by Ian Douglas
Right behind the survivors of the Dragonfires, the Night Demons came in tight and hot, adding their barrage of sand and fire. “Trevor!” Ryan’s voice called. “Trev, are you okay?”
“I’m okay, Shay,” he told her. “I’m not sure how.”
And so many weren’t okay. Gray found himself shaking at the realization. The Dragonfires numbered just five fighters, now: Allyn, Collins, Kirkpatrick, Donovan, and Gray.
But all three Soru warships were gone, now, reduced to drifting, ruined hulks and far-flung clouds of gas and droplets of molten metal swiftly freezing into expanding cascades of glitter.
“America CIC, this is Dragon One,” Allyn called. “Three Soru destroyers down.”
“Shit,” Donovan said. “Where are the others? Where are the Nighthawks and the Lightnings?”
Gray checked his scanners. The two squadrons had merged with the enemy at high speed, and would have passed through the formation swiftly. He was picking up distant targets, now, several million kilometers out . . . six . . . seven . . .
“I’ve got eight on my screens,” Allyn said. “No . . . nine.”
Nine left, out of twenty-four in the two squadrons.
At this rate, there wouldn’t be many fighters left for the endgame at Al–01.
“America CIC, Dragon One,” Allyn called. “Target destroyed. What are your orders?”
There was no immediate reply.
CIC, TC/USNA CVS America
Alphekka System
2004 hours, TFT
“Admiral Koenig?” America’s space boss asked. “Do you want to retrieve our fighters?”
Koenig stared into the tank display. Four fighter squadrons had just hurled themselves at the three Soru ships, a display of stunning bravery. The cost had been far too high. . . .
“Sir?”
“Eh?” Koenig blinked and looked up. Other faces were watching him around the display tank. “No. No, tell them to take up close formation with the fleet.”
“They’ll be low on expendables after that little scrap, sir,” Craig pointed out. “They need to re-arm.”
“I know. But it will take time—time running at zero deceleration—to take them back on board, and more time to re-arm.” He shook his head. “We don’t have a choice. They’ll have to ride through the close passage with us.”
“And through the protoplanetary disk,” Sinclair added. “Some of them . . . their shields and screens are pretty badly damaged. They might not survive it.”
“Then they can break off and get clear before the passage!” Koenig shouted. The startled expressions on the CIC crew’s faces stopped him, and he gentled his voice. “Tell them they’re authorized to use their own discretion.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
If America stopped her deceleration now, she might not be done taking the fighters on board when they passed Al–01. By allowing those able to make the disk fly-through to go in with the capital ships, he would add a small amount of additional firepower to the fleet’s split-instant volley, and the far faster, more maneuverable fighters would be useful in keeping Turusch Toads from dogging the more cumbersome fleet.
But Gods, the price.
As a military commander, Koenig was wrestling with two distinct problems. It tore him apart to order his men and women into tactical situations that, most likely, would end with them being killed or tumbling off into the emptiness of space. That was the worst, always—sending young men and women off to die.
But from a strictly logistical perspective, he also needed to husband his resources; while new fighters could be nanufactured on board the Remington and the Lewis, he had a sharply limited supply of experienced pilots. It would be possible to accept volunteers from throughout the fleet and give them the download training for basic space fighter combat and piloting skills, but it would take a lot of time in simulators and in non-simulated cockpits before they could take on a Turusch Toad head to head and survive.
Worse, recruits were thoroughly screened for aptitude when they first entered the military, and those candidates with unusual talent and inborn skill for piloting, for three-dimensional navigation and orientation, for being able to judge vector and angle and lines of fire on the fly were invariably siphoned off for naval aviation. That suggested that there would be few good candidates throughout the fleet. It took a special set of mental twists to make a good pilot, and those skill sets were all too rare.
But Koenig would make do with what he had.
There were few damned alternatives.
Ryan
VFA–96
Alphekka System
2006 hours, TFT
“Stick close to me, Twelve,” Lieutenant Charles Forrester called over the tactical link. “Don’t wander off and get lost!”
“Copy,” Shay Ryan replied. She considered adding something nasty—she didn’t like Forrester’s patronizing, risty attitude—but thought better of it. This isn’t the time or place. . . .
Ryan found she was shaking inside, and bit off a sharp curse. She would not show weakness, not on board the America, and for fricking sure not out here.
But the last time she’d strapped on a Starhawk and tried to turn and burn with the bad guys, she’d ended up falling in toward that gas giant, helpless, her ship dying, and no way out . . . no way, at least, until Trevor had slipped in astern of her and nudged her into a new vector.
Forrester was her wingman, and she would do what she’d been told. But she didn’t have to like it.
Slowly, a fighter swarm began materializing around the perimeter of the carrier battlegroup, as more and more of the surviving fighters from VFA–42 and VFA–51 caught up with the fleet and fell into formation. Five Starhawks left out of the Dragonfires, and ten from the Night Demons, plus six from the Nighthawks and just two from the Black Lightnings. Twenty-three in all.
Fifty percent casualties for the four squadrons taken together. The realization of that statistic hit Ryan like a hammer blow in the pit of her stomach. They were getting slaughtered out here, and the gold braid back on board the carrier didn’t seem to give a starsailor’s damn.
“Right, people,” the voice of Commander Allyn said over the tactical net. “As senior officer, I’m taking command of the CSP element.”
Both Dodgson and Klinginsmith, the COs of the Nighthawks and the Lightnings, were dead. Commander Taylor, of the Night Demons, was still alive, but Allyn held seniority, and the Night Demons were newly arrived on the America, with damned little experience before Arcturus.
“CIC has given each of us discretion to break off. If your fighter is too badly shot up, pull out and get clear. You can reform with the fleet later. Any takers?”
There were no replies.
“Gray?” Allyn said. “Your telemetry shows your forward shields are out. If you follow the fleet through the protoplanetary disk you’re going to slam into a rock and vaporize . . . or fry, zorching through a dust cloud. Break off.”
“Thank you, Commander,” Gray’s voice came back. “I think I’ll stay.”
“Mister Gray . . .” Allyn began. But then she broke off.
“I need to be here, Skipper.”
“Very well,” she said after a slight pause. “But don’t try to make it through the disk. Set your AI to loose your weapons when the fleet does, then decelerate at fifty K gravs and change vector. Do not enter the disk. That’s an order.”
“Aye, aye, Skipper.”
Ryan wondered what made Gray tick. He was a squattie, like her, and squatties grew up looking for the main chance, running from trouble, not seeking it out. Like her, when those Rebs had tried to catch her in mangrove swamp. On the Periphery, you kept a low profile, kept your head down, and you were ready to cut and run in an instant if you wanted to survive.
Why was he following the rest of the surviving fighters in?
Well, for that mat
ter, why was she going in? Her shields weren’t damaged, but flying through the tangled mess of that protoplanetary disk ahead was all but a death sentence for a fighter. CIC had said the passage was discretionary . . . which meant volunteers only. Allyn had interpreted that to mean that fighters with damaged shields could opt out, but she’d seen the order come through. Any fighter could break off, could avoid the firestorm of this final close passage.
So why didn’t she take advantage of the offer?
She wasn’t sure. Gray had a lot to do with it. What was it he’d said to her? Us Prims need to stick together.
If he was going into the crucible, then by God she was, too.
Gray
VFA–44
Alphekka System
2009 hours, TFT
Gray was wondering why he’d decided to stick with the squadron. It wasn’t as though he felt compelled to do so. Of the four other survivors of VFA–44, one—Donovan—was a friend, while the skipper was a decent-enough sort. Collins and Kirkpatrick? He certainly felt no band-of-brothers connection with those two, nothing that justified risking his life. If they died in the next few moments, they were zeroes, risty assholes who’d made it quite clear what they thought about him and his kind.
The hell with them.
And yet, he’d refused an order to break off, choosing to stick with the fleet on its close passage of Al–01, a choice that was very likely to get him killed. His own decision had left him bemused. Maybe he was starting to buy all of that Navy bullshit propaganda about honor, duty, and glory.
Besides, Ben was a friend . . . and so was Shay, in the Night Demons. Friends were a damned precious commodity, one growing scarcer by the moment, and Gray believed in being loyal to them. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he flew clear of the coming fracas and then watched both of them get chewed up in the Turusch grinder.
He would stay, no matter what the cost.
CIC, TC/USNA CVS America
Alphekka System
2011 hours, TFT
“The fighter CSP is in position around the CBG, Admiral,” Commander Craig told him. Eight more minutes to intercept.”
“Very well.”
His eyes never left the tactical tank. He was watching the red icons clustered about the larger symbol representing Al–01. Would they move? If he were the enemy commander, and had received intelligence like that which he’d just passed on to the Agletsch, he would wait until the last possible second before deploying.
And there was the speed-of-light time delay to consider as well. They were still a couple of light minutes out. The enemy could have redeployed that long before, and the incoming battlegroup still wouldn’t have seen—
There!
The red icons were drifting apart, moving out and away from Al–01, taking up positions across the surface of a flattened sphere two light seconds—over half a million kilometers—across. They were setting the trap, gambling on the all-but-impossible chance of pulling off an englobement of the Confederation battlegroup.
He opened a channel. “Dr. Wilkerson?”
“Yes, Admiral?”
“Our . . . guests.”
Koenig could feel Wilkerson’s sigh over the communications link. “I’ve been watching over the repeater down here. Damn.”
“The Turusch moved. Drop the hammer on them.”
Koenig had discussed the situation with Wilkerson days ago, before they’d even emerged from metaspace. Koenig had been thinking about his decision to help the H’rulka city, knowing that the ship on the floating platform might well warn the enemy of the battlegroup’s destination. Of course, the CBG’s actual destination, Alphekka, could only have been transmitted to the H’rulka by America’s two Agletsch liaisons.
And Koenig had been weighing all of the possibilities, even before the battlegroup had emerged at Alphekka.
Wilkerson was of the opinion that the two Agletsch, if they were passing information on to the enemy, were doing so innocently. “I know they’re alien,” he’d said, “but, damn it, they feel sincere to me. I think they’re telling the truth.”
In fact, Koenig was inclined to believe that they were. The two aliens had been under constant surveillance since they’d come aboard, through sensors in their quarters, security guards walking with them, and certain areas of the ship, like the communications center, the bridge, and CIC, being simply off-limits to all but authorized personnel. Most particularly, the ship’s AI had been monitoring their access to the ship’s Net and, through that, to the fleet’s Net. Never had they shown any interest in accessing secure or militarily sensitive information.
The danger was that one or both Agletsch carried microelectronics, perhaps even nanolectronics so small that they existed on a molecular level. Such devices could be implanted easily enough without the victim knowing it—through food or drink, for instance—and it was all but impossible to detect them. Or an ultra-small communicator could be hidden within the translators they wore, or even within the curlicues of silver body paint decorating their carapaces.
“So what are you going to do?” Wilkerson asked him. “Throw them in the brig? Their Net access is already restricted.”
“The Faraday Cage around their quarters ought to be sufficient,” Koenig replied. “At least for now. They’ll be restricted to quarters for the time being. See to it, please.”
A Faraday Cage was an electrified mesh enclosing a space—a room, for example—which blocked the passage of all electromagnetic signals. Personnel from America’s engineering department had grown such a mesh around the Agletsch quarters inside the bulkheads several days ago, just in case, and the normal physical access infrastructure—water, raw materials for nanufacture, Net access, electricity—could all be individually screened to block EM transmissions.
“Yes, sir,” Wilkerson said. “Under protest, sir.”
“Protest all you want, Phil. It’s that or chuck them out an airlock.”
Koenig was a little angry with himself, since it had been his decision to bring the two on board. And it wasn’t as though it was just aliens that could be passing information to the enemy. The Sh’daar had human supporters as well, some of them within the Confederation Senate, who felt Humankind’s best course of action was to accommodate the Sh’daar, to give them what they wanted. It was just possible that Sh’daar agents back on Earth had passed specifics about Operation Crown Arrow on to the enemy as long ago as the end of December.
It was an unpleasant thought, but all too plausible.
“Look,” Koenig added. “Confinement to quarters—house arrest—is our best option for right now. We can discuss the situation with them later on, see what they have to say about it. We might be able to arrange dropping them off somewhere where their fellows can find them and pick them up.”
He didn’t add that yet another option would be to continue feeding the two false information, “disinformation,” in the lexicon of the ONI.
“I understand the need for security, Admiral. I guess I’m just . . . disappointed.”
“Me too. Now excuse me. I have a battlegroup to manage.”
“Yes, sir.” There was a pause. “The Faraday Cage is on, Admiral. They’re cut off now, except for what we decide to allow through.”
They should, Koenig thought, have done that from the beginning. But the two Agletsch did have security clearances. Such measures should not have been necessary.
He reminded himself that, out here, so far from the rest of Humankind, they needed to make their own rules. Earth’s rules, Earth’s bureaucratic intrigues, Earth’s official clearances and approvals—none of that mattered here.
“Open a channel for me to all ships,” Koenig said.
“You’re on-line, Admiral,” Ramirez replied.
“All ships, this is Admiral Koenig. As you can see on your tac displays, the enemy formation is moving. I want yo
u to stay with your assigned targets. Have your AIs track your target’s movement and adjust your firing solutions to match. If your target no longer has a viable firing solution—it’s hiding on the other side of the factory, for instance—reprogram for a secondary target. Secondary targets include Al–01 itself, plus the larger Turusch warships, the Alphas and Betas. Be very sure that a change in attitude doesn’t put a friendly ship into your line of fire.
“Good luck, everyone. Koenig out.”
He listened for a moment to the chatter of telemetry between the ships, watching the tank as individual members of the battlegroup began reorienting themselves. During the close passage of Al–01, there would be no time to point your ship at a target, no time to take aim. The entire setup had to be performed by the super-human intellect of the CBG’s interlinked AIs, with each ship positioned so that it would be pointed at a target as it zorched through the enemy position. As the number of light seconds between CBG and objective dwindled away, the AIs kept watch, continually tweaking each warship’s attitude in order to take advantage of the constantly updating tactical picture.
How long, Koenig wondered, before artificial intelligences ran all parts of the distinctly human game called war? In situations such as this one, there was simply no way human eyes or brains or reflexes could contribute.
For the next several minutes, it would all be in the electronic hands of the Fleet’s AIs, which could think thousands of times faster than humans.
Koenig was counting on this in the coming close-passage of the enemy factory complex.
“Three minutes,” he said. “All systems on automatic. Hand it over to the AIs. Tell the fighters to choose targets of opportunity, and to fire at their discretion.”
The enemy’s defensive fire was already reaching toward the battlegroup.
Chapter Twenty-five
25 February 2405
CBG–18
Alphekka System
2018 hours, TFT
Although there was no good way to directly compare the human brain with a computer, the raw computational power of the human brain was generally estimated to be around 1015 operations per second, and good implant software could effectively increase this to 1017. Modern AI hardware typically ran in the range of 1021 operations per second, some ten thousand times faster.