StarFight 3: Battlecry

by T. Jackson King

  “Where from?” he called.

  “Ahead! All across our front. There are lots of ship surges. Gobs of them!”

  Gobs was not a firm number. But Jacob didn’t blame Cassandra. This was the moment they had expected.

  “Tactical, what’s the range to the graviton surges?”

  “Uh, 932 kilometers directly ahead,” Rosemary said. “A few hundred kilometers to either side. The enemy is clustered!”

  “All ships, multiple hostile bandits approaching. You are cleared hot. Kill is authorized. Philippine Sea, Chesapeake and Aldertag, coordinate your laser and proton fire at single targets in sequence. Support Hunters Twelve, Fifteen and Seventeen, do the same. Targeting will be transmitted by my Tactical station. The Lepanto will fire on targets directly ahead.”

  The true space image of the wallscreen now showed star dots rippling as incoming gravity bubbles that were Alcubierre space-time miniverses arrived at the edge of the magnetosphere. He lost count of the rippling spots. Too many to quickly count.

  “Tactical! Enlarge the electro-optical view!”

  “Enlarging,” Rosemary murmured.

  The middle of the wallscreen filled with silvery white manta ray ships, their long tails aimed outward, with their front and side wings facing his line of combat. A counter in his true space holo registered twenty. Which matched the number of purple dots now showing on the situational holo to one side of his seat. The manta ray ships were arranged in a tight arc.

  “Tactical, assign targets to all ships and Darts!” Jacob yelled.

  “All Ships, targets are M designated.” The dots on the situational holo now grew M numbers. In front of the Lepanto were manta ray ships M9, M10, M11 and M12. “Support Hunters, fire at M1, then M2. Fleet ships, fire at M20, then M19. Lepanto Darts, combine fire at M13. Chesapeake Darts, take on M14. Battlestar laser nodes and belly proton laser, target M8. Everyone, fire!”

  “Outrigger lasers are firing,” Oliver said loudly.

  Finally. “Antimatter cannon, lock on to M11. Fire!” Jacob yelled.

  “Firing,” called Linkletter over his helmet comlink.

  A thick black stream of negative antimatter streaked out from his ship and hit the bulbous nose of the manta ray ship M11. Yellow-white plasma covered the ship’s nose. Then it moved inward, blowing out hull sections on either side. But the explosive dissembling of the shark-head ship ended as the expanding antimatter cloud formed by the beam reached out faster than simple matter could move and turned those hull fragments into star-yellow globs of light. A large sun now glowed where once a manta ray ship had lived.

  “All lasers firing!” yelled Rosemary.

  Too much happened simultaneously.

  Yellow lightning bolts from the three wasp ships joined together and hit M1, with the green of their nose ring CO2 lasers hitting M2.

  To the right of the Lepanto, the front lasers of the Chesapeake and Aldertag joined with the Philippine Sea’s proton laser to strike M20.

  Small yellow stars filled the blackness ahead.

  Rosemary punched the air with her fist. “Yes! Targets M1, M11, M13, M14 and M20 are gone! M2 and M8 are damaged. They are retreating. Retargeting. All ships, fire!”

  “Linkletter, fire the cannon at M10,” Jacob said.

  “Firing on M10,” yelled the excited voice of the young petty officer.

  The thick black beam of the antimatter cannon crossed 932 kilometers instantly, it seemed. It struck the nose of the manta ray ship, creating yellow-white plasma as the negative matter combined with ship matter in a total matter-to-energy conversion. That ball of plasma conversion spread out, englobing the side wings and tail of M10. Where once had existed a starship filled with scores or a hundred shark-head aliens, now only thinning plasma gases filled the void.

  Over his helmet comlink, Jacob heard the voices of Olivia Houndstooth from the left outrigger laser node and Quincy from the right laser node repeating the Fire orders.

  Four groups of green lasers streaked out from the Lepanto, Chesapeake, Philippine Sea and the Aldertag, impaling two more manta ray ships. On the left the wasp yellow lightning bolts and green lasers hit a single ship.

  Yellow balls of star flame filled the spots where those ships had existed. Just beyond the flame balls were silver streaks of water that had gushed out on the initial strikes, followed by puffs of white air. Bodies were too small to show in the scope imagery.

  “Targets M2, M10, M12 and M19 are gone!” Rosemary cried, the excitement in her voice matching Jacob’s feelings.

  Feeling good in a battle of directed energy beam warfare in the vacuum of space is not smart.

  “Incoming!” cried Rosemary.

  Pairs of orange graser beams struck out from the eleven surviving manta ray ships. Which were moving as a unit, but spreading out and jinking to make them difficult targets. Stationary they were not. Moving and counter-attacking they were.

  Black balls of antimatter shot out from the noses of every manta ray ship.

  The balls sped toward the ships of the line. They moved fast. Not one-tenth lightspeed fast, but still, incredibly fast. And crossing 932 kilometers would not take long. Seconds at most.

  “Returning fire!” yelled Oliver. “Misses. They are too nimble. Outriggers are trying again.”

  Green CO2 laser beams shot out from the Lepanto’s right and left outrigger pods, joined by the red beam of the belly proton laser. The beams failed to hit.

  “Darts, get the hell inside this ship! We’re leaving.” Jacob looked to the left. “Engines! Activate our Alcubierre stardrive!”

  “Activating,” Akira called out.

  “All Ships, activate your stardrives,” Jacob yelled. “Move to our rendezvous spot! Do it now!”

  Eight orange beams hit the front of the Lepanto. A siren sounded on the Bridge.

  “Front sensor array is non-functional,” reported Melody. “Spine plasma battery has also died.”

  “Darts Chapultepec and Fallujah are inside Silo Eight,” Richard called over the helmet comlink. “Chao Lee and Tarawa II are moving to enter.”

  “My two Darts are inside,” called Rebecca from Chesapeake. “We lost our top plasma battery and one of our laser nodes.”

  “No damage,” Joan called from the Aldertag.

  “Our plasma battery is gone,” reported Joy from the Sea.

  “All Darts inside,” Richard grunted.

  Ahead the true space wallscreen image showed five black balls of antimatter speeding toward his ship. Other balls sped toward the Chesapeake and Twelve’s ship. They were visible only due to the yellow sparks from space gas and ice particles that existed in the middle reaches of this system’s Kuiper Belt. Those particles were few and far from each other. How many other AM balls were heading his way that were not visible? His sensor holo would show the UV rads from their magfield drives. He did not look at it. Instead, he looked straight ahead, fingers crossed.

  “Transitioning,” Akira said.

  The hundreds of stars and the eleven manta ray ship bodies now shimmered.

  The black balls drew closer.

  Greyness filled the wallscreen.

  “Damn!” said Daisy. “That was too close.”

  Jacob agreed. When the ‘wait and pounce’ tactic had been discussed at that conference room meal, he had expected the shark-head aliens to arrive thousands of klicks out from the fleet’s arrival point. His worry then was whether the enemy would arrive within the 11,000 klick range of the wasp weapons and the 10K range of human directed energy beams. Their arrival within a thousand kilometers had been an unpleasant surprise.

  “Exiting Alcubierre,” called Akira.

  He blinked, then looked at the time counter in his situational holo. It showed 43 seconds had elapsed since they had entered Alcubierre. So little time. But with a stardrive that moved a ship 25 light years in just 24 hours, being fast with the shut-off was essential to avoid ending up on the far side the Kepler 63 system.

  The wallscreen filled wi
th starry blackness. To its lower left glowed the yellow ball of 63’s star. To the right of the screen there now appeared a system graphic showing planets, asteroid belt, Kuiper belt and eleven purple dots lying several AU away from their arrival spot. To the left of the blackness now appeared the situational sensor holo. On it two green dots appeared. Then a third green dot. He drew a deep breath. Three blue dots appeared not far away. Six ships had escaped the deadliness of balls of antimatter that could spiral, twist, jink and home in on any matter their little innards sensed was nearby. The top of the wallscreen filled with six images. The humans looked tired and relieved. The three wasps were hovering in mid-air, their brown wings whirring fast. A sign of anxiety, he recalled from watching Hunter One.

  “Sir, we are six point three AU distant from the manta ray ships,” Louise reported.

  Relief filled him.

  “Enemy is heading inward,” Rosemary said, sounding exhausted. “They are moving slowly, not yet up to one-tenth lightspeed.”

  Damn. No time to feel safe. They were still in a fight to protect alien civilians.

  “All Ships, follow me to our first intercept point in the asteroid belt. Navigation, set our vector track. Engines move us inward at one-tenth psol. Execute!”

  “New vector track set,” reported Louise, her tone subdued.

  “Fusion pulse thrusters are firing,” Akira said. The woman looked back at him. Her ink black face had sweat on it even though her helmet was sealed. Clearly the tight timing of the Alcubierre transition jump had strained her. “Captain, I recommend all ships perform a systems diagnostic on their stardrive engines. No Star Navy ship has ever turned on, then shut off, their Alcubierre space-time bubble generator so quickly. As you may know, we usually spend an hour ramping up to transition, then an hour preparing the quantum molecular circuits for shut-down.”

  He did know that. “Engines, permission granted for stardrive diagnostic.” Jacob looked up at the six captains above the wallscreen. “Captains, I recommend you do the same. Whatever the future holds, any hope of returning to Earth or Kepler 10 depends on working Alcubierre engines.”

  Acknowledgments came from Joy, Joan and Rebecca. Who looked tired. Did he look tired? Daisy certainly did. Carrying out this ‘fire and scoot’ tactical strike maneuver, for the first time ever, had strained everyone. Including the wasps, whose wing beats were now slow enough to be visible. Twelve, Fifteen and Seventeen acknowledged his command. Jacob gave thanks that the translation of their pheromone speech did not fill the Bridge. He and everyone else had had enough sneezing to last a lifetime.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Pod Leader felt fury. The land predators had ambushed his sky floaters with terrible beams of sky glow heat, and two beams of black nothingness. The normal period of slowly adjusting to a new current and saltiness upon departure from the alternate world sea had been violated! Only his instinctive flexing through the currents of cold darkness had kept other Pod floaters from becoming small balls of sky glow. While his Defender Prime had fired their orange beams at the land-bound ones, as had other Defenders on other floaters, of the eleven surviving floaters two were damaged and all felt deep shock at this violation of the normal current flow of arriving at the outer boundaries of a new sky glow. He felt that shock through the linking of his body’s magnetic field with the body fields on other sky floaters. There was no pod-mate who did not feel deep shock, and fury. Gripping his tank edge with his front walk-pads, he pulled himself up into the dry air. His eyes took in all parts of his Swim Cove chamber.

  “Workings, how could this happen?” he color-cast in a flurry of color signs.

  The elderly male flashed a mix of brown, orange, silver and green colors in a distinctive pattern. “Pod Leader, these are terrible land predators. Recall our Pod’s old history? Recall how the clawed ones waited on rocks next to where the tide flowed in? Recall how they would jump suddenly onto any pod-mate who emerged from the waters, stumbling as they sought to adjust to the change from floating to land-walking?” A new pattern of red, yellow and blue colors took form on his aged skin. “Just so are these new predators. They pounced on us just as we emerged from the alternate world sea.”

  The body fields of all pod-mates within the chamber pulsed with shock and fury. It was clear they needed leading. And lead was what he had been born to do.

  “Sky Watcher, the floaters of these predators have disappeared. Where did they swim to?”

  The female flashed a complex mix of colors from where she floated in her tank. “Each floater showed the shimmer of entering into the alternate world sea.” Four of her spine eyes looked upward. “Our small particle sensor device shows they quickly left that sea. They hide now at a different part of the magnetic field edge of this sky glow. See?”

  Pod Leader looked upward with four of his spine eyes. The view lens of the device showed seven tiny sparkles lying far away. It would take several rest cycles to travel to that new location. Or his Pod could repeat the swift entry into and exit from the alternate world sea, there to arrive suddenly among the land predators. Such quick leaps out of one sea and into another sea had never been done. Instead, he cast his front pair of eyes on the view lens that showed the local sky glow and its shoal of warm worlds. Ultrasound emissions came from the sixth world out from the sky glow. They had the flavor of the sky flyers who had resisted the Pod’s claiming of the watery shallows on the world Green Water, which swam about the other yellow sky glow.

  “So the sky flyers occupy another world?” he signed in a quick flash of colors. “That is where we will swim. If we pose a danger to the sky flyers on that world, surely it will draw in the land eater and sky flyer floaters. Then we will drive the air from their bodies!”

  To his right a pod-mate moved tendrils. “Sending swim current color sign to our other sky floaters,” signed Pod Signer in a brief flare of red, brown, purple, silver and blue colors.

  “Pod Leader,” flared the Birther from behind him. “Does this warm world contain sheltered waters? It would be worth the loss of our other floaters if the Pod could claim that world for our Podlings.”

  He scanned another view lens with his topside eyes. “It contains water in its air and on its surface. Plentiful water glows in that image from the expander view lens.”

  She splashed cool water over the rim of her tank. “Such good news! Let us swim there, after you have driven the air from the land predators.”

  Around his Swim Cove, colors of determination and resoluteness glowed on the skins of his pod-mates. No doubt such color glows ran among the pod-mates of the other sky floaters. The glows told him what mattered most to his Pod.

  “Yes, yes, let us head inward, then fight the land predators when they come near,” he signed in a harsh flow of silver, gold and blue colors. “This shoal of the Pod will fight in a way the predators have not yet seen. Swim onward!”

  And swim they did, eleven floaters bound by magnetic glows that linked each and every pod-mate in a common current. It was the result he had hoped for. Now, he must think hard on the new swim mode that would allow his pod-mates to kill each and every land eater floater!

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Jacob counted it as an hour since they had left the edge of the magnetosphere. They still had 33 AU yet to travel before his fleet reached the asteroid belt ambush spot. A spot he had chosen based on mining survey records provided by Hunter Four. He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. Now, his seven ships would travel into the Kepler 63 system, moving along its ecliptic plane. It would take 35 hours to reach the 10 AU line where the asteroids were thickest. Truly the old saying about serving in the military was true—hours of boredom punctuated by seconds of sheer terror. Should he send for some food and drinks? His Bridge shift still had four hours to go.

  “Captain,” called Rosemary, who pointed to the right side of the wall screen where the system graphic held icons denoting the star, planets, asteroids and Kuiper Belt, along with two sets of neutrino emission sources. One set wer
e the seven green and blue dots of his fleet. Another set were eleven purple dots. The enemy. All the dots were moving inward, though his fleet moved at an angle on the vector track set for the spot in the asteroid belt that he had earlier given to Louise. A new dot appeared. “It’s a ship.”

  A neutrino emission point now glowed at the edge of the magnetosphere, but at a ninety-degree angle relative to the system’s ecliptic plane. In short, this ship dot had arrived at a spot corresponding the star’s equatorial rotation, which put it ninety degrees above the ecliptic. The spot turned blue. It began to move inward.

  “Any ID yet?”

  “No sir.” Rosemary tapped her control pillar touchscreen. “But it is definitely the neutrino emission profile of a wasp ship. A powerful wasp ship, judging by the emission strength.”

  “That spot is where Hunter One left for the other wasp colony,” Louise said quickly. “Whoever it is, they have come from that colony.”

  “Wonder who it is?” he said, pushing away his hopes. It could not be Hunter One, not with just a single ship. Somebody else perhaps. “Andrew, send a—”

  “Incoming neutrino message, sir,” the elderly Japanese-American interrupted. “The signal carries a wasp ID. It is both video and pheromones. Putting it through the signaler block for translation. Do you accept it, sir?”

  “Yes!” he said impatiently. “Yes I do, Chief Warrant Officer Osashi. Please put the video up above the wallscreen. And share it over the fleet comlink channel. And on the All Ship vidcast.”

  “Going up, sir.”

  A new image joined the six that ran across the top of the wallscreen. It was a wasp! And one he knew too well.

  “Hunter One! Where are your other ships?” he yelled, not giving a damn for using wasp terms like ‘flying nest’.

  The creature’s two antennae flared back, then sideways. Its black mandible opened, then clacked shut. Its body enlarged as it took in extra air for its pheromone speech.

  “Human leader, you fly wrongly. The nest I fly within is the same kind as the nest I originally guided. And that Hunter Prime brought to battle.” The wasp spun his wings and moved to one side, opening a view to the space behind him. “Behold our Matron Prime! She is the ruler of this great nest. And she has commanded me, this nest and all Swarmers within it to fly here and give a biting defense to our younglings on Food Enough!”