All Enemies Foreign and Domestic (Kelly Blake series) (46 page)

* * * * *

      The queen commander joined her destroyer/frigate task force as they turned and prepared to come in on the flank of the biped fleet.
 
She watched the feed come in from her cruisers, showing the devastation they were causing in and among the biped fleet.
 
She saw three cruisers, six destroyers, two frigates, and two of those smaller small ship carriers damaged or destroyed, and her missile strike hadn’t even hit yet.

      She hadn’t scored any hits on the big ships yet, but she ordered a second salvo of offensive missiles just to go after them.
 
This should sow more confusion in their ranks and she was only fifteen minutes out.

* * * * *

      Angie couldn’t believe her luck in this situation, two squadrons of A-76s with full anti-ship missile loads.
 
She ordered them out immediately.
 
She loaded the F-53s with half anti-ship and half medium seeker anti-fighter missiles.
 
As the A-76s launched, she realized she was all in except for her fighter.
 
She called to CIC and got the captain’s permission to launch.
 
It was not normal practice, under this captain, for the CFW to fly during combat.
 
An excess pilot normally flew her ship, but there were no extra pilots at the moment.
 
She laid all this out for the captain and he let her go.
 
Her fighter had been loaded with the half and half load out and she launched.

      She oriented on her receding fighters and kicked hers to catch up.
 
She had an extra 0.03
c
speed over all the other ships in her wing because she had hers tweaked with a secret she learned from a lovesick maintenance officer when she was a lieutenant.
 
It was her edge – not much, but enough.

      She was just about to catch up with her fighters when she saw the Saint Elmo’s fire effect when ships dropped out of FTL too close to a planet.
 
It was the destroyer/frigate group popping in just above the polar caps.
 
She ordered two F-53 squadrons to follow her as she turned towards the group of smaller ships.
 
If she could saturate them with ship killers quickly, it might break their momentum and make them an easier target for the big ships’ guns and missiles.

      She called, “Tally ho,” and had her squadrons attack by four ship groups.

* * * * *

      The small ships appeared just above where the Behemoths were parked in geosynchronous orbit.
 
All five Behemoths opened up with all guns near simultaneously, while their escorts unloaded missile after missile at the destroyer/frigate group.
 
The guns had some effect as guns and missile launchers on the small ships were silenced.
 
A concentrated salvo from the Gigantic tore one destroyer apart and one of the larger pieces sideswiped a T’Kab frigate, crushing the hull and sending it spinning out of control and down into the atmosphere to burn up on re-entry.
 
The destroyer/frigate group fired all their offensive missiles and then the small penetrator ships started launching from the T’Kab cruisers, destroyers, and frigates.

      The fighters from the Xerxes unloaded a salvo of 80 anti-ship missiles and turned in pursuit of the penetrators, which were heading right for the Behemoths.
 
The F-53s closed the gap quickly, knowing the Behemoths would activate their defensive guns as soon as the penetrators reached optimum range.
 
This gave them about thirty seconds to see how many they could take out.

      Angie ordered deconfliction mode on for all her Bolivar fighters and ordered missiles away.
 
As the last fighter emptied his rails, she pulled back and sent one squadron back to rearm.
 
She watched the deadly ballet between the missiles and the penetrators.
 
The penetrators had no countermeasures, designed as they were for a high-speed dash into the side of a ship.
 
The penetrators changed course slightly or dramatically and the missiles calculated a new intercept course, never wavering.

      The first missiles met the first penetrators in blinding flashes, as the antimatter warheads in the missile and the penetrators exploded.
 
Missiles originally oriented on penetrators that had been destroyed, oriented on the unacquired targets.
 
Soon there was only one penetrator left of those from the destroyer/frigate group, being chased by twenty missiles.

      That penetrator was aimed squarely at the Behemoth.
 
It was first in line and it made an inviting target.
 
A decision loop in the anti-missile circuitry was designed to avoid adding to the damage of a successful strike, by autonomously determining they were not going to intercept the target before it hit a ship and veering off, then self-destructing if there were no more targets.
 
That only partially worked – three missiles followed the penetrator as it plunged into the hull of the Behemoth, adding to the damage.

* * * * *

      Tammy had one of her A-100 and an A-120 squadron on strip alert.
 
They had to be in the air within fifteen minutes of the call.
 
Her executive officer was with the A-120 squadron.
 
She was tagging along with the A-100 squadron.
 
Sitting in the cockpit of a ship that is not running is one of life’s most boring experiences.
 
She used the time to review award recommendations.
 
She thought some were just ‘me too’ awards and culled them out or asked for more info.

      Boredom gave way to adrenalin when the ground crews rushed out to the start carts and hit the power assist buttons to kick over the ships’ powerful engines for the atmospheric flight phase.
 
Tammy was watching her dashboard chronometer, looking at the fifteen-minute mark approaching, as the first A-100 trundled up to the start line, applied power, and gracelessly clawed its way into the air.
 
All eighteen lifted off and it was her turn.
 
Up she went, following her June Bugs into the blackness of space.
 
Her A-120s joined up in trail, with her XO’s ship in the back.
 
She gave the order to transit the gate and away they went.
 
They came out on the far side of the planet where the ring ship was hiding among the supply ships.

      They followed her around the planet until they could make out the hairball that the battle had become on their sensor screen.
 
Red was mixed in with blue on her situation screen.
 
Green signifying debris was tumbling through the battlespace.
 
She found the wedge of cruisers ramming into the formation behind their wall of missiles and sent the A-100s after them.
 
She sent the A-120s after the destroyer/frigate group and they went after the more nimble ships.

      Her A-100s fell in behind the speeding cruisers and launched a salvo of 108 missiles, speeding off towards the cruisers.
 
A combination of dumb luck, sturdy construction, and good defensive fire reduced the effectiveness of the missile strike.
 
Only six of the missiles hit a ship.
 
One cruiser dropped out of the formation after two missiles blew off its tail cones, to be finished off by fighters from the Xerxes.
 
Another cruiser took a missile to the bridge and it tumbled out of control, burning in space until its oxygen dispersed.
 
A third ship took a missile in ammo storage and sympathetic detonations ripped it apart.
 
The fourth and last ship hit in this strike took a missile in the ship’s stern and another in the keel.
 
It tumbled until it ran into a piece of a cruiser torn loose by another missile.
 
The bent and broken hull spun off towards the planet’s atmosphere and a fiery demise.

      Tammy ordered a second strike at the cruisers, approaching from the port side as they fired 120 missiles, including Tammy’s.
 
This time they did better, more missiles hitting ships but fewer ships.
 
Three missile cruisers took multiple strikes and were reduced to burning twisted hulks.
 
The A-120s came in and made strafing runs on the ships’ sensor towers, attempting to blind them, before heading off for the ring ship with two burning destroyers to their credit.

      The cruisers turned towards the Xerxes and Tammy saw an open path for them to the flagship.
 
She saw an opportunity to employ her secret weapon.
 
She ordered her two squadrons to return to base and she lined up near the rear of the Xerxes’s escorts and fired up the device she had wired into her ship.

      From the T’Kab cruisers’ perspective, a new fleet of ships dropped out of FTL and was heading right at them, moving to place themselves between the fleet and the T’Kab.
 
Missiles fired by the Xerxes’ escorts added to the realism as Tammy moved her holographic fleet at the T’Kab cruisers.
 
The cruisers changed course and moved away to avoid this new fleet bearing down on them.

      Admiral Conover came up on Tammy’s communicator and asked, “Did you do that?”

      Tammy replied, “I did, sir.
 
It came to me in training one day, and I thought it might come in handy.”

      Admiral Conover thanked her for saving his flagship and bid her good luck.
 
Tammy turned to meet the gate on the other side of the planet, and in an hour she was back in her office, listening to the roar of two A-120 squadrons lifting off to battle the T’Kab.

* * * * *

      The explosion knocked Commander Gibbons off his feet.
 
He got up and made his way to the damage control board.
 
The penetrator had hit just above the largest collection of large open spaces, the accommodations compartment for the embarked soldiers, but these compartments were empty, awaiting the refugees from the feedlots that were still going through preliminary medical screening.
 
Atmosphere was lost in all those compartments, so Gibbons started flipping switches to establish force field barriers between the damaged areas and the undamaged areas.
 
When he had the fields in place, he told the captain he was going to supervise the damage control parties.

      Captain Harris told him to stay in touch and to be careful.

      He arrived at bulkhead 28, looked through the glass porthole on the hatch, and saw twisted wreckage and black space through the open ceiling.
 
The force fields would keep more of the atmosphere from escaping, but he needed to activate the hull integrity fields.
 
He called the captain and recommended activating hull integrity fields 17, 18, 19, 20, A, B, and C.
 
That would lock the weakened hull sections together as if there were no damage.
 
He worked his way around the perimeter of the damage, calling back modifications to the force fields he already activated.

      It was when he got to aft of the damage and looked through the airtight door that he saw the warhead.
 
It was one of the anti-fighter missiles and it was lodged below a main support beam.

      “Captain, we have a live warhead just below the main portside support beam.
 
I’m sending an EVA team out to pull it free and set it adrift.”

The captain told him to go ahead.

      He called the damage control EVA team leader, gave him the mission, and told him to be very careful releasing the missile, for if the containment vessel were damaged it could release the antimatter and explode.
 
The team leader looked at the missile through the port in the airtight door and said he understood.

      Commander Gibbons said, ”Relax, it will be just like in training.
 
Do what you were trained for and it will be fine.”

      Gibbons hit the pressure check valve, got a positive result, undogged the door, and let the team out once their helmets were secured.
 
He dogged the door behind them and tuned his communicator to the EVA team’s frequency, while calling the damage control watch officer and having him deactivate force field 48.

      He heard the young rating pass duties around and had his team hold fast while he made an initial assessment.
 
The missile was loosely held to the hull by some cabling and wiring.
 
The warhead case was cracked and he could see the containment vessel still active.
 
He called the team member over with the bolt cutters and told him to cut away the wiring and cables, but don’t move the missile or cut any part of the missile.
 
He went up and examined the warhead from all angles and saw nothing holding it in place.
 
The bolt cutters made short work of the tangles and soon the missile was floating free.
 
The two of them gently hauled the missile loose from the wreckage and cast it toward the planet.