The eight ships of BatRon 1 engaged the next ship out, firing half their forward lasers. The second ship through the jump exploded.
But there were more. The battle squadrons engaged in order the third, fourth, and fifth targets. Alien ships came through the jump, and alien ships died. It was BatRon 1’s turn again, but the wreckage and roiling gases from the earlier ships were making the lasers less effective.
“Let them get out five hundred klicks,” Kris ordered, and the squadrons held their fire for a fraction of a second before laying on again. Still, there were ships through now that hadn’t been fired upon. For every ship they blew, one slipped through and raced off at two gees acceleration.
On the orders of their own commodores, the squadrons flipped to bring their aft batteries to bear. More monster ships died—some in spectacular explosions, some from a series of internal blows that tore them apart. Alien ships fired back, but their lasers dissipated before they could reach Kris’s fleet.
Yes, alien ships died, but Kris’s ships were shooting themselves dry. They needed more time to recharge. As Kris’s screens showed her ships firing their last pair of ready lasers, she gave her next order.
“Deploy chaff. Set course to two-ten by fifteen.” That would aim the fleet sunward and toward the nearest gas giant. “Accelerate at one gee. Deploy mines on my mark.”
Kris waited ten seconds for the fleet to begin its move away from the laid chaff before giving the mark. As the mines silently slid from the frigates, canisters of ball bearings, metal cubes, and simple rocks left behind became active and blasted toward the alien ships. Some chaff canisters held bits of magnesium and white phosphorus with delayed timers to mix them with oxygen and set them to burning bright and hot. Behind the fleet, space began to sparkle, as the chaff masked where the mines waited patiently.
Almost thirty alien ships were dead, but they had forced the jump for their master. Kris had made them pay a cruel price, but it was a price someone had paid willingly.
More ships came through the jump every second. Kris would not have risked ships at that short an interval, but the aliens commander did. He paid with a couple of collisions that Kris spotted. Maybe more that she didn’t.
While her fleet spent fifteen precious seconds recharging, fifteen ships came through, spread out, and went to two gees acceleration.
They formed a circle, then slowed their acceleration while later arrivals filled in the center. “A fighting dish,” Kris observed. She’d considered that but dropped it for the advantage that articulated squadrons and divisions gave her. These guys had been doing this a whole lot longer than humans had. Was it nearly instinctive to them?
Lasers recharged; still, Kris continued to back off. The dish came on as more ships came through the jump and formed up in more circles.
The lead alien formation approached the waiting mines, their lasers sweeping the space ahead of them. A few mines took hits, but not many. The mines were actually high-acceleration missiles with passive sensors. Once the sensors found reactors of an unknown origin near them, they waited until the aliens passed them by. Then the missiles took off at nine-gee acceleration, aiming their antimatter warheads for the vulnerable engines.
More lasers came alive as a few ships recognized the attack, but the missiles were close and coming in fast on an erratic course Nelly herself had designed. Explosions began to mark the fighting dish. Ships lost balanced power and shot off in wild course changes. Others began to eat themselves as reactors failed and plasma ripped through the ship. There were two more collisions.
The fighting dish shattered.
“Reverse course,” Kris ordered. “One-gee acceleration, if you please.”
Her fleet flipped and charged, jinking as it closed the distance to the flailing enemy. The aliens were too busy with damage control, or they’d lost their sensors. Only a few fired at Kris’s fleet or tried to dodge.
Kris’s squadrons mopped up the residue of the dish.
“Fifty-seven down,” Nelly reported.
Kris had no time to celebrate. Four more fighting dishes had formed up and were now headed her way at two gees.
“Pop more chaff,” Kris ordered, then reversed course at one gee. The oncoming alien dishes began to sweep the space in front of them with their huge battery of lasers. Kris didn’t try another mine drop, but she had plenty of chaff. So she did what she could to keep them working their lasers where she wanted them. Forward.
“Professor, Chief, let me know if their weapons begin to heat up.” Human lasers lost some of their efficiency and power when the system overheated. Physics was the same galaxywide. Kris wanted the aliens worn down before they reached the gas giant.
The alien fighting dishes were now arrayed in a box much like Kris’s squadrons but covering more space. Kris’s flanks, right, left, up, and down, were covered. Kris could retreat, but if she turned to fight, she invited the aliens to swarm around her flanks and into her rear.
It was not a good picture on the screens of Kris’s lonely flag bridge.
Another set of four dishes formed up. Thirty ships to a dish, four dishes to a square, made for 120 ships. Two squares should account for all the enemy she’d identified and then some. Either the last square was short a few ships or Kris’s intel hadn’t counted them all.
Either way, the mother ship should be coming through soon.
Finally, it did.
The monster fighting ships were huge, at four or five hundred thousand tons. The mother ship dwarfed them. This one was the size of a moon. Unless Kris was wrong, it was cut from the same mold as the one she’d disposed of before.
Well, if you have a successful design, why mess with it?
While the first square of dishes continued to close on Kris at two gees, the second held back, forming a shield around the mother ship. The smaller, faster ships darted around mother, using their few lasers to vaporize anything that came even close to her.
Yep, they’d gotten the word about how Kris blew away their sister. Kris hadn’t expected to use the same trick twice. The only question was, would they spot the new trick any faster?
The lead box of dishes was 150,000 klicks away and closing. Kris let them get to 120,000 before she went to two gees. She ordered the hooligan squadron into the line well to the left of BatRon 1. With BatRon 1 now facing the enemy’s center, Kris edged the rest of her squadrons a bit to the right.
Then the aliens pulled their first surprise.
53
“The lead alien square of dishes has jumped to 2.5-gee acceleration, Kris,” Nelly said.
They aren’t supposed to do that! No doubt, a lot of aliens are feeling the pain.
“Squadrons, fifteen degrees right, engage the closest dish,” Kris ordered, as the aliens came within range. The fifteen-degree angle protected their vulnerable engines. BatRons 1 through 4 engaged the enemy’s far-right dish. But the enemy was coming on fast, switching their fire from motes of dust to Kris’s ships. At extreme range for their lasers, damage was light, but there was plenty of it.
On Kris’s board, ships’ armor switched from green to yellow as they began to stream steam and take hits.
But the aliens were well within range of Kris’s 20-inch guns. Her ships lit up the aliens; twenty-six ships engaged thirty aliens.
In a minute, the dish was an expanding ball of gas.
But to finish off the aliens, Kris’s ships had to flip to use their forward battery. That put the enemy way too close. “Accelerate away at 2.75 gees,” Kris ordered. “Pop chaff. Launch a missile volley.”
One dish was gone, but the top and bottom dishes had angled over, getting the range. The far dish was hammering Commodore Benson’s hooligans of BatRon 5. The cheery volunteers gave as good as they got, but Benson had to order them to run for it ahead of Kris’s orders.