Rumors of Salvation (System States Rebellion Book 3) (26 page)

Drake
switched over and spoke first. “Lor, you have to declare an emergency and
evacuate the islanders right now! If your ships angle around the planet during
their ascent, they may be safe from whatever took out our ships.”

“I’ll
start the evacuation right away, Ro. I think I know how Majestic was able to
destroy our ships. The second time the recon ship appeared, I think it launched
missiles that accelerated to a very high speed before micro-jumping closer. If
they got within terminal guidance range just as the two carriers reached orbit,
they could have targeted all four ships.”

Drake
shook his head even as he began to feel Europa’s acceleration overwhelm the
ship’s inertial dampeners. “Standard missiles couldn’t possibly accelerate that
fast in that short a time!”

“I
agree, but Majestic has had time to develop missiles that might be a lot
faster. That’s why we got here first. Majestic and its slaves were somewhere
else building these new missiles. What are you going to do, Ro?”

Drake
hesitated. His wife wasn’t going to like his answer. “There’s only one thing I
can do. Europa has to try to destroy Leviathan. The other ships don’t matter.
If Leviathan is destroyed, then so is Majestic, and maybe that will allow the
C.O.’s of the other ships to stand down. If nothing else, it’ll give you time
to get our people off the planet.”

When
she replied, her voice was heavy with emotion. “I was afraid you would say
that, but I understand why you feel you have to try. Please don’t get yourself
killed! We’ve gone through too much to lose each other now!”

Drake
struggled hard to keep his own voice from betraying the emotion that he was
feeling now. “I’ll do my best, babe. We should end this call now. We both have
things that need our attention. Just make sure you don’t get caught in this
battle. I’ll see you at the pre-arranged rally point. Europa clear.”

He
cut the channel just as he heard her say, “Love y—“

He
felt guilty cutting her off like that, but the sense of urgency was screaming
at him to DO SOMETHING! He quickly checked the display’s sidebar data. Europa
was climbing fast, so fast in fact that air friction was beginning to heat the
hull. Prudence dictated that he slow down, but the irrational part of his brain
was urging him to speed up! Molitor’s advice about not doing the obvious thing
replayed itself in his mind.

“Helm,
drop our acceleration to zero and hold this altitude.”

“Sir?”
asked the confused H.O.

“The
enemy’s not going anywhere. We’ve got time to plan our response carefully.
Follow my orders, Lieutenant.”

With
the order acknowledged and Europa’s velocity dropping quickly, Drake turned his
focus to Lorelei’s suggestion of super-fast missiles. A quick calculation made
him shake his head in disbelief. For missiles to have penetrated all the way
down into the hyper-zone in less than twenty-five minutes, after micro-jumping
from the five light minute position, they had to have accelerated at over 245
Gs! How they had managed to build missiles that fast he had no idea, but he had
to assume that they had. That calculation was based on the assumption that the
missile volley had been fired by the first recon ship. If the second appearance
of the single ship had resulted in another missile volley, they should get here
ten minutes after the first volley’s arrival. He checked the chronometer for
the elapsed time since the destruction of his four ships. Just over four
minutes had gone by. That meant he had roughly six minutes to figure out how to
avoid being hit by missiles his radars couldn’t see and therefore couldn’t hit
with anti-missile terminal defense lasers.

If
the obvious course of action was the worst option, as per Molitor’s
speculation, and the obvious course of action was to continue to gain altitude
until Europa was in space, then the opposite of accelerating into space would
be to stay within Midgard’s atmosphere so that the enemy missiles’ plunge into
the atmosphere would make them visible and therefore vulnerable to anti-missile
counter-fire. That might work against the second volley, but eventually
Majestic would figure out what he was doing and adjust its strategy
accordingly. Staying within the atmosphere would also complicate Europa’s
ability to fire its superluminal lasers. Drake suspected that the atmosphere
would attenuate the laser beams just enough to reduce their effectiveness and
make aiming accurately more difficult as well. He looked at the display that
was still showing the overall position of Majestic’s ships, Midgard and Europa.
By shifting position to the right, Majestic’s ships now had direct
line-of-sight with the space above Avalon Island, but from Majestic’s point of
view, Europa was still below Midgard’s horizon, although just barely. A quick
check confirmed his suspicion that Leviathan and the other ships were on a
vector that would swing them around Midgard’s hyper-zone in a clockwise
direction. If he kept Europa where she was now, they would soon have direct
line-of-sight with her, and that would make any additional missile attacks
easier. Now he knew what he had to do.

“Okay,
Helm, here’s what I want you to do. I want Europa to move laterally and to gain
altitude and velocity while keeping the hostiles below the horizon. Keep us
below 100 kilometers altitude for another…six and a half minutes, and then you
can go above that. Once we reach space, go to max acceleration and continue to
swing around the planet until I tell you otherwise. Got it?”

“Got
it, Sir.”

With
Europa in motion again, he called the Weapons Officer down to his Command
Station for a conference.

“Sir?”
said the officer.

“I
need you as a sounding board for my tactical thinking, Lieutenant. We know that
Majestic has missiles that are much faster than ours. I think it’s unlikely
that Majestic knows about our x-ray and superluminal laser turrets, but even if
it does know, there’s no way for it to know about our x-ray laser missile
warheads. I also think it’s safe to assume that Majestic thinks we still have
the standard missiles with their much lower acceleration. When it detects our
movement around the planet, that’s going to complicate missile accuracy for
additional missile volleys if they stay were they are now. Would you agree with
that?”

“Yes,
sir.”

“Does
it then make sense that they would move in closer and therefore deeper into the
zone?”

The
W.O. thought about that question for a few seconds and then said, “That makes
perfect sense to me, Sir.”

“Me
too. Okay, how many x-ray missiles do we have again?”

“Ten,
sir.” Drake nodded. They had just enough to fire one x-ray armed missile from
each of Europa’s ten missile tubes. He wished now that he had waited on
Excalibur until each cruiser had more of them, but getting to Midgard ahead of
Majestic, even if there was only a remote chance of doing so, had seemed worth
the trade-off.

“Then
here’s what I’m thinking. We keep the planet between us and the enemy ships.
When they commit themselves to penetrating the hyper-zone, we’ll fire our x-ray
missiles at a projected interception point from behind the planet. With our
x-ray warheads, they only have to be in the same general vicinity as their
targets. As soon as those ships get close enough for our superluminals to have
a decent chance of hitting them, we’ll pop up over the horizon and fire. If we
get lucky, we’ll be able to fire our supers at the same time as the missile
warheads detonate, and the enemy won’t realize that they’re being hit from two
directions. Make sure our missile volley is spread out enough that their
detonations don’t interfere with each other. What do you think of that plan,
Lieutenant?”

“It’s
devious as hell, Sir. I love it!”

“Good!
Set it up, and then I’ll have a look at it. Any questions?”

“Yes,
sir. How do you want me to distribute those ten missiles among the four
possible targets?”

Drake
didn’t hesitate. “All ten plus our supers are to be aimed at the big ship.
That’s the head of the snake that we have to cut off. Anything else?”

“No,
sir.”

“Fine.
Carry on, Lieutenant.”

With
a plan in place, Drake checked the elapsed time again. Eight and a half minutes
since the first missile attack.

“What’s
the status of our anti-missile systems?” he asked.

“All
AM systems are charged and set for automatic fire, Sir.”

Drake
relaxed just a little bit. There was no way to know if the second enemy volley
had enough power left to maneuver into Midgard’s atmosphere, but if they did,
Europa’s point defense lasers should be able to burn them out of the sky. The
next two minutes passed uneventfully.

Drake
heard the telltale ping and saw the tactical display change to near space just
as the W.O. broke the news. “AMs have locked on and fired! All four targets
destroyed!”

Drake
pumped his fist into the air to give expression to his relief. They no longer
had to worry about the second volley. If a third missile volley was already on
its way, Europa would be so far around the back side of Midgard that those
missiles would have difficulty reaching it.

Very
good, Lieutenant! How’s that fire plan coming?”

“Almost
ready, Sir. I need another minute or two.”

Drake
ordered the main display to shift back to the large scale overview. Leviathan
and the other three ships were now almost at the two o’clock position, but
Europa was getting close to the seven o’clock position. They were putting more
and more of the planet between them and Majestic.

That damn machine has to have noticed what we’re doing by
now. Come on, Majestic, take the plunge!
As if the machine had
been reading his mind, the display pinged again. The red icon representing all
four enemy ships had changed vectors and was now accelerating towards the
hyper-zone.

“Fire
plan is ready, Sir. I’ve sent it to your number two screen,” said the W.O.

Drake
checked the missile programming and touched the screen’s virtual ‘approved’
button. From this point on, the tactical computer would continuously update
possible interception points as the bogeys moved closer. All Drake had to do
was touch the ‘execute’ button and the missiles would fire. The tricky part was
trying to time the interception to coincide with the laser fire from Europa.
The longer Drake waited to fire his missiles, the less time it would take for
the missiles to intercept and the more accurate the ship’s lasers would be when
they fired, but that also gave Majestic more time to do something unexpected.
At this point, all Drake could do was wait.

“Com,
get me Commander Corpus Christi,” ordered Drake.

“On
Tac Two, Sir,” came the reply a few seconds later.

“Lor,
I’m setting up a close range battle scenario, so I’ve got a few minutes to
talk. How’s the evacuation going?”

“Not
as fast as I’d like, Ro. At least we don’t have to worry about running into a
missile barrage now that Leviathan’s heading directly for Midgard instead of
curving around the zone. We’ll still be below the horizon.”

“When
you do lift off, stay within the atmosphere as long as you can, okay?”

There
was a pause before Lorelei replied. “Ro, I just had a horrible thought. The
Midgard Colony is on the side of the planet that’s facing Leviathan. What if
Majestic decides to fire missiles at The Colony while it’s waiting to engage
Europa?”

Drake
cursed himself for forgetting about the main colony. It was completely
defenseless.

“Stand
by, Lor. Helm? How fast can you get us hovering over the main colony at a
twenty klick altitude?”

“Minimum
of twenty point four minutes,” came the reply.

Drake
thought fast. If Majestic had fired another missile volley at the planet when
it made its course change, Europa might be able to get into a position in time
to use its AM lasers to stop those missiles, but he had to decide RIGHT NOW if
they were going to try it.