46

It had been a long time since Kira had novaed in this close to the enemy—but then, it had been a long time since she’d flown off a cruiser that was part of a real battle line. She had a clear vision of the Bengalissimo logistics depot at maybe half a million kilometers before everything around Seventh Fleet vanished into their own jamming.

“Deck has the ball,” Tamboli recited in her headware. “Launch on the ball, launch on the ball. Stand by…” There was a pause as the first sets of fighters launched into space, and then the deck boss switched to her. “Basketball, launch.”

The “ball” was the control of her fighter, and Tamboli’s people had it. Systems aboard both her fighter and the cruiser flared to life, and her Hoplite was flung out into space, the last of the eight-ship Memorial-Alpha squadron.

Three more launch waves followed as Kira brought her fighter into formation above Deception, linking laser coms to the cruiser. She wouldn’t have coms for long, but she’d use them while she had them.

“Target analysis downloading to your fighter,” Davidović told her. “Heavier than we hoped, lighter than we feared. We’re making it three cruisers, five destroyers and fifteen light ships. No carriers on the scopes.

“Battle line is advancing.”

“Network established,” Cartman murmured in Kira’s ear. “All fighters online. That won’t last.”

“No, it won’t,” Kira agreed, taking advantage of the moment to link to all two hundred and seventy nova fighters under her command. “All nova fighters, mark the range at four hundred and fifty thousand kilometers. RV is in your computers and lock in your targets.

“First sweep is the lighter warships. I don’t want anything smaller than a destroyer left, pilots, but hang on to your torpedoes. The cruisers may yet need our help.”

She paused, considering what final words she could give the people she’d trained or the people she’d fought alongside. There wasn’t really anything.

“Seventh Fleet Nova Group,” she said calmly. “Nova and attack.”

The world flashed around her as it always did, and her Hoplite dove into chaos around the enemy formation. Even if the enemy hadn’t brought up their own jammers, it didn’t matter. Every fighter novaed with their multiphasic jammers online.

Without a prepared laser network, the Bengalissimo Fleet and their mercenaries’ communications were hashed. That moment of confusion was key—that moment of confusion was where nova fighters lived and died, on the ragged edge of violence and speed.

The freighters weren’t their target yet, and Kira picked her own prey in a moment—a corvette trying to pull away from a fueling tanker. It was vulnerable but on the far side of the Bengal formation from her formation.

Harrington coils flung her through the enemy formation, dodging around the scattered flak that the warships were starting to put out, and she lined up on her prey—and proceeded to disobey her own orders, firing the single torpedo her nova fighter carried directly at the corvette while opening fire with her guns.

The corvette did exactly as she hoped, dodging away from her cannon fire and directly into the path of the torpedo blast. The impact flung the dying ship backward into the fuel tanker itself, tearing a massive hole in the side of the vessel and bringing enough oxygen to ignite a massive portion of the tanker’s hydrogen cargo.

A short-lived jet of flame covered Kira as she flipped back into the fleet, searching for prey. There wasn’t much. The gunships were gone, swarmed under by ten times their numbers of nova fighters. Long-range plasma fire was already beginning to lace the empty void around the Bengal cruisers as Seventh Fleet closed, but the BF was forming up in good order.

Kira’s people would have to deal with the destroyers next, but for now…her sixty seconds was up.

She novaed to the rendezvous point and left the enemy to the cruisers.

* * *

Kira couldn’t help but hold her breath as nova fighters appeared at the rendezvous point and dropped their jammers. Two hundred. Two hundred forty. Two fifty. Two sixty. Two…sixty-six.

Some of the pilots had taken almost forty seconds longer than they should have to get out, but only four were missing. She’d have preferred no missing pilots, but she’d take it.

“All fighters, escorts are clear and it’s down to the big boys,” she told them. “We could play it nice and safe and go after the destroyers, clear the way for our battle line.”

She let that hang in the air as she considered the weight of metal in the battlespace they’d left behind. The Bengals and their mercenaries were badly outnumbered, and if they were smart, they’d focus their fire on Seventh Fleet’s cruisers to try and even the odds.

“We’re not going to do that,” she said. “They have three cruisers, and we have a hundred and twenty fighter-bombers and heavy fighters. I’m dropping targets by squadron, but I want a hundred torpedoes on each of those big bastards.

“Interceptors, dance and weave. Your job is to make the bastards’ gunners lose your big sisters,” she told them. “And then we send them to the damn fire. Even the new pilots know the steps.

“Let’s dance. Nova and attack!”

She suited her actions to her commands and led Seventh Fleet’s fighters back into the chaos. They came out of nova almost fifty thousand kilometers from the cruisers and were immediately back in the fray.

The torpedoes needed to get closer, and Kira’s heavier fighters were the key.

The battle lines had closed, spitting fire at each other from about the same distance the fighters had appeared at. There were ships missing on both sides, but Kira couldn’t take the time to ID them. One of the Bengal cruisers was badly battered by the fire from Deception and the others, but she couldn’t even redirect the fighters she’d assigned to it.

Everything came down to getting her fighters into and out of the enemy’s defensive fire—and she led a chaotic swarm of over two hundred and sixty nova fighters into the teeth of the enemy formation.

Plasma flashed in every direction, but it took the Bengals and their mercenaries a critical few seconds to realize the threat. Last time her birds had swept through, they’d only targeted the lightest ships and they hadn’t used torpedoes.

By the time the cruisers identified the fighters in the jamming and realized what was going on, Kira’s people were almost in torpedo range. The defensive fire was late and wide, and her fighter-bombers and heavy fighters launched their torpedoes in massive waves.

It wasn’t the synchronized fire of a more-practiced force, one that wouldn’t need the communications they didn’t have, but it was more than enough. The more-practiced force would have intentionally sequenced their fire, stressing the dispersal networks even if they couldn’t overload them.

The scattergun fire from Kira’s nova group achieved the same result by accident. Two cruisers vanished in a blaze of fire. They might be more replaceable now, but those ships still represented a massive investment on the part of their owners.

The last cruiser was reeling, and Kira had enough time to watch the focused fire of five cruisers tear into her before her sixty seconds were up again and she novaed to safety a second time.

* * *

It was over by the time the nova fighters returned to the battlespace for the third time. Less than ten minutes had elapsed since Seventh Fleet had arrived, and the blockade force was gone. A third of the freighters that had made up the logistics depot were still in place, under the Fleet’s guns as assault shuttles swarmed them.

The other two-thirds were gone, and Kira doubted they’d all been destroyed.

She keyed off her own multiphasic jammers as she set her course for Deception. Seconds ticked away as her fighters followed suit, but she had a laser-com link with her cruiser.

“Zoric, where are we at?” she asked.

“Two destroyers and sixteen freighters novaed,” the cruiser Captain said instantly. “Admiral Remington is trying to keep people from declaring victory just yet, but it’s pretty clear.”

“Depends on where those destroyers and freighters went,” Kira said grimly. “There probably aren’t more cruisers in the blockade, though, so…”

She considered, looking at her fighter squadrons as the last of the multiphasic jamming shut down.

“I’m sending the heavies in to refuel on Deception,” she told her subordinate. “Sending in fighter-bombers and heavies in across the board, in fact. Interceptors will stay out for now.”

It took her a moment to pass those orders on. She was down eleven fighters now, though she hoped they would find the survival pods from those planes. Some of those pilots would fly again—and if they got the full pod, with the class two drive included, so would the fighters. In spirit, at least.

New alerts pinged across her dash and headware as Remington called an all-senior-officers conference.

“Well done,” Remington said immediately. “We did good today, people, but we got burned more than I would have liked. All five cruisers require some in-place repairs, and we lost two of the RRF’s destroyers and eleven fighters.

“First wave of the convoy should be joining us in an hour,” she continued.

One of Kira’s responsibilities had been to send a fighter back to warn them off if the battle was lost. That, thankfully, hadn’t been necessary today.

“We will hold here for forty-eight hours to complete quick repairs and see out the civilians who aren’t coming with us to Ypres,” Remington told everyone. “Watch for counterattack. There was no way to stop Bengal forces escaping, which means the rest of the blockade knows we’re here.

“Hopefully, they’ll recognize they’re outgunned and withdraw quietly. I refuse to hang the fate of this fleet on hopefully.”

“We are maintaining a full interceptor patrol,” Kira reported. “Our most likely counter-act is a fast nova strike, with bombers if they have them, in an attempt to take out one or more cruisers.”

“Agreed,” Remington said. “All ships are to prepare to repel nova bomber strikes. Mostly, though…that will be on Commodore Demirci and our fighters.”

“We are ready,” Kira promised. “In their place, I’d give us some time to relax. An hour or two, potentially. And they won’t nova the carrier in within easy detection distance. They’ll want her drive cooled down before they send in the nova fighters—but if she’s only novaing a light-year from another blockade post, they could be as little as five hours.”

“I’m afraid it’s going to be a long day for you, Commodore,” Remington said. “We’ll trust your judgment here.”

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