Dark Matter (Star Carrier, Book 5) (14 page)

And
America
’s tactical officer began issuing orders.

Chapter Nine

5 March 2425

USNA CVS
America

Saturn Space

0957 hours, TFT

Braking hard,
America
’s carrier battlegroup plowed into and through the Confederation fleet at 10,000 kilometers per second—just over 3 percent of the speed of light. It was a daring, even reckless approach this deep within a planetary subsystem, burning through walls and veils of drifting ice specks that comprised Saturn’s rings.

But they were coming in behind clouds of high-velocity sand, coming in tightly clustered around and behind the giant mushroom shape of the carrier
America
, coming in behind a steady barrage of AMSO rounds that continually replenished the sand clouds ahead, sweeping clear the CBG’s path.

Admiral Gray sat on
America
’s flag bridge, studying the virtual tactical tank before him, his mouth set in grim determination. The main portion of the enemy fleet lay directly ahead . . . a light carrier that
America
’s warbook had identified as the
São Paulo
, a Brazilian vessel of about 95,000 tons, plus two heavy cruisers of roughly the
Edmonton
’s class, and three destroyers. Two more Confederation destroyers were at Titan now, and a sixth at the Huygens facility in the Cassini Division of the rings.

The big unknown, still, was the 700-meter alien ship, which appeared to be closely guarded by two monitor gunships, both German—the
Rostok
and the
Emden
. Meant for defensive operations in orbit, they were massive, slow, and clumsy vessels each massing over half a million tons, but they were heavily armored and bristling with heavy-weapons turrets. They were by far the most dangerous warships in the enemy squadron, and they would be the principal targets of CBG-40 in the coming bloody minutes.

The task force had entered battlespace behind the expanding, fast-moving clouds of sand grains launched from hundreds of AS-78 anti-missile shield ordnance rounds at high velocity.
America
was releasing AMSO clusters through its two spinal railgun mounts every few seconds, as quickly as the magnetics could recycle. Already traveling at a few percent of the speed of light, the AMSO rounds accelerated for a few seconds at 50,000 gravities, and when they released the several kilos’ worth of sand-grain-sized lead spherules in their warheads, each grain was traveling at nearly 10 percent of the speed of light.

Those grains carried kinetic energy enough to vaporize ice fragments, sweeping clear a tunnel through which the USNA ships were traveling at high speed. There weren’t enough lead spherules to get
all
of the debris, especially within a few kilometers of the visible surface of the rings where the ice cloud was thickest, of course.
America
, in the lead, got most of the rest, plowing through the remaining particles and wisps of hydrogen and oxygen and vaporizing anything solid still in their path.

The leading surface of
America
’s shield cap had been polished clean, the enormous letters spelling out her name and hull number sandblasted away by billions of ice chips that had escaped the sand clouds. As the carrier continued to close on the enemy, her shield cap began to get hotter . . . then hotter . . . then hotter still, as the alloyed metals and ceramics covering the water storage tank boiled away.

“The water tank won’t take much more, Admiral,” Captain Gutierrez told him. She sounded worried. “We’re going to get wet.”

An exaggeration, that. Gallows humor. If
America
’s shield cap ruptured, billions of liters of water inside would instantly and simultaneously boil and freeze in hard vacuum. The ship might well not survive as her leading structures were torn apart.

Even more worrying was the loss of
America
’s forward gravitic projectors, a forest of antennae a few centimeters high that bent space around the ship’s hull. They were important in establishing and balancing the Alcubierre warp field around the entire ship . . . and in combat they bent space enough to deflect incoming lasers and particle beams, providing a measure of protection.

That protection was gone now, ablated away by temperatures high enough to make
America
’s shield cap glow a dull red in places.

But the trick with the sandcasters appeared to have worked well enough that
America
had survived the passage, so far, at least.

“Everyone still with us?” Gray asked.

“The
John Young
and the
Ramirez
report minor damage, Admiral,” Mallory told him.

The destroyers had been out on the flanks, outside of the protective cone swept by
America
’s disintegrating shield cap.

But none of the CBG vessels would have made it without the AMSO sandcasters. Years before, as a raw, young fighter pilot, Gray had earned the nickname “Sandy” when he’d used AMSO rounds as antiship missiles. AMSOs were primarily intended as anti-missile defense systems, to detonate incoming warheads well away from friendly ships as well as to scatter beams of radiation, but it turned out that grains of lead sand traveling at close to
c
were a damned effective weapon against enemy fighters, against capital ships . . . and even planetary bases and defense systems.

So the “Sandy” handle had stuck with him through the years. He had a feeling he was going to be hearing more of it in the future.

Assuming they survived the next few minutes, of course. Using AMSO rounds to clear out an approach corridor allowed CBG-40 to maintain a high-velocity approach. Now, though, they would have to use that velocity to good effect against an enemy fleet that outnumbered them—and that represented some serious unknowns in the capabilities of the alien capital ship and its fighters.

“We’re reading high temperatures on some of the enemy ships, Admiral,” Captain Gutierrez reported. “I think some of the sand that got through the ring particles must have scoured the Confed ships. Not enough to destroy them, but . . .” Her mental voice trailed away.

“Every little bit helps, Captain,” Gray replied.

At 9,000 kps, the battlegroup swept out from beneath Saturn’s glowing rings, and in an instant, Enceladus loomed ahead, a brilliant white crescent swiftly growing larger. Decelerating sharply,
America
’s battlegroup slashed its forward velocity, and the tiny moon’s swift growth slowed.

Enceladus was only about 500 kilometers across, a frozen flyspeck all but lost in emptiness. As the crescent expanded, however, and just for an instant, Gray could clearly see those enigmatic ice and water geysers at its south pole, backlit and glowing in the light of the distant sun. Pinpoint flashes sparkled across local space as fighter battled fighter in the near distance . . . and hammered away at Confederation warships orbiting the moon.

“Any time you’re ready, Commander,” Gray told
America
’s weapons officer.

Taggart’s mental command snapped out an instant later. “All weapons, when you bear . . .
fire
!”

The other ships in the squadron opened up a second or two later.
America
’s weapons were relatively light—mostly lasers and plasma weapons for close-in point defense, though she did have the paired spinal-mount rail guns that could accelerate multi-ton kinetic-kill warheads to high velocities. The other capital ships, though, possessed heavier and longer-ranged weapons—the cruiser
Edmonton
especially. She was slamming high-velocity KK warheads into the nearer of the two monitors, the Pan-European
Rostok
.

The
Rostok
returned the fire, her massive quad turrets pivoting to track the fast-passing cruiser, but her target acquisition antennae had been damaged by the scouring effect of incoming sand moments before, and she was having trouble locking on.
Edmonton
’s shield cap took several solid hits, and she was trailing bits of glittering wreckage and the telltale bleed of ice crystals escaping from her punctured tank, but she was still in the fight and giving much more than she was taking. The
Rostok
staggered under a trio of heavy KK projectiles that punched through weakened gravitic shields and thick armor. Atmosphere spilled into space, an expanding silver fog as air and water boiled . . . then froze.

The big alien ship opened fire in the next instant, dozens of high-energy X-ray lasers stabbing out through the night, slamming into the
Edmonton
. Part of her shield cap exploded in a dazzling spray of freezing water.

“The alien has opened fire, Admiral,” Dean Mallory said.

“I see it. He’s declared himself as a combatant. Return fire.”

America
was pivoting as she passed, targeting the alien, slamming a pair of depleted uranium shells into the huge craft at thousands of kilometers per second . . . the velocity of the magnetically accelerated rounds plus the forward velocity of the star carrier. Those rounds struck at hundreds of kilometers per second, but had a sideways vector equal to
America
’s current velocity, and so they ripped through hull metal like savage can openers, doing horrific damage.

As
America
hurtled close to the icy moon, Gray strained for a glimpse of the alien, magnified and projected on one of the flag bridge tactical displays . . . but then
America
was past Enceladus and hurtling on out into open space, away from Saturn.

The sun lay directly ahead, shrunken by a billion kilometers.

America
continued her turn. When she was pointed back at the receding Enceladus she engaged her singularity drive again, slowing her outbound passage, then slowly building up speed back toward the moon. The other ships of CBG-40 matched the maneuver; enemy fighters closed on the USNA ships, hungry for blood, but the point defenses of the cruiser and three destroyers burned them down like moths in a candle flame.

“Order our fighters to close with us,” Gray told Mallory.

“Aye, aye, Admiral.”

“
Rostok
is breaking up!” Gutierrez called. “She’s had it!”

A flare of antimatter annihilation seared across the sky. “What the hell was that?” Gray asked.

“That was the
Spruance
, sir,” Taggart told him. “X-ray burst from the alien . . .”

Damn . . .

There’d been three hundred in the destroyer’s complement. Her skipper, Commander Craig Yashimoto, had been a friend.

But right now, Gray’s principal concern was for more than five thousand people on board the
America
. She was . . . struggling.

The space-warping shields that protected a starship in combat were created by gravitic projectors extending out from the vessel’s hull just a few centimeters. They could be melted away by a nearby thermonuclear blast—or by the sandblasting from a high-velocity AMSO round—and when that happened, that section of shield would fail, exposing the ship’s hull to incoming missiles or radiation.

As the battle continued to drag itself out through Saturn space, the ships of CBG-40 were taking more and more damage—light stuff, at first . . . but the more gravity shield projectors that were damaged by ice or nearby nuclear detonations, the more hard stuff began leaking through. Gray felt
America
’s deck shudder as something big slammed into the ship. Something struck the side of his face, then spun through the air . . . an electric clipboard adrift in the microgravity of the flag bridge. The blast had dislodged it from a magnetic clip.

“Secure that!” Gray barked at an enlisted rating manning a workstation behind him. Bits of insulation were filling the air as well, hammered out of the bulkheads by the steady vibration of shuddering, incoming hits.
America
lurched and shuddered again as she took a direct hit from a particle beam, which punched a small, tight hole straight through the shield cap in a spray of debris and freezing water. The ship wouldn’t be able to stand up to this kind of pounding for very much longer.

“Fire!”
Taggart yelled over the tactical link, and two more massive kinetic warheads hurtled from the launch tubes and slammed, seconds later, into the monitor gunship
Emden
. On the main tactical display forward, the monitor began to crumple, falling into its own onboard black hole arrays. A cheer went up on the flag bridge as the collapse accelerated . . . and then the Confederation ship, what was left of it, exploded in a blinding flare of silent light.

Nearby, the scarlet, misshapen egg of the alien transport or whatever it was began picking up speed, looping low over the icy limb of the frozen moon, fleeing for the safety of deep space.

“The bastard’s running!” Taggart yelled.

“Stop the alien!”
Gray snapped. “Hit him!
Hard!
”

America
shifted her orientation slightly, tracking the enemy, and Taggart yelled, “Fire!” Two more KK projectiles hurtled after the receding ship.

The destroyer
John Young
broke off from the battlegroup formation, pursuing the alien. Beams were all but useless, but the destroyer was loosing clouds of nuke-tipped missiles, including a couple of VG-44c Fer-de-lance shipkillers and one VG-120 Boomslang, a missile usually reserved for space-to-ground bombardment, with heavy shielding and a superb onboard AI.

Gray watched as the alien’s X-ray laser snapped across the two KK warheads and vaporized them. One of the Fer-de-lances went next, flashed into hot plasma by the searing breath of that beam.

But the second Fer-de-lance detonated an instant later, well short of the fleeing alien vessel, but close enough, perhaps, to scramble its shields and electronic sensors.

When the Boomslang exploded, it lit up the entire sky close to the curve of Enceladus . . . and then the alien ship was tumbling . . . tumbling . . . falling out of Saturn space and into the blackness beyond.