The Ferret targeting systems went into auto mode, sending streams of darts at the projected points in space where they could hopefully impact on the deadly missiles; light missiles were chemically powered and more difficult to target than the new gravity drive missiles that were now in development.
Space erupted in savage boils of fire as dozens of missiles were struck within the span of a few seconds. The fireballs walked inexorably towards the Ferrets. At nearly point blank range the Ferrets single lasers fired and dozens more missiles detonated just short of their target.
Finally it was the rebels turn and more fireballs erupted as Ferrets began exploding. When a Ferret was destroyed, its robotic craft automatically looked for a nearby Ferret to take control of it. If there was no Ferret within range, it simply slaved itself to another robot or, if that was not possible it locked its own fairly rudimentary system into the targeting grid.
Fourteen Ferrets were destroyed in less than ten seconds but the suddenly isolated robotic craft were able to link up with another ship and they continued to spew their deadly darts at the depleted ranks of rebels, who were now less than ten thousand kilometers away.
With nearly half of their fighters destroyed, the rebels began banking up and around to get out of range of their enemy and retreat back to the safety of their fleet. They were extremely maneuverable, but the Ferrets knew exactly what they were capable of, and darts continued to stream out in an effort to intersect the desperate fighters’ course changes. The Arrow weapon system was designed specifically to kill small fighters and missiles, and it was proving to be lethally effective.
As the remaining fighters began streaming back towards their fleet, more fireballs lit up space. With no more missiles, the rebel fighters would be at an extreme disadvantage against the federal fighters that had finally begun accelerating after them.
Despite the huge number of darts each Ferret carried, they had now expended sixty percent of their total in beating off the relatively light first attack. This was one of the Achilles heels of the system – to be effective it required huge numbers of darts.
It took over an hour to resupply the robotic craft and there was not going to be enough time for them to return to their mother ships where that resupply would take place, so they ceased firing at the rapidly retreating fighters. Their own fighters, which were newer versions of the same craft the rebels used, had a window of less than one minute to fire their own missiles before the rebel fighters would be out of range. They unloaded all their own missiles in a coordinated launch and turned back towards their own carrier. Three hundred and twenty anti-fighter missiles were fired at relatively long range, targeting less than thirty fighters. It was a race that seventeen fighters and their two-man crews lost.
Only thirteen rebel fighters returned to their carriers, for the loss of fourteen mystery craft and not one single federal fighter.
By now three more rebel fleet carriers were in position and Admiral Ito decided to launch all their available fighters and try to swamp the small number of federal ships before their fighters could be rearmed. He had developed a fairly good idea of the type of weapon the federals deployed against him and came to the conclusion that if he could direct his fighters outside and around those strange ships he would force the federal admiral to reposition and spread their defensive fire over a much greater area. He hoped he could get enough fighters through to be able to attack the carriers directly. He knew that it would be extremely difficult to get past the enemy ships and he couldn’t afford to leave those carriers intact, so he had to go through them.
He ordered the launch and within fifteen minutes rebel fighters began to eject from the three carriers, while the first two ships began to recover what was left of their own flights.
Admiral Sanchez received a message from Rear Admiral Cornell, whose first elements were beginning to stream into the system. From just inside their entry point, they jumped into close proximity to the Ferret carriers and launched eight flights of fighters to supplement the eight flights that were now recovering on their carriers. The admiral thought for all of five seconds before giving orders to his maintenance crews to hot load missiles while the pilots sat in their cockpits, a practice that was distinctly against peacetime regulations and routinely ignored in wartime.
As frantic crews pulled pallets of missiles under the fighters, the sixty-four fresh federation fighters firewalled their drives in an effort to arrive in time to be of help. Meanwhile, the rebels were within two hundred thousand kilometers of the federal blocking force and they began curving out in an attempt to get around the Ferrets. This tactic had been anticipated, and the Ferrets had already begun recovering their robotic craft.
As the Ferrets repositioned to encircle their mother ships, their supporting fighters began to stream back out. They positioned themselves in flights of four and prepared to intercept any leakers that managed to punch through the Ferrets.
Admiral Sanchez watched his main plotting board with something approaching awe: this was his first experience with the new weapon system, and despite arriving late to the party, it was working as advertised, something of a first in his experience. One weakness of the system was already apparent: the Ferrets had a strictly limited supply of darts and it took many hundreds, possibly thousands of darts to destroy a single fighter.
Once the Ferret magazines emptied, they would have to return to the carrier to rearm, and that was a time-consuming task. The Admiral greatly feared that the weapon’s advantages might well be outweighed by its disadvantages.
To his front he could see the main elements of the still emerging rebel fleet, while behind him his own units were doing the same thing. Between these two fleets lay his previously untested force. It was obvious to him that the fleet that was able to get into battle order first would have an enormous advantage. It was his duty to ensure that the federal forces would prevent the rebels from destroying this system.
Despite his gnawing fears, Admiral Sanchez was impressed that his Ferrets had killed forty-seven highly experienced fighters and approximately one hundred heavy missiles, plus over one hundred light missiles from the fighters, against the loss of only fourteen of their own craft. This time around, however, they would be hard pressed to adequately cover the fleet. His tacticians had known that the enemy would adapt to the new weapon fairly quickly; it was now time to see who adapted faster, and better.
As the first relief fighters began streaming into the formation of carriers they began decelerating savagely. The Ferret carriers were moving in the opposite direction.
The rebel fighters were now curving inward to envelope the Federals. They were in a race to get into range before the federation could bring up reinforcements, and once again they lost the race by minutes.
From a range of just under one million kilometers – the maximum range of current heavy missiles - the rebel missile ships began launching another wave of missiles. Admiral Ito was trying to plan the battle on the run and was hoping he could simultaneously hit the feds with missiles and fighters. He had enough missiles and launchers to easily swamp a normal force of this size, but the Ferrets had changed the balance of power in favor of missile defense.
The four federal destroyers launched a small number of their own anti ship missiles and these streaked toward the distant rebels. Admiral Sanchez realized that the rebels had forced him to spread his defenses while simultaneously sending in its missiles in a compact mass directly at the center of the federal flotilla. It was a clever response to the Ferrets and he nodded his head in respect, and then resumed giving orders. He had also planned for that possibility.
He stopped the Ferrets from further realignment as he was now receiving additional fighters to swell out his own handful. The Ferrets once again ejected their robots, this time in a little better order. They would be positioned in an arc rather than a disk and would be covering a much larger expanse. Half of the new fighters were positioning themselves at the outside of the arc in an effort to forc
e the rebel fighters to choose to go through the Ferrets rather than fighter missiles and lasers. The other half of the federal fighters was coming into position behind the Ferrets to act as a second layer of defense for the mother ships.
The rebels turned in toward the Ferrets, timing their maneuver so that they would be in range at the same time as the heavy missiles, forcing the defense to choose which enemy to fight. Admiral Ito was confident that this attack would get through the thinned out defenses surrounding the fragile carriers.
Admiral Sanchez had another surprise: rather than the four smaller anti fighter versions his own fighters had been loaded with, they carried two heavy anti ship missiles. He launched one hundred sixty missiles that tore through his screen and swept toward the rebels as their own missiles closed on the small federal force. Suddenly, the rebel fighters were faced with the same dilemma they had attempted to create for the feds: they had to choose between attacking the Ferrets or the incoming missiles. Admiral Sanchez had timed the launch a little late, and for the most part the rebel fighters chose to continue in toward the Ferrets, but some of them launched – uselessly - at the missiles racing away from the small flotilla. The finely meshed attack began to unravel as some fighters strayed out of position or expended their missiles.
This was a risky defensive plan but Admiral Sanchez knew that the fighters were not his first priority – it was the enemy missile ships and carriers, so he chose to attack them at the risk of placing his own ships in jeopardy. He badly wanted to stop reacting to the rebels and force them to react to him, and this was an excellent way to achieve just that goal. He hoped he would live long enough to see some good results.
All one hundred sixty missiles were targeted on just five carriers. The missile ships could be whittled down to size once the federation fighters were able to concentrate on them instead of having to fight through a very determined and experienced fighter element. Admiral Sanchez assumed that the process of whittling down those missile ships would have to be done by someone else – his force was going to get savaged in the coming battle. He prayed that his goal of stopping the rebels long enough to allow the follow-on forces to get into the battle would be successful.
The Ferrets began firing huge number of darts. They would only be able to fire at this volume for six or seven minutes, but the battle would be decided one way or the other by that time. The outgoing flight of one hundred sixty missiles passed the two hundred fifty rebel missiles at a distance of two hundred thousand kilometers. The fighters would reach missile range about the time the large missiles reached the Ferrets, creating a hoped for targeting nightmare for their federals.
The Ferrets chose to concentrate on the incoming missiles, and blossoms of fire began pocking the space directly between the two fleets. The rebel fighters launched half of their short ranged missiles in a ragged volley of over two hundred, saving the other half for the thirteen carriers that were now retreating in an effort to give them defensive depth and more time to stop the missiles, now just a few minutes out. Those fighter missiles were concentrated on just one third of the Ferrets, but while this tactic was usually quite effective against capital ships it made little difference to the Ferrets, whose defenses were networked. They continued to pour large numbers of darts at the huge, not terribly maneuverable missiles.
The path of destroyed missiles of fire swept rapidly closer and by the time the missiles interpenetrated the Ferrets only twenty remained. The four destroyers began firing their own missiles and lasers as soon as they had targets. More blossoms of fire appeared silently in space. Five missiles survived this gauntlet and made their final runs against three maneuvering carriers. Two of the large ships were hit and damaged. Over two hundred crew were killed in just a few seconds. If these carriers had been first generation, retrofitted freighters, they would have been totally destroyed.
Now it was the rebel fighters turn, and they jinked madly in an effort to stay alive long enough to reach energy weapon range. Ferrets and fighters began exploding in large numbers. Thirty rebel fighters survived and swept through the outer layer of defenses, and began attack runs against the carriers. Swarms of federation fighters pounced on them, firing multiple missiles at each rebel. More fighters exploded but beyond all reason they continued to close, and a handful reached launch range and fired off their two remaining small missiles. One carrier was hit four times. Unfortunately, a fifth missile impacted on an open flight deck causing huge secondary explosions that destroyed the ship in mere seconds. Another was damaged so severely that the crew began evacuating. Most of them were still on the ship when a missile penetrated the hull near a fusion plant, causing the ship to disintegrate.
The few remaining rebel fighters fought to get clear of the federation fleet and return home, but the federation pilots were enraged and swarmed over them. Only fourteen rebels returned to their ships. For the loss of eighty-six fighters, the rebels had destroyed forty-two Ferrets and two of the new carriers, damaging three others to some degree. It had been an expensive attack, but it had not come close to accomplishing its primary goal – creating safe passage into the inner system.
In terms of the loss of life, the loss ratio was severely in favor of the attacking fleet, but the relatively large loss of so many critical fighters meant that for the moment the rebel fleet was now vulnerable, while the federals now in the system retained most of their defensive ability.
As the remnants of the rebel fighters streaked home, the federation missiles came into range. For the first time in this engagement, the rebel ships came under attack. A few of the missiles had malfunctioned during their relatively long flight, but the small flight of destroyer missiles made their attack run in a compact bunch while just seconds behind them came the larger flight of one hundred fifty two missiles. The rebel fleet defenses concentrated on the nearer group of missiles, allowing the follow on missiles to close with limited losses.
The rebel fighters from the first attack were back on station and loosed missiles at the incoming missiles, while the missile ships launched hundreds of additional missiles. Scores of explosions marked the progress of the missiles as they closed on the fleet. Over one hundred missiles were destroyed well short of the fleet but seventy made it to within ten thousand kilometers, where the fighter’s energy weapons came into play. It was a classic duel between the fighters and the incoming missiles that now had a huge relative velocity.
Of the seventy missiles, an impressive sixty-four were intercepted, but the remaining six hit five of the lumbering former freighters, exploding one of them outright, reducing two to useless hulks and damaging another. Only one escaped unscathed. Admiral Ito was forced to hold up his headlong attack in order to rearrange his disorganized array of warships into some semblance of order.
This delay would prove decisive to the defense of the inner system. Admiral Sanchez’ surviving ships rang with cheers as their crews were told that their efforts had halted the headlong rebel assault, providing vital time for the bulk of the federal fleet to enter the system.
The main battle was yet to take place, but the initial stage had demonstrated that the federals had finally gotten their act together.
As additional rebel and federal ships streamed into the system, Admiral Ito attempted to outflank the defenders and get into the federal rear. The federals responded by sending their incoming units into blocking positions. Both federal and rebel plotting systems became increasingly complex as the fleets faced each other across a growing arc of space over one million kilometers in diameter
Admiral Ito sent numerous probes of twenty or so fighters at the light destroyers and fighters that protected the huge missile ships and carriers that were the heart of the fleet. These probes were countered desperately by the only partially organized defenses of the federal fleet.
Admiral Ito studied the results of the probes and the sensor reports they gave him, and decided to deploy a portion of his fighter strength to an attack just inside of the outer arc of the federal a
rc of defenses. He had seen a weakness he wanted to exploit.
If he simply tried to flank the defenses, they would continue to block him, but if he could get a significant number of fighters through the federal screen he could wreak havoc amongst the carriers and fleet colliers, which would in turn allow him to disorganize and break the defense. He’d done this many times, but today he worried – the federals were no longer making critical mistakes that he could easily exploit. Admiral Ito was confident of his ability to punch through, but in his heart he shivered at the loss in human life this battle was going to generate.
Three Years, Six Months Earlier
John Chamberlin, a history professor, and his younger brother, James, a mechanical engineer, stood in a long, snaking line of young men. On the other side of the hall stood another line of young women. They all wore civilian clothing and carried a single handbag, all that they had been allowed to bring with them.
The line disappeared into a doorway. Inside, a row of tired doctors performed hurried examinations, using medical equipment borrowed for the occasion from the university medical school, located across the quad.
After being given a clean bill of health, the two brothers passed into yet another room. Here they were told that they must provide suitable samples of their DNA, and semen. In a similar room, young women were being told the same thing, save that they were to provide eggs.
Hawk Genesis: War (Flight of the Hawk) Page 2