* * *
Admiral Saha felt like he’d been kicked in the gut. He had seen people die before, but no matter how many times it happened he never got used to it, especially when it was a friend. What never failed to make an impression on him was the random suddenness of death. One moment the person is here, the next they’re gone. But now was not the time for mourning. Clamping down on his feelings he settled himself back into his seat and looked toward the captain of his flagship.
He drew in a deep breath and forced his voice to remain steady as he said through clenched teeth, “Captain Rogers, send a warning to the rest of the fleet to stay out of the firing arc of those guns.”
“Aye, Admiral,” Rogers said. If the captain heard anything unusual in the admiral’s voice he kept it to himself.
The bridge was silent as Captain Rogers broadcast his warning.
Seated at his console, Admiral Saha replayed the last few seconds of the transmission from the Valiant. One moment he was watching an image of the asteroid as it rotated, bringing the crater opening into view, and the next moment there was nothing but static. He replayed the recording again, now at one tenth speed. This time he detected a momentary flash just before the transmission was cut. It seemed incredible but there was no denying the facts—the ship had been completely destroyed with a single blast. He replayed the transmission once more at normal speed, then reached for the intercom.
“Captain Kirov to the bridge.”
As a carrier ship, the Gulliver boasted a compliment of twelve fighter squadrons. Foremost among the fighter aviators were those pilots who comprised the elite Alpha squadron. And leading this squadron and responsible for all of the pilots aboard the ship was the senior pilot known as the wing commander. Wing commanders were seasoned pilots who had distinguished themselves throughout their time in the service. They were the best of the best. On the Gulliver that officer was Dmitri Kirov. As he ran the recording again, Admiral Saha knew that he would need the best of the best if they were going to breach the pirates’ defenses.
In spite of the vast size of the ship, Captain Kirov arrived at the bridge in minutes. Because they were at alert status he was dressed in his flight suit, with only his gloves and helmet missing.
“You wanted to see me, sir?” Captain Kirov said.
“Take a look at this, Captain,” Saha said as he projected the recording of the pirate asteroid as a 3D image above his console. He ran the recording through once at full speed, then again at one quarter. Captain Kirov watched without comment. After the image disappeared in a sudden flash for the second time, the admiral put up a paused image of the pirate stronghold for them to study.
“That tunnel appears to be our only way into their base,” Saha said, pointing at the small crater on the image. He tapped at his board and brought up a series of readouts alongside the hologram. “This is what our sensors recorded before the transmission was cut.”
Kirov studied the data for a moment then looked up at the admiral.
“Fighters could do it,” Kirov said simply. “Anything bigger would be too slow to evade those guns.”
“My thoughts exactly,” the admiral agreed.
The wing commander looked thoughtful for a moment. “May I see the playback again, sir?”
Admiral Saha replayed the recording once more at normal speed.
“It seems odd that their entire defense would be built around just those guns no matter how powerful they are,” the captain said eventually.
“That’s all we’ve been able to pick up,” Saha said. “They have a powerful energy shield across the entire mouth of the crater now so our sensors might be missing something, but the Valiant didn’t detect anything else even before … their transmission was cut.”
Kirov glanced at the lines of data hovering in the air beside the image then said, “I can have my ship prepped to launch in ten minutes.”
“Hellhounds?” Saha asked.
Kirov nodded. “I’ll have the crew mount two, just in case, but one should be more than enough.”
Fighters could carry a maximum of twelve missiles, depending on the mission. For this mission speed and maneuverability were critical so payload mass would need to be kept to a minimum. Maneuvering in space was more complicated than flying through an atmosphere and hellhounds were much bulkier than the missiles normally carried by a fighter. Because of the intensity of the pirates’ energy barrier however, the standard pike missiles that were usually carried by their fighters would not do. Although the pirates’ screens could not stop them, the less massive pikes would be deflected off course. That would not be the case with hellhounds. They were specifically designed to punch directly through shielding with minimal deflection. But carrying the hellhounds would make Kirov’s ship slower to respond—and an easier target.
Admiral Saha held his eyes. “We need those guns taken out, Captain, but I’m not ordering you to do this. I simply wanted your opinion on feasible options.”
“I don’t really see any other options, sir, not if you want to gain access to their stronghold.”
Saha’s expression was grim, but he nodded his assent. “Will you be taking your entire wing?” Fighters aboard a carrier were grouped into three wings of four squadrons each. A full wing would give him thirty six ships.
“I don’t think so. Just my squadron should do. It’ll be helpful to have multiple fighters out there so the pirates have more than one target to keep track of, but I’d like to minimize the number of ships in the air. We’re going to need to maneuver quickly and you don’t want the space around you too crowded in this kind of situation. All those drifting hunks of rock are going to be enough to worry about.” Although fighters carried both navigational and combat shields, they were nowhere near as powerful as those aboard the carrier.
“Very good, Captain. Good luck.”
The wing commander drew himself up straight. “I’ll go see to the ordnance, sir. We’ll signal when our ships are in the tubes.”
For the next several minutes the admiral lost himself studying the frozen image of the pirate asteroid base. As he sat there he ran through various scenarios in his mind about the different ways Captain Kirov’s squadron could approach their objective. The biggest problem was the time the captain needed to get a target lock before he could launch a missile. Although the targeting computers were fast, Kirov would still need to hold his ship on a fairly steady line toward the cave entrance for at least a few seconds to ensure a target lock. But that would also give the pirates a chance to get a lock on him.
It seemed like only a couple of minutes had passed when word reached to bridge that the squadron was ready to launch. While the wing commander and his squadron had been readying their ships, Captain Rogers had ordered the carrier turned broadside, repositioning the Gulliver so that the launch tubes Alpha squadron would be using were pointed in the direction of the pirates’ asteroid.
“Alpha squadron is ready for launch,” Rogers said.
“Launch fighters,” Saha ordered. The words felt heavy in his mouth.
The pilots of Alpha Squadron braced themselves as the magnetic guide rails within the launch tubes hurtled the fighters into space. As their ships erupted from the side of the carrier, the pilots took control of their ships and made the minor course adjustments needed to close up their formation. The momentum from their launch had them traveling at sufficient speed for the time being and they did not yet need their main engines.
As they had discussed during the mission briefing, they would not be holding to strict formation for this operation. Not only would all the floating bits of rock make that impossible but they needed to keep their ships moving in unpredictable patterns to prevent themselves from being target locked by the immense guns that were their objective. A single blast from one of those guns would obliterate any fighter it hit and continue on with virtually no loss of destructive force.
From the carrier’s
position the pirates’ asteroid stronghold was hidden behind a large, misshapen lump of rock. To the fighters it meant that they were shielded from those guns, at least for the moment. For the first minutes of their flight each pilot kept his or her attention glued to their sensor screens as they jinked their ships about to avoid the random bits of rock around them. The constant sparkling display caused by sand sized particles impacting their shields reduced the effective range of their sensors, but they found that they were able to detect and avoid anything large enough to damage their ships.
By the time they had begun to accustom themselves to flying through the hazardous space, they were approaching the edge of the huge rock that was shielding the objective. Just as they were about to round the limb of the asteroid, a tumbling shape off to one side drew Kirov’s attention. There was something about it that triggered his pilot senses, warning him that it was not a natural object. He wondered why his threat detection system hadn’t warned him about it. A quick glance at the sensor return showed that his scanners were only picking up a weak, intermittent return from the object, as if they were having trouble reading it. It was his eyes that eventually told him the real story. He felt his breath catch in his throat as he recognized the object as the remains of a sub’s command sail that had been violently torn from the main body of its ship. What remained of the sub’s ablative coating was interfering with his fighter’s sensors.
“My god…” came a voice over their battle frequency.
“Cut the chatter, Alpha four,” he said automatically, although there was no reproach in his voice. “On my mark we will break and engage the enemy position. Space it out and remember to keep moving. If they get a target lock you’re toast.”
As they flew around the edge of the asteroid, the pirate stronghold came into view. The immense asteroid loomed in front of them appearing to be almost the size of a planet at this distance. Their approach had been timed using the telemetry data from the Valiant so that the tunnel leading into the giant rock was facing them virtually head-on.
“Break, break, break,” Kirov ordered. The squadron immediately broke from their loose formation to begin the series of erratic movements designed to confuse the enemy’s tracking system. No sooner had they broken formation than a powerful blast flashed at them from one of the particle cannons. The brilliant shot streaked through their midst. It missed the fighters and slammed into to body of the asteroid they had just swung around. The blast tore a large chunk free from the already misshapen lump of rock. Even with the anti-glare faceplates of their helmets their eyes were dazzled by the flash of the compressed particle beam.
Alpha squadron lit their main engines and dove toward the asteroid. It was a risky maneuver, accelerating toward their objective, but they needed to close the distance between themselves and the guns as quickly as possible. Because the cannons were recessed within the cave to afford them the protection of dense rock, their firing arc was restricted. Ironically, the closer the fighters came to the asteroid the safer they would be. A second shot flashed at them almost immediately after the first one had been fired. It also missed, but came close to taking out one of Kirov’s wingmen. The wing commander sent his ship into a corkscrew loop to one side while his wingmen looped in opposite directions as they tried to keep their ships away from the trajectory of that last blast.
Around him, the other members of Alpha Squadron opened fire, loosing their missiles at the entrance to the pirate base. The other ships had been equipped with pike missiles. Their lower mass would not interfere with the maneuverability of the fighters and firing them at the base would serve to distract the enemy. A lucky shot might even damage one of the guns, although that was unlikely. In a few moments the missiles began to impact against the asteroid. Since the other pilots hadn’t waited to acquire a target lock the strikes were scattered across its surface. Even so, the pilots’ instinctual reflexes were so good that more than half of them reached the broad crater. But as he watched, Kirov noted how the missiles veered off course as they passed through the powerful energy shield. None of them actually entered the tunnel or came close to the protected guns.
While he jinked his ship in erratic patterns, Kirov also tried to keep the nose of his fighter pointing at the cave entrance to give his targeting computer a chance to get a …
Target lock flashed on the heads up display on his canopy as the targeting reticle changed from flashing red to solid green. His thumb mashed the fire button on his control stick and he felt the slight bump of the clamps disengaging as the missile was propelled away from the ship. As soon as it was free of the fighter, the missile’s engine ignited and it streaked forward. Captain Kirov watched the missile for a moment as it raced toward its target. Its trail was distinctly different from the other missiles—broader, longer, more brilliant. It was as if it were announcing its contempt for the defenses arrayed against it. He knew that it was moving far too fast for those massive guns to track and intercept. In another few seconds it would—
The hellhound exploded.
Before the missile had even reached the energy shield it erupted into a brilliant fireball. For a moment Kirov was confused. The particle cannons had not opened fire. So what… As he thought about what had happened his mind replayed what his eyes had seen. Just before the missile exploded there had been a series of flashes to one side of the cave entrance. With all of the pinpoint flashes going off around his ship he had ignored them at first. Then he realized what he had seen. The pirates had anti-missile batteries hidden in the crater floor. What he had seen were the muzzle flashes of one of the gun turrets unleashing a stream of slugs at the incoming weapon.
As his ship continued to fall toward the asteroid the danger of their situation became obvious. Although they would be out of the firing arc of the cannons when they got close to the surface of the asteroid, they would be at point blank range to those other guns. The hardened slugs that could be sprayed at them from those batteries would tear through the fuselages of their ships like tissue paper.
As if in response to his thoughts the target lock warning buzzer suddenly blared from his console.
“Abort! All ships pull up!” he called into his mic even as the glittering explosion from the destroyed hellhound continued to expand before them.
Firing his maneuvering thrusters, Kirov turned his ship until its nose was angled away from the asteroid and slammed his throttle to full power as he jinked his ship erratically to throw off the enemy targeting computers. Unlike atmospheric craft, they could not use air friction to redirect their momentum into a different heading. They would continue toward the asteroid at the same velocity until they turned around and accelerated in the opposite direction. But turning their tails to the enemy position now would be suicide. They would not only need to apply thrust long enough to stop their motion toward the asteroid, but they would have to then continue to fire their engines until they began to accelerate away from it. All during that time they would be easy marks for the nimble guns that could track and target them far quicker that the huge cannons.
Their only chance was to apply thrust at a right angle to the direction they were traveling so that they would pass beyond the edge of the asteroid. Once out of the danger zone they could worry about cancelling their forward momentum to head back to the carrier. But even as the though came to him Kirov knew that it might already be too late.
As he held his throttle against its stops, from the corner of his eyes Kirov saw the flash from one of the guns on the crater floor as it opened fire. A moment later he saw one of his wingmen’s ships erupt in a ball of fire. A second explosion flared somewhere above him seconds after that.
He never knew it when the stream of rounds punched through his own ship and triggered his engines to overload.