Starcorp 1: Escape from Sol

Gruenberg had been content to let the starcorp basestar shadow them since its move to their three o’clock position twenty hours earlier. When the basestar matched his acceleration, he became less so. He could not help but worry that he was falling into a trap. He pondered the idea that the starcorps had a large force of these new spacefighters waiting for them in Mars orbit. But this thought continuously failed to make sense when he examined it thoroughly. He could not reconcile the losses that the basestar absorbed so far with the presence of a large contingent of spacefighters sitting idle at Mars. If they had the means to defeat them, they should have done it ahead of their arrival to Mars orbit. And if they did not have this means then they should not be allowing them to approach the planet unchallenged. This thinking had been rolling about in his head for the past twenty hours. At the end of this time, when the basestar turned and began to move away at a high rate of acceleration, Gruenberg began to see the logic behind their action.

“What’s happening?” Eckhart demanded after hearing the sensor operator’s report on the basestar’s turn and acceleration away from them.

Gruenberg was hesitant to respond to this. His brain was still putting the puzzle pieces together.

“They can’t be running,” Wilkinson thought out loud. “They would be leaving Mars defenseless.”

“They are running,” Gruenberg corrected even as he was mentally putting the last puzzle piece in its place. “There’s nothing left at Mars to defend.”

Eckhart was shocked by this announcement. The last thing he wanted to hear was that the starcorps got away.

“What do you mean, there’s nothing left?” Eckhart challenged without giving any thought to the question.

“We’re too late,” Gruenberg reported with a sigh. “My guess is that the starcorp fleet has already left.”

The fact that Wilkinson and Carr appeared to agree with this position made it all the truer in Eckhart’s mind. He could do nothing but fume while he assimilated this. All others waited on him to speak again. Ten seconds later he did.

“What do we do now?” Eckhart grumbled towards Gruenberg.

“We can continue on to Mars and secure what has been left behind,” Gruenberg offered tentatively.

“What about the warship,” Eckhart raged at Gruenberg. “Can we catch it? Can we stop it?”

This question came as no surprise to Gruenberg. He had little doubt that Eckhart would want that basestar and, more importantly, the star-drive within it. This was a task that was well within the boundaries of Gruenberg’s ethics to complete. He was more than a little excited about the prospect of re-engaging with the basestar. It was a trophy that he was eager to acquire. But his military training told him that this hunt was contrary to the armada’s defined objective. They needed only to continue to Mars to complete the mission. To do otherwise was a divergence from his written orders.

“Prime Minister, pursuing the warship is outside of our assigned objective.”

“I decide what our assigned objective is,” Eckhart roared back at his General. “And I remind you, General Gruenberg, you take orders from me.”

Gruenberg took no offense from this rebuke. In his mind, Eckhart’s bluster had set things right with him. He was obeying an order once again, and any wrongdoing in this act now belonged to Eckhart and not him. With an order, which he broadcasted to all his spacefighters, Gruenberg turned his entire armada and set them on the chase for the starcorp basestar.

“Can we catch them?” Eckhart questioned an instant after the order was sent.

“Yes, we can,” Gruenberg reported with discerning confidence.

Gruenberg’s aplomb was well supported. The basestar had no chance of accelerating away from his armada. The small size of the spacefighters, relative to the basestar, enabled them to tolerate ten times more inertia. This was because their Zero G Field energy requirement was a thousand times smaller than the basestar’s. In addition, the basestar was too near for a contest of engine burn duration to be a factor in this chase. The spacefighters had near to cutting-edge thrusters with equivalent burn timespans as the basestar. Gruenberg calculated that the armada would be in the lethal range of their guns inside of five hours.

“What will happen then?” Eckhart grumbled with a concerned expression.

“Then we will either capture it or destroy it, Prime Minister,” Gruenberg answered with a casual delivery.

“And what makes you so sure of this?” Eckhart challenged with a stern look. “Why can’t they just activate this star-drive and escape?”

“Your scientists and engineers tell us that they will likely need to reach a minimum speed before the star-drive will work,” Gruenberg commenced to explain to Eckhart. “And they are more than ten hours away from that speed, probably closer to fifteen. Their lead is too small to make that time before we catch up with them. The starcorp warship will have to engage us directly long before then. And when that happens we’ve got them.”

“Why?”

“You can’t run and evade at the same time.”

Eckhart did not need any explanation for this. He knew that the basestar’s forward momentum would be slowed with every hard turn that it was forced to make. But he still was not convinced that the spacers did not have another trick up its sleeve. When he challenged Gruenberg on this, he got back an answer that gave him reason to believe.

“Prime Minister, if that warship had the means to beat off this armada it would have done it ahead of sacrificing more than half of its spacefighters.”

Gruenberg was ninety minutes into its pursuit of the basestar when Gourmand’s message to the inhabitants of the Sol System began to pass through the armada.

“This message is for the people of Earth. My name is Eric Gourmand. I am the Chairperson for the BX01 Starcorp League. I know that the activities of the starcorp community have given all of you a reason to be concerned about our intentions. I give you my word that you have no reason to worry. It is not now nor has it ever been our plan to do harm to the people of Earth or any holdings belonging to you. We have no intentions of stopping or disrupting the import of foodstuff from Mars. The actions that we have recently undertaken are the first steps to our departure out of the Sol System. We, the starcorp community, have been working in secrecy towards this end for the past two decades. Today this plan is being realized. I know that the relationship between us has been contentious at times. I will not deny our share of the blame for this. But we do want you to know that the well-being of Earth’s inhabitants was the guiding star behind our actions. On behalf of the BX01 Starcorp community, good-bye and good fortunes.”

Shortly after this message had passed through the armada more than two-thirds of its force began to break away, much to the shock of all within the command and control spacefighter.

“What’s happening?” Eckhart bellowed towards all within the capsule.

“We’re losing our armada,” Gruenberg reported with a shake of his head.

“Well, get them back,” Eckhart roared at his General.

“And how do I do that?” Gruenberg returned with a look of surprise. “You can command me, Prime Minister, but you have no such authority over the commanders from other states. They have their orders.”

Eckhart was not deterred by this. He opened a communication channel that all the spacefighters would receive and bellowed out a command that they all stay with the chase. Despite repeated calls to this effect, all two-thirds of the armada continued to fall away. None chose to express cause for their decision to leave.

“They’re still falling away,” the sensor operator called out for all to hear.

This report convinced Eckhart that his efforts were not going to succeed. He turned his attention to the situation he was left with.

“How many spacefighters do we have?” Eckhart questioned his General.

The answer that came back was four hundred and fifty-seven. Eckhart responded to this report with an expression that was an outgrowth of his extreme frustration. Wilkinson and Carr noted same with looks of defeat.

“We don’t have enough spacefighters for another engagement,” Wilkinson sighed out after a pause. “We have to turn back.”

Eckhart gave no response to this. He did not hear anything that he was not already thinking. He maintained a fixed stare at his personal monitor as he fumed over the failure to do all that he hoped to do.

“I agree,” Peter Carr voiced with an inflection of reluctance. “We can’t win against their spacefighters.”

In response to Carr’s declaration, Eckhart sucked in a deep breath and heaved it out a second later. His attention remained fixed on the monitor in front of him. And his expression went from stunned to hard with anger. He held this look right up until the moment that Gruenberg enunciated his opinion on the subject.

“We don’t have to.”

Eckhart swiveled his attention towards Gruenberg with a quick turn of his head, and then he challenged him to explain what he meant by that remark.

“The warship is the target, not the fighters,” Gruenberg explained as though he was teaching something simple to someone very smart.

“But we have to get past the fighters to get to it,” Wilkinson disputed.

Gruenberg looked to Eckhart when he spoke his reply to this challenge.

“We don’t have to engage with their spacefighters to do this. We spread out our forces and go around the spacefighters. We have the numbers to do this.”

Wilkinson was quick to take exception with this.

“There’s no going around them,” Wilkinson contradicted. “It doesn’t matter that we outnumber them. They’re too fast. We cannot scatter our fighters. Alone, or in small groups, our spacefighters are all but defenseless against those starcorp spacefighters. We will lose a minimum of half our spacefighters with this strategy!”

Wilkinson directed the last portion of this remark at Eckhart and delivered it with emphatic emphasis. Gruenberg endured this challenge with indifference. When Wilkinson finished speaking, he turned his gaze towards Eckhart and responded to it.

“By my calculation, more than twenty, possibly as many as fifty, will get through, Prime Minister. All we have to do is punch one hole in that warship and it will be stranded here until it repairs the damage. And without the starcorps that could take more than a year.”

“What about the warship,” Carr queried with a confused expression. “Won’t it have defensive weapons?”

“Undoubtedly,” Gruenberg returned with a nod. “And its defenses are probably extensive. But its primary defensive weapon is its fighters. When there was two hundred and eighty-four of them, we would be lucky to get five spacefighters out of a thousand within lethal range of that warship. But there is only seventy-nine of them now. We have a chance. It can be done.

“By sacrificing seventy percent of our force,” Wilkinson railed back.

In response to this, Gruenberg turned his argument towards Eckhart and continued to sell it.

“It will come at a cost, Prime Minister. But if twenty of our spacefighters gets close enough to launch a large salvo then the odds are good we’ll get some hits. That warship is slow and clumsy. Just one hit, Prime Minister. After that, it’s ours—Checkmate.”

Carr and Wilkinson thought this reply clarified the situation enough to need no further argument from them. Both men were still concerned about the losses. They both knew that this plan would require sending more than half of the crews in their spacefighter force to near certain death. But they resigned themselves to the fact that the decision was not theirs. In Eckhart’s thinking, these losses were not a consideration. He had heard enough to need but one question answered to become sold on it.

“Will this scheme work?”

Gruenberg gave Eckhart an unwavering look before speaking the one answer he believed to be an appropriate reply.

“It’s the only scheme that will, Prime Minister.”

Joshua called all ship’s personnel to battle stations once the entire UFP Armada had turned and was racing towards them. He had anticipated that this might be a consequence of their actions and dreaded it.

“They figured it out,” Noonan commented twenty minutes into the armada’s turn toward them. “What do we do?

Noonan knew that there was only one viable defense left to them. The guns of the Orion had to be brought to bear against the armada if the remaining mows were to have any chance of surviving a third engagement. His question to Joshua was his way of making sure that they were of the same mind on this.

“There’s nothing we can do,” Joshua returned after a long pause.

“We can put up a fight,” Noonan disputed. “The UFP hasn’t faced the guns of the Orion yet.”

“We don’t stand a chance against a force that size,” Joshua corrected.

“Yeah, but we can give them one hell of a bloody nose,” Noonan argued back. “They just might decide to cut their losses and let us go.”

“That would be nice,” Joshua agreed halfheartedly. “But I don’t think they would have turned to pursue us if they were inclined to do this.”

“So, what are you saying?” Noonan questioned with a confused expression.

Joshua gave the query a short time to hang in the air between them before giving his answer with a heavy undertone of glum.

“We can’t let them get their hands on the Orion.”

Noonan comprehended what Joshua meant by this an instant after he said it. The Orion had to be destroyed to protect the secrets within it. This was not an outcome that he had entertained in the past. And it was not one that he was interested in considering at the present. Noonan was full of fight. He did not like being replaced by a bunch of teenage gamers and sidelined. Thinking about scuttling the basestar before firing its first shot in anger conflicted with his fighting nature.

“We have to at least try to give them a fight,” Noonan insisted with a stern delivery. “We can’t just give up.”

Joshua elected to give no response to this. He understood Noonan’s passion, but he did not share his thirst for the fight. From the beginning of this struggle, the loss of every pilot weighed on his conscious. It was his decision to enlist the gamers into this conflict. It was his words that convinced them to risk life and limb for this cause. He had no desire to add more casualties to a cause that looked to be lost. He knew he could save the life of everyone aboard the Orion by initiating the self-destruct program. This would set into motion an automated evacuation process. The space capsules would be jettisoned into space and the reactors aboard the Orion would detonate when the capsules were in the clear. But this was a decision he was not prepared to make at this moment.

“Maintain battle stations,” Joshua called out to his crew. “Keep all weapons charged and at the ready.”

These commands came like music to Noonan’s ears. He was happy to hear that Orion’s combat computer and the weapons it operated were to remain at the ready. But Joshua knew that this preparation was no guarantee that they would ever fire a shot. It was estimated that the UFP was five hours away from lethal range, and they were fourteen hours away from their time jump. The Orion was accelerating towards the outer solar system at its best possible acceleration under the circumstances. The sensor field was consuming near to forty percent of the power that was being generated by Orion’s reactors. This was power that Joshua wanted to apply to the basestar’s engines and Anti-Gravity Generator. But the continued presence of the UFP Armada made the sensor field a necessity.

Despite this inconvenience, Joshua was determined to buy himself as much time as he could. This included using the weapons systems of the Orion if and when circumstances made them a viable option for the escape of ship and crew. This circumstance came into existence eighty minutes later.

The video message from Chairperson Gourmand came as a complete surprise to Joshua and the crew of the Orion. Even though the message was intended for the people of earth, all aboard listened to every word of it. There was no expectation in any of them that this would cause some change in their situation. Shortly after the message completed, they noted that it produced a welcome surprise.

“Admiral, a large portion of the UFP force is turning away,” the sensor operator called out in an excited voice.

“How large?” Joshua questioned back in a hurry.

“More than half their numbers are splitting off from the chase,” the crewman answered back with equal haste.

“Give me a count on the remainder,” Joshua instructed with new enthusiasm in his tone.

The UFP Armada was still in the act of separating. It took more than a minute for the divide to complete. When this was done, the crewman reported that four hundred and fifty-seven spacefighters were still pursuing them.

“We have them beat,” Noonan declared with excited relief.

Silently Joshua agreed with this, but he was reluctant to say so out loud. He calculated that his remaining seventy-nine mows could decimate the pursuing spacefighter force at a loss of a quarter to a third of their own. And this was without the assist of Orion’s guns. He expected his pursuers to come to this same conclusion and turn back. To emphasize this fact to them, Joshua ordered the deployment of the mows.

There was no change in the course from the UFP force ten minutes after the deployment of the seventy-nine mows of the Orion. Joshua began to ponder the logic of their continued pursuit. In his thoughts, he questioned if they had a chance of winning a third engagement. This query sent him on a search for the Achilles heel of his situation. He found it thirty minutes later.

“They’re spreading out,” Noonan reported.

The four hundred and fifty-seven UFP spacefighters began to disperse. It was obvious to all that this was in reaction to the deployment of Orion’s seventy-nine mows. What had Noonan so confused was the fact that this was, in his mind, the worst possible thing they could do.

“They don’t want to take on our fighters,” Joshua spoke while pondering what he was seeing.

“I don’t plan to give them a choice in the matter,” Noonan declared with defiance.

After making this statement, Noonan ordered the mows to pursue and destroy the UFP forces. He saw no reason to ask for Joshua’s permission for this given his original mandate to engage them.

“Recall the mows.”

Joshua’s countermanded came after a sudden realization that the UFP spacefighters were going to attempt an end run around their mows. It took him a second of thought to conclude that this had a chance of working.

“We have to do this,” Noonan insisted.

“We can’t extend the mows out to run down these spacefighters,” Joshua disputed with a sternness in his voice. “Get the mows back inside.”

“We can’t let those spacefighters get within range of this basestar,” Noonan retorted with an expression of shock.

“We can’t stop them,” Joshua roared back. “Do it!”

Noonan was reluctant to comply with Joshua’s order. The reasoning behind it eluded him. Noonan understood that the UFP force behind them was about to attempt a desperate gamble. But in his mind going after these spacefighters became all the more important because of this. He thought it better to try and negate this gamble then to do nothing. Despite this thinking, he complied with Joshua’s order and called back the mows. After doing this, he turned to Joshua and expressed his thinking.

“Admiral, we have to destroy those spacefighters.”

“We won’t get them all in time,” Joshua responded in a soft voice, his eyes staring into the space in front of him and with a mild shake of his head.

“We still have to try, Admiral,” Noonan insisted. “We have no other choice.”

“No, Commander,” Joshua responded with a heavy accent of regret. “We have one.”