by Evan Currie
As the interface came to life, she became the fighter.
Heat washed over her from the lasers reflecting off Aerin destroyers, an almost cool breeze of cosmic wind at her back coming up from the local star. She could smell smoke and metallic odors in the space around her.
The enhancement of her senses was addictive, one she reveled in as it fully wrapped around her in a way she’d never be able to describe to someone who’d not experienced the feeling. Adrenaline coursed through her as she anticipated the coming battle.
“Archangels, enemy at twenty light-seconds and falling.” Stephanos’ voice sounded calm, cool, his previous humor gone as though it never existed. “Stand by to unmask.”
“Roger,” Cardsharp said, struggling to rein in her excitement and sound as calm as the boss. “Archangel Three, standing by.”
Hiding a ship in space was easy and impossible at the same time, a particularly twisted paradox. Any enemy looking at the right place was simply going to see you, and there was almost no way to stop them. Ships simply couldn’t mask their radiation effectively in space. Heat was the killer. It had to be disposed of in some way and, ultimately, in a closed system like a starship, the only option was to radiate heat outward.
You could direct the radiation away from a target, to a degree. You could contain the radiation for a time, but that was ultimately a short-term solution if it worked at all. Dying of heat stroke in the cold of space might seem contradictory, but it would kill you just as dead as anywhere else in the universe.
Ultimately, if an enemy was looking in the right direction, you were going to be seen.
It was even worse in the case of ships powered by Priminae or Imperial gravity singularities, or those that were actively warping space. Significant changes in space-time, such as those that created noticeable gravity fields, actively called out for notice.
On the other side of the equation, space was thankfully huge. Figuring out in what direction to look was, in fact, an almost impossible task. When a ship wanted to hide, it could do so by lowering its active attempts at garnering attraction and just hope to go unnoticed. The strategy wasn’t entirely reliable, but the odds were in favor of the hider rather than the seeker.
Of course, to skilled space hands like the pilots of the Archangels, that just made hiding a challenge worth putting some thought into, especially when you were forced to hide in the one place the enemy was certain to be looking.
Beams crossed back and forth as the small squadron doggedly exchanged fire with the fleet bearing down through the intervening space. Powerful weapons exceeding the terawatt range vaporized anything they touched while the vacuum of space sucked it all eagerly away.
The Belj ships had closed the range, warping space in reverse as they decelerated while keeping their weapons trained on the enemy ships, crossing to less than ten light-seconds when the ships within the asteroid cluster opened fire.
Belj Fleet
Mir cursed, recognizing the profile of the new ships the instant they revealed themselves on the scanners.
“It appears we know where the rest of the Kingdom’s destroyers had gone,” his second said grimly as the barrage of beams bracketed their position with hellish heat and destruction.
“That,” Mir growled, “and one more place where the Kingdom’s harvest location is not.”
He left the tactical situation to his captains for the moment, quickly analyzing the situation to try to determine his best response. The scene was ugly, there was no question, but it took little more than a glance to confirm that the odds were still well in the favor of his fleet.
I would not have come this close had I known it was a trap, Mir thought sourly to himself, but the Kingdom didn’t have enough ships to threaten my fleet with destruction. Now I will merely have to ensure we take at least some of them intact, because we need that location.
“Press the assault,” he ordered. “Close ranks with the enemy!”
There was no response, but in the chaos of those working around him, Mir could see his orders being followed all the same.
He settled in to grimly oversee the battle, knowing it would be bloody and costly no matter how it turned out.
Gaia’s Revenge
“They are committed, Stephan.”
Steph nodded firmly, recognizing what Milla was telling him. The Belj squadrons could no longer evade close contact. They were committed to engaging the Kingdom’s destroyers up close and personal. He and his had been waiting for just that moment.
“Archangels, unmask and engage the enemy. Watch your flight trajectories, do not get between the enemy and the Kingdom destroyers. I don’t know them well enough to trust them to avoid shooting us, and even if I did, there are still a few light-seconds’ delay to deal with. Accidents happen, so don’t taunt Murphy!”
He barely heard the response as he was powering the drive reactors with a thought, throwing that power to the Revenge’s space-warp system and lifting the ship out of the shadow of the Kingdom destroyer he had been hiding behind.
The sleek gray hulls of the Archangels unmasked from behind their cover in near unison, each throwing off power curves that easily matched those of the much larger destroyers they had been hiding behind as they flung themselves through space and into the battle with an eager fervor.
The six fighter-gunboats blasted away from cover at massive levels of acceleration, crossing the intervening space between themselves and the Belj destroyers in mere seconds, fast enough that the shock of their charge left no time for reaction as the command rang out from the Revenge to open fire.
Priminae Space, Odysseus Task Group
“System appears clear, Commodore,” Miram said into the quiet of the command deck as they stood over the second watch since the declaration of general quarters. “Shall we stand down?”
Eric didn’t respond. He was standing in the center of the deck with hands clasped behind his back as he stared at the large display showing the augmented view of the system beyond the ship. The planets and sun were glowing. Faint traces of lines through space showed their ballistic trajectory through the universe, along with other items of interest the computers had been instructed to highlight.
He bit his lip, considering the scene, trying to figure out what was bothering him.
The commander was right. There was no sign of any enemy ships, let alone the Imperial Fleet that they had been looking for. The only thing out of the ordinary in the system, as best any of them could tell, was a single Priminae emergency transponder.
Not even a military transponder.
“Sir?” Miram spoke up, repeating her question. “Should we stand down?”
Eric frowned, thinking about that transponder.
Why is a civilian signal here? There hasn’t been a colony in this system since the Drasin incursion, and there’s nothing reported of value here worth coming this close to the edge of Priminae patrolled space.
“Sir . . .”
“No.”
“Sir?” Miram questioned, not sure if he was speaking to her.
“No,” Eric said again. “Maintain general quarters. They’re out here. Issue orders to the squadron. I want interception drones deployed and the Vorpals at the ready launch position.”
Miram stared for a moment before she nodded slowly. “Aye sir.”
Eric tilted his head slightly, eyes falling on the spot where Odysseus stood in his modern composite armor. The commodore smiled slightly.
“Reverse acceleration, slow our transit through the system.”
“Sir?” Miram looked confused.
“You heard the order, Commander.”
“Aye Skipper. Helm reverse acceleration curve!”
“Reversing acceleration. Aye, aye, ma’am!”
Imperial Eighth Fleet Command Vessel
“Enemy squadron is approaching at one-third light, Fleet Commander.”
Helena nodded somberly to herself, considering that. She had set her fleet moving, and now they were almo
st in range to force an engagement with them, but the enemy’s closing speed was fast. Too fast.
At that rate, the engagement would last only seconds, leaving too much chance for failure.
She hissed, irritated, but there was nothing she could do. This time, the enemy would proceed unimpeded. Helena shifted, readying to give the order to stand down, when another call cut her off.
“Enemy squadron is slowing!”
Helena came to her feet, eyes wide. “Why? Have they spotted us?”
“No sign of that, Fleet Commander. They’ve just . . . begun slowing.”
Is it a trap? Helena hesitated, an uncharacteristic concern filling her. None of her fellows would hesitate. The enemy had just made a fatal mistake, but she didn’t command the First through Seventh Fleets.
She commanded the Eighth.
“Kill the drives,” Helena ordered, her tone snapping across the deck.
“Ma’am?” her senior officer started to ask, but shook himself quickly and turned around. “Kill the drives! Ballistic course only!”
With the order relayed, he quickly walked over to her.
“Trap, Fleet Commander?”
“I don’t know, but these . . .” Helena shook her head. “These beings are not behaving like the Oathers. I believe we have found our . . . anomalies.”
“Yes, Fleet Commander. Should we not engage?”
“Orders are to gather intelligence. We do that first,” she ordered decisively. “Our enemies will fall on our schedule, not theirs.”
Chapter 16
Odysseus Task Group, Odysseus Command
“There!”
Eric turned, heading for the scanner station. “What did you find, Lieutenant?”
The young officer flushed slightly as his CO leaned over his shoulder, but pointed to the screen. “We picked up a stray signal as we crossed this space. Faint but modulated. Couldn’t identify it, but we could track it, sir. Took a while, which left us with too much space to scan, but we got lucky.”
Eric noted the glint of light from the system primary reflecting off a metal hull and nodded grimly. “We know where they are now. Track them back along their course through the archives.”
“Yes sir.”
The massive sensor arrays of the Odysseus Class cruisers scanned far more than even the enormous computers on board could hope to process. Not quite everything, but huge swaths of space were scanned and recorded onto fractal cores until the point that the computer finally got around to examining them. That meant that there was a good chance that the ships they’d located could be tracked back over hours, or even days or more, of recordings.
Eric eyed the trajectories involved and spotted the pattern before the computer even did. He barked out a laugh as he straightened up.
“I don’t believe it,” he said, shaking his head.
“Sir?” Miram asked, approaching. “What is it?”
“They could have forced an engagement, but they let us pass,” he said, eyes following the departing track of the enemy ships, the count growing quickly as the computer ran deep pattern-recognition searches.
“That doesn’t seem like the Empire,” Miram noted. “Are you sure?”
“Look for yourself. The computer has the plot coming up.” Eric stepped back.
He let her examine the data, walking out to the center of the command deck as thoughts whirled in his mind.
“You are surprised,” Odysseus said gently, appearing beside him.
“I am,” Eric confirmed.
“Why?”
Eric thought about it. “Because that isn’t like the Empire. They should have believed they had us cold.”
“Did they not? We did not know they were there,” Odysseus suggested. “And your deceleration opened our flank to . . .” The entity paused, blinking. “You wanted them to attack. You . . . knew they were there, but how? Nothing showed their location until just now.”
“I could feel it,” Eric said, his tone serious. “What I didn’t feel was the nature of the enemy commander. This one, he’s patient. That’s new.”
“Commodore,” Miram said, coming back to him, “you were right. Stranger still, sir, they were on an intercept course until you slowed the squadron. They’d only have been able to get a couple beams off in our direction, but they were trying to get us locked in.”
Eric nodded, mentally tipping an imaginary hat to the enemy commander.
“Well played,” he said to no one.
Until we meet again, Commander.
Belj Fleet, Free Stars
Mir was set back on his heels, shock reverberating through him as the small ships appeared from nowhere, charging with blinding speed, and tore into his squadrons with lasers that were at least on destroyer level, well beyond what ships of their size should have had.
“What in the abyss are—”
He cut himself off, his mind returning to the report from Commander Hirik.
The unknown ships. The commander wasn’t as much a fool as I thought, clearly.
In the few moments of his shock at the ships’ sudden charge, the six small ships had closed the distance to insanely close ranges, ducking in under his vessel’s fire-control aiming systems and crossing their beams at far beyond the tracking rating of any of his weapons.
Mir could feel shudders running through the destroyer’s deck below his feet as lasers raked her armor, vaporizing sections with vicious effectiveness and venting atmosphere to the void.
“Target the new vessels before they tear us apart,” the destroyer’s captain called, clutching at a rail as the ship again shuddered.
“We can’t,” the weapon’s officer responded. “They’re too close and too fast. Our computers barely even register that they exist, Captain.”
The captain glared at the display for a moment, glancing back only briefly in Mir’s direction before returning to his task.
“Shift to manual control,” he ordered. “Try to anticipate the trajectories.”
That got him a strange look, but the man at the weapons station swallowed hard and nodded.
“On your command, Captain,” he said, turning to his controls as he opened a communications channel. “Weapon stations, shift to manual firing.”
The captain pushed back, worry on his face as he turned and approached Mir’s position.
“Will that work, Captain?” Mir asked softly once he was in earshot.
The captain shook his head. “Possibly we’ll be fortunate, but with the computers we would not even have that. They literally were not able to detect the vessels quickly enough to project a likely trajectory.”
“I see.”
That put a spin on the situation, and Mir knew he had only seconds to make a decision. The small ships had timed their assault to near perfection. His squadrons were committed to a close engagement with the Kingdom’s destroyers. That would be bad enough without the fast-moving vessels, as the outnumbered destroyers had the advantage of fortified positions in the asteroid cluster.
With the addition of the small, high-speed vessels, the scales of battle had changed without question.
“Full power to the drives,” he ordered. “Bore on through.”
“As you command,” the captain said quickly, spinning back. “All squadrons to full acceleration! Fight our way through!”
Gaia’s Revenge
“The enemy destroyers have returned to full acceleration, Stephan.”
Milla’s announcement came as little surprise to Steph as he twisted the fighter-gunboat around, instinctively flinching away from a near sweep of an enemy laser that scorched his skin through the NICS interface. The fighter flinched with him, skipping a few dozen meters farther from the laser’s passage as his involuntary response was translated into reaction for the ship as a whole.
“Understood,” Steph said.
The enemy had been put in a position where they had two real choices. Stay and fight, or use their kinetic motion to their advantage to escape the trap as best they
could. If they’d picked the first, Steph was reasonably certain that his squadron and the Kingdom destroyers would have been able to win the day, but the losses would have been extreme on both sides.
By running, the Belj had given themselves a chance to fight another day. Since the asteroid cluster was clearly not what they had been hunting for, it was the intelligent play on their part and it suited Steph’s purposes just as well. He was a little impressed that they’d made the call so quickly, but really, the decision was inevitable.
“Archangels, harry and drive them on,” he ordered. “Stay close, stay fast, until they clear the Kingdom’s line, then break off and let them go.”
Keeping his own orders in mind, Steph dove in for the closest destroyer formation with Black’s Archangel Two following tight on his six.
The two fighter-gunboats raked the enemy destroyers with short beams from their forward lasers, tearing up the armor of the vessels with vicious strokes of directed energy, but largely moving too quickly to do much serious damage even as they used that speed to prevent the enemy from achieving a lock on them in turn.
An explosion of vapor and dust ahead of him as he crossed close to the center beam of the Belj destroyer served notice that the Kingdom wasn’t inclined to simply allow the enemy to pass unmolested. Steph pulled his fighter out of the pass prematurely to avoid flying right through superheated plasma and armor shards blown off into space right.
“Watch your flight paths,” he ordered. “This area is downright hostile flying space.”
Archangel Three
“No kidding, boss,” Cardsharp swore as she twisted her fighter-gunboat hard in a tight corkscrew roll, evading the panicked evasive maneuvers of the destroyer she had been engaging.
She didn’t know who was in charge or if they’d ordered such a maneuver, but she cringed as the ship collided with one of its fellows. She led her fighter into a gap between them, accelerating to safety with Archangel Four on her tail, neither able to get off any shots in the process, as they were too focused on keeping their own hides intact.