Battlegroup (StarFight Series Book 2)

by T. Jackson King

  “Hunter One!” called the leader of all Swarmers. “Is your nest able to bite hard!”

  “It is,” One replied in a rush of aggregation and signal pheromones. “We cannot erect our Pull Down hull plates for we lack the head group that would complete the field. But our middle and tail stinger rings are hungry to taste Soft Skin flesh!”

  “You showed strength in biting back even as you turned your nest to follow me,” Hunter Prime said in a strong flow of command, signal, trail and aggregation pheromones. “Are you ready to attack these two-limbed defiers of life’s order?”

  That answered his unspoken thought. They would not re-enter the alternate dimension and fly elsewhere. Briefly he wondered whether Hunter Seven and his nest still lived. “In some moments my nest can join your nest and the other Support Hunters in attacking the Soft Skins. My Workers and Worker Leaders are acting to close the severed tubeways and tend to our two remaining power blocks.”

  “You hold back?” Hunter Prime said in a swift flow of signal and dismay pheromones.

  “No!” One said in a scent cast of aggregation pheromones. “This nest is loyal to the Swarm! This nest is ready to bite hard! This nest will carry our larvae Pods to the third world!”

  “Better,” Hunter Prime said in a mix of primer, trail and territorial pheromones. “Let us fly ahead and englobe these Soft Skins! Perhaps one of their nests will come close enough to be broken in my Pull Down field!”

  “Leader, be wary of the black beams! Their range is greater than the reach of our Pull Down field.”

  The leaders two black antennae pulled back. “You make Challenge! Come to my nest and I will show you the wrongness of your scents!”

  “No Challenge,” One hurriedly scent cast back. “Misunderstanding am I. Helping our Swarm was my sole intent in warming of the black beams. Guide me, Hunter Prime.”

  The leader’s antennae leaned forward. “At least your caste training comes forth now. Follow me ahead. Join your bolts and beams with mine. Together we shall bite off the heads of the Soft Skins!”

  “Following,” Hunter One replied in a flow of aggregation scent. “Flight Servant, set our path alongside the Hunter Prime. Propulsive Servant, make our nest fly toward the Soft Skins!”

  Obedience pheromones came from all his Servants.

  Ahead, the imagers showed the forms of the Soft Skin nests growing larger.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Richard felt surprise that the wasps had not already gone into Alcubierre space-time, if only to buy time for repairs. The incoming enemy fleet had been cut in half. Clearly they had not expected the Earth ships to be present at their arrival site. He felt renewed appreciation for the admiral’s decision to do the reverse of Jacob’s prior actions. While the young captain had much of the daring, ruthlessness and creativity of his old man, the admiral had decades of spaceship handling and fighting experience. Old Renselaer knew when to attack and when to prepare a surprise for the enemy. What would be the man’s next command?

  “Commander Branstead,” called Jacob. “Are you ready to transmit some pheromone signals at those ships?”

  That alerted him to a new surprise coming not from the father but from the son. He looked right to the brown-haired woman whose xenolinguist had been working on building an English-to-wasp vocabulary, thanks to daily talks with the captive wasps. What had happened recently?

  “I am. We are, I mean.” She put a finger on an armrest control patch. “What do I send to Chief Osashi?”

  “Send him three short message scents,” Jacob said quickly. “Make the first one ‘Fly away’. Make the second one ‘Stop biting’. Make the third one say ‘Submit to Soft Skins’.”

  The veteran deck leader tapped her control patch, looked aside at a holo filled with color patterns, then up front where the electro-optical scope image showed the wasp ships moving into a loose cloud formation. “Transmitted to the chief. Let’s hope our scent frequency matches their receiver tech.”

  “It should,” said Daisy from his left, giving him pause to wonder just what the captain’s brain trust of smart young people had been doing together. “Lori tried it on another, unmodified signaler unit that was placed in the Forest Room. The first two signals caused the expected reaction among the Worker wasps. Their response ended after their leader told them to ignore the strange scents.”

  “Good,” Jacob said, sounding pleased.

  Richard looked up at the line of ship captain images. There were eighteen there, including the admiral, his XO and his captain in one of the images. Jacob was the missing nineteenth captain. The admiral had looked up at Jacob’s comment. Now he frowned thoughtfully.

  “Captain Renselaer, do I understand your Science people have created a way to ‘talk’ to these wasps?”

  “They have, sir. It requires the emission of polarized radio signals. The polarization interacts with the wasp signaling devices to convert incoming EMF signals to scents, and to convert scents received into polarized EMF signals,” Jacob said slowly. “Do you wish a copy of the three signals I just ordered sent to our Communications chief?”

  “I do. Send it to my XO’s attention,” the admiral said quickly.

  “Going out,” called Osashi from up front.

  The admiral looked aside at a holo. “The wasps are not leaving this system. Instead, they are moving into a cloud formation. It’s similar to what you encountered in the Kepler 22 attacks. Are they unable to do other than try to englobe an enemy?”

  “Sir,” Jacob said quickly. “My exobiologist Lieutenant JG Antonova has shared with me her insights into wasp culture. Like many predatory insects on Earth and on our colony planets, these alien wasp people have a cultural pattern of attacking en masse any opponent or intruder. She thinks our arrival at Kepler 22 set off this instinctive behavior.”

  “Could be,” the admiral mused. Richard marveled at how quickly the admiral could change his mind, given new facts. The old man, wearing helmet and vacsuit like all of them, faced forward. “My XO has signaled to me we have your three wasp signals. Do we both use them at the same time, or independently?”

  “Admiral, sir, I suggest your Battlestar should transmit a different signal from the one the Lepanto sends out, but do it at the same time you hear us transmit a signal. That should increase wasp confusion when they get different orders from two different sources, on top of whatever orders their leader or leaders are transmitting by polarized EMF signal. There’s no need to try the neutrino transmission mode since speed of light works almost instantly at the short ranges of our weapons systems.”

  “Agreed.” The old man’s squarish face grew tense. “They’re coming in!”

  “Enemy approaches at 973 kilometers a minute,” called Rosemary.

  “We concur,” the admiral said. “All ships! Your ordnance is cleared Hot. Engage the enemy with co-targeting of gas and proton lasers!”

  “Tactical,” called Jacob. “You heard him.”

  “Tracking incoming enemy,” Rosemary said softly. “Range is 74,312 kilometers and reducing. Enemy formation is cloud-like.”

  “All ships!” called the admiral. “Go to Alpha Bristle Ball formation!”

  Richard liked that order. The new formation was one not seen by the wasps and it should be effective in defending against an englobing attack.

  “Navigation, move us to the rear of the formation,” Jacob said quickly.

  “Vector track set. Engines are taking us to our new position,” called Louise Slaughter.

  She was one of two redheads on the Bridge, a fact that did not disturb him. Richard liked colorful people, in all skin and hair colors. Even the Cassandra gal whose hair was a bright green. Looking up, he watched the wallscreen as images changed. The cloud of silvery wasp ships grew larger in the screen’s true space image, while the situational image on the left enlarged to display their section of space, with the Pluto-like seventh planet far behind the two ship groups. On the right glowed the sensor tracking image. In seconds the green
dots of the Earth ships had rearranged themselves into a tight ball with just four thousand kilometers between each ship. The Midway was at front middle of the ball, the Lepanto at rear middle, with the five cruisers arranged in a north-south polar circle halfway between the two Battlestars. The eight destroyers were clustered halfway into the ball, their proton lasers aiming forward for the moment. The surviving four frigates were at the center of the ball formation, which gave them some shelter from incoming beams that might be blocked by the destroyers, cruisers and the Battlestars.

  “Range is 41,427 klicks,” called the other redhead at Tactical.

  Richard pulled his helmet down over his head. It sealed with a snap-click. Telltale status lights appeared in a chin-up position just below his nose. His seat vibrated as automatic straps moved out and over his chest in an x-pattern. Pairs of straps went over his legs. He didn’t like being locked into his cushioned seat, but it was necessary in case the ship lost its inertial damper field. A rare event, true, but not impossible.

  “Admiral,” called Jacob hurriedly. “Suggest we each launch three missiles loaded with x-ray thermonuke warheads. At Kepler 22 they seemed to affect wasp ships when they were within 5,000 klicks.”

  “Agreed. Tactical, launch our missiles,” the admiral said quickly. “Weapons, what load of antimatter has our accelerator produced?”

  “Sir, three shots, with a fourth building,” came the voice of the admiral’s Weapons station crewwoman.

  On his left, Daisy leaned forward. “Admiral, I show we have four shots in our reservoir, with a fifth accumulating.”

  That was fast work for a particle accelerator. Still, the accelerator tube that wrapped around the nose of each Battlestar was a sixth generation device. Its magcoils clearly produced an unprecedented amount of positron particle collisions that produced the negative antimatter which the cannon’s emitter node shot out in a magnetically controlled beam. Richard did not like relying on a weapon the size of a small spaceship, but carrying an AM cannon was one of the reasons for the building of five Battlestars. It quite put to rest the old argument between manned fighters and automated missiles. Neither moved at lightspeed, which the cannon beam did.

  “Tactical?” called Jacob.

  “We’ve launched four x-ray thermonuke missiles. I’ve programmed the missiles to eject their warheads once their sensors detect an enemy ship within 11,000 klicks,” reported the Tactical woman. “Will make it harder for the wasp lasers to track and zap the warheads, which are on a randomized vector track toward any ship without a friendly IFF signal.”

  “Good. Science, do you see anything unusual about the incoming formation?” Jacob said.

  “Nothing yet, sir.” The portly Jewish man with the booming voice was someone Richard had yet to figure out. Willard Steinmetz had few friends on the ship, according to scuttlebutt heard in the Mess Hall, but he was clearly very competent. And Branstead had put him into his Bridge post long before the old admiral had gotten the senior officers killed. “However, we should be alert to their black hole fields. Only a giant wasp ship has carried that weapon, so we could be facing two such fields.”

  “Captain,” called Daisy. “My analysis of the signals from the giant wasp ship on the left of the cloud formation says it is the same ship that led the attack on us in Kepler 22. It stopped using the black hole field after we put a big hole in its front nose. Could be it cannot produce such a field with a quarter of its hull missing.”

  “Good point, XO.” Jacob’s tone sounded thoughtful. “All ships, be alert to the danger posed by the two giant wasp ships. They are able to produce artificial black hole fields. The weapon’s range is 3,917 kilometers. The wounded giant ship may not be able to deploy its field.”

  Richard watched the admiral’s image but the master of the combined fleet seemed focused on other matters in the holos that surrounded him. Which made him wonder if there was anything he could see in the enemy formation that he should warn young Renselaer about?

  “Navigation, spin the ship,” Jacob said firmly.

  “Spinning.”

  The wasp ships had reached a range of 15,000 klicks and were still incoming at just under a thousand klicks per minute. Which meant his ship would shortly be on the receiving end of CO2 laser and lightning beam strikes. Watching a lightning bolt jink and jerk across 11,000 klicks of black space was an experience Richard did not like. He had never enjoyed doing maneuvers in the rain, let alone during a thunderstorm. But such was normal for Marine raiders and Quantico had never let up on the doctrine of “If it’s hard to do, do it better than anyone else!” He wished his Darts had a role to play. But their thin hulls could not survive the oncoming blizzard of green and yellow beams fired by the wasps. The only way his three Darts had managed to get to the ship hiding in the comet had been thanks to covering fire from Jefferson’s destroyer. She was the kind of woman he would gladly go into a firefight with, much like Diego. Neither resembled each other, but both were eager to take out the enemy. Which, he recalled now, was the prime reason he had joined the Marines, long decades ago.

  “Incoming!”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Hunter Seven watched the movement of Swarmer nests and Soft Skin nests on the perception imager that depicted sky light particles from their propulsive units and power blocks. Earlier, when he had seen the Soft Skin nests fly in a group to the exact point where One’s Colony nest would return to, he had wished for a way to warn them of the danger. But that required his nest to be in the alternate dimension that allowed travel from one sky light to another. Now, flying above the world meant for Swarmers, they were far from the place where such travel could happen. So the disaster had happened upon the arrival of six six-groups of nests, including three Colony nests.

  Clearly the new Soft Skin nests were led by someone different from the one who had led the fighting nests in the earlier battles in darkness. This new leader had brought more fighting nests, perhaps from the home world of the Soft Skins. His Servant for monitoring external sky signals had noted the direction the new nests had come from. But now, after seeing three six-groups of nests be destroyed at little loss to the Soft Skins, he wondered if he would ever live to share with them his knowledge of the third world.

  “Hunter Seven,” called his Servant who was their Speaker To All. “Should we send scent to our fellow Swarmers that we are here, above the future colony world?”

  “To what point?” Seven cast in a flow of frustration and signal pheromones. “It would take us three day cycles to reach our fellows. But if we try to leave, the particle disruption seeds left behind by the Soft Skin nest that followed us here would try to kill us.”

  “Leader!” called his young Stinger Servant. “Our tail ring of stingers could kill those seeds!”

  “Perhaps so,” Seven said in a slow flow of primer and territorial pheromones. “But we are badly damaged. We lack most of our stingers. We could not help these other flying nests.”

  “But Seven,” called the young female who managed their sole surviving propulsive device. “If we kill these seeds and then fly to the world where the Soft Skins now live, could that not help? It might force the Soft Skins to send some nests to defend their colony.”

  Seven wondered at the idea proposed by the talented female. It would violate their agreement to stay at the world he hoped would be a future colony for Swarmers. But these new Soft Skins had already violated the offer for each lifeform to stay on its own world and to share needed items by meeting in cold dark space.

  “Your scent is engaging,” he told the young female. “Let us see what comes of this next battle in the dark sky. Perhaps we can do as you say.”

  “Leader,” called his new Stinger Servant, “we should signal our offer to Hunter One now! One of those nests is his Colony nest. Our tools tell us he has returned as promised!”

  Seven did not like the recklessness of the young Servants in his Flight Chamber. They had not been satisfied with visits to the world below. Even the capture o
f live food and eating it out in the open spaces of the new world had failed to satisfy them as all on his nest awaited the return of Hunter One and other Swarmers. That had now happened. Perhaps it was the right time to fly into the darkness. He emitted a rush of aggregation and command pheromones.

  “Speaker To All, send word to Hunter One of our position and our willingness to dive on the Soft Skin colony world. Stinger Servant, begin destroying those particle seeds. Let us see how well you aim your stinger!”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Daisy watched the situational holo on her left as Jacob fought their ship. Red dots swirled around the green dot ball of their formation. She looked at her true space holo. It was filled with red, green and yellow beams as every ship in the two groups fired at each other now that the wasps had slowed enough to avoid running past the Earth ships. Both groups now did combined targeting of enemy ships. The eight destroyers had concentrated their proton laser beams on a wasp ship her holo had labeled W4. But every wasp ship except the two giant ones were concentrating their lasers and lightning bolts on the inner cluster of frigates. Which were having a hard time avoiding being hit, even tho the Lepanto, the Midway, the Chesapeake and other cruisers were moving to block as many beams as possible. But with the wasps spread out in a cloud formation, beams were coming in from every angle relative to the Bristle Ball. From the top, bottom and front. Soon it would be the rear once they finished their enveloping maneuver.