Chapter Eleven
Asp 01, Approaching Ganymede, Solar System, June 15
Jupiter filled most of the space fighter’s view screen. Calvin’s target, the moon Ganymede, was silhouetted in front of it. The largest satellite in the Solar System, Ganymede was larger than Mercury and almost three-quarters the size of Mars. Ganymede made a great target, as it had variations in its coloring that formed intricate patterns across its surface. These color variations could be seen from a long way off and made excellent visual references. About 40% of the surface of the moon was covered by highly cratered dark regions, with the remaining 60% covered by a light, grooved terrain. In addition to the different levels of shading, there were also a number of large craters that were visible due to the bright rays of ejected material that had splashed out from the craters when asteroids hit the moon. Although formed in the same manner as the craters on the Earth’s moon, they lacked the same kind of central depressions, due to the slow and gradual adjustment of Ganymede’s soft icy surface.
The squadron’s target was in the middle of the Tros crater. The depression was one of the biggest on the moon, a large white area nearly 60 miles across. As the moon started to swell ahead of him with the view screen’s enhancements, he could see it as a white dot in the upper right of the moon.
“Take combat spread,” Calvin commed. He watched as the other five Asp fighters that had been flying alongside him spread out to both sides. On his in-head display, he could see that the other half of the squadron, the six Viper fighters, spread out similarly 50 miles ‘above’ him. The four crews that had survived the Vella Gulf’s first mission were flying the new Asps; the other two Asps and all of the Vipers were crewed by new personnel. As the fighters all reached their pre-briefed positions and settled into them, Calvin smiled. This was their first full-squadron strike. So far, so good.
“I wonder when they’re going to start shooting at us?” asked one of the new WSOs over the radio. With a thought, Calvin saw that it was Lieutenant Ali Ahmed Al-Amri in Viper 05.
“Are you in a hurry to die?” Calvin asked, annoyed that the Saudi had violated radio silence. “Stay off the frequency unless you have something important to say.”
Now that the question had been asked, Calvin wondered when they were going to start shooting. The brief said that the enemy’s missiles had a range of 15 million miles, and they were passing 17 million miles. The space fighters’ defensive systems had reported several surveillance radars active, but none of the tracking radars were yet. Even though the Terrans were trying to achieve surprise, Calvin didn’t think that they had fooled anyone. Especially with people talking on the radios when they weren’t supposed to be. They were probably just letting the Terrans get into the heart of the defensive systems’ envelopes so that they had a better chance of killing them. Still, the defenders should have launched already if they were going to intercept the Terrans at a distance of 15 million miles.
The squadron had to run the gauntlet of the moon’s missile defenses for 11 million miles before they could launch their missiles at four million miles. Their best defense, especially for the initial phase of the run-in, was to maneuver. Although some galactic civilization had figured out how to make communications go faster than light, no one had yet figured out how to make radars do so. Traveling at just over a 186,000 miles per second, it would take the radar beam about 80 seconds to cross the distance from the moon to the fighters located 15 million miles out, and then another 80 seconds to get back. In that time, the fighters traveling at about 100 million miles per hour would have moved over four million miles.
Passing 15 million miles, the tracking radars activated. “Spacehawks, begin evasive maneuvers!” Calvin’s WSO, Lieutenant Imagawa ‘Samurai’ Sadayo commed.
The enemy’s strategy quickly became apparent. Since they would only have time to fire one or two volleys of missiles at the fighters, the enemy defenders launched several missiles from each of their launchers, trying to bracket where the Terran fighters might be when the missiles arrived. As each of the missiles had their own acquisition and targeting systems, they only had to get them ‘close enough’ to the space fighters for the missiles’ onboard radars to acquire them, but with the fighters spread out, it was impossible for the defenders to mass their attack on any single fighter.
The fighters continued to maneuver randomly and violently as they got closer to the target. The fighters’ anti-missile lasers began firing at the missiles that had targeted them, and the WSOs did their best to defend themselves while still trying to complete the attack. Their best wasn’t good enough for some of them, and a few of the Terran fighters were enveloped in nuclear explosions. Samurai looked through his targeting system and could just make out the missile site that was their target. Calvin had done a good job banking their craft around, and they still hadn’t been hit. The range counted down until it was time for the attack sequence. “Standby...” Samurai said to Calvin. The call was repeated throughout the squadron as the WSOs acquired their targets and locked their missiles onto them. “Acquired!” Samurai commed. “Roll out!”
Calvin ceased maneuvering and leveled the wings of the space fighter. This was the most critical and dangerous part of the attack run, as the missiles needed a couple of seconds to get the final targeting data and align themselves, without having large g-forces ripping them from side to side. Within 1.5 seconds, the missiles had everything they needed and a green ‘Ready’ light came on in front of Calvin. “Firing!” he said and then, “Missiles away!” The two big anti-surface missiles leaped from under his wings and raced toward the target, accelerating as they went. Even without any explosives in them, the force of the missiles hitting at a sizable percentage of the speed of light generated devastating amounts of energy, and the missiles tore huge chunks out of the moon.
Once the missiles were clear, Calvin began to jerk the space fighter back and forth again, hoping to avoid any additional missiles fired at them. His missiles hit the target, and he watched as the squadron’s other missiles began impacting the target area. Their missiles were only intended to silence the defenses, not to destroy the target, and the space fighters continued inbound on their strafing runs. At the speed he was traveling, he wasn’t able to line up the laser visually for the shot. Instead, Samurai designated the target to the computer, and the computer began tracking it. As the Asp came in range, the computer fired, its high-powered laser burning through the target and into the surface of the moon.
In the blink of an eye, the fighter was past the target and headed back out to space with the other fighters of the squadron following behind them. Calvin continued to jink the fighter around in case any of the defensive missile systems were still operational. Passing 15 million miles from the target, Calvin sighed and relaxed. They were clear. “All Spacehawks join on me,” he commed.
Calvin looked over to Samurai. “How’d we do?” he asked.
“We got the target,” Samurai replied, “but we lost over half of our fighters doing it. I hope we don’t have to attack too many more targets like that. There won’t be any of us left!”
“Good thing it was only practice,” said Calvin with a sigh.
Spacehawk Ready Room, TSS Vella Gulf, Solar System, June 15
“As you can see from the hologram,” Samurai said in debrief, “everything started out well.” He pressed the button and a six-feet tall, three dimensional digital hologram appeared next to him at the front of the ready room. The briefing space was filled to capacity as Calvin had required all of the squadron’s pilots and WSOs to attend. Everyone leaned in, trying to see it more clearly.
The digital hologram showed Ganymede and the two groups of fighters inbound to it. The facilities of their enemy, the nation of ‘Red,’ were shown in red on the moon. With Calvin’s call to assume combat spread, the 12 spacecraft made two long lines of six ships with the six Vipers in a line abreast ‘above’ the line of the six Asps. Samurai stopped the replay. “Here we are just before the targeting radars began illuminating us. Everyone is in perfect formation. As it turned out, our electronic countermeasures (ECM) systems were functioning perfectly, and they weren’t aware we were coming.” Solomon, the Vella Gulf’s artificial intelligence was simulating the enemy forces and had determined that, with the parameters given for their equipment, the enemy wouldn’t have seen the attacking force.
“And then someone talked on the radio and alerted them to our presence,” Samurai chided. He didn’t say who it was, but everyone already knew. “Since radio travels faster than light, they were instantly aware of our attack.”
“Nice job, Chatty Cathy,” said someone from the back of the room, naming the 20th century talking doll.
“Once the transmission reached the defenders, they focused their high power tracking radars on us and were able to burn through our ECM.” The crews could see the simulated missiles begin launching from the moon, and the space fighters began maneuvering to avoid the incoming weapons. The initial volley claimed three of the Vipers and one of the Asps. Their icons flashed and then went out. Samurai paused the playback.
“Viper 02, Viper 05 and Asp 06 were not jinking enough and were hit in the initial volley,” commented Samurai. “They’re all dead, and their missiles won’t count.”
“What about me, mate?” asked Lieutenant Nicolas Wilson. “Viper 06 got killed even though we were maneuvering like we were supposed to.”
“To use an American phrase, shit happens,” Samurai told the Australian. “You did everything right, but the red forces got lucky and shot you down. It was just your day to die; I hope you did it well.”
“Aw, hell,” mumbled Lieutenant Wilson, shaking his head. No one ever wanted to be singled out as the unlucky one. As aviators were superstitious by nature, now all of the WSOs would think twice when they were crewed with him.
Samurai restarted the hologram. “Here we are at the launch point,” he said. The crews could see the fighters level off, and missiles begin tracking from the Terran fighters back toward Jupiter’s moon. One of the remaining Vipers winked out. He stopped the replay. “It looks like Viper 03 became mesmerized by the missile launch and forgot to start maneuvering again. Two missiles locked onto him while he flew straight toward the target and detonated close by. There were no survivors.”
“Unfortunately, that is true,” agreed Lieutenant Gurnoor Bhola. “I have never launched missiles that large before, and they were quite striking as they left the fighter. I admit to being distracted by it. It will not happen again.”
“Well, that’s why we do these things,” noted Calvin, “so that you can learn and not make those mistakes in combat. No one was hurt today, but had this been real, you would be dead now. Hopefully you learned from it.”
“I did,” said the Indian, looking embarrassed.
Samurai restarted the hologram. “You can see our missiles start hitting the defensive sites,” Samurai pointed out. “Most of the batteries were destroyed, except for the ones that would have been targeted by the fighters we had already lost. As you can see, one of these gets off another missile in close, hitting Asp 03.”
“I disagree,” said Lieutenant Steven Jackson. “I’m going to have to complain to Solomon. There’s no way they got me.”
“Complain all you want,” interjected Solomon, who had been listening with half an electronic ear. “Mathematical analysis showed that there was an 87% chance of your destruction. You were dead.”
Most of the crews laughed as the pilot sputtered something about computers that were too big for their britches.
“The rest of the strike fighters successfully made their firing runs,” said Samurai, regaining control, “and the target was destroyed. Unfortunately, Viper 01 and Viper 04 forgot to maneuver on the way back out and got missiles straight up their butts. They were destroyed as well.”
Calvin walked up to stand next to Samurai. “The bottom line is that we’ve got to do better. Most of these fatalities were because people didn’t follow procedures. They could have been avoided but now you’re dead! You have to do better than that. We have to do better than that! There are only 12 fighters in the entire Terran Space Navy! Those 12 fighters and our one cruiser are all that stand between a host of aliens and the families you love. If you can’t follow procedures, let me know now so that we can send you home and get aircrews that can!”
With that, Calvin turned and walked out of the ready room, leaving a squadron of stunned aviators in his wake. If nothing else, Samurai thought, he definitely made his point.
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