If the federals could destroy three adjoining elements of the network of platforms, they would be able to infiltrate large numbers of ships and fighters inside the defensive array. Even then it would be very costly, since the defenses had something on the order of three thousand fighters that from their interior lines could easily respond to any breach in their platforms. They also had over fifty destroyers and a large number of missile ships, many of them recently converted freighters. Fleets of tugs resupplied the platforms and moved them as necessary. In addition to all that, the rebel mobile fleet was present, with several thousand additional fighters and dozens of missile ships.
To date, the war had produced thousands upon thousands of casualties, but this engagement was destined to usher in a new era of warfare, one that could prove to be immensely costly in both lives and treasure. It made John think of ancient stone castles, or trench warfare. Defensive doctrines were rarely ever effective for very long, and John didn’t think this one would be either, but if the new admiral was stupid, breaching it could cost thousands of lives.
The Adams group was tasked with joining a major assault on one of the platforms. After John looked at a hologram of the structure, based on distant sensor scans, he shook his head in admiration. It would be very difficult to destroy, since there wasn’t much there in the first place. A missile hit on one part would simply destroy a light alloy support, possibly one missile pod. On the other hand, the platforms were going to be an extremely dangerous place to work, and many, many people were ultimately going to die.
Some federal genius had designed a sort of immense fuel-air bomb that was largely invisible to radar, and they’d pushed it off in the direction of one of the platforms. The bomb had some maneuvering thrusters that allowed it to track the platforms, which tended to move about a bit. If it was able to get to within one hundred kilometers of the platform without being destroyed, the federal forces would launch a large assault of fighters, whose primary purpose was to distract the defenders while the bomb drifted to within less than one hundred meters. John snorted in derision, thinking about the possibility that not one single rebel would notice a huge fuel bladder with bombs attached.
At the last moment, the Adams group was pulled out of the assault, and given the task of looking for a back way into the inner system. John’s earlier exploit had reached someone’s ear.
While the Adams group was pulling away, a large force of nearly five hundred federal fighters began their assault.
Ten minutes later, while the fighters were still over one million kilometers distant, the bomb went off, possibly and improbably putting the platform out of commission, at least temporarily. The fighters arrowed toward the small hole this opened in the defenses.
In the space of less than two minutes the surrounding platforms launched nearly fifteen hundred heavy missiles. As soon as the federal fighters began their attack, rebel missile ships began moving forward, and they added their own flood of missiles to the deluge. Not surprisingly, it appeared the federal attack was not a surprise.
The fighters began launching their own light missiles, and federal missile ships launched still more. Within the space of just a few minutes, the five hundred fighters found themselves in a veritable no-mans land of missiles and energy beams. Clouds of explosions erupted as the fighter missiles struggled to fend off the huge numbers of rebel missiles.
Federal missiles passed the fighters and entered the incredible stew of explosions. Hundreds of missiles locked on to targets, were destroyed, and replaced by even more missiles, many of which lost lock and strayed until being destroyed or finding another target.
Over two hundred fighters were destroyed in less than ten minutes, but the remaining fighters’ dilemma was not over, for the surrounding platforms continued to launch more missiles, and rebel fighters began to appear.
The federal fighters launched their remaining missiles and began to retreat, but little more than one hundred survived the holocaust to return to federal lines. It had been a blood bath.
Meanwhile the Adams group of four carriers, plus another group of brand new purpose-built carriers were arcing around the planet. They stayed under light acceleration, well out from the fray. John’s assignment was wonderfully vague; he was to look for a weakness in the defenses, and if he found one, he had permission to probe. He had a large number of fighters at his disposal, over six hundred. The most he’d ever commanded in battle had been eighty.
The rebels were still attempting to replenish the system, and had managed to maintain an intermittent supply chain, probably consisting mostly of missiles, which system defenses were using in enormous numbers.
John kept one hundred fighters out on station, with another one hundred crews sitting in their cockpits; the remaining fighters could be in space within twenty minutes. John’s proposal to his superiors was that the federal forces had to destroy all rebel supply convoys. That alone, he’d said, would mean the eventual collapse of the rebel defenses. He didn’t get the sense that anyone else had had the same, completely obvious thought, although someone must have.
As it happened, the rebels seemed well aware of this possibility. John’s fighters picked up a radar return of a sizeable ballistic object, which turned out to be a large freighter, trying to sneak inside rebel lines. John ordered the freighter to get under power on a new course. It reluctantly complied, but within thirty minutes a pair of rebel destroyers that had also been drifting along, brought up their engines and began launching missiles at the distant carriers. John’s fighters neglected the two destroyers in favor of protecting the eight carriers. The Alpha alert fighters immediately launched from the carriers and John ordered the launch of another one hundred fighters.
The small number of ship missiles was destroyed well short of the carriers, but in the meantime the destroyers accelerated away, heading toward the planet.
The freighter also made a run for it, but it had barely settled on its new course when over ten missiles struck it. It lost power and began tumbling. The crew failed to escape. Since there was a chance the rebels could take the damaged ship under tow, John ordered it completely destroyed.
The two destroyers were run down and destroyed before they could flee into the umbrella of rebel missile platforms.
John promptly ordered the first group of fighters to return to the ship and rearm and refuel. He also decided to launch all the remaining fighters.
Over the next two hours his forces encountered three more ships trying to enter the system. One escaped, but the other two were destroyed.
The mission was working out well. As long as he could take on the enemy one or two at a time he should have little difficulty in closing up this avenue into the planet. His communications lag was only about fifteen seconds, making it easy to update his superiors on his progress. In a sense, he wasn’t making any progress, since his mission was to find a way inside the rebel defenses. On the other hand, he was causing a great deal of distress to the rebel supply lines. One freighter could hold tens of thousands of missiles.
He finally got a reaction from the planetary defenders. A large number of missile boats and fighters moved out from inside the platform defenses. At that point, Chamberlin’s carriers were six million kilometers out from the planet. As soon as he saw the sortie, he ordered his fighters in for refueling and rearming. He decided on a mix of two heavy missiles, except for the now eighty heavy fighters, which were loaded up with the usual mix of sixteen light missiles.
John added up the numbers and decided that his six hundred and forty fighters could take on the six hundred fighters and nearly one hundred missile boats.
While the fighters were scrambling aboard their carriers, John laid out his strategy for the coming attack. He was already seeding the approaches with a large number of spoofers and jammers, and he had more ready for emplacement. The rebels would be fighting him on his terms this time.
His plan was to launch waves of heavy missiles, targeting only the missile boats, which
had the ability to swamp his defenses if they could get into range and launch a well-coordinated attack. The heavy missiles were expensive, but his carriers were far more important – they served breakfast.
As soon as the boats crossed to within five hundred thousand kilometers, the first group of eighty fighters launched one hundred sixty missiles, and turned to head back to their carrier. He had seven carriers worth of the light fighters, and he intended to continue to launch heavy missiles up until the enemy was within one hundred thousand kilometers, at which time he would have all his fighters loaded up with a full complement of light missiles.
As the first wave of missiles swept down on the missile boats, which were tucked in behind a heavy layer of fighters, Chamberlin launched a second and then a third wave, meaning there were nearly five hundred missiles targeted on only one hundred missile boats. Another one hundred sixty followed just a few minutes later. The enemy fighters were going to be forced to use their own missiles to fend off the attacks. John wasn’t terribly concerned about the number of missiles that got through, as long as he was able to force the enemy to utilize his limited number of missiles in defense.
The enemy sortie was now far enough out from the planetary defenses that Chamberlin thought he could not only break the attack, he could decimate the remnants before they could return to their own lines.
Fifteen missiles from the first assault broke past the fighters, destroying ten missile boats. Right on the heels of the first wave came four more. The timing of the launches meant that the rebels had no time to recover from one attack before the next was on them. By the fourth wave, forty-seven missile boats and three fighters were gone, and they were approaching the one hundred thousand kilometer limit.
John’s fighters were by then fully reloaded and in position. At one hundred thousand kilometers, John ordered the eighty heavy fighters to flush their missiles. Twelve hundred and eighty missiles leaped off their rails, targeting the fighters only.
In a highly unusual move, John kept the carriers close by – he didn’t want to split his force in two and he wasn’t going to leave the carriers without a heavy escort. This was the first exposure to combat for the new carriers, and John felt they had an excellent chance to avoid even minor damage. Today, they would find out.
In a way, the fact that these carriers could actually protect themselves, and were less susceptible to destruction from one or two small missiles was turning out to be a huge advantage for the federals.
At ninety thousand kilometers, the enemy launched nearly the same amount of missiles at John’s position, probably all that they had left after beating off repeated waves of missiles. He promptly launched half of the missiles on his light fighters. Another eleven hundred and twenty missiles slashed out toward the enemy.
Over three thousand missiles were in flight at one time, but this time around, John thought the results were going to be far better for the federal side.
The first two large groups of missiles interpenetrated, producing what appeared to be a nearly solid wave of explosions. Despite that, hundreds of enemy missiles appeared out of the holocaust, and were promptly attacked by the second wave of missiles. Less than one hundred reached energy weapons range, and John’s fighters destroyed all of them well before they were able to pose a threat.
John’s fighters then launched their last missiles, and eleven hundred missiles leaped forward. John had been careful not to send more missiles than could be accounted for by the number of fighters. His enemy didn’t know about the heavy fighters, which were now streaming back out with a fresh load. He had a surprise for them.
The rebels were now faced with trying to winnow down the large number of missiles, using only their lasers, or using both their lasers and whatever remaining missiles they might have. They went to both, as John was certain they would. Another immense series of explosions erupted in the dwindling space between the two forces. Over two thirds of the federal missiles were knocked out, but well over three hundred arced into the rebels, destroying one hundred and eighty one fighters and thirty two of the remaining missile boats, some of which still had their missiles.
John sent his heavy fighters forward, accompanied by half of his light fighters. The enemy would believe that the playing field would be even, that all the federal fighters had expended their missiles. They still had a small number of missile boats, and if they could escort them in close enough, they probably thought could take out a few of his carriers.
At forty thousand kilometers, John’s heavy fighters unloaded fourteen missiles each. Eleven hundred and twenty missiles streaked away, approximately three for every remaining rebel craft. Following closely behind those missiles came half of his light fighters. He left the heavy fighters behind to act as a missile shield against any possible leakers. Half of the remaining light fighters were queuing up for a fresh load of missiles.
The rebel attack began to unravel as soon as it saw the huge missile launch. They would not have expected it, and it would be a seriously bad shock.
They were so far inside the federal missile envelope that they had no chance of escape, so they continued forward. It was an extremely disciplined and courageous act, but it was not destined to succeed. Only one missile boat survived the attack, and it turned back.
There were now two hundred and fifty three rebel fighters left, against a little over three hundred federals. John launched the remaining one hundred sixty missiles on the heavy fighters. Just ten thousand kilometers separated the two large groups of fighters when the missiles slashed past the lead federal fighters. The rebels had only a few moments with their energy weapons before the missiles began detonating amongst them. One hundred and sixty seven rebel fighters finally broke, and turned to run for the protection of their lines. They were too late.
Nearly all of their discipline and coordination evaporated, and they began turning in all directions. It turned into a turkey shoot, and less than fifty rebel fighters and that one missile boat made it back to the protection of a missile platform. John lost three fighters, and he was able to rescue two crews – energy weapons were far less destructive than missiles.
What had started out as a moderate sized battle turned into a major defeat for the rebels, in a sense evening the score.
Chamberlin ordered all his fighters back to the carriers. Within less than two hours all of the light fighters were refueled and fully loaded with two heavy missiles.
John stood in the plot, looking at the array of rebel platforms. There was simply too much space for any single planetary system to completely cover every square inch of that enormous sphere, but the platforms did the next best thing, they funneled the enemy into the corridors between the platforms, and the interior lines of communication were relatively short, they could easily send hundreds up to thousands of defenders to any point of attack. It truly was an original and well-designed system. But it wasn’t perfect.
John thought that the federal forces could afford to release one or two additional groups of carriers, which, with a little time could pinch off all remaining avenues of support and resupply. There were additional things that could be tried. For example, multiple, simultaneous attacks would prevent the rebels from being able to swamp any one attack, such as had just been done on the other side of the planet. Additionally, the defensive doctrine, as beautiful as it was, depended on an enormous expenditure of missiles.
After a half hour of thought, John sent off a long message to admiral Grigorivich. His fighters continued to aggressively sweep the region of space he’d settled in, but the rebels seemed to have evaporated. They hadn’t, they were still getting supplies into the system, just not through his area.
Over the next day he received a flurry of messages from upstream. The aborted federal attack had resulted in dreadful losses, and the military had become sensitive to such large casualties, especially when they achieved little or nothing in return. John’s approach held out the promise of achieving their goal without sustaining unsustainable
losses.
Two days later, two more carrier groups arrived to supplement Chamberlin’s force. They consisted of fifteen of the original carriers, meaning they were neither very mobile nor able to defend themselves. They would assist with the efforts to choke off rebel resupply of this quadrant of space and free John’s fighters to try out a new approach.
John’s group maneuvered around the huge globular region of space inside of which the southern hemisphere of the very beautiful planet gleamed, like a tiny jewel on a bed of black satin.
He moved half of his light fighters forward, accompanied by the eighty heavy fighters. He had concluded that the heavy fighters ought to be capable of fending off anything short of a major assault, leaving his light fighters to carry out a simultaneous assault on three adjacent missile platforms. Actually, he had no intentions of making an attack; he was merely making a feint.
John’s plan called for four hundred fifty light fighters to ease into position in a region of space roughly equidistant to three platforms, and just out of their range. On his command one hundred fifty fighters launched their heavy missiles. The missiles shut down their drives after one minute, causing them to become nearly invisible to the enemy defenses. This ability had only recently been introduced to federal forces and so far proved elusive for rebel factories, although the theory was fairly simple.
Hawk Genesis: War (Flight of the Hawk) Page 13