“That’s OK. Do it!”
“Ok, here goes.”
Amini, Doc, and I watched in amazement as one armed cargo ship after another appeared from nowhere. Now that Tiana could see the enemy, she would know what to do. That’s what all our training and maneuvers were for.
Until that moment, the enemy formation had been stationary waiting for the Resistance to show up. With their less sophisticated ships now vulnerable, the warships were forced to dump their stealth protection to keep the panicking cargo ships from running them over. At the same time, the commander said something to the other ships to call them into line. To help do that, he was forced to have the formation begin a slow movement forward, waiting for his enemy to appear. He still did not have a target. That’s when I decided to launch Falcon. My plan was to have Argos take up a position near the destroyer and Falcon and I near the frigate. When the shooting began, both of us could attack the warships. Separated, our two ships would have less power, but we could fire from stealth and, over time, do some real damage to the leading warships in addition to hampering their decision-making abilities. If Tiana did what I thought she would do, that last part would be important.
Tiana blinked several times when she saw the whole enemy force come out of stealth. She couldn’t understand why or how that happened, but it was fine with her. This was where the long practice sessions she and her ships endured would pay off. She was sure of it and knew what she wanted to do immediately. She had ten, armed cargo ships with the new plasma cannons in addition to ten upgraded gunboats.
The first thing she did was split six of her gunboats into two three-ship attack units (GB1 and GB2) and sent them in stealth toward the rear of the attacking force. The enemy armed cargo ships there would be vulnerable to a rear attack and not supported by the warships upfront. She sent them off immediately, each in the opposite direction to flow around and behind the opposing force. GB1 went left and GB2 to the right.
The second thing she did, almost automatically thanks to her training, was to split her armed cargo ships into two attack squadrons. The cargo ships formed two five-ship V formations with the point of the V aimed at the enemy. The four remaining gunboats were inserted, two per V formation, into the center of each formation. One slightly below the formation and the other in high perch. She then launched both of these squadrons to follow the paths of the two gunboat attack units. Tiana in Dreng led one formation to the left, and the trusted and experienced 03 led the second to the right. All the Resistance parts were in motion and committed.
As planned, the gunboat units got into position first. They waited for about ten minutes until the two Resistance attack squadrons got closer. On an order from Tiana, the gunboats dropped their stealth and began chewing into the rear of the enemy formation. But this wasn’t like shooting fish in a barrel. These fish had a bite.
On the first pass, GB2 scored multiple hits on several ships, one of which streamed gasses and exploded. GB1 also scored a kill on their first pass, but one of the gunboats in the small formation took multiple hits from several armed cargo ships and was destroyed. Both attack units circled and prepared to attack again. That was the signal for Argos and Falcon to open up on the two leading warships. Not so much to destroy them right off, but to keep them busy and from turning around and attacking the gunboats at the rear.
As the gunboats completed their circle to make a second attack, Tiana and her two squadrons were in position to attack as well and dropped stealth. Like matched teams, the four Resistance units’ coordinated attacks inflicted heavy damage to the rear of the enemy formation, which started accelerating forward to get away from the Resistance sting.
The rear fight was furious. Later Tiana would admit the few minutes that passed in the first two attacks seemed like hours, even days. Combat has a way of slowing things down. Your perceptions are at peak performance; you see everything, hear everything, feel everything all in the course of seconds. Anybody who has been in combat knows the feeling.
After the third pass, Tiana took stock. Five more enemy armed cargo ships were gone or drifting in space, but not without cost. As she took a mental inventory of her own forces, she realized with a shudder that two of her cargo ships were gone. One in her formation and one in 03’s. Adding to her momentary sorrow, one of the brave little gunboats in GB2 was also gone. They were down to four of the feisty little ships now.
As she watched, the enemy formation continued accelerating, heading toward Asteroid 3. The plan the Resistance prepared began to take on reality. The enemy was trying to create distance between themselves and their attackers. They also probably hoped that they could put the asteroid between them and their attackers. Tiana and all the Resistance forces slowed and allowed the enemy to think they were being successful.
As the enemy approached the asteroid, the ships broke into two separate units. One led by the destroyer to the right and the other by the frigate to the left. They were preparing to circle around the asteroid and return for a two-pronged counterattack. The frigate commander was showing his skills. That might have worked had Asteroid 3 not been newly equipped with high power plasma cannons and lasers. Just as the fleeing force broke into the two sections, the asteroid defenses were activated remotely by Tiana. Almost immediately, two of the enemy armed cargo ships disappeared, and several others took hits. The enemy force that started out with sixteen total ships was now down to eight: two warships and six, armed cargo ships.
Chapter 28
I was watching from my comfortable seat in Falcon. Argos and I temporarily broke away from the enemy warships to keep clear of the asteroid’s firepower. If anyone had told me that our little ragtag Resistance force could fight like this, I wouldn’t have believed them. Clearly, all the training helped, but these people, especially Tiana, were fierce. I remembered those first few training sessions that were disasters and chided myself for thinking they could never get it right. Yet, here they were, kicking the ass of the most threatening force the Tye system had seen for a long time. I had to admit I was proud of them and of the Argos and her crew. Yes, and of Wizzy. Without his help in renovating the ships, building the weapons, and installing the defenses on Asteroid 3, this could have been — no, would have been — a disaster. And no, I’m not going to say that to the little pile of circuits. If I did, he would never let us forget it.
As the enemy force split and bounced off to the left and right like water off a hot stove, I realized round two was about to start. The group led by the destroyer was turning right toward Argos and 03’s squadron to escape. The group turning left, led by the frigate, was headed back toward me in the Falcon and Tiana’s waiting squadron. The two remaining two-ship formations of gunboats each peeled off to engage one of the two enemy forces as well.
Later, I had to reconstruct the battle with the destroyer and her ships against Argos and the friendly ships around 03. The destroyer took out another one of the armed cargo ships in 03’s formation but suffered a catastrophic engine cascade failure when plasma shots from 03 and Argos hit her at the same time. There was nothing left. The two trailing gunboats took out one of the three remaining enemy armed cargo ships. It was over when 03’s remaining ships took out the last two enemy combatants. That’s when Amini, on her own (bless her), decided to leap to my location in Falcon, and we began the integration process.
The frigate and her force apparently had enough and turned roughly toward Tye. They were getting ready to run. The two gunships of GB2 pulled in behind the three remaining armed cargo ships and attacked. Right away, one of the enemy ships exploded, but the other two sent fire into the two small gunboats and destroyed one. As if in an act of vengeance, Tiana’s force closed in on the two remaining cargo ships and made short work of them. That’s where we and the Argos came into play again as we both turned our attention on the fleeing frigate.
After integrating and now with more power to weapons, I sat in Argos’ command chair and focu
sed my attention on the frigate. I momentarily wished that Sif was there to handle weapons, but soon realized Doc was up to the job. We started firing the plasma cannon as fast as it would recycle, and on his own, Doc released two missiles. We would have used the rail gun too, but the target aspect wasn’t right.
As luck would have it, or good spacemanship by the frigate commander’s part, both of our missiles were defeated. But our plasma shots were having an effect hitting every time. At one point, two of Tiana’s shots hit at the same time that one of ours went home. I could see the frigate yaw to the right and then come slowly back on course. We hurt him. Just as Dreng and Argos were about to administer the final blow, the frigate disappeared.
“What the hell just happened?” I asked to blank stares in the bridge.
“The frigate went FTL,” came the matter of fact voice of Wizzy.
“Then let’s get after him,” yelled Doc.
But it wasn’t the right move. I couldn’t just abandon the Resistance force around me. They fought too hard. Then I remembered what the Argos crew and I talked about before the start of this fight. Argos can leap again. AND, she could probably take along at least two full-sized ships at the same time. As I remembered, my father had done it more than once. But which ships to take? With the frigate in FTL, we would have some time before it got to Krona. Why not take them all, or at least as many as we could?
If someone had been the least bit observant, they would have seen the Argos disappear from one place and reappear near the Falcon just a short time ago. So the secret was out. The cat was already out of the bag, if you will.
“Amini, get Tiana on the line, please.”
“She’s up,” came Amini’s response.
“Tiana. We have a capability we have not been using. We wanted to keep it secret until it was absolutely needed.”
“You mean like moving from one place to another instantly? I saw that when Argos joined you and Falcon. That what you are talking about?”
I hesitated, but it had to be said. “Yes. Not only can this ship move from one known location to another instantly, it can also carry a couple of other ships along with it.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. I could visualize Tiana holding out the receiver and staring at it like it was possessed. Then she came back up.
“You are sure? You have done this before?”
“Yes, I’ve done it. My father has done it. In fact, it was a major tactical advantage in the Arkon war. Now nearly all our ships have it.”
“So, you are admitting you are not just a trading ship? That you are part of a larger force?”
“Well, we can talk about that in private later. Right now, I’m prepared to make multiple trips to our holding position over Krona and bring along all the ships we have here. That is, if it is okay with you.”
Another long silence on the line.
“Nobody will get hurt?”
“Nobody will get hurt. Some people might get a little motion sickness, but it doesn’t last long. Want to do it?”
This time the answer was immediate.
“Yes!”
“OK, bring Dreng over in close formation with Argos and how about two of your gunboats. We should be able to do that. Have your crew touch nothing. Don’t try to fly anything until we release you at the rendezvous point. Then spread out and make room for the next arrival. Nobody can be in the arrival zone when we leap in. If they are, then BOOM! We don’t want that.”
Dreng pulled into position on our port side, and two gunboats on the starboard side. I let Wizzy make the calculations and enter the data into the leap drive computer (made, by the way, by the first Harry AI).
Dreng and the small boats signaled ready, and we started the process in the computer, under Wizzy’s observation. We didn’t want to make mistakes. It had been a long time since I last did one of these. I didn’t tell Tiana that.
When all was in readiness, I flipped up the cover on the leap drive switch and pressed the button. A little white light, then we were there. Below us, we could see the two, armed cargo ships with the attack troops and the four escorting gunboats. We released the three ships we had brought along. When they were clear, we did the reverse back to the area of the fight. It took about an hour to get all the ships moved to the new location. Much of that time was consumed convincing the ships it was okay and then getting them to maneuver the correct distance alongside. It was now back in the hands of the Resistance forces — Tiana in space, and Altor on Krona. The best part was that half of Founders Day still remained. It was looking like this could be done!
It was hard to say who was more shocked, Tiana or Altor, when our first leap was done depositing Dreng and two gunboats neatly near the planned coordinates, less than a hundred miles from the waiting troop transport formation. At least Tiana knew, in concept, what was going to happen, but Altor had no idea. All he knew was that in less than an hour, his defensive force grew by nearly a dozen ships, large and small. I said nothing and stood off in Argos as Tiana set her approach formation. Again, she used the V formation as the lead element of the force with the troopships tucked in behind her. Dreng was the point of the V with the steady 03 on her right side. The troopships already had gunboats placed in strategic places around, over, and under the two high-value ships.
Tiana formed the six remaining gunboats into two three-ship formations (GB3 and GB4) as she had at Asteroid 3 with the intent of using them in a similar way. GB3 was posted to the left of the formation and GB4 to the right. Both ready to shoot forward and attack any opposing force.
We had detailed information on the Krona facility thanks to Larona spilling her guts, along with the plans she helped draw. We had to get to the moon before that information would be useful, and we had no real idea what we would face. We expected to see the frigate again at Krona. It left the space battle well before we even started leaping Resistance ships. In her intelligence debriefing, Larona said she thought there was another warship here, but she had no idea what kind it was. Jointly, we thought there might be a few armed cargo ships in the area, possibly flown in from other outposts. Again, we knew nothing for certain. My guess was that the majority of their ships were at Asteroid 3, and not coming back. By that reasoning, I felt certain the defensive space force would be small. Oh, yeah, Larona mentioned one more thing. Gurko wasn’t alone. More than that, he wasn’t the real boss. There was an Arkon Blue there named Berzalius who was running the whole show.
When Tiana’s formation was complete, I suggested that the Argos go in and do a stealthy recon of the space around the moon. We had to know what was there before we could risk starting the landing. She agreed.
I decided to circle the moon as fast as we could and still collect intelligence. At random, I selected to start around the right side of the moon relative to the way our force was pointed. It was a good choice.
Wizzy was drawing as much power as he dared to his passive sensors. We suspected the frigate was there and that she had been hit hard and damaged in the earlier battle. Wizzy prioritized looking for her signatures that we had recorded. We hoped the damage was great enough to her hull that emissions would seep from her disrupted hull and frame. It didn’t take long.
“Bingo,” we heard Wizzy call as his avatar appeared dancing a jig in the air above the Argos’ bridge deck plates. “I have the frigate, looks like it just arrived. Oh, they are making things too easy. I just heard two cargo ships trying to send coded information on parts they would like to trade for. No discipline from those ships. To be fair, they thought they were transmitting on a narrow beam. However, they didn’t count on the awesome Wizzy listening in. These people are not even as smart as apes.”
“Thanks for the compliment, Wizzy, but can we just stick to discovering what’s out there?”
“Oh, sure. At the moment, I can say there is one frigate and two cargo ships. All the cargo ships use the sa
me frequency when chatting with each other just in case, you know, you wonder how I can be certain. There are at least ten other reasons I can give you if you want.”
“No, Wizzy, I trust you. A frigate and two, armed cargo ships. Is that all?”
“Not sure.”
“What do you mean ‘not sure’? You’re supposed to know everything.”
“Not everything, just mostly everything. In this case, I know there is another ship there, but I cannot give it a category. All I can say is that it is bigger than any of the enemy ships we have seen so far.”
“So, there are four ships here, correct?”
“Um, yes, at least four ships.”
“Come on, Wizzy, show us some of that awesomeness. Are there four, or are there more?”
“Just four. I think. Probably.”
Now you might think I would be pissed at Wizzy’s response. I was not. Wizzy’s guesses are usually better than any absolutely positive thing we mortals can think of. I was messing with him.
“Like I asked before the last battle, do you know if either or both of the cargo ships have an AI?”
“Surprisingly, there is one, an old Arkon military ship similar to the one off of Asteroid 3, and I have been playing with it a little. Sort of how you humans use a laser pointer to play with cats. It is so cute… but stupid.”
“While you’re playing with it, have you, by any chance, asked the kitty what type of ship is next to it?”
There was a short bit of silence.
“Um, no.”
“Don’t you think that would be a good idea?”
“Smarty-pants. You never let me have any fun. Hmm, interesting. Oh, that’s clever.”
“Wizzy!”
“Oh, alright. But you are not going to like this.”
“Just tell us for crying out loud!”
“It is a cruiser… an old one.”
Crucible: Records of the Argos Page 27