Star Force: Origin Series Box Set (9-12) Page 13

“I know. Let’s keep it short…5k?”

  “Deal,” Paul said, finding it difficult to maintain pace. He too was feeling the transitional effects from the low gravity.

  “Damn Chinese,” Jason said, focusing on relearning how to run a normal stride.

  Paul didn’t say anything, but he agreed. Messing with an Archon’s workouts was a surefire way to piss them off.

  5

  March 26, 2060

  Before the Star Force fleet could fully assemble, the Chinese warships sensed the threat and moved to intercept. The Mjolnir, a pair of cutters, and a destroyer had yet to arrive within weapons range, but all were close. The rest of the 23 ships were milling about in a holding formation, spread wide with the Turok in formation center.

  The Chinese had 10 escort ships surrounding their large carrier, with a group of 2 cutters and 3 corvettes driving hard to get out ahead of the rest of their fleet as they sped towards the Star Force ships…aimed not at the gigantic battleship, but one of the destroyers situated on the forward starboard edge of the formation.

  A warning hail went out, advising the Chinese to stand down and surrender, but like all those previous it didn’t draw a response and when the first of the enemy warships crossed into weapons range the Star Force destroyer took aim with its heavy lasers and blew two small holes in the hull of one of the cutters.

  The ship immediately depressurized, given that its armor was paper thin to maximize weight to speed ratios. Inner bulkheads had already been closed prior to battle, so only the crew in that particular section of the ship were killed, leaving the bridge and other compartments intact and the cutter burning hard to close the range with the Star Force fleet, hoping to pounce on the momentarily isolated ship before the rest of the group could coalesce into weapons range.

  The destroyer repeated the twin blasts again, knocking another couple of fist blows against the hull, then launched a salvo of long range missiles on fuel delay towards the other cutter, which was outpacing the corvettes along with its twin. 25 missiles leapt up out of the racks and arced over as they accelerated in a blink of the eye towards the distant enemy…then their fiery tails went out as they coasted on their momentum closer to their target.

  A small anti-missile chain gun opened fire on the undamaged cutter…the other had lost their defensive weapon from one of the laser hits…and started spraying a hail of tiny bullets in the path of the missiles which weren’t yet within effective range. The waste of ammunition missed them completely, and it wasn’t until the missiles closed within a predetermined distance and relit their rocket engines did the Gatling gun succeed in hitting one of them.

  The other 24 adjusted their trajectory to the new position of the ship and hammered its hull, ripping apart the small ship and taking it out of the fight.

  The destroyer launched another salvo of missiles as its forward engines flared, pushing it backwards and away from the approaching ships, buying a little more time before they got within their own weapons range as well as bringing the destroyer closer to the rest of the Star Force fleet.

  The second salvo of missiles entered their coast phase briefly, but as they relit and angled in towards the surviving cutter, the Chinese ship launched all of its 48 missiles, just getting them out of the tubes and enroute before the Star Force missiles arrived and diminished the Chinese ship count down to 9.

  The twin heavy lasers on the destroyer fired off their shots at one of the trailing corvettes, then switched their recharging power flow over to the 4 anti-missile cupolas as it prepared to defend itself against the incoming Chinese missiles.

  Meanwhile one of the nearest Star Force cutters enroute launched its own missile salvo, with the 15 warheads streaking out on a vector into the gap between the Chinese corvettes and the destroyer, entering their coast phase and disappearing from view…save for on radar, which gave Captain Voss their exact position.

  He nodded distractedly, approving of the pilot’s tactic. Instead of firing at where the enemy ships were and having the missiles fly in an arc to intercept the targets, he had fired at where they would be, allowing them to travel in a more or less straight line. The captain of the Turok watched the engagement unfold as he leaned to the side towards his first officer.

  “Status on the carrier?”

  “Still buttoned up and thrusting hard.”

  “If you get a kill shot at range, take it,” he ordered his bridge crew. The rest of his fleet ‘controllers’ were situated in their stations at the fore end of the bridge in front of him, but those stations in between housed the people flying, and soon to be fighting from, the battleship.

  “Yes, sir,” the female gunner said, a sly smile worming its way onto her face. Ever since she’d been given control of the Turok’s primary weapon she’d been itching to fire the big gun.

  On the radar Voss saw the Chinese missiles start to wink out as they came within laser range, then a host of new contacts blossomed from the destroyer as it fired off its intercepts.

  On another display screen each of his fleet’s ships was lined up in virtual rows according to their tonnage. Voss tapped the touch screen image of the destroyer and it enlarged into a 3d diagram of the ship. He glanced it over, seeing no damage indicators, meaning all of the missiles had been successfully intercepted.

  The Captain returned the image to its smaller form and studied the battle map, seeing that the Chinese ships weren’t decelerating or cutting thrust…meaning they intended to overshoot or ram the Star Force vessels.

  “All ships,” he said aloud, the cue for the remote pilots to listen. “Maneuver around their trajectory lines…I don’t want any collisions with them or their debris.”

  A slew of nods confirmed his order, but no voices responded. All of the pilots were intently focused on their screens and controls, now that the fighting had actually begun. Those not already within weapons range were trying to eek as much thrust and appropriate angles out of their ships as they could, wanting to get in position to back up the others.

  As soon as the missile maelstrom abated a metallic slug shot out from the destroyer’s rail gun and tracked across the radar screen, impacting the middle corvette, then exiting out the other side at a slower, but considerable speed, traveling back towards the other Chinese warships and incidentally passing within 500 meters of the carrier, which was now beginning to launch the first of its fighters.

  The Chinese corvette, elongated like the rest of their warship designs, was cored on the prominent bow and gutted along the length of the slender ship, exiting out the starboard aft quarter, cutting a line almost parallel to the ship’s hull. An atmospheric plume washed out of both holes, draining the interior sections and pulling debris out with them. The engine bank in the rear was clipped, knocking the starboard engines offline with the ship immediately curving to the right as the thrust was unbalanced.

  The ship arced lazily, cutting across the path of the missile-damaged corvette, nearly clipping it but missing cleanly, though both ships were already severely damaged, but not entirely out of the fight, with the cored corvette firing off a salvo of missiles that were apparently still operational.

  By this time a frigate had caught up to the Star Force destroyer and passed it by while starting to reverse thrust to decelerate and fall back into position alongside it. When the corvette’s missiles angled in towards the destroyer the Star Force frigate launched a salvo of intercepts, taking down half of the attack with the destroyer’s diminishing reserve of the effective anti-missile missiles neutralizing the rest.

  Meanwhile the five escort ships surrounding the carrier suddenly diverted and headed straight for the Turok…though still some distance away. The fighters, now numbering 14 in flight with a few more still waiting to come out of the bays, split up into two groups, one of which was also heading for the Star Force battleship, but at a ponderously slow speed, pacing the capital ships.

  The other group of 6 tore away in formation and caught up to the three corvettes, only one of which was s
till fully operational. Just before the intercept occurred, all three Chinese ships launched missiles on the destroyer simultaneously, with the fighters following behind the segmented salvo.

  The intact corvette launched all of its missiles in a long train, with a lesser number coming in two small groups from the others just before the starboard most Chinese corvette blew apart from a second missile attack from the Star Force cutter closing on the flank and breaking hard so as to not overshoot, placing itself directly in the gap between the two fleets, seemingly unafraid of the larger ships.

  Invisible laser fire broke out as the destroyer and its pacing frigate began to shoot down the 284 incoming missiles, with the pair of ship’s popping intercepts a few seconds later to counter the rest while bracing for the impact of any that got through. Behind the fireworks the 6 Chinese fighters targeted the destroyer and frigate, launching their own missiles, two apiece, following the hoard.

  The four that went towards the frigate were shot down by laser fire, but two managed to get through to the destroyer a handful of seconds after three other missiles hit the hull, damaging the armor plating in different locations, none of which punctured all the way through, though visible, cracked craters manifested themselves at the impact points.

  When the fighters’ missiles hit, one was already damage by a few laser hits, but not enough to destroy it before impact. The trigger mechanism, however, did not fire, having been melted away, with the missile ramming and crumpling against the hull…only to be vaporized a moment later as the other one hit, detonating the 125 kiloton nuclear warhead it contained.

  The rectangular cube that was the destroyer vanished from the radar screen, with the frigate flashing damage warnings along its port side, conceivably from debris impacts as a deep scowl dug its way into Voss’s forehead.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “Rad signature,” his first officer reported. “I think that was a nuke.”

  “From where?” he insisted. All of their missiles couldn’t be carrying nukes.

  “Check the fighters,” the remote pilot flying the frigate half yelled in suggestion.

  Voss’s eye line darted to the Chinese fighters pacing their capital ships heading for the Turok, realizing now why they were laying back. They couldn’t fire their nukes straight on because the anti-missile systems would take them down easily…unless they overwhelmed the defenses with a convention missile attack en mass.

  “All engines full reverse!” he ordered, realizing the threat they posed to his ship. They’d lost an unmanned destroyer, but he and his entire fleet’s crew were aboard the Turok. Take the battleship out and the drone ships would fall dead…at least until the Mjolnir, Orion, or Atlantis assumed control, though at that point he wouldn’t care because he’d be dead.

  “Cutters, move ahead and engage those fighters before they get within firing range. Main battery, co-op with the helm and get me a firing solution on that Chinese cruiser. I want it dead before it can launch missiles.”

  “We’ll need to cancel thrust to fire, Captain,” the gunner reminded him.

  “Helm, get it done, now!”

  “Ten seconds,” the pilot of the lumbering battleship said as he moved the knife-like bow of the Turok up and to starboard with maneuvering engines, then thrusters, getting it within the narrow targeting window that the main rail gun could micro-adjust within. The entire assembly was designed to move within the ship over a 2.4 degree arc, meaning the helmsman had to do the primary aiming, with the gunner then fine tuning the shot. “Engines…offline. Thrusters stabilizing.”

  “I have a shot,” the gunner said, her voice rising slightly as she saw the targeting reticule pass onto the hull of the largest warship the Chinese had, after their carrier.

  “Fire,” Voss ordered.

  “Firing!”

  The star destroyer-esk battleship launched a bobsled-sized metallic slug out the 600 meter long barrel faster than the eye could see, with the projectile popping up on radar briefly as it travelled the distance between ships before hitting the port side of the cruiser at a shallow angle, but it didn’t deflect. Instead it dug into the aft quarter, carving a furrow into the side before boring all the way in and exiting through the engine bank…and yanking a chunk of the ship free in the process.

  The torsion of the impact also spun the ship about, bringing the submarine-like nose around to port slowly, setting the ship aspin as it no longer had any primary engine thrust to correct with and thrusters alone wouldn’t be able to settle the ship for some time.

  “Hit it again!” Voss yelled.

  “Reload complete, capacitors charging.”

  On the visual displays Voss saw the first missile plumes coming from the Chinese as they counterattacked the cutters zipping forward into their lines, targeting the fighters in rear with their lasers. Intercepts puffed out from the ships like a bear swatting at a bee hive as one of the fighter icons disappeared in back from the concentrated, point to point instantaneous laser fire.

  A small blob of radar contact remained where the fighter had been destroyed, but the ship’s computer no longer tagged the debris as a target…either due to the breakup of the signal or because one of his crew had manually removed the tag. Either way, it was down thanks to the 6 cutters.

  Another smaller rail gun slug shot out from one of the other two Star Force destroyers…this one flanking the Turok on the port side and easing ahead of it as the battleship’s backward momentum effectively moved the Star Force lines ‘forward.’ The slug hit the Chinese cruiser in the bow, tearing a monster hole in the hull, but failing to penetrate all the way through. Before Voss could figure out why it hadn’t, his gunner fired off another super-sized round.

  This one hit square in the center of the ship, thanks to the spin that brought the starboard side around into plain view, making for one big lateral target. The round crumpled the ship along the vertical centerline, pulling the hull in around the impact hole and making the once straight line of a ship now look like a shallow arrow, pointing back at the carrier it was defending.

  Subsequent explosions marked the cruiser’s hull as it was bombarded by long distance laser strikes as the Turok’s gunners opened up on the nearly dead ship, wanting to make sure it couldn’t launch a last second missile strike. The heavy destroyer sitting underneath the Turok contributed a medium-sized rail gun slug of its own, along with additional laser blasts. Between the two heaviest Star Force ships in the fight, they ripped apart what was left of the cruiser while the rest of the fleet switched to other targets.

  As the other four Chinese ships continued to accelerate and left the corpse of the cruiser behind, the ranges between the fleets shrank dramatically fast, bringing the enemy inside missile range only a few seconds after the Star Force ships entered theirs and launched a salvo of over 1000 missiles at the dwindling Chinese fleet.

  6

  The Chinese ships returned the gesture with a salvo of their own as their momentum carried them quickly towards the Star Force ships. The two groups of missiles crossed paths with only three collisions out of the 1400 involved, then travelled towards their designated targets, splitting into various groups tracking towards individual ships.

  Every Star Force ship within range let loose with their point defense lasers and started picking the missiles out of the black sky while the Chinese ships attempted no defense, instead launching a continuous second salvo of missiles, emptying each box on the ships as fast as they could, sensing their impending deaths and wanting to do as much damage as possible before they died.

  Intercepts began popping from the Turok and the nearby destroyers as the remaining Chinese missiles came within final defense range in a last ditch effort to get them all. Voss let his gunners handle the task while he monitored the position of the fighters approaching behind the first missile salvo, now being overtaken by the leading elements of the second, mixing them into the flow and making them easy to miss.

  The speed tags on the fighters relati
ve to the Turok were high…too high for a long engagement window. With their kinetic speeds factored in, their effective missile range was stretched out, meaning they could launch before the laser gunners had decent sized targets to shoot at. So far, however, they hadn’t fired a missile, according to Voss’s keen eye, meaning they were waiting for what they thought would be the opportune moment.

  With his left hand the Captain toggled the orders panel and tagged the 6 corvettes mixed in between and around his larger capital ships. He typed out a quick message using the shorthand commands preprogrammed into the panel then submitted the batch orders…which went directly to the consoles of the remote pilots just a few meters ahead of him on the bridge.

  He could have shouted out the orders, but with things becoming so intense and chaotic, some things were best left on the quiet side.

  With his eyes still on the approaching fighters behind the missile storm, he noticed that all six corvettes immediately began to move backwards as they began gathering speed to intercept the Chinese warships that were soon going to overshoot their lines. Even if they’d wanted to, their ships had gathered so much momentum that even a linear flip and full engine thrust couldn’t have bled off a tenth of their speed before crossing.

  Voss hit another button and the trajectory tracks for each ship appeared. Several of the Chinese ships were going to pass close to the Turok, but none were actually going to collide, assuming they didn’t change course…with every passing moment making that more unlikely as mathematical uncertainty diminished. The rest of his fleet’s ships also appeared to be clear of potential collisions, which meant the primary threat now was the nukes and the conventional missiles.

  Voss continued to watch the fighters, his hand held over the tagging button in anticipation.

  There! he thought, seeing a radar image appear to come out of the blip that was one of the fighters. Pushing the primary target button and tapping the icon on the touch screen, the battleship’s targeting system immediately highlighted the location on every gunner’s screen.