Hawk Genesis: War (Flight of the Hawk) Read online

  Prelude

  In a public meeting hall in the relatively new city of Chavez, planet of Maya, a large number of young men and women raised their right hands and recited, “I do solemnly affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Maya against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the Prime Minister of the Republic, and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

  An officer of the Federal Navy stood at the front of the packed room. His expression was appropriately solemn, but behind his eyes glittered a flicker of worry. For the first time in centuries, war had broken out.

  Chapter 1

  Three Years, Six Months Later

  Out of the nothingness of space, beyond the orbit of the outer gas giants but deep inside the Oort Cloud of an inhabited solar system, a small tear in the fabric of space opened for a brief moment. When the opening closed, it left behind a small spacecraft. It sat for many long minutes, its passive sensors seeking out the spoor left by the passage of war ships.

  Apparently satisfied that it had entered Elyse without drawing any attention to itself, the craft oriented itself to the interior of the system and began accelerating. Other than its faint drive signature, it radiated nothing to reveal its presence as it slowly moved toward the orbits of the outer planets.

  After it had traveled sunward several hundred thousand kilometers, an even smaller pilotless drone aligned an antenna and transmitted a tightly focused message across a network of similar craft, eventually reaching the attention of a human being.

  The craft that had just entered the system was a scout ship, an advance element of a large force of warships belonging to the rebellion, a group of planetary systems that were attempting to break away from the federation. For its part, the federation had elected, despite sometimes extremely divisive debate, to force the sixteen systems to rejoin the twenty-two worlds that remained. The consensus was that the permanent breakup of the federation would lead to an equally permanent state of war.

  The federation had a large edge in population, and its worlds were generally more capable of building the highly expensive fleets of ships that the war was bringing into being. Against that burgeoning superiority in ships and weapons, the rebellion had fought not only very hard, but also much smarter than the federation. As a result the war had dragged on longer than either side had originally anticipated, far longer than anyone wanted.

  The rebellion had managed to repeatedly route the larger and better-equipped federal forces. Rebel leaders had optimistically assumed that the federation would eventually cave in and allow the two bitter enemies to separate.

  For its part, the federation had wrongly assumed that it could simply spend the rebellion into submission. Unfortunately, when the split took place, a majority of its most able officers resigned from the tiny Federal Navy and joined the rebellion. These officers had repeatedly outthought and outfought the ineptly led federal forces.

  The system of Elyse was well within the federation sector and not only was it a relatively highly populated world with an advanced industrialized economy, its position deep within federation territory would allow the attacking forces, if they could take it, to resupply and easily reach many of the other heavily industrialized worlds which constituted the core of the federation.

  In fact, actually taking the planet itself was not necessary. The large number of facilities that made the system a threat were all in orbit, and once the system defenses were swept aside, those facilities could be destroyed at leisure, a result that would prove to be extremely destructive to the colonists who had worked for decades to struggle up off the surface of a world that had been transformed through enormous effort into one that was hospitable to humanity.

  The federation, aware that Elyse was a likely target, had ordered its primary mobile fleet to occupy that system and not only deny it to the enemy, but crush the attacking forces. This so far elusive task had been attempted many times during the previous three years, and never accomplished.

  However, those previous defeats had slowly managed to weed out the inept, cowardly and merely timid, allowing a new generation of men and women who were both capable and eager to quickly rise in rank into positions of leadership. The small force that was already in-system was an excellent representative of that new spirit. The cost in personnel and material to gain this hard-won ability had been enormous, and the populations of the federated worlds were growing weary. If the federation hoped to win, it had to achieve some significant victories, and quickly.

  The appearance of the rebel scout ship signaled the failure of the federation forces to arrive ahead of the enemy. However, the federals managed to send a flotilla consisting of thirteen capital ships of a radically new and untested design. This small flotilla was, for the moment, all that stood between Elyse and the rebel force of approximately sixty five medium and heavy missile ships and thirty seven fleet carriers plus an unknown number of smaller escort carriers. The total number of fighters in this fleet was estimated to exceed four thousand. Fortunately, the rebel forces seemed to be almost as badly strung out as the federal fleet.

  Even as the message was being received, enemy ships began emerging into the system.

  As soon as he received the Case Zulu message, Rear Admiral Eduardo Sanchez ordered his flotilla to jump into a blocking position. He positioned his ships just outside the limit line inside where the suns gravity well essentially barred FTL travel, while still leaving him over twenty million kilometers outside of Elyse. Even as his crews ran to battle stations, rebel ships began appearing outside of his position.

  Admiral Sanchez knew that Elyse’ orbitals were the target, not his ships, but the rebels initial numerical superiority seemed to convince them to roll him up first.

  As more and more rebel ships appeared, the thirteen brand new federal ships began disgorging scores of an equally new type of small craft, along with their accompanying fighters.

  Until the civil war the federation had never possessed or required a heavily armed military. Both sides began converting freighters, combination passenger-freight carriers and passenger ships into carriers, missile ships and destroyers. The thousands of shuttles that transferred freight between orbit and the planet were turned into missile boats. The war was now over three years old, and for the first time, the federation began to field purpose-built war craft.

  The new craft, called Ferrets, dispersed hastily and began forming into a thin shell directly in the path of the approaching enemy fleet that was rapidly arriving in-system. It was a race against time, and Admiral Sanchez knew his forces were facing very heavy odds. Unfortunately, he had no choice: he had to delay the enemy long enough for the main body of federal ships to reach the system. He and his thousands of officers and men and women knew the odds, but they also knew the stakes, and ran willingly to their battle stations.

  Their placement was crucial: they had to protect the human occupied planet and its orbital infrastructure, but they could not perform that task unless they were able to keep the enemy and its missiles out of the inner system. They positioned themselves far enough solward of the point of entry into the system of the rebels so that they could react to whatever efforts the rebels might take to evade them, while keeping the enemy as far away from the planet as possible.

  The system’s own defenses consisted largely of fighters and missile boats, and were occupied in preventing solitary “leakers” from getting into close proximity to the planet itself. Due to the strong gravitational fields found in the innermost portions
of solar systems, jumping anywhere near a planet or within one astronomical unit of the sun was an extremely risky proposition; that said, it had been done, although rarely, and even more rarely, without extensive damage. However, one destroyer could wreak havoc.

  As each Ferret neared its assigned position it began launching sixteen stubby robot craft that had been affixed to the hull. They moved outward to form a large disk many hundreds of kilometers across. Nearly fifty thousand kilometers behind that cloud of robotic ships a small complement of fighters scrambled into position, ready to attack any enemy fighters that made it through the new and untested weapons controlled by the Ferret.

  Well before all the Ferrets reached their positions in the thin line, the first rebel carriers were disgorging fighters that immediately accelerated towards the planet, located beyond the thin screen of federals. Behind the fighters, converted freighters began launching anti-ship missiles, targeting the large capital ships they had detected rushing to interpose themselves between the approaching rebels and the nearly defenseless inner planets.

  There was no actual high ground here, but the rebels knew they had to brush the light defensive screen aside in order to safely enter the inner system. They could not allow the federal ships to attack their fragile carriers and supply ships.

  As soon as the robotic craft settled into position, the individual Ferrets were each assigned defensive sectors, and powered up their search systems. Each tiny craft formed one element in what was effectively an enormous antenna that was able to see tiny missiles at huge distances.

  The rebel fighters were already within the effective search radius of the new system, and powerful computers in the manned ships began handing off targets to the individual craft.

  The robots began launching streams of an entirely new weapon. Called the Arrow, these weapons consisted of thin shafts of a dense and non-reflective carbon with a tiny one shot motor on one end and a rudimentary seeker head on the other. The weapon was basically a ballistic dart with the ability to make one course correction before striking its target. It relied upon kinetic energy to destroy or damage its victim. After a predetermined time, the darts were designed to decompose into a cloud of harmless dust.

  The Arrows were accelerated to extremely high velocities by a magnetic launcher system in the robotic craft. Each craft held ten thousand arrows, and each Ferret controlled sixteen robotic craft. Their darts were virtually impossible to detect and they were sent out in multiples, most aimed at the incoming missiles, the remainder at the unsuspecting fighters.

  At the large distances of up to one million kilometers that these weapons operated, a direct hit was statistically impossible, but a direct hit wasn’t required. If a dart was able to strike the intense gravity field propelling the capital missiles or manned craft they would transfer an incredible amount of kinetic energy to the target, with explosive results.

  Admiral Ito, in charge of the lead elements of the rebel fleet noted the strange disposition of the small force that had placed itself between him and the inner planets, and began asking his intelligence officers for an explanation of the apparently suicidal maneuvers he was seeing. He had witnessed the federal forces make many stupid mistakes, but he had lately seen signs of a stiffening of resolve, as well as the first instances of good tactical and strategic ability. Despite all the evidence to the contrary he didn’t just assume the enemy forming up in front of him was making a mistake. Of course, if it was, he would gladly accept the victory.

  He didn’t understand what he was seeing, and he emphatically hated surprises. He ordered his missile ships to cease launching while he attempted to decipher the new tactics displayed by the federals. He had a strictly limited supply of ordnance and he didn’t want to waste it in what he feared was merely a prelude to the coming clash of both main fleets.

  The darts streaked into the flight paths of the missiles and began making their final course adjustments, some ordered by the Ferrets, some few by the dart itself. The first flight of missiles began disappearing in immense fireballs as the darts struck. Dozens of darts were assigned to each missile but a missile was a very hard target to hit. Fortunately, it only took one dart.

  The Arrow targeting systems were a very complex and highly advanced array that wove the mother ships, Ferrets and robotic craft into a huge sensor net, connected by tight beam lasers. This net constituted a major advance in the ability to track and target well over ten thousand individual objects, which a major attack of missiles and fighters could generate.

  The mother ships assigned each incoming missile a stream of darts from one or another of the Ferrets and continued to track the missiles and the fighters coming in behind them. There was a time lag built into the targeting system, and the greater the distance, the larger the lag and the smaller the accuracy, despite some of the most powerful computers ever built. On the other hand, the lag would get progressively smaller as the targets approached and the system’s accuracy would improve.

  Barely a handful of the first hundred missiles survived the wave of darts, and already another stream was en route, targeted on the survivors. A single missile survived to reach the outer shell of destroyers, and it was easily picked off by their anti-missile system.

  Admiral Ito’s sensor systems were unable to detect the darts but they could see the robotic craft and he came to the inevitable conclusion that they were the cause of his disappearing missiles. They were only visible for the short time that their launchers were spewing darts, and they looked almost like fireflies, appearing and disappearing on his screens.

  He ordered his fighters – now many thousands of kilometers behind the missiles - to target the robotic craft with their own small missiles, and continue to accelerate into energy weapon range to target the larger ships which sat amongst the almost impossible to detect smaller craft. He didn’t know exactly what he faced but whatever it was he knew he had to quickly destroy it.

  The second and last wave of missiles began disappearing far short of their targets, and additional darts were already being launched at the incoming fighters. The fighters knew something was hitting their missiles, and their pilots began making small, erratic course changes as they came in, creating a severe challenge for the Ferrets.

  Each Ferret had a single defensive laser system but their crews knew that if an enemy fighter could get close enough to the stationary Ferret, the odds were very short that they would survive the encounter. They went to continuous firing as the fighters closed to fifty thousand kilometers.

  As the darts neared the fighters they began making their one and only course change. One, then another, then a third fighter disintegrated in a fireball. The bad news took over twenty seconds to reach the admiral, and he realized that his fighters had no chance unless they could close as quickly as possible to get into laser range of the strange new weapon arrayed against him. Otherwise, he’d run out of fighters, leaving him naked to the federal fighters, strangely motionless behind the cloud of tiny craft.

  He ordered his fighters to sprint at maximum acceleration. It took another twenty plus seconds for his orders to reach the fighters, and by that time seven more had been blotted from existence.

  The highly experienced fighter pilots realized they were in deep trouble, and instead of accelerating they began making extreme course changes in an effort to throw off the unseen danger. This tactic proved to be fairly effective, and for a few moments no additional fighters were struck. They were now within forty thousand kilometers, and just moments away from being able to begin targeting the nearly invisible enemy craft with their own short ranged anti-fighter missiles. The range of their missiles was greater than that, but the defenders were almost invisible.

  Due to their stealthy design the robotic craft and Ferrets were extremely hard targets to acquire; additionally, they were only generating significant energy fields when the launchers were on line. For this reason, the rebel fighters had to close to less than fifty thousand kilometers before their targeting systems
could even begin to detect something they could shoot back at.

  The Arrow system designers took into consideration the evasive maneuvers rebel fighters were now using. The robotic craft began launching spreads of darts, designed to account for the possible range of maneuvers the rebel fighters were capable of. It was an immensely complex problem, multiplied by the number of fighters, but the system was designed to put at least one dart in close proximity to the target no matter what it did. The launchers were now continuously lit up on the approaching fighters’ screens.

  More fighters began to explode. Of the original sixty fighters, seventeen had already been destroyed and they had yet to fire their first shot in anger.

  The Ferrets had by now expended nearly fifty percent of their darts. Seven more fighters disappeared in tiny explosions of energy, but their own targeting systems were finally locking onto targets. Rather than a coordinated launch that would swamp the defenses, each fighter released all his missiles as soon as possible, hoping that would take the enemy’s mind off his own particular little craft. Within thirty seconds one hundred and forty two missiles were launched at the one hundred and eighty two Ferrets, all of which were finally on line. As could be expected, many Ferrets were not targeted at all, and some had two or even three missiles coming down on them.