At four weeks, we had twenty-four new Hawks ready to fly, but we were running into problems with the crews. We just didn’t have the time it required to fine-tune the crew assignments, and the results were in a few cases not good. We beached one entire crew after they got into an actual fistfight one day after returning from a run.
An artful suggestion, put to us by Admiral Lee’s aide led us to add some psychologists to our team. These worthies put together a battery of tests that we ran our original crews through first. We already knew they got along, and after tinkering with the tests, we began using them to screen out the obvious bad mixes. Unfortunately, we had no way to put these new crews through actual combat, and simulators were just that, they simulated, and no matter how real the experience might seem, the crews knew they were going to walk away from it. Combat is not a simulation, and if you weren’t quicker, better, and luckier than your opponent, you didn’t walk away, unless you believed a genuine out-of-body experience was actually a good thing.
We had hand picked our first crews and chosen who would fly with whom. This time around, the Hawks came with crews, and it wasn’t so easy moving people around.
At five weeks, and long after it had been promised, we finally got to test the new versions of the Dash 15. For this, Elian took charge, he being much the smarter of the two of us. He closeted himself with the vendor’s engineers and technicians for an entire day and came away with some very good ideas for utilizing them.
We gave each crew two missiles to shoot and set up the parameters so as to make the experience as real as possible. It was fun watching the excitement on each crew’s faces as they fired off a million credits worth of bang. The bang was now about twice as good, although it was a pinprick compared to the bug’s missile.
I finally sent a message to Admiral Lee, giving him a date of two weeks. We had thirty-six complete ships and crews, including one spare, four mules and six scouts, not counting the original four. That gave us a lot to work with.
Admiral Lee desperately needed to go on the offensive, and worried that it was already too late. I had trouble sleeping, I couldn’t imagine how he managed just sitting down behind his desk.
He decided that we had no more time and scheduled a meeting with Elian and I and our crew, along with a few select others. Out of that meeting came the decision to launch an attack using the Hawks. We were to hit all three bug mother ships simultaneously. They had been in close proximity to each other continuously since our first attacks. Their arrangement meant that within ten minutes of an attack, the other two flotillas could have at least as many as one hundred fighters each looking for us. No matter how stealthy, once we fired a missile or laser, we could be swarmed and killed.
Admiral Lee had originally wanted to send in one Dresden, working with twelve Hawks as support, but the Dresdens were weeks away from being ready, and there simply was no more time.
We held a closed door meeting with all one hundred eighty eight Hawk crew in attendance. Admiral Lee was there in person and spoke to us at length about what we needed to accomplish, which was, at a minimum, to force the bugs to put all their resources to work protecting their mother ships. We were to make a serious effort to kill one or more mother ships, but we didn’t feel that would be likely or precisely necessary.
At the last minute, I received permission to take a Dresden along with the Hawks. It was able to defend itself but did not yet have the ability to launch capital missiles, but we badly needed to see it in operation. I got to go, but I wasn’t the captain, just an extra hand along for the ride.
Our redoubtable captain from that first flight of the Stone had volunteered within minutes of receiving the offer from Admiral Lee, and he was the proud captain of a potentially very deadly war craft that had the ability - we hoped – to end the war. At least he didn’t think I was a menace. He knew I was nuts, but he apparently approved of that state of mind.
We left Jupiter base next morning and spent the next four days transferring to Lubya. I was exceptionally eager to return, because my very first girl friend was awaiting my arrival – reportedly anxiously. We hadn’t actually gone on a date or anything, but we hoped to change that. Of course, the chances of the two of us getting leave at the same time were slim to none, but one could hope.
Our arrival at Lubya was very exciting, although not in a good way. The bugs had been scouting heavily and were getting closer and closer.
Unfortunately, they didn’t have to actually physically scout the planet; all they had to do was detect Lubya’s electronic emissions. It had been deemed useless to curtail the sort of activity that would attract the attention of the bugs because at interstellar distances, we would have had to cease those activities years earlier.
Lubya had been settled for two centuries, meaning that inside a radius of two hundred light years anyone could pick up electronic emissions from that planet. The bugs were well inside that radius, were only five light years away. We believed that they hadn’t figured out how we communicated. We’d know when they figured it out, via a change in heading.
On the other hand, we would have several years to prepare for them, although the way our government was reacting, Lubya might never get reinforced.
We jumped into fairly close proximity of Lubya, and almost got shot up by a very nervous destroyer captain. It momentarily terrified me to think that I could survive so many encounters with the bugs only to get killed by my own fleet.
We landed the Hawks on two different bases, as there simply weren’t facilities in any one base to house that many Hawks – Lubya was a real backwater with minimal Fleet resources. We placed the Dresden into orbit around the moon. The place was jumping with ships and maintenance and repair crews, the result of that abortive attack two months earlier.
Leave was granted, and we sent a group of twenty Hawk crews down to the capital. Elian and I along with some of our crew were shuttled down and we took them on a tour of the two or three locations that catered to carousing, drinking and fighting. It’s just possible these sailors were also probably highly eager to get into the pants of someone or other.
Our crews behaved themselves quite well, knowing that they had a mission to perform that might save the lives of the entire planetary population, although they were under strict orders not to mention that little fact.
Lubya had been hoping for a much larger demonstration of preparedness than these small craft, but you know, it was something. Its citizens would just have to go on hoping.
One week later, we accelerated out of Lubya orbit. We had already sent out our scouts, with whom we were scheduled to rendezvous before the actual attack.
Our jumps were made in the usual manner, with a handful of Hawks appearing and lying doggo for several hours before one would jump back and bring in the rest.
It was exciting to be returning to the Void with such a relatively powerful force, and despite knowing that the odds were bad, I wanted another mother ship taken all the way out.
We had pretty good intelligence on the location of the flotillas, which had been moving diagonally through the void toward a cluster of stars, none of which were inhabited by human kind. As far as we knew, their failure to accelerate up to a high fraction of light speed was highly unusual, and worrisome. The only conclusion we could draw was that they were at or close to their destination, which would be us.
Their scouting had been very wide ranging – they were presumably operating on the assumption that we didn’t possess FTL and must therefore live just down the block. We were also working on tactics that would allow us to go after one or two of their scout teams, in the expectation that they would then be forced to change to methods that were less likely to result in the discovery of Lubya, or another inhabited planet.
We jumped into a region of space approximately one billion kilometers from the last reported location of the three bug flotillas. The fifth flotilla had resolutely refused to change course, accelerate or decelerate, or to do anything that would indicate
that it knew of the little war going on, or intended to do anything about it. This was still puzzling our ‘experts’.
Elian and I felt that what we had was a series of five separate tribes, groups, families, or what passed for social organization in their society, either escaping another predator, or looking for new systems to inhabit. Perhaps both.
We sat and waited for our scouts to show up. One by one they appeared, and updated our data banks. We now had reasonably precise information on all three flotillas. They were moving as a group, but with about one million kilometers separation between mother ships. Our scouts reported that the flotillas continued to use destroyers out to as much as ten million kilometers with clouds of fighters closer in. None of us could understand how they could keep so many fighters out continuously for so long. Perhaps their pilots didn’t know about unions, or they had immense bladders.
The Hawks were organized into flights of four, with two flights forming a squadron of eight. We had four squadrons of attack Hawks, with a fifth squadron consisting of the six scouts and two extra attack ships, cobbled together from the least capable units.
We held a meeting aboard the Genera, the Dresden we’d brought, at which all nine flight leaders attended. We covered all our intelligence in detail, established rendezvous locations and times, and set out primary and secondary goals, as well as guidelines for preserving the Hawks. We hadn’t lost any yet, but this mission was designed to be a serious assault, and I felt certain that we were going to lose some.
We settled on one squadron per mother ship, with one squadron and the Dresden in reserve. We were hoping to sucker several dozen fighters into a stern chase following on the heels of the first assault. The plan was for the Hawks to flee with some bugs chasing. The Hawks would blow through our stationary ships which would fire at their pursuers as they passed, putting them between our two groups. I told them the plan had a one in five chance of success. I actually had no clue how successful the plan might be, but I had to tell my crews something.
In that scenario the fleeing Hawks were to keep their acceleration down to fourteen G’s unless they were in danger of getting nailed, in which case they were free to pour on the coal.
We settled on a very old tactic called “Time On Target”. We would attack all three mother ships simultaneously, making it difficult for the bugs to know where to send reinforcements. That wouldn’t preclude them from being smart, or lucky and simply choosing one attack to pinch off, but I wouldn’t do that were I in their place, and Elian and I had high hopes they wouldn’t take the chance either. We counted on their logical mindset to help us kill them.
I was getting very tired of ‘having hopes’.
I spoke a few words of advice, not exactly repeating advice they had already heard many times already, but as close as to be the same thing.
They returned to their tiny craft and shortly after, the three squadrons began accelerating away from us. Suddenly, it was real, and it was lonely. I had forgotten how lonely it was, to be in this empty void so far from friends, never knowing if in the next moment the bugs would attack. Now, however, this was my plan, and these people were heading out to make war on my orders. I found it almost impossible to sit still, and imperative not to fidget. Not only was I not going to be in on the actual attack, I wasn’t even in command of the Genera. I was not particularly happy at all the changes that now prevented me from killing something, but placed me in overall charge.
I was also very unhappy not to have a carrier that the Hawks could return to and get reloaded from, but Fleet was becoming progressively more paranoid about protecting human occupied systems. This may have been due to the near riots that erupted in the capitals of every single system. Humanity had somehow lost the understanding that the universe sometimes didn’t give a Damn if little Johnny might die because an unknown species wanted to play in the same sand pile.
We positioned our own eight Hawks – Delta Squadron - in a cloud around the Dresden. We had worked tirelessly to eliminate every trace of emissions from it, but it just hadn’t been possible. It made more noise than the Hawks, although far, far less than any other human built war craft in space, even including the modified Dash 4’s. That alone made it an amazing craft, just not sufficiently amazing to satisfy me.
We motored along, intending to place our small group of craft outside of and equidistant to two of the three bugs mother ships. As we approached their expected location, the tension mounted incrementally. The Genera had a crew of ninety-four, less than a normal complement, but sufficient, considering we had no capital missiles to work with. The Dash 15 launchers were fully automated, which was a big plus. A spare crew manned ‘my’ Hawk.
Ten hours before the planned assault, we ghosted to a stop, relative to the two flotillas. Our scout Hawks had spread way out and finally caught the scent of first one, then another flotilla. We were in approximately the right location.
One hour before the planned assault, we went to battle stations and closed up the ship. I hoped that those unusual hatches in the Genera were not going to be tested in the near future. Frankly, in any possible future.
Finally, the clock started running. Each squadron was to come in on a specific heading, so that when it fled, only one flotilla would be likely to send fighters its way. We didn’t want to face several hundred fighters in our trap. That would be very bad for our health.
It was expected our attackers would take approximately four hours from the time they began their assault to reach a position where they would first be liable to detection, and another two hours to reach maximum launch range. Anything beyond that would be a bonus. Within those two hours we would expect to see a reaction from the bugs. We hoped for later rather than earlier.
We settled on the very simple expedient of using the 65’s jamming ability to kick off the other group’s attack. The jammers, by their very nature, were noisy, and could be detected many millions of kilometers away. If one attack was detected, their jammers would come on, signaling all the missiles to go to sprint mode, jamming on. We felt this approach would generate the most impact on the bugs. We were going for as noisy an attack as possible. We wanted to shock them out of complacency, and to fear us. In other words, we were trying to trick them.
Ninety minutes into the attack, we detected Mark 65 jammers coming on line from the furthest bug flotilla. Seconds later, accounting for time lag, the other two groups of Mark 65’s came up. We now had a total of 48 capital missiles in space, representing the second largest single assault by capital missiles in over forty years. In both cases, Hawks launched all of them.
Alpha Squadron radioed that they had been unable to get in as close as desired, so they launched at five million kilometers and the jammers came on at three million. The missiles would be able to sprint all the way in, but it gave the bugs a lot of time to kill them. Our sensors indicated that hundreds of defensive energy weapons were already targeting the incoming missiles.
We detected a missile detonation, then another, and another. It looked as if the bugs were getting more kills than expected, earlier than expected, which was, well, unexpected. I wanted to know how they were doing it, but I would have to wait; our crews were busy.
We detected defensive missile launches from the Hawks as they attempted to egress. Interspersed with their own launches, as well as large numbers of bug missiles. They were launching far more missiles than in the past. Their missiles were relatively easy to kill, but there was the danger of simply getting swamped. Elian said, “Those buggers are adapting very well to our tactics. Not good.”
We were now seeing missile launches from all three flotillas. By our count, we had already lost a third of the 65’s and they still had a long way to go. Additionally, we continued to see 15’s getting launched, indicating very heavy coverage well outside the usual perimeters the bugs maintained.
We saw the first evidence that someone’s missiles were hitting their target. One bug destroyer came under heavy missile fire, and then laser fire.
I said, “That bug probably laid quietly, well outside their perimeter and our guys ran into it. It looks like the destroyer is paying for being so cute, however.” Elian said, “If it is in fact a destroyer. I’d hate to run into the same class of cruiser we ran into.”
I nodded my head grimly. This watching from a distance as men and women launched an attack I planned was pure agony.
Almost simultaneously, we saw an intense exchange of laser fire, and multiple missile launches. That destroyer was getting hammered, but it appeared there were some bug fighters entering the fray as well.
Suddenly, the bug destroyer exploded. Seconds later, two fighters went up with it. So far, things were going our way. Finally, we received our first communication: since the bugs now knew we were visiting, security was less important.
Charley Squadron leader reported that one of his Hawks was getting lased pretty heavily and they had to go to max acceleration to evade a large number of fighters. They were running out of room to maneuver, but four other Hawks sent a blizzard of the brand new and super fast 15g. This was a nasty surprise to four fighters, who were hit and exploded.
Hawk Seven (Flight of the Hawk) Page 40