Semper Mars(107)

Yukio felt cold. Just like that. A ship and three men, killed….

“Tanegashima, Taka One,” Kurosawa said. “We copy. We are proceeding with the attack.”

There was no alternative, of course. They were committed now. Even if they’d wanted to break off and return to Earth, the deorbit maneuver would simply drop them into a lower and faster vector. The enemy would assume they were still attacking.

Besides, honor was involved, and the workings of wa and bushido. To flee now, even if they could, was unthinkable.

Laser fire clawed at the spaceplane’s nose again, the glare off vaporizing hull metal dazzling through the cockpit window. Captain Iijima jinked the spacecraft hard to the right, the sudden acceleration slamming Yukio against his seat. The laser found them again with unerring accuracy.

“Chikusho!” Kurosawa shouted. “Chu-i-san! Give me a solution!”

Yukio was struggling to plug new numbers into the equations, taking into account the last violent change of lateral vector. Whatever drift to left or right the fighter had, the missiles would possess as well. He bit off a curse. They were still a long way from the American station…but it would take too long to try to work closer. “Firing solution!” he announced, fingers stroking the touch panel on the console as he programmed both missiles. “Missiles programmed and ready to fire!”

“Missile release!” Kurosawa announced. Yukio felt the slight hum and thump as the underside of Inaduma’s wings opened wide, and the sleek, three-meter white arrows drifted free.

“Missiles clear, Commander,” Yukio announced. “You may trigger ignition.”

“Banzai!” Kurosawa shouted, and the others in the cockpit joined him to complete the traditional chorus of three. “Banzai! Banzai!”

Yukio glanced forward again in time to see two brilliant suns whip out from under the Inaduma’s nose and dwindle rapidly into the blackness ahead.

“Tanegashima, this is Taka One,” he said. “Missiles away….”

The three men waited breathlessly as the missiles continued their run. At least the enemy laser fire had ceased. Shepard’s radar would have announced the launch of the two missiles, and the Americans would have shifted targets. After nearly a minute, Yukio read the telltale flicker of numbers on his screen and shook his head. “Missile one has been destroyed. Objective is shifting the attack to missile two.”

It wasn’t going to work. With four missiles, Shepard’s defenses might have been overwhelmed…but Taka Two had been knocked out of action before they could get their Hayabusas into the game. If the Americans destroyed both of Taka One’s missiles, they would have to attempt to close and engage the enemy with the gatling cannon in the spaceplane’s nose, an attempt that would almost certainly be fatal.

“Stand by to detonate the warhead, Chu-i-san,” Kurosawa said.

“Hai!” Yukio had already flipped open the second of two large, yellow-and-black-striped protective covers on his console, exposing a large, red button. His thumb hovered above it, waiting…waiting…

“Range to target, two-five kilometers,” he announced. “Target has acquired the missile.”

“Trigger the warhead,” Kurosawa said. “Now!”

Yukio pressed the button and, hundreds of kilometers ahead, the Hayabusa’s warhead detonated.

The warhead was a special type designed for antisatellite warfare, with explosives packed behind a cluster of heavy, steel ball bearings. The explosion hurled the bearings forward in a large and deadly cloud, like the blast from a titanic shotgun. By detonating the warhead far short of the optimum range, Major Kurosawa was taking a chance, gambling that enough of the ball bearings would still hit the target to do critical damage. Like an actual shotgun blast, the shot began spreading as soon as it was fired; where detonation at a range of several hundred meters would have fired nearly one hundred steel balls into the target with a velocity difference great enough to shred the Shepard Station’s hull, detonation at a range of almost twenty-five kilometers meant that Taka One would be lucky if they hit with ten. Or five. Or even one….

It also meant that the software AI running the enemy laser was momentarily confused. One large and deadly target on an intercept course had just been replaced by a hundred tiny targets, each one relatively harmless by itself. For nearly one second, the program analyzed courses and drift, arriving at the conclusion that not more than eight of the oncoming spheres would collide with the station proper.

It therefore gave the projectiles a lower threat rating and shifted aim back to the original target…the Inaduma spaceplane still approaching on an intercept vector.