Roads Paved in Shadow
Book II
Chapter VI
"Earth War-Part 2"
Cyrannus Star System:
"Missile alert!" announced Strike One, the second raptor designate dedicated to DRADIS and ECM counter measures. "Thirty-two inbound. Conventional."
Starbuck frowned at the warning. The enemy had initiated their launch earlier than she had expected and her DRADIS hadn't detected them until after Boomer had warned them. What surprised her even further was that the missiles were slower than their standard Colonial counterpart. That made her smile. Any advantage in combat was good. Now, she had to see how 'smart' those missiles were. "All squadrons go active. Remember your training."
Major Kinto glanced at his LIDAR and felt mildly disappointed. He was expecting a somewhat easier mission. He was anticipating what was to come next and this delay was irritating. Those Colonials were good. Their fighters were already spoofing the missiles and shooting them out of the sky with an impunity that surprised him. Intel reports had informed Earthforce that their fighters were overall unarmored and weapons weak, but in some ways equal in maneuverable capability to the starfuries, but he hadn't fully believed it, not when taking into consideration the upgrades that his squadron had been outfitted with.
His Tactical Fight Officer, Jennifer Charita, grumbled softly, "Not one of our targets were hit." The brunette was as disappointed as he was as the lack effectiveness of their missiles.
Kinto didn't respond to his TFO's comment. But he had to admit that he was an impressive feat for supposedly inferior fighters. Well, his squadron would have to do this the hard way.
The short-lived Centauri conflict at Proxima ten years earlier, proved the star fury's capabilities and effectiveness. The updated Thunderbolt had a four to one kill ratio against the Centauri sentries. The Earthforce capital ships were even more effective against the Centauri capitals. The Centauri suffered a disastrous defeat, one that nearly caused Emperor Catagia to go catatonic with rage. As punishment for the defeat by 'the human trash', and the failure to contain Earth's expansionist activities into supposedly Centauri territory, the madman ordered the beheading of most of his admiralty. Those actions appeased his rage, but it didn't stop humanity's military from dominating everything it touched. The antagonism continued to simmer between Earth Alliance and the Centauri Republic. It was another enemy that EA would have to deal with an immediate future. But for the moment, these Colonists had to be dealt with. "Yellow Jackets three and four, arm nukes. Initiate launch. We'll thin them out before we tangle."
"Roger that, Yellow Jacket One. Initiating launch in five seconds."
"Roger that. Heads up. Let the nukes do their job." He chided himself for not doing this at first. But he was trying to save his nukes for the larger targets. "When enemy has been thinned out, we mop up what's left. Leave the capitals alone for now. Let the Olympus gunboats do their job."
Kinto, like any good commander, had no intentions of losing any of the men and women under his command. The tactical nukes should thin out the numbers nicely allowing his people the cleanup what was left. But, he was also curious to see how they would respond to this attack.
Sixteen five kiloton nuclear tipped missiles launched from the bellies of the modified Thunderbolts.
"Radiation alert! Inbound, sixteen nuclear missiles. Estimation, five kiloton range. Missiles are stealth with ECM. DEADIS is trying to burn through."
"Understood." Kara half expected this. The first group of missiles were all but useless against her viper squadron. The most logical thing for them to do is what she would have done. Try to thin the enemy out using nukes. Well, her people were experts in dealing with this type of attack as well. During the long cold war with the Cylons, they had practice all sorts of scenarios this was one of them. "Can we get a lock on incoming missiles?"
"They're throwing out all kinds of interference, trying to confuse our DRADIS. Give us a few seconds to burn… got it. Their stealth systems were good, but they weren't good enough, not against the newest countermeasures that her fighters and raptors possessed. "Twenty seconds out and closing. We have clean locks."
"Black Wolf One to Vigilantes, we got this. Watch our backs."
"We got your back, Black Wolf One, Go for it. Vigilantes and Primus, pick a target and launch DAFMs."
"DAFMs launching. ECM are active and tracking."
Six seconds later, thirty-six Diana class anti-missile missiles vectored towards the Earthforce heavy space strike-fighters. EF countermeasures screamed warnings as the units tried to spoof the incoming missiles. The pilots were more than a bit stunned that their Minbari-EF hybrid systems were having so much difficulty trying to counter the Colonial missile tracking systems.
This marked the first time any 'alien' missile couldn't be completely confused by the stealth systems. Centauri, Vree and even the older Minbari strike missiles couldn't come close to any EF fighter so equipped. ECMs on both sides fought to protect or kill their targets. The UCF tactical system was considered all but jam-proof and had proved itself time and time again even against the feared Drazi Sky serpent fighter. The Thunderbolts had proven themselves time and time again.
This time, EF fighters were forced to perform evasive maneuvers to keep from being hit and were forced out of position. Missiles on both sides passed one another trying to acquire and hit their targets.
The four Black Wolf vipers fired their turbo boosters as each of them began firing their forward mounted thirty-millimeter mass accelerated depleted rounds. The relatively slow EF missiles' defensive protocols were smart enough to attempt to evade the incoming fire, but not smart enough to keep from being killed by the hunting vipers. The nukes hadn't had time enough to arm themselves before they were shot down.
Major Kinto's initial excitement turned into healthy caution, the type of caution that kept one alive. The enemy vipers had closed in and destroyed the missiles before they could go active and detonate and that was an important lesson for him and his squadron. Every alien government surrounding Earth Alliance didn't rely on missiles as primary weapons. In that aspect, Earth was unique.
Not so here. These people used the same anti-missile protocols and knew what they were doing. "So much for beyond visual," he said to his crewmate. They would have to do this the hard way.
"Eight seconds before contact," Charita informed him.
His squadron would have wiped out Centauri or Narn fighters at well beyond visual range by now. This was turning out to be more intense than he first assumed it would be. "Everyone, mark your targets. Wingmen stay together. Take your targets down."
The first Colonial vipers flashed by him at less than four kilometers before his auto-Gatling pulse cannons fired. Radar and Lidar were almost useless as it struggled against the counter jamming. Furthermore, those little SOBs were fast. The spotting/ targeting computer registered a hit just as his peripheral vision saw a brief flash. One viper was gone he acknowledged just as his threat computer began blaring warnings. His fighter was hit twice, and his high port engine was crippled by Colonial anti-fighter rounds. Again, he was surprised those rounds had penetrated both his crystalline and standard armor. What type of canon shells were they using he wandered? Twisting his ship to track and kill the viper that had tried shred his fighter. He fired his twin Minbari-derived neutron pulse cannons missed as the viper darted out of the way.
His wingman had scored another kill an instant before he was bracketed by no less than three Colonial vipers who proceeded to tear his ship apart with their overpowered ordinance. The fighter broke up just before it exploded. Two more Starfuries tried to kill those same vipers and were having a devil of a time doing it. Radio chatter was jammed with pilots calling out targets or calling for assistance.
In the back seat, his Charita was busy yelling out targets while trying to bypass the damage inflicted on their fighter. Kinto barely heard her as he used every bit of zero-gee combat knowledge he had to get this persistent Colonial off his tail. "I got you!" he yelled, only to miss again. The pilot trying to kill him was crazy. Pulling a one-eighty turning at the speeds they were going should have torn that fighter apart. He felt a small stab on envy.
The second wave, a group of modified Aurora star furies had just joined the fight and although heavily armored as compared to their earlier design counterparts, they are being hit and torn apart by the vipers. Highly maneuverable, they were still didn't have the speed to counter the hunting Colonials who were trained to fight against overwhelming odds. They scored kills but so did the enemy. The one-man fighters' formations were broken up and the vipers with raptor support fell on them like a school of Piranha smelling blood.
This battle had just turned into a firefight on a scale he'd never experienced before. Swinging his fury around in a one-eighty spin, he gutted another viper before the enemy he'd shaken off for a few seconds was on him firing, putting a score of heavy cannon shells across his starboard side. More emergency alarms sounded off. His backup avionics flickered and shorted out.
"I burned through its stealth," His Tactical Fight officer Jennifer Charita cried into her helmet transceiver while she focused on the short-range tracking system. She was busy trying to keep the robust weapons/radar system from shorting out due to enemy cannon shells. Plasma pulse were in a league all their own but Colonial close in weapons were nothing to sneer at as. So far, four of his Thunderbolts had found that out to the hard way. Seven others were severely damaged and were being forced to retreat from battle. "You only have a few seconds before I recalibrate again!"
"Roger that. Target acquired firing," he yelled back at her. Trace rounds flew passed his fighter coming too close for comfort. Neutron-based lasers shot out from his gun ports, targeting the Viper with a red striped tail which he assumed was their leader. And… He missed! "Impossible".
It seemed as if whomever was piloting the craft anticipated what he was about to do and had literally moved his fighter out the way. Activating his thrusters, he pulled his fighter into a tight one-eight turn, so that he could fire at is designated target and once more, and to his shock, the enemy fighter had already done the exact same thing and was already firing. The viper was perforating his ship with high velocity kinetic rounds, lots of them. The rounds tore into his ship destroying crystalline armor, turning it into shrapnel. But the robust crystalline armor had done his job and kept his behind from being blown apart. Adrenaline fueling his reflexes and sweat pouring from forehead threatening to blind him, he tried to reacquire his target only to see that his target had went evasive was now turning, vectoring for a second attack run.
That pilot was gifted… The last thing he needed was an overachiever trying to make him the latest silhouette on the side of his fighter. For a second, he toyed with activating his shield. But that only gave him five seconds of respite while the power hog drained his power. Plus, it screwed with his maneuverability, and that was the last thing he needed in this fight.
His wingman was gone, killed by these Colonials and he intended to make these people pay in blood and fire as soon as he killed this pilot. Then, he'd rejoin and reform his squadron, reform and kill them all. After he got that viper off his tail! Suddenly the continual shredding of his armor stopped. Thank the ancestors! Two of his fellows saw his dilemma and had come to his aid.
"Whoever that was did a number on us," his TFO told him. "What kind of ammo are they using? We have damage across the board. We have to pull out of this before I can affect any repairs."
"Weapons status?"
"The system's overheating. We lost two cooling units for the plasma weapons. You have about three minutes of firepower before we burn them out."
"How many missiles do we have left? I'm seeing error codes."
"Six missiles left. Two of them are offline. The launch release clamps. They won't release."
"No choice. We have to pull back," Kinto growled. In this condition, his fighter was useless except for target practice now. Communications were alive with Earthforce pilots being put through their paces. The vipers were paper thin when it came to armor, but their tri-cannons were supremely dangerous. These people specialized in close range combat techniques and their experience showed. Earthforce fighters specialized in long-ranged BVR combat techniques. They were at a disadvantage here. His people were relying too much on radar and lidar targeting systems to do the job for them. That weakness was evident now as enemy vipers ripped them apart with decreasing efficiency.
"Pulling back behind the gunboats. That should give us some cover until we can get back to combat effectiveness.
"Roger that."
The major broke off combat and quickly punched in the waypoint coordinates and began accelerating towards his support gunboat. The Olympus support designate lingered behind the others. Tearing his eyes away from his HUD he saw dozens of flashes of light in the distance. The fighting was a little too far for him to see what was happening. But the frantic transmissions were telling. Despite the armor, despite their advanced avionics, and despite their superior scanning and tracking systems, they were being blown out of space by these Colonials. It was a humiliation no one expected.
Spread across the Cyrannus star system, they didn't have enough resources for reinforcements to get to them in time. It was going to be up to the gunboats to pull this debacle of the fire. As far as he knew, this was the first decisive defeat of Earth force against these primitives. His squadron would be the butt of jokes for years two come.
The threat indicator began screaming pulling him out of his musings.
"We've been re-acquired!" Jennifer yelled. "We're being painted!" Her voice betrayed the panic that she felt. Two vipers were vectoring towards them, their weapons hot. The Thunderbolt's ECM was fluctuating and all but ineffective at this point and at this range. They were also the target of a tight beam radar fix coming from several other vessels much further away from fighting. "They must be augmented with their version of AWACS with those vessels far from the combat zone.!"
Kinto didn't care how they were being painted, only that they were. Instantly, Kinto began putting his fighter through a series of frantic evasive maneuvers. Less than a second later, he felt the ship being hit by sledgehammers as the Colonial cannon shells ripped through his star fury and his body. He opened his mouth to scream just before he and Jennifer died in fire.
Lieutenant Louanne 'Kat' Katraine took a second to make sure her target was dead before heading, along with her wingman to help Starbuck out of the jam she'd gotten herself in. Apparently, she was making too much of a nuance of herself and had no less than three of those oversized Earther fighters trying to kill her. The now exploding Earther wreck, the explosions occurring due to the remaining ordinance cooking off, was one enemy fighter less to deal with. That pilot had the nerve to try to kill her in one pass and then ignore her?
Yeah, right. Why he or she didn't expect her to come back and re-engage was beyond her. Too bad for him. The fighter with the dragon face just went extinct just like the rest would.
"So say we all," she muttered to herself. Her tri-cannons were blazing before she knew it, catching her new opponents trying to take Starbuck out unawares.
This was a pilot's life–to live in glory and die in fire. She knew that her wing mate, 'Jolly' was thinking the exact same thing.
Breaking up the attack on Starbuck, she and Jolly turned to engage the missiles fired by the two incoming gunships.
"Galactica Actual. All squadrons, break off attack. Proceed to emergency landing stages immediately.
Kat, Jolly and the surviving viper pilots immediately broke off and vectored towards their carriers. The fact that they had broken off their attacks meant only one thing. On her DRADIS screen she saw Starbuck and her wingmen breaking off their attack catching the enemy by surprise for a second. She knew it wouldn't last so she and the others would retreat as quickly as they could.
"Next time," she promised.
CDF Galactica
"All port batteries open fire," Adama ordered. A constant stream of anti-flak cannon fire poured from one of three dozen antimissile cannons started along the port side of the damaged battlestar. The eight cruisers and nine destroyers that made up the small fleet trying to defend themselves against the Earthforce aggressors quickly followed suit. The Olympus gunboatsin wedge formation had fired a total thirty-three nuclear tipped missiles at the Colonial fleet. Those missiles slammed into a wall of uranium depleted shells and were effectively blocked from causing any damage. The second wave of missiles that followed three seconds behind the first were more successful. Two of them crashed into two destroyers, crippling one and obliterating the other.
Not to be outdone, the battlestar, cruisers, destroyers, and the two strike stars initiated an alpha strike. Close to one hundred five-kiloton nuclear missiles arced towards the Olympus gunboats. In response, the gunboats use their own antimissile batteries to destroy the incoming missiles with only partial success. The darkness of space turned white and sixteen missiles that hadn't been intercepted hit their targets. Five or those missiles scored a direct hit on one of gunboats knocking it out of formation. Shields gone, its haul blacked from the blasts, its thrusters corrected the uncontrolled trajectory moments before the ship visibly shuddered. Internal explosions rocked the vessel and one of the engine exploded. The shield engine overloaded and that caused a cascade effect spreading to the fuel storage cells.
"Missiles hit the target. One kill!" Dualla announced quickly. "Whatever those electronic shields or blisters are, they were able to block our missiles.
"We got one."
"By sheer luck," Tigh grumbled.
"Prepare for another alpha strike," ordered Adama. The approximation attack did much better than he had dared hope for, but the hope died as it did earlier. The smaller Earthforce ships were protected by the same type of energy field that the larger ones had. He was hoping that there were two small to be able to handle such energy requirements, but he was obviously wrong. Between energy blisters and their stealth system, was almost impossible to even directly hit one of the larger vessels in the same thing was happening here. "Recall all of our fighters," he ordered. "We're going to have to retreat."
"Sir," Tigh muttered. "We might be a to get through those shields with the second strike." He loathed the idea of retreating, but he also knew that it was almost impossible to fight an enemy that couldn't hurt you but couldn't hurt in return. "How long before all of our fighters are back?"
"Five minutes."
"I want every portside weapon we have firing at those ships. We have got to keep them off our backs for five minutes."
"They should be in firing range within seconds. DRADIS signal is degrading. We can't get any kind of accurate lock now on the gunboats, only approximations."
It was happening. Whatever stealth system these Earthers were using, it effectively skewed DRADIS accuracy by as much as three percent, making accurate targeting almost impossible. There is no possibility of winning the fight under conditions like this. The Galactica was equipped with the older and war battered DRADIS which was unable to correct for the skewing. To continue fighting under these conditions was suicide. "As soon as the last fighters are onboard, I want us to jump."
"Enemy gunboats are firing!"
The eleven Earthforce Olympus corvettes supported by an advanced model, jump capable Monsoon gunship engaged the much larger, but more fragile Colonial heavies. Having weapons capability with longer-range capabilities, Earthforce warships hit back hard. Twin particle beams raked three of the closest CDF destroyers. The destroyers were firing the main weapons against the gunboats to little effect. Most the shells never even came close to their intended targets and the few that did simply bounced off the energy blisters of the gunboats.
Earthforce particle beams had no trouble burning through the heavy layers of flak and hitting their Colonial targets. Kobollian armor didn't stand have a chance of blocking incoming fire as the particle pulses melted through the relatively thin armor, burning through vital systems and crew members alike. They also found ordinance and vital fuel depots and in a matter of seconds, all three ships were floating, expanding debris fields, a silent testimony to the power displayed by the Earthforce weaponry. Moments later, two Colonial cruisers were hit.
One of the cruisers was cut in half by an energy beam fired from the larger, more heavily armored Monsoon gunship. The rear section, its main engines still active, crashed into the front half which promptly crumbled into an unrecognized mess. A massive amount of debris and body parts spread everywhere just as the cruiser exploded. Not one of the crew of any of the destroyed vessels had a chance to escape.
The three strikestar missile carriers again unleased their nuclear arsenal at the Earthers. As before, the Colonials couldn't lock onto their targets directly, but because of one lone raptor that performed a short-range jump next to one of the Olympus ships, they were able to target the raptor's position when they fired. The two pilots that perform this suicide mission were intending to jump out immediately having stayed a few seconds in order for their fellow Colonials to have the time to lock onto their position but they both knew it was impossible. Instead, they sacrificed their lives seconds later as enemy plasma fire burned through their small ship. Their mission however was fulfilled. Sixty anti-capital missiles hit Earthforce ships in an Alpha strike. The remaining Colonial cruisers added their missiles as did the surviving destroyers. As with the last time, the huge numbers of nuclear missiles detonated crippling two of their targets but doing little to damage the incoming. But explosions did appear to have blocked their sensors for a few precious seconds.
Those seconds weren't enough to stop a torrent of plasma pulse and beam weapons eviscerated another four destroyers and two more cruisers.
"The last vipers are in," Tigh yelled. Alarms were blaring, the latest one indicating an imminent attack. "We're being targeted by at least three of those boats. Our flak won't stop them."
"Our forces are jumping," Dualla informed the commander. "Raptors are jumping. Incoming forces are targeting us."
"Start the clock," Adama ordered. Being the most damaged, the Galactica was furthest away from the fighting, not that that would do any good in the next few seconds. "All batteries continue firing."
"Clock is running. Five seconds…four...three…"
"Energy spike!"
The Galactica vanished in a flash, bare moments before long-range energy beams could rip her to pieces. Adama, indeed the entire crew let loose breaths they weren't fully aware they were holding when the wounded ship appeared back in normal space
"Sir, were holding station seven kilometers from the Pythia shipyard. Unidynal is reporting that five ships made it."
"Gods, we actually made it," Tigh whispered. "She held together," he said to a relieved nut still grim Adama.
"Yes, contact Pythia. Let them know we have casualties. I want to see the latest updates from Picon HQ and find out what's…"
He stopped as the Galactica rumbled. Then power was lost which prompted the emergency lighting to automatically activate.
"That's it. Husker," Tigh whispered to him. The ship groaned and then, rumbled again. "Her back's broken. She's done for."
The Commander nodded his somber agreement at that assessment as he prepared to give orders to evacuate the ship. "But she got us here, didn't she?"
TBC