Hurley closed her eyes, as she usually did just before a launch. It was a personal habit she’d picked up over the years. She felt the pin-prick of the injections and the pressure around her body as the AI triggered the chemical reaction that expanded the cushioning of her couch into a heavy cocoon that nearly enveloped her body. She was scared; she couldn’t deny that to herself. She didn’t really expect to return, not from this mission. But she knew her duty…and she wasn’t about to let Admiral West down.
“Good luck, people.” She pushed back the fear…she wasn’t about to be weak when her crews needed her. “Let’s go get those bastards.”
She lay there quietly, waiting for the bomber to launch. Everything was in the hands of Princeton’s battle computer now. A few seconds passed, perhaps half a minute…then the status light flashed green and she felt the pressure of rapid acceleration as the magnetic catapult blasted her ship out into space.
The mag catapults gave the bombers enough velocity to quickly clear Princeton so their own engines could safely fire. A bomber launch was a jerky affair…the pressure of the catapult followed by a few seconds of free fall as the ship cleared the danger zone around the mother ship, then the intense g force as the bomber’s engines fired at full thrust.
“Ok people, let’s get this right.” Her wings from the capital ships were linking up with those from the orbital fortresses. The AIs had all the course changes locked in, but she still wanted her people alert and aware. They had an unorthodox mission and a formation none of them had flown before. They’d practiced it twice, but that was all they’d had the excess supplies for. Hurley would have liked another 3 or 4 exercises before the real deal, but the pair of dry runs would have to do.
The intense pressure from the acceleration made it difficult to concentrate on anything, but Greta forced herself to focus on the plotting screen. It looked like her ships were falling perfectly into position. She knew the AIs would handle the maneuvers with precision, but this mission called for perfect formations, and it was her job to make sure that happened. All the external ordnance bolted onto the bombers was dragging down maneuverability, and if there was a mistake in the calculations, she wanted to catch it immediately.
She leaned back and closed her eyes for a few seconds. She really needed another stim to counteract the sluggishness of the pressure equalization drugs, but she was going to wait until they were a little closer to their objective…maybe 30 minutes.
Another hour, she thought. In another hour we’ll know if the plan worked.
“All ships…launch.” Erica West sat up in her command chair. The fleet had ceased its acceleration and the relief – plus the double dose of stimulants she’d just taken – cleared her head quickly. The entire fleet was arrayed for launch, and on her command 68 ships flushed their external racks, sending almost 300 missiles hurtling toward the incoming enemy fleet.
“All vessels report externally mounted ordnance launched.” Athena was simply reporting what West could see on her status board.
“Prepare to launch internal missiles. All ships to execute on my mark.” Athena was relaying West’s orders to the entire fleet. West worked closely with her staff when she was planning an operation, but they were mostly spectators during the battle itself. At least the early stages…before plans started to fall apart and the improvisation began.
“Launch first wave.” Unlike the externally mounted weapons, which could be fired all at once, the rate of fire of internal missiles was constrained by the number of launchers available. Ship types had various numbers of reloads, so a fleet firing all its ordnance would do so in successive waves, each of diminishing size as different vessels exhausted their magazines.
Cambrai shook as her launchers sent 6 missiles toward the enemy fleet. West’s flagship carried 48 missiles internally, so she could launch 8 waves. Princeton, her newest and most powerful capital ship, had 12 launchers, and 120 missiles in her magazines, allowing for 10 full strength volleys. All told, Third Fleet was sending almost 700 thermonuclear weapons toward the enemy.
“All ships report second wave missiles loaded, admiral.” Athena was coordinating all communications from the fleet to the admiral.
“Launch second wave.” West leaned back in her chair and lightly gripped the handholds as Cambrai shook again. More missiles on their way to the enemy. This was the biggest attack yet made against one of the enemy’s fleets. But there was no ambush here, no massive edge. She wondered how many of her weapons would get through. Would it be enough?
“Ok people, get ready for the first drop.” Greta Hurley was sitting bolt upright. The bombers had cut their acceleration two minutes before, and she was out of her cocoon and jacked up on stims. “I want precision work here.”
Her squadrons were arrayed in four lines, set about five light seconds from each other. The bombers began releasing anti-missile mines, dropping one every 50 seconds. The bombers in each wave were offset from one another so the mines were dispersed to cover an area of approximately 20 cubic light seconds.
The enemy had launched its missile salvoes, and they were plotted exactly as Admiral West had predicted…and the minefield the bombers laid was right in their path. The mines would detonate when their internal AIs deemed they had the maximum damage potential. They would scatter a field of smaller bombs, each of which would explode, creating a cloud of small projectiles in the path of the incoming missiles. With the velocity of the enemy volley, a chunk of metal the size of a grain of rice was enough to destroy a missile.
“Waves 1 and 4, prepare for anti-missile runs.” Hurley was in the second wave. Her group and the third line were outfitted for normal anti-ship attacks. The 1 st and 4 th had been armed with shotguns, and reprogrammed for anti-missile runs. It was a new idea…as far as Hurley knew, bombers had never been used this way. But Admiral West knew her ships would take devastating losses from the enemy particle accelerators before they were able to respond with their own lasers…if she was going to have any chance at all she had to win the missile duel. Admiral Clark and his people had stripped away the enemy’s antimatter weapons. Now it was up to Hurley’s detached bombers to weaken the enemy’s barrage of nuclear missiles, lightening the load on Third Fleet’s close in point defense.
She leaned back in her couch, extending her arm to receive the injections. Her group was going to make a minor vector change and accelerate full all the way down the throat of the enemy. Her boats had the new ECM suites installed, but she had no idea how much protection that would offer against the enemy point defense. Regardless, though, her group was going right at the enemy ships.
“First and fourth waves decelerating and preparing for missile interception, commander.” It was Jarrod Kynes on the com, her XO and the leader of the anti-missile group. “Good luck to you, Greta.” Kynes’ people had a chance of survival, at least. They could return to the fleet after their runs were complete and, with luck, there would still be someplace to land. But no one was fooling themselves about the casualties Hurley’s group was likely to take. They were going straight into the maw of the beast with nothing to protect them save for an untested ECM suite and the grace of God.
“Full damage control procedures…all ships.” West was staring intently at her plotting screen. Her multi-layered missile defense had exceeded her most optimistic hopes. The bombers had raked the enemy salvo, destroying missile after missile. Twenty of them got too close to nuclear detonations and were lost, but over 50 had survived. Now they were frantically trying to get out of the path of the incoming enemy fleet. Low on fuel and ordnance, they wouldn’t stand much chance against the enemy’s point defense.