He was grinning and the tension eased a bit. I said, “We’re having more success attacking them than we’ve had defending ourselves from their attacks, so it’s beginning to look like we’re going to get a much needed shower and change of clothes.” Everyone smiled, in one or two or maybe three cases unsuccessfully hiding their relief.
I said, “It looks like our acceleration is throwing them off. They seem to be able to see us now, I would be shocked if they couldn’t, but they don’t seem to have adjusted their courses very well. That’s interesting. I don’t know what it means, but then I don’t know why they haven’t used missiles on us, or why we haven’t heard a peep out of our radios. They’re communicating, but I have no idea how. Any ideas?”
Carolyn was concentrating on her screens, making inputs, looking carefully at the results and then making more inputs. She looked up, as if she’d heard my question five seconds after I asked it. She looked at me and grinned. She had a nice grin. “They’re using radio, but I’m having a tough time with it. They seem to be using frequencies above what we use, and their transmissions don’t appear to be digital, or at least not binary, base ten, hexadecimal, or any other digital logic I’ve heard of. It’s almost as if they were using analog, but that can’t be right. Well, if so, it would be ‘right’ of course. I’m recording everything and I’ve got my systems trying to decipher what they’re doing. Hopefully, when we get home we’ll have something to give our intel section, which has much better computational power to work with. I wish we had better sensors though”
A big red light lit up at Elian’s station and he said, “A large ship just brought up its drive. It’s not a fighter; call it a destroyer, although it’s a big bastard. It’s about one million K’s outside of us, relative to the mother ship, and its accelerating pretty hard, maybe eight or nine G’s. On our present course and acceleration we’re going to scrape paint.” Carolyn actually giggled, which was a pretty good sign, all things considered.
I looked pointedly at Elian and he grinned, then said, very formally, “By ‘scrape paint’, I meant that it would get within potential weapons range.” I nodded my head, although I’d already figured that out.
I asked Elian for a course that would keep us away from the new bogey as well as the ones we were already aware of. Elian said, “With no changes, in about five minutes we’ll match the fighters accel and begin to pull away from them. At their closest, they’ll be about two hundred K’s distant, so no problemo there. We have a lot of space to maneuver in, but I‘d suggest that you alter course ten degrees to polar north. That should maintain our acceleration advantage over the fighters and simultaneously allow us to negate the destroyer’s temporary acceleration advantage. Is there any chance that you might try out our jump capability?”
He knew the answer to that, but he was very bright, and I think he asked it for our other crewmembers sake. I said, “Well, let’s keep that little piece of hardware under wraps. At this point, we look golden, but if that changes, I’ll consider it. To that end, I’d like you, chief K, to test the jump systems but don’t bring them on line unless I ask for it. We have no idea yet how they found our fleet in the first place, and it might just be our jump systems, not our radio.”
Chief Kana looked up in surprise at my last statement, and said, “You know, I’ve never thought about that, but you might have a point. Jump systems generate a very big energy pulse when they initiate. Good call, sir Robert.” I grinned back at him and stretched my muscles, which were getting tired of sitting in one position.
I set my systems on auto and stood up. I walked over to the tiny head and went inside to relieve myself. Lots of coffee can lead to lots of head calls. I came back out and grabbed a food package. We had stashed some emergency rations in the ship, which normally didn’t have any need of them. The Hawk was actually large enough that one could stand up and walk around, although ‘around’ was barely two meters. By comparison my fighter cockpit was a glove. I reveled in the freedom of movement the Hawk gave me.
I sat back down and opened the package. It smelled like it might be edible, but not tasty. My nose was right. I wasn’t particularly hungry, but this was another way to ensure that everyone felt things were under control. In fact, I was worried about that destroyer. Where there was one, there might be others, and I didn’t want to get herded right into an ambush.
I finished my lunch, or whatever it was, and asked Carolyn, “I’d like you to pay special attention to a cone of space with our ship at the pointy end, otherwise called an ‘apex’ and extending along our base course, with a radius of thirty degrees. That destroyer might not be ‘the’ destroyer, but simply ‘the first’, and I want to see anything that pops up before, well, it pops up, OK?”
We were now opening up the range to the enemy fighters, but I still worried. Despite our having plotted the course of well over a dozen destroyer-sized ships, I didn’t think we’d seen all of them, and as a result we couldn’t be certain of the exact number or makeup of all the enemy ships we had to contend with. We’d been instructed not to jump unless we had absolutely no other choice, but now that we had found the enemy, I felt that revealing our technology was preferable to not getting the location and makeup of that huge mother ship back to the Essex.
This system was entirely new to the Hawk, and if we had to use it, the results should prove to be interesting. I had never heard of a ship this small being able to jump, but we had enough power - five fusion bottles - about as much energy as a destroyer. If we were forced to jump out, we would have only a rough idea of where the jump would take us. We had never tested the system and it was not calibrated. I wished profoundly that we might one day have more choices.
Over the next twenty minutes the destroyer’s infrared signature bloomed as it tried desperately to cut the corner on us but finally we began pulling ahead of it at a rate that would ensure our being able to remain outside of any known energy weapons it might have. We monitored passively, not wanting to give them any clue to our capabilities.
I continued to worry about what we weren’t seeing. Chief Kana summed it nicely when he muttered, almost to himself, “I hope the nothing we’re not seeing is actually nothing, rather than something that looks like nothing.”
At a distance of two million kilometers, four missiles separated from the destroyer. This was unpleasant news. We had a huge amount of vital information for our fleet and we now really needed to get back into the relative safety of our home away from home. As our sensors calculated acceleration and time to impact, I considered giving Chief Kana the go-ahead to jump us out. Within five seconds however, Carolyn said, “Sir, their acceleration is much lower than our missiles. I make it approximately twenty G’s. At that rate, it would have to have a huge run-time to be able to hit us. I don’t believe we have any missiles on the Essex, save for the Mark 65 that could accelerate for that length of time.”
Elian was tracking them also and said, “It’s going to take a while for them to reach us but I don’t have an accurate reading on their range, and no idea as to what payload they might carry. Let’s just avoid having to worry about that, OK Robert, sir?’
I grinned at him and gave him permission to use our anti missile system. I added, “Let’s wait a bit to get more information on them before you go trying to bounce them around with your gravity shields. Target just one of the missiles, so we can get useful information on how our system works. As you can guess, we need to know what kind of course corrections it’s capable of, what kind of range it has, its payload, and anything else you can learn.”
Elian nodded, his head buried in his screen. He tapped a series of orders into the system and then turned to me with a questioning look on his face. I looked at my screen once more than nodded my permission. He grinned like a little boy in a candy store and gently caressed his touch sensitive screen.
We heard the noise of a capacitor charging up behind us, and then the system burped a narrow gravity pulse right in front of the missile. If successf
ul, the pulse would crush the missile.
The first missile flashed, a very large yield for such a small missile, and Elian grunted in dismay as he read the readout of energy that relatively slow missile packed. It wasn’t as big as our 65’s, but it was fairly close, big enough to vaporize our Hawk. In fact, it was big enough to disable a destroyer, perhaps even a cruiser.
I told him, “Judging by the size of that explosion, you might just want to go ahead and finish the other three now. These missiles are slow compared to ours, but that payload is huge.”
I turned my head to Carolyn and added, “Let’s have the lasers ready in case one gets by Elian. He’s blind as a bat, so one has to be prepared.” Elian grinned and caressed his panel again. The capacitors sang up out of hearing and then one second apart three narrow gravity wells appeared in front of the incoming missiles. Two were destroyed, quite spectacularly, but the third continued to accelerate toward us.
I ordered both Elian and Carolyn. “Use both systems.” Elian programmed his console to project three gravity pulses serially, one second apart.
The capacitors were singing like crazy as both systems powered up. Elian’s systems fired, and the missile flashed out of existence before Carolyn’s lasers discharged.
I said, “Good shooting. Question: why was it so hard to hit such a slow moving missile?” Elian knew from my tone that I wasn’t criticizing him. He said, “Those little buggers are tough. I swear that I hit that last one dead on the first time and it just went right through it. Let’s try the laser system if that destroyer launches again. I’m now confident my system can handle them, but I’d like to see how our lasers work.” I nodded my head at Carolyn and she smiled and returned to her systems, looking for something to shoot.
Elian said, “If they’re going to launch any more missiles they’re going to have to do it pretty soon, we’ve built up a pretty large edge in acceleration over that destroyer. Now that I’ve said that, why haven’t they fired more missiles?”
At that same moment, four more missiles separated from the destroyer and began accelerating after us. We were far enough away that we would have a very long time, relatively speaking, to destroy them as they tried to overtake us with only a three or four G edge. They first had to make up the now large difference in relative velocities before they could close on us. I said, “The fact that they have launched tells us that those missiles, while relatively slower than ours, probably have enough run time to overtake us. Make certain that we get as much sensor information as possible. Um, in answer to your question, they might be doing the same thing we are, which is trying to get a feel for us and our technology, just as we are trying to do.”
I told Carolyn, “Try hitting the closest one at one hundred thousand klicks. If you hit it but don’t knock it out, use both lasers the second time. Keep on firing until they’re all destroyed. Remember, the closer they get, the faster they’ll be traveling, relative to us. We’ll hold Elian’s gravity shields as backup this time. Elian, don’t wait for me to tell you; if they get inside fifty thousand, take them out.” They both nodded their heads, although their primary attention was focused on their sensors.
At a distance of one hundred thousand kilometers Carolyn fired one laser which appeared to be a direct hit, but with no joy. She powered up her capacitors and five seconds later fired both weapons. They hit at a distance of about eighty five thousand kilometers and exploded the first missile. She fired both lasers at the second, which detonated, and continued to fire every five seconds until all four were gone. At the time of their destruction, they had been accelerating for over seven minutes, a relatively long time for such a small missile. At the time of destruction, the missile’s overtake velocity had become very high, and I made a mental note to test how good our targeting systems were. I preferred to discover problems in a test environment, where I didn’t suffer a painful case of dead if a problem cropped up.
Carolyn’s lasers had succeeded in destroying the four missiles before they closed to fifty thousand kilometers, so Elian hadn’t needed to use his system. We now knew that both defensive systems could kill, and this positive knowledge relaxed all four of us. I wondered how many missiles they could send and decided to ask Elian to compute different responses to the various possibilities.
That was the last from the destroyer, which fell further behind us as our relative acceleration continued to increase. We ran flat out for another hour, after which I chopped our acceleration back down to six G’s and altered course radically. I chose a heading that would take us directly to our rendezvous point. I was reasonably confident that they couldn’t track us at this range and acceleration, and their response to my course change should serve to bolster my confidence. Or not.
When their fighters reached the location where we dropped our accel and changed course, they continued charging along our original track. I let out what I hoped was an unobserved sigh of relief. I didn’t mind an enemy that fought dumb, not in the slightest.
I said, “These people don’t seem to be fighting as well as before, or rather, as well as their fighters have when they attacked us. For example, the first time we used missiles, they reacted immediately and intelligently. They retreated out of range, analyzed what we had done with our missiles and then they came back at us, using modified tactics. This time, they seem less smart.” Carolyn said, “Sir, the fighters that chased us have similar but slightly different characteristics than the ones that attacked the Essex group. The acceleration of those fighters was higher by a small but significant number, they didn’t emit as much IR as these fighters, and as you said, they fought better.”
I thought about her statement. “Crap. If you are correct, and you seem to be, then you’ve just presented us with evidence supporting the existence of more than one enemy fleet. You’ve also raised new questions, such as why, if there are two different fleets, there are differences, and where the hell the other one is. Other ones. Why there are multiple enemy fleets, all of a sudden, in our little corner of the universe, and, well, why didn’t they just say ‘we’re just passing through, thought we’d say hello?’”
Chief Kana and Elian had nothing to add to her statement or mine, so I reclined my chair and thought about all our encounters with the bug fighters.
A very bad thought struck me, and I asked, “Is this monster ship part of a larger group? Are we facing more than one, whatever you call those ships, Globes, or mother ships? This is giving me a headache. One thing is clear to me however, I’d like to come back with all four Hawks, loaded for bear. I think we could take that monster out of commission if we could hit it with five or six 65’s. I’d sure like to try. Also, I want our internal missile launchers filled next time, especially now that we know they have missiles as well as fighters.”
Elian looked at me with sharp interest, and made some notes on his pad. The four of us tossed ideas back and forth for the next thirty minutes as the adrenaline in our systems slowly dropped back to normal and kept on dropping.
We maintained radio silence and took turns getting some desperately needed sleep. After the tension of our passage through their fighter shell, the long drawn-out surveillance, firing our missiles and then fighting our way back out, we were completely exhausted.
Elian took over my duties and within moments I was asleep. As big as the flight deck seemed to a fighter pilot, it wasn’t designed to house four people for extended periods, and this was beginning to become an extended voyage. Carolyn fell asleep just as quickly.
Interstellar space is so vast as to make the space inside a solar system seem as nothing by comparison. We were near the edge of an immense area devoid of solar systems and the closest star was still over three light years from our present location. This immense nothingness can hide a great deal, including entire fleets of ships. When our navigation systems signaled that we were in the approximate location for linking up with our carrier we turned on our transmitter and Carolyn sent a pre-arranged burst transmission.
We h
ad no idea as to our enemy’s abilities concerning RF, so we chose to play it safe and not use our radios for any extended transmissions. We coasted along with all our weapons systems hot and after a very anxious five minutes we received an encrypted reply.
It took our own system a moment to do a handshake and then we heard the welcome voice of an anonymous fleet communications tech giving us a new heading. It was unusual to communicate via a remote link, but until our fleet better understood just how our enemy communicated, and how it found us, we were being careful. Elian grinned in relief at hearing a human voice and I immediately turned us onto our new course.
After two hours we received a small course change. Our passive systems began to pick up readings in the IR bands as we passed through the outer shell of destroyers and neared the Essex, but our gravity sensors showed no sign of a fleet under acceleration. Finally there it was, an enormous and enormously welcome sight – the Essex. Better yet, it was in one piece and wasn’t under attack.
It took us another half hour to come up alongside the ship and get tractored into a hanger. As soon as we were deposited on the deck I began shutting down systems. When the hanger became pressurized a veritable horde of crewmen crowded through the personnel hatches to surround our ship. Within moments we were hooked up to external power, communications, and cooling systems. Our monitors revealed the other three Hawks, all loaded with Mark 65 missiles, and seemingly ready for a mission.
Hawk Seven (Flight of the Hawk) Page 7