by M. D. Cooper
DETECTION
STELLAR DATE: 10.29.8927 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: BWSS Freya, Near Kithari’s L4
REGION: Bollam’s World System, Bollam’s World Federation
“They’ve picked up our rounds,” the officer at the scan console announced. “Their ships are all moving to new positions outside of the pocket.”
“What?” Senya yelled from across the bridge. “How is that possible?”
Ren felt a moment’s pity for the woman operating the ship’s scan, but strode over, curious as to how the colonists had detected the kinetic rounds in the darkness of space.
The scan officer shook her head. “I don’t know, if I didn’t know where they were, I wouldn’t be able to detect them at all. But they’re all going to miss.”
Senya swore and Ren wondered if perhaps Nespha was right. The admiral seemed more emotionally invested in this battle than he would have expected.
No one spoke in the following minutes as the first of the slugs approached, then passed through the space where one of the enemy’s larger cruisers should have been.
“They’re repositioning,” the scan officer announced. “Incoming kinetic rounds—they’re targeting our stationary emplacements!”
“How do they know about those?” Ren asked, bewildered at how the enemy could have detected so many of their rail platforms so quickly.
“Don’t worry about that; direct the fleet to take those slugs out. We know where these rounds are going!”
Ren passed the orders through the fleet AI and directed his ship to fire slugs at the kinetic rounds passing closest to the Freya. His tactical group impressed him as they destroyed a half-dozen slugs and altered the trajectory of another ten with beam fire.
However, it wasn’t enough. Dozens of the colonists’ weapons were still going to get through and hit BWSF rail emplacements.
It was a disaster.
“Get me their commander,” Senya yelled, and the comm officer scrambled to open a line of communication with the leader of the colony ship.
When the call was accepted, a holoprojection of a tall woman shimmered into view. Ren was surprised. He had not seen the leader of the colonists before, but he thought it was a man named Andrews.
The woman wore a military uniform, a general by the two stars on her lapels. Her long, blonde hair was pulled back tightly in a simple clasp and her cold blue eyes bore into Senya’s with disapproval.
If Senya was curious about whom she was addressing, she didn’t show it.
“You’ve just sentenced thousands of Bollam’s citizens to death,” Senya’s voice dripped with venom. “There will be no more treaties. We will reclaim our new world, take your ship, whole or in pieces, and crush your pathetic little fleet.”
The woman turned to address someone not visible on the holoprojection. “At least when we were dealing with the Sirians, they had proper megalomaniacs. This pales in comparison.”
Ren watched Senya’s face turn red. He suspected that she might have never had anyone disregard her in such a way. He knew what was coming, and steeled himself for the storm.
“Our ancestors were from Sirius! They got caught in Kapteyn’s Streamer hundreds of years before you. They earned these worlds,” Senya yelled and Ren realized that she had viewed the colonists as mortal enemies all along—though such a view, defied logic.
He glanced around to see the bridge crew’s posture change; though they didn’t turn or look toward Senya, he knew they were listening, and wondering where her rage would fall.
“Sirians…that explains a lot,” the colonist woman said, her voice calm and controlled. “You say that we killed hundreds, but thousands would have died on our ships, had your kinetic rounds connected.”
“They would not have!” the Senya replied, her voice rising in pitch. “You have advanced shielding, what we fired was merely a shot across the bow.”
Ren knew this was not entirely true. Senya suspected that they may not all have the advanced shields their fighters had used when dealing with the pirate ships. Fleet Tactical’s assessment was that if they did have them, there was no evidence to show they were activated. If the kinetics had remained undetected, they would have obliterated the colonist fleet.
On the holoprojection, the general scowled, her eyes narrowing into accusing slits.
“Are you seriously going to attempt to paint us as the aggressors? Until your unmistakable act of war, we had only taken defensive actions. You are brigands; you attempt to seize whatever drifts past your system, to better yourselves. You’re nothing more than well-established interstellar bandits.”
Ren was barely able to make out the last of the general’s words over Senya’s screaming.
“You sanctimonious, dusty old bitch! Our people built this system out of nothing. We worked for millennia to create what you see. You would come here and pick our best worlds for yourselves in trade for trinkets. No one will have your tech. Not those pirates, not those core-world bastards, and certainly not you. I’ll see you all burn in h—!”
Senya’s words choked off abruptly as the holoprojection shut off, the enemy general disappearing from view.
Ren sucked in a deep breath as the admiral spun to him. “We’re attacking. Ready the division!”
“Attacking, Sir?” Ren asked carefully.
“Yes, attacking. That thing you’re all trained to do. We’re going to crush those bastards and take their ship.”
Ren was glad to hear that her proclamation of utter destruction was just for show and nodded to his tactical officer to send out the orders. “Just our division?”
Senya had looked away in thought, but her sharp gaze snapped back to him. “Yes, just our division. Don’t you think a hundred of our ships can take out a dozen colonist tugs and transports?”
Ren refrained from saying that the colonists possessed over two-dozen ships, and while they may have once been simple tugs and transports, they were now far more than that—they were highly advanced warships with unknown capabilities.
Not to mention those fighters. His division possessed no fighters and only a smattering of combat drones. Senya may think that their victory was a foregone conclusion—and maybe it was, but how many would die for her to gain whatever strange revenge she was trying to achieve.
SUBTERFUGE
STELLAR DATE: 10.29.8927 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: ISS Andromeda, Near Kithari’s Trojan Asteroids
REGION: Bollam’s World System, Bollam’s World Federation
“Boller fleet is on the move,” Trevor announced.
“Fleetcom is directing us to move out and join the Condor in the Greek asteroids,” Ylonda said.
“Do it,” Joe directed.
The Bollam’s World System was still young and hot, with the remains of stellar, and planetary formation strewn everywhere. Unlike the Sol System, where things had settled down over billions of years, planets here—like Kithari, the gas giant near which the battle would take place—had not forced all their Trojan and Greek asteroids to fully settle into the planet’s leading and trailing Lagrange points.
Instead, those two asteroid camps formed long smears of rock and debris leading and trailing the world—much of it very close, and very active. Space didn’t present many large natural barriers you could take cover behind, but these regions of rock, sand, and dust were as close as it got.
Joe approved of Tanis’s tactics. The cruisers would move out, above and below the asteroid fields, while the fighters moved in closer to engage the enemy ships. The cruisers would surreptitiously seed the asteroid camps with missiles. When, inevitably, the ISF ships had to pull back, they would deliver a devastating blow to the enemy vessels.
“There are over sixty ships, in range of our group,” Trevor sounded nervous as he gave out the count. “No fighters, though, their smallest are corvettes similar to what the pirates have—though more uniform in appearance.”
“Steady. The General knows what she’s doing. We�
�re going to get through this and be on our way before you know it,” Joe said in the calmest voice he could manage.
Two cruisers and a fighter shield against sixty capital ships were not the sort of odds he had ever expected to play.
“Shit!” Trevor’s voice grew more alarmed. “Those pirate ships back there just did something…uh…weird….”
“It’s a shield bubble,” Joe provided. “Tanis informed me that they were planning to do that. Captain Espensen and the Enterprise are taking care of it with help from Sabrina.
“They better hurry up,” Tori frowned as he pulled up a display of The Mark fleet’s position relative to the Intrepid’s. “It won’t take long for those pirates to get to the Intrepid.”
No kidding, Joe thought to himself.
Aloud he did his best to bring the crew’s focus back. “They have their jobs, we have ours. I want a hundred missiles in the leading edge of this asteroid camp asap.”
The Arc-5 fighters were engaging the Boller fleet as it approached the asteroids. This was Joe’s least favorite form of space combat. Unlike the final battle with the Sirian fleet in the Kapteyn’s System—which was characterized by brief, high-velocity engagements—this would be a slow-moving slugfest.
The Boller ships were boosting at a moderate speed, which would allow them ease around Fierra and engage the Intrepid. The ISF defensive lines were almost at rest—relative to the Boller ships—ready to apply thrust and engage them as the enemy moved toward the Intrepid.
Much of the combat would occur with the ships barely moving relative to one another; it was the most deadly type of battle—missiles would easily seek their targets, and beams could track and penetrate targets with ease.
Already Joe could see the Condor in the Greek asteroid camp, and the Pike and Gilese positioned in the Trojans, accelerating to gain erratic maneuvering options. No one wanted to be a sitting duck.
“The Sabrina is…it’s running away,” Trevor called out from the scan station.
“Agreed,” Joe added. “I don’t know them well, but Tanis trusts their captain with her life—has already done so on a few occasions. From what she’s told me, Captain Sera even has a personal grudge against the leader of that pirate band. She has something up her sleeve,” Joe wondered what that would be.
The crew’s focus snapped back to their end of the battlefield as several of the missiles they had seeded at the edge of the asteroid camp came to life and sought out targets in the Boller fleet. The enemy took out two of the missiles, but another pair reached their targets, the kinetic impacts destroying shields and leaving the ships vulnerable to the secondary fusion explosion.
Unlike Padre’s pirate fleet, the Boller ships were spaced hundreds of kilometers apart. There was little to no chance that any of the missiles would deal secondary damage. Still, two ships for four missiles was a good trade. If that ratio kept up, they could seriously weaken the enemy fleet.
The distance between the Boller ships would also lessen the danger of concentrated fire from an enemy fleet—if there had been an enemy fleet. The only two capital ships they were facing were the Andromeda and the Condor, and they couldn’t even see the Andromeda.
The Arc-5’s, on the other hand, were doing what they were made for; fly at extreme v, striking at a target, before flitting on to the next. The Boller fleet’s spacing—intended to protect them from capital ship beams—kept them from responding in any serious measure to the fighters.
Joe smiled to himself, growing even more grateful to the dust and rock permeating this primordial system. In an older, clear system such as Sol, firing a beam across ten-thousand kilometers was child’s play, but here the beams, be they electrons, or even more mass-heavy particle streams, were diffused by the time they reached their targets.
“They’re having trouble targeting our fighters, Captain.” Ylonda suddenly spoke up. “I don’t think their algorithms are designed to track ships that move like ours.”
“How so?” Petrov asked.
“We don’t jink enough,” Ylonda replied. “With every ship they face utilizing inertial dampeners; they have a lot of logic set aside to tell what is a feint and what is a real move. I suspect that no matter what our fighters do, it always looks like a feint to their AI.”
“Good point. You should share that with our tactical groups,” Joe said.
“I already have, Captain,” Ylonda said and her face slipped into a slight frown. “It would appear I was not the first entity to make that assessment.”
Joe chuckled. “Faster than I would have spotted it. Top marks from me.”
Ylonda let a rare smile slip and nodded her thanks.
“Sweet fuck!” Trevor swore as a massive energy discharge lit up the holoprojection.
“What the hell was that?” Joe asked, rising from his chair.
“The…the…pirates…they’re gone!”
Joe replayed the scan feed and realized that Sera had indeed not run from the fight. She had brought Sabrina back around Kithari and slammed her ship right into the pirate’s shield bubble.
“So is Sabrina…” Joe said quietly.
“No!” Trevor called out, unable to keep the excitement from his voice. “The Intrepid spotted them. They’re intact and alive.”
Joe slumped back in his chair. “Thank the stars,” he muttered. Then he sat up, Sera’s gutsy move invigorating him. “Tori, let’s drop four of our defense turrets. Let’s make these Bollers see some ghosts.”
Tori grinned. “Yes, sir. A bundle of Wrecking Balls on the way.”
Joe watched Petrov coordinate the best drop-off placements for the WB’s and silently approved of their tactics. Petrov shifted the Andromeda into a trajectory where its engine wash dissipated in the asteroid camp, and boosted hard, leaving a wake of tumbling rock and swirling dust in its wake. There was no way the enemy could miss them, but that was the plan.
Four Wrecking Balls now lay along the path the Andromeda had taken, and, when they cleared the bulk of the dust and gravel, shields running hot, Petrov spun the ship, braked hard, then boosted on a new trajectory before repeating the maneuver.
Joe had always considered himself one of the best pilots in the ISF, but as Petrov moved the seven-hundred-meter cruiser, dancing it as if it was a ten-meter fighter, he wondered if his skill had been bested. Three minutes later, the Andromeda was a thousand kilometers from the fourth Wrecking Ball and lost in a haze of confusion.
He wondered what the Bollers were thinking.
Except for its initial departure from the Intrepid, the Andromeda would have been invisible to the enemy for the entire engagement. Now they would see the wake and shadow of what they knew to be a cruiser, one, which had been very close to the bulk of their fleet.
The bulk of the enemy fleet was approaching the asteroids and two cruisers, accompanied by six destroyers and over a dozen corvettes broke off from the main force, searching for other ISF ships, which may be laying invisible in the dust and gravel.
They passed by the first wrecking ball, and then the second. Everyone on the Andromeda’s bridge waited, eager to see what would happen once the Boller ships became fully invested. The minutes ticked by slowly and then the leading cruiser passed within a dozen kilometers of the fourth WB.
An enemy ship progressing that far was the pre-programmed signal. The balls spun to life, each firing beams at half a dozen targets, while accelerating toward the closest enemy vessel. The WB’s were not intended to provide long-term protection, just enough time for the missiles seeded through the area to come to life and seek out their own targets.
However, for those few moments, they delivered as much punch as a mid-sized cruiser, fooling the enemy into thinking there were multiple ships in their midst.
The Bollers lashed out, destroying two of the WB’s in an instant, and the third a second later. The fourth, the one clos
est to its target, collided with the enemy ship, pushing it off course, and into a small field of gravel that lit up its shields.
That was all the time the relativistic missiles needed to achieve speeds over a tenth the speed of light and reach their targets.
Not every missile made it, the Bollers were on guard and struck down nearly half, but those that did punched through shields dealt lethal damage. The two cruisers remained intact; though the one, which took a hit from the Wrecking Ball, saw its shields fail, leaving it vulnerable in the field of gravel it now rested in.
Joe gave Tori the signal over the link and his weapon’s officer launched two more missiles from the Andromeda’s store at the crippled ship.
Two minutes later, only one cruiser from the exploratory force remained, moving out of the asteroids and back to the main Boller force.
“There,” Trevor pointed to the main tank. “Ylonda, what do you think?”
Joe looked to his scan and comm officers. “What is it?”
“We think that cruiser is their flag. It has nearly twice the comm traffic as the rest of the ships, and its position in their fleet shows that they are guarding it.”
“Except that it’s in the group assaulting the ISF,” Joe replied. That doesn’t seem like the smartest thing to have your flagship doing.
“Nothing they are doing seems like the smartest thing,” Ylonda replied. “They could have treated fairly with us and had better technology than any system in the galaxy. But now they’ll have nothing.”
Joe held back a laugh. Ylonda was picking up a bit of her mother’s attitude.
PURSUIT
STELLAR DATE: 10.30.8927 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: BWSS Freya, Near Kithari’s Trojan Asteroids
REGION: Bollam’s World System, Bollam’s World Federation
“There!” the officer on scan called out. “I have its position!”
Ren strode to the woman’s side and looked over her data. Sure enough, there was a faint ion trail glowing in the dust near the edge of the asteroid camp.