StarFight 1: Battlestar (8 page)

“Targeting,” Rosemary said, tapping her control panel to send the selected wasp ship coordinates to the carbon dioxide laser gunners at the front ends of the right and left outrigger pods.

Daisy saw those stations go Red Active on her ship deck holo. Everyone else was at Orange Ready status. The proton lasers were aimed sideways at a 90 degree angle off of their head-on aim. The rear pair of lasers and the missile silos waited for an enemy to enter their targeting zone. And the railguns and plasma batteries waited for close-in targets like self-guided missiles and Smart Rocks. She felt her heart beat faster and her skin felt sweaty under the vacsuit fabric. Cool air in her helmet did nothing to relieve the tenseness of her body.

♦   ♦   ♦

Hunter rose off his control bench. His five eyes took in all the perception images and scent trails emitted by the Servants in front of and to either side of him. What did the shape of the Soft Skin formation mean? They had not moved into a half globe for enveloping of his Swarm mobile nests, as another Swarmer would try to do. Nor had they run away on propulsive emissions as a small Swarm group would do when faced with a larger Swarm group moving to attack. On his world of Nest the rule was simple. Fight and defend your territory. Fly away and lose the territory. Or surrender to the new Hunter by offering the sacrifice of their failed Hunter. The last option was how the Swarm had come to control all parts of their home of Nest. No creature, whether of air, water or ground, challenged the Swarm. All other creatures sought to survive. These Soft Skins chose to fight even though they had fewer flying nests than the Swarm. Nine against twelve was an obvious flight path to defeat and death. So be it.

“Stinger Servant!” he scent cast with a strong primer pheromone. “Are the Soft Skin nests within attack range?”

“Not yet,” the young female replied. “Within seventy beats of our wings they will be. Very soon.”

He inhaled her mix of pheromones. And those of Stinger Servants on the other Swarm flying nests. All were ready. All were eager to attack and kill the enemy that sought to claim their new home nest. “Support Hunters, sting and move as you desire,” he said in a mix of aggregation, primer and signal pheromones. “Maintain the shape of our formation, but sting the way your ancestors stung!”

“Range achieved!” signaled the Stinger Servant.

“Sting them!” he scent cast with a massive flow of signal pheromones.

His four foot pads felt the floor humming as the front group of stinger tubes unleashed sky bolts and sky light strikes. His hearing membranes heard the rasping of forearms against hard shells as everyone in the Flight Chamber joined in the attack excitement.

♦   ♦   ♦

Jacob felt shock as yellow lightning bolts and green laser beams shot out from the front group of six wasp ships. The enemy was still 11,000 kilometers distant. Beyond the range of their own CO
2
and proton lasers. But not beyond the enemy’s range.

“Spinning ship!” yelled Slaughter at Navigation.

His eyes saw the red dots of laser and bolt strikes as they struck parts of the
Lepanto
cross-section that floated to his right in one of the four holos before him. Four hits. Two laser strikes on the lower hull just below the Bridge and two lightning bolt hits on the upper hull, just ahead of the right front railgun launcher. He blinked, then realized the adaptive optics and ablative hull coatings had deflected most of the incoming energy. What did penetrate was stopped by the ship’s thick armor.

“All ships, accelerate forward!” he yelled over his helmet comlink that linked him with both his Bridge crew and with the other ships by way of the constant neutrino signals that passed among all their ships. “Break orbit and approach enemy at 900 klicks per minute!”

“Our three main fusion thrusters are firing!” called Akira M’Bala from her Engines post.

Everyone was doing their job. Slaughter had activated the attitude jets to spin the ship about its long axis, thereby reducing the time of impact of enemy beams on any part of the
Lepanto’s
outer hull. M’Bala had kept the ship’s three main fusion pulse drives hot and ready for further use. The
Lepanto
and the eight other ships of the formation now moved forward toward the enemy, no longer holding a stationary geosync position. That joint movement made it harder for the enemy gunners to target any Earth ship and brought the nine of them within range of their own weapons sooner. They needed to fire, now that it was apparent the wasp ships had a slightly greater range for their lasers and lightning bolt weapons than the range of human beam energy weapons.

“Steinmetz!” he yelled. “Analyze enemy weapons. How can they have greater range than our weapons?”

The portly man reached out one hand and touched his Science control pillar. “Sensors report the front ring of tubes on each enemy ship contains both lightning bolt and laser emitters. No idea how the bolt weapon can reach us. The laser beams that impacted had weak power. Clearly they were operating at the extreme end of their weapon’s focusing power.”

Which told him something but nothing of real use. “Tactical! Fire! All ships, fire on enemy hostiles!”

“Firing!” called O’Hara.

Jacob watched as the left and right front laser nodes shot out two green beams at wasp ship W9. The two side proton lasers had to wait until wasp ships were to the left and right of the
Lepanto
. As would the proton lasers on the top and belly of the ship. The Battlestar had incredible weaponry. Two laser nodes on the front ends of the two outrigger pods, two at the rear of the pods, plasma batteries on the spine and belly, eight missile launch silos that circled the ship’s three main exhaust funnels, two front and two rear railguns on the top half of the hull along with four on the bottom half of the hull. Plus their
coup de main
was the antimatter cannon at the front nose of the ship. Its emitter portal had little directional mobility. It could only fire straight ahead, at whatever the ship’s nose was pointed at. Which right now was the largest enemy wasp ship. It lay well beyond the weapon’s 4,000 kilometer range given the enemy’s placement at the rear of the wasp formation.

“Hits on W9!” cried O’Hara.

He saw that in the true space holo that hovered to the right of his seat. There was the silvery sparkle of hull fragments and white puffs of something that must be air. Leastwise, that was what his ship’s topside electro-optical scope showed in the telescopic view of the enemy. The left side holo with its sensor glows for each enemy ship showed three red infrared spots on the forward hull of the enemy ship. Damaged it was, but not destroyed.

“Hits on two other wasp ships!” called Daisy from her XO seat.

Jacob’s eyes drank it all in. Wasp ships W2 and W5 had been hit and damaged by the lasers fired by the cruisers, destroyers and frigates of his formation. Mentally he visualized the weaponry placement of each ship. The cruisers were nearly as powerful as the
Lepanto
. They had dual lasers at the nose and tail, proton lasers on the right and left sides of the ship, plasma batteries at top and bottom, a single railgun launcher on the front nose and four missile launch silos at the rear. The destroyers were smaller but just as deadly. Each one had a single proton laser at the nose, two CO
2
laser nodes at the tail, plasma batteries at top and bottom, and two missile launch silos at the rear. The frigates were swift and mobile but lacked proton lasers. They carried CO
2
lasers at the nose and tail, a single plasma battery and a single missile launch silo at the rear.

“
Britain
reports damage to its topside plasma battery,” Daisy called out, adding words to what Jacob saw in his left side holo that showed sensor images of the battle group’s eight ships. “
Philippines Sea
reports glancing strike on one of its two nose lasers. Both ships remain combat operational.”

Three enemy ships hit in return for hits on three battle group ships, including the
Lepanto
. Jacob did not like equal exchanges. “Slaughter! Shift our forward angle by twenty degrees. Bring us within target aim for W9!”

“Adjusting ship’s vector track,” the woman said hurriedly. “But W9 and all the wasp ships are now jinking erratically. Looks like a random walk formation. Or something like that.”

Jacob saw the enemy ship movements in his right side true space holo. Which now showed the six nearest enemy ships again firing green lasers and yellow lightning bolts at the battle fleet ships. In the same instant his left side holo showed the two groups of his ships firing lasers at two new wasp ships. That made for twelve lasers aimed at two ships. Surely punch through would happen—

“W8 shows an explosion on the middle of its hull!” cried O’Hara from Tactical. “Ship’s jinking has stopped. Motive power is disrupted.”

“
Ofira
and
Hampton Roads
each report laser and bolt hits on their front ends,” Daisy called over their shared comlink. “Both ships are still combat operational.”

Impatience filled Jacob. The range to the front group of six enemy ships was now down to 4,875 kilometers, thanks to the continuing fusion pulse acceleration of the
Lepanto
and the battle group. The enemy was rushing toward them and they were rushing toward the enemy. Which gave both groups a rapidly increasing closure speed.

“Navigation, shift
Lepanto’s
swing to focus on W8.” He licked his lips and told his nerves to get the hell out of his mind. “Tactical, link me with the chief petty officer in charge of the antimatter cannon,” he said.

“Linking,” called O’Hara.

“CPO Jim Linkletter reporting,” came the voice of a young man over Jacob’s helmet comlink. “Acting captain, you have orders for me?”

“I do. Prepare to target wasp ship W8. It’s wounded and not jinking. Advise me when it enters the impact zone of the cannon’s beam.”

Seconds passed. A third volley of laser and lightning bolt fire passed between the wasp ships and the battle group. Ships in both groups were jinking sideways using attitude thrusts and sometimes main drive flares so as to avoid presenting a simple fixed target to enemy gunners. Ships in both groups reported new hits. The frigate
Britain
reported a punch through to its midbody cargohold. Three dead. The ship was still operational and firing back with its nose laser.

“Target within reach!” called Linkletter.

At last
. “Fire antimatter cannon!”

A black beam of magnetically confined negative antimatter shot out from the front of the
Lepanto
and impacted on the middle of the W8 wasp ship.

A small sun replaced the matter and living bodies of the wasp ship.

The expanding yellow-white globe of total matter-to-energy conversion grew and grew, then gradually began to fade as the absolute coldness of empty space drained the plasma ball of its coherence and energy. Eventually only a pale red shell of energetic particles marked the spot where an enemy ship had once lived.

“Linkletter!” Jacob yelled. “Fire at any wasp ship that comes within the impact zone of the AM cannon! Slaughter, shift our nose aim toward whatever enemy ship is closest to where W8 used to be.”

“Shifting!” the woman responded.

“Ready to fire,” Linkletter replied.

Jacob hoped the wasp ships and their leaders would be shocked into brief immobility by the total destruction of one of their ships. Moments were all he needed to gain a lock-on against another wasp ship. Would he have them?

CHAPTER FIVE

Shock filled Hunter’s inner gut. The intruding Soft Skins possessed a black beam unlike anything known to the Swarm. What the beam hit instantly became a globe of plasma. No fragments remained. All aboard the flying nest he knew by its name of
Soft Nest
were gone. Vanished.

“Stinger Servant!” he alarm scent cast. “What kind of stinger is that?”

“Unknown,” the young female scent cast in confused alarm pheromones. “The result resembles what happens in our propulsive devices that fly us through cold space. Or something hit by a flying seed. But particle disruption seeds leave fragments behind. This was not such a stinger.”

“Hunter One,” scent cast the Servant who monitored the cold radiations from space. “The weapon’s impact resembles the few times we have seen distant sky lights explode and die. Perhaps the weapon captures whatever causes such sky death.”

Hunter’s shell hairs stood out as a chill filled the three sections of his hard shell body. Did these Soft Skin intruders possess a weapon capable of killing a sky light? Breathing fast through his spiracles, Hunter realized that only one Soft Skin flying nest had fired the deadly black beam. Which must mean other intruding flying nests lacked this terrible stinger. And the weapon’s range was half or less than that of their sky bolt and sky light stingers. He scent cast a triple level of aggregation pheromones crossed with releaser pheromones.

“Support Hunters! Move your mobile nests outward! Move beyond the stinging range of this new weapon.” What else must he scent cast? “Fighter Leaders, continue your attacks with our sky bolt and sky light stingers! Keep buzzing swiftly to avoid Soft Skin stingers! We have damaged four of their flying nests. A visit with the Matron goes to the stinger Servant who kills a Soft Skin flying nest!”

Sex always motivated every Swarmer. That was something Hunter knew as deeply as he breathed. The millions of eggs birthed each year by the thousands of Matrons on Nest were the cause of their search for new nest homes about distant sky lights. Giving the male stinger Servants an extra motivation for defending their flying nest could not hurt and might help. A new pheromone scent of
fertilization welcome
came to Hunter from the Matron behind him. Good. She agreed with his offer. Now, how soon before a Soft Skin flying nest died?

♦   ♦   ♦

Jacob watched as the wasp ship formation grew closer. The remaining five ships in the front wasp group were now within 3,987 kilometers of his ships. Less than a minute had passed since the antimatter beam firing. A fourth round of laser and sky bolt firings had occurred, with strikes on ships in both fleets. His eight allies were still whole and fighting. The
Lepanto’s
right and left front laser nodes now joined a group of four ships firing at target W3, one of the five remaining front line wasp ships. But the inner group of wasp ships were at 4,312 kilometers out, including the giant wasp ship at the center of their half globe formation.

“Wasp ship W4 is now head-on to us,” Slaughter called from Navigation.

“Ready to fire!” called Linkletter.

“Fire antimatter cannon at W4!” yelled Jacob.

A black beam speared out to the wasp ship that lay straight ahead but was jinking sideways, up and down in short, sharp movements.

It didn’t matter. The meter-wide beam grew in width the further out it traveled.

A second star bloomed yellow-white against the darkness of space.

The plasma fireball’s glow cast light on the dark terminator line of the planet below them.

“Yes!” yelled O’Connor from the seat to the right of Daisy. “Two enemy gone. That makes it ten enemy to our nine ships. Better and better.”

Jacob agreed but stayed quiet. His father the admiral nearly always beat him at chess, ending up with the comment “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch, young man.” The early results of this first engagement were encouraging. But surely this enemy possessed more weapons than the laser and lightning bolt beams. He just hoped the wasps did not possess antimatter cannons. If they did, his ships could die just as easily as the two wasp ships had died.

A new star flare surprised him.

“W3 is gone!” cried O’Hara from Tactical.

How had this happened? His memory of images from the four holos in front gave him the answer. Their two groups of four ships had joined their twelve laser beams on a single wasp ship. The green lasers fired by Quincy’s laser node and the
Lepanto’s
left side node had joined in. Punch through had happened in three places, according to infrared emissions. One of the punch throughs must have hit the wasp ship’s fusion reactor. Or something equally volatile. A yellow-orange fireball now consumed the wasp ship, the fireball spreading from the middle out to the nose and tail of the wasp ship. In seconds only small fragments were left, flying off in all directions.

“Outstanding!” Jacob said, knowing he had to join his Bridge crew’s happy celebrating. “Watch out for—”

“Enemy ships are flying outward!” cried Slaughter at Navigation.