by Jay Allan
Compton knew it didn’t make sense. Not if you expected Midway to get out of this system. But Compton had used every trick he had, every unexpected, unpredictable move he could come up with. He was out of options. All he could do was plant Midway between the enemy and the rearguard’s exit point. And then fight like a motherfucker…and either destroy two ships that each massively outclassed his flagship, in both tonnage and tech…or go down trying.
* * *
“The buoys are deployed, Captain. Switching to standby mode now.” Fukudu’s fingers moved across her workstation. “Project nine minutes until enemy vessels reach two point five light seconds.”
Coda nodded. “Very good, Lieutenant. Arm missiles.”
Fukudu flipped a series of switches. “Missiles armed and in the tubes, sir. Ready to launch on your command.”
“Wave one…” Coda waited, counting off in his head. “…launch.”
“Wave one, launching.” Fukudu hit a button below the row of switches, and Kure shook as the spread of missiles blasted from their tubes.
Coda stared at the display, watching as the five small icons appeared. They moved out from Kure, zipping along quickly on the screen as they accelerated and blasted away from the stationary cruiser. They began to spread out almost immediately, unlike a normal missile strike.
Coda’s eyes moved to the bridge chronometer, his lips moving slowly, counting down. “Wave two,” he said calmly, “launch.”
Fukudu hit the next button, and Kure shook again, another five small dots appearing on the screen. “All weapons launched…detonation in forty-five seconds.”
Coda didn’t reply, he didn’t even nod. He just stared at the screen.
“Thirty seconds.”
Coda punched the controls of his com unit. “All ships, prepare to execute nav plan Beta-3 on my command…twenty seconds.”
“Twenty seconds,” Fukudu said, almost in unison with the captain.
Coda sat, trying to look calm for his crew. But inside he could feel the tension, the tightness in his stomach. The plan was brilliant, one more bit of genius from Terrance Compton. But it was complex too, and it required precise execution. The two waves of missiles would detonate simultaneously, bathing the front of the dust cloud with massive radiation. At the precise moment the warheads blew, the three ships would engage their thrusters for ten seconds, changing their positions and forcing the enemy to rescan for their targeting…a sensor sweep that would be largely blocked by the irradiated dust.
If he pulled it off perfectly, the enemy would have no locks on his ships, no real chance to score any hits, at least not for two or three minutes. And at close range, a few minutes was an eternity. During that two minutes, he would activate the line of scanning buoys, giving him targeting data from outside the dust cloud. Then his ships would unload on the enemy. All their remaining missiles, firing in sprint mode at point blank range, as they had in the last battle. Every laser cannon, channeling all the output of reactors running at 110%. If he’d had a guy on the outside of Kure with a box of rocks, he have had him throwing them at the enemy. It would be two minutes of concentrated, non-stop destruction. And then it would stop, and his ships would make a run for it…right to the warp gate.
Coda was concerned about the whole plan, the timing, the remote targeting of his weapons. He knew if his ships didn’t do enough damage, the First Imperium force would pursue and catch them. His ships would be drained, almost defenseless, and the enemy survivors would blow them to hell. He sat and shook his head. Yes, there was a lot to worry about. But that wasn’t what was bothering him. His confidence propped him up, his belief in his people. They would get the job done. But when they ran, when they bolted through the warp gate, they would leave Midway behind, alone, facing two enemy battleships. Compton’s flagship was the rearguard’s rearguard, and it was facing a fight Coda knew it couldn’t win. It was hopeless, but then he wondered. Terrance Compton was almost superhuman. Maybe he had a plan. Coda didn’t really believe it, but he tried to force himself. He didn’t have time to second guess the admiral. It was show time.
“Detonation.”
He heard Fukudu’s voice in the background, but he wasn’t paying attention. He was hunched over his own com. “Execute,” he said firmly, authoritatively. Then he gripped the armrests of his chair as Kure’s engines blasted with 6g of raw thrust.
* * *
“Kure’s group has detonated its missiles, Admiral.” A few seconds later. “Massive radiation readings in the cloud, sir. We’ve lost our scanner lock on all three ships.”
Compton leaned back. Good. If we can’t see them, neither can the enemy. This might just work…
“Very well, Commander.” Compton’s eyes dropped to his own display. It was divided into two sections. The first showed the dozen ships, mostly Gargoyles, heading toward Kure and her two companions. Coda and his people wouldn’t have had a chance in a straight up fight…but Compton had made sure their battle would be anything but a fair fight. Gargoyles were tough, like any First Imperium vessels, but they were only cruisers. They didn’t have the armor and power of battleships like the Leviathans. They would be hurt when Coda’s people opened up…enough he hoped to give the three ships a chance to escape.
And that will only leave us…
Compton had sent the rest of the rearguard on a mad dash to the warp gate. Kure and her two escorts were facing one group of pursuing First Imperium ships. And Midway was on the path of the other enemy force. Hopefully, Coda’s group would unload their weapons and get away without significant damage. But his own ship was out in the middle of the system, alone in open space. The only way Midway would get to the warp gate itself was to win the fight. That wasn’t mathematically impossible, but it was damned close.
“Captain Coda’s ships are opening fire, sir.”
Compton felt the tension in his gut. He knew Coda’s people needed a strong first volley. If they didn’t hit the enemy hard enough, they weren’t going to get away. The First Imperium ships would pursue and catch them well short of the warp gate. He almost ordered Cortez to report on the strike’s effectiveness, but he stopped himself. Jack Cortez knew his job.
“Damage assessments coming in…” Cortez was focused on his screen. “…looks like two direct hits with sprint-deployed missiles, sir.” And instant later. “Correction…three hits. All three vessels destroyed!”
Compton smiled. Missiles had always been a long-ranged weapon, one that relied on the abilities of purpose-designed AIs to evade enemy countermeasures and get close enough to target ships to cause damage when they detonated. But the rearguard had been using a different tactic, firing the missiles from close, even point blank range, with the intent not of exploding within a few kilometers of an enemy ship, but of actually impacting a vessel, and delivering the full explosive force to the target.
Five hundred megatons was enough energy to vaporize any vessel, even the biggest, nastiest battleships of the First Imperium. It wasn’t easy to get close enough with missiles still in the tubes…the launchers were one of the most fragile systems on a warship, and the heavy fire a ship encountered in a close-ranged fight often knocked the systems offline. But Compton had used the tactic in special situations, when he could get his ships close under some kind of cover. Like the dust cloud. And it was working.
He forced back a smile. If they’d been back home, on the other side of the border, he imagined some wag would dub the tactic the Compton maneuver, or something equally silly. And there was a good chance it would have stuck. Generations after he was gone, officers would have shouted out commands to prepare for a Compton. Though, rightly, he thought, it should be the Cutter-Compton maneuver. Hieronymus Cutter had modified the guidance software, massively increasing its accuracy, and giving a twelve meter long missile a chance to hit a spaceship across the vast distances involved in space combat.
“Admiral, Captain Coda reports his ships are withdrawing as ordered.”
Compton looked down at the
screen, watching the damage assessments coming in. They were a mixed bag. Coda’s laser barrage had been disappointing, but that was no surprise. The dust cloud that was providing cover for his force wreaked havoc on his lasers, attenuating many of the blasts until they were virtually ineffective. However, another two missiles had struck targets. Coda’s force had destroyed five enemy vessels with thermonuclear blasts, and badly damaged several others.
It wasn’t a great result, but as Compton’s mind reviewed the data, his thoughts coalesced into a single conclusion. Good enough.
“Admiral, Captain Coda requests permission to change course, and join Midway.”
“Negative, Commander.” Compton wasn’t surprised. Coda was a brave officer, one he knew would find his orders to abandon comrades difficult to obey. He found it an interesting trait of the very best officers that emotional considerations like that could supersede judgment. Coda had to realize his own pursuers would come with him, that he’d bring as much or more enemy strength into Midway’s fight as his ships would add to the battleship’s power. That all he could do is throw the lives of his ships’ crews away with those of Midway’s. But Compton knew the urge his captain felt was real. He’d experienced it many times himself. “Captain Coda is to follow his orders.”
“Yes, Admiral.”
Compton suspected Coda would carry the guilt of leaving Midway behind for the rest of his life. It didn’t matter that he was following his orders, that he’d requested permission to remain behind and been denied. Nor did it make a difference that nothing he could have done would have helped. If Midway didn’t survive the fight to come, Coda would blame himself. Compton knew, and he wished there was something he could do to relieve his officer of the burden. But he knew there wasn’t.
He looked up at the display, at the two red circles moving toward the flagship. Each of those icons represented an enemy Leviathan, massive battleships bristling with weapons. Midway was one of the most powerful vessels ever built by mankind, but it wasn’t a match for even a single Leviathan, at least not purely by equipment and technology.
Compton knew a skilled human commander had an edge against the unimaginative tactics of an enemy AI, and no human officer had more experience in facing the First Imperium than Terrance Compton. But at some point, materiel—guns, tonnage, power generation—told, regardless of an officer’s skill. Compton wasn’t sure where that line was, but he suspected he would find out.
“Bring us to battlestations, Commander. Arm all weapons.”
“Yes, sir.”
The flag bridge was bathed in the red glow of the battlestations lamps, and Compton could hear the alarms blaring. He knew all over Midway, his crew was rushing through the corridors…to their stations in engineering, in the gunnery stations, everywhere. The alert called all of the flagship’s crew to duty, to prepare for battle. And Compton knew his veterans had been waiting for the summons. They would serve well, he had no doubt of that. But he just wasn’t sure it would be enough.
“Get me Admiral Hurley.”
“On your line, Admiral.”
“Greta, when can your squadrons be ready to launch?”
“We’re ready, sir.”
Compton was surprised, but only for an instant. Then it made perfect sense to him that Greta Hurley had her birds ready to go, waiting for the call she knew would come.
“I know you’re loaded up with plasma torpedoes, Greta, but I need your people to do an anti-missile run. I’m holding back our warheads. I don’t know if we can get close enough for sprint-firing with any of the tubes still operational, but I’m going to try. It’s the only way I can see us beating both of these ships.”
“We’ll do our best, sir. We’ll keep their missiles from getting through.” Hurley’s voice had the usual unshakable confidence. Compton had never met another officer like her…so utterly unflappable, no matter what the odds.
He knew Hurley only had fourteen birds left, and he shuddered to think how many might come back, even if Midway somehow survived its desperate fight. But now wasn’t the time to worry about it. He needed every bit of force he could muster now, no matter what the cost.
“I know you will, Greta.” He wanted to say more, to express to her how vital she had been to the fleet’s survival over the past two years, but he didn’t. He knew his words would sound like goodbye…and whatever the odds, he wasn’t ready to give up…on Hurley or on Midway. So he just said, “You may begin your launch.”
* * *
“Wolfpack leader, bring your birds around, 233.118.044…full thrust.” Hurley stared down at her display, her eyes darting back and forth between the blue squares of her fighters and the tiny yellow dots…each one representing a multi-gigaton antimatter warhead moving toward Midway. Any one of those missiles could cause serious damage to Compton’s ship if it got within a few kilometers, even destroy it. But they had to get past her people first.
“Yes, Admiral.” She remembered Becca Coombs from the day she’d reported for duty fresh from the Academy. The pilot had been eager then, back in the final days of the Third Frontier War, almost painfully so. Hurley knew Coombs had been one of the lucky ones, as she herself had been so long ago. She’d survived her early days, lived long enough to gain the experience that made long term survival something more than a mathematical anomaly. She was still serving under Hurley, as she had for her entire career, though now she was commanding one of the fighter corps’ crack squadrons. The Wolfpack had distinguished itself throughout the First Imperium War, and especially in the wild struggles of the past eighteen months, as the trapped fleet fought time and time again to survive. Coombs’ people were responsible for destroying fifteen enemy vessels, an astonishing kill record for a single squadron.
Coombs and Mariko Fujin were Hurley’s choices as her own successors. But Coombs was here with her, part of the desperate rearguard, and Fujin was on Saratoga, fighting for her life after almost dying in Midway’s stricken launch bay. If none of them survived, the fleet’s fighter corps would be leaderless, in an even worse shambles than the devastating battles of the past year and a half had left it.
“You ready, John?” She glanced over at Wilder. The pilot was hunched over his station, his own eyes staring at the wave of incoming warheads.
“As ready as I’ll ever be, Admiral.” He paused. “That’s a lot of missiles.”
Hurley just nodded. There was nothing to say. It was a lot of missiles. She just sat, quietly, staring at the screen as the dots moved closer. Finally, she flipped her com to the wing channel. “Okay, people…it’s time. You know what to do. Give me your best. And remember, Midway is counting on us. Admiral Compton is counting on us.”
“Engaging thrust at 2g.” Wilder pulled back on the throttle, and Hurley felt the force of twice her weight pressing against her. She was staring at the screen, watching the clusters of enemy missiles moving closer. She felt the temptation to snap out orders, to point out targets to Wilder. But her pilot knew what he was doing. There was nothing she could add, no purpose she could serve other than to distract. That was a realization she knew the young Greta Hurley would never have understood. She had been ruled by raw energy in those days, but now she had years of experience to temper her drive. It was the combination of the two that made her the commander she was, but she sometimes missed the simplicity of acting on pure courage and élan.
She could see that Wilder was going after the same cluster of missiles she was going to point out. There were about a dozen of them, and they were heading right for Midway. And John Wilder was right behind them. A few seconds later, the fighter echoed with the high pitched whine of the laser cannons…and one of the dots disappeared from the display. Then another. And another. Wilder was angling the ship’s thrust, moving toward a missile then angling away the instant it was destroyed. Greta Hurley had pioneered the use of fighters in missile defense, and her protégés like Wilder had continued to refine the tactics.
She watched as her fighters dispersed, each one pi
cking a group of missiles and chasing them down, laser cannons blasting away. She felt pride in the crews she had trained and led, but it felt strange, uncomfortable to just sit there quietly…to watch as her people struggled to defend Midway, to clear a path through the barrage for the fleet’s flagship.
She knew the fighters were a bit sluggish for the pinpoint maneuvers needed for anti-missile ops. Normally, a fighter wing on point defense duty would have empty bomb bays, but her birds had two plasma torpedoes each, weapons she intended to use against the enemy ships as soon as the missiles were gone. Her ships would be low on fuel by then. Normally, they would return to their base ship to refuel and rearm with torpedoes, but there was no time. They could never get back, land, and rearm. Not before the Leviathans reached the flagship.
Midway needed every edge it could get in this fight, and she was damned sure of one thing. The fighters would do their part. And more.
Chapter Fifteen
AS Saratoga
System X108
The Fleet: 88 ships (+2 Leviathans), 20988 crew
“Launch all fighters.” West’s voice was grim, cold. She stared out at the main screen as she barked the command. It had been two months since her people had fought the First Imperium’s warships, but that respite had been all too brief. Admiral Compton and the rearguard had managed to buy the fleet time to reach Shangri la…but little more than that.
Another few days, and maybe we’d have found something useful there. Maybe…
The fleet coming through the warp gate was a large one, spearheaded by a line of Leviathans. She’d watched the scanners intently as the enemy vessels transited in, counting tonnage, guns…figuring tactics. And waiting to see if the enemy had any Colossuses. The massive enemy superbattleships were unimaginable engines of destruction that outgunned and outranged anything she had. But there were none, at least not yet. The enemy fleet was strong, but not invincible. Her people could take it. Maybe. Just. But it would cost. And that would start with the fighters.