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  “Weapons?”

  “Ready as we’ll ever be, Sir,” his tactical officer confirmed eagerly.

  “Starboard wing?”

  “Sir. Prepped, armed, ready to launch on command,” the perfunctory reply came.

  “Port wing?”

  After a brief pause, the slightly embarrassed voice of a middle-aged woman spoke up. “All interceptors except ten, eleven, and twelve ready, prepped and armed. Hanger bay door malfunction. Repair team on the way, Sir!”

  Captain Nomon glared at the Port Wing control officer for a few moments, but said nothing.

  Gradually the air resistance, and therefore his weight, increased as they fell almost silently toward a mass of converging vectors on the main tactical screen. Some of the captains had thought it was overkill, the rumors must be the greatly overblown to excuse incompetence. He was experienced enough to know that when facing the unknown, there was no such thing as too big a hammer, though if asked privately this seemed a little much. But he wasn’t interested in bragging about the kill, or honor and glory; he just wanted this pain in his ass dead, one way or another, so he could go home and see his new grandchildren.

  As he watched the display, suddenly the vector attached to the one in the middle of the mess changes, angling down, steeply. Captain Nomon frowned, not liking any unexpected changes. “Sensors! Is that right? Are they going back down?”

  After a few quick taps on the console, and then re-verifying unexpected readings, one of the sensor specialists looked up and answers. “Confirmed, Sir. Diving sharply, high acceleration. Moving fast already. Hull’s starting to heat up.”

  Nomon’s frown deepens. “Tactical, could she have seen us? Or anyone else up here? Nobody reported active measures being detected.”

  “Unclear, Sir. Sensor capability is unknown, or at least there wasn’t anything in our briefing about it. Possible; we’re heating now, too, Sir.”

  “Any idea what she’s doing?”

  “Negative. If she sees us all, she knows she’s surrounded. I’d think she’d want to pick and fight only one on the way up trying to leave. Low altitude limits her velocity, and we can cap her in en masse.”

  The captain rubbed his chin, thinking, then leaned back and sighed. “A crapshoot. Not enough information. Spin up the drives, prepare to dive under power. Launch both wings. Get ready to start with the beams.”

  “Beams, Sir? At this range?”

  “Don’t expect to hurt them. Just want to see what they do when we show up on their screens in a big way. If we scare them into Jasman’s frigate, we save the cost of ordnance and they are just as dead.”

  The bridge started to vibrate from the air rushing past the opening launch portals on both sides of the ship, setting up a haunting harmony he hated, as if they were living in a giant flute. It sounded different, unbalanced, worse than normal, because of the stuck launch door. He glared again at the busy and embarrassed port wing control commander, too involved in directing the launch and repairs to note the captain’s eyes.

  “No significant change in vector” the sensor specialist reported, confirming what his eyes told him from his own screens. That was surprising. He hated surprises. He expected some sort of change at suddenly seeing an obviously attacking frigate, and some of the beams were indicating hits, though they would likely not be particularly devastating at that range. But no change? Still working its way north, low and zig-zagging slightly in random shifts, close to the ground. A dotted line started appearing on the screen, following the ship.

  “What’s that?” he asked, highlighting it on his screen. After a brief pause, his answer came back with a chuckle. “Hotspots. Beams hitting flammables on the ground starting a line of fires where she passed.” A moment later, they disappeared from his display, designated as clutter.

  The line of interceptors from another frigate spread behind Tajemnica, as his line started spreading out around him, then going ahead. The screen flashed briefly, a stream of data flowed down a window in a corner of his screen.

  “Jamming! Hard stuff, all sorts of messing with things.” The chief sensor tech and his minions twiddled and twisted controls, trying to find a solution. “WOW! That’s some serious…. New tricks for the training manuals.”

  On the tactical screens, the center vector suddenly turned, and kept turning, as sensor adjustments were made, modified, and reworked. “She must see us, turning to run… away…” The sensor tech’s evaluation fades as the turn goes past 180 degrees, and continues pulling hard Gs in a three-quarter circle, then a full loop… then vanishes. The hollow sounds of the wind across the launch doors ceased as they close at last, and the silence of the sensor and tactical crews trying to figure out what happened was all the more noticeable.

  “Where is she? Somebody talk to me!” The captains scowl deepened. “She can’t have just disappeared! Ideas, speculation, ANYTHING?” The seconds ticked by, techs working madly to unscrew a problem they can’t identify. One of them caught the captain’s eye, holding out his hands, palms up with a shrug indicating “got nothing here” before getting back to work.

  “Jamming is brutal. Got nothing but passive; visual is too dark, UV is too far, nothing but low-res IR. Datalink says everyone else has the same problem.”

  Captain Nomon and the sensor specialists stared at the converging lines representing ships in the task force, now aiming at a point with nothing on the screen. Techs scrambled, the captain thought as precious seconds ticked by, where every second might be a half a kilometer or more in any direction. One of the techs muttered “Screw it,” and changed a setting to eliminate much of the filtering, putting raw sensor output on the screen. The mass of information changed the screen from a neat map with icons, vectors, identification information, and tables of data, to an odd and difficult to read collage of color. Predominant on it were the infrared images showing color differences. The laser-started fires that had been blocked as clutter by the computer were clearly visible against the cooler land around, following the path that Tajemnica had traced out, leading to the huge circle the ship had made on the prairie she was running low across, then leading away. It continued in the same direction, new hot-spots of ground fires, and the fast moving hull of Tajemnica herself, firing to create new hot-spots, and heated by air friction to nearly the same temperature, which had been automatically filtered as clutter! She was screaming west, trying to bypass the low-flying frigate’s screen

  “Ha! Weapons, fire anything you have that can reach her. Interceptors stay spread out, save your ammo, but vector to converge. Let the others know what we have!”

  “Already done so, Sir!” the eager reply came from a no-longer frustrated sensor specialist.

  On his screen, Nomon could see the suddenly changing vectors on the different groups as the information passed and they started to alter course. It was an inspired move that got her out from being surrounded so uniformly. Instead of converging simultaneously, she’d be going nearly one-on-one with M’boto’s frigate before the others could even the distances out a bit. His group was the last to respond, because of low altitude and caution, being the last to receive word, incompetence, or some other reason he could not be sure. As he looked at the long-term tactical picture, five or ten minutes out, Tajemnica turned sharply, heading straight for M’boto, and a mass of additional icons appeared just as the display cleared up completely.

  “No more jamming, totally silent. Missile launches, lots of them. She ditched a few missile pods,” the tech reported. M’boto’s ship was clearly launching missiles too, and the screen quickly grows cluttered with the converging masses of flying metal and beams, the two ships on a nearly direct collision course, Tajemnica dodging as wildly as any fighter, making the cruiser’s maneuvering look desultory by comparison. Interceptor icons starting turning red, blinking, and flickering off the screen as they were hit. The recently impressive-looking screen of ships rapidly disintegrated, interceptors destroyed, damaged, or fleeing for reasons unknown. As the two vec
tors closed and briefly crossed paths, suddenly the frigate’s icon sparkled brilliant red and went out, only five of her interceptors remaining in the air. The screen flickered and froze briefly, then shifted back to raw IR input as the hostile jamming was back at full power. The landscape was littered with the blazing hot spots from crashed ships and debris, and Taj’s heat trail continued westward toward the rugged mountains on the horizon.

  “Damn! Helm, slow up a bit, talk to the other ships, converge on her simultaneously above her. Low and one-on-one looks like a really bad plan.” Apparently seven warships worth of overkill, wasn’t. On the screens, vectors altered, some extending, some shortening, and some just changing direction. He hated surprises, but he had to admire a determined and resourceful enemy. At least he wasn’t the one finding out what the bad plans were, unlike that glory-hound M’boto.

  Looking at the situation, there were likely a few minutes before anyone might be in reasonable firing range again. “Tactical, speculation?”

  “Try to hide in the mountains, maybe? Rugged stuff, it would limit the incoming attack angles so they could concentrate defensive fire.”

  “But we can still just sit over them, so… then what? They have to run out of ammo eventually, and we have a lot more beams. Where else might they go?”

  “Past the mountain range is the sea, no place to hide at all. Plains here are almost as bad, though the fire trick won’t work again. Hope we get careless and keep taking them on one at a time in the mountains, maybe? They can’t win, but I’m not sure what they’ll do.”

  “OK, then. Slow and methodical. Cap at altitude above effective railgun range with an even ring, draw the circle tight slowly. Pass the plan and hope they agree.” Not having an overall commander in a four-nation (well, now three-nation) thrown-together task-force like this was awkward. Too much negotiation, no guarantee actions would be properly coordinated. On the other hand, sometimes chaos was useful.

  On his screens Tajemnica still headed for a narrow gap into the rugged, snow-capped mountains. Once she passed though, only his ship straight above it would be able to directly see it on sensors, the rest would be blinded by the steep rock. Of course moving that fast in the mountains, he thought to himself, might solve the problem on its own. The bridge crew was nearly silent as they watched the ship twist and turn, cutting angles impossibly fast and close. The starboard wing control officer, himself a former fighter pilot, shook his head in appreciation for the daring maneuvers, knowing that if one of his own pilots were to fly so recklessly he would be suspended for a month, if he survived.

  Without any obvious reason why, Tajemnica veered up out of a low valley and darted down a side-rift, a high, steep, long, straight cut with snow and micro-glaciers lining it. At the same time, jamming came back with a vengeance. This time the switch to raw thermal imaging was quick. They watched as the valley, initially patchy with a modest range of natural cool thermal readings rapidly becomes a uniform snow-cold temperature end to end, with the hot glow of Tajemnica standing out starkly against it, then pulling up hard as she neared the end of the valley, going up high above the rim rock and briefly heading straight at them and making launch detectors scream warnings. Nomon didn’t have to call for evasive maneuvers; the helmsman did them automatically, giving sudden weight to his body that the accellacomps couldn’t overcome. The other ships in the fleet, unexpectedly seeing the vertical flight of Tajemnica on their screens, also started to maneuver as sharply and erratically as they could.

  No reports of dying ships or people, only modest damage, appeared on his screens. He watched as Tajemnica completed her loop and dove back into the valley… where her heat signature faded rapidly into the background of frosty, even, whiteness. The sensor specialists scrambled once again, switching to raw feeds of everything, then sorting it out as fast as possible. Views and data shifted rapidly, without rhyme or reasons as various specialists tried different things, knowing she still flew because that hellish little ship was still jamming active measures so effectively. Range was close enough that on visual it became apparent what happened.

  The first pass through the valley had induced a valley-long series of avalanches that filled the small valley with a massive and deep layer of fine white airborne snow and ice. Her second pass was so low it was deep inside it, under the frigid layer and cooling rapidly. She could be hidden anywhere in the valley, undetectable on jammed active sensors, under the uniform cold layer passive sensors could see. Nomon saw an opportunity. “Weapons! She’s trapped, launch nukes! End to end in that valley, six warheads evenly spaced!” Rapidly the men at the weapons punched control codes and verified launch authorizations, target areas, yield, safety distances, and all the rest that such destructive weapons required. A few interceptors from another frigate, closer than the rest, launched a few missiles at the valley from long range on general principle. There was no return fire giving away Tajemnica’s position.

  The missiles were finally launched after seemingly interminable seconds, safety and security protocols ensured. Missile fusillades came from other frigates, and one of the cruisers, too. Everyone on the bridge held their breath, watching the missile tracks rapidly converging on the valley like seeds tossed in a giant furrow, the half-dozen nearly identical countdowns until detonation ticking by on screens. The timers fell toward zero with painful slowness, until the valley filled with nuclear fire. Sensors were no longer being jammed by active measures of an opponent, just with the impossibly intense interference cause by six tiny suns, and followed rapidly one after another by five more from other ships, matter turning to immense energy- heat, light, RF, X-ray, and a soup of the entire EM spectrum -turning the cold white valley into an impressive cauldron of flash-vaporized water and rock in a giant upward pointing super-heated blast.

  The ships below the horizon of the jagged line of mountain ridges saw, but were largely unfazed, by the tremendous energy conversion in the valley. The two ships above, the Montserrat and one of the cruisers just arriving nearby, were rocked violently by the shockwave, and even at their normally safe altitude the landform and additional warheads made it a very tense ride, with flash damage reports detailing numerous failures, and two interceptors incommunicado. On visual screens, nothing discernible could be seen in the roiling clouds rising explosively up from the newly glassed valley. Data flowed by, sensors and technicians gathering and interpreting what they can. Warhead yield numbers were all over the place, something sure to come up at after-action report, but then again surely not all the ships would have had identical missiles of the same age. They were used and handled so rarely it might be a good thing to study in detail when they had time. Nothing could be seen and positively identified, lots of reporting of “nothing certain, yet!” came flooding in. The stuck launch door was reported as repaired, and Nomon decided against launching anything more into the maelstrom. A dramatic encounter, but it ended here.

  One of the tech’s called out urgently. “Linscott reports he just lost two fighters, an anomaly reported heading down a valley. Not as hot as she was, sensors still messed up from the nukes, but looks like she got out of the valley just in time under the snow. She doubled back while cold, then headed down a valley for the sea!” As he watches, the data feed shows tracking data reported by Linscott’s frigate. Sure enough, a wildly maneuvering and slowly warming hull showed up on IR.

  “Damn! Westward! Fire a barrage of heavy anti-ship missiles, IR terminal tracking, manual remote control until final approach. Helm, follow her! Wing control, reform the line two high, headed west! Launch remaining three! Weapons, prep nukes for launch so there is less delay next time. Prep four missiles for initial, four more for immediate follow-up!”

  The weapons officer spoke up. “Sir! Only four nukes left in the magazine. Lots of conventional and hyper-vel, though.”

  Captain Nomon swore silently to himself. He knew that. Budget cuts left him with only ten this deployment. He would take it up with the bean-counters later. “OK, prep all four fo
r a launch on command, only launch two on first barrage, hold two for a fast follow-up.” The weapons officer nodded an affirmative and got to work convincing the computer they might need to be ready to launch at the touch of a button but without a defined target yet in her sights. Ahead, Captain Linscott lost another pair of fighters as they tried to ambush Tajemnica coming around a valley corner, but instead got surprised when she cut over the top of a ridge instead of following the valley floor. One fighter was shot, one apparently got clipped by a massive armored corner of the ship. Moments later, she’d passed Linscott’s ship and was out of the mountains, screaming low and fast across the plain toward the nearby sea, while the cap of frigates, cruisers, and cloud of smaller ships clarified above her. With the distance and time from the nuclear detonations increasing, sensor input improved, slowly, until jamming was resumed proving without a doubt that the ship they chased was the intended target. The thinner air at high altitude allowed faster flight, and maneuverability meant less in the wide open seascape.

  Nomon grew cautiously optimist as he watched the vector arithmetic slowly converge on a solution that spelled the final end for this most creative of opponents.

  The weapons team coordinated with the other ships. A massive barrage of railgun fire, then conventional missiles of every type from every ship, mixed at random intervals with nukes, some with manual guidance, some with totally automated guidance, some with hybrid. Everyone was invited to the party, every cruiser, frigate, fighter, and interceptor was to launch everything they could for three volley waves of time on target and contact detonation. Not very fancy, and damned expensive, but anything that could survive that valley deserved nothing but the most intensive weapons workout they could manage. Beams were already firing at extreme range, and would be slowing their rate of fire, reaching heat-limit soon.