Trail of Evil

by Travis S. Taylor

  Roger that, Captain. The answer came from the four captains simultaneously—an eerie effect in her mindvoice. Nancy noted that she’d have to get used to that.

  “Take us to hyperspace jaunt and get us on top of those enemy ships!” Nancy ordered the navigation officer. The ship lurched hard as if they’d hit an asteroid. “What the hell!”

  “Shield generators down to fifty percent power, Captain!” the STO clone said emotionlessly. “I estimate we can take two more hits like that before they fail completely.”

  “Move us, Nav!”

  Three of the blue beams converged on 61 UM 7 and the ship exploded. The Blue force tracking dot in Nancy’s mind vanished. Over twenty thousand clones had just died. Clones or not, they were under her command and she wasn’t moving fast enough to keep them alive.

  “Goddamn it! I want every missile and DEG battery firing at those ships continuously! STO, keep me a constant shield status bar in my DTM!” Nancy looked at her ship and the remaining three. They were popping out of hyperspace jaunt right on top of the incoming enemy ships. The purple vortex of hyperspace appeared and disappeared in less than a couple of seconds. They didn’t have far to jump.

  The vortex vanished and immediately they were between two of the Chiata battleships. Directed-energy weapons poured out energy beams across the ship’s surface and some sort of energy balls continued to slam into the hull. The ship rocked and lurched and bounced.

  “We’ve got mecha everywhere, Captain!” the XO said.

  “Air Boss! Deploy the fighters!”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Well, at least the blue beams have stopped, right?” Nancy looked around the bridge for reassurance. “Anyone?”

  “None have fired in the last few seconds as far as I can tell,” the STO acknowledged.

  Nancy looked at the shield status bar in her DTM and it was hovering around thirty percent. They could turn and run now but she wasn’t sure the enemy would take the bait. And she had to give Fullback time to hit the planet farther in. The plan was to hold out for three minutes. That was a very long minute and a half away.

  “UM 5 just collided with one of the enemy ships, Captain!” Rackman shouted. The shield system was deflecting the bombardment but the effect was that the ship felt and sounded like the inside of a bass drum.

  “Order them to snap back to the Oort position!” Nancy looked at the location of the enemy ships surrounding them and her ships in her DTM. The enemy had them surrounded. They swarmed in and around them in a three-dimensional ball. They couldn’t hyperspace jaunt out or even fly out under main propulsion. There was only one way out and they were still fifty seconds away from that.

  “Alright, we will not survive this for fifty seconds more,” Nancy said just as UM 5 vanished. As it did it left a gaping hole in the enemy ship it had collided into after popping out of hyperspace. Orange and white flames filled the port bow of the ship, and secondary explosions threw debris and vents of smoke jetting in all directions.

  “Fire all weapons on that ship!” Nancy pointed at the damaged Chiata vessel.

  “Roger that,” the Weapons Deck Officer acknowledged.

  “Captain, we are losing mecha fast. The fighter wing is down to seventy percent,” the Air Boss said in a flat voice.

  “Order all the fighters to go deathblossom, and then snap back to Kill Box One!” Nancy ordered. “That might buy us a few seconds.”

  “CO, CDC.”

  “Go, CDC!”

  “CO, we are detecting three different clouds of movement headed our way.”

  “What does that mean, CDC?”

  “Each cloud represents multiple ships. There are thirty-nine supercarrier-sized ships in the nearest and smallest one, and there are many other smaller vessels ranging from frigate class to fighter class. ETA one minute.”

  “Roger that, CDC!”

  We better not be here in one minute, Nancy thought.

  I agree, Allison replied in her mind. The plan is working. They are taking the bait.

  Let’s hope it is a plan we can survive.

  The red beams from the forward directed-energy guns on the Hillenkoetter splashed across the front of the damaged enemy vessel, tearing into the interior of the alien ship. The DEG beams cut the alien ship as well as they did any other. Nancy was proud of that fact.

  As smoke and debris jetted out of the Chiata ship, it continued to fire the energy balls from side-mounted cannons. The energy balls slammed into the shields and jarred Nancy to the bone with each impact. Several standard missiles twisted through the hailstorm of enemy fighters and antispacecraft fire. Two of them managed to make it to target, detonating inside the enemy ship. The bow of the ship blew open like an exploding cigar. Then a blue beam tore through the center of the damaged ship and hit dead center of the Hillenkoetter.

  “Shit!” Nancy grabbed at her chair and toggled the armor restraints. “That does it! Shields are down to fifteen percent. We can’t continue this. Nav! Snap-back to rendezvous at Kill Box One!”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Comm, see if you can get me a status from the Thatcher as soon as we materialize!”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “QMT commencing in three, two, one,” the nav announced.

  Chapter 44

  June 13, 2407 AD

  Alpha Lyncis

  203 Light-years from the Sol System

  Tuesday, 6:21 AM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

  “Kill Box One, Captain.” The clone navigation officer didn’t even look up from his control panel as he talked. Nancy looked through the viewscreen as well as her DTM view and could see the red giant star, now almost ten astronomical units away. They were in an asteroid field that seemed to stretch as far as she could see in every direction.

  “Captain, Blue force trackers are online and we have the bot ships tagged,” Rackman said. “No sign of Vice Admiral Walker’s fleet yet. The CHENG reports that repairs are under way on the SIF generators as well as the barrier shield system.”

  “The admiral will do her job. She’ll show,” Nancy said. She flashed through the fleet’s locations in her DTM. The bot ships were arranged very two-dimensionally. “XO, have the bot ships move into more of a sphere using the asteroids as cover. The way the Chiata fought us just now was very three-dimensional and swarmlike.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Captain, I estimate the Chiata ships have located us by now and at estimated top hyperspace jaunt speeds will be here in ten to twenty seconds,” the STO clone said. Nancy knew and could see in her DTM that all the clones had name designations, but it didn’t seem to bother them that she only called them by rank or position. It was all a little weird to her.

  If we survive this, I’m going to have to learn all the bridge crew by name and face, she thought.

  That will be difficult with over eighty percent of the crew being clones. Each of the bridge crew has multiple twins somewhere else aboard the ship, Allison replied.

  “Roger that, STO. Keep me apprised of their movement if you detect anything. CDC could miss it.” Nancy pulled up the ship’s status reports. The clones, humans, builder, and repair bots were working like mad to fix the damage to the hull as well as the shield generator systems. They had all of twenty seconds to get them back up to full power.

  “Nav—move us back behind the bot fleet and get us cover behind an asteroid. I’d prefer to have cover from as many angles as possible. Let’s let stay back as long as we can to get some repairs done.” Nancy hoped there were enough bots and other ships to make a dent in the oncoming enemy onslaught. There were likely more than a hundred enemy ships following her. She suspected there would be just as many behind Vice Admiral Walker.

  “Captain, the Thatcher and UM 3 and 4 just appeared,” the STO said. “It looks like the Thatcher is in pretty bad shape.”

  “Patch me through, comm.”

  “Channel open, Captain.”

  Walker’s face popped up on the screen.
“Admiral Walker, I see you did about as badly as we did. Are you okay, ma’am?” Nancy asked.

  “We’ll make do, Captain Penzington. You’re not in much better shape, it appears.” Walker noted. “Be advised that over three hundred enemy ships are headed our way. Details of our engagement are being transmitted to your CDC for analysis.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll have our CDC return the favor. We believe that over one hundred are following us.” Nancy choked down bile and butterflies. The odds were overwhelming. “Admiral, any suggestions ma’am? We are severely outgunned and outnumbered.”

  “Stick to the plan, Nancy. If it gets too hot, we snap back. I’m giving you this order now and you better adhere to it. We do not lose any human ships at this location. We will snap to the Oort and lick our wounds before we do. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  “CO, CDC.”

  “Go, CDC.” Nancy said. “Looks like we’re on, Admiral. Good hunting.”

  “Walker out.”

  “Captain, we just had over a hundred ships just materialize out of hyperspace jaunt.”

  “Roger that, CDC. Keep an eye out for three hundred more.

  “Nav, get us under cover for now. We’ll watch how they engage the bots before we make a move. I want us hugging one of these asteroids. Get me recon birds on vantage points to keep me in the loop on what is going on.”

  Allison, send the same orders to UM 6 and 8.

  Done.

  “Aye, ma’am.”

  As the Hillenkoetter and UM 6 and 8 placed small asteroids in the belt between the bot fleet and the Chiata, the blue beams started tearing across the asteroid field and pounding into the thirty ships of the bot fleet. The bot ships fired red DEG and nuclear-tipped missiles back at the oncoming enemy swarm. The Chiata ships moved in a cloud formation with each of the individual particles of the cloud moving in what appeared to be random fashion. Nancy had asked Allison to model the motion and found that they were moving using Kolmogorov statistics and a von Karmen spectra almost identical to how atmospheric molecules bounce around in a turbulent flow. While even the best AIC could predict the general nature of the turbulent flow, there was no way to predict the location of individual components of the field of ships. Like the randomness of the atmosphere, the Chiata swarm was just as unpredictable.

  The Chiata ships closed the gap on the bot fleet and several of the zig-zagging blue beams turned and danced across space before they hit a target. In less than thirty seconds, five of the bot fleet ships had been totally destroyed. Fortunately, the thirty ships that had been deployed in the asteroid field, other than Walker’s fleet and Nancy’s, were completely bot controlled. There were no humans or clones aboard them. Moore’s and Madira’s plan had been to infect as many of the Chiata with buzzsaw replicator bots as they could. But that meant they had to get the bot ships close enough to latch some builder bots on.

  “Captain, we need to find a way to hit that swarm all at once. While the cloud confuses our guns and missiles they are all still close in on each other,” Rackman said. “I recall taking out some killer bees once with a can of spray lubricant and a torch. The bees swarmed right into my makeshift flamethrower.”

  “We’d need a big-ass flamethrower, XO.”

  “Yes, ma’am, or a bunch of nukes,” Rackman agreed. “And while we have used most of ours, I’m sure some of these ships here still have them.”

  “Good call, XO.”

  “CO, CDC.”

  “Go, CDC.”

  “Three hundred more ships just materialized in five clouds of sixty supercarrier-sized vessels. They are flanking our position.”

  “Roger that, CDC.” Nancy looked at the situation in her DTM view. The Kill Box One zone was at the origin of a sphere, whereas the surface of the sphere was now covered with alien ships bringing blue beams of death. And the sphere was collapsing and crushing inward.

  Allison, get me a direct link to Vice Admiral Walker.

  Done.

  Admiral, my XO had a great idea.

  Go.

  We need to detonate multiple nukes at the heart of each of these enemy clouds simultaneously. Nancy explained further and uploaded the sim Allison just finished to her.

  Got it, Captain. Good idea. You take care of it. I’ll direct the bots.

  Yes, ma’am.

  “XO, we have seven major clouds hammering us from outside, trapping us in our own goddamned kill box. Identify seven bot ships with the most nukes still available and implement your plan ASAP!” Nancy ordered Rackman.

  “I’m on it, Captain.”

  Nancy watched the battle continue to unfold as the bot fleet was getting hammered and the enemy fleet was still too far outside the kill box to let the buzzsaw bots loose. There were too many enemy ships just to kamikaze the bots and have them QMT into them. The idea was to infect as many of the enemy as possible. And that meant that they had to lure the enemy into the trap.

  She hoped that dropping nukes into the heart of the clouds would disperse the aliens and drive them to come closer in. Once the battle bots were able to engage the enemy ships they would attach, dig in, and start multiplying. Going to hyperspace wouldn’t help the Chiata at that point because they would be infected. Nancy hoped they’d suffer the same fate as the original Madira had and be eaten from the inside out and destroyed.

  “Ships identified and calculating QMT coordinates, Captain,” Rackman said. “They will be ready to engage in seconds.”

  “Davy, they must all go simultaneously. Have them QMT in, drop their missiles, and QMT out. Got it?” Nancy asked. Even though they were bot ships there was no need to lose them if they didn’t have to.

  “Understood, Captain. QMTs commencing!”

  Nancy watched in her mindview as the blue dots of seven ships vanished from their current Kill Box One location and then reappeared inside the middle of a red cloud. Almost as soon as the blue dots appeared in the red clouds they disappeared again and reappeared back in formation with the rest of the fleet. There were bright flashes and multiple explosions covering the interior of the large enemy clouds. Several secondary explosions followed and the swarms fell apart into random vectors.

  “That’s what happens when you put all your eggs in one basket,” Nancy said. She was very pleased to see that they had managed to damage several of the large Chiata vessels and totally wiped out many of the smaller ships and fighters.

  “It’s working!” Rackman shouted as he pounded his right fist against his left palm. “Now if they will just dig in closer.”

  “I suspect we’ve managed to really piss them off,” Nancy told her only non-clone bridge crewman.

  Blue beams rampaged through the bot fleet. The bots were doing a good job at moving around through the asteroids for cover, but the blue beams of death were hard to avoid. Of the thirty ships they started with, they were now down to nineteen. And in order to lure the Chiata in closer, the remaining ships were pulling in close to each other and nearer to asteroids. The Hillenkoetter and the Thatcher were right in the middle of it.

  The disrupted swarms filled the empty space between the asteroids surrounding the human and bot fleet ships. They were in range. Nancy was tired of seeing humanity’s assets continually blasted away. The attrition rate of the human ships was ten times that of the Chiata fleet. It was time to do more damage.

  “Come on, Admiral, they’re in close enough,” Nancy said through clenched teeth as one of the blue beams zigged around the edge of the asteroid and pounded into the shields of her ship. “Come on.”

  “Captain, the bots have been deployed,” the STO announced.

  “I see them,” Davy added as he pointed out the viewport. “Let’s hope they can get inside the enemy ships and cause them the same kind of problems we had.”

  A second blue beam tore through the asteroid near the aft section of the ship. Large chunks of molten rock slammed into the shields. Nancy watched as the shield status bar dropped to single-digit percentage.
Internal fire alarms popped up on the ship status map in her DTM view.

  Nancy, we can’t take another hit like that, Allison warned her.

  I know.

  “XO! Can we confirm that the bots have engaged the enemy?”

  “Yes, Captain! The bots are swarming like mad.”

  “Nav! Get us the hell out of here.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the navigation officer replied calmly and in a monotone.

  Chapter 45

  June 13, 2407 AD

  Alpha Lyncis

  203 Light-years from the Sol System

  Tuesday, 7:33 AM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

  “Vice Admiral Walker and Captain Penzington took extensive damage, General,” Firestorm reported to Alexander. Their mission reports started filtering into his mind almost as soon as they had re-entered local space at the Oort Cloud muster point.

  “Understood, XO. Get them parked and get them whatever help they need from the rest of the fleet. It’s time for attack wave two.” Moore nodded at his second in command.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The plan was simple. Keep the main part of the fleet parked in the Oort Cloud, which was more than five days away from the Chiata at high speed. For several days they would hammer the interior of the Alpha Lyncis system with wave after wave of fast attacks while at the same time making no attempt to hide their position. If the Chiata found them and sent the majority of their fleet out to the Oort to face them, then Moore had Kill Box Two all set up for them. And he still had over forty ships at his disposal. Captain Seeley had seventy fully manned with clones. The goal was to chip away at the stone until there was one big last stand.

  “Get me Captain Seeley,” Moore ordered his communications officer.

  “Captain Seeley is online, sir,” the young lieutenant said nervously. While they had been fighting for almost two years, his crew were battle hardened, but the fight had been more mopping-up activities with few casualties. This engagement was different. This was all-out war. Moore’s crew knew the odds of survival were very small. He could understand his young communications officer’s fear. Moore stood and slowly clanked across the bridge and stood over her. He put an armored hand on her armored shoulder.