by S. H. Jucha
“We can expect the enemy’s forces to arrive and engage our Tridents in another six days, Reiko,” Tatia said. “More important, we can expect carriers and fighters. Forget about capital ships.”
“Where’s this coming from, Admiral?” Reiko asked.
“It dawns on me that we’ve been planning to handle as many contingencies as we can possibly imagine,” Tatia replied.
“But that’s good strategizing, Admiral,” Reiko complained.
“Or shortsighted, depending on your frame of reference,” Tatia replied. “Alex, Mickey, and the SADEs are taking action based on what they believe the enemy will do, and, so far, they’ve been extraordinarily accurate. It’s time for you and me to adopt their thinking.”
“Which is what?” Reiko asked, taking a seat at the table.
“If you were a collection of races that had operated the same way for an eon, how would you handle upstarts like us, based on our interactions with them?” Tatia asked. When Reiko screwed up her face in distaste, Tatia added, “You get one opportunity to play it right. Otherwise, you lose all your forces.”
“If you put it that way,” Reiko replied, leaning back in her chair to stare at the holo-vid. “I think you’re right, Admiral, they’ll bring carriers. Having seen our forces, more ships will arrive than did the first time. We know from the Redemption’s data records that their fighters burn reaction mass. That means the carriers will have to advance inward to cut down their fighters’ distance to target, which I suspect will be the Freedom.”
“And how would you expect them to deploy their fighters?” Tatia probed.
Reiko shook her head in exasperation at the line of questioning. She hated the idea of predicating her defense on a single concept of what the enemy might do. Nonetheless, she exhaled a short breath and replied, “The last time, the aliens spread out their carriers in a three-quarter globe to trap Ellie’s Trident, which didn’t work. Unfortunately and implying no fault, Lieutenant Yumi Tanaka demonstrated the acceleration and maneuverability of our Tridents to the enemy.
“And so?” Tatia pushed.
“They can’t surround this system,” Reiko continued. “In no way can I imagine they’ll have enough forces for that. Plus, they’ll know the Freedom has taken up a defensive position in the moons of this giant ice planet.”
Rather than comment, Tatia waited for Reiko to continue.
“Alex said that he suspects the enemy’s action will be a demonstration to the other races,” Reiko mused. “The aliens will want to make their operation spectacular, something like swatting an insect. That will require they send their fighters at us en masse. We’ll face an overwhelming fleet composed of thousands of enemy fighters.”
Tatia nodded in appreciation of Reiko’s logic, and she added a detail to the display, saying, “And you can probably draw a line from just outside the system, when the carriers arrive, to this city-ship. Believing that, how would you deploy the Trident commands and our travelers?”
“I’d leave Ellie’s forces in place,” Reiko replied, accepting the conditions that Tatia had led her to enumerate. “Her command is part of the Freedom’s final defense. Then, I’d move the other commands to a point one-third the distance from the city-ship to the outer planet’s orbit. That would give our forces time to maneuver and engage the enemy.”
“Give the orders, Reiko,” Tatia said perfunctorily and turned to the display.
Reiko sat still for a few more moments, debating whether to argue. Instead, with a sigh, she got up and left, signaling the commands of their new deployment orders.
The Trident admirals were some of the original campaigners with Alex. They’d been with him since Libre, and they were pleased to receive the news. Two of them thought Tatia was responsible, and the other two thought it was Alex.
As Svetlana phrased it to her colleagues, “Who cares? We know they’re coming through the front door, and they intend to wipe us out. Now, we’re effectively repositioned to resist them.”
* * *
When the comm sphere arrived, the Sisterhood was ecstatic. They were anxious to test their skills against the alien broadcast. In humans, this hubris could be a disaster, but the three hundred, networked, SADE copies were certain they could withstand the attack.
However, the sisters intended to do more than defend the fleet from the malicious code, which would seek to overtake the ships’ controllers and any digitally linked entities. To their logic, comm and code flowed both ways, and their aim was to see if the comm sphere’s broadcast could be turned against the attacking forces.
The scout ships received the first waves of the broadcast, and the sisters transmitted their analysis to the others, as they hurriedly rotated copies to absorb the incoming barrage. The action gave the remaining sisters ample time to review the now isolated, destructive code, without having to manage the sphere’s broadcast. It would arrive soon enough.
By the time the comm sphere’s signals reached Svetlana’s Liberator, the Sisterhood was ready with their own response to the broadcast. However, they chose to bide their time. Consensus among them was that they might get only one opportunity to test their constructs. The target wouldn’t be the comm sphere but the enemy fleet that came to destroy them.
-11-
En Masse
Tatia and Reiko’s redeployment of the Trident commands was fortuitous. Twice the number of enemy carriers arrived as had confronted Ellie’s Liberator. And, as had been predicted, the carriers advanced deep into the system before they emptied their bays of fighters. Fifty-three Tridents and over two hundred travelers faced thousands of alien fighters, which sailed at them in an enormous cluster.
The principal participants in this extraordinary gambit against a vast alien conglomeration stood on the Freedom’s bridge to watch events unfold. At this point, there was little they could do. Actions lay in the hands of the fleet’s individuals, such as the admirals and the sisters.
Reiko watched the incredible number of enemy fighters close the distance toward her forces.
Julien’s expression blanked for a moment, while he furiously calculated the various factors.
Aboard the Liberator, Svetlana stared at her bridge holo-vid. She expanded the view until resolution failed and then backed off.
The bridge crew had identified three different types of enemy fighters, but they carried a similar design when it came to armament. A slender tube ran beneath the hull and extended from the tail to a point about a meter past the bow.
“What are you carrying?” Svetlana whispered quietly. A thought occurred to her, and she urgently sent a message via the admiralties’ link.
Several glances were shared among the senior personnel on the Freedom’s bridge.
While the intense discussion between the admirals continued, the sisters governing the comms of Svetlana’s Trident and her four travelers decided to share the admiral’s conversation with the wa
rship’s flight commander, Maurice Defray, a Méridien.
Maurice was surprised to be hearing the unauthorized communication. His first thought was that the Sisterhood was succumbing to the comm sphere’s broadcast, but the ship’s systems were responding nominally. He did agree with his admiral. It was imperative to learn the enemy’s capabilities.
Maurice was an Independent, as were most of the Confederation’s officers and crew. He was under no illusion about what would happen to him if he left the service or the Confederation chose to abandon the fight. The thought of being incarcerated again, if either of those two conditions came to pass, angered him.
A fierce grin crossed Maurice’s face, as he made a snap decision.
Svetlana wanted to rail at the commander for his insubordination, but she was torn. He was only doing what she had requested of Reiko. Then a thought suddenly struck her: How did the flight commander know about her conversation with Admiral Shimada?
Maurice glanced at the blip that suddenly showed in his heads-up display. Lieutenant Essie Cormack’s traveler sat on his wing, where it had been since they graduated from Bellamonde flight training.
Tears blurred Maurice’s vision. He lifted his helmet’s faceplate, wiped his eyes, and closed it. Essie was a young Independent, who was separated from her family at eighteen. If he’d had a daughter, he would have wanted one like Essie.
Maurice was tortured. If he turned back, Essie would follow. But the future wasn’t guaranteed for either of them. They held positions at the point of Alex’s forces and would be the first to engage the enemy. The odds were great that neither of them would survive the first clash. And, deep in his heart, he knew that Essie would be disappointed in him if they returned to formation.
Z and Miranda tore through the evidence provided by the two fighters’ controllers. Z sent a fleet-wide message.
Miranda added,
On Reiko’s message, the commands spread out into wall formations.
Julien, Z, and Miranda ran scenarios, aware that Alex was taking part in their designs.
Reiko glanced between Alex and Tatia. The sacrifices of the two traveler pilots had given the fleet crucial information about the enemy’s armament. However, the assumption that the enemy fighters wouldn’t engage her leading forces was something she wasn’t prepared to accept.
Reiko dropped her misgivings and embraced Alex and Julien’s advice. She ordered new attack scenarios for the three commands of Svetlana, Darius, and Deirdre. Those orders were relayed through Z and Miranda, who were responsible for programming the fleets’ controllers to coordinate the attack. At any time, the controllers could be overridden, but they effectively drove the ships along the optimum courses to intersect the enemy fighters.
Franz connected with Z and Miranda.
A link appeared in Franz’s implant, it was a view of a new offense, and he relayed the imagery to the Freedom’s holo-vid.
The display highlighted the movement of the travelers and showed their shorter, but wider, arc intersecting the enemy fighters about one-third of the distance from the leading edge. The Tridents’ arcs were lengthier, but narrower, and they would manage to intersect the leading edge of the enemy.
Reiko sent.
Reiko ordered the change in tactics, Z and Miranda reprogrammed the traveler controllers, and Miriamal relayed everything to her sisters.
* * *
Svetlana’s Tridents swung above the ecliptic to begin their attack run. The commands of Deirdre and Darius dived below. The travelers had vacated their wing positions alongside the warships, separating into two enormous groups of more than a hundred fighters each and led by a total of eight wing commanders.
The wing commanders examined their courses, while they arced above or below the ecliptic. They would be shooting through a deeper part of the enemy fleet. To a man and woman, the commanders ordered their pilots to remain hands off their controllers. As one wing commander put it, “There’s hardly a straight line through the enemy. That means you must leave it to your controller to operate your beam and weave through the enemy’s rank.”
The tremendous velocities of the fleet’s travelers meant their engagement envelope with the enemy would be measured in ticks of time. The pilots hit the top of their arcs, the fighters followed the controllers’ directives, and the Omnian fleet’s fighters shot through the advancing enemy force, with beams spitting their lethal fire.
The SADEs recorded the loss of a handful of travelers. They also reported the de
struction of more than three hundred enemy vessels. Most alien fighters were destroyed by beam fire, but some sailed into debris, and a few were ripped apart by the kinetic weapon discharge of the fighters behind them.
What everyone in the fleet noticed was that the enemy fighters hadn’t turned to meet the travelers’ attack. They never swerved from their course, which pointed them straight toward the Freedom.
“Our turn,” Svetlana whispered, as her Trident completed the apex of its arc above the ecliptic. Her warship led her command, as the powerful Tridents dove toward the leading edge of the enemy fighters.
Each Trident managed to release two sets of twin beams shots, as the squadrons cut through the enemy fighters from above and below. Several Tridents were crippled and crew members were lost, but even the damaged warships maintained thrust and maneuverability. More important, the Tridents eliminated more than five hundred enemy fighters.
The travelers and Tridents flew above and below the ecliptic after their pass through the enemy’s ranks. Each command had the opportunity for one more pass, which would attack the trailing portion of alien fighters.
The Omnian ships arced hard again, pushing the limits of their grav plating. Pilots and crews felt the unaccustomed pressure of g-force as the ships exceeded their limits.
Z and Miranda had programmed the Omnians’ final pass at the enemy to be shallower and to give the fleet’s ships more time to engage the alien fighters.
First the travelers and then the Tridents shot through the enemy’s ranks, firing their deadly beams. From these attack positions, there were no losses to the Omnian fleet, but that also meant there was no collateral damage to enemy’s fighters from debris.
The expedition’s ships, having sliced through the enemy at shallower angles, lost time reversing their courses to chase the enemy. The Omnians’ ships were faster than the enemy’s, but they had a significant distance to make up.