Hegemony (17 page)

Freya watched as the thermal signatures of the outbound interceptors spread out towards the intercept point with the lance-ships. All three of the big ships were drifting now, hiding behind bow-shields, exposing only weapons and sensors. All three ships were firing their tertiary laser arrays, lasing each other to degrade sensors. Range between the ships had fallen to two million kilometers.

The lance-ships launched their interceptors, each ship powering their maximum salvo of six. Together it made a decent defensive salvo, but it was not likely to be enough against the twelve inbound interceptors. Basic defensive doctrine required a two-to-one advantage to reliably stop an enemy interceptor with a defensive interceptor; with twelve to twelve, the lance-ships might be able to degrade the
Conquering Sun's
attack if they coordinated properly, but they were not likely to stop it. And the lance-ships would be dealing with the more powerful blinding lasers of the assault-ship. Now the high closure rate made more sense to Freya. By closing in at such a high velocity, the lance-ships had decreased the effectiveness of blinding lasers for all sides, giving their own salvo of defensive interceptors the best possible chance to save their ships if their "victim" turned out to be something other than what it had appeared to be. That showed a lot of foresight, Freya thought, and a thorough, sober tactical approach... or just a very suspicious mind on the part of the lance-ships' commander.

The two salvos of interceptors accelerated towards each other, the attacking salvo from
Conquering Sun
spreading out somewhat, forcing the defending interceptors to spread out as well. With luck, Freya thought, they would spread out too far, leaving holes in their defense formation through which some of
Conquering Sun
's interceptors could pass unimpeded.

Suddenly, there were more thermal flares from the lance-ships, and Freya frowned. It looked like the lance-ships had launched more interceptors, but they had not stopped lasing for the original salvo; two lance-ships would have no PLAs that were not already lasing...

None the less, sensors counted eighteen more interceptors streaking out from
each
of the two lance-ships; a total of thirty-six launches, forty-eight counting the first dozen. That was impossible. Even at close range, that was more than twice the firepower of an assault-ship. No lance-ship could carry that sort of laser power.

But these two ships did. Freya could see the blaze of laser energy and waste heat clearly. The two lance-ships flared like stars as each one boosted two dozen interceptors outbound.

The
Conquering Sun
was reacting, lighting her main drive to complicate the enemy's intercept, venting laser coolant and launching a dozen defensive interceptors with the almost over-heated PLAs that had just been used to boost the first two waves of interceptors on their first stage.

"Weapons, all lasers on those lance-ships; put maximum laser energy on those ships!" Freya ordered.

"We're too far out of range," said Muir, "we can't do anything to them from here."

"We can blind them from one more angle, add a little more heat to their systems to deal with, reduce their radiator efficiency!" As much as it could be inside the neural net, Freya's tone was desperate.

"Communications," Freya went on, "signal
Skyrunner
. I want maximum sustained acceleration on a vector towards those lance-ships. We need to give them something else to think about!"

"We're too far away," Muir said.

Freya did not answer. She knew that already.

Zandy was on the beam. Twelve enemy interceptors were spread out before her, screaming towards her at a combined velocity of almost six thousand kilometers per second, two percent the speed of light. It was the fastest intercept she had ever done, even in sims.

Worse yet, impossibly worse, was that thirty-six more enemy interceptors were on a separate vector for the
Conquering Sun
. Forty-eight enemy interceptors from two lance-ships; it was an impossible number. It would take a multiple assault-ships to launch that many... or it should have. But that didn't matter. All that mattered was the moment.

The enemy defensive wave was less than a minute away from intercept. The geometry of a battle at these closure rates meant that all the actual shooting, both at the defending interceptors and at the actual targets, would all be compressed into just a few minutes. Everything, this whole battle, would be over in less than three minutes.

The huge closing velocity had a strange side effect; the opposing capital ships had launched their interceptors millions of kilometers from their targets, aiming at where the enemy
would be
at the point of closest approach. Which meant that, for now, the capital ships were much further apart than they would have been in a normal intercept. The longer distance made their blinding lasers noticeably less effective than usual, and Zandy could see the defensive salvo of twelve enemy 'ceptors, two full waves, with remarkable clarity. Usually only her radio detectors, picking up the powerful but indistinct static from the enemies' drives, would be giving her any reliable data by now; her visual and thermal sensors would be flooded with laser energy and she would be trying to sneak remote sensor drones out into space to give her a clear glimpse of her surroundings. Instead she could see the enemy interceptors clearly with her thermal sensors and even visual sensors still gave her an intermittent, fuzzy image of their laser-driven exhaust plumes.

She was feeding all her sensor data via laser link to the other interceptors of First Wave; she was deputy wave leader now. She had to make sure she did not forget her new duties.

The clear view wouldn't last; soon, she knew, she'd be within effective blinding range of the enemy lance-ships' lasers. It would be very brief, though. She'd be through the usual high intensity range of the enemy's lasers in less than fifty seconds. But that was going to be the fifty seconds that counted. Her actual engagement time against the target lance-ships was going to be less than two seconds, compared to about ten seconds for a usual run.

The enemy would have a hard time stopping her interceptor, she knew, but with only two seconds of laser-blinded tracking time, she'd have just as hard a time hitting them.

Of course, if she didn't focus and pay attention to the twelve interceptors heading right at her, she wouldn't live to get to the lance-ships. Wave Leader Handric was signaling, sending out a coordinated laser blinding plan against the dozen inbounds. She took a long second to review it, then implemented it. Her own small lasers lashed out, flooding the sensors of the enemy interceptors with energy. They were returning the favor, but the range was long enough that the sensor degradation was limited to annoyance levels. The engagement window to hit the enemy fighters was going to be amazingly brief; less than one second if she used her anti-interceptor warheads. She could task an anti-ship warhead; the bigger warhead's detonation lasers had greater effective range and would extend her engagement envelope, but that would be a waste. She didn't need to kill these interceptors; just to avoid being killed by them.

At least, Zandy thought, the
Conquering Sun
had realized the nature of the situation. If
Conquering Sun
cut off laser power to First Wave and transferred the pilots back for a defensive launch in their backup interceptors, she could launch twenty-four interceptors for defense. But there were forty-eight enemy interceptors in space, somehow, and thirty-six of those were on a vector to hit the assault-ship. There was no way to stop that many. But if the dozen interceptors of First Wave and Third Wave got through and killed the lance-ships, all the enemy interceptors would lose power.

"OK, people," came the signal for Handric, "here we go. Hold on to some of your anti-'ceptor warheads in case of a follow-on defensive salvo, and don't take any risks going for a interceptor kill; all we need to do is get through them."

In her mind, Zandy nodded. There were forty seconds left till the intercept with the  enemy's defensive interceptor salvo. They were spread out, matching the spread of First and Third Waves as much as possible.

They were reacting to the
Conquering Sun's
attack salvo, Zandy realized with a sudden start, and that reaction created possibilities. The enemy interceptors had numerical parity, and they were probably loaded exclusively for anti-interceptor combat, carrying a lot more anti-interceptor warheads and none of the larger anti-ship warheads.

That would give the defensive interceptors a firepower advantage. But if she deployed sensor drones a few seconds early, and then maneuvered to pull the enemy interceptors into the coverage zone of the drones... they'd have to be very sharp to notice the trick, and it would give her better sensors data than she could have otherwise had. If it worked, it could compensate for some of the enemy's firepower advantage; more accurate targeting was worth more than pure firepower, in an interceptor fight.

Less than thirty seconds to go. Her acceleration was averaging sixty five gees, but she'd go as close to ninety as she could to make the actual intercept. She triggered a spread of drones and slewed the interceptor away from them, setting up the maneuver.

Laser energy from the inbound interceptors filled her visual and thermal sensors with glare as her own lasers tried to return the favor. Ten seconds to intercept.

She angled the reflectors and fed fission fuel into the drive, reaching eighty-nine gees for a moment. She could feel the stress on her hull as she skidded back towards the vector she had left her drones on; they were a few hundred kilometers behind her now; they had not accelerated at all after she had deployed them, but as the enemy interceptor that had chosen her as a target reacted to her maneuver, it came within the sight line of the drifting sensor drones. It hadn't noticed the deployment in time and her sensor drones were clear of laser blinding.

She tasked her own lasers to blind the enemy's sensor drones as they deployed. At three seconds to intercept she triggered four of her anti-'ceptor warheads. The long darts detached from her interceptor and fired stand-off drives to take them to safe detonation range. This far from the enemy mother-ship, the warheads could survive for a few seconds.

Two seconds; she could see, through her sensor drones, dozens of enemy warheads spreading out. She could see the enemy sensor drones too. She shifted her lasers to cover them.

One second; there were too many enemy drones for her blinding lasers to cover. She needed more laser power. An instant decision and one of her warheads detonated, aimed at a concentration of enemy sensor drones. The flare of the nuke added to the blinding effect on some of the drones. Other drones melted in the instant fury of x-ray laser energy. Zandy dumped more fission fuel and slewed off her base vector in a wild spiral, desperate to evade the targeting solutions of the enemy's warheads.

Intercept. She crossed through the effective range of hers and the enemy warheads in a fifth of a second. Her three remaining warheads detonated, together with more than a dozen enemy warheads. For an instant the glare of nuclear explosions blotted out all sensor data.

She was still alive. The bow-shields were showing severe damage; x-ray laser energy had vaporized the ablative polymer and melted part of the shield mesh. But she was alive; she must have caught just the edge of the x-ray laser pulse's focus.

Her sensor drones were still giving her data, showing the enemy interceptor drifting with no acceleration, surrounded by an expanding cloud of vapor and debris. That was a kill.

Other enemy 'ceptors flashed past her, out of mutual range in a fraction of a second.

She looked for the rest of her wave. There were four signals still showing for First Wave, plus her. Third Wave showed four total. Third Wave would have to take care of itself, but someone was gone in First Wave too. It took her a moment to realize it was Handric. She was Wave Leader now.

Freya watched as the leading edge of the
Conquering Sun
's interceptor salvo intersected with the defensive interceptors from the lance-ships. The point of intercept was suddenly lit with dozens of savage pinpricks of nuclear detonations. A moment later she watched the two salvos streak apart. There were still nine interceptors left from the
Conquering Sun
's wave, only seven left from the enemy salvo. The Hegemonic Fleet could usually count on an advantage in interceptor pilot quality, especially over the Coalition. The Coalies had what amounted to a religious hatred of daemons, and only daemons could fly an interceptor.

It occurred to Freya that she was assuming the enemy lance-ships were Coalition ships. Their basic drive signature and architecture
looked
Coalition, and whatever those ships were, they were no hard-scrabble pirates.

Ice Knife
and
Skyrunner
were accelerating at just over seven gees, pushing hard to intercept the lance-ships. There wasn't too much practical purpose to the maneuver. It would take more than two hours for her ships to make the intercept, even if the lance-ships did not try to accelerate away. All she could hope was that her approach might give the enemy lance-ships one more thing to worry about.