Sentience 1: Storm Clouds Gathering (45 page)

When their munitions were expended or bingo fuel was reached, the remaining Confederate fighters peeled away to return to their carriers at the predetermined rendezvous point. Fleet-Admiral Kalis, who had previously transferred his flag to the light cruiser CSS
Exeter
, ordered a general withdrawal of the Confederate Fleet back towards Ginia, when he received the message they would be without fighter cover while his fighters went to rearm and refuel. Another battlecruiser, two heavy cruisers, two frigates and four more destroyers were lost by the time the Confederate fleet managed to withdraw out of range, but they managed to destroy another 41 Union fighters.

When long-range scans revealed half of the Confederate fighter squadrons were heading directly towards his carriers, Bishop ordered 250 of his outbound fighters with anti-fighter armament aboard to reverse course and assist the 200 Union
Raptors
and
Demons
swirling in a figure-8 racetrack pattern in combat space patrol, in front of the Union fleet.

By the time an echo from the reemerging Confederate carriers appeared on Bishop’s long-range scans, he only had about 225 fighters with full anti-ship loads remaining that hadn’t launched their missiles yet, so he sent orders for those to divert and go after the defenseless Confederate carriers, sitting all alone out there. The Federal fighters were almost halfway to the Confederate carriers when three more blips appeared nearby on the Union scanners, but after initially ascertaining there were definitely nine ships out there, no one thought to count the blips again after that.

When 330 Confederate
Raptors
and
Demons
tore into 200 of their Union brethren guarding the Union fleet, it was reminiscent of war games played countless times before, except that the real weapons resulted in real losses and real deaths this time around.

Bishop, wanting to keep those enemy fighters away from his carriers, ordered his combat space patrol to meet the enemy well away from the Union fleet. This was what the Confederates were hoping for, as it enabled them to engage the Union fighters at a true 3:2 numerical advantage without being subjected to anti-spacecraft fire from the Union fleet. With virtual equalities in both equipment and experience, the 3:2 advantage in numbers the Confederate pilots enjoyed became the primary difference maker in both tactics and results. Only 24 of those Federal fighters remained when the 250 returning
Lightnings
arrived to smash into the remaining 219 Confederates.

When the Confederates' munitions were expended, the surviving 167 turned and ran back towards the Confederate fleet. Five more were lost to pursuing
Lightnings
before the Union fighters were recalled, so they could be rearmed, refueled and relaunched before the returning strike fighters arrived.

Vice Admiral Kent had been ordered by Admiral Kalis to bring
only
his three carriers to the rendezvous point, while leaving the remainder of TF-22 hidden in Ginia’s planetary shadow. Instead of finding nine defenseless carriers at their mercy, the 225 redirected Union
Mustangs
carrying anti-ship loads ran right into the teeth of 230 Confederate
Raptors
and
Demons
specifically outfitted for destroying fighters… which they did… with incredible efficiency.

Admiral Thorn had been shadowing the Union fleet within visual distance of their myriad of drive plumes and she marveled at the incredibly vast numbers of enemy vessels right in front of her. Two full task-forces were a considerable force, but being
this
close to just over three complete enemy fleets was a bit unnerving.

Thorn had noted the time when the Federal attack force finished assembling and turned for the attack on Admiral Kalis’ 1st Fleet. Knowing the nominal cruising time necessary for the attack force to reach 1st Fleet, approximate loitering time during the attack before munitions were expended, and the time to return for rearmament, Thorn had a rough idea of when the fighter armada should be returning to their carriers. She wrestled with the tempting idea of attacking the Yankees while their strike force was well away, but Admiral Kalis’ orders were explicit — she was to wait for the enemy’s combat space patrol to be dealt with, so that her fighters could reap maximum carnage on the enemy fleet with full anti-ship loads.

Thorn
almost
jumped when she saw the Federal defensive screen zoom away to meet Kalis’ inbound fighters, but from her position behind all those drive plumes, they had been unable to get a hard count of the number of defensive fighters that had been drawn away. There was just no telling how many, if any, defensive fighters might still be loitering in front the Union fleet. Although she was admittedly antsy to launch and struggled with the decision, she waited.

Suddenly over 100 drive plumes, obviously from fighters, were spotted inbound and then began disappearing.
They’re recovering them. Too early… too early to be returning from the strike force. That has to be defensive fighters coming back.
Although she was disappointed that so many of the Federal fighters appeared to have survived their encounter with Kalis’ fighters, it appeared a window of opportunity had opened. When the small plumes stopped disappearing, Thorn turned to her communications officer.

“Signal the fleet by tight-beam laser. All carriers launch fighters immediately. All ships to battle-stations in preparation for action. On my order.” Admiral Eileen Thorn was about to order a close-range attack on five times her own number. This could get ugly… very, very quickly.

After the Federal fighters turned away to return to their carriers, Admiral Kalis ordered the remainder of 1st Fleet still able to fight to again reverse course, back towards the incoming Union fleet. His command had been ravaged, taking the brunt of the massive initial Federal attack, so he also ordered the remainder of TF-22 hiding behind Ginia to rendezvous with 1st Fleet near the mid-way point between the two converging fleets. On his way back to the fight, Admiral Kalis also issued an urgent distress call, requesting assistance from Norf Fleet shipyard, to collect survivors from among the wreckage of 1st Fleet.

“They’re launching more fighters,” exclaimed Daniel Simmington.

“Must be the defensive reserve,” remarked Aneke. “They’ve evidently spotted a threat moving towards the fleet, although I don’t see how that could be possible. With over 1,400 fighters coming at them, the rebels would be foolish to spare any of their defensive screen to try attacking the Federal fleet.”

“I’d have thought Bishop would have already had his fighter screen launched and ready,” remarked Morgan Rainey.

“Me, too,” said McCauley. What the hell is Bishop up to?”

Due to the tremendous aftward distortion generated by their own drive plumes, most of the ECM operators on the Federal carriers never detected the Confederate fire-control scanners locking onto them. The few that did were understandably startled when signals suddenly erupted, in such incredible strength, from seemingly empty space. None saw the missiles themselves lock on.

After recovering Vice Admiral Kent’s 228 surviving fighters, eleven of the twelve Confederate carriers accelerated up to transition speed, while the
Princeton
began limping back toward the Norf Fleet shipyard, orbiting Ginia, for repairs. During the run up to transition speed, Kent’s fighters were rearmed with anti-fighter loads. When transition speed was achieved, the carriers again did a 31-second tachyon jump at 350c, which put them near the rendezvous point with TF-22 coming in from behind Ginia.

Again, the double-transitions within seconds were very hard on the crews and required them to again utilize stimulant injectors to recover from transition shock. This one was especially hard on the crews of Kent’s three carriers, as it came so close on the heels of their first double-transition from behind Ginia. Over two hundred crewmen required a third dose of stimulant — putting 36 of them into stimulant-shock. In the ship’s dispensary, four of them died... one of whom, was Vice Admiral Kent.

Anti-ship missiles and pulse-lasers of between five and fourteen gigawatts poured directly into the unarmored plasma tubes mounted in the sterns of the Union carriers at virtually point-blank range. As the enemy carriers were the primary targets of the initial salvo, it was unsurprising when sixteen were destroyed totally and the remaining six left dead in space, with their reactor rooms and engines blown away. Despite being completely surprised, the rest of the Federal fleet reacted quickly. The escorts on the outer edges of the Union fleet began looping outwards with their scanners in acquisition mode.

“What the hell?” yelled Ted Wentworth.

“Weren’t those some of our ships that just blew up?” asked Aline McCauley.

“Those were carriers that just exploded!” roared J.P. Aneke. “Our carriers. What the fuck is going on?”

“I couldn’t tell. They just seemed to blow up, for no apparent reason,” exclaimed Ruby.

The big cruisers near the center of the Union’s globe formation found maneuvering room cramped in all directions, allowing the Confederates to get off a complete second salvo, right up the cruiser’s vulnerable drive tubes. Collisions occurred as cruiser crews became frantic to achieve maneuvering room.

Fear of the
unknown
becomes amplified to incredible proportions when heavy ships all around you suddenly begin exploding for no apparent reason. When the Federal carriers exploded in radioactive flames, their escorting cruiser crews were initially stunned. After the Confederates' second salvo, pandemonium reigned amongst the inexperienced bridge crews of the surviving Federal battlecruisers and heavy cruisers — thrown into a panic by not knowing
what
was killing their fleet.

With their fleet commander dead or marooned on a dead hulk, and having no room to maneuver freely, one or more of these cruiser captains either panicked, or merely followed each other’s example, but one-by-one, the remaining twelve large cruisers jumped into tachyon space and disappeared. Much of the Confederates' third volley went wasted as the remaining Federal heavies escaped into hyperspace, but it did manage to destroy fourteen light cruisers with stern shots and severely damaged four others that managed to turn far enough they the hits glanced off of their relatively thin armored hulls.

The multitude of frigates and destroyers on the outer edges of the Union’s globular formation completed their turn and acquired Thorn’s Confederate 2nd fleet. Confederate ECM went active when the Yankees’ fire-control scanners locked on, some of which managed to break-lock, forcing the Federals to reacquire, and the electronic dance commenced. Over half of the remaining Union ships got off a volley, just as the Confederate fighters mauled them.

“Those ships just fired on the rear of their own fleet,” yelled Robert Eastman.

“Look, those fighters are going after their own ships,” exclaimed Ted Wentworth.

“Those aren’t our fighters.” roared J.P. Aneke. “Somehow the damned rebels snuck in BEHIND our fleet, and they’re tearing the hell out of them.”

“Behind them?” asked Morgan Rainey. “Is that bad?”

“There’s no way to armor drive tubes. Might as well be shooting into tin foil…
any
ship is dead meat to a shot directly up the ass.”

Suddenly, a large bolt of pure plasma shot by... alarmingly close to Aneke’s space yacht.

“God damn!” yelled Dan. “What the fuck was that?”

“That was a plasma bolt from a 5-gigawatt pulse-laser from one of our destroyers that missed its intended target. Captain, get us out of here… NOW!” yelled Aneke. “Keep the external cameras focused on the fleet. I want to know what the fuck happened here today.”

Just before they made it back to the safety of hyperspace, Aneke’s cameras captured the image of an explosion caused by a Federal thermally guided anti-fighter missile that had been pulled off target by a phosphorous flare popped by an alert Confederate pilot…

…which then locked on to the fusion plume of a nearby pleasure craft full of senators, their entourage of idle rich admirers and the inevitable group of accompanying paparazzi.

The single remaining Union flag officer, a commodore from a light cruiser squadron, knew she had the remaining Confederate ships badly outnumbered, but despite her burning desire to wreak vengeance on the Southerners for what they had just done to the Union fleet, she also knew that her remaining ships couldn’t stand up to another pass from all those fighters without fighter support of their own. She also knew that her primary responsibility was to get her remaining ships back to Waston and deliver their eyewitness reports of what had happened here to Fleet Headquarters.

Admiral Thorn was wrestling with a similar decision. Her fighters could obliterate the remaining Union ships with another pass, but she’d probably lose her entire command in the process. She had to protect her carriers, but just before she ordered a general retirement, the Federal commodore sent out an encrypted omindirectional radio signal… and the remaining Federal ships began disappearing into tachyon space.

Under threat of annihilation from the remaining Confederate warships and fighters, Admiral Thorn’s offer of safe conduct and assistance in return for surrender was reluctantly accepted by the surviving Federal ships that were too badly damaged to escape. Confederate Marines and damage control parties were ferried out on shuttles to take charge of the Federal ships and help get their fires extinguished. Other damage control parties were also shuttled to assist the incapacitated ships of 2nd Fleet.

Admiral Thorn’s five functional carriers had barely enough time to retrieve their 428 surviving fighters, rearm them with anti-fighter loads and launch them again, before the first wave of returning Federal fighters arrived to find all of their carriers transformed into drifting space junk. Low on fuel, their munitions expended, and over 400 angry
Raptors
and
Demons
ringing them, the stunned Northern pilots had very little choice but to accept Admiral Thorn’s clear-voice offer of an honorable surrender, in return for a place to set their exhausted birds down.