Chapter 13

“Emergence in twenty seconds “ the Comms officers call came through my helmet as I ran final checks on Betty's systems. “One copies all” shortly after I heard lt. Johnson answer as well. “ Two copies” a few moments later a soft shudder went through the Paladin and we were raised from the final hold short position to launch point. Then the light on the hull in front of me switched to green as comms called “ Launch, Launch, Launch” as I pulled back and left hard rolling away from the Paladin as Lt. Johnson did the same on the opposite side.

With Fighters away from the deck the Comms were transferred from flight operations to the battle net. It didn’t really make much of a difference with our small “fleet” of three ships but it did add certain chatter from the ship's crew that used certain prowords that were deemed pertinent to all stations. “ Contact, Bearing 355 lateral 5 vertical from flag, appears to be destroyer sized.” the dot populated on the bettys sensor screen, all new contact reports were announced from the flag ships position of the fleet, this could vary if multiple small squadrons were engaging in an area the contact reports could be called based on that squadrons leader.

The call outs were redundant as the battle net would auto update any new contacts and push them out to the fleet's sensors. if for some reason the battle net was down or the ships link was damaged the audio calls were still made in case those were still functional. The Paladin was back up to full strength and was not hiding its true nature this time, it came through the jump gate with the gun ports open and now the shields flickered to life with their eerie green glow unique to plasma shields. The teslating hexagon pattern that all shields had formed around the vessel in an instant and even a blind squirrel would know that Paladin was a warship.

The station was only ten light seconds from the portal and soon began launching their own fighters. The three we expected launched followed quickly by three more. “Looks like they had one more than we expected” Lt. Johnson observed over the Comms before I could comment another two sets of three appeared from an empty sector of space near the station followed by four slightly larger contacts and finally a last bigger target. “Contact multiple baring 347 lateral 5 vertical reads as four Gunboats and a Tender with fighters in support.” Fighter call outs were normally left to the CAG (Commander Air Group) or flight operations but with a wing of two fighters and Johnson being a veteran pilot, I was expecting him to call out if he had somehow missed the extra fighters still it was good practice to make the call.

“Foxtrot 12 Confirm?” I called on the squadron Comm. Foxtrot was the old earth phonetic for F which of course was the first letter in fighter. Twelve referred to the total number of fighter contacts and confirm was a simple request for Johnson to confirm he only saw twelve as well, no more and no less. “Two confirms Foxtrot 12, getting a little thick out here Sir orders?” That was a good question. I was convinced we could have handled the six or at least done enough damage before breaking off that they wouldn't have been able to get through the Paladins limited point defense.

We had one chance to pull this off without having to change the plan but it was going to be risky and to make matters worse I would have to do it alone because Johnson and I hadn’t had enough training together in this scenario. “ Two set all missiles to intercept mode launch the moment the pirates launch then return to the barn to rearm and stand by for phase two.” Johnson hesitated before answering “ Yes, Sir what are you going to do?” I could tell he was worried I was going to do something stupid. Which was good instincts because I was about to do something stupid.

“I will be fine two break Barn this one number of Foxtrots beyond predicted going Medieval.” Going Medieval was a backup plan Emily had helped me develop; she had rigged up a torpedo with a special package that had been found in Paladin weapon storage. It was a nuclear tipped planetary bombardment round they were banned for their intended use after the war and we turned it over when the Paladin was brought in. The actual use of nuclear weapons in a ship to ship conflicts was normal for the major powers, just the use against planetary targets was outlawed. Civilian position of nuclear weapons was out right banned in all but three systems. One of which was Palades who had outlawed the production, import, purchase, and sale of Nuclear weapons by civilians but not technically the ownership and then after the war had a mandatory buyback of any still in Milita hands. There were still rumored to be a few hidden on personal stations in the asteroid belts but the rumors never seemed to uncover any physical proof.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

This led to an awkward situation as written into the Nuclear buyback act was that it could only ever be done once, it was a concession to the party that worried that the other side was going to try to start seizing all military style arms from the populace like the League was at the time. The situation was solved before I even knew about it. Emily had submitted a request for the materials to be transformed to create a new Type of EW or electronics Warfare warhead that would blanket an area in enough radiation to mess with sensors and make most weapons unable to lock properly. Rail guns and dumb weapons would work fine but active tracking equipment would have a hard time, I had been looking for an excuse to test this equipment for two reasons first if it worked out it maybe Adopted by the Palades military giving our guys an edge and two getting rid of it would keep it from becoming an issue if politicians heard about it.

We accelerated towards the merge the battle began with the destroyer starting the fight launching its ready anti ship torpedo’s. eight torpedoes launched through a gap in the shields and began to accelerate towards the Paladin. The torpedoes were unshielded and designed to destroy themselves as effectively as possible; they were an older surplus model the Theocracy had finished phasing out over thirty years ago. These torpedoes had lighter yield then modern torpedoes were slower, had less electronic warfare capabilities and would auto detonate thirty minutes after launch if not modified.

And yet, they still had a longer life than the destroyer that launched them. The track of the Main Cannon on the Paladin began to glow blue as smaller metal dust began randomly accelerating and self annihilating as the massive rail gun charge then with a shudder that I knew everyone on the ship could feel but I couldn’t see from outside a blue plum indicated the shell launching towards the destroyer.

The destroyer would have had five seconds to realize this was happening thanks to the impossible to miss power surge. The round had a closing rate of .8 C and had been launched at seven light seconds; this added another 8.75 seven five seconds to the destroyer's time to react. With the thirteen and a half seconds they had to react the ship may have been able to change their heading by a half a degree. It did not help them, the dumb round slammed into the forward shield and the battleship class slug hit the destroyer's shield slowing it down by over 67,061,663 miles per hour as it was overloaded and shattered around it. The round was still traveling at seven tenths the speed of light slammed into the prow of the destroyer.

I watched as the destroyer disappeared from the sensors as it began to come apart before the core detonated, destroying the vessel. The eight torpedoes carried on towards their target. “Two launch four interceptors.” four of lt. Johnson’s twelve missiles launched from his rack and sped toward the incoming torpedoes. That was all the attention I could spare for the torpedoes; our fighters continued to close with the enemy fighters. The 12 fighters launched two missiles each a regular salvo most fighter combat was done with wave launches , a total of 24 missles headed our way. “Launch all missiles “ I ordered as Lt. Johnson's remaining 12 missiles launched towards the incoming swarm “break right and RTB” johnsons missile flew towards the pack as he turned away from the formation. I broke left and watched the missiles separate into two formations. The split wasn’t even as 14 went after Johnson. I took a deep breath of the canned air and launched my own eight counter missiles.

I wasn’t worried the anti missile warheads we carried would fly to close range before deploying a shotgun spread of single use high intensity lasers; they couldn't even penetrate the hull of a civilian shuttle and even had a hard time with the hulls of torpedoes. but worked fine against the thin shell of the missiles. In swarm events like this the anti missile missiles had a 1.2 kill rate and that made all the difference in this battle. The merge happened and three missiles survived coming through towards us; one was tracking me and two Johnson. One clearly had been damaged and lost its track leaving one for each of us.

“Popping counter measures two going Medieval in 10.” ,I watched Lt. Johnson finished his turn. ”copy 1 godspeed” big modified torpedo slipped off my center rail and flew towards the group we would all enter its range except Lt. Johnson by the time it detonated. The last missile tracking me was drawn off by one of my decoys and I got one last look at the enemy formation before the torpedo detonated and my screen turned to snow.