The plan was for the Ghosts to hit first and then come about. They’d be vulnerable turning the period where they were slowing down and then accelerating back toward the alien cruiser that was their target. But that was when Kel’s squadron would strike. With luck, the distraction would keep the aliens from firing on Sam’s people during the critical few minutes where they’d be most vulnerable. The faster they were moving, the less likely they’d be hit.
“All right, this is a hit and run. Wait until we’re right on top of them and then unload everything we’ve got,” Sam said. A few of the Ghosts replied with affirmatives, but most kept radio silence. They were all focused on the battle ahead.
A hail of gunfire flashed from the alien ship as her people got within range. Beam weapons designed to take down incoming missiles lashed out, striking one fighter after another. Sam grimaced as three names disappeared from her HUD. Three pilots gone in as many seconds.
They knew this was going to be painful, though. The Intrepid had jumped in blind. All they’d had was a best guess for where the enemy vessels might be. It was good enough that her fighters were within strike range, but far enough out that the aliens still had a space of time where her people were in a shooting gallery - and not in the fun role.
The distance between the Wasps and their targets dropped at an ever-faster rate. Her squadron was still accelerating. The alien cruiser maneuvered to avoid them, but it wasn’t going to be enough. Sam plotted a small course correction and transmitted it to the rest of the Wasps. They adjusted course like a flock of birds, veering unerringly toward their prey.
“We’ve got you now,” Sam said.
“Energy buildup on the ship,” Harald warned.
Sam checked her scans. They were preparing to jump. In a few more seconds they’d be gone, flickering out to someplace else.
“Fire!” she called.
It wasn’t as close as she’d wanted to be, but their missiles and railgun rounds would travel to the target faster than they would. Plumes of fire shot from under the wings of two dozen fighters as they fired half their missile payload. Each railgun also opened up, filling space around the cruiser’s path with chunks of high-velocity iron.
Sam watched the missiles as they zoomed in toward the enemy ship. She could see the energy buildup for the jump continue. Had they fired in time?
The first missile slammed home, and then another. A third and fourth detonated on the cruiser’s hull. Then it winked away, vanishing from sight. Damn it! Most of their missiles rocketed away into space without striking anything at all.
“Where is it? Where did it go?” Harald called.
The enemy ship wasn’t showing on Sam’s scans, which meant it was doing a long jump. Had it retreated? She didn’t think so. The other two ships were still around, closing slowly toward her position. If they weren’t pulling out, then they were preparing to strike. The particle wave when they exited the jump…!
“All fighters, break from present course and scatter!” Sam called into the radio. “Kel, human pilots too. Break and scatter!”
Her wing followed the order instantly, shifting vectors to spiral outward in a dozen different directions. Their Wasps were able to handle the high-G turns without too much trouble. The stress tolerance of the Wasp fighter was excellent.
The g-force tolerance of a human being was nowhere near as good. Sam watched as Kel’s squadron broke apart as well, each fighter veering away from the others on its own course. They were burning hard. Those pilots had to be doing six, maybe seven gravities. They couldn’t keep that up for long. But they were the target. Sam was sure of it. Their slower-moving fighters would be the tastiest target.
“Ghosts, come about and back toward the Pheonix Wing. They’re going to need our help in a minute,” Sam said.
All her people changed course again, decelerating hard to dump velocity. It would take a minute to drop to zero, and then they’d begin driving back toward Kel’s wing at ninety-eight meters per second, per second. That would be enough. It had to be enough if the aliens did what she thought they were going to.
The other two cruisers were drawing closer. A massive beam weapon shot out from one of them. Their heavy cannon were designed to strike large ships, not fighters, and usually they’d be too slow to target her craft well. But with her people dumping velocity they were vulnerable. One of her fighters vanished, vaporized in an instant. There wasn’t even a scream from the pilot before he died.
“Damn it, where’s the Intrepid?” Harald shouted.
Sam checked her scopes. It wasn’t back yet. Their mothership had jumped out once it had courses locations for the alien cruisers. It was going to jump back in on top of them. But a short jump didn’t pick up enough particles to do damage on arrival. So they needed to jump some distance, curving space and picking up random particles in space as they went. Then they’d come back and dump all that pent-up energy on a cruiser.
That was the plan, anyway. Sam had a feeling they were about to be on the receiving end of the same sort of attack.
The vanished cruiser burst back into real-space. It arrived at a course close to where Kel’s fighters would have been, had they stayed on their original heading. They’d curved away, and that saved most of them.
A brilliant light filled space ahead of the ship like a massive aurora. The wave of energized particles spat ahead of the alien ship, blazing a trail through space. The nearest fighters were caught by the edge of the wave. Two exploded, torn to shreds in seconds. Another three were severely damaged. They lost thrust control and spun away wildly. Sam winced, hoping those pilots were still alive. Given their original vectors and the spin the particles imparted, she wasn’t sure a physical human could have survived.
But her fighters were in a perfect position for payback, already turned about and accelerating in the general direction of the reappeared cruiser. A quick course correction and Sam had her nose aimed directly at the ship.
“Light ‘em up!” she called.
This was why they’d only burned half their missiles before. The Ghosts unloaded their remaining missiles. They flashed through space, blazing a score of trails toward the alien ship. It fought back, every gun it had working to lick rockets out of the void before they struck. One missile vanished, then another two, and four more. A few went wide and missed their target. That was interesting - the aliens must have some sort of tech that spoofed or decoyed the missiles somehow.
But it wasn’t enough to stop them all. Eight missiles struck home, blasting into the hull of the cruiser all along one flank. Explosions lit up the night, easily visible as the range between Sam’s Wasp and her target continued to drop.
She opened up with her nose-mounted railgun. It wasn’t over yet.
Fourteen
Thomas gripped the arms of his chair hard enough that his fingers were beginning to hurt. He relaxed them with an effort. It was always like this right before a battle. There was the long wait, where you knew the tiger was about to be in the room. The tension built until it was so high he felt like he couldn’t bear it anymore. Then they’d engage the enemy, and he’d finally be able to relax. Once the tiger was actually there in front of him, it was easy to face.
It was the waiting beforehand that killed him every time.
“Status?” he asked.
“Exit in twelve seconds,” Edwards replied.
Almost there. Just a few more moments and they’d be back in the fight. Thomas hoped his fighter pilots were OK. They’d been left alone out there in the furball for too long. Hell, he knew in his gut that some of them wouldn’t have made it. It was mostly Keladry he was worried about. She was out there risking herself. It was a distraction he could ill afford, but try as he might Thomas couldn’t entirely set aside his concern for her.
“Exiting jump!” Edwards called.
Thomas braced himself for an abrupt exit. Ever since the Intrepid’s first and near-disastrous jump, he’d held on for dear life whenever the ship came back into real-s
pace. They’d found and fixed the problem with the drive that had caused such a catastrophic overload, but his lizard brain didn’t know that.
The slide back into regular space was as smooth as ice. A riot of color lit up the view ahead. This was the most dangerous part of jump exit. For a brief moment the burst of high-energy particles blinded their sensors. At the same time, they provided a light show that could be seen from a great distance. They were incredibly exposed and vulnerable for that precious period of time.
“Contacts! Multiple contacts nearby,” Melson said.
“Put them on the tank,” Thomas replied. His voice was calm, his gut had unclenched. It was like magic, really. As soon as he was engaging an enemy, all that tension vanished like it had never been.
“Aye, sir.”
“Guns, stand by to fire as you bear. We’ll want to hit them as soon as we have a good target,” Thomas said.
The scan resolved, showing battlespace around the Intrepid. Three alien cruisers, one heavily engaged by the fighter wings. They weren’t precisely where they’d been when the Intrepid jumped out. Had the alien ship jumped? It must have.
But the other two were precisely where he’d expected them to be, making shortest-time courses to support their beleaguered friend. The Intrepid had jumped directly into the predicted path of one of those ships - coming in behind where Thomas expected the ship to be.
It was a little further away than he’d planned - the aliens were capable of some incredible acceleration. But it was still near enough for their arrival wake to strike hard.
It wasn’t accelerating anymore. “Looks like we nailed its engines. Take that thing out!” Thomas ordered.
“Aye, sir,” Edwards replied. He relayed the orders to gunnery stations. The Intrepid shuddered as massive railguns propelled chunks of metal into space. Missiles blazed away toward the alien cruiser. It was an all-or-nothing alpha strike. Every gun firing at once. Thomas nodded with approval. All that gunnery was actually slowing his ship down a little, but his engines were still working fine. They’d pick velocity back up soon enough.
The railgun rounds hit first. Thomas could see the impacts on his holo-tank, the computer obediently displaying each impact and trying to predict the damage done. Without engines to accelerate or steer, the enemy ship was a sitting duck. Every railgun round impacted it dead on target. Bits of shattered hull flew away from the ship as the bullets tore apart armor plating.
Then the missiles struck. They weren’t the smaller missiles the Wasps were carrying. These were massive ship-to-ship weapons, designed to take down capital ships. They punched deep into the armor plating before detonating. The enemy vessel bucked with each explosion. Finally, something inside the ship blew and lit up space in front of the Intrepid like a miniature nova.
Cheers sounded on the bridge, and Thomas allowed himself a small smile. “One bogey down. Well done, people. But let’s not get too full of ourselves. There’s two more of them out there. Lay in a course to engage that third ship before it can take out any more of our fighters.”
“Aye, sir!” Melson said. He set about his console with alacrity and the stars spun in the main screen as the Intrepid came rapidly around to the new heading.
That fight had been the easy part. This next battle was going to be much more of an even matchup. This wasn’t a disabled ship - it was an alien warship at full power. Thomas glanced at the tank again, looking for enemy fighters and finding only a tiny handful, all engaged around the cruiser his Wasps were assaulting. The alien fleet had burned most of their fighter wing in the initial attack on Mars. Now they were going to pay for that.
But Thomas didn’t have a fighter screen left, either. His Wasps were all working over the other cruiser. This fight was just going to be alien energy cannon against human guns and missiles.
The Intrepid shook as the alien’s main beam weapon lanced out at them, digging into the frontal armor. Her railguns sounded again and again, the thrum of each volley vibrating the deck beneath Thom’s feet. The enemy ship had changed course as well. It was on a collision course with his own.
“Looks like they want to play chicken,” Thomas said. “Melson, maintain course. What’s the status on our jump drive?”
“We’re down to ten percent charge, sir,” Melson replied.
Most of the charge for a jump was burned entering jump-space. Once a ship was there, it seemed like maintaining its presence was less costly than getting there. What that meant was that two short jumps used much more energy than a single long one. He wasn’t going to be able to re-enter jump-space for a while.
The Intrepid shook again, alarms blaring. They’d lost hull integrity somewhere in the forward sections of the ship. Damn, but those beam weapons were powerful! Thomas watched the computer attempt to predict the damage down from his own shots. It wasn’t going to be enough to take the enemy down before it closed.
Would they ram him? This enemy had shown itself more than willing to sacrifice ships and lives to beat an enemy. They knew the Intrepid was one of the best defenses Earth had. Thomas felt confident they’d happily trade one of their smaller vessels to take down humanity’s flagship. His job was to make sure they weren’t able to.
“Edwards, stand by on missile launch,” Thomas said.
“Aye, sir,” Edwards replied. Thomas could see the sweat beading on the man’s face, but he didn’t let his stress show in any other way.
The alien ship was close enough that they could see it on their screen, with the magnification dialed up. That was insanely close, in terms of a space battle. They were shooting at each other at nearly point-blank range.
Range that was far too close for the alien anti-missile systems to be of much use.
“Fire!” Thomas said. “Melson, come about to two-hundred eighty, mark one two zero.”
A chorus of affirmative responses was drowned out by the roar of every missile launcher on the Intrepid firing at the same time.
Fifteen
Streams of high-energy particles shot past Sam’s cockpit. The beam missed her, but it was close enough to scorch the wing of her Wasp. Her ship bucked, rocking from even the near-miss.
“Damn! Where did that come from?” Sam said. Her quick scan showed the alien fighter on her tail, along with another half dozen of the small ships. They must have just arrived. Certainly weren’t there just a minute ago! “As if dealing with the cruiser wasn’t enough trouble.”
Sam dipped the nose of her craft and weaved from one side to the other, trying to shake the enemy on her tail. Nothing worked, not even a ten-gravity tight turn! The alien stuck with her no matter what. It fired its beams again, barely missing. How was it managing that? Sam figured her digital nature should have given her an edge in combat. It would have, against any human pilot. What kind of aliens were these things?
They’d never recovered a single body. Some random organic compounds, but nothing like an actual corpse. The scuttlebutt was the aliens were using some sort of tech to disintegrate themselves when they died. Either that or the ships were populated by actual ghosts - and that one Sam didn’t buy.
“Hang on, I’ve got you.” The voice snapped over Sam’s radio. It was Kel - the CAG. “Break hard right when I say.”
“Roger,” Sam replied. She took the Wasp through a series of spins to avoid another shot. “Hurry, please?”
“So impatient,” Kel replied. “Now!”
Sam didn’t reply - she simply twisted the ship onto its side and turned right as hard as she could. The structure of her Wasp groaned under the strain. How many gravities was she pushing? Sam glanced at the readout. Twenty was a lot. The Wasp wasn’t rated to survive that much stress. But if she didn’t push hard enough, the alien fighter would stay too tight, and Kel would lose her shot.
“Hold together just a little longer…” Sam whispered.
An explosion behind her told Sam that Kel had managed her shot. The alien fighter was destroyed! Just in time, too. That was far closer than she ever want
ed to be to getting outflown. The whole thing still bothered Sam - how had it managed that? The computer said it had managed to do a fifteen gravity turn. She’d out-turned it, but not by as much as she should have. How?
It was a question for another day. They had bigger fish to fry at the moment.
“CAG, this is Ghost One. Want to help me mop up the last of those fighters before they take any of us out?” Sam asked.
“I’m on your wing now. Let’s do this,” Kel replied.
They both streaked ahead and tore into another enemy fighter that was trying to take out a Wasp, then hunted for a third. There was just one more left. Together they caught it in a pincer that it couldn’t escape. Sam fired the killing shot this time.
“Look - while we’ve been busy, so have the rest of our wings,” Kel said.
Sam glanced over at the alien cruiser. Secondary explosions rocked the ship’s stern. Something was going off in there, melting away the ship’s hull. The area around the engines began glowing cherry red, then drifting away from the vessel as balls of slag.
“Holy shit! Get clear, everyone. I think they’re losing containment on something,” Sam said. “Abort attack! Move it!”
All the Wasps changed course and moved away from the cruiser as rapidly as their engines and physiologies allowed. Again the Ghosts had an advantage there, Sam noted. The human pilots just couldn’t accelerate as fast. Two of them were still too close to the alien ship when it went up.
The explosions started at the still-slowing aft sections. The hull split, a brilliant blast lighting up space. Then the explosion carried itself forward in a series of bangs like firecrackers going off inside a roll of aluminum foil. The cruiser broke into fragments, each propelled outward by the force of the blast.
Only two fighters were lost, which was something of a minor miracle. They’d been engaged at point-blank range so that they had optimal targeting with the nose-mounted railguns. But that had almost cost them all dearly when the ship finally blew.
Ghost Squadron Page 6