On Silver Wings (25 page)

It was large, lightly furred to her eye, and massively muscled compared to the grey aliens. Sorilla hefted its weapon idly, noting that the design was recognizable enough.

Business end, buttstock, everything looks pretty familiar. Let’s see… trigger stud looks to be thumb actuated.
She noted, recording her observations as she flipped the weapon over and recorded it all into her memory systems. Her hands, in armor, fit almost into the grooves of the weapon. She’d have to stretch her thumb to trigger the weapon, but it was workable.

Sorilla kicked the alien over, noting that it was wearing something akin to armor, but it hadn’t done squat against a bullet. She nudged it with her foot, noting the flex of the material and decided that if it was a ballistic vest it was only rated to the equivalent of civilian rounds. Not too shocking, in order to stop military spec calibers you pretty much needed hard plate since even if a soft material could stop the round all it would do was transfer the energy into the body underneath. Dead by internal bleeding instead of external was still dead.

She glanced at the solid glass like cut of the alien’s weapon bore, however, and remembered that the military drones used some sort of energy weapon in the jungle and decided that there was a fair chance that the material was anti-laser or something more than ballistic. There were energy and particle weapons issued by the army, but they were mostly anti-armor weapons and one hell of a lot bulkier than what she was holding.

Means they’ve got some pretty sweet power sources,
Sorilla decided, considering the weapon for a moment before dropping it back onto the body.

She didn’t have time for it now, if the opportunity presented itself she’d grab it or another one on the way out, but she had another job to do first.

Sorilla smirked as she jogged toward a door that seemed to lead deeper into the complex.

It was most certainly time to harass enemy supply lines and destroy a few valuable resources.

*****

USS Montana

Inner Hayden System

“Confirmed enemy sighting, Captain.”

“I see them,” Neal Jackson said as he watched his repeater plot, “Designate as follows… Bandits One through Three.”

“Aye Sir, targets designated. Send to the fleet?”

“Send it.” Jackson replied, pivoting his seat to the left as he flipped open three local channels. “Give me a system eval.”

“Engines are primed, Captain.” The Chief said immediately, “Tanks are topped off, and the colliders are operating at peak efficiency.”

“Weapons are hot and ready to fly, Cap.” The Weapons Chief non com answered in turn. “No red lights, Cap.”

“Damage control is the same Captain. Keep us from being crushed like a tin can and my teams will keep us flying.”

Jackson scowled lightly at the man’s tone, but didn’t comment. He understood the concern, but wished that he’d keep it to himself. That kind of talk had a place, but it wasn’t right after they were committed to contact.

“Excellent.” He said finally, pivoting back to where he opened the channel to the Admiral. “Admiral…”

“Yes Captain?” Admiral Shepherd came back almost instantly.

“We’ve confirmed three bandits trying to sneak up on us, pulling the same out of the sun maneuver they used on Admiral Sweet and Task Force Two.”

“Fool me once…” Shepherd said calmly, nodding, “Do they know we’ve spotted them?”

“No way to know, Sir.” Jackson answered, “They look to be coming in straight, fat, and happy though.”

“Let’s hope it’s our time to fool them,” Shepherd said, leaning forward, “I’m going to issue orders to initiate the next phase.”

“Understood Sir.”

“Go get 'em, Captain.”

“Aye Aye Admiral.” Jackson said, nodding once before closing the channel and turning his chair back to look over the bridge. “Sound battlestations.”

“Aye Sir, Battlestations.” The XO responded as the alarms went off.

Jackson did a quick check of the fleet’s positions, satisfying himself that they were all where they should be even as he noted the Admiral’s orders going out.

The best intel they had on the enemy bandits limited their main weapon, both in range and targeting capability. Admittedly most of those limits were based on advanced guesswork and applied scientific theories way over Jackson’s head, but they were the best numbers anyone had to offer so he’d take them.

They were pretty sure that the enemy’s weapon wasn’t FTL, thank whatever Gods ruled creation. The range seemed to be within a couple dozen light seconds, since that was when they’d opened up the last time. Probably they could take pot shots from further out, Jackson guessed, but even with FTL targeting there was a physical limit on how effective you could react at that kind of range.

Telemetry from the Task Force gave them some pretty hard numbers on the effective attack window of the enemy device. From first indications of a gravity event to the total catastrophic failure of the target ship was always at least thirteen point four seconds. To hold your aim on a target for more than thirteen seconds at better than twenty light seconds, well that took a fair combination of technical excellence and dumb sheer luck.

All of that was why the fleet was spreading out, keeping thirty light seconds spread in their formation. Frankly, missile guidance sucked out past twenty light seconds, but it was technically feasible to maintain guidance as far out as there was fuel left in the tanks.

“Lock up Bandit One.” He ordered, sounding a lot calmer than he felt.

It was a strange feeling, he thought, knowing that he was about to open fire on an entirely alien species. He wouldn’t be the first to do so, that ‘honor’ fell to Admiral Sweet and Task Force Two. He told himself, not for the first time, that he wasn’t starting this war. The first shots were fired on civilians almost a year earlier, but honestly it didn’t really help sooth his mind.

This is going to be bloody…
He thought grimly, watching the numbers slowly spiral down.
Maybe the bloodiest ever. These… whatever they are, have weapons that could theoretically crack planets. God help us, but I’m about to spit in their eye.

“Bandit One is entering maximum engagement envelope.”

Neal Jackson nodded, only thinking about it for a moment.

“Fire as she bears,” He said with a wry smile, “All tubes.”

“All tubes, Aye.”

The internal magazines of the Montana whirred to life as the ship’s armory began feeding the four main tubes with missiles, rapid firing her birds into the black.

The remaining seven ships in the offensive fleet followed suit, each putting twenty birds into space in a matter of seconds before falling silent as their crews settled in for the long wait to see the results of the handy work.

“Ahead One Gee.”

“Ahead One, Aye.”

The Montana, followed shortly by the rest, surged ahead to meet the bandits head on as they formed a line through space four light minutes across.

*****

USV Socrates

“That’s it, they’ve kicked off the fireworks.” Commander Ashley announced calmly from his position across the bridge of the science and research ship.

Alexi nodded, lips drawn over his teeth in a grimace. “Understood. Let us hope that they can keep them occupied long enough for us to do our work, yes?”

“Aye Sir.”

“Increase acceleration,” Alexi ordered, cocking his head slightly as he ran the numbers in his head. “Make it… four gravities, Mr. Keith.”

“Four gravities, Aye Sir.”

The Socrates rumbled for a moment as its VASIMR drive lit off, slamming them back hard as the big ship made for Hayden at almost forty meters per second per second.

Commander Ashley grimaced as he reached forward and opened a keyed comm to the Captain on a private channel.

“Sir?”

“Yes, Commander?”

“At this acceleration, we’re going to have an issue stopping in time, won’t we?”

“Nyet, Commander. Trust me.”

Ashley didn’t say anything else, but Alexi could see the military man shooting him worried glances that told the tale. He grinned widely, probably a little lacking in sanity he supposed, but this was the one part of the mission he enjoyed. Behind him flew some of the best people he’d ever worked with, people he trusted to follow him without killing either themselves or him in the process.

They didn’t often get a reason to let it all out the way he intended, the brass tended to frown on putting that kind of stress on the spaceframes. He didn’t suppose they’d be in much of a position to bitch about it this time though.

“Let us hope that they keep those alien warships away from us, Da?” Alexi muttered, his accent deepening darkly as he focused on the plot. “Or this will be a very short rescue.”

*****

USS Montana, Flag Deck

Admiral Shepherd watched over the telemetry plots, eyes constantly flickering to the countdown. Five minutes after launch and there was still no sign of response from the enemy ships.

They can’t be that arrogant, can they? The Los Angeles made them bleed, took one of them according to the telemetry we recovered. They can’t be planning on just sitting there and taking our best shot in the teeth, can they?

“Bandits One through Three are on the move!” The Ensign stationed at the sensor suite jarred him from his reverie. “Accelerating… One hundred Gravities… Two Hundred! Three hundred! Holding at Three hundred! They’re avoiding the missiles!”

Shepherd grimaced, accepting the news. He’d begun to hope for a minute that they were as stupid as they seemed, but if they had been he would have had to start wondering how the hell they’d become a space faring people.

“Maintain course and speed.” Jackson ordered calmly, “Load tubes one through four and ready the magazines for rapid fire launching.”

“Aye Aye Captain.”

“All ships, initiate phase three of the operations.” Admiral Shepherd’s order issued over the FLTCOM channel.

Captain Jackson of the Montana answered instantly, confirming phase three initiation. Shepherd knew he’d have to wait minutes and more for the responses from the other ships.

He settled for watching the plot adjust as the best detection systems of Task Force Three worked like mad to track and predict the moves of three alien ships.
Three on eight, it shouldn’t even be a match
, He thought.
Too bad reality is such a bitch.

The three Bandits had split up, circling wide around the missiles well out of their maneuvering range. The missiles had a maximum acceleration of just over two hundred and fifty gravities, but that would burn them out in no time at all. Given the endurance they needed, Shepherd knew that the fleet’s birds wouldn’t be able to pull more than a hundred gees.

The Bandits were tracking wide, they’d obviously got a good read on the missiles capabilities in their engagement with the Los Angeles Task Force. They were skirting the edge of the missiles maneuvering range, playing it close to the edge all along the way. Shepherd had to admit that he was impressed with their intelligence gathering and general technical capabilities, at least if he stepped back and looked at it from an outsider’s perspective. From the perspective of a man about to be on the receiving end of said technical capability, however, he wished they were just a little less competent.

“That’s it,” Jackson announced over the ship’s command channel, “They’ve burned out their motors.”

Shepherd glanced at the plot, nodding as he noted that the missiles were on a pure ballistic trajectory. The Bandits were arcing back in, coming at the line of war in roughly evenly separated intervals. He allowed himself a smile, it was almost better than he’d hoped when they worked up the plan.

They’re using a geometrically perfect assault pattern.
He noted,
They think they’re going to run us over.

Shepherd exerted the discipline he’d forged to make it to the position he currently enjoyed, and kept himself from micromanaging his Captains. The plan was in action now, he just had to trust them to do their jobs.

Hardest part of his job was just sitting back and letting them do theirs.

“We’re coming into range of their weapons,” The tactical report came up, “Thirty light seconds and closing, Captain.”

“Hold fire,” Jackson said coolly, “Let them commit.”

“Three minutes to their minimum engagement range… God they’re moving like bats out of hell.”

“They’ll be unable to turn back shortly,” Jackson said, “Just keep it cool a little longer.”

“Gee Force spike on the gravity array!”

“Helm! Give me twenty Gees, full ahead!”

“Twenty Gravities, Full Ahead, Aye!”

Jackson thumbed open the shipwide even as the VASIMR drive began to rumble, “All Hands, brace for full military power acceleration!”

Men and women across the ship grabbed onto their seat straps, closed their eyes in some cases, and started to pray even as they were slammed back into their acceleration bolsters. The ship surged forward as every warning alarm in the universe seemed to go off in their faces.

On the Bridge, Jackson was grimacing as he panted and clenched up, trying to keep the blood from running to his feet. At twenty gees he couldn’t hold out for long, it had been a long time since he ran the races, but it would only be a few seconds. If he and his ship were still alive by then, well then the enemy weapon missed.

Seconds ticked by like hours before the ship jerked once, hard, slamming Jackson and everyone else back and to the left like a giant hand grabbed them, batted them around a bit, and then let go.

“Kill the drive!” He gasped out in between breathes.

At the helm, the Ensign reached out painfully and oh so slowly for the kill button before he managed to slap his hand down.

Instantly the giant fist pressed into his chest vanished and he began to float free within his restraints again.

“Report!” he barked out.

“Best I can tell the gravity event happened portside, aft.” Ensign Meers said from where he was surrounded by screens. “No damage showing, I think we got through clean.”