StarFight 1: Battlestar
Page 13
“Yeah, I remember. And thanks for the food. I was feeling a bit famished. How are things in the Mess Hall?”
“Busy,” Kenji said, standing there as he looked around Jacob’s small quarters. His friend looked up. His attention fixed on the hologram of the Milky Way galaxy that Jacob had told the room’s stupid AI to always create just below the room’s ceiling. It provided the same light that could be had from the light strips that illuminated every room on the Battlestar, and anyway, it was fun to look at in the dark, before he dropped off. “Neat holo. I like.”
Jacob gestured at the swing out plank that served for a sit down place before his desk. “Have a seat.”
“Thanks.” Kenji sat and faced him, his pale white face showing little expression beyond normal alertness. His friend hated the old ‘Asian inscrutability’ term, but did nothing to be boisterous the way Daisy did. He nodded aside at the tray. “You gonna eat?”
“Soon.” Jacob gave his friend a thumbs-up. “Really, thanks for looking me up and bringing me the tray. I just needed time here to cope with all that’s happened in the last three hours. You know.”
Kenji squinted. “Actually, I don’t know. You’re the officer. You and Lori and Daisy and Carlos. Me and Quincy are the honorary jokesters.”
“Wrong!” Jacob sat up and leaned forward, putting just two feet between him and Kenji. “You and Quincy are Spacers. You are just as valuable to the Lepanto as me or anyone else. What’s the chatter in the Mess Hall? About the death of the top brass and what I’ve done to protect us?”
Kenji’s expression grew thoughtful. “Everyone was shocked at the Cloud Skimmer images. Some of us wondered why we had not heard back from the ensigns who’d gone down with them. You weren’t the only ensign to hang with Spacers. Though you are the nicest,” his friend said quickly. Jacob nodded, encouraging him. “When you took command, there was surprise. Then when we saw over the All Ship vidcom that the wasp ships were coming our way, plenty of folks got scared. You being up there, with the Bridge crew and our friends, that helped a lot of them cope with it. When the ship status changed to Alert Combat Ready, folks ran out to their posts. We in the kitchen shut down the flammables, locked the food storage, then took our fire-fighting posts on Habitation Deck.” His friend paused. “Was really good being able to see and hear over the All Ship vidcom just what was happening, what you folks were doing, what the other ships were doing. Me, it gave me the sense we had a chance.”
Jacob felt relief. Then appreciation. Kenji, though a Japanese national, had always treated Jacob and their other friends as if Kenji had grown up with them, rather than in Yokohama. Where he’d attended an American base school in order to learn English. His friend said his time on base had convinced him to join the Star Navy. “Good to hear. But it’s not over. We’ve got nearly two days time before we get to the magnetosphere and make tracks for Kepler 10. I expect the aliens to attack us again.”
Kenji shrugged, then stood up. “So, we’ll fight them again. Maybe kill another ship of theirs. And I’ll head for my fire-fighting station once we get the word from the Bridge to head to combat stations.”
“I know you will.” Jacob stood up. Kenji stepped back toward the slidedoor. He grabbed his friend’s vacsuited arm. Kenji stopped, his look puzzled. “Kenji, thanks for bringing the food. I’ll eat it soon. Then it’s back up on the Bridge for the duration. Take your Awake pill when your chief hands them out. We all may have to stay awake until we go Alcubierre.”
“Will do. Guess I can sleep during Alcubierre. We’ll be safe there.”
“Yes, we will be,” Jacob said, letting go his friend’s arm. “Maybe I’ll bring our friends down to the Mess Hall for a round of beer and dried seaweed once we enter Alcubierre. Sound okay?”
Kenji smiled big. “Very okay! Later.”
“Later,” Jacob said to his friend’s back as the man exited through the slidedoor.
The hiss of its closing told him it was time to eat, then to head back to the Bridge. The image of him sitting in the admiral’s seat, in command, was clearly an image the Lepanto’s crew needed to see. And likely, an image the new captains on the other ships needed to see. Sitting down, his mind swirling with images of a close run against the giant wasp ship, he took a bite of a cold sausage link. Spicy it was, but Italian in flavor. Just what he liked.
♦ ♦ ♦
Hunter returned from sucking in liquefied fliers in the Nourishment Chamber of his flying nest. He saw that all twelve of his Servants were present, seated on their benches, their attention focused on the wall perception imagers and the colors flowing across their control panels. He moved his abdomen over his bench, lowered until his four footpads could lift from the chamber’s cold surface, then inhaled deep the aromas of the chamber.
Aggregation pheromones dominated, along with a strong flow of territorial, trail and signal scents. They were what he expected. And what his Servants knew they should emit if they were to survive his displeasure. “Speaker To All, send the Attack Ready pheromone to all other flying nests. In six hundred wing beats we will attack the Soft Skins!”
Excitement and curiosity pheromones now joined the chamber’s air mixture. Those pheromones would be transmitted to the other flying nests, just as he would scent the responding pheromones from those nests.
“Attack Ready pheromone sent,” the young male scent cast to him.
Hunter swung his head, fixing all five eyes on the young female who managed their stinger weapons. “Stinger Servant, are all our stinger tubes ready to kill the invaders?”
“They are ready,” she scent cast back to him. “Repairs were made. The hole in the forward head shell has been filled with quick hardening nest liquid.”
“All Servants,” he scent cast, knowing his scent orders would be inhaled on the other flying nests. “Prepare to attack the Soft Skins. Our flying nest will lead the way. The nests of Support Hunter Seven and Support Hunter Nine will come close to our nest, the better to hide them from the perception of the Soft Skins.” Excitement scents now dominated. “We move to the attack. While most of us will stay beyond the reach of the black sky light carried by the largest Soft Skin nest, the two nests closest to us will suddenly dart forward and attempt a killing sting against the largest Soft Skin nest. That is where their best Fighter Leader must now hover. When we kill that nest, we kill the other nests ability to fight us. It will then be simple to sting them all to death!”
The responding pheromones from the other six flying nests were uniformly excited and eager to attack. Even the scent from Support Hunter Seven, whom he suspected of planning a Challenge, came through loaded with aggregation pheromones. So. The youth would wait until the Swarm completed the destruction of the Soft Skins before mounting his challenge. Well, Hunter would await his arrival with sharp mandibles and deadly sting!
♦ ♦ ♦
“Captain!” called Rosemary from Tactical. “The enemy is coming!”
Jacob reached back, pulled his helmet over his head and spoke. “Melody, change ship status to Alert Hostile Enemy. All decks, prepare for combat. All ships, move to the positions we discussed.” He scanned the several holos in front of him. One showed an overhead view of the Bridge. Lori and Carlos were at their seats in the rear, making their vacsuits air-tight. Below him Daisy and O’Connor were doing the same. Up front, his nine Bridge crew were either pulling helmets shut, or had done so and were now leaning forward to scan their control pillars and status holos. In front of him was the situational holo that was a copy of the one Daisy always kept in front of her. “Tactical, report disposition and range.”
Rosemary tapped her control pillar. The red enemy ship icons in his holo now gained additional text, along with arrows indicating the vector angles.
“The largest wasp ship is in the lead, sir. Flanking it are four other ships. Which makes five.” She paused, looked up at her holo, then back down to her Tactical pillar readouts. “That’s five ships. There were seven survivors. I do not see the oth
er two in either radar, infrared, ultraviolet or by our ship scope. As for range, the ships are at 11,432 kilometers and closing. Their approach speed is 900 kilometers per minute.”
He checked the holo. It showed the Lepanto at the base of their formation, with the other seven ships arranged in two tiers above him, which put them slightly further away from the oncoming aliens. A separate green icon was the Salamis. It was coming in fast. It might arrive before the wasps began firing. Or soon after.
“Science, can your sensors tell us where those two missing enemy ships are?” He looked right to the man at the far right of the front line of function stations.
Willard, who wore a Flower Child decorated vacsuit, was strapped in, like everyone on the Bridge. Still, he leaned forward to scan his control pillar and its sensor readouts.
“Uh, acting captain, a moment. I’m switching settings on the forward sensor array settings.” Silence came. “Yes! The two missing ships are below, close to and out of direct sensor image pickup. That’s according to my moving neutrino sensor. The giant ship’s location is the source of three moving neutrino sources, not one.” He paused, tapped his right armrest, and scanned a new holo. “Plus, I’ve got an electro-optical view of the three ships now. It’s from one of the monitor sats we put in fourth planet orbit. Since the enemy fleet is between us and the planet, it has a great view of the enemy’s rear. So to speak.”
Jacob smiled at Willard’s talkative manner. The portly man was in his late thirties, older than many crew on the ship, and had few friends. But he was an accomplished chess player. After Carlos beat Jacob once, Willard had taken on the young Latino and beaten him handily. Which told Jacob he should never bet in any gambling game where Willard was present. What mattered now was the man’s decisive knowledge of physics, astronomy, orbital mechanics, biology, sociology and the many other disciplines on the Science Deck. While Lori had better chops in gravity and bio-cultural stuff, the man had earned his way to the Bridge the honest way. By being smart, creative and willing to think outside of the box. Or so said his personnel file, which Jacob had scanned during his personal quarters break. In fact, he’d scanned the personnel files of every Bridge crew member, right after Kenji had left. He looked to the Brazilian who sat just to the right of Rosemary.
“Weapons, we are nose down and facing the oncoming enemy. Can you depress the spine or belly or flank proton laser nodes enough to shoot ahead?”
“Acting captain, that is not physically possible,” replied Oliver Diego y Silva. The swarthy man tapped his pillar. An external hull image of the Lepanto now showed in the middle of the front wallscreen. The imagery rotated, top to bottom, then back to top. “Our four proton lasers are intended to protect the ship’s flanks. Which means they fire at a ninety degree angle from the ship’s central axis. The proton nodes can tilt by 20 degrees off vertical, but that’s it.”
Which meant for the Lepanto to put one of its proton lasers on target on the giant wasp ship meant his ship had to dip its nose by seventy degrees. Thereby exposing a long stretch of its hull to any enemy lying ahead of them. Right now, all eight ships of the battle group had their noses facing the enemy. Behind the Lepanto were the two cruisers, lying just to the right and left of his ship’s vector track. Behind them were the two destroyers. They occupied the top and bottom slots along his vector. Behind the four heavy ships were the three frigates, which were clustered directly behind the Lepanto in order to reduce their exposure to combined enemy laser fire. In short their current formation was a four layered tube. That would change once the Lepanto made its leap ahead against the giant wasp ship.
“Weapons, thank you. Tactical, put up both the true space starlight imagery of the enemy fleet and the situational holo sensor imagery.”
“Displaying.”
In seconds the image of his Battlestar disappeared. In its place, overlapping where stars had once been, were a telescopic true space image of the enemy ships on the left side of the wallscreen, and the situational holo imagery on the right side. The width of both images was about 100,000 kilometers and getting smaller as the enemy got closer. His duplicate of the oncoming wasp ships holo said they were nearly at 11,000 kilometers. Which was the maximum range for their laser and lightning bolt weapons.
“Communications, is everything on this Bridge going out on the All Ship vidcom? And out to the other ships?”
“It is, acting captain,” Osashi said quickly.
“All personnel, combat is imminent. Gunners, you are cleared hot. Kill any enemy target that is within your weapon’s range. Coordinate your fire with the Weapons chiefs on the other ships,” he said quickly. “Remember, every ship fires its carbon dioxide lasers at one spot on the giant wasp ship, while the proton lasers fire together at another spot. Target spots will be designated by the first hits by the Lepanto. Everyone join in!”
Below him, O’Connor looked up. “Acting captain, I accept your decision to go with Tactical’s attack formation Alpha Squeeze, and your close-in run as proposed by Ensign Antonova. What about my Darts? We could penetrate the giant’s hull, plant nuke mines, then pull out before they detonate.”
“CWO O’Connor, I am sure your Marines could do just as you propose,” Jacob said, his eyes watching the range countdown on the situational holo. “If they could reach the enemy ship. But the middle and rear hulls of your Darts are thin. Two hits by a lightning bolt and a Dart is gone. Plus, I prefer to reserve your Darts for the defense of Kepler 10, after we get there.”
“Accepted, acting captain.”
His peripheral vision told him the white-haired Marine had turned back to watch the two images on the wallscreen. The man had been patient earlier, after he’d come back to the Bridge, contacted the captains on the other seven ships, discussed Rosemary’s formation idea with those captains, then passed the data on to Mehta. He had not challenged Jacob during those discussions with the battle group captains. Which Jacob appreciated. However, the man believed deeply in the value of his Darts for taking down prime targets. Jacob did too. Just not in this battle.
“Enemy is firing,” called Oliver from Weapons, beating the same words from Rosemary by two seconds.
Green laser beams streaked past the Lepanto, heading deeper into space. Yellow lightning bolts came crackling out from the five wasp ships that shielded the two hidden ships. What did the enemy commander plan by hiding those ships?
“Nose impact by bolt,” called Joaquin from Life Support.
The red dot of the impact showed on Jacob’s cross section holo of the Lepanto. The holo confirmed that all decks were locked down and air-tight. All staff were at combat stations. And the chiefs of each deck were in their control centers, ready to respond to any emergency on their deck.
“The Chesapeake is hit,” Rosemary said quickly. “On its upper hull, just ahead of its plasma battery.”
“Tsushima Strait hit by bolt,” called Osashi, surprising Jacob that the Communications chief would choose to talk about other ships. Course he was in charge of other ship com linkages, especially the FTL neutrino comlink that allowed real time talk between every Earth ship. Still . . .
The wasp ships hit the 10,000 kilometer distance mark.
“All ships, fire CO2 lasers at the stern of the giant ship!” Jacob yelled. “Cruisers and destroyers, fire your proton lasers at the top front of the ship. Weapons, fire!”
“Firing,” responded Oliver.
The Lepanto’s two front lasers fired from the right and left side outrigger pods. Their green streaks blazed ahead and hit the top rear of the giant ship’s stern. Laser fire from seven other ships joined the Battlestar’s fire. That made for nine green beams hitting within meters of each other.
The true light image of the enemy ships jiggled as the Lepanto jinked sideways, then up, to avoid incoming bolt and laser fire. The other battle group ships were doing the same, relying on attitude jets to move the heavy inertia of their ship off the direct line-of-sight that beam energy gunners were limited to.
“Power, increase reactor output! Engines, take us up to twelve percent of lightspeed!”
“Reactor output increasing by ten percent,” responded Maggie.
“Ship’s three thrusters are taking increased isotope flow,” called black-skinned Akira. “Magfield confinement of fusion implosions is holding. Speed increasing. To 11.5, 11.7 . . . and now at twelve percent!”
Jacob felt a thrill run down his back. Both fleets were paralleling each other at twelve percent of lightspeed, but closing on each other at far slower speeds of a thousand klicks per minute. Whatever the giant enemy ship commander was planning by hiding two of his ships, the Lepanto was about to spring its own surprise. Everyone had agreed the enemy ships would all stay outside the 4,000 kilometer range of the Battlestar’s antimatter cannon. And no battle group ship would get within the 3,917 kilometer range of the giant wasp ship’s black hole weapon. But that gave Jacob eighty kilometers in which to get close enough for him to fire the AM cannon at the enemy ship. Running up the ship’s speed so suddenly was not good on the microelectronic matrices of the reactors and the thruster magfields. But it was the only way he knew of covering the distance faster than the enemy could move out of range.
“Range to giant enemy ship is now 5,143 kilometers,” called Rosemary from Tactical.
“Carbon dioxide lasers are firing a third burst at the enemy,” called Oliver from Weapons. “So are the proton lasers.”
“Reactor stability is holding,” called Maggie.