Retribution (The Federation Reborn Book 3) (30 page)

The CAG watched, praying anxiously as the destroyer's fighters tried to pick up the slack. They were out of position however, stacked high and low to steer clear of the counter missile fire. By the time they'd gotten into position, the missiles had reached their final run and gone to sprint mode.

Horrified, the CAG watched helplessly as five missiles got past everything the fighters threw at them. Two impacted on the destroyer's shield a half second ahead of the other missiles …both within a few meters of each other. The combined two hundred megatons of force were too much for the shields to handle and they overloaded.

Before they could re-form, the other three missiles came barreling in. One impacted on the ship's nose as she tried to steer away, chewing a painful chunk out of her bow sensors and armor. A second hundred-megaton warhead hit her along her starboard flank scouring it, but the fourth flew into her midships boat bay. The missile hit at 88 degrees, almost perpendicular so there wasn't much of a chance of deflection like the other two hits. The hundred-megaton warhead cleaved through the armored door with its plasma breaching round then the real warhead went off within her boat bay a few milliseconds later.

One moment
Eagle
was a frantically firing and maneuvering ship and the next she bucked like a living thing as an explosion was lit off in her guts. It was just her crew's bad luck that they had a fuel line exposed at the time. The line was breached and fed the blast. Fire ran up the line and detonated a tank behind an armored wall, sending it sprawling throughout the tight confines of her engineering decks. Plasma lines ruptured and her drive cut out.

Before the computer could get a handle on the reactor and scram it, the excess plasma from her heart bled into the breaches and hit a magazine lighting off several of her missiles.

To the outside world, she seemed to initially survive the hits, but in one sick twisted moment, she started to break up, then explode in raw fury.

Commander Wilder saw it and swore, tears streaming down her face as she turned away.

:::{)(}:::

Eagle's
sudden and unexpected cessation of fire had a chilling effect on her sister ships. It opened a narrow hole in their own defenses.
Hachimaze
took three hits in rapid succession, downing her shields and hammering at her starboard flank and dorsal weapon mounts. She lost most of her weapons in those brief but hard hits.

Warrior's Creed
also took two hits on her shields. The last missile managed to bleed some of its plasma energy through the dying shield to scour some of the instruments off her starboard flank, momentarily blinding her. The shields reformed after a moment but not as strong as before.
Endymion
took one hit to her starboard shield. It held but just barely.

:::{)(}:::

“Scratch one!” Lieutenant Nezier crowed as he noted the destroyer breaking up in his rearview sensors.

“We did it! We got one of the bastards!” his copilot echoed, pumping his fist. The two pilots fist bumped, grinning at each other.

“One down, two, no, three damaged,” Lieutenant Nezier noted, doing a rough assessment of the damage. Then he took a look at the remaining friendly IFF tags and grimaced. Despite the mission plan, there were still going to be some empty bunks when it was all said and done.

And each time they lost people, it became harder to ram the next attack home. But he knew there would be one, and if he had missiles and a craft to fight with, another after that. They'd get the job done.

One way or another.

:::{)(}:::

Commander Zakhan nodded as the bomber wing broke off. They'd scored their first kill, and that was important. He would have liked to have seen more, but that damn stacked defense was a bitch to get through. They just had to wade in and take their licks.

Which was nice in theory but he was paying for it. He didn't like what he was seeing. Each mission wore away a part of his strength. It meant future missions would get harder. Sure his people were learning, but that balanced out against what the knowledge and skills the surviving enemy was picking up on their side.

He grimaced. Whoever ran the interceptors on the other side, they were good. He'd barely survived the mauling his people had endured. He'd ordered his
Raptors
to hang back and draw the enemy off or sniper them, classic wild weasel tactics, but they'd still taken losses.

Losses they couldn't easily replace either he knew.

“Back to the barn people. You know the drill,” he said as he downloaded their logs and then added his own. When he was finished, he pointed his antenna at the approximate location of the flagship as well as
Nimitz
and sent the compressed report off to them.

:::{)(}:::

“Sir, we're getting the first assessment reports from the wing. It looks like the fighters did a little better job. We didn't lose as many, but we still took losses,” Catherine reported.

“And their attack?”

“He went after the
Arboths
instead of the fleet defenders,” Catherine reported in a neutral voice.

The admiral surprised her. Instead of growling he merely nodded. “Zakhan knows what he's doing. He's picking the easy targets—the ones his people could hit the hardest. If he'd tried to go after the
Nelsons
, he would have wasted a lot of munitions and not been guaranteed a kill.”

“Yes, sir,” Catherine replied, making a mental note of that. “It looks like they killed one of the
Arboths
and damaged two others.”

“A good start. Every little bit helps. It'll spread their coverage and force them to protect their cripples,” the admiral mused. Catherine nodded, waiting and watching him. She gauged his mood as guarded but hopeful. “Get them back here and turned around for another strike,” the admiral rumbled, startling her.

“Yes, sir. We're picking apart their screen. I wonder how long it will take before they launch a bomber strike of their own?”

“Don't curse us,” Sedrick growled.

“She's right. But the answer is doubtful,” the admiral mused.

“Sir?” Sedrick asked, confused.

“Their bombers would have a free ride to us, but they'd have to beat feet and burn hard to catch up with their own mother ships on the return journey. That'd cost them. If they did any maneuvering in the meantime, they'd be in trouble. I'm not expecting a bomber strike, but be on guard for it anyway.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Catherine replied, shooting a significant look to the intelligence officer. He grimaced but then nodded.

:::{)(}:::

The great thing for Commander Zakhan was that once his people were clear, they cut their engines and then drifted as the Retribution Fleet caught up with them, thus saving fuel. There had been a bit of cursing and sweating when a few of the engines had balked initially at restarting, but they'd gotten the engines kicked back on. After that it had been a simple recovery mission. His people landed each in turn. Telemetry from each bird was carefully monitored by the deck crews and Prifly. Any bird that had damage was triaged. Within an hour the entire force had been refueled, rearmed, and was ready to be sent out again for another bite.

:::{)(}:::

Once the battle space was cleared, the bombers began to launch even before the interceptors and defensive fighters began to recover. The exhausted fighters kept to the flanks of the carriers in formation, well clear of their launch and recovery bay doors until the bomber wing and their escorts were away.

Only when they were clear and on their way did Meia and Wilder order their flocks back home to roost for some much needed rest on a triage basis.

Commander Wilder popped her canopy and looked over to Jane. Jane had taken her helmet off and was practically hugging her bird. “Good girl,” Jane said lovingly, making the CAG crack a tired smile.

She heard a purring chuckle and looked over to her left to see Hurranna. The Neolynx climbed out of her cockpit as her plane captain began doing inventory and overseeing the bird's wings being folded up for easier storage.

Not that they needed it, Jerrica thought. They had a few holes in their ranks. Each time they entered combat, they were bound to lose someone.

“Two more gone, CAG,” Orville reported through her implants. “And two fighters sufficiently damaged to be down for a week or more. Technically they are write-offs. If the maintenance teams have the time, they could strip them for parts and then dump the frames overboard.”

“Don't. Not unless we need to shed the mass, and two planes aren't enough to make much of a difference,” Jerrica replied as a rating handed her an energy drink. She unscrewed the lid, dropped a straw in, and took a sip.

“It's between you, the skipper, and the deck boss I suppose,” the A.I. stated.

“Hell, we've got replicators, figure it out. There will be plenty of time to repair the birds once we're in hyper.”

“If we get to hyper. Right now we've been sparring with the other side; each time we've been sizing them up and testing them as much as they have us. The main event won't begin for another two hours,” the A.I. stated. “And we'll most likely be spectators for it,” he grumped.

“Maybe. We'll see,” the woman replied, waving Jane and Hurranna over. “Break time over. Time to rally the troops ladies,” she said to them. Both women nodded.

:::{)(}:::

Vasili grimaced as his bombers entered the outer engagement zone. He had forty-two bombers with him, three had been destroyed, one had been too damaged to fly once it had gotten back to
Crystal Cold
, and two others had been down checked at the last minute due to unseen damage.

He also only had a single squadron of fighters to ride cover with him. Not good, he thought as they steered well clear of the enemy fighters and bombers recovering on their fleet carrier.

“This is going to be a bit different people. If they jump as we're expecting, Beta plan will be activated. Keep that firmly in mind and the objectives on your HUD primed for check off. Don't hesitate,” he said over the wing radio network.

“Destroyers in sight,” Anna stated.

“Line up on them. Let's see if they flinch as expected,” Vasili replied. “We've got to make this quick. We don't want to be caught outside the barn when all hell breaks loose,” he said.

:::{)(}:::

Commander Zakhan cursed the timing. He'd thought he'd gotten better at it, but of course he hadn't anticipated life's little hiccups getting in the damn way. Having a fouled deck due to a scraped landing was just the headache he didn't need or want; it had thrown his carefully structured plan in to chaos. It was a clear case of expectations not meeting reality and biting him in the ass; with the deck fouled, he couldn't turn the latter half of his fighters around to meet the incoming bombers as he'd expected.

He had the alert five fighters out of course, and one of his scratch squadrons had refueled. It had half armaments so he threw them at the incoming bombers.

His
Emperor
class super fighter had the fuel to pitch in, but his wingman was gone. He was leery about mixing it up without someone there to cover his ass.

:::{)(}:::

“Zakhan is in trouble, sir,” Catherine reported.

“I see that,” Admiral De Gaulte rumbled. “Order the destroyer screen in tight. In fact, move them in past the Crueron 5. Get them out of the way.”

“Aye, sir,” Catherine replied.

:::{)(}:::

“They are going for it!” an exultant voice said over the bomber net as their sensors told them the story. The surviving destroyers were being pulled back out of their reach. Just as they'd hoped.

“Okay people, plan Baker is in effect. Repeat, plan Baker,” Vasili said as he keyed up the second plan and inputted it into the computer.

:::{)(}:::

Admiral De Gaulte had one moment to realize he might have erred when he realized the bombers hadn't been warned off by the defensive depth they'd have to go through to get through to their intended targets. He cudgeled his puzzled brain for answers. Nothing came to him until he accidentally flicked his plot to the Z axis and looked down at it. Then he caught on.

“The destroyers were never their intended targets. They are going for the cruisers. Alert the cruisers, Commander,” he barked, looking over to Catherine.

Startled, his OPS officer nodded and then obeyed.

As she began passing orders, he flicked his own microphone to the destroyers. “Cruisers are the target. Halt your retreat and support them,” he ordered.

“In again, out again, Finnegan. Aye aye, Admiral,” Commodore Eichmann replied.

Admiral De Gaulte didn't spare any time or thought to scold the commodore for his flippancy. He had more important things on his mind.