Singularity: Star Carrier: Book Three (5 page)

“Hey, Ron, you Limey bastard. Got your message,
all
of it.” He thought for a moment. Chances were good that Giraurd was tapped in to
Illustrious
’s comm suite and reading the mail. He decided not to mention his previous message, which Giraurd may or may not have seen.

“The thing about a civil war,” Koenig went on, “is that it is
never
civil. We can’t afford to bloody each other, and I refuse to become the bone of contention that splits open the Terran Confederation. The enemy is
out there
, not within our own ranks.

“I appreciate your offer, but for now, I’d prefer that
Illustrious
,
Warspite
, and
Conqueror
remain with the Pan-European fleet. We are establishing a no-cross line one hundred thousand kilometers from the
America
, and we ask that you respect that.

“I hope that when this is over, you and I can sit down in a wardroom, your ship or mine, and have a cold one and a good laugh about this. For now, please stay clear.

“Koenig,
America
, out.”

In the tactical tank, the two fleets continued to draw closer together.

Chapter Three

10 April 2405

VFA-44

Kuiper Belt, HD 157950

98 light years from Earth

1715 hours, TFT

“T
hings are about to go supercritical,” Gray said over the squadron tac channel. “Reconfigure to sperm mode.”

The SG-92 Starhawk’s outer hull consisted of a matrix of conventional metals and ceramics blended with nano-molecules controlled by an electrical field projected by his ship’s AI. Launch configuration was a slender needle with a swollen central area housing the cockpit, designed for magnetic acceleration down the launch tube. Combat configuration looked a bit like a headless bird with down-canted wings, providing widely separated weapons and sensor platforms useful in a fight.

Sperm mode
was fighter-slang for high-velocity configuration—a blunt-nosed egg shape with a long, tapering tail. The old, conventional wisdom that said that spacecraft didn’t need to be streamlined in the vacuum of space broke down when the vessel could approach the speed of light. At those speeds every little bit helped.

Gray didn’t know what was going to happen in the next few moments, but he did know that their survival would depend upon their speed and their maneuverability.

The twelve Starhawks had been patrolling in combat mode, but now their wings began folding in toward their bodies, their black surfaces turning cold-molten and flowing like thick water. They were drifting along the no-cross line, an empty region of space defined by its distance, 100,000 kilometers, from the
America
.

The heavy cruiser
Valley Forge
was only five kilometers off his starboard side at the moment, three quarters of a kilometer long, a slender stem behind an outsized forward cap shaped like a flattened dome. To the naked eye, she appeared slightly blurred and indistinct. Shield technology involved bending space sharply above and around a ship’s hull, and that bending caused light to twist. When an incoming projectile or thermonuclear detonation struck the field projected across a warship’s outer hull, that spatial warping momentarily became much stronger, deflecting the threat. Gravitic shielding was costly in terms of energy, however, and was generally switched on only when combat was imminent. Koenig, clearly, was taking no chances; high-velocity kinetic rounds could come slamming out of the darkness with little to no warning at all, and all ships in the battlegroup were at the highest possible alert status.

According to the tactical display,
Jeanne d’Arc
and the eleven other capital ships of the Pan-European contingent were a scant half million kilometers away, drawing ever closer.

“Hey . . . Skipper?” It was Shay Ryan, on a private channel.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t like the idea of shooting at our own guys, y’know?”

“Neither do I, Lieutenant.”

“If we get shot up way out here, it’s going to make fighting the Sh’daar, or getting home, a hell of a lot harder.”

“The brass’ll figure something out,” he told her. “They know a lot more about what’s happening than we do.”

He wished he felt that confident, though. Koenig was a good officer and a brilliant strategist, Gray thought, but he shared with most fighter pilots a measure of distrust for the men and women who made the tough choices in the relative safety of the CIC. Sure, their lives were on the line if the capital ships came under attack, but they weren’t out here, crammed inside a gravfighter with nothing but speed, maneuverability, and skill between you and the enemy’s incoming rounds.

He found himself wondering just what the battlegroup could do if Giraurd tried to push things. A traditional shot across their bows? And what if they called the bluff and kept coming? He called up a battlespace view, imagery transmitted from one of the thousands of robotic drones now dispersed throughout this region of space, for a closer look at the enemy.

There she was . . . the
Jeanne d’Arc
, a light star carrier, perhaps three quarters of the mass of
America
. Like all Alcubierre Drive ships, she had the same general design—slender spine aft, large, flattened dome forward. The shield cap had been painted blue and white, a sharp contrast with the sandblasted gray-black of
America
’s prow. Her name and number appeared pristine, newly painted. According to the warbook, the
Jeanne d’Arc
didn’t have
America
’s twin launch tubes running through the center of the shield cap. Instead, she possessed a single high-energy particle cannon, which gave her a formidable long-range bombardment capability above and beyond the punch carried by her fighters.

A whale swimming with minnows, the
Jeanne d’Arc
was accompanied by a cloud of fighters, tiny blue motes moving in her shadow.

Gray didn’t immediately recognize the Pan-European fighters, and had to pull an ID up on his warbook: Franco-German KRG-17 Raschadler fighters. He felt himself relax slightly. The Raschadler was roughly equivalent to the USNA SG-55 War Eagle, a design about twenty years old. They didn’t have the delta-V of Starhawks, the endurance, or the warload capability, and they didn’t possess the Starhawk’s high-tech ability to change its configuration for launch, for high-velocity travel, or for combat. In head-to-head knife fights with the Pan-Europeans, the Dragonfire Starhawks would come out on top every time. The problem was that no one wanted such a confrontation in the first place, least of all, Gray was certain, Koenig.

How could CBG-18 stop the Pan-Europeans without destroying their ships or risking the destruction of their own?

He zoomed in closer, magnifying the image. The Raschadler fighters were obviously positioned to prevent CBG-18’s fighters from getting close to the carrier’s central spine—the weapons sponsons and rotating hab modules and drop bays tucked away just aft of the shield cap.

Just ahead of the
Jeanne d’Arc
was a tiny, blurred tumble of distortion—the projected drive singularity that was pulling the giant through space.

The ship’s gravitic shields would be down on the forward cap, to enable the field projectors to create the singularity, a tightly knotted distortion of space.

And Gray thought he saw a way. . . .

CIC

TC/USNA CVS
America

Kuiper Belt, HD 157950

98 light years from Earth

1732 hours, TFT

“Admiral?”

“Yes, CAG?”

“One of our people came up with something. Thought you should see it.”

Koenig read the downloaded text, transcribed from a pilot’s laser-com transmission. “Lieutenant Gray?” Koenig asked.

“Yes, sir. Acting CO of VFA-44.”

“I remember. Hero at the Defense of Earth . . . and again at Alphekka. He knows his shit.”

“Yes, sir. And his idea might work. Gives us something to go on, anyway.”

“We’ve got nothing better,” Koenig said. “Okay. Mr. Sinclair? Pass the word to all ships, tight beam and quantum encoded.
Jeanne d’Arc
will be the first target. We won’t hit the others unless this doesn’t work and they keep coming.”

“Aye, aye, Admiral.”

Koenig, an avid military historian, smiled. Lieutenant Gray, he thought, knew a secret first uncovered by an aviator back in the days of fabric-winged biplanes and oceangoing navies, a man named General Billy Mitchell.

“It appears,” Koenig said, “that our fighters are going to earn their pay today, David-and-Goliath style.”

“David and who, sir?” Sinclair sounded puzzled.

“Never mind.”

Since the passage of the White Covenant, in the late twenty-first century, the religious beliefs or training of others—or the lack of such—was no one’s business. Technically, it was only against the law to try to convert someone else, but in practice it was considered bad manners even to make a casual religious comment, or to make a reference to religious mythology.

“Our boys and girls out there are going to need something more than a sling,” Wizewski said quietly. The CAG, Koenig recalled,
was
religious, a member of some small and semi-fundamentalist Christian sect. There were so many nowadays it was impossible to keep track.

“Amen to that, CAG,” Koenig said quietly, so no one else would hear. “Amen to that. . . .”

CIC

TC/PE CVS
Jeanne d’Arc

Kuiper Belt, HD 157950

98 light years from Earth

1739 hours, TFT

Grand Admiral Francois Giraurd studied the pattern of colored icons unfolding in the tactical display tank. Koenig would
have
to capitulate. He had no other sane option.

“Sir,” his tactical officer said. “We cross their line in twelve minutes.”

“Very well.”

“Sir . . . do you intend to attack?”

“It won’t come to that, Lieutenant. We will cross their line, they will scatter and refuse to confront us, and we will put our boarding party across. And then . . .”

“Sir?”

“And then we go home.”

They were ninety-eight light years from Earth, farther than any human had ever before voyaged. The emptiness, the darkness scattered with myriad unknown suns and civilizations, filled him with foreboding and a brooding sense of agitation, even fear. Humans didn’t
belong
out here, not in a galaxy already staked out and claimed by millions of other technic cultures.

He magnified the image in the tank. “What ship is that?”

“The
Valley Forge
,” the tactical officer told him. “One hundred fifty thousand tons.”

“Target to disable her,” Giraurd said. “Power systems and weapons. We will push past her, then, and engage the
America
.”

“The cruiser is accompanied by a number of fighters.”

“Those are of no consequence. If they get too close, destroy them.”

“Our orders, sir, are to effect Koenig’s surrender
without
causing damage to their ships, or causing casualties.”

“We will damage them as little as possible, cause as few casualties as possible. But I see no other way of reaching the
America
, do you?”

“No, Grand Admiral.”

“Direct our fighter escort to move out ahead of us,” Giraurd said. “They will be our wedge to sweep the enemy aside. Order them to fire only if they are fired upon.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And accelerate to combat speed.”

“Yes, Grand Admiral.”

Giraurd smiled. They would end this standoff soon enough. Koenig was a fool if he thought he could make military policy for the Confederation. The
Jeanne d’Arc
would push through Koenig’s outer screen, close with
America
, and put boarding parties across to capture Koenig and take command of his fleet.

And then they could all go home.

VFA-44

Kuiper Belt, HD 157950

98 light years from Earth

1748 hours, TFT

“Here they come!” Gray called. “Their fighters are deploying ahead of the carrier, and they’re accelerating!”

“Hold position, Dragonfires,” Wizewski’s voice said in his head. “We’re doing it by the book.”

“Holding, aye, sir. . . .”

By the book
meant a warning shot, a formal nicety in which modern naval vessels rarely engaged. Generally, the idea was to launch an attack, all-out, complete and devastating, zorching in before the enemy was even aware that your forces were in the area, with missiles and kinetic kill impactors coming in just behind the light announcing their arrival.

He switched to the tactical channel. “All ships! Engage squadron taclink.”

Gray and the other pilots each focused their thoughts, connecting with their fighters’ artificial intelligences. The twelve fighter craft were interconnected now by laser-optic feeds linking their onboard computers into a single electronic organism.

The
Valley Forge
was pivoting slightly now, bringing her main battery, a spinal-mount CPG, to bear. A moment later, she fired—a burst of tightly focused high-energy-charged particles invisible to the unaided eye but showing clearly on Gray’s instruments and on his visual display. The beam burned past the shield cap of the
Jeanne d’Arc
, missing the carrier by less than a hundred meters.