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to Bell the Belle - Chapter 10
Time: Day 9Location: Sassy Sue - Herrick's World System
Rommie came to full alert as Beka's voice came over the ship to ship communicator located in the improvised combat information center that had been installed aboard the Sassy Sue
"All units this is the Maru, incoming missiles, release combat drones"
A few short seconds later the the display on Rommie's repeater of the Sassy Sue's weapons officer's control console indicated that the Willow and the Puffer had launched the combat drones Andromeda had placed in their cargo holds. An instant later Beka's voice came over the ship to ship communicator. "Missile launches detected. Engine light offs detected."
The Salvagers' Guild ships minus the Andromeda had been in the Herrick's World system for nearly a day looking for the Belle, or more accurately waiting for the Belle to come to them. Dylan had objected strenuously when the Guild members had requested that he let them look for the Belle without his presence, only relenting when Andromeda pointed out that if she accompanied the Guild ships the pirates would undoubtedly simply flee into slipstream the moment they detected her presence in the system, and that the chance of them appearing in normal space near enough to run the pirates down before they escaped into slipstream was infinitesimal. The best chance they had of finding the pirates was for the Guild ships to enter the system unaccompanied. The Guild ships would enter the system with their transponders blaring and using their active search systems to ensure that the pirates would notice them. Patrick was sure that his father would not be able to resist taking out his wrath on his 'traitorous' son and the woman who had made a fool of him at the last Salvagers' Ball. Dylan eventually agreed to let them have their crack at the pirates but with the stipulation that he would enter the system 24 hours later no matter what.
Rommie felt the Sassy Sue lurch as her own combat drones were launched. As Beka was speaking, data from the other ships began to show up on her display. The separation of the ships allowed for the position of the engine light off signatures to be triangulated and their location plotted. Given the light speed time delay factor and the distance from the vessels to the Maru, Beka had to have ordered the other ships to launch their combat drones before the pirates had launched their missiles and had ignited their engines. Rommie spent a fraction of a second pondering the improbability of Trance's hunches or lucky guesses. The girl seemed to have some sort of ability to perceive future events. The fact that the ability seemed erratic was no consolation to Rommie. The girl shouldn't be able to do it at all. With a mental shake of her head Rommie focused her attention on the present. There were people out there who were trying to kill her and her friends. She intended to kill them first.
Rommie had split her flotilla of Guild ships into two groups named rather unimaginatively alpha and bravo. The Maru, Willow, and Puffer in alpha group and the Enchantress, Kuraudo, and Hakucho in bravo group The two groups were separated 3 light seconds apart with the Sassy Sue positioned between the two groups allowing her to provide fire support to either group. By High Guard standards the ships were grouped dangerously close together. Normal High Guard doctrine had its ships operating at distances of approximately three to four light seconds separation between ships, but High Guard ships normally operated in a cloud of combat and sensors drones that provided fire support and augmented the ships sensors, a cloud her ships didn't have. As a result she had positioned her ships closer together to minimize the light speed information lag but even with her ships operating as closely together as they were the light lag was still significant. By the time the Enchantress had launched her combat drones the Maru and her companions were receiving the first missiles launched by the Belle and her consorts.
More information was appearing on Rommie's display consoles. All the Guild ships had launched their combat drones. The pirates landers were heading towards the Guild ships while their mother ships were remaining in position and providing missile fire support. She entered commands into the console giving the combat drones their orders and ordering the other ships in the squadron to remain at one light minute distance from the Belle.
Combat drones were essentially unmanned self controlling fighters. Being unmanned they didn't need to allocate room for a pilot and the pilots life support equipment, nor did they need to allocate room for a slipstream generator since they were unable to navigate the stream. As a result they were half the size of a manned fighter while carrying more firepower. Each of the Four Freedoms freighters in her flotilla had been equipped with two combat drones. The orders Rommie had given the drones were simple, engage the pirates landers and after they had been neutralized to attack their mother ships. She didn't expect the drones to inflict significant damage on the pirate's major ships but what she did expect them to do was to put the pirates on the defensive long enough for the Guild ships to counterattack.
She felt the Sassy Sue shudder, the result of a near miss. The vessel's PDLs had destroyed an incoming missile but at such close range that the cloud of super heated gas that was all that remained of the missile had impacted with the vessel with enough coherence to damage her. The decision had been made to arm the guild ships primarily with defensive missiles. The disparity between two fleets missile combat ability made it senseless for the Guild to engage in a missile slug fest with the pirates. Defensive missiles were only half the size of offensive missiles which allowed each Guild vessel to carry more missiles. The Maru class vessels' tubes were loaded solely with defensive missiles while the Four Freedoms class vessels which had considerably more defensive capability with their more numerous PDLs each had two tubes loaded with defensive missiles. No alarms went off as a result of the hit so Rommie ignored the event. It was George's job to fight the Sassy Sue. It was her job to fight the Guild fleet as a whole.
She checked the time since the launch of the combat drones. At one light minute distance the Belle and her consorts should have detected the launch but they would not have had time to determine if they or their landers were the drones' targets. They would find out soon enough. The drones were more capable than the landers and outnumbered them 2.5 to one. She keyed her ship to ship communicator. "All units this is Sassy Sue Flag Bridge execute Parthian Shot two minutes from my mark. Mark."
One of the problems with coordinating a group of ships operating at near light speed and several light seconds apart was that while the speed of light was fast it wasn't infinitely fast. There was always a delay from the time a signal was emitted, be it an engine light off or a radio transmission, and the time it was received. One of the ways the High Guard dealt with the situation was that their ships sent out time stamped messages approximately every millisecond, giving their current vector, position, and if they were in the process of changing course or speed. This allowed the computers on the other ships to calculate the position of their fellow ships while allowing for light speed lag and compute an area of probability of where a ship might be if the ship changed their course or speed after sending out their position message. The system was also used to determine the damage status of a ship. The Willow hadn't reported in for the last 15 seconds. Which under the circumstances was a bad, very bad, sign.
Exactly two minutes later Rommie's displays indicated that the Sassy Sue had come about and was apparently retreating from the pirate ships. Seconds late her displays indicated that her sister ships with the exception of the Willow were also opening distance from the pirates. The Willow was obliviously continuing on its previous vector confirming what Rommie had feared when it stopped transmitting. The Willow was no longer under control and in all probability no longer manned by the living.
The Enchantress and the Kuraudo were reporting damage. The Kuraudo reporting that she was limited to 60% maximum speed and the Enchantress reporting that its number four PDL had been destroyed. The icons indicating the pirates' landers had disappeared, the drones had done their work. Of the ten drones that had been launched seven where still transmitting. Given their location from the Sassy Sue the information was almost 30 seconds old. They were probably engaged in combat with the pirates capital ships but she wouldn't know for another 30 seconds or so.
There was a rumbling and shaking through out the ship as the Sassy Suebegan to drop her mines and decoys. The other Guild ships would be doing the same. Rommie didn't expect that the mine field would create an impenetrable wall which her ships could hide behind but it would do something else, conceal the ignition signature of the Janus drones that the Sassy Sue was dropping along with the mines.
The Sassy Sue lurched violently enough to throw Rommie against the restraining straps of her seat, at the same time a hull breach alarm went off. The Sue had taken a hit. She punched up the environmental control display. Cargo hold number two had been holed and there was internal damage to the ship but there were no personnel casualties and no critical systems had been damaged. The rain of incoming missiles had slackened off. The pirates were being forced to split their attention between the surviving combat drones and the Guild ships. It was nearly time for the Guild ships to go on the offense. Rommie keyed her intra ship communicator. "Command Deck this is Flag Bridge," she said "The Willow is no longer operational and has left station. Close with the Puffer and the Maru and assume Willow's place in formation." She then keyed the inter ship communicator using the all ships channel. "Enchantress this is Sassy Sue Flag Bridge. Bring your formation to within one decimal five light seconds of alpha formation. All units prepare to launch offensive missiles, targets to be designated."
As Andromeda had noticed in her analysis of the earlier pirate attack the pirates were not working as a team. Their formation was spread far enough apart that they were unable to give each other PDL fire support. Surprisingly three of the drones were still operational. They had focused their attention on the Belle staying just out of effective PDL range forcing the pirate ship to divert some of its missile launch capacity to keep the drones at bay . The Belle was the Guild's primary target and Rommie marked the ship as such. According to her weapons console display one of the other freighters was operating at 80 % of it's engine capacity. Rommie marked the undamaged freighter as the secondary target and the damaged freighter as the tertiary target. If all went according to plan they could deal with the cripple later, assuming it survived the Guilds counter attack.
A new volley of missiles approached the Guild flotilla. The majority of the missiles were decoyed by the false target generators into the mine field. The missiles were destroyed which was good, but more importantly from Rommie's point of view was that the detonations of the mines concealed the fact that the Janus drones had lit off their engines. Rommie quickly sent out new commands to the combat drones. She didn't know if any of the drones would still be operational when her commands reached the drones but if they were, the drones would press home their attack at the same time the Guild missiles arrived.
"All units, this is Sassy Sue Flag Bridge," she said as she keyed the all ships communication channel. "Prepare for batteries released. Five seconds after my mark.".
Rommie's strategy was simple. The incoming missiles and combat drones were simply decoys to divert the pirates attentions away from the Janus drones. Janus drones were marvels of High Guard technology. Used as both remote sensors and weapons they were equipped with every stealth and counter detection system known to the High Guard, some of them so classified that prior to the Nietzschean rebellion Andromeda hadn't had clearance to study them. Once launched they were virtually undetectable by any vessel that didn't have the equivalent of a High Guard sensor suite. As Harper had described it, "She was going to make them defend their face and then knee them in the balls." It was time to make them defend their face. She keyed her ship to ship communicator "Eureka Maru this is Sassy Sue Flag Bridge. Execute Overload. Repeat Execute Overload."
A few long seconds later Beka's voice come over the communicator. "Sassy Sue this is the Eureka Maru, Overload in place."
In her minds eye Rommie saw the Maru's cargo pod loading hatch opening and a column rising out of the hatch. Attached to the top of the column was a rack containing 40 ELS missile tubes each loaded with six OM-5 missiles. The OM-5 missiles were faster and had a longer range than the OM-4's carried by the rest of the ships in her battle group. Rommie was using that to her advantage ensuring that the Maru's missiles took a different path towards their targets than the missiles launched by the other ships in her battle group did, but one that would ensure that they arrived at their targets at same time as the OM-4s arrived. And at the same time that any surviving combat drones and the Janus drones launched their attacks on the Belle and the freighters. Rommie keyed her mike one more time. "All units this is Sassy Sue Flag Bridge, batteries released. Repeat batteries released. Mark. Mark Mark. Assume formation Delta. I repeat assume formation Delta" If the Belle was at her predicted position she would know in exactly 135.47 seconds if her battle plan had been successful.
One hundred and forty two point three seconds later she keyed the all units circuit. "All units, stand down from combat operations," she said. "It's over."
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