Fleet Action (30 page)

He sat back, hands clasped, pondering, wishing he could somehow penetrate the fog of war. The Kilrathi had shut down nearly all military channels and kept silence ever since the burst signal from Tarawa got through, except for the nonstop bombardment of propaganda. The mere fact that signal traffic was nonexistent showed just how well planned the operation was. In the ordinary sphere of war, it was impossible to maintain operations for long without a steady flow of information.

Masterful.

I've got to buy a little time till they show their hand, but at the same time I need to wiggle a little bait, bringing the main assault on myself.

It was almost a foregone conclusion that Thrakhath was in charge of the main fleet. He was always bullheaded, and when he believed himself to have the upper edge, arrogant. Thrakhath never really gave a damn about taking territory; he wanted battle, to close with his enemy and destroy him.

He'll come straight in and dare me to stop him. He was behind the carriers.

I need to show confidence, aggression, he thought, not let them think we're already whipped.

Geoff punched in to his bridge officer.

"Pass the word to the fleet. We jump forward to the Warsaw system and will move at full speed to meet the carriers head on. Get Admirals Ching and Bjornsson on laser."

He turned the channel off and within seconds felt the vibration run through the ship as the helm officer called for full engine thrust.

Ching's image materialized on a flat screen, the bridge of his carrier, Moskva, in the background, followed seconds later by Bjornsson, commander of Verdun.

"We're going up to bloody nose them a bit and get their attention," Geoff said. "It'll be three on four, and with luck we'll buy enough time for our other two ships to get into position."

"Tough move, Geoff," Ching said. "They could be flanking in behind the cruisers."

"They're diversions. Thrakhath will come straight on in, looking for a fight."

"I hope you're right, Tolwyn. If not, they won't be too happy back on Earth if those super carriers get there and we're out chasing shadows.

Tolwyn laughed grimly.

"If they do, we won't hear the complaining for long."

"It's a risky move, Geoff," Bjornsson said, her features grim. "If we lose a carrier that'll leave just four to face off against the big ones."

"If we don't slow them, there'll only be four anyhow in front of Sirius when they arrive. It's a risk I'm willing to take though.

"Glad you're running this one, Geoff. This isn't just a battle, its the whole shooting match."

"Yeah, thanks. If there's ever another time, remind me to retire first."

The two admirals laughed softly and signed off.

Again the thought crept in. The old rhetoric of the battlefield, how the fate of civilization depended on what happened next. It had been used by his ancestors when they had stood at Agincourt, Waterloo, the Somme and against Hitler and Zhing. In most cases it was just rhetoric; this time it was for real. He realized that if he allowed himself to dwell on the outcomes it'd cripple him, and he pushed the fear aside. There would be time enough for that later.

Another update flashed on the holo, a blinking purple light, showing that action had started in the Landreich. It had taken hours for the signal to travel, even at burst speed. Three carriers of the Kilrathi fleet now confirmed against what a colonial militia could put up. Their chances were next to nothing, he thought, just about the same as ours.

"Ten seconds to jump and counting at nine, eight . . ."

Jason punched in to the deck flight officer.

"All fighters prepare for launch!"

"Two, one, jump initiated."

The phase shift of the jump field kicked in, space in the forward and aft screens disappearing in a wavy haze. Jason swallowed hard, the momentary nausea of jump taking hold, as Tarawa and everything inside of it winked out of existence at jump point 324C and then rematerialized seconds later half a dozen light years away, back into position in the Hell Hole system.

The screen shifted, star fields returning to view.

"All ahead full, move it!" Jason shouted and Tarawa surged forward. Not five seconds later Gallipoli appeared behind him in nearly the exact same space he had just been occupying, followed seconds later by two more escort carriers.

The maneuver was insane. Standard fleet procedure was to have at least one minute intervals between jumps. The actual point of rematerialization was problematic, never occurring at precisely the same spot, and if a ship in transit should come out of jump in the same space occupied by another vessel no one in the two ships involved would ever even realize that their existence had suddenly winked out in a white hot explosion.

"Launch all fighters, launch all fighters!"

A hazy shimmer appeared in the forward screen.

"Helm hard to port, up ninety degrees!"

Tarawa shifted, turning, as a destroyer of the Landreich fleet materialized out of jump less than four hundred meters ahead.

Jason was nearly knocked from his command chair and at the same instant a bank of red lights started to flash at the damage control desk.

"Ship hulled starboard side, sections twenty-two through twenty-four Decompression hull breach!"

Internal bulkheads had already been sealed for action stations. Jason looked over at the damage display board. Three sectors of the outer hull were gone, crew quarters. He could only hope no one was still in there. He waited, watching to see if the breach would rip down the length of the hull or burst into the heart of the ship. It held.

"What ship was that?"

"Destroyer Blitzkreig, Kruger's flagship, sir."

"Damage?"

"Part of her port rear stabilizer gone. Hull integrity holding."

"Then the hell with her, get the rest of those fighters out!"

He turned back to tactical display and drew in his breath.

Kruger was either a genius or a madman, the next five minutes would tell — so far the plan had worked.

Directly ahead, at less than a thousand kilometers, were the three Kilrathi carriers, moving in line abreast formation. Kruger had met them ten hours earlier as they jumped into the Hell Hole system, fought a brief skirmish, trading a corvette and two fighters for two destroyers and nearly twenty fighters of the Cats and then fled, the enemy in hot pursuit.

They had jumped out of the Hell Hole System, come to a dead stop, and then turned, jumping straight back into the system they had just fled.

The Kilrathi, assuming they were chasing a beaten and far weaker foe, had recovered nearly all their fighters in preparation for jump in pursuit. Forward of the carriers by three hundred clicks was the outer screen of frigates, which would, according to standard doctrine, jump through first to secure the next point in preparation for the carriers to follow.

Range to the forward ships would close in under a minute.

Doomsday gave the thumbs up to the deck launch officer. She saluted, crouched down low, pointing forward, and the senior deck officer in the launch control room hit the catapult button.

In under two seconds Doomsday was clear of Tarawa, full afterburners roaring, even as Tarawa turned to avoid colliding with Kruger's flag ship. Doomsday banked hard over, skimming past the destroyer with less than a dozen meters to spare, and took a deep breath as he shot clear.

His heavily modified Sabre, with side-by-side pilot and co-pilot seats crammed in, and a single heavy Mark IV torpedo slung underneath shook with the 110% power surge. Grinning, he looked over at Paladin who was flying the right hand seat as weapons officer.

"Here we go again, laddie," Paladin said calmly, though Doomsday could tell that the old pilot was miffed that there weren't enough fighters in the fleet for him to get one of his own.

"Weapons check?"

"Torpedo armed and ready, now give me a target."

Doomsday spared a quick look down at his tactical screen. The forward string of frigates were less than a minute away, the first of them already slowing, turning to move in across the carriers. Less than thirty seconds behind them the three carriers were starting to come about

"All hells about to break loose," Paladin chuckled. "These two fleets are about to go straight through each other.

"There's the rest of the strike," Doomsday announced, pointing nearly straight up, and he edged his stick back, climbing a thousand meters to tuck himself in under a Broadsword's belly, giving himself a little more protection from the heavy strike craft's gunners.

"We're going for the middle carrier," Doomsday said quietly.

"We'll go for his port launch deck, you take the starboard one, lad," the Landreich pilot of the Broadsword above them replied and Doomsday clicked his mike twice as an affirmative.

"Hang on, crossing through the frigates!"

A crisscrossing of neutron bursts, laserflashes, and mass driver rounds snaked out from the Kilrathi picket line. Doomsday held steady on his course, working for an early fix and lock on the center carrier, which was now full broadside and starting to come around astern.

"Launch bay hits are out," Paladin announced. "Go for main engines."

A Landreich fighter, moving ahead of the two, winked into a fireball and disappeared. They shot through the wreckage, Doomsday wincing when a bloody smear of what had once been the pilot smashed into his forward canopy and spun away into the darkness. The blood seemed to be a dark omen and he started to breathe hard, fighting down the sense of premonition and Paladin looked over at him.

"He was already dead, laddie, already dead."

Doomsday gulped hard and shook his head. He pulled open his helmet visor. wiped the sweat from his face. He reached into a breast pocket and pulled out a short cigar and clamped down hard on it, chewing the end.

Ian had given the cigar to him long ago. He had never smoked it, but somehow, for this mission he felt it was a talisman and he brought it along.

They shot under the belly of a frigate, the two attack craft shuddering as they skimmed through the high energy field of the ship's fuel and maneuvering scoops.

"I have target lock," Paladin announced calmly, "and counting at thirty seconds, twenty nine."

Doomsday hated torpedo launches more than anything else. It required the fighter to stay on a straight and steady course for thirty seconds until the torpedoes' guidance and arming systems cut through the high energy shielding of the target, decoded the shield phasing, and then countered the phasing so that it could penetrate for the kill.

The carriers were now clearly visible in space, three silvery masses less than fifty clicks ahead, the ships completing their turns, engines winking white hot. Three Landreich fighters darted past Doomsday, their afterburners flaring, diving straight in, loosing a string of infrared guided missiles. The shots would not penetrate but their explosions on the carriers aft shields would momentarily blind the point defense systems.

"First fighters coming out," Doomsday announced, able to clearly see the pinpoints of light leaping out from the Kilrathi carriers.

"The furballs are a bit late today. Caught them with their pants down this time, that is if the buggers are wearing pants."

The pin points of light disappeared, and Doomsday knew that meant they had turned and were coming straight back towards him.

He caught the first hum of an IFF locking on. and then three more. Taking over defensive systems control from Paladin, he launched one of the new noise makers, hoping it would distract the missiles. The Kilrathi carrier seemed to fill all of space in front of him and he felt that if he closed any further, he'd run straight into it. The sweat was soaking his back and he found himself silently praying.

A modified Ferret, stitched onto what looked like old twin Sabre A engines, slammed past, diving straight into the emerging fighters. Several flashes of light appeared, fighters being killed, though Doomsday could not tell who had bought it

"Ten seconds, nine. eight. Signal lock on, phase counter lock on, warhead armed, three, two, one . . . it's away!"

Doomsday felt his ship lurch as the ten meter long torpedo dropped from the underbelly pylon, its engine flaring to life. He looked up and saw a Landreich craft above him dropping his spread of three Mark III Torpedoes as well. Breaking his ship hard to starboard Doomsday nosed straight down and then spun over, keeping his belly turned towards the carrier so that the new laser torpedo guide could maintain lock. Paladin stayed hunched over the weapons screen, ready to take over manual guidance of the torpedo if Kilrathi jamming should throw it off course.

Doomsday spared a quick glance at his tactical as half a dozen red blips closed in.

"She's closing, closing," Paladin chanted softly, punching in a guidance command as the torpedo lost lock for a second, his guidance laser firmly tracking on the torpedoes tail. The fact that Kruger had half a dozen of the new ship-to-torpedo laser guiding systems in his munitions inventory had surprised Doomsday, who figured it was best simply not to ask how they got into Landreich hands.

"Closing, closing . . . impact, laddie, we got them!"

Doomsday punched in an aft visual and saw an expanding fireball of light erupting from the carrier's main engine bank. A second ball of light snapped as one of Doomsday's torpedoes slammed into the explosion. Four of the Landreich's old obsolete scimitars darted in towards the carrier's tail, disappearing into the inferno, two of them reemerging from the fireball seconds later and as they pulled out, a solid ripple of explosions shuddered across the carrier's stern from the missile spread they had launched, now that the aft shielding was overloaded and down. The entire aft end of the carrier suddenly disappeared in a white hot light.