The Tau Ceti Agenda

Timmy, sound a brace for impact! Captain Jefferson dug his fingernails into the armrests of his chair and watched the seconds tick down in his mindview.

Aye, sir.

'All hands, all hands! Brace for impact! Multiple hull breaches. Emergency crews standby! Second hit imminent in five, four, three, two, one . . . .'

'Rice! Knock that goddamned thing out!'

'This is so gonna suck, sir,' the COB slammed his magnetic coffee mug into its holder, gripped his chair, and then pushed his feet against the underside of the station for extra support.

The second shot of the mass driver pounded right on top of the previous spots. The severely sublight evasive maneuvers were of little effect to an object traveling twenty-five percent photon speed. The projectile poked through the nanocarbon composite metal hull, vaporizing two decks before it completely disintegrated with the violence of turning several tons of slag metal to vapor instantaneously. Four decks deeper, the rupture stopped. Unfortunately, that deck was where the all-important space-time dragging sublight propulsion system was.

The power system to the sublight engines exploded like a mini- nuke, destroying decks all around it in every direction for at least thirty meters. A violent orange fireball swept across the decks, hot enough to turn solid metal to molten lava. Hundreds of sailors were vaporized almost instantly, and hundreds more were dumped into space. Fortunately, the vacuum of space extinguished the fireball almost as rapidly as it formed, leaving a gaping hole in the back of the now listing and propulsionless supercarrier.

'Sublight propulsion system is gone, CO!' Larry shouted. 'They knew right where to hit us too! Jaunt drive took serious damage.'

'Auxiliary propulsion?' the CO asked.

'Not sure, sir. The flow loops for the power were so disrupted, who knows,' the STO shrugged.

'Engine room! When will I get my propulsion back?'

'Working it, sir. We've got massive casualties down here. I need every fire crew you can get me to reroute the systems. The aux prop is out too, for at least thirty minutes, until I can get power to it.'

'You have three minutes and fifty-two seconds, Eng!'

'Aye, sir!'

'What about the sorties, sir?' the ground boss asked. 'My guys are getting chewed to all hell and gone down there.'

'Comm! Get the Blair in here now!'

'Yes sir!'

'Air Boss, launch all the sorties now!'

'We're waaay out of range, CO.' The air boss did some quick math in his head via the help of his AIC. The fighters were typically rated as having a top speed of two thousand kilometers per hour. That wasn't true, actually. In an appreciable atmosphere that was mostly true, but in space the fighters could accelerate as long as they wanted to and eventually reach an extremely fast velocity. The problem with that was slowing down. In order to slow down, the fighters had to decelerate just as long as they had initially accelerated. And, the inertial dampeners could only handle so many g-forces and the SIFs, and hull plating could only handle so much impact. A micrometeorite at speeds much faster than the max rated safe speed put the pilot and aircraft at much greater risk.

'CO.'

'Go, Air Boss.'

'The fighters at double the rated safe speed would still put them about ten minutes from the engagement zone. Engineering might have aux prop up by then.'

'They might. Deploy all sorties now. Pilots have volunteer's discretion for approach speed.' The CO suspected that allowing the jocks to volunteer to push their planes beyond the limits might encourage them to push the performance envelope of their systems. Hell, the air boss was all the time writing up the pilots for violating the speed protocols, and now he was giving them free reins. 'Air Boss, make certain to reiterate the suggested safe speeds.'

'Aye, sir.'

'What about the ground, sir?' the ground boss asked.

'Sorry, James. Unless we get prop of some sort or the other, they're gonna have to do the best they can. Relay that message.'

'Air Boss.'

'Sir?'

'Pull the Gods of War from high-altitude engagement, and tell DeathRay to help out the ground troops.'

'Aye, sir. That might prove difficult, as they are covered up more than three to one right now.'

'Pull them down. It might force the Seppy bastards into a more confined engagement zone and shrink the bowl.' The 'bowl' was what fighter jocks had called the engagement zone for centuries. In space, the engagement zone was a full three-dimensional sphere, or 'ball.' But over a surface, it was a hemisphere or an upside-down bowl. By pulling the fighters in closer to the ground, the ball became a bowl, and the closer they could pull down, the smaller the bowl got. This made turns tighter and maneuvers harder, giving better pilots and more advanced technology the biggest advantage in the dogfight.

'The goddamned bowl is too big for certain,' the XO added. Being a marine mecha jock in his earlier career, EndRun understood the tactics of dogfighting firsthand. The captain was glad that his XO agreed with him.

'Roger that, sir.'