Looking Glass 4 - Claws That Catch (46 page)

“Capacitor recharge nominal,” Shafer said.

“And this baby is still up! Charge you bastard, charge!”

The penetrator was not just a chunk of random metal. The optimum design had been found on the Karchava engineering database and slavishly copied. At the core was a long, pointed, chunk of heavy metal, in the case of this penetrator depleted uranium. Of all heavy and hard metals it was the most available to humans since it was made from reactor waste that had been reworked to remove all trace of radioactive particles.

Out from that it was simple steel. A lot of steel. Enough steel to make a World War Two destroyer.

The outer layer was a thin sheaf of carbon monomolecule. It was there to prevent significant damage from micrometorite hits. Like a diamond, the penetrator was hard but fragile. Even a very small pebble could, potentially, crack the penetrator before it hit its target. And that would be sad.

Accelerated to a small fraction of light-speed, the titanic dart gained a boost of energy from Einstein's famous equation, raising its potential kinetic energy to right at the output of every nuclear weapon on Earth at the height of the Cold War—several exajoules of energy.

When it hit, a significant fraction of that astronomical energy was transferred to the Dreen brain-ship.

The penetrator hit on the nose of the brain-ship, slightly to starboard. Most of its mass converted to plasma immediately, the inertia of the impact carrying the blazing ball of hell deep into the vitals of the ship. Bulkhead after bulkhead was vaporized as the gaseous fire burned through everything in its path. The plasma ripped through seventy percent of the weapons controls on the starboard side, devastated starboard fighter systems, which had yet to launch, and tore apart thirty percent of the ship's environmental systems.

But at its core, in a way worse, was the massive dart of depleted uranium. The impact mostly vaporized the steel around it and, due to simple physics, the plasma front could outstrip the speed of even the relativistic dart. But the harder, stronger, heavier metal remained intact for a few moments, blazing at the heart of the plasma ball.

That is, until the plasma expended its last joule of energy. Leaving the dart to fly ahead of its wavefront and smash further into the interior.

Depleted uranium is very strong but it is also, again, fragile. As soon as it hit a major obstacle, a primary support beam for the ship, it broke apart into a thousand pieces. And like flint and steel, when uranium hits even itself hard enough, it sparks. Then, like magnesium, it burns.

Thousands of chunks of white-hot uranium crashed into the depths of the brain-ship like a flaming shotgun blast.

Mass driver impact. Significant damage to environmental, starboard fighter support, starboard fighter bays . . . 

The sentient didn't need its child to tell it that the damage was significant. It could sense the ship screaming. It was tied into the depths of its creation, as much the brain of the ship as the brain of the task force. The ship's pain was its pain, and it had just had the equivalent of a flamethrower hit it on the shoulder.

But the hit had missed the heart and the brain.

Close to range for secondary weapons. Roll to engage from port when in range. Launch all remaining fighters.

“Ooooh, that's gotta hurt,” Spectre said. He was looking at the long-range viewer repeater on his own console. The Karchava apparently didn't have Star Trek viewers, either. The system was a near twin of the one on the Blade, the only difference being even better jitter controls and the fact that with the circumference of the dreadnought and the larger individual telescopes it hosted, it was the largest telescope ever built. The resolution was just awesome. And he'd never seen a better image to resolve than the one of a Dreen brain-ship spouting fire.

“Reports indicate serious damage,” Korcan said. “The brain-ship is streaming air and liquids.”

“You just blew out its whole starboard side,” Spectre said. “Serious is a bit of an understatement. I mean, it gushed plasma along a third of its length. I'm surprised it's still operating at all. That gun is bad news.”

“Alas, it takes time to charge.”

“Commander, reaching optimum engagement range for fighter launch.”

“Launch fighters.”

“Tallyho!”

The midsection of the Thermopylae hosted thirty fighter bays, fifteen to a side. When it was captured, the Karchava fighters were long gone, replaced by Dreen organic fighters.

Now it hosted a new version of organic fighter, the Cheerick dragonflies.

Perhaps it had been some constraint that was still unknown to the Alliance or perhaps it had been simple oversight. But the Dreen had maintained one fighter in each bay.

When the dragonflies were boarded it became immediately apparent that the Alliance need not be so sparse in their allocation of resources. Dragonflies could maintain themselves for quite some time on minimal resources and there was more than enough room to pack them into the hangar bay. They could, in fact, be stacked on top of each other.

Thus, when the fighter bays opened up they opened all the way up, not only opening their hatches but their internal clamshells and evacuating the hangar bays. Instead of thirty fighters the ship could disgorge eighty-six shielded, laser-eyed, giant-chinchilla crewed dragonflies.

Colonel She-kah knew that she could not, however, control them. From reports they had already gotten from Che-chee she knew there was a way to train other than by flying in space. But up until they reached this system, all she could do was occasionally train her males when the ship rested or was moving from one node to another.

Thus, they were not the crackest cavalry in the galaxy. But they were eager.

“Follow your icons, males,” the Cheerick Mother said. “As soon as you see the enemy, though, you are on your own. Teams stay together. Fight well. Re-ka, you shall stay on my tail and not leave it. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Colonel,” the young cavalryman said.

“Let us do battle.”

“We're taking long-range fire from the Dreen fighter group,” the defensive systems officer reported. There had been a faint shudder through the ship, barely noticeable in CIC. “Permission to open fire.”

“Fighter control, time to dragonfly engagement range.”

“Colonel She-kah has ordered her fighters to hold their fire until they are closer,” Fighter Control relayed. “They're planning their initial sweep at under a light-second. Fighters have been vectored up and away of direct path. Most of them followed the vector. About fifteen seem to be totally lost.”

“We'll collect them later,” Korcan said. “Defensive Systems, open fire.”

“Open fire, aye.”

The angle of retreat and the fact that the brain-ship had only been able to launch from its port side meant that the majority of the Dreen fighters were to starboard of the Thermopylae.

All along the starboard side, plasma cannons, lasers and mass drivers swiveled forward and began to belch incandescent hell at the oncoming Dreen assault.

“Colonel!” Re-ka shouted. “The ship is on fire!”

“They have opened fire against the Dreen fighters,” She-kah replied over the full circuit, trying not to sigh. Males were always so excitable. “You can see the fighters firing at the ship as well.”

“The icons are moving around . . .” Re-ka replied. “I cannot really follow them.”

“They are evasively maneuvering,” She-kah said. “Which is why we are waiting to fire.”

“Twelve bandits destroyed,” Defensive Control reported. “Continuing to engage.”

“Discontinue engagement when the dragonflies make their pass,” Korcan said.

“Discontinue for dragonfly pass, aye.”

“Minor damage to the starboard forequarter,” Damage Control reported. “Mass drivers nine and six out of action. No casualties.”

“Tough ship,” Spectre said. “That much fire from fighters would have made a hash of the Blade.”

“She is a tough ship,” Korcan said. “And another species lost her to the Dreen. And then the Dreen lost her to the Blade. Any ship can be defeated.”

“Point.”

“Colonel She-kah, formation approaching one light second from the forward portion of the Dreen fighter group.”

“Roger,” She-kah said, squinting. The icons she was watching were still jiggling around, indicating that the Dreen fighters were maneuvering. But she could not for the life of her see them, yet. She knew that the cavalrymen could not engage simply on the basis of the icons. They were going to have to see their enemy. She had not realized that a light-second was so far. “We are going to continue to close before firing.”

“Main gun charged,” gunnery control reported.

“Fire as you bear,” Korcan said.

“Main Gun Fire Procedures.”

“Main Gun Fire Procedures, aye.”

While the Dreen fighters were still invisible, only appearing as icons or the occasional flash of plasma guns, Colonel She-kah could clearly see the massive Dreen brain-ship. The monstrosity, ten times the size of the Thermopylae, seemed as large as a planet and they were starting to take fire from it.

The fire became momentarily wide and sporadic as the massive ship gouted fire from every port in the forward section. Chunks, still burning, broke off and drifted away into space. But the massive dreadnought continued forward, still apparently under power.

“Colonel . . . I see . . .”

Colonel She-kah had also not considered the speed with which something very hard to see could suddenly become much more visible and much much closer at astronomical speeds.

“All dragonflies open fire!” she shouted as her helmet suddenly became a mass of red icons.

The only thing that permitted the dragonflies to get any hits in at the closing speeds was the fact that it was a target rich environment. Over two hundred Dreen fighters remained from the battles deeper in the solar system and they had been joined by another eighty from the survivors of the first hit on the brain-ship. Nearly three hundred fighters were approaching the Thermopylae in a, for space, very small formation. Which Colonel She-kah had piloted her functional fighters right into the middle of.

The only thing that was statistically improbable was a mid-space collision, but Cavalryman Tre-trak managed even that, impacting his dragonfly directly on the nose of a Dreen fighter, despite its best attempts to dodge the idiot.

Everyone in the interpenetrated formations was dodging wildly, with the relatively small space so filled with plasma and laser bolts it momentarily gained something resembling an atmosphere. Both fighters could maneuver in three dimensions with rapid axis change, something that Colonel She-kah had not really realized until necessity taught her very very fast.

From She-kah's perspective, the encounter was a confusion of spinning stars, fleeting shots and way more plasma than she ever wanted to see again in her life. She was unsure if she'd hit anything but as the dragonfly formation passed the Dreen formation, both groups turning and sending Parthian shots at the other, she could see drifting and smashed Dreen fighters. Along with far too many dragonflies.

She could also see the enemy headed towards their ride at a very fast clip.

“Follow them!” she shouted. “Section leaders, report casualties.”

“Permission to reengage Dreen fighters,” Defensive Control asked.

“As long as you don't hit the dragonflies,” Korcan replied. “Fighter Control?”

“I would not use the term 'control,' sir,” the lieutenant commander, a former FA-18 pilot who was itching to get these medieval idiots to learn real air-to-air tactics. “Dragonflies appear to have taken out eighteen Dreen fighters for a loss of seven. One of those may have been a mid-space; the encounter was too confusing for our computers to really keep track of. Definitely don't know who got what. Some of the Dreen losses may have been blue-on-blue and ditto for the dragonflies.”

“Clearly we must get this simulator Che-chee has developed,” Korcan said. “Order the dragonflies to decelerate and pursue.”

“Colonel She-kah's on it.”

“Why are we still not catching up?” She-kah snarled, then waited impatiently for the response. This thing about “light-speed lag” was still confusing. It seemed to her as if the controller on the other end was dawdling.

“Colonel, you had a high relative vector to the Dreen formation,” the combat controller said, trying not to sigh. “They're decelerating to engage us but you're still not even headed back to us, yet. Your velocity was too high for your accel to get you going in the right direction, yet. You have to keep decelerating for a while. I'd recommend random maneuvering as well. You're well into the engagement basket of the brain-ship.”

“I noticed,” She-kah snapped.

“Maneuver, you young idiot,” She-kah said as a plasma bolt from the brain-ship passed by.

“I'm trying, Colonel,” Re-ka replied. “But I'm getting very confused.”

Everyone in the formation was. The best they could do was try to figure out which way the various icons were pointed and try to follow them, not an inherent Cheerick skill. The only thing in view from their perspective was the brain-ship and the torrent of fire pouring out from its midsection. The dragonflies had gotten so scattered on the pass through the Dreen fighter group many of them were out of sight of each other.

“Fighter control, can you turn off all the icons but one?” She-kah asked.

“Aye, aye,” the controller replied a few seconds later. Damn this lag thing! “Which one, Colonel?”

“Mine. I need to rally my force. Wave the banner high, Fighter Control.”

As the Dreen fighters approached the Thermopylae its fire became more accurate, taking out more and more of the fighters.

However, the Dreen fighters had a functional engagement range of nearly two light-seconds, nearly twice the distance from Earth to the moon, and they were highly maneuverable. It was impossible for the guns to track on them and ensure a hit at that range.