The Star Carrier Series Books 1-3: Earth Strike, Centre of Gravity, Singularity

Main Mess Hall

Eta Boötis IV

1854 hours, TFT

Gray and the others had felt a sudden letdown, a surge of disappointment and even anger as first the Choctaw had lifted itself back up into the clouds, and then as the five Starhawk fighters had streaked off into the night. “The bastards are leaving us!” one Marine had screamed. “The fucking Navy zorchie bastards are leaving us!”

Outside, the crowd was jubilant, shouting and laughing and jumping up and down. Some were firing their lasers uselessly into the sky, in celebration or in an empty gesture of defiance, or both.

Gray had spotted something, though. As the line of black Starhawks had begun slipping away out of the glare of the lights below, he’d noticed that they were flattening out, and that they were growing black, swept-back wings. If those fighters had given up, if they were boosting for space and a return to the carrier, they would have adopted a more rounded, teardrop shape. Wings, however, meant they were planning on maneuvering in the atmosphere, probably at low altitude.

And he thought he knew what they were going to do.

“They’re not leaving, everybody!” he yelled, boosting the volume on his e-suit speakers to make sure he got everyone’s attention. “Everyone get down! Marines … stand ready to move out and secure the landing field!”

He bellowed the orders, putting all of the authority and power he could into the words. Across the room, he caught a Marine major staring at him. A major outranked a Navy lieutenant by one pay grade, the equivalent of a Navy lieutenant commander, and, in any case, a stranded Navy pilot normally had no business giving orders to Marines.

“Do it!” the major barked. “You! You! You! And you! Over by this door!”

And then the sky outside lit up with lightning.

Gray recognized the signature flash of a heavy particle beam. Navy Starhawks mounted StellarDyne Blue Lightning PBP-2 particle beam projectors which could project a bolt of protons with a yield of around a gigajoule in one tenth of a second. The total energy was about one thousandth that of a typical natural lightning bolt, but at close range, the pulse lit up the sky as the air ionized along a straight-line path.

An instant later, the first Starhawk zorched overhead, traveling so low, so fast, that Gray was aware of a flicker of motion but nothing more.

The sonic boom that followed shook the walls of the mess hall, deafening and shrill. It was followed a moment later by a second … a third … a fourth … a fifth, the hypersonic booms coming in a rapid succession of deafening, high-pitched thunderclaps. Outside, the rioters appeared to crumble in a mass, dropping to their knees or full-length on the ferocrete landing pad, bringing gloved hands up against their helmets as they instinctively tried to cover their ears.

When the Marines and the civilian women and children had fallen back to the mess hall, they’d come in through a large doorway blocked by a nanoseal, the same black, liquid substance used to prevent pressure loss on America’s hangar deck when spacecraft were brought in from the vacuum outside. As the mob had surged after them, a Marine had switched on the seal freeze, turning the suspended nanoparticles into a rigid structure, a barrier stronger than plasteel.

Now, the seal freeze was released, and the first four Marines charged outside, weapons at the ready, followed closer by more Marines, and a scattering of Mufrid militia.

“Come on,” Gray said to Corporal Anderson. “Let’s get out there!”

It took several minutes to elbow through the panicked, milling crowd, but Gray made it to the nanoseal lock and stepped through, pushing against the liquid’s yielding resistance and out onto the landing field. The rioting mob had been effectively neutralized, reduced to stunned and disoriented individuals as the Marines began to shove and push unresisting rioters back off the field. He looked up at the balcony overlooking the field nearby, and saw more Marines grabbing the agitator and hauling him back into the building.

All of the floating glowglobes had been swept away by the shock waves, and many of the remaining lights mounted on the buildings had been shattered. The few lighting panels that remained cast eerie, pitch-black shadows across the field, lending a nightmare aura to the scene.

“Get the field clear!” the Marine major was shouting. “Get it the hell clear!”

Overhead, the Choctaw had reappeared, running lights pulsing, the black, UC-154 shuttle slowly drifting down for a landing.

Chapter Twelve

26 September 2404

CIC, TC/USNA CVS America

Haris Orbit, Eta Boötis System

1945 hours, TFT

With the exception of the Dragonfires, the last of the fighters were recovering on board the carrier, drifting in toward the aft end of the landing deck stretched out along the ship’s spine, killing their grav singularities at the last moment possible, then hitting the tangleweb field to kill the last of their forward velocity. As each Starhawk came to a halt, robotic arms snagged the ship and dragged it forward, out of the way of the next incoming ship, then swung it up into nanosealed ports in the deck above, lifting it up into the hangar deck.

The battlegroup was preparing to accelerate, each individual ship slowly swinging around until its broad, hemispherical forward shield faced a nondescript patch of relatively empty sky midway between the beacons of Canopus and Rigel. Earth’s sun lay there, somewhere in the emptiness. At thirty-seven light years’ distance, Sol was just barely too dim to be seen with the naked eye. On every ship in the fleet, however, the sun’s location was marked by a bright green circle.

Home …

Admiral Koenig sat at his CIC workstation, reports from all twenty-four ships of the carrier battlegroup flooding through the America’s communications suite.

All things considered, the battlegroup had come through in superb shape, much better than he’d hoped. The Farragut and the destroyer Carter both had been destroyed; three more ships had suffered serious damage in the battle, and one of those, the frigate Abramson, had been so badly shot up that her crew was now being transferred to other vessels, including the America. With Mufrid refugees already packed into every available ship, crammed onto mess decks and into passageways and storage bays, it was going to be a tight fit getting everyone on board.

It had been the fighters, Koenig knew, who’d tipped the balance, who’d made the lopsided victory possible. Turusch ships heavily outgunned and out-teched equivalent Confederation vessels, and tended to be much tougher, much more powerful than human ships … especially when you found yourself up against converted asteroids like that command ship.

“Admiral?” Commander Reigh called from the Controller’s workstation. “The Conestogas and their escorts report readiness for acceleration. They’re requesting clearance.”

“Very well. They are clear for boost.”

“Captain Vanderkamp has acknowledged.”

On the tac display, the eight converted Conestoga troopships and four escorting destroyers began to move, falling toward a distant, invisible Sol at one hundred gravities. Captain Vanderkamp, on the destroyer Symmons, would command the detachment, would get them safely back to Sol.

“Clear the auxiliaries for boost,” Koenig ordered.

“Order acknowledged, Admiral.”

Five more vessels—fleet auxiliaries: three supply vessels and two repair tenders—began accelerating as well, falling away from the fast-dwindling battlegroup.

Koenig’s greatest concern at this point was that the Turusch would counterattack, would hit the battlegroup with its fighter screen on board the carrier. With that in mind, he was sending the troopship and unarmed auxilliaries on ahead, with the remaining seven ships—the America, the Spirit of Confederation, and five others—holding position as the last of the fighters and shuttles recovered on board.

At this moment, the last of the Marines on the surface of Eta Boötis IV were on their way up from the planet, escorted by the five remaining Dragonfires. The surviving gravfighters from VFA-44 had succeeded in scattering the rioters in the Marine compound down on the planet’s surface, had escorted several more shuttles back up to the fleet, and now were seeing to the last of the evacuees.

The eleven gravfighters of VFA-51, the Black Lightnings, were still out there as well. Hours before, he’d sent them out on deep perimeter patrol, following the retreating enemy ships a full thirty light minutes out. If the Turusch did turn around and launch a counterstrike, the Black Lightnings would be America’s early warning net. They were returning now, but would not be back on board the carrier for another forty minutes.

“Admiral!” It was Commander Johanna Hughes, the tac evaluator. “Urgent from VFA-51! Enemy fighters inbound at near-c!”

Shit. The nightmare scenario.

“How many?”

“Unknown, sir. He says ‘a hell of a lot … at least fifty.’”

Koenig studied the tactical display. The enemy had retreated in that direction—roughly toward the star Epsilon Boötis … not that that star would necessarily have been their actual destination. He’d sent the Black Lightnings out line along the same path to watch for just this eventuality. Eleven Starhawk gravfighters against fifty Toads. Not good odds. Not good at all.

But the real urgency of the situation lay in the fact that the enemy fighters were coming in just behind the lasercommed message warning of their approach. The battlegroup’s rear guard might have mere seconds before the Turusch were among them.

“Make to all ships,” Koenig said. “Maneuvering, Code One. Initiate hivel-A defenses now!”

“Aye, aye, sir.”