by Ian Douglas
When the Marines and the civilian women and children had fallen back to the mess hall, they’d come in through a large doorway blocked by a nanoseal, the same black, liquid substance used to prevent pressure loss on America’s hangar deck when spacecraft were brought in from the vacuum outside. As the mob had surged after them, a Marine had switched on the seal freeze, turning the suspended nanoparticles into a rigid structure, a barrier stronger than plasteel.
Now, the seal freeze was released, and the first four Marines charged outside, weapons at the ready, followed closer by more Marines, and a scattering of Mufrid militia.
“Come on,” Gray said to Corporal Anderson. “Let’s get out there!”
It took several minutes to elbow through the panicked, milling crowd, but Gray made it to the nanoseal lock and stepped through, pushing against the liquid’s yielding resistance and out onto the landing field. The rioting mob had been effectively neutralized, reduced to stunned and disoriented individuals as the Marines began to shove and push unresisting rioters back off the field. He looked up at the balcony overlooking the field nearby, and saw more Marines grabbing the agitator and hauling him back into the building.
All of the floating glowglobes had been swept away by the shock waves, and many of the remaining lights mounted on the buildings had been shattered. The few lighting panels that remained cast eerie, pitch-black shadows across the field, lending a nightmare aura to the scene.
“Get the field clear!” the Marine major was shouting. “Get it the hell clear!”
Overhead, the Choctaw had reappeared, running lights pulsing, the black, UC-154 shuttle slowly drifting down for a landing.
Chapter Twelve
26 September 2404
CIC, TC/USNA CVS America
Haris Orbit, Eta Boötis System
1945 hours, TFT
With the exception of the Dragonfires, the last of the fighters were recovering on board the carrier, drifting in toward the aft end of the landing deck stretched out along the ship’s spine, killing their grav singularities at the last moment possible, then hitting the tangleweb field to kill the last of their forward velocity. As each Starhawk came to a halt, robotic arms snagged the ship and dragged it forward, out of the way of the next incoming ship, then swung it up into nanosealed ports in the deck above, lifting it up into the hangar deck.
The battlegroup was preparing to accelerate, each individual ship slowly swinging around until its broad, hemispherical forward shield faced a nondescript patch of relatively empty sky midway between the beacons of Canopus and Rigel. Earth’s sun lay there, somewhere in the emptiness. At thirty-seven light years’ distance, Sol was just barely too dim to be seen with the naked eye. On every ship in the fleet, however, the sun’s location was marked by a bright green circle.
Home…
Admiral Koenig sat at his CIC workstation, reports from all twenty-four ships of the carrier battlegroup flooding through the America’s communications suite.
All things considered, the battlegroup had come through in superb shape, much better than he’d hoped. The Farragut and the destroyer Carter both had been destroyed; three more ships had suffered serious damage in the battle, and one of those, the frigate Abramson, had been so badly shot up that her crew was now being transferred to other vessels, including the America. With Mufrid refugees already packed into every available ship, crammed onto mess decks and into passageways and storage bays, it was going to be a tight fit getting everyone on board.
It had been the fighters, Koenig knew, who’d tipped the balance, who’d made the lopsided victory possible. Turusch ships heavily outgunned and out-teched equivalent Confederation vessels, and tended to be much tougher, much more powerful than human ships…especially when you found yourself up against converted asteroids like that command ship.
“Admiral?” Commander Reigh called from the Controller’s workstation. “The Conestogas and their escorts report readiness for acceleration. They’re requesting clearance.”
“Very well. They are clear for boost.”
“Captain Vanderkamp has acknowledged.”
On the tac display, the eight converted Conestoga troopships and four escorting destroyers began to move, falling toward a distant, invisible Sol at one hundred gravities. Captain Vanderkamp, on the destroyer Symmons, would command the detachment, would get them safely back to Sol.
“Clear the auxiliaries for boost,” Koenig ordered.
“Order acknowledged, Admiral.”
Five more vessels—fleet auxiliaries: three supply vessels and two repair tenders—began accelerating as well, falling away from the fast-dwindling battlegroup.
Koenig’s greatest concern at this point was that the Turusch would counterattack, would hit the battlegroup with its fighter screen on board the carrier. With that in mind, he was sending the troopship and unarmed auxilliaries on ahead, with the remaining seven ships—the America, the Spirit of Confederation, and five others—holding position as the last of the fighters and shuttles recovered on board.
At this moment, the last of the Marines on the surface of Eta Boötis IV were on their way up from the planet, escorted by the five remaining Dragonfires. The surviving gravfighters from VFA-44 had succeeded in scattering the rioters in the Marine compound down on the planet’s surface, had escorted several more shuttles back up to the fleet, and now were seeing to the last of the evacuees.
The eleven gravfighters of VFA-51, the Black Lightnings, were still out there as well. Hours before, he’d sent them out on deep perimeter patrol, following the retreating enemy ships a full thirty light minutes out. If the Turusch did turn around and launch a counterstrike, the Black Lightnings would be America’s early warning net. They were returning now, but would not be back on board the carrier for another forty minutes.
“Admiral!” It was Commander Johanna Hughes, the tac evaluator. “Urgent from VFA-51! Enemy fighters inbound at near-c!”
Shit. The nightmare scenario.
“How many?”
“Unknown, sir. He says ‘a hell of a lot…at least fifty.’”
Koenig studied the tactical display. The enemy had retreated in that direction—roughly toward the star Epsilon Boötis…not that that star would necessarily have been their actual destination. He’d sent the Black Lightnings out line along the same path to watch for just this eventuality. Eleven Starhawk gravfighters against fifty Toads. Not good odds. Not good at all.
But the real urgency of the situation lay in the fact that the enemy fighters were coming in just behind the lasercommed message warning of their approach. The battlegroup’s rear guard might have mere seconds before the Turusch were among them.
“Make to all ships,” Koenig said. “Maneuvering, Code One. Initiate hivel-A defenses now!”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Hivel-A was milspeak for high-velocity assault. Defenses included launching clouds of sand, firming up defensive shields, but most of all, moving. If there were laser bolts coming in at the speed of light, or plasma beam or other weapons skimming in just behind the light barrier, the best defense of all was to not be there when they arrived.
“Copy the tacsit to everyone within range,” Koenig added. He was thinking of the last Choctaw shuttle coming up from the surface, and the gravfighters and Nightshades escorting it. They needed to know what they were boosting into.
Slowly, ponderously, the remaining seven ships of the carrier battlegroup began to move.
Dragon One
Above Eta Boötis IV
1945 hours, TFT
Her Starhawk punched through the last cloud deck and Commander Allyn emerged into the clear, vast emptiness of the planet’s upper atmosphere, with stars gleaming down at her with hard and untwinkling brilliance. A moment later, the local sun exploded into view on the horizon, wiping out the stars, illuminating a scimitar’s edge of cloud cover dividing planetary night from space.
As the atmosphere rapidly thinned, she reshaped her Starhawk into its needle configurat
ion. The other four fighters of VFA-44 were already doing the same, dragging straight-line contrails behind them as their drive singularities chewed through what was left of the air. The Choctaw, fat and bulbous, didn’t have a variable geometry hull, and began lagging behind. Allyn ordered the squadron to slow their ascent, matching their velocity to the transport shuttle. The four Nightshade gunships followed close in the Choctaw’s wake, like angular black insects pursuing an ungainly blue-painted cow.
“We are receiving an urgent tactical update from the fleet,” her AI told her, the voice a whisper in her mind. “Details follow….”
She watched the incoming data scroll through an open window in her consciousness. “Toads!” Allyn snapped as the data flooding through from the America registered. “Hivel-A, fifty-plus Toads.”
“Where?” Tucker demanded. “I don’t—”
White light blossomed on the night side of the planet directly astern, a searing illumination of the clouds that momentarily blocked out the glare of the bright-rising star. Her sensors picked up the wake of a high-G impactor that had just seared down out of the sky, passing the Confederation fighters and shuttle perhaps eighty kilometers abeam.
“What the—” Lieutenant Collins called over the squadron frequency.
Seconds later, two distinct shock waves struck, first from the ground thirty kilometers below, then a lesser one from the impactor’s more distant atmospheric wake, twin sledgehammer blows against her fighter’s hull. Had the air been any thicker, had they been any closer to the ground, any deeper inside Eta Boötis IV’s thick atmosphere, the shock waves, she knew, would have swatted them all from the sky.
The former Marine base had just been obliterated.
The knowledge stunned her. They’d lifted clear of the base landing pad scant minutes earlier as the rioting mobs had closed in on the loaded shuttle once again. There’d been no point in orchestrating another high-Mach passage over the base. The civilians who’d wanted to get out were getting out; the others had already made their choice.
But it was startling to see how swiftly the consequences of that choice had arrived—as a ten-kilo inert kinetic impactor traveling at just below the speed of light had slammed into the base and released thousands of megatons of energy in a single dazzling flash. As she scanned the planet, she saw a second flash, far up the curve of the northern horizon, and realized that a second impactor had just struck the Mufrid outpost at Kurban.
A third flash…that was probably Amal…and a fourth, more distant still, Lilistizkar.
The Marine base and the last three inhabited colony domes, all…all gone.
The suddenness, the sheer savagery of the attack was almost too much to grasp.
She shifted her scan forward, to the carrier battlegroup. Only seven ships remained in planetary orbit; the others had boosted moments before, were already accelerating hard out-system. Those seven, she saw with considerable relief, all were accelerating, breaking orbit, turning in toward the planet to use Haris’s gravity to their advantage.
The Turusch, of course, would have had precise targeting information for the planet, could accurately strike the colony outposts from light seconds out. Ships, however, could leave their predictable orbits and not be there when the beams or hivel projectiles arrived.
Collins’ scanner picked up numerous faint straight-line trails of ionization ahead, the traces of near-c impactors flashing through dust and stray molecules of atmosphere just ahead of where the fleet had been orbiting scant moments before.
The Confederation had tried exactly the same tactics against the Turusch fleet earlier, with considerably greater success. It appeared that the enemy had missed all seven human warships.
But the thought of what was happening on the planet astern still burned. Why?…
It made no sense. The Turusch had bombarded the Marine perimeter for over a week; at any time they could have accelerated a rock big enough to vaporize a continent, but they hadn’t. They’d been trying to capture the place, not obliterate it.
That strategy, evidently, had changed. The Turusch had just annihilated all human outposts remaining on the planet, killing some tens of thousands of civilians.
Why?
She shook the thought aside. Strategists, xenopsychologists, and admirals could worry about that later. Her problem now was the knowledge that there would be high-G fighters coming in immediately behind the near-c kinetic impactors.
There!
The Toads were coming in hot, decelerating hard in order to engage ship-to-ship. Among them were Confederation Starhawks—the gravfighters of Sandy Jorgenson’s Black Lightnings, following the leading wave of Toads in, trying to burn them down.
The battleship Spirit of Confederation opened up with her long-range fusion cannon, and a constellation of oncoming Turusch fighters smeared into tiny, brilliant novae. And then the enemy fighters were sweeping into the battlegroup like avenging angels of death.
CIC, TC/USNA CVS America
Haris Space, Eta Boötis System
1947 hours, TFT
“Enemy fighters at two-three-zero plus five-one, engaging!” Johanna Hughes announced.
Koenig watched the unfolding action on the tactical display—green icons representing Confederation vessels, red the enemy, with a vast, ghosted gray sphere showing the position of Eta Boötis IV.
More hivel impactors, launched at closer ranges, might still be out there, coming fast. If the carrier squadron could maneuver around behind the planet, use the planet as a shield, they might be able to delay acceleration long enough to take the remaining fighters on board.
That was the true hell of the tacsit. Right now, there were sixteen gravfighters out there, plus four Nightshade close-support gunships and one last, lumbering shuttle packed with civilians and Marines. If America boosted for c, the gravfighters, with their high accelerations, could catch up—assuming the Toads let them—but the shuttle and the gunships would be left behind.
And even the fighters were at risk. Trapping on board a carrier under acceleration was not for the fainthearted, nor was there a promise of success.
But the seven capital ships were vulnerable if they stayed put. They might hold the Toad fighters at bay for a time, but Koenig was willing to bet that Turusch capital ships were out there, lots of them, still undetected and burning in tight on the fighters’ wakes. If the squadron didn’t start boosting for c, they would be trapped here, pinned against the planet and annihilated one by one.
A gravfighter—one of the Lightnings—had burned out a Toad, but now two more Toads had dropped onto his tail. He listened to the voices of the cockpit chatter, relayed back to America’s CIC by the cloud of battlespace drones serving as comm relays and unmanned intel platforms.
“Lightning, Lightning Five! I got two on my tail!”
“Five, One! Break left, break left!”
“Copy One, breaking left!…they’re still—”
One of the green pinpoints in the tac display winked out. A tight formation of Turusch fighters were closing on the knot of Starhawks, slashing at them with beam weapons.
“Comm! Make to the Spirit,” Koenig ordered. “Break up those Toad clusters! Get them off our people!”
“Aye, sir.”
The Spirit of Confederation had the most accurate of long-range weapons in the formation, with railguns and fusion beams that could pop something as small as a fighter at a range of over one light second.
Of course, she still needed a good idea of where the target would be one second after firing—that was the single major limiting factor in space combat. But so long as the target held course and speed—or a constant rate of acceleration—for more than a second, her targeting computers gave her uncanny accuracy.
Another of the Black Lightnings vanished in a white flare of incandescence.
“Make to all fighters,” Koenig told the communications officer. “Break off and rejoin the battlegroup. Prepare for underway trap.”
“Aye, aye, sir!�
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He looked into the tac display again. Five fighters, a shuttle, and four gunships still coming up from the surface…and ten gravfighters of the Black Lightnings tangled in a fur ball with the Trash. Damn. They needed to get that transport aboard. The display readout showed 214 people packed on board—God! They must be sitting in one another’s laps! UC-154s were rated for about 180 at most.
He juggled with the possibility of launching another fighter squadron, then decided against it. More fighters might help the long odds against those Toads, but the rest of the Turusch fleet would be along very shortly, of that he was certain. He already stood to loose seventeen good gravfighter pilots out there. He didn’t want the number to rise to twenty-nine.
If the capital ships could hold off that swarm of incoming Toads with their point-defense weapons, maybe they could bring the fighters and the shuttle on board as well.
But it was going to be damned tight.
Dragon One
Above Eta Boötis IV
1948 hours, TFT
Allyn heard the orders come down from America’s CIC—rendevous with the carrier. Prepare for underway trap.
But she saw a tactical opportunity.
As the fighters continued to climb up out of Eta Boötis IV’s gravity well, she saw that the enemy fighters, closing with America and her escorts, would be passing almost directly above the five hard-boosting Dragonfires. Better yet, the planet’s surface directly astern, directly below them, was a flaring, savage glare of white in the middle of a broader swath of red-orange light. Above the light, a fast-swelling, red-lit mushroom cloud was spreading out rapidly above the apocalypse of lava and erupting volcanoes marking the vast, molten crater vaporized by the near-c impactor.