The Synchronicity War Part 3 (12 page)

"Not right now. I'll be back on the Flag Bridge soon.
CAG clear."

Hours later, Iceman had an update for Shiloh.

"Dreadnought has commenced her refueling run, CAG. With
the ionizing atmosphere now getting in the way, communications with Valkyrie
are not as clear as I'd like, but I can still understand her and she me."

"Understood. Any sign of the VLO yet?" asked
Shiloh.

"No, CAG. I would have mentioned it if there was."

Shiloh nodded. He was getting anxious and it was making him
ask silly questions. The latest news hadn't helped. Voodoo had returned from
the recon mission over an hour ago. He reported that the VLO had apparently
given up on rendezvousing with Valiant and Resolute when suddenly it changed
course to line up for a jump to Jupiter space. The timing matched almost
exactly the point when the signal had arrived from the drone over Europa.
Voodoo's data also made it clear that the VLO would already be here if not for
the prospect of obtaining a lot of metal from the two crippled carriers, and
THAT was why he would not warn them or himself when he got back to Terra Nova.
Valkyrie needed the extra time to get to Jupiter's atmosphere and refuel.

Shiloh found himself drumming his fingers on his armrest and
made his hand stop doing that. For some reason this battle was making him more
nervous than any battle he'd been in so far, and Midway wasn't even in danger.
She was now beyond the gravity zone and could jump away in a fraction of a
second if need be. No, it was Dreadnought and Valkyrie he was nervous about.
She was alone on that monster with no way to defend herself if Dreadnought was
swarmed by attack craft. He glanced at the tactical display of Jupiter and its
moons. At least Europa was nowhere close to where Dreadnought was skimming the
gas giant. When he realized that his fingers were drumming the armrest again,
he angrily unbuckled himself and got up to start pacing around the Flag Bridge.
The click of his implant told him that he was about to get a private voice
message.

"Far be it from a mere admiral to tell the Chief of
Space Operations what to do, CAG, but you're pacing will make everyone else
nerv--. VLO has just arrived, CAG! I've advised Valkyrie. Her reply is garbled.
I'm continuing to transmit the same message to her, but she may not be able to
hear it, CAG. Tracking data is on the screen now."

Shiloh spun around and looked at the tactical display. The
icon representing the mammoth mothership was not that far away from where
Iceman estimated she'd be. He'd have to congratulate Iceman later for that. The
spherical ship was still outside the gravity zone, but the sidebar data showed
that it would enter the zone in less than six minutes. Until then, Midway and
its fighters would do nothing to spook the Bugs. It didn't take long for the
VLO to launch attack craft. Detection was by passive sensors only, so Shiloh
was sure that there were more than the three attack craft that they could
detect. The big question now was whether Valkyrie knew where the VLO was. If
she did, she would realize that the supersonic skimming would take too long and
go for the faster but more risky subsonic flight plan.
God speed Valkyrie.
He sent the thought out and went to sit back down in his Command chair.

Valkyrie had never been so busy during her existence. No
human could possibly have piloted Dreadnought by herself and still monitor all
the necessary sub-systems, the flight plan, the refueling process. She even
doubted that some of the other A.I.s could have done it. At least she was in
constant communications with Iceman, although the static was getting worse the
deeper into Jupiter's atmosphere Dreadnought got. A new signal brought her
attention away from Iceman. That damn Hangar Bay locking mechanism was again
reading as unlocked. The intermittent locked/not locked signal was very
frustrating for her because there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.
Her fighter was securely fastened to the Hangar Bay deck with explosive bolts
that would free it when it was time to leave the ship. All she could do was
keep an eye on the locking mechanism.

The transmissions from Iceman suddenly changed tone. By now
she was missing most of it but she knew that Iceman would repeat the data over
and over again so that she could fill in the missing blanks. She got it now.
The VLO was back and she knew what direction it was coming from. She quickly
did the astrogational calculations and was dismayed by the result. If
Dreadnought continued to refuel using supersonic skimming, the VLO would have
plenty of time to send its attack craft to Europa, determine that there was
nothing of value there and leave Jupiter's gravity zone before Dreadnought
could get the minimum fuel she needed and accelerate to ramming speed. It only
took a fraction of a second to reconfigure the flight plan for subsonic
refueling and the result scared her. The lower aerodynamic lift would force
Dreadnought deeper into the gas giant's atmosphere, and that was where the
dangerous downdrafts were. But as soon as Dreadnought had processed enough
heavy hydrogen to light up the fusion reactors, the ship would have plenty of
power to pull out of any dive. The big unknown was whether Jupiter would pull
her down too far to recover before she had full power. The CAG was counting on
her and she wasn't going to let him down again. Never again! She throttled back
the ZPG units and let the ship slow down to the maximum speed that would allow
for continuous scooping of gases.

As soon as Dreadnought dropped below the speed of sound, the
Hangar Bay locking mechanism signal began switching between locked and unlocked
much more frequently, and Valkyrie understood why. The turbulence of the
atmosphere streaming past the hatch was causing alternating push and pull. If
the hatch wasn't securely locked down, not only would the Bay's atmospheric
integrity be compromised by gas leaking in, but the constant banging against
the lock could damage the mechanism. No time to watch that now. The ship was
dropping fast. The gas processing system was operating at capacity, but it took
a lot of hydrogen to filter out the amount of heavy hydrogen the ship needed.

The rate of descent suddenly spiked. A downdraft was pulling
Dreadnought down fast now. Fuel levels were rising towards the minimum needed
to light up the power plants. They were almost there … NOW! Dreadnought's
carefully scrutinized but never tested fusion power reactors came to life.
Within half a second Valkyrie had plenty of power. She used it to pull the nose
of the ship up until it was pointed at the correct angle and then fed more
power to the engines. Dreadnought pulled out of its descent. At this shallow
angle of ascent, the ship should have the necessary minimum fuel levels for its
ramming attempt by the time it left Jupiter's atmosphere. She checked the com
channels. She wasn't getting anything from Iceman now, and there was no way
that Dreadnought could send a focused beam of microwaves to Midway that would
penetrate this static. Low power laser bursts were out of the question, too.
She was on her own until she got out of this damn soup, but at least she had
power now. She checked the docking mechanism and was surprised to see that it
was now indicating a steady 'locked' status.

"Are we in position yet, Iceman," demanded Shiloh
somewhat testily.

"Affirmative, CAG. If Valkyrie managed to refuel
Dreadnought subsonically, she should be breaking out of Jupiter's atmosphere
any second now, and we're in the best position to support her while still
staying outside the gravity zone."

Shiloh wanted to hit something. It went against the grain to
keep Midway way out here where she was safe while a Space Force comrade would
shortly be in danger, but Midway was strategically too important to risk now.
Her fighters on the other hand, were not. They were already on their way in deeper.
If Dreadnought appeared where Iceman expected, she would very quickly get 75
fighters as an escort. By carefully orienting themselves in a way that would
eliminate any chance of being detected by reflected sunlight, the fighters had
not yet been detected and would try to keep it that way as long as possible.
Dreadnought, on the other hand, could not be so easily hidden. Its sheer size
worked to undermine any attempt to manage reflections.

Shiloh checked the tactical display for what must have been
the hundredth time. The VLO was now slowly curving around in an obvious move to
get beyond the gravity zone. Its attack craft had done the expected and swarmed
over Europa long enough to make sure that there was nothing living there and
then returned to the mothership. Shiloh had hoped they might want to salvage
the metal in the refueling station, but Iceman had correctly estimated that
there wasn't enough metal there to entice them to stay.

Shiloh was pacing the room again, and Iceman knew enough to
keep quiet about it. Shiloh heard the display ping and Iceman's voice at the
same time.

"Dreadnought has broken through the atmosphere and is
transmitting by tight beam again, CAG. She's in just the right position.
Voodoo's fighters will form up on Dreadnought in two point seven seven minutes.
No indication that Dreadnought's been detected yet."

Shiloh heard shouts from the others in the room and realized
that he had shouted too. He smacked his right fist into his left palm for good
measure then said, "Can I talk with Valkyrie without tipping off the Bugs,
Iceman?"

"Possible but not recommended. She's pretty busy now,
CAG. Some of the ship's systems didn't like the pounding the ship took from the
subsonic refueling. You may not be aware of this, but translating from human
speech to digital impulses that we can understand and back again is not a
trivial task for us, CAG. Tell me what you want to say and I'll send her the
A.I. equivalent message."

"Tell her … tell her that I'm proud of her. Damn proud
of her." Shiloh wanted to say more but knew his voice would betray his
emotions if he tried.

"Message has been sent. At this range, we won't get her
reply, if any, for another four minutes. Shiloh turned his face away so that
none of the other members of the crew could see him. He needed time to get his
expression under control. He cared about all the A.I.s, but Valkyrie was
special in a way that maybe only Kelly could understand. He had a feeling that
Valkyrie was special to Kelly too.

When his composure was restored, he turned to look at the
tactical display again. They had pulled off the strategy perfectly. The VLO was
accelerating outward and Dreadnought, with her soon to be fighter escort, were
behind the Bugs. Midway was circling around the edge of the gravity zone and
was at the nine o'clock position, relative to the VLO's twelve o'clock exit
point. If the VLO continued to ignore the space behind them, then Valkyrie
could set the auto-pilot to ram it from behind while she took her leave of the
ship. Without her monitoring, some of the ship's systems would malfunction, but
by then the ship would have enough momentum to continue on even if the engines
stopped or the power failed.

The distance between Dreadnought and the VLO was over 14.4
million kilometers, but Dreadnought would be accelerating at over 101Gs while
the bug ship would be accelerating at less than 2Gs. There was no way that the
VLO could break out beyond the gravity zone before Dreadnought caught up to
her.

Shiloh and the rest of the Flag Bridge crew watched the
display as the minutes ticked by. Everything they were seeing on the display,
based upon data received from Dreadnought and the fighters, was now taking over
a minute to reach them. Valkyrie hadn't sent a reply to Shiloh's message. If she
was that busy, then maybe he should start worrying again. The Bugs put a stop
to that thought.

"They've spotted Dreadnought. Multiple attack craft
launching from the mothership now, CAG. It's hard to pin down the exact number
with passive sensors, but it's at least 81."

"Notify Valkyrie and Voodoo just in case they can't see
them. Does Voodoo know what to do, Iceman?"

"He knows. We gamed out this exact scenario. He'll do
the right thing," said Iceman.

Seconds later, the fighter escort went to maximum
acceleration to get ahead of Dreadnought and run interference for her. They
each had one Mark 1b fusion and four Mark 2 Kinetic Energy Penetrator drones.
The plan called for them to launch the Mark 2s en masse to overwhelm the
incoming bogeys. With a minimum of electronics, the Mark 2s were simple to
build and tough to disable. If a Mark 2's depleted uranium rod hit an attack
craft, the kinetic energy would instantly turn it into a jet of superhot plasma
that would eviscerate the inside of the attack craft before shooting out the
back end. The Mark 1bs were to be used against any stragglers that survived the
Mark 2 barrage. The fighter pilots had orders to be stingy with them in case
some of them were needed against the VLO itself if the ramming attempt didn't
damage it enough.

The actual battle between the fighters and the attack craft
turned out to be an anti-climax. All but three attack craft were hit and
crippled by Mark 2s, and Mark 1s soon vaporized those three. None of the
fighters suffered laser hits from the attack craft, but they were soon under
fire from the VLO itself, and its lasers were much more powerful. Shiloh
watched as several fighters literally vaporized from hits by the massive laser
blasts.

"The insectoid ship has switched its fire to
Dreadnought now. Valkyrie is reporting multiple hits to the bow of the ship,
but so far she still has engines and power," reported Iceman.