Titan Battle, page 3
And closer…
"Alpha Wing," said Alpha Wing's Commander, Donald Reese, "commence attack on battleships E1 and E2. Begin bombing run. Good luck and good hunting!"
Beck said nothing. He continued on course, listening and watching with envy as Alpha Wing began its attack on those two battleships that were clearly ahead of all other ships in the enemy fleet.
On his monitors, he saw all 16 'Starfury' class mark-9 strike fighters of Alpha Wing accelerate to maximum speed towards battleships E1 and E2. He wished he was part of them. He could already imagine their shield deflectors being manually adjusted so most of the shield concentration reinforced the forward half of their birds in preparation for any anti-fighter point defense beams or flak from E1 and E2.
Closer… Closer…
He watched as enemy battleship E1 opened up its weapon ports and - OH MY GOD - there were so many flak cannons! That's a mobile flak platform disguised as a battleship!
Suddenly, the command channel exploded with cries from multiple birds. "All birds, abort! ABORT!" yelled Alpha Wing's Donald Reese. "I repeat, ABORT the attack run!"
And then E1 and E2 opened up with their cannons - and suddenly, thousands, no, millions of exploding shells gushed out of E1 and E2 right into the path of the incoming starfuries of Alpha Wing. The space in front of Alpha Wing literally lit up with exploding fragments that smashed into shields. With so many of these metal fragments exploding, naturally some penetrated the shields of Alpha Wing's fighters and crashed into the hulls of inadequately armored starfuries that were never meant to withstand this much anti-fighter fire. Within half a minute, 9 birds out the original 16 had dropped off sensors, their ID transmissions ceased to exist.
Dead.
What was worse was that Alpha Wing was not the only Wing to attack E1 and E2. Wings from other carriers had also been sent to attack E1 and E2. They were annihilated. Beck tried to count and make a ball park estimate… 80, no, maybe 90 birds dead within a minute.
People screamed on the command net. The screams of dying men and women filled Beck's headset.
"Pull back! Pull back!" said one.
"I ain't getting out of this one - oh god, oh god -" said another.
"Regroup! Regroup!"
Beck shook his head and almost turned his headset off. He didn't want to hear the yelling of people who were about to be sent into oblivion any longer.
"Beta Wing! Beta Wing!" said Jerome Bottis's familiar voice suddenly, "continue on course towards the enemy superspacers. Avoid battleships E1 and E2 at all cost!"
"They're firing at us, commander!" said another member of beta wing.
"Oh shit -"
On his monitors, Beck suddenly saw E1 turn and angle its broadside towards where the members of his wing were - where he was. E1 aimed its flak cannons - all seven hundred of them - and fired. Luckily, there was so much more distance -
"Beta Wing," said Jerome Bottis, "evasive maneuvers! Spread out! Spread out!"
"Yes, sir!" Beck angled his fighter in a random direction and punched his drive. So did the other 15 members of his wing. Beta Wing became an exploding beehive, as everyone tried to create distance from each other.
And then the flak shells came. The canisters detonated. All thousands of them.
"I'm hit!" yelled Grim.
"Me, too!" said Maniac. "But it's not bad. It's not bad. The damage is not terrible!"
Beck heard a clunk in his cockpit and wondered what part of his bird got caught with a metal fragment. He suddenly glanced at his damage control monitor and it showed a piece of foreign metal in his rear laser communication set. Not serious, at least.
Blue-white shield splattered all around his fighter as his deflector matrix tried to push away dozens of high-velocity metal fragments. His shield capacity monitor showed 65%, then 55%, then 40%…
"Ahhhhh!" yelled a voice. It was Greta Antoine 'Grim'. Suddenly, her ID blinked off the map monitor. Beck had no idea what happened to her fighter.
And then, suddenly, the pounding stopped.
"Thank god," said Maniac. "We're out of its flak envelope."
"Everyone, ok?" said the Wing Commander. "Grim, you there?"
No answer.
"Is everyone else, ok?"
"Yes, sir." Beck nodded, and then gazed at his monitors and saw E1 angle its broadside at another target, another Wing from another human carrier. He prayed for their safety…
Chapter 7
Bridge, Federation Starship Newson, above the wormhole to Sol, Alpha Centauri System
Jason Thorim slammed his fist on his armrest.
Goddamn it! He had lost 200 birds in under five minutes! At this rate, he was certain to lose over 40% of his entire fighter force by the time the strike had ended.
Sector General Thorim wiped the perspiration off his head and tried to not look flustered. He gazed at the readouts of the monitors surrounding his command chair. He had to think. Should he abort the entire strike now?
No! He had to continue! Aborting the strike now would mean taking the brunt of the damage to his fighters without doing any damage to the enemy's capital ship fleet.
Yet, how he should have known! He should have realized those two battleships at the front were specialized flak ships. He should have realized the enemy would have by now adapted a major portion of their capital fleet to specialized anti-fighter roles especially after how well his fighters had fought against the enemy's battleships in the previous battles up to this.
He eyed the battle map. So what should he do now? Now that the enemy have created two new battleships specifically for the task of taking down his fighters? He… he had to order his fighters to avoid them as much as possible. Yet, could they? He checked the range on the flak cannons on those two battleships and cursed. The flak cannons had a range of over 200,000 kilometers!
He massaged his chin and sighed. His fighters would just have to eat it up on their way back, that or take the long way around the enemy's forward fleet partition.
Cockpit, Fighter 004, on top of the enemy fleet, Alpha Centauri System
"We made it, fly boys!" yelled Beta Wing's Wing Commander Jerome Bottis on the net. "Now, let's launch our payload on those superspacers, and kick their ass!"
"Yehaa!" said Maniac. "Let's do this!"
"Roger!" Beck yelled back into the net. It had been a long struggle, but they were finally here - on target. Oh, they had taken some terrible losses from flak cannons and point defense laser beams from several destroyers and frigates they had passed… A full 15% of their squadron hadn't made it. But now they were finally here. Right on top of those superspacers at the far rear of the enemy fleet's formation.
It was payback time.
"Bombs away!" yelled a couple voices.
"Bombs away!"
Beck watched on his cockpit map display as a dozen bombs - very short-range antimatter warheaded missiles - sped forward towards enemy superspacers A1 and A2. The superspacers fired back with their own collection of flak cannons and point defense lasers, of course - but the short-range missiles were moving at close to 0.65 c. Although none of that kinetic energy would transfer to explosive energy when the bombs hit, a natural outcome due to way the Yatimis Miniature sliding drive worked, the payloads in those antimatter warheads would create an explosion of more than 500 megatons of TNT. It would devastate the superspacers if they hit.
Beck 'Sal' Grim watched in satisfaction as three, no, four, short-range bombs hit the forward-most enemy superdreadnought and wham! The blinding explosion created craters in the superdreadnought's armor. Fires spread throughout the target's hull, and massive shockwaves of secondary explosions gushed out of its exterior. One can only imagine what happened inside those superspacers, especially near the points of detonations.
As more bombs hit their target, the superdreadnaughts finished forming a wall and collectively counterfired with their flak cannons and point defense lasers to make sure as little as possible of the human fighters got away from that encounter and -
"Sal, what you doing? Launch your bombs and get out of here!" yelled Wing Commander Jerome Bottis.
"I got an idea," replied Beck on the wing net. "Hang on, Bozeman. I'm gonna try something heroic! You get out while you can!"
"No, Sal! Don't do it! You'll never make it out alive! Fire off your bombs and get out of here with the rest of us or I'll have your head!"
"Hang on!" said Beck. "It'll only take a little bit more time!"
Beck angled his fighter and sped forward at maximum velocity - past the superdreadnought that fired canisters of flak at his wing - and he kept zooming forward at 0.5c until he was behind the superdreadnought designated A1, and then he aimed his missiles at A1 - Bull's eye! - he tapped the fire button. All missiles, launch!
Four of his short-range antimatter warhead missiles sped forward at Superdreadnought A1 at point blank range - around ten thousand kilometers. One of the bombs were taken out by the superdreadnought's flak cannons. Another was somewhat scorched by the enemy's point defense lasers, but continued forward, boosted by its Yatimis Miniature Sliding Drive… until all three of them hit - BANG! BANG! - right into the superdreadnought's main drive ring.
A1's main sliding drive ring exploded as the equivalent of 1.5 gigatons of TNT smashed through its armor and into its inner structure. As its drive ring collapsed, so did the power conduits that led to it - the power conduits bled energy, which added to the secondary explosions. A1 suddenly stopped moving - sliding - and was dead in space. One, two - no, three - more explosions burst from inside A1 near its primary power core, and a major portion of its aft hull careened off its main hull so that A1 broke in two.
"Waaahooo!" yelled Beck 'Sal' Grim. "Take that, you Argonan scum! Scratch one superdreadnought!"
"Show off!" said the voices in the wing net.
Beck Grim angled his fighter on a course that led back to his carrier… with a wide smile on his face. Everyone ought to remember that one for a long time!
Bridge, Federation Starship Newson, above the wormhole to Sol, Alpha Centauri System
Sector General Thorim grinned and pumped his fists into the air as he observed his fighters' bomb strikes go into the enemy's capital ships. Five of the enemy's 'standard' battleships failed to maintain formation and fell away from the enemy fleet. A full 14 of them had been hit by his fighters' short-range missiles. As for the enemy superspacers, three were in what was generally termed 'critical' damage state and were gushing fires from their underbellies. One of them had exploded into pieces, although Thorim had no idea how that happened or who did it.
As for the enemy's Thornguards, both were still healthy, having shrugged off the bomb strikes from three human fighter wings without showing any damage to their propulsion drive nor their power generation capabilities. Boy, the enemy's Thornguards were tough!
Thorim caressed his chin, eyeing the damage reports on the enemy fleet with high hopes and high expectations. Still, it was not as high a damage output as he might have hoped, had he had a fresh fighter force that wasn't nearly decimated by the enemy's two flak battleships.
Then… when he gazed at the total losses to his fighter force, he shuddered at the numbers. There was no way to go around it without admitting the facts. He had lost over 50% of his fighter force to the enemy's dual flak battleships as well as their screening elements like destroyers and frigates. Thorim was devastated by the loss of crews and pilots but he wasn't hurt to the point where he lost hope in the battle. The fighters and their pilots were expendable. They could be easily replenished because the crews could be easily trained and their total tonnage was small compared to that of the carriers and capital ships within his fleet. In other words, the fighters themselves could easily be created by the remaining industrial might of the human star federation.
However, a loss rate of 50% did mean that he wouldn't be able to rely on his fighter force as tactically as he would like in the remaining battle yet to take place.
He sat there, in the aft of the flag bridge, and nodded his head. He had to be happy with what had already been accomplished. Even if he wasn't happy, he had to be settled with it. There was no time for regrets or what might-have-happened had he given orders differently. He had to concentrate on his next orders because as much as he wanted to ruminate on what had already happened, the battle was quickly moving to its next stage.
He eyed the enemy fleet's distance from his fleet. Missile range was soon approaching.
He gazed at his 32 missile ships on the battle map. About 54,000 missiles total. If he played his cards right, he might actually be able to win this.
"All missile ships, open flaps!" he commanded. "Begin main start-up sequence on all missiles' Yatimis drives!"
Of course, he was well aware that the enemy would be doing the same to their missiles at this very moment - all 100,000 of them. Actually, at the very moment, he didn't know exactly how many missiles the enemy had. Some of his intel advisers estimated a low of 80,000, others said as high as 150,000. It was all guessing. Since the last battle had been around 100,000, and since the enemy fleet had probably restocked on missiles since then, Thorim guessed that around 100,000 was a good number of what he'd be facing.
He eyed the enemy fleet… while making checks on which enemy warships would be targeted by each batch of missiles within his arsenal. He would definitely take out some of the enemy's screening frigates and destroyers that got in the way of his missiles, but he knew his main target was still the enemy's capital ships. He also knew that he had to take out - if he could - both of the enemy's flak battleships. If he didn't, they'd simply rain fire on his missiles and none of them would get through.
When he was done cross checking and making his last pre-launch updates, he sat back and relaxed. Even if his current targeting priorities wasn't optimal, he could change them while the missiles were in route.
He gulped. "All missiles," he said at last, "power Yatimis drives to full and advance!"
Chapter 8
Throughout the human fleet, all 32 missile ships ejected all 54,820 missiles from their external and internal missile racks. Each missile was powered by standard Yatimis sliding drives and sped forward towards the enemy fleet at around 0.65 c.
The enemy fleet did the same for its 121,080 missiles - all of which exited the enemy fleet's 60 missile ships. The enemy missiles headed towards the human fleet at 0.7 c.
At the same time, both fleets formed anti-missile defense formations. The Argonan fleet pulled most of its destroyers to a point directly in front of its battleships and superspacers. Its frigates formed another defensive surface in front of its destroyers.
The human fleet did the same.
However, the enemy moved its two extra flak battleships into the front of its frigates to take most of the blow from the human missiles…
Bridge, Federation Starship Newson, above the wormhole to Sol, Alpha Centauri System
Sector General Thorim gazed at the pixelmap. 121,000 missiles! How did they get so many missiles?
Thorim ran his fingers through his hair. Damn, this is a terrible miscalculation.
I never thought they'd have so many missiles. Where had they come from? Had the new missiles come from the enemy's supply caravan through the 5 th wormhole entrance to Alpha Centauri? If so, how did they manage to resupply their missile ships so fast while their fleet was still in transit towards the Sol gate?
Or… had those additional missiles supply ships been right behind their fleet the whole time even while we fought it out right above Worber's World?
Thorim gazed at all 121,000 new dots that had appeared right inside the enemy's fleet. He realized that he could take on 100,000 missiles, but 120,000 missiles was probably too much. His fleet did not have the shielding and countermeasures to take down enough of those 120,000 missiles before the remainder of those missiles surpassed his point defenses and smashed into his ships.
Damn! A terrible miscalculation!
What do I do? What do I do?
He eyed the entire map in front of him. There's nothing I can do. I simply do not have enough screening frigates and destroyers in front of my capital ships to shoot down all those extra 20,000 missiles.
He supposed that if he had what the enemy had, which was two extra flak battleships, he might stand a better chance. As it was, he could only hope on fate and the gods of luck to help him combat the enemy's extra 20,000 missiles. What he needed was extraordinary precision and efficiency in his anti-missile defense screens - his screening destroyers and frigates - to take down that big missile wave so that by the time it reached his capital ships, his capital ships would have an easy time taking down the remainder of the missiles that had gotten through.
