by Mark Wandrey
“Main gun charged,” Edwards reported. “I have a firing solution on Bogey Three.”
“Match bearings and fire,” Alexis ordered.
The Pegasus’ two operational fusion plants were fed dense streams of hydrogen through microscopic discontinuities in their magnetic bottles. The tiny suns inside flared with immense power, which was captured by radio-thermocouples and translated into energy that was fed to the ship’s main weapon. In the front quarter of the ship, banks of massive capacitors received the power from the reactors, and in seconds they were fully energized. On Edwards’ status panel, the spinal mount status blinked ‘charged.’
“Firing,” he said. After a quick check through his pinlinks to verify the target was in the anticipated strike window, he touched the release button.
Terawatts of power surged into the densely-stacked lines of accelerator coils. One after another they discharged into the next coil, and the next, and onward. This progression took less than a microsecond. Exactly one-quarter of a second after Edwards’ stubby finger touched the button, Pegasus’ spinal-mounted gun discharged a one second long, 40-terawatt pulse of coherent energy which traveled to the Yushispa at the speed of light. It stuck a glancing blow off the cruiser’s shields.
“They anticipated the shot and had their shields up,” Glick said, “although one of their shields was overloaded.”
Damn, Alexis cursed inwardly. Although she hadn’t wanted to destroy the other ship, she’d hoped for a quick disabling shot to take them out of the fight. The other two escorts might then have rethought the entire engagement.
“Noted,” she said. “Standard recharge. Power to secondary weapons and shields, 20-percent reserve.”
“I have missile launch,” Glick said, “tracking 20 inbound missiles from Bogey Three; target is now maneuvering evasively.”
“Drone status?” Paka called out.
“Drone Control,” a ghostly voice said over the intercom, “First Squadron is away. Second Squadron in 20 seconds.”
“Enemy missiles’ time to impact, 39 seconds,” Glick said.
Alexis hissed. Too damned close.
“Load aft tubes with anti-missile missiles and fire.”
Paka glanced at Alexis as Edwards executed the order. It took a little more than 10 seconds to change from offensive to defensive missiles. Once the aft tubes, half their complement of launchers, were loaded with defensive missiles, it would severely limit their offensive punch. The clock clicked down until Edwards spoke again.
“Firing anti-missile missiles,” he said, and the status board showed the green specks flying away. Outside the ship, twelve missiles left their tubes like the spokes of a wheel. A split second after inert gas expelled them into space, they spun to face forward, ignited their engines, and accelerated away at 1,000 gravities.
Pegasus was ringed with a squadron of 10 drone fighters, and the second squadron had just finished exiting the landing bay when the defensive missiles reached their targets. The two flights of missiles approached each other at hundreds of miles per second, far too fast for a Human to react. Their computer brains analyzed data they’d been preprogramed with before launch and sensor data gathered during their flight. The inbound missiles tried to evade anything that kept them from reaching their objective; the outbound ones strove to kill the first.
The anti-missile missiles were relatively simple. They used terminal guidance to place themselves in the path of an oncoming missile, and when less than a mile away they detonated a pair of charges. The first turned the carefully crafted nose cone into a near wall of high density shrapnel. The enemy missile would have to fly through the debris. No matter how tough the anti-ship missile might be, hitting a piece of hardened-alloy steel with a combined closing velocity of several hundred miles per second would end it. The second charge turned the booster into similar junk, thus increasing the odds of a kill, if only by a tiny amount. At so close a range, the detonation window was less than a picosecond.
“Fifteen of the incoming missiles destroyed,” Glick said, “and one more is wild.”
“Reloads won’t be available in time,” Edwards said.
“Drone Control, get those drones away so I can maneuver to shoot, god damn it!” Alexis ordered.
“Clear,” the passionless voice announced.
“Paka!”
“Roll the ship, engage with all lasers!” the Veetanho snarled. The two squadrons of 10 drone fighters shot away from their mothership at high acceleration, clearing the battlecruiser’s threat box.
Spaced along the Pegasus’ cylindrical hull were three rings of eight laser emitters. As soon as the fight went hot, their covers slid aside, and the emitters rose on short projections to give them a wider area of fire. The maneuvering thruster fired again, the ship spun to afford the lasers more targeting opportunities, and the lasers began firing.
Each emitter was a complicated series of mirrors and a camera. Depending on the power needed, each could generate a single 100-megawatt beam, or be split into four 20-megawatt beams, which were ideal for missile and fighter intercept. In an instant, a deadly light-show of 96 lasers was flashing out at the surviving missiles.
Sensors locked onto the five rapidly approaching missiles and guided the laser fire. The intercepting beams crisscrossed in a complicated algorithm designed to cover as much space as possible in the missiles’ flight paths. It was extremely effective. All five were vaporized in seconds, the last one less than 50 miles out.
“All missiles intercepted,” Edwards confirmed.
“High-G maneuver,” Alexis ordered, “widen their target box!”
“Four Gs of thrust,” Paka ordered, “skew turn, bring her about to 165-mark-210!”
As the maneuver began, a Tri-V globe formed in the center of the CIC. A miniature Pegasus was in the center of the sphere, oriented so it’s nose pointed at the nose of the actual ship. Flashing red points showed the bearings to the three enemy ships, and steady blue dots showed the ship’s drone fighters, now racing away nearly as fast as missiles in two groups of 10.
In the center of the ship, the CIC felt little of the turn. Centrifugal forces were minimized there, one of the many reasons why the CIC was located where it was. Most of the officers were strapped into self-orienting chairs, or locked in place (for the aliens). The only one who preferred to just wing it was Paka. The somewhat rodent-like Veetanho would simply cling to whatever console she was currently using.
As the ship spun and built thrust, the CIC crew were shifted sideways and pressed into their seats. Outside, the ship pointed to the new bearing, and its fusion torch flared with blinding power, altering the ship’s course in a wide skew turn.
“New course and bearing set,” Chug reported. His piloting station had a series of suction points that locked his shell in place against the forces the ship experienced.
“Forward missile batteries target the cruiser,” Alexis ordered. “Fire!”
Twelve missiles left the forward tubes. Just like the defensive missiles, these were fired straight out from the hull; they aligned on their targets and shot away under high acceleration. Only these were ship-killers, larger and slower than their anti-missile counterparts, but infinitely more dangerous.
“Missiles away,” Edwards confirmed.
“Configure laser batteries for ship-to-ship fire,” Alexis ordered. Outside the ship, the mirrors on the laser pylons shifted to fire single beams while the smaller point defense lasers prepared to take up the slack.
“The frigates are intercepting the missiles,” Glick said.
“Good,” Alexis said. “Edwards, target Bogey Two, all bearing lasers, and fire.”
Fifteen of the 24 laser emitters had clear bearing on the intended target. Each laser only consumed a tiny fraction of the power used by the spinal mount; fifteen lasers burned 1,500 megawatts per pulse. Only fifteen ten-thousandths the output of the spinal mount. However, they weren’t powered by the spinal mount’s capacitor banks, they drew directly from
their own power feeds. They fired constantly in 100 millisecond bursts while the spinal mount slowly charged.
The enemy frigate was slightly over a light second away. Pegasus fired 10 bursts from each laser before the first hit its target. The 100-megawatt pulses tracked along the anticipated course of the frigate, peppering the target box with coherent beams of laser energy. One in five had its wavelength modulated slightly to make the beam more visible to the ship’s sensors.
Fighting a battle hundreds of thousands of miles from your enemy, when both ships are moving, sometimes at extreme angles and speeds to each other, is a duel of prediction and guessing. In some ways, it was like old Earth WWII anti-aircraft gunners trying to predict the flight paths of incoming fighter planes. Computers analyzed the enemy ship’s flight path, then added its drive characteristics and any details available about its commander to come up with a probable targeting solution.
The intermittently visible shots acted like tracers for targeting, helping the gunnery computers and tactical team fine tune their follow-up shots. The first several dozen pulses hit nothing; the next were on target. The frigate was concentrating its fire on the flight of missiles targeted at their cruiser, the job of an escort. To be effective, they were not evading. The ship was a nice, steady target.
The frigate’s shields lit up as thousands of megawatts of energy poured into them. The ship’s commander realized his peril too late, as the entire might of the battlecruiser Pegasus’ bearing laser batteries unloaded fifteen gigawatts of energy into his vessel’s shields in one shuddering second of violence. Hole after foot-wide hole was punched into the ship, penetrating armor, burning through bulkheads, and destroying vital interior spaces.
“Multiple hits,” Flipper confirmed.
“They’re hurt,” Glick said as he analyzed the ship’s energy profile in the data fed by Flipper.
“Finish it,” Paka ordered. Another second of laser fire shredded the smaller ship. A series of bright flashes were visible across the many thousands of miles separating them.
“Their reactors are hit,” Flipper said. “They’re adrift.”
Without the benefit of both its frigates providing defensive laser fire, the cruiser was no longer in a favorable position. One of the Pegasus’ missiles made it through and detonated against its shields with a spectacular flash.
“Cruiser took one,” Flipper said.
“Their forward shields are down,” Glick said excitedly.
“Redirect lasers to the cruiser,” Alexis said.
The lasers stabbed out at the cruiser, and missed as it performed its own skew turn. Follow-up shots hit, but on the still-powered flanking and aft shields. Alexis grunted and nodded; Geshakooka was an accomplished combat ship’s master.
“Hits on port forward quarter shields,” Edwards announced. “Multiple hits, 100-megawatt range. Shields down 10%.” Then a second later. “Additional hits, ventral forward quarter shields. These are 20-megawatt, but rapid fire. Shields are down five percent, 10, now 15!”
“Roll the ship,” Paka ordered.
“Drone Control,” Alexis said, “time on target?”
“Approximately 20 seconds,” the voice replied. “Target?”
“Take out the other escort.” She knew the cruiser was the bigger threat, but the drone fighters didn’t carry missiles. Each was a 12-foot-long flattened cylinder with a miniature fusion reactor, a tiny fusion torch drive, electronic brain, sensors, and a small shield generator. They were armed with a single, two-megawatt high-pulse-rate laser, and could carry a single ship-killer missile in place of the laser. Individually, they weren’t a threat to a capital ship, but in squadron-sized formations, they were a serious problem.
“Acknowledged,” Drone Control replied.
A light second away, the two squadrons of drones turned like a flock of birds toward the second frigate in a complex and well-orchestrated attack pattern. The frigate maneuvered and fired at the drones with its main lasers as well as its smaller defensive lasers. The ship’s larger lasers couldn’t come close to the darting fighters, and the point-defense lasers were stopped by the drone’s shields. Several of the frigate’s little one-megawatt point lasers scored enough hits, though, that two drones lost their shields, and one was destroyed. Then the drones struck.
Acting as one, the two squadrons suddenly came together in a pin-wheeling formation and fired. The frigate’s commander gasped in surprise at the coordinated attack. Drones didn’t work together with that level of intelligence! The impact area on the frigate’s shields was only 20 feet across. Almost 40 megawatts of laser energy slashed into the shield 20 times per second. The shield failed in a second and a half, and the drones altered their aim points and spread their fire along the entire length of the unshielded hull. The 19 drone fighters shredded the frigate.
“Second frigate is down,” Flipper informed. “Cruiser is disengaging.”
“Pursuit?” Paka asked her commander. Alexis considered having the drones finish the job. But did Captain Geshakooka and his crew deserve to die because they took a shit contract from a shit syndicate?
“High probability of new aggressors in our threat box,” Glick warned. “Based on the direction of retreat and posture of Bogey One.” Alexis cursed under her breath. Of course, with as big an operation as Transki had mounted here, they wouldn’t have left emergence interdiction to a single cruiser squadron. Captain Geshakooka had just been buying time.
“Very well, Paka, disengage.”
“Recover drones,” the XO ordered. “Chug, come about to course 45-mark-160, three gravities.” Pegasus spun, though without the urgency of earlier maneuvers, and began to boost away from the area of engagement. Her drone fighters changed course to match for intercept. Five minutes later, their sensors picked up exactly what Glick had predicted.
“Drones relay multiple new targets,” Flipper reported. “I have at least two cruisers, one battlecruiser, nine escorts…” he paused to examine the data, “and there is a high probability of a battleship.”
“Continue present course,” Alexis ordered, “increase power to five gravities, and deploy decoy drones.” Paka gave the orders. “Drone Control, bring your fighters back cold.” The alarm sounded and the warship groaned under the huge acceleration.
“Acknowledged.” The order would cause the drones to split up and go dark for several minutes, which kept the enemy from getting a clear heading to the Pegasus. Once Pegasus had time to pull away, the drones would rendezvous with her. The fusion torch poured on the power as the ship launched decoys, cylindrical canisters with radioactive debris whose signature, from a distance, resembled a fusion torch under thrust. “Once we have some space between us and our pursuers,” Alexis grunted under five times her normal weight, “launch a message drone to the stargate and schedule a dedicated transition.”
Paka’s long neck craned around from where she’d been clinging to the sensor operator’s position. Her XO knew only too well how expensive such a stargate activation would be. She also knew it was all but impossible for them to come in and make it through the stargate at any of the scheduled windows. Transki would be sure to be waiting for them.
“Decrease thrust to one gravity in five minutes,” Alexis said, struggling to breath. “Expected time of arrival at the stargate?”
“Approximately eleven hours if we flip at midpoint,” Chug said.
“And if we don’t?” Alexis asked. Now she had the attention of everyone on the bridge.
“Seven hours,” he replied. “We’d arrive at the stargate going approximately 150 miles per second.” The CIC was quiet except for the background chatter of crew relaying information as five minutes passed. Everyone struggled under the ship’s power, quietly bearing it. Then the fusion torch throttled back to a smooth one G. Alexis breathed a sigh, her chest aching from five long minutes of breathing in high gravity.
“I’ll have additional orders in three hours,” she said as she released her restraints and headed for her wardroo
m adjacent to the CIC. “XO, would you join me?”
Paka followed her captain. “What do you need, Captain?” she asked once inside the small office.
“This situation sucks,” Alexis said, dropping into her chair. Paka stood next to one of two seats in the wardroom.
“So how is this different from any other day?” The line was delivered completely deadpan. Alexis looked at her XO for a long moment, then shook her head and laughed. Paka gave a few chipping laughs herself.
“All joking aside,” the captain said, “this is the second system in a row where we blundered into a,” she lifted her fingers like quotation marks, “‘combat situation.’ That’s ridiculous.”
Paka nodded in agreement. The statement was accurate. “It’s a dangerous universe.”
“From now on, I want our drone fighters locked on the hull for combat deployment at all times. Go crack the whip on Long and find a damned way to get that reactor back on line.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Paka said. She gave a little bow before leaving. Alexis stared at the door long after the Veetanho was gone. Finally, she put her hands on her desk and closed her eyes.
“Do you know anything that can help?” Alexis asked.
Silence for a few moments.
“Yes,” Alexis said. Their last contract before the current one had been to travel to the Morphut system and provide space defenses for the Wathayat trader syndicate. When they’d arrived, they found nothing but death and destruction. No signs of a raid, only carnage. There were no survivors, and inconceivable amounts of damage to the planet.
“Okay, but how does that affect us here, now?”