by A. D. Bloom
"Even if you can hide all those small strike craft, that Imperium ship is sixteen Ks tall," Rabal said. "You're going to need more than the fission torpedoes those junks carry to kill it."
"We're not trying to kill it. Not with torpedoes. If we're right, the strike from the junks will disrupt its ability to produce a shield and/or attack."
"If the crews can put those torpedoes in the right place, that is," Pardue said. "It's a big ship."
"They'll target the tips of the spires, the logical area for field generator placement and known point of emanation for the plasma it fires. After the strike, Guerrero's railguns should be able to handle the rest of the job."
Garlan Foet shifted his weight to the other foot and squinted at Ram. "If the air group is on the other side of the battle, Commodore, then what's going to protect the two carriers from attack while all this is going on?"
SCS Doxy
Garlan returned from Hardway with a small armory the redsuits had packed into the longboat. They loaded it with crates of MA-48 rifles, ammo, grenades, and a chain gun. He almost wasn't sure if he wanted to distribute weapons to his crew. If they'd had rifles three hours ago, they'd probably have tried to shoot the Shediri that turned out to have been saving Bix. In the end, fear won the debate, but the 'little rock thrower' kept the chain gun for himself.
"MA-48," Singh said when he brought three rifles and the encased chaingun to the bridge. "Railgun on top. Under-barrel, x-ray laser."
"You ever shoot one?"
"Nope."
"Me neither."
"Remember where the safety is and what you've got selected," Graves said. "Hopefully, they'll grow cobwebs. What's in the case?"
They whistled when they saw it. "I guess Skipper wants the big gun," Annie said.
There was nowhere to put the rifles. The ones they leaned against consoles immediately fell underfoot. "Carnaby," he called on comms. "Send two of your lot to the landing bay. I left presents for you in the longboat. Help yourselves and figure out storage for it all."
Doxy steamed for the inner system just behind Hardway and so close to starboard that the swarm of Shediri flying around Doxy's flight decks cut across the front of the attack carrier's bays. From the command chair on the bridge Garlan had a view down the length of 950-meter Hardway as Guerrero rose up next to them both so he could see nothing but Hardway to port and the battleship's armored flanks and engine glow to starboard. Guerrero settled in with the center line of her mass just above the carrier's top decks as the Shediri swarm passed in front of Doxy's bridge.
Black and white, painted chitin filled the vacuum in front of the bow as the hundreds of raiders passed, but after that, the open bays down Hardway's length flashed with pale and quick, maneuvering thruster bursts. Moments later, the first of the junks and fighters began to coast out of the bays, engines dark and cold, trying to be black holes in the vacuum.
Singh said, "What the hell is with all the black and white, alien warpaint anyway? It isn't camo. One of the junks' EWOs said it's the chitin makes them stealthy. So what gives with the paint?"
"It was camo," Garlan said. "Once, at some point. Now, it's decorative."
"How the hell was that ever camo?"
"They're color blind mostly. That paint job is a dazzle pattern made for arthropod eyes...insect-type compound eyes specifically. If they're anything like Earth bug eyes, then when one of the hundreds of cells in them goes from receiving dark stimulus to receiving light quickly or vice versa (like when that war paint moves in front of them), it's interpreted by the host system as object movement towards and away from the bug at the same time. The pattern confuses them. Zebras use the same thing on mosquitoes and flies."
"How the hell you know so much about the bugs?"
"I asked."
Graves said, "You think the enemy can see the ships moving to Guerrero's hull? You think they can see what we're doing?"
"The way we're turned, the enemy battlegroup can't see the starboard side of either carrier or the starboard side of Guerrero," he said.
"I know, but,"
"Devlin told me the 55th Hellcats and some junks swept ahead of us. He said there's no alien spy birds out there anymore."
"Better not be," Annie said as a flight of four Sky Jacks coasted out of Hardway's bays together and slid silently under the battleship. Four more followed. Just past them, three torpedo junks drifted until they hit the thrusters so lightly it looked like they simply vented the plasma and let the icy blue fire vape away into space. The junks disappeared silently around the far side of the giant battleship's hull with the fighters. Moments later, Garlan pulled in their encrypted chatter over comms. "Touchdown, touchdown; we're looking good."
"Roger that, sending more."
"Tell them to watch out for the bugs."
The swarm didn't cease its close orbits of the Doxy during transfer and as the aliens launched more and more of their approximately 590 remaining raiders, the swarm thickened. They cut an s-turn in front of Doxy's bow and veered off to the hidden, starboard side of the battleship's hull. After he lost sight of them, Garlan pictured them landing and clinging to Guerrero's 800-meter length like giant, dazzle-painted roaches.
SCS Bangalore, 50-meter torpedo junk, over the hull of UNS Guerrero.
Dice searched below for open space. He said, "The bugs parked everywhere down there already. Even those little Sky Jacks don't know where to set down." He nodded his helmet at the flight of F-223s flying slowly across the canopy of their junk, following the curve of the battleship's hull, looking for space between the Shediri raiders.
"Beetles," Lippmann said. "Look like beetles."
"Roaches," Chief Bai insisted. The crew chief held on to the handholds above the two pilots' seats, floating between Dice and Lippmann. "I know roaches," Bai said. "Shediri raiders look like the big city outdoor roaches that never come down from the outsides of the tall buildings. Look just like Shediri. But not black and white."
"Then how do they look just like 'em?"
Dice said, "Chief, tell me how those Shediri engines are supposed to work again." He already knew, but Bai was nervous and when he was nervous, he chattered. It was better when he chattered about engines.
"Spatial distortion using a set of field coils," Bai said. "That's how they work. Compresses space on one side, expands it on the other. It's a little slow unless you've got a giant power plant, but that's part of why the bugs are so hard to spot on IR - no exhaust - no engine plume."
"Kind of a shame to waste their stealth like this," said Lippmann.
"You just wave to our Shediri friends out there and be glad they're here. The more of them there are, the less fire is going to be directed at us. And there's going to be plenty of fire." Bai's mouth was dry. You could hear it over his helmet mic.
"Crew Chief, is that penetrator pinch still working like Meester said it would? I'd sure hate to get up to the Imperium shield and find out it's not working."
"I'll go triple check."
Lippmann shook his head after Bai left.
"Give him a break," Dice said. "He's nervous."
"He should be. Pressure is on. Bangalore used to be just another torpedo junk. Then, the redsuits put that extra set of field coils in her and now, a whole battle is hanging on us and a few torpedoes."
Dice said, "You got it only half right. Everything isn't hanging on us. It's hanging on every man and woman and bug here. But... Bangalore and five other torpedo junks got the shield penetrators and received orders to hit the Imperium ship so what we get is the last chance to screw up everyone else's hard work."
SCS Hardway, bridge
Ram didn't turn in the chair to hear the message as it was read to him by the warrant officer at the Diplomatic Console. "Transmission from Ix, but it's just a number, Mr. Devlin...267."
"Pardue," Ram said to his Air Group Commander. "267."
"267 Shediri raiders won't fit on Guerrero and will remain with us. Noted. We'll need them."
Ram
said. "What do we have left in our reduced air group?"
"Three torpedo junks and twenty-four Sky Jacks from the 55th."
"We've just crossed 13 million miles to target," said Wei from the NAV.
Ram said, "We'll split with the battleship in a few minutes. Pardue, once we steam out of Guerrero's ring of destroyers, I want you to put everything you've got out there on an aggressive forward patrol. We've got to make it look like we've still got a whole air group and a full swarm of raiders so we can draw all of the fat gunboats made to kill small craft our way. That will be what opens the Ekkai battlegroup's other side for the real assault on the Imperium ship."
Pardue said, "What if they don't believe the air group is coming from our side?"
"Then we die, the Shediri die...everybody dies."
9
55th Fighter Squadron
"This is AGC Pardue," said the voice from the carrier, "In addition to the enemy directly in front of you, our arrays have intermittent contacts showing at least seven more Ekkai hunter-killers now moving in your direction."
"What about the disco balls...the gunboats..."
"The Ekkai aren't committing them to either prong of our attack yet."
"Copy that, Hardway. We'll give them a reason to send 'em our way."
Strike angled her nacelles' thrust starboard and shifted her Sky Jack to port again. As she flew nearly sideways, the Ekkai in front of her flight came visible to her naked eye. Domed batteries blistered their sides. "This is Hellcat 1-1, listen up. Our job is to lure the gunboats over here so the junks will have a chance to get by. Best way for us to do that is to cause so much damage, there's no other choice but to send 'em here."
"This is Hellcat 1-2," Cheese said. "We're with you, Strike. But we're going to have to fly through overlapping fields of fire on the way in if we want to score with the warspites on our belly mounts."
The Ekkai would pluck their torps from the black if they weren't launched close. Only Strike had scored a good hit in the last engagement and only because she'd released too late for her own good. "We're going in with the Shediri - with the swarm and their missiles for cover. Don't let your torps go until you're close enough to spit on an enemy hull."
The 267 Shediri raiders to port flew a corkscrewing path in the silence of the vacuum, ripping past close to her canopy in the raking light. Their warheads packed less than 10% the punch of a fission-tipped warspite torpedo. She'd never seen one actually hull anything with a vape crater, but when enough of them detonated against a hull, the shock waves could be devastating.
The Shediri were a war-painted river of ships that twisted like a mad snake. When the tail end of it passed and the last of them were all in front of her squadron and preparing to launch, she said, "Hellcats, stay close and follow my line unless I say otherwise. Flight One has dibs on the closest HK. Y'all can fight over the rest." Then she kicked her nacelles high to her five o'clock and plunged after the Shediri with Hellcats 1-2, 1-3, and 1-4 close behind in echelon.
The Ekkai ships adjusted course together, chasing the front of the swarm. It was the Shediri who fired first, launching a salvo so thick and buzzing that if the bugs' missiles had been any bigger, they would have blocked the first of the Ekkai ships from sight. "790 Shediri missiles tracking on target."
As the swarm veered to port and looped under itself, the enemy beams reached out to burn the alien salvo from the sky. They fired in flashing pulses drawing a hundred lines a second connecting the Ekkai guns to the incoming missiles. The bugs' ordnance cooked off in bright, popping bursts like fireworks everywhere around the Ekkai as the hunter-killers stabbed without mercy at the swarm.
Every burned out, hulled and halved Shediri raider became deadly debris that Strike and her Hellcats had to jink to avoid. She pulled out of line to take her chances with the guns.
The surviving missiles of the Shediri's first, nearly eight-hundred-missile salvo arrived, and over a hundred detonations bloomed across each of the two leading ships. They flashed up and down their lengths for whole seconds while the lines of the Ekkai's vertical fins shook so fast, they blurred. Strike's LiDAR pulses read them in two places at once. When the dets all faded and the charred and hammered Ekkai hulls were revealed, the hunter-killers' engines and guns were dark.
"This is Hellcat 1-1. Bugsy stole our kill," she said. "Follow me in on the third."
The alien gunners in the enemy squadron's third ship must have seen her coming with that torpedo. They shifted their beams from savaging the Shediri and chased her with an intersecting dazzle of rays. Evading them threw her and her flight off their line of attack. Strike knew how to get her fighter back on line to launch that warspite, but this time, doing it would be like flipping a coin for her life. If she survived, it would be pure luck.
"Break away, Flight One. Do not follow me." Strike vectored the thrust from her nacelles in opposition, spinning the 223. Tight beams of lensed gamma rays from every remaining battery chased her, waving above and below, trying to catch her as she flew up and down and sideways. With her nose pointed out of her line of travel that far, she couldn't maneuver evasively enough. She was unable to do much but effect minor changes in direction and it puckered Strike's knot to feel herself flying through the crosshairs of the alien gunners below. Before the beams could find her, she punched the launch button. The Mk3 warspite torpedo leaped off its mounting and blasted itself out in front of her 223, washing her canopy with blinding blue plasma. "Warspite away!"
The beams chased it on its way in and sliced across its path. This one had been programmed to fly thousand-gee maneuvers that would have turned a human or alien pilot to spam in their suit. Launched this close, the Ekkai had less than three seconds to stop it.
Strike fired her thrusters hard against her line of travel and sucked up the gees to get clear. The Ekkai panic fired then. Coordination between the batteries disappeared and there were only mad, flailing desperate beams before impact and detonation.
When her helmet's visor cleared to let her see again, two more fission dets lit off against the hulled and burning hunter-killer. "And that is how we do it, people! Good hits! Good hits! Hardway, this is Hellcat 1-1. Tell those other Ekkai contacts to hurry the hell up. We just dusted a squadron of hunter-killers and we are hungry for more."
"Roger that, Hellcat, 1-1. ETA for new contacts is under two minutes."
Strike cut back around the hulled Ekkai ship. Firestorm jetted from all three vaped and blasted holes. The warmth of it lit the bellies of the swarming Shediri as they passed. She saw a few of her fighters on the far side of the swarm, just not enough of them. She pulled her nose over to port and behind her and looked for the rest of her flight. Their transponders weren't even projected on the tactical display in her helmet visor. "This is 1-1. Cheese! Dopio! 1-2, 1-3. Hojo... Where the hell are you?"
She knew they'd followed her in because the warspites that hit so close to hers had to have come from her flight. As the Shediri swarm tore past to get at the incoming Ekkai ships, Strike looked down the line of flight she'd been on when she launched her torp. Cheese and Doppler and Hojo weren't there. Not anymore. Far down the line, three Sky Jacks tumbled in their own debris clouds, bent and twisted with missing nacelles, melted hulls, and burned out cockpits.
SCS Hardway, bridge
Over the tactical console, three Ekkai hunter-killers drifted dead or disabled along with the wreckage of three F-223 interceptors and some 60 destroyed Shediri craft. Ram said, "Mr. Biko, what is the disposition of the enemy ships after that display. Any change?"
"A string of intermittent LiDAR contacts suggests larger vessels between us and Guerrero are moving in our direction. The Ekkai gunboats, I hope, but we can't confirm it."
Pardue said. "I've got Sky Jacks requesting to rearm."
"We can't do that. Keep them where they are."
"They can't peck at warships with 140mm cannon rounds and expect to get anywhere."
"I know," Ram said. "But we have to give the ene
my the impression we have the entire air group here with us. Carrier air groups that have all their planes don't recall them for rearming without sending out more first. And we don't have any more to send."
"What should I tell them to do?"
"What I need them to do now is sit where they are and be bait to lure all the vengeful gunboats in."
"Hellcat 1-1," Pardue said. "Hold position. I'm sending you three junks."
They'd been saving those to defend against an Imperium plasmoid salvo, but Ram didn't stop her. "NAV, give me our current ETA to the Hellcats' location."
"Three minutes and...46 seconds."
The incoming blobs projected over Biko's console resolved. "Good return on the last active LiDAR pings. Confirmed, six Ekkai gunboats and three more hunter-killer squadrons inbound for a total of fifteen ships. They'll intercept the 55th and the Shediri raiders before we can get there."
Ram nodded.
Biko said, "Are we going straight into that?"
"It'll look like we're using our speed to launch more fighters before we veer away. Except we won't veer away. Notify the squadron of railgun monitors and signal the Doxy to follow us in so she can use us for cover."
Biko thumbed the squack. "Vent for combat in thirty seconds."
"All batteries prepare to fire."
UNS Guerrero
Captain Chun Ye Men and the crew of his Galleon Class battleship steamed into action at the heart of a belt-iron steel mountain. Beams from the Ekkai heavies stretched out across the starry black and scored the gargantuan, unbroken shield of her bow plate, turning metal to plasma and exploding what it couldn't sublime. Guerrero shuddered with the shock waves even at her core.
"They're cutting bloody trenches in our bow armor." Chun's XO said, "We need to maneuver or they're going to get lucky and hit a gunport."
He said, "Helm, hold position and keep our bow pointed at the enemy. If they see the air group stuck to our sides, then the last Ekkai gunboats won't ever leave here and clear the way for the air group." He just hoped the teardrop shape of Guerrero's hull and the overhanging lip of her outermost section of bow plate will keep the small craft on their starboard side hidden.