Angles of Attack (Frontlines #3)(77)
“T-minus seven for Flight Three. Flight Three, advance formation to transit positions and keep queue order.”
The three-carrier formation and its escort spread out and line up for the transition. Then we are under way at maximum acceleration, which we will keep for seven minutes. By the time we hit the node, we will be going almost as fast as the supply ships that went before us.
Regulus is the fastest of the carriers, so she gets to take the lead in the queue. The knot in my stomach grows bigger with every minute we accelerate toward the Alcubierre node. Once we are engaged, there’s no putting on the brakes or turning back.
“One minute to transition . . . Thirty seconds to transition . . . Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six . . .”
Next to me, Sergeant Fallon takes the ration bar out of her pocket again and sticks out her tongue. “You know what? If this ends up being the last thing I get to eat before we all buy the farm, I’m going to be really fucking pissed.”
CHAPTER 22
“All hands, prepare for transition. In ten. In five, four, three, two, one. Transition.”
Regulus’s hundred thousand tons and three thousand souls blink back into normal space with barely a hull vibration, the smoothest Alcubierre transition I have ever experienced in any fleet ship.
“Oh, fuck me,” Sergeant Fallon says next to me when the display on the bulkhead comes back to life. Her voice is a little muffled by the battle-armor helmet she’s wearing with raised visor.
“All units, all units. Execute Battle Plan Romeo.”
We are back in normal space. Ahead of us and above our trajectory, there’s the unmistakable bulk of a Lanky seed ship, but it’s in the distance and heading away from us at a thirty-degree angle. I can’t quite get a grip on the situation as well as I would if I had a three-dimensional tactical display in front of me instead of overlapping camera feeds, but I can see that the plan has worked at least partially—the Lanky is moving away from the Alcubierre node, and we have at least fifty kilometers of open space between us and him.
Regulus swings hard to port to clear space for the ships that popped through the node right behind us, and the ship-to-ship channels erupt in terse combat chatter.
“Contact at zero-four-five relative, positive zero-three-zero!”
“Get behind Regulus. Come to new heading three-four-one by negative thirty. Expedite, goddammit.”
“Get me a targeting solution on that huge son of a bitch.”
“Hold all missile fire. Repeat, hold all missile fire. Unmask rail gun batteries and link for barrage fire.”
I try to open up as many camera-feed windows on the display as I can to capture the scope of the action that’s unfolding. Regulus is leading the breakout charge through the node, and all the other ships are behind us in a staggered battle line. We are forming a V with the Lanky ship, with the Alcubierre point at its tip, and the legs of the V slowly diverging as we accelerate away from the seed ship as fast as we can.
“All units, open fire. Weapons free, weapons free.”
We watch the fireworks on the camera feeds in slack-jawed awe. Nine capital warships open fire simultaneously with all their rail gun batteries. Hundreds of tons of kinetic warheads streak toward the Lanky ship, salvo after salvo. They cover the fifty-kilometer distance between the ships in just a few seconds and shatter against the hull of the Lanky ship in spectacular thermal blooms. This concentrated barrage would be enough to take apart any ship ever put into space by us or the SRA, but the Lanky seed ship’s hull shrugs the kinetic rounds off like an animal swatting aside angry wasps.
“Bogey is coming around! Bearing change to zero-four-five relative.”
The seed ship seems annoyed enough with the barrage to break off pursuit of whoever managed to lure it away from the transition point, or maybe whatever entity controls it has decided to pursue the more numerous targets that just popped out of nowhere behind it. But we have a slight speed advantage, and our task group is accelerating as fast as our ships can burn. Whatever cosmic fates have set us on a collision course with this species, at least they’re still beholden to the laws of physics, even if they have ships that can withstand millions of joules of kinetic energy.
The task force ships fire another barrage. The lights on the flight deck dim momentarily as the power output of the ship’s fusion reactors is almost completely eaten up by a propulsion system going at emergency power and a battery of electromagnetic artillery firing from all tubes. We are increasing the distance meter by meter, and trying to slow the Lanky seed ship down by throwing spit wads at their hull, pure defiance and desperation.
Our formation is rapidly pulling apart. Every ship is making its own best acceleration, and some of the older units are falling behind a little. Regulus was leading the charge out of the Alcubierre node, but even with the ten-second head start we had, the frigate Tripoli is pulling ahead of us. The heavy cruiser Avenger, Regulus’s bodyguard unit, could probably outrun us easily, but she is just off our stern and to our starboard, faithfully and doggedly shielding her charge.
“Incoming fire! Vampire, vampire. We have incoming ordnance from the Lanky.”
Overhead, the forceful voice of the Regulus’s CO comes over the 1MC.
“All hands, brace for impact.”
This time I can actually see the Lanky missiles. One of the cameras is angled just right, and against the backdrop of the rail gun impacts in the distance, there are dart-like objects crossing the space between us in a flurry of movement.