Jupiter Fleet 1: Werewolves Don't Purr (42 page)

“It’s because some of the pieces changed speed. When these forward pieces were ejected from the main body, they caused the main body to slow down. The reason they were going to hit the Earth was because the Earth was going to be in a certain place at a certain moment. If these pieces get there sooner, then the Earth won’t be there yet,” said Sarah.

She got up and went over to where Thor, her father, was sitting. She motioned at the display with her hand.

“These slower pieces will cross Earth’s orbit later, but the Earth will have already gone by. It is those pieces in the middle that will be there at the same time the Earth gets to that collision point,” said Sarah, pointing at the middle group of objects.

“Is there anything that we can do about those six larger pieces?” asked O’Neil.

“Yes, but we are going to need our gravity drive working again before we try. Hiroshi: any idea when that will be completed?” thought Thor.

“Fortunately for us, we have four gravity drive disks in the storage bays. We will need two of them to repair the ship. The rest of the supplies we need are on board as well. The computer says the repair bots will need fifty-six hours to complete repairs,” replied Hiroshi.

“That is going to be very close, but I think we can still get it done,” said Thor.

“One more thing,” said Ashley. “I have been doing some research on the way the Supes had that asteroid rigged up. It is apparently a very old tactic of theirs. In their history, such an attack is launched at a world that the Supes consider important. The ships that are sent to try to divert the asteroid away from the planet are destroyed when the bombs go off and pieces of the asteroid are ejected like shrapnel from a hand grenade. If it hadn’t been for Hiroshi’s driving, their tactic would have worked, too.”

“We’ve been hit,” Will announced. “I’m taking evasive action.”

Leona felt the ship lurch. “Where?”

“The Command Deck has been completely destroyed,” said Brian from the navigation station.

“Good thing it was evacuated,” said Will.

Leona felt another lurch in the ship’s motion. This one felt a lot closer.

“We’ve been hit again. The midsection magnet array has been destroyed. That’s part of the magnetic accelerator for the main drive. Our main drive is offline!” said Brian, his voice starting to rise a few octaves.

“Can we return fire?” asked Leona.

“More incoming laser blasts—they missed,” said Brian.

“They missed? Why?” asked Leona.

“For the same reason we will not be able to return fire. The laser blasts originated thirteen-point-six-seven light minutes from here.”

“How did they hit us from that distance?” wondered Leona.

“I guess they saw us flying in a straight line and decided to take a shot or two, or…twelve now,” said Brian, looking down at his instruments.

“Laser beams are considered to be able to travel an infinite distance,” said Will.

“Oh, I see,” said Leona faintly.

“However, the idea that a laser beam can travel an infinite distance while retaining its original beam width is false. The beam will slowly spread out as it travels. When the beam leaves the laser, the ‘light waves-slash-particles’ are initially parallel, but they immediately begin to spread out at a steadily increasing rate. However, almost all the energy that was originally in the beam is still there, just a little wider,” said Will.

Leona looked at Will, waiting to see if he was going to add more to that. He looked at her with a grin that said he knew what she was thinking.

“You can do the opposite, however. If you know the range of the target, you can focus the beam by—”

“OK, Will, thanks,” said Leona. “Thirteen light-minutes. So, if you can see it, you can hit it, if it doesn’t change course.” Leona tapped a fingernail on a tooth. “Will, from now on, I want a random minor course change every ten to twelve minutes. If they shoot, let’s not be there to receive it.”

Leona had a fleeting memory. Hadn’t she also given that instruction to Hiroshi in the past? Or if she hadn’t, she should have!

“Brian, are they moving toward us?”

“It’s hard to tell—they seem to be playing hide-and-seek among the asteroids, but I think so.”

“Now that we know where they are, keep an eye on them. Also, please notify Admiral of their position.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Brian.

“When will the main drive be operational again?”

“Unless we get some new magnets to replace the destroyed ones—never.”

“Let me guess, the only place to get new magnets is at the station?”

“No, actually, according to the system manifest, the only place to get new magnets will be to have them built on Earth,” said Brian.

“Great, this just keeps getting better. Brian, have the gunny report to the Battle Bridge,” Leona said.

Time for coffee
, she thought.
I need the hot black right now
. Leona got up and went again to the coffee station at the back of the room. She brewed another cup, her second of the battle.

“My mom has always been a coffee monster,” Will remarked to Brian.

She looked over at Will and he was grinning. She knew that it was the fashion among young people nowadays to drink only herbal teas. She smiled at the two young men and returned to the captain’s chair. Leona was embracing her coffee cup fifteen minutes later when Gunny arrived.

“Sorry it took so long, ma’am, I was on the other side of the ship.”

“No problem. We found the ship that fired on us, and it’s probably also the ship that launched the rock at Earth. I want a team on the telescope and the radar to track that ship at every moment. I want its position broadcast to the Fleet constantly. I am going to prepare a message for broadcast telling the other ships what happened to us.”

“Got it, Captain. I will also tell Isamu to continue his previous scans in Observation, in case we have other enemy ships out there.”

The gunny left the deck at a trot. Leona looked deep past the bottom of her now-empty coffee cup.

“I hope we don’t have any more enemy ships out there. We’re having a hard time with the one we have right now.”

“Admiral, we have a fix on that ship that fired on the
Space Dog
. It is one-point-seven-five light minutes from here. Should we change course to intercept?”

“Prepare the shuttles for battle first. Let us set up a surprise for them.”

“Yes, sir. Also, you should know I have identified that ship as the one that we sent away from the station. Apparently, our action did not work as we hoped.”

“Yes, apparently it did not. I would like to know how they could rig new lasers on a stripped ship!”

Admiral checked the position and status reports of the rest of the ships in the Fleet.

“How long has it been since I thought of ships as being in my fleet? I am going to have to give the humans some lessons in space tactics, if we ever get some moments of peace together,” he thought.

He then prepared a message to Frosty. “I am going to attack the enemy ship. You will have to be in command if anything happens to me or
Victory
; if not, the humans will not last very much longer as a species.”

The shuttle group was set up, armed, and fueled.

Two US Marine captains, Vince and Copeland, were in the shuttle designated as
Bright Boy 2
. A pilot from the Israeli Air Force who preferred to just be called Saul, and the Russian cosmonaut Oleg, were in the command shuttle designated
Boss
. Two Royal Navy pilots, Lieutenants Stanley and Robinson, were in the shuttle designated
Bright Boy 1
. The space suits of all the men were outfitted with extra oxygen. As always, it was one man’s job to fly the ship, while the other would operate the armament and deploy the lights.

The shuttles exited the
Victory
’s launch bay and took their positions, with
Bright Boy 1
at the nose of the
Victory
,
Boss
one-third of the way down the ship, and
Bright Boy 2
in position at the aft third. Once they were ready, each of the copilots—or, as they were affectionately known by the pilots, the “cargo monkeys”—deployed a string of very large lights that were trailing behind the shuttles.

When the shuttles had the lights extended behind them, Oleg signaled to the
Victory
’s navigator to extend the gravity field. The ship’s gravity field was extended slowly, and the shuttles and lights gently thunked down on the ship’s outer bulkheads.

Oleg signaled that they were in position and standing by.

“Change course to intercept the enemy, and accelerate to zero-point-five light-speed, full burn,” commanded Admiral.

One minute later the helmsman reported. “We are at zero-point-five light-speed. We are one-point-one-two-five light-minutes from target.”

“Weapons, open fire.”

“Yes, sir, but you know that we can’t hit them from this distance—they are changing course too rapidly.”

“I just want to get their attention.”

“Firing.”

Two minutes later, Admiral clicked his fangs together. “Launch shuttles and cease firing. Shuttles: as soon as you are clear of the ship, open fire.”

The gravity field holding the shuttles in place was released suddenly. In the shuttles, that felt like they had just started falling. Oleg felt the adrenalin start to flow.

The
Victory
moved away from the shuttles and the three shuttles continued on the same flight path as before. At that moment Saul started to fire at the enemy ship.

“Shuttles are clear and have commenced firing,” Oleg reported.

“
Victory
, change course to two hundred seventy by one hundred eighty by zero degrees and increase to zero-point-five-five light-speed, rig for dark running,” thought Admiral.

(When coordinates were provided, it was always as heading, attitude and inclination, in that order.)

From the shuttles’ point of view, the
Victory
just disappeared. Saul was tempted to look for it, but he was busy trying to hit the enemy ship.

The shuttles continued toward the enemy ship at a velocity of 0.5 light-speed. They continued firing the ship’s cannons that had been installed on them. Aboard
Boss
, Oleg now pressed a button to deploy chaff. All along the string of lights, chaff pods fired shiny aluminum strips that resembled very large Christmas tree tinsel. Thus, with the chaff along with the strings of lights that had been deployed, the group of shuttles looked, both to an observer and to radar, very much like a large warship that was firing all guns.

Robinson on
Bright Boy 1
scored a hit on the aft section of the enemy vessel. There was a visible explosion. He radioed to the other shuttles, exulting.

“Pay up, lads, I scored the first direct hit!”

As they started to score some hits on the enemy ship, it returned fire. The laser blasts passed harmlessly through the chaff and lights. The copilots launched explosives that detonated behind the shuttles, to simulate a direct hit.

Admiral looked at the decoy and was startled at how convincing the display looked.

Meanwhile, Admiral’s pilot was keeping an asteroid between
Victory
and the enemy ship. The Supes did not see Admiral’s ship approach.

“I am detecting numerous nuclear signatures in the flight path of the shuttle team,” the navigator thought to Admiral.

Admiral did not hesitate to break radio silence.

“
Bright Boy
s, break up, break up.”

Admiral had known that the reason the enemy ship had fired on the
Space Dog
was to lure one of the other ships into attacking them, and into a trap.

“Why else would they give up their position?” he thought to himself.

The shuttles jettisoned their strings of lights and broke formation on Admiral’s command.
Bright Boy 1
broke left,
Boss
veered down, and
Bright Boy 2
pulled up. Their scanners told them that they were bearing down on a wall of stealth nuclear proximity mines. If they had been a full-sized ship they would not have stood a chance.

Bright Boy 1
was the closest to the mines. The pilots were veering left as much as they could.