Storm Assault (Star Force Series)

by B. V. Larson

  I shook my head. She was right mathematically, but I didn’t think the Blues would use lasers. After all, their natural environment didn’t permit vision of any kind. Beams of intense light wouldn’t be natural weapons for them.

  “I’ve been down there on their world,” I told her, “It’s as dark and dense as a sandstorm at the bottom of an ocean. How would you even test a long range optical weapon in such an environment? They would have to have come up into orbit to fire it, and we would have seen it months ago.”

  “I’m just being cautious and looking after my ship.”

  I couldn’t fault her for that. Ten more minutes passed, and I became antsy again. There was only time enough left for one more transmission and response before our two paths crossed.

  “Marvin, prepare—”

  “Excuse me, sir,” he said. “I’m detecting an energy surge—”

  “Kyle, look!”

  We saw it on the command screens first. One of our four carriers winked out—or rather, it rapidly reduced in size to a blip no bigger than a gunship. The new configuration was misshapen and irregular. It looked like a wad of gum someone had chewed and spat out on the sidewalk.

  “Emergency evasion!” Captain Sarin screamed. “Ready all missile tubes, scramble all reserve fighters, transmit e-code delta-delta to Shadowguard!”

  I stood beside her, but didn’t interfere, she was listing off every emergency command she had on the books. That was the right thing to do, and I wasn’t going to second guess any of them.

  “They just destroyed Defiant,” she said, still in shock.

  “Is that confirmed?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Marvin said brightly. None of our stress or dismay was evident in his voice. “The carrier Defiant is now reduced in composition and size, but not in total mass.”

  “What’re you saying?” I demanded. “Didn’t they blow it up?”

  “No sir. They appear to have crushed it somehow. It is now flat and crumpled. The alloys are fused, and although there are secondary explosions, the central mass seems stable now. I expect no survivors will be found.”

  “No kidding,” I said. “Marvin, when I told you to hide the source of my transmissions, what did you do?”

  “I relayed them through Defiant, sir,” he said brightly.

  I nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

  -5-

  The next few minutes were like a mass panic. We scrambled every fighter we had and threw every emergency plan into action.

  Black metallic tentacles sprouted from the smart metal decking and entwined themselves around our legs. More came down from the ceiling and ensnared our upper bodies. They were programmed to let us move as freely as possible, but the end result was like moving around with car restraints all over you—restraints that had peculiar ideas about what they should let you do.

  I let Sarin do her thing. In this action, I couldn’t use her as my exec for the overall battle. As I watched she moved to another station where she could manage her ships and her fighters. As the captain of Gatre, her first responsibility was to her own vessel. At the same time, she was operating as the ship’s CAG, which seemed like more than enough.

  In her place stood Marvin and a few staffers at the central command table. The holotank hanging above it was full of contacts. All the missiles and ships were green because they were all ours—except for one big spherical mass the size of a baseball. It was red now, having been reclassified as an enemy target.

  “Where’s Miklos?” I asked. “Was he on Defiant when it was hit?”

  “Negative sir,” Marvin answered. “The Commodore is attempting to communicate with me right now.”

  “Patch him through to me.”

  There was a squawk and a few beeps, then a crackling sound. “Miklos? Do you read me? This is Colonel—”

  “Yes sir, loud and clear.”

  “Good. Did you escape the Defiant? If so, what hit you?”

  “I’ve got no clue, sir. I was flying a pinnace between Defiant and your ship when the enemy struck us.”

  I wanted to ask him why he was doing that, but I simply didn’t have time. I was very glad he had survived. He was the commander of the Defiant, but that didn’t mean he had to die with her. I valued him as my second in command more than the ship itself…well, almost.

  “Well then, get aboard and come to the command deck. We’ve got a very hard battle ahead of us.”

  “Sir, I think that would be a mistake.”

  “What would be a mistake? Talk quickly and plainly, Commodore, we’re under fire here.”

  “Yes sir. I don’t think we can fight them. We aren’t even in range to strike yet. If we launch every missile and fighter we have left, they wouldn’t even notice for twenty minutes.”

  He was right. My carriers didn’t have heavy, long-range guns. They had a few cannons for aerial bombardment but nothing that was going to effective against a target as big as a moon.

  “But what choice do we have, Commodore? If we get in close enough and attack, maybe we’ll win. If they kill us before that, well, then it’s over anyway.”

  “We can run, sir.”

  I frowned, looking at the boards. I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Have you looked at the tactical situation?”

  “Yes, and I still say it’s our only option. Every second we spend closing with them is a second we could better use trying to escape.”

  I gritted my teeth and tried to think. Around me, a dozen voices were shouting at once. The klaxons kept blaring until I ordered them shut off. I figured everyone had gotten the point by now, and they weren’t doing anything other than giving me a headache.

  “We can’t reverse course, our speed is too great.”

  Miklos tapped my arm. I startled, then smiled. I clapped him on the shoulder, making him stagger back a step. He’d been on his com-link, but had managed to reach me during the conversation.

  “Glad to see you make it out of that mess alive, Commodore. Step into my office and use the screens to show me what you’re thinking.”

  Miklos still had his vac suit sealed. He had to struggle out of it and I saw frost inside the helmet. Maybe his escape had been closer than he’d indicated. We didn’t have time for chatting about it so I let him do his job.

  “We can’t turn around due to inertia, but we can veer off at an angle,” he said, running a finger in an arc across the screen. The brainboxes immediately interpreted his gesture and plotted a theoretical course with many slight corrections of their own. I watched as he directed our ships toward the homeworld of the Blues, right past the enemy fleet.

  “Why do you want to head that way? To convince them we’re on an attack run? Or maybe you want us to threaten to bomb their world?”

  “Possibly sir, but really I wanted to achieve maximum velocity. If we head for their planet, we’ll get the added benefit of the extreme gravitational forces exerted by Eden-11 to increase our speed. We can then slingshot around it, changing course rapidly by using the gravity again, and make good our escape. We can choose practically any destination we want, and they won’t know where we’re going until we break orbit.”

  I nodded. “We’ll do both. I want our fighters to head at them in a loose cloud formation. They’ll do a passing run then rejoin us in orbit over Eden-11.”

  “Is that wise, sir? That will end any chance of achieving a ceasefire with them.”

  “Take a look around, Miklos. They aren’t even answering my transmissions. They have no interest in peace, and that won’t change as long as they think they have the upper hand. Besides, I’m hoping they might shoot at the fighters instead of taking out the rest of the motherships. Execute the plan.”

  Miklos didn’t hesitate further. He turned and began shouting to every navigator present, and they tapped their screens to set the course. Soon, the ship was shaking and we all began sliding toward the aft bulkhead. I had three or four lateral Gs on me within thirty seconds, and it kept building. For the first time since the c
risis had started, I was glad my feet were wrapped up by metal vines.

  Once our course was established, we had a bit more time to breathe. I didn’t feel relaxed by any stretch of the imagination, however. At any moment that ship could reach out and snuff another of my best vessels.

  “What was that weapon? Any theories?”

  Marvin’s tentacles did a dance in response. “I have several, sir.”

  “Give me the most likely one.”

  “They have developed a weapon beyond our science and employed it in such a way as to leave no traces as to its origins.”

  I rolled my eyes. “That’s obvious, Marvin. What I want is speculation as to the nature of said weapon. Are there any trace radiation readings? Any chemical signatures? Anything at all?”

  “I believe my initial statement clearly indicated we don’t have that data.”

  I turned away from Marvin in frustration. Sometimes his precision was irritating. This was one of those times. “Has anyone thought to ping that wreck? What have we got?”

  The staffers gave me startled looks in return.

  “People, pull it together. Someone should be out there in a vac suit by now, looking for survivors and taking samples. We have to know what we’re up against.”

  I reached out and grabbed an ensign by a handful of his smart-cloth suit. I pointed toward the airlock. “Get to the Commodore’s pinnace, fly out to the wreck and report what you find. Take an instrument kit and a sensor box.”

  “Both of those items are already aboard my pinnace, sir,” Miklos said helpfully.

  The startled ensign looked at both of us with wide eyes. He found no comfort in either of our faces. He seemed too stunned to reply.

  I decided to help him get moving. I lifted him with one hand until his boots were clear of the floor. The tentacles that were responsible for his feet were upset about that, and tugged to pull him back down.

  “Sir?” he asked, as if dazed, “how will I get back? We’re accelerating away from the wreck on an angular course.”

  I ripped him loose from the tentacles and propelled him toward the exit. He had the presence of mind to put his hands out in front of him before he hit the hatch, which turned to liquid at his touch.

  “Someone will pick you up later,” I called after him. “Be happy, Ensign. You might be Gatre’s sole survivor today.”

  As he drifted out of the chamber and into the airlock, he didn’t look happy. But sometimes I’m not good at reading people’s expressions.

  “Sir?” Marvin said at my side. I felt his tentacles tapping and rasping at my suit.

  I turned on him, glowering. “What have you got?”

  “I believe we were just hit again.”

  That got my full attention. I scanned the carriers and did a quick count. There were still five. I zoomed in on several in turn, examining their mass and their readings.

  “I think you’re wrong about that, Marvin,” I said in relief. “Every vessel is accounted for and showing green.”

  “I’m not talking about the carriers, Colonel.”

  I suddenly understood. A second later Jasmine reported in.

  “We just lost three fighters from 2nd Squadron. They were mine, Colonel.”

  I nodded in sudden understanding. Really, this was good news. If they wasted shots against our fighters when they could take out an entire carrier with one hit, we were winning—well, at least we would last longer.

  “Sir, I’m ordering my fighters to spread out farther.”

  “Belay that, Jasmine.”

  There was a moment of quiet, then a private channel request began blinking. I hesitated, then took the call.

  It was Captain Jasmine Sarin, naturally. She was calling me privately, even though we were only a few feet apart. It was a technique we employed when we didn’t want our underlings to see us arguing in public.

  “What are you doing, Kyle?” she demanded. “If I spread them out, they might only get one fighter with their next shot. Why risk more?”

  “Because I want them to keep shooting at fighters, not our big ships. It’s grim, Jasmine, but that is the calculus of war. We only have three carriers left in this task force and I need them all.”

  “So my fighter pilots are just out there to bait the enemy?”

  “If all goes well and they don’t get any smarter, yes. Riggs out.”

  I disconnected and turned back to Miklos. He nodded to me.

  “You had no choice, Colonel,” he said. “If we make the fighters harder targets we could be cutting our own throats.”

  “Do you have a timing interval between the first strike and the second?”

  “I do, Colonel,” chimed in Marvin. “My best estimate is nine minutes and seven seconds. This interval may change as we close with the enemy. I can’t estimate the variation until I know more about the nature of the weapon system.”

  “Nine minutes,” I said thoughtfully. “That’s a long time. That’s excellent news, in fact. I surmise from this data they have a very powerful, long-range weapon, but it has a serious weakness: a slow rate of fire.”

  “I would agree with that assessment, sir.”

  I turned back to the boards, thinking hard. We would be past them in roughly twenty nine minutes. Time enough for three more shots.

  “When will the fighters hit them?” I asked.

  “In approximately two minutes,” Marvin answered.

  “Any sign of enemy point-defense fire? Any smaller weapons at all?”

  “Not yet, sir.”

  It was hard not to order the fighters to spread out on their final attack run. I couldn’t be sure if I was sacrificing them needlessly. But such decisions were the bane of all commanders in a tough fight. In the end, I knew I had to play it safe. The enemy had already struck us a grievous blow, and I intended to get out of this without suffering a second crippling strike if at all possible. In the end, fighters were much easier to replace than an entire carrier.

  The minutes crawled by while we all watched the screens, staring until our eyes stung before daring to blink.

  We were running, and I didn’t like that, but I didn’t see any better options. The enemy looked invincible. When faced with an overwhelming force, the only sane choice was to withdraw and study the target, hoping to find a weakness. We’d been surprised, and we had no plan and no real data on which to base a plan. Running was the only thing that made sense.

  But my fighter pilots didn’t know that. As far as they were concerned, they’d been tasked with taking out a moon that was for all intents and purposes a flying wall of solid rock. I didn’t envy their situation. But I didn’t know how to help them.

  “Two fighters more were just taken out—the ships were from the 6th Squadron,” Miklos reported.

  “The interval has reduced, but it is still lengthy,” Marvin said. “I think the weapon may be limited to the speed of light, Colonel. That may explain why it hit us sooner this time.”

  “Well, at least we’ve got that going for us,” I said.

  My carriers were now passing the big rock and hurtling toward Eden-11. Soon, we would be out of their range. I began, for the very first time, to feel a tiny relaxation in my belly. It was a small thing really, just enough to realize that I’d been clenching up my guts for nearly half an hour now. My muscles ached from the tension. I wanted to rub my neck, but my helmet was in the way.

  “Sir? The fighters have almost reached the target. The pilots are reporting a variation in the enemy ship’s attitude.”

  “What’s it doing?”

  “Uh, rotating sir. It’s coming around—to face us.”

  “Emergency evasive procedures!” I roared. “All carriers, assume incoming fire is imminent.”

  “It hasn’t been anything like nine minutes,” Miklos argued.

  The ship was rolling and shaking at this point. Both of us clung to our table, and our bodies were whipped about. We must have looked like trees in a hurricane.

  “We’re a lot closer t
han we were last time,” I told him. “That may shortened the timespan required to cycle their weapons.”

  “You think they’ve decided to ignore the fighters?”

  “Wouldn’t you? It only makes sense to worry first about the big ships heading toward your homeworld.”

  “I see. Orders sir?”

  “Fire our missiles. All of them. Target the structures at the poles. Maybe that will do something.”

  Up until this moment, we’d held onto our limited supply of nuclear missiles. We had sixteen of them on each carrier. At first, I hadn’t given the order to fire them because we didn’t have a clear target. Later, I’d held back because I wanted the enemy to go for the fighters instead of our motherships. Now, it seemed to me I was in a use-it-or-lose-it situation.

  I felt the vessel shudder as the missiles left their tubes. They fired in rapid succession. I hoped they’d do some good when they struck home.

  There was a short interval then during which nothing happened. Gatre was still twisting and jerking from side to side. But there was no evidence of a strike against us, not yet.

  Then, with no warning whatsoever, another carrier was hit.

  “Hit confirmed. It was Excelsior this time, Colonel.”

  I nodded to Miklos and he brought the data up on the screen. Looking at the ship, I didn’t see the damage at first. Unlike Defiant, it wasn’t a total loss. The ship hadn’t been crushed like a beer can. Could the enemy weapon—whatever it was—be weakening?

  But then Miklos rotated the view and the secondary explosions became apparent aboard Excelsior. A hole gaped in the aft region of the hull.

  “It looks like a shark has taken a huge bite out of Excelsior’s ass,” I said.

  “Exactly what I was thinking, sir. I think our evasion had some effect. It was not a perfect hit.”

  “Either our evasion, or the reduced timeframe. Maybe it takes them nine minutes to stoke up to a full charge with their system. Maybe if they fire it faster, it is less effective—or less accurate.