2020 hours CST, June 24th, 2673; Javelin fighter

Major Huey was back in the cockpit of his Javelin fighter when the Rake class torpedo boat was spotted again, a couple of light seconds from where they had lost it before. Space control did not seem to be worried about the boat, but they still wanted it contained.

The ships of the fleet were not moving to engage the boat; they were waiting for the Clearwater fleet to show and did not want any rogue emissions giving them away. The latest intelligence they received said that it should be moving to one of the outgoing systems soon, which meant it could be arriving at any time. If the fleet did not come through to Sigma Delta Four, then Clearwater would be left vulnerable. The Javelin fighters were left on their own to keep the torpedo boat contained and neutralized.

The senior leaders of the fleet command did not see the boat as a threat and believed it had shot off its last torpedo on that failed run on the Fitzgerald. The admiral of the fleet had left orders not to destroy the Rake if they could just disable it; he was interested in recovering it and its crew, for some reason.

The smaller ships of the fleet had started to move as soon as the Rake turned on its radar and locked onto the shield ship. Despite being told to mostly ignore the torpedo boat, long-trained instinct had made the frigate and destroyer captains want to move into position to intercept. The shield ships were fragile and not put together well to begin with; they were still very valuable despite their inherent design flaws. The closest pair of frigates moved to defend the shield generators, even though a torpedo boat without torpedoes should not be able to damage them.

Huey’s flight moved on to an intercept vector when the torpedo boat boosted its acceleration to two G. When the Rake’s acceleration increased to 5G, he increased his own to make the intercept. Orders were coming in to divert it away from the shield ship, but he wanted to avoid a head-on fight with the Rake. He also did not want to get into a tail chase. He remembered what had happened when a flight of Javelins had gotten too close.

“Spread the formation. I want at least four thousand metres between fighters,” he ordered the group. That should be far enough apart that the shotgun-like rail gun on the Rake would not get lucky and take out more than one fighter at a time.

“Do not get closer than a quarter of a light second to the torpedo boat. Keep your distance for now.” That was still a fair distance away, and their lasers would not focus well. Fighter combat happened much closer than that. The initial exchange of interceptor missiles usually occurred at a range of fifty thousand kilometres, about a sixth of a light second. Rail guns had a theoretical effective combat range of three-quarters of a light second, about a quarter of a million kilometres, but were really only effective under one hundred kilometres, and most rail-gun combat occurred under that.

Minute imperfections in a barrel’s alignment caused by manufacturing, violent manoeuvres, even takeoff and landing caused the alignment to drift. Any drift in the alignment cause the slug’s trajectory to miss a target at great distances. Effective combat distance for a fighter’s rail guns were short, and the lasers the fighters carried also had similar limitations. The fighters’ laser focal distances were greater, set to two hundred kilometres, and were most effective at that distance. Attacking a boat like the Rake or even a lumbering bomber increased the range by making the targets larger and easier to hit.

Huey was not willing to risk his flight unless he was going to go in for the kill or if the torpedo boat proved it could be more effective than space control thought. The fleet’s space control also did not want him to kill the boat. He did not agree with the reasons, but he followed his orders and was not going to go in for a kill. Since he was not allowed to kill the target, and it could not do any damage to anything except his fighters, he was not going to risk his flight.

Major Huey still needed to divert the boat from its course, and since it was bigger than a fighter and even a bomber, his weapons should have a greater range. He was not too concerned about hitting the Rake, just getting it moved off its present course.

As the torpedo boat moved closer to the shield ship, the ship adjusted its shield. It was no longer attempting to synchronise with the other shield vessels of the fleet to get the large cloak back in place. Instead, it brought its shield in closer to protect it and the frigates that moved to defend it and to block the approaching boat.

The flight of Javelins moved closer, about thirty degrees off the bow of the boat. The boat had been accelerating at five G for ten minutes before its behaviour changed. Five minutes before the boat was projected to pass by the shield ship, Huey’s sensors lost lock, and the radar image became distorted. The torpedo boat had a powerful electronic countermeasures suite it had not used before, and the fighters needed to get closer for their radars to burn through the interference.

Seconds passed as the fighters moved closer to the source of the jamming and finally got good returns from the torpedo boat. It turned out that Huey was closer than he expected, much closer. He was also closing fast with the target, much faster than he expected and should be. Bearing on the target was not changing like it should.

“Delta-Baker Flight, break off, maximum acceleration!” Huey screamed into his flight’s channel, praying that he got through the communications jamming. He pulled back on his control stick and pushed forward on his throttle. He caught sight of the glowing rail gun slugs as they sped past the shot he was in, and then they exploded.

Huey’s fighter was peppered by shrapnel; his number two thrust engine was damaged enough that he was forced to shut it down. He cut all his forward thrust and flipped his fighter to take a few shots at the torpedo boat as it passed by over two thousand kilometres away. With only one engine, there was no way he was going to be able to continue the pursuit. With unbalanced thrust to the centre of mass, he could only fly around in circles.

* * *

“One fighter disabled, one destroyed, the other two…are retreating,” reported Petty Officer Lefebvre from the defensive fire console. Suddenly an explosion was felt throughout the boat, coming from the aft of the Skate.

“Damage report!”

“Getting it now, sir,” Lieutenant Ridgard reported. “No report from turrets…eight and nine, no vitals from the crew stations there. The capacitors exploded…from the looks of it. The RSG turret also took a hit…but I’m still getting vitals from the crew.”

“Helm port, roll one fifty degrees.” The two point defense turrets were at the rear of the ship, one on the top and the other on the starboard side of the boat. With the status of the RSG unknown, Murphy ordered the boat to expose the still-protected bottom and portside to the closest threats.

Murphy selected a set of asteroids that were fifteen degrees off their current vector. “Lieutenant Bell, plot us a course and get us to those asteroids at our best possible speed.” He was going to play hide-and-seek in the asteroids again, and he was not sure he would be able to fool his pursuers again without a decoy.

There were a few countdowns on the tactical plot running downward. Murphy’s eyes focused on both of them, hoping the diversion he set up would work. Bell and Hart worked on the orders he gave them, and they aimed the boat toward the asteroid field.

“Keep the radar active,” he said and looked over at Lieutenant Sinkovich, his signals officer. “When we pass the first asteroid, I want you to start broadcasting random chatter. Make it the same recording that is used in our decoys.”

The signals officer started to program the communications array on the torpedo boat, wondering what her commanding officer was up to. With past commanding officers, and in other situations, she would have asked for the reasons behind the order, but now she had seen enough narrow escapes that she did not want to interfere with what Murphy was planning.

Murphy watched the sensor contacts as the radar continued to operate and gather in more information on where the ships were and what they were doing. The shield ship had just shut down its local shield and had started to synchronise with the other shield ships of the fleet to regenerate the cloak. That would take some time. Another anomaly came to Murphy’s attention; the fleet was based around what looked like two joined spheres. The carriers and dreadnoughts were the centre of one sphere, with cruisers, destroyers, and frigates positioned defensively around them. Another set of smaller ships out there formed the edges of a second sphere.

He would have to tend to that later, if he had a chance. The Skate was getting closer to the asteroids, and there were still two fighters in pursuit. Other groups of fighters were getting closer, but they were not going to be able to close the distance before they got into the asteroids.

“Lieutenant Bell, I want a course change once we pass the first asteroid.” Murphy brought up where he thought the centre of the second sphere was and told the astrogator where he wanted the boat to go.

The Skate flew past the asteroid and altered its course drastically. The boat groaned at the second use of the gravity drive as it brought them around the asteroid at an almost impossible rate. Murphy ordered the radar shut down and the radio chatter started just as the manoeuvre started.

The engines were shut off next as they left the cover provided by that first asteroid, and the boat flipped end for end to point the exhaust of the engines away from the pursuers. Murphy watched the tactical plot as the cameras followed the fighters when they flew straight past the asteroid and did not make the course change that Skate had. He waited and watched for thirty seconds. The fighters spread out as they searched, ignoring the source of the radio chatter.

“OK, kill the ECM and the radio chatter, and withdraw the turrets. Bell and Hart, I want some gentle manoeuvring around the asteroids. Use the gravity drive for the most part. Don’t get us locked into one position, and don’t use the main engines if you can avoid it.”

He had made the Skate look like a decoy that time, and the fighters had moved off on the previous vector, trying to catch up with the boat. It was another lucky break for the crew, and Murphy was sure it would not work again. Cry wolf enough times, and people would stop believing Peter. This time it was the wolf that howled and got away because of it.

The first countdown on the tactical plot ran down to thirty seconds, and then the emissions from the shield ship changed. The shield was being withdrawn again from the fleet-wide cloak and was being brought down to protect the shield ship and its escorts.

“Looks like they’ve discovered the first of our surprises,” he said to the bridge crew. The projected radar signature for the frigates near the shield ship changed as well.

A pair of fifty-metre-long pods—the mostly intact remains of the sensor pods that were damaged during the first lucky strike by the fighters—were drifting at high speed toward the shield ship. Murphy had them jettisoned at the end of the five-G run toward the shield ship, just as he had the jammers activated and diverted course to go head-to-head with the fighters.

The shield ship was forced to bring its shield back in to protect itself against the incoming debris, and the frigate started to fire at the two pods with their point defense weapons. The torpedo boat was designed only to carry and support the Mark 15 torpedoes, and was only just before commissioning was it retrofitted to work with the sensors; the result was that everything it carried had to fit into the torpedo-shaped pods. The shield ship and its escorts could assume that the incoming pods were harmless, but they could not take the chance. The pods were just the second part of Murphy’s planned distraction. Murphy wanted the shield ship’s radar and operators focused on those pods.

Halfway through the course change to intercept the fighters, Murphy had released his second message beacon. It continued on a course toward the edge of the cloaked area and was far from the frigates or shield ship.

The fleet’s cloak and shield were down, as the shield ship had to deal with the debris heading straight for it. The second countdown on the main display went to zero. The programming in the message beacon activated, and it accelerated at 150 G out of the area. There was nothing in position to intercept it as it raced toward the sun to get its message to the Clearwater fleet.

The torpedo boat was moving away from the source of the distraction. The fighters had moved back toward the asteroid belt and were scanning it with their radar, trying to trap the boat in the area. The torpedo boat had moved through the asteroids without slowing down, moving between them at a dangerous velocity to clear the area before the fighters came back, leaving the fighters to search fruitlessly.

The damage to the aft of the boat was not good. Murphy had lost the four crewmen in the two turrets. They were fortunate that they were killed instantly and did not suffer through decompression. One of the turrets had been completely destroyed, and the other was out of commission for the time being. They might be able to get it working again, but it was unlikely. One of the gunners in the RSG turret was hurt, but the others in the turret were able to apply a patch to his skin suit before the atmosphere bled from the holes left by the three-millimetre rail-gun shells.

The rail gun itself was undamaged, but the autoloader was out of commission, and some of the power linkages to the barrels had been cut. The lead gunner had the gun reloaded and with help was able to repair the power linkages. He was currently working on the autoloader to see if he could get it repaired. The two unhurt gunners were staying in the airless compartment, working on the rail gun to repair it.

The turret was made airtight again, and the injured crewman was moved to the medical compartment. His left clavicle was broken, and he was lucky that he did not suffer from major blood loss. He was out of the fight and having a wonderful time strapped to the bed, with pain-killers going through his system.

Murphy had relaxed the call to battle stations as the Skate drifted toward the centre of the second sphere. Several hours had gone by, giving himself and the rest of the crew some time to relax and recover. The crew was on half-and-half watches, with most of them relaxing at their posts in zero gravity. Murphy was just coming back onto the bridge when a new set of ships was discovered and reported.

“What have you found?” he asked as he sat down in the watch officer’s chair and buckled up the five-point harness.

“Six battalion-sized troop transports so far, sir.”

“Very well, keep looking,” he said needlessly. The battalion-sized transports were the first answer to many of the questions he had. He thought about it; six battalions would be enough to take and hold Clearwater and Clearwater Prime. It looked like he had an invasion fleet on his hands. The pirate fleet was obviously there to engage the Clearwater fleet so this fleet could sneak into the system while the Terrace forces were distracted.

* * *

0100 hours, June 25th, 2673; Pirate Flight Charlie

The message beacon had been accelerating at 150 G for hours and had started to decelerate for its approach to the sun. So far it had been unopposed.

The four fighters of Charlie Flight were in their pirate fighters and were waiting. The NTF fleet knew a message beacon was on the way and had warned the pilots. They also knew that the message beacon had to make its transition here, at the exit to Clearwater station. They extended their patrol and kept in the area for the additional hours, keeping their fuel usage as low as possible to intercept the beacon. Another flight was already on the way out to replace them, but they would not be there in time. Instead, Charlie Flight had a crack at the beacon.

Each of the four fighters fired off an interceptor missile at the incoming message beacon. The beacon only had one-third the acceleration of the missiles, but it had enough intelligence to evade the missiles. Its pattern was almost completely random and fooled the first two missiles. The proximity fuse on the third missile exploded its warhead and damaged the message beacon, but only enough to slow it down. The fourth missile’s proximity fuse never triggered; the contact fuse detonated the warhead instead as it impacted with the beacon.

* * *

0110 hours, June 25th, 2673; the bridge of the Skate

The termination of telemetry from the message beacon happened well before it was due to make the jump and before the cloak was fully engaged. The destruction disappointed the senior officer of the boat. He had fired off two beacons and had no idea if the first had gotten out. He only had one more beacon left. Murphy was going to have to find another way to break out and deliver the message himself. He could not trust another beacon, at least not over the long range it needed to go for it to get to the sun and then get away.

Another two troop transports had been found, and a couple of support ships. A full regiment of infantry would give the defenders in Clearwater a hard time. If the Clearwater fleet was busy elsewhere, the regiment could land almost unopposed. The Skate was still drifting closer toward the centre of the new formation. None of the big ships had active sensors running, and none of the fighters were patrolling the area.

“Sir, there’s something strange out there.”

“What is it?”

“Two glints of light eight thousand, fifty-three metres apart, moving as if they were joined.”

“Helm, see if you can get us on a better vector to get a good look.” Eight thousand metres was a huge ship; only a few things were on record at that size or larger. Extremely large transports, tankers, and cargo vessels were on the list, but hardly any warships were. A large cargo ship could explain the reason behind the local defense boats that the pirate fleet had attached to it.

Murphy watched the image from the cameras as they got closer, and they were able to get more of a shape from it. Ten kilometres long, but only four hundred metres wide.

“What is one of those doing here?”