Hawk Genesis: War (Flight of the Hawk)

by Robert Little

  The third station seemed to disappear behind a cloud of expanding atmosphere, fire, and debris.

  The first portion of the mission was now complete. Now, the most vital element of their brief tour of the solar system: escape.

  He’d been monitoring the approach vectors of the various groups of fighters, and the situation now looked far better than he had earlier feared. Only one group, about two hundred, appeared to pose any immediate threat. They had apparently been called in from another sector of the planet-based defenses, and were coming up from the far side of the planet.

  Chamberlin’s fighters were now struggling out of the gravity well, but they carried so much velocity with them that this new group of fighters would have to launch within the next few moments or the federal fighters would sweep out of range.

  They did launch, a much better coordinated effort than he’d seen so far. Over six hundred missiles sped off their rails, launched from over one hundred thousand kilometers. If those were the same type as the first units had fired, he had a chance to avoid most of them. If not, he had a problem.

  While he watched the lines of fire arc up toward him, a group of new blips came into existence. Three destroyers appeared at a distance of six million kilometers. Jumping that close to such a large body was inherently and extremely risky, and did very bad things to the gravity drive systems. John could think of no other occasion when he’d witnessed anything similar. He laughed and told his pilot, “I think they’re not very happy with our visit.” She didn’t laugh, but then, she rarely did – her husband was a rebel prisoner.

  Moments later, four more small ships, probably destroyers, appeared two million kilometers further out. One immediately began tumbling, an indication that its drive system had failed. John announced on the general comm system, “We can count that destroyer as heavily damaged – we didn’t shoot it, but it’s been put out of commission as a direct result of our actions.”

  He carefully plotted the course and velocity of the other six destroyers, and relaxed minutely: they were out of position and wouldn’t even reach missile range. Unless more combatants appeared in their direct path, they had a chance to escape.

  On the run-in to their launch on the orbital infrastructure, and subsequent curving acceleration away from the planet, John had carefully kept their total acceleration to no more than their compensators could handle. He assumed that soon enough they would be forced to endure up to three or more positive G’s. A few minutes was no problem, but a few hours would be another matter.

  Some of the incoming hundred missiles had already failed in flight, telling John a great deal about the enemy’s defenses as well as his ability to either manufacture or obtain armaments.

  Less than forty missiles were able to struggle into range of his fighters, and all of them were knocked down. The fighters continued to accelerate after him, but he had a very large initial velocity advantage, and a slightly higher base acceleration, so they weren’t catching him, at least not today.

  The missile boats had emptied their racks and were no longer a threat, and of the original five hundred or so fighters, almost twenty percent had been destroyed, and the others were now totally out of the fight. The tactical situation had changed dramatically for the better, helped greatly by a surprisingly inept enemy.

  What had originally seemed to be a near suicide mission was turning out to be far more successful than he would have dared hope for. Unfortunately, in this war, losses of even twelve percent were not considered severe. To John, it meant eight dead and six captured friends.

  Three additional groups of destroyers appeared, one right in his path. He immediately changed his course to avoid them. This caused him to look at his fuel state. His external fuel tanks had greatly extended his range, but at the rate he was using fuel, he’d never make it to the outer reaches of the system. He analyzed their remaining reaction fuel and sat in thought, trying to imagine the system, the location of the defenders and his fuel state. He would have to shut down their drives or at least lower their acceleration to no more than one G.

  He decided to use their remaining thruster fuel. On command, all sixty fighters shut down their gravity drives and immediately went to their thrusters. They only had a quarter G of thrust, but after five minutes, that would amount to a significant delta-v.

  They shut down their thrusters at five minutes. They were now down to fumes, and would require at least a little to dock, but first things first – they had to survive the journey.

  The first two groups of destroyers began launching missiles, although he didn’t know exactly why, as they no longer had a target, and even if they did have one, his fighters were well out of range. After thinking about it, he came to the conclusion that while it might not be logical to him, to the destroyer captains it might make excellent sense – they would be seen by the civilians on the planet as doing everything possible to destroy him.

  He would have a little time before having to worry about the latest group of destroyers, who were now accelerating on the same heading he had been on – his overtake velocity was very large and they wanted to extend the time they would be in missile range.

  If he did nothing, it would take over twenty hours to reach the original rendezvous. He had enough fuel for about five hours of maximum thrust. As long as he was under acceleration, the enemy would know exactly where he was, and if he shut off they would still be able to accurately calculate his position. He had a very large velocity advantage, and he was now out of sight and on a slightly different heading than before, but the enemy would know roughly where he was headed, and he felt certain that more destroyers would be jumping into blocking positions. Fortunately, this system didn’t seem to have many destroyers, no carriers, and of course, fighters couldn’t jump. He didn’t think that even these lunatics would or could make multiple jumps this close to the planet.

  He sent an encrypted message to his carrier. He included all his recordings of the attack, the numbers and types of kills, his analysis of the overall defenses and weapons, and requested that the carriers meet up with him closer in. He didn’t think he could successfully evade a continuing series of destroyers and their missiles. If the carriers could jump into space outside the fourth planets orbit, he might have a chance to reach them, but only if the other federal fighters could first cleanse the immediate area of defenders. It would take four hours for the carriers to receive his message, and he wouldn’t know if they would comply with his request until they showed up.

  He watched his plot. The destroyer missiles dropped out, but the last group of planet-based fighters continued to pursue him, sort of a modern version of the hammer and the anvil, with the destroyers being the anvil. He could kill them, but at a high cost. Within three hours their pursuers would equal his escape velocity and in seven would overtake him. That would use up most of their fuel, but he didn’t think that would be overly important to them – they could always send out destroyers to refuel their fighters, after his fighters were eliminated of course.

  He developed a rough plan that would require his fighters to resume accelerating within two hours. He didn’t dare allow those pursuing fighters to catch him – he had enough worries with the destroyers already in his path. He also assumed that he’d see more destroyers as the planetary defenses gradually reacted to the attack.

  His thrusters had eased him slightly out of the path of the pursuers, but not so much that they couldn’t easily reacquire him, meaning he was eventually going to have to try to fend off missiles and possibly even the powerful lasers most destroyers were equipped with.

  The time to resume acceleration dropped down to zero, and the federal fighters went back to maximum acceleration. It took less than two minutes for their pursuers to realign their pursuit. Chamberlin’s fighters still enjoyed a velocity advantage over their pursuers, but they also still had several destroyers ahead of them, which were now maneuvering to intercept him. He calculated that they would be able to force him to either come into m
issile range or push him further away from his destination.

  He could now see nearly two thousand drive systems in the vicinity of the planet, and while virtually all of them were of little or no threat to him, that still left a few hundred possible threats to worry about, and he felt in his bones that the worst threats weren’t yet visible. He had never forgotten his encounter with those four super-destroyers. Without missiles, his ability to keep the enemy off his back was highly limited; therefore, he had to continue to avoid conflict.

  Over the next four hours Chamberlin’s fighters clawed their way past the blockading destroyers and maintained a narrow gap ahead of the pursuing fighters. He felt reasonably confident that he could handle one or the other, but he would lose people in the process, something that he’d grown to dread, so he continued to try and avoid getting within range of anyone’s weapons.

  By now their carriers would have received his message, but he would have no way of knowing until he showed up at the new rendezvous.

  Twelve destroyers jumped into a well-calculated blocking position, directly between where he was and where he wanted to go. His velocity was now extremely high, but they’d done a decent job of figuring out where he would want to go. As a result, within just twenty minutes, possibly a little more, he would run right into range of their missiles. He made yet another course change. It would divert his fighters to the very edge of the destroyer’s missile envelope while keeping outside of the pursuing fighters much shorter-range missiles, should they still have any. Since he couldn’t be certain, he had to assume that they did.

  He was no longer certain that he could make it to the new pick-up location. Fortunately, as long as they were within twenty million kilometers or so, his drive systems would register on the carrier’s sensors. He might just have to rely on that, and hope that the carriers would be able to jump into a position he could reach. John’s experiences in the military had taught him to dread having to depend on others.

  Four more groups of destroyers appeared on his screens. It was becoming apparent that the planetary defenses had gotten their act together, and were doing everything possible to prevent him from successfully breaking free. They were also taking a big chance that the multiple gravity wells found in solar systems could damage or destroy either the drive systems or the entire ship. So far, they’d only damaged one destroyer badly enough to be visible, but the chances were good that many to most of the others had sustained minor to significant damage that would require time in a space dock.

  He now had almost twenty destroyers on his screen. All of them had jumped into an arc generally outward of his present position and heading. None of them were close enough to be an immediate threat, but his fuel status was now down to less than fifteen percent. He could run at max G’s for another one hundred thirty minutes.

  Four new blips appeared on his screen, outward of two destroyer groups, and much larger than anything he’d yet seen inside the system. His first thought was that the enemy had brought in some outside reinforcements. However, a moment later he reported to his crews, “Our carriers have jumped into a position about one hour distant. There are a few destroyers in between us and a hot shower, but I’m guessing those carriers might have a few fighters on board. We’re going to see if our friends can convince the destroyers to make nice.”

  He ordered what he hoped would be a final course change and looked critically at his plot. Three carriers had jumped into fairly close proximity of the destroyers, in fact, within heavy missile range, and he could already see that they were launching fighters. The Adams had jumped into the system further out, and with some matching velocity, and he smiled in relief. Captain Ahmidiyeh was an extremely good ship handler, and had managed to not only put himself into approximately the right portion of space, John’s fighters weren’t going to sail helplessly past him. He would have to begin decelerating in order to be able to match courses, but the Adams must have very carefully plotted his course and spent the intervening time trying to generate its own, matching velocity in order to make his task of matching course possible. He did some careful calculations and saw that the pursuing fighters would have a chance to catch him, but he now had some reinforcements. The other carriers had brilliantly performed an extremely difficult maneuver and were carrying enough velocity with them that his fighters would be protected as they attempted to dock.

  After another few moments of calculations he told his crews, “Okay boys and girls, we’re going to go to max decel in seventeen minutes. If I’ve timed it correctly, we should come to rest, relative to the Adams, with fifteen minutes lead-time on our pursuers. I don’t think they have any missiles left, but they’re not answering my calls, so we have to presume they do. Meanwhile, I want to remind you that we have almost zero thruster time remaining, so be very careful how you approach the ship. Heavy fighters have first priority, then the good pilots.”

  He heard some chuckles over the net, although not that many. He found that keeping a light tone helped to ease the tensions that their business – killing other people – tended to create. This had been yet another mission in which his people had expected the worst. The fact that “only” fourteen crewmen were dead or prisoners didn’t lessen in the least the enormous emotional load they’d been operating under.

  They spread out and began decelerating. Their compensators struggled with the large forces, managing to keep them down to a heavy three gravities. For a short time, trying to function with over three gravities was not difficult, but they had been under acceleration for a very long time and would be decelerating for over another hour, making for some bruising and very sore muscles, assuming that in the final hour of this mission they didn’t get killed by the destroyers or fighters.

  The Adams contacted John and told him that the other carriers were in the process of attacking the destroyers, and advised him that there were over one hundred fighters on his tail. John muttered to nobody in particular, “No Shakespeare,” his way of not quite swearing. James had long ago stopped laughing at his literary references, or in fact, at much of anything. His boyish enthusiasm had been ground down.

  John watched his plot, which filled up with the missile tracks of well over three hundred federal missiles, targeting just four destroyers. The ships didn’t long survive, although two federal fighters were destroyed by the counter attack. There were three additional destroyers that were hesitating to enter the fight. They were about two hundred fifty thousand kilometers distant from the carriers, much closer to it’s large number of fighters, positioned to intercept both them and their weapons. If they strayed in closer, they would have to face a torrent of light missiles.

  John felt a momentary spike of pity for the captains who would later have to explain to their superiors why they didn’t attack. The fact that it would be suicide might not hold much weight with an admiral who would in turn have to explain to his red-faced civilian leaders that many billions of dollars in crucial orbital infrastructure had just been destroyed by a paltry sixty enemy fighters.

  John’s fighters overshot the Adams, but a few moments later the heavy fighters began edging carefully, although not that carefully into their bays. The enemy fighters were still fifteen minutes out, but they were now facing another huge launch of federal missiles, and they might not have much attention left over for the carriers. They hadn’t launched a single missile, making it apparent that they’d shot their one bolt right at the outset of their pursuit. Not smart, but very good for John and company.

  The last fighters were still edging into their bays when klaxons began sounding, telling everyone that the carrier was preparing to jump. The area was beginning to fill up with numerous missile launches, although none had any real chance at reaching the carrier.

  They jumped while crews were still tying down fighters. Lots of regulations were getting broken, but the Adams wasn’t, a fact the entire crew made known when the ship jumped out of the system, following closely on the heels of the other three carriers. Everyone paus
ed work for a few moments and cheered, whistled and applauded like crazy as the bruised, exhausted and hungry crews shuffled toward their quarters.

  Where the showers were.

  Chapter 11

  Two hours later a very tired Lieutenant Commander Chamberlin sat down with the CAG’s of the other three carriers, Captain Ahmidiyeh and the admiral of the flotilla. His body was so sore he could barely walk.

  John listened as the lead CAG described their ingress, and the encounter with the ill-fated missile boat. At that point she almost surprised John by explaining that at her request John had developed a deviation from the original plans. She gave her reasoning for asking for his input, and for accepting it. She ran into some light interference from two very small flights of fighters, and had easily brushed them aside to return to their carriers. She then turned it over to John.

  He described their attack, the highly creative use of their chemical thrusters to create a little confusion, their attacks on the three stations, leading to the near total destruction of the third, roughly fifty percent destruction of the second, and mild but significant damage to the first. He had lost seven crews, a once again extremely painful loss, in no way mitigated by the mild military success and huge political bounty the mission would generate. Everyone was quietly effusive in his or her praise of pretty much everyone else. A successful mission wouldn’t hurt anyone’s career.