Battleship Destroyer (71 page)

"Comm. Flash Commander Gagnon
to update the running torpedoes to coordinate with the asteroid cloud." The Captain started tapping her fingers on the arm of her chair. "If they can keep the enemy fleet's attention for another minute or two we have them."

"Captain!" Jack glanced over his shoulder at the Captain. "I think the boats are on a collision course with that same cloud sir. They need to maneuver out of
its way now sir."

"Yes they do don’t' they Mr. Turner." The
Captain closed her eyes for a second frowning.

Several seconds passed and Jack looked over his shoul
der at her again. "Well Captain. Aren’t you going to warn Commander Gagnon so he can avoid them?"

"
The boat fleet already knows the cloud is their Jack, from the targeting update we sent them." The Captain took a breath and let it out slowly.   "Mr. Turner. I launched the boats as decoys knowing that it was possible that the boats would be intercepted by the cloud that your plan put there for the enemy fleet to run into in the first place. You had to know that possibility as well when you suggested sending the boats as decoys. The fact that the boats are now manned instead of stupid hulks does not change the fact that if they try to maneuver out of the path of the attacking cloud it could alert the enemy to its existence and give them time to maneuver around it as well. That is if Commander Gagnon even tried."

The Ensign interrupted the Captain. "Torpedoes are changing their courses and accelerating to intercept the enemy at the
same time as the asteroid cloud." The Ensign tapped several icons on her board. "Detecting new torpedo and missile launches from the boats sir. Telemetry from them indicates that they are targeting the fleet to arrive at the same time as well sir." Large explosions started appearing around the boats that looked a lot like big guns firing without the big beams streaking toward the enemy. "Captain the boats are detonating flash bomb decoys around themselves. Why?" She said baffled.

"To an enemy it can look like they are being fired upon if you don't look very close and I have a suspicion that the energy surge of the gun firing is all they look at anyway."

"We just lost a boat Captain!" Tactical suddenly said.

"My God! Why don’t they get out of its way damn it?"

"Duty Mr. Turner. They went knowing it was a one way trip Lieutenant. Now get ahold of yourself and do your duty."

"One minute to impact sir. The enemy ships have started firing their close in defensive weapons on our to
rpedoes and missiles sir." The Ensign’s hands flew over the controls at the science station. "The enemy fleet is facing our attacking torpedoes and missiles and are taking a lot of them out sir."

"W
e just lost another boat sir." The tactical operator shouted. "Sensors show a direct hit vaporizing the whole damn boat and everyone in it. No survivors or even pieces of the boat. Just a small expanding vapor cloud. Two more…..  Are gone."

"
Impact in 30 seconds. They can't miss now sir."

"Mr. Turner you are
drifting off your course plot. Get that nose up! Or do I need to relieve you?"

Jack suddenly woke up. "
Relieve me?" Ah no sir. Shit! Damn I should have been slowing our decent seconds ago not to mention we need to follow the damn trench." Jack brought the nose of the fleet up and around. Luckily, he was already off coarse drifting in the direction they needed to go to follow the trench as it rushed up at them. The sides of the curved trench in the cloud suddenly loomed above them as they dropped into it and started approaching the far wall of the curve that lead into the long straight trench that ran across that part of the cloud along the course they had been on. Jack had simply entered the curved end of the trench early to get around the enemy fleet just in case it was not taken out by the trap they had set up for it.

Realizing that they were approaching the wall of the trench much
too rapidly he dropped the nose of the fleet turning to direct the full thrust of their engines in an effort to keep the tail end of the string of ships from hitting that wall as they raced around it to enter the long straight trench.

"Half our torpedoes
have been destroyed Captain. Fifteen seconds to interception of the first wave of torps and rocks. The second torpedo wave launched from the boats will be a few seconds behind them since they have had to catch up from the decelerating boats. The enemy still has not responded to the asteroid rock cloud approaching them from their 5 o'clock or stern side quarter along their orbit. And I am detecting soccer ball sized boulders behind the gravel now." The enemy fleet was hard at work firing hundreds of beams into the large spread out mass of decoy boats as flash bombs continued to explode amongst them and the boats continued to launch missiles and torpedoes as fast as they could reload them. While the boats continued to die.

"Another
dozen boats have been vaporized Captain." The Tactical officer was sounding half sick. The excitement long gone from her face and voice. "Three more sir. The boats are launching another round of torpedoes sir. I can't believe they reloaded that fast sir. How big of crews did they send with them?"

"We are going to hit the trench wall!" The Navigator bellowed
catching everyone by surprise except Jack.

Jack pushed the throttles to
400 Gees, the fleet straining to keep up as the two damaged ships started to fall behind with their damaged engines not able to produce the needed thrust. They slowly fell down the line of ships from their protected position in the middle of the line as the wall quickly approached. One ship falling faster than the other.

"Five seconds until
weapons impact with the enemy sir. The enemy still shows no signs of seeing the…"

The massed
enemy fleet of picket ships hit the cloud of gravel doing over a hundred times the speed of light. Each little carbon ceramic pea penetrated the relatively thin side and stern armor of the enemy ship it hit from the quarter rear side leaving a hole.  The hard ceramic carbon rock barely having the time to heat up until it hit something really hard like an armored deck or engine or gun tube where it would fission with the mettle releasing the energy equivalent of a thousand tons of explosives promptly tearing whatever it hit apart. Most of the enemy ships lost a gun or two or an engine with at least a hundred pebbles hitting each ship though spread out as they were, most did not hit anything vital.  Hundreds of holes opened into the enemy ship's sides while defense turrets, targeting sensors and heat radiators were knocked out. But with the big armored decks facing roughly toward the Republic fleet all Jack's crewmates could see was a few engines and weapons attached to the ship on pylons start to drift away while the enemy ships continued to operate without skipping a beat, though not quite so aggressive. Jack missed the sight as he concentrated on the wall they were approaching.

The Ensign studied the
damaged enemy ships on her screen as the whole bridge tried to make up their minds weather to watch the battle on the screen or the approaching deadly wall. "Most of the enemy ships seem to have been hit. Captain. But the damage seems to be light comparatively. A blown up gun or engine on most of them but they are still operational. The torpedoes are going in now. Maneuvering around the sides of the armed decks going after the weapons and sensors. Point defenses seem to be greatly reduced. Three, Two, One."

The light show started again on the scre
en. Most noticed that the close in self-defense gun fire was somewhat reduced as the torpedo's made their final plunge. The torpedo explosions seemed anemic compared to the pebbles hitting the fleet but seemed not to be so random and better targeted. Engines and big long guns started spinning away from ships or suddenly acquired a strange angle.

Jack watch
ed one of the damaged ships lagging behind the Republic fleet enter the wall of the cloud sliding sideways tail first across it. He watched it disintegrate as dust and gas molecules started hitting the ship blasting holes into it and then one of the landing cooling fines flew off and then another. The ship started tumbling as it turned into Swiss cheese. Explosions wracked the ship tearing it apart before it disappeared into the wall.

The fleet continued approaching the wall as Jack
watched in horror. "Damn it. Damn it. I took my eyes off the damn plot and see what happens. Damn me to hell. Captain permission to go to full thrust."

"No
!” She glanced at the Gee meter. "No. You are already at 400 Gee. No more." She had not noticed the rapidly approaching wall behind her with her eyes fixed on the enemy fleet.

"Captain, the enemy has started targeting the smart boulders
, they are swinging half of their ships around to face them. A minute to impact sir. The boats are launching another wave of missiles and torpedoes. The second wave of torpedoes are a minute out sir. And we are picking up missile signatures on the other side of the boulders, thousands of them.  Sir. The stealth missiles should have attacked next and gotten closer before powering up and giving away their positions sir. Someone screwed up sir. They already had plenty of velocity. Or should I say the target has plenty of velocity and all the damn missile had to do was use its powered thrust to make sure it hit a target. From this fucking distance the enemy may be able to maneuver out of the missiles tracking parameters."

The smart
boulders hit next. Only a little over half a foot around with a simple guidance system, the rocks had cores of compressed ultra-heavy dense hydrogen called Quadreum. Most of the heavily armored soccer balls managed to not get taken out by the greatly reduced close range self-defense weapons. With several hitting each ship at a hundred times the speed of light.  The armored Soccer balls had a cone in the back side of the armor where their propulsion and guidance package was housed. The cone was designed to focus the energy of hitting a solid target into the Quadreum using the armored front as an anvil by turning around to present the cone onto the target just before impact.  Most that managed to penetrate the defenses, managed to turn that cone around just before they hit. Most of those that made the turn exploded, producing megaton fusion explosions that tore apart the heaviest shields and the ship behind them in mile wide fireballs.

"My God sir
; most of the enemy Battleships just disappeared. They are gone." The ensign said shocked.

"The pebble cloud hit our boat
fleet sir." The Captain turned to face the Executive Officer making the report. "We lost 5 boats with half the rest damaged with pea sized punctures in the hulls. Evidentially if the rocks didn't hit anything solid to explode against, the boats only have to patch the small holes."

The
seven enemy ships that were left had almost a thousand feet of armored shield decks facing the on slot of smart rocks and survived with half their shield decks missing and the rest pancaked down onto the top of the bottom armored shield deck. While all 7 started tumbling after the blasts, only half of them proceeded to stabilize themselves and immediately started firing at the decoy boats again turning their shields toward them. Evidentially blaming the boats for the fusion bombs.  The 7 were immediate the target of almost two hundred torpedoes from one side in a large arc and over a thousand penetrator tipped missiles attacking from 140 degrees to the side.  Several more of the enemy ships started to recover and turned to face the torpedoes while some faced the missiles. It did not matter. Between the two attacking groups against even the few defenses the enemy ships had left, they did not stand a chance.

The torpedoes programmed to go around the shield decks
by Commander Gagnon's orders and at their slow relative speeds after being launched from the boats, had no problem going around and attacking the Enemy Battle ships soft assess. With all the torpedoes talking amongst themselves to insure every ship had an equal amount of attention. The close range self-defenses on all the remaining and already damaged ships simple could not cope with such a massive attack from both sides. With an average of 40 torpedoes hitting each ship tearing into the lightly armored personnel and control sections.  While the penetrator warheads of at least 350 missiles hit each ship ignoring the shield decks.  Going too fast to maneuver very far, the missiles managed to penetrate the 20 foot thick armored hulls of the engines and guns as well as the personnel decks sending million degree metal fanning out through the insides of the personnel and equipment sections of the ship followed by the main warhead of the missile exploding. Devastating to the insides of the ship even if the missile had no shield to hit as it penetrated the ship.

The high velocity missiles
hitting the 7 remaining equipment hulls on the ships turned them into Swiss Cheese as they started to tumble with flames showering out from scattered holes.

"Well we may have some hulks to check out after all if
we get time." The Captain stood up with a huge smile on her face, stepping up as close to the forward screen as she could get looking at the hulks. "Almost be worth losing the secret of our new engines to take the time to check them out and find out just who the hell we are fighting as well as their secrets."

"Captain."  The Tactical Officer sounded baffled. "I am
picking up the readings of thousands of the Heavy hydrogen core rocks approaching the hulks. A few transport must have been late releasing their cargo. Most are ignoring the hulks."