Chen?”
“Three thousand, Sir.”
“Those ships are more than 20 miles long,” Smith thought. “I hope our weapons can stop them; we should know shortly.”
“Eight hundred miles from contact,” Chin reported. The two fleets slowed to avoid over running each other but the Plant fleet was getting closer visibly.
“Prepare the initial 300 penetrators.” The bridge of the Atlanta went to battle status and all the lights dimmed to make the various displays more visible.
“Sir,” Chen responded, “the ship that fired the initial hornet will track it in and have their primary targeted on it. The initial 300 will be fired from 300 Ultras along with 300 more Ultras targeting them with their Primary beams also. I thought it would be easier to assign targets that way to make sure. The primaries targeted on those initial hornets are also going to be triggered by the signal sent out to the hornets so there won’t be any delay. At the speed of light, the two beams should hit in less than a second from the penetrators impact on those first 300.”
Smith looked at his sensor officer and thought, “If we make it thru this, you will command one of the new Megas. This is one sharp officer.” He then said, “Target all the salvos accordingly. Send the order out.”
Chen turned back to his console and began issuing the orders. Smith noticed he never took his finger off the signal button. Then he heard Chin report, “One hundred fifty miles from initial launch.”
Smith turned on his fleet com and said, “Launch at 240 miles, weapons clear.”
At 240 miles the SR fleet launched 300 pulse penetrators. They arrived and impacted in less than fifteen seconds and Chen pushed the button. “Initial hornets did not penetrate the heavies, Sir. The smaller vessels shorter than 8,000 feet were hit and their screens were also not penetrated.”
Smith heard his sensor officer in the background but was fixed on his display where 600 focused primary beams hit 300 of the Plants ships with a beam 100 feet wide. All three hundred Plant Ships were immediately damaged. Half of the hit ships exploded into huge explosions taking out another ship. Of the ninety heavy ships hit only forty of them had massive explosions that stopped them. The others continued to move forward. Then the massive salvo of penetrators arrived at the Plant fleet and began hitting them two at a time. The exploding ships were too numerous to count. Fifty of the heavies were so severely damaged that they fell out of formation leaking atmosphere.
“Lt. Barrett, notify Admiral Mikado that penetrators will not pierce the screen of their ships on the first impact,” Commodore Smith ordered.
The Algean fleet scattered trying to avoid the penetrators. They fired their beams and killed a huge number of them before they could impact but every ship had more than two hundred moving on it. The Algeans then launched their missiles at the SR fleet. Each of the heavies fired 2,000 each with all the others firing 500 or more.
“Launch second volley of penetrators and move to flank speed,” Smith ordered.
The SR fleet seemed to instantly accelerate away from the Algean fleet and the 600,000 missiles coming at them. To the Algean fleet, the speed at which the enemy turned and fled was incredible. No ship they had ever encountered could move that fast. Then the second wave of penetrators arrived and the Plants had no time to worry about the fleeing ships.
“Attention all ships,” Smith said on the fleet com. “I’m going to attempt a trick I’ve once seen in action. All ships maintain enough speed to stay ahead of the Plant missiles but follow my ship and stay in formation.”
“Sir,” Chen said, “a plant fleet has just appeared at the jump limit and is moving in system. There are more than 100,000 ships.”
“We’ll worry about them later, Lieutenant.”
“Ensign Mason, I want you to make a turn away from the Plant ships we just fired on and head toward the 8,000 ships in the second group coming from the planet.” The entire bridge crew looked at Smith like he was a lunatic. The SR fleet made a big turn outrunning the missiles that were cutting the corner of the turn to shorten the distance. Once the turn had been made the SR fleet was only fifty miles ahead of the mass of Plant missiles. “Ensign, I want you to slow so that the missiles are only two miles behind us and maintain that distance.”
The helmsman complied and the rest of the SR fleet maintaining formation on the Atlanta thought their commander had lost his mind. Those missiles were close and twenty five% of them were anti-matter. They were charging in on the 8,000 plant ships from the planet at an unbelievably high speed.
Smith turned on the Fleet com and said, “We are going to fly straight into the second Plant fleet and run their missiles into their formations. We will fire two volleys of penetrators as we approach their fleet and follow them in and then turn as we approach their ranks and go over the top and bottom of their formation. Some of us will be hit as we pass but I believe that our losses will be less than if we let these two fleets combine against us. Put all your power into your screen and be prepared to make the turn. All of the Plant Heavy ships are in the first group so we should have to endure less of a hit than the first group would give us but it will still be massive. Change the formation to two lines so that the Ultras are on the bottom and all other ships are in the line above them. We will split when we are two seconds from the enemy and go over and below them. Once clear of them rejoin on my ship and turn for a pass at the survivors.”
The second group of ships coming from the planet saw the strange ships run from the first group and turn their way. Their excitement rose; here was a chance to hit the enemy. Then they saw the unbelievable speed of the approaching ships and knew that they would be on them is less than forty five seconds and then they saw thousands of bright lights leave the strange ships and come even faster toward them. “Fire missiles and beams, the Plant Fleet Leader ordered but by the time the ships fired the strange ships were on them and going above and below their formations. Their thousands of beams killed more than 400 of the strange ships but then they were past and more than 600,000 penetrators hit them followed by 600,000 missiles fired by the first Plant fleet. Those missiles were programmed to avoid Plant ships but there were too many of them and they couldn’t turn fast enough to avoid their ranks. Once the anti-matter missiles started hitting the Plant ships, the destruction was total. More than a million missiles and penetrators hit those 8,000 Plant ships. As the SR ships turned and came back around to attack the survivors, there was nothing left to attack. As the SR fleet split and went over and under the Plant formations, the Plant missiles lost the ships they were locked on because they could not turn as fast so their sensors locked on one of the penetrators and chased it into the Plant fleet. Most of the Plant ships were hit more than 60 times. Nothing remained, not even dust, especially when the anti-matter missiles they carried on board went off.
“How many ships did we lose?” Smith asked Chen.
“We lost 467, sir.” Smith hung his head a moment and then said, “All ships, move back into formation and prepare to attack the first group.”
The rest of his ships moved quickly and efficiently into formation and the members of the fleet felt a huge confidence in their commander. They had lost more than 400 ships but if a fleet action had been necessary, they all knew that the number would have been tremendously higher. “Attention all ships. We will move in on the first group at flank speed. We will fire two volleys of penetrators and follow them in 200 miles behind them. I want a minimum of ten ships to target their focused primary on every Heavy Battle Ship the Plants have remaining. Weapons, arrange the spacing between each primary to 600 feet. You have 2 minutes to set up your firing solutions. The penetrators will be impacting just as we fire the primaries. Once we fire, all ships turn 90 degrees and fly straight up from their fleet. I’m sure we will have more missiles to dodge.”
Chin programmed the instructions into the weapons console and downloaded them to all of the ships. The computer then assigned the ships to each of the remaining Plant heavies that sensors had targeted and the weapon officers on each ship sighted in on their assigned section of the Heavy’s hull. The distance was decreasing rapidly. “Approaching launch point for the penetrators, Sir.”
“Weapons free, fire penetrators at three hundred miles.”
The salvo of 300,000 penetrators was fired and moved quickly ahead of the fleet. As the fleet reached 200 miles the penetrators began hitting the Plant fleet and every ship fired their primaries at the Heavies. The Plant fleet fired more than 100,000 high energy beams into the SR ranks and those ships unlucky enough to be hit by 100 or more had their screens overload and blow up. The remaining ships turned and rocketed away above the mayhem taking place among the Plant ships. Of the 5,000 heavy ships still in operation before the attack, only two remained able to steer and navigate and they had ten 100 foot wide holes blown completely thru them. The remaining huge ships had the misfortune to have their anti-matter magazines hit and there was nothing left in a forty mile radius
