Forge of War (Jack of Harts) (6 page)

There were twelve Avengers in Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 112, and each of them carried two grav cannons.  The Shang cruiser had the vast majority of its deflection grid aimed at the Peloran ships, with very little power dedicated to the direction the Cowboys came from.  Twenty-four cannons ripped through the deflection grid like it was tissue paper and drove deep into the ship’s structure.  A moment later, forty-eight lasers began to fire, pulsing from one target to the next, running from nose to stern, destroying every external sensor, weapon, or engine port they could detect.

In the end, the laser fire wasn’t needed.  One of the grav cannons breached the missile magazine for the forward missile bays.  The missiles were in safety shut down mode, not yet sent to the bays for firing, but when the gravitic beam slashed through the magazine, it effectively tore several of the missiles apart and compacted them inside the beam’s area of effect, causing a large percentage of the missiles’ mass, some of which was energetically active when brought together, to combine in extremely unstable ways.  Once the beam passed through, and hundreds of gravities of sheer no longer held the missiles together, the pieces of former fusion-powered missiles once again became separate.

The separation was suitably explosive and the bow of the Shang ship vaporized.  The ship slewed violently out of formation, spraying wreckage as it spun away from the battle.

Cowboy squadron spun as one, the cybers in charge acting in unison, and aimed at another cruiser.  “Fire,” Johanson ordered and twenty-four grav cannons ripped into another target.

Their second target was prepared, spending the seconds it took for the Cowboys to kill its compatriot to reorient its deflection grid to protect itself from their attack.  Twenty of the beams twisted off into space where distance and loss of control made them impotent after a mere few hundred kilometers.  One of those slew through a flight of Peloran missiles and they exploded spectacularly in empty space.  The other four cannons managed a direct hit and penetrated the grid, doing some damage to the armor, but none of them had enough power and control left to break through the dense armored hull.

The same could not be said about the four much larger grav cannons the Peloran battleship fired a moment later.  Mere seconds before, the Shang deflection grid had held, twisting the Peloran weapons away in the most classic of all defenses, not being where the weapons fire arrived.  Now a significant percentage of the cruiser’s total reactor load was spent holding the fighters on their flank to “mere” armor damage.  All four Peloran beams smashed through the weakened deflection grids and hit the cruiser like the hammers of ancient gods.  The Peloran capital weapons were
not
measured in mere hundreds of gravities, or in centimeters.  The second Shang cruiser did
not
explode.  The four beams sucked sections of the ship in, compressing the compartments inside each one, ripping the ship into ever-smaller sections.  When the beams faded away, tiny compressed metallic pebbles and larger undamaged but no longer connected pieces of ship fanned away from where a ship of war had fought seconds ago.

“My God,” Jack whispered in awe.

“Yeah,” Betty answered in a low voice.

The displays flashed in warning and Jack’s eyes went wide.  It hadn’t taken long for the Shang to send a couple squadrons of fighters their way at all.

“Go HOTAS and bring the fangs out!” Johanson ordered as forty Shang fighters bore down on them.

Jack smiled at the age-old order and placed his hands on the throttle and stick.  If the Shang wanted a dogfight, they were going to get one.  “Let’s dance,” he said and pulled the stick over.

“I think it’s time for the Tango,” Betty answered as the Cowboy formation exploded, fighters peeling away into flights of two fighters.

“Sounds good to me.”  Jack brought the stick hard over again, and felt the fighter buck around him from a near miss.  He really wasn’t doing the lion’s share of the work, even now.  Betty did most of it, with her near-light-speed reaction time, maneuvering the fighter in a nearly random program of evasive maneuvers.  The problem was, that even the best cybers were simply not as random as a genetic human, and with enough experience they could be predicted.

Jack pulled the throttle back hard and the engines flared to life.  If asked, he would have said he had no idea why he did it.  He just felt like doing it.  He was embracing the randomness of life that he was best at.  A split second later, a missile passed through where they would have been and went on its merry way.

“Betty, I
do
think someone’s trying to shoot us.  Do you have an answer?”  He flicked the stick over, altering their course just a little bit to starboard.  Betty maneuvered them around that base course, thrusters flaring with each shift, while the laser turret spun and fired.

“Response on the way,” Betty returned.  “Damn.  Deflection grid held.”

“Do it,” Jack ordered and set his teeth.

The Avenger spun around on its axis, turning towards its attacker, as another almost random flare of thrusters sent her up and over a salvo of missiles.  The laser turret pulsed the deflection grid, bending away from the target with each shot.  The grav cannons missed the Shang fighter that was desperately maneuvering to avoid being killed, but swept across its deflection grid, collapsing it instantly.  The four barrels of the laser turret went to rapid fire, shredding the fighter in seconds as the Avenger spun back to face her general course.

Jack swallowed as a frigate came back into view, her laser turrets and missile bays spraying all over the Cowboy formation.  He glanced at the displays to see that a quarter of the Shang fighters, one credited to his wingman, were down with no Cowboy casualties.  A flash of light heralded a successful missile strike on Johanson’s fighter.  Jack gritted his teeth as the Colonel’s Avenger spun out of control, deflection grid sputtering in and out.

“Cover him!” Jack ordered and Betty brought their Avenger around to fire the grav cannons at a fighter trying to take advantage of the Colonel’s situation.  Lasers followed up and the Shang fighter ceased to exist.

The frigate focused fire though and Johanson’s fighter ripped apart under the assault.  His wingman banked away, lasers playing across more Shang fighters, but the frigate’s fire turned to destroy it too.

“Damn,” Jack whispered, scanning the plot quickly.  The two senior officers, the only two Cowboys who had been pilots when The War started, were gone, just like that.  The Peloran squadron was making headway against its attackers, and the Peloran fighter formation was reforming now that the Cowboys had pulled some of the Shang off their case.

But if they didn’t do something about the damned frigates, they were all going to be in a world of hurt.  He took in a deep breath, readying himself to give the order.  He wasn’t the highest ranked of those remaining, but somebody had to give the order to do it.

“Wait one second,” Betty said, smiling at him.

Jack let the breath out slowly, gazing at Betty’s hologram.

“Cowboy Three to all Cowboys,” Woodchuck’s voice transmitted into his cockpit as the frigate flashed on his displays, showing the whole datalink had locked it.  “Let’s kill it.”

“Oorah,” Jack answered the man that was barely his superior without hesitation in chorus with the other Cowboys.  He smiled at Betty.  “I didn’t think he’d step up.”

“Neither did he until he had to,” she returned, her avatar looking towards the frigate in the distance.  “Don’t worry, Jack.  Your time will come.  I have faith in you.”

The Cowboys swung around, locking onto the frigate, and twenty grav cannons fired on the frigate.  It was a much smaller target than the cruisers they’d fired on before, designed for fighter suppression.  True warships could destroy it with relative ease, while it lacked the heavy weapons to threaten larger warships.  That was probably why the Peloran warships had mostly ignored it and its sisters in favor of ships that were actually penetrating their deflection grids.  Unfortunately for the frigate, the Avengers mounted gravitic cannons designed to take down larger warship deflection grids.  A grid designed to deflect the lighter weapons fighters typically carried collapsed under the Avengers’ fire and the frigate belched atmosphere and fire.  The laser turrets played across it and the frigate began to drift out of the conflict, power systems sputtering out.

The displays flashed and Jack glanced up to see Cowboy Eight’s damage codes going red.  That would be Drew and Jasmine.  Her nose flew away, separated by the concentrated fire of a dozen Shang fighters.  Her laser turret went with it.  The damaged fighter swung away from her attackers, trying to open the range.

“Covering fire!” Charles ordered and nine Avengers swung around as they maneuvered randomly, avoiding enemy fire as much as possible.  Gravity twisted through the Shang formation, ripping deflection grids and fighters apart, and thirty-six laser barrels sought out the survivors.

Jack brought the stick over, because he felt like it, and scanned the displays.  Two more of those frigates still harassed the Peloran fighters, ripping holes in their screening formation.  Someone had to do something about them soon.

“Betty?” he asked.

“Almost certainly,” she answered.

A frigate flashed in the display.  “Cowboy Three to all Cowboys.  Flights Four, Five, and Six, focus on that frigate and kill it.  Flights Two and Three, we will provide covering fire.  Now!”

“Oorah,” Jack said and swung his fighter around to face the last of the Shang fighters sent to harass them.  Six Avengers, including Drew’s injured fighters that still had two very functional main cannons, charged forward deeper into the battle that raged around the Peloran squadron.

“Fire ’em up, Betty,” Jack ordered and kept his eyes scanning for threats as he maneuvered them wherever he felt like going at that particular moment.  The grav cannons and lasers lanced out, taking down another fighter, and the survivors broke away, leaving the rear of the Avenger formation unmolested.

The head of the formation fired and twelve waves of gravitic sheer tore into the frigate.  The frigate bucked under the assault, its deflection grid failing, and armor ripped away.  A squadron of Peloran heavy fighters took advantage of the situation, hammering its other flank with lasers and breacher missiles, and explosions wreathed it from stem to stern.

More Shang fighters swarmed in and Jack and the other three Cowboys spun to fire on them.  He scanned, watching the frigate break apart under the assault and took in a deep breath.

The Peloran battleship and her escorts accelerated past the third frigate, her heavy fighters ripping into it on the way by.  Massive rents in the Peloran ships’ flanks spewed wreckage and atmosphere into space.  It was obvious they’d taken a severe beating in the last few minutes but they continued to accelerate, firing into the rest of the Shang formation, missiles and grav cannons shredding the deflection grids with their gravitic interference.  Lasers punched through, and for a second the Peloran ships were close enough they even fired kinetic lances at a significant percentage of the speed of light.  More Shang ships and piece of ships spun away and the formation scattered, individual ships diving into hyperspace with a flash of light.

A face appeared on the display and smiled at them.  “Thank you.  You saved me from taking heavy damage.”

Jack looked over at Betty with a raised eyebrow.

“That’s Hal,” she answered his unspoken question.  “He’s the
Guardian Light
.”

“Ah.  Of course,” Jack returned.  “It’s a pleasure to help,” he said to the warship.

Betty cocked her head to the side before smiling.  “New orders coming in.”

“Cowboy Three to all Cowboys.  Engage datalinks with the Peloran squadron.  Slot in and prepare to protect them.”

“Oorah,” Jack and the others answered without a pause.  “Betty?”

“Way ahead of you, Jack.  Datalinks are synced…now.”

The displays flashed and he saw the Peloran squadron arrayed in them with new codes that showed their situation.  Bad.  Nearly half their point defense was gone, most of their missiles and lances had been expended, and their armor was a memory in more places than he wanted to think about.

“Damn,” Jack whispered.  “If that’s not heavy damage, I don’t think I want to
see
heavy damage.”

Hal’s smile deepened.  “I do not wish to see it again either.  Hence the reason for my thanks.”

“Right.  Betty, link us into their point defense network and let’s see about keeping them from taking heavy damage.”

“On it, Jack.”

The Peloran squadron turned and accelerated towards the American fleet covering Fort Wichita.  Nearly half the American ships were dead in space and every single one of the others, even the mighty
New Jersey
, spewed atmosphere out of holes in their flanks.  All of them, even the battered fort, continued to fire on the Shang, though.  A quick scan of the displays showed that half of the Shang ships were similarly battered, drifting towards Earth and a very messy landing if they weren’t stopped, but they still had the advantage of numbers and the American forces were taking extreme damage.

Jack blinked as he saw something else appear on the displays.  Squadrons of fighters from every major nation of the Western Alliance were launching from their ground bases, rising up towards space.  The Russians and Chinese were doing the same, and Low Earth Orbit was beginning to become a very busy place.  Jack swallowed.  If the Lunar Treaty fell, if war erupted inside the Lunar Orbital, it would be beyond catastrophic for every soul on Earth.  If the treaty held, the Shang would lose their advantage in numbers in a few minutes at most.