The Pathfinder Project (14 page)

Carefully, the Captain adjusted
his Z-Axis setting to minus 1,200 meters. He tapped the screen again. The first
hop brought the
Pathfinder
down to the same level of the fighter patrols
closing in from behind them. Five more quick flashes and the ship moved within
firing distance. The lead fighters instantly began shooting at the starship,
but one more tap of the screen by Kaufield caught the enemy pilots by surprise
again as the
Pathfinder
reappeared
behind
them.

Some of the incoming missiles
flew cleanly through the two fighter patrols, still seeking their assigned
target, while others detonated. At least three of the smaller fighters were
destroyed by the unexpected turn of events and half a dozen more suffered
damage from flying shrapnel.

“That’s not bad, Captain,” Adam
commented. “You’re successfully using our new ‘edge’. Their PTP technology
can’t possibly keep up with ours – we’re leading their missiles around by the
nose.”

“Thank God your brother and
Glen got the CAS Drive working,” Kaufield said gratefully. “Or we wouldn’t have
been able to risk a rescue mission – not without the ability to defend
ourselves.”

The surviving fighters in both
patrols spun quickly around and accelerated in pursuit of the
Pathfinder
.
Many of them quickly narrowed the distance to the starship, pinning it between
their position and the remaining missiles arcing in the background. The instant
the fighters launched another wave of missiles Kaufield began tapping his
finger on the screen again. “I guess you didn’t learn the first time,” he
commented with a dry smile.

Another series of twelve
flashes lit up the local space, this time curving back and gradually upward
toward the main battle group. The missiles quickly turned to follow, only to
find their target was again executing a rapid sequence of transits to port.
Mechanically programmed to be patient, they paused again to recalculate target
coordinates before resuming their pursuit.

“Did you notice?” the Captain
asked carefully. “On the first pass through the fighters, did you spot the
differences in the missiles that they launched at us?”

“Yes. Some of them are armed
only with proximity detectors,” Adam said, smiling for the first time in quite
a while. “They couldn’t identify the fighters as friendly and detonated as soon
as they detected a nearby object.”

“That’s right. It’s a
saturation technique meant to destroy a target before it can react. But some of
the missiles have better programming and
didn’t
detonate. They’ve
acquired the
Pathfinder
as their sole target and I would wager that they
will follow us indefinitely until we destroy them or they run out of fuel.”
Again he touched his laptop screen and prompted their ship’s CAS Drive,
executing a rapid-fire series of PTP jumps. As the short-range hops continued
to confound the enemy, Kaufield suddenly thought of a new wrinkle.

“Thomas, if I position the
Pathfinder
above that civilian ship would you and Glen be able to temporarily retake
command of our CAS Drive?” He continued moving his fingertip across his console
as he spoke, keeping the
Pathfinder
constantly skipping to new locations
and thereby impossible to reach.

“
Certainly – what are you
planning
?”

“I want you to do your PTP
shrinking process, like you did with the probe and the shuttle.”

“
I get it. You want us to roll
a transit window across the civilian ship – where do we send it
?
”

“Into the enemy warship, where
else?” the Captain said angrily. “That asshole who confronted us back on Khyber
Base really pissed me off. I want to send his friends a message.”

“
The civvy is pretty big
,”
Thomas replied. “
We’re supposed to
shrink
the PTP field for smaller
ships. If Glen doesn’t reduce it enough we could risk catching the edges of the
Pathfinder
’s lower wings in the transit.”
He paused to let the
seriousness of his comments register.
“You can understand that we DOWN here
think that would be bad
.”

“Then transit
part
of
that ship, for God’s sake!” growled Kaufield brusquely. “I’m setting my clock
at thirty seconds to target. As soon as we arrive I’m going to transfer control
to your station. I need you to transport the civilian ship into the warship and
then return PTP control
immediately
to my station. We’ve still got at
least two dozen missiles stalking us.” He continued pressing his finger softly
against the screen’s surface and sending the
Pathfinder
quickly to half
a dozen new locations. The maneuver separated the incoming missiles from the
fighters. The enemy ships didn’t seem to mind at this point in the battle –
they were busy merging into a single strike force and taking up a defensive
posture in front of the mammoth-sized mother vessel.

“Before
you give us control,
I need you to move us to a point thirty meters above the civilian ship, Captain
,”
Glen specified. “
Please center the civvy as close as possible beneath the
Pathfinder.”

“
Thirty
meters and
centered? Is that all?” demanded Kaufield sarcastically. Another question
occurred to him. “Do you mean thirty meters from the bottom of the hangar bay
or thirty meters from the bottom of the lower wings?”  There was no immediate
answer, so he hastily glanced at the civilian ship’s Z-Axis setting and used
his scroll bar to set the next destination to arrive at plus one hundred meters
above it. “Adam, please stand by on thrusters. When we arrive at our
destination I need you to lower us from one hundred to within thirty meters.”

“Do you mean thirty meters from
the bottom of the hangar bay or thirty meters from the bottom of the wings?”
Adam repeated cautiously. He ignored the dirty look Kaufield shot his way.

“Initiating CAS transit to the
civilian ship.” He pressed his finger firmly on top of the screen’s second
white dot – it represented the only other friendly target in their area. The
monitors above them lit up with the familiar PTP flash and he could hear cheers
coming from the still open Comm-link – apparently they liked what they saw.

The
Pathfinder
’s hull
rumbled slightly as her thrusters fired. Adam’s face was a frozen mask of
concentration as he quickly lowered the starship the rest of the way downward.
His expression remained unchanged for almost thirty additional seconds before
he looked up at Dennis and nodded.

“It’s now or never, Lab wing!”
Kaufield shouted excitedly.

“
Transferring Delta console
control now
,” Thomas excitedly informed him.

At almost the same instant they
heard Glen reply, “
Shrinking PTP window
.”

On the Captain’s motion sensor
screen, the huge red target representing the enemy warship noticeably wobbled.
“My guess is they noticed
that
,” the Captain commented.

“
I’m returning CAS control
to you Captain. As before, just hit the panic button when you want us out of
here
.”

“Acknowledged – and good work
gentlemen!” said a pleased Kaufield, intensely focusing on the incoming
missiles that were still tracking the
Pathfinder
. Another series of
screen taps and the ship was hopping quickly across local space directly toward
the newly organized, integrated fighter patrol. Once again Kaufield paused long
enough to tempt, then skipped the
Pathfinder
between the smaller
fighters and the larger mother vessel. The fighters reacted much more quickly
this time, but several more were still picked off as the relentless array of
missiles passed through them a second time. The rest immediately altered course
and continued their rush toward the Earth starship. Kaufield took a quick look
at the monitor above him.

One of the triangular wings on
the warship had broken off and was drifting away. Most of the central mass
within the engine section of the huge starship had become a bizarre, blazing mass
of molten metal. The huge ship began tilting awkwardly to one side – its XYZ
coordinates on Dennis’ console indicating that the warship was entering an
uncontrolled spin. Thus far, the decision to use the remnants of the civilian
ship against them was proving to be extremely helpful as the enemy starship had
so far been unable to fire a second wave of missiles in their direction. Again,
Kaufield opened his Comm-link.

“I hope you’re ready down
there, Nori,” he said somewhat nervously. “We’re only going to get one chance
at this.”

“
Just say the word, Captain
,”
replied his air group commander confidently. “
We’ve got the Colonel’s ground
based missile launchers set up down here and ready to fire
.”

“What about the
recoil?
”
Kaufield asked, curious. “Last I heard, you still weren’t sure how you were
going to handle that.”

“
No problem
,” she
replied. “
We drove a couple of the heavier forklifts onto the back of the
missile launchers. They’ll hold the whole setup in place,
and
absorb the
recoil
.”

Like a stone skipping across a
pond, the
Pathfinder
continued its series of transits and skittered
unpredictably toward the damaged Brotherhood warship with enemy missiles
following closely behind. The ship’s rail guns finally began firing at them –
again too late as the Captain pressed a forefinger to his screen and
instantaneously hopped them to the far side of the enemy mother ship. The fighters
managed to shoot down most of the incoming missiles, but Kaufield watched at
least three of them score direct impacts against the warship’s hull. He studied
the radiology telemetry pouring across a screen next to the laptop and smiled
with satisfaction.

“Congratulations you bastards…
you’ve just nuked yourselves!” he grinned, noting the look of astonishment on
Adam’s face. His attention turned back to his screen and the
Pathfinder
’s
close proximity to the Brotherhood’s behemoth. “Nori, we’ve got our ass toward
them just like you asked – please fire away!”

“
Acknowledged, Captain.
Missiles firing
!”

From the bottom of the
Pathfinder
came a huge rumble. The Command Dome shuddered briefly as Kaufield watched a
series of armor-piercing missiles rocket out the rear of the hangar bay… the
image instantly fed to their monitor directly from one of the landing skid
cameras. Each missile quickly closed the distance to the enemy target and
struck it virtually dead center in the heavily damaged engineering section. All
four pierced the hull and vanished deep inside. The overhead monitors recorded
the whole thing – another series of violent explosions erupted from deep
within, bathing the sinister dark vessel in a hellish, flaming glow. Kaufield
was still watching the overhead monitors carefully and surveying the damage
when the warship unexpectedly transited away.

Mary turned and
stared
at him. “The Brotherhood vessel has…
retreated
… sir,” she reported with
amazement.

“Good for them,” said Kaufield
triumphantly. “Bad for the pilots they left behind.” He took a deep breath and
sighed with relief. “Based on our two encounters with them, my analysis is that
they rely too heavily on surprise, over-confidence, and superior firepower.
They obviously haven’t worked for a government in a while, where we all learn
early on to do more with less!” He glanced at Adam, who also was looking a
little stunned. “Am I right, Hardware Specialist and part-time pilot Adam Roh?”

“Right, sir,” said Adam,
deciding not to play a Devil’s Advocate for once.

“Thomas, this is Kaufield.
There’s still an angry bunch of fighters meandering around out there. Would you
please return us to our hiding place? And please keep the CAS Drive active,
just in case they find us before we determine our next course of action.”

“
Aye aye, Captain
.”

“
That
,” declared the
Captain proudly, “is what I call Contingency Plan Delta.”

*    
* * *     *

After all the proverbial dust
had settled, the Captain took a brief tour of his ship. He started by walking
through each passenger deck at least once, surveying the throngs of officers
and families that had hastily been assigned quarters. Most of the occupied
rooms still looked primarily vacant since no one had been able to bring much
more than they could carry with them. After the earlier general quarters alarm
it was good to see people moving casually about the ship again. Everyone still
looked a bit tense, but swiftly circulating reports of the
Pathfinder
’s
recent success against the Brotherhood had temporarily reassured everyone that
– at least for now – the loved ones they brought with them were safe and cared
for.

As he walked the lowest deck, a
Mom passed by him holding the hands of her two children. The kids were smiling
happily, obviously on their way to one of the classrooms or recreational areas
nearby. He also noticed an off duty Marine salute him proudly as he walked by
and made a mental note to write that one down. Obviously word had already
gotten around as to just how
well they had done in battle, because he
was used to having to do something rather extraordinary in order to get the
really rough and tough boys to salute a Navy counterpart.

Kaufield paused at the rear of
the ship and nodded to the Marines guarding the hatches to the lower wings. He
thought about checking up on the Lab technicians but had heard earlier that
Thomas and Glen were not present – they were already back in the hangar bay busily
working on the fighters. So he took the lift up to the top deck and headed for
the Livestock wing.