Fleet Action (wc-3) William Forstchen (fox in socks read aloud .txt) 📖

Twenty years of fighting is pressing the edge of the envelope just a little too much. He pushed the thought aside, no sense dwelling on it. Besides, what the hell would I do with myself to kill the boredom?

A new starfield snapped into focus and at the same instant the radar detection alarm started to shriek its warning.

He leaned over in his chair, punching the alarm off and turned to look at the readout screen.

"Well, lad, we're being tracked," he announced, trying to keep the fear from his voice. It always amazed him how all the others looked to him as someone with ice water in his veins. If only they really knew just how gut-wrenching the fear could really be.

He watched his screen as optical mounts turned, tracking down the incoming paths of the radar, passively searching out the darkness for the enemy.

"Got one sighted, make that two, now three, the closest standing at thirty eight thousand clicks, a light corvette."

Another high energy radar burst snapped on them, this one a narrow focus beam. It could only mean that the Cats were on to him.

He spared a quick look up at the unknown system they had just entered. The jump point was fairly close into the systems sun, a standard class M. He continued the optical sweep. He'd have a good five minutes before the corvette would start to close. Now that they'd been found out, they could at least do a quick scan before jumping back out and shaking off the pursuit in the system which they had just jumped from.

"Getting an awful lot of sublight radio traffic in this sector," Ian announced. trying to get an optical lock on the signals."

Ian, working the long range optical scanners, stayed hunched over his screen. A full radar sweep would have been better, but they would be long gone before the first returns even started to bounce back. The use of the narrow band translight pulse was out of the question. They'd have to drop completely out of Stealth and it'd reveal their true mission to the picket ships.

"Paladin, switch to my screen," Ian whispered, his voice suddenly high and tense.

Paladin switched into the long range optical scan, his eyes straining as Ian spun the optics up to their highest magnification, which could pick up an object the size of a one pound coin from two hundred thousand clicks out.

"My lord," Paladin gasped, "hit the holo recorder switch."

"Already running," Ian replied.

Paladin stared at the screen in disbelief when Ian punched in a computer enhancement with scale gradients superimposed over the image. They were looking at a ship that was at least fifteen hundred meters in length. Several seconds later the computer, now armed with more information, cleared the first image from the screen and replaced it with a higher resolution enhancement, with the beginning of an analysis of what they were looking at.

"Fifteen hundred and eighty meters, estimated half a million ton bulk weight," Paladin whispered. "Range 102 million clicks, orbiting the only planet in the system.

"Dozens of ships orbiting that planet," Ian announced, "coming up now on second screen."

Paladin spared a quick glance over to the secondary images forming, three more ships like the first one, half a dozen more apparently still under construction, a dozen cruiser type vessels that were bigger than the old Concordia — battleships he could only guess would be the word for them, drawing the term out of ancient nautical history. Part of the screen was tallying off a count of transports, more than a hundred of them either docked into what appeared to be an orbital construction yard that filled half a dozen cubic kilometers of space, or hovering around it

The alarm went off again, warbling with a high insistent tone and Paladin turned to look back at his tactical.

We've got company, laddies. Looks like two Stealths just jumped in behind us. Prepare for evasive!"

"We'll lose the visual lock, Ian shouted. "I don't have a full read on it yet."

Paladin weighed the variables and in less than half a dozen seconds from the sounding of the second alarm he came to his decision. Turning back to his main screen he cleared it of the optical and punched in the order for a translight beam sweep, dropping his ship out of Stealth mode. The pulse went out, even as he swung his ship hard over into an evasive. The first Stealth already had a lock on him and dropped a missile which he assumed was one of the new and more deadly IFFs. Before the missile was even clearly away Paladin popped a scrambler, a decoy pulsing with a standard Confed IFF code and capable of reflecting back a radar image of a fleet light corvette, a counter he had rigged up based upon Ian's unpleasant experience.

Ian looked over at him in surprise and grinned, as the transponder snapped to life. It was a clear give away as to who they really were along with the translight pulse sweep. Seconds later the data came sweeping back in with a high resolution read of the enemy fleet. The first missile at the same time streaked into the decoy and detonated. Two more missiles swept out from the Stealths which were turning to follow Bannockburn in its evasive and Paladin punched out another decoy while at the same time launching half a dozen dumb fire flechette bolts from his rear tubes that would fill space behind him with thousands of nail-sized shot that could rip a fighter to shreds if it got caught in the spread.

Even as he piloted the ship he watched the other screen. A green flash indicated that the pulse had been successfully read and stored by the ship's computer.

"Check it!" Paladin shouted.

"We've got good data," Ian replied.

"Load it along with the optical read and our coordinates into a burst signal, aim it back towards Tarawa."

"Loaded!"

Paladin toggled a switch into the burst signal line.

"Green one, green one, this is green two, am under