Free Earth Strike by Ian Douglas Page A

gravs or so ahead of the vessel would cause problems—tidal effects would set up deadly shear forces within the ship’s hull that would tear her to bits.
    “So for larger ships, we use the Alcubierre Drive. It manipulates the fabric of spacetime both forward and astern, essentially causing space to contract ahead and expand behind. The result is an enclosed bubble of spacetime with the ship imbedded inside. The ship is not accelerating relative to the space around it, but that space is sliding across the spacetime matrix at accelerations that can reach the speed of light, or better.”
    “That makes no sense whatsoever.”
    Koenig grinned. “Welcome to the wonderful world of zero-point field manipulation. It’s all pretty contra-intuitive. Free energy out of hard vacuum, artificial singularities, and we can reshape spacetime itself to suit ourselves. No wonder the Sh’daar are nervous about our technology curve.”
    “Explain something to me, Admiral?” Quintanilla asked. He was floating near the system display, and had been studying it for several moments.
    “If I can.”
    “Why only one squadron? That’s…what? Twelve spacecraft? But you have six squadrons on board, right?”
    Koenig blinked, surprised by the abrupt change of topic. He’d been expecting another physics question.
    “Six strike fighter squadrons, yes,” Koenig replied, cautious. What was the civilian hammering at? “Plus one reconnaissance squadron, the Sneaky Peaks; an EW squadron; two SAR squadrons; and two utility/logistics squadrons.” EW was electronic warfare, specialists in long-range electronic intelligence, or ELINT, and in battlespace command and control. SAR was search and rescue, the tugs that went out after high-velocity hulks, attempting to recover the pilots.
    “But you just sent one fighter squadron in, and they have, what? Another nine hours in there before we arrive?”
    “Nine hours, twenty-one minutes,” Koenig said, checking his IHD time readout.
    “So what are the chances for one lone squadron against…what? Fifty-five Turusch ships, you said?”
    “More than that, Mr. Quintanilla. Fifty-five was just the number we could see from seventy AUs out. And even more might have arrived since.”
    Quintanilla shrugged, the movement giving him a slight rotation in microgravity. He reached out awkwardly and grabbed the back of Koenig’s seat. “Okay, twelve fighters against over fifty-five capital ships, then. It seems…suicidal.”
    “I agree.”
    “Then why—”
    “Every man and woman of VF-44 volunteered for this op,” Koenig told him. He could have added that Koenig’s own contribution to the plan hashed out by Ops had called for three squadrons, half of America ’s strike-fighter compliment. Ultimately, that had been rejected by the Fleet Operations Review Board at Mars Synchorbital. His was still the final responsibility.
    “It just seems to me that your plan should have allowed for more fighters in the initial strike.”
    “It’s a little late to start second-guessing the oplan working group’s decisions now, isn’t it?”
    “But you could launch the rest of your strike squadrons now, couldn’t you? We’re a lot closer to the target. It would take them—”
    “No, Mr. Quintanilla. We could not.”
    “Why not?”
    Koenig sighed. Would it serve any purpose whatsoever to educate this…civilian? “I just told you how the Alcubierre Drive works, Mr. Quintanilla.”
    “Eh? What does that have to do with it?”
    “As I said, each ship in the fleet is imbedded inside a bubble of warped spacetime, contracting the space ahead, expanding behind. The bubble is moving. Right now America ’s bubble is moving at about three quarters of the speed of light. But each ship in the task force is imbedded within the spacetime inside its bubble and is relatively motionless compared to its surroundings.”
    “So? Why can’t you just drop out of this bubble and launch more fighters?”
    “Because we would drop