by Dietmar Wehr
Third Fleet Flagship (Kursk):
The Flag Bridge was unusually quiet, and Harrow was acutely aware of how long they’d been waiting in the Metrone system to see if the Tyrell had taken the bait. She looked around at the familiar surroundings and congratulated herself once again for making the right decision to keep her flag on Kursk instead of transferring it to the newly repaired Waterloo. The heavy carrier’s flag bridge was much larger, brighter and noisier, and she didn’t feel comfortable in it. Besides, she knew the people manning the various stations on this ship quite well and the Waterloo’s crew not at all. There was no regulation that said that the senior officer had to fly her flag on the largest ship. She looked over to where Gort was standing with a frown on his face. With no station to sit at, he was forced to stand or lean back against a console. If they were on Waterloo, there would have been a place for him to sit. She felt some guilt about making him stand, but only a little.
“Cag,” she said in a low voice. He turned to look at her, then came over to stand beside her chair.
“Are you feeling it too?” he asked before she could say anything.
“Feeling what? I just called you over to ask how your pilots are handling the waiting.”
“Ah. Well, I’m feeling an itch right at the back of my neck, and the last time I felt that kind of sensation was just before the last battle. I think something’s about to happen.”
Harrow didn’t know whether to laugh at or take Gort’s itch seriously. Before she could make up her mind, she heard the tactical display ping for attention. A text message generated by the ship’s TacComp scrolled across the bottom of the display.
[RD1s HAVE DETECTED 60 LARGE SHIPS IN TWO GROUPS FLANKING PLANET. ALL MASS READINGS MATCH PROFILE FOR TYRELL SUPER-SHIPS. NO SIGN OF ENEMY CARRIER.]
“My God, they took the bait!” said an excited Eagleton. Harrow was about to tell him to get down to the squadron ready room to brief those of his pilots who were not yet manning their stingers, but he was already running for the exit.
“Signal the Fleet to go to Battle Stations,” said Harrow in what she hoped was a calm voice. “Alert squadrons to launch immediately and take up pre-attack positions.” With one quarter of all stingers on all three carriers ready for immediate launch at all times, at least some of them could be launched immediately without the danger of pilot fatigue from sitting in the cockpit for long hours. Getting the other three quarters prepped and launched quickly was the challenge now, but she wasn’t thinking or worrying about launching the other stingers. That was the CAG’s responsibility, and Gort knew what he had to do. Her concern was about the enemy carrier. Her intuition told her that the Tyrell would not launch an operation of this size without their carrier, and if it wasn’t near the planet, then it had to be somewhere else in this system, but where?
“Has TacComp come up with any probable locations for the enemy carrier?” she asked her Fleet Tactical Officer.
The FTO shook her head. “Nothing so far, Admiral.”
Harrow was not surprised by that answer. The Tactical Computer had very little information upon which to made predictions. She could see from the display that the two groups of super-ships were equally distant from the Metrone planet, so that didn’t suggest one side over the another. She took a closer look at the overall planetary system configuration and nodded. The actual location of each group of super-ships made a lot of sense from the point of view of the most likely direction the Tyrell fleet had taken to get to the Metrone star system. If that fleet came from the direction she suspected, then it would have been easy to take up a position on either side of the planet without having to maneuver around it first. That being the case, if she had been commanding that fleet or at least the Tyrell carrier, she would have kept the carrier back from the planet along the fleet’s basic approach vector. In other words, the fleet would have ‘dropped off’ her carrier as they were moving closer to the planet. If Third Fleet deployed some recon drones along the most likely axis of approach, they might be able to detect the enemy carrier and attack it quickly. Deployment of recon drones fell within the responsibility of the CAG, and normally she would have told Gort what she wanted done. But he was busy getting the other pilots scrambled, and she wasn’t prepared to wait for him to return to the Flag Bridge. She quickly manipulated one of her Command Station screens and then called the FTO over.
“How many RD2s is Kursk carrying?” she asked.
“Twelve, Admiral.”
Harrow was hoping for more but decided that would have to do. “Okay, here’s what I want done. I want this axis of approach scanned by all twelve.” She pointed to the screen. “I want them to jump to a point on this axis 30 light seconds from the planet and then move at maximum speed with maximum detection coverage further out. How fast can you make this happen?”
The officer hesitated. “Programming the drones will take only a few seconds, but launching them now while the alert stingers are also launching would be a violation of safety regs, Admiral. By the time the alert stingers are out, the Cag will have other stingers ready to go. It’ll take about ten minutes to get all our stingers launched.”
Harrow shook her head. “Not acceptable. Program the drones right now and when they’re ready, you tell Flight Ops to halt stinger launches until the drones are safely deployed. If Flight Ops or the Cag give you any pushback, you tell them to take it up with me, understood?”
The FTO smiled a mischievous grin. “Understood.”
“Okay, get to it,” said Harrow with a slight smile of her own. Gort might not notice the delay, but if he did, he would raise hell, and she was prepared for that.
The FTO was as good as her word about getting the programming done quickly. Less than a minute after returning to her station, Harrow heard her say, “Drones are programmed, Admiral. Flight Ops, this is the FTO. Kursk needs to launch 12 recons immediately. Suspend stinger launches until the drone launch is finished.”
Harrow switched her headset over to the Flight Ops channel.
“Wait one, FTO.” There was a short pause. “Negative on the stinger launch halt. The CAG says the stingers have priority.”
Harrow turned her head to look directly at her FTO who looked back and nodded.
“The recon launch as been ordered by the Fleet Commander, Flight Ops. Do you want to hear the order directly from the Admiral?”
Harrow heard Gort swear in the background and suppressed a chuckle. After another short pause, she heard the Flight Ops officer again. “Ah, no. Stinger launches have been halted.”
“Proceeding with drone launch.”
Harrow heard the click that meant that the FTO’s com channel to Flight Ops was shut down, but her channel was still open. “Flight Ops, this is the FC. Is the Cag still there?” asked Harrow.
“I’m still here, Admiral,” said Eagleton.
“If you come to the Flag Bridge now, will that slow down the rest of the stinger launches after they resume?”
“No, Admiral. They’ll launch without me here.”
“Fine. Please return to the Flag Bridge. We need to discuss targeting and attack timing.”
“On my way, Admiral.”
While Harrow waited, she watched the sidebar data on how many stingers were now at their pre-attack positions from each carrier. That number was steadily increasing. Ranger and Kursk carried 60 stingers each and Waterloo carried 120. Potentially, it could have carried 288, but that would have left no room to carry RD1 and RD2 drones, and in any case, 240 stingers were all that could be built in the time leading up to this mission.
Just as Eagleton entered the Flag Bridge, the FTO said, “The Metrone carriers appear to be breaking up, Admiral.”
Harrow shook her head in amazement as Eagleton stepped up to stand beside her Command Station. “It’s hard for me to imagine so many KE impacts that the hulls of those carriers actually broke up under the stress,” she said in a low voice.
“I hope there were relatively few crew on those ships. Their d
eaths are on our hands, you know,” said Eagleton in an equally low voice.
Harrow looked him with a hard expression. “I know that, Gort. It isn’t necessary to remind me. We knew from the very beginning when we put Operation Watchtower together that there would be Metrone casualties. I can live with that on my conscience. You told me you could too. Can we get on with winning this damn war now?”
Eagleton nodded and took a deep breath. “Sure. Any sign of their carrier yet?”
“Not so far. Here’s what I’ve done to find it.” Harrow showed him the search axis for the RD2s that had held up his stinger launches.
“Yeah, I agree. That does seem like a likely position for their carrier.” He looked up at the FTO. “What are their super-ships doing now, Lieutenant?”
“Both groups are still holding their position, Cag.”
Eagleton looked back at Harrow. “This is the part I hate. It’ll take us another five or so minutes to get all 240 stingers launched and in attack formation. Then they’ll need another 15 minutes to get into attack range. If those two groups start to maneuver or, God forbid, withdraw before then, we’ll have set the trap for nothing.”
Harrow’s expression had softened by now. “There is that possibility, but I don’t expect it. If we gathered sixty ships that size and sent them to nip a multi-racial attack in the bud, we wouldn’t be in a hurry to leave, would we, and especially not if we only found three enemy carriers when we were probably expecting three to four times that many. No, I’ll bet you a year’s pay that they’re not going to head back home this quickly. They might change position though. I wouldn’t be surprised if they move closer to the planet, but we’ve planned for that possibility. Let’s decide on the attack plan itself. Here are the scenarios we planned for. Which one do you like, given that they have two groups of 30 ships each on opposite sides of the planet?”
Eagleton scanned the scenarios quickly to refresh him memory and then made a decision. “This one,” he said with a grin.
Chapter Five:
Tyrell carrier Natron:
It was with a sense of growing frustration that Torq listened to the report from the Fleet of Fleets Sub-Master detailing the complete destruction of the three Metrone carriers. His pilots and their crafts were still sitting in the launch tubes, and some were beginning to complain. That they wanted to get into combat or at least have the possibility of doing so was to their credit, but vocally challenging the orders of a Fleet Master was a disturbing development, and Torq knew that he couldn’t keep them half deployed much longer. Soon, he would have to either launch them or order them to stand down. One more check of the main display showed the status of the expanding shell of sensor drones that were moving out in all directions at high speed. So far, no sign of any other carriers, and yet Torq was as certain as he could be that there had to be more than just three carriers in this system. Otherwise, those intercepted messages made no sense. The time frames contained in them, converted to Tyrell time equivalents, had been confirmed. There should have been a buildup here of carriers from potentially four races in preparation for a combined attack on his home world. The sensor drone shell would soon be so dispersed that there would be gaps in coverage between drones. Small gaps could be tolerated. Large gaps could not, and his two carriers had deployed all the drones they were carrying. It was time to take care of both his concerns with one action. He would launch his attack craft, and until they discovered evidence of other enemy carriers, they could supplement the sensor drone network with their own detection equipment.
“Fleet Weapons Master, all attack craft are to launch immediately, and you are to deploy them in such a manner as to cover gaps in sensor drone coverage. Are my wishes clear?”
“They are, Fleet of Fleets Master.”
Torq listened to the chatter between the pilots and the FWM. The complaining didn’t stop, but it did change in content. The pilots were no longer complaining about having nothing to do. They were now complaining about being ordered to engage in boring patrol duty, but at least that was normal, and the group leaders had stopped complaining altogether.
With that problem temporarily solved, he returned his attention to the 60 Ships-of-Battle and what they should be doing next. His Second-in-Command wanted to bombard the planet with kinetic strikes in order to satisfy the battle lust of some of the command crews that were complaining that the combat with the three carriers had ended too quickly. Torq had to restrain himself from voicing his anger over the fact that any of the command crews had allowed themselves to succumb to the battle lust at all in contravention of his explicit orders to the contrary! He then reminded himself that these Ship-of-Battle Masters had been under his command for only a fraction of the time that his pilots had, and therefore not all could be expected to have mastered the self-restraint that he had instilled in his pilots.
“There will NOT be any planetary bombardment unless I explicitly order it. You will order your fleets to move to half a light cyclet from the planet with a dispersed formation. Orbiting assets can be targeted as long as care is taken that the planet is not also in the line of fire. The crew of any ship that fires a projectile that hits the planet by mistake will suffer my wrath. I want you to make that clear to all your crews, Sub-Master. Report back to me when my orders have been carried out.”
It was 610 cyclets later when two things happened almost simultaneously. A sensor drone reported three mass detections at extreme range, and the Communications Technician called to him in an excited voice.
“FoF Sub-Master reports that some of his ships are taking kinetic hits!”
Torq was so focused on the mass detection report that at first he wondered if he had heard the verbal report correctly. Tyrell ships taking kinetic hits, not anti-tachyon beam penetrations? Could the Metrone have built Ships-of-Battle and deployed them far beyond normal detection range? Is that what his sensor drone was detecting now? Ships-of-Battle and not carriers? He quickly switched over his Command Station com channel to the incoming transmission.
“How many ships are being hit by kinetic shells, Sub-Master?” asked Torq.
“All of them, including mine!” The Second-in-Command’s voice was shockingly full of fear. Torq shook his head in confusion. From that range, there was no way three ships could fire enough kinetic projectiles to hit all 60 Tyrell ships that quickly, and for that matter, that accurately! Something else was going on here. He was about to order those ships to withdraw from the planet’s vicinity when an idea hit him.
“Order your ships to boost out of orbit and return here, and while they’re doing that, they are to begin scanning with micro-waves and report ANY contacts, no matter how small.”
“It shall be done, Fleet of Fleets Master.”
The officer’s voice had lost some of its fear now that he knew what to do. That took care of one problem. Now to take care of the other.
“FWM, order the attack groups to reform and immediately move at maximum speed to the location of the mass detections,” ordered Torq. He had a suspicion that his fleets were being attacked by a new type of small ship or craft, and if that was the case, then these newly detected ships had to be the alien carriers he’d been looking for. His attack groups would be arriving at attack range one group at a time, but that couldn’t be helped. They were too widely scattered to come together quickly. It would be a haphazard attack, or no attack at all. He checked the status display of the 60 ships and groaned in dismay. Every single Ship-of-Battle was showing at least some damage, and a surprising number were showing a lot of damage! In fact, five ships were no longer able to maneuver at all. They were coasting along a ballistic path that would be far too easy to predict by the enemy. For half a cyclet, he contemplated ordering all ships including his carriers to jump back to their base star system, but his pride stopped him. He had been hoping for just this kind of confrontation, and now that it was here, he would NOT turn his back on it!
No sooner had he made that decision than his Second-In-Command called
back. “Micro-wave scanning has detected over a hundred tiny craft moving away from us on a vector that points to the location of the three detected ships, Fleet of Fleets Master!”
Torq pounded his left fist on the armrest of his Command Chair. His suspicions had just been confirmed! “Keep tracking them as long as you can, but do not pursue. If their behaviour changes, I want to hear about it immediately.” With the com channel muted, Torq leaned back and took a deep breath. Once the Fleet of Fleets was completely back together, he would wait for the next enemy attack with active micro-wave scanning and use the short-range particle beam projectors that were installed on some of his Ships-of-Battle to fight them off before they could inflict more damage. In the meantime, his attack groups would be destroying the enemy carriers! He wondered if it might be possible to win this new war right here and now.
Third Fleet Flagship (Kursk):