Conflict!

by Dale Moorhouse

  “At least some of the ships they are building are capable of FTL, we saw a few of them enter and exit FTL in short jumps around the system they are in. I left a couple of AI Swift Fangs there to observe and follow them if they move. One of them will return here immediately if the swarm looks like it is headed for Terra.

  “Here are all of my observations and my AAR. I left a copy with Silent for his people to review and analyse.”

  I sat silently for a few moments, “While I knew this could eventually happen, I’d hoped it would be a while longer before they started building FTL ships in quantity.

  “Would you go over to the communications desk and have them send Ginger and Blue the emergency recall signal? Also, send it to Chocolate, she is nearby in the Kuiper Belt and should be able to get back here quickly.

  “When you are done with that, issue a fleet alert to get all of their crews back aboard and take on any supplies they may be low on. It is protocol but remind them anyway, sometimes things fall through the cracks. At least all of the ships have been retrofitted with the detectors and dampers. We have a large supply of small missiles whose only purpose is to detect a ship in FTL then short-jump to it and damp their FTL field. You will want to take on a supply of them.

  “Report back to me when you are done.”

  I commed Johnny, Jacky and Ishmael and asked them to come to my office. Then I commed Silent and asked how long before he had an intelligence assessment for me.

  “I can have a preliminary to you in thirty centas and the detailed assessment in two decas. There is a lot of material to go through,” he replied. “I’ll bring the preliminary assessment to you as soon as it is ready, Ser.”

  I thanked him and closed the comm. At one time Johnny had handled this sort of thing for me, but when he added Silent to his staff he was quick to realize Silent had a particular talent for intelligence and now Silent had his own protégé, Winston who had come over from the Weasel’s Intelligence Service and was showing promise as the best yet. Winston is also a master at interrogation, he and Silent make a formidable team. I’m glad they are on my side.

  Johnny and Jacky showed up almost right away and Ishmael commed to say he was on his way and should be with me in a few centas. I decided to get a glass of tea while I waited, and my two deputies joined me. Jacky excused herself and left returning a few ticks later with a tray of scones and some honey and jam. She quickly passed one to Johnny before setting the tray down in the middle of the table, grinning at me. Jacky has foresight that is not often wrong and more than once she has known there would be long meetings and tasks to perform so she always baked trays full of goodies to tide us over on those mornings her foresight told her to.

  Ishmael showed up, grabbed a scone and sat while I began. I slipped the thumb-drive into the control console and put the images up on the screen. We watched as Harvester-Class ships came out of the globe ship like bees leaving a hive. They assembled into loose formations and then shimmered red and disappeared. They reappeared again a few hundred kilometres away in the same formation, Johnny let out a quiet “Oh, crap”.

  As we continued watching, huge hatches opened up on the harvesters, and we could see racks of large missiles in what would have been the cargo hold of a normal harvester.

  The timestamp jumped, and a bevvy of breaker/sorter ships left the huge globe and went FTL. When they returned, the aspect of the video changed and we could see the huge beam weapon usually used to break down planets to smaller chunks was even larger, and two of them had been mounted, one above the other.

  Another jump in the timestamp showed us the Plague version of Swift Fangs, and these didn’t go FTL but moved to the harvesters and latched onto the top, sides and bottom of the huge missile bay. In total there were over a thousand ships now under observation by the probe that made this record, in the background, there were hundreds of more collections about this size.

  Johnny asked, “Do we have an idea how many more the trio is going to make before they come our way? Do we know how many they already have?”

  I was about to say I didn’t know yet when Silent came through the door. Over our implants, we heard, “They are just short of a million, and we project they will most likely double that before they move on us. Winston and the rest of my crew are working up the numbers now but based on what we have seen so far we are estimating it will be about ten cycles before the move. Of course, I could be wrong, and they have already left, but based on the past actions of the rebels they want to have as many ships as their controllers can handle before they attack; they tend to be risk-averse when rebel Squids are running the show. This activity has all the hallmarks of the Squids being in charge.”

  Silent can speak but never does, preferring the silence of implants. He passed some flimsies around the room, and after we had a chance to review them asked, “Any questions, Sers?”

  I said no and thanked him.

  He replied, “In that case, I will get back to my desk. Chocolate is on her way in, and I just heard from Ginger. I’m bringing in some of my off-duty people to process all of the expected logs. I will bring you anything important that shows up as soon as I get it.”

  37

  GINGER AND BLUE RETURNED TWO cycles after we discovered the Plague trio was pooping out FTL capable harvesters and breaker/sorters configured as warships. After they were briefed, they and their crews were given two cycles of downtime. I knew that Blue and Ginger wouldn’t take it, and more than half of their crew wouldn’t either. I’d had a ferry crew come and get Tiger and Lion and take them to Shipyard One for a thorough going over before I sent them out to battle. By the time the ships’ crews had wangled rides out to their ships, all the repairs were done, and the crews were there just in time to check out what was done then ferry the two ships back to Mother of Glory.

  Elaine and I met Ginger and Tuxedo a couple of times for dinner but we agreed between us to make an early night of it, so Ginger and Tux could spend more time together before Ginger took her battle group out and Tuxedo joined me on Thermopylae. Elaine was going with me again as one of my Med-Tech Is, and Vanilla was going with us as well. In the lulls between battles they had been working with Svetlana, and her researchers on the problem of Bond Death and they were ready to try one of their treatments under battle conditions.

  In most cases, Bonded pairs are stationed on the same vessel and often work closely with one another. Ginger and Tuxedo were amongst the exceptions to this, partly by choice and partly by necessity. There simply weren’t many people who could fill senior command billets and Tuxedo is one of only a few warriors who can handle virtually any duty and hit the ground running. He has performed every enlisted, noncommissioned officer and commander job plus a few senior commander jobs as well. He liked the freedom his Immunus rank gave him and is the kind of warrior every other warrior wanted to be, Terran or otherwise.

  Ginger had Svetlana on Tiger as her chief Med-Tech I and it was only the second time Svetlana was going into a combat zone. The only time I’d ever seen or heard her disagree with Dimitri was when she told him she was going out again and he disagreed and tried to talk her out of it. Svetlana told him in no uncertain terms that no woman in her family had ever not fought for her people one way or another and she was not going to be the first to shame her lineage, the Rodina or herself by not doing what she could to help. Her glare and tone of voice brought Dimitri up short. He apologized to her, and they smiled at each other and kissed.

  The next cycle he asked me if there was anything more important to the war effort he could be doing and I asked, “Are you serious? If it weren’t for you and Sergei our production of war materiel on Terra would be less than half what it is now. Without fighters, bombers, guns and bullets, we can’t fight this war. You two keep those coming, and you inspire those you direct to do just a little more each day than they did the day before. That kind of leadership is critical in a war like this.

  “I hope you are taking a lot of notes because I think you will
need to chronicle the events in which you’ve participated for future generations so they can see how real work is done.

  “If you want to come for a ride on Thermopylae and see how all the equipment you get us is used, I will take you along so you can see for yourself, but then I’m going to have to ask you to come back and get us some more. Are you up for that?”

  He smiled and nodded, “Yes, I would like just once to see how my efforts here help you out there. Then I will know in my heart, and I won’t ask again.”

  I gave him a list of things to bring along and told him to go to the armourer on the second floor and get a ship-suit fitted. I reminded him it should be an augmented suit, not armour. When he had everything together, he should report to Thermopylae, get a stateroom and wait for the rest of us to join him. I commed Missy and told her he was coming. She promised to look out for him and get him settled. She asked, “Is it wise to let someone so important to our supply chain go into a combat zone?”

  “Not wise but necessary. Svetlana is going on Tiger and Dimitri is a former soldier with combat experience. He wants to be in action once more before he hangs up his shield. Who am I to say no?”

  “She laughed and said, “I learn something new about you every day, Ser.”

  The following morning I had one more officer's meeting. When everyone checked in and reported ready, I said, “Let’s go get these guys out of our space once and for all.”

  We dropped out of FTL in the next star system over which was only a light-kilocycle away or not quite three light-years. The scouts and probes Sarah left in the Plague-ridden star system were asked to upload their latest intel, and they did in highly compressed packets that were sent via the quantum communicator. We still couldn’t get the resolution in the images we needed, but it was fine for sending us the coordinates for the swarm and its picket ships. Once we had that info we jumped to our preassigned staging positions then manoeuvred to our jump off positions using gravitic engines alone, they are slow but almost undetectable. Using our fusion torches would be like sending up a big flare.

  Each of our battle groups had four attack elements of one-hundred Mammoth-Class carriers. Each carrier had close to three thousand bombers. The Leopard-Class carriers like Leopard, Tiger, Lion and Cheetah carried almost as many fighters even though they are much smaller. With the folding “wings” and stacking capability, we could pack them in pretty tight. We would deploy all of them but hold back half in a second wave that we would send in while the first wave came back to rearm.

  Each battle group would be sending half of their attack elements keeping back the other half as a reserve. As soon as everyone was deployed, they started closing to the edge of detection range where the fighters would short-jump in and launch thousands of their small FTL damper missiles. Right on their heels would follow a couple of strings of ten armoured freighters which would drop out of FTL, dump their loads, then go back into FTL and head back to Terra to reload.

  The last time we used them, they had removed their launcher bin doors which cut the time required to shoot themselves dry. This time some clever engineer had provided them with light metal disposable doors the missiles would just blow off when they launched. We had just under a centa to hit them before the Plague ships built their FTL fields and jumped. The AI fighters had talked it over amongst themselves and were determined to take out the trio if they all died trying and to our surprise and delight, they did just that in the opening seconds of the battle and only lost a half dozen in the effort. It was apparent they had practised precision short-jumps because as soon as the lead elements of the fighters got visual on the trio, they jumped in through the open launch portals and fired their Cracker-3s.

  The trio disappeared in flashed as blue light. It only took a handful of fighters and the rest went after the missile ships firing their FTL dampers first and then swinging around to start pasting them with Cracker-3s, coming in behind the armoured freighters and adding their precision fire to the mayhem the freighters were creating. As the Harvesters died, they took their Swift Fang riders with them.

  The survivors milled around for several centas while they were being mauled, and none of them tried to use their FTL to jump away. Instead, they lit off their fusion torches, which just made it easier for the bombers who were finally on the scene to pick them off. Several pilots had to fly after the runners for decas but finally bagged their bogey and returned.

  The SAR Elsies took their time and had only a few life support pods or AI pods to pick up. Several of the breaker/sorters and harvesters were taken out with Goblin Gun strikes to their engineering sections. I sent in warrior boarding teams with orders to take as many of the drones they could, intact. After two cycles, all of the disabled Plague ships were pacified, and Tuxedo and I went on an inspection tour. We were trying to determine why the ships hadn’t used their FTL capability. Plenty hadn’t been hit with the FTL dampers and should have been able to escape.

  Try as we might we couldn’t find anything wrong with the ships. I finally ordered all of the drones to be moved to one of the armoured freighters after their power supplies and antennae were removed. Rusty was going to have his work cut out for him when we got back.

  We left Sarah White-Stripe in charge of the clean-up and flew back to Mother of Glory escorting the freighter carrying the drones. When we got there the carrier simply detached the bin holding the drones and using and Elsie, we parked it at the edge of Shipyard One. The team on the Elsie and their cats stayed with the drones and monitored them for that strange frequency we knew them to use, but all was quiet when Rusty came out with another Elsie to select two and take them to his lab. He did a quick scan of all of the drones in the bin and announced, “There is nothing wrong with any of these drones, none of them is leader class, though.”

  Over the next few cycles, he scrutinized each drone and confirmed his diagnosis. His conclusion was either the leader class hadn’t been sent out to the ships yet, or it was the intention of the Squids running the swarm that all guidance comes from the globe ships. Given the lack of performance, I figured he was probably right.

  ◆◆◆

  Chocolate

  We had four globe ships much closer to Terra to get rid of, and we started on that two cycles after we got back from our battle with Sarah’s swarm. I took Leopard out to rendezvous with the scout I’d left monitoring the trio and singleton globe ships and got a nasty surprise. My probes and scouts had been destroyed, and the four globe ships were gone. I set out for the next scouts up the line and found them intact so doubled back and began a clockwise trek around the Kuiper Belt. When I got to the location, I’d left my next pair of scouts they too had been attacked and destroyed. I sent a quick status using the quantum communicator. Jase ordered me to hold position while he sent the rest of my battle group to help. My battle group was in active stand by and left less than a deca later, headed straight for my location. As soon as they were able, they jumped and met me.

  I’d had a couple of my SAR Elsies round up all the debris they could find and had it pulled into the hangar usually occupied by Swift Fangs. The maintenance mechanics from the flight deck helped sort through the parts and were able to assemble an almost complete scout. What they found was a hole in the bottom of the ship that had the same appearance as the one Jase, and Tuxedo found in Claws of Courage, a Swift Fang they found in some Plague rubble at Alpha Centauri A over a kilocycle ago. Courage had a fifty-centimetre hole in the bulkhead leading to the engineering spaces. This scout had a hole in her bottom that was the same size and had the same smooth sides as the disrupter hole in Courage.

  In this ship, the hole led to the section where the FTL generator was and from there through a bulkhead to the main compartment. We weren’t able to get anything useful from what was left of the AI who had clearly self-destructed following the capture protocol we had set up taking the nasty little drone that had done this with it. We didn’t know which of the four globe ships had launched the drone, but it didn’t rea
lly matter. I was angry and felt ashamed I hadn’t been there to help my scouts.

  Leading my battle group, I began my search for the four missing globe ships and the swarms they were undoubtedly building before they attacked farther into the Solar system. I split my battle group into four elements and left one to escort my fleet train while the rest of us scoured the Kuiper Belt for signs of the Plague. The belt is over thirty-five AUs wide including the less dense small bodies on either side and is more of a torus, like a flattened doughnut. We decided to assign three search elements to concentric rings divided such the centre ring was narrower but deeper while the inner and outer rings were thinner but broader. I chose to take the centre ring with my element while the others took the inner and outer, proceeding clockwise and roughly abreast of each other.

  The first thing I did was deploy all of my AI fighters and Swift Fangs ahead of my larger ships. They were tasked to search the high and low portions of our ring while the more massive vessels including our carriers searched the centre and overlapped with the other search groups slightly to ensure no stone was left unturned. Over the next few cycles, we came upon two more pairs of scouts that had been destroyed but no sign that any mining had taken place.

  Just before we got to the location of the next pair of scouts, two of our fighters encountered a suspicious void in the belt that started close to the centre and extended up and apparently out of the belt. I sent a couple of our Swift Fangs ahead to check on the status of the scouts we expected to meet. When they arrived at their location, they found both were on station and had been patrolling back and forth across the belt but had seen nothing. The two ships I sent were to relieve them and sent the scouts back to my search element. When the Swift Fangs landed in the hangar, both crews reported to my intelligence officer for debriefing before being given downtime.