“There is another factor, captain,” Brogan said. “Whatever we do, we’re going to need to perform a rather pointed maneuver to get her out of orbit. If we get caught in Bayone Three’s gravity well, we may not have the coordination to stay out of the atmosphere. If this thing catches even the edge of the thermosphere, we’re going down in a fireball that will be visible from the next star system.”
Islington hesitated. Up to now she had never commanded or flown a ship with more than four engines. Getting Minstrel out of an atmosphere was a feat she could likely accomplish alone in her sleep. Argent had eight engines, each many times the size of her entire ship. There would be no navigational shielding, no SRS shielding, no navigational computer, no navigator and no emergency systems to fall back on if their attempt to pull the ship into space failed. It was very much like trying to compete in the Baja 1000 with one person using their hands to operate the gas pedal, another person using their feet to turn the steering wheel, and a third person holding an umbrella out the window to slow the car down if necessary. Fun and potentially entertaining on the ground. Not so much fun if you’re going Mach twenty-seven 190 miles in the air in a 200,000-ton battleship full of fusion reactors and explosives.
Then there was the time factor. At best, she and Cal were going to have minutes to get acclimated before they were going up against a coordinated task force of three warships.
“We’ll just have to improvise then, chief. Islington out.” The captain entered the key sequence to request bridge access and sighed with relief when Argent recognized her and granted authorization. One of the four lift-cars started its descent from more than thirty stories above the two Minstrel officers.
“What I really need is command computer access, and I don’t think I’m going to get it.” the captain muttered.
“Why not?” Grant asked. “You’re a ship’s captain. Why wouldn’t Argent acknowledge you?”
“Because technically under regulations I’m not a command officer, ensign,” Islington replied. “Even though I’ve been posted to a C.O.‘s billet, I don’t have the technical authority to assume command of another officer’s ship.”
“And the lowest command rank is Lieutenant Commander,” Grant said. “Perfect.”
“Exactly. Not enough brass on this officer’s shoulder to make a key big enough for that lock, as my old academy instructor would say. But he was also fond of saying ‘captains always find a way,' so that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
“What do you mean?” Cal asked, looking up as the lift-car approached.
“I’m assuming command of this ship in ten minutes.”
“But you just said you can’t do that. Everyone will know it’s not true.”
“The Sarn won’t.”
Twenty-Two
One of the things that had distinguished the Bandit Jacks from many other fighter squadrons was their total disregard for danger. The young Lieutenant Commander Hunter was like an unconventional quarterback in his propensity for the unexpected. If you tried to defend against the pass, he would run. If you blitzed, he would shovel pass the ball right through your rush. If you started to think he was settling into some kind of a pattern, the next thing you knew he would have his fullback throwing the ball and himself running a crossing route to catch it for a game-winning touchdown.
Once he was teamed up with enough talent, the battle tactics he employed were almost magical. Had there been a way to do it, Skywatch would have made a fortune selling tickets to engagements between Hunter’s five-strong fighter wing and their many opponents. It would have been the spaceflight equivalent of Friday night wrestling. All that would be needed would be a cash bar and an attractive girl to hold up the round numbers.
What some understood but most didn’t was that Hunter inspired his pilots to do the very same things he did. Confidence radiated from his words and even from his very presence like comfort from a Christmas fireplace. If Hunter was on the mission, the outcome was never in doubt. The only uncertainty was what crazy, improbable, disaster-defying thing he would do to win. His first crew chief coined his nickname ‘El Bandito’ because it seemed less that Hunter won victories and more that he stole them right off the table with everyone watching and then dared the rest of the dinner guests to try and take them back.
At this particular moment, one of the pilots he had a considerable transforming effect on was in a low-vector attack approach to three ships any one of which could vaporize her fighter with one shot. Under normal circumstances, no Jack driver would ever consider going head-to-head against a task force consisting of three 40,000-ton Sarn destroyers.
But this was no ordinary pilot. This was Jack Three, starboard wing of the original masked raider known more by reputation and call sign than by name. Like her flight leader, Zony Tixia had so many nicknames by this point one could almost tell what region of space they were in by how they referred to her. ‘Diamond Jack,’ ‘Trip Wing,’ ‘The Hook’ and ‘Three Ball’ were among the more common, but ‘Crimson J,’ ‘Rabbit with a Gun,’ ‘The Red Duchess’ and ‘Radio Girl’ had also been used occasionally.
The last on that list was of particular significance at this moment, because this Yellowjacket pilot also happened to be a decorated Signals Corps officer who was just now putting the finishing touches on an electronic riposte so daring it just might earn her another nickname and some hardware to go with it. The Jackrabbit anti-missile configuration her captain had authorized weeks before was working perfectly, but having the additional targeting circuitry wasn’t what made the component dangerous. It was the fact it gave Zony the capacity to perform high-powered electromagnetic improvisation literally “on the fly.” It was essentially the potential for mayhem if a legendary rock guitarist were given the ability to fight attacking spaceships with power chords, hairstyles and string-bending solos.
One thing was clear: If the Jackrabbit-enhanced fighter could coordinate a multi-vessel defensive envelope on its own, it could certainly double as a formidable electronic counter-measures (ECM) system. Putting Zony Tixia in control of such a system was like letting King David pick a fight in a rock quarry.
“Buck Four to Argent.”
“Argent, Islington.”
“I’m 20 seconds out. I’m going to guess I’m on my own when I engage Kilowatt Alpha One.”
“My engineering chief tells me we can maneuver, but we’re going to have to climb out of orbit first. Whatever we do, it isn’t going to be coordinated, lieutenant. You and Minstrel are going to need to run interference for us until we get the boilers lit.”
“Can you access tactical from your location?”
“My tac officer and I are on the bridge. What did you have in mind?”
“Tell your officer to go active with your short-range targeting systems. They are independently powered for emergencies. Configure maximum amplitude narrow-frequency beam right at their hardpoints. Light up the lead unit. I’m going to pretend to be a squadron and see if I can break them up. Stand by.”
On the bridge of Argent, Calvin Grant was already seated at the tactical station. Some of the controls looked familiar to him, but he wasn’t well acquainted with the idea of a ship with eight separate tactical arrays. After a few moments of high-pressure stress, he finally found the starboard control systems and set the SRS detection bank to local emergency power.
Lieutenant Islington was seated at the conn, gradually becoming aware of just how big a strike battleship was.
“Now, ensign!”
Deflection antennas on Argent’s starboard main and flight hulls filled the EM spectrum with pointed waveform transmissions. From the Sarn perspective, it was like watching a lit match turn into a ten-thousand-acre inferno-consumed forest. Just as their own targeting systems were starting to push back against the unbelievable power Argent was channeling, the alien blood in the lead destroyer’s weapons officer ran cold. On his scope a wedge of 22 torpedo-armed Yellowjacket fighters exploded out of the interference and powered int
o attack vectors. The lead Jack piggy-backed a targeting beacon and acquired a heavy lock on the lead destroyer, which set off panic alarms all over its bridge.
Alpha One and Alpha Two swerved in opposite directions, trying to avoid the oncoming swarm of angry little phantoms.
Kilowatt Alpha Two drew the short straw by virtue of its delayed arrival at zero point. Alpha One opened fire on the fighter contacts with its lateral batteries, only to watch helplessly as none of the onrushing “Yellowjackets” were hit. One of the attackers, however, rolled out of the formation and unexpectedly raced for the second ship’s starboard quarter. Zony pushed her tough little fighter to its maximum tolerances, pouring everything she had into the desperate attempt to get a torpedo lock on Alpha Two’s engines.
A barrage of point defense missiles leaped into space from Alpha Two’s starboard launchers and tore after Buccaneer Four, ramping their sprint engines to try and out-angle the Jackrabbit pilot to the optimum firing position just off Alpha Two’s trailing edge.
Zony’s eyes widened as her elaborate anti-missile technology lit up like a combination Christmas tree and pinball machine. Buck Four pivoted in space and came up on the leading edge of the missile wing. Flying backwards at hundreds of miles a second, the fighter’s targeting systems engaged their multi-mode heuristic tracking all at once, and suddenly one weapons bank was prepping millisecond fire bursts against more than 18 inbounds.
“Oh, glory–” Zony whispered as she watched her signature electronics achievement preparing to do things a full squadron of fighters would have required a week of practice to even attempt. Buck Four suddenly powered down its forward vectoring, pivoted seventy degrees and went into an engines-neutral counterthrusting skid. Zony held on to the controls, hoping she was interpreting her ship’s actions properly.
Sure enough, the lead missile broke range exactly as predicted and Badoo’s fighter went to work. The first shot was a 1.8%-power burst from the forward cannons that neatly chopped the aft section off the lead missile, causing it to tumble past at a breakaway speed of nearly 1000 miles a second. It detonated at a range of six miles.
From the time missile one was hit, it took Buccaneer Four two point seven seconds to pivot another 242 degrees true and shred the rest of the missile wing with both forward and aft weapons fire. The engines kicked back to battle speed and Zony’s fighter rocketed out of a thicket of explosions directly into the trailing wake of target Kilowatt Alpha Two.
The phrase “pirouette of fire” wouldn’t have done the maneuver justice, mainly because such a feat by a single fighter had never been done before.
Point defense slashed and tore at the space around her, itself desperate to get ahead of a legendary pilot’s silky-smooth evasive skills, but it was too late. For whatever reason, Alpha Two itself made no attempt to defend its most vulnerable section, apparently confident its powerful anti-fighter weaponry would be enough. Zony surmised the Sarn captain was just now realizing his battle tactics, while exactly right for the theoretical battlespace, were totally wrong for this opponent. The destroyer’s last maneuver was to try and accelerate to a position above and behind the formation’s lead vessel, apparently to try and enlist the lead ship’s defensive firepower.
Buccaneer Four’s sophisticated targeting systems all lined up at once. The jangling lock indicator sounded in Zony’s helmet for a few seconds, then settled into an ominous tone as the visual indicators swapped colors. The Yellowjacket’s weapon lock lit up the much larger destroyer’s aft hull as it ran for its life.
“Buck Four has wave and tone.”
The howling waveform match sounded across the entire communications net while the flashing targeting lattice reflected from Zony’s expressionless helmet blast shield. Diamond Jack rocketed directly into the warship’s engine wake at an attack velocity of more than 700 miles per second.
“Fox three.”
Zony pulled her weapon release handle and banked away. The Hemlock-class torpedo separated from the fighter and activated its own sprint burners. Buccaneer Four was already three thousand miles away and performing a wide return arc in preparation for another run when the anti-matter warhead plunged more than 170 feet into the Sarn hull and detonated.
The explosion shattered reality for ten miles in every direction. Alpha One was thrown clear as the aft hull of Alpha Two ruptured into a hellish plasma fire that drew a yellow-white spiraling trail across space.
“Splash one. Confirm impact with high-power warhead. Buck Four now engaging hostile contact Kilowatt Alpha One. Sixty seconds.”
Alpha Two had already broken up. A trail of atmosphere and debris soared across the port edge of Alpha One’s course. Rebecca Islington just stared at Argent’s main viewscreen. She had heard stories, but watching a single-seat fighter kill a destroyer was beyond her wildest imaginings.
Twenty-Three
Senior Crew Chief Sean Brogan stood resolute before the floor-to-ceiling coolant transfer control bank at the base of Argent Fusion Reactor Four. His feet were shoulder width. He was closing and opening his fingers, preparing himself for what was about to happen on Argent’s engineering deck. The last time he had worked with a Von Mansfried fusion plant was when he was obtaining his ratings for operating multi-reactor warships. Prior to being assigned to Islington’s command, he was one of the fleet’s pre-eminent fission specialists. It wouldn’t have taken him long to get up to speed on the newest in starship power systems, but he was in such high demand elsewhere in the fleet he didn’t have as much time as he would have liked. He rubbed his bald head with freshly limbered-up fingers and took a deep breath.
The equivalent power plant aboard Minstrel was roughly the size of a small delivery van. This beast was nearly ten stories tall and had seven backups just like it.
“Alright, corporal. Watch the screen next to your controls and make sure it is set to mnemonics display mode before we start the clock. Do you have that set up? There will be a circle with four dots inside it at the base of the display!”
Corporal Nathan Dempsey was not far away, stationed at the multi-axis reaction mass control bank. “The display has a circle with four dots! I think it’s set up correctly, sir!”
“Don’t call me sir! I’m a Crew Chief! I drive starships!”
“Aye, Chief!”
“Alright, we’ve got a clean chamber! Now, we’re going to do this by the numbers. Because if we hork the procedure, we’ll have to manually scram the reactor and start over! But we won’t get a chance to start over because we’ll burn up! You tracking me, corporal?”
“Aye, Chief! By the numbers!”
“LASER capacitance chamber set to standard timing! Rate zero zero zero niner two! Mark!”
“Okay, I’ve got colors, shapes and a bunch of text on the screen!”
“Just read me everything in yellow and follow the mnemonics as they appear on the screen. They will show you what controls to operate. The green text is your instructions!”
“Aye! Chamber temperature eight one degrees and rising within tolerance envelope. Stand by! Twenty one seconds!” Corporal Dempsey shouted.
There was no going back. Cold-starting Argent’s number four fusion reactor had to be done on a precisely-timed clock, with the last ten to fifteen steps performed to within computer-controlled tolerances of fractions of a millisecond. There was little room for error, as the initial reactions took place with the union of deuterium isotopes, a precisely controlled magnetic field and a high-powered mode-locked LASER firing from hundreds of thousands of disparate axes. If they were successful, and the timing was right, reactor four would initiate its first controlled fusion reaction, programmed to last for just over 30 seconds and generating more than sixty megawatts of electrical power. The first “run,” as it was called, was just enough to establish a containment field so they could increase reaction mass to one percent power.
Chief Brogan used both hands to close the enormous junctions for the metallic liquid sodium coolant reservoir. One of the k
ey tasks to be completed in time for the first power transfer from the reactor would be to pour a fantastic amount of heat into the coolant sink, then throw power to the conductive electromagnetic pressure energy transfer system so heat could be bled out of the reaction matrix at a rapidly increasing rate. As more fuel was introduced into the chamber, the amount of excess heat that would have to be carried away would begin to climb.
Since Argent’s sodium coolant was electrically conductive, its reactor heat transfer systems were based on the same scientific principles as her HAVOC batteries and fighter launch tunnels. They were essentially continuously-powered railgun-like pipes that moved the coolant along by manipulating electromagnetic energy. At just over 12% power, coolant would be pressurized into a uniform balanced mass and moved through the pipelines at supersonic speeds: A process called superstreaming. The computer-controlled near-zero turbulence of the sodium coolant inside the conduits was what made the Von Mansfried reactor design a reality. It increased electrical energy yields more than 40% above the next best competing design without increasing size or exceeding equivalent fuel consumption.
The result was a cooling system that could compete respectably with the Grand Coulee Dam in terms of how much mass it could move from one place to the next in a given interval.
“Tertiary phase energy transfer panels at base capacitance!”
“Affirmative!”
“Secondary phase energy transfer panels at plus one volt per 20 mils square!”
“Confirmed!”
“Primary phase energy transfer panels at plus one point three volts per nine mils square!”
“Affirmative!”
“Stand by to activate multi-axis LASER control sequencer! Fuel in the chamber in six seconds! Mark!”
Red LEDs activated one by one down the left side of Brogan’s coolant panel, indicating the moment when the first deuterium isotopes would be injected into the lattice origin for the multi-axis LASER device. It would only be targetable by the mode-locked emitter for a few thousandths of a second, so everything had to happen at precisely the correct moment.
Strike Battleship Engineers (The Ithis Campaign Book 2) Page 8