COMBAT SALVAGE 2165 (8 page)

Hundreds of millions of Ks away, the battlegroup’s last breaching ship,
Fat Anne
, opened the transit to Beta Ursae Majoris, the convoy's next stop. Wrigley reported the emissions. They sent no last message before
Hardway
and all the ships of the battlegroup and the convoy entered the passage. Wrigley told them when the transit had closed behind them. "We’re all alone at Algol now," he said.
 

Because he’d just been fooled by Rampone’s impersonation of a Squidy transmission, Tig almost didn’t say anything about the formation of five stars that seemed to have ripped themselves loose from the black just to follow the junks and the destroyer towards their rendezvous with the drifting breaching ship. He zoomed in with his helmet, but they were too close to Algol for him to see them clearly in visible light or IR and too far away to read their transponders. He couldn’t even make out the color of their jets. The swollen star’s glare made even the Squidies’ pinkish exhaust flares look pale blue like a friendly craft. When he pointed them out to Parker, Rampone heard him and said, "What? That formation out there? Oh, that’s not Squidy. That there is way more dangerous. That’s the Lancers, the 133rd Fighter Test Squadron.

He said, "Why are they rolling in on us like that. They look like they’re rolling in for an attack run."

"You’re right," Rampone said. He zoomed in on them, himself. "That’s weird. They
do
look like they’re about to attack."
 

*****

"
Maintain attack formation," Jordo said. "I lost the contact again, but I swear it’s out there."
 

The flares from the two junks’ engines grew larger in Jordo’s cockpit canopy as the 151s closed on them. The Lancers would have to pull away in less than sixty seconds. Jordo hoped that would be long enough to get a fix on his LiDAR ghost.

Dirty whispered her next words like whatever was lurking out there might hear. "We’re coming in pretty hot on those junks and that destroyer."

"
Hold course and speed. And tighten up the formation," Jordo said. "Make a LiDAR net. Holdout and Gusher, pull parallel with me and Paladin. It’s out there and we’ll spot it if we get close enough." Holdout and Gusher accelerated and then tapped their maneuvering thrusters forward to fall into line with Jordo and his wingman.
 

Gusher couldn’t contain the excitement in his voice. "I got a glimmer! Between us and the destroyer, 3 by fifteen off my nose. 43,000Ks out.
Shite
. It’s gone."

"
I
got it now," Paladin said, and Jordo’s 151 saw it too. His flight helmet projected a faint, specter in the visor for an instant, and then, it was gone again. "Lost it."
 

"
39,000Ks. Three point five by fifteen off my nose."
 

"
Whatever it is, it’s not a reflection. It’s moving closer."
 

"Move to intercept.
We’ll be on top of it in twenty seconds." It had only been less than a minute since the first flickers on their LiDAR screens and Jordo hadn’t called it in yet because he wasn’t sure, but now, as they closed on the contact, it appeared in his visor again, and this time, it was close enough that he could zoom in and see the waving patch of stars with his naked eyes. Something was there, bending the light around itself. Jordo thumbed comms to the junks and UNS Duer. "Lancer 1-1 calls bogie, bogie.
Duer
, you have an unknown craft on your port side closing out of the sun. Best range estimate is now under 15,000Ks from your position."
 

The UN destroyer responded. "Lancer 1-1, this is UNS Duer and we have zero bogies on LiDAR, radar or IR. You run a syscheck on that Bitzer's array?"

"Lancer
1-1, this is Pardue in
Greenstone
. My EWO had something, but now, he can’t see squa-" Pardue broke off in mid-sentence and as the Lancers ripped past the location of the last known contact, Jordo knew why.
 

At only a kilometer’s distance, it looked like a pale, blackish silver ghost made only of the searing light from Algol that it couldn’t lens around itself. It was gone again even before the Lancers shot past, but before it slipped back into the starry black, it launched four warheads.

"
Vampire! Vampire!" Jordo called out on comms. "Four enemy warheads 15,000 Ks out to port and… headed for
Tipperary
! Bearing 182 mark 12."
 

The junks and the destroyer were a lot closer, but it had shot at the breaching ship. The alien warheads accelerated and left faint trails pointing to
Tipperary
where she hung, not far from the muddy yellow, second planet, where the Squidies had waited in ambush the first time.

"
Tipperary
, this is Lancer 1-1." He had no idea if they could hear him or even if there was anyone alive on that darkened and fragile hull, but he told any potential survivors the only thing he imagined they’d want to know about right now. "The Lancers will handle those alien warheads for you. Sit tight."
 

*****

Tig tracked the four alien bombs and zoomed in on them with his visor. They rolled on their spiky thrusters as they streaked towards the breaching ship. Whatever had loosed them had done it close enough to
Audacity
that Tig had a detailed view of their casings from the rear. The alien warheads were almost as big as the alien fighters. They’d been packed with maneuvering thrusters like a fighter, too. Once you engaged them, they put on a hell of a set of evasive combat maneuvers. He’d seen a few of them come in at
Hardway
, corkscrewing around the shells from the turrets.
 

"
The Lancers will get ‘em," Rampone said, poking the porthole with his finger like the line of alien torpedoes crawling across it were bugs and he was squishing them. All of the redsuits pressed to the portholes. Wrigley stayed glued to his console and Phipps was too busy checking his systems one more time to watch someone else’s action.
 

"
Those Squidy warheads are goin’ pretty fast," Wrigley said. "They got a lead and a jump on the Lancers. "They might not catch ‘em before the bombs hit
Tipperary
."
 

"
You're stuffed full of it," is what Rampone said to that.
 

Parker went to the data, of course. "At max acceleration, the Lancers F-151s will put Squidy’s flying bombs in cannon range in…" Parker gestured in front of her helmet, trying to get an estimate based on observed speed of the alien warheads. She knew how to work the slimmed down version of the OMNI NAV system built into a standard Staas exosuit pretty well. Tig knew she had the answer when she stopped gesturing. She opened her mouth to speak, but Raleigh cut her off.

"
Stifle it, Cherry. Don’t you spoil our pool. We start the clock in 30 seconds and my fifty Ameros say the Lancers take the Squidy bombs in 30 to 35 seconds after that. "
 

"
I got 35 to 40." Wambach was in.
 

So was Posjic. "25 to 30."

"With
that
lead?  Squidy bombs fly over 1060 KSS.
And
they got a head start. The shells won’t catch up until at least 50 seconds."
 

"
So what’s your claim?"
 

"
45-50. Money, money, money." Komora was superstitious.
 

"
50-55," Rampone said. "And it’ll be a long-range kill."
 

"
Anyone else? And…..mark," Raleigh said. "The clock’s ticking."
 

The alien warheads barreled ahead as if
they
thought they’d make it.
 

Tig could have worked it out like Parker had, but he didn’t have to. The alien warheads were flying flat out, as fast as they could and he could see the Lancers gaining on them a little bit at a time. He knew their relative ranges so what he saw was no trick of the eye. "Sixty-five seconds," Tig said.

"
Cherries ain’t allowed to play."
 

The 151s rolled in on the flying bombs for a long-range deflection shot. Rampone said, "
There
it is. 55 seconds..."
 

Tig said, "The haven't hit them yet." The streams of fire from the first 151s stitched across the black, curving, reaching out for the alien bombs. The alien bombs jinked hard to avoid that first salvo and Tig realized the first two planes were herding them just before the rest of the Lancers opened up and the alien bombs flew into a hellfire rain of 140mm shells. The HE-443s and OT Sabot loaded by some redsuit’s hand sparked on the alien hull casings before they penetrated, detonated, and shredded everything inside.

The Squidies’ bombs cooked off harmlessly in empty space nowhere near
Tipperary
. "62 seconds on the nose," Parker said. "How’d you do that, Tig?"
 

"
Too easy." That’s what Tig thought he heard Wrigley mutter to himself just before the junk spun around him and the bulkhead smashed into him from the side and tried to brain him with the edge of the electronic warfare console. It had been on the other side of the compartment just a second ago.
 

"Brace for ACM," Burn said over internal comms like it was an afterthought. You were supposed to say that
before
you bounced your passengers off the bulkhead. She called out to the other two ships. "
Greenstone
and UNS
Duer
, come about for gunnery, now, now, now!"
 

Out the starboard porthole,
Greenstone’s
pilots didn’t ask questions, the gunnery junk fired thrusters in opposition and spun to put more of its turrets on target.

"
Audacity
, this is Commander Tobin on UNS Duer, what the hell are you doing?"
 

"
Come about for defensive action!"
 

Only 2Ks behind the destroyer, the stars shimmered like someone had thrown gravel in a puddle reflecting them. The distortion hung behind UNS
Duer
like a killer raising a knife. Tig knew UNS
Duer
saw it too when the Commander in the chair thumbed comms at the same time he gave orders to his NAV. "Oh my god…. come about! Come about! One Eight Zero! All defensive batteries, contact bearing one eight zero, fire! fire! fire!"
 

The stealthed Squidy ship that snuck up behind
Duer
fired a single warhead, almost point blank. The flying bomb traveled for less than a second before it detonated up against the slender destroyer’s engines. Tig’s helmet dimmed to save his eyes and when it let him see again,
Duer
had been knocked forward and its shape had changed. It was bent around a volcano where its main engines should have been. The doomed ship tumbled past the port side of the junk and shuddered before her hatches blew and she jetted fire. Internal detonations rippled her hull in nauseating waves in the moments before she burst.
 

Audacity
and
Greenstone
blazed from their turrets and raked the sky in vengeance, but they hit nothing. The shells streaked off across Algol until they spread thin and dim, and their fire petered out in the black.
 

7

"
Audacity
and
Greenstone
, this is Lancer 1-1. Do you have eyes on any survivors?"
 

Paladin answered for them. "Don’t look like it."

That alien played them… played
him
. Jordo sent all his fighters after those warheads just like it wanted him too. He had no idea if a Squidy thought anything like a human thought, but this one had outsmarted him. Now, UNS
Duer
was nothing but an expanding debris cloud spread out behind the junks.
 

"
No survivors," Burn said over comms. "No lifeboats; no pods. Lancer 1-1, hold your current position and maintain guard on that breaching ship. We are coming to you."
 

"
Audacity
…Burn… What the hell was that thing?" He asked out in the open and Burn must have known plenty of people were listening.
 

"When Cozen had me flying at Sirius," she said. "Things got pretty haeney. Ships went down like
Tipperary
went down more than once.
Baentz
,
Nimrod…
Nobody ever knew why it happened. There was never any proof of any enemy ship around when it happened. Nobody ever saw nothing. Accidents," she said. "Had to call it all accidents and bad luck. But the pilots in the 71st, the Spittin’ Cobras… they got stuck on the idea that it was a stealthed Squidy doing it somehow… Some kind of prototype zapping their reactors to overload ‘em maybe…didn’t always work, they said, but the 71st attributed half the mystery reactor problems the big ships had to that thing. They said we never saw it because the stealthed Squidy warship was too smart to show himself when the enemy was superior. Smarter to stay hid. Take the soft kill and get away to do it again. Like some kinda serial killer. 71st called it
The Ripper
."