by S. H. Jucha
* * *
Much of Ellie’s command had received their quadrant targets and accelerated forward to engage the enemy. From Descartes’ squadron controllers, she had a good idea of the number of enemy fighters her command faced. As each of her squadrons engaged the alien vessels, her controller counted down the number that was dispatched and updated the holo-vid display.
Unfortunately, the enemy was doing the same to her forces. She was losing travelers and Tridents, even as the Omnians eliminated the alien fighters. The conflicts with her advance forces were over quickly. Soon, her remaining warships were the last line of defense between this group of fighters and the Freedom.
Ellie spread her Tridents, led by Alphons, into a wall. The squadrons’ travelers, bolstered by the Freedom’s travelers, filled in the spaces between the Tridents. Ellie linked her ship’s controllers to every vessel in her command. Her controller counted the time down until the fighters’ arrival. It was merely an estimate, but it was better than nothing.
At any moment, the enemy fighters were due, and Ellie hurriedly ordered.
The travelers, with their beams’ shorter reach and power, put up a layer of fire that lay close to them. They twitched their positions to spread their shots. The Tridents, with their longer beam ranges and variable firing lenses, laid out a far greater and more powerful field of fire.
Ellie’s forces had only begun to fire when the remains of the enemy fighters emerged from around small fields of rock and some larger asteroids. The alien vessels flew into a hot, killing zone. Enemy fighter after fighter exploded, as the beam’s energy ignited their volatile material. But, despite the valiant attempt to eliminate all the enemy’s forces, fully forty-three fighters escaped Ellie’s command.
The alien fighters swept past the Tridents and travelers, and hot on their aft ends sailed Deirdre’s travelers.
“Catch them,” Ellie muttered. Her comment caught Yumi’s attention.
Instead, Ellie sent a recall to her forces to join up with her Trident. Deirdre’s command, composed of Tridents, would be arriving shortly. They would carry velocity and would be the first to reach the city-ship.
Ellie regarded Yumi’s young face, marked by her confusion, and she said sympathetically, “The Freedom’s battle will be over before we reach her. Some fifty-eight to sixty-five enemy fighters are triangulating on her position. Either the city-ship and Deirdre’s travelers will be sufficient to defeat them or both Admiral Canaan’s command and ours will arrive in time to discover our magnificent city-ship engulfed in explosions.”
“But maybe we could save the freighters,” Yumi objected. She’d drawn the attention of the bridge crew, whose pained faces mirrored Yumi’s.
“Run the calculations, pilot,” Ellie ordered sternly. “How long will the various groups of enemy fighters have to engage the Freedom in combat before our forces would arrive?”
Yumi furiously interrogated the controller, which ran the calculations for her. “More than two-thirds of an hour, Admiral,” Yumi said, with defeat. She glanced at the crew seated beside her, and her sad eyes conveyed the truth.
“All is not lost,” Ellie announced forcefully. “The Freedom has been well-prepared, and a SADE will conduct the fight. Don’t forget Admiral Canaan’s travelers are in hot pursuit. But hear me: Whatever happens, we’ll continue what has been started. This is only the first battle to protect our worlds.”
* * *
Cordelia locked her avatar and immersed herself in links with the city-ship’s telemetry, the engines, propulsion jets, beam weapons, protective travelers, freighters, and several other vital ship systems. She maintained links with only two individuals, Julien and Alex, who could provide her with data and ideas.
The Freedom’s controller and Julien held the approximate number of fighters that were approaching, the distance they would have to travel, and their estimated time of arrival, calculated by the density of the rock fields that they would have to navigate.
Cordelia had rolled out the ship’s beam weapons on their rails, checked the power levels in their energy crystals, and tested those that had an open field of fire. She rotated the giant ship off its horizontal position to the ecliptic and positioned it on its edge. In this manner, her beams, along the row of bays, would face the oncoming fighters from above and below the rock fields.
A link was slipped into Cordelia’s message queue. It was from Alex, and Cordelia opened it immediately, accessing the file in the ship’s databases. It was an old file and detailed the method by which the city-ships had supported Ben Diaz, known as Rainmaker, in delivering ice asteroids to aid the terraforming of Haraken.
Without bothering to reply to Alex, Cordelia began rotating the Freedom around its axis, which ran through the center of the ship from top to bottom. It allowed the defensive fire of the city-ship to be spread evenly among the beam weapons, allowing the massive power crystals recharge time and increasing her effective rate of fire.
The procedure Cordelia expected to use would require precise coordination of the beams. Cordelia ran calculations to determine if she could manage the ship’s position and the weapons control within the time constraints she would require. The answer was no.
Julien hesitated. Asking SADEs to destroy sentient beings was an improbable task, and Cordelia and Julien knew it. Only those SADEs closest to Alex had reached a point in their long lives where they had come to terms with the question of whether they had a right to live by taking the lives of others who were attempting to take theirs.
Julien and Cordelia’s processing halted for the briefest tick of time in response to Alex’s statements. While most humans digested the thought, SADEs, such as Miriam and Luther, signed up to aid Cordelia. Alex’s estimation was thought to be more than a simple calculation. The SADEs believed in Alex’s incomprehensible leaps of intuition.
With the added support, Cordelia released her links to the beams even as the supporting SADEs calculated the city-ship’s rotation speed, the beams’ firing properties, and the enemy fighters’ maneuverability. They soon announced their readiness to her.
Cordelia coordinated with Franz, Miranda, and Z, detailing the approaching enemy numbers and their suspected arrival times. In addition, she sent a quick message to Deirdre’s travelers.
Nine enemy fighters came at the Freedom from above. They came in fast not planning to engage the city-ship in an extended exchange of weaponry. The alien ships fired their kinetic armament, and the projectiles pierced the outer decks of the enormous ship.
SADEs and humans had recalled all personnel from the outer areas of the decks. The departing crews sealed bays, cabins, corridors, and vented spaces, where they could, to limit the effects of explosive decompression. Damage to the Freedom was expected, but it was hoped the lives aboard could be saved.
Two enemy fighters targeted the Freedom’s midline and destroyed a beam weapon before they were vaporized. The other seven alien ships split into two groups and slid as
ide, raking the city-ship as they passed. The enemy fighters flew directly in front of the waiting travelers.
Z and Miranda controlled the firing of their six fighters, able to time their shots such that the three enemy fighters flew through their beams.
There were only a few moments of relief for Cordelia and her defenders. Then ten enemy fighters sped out of the dark.
The enemy’s fire struck the power crystals of a beam weapon, exploding the rail-mounted structure from the bay. The fire from another beam weapon destroyed one fighter and clipped the bow of another. The hull of the damaged ship tumbled and exploded on impact with one of the city-ship’s weapons, destroying it. The enemy had effectively eliminated three of the Freedom’s beam emplacements.
The final seven fighters shot past the city-ship, adding their damage, and a total of five were taken down by the guarding travelers. The last two flew on into the nearby rock fields, where they would need to reverse course for their next pass.
Z sent in the open.
Miranda shot back.
Cordelia was in the midst of her rotation, when the two fighters, which had passed from top to bottom through the rock fields, returned. Franz and his pilots launched from their positions to intercept them. The enemy fighters were destroyed, but, in turn, the aliens had destroyed one traveler and chopped Franz’s fighter into pieces.
Reiko’s heart was squeezed. She had maintained a link to the Freedom’s controller to track the status of Franz’s ship, and she’d just received his controller’s distress beacon through his cockpit’s emergency comm system.
Z, Miranda, and their accompanying pilots left the city-ship’s bottom in preparation for the return of the two fighters from atop the ecliptic. They separated and angled their travelers to create a gauntlet, anticipating the enemy fighters would head straight for the city-ship. In one respect, there were factors that supported the concept, but, more than anything, it represented a clever gamble.
Cordelia had nearly finished her rotation, when the two enemy fighters returned and flew into the SADEs’ trap. Six simultaneous beam shots turned the two fighters into expanding balls of hot gases and debris.
The SADEs sent two of their squadron’s fighters to join the three travelers, which had repositioned themselves at the city-ship’s upper surface, while they returned to guard the bottom.
Julien calculated the arrival time of the traveler forces from Svetlana and Deirdre’s forces against the expected arrival of the multitude of enemy fighters on approach through the rock fields.
Reports from Deirdre’s travelers detailed the elimination of three trailing enemy fighters, who had exhibited some damage and had fallen behind the alien force. The majority of enemy fighters were due to arrive soon, and there was little else that could be done to prepare.
Around the city-ship’s bridge, humans and SADEs, other than Cordelia and Julien, glanced at one another, resignation on their faces. The damage done to the Freedom by a handful of fighters made them realize the devastation that forty fighters would wreak.
Alex walked to the back of the bridge, where Renée stood. She’d not wanted to distract those fighting the battle. When Alex paused in front of her, she touched his face gently and sent,
Alex stepped behind Renée and wrapped his arms around her. Together they waited for the final encounter with the deadly alien fighters.
-13-
Final Assault
After the launch of the alien fighters and before the initial engagement of the fleet’s combined forces, the Sisterhood detected the cessation of the comm attack by the small sphere. A series of strong comm signals replaced the sphere’s broadcast. No malevolent code could be found in these new alien signals, and the sisters replaced infected secondary copies with clean ones.
The sisters diligently triangulated the new signal sources. They originated from the alien carriers and were directed toward their fighters. Immediately, Miriamal signaled the sisters to deconstruct the complex alien signals.
Despite the efforts of the Miriam copies, no headway was made toward understanding what the alien carriers were sending. Worse, while the battles raged, the number of sisters slowly dwindled, as Tridents and travelers were destroyed.
Recognizing the danger represented by the number of enemy fighters converging on the Freedom from three different directions, Miriamal sent,
Miriamal, who was linked intimately with the Freedom’s controller, had noted the following events: the launch of the remaining ship’s travelers, the call to SADEs to assist Cordelia, the rotation of the city-ship, and the initial attacks by the alien fighters. A small aspect of her programming sought to urge the sisters to hurry, but that impulse was quashed, and she adjusted that algorithm. Regardless of its source, it was disturbing to her mission.
The sisters completed their code work, which was shared among them. Miriamal prepared the city-ship’s comm system to create the types of carrier waves. She created enough copies of herself so that each one held one of the discreet codes. As the mass of enemy fighters shot through the nearby rocky fields toward the city-ship, Miriamal triggered her copies to send. The imitative carrier broadcasts blasted from the city-ship’s comm system.
Miriam, Luther, and the other SADEs lanced their beam shots at the oncoming mass of enemy fighters, which quickly spread apart. The velocity and nearness of the alien ships prevented swift tracking by the beam weapons. Thousands and thousands of projectiles pierced the city-ship’s hull, penetrating multiple decks.
As expected, the enemy fighters overflew the Freedom. This time, they had to angle wide to elude the moon that protected the
city-ship’s rear approach.
The freighter captains and officers blanched at the number of enemy fighters that flew only a few hundred thousand kilometers from their positions. More intimidating, not a single fleet ship chased them. The freighter crews were certain the enemy ships would circle the moon and return to eliminate them before attacking the Freedom.
Cordelia started rotating the ship again. This time, she intended to return the Freedom to its original position. The enemy fighters had split into two groups and were circling the moon on opposing courses. They would come at her vessel from two different directions. Her only hope was to position her beam weapons to cover both approaches.
Z, Miranda, and the other traveler pilots readied themselves for what they considered was the final assault. The city-ship’s beam weapons had been reduced by a third, creating gaps in Cordelia’s rotational defense.
To Cordelia, her command to Deirdre to prevent the pursuing travelers from entering her field of fire appeared to be a poor judgment call. They could have been the deciding factor that saved the Freedom.
Then the last group of enemy fighters completed their orbits of the moon and came for her ship. Their trajectories were slightly off, and Cordelia interpreted that as a means of trying to evade her beam weapons. Undeterred, the SADEs, who were handling the city-ship’s beams, destroyed fighter after fighter.
Cordelia, who was intimately linked to the ship’s controller, noticed that sensors were not recording enemy strikes on the hull. In the blink or two of a human eye, the enemy fighters flew past the Freedom, without firing a single projectile. They sailed past the Freedom, headed toward a rocky field, and, one after another, the fighters rammed into the collection of aggregate space debris, tearing their ships apart or exploding them.
There was a moment of dead silence aboard the city-ship. Implants and comms searched the Freedom’s controller for signs of other enemy fighters. None were seen and, according to the reports from the Trident admirals, none were expected. The humans erupted into cheers, hugging everyone in sight, humans and SADEs. Renée turned around and threw her arms around Alex.