“The first wave of missiles has been completed,” Lopez reported. “We’ve damaged a couple of stations, but not enough to cripple the planetary defences.”
Ted swore, inwardly. He’d expected more than that from the modified missiles, but he’d underestimated the planet’s defences. They’d crammed more point defence and armour into the stations than he’d expected. Some of them might be as heavily armoured as Ark Royal herself…
“Launch the second salvo,” he ordered. But ship-mounted missiles wouldn’t be enough, he knew. “Then detach half of our remaining bombers to target their stations. Try to coordinate the strikes so they go in simultaneously.”
“Aye, sir,” Lopez said.
Ted gritted his teeth as the first flight of bombers started to launch from their carriers. He’d hoped to keep the bombers in reserve, just in case the alien carriers managed to link up with reinforcements and launch an immediate counterattack. But instead they would have to be committed to the attack on Target One. He briefly considered adding mass drivers to the fury wracking the skies of Target One, then dismissed the thought with some irritation. There was too great a risk of accidentally striking the planet’s surface.
If all of our attacks are so difficult, he thought, we might want to consider building additional attack ships. Or just blockading the worlds and leaving the aliens to rot on the vine.
The alien starfighter came out of nowhere. Henry had barely a second’s warning before bursts of hot plasma screamed past his fighter and vanished somewhere in the inky darkness of space. Swearing out loud, even though he knew his mike was on, he yanked the starfighter out of the alien’s path and tried to draw a bead on his opponent. If the alien hadn’t been distracted by a missile that flashed past his ship, close enough almost to be seen with the naked eye, Henry suspected his career would have come to a very sudden end. As it was, he managed to line himself up on the alien long enough to blow him into plasma.
He pulled back and fell into formation escorting the bombers as they roared towards their target, one of the larger alien battlestations. It seemed to be glowing with light on his display as it hurled bolt after bolt of plasma fire towards the incoming ships, a display of fury that would have overloaded any comparable human system. He felt a moment of envy which rapidly became pity as the bombers launched their missiles towards the alien station. A handful made it into attack range and detonated. Moments later, the station shuddered and started to disintegrate.
“Pull back,” the Wing Commander snapped. “You don’t want to be hit by a piece of flying debris.”
Henry nodded and followed the bombers as they retreated, chased by vengeful alien fighters. Behind them, warnings flashed up in his display as pieces of debris shot in all directions, most of them heading down into the planet’s gravity well. A quick check revealed that most of them would almost certainly burn up in the planet’s atmosphere, although a handful might make it down to the surface. He doubted having so much debris dumped into the atmosphere would do the planet any good, but at least it wouldn’t cause immediate problems.
“The bombers are to return to the carriers to rearm,” the Wing Commander ordered. “Starfighters are to engage their counterparts.”
Henry nodded and flipped the starfighter over, following North and his comrades as they headed back towards the alien starfighters. The aliens were fighting with a bitter desperation that almost made up for their poor training — Henry had never appreciated how hard the CAG had made them work until he saw the aliens — but it was hopeless. One by one, the alien starfighters were burned out of space, followed by their battlestations.
Alerts flashed up in his display. He evaded automatically, searching for his target. One of the alien asteroids had started to disintegrate, shattering into a tidal wave of rocky debris that seemed to fly in all directions. He stared, then glanced at the overall update as other pilots started to fill the airwaves with chatter. What the hell had happened to the alien asteroid?
“Unknown,” the CAG said, finally. “No missile went near the asteroid.”
He paused. “Continue operations.”
Henry nodded and led the charge towards the next alien station.
“They blew it up?”
“Radar reports suggest that the cause of the destruction was internal,” Lopez confirmed. “As far as the analysts can tell, sir, none of our missiles or starfighters went anywhere near the station.”
Ted nodded. Was it a warning — the other stations might be rigged to blow too — an accident or an attempt to deny the stations to humanity? Moments later, he had his answer as the other orbital installations started, one by one, to disintegrate. He cursed out loud as he realised that the debris would cause very real problems for his landing craft, as well as threatening the planet with nuclear winter. Billions of tons of dust entering the planetary atmosphere would do it no good at all.
“They blew all the civilian stations,” Lopez said. She sounded utterly shocked. “Sir, they just blew them all!”
“Probably didn’t want us getting a look at them,” Ted said. He wasn’t too surprised, even though he had a feeling the alien leaders had just sacrificed thousands of their own people just to hide their secrets. “They know what we did with the last ship we captured, after all.”
He took a breath. The remaining orbital battlestations were fighting savagely, but there was no longer any doubt about the outcome. If only they would surrender! Ted had strict orders concerning alien POWs, orders he agreed with wholeheartedly. They certainly wouldn’t be mistreated in human custody. But then, now they had proof that some aliens understood English, they might well be turned into a source of intelligence for the human race.
“Reassign the Marines who would have boarded the stations,” he ordered, flatly. “There’s no point in trying to take them any longer.”
“Aye, sir,” Lopez said.
“Then redirect the bombers to take out the last battlestations,” Ted added. “Then we can put an end to this.”
Kurt stared down the roster as the bombers hastily returned to Ark Royal and the two makeshift carriers. All four bomber squadrons had taken a beating, forcing him to reconfigure them on the fly. Worse, two of them had lost their commanding officers, which meant he would have to promote one of the rooks to CO, transfer a more experienced officer or concentrate the four squadrons into two. Any of the options would cause real problems as exhausted pilots took their craft out once again to engage the enemy. But there was no choice.
At least the experienced officers would know how to handle newcomers, he thought, but I hate doing it when we’re in the middle of a battle.
He sighed, rubbing his eyes. It was hard to really feel the battle deep within Ark Royal’s armoured superstructure. He wasn’t outside in space, with only his skill and daring keeping him safe and well in the face of concentrated enemy attempts to kill him, but inside a starship that had, so far, proved invincible. But the enemy had already managed to damage the carrier once on the mission… they’d certainly know how to try again.
And Rose was out there, risking her life. So was the Prince and all the other rooks.
Kurt cursed under his breath. Molly had tried to nag him into getting a nice safe job flying a desk, but reservist pilots never really had much choice about their assignments. Indeed, he knew he’d been lucky to draw assignment to Ark Royal, even though no one had expected the Old Lady to become the effective flagship of the navy and the linchpin of humanity’s defence. But he would never have been happy flying a desk… and this, no matter what gloss he tried to put on it, was flying a desk. The only real danger was the very real prospect of being killed by the aliens.