The Unscheduled Mission (27 page)

“Should have done this yesterday,” Park told the other two captains a moment later.

“You were asleep on your feet, sir,” Tina told him.

“I think we have a lot of good people here,” Paul added. “That was a good idea about picking up sides. Let’s just do it.”

“I was only kidding,” Park replied. “And who would be the fat kid nobody wants? Still we haven’t got the time to really quibble over this. I printed out a list of personnel, sorted by their specialties before I left the house. Let’s see how we do instead of lining everyone up and pointing.”

The selection process turned out to be easy and fast and soon all three crews were on their respective ships and running down the pre-launch check lists while Park continued to confer with Tina, Paul, Arn and Taodore. “Do you have a plan?” Arn asked Park.

“I plan to win,” Park retorted. “Anything beyond that and the details are a little sketchy.”

“I have an idea,” Tina told them. She picked up one of the Van Winkle computer pads and diddled with the keys for a moment. Behind her a large screen lit up and they all turned to face it. “Here’s the solar system where everything is at the moment. Here’s Earth and Luna,” she used a laser pointer to assist her as she indicated a blue dot. Out here is the approaching battle group. I think we could meet them in Jovian orbit, over here, but that presupposes they want to meet us. I don’t think they do, so we need to go and do what we can to match course with them and then slug it out on the fly. Normally I’d say we go out to Jupiter, use the planet and a gravity sling and coming zipping up from behind then, but Jupiter is on the wrong side of the sky and Saturn is too far out. Luckilly Mars is close to the right place but it won’t give us the boost Jupiter might have.

“I’ve been doing the math and we’ll need to swing a bit out of the planetary plane to catch them at the right angle too,” she went on, “and then put the pedal to the floor, so to speak. Then we’ll be too fast and ahead of them, but that’s good because as we decelerate we’ll be facing them.
 
I’m even hoping we can make them pass us and then swing around and get anyone we missed on the first volley while they try to reposition themselves.”

Park looked at Tina’s program, noted she had thrown in some controls by which to try out variations. “It looks good,” he commended her. “Very good. Tell you what. Upload this to our ships’ computers and we’ll play with it over the next few days.”

“
Defense
will need a copy too,” Paul told them.

“We can beam it to her when we rendezvous,” Park decided. “Speaking of which, we’d better join our crews or they’ll take off without us.”

The three ships went into a deep eliptical orbit around the Earth and as they reached apogee, rendezvoused with
Defense.
Then all four ships slung themselves back down and with a boost at perigee from their drives, flung themselves Marsward.

The four captains spent the trip running simulations but eventually decided that Tina’s original idea was so close to their best strategy that it only needed a little fine-tuning. But they continued to tweak the scenario, playing with relative ship positions. Finally, Park decided on the details. “But you’re leaving so much undecided,” Tina protested.

“Who was it who said that no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy?” Park asked.

“Just about any general or admiral, I’ll bet,” Paul replied.

“Precisely,” Park agreed. “We are going over this so many times, we’re in danger of over-thinking it. Keep the plans lose, because once we get within shooting range anything can happen.”

“We’ve blown them away with ease everytime so far,” Paul commented.

“There are stories of their weapons,” Machal Ginaes, the captain of
Defense
told them. “Things we have not yet seen. Three dimensional gravity cannons that push, squeeze and twist all at once, for example, and a field effect that cancels both weak and strong nuclear interactions.”

“Are you saying they have a disintegrator ray?” Park asked.

“The description is inaccurate to say the least,” Machal replied, “but yes, I suppose you might call it that.

“Then why haven’t they used them on us before,” Park asked. “Why have they mostly stuck with plasma casters and x-ray phasers?”

“Those might be cheaper weapons,” Machal suggested, “all they felt need to keep us in line.”

“Cheaper, perhaps,” Park nodded, “so they are mounted on their smaller ships. Also the smaller ships probably can’t handle the grav cannons. Theirs pack more of a punch than ours do. I’m not sure I believe in a grav cannon that can twist though or any sort of disintegration ray. But I’ll see if Ronnie thinks they’re even possible. It’s not the sort of thing I care to be wrong about. What they do have is a lot more ships than we do and I want our gunners coordinated for the first round of fire. After that shoot at any available target. It’s possible we’ll have another relatively easy and fast victory. Our stasis plating should fend off their worst shots.”

Iris was working similarly with the gunners of all ships and Marisea took it on herself to work out a code with the other comm. officers in an attempt to speedup intership communications.

The next week passed slowly as they approached Mars and Park began to worry. “We still can’t see the Alliance ships,” he reported back to Arn.

The lightspeed gap between them was too long for a comfortable conversation now so when Arn replied, “Don’t worry. They haven’t changed course.” He merely radioed back his acknowledgement.

Finally Mars grew from a bright orange dot to a disk and began to swell in their screens and ports until it was all they could see along one side of the ships. Below them the Martian landscape raced by and they observed some faint ionization effects as they scraped over the thin upper atmosphere.”

“Too bad we can’t get even lower without burning up,” Park grumbled during the maneuver.

“That would throw Tina’s calculations off,” Iris reminded him, from her console.

“There is that,” Park admitted, “She has us correcting our course almost continuously for the next 12 hours just to put us going in the same direction as the Alliance ships.”

“At least we’ll be coming up on them from behind,” Iris remarked. “If you ask me the tricky part will be turning to face them as we pass. You’ll only have a second, you know.”

“Too fast for a mere mortal to do, actually,” Park told her. “The move is programmed in. I just have to initiate it.”

“I’m picking up the enemy fleet, Skipper,” Marisea reported. “They’re hailing us.”

“Put them on,” Park replied. “Maybe they’d like to surrender first for a change.”

“Attention Earth Fleet,” a deep bubbly voice filled the bridge. “This is Rear Admiral Soorest Fillonstot. You are in interplanetary space illegally. Return to Earth immediately or face destruction.” In the screen they could see a large and rotund suprahuman in a deep blue uniform. His skin was a light brown and his hair black. He looked as though he should normally have been ten feet tall, but that some god had reached out and squashed him into the lower stouter form.

“Admiral Fillonstot,” Park replied. “This is Commodore McArrgh. This is Terran space and you are the ones who have entered it illegally.You are hereby ordered to leave forthwith.”

“I’ve heard of you, McArrgh,” the rear admiral replied, “and it will be my pleasure to serve justice to you and all your pirates. Stand down your drives and we will match courses with you. Failure to do so will result in the destruction of all Earthly cities.”

“They’re turning to match course with us,” the navigator, Garron Tinns, reported.

“Yes we are,” Fillonstot chuckled. “This is your only chance to surrender, Pirates.”

“Chance denied, Admiral,” Park told him. “This is our system and you haven’t got the fire power.”

“Are you certain, Pirate?” the Alliance Admiral asked smugly. “Four ships really don’t have a prayer against a battle group.”

“And two ships didn’t have a ghost of a chance against eight,” Park growled. “Come on if you think you’re man enough!”

Fillonstot’s face grew dark and he scowled even more deeply than he had before. “Think about it, Pirate. By your own words you condemn all of Earth.”

Next to Park one of the Atackack cadets had been acting as co-pilot. He click-clacked something loudly in response. Park had still not gotton the hang of understanding Atackack speech, but he did recognize one word. “Yeah, what he said,” Park grinned tilting his head toward the cadet. “You’re a filthy, ignorant savage. Hold on a bit and we’ll see about your education. McArrgh, out!”

“Sure hope I can back up those words of yours, Park,” Iris remarked dryly.

“I didn’t appreciate much his trying to hold Earth hostage to our behavior,” Park explained. Tragackack is right. He is a savage.”

“Actually,” Marisea corrected him, “the word he used was Kogack.”

Tragackack was wearing a torc and when he spoke this time it translated, “The captain understood my intention. That man is a savage no matter what sort of civilization he must come from. Only a savage could be so wasteful as to destroy a million souls over the insults of one.”

“More than a million, I should think,” Park replied.

“Until I came to Van Winkle Town,” Tragackack replied, “I could not even count that high. My language has no word for million. In fact the word you generally translate as thousands really just means ‘Many.’”

“Not unusual in tribal cultures as I recall,” Park remarked. “Well, Human tribal cultures, but I guess it applies to Atackack too.”

“Park,” Tina called from her ship. “They’re changing course to match us.”

“Sure, let them do the work,” Park told her, “although maybe we should accelerate just a bit at the last moment. No need to let them get the first shots this time.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Tina acknowledged.

The next twelve hours took much of the edge off Park’s anger and that worried him. By rights all that bluster should have been immediately followed by all ships opening fire. That was the way it had happened in his previous battles, but this time they had to wait before they were even close to within range and then it happened all too quickly.

“Coming up on enemy fleet,” Park broadcast to his own ships. “Open fire!” And then all hell broke loose.

Park had his eyes on the pilot’s console and screens, but he heard Iris’ capable fingers press down a button. At the same time the view in his screen changed radically. Then, just as rapidly, it changed again and again. The stars merely flickered on and off. Once he saw the bright red of Mars for just an instant, and then the Sun.

What the hell is happening?
he asked himself. Where were the enemy ships? Then, mercifully the ever-changing view stopped and he looked around.

“What happened?” Marisea asked.

“Where’s the Alliance fleet?” Park shot back. “Damn! They figured out the stasis problem. Any casualties on our ships?”

“Alliance ships just out of range,” Marisea reported and added the three dimensional coordinates relative to
Turnabout.
“No causalties reported.”

Park swung the ship around and saw Fillonstot’s fleet coming about for another pass at them. “They’re turning in formation,” he noted. “That seems rather wasteful.”

“That carrier must be coordinating the maneuver,” Iris speculated.

“Not necessarily,” Park replied. “I’ve seen pilots do things like that in airshows.”

“So have I,” Machal nodded, “but it’s easier to do in atmosphere and at jet speeds than it is in space. It takes a lot of training and practice and it is far too dangerous to try in a battle. Iris is right, someone is coordinating that and it’s likely the Carrier’s computer is feeding instructions to the smaller ships.”

“All ships fire on the carrier,” Park decided.

“But how did we miss last time?” Marisea asked.

“I barely got to fire a shot off,” Iris explained. “They hit us first and we went into stasis.”

“How long were we under?” Park asked. “No, never mind. They must have kept us under bombardment for several minutes as they swept past us, but all we saw were tiny fractions of a second.”

“Our missiles have a longer effective range than their grav cannons and phasers,” Iris reported, “but I think the few I fired off last round got picked off in the barrage.”

“I thought their weapons systems weren’t accurate enough to target a missile except by luck,” Park commented.

“The way they must have been hitting us,” Iris replied, “the missiles just happened to get hit, but they weren’t being aimed at, I don’t think. Thirty seconds until target is in range,” she broadcast to all gunners. “Target the carrier,” she relayed Park’s order.

But the carrier held back and allowed the smaller ships to approach first. Two of them got shot down by phaser fire, but the rest blanketed the terran fleet with plasmacasters and x-ray phasers and the dizzying view on the screen began all over again. The discontinuous view was bothering Park’s eyes and he realized that his original assessment of the stasis plating was correct. Once an enemy realized what it was up against a steady barrage of fire would slowly eat through a protected ship’s defenses one molecule at a time.

Had the Galactics known that on their first approach, or had they merely gotten lucky and stumbled across that fact. Park, desparately trying to bring the ship under control but having no luck, decided the Alliance had been lucky that way. They might not even know exactly what was keeping them from destroying the Terran ships, but they certainly knew an effective strategy when they saw it. The barrage lasted seeming minutes, that Park knew must be hours in real time. How much longer would it be?”

“Heat seakers!” he heard Iris shout.

“What?” he asked in reply, but she had already slamed her hands down on the console’s buttons and the stasis effect slowed considerably.

“Carrier’s been hit,” Iris reported, but they were still being bombarded and each time they came out of stasis the view changed. And then suddenly it stopped.”

“Attention all Alliance ships!” a familiar voice could be heard. “Cease fire by order of the Confederation Diet! This is Lord Rebbert II of Dennsee and you are to cease all hostilities immediately.”