Starfist: Wings of Hell (19 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Among the lead elements of the gator fleet to arrive in orbit around Haulover was the construction starship CNSS
Wedge Donovan,
which immediately landed its construction battalion and their heavy equipment. The navy engineers selected land next to Beach Spaceport for an expeditionary airfield. Not that they had an easy time securing the land. Haulover Chairman of the Board Smelt Miner, the closest thing Haulover had to a head of state, wanted to charge top credit for the land, and refused to allow construction to begin until he was paid a sizeable deposit. Vice Admiral Geoffrey Chandler, the gator fleet commander, wasn’t about to delay construction of the airfield just because some pipsqueak of a local dignitary let petty greed cloud his judgment. Chandler promptly ordered a light armored infantry battalion, one of the first ground combat elements to arrive with the fleet, planetside to convince the civilian authorities to let the construction begin even before proper negotiations on a lease began. Mr. Miner backed off as soon as he realized that the light armored infantry battalion was fully capable of defeating the entire military, such as it was, and police forces of Haulover without breaking a sweat. Miner was somewhat mollified when Chandler told him there was a chance that ownership of the airfield would revert to Haulover at the conclusion of anti-Skink operations.

Chandler didn’t mention that it was at least equally possible that the airfield would form the core of a permanent Confederation military base on Haulover.

At any rate, the navy construction battalion had the airfield ready for use by the time Lieutenant General Carano briefed his major element commanders on the coming operation.

Within hours of the combat briefing, the Fourteenth Air Wing, off the carrier CNSS
Raymond A. Spruance,
landed at what the navy saw fit to name Naval Air Station George Gay, after a navy pilot of a twentieth-century war, and prepared for its first mission. The Twenty-fourth Infantry and Eighty-seventh Heavy Infantry Divisions were landed by waves of Essays two hundred kilometers east of the easternmost Skink base. The Essays had dropped from orbit south of Sky City, and flew nape-of-the-earth, to avoid detection by Skink observers, to their drop zones. The Twenty-fourth Infantry Division would be the assault element, with the Eighty-seventh in reserve. The Fifteenth Armored Division was dropped midway between the objective base and the next one to the left. Other Essays swung around to the east and landed Thirty-fourth FIST a hundred klicks northeast of the Skink base. The Essays that dropped the Twenty-fourth and Eighty-seventh Divisions turned about and retraced their routes to orbit, where they refueled and brought the Fifty-fourth Light Infantry and Twenty-seventh Medium Divisions, along with the remaining FISTs, to bivouac areas a short distance north of Sky City. The Eighth Air Wing, off the CNSS
Frank Fletcher,
followed to NAS Gay.

Even before the Fifteenth Armored Division was in position, the Twenty-fourth Infantry, mounted in armored personnel carriers, sped toward the Skink base. At that same time, the ninety-six Raptors of the Eighth Air Wing began launching and headed for the objective, intending to devastate the enemy forces taking their ease outside the cave and tunnel system.

The Eighth Air Wing passed over the advancing infantry division when they were still a hundred klicks away from their objective. Less than a minute later, they encountered a surprise such as Lieutenant General Carano had warned about.

“Magnum Lead,” Ensign Jabarrah said in a voice that denied the excitement and adrenaline that suddenly surged through him, “I have bogeys at two o’clock low.”

“Magnum Four,” Lieutenant Deitz, Magnum Lead drawled, looking down and to his right front for the bogeys Jabarrah had alerted him to. He spotted them. “I have them.”

“Buddha’s blue balls!” Ensign Ghibson, Magnum Three, exclaimed when he spotted the bogeys. “How many of them are there?”

“Enough that not even you can miss,” Lieutenant (jg) Hoot, Magnum Two came back.

“Can the chatter, people,” Magnum Lead snapped. Then he said to the squadron commander, “Pistol, Magnum division has numerous bogeys approaching from two o’clock low. They have no IFF signal. I want to veer off to investigate.”

“I have them, Magnum Lead,” Pistol answered. He was Lieutenant Commander Pitz. “Check them out. Go red.”

“Roger, Pistol. Going red. Magnum Division, arm air-to-airs, charge guns. Follow me.” Magnum Lead turned his Raptor into a shallow dive to the right, heading for the middle of the approaching formation.

The pilots of the Eighth Air Wing were flying top-of-the-line fighter aircraft and were very highly trained. Many of them, including all of Magnum Division except Magnum Four, also had combat experience. So the pilots weren’t unduly unsettled by unexpectedly encountering a sizeable force. After all, they’d won all of their air battles in the past. In fact, although the four pilots of Magnum Division seemed to be heading into combat against an entire sixteen-aircraft squadron, they were confident of coming out of the battle as undisputed victors.

Magnum Lead was closest when red flashes showed on the wings of four of the bogeys. Lieutenant Deitz didn’t even have time to open his mouth to call a warning before half a dozen pellets struck his Raptor at a significant percent of the speed of light, disintegrating it and killing him. The other three Raptors of Magnum Division disintegrated less than a second later.

Pistol happened to be looking in Magnum’s direction when the division was killed, and saw four of his aircraft get knocked into small bits, none of them as big as a human being. He was good enough a combat pilot that he didn’t go into immediate shock at the inconceivably sudden deaths of four of his men and total destruction of their aircraft. Instead, he began immediately snapping orders to the remainder of his squadron to take evasive action.

Captain Mason Anderson, the Eighth Air Wing commander, had been monitoring that action and more, and knew that more squadrons were approaching his wing from various directions. He ordered his squadron commanders to have their pilots take evasive action, then counterattack what were obviously “bandits,” bad guys, rather than just “bogeys,” unknowns.

In seconds, the airspace occupied by the Eighth Air Wing was filled with Raptors flying in multiple directions, mostly in four aircraft divisions, but some flying in pairs or individually. A dozen bandit squadrons were rapidly approaching them from multiple directions, spreading out, spitting red flashes from their wings. More Raptors disintegrated. Some Confederation pilots tried to line up shots for their guns or to get solid locks for their missiles but most of those were killed before they could get their shots off. The rest of them began firing their guns and missiles as soon as they were anywhere near having a good shot or lock, trusting to luck. A few had that luck, but nowhere near enough of them. Most of their kills came when a bandit jinked to throw off someone’s aim and accidentally put himself in the path of someone else’s plasma bolts or missiles.

In minutes, the ninety-six aircraft of the Eighth Air Wing were reduced to thirty-seven, which turned tail and headed at maximum speed back to NAS Gay. Against their fifty-nine losses, they had scored twenty-three kills.

Unfortunately for them, the past air battles of the Confederation Navy had been against the air forces of planetary militaries, which were rarely a match for them. The Skink pilots, on the other hand, had turned out to be every bit as skilled as the pilots of the Eighth Air Wing. They had numbers on their side, and, although the Confederation forces didn’t learn this until much later, the Skinks’ guns were rail guns, which meant much greater destructive power. Every Raptor that got hit went down, mostly in rather small pieces.

The Skink aircraft then turned their attention to the still-advancing Twenty-fourth and Eighty-seventh Divisions.

At first, those soldiers of the Eighty-seventh Heavy Infantry Division who could see the fighting in the sky above cheered every time they saw the explosion of an aircraft being killed. Until they realized that those were
navy
Raptors, not Skink aircraft that were being pulverized. The cheers turned to groans and gasps, then silence when the surviving Raptors turned tail and ran.

The silence didn’t last long. It was shattered by screams when the enemy aircraft turned their noses groundward and began firing their rail guns at the armored personnel carriers.

“Point those guns up!” shouted Captain Sparr, the commanding officer of Fox Troop, Seventh Heavy Infantry Battalion. His men were well enough trained that half of the swivel-mounted guns on his battalion’s armored vehicles were already firing at the diving aircraft. It wasn’t until the guns on all thirty-six of his vehicles were spraying bullets into the sky that they finally hit one of the attacking aircraft.

Fourteen aircraft began the run at the armored vehicles of Fox Troop, and eleven of them completed the run. But they killed seventeen of the armored personnel carriers—and more than 150 of the 170 soldiers in them.

Not every troop in the Eighty-seventh Heavy Infantry Division was attacked; each of the Skink squadrons struck at two troops, hitting twenty-four of the division’s thirty-six troops. Not all of them were damaged as badly as Fox of the 505th, and only a few were hit harder. But by the time the Skink aircraft flew away, Major General Kocks, the division commander, had little choice but to turn his division around and head back toward the bivouac that was building just north of Sky City.

The Twenty-fourth Infantry and Fifteenth Armored Divisions, although uninjured, went with them; the initial offensive by the XVIII Corps died aborning.

Brigadier Sturgeon believed that the Skinks hadn’t detected Thirty-fourth FIST, so he ordered his Marines to hunker down and hold their position until the army was ready to resume its offensive.