Tactics of Conquest (Stellar Conquest) (29 page)

Interlocks prevented the fighters from shooting each other, even by accident in the swirl of a furball, but some jet jocks turned them off because they could cause a weapon to cut out at the wrong time. They depended on the “big sky, little bullet” theory to avoid shooting each other. Vango wasn’t so sanguine.

Forty StormCrows spread out and flew into the speeding cloud. Fully VR-linked, Aerospace pilots pushed the limits of machine and man, with their time senses artificially accelerated by a multiple of over two hundred. Even with the universe slowed to bullet time, the two forces interpenetrated at speeds that required computer predictive aiming to both hit targets and avoid collisions.

To Vango, he seemed back in some old space combat video game such as he played growing up. He lined up on a bogey and triggered his centerline maser, noting a hit. Not waiting to see the results –
Lark
’s maser was powerful enough to kill any hyper – he dropped pips onto two more and let the computer fire his wing lasers and railguns in pairs while he lined up on another.

Leaving the secondary suite of weapons on self-selecting automatic, he fired and took out another hyper. Once more, he set up a perfect shot, and then he mashed his thumb down on the virtual trigger but saw no result. Cursing, he remembered that at this fast timesense, the usual ten-second recharge time for a full maser round of two shots would feel like two thousand seconds – more than half an hour in his head.

So he concentrated on turning around and slowing down before the hyper cloud passed him completely.
Lark
spun, pointing herself backward as he watched the enemy projectiles flash past him, still accelerating on fusion engines. He realized that, given their enormous speed and acceleration advantage, his squadron would never catch the missiles before they made their runs at
Conquest
. Still, he lined up on his mother ship and poured on the power.

“Alpha Squadron, this is Alpha One,” Vango said over the squadron channel. “We got our licks in, and they’re past us. Nothing we can really do, but we knocked out at least half of the hypers. Hope that leaves us a home to go to.” That was a horrifying thought – stranded in an enemy-controlled system, in a one-man fighter.

“Push your thrust up to seven percent overload. Reduce T-sense to no less than one to one, but leave the kick on automatic.” That meant that any threat warning catapulted the pilot’s brain and link to maximum speed, while allowing him to slow down to experience time normally. Otherwise, a few minute’s travel might seem like days.

Dropping his timesense back to normal, Vango felt the Gs leak through the gravplates as he pressed
Lark
as hard as he could. Seven percent thrust over maximum was the statistical safety limit. Doing so would wear out the engines faster, but only slightly increase the chance of a catastrophic failure. Still, there was no way the squadron would get another shot at the missiles, unless some missed and looped back around for reattack.

Looking at
Conquest
, he saw a blizzard of small craft – grabships, pinnaces, and assault sleds – spreading out in a ring around the dreadnought, tiny and insignificant, but each with at least a laser. Automated maintenance drones joined them, and soon more than a hundred tiny helpers floated in the void. This was a tactic of desperation – probably very few would be able to take out a speeding hyper – but any reduction was beneficial.

Briefly his VR controller highlighted another launch from
Conquest
, something small, like a missile, heading at an oblique angle to the hyper cloud. He caused his viewpoint to swoop in on it but suddenly it disappeared from his data stream. Backtracking its path, he saw that it had also taken flight from the small craft bay. Instead of joining the fight, though, it had blasted away at high speed.

Then he had no time to wonder as the hypers entered
Conquest
’s defensive engagement zone. Increasing his timesense to maximum again, he watched medium lasers nose from their firing ports as their armored clamshells opened. Immediately they began rapid fire, using just enough energy to damage the incoming missiles without bothering with confirmed kills. At speed, blinding the enemy projectiles and causing them to miss was good enough.

Thrusters flared from their gimbals around the dreadnought’s rim, shoving the ship sideways so that those hypers losing terminal guidance would shoot through the empty space where she had been. The assorted small craft moved away in a perfectly coordinated dance, and Vango realized that they must be on automated control. That made more sense than manning them, anyway – so close to
Conquest
, with no transmission lag, the AI could fight them better than crew.

The evasive maneuvers and individual defensive shots saved
Conquest
from the leading edge of the hypers, but thousands remained. Closer and closer, the enemy missiles bored in, and each one that died bought its fellows a few more milliseconds, like a wave assault of screaming footsoldiers assaulting machineguns.

Finally, they broke through. Clamshells slammed shut even as hypers dove for the laser firing ports, weak spots in the hugely thick forward armor. With his speeded senses Vango saw
Conquest
spin on her axis like a top. In fact, that maneuver had begun several seconds ago, in order to complicate the hypers’ targeting and distribute damage over a wide swath of armor, rather than allow the things to slam repeatedly into the same spots and bore through.

Vango lost all vision in close, and he pulled his VR view back until he could see a boiling cloud of heat and debris. It seemed to take forever, until he remembered to adjust his timesense to near normal again. Then
Conquest
, spinning, seemed to fling off the mess and rise as it pushed forward on main engines.

Though the entire forward glacis of the dreadnought had been stripped of fittings and ten meters of armor, Vango was relieved to see no critical damage, none of the huge deep holes he had feared. Then he remembered that hypers depended on speed to do damage. The farther away they were fired, the harder they would hit on impact. These had flown for only a few minutes, and with the new armor, even thousands could not chip their way through without the relativistic velocities that usually made them so deadly.

It did look like most of the lasers and all of the sensors were scoured from the surface. Every piece of clamshell armor had been blown clear, leaving naked firing ports, twisted weapons, and hectares of wreckage.

Vango transmitted, “Alpha Squadron, I see a few hundred hypers out there trying to reattack. You are cleared hot to engage by singles. I say again, take your best shots, and we can tally up kills in the bar.” This was the time for the aggressive, competitive spirit – just a turkey shoot against targets that didn’t return fire. That made him wonder if the Meme had ever considered such a thing. Putting a laser on a hyper would complicate things enormously for fighter pilots.

Probably not worth the time and materials,
he thought.
Meme are all about efficiency.

Fifteen minutes later he lined up
Lark
for recovery through the small craft bays. Once the magnetic grapples had him, he dropped out of link and relaxed inside the cocoon, feeling the comedown of being ejected into the real world. Even now, the system pumped him full of drugs to balance his brain chemistry against the powerful addictive pull of VR space, but those could only blunt, never completely overcome, its siren song.

Mission debrief and a few beers would help, and now that Dannie had dumped him –
what, decades ago
, he thought with an emotional wince – maybe that cute civilian cyber-tech would join him for a drink and more.

“Two days? That’s remarkable.”

Timmons nodded. “That AI is a wonder, sure. Manufactories are going at full speed. I’ve taken the liberty of requesting the Marines help out. With their armor and cybernetics, they are doubling as labor for the surface repair, bolting on new clamshells so that the finer work can be done later under atmosphere. Also, I have them carrying materials in low G from the bulk storage to the assembly lines. But we’re running low on some things.”

“Sensors,” Absen asked Scoggins, “how long until those Destroyers arrive?”

“They’re launching hypers as fast as they can make them, all the way from Jupiter,” she replied. “Those will get here in about four hours, and they’ll hit hard at over half lightspeed. The ships will take three days.”

Absen shook his head. “We won’t be here. Well before those arrive, I want to pulse out. Two pulses, actually, that will zigzag us to the other side of the sun from the Destroyers, and then drop us near the asteroid belt.”

“They’ll still find us, sir. There are thousands of stealthed sentries all over. One of them is bound to see and pass our position.”

“I don’t mind,” Absen replied. “In fact, I’m counting on it. I want them chasing us, burning fuel and wasting time while we make repairs.”

“Funny, sir,” Johnstone spoke up. “We’ve become more like them.
Conquest
is now a sort of living ship, able to heal and stay on long range patrol indefinitely.”

Absen smiled indulgently. “If you had a deeper military background, Rick, you’d know that the ebb and flow of warfare always drives a sort of directed evolution, of tactics and technologies. Each combatant selects the best of what the enemy has used against them and replicates, improves it, while also trying to innovate. No, no, I’m not criticizing. You’re the best at your job, and it was an astute observation, for someone not well versed in history.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“We can pulse any time now,” Okuda said.

“Then let’s get everything secured for TacDrive and go before those hypers show up.”

Conquest
lumbered forward under careful grabship control. The little tugs grasped the rim of the flattened teardrop like dragonflies, providing the dreadnought with fine mobility in the absence of the gimbaled thrusters blasted away by the hyper strike. It was backing now, as clumsy as a seagoing supertanker in a confined port of call.

On the bridge screen, Absen stood and watched the holotank representation as his boat aligned the opening in her rear armor with another potato-shaped asteroid. More grabships on the rock kept it steady, and between the two teams, the lump of minerals slid slowly into a cargo bay.

“That makes eight,” Timmons reported. “Six high-metal rocks and two iceballs. Should be enough to replenish the raw materials.”

“Seal up, then. Even though we’re pretty safe out here, I don’t like having that huge opening in the armor. Get those things broken up and stowed for processing.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Timmons did nothing but acknowledge his boss’s order, not even touching his console, just drinking his coffee. Because he disliked linking just as much as Absen did, the captain took this to mean the COB was ahead of him, and had already given the necessary instructions to his section chiefs and repair teams.

“How long?”

Timmons checked the watch on his wrist, an old-fashioned gesture that often gave away those born in the twentieth century. “Two hours, more or less.”

“Plenty of time. Any change in the Destroyer fleet?”

“No, sir. Still parked at Earth, within the Weapon envelope.”

“Damn. Clever bastards.” Like naval warships sheltering beneath the guns of a land-based fortress, the Destroyers, instead of chasing
Conquest
as he had hoped, had taken up a position near the moon. Now, if he made a pulse run at them, he would have to come within range of that ship-killer. “Thoughts?”

With the prime watch just returned from their rest period, Absen looked around the bridge as his crew turned toward the center. With Timmons on his left, Michelle Conquest on his right, Okuda in his sunken cockpit, and the rest along the circular walls, the captain felt at home, and waited for the team to express their opinions.

“Stay here until we are one hundred percent,” Ford began the brainstorming. “We have to be at full strength before we go in to battle.”

“I concur,” Doc Horton said from BioMed. Bogrin was absent from his position, though none there but Absen knew where he had gone. “The crew is working at capacity on these repairs. They will need some rest or they’ll start making mistakes.
More
mistakes.”

“Agreed,” the captain replied. “Unless something else comes up, we’ll stay as long as we need. How long is that?” He turned to Timmons.

Timmons glanced over at Conquest’s avatar, who said, “Two more days for the major repairs, another day for the less critical stuff, and another day for crew rest and recovery.”

“Four days, then. Fine. Make sure we keep a sharp watch. I don’t want some stealthed sentry to sneak up on us with an antimatter bomb. So what then?”

His crew glanced left and right, until Conquest spoke up. “I believe we have to go after Jupiter.”

“Explain.”

She made a throat-clearing sound, despite having no throat to clear, and Absen marveled within himself at the very human emulation that the AI displayed, even to idiomatic speech. “The enemy’s remaining ‘fleet in being’ is guarding the prize of the solar system: Earth. Its ecosystem is recovering and has an estimated population of almost one billion people. It has orbital defenses and the remaining Weapon to help secure it. As you implied, too tough a nut to crack right now. But without the Destroyers, the Jupiter system is an inviting second prize. Millions of workers, manufacturing, shipyards – and its magnetic field is the only ready source of antimatter other than Saturn. Militarily, it’s probably more important than Earth.”

“I see you’ve thought this through.”