Brave of them, he conceded, reluctantly. They’re safeguarding the carriers at the cost of their own lives.
He watched grimly as the bombers returned to Ark Royal, then turned his starfighters to cover the carrier as she advanced on the alien craft.
“Sir, the bombers are reloading.”
Ted nodded, thinking hard. The bombers had lost nearly a third of their number, a staggeringly high loss rate even if they had taken out a single alien carrier. And the aliens were in full retreat. But he didn't want to let them escape, if it were possible to stop them.
“Order them to launch again once they have reloaded,” he ordered. “And then…”
He broke off as a red light flashed up on the display. “Sir, Amati is gone,” Farley snapped. “They just blew her apart!”
Ted stared down at the display. There was nothing left of the missile frigate save an expanding cloud of atoms. “What happened?”
“Unsure,” Farley said, after a moment. “I think… I think they have a short-range plasma weapon of staggering power.”
It would have to be, Ted realised. A mass driver would have been noticeable — and logically the aliens would have fired it at Ark Royal, rather than one of the smaller craft. And, whatever it was had to be short-ranged or Ark Royal would have been blown apart by now.
“Hold the range open,” he ordered, thinking hard. What was the minimum range? He keyed his console. “Analysis; I want to know what happened and why.”
There was a long pause. “Our best guess is that they have an intensely powerful plasma system,” the analyst said, finally. She sounded unhappy; analysts were rarely called upon to provide data during a battle. Or at least they hadn't been. That too was going to change. “I think they couldn't maintain containment for very long, sir. Once the field fails, the blast would simply come apart.”
And be harmless, Ted thought. One by one, the alien escorts were slowing their retreat, threatening to bring the human ships into range. If he wasn't careful, he would wind up impaling himself on their weapons.
“Thank you,” he said. Unlike a mass driver, the alien weapon’s plasma would move at the speed of light. There would be no warning before it struck home… and it was clearly an order of magnitude more powerful than the weapons mounted on alien starfighters. “Will our armour be able to handle it?”
“Unknown, sir,” the analyst said. “However, the weapon did manage to take out a frigate. We have to assume the worst.”
Ted closed the channel, then looked over at Farley. “Target missiles and mass drivers on the alien escorts,” he ordered. He was effectively letting the alien carriers go — they were picking up speed at a surprising rate — but there was no alternative. If nothing else, the aliens had taken a very definite bloody nose after trying to outflank Earth’s defences. “The bombers are to attempt to engage the alien carriers.”
He settled back in his command chair and watched as the range continued to open. The alien ships were in full retreat, not even trying to send their own starfighters to engage Ark Royal and her escorts. Ted allowed himself a moment of pleasure at their discomfort, then glanced down at the reports from engineering. The damaged weapons and sensors wouldn’t take too long to repair, thankfully. They could give chase if their FTL drive had been equal to the alien system.
“Captain,” Farley said, “they’re approaching the tramline.”
Ted sighed. By any standards, they had won a naval victory… but they still had no idea just how powerful the aliens actually were. It was impossible to tell if they’d degraded the enemy fleet by ten percent, one percent or point one percent. The only sign that the aliens might not be as strong as they had feared was that they’d sent only a handful of carriers through the back door. But they might well have been attempting to secure their lines of communication before launching the main thrust towards Earth.
“Recall the fighters,” he ordered, softly. “Let them go.”
Five minutes later, the aliens flickered out and vanished.
It was against regulations, but Kurt couldn’t help flipping his starfighter over in a loop-the-loop before guiding the tiny craft into the recovery bay. Outside, the maintenance crews were going crazy, cheering the fighter pilots as they cracked open their cockpits and jumped out onto the deck. Kurt found himself being kissed by several women and two men before he finally managed to disentangle himself and bellow for order. Slowly, quiet fell over the recovery bay.
“We won,” he said.
The sound of cheering almost deafened him. They’d all seen the images from New Russia, they’d all feared that their first engagement would be their last. But they’d adapted, reacted and overcome. The aliens would be back, he was sure, but they’d given them a bloody nose that would make them rethink their plans for overrunning human space.
“We will go over everything that happened tomorrow,” he continued. There was a chorus of good-natured groans, entirely understandably, but no one objected out loud. “For the moment, eat, drink and be merry… and any of you who turn up drunk will regret it for the rest of a very short and miserable career.”
He smiled at their expressions. It hadn't been uncommon for pilots to drink, sometimes heavily, despite regulations. Clearly, that was something that hadn't changed since he’d transferred to the reserves. But this was wartime and he was damned if he was going to be kind and sympathetic to any of his pilots who ended up drunk. There were treatments to force someone to sober up within moments and he would use them, if necessary.
“Make sure you get some sleep too,” he added. “We don’t know when the aliens will come back.”
That got their attention, as he’d expected. The aliens might just take a few hours to rethink their plans, then go back on the offensive. They would need a special weapon to take out Ark Royal, but that wouldn't be too hard for them. A mass driver would be quite effective, or a simple set of nuclear torpedoes. There was no way they didn’t have nukes, not if they had plasma cannons and an improved FTL system. Hell, they might even have something more effective, once they realised the potentials of their own system.
“And well done, all of you,” he concluded.
He turned and walked out of the bay, remembering the days when he’d been a simple pilot and could participate in after-action parties. But, as CAG, he wasn't supposed to be condoning any of it. It wasn't fair… he shook his head, annoyed at himself. The world was not fair. Just ask the crews of Formidable and Invincible.
“Kurt,” a voice called. He turned to see Rose following him. “Do you have a moment?”
Kurt lifted an eyebrow, but nodded, allowing her to follow him into his office. The analysts hadn't wasted any time, he noted; there was a complete copy of all of the sensor records on his terminal, just waiting for his input. The battle would be dissected over the coming days and weeks until every last micron of data was wrung from the records and used to plan humanity’s next move. But, for the moment, all Kurt wanted to do was sleep.
“You should be at the party I’m not meant to know about,” he said. “Why did you come here?”