by Isaac Hooke
The Mind Refurb vessels on the far side of Earth began to pop into existence on Jain’s display. For a moment he was confused as to how the Mimics were obtaining that information, until he noticed that alien battle groups had jumped in near the opposite side of the Martian orbit, where there was a clear view of Earth’s far hemisphere. A rift jump like that wasn’t entirely unexpected: according to the alien manual, the rift destination could be fine-tuned with far greater accuracy than rifts formed by human vessels.
Even in stealth mode, Mimic ships could still communicate, because they utilized directional gamma rays. This would allow them to send signals back and forth undetected by the Mind Refurb ships. Well, until those add-on sensors penetrated the Mimic holoemitters.
The alien ships in both groups finished jumping in. There were seventy-five with Jain’s battle group, and another seventy-five on the far side of the Martian orbit.
As for the defenders of Earth, in total Jain counted one hundred and ten vessels. That number was a little higher than he thought it would be; which meant humanity had withdrawn the fleet from the ruins of the outlying colonies, and most likely had abandoned the Galactic Eastern Front entirely, ceding the final system to the Link. This truly was their last stand.
Jain feared that stand was doomed to fail: the Mimics outnumbered them by about forty ships. But he reminded himself that there were likely a good portion of Mind Refurb vessels still cloaked; more ships might be hiding behind each other, further masking their numbers.
Still, they couldn’t have much more than around one hundred fifty, making the battle about even, at least in terms of numbers. Unfortunately, Jain remembered very well how difficult it was to win an even battle against these aliens. In the simulations, his Void Warriors had lost every time.
“I’m receiving a request from 46,” Xander said. “Your commanding officer would like to open a permanent, voice-only line.”
“Do it,” Jain said.
Only a moment after Xander established the line, 46 gave the opening order.
“Advance on indicated course,” 46 said over the comm line. “Speed seventy-five percent.”
A course appeared on Jain’s tactical display, the data transmitted through the open comm line. Jain folded space in front of the Devastator along that course, and jumped to seventy-five percent speed as asked.
Eight minutes later the protective half-sphere formation of the Mind Refurb ships began to shift in orientation: they had detected the incoming enemy fleet. In a short time, the Mind Refurbs had formed a complete sphere formation around their precious homeworld. According to the tactical display, half remained in orbit on the far side of the planet to combat the threat posed by the Mimics from that vector, while the other half floated above the hemisphere Jain’s group approached from.
Somewhere among them awaited the Void Warriors.
We meet again, my brothers and sisters. I just wish our reunion could be under better circumstances.
Jain could almost feel the tension emanating from the Mind Refurb fleet. Then again, a similar anxiety was no doubt swirling through the ranks of the Mimics. He felt it himself, though in his case the stress was more out of concern for his friends, and humanity, than for the invaders. Well, and for himself.
How am I going to survive this?
He knew what he had to do, and yet he was a little afraid to do it. He was going to join the losing side in the middle of an impossible battle.
Shit.
It was all too tempting to create a rift and jump the hell out of there. Just turning his back on everything and running, never to look back.
But that went against everything he stood for as a SEAL.
No. I stay and fight. And probably die. Partly for humanity. But mostly for my brothers and sisters of silicon.
There would be no restoration of his consciousness from backups. Not this time. This was truly the end.
Then I’m going to make it a fight the Mimics will remember.
He prepared several blobs and stored them in his Terrier bays. He was going to need them in the coming fight.
As the alien fleet continued its approach, Jain wondered how the Mimics planned to destroy the planet. The colonies were easy, since the populations were concentrated in usually one or two cities. But with a planet like Earth, with humanity spread out across one entire hemisphere, it was a lot harder. There were even a few pioneers living in the uninhabited zone on the opposite hemisphere, so if the Mimics wanted to be thorough, they’d have to attack the settlements there, too.
It could take them years to completely rout out the last remnants of humankind.
Unless, of course, they had some sort of masterplan to accelerate the population’s demise.
Jain didn’t even know what the battle plan was. The alien fleet admiral had likely revealed the knowledge to his immediate captains, who were keeping it a secret from their own subordinates for the time being, and would probably continue to do so until the Mimics were almost upon the planet. It made sense to hold the attack plan tight until right before Earth, to avoid the chance of any potential moles—like Jain—from leaking it to humanity.
But if 46 or any other commanding officer decided to reveal those plans early, Jain was ready. He had used his multipurpose termites to print up a comm array specifically designed for sending human-compatible radio waves. While his own comm array was capable of transmitting such a signal, the aliens would have instantly picked him out as the source, and the fireworks that followed wouldn’t be pretty. Not to him, anyway.
He’d secured that array to one of his skirmishers, and covered the surface in holoemitters, thermal maskers, and LIDAR absorbers. While he was creating it, he wondered why the aliens didn’t simply coat all of their boarding party units with stealth features like that. But as the process dragged on, he understood why: it took about thirty times longer to create a stealth skirmisher similar to the one he had designed. It simply wasn’t worth it to spend the extra manufacturing time to justify stealth, considering that more than enough of the skirmishers were getting through the Mind Refurb point defenses. Why spend a half hour creating a stealth unit when you could have thirty within that same time span, with about ten eventually landing on the Mind Refurb hulls and deploying their cargo? Plus, the constituent elements required for full stealth were in far shorter supply, so even if the aliens printed the units in advance, they’d only be able to create about five per vessel. Some of the Mimics probably did use a few stealth skirmishers, but as soon as the devices attached to enemy hulls, their positions would be revealed just like ordinary boarding party units.
When finished, Jain had constructed another of the specialized skirmishers, so he had a standby in case he needed to send two messages before he revealed himself to the enemy, with the understanding that each skirmisher would be destroyed shortly after the message was transmitted. He also had another sixty normal skirmishers waiting in the staging areas of course, filling up all his reserve space, but those would be used for offensive purposes.
While humanity had developed a sensor add-on to penetrate that specific stealth technology, the aliens had no such tech: Jain knew from the manuals that the Mimics relied instead on the weak thermals produced by the inertialess drives whenever they needed to track a stealth pyramid that wasn’t responding to ordinary communications.
But the skirmisher Jain had developed didn’t contain any such thermal leakage—it didn’t use inertialess drives. He anticipated it would completely slip under the Mimic radar until the message transmitted. However it was possible the Mind Refurbs might detect the skirmisher before the signal went out, but that was doubtful, considering the size of the craft.
One hundred thousand kilometers away from Earth, Xander announced: “We just took a weak laser hit, port flank, thirty degrees inclination.”
Jain pulled up his damage report screen, and the emulation layer Xander had written highlighted a small red mark on his hull.
“Probably not worth it to
dispatch the termites,” Jain said. “We’ll save our metals for the more important repairs.” He glanced at the tactical display, and saw white lines momentarily flashing into existence, sourced from the human fleet. Those lines represented lasers, as computed by the alien sensor cloud.
“So the Mind Refurbs have begun to fire their raptors,” Jain said.
“Yes,” Xander said.
“It’s interesting, coming at this battle from the point of view of the Mimics,” Jain said.
“It certainly is,” Xander said. “But it’s made all the more interesting by the fact that you intend to turn on them.”
“Just as soon as the bastards reveal their battle plan…” Jain said.
“Launch Terrier units, defensive pattern thirty-two,” 46 ordered over the comm line.
The requested firing vector highlighted on Jain’s tactical display, and he obeyed. He followed that firing solution to the letter when he launched his blobs; the other Mimics in the battle group unleashed their own Terriers so that, in only a few moments, the accelerating projectiles completely screened the battle group from the lasers. They were imparted with just enough speed to keep pace ahead of the battle group, and formed multiple layers so that when the defenders released the next round of laser attacks, the beams only ate away the first layer of blobs.
Jain began replenishing the Terriers he had lost, mindful of the drain it had on his main power well—the lightning weapon used the same power source, and he wanted to have it ready to fire when he turned against them.
The battle group continued to regenerate that screen of Terriers during the approach so that the most damage the pyramids received were a few nicks and scratches.
Humanity is truly outmatched. Why are they fighting?
But he knew why. There was no surrender. And no running. They didn’t have enough ships to evacuate all those billions of people. The ships used to transport settlers to the colonies could only carry between ten to fifty thousand each.
At twenty thousand kilometers, Jain was expecting the order to launch skirmishers, as the pyramid fleet had done the last time he had engaged them from the Mind Refurb side. But the order didn’t come, and the enemy held back. Last time, the Mind Refurbs had used their missiles to clear out those skirmishers, to good effect.
I guess the Mimics finally learned their lesson…
At fifteen thousand kilometers, missiles finally began to pour in from the defenders. Some were nukes, some conventional weapons. The Mind Refurbs that composed the defensive sphere above Earth fired them at both incoming battle groups; they spaced them out, and organized each successive wave so that the lightning bolt weapons wouldn’t be able to arc between the missiles and take them down in multiples. Humanity was also learning from its previous fights…
Jain’s sensors weren’t able to differentiate between nuclear and conventional warheads, and all of the missiles showed up as the same type of dot on his map: a yellowish-red projectile.
Because of the spacing, he doubted the aliens would use their lightning weapons this time—there were simply too many missiles out there. Sure enough:
“Fire skirmishers and Terriers to intercept incoming projectiles,” 46 announced. “Choose available targets. Utilize thirty percent of remaining inventory. Maximum acceleration.”
Missiles turned a darker yellow-red when targeted by another Mimic, so Jain was able to choose those missiles that hadn’t yet been selected. He launched skirmishers and blobs at the different targets in turn, using up thirty percent of his available inventory as requested. He began creating new versions of each unit to replenish his inventory.
Firing at maximum acceleration allowed the blobs and skirmishers to weave past the Terriers that acted as a screen, and onward the different targets. The projectiles had to get close with the incoming missiles in order to take them down: ordinarily the proximity fuses only detonated when the nukes were under five hundred meters out from a target. This was because in space, if a nuclear weapon detonated from further away than a kilometer from its mark, it would blind a few sensors, and at best discolor a portion of the target’s hull. And this was against human ships. Against the thick armored hull of the Mimics, the detonations would probably have to occur much closer to cause any significant damage. Conventional missiles had it even worse, and usually detonated only upon impact with the target, combining blunt force damage from their velocity with explosive yield from their warhead.
Jain noted that most of those fuses of either weapon type weren’t detonating at all this time; these were smart missiles, and had been programmed to detonate only for the larger alien hulls, apparently.
The skirmishers and Terriers were still able to take down the units by impacting; some of the missiles dodged the first wave, only to be taken down by the second or third. There were no detonations—the missiles simply broke apart from the blunt force damage if hit by a skirmisher, or if a Terrier hit them, they disintegrated. The skirmishers were reduced to spare parts after the impact, whereas the Terriers only shrunk slightly, ready to take on more targets.
The defenders must have updated their detonation orders when too many of those Terriers survived, because the nukes and missiles began to explode when Terriers came near; the nukes cleared those blobs from the map, but missiles only shrunk the Terriers slightly. Overall it was a good trade off for the Mimics, because the cost of creating one Terrier in terms of time and energy was far less than that of a nuke, or even conventional missiles.
A few missiles did manage to make it through the waves of skirmishers and Terriers, and hit the waiting screen of blobs. Those that weaved through that final layer were detonated with a lightning blast so that none of the missiles reached the battle group.
The aliens win this one, too.
There was no danger of those lightning bolts arcing to nearby Mimic ships—their hulls were designed not to attract the particular plasma channels involved.
At this point, only a few of the screening blobs remained. Jain knew what was coming next.
Sure enough:
“Fire skirmishers and Terriers to intercept enemy fleet,” 46 announced. “Choose your targets. Expend thirty-five percent remaining inventory. Maximum acceleration.”
Jain and the other members of the battle group began launching Terriers at the distant Mind Refurb ships in orbit. Jain avoided targeting any Piranha class vessels—the base ship class of his Void Warriors. While he could ID that particular class of ships by heat signature, he had no way to identify the actual owners of said ships, not without engaging in communications with the Mind Refurb fleet and revealing his true nature to the Mimics.
The launched projectiles hurdled past the few blobs that yet screened the alien battle group, and headed toward the distant ships waiting beyond. The fresh wave of incoming projectiles forced the Mind Refurbs to expend their heavy lasers in defense, along with what was likely their remaining nukes and missiles.
At twelve thousand kilometers gravitational distortions began to assault the battle group. Pyramids swerved in three dimensions beside him, dodging the bolts as they came in, and easily escaping the clutches of the resultant black holes that formed.
Jain knew the tears in spacetime would have no effect on his trajectory thanks to his inertialess drives, but still he instinctively expected to feel the pull. It was only after ten or so holes had opened around him that his expectations changed, and he began to feel invincible.
Not even black holes can touch me!
He had to remind himself that if he made a mistake, and hit one of those holes, it would still spaghettify him. The bolts that formed these holes were hard to detect, only picked up by the alien sensors when they were under four thousand kilometers away, and he had to quickly fold space in another direction. The attacks certainly kept him on his toes.
The successive black hole attacks came in a herding pattern, of course; the defenders were trying to guide the individual ships onto particular trajectories in preparation for follow-
up barracuda strikes. It was a tactic he knew well—it was one of his favorites, after all. The other Mimics would have recognized this particularly strategy by now as well.
Sure enough, 46 announced: “Prepare to dodge the expected energy weapons.”
The question was, would the Mind Refurbs use a different tactic this time around? Probably not… why change what they knew already worked?
30
At eleven thousand kilometers, the barracuda energy bolts began to come in. Jain had been herded into a particularly tight series of black holes, and as an energy bolt came directly for him, he decided that rather than attempting to dodge, he was going to reverse course entirely.
And so he switched from full forward momentum to full backward momentum, moving away from the energy bolt. The deadly tunnel formed by the black holes squeezed tighter around him as the gravity wells attracted one another, spiraling closed, and he barely squeezed through the other side. The energy bolt emerged way off course so, when he switched to full forward momentum again, the bolt missed him easily.
Other Mimic ships issued similar dodging maneuvers, and then continued forward as well.
Cloaked Mind Refurb ships appeared randomly among the battle group, striking into the Mimics. Mind Refurb teleporters also appeared in the alien ranks; some had sword extensions like Medeia and cut through the surprised alien vessels. Others had micro machines like Cranston, and used them to inflict kinetic kill damage. The Mimics still hadn’t developed an effective countermeasure to those attacks. They lost ships because of it, but that didn’t matter, because they usually destroyed the offending vessels before they could get away. Occasionally an attacker managed to cloak before the retaliatory strike came, but those proved the exception rather than the norm.
Jain just hoped that none of the cloaked ships and teleporters would target him. Perhaps the Void Warriors had found a way to identify him. Then again, even if they had, that didn’t necessarily mean that the defenders wouldn’t attack his craft: they would have seen him opening fire already after all, and maybe thought that the Mimics had already wiped and replaced his mind.