Earth Strike (8 page)

Eta Boötis glowed hot and yellow orange almost directly ahead, with its fourth planet a slender, silver-yellow crescent bowed away from the star just beside the glare. A readout on his virtual display showed they’d emerged 38,000 kilometers out from the planet’s night side—bang on-target. On the tactical display above the pit, red points of light began winking on in rapid-fire succession, starting close to the green-lit globe marking the planet and extending farther and farther out as
America
’s sensor suites picked up EM returns and emissions from other ships near the planet. The ship’s AI identified the signals as quickly as they came in, then plotted positions and vectors on the display.

A solitary blue light winked on against the planet’s night side. The Marine perimeter, at least, was still intact.

Koenig breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that. The mission had not been launched in vain after all.

All of the lights marking spacecraft, however, were red—enemy ships. None were blue. Either the fighter strike had been wiped out in the attack hours before, they’d been disabled and drifted clear of battlespace, or they were down on the planet’s surface.

Other lights were coming on now—yellow ones—indicating unidentified targets. Most of those would be disabled ships—hulks, critically damaged vessels, or even large chunks of debris. The Dragonfires, Koenig noted, had made a definite impression on the Turusch; there could be no doubt about that.

And even as he watched, the first pair of blue fighters emerged from
America
’s twin launch tubes at nearly 170 meters per second. The first pair was followed by a second, and then a third. VFA-49, the Star Tigers, began arrowing into the heart of the Turusch fleet.

At the same time, other fighters were emerging from the drop tubes circling
America
’s spine. As the carrier rotated on its axis, creating spin gravity for her crew, centripetal force flung the fighters of VFA-42, the Nighthawks, clear of the shadow of
America
’s forward shield and into space with a relatively sedate velocity of five meters per second.

In seconds, a cloud of gravfighters began to encircle the carrier, moving outward.

“We’re counting thirty-four active Turusch capital ships,” Commander Craig told him. “Eight more appear to be heavily damaged, but still have active power sources.” She hesitated. “Lots of fighters…but we’re not picking up any friendlies.”

“Very well,” Koenig said. “Captain Buchanan? You may accelerate and engage as soon as all of our fighters are clear.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

If the initial numbers were to be believed, the Dragonfires had destroyed at least thirteen Turusch warships, and damaged eight more, a
very
respectable showing for just twelve gravfighters. Data tags alongside the slowly drifting red icons in the display showed that several of the remaining enemy vessels were damaged as well.

That gave the
America
battlegroup a decent chance against the survivors of the Turusch fleet, chances better than even, at any rate. A lot would depend on how prepared the enemy was for the Confederation fleet’s arrival.

He’d not expected to see any Dragonfires in the battlespace, not after nine hours. He just hoped that most of them had been able to win through to the Marine perimeter on the planet.

Blue Omega One
VFA-44
Dragonfires
Battlespace Eta Boötis IV
2352 hours, TFT

“All Blue Omegas are in position and ready for boost,” Commander Allyn said. “We’ll take our count from you.”

“Copy that, Blue One,” the voice of a Marine in MEF HQ Operations Control replied. “The shield is coming down in five…four…three…two…one…
mark
!”

The five gravfighters were already airborne, configured for atmospheric flight and floating vertical, their noses aimed at the night sky just south of the zenith. As the shield section flicked off, the fighters began accelerating, a slight ripple preceding them as artificial singularities winked into place. Within seconds, they were shrieking skyward. A thick cloud of vapor engulfed each as it lanced toward heaven, stretching out behind and forming a cone shape as the Starhawks went supersonic, then vanishing as they went hypersonic seconds later. Behind and below, the Marine shields switched back on and the base lights vanished.

“Hey Skipper?” Tucker, Blue Eight, called. “I’m getting an EDS here. AI says it’s Prim!”

Allyn glanced at her virtual com suite display, saw the wink of a contact light, with bearing and range. So Prim had survived! Or, at least, the emergency distress beacon built into his e-suit was still functioning, which wasn’t necessarily the same thing.

“Got it,” she said, patching the signal through back to MED HQ.

“Shouldn’t I go back down and try to find him?”

Katie Tucker was Prim’s wing. Of course she wanted to cover her partner. “Negative, Tuck,” she replied. “The Marines’ll take care of him.”
If they can
, she added to herself, but she didn’t speak the thought aloud.

“Yeah, we got other Tushies to fry,” Blue Five put in. “Let’s
do
it!”

On Allyn’s tactical display, six Turusch capital ships and a score of fighters were picked out by red icons above Eta Boötis IV. All were under acceleration, and appeared to be outbound from the planet’s night side. She extended the range on her display, and the blue icons of the emerging carrier battlegroup winked on.

The five surviving Blue Omega fighters had pulled several two-ship patrols in the time since they’d arrived at Mike-Red, aimed mostly at keeping the Turusch at a respectful distance. The bombardment of the Marine perimeter had all but stopped. With Blue Omega’s arrival, the enemy had known that the battlegroup would be on the way, and they’d obviously been preparing for its arrival, the Marines on-planet now a far lower priority than the approaching Confederation fleet.

The overall tactical situation offered the handful of Starhawks on the surface of Eta Boötis IV a rare opportunity. With the
America
battlegroup emerging from metaspace off the planet’s dark side, the Turusch fleet was swinging about and accelerating to meet it…and in the process turning their backs on Allyn and the remnants of her squadron.

White light blossomed, startling and stark against the night. The Tushies hadn’t entirely forgotten the base, or the fighters hidden there. “Everyone okay?” she called as the crackle of EM static faded.

“Blue Eight, okay!”

“Blue Five, still here.”

“Blue Six. Got a little crisp there for a sec, but okay.”

“Blue Three. Rog.”

The black bulk of Eta Boötis’s night side dropped away as the five Blue Omegas streaked out of the turbulent atmosphere.

“Okay, children,” Allyn told the others. “Let’s put them where they count!”

“Sur
prise
, you freaking Tush bastards!” Lieutenant Tucker called over the tac channel. “Omega Eight, target lock! And
Fox One
!”

Allyn was already targeting a Sierra-class cruiser, eight thousand kilometers ahead. “Omega One! Target lock! Fox One!”

The Krait slid off the rail and through the momentary puckered opening in the Starhawk’s smoothly shifting surface and vanished into the distance. Seconds later, it detonated against the Sierra’s screens with a swelling, nuclear fireball…but Allyn was already breaking right and high, targeting another enemy vessel.

Then the Tush fighters were closing on them from three directions, swinging around and back to engage the sudden pop-up strike from the planet’s surface. The five Confederation fighters went into the merge accelerating hard, engaging the fighters with particle beams and KK cannon, saving the heavy-hitting Kraits for capital ship targets.

For the next several seconds, the combat was a confused blur of fast-moving ships, black space, and fireballs. Twice, Allyn’s Starhawk AI intervened to throw the ship one way or the other to avoid hurtling pieces of white-hot debris. She saw her CPG beam spear through an oncoming Toad just ahead, and then the sky lit up with an eye-searing explosion, pelting her outer hull with high-velocity bits of shrapnel. Warning tones sounded in her ear as gravitic missiles locked on and accelerated toward her. Sand canisters thumped into the void, blocking the enemy thrusts.

Ahead, two massive battlefleets engaged….

CIC, TC/USNA CVS
America
Battlespace Eta Boötis IV
2354 hours, TFT

“Main spinal mount!” Captain Buchanan called from the bridge, “
Fire!
”

On the tactical display, a beam of white light snapped out from the icon of the
America
, connecting the carrier momentarily with an Alpha-class Turusch line battleship—a small asteroid ten times the length of the carrier and bristling with weapon mounts. Its pitted outer surface was pocked and splotched in places by white-hot craters where Confederation weapons had already and repeatedly struck home.

Screens and displays within CIC showed the unfolding fleet action from dozens of different perspectives, the scenes relayed to the battlegroup flag by sensor drones scattered across the battlespace.
America
’s spinal mount PBP fired a proton beam invisible to the eye or to drone cameras, but it impacted the Turusch shields at energies of up to 1.15 TeV.

Most of that kinetic energy was splashed aside by bent-space shields or electromagnetic screens, but enough leaked through to melt shield projectors set into the asteroid warship’s surface.

And when enough shield projectors were knocked out, the target became vulnerable….

At this point, Koenig’s role was more that of observer than of military commander. He could suggest strategy and coordination with the other ships of the battlegroup, but Buchanan was captain of the
America
, the one fighting the ship.

In fact, he thought with a touch of bemusement, the engagement already had become far too big, too fast, and too spread out for any human mind to grasp it, much less control what was happening.
America
’s AI was running tracking and targeting, firing the weapons, maintaining screens and shields.

All twenty-six of the other Confederation ships in the battlegroup had emerged from Alcubierre Drive and were accelerating now, swiftly building up to combat velocities. The railgun cruiser
Kinkaid
had fallen into position one hundred kilometers abeam of the
America
, and was joining her considerable firepower to that of
America
’s main gun. The
Kinky
pounded at the asteroid warship, now just eighteen thousand kilometers ahead, with kinetic-kill slugs accelerated at five hundred gravities down its kilometer-long superconductor rail.

“Admiral!” Hughes, the CIC tac evaluator, called out, excited. “We’re picking up fighters.
Our
fighters, coming up from the planet behind the Trash fleet!”

“How many?” he snapped.

There was an agonizing pause. “Five.
Just
five. But…”

“Synch their data inks with ours,” Koenig said, interrupting. “Coordinate their attacks with ours.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

There’d be time to count the losses later…and to mourn them. Right now, the god of battles had offered the Confederation fleet a singular opportunity, and he was going to take the fullest possible advantage of it.

26 September 2404

Tactician Emphatic Blossom at Dawn
Enforcer
Radiant Severing
0004 hours, TFT

Emphatic Blossom at Dawn, like all of the Turusch, was of three minds.

Literally
. The Mind Above, as the Turusch thought of it, was the more primitive, the more atavistic, the original consciousness set that had arisen on the Turusch homeworld perhaps three million of their orbital periods in the past. The Mind Here was thought of as a cascade of higher-level consciousness from the Mind Above, more refined, sharper, faster, and more concerned with the song of intellect.

And the Mind Below was more recent still, an artifact of both Turusch and Sh’daar technology, a merging of Minds Here into a single, more-or-less unified instrumentality.

For Emphatic Blossom, the Mind Above, a shrill demand almost beyond reason, screamed, “
Kill!
” The Mind Here, analyzing the data coming through the artificial awareness of the Enforcer
Radiant Severing
, echoed the demand to kill, modifying it with sensory data and intelligence flowing through its linkages with the ship. “
Kill
,” yes, but with an awareness that the Turusch fleet was now caught between two separate and rapidly closing tentacles of enemy force, that the fleet was caught in a crossfire that seriously hampered its maneuverability and limited its tactical options. There was a distinct possibility of gaining an important advantage if the enemy carrier vessel could be crippled or destroyed.

But the Mind Below carried a different message entirely.

“
There are strategic considerations that take precedence beyond the tactical
,” Blossom’s Mind Below was saying. “
The Sh’daar Seed requires that we withdraw
.”

“
Threat!
” cried the Mind Above. “
Kill!
”

“
The prime orders have not yet been fulfilled
,” replied the Mind Here. “
Enemy ground forces remain on the objective world, as do the nonmilitary components. These should be eliminated before we withdraw
.”

“
The ground forces will soon be withdrawn. This is the judgment of the Sh’daar Seed. The prime orders will be fulfilled
.”

“
Threat!
” cried the Mind Above. “
Kill!
”

“
But we can yet inflict severe damage on the enemy,”
the Mind Here insisted.
“Our sensors have identified no fewer than twelve major vessels in the alien fleet massing greater than twenty-eight thousand
g’ri,
including their fighter carrier. Destruction of those vessels would seriously weaken the enemy’s ability to mount a counter-offensive against Turusch fleet elements and bases within the sector
.

“
And the Sh’daar Seed, as ever, circulates plans within plans. When the enemy reaches the Bright One
, all
of the enemy ships shall be destroyed, and their homeworld left defenseless
.”

“
Threat!
” cried the Mind Above. “
Kill!
”

The Turusch tactician considered the matter further, then agreed, Mind Below and Mind Here slipping into harmony. It
had
to, since the Sh’daar Seed’s suggestions took precedence even over the judgment of a tactician.

Still, it would be extremely difficult for the Turusch fleet to extricate itself without suffering further significant damage. The enemy carrier and several other vessels were concentrating their fire on the
Radiant Severing
, and other vessels of the fleet were being pounded by enemy fighters.

Emphatic Blossom at Dawn could not directly refuse the Seed’s suggestion—such a choice was literally and physically impossible—but it did have a great deal of latitude in how it carried out the Seed’s suggestions.

The heart of the enemy’s offensive capability was their carrier. Destroying that vessel would be the key to extracting the Turusch battle fleet from this pocket.

CIC, TC/USNA CVS
America
Eta Boötis IV
0007 hours, TFT

The last of the fighters—SG-92 Starhawks and the older SG-55 War Eagles—were away, VFA-36, the Death Rattlers, flying Combat Air Patrol around the
America
, the rest lancing at high-G into the Turusch battle fleet. Kiloton nuclear pulses flashed in the distance as warheads blossomed with white fury, reduced to twinkling pinpoints by the distance.

“Three Golf-Mikes inbound,” a CIC technician reported, her voice calm. “Intercept course, detonation in thirty seconds.”

“Countermeasures deployed,” another voice said.

“Escort
Farragut
moving to intercept,” Craig reported.

Koenig watched the battle developing. The enemy had more ships than the Confederation battlegroup, and a slight technological lead in such areas as gravitics, shields, and beam weaponry, but they’d been bloodied by the fighter strike earlier and were acting in an uncoordinated, almost sluggish manner.

The large vessel ahead—an asteroid, it appeared, partially hollowed out, given massive gravitic drives and mounted with weapons—was probably the enemy command ship. With more and more of the battlegroup’s weaponry concentrating on that one giant ship, it was possible that they were having trouble coordinating their fleet.

Gravitic shields blocked radio waves and lasercom beams. Typically, ships coordinated with one another in combat by flickering one section of their shields off and on while transmitting tightly packaged comm bursts precisely timed with the shield openings. Pile on enough firepower to keep the enemy’s shields up, and you kept him from communicating with other ships as well.

The Turusch fleet was attempting to rush the
America
…the largest vessel in the Confederation fleet.
That’s what I would do
, Koenig told himself. As more and more beams and missiles slammed against the Turusch command vessel’s shields, the enemy’s fleet organization became looser, less coherent.

But the enemy ships kept moving forward, sending waves of nuke-tipped missiles and Toad fighters out ahead of the lumbering capital ships.

Even disorganized, that swarm of Turusch ships would be able to overwhelm
America
’s defenses in fairly short order.

Koenig looked around, momentarily expecting Quintanilla to be there watching, criticizing. The operational orders issued by the Senate Military Directorate while the battlefleet was still gathering off Mars—several hundred megabytes’ worth of detailed instructions—had been
very
explicit. Koenig was not to risk the star carrier
America
. She was one of only six ships of her class, and the Military Directorate wanted to minimize the chances of her being lost or badly damaged. Those orders had directed Koenig,
if the tactical situation warranted it
, to take the
America
no closer than fifty AUs to Eta Boötis IV, and to direct the battle from there. At all costs, the
America
was to avoid direct ship-to-ship combat.

Sheer nonsense, of course, the appraisal of armchair admirals and politicians considering the possible course of a naval engagement from the comfort and security of their offices and conference rooms thirty-seven light years away. You could not direct a battle from four hundred light minutes away, not when the situation was over six and a half hours old by the time you received a status update transmission from the rest of the fleet, and with six and a half hours more before your orders crawled back to the fleet. Even worse, Koenig would actually have had to split his small fleet to ensure that
America
had combat support. If the Turusch detected
America
, caught her traveling alone, they could launch a long-range fighter strike or send a small detachment of warships to attack the lurking carrier.

Unsupported, the carrier wouldn’t have a chance in ten of survival.

And so Koenig had deliberately violated his orders. The phrase “if the tactical situation warranted” was his loophole, his way out. So far as Koenig was concerned, the tactical situation did
not
warrant either splitting his fleet or trying to run the show from over six light hours away. The phrase was, in fact, a cover-your-ass clause for the politicians; if
America
and her battlefleet were destroyed or suffered serious damage, the admirals and the Directorate senators could shrug and say, “Well, it wasn’t
our
fault. Koenig disobeyed orders.”

Pretty standard stuff. If the Confederation won and the Marines were successfully evacuated, the breach of orders would be quietly ignored. Otherwise…

Three hundred kilometers ahead, the escort
Farragut
had changed course, moving across
America
’s path to help shield the carrier from oncoming missile volleys. Two Turusch missiles struck the escort’s shields, the twin, silent flashes minute but dazzling on the CIC display screens.

But Confederation fire was hammering home among the Turusch ships as well. The
Kinkaid
continued to slam high-velocity kinetic-kill projectiles into the suspected enemy command-control ship.
America
was cycling her spinal mount weapon as quickly as possible—firing about once each fifteen seconds—targeting the same Turusch asteroid ship. If they could just keep up the pressure, if they could keep the enemy command ship’s shields up…

“
Farragut
reports heavy damage,” Hughes reported. “She’s falling out of the fight.”

Koenig turned in his seat to check one of the monitors relaying visuals from a battlespace drone out ahead of the carrier.
Farragut
was a missile escort, small and fast with a bundle of twenty-four mamba launch tubes tunneling through the center of her forward shield cap, massing 2200 tons and carrying a crew of 190 men and 15 officers. The ugly little missile boats were designed to dash in close, loose a swarm of high-yield smart missiles in the merge with the enemy formation, and accelerate clear under high-G boost. On the display, the
Farragut
was barely making way, her drive fields dead; he could actually
see
her on the screen, which meant her gravitic shields were down or intermittent only, and a portion of her aft drive structure was a tangled mass of wreckage, glowing white-hot and trailing a stream of half-molten debris like streaming sparks in the night. Another missile struck the craft, the flash lighting up the display, a dazzling, single pulse of light, and as the glare faded, the
Farragut
reappeared, her drive section gone, the forward stem and shield cap tumbling end-over-end. Radiation scanners aboard the drone were pegging the readouts in CIC off the scale.

There was no sign of escape pods evacuating the hulk. Two hundred five men and women…

The missile boat’s skipper, Maria Hernandez, had been
America
’s Operations officer until she’d been promoted to captain and given command of the
Farragut
.

She’d also been a friend.

“Controller,” Koenig said.

“Yes, sir.” The controller was Commander Vincent Reigh, and he was responsible for directing all fighters and other secondary spacecraft operating in
America
’s battlespace—the voice who directed the fighters to their targets and who passed new orders to the fighter squadrons as the combat situation changed.

“Have all fighters concentrate on target…” He paused to read the code group off the tac display. “Target Charlie-Papa One.” Charlie because it was the probable enemy command ship, Papa for a planetoid converted into a warship, and One because it was the most massive vessel so far spotted within the enemy fleet.

“All fighters to target Charlie-Papa One, aye, aye, Admiral.”

Right now, most of
America
’s fighters had merged with the enemy fleet and passed through to the other side. There, they would decelerate, reform, and begin accelerating back through the enemy fleet, joining the five fighters coming out from Eta Boötis’s night side.

Silent detonations continued to pulse and strobe throughout the Turusch fleet, but more and more were concentrating on the enemy command vessel. So damned little was known about Turisch combat psychology, even after the disasters at Arcturus Station and Everdawn. If the carrier group could decapitate the enemy by taking out that Charlie-Papa…would that be enough to send the rest of them running?

White light filled heaven outside
America
’s shields, and the combat display broke up momentarily in static. “What’s our Trapper?”

“Transmission percentage at sixty-one percent, Admiral.”

As the Confederation fleet attempted to interfere with the enemy command vessel’s ability to transmit orders to other Turusch vessels, the Turusch were attempting to do the same, blasting away at
America
’s shields to force them to stay up, blocking radio and lasercom signals to the other battlegroup ships. Transmission percentage—“Trapper”—was a measure of the clarity of ship-to-ship communications during combat. The harder the enemy hammered at
America
’s shields, the harder it would be to transmit orders to the rest of the battlegroup, or receive tactical updates and requests. Sixty-one percent was actually pretty good. It meant
America
’s shields were open and signals were getting through almost two thirds of the time.