Out of the Black (Odyssey One, Book 4) (54 page)

It was one reason why Eric was far from convinced that the nuclear option was a good one, though he knew that there were few options left and none of them were any good. No matter. They’d have to comb the strike zones after the blast, just to be sure. There was no room for error in what was coming. That much he knew for certain.

“Alright,” he leaned forward, tapping the pilot’s shoulder to emphasize the words. “Take us to our assigned sector.”

“You’ve got it, sir.”

The Cherokee banked hard to the right, coming around as the pilot charged the CM generators. Eric felt the familiar tingle of the hair standing up on the back of his neck just before the turbines’ scream turned into a roar and he was slammed back in his place, along with everyone else, as the Cherokee leapt past Mach One and headed for hypersonic.

CHAPTER TWENTY

“BRAVO SQUADRON, SPREAD out,” Thane ordered as his instruments began showing the targets ahead of them more clearly. “Targets are being prioritized and assigned. Lock and stand by your Thunderbolts.”

The squadron acknowledged as he flipped a panel of switches, bringing his own array of Thunderbolt High-Velocity Missiles online and making them live. The Thunderbolt was the designation for the antiship variation of the missile platform, equipped with far more expensive and heavier-duty CM capabilities.

The theory was that they could take out even the most powerful of capital ships, but that was something he hadn’t seen much proof of just yet. They’d seen some light use in previous battles, but mostly it was the fighter screen variations that saw the heaviest use.

Time to see just how well these things really work
.

The enemy ships were an ugly blood red on his screens, and he took his time confirming the firing arcs. It wouldn’t do to miss and take out one of their own ships in the
process. That wouldn’t just be disastrous . . . it would be humiliating too.

The flight commander of Bravo Squadron chuckled to himself as he finished the calculations.
Death and destruction are part of the business. Embarrassment, however? That’s just not acceptable
.

“Targets assigned,” he said. “Fire on my command.”

His team acknowledged him by the numbers, and Thane calmly armed the final system before he sent the targeting data to the Thunderbolts and haloed his targets.

“Commander, your screens!”

Thane looked down, frowning as his wingman called out, but instantly saw what had alerted the man. Dozens of enemy fighter class drones were launching into space from the targets, accelerating hard in Bravo’s direction.

“Damn. They spotted us,” he said, sounding bored. “
Enterprise,
Bravo Actual. Are you seeing this?”

“Roger, Bravo Actual. Alpha Flight is scrambling now.”

“Well, I suppose we’d better get on with it, then,” Thane drawled over his team comm. “Bravo Actual . . . Fox Three.”

The Vorpal Class Space Superiority Starfighter was intended as a multirole chassis, designed to replace the older airframes that had done the bulk of the fighting in the Block war and even made up the famed Double A squadron. Vorpals were long, sleek space frames built around a paired set of CM generators and four large vacuum breathing reactor plants that put out enough power to shove around a ship the size of the
Enterprise
itself.

Instead of the dual “six gun” missile launchers that were stored inside the older airframes, the Vorpals wielded
four eight-barrel launchers mounted under each stubby “wingtip.” Not needing to worry about either weight or air resistance gave them a significant advantage in terms of payload, after all.

Bravo Flight was equipped with an antiship load out of Thunderbolt HVMs, semi-smart unguided missiles designed to impact their targets at relativistic velocities and kill with kinetic energy alone.

On Bravo Actual’s announcement of “Fox Three,” all twelve members of Bravo Flight put twenty-four Thunderbolts apiece into space in under three seconds.

Each weapon aligned on a specific target, precoded by the Vorpals’ pilots, and then engaged both their overpowered CM generators and their solid-fuel rocket motors. Each Thunderbolt flickered away, appearing like nothing else but instantaneous teleportation to the human eye, and lanced toward their targets more like lasers than physical weapons.

Three light-seconds away the Thunderbolts interpenetrated the Drasin fighter screen, but unlike many earlier engagements, there was little the fighters could do to stop them. The missiles moved too fast to track, given their size, and even along that narrow path, space was just too big to put up a wall even if you were willing to use your own body to do it.

Two of the missiles impacted with the enemy fighter screen, blowing through them like an icepick through cardboard, leaving nothing but expanding gasses in their wake. The rest of the Thunderbolts encountered no resistance as they continued on, hammering into enemy ships like the blasts from Mount Olympus from which they drew their names.

Under the combined force of
two hundred eighty-eight
kinetic weapons raining down on their position, the
twenty-eight remaining Drasin ships within knife range of the Heroic Task Force vanished into plasma and memories.

“Good hit, Bravo,” Captain Carrow said from the command station of the
Enterprise
. “RTB while Alpha mops up the dregs.”

“Aye sir, Bravo Flight is RTB,” Thane said, flipping his Vorpal end over end, putting his burners away from the destruction his flight had wrought.

The squadron followed suit, burning hard to build Delta-V back to the
Enterprise
. The carrier was barely visible in the distance, and only by their augmented scanners, but it was heading toward them even as a dozen IFF tags lit up on their screens.

Alpha Flight was in space and accelerating hard in their direction.

Thane glanced at the rear scanners, noting that it was probably none too soon, because every single remaining Drasin fighter was blue, shifting hard.

“I think we pissed them off, boys.”

“Whoa.”