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… then flashed back as the crushing sensation of weight abruptly vanished. It took the Starhawk 2.39 seconds to traverse the two-hundred-meter cat-launch tube, and as it emerged into open space it was traveling at just over 167 meters per second relative to the drifting America.
“Blue Omega Seven, clear,” he announced.
“Omega Eight, clear,” another voice echoed immediately. Lieutenant Katie Tucker, his wing, was somewhere off his starboard side, launched side-by-side with him through the twin launch tubes.
He brought up an aft view in time to see the rapidly receding disk of the America’s shield cap dwindling away at over six hundred kilometers per hour. In seconds, the dull, silver-white shield had fallen astern to a bright dot … and then even that winked out, vanished among the stars. Icy and remote, those stars gleamed hard and unblinking across night; the other fighters of VFA-44, even the other capital ships of the Confederation fleet, all were lost in dark emptiness.
“Imaging, full view forward.”
The view from his SG-92 Starhawk’s cockpit was purely digital illusion, of course. At his command, the aft view projected across the curving inner surface of his cockpit vanished, replaced by different stars. One, directly ahead, gleamed with an intense golden brilliance—the local sun, though it was too distant to show a disk.
To port and low, another gold-red star shone almost as brilliantly—twice as bright as Venus at its brightest, seen from Earth. That, Gray knew from his briefings, was the star Arcturus, just three light years away.
Arcturus, however, was not his problem. Not anymore.
And not yet.
“Imaging,” he said. “Squadron ships.”
Green-glowing, diamond-shaped icons appeared on the stellar panorama, above, below, and to the left, each attended by a string of alphanumerics giving ship number and pilot id, and Gray felt just a little less lonely. Eight other Starhawks besides his drifted in the void out there, their AIs nudging them now into a ring ten kilometers across. As the minutes passed, three more strike-fighters moved up from astern, taking their places with the squadron.
The formation was complete.
“Okay, chicks,” Commander Marissa Allyn said over the squadron comnet. She was VFA-44’s CO, and Flight Leader for this op. “Configure for high-G.”
Each of the Starhawks had emerged from the diamagnetic launch tubes in standard flight configuration, a night-black needle shape twenty meters long, with a central bulge housing the pilot and control systems, and the mirror-smooth outer hull in a superconducting state. At Gray’s command, his gravfighter began reshaping itself, the complex nanolaminates of its outer structure dissolving and recombining, drive units and weapons and sensors folding up and out and back, everything building up around the central bulge in a blunt and smoothly convoluted egg-shape with a slender spike tail off the narrow end, and with the fat end aligned with the distant, golden gleam of Eta Boötis.
“Blue Omega Leader, Omega Seven,” he reported. “Sperm mode engaged. Ready for boost.” Gravfighter pilots claimed their craft looked like huge spermatozoa when they were in boost configuration. His Starhawk was now only seven meters long—not counting the field bleed spike astern—and five wide, though it still massed twenty-two tons.
“America CIC, this is Alpha Strike Blue Omega One,” Allyn said. “Handing off from PriFly. All Blues clear of the ship and formed up. Ready to initiate PL boost.”
“Copy, Blue Omega One,” a voice replied from America’s Combat Information Center. “Primary Flight Control confirms handoff to America CIC. You are clear for high-grav boost.”
“Acknowledge squadron clear for boost,” Allyn said. “Don’t forget about us out there, America.”
“Don’t worry, Blue Omega. We’ll be on your asses all the way in.”
That wasn’t quite true, Gray thought. According to the operations plan, the task force would be following, but it would be another eighteen hours, total, before they reached the target planet.
The squadron would be on its own until then.
“Blue Omega Strike, Omega One,” Allyn said over the squadron’s tac channel. “Engage squadron taclink.”
Gray focused a thought, and felt an answering sensation of pressure in the palm of his left hand. The twelve fighter craft were connected now by laser-optic comnet feeds linking their on-board AIs into a single electronic organism.
“And gravitic boost at fifty kay,” Allyn continued, “in three … two … one … punch it!”
A gravitational singularity opened up immediately ahead of Gray’s Starhawk.
He was falling.
In fact, he was accelerating now at fifty thousand gravities, falling toward the artificial singularity projected ahead of his gravfighter, but since the high-G field affected every atom of the Starhawk and of Lieutenant Gray uniformly, he was not reduced to a thin organic smear across the aft surfaces of the cockpit. In fact, he felt nothing whatsoever beyond the usual and somewhat pleasant falling sensation of zero gravity.
Outwardly, there was no indication that within the first ten seconds of engaging the gravitic drive, he was traveling at five hundred kilometers per second relative to the America, his speed increasing by half a million meters per second with each passing second. The stars remained steady and unmoving, unwinking in the night.
After one minute he’d be traveling at three thousand kilometers per second, or 1 percent of the speed of light.
And in ten minutes he’d be pushing hard against c itself.
In strike fighter combat, speed is everything.
CIC, TC/USNA CVS America
Eta Boötean Kuiper Belt
0312 hours, TFT
Admiral Alexander Koenig watched the slowly growing green sphere of local battlespace, now four light minutes across and still growing. Perhaps half of Battlegroup America was accounted for now. The others were out there, but scattered so far by the uncertainties of pinpoint navigation across interstellar distances that the information heralding their emergence from metaspace wouldn’t arrive for some time yet.
The America’s Combat Information Center, located just aft of the bridge, was large, but had a tightly packed, almost cluttered feel. Located at the carrier’s hub, it was designed to function in microgravity. CIC personnel were tucked into workstations that let them link electronically with the ship and with other stations. Curving bulkheads and the shallow dome of the overhead displayed seamless images of the sky surrounding the huge ship, relayed from CCD scanners on the rim of the shield cap forward. The local space display was on the stage at the center of the compartment, just below Koenig’s station. By moving his hand within the glowing and insubstantial console projected in front of him, he could rotate the sphere and enlarge a portion of it, checking the ID alphanumerics.
Altogether, some twenty-seven ships made up the task force, including heavy cruisers and a battleship, four destroyers, half a dozen frigates, a small flotilla of supply and repair vessels, and a detachment of eight troop transports, all empty. Of all of those, only nine ships were linked in so far.
Ah! Good. The railgun cruiser Kinkaid was visible now, two light minutes abeam, at 184 degrees relative. They would need the Kinky’s massive kinetic-kill firepower if this op degenerated into a fleet action … and Koenig was certain that it would. And the destroyers Kaufman and Puller were on-line now as well. They would be vital if—no, when—the Turusch va Sh’daar spotted the battlegroup and deployed their heavy fighters to meet it.
That made eleven so far.
A gangly, long-legged shadow swam across the scattering of stars against the overhead dome, backlit by the gold gleam of Eta Boötis. John Quintanilla, the battlegroup’s Political Liaison, floated upside-down, from Koenig’s perspective, clinging to the back of the admiral’s couch.
“Shouldn’t we be accelerating or something?” the civilian asked.
“Not until the rest of the battlegroup forms up with us,” Koenig replied.
“Your orders from the Senate Military Directorate,” Quintanilla said, his voice low, “require you to reach Gorman’s force in the shortest time possible. Time is critical! He can’t hold out very much longer.”
“I am very much aware of that, Mr. Quintanilla.”
“Those fighters you launched aren’t going to have much of a chance against a Turusch war fleet. Your orders—”
“My orders, Mr. Quintanilla,” Koenig snapped, “include the requirement to keep my battlegroup intact … or as intact as combat allows.” Koenig moved his hand, calling up an AI-generated image of the planet nine and a half light hours ahead, outlined in green lines of latitude and longitude. “We will not help General Gorman if we piss away the ships of this battlegroup a few at a time!”
“But—”
“This is what’s waiting for us in there, Mr. Quintanilla,” Koenig said, interrupting. The sphere at the center of the CIC display enlarged sharply, and a number of red pinpoints sprang into sharp relief against the green background. Each red dot was accompanied by alphanumerics showing mass, vector, and probable id.
“Fifty-five vessels that we’ve been able to detect so far,” Koenig told him. “So far. There are, no doubt, others on the far side of the planet that we haven’t picked up as yet. We will be seriously outnumbered in this engagement, sir, and I will not divide my fleet in the face of a superior enemy!”
Most of the enemy ships were in orbit around the planet, but a few were farther out, decelerating as they backed down in their approach vectors. The Turusch had definitely arrived in force.
“You know what is best, of course,” Quintanilla said, his face stiff, expressionless. “At least from a tactical perspective. My job is simply to remind you of the … of the political ramifications of your decisions. General Gorman is an extremely important person in the Senate’s estimation. They want him rescued and returned safely.”
Koenig made a face. He detested politics, and he detested playing politics with brave men and women. “Ah. And Gorman’s Marines?”
“Of course, the more Marines you can pick up, the better.”
“I see. And the Mufrids?”
Quintanilla gave him a sharp look. “Certainly, any of the colonists for which you have transport berths can be brought out, especially any with information on Turusch capabilities. But I’ll remind you that General Gorman’s rescue is your prime consideration.”
“I know my orders, Mr. Quintanilla,” Koenig said, his voice cold. “Now … if you’ll excuse me …”
He moved his hand in his workstation’s control field, and the electronic image of Eta Boötis IV vanished again, replaced by the map sphere of space immediately surrounding America and her consorts. More ships were popping up on the display’s expanding battlespace globe, including the Ticonderoga and The Spirit of Confederation, the first a heavy cruiser, the second the task force’s single line-battleship, with heavy kinetic-kill railguns that could pulverize a planet.
Unfortunately, the Confederation task force could not pulverize the planet ahead, not without killing some five thousand Marines of the 1
Marine Expeditionary Force and the colonists they’d been deployed to protect.
Quintanilla floated above Koenig’s workstation for a moment longer, then grunted, pushed himself off from the couch, and drifted toward the CIC entrance behind the command dais.
Located beneath Koenig’s station was the section of the CIC known as “the orchestra pit” and, more usually, simply as “the pit.” Twelve workstations nestled within the pit, where America’s CIC officers stood their watches. One of them, Commander Janis Olmstead, the primary weapons control officer, caught Koenig’s eye and arched an eyebrow. “Since when did micromanagement become Navy SOP, sir?” she asked.
“Mind on your links, Weps,” Captain Randolph Buchanan’s electronic avatar said. He was America’s commanding officer, and Koenig’s flag captain. Physically, he was on the bridge next door to CIC, but the compartment’s electronics projected his image to the command dais next to Koenig’s couch.
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
“She’s right, you know,” Koenig told Buchanan, but he texted the words to Buchanan’s screen, rather than speaking them aloud. He would not criticize Buchanan’s running of his ship and crew, not publicly. “It’s not going to be the Sh’daar that defeat us. Or their client races. It’s going to be the damned Confed politics.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Buchanan’s image scowl as the captain read the words on a screen.
“Agreed, Admiral.” The words appeared silently on one of Koenig’s screens a moment later. “I have to tell you, sir, I don’t like this.”
“No,” Koenig typed back. “But we play by the rules we’re given.”
Buchanan seemed to hesitate, and then the avatar looked at Koenig. “How the hell do we fight a galactic empire, Admiral?” he asked aloud.
Damn. Buchanan should have kept the conversation private, exchanging text messagers. Glancing down into the pit, Koenig could see that Olmstead and the others were carefully watching their own link channels and displays, but they’d obviously heard. The conversation would spread throughout the America before the end of the next watch.
“I don’t believe in ‘galactic empires,’” Koenig said. He snorted. “The whole idea is silly, given the size of the galaxy.”
“Well, the Sh’daar appear to believe in the concept, Admiral,” Buchanan’s image said. “And I doubt very much that it matters whether they agree with you on the point or not.”
“When the Sh’daar show themselves,” Koenig replied carefully, “if they show themselves, we’ll worry about galactic empires. Right now, our concern is with the Turusch.”
It had been ninety-two years since humankind had made contact with the Sh’daar, or, more precisely, since they’d made first contact with the Aglestch va Sh’daar, one of an unknown but very large number of technic alien species within what was somewhat melodramatically called the Sh’daar Galactic Empire. Quite early on, the Aglestch—some humans still referred to them as “Canopians,” even though that brilliant, hot F0-class supergiant could not possibly be their home star—had explained that they served the “Galactic Masters,” the Sh’daar.
Then, fifty-five years later, an Aglestch delegation had tentacle-delivered a message to Earth, inscribed in English, Spanish, Russian, and transliterated Lingua Galactica, purportedly from the Sh’daar themselves.
They claimed to be the overlords of a galaxy-spanning civilization. After five and a half decades of peaceful trade between the Confederation and the Agletstch Collective, the Sh’daar now stepped in and “suggested,” with just a hint of velvet-shrouded-mail fist, that the human Confederation submit to them and take their rightful places as a star-faring species—under the hegemony of the Sh’daar Masters.
And until that happened, humans were forbidden to have any contact whatsoever with the Aglestch.
The problem was, in fifty-five years an active and spirited trade had sprung up between the Aglestch worlds and the nearest star systems colonized by humans. StarTek and Galactic Dynamics, the trading corporations involved, hadn’t wanted to give up their lucrative contracts for Agletsch art and basic technical information. A Terran naval task group had been deployed to protect human trade routes in the region, and the Confederation Diplomatic Corps had made overtures to the Aglestch Collective about maintaining trade and diplomatic contact apart from Sh’daar oversight.
The result had been the disastrous Battle of Beta Pictoris, in 2468, the equivalent, in human eyes, of reaching out to shake hands and pulling back a bloody stump.
And for thirty-six years now, the war had continued … with a very few minor victories, and with a very great many major defeats. Humankind’s principle foes so far had been the Turusch va Sh’daar, a different Sh’daar client species that first had made its appearance thirty years before, at the Battle of Rasalhague. The First Interstellar War, as the news agencies had termed it back home, was not going well.
The infant planetary system of Beta Pic had been just sixty-three light years from Sol, the furthest humans had yet ventured from their homeworld, a microscopic step when compared with the presumed extant of the galaxy-spanning Sh’daar. Rasalhague had been closer still—forty-seven light years.
And Eta Boötis was only thirty-seven light years from Sol. The enemy was closing in, relentless, remorseless.
In 2367, the Terran Confederation had incorporated 214 interstellar colonies and perhaps a thousand research and trade outposts on planets scattered across a volume of space roughly one hundred light years across and perhaps eighty deep, a volume embracing almost eight thousand star systems, the majority of which had never even been visited by humans. And after less than four decades of bitter fighting, Confederation territory had dwindled by perhaps a quarter.
Humans still knew almost nothing about the Sh’daar—so far as was known, no human had ever even seen one—but their brief contact with the Agletsch had suggested that the Sh’daar presence might well encompass several hundred billion stars. Whether you called it a galactic empire or something else, in terms of numbers and resources, it seemed to pose an insurmountable threat.
The sheer impossibility of the Confederation fighting such an overwhelmingly vast and far-flung galactic power had strongly affected human culture and government, deeply dividing both, and affecting the entire Confederation with a kind of social depression, a plummeting morale that was difficult to combat, difficult to shoulder.
And one symptom of plunging morale was the increasing micromanagement out of C
—Confederation Central Command—on Earth. All military vessels now carried one or more Senate liaisons, like Quintanilla, to make certain the Senate’s orders were properly carried out.
If anything, direct Senate oversight of the military had made the morale problem even worse.
And that was why Koenig was concerned about his flag captain speaking his pessimism in front of the bridge personnel.
“We’ll know more when we rescue Gorman and his people,” Koenig added after a thoughtful pause, stressing the word when, rejecting the word if. “The scuttlebutt is that his Marines captured some Tush officers. If so, that could give us our first real insight into the enemy psychology since this damned war began.”
“Tush” or “Tushie” was military slang for the Turusch … one of the cleaner of a number of popular epithets. He saw Olmstead’s head come up in surprise at hearing a flag officer use that kind of language.
“Yes, sir,” Buchanan said.
“So we play it by the op plan,” Koenig added, speaking with a confidence he didn’t really feel but which he hoped sounded inspiring. “We go in, kick Trash ass, and pull our people and their prisoners out of there. Then we hightail for Earth and let the damned politicians know that the Galactics can be beaten.”
He grinned at Buchanan’s avatar. He suspected that the Captain had spoken aloud specifically to give Koenig a chance to say something inspiring. A cheap and theatrical trick, but he wasn’t going to argue with the psychology. The crew was nervous—they knew what they were in for at Eta Boötis—and hearing their admiral’s confidence, even an illusion of confidence, was critical.
On the battlespace display, five more ships appeared—the destroyer Andreyev, the frigates Doyle, Milton, and Wyecoff, and the troopship Bristol.
They would be ready to accelerate for the inner system soon.
VFA-44 Dragonfires
Eta Boötis System
0421 hours, TFT
Lieutenant Gray checked his time readouts, both of them. Time—the time as measured back on board America—was, as expected, flashing past at an insane pace, thirteen times faster, in fact, than it was passing for him.
In its high-G sperm-mode configuration, the SG-92 Starhawk’s quantum-gravitic projectors focused an artificial curvature of spacetime just ahead of the ship’s rounded prow—in effect creating a gravitational singularity that moved ahead of the fighter, pulling it forward at dizzying accelerations.
