Battleship Avenger (Conquest of Stars Book 2) (19 page)

“Col. Kartar of
Starfirian fighters sends message that they are on their way for their part in
the mission,” Jovus said.

“Prepare our
fighters too,” Bakus said, “get them in their planes.”

“Fighter pilots
ready to launch,” Porus replied, “Awaiting orders.”

The five hundred
Starfirian space fighters had flown astern Battleship
Avenger
to avoid
detection and identification as an independent force and now they broke cover
and flew towards the small moon that was the lone satellite of the planet. The
moon’s gravity masked the minute gravitational signature of the spacefighters.

“General, the
enemy battleship is moving at a 45 degree angle from our vector to the planet,”
Tagg said.

“Flanking?” Joules
looked at Bakus with questioning face.

“Yes, but more
than that,” Bakus said, “They want to catch us in crossfire between their
spaceship and their planetary weapons. However we practice this very tactic
every year on both sides of it. I want that ship to be kept between Avenger and
the planet. Get to it.”

Joules and the
flight crew worked frantically to maneuver Avenger and it banked hard to its
left and accelerated to avoid getting flanked. The Mercurian battleship
reversed course a hundred and eighty degrees and Avenger mimicked it precisely
and it too turned on its heel. The Mercurian battleship turned straight towards
Avenger and accelerated rapidly in an attempt to pass it. But Avenger’s flight
crew was dexterous and experienced, having been chosen from the best of
Nestorian battlefleet crews, and it too swung its nose rapidly out towards space
and accelerated furiously. Before Mercurian battleship could rise parallel to
it, the Nestorian ship had darted off further in space still keeping the
Mercurian ship between them and the planet.

Then the battle
began.

The Mercurian
commander must have reached the limits of his frustration because he abandoned
space maneuvers and let loose with a massive volley of rockets.

“Return fire,
rocket for rocket,” Bakus said.

“Launching
offensive and defensive rockets,” Xanus replied.

Rockets launched
from the tubes of both battleships and lurched at each other. Many collided in
mid space while others smashed on to the shields protecting the hull.

“Activate the
laser defense system,” Bakus said, “switch it to automatic.”

“Laser is on
automatic, general,” Joules said, “We should start firing concentrated lasers
at them.”

“Joules take
personal charge of laser offensive,” Bakus said, “Probe for weakness in their
shields.”

“Yes general,
taking control,” Joules said. He started identifying potential targets on the
enemy’s hull and passed them to the junior laser officers who would try to
strike them. Streaks of powerful green laser rushed from Avenger’s cannons and
splattered over the Mercurian battleship at multiple points. The Mercurian
commander retaliated with blue lasers striking Avenger every which way.

Bakus knew he had
an advantage here. The Mercurian ship had taken some damage to its hull that
was visible and also picked up by the scanners and identified by the computers
which compared pattern over the entire hull. The fact that it was a sub-light
speed battle made visual targeting possible as the laser officers were doing.
They were using telescopes to find spots on enemy’s hull that might be signs of
damage and testing them with concentrated laser. All they had to do was to open
one hole large enough for a rocket to pass through and keep it open long enough
for it to reach inside and then the warhead abroad the rocket would tear the
enemy from inside out.

The Avenger had a
new, fully charged shield and while a spaceship’s hull was never completely
uniformly strong, it would take a lot of random probing laser fire from
Mercurian battleship to find a weak spot on her.

“General, the
enemy has launched spacefighters,” Tagg said, “the computer estimates 300 of
them.”

“No doubt to try
to take out our laser cannons,” Joules said.

“Porus, launch all
fighter planes,” Bakus said, “Order them to restrict their objective to
intercept the enemy fighters till further notice.”

“Yes sir, sending
directions to Capitan Agnosis now,” Porus replied, “Fighter planes launching at
ten per second.”

Capitan Agnosis
was the first spacefighter out of Avenger’s bay and he accelerated straight at
the incoming enemy fighters. He was joined by his squadron mates and they
readied their rockets and lasers while counting down the seconds to the
effective range. There were 200 of them and while they were outnumbered Agnosis
wasn’t too worried. They had experience fighting the Mercurians and he had
handpicked the best pilots from across the entire Nestorian battlefleet for
this mission.

An enemy
spacefighter flew at him head on and Agnosis strafed him with his lasers at
full charge. He took off a wing from the enemy fighter and sent it tumbling
wayward in space. He quickly pulled up to avoid the incoming rocket it had
managed to lob at him and the rocket made a narrow pass under his fuel tank.

The Nestorian and
Mercurian spacefighters passed each other firing lasers and then turned around
to engage each other in dogfights. Mercurians took advantage of their superior
numbers and many of their spacefighters kept flying towards
Avenger
.
Agnosis and a few others pulled their fighters in a reverse roll and got on
their tail. Their primary objective was to save their powerful laser cannons.
Agnosis now fired a rocket at a Mercurian spacefighter heading towards
Avenger
which banked hard to the right and the rocket went straight ahead and exploded
against Avenger’s hull. Agnosis cursed violently although he knew a single
rocket from a spacefighter would barely scratch a battleship’s hull.

“How is our laser
attack going?” Bakus asked abroad the battleship.

“The Mercurian is
a sturdy ship,” Joules replied, “But at this range we are hitting it with most
of our shots. Just a matter of time before we can penetrate their shield and
hull at someplace.”

“General, we are
picking up rocket launches from the planet’s surface and from under its methane
oceans,” Tagg said.

“They have also
started firing ground based lasers at us,” Joules said.

So the
Mercurian commander was feeling the pressure of the battle
, Bakus thought.
That was a good sign and now if only the Starfirians executed their part of the
mission aptly they would gain an upper hand.

“Permission to
divert some rockets at the planet?” Xanus asked, “Tagg’s scanner data is
identifying geolocations of their rocket launch platforms and laser cannon stations.”

“No,” General
Bakus said firmly, “We concentrate on their battleship. If we can defeat it, we
will mop up the planetary defenses. Capitan Jovus, send all the data about
plausible locations of their ground defenses to Starfirian spacefighters.”

“Sending now,”
Jovus replied.

Colonel Kartar
Ryft was sitting in his spacefighter watching the data stream in from the
battle between Nestorian and Mercurian battleship.
Avenger
was
performing better but its victory was far from a foregone conclusion. And now
lasers and rockets were flying in from the planet to aid their battleship. Most
lasers missed Avenger well off the mark. It must be difficult for their
operators to aim at Avenger when their own battleship was in between and
obscuring the view, Kartar thought. But the rockets were faring better as they
could maneuver around the Mercurian ship in their flight path to the target.

The five hundred
Starfirian spacefighters were hovering on the dark side of the moon biding
their time. As Kartar was checking out the battle data from their own sensors,
he received an encrypted message from
Avenger
. He looked it over and
then smiled.

“Attention, Col.
Kartar speaking,” he said on the comm. channel to the rest of his force, “we
have received the signal. Prepare for the strike mission: fly low and hit
hard.”

 The Starfirian
spacefighters launched from the moon and accelerated rapidly to the other side
of the planet from the battle. Col. Kartar looked at the planet from his own
eyes as it became larger and larger in his view. He had never known a planet
like this to be habitable for any alien race he had heard of. The Mercurians
must be a real strange one, he thought to himself as their fleet descended down
on the planet. The planet’s composition was primarily methane and the surface
of the vast blue oceans of liquid methane along with the planet’s atmosphere
were shrouded in dense white fog, however it was not uniformly distributed and
there were clear spots in the sky.

“Ready the
fighters for the strike run,” Kartar said over the common channel once they had
descended to a sufficient altitude. He pulled his stick and steadied his
spacefighter in a parallel flight to the planet’s surface and his squadron did
likewise.

The data sent from
Avenger
had now been incorporated into their targeting system by the onboard computers.

“Strike Run,”
Kartar said and all the Starfirian fighters shot their planes forward with
rapid acceleration and they flew across the planet’s atmosphere firing lasers
at any target the computer identified and locked on screen as plausible laser
cannon installation and their rockets were launched by the battle AI on the
ground rocket batteries, silos and potential submarines. It took them ten
minutes to circle the planet and return to the spot they had descended upon
from space. They had suffered few hits as the Mercurians were caught off guard
and their ground defense efforts were concentrated on combating
Avenger
.
 

Kartar looked at
his live spacefighter database; he had lost twelve planes to the anti-aircraft
laser batteries whose operators had scrambled at the last minute.

“Repeat One,”
Kartar said and once again the Starfirian squadron flew a circle across the
planet firing lasers at targets they had missed the first time and with the battle
AI launching another volley of rockets. This time the Mercurians were ready and
they encountered heavy laser fire from multiple military installations and
rockets were also launched their way. Kartar counted fifty seven spacefighters
lost this time. He had a choice to make. The Mercurian targeting system’s
computers must have their own battle AI which was learning more about
Starfirian’s capabilities and tactics in real time and providing better target
solutions to anti-aircraft laser cannons and rockets. They had cut down the
laser and rocket strikes from the planet against Avenger significantly, but he
had to give Gen. Bakus every chance possible to triumph in his dual.
Conquistador
was too far away and if
Avenger
was defeated, his spacefighters could
not take on the Mercurian battleship by themselves. 

“Repeat two,
double speed, single rocket,” Kartar ordered and the Starfirians made a third
strike run circumnavigating the planet but this time in only five minutes. They
only used a single rocket to conserve their supply. The speed was too fast for the
pilots to fire lasers at the targets and the battle computer took over both
laser and rocket strikes. The ground batteries struck back thunderously with a
massive barrage of anti-aircraft lasers and land-to-air rockets; the defenders
had sufficient time by now to bring all their weapons systems online and in
position. Kartar counted loss of eighty three more spacefighters. That was it,
he told himself, and they had also done their jobs. Kartar ordered all his
spacefighters to take off skyward and join the battle in space. There were only
sporadic rocket launches towards
Avenger
and those were from submarines
below the methane oceans; laser fire into space was negligible as they had
knocked out most of the laser cannons.

“Gen. Bakus,” Col.
Kartar opened direct communications to Nestorians, “I hope we have
significantly cut down the ground strikes on your battleship.”

“Colonel you
exceeded expectations,” Bakus said, “Care to provide us a hand up here?”

“Already on our
way,” Kartar said as the Mercurian battleship loomed ever larger in his view.
The remaining three hundred and forty eight Starfirian spacefighters gunned for
the belly of the enemy’s battleship and simultaneously launched a single rocket
each. The rockets drew laser fire from Mercurian laser cannons but this allowed
the Starfirians to fly past the battleship with little fire directed their way
and to join the grand dogfight underway in the space between the two
battleships.

Capitan Agnosis
whistled with joy when he saw the red colored spacefighters pour in from the
other side of Mercurian ship in large numbers and enter the fray firing away
their red lasers. The space turned into a spectacular yet deadly laser show of
blue, green and red lasers shooting in every direction.

“The rocket
strikes from the planet have dropped into negligible numbers,” Tagg said.

“Joules, I want to
try a gamble here,” Bakus said, “The Starfirian fighters have drawn all
Mercurian fighters away from runs on our ship. We can shut off the laser
defense system for a while.”