Equilibrium, page 24
part #3 of Scattered Stars: Conviction Series
“Okay, now I’m curious,” Kira admitted.
“Go check it out,” Bueller told her, a small smile on his own face. “I have some tachyon-static discharge systems to review. Dinner in your quarters?”
“Twenty-one hundred sharp,” she promised. “Sorry, Kavitha, but we’ll skip the Captain’s mess tonight.”
“No apologies,” Zoric told her. “It is absolutely not my place to suggest that my CEO and my XO make sure to fuck like bunnies before we go to war, and that is the only reason I haven’t done so.”
By the time Kira made it to the flight deck, the slight blush from Zoric’s pointed not-suggestion had faded. The two sections of Deception designed to receive and launch spacecraft were as far apart as the structure allowed, since the flight deck could easily handle shuttles and, in an emergency, the shuttle bay could handle fighter retrieval.
The first thing she did on the flight deck was check in on her own Hoplite-IV. Apparently, someone had warned the flight crew that she was coming back—the fighter was positively gleaming…and half-hidden behind a massive banner proclaiming WELCOME BACK COMMODORE!
The rest of the interceptor’s bay was filled with paper streamers, though Kira’s trained eye picked out where the streamers had been pinned to keep them out of the way of the bay’s functions—and the way they’d been attached to each other to allow for easy removal.
She still had to stand there in front of the fighter for a full minute, just chuckling and basking in the fact that her deck crew appeared to like her.
“There you are!” Tamboli declared, the dark-haired officer barging up on her with a wide grin on their face. “As the sign says, sir, welcome home.”
“Thanks, Commander,” Kira said. “After the last two months, it’s good to be back.”
“I’m not going to thank you for the quartet of greenies you’ve handed me,” they replied. “They’re better than I was afraid of, but they still squeak when they turn.”
“We were all there once,” she told them. “Any particular problems?”
“No problems, just new-pilot friction as they learned how to work in our systems,” Tamboli replied. “We pulled most of our pilots off Conviction, so I figure you picked the best for us.”
“I did,” Kira agreed. “Watch Bradley for me, Dilshad?” she asked. “She may have handed Redward the counterintelligence coup of the decade, but she was an Institute agent. More than that, she’s… Well, she’s good at the job, but she’s got a kid to go home to. She’s not going to be a long-hauler.”
“Not all of them can be,” Tamboli said philosophically. “We all know our parts and our jobs. Though…”
“You have a surprise for me,” Kira told the officer. “Kavitha warned me. I’m guessing it wasn’t this”—she gestured at the streamers—“so, what is it?”
“Follow me,” the deck officer said, gesturing for Kira to fall in behind them.
Curious, Kira did. Tamboli led her down to the two hangar bays at the very back of the flight deck and gestured widely at the nova fighters occupying those bays.
She stared at the spacecraft in a mix of awe and horror.
“Uglies,” she said quietly. The two fighters weren’t built to any clear design, assembled from off-the-shelf components and partial fabrication schemes for the three types of fighter Deception carried. Except… “Big Uglies.”
“They’re our Screwballs,” Tamboli confirmed. “Most of the core frame is from the Weltraumpanzers, but we had to bake in components from the PNC-One-Fifteens to get everything lined up the way we needed.
“They’re Uglies, but they’re Ugly bombers, sir, and we have twenty of them across the fleet.”
Kira whistled softly.
“How many torps?”
“Ten. The internal support is a jury-rig; we didn’t want to risk more than that,” Tamboli said. “The Harrington coils are balanced enough and the nova drive works, but…none of it’s perfect. But they work.”
“And you built twenty of them?”
“Deception built two,” they corrected. “Conviction built twelve, Theseus built six.” They shrugged. “Conviction kept six and sent the rest to Theseus. The RRF has a two-squadron hammer just waiting to take someone by surprise.”
“That might be the best news I’ve had today,” Kira told Tamboli. “And nobody knows?”
“Unless they’re on a ship with the Screwballs, they don’t have a clue,” the deck officer confirmed. “My understanding is that Hoffman has some of the best of the old Darkwings slotted to fly the ones on Conviction and the RRF basically has every vet that isn’t commanding a squadron sticking a bomber.”
“Give them to Yamauchi’s squadron,” Kira ordered. “Or am I saying the obvious?”
“You’re saying the obvious, sir,” Tamboli agreed. “We replaced the two Weltraumpanzers we lost against the Clans with the Screwballs. “
“Good call,” Kira said. She looked over the misshapen fighter and shook her head. Ugly as it was, if it could put ten torpedoes on target while the rest of the fighters escorted it, the Screwball was going to be worth its weight in gold.
45
Kira watched from Deception’s flight control center as ship after ship pulled into a waiting zone “behind” Seventh Fleet. The call had gone out announcing that the RRF was punching a hole in the blockade and inviting the civilians to join the convoy they were escorting out.
The core was a humanitarian aid convoy destined for Ypres, but her eyeball estimate put it at just over fifty freighters, ranging from tiny ten-kilocubic ships up to civilian-owned sixty-kilocubic bulk freighters to rival the largest of Seventh Fleet’s military colliers.
“Countdown is set,” Zoric said in her headware, the Captain keeping the announcement quiet for the moment. “Seventh Fleet novas in an hour. We’re hoping to get ahead of any warning reaching the target.”
“No real way to stop that,” Kira admitted. “We haven’t told the convoy exactly where we’re jumping yet, have we?”
“That’s with Admiral Remington,” her subordinate said. “I don’t think so. On the other hand, every ship in Seventh Fleet now has that data.”
“Hopefully, they got all of the military spies at least,” Kira said. “Going to be a hell of a few days.”
She blinked away a tiny scrap of sleepiness—following Zoric’s recommendation, she and Konrad had not slept as much as they should have the prior night—and considered the situation.
“Is there a briefing planned for the ship Captains?” she asked Zoric. “I haven’t heard anything myself.”
“We just got a data dump of everything Redward Intelligence has on the target,” the Captain replied. “Sending to you. I presume we’ll have a briefing called in the next few minutes, before the Fleet goes to battle stations.”
Kira’s headware told her she’d received the file and she nodded.
“I’ll go through it while I have time, I suppose. I need to brief the nova group.” Kira had full responsibility for all of the two hundred and ninety nova-fighter pilots in Seventh Fleet, a marker of the degree to which the RRF no longer really regarded Conviction or Deception as mercenaries.
“Remington’s doing everything she can, but don’t rely on her giving you enough time for that,” Zoric warned. “They’re not used to fighters being quite as critical as they’re going to be for this.”
“I know,” Kira agreed. “I’ll brief the pilots at T minus twenty. Hopefully, the Admiral will give us the spiel before then. If not, well.” She skimmed the data dump. “At least she just sent us the main plan.”
No one was going to rely on the digital version of the ops plan. Only after a proper virtual briefing where people could ask questions and clarify problems would Seventh Fleet truly be ready to make their move.
Even if they’d gone over every piece of the plan before—a dozen times—they still needed to see how it all came together.
“Pilots, we are ready,” Kira told her people forty minutes later. “The Admiral has briefed everyone.” The briefing hadn’t been as extensive as she’d expected, but then, they were still trying to maintain data security.
“You know what you’re doing,” she continued. “But most of you have never flown in combat before. We’re novaing directly into a fight and we’re going to be launching the moment the carriers stabilize.
“Our job at this stage is not to engage enemy capital ships. Intelligence says we’re taking five cruisers against three. I don’t care if they’re all the big shiny new ones Bengalissimo built, because they’re not making up those odds.
“So long as it’s a cruiser duel, the BF is fucked. We’re here to make sure that it stays a cruiser duel—we know there’s mercenary destroyers, gunships and nova fighters in the blockade, and we’re hitting their main fuel depot.
“They’re going to go at the cruisers with everything they’ve got. Our destroyers will handle their destroyers at first, and we take the fighters and the gunships. Once the battlespace is clear of anything smaller than a destroyer, we hit the merc destroyers.
“By the time we and the destroyers have cleaned up the escorts, Deception and the Redward cruisers should have turned the BF’s big hitters to scrap.”
She paused, letting that all sink in.
“Some of you—you know who and why—won’t be launching today unless things really go sideways,” she noted. The Screwballs were staying aboard their carriers unless there were a lot more cruisers than expected—or they had a shot at one of Cobra Squadron’s carriers.
“Now. Like I said, this is the first run into combat for far more of you than I like,” she said grimly. “So, I’m going to say a few things I wouldn’t normally bother with.
“First, realize right now it isn’t going to go according to plan. And once things come apart, there’ll be no one to give you updates, no communications to tell you where to go.
“Stick with your wingmen, follow your squadron leaders. Remember the one-light-minute rendezvous point and remember that you have a far better chance of getting a laser link to a carrier than to another fighter,” she told them.
“Second…” She looked at the rows of faces in front of her, most of them virtual. “Some of you aren’t going to come home. Remember that you have ejection pods and we’d rather save you and the class two drive over just about anything else.
“When everything goes to hell, remember that you are nova-fighter pilots and there is one instinct I hope we’ve managed to train into you: when things are getting too hot for you…be somewhere else.
“You have more FTL maneuverability than anything else on the battlefield. Use it. Today, at least, the cruisers will do the heavy lifting. Stay alive and do your jobs.”
Kira looked across the faces again.
“We have five minutes before you need to be in your fighters. If you have any last-minute questions, now is the time.”
Kira ran her fingers along the hull of her Hoplite. The smooth, painted metal was a familiar feeling, an old friend. This wasn’t the Hoplite she’d taken into the war against Brisingr—if nothing else, she’d spent most of that war flying a Hoplite-III—but it was one she’d taken into one nightmare after another there in the Syntactic Cluster.
“Everything tests green,” Tamboli told her. The deck chief sounded pleased with themselves. “Every fighter tested out green, even the Screwballs. If it could go wrong, we replaced it. They’ll be as reliable as the day they were built, sir.”
Kira chuckled.
“The Hoplite-IV has some particular issues with the manufacturer’s parts, actually,” she pointed out. “If you replaced the parts that might go wrong, she’s more reliable than the day they built her.”
While many of their fighters were clones built in the fabricators aboard Conviction and Deception, her Hoplite was one of the originals she’d dragged out from Apollo with her.
“She’ll serve you well, as she always has,” Tamboli said firmly. “And I see my cue to go find something interesting somewhere else on the flight deck.”
Kira turned to see the enby deck officer vanish off with surprising speed—and Konrad Bueller standing next to the bay.
“Time to go?” he asked.
“I’ve got about…three minutes,” she told him. “Shouldn’t you be in Engineering for the nova?”
“For the fight, but the nova will handle itself,” he said. “Wanted to see you off. The way these things go…yeah.”
“Fair.”
He crossed the deck to her with that implicit permission, wrapping her in his arms and then kissing her.
“I’ll be fine,” she assured him. “You just make sure Deception’s here when I get back.”
“What did you call her once? The biggest, baddest warship in the sector?” he asked. “You weren’t wrong then and it hasn’t changed. I’m not worrying about Deception. I might be worrying about her CNG, but I know that that’s beyond my control.”
She squeezed his hands.
“This is what I do,” she said. “There’s nowhere I can have a bigger impact on this fight than in the cockpit. There’ve been times that hasn’t been true, but this time it is.”
“I know,” he agreed. “And I’m not here to stop you.” He kissed her forehead and Kira shivered warmly.
“I’m here to wish you luck and your enemies damnation,” Konrad Bueller told her. “If I had a favor to give you as you fly into battle, my brave knight, I would, but the thought only just occurred to me.”
He smiled. There was still the shadow behind his eyes, but this was the man who’d been growing on her.
“So, the only thing I can send with you to keep you safe is my love,” he murmured softly, using a word they had very carefully not used up to that moment. “I love you, Kira Demirci. May that be the shield that brings you back to me alive.”
And while she was still processing that, the rotten bastard kissed her on the forehead and strode away purposefully toward his own duty station.
“Hey!” she shouted after him. He turned and smiled back at her. She glared at him, well aware that the entire flight deck crew could hear her now.
“I love you too, you arrogant grease monkey,” she told him loudly. “Now keep my ship intact while I go win this battle for your favor.”
Bueller laughed and threw her a textbook-perfect salute.
46
It had been a long time since Kira had novaed in this close to the enemy—but then, it had been a long time since she’d flown off a cruiser that was part of a real battle line. She had a clear vision of the Bengalissimo logistics depot at maybe half a million kilometers before everything around Seventh Fleet vanished into their own jamming.
“Deck has the ball,” Tamboli recited in her headware. “Launch on the ball, launch on the ball. Stand by…” There was a pause as the first sets of fighters launched into space, and then the deck boss switched to her. “Basketball, launch.”
The “ball” was the control of her fighter, and Tamboli’s people had it. Systems aboard both her fighter and the cruiser flared to life, and her Hoplite was flung out into space, the last of the eight-ship Memorial-Alpha squadron.
Three more launch waves followed as Kira brought her fighter into formation above Deception, linking laser coms to the cruiser. She wouldn’t have coms for long, but she’d use them while she had them.
“Target analysis downloading to your fighter,” Davidović told her. “Heavier than we hoped, lighter than we feared. We’re making it three cruisers, five destroyers and fifteen light ships. No carriers on the scopes.
“Battle line is advancing.”
“Network established,” Cartman murmured in Kira’s ear. “All fighters online. That won’t last.”
“No, it won’t,” Kira agreed, taking advantage of the moment to link to all two hundred and seventy nova fighters under her command. “All nova fighters, mark the range at four hundred and fifty thousand kilometers. RV is in your computers and lock in your targets.
“First sweep is the lighter warships. I don’t want anything smaller than a destroyer left, pilots, but hang on to your torpedoes. The cruisers may yet need our help.”
She paused, considering what final words she could give the people she’d trained or the people she’d fought alongside. There wasn’t really anything.
“Seventh Fleet Nova Group,” she said calmly. “Nova and attack.”
The world flashed around her as it always did, and her Hoplite dove into chaos around the enemy formation. Even if the enemy hadn’t brought up their own jammers, it didn’t matter. Every fighter novaed with their multiphasic jammers online.
Without a prepared laser network, the Bengalissimo Fleet and their mercenaries’ communications were hashed. That moment of confusion was key—that moment of confusion was where nova fighters lived and died, on the ragged edge of violence and speed.
The freighters weren’t their target yet, and Kira picked her own prey in a moment—a corvette trying to pull away from a fueling tanker. It was vulnerable but on the far side of the Bengal formation from her formation.
Harrington coils flung her through the enemy formation, dodging around the scattered flak that the warships were starting to put out, and she lined up on her prey—and proceeded to disobey her own orders, firing the single torpedo her nova fighter carried directly at the corvette while opening fire with her guns.
The corvette did exactly as she hoped, dodging away from her cannon fire and directly into the path of the torpedo blast. The impact flung the dying ship backward into the fuel tanker itself, tearing a massive hole in the side of the vessel and bringing enough oxygen to ignite a massive portion of the tanker’s hydrogen cargo.
A short-lived jet of flame covered Kira as she flipped back into the fleet, searching for prey. There wasn’t much. The gunships were gone, swarmed under by ten times their numbers of nova fighters. Long-range plasma fire was already beginning to lace the empty void around the Bengal cruisers as Seventh Fleet closed, but the BF was forming up in good order.
