I discussed the lost Mark 65 with the officer in charge of the missiles. That conversation led to a delayed departure. Diagnostic software was transferred from the cargo ship to my ship, and thence to the other three Hawks, and we spent forty-five minutes running software programs through the missiles. It was a good thing we did, because we found another bad missile on Hawk 03.
A maintenance tech flew over and spent an hour replacing some modules and the antenna it used for communication. We then reran the diagnostics and were happy to see that it was back with the living.
The Mark 65 was a potent weapon, but the ones we were using were over ten years old. It was almost surprising that we hadn’t suffered more problems with them.
We had just gotten underway when we spotted yet another destroyer, escorted by eight fighters, on a heading that would take it perilously close to our cargo ship. It was well outside of detection range of our location, and we hadn’t done anything to alert them, so there had to be some other explanation.
I asked for input on why it would be heading toward our resupply point when its sensors couldn’t have possibly seen us, and came to the reluctant conclusion that our position was simply logical. Our small ships weren’t large enough to hold more than a couple of large missiles but we had reappeared, freshly armed, in less time than it would take to have returned to our fleet; therefore, we were being resupplied close to hand. This enemy was smart.
I got on the radio and instructed the FFC captain to head at max acceleration back toward the fleet. We did not have enough missiles to fight the destroyer and the mother ship. As soon as we were relatively certain that the cargo ship was fast enough to stay ahead of the destroyer, we each began spreading out to envelope it, one at each cardinal point of the compass. By now, the destroyer had picked up the cargo ship and had altered its heading to close with it, but we had not been detected.
The destroyer would pass within fifty thousand kilometers of us and I hoped that we could nail it with our lasers enough times to wound it, if not kill it. We were going to take some return energy weapons fire, but the globular approach meant that the destroyer would not be able to target all its weapons against one single Hawk. Well, it could, actually. I just hoped it wouldn’t be that smart. If we killed the destroyer, the fighters would probably return to their mother ship. Probably.
As we came up on the destroyer our lasers opened fire on command. The destroyer loosed two patterns of four missiles, two to each of us, which was a minor mistake, but one I was certainly happy with. The enemy fighters immediately went to max acceleration directly towards us, so each Hawk launched all four wing-mounted ER-15’s, two for each fighter.
As our Hawks lashed the destroyer with energy fire, our anti-missile gravity shields began targeting its missiles. All eight were destroyed very quickly. The destroyer lasted fifteen seconds longer than its missiles. The enemy fighters failed to even try to evade the missiles, and none survived longer than the time it took for the missile to detonate them into expanding clouds of very small pieces. Zeke, the commander of Hawk04 got on the laser comm and said, surprise in his voice, “That was easy. I think I like my Hulk.”
We now had a few new scars on our hulls, courtesy of a number of direct laser hits. Our Hawks lived up to their reputation and shrugged off the energy easily. As soon as the enemy began targeting our ships with lasers, protective shields closed the vision ports and the laser barrel in direct line of sight of the destroyer. I simply had to rotate the ship every few seconds to unmask a laser. This thing was a tank.
I almost recalled the cargo ship, but decided that it was probable that the destroyer had alerted the mother ship, so I let it continue on towards the relative safety of our fleet.
We set our acceleration at six G’s and headed back in. They would know we were coming and I worried about other destroyers lying quietly, directly in our path. Fleet wanted the enemy to go defensive, and to that extent we may have succeeded, but that also meant that the enemy was waiting for us. We had no choice. I ordered that all systems be on line, with all missiles hot and ready to go at a moment’s notice.
We were many hours away from our third attack, so I ordered the crews to get some rest. We were seriously tired by now – we’d been in these ships for six days, with possibly another four or so before we could get some rest. I’d never considered fuel to be a constraint before, but this trip was going to leave us with very little reactor fuel left for the return flight.
At approximately the location we had calculated the enemy fleet ought to be, we began to pick up emissions of its outlying fighters. There were a lot of them out, possibly every single fighter available. We counted sixty-four, but there were now far fewer destroyers visible to us, and they were the ones we most worried about.
Their fleet continued moving slowly away from our own, which was a good sign, but not one we could count on to continue. We had to try to nail the mother ship.
We reduced our acceleration, relative to their own, and I talked to the other crews. We exchanged information on the Mark 65’s performance to date, with and without its own on-board defensive systems. We hadn’t seen any sign that it was more effective without it, so I elected to utilize it, and to target all of our ER-15’s on the carrier as well, sending them in ahead of the capital missiles, hoping they would reduce the amount of weapons fire directed at the larger missiles.
We were going to try to have the smaller missiles mimic the larger ones. This would hopefully allow more of the Mark 65’s to get through their intense defensive fire, now supposedly lessened somewhat due to the destruction of six of their escorts.
We realized that targeting all the missiles on the one ship would leave us more vulnerable to the destroyers, and those small anti-fighter missiles would barely dent the massive ship’s hull. But on the other hand they might help dilute the defensive fire, and the destruction of the mother ship was our first priority.
We slowly caught up to the fleet and I reduced our closing rate again. We needed to get those missiles as close as possible to their target, and that meant we would once again have to try to sneak past their cloud of fighters.
They had pulled their outer screen of fighters in much closer, reducing the spacing between each ship and thereby making it more difficult to evade detection. The odds of our once again sneaking unnoticed past their screen were now reduced to nearly zero.
After looking at the screen for fifteen minutes, I decided to adapt our attack to their defense. We would target any fighter that was directly between us and the carrier, taking on the ones out of laser range with our ER-15’s. I thought that this gave us the best chance to get close enough to the carrier to give our Mark 65’s a good shot. We were going to take a beating however, because there were a lot of fighters in a very small space, and they were presumably just a little put out by our earlier successful assaults on them. We continued to close on the mother ship.
We evaded three fighters successfully but the positioning of the next few made it obvious that we were going to get spotted. I assigned a fighter to each Hawk and on command eight missiles dropped off our wings and began accelerating towards the four fighters nearest us that were outside our present laser range but that could get into energy weapons range before we released. We immediately accelerated to maximum and this of course attracted a certain amount of attention.
Capacitors began singing as our lasers targeted close-in fighters, sending bolts of coherent light at them. Two exploded in quick succession and moments later two fighters were hit by at least one missile, taking them out of the picture. We headed directly at the carrier, which was ponderously starting to accelerate. I was pleased that this time they were fighting smart; they didn’t just assume that our attack was the only attack that was going in, so most of the fighters and destroyers were forced to remain in position as they looked for additional attacks from other points of the compass. We were not as agile as the enemy fighters but we were lots faster. That seemed to be a contradiction, bu
t our Hawks massed at least three or four times what their fighters did, and King Inertia had to be paid. It appeared that there were only two destroyers in a position to target us, and just about the time I painted them on our screen they began belching missiles at us. In a shockingly short period of time we faced nearly forty missiles targeted at our four Hawks.
For possibly the first time our ships were using every erg of energy they could generate. Our engines were at maximum, both lasers were firing every five or six seconds and now our G shields were powering up and popping small, focused points of gravity in front of the approaching missiles, which began exploding. We gave those missiles first priority, as we would not survive them if they got close enough to detonate. Lasers we had a chance with, and so our defensive fire, both lasers and gravity shields, concentrated on taking out those missiles. They were relatively slow, but the longer they were in flight, the higher would be their terminal velocity.
Two fighters came into close enough range to begin firing their energy weapons at us and we had nothing left over for them. It put us in a bad spot because as soon as they opened up on us, the laser on the side facing them had to shut down and cover up. We were hit very hard by a fighter and we could feel the Hawk stagger from the huge amount of energy transfer.
The craft shrugged it off and continued ahead. We were still killing missiles but they were getting closer with every second. Carolyn shouted over the din made by the capacitors and lasers going off, “We’ve still got eight missiles coming in and they’re about fifteen seconds away.”
We were hit by another laser, this one not as hard but hard enough. Dust, probably older than we were, was drifting in the air. The last missile was destroyed at approximately one hundred kilometers, and I heaved a large sigh of relief. We had a moment’s reprieve and took that to target and destroy the two closest fighters that had been pounding us with lasers. We could see that as many as twelve additional fighters were going to be able to come within range of us before we could get away.
I sent a command to release the Mark 65’s and they dropped off our wings. We had positioned our ships so that the missiles were hidden from their energy weapons by the bulk of the ship. If one of them had been hit by a laser it would have been Very Bad.
The 65’s immediately accelerated to maximum and brought up their jammers. Our screens went completely white for a moment before our own systems blanked out the jamming.
We continued to follow along behind the missiles in an effort to keep some fire off of them. It was apparently successful because we were getting targeted by a lot of energy fire. Nearly all of it was dissipated by distance and merely warmed us up some, but by now our hulls were hot enough to clearly show up on infrared sensors.
Elian asked, “Are we having fun yet?”
Finally, we curved up and away from the massive ship. We were within five hundred thousand kilometers of it, far closer than we’d ever been, and just a little too close for comfort. We continued to attract a great deal of negative attention but for the moment we were out of effective range of energy weapon. Our new flight path reduced the relative closing speed of the missiles already launched at us.
Our shields continued to pop bubbles of gravity in front of anything that came close to us while our ships began to bleed off thermal energy.
As we curved away we once again began to come under energy weapons fire from additional fighters. Behind us, one of the 65’s detonated, then a second. We were down to six. A third was hit but then we finally had our turn. Five massive Mark 65 missiles detonated practically as one. Our Hawks deployed yet another defensive measure: just before the missiles detonated we shut down all our passive sensors. Carolyn’s work again. I made a mental note to thank her, assuming I would get the opportunity. She told me that the Mark 65’s detonations were no threat to our own ship and its electronics, but if the mother ship exploded all bets were off. Our sensors, what were left of them after the firefight, were what allowed us to stay out of reach of their own sensors and energy weapons, while keeping them in reach of ours.
Our screens came back on line three seconds later and we enjoyed the spectacle of witnessing an immense hole in the process of opening in the side of the carrier. We exulted at the amount of damage we had inflicted, and were dismayed that the immense ship continued under power, but this time we knew we’d hurt it. At this range, our sensors were able to record a huge amount of data. This ship had absorbed a total of ten Mark 65 missiles, roughly ten more than one of our own carriers could take, and it was still under power. However, even as we watched its acceleration faltered and it slowed to little more than a half G. I’d love to have seen the engines in that monster. But even more, I’d love to see it die.
We continued firing our lasers, targeting and destroying oncoming missiles, of which there were far more than we’d previously experienced. We had more than enough time to get them and were able also able to target the various fighters that came within range. We seemed to have superior fire control and our lasers were able to focus more energy effectively, even though we didn’t have as much total power as theirs did. What mattered was the energy that hit the target.
We destroyed three more fighters before clearing the screen and showing our heels to our pursuers. They turned back towards their carrier as soon as it was obvious we were leaving. They probably feared another attack. I would.
After two hours of flight I had our four ships coast in close to each other so we could get visuals on each other. It wasn’t pretty. Every single Hawk had been hit at least once by a direct and very powerful laser. The armor had dissipated all that energy but we could see the scarring.
Hawk 03 reported that it was running on only two fusion bottles – three of it’s four ‘extra’ bottles had shut down after a particularly hard hit and its crew had only been able to get one back up. Fortunately, that had occurred as we were leaving and it had been able to maintain position on us. Hawk 02 had lost one laser and taken damage to some of its sensors. We had lost all of our antennas on the roof of our ship, and it appeared that the other three had also lost many or most of their new antennae.
We resumed our acceleration back the way we came with mixed feelings. We had not destroyed that ship, but we had destroyed or seriously damaged approximately ten destroyers, one cruiser sized ship, and as many as thirty fighters. We had lost count, but all four Hawks were aces or double aces now. Perhaps triple aces even. We wouldn’t know for certain until after we reviewed our flight data, and at present we were too tired to care.
We flew under control of Carolyn’s system and three of us slept while one struggled to stay awake. After four hours, I woke Elian up and immediately reclined my seat. I was dead to the world in seconds. We had sensors to alert us if we ran into another destroyer, but after the last attack, we were all just too tired to worry about one tiny destroyer. Just two weeks ago we’d been terrified of their fighters.
We woke up, ate and began decelerating. We had continued at max G’s and were now up to the highest relative velocity I had ever seen in such a small craft. The bugs knew the location of our fleet, so it wasn’t as if we were giving away state secrets. We wanted to take a shower, put on clean clothes, eat a real meal and be able to walk for more than two paces.
At the appointed time we made contact with our fleet and three hours later the four battered Hawks settled into their adjoining flight bays.
As soon as the decks repressurized, a torrent of crew poured into the bay. Some of them actually had jobs to do and dragged umbilicals, cables and hoses up to connect the Hawk to the ship. Many of them did not, other than to stare up at our scarred flanks. We had discussed our exit from the Hawks, and on command, all four ships lowered their rear hatch. We marched down the ramp and all four crews met and got into formation. I saluted the admiral, who had come down with his personal staff to greet us. I said, “Sir, I regret to inform you that we were unable to destroy the enemy carrier. We destroyed or seriously damaged ten destroyer sized ships,
six of them that were in a group of eight ships, including one heavy cruiser sized ship, while en route to attack this fleet. Additionally, we destroyed or seriously damaged approximately thirty fighters. We hit their mother ship with a total of nine additional mark 65’s, for a total of ten. When we went out of sensor range, the ship was under power, but at a greatly reduced acceleration. It was heading away from our fleet.”
My words were followed by total silence as the admiral looked up at our four Hawks and then back to us. He said, “Lieutenant Padilla; you and your crews are to be commended for your repeated attacks against a numerically superior enemy. You are also to be commended for your ability to adapt to changing circumstances, and your ability to think under fire. We are going over your sensor records and I believe that in approximately twelve hours, we will want to debrief you and your personnel. Not one minute before twelve full hours. There will be an informal dine-in scheduled for two hours after your debriefing, and you and your crews are ordered to attend that dine-in. Until that time, you are dismissed.”
We all saluted relatively smartly, and the noise level rose dramatically as the several hundred officers and enlisted began applauding as we walked tiredly toward showers and a bed. Finally, we hitting them back, hitting them very hard. In fact, on the basis of tonnage, we had destroyed as much as three or four times the tonnage that our enemy had.
Hawk Seven (Flight of the Hawk) Page 12