Sol Strike (Battlegroup Z Book 3) by Daniel Gibbs (red novels .txt) 📗

A shame we don’t have twenty carriers and five hundred ships laying waste to the entire thing. Martin and his fellow pilots were a bit out of their element, flying craft whose handling capabilities were somewhere between those of bomber and space superiority fighters. Ironically, it was to his benefit, as Maulers turned like snails.

“I think there’s something in the shipyard,” one of his wingmen said. “Sensor resolution is still spotty.”

“Let me see if I can clean it up,” Martin replied. He used the integrated tactical network to direct several of his squadron mates’ forward LIDAR arrays toward their ultimate target—the League Navy shipyard. A few moments later, a sharper image came into focus. “Yeah, a Rand-class cruiser. From what I see here, it’s undergoing a refit. Half the armor panels are missing.”

Ripples of aftershocks from Justin’s assault on the fuel complex in Saturn’s orbit radiated throughout the system. Incredibly, no large-scale launch of fighters or military vessels had been observed by their systems. Martin spent little time focusing on it, though. His one mission was to erase League hardware, by any means necessary. After seeing so many of his friends die, hatred for the enemy was one of the few things he had left. Most didn’t see it. On the outside, Martin was still his happy, wisecracking self. But in the dead of night, when the tortured landscape of his soul came to the surface, he had to admit the truth to himself: the war’s toll was extreme, to the point that Francis Martin didn’t recognize who he was anymore.

As the kilometers ticked down rapidly, Martin had no time to dwell on his mental state. Hatred filled him as the shipyard grew larger in his flight helmet’s integrated HUD. The yard was a small part of a much larger orbital facility, but the section they were after was far older than the rest. As such, the eggheads back on the Zvika Greengold felt they had a higher chance of a successful attack. “Close to fifty kilometers and prepare to release Javelin missiles on my mark.”

Freighters, corvettes, personnel transports, and all manner of civilian vessels crowded the HUD—so many that it overwhelmed Martin’s ability to process the mass of dots. Friendlies showed up as blue and enemies as red, while civilian ships, which the computer determined were off-limits based on the specified rules of engagement, were displayed as green icons. Martin darkly mused that it wouldn’t be so bad if one of the anti-ship warheads hit a Leaguer hauler with its shields down. Take some more of these buggers with us.

The lock-on tone sounded in Martin’s cockpit, and he focused entirely on distance and approach vector for the shipyard. Leading the squadron in a downward motion relative to the Z-axis plane they flew on, Martin sought to avoid some of the clusters of vessels. Maybe they have predesignated routes. Probably do, the commies—and send anyone who deviates to a reeducation camp. The range crept down, each second bringing him closer to the enemy.

“Okay, mates, here it comes. Delta One, fox four.”

Twelve Javelin missiles sped away from the squadron of Ghosts, heading straight toward the enemy installation, their exhaust plumes trailing in the void. Sensors should’ve picked them up as soon as they launched, but that would’ve supposed the Leaguers had expected an attack. The concept of Sol itself being assaulted by an enemy—much less the hated capitalists of the Terran Coalition, who had been ginned up for decades as the next boogeyman preparing to destroy the League—was beyond all possibility.

The Javelins began their terminal approach, accelerating. A few bursts of disorganized point-defense fire met the missiles but not enough to matter. All twelve impacted, some on the shipyard’s superstructure and a few on the Rand-class cruiser itself. Bright flashes from the fusion explosions shone against the darkness of the void, briefly as hot as the surface of a star.

“Scratch one League cruiser!” Martin practically shouted. The HUD confirmed target destruction, and for a moment, he felt good, as if they’d struck a blow to repay the Leaguers for the battle of Canaan. It faded almost as quickly as the light did from the blast. The hate and anger were still there, though. They never went away, burning brightly in his soul. He started searching for a new target, as his entire squadron had another thirty-six Javelins between them—until a group of four red dots appeared on the HUD.

His Ghost’s internal sensors identified them as League Shrike fighters almost immediately. As a bomber pilot, Martin had limited experience in dogfights. Despite training nonstop for three months in the simulators both before and after they’d set out for Sol, it still felt surreal for him to rotate his craft toward the enemy and push up the throttle.

While they’d avoided detection for some time, the secret was out. The four enemies headed straight for them. I’ll give the buggers credit. Either they don’t know they’re outnumbered three to one, or they’ve got some balls.

“Delta One, this is Alpha One,” Justin announced over the squadron-commander commlink channel. “I show your primary target destroyed.”

“Confirmed, Alpha One. Just some trash to clean up before jumping out.”

“Understood,” Justin replied. “Secondary rally point beta. Leaguer reaction time is slow enough that I’ve decided to take a run at the Mars military orbital.”

Martin smiled. Blowing up yet another League space installation sounded like a great idea. “Can’t wait, sir. We’ll finish up here.”

“Taclink will coordinate the jump. Good hunting, Lieutenant. Spencer out.”

“Okay, mates, time to turn and burn.” Martin toggled his target-acquisition LIDAR array online and focused on the lead League craft. Your ass is mine, bugger. The enemy fighters continued to bear down on the flight of Ghosts in a nearly straight line. It hit him as suicide, but Martin only cared to erase them from the universe. “Delta One, fox three.” The Vulture missile dropped out of his internal stores bay and raced into the void.

Other fighters in