This is a very rough draft of the beginning of a story I am trying to write. Being undisciplined it might be a long process before anything get done. I already know that there are a few revisions and changes I would make to what is below, but I’m going to post what I have and then move to writing the next scene before going back and revising and (hopefully) improving. Any thoughts or feedback anyone has I would appreciate it.
Iota Strike:
Lieutenant Oliver Norskov, the 7th Shahzadeh of the Zaminziba Star Empire callsign Prince pilot of the Excalibur class starfighter Iota 1 as he jinked it around in the patternless flight that was the only defense against the autocannon turrets the destroyer was firing desperately as he maneuvered along the 800 meter length of the Samudragupta’s gravitic shroud. At this angle, his own rail cannon would never penetrate the shroud and even if he maneuvered into a steeper attack unless he got incredibly lucky and hit a sensor node or a point defense cluster it wouldn’t matter. Even destroyer armor was too heavy to be seriously damaged, let alone penetrated by the fighter class cannon. The Phoenix missiles Iota 1 carried, designed to kill other starfighters, wouldn’t do much better.
The simple truth was, fighters almost never could kill capital class ships. The ‘almost’ was why Prince and his crew were one of the elite, three starfighters out of the entire two wings from the Supercarrier Knightfall and the two flights from their cruisers because once in a while, if everything went right, the right crew could kill a starfighter.
Looking at him, or the two other members of Iota 1, Lieutenant Mei-Ling Okonokwo and Chief Warrant Officer Arjun Rousseau, the tactical officer and engineer respectively, they would appear to simply be asleep, lying back in their seats, eyes closed and only the occasional furrow in the brow or movement behind the eyelids showing any activity at all. In truth their minds were deeply linked to their ship and each other as well as the tactical datamap being populated by all the other Excaliburs as well as the wing command pinnace and the Raijin, Taranis and Illapa, the Stormlord class cruisers almost 100,000 km away. Oliver and Mei-Ling were each connected to the ship by three datalinks, the typical one in the temple and one in the spine and another on the dominant wrist.
CWO Rousseau was connected by four datalinks,most starship engineers only used two, but since he had already had neural sockets in each wrist before joining the Zaminziba Navy he had trained himself to manage sensor probes with the his right ‘hand’ and the starship capacitors and heat sinks with his left. Those links were quiet now, the stern sensor and comm array of Iota 1, and almost all the other Excaliburs on the attack was still intact, giving a near perfect tactical map and the slow pace of offensive attacks launched by Iota 1 wasn’t giving the heat sinks any trouble.
Mei-Ling’s voice floated across the link “We are down to two Phoenixes and the Triumphant will be in effective range of the cruisers any minute, if we are going to go for the strike it has to be soon.”
“We have a little time, Triumphant and the destroyers began moving on the refueling facility as soon as they purged from their blink jump,” Arjun replied. “Triumphant won’t have more than 100 rounds in the magazine for their spinal accelerator and even a 5 shot bracket has pretty low odds at this range. They will take a moment to make sure of their shots, watch how the cruisers change up their maneuvers now that they are in real danger.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Oliver interjected, “It’s up to the Wing Commander when we go, not us. We stay alive and blend in with the rest of the strike until then. Focus on what is in front of us and be ready when the word is given.”
Just then, the shroud surrounding Battleship Triumphant seemed to shudder in space, her forward acceleration being almost arrested as the tell-tale electromagnetic spikes showed the spinal gun was firing. Even at the incredible acceleration the kilometer long railgun imparted to the rounds it was firing, it would be over a minute before they reached the cruiser the battleship had targeted. The spinal gun was the ultimate ship killer, a single hit would destroy or disable one of the defending cruisers and if that happened the the other two cruisers wouldn’t be able to stop the four destroyers even if the Excalibur could take out the Triumphant. If they couldn’t defeat the battleship, there wouldn’t be any Cruisers when the Destroyers got to the range where their much smaller rail turrets could attack and the refueling depot would be destroyed or captured.
So far, the battle had appeared to be all on the defenders side. The ZNS Strix supercarrier had launched two full wings, 532 Excalibur Starfighters and the 3 Stormlords each had a full flight’s worth themselves with the current loadouts of the variable payload architecture. The wing that had been assigned to defense, one flight protecting the Strix and the refinery depot, the rest in a long oval circling between the attaching battleship and destroyers to enable at least some of them to get extended intercept time on any missiles launched, had rendered the defenders virtually immune from any missile attack. The attackers, only having the four fighters the Triumphant carried primarily for scouting purposes didn’t have any such defense, and they had employed their own anti-ship missiles in a counter-missile roll, something they were not particularly suited to even if they could destroy some of the incoming salvo they wouldn’t get many.
A battleship in concert with four destroyers had formidable missile defenses and the cruisers alone wouldn’t have been able to score more than the occasional hit against their defenses even with having another third of their variable payload being launchers for the Dragon Kinetic Spear anti-ship missiles to along with their own internal tubes but the fighter strike, over 300 of the nimble Excaliburs had both been able to knock back sensors and destroy some of the point defenses. Just over 100 of the attacking fighters had been destroyed so far in exchange. So far a dozen missile salvos had crashed against the attackers, some in each volley being taken out while still ballistic from the attachers own Dragon missiles, some destroyed by Griffin counter missiles and some destroyed by laser clusters or auto-cannon turrets. Quite a few had gotten through, but it hadn’t been enough.
The first volleys had been targeted exclusively on Triumphant. The battleship was the key after all, but battleships were designed to do just one thing, deliver their spinal cannon into range against the enemy, and to do that they were the toughest things that could cross the interstellar void. The supercarrier Strix and the battleship Triumphant had the same mass, but the supercarrier was half again as long and had several times the volume. It was designed to bring in its starfighters and stay out of the way. A battleship had the thickest most powerful armor that could be found, the densest point defense emplacements and the most redundant systems. It could take a lot of hits, and with its four escorts in its defense network it hadn’t take that many in those initial volleys.
After that, the Stormlords had switched to targeting the destroyers, and one seemed to have had most of its defenses and sensors taken out, although its shroud remained active. If they had had more time a missile duel might have worked, but in order to protect the refinery and fuel depot the cruisers and starfighters had to engage far enough away that the attackers couldn’t localize the position of key infrastructure from behind the concealment measures. The two forces were still closing and would continue to and so the missile duel portion of the encounter was coming to an end.
“It’s time people,” Wing Commander Rao’s voice came through the all wing channel, “Next missile volley will be burst mode, giving us our window while they try to restore sensor drones. Eagle, Razor and Dawn flights each will go after the active destroyers I’ve tagged for you, everyone else hit the Triumphant with everything you have left, if you don’t have anything, make them think that you do. Go is in 45 seconds.”
The Iota Squadron’s private channel opened up , “Viper you’re up first, airburst,” said Lieutenant Commander Braun. “Goblin 6 seconds behind Viper, if he makes it go for the contact strike, if not you airburst. Prince, you’re cleanup, this has to go through. Hopefully Viper or Goblin clears the path, but if not you will have to go in hot. Airbursts won’t be enough against that armor. I’ll call the strike when they rest of the wing engages, rest of you, you know your jobs, keep that battleship worried about you and give Viper, Goblin and Prince their shot”
Oliver acknowledged the order with a mental affirmative. This was what it was all about. The volley of missiles coming in would hopefully clear off most of the warships external sensors, then the fighter strikes would launch, keeping the ships disoriented and confused as they tried to resolve targets and restore their coordination and identify the real threats. Iota squadron would streak in, hopefully Viper or Goblin would make a successful shroud insertion and then it would be Iota 1’s turn. Prince would take Iota 1 along the edge of Triumphant’s shroud, dancing in the unpredictable flight that made him one of the best pilots in the ZNS. Mei Ling would scan the Triumphant’s gravity shroud, looking for the pattern in the chaos that few had the talent to read, and matching Iota 1’s own shroud resonance to it.
Then, the deep link that Oliver and Mei Ling shared would come into play. Between identifying an opportunity and exploiting it were only fractions of a second. Not enough time for communication, not enough time for conscious thought, it had to be instinct coordinated at a deep level that could only be achieved through a link that encompassed emotions and sense of self. Then, the instant Mei Ling spotted the window, before she had even begun matching the resonance, Oliver would move diving for the spot Mei Ling felt would be right and, if they were perfect, Iota 1 would slip through the Gravity shield that protected Triumphant, bypassing the might ship’s most potent defense.
To form an Iota capable crew, you had to have a pilot that could embrace formless flight unpredictable to the targeting algorithms and human operators alike. You had to have someone with the rare talent to see the patterns in a grav shield that computers said didn’t exist and have honed that talent to the point it could be relied upon, and you had to have both of them be compatible enough to tolerate a neural link level that was almost unimaginably intimate. The entire ZNS only had 5 qualified Iota Strike fighters, Prince’s Iota 1, Viper’s Iota 2, Goblin’s Iota 3 and 2 crews on the super carrier Pegasus.
Once they were through the shroud they would have to close the final 600 or so meters to less that 50 meters from the battleship’s hull before releasing their nuclear Iota bomb, its electrostatic adhesion could then lock it to the battleship’s hull and fire a shaped nuclear charge of plasma, ensuring damage that would disable if not outright destroy the Triumphant. If Viper or Goblin managed an airburst first, they had a good chance, there would still be some sensors and point defense systems that had been shielded enough to survive the clearing strikes but mostly the way would be clear. If they had to go without a clearing airburst first, against mostly intact defenses with the battleship not having to worry about seeing past its own shroud, their chances of making it all the way in were low, maybe 1 in 5.
The half a dozen of the missiles from the Stormlords volley made it into the region between the battleship and its consorts aided by the last minute maneuvers that took them into the empty area between the ships rather than close to any of them. The warheads erupted with nuclear fire and radiation, harmless to any ship protected by a gravity shroud but devastating to the drones that let the ships see outside their own shrouds and maintain their defensive coordination. They could be replaced readily enough, Tactical officers on the Battleship and Destroyers were ordering that almost as soon as the missiles detonated but for the moment the space inside their formation was almost a blind spot and the remaining Excaliburs of the offensive wing boiled in, railguns blazing into the shrouds, phoenix missiles launching, weaving a pattern of chaos and distraction.
Oliver, Mei-ling and Arjun prepared for their run. Iota-1 circled out to match vectors with the battleship and approached from the stern, trailing Viper and Goblin. The capital ships defenses were obviously degraded, but anti-fighter missiles, auto-cannons and even point defense lasers were blazing away at the attacking swarm, more and more fighters disappearing from the screens as their luck ran out.
“Viper is in” Arjun communicated. “Successful Iota insertion. No signs of detonation, nothing on the screens.”
“Goblin will clear the path for us.” Oliver replied, “Stay focused. We have this.”
The starfighter neared the battleship, its overall velocity just barely higher but jerking around forward and back, side to side in an unpredictable path that was its best defense. Arjun saw the flash on the fighter’s shroud as a point defense laser briefly transfixed the fighter. Even at this range a laser couldn’t penetrate the gravity shroud, the photons themselves were bent away and the beams cohesion thoroughly scrambled. The weapon had some effect however, as the energy translated mostly into heat, warming the shield and making it more difficult for the fighters’ own heat radiation systems. A capital ship, or even a merchant vessel wouldn’t really care having hundreds of meters between its hull and the shroud and only a fraction of the volume enclosed by the shroud being the ship itself. For a starfighter, or even a grav-drive pinnace, the shroud was only meters from the hull and 90% of the volume contained by the shroud was the vessel itself. Radiating heat into the available space, and then through the shroud was a balancing act, and enough laser strikes could quickly overwhelm the available heat radiation.
“Cooked us a little,” Arjun noted, “heat sinks still in the green but lets avoid that for a bit Prince.”
“Vampire, vector painted” warned Mei-ling as an anti-fighter missile locked onto Iota-1, coming in from ahead and to the left. “Engaging point defense.”
Oliver accelerated toward the missile,still maintaining the random maneuvering to keep other weapons from hitting the starfighter. Mei-Ling directed the point defenses, gunports opening in the fighter’s shroud to allow the beams to pass through, but between the missiles maneuvers and the starfighter’s erratic flight the beams missed. Arjun pre-emptively launched one of his sensor drones on a course away from the missile, giving him a reliable communications and sensor platform if the oncoming missile were to take out Iota-1s stern mast, the long boom that extended beyond the shroud and housed the sensors and communications gear that kept them in touch with the rest of the fleet.
At the last moment, Oliver took the starfighter into a looping spin, narrowly avoiding the cone of plasma and shrapnel that the shaped charge would have sent through the shroud and into the body of the starfighter, easily destroying it. Most of the time, acceleration from a gravity drive, even the type 2 drives that the starfighters have was unnoticeable since every atom contained in the shroud was essentially ‘falling’ at the same rate. This maneuver however, employing both the forward and stern gravity drives at the same time, from different axes caused a noticeable feeling of spin.
“Nice job, got the sensors shielded from the blast and didn’t even snap the mast.” Arjun remarked. “I read you had at least 5% tolerance. Heats a little high, in the yellow but we should be ok. Radiation from the battleship! Goblin’s airburst got off.”
“Transfering point defense to you Arjun. I’ll be focusing on missiles and the Iota bomb after the merge. Keep us from getting killed.” said Mei-ling.
“Get drones off as soon as we merge,” Oliver commanded, “we won’t have a tac-net during the strike and we’ll need eyes all around us, not just hanging off our tail.”
“Got it, Got it,” said Arjun, “everything on me, no problem.”.
The Excalibur hurtled along the length of the battleship, Oliver engaging the patternless flying that was really their only defense at this speed while Mei-Ling searched for the exact moment that would let the fighter fly through the Triumphant’s gravity shield and make their attack. The timing was so exact that not even words exchanged at the speed of thought would suffice. As Mei-ling saw the opportunity her emotions raced through the link as she instinctively highlighted the insertion locus and began adjusting the Excalibur’s shield harmonics to match. Oliver was already diving toward the shield even as the exact focus for the insertion lit up in his display.
They hit the shield, were jostled briefly as the two ships’ grav fields negotiated each other, and then were through. Arjun launched his sensor drones, giving them a complete picture of the area as Oliver made a twisting dive toward the battleship’s hull. The defenses immediately in their area seemed to have been reduced, but Mei-Ling identified a pair of sensor masts on the periphery and sent the last two Phoenix missiles at them and readied the Iota bomb. As they passed within 50 meters of the hull, she released the bomb triggering it to adhere on contact and Oliver rocketed them away.
Merging shield harmonics going out was much simpler than insertion, and Iota 1 raced away.
“Hell yeah,” interjected Arjun, “Reading successful Iota detonation. Scratch one battleship.”
“Exercise complete,” Wing Commander Rao announced over the command channel. “Great job everyone, especially Goblin and Prince that brought us the win. I’ll have some feedback for everyone later, but for now get yourselves back to the Strix and celebrate your victory.”