“That’s half the sleds protecting just the Armillary, is that fair on the pilots.” I pointed out, concerned.
“I know, but the sled to person ratio still gives us less cover than the crew.” Hank reminded me.
My primary concern was ensuring everyone’s safety. No-one had chosen this path and if I was willing to risk their lives to protect my own, I would be no better than Lara.
“Who is going to pilot all these ships?” I asked.
“Right here!” A voice sounded across the hanger bay.
Ava stood there, holding her laptop and swinging off the spiral staircase.
“You’re going to pilot a hundred ships?” I questioned.
“No! Lovelace is.” She informed me. “Now that she is strapped in downstairs, she will be coming along for the ride and she can easily command the fleet, with more accuracy than traditional pilots I bet!”
“Let’s not go that far!” Hank interrupted.
It was a clash of opinions again. Ava thought that technology could replace every human job whereas Hank believed a computer could never understand the intricate workings of a human mind and therefore, never be able to make the same decisions.
“We also have the robots.” Hank reminded me.
“I forgot about them. Is Lovelace going to control the robots too?” I asked Ava as she walked over to us.
“Yep, but they are going to follow orders from the pilots in the first instance.” She explained, looking at Hank to make sure he acknowledged the gesture.
“What is the plan with them? Are they just decoys?” I asked, still getting my head around the details of every part of the plan.
“We are equipping each one with a welding arm. They can be decoys, battering rams or they can burn things with the welding torch.” Hank said, a grin grew on his face.
This was more like Hanks speciality. He didn’t mind fine details and clever tactics, but really, he just wanted to use overwhelming force to break an opponent. These robots were rough and tough, just like him.
“One minute until take off.” Sam’s voice echoed through the intercom system.
“We better get up there.” Ava said, running across the hanger bay and disappearing up the stairs.
“Do you think this will work?” I asked Hank honestly.
He had the most experience with warfare, although battles on this scale were outside of everyone’s expertise.
“It has to, for humanities sake.” He said calmly resting his huge paw on my shoulder trying to comfort me.
As we launched I heard the scraping of metal from the legs of the Armillary. The robots had broken the welds on the containers that were encasing the base of the ship, so as we took off, the ship tore through the metal, casting it out across the moon’s surface. If this was going to become a regular thing then we would have to find a better way to dock the Armillary.
We had no real way of knowing how big Lara’s forces had grown. We stole her replicator and shut down all her ships but we had seen so much activity in the atmosphere it was clear she had repaired the damage to her ships or she had used access to Bills replicator to make more gravity drives. At this point we just didn’t know the numbers.
“Entering cruising speed.” Sam said over the communications system to all the craft.
“Take it nice and slow.” I said as I entered the control room.
“Ava, keep us updated with any changes to Lara’s fleet.” Sam requested.
“Eye, Eye, captain.” She said ironically.
We wanted to see how Lara would respond. If she gathered her forces in a show of strength, which we suspected was most likely, we would have time to turn and run, but we needed to know what we were up against.
“We’ve got twice as much firepower as before.” I said to Sam, handing him a drink. He downed it in one.
“Yes, but this time we have no missiles and we only got away last time because of Ava’s little virus, disabling Lara’s craft, we need to know what we are up against this time, before we fly into a trap.” Sam said. He wasn’t his usual, calm self, I could tell that he had something up his sleeve, but he wanted Lara to show her hand first.
“Time for one last meal.” Tony’s voice shouted up from the staircase as he appeared carrying plates of food.
He and Julie had been in the kitchen cooking some strange looking stuff. I didn’t recognise any of the ingredients, or the plants that it came from, but I knew that it would be something fitting for a possible last meal and they had worked hard on it so I appreciated the effort.
On the plates were bars of food. They looked like chocolate bars. I hadn’t tasted chocolate in weeks.
“Here you go!” Tony said as he handed one to me.
It certainly looked like chocolate, however, there were instructions imprinted onto the side of it.
The bar was segmented into three different bites with the words, ‘Starter’, ‘Main’ and ‘Desert’ imprinted into the surface. I snapped off the first and started to chew.
“Tomato soup!” I stated as the taste differed completely from what I was expecting.
“No, it tastes more like prawns” Derek said, contradicting me.
“Mine tastes like cheesy garlic bread.” Ava added.
“They are all customised to your own personal tastes.” Julie said, handing the last one to Hank.
“Everyone should have their favourite meal.” Tony explained.
“This is the best salmon that I have ever tasted!” Sam said, literally licking his lips.
“What does yours taste of?” Ava asked me.
I put the next bit into my mouth.
“The best bacon cheeseburger I have ever tasted!” I reported, “What about you?”
“Spaghetti carbonara, it’s delicious!” She informed me between bites.
Hank was holding the little bar in between his index finger and thumb. The bar looked small in everybody’s hands but in Hanks it looked bitesize and it was. It only took one chomp for Hank to swallow his whole.
“My favourite, unsweetened, porridge!” Hank exclaimed and the whole room erupted in laughter.
As the Earth grew larger in the window the sensors indicated that a lot of gravitational anomalies were heading towards Europe, converging over England. Lara was collecting her forces over the facility it seemed.
In total we had about three hundred ships of various shapes and designs including the robots that were equipped with gravity drives and welding arms and the new sleds.
“Sam, how many ships are we estimating?” I asked as we hovered over the Atlantic Ocean.
“Lara has amassed nearly five hundred ships already. I have slowed the fleet to ensure that all her forces are in one place, she still has ships incoming over Eastern Europe and from the Artic, and they will join her fleet before we get there.” Sam informed me.
Ava looked at me. That number was smaller than we expected, and she seemed optimistic.
“Incoming message.” Derek alerted the room.
Lara’s face appeared on our screens.
“Dear Terrorists. Thank you for making your destruction easy for me. You are about to take part in a public spectacle that will show the world the full might of my invincible fleet.”
The message cut away as abruptly as it started.
“She has some nerve!” Ava said, angrily.
“Let’s just hope that she has underestimated our forces.” I replied.
“Let’s hope we haven’t underestimated her!” Derek added.
It took a few more minutes to arrive over the south coast of England. We kept scanning the skies to make sure that all her forces were together. One final count showed she outnumbered us two to one, once again she had the upper hand.
“Ava, put a fleet counter on the screens.” Sam demanded.
“Done!” She said as two numbers appeared in the corner of every screen, a smaller number, ours, reading three hundred and fourteen, and a larger number, Lara’s, reading six hundred and fifty-four.
“Orders sent.” Derek confirmed.
The screens around the room displayed the overview of the battle. The large collection of yellow dots on the left indicated Lara’s fleet and the smaller number of green dots on the right represented us. In the middle of the green dots was a single blue dot. This was the Armillary.
Our main fleet slowed and we halted about forty miles away from the facility where Lara’s forces were gathered. Hovering a mile up in the air with the white cliffs of Dover below us.
We assumed Lara must be inside the facility, she had given many press statements recently from the carpark outside so she couldn’t be too far away.
The aim was, win the battle and then blockade the facility until she agreed to release the technical files containing all the historical research she had been holding back. That was the plan at least.
“Ready for this?” Sam asked the room.
On the screen a swarm of smaller dots advanced on the enemy. These were the worker robots and the sleds, all controlled through a combination of our pilots and Lovelace.
As they got closer, we started to get good visuals of the fleet Lara had assembled. It was the exact same model as in previous battles. Obviously, she thought that this was the best design and had stuck with it although I couldn’t figure out why, it was clunky, overly large with expensive life support systems for a drone ship and it had very few weapons.
We had a hundred sleds and robots approach Lara’s front line. They moved as a small swarm, spherical in shape, however, our top down graphics drew it as a circle on our screens, only Sam, who stood in front of the Holotable could see the battle in three-dimensions. Right on queue Lara’s fleet fired their missiles.
We had expended all our missiles when we captured the replicator, but this was not a problem. Our ships could easily outrun the crude, rocket based propulsion of the missiles.
“Lovelace is taking evasive action.” Ava said.
We watched as the dots on the screen moved sporadically. At first, they flew towards the missiles, then, when they were locked on, they sped away, each with a single rocket in tow.
It only took about thirty seconds for the missiles to run out of fuel and then the wave of explosions from the spent warheads created a flash of light that was visible from our remote location through the window. I had to put my hand in front of my eyes to shield from the glare.
This was our advantage and we knew it. Our ships were faster and more advanced than Lara’s and, with Lovelace controlling the overall group, we could now set traps for the remaining fleet.
“How many missiles did they use?” I asked across the control room.
“About half.” Derek replied.
“Ava, now is the time then.” I nodded towards her and she gave me a knowing smile.
“Changing tactics.” She reported.
“That’s good, just like we planned.” Sam confirmed.
The sleds and robots flew at high speed into Lara’s fleet. The robots doing their best to ram an enemy craft, trying to get close enough to burn it with their welding kits or just bulldoze their way through the cloud of aircraft.
Through the cameras we saw some of the tactics that Lovelace was employing. She would fly one of the sleds near Lara’s unmanned planes to get their attention. The plane would fire its machine guns at the sled but the rapid movements, and the small target were near impossible to hit.
Then the sled would bait the enemy away from the crowd, letting the plane chase the sled to get them into position. A simple cat and mouse tactic that worked so well before, with our sled being the mouse staying just out of effective range of all the weapons. While this was happening Lovelace would position three sleds in the path of the oncoming enemy. After watching our sled pass them, they would then appear from the side of the chase, machines guns and laser beams firing until nothing remained as the larger plane flew through the hail of fire.
It was a trap that proved very successful. Watching Lara’s craft chase a sled into oncoming fire was very satisfying.
Between the sleds working in small teams and the robots that were setting fire to anything they touched, the first few minutes of the battle went entirely in our favour.
Our craft were too small to get hit and the tactic of using the entire fleet in one, single, choreographed dance was too complicated for Lara’s remote pilots to understand.
A couple of Lara’s planes did get a few lucky shots away and either damaged or completely took out our sleds but overall, the sleds were winning this battle and proving to be very effective.
“We are winning this battle three-to-one.” Derek informed the room.
“Three-to-one?” Sam asked. “I don’t see many casualties on our side.”
“It’s the robots. They are like kamikazes. They can do a lot of damage when they ram into something, but it’s fifty-fifty if they survive the impact.” Derek explained.
“Then forget the ramming, get the robots to run the gauntlet, it will free up the sleds.” Sam issued the command.
“Making changes now.” Ava replied.
I watched as a robot started to get chased by the enemy and I spotted three more sleds line themselves up in front to shoot at the enemy as it flew past. I was going to be another textbook manoeuvre until Lara’s fleet suddenly started to change tactics.
A missile launched from the chasing plane at point blank range straight into the flanking trio of sleds.
I looked out the window and saw a volley of explosions as missiles left multiple enemy aircraft and collided with our waiting sleds. The screen told me the damage. In only a few seconds we lost half of our fleet.
Lara’s numbers started to leap ahead in the battle and looked at Sam.
“Looks like she has become wise to our tactics.” Sam commented. “Ava what options have we got?”
We both turned to see Ava trying to interpret the ideas the supercomputer was constructing.
“Not many options at this point. If they are going to fire missiles at point blank range then we don’t have time to avoid them.” Ava explained. “By the time Lovelace sees the rocket it has already impacted.”
“On to plan B then.” Sam ordered.
It always felt good when you had a set of well thought out plans to fall back on.
“Are you sure?” Derek asked for clarification.
“Are we sure?” Sam asked everyone.
I saw nods of agreement throughout the command room and I gave Sam the thumbs up.
“Yes. Give the order.” Sam replied.
“It’s done.” Derek confirmed.
I watched the screens. Every sled and robot changed course, aiming straight at an enemy ship or group of ships if possible. Then the cameras went dead.
We all looked out of the window and saw the devastation over the horizon.
Bubbles of pure energy appeared from the middle of the battlefield. We had rigged the fleet to overload their gravity drives. It was a short-range weapon that caused the sleds and robots to implode causing everything within a small radius to get sucked into the mini-blackholes that were created. It only lasted a fraction of a second, but the gravitational pull was enough to crush everything in the vicinity.
The numbers spoke for themselves. We had sacrificed part of our fleet, but Lara’s damages were much greater.
“Incoming message.” Derek said, and he tapped the screen to relay the message to the entire control room.
It was Lara again, but this time there was a little icon to notify that this was a live call and not a pre-recorded message.
“Dear Terrorists. You are willing to blow up your own ships rather than admit defeat, and to what end? Now you are outnumbered, and we know your tactics. I hope you have made your peace.” She said in a sarcastic tone.
“Dear Tyrannical Leader.” Sam started. “I think you need to check your information. We are not outnumbered; in fact, I think the odds are in our favour.”
S
am gave the thumbs up to Hank who pressed the buttons on his control panel.
The floor started to vibrate as the doors of the hanger bay below started to open. Out of the window flew another fifty-five sleds which, according to the numbers of the screen, evened up the fleets. Sam had a smile on his face.
“I think that makes us even.” Sam continued. “Why don’t you give yourself up?”
“I see, terrorists.” Lara again transmitted. “Obviously your sensors are not as sophisticated as ours, if you would care to look behind you, around six hundred miles west, you will see your impending fate.” Lara closed the transmission with a delicate smile on her face.
Derek used his control panel to zoom out of the battlefield and pan over to the location Lara had stated. All the screens around the room mirrored this new view.
There they were, about five minutes away and closing. Over a thousand ships flying towards us over the Atlantic Ocean.
We currently numbered just over two hundred as did Lara but here was a new force and it could only belong to one person. Bill.
“How did we not see them coming?” Ava screamed!
“What should we do? Tony and Julie both asked me in unison.
I looked at Sam, worry all over my face and he just sat there, calmly, with a huge grin on his face. He cleared his throat, stood up and walked over to the window.
“Sit tight everybody, this is going to get interesting.” Sam said in his usual, calm way.
“Sit tight! Have you counted them?” Ava yelled, jumping over the control desk and running over to him. “One thousand and twenty-four ships, all coming this way, all carrying missiles and machine guns!” She sounded hysterical, rightly so.
“Now is not a time to panic!” Sam said, looking her in the eyes. “Derek, command the fleet to stand down and disarm weapons.”
“Disarm!” Ava yelled. “Are we giving up?”
“Do you think they will let us live if we do give up?” Derek asked.
“No, he doesn’t think that!” Ava screamed, looking Sam in the eyes. Sam just smiled back. “He is trying to make it quick, so we don’t have to suffer.”
“So this is how it all ends? Lara wins, everything we did, it made no difference, the human race will continue like nothing has changed.” I said, joining Sam and Ava at the window.
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