Reaper's Crossroad

by Timothy Ellis

  While Angel reveled in the attention, he was more reticent. Jane had told me he was into play dates with the other cats on the station, but stayed away from people most of the time. Technically he was still Thirteen's cat, and I assumed Thirteen was dropping in on him enough, as Max wasn’t showing any signs of missing his human. Even if he wasn’t human. He never slept with us though, and wasn’t interested in ships or space like Angel was.

  I know both of them played with Grace's Gingernut, and my parent's Midnight at any opportunity, but they played more often without Angel, when I was off on a ship. Midnight technically lived on Galactica, but Jane had still worked out a way for the cats to visit. The explorer ships were too large to dock with the station, but Jane had figured out how to sync ship and station, so a docking tube could safely link them. As far as I could tell, a group of butler droids were tasked solely to moving station and ship cats around so they could all play together.

  Aline looked as tired as I was, and we both shifted to belts without saying anything, and changed underwear for sleepwear. It wasn’t until after I used my PC to turn the lights out, before Aline spoke.

  "Jon, why did you let them do that to me?"

  "What makes you think I had any part of it? They sandbagged me with it just before you came in."

  "So it wasn’t your idea?"

  "Hell no. I couldn’t do that to you."

  "I know. But I needed to hear you say it. Where does this leave us?"

  "Joined at the hip babe."

  "Don't be flippant."

  "Sorry. We're together. What happens to one of us, happens to both."

  "So you're officially my boyfriend then?"

  "It's official."

  "Good."

  She went quiet for a bit.

  "Jon?"

  "Yes Aline?"

  "You've never called me babe before."

  "I didn’t want you punching me out before."

  "Why would I do that?"

  "Duh!" we both said together, and laughed.

  "Meow!" said Angel, who we'd obviously woken up.

  "Okay sweetie. Sleepy-byes time for us, dark time for you."

  "Night Jon."

  "Night Aline."

  Angel started purring.

  Thirty Two

  The station building had sped up dramatically now.

  The second battlestations were now complete, and the third ones begun. Hurndalls Stallion was offloading on the other side of Thorn's space, where the biggest threat now was, and speeding things up even more. The other jump points had long lines of tugs going to and from the stations.

  Another day should see those jump points completely secure from anything less than five fleets all jumping in at the same time, but the Keerah didn’t seem to have figured that one out yet.

  Our jump point was getting the same attention now, but if anything, the building was even faster, given the proximity of Redoubt. But we needed nine of them here, if not twelve. I pinged Bob to check, and he was indeed doing twelve. Nine to go into Crossroad, and three more for our side, just in case anything made it through. And there was possible infiltration once traders starting visiting us.

  Which reminded me.

  "Jane?"

  "Jon?"

  "Anything planned for dealing with rogue traders once they start jumping in?"

  "We'll have a squadron of Excaliburs and a half dozen squadrons of Brawlers on Redoubt by then."

  "Piloted?"

  "Probably not. But I can handle it."

  "Just checking."

  "There is another option."

  "For what?"

  "We could arrange things so no traders ever visit our space at all."

  "How."

  "We could take those stations on the other side of Crossroad, have freighters dock there, and join them to Terminus. They can then trade with everyone on the network, and no-one needs to know where Terminus is, or where we are. They can walk the network if they want, but if we never let any ships into our space, we never have a rogue ship problem."

  "We just need to make sure the stations can repel boarders, and control any criminal elements."

  "I'm doing that now. At least with ours. Thorn's people seem to have everything under control as well, although I gather he has some sort of magic in place to alert his security people to trouble. The stations with my clones though are also completely under their control."

  "Big sister rules?"

  I grinned. She wasn’t in my office to do so back, but her laugh said it all.

  Midmorning, while I was watching the live action in Crossroad, and still trying to get a handle on how to stop it, Arthur, Guinevere, and Mordred walked in. I waved them to chairs, and they sat. Arthur looked grave, Mordred seemed amused, and Guinevere was positively beaming. I looked at Arthur.

  "Let me guess. You lost?"

  "I did. How did you know?"

  "It couldn’t be more obvious. I don’t know what you lost, but that look says a very bad loss."

  "I wouldn’t go that far."

  "I would," said Guinevere.

  Arthur shot her a dark look, but she kept on grinning.

  "I am reluctantly convinced our ships are obsolete now, and we need to buy two more of your modified Scimitars."

  I was tempted to make a joke out of it, but a slight shake of the head by Guinevere stopped me.

  I opened a channel to Bob's office.

  "Got a minute Bob?"

  He startled, and looked up and around at the screen which had popped up.

  "Always, my boy. What's up?"

  "Arthur would like two more of the special Scimitars. Can do?"

  "Already done the hulls." He was grinning now. "I saw that request coming as soon as Arthur came back all beat up again."

  "The hulls are the main problem," said Arthur. "Your shielding is better, but our hulls are far superior."

  "Ah," said Bob. "What do you think Guinevere paid for her ship with?"

  Arthur shot her a look on the 'you're dead' end of the killing look scale.

  "They were going to discover it on their own very shortly anyway," she said defensively. "Between the Keerah hull debris, and the Lufafluf super walls, which they've already traded for being saved and relocated, it wasn’t going to be too long before Bob and his team engineered something better than we have now. So I took advantage of that."

  "But you did it before the Lufaflufs were rescued."

  "Saw it coming, and gave Bob a head's up."

  "You should have asked me first."

  "My ship. My decision."

  The two of them sat there glaring at each other.

  "When can they be completed?" I asked Bob.

  "Late tomorrow most likely. I'm not building anything else new at the moment other than fighters, and battlestation modules. The explorers are structurally finished, and what's left to do is just outfitting. I'm planning to start on Slice's new explorer ship next week."

  "Okay." A screen popped up showing me Redoubt. "Is that all you’re doing? What's going on at Redoubt?"

  "All ships of battleship length or smaller are getting an extra hull layer. It's just as easy for me to send the plates through the rift network, and let repair droids do all the work, than bring each ship back here, and put it in a bay for the job."

  "So I don’t actually have a fleet at the moment then?"

  "Err, no you don't. Should have told you?"

  "Bloody oath you should have."

  My three guests were all now grinning, and it was me frowning.

  "Ah well young Jon. You know me."

  I did. Fortunately I wasn’t planning on using the fleet today.

  "When?"

  "When will they all be done?"

  I nodded.

  "BigMother will take the longest. Breakfast day after tomorrow?"

  "And the battlestations?"

  "A day later?"

  "I'll hold you to that."

  "I expect nothing else. Anything else my boy?"

&
nbsp; "No."

  "Toodles then."

  The channel closed.

  "You have plans?" asked Arthur.

  "Working on them. Want to be part of them?"

  "Definitely."

  "What can you tell me about the systems on the other side of the ones connected to Crossroad?"

  Thirty Three

  I had lunch with my four stars.

  The new uniforms had apparently been well accepted, with 'slinky red' now becoming a default flight or fight suit, rather than for everyday wear. Even the pilots were shifting back into the new uniform when their flights or simulator time ended. The marines on the other hand were only using the new uniform for more formal attire. Annabelle was wearing the new uniform, but the rest of the teams were not. The SAS were also sticking with 'slinky red', including Hobbs. Hobbs was training with his troops these days as well.

  It was long past time I was brought up to date on what was happening, my fault I hadn't already done so, and the long lunch was full of happenings, and planning. Chief among these were the new training programs. At the troop's level, there was one for combat suit use, which was also part of marine recruitment, along with testing for skills like sniper. There were multiple levels of pilot and fighter pilot training, as well as dropship piloting.

  Officer training courses for each branch of our new military were about to begin, with levels beginning with all in together, and ending with special training for each branch. While we didn’t have big navy crews anymore, it was more and more important those few on each ship were capable of being the officer of the watch, given a battle could happen with little more than second's notice, and the captain might not make it to the bridge in time to fight the ship.

  It appeared we had quite a few retired officers from various militaries, and some of them had agreed to run training courses. They were currently in a course of their own, updating them to the new military's way of doing things.

  After lunch, Jane escorted in one of the 'tool men'. I’d been surprised to find the best of them had not gone to Gaia at all, but had decided to take the risk and remain on Haven. For the last several months, they'd been working in two main areas. Improving the belt suit, and hand weapons capable of killing a Darkness effectively. They'd failed on the latter, although our guns had been improved.

  When he left an hour later, I'd given approval for a belt suit upgrade.

  They'd finally solved the hop issue.

  The early suits had only been designed to take small arms fire. I'd found you could merge three belts and three boosters together to form a much better suit, which was capable of taking fire from heavy weapons. The down side was the momentum of really solid hits tended to knock you down, leaving substantial bruising of the skin where you were hit.

  Upgrades had made taking a major hit less painful and easier to stay upright, but the downside was a hop as all the energy and momentum was redirected out of the feet. During the latter stages of the Darkness War, improvements were made, but the problems were never really solved.

  Now they were. Instead of going out the feet, and acting like a mini thruster, the entire suit was now absorbing and radiating it in all directions at once.

  No more hopping. No more major bruising. At least that’s what they told me. I'd wait and see what actually happened. There was nothing they could do about being hit while not braced, but at least now we had control back. We'd tolerated the hop because of the protection offered. Now we didn’t need to anymore.

  They'd also improved something else I’d introduced. There was a definite limit to how many belts could be merged, and this hadn't been improved. But I'd started adding additional belts as armbands on the combat suits, which had been adopted by the pilots. But it required the existing suit to shred before the next one kicked in, which for pilots left them vulnerable for the second or so it took the next one to activate. Combat suits could take a hit, but in space, even a second of being in your underwear while the suits cycled was going to leave you more than a little cold. And for a marine, that second could get them killed.

  Now the software for the main suit and each armband was integrated, so you could wear as many as six armbands, and cycle through them so fast you were never unprotected. This was especially good for pilots, as the life support problem of just thirty minutes in space, was now over three hours if you wore six armbands. What I’d have given for that much life support in the past.

  I was promised the upgrades to fleet and marine personnel would be completed by the time the Wayward Fleet was ready to deploy again. Mine had already been done by the Tool Man.

  When I was alone again, I sat there thinking about how and where to deploy. In essence, we were in a five front war with three enemies, with two more dormant fronts. And so far, I’d been on the defensive. It was time this changed, but what was the best way of going on the offensive instead? By the time the fleet was ready for another fight, the battlestations would be complete where we needed defenses. But not yet where I wanted defenses. But before deploying the wanted defenses, I needed to offense Crossroad clear of enemy. How to do it?

  Defensively, we had the advantage of being able to see sufficiently into the future to have a defense in place, and enough firepower to keep from being shot at ourselves.

  But offensively, we didn't have parity of weapons yet, unless I deployed my titans, which I didn’t want to do unless absolutely necessary. Even the titans could be vulnerable in a situation where there was no chance of regenerating shields. And for now, the new hull advance would take time to be implemented on them, given how big they truly were. Great for a solid punch with no warning given, but not for fighting a war which didn’t have any end. And with three thirds of the galaxy to use as foundries, this would always be a war with no end.

  There was a way of doing surprise though, through magic. Even having made it work so well so far, I can't say I’d actually embraced it completely yet. But maybe it was time to start doing that?

  The opportunity came as I thought about it, or maybe because I thought about it.

  The Keerah did something new.

  Thirty Four

  "Jon?"

  "Jane?"

  "The Keerah are changing their fleet deployment on the other end of Thorn's space."

  A wall screen came on, showing me both sides of the jump point. On our side, the third battlestation was not quite completed yet.

  On the other side, the Keerah ships were moving, and there appeared to be seven fleets there now.

  "What are they doing Jane?"

  "Tightening their formations. I'm not sure why yet. Could be a prelude to an attack though."

  "You think?"

  "Projecting." There was a moment's silence, while ships kept moving. "Missile fan?"

  "What's that?"

  "They seem to be moving into positions where every ship can fire missiles at the jump point at the same time, so several thousand all come through at once."

  "Why fan?"

  "That’s how it'll look on our side. The missiles will all come through on different trajectories, resulting in them fanning out in a huge three dee fan shape."

  "Can we handle that?"

  "Sure. Until we run out of mosquitoes."

  "Then what happens?"

  "We start losing things if you don’t take the fleet there first."

  "The fleet's not ready."

  "The titans are."

  "If we deploy even one of them there, the galaxy finds out we have them."

  "Maybe it's time?"

  "I hope not."

  "You have plans for them?"

  "Last resort, I hope."

  "Why?"

  "Because if I use them, history will remember me."

  "You make it sound like a bad thing."

  "It will be. A very bad thing."

  "Is there an alternative?"

  "For now, maybe."

  "Missile launch."

  She said it as if it was the next logical thing to say in the conve
rsation, and it threw me for a moment. The navmap went a solid yellow around the jump point. I didn’t even get the word out, before our side of the navmap went solid yellow as well. Nearly ten thousand missiles in two sizes headed for the jump point from both directions, three of ours to each one of theirs, with backups of ours.

  The Keerah side cleared, our side was momentarily an even more solid blob of yellow, and most of the yellow vanished. A few hundred Keerah missiles continued on, and were taken out by the backups. None of them hit anything, but the last few were close to one of the defending ships, and taken out by point defense turrets.

  "Pull the defense force back Jane. No point in them being close enough to take hits."

  "Confirmed."

  Several ships began moving immediately, but most of them had not yet begun to move when the second broadside was fired.

  "Are you running the fight?"

  "No. The three station clones are, but most of the work is being done by the medium AI's on each mosquito launcher. I'm acting as a high level supervisor."

  "How long do you think they can keep this up?"

  "Hours at least. But I suspect they'll be resupplying their ships before they run out. So it's really anyone's guess."

  "How long can we?"

  "Without our fleet going there?"

  "Yes."

  "Depends how fast we can move mosquitos to the stations. If we don’t, after about two hours, their fabricators won't be making enough to keep up. Oh."

  "Oh?"

  "They have another fleet arriving at their station now, and it seems to be escorting a large number of freighters."

  "So missile replenishment?"

  "Seems so. Maybe they intend to keep this up as long as it takes to rid the system of defenses."

  "How would they know?"

  "Must have spotters on our side, possibly giving them targeting information."

  "If they do, I can't see specific targeting going on. With the ships all back further now, I guess the target is the nearest battlestation."

  "Seems to be. Even if they're not spotting, messages just feeding back results would be all they need."