That was good, at least for Commander Gomez since the enemy wasn’t going to catch her, but it left about five hundred small craft in between John and his planned targets. Not good. He was pretty certain that he would be a very bad surprise, especially since his fighters held far more missiles than the defenders would expect, but that still meant a lot of letters, assuming he was alive to write them.
As expected, everyone not wearing a federal uniform was radiating like crazy, making it unlikely that John and his sixty fighters could just sneak past the extremely alert and quite probably terrified and angry defenders.
They were still two hours away from detection, assuming that they didn’t stumble over yet another enemy. John sat quietly, thinking about three-dimensional space. He checked his reaction fuel, did some calculations and after another five minutes of thought asked his flight leaders to check their status. He told them to only reply back with any fuel states that were below what he calculated they would require for his tentative plan. They were all supposed to have been full when they departed the ship, and they hadn’t used their thrusters, so they should have full tanks. John was alive in part because he didn’t trust ‘should’ or any of its homicidal cousins.
As it turned out, all sixty fighters had enough reaction mass to make the relatively minor course change he had in mind. Since they were still approximately two hours away from the point where they could be detected, they would be able to generate enough delta V to come in approximately fifty thousand kilometers below their present trajectory. By using their thrusters, which were designed for delicate maneuvering inside the gravity field of their carriers, they would avoid generating any telltale gravity spikes.
He passed his instructions to his fighters, and on command all sixty craft began imitating ancient reaction rockets. For the next nine minutes his fighters accelerated at a ninety-degree angle to their flight path. After shutting off, he ordered his crews to carefully use their thrusters to close up the formation. He wanted all sixty to form a globular, compact mass with no more than one hundred meters separation between craft.
Fighters normally operated with as much as one hundred kilometers of separation. One hundred meters was extraordinary, and would require constant monitoring. Nobody complained.
It took almost five additional minutes for everyone to settle into place, and even then his crews had to make tiny adjustments to avoid collisions. They now occupied the approximate amount of space of a cruiser, but without the radar return.
Thirty minutes before they crossed the threshold into possible detection, he outlined his plans. Once he was certain that everyone understood his highly unorthodox attack, he ordered his forty heavy fighters to launch, one by one, eight missiles each. They were to accelerate for the absolute minimum, no more than forty seconds, and they were to stagger their launches so that no more than two missiles were launched at a time. All the missiles were targeted at a region of space rather than a particular target. He set them up to reignite when they were within one thousand kilometers of the calculated leading edge of fighters. An experienced enemy would see the extremely hot missiles, but John was hoping this enemy was not.
If things went as planned, although “things” never did, three hundred and twenty missiles would suddenly come to life, virtually in the face of the enemy, who would have very little time to react.
Due to his approach, when this happened, his fighters would be over two hundred thousand kilometers distant, and almost fifty thousand kilometers below the hoped-for holocaust of destruction. It might be enough, but he wasn’t willing to take a bet on it. They were going to have to fight to get in, and fight to get back out. The war had dragged on for over three years, and these people had presumably been practicing to defend their system for the same amount of time.
He ordered his crews to take a stimulant, and keep all their systems on standby. Since the majority of his people were still relatively raw and inexperienced, he went over the various possibilities, talking conversationally, almost as if he was still the history professor he’d once been. Chamberlin was an almost fervent believer in the concept that success stood on two legs – knowledge and intense practice. He didn’t talk about luck, but if they asked, he told them they could make it work for them or through neglect allow it to work against them. On occasion, he had referred to luck as the third leg of a good plan. Depending on his audience and what he wanted to accomplish, he had any number of ways to proceed, some of them distinctly scatological and guaranteed to reproduce a laugh.
Since early detection was a possibility, they might get pinned down well before their missiles were within range. He would have to play that by ear, as even if they were out of range, those three hundred missiles would still capture a great deal of attention.
At a distance of seventy thousand kilometers from the front rank of fighters, someone got a sniff. John saw the sudden change in acceleration and direction and immediately sent a signal to their now distant missiles. Three seconds later three hundred and ten missiles ignited their motors and began seeking targets. Ten had lost power or didn’t get the signal.
In any event, his missiles were only twenty-five hundred kilometers distant from the slowly accelerating wall of tiny fighters, with concentrations of missiles boats just a few thousand kilometers behind.
The federal fighters were now approximately five hundred thousand kilometers from the planet. John estimated that almost two hundred enemy craft were within potential missile range of his fighters, or would be at some point in the ingress to the targets, the orbital infrastructure that allowed the population of this planet to venture into space, and get supplied from space.
At his velocity, relative to the planet, he was still four hours away. That was a very long time.
As he watched, his missiles began homing in on those enemy craft that had the great misfortune to be in that particular portion of space at that particular point in time.
Some of his missiles were getting hit by lasers, but the defenders were already demonstrating that they were not the enemy’s first team, perhaps not the second. They were ragged and their response was highly uncoordinated. John thought this a good omen – for him.
Meanwhile, the one fighter that had seemed to find them had also seemingly forgotten them the moment the missiles came to life. It was accelerating toward the missiles, and obliquely away from John. Very good. Stupid, but good.
Eventually – time seemed to drag at times like this – two hundred and eighty missiles slashed into the ranks of enemy craft. They had lost less than ten percent on the ballistic run-in to the enemy, a remarkably bad demonstration of poor training and shooting – for the rebels.
They were too far away to actually see the explosions, but their systems began to register the destruction of dozens of fighters and missile boats. It was not only a much better result than John had hoped for, it produced yet another favorable reaction. Most of the enemy craft were now heading directly towards the region from which the missiles had appeared, taking them away from John and his fighters actual position, and making him begin to hope that they might actually reach their target.
Over the next few minutes, his missiles swarmed in amongst the frantically maneuvering and firing enemy. He estimated that something on the order of ninety craft were blotted out of existence, and almost even better, the shockingly successful attack seemed to cause a certain amount of additional confusion and loss of coordination. In other words, panic.
Eventually, as John knew it would happen, they were detected. By this time, they were a little over four hundred thousand kilometers from the planet. John ordered another launch of four missiles from the heavy fighters, and once again they attempted to hide their exact location, heading and identity. The missiles promptly shut off their drives, and after two more minutes, long enough for John to verify that the enemy had definitely detected at least something, he ordered the launch of another four missiles, again shutting off their drives. His fighters went to maximum accel
eration.
As the pressure mounted, his couch enveloped him in a tight embrace. Within moments their acceleration exceeded the fighters ability to compensate.
John waited another two minutes and relaunched half of the missiles at the main mass of fighters, who were coming in from above and to his starboard. A minute later, he launched the second half.
The enemy quickly saw the missiles, and came to the very logical yet erroneous conclusion that the sixty fighters they could clearly see on their screens were not the only enemy fighters. Two groups of eighty missiles each could mean that a minimum of forty additional fighters, up to as many as one hundred sixty, were trailing the sixty fighters that they could see. John’s ploy created the possibility that his sixty fighters was a decoy for the main body.
As hoped for, nearly one hundred fighters promptly veered toward the fresh flight of missiles. They were still going to come into his range, but they would now be coming in behind his fighters, and because of his very high relative velocity, they would only be in range for a few minutes.
That still left almost one hundred fighters that he would have to deal with, and he was running out of missiles. He’d expended four hundred eighty missiles, leaving his fighters with three hundred twenty. He didn’t have any recent information on the three large space stations that they were to target, but it was assumed that it wouldn’t take many missiles to severely damage or even destroy them – he simply had to ensure that he could get into range with enough to accomplish the task.
At their present acceleration they would be within range in less than one hour. In far less time than that his fighters would come under attack. His crews had spread out and were forming into a thin disk formation, giving them the maximum possible coverage for any missile attacks coming from their twelve o’clock. Missiles coming in from an angle would pose a danger to the outer perimeter, but he’d placed his most experienced pilots in those positions. They had become highly adept at killing missiles.
They finally began to see a ragged and seemingly totally uncoordinated missile launch from the approaching fighters. The federal velocity was so high that the defenders were going to be in danger of blowing right past him and out of the fight, unless they began decelerating very soon.
The piecemeal manner in which the missiles were coming in made his job much easier. His crews patiently waited and began using their energy weapon to pick off the missiles.
The leading edge of the enemy finally realized their predicament, and began decelerating, but John thought they’d waited too long. As long as he and his crews could survive the next few minutes, they’d blow past this first wave of defenders and have a little breathing room before the next bunch.
At a range of fifty thousand kilometers, John’s fighters launched one missile each, all targeted on just the fighters directly between them and their still distant target. The enemy responded with another ragged launch, presumably emptying their racks. The difference between his highly disciplined crews and the enemy was striking, and strikingly in favor of the federal forces.
The federal missiles managed to evade the once again frantic enemy maneuvers, and twenty-seven fighters disappeared in large, soundless explosions. Only one enemy missile even got close to his fighters. The enemy was fighting dumb.
As they slashed toward the enemy planet, John ordered his crews to begin maneuvering to avoid the last ditch laser attacks, which so far had been largely ineffectual.
The two waves of fighters intersected, leaving in their wake three tumbling federal fighters and an amazing twelve more of the enemy. John anxiously checked his board – James was still with him. All three of his crews seemed to have survived the attack, but for the foreseeable future they were going to be guests of the enemy.
On command, John’s crews shut down their drives, swapped ends and resumed lasing the now retreating enemy, who once again hadn’t reacted in time. As the distance opened between the two groups of fighters, intense beams of focused energy passed in both directions, and seven more enemy fighters were hit.
Chamberlin’s crews turned around and resumed their acceleration toward the orbital structures, now only two hundred thousand kilometers distant.
John could see evidence of a frantic evacuation of the stations, something he heartily approved of. He hated killing and destruction.
There remained one fairly large and reasonably organized group of enemy fighters that posed a threat to his fighters, but they were coming in at an angle, and it was now obvious that John could successfully push through with his attack. The only question would be how many men and women he would lose.
He was now only twenty minutes away from his launch, and he began to look at possible exit strategies. While he was pondering the possibilities, the approaching enemy fighters and missile boats launched a relatively huge attack. More than six hundred missiles appeared, targeting his fifty-seven fighters. Fortunately, the missiles had been launched at or beyond extreme range, and he knew that a significant number of those missiles would go ballistic before reaching out to touch someone. These people were proving to be terribly inexperienced with warfare. They presumably knew the range of their fighter missiles, but hadn’t taken into account the fact that the federal fighters had built up a very large and increasing velocity away from them that would reduce the effective range.
Even as he looked at the approach vectors from that launch, another group of missile boats launched three hundred missiles from his port quarter. Those missiles were going to have to overtake his fighters, and they were at extreme range. The enemy now had an enormous number of missiles in space, and it would look spectacular to a civilian, but it was mostly a huge waste of taxpayer money.
A pair of destroyers that were actually within a few kilometers of the closest space station began launching. Those missiles, while few in number, were actually the biggest threat to his existence. They were larger, had better seeker heads and their terminal velocity would make them difficult to hit. John had saved one hundred eighty missiles, sixty each for the three stations. Well, minus the twelve missiles that had been on the three destroyed fighters. One missile per fighter would be launched at each of the stations.
John looked at his tiny plot – the two destroyers would be able to hit a majority of any missiles he sent at that station, but he didn’t see any similar arrangement at the two more distant stations.
He watched his plot. His crews reoriented themselves to the first huge attack, and began lasing the closest missiles from outside the probable envelope of destruction. His fighters had managed to avoid heating up their capacitors, knowing that within a few minutes they would have to begin lasing as fast as their systems could recharge the capacitors.
They began picking off approaching missiles, but there was a huge number of them, and within a few moments, the two other groups would come into laser range, giving his crews far more targets than they wanted.
He decided to simultaneously launch at all three stations, and ten seconds later his crews launched a very tight spread of light missiles, which streaked away from the federal fighters, curving in on the presumably defenseless stations.
As soon as his missiles appeared, the destroyers switched to firing light missiles, targeting his own. The enemy destroyers were doing a reasonably good job of hitting his missiles, but unless they got incredibly lucky, at least a few were going to get through. The structure was huge and the small number of warheads would probably not destroy it, but it ought to put it out of commission for a few weeks.
He ordered his crews to give first priority to the destroyer’s missiles, which numbered thirty, and were within a few minutes of coming within range.
He zoomed his plot out, trying to understand what he would face after he got away from the planet. It looked absurdly like a small walnut with hundreds of lines coming in from over two hundred and eighty degrees. So far, none had come closer than five thousand kilometers, but he felt that a few of them would have enough drive time left.
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br /> His crews were now lasing as fast as possible, destroying a missile with virtually every shot. Unfortunately, despite the fact that a large percentage of the enemy missiles went ballistic, some began to get through. First one, then three, then a fourth federal fighter exploded.
Astonishingly, that was the end of it. The enemy missiles had been both slower and shorter ranged than the ones used by front-line units.
His own missiles began impacting on the first station. Eight struck, creating large blooms of atmosphere and debris. He turned his attention to the next two stations, now just minutes away from receiving his attack. Swarms of fighters launched missiles in an attempt to destroy his, but they were well out of range and had no chance of an effective defense.
As John’s fighters swept past their closest approach to the planet and began curving away, he watched as the federal missiles punched through the thin walls of the second station. One of those missiles struck something important. Silent streamers of fire and debris erupted, heaving smoke, flame and debris into space and leaving a gaping hole. More hits followed, lots more, some blowing clear through the station. The station was almost a kilometer long, but much of that was now scrap metal.
Hawk Genesis: War (Flight of the Hawk) Page 10