Coalition Defense Force Boxed Set: First to Fight

by Gibbs, Daniel

  “TAO, match bearings, shoot, neutron beams.” Tehrani leaned forward as she spoke. The timing had to be perfect.

  Twin blue energy beams shot out of the Greengold and lanced through the hangar bay of the enemy ship. A small series of explosions blossomed around the hull nearest to the hangar. One after the other, the bursts of orange-and-blue flames grew until the stern of the vessel blew clean off.

  “Conn, TAO. Master Four Hundred Twenty-Six neutralized.”

  “Nice shooting, Lieutenant. What’s coming in next?”

  “Three more destroyers, ma’am, designated—”

  “TAO?” Tehrani prodded.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. Sierra One Hundred Sixty-Eight is on terminal approach. She’s less than fifty kilometers from Master One.”

  Tehrani quickly brought up the tactical plot and zoomed in to the area around the League flagship. The screen was impersonal, an antiseptic display of blue and red dots, with relevant information such as speed and heading. She imagined that the enemy was flinging everything they could at the destroyer, which was little more than a speck among giants. The bravery shown by Major Cohen, a man she only knew by name, was awe-inspiring. To ride into the face of certain death took incredible guts. Or balls, as I’m sure the master chief would say. As the kilometers closed in the blink of an eye, Tehrani mouthed a prayer in Arabic, asking Allah to watch over the souls of Cohen and his crew and guide them into heaven. The blue icon representing the Salamis merged with the red graphic that represented Master One.

  “Conn, TAO. Sierra One Hundred Sixty-Eight… destroyed.” Bryan’s voice sank, then it rose again. “Aspect change, Master One. Multiple explosions, ma’am. Debris separating. She’s disabled! Repeat, enemy flagship disabled!”

  Hope was a fickle thing. Sometimes it manifested as grim determination to press on and at other times as ebullient optimism. On the bridge of the Zvika Greengold, it was a bit of both. The enlisted personnel and several senior officers let out a series of cheers. Bryan high-fived Mitzner. A raucous chant of “CDF! CDF! CDF!” broke out and was taken up by most of the crew.

  “As you were! Maintain proper bridge protocol!” the master chief rasped.

  “TAO,” Tehrani said as the chant stopped, “status of the enemy fleet?”

  “Slowing their advance, ma’am. Some vessels appear to be ceasing forward movement.”

  But most continued. The battle was far from over. Tehrani set her jaw. “TAO, firing point procedures, forward neutron beams, Master Four Hundred Twenty-Eight.” Their target was the nearest enemy vessel to them—a destroyer.

  “Firing solutions set, ma’am.”

  “Match bearings, shoot, forward neutron beams.” Even with their brilliant victory over the flagship, the fight ahead would be brutal. Without the promised nation-state reinforcements, she still saw no way to win. But she pushed the depressing thought down and went back to work.

  * * *

  Justin pulled up hard on his flight stick, dropping a trail of flares. The flares ignited almost instantly and attempted to decoy the incoming missiles with their five thousand degrees Celsius burn temperature. He killed his Sabre’s afterburner, hoping to cool his engine exhaust just enough for the enemy warheads to take the bait. One overshot and exploded violently, close enough that it shook his craft and jostled Justin. The second slammed into his weakened aft shields, knocking them down to five percent effective strength.

  Red bolts of energy streaked by the cockpit canopy, putting a fine point on how bad a predicament Justin was in. His OODA loop was so compromised it hadn’t even registered to call for help yet. “Alpha One to any friendly fighters, my wingman is down, and I’ve got three bandits on my tail.” He jammed the throttle back to max thrust and engaged the afterburner. “Repeat, any friendly fighters. Mayday! Mayday!” Beads of sweat dripped down Justin’s forehead.

  “Spencer, this is the CAG. Execute guns-D and keep those bastards guessing.”

  “Roger that, Major,” Justin replied. Immediately, he launched his craft into a wild series of random twists and turns, accelerating and decelerating and doing his best to avoid the massive volume of fire directed toward him. After no fewer than twenty dodges, one of the red dots directly behind him disappeared, and for a split second, he saw a faint orange glow in the canopy reflection.

  “CAG, splash one,” Whatley said calmly. The man sounded like he was merely giving a to-go order for his lunch. “Spencer, break right, ten degrees declination.”

  Justin was well aware his life wasn’t in his hands at the moment. He sucked in a breath and rocked the flight stick as instructed, pulsing his afterburner simultaneously. To his surprise, Whatley overshot him, then things got weird. The major’s Sabre turned a full one hundred eighty degrees, still flying forward. Blue bolt after blue bolt erupted from its neutron cannons, and both pursuing League fighters were caught unaware. The first one blew apart into centimeter-sized chunks, while the second attempted to avoid. It lasted a few seconds longer than the other before it, too, exploded.

  “CAG, splash two.”

  “Uh. T-Thank y-you, sir. How’d you do that?”

  “You did read the flight manual, right, Lieutenant?”

  “Uh. Yes, sir,” Justin replied sheepishly.

  “There’s a little-noticed feature these Sabres have… you can disengage your inertial damping system and use the station-keeping thrusters to turn your bird. It’s quite a shock to anyone not expecting it.”

  Justin vaguely remembered seeing someone do that in a demonstration flight once. And that’s why Whatley gets paid the big bucks. He scanned his HUD. The remaining League fighter was headed straight for him. “We’ve got company, Major.”

  “I see it, kid. That one’s all yours. Took out your wingman, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Send the bastard on to God, and we’ll let Him sort it out.”

  Justin rotated his Sabre toward the enemy without replying to Whatley’s instruction. Instead, his mind was laser-focused on the approaching hostile. The missile-lock-on tone buzzed, and he automatically squeezed the trigger, dropping a Vulture active-LIDAR-tracking missile toward the target. The Leaguer fired a similar warhead at him, which he avoided with ease. That League tech doesn’t appear to be as good as ours. Perhaps a technological advantage would help them in the long term. It would do much to explain the number of kills he and the rest of the Zvika Greengold pilots had racked up.

  The enemy fighter blew past him as both craft exchanged energy-weapons fire. Without the three wingmen backing the Leaguer up, his movements were less confident and aggressive. The fight quickly turned into a turn-tail chase as they both tried to gain an advantage. Potshots at each other scored few hits, and Justin didn’t have enough time for missile lock-on. I’m still fighting this guy’s war. I need to fight mine. Clarity came to Justin, and he toggled the secondary weapon selector to his heat-seeking warheads. At the same time, he overrode the safety controls and set them to double launch.

  Justin whipped through a tight series of scissors moves and borrowed a trick he’d seen Whatley perform in a different combat and slowed dramatically through one turn. The Leaguer overshot on full afterburner, and Justin pressed the missile-launch button. “Alpha Two, fox two.” Twin heat seekers rocketed away from his Sabre and tracked the enemy fighter relentlessly. He took the time to make a transmission on the guard frequency. “Hey, Leaguer. Alpha Mike Foxtrot.” A few seconds later, both missiles hit its shields and detonated. The resulting explosion took the other craft with it. “Alpha One, splash one.” It felt good to erase from existence the person who’d probably killed his friend.

  “More heavy bombers inbound,” Whatley rasped. “Alpha, get after ’em. I’m going to assist Beta.”

  “Roger, sir.”

  “And Spencer… nice shooting. What’d you learn?”

  “Don’t allow emotion to overcome good tactical judgment.”

  “Ah, lookee here. The kid can learn.”

  Ju
stin could almost feel the smirk he was sure was emanating from Whatley’s face. “Occasionally and twice on Sundays.”

  “Good hunting, Lieutenant.”

  With that, Whatley was off. Justin turned his attention to the inbound flight of League bombers flying directly toward the Zvika Greengold. It surprised him that they weren’t attacking a more capable capital ship, like the Conqueror, but it didn’t matter in the end—only that his element did its job. The squadron information screen on his HUD showed ten green dots and one red one. One was absent. Feldstein and Adeoye’s craft were functioning at one hundred percent—at least according to the integrated sensors. “Alpha One to Alpha Two, come in.”

  “This is Alpha Two. Go ahead,” Feldstein replied quickly. “We were worried about you for a minute there, Lieutenant.”

  “I was worried about myself.”

  “Is Mateus…”

  “I don’t know. She said she was ejecting, but it’s so chaotic out here that my sensors didn’t pick up an escape pod.” He hoped against hope that her IFF was malfunctioning but knew it was unlikely. Moreover, he couldn’t spare the brain space to think about it. They had a job to do—stay alive and defeat the enemy. “Form up on me and switch to dumb-fire rockets if you have any left. We’re going bomber hunting.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  The intercept vector was a favorable one for Justin’s fellow Alpha element members to catch up to him without staying at maximum afterburner the entire time. He took the time to examine the battlespace and get a feel for the ebb and flow of the fighter combat. Most of the friendly small craft were of the planet-based variety. The only carriers the CDF had in its inventory were the Thane class. While they were all present and accounted for, three hundred sixty fast movers weren’t enough to shift the tide in any meaningful way.

  “Everyone lock up a separate bomber,” Justin said. “Take one high-speed firing pass then get behind and terminate these guys.”

  “Sir, there’s another flight of fighters headed our way,” Feldstein called. “Four bandits, bearing one-two-eight degrees negative declination.”

  “Forget them. Take out the bombers, then we’ll shift targets.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Justin lined up the lead enemy and squeezed his firing trigger the moment it entered maximum range. Return fire in the form of red energy bolts rushed toward him. He added his dumb-fire missiles to the mix. Each hit substantially impacted the bomber’s shields. They failed, and chunks of armor broke off. At the last second, Justin rolled to his left, and his final rocket smacked the enemy craft, causing a chain reaction of several small explosions that blew the bomber apart. Only after the intense glow from the brief fireball had faded did he realize that three anti-ship missiles were headed straight for the Greengold. He briefly considered pursuit but discounted the idea. The carrier’s CIWS systems would have to be up to the task.

  * * *

  “Conn, TAO. We just lost two of our point-defense emplacements, port side.” Bryan turned his head around. “Fifty percent reduction in point-defense effectiveness on that quarter.”

  “Communications, have Major Whatley designate one of his squadrons to protect us until repairs can be made,” Tehrani said. She turned toward Wright. “XO, prioritize getting our CIWS emplacements back online. By any means necessary.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am.”

  Tehrani brushed a wisp of brown hair out of her face and focused on the tactical plot. The blue overhead lighting amplified the screen and made watching it easier. Across the battlespace, the League ships had stopped their advance, except for a few pockets of vessels still moving forward. She assumed they had a rigid command structure that didn’t allow for individual commanders’ initiatives.

  The Greengold shuddered from another series of hits.

  “TAO, who’s shooting at us?”

  “Master Four Hundred Thirty-Six, ma’am. Enemy destroyer, and it’s coming about for another pass.”

  On the plot, Tehrani quickly found the enemy along with two frigates maneuvering aggressively. “Firing-point procedures, Master Four Hundred Thirty-Six, forward neutron beams.”

  “Firing solutions set, ma’am.”

  “TAO, tag Master Four Hundred Twenty-Eight and request Delta element engage as she approaches us. ” Tehrani grinned fiercely. “We’ll see how many times they’ll fall for that particular trick.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am,” Bryan replied with levity in his voice—the sound of a man who had hope he would live to see another day.

  Wright leaned in. “Bad news, Colonel. Damage-control parties report multiple hours to get our PD guns back online. One’s completely gone, while the other is suffering from a severed power conduit.”

  “We must make do,” Tehrani replied. Her heart sank. At any moment, the Leaguers would realize how badly her ship was wounded and concentrate everything they had on the port quarter. I owe it to my crew not to sacrifice them in a meaningless gesture. “Run a Lawrence drive calculation to put us across the system, closer to Canaan and inside the Lawrence limit,” she whispered.

  “Shouldn’t the navigator do that, ma’am?” Wright replied equally quietly. “I’m rusty enough that I might put us into the sun.”

  Tehrani chuckled. “No, I don’t want to alarm the crew. Just in case we have to bug out quickly.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am.” Wright turned and bent over his tablet, hard at work on the equations.

  “Conn, Communications,” Singh called. “Flash traffic from CSV Victory, ma’am. Vidlink is active.”

  “Put it on my viewer, Lieutenant.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am.”

  The screen above Tehrani’s head sprang to life with an image of General Irvine. Her face was harried, and dark circles were visible under her eyes. “Attention, all CDF forces. The enemy’s flagship has been disabled and, with it, their command-and-control structure. Our reinforcements are minutes away, but victory is still far from certain. Engage the enemy at all points of attack and don’t hold back. We must press them and send them on the run. You’ve all fought bravely and valiantly. Continue to do your duty, and we will prevail! I will see you all at the victory celebration. Good hunting and Godspeed.”

  “I wish we knew how long we had to hold,” Wright groused. “But it’s good to hear the American and the British space navies are on the way.”

  “The CDF should never have disbanded and downsized the way it did,” Tehrani said. “That decision was short-sighted.” She glanced at the tactical plot and noted that the League destroyer she was tracking was almost in range. “TAO, reconfirm firing solution for Master Four Hundred Thirty-Six.”

  “Firing solution set and confirmed, ma’am.”

  The League vessels flew into firing range, loosing a barrage of the ubiquitous red plasma balls. The view through the Zvika Greengold’s windows filled with the glow from the enemy weapons, while the Greengold’s point-defense systems—those still working, anyway—blazed away at incoming missiles. Delta element sent three anti-ship missiles at the hapless destroyer, pummeling her shields to less than ten percent.

  Tehrani grinned. “TAO, match bearings, shoot, forward neutron beams.”

  Two blue spears of solid energy shot out from the bow of the Greengold and first depleted what was left of the League vessel’s deflector screens. For a split second, the enemy’s shields held with a red skid effect visible. Then they were gone. Because of the positioning of the two ships, the neutron beams speared the destroyer from bow to stern, punching a hole clean through the thin hull. Moments later, it exploded in a flash of orange-and-blue flame, with nothing left to prove it had ever existed except one-meter-long chunks of debris.

  “I would again remind you that CDF tactical doctrine states that carriers are to stay back, out of a direct ship-to-ship engagement,” Wright said and laughed. “The way you’re going, ma’am, we’re going to get awarded a battle star.”

  “Desperate times, desperate measures, XO.” Tehrani set her e
yes back to the tactical plot, searching for the next target. She had many to choose from.

  16

  “Beta three declaring an emergency. Mayday, mayday, mayday. I’m punching out,” someone calmly stated.

  Justin winced. That made three pilots from his squadron with a total loss of craft and an unknown number of them killed in action. They were down to eight combat-effective fighters. All around the Red Tails, debris from destroyed Leaguers filled the void. We’ve fought a good fight. He maneuvered through space as he did the mental mathematics to plot a course to bring his Sabre behind the enemy displayed on the HUD.

  “Any word on those reinforcements, CAG?” Feldstein asked.

  “What do I look like? A prophet? They’ll get here when they get here,” Whatley groused. “Until then, keep killing the bastards.”

  “Wilco, sir.”

  Justin laughed softly. I’d wager the major is having a blast over there. Some people were seemingly made from steel. Whatley was one of them.

  The calculations Justin had made appeared to work, as his Saber glided behind the enemy he was tracking. To his surprise, he was close enough for a guns solution, and he held down the firing trigger. Dozens of blue neutron-cannon bolts flew into the hostile craft, and it exploded violently. “Alpha One, splash one.”

  Another League fighter exploded to his left. “Alpha Two, splash one,” Feldstein said tightly. “Two more in this group.”

  I’m down to my last heat-seeking missile. Justin quickly toggled through his stores, having lost count during the nonstop fighting. He only had one warhead left. He’d expended all active LIDAR trackers and dumb-fire rockets. Better make it count.

  His craft shuddered from a volley of hits, and Justin slowed his Sabre dramatically. The enemy overshot. Time seemed to slow as he pressed the missile-launch button while holding down the firing trigger for his energy weapons.

  The enemy craft blew apart, and its debris cloud struck his cockpit canopy with a series of short metallic impacts that sounded like rain hitting a tin roof.