“All scanners and ambient sensors standing by until the ship is in open space.”
“All uninhabited sections of the ship are pressured down.”
Consherra looked over at Velmeran. “All set.”
He nodded, and turned to communications. “Status?”
“All ships standing by. All fighters are ready to launch. Recovery transports and capture ships are in space. Alkayja station reports that the automated defenses and long-range scanners are standing by.”
“Relay this order to the carriers,” Velmeran said. “To avoid collision, all ships will rotate right upon backing out of their bay, then come around to the left when moving forward. Execute.”
Consherra considered this possibly the trickiest move that she would take this big ship through all day. Even Valthyrra moved herself in and out of the docking bay with extreme caution. Consherra engaged the forward engines only for a moment. The docking braces snapped back as the Maeridyen’s shock bumper slipped out of the forward brace, and she backed slowly out of the bay. As soon as she was clear, Consherra pivoted the ship around and engaged enough thrust from the main drives to bring the ship to a stop. The other three carriers, emerging from adjacent bays, moved in almost perfect unison. They pivoted around and accelerated, moving swiftly away from the base.
“Good enough so far,” Velmeran commented. “Long-range scan. Where are they?”
“The entire force is moving forward at high sublight speed, the small ships in a tight group ahead of the Fortresses,” Larenta at the scan station reported. “Anticipated arrival in seven minutes at sustained speed.”
“Those Fortresses will need a full fifteen minutes at least to get themselves slowed down. They should start braking any time now,” Velmeran mused, and looked up. “We will hold position twenty million kilometers out and let them come to us. I will not allow them to draw us too far away from the Base. Put me through to the Karvand.”
The wait was somewhat longer than he was used to with Valthyrra’s instant response in opening channels. “Daelyn of the Karvand here.”
“Hold your position here,” he ordered. “The Karvand is to remain out of the immediate battle. Your duty is to remain near the station. When those Mock Starwolves arrive, they will probably be coming in behind us. I want your carrier and all of your fighters guarding Alkayja, with your pilots unfought and fresh for battle.”
“Yes, of course,” Daelyn responded. The Karvand was already slowing to a stop. “You are picking on my poor ship, you know.”
“The Maeridyen and the Vardon have superior shields,” he explained. “The Methryn, I am sorry to say, is expendable. The Karvand is vulnerable, and she has her active crew still on board. Besides, this probably only means that the Mock Starwolves will destroy you first on their way to get us.”
“Oh, that is different.” Daelyn sounded quite mollified. Velmeran made a vague gesture to cut the channel, then remembered their present circumstances and directed that motion toward the communications console.
Consherra glanced up at him from the helm. “She is definitely your big sister.”
“She has also been in command of that ship only two months.” He turned to the main viewscreen. “Could we have a tactical schematic of long-range scan up here?”
That was apparently no problem at all, once it was asked for. He missed Valthyrra’s quiet efficiency more than ever, and her long experience that always allowed her to know what was wanted before it was called for. The bridge crew did not know such things because Valthyrra had always been there to do it for them. They would learn a lot by the time they came through this battle, assuming that they did come through it.
The wide main viewscreen partitioned itself, its right one-third becoming a three-dimensional schematic of the area surrounding the carriers, the left third identifying individual targets, and the middle remaining a completely uninformative visual image of space ahead. Velmeran stood for a moment, watching the scanner map. The Fortresses were already braking, falling well behind the broad line of stingship carriers and battleships. The smaller ships could drop speed in a hurry, at least compared to the Fortresses, and he thought that they might close half of their remaining distance before they would begin braking. At the same time, he thought that the carriers would have to begin launching their stingships at any moment, to give themselves time to get their own forces in space, then circle around out of danger of battle themselves.
“No activity from those stingship carriers?” he asked.
“They are just now beginning to swing out their racks,” Larenta reported.”By what I remember of stingship operation, they should take over a minute to deploy their racks, and another two minutes before the first stingships are launched.”
Velmeran nodded. This was more like it. “Relay orders to the Vardon. They are to launch six packs, moving to intercept those stingships. Get me some estimate on the number of stingships they have.”
The battleships would be more of a navigational hazard than anything; their own batteries could not penetrate the shields of the Starwolf carriers, but the carriers could take out even the largest battleships with a single shot from their massive, forward cannons. The stingships, though, were a very real danger. They would be carrying high-speed, shielded missiles, which could penetrate even heavy battle shields. He would move the fighters against the stingships, where they were most useful but in the least danger themselves. The Starwolf carriers, with their quartzite-shielding detonating missiles and their conversion cannons, were the only weapons that could take on the powerful Fortresses.
The first task was to use his own fighters to open a hole through those stingships. Starwolf pilots were good only for some fifteen minutes of hard flying before hypermetabolism wore them down and left them in need of a rest. It was actually more efficient for him to send the packs into battle in small groups rather than all at once, at least in a fight that they could not win within the first fifteen or twenty minutes.
And the most important question remained. Where were those Mock Starwolves? Would they hit early on, or when his own pilots were already tired of battle? He could not move his 700 pilots against their thousands and expect to win. His only hope of winning was that they would come in grouped together. Then he could have the Karvand swing around and take out the largest group of them with a sustained low-intensity blast of her conversion cannon, cutting their numbers enough for his more experienced pilots to handle. He might possibly win this battle, but he would need many lucky breaks and no surprises.
“Commander, I count 200 stingship carriers,” Larenta reported after a moment. “At 20 for each carrier, that comes to 5,000 stingships.”
“Thank you. I always appreciate bad news,” Velmeran remarked drily. “Tell six of the twelve packs from the Methryn to launch and move quickly to reinforce the group attacking the stingships.”
“That will leave only six packs at Alkayja base,” Consherra reminded him.
He nodded. “I believe that we would do best to solve our immediate problem. That will leave us with one less problem staring us in the face when the next one presents itself.”
The first group of fighters intercepted the leading edge of the first attack force, largely ignoring the battleships and aiming their more powerful accessory cannons at the stingship carriers. Those large ships, essentially just long racks with engines and crew cabins at either end, were largely unprotected, and most were still trying to get their racks of stingships clear and away. The Starwolf cannons ripped into the lightly-shielded carriers, tearing them apart. Many exploded under the concentrated barrage of heavy fire, taking their cargoes of small, swift warships with them.
But many stingships were already away, and many more were able to clear their racks while only 54 fighters did their best to deal with 200 carriers. In the end, nearly a fifth of the original 5,000 stingships survived the initial attack. The stingships were long, slender machines, all engines, generators, and weapons with a minimal crew encased in acceleration suits and supportive couches that protected them against turns and accelerations on the very limit of human endurance. As fast and as powerful as the stingships were, their performance still fell well short of the abilities of the Starwolf fighters and genetically engineered pilots.
The stingships turned as a group, moving swiftly through the advancing lines of the battleships as they oriented on the Starwolf carriers. The fighters were on their tails immediately but the stingships were swift and shifty, bobbing in small, sudden movements that made them difficult to hit, for all that the Starwolves’ natural abilities made them better targeting computers than even their own tracking scanners. The Union forces possessed the added advantage of sheer numbers, outgunning the defenders more than eighteen to one. Then the second set of Starwolf fighters, the six packs of the Methryn that had launched from the station, moved swiftly past their own carriers and into the middle of the mass of stingships.
With the Starwolf carriers moving in swiftly, the stingships suddenly broke off their attack and looped around to join the Fortresses, allowing the line of battleships to move forward into battle. Velmeran figured that the Union commander had looked upon the destruction of four-fifths of his stingships as the loss of protection he needed for his Fortresses, and decided to sacrifice his battleships to the task of wearing down the Starwolves and their known inability to endure a long conflict. Possibly he had also looked upon those four carriers as at least twice as many as he had expected, and he could only assume that each of those carriers possessed at least ten packs of its own. He could not have known that one of those carriers lacked both packs and a sentient computer system.
Velmeran also anticipated that, with the unexpected loss of most of his stingships, the Union Commander would have called up his Mock Starwolves to take the defenders from behind, opening a new line of attack, forcing the Starwolves to spread themselves thin to handle everything. Velmeran knew that his force could not last more than a few minutes, once they did attack. And still they did not come.
“Relay to all carriers,” he ordered suddenly. “Engage shields to stealth intensity and loop around the battleships to attack the Fortresses directly. Valthyrra, you come with us to the right, Vardon to the left. Have shield detonation missiles standing by. Execute now.”
All three of the attacking carriers suddenly disappeared from scan, at the same time engaging their main drives and accelerating hard. The Kelvessan could still sense the phasing of their powerful engines very clearly, but they had completely vanished as far as the human pilots were concerned. Even visual was no use, with dull, black ships moving through space across distances of thousands or even millions of kilometers. They circled wide around the battle between their own fighters and the Union battleships and stingships, coming in at the Fortresses suddenly and swiftly.
Still moving cloaked and at high speed, they made their first run at the seemingly motionless Fortresses. Each ship launched several missiles at their targets and, approaching from different directions, they were able to hit the immense ships from both sides. The automatic tracking systems in the Fortresses flashed into life as soon as they identified the missiles and brought their defensive cannons around quickly, but those shut down an instant later as eight of the ten Fortresses tried to shield themselves. The ships suddenly disappeared inside their hazy, white shells of high-intensity shields.
Neither defense was effective against the Starwolves. The shielded missiles cut through the defensive shells of the Fortresses with a brief but brilliant flare of discharged energy, slamming into the hulls of the large ships almost in the same instant. The quartzite shielding on the hulls of the Fortresses turned the tremendous explosions harmlessly, but then a backwash of searing energy began to move through the shielding, cracking its matrix and stripping it away. Automatic systems dropped the outer shields, then stole power from the engines and guns to pour even more energy into the quartzite shielding, trying to arrest the destructive process. That only fed it even more, although the partially sentient computer systems of the giant ships could not comprehend that. The process continued to completion in a matter of minutes, stripping the Fortresses of their second major defense.
The loss might seem almost inconsequential. The Fortresses still had their outer shields, and the Methryn had been unable to cut through those when she had fought the Challenger twenty years earlier. But the Starwolves were now ready to show the Fortresses the mistake in their design. The big shields took every trace of power from the massive warships, leaving them unable to fight or even maneuver while shielded, nor could they hold their shields for very long. Every time the Fortresses dropped their shields, the swift carriers were waiting with their powerful cannons, picking off turrets and engines.
But the Fortresses had an even deadlier fault, for they were only massive armor frames drawing their power from their replaceable cannon and engine modules. Those modules, each with their own generator, were by necessity on the surface of the ship, vulnerable to attack. The shields may repel bolts from the Starwolf cannons, but no shield was proof against shielded missiles, and the carriers had hundreds of missiles bearing small conversion charges. Although the carriers were forced to fire blind into the shields, each explosion cut a large hole in the unprotected hulls of the Fortresses.
Velmeran had just made the final shift of advantage unavoidable, and he knew it. The Mock Starwolves would surely be closing by now, coming to the rescue of the Fortresses. Whatever they have been waiting for, this was more important. He guessed that they would strike either at the carriers themselves or at Alkayja Base, distracting the Starwolves from their prey. He would do both, demanding a division of forces. The Starwolves had only one hope, to take out as many of the Fortresses as they could, while they could.
When it came, the response surprised him. The area was suddenly full of stingships, bringing their own missiles and cannons to bear on the carriers, and the fighters that were slowly but steadily cutting away their numbers.
“Relay this order to the Vardon and the Karvand,” he shouted. “Launch all remaining packs.”
“Hold that order!” Consherra declared, and turned to Cargin. “That one will be dropping her shields any moment. I doubt very much she sees us. I will hold us on target.”
“Building to power now,” Cargin answered. “I can give it seventy percent instantly.”
The end of the wait came suddenly, the Fortress some 1,000 kilometers ahead dropping her shields. The Maeridyen had been flying sideways, engines still, while Consherra held the nose of the carrier locked on target. The carrier shuttered once as a half-megaton warhead rolled harmlessly off her reinforced shield, then Cargin had a clear shot at his target.
Deep in the Maeridyen’s conversion cannon, several kilograms of water were suddenly converted into thousands of megatons of energy. A slender, tubular force field leaped out of the nose of the cannon, locking onto the Fortress, forming a pathway as that tremendous destructive force was shot toward its target. The entire Fortress glowed red and then white for a long instant out of time, then it disappeared in a blinding flash that leaped out like the explosion of a small star.
“Good shot,” Velmeran commented approvingly, honestly surprised that they had managed that tactic unaided by computers. “Now could we please get those extra fighters away?”
“Commander Velmeran, this is Daelyn on the Karvand.” The voice sounded distant over the com in the camera pod retracted overhead.