Hawk Genesis: War (Flight of the Hawk)

by Robert Little

  John had some letters to write, but not tonight.

  The carriers linked up with their destroyer escorts who had enjoyed an entertaining day, launching missiles and jumping around the system’s periphery. They’d avoided any damage, and hadn’t caused any damage, but the enemy had uselessly expended nearly four hundred missiles in what now appeared to be an ill-trained defense of the system.

  John pointed this fact out twice before someone noticed and asked him about it. He tiredly explained, “I think we can conclude that this system has not properly prepared its own system defenses. I think we can also conclude that it will now redouble efforts to protect its infrastructure and people from attack. It will make demands on their central government for more resources, and will be less willing to provide resources to that same central government. The final conclusion I would draw would be that our navy ought to devote some efforts to duplicating this attack. The more resources the home systems hold back from their mobile fleets, the fewer resources those fleets will have available to attack federal worlds, thereby shortening the rebellion and increasing the prospects of all of us for a long life.”

  Everyone sat in thoughtful silence for a long moment before the admiral said, “Commander, write up a proposal, forward it to my attention.”

  John should have kept his mouth shut – he hated military paperwork, although those feelings didn’t cross over to anything in excess of three hundred years old.

  Over the next two weeks John gave his crews as much of a break as the war would allow. Despite the relatively severe physical demands a long mission like that caused, within two days they were back in the main fleet and patrolling. John’s protests had fallen on deaf ears, the same deaf ears that hadn’t heard all his previous protests when his crews performed brilliantly, sacrificed so much.

  Chapter 12

  Early one ship morning, Chamberlin was called up to the captain’s cabin and informed that he’d been promoted to full commander, and assigned the responsibility for all four ships fighter groups. The former Group CAG had been promoted, no doubt due to the superb manner in which she’d executed the recent mission. John didn’t begrudge her the promotion, and in fact she had behaved professionally and intelligently, meaning that her promotion might mean an overall improvement in the new posting.

  The four carriers, three of which were now new, purpose-built ships, were once again yanked out of the line and sent to the rear. They pulled into a navy anchorage in Elyse. As they entered the system their sensors picked out four very large ships in open construction docks that their computer couldn’t identify, but they’d already come to the conclusion that they were to join up with some new-build ships. They assumed that this was a closely guarded secret since they hadn’t been told. James grumped to his brother, “The navy has a lot of secrets, probably including the location of their secrets.” John looked at his brother and commented, “My, aren’t we cynical today.” James grumped, “This is the fourth time the Adams has run out of coffee; how are we supposed to fight a war that way?” John smiled, although his brother’s question held a great deal of merit. Federal logistics left a great deal to desire, and not just coffee.

  John and his four CAG’s, one of which was James, who had taken his place on the Adams, were ferried over to one of the four ships. Once they boarded and saluted the flag, they learned that they were on the heavy cruiser Baltimore, a brand new class of heavily armored ship. Its primary offensive weapon consisted of twenty missile launchers, but it also included forty energy systems, mounting thirty-five cm lasers. These were the very first ships in the federal navy to include both ablative and blast shielding. They reportedly included the largest fusion plants the navy had ever put into one ship, and could accelerate at “up to eight” G’s. The representative of the navy yard proudly let slip the information that construction on a battleship was nearing completion. It would possess double the launchers of these cruisers, sixty energy weapons and even heavier shielding. Since he’d broached the subject, John asked him about any other ships they might be commissioning in the near future, the only future he was interested in.

  The yard rep promptly closed his mouth. So, something else was in the works, literally.

  The ship smelled new, and certainly looked impressive. It could launch twenty missiles every ninety seconds, about what most current missile ships could do. However, it was armored and should be able to shrug off most energy weapons, meaning the energy weapons fielded by fighters, and could presumably withstand numerous missile hits, and continue to function. If so, it would be both formidable and a first.

  John wondered how many fighters could have been produced for the cost of this new class of ships. He wasn’t terribly impressed, and thought that his eighty fighters could have it for lunch. It didn’t possess the ability to launch the smaller, chemical reaction missiles his fighters used, which were an inexpensive yet useful weapon against fighters, the only realistic opponents this ship was going to face. He failed to comment on that thought. On the other hand, it had been built with the ability to launch an entirely new class of heavy missile, powered by a gravity drive, giving it as much as eight times the range of current versions. There was no word as to the availability of said missile.

  The tour ended, and after shaking hands and/or saluting, everyone was ordered to prepare to escort the four cruisers on their shakedown cruise. Ugh.

  John had forty fighters out on station when the four ships slowly edged out of their slips and accelerated out system toward a belt of detritus and rubble left over from the formation of the system.

  For the next two days the carriers and a couple of destroyers trudged along behind the cruisers. Nobody said anything, but it was obvious from the numerous delays that the ships were experiencing lots of teething problems.

  The missile tests were something of an embarrassment, and all four cruisers had trouble with maintaining the nominal acceleration figures. Worse, the ships fusion plants were unable to provide enough power to both accelerate the ship at its maximum, and operate its energy systems. John kept his mouth shut, but it required a certain amount of willpower, learned at the feet of his typically unhappy father. James muttered, “They should have named them after disasters, since that is what they are.” John smiled faintly and said, “Shush, or I’ll appoint you to my job.”

  James grinned and waved his hands, “No, anything but that!” John nodded, “Judging by the way you don’t turn in your paperwork on time, or correctly, or in any recognizable language, I thought that might make you listen.”

  He added, “After this cluster Frankenstein of a monster mission is completed, we’re getting some leave. Our new carriers seem to have a few teething issues that need to be fixed, in part due to Captain Ahmidiyeh’s creative violation of navy regulations relating to jumping into close proximity of anything larger than an ant, and so, my young, impetuous brother, what say we plan on a couple of weeks at home?” James laughed in delight, “Serious? You wouldn’t lie to me?” John grinned, “Based on the fact that we’re brothers, you already know I’d lie to you in a heartbeat. However, unless or until we hear otherwise, we need to prepare to get sunburned, and possibly meet a young lady, who will of course, dangle on my arm while you look longingly at a future that will not include female companionship of any sort, at any time, or, dare I say it, at any cost.”

  James smirked, “My elderly brother, your two feeble brain cells have collided and knocked each other senseless, which, I might add, is your normal state. I admit that you have a doctorate, you’re taller than is recommended or normal, and you have all of your hair and teeth. However, you are and have always been a nearly total idiot when it comes to feminine charms and the women who wield them. I have it on good authority that you aren’t even on a first name basis with anyone under the age of retired. However, as your brother, a man renowned far and wide for his ability to attract the acquiescing admiration of the comeliest, and, um, most highly available young ladies of our home town, I shall f
orthwith begin a campaign whose goal is the name and contact information of a reasonably attractive companion, one who is insusceptible to your extremely boring table talk, a woman who shall overlook your numerous deficiencies and yet still be capable of intelligent conversation, the one type you seem incapable of.”

  John looked at his grinning brother and shook his head. He said, “James, I’m not looking for…” James held up an imperious hand, “I know where you’re going, and while I don’t normally object, times have changed. You – hell, both of us – have been cooped up in this barely functional example of cutting edge technology for most of a lifetime. We are, shall I say, in need of a little release, and I can think of no better way than to spend two weeks somewhere with somebody I don’t have to salute, at least in the military sense of that term.” John laughed, “If the salute you’re contemplating is as quick and inaccurate as the one I’ve been watching you practice, then it won’t be two weeks, it will be more like two minutes.”

  James grinned, “Yes, but, you know, two minutes here, two minutes there, pretty soon you find that it’s time to return to the Junk Adams, err, John Adams.”

  John shook his head, but he was grinning almost as much as his brother.

  The trials were aborted several days ahead of schedule, due in no small part to the fact that one of the cruisers had to be taken under tow, another had discovered that the feed mechanisms for its missile launchers couldn’t handle the missiles without breaking down, and the other two merely failed to be able to function well enough to be a danger to anyone other than their own crews. John would have been amused, save for the fact that his red-face admiral would have shot him: he did almost shoot the contractor’s representative.

  They slowly returned to the ‘scene of the crime’, as James referred – privately – to the slips where the ships had come to half-life. His acerbic comments were another example of his barely concealed contempt of the federal war on logic and common sense. John had become just as weary of ineptitude and/or corruption, and shared the not terribly secret thoughts of many officers and enlisted that the military approach to a problem – blowing it up – might just be what the doctor ordered to spur the civilian contractors to stop lining their pockets and actually produce some decent war ships. In fact, the somewhat successful Indian carriers and their Ferrets were almost an anomaly.

  Their leave was cancelled, and they spent the next month in-system, patrolling the very empty outer reaches of Elyse while civilian contractors labored to resurrect the hugely expensive hulks.

  The system’s civilians were now engaged in a white-hot verbal and legal war with the navy over these four not-quite ships. Neither side wanted to accept responsibility for the inability of these highly touted war ships to actually wage war. It was probable that there was enough legal action for months to come, but that would be for someone else to deal with.

  John spent a day touring the engine room of the Baltimore, the ship that had completely failed to get out of its own way. The builder was frantically tearing down a load-bearing bulkhead, located adjacent to a power room, and installing additional fusion bottles and capacitors. John surmised that that would go a long way to solving most of the ships deficiencies, although it would make eating a more difficult task for the crew, and he had no idea how they would go about getting that additional power to the engines and weapons. Not his problem, at least at that particular moment.

  The flimsy missile transport system was also being redesigned and upgraded, and John decided that at least at this practical level, his civilian counterparts in the war effort were genuinely trying to create a ship that would work as advertised, or at least work.

  The Baltimore left the yards, several days ahead of the Quincy – named after the city, not the man – and her two companions. Three hours out the cruiser went to maximum acceleration and managed to accelerate at the actual rated figure for nearly forty minutes before something went boom. Whatever happened, it was fixed fairly quickly, and the ship finished it’s acceleration run in reasonably good order, if not quite to spec.

  Over the next four days it launched practice missiles and performed full-power tests that included both the engines and energy weapons. It still couldn’t accelerate at max G’s while firing ten energy weapons, but it worked well enough to get a pass.

  Two weeks later, and well past that promised leave, the four cruisers left port, and headed for war.

  Chapter 13

  The four carriers plus six destroyers escorted the four heavily armed ships through a long, four-day journey that ended when they rejoined the fleet. Their delay had served to keep them out of the opening battle in the outlying regions of a major rebel world. The primary rebel fleet had finally come to ground.

  The federal fleet now had a new admiral, named Grigorivich, who would never be referred to as ‘brilliant’, but he was turning out to be a bulldog, determined to grab hold of the enemy and not let go. The rebel fleet had, inevitably, run out of missiles and possibly food, and had been forced to head to a port. This time, the federals followed right on the enemy’s trail.

  The Adams’ orders to report back to the yards were held up, once again.

  This system was a crucial one for the rebellion. It had some of the largest orbital installations in the entire rebellion, and the populace was fervently anti-federal.

  The planet, named after an otherwise forgotten Egyptian, was called Nasser, and had a reasonably large population of one hundred million, the majority of them ostensibly Muslim and overtly and wildly capitalistic. The planet had created a very good educational system and was an important trading hub. Losing it would probably unravel the rebellion, if not immediately. Both sides knew this, but only one thought it a good thing.

  The rebellion had developed a new defensive doctrine, one that seemed likely to have been presaged by that remote missile launcher John’s expedition had previously encountered.

  Instead of one pod, the rebels built enormous platforms, each with hundreds of missile launchers. They were nearly immobile, but there were a great many of them, installed in difficult-to-maintain orbits around their home world. After a brief and futile effort to defend the outer reaches of their home system, the rebels collapsed their defenses into a region of approximately one and one half million kilometers radius of their planet. That placed them outside of the current longest-ranged missiles. The rebels reportedly knew of the development of gravity drive weapons, despite not having seen any examples, another example of poor security or greed which led to the transfer of knowledge, as well as ineptitude, which so far hadn’t led to a missile.

  Unfortunately, even if federal missiles had been able to reach the orbit of the planet, no federal ship would take the chance: gravity drive missiles could attain such a high relative velocity that even a dead missile would punch through the atmosphere within as little as three seconds, with enough kinetic energy to destroy hundreds of square kilometers of land, and if, as was likely, it were to hit an ocean, the resulting tsunamis would potentially kill millions of people.

  With respect to their use against planets, the newly modified federal constitution absolutely and specifically prohibited the use of gravity drive weapons. Their operation in space was permitted, but against a planet they were classified as a weapon of mass destruction, joining nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

  Terraforming, one of the prime factors leading to the war, was of course, biological warfare on a planetary scale, and over the previous three centuries, a growing percentage of earth’s population had come to view it as either a sin against God, in the case of religious conservatives, or as mass murder, in the case of liberals, both secular and religious.

  These platforms were not even enclosed structures, but were simply a light frame onto which hundreds of missile pods had been attached. They were relatively easy to reload and resupply, and were not easily destroyed. In fact, some missiles had actually passed through the structures without hitting anything. Worse, at least from th
e standpoint of the federals, they could launch up to five hundred missiles within a very short time, and maintain a steady stream of at least fifty missiles per minute. In short, they were formidable, and there were several hundred of them. Considered as a construction project, it would rank as one of the biggest in the history of the race, right up there with the pyramids. Come to think of it, both involved death.

  It was thought that many hundreds of personnel were required to keep each of these structures functioning, but Nasser had one of the largest populations of any world outside of Earth. Even so, they may have dedicated well over one hundred thousand people to the manning and resupply of those platforms, easily the largest concentration of humans in space of any world save for Earth herself.

  The federal forces had initiated a siege. A large number of missile ships stood off, just out of range of the platform missiles and launched a steady stream of capital missiles at just a handful of platforms. The only advantage the federal missiles enjoyed depended on the slight increase in range that gravity offered. That advantage had so far proven to be nebulous. The few missiles that hadn’t been destroyed had produced almost no appreciable damage, and even that had been easily repaired. James remarked, “It’s like shooting fog.”