Star Force 10: Outcast

by B. V. Larson

  Adrienne looked away with a tight face to do as I’d instructed. Once she’d done so, I explained the situation to her matter-of-factly, keeping my voice low.

  “This tactic does three things: One, it allows us time to fill up our capacitors. Two, it keeps our speed up, and speed is life in air or space.” I noticed Hansen nodding unconsciously, a pilot’s response. He was listening in without looking at either of us.

  “And lastly,” I said, “the Raptors are losing the particular fight we’re heading for because of this.” I pointed at the Lithos’ one dreadnought. “We’re going to take the Lithos from behind and help our new allies win, saving some of their lives.”

  “Fucking-A right,” Hansen murmured, and I realized I’d scored big points with him, though I had lost some with Adrienne. The ship and crew had to come first though, and I couldn’t have her delaying the execution of my orders until I handled her every objection. Maybe I should have recruited and trained an ops officer from among the available noncoms. Had my judgment been affected by a pretty, familiar face? A more senior officer would probably shake his head and tell me I’d made a rookie mistake putting Adrienne on my bridge, but it was too late to worry about it now.

  The combat drones covering our tail took out the missiles following us, losing several of their number when one of the Litho nukes detonated too close. I remembered something then. Our combat drones carried two external missiles each, and naturally fought better after they were fired because they didn’t have to drag around the extra weight. It occurred to me that I should have designated a combat drone coordinator, a kind of CAG, “Commander, Aerospace Group” in military jargon, to direct them more tightly. As it was, I’d thought it would be easy to pass orders to the controllers directly, but I couldn’t run the squadron and multiple combat drone missions at the same time.

  Checking, I noticed we had about five minutes until we entered the effective AP range of our targets, so I told the restraints to release me and clomped over to the arc of director stations across the front of the circular bridge.

  “You, Chief…” I said, tugging on the striped sleeve of a beefy Fleet noncom.

  “Bradley, sir,” he said, turning to look at me.

  “Pass your combat drones to your best director. You’re my new CAG. Stand up and run the combat drone group for me. I’ll talk to you, and you talk to them, got it?”

  The man looked anxious but did as I told him. “Got it, sir.”

  I looked him in the eye. “Can you do this? If not, tell me who can.”

  “I can do it, sir,” he said more firmly.

  “Good man.” I slapped him on the shoulder, forgetting to restrain myself and rocking his fireplug body. He touched his shoulder, surprised that it hurt, then, with his headset on, he turned to walk up and down behind his people.

  “CAG, when I tell you to launch missiles, fire them ship by ship, and then employ the clean birds first, understand? They’ll fight better.”

  “Roger, sir.”

  “Okay. Give me ninety-six missiles in a spread pattern, twelve on each of these eight ships.” I marked them in the holotank, a group on one side of the fight, then sent the update to the combat drone stations. That would give us forty-eight clean combat drones, each with a close-range AP beam for counter-fighter or counter-missile use.

  Turning away to let Bradley coordinate that strike, I said to Adrienne, “Turnbull, give me a lens formation focused here.” This time I marked the enormous Litho dreadnought, the largest in their fleet, five miles long and two miles wide. Our ships were tiny compared to it, and I had to keep telling myself that it wasn’t as scary as it looked. “Release half our remaining mobile mines right now, and make sure they only target Lithos. Once that’s done, Hansen, begin gentle braking to let the mines fly out ahead of us.” This tactic turned the guided mines into crude missiles, effective only because the enemy was large, slow, and directly in front of us.

  First, the ninety-six missiles shot out in front of us on trails of hot blue plasma, then more than a hundred repeller mines were deployed, immediately pulling away from us as we braked. These two salvos represented half our remaining ordnance, but I didn’t see any point in holding onto it if I could kill Lithos and save Raptors.

  Stepping around to the other side of the holotank, I looked at our formation from the point of view of the Raptors. They swooped and fired on the Lithos at close range, going toe-to-toe with their enemies, who right now were caught between two formations.

  “Make sure any missiles that miss the Lithos,” I said, “don’t retarget on the Raptors. That goes for the repeller mines too.”

  The weapons people worked to implement my instructions. I turned back to the helmsman who waved for my attention.

  “The mines have contact fuses,” Hansen reminded me. “We can’t control them. If they fly past and a Raptor gets in the way…well…” He shrugged.

  “Good point,” I said, frowning. “Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen. Valiant, send a signal to the mines to detonate themselves as they reach the Litho line, regardless of proximity to target.” That would limit their effectiveness as they might blow in space rather than continuing to seek their targets, but it would also eliminate friendly-fire problems.

  “Command acknowledged.”

  “Here we go,” I said as our first salvo entered the Lithos’ engagement envelopes. As I had hoped, the enemy had been fully entangled with the Raptors and now had to pick their poison. They chose to turn and present their angled, more heavily armored front faces to the greater threat, my nukes.

  Litho beams blazed, picking several Star Force missiles out of space at maximum effective range. At the same time, counter-missiles calved off from their big ships, accelerating fast toward our swarm. I’d ordered a spread, but the groups naturally tightened up as they arrowed inward toward their eight targets.

  “Valiant!” I barked, realizing what was going to happen. “Switch targets! Retarget all missiles toward any other Litho ship!”

  I’d made a rookie mistake, and my green crew hadn’t caught it. Each missile group had pointed itself at its target for too long, and all it would take was a nuke or three in the right spot to catch the tight cluster in a blast.

  After a moment much longer than I liked, Valiant’s brainbox responded, “Retargeting. Signal sent.”

  Our missiles had just begun to change their courses, groups looking like forward-bursting fireworks as they turned and blasted laterally as hard as they could, when the Lithos’ defensive nukes detonated. More than three-quarters of our weapons disappeared in the blasts, and I let loose a few choice vulgarities. I’d been too late.

  A moment later I had cause to feel better. Behind the wall of nuclear blasts the Lithos had thrown up, the holotank displayed more than a dozen heavy thermonuclear blasts—caused by our weapons according to the radioactive signature. When the overload cleared, I saw two Litho ships heavily damaged and two others hit.

  “They took out most of our missiles, but the ones that made it past couldn’t be shot down due to all the interference,” I said. “Valiant, in the future, randomize the maneuvering of similarly targeted missiles in each salvo to hide their destinations for as long as possible.”

  “Protocols updated.”

  I hoped that would improve our missile performance, but nothing was guaranteed. Every protocol had its weaknesses. Space combat was often as much art as science with so many possibilities of move and countermove involving differing weapons, all played out in three dimensions.

  Our next blow came from the repeller mines we’d thrown forward. They’d been called poor man’s missiles since mines didn’t have the maneuverability to do more than adjust their trajectory slightly toward their targets. If our normal missiles were space-sharks, mines were paddling dogs. I hoped the Lithos didn’t see them coming until too late, as they were smaller and heavily stealthed.

  “Entering our long laser range,” Hansen announced.

  “Begin long-range l
aser fire. Switch to APs as they reach. Don’t spare the juice,” I said.

  “That may cause them to break up.”

  “All the better. The radiation from the gamma-enhanced nukes will hurt their small craft more than their big ships,” I replied. I’d been expecting that objection. At least Hansen had delivered his complaint in a neutral, matter-of-fact tone.

  Valiant hummed with resonance as our two big lasers began to fire, as did the corresponding mains on our frigates. Given our number of combat drones, I’d mandated the frigates have the heaviest weapons possible, but they were short on point defense. Because of the Lithos’ size and toughness, I did not see small, highly accurate lasers as the best use of limited space and power. Besides, the combat drones could provide that function in a pinch.

  The Lithos now fought back-to-back, less than ten miles apart from each other. That was a very tight range in space. A half-dozen ships plus fighters and snowflakes battled ten or so Raptors on the far side, while eight Lithos had turned toward us, two of which were heavily damaged. Unfortunately for us, this group included their biggest ship.

  The cruiser we were pummeling began to calve into fighters just as our mine barrage reached their line. As I had hoped, they hadn’t seen our weapons, and over a hundred explosions rippled among the enemy. While none of the mines contact-detonated, their area of effect caught all eight Lithos within.

  The new fighter group that had recently been a cruiser now disintegrated. The arrowheads still existed, but instead of moving purposefully, they spun like glitter through the void.

  “Excellent!” I shouted. “Their fighters are too small to shield against the enhanced gamma.”

  Unfortunately the barrage didn’t seem to have a great effect on the large ships. Perhaps it killed off a few templates near their surfaces, but if I were a Litho fighting against the Raptors, I’d keep my “people” deep within, behind effective shielding. We’d exploded the equivalent of a neutron bomb and fried the fighter pilots, but their battleships had thick armor.

  “Hansen, optimize our speed so we get time for a heavy pass through the Lithos along the side here.” I drew a line in the holotank. “That will bring us up next to the Raptors if we decelerate hard. Try to give them room, though. I don’t want them to feel we’re a threat to them.”

  “Got it, boss,” Hansen replied. “Valiant, patch my course plan to the frigate pilots in realtime.”

  Hansen informed the other pilots things were about to get rough. I privately agreed with his assessment.

  -32-

  Hansen was right. The radioactive dust had cleared somewhat, revealing the mountainous prows of the five remaining Litho effectives. They were aiming toward us now, and they began to fire.

  “Keep us evading, Hansen,” I said as Valiant shuddered with beam hits and near-misses. “Concentrated, continuous AP fire on the nose of that dreadnought, now!”

  The helmsman was already ahead of me as I saw our formation slide sideways to cut past the edge of the enemy. Tentacles grasped me tighter as the ship rocked with hard G-forces, and I watched as our power reserves dropped by half within thirty seconds.

  Fountains of fire bloomed all around the pointed bow of the Litho dreadnought. It looked as if a hundred small volcanoes had erupted all at once. Our antiproton beams converted matter into exotic elements and isotopes, tearing the ship apart. In the holotank I could see the beams lash out from our side, briefly connecting our ships to the enemy with razor-straight lines.

  But answering lines were coming back at us. The four enemy cruisers sent their beams slashing across my formation, and I felt the punch in the gut as they intersected two of my frigates. The first wobbled and began to tumble, continuing in a straight line even as we curved on our attack run. The other simply disappeared, blown apart by the heavy concentration. I slammed my fist down on the nearest hard surface, causing it to buckle before it began to reform, but otherwise showed no emotion. Now was not the time to call attention to our losses.

  And then we’d passed them, still firing with all the beams that we could bring to bear. Staring at the Litho dreadnought we’d punched in the nose.

  “Come on, come on,” I muttered, but the enemy commander didn’t cooperate. I’d hoped to hit him hard enough to cause him to break up. I considered the smaller Litho forms to be a lesser threat, even en masse. Our gamma bombs had turned out to be highly effective fighter-killers.

  Hansen brought us hard about, decelerating to join what I hoped were our allies.

  “Bradley,” I said, addressing my newly appointed CAG, “send two clean combat drones after that frigate. Their director’s only job right now is to get it stabilized and try to bring it to somewhere safe outside the battle zone.”

  I couldn’t spare a manned rescue mission yet. Two combat drones more or less wouldn’t win or lose this battle, but by doing this, I showed I cared about every individual under my command. Calculated? Sure, but it was no lie. I did care.

  My CAG seemed to be holding up all right, shuffling the combat drones around to screen our force. I’d hardly noticed their presence like a cloud of gnats in the holotank, but they’d kept several missiles and at least a dozen fighters off our backs as we made our run, so they were proving their worth. “CAG, how’s the drone fuel holding up?”

  “Below half on most birds, sir,” Bradley replied. “It will help if we can launch the rest of the missiles and start rotating some aboard for refueling.”

  “Not in the middle of a fight, Bradley,” I said.

  Valiant had the capability to service the combat drones, but she was no carrier. Only two at a time could be brought in. At least no personnel needed to be involved since small brainboxes controlled the refueling and rearming bays.

  I moved to Bradley’s side to examine his boards. “Be as conservative as you can with your shots, but keep them with us. Weapons fire is the biggest drain on the combat drones, not simply flying around.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “In fact,” I continued, “launch a full strike with the remaining combat drone missiles at the nearest cruiser. That will clean them up and save some fuel.” It wasn’t the best use of the weapons, but I was still feeling my way through my squadron’s capabilities and tactics, and had to balance pros and cons of everything.

  The nearest cruiser was one of the six—now five—which engaged with our supposed allies.

  “Divert a quarter of those missiles toward that fighter swarm,” I said, watching the cloud we had launched fighting to overcome inertia and line up on the enemy. Firing missiles sideways or backward had its drawbacks as they did not have the benefit of the launching ship’s velocity.

  Another minute brought us around in a loop that flanked the five Lithos engaged with the Raptors, who were down to four ships of their own. All of the Lithos were damaged. “Long range fire,” I said, wanting to distract the enemy from our allies. Our power reserves had risen to sixty percent, so I figured we had one more monster firing pass in us before we had to pull back and recharge.

  The back line of Lithos had turned around and sought to reinforce their five ships as we had swung wide. Their other three crippled ships, the two cruisers and the dreadnought, looked to be withdrawing in a small group toward the ring. “Look, they’re running,” I pointed out mainly to keep our people’s morale up. “That’s good news. They’re not impossible to break.”

  Now four Raptor heavy cruisers flew with us. Together, we faced ten Lithos and a fighter squadron. All of the enemy ships had sustained significant damage, but none so badly that they were running or breaking up. I watched as our barrage of sixty missiles neared their targets, fifteen toward the Litho fighters, forty-five at one cruiser.

  Only one of the first group made it through to detonate near the Litho small craft. It knocked out all but a couple of them in one blow. At least a dozen of the other group ran the gauntlet to pummel the Litho cruiser, three detonating on contact, the best result we could hope for. No battleship, it began to cal
ve at the last moment, but then broke apart into several ugly chunks bearing no resemblance to spacegoing vessels. The blasts flung them off in various directions.

  My crew cheered.

  “Lens formation. Stay tight,” I reminded them as our grouping became sloppy. “Hansen, point us at the nearest ship. Everyone else cue off Valiant and fire when ready.”

  We accelerated toward the melee again. The Lithos turned five of their nine ships to face us in a ragged slanting line. I could feel our heavy and medium APs firing. Unlike lasers, they accelerated actual particles to near light speed and thus generated recoil almost like guns. Hansen muttered profanities and wrestled with his controls, keeping Valiant aligned like a race car fishtailing down a wet track.

  “Missiles, full spread, now. Target the third cruiser in line.” A moment later my battlecruiser’s six missile tubes and the two on each remaining frigate spat more than two dozen guided nukes. The barrage seemed puny compared to the two earlier off our combat drones, but it was all I had. Even as they leaped away from us, our APs turned the lead cruiser into an inferno.

  In return, a swarm of missiles calved off our opponents and beams of their own came questing for our lives. Unwilling to give up the offense, I did not order shields raised.

  “Combat drones forward,” I snapped. “Get their missiles or force them to detonate.”

  In the wake of our missile strike, all sixty-some remaining combat drones accelerated, putting their mechanical bodies between us and the Lithos. This made me doubly glad they were unmanned. Even if we had enough pilots, I would never have been able to use them as such a sacrificial screen.

  Frigate six fell back, main engines knocked out, curved away from the fight and heading for deep space and possible safety. The pilots had named the ships, but I hadn’t memorized them yet so I just left them numbered in the holotank. Maybe I knew some would be lost in this fight and thought the pain would be lessened if I didn’t get to know them too well. I was starting to regret not building, say, two cruisers rather than twelve frigates, but this had provided us maximum speed and firepower. Unfortunately I had to accept the casualties.