Earth Strike: Star Carrier: Book One

Half of the enemy fighters that had been pacing them had been destroyed. Most of the rest were drifting, battered hulks, their shields down, their armor all but stripped away. The Confederation pilots burned past the enemy craft, hitting them with PBPs and a few remaining KK rounds. Those Turusch fighters that could scattered, some engaging, some fleeing. The battle broke up after a few seconds; both sides appeared shocked into a kind of fugue by the devastation. It was hard to think, hard to act.

But for the moment, the Confederation pilots held the advantage.

The Turusch battlefleet was in complete disarray. A cruiser turning one way had collided with a battleship turning another, filling the sky with broken fragments. Some of those fragments, tumbling outward at high speed, had struck other enemy warships, adding to the devastation.

The Confederation fighters made one high-speed run through the Turusch fleet, burning and killing wherever they could find targets of opportunity. Clouds of white-hot plasma and jagged, tumbling fragments of wreckage continued to drift with the fleet, however, and Allyn ordered the attack to break off before she lost any more pilots.

Some of the Turusch vessels were firing back, were still deadly adversaries.

“All fighters,” she called over the tactical channel. “Regroup and reform on my position. We’re going to stay clear of the battlespace for a while.”

There might be further sandcaster volleys on the way out from Green Squadron. At this point, it was more important to track the enemy, to see what he intended to do….

…and to await reinforcements. Green Squadron would be here soon.

“I’m not sure, people,” Allyn transmitted to the others, “but I think we may have just won the battle.”

Tactician Emphatic Blossom at Dawn

Enforcer Radiant Severing

1117 hours, TFT

Emphatic Blossom at Dawn knew the Turusch warfleet had lost.

It had begun having doubts about the practicality of this operation some g’nya before, as the ferocity, the sheer determination, the astonishing dedication of the defenders’ attacks had become apparent. The humans had continued to assault a vastly superior Turusch battlefleet, arriving in twos and threes from all over the sky, hurling themselves at warships like tiny d’cha swarming around a behemoth grolludh. Even a grolludh’s massive gasbag could be punctured if enough of the mites attacked for long enough, if they wanted nothing other than the grolludh floater’s death, if they didn’t care how many of their number died.

“We must withdraw,” Blossom’s twin said, “while yet we can.”

“This defeat will be…difficult to explain to the Sh’daar Seed.”

The two voices speaking together said something quite different: “The Masters will not be pleased.”

But orders were given and, one by one, the remaining Turusch warships began turning away, a ponderous change of course through 180 degrees.

It was an extremely risky maneuver, especially carried out by a closely formed fleet comprised of numerous damaged ships, some with sensors scoured away from ravaged hulls, some with faltering drive projectors or failing power plants. It would have been safer by far to flip end-for-end and decelerate at five hundred gravities, then accelerate back out-system, but that maneuver would have carried the battered fleet many light- g’nyuu’m deeper into the enemy’s star system. The hunterfleet’s deep-range scanners were already picking up returns of what likely were more enemy fighters outbound. If the Turusch hunterfleet came under heavy and sustained attacks by human capital vessels, few, if any, Turusch warships would escape at all.

One vessel, the Scintillating Gleam, began turning. A second, larger, ship, the Devious Observer, was supposed to turn, but its grav drive failed and it continued drifting straight ahead, directly into the Gleam’s path.

The Scintillating Gleam exploded as her power plant ran out of control. The Devious Observer took more damage to her flank, but the larger vessel continued ahead, a drifting hulk.

The enemy fighters watched the maneuver from a safe distance.

“You have won this time,” Blossom said. “We don’t know how.”

“Enjoy the victory,” the twin said. “Hard fought, bitterly won.”

Together, the harmonics spoke a third time. “We shall grasp the final sharp reckoning, a new hunt…and soon.”

Green Squadron

Outbound, Sol System

1120 hours, TFT

“Right, people,” Gray called. “Stay tight! Keep jinking! Hit ’em!”

In close formation, the twenty-four Starhawks flashed in from astern of the Turusch fleet, a fleet now in full and tumultuous retreat. Gray locked on to an immense Alpha-class battleship, a ten-kilometer-long asteroid, potato-shaped and crater-pocked. Its shields were down, the weapons turrets and domes scattered across its surface nakedly exposed.

Gray locked on at ten thousand kilometers and fired a pair of Krait missiles, and a thousand megatons flared against the night. His Starhawk angled in close behind the missiles, pivoting as it zorched across half-molten craters seething into hard vacuum and lancing the stricken giant with its particle weapon.

Elsewhere, a Kilo-class light cruiser exploded…a brightly painted Toad fighter tumbled out of control, slamming into a mobile planetoid…a Gamma-class battle-cruiser began coming apart under the relentless pounding of four Confederation fighters, hull plates spinning into space, weapons housings collapsing into white-hot, molten metal, atmosphere spewing into emptiness like random rocket exhausts.

The attack continued with relentless purpose for twenty minutes, the fresh Starhawks of Green Squadron supported by the handful of exhausted survivors of Star Carrier America’s squadrons.

“About time someone else got out here,” Commander Allyn quipped over the tactical channel.

“We weren’t going to let you have all the fun to yourselves,” Gray shot back. “Looks like you guys have been busy.”

“Busy,” Allyn replied. “Is that what you call it….”

Green Squadron broke off the attack at last, however. The Turusch warfleet was scattering, and the pursuing fighters were being drawn further and further into the Abyss. Two of his nugget pilots were killed in the fight, burned out of the sky when they got a little too eager in their close pursuit.

The Turusch fleet had been badly mauled in the engagement-at least forty capital ships destroyed, and most of the rest had at least some damage from the sandblasting attack. The survivors were in full retreat, streaming out-system in the general direction of the star Alphekka. Those with disabled gravitic shields might not be able to jump to FTL. Unable to travel faster than light, their crews exposed to the harsh radiation cascade of near- c travel without screens, they would count as kills as well. Lifeless hulks doomed to fall endlessly through the gulfs between the cold and unwinking stars.

Confederation losses had been astonishingly light, with only fighters engaged, and no losses among the defending capital ship fleet. Allyn’s ragged command had lost thirty-eight ships…and if SAR teams and tugs got out here in time, some of the missing pilots might yet be saved. Green Squadron had lost two. A stunning, lopsided, upset victory for the Confederation-forty fighters lost in exchange for forty or more capital ships, perhaps a hundred enemy fighters destroyed, and the salvation of the solar system as the enemy’s attack fleet was turned back.

Or it would have been a lopsided victory…if not for one of the bitter ironies of modern space combat.

Some of the rounds fired by the enemy fleet had not, in fact, yet reached their targets….