The Prisoner of Eldaron: Crimson Worlds Successors II (39 page)

The 500-megaton warheads on the Eagle’s missiles were throwbacks to the wars of the Superpowers, weapons of a power and production cost that was out of reach to most of the colony worlds since the Fall. But Darius Cain had spared no expense in equipping his Black Eagles…and now this enemy would feel the effects of his wealth and foresight.

Caravalla watched as the second and third waves moved in against the enemy line. Again, the defenders’ point defense arrays thinned each volley, but despite all their efforts, missiles were getting through…and as they did, more ships were damaged and destroyed.

“All right, Alphas, prepare to begin attack run. We’re going in right on the tail of the fifth wave. We don’t give those bastards any time to adjust their point defense arrays.” He’d seen the thickness of the anti-missile fire from the enemy ships, and he realized immediately his strike force was going to suffer badly. If they’d been going in alone, without the missiles as cover, he doubted any of his twenty birds would have made it through. But the missiles gave them a chance, and the heavy plasma torpedoes they carried could gut one of the enemy ships with a single hit.

He glanced down at the secondary display. The scanner satellites around the Nest were sending him a live feed as the first of the enemy missiles approached the base. The Eagles’ defensive fire had torn into the clusters of enemy weapons…and Strike Force Beta had plunged in as well, chasing down and destroying any warhead that evaded the Nest’s fire. In the end, only two missiles from the first wave got through…but the instant Caravalla saw the explosion on his display he felt his throat tighten.

That was a big detonation. Like one of ours
.

His eyes stayed locked on the display, watching as the report filtered in. Estimated yield: 511mt.

Fuck
, he thought, quickly realizing that the one advantage he’d thought the Eagles enjoyed had just vanished. It wouldn’t take too many 500 megaton missiles to scrape the surface installations away. Including the landing bay for his fighters…

He looked back toward the primary display. The fourth wave of missiles had just gone in. The front line of enemy ships had been hit hard, four of them destroyed outright, and another dozen damaged to various degrees. But the second echelon was accelerating, moving forward to support the vanguard.

He tapped the throttle, and he felt his body pushed back into his chair. “Alphas, accelerate at five gees…begin attack run.”

He angled his thrust, altering his vector slightly as he followed right behind the fifth wave of missiles. He stayed close…ten klicks behind, as close as he dared. If he moved up any faster he risked getting caught in the damage radius of a detonation. But if he drifted back, he’d give the enemy more time to target his ship.

The rest of the strike force was all around him in a tight formation. But now it was time…

“Strike Force Alpha, break. All ships target and pursue individual targets.”

He angled his own throttle to the right. He’d spied an enemy ship on the display. It had taken a significant hit from a missile detonation, but it wasn’t a wreck either. Caravalla wasn’t going to waste his single plasma torpedo on an almost-dead ship…he had laser cannons for carrion work after his first run. But now he wanted to take on an enemy vessel that had combat power remaining, one that was still a threat.

He leaned back in his chair, forcing breath into his lungs as five gees of pressure bore down on him. He did a quick calculation. The 5g thrust would put him on a vector directly toward his target in three minutes, twenty seconds. And he would reach the vessel in just under four minutes. That was cutting it close. But Caravalla had been in a fighter cockpit the better part of the past fifty years, and he wasn’t afraid of a pinpoint maneuver.

He focused mostly on his own target…the strike force had its orders, and there was little he could do now to help them. But he glanced over at the wide area display anyway, taking a quick note of where his pilots were heading. The screen showed all of the fighter-bombers, with two lines extending forward from each. The first showed the current vectors and the second the courses to their projected targets. He allowed himself a brief smile. If all his birds got through and scored hits, they would obliterate the second line of enemy ships.

Whether or not we’ll have any place to refuel and rearm—or even land—is another matter
.

He watched as a pair of warheads detonated around his target. One was almost ten klicks out, too far to have any real effect. The second was just inside five, too far to cause major damage, but enough to blast the vessel with a heavy dose of radiation…one strong enough to interfere with its scanner array, and it’s ability to target his fighter.

Perfect
, he thought, feeling the excitement he usually did as he approached a target. There was a touch of the predator in every good fighter pilot, and he was no exception.

He pushed on the throttle, bumping the acceleration to 7g. It was damned uncomfortable, but the sooner he could reach his target, the more cover he’d have from the radiation…and the less chance the enemy vessel would manage to target his fighter before he fired.

The enemy ship was growing, almost filling the screen. The range was displayed just below, the numbers moving quickly as his fighter raced toward its target.

Fifty-thousand kilometers. Well within range…but not close enough to ensure a hit.

The scanners were feeding him stats on the enemy’s activities. Their point defense had been completely offline right after the nuclear blast, but now it was coming back. He could pick up defensive missiles firing. Some were clearly targeted at the warheads of the sixth wave, but at least two were clearly aimed at him. His ship was moving at over two thousand kilometers per second, and at that speed even maximum thrust would take a long time to appreciably alter his vector. It was one of the realities of space combat that seemed illogical to those who spent their lives in the atmosphere and gravity of a habitable planet. In space, slower-moving vessels were harder to target, because their thrust could more quickly alter the vector of their movement. A ship moving at high speed was predictable, because its thrust could only slowly alter its trajectory.

He put the missiles out of his mind. They would either detonate close enough to destroy his fighter or they wouldn’t. There was nothing he could do, certainly not without giving up on the target. And that wasn’t going to happen…

Twenty thousand meters.

His eyes dropped to the status screens on the panel in front of him. The torpedo was armed and ready, the bay doors open. One small tap on the firing stud, and it would be on its way.

Ten thousand meters. Close range by any measure.

But not close enough…

Eight thousand. The enemy ship filled his display. He could see darker areas on the image, locations were the hull was breached, where atmosphere and fluids were escaping.

Hold on…wait…

Six thousand.

Now!

His finger squeezed hard, and he felt the fighter shake as the torpedo launched.

He fought the urge to watch the weapon go in, to confirm that he had scored a hit…he was three seconds out, on a direct collision course for the enemy ship, and he didn’t have time. His hands moved rapidly, moving the throttle as if by instinct alone. He pushed forward, increasing the thrust to 9g. He felt the pain, the pressure of nine times his normal weight slamming into him. He held his breath, knowing if he exhaled he’d never manage to force another gulpful of air into his lungs.

He knew only seconds were passing, but each one drew out like an eternity. A few seconds of thrust wouldn’t change his vector much, barely a few thousandths of a degree. But he didn’t need much of a heading change…just enough to clear the eight hundred meters of the enemy ship.

He could see the icon of the vessel moving across the display, slipping off to the side as his fighter’s trajectory was altered slowly…and an instant later the image disappeared from his forward view as his craft whipped by barely a thousand meters away.

He cut the thrust at once, feeling the relief of free fall, sucking air greedily into his lungs. He’d found the effects of high gee forces harder to endure as he had aged, but that wasn’t a consideration, not in the heat of battle. But now, his attack run complete, he felt the effects, and he fought off a wave of dizziness.

It took him a few seconds to regain his focus, but when he did, he could see the effects of his attack on the scanning display. There was no enemy ship at all, just the residual fury of a massive fusion blast, mostly likely the result of lost containment in the vessel’s reactor.

Scratch one bogie
, he thought, a wave of exhilaration sweeping over him. Fifty years of warfare, and he had never tired of the feeling of the kill. That vessel could have bombarded the Nest, killed his comrades. But he had destroyed it, and it would do no more harm.

He gave himself a few seconds of private celebration, then he grasped the throttle again. He hated the idea of more high thrust maneuvering, but he had to bring his ship around…his laser cannons were fully charged, and there were enemy ships remaining to be destroyed…

*  *  *  *  *

Cranston watched on the display as the surface above the Nest was blasted by one massive explosion after another. The five hundred megaton warheads were ravaging the frigid surface, vaporizing the nitrogen snow covering the ground and gouging huge craters that filled instantly with molten stone. The heat didn’t last long, the lack of an atmosphere hastening its dissipation. But wherever the deadly weapons impacted, anything built by man was swept away. Silos, laser turrets, scanning arrays…all were destroyed as missile after missile slammed into the moon the Eagles called home.

He had ordered all installations to maintain fire. The remaining missile silos continued to launch, and the functioning laser arrays kept up their defensive fire. But with each hit, the Nest’s firepower declined. Every laser turret obliterated by the fury of a thermonuclear blast, every missile silo buried under tons of caved in rock, reduced the Eagles’ firepower. Cranston knew his people were the best…but he also knew war was ultimately about mathematics. You could be ten times better than your enemy, but if they outnumbered you twenty to one, you were fucked.

The enemy fleet had been ravaged, not a ship remaining from those in its first line. But the second line had moved up into position. More than half of those vessels were gone too, mostly at the hands of Caravalla and his pilots, but now a third line had formed up and was advancing. And ships were still coming through the warp gate. Cranston was too old a veteran to try and fool himself. The Eagles weren’t going to win this fight.

This isn’t a normal enemy. Any of the colonial forces—and even the other merc companies—would have broken off after suffering losses like this. But they are still coming
.

His people were outnumbered, and if they couldn’t break the enemy’s morale, they’d eventually be overwhelmed. He stared at the damage reports scrolling down his display. Two of the landing bays had been destroyed, along with half the surface docks for the big ships. When Darius Cain returned, much of the Eagle fleet would be unable to land. But Caravalla’s fighters were a worse problem. There was only one bay still functional, and if that one went, the strike forces would have no place to land. They’d be trapped in space, unarmed and low on fuel. And that meant they would die. All of them.

Cranston felt a wave of frustration move through him. He was a man of action, accustomed to meeting an enemy head on, not sitting five klicks below ground waiting helplessly. But there was nothing for him to do. He couldn’t move his garrison forces to the surface, not in the middle of a nuclear bombardment. So all he could do was sit and watch…and wait until his remaining weapons were picked off one by one.

He turned and looked over at Anders. “Captain, I think it’s time to dispatch the Flare.”

Anders nodded. “Yes, sir. I agree.” Anders turned toward his workstation, turning a lever and opening a small cover over a large red button. He glanced back to Cranston, and at his superior’s nod, he pressed it.

The Flare was a small ship located a million kilometers from the Nest, a two person vehicle that was constantly manned and positioned when the Eagle fleet was out on an operation. Duty on the Flare was commonly dreaded, for its boredom rather than its danger. Its crew generally did a 72 hour shift before being relieved by shuttle. While aboard, they endured the dim lighting and minimal life support of a vessel operating on low power. It had two purposes: to remain as undetectable as possible and to make a run for one of the warp gates if the Nest was threatened…and to find its way to the main force, to alert Darius Cain and the rest of the Eagles that their home was under attack.

“Flare alerted, sir. She is activating thrusters, and heading for the Omicron-5 warp gate.”

Cranston nodded and sighed. The Flare was the fastest thing in the Eagles had, and she was heading almost directly away from the enemy fleet. And that meant she would easily get away. How long it would take to reach Darius Cain, and what the general would be able to do, remained to be seen. But Cranston realized, as he watched another half-dozen warheads slam into the surface, that he had only one purpose…to dig in underground, to hold onto the Nest at all costs.

“Evacuate all surface personnel,” he said grimly. “We’re closing the vault in five minutes.” The most recent wave of warheads had obliterated the last of the landing bays. He felt a pain in his gut, a wave of guilt at abandoning Caravalla’s fighters. But he knew those crews were as good as dead without a place to land. And if he didn’t close the vault he risked radiation penetrating to the main facility. Once the last of his surface weapons were destroyed, nothing would stop the enemy from carpet bombing the surface. The Nest’s underground facilities were deep, located there for the express purpose of resisting such an attack. But if he intended to hold out, he knew he had to go by the book, whatever the consequences. And that meant closing off all access to the surface…and giving up on Caravalla and his squadrons.