by SD Tanner
“Tiana, have you got an update?”
“Nothing I understand.”
He needed to test if the robot was still in control. Edging forward again, he stepped out into the corridor still aiming his gun at it. The robot was standing motionless as if something had stunned it. One by one, his squad followed him, cautiously stepping towards the robot.
“Hold your fire.” Realizing they might be trigger-happy, he added, “I mean it. Do not fire unless ordered.”
Initially he’d thought the robot wasn’t moving, but on closer inspection, its fingers were twitching spasmodically. Suddenly its head spun three hundred and sixty degrees, making them all jump backwards.
“Freaky.”
Raising one arm, it waved at them in what seemed to be a friendly gesture.
“What the hell is it doing?”
The robot didn’t reply, but lowered its arm. Bending over deeply, it touched its bulky feet.
“Tiana?”
“Shut up!”
While they watched, the robot began performing a series of actions, none of which made any sense to him. Lifting one leg, it balanced on the other before repeating the movement with the other leg. Stepping forward, it dragged its other leg so that it was standing upright again. Its upper torso turned left then right, leaving its lower body motionless.
“Tiana?”
“We have it under control. The nanobytes have infiltrated the main processing unit.”
“How are you controlling it?”
“From a console, which is how I think it was being controlled in the first place.”
“So, it’s just a dumb weapon with an operator?”
Sounding contemptuous, she replied, “It is not like a nanobyte. The decision-making ability is limited.”
“Send out instructions to the other ships. They need to know to disable and control it.”
“Doing it now.”
After listening to Tiana’s soft tone, Tank’s voice sounded harsh in his headset. “Blast that tin can into space. We’ll blow it up once it’s out.”
“Why? Tiana can control it.”
“For critters sake, Ark, they can see us through it.”
Realizing Tank was right, he said, “Tiana, march it down to the docking bay and make it throw itself overboard.”
Still sounding unimpressed, she replied, “But it is only a toy.”
Before he could argue that the toy had killed two hundred of their people, Tank’s voice came through his headset again. “Quit screwing around, Ark. There’s a full scale battle going on out here.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN:
Eyes On You
(Ark Three)
Joining Tank on the Bridge, he could see the full extent of the problem. Thousands of Earth’s assault ships and two hundred Battleships were driving towards them at speed.
Spinning in his chair as he walked onto the Bridge, Tank asked, “Now what?”
He studied the screens listing the number and type of ships converging on their position. With one hundred and forty BattleRigs, fifty were within range and each had thirty Scorpions. When the two armies met, the battle would distil into a number of smaller fights between the Scorpions and assault ships. The only way to end the battle was to take out Ark Command, but she was heavily defended and a good distance from where the two fleets would meet in space.
“Have you ever done this before?”
Tank shook his head. “Not on this scale and not against our own.”
He needed to spread the risk and turn their weaknesses into strengths. Taking on the Navigators in their area of space made them vulnerable. The Navigator fleet would have a way of resupplying, so he needed to take them further out or cut off their supply. Although his troops weren’t as good at taking orders, they knew how to function without a central command. If he could disrupt communications from Ark Command then that would leave Earth’s ships leaderless. Their Scorpions were fast and highly maneuverable, but the Navigators could only have limited experience with their assault ships. His Scorpions should isolate each assault ship, disabling it before moving onto the next.
Nodding to himself, he opened a channel to the Battalions. “I want ten BattleRigs to hunt for Ark Command. When you find it, chase it down. It’ll be heavily defended and I don’t want to lose any ships to it. Your main objective is to make it move out of range. Tank, you lead them.”
“Roger that.”
“We need to cut off their supply ships, so I want five BattleRigs dedicated to finding them. They’ll be behind their lines, so use the Scorpions to search and destroy. If they can’t resupply they’ll have to abandon their attacks. I don’t care who leads it, just get it done.”
“I’ll lead the battle team against the main attacks. We need to pull them further out into space, so I want our remaining BattleRigs to retreat. The Scorpions are to form a front line. Your objective is to tease them with lightening attacks and then pull back. We need to spread them thinner and further away from one another, Ark Command and their supply ships.” When no one spoke, he continued, “Once we have them isolated, we take each one out. Do not hesitate. If you do, then you die.”
Tank’s voice cut across the channel. “Are we taking prisoners?”
“No, I don’t want to board their Battleships. When they run let them go.”
“What about their visibility pods?”
“Good point, Tank. I want a team of twenty Scorpions to search and destroy. If they can’t see us then they’re at a disadvantage. Alpha One ship is now in command of the whole battle. The search squad hunting Ark Command, the supply destroy squad and visibility destroy teams are to report to me. I’ll lead the front line attack.”
Tank’s squad had the most experience in space so they assigned one of his Bombardiers to each of the teams. Samson and Tank would lead the hunt for Ark Command. Lace and Bombardier One-Zero-One would destroy the supply lines. Cardiff and Bombardier Six-Three would search for the visibility pods.
Turning to Tank, he said, “I’ll head out to the battlefield.”
“Where exactly is that?”
It was a very good question. Unlike a land-based war, they could move vast distances across space. With thousands of ships involved in an engagement, the battlefield would span solar systems and they could move fast, meaning it would shrink and expand without warning.
“We need to define it. I need another squad to act as the rounders. Their job will be to drive the enemy ships…”
“Enemy ships?”
“Yeah, the navs are now our enemy, but I don’t want to kill any more of them than we have to.”
No one spoke, leaving his words to echo across to the Captain of every ship. It was one thing to want control of Earth, but entirely another to know it would come at the cost of people they thought of as their own.
“Does anyone have problem? Because if you do then you must stand down from your command. There’ll be no judgment or punishment, but you need to be honest.”
Bombardier One-Zero-One said what everyone was thinking. “It’s brother against brother.”
“They choose to fight for Dunk.”
“And we choose to fight for you.”
“And I’m at war with Dunk.”
A dead silence reigned for a brief moment before Cardiff spoke confidently. “We fight for Ark. The decision has already been made.”
Excited chatter filled the communications grid as people and Scorpions were assigned to the squads. The moment had passed. Hitting the mute on his screen, he cut across their communications. “The rounders squad is to be led by Mex and Bombardier Four-Two. Report to me as you go.”
Tank stood up from the command chair. “You have the helm, Commander.”
This would be his first space battle. All of his other fights paled in comparison to the number of ships under his command and how many enemy were headed his way. Placing his hands against the arms of the large chair, he slowly sat down. Up until this moment, his leadership had never been tes
ted. Today he would lose ships and the people piloting them. They would follow his orders and it would cost them their lives. He’d taken a stand against Dunk and this was the price. Was it worth it?
Leaning back into the chair, he vaguely listened to their chatter on the grid. Despite always appearing to be undisciplined, his troops were organizing themselves. Battalion Generals were setting battle strategy. Their Brigade and Executive Officers were developing courses of executable action and passing it down the line. The Captains and Senior Sergeants were taking those orders, translating them into executable tasks the front line troops could understand and implement. Without needing to hear their communications, he knew the Squad Leaders would be readying to take action based on those plans. His war machine might lack the visible structure of the Navigator Army, but it wasn’t incompetent, which he supposed was what really counted.
Tank batted his shoulder. “Gotta go.” Leaning into him, he added, “Stay icy. You’re doing good.”
It was about as positive a statement as Tank had ever made about his performance. Allowing himself a small grin, he looked up at Tank. “Stay alive.”
Turning away and laughing, Tank shouldered his weapon as he headed towards the door. “The less I try the longer I do.”
It felt strange without Tank by his side, but it was time he stood on his own. The enemy fleet were only twenty light-years from their position. His troops might have little to no space battle experience, but neither did the Navigators. With no tried and true tactics, he wasn’t constrained by any preconceived ideas. He would turn every weakness into a strength.
As his confidence grew, five attack ships appeared out of nowhere, all firing at his BattleRig. Rocking with the impact, he gripped the arms of his chair.
“Where the hell did they come from?” The Visibility specialist shouted.
“BattleRigs retreat! Scorpions attack!”
Sending such a small number of ships into their space wasn’t a good tactic. While he watched, fifty Scorpions surrounded the five ships, returning fire. Expecting to see Navigators launching into space, he was surprised when only robots burst from the escape hatches.
“Dammit. How many of those bots does Dunk have?”
“Scoop them up. We will take control of them,” Tiana said.
He liked the way she was thinking. Dunk Two might have almost indestructible robots, but Tiana could infect them with nanobytes. If anything, Dunk Two was only adding to his army. “Scorpion ships, tow them in.” Turning in his chair, he added, “Tiana, get down to the docking bay. Make sure they’re infected before they board. And disable their cams.”
He couldn’t work out how Dunk Two was able to drop enemy directly onto their position. It was as if at times he knew where they were and other times he didn’t. Looking at his large hand, he remembered how he used a chip in his wrist to open every door in CaliTech. The implanted chip had been destroyed in the process of becoming a Bombardier, but not all of them were transformed. As comprehension dawned, his stomach did a flip.
“All Generals. Your navs still have chips. Destroy them now. The enemy is using them to locate us.”
Through the grid, he heard Cardiff ask, “How can they do that? Those chips can’t be read across space.”
That was true. To read the chips they would need a device closer to the source, meaning Dunk Two must have communications beacons. “Cardiff, look for any other sort of beacons while you’re hunting down the visibility pods.”
“What do they look like?”
“I don’t know, but Dunk Two likes to reuse tech, so they’ll probably look like a visibility pod or a small ship.”
“Those things are biologically based, which makes them tough to spot.”
“Then look hard.”
“Roger that.”
Dunk Two wouldn’t like losing his toys, so he doubted he’d send good robot after bad. Leaning back in his chair again, he narrowed his eyes. The Navigator ships were closer now. What would they do? They’d just tried sending scouts in the form of robots, but they’d know not to do that again. What would he do if he wanted to attack a formation of heavily armed ships? The Navigators didn’t know what he had by way of fleet or weapons. Admittedly, they would have gained some insight from the robots that boarded their ships, but that would give no hint about their capability or capacity.
When it came to size of army, Dunk Two had him beat. There were three hundred thousand Navigators and his army was only ten percent of their size. His fleet had been larger than Dunk Two’s, but they grew their ships from cells, so that would have been easy to fix. Weapons wise, he figured they could match one another. Once any weapon was destructive enough, there was very little that could be added to make it more so. A Navigator in armor could put up a decent fight against a Bombardier, so that was another match. Dunk Two had clearly developed some sort of fast way to travel otherwise the robots couldn’t appear out of nowhere. Regardless of how Dunk Two was making them appear, it wasn’t far reaching enough, otherwise Navigators would already be onboard his ship.
Strumming his fingers on the arm of his chair, a voice interrupted his thoughts. “Ark, sir, we’re waiting for orders.”
Where the other squads he’d sent out would weaken the enemy, his team would take the brunt of the Navigator attack. Continuing to strum his finger, he tried putting himself in Commander Casey’s position. She didn’t know his strength in numbers, weapons or capability. As a dedicated and professional commander, she wouldn’t want to lose many of her Navigators. Given they’d just taken control of the robot that boarded them, she knew they had that tactic beat. Why had she sacrificed five ships and robots?
The only reasoning he could come up with was intelligence. Casey was trying to compensate for her lack of information by using the cameras on the robots. She was watching them right now, using the robots and gaining insight into the size of his fleet. His immediate instinct was to destroy them, but then he smiled.
“Tiana, take a couple of Scorpions and tow the robots away from the battlefield.”
“And go where?”
“Take them down to a planet, any one will do.”
“Why?”
“I want Casey to think we have a base there. She’ll waste some troops taking a look.”
“I can program the robots to attack them if she does that.”
“Do it.”
Casey already knew he had a well-sized fleet with weapons good enough to take down an assault ship. If he were in her position, he would create squads of three and five ships to attack the Scorpions. As they fought, he would drive them away from the BattleRig until it was exposed. Once he had a clear shot, he’d use one of the remotely controlled robot ships as a bomb. All it would need to do was to land in the docking bay and explode. Easier still, he would ram the BattleRig, exploding the assault ship on impact.
Standing, he turned to the Bridge specialists. “Lead all the BattleRigs into deep space.”
“Why?”
“They’re about to be targeted. I want all Scorpions out in a three dimensional grid formation within the battlefield.”
“Where are you going?”
“To join them. I’ll run the battle from inside of our perimeter.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN:
No Cigar
(Ark Three)
Scorpions were three times the size of an assault ship. Used only in combat, all they contained was a three-person battle deck. The rest of the ship was dedicated to weapons, thrust and power supply. The Scorpion’s main weapon was its Particle Beam, firing pulses up to ten times a second. Unlike lasers, particle beams could blast through armor, releasing heat and radiation within the target. The Particle Beam cannons could be locked onto a target manually through a Bombardier or via the Scorpion’s computer. The secondary weapon of the Scorpion was the ship-to-ship seeker missiles, but with only sixteen per ship, they were used sparingly. The Scorpion also had defensive countermeasures in the form of electro-optical crystals in the ship’s
armor. The onboard computer used them to deflect lasers and hide their signature from seekers.
The Battle Deck on a Scorpion worked like a hologram, so sitting on it was like being on a floating platform in space. If he wanted to see anything in more detail, he only had to reach out and grab it. The system would zoom in on that location, giving him as much detail as it had. He was in the central position and two Bombardiers were seated slightly below him on each side. The three dimensional world faded the Bombardiers into the background, making him feel as if he were alone.
Above, below and behind him were Scorpions. Each was equally spaced from the next, forming a grid of warships. Just as he’d ordered, the BattleRigs were well behind the lines. By spreading the BattleRigs far apart, he’d made each one an expensive target. Casey would need to send at least twenty assault ships to find and attack one. If she did then the other BattleRigs would move out of position to help the one under attack.
Tank’s voice could be heard on the grid. “Ark Command is on the run. They’re pulling back into their own space.”
“Keep them under pressure. Don’t let up.”
“Do I ever?”
“Battle formation. Controlled retreat five light-years. We need to keep dragging them out of their space.”
His battlefield was like a rectangular box. Over a thousand ships hung in formation, with a hundred across the front and ten rows deep. It was creating a straight front line, but once he drew enough of the Navigator ships into their grid he planned to create an arc shape. Eventually the Navigator assault ships would find themselves inside of a closed circle surrounded by Scorpions. Gripping the arms of his command chair, three thousand assault ships were forging towards them, forming a wall of weapons. Stacked ten levels high and twenty across, the ugly brown ships were travelling fast.
“Here they come!”
Just as he expected, Casey had numbers on her side. She was planning to overwhelm them, sending three ships for every one of theirs. Each assault ship had laser cannons and six Space Spear missiles. It was overwhelming firepower with eighteen missiles for every one of his Scorpions. If his plan didn’t work then this could become a massacre where he would lose most of his fleet. Bombardiers didn’t sweat, but that didn’t stop his shrunken stomach from churning unhappily.