Chapter 56 The Seven Day Battle
01
Twenty-one days out of Zilantre, fourteen days away from Boscone, the shadowing ships began edging in. There were now ten ships, small drift traders by the shape of their sensor data, captured or pressed into service for the Despar Navy. They'd likely be hastily armed with portable missile batteries mounted in their small cargo holds. Individually, they represented no threat to either the Lost Star with its enhanced anti-missile system and St Bleyth donated missiles or D'Lay's jump fighters. And even taken together, represented only a small threat. According to D'Lay, anyway.
As the operational base of the jump fighters, the Lost Star was their target. Their tactics became evident in their first attack. Since they're no more maneuverable than we were, and less powerful, there was no nipping in and out. Several of them would simply edge in closer and closer until they were in missile range, forcing D'Lay to send out his jump boats. They'd then fire a barrage of missiles towards us and attempt to flee.
Since they never sent in more than two ships at once, D'Lay's jump boats had no problem destroying their missiles long before we had to deal with them, and often were able to chase and disable the fleeing ships as well. Seeing that they were outnumbered by the eight jump fighters, it struck me wasteful to send them in as pairs to certain defeat.
'They've no illusions about these attacks succeeding,' said D'Lay over the com link. 'The intent is to wear my pilots down by these attacks. I'll need to keep several of my fighters on patrol now, watch on watch. And as you well know, flying jump fighters is demanding work and in combat an order of magnitude more demanding. They're hoping that by launching these attacks around the clock, for days on end, they'll wear my pilots out before we get to Boscone.'
'Will they?'
'Not at this level. Still, expending ships this early suggests either a great deal of confidence or desperation. Which it is, only time will tell.'
'Let's hope it's desperation.'
He smiled. 'I'd like to believe we can handle either, Captain.'
'So would I. So would I...'
02
By the end of the first day of attacks, the eight ships had been reduced to three operational ones with the five others driven out of range, unable to change their course due to damage received from tangling with our jump fighters. Still, by the following day, the three had been reinforced by four more, three more joining late. They continued to expend their ships, using two tactics now – either edging them to fire an all-out volley of missiles and then firing their main rockets to accelerate out of range ahead, or they'd fire their main rockets to dash in towards us behind a second and third volley of missiles. D'Lay's jump fighters still dealt with them without our help. I had Tenry, Vynnia, Rafe and Kie manning our-missile station around the clock, just to be certain. All of the ships that drew the short straw to press the attack were disabled or destroyed and could be seen on our radars, drifting out of range, their engines damaged or as a cloud of debris.
'They press their attacks against impossible odds just to insure that we take every approach seriously enough to respond in force,' explained D'Lay. 'We can sit off with a fighter or two and defend the ship without breaking into a sweat if they only edged in far enough to fire their missiles. When they charge, we need to deploy at least two per ship, I really can't afford to have your ship damaged. You're very precious to us, my dear Willy,' he added with a weary smile.
'That's good to hear, Captain.'
I spent a lot of time on the bridge watching the sensor displays as the attacks unfolded, hour after hour. Battles like this are very rare in the Nine Star Nebula and unheard of in the Unity part of it. The Unity Charter governs all the star system planets and moons of the nebula. Commerce is tightly controlled to insure that even the richest and most populous planet cannot use their wealth to dominate even the most backward planet, so there is little source of conflict. Plus, the natural rebels have the drifts to roam and conquer, so the Patrol functions mostly as a police force keeping the bolder of the drift pirates and smugglers in the drifts.
'A couple of Marlin class frigates would settle this war in no time,' Tenry assured me. 'And the dear old Patrol has a thousand of them. But you see, you can't encourage society's rebels and anti-socials to live outside the Unity's tight control, and then extend the Unity's control into the drifts, so we generally turn a blind eye to affairs like this. It's viewed as a bunch of semi-barbarians stealing each other’s cattle, no threat to the Unity now or unlikely ever will be. Mind you, they don't turn a blind eye on what's going on in the drifts on a mega-scale, but they can and do ignore these little flare ups.'
'Is this a little affair? It seems that dozens of drift worlds and reefs are being impacted by it. Why, we're only here because some big chartered companies had to increase security. You'd think they'd take their case to Unity Prime.'
Tenry shrugged, 'There are metrics used to determine responses. I was just a humble boarding boat leader, at my peak Patrol career, mind you, so things like that were determined far above me.'
They're determined far above a commander too, Vynnia assured me later.
03
Despite the continued attrition, the number of ships we were attracting continued to grow. By the third day of their attacks, we'd a dozen in range.
'I'm considering leading an extended raid on this ship here,' said D'Lay, pointing to a distant blip on our sensor screen. 'It's been out there for the last two days and I'm thinking it's one of the Despar frigates. It's likely the control ship,' He paused, considering what he wanted to say.
'I'd need to take four fighters out and we'd be gone a good six hours. That'll leave our base with only four fighters and six pilots. The four fighters should be more than enough to handle what we're facing today. I'm concerned, however, that by tomorrow that might not be the case, so I'd rather not wait on this raid. I am... wondering, however, if I could borrow your Patrol trained pilots to give my pilots a break. So far we're facing nothing more dangerous than a live weapon exercise in defense, nothing challenging or very dangerous... If you don't object.'
I considered my response. Vynnia and Tenry were trained and had been in combat, so I had faith that they'd handle themselves coolly, and competently under fire.
'I've no objection if they volunteer to help out. I'll ask them and send them over if they agree.' I was certain they would, Tenry for the 'fun' of it, Vynnia because she'd see it as her duty.
They readily agreed.
'Make no mention of this in the log, Captain,' Vynnia said as she and Tenry suited up to go out and around the hull to get to the mercenary base in our no. 3 hold.
'Why?'
'Well, it's not strictly either a Guild or Unity sanctioned activity. We're on a pretty iffy course as it is. And secondly, it might be good if we kept the Lost Star as non-combatant as possible. We were chartered to carry the mercenaries to their base in Boscone, not act as a warship. We're now defending ourselves, but going on the offense, well, let's keep what Ten and I are doing as off duty recreation...'
'I consider it recreation,' chimed in Tenry, earning a glare from Vynnia.
'Point taken.'
The extended raid on the suspected Despar frigate accomplished little. From its response, it fled, it was clear that its power profile matched a small frigate, not a small drift tramp. It abandoned control of the attacking ships for perhaps a watch or two, and the attacks slackened for a while. But once out of the extended range of the jump fighters, the attacks began again, no doubt directions were relayed in. The fighter force came back discouraged and exhausted.
04
If anyone had any hope that the forces of Despar were going to run out of expendable ships, they were dashed by the time I swung out of my hammock on day four of the siege of the Lost Star after a ragged nap. We seemed to have fifteen fresh ships in range and several more blips at extreme range.
The attacks were now pressed with three and four ships coming in behi
nd swarms of missiles. We were now deploying six fighters at the height of each attack, and intent on defending the ship, we're rarely damaging more than a ship or two, leaving the undamaged ones to make another pass six hours later.
D'Lay abandoned any ideas of an offense, and settled for a dogged defense. Still, late in the day the Lost Star had to fire her first anti-missile missiles as the five fighters able to deploy could not quite destroy all the incoming missiles. Jump fighters are durable machines, but there were now one or two that needed repairs of one sort or another at all times. And the pilots, were in even worse shape. Tenry and Vynnia were now serving like regulars, and I feared D'Lay would be soon asking for more help consisting of Min and me. Molaye would go in over my dead body. I hoped she'd not have to.
The only bright spot was that in three days, we'd be entering that drift of thick gas and dust. This would drastically reduce the range of everyone's sensors due to the ionization caused by our ship's collision with it at our current velocity and that should shut down the battle for half a day at least. It would also mask any course change we might wish to make.
Assuming we could reach it.
Our opponents knew it was coming too, and that they'd lose contact with us allowing us to alter our course enough to delay further attacks for hours or days and would leave them with only a day or two to attack us without themselves going into the Boscone Reef, and the Boscone forces that we had to assume still held it.
'Well, Wil, are you ready to put all that training to good use?' asked a worn D'Lay early in the fourth watch of day 24 over the com link to my office.
'Are we that desperate?'
He shrugged. 'It would help.'
'Right. I'll be over. It can't be too much more wearing than being the target.' I'd already realized that it had to be done. The attacks had become increasingly frequent with four or five ships at a time charging straight on in behind their barrages of missiles. We were all wearing our safety space suits now with a soft helmet hood and an emergency air supply. I'd ordered the engine room abandoned and sealed to isolate any engine room hit and deployed the drones alongside with the idea that perhaps they might take a hit that would otherwise hit the ship. Everyone had a brave face, except me. I had a worried one. What had I gotten my ship and crew into? The only comfort was that I was convinced that D'Lay would have commandeered us in any event, but he refused to acknowledge that. Min was serious, but cool.
I found her at the airlock suiting up. 'You got the call too?'
'It's the least we can do. They don't need us aboard the ship.'
'I'm sorry I got you into this. I should have given you better advice.'
'I'd have not taken it, so don't worry about it.'
'I hope D'Lay has something left up his sleeve. This wasn't what he'd promised. I'm losing faith in Saint Bleyth.'
'The universe is written, Wil. We just think we're living it. Somewhere, pages ahead, we're looking back on today as one of those days you never forget.'
'I've a feeling I'll want to, if I have the chance.' I was not in a very optimistic mood.
05
I'll not keep you in suspense. I survived my first tour of duty. Since I was a hastily trained volunteer, my role was to hang back and destroy any missiles that filtered through the first line of defense. It was the type of work that I could safely leave the jump fighter to do automatically and I didn't interfere with it.
D'Lay had offered to send along a second pilot, but I told him that'd defeat the purpose, and if he didn't trust me with the machine, he shouldn't send me out.
'I trust the fighter. You trust it too. Don't get fancy or foolish. Just defend your ship.'
As I mentioned, the Bleyth version of the jump fighters had an illegally powerful artificial intelligence unit so that as long as I let it do its job, it defeated every ragged missile volley that came my way. The human pilot's job is mostly to put the fighter in the best position to inflict offensive damage. Min guarded one side of the ship and I the other. To be honest, I didn't do much more than babysit the jump fighter. Its AI found and destroyed the threatening missiles on its own, and much faster than I could have, so I just let it do its job. This first mission was a bit frightening, not knowing what to expect, and it seemed to go on forever, though it passed largely uneventfully. Every so often an incoming missile which had escaped the front line fighters would be detected by the AI and it would automatically position itself to fire its small anti-missile missiles – little more than a small, very fast, and very dense projectiles – at the onrushing missile to destroy it.
As for the larger battle, I knew less about it than before, only that the space all around us constantly flickered with explosions large and small. I dimmed the display and just followed what my fighter was up to on my com link. Once I got used to it, it wasn't all that stressful – our four front line fighters did all the hard work.
Vynnia, Ten, Min and I, plus two relief mercenary pilots, rotated in guard duty, so I had eight hours off between four duty stints. There seemed no point in going back to my ship proper – I could worry in the mercenary base just as easily as in my cabin, so I appointed Illy acting captain and bunked with the other pilots. Molaye called several times volunteering her services, but I was never available. I didn't want to deal with her. I just told Illy that under no circumstances was she to allow Molaye out of the ship.
The following day each attack intensified – now five or more ships in quick succession. Our front line fighters spent most of their effort countering the missile barrages that enemy fired ahead of their attack, leaving them little time to inflict damage on the numerous attacking ships themselves. This allowed them to redeploy those ships to attack several times in a day once they'd decelerated and turned, for another run at us. Our front line fighters could only be relieved one at a time.
The big attack came on the day before we'd reach the brief shelter of the drift stream, involving every ship they had at their disposal. They'd held off attacking for several watches (allowing us a brief spell to get some much needed rest) while they gathered all their available ships and positioned them for the big push. While we couldn't know what they were thinking, my fellow pilots felt it wasn't a case of desperation – this is what they'd been setting us up for since the attacks began. They'd worn us down and now they were going to overwhelm us with numbers. They still had fifteen ships to throw at us and rather than send them in five or six at a time, they were positioning them to attack the ship from 360x360 degrees, hoping to overwhelm the jump fighters and the ship's own defenses. They made no effort to hide their intentions. Desperation or confidence. Your choice.
They chose my watch in the jump fighter to do so, though I don't suppose it was any less frightening watching from the bridge.
D'Lay deployed every fighter and seeing their intent, sent them out to meet the attack, keeping only Min and me back. Outnumbered, and unable to engage every ship, D'Lay chose to concentrate his fighters on fewer ships and take them out, two or three at a time. This left Min, me and now the Lost Star to deal with the missile barrages of the ships left unengaged and their missiles unchallenged. We divided the defense into four sectors to keep the jump fighters out of the way of the ship's missile defense system. Min and I positioned our fighters above and below the ship, to allow it a clear field of fire for its anti-missile defenses.
The more distant approach battle lasted perhaps half an hour. And then there was a maelstrom of explosions, with missiles and ships, large and small, streaking though the torn fabric of space so fast and furious at us that only the jump ships themselves knew what was going on. The Lost Star added a score of scars to its hull, taking hits from the small anti-missiles filling the space about it. I was being thrown wildly about, useless, really, as the jump fighter danced and dashed about, dodging missiles and launching its own in what must have been a brilliant ball of light and debris that was the culmination of the attack. I could hear and feel the ting and clang of glancing small missiles
and debris, but I emerged operational.
As the Despar ships passed by the ship, D'Lay ordered a general pursuit, and with the danger to the ship now all but passed, Min took off in pursuit with the rest of the wing, leaving me no choice but to follow. I'll not deceive you into believing I did so with any enthusiasm, but I realized that any ship we damaged now would unlikely be able to attack us again before we reached the drift stream.
As the confusion of the chase lessened as the ships diverged, I found myself on the tail of a fair sized tramp freighter, and began to press an attack in order to get closer to be able to launch the larger, anti-ship missiles I had aboard. I was just skillful enough to know that you'd want to get close and launch your attack either from directly ahead or astern where the anti-missiles could not respond fast enough.
My target had likely expended most of its missiles in the attack and over the course of the whole engagement, so I was able to work my way in close without having to do a great deal of jumping about. It used its steering rockets to try and keep me on its broad side, firing the occasional missile and barrages of smaller anti-missiles to keep me at bay. By now, I'd a great confidence in my ship to deal with these, and concentrated on closing and anticipating my opponent's next move. Time was meaningless in the midst of the action. As the ships diverged, the sense of battle had receded and it had become a duel between the ship's captain and me, and I'd every intention of winning.
D'Lay's recall of his boats came over my com link, but since my boat had not gone out to meet the attack, I'd still enough fuel to continue to press my attack, and decided to not hear the recall and press on a little longer, since it seemed I'd be able to win in the end. I was a warship, and she, an old tramp. I'd been on the receiving end too long...
D'Lay noticed my lack of response and ordered me back. I pretended my com link was down...
And just like that, he'd made the move I'd anticipated, and I had my jump fighter close and astern, too close for any of his missiles to hit my fighter or block my missiles. I'd had him. And yet. And yet, I hesitated. Putting several missiles up the exposed rocket tube would not merely disable the ship, they'd blow it to atoms.
I found I couldn't fire.
I opened a laser com link to the ship ahead and sent on the common frequency,
'Despar ship. You've two minutes to abandon ship before I fire. Two minutes starting now.'
I glanced at the flashing red light on my visor display warning me that we were into the fuel reserves and I'd have to return soon or I'd not be able to catch up with the ship any time soon...
D'Lay had now noticed my position and ordered me to fire, Neb-damn you fire and get back, the warning light flashing and the clock slowly ticked down my two minutes, I fingered the fire button torn, I'd not wait a second longer than my two minutes, no matter how unreasonable that time limit had been. It came and went. Damn you captain, you're doomed, get the Neb off... My new deadline was two minutes and thirty seconds. The ship's boats blasted away at the two minute forty mark, and I waited five more seconds and sent three missiles down the ship's main rocket engine tube, and hit full power to my forward facing rockets, throwing me forward against the restrains as the view before me exploded into light and debris. My jump fighter made a few jerky moves to avoid debris and I started back for the Lost Star, with a very angry read light flashing in my visor. I'd enough fuel to get back to the ship, but it took over two hours. I maneuvered it into its launch bay in the hold on vapors.
'The skipper'd like to see you, Captain, once you've freshened up,' said the service tech as I crawled out of my fighter. He looked like he was trying to be serious.
'Ah, you might check the com system, I think it took a hit or something.'
He gave me a grin. 'Right. It happens.'