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slower and less maneuverable, but for that reason it is probably the best
armed and shielded."
Chi nodded. "What do we have?"
"Nine fighters dedicated to command ship fighter screen, two other groups of
six each on random surface sweeps, two transports and the supply and factory
ship each with one group screen of nine,"
Marquette responded.
Alarms suddenly went off. "Minipunch detected! Attack imminent!" warned the
speakers, and as Chi watched, the center ship vanished from its position on
the master screen while the two fighters went into normal space motion,
peeling off and creating large arcs as their probable attack plan was
analyzed.
"Don't like this," Marquette grumbled. "Sitting ducks, waiting for them to
shoot before we know where to shoot back."
Lightningemerged from its punch within barely a kilometer of the supply and
factory ship and let loose a barrage of torpedoes, punching back in within
moments.
"Bastard! Nervy bastard! He's actually punched inside our damned fighter
screen!" the commodore
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exclaimed. The torpedoes, all intelligent and all preprogrammed for weak spots
in shielding, curved and dodged close to the transport whose guns blazed
trying to pick them off before one of the torpedoes found a way in. In the
meantime the fighters were nearly useless; any attempt on the torpedoes would
be just as likely to hit the ship they were supposed to protect.
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"Transport struck! One two no, three hits! Damage serious!" the battle group
commander called, although Marquette could see what was happening.
Lightning punched out a good fifty million kilometers out from the Chanchuk
task force, looped, then came back straight in and punched as, simultaneously,
the two freighters punched as well.
With these speeds and distances, punching was nearly instantaneous. An
attacker would simply vanish in one spot and appear in another. No human could
defend against such an attack, but the battle computers could shift if
Marquette freed them to counter the threat.
Suddenly all three ships were inside the command ship's perimeter, firing off
salvos of a dozen torpedoes and vanishing. Punching in with their full forward
shields on and punching out without turning, the massed fire from the command
ship itself had no more effect than to perhaps shake up the people on the
attacking vessels. The command ship attack was equally futile; the kind of
screens employed by the command ship would take far more than these kinds of
forays to damage. Still, there was a faint shudder within the bowels of the
ship as the torpedoes struck where they could.
"These aren't random attacks," Marquette told Chi. "They're well planned, well
scouted, and well flown.
Thanks to the initial response, the damage to the factory ship isn't bad and
is under control, but they can do this all day if they have the power, and I'd
guess they do. Sooner or later they are going to take some of us out. I've got
to free the defensive computers to work as a whole! Otherwise we will begin to
suffer serious damage!"
"No!" Chi was adamant. "They are trying to pull us away, don't you see?"
"Colonel, we have twelve fighters covering the Chanchuk grid from pole to
pole. Nobody can punch from thesurface; it'd take a good ten minutes for
anything taking off to reach orbit, let alone beyond. In ten minutes I can
have three fighters taking out anything that comes up from anywhere."
Chi swallowed hard, unable to make a case against that. The navy knew what it
and a potential enemy could do, and physical laws were physical laws. "All
right. I will defer to you on this. Keep the planetary screen intact but feel
free to employ your other forces as you desire."
"Now you're talking!" The commodore could have overridden Chi from the start,
of course, on the basis of sheer rank and position, but had no desire to do
so. Their mission was to prevent an escape; that was
Chi's department.
The defense computers took over task force command. The three vulnerable ships
were brought close and tightened up with the command ship, and the new task
force fighter screen, now numbering eighteen, divided into two groups, one
shielding the ships and the other ready to analyze speed, trajectory, and
movements of the enemy and go after them. None of the fighters was manned; all
had limited punch capability.
The three enemy ships and the SPF played cat and mouse for almost forty
minutes, neither striking any real blow against the other that caused any
damage, until the defense computers under Marquette determined what was known
as a "release pattern" to the enemy attacks. They came in, attacked
alternately, and regrouped at various angles from the task force but the
regrouping positions were now
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showing a distinct mathematical pattern. The defense computers took a guess at
just where they could come out next, and when the next attack came, and the
attackers punched through, the fighters punched through at the same time.
Colonel Chi watched the battle on the screens, notingparticularly the rolling
and gyrations of the enemy vessels as they were engaged by the fighters.
Thinking about there being people on those attacking ships, she was very glad
she was a ground trooper.
"Stung 'em a bit that time," Marquette noted with satisfaction.
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"Sir! Surface launches!"
Marquette whirled in his chair. "Where? How many?"
"All over. Oh, my
hundreds*.
From all over the place!"
A full three-dimensional model of Chanchuk hovered over the command plate in
the planetary defense section, and on it could be seen just what the monitor
was reporting. Hundreds of angry, red blips, all over the globe...
Suddenly Chi realized the one thing she'd forgotten in all the excitement over
the Sacred Lodge, the raid, the creature, all the rest. That damned small
motor assembly.
Somehow, somewhere, over a very long period of time, they had been planting
those things all over
Chanchuk! What use was just a motor and a small logic module? On defensive
screens the damned things all looked alike. Somewhere among them was one, two,
perhaps three with pirates aboard and the ring.
"Break off!" Chi shouted. "Concentrate all fighters on those things! Shoot 'em
down! All of them! Forget about anything else!"
"I'll be damned if I'm going to take my screen off this ship!" the commodore
responded. "Recall and reform battle group," he commanded. "When done, commit
three fighters from battle group two to each enemy vessel. Have planetary
defense battle group break off and split into thirds and join covering
fighters. Target anything attempting to reach said vessels. Shadow!" He turned
and looked up at Chi.
"Can't possibly get morethan a fraction of 'em, but we can shoot anything they
try to pick up!"
Chi's estimation of Marquette went up a notch or two.
The tiny SPF fighters were much too small and fast to use torpedoes against,
and as long as they themselves could throw a random missile or two at the
enemy to make it keep its distance which meant keeping out of range of the
ship's guns they were relatively safe. On the other hand, guns could pick off
an object of any size or significance that was on any sort of clear trajectory
for pickup by the freighters, who were bearing down so that they would both
skim opposite sides of Chanchuk well away from the task force's position. If [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]