All Enemies Foreign and Domestic (Kelly Blake series) (45 page)

* * * * *

      Angie was expecting her A-76s back shortly.
 
She felt naked without her attack craft to back up her fighters.
 
There was always a chance a T’Kab fleet would arrive after being out of communications in FTL travel and not know the Fleet was there.
 
If they dropped in the wrong place, it could be hazardous for both parties.
 
She reviewed her patrol plan for tomorrow and liked what she saw.
 
Her operations office was starting to gel.
 
She approved the plan and was about to turn in, when she saw her first A-76s joining the pattern to land.
 
She saw they were loaded with medium killers on their wing pylons and in their rotary launchers.
 
The anti-ship missiles had been mistakenly delivered planetside instead of up here.

      The A-76s landed and taxied over to the ammo handling spots where the missiles were to be offloaded and loaded into the ammo storage compartments.
 
The surface ground crews had loaded the rounds as if it was for a strike mission instead of for transport.
 

      Since each A-76 could carry 12 missiles, there were 288 missiles to be offloaded, and the handling equipment was malfunctioning every hour or so ever since they loaded the latest software upgrade.
 
The aviators shook hands with their crew chiefs and left the ships in their capable hands.
 
After several hours and no success getting the ammo loading mechanism to work they gave up.
 
There could be worse things than A-76s on the flight deck with live munitions ready to fire.

* * * * *

      The queen commander waited for her ships to get in position before she gave the final order that might win the war.
 
If she could knock down their mini-ship launching ships by 50% or more, she could have a major victory.
 
The difficulty was in the fact that they were all spread out and surrounded by very capable escorts and a cloud of their mini-ships.

      Her destroyer/frigate group should be dropping out of FTL any second now.
 
The task force hit their marks beautifully.
 
They appeared at sub-light just in front of the big ships in orbit around the planet.

* * * * *

      Alarms rang out all over the CIC and very excited people started yelling and talking over each other.
 
Commander Gibbons realized he was the senior man in CIC and took charge.

      “AT EASE!
 
Everyone calm down, and report one at a time in proper sequence.
 
Defensive missiles, get ready to fire a salvo.
 
Defensive guns, stand by.”

      He keyed his communicator and said, “Captain to the CIC.”

      As he waited for the captain, he received and processed the reports of twelve destroyer class T’Kab ships and fifteen frigate class.
 
The Fleet escorts started firing missiles at the group, twenty to thirty missiles per ship.
 
The screen got cluttered with offensive missiles outbound toward the T’Kab ships.

      The Captain entered CIC and came over to Gibbons.

      “What have we got, Jim?”

      “Twenty-seven T’Kab ships just dropped into the system.
 
Twelve destroyers and fifteen frigates, no heavies.
 
They haven’t fired any missiles yet, but they are scanning like crazy with every active sensor they got.
 
The escorts have launched missiles at them, but no reaction from them yet.
 
I spoke too soon.
 
Missile launch.
 
We have lock on from ten of them.”

      The Captain took over.
 
“Defensive missiles, launch two per; defensive guns, on standby.
 
Comms, contact our escorts.
 
I want to know what they’re doing.”

      The destroyer/frigate group spun on their center and headed out at just below light speed.
 
Gibbons thought they might be trying to clear the orbital path before they activated FTL.
 
Some of those old engines sometimes overloaded when going into FTL too near a planetary gravity well.

      The friendly situation reporter announced, “Captain, a large number of the escorts are in pursuit.
 
Missiles are having some effect.
 
Three friendly frigates were destroyed:
 
the Daniels, the Constantin, and the Thorvaald.”

      “Comms, signal our escorts to stand fast.
 
This doesn’t smell right.”

      Gibbons saw it, too.
 
“They pop in and stay just long enough to draw our attention, and then leave at sub-light to draw away our escorts.
 
Something smells rotten.”

      “Engine room, make all preparations to get under way.
 
Defensive missiles, how are we doing? Defensive guns, prepare to engage.”

      “Eight missiles destroyed, two still inbound, five minutes ETA.”

      “Long range guns on wide beam, take them out.”

      Shudders could be felt through the deck as the big long-range guns engaged the missiles with charged coherent light.
 
The effect was almost instantaneous, as the sensors showed the missiles exploding into balls of fire.
 
The threat board now showed clear.

      The Captain got on his communicator and spoke to his senior escort commander, “Jules, let’s not get tunnel vision on this.
 
I don’t like that there were no heavies in that group and they were emitting in the communications frequencies.”

      He turned to Commander Gibbons and asked, “Jim, where would you pop in if you had split your heavies off?”

      Realizing where his captain was going, he said, “Sir, I would come in opposite of where that group is heading out.”

* * * * *

      Admiral Conover, on the Xerxes, watched the situation continue to unfold and recalled half the pursuit of the destroyers and frigates.
 
He assigned one of his scout ships to trail them and report.
 
They were no real threat.
 
Their missile strike had been destroyed and they were moving out.
 
What was coming next?
 
The fact that they dropped out of FTL in the system spoke of two things.
 
Either their navigation sucked or it was a ploy.
 
He called his carriers into high orbits around the planet and spread his somewhat crowded ships as far apart as orbital dynamics would allow.
 
He smelled a rat and waited for it to show.

      Conover had been arguing for days with Admiral O’Brien to move some of these ships out, but he was reluctant in case the T’Kab mounted another massed offensive and they had to lift the Marines or soldiers out.
 
All his attempts to show the mathematical impossibility of moving three corps out did was get him a chewing out for being impertinent.
 
So now he had the dirty job that someone always got to do.

      He moved his second scout on a back azimuth from the direction the destroyers and frigates were running and he noticed they finally went into FTL.
 
His scout following them shot off in hot pursuit and he recalled the other escorts pursuing the destroyer/frigate group.

* * * * *

      Linda Sawyer, captain of the frigate GRS Conagher, watched the destroyers and frigates speed up and correctly assumed they were preparing to jump to FTL.
 
She fired her last offensive missile and watched it track on a T’Kab frigate in the rear of the formation.
 
As it just reached the frigate, the frigate engaged FTL.
 
The missile exploded as it contacted the forming FTL bubble.
 
The explosion collapsed the bubble and the resulting whiplash, from attaining FTL and being ripped back into normal space, slammed the brakes on so abruptly that the stabilizers could not compensate.
 
The frigate was literally ripped in half.
 
Sawyer ordered the wreckage strafed for good measure, then left the burning wreckage and returned to the formation around the landing ships.

* * * * *

      The queen commander watched the current play in the system.
 
Her destroyer/ frigate task force had carried out their mission and drew away forty-seven escorts, although half of those had dropped the pursuit and were returning to their stations.
 
They were still out of position to guard the fleet.
 
Her cruisers should pop in any second now.
 
She considered it fortunate that she only lost three frigates.
 
That meant she would still have sufficient combat power when they looped back and attacked the flank while the cruisers were engaging.

      She saw the remainder of the pursuing escorts break off and turn back towards the fleet.
 
Those were twenty more ships that would be out of position when the cruisers arrived.

      She saw the cruisers pop in close to the planet.
 
Twenty-one cruisers dropped out of FTL immediately behind the fleet.
 
Some were so close to the enemy that they were engaging ships with guns as their missile salvos were leaving the rails.
 
One enemy frigate blew up from the combined attention of three light cruisers.
 
The missiles were creating confusion among the enemy ships as they oriented on their targets, but the guns were doing the most damage as the cruisers accelerated to come in behind their missiles.
 
By firing first, her ships got to fire into clear space.
 
The enemy now had to counter fire into a cloud of missiles, decoys, and countermeasures.

      She saw the first missile strike on some sort of ship she didn’t recognize.
 
The missile must have damaged the stabilizers for the ship shook violently and drifted free in space without power.

* * * * *

      The Red Wasp, an assault landing carrier, took a missile into the hull just forward of the well deck.
 
The explosion tore a hole in engineering, which took all four engines offline, vaporized the stabilizer, and shattered the keel.
 
The Red Wasp’s captain reached the undeniable conclusion that his ship was doomed.
 
He ordered his pilots to fly the AS-500s to the spaceport to save as many of them as he could.
 
The crew would use them instead of the rescue pods – this was not a planet to drop random groups of humans onto.

      As his crew made an orderly exit to the well deck, he waited for the casualty reports to come in.
 
He would have that list before he departed.
 
A corpsman came up to splint and immobilize his broken arm from where he had been thrown from his chair when the stabilizer went offline.
 
His last act as captain was to fire retro rockets, dropping the ship into a lower orbit and out of the battlespace.
 
It would eventually burn up on re-entry.
 
He boarded the last AS-500, got the casualty report and an all clear from his XO, and told the pilot to go.
 
Fifteen minutes later he was on the surface, looking up at the smoking debris burning down through the atmosphere.

* * * * *

      The cruiser Thomas was close to where the T’Kab cruisers came out of FTL and one of the first ships engaged by their guns.
 
She was just recently launched and had the new plasma shields, so the T’Kab guns were ineffective.
 
She jolted as the T’Kab guns hit her, but the charges just dissipated and slid off the hull.
 
Her charges had a much more serious effect on the T’Kab cruisers.
 
She fired salvo after salvo into the cruisers as they were launching their offensive missile strike and powering up to follow it.

      She managed a lucky shot on one battlecruiser and caught a missile as it left the cell, breaking its antimatter containment shell.
 
The resulting explosion took the bow off the ship, as other missiles in the cells exploded through sympathetic detonation.

      The light cruisers were no matches for the cruiser Cowpens’ rapid-fire gun sending bolts of Yestepkin energy at the lightly armored gun cruisers.
 
In a short time, she had destroyed or disabled all three light cruisers before she had to break off to fire her missiles as part of the fleet’s defensive missile volley.

      After the volley, she returned to slugging it out with the cruiser group.
 
She couldn’t kill the missile cruisers or battlecruisers, but she could blind them.
 
She methodically fired charge after charge at the ships, stripping away their electronic towers.
 
She kept firing until she had blinded half the ships’ sensor arrays.
 
She then retired to her place in the screen and defended the landing ships.