by Kalina, Mark
But to attain maximum range, two lasers were needed for each interceptor launched. A PLA, even venting coolant, couldn't keep lasing for the entire time it took to boost an interceptor to its maximum range. Instead, one PLA powered the interceptor till heat buildup forced it to shut down, and then a second PLA took over, firing at maximum power for a shorter duration to accelerate the distant interceptor on its final attack vector.
In the case of his ships, each laser pod would work only once, but in the short term it actually didn't matter much that a conventional ship's lasers would come back online after cooling down where his would be burned out; for a single long range salvo, the effect would be much the same.
Using two lasers per interceptor meant that a maximum range attack reduced his salvo by half. Of course, if the enemy fired at maximum range as well, their salvo would also be reduced.
The temptation to fire at maximum range was substantial, especially given how heavy his salvo would be, even using two lasers per interceptor. It avoided the risk of a long range enemy attack killing or crippling his ships before his own attack hit them. And if the enemy decided to wait and launch at a shorter range, it offered him a chance to destroy them without suffering their attack.
On the other hand, there was the risk that his attack would not be decisive. Given a chance to react, the assault-ship's enormous firepower could be a very effective defense. And if he launched first, at long range, the enemy would see the size of his salvo in time to react. They might cut power to their own long range attack and launch a full salvo of defensive interceptors.
The assault-ship could launch two dozen interceptors in time for close range defense; that would be one-to-one odds against the maximum of twenty-four that he could send out to long range for an attack. And the huge ship also had a massive battery of secondary laser arrays, designed for anti-interceptor fire. And the assault-ship was a tough target, with huge bow-shields and heavy external and internal armor. It still wasn't good odds for the assault-ship, but it was possible that she could successfully defend herself.
And if his attack failed, he would not get another chance. The assault-ship's lasers would cool down and be ready to fire again; his weapons would require a full refit with fresh laser pods.
He might still be able to escape; his ships were much faster and the closure rate was very high. But if the assault ship did manage a second salvo while he was still in range there would be very little he could do to defend himself.
And even if he escaped, he would have no chance of re-engaging the assault-ship. At best he would have to flee or die. So if he did escape, the mission would be a failure. The Hegemony forces would survive. The test of the new technology would be deemed a failure. Worse, the Hegemony would know something about his ships. They would not know the details of how a lance-ship had fired such a salvo; he did not intend to get close enough to the enemy to let them get that good a look at his ships. But they would know the basic facts of what his ships could do. They might also deduce that it could be done only once; why else would he run after the first shot?
On the other hand, if he managed to destroy the assault-ship, then the situation was very different indeed. He would be safe, and he would have proven the new technology.
The surviving swift-ships were a problem. The plan had made the reasonable assumption that one or two fast lance-ships would be the Hegemony's response to his raiders. Lance-ships did not usually have swift-ship escorts; they were fast enough not to need the smaller ships.
The swift-ships would be almost impossible to catch... Maybe an FTL transit to drop his ships right on top of them? That was a very hard thing to actually manage... Trying to force an FTL transit over such a short range, with such a high degree of precision, might destabilize his ships' singularity reactors and leave him drifting helpless in the face of whatever further response the Hegemony sent. No, that wasn't a realistic option.
So that meant, with two swift-ships in the system, the Hegemony would know about his ships' firepower. Very well. But if he killed the assault-ship, they would have no way of knowing it was a single-use capability; they would know he had that firepower, but nothing more than that. And in any event, he did not want to trade the secret away for free; let them pay an assault-ship for that knowledge.
All of that meant that he had to kill the assault-ship. And that meant a close range attack. If he waited till the interceptors' flight times were down to less than eight minutes, he would need only one boost stage for each interceptor. Each one of his lasers could power a separate interceptor. That meant that together, his two ships could salvo a total of forty-eight interceptors at once; it would take a fleet to match that attack with conventional weapons. Of course that meant that the enemy would probably get the first shot...
He could let them launch first, and then deploy a part of his interceptor capacity for defense, loading some of his interceptors with only anti-interceptor warheads. An assault-ship should be able to launch twelve interceptors against him at long range, assuming they held nothing back for defense. If he launched twelve interceptors for defense he would have a fighting chance at defending himself and still have thirty-six left for attack. And the defensive salvo would be what the enemy would expect to see; two conventional lance-ships firing together could salvo a maximum of twelve interceptors.
Overall, he thought, the odds were good. With thirty-six interceptors in an attack salvo, he would be almost sure of a kill. Of course, there was no certainty that his defensive interceptors would stop the enemy attack. But even if one of his ships was lost, half his attack, eighteen interceptors, would reach the enemy. Even if the enemy abandoned its own attack and switched its lasers to defense, those lasers would already be hot, with less firing time available.
So that was the crux of it, Grantsen thought. He could take the chance on a cheap victory and risk defeat. Or else accept the probability of losses and casualties, and with them gain an almost certain victory. Either way, there would be only this one chance.
And there was really only one answer. He had to gain the victory, or else this whole operation was for nothing. He would take his ships into close interceptor range, suffer what he must, and kill the enemy. Now that his decision was made, he felt a flow of confidence. He might not survive the battle to come; almost certainly some, perhaps many of the people under his command would not, but it was the right decision.
Grantsen looked at the oversight officer, and let the ghost of a smile touch his face. At least if it all went wrong, there was an excellent chance that the red-coat would die too.
Segan Steven, Category Two Oversight Officer to the Coalition lance-ship Swift Liberty, focused for a moment on his data feed and watched the faces of the officers whom he oversaw. He could see the tension in the set of the mouths of the bridge officers, the well hidden contempt in the eyes of the commander. Well hidden enough, the oversight officer judged, and easily justified.
It was not easy to play the buffoon for such an extended deployment, but then, the job wasn't promised to be easy, and the knife one did not see was the most dangerous. The commander seemed, seemed to be adequate. But then an experimental ship like this was no place for mere seeming, and a disloyal officer was much more likely to be sloppy with a fool of an oversight officer to watch him than with a competent one. Some men in Segan's position would have chosen to act friendly, reasonable; to show the officers they watched that there would be no trouble for politically suspect acts or statements. It was an effective way to lure fools off their guard, but useless at finding competent traitors. So to this ship, he was a buffoon, a fool in a red coat, prancing about and speaking in tired clichés like a propaganda vid. If it lured a disloyal officer off his guard it was well worth it
But he did not think anyone on this ship was disloyal enough to really warrant deep concern. Some impropriety was tolerable, even desirable, if it came with operational effectiveness and stopped short of a destructive level. Not that he would ever show that thought,
through word or deed. Ideas could be spread like viruses, amongst the tension of a warship, and men who knew their loyalty was being monitored were less likely to be infected with disloyalty; to a point. That, of course, was the other advantage of the buffoon; he could simply "fail to notice" the everyday, harmless disloyalties of the crew, allowing them to actually do their jobs while not in the least letting them think their improprieties were known of and tolerated.
It would be interesting to see this crew in battle. That, after all, was the real test of a warship's crew. It would show their effectiveness, and whether or not it was high enough to merit his continued tolerance of their minor infractions. An effective crew was worth some tolerance, after all. An ineffective crew was worth very little indeed. He'd soon see.
7
The interceptor was a narrow spike of metal and ceramic, black as space and, where the hull was not interrupted by external hardware, smooth as glass. Zandy ran her hand along the hull of Interceptor CS-1-4. The ten meter long craft was nestled in its support cradle, one of six that were about to be loaded into the forward-starboard launch tubes. The interceptor was festooned with clusters of long "harpoons," nuclear detonation x-ray laser warheads fitted along the interceptor's sides. There were a dozen anti-interceptor warheads and six bigger anti-ship warheads; these were the business end of the tiny fighter-missile. Each warhead was a six-meter-long needle of metal. The anti-interceptor warheads were barely 10 centimeters in diameter, and the anti-ship warheads were only twice as wide. The x-ray lasing rods took up most of that length, with the actual warhead and short-duration fission pulse-drive crammed into the last meter of the weapon. Zandy smiled grimly. This time would be for real; no simulations now. Those warheads were live; multi-kiloton nukes for the anti-interceptor weapons and megaton-yield nukes for the anti-ship warheads.
She stepped forward to look at the retracted panels of the bow-shields, ran a hand along the sensors masts that would extend to look past the shield, then stepped aft to inspect the reflector array that, once opened to its full twelve meter span, would help focus laser energy onto the interceptor's drive. The drive section was retracted for now; in space it would extend from the rear of the interceptor, almost doubling the craft's length, placing the reaction mass nozzle right at the focus point of the reflectors. When the laser energy from one of the Conquering Sun's PLAs focused on it, the drive would be able to accelerate the interceptor at almost ninety gees.
Zandy looked over the glossy half spheres of the interceptor's laser arrays. The little lasers lacked the power to burn though heavy armor, but they would be able to blind an enemy interceptor's sensors. Aside for the bow-shields, the little lasers and the radical evasions made possible by the interceptor's huge acceleration were her only defense. She ran a hand along the cluster of recessed launch tubes for her sensor drones. Those would be her eyes when the main sensors of the interceptor were blinded by the glare of enemy lasers. Everything looked perfect.
It was odd, she thought, to be touching one of her bodies with the hand of the other... Now there was a thought only a daemon could have, Zandy mused. She could see the distorted reflection of her biosim face in the smooth metal of the interceptor, and for a moment it was as if the interceptor wore the same face. She wondered briefly which one was actually "her."
But there was no time for that sort of thing now. She focused her mind and turned away from the interceptor. It was time to head to the avatar storage compartment, where her current body would be safely stored while she inhabited the interceptor. There was just enough time left to walk to her assigned storage compartment before the Conquering Sun dispensed with the charade that she was a freight super-liner and went to a full three gees acceleration; a few minutes after that, the enemy would be in range and the assault-ship would open fire, with Zandy, in her interceptor body, as one of the projectiles.
The avatar storage room was a familiar sight; rows and rows of storage capsules for biosims and the occasional bioavatar. In an emergency, she could have transferred into her interceptor from her quarters, or from a dozen other places in the ship, but if the Conquering Sun accelerated hard, that would risk damage to her biosim avatar, left behind while she was in the interceptor.
Zandy jostled past other crewmembers as they climbed into the capsules. Jessa was already in the command neural net, flying the ship. Her biosim avatar was already stored in one of the ship's other avatar storage rooms. Zandy climbed into a storage capsule, plugged a data line into the back of her neck, and strapped herself in. The link to her interceptor lit up inside her mind and she transferred herself: A moment of disorientation...
And she was in the interceptor; she was the interceptor. A systems check ran almost subconsciously as she tested her body: reflectors, maneuver systems, small laser arrays, sensors; all came up green, stretched and limber, ready to fly. She was used enough to the interceptor that she didn't feel a psychological need to take a deep breath. A query came into her mind and she answered it, "CS-1-4 ready to go."
She could feel the her interceptor body riding forward into the loading chamber. Status data poured into her mind. First Wave was ready.
"OK, pilots," came the "voice" of Wave Leader Handric, "we have two enemy targets, but they are lasing to blind, so you'll have to make your attacks based on the target data you have at the intercept point.
"We can expect as many as twelve defensive interceptors, but we should have the chance to see them coming and deploy anti-interceptor weaponry accordingly. Remember, though, the real target is the lance-ships; kill those and their interceptors go with them.
"Keep your bow-shields deployed and aimed at the lance-ships; no repeats of the mess-up from the last simulation.
"Zandy and I will take the edge positions; if you're starved for sensors data, put a comm-laser on us and we'll do our best to feed you data from the edge of the wave.
"Keep in mind the high closure rate on this shot; it should help us a bit; we're only going to be inside their most effective laser range for a short time. On the other hand, make sure of your aim when you launch warheads; there is way less room for error than usual.
"OK, people; God bless, good hunting, and stand by for launch."
There was a vibration that she could feel through her accelerometers as she was loaded into the launch tube. Conquering Sun would fire in a bit more than one more minute. The count-down was running as a subroutine, half-subconscious.
Someone had sent a communication to her, and she took a fraction of a second to "read" it.
"Luck," it said, with a icon of a smiling pixie attached as a signature. Zandy smiled in her own mind.
She was still "smiling" when the magnetic catapult shot her out of the Conquering Sun at fifty gees.
There were a few seconds of silent drifting as she aligned her bow-shields and flooded them with ablative polymer, then extended the drive and spread her smart-metal reflectors wide. And then, with a sudden impact of acceleration, one of the Conquering Sun's PLAs locked on and concentrated its power into her interceptor, shooting her forward at seventy gees.
The target, which she could see with a sensor mast aimed around her bow-shield, was just a spot of thermal energy, five million kilometers away, but it was closing in at more than five thousand kilometers a second.
Seen from a distant vantage point, an engagement of space warships was a visually striking sight, Freya thought. From three million kilometers away, the ships themselves were not visible, but their multi-hundred kilometer long exhaust plumes were bright spikes of violet fire.
Two of those spikes of fire were close together, only a few thousand kilometers apart: the two hostile lance-ships. Just now the two lance-ships' exhaust plumes were pointed at the much more distant third spike of fire, the Conquering Sun. The two smaller ships had built up a large overtake velocity, and now were decelerating to reduce the overtake rate; too fast a rate of closure and weapons would not be able to reliably track fleeting targets.
Both swift-s
hips, Ice Knife and Skyrunner, shadowed the attacking lance-ships, hanging back by a few million kilometers, well out of range.
The distant but fast approaching third spike of fire was the Conquering Sun, still "fleeing" at half a gee of acceleration, still hiding her actual identity behind the flare of her drive.
A more cautious attack by the lance-ships might have involved the two ships passing on either side of the target, well outside of weapons range. That would have defeated any attempt by the target to hide behind her drive plume, since a ship could only aim her drive in one direction at a time. Once the identity of the target was known, then the attackers could reform and generate a vector to intercept and engage. But these lance-ships were forgoing a careful approach. They would engage on the first pass, coming to within three hundred thousand kilometers at the point of closest approach unless they changed their current vector.
Range between the lance-ships and the assault ship was falling fast; closure rate was a startling five thousand kilometers per second, more than one percent of light speed. The two sides would be firing well before they actually came within range, aiming far "ahead" of each other to intercept the point where the enemy would be at the moment of closest approach. The lance-ships were less than ten million kilometers from the assault-ship, but at this closure rate, they would be firing at almost five million kilometers, in less than seventeen minutes, in order to have their interceptors reach the target in time to actually engage.