Battlegroup (StarFight Series Book 2) (31 page)

“They may. But I don’t trust this truce for a minute,” Richard said bluntly.

Jacob gave a sigh. “I’ll urge the admiral to have the
Inchon
join us on our trip back to Valhalla. We can leave the wasp watching to spysats we put out.”

Richard liked that point. Conserve your forces. Don’t split up into two groups unless you had to as part of a better plan. “Sounds good. Any need for me and the gunny to stay here?”

“Nope,” Jacob said. He turned and headed for the exit slidedoor.

Richard walked in reverse, still keeping both arms aimed at the five wasps hovering about twenty meters from him and the gunny. Who copied his backward walk, keeping her gun arms aimed.

“Then we’re leaving. I’ll enter the lock code after we exit. Nobody else comes in here unless it’s with a Shinshoni escort. Your buddy Petty Officer Watanabe has brought food down a few times. My people cover him.”

In the Habitation Deck hallway, Jacob watched as Richard and Diego exited the Forest Room. “Glad to hear it. You’re doing exactly right to always escort any human who enters that room. Which includes any of the algorithm boffins from Science Deck. And also my XO.”

Richard had assumed that. And he liked how the Stewart woman had taken to being the ship’s new executive officer. She was good at managing competing interests while showing deck chiefs and enlisteds the same kind of appreciation. He felt the captain was lucky to have her, both as XO and as his lover. Maybe Jacob would have better luck in his relationship than Richard had had with his woman. At least he’d gotten three kids and a spunky granddaughter out of it.

“Will do, captain. We’re heading for our Darts. Time to do a functional check of their systems. You may yet have need of launching some Darts against these bastards!”

“I might,” Jacob said softly. “Remind your folks these next few days heading in-system are likely to be the only low-risk time we’ll have until these wasps leave Kepler 10. Tell them I’ve counting on them.”

“I will.”

Richard turned away from his young captain and followed Diego down the hallway to a gravlift that would take them up to the Engines Deck and the hangar for his Darts that lay next to Silo 8. Wayne, Auggie, Jane and all the guys would be there. It was time for a ceremony to name a Dart after Master Sergeant Chao Lee. He had no doubt his people would prefer to paint Chao’s name atop the Dart One number. Its pilot Linda Mabry would have no objection. If anything she would insist on being part of the painting crew!

That thought told him it was time to give a name to the other two Darts. He had one name in mind that would do. Maybe Jane could come up with a second. Whatever. He looked forward to painting fun.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Jacob felt relief as the
Lepanto
came to a halt just above the large white moon that gave Valhalla halfway decent tides. To either side and behind came the other sixteen ships of the two battle groups, which included the engine-repaired
Inchon
. The eighteenth ship was already there. The frigate
Schweinfurt
was closer in, orbiting just above the wasp ship that had hidden out in the comet and now held geosync orbit above the colony. The frigate was well within reach of the wasp ship’s lasers and lightning bolt weapons, and she had her nose laser aimed at the enemy, with her tail facing outward toward the moon’s orbit. That moon lay 300,000 kilometers from the green and blue world that held 71,000 people. The
Schweinfurt
and wasp ship orbited at around 31,000 kilometers high due to Valhalla’s nine-tenths gee gravity that resulted when a rocky world was smaller than Earth. They were eighteen ships against one wasp ship, for the moment. The fifteen surviving wasp ships still orbited above planet three, most of them showing vacsuited wasps working on hull repairs and sensor device fixing. Or so said the neutrino-sent imagery from their multiple spysats.

“All ships, maintain Alert Hostile Enemy,” called his father from his Bridge. “Weapons remain Hot. Kills are authorized when attacked.” The man who had come up with the idea of putting the fleet just where the wasp ships were bound to appear as they exited Alcubierre space-time now looked to Jacob. His expression was thoughtful. “Captain Renselaer, I do not like having a functional wasp ship orbiting above Valhalla. It has the ability to move closer and drop nukes. I’m doing something about that.” He looked aside to one of the holos that surrounded his elevated seat. “Lieutenant Jefferson, take your
Philippines Sea
down to geosync and coordinate with the
Schweinfurt’s
Captain Holtzman. He’s almost as aggressive as you are.”

On Jacob’s wallscreen, Joy looked alert. Her XO Aelwen tapped on an armrest control. “Fleet admiral, happy to head down. What are your orders when we arrive?”

“Take out the working fusion pulse thruster of that wasp ship,” his father said, his tone matter of fact. “Kill any working weapons rings. Your proton sharpshooting combined with Holtzman’s nose laser should do the job. But do not destroy the ship. It refrained from launching nukes when the
Green Hills
base was on the far side of Valhalla. Plus it has major damage from the Marine boarding. I do not see it as a threat, once the engine is taken out.”

“Admiral, will do,” Joy said, giving a salute to Jacob’s father. She looked aside. “Engines, head us down at one percent of lightspeed.” She looked up. “Fleet admiral, we’ll be there shortly. May I take my leave to coordinate with Captain Holtzman?”

“You may. Once the job is done, rejoin us out by this moon.”

“Will do.
Sea
out.”

Jacob looked down to where Daisy sat at her own XO post. She was checking her ship cross-section holo, clearly focused on confirming all parts of the
Lepanto
were at Green Operational status. He looked up at the holos that surrounded him. His situational holo showed the inner part of the Kepler 10 system, with the first five planets located and their orbital tracks projected. Planet three still lay 20 degrees ahead of Valhalla’s fourth orbital, though its faster movement around the system’s yellow star, which was indeed called Odin, had moved the wasp colony world a bit further from the human world. Still, the distance was just over two AU. Or only 2.77 hours away from Valhalla at one-tenth lightspeed. And since both fleets could come to a stop from that vast speed in just a few moments, thanks to their powerful fusion thrusters, it meant death lay less than three hours away.

Shaking his head he looked to his true space holo, which now held a view from one of the electro-optical scopes on a spysat. The fifteen wasp ships were clustered in two groups that centered on the two giant ships. Nothing new was happening. Hours earlier they’d sent down their larvae pods, then had put crew out on their hulls to do simple repairs. He checked the sensor holo. There were no new moving neutrino sources anywhere in the system, for which he gave thanks. His own holo cross-section of the
Lepanto
showed the vital details, with each weapons station marked Green Operational. The three surviving Darts were in their hangar next to Silo Eight, their internal power showing hot, with a pilot seated inside each Dart. Richard had told him his Marines were ready for a boarding or for launch to do laser harassing of wasp targets. Each Dart’s stern laser had the same range as every ship laser in the fleet. And a Dart could move as fast as a frigate. But they were far more vulnerable to counterfire than even the frigates, since their thin hulls had no armor. Still, the Darts were incredibly mobile and fast, as he’d seen while watching them move on the comet-bound wasp ship.

“They’re engaging,” called Daisy.

He looked up at the wallscreen. It held a true space image from his Battlestar’s own electro-optical scope. The two gray shapes of the
Philippines Sea
and the
Schweinfurt
now approached the wasp ship at 900 klicks a minute. They were just five thousand klicks out from the target. The wasp ship must have realized this was not a peaceful visit. It fired green lasers and yellow lightning bolts at the destroyer and the frigate.

“Sir, the wasp ship’s middle weapons ring is operational,” Daisy said.

“Noted.”

Jacob wondered what Richard and Alicia, who sat below him, were thinking of this pre-emptive action. No doubt Richard fully approved. Maybe even Alicia. She had grown more and more concerned as she listened to Hunter One have innocuous chatter with the four wasp captives. It was as clear to her as it was to Jacob that these captives expected freedom sometime soon.

His true space holo now filled with red proton laser beams from the
Sea
and green laser strikes from the
Schweinfurt
. Both ships were spinning as they approached in a stepwise spiral corkscrew, doing their best to add random jinks and jerks to their vector track. Most of the yellow lightning bolts and many of the enemy’s green laser beams missed both ships. But the frigate’s spine plasma battery was a smoking ruin. However the destroyer’s spine plasma battery was firing multiple canisters of plasma, even though the enemy lay far beyond the battery’s range. He suddenly realized Joy was building a plasma haze around the vulnerable parts of her ship, since the plasma charges moved forward at the same speed as her ship. He liked her innovative use of what Earth Command always viewed as a close-up defense of a ship from incoming Smart Rocks and shrapnel.

The
Sea
jinked right, then slanted its approach to give a better aim at the tail end of the wasp ship, which had only now fired its single working fusion pulse thruster, trying to open the range between it and the oncoming human ships.

“Engine destroyed,” Daisy said softly.

“Holtzman! Get the hell out of range! We’ll take care of putting down these weapons rings,” Joy yelled over the neutrino comlink.

“Two guns are better than one,” replied the black-bearded German who moved his frigate in ways that almost made it dance around the enemy beams.

The frigate’s nose laser was clearly aimed by a sharpshooter Spacer. It placed multiple hits on the wasp ship’s rear weapons ring, taking out three weapons tubes with each hit.

The destroyer’s proton laser cut deep into the rebuilt middle weapons ring. He recalled Joy’s people had earlier killed both the nose and middle weapons rings with their tightly focused proton laser shots. Clearly the Hunter in charge of the enemy ship had put out crew to fix the middle ring as it awaited orders to do something else.

“Done!” grunted Holtzman from his image at the top of the wallscreen.

“Us too,” called Joy from her image. A wisp of black smoke showed in her Bridge image. “Let’s pull back.”

Jacob noted the engine-dead wasp ship was using its attitude jets to stabilize it back into geosync orbit. It did not fire any weapon at the two Earth ships. Nor did it launch any missiles or nuke warheads at them. Clearly its Hunter captain understood it survived on the sufferance of the human fleet. He hoped the smoke in Joy’s Bridge was just the result of circuits fusing somewhere in the destroyer’s electrical distribution system. He also noted something else. His father had waited to order the attack until the Star Navy base
Green Hills
had orbited back to this side of Valhalla, putting it in position to defend the capital Stockholm against any nukes that might be launched by this wasp ship. O’Sullivan was firing the base’s attitude jets to raise its orbit above the normal 492 klicks. A higher orbit meant a longer time on this side of Valhalla and a longer period in which O’Sullivan and his people could protect the colonists. The true space image of the planet and
Green Hills
also showed two Star Navy shuttles leaving the station and heading toward the wasp ship. Damn. Each shuttle was armed with a single low power nose laser. But that laser would be enough to knock out any nuke warhead launched by the wasp ship when the fleet left its current orbit above the moon. O’Sullivan was very aware that his base could not stay on the same side of his world as the enemy, unlike the wasp ship that was in a fixed geosync orbit just above Stockholm.

“Jacob! Uh, captain,” called Daisy. “Look at the spysat images!”

He looked away from the local true space holo and up to the spysat image that filled the middle of the wallscreen. The fifteen wasp ships were all firing their thrusters and moving up and away from their new colony world. Green beams shot out from three wasp ships, hitting three of the spysats his father had left in geosync orbits both equatorial and polar. The wallscreen image shifted from a dead spysat to a still living one, sending a live stream of neutrino-transmitted images across two AU.