Stellar Fox (Castle Federation Book 2) (7 page)

“All right,” Kyle acknowledged. He spared one final glance at the seemingly impassive Vice Admiral, then turned to Pendez. “Commander, you may warp space at your discretion.”

He felt the big ship hum as power fed to the Class Ones, and spotted the distinctive fuzz in the viewscreen of the A-S Drive’s singularities.

On the tactical display his implant was overlaying on part of his vision, white stars marked the formation of the same singularities around the other ships. The distortions wavered, and then vanished in flashes of bright blue Cherenkov radiation.

“Warp bubble initiated,” Pendez told him. “We are on route, ETA ninety-two minutes.”

Kyle checked another set of numbers. His Q-Com-relayed display of the battle showed the Federation defenders already in missile range of the Terran ships, but still twenty minutes from positron lance range. Both sides were keeping their starfighters close as a handful of missiles probed each other’s defenses.

By the time Battle Group Seventeen arrived, the two forces would have passed
through
each other, and the Terrans would be approaching weapons range of the Flotilla itself. Given the distance between BG17’s initial space warp and their emergence, they wouldn’t even know they’d gone FTL until the Allied battle group jumped them.

That would probably be enough to save the Flotilla, but everyone in the system already knew it wouldn’t save the two
Indomitable
-class battleships charging out.

Even as Kyle watched, the Commonwealth starfighters charged out, followed by a swarm of missiles as the Terran starships fully opened fired.

He was taking mental notes and made sure Stanford was also receiving the footage. Coordination between the missiles and the fighters was poor. The missiles had twice the starfighters’ acceleration, but their acceleration could be stepped down or up at will. It was an ability Kyle had used before to combine starfighter and missile attacks.

The Terrans didn’t bother. The forty missiles of their salvo blasted ahead of their starfighters and, unsupported, ran into the Federation starfighters.

The Gawain Reserve Flotilla Defense Group might have been a secondary posting, but its starfighter flight crews were hardly incompetent. Not a single missile of the first four salvos made it past them.

Then they ran headlong into the Terran ships. Both sides had sixth generation starfighters – the Terran
Scimitar
versus the Federation
Cobra
– but the Terrans simply had more. Each of the three
Assassin
-class battlecruisers fielded thirty starfighters, and the
Safari
-class heavy carrier anchoring the task group deployed a hundred and eighty.

The last wave of missiles was also, finally, coordinated with the starfighters and was targeted at the Federation starfighters. The
Scimitar
was heavily optimized towards anti-fighter engagements, with multiple lighter positron lances and light missile launchers.

None of the Federation starfighters survived to interpenetrate. Six hundred men and women were wiped away in a matter of moments, and then the surviving Terran starfighters fell back. Commonwealth doctrine now called for them to act in a missile defense role while the battlecruisers did the killing.

The two Federation battleships had clearly realized they couldn’t get missiles through the remaining hundred and fifty starfighters. They continued to fire them, but they were wide salvos – intended more to fill space with radiation and distort sensors than to kill starships.

Their own defenses shattered missiles by the dozens as they closed. Their heavy beams had a range that left a starfighter pilot like Kyle green with envy, with a chance of hitting their targets from almost a million kilometers away.

They almost reached that range intact. Missile salvo after missile salvo filled the space between the two forces, thoroughly demonstrating why no one regarded even capital ship missiles as ship killers as not a single missile hit.

Until one did. A laser cluster on one of the battleships didn’t track in time. Three missiles slipped past and slammed into the Castle Federation battleship
Jackson
.

Three one-gigaton warheads flared within a second of each other. The battleship’s massive armor shed some of the impact… but not enough.
Jackson
reeled, her engines flaring out as her mass manipulators failed and she tried to evade.

Without her sister to help stop missiles,
Kennedy
couldn’t cover them both. Four more missiles from the next salvo made it through, and
Jackson
simply ceased to exist – and five thousand souls went with her.

Kennedy
sought to avenge her. Moments after
Jackson’s
death, the battleship reached her range of the Commonwealth ships – a range the cruisers and carrier couldn’t match. Six hundred kiloton-per-second main lances spoke in anger, but at this range it took the lance beams almost three seconds to reach their targets.

That was enough to throw off accuracy, and the Terran
Assassin
-class battlecruisers had six hundred kiloton lances of their own.
Kennedy’s
deflectors were stronger, but not enough to reduce the range by much.

Five ships danced in space, pirouetting like dancers as they dodged around beams of deadly antimatter. More missiles slashed in on both sides, and the Terran starfighters grimly stuck to their larger brethren’s sides, picking off the robotic attackers.

Kyle watched in grim silence, convinced that it was all going to be for naught – and then one of the battlecruisers zigged when it should have zagged. Eight heavy positron lances slammed into the warship.

Where they hit, the matter of the ship’s armor collided with the antimatter of the beams and annihilated. The starship’s own armor turned into a devastatingly powerful explosive and ripped open vast gaping holes in her hull. The beams were only connected for half a second – and that was enough.

The battlecruiser came apart into pieces, its interior gutted by the beams of pure destruction that had ripped through her.

Any hope for
Kennedy
was short-lived. Even as her target died, the old battleship’s defenses proved unable to handle the missile fire that she and her sister had withstood together. Five missiles made it through in a single salvo – and not even the mightiest battleship could stand that kind of fire.

Silence reigned on
Avalon’s
bridge, and Kyle knew his crew had been watching the battle alongside him.

“Commander Pendez,” he said quietly. “ETA?”

“We will arrive in forty-seven minutes, sir,” she replied.

“Inform Vice Commodore Stanford,” Kyle ordered. “Let’s see if we can give these people a well-deserved shock.”

Vice Commodore Michael Stanford looked over the data being relayed to him from the system defense net with an appraising eye. The Commonwealth fighter force had been hammered in their engagement with the defending fighters, but not nearly enough for his liking. They still had over a hundred
Scimitars
tucked in close to provide missile defense.

Someone in the enemy task group had also clearly been smart enough to guess at least the basics of Battle Group Seventeen’s plan. As soon as the defenders had been destroyed, they’d altered their vector – now they were burning for open space.

Of course, that acceleration wasn’t changing their vector towards the Gawain Flotilla. They’d waited after destroying the defenders and let themselves get close enough for a nice solid fix on the mothballed starships, and then started launching missiles.

A capital ship missile like the Commonwealth’s Stormwind had a flight duration of a little over an hour. At an acceleration of over a thousand gravities, that gave them a range of roughly a light minute from rest and a terminal velocity over ten percent of lightspeed.

Of course, firing missiles through a defensive fighter screen was ineffectual at best, and the closer you were when you fired, the more accurate you were. The Commonwealth was still using a significant chunk of the Stormwind’s range, leaving them with a thirty minute flight time.

Stanford ran the numbers through his implant and the starfighter’s computers, but he knew the answer already. There was no way any of BG17’s starships were going to get between those missiles and the Reserve Flotilla.

BG17’s starfighters, however, were seventh-generation birds rated for five hundred gravities of acceleration. All of the battle group’s three hundred and sixty eight starfighters could manage to get in front of the missiles if they launched immediately upon emergence from Alcubierre.

The Battle Group hadn’t taken sufficient form, yet, for Stanford to be able to order that launch as senior CAG. Once the starfighters were in space, however, he would be in command as the senior starfighter officer on the scene.

Reviewing the statistics of the eighty Imperial
Arrows
under his command, he smiled grimly. Combining their extra missiles with his
Falcons’
powerful electronic warfare suite gave him an idea.

#

Michael barely had time to register the wrenching sensation of the big carrier emerging from Alcubierre drive before he was slammed back into his acceleration couch as his fighter shot into space. It was refreshing after the improvisations they’d had to pull on the old
Avalon
to have a full set of fighter launch tubes.

Ten squadrons shot into space. Twenty seconds later, another ten followed.

Sixty seconds after exiting their Alcubierre, all of
Avalon’s
starfighters were in space, forming up into a loose formation that left each starfighter the space to ‘random-walk’ to avoid incoming fire.

It took another ten seconds for
Cameroon’s
six squadrons and
Gravitas’
ten to join Stanford’s people in space. All three hundred and sixty-plus little ships then turned as one and fired their engines – charging towards the enemy.

Michael triggered a mental command, linking him into the Federation Wing Commanders and the Lieutenant Colonel commanding the Imperial force.

“We can catch those bastards,” Lieutenant Colonel Kai Metzger said immediately as the channel established. “There’s no way they can reach a clear gravity zone before we can catch them.”

“Negative,” Michael told him. “We can’t catch them
and
defend the Flotilla – we need those ships more than we need to catch the Terrans. The missiles are the priority.”

“Three modern ships are worth more to the Commonwealth than six obsolete hulks are worth to us,” Metzger snapped dismissively.

“That’s not your call, Lieutenant-Colonel,” Stanford replied bluntly, emphasizing the junior man’s rank. “Castle command says we save the ships, so we go for the missiles.”

“Do whatever the hell you want, Feddie,” the Imperial officer said dismissively. “We’re going to go kill us a carrier.”

Even before the Coraline man had finished speaking, all eighty of his ships twisted away from the Federation fighters. Their vector would leave them completely out of position to intercept the missiles, but take them directly into the teeth of the Commonwealth task group.

“Get your ships back into formation,” Stanford snapped immediately. Silence was his only response, and his implant calmly informed him that Metzger had dropped the link.

“What’s the plan, CAG?” Wing Commander Russell Rokos asked after the silence stretched a moment too long. As usual, the phlegmatic pilot knew exactly what needed to be done.

Stanford shook himself physically, updating his plan for the
lack
of the Imperial fighters on the fly.

“I’m sending everyone positions for their fighter wings,” he told the Federation officers. “With only our missiles, this could cut a lot closer than I was planning on.”

“Our Starfires can’t intercept Stormwinds,” Wing Commander Andreas Volte, the leader of
Cameroon’s
Wing, objected. “Not without getting damn lucky.”

“They don’t need to,” Stanford replied. “Get them close enough and the radiation wave will screw with their sensors royally – that’ll make them sitting ducks. Trust me, gentlemen, ladies – some of us have done this before.”

He carefully ignored the Imperial starfighters flying off on their own course as he structured the firing patterns for the Federation ships. That was a problem… but it was a problem for
after
there were Commonwealth ships in his home system.

#

They swung wide around the Flotilla itself, Stanford taking a moment to mentally catalog the defense platforms and the main station weapons ready to defend the mothballed ships. There weren’t as many as he’d have included with hindsight. Anything more than a dozen missiles was going to cause headaches for the remaining defenses.

Whoever was in charge of the station had clearly been watching for them. As soon as the
Falcons
passed the station, its massive radar arrays opened up at full power. While the missiles were capable of fuzzing their signatures and making them harder to
locate
, there was no way they could
hide
from the big stationary arrays.

Ten salvos burned through space, closing on the helpless ships behind him. Three hundred missiles.

“All Wings, fire missiles on my mark,” Stanford ordered calmly as the information slotted into his plans and the computers returned the appropriate responses. “Detonation patterns downloading now.”

A few moments passed as the computers talked to each other, and then confirmed to the CAG that everyone had the details of where to fire their missiles.

“All ships… maximum rate fire… MARK.”

The rotary magazines attached to a
Falcon’s
missile launchers could be emptied in twenty seconds. It was rarely the best use of the Starfire missiles, but in this case it had its advantages.

Over three thousand missiles launched into space in three waves. There were easily a dozen Starfires for each Stormwind.

If the Starfires had been faster, or smarter, or more maneuverable than the capital ship missiles, that would have been all that was needed. Unfortunately, the Stormwinds were just as fast and maneuverable as the fighter missiles – and a few tons worth of smarter.

Jammers flared to life and the suicidal robots began to dodge and weave. Entire regions of space dissolved into static, and Stanford watched it all with a practiced eye.

“Rokos,” he said softly, opening a channel to just the Wing Commander.

“You need us to play targets, don’t you?” the other man replied instantly.

“You got it,” Stanford agreed.

“Just cover us, boss,” Rokos replied. “Fifty asses in the wind, coming right up.”

Ten seconds later, Rokos’ six squadrons lit up as their ECM went to full power. The
Falcon
had fewer missiles than the
Arrow
in the same mass – and the Federation had used every gram of that mass for powerful computers and emitters.

Even
knowing
what was going on, Stanford’s computers were still almost fooled. A ghost image appeared on his scanners – forty-eight starfighters pretending to be six mothballed starships.

Stormwinds were smart. They weren’t fooled immediately, still focused on the Reserve Flotilla behind the starfighters.

But then the Starfires started detonating. The first wave only took out a half dozen missiles, but that was actually
more
than Stanford had expected.

The second wave of explosions wiped the entirety of the first two salvos, confused and lost in the radiation storm, from existence. The third and final salvo wiped over a hundred missiles away, making the missile strike
far
more effective than Stanford had dared hoped without the
Arrows’
extra launchers.

Of course, that meant there were still a hundred and twenty capital ship missiles bearing down on them – and over three quarters decided that Rokos’ Wing were actually their targets.

Those missiles dove straight into the teeth of Stanford’s squadrons, and never really stood a chance. Positron lances filled space with the glitter and fire of antimatter, and missiles died by the dozen.

The missiles Stanford was truly concerned about were the twenty-four that still went for the real ships. With ninety-odd weapons headed right at them, his people focused on defending themselves. Once they were clear, they turned their fire on those last few missiles.

The angle sucked, and the missiles were in final acquisition mode – dodging and dancing across space. Missiles died as Stanford’s fighters took them from behind. Two, three – five.

Then the Flotilla defenses opened up. Lasers and positron lances filled space, and more and more missiles died. For a single heart-wrenching moment, Stanford thought they’d succeeded.

Two missiles broke through, dodging past everything thrown at them. Still in communication with each other, their suicidal brains picked different targets – and struck home.

Two
Commandant
-class carriers vanished in separate balls of fire.

Vice Admiral Dimitri Tobin spoke four languages fluently and had learned to curse in three more. It took a full minute for him to finish swearing after watching the
Commandants’
destruction. The two carriers represented over a hundred trillion Federation Stellars of investment – a full
tenth
of a reasonably wealthy system’s Gross System Product.

Even for the Castle Federation, two carriers was not a loss they could easily afford. Thankfully, there had been barely anyone on board, but the loss was still more than painful. The only question was…

“Captain Roberts,” he said loudly, though far more calmly than his previous string of quietly muttered curse words. “A moment of your time, please?”

The big Captain blinked, probably checking the tactical display where the Imperial starfighters were busily scattering away from their abortive and failed strike on the Commonwealth ships, and then stepped over to Tobin.

“Sir,” Roberts said quietly. He sounded far calmer than he could possibly be, and Tobin was impressed at his self-control.

“You’ve flown with Stanford,” Tobin stated. “You taught him that trick?”

“In a manner of speaking,” the Captain replied. “I’d used it before I met him, but he came up with it on his own in an intentional high-loss scenario I threw at him.”

“Given the additional missiles from the
Arrows
, would it have worked?” the Vice Admiral asked bluntly.

Roberts glanced back at the main screen, showing where search and rescue shuttles were fanning out through the wreckage of the Reserve Flotilla.

“Just given their positron lances alone, it would have worked,” he said calmly. “The Lieutenant Colonel just cost us two carriers, sir,” he finished.

“And at least twenty of his own people,” Tobin agreed grimly, his implant showing him the state of Metzger’s fighter group. “This isn’t acceptable, Captain.”

“I’m not sure what more Vice Commodore Stanford could have done, sir,” Roberts said stiffly. “He had the authority and the plan.”