Jay Allan - The Cost of Victory

The ships were at battlestations, but the crews alternated slumber periods during the approach phase. It's not easy to rest being crushed to death in an acceleration couch with battle imminent, but they did the best they could; if you're tired enough you can sleep anywhere. When they entered the battle zone, the whole crew would be pumped up on stimulants anyway.

The Alliance fleet had nine battlegroups, every one of them built around a single capital ship. Each of Garret's battleships was supported by its own flotilla of supporting craft. There were two, or occasionally three, cruisers in each group, heavily armed and reasonably durable, but lacking the truly heavy weapons and fighter-bomber squadrons carried by the battlewagons.

A destroyer flotilla was also attached, along with one or two squadrons of fast attack ships (FAS). The destroyers were there mostly to defend the capital ship against enemy bombers and attack craft, though they also carried missiles to attack heavier targets. The attack ships were fast and heavily armed, designed to go after the enemy battleships and cruisers. Sardonically called "suicide boats" by their crews, they were heavily armed and fast, but light on defense.

Each Alliance battlegroup also had a single point defense ship, an innovation that had been pushed heavily by Garret earlier in the war. Mostly modifications of older cruiser hulls, these vessels had no heavy weaponry at all, only anti-missile rockets, laser batteries, and angel dust launchers. Pure defensive platforms, they gave Garret's groups a battleship's worth of added point defense capacity.

Garret had his crews brought to full readiness 30 minutes before optimum launch range. Keeping crews sharp and effective during a days-long combat situation was one of the more difficult aspects of fleet command. Garret had a good feel for handling his people, and they were fanatically loyal to their hero-admiral.

The bombers would be hitting the enemy fleet just before the incoming vessels entered missile range. The bombers were likely to take heavy losses since the defenders were not simultaneously fending off missiles and could focus solely on the strike force. But the bomber wings would also inflict their damage before the enemy could launch at the main Alliance fleet.

It was a gamble, one Garret hoped would pay off. Ships went into battle with external racks of missiles to supplement the magazines they carried internally. It was a cheap and easy way to increase firepower, but ships still carrying their racks were at a heavy disadvantage in combat. The missiles were expected to launch before the ships were within range of enemy attack, but Garret's early bomber strike was forcing the issue. If their attack compelled the target ships to jettison the racks, it would cut the enemy firepower significantly - above and beyond any damage inflicted.

"Strike force Alpha, commencing attack run." The com in Garret's earpiece fed him the incoming transmissions from the bomber groups.

"Strike force Beta, commencing attack run." The second group commander echoed the first, followed by the leaders of the Gamma and Delta wings. Four waves of fighter-bombers, 144 ships and 576 men and women running a gauntlet into the maw of the largest space fleet ever assembled.

Into the Valley of Death, thought Garret, recalling an ancient poem about six hundred doomed warriors in a different, yet somehow disturbingly similar situation.

Garret's planning was sound. If his stratagem worked it could save thousands of crew on the ships of the fleet. Missiles jettisoned or destroyed in their launchers couldn't be used to blow his ships apart. But it was a brutal type of calculus that he could perform but never quite stomach. He had known he was sending most of those bomber crews to their deaths, but he did it anyway. They had known too, yet they went unquestioningly. They knew what was at stake.

The bombers were equipped with heavy ECM suites and, not expecting an attack at this range, the enemy was totally unprepared. Garret listened to the reports coming in, knowing they were twelve minutes old when he heard them and wondering if the speakers he was listening to were already dead.

The enemy commander hurriedly ordered his ships to jettison their external missiles and bring their point defense arrays online. Garret's first objective had been attained before his bombers fired a shot. Now they plunged in and, as they had been ordered, ignored all the escorts of the enemy fleet, driving straight to the capital ships. They had one goal, and they targeted all of their ordnance at the launching facilities of the enemy battleships. The Alliance bombers were armed with close-range plasma torpedoes, small sprint missiles that triggered a controlled nuclear reaction just before impact and struck the target as a ball of superheated ionized gas. One of the Alliance's newest weapons, the torpedoes were difficult to target effectively, but extremely powerful. Garret's crews had been practicing for weeks.

"We got in fast, missile fire is light." That was Alpha commander's report, soon reinforced by the others. The enemy had been slow to get anti-fighter missiles launched. Garret's surprise launch had given the bombers a chance to get close enough to make their attack.

The good news didn't last. The bombers were heading straight at the enemy capital ships, and the defensive laser fire from the escort vessels they were ignoring started to take a heavy toll. The bombers were on predictable trajectories, moving at high velocity straight through the enemy fleet. Almost half of them were gone by the time they reached their designated launch points. They fired their torpedoes and then, strapped in their couches, they blasted off at maximum acceleration, trying to outrun the missile volleys sent after them. They had done their job for Garret; now they were working for themselves.

By the time they had cleared the enemy fleet, just under a third of them were left, and they began the slow process of decelerating and vectoring back to the designated rendezvous point. They'd zipped past their targets too quickly to allow for effective damage assessment, so neither the exhausted survivors nor their admiral yet knew that their devastating strike had ravaged the enemy launch bays. Fewer than half of the ships were going to get their own bombers launched and, combined with the loss of external missiles, the enemy's firepower had been degraded as much as 50%. But the cost had been high.

"Entering optimum missile launch range, Admiral." Lieutenant Simon's voice brought Garret out of his guilt-ridden trance.

He put his arm on the edge of the command chair. "Give me a boost, Nelson." He felt the small pinprick as the AI directed the injection of the stimulant cocktail designed to maximize mental clarity and effectiveness. Almost immediately, Garret could feel the drug pushing away the fatigue and the crushing headache. By the time the battle was over he was likely to be a strung-out wreck, but none of that mattered now.

He ordered all ships to flush their external racks in a first volley, and then fired virtually every remaining missile in the fleet in a series of waves, another violation of SOP as outlined in the "book." Only his destroyers kept their small arsenals; every other missile in the fleet was now heading toward the enemy.

His battleships launched 72-96 missiles each, with the gargantuan Yorktowns firing 144. All told, the battleships and cruisers had fired a volley of over 1,000 missiles, each with multiple warheads. His ships were decelerating, and they were moving at a considerably lower rate than the approaching enemy fleet. The lower intrinsic velocity imparted to their missiles meant the incoming volley would hit them before their own salvoes struck, a difference of no particular consequence beyond the possibility that Garret wouldn't still be alive to find out how much damage his attack inflicted.