On Silver Wings (15 page)

Against any conventional weapons system, Gates figured that a Cheyenne could take anything an enemy might shell out and just grin wide as it kept on coming. The numbers even indicated that the armor would shrug off a nuclear strike with little damage to the internal systems or crew, through her armor would be totaled of course.

Now
, thought Gates,
if only they were going out after an enemy that used conventional weapons.

*****

USV Socrates

On Station, Earth Orbit

Alexi Petronov firmly gripped a hand hold as he swung across the last airlock connection and into his ship. His boots landed against the deck, and he held himself in place for a moment as he looked around. The Soc looked the same, there was no glaring signs of the military changes they’d wrought on his poor ship, in fact most of the crew seemed to be intact and moving about their business pretty much as usual.

There was a ton of cargo visible in the bay from where he was, far more than they would normally have crammed in for the majority of missions he’d been sent on, but they’d weighed off with full bays more than once too. Space on a starship wasn’t exactly at a premium, the space only vessels were built big, and generally the outer colonies were small and mostly self-sufficient, so they didn’t import bulk items as a rule.

Colonies like Hayden, for example, generally imported information chips because the bandwidth on the Casimir Transmitters was limited. Scientific, commercial, and industrial instruments, and luxury items were also on the list. They grew their own food, produced their own raw materials, and were often net exporters of many bulk items. There were generally reasons why a colony site was selected, of course.

Ships like the Socrates occasionally brought in emergency supplies, much like this mission, or helped a new colony establish, but both of those instances were rare. In fact, in the entire line history of the USV Socrates, she had been loaded this heavy only once before. Alexi had looked it up. That was in response to a massive critical failure of both meat and vegetable crops at the Ares Teraforming Project over thirty years previously. A local contamination had infiltrated the main Ares Bio-Tower facility and managed to ride the tether up to the orbital counterweight before it was noticed. The complex chemical toxin had destroyed growth mediums for both the protein domes and aeroponic facilities before anyone realized they had a problem.

This mission was probably a bit more nerve racking, Alexi had to say, though. He steeled himself with a deep breath and kicked off the ground, gliding deeper into the research vessel turned uncertain warship.

“Captain!”

Alexi twisted in midflight, snagging an overhead hand grip and arresting his motion smoothly as he spotted Quartermaster Koonzin swinging in his direction. The squat looking woman was proportioned like a wall, but had shipped with him on every mission he’d taken in the last five years, and Alexi was both disappointed and relieved to see her.

“Shiri,” he nodded as she swung to a stop, “I’d hoped you and the rest would turn this one down.”

She snorted, shaking her head, “Not likely Captain. We’ve been let in on the secret, once we’d signed a whole crapload of papers saying we wouldn’t even THINK about what they were about to tell us. We’re all back, 'cept for Mackay and a few of the short timers.”

Alexi winced, “Jane’s not on board?”

Jane Mackay had served as his first officer for the past three years, and the woman was a treasure. Alexi again felt the mixed feelings of relief and disappointment, this time the other way around, and he chided himself for the stupidity of the emotions.

“They gave her the Hood.”

Alexi froze, his stomach lurching as he recognized the name.

“That...” he licked his lips, “That’s one of the Longbow class.”

“Yes Sir,” Shiri Koonzin replied, her dark face as serious as her Captain’s. “The British Admiralty called her up the day after you left for Moscow, Sir.”

It made sense, he supposed. Jane was a British reservist, and had to have some of the longest deep space times of any British military personnel. She was also damned good at what she did, so he’d always known that he wouldn’t have her forever. Even in the Solari Organization, where the budgets were so slim they occasionally vanished into the air recyclers, a woman like Jane Mackay wasn’t going to stay second fiddle on a survey ship for long. Advancement in the fleet had been slow over the past few years, but it was apparent that the times were changing.

He forced himself to nod, accepting the information that a woman he considered a close personal friend was now in command of a ship that would most likely be right on the front lines.

“Right,” he said firmly, “I’ll have to send her a congratulations, thank you Koonzin.”

Shiri nodded, her eyes understanding as he pushed off the deck and glided toward a nearby lift. “Captain?”

He turned back in mid-flight, eyes questioning.

“Relieved to have you back on board, sir.”

Alexi Petronov nodded gratefully, hand reaching out automatically to hook a hand grip as he reached the far wall. He swung into the lift smoothly, slapping the manual close even as he accessed his implants and connected to the ship’s computer system. A few moments later, he was accelerating along the inner shaft, climbing the ship’s spine to the forward command deck as he began referencing the changes they’d made to his ship.

The USV Socrates, Discoverer Class survey vessel, was about as far from a warship as anything jump worthy could be. Oh, it was about as well armored as a Los Angeles class cruiser, and unlike sea faring merchant ships, the Plato Class ships were laid out inside with much the same paranoia as military ships. Explosive decompression didn’t much care if it was caused by a missile or a rock after all. The hull was actually identical to an older military design, the first jump capable Armstrong Class in fact.

The Soc’s maneuvering capabilities wasn’t up to military specs, however. Her VASIMR drive held only a quarter the thrust of a military vessel because the bone crushing, death dealing, thrust that a Los Angeles Class vessel was capable wasn’t something that the civilian designers of the Soc had even considered that a crew might want to have on tap. Likewise, while her armor and layout was similar to military specs, her damage control capabilities were not. Fast and efficient though it was, Alexi knew damned well that even at their peak his crew didn’t have the tools to match even an older military ship on that level.

Weapons wise, well until a few weeks earlier there were none. None to speak of anyway.

They had Laser and Maser nodes, used mostly for burning out chunks of rock and comet fragments for analysis. They had two torpedo launchers made to military specifications, but those were used to launch probes mounted on torpedo thrust modules. Even with military grade torpedoes, the Soc wasn’t a threat to anything but another unarmed survey ship.

Things had changed in some small ways since then, however. The Yard had tacked on some box launchers, loaded with fifty birds apiece nose to tail in a head to tail launch configuration. That basically gave the Socrates a throw weight equivalent to a pair of fully armed Los Angeles destroyers. Not bad, he supposed, though from the data he’d seen, it wouldn’t be enough and there was no simple way to reload the launchers short of a yard slip.

The Soc’s mission profile wasn’t fighting, however. For that, at least, Alexis was glad. He swung off the lift as it came to a halt on the command deck, and drifted over to the central chair as the skeleton crew nodded their greetings. Most of them were faces he knew, but there was a man at a new station that had apparently grown out of the side of the bridge.

Weapons control, he filled in mentally as he pulled himself into the command station and fastened his belts.

“Captain.”

Another new face, Alexis noted as he looked up.

The blond man drifted in slowly, reorienting himself to match Alexis’ up/down position as he approached. He wore a USF uniform, with an American patch on his shoulder and a set of bars on his chest that identified him as military. Not reservist either, current serving military, Alexis noted as he tried to pin down the rank.

“I’m Commander Ashley,” the man said, extending his hand as he finished his ‘docking maneuver’ and came to a stop by the command station.

Alexis took his hand and shook it firmly, “Petronov.”

Ashley nodded, smiling, “Yes I know.”

Of course he knew, Alexis thought. He was obviously the replacement for Mackay, and a military liaison as well.

“I’ve been assigned as your new Executive Officer,” Ashley went on, confirming Alexi’s thoughts. “I’ve been trying to fill in for Captain Mackay since her promotion.”

Alexi nodded, “Yes... I can see that. How are things?”

“Coming together, Sir,” Ashley said instantly, “The new systems are being wired through the mains now, and we should be mission ready within the week.”

Alexi nodded, “That’s... excellent, Commander. Thank you.”

Ashley nodded then waited for a long moment before squirming a little as he floated in place before finally nodding again, “Yes well, I’d best get back to work.”

Alexi nodded, “Of course, Commander. Ah... before you go...”

Ashley looked back from where he was twisting away, “Yes Captain?”

“I’ll be having dinner this evening, about seven... senior officers would be welcome.”

The Commander blinked, and then smiled, “Yes Sir. I’d be delighted.”

“I’ll see you then, Commander.” Alexi said before turning his eyes back to the large interface screens in front of him.

Commander Ashley nodded and kicked off, floating away quickly.

*****

Maritime Warfare School, HMS Collingwood

United Kingdom

Newly minted Captain Jane Mackay found herself wondering if she shouldn’t have stayed on the Socrates when offered the early promotion. The idea of commanding the HMS Hood was an incredible honor to be sure, but since she’d received her command she’d spent every waking moment seated behind an antiquated plastic desk, staring at slide shows of theoretical space combat strategies that had been developed at various allied think tanks since the loss of Hayden’s World become known.

Material specs, technical details, performance charts… the data on the new Longbow class of ships alone were going to make her brain bleed out through her ears at the rate they were being crammed in. The Space War Tactics classes were a relief compared to this, but they were entirely theoretical at this point, and as the developers had pointed out were based on an incomplete understanding of the enemy technology and tactics.

The one thing they were certain of, however, was that the enemy’s apparent control over gravity made them incredibly lethal within their active engagement ranges. Best guess there came from the data the Majesty had brought back, which seemed to indicate that their engagement envelop was within a three hundred thousand kilometers.

It sounded like a lot, in fact it was a lot. Just a hair over two astronomical units, but space was a big place. Even with a massive envelop like that, there were obvious tactical issues with deploying weapons like the enemy’s gravity implosion device.

Which is exactly where the assumptions start to come into play.

First, the think tanks assumed that the weapon was a lightspeed effect. Unlike human missiles, the enemy’s weapon system was presumed to operate at the speed of light. On the surface this was a huge advantage, but it was also an energy based system and therefore unguided. That limited its range drastically, particularly if the target was maneuvering. You had to aim where they would
be
, not where they were.

Missiles were slower, but they could track and be guided.

The eggheads were supposedly working up some countermeasures for the weapon itself, but the current plots were all about evading the gravity weapon as long as possible while engaging with missiles.

Of course, that was easier said than done when you took the enemy acceleration into consideration. Anything that could move as fast as those things did belonged in a science fiction movie, not the real universe.

Which brought her to the core tenant of the new Space War Tactics ‘bible’.

The Centre Cannot Hold.

It was a line out of a poem by William Butler Yeats, a rather dreary piece of prose in her opinion, but that had little relevance to the point the strategists were making.

A key tactic of warfare, historically, had always been surrounding your opponent with overwhelming force. In space war tactics this became far more powerful a tactic as you could practice an ‘englobement’ maneuver, which could force the defending ship or taskforce to attempt to fight back while their computers were trying to analyze exponentially greater target area than your own.

In simulations, even the best battle computers in the Solari fleet were simply unable to keep up with the needs of that sort of situation. It was, therefore, the first rule of space war. The center cannot hold, so do NOT let the enemy englobe you.

Against a foe like those faced in the Hayden system, that was easier said than done, of course. They were capable of maneuvering at acceleration rates that made even bleeding edge Earth technology look like sailing ships becalmed in the doldrums. The only hope they had of countering that was with precision maneuvering and exceptional inter-ship communications.

Mackey again found herself flipping back to the think tanks’ answer to that problem, the first shipboard Casimir FTL Comms. The specs looked good, but she wanted to get her hands on the hardware and put it through some real space trials.

Hayden

Jerry Reed watched Sarge as she pushed through the jungle, the light from the moons occasionally filtering in to cast a sheen off her skin as they moved. She looked bad, and he was starting to worry about it. He knew that she had been on her feet for at least a day and a half, more likely a full forty eight hours or more. In addition to that, she’d been attacked and apparently blown up in the process. Sorilla Aida was a tough woman, that was damned certain in his mind, but Jerry really wondered what the limits were on that toughness.