1700 hours, June 24th, 2673; Alpha-Hotel Flight

“One, this is three,” Sara reported to Jorge from her position leading the second element of the group. “I have something on the MAD.”

“What’s the bearing, three?”

“Below us is all I get.”

“Roger, Alpha-Hotel Flight, angle forty degrees down.” The four Javelin fighters brought their noses down and set off on a new vector.

“Camera contact. Something passed in front of an asteroid. Asteroid is one-point-oh-five light seconds away,” reported Walker from the fourth Javelin in the group.

“Does anyone else have it?” No one else reported the contact. “Activate the search radars and see if we can pick it up.”

“Radar contact from two.” The report came in quickly, followed by contact reports from the other three fighters. The contact was less than a tenth of a light second away.

“Accelerate at five G. We’ll start with a gun pass and then loop around and use missiles.” He called the contact into the fleet’s aerospace flight control and pushed forward on his throttles.

They were too close to fire their missiles. The seeker heads would not have a chance to lock on properly after launch before they blew past the torpedo boat. The four fighters fired their rail guns and lasers when they were one-twentieth of a light second away, only 15,000 kilometres. They were not aiming for the bow or stern of the boat; they were aiming for the top.

The lasers were mostly defused by the liquid hydrogen that cooled the surface of the boat, but the thin armour did not protect against the three-millimetre shells that the Javelin fighters shot. Many of the slugs shot through the hull and vented atmosphere from the torpedo bay. Two of the internal bays were hit. Fortunately, they were the two middle bays, which carried the extra sensors, and not the starboard bay that had the explosive Mark 15 torpedo.

The crew in the torpedo bay immediately donned their helmets. While the holes left by the three-millimetre shells did not vent the atmosphere quickly, the boat’s environmental system could not keep up. As the fighters passed by, the engines of the boats fired up and accelerated the hull forward at five G.

* * *

“Damage report!” Murphy ordered as soon as they were accelerating away.

“Atmosphere is venting…in the torpedo bay,” Lieutenant Ridgard reported from his station. “MAD, GAD, and HHE…are all showing faults. Hull looks like…a piece of Swiss cheese…in spots. No reports of injury…it looks like…light rail gun shells…passed through the top…and bottom hull.”

“Deploy the turrets, prepare for anti-fighter action…Activate the radar. Able Miller, find me those fighters. Helm, bring us back to…one G as soon as the turrets…are deployed. Lieutenant Ridgard, stop wasting…our air supply in the bay. I show all crew with…their helmets racked and ready.”

Murphy reached back to the rack on his seat and pulled the helmet over his head when the acceleration was down. “All crew should don their helmets when they get a chance. We won’t have time later,” he said as acceleration decreased. He settled the helmet into place and pushed up on the visor.

“Incoming missiles!”

“Four G acceleration, helm. Evade if you can, but get us rolling.”

The torpedo boat started to roll, exposing different sides of the boat in turn. The belly of the boat was protected by four point defense lasers. The sides each had two, and the top had the final two lasers of the boat’s complement. The top of the boat also had the RSG, and the entire crew could hear and feel the boat shudder as the RSG began firing on the incoming missiles.

The rail shotgun could fire three times a second. The barrels were loaded with eight shells each, which meant that the gun could fire for three seconds before it needed to be reloaded. If the helm rolled the boat right, the RSG would be exposed long enough for it to fire off all the loaded slugs, and then expose the point defense lasers on the other sections of the boat while the gun was reloaded.

“Large contacts detected ahead!”

“How many?”

“Three extremely large contacts…five smaller contacts, sir.”

“Helm, aim us right at them…and bring us back up to five G.” The torpedo boat accelerated forward and stopped rolling when the last of the interceptor missiles had been destroyed.

* * *

“Our missiles aren’t effective, lead!” Walker reported from the fourth Javelin.

“They’ve probably cracked the evasion pattern since the war…Keep them in sight and on the radar.” Captain Wilmore then cursed over the channel as the torpedo boat took off at five G, heading directly toward the centre of the fleet.

“Do your best to get back into position on them again,” Jorge said. The four fighters were on the wrong vector to intercept the accelerating torpedo boat, and the best they could do was a tail chase again. That was not the position the fighters wanted to be in. The top, bottom, and side armour of the Rake class boats were the thinnest. The bow armour had already proven more than a match for the Javelin’s meagre armaments.

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The fighters could still out-accelerate the torpedo boat, but only at the cost of effectiveness of the pilots. They could push themselves to catch up, but they ran the risk of red-outs as blood was pushed toward their brains by the constant high acceleration from the rear of their fighters. Most jet-age pilots had to worry about blackouts caused by high-speed turns. The turns pushed blood to the bottom of the turn, which was invariably where the pilot’s feet were. The engines in the fighters pushed almost directly at the pilot’s back, so the pilot had to worry more about blood being forced into the brain. Too much blood pressure would cause the blood vessels in the brain to burst, effectively giving the pilot a stroke.

Captain Wilmore did not want to risk his pilots at the higher acceleration needed to catch up with the Rake. Instead, he matched the acceleration and kept up with the boat, waiting for it to slow down before he made another attack. He also wanted to save his missiles, as firing them now would make them easy targets for the point defense armament of the boat.

“Control…this is Alpha-Hotel lead.” His breath was ragged and laboured. “We’re in pursuit…of a RoT Rake class torpedo boat…heading deeper into the fleet zone.”

“Roger Alpha-Hotel, keep in contact. This one has been slippery. We’re angling the other groups to intercept.”

Jorge looked at the radar map and almost shook his head, keeping the movement slight because of the acceleration. He was pursuing the contact, and the other flights of interceptors were behind him. If he could not catch the boat without risking his group, then there was no way another flight would be able to do so.

The torpedo boat changed its vector a little, and Alpha-Hotel Flight was able to make up some of the distance. He was looking at the track of the boat and swore again.

“Control, this is Alpha-Hotel lead.”

“Go ahead.”

“Boat has angled on a direct run toward the Fitzgerald…It’s on a torpedo attack profile.” The Fitzgerald was one of the three carriers that the expeditionary fleet had in the system. It was currently launching more fighters, and the shields were down to facilitate that. Not that the shields would have helped, with how effective the torpedoes had proven.

The carriers relied on ships like the Spear class frigate for point defense and to keep threats away. The large vessels had the standard complement of lasers and short-range rail guns, but they were generally not enough to cover the entire length of the hull. Most of the surface had been given over to the launching and recovery of fighters, bombers, and other spacecraft.

* * *

“The three largest contacts…are Geogiaton class carriers…the five smaller ones are Harrison class dreadnoughts.” The identification came in from the VSO station.

“One appears to be launching fighters, sir.”

“Mark it on the tactical display.” Murphy waited for the target marker to pop up on the main screen. “Helm, set us up…for a standard torpedo run on that ship. Keep us at five-G acceleration.” This was not going to sit well with the crew. Murphy’s own breath was laboured. It was a good thing most of them were on their back or front relative to the acceleration, not on their heads.

Murphy’s eyes went back to the plot and tried to figure out the best way to break contact with the fighters following him. He knew they were still there, and he did not think he would be able to shake them loose easily. He set up the standard torpedo run profile instinctively. He was not sure what he was going to do with it just yet.

“Petty Officer Watts,” Murphy said and looked slightly to his right at the EWO. “Can our decoys simulate a torpedo?”

“Yes sir, but they won’t…have the acceleration…or the shields. But the signature can be mimicked.”

“Good, set up to mimic a torpedo accelerating at no more than eight Gs.”

“Aye sir, give me a moment to program one,” she said from her station. It was only a few simple commands to enter the orders, but she had to struggle against the acceleration. “Ready, sir.”

“Good. Ridgard, how close…are we to optimal firing…of a Mark Fifteen on that carrier?”

“About forty-five seconds.”

“Good, we’ll launch the decoy then. Helm…make a break away…as if we launched a real torpedo. Then five seconds later…bring us back in line…put us between the fighters and the decoy.” It was going to be another roll of the dice. He had been lucky so far, and he hoped his luck would hold out some more.

* * *

“Control! Torpedo launched on the Fitzgerald!” Captain Wilmore shouted into the communications channel.

“Intercept it, Alpha-Hotel.” The pilots pushed forward on the throttles. “Hold it…the torpedo boat…it’s coming back…in line with the…torpedo. Torpedo is only…accelerating at eight G. The engine must be a dud,” Jorge said into the channel.

“Evade the boat, get that torpedo. We can’t afford to lose the Fitzgerald, Alpha-Hotel!”

“Alpha-Hotel, break…forty-five degrees…around the torpedo boat. I want…each of us…on a different side,” he ordered the group, hoping that would confuse the gunners on the boat.

The four fighters moved onto four different vectors, keeping their distance from the torpedo boat. They accelerated to eight G—not enough to catch the torpedo, but hopefully enough to get past the torpedo boat so they could launch their interceptor missiles and not have them intercepted by the boat’s point defense armaments.

“Two, watch out…the Rake is moving to block you…break wide,” he said as he watched the torpedo boat angle itself to the right, rolling to present its RSG and topside point defense lasers at the Javelin.

“Break away, two!” he ordered again, and then watched as the glowing projectiles of the RSG shot out of the top of the boat toward the second fighter of his group. The high-speed projectiles covered a large area and caught the Javelin. Jorge’s wingman did not have a chance to call out as his fighter exploded around him.

He had no time to mourn as he locked onto the torpedo before him and pushed his fighter for all it was worth. He selected the four interceptor missiles he had left and fired them all at once. He was not sure if he was far enough past the torpedo boat for its point defense lasers to be effective. The two remaining fighters in his group also fired at the same time, and twelve missiles accelerated at over 450 G toward the torpedo.

The decoy did not have a chance; it was much smaller than the Mark 15. It did not carry the shields, the laser, or the ECM that the torpedo did. All it could do was run. The twelve interceptor missiles did their job and destroyed the decoy without leaving much of anything behind.

“Alpha-Hotel…angle back toward the Rake,” Captain Wilmore ordered and looked at his sensor log for the torpedo boat. The Javelin only had a forward-facing radar and had lost contact with the torpedo boat when he broke past it to chase after the torpedo. He had also focused purely on the torpedo as he went in for the kill. He had lost track of the boat. He berated himself. It was a mistake a rookie would make, and it should not have been made by a flight leader. He should have held back and let the other two pilots deal with the torpedo while he kept the Rake in sight.

His sensors picked up the emissions from the torpedo boat, fleeing at seven G away from the carriers. He was out of position, and his cameras were not picking up any glints from the black hull. He was not expecting to catch sight of it unless he got lucky. The Rake was also pulling its trick of reducing its radar signature, since his radar was only reporting a faint contact. His cameras were able to pick up the thermal image of the boat, but it was also faint.

He was surprised at how fast it was moving. It must be light. It must be out of torpedoes if it can accelerate that fast, he thought to himself.

“Control, this is Alpha-Hotel. Torpedo destroyed. Rake is leaving the area…at seven Gs. We are angling to intercept. It must be out…of torpedoes or it would have…fired another at the carrier.” He kept his fighter at eight G to catch up with the target.

“Alpha-Hotel, this is control. Intercept the boat if you can. We are angling the rest of the fighter groups to intercept. We agree that it is out of torpedoes. Just keep it away from us for now. Don’t risk your fighters, it’s harmless now.”