The Ties that Bind

by Hiroyuki Morioka

  “Yeah, yeah, Lafier, I know.” He changed the subject. “If this strategy succeeds, then the Countdom of Hyde getting reconquered by the Empire won’t be too far off.”

  “What will you do once you recover your star-fief?”

  “What will I do?” Jint looked at a loss. “To tell the truth, it would be tough meeting with the people back home. I’d rather have somebody stand in for me if at all possible. To be the ‘Count’ for me.”

  “You should hire a magistrate.”

  “I should... but then, it feels like I’m just running away. Even though I don’t even have a reason.”

  “You have a great reason, if you’re working in the military.”

  “Oh yeah. I guess since I’ve still got 10 years of military service left, I can’t be called the real and true count of the system,” he said. Then his eyes virtually sparkled; a wonderful idea had occurred to him. “Why don’t we trade fiefs? You become the Countess of Hyde, and I can plant roses as the Viscount of Parhynh. “

  The notion came as a shock to her. “There’s no way that would be an option.”

  “So it’s a no-go,” he said, without a trace of actual disappointment. “And I thought it was such a good idea, too. Though I’ll grant you, the title of ‘Viscount of the Land of Roses’ doesn’t exactly fit me to a tee, either.”

  “You’d best resign yourself. A noble rank comes with duties.”

  “If I ever meet a taker, I’d give them my noble rank free of charge.”

  “The countship belongs to your family house. You can’t just give it to someone.”

  “Good grief. So it’s attached to the noble house of Lynn, you say. The family house that currently consists of me. If only I had some cousin to foist it on.”

  “You can either stay in the Star Forces, or ride a trade ship. If you don’t like the idea of withdrawing to your fief, you’d be far from the only grandee doing likewise.”

  “That so? Then I might as well do that.” His expression turned sunny enough, but only for a fleeting moment before it took a turn for the stiff. “But then the folks back home will mock me as a coward.”

  “Every choice has its upsides and downsides. It is you who must decide,” Lafier fired back.

  “Thanks for the thought-provoking remarks. I’d been under the impression that becoming an Abh noble meant your life became set in stone, but it seems rather enjoyable, all things considered.”

  “Nobles need to enjoy themselves from time to time, too.” Lafier clasped her hands behind her head. “We Abhs haven’t truly matured until we’ve experienced three separate periods in life. You and I both have just begun to step into the first. And there’s no point in worrying our heads over the next.”

  “I’m not really ‘worrying my head’ over it.” But something had him so taken aback he was knitting his brow. “That aside, what’s this about three life periods? I can guess the first two. The first is as a starpilot, and the other is as a trader. But what’s the third?”

  “You don’t know?” Though he wasn’t as bad now as he had been three years ago, his ignorance still startled her at times.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “It’s the most important of them all.”

  “Would you tell me already?”

  “It’s your life as a parent.”

  The first to assume their positions were the unliving, unfeeling mobile space-time mines. The battle-line ships had crept close to the Aptic Portal, and all at once unleashed the many, many mines they had stockpiled. The mines, thus fired, reached their assigned positions via inertia, and then stayed in place by briefly engaging the reverse thrusters. For a momentary span, they fell asleep, with the weak and light attitude-control propulsor flames they intermittently spouted akin to soft snoring.

  The battle-line ships, now significantly lighter, subsequently retreated, after which the assault ships came flocking, their antiproton cannons pointed squarely at the Aptic Portal. The defense ships wedged their hedgehog-like frames in between the assault ships, and wriggled the mobile laser cannons equipped onto their surfaces. Lastly, the patrol ships slowly and gently assumed their places.

  “Battle preparations complete. Thirty minutes until enemy fleet infiltration ETA.”

  After hearing the report from his staff, the Commander-in-Chief of the Aptic Defensive Fleet, Neleth, looked down at the planar space map. Naturally, he couldn’t see through to planar space from here in 3-space. That said, countless carrycrafts entered and emerged from the Aptic Portal, sending fresh new information all the while.

  The enemy had largely divided their forces into diamond-shaped formations, and they were making a beeline for the Aptic Portal. Meanwhile, at the Saudec Darmaper (Darmap Portal), much farther out than the enemy, their allied, principal fleet could be seen.

  “It appears as though we ought to make them hold out for five hours,” said Neleth, optimistic.

  “But the enemy knows that,” whispered Nefeh close by. “They’ll come at us so ferociously they’ll be all but breathing fire.”

  “Well, if they didn’t, what fun would it be?”

  “We’re not waging war for your kicks,” Nefeh chided.

  “Yes, but if I end up having some fun, then who can blame me?”

  “Are you sure no one would blame you?” The Chief of Staff gave his genetically identical brother a skeptical look.

  “Of course not. I’d never skew the battle for my own amusement, not with the lives of my subordinates on the line. In case that’s what’s got you so perturbed.”

  “Yes, that’s what I’m worried about, obviously. I hope you don’t forget what you just said. Not just for our subordinates’ lives, but also not to lower the reputation of our clan any further.” After a moment’s thought, Nefeh corrected himself. “Or maybe I should say, in order not to raise it any further.”

  “Don’t fret. I have nothing to do with the ‘florid insanity’ of the Biboth clan. Whenever I think about how I’ll be continuing my life of utter banality, I grin from ear to ear.”

  “Commanding a fleet while holding the title of commodore is a life of utter banality?” Nefeh scoffed. “That misconceived perception could be taken as a sign of our clan’s chronic affliction, and we can’t have that.”

  “Then take care not to make me any more anxious,” said Neleth, peering at his brother’s face. “My urge to add yet another anecdote to the history of the madness of the Biboths has grown by the minute.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll be here for you. That is to say, I’ll be here to stab you so as to stop that from happening.”

  “A transmission from the carrycraft Causrurh,” interrupted the communications staff officer. “The enemy has dispersed space-time bubbles thought to be mines.”

  “Tsk. So they’ve seized the first move while we’re here flapping our gums,” said Neleth.

  Incorporating the new intelligence, countless blips of light appeared in front of the enemy fleet on the planar space map.

  “What’s their ETA?”

  “Seven minutes.”

  “Shall we launch our own volley to intercept?” asked Nefeh.

  “We have no other choice. Otherwise, we’d just be sitting here getting blown to bits, and that’d really ruin my mood.”

  “That is a wise stance on the matter, Neleth.”

  “Thanks.” He looked at the Communications Officer. “We’re shooting all of our mines at the portal. Notify the fleet.”

  Lafier grasped the situation through her frocragh, though they also had the video of the outside pulled up, too. Vision boasted advantages that were different from those of spatiosensory perception, and chief among them was color.

  In front of them, the mines were huddled shoulder to shoulder. And then, that herd of bombs heated up; their propulsor flames had spouted.

  “And so it begins...” she heard Samson mutter.

  Lafier’s eyes darted to the war situation bulletin. It seemed there was still some time before the enemy fleet itself st
ormed through.

  The mines plunged one after the other into the portal. Though moments earlier, the mines had made such a dense blanket that the Aptic Portal was almost entirely concealed, once they were all gone, it left Lafier with the sense that they’d been rendered defenseless. But we were always defenseless to begin with.

  She bottled up her emotions. It mattered not whether there were mines out in front of them; it didn’t change the fact that an assault ships’ armor was thin. And they had no way of knowing what was happening over on the planar space side, either. They could only speculate.

  There was no doubt that their mines and the enemy’s were violently smashing into each other. And it was impossible that they’d destroy every one of the enemy’s mines. A portion would certainly make their way out of the portal.

  Time stretched languidly as they waited. Her eyes fell on her control gauntlet-equipped left hand. Twenty people’s lives were hanging on her fingertips. Pre-battle nerves enveloped her. The sensation wasn’t unpleasant, per se, but if it grew in excess, then it could well lead to her demise.

  Surreptitiously, so the starpilots on the bridge wouldn’t notice, she took a deep breath to steel herself.

  “The ETA of the enemy’s vanguard wave of mines is at hand,” said Sobash.

  That very instant, the Aptic Portal began seething, with mines bubbling up from its surface. It was like a sickening cancer, with “cells” dividing from the portal and wildly multiplying in number.

  “Commence battle!” But Lafier’s words of command might have been directed more toward herself.

  A mine charged at them from dead ahead. Lafier made to line it up with the antiproton cannon’s sights and pull the trigger, but that second, the mine broke apart before her eyes. She thought a consort ship had perhaps taken care of it, but it soon became clear that that wasn’t the case.

  The mine’s shards were accelerating. This could only be a multi-warhead-type mine. Moreover, each of its warheads had propelling force behind it.

  Lafier gritted her teeth and pulled the trigger. One of the warheads was extinguished. The consort ships, for their parts, were also carrying out their task. And so each of the warheads were blown into actual “shards” this time.

  This shrapnel, too, posed a threat to assault ships, since they were so small and thinly armored. And since their relative velocity was so high, if they collided with one or more fragments, it could cause fatal damage.

  Lafier swerved to evade one such shard which was on the larger side, and which just so happened to be on a trajectory to cross paths with them. That slight loss of time efficiency was all it took for another warhead to sneak toward them. When she noticed, it was directly abeam the ship. She had no time to point the bow toward it.

  “Ecryua!” she shouted, warning the Deputy Starpilot, who was manning the multi-turret laser cannons.

  But she needn’t have. For by the time Lafier called Ecryua’s name, the Basrogrh’s mobile laser cannon had already skewered the warhead with its ray. The matter-antimatter annihilation explosion boomed at close quarters.

  “Starboard armor plating damaged. Breaches in Compartments 4, 11, and 15,” reported Jint. “Oh, and in Compartment 7, too.”

  “Any casualties?” asked Lafier.

  “Everyone’s fine at the moment.” Jint monitored the statuses of each individual non-bridge personnel crewmember, or in other words, all of the NCCs. Since they were now in combat, the NCCs should all be wearing their pressure suits.

  Lafier breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Hull temperature rising,” said Samson. “But no need to worry on that account, either. It’ll settle down in no time.”

  The antiprotons once housed within the warhead were reacting with the atoms that made up the ship’s hull. However, the majority of them had been deflected by their magnetic shield.

  “Is the Basrogrh okay?” came Atosryua’s voice.

  Her hologram, around 10 dagh in height, was floating above one end of the tactical control counter. It was only showing her upper half.

  “We can still push on,” she told her transparent, miniature commander.

  “Good.” The hologram vanished.

  The Hecto-Commander was both Unit Commander and the Captain of her ship she was piloting for the fight. She hadn’t the time to talk for very long.

  “Wave 2, incoming,” said Ecryua.

  Once again, Lafier focused on her frocrach. From behind them, nuclear fusion shells launched by the patrol ships were drawing nearer. Suddenly, they were already zipping past the Basrogrh in their bid to assail the mines. Lafier helped by taking down a mine before it separated into its multiple warheads, which served well to improve her mood.

  The sector surrounding the Aptic Portal was now brimming with drifting shrapnel, and those glowing hot fragments, affected by Aptic III’s greater gravity, were forming long lines around the portal. Perhaps these rings of debris would become a bit of a famous site for the planet.

  “Wave 3, incoming,” said Ecryua. They were numbering these “waves,” but it didn’t really mean much, seeing as the enemy mines were gushing out without pause. Their density was out of the ordinary, too. The mines they had had to deal with up until now were probably those that needed to weave between allied mines to reach them. Whereas the mines from this point forward would be hurtling their way with no obstruction to speak of. In other words, the fight would only get harsher from here on out.

  Lafier pulled the trigger.

  “How many mines did the enemy bring with them?” said Neleth, brow furrowed.

  “I wonder whether they thought they’d bring all of those for a fight with the main forces.” Nefeh folded his arms. “Of course, even if they just planned to knock us down and stay to hold Aptic, they’d need mines left over for the job.”

  “Should we give the enemy a pointer or two?”

  “I’d be game to do so, if at all possible. Honestly, what is going through their heads?”

  The enemy’s forces numbered an order of magnitude larger than their own. They’d had to steel themselves for an intense area-control projectile blitz. Yet the sheer fury was exceeding their expectations by light-years. Were they seriously aiming to pump the entirety of their stock of mines into the Aptic Portal? Surely, they did understand that the Star Forces’ principal forces were approaching.

  Neleth couldn’t wrap his head around it. “Well, whatever they’re scheming, we still just need to hold out. Let’s use the patrol ships’ mines.”

  “Weren’t we going to save them for the üéfthoth (battle of pursuit), Neleth?”

  “If we lose here, there will be no üéfthoth, Nefeh.”

  “That is a startlingly cogent idea for you.”

  “No, what’s startling is how you’re not raising some insane objection to the obviously correct move.”

  “We can’t just stand here gaping in shock at each other.”

  “I hate to admit it, but that we can agree on. Tell all patrol ships to begin firing back with their own mines.”

  “By the way, what do we tell the assault ships? It’d pain me to keep exposing them to the enemy blitz like this.”

  “Can’t be helped. If enemy assault ships start coming through, we’ll need the help they can provide.”

  “But we need to do something.”

  “Have them band together with the defense ships.”

  “Huh?”

  “Let’s pair each assault unit with a defense unit. We’ll leave the formation particulars to the glagamh ïadbyrer (sub-fleet command centers).”

  “Hmm... a sound approach.”

  “I know it is. Now hurry — there’s no time.”

  Nefeh was about to stride off to relay his orders, but he froze in his tracks without delay.

  “What?” Neleth saw his twin’s eyes were fixed on the tide-of-battle diagram.

  “It seems we’re a tad late, Neleth.”

  Neleth turned to look at the diagram as well. The assault ships positioned a
round the portal had dropped drastically in number, such that significant gaps pockmarked the grid.

  “It can’t be. What in the starry skies is happening?”

  “It’s their new weapon,” reported communications staff officer, after consolidating all of the fleet information.

  “New weapon?” Neleth frowned. “You find a new calling as a comedian?”

  But the staff officer was not, in fact, practicing a joke routine.

  Innumerable shards of debris drifted in the Basrogrh’s vicinity. At this density, it was a strenuous feat just avoiding collision. And Lafier was expending her every effort weaving between all of the obstacles, large and small. At present, all she could do was pull the trigger whenever the bow happened to align with a target.

  Another shard, not far from rear starboard. Actually, it was too regular in shape to be called a “shard,” but naturally, that fact didn’t cross Lafier’s mind. Even if she were to have paid it any attention, she would have thought of it as another nonfunctioning warhead whose control unit or propulsion unit had been shot clean through.

  And now, the “shard” / “nonfunctioning” warhead had sprung back to life.

  “Ecryua; 4-7!” Lafier directed, quickly and loosely.

  The warhead that had been playing dead soared straight at them like an arrow. But the trigger finger of the silent Deputy Starpilot made it in time, albeit by a hair’s breadth.

  The warhead blew up at close range, and a sudden storm of antimatter rained upon the Basrogrh. The magnetic shield deflected half of the downpour, but couldn’t fend off all of it.

  The Basrogrh rocked viciously, and the artificial gravity failed to absorb the resulting tremors.

  “Fissures to the stern!” Samson announced.

  But Lafier couldn’t waste a second of concentration, not even on such a grave report... because that wasn’t the only warhead awakening from hibernation. Three others in the Basrogrh’s immediate area leapt from the grave at the same time, and launched simultaneously toward their quarry.