Battlegroup (StarFight Series Book 2) (34 page)

“Got ‘em,” said Daisy.

Below, Alicia looked up, her expression very sober. “You’ve put paid to the killers of Admiral Johanson, Miglotti and Anderson.”

“We
all
put paid to that debt,” Jacob said.

He watched as a large sun replaced the matter and living bodies of the wasp ship that had led the unprovoked attack on his ship and his StarFight fellows.

A second smaller sun now showed just beyond the spot where the giant wasp ship had once been.

His father’s eight ships had come about in their reverse scissor blade formation and had run up on the rear of the remaining wasp ships. They had just killed W12, the last ship on Jacob’s side. Which left the giant ship led by Hunter Prime and two more wasp ships.

Fifteen green dots versus three purple dots. Eight ships in the
Midway
formation and seven in his StarFight formation. They had paid in blood for the death of most of the invading wasp fleet. He saw his father’s
Midway
leading the beam fight against the two smaller wasp ships. They had moved to trail behind the rear of the remaining giant wasp ship. Why the move back?

“Captain!” yelled Lori from behind. “Look! The giant wasp ship is putting out new hull plates. It’s going black hole!”

Damn
. “All StarFight ships, stay back! Giant ship is going to black hole mode!”

“
Midway
fleet, do the same,” called his father. “Tactical, concentrate our lasers on the ass of that wasp on the right. Maybe we can blow its two thrusters!”

Jacob liked that. “Tactical, aim our front lasers at the other wasp ship. All StarFight ships, join your lasers with those of the
Lepanto
.”

“Joining with
Lepanto
,” came the responses from the captains of the
Chesapeake, Hampton Roads, Tsushima Strait, Salamis, Philippine Sea
and the
Aldertag
.

“Joining,” came from his father’s battle group.

The ships
Okinawa, Mobile Bay, Manila Bay, Monitor, Leyte Gulf, Schweinfurt
and
Malacca Strait
joined their laser fire with that of the
Midway
.

The hulls of the two wasp ships glowed from the touch of green laser beams.

The giant wasp ship disappeared.

It had gone into black hole mode, leaving behind only an invisible event horizon and a power great enough to reach out nearly 4,000 kilometers in any direction. Actually, the other part of Jacob’s mind corrected, its reach was 3,917 klicks.

“Look!” yelled Lori. “Those wasp ships are caught in the field!”

Jacob watched along with everyone on the fifteen surviving ships as the two wasp ships now paid for moving close to the giant ship’s stern in an effort to protect that ship. Had the Hunter Prime ordered them to do that, even as he planned to activate his black hole field? Had he known it would kill the other wasp ships? Whatever his plan, his ship was now invulnerable to incoming beams. Which had become streaks of green and red laser light that circled the middle of an invisible globe. That globe began moving away, pulling the two wasp ships closer and closer.

Gray hulls fragmented into hundreds of plates and pipes and blocks as gravitational tides pulled the once-living ships into long streams of gray taffy surrounded by white clouds of air that had once been breathed.

“Damn,” called Rosemary. “We didn’t need to shoot at those two bastards. Their own boss killed them.”

Jacob could only agree. Well before the incoming laser and proton beams could kill the last two smaller wasp ships, they had been pulled out of targeting lock-on and closer to the giant ship that was now a swirl of green and red light that flared every time a metal fragment hit the event horizon and was consumed by the beam energies fired by their fifteen ships.

“Well, that puts paid to most of them,” said his father from the
Midway
, sounding satisfied.

True. But there was no way the giant ship could stay in black hole mode forever. It had—

“Captain,” called Louise from Navigation. “That black hole ship is increasing its speed. It’s up to eleven psol. Moving higher. Now at twelve psol. It’s at thirteen psol and—”

“What’s the vector track of that ship!” Jacob yelled, his belly clenching as new fears filled his heart.

“Toward Valhalla,” Louise said, choking on her answer.

He looked to his father. “Fleet admiral, we cannot let that bastard get to Valhalla! All he has to do is to drop his field and launch his nuke warheads. We couldn’t kill them all. The
Lepanto
can catch that bastard!”

“How?”

His father’s expression had gone from satisfaction to frustration.

“By going up to fourteen percent of lightspeed. Our reactors can provide the power. Our thrusters can handle the strain.”

His father looked torn. “I remember that part of the first combat video. That was how you pulled the
Lepanto
out of that other ship’s black hole field. But son, it’s a long trip to get to Valhalla. An AU at least. You can’t keep that speed up for an hour.”

He was probably right. “We’ll hold it to thirteen point two psol,” Jacob said. “We’ll overtake that Hunter Prime bastard!”

Decision filled his father’s face. “Do it. And send us your power and thruster settings. Two of us going after that bastard doubles the chances that one of us will overtake him before our engines melt. Or worse.”

Jacob knew what worse meant. “Engines, Power, send your settings to the
Midway
. Take us to thirteen point two psol. Now.”

“Sir!” Maggie cried. “That will put the reactors at 12 percent beyond their maximum safe rating! We’re now at five over.”

“So it will. Do it.” He remembered what he had to do to increase power flow to the thrusters. “Gravity,” he called to Cassandra. “Cut power to all gravity plates not involved in the operation of the fusion reactors, fuel feed and thruster operation. Warn all decks, but cut power. That will reduce the draw on the fusion reactors and increase power flow to the thrusters.”

“All decks,” the green-haired woman called over the shipwide comlink. “Null gravity coming.” She reached out and tapped her control pillar. “All gravity plates shut down. Sir.”

He looked ahead to Akira. “Engines, increase thruster output as much as you can with the increased fuel flow and power feed.”

The young Black woman nodded, her tight curls floating out from her head as the Bridge gravity plates shut down. “Increasing thruster power. Moving up to 12.3, 12.7 . . . 13.2 percent of lightspeed!”

On his wallscreen the image of the
Midway’s
Bridge showed his father doing the same with his Power, Engines and Gravity people. A tablet floated up from the armrest of the Sioux captain, who reached out faster than quick and grabbed it.

“Fleet admiral, the
Midway
is hauling ass!” called the man.

Jacob almost smiled at the sudden looseness of his father’s captain. Marjorie Jones his XO did smile briefly. Then sobered. His father and his staff understood the risk they were taking in pushing their Battlestar well beyond its thruster and reactor ratings. This was the first time for them. It was the second time for him, Daisy and everyone else on the Bridge.

“Navigation, show me a projected interception point for our arrival within weapons range of the black hole ship.”

Louise tapped on her control pillar.

The wallscreen already held two images. The sensor holo filled the left side of the screen, while the true space holo filled the right side. Its middle now showed the green dots of their disjointed Scissors formation. Thirteen green dots moved at ten psol, falling behind. Two green dots now chased after a single purple dot.

“Projected.”

The middle holo enlarged until it included the planet Valhalla and its moon on the far right side, with the ships on the far left. A dotted green line chased after a purple dot. Intersection showed at a million klicks out from Valhalla.

“All Ship, we are in pursuit of the surviving enemy ship,” Jacob announced. “I aim to kill it before it hurts Valhalla. Take your Awake pills and stay on your stations. This battle is not yet done.”

He sat back and tried not to feel impatient.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

An hour later Daisy watched the readings from the ship’s three fusion reactors and three fusion pulse thrusters. The internal magfields of the reactors were holding their tiny fusion blasts and bleeding off electrical power to the ship’s essential functions. Which were air, lights, control circuits, the shipwide wifi field, sensors, the Mess Hall freezers, the Med Hall equipment and the weapons mounts and nodes. The shutdown of nearly every gravity plate in the
Lepanto
had allowed enough power to flow to the thrusters so Akira and the fusion engineers on Engines Deck had been able to increase the strength of the fusion magfields that fed each thruster with implosion byproducts. Raw energy spat out the rear of her ship’s three exhaust funnels, seeking escape from the magfields of those funnels. Once free of the funnels, the streams of orange-white plasma joined together in a single flare that reached out eighty kilometers to her ship’s stern. Secondary reradiation from molecules of interstellar gas reached beyond the flare itself. She wished that flare could be turned loose on the black hole wasp ship. But its river of electrons, protons, neutrons and subatomic particles would be bent sideways and join the field’s accretion disk, the same way the earlier barrage of beams from both Earth fleets had been shifted. Her holo’s true space image of the distant enemy ship showed a glowing white, green and red ball with periodic flares of yellow light as interstellar gas impacted the field. Only the
Lepanto’s
charged electromagnetic field kept her ship from being badly buffeted by the sparse gas that lay between the planets of any star.

“Interception point arrives in six point three minutes,” called Louise.

“Finally,” muttered Jacob from above her. Her overhead image of him showed him looking to Richard. “Chief O’Connor, tell your Marines to load into their Darts. Just the pilot and a single Marine to handle the Dart laser. And to offload the three thermonuke warheads you put in each cargohold.”

The white-haired, strong-shouldered man hunched forward, peering intently at one of his holos. “Darts are loading a pilot and a Marine sharpshooter.”

“Who’s going out?” called Jacob.

“The pilots are Master Sergeant Linda Mabry on the
Chao Lee,
Master Sergeant Howard Johnson on the
Chapultepec
and Master Sergeant Aaron Jacobs on the
Tarawa
,” Richard said flatly. “Joining them to sharpshoot are Gunnery Sergeant Jane Diego on
Chao Lee
, First Sergeant Auggie Naranjo on the
Chapultepec
and First Sergeant Wayne Park on the
Tarawa
. All six of them carry the nuke arming codes. Sir.”

“Your team leaders,” Jacob said, sounding distracted.

“Yes sir.”

Daisy understood the Darts prep was in case the
Lepanto
lost her antimatter cannon and a boarding of the wasp ship was needed. The Marines would launch under covering laser fire, impact, offload the thermonukes and then hit the retros. In theory it would place nine, three megaton thermonukes into three parts of the wasp hull. Enough to kill it, Jacob had said during the early part of their chase. He’d called it his ‘final option’.

She returned her gaze to the ship cross-section holo, with quick glances at her situational holo that showed the upcoming intersection of the
Lepanto
and the
Midway
with the black hole ship. Its vector track had changed slightly, moving it into a line that ran close to the top of Valhalla’s atmosphere. She touched her armrest control. The projected end point would arrive at 4,180 kilometers above the planet’s atmosphere. A blinking yellow dot just below that arrival point turned her throat dry.

“Captain! The wasp ship is aiming straight at
Green Hills
station! If it’s still in black hole mode when it arrives, the station will be ripped apart!”