“Kayla, prep the missiles for the fighter intercept,” he ordered Kayla Arnolds, his starfighter’s fair-haired gunner. “I’ll handle the positron lance for the missiles.”
He barely had enough time to hear Lieutenant Arnolds’ acknowledgement before the missile swarm was on them and the Falcon’s single fifty-kiloton-per-second positron lance spun up.
The starfighter’s power readings spiked as the zero point energy cell at the core of the lance spun up, electrons being pulled off into the ship’s power grid while positrons fed into specially designed capacitors.
The weapon charged over about a third of a second, accumulating enough captured positrons to feed the beam—and then Michael released that energy into space. The Stormwinds were throwing out enough jamming that his computer was only throwing up probability zones for missile locations, so he aligned the lance with a spot where several zones overlapped and fired.
He slashed through space with a single three-second pulse of positrons and hit nothing. Even with almost seven hundred beams cutting through space, most of them missed—but not all. Dozens of massive fireballs lit up the Alizon system as containment failed on one-gigaton antimatter warheads—or on the missiles’ antimatter fuel tanks.
Moments later, Michael’s command starfighter trembled as it blasted through the expanding field of debris and radiation. The mass manipulators that compensated for acceleration reduced the turbulence, but it was still a rocky ride.
Then they were clear—and closing on the second wave of missiles. There was less time for the computers across the starfighter strike to resolve targets and calculate probability zones—leaving where to fire almost entirely up to instinct.
Instinct was why there were still humans aboard a starfighter—and while Michael Stanford almost certainly wasn’t the best pilot in the seven hundred ships he led to war, he was definitely one of the better ones.
He let instinct take over, dodging and weaving through four more salvos of missiles. Twice, his slashing cuts through space caught a missile, detonating it in a blast of pure white fire and radiation as dozens of its brothers died around it.
Finally, they were through—and a good third of the missiles the Terrans had launched were gone. The remaining four hundred were the CSP’s problem now—and Michael turned his attention to his strike.
“Report, did we lose anyone?” he demanded, skimming his tactical plot.
The Wing Commanders from Avalon’s group and Camerone reported first, knowing exactly what he’d want to know. The CAGs for the new ships took a moment to confirm with their own subordinates before responding to him, but thirty seconds after clearing the last missile salvo, he’d confirmed all six hundred and eighty-eight starfighters were intact and with him.
A few had radiation damage, lost sensors and such, but the Q-Com network linking the entire strike together could easily make up for that. They had seven minutes now before they were in missile range of the Terran fighters.
“All ships, prep one full salvo of missiles,” he ordered. “We have them outnumbered and I want to save the birds for the capital ships. Take any that survive the salvo with lances.” He glanced at the Templar’s specifications again and came to an instant conclusion. “Phoenix ships, hold your lance fire until the Falcons are in range. Everything these guys see, Walkingstick’ll know. Let’s not tell him anything he hasn’t learned yet, shall we?”
Chuckles answered him. Q-Coms worked both ways—the same tech that allowed a probe hanging sixty thousand kilometers away from the Commonwealth Task Force in Alizon to tell Seventh Fleet what the Terrans were doing in real time; also allowed Marshal James Walkingstick, the supreme commander of the Commonwealth offensive, to know exactly what was going on in the same timeframe.
Timers flashed up in Michael’s mental displays. A little over four minutes to missile range—over four and a half million kilometers at this closing velocity. One hundred and fifty seconds for the missiles to reach their targets—and fifty seconds after that for the Falcons to reach lance range of any survivors.
The Commonwealth missiles would reach Seventh Fleet over a minute before any of that…
23:07 February 20, 2736 ESMDT
DSC-078 Avalon, Bridge
Avalon’s bridge was quiet. Kyle’s displays showed him half a dozen side conversations taking place via the neural links, but no one was speaking aloud as they watched the waves of missiles sweep in toward Seventh Fleet.
The starfighters had done better than he’d expected. Out of the six hundred and eighty missiles the Terrans had launched, only four hundred and eight had survived passing Seventh Fleet’s starfighters. Even as the Stormwinds had blown past the fighter strike, the Arrows they’d kept with Seventh Fleet had opened fire with their own missiles in interceptor mode.
The Arrows’ design had proven to have flaws in combat, especially compared to the Falcons with their far heavier electronic warfare capabilities, but they still carried six missile launchers apiece. For every Stormwind closing on the Alliance fleet, their defending starfighters flung two missiles back at them.
Space was filled with antimatter explosions as the missiles salvos intersected. This kind of head-on intercept was inefficient at best, but it made for one hell of a show as collisions and proximity kills took out missile after missile.
With a practiced eye, Kyle realized that none of the first few waves were going to make it through the Imperial starfighters’ defensive fire. The later waves would have to survive the newly created temporary belt of radiation and debris in their path, but some would still make it through.
“Target all lances and defensive lasers on missiles waves three through five,” he ordered. “I’m taking any scratches on the hull out of your pay!”
The quiet dissolved into surprised chuckles, and Avalon’s Captain smiled to himself. The Commonwealth had no idea what kind of fight they’d picked.
23:11 February 20, 2736 ESMDT
SFG-001 Actual—Falcon-C type command starfighter
The Terrans were in range a fraction of a second before Michael’s people, and the icons of the closing Scimitars vanished behind a solid wall of missile threat icons. Each of the four hundred and fifty Scimitars launched four Javelin starfighter missiles into space, sending eighteen hundred missiles blasting towards his people at a thousand gravities.
Even as Seventh Fleet’s CAG noted the numbers and presence of the enemy missiles, the Vice Commodore felt his own ship tremble as Kayla Arnolds returned the favor. Four Starfire missiles launched from each of his Falcons, plus three from each Templar—sending over twenty-six hundred missiles back at the Terrans.
“Missile defenses online,” Michael’s engineer confirmed over their in-ship link. “Lasers cycling at one hundred and three percent designed efficiency, ECM emitters at full power.”
The two massive formations of starfighters lunged at each other through space, their missiles closing the distance between them at twice the acceleration of the fastest starfighters. Emitters threw jamming and deceptive siren songs into space, luring missiles off-course or onto perfectly straight, easy-to-intercept, courses.
The Falcons and Templars did a far better job of confusing the missiles than the Scimitars did—but where the Alliance ships had launched a single salvo of missiles, the Commonwealth fighters launched three.
Michael left guiding his missiles in to his gunner and focused on keeping the starfighter alive. Even keeping a part of his mind on the big picture, most of his attention sucked down to the plain and simple task of “do not die’.
A tsunami wave of explosions reached across space, the deaths of the incoming weapons only helping to hide the survivors. He spun the starfighter through a series of spiraling pirouettes to throw off the missiles, even as his engineer fired lasers again and again.
“We have kills!” Kayla announced. “Multiple impacts, my Gods—their entire formation looks like it’s on fire.”
Even the complete annihilation of the Commonwealth figh
ter group wouldn’t save the Alliance craft from the missiles already on their way. A second salvo burned in even as they neared positron lance range, and the jammers continued their song as the lasers reaped their harvest.
“Lance range in ten seconds,” he snapped across the network. “Fire at two-twenty-five.”
He spun his Falcon sideways, a burst of thrust added to by the force of the explosion he barely dodged. The doughty little ship took no serious damage—and they were in range.
Hundreds of positron lances flashed into space, beams of pure antimatter cutting across the distance between the two formations at nearly lightspeed…and missing. The range was right for the strength of electromagnet deflector fields the Scimitars were supposed to have, but…
“Shit!” someone bellowed on the command channel. “They’ve upgraded their deflectors!”
“Won’t save them,” Michael reminded his people. “Those Scimitars have crap for lances; sustain fire until you hit!”
Their intercept speed was almost eight percent of the speed of light. The conversation flashed through the neural links in fractions of a second—and the range kept dropping as they thought at each other.
Two seconds passed. The Templars, with their more powerful lances, started burning through. There were only a handful of Scimitars left, now scattering to try to evade the solid hammer of the Alliance formation—scattering in vain.
At one hundred eighty thousand kilometers, the Falcons finally found the range. Eight seconds later, Seventh Fleet’s starfighters blasted past the wreckage of their enemies.
“Who’s left?” Michael finally asked, able to breathe for a few minutes as they cleared. “Who did we lose?”
The answers came in faster this time—and were stunning. Four Falcons, all from the new carriers, and two Templars. The emergency pods on all six had managed to trigger, though that was no guarantee of survival in a high-radiation combat environment.
The Commonwealth fighters, upgraded or not, had been outnumbered and outclassed.
“Sir,” Arnolds interjected. “I think we spooked them—their capital ships are turning!”
5
Alizon System
23:15 February 20, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
DSC-078 Avalon, Bridge
Kyle breathed a sigh of relief that was probably audible across the entire bridge when the last missile died several thousand kilometers short of even the fighter screen. Capital ship missiles were smart, and even having been gutted by Stanford’s people, one could have made it through—and one hit would cripple any ship in the fleet.
“Sir, Q-probes report the Commonwealth ships are turning,” Xue announced. “Ninety-degree vector shift perpendicular to the ecliptic, pushing to emergency acceleration: two hundred and thirty gravities.”
“I guess they decided they don’t want to play our game,” Kyle murmured, running the numbers. Two hundred and thirty gees was an expensive game for the older ships in the Commonwealth force. They could do it, but their standard acceleration was set as much by their fuel efficiency as anything else.
Thanks to the mass manipulators woven throughout the Terran ship, they could increase the mass of their exhaust, decrease the mass of the ship, and create gravity fields to compensate against those hundreds of gravities—but at a price. Right now, the older ships would be burning several minutes’ worth of fuel for normal acceleration for every minute they ran the higher accel. But… He crunched the numbers and sighed.
“Xue, Anderson,” he said quickly. “Check my math—when can they go to Alcubierre-Stetson?”
His XO and tactical officer ran through the same numbers he had and he compared all three results.
“Burning straight up like that, they’re eleven light-seconds away from clear enough space,” Anderson said aloud. “Call it…twenty-eight minutes.”
“And our range when they jump to FTL is just under one point seven million klicks,” Xue added. “Nobody—not even Zheng He—can hit them with lances at that distance.”
A ping on the command channel tore Kyle’s attention away from his staff.
“All ships, target the Commonwealth with capital missiles and open fire,” Alstairs ordered. “Maximum rate of fire, ten salvos.”
Among the many refits the Reserve ships had undergone before being sent to the front was updated missile launchers. All twelve of the ships in Seventh Fleet had the same twenty-two-second cycle time on their launchers. Another ten salvos would run the ammunition stocks down a lot…but Alizon was a logistics depot. They’d rushed supplies in to replace the Commonwealth missiles they couldn’t safely use.
There was no guarantee they’d hit—the starfighters the Commonwealth had kept back had made short work of the earlier salvoes—but they’d also arrive after the starfighters had their own opportunity to engage.
The Terrans had made their turn in perfect time. It was down to the starfighters now—but there were ways to optimize that.
23:20 February 20, 2736 ESMDT
SFG-001 Actual—Falcon-C type command starfighter
Michael Stanford could run the same numbers the officers back on the capital ships were running. The starfighter strike could empty their missile magazines as they swept by—but the Terrans were closing up their formation. A lance strike would be…expensive.
“Adjust vectors,” he finally ordered after several long moments of thought. “Maintain a minimum one-million-kilometer radius. We’re not playing with lances today—not when we’ve got a three-million-klick missile range to play with.”
If the Admiral wanted him to close to knife-fighting range, she would have told him so. A full missile dump at maximum range was going to give the Terrans a headache either way. And since the mission was to defend Alizon…they’d already won. It was just a question of putting the boot in.
“Michael, it’s Roberts,” a voice said calmly over a private channel. “We’re launching a full spread of missiles. If you delay your launch to arrive alongside the Fleet’s next salvo, I think that will make an impression.”
“That’s almost a thirteen-minute delay in launch,” Michael noted. “We could soften them up for you.”
“We’re not getting them all either way, CAG,” Avalon’s Captain reminded him. “If we hit them with three salvoes of a hundred and fifty capital ship missiles plus twenty-six hundred fighter missiles, that should soften them up for the follow-up salvos.”
“Admiral on board?” the CAG asked.
“Just flipped her the numbers,” Roberts replied. A moment later, another voice came on the channel.
“It makes sense to me, CAG,” Admiral Alstairs told them both. “But it’s down to you at this point; we’re fifteen million kilometers behind you.”
“I like it, ma’am,” Michael Stanford admitted. “Let’s bleed the bastards.”
Michael explained the plan to his subordinates. Then explained it again when some of the more inexperienced ones didn’t quite get the value. Just adding the capital ship missiles’ jamming capabilities to the salvo would make their own lighter missiles significantly more effective.
Once everyone was on board, the Vice Commodore watched the missiles rapidly gaining from behind him. The Terrans had started firing missiles themselves, but the angle was such now that he had no chance to intercept them.
Demonstrably, however, Seventh Fleet could handle its own defense now. The Vice Commodore’s job now was to see what damage they could do to the Commonwealth before they ran.
“All starfighters, stand by to fire first salvo on my mark,” he ordered briskly. The computers promptly calculated the numbers for him—given the Fleet’s missiles’ higher base velocity, he needed to launch before they passed him to arrive at the same time.
“Mark,” he snapped.
Six hundred and eighty-two starfighters launched missiles as one. Twenty-six hundred and thirty-four missiles blasted into space.
A minute later, another salvo followed.
The third salv
o was weaker, as the command starfighters scattered through the formation gave up the last missile in each magazine for their more powerful computers and larger Q-Com arrays. It still added over twenty-five hundred missiles to the hundred and forty-seven fired by Seventh Fleet.
“That’s it,” Arnolds said quietly. “I’m relaying what telemetry we can send from the Q-probes, but now it’s down to luck and how good their defenses are.”
“Do what you can,” he ordered her. “You won’t be the only one.”
Even as he watched the missiles go in, he gently adjusted his starfighter’s course, curving the six-thousand-ton spacecraft farther away from the fleeing Commonwealth ships.
“Burn, you sons of bitches,” he snarled under his breath. He might know that the Commonwealth hadn’t ordered the bombing of the Alliance world Kematian—hell, a Commonwealth warship had stood aside when Avalon had caught up with the ship that had bombed Kematian—but he could still blame them for starting the battle that had made him watch a world burn.
The Terran starfighters had fallen back to this side of the capital ships. They had to know their survival chances were slim, but defending the starships was their job. The purpose of a starfighter was, in the cold equations of war, to die so that the million-times-more-expensive starships lived.
And die those starfighters did.
Michael Stanford was well aware he hated the Commonwealth now, more than he ever had before. The massacre at Kematian had sunk into his soul over time and only made him angrier.
He still found himself mentally saluting as the Terran Carrier Space Patrol lunged out at the first, almost twenty-eight-hundred-strong missile salvo, launching their own missiles as they went. Ninety starfighters put three hundred and sixty missiles into space—four times in a single minute—and then opened fire with lasers and positron lances.
Avalon Trilogy: Castle Federation Books 1-3: Includes Space Carrier Avalon, Stellar Fox, and Battle Group Avalon Page 67