“Firing solutions coming up now, Commander,” Ayres said.
Her calculations flicked across to his board. Together, they operated the tactical station in perfect harmony. Lee would be proud.
“Firing,” Aaron said.
The forward railguns spat a trail of tungsten slugs. The ORA vessel was a big bully and it couldn’t evade worth a damn. But it would be like pricking someone with a pin.
Unless they hit something really critical, it would only sting a bit. And that thing must have armor thicker in some places than a quarter the length of Phoenix.
“Now, Ensign . . . jump.”
After emptying her forward magazines, Phoenix micro-jumped behind the dreadnought and vectored hard to port lining up the dreadnought for a barrage from the starboard guns.
Aaron extended the missile batteries from the hull, and launched a volley of havocs, just as Flaps veered hard to starboard and kicked in an emergency acceleration. The return fire from the dreadnought drifted harmlessly past as Aaron unleashed fury from the port guns.
The slugs from their first barrage, prior to the jump, now reached the dreadnought just as the port guns fired. The first set pounded the frontal sections and the second volley tore into the rear sections. Good hits, but not enough to slow the beast.
“We’re doing good,” Aaron said. “Back us off a bit while the magazines reload. The computer is analyzing their turret’s tracking capabilities. The results so far are promising for us.”
Phoenix burned away from the dreadnought. A brief respite.
“It feels like fighting a giant,” Flaps said. “We’re not hurting it much. It reminds me of the story Lee told me about Gunther.”
“Gunther?” Aaron asked.
“The black market guy. You know the one they fought on Luyten? Lee said he kicked him in the gonads, but it didn’t really have the intended effect. I bet if this thing had gonads, and we kicked it, it’d have an effect.”
Flaps probably thought he was being funny. The boy was brilliant!
The oversized belligerent must have an inordinate amount of ammunition. Maybe the entire vessel was full of ammunition in one part of the ship. A giant had sensitive parts too. The only weapon which really threatened Phoenix with the kinetic barrier down, was the dreadnought’s excessive amounts of missiles. The other weapons were short-range only.
An old story of a boy and a slingshot flashed in Aaron’s mind, but he couldn’t quite recall its significance now. If he could get a good scan to penetrate the hull and lock on to the signature . . . a mass of weapons in one location must have a huge signature.
“Zane, you heard the ensign, this giant has a weak spot. Feed the data from the scans of their missiles into the computer. Draw what power you need and get us a deep scan. Find the largest concentrated sensor returns matching those scans. We’ll target those areas. The missiles have to be stored there.”
The scientist turned ops officer dropped his head and worked his station. They had to find those missiles. A couple well-placed hits could destroy most of the dreadnought’s missile ordnance and defang it. It would have to be soon. Hundreds of missiles closed on Phoenix.
The more missiles in the black, the more their targeting computers could synchronize and worked to defeat Phoenix’s counter measures and evasive patterns. That could possibly mean missiles intercepting Phoenix from every direction.
Missile defense 101 called for scurrying away like a frightened animal at best speed, increasing the hostile ordnances’ time to intercept, while giving point defense and counter measures more time to take them down.
But with clusters of missiles coming from all directions—it really put a damper on that.
Flaps fixed their course away from the closest flight of missiles. Some of the hostile ordnance didn’t even burn directly for them, but vectored to flank. The up side was it took a while for the enemy ordnance to maneuver into the most efficient intercept positions. If Aaron could increase that intercept time, point defense accuracy would increase.
Explosions popped all around in randomness as missiles closed on Phoenix and her point defense slugs intercepted some.
The dreadnought wasn’t moving much at all, a few thousand meters at most. It just sat and gave as good as it got.
“Ensign, head directly for them.”
“That’s certain death, Commander.”
“Not so certain as those missiles, Yuri.”
Phoenix now held her vector straight for the dreadnought. Those missiles were certain death for anyone and anything.
The dreadnought’s plasma turrets opened up. The initial bursts could be dodged with bursts of thrust from the maneuvering thrusters. But as you continued such maneuvers, eventually to keep the targeting foiled you had to thrust the opposite direction of the ship’s momentum, which in turn pushed against the current momentum. It became counter-productive.
Plasma bursts slammed into the polarized armor.
“I can’t dodge anymore of those shots, Commander!”
Aaron grimaced. The power drain on the defense field was extraordinary.
“Hold course!”
The hits from flak cannons hurt too.
“Now—take us under!”
The helmsman had waited for the order. Aaron wondered if it never came if Flaps was content to ram the ORA ship.
The pursuing missiles didn’t have a choice but to detonate or risk hitting their mother ship.
“Now what?” Flaps asked.
Aaron didn’t answer but returned fire with the railguns. They were too close for fusion torpedoes. A detonation would damage them too.
It was infuriating. The railguns just weren’t packing enough of a punch against a ship that size. Not enough to destroy them soon enough. He could destroy half of the ship and the other half would have enough power and weaponry to continue fighting.
Phoenix moved away. The dreadnought unleashed more fury.
“Flaps, bring the bow one-eighty relative to target.”
Aaron gritted his teeth. “Herman? We need something soon!”
“Working, Commander. Their counter measures are scattering the scans, but I’m making head way. That close pass did it, analyzing the readings now.”
The thrusters pushed Phoenix around as she continued to increase distance from the behemoth, and she now faced it.
A full volley of fusion torpedoes thundered out from their launch tubes. Aaron fired all that was left. That hurt for sure, the sensors registered a power fall off throughout the enemy ship.
Zane finally came through. “I’ve got them! Twenty power signatures. It must be the weapon caches near the superstructure. Ninety percent certainty.”
“Bless you, Herman.” Aaron checked his board. “Get us some more distance and bring us around again, Ensign.”
“Same thing?”
“Affirmative.”
“I’ve got a lock on a weapons cache,” Ayres said. “Plotting a firing solution and best potential attack vectors, sending over to the helm now.” She swiped the information over to the ensign’s station.
Aaron incorporated her firing solutions. “I want to hit it when some are being primed.”
“I’ve got it. Plotting attack runs,” Flaps said.
“Maybe we can just repeat that first maneuver, Commander. Their missiles won’t be able to touch us,” Herman said.
Again the plasma turrets volleyed. Flaps piloted the ship along the dreadnought’s ventral quarter maintaining too fast a transversal for the hostile ship’s turrets to track.
Just before Phoenix could complete the attack run, an explosion ripped through the underside of the ship. Aaron knew exactly what it was, an antimatter mine.
The enemy captain had played him.