B009NFP2OW EBOK (16 page)

The dilemma was a serious one. If Gray forced the issue, Captain Lavallée might pull the Confederation ships out of the attack, and that exchange just now with twelve Slan warships proved that going up against them with less than the full weight of the fleet was a very bad idea.

But there was more and worse. Lavallée had just announced his intent to pull a near-
c
fly-by. If Gray gave in, if he conceded the command to Lavallée, the entire fleet would flash past Arianrhod at 0.997
c
. . . and
America
would be unable to recover the fighters she’d launched over an hour before.

“Captain Lavallée,” Gray continued, “we need to work together on this. We must continue with the op plan as it was written. If we don’t, we’re going to have trouble recovering our fighters.”

“The fighters are expendable, Captain Gray,” Lavallée replied. “Our fleet is not. With the demonstrated abilities of the Slan ships, slowing for close combat at the planet would be suicide.”

“Nothing has changed, Captain,” Gray said. “We knew the Slan had a lead over us in miltech after Arianrhod fell.”

“In case you missed it, Captain Gray, the Slan have tactical FTL. We cannot fight against that.”

Unfortunately, the European Union captain might have a point.

Gray pulled up a navigational 3-D graphic in the bridge tank, showing Arianrhod in orbit about 36 Ophiuchi A, and the projected path of the fleet, a ruler-straight green thread skimming close past the planet and curling around it in a tight loop. Red stars marked the Slan ships identified so far. There were still only fifteen enemy warships in orbit about the planet, but scattered elsewhere through the system were four other outlying groups totaling twenty-two vessels, including the survivors of Tango One. When the fleet reached Arianrhod, those twenty-two outlying ships might shift in toward the planet, and the Confederation fleet would find itself up against all thirty-seven Slan capital warships. As Lavallée had just pointed out, the Slan ability to move tactically within the star system at FTL speeds gave them a tremendous—possibly an overwhelmingly decisive—advantage.

“Captain,” Gray continued after a moment, “we can beat them if we concentrate our force. Tango One was only in contact with a fraction of the entire fleet. Once we decelerate into near-Arianrhod space, we’ll be able to—”

“This conversation,” Lavallée said, “serves no useful purpose, sir. The fleet will pass through the objective area at near-
c
. The USNA contingent can do as it likes. Transmission ends.”

Lavallée’s dismissal took one worry off of Gray’s docket, at least—the horrific possibility that Confederation ships might actually open fire on
America
or other ships of the USNA contingent in an attempt to force them to comply with orders. But it also meant that CBG-40 would be on its own if Gray decided to follow the original op plan in order to pick up the fighters. CBG-40 was down to twenty-two ships, now, with the
Grant
and the
Worden
both destroyed. Several other vessels,
America
included, had been badly mauled and were still under repair.

Just how badly, Gray thought, did he want to recover those fighters?

The question was scarcely worth considering.
We are not abandoning those people
, he thought.

“We may have no alternative.”

The unexpected voice in his head made Gray start. He checked his in-head, and saw his neural link to
America
’s AI was open; he’d not been aware that he’d left the connection in place after questioning it about the Confederation’s Act of Military First Right.

“Damn it,” Gray said. “We do
not
leave people behind.”

“But thirteen capital ships—two of them supply and repair vessels—may not be able to eliminate Slan defenses in-system.”

“Then we’ll have to hope that the fighter storm buys us an advantage.”
Fighter storm
was the slang term for the large number of fighters sent on a preliminary long-range strike against an enemy-held world.

“Indeed. And that raises another issue. Remember that there are a total of twenty strike fighter squadrons en route to Arianrhod, Captain, five of ours, but fifteen more launched from the four Confederation carriers an hour ago. The squadrons off the
Klemens von Metternich
, of course, no longer have a ship on which to recover.
America
does not have the hangar deck space to take all of them back on board. There will also be streakers.”

Twenty squadrons—240 fighters. The fighters off the other remaining Confederation carriers—
Kali
,
Bolivar
, and
Illustrious
—should be able to trap on board their mother ships, though catching up to them and trapping at near-
c
always posed a really hairy challenge. The big problem, though, as
America
’s AI had reminded him, was streakers—fighters damaged in combat and hurtling off into deep space at near-light speeds, unable to decelerate or maneuver. Even relatively slight damage to a strike fighter might make it impossible to trap in a carrier’s docking bay.

That was what SAR tugs—search and rescue vessels sent out to grapple with damaged fighters and haul them back to the carrier—were for. But recovering a damaged fighter at relativistic velocities was awkward and dangerous. Far better to dispatch and retrieve the SAR tugs at planetary speeds—no more than a few thousand kilometers per second.

And the number of open hangar bay slots for recovered fighters was also an issue. Of course, there might not be enough survivors from the fighter storm to raise a problem. There
would
be losses in the coming strike pass, of course, but
America
simply didn’t have room for more than perhaps 100 fighters. Unless 140 or more were destroyed in the coming battle,
some
of those fighters would be unrecoverable.

Gray had been in fighter shoot-outs with high casualty rates—two thirds or more. Fighters were considered expendable; the idea was to send them whipping in past an objective at high velocities and ahead of the arrival of the main fleet. A fighter swarm could do incalculable damage to an enemy fleet or orbital defenses, allowing the heavies, arriving hours later, to simply mop up.

In Gray’s experience, it was rarely that easy. Usually, the best the fighters could do was blunt the opposition’s defenses enough that the heavies had a fighting chance when they got there, especially if the fleet was outnumbered or up against a better, more advanced technology. He knew. He’d been there.

And he knew from personal experience the terror of being left behind in a hostile system, light years from home.

“We’ll find a way,” he told the AI. “We
have
to.”

He checked the passage of time, subjective and objective. At the fleet’s current velocity, time was passing for them almost thirteen times faster than normal. It was now 0927; in a little more than three hours objective, it would be time to begin deceleration—if the battlegroup was going to do so. At this velocity, that worked out to less than fifteen minutes subjective.

The pressure to make a decision definitely was on.

It would have helped, he thought, if
America
could have waited until the strike wave of fighters hit Arianrhod before making that decision, but the hard physics of the situation made it otherwise. As he reviewed the opplan timetable, the numbers shifting and flickering through his connection with
America
’s AI, he noted that the fighters were due to pass Arianrhod at 1319 hours; if she was to enter Arianrhod battlespace at planetary speeds,
America
and her escorts would have to begin deceleration at 1239, almost an hour earlier.

“America,”
he thought, addressing the ship’s primary AI again. “I need full amplification.
And
a full command-group brainstorm.”

And new data began flooding into his mind.

Lieutenant Donald Gregory

VFA-96, Black Demons

36 Ophiuchi System

0935 hours, TFT

“Great job, Gregory,” Mackey said over the tactical net. “Where’d you come up with that trick?”

“Not sure, Boss,” Gregory replied. “I was just in the right place, is all. . . .”

“Patch your mission record back to CIC,” Mackey told him. “They need to know about this.”

“Jamming my nose into Slan hull armor and making like a can opener?” Kemper said. “Fuck
that
.”

“We’ll call it the Nungie maneuver,” Del Rey added. “You have to be crazy as a damned Nungie to try it!”

“Considering that he just saved our asses,” Jodi Vaughn said, “
and
the entire fleet, maybe you idiots should just lay off.”

“I want
all
of you people to record this,” Mackey said, “and have it ready for implementation. We’re not going to have time to trap and rearm.”

Gregory looked at his opplan timeline and saw what their squadron leader meant. While hours remained, objective, before deceleration, only fourteen minutes subjective remained to deceleration. The squadron would not have time to return to
America
’s hangar bays, rearm with new expendables—missiles and high-velocity kinetic-kill rounds—and launch again before the carrier began decelerating. Technically,
America
could cease deceleration halfway down the velocity slope in order to launch the CAP fighters again, but fourteen minutes wasn’t enough time for the squadron to get all the way back to the carrier and then recover on board. In any case, the CBG needed to stick to the timetable. Ceasing deceleration for a fighter launch meant reaching the mission objective with excess velocity.

The six surviving fighters of VFA-96 were on their way in toward a hot battlespace zone with damned few nukes or KK rounds left.

And that meant that they were going to need every weapon and tactic available to them out here just to survive.

Chapter Thirteen

12 November 2424

TC/USNA CVS
America

In transit

36 Ophiuchi A System

1224 hours, TFT

The brainstorming passed like a dream, with images crowding in upon one another in rapid-fire sequence. The thoughts of fourteen men and women merged within the virtual reality of
America
’s AI, accelerated to transhuman levels as data cascaded through their electronically linked brains. The AI was running through thousands of overlapping scenarios, sequences designed to show the various alternative outcomes of different actions . . . if CBG-40 decelerated and faced the Slan at Arianrhod alone, if CBG-40 stayed with the main Confederation fleet and passed Arianrhod at near-
c
, if CBG-40 was joined by some Confederation ships but not others, if the Slan reacted by massing all of their ships at Arianrhod, if the outlying Slan ships stayed where they were . . .

Simulations even modeled what might happen if the Confederation fleet opened fire on CBG-40 . . .
not
one of the better scenario outcomes.

One outcome emerged from the virtual sequences with uncomfortable regularity, however. If the Slan fleet at Arianrhod was not engaged, directly and forcefully, those warships might very well seek to eliminate the source of the Confederation strike against 36 Ophiuchi.

If Arianrhod was just twenty-five hours from Earth, the converse also was true. The strike
had
to cripple the Slan fleet here, or risk a counterstrike against Earth itself. Hurt them enough, and maybe they wouldn’t attack Sol and Humankind’s homeworld.

Maybe
 . . .

Weighing in to the decision were the opinions and rationalizations of the members of
America
’s command staff. Command was not a democratic process, and the decision, ultimately, was Gray’s alone . . . but he wanted to hear what the others thought. At the beginning of the mental staff meeting, nine of the other fifteen had voted to bypass Arianrhod at near-
c
. The fighters, they argued, would be able to accelerate after the fleet and would, eventually, be able to match speeds and trap.

Streakers unable to do so, and fighters off the
von Metternich
with no place to trap, all would be lost. But then, combat resulted in combat losses. There was no way to avoid that, and it might be better to lose a few dozen fighters than to lose much of the USNA battlegroup.

As the scenario run-through had continued, though, more and more of the command staff personnel had changed their minds. The balance now was solidly in favor of battling it out with the Slan, eleven to four.

Commander Laurie Taggart,
America
’s weapons officer, was one of the four, and the most outspoken of them. “I still say the Slan have demonstrated that they’re too advanced for us to face them in a stand-up fight,” she said. The flow of imagery through the simulation focused for a moment on what might happen if the USNA ships engaged the main body of the Slan fleet directly. The incoming fighter waves were swept from the sky . . . and when the main fleet arrived an hour later, ship after ship was smashed by antiproton and heavy fusion beams.
America
took a dozen hits, the carrier crumpling under the onslaught in a matter of seconds.

“Captain,” Connie Fletcher said on a private channel. “Have you seen this?”

“What is it?”

“A feed from our CAP a few minutes ago. One of the pilots appears to have discovered a new weapon.”

Gray looked at the imagery and other data passed on by the fighters from the battle a short while before. One of the pilots—Lieutenant Gregory—had sliced open a Slan Ballista with his own drive singularity.

Gutsy. And near-suicidal . . . but Gregory’s attack appeared to have been the turning point in the skirmish, sending the remaining Slan warships back toward Arianrhod.

“I’m not sure our people will be able to use this,” he told Fletcher on the side channel. “But we may be able to adapt this somehow.”

“That’s what I was thinking. I’ve already passed it to the Weapons Section to see what they make of it.”

“Good. Keep me posted.”

Another voice entered Gray’s mind. “Deceleration in fifteen minutes objective, Captain,” the ship AI reported. “That’s a minute nine subjective. You wanted to be alerted.”

“Thank you,” Gray said. He interrupted the data flow, entering the simulation stream. “We are out of time, people,” he told the others. “I’m giving the order to decelerate.”

The command staff officers all acknowledged and dropped from the linkup, all agreeing without argument, even the holdouts. Although his was the absolute say-so in decisions like this one, Gray preferred to have his department heads on his side, committed to the course of action he’d chosen. Eleven for fifteen wasn’t a bad ratio, and he knew that Taggart and the others would support him even if they didn’t agree with his reasoning.

Gray swam up out of the deep, in-head session, blinking at the sudden glare of light on
America
’s bridge. “All hands,” he said, using the ship’s intercom. “This is the captain. CBG-40 will begin deceleration in thirty seconds, subjective. The Confederation ships have decided . . . to proceed without us, so it will be up to us to hit the Slan fleet as hard as we can, as decisively as we can, in order to make them think twice about launching a retaliatory strike against the Sol System.

“
Everything
is now riding on the USNA contingent. We are outnumbered, but the fighter wave will be arriving at Arianrhod soon, and we can be confident that they will be softening up the enemy defenses.

“I know that every member of this battlegroup will do your duty. Thank you.”

And subjective seconds later, at precisely 1239 hours, fiercely focused singularities winked on astern of each of the USNA ships, and the
America
battlegroup began to slow.

Lieutenant Ronald Dorshner

VFA-112, Death Eagles

36 Ophiuchi System

1318 hours, TFT

“Coming up on the objective,” Lieutenant Commander Meise, the squadron CO, announced. “Keep it tight. Weapons and attitude control to your AIs.”

Lieutenant Dorshner checked to make certain that his Velociraptor was now solely under the control of his AI. VFA-112 was one of the strike squadrons off the
America
. From his perspective, just 30 minutes had passed since he’d accelerated clear of the carrier. In the non-accelerated universe outside, 349 minutes and 40 astronomical units had slipped past. He was still moving at near-light velocity, and the sky around him was sharply compressed into the familiar colored bands of light ahead.

With everything in the electronic hands of the fighter AI, there wasn’t much left for Dorshner to do but sit and wait. Humans had their place in space fighter combat at slower speeds, carrying out maneuvers that required human creativity.

At over 99 percent of the speed of light, human reflexes simply weren’t fast enough to provide useful input.

His weapons triggered, missiles and sandcasters first. The missiles had to be released well before the closest point of passage, since they shared the fighter’s velocity, and needed to be put on a vector that would swing them into the targets at that speed. At near-
c
, a few hundred kilos—the mass of the missiles themselves—carried enough kinetic energy to overwhelm the detonations of their nuclear warheads.

The salvo included his entire warload of AMSOs, twelve AS-78 anti-missile-shield-ordnance-containing warheads of tightly packed, sand-grain-sized spherules of matter-compressed lead. When the warheads detonated an instant later, clouds of sand hurtled across emptiness toward the Slan targets, again at close to the speed of light. Where the enemy’s anti-missile defenses might wipe incoming missiles out of the sky, it was virtually impossible to do the same to hurtling clouds of dispersing sand. At the speed of light, even something with the mass of a BB carried tremendous explosive power.

An instant after his missiles and sandcaster rounds were away, Dorshner’s beam weapons fired—lasers, particle-cannon bursts, and fusion beams—and the weapons continued to fire as the fighter swept past the target zone, the fighter pivoting on its axis to keep the beams on target.

And then he was past. He gave a thoughtclicked order, and his fighter began decelerating, braking at fifty thousand gravities.

He still couldn’t see the Slan targets or the planet, now light seconds behind him, didn’t know how much damage, if any, he and the other members of the fighter swarm had caused.

But they were about to find out.

Slan warship

Low Orbit, 36 Ophiuchi AIII

1319 hours, TFT

She sat in pitch darkness, her skin suit’s light off to conserve the small power cells.

The Slan, Lieutenant Megan Connor had decided, must “see” by sonar, sending out pulses of sound and forming an image of their surroundings by listening to the returning echoes. She remembered that certain sea mammals back on Earth—dolphins and the now extinct whales—had used sonar to image their murky undersea universe. The fatty masses in the heads of dolphins that focused the sound waves, she recalled, were called melons. The mobile cones above the Slans’ bodies, she was pretty sure, must be their sonar-imaging melons. The large, somewhat translucent flaps to either side of the upper body might be external ears, focusing returning sound waves.

The information did her no good at the moment, but she was determined now to make her escape. If she could somehow get away, somehow return to a human ship, what she’d seen and heard here might be of use.

The ship’s artificial gravity dragged at her. Her suit could compensate, somewhat, when she was walking, but when she was just lying on her back she felt
heavy
—twice, nearly, her usual sixty-five kilos. For hours—her internal clock had logged seventeen since her capture—she’d been here, locked inside the small and lightless cabin to which her captors had led her earlier, after her interview with Old Captain Two-Heads, as she thought of the creature, and after the terrifying nightmare in the alien lab. She shuddered again at the memory, though they’d only hurt her once—by inserting a heavy-gauge needle into her arm right through her skin suit.

The suit had sealed off the resulting leak almost immediately, but the stab had left her terrified. The worst part had been the
not knowing
, as six aliens had surrounded her in the darkness, manipulating arms and legs, touching her, scanning her with unidentifiable devices, seeming to peer at her and
into
her with those blunt, featureless organs on the ends of those writhing necks. . . .

She’d tried to talk to them, by voice, by radio, by flashing her suit light . . . but she couldn’t even tell if the beings were aware of her attempts.

And then, anticlimactically, they’d brought her to the cell and locked her in. For the hours since, all she’d been able to do was sit in the darkness, listening . . . and wondering if the Slan were going to try to feed her, take care of her environmental needs . . . or if the interrogation was to resume.

Now, though,
something
was happening.

She could hear some sort of excitement outside the locked cabin door—rapid movement through the passageways outside, and the rattling clicks and buzzes that she’d begin to think must be Slan speech. It was difficult in the extreme to attribute anything like human emotions to beings so alien, but she had the impression that they were excited.

And then, out of nowhere, something struck the ship’s hull with a terrific
bang
, and she was thrown from the low pad that served her as a bed in her cell. A thin, shrill whistle told her that the atmosphere was shrieking out into vacuum. Her captors’ ship had been damaged . . . possibly critically.

She switched on her suit’s light, and immediately saw four shafts of condensing vapor in the wet, hot air. Looking more closely, she was able to see tiny holes, each the size of a small pea, in bulkhead and deck, and she felt a cold prickle of dread moving up her spine. AMSO rounds—tiny spherules of compressed lead moving at extremely high velocities. One had missed her by less than 2 meters.

But that also meant that the Slan fleet was being attacked. Her heart beat faster as she stood up and made her way to the door.

She had a virtual tool in a hip pouch, overlooked by the Slan, who apparently hadn’t recognized it for what it was. All fighter pilots carried one, a programmable utility multipurpose tool that could melt through tungsten steel, punch holes or seal them, glue together broken pieces . . . or unlock doors. She’d not used it earlier, reasoning that if it did get her out of her cell, there still had been no way to get off the Slan warship. Better to stay put for the time being, perhaps with the possibility of learning more about her captors.

Now, though, with the ship under attack and clearly damaged, there might be some way for her to take advantage of the situation . . . and the alternative was to wait here in the dark until the ship was either destroyed or its automatic repair systems kicked in, closing this window of opportunity.

If she could find her way, somehow, back to her damaged fighter . . .

The virtual tool was the size of her thumb, flat, and metallic green. When she held it in the palm of her hand, in contact with the maze of gold, red, and silver threads marking her glove’s contact area, it linked with her in-head systems and announced that it was ready to work . . . and what job did she want done?

“Open the door,” she thought, pressing the tool’s business end against the seal of her cabin door, a low, broad oval shape a meter and a half high and perhaps three wide, a silhouette in keeping with the low-riding bodily structure of the Slan. There was nothing like a doorknob or activation switch, but the tool was smart enough to trace the electronic circuitry, find locks, override power supplies, even melt through mechanical tumblers or locking bolts, if necessary. Programmed by her in-head circuitry, the tool emitted a thin stream of nano agents that flowed along the seal, looking for a viable approach.