46
Prime Minister Adrin positioned his Matayan fleet nearby, securing their right flank at several levels. Then he joined the planning session. Ellis and his clone uncle embraced.
The prince would soon command half of that fleet–the attack wings–while Adrin and his flagship held the line.
The miners arrived last, and scattered their beat-up, cobbled-together fleet on the left flank. Even they knew that they were the weak link in the defense around Nuratine-5. Yet they had Shalaen and her powers, a definite wild card.
Plus, Admiral Joshua reinforced them with mine-layers, short- range system defense gunships, and mass drivers.
Nevano Kinmal arrived at the planning session.
Tarim approached him when the formal greetings were over. “Sir, how is your daughter? Is Shalaen all right?”
Kinmal embraced Tarim. “She’s doing well, son. She sends her personal greetings and tells you to take good care of yourself during the coming battles. She hopes to see you once more, after the fighting is over.”
“Tell her I…tell her from me to do the same, sir. Good luck to you and our people. Fight well.”
“Fight well. I’ll tell her everything you said. She’ll want to know.”
“I love her, sir. I would give my life for her.”
“She knows that, son. That’s why you can’t be with her in this. She doesn’t want to lose you.”
For three hours they made they final plans and adjustments.
Admiral Nathan Joshua reported to them.
“This is it, my friends. The enemy’s making their first move; they’ll hit us in less that twelve standard hours. After the initial contact, we’ll have to continue to adjust and shift our strategies on the fly, according to the flow of battle.”
“How many are they sending in?” Aunt Sleak asked.
“We mark three attack groups on three optimized vectors, two hundred ships, four fleets each. The Matayans will hit us first.”
“Well, at least our foes are taking it easy on us,” Klyne said with a grin. “That’s only twelve fleets against our two. But at least one of our Shadow Fleets is on the way. Its vanguard should reach us in a matter of hours. Your remaining ships are with them, Sleak. And they’re ready to fight. You and I will divide up the Shadow Fleet between us and lead them on the attack.”
“Good. Got it. Admiral Joshua. Give the order.”
Joshua nodded. “To your ships, everyone. Good fortune. Fight well. May the Powers That Be guide our hands. Battle stations. Let’s give them a fight they’ll remember.”
The assembly raised their fists and took up the cry.
“Battle stations!”
Naero hugged and kissed her friends on both cheeks. Even Aunt Sleak, Klyne, and Admiral Joshua.
After Adrin, she came to Ellis.
The jerk smiled at her. He still looked handsome in his new Fleet Captain’s uniform. Even if he was a Matayan bastard.
“Don’t die, Captain Naero. I would very much like to see you again, privately, after our coming victory.”
“Then don’t get your cute little ass shot off either. Maybe I’ll let you prance around for me, my prince.”
He chuckled, drew close, and whispered to her, “I’d like that. I still cannot forget our kiss, and when we held each other close, Naero.”
Naero caught her breath and could only nod at first.
She found her voice again as he and Adrin departed. “Prince Ellis. Luck to you. Fight well.”
Now it was his turn to grin at her and nod.
47
Naero had only a handful of hours to help oversee the loading of hundreds of fighters and gunships into huge bulk freighters to ferry them out to the battle.
Spacers worked together with miners and Joshua Tech personnel around the clock to coordinate the transports.
She wore a gravwing to help her flit back and forth from one landing bay to the next, packing the ships in and lining more up for the next ride.
While she was up in the air, she spotted glittering fields of shining metal, kilometer after kilometer in the distance.
She called the west tower. “Tower, what is all of that stuff shining and glowing out to our west?”
“Captain, that’s the naval graveyard where all the junkers and obsolete craft from the last three centuries rot and wait to be scrapped and smelted.”
Naero blinked.
Graveyard?
She had visions of Boon-3.
She called excitedly over her com. “I want every fixer available sent over to this damn graveyard. Let’s see what we can raise from the dead. Get every pilot and stunt jockey who can fly and fight over here to suit up. Get armies of flight teams and teks over here and some of the admiral’s people to organize them into new fighter wings.”
“Captain, I can’t authorize that. And neither can you. It would take an admiral to–
Voices cut in almost instantly.
“This is Admiral Nathan Joshua. Follow Strike Captain Maeris’ orders to the letter. Give her whatever she wants.”
“This is Admiral Sleak Maeris. Haul ass, people. Send all available fixers and shipless fighter pilots to that location. Toss those birds in the air and make them fly. Get on it.”
“This is Prime Minister Adrin. Captain Ellis will be sending down several thousand Matayan pilots from our training programs, if you should happen to have any extra empty fighters that need them.”
In minutes, clouds of fixers roared in.
Flight teams and unit organizers arrived in waves, stacked up right behind. They pocketed the empty fields and dry lake beds blowing up clear plasteel bubble tents and hangars, exploding like a virus, spreading out over the entire western landscape in organized chaos.
Naero and Om led the fixers directly into the graveyard, and put them to work.
Gutted ships. Derelicts. Rust buckets. Famous old fighters of legend, long obsolete.
Haisha
,
haisha
…
Naero knew them all.
They were the ships of legends she grew up with.
She knew their history, their armaments, their specs and performance. Who made them, their variations, how long they served, and what battles they fought in.
From the time she could float she had flown all of them in simulation.
The Gamma-67 Lightning, The Chikara-88 Rocket Dog, even the Gelden-11 Fox Cat.
She and Om directed the fixers to not just re-configure each model, but to upgrade and improve upon their core designs and mutate them up to speed, with modern, advanced capabilities, shields, and armaments.
The result? Exciting hybrids of the old and new blended together.
On top of that, an AI fixer merged with each new craft to assist the future pilot in both rapid flight learning and training, and during actual combat.
Then Naero spotted them. Like broken, ancient warrior gods lying in the grass, still in their shining armor.
Hundreds of corroded Stellar F-59E Ghost Dragons, crumpled and forgotten–abandoned in the weeds. Famous legends from the past.
Ghost Dragons.
Finest all purpose fighter of the Third Spacer War through 2451. The ship that almost defeated the Clans. So effective that Spacers captured and virtually copied it, calling theirs the P-24 Valiant. First fighter to ever have its own deflector screens.
Naero almost drooled. She couldn’t help touching them.
“Some of these are going to be mine and Jan’s new personal fighter squadron. The Ghost Dragons are going to scorch the stars once more. I want every possible upgrade pumped into them.”
She and Om personally oversaw the re-configuring of the first advanced prototype.
Eight heavy hyper-velocity pulse cannons, level-four shields, close-in rapid-fire nose and aft defensive blasters. Micro-fusion bomb and missile racks. Twin Joshua Tech E-353 Micro-pulse core reactors, jump, and sublight accelerator drives. One quarter the weight and a hundredfold the energy and flight capabilities. Advanced gravitics, avionics, and electronic defensive packages.
Good work Om.
I could not orchestrate any of this without your precise, intimate knowledge of these fighters. You are guiding this program as much as I.
A collaboration, then. How long until we can fly them?
The first formations will be ready for test flights and training in forty standard minutes. Are we expecting visitors?
Why?
Several dozen persons in flight gear and gravwings are converging on our location.
Naero gasped and looked up. Out of the sun, multiple gravwings shot down straight at her.
She prepared to flee, drawing her sidearm and her battle blade.
We’re they trying to capture her?
“Don’t shoot us, you idiot,” Chaela barked over her com.”
“Sweetie, we came to fight with you,” Saemar said. “I mean, not literally fight with you, ya know?”
Saemar and Chae nearly collided with her, and the three of them laughed and cried and hugged each other, spiraling slowly to the ground.
Tyber and Zhen joined the hugging circle a few moments later.
Each second, a growing circle of crew and Spacers from Clan Maeris and several other Clans joined around them, swelling their ranks.
Several fighter pilot hunks hovered around Saemar, and seemed to have caught her scent.
Naero raised one eyebrow at her friend. Saemar didn’t say a word.
She just rolled her eyes, struggling to suppress her little smile, and shook her curly head in apparent anticipation.
“Ya know, sweetie,” Saemar whispered. “We could all be dead an hour from now. We might as well have us a little taste of heaven while we can.”
Zhen flung her arms around Naero, crying. “We thought you were dead. And then all of us almost got killed, and so many others died. It all made me realize how much I miss you, N.”
“We need to stay together,” Tyber insisted. “You’re a strike captain now. We can serve with you. Have us assigned to your unit.”
“I will.” For the first time in weeks, Naero savored real joy, however bittersweet. All of them were going into battles they had little chance of surviving. But Naero would do everything she could to bring them through.
Sorry to interrupt.
Better be important Om.
Several enemy stealth ships have uncloaked and are launching fighters just outside of the atmosphere above our position.
What!?
This far behind our lines, there are currently no effective ships in range to intercept them, and their attack wings will hit our forward positions here in a matter of minutes.
Do we have any fighters ready to send after them?
Negative. Twenty Ghost Dragons are the closest to launching, but they will require fifteen standard–
Naero called out to her forces just as the warning sirens went off. The fleets were now aware of the attackers, also, for all the good it did them.
“Everyone, take cover,” she shouted. “Prepare for an enemy attack on these positions.”
How did the enemy find them again? And just happen to launch sorties against their precise location. Their foes would destroy their new ships on the ground, before they could get them in the air.
She had to do something. Naero just didn’t know what.
48
Naero jumped in Ghost Dragon-1, her new fighter, the fixers still humming and droning all around her.
Om, what can we do to speed this process up?
Nothing. The fixers are already operating at their limits.
She clenched her fists and teeth and groaned in frustration.
“Aauughh!”
There must be something. We have to think.
Why don’t you just merge with this vessel? With your knowledge and our teknomancer abilities, together we could complete the reconfiguration much faster than the fixers. Assume control of the process and finish it…in seconds.
Om, I’ve never done anything like that. I don’t know how.
Yes, you have. When you created the first fixers. Just think of the ship as a larger, more complex unit with a different design and purpose.
Naero closed her eyes and tried to focus.
No, not like that. Join with the ship. You’re an expert pilot. You’ve done so many times without even thinking about it. Become one with the craft. Then instead of making a fixer, complete the ship.”
“Everyone get back,” she said. “I’m going to try something.”
People glanced at each other oddly, but obeyed her commands and pulled away.
It helped if she closed her eyes.
Om did his best to guide her efforts.
“Make a fixer…”
A fixer flashed together in her open hand. Even with her eyes closed she could sense every part of it come together.
She knew it.
For a brief instant she
was
it.
She was part of the fixer, making it exactly what it was supposed to be and do.
In theory, Om was correct. The principle was the same, no matter the size of the object or device.
“Make a ship…not just a ship…a fighter…”
And not just any fighter.
A Ghost Dragon.
Naero gasped at a brief flash of pain like someone sucking her bones out of her flesh.
She felt it. She merged completely with the craft. Feeling each of the droning fixers working steadily and methodically on the reconfiguration. She was the ship; merging with it made every part of her tingle.
Naero not only saw what the ship was, she inherently knew what it should be and do. What it could be.
She noted how far along the fixers were at each stage, absorbed them in an instant without hesitation for the raw materials needed, and completed the task, like energy and tek filling up the empty fighter like water.
She heard her friends and the other Spacers gasp and pull even farther away as the fighter morphed right before their eyes.
Naero even started the gravitics and hovered the ship off the field a few centimeters.
Systems, propulsion, and O&D.
She opened her eyes and climbed back out, rushing to the next fighter to lay hands on it and complete the same re-fit.
Tyber alone flew after her with his own gravwing. He wept openly, stunned and amazed, pale and gaping.
“Naero, what the hell did you just do? I still can’t believe it.
Haisha
…you completed the refit on that wreck in seconds. In a flash. It was like–like a miracle of some kind. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Kind of busy here, Ty.”
She zapped another, and moved on to a fourth.
Tyber gasped. “You…just did it again.”
“Chaela, Saemar, get our best pilots in these rigs. No time to test them. We’re going up to meet our new friends and crash their party. The fixer AIs merged with the ships will help each pilot. Have the other fighters launch and sortie with us ASAP.”
Everyone stared at her, dumbfounded.
“Roger that,” Chaela said in a daze.
Saemar shook her head and snapped out of it. “You all heard the captain. Everyone pick a ride.”
Tyber kept following her, watching. Zhen stayed back, visibly shaken and frightened.
“Find something to do, Ty. Deal with it. I’m a
teknomancer; I have the ability to speed up the fixers and what they can do. There’s no time to explain it all now. Maybe later. I don’t understand it all myself. I just want to get enough ships in the air to defend these bases. We can’t lose all this right before the battle begins.”
In minutes she had twenty ships. Two fighter wings.
That would have to be enough to buy them the time they needed.
And she would lead them into combat.
They punched into the air and assumed their attack formations, on a rapid course for intercept.
Only seconds and they plunged in the mix.
Twenty sleek, silver Ghost Dragons, complete with narrowed eyes and shark teeth in snarling jaws painted on their noses.
Multiple long-range missiles locked on, heading straight for them.
The Triaxians already fired.
Naero counted two hundred bogeys stacked up against them on multiple vectors. Triax Achilles-125Ds, their top-of-the-line space-superiority fighter.
Chatter from the enemy pilots, stunned at the presence of any resistance at all magically popping up from the surface.
Naero laughed. “They were certain they’d caught us napping.”
Thanks to their spy.
But they still zeroed in for the kill.
“Take out those missiles,” Naero demanded. “Then let’s get in closer and mix it up. The Ghost Dragons can take it and give it back double.”
Beams. Chaff. ECMs. Cluster anti-missile mines and evasive piloting.
Three missiles impacted on Ghost Dragon deflector screens and only took them down twenty percent.
Naero grinned as they closed with the enemy pack. “Here we go, people. Hunt ’em down.”
Chaela jumped in. “They’re overconfident. They’re still too close to each other.”
“Use it, use it,” Naero advised. “
All right, new plan. Dragons Two through Eight, stick with me right down their throats. Everyone else pair off and hit their stacks from every optimal vector possible. Keep on them. Keep them busy.”
Naero led them in, accelerating to attack speed, flipping her squadron in, over, and under the lead elements.
They locked on and fired weapons at multiple targets all along the way.
Each Ghost Dragon unleashed a storm of fire and advanced ordnance.
Multiple explosions rocked the sky.
They shot through the enemy formations.
Enemy ships vanished in bursts of flame and detonations of their fuel, power cores, and ordnance.
Cries of their pilots cut off abruptly.
First contact cost Triax twenty-three fighters and a dozen more heavily damaged and pulling out.
No Ghost Dragons fell from the sky, although two were shot up pretty good, their fixers repairing the damage as they kept fighting.
But Naero saw their weakness.
Their initial shields took a beating, and most were already down by half, if not completely gone.
And it took a while to bring those shields back up, even with fixers.
Triax had enough numbers to wear them down.
“Good work Spacers. Keep at them,” Naero said.
Chaela cut in. “Sir, three wings just broke off to make a strafing run on our airfields.”
“Punch it, everyone. Break off and intercept them.”
Now they showed Triax their speed.
The Ghost Dragons shot away from Triax’s best in mid-combat and vanished, as if their foes were standing still.
Naero had improved their top speed by more than thirty percent.
They fell upon the strafers just as they began their attack runs, and put most of them down.
Only one or two got through to cause damage, and they were forced to break off or be destroyed.
Even though the enemy still held a numerical advantage, they cautiously pulled back to regroup.
That would buy the fixers and the ground crews precious minutes.
The respite did not last long. Their foes charged back in, very determined.
“Here they come again,” Saemar said.
“Copy that,” Naero said. “Check their new attack pattern.”
The fighters were now bolstered by four light strike cruisers with strange rapid-fire spinal guns. Very weird energy signatures coming from them on the scans.
And waves of ground attack bombers lurked behind their defensive screens, waiting to go in once the defending fighters got swept from the sky.
Not going to happen.
“I want those heavies. Let’s take ’em out one at a time. Swarm on them in close orb formation and pound them. Then we hit the next.”
But weird violet pulses of energy beams shot out from the triple-barreled big guns.
Some new type of enemy cannon.
Too late. One blast tore right through Naero’s shields.
At first, she thought she was a goner. Her ship would cook off in the next instant and blow her apart.
Then she dropped like a stone out of the sky, all power gone. Every system dead.
Ion disruption beam. Total energy drain. You must re-start one or both of the energy cores before we crash.
Naero struggled to merge with her ship again and do so, while it spun out of control, while enemy fighters zeroed in on her to follow her down.
While the enemy cruisers blasted more of her friends and drained their ships, sending them spinning down, helpless.
And the enemy bombers dropped down to make their runs.
She recalled a line from one of her father’s poems. Or perhaps it was one of her own.
I am a ship. My heart is a fusion core,
and I must fly or burst asunder.
After two attempts and two flare-outs, Naero merged with her core drives and re-ignited them.
She punched it, spun back around, and blasted two foes at close range, plowing through their debris.
Om sent instant commands to the onboard fixers on the other Ghost Dragons on how to effect similar repairs.
One Dragon crashed. Its pilot escaped on his gravwing.
Four others re-ignited their cores and rejoined the fight.
From the ground, more single fighters launched and paired up, going after the bombers.
More refitted fighters launched, strange designs and configurations. Five and six at a time. Then entire fighter wings of ten.
The cruisers fired rapidly, robbing defending craft of their power, but more still came on.
“All fighters within range,” Naero ordered. “Concentrate all attacks on the lead cruiser. Take them down one at at time. Ignore the fighters if possible. You fighters that are just launching, blast the rest of those bombers.”
In seconds, the lead cruiser was burning and falling out of the sky, rocked by attacks as it fell.
Suddenly it detonated in midair, taking out several ships nearby, both friend and foe.
The other three cruisers withdrew, performing a textbook fighting retreat.
Their foes had lost the element of surprise and they knew it.
Naero guessed that Spacer Intel wouldn’t find anything intact from the wreck of the downed cruiser concerning that new enemy ion disruption gun.
To her knowledge, no one else had such an advanced weapon. Not even Spacer Intel.
Where had Triax obtained or developed such an advanced piece of hardware? It sure didn’t sound like them.
And even worse, if it worked equally as well on larger warships, that could be a definite game changer in the battles to come.
Capital ships suddenly robbed of all power at the height of a key engagement? That would surely give Triax the advantage, and victory after victory. It could overturn the slight tek lead that Spacers always took for granted.
More Alliance fighters swarmed up from the ground. Spacer pilots, miners, even a few newly arrived Matayans.
The enemy stealth ships retreated outside of the atmosphere and jumped, even as the Joshua Tech warships closed in to intercept.
But the point had been made.
The enemy could slip in and hit them anywhere, at any time, even in the rear areas where they thought they were safe.
That would require more of their new fighter wings to be spread out and remain within range to defend their key areas and bases.
Naero shook her head. Easy come, easy go.
And this was all just a taste of what was to come. This fight was just a mere skirmish.