Fight for Triton

Contents

Earth Attack Guard

Chapter 1

Tritonian Democratic Defense Force

Chapter 1

Earth Attack Guard

Chapter 2

Tritonian Democratic Defense Force

Chapter 2

Earth Attack Guard

Chapter 3

Tritonian Democratic Defense Force

Chapter 3

Earth Attack Guard

Chapter 4

Tritonian Democratic Defense Force

Chapter 4

Earth Attack Guard

Chapter 5

Tritonian Democratic Defense Force

Chapter 5

Earth Attack Guard

Chapter 6

Tritonian Democratic Defense Force

Chapter 6

About the Author

"To fully appreciate the lessons available from any battle, it

is necessary to study two truths: the truth of the winner and

the truth of the loser. It is not enough to mimic the decisions

of the side which owned the advantage in intelligence,

strategy, and equipment; there is a wealth of knowledge to be

gained from the vanquished.

Naval Officer Training Manual

1898

Earth Attack Guard

Chapter 1

Preparations

"If they ever write The Complete Unabridged History of War, I sincerely doubt this battle will make it into the ‘Went Exactly as Planned’ section."

Skeeter Hower chuckled quietly at his witty sarcasm, and just as quickly forgot it. He was not in the habit of letting distractions interfere with the job at hand, but the magnitude of the errors being committed in front of him deserved some measure of recognition. Skeeter returned to his flying and quickly slid his Defender into position alongside the Commander’s. Once there, he scanned the heavens to monitor the progress of those joining the formation after him.

His boys were flying well. The Commander, of course, would never remember that—as with most leaders, he was always too busy to notice when subordinates didn’t screw up—but Skeeter watched each pilot’s performance with pride. He wrote himself a mental note to pass on the appropriate accolades the next time he spoke to the men.

Things were finally calming down. The recent fiasco, a perfect demonstration of asinine, self-inflicted destruction, was now fully behind them. Skeeter, however, was convinced there was still much left to go wrong.

His ill feelings concerning the mission had surfaced during preparations the night before. There were two things Skeeter had always dreaded: one, making drastic changes in a plan at the last minute, and two, tempting the Fates with showmanship. So, of course, late on the eve of his first scheduled battle, the Planning Staff had ensured both those nightmares would come to life.

It was the Commander who had smilingly delivered the good news. I have called you in to inform you that tomorrow we will be flying a show-pass in attached-four formation for the troops staying behind.

Skeeter had almost spit fire. What a ludicrous idea, sir!

Your orders are as stated, retorted the Commander. Our Section will join the entire First Wave for the pass before departing on our mission. You will prepare the men.

As the Commander spoke, Skeeter had sketched himself a mental picture of this change to the plan. He had drawn in the entire First Wave (an ungainly string of 4200 craft) parading like an accordion—sometimes unbecomingly too far apart, sometimes dangerously bunched too close together—across the heavens. He had then drawn in his own six-craft part of that Wave, positive as always that his Section could handle the task at hand, but all the time praying that none of his pilots would flinch while they flew unnecessarily close together. Finally, he had focused in on the configuration dictated: attached-four. Quickly, he had drawn in the three Defender-Clones each pilot would have to hook on to his Master Ship. And, just as quickly, he had envisioned that the formation would become a fireball.

In desperation, Skeeter had blurted, You know my men never fly attached-four!

Are you suggesting they’re not capable? If so, Second Commander Hower, I will relieve you of your duties and replace you with someone capable of guaranteeing the men’s preparedness for battle.

Aw dammit, sir. You know these guys are the best-prepared collection of Defender pilots you’ve ever seen. This is not a question of ability; it’s a misplaced attempt on your part at omnipotent command authority. Hell, this whole show-pass thing was probably your idea. You just want to see how high you can get us all to go when you yell, ‘Jump!’.

At least that’s what I should’ve said, thought Skeeter in hindsight. The fact that he had simply saluted, turned, and walked from the room without responding to that insult left him rather disappointed in himself. Skeeter Hower may have been extremely brave and courageous in his own mind, but in real life, he had always been the perfectly compliant subordinate. He had, unfortunately, yet to find the sword worthy enough to fall on.

It had been by Skeeter’s choice that his pilots had stopped flying attached-four formation. He had always seen it as something useless, something unnecessary, but most importantly, something un-tactical.

That topic had become one of Skeeter’s more aggressive barroom arguments. On any given Friday night, after one or two too many scotch-and-waters, most knew better than to dive into a serious conversation with Skeeter. But, every so often, either out of ignorance or on a dare, someone would sheepishly approach and challenge, You know, Boss, I just can’t understand why your guys don’t fly attached-four more often. Don’t you think they’re qualified enough?

Whereupon, Skeeter would detonate. Boy, lemme tell you. That’s about the most ignorant, pigheaded thing I’ve ever heard emanate from your nasty-smellin’ mouth. Did you get dropped on your head as a child, or are you just genetically stupid?

And, on he would rant, for hours at a clip. The gist of his argument, when cleared of its flowery, alcohol-induced flare came down to seven simple points:

1. Throughout the history of air warfare (nay, all warfare),sending a lone wolf out on his own to battle the enemy had resulted in a number of dead wolves.

2. Generals and Commanders had, therefore, demanded that the wolves travel with others (called wingmen) in packs, hoping that maybe the pack could both operate as a team and explain away any dead wolves.

3. Eventually, we proved it was not only impossible to work together as a team, but it was also more probable that one’s wingman would cause more harm to one than one’s enemy ever could.

1. So, they built the Defender. The perfect solution, because you are actually your three closest

2. wingmen. You sit in one craft, aptly called the Master, and simultaneously pilot three Clone craft. Since those Clones are controlled by you and not another human, all communication-caused miscues vanish.

4. But, it’s not easy doing four different things (i.e., flying four different craft without having them simply resemble four peas in a pod). So, each Defender pilot owes it to himself to spend every flying moment improving that skill.

5. Unfortunately, there is a tiny flaw in the Defender design. Someone way back in the design process put three hooks on the Master so the Clones could be attached. Evidently, that someone saw a need the rest of us never did. Damn, they don’t even ferry Defenders from the factory with their Clones hooked on!

6. Of course, some Commander jumped right on that. I believe it would be properly aesthetic, the geriatric goon probably said, if we had the Defender pilots hook all three Clones onto their Masters and had them perform all shows thusly. Never did the man think that it was exactly what we didn’t want to teach our pilots (see point 5 above). Never did the man think that from birth, all we wanted our pilots to believe was that they were schizophrenically flying each of the entities in a four-ship.

He had always concluded the argument the same way. The Defender is one of the simplest, most efficient fighting craft ever made. The long, sleek pyramid design looks eager to annihilate anything that crosses its path, even when it’s just floating dormant alongside the Fleet. When the three Clones are attached, though, the craft comes to resemble some sort of ungainly snowflake tumbling through space. As long as I am in charge, he had always vehemently promised, no one under my command will ever have to fly that archaic dinosaur of a formation.

Spending the precious hours before launch detailing the Defender’s attached-four response characteristics to his boys had, therefore, not been an easy pill for Skeeter to swallow.

Thankfully, nothing had misfired as they joined up. Carter, Skeeter’s wingman, had tucked himself securely on Skeeter’s left. The Commander, therefore, had Blackmon on his right, Skeeter on his left, Murray on top, and Andersen underneath. These were the best four fliers Skeeter commanded, which left him rather anxious about the experience in the Second Wave. It’ll be all right, he had convinced himself. They’ll be able to take care of themselves. I gotta trust them.

Once joined, Skeeter had momentarily allowed himself to relax—just in time to watch the whole plan disintegrate.

DANGER, DANGER, the Universal Communicate had whistled. Skeeter had instinctively turned his head toward the sound while his brain had quickly sorted through possible causes for the warning, trying to beat the on-craft console to the solution. Almost simultaneously, each had reached an answer.

My God, Skeeter had shuddered, nobody collides on launch anymore!

EXPLOSION…TWO ATTACKER CRAFT…

Super. Two dead prima donnas. I wonder if…

NO WEAPONS FIRED INTO EXPLOSION…

Okay, calm down, no bad guys here yet.

DAMAGE TO FLEET AND WAVE NOT YET ASSESSED. POTENTIAL DAMAGE: MODERATE AND HIGH.

Dammit, I knew this was gonna happen. But, they had to have us packed in close and pretty for their show. Boy, somebody’s gonna get his organ spanked for this gem of a decision!

About the same time Skeeter finished his monologue with the console, all three levels of the Communicate had begun screeching. The Universal Channel, so called because all those flying were required to be tuned to it, had cackled with the voice of the Wave Commander: Terminate Phase 1. Repeat, Terminate Phase 1. All Sections transition immediately to Phase 2. Repeat… Similarly, the Section Channel of the Communicate, where Skeeter’s part of the Wave could speak without interrupting the entire Wave, had bubbled with news of reported damage. The exploding Attackers had been precariously close to the flight of Destroyers that Skeeter was scheduled to go in with; each of those Destroyers now was coping with and attempting to communicate his damage to his flight-mates. But, worst of all had been the chatter on the Local Channel, Skeeter’s and his boys’ private frequency. The Commander had babbled incessantly, drooling on and on about the situation at hand and about responsibilities in the next phase, as if they hadn’t just briefed all that an hour before.

Why doesn’t he just shut up? Skeeter had contended. We know what to do! Thankfully, the boys hadn’t seemed affected. They were still flying well.

Terminating Phase 1 had been, in the realm of all possible options, undoubtedly the worst choice. Its effects had cascaded almost immediately. The Sections had no time to separate before attempting to slide into the orbital approach channel. So, instead of showing up through the first choke point in an ordered manner, the Earth’s first team had become a melee, resembling a raucous crowd of schoolchildren pushing their way to the front of a lunch line.

Such was the situation at hand. Such was the situation which brought about Skeeter’s Complete Unabridged History of War remark.

Looking around, Skeeter figured they were about tenth in line. Thank God, he said, only about ten more minutes and I can finally cut these Clones off from around me.

As he continued to wrestle with his misshapen craft, he once again became incensed at the entire planning process which had helped set him in this precarious carousel. What a stupid plan this is!

He had argued all along that there was no need for a single-orbital-channel Train Attack. On Earth, with all the enemy sensors watching their every move, he could understand the need for starting far away and letting gravity bring the force silently into position, but there was no way Triton had that sophisticated a defense network. Why, Skeeter wondered out loud, didn’t they all just form up, blaze their engines, and overwhelm whatever forces stepped in their paths?

He knew the answer to that. Whenever the entire Earth Attack Guard acted as a unit, it always used the Single Train. There was not yet born the Senior Commander who would stake his career on trying something different, no matter how smart that something different might be.

Which brought him to his final point. Why had they brought half the entire Earth Attack Guard to put Triton and its pesky Tritonians in line? Somebody higher than Skeeter should have put a quick stop to that idea. As it was, with the size of the army they brought, Skeeter was more worried about getting shot by an anxious friendly Attacker than a deadly Tritonian foe.

Granted, Triton had asked for it. They could not have timed their transmission, We Are Returning To Reclaim What Is Rightfully Ours, any worse. The message had been received unintelligibly the same day the Presidential vote-of-confidence campaign had kicked off. It had been translated to New English about the same time said campaign had begun to wane. Without much thought, all those in power soon appreciated that a victory over the evil Tritonian empire would be just the confidence-improver that the voters needed.

A number of fundamental questions would have to be answered, however, before a successful campaign could be waged. Questions like, where was Triton?

Triton is the largest of Neptune’s moons, the experts responded. At nearly 6100 kilometers in diameter, Triton is actually the solar system’s largest moon.

Who lives on Triton?

It is uninhabitable. Surface temperature is-253 degrees Celsius.

Who, then, sent the message?

Unknown.

Armed with such compelling intelligence, the Earth Attack Guard had set out. In a mild show of arrogance, they now had enough firepower on their side to eradicate Neptune, let alone its small, insignificant satellite.

Unfortunately, Skeeter reasoned, that was just too much. Commanders were stepping all over each other in an effort to get their boys to the front, to make sure their boys did some killing while there was still some killing left to do.

Aw, I guess you can never have too big a fleet or be too careful about its employment, Skeeter finally accepted. It’s probably better than jumping into this without a care.

Skeeter shook off his philosophical aura and got back to flying. They were now sixth in line. About five more minutes of calm, he decided, and then let the madness begin.

DANGER, DANGER, rapidly destroyed his anticipated calm.

ENEMY CRAFT APPROACHING…

TOTAL NUMBER OF ENEMY CRAFT: SIXTYTHREE…

Skeeter tired of the millisecond delay and inconsequential information on the Universal, and switched without permission to the Front Sections Channel. There was a lot of chatter there as the ambushed Destroyers in the front tried to climb back up the ladder toward the safety of the Fleet. Only when he switched channels again to the Front Attacker Local did he begin to gain some valuable information.

Weapon launched, target 10:40:25, announced an anonymous Attacker.

Launch confirmed, responded his Controller.

Skeeter immediately pushed his detection range to its limit and searched around the coordinates that had been called out. The 10:40:25 he had heard represented the orthogonal distances (in thousands of kilometers) from the Mission Control Center to the target. As expected, he didn’t see much. Of course, he could see the shooting Attacker—those things were so huge, they were easily visible no matter what the range. But, the targets weren’t there, either because they were too small or too far away. Silently, Skeeter thought the unpardonable and wished momentarily that he were flying an Attacker. The Defender’s capability to resolve standard-sized targets at 200,000 kilometers was enough for him during Earth-orbit missions, but it sure would’ve been reassuring to have the Attacker’s 500,000 right now.

Quickly, though, he rationalized that thought away, You gotta be kidding, Skeeter Hower. They couldn’t pay you enough to sit inside one of those lumbering behemoths once the shooting started. Be happy right here in your tiny, very hard to see cocoon.

Target 10:40:25 destroyed, broke the silence.

Weapon launched, target 35:40:25, shouted another Attacker.

Weapon launch confirmed.

Skeeter marveled at the crisp, calm, coherent exchange. One thing Attackers could do was communicate efficiently. They prided themselves on it, perhaps spent too much time emphasizing it. But, it sure paid off at a time like this. Skeeter had always tried to get his boys to stress communication, but he had never made it a critical point. Once they got back home, he promised himself, he would.

Of course, he countered, that whole conversation was really unnecessary. Eons ago, there was probably a need for controllers and pilots to communicate, but there was really no need for that now. Both players in the conversation knew immediately when weapons were launched and both knew immediately when targets exploded. History, not necessity, had etched that exchange in stone. Maybe, Skeeter finally reasoned, I’ll keep spending my time worrying about how the boys fly and not how they talk.

Target 35:40:25 damaged, the Controller pronounced.

Whoa, Nellie! Skeeter whistled. They must not be quite as dumb as we thought they were!

There was only one currently accepted method to survive an Attacker pulse, but it took some smarts to use and left the survivor crippled almost beyond recognition. The method involved waiting and watching the Attacker’s pulse of super-saturated lithium until microseconds prior to impact, and then shooting directly at and hopefully completely exploding the pulse while it was still some distance from the victim-to-be.

There were two lethal aspects to the superbly designed Attacker weapon. First, it constantly accelerated after leaving the launcher and expanded until huge as it approached nine-tenths the speed of light, which meant that even a poorly-placed shot would still be painful over a rather large volume. Second, the packed lithium was so dense that no reasonably sized craft inside that lethality volume ever had more than a two percent chance of not getting struck and annihilated by a bunch of super-accelerated lithium nuclei.

Defeating the pulse, therefore, was an extremely time-sensitive operation. After innumerable computer-simulated engagements, Skeeter had come to realize he could not shoot too early, because his Defender’s hydrogen pulse would not have enough power left at impact to force a lithium-hydrogen fission explosion. Nor could he shoot too late, because then the expanding pulse would be too large for him to completely nullify all of it, allowing a number of untouched lithium atoms to continue on their paths towards his forehead. Even if he managed to shoot inside the tiny window of time that physics and chemistry had granted him, though, he still had to pinpoint his shot—something akin to picking off an apple at 1000 kilometers. And, if he did all that correctly, he then had to contend with a rather enormous fission explosion going off in his face. Time after time, the simulations showed that the best he could hope for, given his exceptional flying and shooting abilities, was to limp home to the Fleet in a useless, irreparable vehicle.

Surely, Skeeter therefore reasoned, the Tritonian target must be one lucky soul. There’s no way anyone can knock out that pulse the first time…

Target 10:15:5 missed.

Understand, ‘missed’? came back the Attacker’s bewildered response.

Confirm: missed.

Hastily, Skeeter switched back to the proper Channel, his mind racing in a thousand different directions. Missed was a word he had never heard in conjunction with Attackers. What could have happened? Did Triton possess craft sophisticated enough to render Earthen superiority ineffective? Or was it just poor weapons employment by nervous rookies? Either way, by the time the Attackers had another chance to fire, there’d be at least one untouched Tritonian in their backyard. C’mon, Boss, Skeeter silently complained to the Commander, let’s get this show on the road.

They had finally reached the orbital channel.

Section, spread, ordered the Commander.

Skeeter checked that Carter was ready to follow and then led him away from the Commander. Once they had slid the required 1,000 kilometers, Skeeter turned off his engines. Gravity began to speed him silently along the Train Formation’s pre-briefed attack axis. Through the calm, he watched Carter start to push away further into the void.

DANGER, DANGER, interrupted the Universal. Skeeter ignored the warning, knowing full well the news concerned untouched Tritonians in their midst. News like that he didn’t need repeated. Besides, his finger