Starcorp 1: Escape from Sol

The UFP spacefighters were grouped into three fighter wings numbering one thousand and twenty-eight, or less. Each wing was divided into two groups numbering five hundred or more, and each group was divided into five squadrons that numbered a minimum of one-hundred. Altogether they stretched backward into a wide and ragged formation so great that the whole of their number could not be seen visually.

At the front of this procession, a group of five-hundred spacefighters began to thrust forward. The armada that they were attached to appeared to be falling away as the squadron pushed ahead into the black of space. Within seconds of activating their boosters, they began spreading out. This went on until they had a broad front that matched the height and width of the force in front of them. Within thirty seconds, all that could be seen of the UFP squadron was the light coming from their boosters. Fifteen seconds later these went dark and the fighters commenced to free fall through space. Two minutes after that their targets were in the lethal range of their weapons.

Leading this group forward was Major McLaughlin. He was several seconds away from giving the order to fire when each of the one-hundred targets in front of him appeared to break apart, expand, and transform. A second behind this he noted a continuous spray of projectiles spewing out from them. The projectiles were flying out ahead of the mows in numerous directions across the space that separated the mows from them. McLaughlin’s first thought was that the fire was random, but he dismissed this when the computer attached to his spacefighter reported that seven projectiles were coming towards his vessel.

“Activate D-E-D” McLaughlin shouted.

Two seconds after that command was given four of the projectiles coming towards his vessel disappeared from the screen. But the remainder continued unabated.

“Evade, evade,” McLaughlin commanded at a holler.

McLaughlin had been reluctant to give this command. He knew that any evasive action would create an overload of work for the targeting computer. But in this instance, he feared that the last three projectiles were too close and moving too fast for the Directed Energy Defense System to destroy them.

The pilot responded to McLaughlin’s command an instant after hearing it. The secondary thrusters at the top of the spacefighter fired at full blast an instant later. The burn lasted for two seconds. At the end of this time, the three projectiles passed through the area overhead where the spacefighter once was.

“Seven more,” the crewman behind the weapons console shouted.

McLaughlin noted that the targeting computer was slow to lock on to these distant projectiles. He knew that the sudden evasive move of the spacefighter was the cause of this complication.

“Evade,” McLaughlin ordered with a shout.

The pilot reacted to this command by spinning the spacefighter about so that its rear was directed at its two o’clock position relative to its direction of fall and angled thirty degrees high. An instant behind this, he fired the main thrusters. Over the next three seconds, everything on the display shifted towards the upper right corner of the monitor. In the display, the projectiles could be seen streaking by and off the screen.

“Fire at will, fire at will,” McLaughlin yelled into his microphone so that all the spacefighters under his command could hear.

Sawyer’s mow had been falling without input from him for the past two minutes. At the end of this time, he received an order to the ready station from Doherty. This order was transmitted to all one-hundred mow pilots. In response to this order, Sawyer took manual control of his mow by touching his right index finger to the display on the control sleeve attached to his left arm.

Sawyer had control panel sleeves on both arms. The sleeves were similar in appearance to white gloves that extended halfway up the forearm. Attached to the outer sides, along the forearm, were two-inch-long laser pointers. The control panels and the head gear were the only electronics affixed to Sawyer. The bulk of the mechanics that operated the mow existed behind the interior lining of the cockpit. All visuals were being produced by the monitor that enveloped him. The display provided animated graphics of the mow’s surroundings out to the end of its sensor field or the end of whatever sensor data that was being fed to it by an outside source. In this situation, all the sensor data being fed into Sawyer was coming from the Orion. His mow allocated no power to a sensor field.

“Target all UFP spacefighters in lethal range of your guns,” Doherty instructed after a minute of silence. “We have to make them break formation.”

After this, Sawyer heard nothing for another fifteen seconds. At the end of this time, the command he had been anticipating with dread blared through his headphone speakers.

“Engage, engage, engage!”

After hearing this Sawyer extended his arms out in front of him and then flagged his hands and forearms in a large U pattern. It was an action that was not unlike a musical conductor calling for the attention of his orchestra. The motions went down and away from his body and then up. The mow’s computer responded to this action by cracking the hull open along a hundred different interconnecting diagonal lines. Like the shell of an egg, the hull of mow broke apart into several dozen geometric shapes. As the flakes moved apart, the mow expanded out into a robot with a basic humanoid configuration.

In this new disposition, the mow took up four times more space. It had two arms, two legs and a torso. The head was, essentially, a platform for sensors, scanners, optics, communications and particle beam attachments. Much of the exoskeleton was a lattice of mechanical limbs. The upper torso was a reinforced chamber that housed the power plant and the cockpit. The area of the abdomen housed thrusters that faced forward and back. The lower legs housed repulsor engines at the foot. Each forearm was a housing for a repulsor engine. The thrusters were located where the hands would have been. Five railguns were affixed to the underside of the forearms in a circular configuration. Altogether they were capable of discharging one-thousand slugs per minute.

The deployment into this humanoid robot configuration took little more than one second. No sooner had it done this did the mow begin to spew out railgun slugs in rapid fire succession. Each projectile spurted out of the railgun with a flashlight. Within a fraction of a second, they disappeared into the black of space. The firing paused again and again as the mow adjusted its aim for a new target. These redirections lasted for a second or less. The mow needed only to adjust an arm to affect a new aim. Repeated short burns of the maneuvering thrusters were used to adjust and steady the mow.

All these actions and maneuvers by the mows were being orchestrated by the pilots inside them, and all of this was being done via motion capture. Repulsive electromagnetism between the Sawyer’s suit and the lining of the cockpit kept the pilot suspended in the center of the sphere. Magnets within the suit at the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet made it possible for him to perform the movements that he wanted the mow to replicate.

The projectiles that were being rifled out of the railguns were football size nuclear warheads that were encased in a metal covering. The destructive effect of the slug was the kinetic energy it imparted upon impact. The warhead was a self-destruct feature. It detonated automatically after a set period of time. This was done to prevent errant projectiles from flying off and doing damage to something else, somewhere else, at some time in the near or distant future.

Sawyer had just finished firing off close to one-hundred slugs at seven separate targets when he brought the thumb and fingertips of his left hand together and gave his right hand a flip from the wrist. This was interpreted by the mow’s computer as a command to cycle out of combat mode into flight mode. These gestures were interchangeable with either hand. An instant behind this command Sawyer extended his arms out to either side with his fingers separated and swung his arms and hands out in front of him. The gesture resembled the act of pulling suds together in a bathtub. This had the effect of giving Sawyer a God’s eye view of his surroundings. A three-dimensional image appeared between his hands. The view around his mow was condensed down into a three-dimensional ball. The wall monitors went blank. His position inside this three-dimensional ball was represented by an avatar situated in the middle of the display. In this three-dimensional animation, he could see all the spaceships and projectiles moving about him. By adjusting the positions of his hands, he could rotate the image. Sawyer took less than two seconds to examine this display and then shut it down with a backhand flip at the three-dimensional sphere. The god’s eye view disappeared and the wall monitors switched back on.

Sawyer cycled back to combat mode an instant later. This was affected by the same movements that cycled him out of it. An instant behind this he began to spin his torso to the left. He did this with a movement of his left hand and arm. The hand was flat and the fingers were spread wide. The act was reminiscent of a movement used in water to spin to the left. This action operated his orientation thrusters. These were available in flight and combat modes. But full flight controls were only accessible in-flight mode. To stop his spin, Sawyer turned the flat of his hand in the opposite direction. At the end of this spin, he was head-on towards nine tiny moving blips. Each blip represented a UFP space fighter.

By extending an arm, pointing a finger and circling that area of the monitor, Sawyer highlighted it. He then turned the flat of his hand towards him and pulled in towards his face. This act magnified that patch of space on the display wall. To keep the spacefighters in the center of the display, the image moved up, down, left and right in response to Sawyer’s gaze. The dots that represented nine spacefighters were avatars within this magnified view. Alpha-numeric data in the display detailed their course, speed, and distance. To reduce the image, he needed only to move his hand back away from his face. When the image was magnified to his liking Sawyer turned the palm of his hand outwards. Half a second later the mow’s targeting computer locked on to all nine spacefighters. This was done automatically and was indicated by green circles that surrounded them. This told Sawyer that the targeting computer would compensate for speed and distance. In the time it took for the second half of that second to expire, Sawyer directed his laser pointers at the target he wanted to destroy and clinched his fists. As he did this, an animation simulated the spew of a rapid succession of warheads from his railguns. On several occasions, he unclenched his fists. This he did just long enough to redirect his fire at a different avatar. Three seconds later Sawyer unclenched his fists for the last time. All nine UFP spacefighters had been fired on.

The spacefighters that Sawyer was shooting at were too far away to be seen as anything other than a spec of light by the unaided eye. And they were moving too fast for a silhouette of the spacefighter to be contained within a telescopic lens. Because of this limitation, it was virtually impossible for Sawyer to see a target being hit by one or more of his projectiles. This failing had no effect on the sensor field. It registered everything. When a blip in the display blinked from white to red and back again, this was a report that it was struck by something. When one of Sawyer’s targets did this twice, he knew that he had hit it with two of his slugs. Had he witnessed it with his bare eyes he would have seen the first projectile punch into the back end of the first spacefighter he fired at and splatter sparks and debris out the other side. An instant behind this he would have seen the spacefighter spin violently around and the tail end breakaway into space. A second later he would have seen a second projectile rip into the front half of the spacefighter and shatter all but the nose cone into hundreds of pieces. Even while this was happening, he would have seen the path of half a dozen more projectiles as they streaked by it in the time span of a fraction of a second. While this was occurring, Sawyer returned his controls to full powered flight mode with a flip of his right hand at the wrist.

Much of the dance that Sawyer was performing while suspended in the artificially generated zero gravity of the cockpit was being duplicated by the mow. The reaction time was near to instantaneous. As he twisted and spun about in the cockpit, the monitors in the walls that surrounded him gave him the appearance of flying about in a digitized animation of space. With various gestures of his hands, arms, legs and feet he orchestrated the movements of the mow with a deftness that came from hundreds of hours of practice. In full powered flight, he needed only to flex one or both of his feet downward to produce propulsion from that extremity. By bending both of his knees at the same time he produced thrust from the rear mid torso thruster as well. By spreading his fingers wide, he produced thrust from that extremity. Extending both arms all the way out in front of him, with palms facing out, produced thrust from the front mid torso thrusters in addition to the ones at the end of the arms.

It took less than thirty seconds for Sawyer to fire off two hundred and eighty-nine slugs at twenty-three different targets. At the end of this time, he took notice that he was under fire. The mow was beeping alarms at him from seven different directions. A carpet of miniature speakers built into the lining of the cockpit made it possible to localize these alarms to the direction of the threat. This made it easier and quicker for the pilot to visually acquire incoming threats.

There were hundreds of slugs flying across the divide towards the mows. In Sawyer’s display, the projectiles that were moving in his direction were indicated with red circles around them. Often there was a cluster of these circles overlapped with each other. Each circle represented a single projectile. As the projectiles got nearer their circle became smaller. When they descended into red dots impact was a second away. With a flip of his left hand, Sawyer went to flight mode and evaded several projectiles. An instant behind that he condensed his display into a three-dimensional God’s eye view. It took him less than a second to decide his best course of action and he cycled back into combat mode to fire three UFP space fighters.

The mows had directed energy defense systems, but these were regarded as obligatory attachments. Evasive maneuvers were expected to be their primary defensive response. This was an action they were engineered to perform with far greater speed and agility than a spacefighter. Any one of the mow’s six primary thrusters was three times more powerful than what a spacefighter could produce. When performing evasive maneuvers, this power and speed made the destruction of an incoming projectile approaching at a high rate of speed, near to impossible. Just like the UFP spacefighters, the accuracy of the mow’s targeting computer decreased with sharp movements.

In Joshua’s mind evasion was deemed the best recourse in a battle. He understood that combat tactics would always be developed to overwhelm a directed energy defense system. Sawyer’s talent for evasive maneuvers made his directed energy defense system a seldom used weapon. This way of thinking was stressed to all the pilots, but it was the gamers that embraced it to the extreme. In their minds, the frequent use of the particle beam gun was a strong indicator of a weak player.

It took Sawyer two seconds to maneuver his mow into another patch of clear space. He then went into a freefall that lasted eight seconds. This was just long enough for him to engage five more UFP spacefighters. At the end of this time, he needed to move again to evade three new volleys of projectiles that were coming his way. This shoot and dodge dance went on for another two minutes. With movements reminiscent of an underwater ballet, he twirled and dived and corkscrewed and rolled and rocketed his way out of danger again and again. After a couple of minutes of shoot and evade, a lull paused the battle. Nearly fifteen seconds later the dance began again.

“What’s happening?” Eckhart called out with a look of confusion on his face.

Gruenberg ignored the inquiry. He was busy giving the developments of the battle in front of him his full attention. Its evolution was quick and surprising. It took less than four minutes for the initial engagement of five-hundred arrayed spacefighters to devolve into a scattered disarray of confusion. He did not know how to interpret what was happening. All but ninety of the spacefighters within the five-hundred in this engagement remained in place before the starcorp spacefighters. By his count, he still had an overwhelming advantage. He believed this to be true even though the starcorp spacefighters had not suffered a single loss.

“Colonel Trujillo,” Gruenberg barked into his microphone after triggering his transmitter. “Commit your second group to the fight!”

Eckhart paused to give Colonel Trujillo time to confirm receipt of the command. An instant after hearing this he rephrased his question to address a specific aspect of confusion.

“Why are our fighters retreating?”

In Eckhart’s mind, the events playing out on the monitors in front of him seemed to show the UFP spacefighters retreating from the battle. The bulk of the first five-hundred UFP spacefighters to engage with the starcorp spacefighters were scattered throughout the space in front of them and falling back along the sides of the procession.

“They’re not retreating,” Gruenberg explained in a solemn voice. “Evasive maneuvers have slowed their forward momentum. We’re falling past them.”

This was something that Eckhart could understand. The word momentum was often used when the Armada was first forming up for this trip. He knew that it took extended periods of time for multiple ships to match up their trajectory and their rate of fall through space. And he could see on the forward monitor that the spacefighters falling back around them were doing so across a scattering of trajectories.

“So, what do we do?” Eckhart questioned with a stern look towards Gruenberg.

“About them? Nothing,” Gruenberg answered without returning Eckhart’s gaze. “They’ll catch up.”

It took Eckhart a second to comprehend what Gruenberg was thinking. His continuous stare at the forward monitor told him all that he needed to know. The battle with the starcorp spacefighters was entering another phase. Five squadrons of UFP spacefighters were flooding into the battle space. Eckhart turned his attention to this event and commenced to watching it develop.

Colonel Trujillo led the second half of the UFP Space Force 1st Wing into the fray. Unlike the five-hundred before them, the first volley was theirs. They swarmed into the battle space with their railguns spitting out projectiles in bursts of ten or more. Almost immediately all fire from the starcorp mows came to a stop. In close to a minute’s time their rate of fall increased by a third. The mows were backing away from the fight.

“Hold the line! Hold the line!”

Commander Allen Doherty’s voice resounded in Sawyer’s cockpit again and again. His repeated calls to hold the line and to press the fight continued in the face of an overwhelming enemy that kept getting closer. Despite these calls for more aggressive action the mow pilots continued to back away from the fight.

“We can’t win this! It’s too many!”

Sawyer noted this remark came from a mow pilot to his right and below.

“Silence!”

Doherty’s command roared into Sawyer’s cockpit an instant behind.

“He’s right, we can’t win this!”

Sawyer noted that this remark was coming from a different mow pilot that was to his left and down.

“Get off this channel!”

Once again, it was Commander Doherty screaming into his microphone. His repeated calls for others to stay off this channel did not come as a surprise to him. During their training, it was drilled into the gamers that Channel-1 was for the wing commander’s use only. All pilots under his command were prohibited from speaking across the entire command under any circumstance beneath an emergency. A system was set up to facilitate communication across the entire command. Multiple channels were delegated for specific purposes so that information and commands could be passed on without interference from multiple speakers.

For the gamers learning to use multiple communication channels was the hardest part of their training. Their years in the game pods had attuned them to shouting back and forth to each other across a single communication channel. It was because of this ingrained practice, and the stress of the moment, that numerous gamers kept forgetting their training and resorted to old habits. And this they did to the annoyance of Doherty.

“Stop talking on this channel!”

Despite these repeated lapses in communication protocols Doherty was able to get his messages across. Much of what he said was simply words of encouragement. This was the primary reason why he was given the command. Without a veteran security force officer in-charge, it was believed that the gamers would break and run at the first hint that they were losing. With regards to this task, Doherty was completely successful. On several occasions, he discouraged the gamers from giving up on the fight. But this had no effect on the progression of the battle.

Every one of the one-hundred starcorp space force fighters in this engagement was on the defensive. Even Doherty was forced to back away. The rate of fire from the UFP spacefighters kept them on the defensive. They were too busy evading projectiles to launch their own with any degree of accuracy. More than a few of the one-hundred starcorp spacefighter pilots were contemplating turning about and fleeing the fight. But all had reason to stay a little longer. Doherty had promised them that help was on the way.

The delay in the arrival of this help had close to all the starcorp pilots wondering if it was coming at all. More than five minutes after the UFP sent in its second wave of spacefighters this confusion was clarified. Orion’s second squadron of mows raced into the battle from directions that most did not expect.

“What’s that?” Eckhart exclaimed with a startled expression.

“That’s the other shoe,” Gruenberg returned with a hint of sarcasm.

Gruenberg was expecting a second wave of fighters from the Orion. The problem was that he did not know when or from where they would be coming. The Orion was outside of his sensor fields. The only method he had for monitoring the Orion was by visual tracking. But this was complicated, near to the point of impossible, by the basestar’s natural stealth when posed edge on towards them and by the clutter of spacefighters zigzagging across his field of view. This blindness made preparing for a second assault difficult but not a worry. Gruenberg believed that dividing his forces would make them vulnerable. He trusted that the size of his armada could fend off any attack from the Orion, even the one racing into his sensor fields from above with railguns spewing projectiles into his 1st Wing in rapid succession.

“Engage! Engage!”

Doherty’s bellow was too late to have any importance to Sawyer. The sight of one-hundred more mows racing forward from the rear was all the encouragement he needed. Their attack from above caught the UFP spacefighters by surprise. The second wing of mows divided into four columns as they entered the battle space. Two of the columns steered in from left high and low of the battle space and the other two steered in from the right high and low. Because they were entering from the perimeter of the battle, the UFP forces were limited in their ability to overlap their fire. Despite this, the bulk of the fire that was directed at the 1st Wing of Orion’s Spacefighter Force was now being directed at the 2nd Wing that was charging into the fray. The formation of the UFP spacefighters began to swirl and disband in response to the well-aimed barrage from Orion’s 2nd Wing. Within the first minute of the attack, a dozen UFP avatars in Sawyer’s display blinked red. Most did this two or three times before disappearing from the monitor completely.

Sawyer reacted to the sight of this counterattack by thrusting against his fall and closing the distance between him and UFP force. It was an instinctive act. He knew that he had to lend his gun to the fight for the benefit of the others. He fired into the UFP Armada while dodging numerous salvos of railgun slugs. Two of his targets blinked red multiple times. His initiative was quickly followed by the entire 1st Wing of mows. In ten minutes’ time, the neatly formed 1st Wing formation of the UFP Armada was a scattered mess. All one-thousand spacefighters were widely scattered and falling outside of their assigned trajectories.

“Colonel Kaczynski, engage with everything you’ve got,” Gruenberg roared into his microphone. “Engage now.”

It took little more than ten minutes for Gruenberg to discern that his first wing was so badly discombobulated that they were no longer capable of producing a concerted offensive action. His attack order to Colonel Kaczynski, the commanding officer of the 2nd Wing of the UFP Armada, was a desperate attempt to reverse this trend. Shortly after that order was given, the second wing of the UFP Armada, one-thousand spacefighters strong, began to push past the scattered discards of the formation that went before them. On the large display in front of Gruenberg, this was seen as a computer-generated animation. In appearance, it looked as if a dedicated stream of flying insects were racing through an expanding cloud of dazed and confused brethren.

Once the 2nd Wing of the UFP Armada was on the far side of this cloud it expanded and divided to engage all five fronts of the Orion fighter screen. Three minutes into this engagement these fronts merged into a single battle line across a large area of space. The 2nd Wing of the UFP Space Force situated itself across the entire height and width of it, seemingly like a mesh screen. Situated in front of them, the starcorp mows were nearly invisible by comparison. They were nothing but specs spread widely apart. The weight of fire from the UFP spacefighters coming towards the mows was the primary indicator of their presence. The size of this disadvantage had the mows racing backward to maintain the distance between them. Despite this onslaught, there were only rare indicators that one of the mows had been struck by a slug.

The weight of losses that the UFP spacefighters were experiencing was a severe contrast to the mows. Half a dozen or more of their number were blinking red every second. They fell away from the line like snowflakes falling out of the sky. But they had the numbers to endure this. Their line vacillated under the fire from the mows. Their maneuvering thrusters occasionally made minor pushes up or down, left or right, to sidestep a series of incoming projectiles. Their main thrusters were intermittently used to press the fight by pushing them forward. But the UFP spacefighters had yet to break away into full powered evasive maneuvers. This trend continued for another ten minutes, up until the moment that Joshua committed the last wing of his complement of spacefighters.

“Here comes another group of fighters,” Wilkinson warned with a point towards the large monitor.

Gruenberg watched in silence as the third group of starcorp mows entered the battle space from beyond the sensor fields of his armada. All present noted that this group was smaller than the previous two.

“How many?” Gruenberg shouted out to the crew of his spacefighter.

“Fifty,” Major Everett reported off the tip of his tongue.

Gruenberg took in this information as though it was something to ponder on. All present was wondering what he was thinking and why he was not reacting to this event. They all watched the battle progress for another twelve minutes. During this time, four separate groups of mows assaulted the 2nd wing of the UFP Armada at four locations along its perimeter. By the end of this time, two-thirds of that wing was in disarray and falling behind. Only the center stayed in formation. But by this time, it was clear that the center was doomed to be chased out of its offensive posture.

“Do something,” Eckhart yelled at the commander of his armada.

Gruenberg was quick to give Eckhart a stern look before responding to his outburst in a lecturing voice.

“Calm yourself, Prime Minister. This battle is far from over.

Eckhart’s concern was not lessened by this response and he abruptly challenged it.

“You have another wing of fighters. Why aren’t they in the fight?”

Gruenberg was in no rush to answer this question. He devoted the next thirty seconds to watching the second wing’s center commence to break apart. At the end of this time, he turned his attention to the officer in charge of the spacefighter he was in.

“Major, reduce the forward momentum of the Armada by two-thirds. Bring all forces back into formation. Report back to me when this is completed.”

“What are you doing?” Eckhart questioned with a shocked expression.

Even as Eckhart was saying this Major Everett was barking out orders to the crew and to the armada to bring about Gruenberg’s directive.

“I’m reforming the armada for the next offensive,” Gruenberg explained with an inflection of annoyance.

“We don’t have to reform the Armada,” Eckhart roared back. “All you had to do was commit the 3rd Wing to the fight.”

“And what if they had another one-hundred, or two-hundred, of those things waiting out there,” Gruenberg challenged with a stern look towards Eckhart.

There was a second of silence as Eckhart hesitated to think about this. Gruenberg gave him no more time than this to respond.

“The mistake was in attacking with too little at the beginning,” Gruenberg instructed gruffly. “I underestimated this warship’s fighter screen. One on one, their spacefighters are superior to ours. I can’t risk letting them scatter my entire command. Spread out and disorganized those things could take out my entire command piecemeal.”

Gruenberg paused to give this reasoning more thought. At the end of this, he annunciated the decision produced by the effort.

“I’m not going to let that happen. They have the technology, but we have the numbers. We will reform and attack with more weight, and smarter.”