2954-04-15 – Tales from the Service: The First Strike at Håkøya
Still waiting on definitive news from Fifth Fleet. Reports are coming in of engagements, but it doesn’t sound like anything conclusive has happened. It seems they’re content to sit out a multi-week campaign in enemy battlespace, waiting for a ripe opportunity.
This suggests to me the enemy force there is still fairly strong; if it were week, the campaign would have been over by now.
When the burst of acceleration faded, Ansa Harper ’s controls unlocked and the weapons systems automatically began warming up. She brought her heading toward the pre-assigned rendezvous point, sensors searching for targets. So far, nothing had been cross-linked from Von Bismarck, but the destroyer had had only a few seconds more time to search itself.
A quiet beep announced the arrival of a second Puma on the squadron net, as the ship launched Talon Six behind Ansa. Already her course and the ship’s were diverging, and Six had to turn through more than fifteen degrees of arc and go to maximum acceleration to form up behind her.
“Resolution area is clear.” The cool voice of the flotilla commander announced. “Proceed with your assigned objectives.”
Seven joined the net a moment later, but, needing to link up with his own wingman, he turned to follow Von Bismarck until Eight got clear. A Puma caught in the open by itself was at a severe disadvantage, as its single pilot would be overworked flying defensively and also trying to get its weapons into line. Doctrine stated that they joined up in twos for mutual support, and the twos joined up into sections of four rigs, which cooperated with each other in squadrons of three sections to achieve operational objectives. That way, nobody had to face the enemy alone.
“Well, Five.” Six, who with a hard deck underneath him bore the ignominious name of Timothy Traverse, used the wingman channel, so Ansa knew she was about to hear something rather ridiculous. The man was a bit of a chatterbox on comms, “What do you think we’re in for?”
“This is the big one, Six.” Ansa replied. She normally let Six prattle on, but didn’t encourage. Talking seemed to keep him calm, but it did grate on her nerves a fair bit.
“You say that every op.”
“And I’m either proven right or relieved to be wrong when we’re all back safe. Keep those sensors on scream. If I bet right this time, we’re going into the nest.”
“You really think this is Håkøya? God, I hope not. Right into the meat grinder itself, and without the big guns.”
Ansa sighed. There had been no sign of any of the battlewagons on the jumps into this operation, but that didn’t mean they weren’t coming along. Fifth Fleet was under no need to move all as one unit, especially for such short distances. “You’ll know I’m right when you see them on the net.”
“Sure.”
Just then, insistent beeping announced the arrival on the sensor model of enemy contacts. These were a scattering of small chevrons at a long distance away, likely detected by the powerful sensors on the big fleet destroyers, but it still brought things into sharp focus.
Ansa glanced at the geometry visible in the sensor plot. “Picket cutters.” She sighed. They had been expected, sure enough. Pickets weren’t a threat even to a destroyer squadron, of course, but they were certainly already transmitting force reports back to whatever lay in-system.
“Looks like we’ve got one sitting overwatch over our rendezvous area.” Six highlighted the offending spacecraft. “If we wait for the whole squadron, it’s going to be taking potshots the whole time.”
“Shame.” Ansa switched her targeting system over to strafing mode; Pumas carried limited stores, so the best tactic against larger thin-skinned vessels was to get in close and peck them apart with the nose gun. “We’d better go see to that.”
After dashing off a quick update on the squadron net alerting the others of the problem and indicating that she and Six were going to try to solve it, Ansa turned her Puma onto an intercept course. The picket wasn’t trying to evade, which wasn’t too strange; Incarnation crews regularly chose to sacrifice themselves to delay an attack, or to gather as much sensor data as possible for their fellows. Sometimes it was a trap, too, but Ansa doubted that this time. This was just one cutter in a broad picket net stretched across the probable approach angles from Maribel.
As they accelerated in close, a few flashes of desultory defensive laser fire impacted Ansa’s shear-screens. It was impossible to dodge light laser fire like that, of course, but it was also highly unlikely to do any real damage, even if it snuck through the shear-screens. Pumas had a reflective hull coating that could handle low-wattage laser strikes.
The cutter, its main “weapon” being its sensors, had little else to answer the charging interceptors, however. They pulled off just outside its shear-screens. Ansa didn’t need to pull the trigger; the pass was so quick she’d have missed anyway. The computer pumped out three quick shots with the nose cannon as they passed, and Six’s did the same.
“No damage.” Six, whose sensors were already pinging aft, announced. “Might take a few passes.”
“Let’s try to wrap this up.” Ansa entered another strafing pass, this one angled to rake the little cutter bow to stern. “We’ve got a lot of work to do today.”
