LT Simmons, in CIC as the Tactical Action Officer, responded promptly. “Aye aye, sir. Oscar Four initiated. Be advised: tactical reaction time is estimated at a tenth of a second now. If we close the Junkyard, we’ll be increasing our exposure to their direct fire.”
Tactical reaction time was a term they had created to account for the peculiarities of long range space combat. In space, there was no horizon. Every target was within visual range of every other target, thus as long as they could see the enemy, the enemy could see—and fire—at them. The only defense they had was distance and maneuverability.
They saw the enemy and the enemy saw them by either the light and radiation they emitted or the light and radiation reflected off their respective hulls. To strike with a direct fire weapon like a laser or a railgun, you just had to point the weapon at the target and fire. If the objective moved enough in the time between emitting its targeting radiation, aiming your weapon, and the weapon beam or shot crossing the intervening distance, the weapon would miss.
At short ranges, lasers could see, point, fire, and hit virtually instantly. At longer ranges though, lightspeed lag and bearing resolution began to play a part. At their range to the Deltan ships, light took 33 thousandths of a second to cross the distance. Double that time and add in any processing time or physical aiming time and one arrived at a tactical reaction time of at least a tenth of a second. Thus they had a tenth of a second to accelerate the ship out of the way if they were going to avoid being hit. And since either they or the Deltans could easily account for continuous accelerations by leading their targets, that meant the Sword of Liberty would have to continuously change its instantaneous acceleration every tenth of a second.
This basically amounted to a very bumpy ride, and as a defensive strategy, it would only work if they remained well outside their current range. Closing the Junkyard or any of the Deltan ships would render that lag even less effective.
Nathan considered all of that in an instant and answered Simmons. “Roger that, Mike, but we haven’t got much choice. If we stay where we are, we’re going to get targeted by all four. Once the star blocks the other three, we can pull out away from the Junkyard and increase the time lag, but we’re going to have to get our hull dirty at some point. At least they’re a lot bigger than we are and can’t maneuver as fast.”
“That we know of,” Simmons said, with a dubious tone.
“Understood. Execute launch.”
In answer, twenty status symbols went from green to red. Between the evacuated hull and the dampening of the pod’s force gel, Nathan could not hear or feel the opening of the missile hatches, or the launch of them on their inaugural and terminal journeys, but he focused on them just the same.
Twenty friendly missile tracks appeared around the Sword’s own track symbol. Simmons called back. “Initial salvo away. Five missiles designated for each target, ripple warhead pattern. Missile AIs are in autonomous mode.”
“Very well, TAO. Break, Helm, dive for the star’s horizon and make for a 1,000 km high-v CPA to the Junkyard. Flank acceleration.”
“Helm, aye, sir.” Nathan could hear the glee in Andrew Weston’s voice. Their destroyer was many times more massive than any fighter Weston had ever flown, but it also was stronger and more powerful as well.
Immense maneuvering thrusters flared out in cerulean brilliance, kicking the nose of the destroyer down toward the roiling, angry surface of the Deltan drive-star. Then—checking that swing—the main drive erupted in light, thrusting the magnificent ship just to one side of their enemy, for a closest-point-of-approach of a mere 1000 km.
Nathan grunted and tried to breathe as the air was forced from his lungs. He felt the gel pump to a higher pressure around him, focused on his extremities, much as a fighter pilot’s g-suit would do. Unfelt in the discomfort of the sudden fifteen-g acceleration, a cocktail of osmotic stimulants and anti-nausea drugs were injected into him. His vision cleared as his heart and diaphragm pumped harder, forcing the blood and oxygen back into his brain.
Trained pilots and astronauts could withstand up to nine gravities of acceleration in a sitting position, and almost twice that lying down and augmented by modern bio-engineered support systems. Nathan and his crew were not trained to as great a degree, but they would make do. They had no other choice.
Of course, though 15 g’s was quite high, it was nowhere near what the ship’s composite frame could handle. The hull groaned and popped as its structure was put to the test, but it was only the cracking of prize-fighter’s knuckles as he entered the fray. The Sword of Liberty welcomed the torturous thrust and begged for more, though more would surely render her crew unconscious or dead.
The twenty missiles, left far behind her, were under no such restrictions. They had no crew to black out, only a mission to complete. After a moment’s dormancy to allow the ship to clear, each missile’s sacrificial capacitor bank broke down into a storm of free electrons, channeled into their enhanced photon drives. The missiles streaked away from one another at 450 meters per second squared, five heading for the Junkyard in front of them at five wildly divergent angles of attack, and the other fifteen headed in the opposite direction for the three ships clustered on the opposite side of the drive.
The missiles directed at the Junkyard passed the destroyer which had borne them and closed rapidly with their quarry. The jumbled, misshapen alien vessel—reacting to this new activity—fired a pair of beams: one, the silvery beam used by the Control ship to “dust” the Promise and their sub-probes; the other, the laser utilized before with such devastating effect.
It would not be enough.
The laser struck missile simply vanished, shredded into plasma and glowing, high velocity shrapnel. The silvery beam, slowly eating away at the targeted missile’s body, forced the weapon’s AI to react. It transmitted a warning to its fellow missiles and the Sword of Liberty, then deployed its warheads early while it was still intact.
The other three missiles boosted their forward acceleration to a hundred gravities, and began maneuvering wildly across the firmament even as they closed more rapidly. Their motion was lost a fraction of a second later, though, as the six warheads from the harried missile exploded, silhouetting its brethren for a brief instant before dazzling its attacker with multiple beams of coherent x-rays.
The lasing warheads were much too far away to do any real damage, but they did succeed in momentarily blinding the alien ship to what approached. Or, at least, that was the effect as the other three missiles finished closing, unperturbed.
The three unseen shapes suddenly blossomed into eighteen smaller objects, each twisting down in rapidly shifting corkscrews. In a coordinated dance of fire, light, and motion, the individual warheads exploded in sequence. Beams of invisible radiance stabbed into the Junkyard, vaporizing sections of hull and structure. Geysers of plasma erupted from the ship, blowing out chasms of destruction, deep into the vessel. For all its immensity, the alien vessel seemed relatively weak in construction.
The laser warheads fired like the steps of spiral staircase, each one closer than the last. After twelve such successively closer and harsher beams, the remaining six warheads were near enough to switch modes. Two warheads exploded in maximal fusion fire immediately above the mangled surface of the Junkyard, eating deeper in and joining the canyons of carnage together into a glowing, bowl-like depression. The remaining four warheads, driving in at hypervelocity and max acceleration, pierced this softened, half-melted surface, each attempting to drive further and further into the 45 km bulk of the alien ship.