He flipped his fighter end-for-end and accelerated. Starblades and most antiship missiles had about the same acceleration—50,000gravities. He’d counted eight missiles coming from the TRGA. They had four and a half minutes to kill all of them before theyreached the capital ships.
“Headhunters, Gregory!” he called, his voice tight. “We’re going after those warheads. Stay put and watch for the Russians.They’re bound to be coming through any moment!”
“Copy that,” replied Commander Jason Meier, the new CO of the Headhunters. “Knock ’em down!”
“Ay-ffirmative.”
Even at 50,000 gravities, after one minute’s acceleration, one of those missiles was “only” traveling at 500 kilometers perhour and would have covered less than a million kilometers of distance. The problem, of course, was that the pursuing fighterswere playing with the same numbers. As Gregory brought his acceleration up to 50,000 gravities, he turned the targeting problemover to his fighter’s AI. Target lock. . . .
It would have been an impossible chase save for one important bit of physics: though his fighter could never quite match the speed of the missiles because he’d begun accelerating several seconds after them, he could get to within a few tens of kilometers per second of their current speed, then launch his own Krait shipkiller. The Krait’s acceleration would build from his velocity and rapidly overtake the enemy warhead, exactly as if it were a two-stage missile.
He thoughtclicked one of his VG-92 Kraits into space. “Fox One!” he called, the general squadron warning of a smart missilelaunch. The missile rapidly burned up the distance to the target.
The detonation, starkly silent in the vacuum of space, dazzled Gregory despite his optics’ stopping down to protect his vision.Kraits, like the Russian Smart Birds, were variable-yield weapons capable of a couple hundred megatons . . . something ofan overkill option when firing at Russian antiship warheads, except for the fact that a more powerful yield increased thechances for a kill.
“Target eliminated,” his AI informed him.
“Next target,” he ordered. “Lock on!”
“Target lock. . . .”
“Fox One!”
Other Starblades in the squadron, spread out in an arc two hundred kilometers across, began releasing their own Kraits, andnuclear detonations began flashing and pulsing ahead. Gregory was concerned at first that they were traveling directly toward—andfiring their missiles at—the America battlegroup, but the AIs were in perfect control of the weapons.
The Starblades continued their pursuit across the empty kilometers.
One by one, the Black Demons hunted down the nuclear missiles and destroyed them.
After four and a half minutes, the fighters had traveled just over 18 million kilometers—a full light-minute—and were movingat just under half the speed of light as they entered the volume of space surrounding America, not fast enough to experience significant relativistic effects, but far too fast for merely human reflexes and perception.
And then the last Russian warhead was gone, just as it arrowed in toward the carrier, and an instant before it hit.
“Good job, Demons.” The voice came from CIC.
“Decelerate and reverse vector, Demons,” Gregory ordered. “Back to the triggah!”
He wanted to be there if the Russians came through.
When the Russians came through.
USNA CVS America
Flag Bridge
Omega Cluster
1450 hours, FST
Gray watched the strobing of nuclear detonations against the star-clotted backdrop of space, one following another in fast-pacedrhythm, the blasts growing closer and closer with each passing moment. That final detonation was close—less than 30,000 kilometers—butit was far enough away to not affect America.
Incoming targets destroyed, the ship’s fire control computer whispered in Gray’s mind. The final kill actually had been scored by one of America’s point defense weapons, a HEL controlled by a dedicated AI and triggered when a threat got too close. Gray’s heart ratewent up a bit as he watched the firefight play itself out. He’d been a fighter driver long enough to know the sense of poundingadrenaline when a close-quarters knife fight took you inside a capital ship’s defensive perimeter. A capital ship’s AI should be able to readily distinguish between a threat and a friendly fighter, but things were happening so fast, the ships andmissiles moving so quickly, and frankly, mistakes did happen, even with sophisticated automation.
He allowed himself a sigh of relief as the Black Demons formed up and began boosting back toward the TRGA.
If the Russians were going to come through, however, it would be any time now. Quite possibly they’d already begun emerging from the Dunlop TRGA, but the news had not yet crawled across that light-minute of separation.
“Lieutenant West,” he snapped.
“Yes, sir!”
“Make to all vessels. Execute Plan Tango.”
“Execute Tango, aye, aye, sir.”
They wouldn’t be able to take on a carrier and six destroyers. They had to get the hell out of here.
The problem was going to be how.
VFA-96, Black Demons
Omega Centauri TRGA
1508 hours, FST
Gregory was decelerating his fighter back toward the TRGA. It had taken four and a half minutes to decelerate back down fromhis top velocity of 0.45 c, then begin accelerating again back through the America battlegroup and then on toward the TRGA. At the halfway point he began decelerating once more. He’d had an instructor atOceana who’d told his class that the biggest hazard in space fighter combat was that with all of the accelerating and deceleratingback and forth across an ungodly huge battlespace, the battle would be over before you could get back into position.
The minutes had dragged by, but now the Black Demons were again approaching the TRGA.
Gregory didn’t need to worry about missing out this time.
“My God!” Lieutenant Johanson called. “Look at that!”
The Russians had arrived.
They were still arriving. Four of those Cossack-class destroyers had already emerged from the TRGA, the gate’s rotation having spread them all over the sky. As Gregory watched, another emerged, followed closely by another. The TRGA rotation had actually worked in the Russians’ favor. Had they all come out as a group in one area, the waiting fighters could have pounced on them easily enough, perhaps even taken them down one at a time as they followed through the needle’s eye of the gate.
But with destroyers spread all over the sky, the defenders were going to more than have their work cut out
