Demon Star

by B. V. Larson

  “They’ve passed us, Captain,” Hansen said as I strode onto the bridge to get the latest update. I’d dropped off my suit at the armory.

  “Got it,” I replied. “I had a notification trigger set with Valiant.”

  In the holotank, I could see that the Demon fleet had overtaken us, far off to the side, and they were beginning to curve inward toward Ellada. From now on, we would be on converging courses, with our ships still accelerating to match speeds with the enemy.

  We were a few hours from Ellada. Assuming the Demons were going to start braking soon, the plots we’d calculated predicted we’d catch their fleet by the time we reached the target planet. This would put the Demons between two forces—ours and the defenders, with the Elladans’ expeditionary fleet—the one that had been at Trinity-9 and was now running for home—also converging from the flank. They would be hours late to the party, but better late than never.

  “There they go, right on time,” Bradley said from his usual position standing behind his drone controllers. He stared at the wall screen nearest him, which showed a simplified version of the situation.

  I saw that he was right. Most of the Demon ships had begun to decelerate. Those that did not, Valiant marked as kinetic bundles. We wouldn’t be overtaking those. The Elladans would have to deal with them.

  Tensely, I watched as our rate of closure increased. With us still accelerating and the enemy decelerating, we began to catch up faster and faster, even as we slid in behind them.

  “Missiles?” Bradley asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Daggers?”

  “Just wait, CAG,” I said. “We’ve got this.”

  As usual during battle, my mind had gone into overdrive, and I didn’t like people asking me questions. Then I relented a bit in order to explain. “If we launch drones or missiles now, they have to use their own fuel to keep accelerating. The longer we wait, the longer their range or patrol radius. It would be the opposite if we were decelerating.”

  Bradley nodded, clearly worried that we had no drone support placed around our ships, but the range was still extreme. Because the enemy was slowing, they had the same problem with launching missiles or fighters. We were “uphill” from them. The longer they waited, the better their weapons would perform when launched backward at us.

  Over the next couple of hours, as we came in from the side to take position behind the Demons, I watched the display. The arc representing the maximum effective range of Stalker’s big laser finally reached the rearmost Demon ship. “Valiant, tell Kreel to open fire.”

  A moment later, a line of green stabbed at the enemy. “Damage?”

  “Moderate.”

  “Tell him to keep at it. Put me through to Cornelius.”

  “Cornelius here, Captain,” the muscular woman’s crisp Teutonic voice replied a moment later.

  “We’ll enter long range for our lasers in less than an hour, Chief. This will be a pure beam fight until we overtake them, so the gun deck is going to get a workout.”

  “No problem, sir. We’re ready.”

  “Glad to hear it. Stand by, Riggs out.”

  The Demons began to alter their motion, wiggling their drives slightly to make their individual paths less predictable while still lined up along their overall deceleration route. This made them harder to hit, but decreased the efficiency of their maneuvers with wasted motion and forced them to spread out as well. All this was good for the Elladans and for us. I’d take anything that multiplied the enemy’s problems.

  Over the next half an hour, three enemy ships flared and were marked destroyed as Stalker’s massive beam cannon slammed shot after shot into the rear of the enemy fleet despite their evasive maneuvers. Our assumptions proved correct—they were highly vulnerable from this angle, because the Demon ships were designed to fight from the broadside, not from the stern or bow.

  While putting an engine in each end allowed for unorthodox maneuvers, it also meant that from this direction, their armor was thin. They had little more than a clamshell that slid over the fusion exhaust port. They didn’t seem to have shields or screens.

  But what they did have was more than two hundred big warships, not counting the kinetic bundles. If we hadn’t been approaching Ellada and in a time crunch, I would hold the range open and keep sniping, but we couldn’t do that if we were going to help our fellow humans. We had to get in closer so that our midrange weapons would come into play.

  Unfortunately, that would allow them to do the same. I would try to finesse things, though, creeping closer and only doing battle with a few of their ships at a time. It would be a delicate dance under pressure.

  “Mains firing,” Hansen said. I hadn’t given the order, but Cornelius knew her job.

  Our four heavies lanced across the distance to converge on the rearmost enemy. A moment later, that icon showed slight damage. The Chief had fired at the longest range possible.

  We knocked out several more Demon ships which drifted ahead of their decelerating fleet. I noticed Marvin stayed far back in Greyhound, but the four Nano frigates were edging out ahead of us. They could accelerate faster than we could, though they had orders not to.

  “Dammit, get me Kreel.”

  “Kreel here, Riggs.”

  “Captain Kreel, tell your people to get those frigates back behind us. They don’t have the firepower or armor to fight so many Demons in close, and they don’t have the range to shoot from here.”

  “I acknowledge, sir, but my pilots are having difficulty controlling them.”

  “Nano brainboxes are willful. Have your people order them to form up around Greyhound and protect Marvin until they receive further orders. That will make him happy and keep them from throwing themselves away.”

  “Understood.”

  “Captain Kreel, you need to turn your brain on. Riggs out.” I really didn’t have much to complain about with the Raptor captain, except that he lacked imagination and creativity which might be a good thing in some cases, given he controlled half my squadron’s firepower, but dealing with the nano ships was like dealing with first timers right out of boot camp wanting to play hero. He was going to need to rein them in.

  Eventually, the frigates fell back toward Greyhound as ordered, leaving Stalker and Valiant to hammer the Demons. For a while, we were in the perfect position, able to hold the range while the enemy couldn’t close it.

  But that had to change as we continued to overhaul them, and they kept on slowing down. This became clear when the three rearmost demon battleships rotated to present their broadsides.

  “Cease acceleration! Shields up!” I snapped.

  A moment later the ship thrummed with the impact of several enemy beams.

  “Damage?”

  “None,” Valiant replied.

  “What if we’d been hit without the shield?”

  “Damage would have been moderate.”

  “Damn.” I stared at the three battleships which had rotated back to continue their deceleration.

  This maneuver left the other Demon ships as their rearmost guard. The pause in their deceleration caused them to drift forward along the rest of their fleet’s course. Then several of the now-closest ships turned to present their broadsides, and I understood their strategy.

  “They’re going to keep a rolling barrage on us, rotating ships to fire and drift forward while others keep decelerating,” I said for the benefit of the bridge crew.

  I chewed my lip. We’d destroyed thirteen enemy ships—an amazing kill ratio considering we’d taken no damage at all. But if we kept moving in closer, their superior numbers and firepower would quickly reverse the situation. They’d gotten tired of being pummeled.

  “Cease acceleration. Use repellers to hold the distance open and steady our course. Keep us at maximum effective range—and Valiant, snap the shields up any time we’re targeted.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  The dance I’d anticipa
ted continued, each side sniping at the other with little effect, now that we were both taking countermeasures. The best we could do now was provide a distraction and lower their effectiveness. Well, I hadn’t expected our harassment to be decisive. Not with seven ships against hundreds.

  Hours passed. I took a quick nap in the ready room and made sure everyone rotated with their backups and assistants for meals and rest, even Hansen. He had a young kid named Lazar training to fill in as ship’s pilot, a former drone controller.

  So we were fresh and ready when the Demons began to engage the Elladans near their home planet.

  By this time, the enemy fleet had slowed enough for a straightforward fight. If they won, they’d hold the high ground above Ellada—and they were going to win, at least temporarily.

  Half of the Elladan forces, over a hundred ships on their way back from Trinity-9, continued to curve in from the side on the most efficient course. It was clear they would still arrive late. They could have opted to speed up, but if they had, it would have meant overshooting after one pass. It must have been an agonizing choice for them.

  I thought about the beautiful cities and landscapes of Ellada, an idyllic world, and knew things wouldn’t look so pretty when this fight was done.

  The enemy kinetic bundles had already split apart, spread out and ripped through the Elladan orbital fortresses. The immobile platforms didn’t have the ability to dodge or the firepower to destroy all the darts coming at them.

  Soon it would be ship to ship, and the Demons outnumbered the defenders by almost three to one.

  First, the Demons launched a blizzard of fighters from their assault carriers—over a thousand of them. The Elladans put up almost as many, some rising from bases on their moon. That seemed like good news, anyway.

  Then the Demons launched their missiles. We counted a full spread of more than five thousand. It was a nightmarish, awe-inspiring sight—the largest concentration of firepower I’d ever witnessed. The swarm would begin to close on the Elladans in about an hour.

  The only enemy vessels that held their ordnance back were the twelve ships of their rearguard, apparently assigned to keep us at bay.

  Instead of sending the missiles in first at the Elladans, which is what a Star Force commander would have done, the Demon fighters charged ahead.

  “What the hell are they doing?” I muttered to myself. It seemed a damned expensive tactic. Manned craft were far more valuable than one-shot missiles, not to mention the lives at stake.

  But the Demons didn’t seem to care about lives.

  The Elladans launched missiles as well, but only a paltry few hundred. Their graceful ships seemed to be configured mainly with beams and railguns, though they hadn’t provided us with specs. I guessed most of their missiles had been stationed on their fortresses. If I’d been in charge, I’d have soft-launched them before the installations had been smashed and left them drifting in space to be used later.

  I checked the positions of the defending Elladans and their reinforcements racing to the fight. I knew that if we were going to help these people now was the time as the battle was soon to be decided. Maybe the Demons’ command and control would make some mistakes with so much going on.

  “All ahead full,” I told Hansen. “Valiant, let Kreel know to lead us in and open fire with his primary cannon.”

  Stalker was more heavily armored than Valiant, and we’d fitted her with shielding.

  “Message delivered,” said my ship.

  “CAG, deploy forty-eight Daggers.”

  “Aye, aye,” Bradley replied, and soon we had a screen between us and the enemy.

  In response, the Demon ships turned their broadsides toward us and began to return fire. Right now, it was ineffective as Stalker outranged anything they had.

  They also began launching fighters from their assault carriers, three sets of twelve, all at once. Instead of carrying them in an internal flight deck like ours, Demon carriers had a dozen each in individual launch tubes. They were much larger than our unmanned drones, with four small lasers and four counter-missiles each.

  The rest of the space inside the assault carriers was taken up with landing craft according to the intel the Whales had provided. I’d been a bit puzzled by their design as the unarmed shuttles and pinnaces didn’t seem suitable for battle, only for transport, but it didn’t matter right now.

  Stalker pounded on an enemy battleship, one of the three nearest us. Between shots, she raised her shield. I could see that giving the Raptor battleship its own Star Force brainbox had improved her battle efficiency.

  Broadside, the Demon battleship and its two fellows fired back intermittently rather than in volley. They managed to maintain a constant barrage. Their six rearguard cruisers stayed farther from us, and the three assault carriers were farther still.

  When Valiant came into range again, we added our mains to the mix. “Concentrate fire on the same battleship that Stalker is hitting,” I ordered.

  In response, our target began using their end-mounted engines to twist and turn like a mad pinwheel, reducing the effectiveness of our lasers to partial hits. The ability to easily move sideways to the arc of fire was one advantage of their setup that we didn’t have.

  I kept a close eye on their fighter screen and ours. I was pretty sure that, ship for ship, theirs would be stronger, but ours would be much faster being smaller and unmanned. “CAG, I want you to feint with your Daggers toward them and try to get their fighters to follow, to draw them toward us.”

  “Will do, sir.” Bradley issued orders to his controllers, and soon I watched as our screen swooped forward, fired beams at ranges far too long to damage the enemy, and then turned to run.

  “Keep doing that, closer and closer,” I said.

  “They’re burning fuel, sir,” he replied.

  “Let me know when they get to fifty percent.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  On the fifth and closest feint, we lost a Dagger—and then three more blew up in rapid succession. I cursed and bared my teeth.

  Then the enemy cruisers turned and fired their mains in a volley. That told me what I wanted to know. “CAG, have the Daggers launch their anti-ship heavies. Target their fighters with one missile each, and lay the rest on their ships.”

  Each drone carried two external packs. One contained a heavy nuke missile and the other a rotary counter-missile launcher. I was hoping the enemy didn’t look too close, as only the heavies were being fired now, holding the CMs in reserve.

  Forty-seven missiles leaped toward the Demon squadron, and in response, the enemy fighters advanced to meet them. This was standard tactics for fighters trying to kill missiles, because the longer they waited, the harder it would be to hit their targets as the rockets gained speed.

  “As soon as they start picking our missiles off, blow the nearest ones at your discretion,” I told Bradley. “I want a smokescreen between us and them, at least for a little while. Valiant, launch one volley of our own missiles, aimed at their battleships.”

  Although our beams were less effective against the dodging enemy, their ships had given up the ability to move easily toward or away from us. “All ahead full. Now that they’re busy with our missiles and Daggers, we’ll move in closer.”

  “On it,” Hansen replied, and Valiant surged forward. Stalker followed a moment later, with Greyhound and her escort of four Nano frigates farther behind.

  The Demon fighters were already shooting at our leading missiles, coming closer and closer in order to do it. In response, our Daggers sniped at the enemy, knocking out a couple of them.

  A volley of fifty or so missiles launched from the Demon ships, but from my point of view, their timing was poor and badly coordinated. I chalked that up to them not realizing that the second pack on each Dagger wasn’t a nuclear missile, but a counter-missile launcher with a dozen seeker rockets in it.

  When we’d lost three or four missiles to their fighters, Brad
ley’s controllers began detonating the warheads, creating clouds of plasma and brief EMP whiteouts that fuzzed sensors. This complicated everyone’s targeting, hopefully allowing more of our weapons to sneak in closer.

  In response, the Demon fighters moved forward even farther, trying to close with our weapons and take better shots.

  “Bradley,” I said, “I want you to blow a bunch of our nukes and launch half the Daggers’ counter-missiles toward their fighters. Time it so that when the smoke clears, they’ll be surprised and facing a shitload of fighter-killers.”

  “Yes, sir!” Bradley replied, and barked orders to his controllers to set up my ploy.

  A moment later, twenty of our missiles detonated at once just in front of the Demon fighters. At the same time, our Daggers fired over two hundred counter-missiles from their 12-packs. The tiny rockets accelerated at high speed behind the screen of plasma.

  Bradley timed it well. Once the hot gases began to clear, our salvo was too close for the Demons to avoid it.

  The enemy knocked out more counter-missiles than I expected. I could see why they relied on their fighters for point defense. Each craft’s four lasers fired independently and with surprising accuracy, but there were simply too many weapons aimed at them—approximately eight for every Demon. Combined with the confusion from the nuke detonations, they couldn’t keep up.

  Within thirty seconds, thirty-two of their fighters were swept from space, leaving only four. They turned tail and ran for their carriers. Half our Daggers were gone, but I accounted the battle a victory anyway.

  Cheering broke out on Valiant’s bridge, and I let them whoop and holler for a moment. “Rotate out the rest of our reserve drones,” I said, “bring in the damaged ones for repairs, refueling and rearming.”

  “On it,” Bradley replied. Four Daggers fired off their remaining counter-missiles at the oncoming Demon missiles and then turned to run back to Valiant.

  Those enemy missiles advanced in a wave over fifty strong, but now they had no fighter screen to escort them in. Our Daggers made short work of them. Any that couldn’t be brought down with laser shots were killed with counter-missiles.