Black Ops (Expeditionary Force Book 4)

by Craig Alanson

  “That damned thing moves fast for a heavy ship,” Porter commented with concern. “They can accelerate faster than we can.” Star carriers were built to transport other ships by jumping long distances, not by flying the long way through normal space. With their long, spindly spines, star carriers were supposed to perform only gentle maneuvers to avoiding overstressing their structure. Even though the Dutchman was only carrying the relay station/lifeboat, it could not accelerate quickly compared to a true warship. “We’re going to be in trouble if this develops into a running fight.” All the scenarios for combat assumed the cruiser would be disabled by the mines before the Dutchman engaged.

  “We have another problem,” Simms reported from the CIC. “When we got bombarded by charged particles from that frigate blowing up, the Kristang might have gotten a glimpse through our stealth field. If they did, they might know we are not a Kristang ship.”

  “Damn it!” Chang pounded on the arm of the command chair.

  “Sir, they likely don’t know what we are; our profile doesn’t match any star carrier the Thuranin have. But if they got a good enough look, they will recognize our forward structure and engineering section as Thuranin. We are jamming their transmissions.”

  “That would blow the whole plan,” Chang squeezed his fists. If the Kristang thought the Thuranin were interfering in clan business, not only would the Fire Dragons and Black Trees unite against a common enemy, they would report the incident to the Thuranin. Those little green men, knowing they certainly were not involved, might start asking very uncomfortable questions. “Can we make a short jump, get behind them?”

  “No,” Desai declared. “They have us caught in their damping field. Neither of us can jump.”

  “Simms,” Chang asked, “how long until our damping field burns out?”

  “Fourteen minutes, maybe less. I can reduce power to the field because the Kristang ship is closer to us now, that might allow us to squeeze another minute out of it.”

  “Do it,” Chang ordered. “Status of our defenses?”

  “Nominal,” Simms reported. “Energy shields are at one hundred percent, point defense cannons ready and hot. Terminal guidance sensor field was not affected by the other sensor problem, it is fully effective.”

  “How long until we are within maser cannon range?” Chang pressed the touchscreen on the command chair’s armrest and manipulated the main display. He was kicking around the kernel of an idea in his head.

  “Twenty four seconds to effective range,” Desai reported.

  “Missile launch!” Desai shouted. “Enemy has launched.” The ship rocked almost imperceptibly. “Also firing masers at us.”

  “At this range?” Chang asked, puzzled.

  “They aren’t effective at this range; they’re trying to disrupt our terminal guidance sensors. Sir, I suggest an evasive course so they can’t target us with their railgun.”

  “Do it,” Chang ordered.

  “Aye, Sir,” Desai acknowledged. Feeling Chang should know, she added “That will slow us down slightly.”

  “Understood, do it anyway. Desai, that cruiser is turning to pursue us after closest approach?”

  “Yes. It’s still going in the wrong direction but at its current rate of acceleration, it will fully cancel its velocity less than a minute after we pass by.” She anticipated Chang’s next question. “We’re at full thrust and even if we maintain that power, the Kristang will catch us in twelve minutes.”

  “We can’t do that,” Porter warned. “If we maintain full acceleration after we pass by, that cruiser will go out of our damping field range before it is able to swing around and chase us. It could jump away.”

  “We need to slow down?” Chang mused, not liking the sound of that. “Let that cruiser get closer to us?”

  “He’s right,” Desai confirmed, looking at her console. “In fact, we need to begin slowing now, or there will be an eight second gap in our damping field coverage.”

  “Shit. Do it, whatever you have to do. We can’t allow that ship to escape.”

  “Decelerating now,” Desai acknowledged. “We will be within effective maser range in four seconds.”

  “Simms,” Chang called toward the CIC. “Weapons free. Conserve our missiles. Desai, continue evading so we don’t get nailed by their railgun.”

  “Doing that,” Desai replied tersely as the ship rocked faintly. “Lucky shot, that was a maser beam hit. No damage.” At the present range, the enemy was launching maser bolts at the location in space where they thought the Dutchman would be when the maser beam, crawling along at the speed of light, got there. The random pattern directed by Desai and flown by Porter prevented most enemy maser beams and railgun darts from finding their target; they simply flew on through empty space as the Flying Dutchman jinked one way then the other. The maser beams would eventually dissipate, the railgun darts would fly onward until the end of time, slowed slightly by impacts with particles and dust in interstellar space unless they happened to collide with something substantial.

  As the two ships flew past each other at closest approach, they both fired weapons ineffectively. Over a dozen missiles homed in on the Flying Dutchman, all of them were intercepted by the point defense cannons, helped by the upgrades Skippy had made to the original Thuranin defensive guidance systems.

  The engines of the two combatants strained to cancel the velocity that was still drawing them farther apart. As his ship shuddered to a dead stop and began moving in the opposite direction, Chang felt a chill as he had an awful thought. The Kristang heavy cruiser had not yet completed its deceleration maneuver, and was still flying farther from the Dutchman with every passing second. “Simms, if the enemy detects our damping field is growing weaker as they increase their distance-”

  He didn’t need to finish the thought. “Already on it, Sir,” Simms replied. “We’re increasing the damping beam power to keep the field strength steady. They won’t detect a drop in field strength, unless they get another two hundred thousand kilometers away. At their current rate of thrust,” she paused to check a console, “they won’t come close to that distance, Sir.”

  “Good.” Chang sat tensely in the command chair, forcing himself not to grip the arms so tightly that his knuckles shone white. The crew needed to see a calm, confident commander, and that is what Chang was determined to give them. Except, now that he saw on the display the enemy ship had halted its flight and was now accelerating toward the Flying Dutchman, he did not immediately know what to do next. The enemy was successfully trapped in the Dutchman’s damping field. He had caught a tiger by the tail, and now he didn’t know what to do with it. “Desai,” he automatically addressed the ship’s chief pilot, even though she was acting as copilot. “I would appreciate any suggestions. Is there anything you learned about Space Combat Maneuvers that would be useful right now?”

  Desai turned in her seat. “We can’t outrun them,” she replied. “And I don’t think we can outfight them, either,” she made the last remark while looking through the glass into the CIC.

  Simms shook her head. “That’s a heavy cruiser, Sir, they have shields tougher than we expected. They have more missiles, and their maser cannons have higher output than ours,” she lamented. “The whole plan counted on our mines disabling that ship.”

  “They have a heavy cruiser, and we have a space bus,” Chang stated.

  “Essentially, Sir, yes,” Desai concluded. “I don’t see how we can win a stand-up fight against that ship. If we disable our damping field, maybe the Kristang will cut their losses and jump away?”

  “No,” Chang shook his head. “I can’t take the risk that they saw through our stealth field, even for a moment. Stand-up fight?” He smiled. “Skippy tells me he is all about cheating when he can get away with it. Bishop isn’t the only pirate in this crew who can think up a crazy idea. Desai, Simms, I need you to-”

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  The spindly Flying Dutchman awkwardly turned, spinning sideways at the l
imit of its spine structure’s ability to hold integrity. Under Porter’s skilled hands, and with the entire crew whispering silent prayers, the ships turned and burned hard, away from the None Can Stand Against Us.

  For a moment, the enemy hesitated, sensing an opportunity to escape. Then, under Chang’s orders, Desai pulsed the thrust randomly, as if the star carrier’s engines were failing. That made up the minds of the senior leaders aboard the Kristang cruiser; their enemy was now vulnerable, and they wanted answers as to who had conducted a dishonorable sneak attack. And they wanted revenge.

  The Stand continued on an intercept course at full thrust, rapidly overtaking the mysterious stealthed ship that had ambushed the cruiser and destroyed two frigates. The Kristang aboard the Stand burned with curiosity and not a little fear. Somehow, the unknown enemy had managed to make three starships jump to an unintended location, and make them jump so accurately they emerged into a mine field. That implied the enemy had advanced technology, technology that represented a serious threat to the Fire Dragon clan. The enemy needed to be trapped, identified, and possibly taken apart to learn their secrets

  The cruiser launched a volley of missiles at extreme range, fully expecting all four weapons to be destroyed while still well away from the enemy. Instead, three were hammered by maser cannons, but the fourth continued onward, as if the enemy’s point-defense systems had difficulty tracking it. Much closer than the enemy would have liked, the missile was finally burned to a crisp by two maser cannons. The cruiser’s captain might have been puzzled when his ship’s sensors detected the enemy’s stealth field had changed shape and gone opaque, stretching far out to the sides. That was odd, thought the Stand’s captain; the enemy must be confident there were no ships in front to see through the weakened stealth in that direction. Why else was their stealth field configured to block the Stand’s view forward?

  The cruiser’s captain received an answer shortly, as the enemy ship suddenly broke to one side and restored its stealth field to normal. In moments, the Stand’s sensors detected something dead ahead: mines!

  “Yes!” Major Simms exulted. “They’ve flown right into our mines!”

  Chang’s order had been for Desai to steer a course directly away from the Kristang ship, and to reduce acceleration to lure the cruiser closer. Simms contacted the remaining mines and directed them to cluster in the Dutchman’s path. With the ship’s stealth field stretched wide and blocking the Kristang’s view forward, the cruiser had not seen the approaching mines until it was too late.

  The cruiser staggered under the sudden onslaught, explosions causing the ship’s forward shields to flicker and overload, collapsing in sections. The second wave of mines began penetrating through the shields, and the crew of the None Can Stand Against Us knew in a flash that they could not stand another hit. So they did the only thing they could do.

  “Missile warning! Enemy is launching,” there was a pause, “everything?” Simms was shocked. “They’re launching all their missiles! It looks like they’ve rippling off their entire weapons load, I count thirty two missiles in the air and more launching.” The data Skippy had transmitted about the heavy cruiser listed the number of missiles that ship carried; they had all either been fired or were now on their way toward the Dutchman.

  Desai turned in her chair. “Colonel, our defenses can’t fend off that many missiles. I recommend we turn and run.”

  Her suggestion matched what Chang was already thinking. Their mines were besieging the enemy cruiser, and there was nothing useful the Flying Dutchman could do until the mine attack had run its course one way or another. “Get us out of here. Maximum acceleration for now, then we will cut thrust and rely on stealth?”

  “Yes,” Porter agreed. The Dutchman’s stealth capability was far advanced beyond what the Kristang missile sensors were designed to identify; with the enhancements Skippy had installed, the pirate ship’s stealth was more effective than most Thuranin ships. “With that many missiles chasing us, Sir, they will find us. At that point, we should go to one third acceleration to give us maneuvering ability.”

  “Fly the ship however you think best, pilots.”

  The Dutchman’s engines straining at their limit only delayed the star carrier being caught by Kristang missiles. When the ship was bracketed by a swirling cloud of missiles, the pilots cut thrusts and jinked side to side and up and down in a random evasive pattern, trusting their unpredictable maneuvers and the stealth field to confuse the targeting systems of the inbound missiles. That tactic worked only for the first seven missiles, then the remaining missiles were able to home in on defensive maser cannons and the hot charged particles of prior missiles that had impacted the pirate ship’s defense shields. Even the notoriously poor targeting sensors of Kristang weapons could pinpoint the star carrier, and in an instant, the ship’s point-defense cannons could not react quickly enough to track the multitude of targets.

  The deck rocked. “Defenses are becoming saturated!” Simms warned from the Combat Information Center. With the Dutchman flying through a cloud of hot particles from detonated missiles, her stealth field was nearly useless, and the particles were blinding the point defense sensors. “We’ve, we have lost contact with three missiles!”

  For the first time in the engagement, Chang felt a chill of real gut-freezing fear. Three enemy missiles could be anywhere, they could be streaking in to impact one of the reactors any moment.

  “We- explosion at the enemy’s location. The cruiser has blown up!” Simms exulted.

  “Yes!” Desai pumped a fist in the air.

  Chang’s mind skipped celebration and focused. “Is their damping field down?”

  After a momentary hesitation, Simms replied “Almost, Sir. Field is dissipating.”

  “Desai, engage jump drive and get us out of here as soon as possible,” Chang ordered. “Make it a short jump, I want to get a good look and make damned sure that cruiser is gone.”

  “Aye, Sir,” she acknowledged with one eye on the indicator that measured damping field intensity. Without continuously being fed power by the enemy cruiser, the Kristang damping field was rapidly weakening. Missiles were also rapidly closing on the Flying Dutchman. With a glance, she saw the damping field was not equally strong in all directions. “My spacecraft,” she said without looking at Porter, and turned the ship toward a weak area of the surrounding damping field. Three seconds later, her left index finger flicked up to press a button on top of her console, and the star carrier disappeared in a flash of gamma rays as spacetime was rent asunder.

  Twenty two Kristang missiles suddenly found themselves without a target. Without the ability to feel surprise or disappointment, they fell back on what their programming told them to do, when they simultaneously lost contact with a target and detected the distinctive gamma ray signature of a jump drive. Most of the missiles switched off their active sensors and went silent, while four missiles continued actively searching for a target, extending their search patterns farther and farther. Eventually, the passive sensors of all missiles detected another gamma ray burst from where the Dutchman had jumped to, and the missiles quickly calculated it was extremely unlikely they could catch a target so far away.

  However, since the missiles had nothing else to do in the emptiness of space, they all turned and burned toward the distant target.

  The Dutchman emerged from the short jump and immediately was rocked by an explosion. Lights flickered as Chang shouted “What was-”

  “Reactor Two is damaged! Attempting to shut it down,” Simms shouted from the CIC.

  “Simms, concentrate on damage control,” Chang ordered. “Desai, what happened?”

  Desai’s fingers flew over her console, ignoring the fact that Reactor Two might explode at any moment. “We took a hit to Reactor Two, it was bad luck, shrapnel went through a gap in the plating.” Desai looked back at Chang. “That was a hundred to one shot, Sir, we got unlucky. The explosion also knocked out two defense shield generators and a point defense
cannon; we’re going to be vulnerable aft until we can adjust shields to compensate.”

  “What happened? Was it an ambush?” Chang asked apprehensively. The location they had jumped to was selected almost randomly by the jump computer, from a range of short-jump options Skippy had programmed before the beer can left the ship. If a ship had been waiting for the Dutchman to emerge, if an enemy had somehow learned the Merry Band of Pirates’ trick of predicting inbound jump points, they were in serious trouble.

  “No, Sir, not an ambush,” Desai explained, just then understanding the data herself. “It looked like when we jumped, a missile got caught in our jump drive field and sucked in after us; the distortion of the wormhole caused the missile to explode as we emerged here.”

  “More bad luck?” Chang asked sourly.

  “No, this was good luck, Colonel,” Desai replied with a relieved shake of her head. “That was one of the missiles we lost track of. If we hadn’t jumped, it would have scored a direct hit within two seconds. Our shields might have protected us, but,” she held up her hands. “There could have been another missile or two right behind it.”

  “I would not have liked to take our chances with that,” Chang relaxed slightly in the command chair. “Desai, Porter, that was good flying.”

  “She got us out of there,” Porter announced, giving credit where credit was due. “Desai flew us into a weak spot in that damping field. Otherwise, our jump would have been delayed, maybe too long.” He offered the lead pilot a high five. “That was fast thinking, Ma’am.”

  “Colonel Chang,” Simms called from CIC, “Reactor Two was supposed to automatically shut itself down but something got stuck. We ejected the plasma manually, there is some additional damage to the ship from the plasma. The reactor will not explode, Sir, but that plasma is going be very visible, and those high-energy particles will degrade our stealth field and defense shields. I suggest we move the ship away as soon as possible. Reactors One and Three are functioning normally.”