Hawk Genesis: War (Flight of the Hawk)

by Robert Little

  The captain, who had been a freighter captain before the war, gestured to John to sit in the spacious but rough and sparsely furnished office. As soon as John was settled, Captain Ahmidiyeh got to the point, “I’ve been reassigned to the Adams, so we’re going to be working together for at least a few more months.” John stood and reached out his hand to congratulate his friend, “Congratulations sir.” His first thought was, ‘thank God.’

  They talked briefly, and in the process, John learned that the task of transferring over to their new ship would happen both sooner and faster than anticipated. There was a war on.

  John lit a fire under his pilots, and within three days he and his men shuttled over to the still-uncommissioned ship. They left behind their fighters, but most of the key maintenance personnel came over with the pilots. James remarked to John, “The new captain of the DeKlerk screwed up badly – he’s getting an absolute relic of a ship, and most of the people who knew how to keep it running transferred out. His loss, our gain.”

  John nodded in somber agreement, but didn’t reply. He’d been reading correspondence from families of his dead pilots. He had written to each family, related the manner in which their spouse, parent, son or daughter had died, and assured them that he would do everything in his power to ensure that those terrible losses would not be in vain. Some of the families had kept up a correspondence. They seemed to hunger for even the slight contact with their loved one that John represented. In many cases, he’d been the last human voice the dead crews had heard, and he just couldn’t refuse, despite the intense pain their letters represented.

  Over the course of the next week their new fighters began to arrive. They turned out to be an updated version, with a bit more acceleration and endurance, plus fittings for external tanks for the fusion drive. They received one batch of the heavy fighters, and they were also improved versions – they included the offensive laser the first generation lacked.

  John and his crews pitched in with the maintenance people to bring the craft to life, and within two more weeks of intense work, their entire complement of fighters were on board and ready for combat. The admiral had kept his word, and then some. He’d managed to filch four of the DeKlerk’s heavy fighters, giving John the ten spares the ship had room for.

  On a mild spring day, a very old navy joke, the Adams was commissioned. It was only the second military ship to be built by this yard, and it represented a significant boost in the planet’s manufacturing capacity. As a result, everyone who could showed up for the ceremony, some of them praying mightily that the ship would actually be able to leave the dock – they had additional orders to fill.

  As soon as the typically long-winded speeches were concluded, all the visitors departed the primary flight deck and the ship entered the Federal Navy and came to life.

  Their trials were a trial – the ship had a lot of niggling little bugs. The contractor’s crews spent a week with the crew, bringing the Adams up to speed and fixing a blizzard of problems. The main engines worked as advertised, and managed slightly over seven G’s acceleration for the twelve-hour test. The DeKlerk had only been capable of four, and even that was with a tail wind, a joke popular with DeKlerk snipes.

  They returned to the dock, dropped off the highly paid civilians and returned to the war.

  It took nearly a week for the new ship to rejoin the main fleet. They were immediately reassigned to a small strike force that was to try to sneak into the rebel world of Zanzibar, and tasked with taking out the orbital facilities.

  By this point in the war, the federal admiralty felt that it held a significant edge in hardware, and was now finally able to begin the process of cutting off the flow of support to the rebel fleet, or fleets.

  The Adams left the comfort of the main fleet, accompanying three first generation carriers and sixteen destroyers. Captain Ahmidiyeh sat down with John and talked about their orders, and they both came to the same conclusion – the attacking force was so large that there was scant possibility that the relatively noisy clutch of ships could get anywhere near the planet without detection, but it was too small to successfully fight its way through the home defenses.

  John said, “The way to do this would be to ghost in my heavy fighters while the destroyers put on a demonstration somewhere else in the system, hopefully drawing off some or most of the local defenses. We could launch at their orbital facilities and accelerate toward the other three carriers, who would bounce the pursuers. It would work, and we’d remain alive to brag about it.”

  The captain told him, “I don’t know much about fighter tactics, other than what I’ve learned from you and your men, but it sounds reasonable. If you want, I’ll see if I can get you together with the admiral.” John shook his head, “Thanks, but other than pissing him off, it would do no good. I’ve already forwarded my proposal up the chain, and it was rejected, no reason given.”

  Captain Ahmidiyeh was at least fifteen years older than John, and had spent his entire adult life in space, a realm of nature that was absolutely logical. He shook his head in resignation, careful not to speak out of turn about the officers who were not present, but still showing John that he too shared John’s deep dismay at the way the war was being prosecuted, this portion of it in particular.

  The two men went over their orders. The force was supposed to try to sneak into the system, coming in from below the elliptic, and coast in to the inhabited fourth world, Algiers. According to the admiral, they would elude whatever sensor platforms the system had emplaced and launch a large force of two hundred forty fighters, leaving behind eighty for defense.

  During that briefing, John asked to speak. After being recognized, John asked, “Sir, can you tell us about system defenses? How many fighters and destroyers they have available?” The admiral shook his head. He should have offered up that information at the outset, but he hadn’t, so John asked. Significantly, none of the other carrier’s CAG’s had. The admiral said, “I don’t know what their home system defenses are. I wasn’t told and I see no way of finding out save for following our orders.”

  John sat down. The admiral wasn’t a fool, but he also wasn’t very experienced, either in actual combat or in planning attacks. Sending in two hundred and forty fighters, deaf, dumb and blind was one way to lose two hundred and forty fighters. System defenses tended to load up with hundreds upon hundreds of fighters. Carriers were a rarity, as were any capital ships, but fighters could be based out of orbitals, derelict freighters, even from the surface of the planet. They also tended to possess modest amounts of missile boats, converted shuttles in nearly every case. The boats were typically armed with ten missiles mounted on external attachment points. Once their missiles were launched, the boats ceased to be of any practical danger. As the war dragged on and the numbers of carriers, fighters and missiles increased, missile boats grew steadily less relevant save for system defense.

  They entered the system, carrying a very large amount of relative velocity. That would reduce the amount of time in-system, but since that velocity might require heavy deceleration when they approached their target – the location of all those enemy combatants - it would greatly increase their probability of being quickly spotted.

  John carefully briefed his pilots. On this mission, he was taking all his heavy fighters and twenty of the light fighters, leaving behind only twenty for defense. It was a mission designed for failure, costly failure, and by now John was worried they wouldn’t even reach the target. He wanted to ensure that he didn’t have to write any more letters, but would have the ability, so to speak.

  He installed external fuel tanks on his fighters. This would give them the ability to boost at high G’s for an additional three hours. This wasn’t in the orders, but that simply meant he wasn’t disobeying orders.

  They passed through the band of highly charged particles that surrounded the system like a bubble, and launched the fighters just inside the orbit of the outermost planet. The carriers would continue on a ballistic
path that would take them near enough to the fourth planet that the fighters were supposed to be able to rendezvous with them, although it would mean they would be dangerously close to bingo fuel. John’s addition gave his own crews an extra margin of safety, but he already knew that if it came down to it, he would not abandon the others.

  The fighters made a slight correction of their course and gradually drifted away from the four carriers. The destroyers were already proceeding on a different course that would take them fairly close to an outer planet that had several bases on one of the larger moons. Their task was to make a noisy show of trying to sneak in, then quickly accelerate away, hopefully drawing off some of the home system’s mobile defenses, although, of course, not too much.

  Over the course of thirty hours the large force of fighters closed in on the fourth planet. They’d not yet set off any alarms, at least, any that they knew about. The nature of their mission meant that they were totally in the dark as to what was happening with the two other elements, and should the carriers run into trouble, they would have no means of getting out of the system, other than as prisoners or cadavers.

  The fighters had gradually drifted apart and were now in a globular formation with over a thousand kilometers separation between elements. This was designed by the overall CAG to lessen the chance of discovery, but John thought that it would actually increase it.

  Space-going craft utilized a drive that produced a significant gravity bump that other craft could detect, and out to fairly large distances. However, when the drives were shut off, ships became very difficult to find, even using active systems such as radar. However, that didn’t mean they were impossible to find, only very difficult, and the more spread out the flights were, the greater the chance that some of the inbound fighters would set off an alarm somewhere.

  Three hours from their planned turnover, they ran into a missile boat. Actually, they almost ran over the boat. In the immensity of space, the odds of that happening were vanishingly low, yet their avenue of approach was uncreatively logical, thus the presence in the region of a small number of defenders.

  Their first intimation of trouble was the sudden appearance of targeting radar from a distance of only ten thousand kilometers. At their velocity, they would actually pass it within just a few moments.

  The missile boat began transmitting, ending any chance of a successful mission, but their orders were to continue the attack unless they were met with overwhelming force. One missile boat didn’t meet that criterion. The federal fighter that tripped the boats sensors launched two missiles. The boat’s pilot probably panicked, and launched all ten of its missiles, all targeting on that one fighter.

  Chamberlin’s crews had spent hundreds of hours in simulators, in practice and in combat, learning how to provide mutual support for each other, but it was apparent that at least some of the other carriers had failed to do the same.

  Both the missile boat and the fighter were hit and destroyed. John’s heart sank. They didn’t know what awaited them, but system defenses usually consisted of many, many hundreds of relatively cheap fighters. Their location and trajectory would make their target very obvious, and since that planet was where most of the enemy fighters would be deployed, that meant that they were heading right at the system’s biggest concentration of firepower.

  John expected that the mission leader would do something, but as the seconds turned into long minutes, and he didn’t hear anything, he radioed his own crews. They’d been running on their external tanks, and he reminded them to jettison the tanks only on his command. He’d wait until the last moment, but he didn’t want to lose even a fraction of potential acceleration.

  They could already see signs of frantic activity. Multiple gravity drives lit off in the vicinity of the planet ahead of them, and they spotted a number of heavier drive signatures from other locations. If the intent had been to spook the system defenses, their mission was already an unqualified success. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the objective.

  John looked at his plot and made some rapid calculations: if they immediately changed course they would be able to avoid nearly everything and get back to their carriers with little or no damage; if they continued on their present course, they would be unable to avoid contact with those system fighters, which now numbered close to five hundred, and that number was continuing to grow.

  As they approached a pre-planned point where the flights of fighters were to begin to spread out, each one with separate orbital targets, John radioed the commander in charge of the attack, “Sir, orders?” Accustomed to prompt replies by his own pilots, he was surprised when he got nothing at all. He almost asked again, but was relieved that he hadn’t when his commander signaled him. He answered, “Yes, sir?”

  The commander outranked John, but had far less experience, and a RWR, otherwise known as relative with rank. Commander Gomez asked him, “Commander Chamberlin, what is your analysis?” John’s heart sank, but he promptly answered, “Sir, my system now shows over seven hundred fighters and missile boats under acceleration, with more appearing every minute, nearly all of them accelerating to position themselves between us and the planet. I estimate that we would come under fire approximately two hours out from our objective, and we would have to fight for every kilometer from that point onward. I estimate close to zero possibility of even one fighter reaching launch range, but the situation is even worse, since we’d have to use our missiles to defend ourselves. We would manage to kill a lot of fighters, nothing else, but the overall exchange rate would probably only be a bit better than par. Sir.”

  After a long silence, Commander Gomez asked, “Commander, recommendation?” John sighed in relief – the woman knew where she was - in over her head, which was about to get cut off.

  John said, “Yes sir. I think that we have a small opportunity to draw off the bulk of their defenders. Your three groups could go to maximum acceleration, heading towards the carriers. That would draw off most of their defenders, and you would be able to reach your three carriers and jump out ahead of any appreciable risk to the carriers themselves. All four would jump, but the Adams would only jump to our rendezvous point. My fighters would coast in to about fifty thousand klicks, make our launches against the infrastructure that we could target, and then we’d accelerate, and fight our way out to our carrier. Correction, have all four carriers jump to the same coordinates, and your three groups could bounce any pursuers.”

  John’s suggestion gave his nominal superior a great deal to like, starting with the fact that in a few hours her people would be taking a hot shower instead of learning the answer to the question of the possibility of an afterlife. It also held out the chance that the mission could still salvage some success. With barely any hesitation, but some relief, she said, “Accepted. I’ll update our crews. Good luck commander.”

  John had deliberately given her an honorable out, and at the same time, he’d created a small opportunity to actually damage the orbital infrastructure.

  His father loved sports, and had often told John, “Winners always want the ball.” John had researched the genesis of that expression, and after several hours found it in an old flat entertainment from around the end of the 20th century, or beginning of the 21st. He’d viewed it and while he had problems with some of the archaic terms and expressions, he’d loved it. Due to the high risk of physical injury, very few federation planets even allowed American-style football, although Sumo wrestling and soccer were popular. A question that was many centuries too late to ask was how on earth – literally – the lead actor, someone named Keanu, got his job? He was also struck by the distinct racial separation the entertainment revealed. In the centuries since then, the races had largely intermarried, the religions had ceased their attempts to force the world’s inhabitants to obey one mindset, and had instead focused on trying to inculcate virtues in their societies. John was also amazed at the huge sports arenas that apparently populated that society. To a man raised on a frontier world, it just se
emed insane.

  John set up his board with the new and improved plans, forwarded them to his crews and five minutes later, ordered the ejection of the outboard plastic tanks, which many hours later would spark to a brief death in the planet’s atmosphere.

  The one hundred sixty fighters went to maximum acceleration, bending them away from John and his crews, and toward the presumed safety of their carriers.

  John was pretty certain that the missile boat they’d run over would not have been able to get a good read on the total size of the inbound fighters. One hundred sixty was a fairly large force, and he thought that the defenders would send the bulk of their fighters in an attempt to cut off the now fleeing enemy. He was also pretty certain they would not send all of their defenders, since he would not have.

  By now, there were almost twelve hundred enemy small craft under heavy acceleration, most of them fighters, but nearly one hundred were missile boats, and there were a few destroyers and even one larger craft that John’s system couldn’t identify. Considering the hodge podge of ships that had been cobbled into the war effort, that lack of identification wasn’t surprising or unusual.

  Three minutes after the sudden course change, John’s system reported a corresponding course change in many of the defenders. Over the course of the next two minutes, nearly seven hundred craft began accelerating to intersect Commander Gomez and her fleeing fighters.