Hawk Seven (Flight of the Hawk)

by Little, Robert

  At ten hours the Hawk suffered a total failure. Within three minutes Elian’s shuttle left the destroyer and slowly crossed over to the drifting craft. We pulled the crew off and set the missiles to detonate on command.

  I hated the thought of killing that ship, but we could not let it fall into the hands of this terribly hostile race, and we couldn’t stuff it in our empty shuttle bay, as it was too big.

  As soon as the shuttle returned, we upped our acceleration to six G’s. I was very nervous about being so close to all those war ships but I hesitated to go to max acceleration as we were under strict orders not to reveal any of our abilities.

  Presumably, this particular clutch of bugs hadn’t been in communication with the others, and it wouldn’t know our capabilities. We hadn’t seen any unusual activity from the flotilla, but I well remembered how they reacted to anyone or anything that came near them, which we still were.

  The necessity of using the shuttle to pull the crew off was a calculated risk. Its drive system hadn’t been shielded and was far noisier than our ships and we were still very close to the flotilla, but it was far easier than transferring the crew over to another Hawk.

  I lost the gamble.

  Our rear guard reported a burst of activity, and we came to the conclusion that it most probably signaled their discovery of us. Fortunately, they would have spotted the emissions from the shuttle, which matched the other shuttle, but which gave them no information on anything else.

  We were strung pretty far apart, with three Hawks drifting along one million kilometers behind the Dresdens. I told them to kick it up to eight G’s and catch up with us. If we were going to be attacked we needed to close up so we could support each other. Even now, we could have gone to max acceleration and successfully evaded their pursuit, but as long as there was a chance to skulk away, I had to try.

  We began to see the emissions of a large mass of fighters and a pair of larger vessels, accelerating toward our location. I made a radical change of direction but maintained six G’s. The trailing Hawks cut the corner and caught up to us while the Bugs continued toward the general area where the shuttle pulled our crew off. If they continued on to where we had been, we would be outside of their detection range by the time they arrived. I felt that we would still be able to successfully extract ourselves from the flotilla.

  I ordered everyone to battle stations and asked the Hawk crews for a rundown on their condition, just because. Everyone reported that their boards were green. We had eight Hawks, each one with twelve internal missiles and four external, for a total of one hundred twenty eight missiles that could function as either defensive or offensive weapons.

  The Dresdens held one hundred and twenty capital missiles each, plus eight tubes with sixteen missiles each. We had a lot of firepower, but I didn’t want to use it, partly because I didn’t want to have to kill any more of these beings, and partly because I didn’t want them to learn anything about us.

  The bugs continued under high acceleration and arrived at the general area where we had transferred our crew, at which time the fighters began to fan out in a search pattern. They now had sixty-four fighters and two ships, which we’d identified as possible destroyers by their drive characteristics.

  We were now approximately four hundred thousand kilometers distance from the approaching craft. On our present heading we would be able to increase our separation to the point where we could add in more G’s, but for now I wanted to proceed cautiously. The bugs were acting very aggressively, reminding me strongly of Elian’s hive theory.

  If they hadn’t known we were somewhere close I wouldn’t have worried excessively that they could spot us, but they did know and that increased our danger. I instructed the bridge crew to use our passive sensors to learn everything we could about the two ships, as we knew next to nothing about their armament.

  One flight of twelve fighters had changed course and was heading generally in our direction, and accelerating much harder than we were. Unless I stopped hiding and ran flat out we would have no choice but to reduce acceleration to evade detection.

  I changed our heading again, putting us back on our original course, parallel to the two destroyers in the x axis but not z, opening up the distance to the approaching fighters. If that group continued on its current heading it would pass astern of us with less than one million kilometers separation. That was quite a lot, but I had a lot of lives to worry about, so I worried.

  One of my bridge crew reported, “Sir, the two ships we reported to be destroyers are much larger than anticipated. They have the same approximate drive characteristics as the destroyers we’ve previously encountered, but their mass is far greater. We estimate, um, two hundred to three hundred thousand tons. That would make them battle cruisers, sir.”

  I hadn’t worried about our ability to take on the fighters and two destroyers, but battle cruisers were significantly larger than cruisers, which we knew to be far tougher than destroyers. I asked, “Based on this new information, what can you say about these battle cruisers’ ability to accelerate?”

  After a very brief pause, my sensor watch reported, “Sir, we believe that its maximum acceleration would be equal to or lower than a destroyer, eight or possibly nine G’s, but no more. I have no readings as yet on armaments. They’ve been at eight G’s acceleration since they moved out from their original position.” I thanked her and resumed my very casual slouch on my command couch.

  I told communications to blow the Hawk, and one minute later we saw a large flash as it detonated. I didn’t want them to find any pieces they could play with. It went up while three fighters were edging to within a hundred kilometers of it. .

  The ambassador requested a meeting with me, but I told him to remain in his quarters. I spoke to him on a closed circuit, however, and he asked, “What is happening?” I said, “One of our Hawks suffered a total loss of power. We removed the crew, but in the process the aliens caught a sniff of us and are actively trying to find us. They have sixty-four fighters and two battle cruiser sized ships out looking for us. We are safe for now, and are attempting to extricate ourselves from the area. Unless they get very lucky and head straight for us, we should be able to exit without discovery. I believe that if they do find us, we will have enough firepower to hold them off, although we have no information on those two very large ships. I do not want to have to fight them, but if they attack, we’ll have no choice.”

  The ambassador looked at me with an excellent poker face and surprised me by saying, ‘Lieutenant, I am satisfied that you are making every effort to avoid discovery instead of looking for a reason to kill them, and I will report that to my superiors. I will not take up any more of your valuable time.” With that, he closed the connection.

  Huh! He was sounding more and more like a nice man, albeit one I wouldn’t trust on a well-lit street corner, much less in an alley. As a guess, he assumed that I would avoid contact as a matter of policy. He’d never seen what one of their cruisers could do, or he wouldn’t have come to that conclusion.

  We continued to edge away from their groups of fighters. The two battle cruisers were staying together and continuing along the original track with twenty-four fighters along for company. They were accelerating at the upper limit of our guesstimate, or eight G’s and since their course now paralleled ours, they were catching up to us, although they would still be about one million kilometers off to starboard. I didn’t like the fact that we were getting boxed in, but for the moment felt that we were still better off trying to avoid them.

  The next hour was stressful, but our luck continued to hold. The closest fighter group passed behind us, forcing us to lower our acceleration to three G’s as they neared. They didn’t detect us, but I now had that group behind and off to one side and the two battle cruisers with their fighters on the other side. We were probably capable of handling both groups, but it occurred to me that I would have been better off if we had simply gone to max acceleration from the beginning. Hinds
ight can be cruel. I talked to Elian, noting that their formation was very two-dimensional. They’d kept the largest bulk of their fighters close to the two battle cruisers and sent two groups off on tangents but in the same plane. Why? It didn’t make sense to me, pissing me off. These people did nothing in any way, shape or form that would be logical to a human.

  The group behind us reversed direction and began coming back, now straight at us. I decided that they were running a search pattern that would eventually bring them back to the battle cruisers, but we were now nearly directly in front of their new course. And I now had a real problem.

  We changed course once again, heading ninety degrees off our former heading. The new course took us directly away from the battle cruisers but it would once again bring the fighters behind us to within two or three hundred thousand kilometers, not normally anywhere near enough to allow them to detect us. However, they knew we were somewhere in the vicinity, and were aggressively looking, greatly raising the chance for them to get a sniff of us.

  I dropped our acceleration down to one G and spread the Hawks out into a formation that helped mask their drive systems and put them between us and the closest bugs.

  We had no body of combat experience that enabled us to determine precisely how stealthy the Dresdens were and in the absence of firm data I was having to guess, doing so on the conservative side. At our low acceleration, we assumed that we were invisible down to less than one hundred thousand kilometers distance, but although these were bugs, they weren’t the same bugs, and we already knew there were important differences between this group and the others.

  Our previous encounters with bug fighters indicated that we still had ample room to hide in, but this group was not behaving as expected, nor were the characteristics of those two very large ships similar to what we’d previously encountered. Elian commed and said, “Robert, let’s not make the mistake of thinking these people are going to behave exactly like the others, or that their equipment is identical.” I agreed.

  We had been at battle stations now for six hours, and my people were getting tired. I had food brought to them but I couldn’t do anything more until we were safely free of these very busy fighters.

  Alarms shrilled on our bridge as all four flights of fighters launched missiles that began streaking off in all directions. Neither the launch nor their spread pattern made any sense for a moment, then it hit me: they knew someone was out there and they were beating the bushes. The missiles sped outward in an expanding cone in a corkscrew search pattern and I had to nod my head in admiration. This was a tactic I hadn’t ever considered, hadn’t believed was possible, but unfortunately it looked as if it was going to be successful.

  Two missiles were on a heading that would take them within ten thousand kilometers of us. They had identical drive characteristic to the ones we had become so familiar with, so we knew they had a lot of drive time and excellent seeker heads.

  I ordered the Hawk closest to the missiles to laser them the moment one or the other targeted us. I advised all our ships that as soon as that missile was splashed we would accelerate at the maximum rate the Dresdens could pull. I added that we would not fire a missile or otherwise react unless we were discovered.

  The missiles did in fact have a good seeker head, because at fifteen thousand kilometers the closest changed course directly for a Hawk. Almost simultaneously the Hawks two lasers lashed it, causing it to explode.

  We immediately went to max acceleration, changing our course once again to maintain as large a separation between the two large ships and us as possible. Seconds later, the second missile was intercepted. The new course also headed us away from the twelve fighters, but they had an overtake velocity relative to us so if they had any more missiles we might have to deal with them within a fairly short time.

  The battle cruisers and the other fighters changed course and upped their acceleration to their maximum rate, which was about thirteen G’s for the fighters, and the expected eight for those two very large ships. Almost immediately the battle cruisers began launching missiles, eight at a time from each one. Their missiles could do twenty G’s, so perhaps their designers didn’t worry so much about what the ships could do.

  We were only two million kilometers distant from them now, so we were within their missile envelope, although we should have sufficient time to kill them. However, every forty seconds each ship launched eight missiles. We already had forty-eight coming at us and those two ships were large enough to have big magazines. Our situation was rapidly worsening.

  I ordered the rearmost Hawks to tuck in as close as possible to us and decided at the same time that we couldn’t afford not to use missiles. I told the Hawks to dedicate their missiles to kill the oncoming fighters while the Dresdens took on the battle cruisers.

  We began launching capital missiles and within one minute we had sixteen missiles heading back at the two battle cruisers. I wanted to kill them but I didn’t want to waste missiles doing so. I had targeted just one ship, on the assumption that if fifty percent of our missiles got through, that should be more than enough.

  Steady streams of counter missiles streaked back at the much slower bug missiles, nearly always getting a hit. Massive explosions lit the darkness of space, each one a little closer to us.

  As our capital missiles approached the battle cruisers the two ships plus their escorting fighters began firing a truly extraordinary number of defensive lasers at them. Their accuracy was excellent, despite the much higher acceleration our missiles could attain, compared to theirs.

  One by one our missiles started to explode, and I realized that we would have to swamp those ships if we wanted to hit them. I ordered a second launch of forty-eight capital missiles and sent in all sixty-four of the slower 15h’s to make their targeting solutions more difficult. I was reasonably confident that one hundred plus missiles ought to be able to take those two ships out.

  For the moment we were killing their missiles just as fast as they launched them, but if this continued I feared the battle cruisers had more missiles than we did. They had already launched one hundred sixty, with no end in sight.

  I timed the launch and sent forty of the faster 15g’s in at the two battle cruisers so that the faster missiles would get to the battle cruisers at about the same time as the slower capital missiles and 15h’s. They would have nearly one hundred fifty missiles to deal with. It should take only one or two capital missile to disable those ships.

  The last of the first launch of capital missiles was destroyed well short of its target, which was very bad news indeed. Those two ships had immensely capable missile defense systems, far better than we’d previously seen.

  I asked for an estimate of how much longer we would be within their missile envelope, and was told that within fifteen minutes we would begin opening the distance, and approximately twenty minutes later we would be out of range. That was a sobering amount of time. We had the ability to send two more similar sized groups of capital missiles, and it looked as if we might have to. Their lasers were reducing our missiles much more rapidly than expected. I ordered the missiles to turn on their jamming systems, but it took nearly a minute for the message to reach them. Seven capital missiles were hit in that time.

  Finally, their jamming systems came up, messing our screens for a moment. As soon as they cleared I saw that they had some success at making the bugs targeting systems work harder. I’d timed the two strikes well, and despite the large number of hits, we still had nearly one hundred missiles in flight. It looked like we might have some success this time.

  Elian commed me from his bridge and said, “Robert, they seem to be able to tell the difference between the 67’s and the 15’s. They are concentrating nearly totally on killing the larger ones. We may not get a hit with the 67’s and I don’t think the 15’s will even dent those monsters. We have a problem here. What do you want to do?”

  I said, “Let’s wait to see what happens. One hit should at least take the ship o
ut of the fight. Maybe take it out.”

  Explosions pocked space as our missiles flashed in. Three of the larger ones got through and hit, two on one ship and a single one on the second. We saw evidence of atmosphere on the first, and the ship’s acceleration faltered for a minute, then came back up. The second ship seemed unharmed. Eighteen of the smaller missiles struck and exploded, their small warheads doing no apparent damage to either ship. These were tanks.

  Elian and I conferred and decided to launch all the remaining capital missiles. Since they were able to differentiate between the two types, we would save the smaller ones for our own defense. It looked like we might need all of them.

  I had retasked the Hawks with missile defense and they quickly emptied their magazines at the incoming missiles, rather than the fighters, which were not a danger to us at present. The fighters had not fired any additional missiles, hopefully meaning they had none left, and they were still outside of energy weapon range.

  None of the battle cruiser missiles had gotten any closer than two hundred thousand kilometers, but those ships were still launching, over three hundred by now. I couldn’t imagine that they had many more, but we would run out of counter missiles just with the ones they’d already launched.