The Sea jinked right, then slanted its approach to give a better aim at the tail end of the wasp ship, which had only now fired its single working fusion pulse thruster, trying to open the range between it and the oncoming human ships.
“Engine destroyed,” Daisy said softly.
“Holtzman! Get the hell out of range! We’ll take care of putting down these weapons rings,” Joy yelled over the neutrino comlink.
“Two guns are better than one,” replied the black-bearded German who moved his frigate in ways that almost made it dance around the enemy beams.
The frigate’s nose laser was clearly aimed by a sharpshooter Spacer. It placed multiple hits on the wasp ship’s rear weapons ring, taking out three weapons tubes with each hit.
The destroyer’s proton laser cut deep into the rebuilt middle weapons ring. He recalled Joy’s people had earlier killed both the nose and middle weapons rings with their tightly focused proton laser shots. Clearly the Hunter in charge of the enemy ship had put out crew to fix the middle ring as it awaited orders to do something else.
“Done!” grunted Holtzman from his image at the top of the wallscreen.
“Us too,” called Joy from her image. A wisp of black smoke showed in her Bridge image. “Let’s pull back.”
Jacob noted the engine-dead wasp ship was using its attitude jets to stabilize it back into geosync orbit. It did not fire any weapon at the two Earth ships. Nor did it launch any missiles or nuke warheads at them. Clearly its Hunter captain understood it survived on the sufferance of the human fleet. He hoped the smoke in Joy’s Bridge was just the result of circuits fusing somewhere in the destroyer’s electrical distribution system. He also noted something else. His father had waited to order the attack until the Star Navy base Green Hills had orbited back to this side of Valhalla, putting it in position to defend the capital Stockholm against any nukes that might be launched by this wasp ship. O’Sullivan was firing the base’s attitude jets to raise its orbit above the normal 492 klicks. A higher orbit meant a longer time on this side of Valhalla and a longer period in which O’Sullivan and his people could protect the colonists. The true space image of the planet and Green Hills also showed two Star Navy shuttles leaving the station and heading toward the wasp ship. Damn. Each shuttle was armed with a single low power nose laser. But that laser would be enough to knock out any nuke warhead launched by the wasp ship when the fleet left its current orbit above the moon. O’Sullivan was very aware that his base could not stay on the same side of his world as the enemy, unlike the wasp ship that was in a fixed geosync orbit just above Stockholm.
“Jacob! Uh, captain,” called Daisy. “Look at the spysat images!”
He looked away from the local true space holo and up to the spysat image that filled the middle of the wallscreen. The fifteen wasp ships were all firing their thrusters and moving up and away from their new colony world. Green beams shot out from three wasp ships, hitting three of the spysats his father had left in geosync orbits both equatorial and polar. The wallscreen image shifted from a dead spysat to a still living one, sending a live stream of neutrino-transmitted images across two AU.
“Crap.” He looked up at the seventeen ship captain images that lined the top of the wallscreen. “Fleet admiral, looks like the enemy is leaving their colony. And taking down our spysats on their way out. I’m damned glad you agreed to have the Inchon follow us back here. They would have been overwhelmed.”
“True,” his father said, a grimace filling his face. “Looks like this truce was just to buy time for them to put down their baby wasps. Now they’re heading our way.” The man fixed on Jacob. “You warned me this would happen. Now they’re doing just what they did to you at Kepler 22. Well, I have a few surprises for them.” His father looked down. “Captain Canowicakte, move the Midway out of here. Set us on course for planet three. All ships, follow!”
Putting aside his recollection that the name of the Sioux captain meant ‘good hunter of the forest’ in Lakota, Jacob focused on commanding the Lepanto.
“Navigation, set us on a vector that puts us alongside the admiral’s ship,” he said quickly. “Engines, give me full power on all three thrusters. Gravity, Weapons and Tactical, bring your teams to full staffing.”
“Sir, both outriggers are fully staffed,” called Oliver from his Weapons station. “The proton laser nodes, plasma batteries, railguns and antimatter cannon are also staffed by first shift. The AM cannon has eight shots holding in her mag storage.”
“Same for Tactical,” called Rosemary, her wide shoulders tensing within her clear vacsuit. “I am cross-linking our targeting sensors. We’re ready to combine our energy beam firing with that of other ships.”
“Captain, Gravity is normalized on all decks of the Lepanto,” reported Cassandra from her station. “My techs are standing by at all gravplate energizers. They’re ready to shift power as needed, or to cut all gravity pull upon your command.”
Jacob had no wish to repeat his one-time killing of ship gravity fields in order to escape the black hole field of the giant wasp ship. His Navigator and the Navigators on every fleet ship well understood the need to stay at least 4,000 klicks away from both giant wasp ships. Although he thought the ship once commanded by Hunter One was unable to erect such a field. No matter. It was a prime space battle command now, thanks to his father’s new orders during their voyage into the system and over to the third world. Their watch there had been boring. So they’d left once the wasps put out vacsuited crew to repair hull damage. It was clear that action had just been part of the dance of deception as ordered by this Hunter Prime. Who seemed a far slicker opponent than Hunter One.
“Captain Renselaer,” called Alicia from where she sat strapped in. “My xenolinguist has composed several more English-to-wasp statements that might be used for disruption of wasp ship actions. May I send them to you?”
“Yes. Send them to the XO, to my tablet and out to the admiral.” He stopped before saying it was vital that more than one Battlestar had access to such wasp language date, in case one of their ships blew up in the coming battle. “I’ll review them on our way out.” He looked away from the image of his father and to the situational holo that showed the space around the moon. All eighteen ships were there, including the Inchon. Its crew had spent their time heading in-system, then in orbit above planet three, working to restore their knocked out second thruster. They could now make ten percent of lightspeed, although how long the destroyer’s repairs would last was anyone’s guess. He put that aside and focused on the true space imagery that showed the ships of the two battle groups following the Midway and the Lepanto away from the moon and inward to the third orbital. The wallscreen’s central image of the wasp ships streaming away from planet three now vanished in a flash of white as the last spysat was killed. “We’re heading out.”
♦ ♦ ♦
“It looks like we’ll meet them at the halfway point,” Daisy heard Jacob say an hour later.
“Looks likely,” she replied, doing her best to keep her voice calm and firm.
Presenting a confident appearance to the crew at their duty stations on the Bridge, and elsewhere on the Lepanto, was vital. People knew they were heading to a final fight with two giant wasp ships and thirteen smaller, destroyer-size ships. They knew the Battlestar was not invulnerable. The repairs to the deep holes cut into the ship’s belly, nose and top rear had been done well by the engineers at the Green Hills. But there was no normal metal that met the exacting composition of armor metal. Which left her ship with three vulnerable spots, although all weapons systems were fully operational. She hoped Quincy, now in charge of the right outrigger’s CO2 and proton laser nodes, would survive the upcoming battle. This would be a fight to the finish. Either every wasp ship would be killed, or every Earth ship would die in the attempt. They could never allow a fully mobile wasp ship to reach missile launch range of Valhalla. Her memory of visiting the people of Stockholm, seeing their first responders risking their lives
after the last attack, and then going fishing in one of the nearby lakes with a nurse from the local hospital, that had imprinted on her a love for that world.
“Tactical,” called Jacob. “What’s the range to the enemy?”
“Twelve point four million kilometers,” Rosemary said. “They’re moving at ten psol, just like us. But they’re slowing now. We’ll meet in less than five minutes.”
Her overhead image of Jacob showed him nodding quickly. “All Ship! Brace for combat! Engines, slow us to one percent. That’s what the Midway is doing.”
“Reducing thrust,” called Akira from her station.
Her heart beat fast and she had to work hard at not breathing too fast. Hyperventilation was not something she wished to feel.
♦ ♦ ♦
Richard checked his ship cross-section holo that lay to the right of his seat. It showed all ship weapons systems as Green Operational. That he expected. What mattered more to him was the situation in the hangar next to Silo Eight. His Marines were gathered just outside the three Darts, each wearing a Shinshoni Hard Shell. His pilots were already onboard, making engines and systems hot. He knew he could count on the pilots Linda, Howard and Aaron. The team leaders like Jane were checking the battle loads of each person’s hard shell. Thanks to Auggie losing his Dart, up to six Marines could load onto each remaining Dart. Which were now named Chao Lee, Chapultepec and Tarawa. The last name evoked his memory of the WWII journal Touched By Fire. At least in space his Marines did not have to smell the dead bodies rotting and bursting open from hundred degree heat and humidity that drained all energy. Mauritius had been bad enough, fighting the Creole Muslims who supported the foreign jihadists in their fight to overthrow the dominating Hindus. Worse had been the jihadists who killed the Malaysian president, then had retreated to that nation’s thick jungles. He remembered his uniform and boots going very rotty. At least they’d had enough ammo. He put away those memories and focused on what he, his Marines and their Darts might do in the forthcoming battle. He tapped the control patch on his right armrest that gave him a link to the Shinshoni suit frequency.
“Pilots, stand by to launch on the captain’s orders. Auggie, Wayne and Jane, are your teams ready?”
“Ready,” called Jane. “Standing by outside the Chao Lee.
“Locked, loaded and powered up,” reported Auggie from the Chapultepec.
“Ready to kill something,” yelled Wayne from the Tarawa, which was also the assembly spot for some of the Marines who would have loaded into the Dart that had blown on the comet ship.
He knew Wayne would parcel the extra people out to the other two Darts as needed, no doubt being the first to board the Tarawa. Wayne was a gyrene of the old school. A fact that Richard quite liked.
“Marines! If we’re going for a board, fill the Darts. If we’re sent out to sharpshoot, just the pilot and a single Marine to handle the laser go out. The rest of you stay in the hangar and shoot dice.”
“Bitchin’,” called Linda.
Richard smiled. The master sergeant was overdue for promotion to first sergeant, except Earth Command reserved that rank for team leaders. Well, Linda was a hell of a lot more than a pilot. Maybe when they got back to Earth and resupplied with a fourth Dart he could put her in charge of its team.
He glanced up at the front wallscreen. Its central true space image showed a telescopic view of the incoming wasp ships. One group of seven, with a giant ship in the middle of a ring of six. A second group held eight ships, including a giant. Which made their formation a six-on-one and another seven-on-one grouping. Well, it was very similar to how the wasps had arranged their first attack using twelve ships to come around the fourth planet of Kepler 22. What kind of formation would the admiral call out now? He couldn’t wait to hear it.
♦ ♦ ♦
Aarhant Bannerjee locked the slidedoor that gave access to his quarters and turned back to sit in his overstuffed chair. He reached out for the bottle of Scotch that he preferred during tense times. Which were now. His assistants were above, in the Navigation control center, which was just one deck under the outer Weapons Deck. Too close to the ship’s hull, in his view. His quarters on the Habitation Deck were near the center of the Lepanto, which it made two decks below and four decks above a buffer against incoming energy beams. Short of leaving the Battlestar, staying in his quarters was the safest place he could be.
He swigged down a swallow of straight Scotch, not bothering with the shot glass that stood on the nearby table. His tablet buzzed. He ignored it. Then it spoke with the voice of the Singapore woman who was his first assistant.
“Bannerjee! We’re about to enter battle. Your place is here in the control center,” she said, her English carrying a strong Chinese accent, which clearly said she was upset.
“It’s Lieutenant Commander, you hag,” he replied. “I’m sick with the flu. You and the Kenyan handle what needs handling. We’re stuck in this system until the wasps go away. Do the job I gave you!”
“Understood.”
His tablet gave a soft click as she cut the connection.
Well, she and that gay bastard could take their chances with the Weapons Deck being punched through by one of those wasp lightning bolts. He wouldn’t. And illness was an acceptable excuse from being absent from his duty station, according to Star Navy regs. He knew that. He’d researched it many years ago.
Putting down the bottle of Scotch, he took the wallscreen control, switched off its view of the oncoming wasp fleet, and chose a Bollywood movie that featured a man who looked much like him. The man pretended to be the god Vishnu. His blue skin matched his pretence. Bannerjee did not have blue skin, just the normal dark brown common to most Hindus. But he did have a crown that resembled the one worn by this actor. It was a thing he’d ordered during his last Earth leave. It was something he enjoyed wearing in the privacy of his quarters, where no one but himself could see him.
Or could the AI Melody see him?
No matter. It was not a real person. And he didn’t give a damn what it or anyone else thought of him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Range is 12,000 klicks,” called Rosemary. “Both fleets are slowing to 900 kilometers a minute maneuvering speed.”
Jacob did not like the fact his forehead sweated every time he wore a vacsuit. As did his armpits. The cotton camo he wore underneath the vacsuit did little to help that. Up front he saw sweat showing on the camo shirts worn by Maggie, Oliver, Akira, Louise, Andrew, Cassandra and Joaquin. Only Rosemary and Willard didn’t show evidence of sweating as they faced the imminent deadly fighting. Daisy, Richard and Alicia sat with their backs against their seats so he couldn’t tell about them. And Lori and Carlos were behind him. Anyway, when would his father announce the attack formation? When would—
“All ships! Go to Alpha Scissor Blades formation!” his father said loudly. “One scissor forms on the Lepanto and one on the Midway. StarFight ships form on the Lepanto. Now!”
“Navigation! Move us out and to one side of this vector track,” Jacob ordered.
“New diverging vector track set,” Louise called from her station.
“All StarFight ships, form along the Lepanto’s track,” he called over the neutrino comlink. “Cruisers first, then the destroyers, then the frigates.”
“Moving to your tail,” called Swanson from the Chesapeake.
“Us too,” called Wilcox from the Hampton Roads.
Jacob looked to the situational holo that showed the wasp ships as purple dots with human ships as green dots. No planets or moons were shown on this holo that covered a few hundred thousand klicks. It didn’t matter. He recalled the Scissor Blades formation as one his father had used against the cluster of rebel mining ships near Callisto. To the outside observer it looked like a splitting of forces, making each group smaller in numbers than the approaching enemy force. His scissor blade had just eight ships in it, while his father’s blade had ten. They faced fifteen ships. But in reality it was a variatio
n on the ancient pincer formation, but led this time by Battlestars armed with antimatter cannons, followed by powerful cruisers loaded to the hilt with CO2 and proton lasers, a railgun on each cruiser’s nose and four missile silos at the rear. Plus top and bottom plasma batteries for close-up protection.
He liked Scissors because it gave the Lepanto and the cruisers the chance to use their side-mounted proton lasers in a raking fire mode where their proton beams could join with the proton beams fired by the following destroyers. For his formation, that made for six red proton beams, all aimed at a single target. His father’s formation included three cruisers and four destroyers, which gave the admiral a combined strike ability of eight proton beams. Jacob knew from past battles that hitting any of the smaller wasp ships with eight, or even six proton beams meant fast destruction of that six-sided log-like ship. After the formation hit the enemy with raking proton fire, the formation called for his ships to reverse course and come up the tails of the surviving enemy ships, hitting them with combined CO2 laser fire. The railguns on the cruisers and Battlestars would fire Smart Rocks during both attack runs. But first of course would come enemy beams since the wasps had the range advantage.
“Incoming,” called Oliver at Weapons.
Green and yellow beams struck out from all fifteen wasp ships. They were grouped in two sets of ships, one of seven and one of eight. One group of seven ships fired on the Lepanto. The other group of eight fired on the Midway.
“Nav, lift our nose a bit,” he called to Louise. “Protect our cannon node.”
Battlegroup (StarFight Series Book 2) Page 24