Earth Strike. Ian DouglasЧитать онлайн книгу.
to ineffectiveness or been swept aside or vaporized by repeated nuclear detonations. But he’d run the gauntlet in close to the planet, and now he was within combat range of the majority of the Turusch fleet.
The near presence of the planet complicated things, but more for the defenders than for the Blue Omega Strike Force. The planet’s bulk now blocked the line of sight to a number of the Turusch warships in low orbit, provided the gravitational mass for free course changes, and in this world’s case even added an atmosphere that could be used either as a defensive screen or for simple delta-V.
The other fighters of Blue Omega were scattered across the sky now, each operating independently of the others. Gray could hear the cockpit chatter, but had to focus on his immediate situation. His wingman … where the hell was his wing?
There she was—Blue Omega Eight, two thousand kilometers aft and to starboard. Katie Tucker was engaging a big Turusch Echo Sierra—an electronic scanner vessel. That, at least, was what Intelligence thought those monsters might be, with their far-flung antennae and hundred-meter sensor dishes.
Confederation tactical doctrine suggested that pilots work together in wings for mutual protection, but standing orders didn’t require it. One Starhawk could kill a Turusch capital ship as easily as two, and a single one of those thermonukes they were tossing around could take out a pair of gravfighters if they were too close together.
“This is Blue Seven,” he reported. “I’m going to try to get in close to the objective.”
Objective meaning the Marine perimeter in Haris, Eta Boötis IV. It took him a moment to orient himself as his AI threw up the curving lines of longitude and latitude on the image of the planet. Haris was tipped at an extreme angle, with an axial tilt of nearly 90 degrees. At this point in its year, Eta Boötis was 30 degrees off the planet’s south pole, the Marine perimeter at 22 north.
There it was … a green triangle marking the Islamic base and the Marine expeditionary force sent to protect it, just now rotating into the local dawn. Turusch ships swarmed above and around it, or poured fire down from orbit. It was what carrier pilots liked to call “a target-rich environment.”
Gray loosed another half dozen missiles, then spotted a special target. Three thousand kilometers ahead, a Turusch fighter transport lumbered just above the planet’s cloud-choked atmosphere, fighters beginning to spill from her bays.
“Blue Omega Leader, Blue Seven,” he called, bringing the nose of his Starhawk around and accelerating. “I have a Fox Tango dropping Toads. Engaging. …”
“I copy, Blue Seven. Blue Five! Blue Four! Get in there and give Blue Seven some backup!”
“Ah, copy, Blue Leader. On our way. …”
The Turusch heavy fighters code-named “Toads” by Confed Military Intelligence were big, ugly brutes thirty meters in length and half that thick. Less maneuverable than their Confederation counterparts, they could accelerate faster, and individually, could take a hell of a lot more punishment in combat. As Gray swung onto an attack vector with the transport, the Toads already released had begun boosting into intercept courses.
“Fox One!” Gray shouted over the net as he released a Krait. “And Fox One … Fox One … Fox One!”
The red-and-black Toad transport was a prime target, easily worth the expenditure of four nuke-tipped Kraits. Confederation fighter pilots steadfastly refused to refer to Fox Tango transports as “carriers.” They insisted that the code name Fox Tango, in fact, was short for “Fat Target” rather than the more prosaic “Fighter Transport.”
Missiles released, Gray snapped out an artificial singularity to port and rolled left, breaking off the run. The enormous transport was throwing up a cloud of defensive fire—sand, gatling KKs, particle beams, and point-defense HELs.
The Toads already released by the transport were falling into echelon formation as they accelerated toward Gray’s fighter. There were five of them, and they were already so close they were beginning to loose missiles at him.
He plunged for atmosphere.
By now he’d bled off most of his velocity, and was dropping toward the planet’s night side at a relatively sedate eight hundred kilometers per second. Using full reverse thrust, he slowed still further as his Starhawk’s crescent shape flattened and elongated somewhat for atmospheric entry, growing aft stabilizers and a refractory keel. He was moving at nearly thirty kilometers per second, eight kps faster than the planet’s escape velocity.
He felt the shudder as his craft sliced through thin atmosphere, and used the aft singularity to slow him further still.
“Alert.” The ship’s computer voice somehow managed to convey the illusion of sharp emotion. “Shielded anti-ship missile closing from one-eight-zero, azimuth plus zero five! Impact in six … five …”
The lost missile, coming in from dead astern. There was no time for maneuvering, and no way to outrun the thing with the bulk of Eta Boötis dead ahead. Gray flipped the fighter end-for-end, searching for the telltale red star of the incoming warhead.
There! Twenty kilometers! Lock … and fire…
The warhead detonated in the same instant that he gave the fire command.
Seconds passed before Gray blinked back to full awareness. Motion-streaked stars alternated with blackness spinning past his field of view. “AI!” he cried out. “Situation!”
There was no immediate response. Possibly, events had momentarily overloaded it. He didn’t need a ship AI to tell him the situation was bad. He was in a tumble, power and drives were out, and he was falling through thin air toward Eta Boötis’s night side at an unknown but fairly high velocity.
Very soon, the Eta Boötean atmosphere would be getting thick enough that the friction would incinerate him.
He was still getting sensor feeds, but life support and other ship’s systems were out. IC was down, com was down, attitude control was down.
The SG-92 Starhawk had a robust and highly intelligent SRS, or self-repair system. Advanced nanotech modules allowed broken or burnt-out systems to literally regrow themselves, dissolving into the ship’s hull matrix, then reassembling. When he checked the details on the dead life-support system, it told him it was 75 percent repaired, and that number jumped to 80 as he watched it. Power and control systems, too, were moments from being back on-line.
He directed the system to give priority to power and flight control; there was enough air in his personal life support to last for quite a while, and the temperature inside the cockpit was not uncomfortable yet.
The operative word being yet. The external temperature was at five hundred Celsius, and rising quickly.
“Blue Omega Flight, this is Blue Seven,” he called, not with any real hope of establishing contact. Communications, according to his IHD, were also down, though there was always the possibility that it was his display or even the ship’s AI that was faulty rather than his lasercom. There was a set list of things to try in the event of catastrophic multiple-system failure, and attempting to reach the other members of the flight was high among the priorities.
As he expected, however, there was no response. He directed the repair systems to lower the priority of the com network in order to focus more of the available power to power and control.
Abruptly, the dizzying alternation of star streaks with planet night halted, the shock of acceleration jolting him hard. He had partial attitude control now, though the main gravs were still out and only a trickle of power was coming through from the zero-point modules. The fighter shuddered as the keel cut thickening atmosphere, shedding more and more velocity.
He searched the sky display for more missiles, but saw none. That didn’t mean they weren’t out there, closing on him. The warhead that had just blasted him into an uncontrolled planetary descent had been shielded and smart, using the sensor-blinding flash of a nuclear detonation to drop to a velocity just faster than the Starhawk without