Briefly Jacob eyed the middle-aged chief warrant officer who managed the ship’s three fusion reactors. Maggie’s file said she was born in the Bronx, had attended MIT and had designed small fusion reactors like the ones that provided power to science bases on Pluto, Europa, Mars and elsewhere. She was also a lesbian with a partner, two boys and four cats at home in the Bronx. The Jewish woman had held up well during the emergency escape from the black hole weapon. The strain on her reactors was less now, but still beyond the safe ratings. Her attention to detail, noted in her file, was now on display.
“Weapons, launch four missiles from our stern silos,” Jacob called. “As we discussed, set them to precede us by five hundred klicks. Set their thermonuke warheads for proximity detonation. And for remote det.”
“Launching missiles,” Oliver called over the helmet comlink. The man’s gloved fingers tapped his control pillar. “Detonation options input. At twelve warheads per missile, we will have 48 nuke-busters flying ahead of us!”
Jacob knew that. He also knew that many of the warheads would be zapped by the enemy’s lasers and lightning bolts. But he only needed a half dozen or so for what he planned. Briefly he wondered what the enemy commander thought of the Lepanto’s sudden rush toward the wasp ship, which was also moving toward the battle group. The combined accelerations of both ship groups was rapidly reducing the distance between them. Which made the enemy’s counterfire even more accurate.
“Our nose plasma battery is gone!” called Rosemary.
Soon. Soon they would be in range.
CHAPTER NINE
Surprise filled Hunter’s gut. The Soft Skin flying nests had turned to point their heads toward his Swarm. His group had just begun to fly faster when the enemy shifted nest orientation. It was as if their Fighter Leader wished to enter a swirling mix of the two groups of flying nests. Strange. It was not what a Swarmer would do. Then again, as his elderly Servant had said, different lifeforms meant different ways of organizing themselves. No matter.
“Stinger Servant, bite that largest Soft Skin nest with our head ring of stingers!”
“Biting,” the young female scent cast to him in a mix of aggregation, release and food pheromones.
Clearly she wished to eat of the enemy’s flesh. “Support Hunter Seven, Support Hunter Nine,” he scent cast over the scent talker that linked all Swarm ships. “Are you ready to fly out and sting the large Soft Skin nest?”
“Seven hungers to bite the Soft Skins,” scent cast the young male Hunter who led that flying nest. The youth’s pheromones were full of excitement scents mixed with territorial and trail scents.
“Nine is ready to buzz quickly to the attack,” scent cast the older female Hunter who led that nest.
Hunter knew her. She came from a predecessor cohort, one of the cohorts that had led the consolidation of all Swarmers into the Nest-wide cooperative that now guided their world and every Swarmer on it. She had declared her Hunter eagerness while still a young larva, biting the forelimbs of the Workers feeding her fresh caught meat. That aggressive biting had followed her through five levels of study, until she moved from a land nest to the flying nest that circled their world in the cold of dark space. Once there she had claimed the right to lead one of the nests being gathered together for the colony trip to the yellow sky light that now lay behind his group of nests. She was someone he could rely on.
“Bide your eagerness,” he scent cast to them in a mix of aggregation and trail pheromones.
A change in the oncoming Soft Skin nests drew his attention. They were stinging back against the Swarm with their sky light and heavy sky light stingers. But now the largest nest sent out flying seeds that came forward, sniffing for the scent of his Swarmers. The seeds moved slowly, but they moved fast enough to draw ahead of the cluster of Soft Skin nests. Which, he now saw, had moved to an unusual formation.
“Servant for external space, what do you make of the Soft Skin nest formation?” he scent cast to the older female seated on the bench ahead of him.
The red and black streaks on her well-shaped body shone brightly against the yellow of her undercoat. Her antennae leaned forward. “The perception imagers take in many colors from these strange nests,” she scent cast in a strong signal pheromone. “It appears the larger flying nests seek to shelter the smaller nests from the concentrated bite of all our nests.”
He could see that, in detail with his two major eyes and in broad sweeps of ultraviolet through his three small eyes. The largest nest was in the lead of this formation, just as he was in the lead of all the Swarmer nests. That meant his decision to attack the largest Soft Skin nest was correct. Clearly it held the chief Fighter Leader of the Soft Skins. Though, he now noticed, the Soft Skin nest that had flown away from Warmth when the Soft Skin device had discovered the death of Soft Skin leaders, that nest now returned. It was winging toward the other Soft Skins with a fast wingbeat. Good. This battle would lead to the death of all the Soft Skins.
“Hunter!” scent cast the older male Servant in charge of his nest’s propulsive devices. “The Soft Skin sky light weapons are all striking the shell above my devices! There could be a deep bite soon.”
Now was the time for his guidance to all the Servants and all the Swarmer nests. “Patience, elder. Our hard shell is thick and resistant to the heat of concentrated sky light.”
“Our head skin melts!” scent cast the elderly female Servant in charge of pheromone signals to the other chambers of his nest. “The heavy sky lights hit hard and deep! The bite goes deeper than before!”
The Servant’s ragged alarm pheromones were afloat on the air of the Flight Chamber. He could not allow her to make fearful the other Servants, let along the nests of Hunters Seven and Nine. He flapped his two wings rapidly, rising up from his bench and going forward the few body lengths that separated him from the female. Before she could scent cast more defeat, he flew down, landed on the top of her abdomen and then bit her life cord at the spot where her head joined her thorax. Her head came loose. It hit the bottom of the chamber with a loud swish of fluids.
“Servants! We attack! We defeat the Soft Skins! No Soft Skin can oppose us! Bite now and hard!”
The shock of his action, combined with the overwhelming scent of his pheromones, pushed each Servant to a rapid wing fluttering even as they each emitted intense aggregation pheromones.
“Biting harder!” scent cast the young female Servant in charge of their stingers.
“Aiming our head exactly at the oncoming Soft Skins!” scent yelled the Flight Servant in charge of their nest’s movement through cold dark space.
“Look!” cried the old male Servant who studied aberrant social behavior. “The largest Soft Skin nest jumps toward us! It flies faster than any Swarmer!”
Dismay hit him hard. No sooner had he killed the defeatist Servant than the ancient Servant who knew not how to bite or fight or do anything but hum and buzz, he too emitted a scent of confusion and alarm.
“All Swarmers! Our target comes to us! Rejoice!” he scent cast in strong waves of signal pheromones. “Join your stingers against the large nest’s approach! Support Leaders Seven and Nine, launch your nests now! Swing out to either side of this Soft Skin nest and bite from the sides as we bite its head!”
The swirl of confused pheromones now cleared as each Swarmer understood their purpose and bent to it. The scents echoing back from the two nests he had hidden under his wings were filled with aggregation loyalty, trail determination and anger hunger. Flapping his wings, he spread those new pheromones among the Swarmers in the Flight Chamber, thence out to other chambers in the depths of his nest. They might suffer wounds to the outer hard shell. But the essential parts of his nest were hidden deep. They could fly and bite even with half their hard shell bitten away. Inhaling deep, he brought to mind images of the Soft Skins from the meeting site, before the Storm Bringer had ended their lives. Would the best way to kill a survivor be to bite its neck, the way he had done to the disloyal
female? Or should he first sting its middle, the place where his deep color vision said the most heat resided on a Soft Skin? All that mattered was that there be some survivors on which to try all stinger options!
♦ ♦ ♦
Support Hunter Seven sent out the attack pheromone to all the Servants in his nest’s Flight Chamber. Each fluttered wings, bent antennae forward and activated their parts of his flying nest. A vibration that he felt through the bench he sat on told him the nest’s propulsive devices were moving his nest outward and away from the shelter of Hunter One’s massive nest. It was twice the size of any other Swarmer nest, and the leader’s plan to deceive the Soft Skins made sense to him. It was a variation of the historical Swarm attack whereby the strongest Hunter led the swarm forward, his form being the first to be sighted by the major eyes of an enemy cohort. The enemy would think there were fewer nests coming to bite, when in the glow of the day’s sky light there were more!
“Stinger Servant, hold your sting until we are closer to the large Soft Skin nest,” he scent cast in a mix of signal, trail and aggregation pheromones.
“Holding our bite,” the young male scent cast back in a strong odor of hunter pheromones, signaling he wished to eat of the enemy’s flesh.
As did he. Killing the large nest would do much to increase his standing among all Swarmers. He was not the one who had lost five nests to the leaderless Soft Skins. Hunter One was. Once the Soft Skins were dead and gone, he would call for a meeting of all Hunters from all seven flying nests. While Hunter One surely expected him to Challenge, the older leader did not know two nests had already pledged loyalty to him.
“Support Hunter,” called the Servant in charge of monitoring radiations from cold space. “A new Soft Skin nest now flies back to the eight nests that now face us. But it is still distant, even though its wings fly swiftly.”
He inhaled the trail signal emitted by the older female. The Servant spoke truth. But his five eyes judged the speed of the oncoming flying skin to be inadequate to join the battle that now loomed as both nest groups flew toward each other at a large part of the speed of sky light radiation.
“Stay alert,” he said by way of primer and releaser pheromones, mixed with a touch of aggregation to remind her of her loyalty to him. “Soon we will reach the proper flight angle at which to sting hard the disgusting Soft Skins!”
Revulsion pheromones peaked briefly as all Swarmers in his Flight Chamber viewed the perception images of the Soft Skin nests, none of which possessed the orderly outer hard shell that marked a safe nest. Then excitement pheromones became dominant as his fellow Swarmers felt eagerness to attack, that scent enlarged by his release of a releaser pheromone that reminded them all that soon there would be a change in their duties. Soon, their nest would bite hard the head of the large Soft Skin nest, just as Support Hunter Nine’s nest bit hard from the opposite side. Surely no Soft Skin nest could survive bites from both sides and against its head!
♦ ♦ ♦
“Bannerjee, I don’t give a damn what you think about what you deserve! And we’re now in combat!” yelled Alicia Branstead over the between decks comlink.
Aarhant winced. The image of the Australian woman on his tablet showed a brown-haired, middle-aged, stocky Anglo woman dressed in a vacsuit, sitting beside her two principal assistants, in the control center on Science Deck. His own assistants sat behind him in the Navigation Deck control center. He hoped her assistants were not hearing what she was saying.
“I know that,” he replied, his attention partly focused on the situational holo that floated in the middle of the room filled with navigation panels, Library databases, algorithm crunching comp blocks and antique paper files in case a stellar flare wiped all the digital electronic data. “But you are an O-3 Lieutenant, ranking just below me. Surely you must agree that as a lieutenant commander, I am the highest ranking officer still alive on the Battlestar!”
Her frown went to a grimace of distaste. “So what? You know as well as I do that Star Navy regulations prevent an officer from one deck taking over operations on another deck, without an encrypted approval code from Earth Command! Or approval by the ship’s captain. The rules say the Command Deck chain of authority runs from the ensigns up to the admiral or captain. We are not in their chain of command. Not until Earth Command says otherwise!” She looked aside at some holo. “Let me go! We are getting close to the attack on the giant wasp ship!”
“As you wish,” he muttered. “Good day.”
Shutting down his tablet link that conveyed images and voice and data only to his helmet’s comlink, Aarhant felt intense frustration. Whatever the Star Navy regulations were, he should be in command! If he had been, the entire battle group would have left the system before the wasp aliens could attack! The image of the vaporized and melted ruins of the meeting site said clearly the First Contact encounter had come up a failure. Every ship should have accepted his leadership. Instead, while he slept, the whelp had entered the ship status change code, assumed command, and then fought a battle that had resulted in the loss of a frigate! Why, a fresh ensign like Renselaer would not even be in command of a frigate, leastwise not until he made the lieutenant JG grade. But the reality was there were only three commissioned officers still alive on the Lepanto. Himself, Branstead and Lieutenant JG Jane Yamamoto, who ran Life Support Deck. Everyone else was a Spacer, a warrant officer or a petty officer, none of whom possessed an O-ranking. Even James Alvarez, who was technically in charge of routine Command Deck operations, was just a senior chief petty officer. Who was outranked by any ensign! With a sigh, he told himself to be patient. Once they arrived in Kepler 10, he would talk directly to the captain in charge of the Star Navy orbital base. Surely the man, he hoped it was a man, would agree with him assuming command!
♦ ♦ ♦
“Range to giant enemy ship is now 4,212 kilometers,” called Rosemary from Tactical.
Jacob’s heart beat fast. “Navigation, keep us jinking from side to side, up and down and spiral and any mode that reduces weapons impact!”
“Maneuvering,” replied Louise, her gloved fingers tapping the touch controls on the top of her control pillar.
Briefly he gave thanks for the woman’s expertise. Like Daisy she had been a pilot before earning a Ph. D. in celestial mechanics from Princeton. Her file said she was married to a man who was a mechanical engineer involved in building small dams on lesser streams in the Rockies and the Cascades. They had no children. But the woman had piloted every type of spacecraft in the inventory of the Star Navy, including small LCAs, cargo tubes and sensor blooms. She was the perfect person to be at Navigation. Her deck’s boss, Aarhant Bannerjee, had impressed Jacob as a bureaucrat too focused on his personal image and advancement. Thank the Goddess he was not now on the Bridge!
“Carbon dioxide lasers are firing a seventh burst at the enemy,” called Oliver from Weapons. “So are the battle group’s proton lasers.”
That reminded him. It was time. “Navigation, lift our nose up seventy degrees so our belly proton laser can fire on the giant enemy ship.”
“Lifting. Fourteen seconds to proton engagement,” she said over his helmet comlink.
Looking down at his two armrests, Jacob scanned the readouts and control patches that lined half of each armrest.
“Reactor stability is maintaining balance,” called Maggie.
That was good news. He could see from his armrests that the three fusion pulse thrusters were maintaining an outward acceleration of twelve percent of lightspeed. They were angling closer to the enemy, that was also headed outward at twelve percent. Their closure speed was 900 kilometers per minute. Soon, the two groups would pass each other, with some intermingling of ships, or one or both ship groups would swing away to the side to avoid close passage. He knew what the Lepanto was going to do. And he knew the orders he had given to the two cruisers, two destroyers and three frigates following behind him. He looked up and scanned the situational holo. The Salamis was now 40,
000 kilometers out and closing on the other ships, but it would play no role in the early fighting. Maybe the running fight.
“Belly proton laser firing,” called Oliver, his voice excited as he brought into play one of the Battlestar’s most destructive weapons.
Soon the man would be able to launch Smart Rocks from the four topside and four belly railgun launchers. While the self-directed rocks would be launched at Earth’s escape velocity of eleven plus kilometers per second, they would continue forward even as they spread out to either side of the Battlestar. They were more of a miss than hit weapon, but still, they had seemed to bother the wasp ships in the first battle. Any distraction he could add to this battle, in addition to the thermonuke warheads, was welcome. Distraction improved survival. And survival allowed them the chance to kill the giant wasp ship.
“We are taking damage to our belly hull,” Rosemary called from Tactical. “The five wasp ships are all firing at one area. Punch through!”
Jacob saw that on his ship cross-section holo. A large red spot glowed on the forward part of the belly hull. Blinking yellow lights reported the loss of water. Well, the water shield was compartmentalized. Only a portion of their water rad shielding would be lost.
“How close?”
“We are at 4,009 kilometers. Shortly we will be within antimatter range,” Rosemary said quickly, her manner distracted as she monitored the hits being taken on the battle group’s seven other ships, the firing of lasers from the right and left outrigger pods, and the flow of new missiles to the stern launch silos. Among a dozen other things happening that related to the tactical situation.
“We can take it,” muttered O’Connor from below.
“The frigates are avoiding incoming laser fire,” reported Daisy, as his new XO closely monitored the other ships in the battle group. “Lightning bolt hits on Philippines Sea, Hampton Roads and Chesapeake. No punch through. All ships are spinning.”
StarFight 1: Battlestar Page 14