The Tau Ceti Agenda

by Travis S. Taylor

  "XO, forward guns!" Jefferson ordered just as the hyperspace conduit swirled away to infinity and vanished. The Sienna Madira phased into normal space with full-forward velocity like the overarmored and overarmed menace from Earth she was.

  "Gunnery Officer, begin sensor sweep and lock and commence firing of main DEG batteries at your discretion. Be advised to excise military targets only, and do not hit the teleportation facility as briefed and gamed!" Colonel Chekov tapped at his console, double checking the power levels of the guns.

  "Roger that, XO! Multiple targets identified, locked, and firing solutions ready. Firing at will," Lieutenant Rice acknowledged.

  "CO, CDC!" the commander of the Combat Direction Center a few decks below the bridge chimed.

  "Go CDC."

  "We've got multiple sensor pings and are actively jamming on all frequencies. Expect incoming fire, as we are getting lit up like a Christmas tree, sir!"

  "Roger that, CDC. Is the jamming buying us anything?"

  "It might be confusing their point and track, sir, but they know we're here."

  The supercarrier pressed through the active wash of sensor energy from the Seppy facility at maximum normal space velocity. The computers of the ship picked out targets and blasted away at them with mammoth directed energy weapons. The intense blue-green bolts of energy tore through the surface of the Oort object beneath them, blasting away surface materials and manmade structures. Smaller anti-aircraft railguns came online automatically and started searching for enemy flying targets to shoot. Sensor domes and weapons batteries on the planetoid facility exploded into the quiet vacuum of space, scattering debris and chewing up the surface like a behemoth repulsor plow.

  Red dots appeared in the captain's DTM sphere, moving toward the supercarrier at extreme velocities. The IFF algorithms not only identified them as foe but also as anti-carrier missiles, hundreds of them.

  "CO, CDC! Incoming!"

  "We've got it, CDC." The captain turned his chair toward the XO. "Forward SIFs at maximum! XO anti-missile batteries, fire!"

  "DEG and railgun Phalanx systems are active, Captain," Chekov replied. "SIFs at maxi . . ." He was interrupted as the first missile detonated against the forward force fields and armored plating. The ship vibrated against the explosion as the debris from the missile washed over the bow and was absorbed by the supercarrier's hull.

  "Keep firing. And get me a fix on those launch tubes and start battering the hell out of them!"

  "Aye, sir!"

  "Good hunting, DeathRay!" The deck chief snapped a salute from the top of the mecha support scaffold and grabbed at the handrail as the ship's inertial dampening systems compensated for a sudden impact against the exterior hull of the supercarrier.

  "Roger that!" Jack saluted back, and the chief quickly climbed down and began unhooking the power and com umbilical. He finished by giving the VTF-32 Ares-T fighter one last affectionate pat on the empennage.

  Jack pulled his helmet over his head and gave it a twist to lock it in place as he settled into the cockpit. Air rushed into his suit with a faint, hissing sound. He then pulled the hardwire connection from the universal docking port of his fighter and plugged it into the thin rugged composite box on the left side of his helmet, which made a direct electrical connection to his AIC implant via skin-contact sensors in his helmet. The direct connection wasn't necessary as the quantum membrane wireless connectivity was very strong that close to the fighter's computer systems. It had once been thought that enemy jamming of the wireless connection between the AIC and the fighter was almost impossible. The wireless connection was spread spectrum and highly encrypted. But the Seppy attack during the Exodus had shown quite the opposite. The entire fleet had been spoofed, and the wireless systems were told by a Seppy hacker—rumored to have been coded by Ahmi herself—not to see enemy targets with any sensors. Since then, the hardwire was promoted from backup to primary connection, and the wireless was only used in emergencies and in noncombat situations.

  "Hardwire UDP is connected and operational. Lieutenant Candis Three Zero Seven Two Four Niner Niner Niner Six ready for duty," Jack's AIC announced over the open com channel. Then directly to Jack, Let's go get 'em, Commander!

  Roger that, Candis!

  Jack saluted the flight deck officer and brought the canopy down. The harness holding the fighter lowered and dropped it the last twenty centimeters to the deck with that ever-so-familiar squishing feel from the landing gear suspension. The drop always used to leave him with a lump in his throat and butterflies in his stomach because it meant that he was about to go screaming out the ass end of the supercarrier into a storm of raining and streaking Hell from all directions. Or at least it had meant that up until the Exodus and the few cleanup actions afterward. There had been merely training exercises for the better part of four years now, and Jack preferred that to the horrific sights and sounds of war.

  The aftermath of the Exodus was enough to leave serious scars in any soldier's psyche and, indeed, many had resigned from service after it. But Jack was made of sterner stuff, he had told himself. And somebody had to be prepared in the case that America, the Sol System, came under attack again. With the Exodus, he had hoped that war would be a thing he wouldn't have to deal with for a while. He had trained, nevertheless.

  Once again, it looked like it was time for war, and all bravado aside, he was good at it. Jack swallowed the lump, calmed the butterflies, and followed the flight deck sequence. He moved his fighter first in line for takeoff. The tricycle wheels of the little fighter squeaked against the deck plate as it rolled into launch position. Jack could feel the supercarrier vibrating from anti-aircraft fire—a deadly feeling that he had almost forgotten.

  "This is double zero," Jack called over the tac-net. "This is gonna get hairy, folks, and I want everyone covering their wings and following the plan. Good hunting and good luck." He thought his faceplate down and pulled his mouthpiece closer with his teeth.

  "Fighter zero-zero callsign DeathRay, you are cleared for egress. Good hunting, Commander Boland!" the control tower officer radioed. "Handing off to cat control."

  "Roger that, tower." Jack went through his ritual. "Y'all just keep the beer cold, and good ol' DeathRay will be back soon enough." Jack taxied to the "at bat" slot and braced himself for the "ball" and chewed at the bite block.

  "Fighter double zero, you are at bat and go for cat! Call the ball."

  "Roger cat, double zero has the ball," Boland responded as the little gold catapult field alignment sphere blinked on in his DTM view, overlaying the projected launch window circle.

  "Good hunting, DeathRay!" the catapult field AI announced. Jack throttled the Ares-T forward and switched to hover as the landing gear cycled and extracted. He bit down harder on the temporomandibular joint mouthpiece and eased the throttle just a little more forward so that the fighter slipped into the catapult field. His tongue worked nervously against the bite block and the roof of his mouth and he began to salivate profusely. Sweat would soon start building, but his suit would evaporate that quickly.

  Swallowing hard, Jack worked his hands against the HOTAS grip, feeling the controls. The new bot-mode toggle on his right stick control was beginning to feel completely at home, although this would be the first combat the new transfigurable Ares-T fighters had seen. Jack was and wasn't looking forward to the pending opportunity at the same time. He'd been training in the new mecha for more than two years, and now he'd find out the hard way how good it really was in combat.

  "Roger that. Double zero has the cat! WHOOO! HOOO!" Jack screamed as usual through the mouthpiece. The support tube for the bite block started pumping oxygen and stimulants in his face and mouth. The catapult field flung the Ares-T out of the rear lower launch deck, and Jack was thrust hard into his seat at over nine Earth gravities, accelerating the little snub-nosed, fighter-mode mecha to over three hundred kilometers per hour.

  The inertial dampening controls of the fighter kept DeathRay's body from being
crushed against the pilot's seat and his brain from sloshing around inside his head to the point of fatal trauma. The sleek new fighter-mode Ares-T screamed out of the cat field from zero to four hundred kilometers per hour in one tenth of a second with an acceleration of about eighty-eight Earth gravities. The inertial dampening controls reduced the effect by generating a dampening field around the aircraft that served two purposes: 1) to add structural integrity to the fighter plane as it was thrown into a hail of anti- aircraft fire and 2) to reduce the effect of the g-forces to something that human pilots could possibly withstand—twelve gravities or so. Inertial dampening fields or not, Jack was on one hell of a ride.

  "Holy fuck!" Jack breathed rapidly and spat out obscenities almost as proficiently as an enlisted sailor. He grunted as the overwhelming g-forces from the catapult acceleration subsided. He shook his head and squinted the flashing stars and blood from his eyes.

  Jack focused on slowing his breathing and scanned the sky and the viewscreens displaying under and behind him. At the same time, his AIC DTMed a full-scale, three-dimensional, immersive, spherical view of the space around him. He could look in any direction and see space outside rather than the interior of the fighter. The view was partially transparent so that he could still monitor other instruments and controls inside the cockpit that were not virtual.

  The space around him was littered with explosions and flashes of light above and behind him; beneath him were the icy, bungled- together planetoids and the mangled array of Seppy construction. The DEGs of the supercarrier were digging major gashes out of the facility and slinging debris across the planetoids.

  In his virtual mindview, Jack could see the other planes from his squadron being flung from the Sienna Madira hangar bays. His young wingman, Lieutenant Karen "Fish" Howser, pulled in beside him on his right. Jack could see Fish scanning around her cockpit virtual view for bogies. Her head whipped around wildly looking for incoming threats. Karen had seen her first combat at the Seppy Exodus and had proven herself a true ace fighter pilot. Jack had originally chosen her for his wingman because she was truly young and raw, and he thought she needed to be looked after. But he kept her as his wing because they had worked very well together and what she lacked in experience, Jack had noted on that day, she more than made up for in guts, determination, and just plain raw talent. And she took to the new mecha like a duck to water. Karen was probably one of the best aviators he'd ever seen, besides himself, of course.

  Jack could also see the main gun batteries of the Madira firing in rapid succession. Missiles began to spill away from the mammoth warship, along with the DEG bursts through the hail of anti-aircraft fire coming from the Seppy facility. Some of them impacted the Seppy base's exterior hull plating and boiled off large chunks of the armor in brilliant orange and white clouds. The debris spread out in long arcs across the surface of the low-gravity planetoid and spun madly with no atmosphere to drag down its motion.

  Jack, I've got Gnats! Candis warned him. The DTM blinked full of red dots.

  Roger that, time to go to work! He could tell by the blue dots that the Gods of War had made it out of the ship and through the first barrage of AA fire. Now it was time to face the Seppy fighters.

  "Fish, we've got Gomers incoming off our three-nine at angels three." Jack tilted the stick left, diving and spiraling through the anti- aircraft fire into a head-to-head sprint toward the first Separatist Gnat. The two fighters closed on each other with a relative velocity of more than a thousand kilometers per hour. Jack toggled the DEG targeting X in his DTM view and set the missile lock sensors on search. A missile solution dinged in his mindview, and he let a mecha-to- mecha missile loose. "Fox three!" he shouted.

  "Roger that, DeathRay! Gomers off our three-nine at angels three. I've got firing solutions. Guns, guns, guns!" Fish reported over the net. Jack only vaguely caught the motion of her fighter yawing and pitching madly into a sideways spin to target an enemy fighter passing beneath them.

  Jack's missile twisted and countermaneuvered through DEG fire and hit home on the Seppy Gnat, immediately blasting the left wing from the incoming plane and spinning it catastrophically to pieces. Several of the larger pieces twanged against the hull of the VTF-32 as he passed through the spot where the two fighters would have collided. The SIFs and microfiber composite layered armor plating held. Jack tossed the fighter over, giving him a view of the planetoid facility beneath him as well as an eyeball's view of the approaching enemy fighters.

  "DeathRay, this is some thick shit! I think we should double back and try to hold closer to the Madira," his second-in-command

  Lieutenant Commander Damien "Demonchild" Harris said over the tac-net through grunts and bleats of breath.

  "Roger that, Demonchild. Gods of War double back in the mix toward the Madira. If we can bring these in closer to the ship, it will clear out some of the path for the marines and tankheads. It might spread out the AA some as well." Jack doubled his fighter over one hundred and eighty degrees but left his vector in the same direction. The g-forces pulled roughly at his stomach. He grunted and reversed the propulsion system vector, pushing the left hand component of the HOTAS.

  "DeathRay, you got a Gomer on your six firing! Get away, or he's gonna lock you up!" Fish warned him. "Fox three!" The Gnat dodged, while flooding the area in front of the missile with cannon fire, destroying it, and then rolling out of the way, still on Jack's tail.

  "Shit! You missed him, Fish." DeathRay spun his head around, trying to get an eyeball on the Gomer that was barreling down on him. He could see it in the DTM but not with visual. "Where the fuck are you?" The range was too close to go to missiles.

  "Watch out, DeathRay! Guns, guns, guns." Lieutenant Denise "Crash" Fourier streaked past him, only meters away, firing the cannons as she passed by DeathRay's tail. "Goddamn it, that one is quick."

  "Crash missed him, DeathRay. I'm coming."

  "I see him, Fish! Just keep your shirt on." The enemy Gnat had slipped in under him and then behind him somehow and had evaded both Fish and Crash so far. For the longest time, he could only find it in his DTM. But he finally managed to yaw his fighter and spin it wildly in order to find the damned thing visually. If he didn't act fast, his situation would deteriorate to shit in a hurry. And Jack didn't like the ramifications of that.

  Jack toggled the mode control of his fighter, flipping him upside down and making him gasp and grunt for air; all the while, the g-suit continued to squeeze the devil out his lower extremities. Jack's fighter converted from a fighter plane into an upside-down, armored bipedal robot, wielding a DEG for a head with two forty-millimeter cannons mounted on each forearm. The DEG could swivel more freely in bot mode, and Jack immediately set it to auto-fire mode controlled by his AIC. Candis went about finding targets and blasting the hell out of them. Jack used the cannons on his forearms for spread effect and cover.

  His AIC swiveled the DEG around, tracking the Seppy Gnat with green beams dancing all around the enemy fighter. The energy bolts tracked across the plane's trajectory, but it was moving in too close and too fast for the DEGs. Jack rammed the throttle against the stop, accelerating the bot mode Ares-T downward at over a thousand meters per second, nearly causing him to lose his breakfast again. Were it not for the advanced dampeners of the new fighters, that type of maneuver would have killed him, but Jack gave that no thought at the moment.

  He choked the bile down and grunted against the nearly overwhelming g-forces and aimed both arm cannons through the DTM virtual sphere. The two yellow targeting Xs in his mind danced around the sphere, trying to lock onto targets as he fired. The railgun rounds hammered out of the guns at the Gnat as it darted in and out of his line of fire. The Gnat loosed two missiles, both of which were radar- and QM-locked on to Jack's plane. It had been on his tail far too long. Far. Too. Long.

  Shit, DeathRay, he's locked on! Candis shouted into his mind.

  Goddamn, Seppy motherfucker, he thought, stomping the left pedal and throwing a hard spir
al into the mecha. Then he slammed the stick backward against the rear joystick stop. He held the HOTAS with a deathgrip that turned his knuckles almost white enough to see through his e-suit gloves.

  "Uuuggghh! Fuck you! Fox three!" he screamed against the wild spin. His missile launched from the back of the bot, not locked on to any particular target but flying in the general direction of the incoming missiles. Jack tracked both cannons on the tail of his own mecha- to-mecha missile and fired. The forty-millimeter railgun rounds filled the space, tracking and bouncing around the purple glow from the tail of the missile until several of the rounds hit home. The missile exploded into a flaming debris field just as the two locked-on missiles passed through it, ripping them to shreds from fratricide. The additive effect of the other two missiles exploding slammed Jack's mecha with shrapnel and superheated plasma. The SIFs and armor of his fighter were stressed to the maximum, but they held.

  Almost instantaneously, the Seppy Gnat passed through a firing solution of the DEG, and Candis burned him down. Jack followed up on him with a couple rounds from the cannons for good measure, and the enemy fighter burst apart. Jack's mecha still spun wildly with extreme angular acceleration. So, he spread the mecha's arms and legs like a figure skater to reduce the rotation, and then the retro fields kicked in, dampening out the rest. He heaved twice, losing some bile into his helmet, but he managed to keep most of his stomach; then he toggled the fighter-mode control. The bot pulled its arms and legs in and pitched over into a fighter plane again. His suit quickly absorbed the bile on his viewplate.

  "Goddamn! What a maneuver, DeathRay!" Fish shouted. "Great fuckin' flying, sir!"

  "Right," DeathRay said sluggishly, and swallowed hard at the lump in his throat. He chewed down lightly on the bite block and felt a fresh blast of oxygen and vapor stimulants rush over him. "Stay frosty, Gods of War. What we did three seconds ago won't keep us alive the next ten."