by M. D. Cooper
Nuclear fireballs enveloped the entire left flank, dissipating into streaks of plasma as quickly as they appeared, revealing that every ISF ship was intact and undamaged.
“Not surprised. Those were big warheads. Instruct them to fall back until they cool down.”
Despite the calm that Caldwell took care to display to his bridge crew, he felt a mixture of fear and excitement as the attack on Wing One kicked off the battle in earnest.
The ISF destroyers relied heavily on their rails, but they were also equipped with beams, and the space between the two fleets was awash with relativistic particles and the comparatively slower kinetics.
“Oh shit! I know what orders the cruiser sent to the mining platforms!”
Sandy’s outburst grabbed Caldwell’s attention, and he turned to see her staring wide-eyed as she flung a view up on the holo.
Dozens of rocks in a nearby debris field had begun to move, hurtling toward the ISF fleet.
“It’s not going to be enough,” Caldwell replied while ordering Wing Two to fire on the rocks. “It’s not hard to outmaneuver a flying boulder.”
The ISF ships continued their inexorable advance on the defenders, destroying every weapon the enemy brought to bear, until just over half the Pritney-Dax ships remained. As the last enemy destroyer was crippled, the enemy fleet began to scatter, nearly every craft still able to maneuver boosting away from the ISF ships.
“Hail our friend Harold again, Lieutenant,” Caldwell instructed, and Sandy nodded as she sent out the call.
A moment later, a decidedly haggard-looking Harold appeared on the holo.
“We surrender,” he replied meekly. “We…I…how?”
Caldwell felt a moment’s pity for the man. The way that Orion kept these people stuck in the dark ages, there was little they could do to defend against a superior foe. Even if the ISF ships had not possessed stasis shields, he was certain he could have defeated the corporate fleet without trouble—though it may have involved actual losses on his side.
“The galaxy has passed you by, Harold,” he replied. “Orion restricted your development and left your people vulnerable. There’s no shame in it.”
“And yet, here you come to greedily take advantage of that weakness,” Harold shot back, a sneer forming on his lips.
“This is war, Harold.” The thrill of victory dissipated, and the colonel blew out a long breath. “I’m sure there’s a long history of tit-for-tat dating back to some ancient slight, but the fact of the matter is that my people were attacked by yours, and we’re here to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“But we don’t even know anything about that. About who your people even are!”
“We’re blowing your mining platforms in forty minutes, Harold Ems of Pritney-Dax,” Caldwell replied without emotion. “Instruct any of your remaining people to abandon the facilities. So long as your ships keep their shields lowered, we’ll allow you to perform search and rescue operations. But the moment shields come up, we fire. Am I clear?”
The corporate ship captain nodded slowly, his face a mask of anguish. “Yes. You’re perfectly clear.”
“Good.”
Caldwell ended the transmission, a pang of regret settling inside him as he considered that he’d likely just set this man’s life on a very different course.
Well. I was on a different course, too. Then you asshats attacked New Canaan, and I lost everyone.
THE SILENT FLEET
STELLAR DATE: 10.19.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: TSS Cossack’s Sword, approaching Sosondowah
REGION: Machete System, PED 4B, Orion Freedom Alliance
“We’ve secured Iagentci.” Admiral Sebastian’s message began without preamble. “Trey, the Hand agent on the ground here, has given us some assistance, along with a few people who call themselves ‘corporate fixers’. Quite the crew he’s fallen in with.”
Svetlana glanced at Lorelei, who shrugged as the message from Admiral Sebastian continued.
“We’re looking at sixty-two hours before the Orion fleet from the shipyards gets here. Colonel Caldwell took out the corporate forces at Geha and blew all the mining platforms but one. He’s using the last one to replenish his supply of rail pellets. Thus far, the incoming Orion fleet appears to only be focused on us here at Iagaentci; since Geha is currently in opposition to Iagaentci, Caldwell and I have discussed adjusting our strategy. He’s going to thread the needle between the two stars, which will put his railships in position to hit the Oggies in the rear right when they’re decelerating to hit us.”
“Ballsy,” Lorelei said with an appreciative nod.
“That’s for sure,” Svetlana added. “Doyadastethe and Hawenneyu are at periastron, just over half an AU apart. Space is hell between those two stars at that point.”
“Right,” the general laughed. “Thought I summed that up with ‘ballsy’.”
“I’ll keep you updated as things proceed, Admiral Svetlana,” Sebastian’s message concluded. “Given the lack of DMGs in this system, I don’t see how they can do much to stop us, though I do worry that we’re more likely to expend effort saving their people rather than ourselves. Either way, good luck with your end of things.”
The message ended, and the holodisplay switched back to a view of the Machete system.
“He sounded a bit giddy,” Lorelei observed. “Too giddy.”
“What are you talking about?” Svetlana asked. “He sounded the same as always.”
The general shook her head. “Nope, I detected a note of ‘gid’ when he spoke of Caldwell’s ships flanking the enemy.”
Hermes chimed in.
“I guess everyone’s happy to stick it to the Oggies.” Svetlana shrugged and flipped the holo to show her battlegroup’s final approach into Sosondowah’s nearspace.
The battlegroup was now only one hour from assault craft deployment and the takeover of the Alpha and Omega Trumark shipyards. They were entering the critical time when the locals might pick up the fleet of ships drifting past their planet—stealth systems enabled, engines cold, but still visible if you looked at them at the right place and time.
Ironically, we’re sending our best stealth ships through a plasma storm, where their superior tech will be useless.
Over the following hour, there was little conversation on the bridge as everyone kept an eye on scan, watching the flight paths of civilian and military ships in the planet’s nearspace, hoping that none would draw too close to the silent TSF fleet.
“There’s a freighter departing from Trumark-Alpha,” Scan advised. “It’s…yes, it’s on a vector that will pass four hundred meters off our port side.”
Close enough to touch, but not near enough for a civilian to see us.
Svetlana glanced at Lorelei. “Your troops all buckled in?”
“Have been for the last hour.”
“Good,” the admiral nodded as she watched the holotank, the dot that represented the freighter creeping ever closer to battlegroup.
“I get the feeling that ship is running from something,” Lorelai said, folding her arms across her chest as she glared at the civilian craft. “It’s boosting way too hard to break out of Sosondowah’s gravity well.”
“I wonder—aw, fuck,” Svetlana muttered a moment later, as four corvettes veered off their patrol routes, boosting toward the freighter—which had begun to spool out its antimatter-pion drive’s nozzle.
Svetlana was tempted to let the pursuing corvettes simply smash against the Cossack’s shields, but decided that there was no harm in attempting to evade the inbound craft.
The corvettes were hailing the freighte
r, accusing them of a theft and demanding that the ship cease burn and prepare to be boarded. The freighter paid the pursuers no heed and ignited its AP drive, boosting away at over a hundred gs.
What a time to stumble into some sort of robbery…though separating those corvettes from the pack serves us well.
“FCO, have the fleet shift vectors as carefully as possible to avoid collision. We’ll see if we can maintain this approach a bit longer.”
While maneuvering thrusters were difficult to detect—especially when they fired graviton-accelerated bursts of gases cooled to the same temperature as the surrounding vacuum—if active scan swept over them at just the right time, sensors would see light from distant stars refract, and it would give them away.
The ships settled onto new vectors, and Svetlana let out the breath she’d been holding.
“It looks like we—”
“Active scan sweeping across the battlegroup!” Scan called out. “Tactical estimates that two of our ships may have been spotted.”
“Dammit,” Svetlana muttered. “FCO, direct Wing One to engage those four corvettes—the freighter too, if it gives any trouble. Wing Two and Three are to escort the assault craft in. Four through Eight have their targets. Execute.”
She knew that Hermes would have begun to send the commands the moment she spoke the words, but Svetlana liked saying the word ‘execute’.
“Craft are away,” the Cossack’s Sword’s dockmaster announced from his station.
“On a vector to provide cover,” Helm added. “I have them in our shadow.”
“Very good,” Svetlana replied as she watched the holotank instantly transform from a near-static view of the fleet drifting toward the two Trumark shipyards to one of action and chaos.
Wing One—which consisted of five cruisers and two dozen destroyers—opened fire on the pursuing corvettes, making strategic strikes and disabling the ships’ engines and main weapons without destroying the ships themselves.
One of the corvettes flared its engines, trying to outrun the enemy vessels that had appeared all around. The action caused a beam to penetrate something it shouldn’t have, and the Orion ship exploded.
Well, trying to avoid destroying ships, at least.
While Svetlana had no issue with tearing the Orion Guard to shreds, she knew that ruining ships and leaving crews stranded would create a greater strain on the enemy’s resources than simple mass destruction.
The comm officer suddenly laughed aloud, then covered her mouth. “Sorry, ma’am. The freighter’s crew just promised to buy us a round if we ever bump into them again. And they sent along a little dance…. It’s not suitable to put on the holo.”
A smile twitched across Svetlana’s lips as she shook her head. “We’ll have to take a look later.”
“Look at what, ma’am?” Command Master Chief Merrick asked as he strode onto the bridge. He passed the comm officer’s console and paused as his eyes widened. “Stars, that has to take some serious mods to pull off.”
Svetlana cleared her throat, and nodded her chin at the holotank. “We got outed a bit early, but I was expecting something like this to happen anyway.”
Her father snorted as he stepped around the comm console and stopped next to the holotank. “Trust me, you weren’t expecting anything like that to happen.”
She accessed the feed and felt her face redden.
“Ummm…probably not.”
The Cossack’s Sword was on a vector for Trumark-Alpha, and the pilot was adjusting position and thrust to match velocity with the assault craft that were in its shadow.
“Ten minutes till our devils latch on,” General Lorelei said, trying not to smirk—a sign that she’d tapped the feed from the freighter as well. “Based on the specs Trey sent, I estimate we’re looking at twenty minutes to lock down the command decks, and then another two hours to fully secure the stations. The rest of the shipyard will take longer, depending on what we decide to keep.”
From what they could see, the vast majority of the battle-ready Orion Guard ships had left the shipyards with the fleet that was en route to engage Admiral Sebastian’s ships. Only fifty-three patrol craft—all destroyers and corvettes—remained to protect the six shipyards.
Already, Wings Four through Eight were striking out at the remaining Orion ships, while the escort wings targeted the fixed defenses.
“Fools,” Merrick muttered. “They should just surrender. Even if those other ships do turn around and come back, it’ll be too late for anyone here.”
“A group of enemy corvettes has broken off,” Scan announced, and a dozen light attack craft were highlighted on the holotank. “It looks like they’re moving to the far side of the planet.”
“Well,” Svetlana glanced at her father. “I wonder if they’re going to try to hide and wait for reinforcements.”
“Gravitational anomaly in Moon S1!” Scan cried out. “I read high-intensity gamma emissions.”
“Fuck, no!” Svetlana shouted, switching to all-fleet.
Hermes immediately disseminated orders to every ship, providing new vectors away from the moon while also ensuring that none of the capital ships directed their engine wash at the assault craft.
Svetlana barely paid attention to the chaos. Her eyes were glued to the view of the largest of Sosondowah’s two moons. Like the planet it orbited, the moon had a long, nearly unpronounceable name, which is why it was noted as ‘S1’ on the holotank’s display.
Moments later, a beam of blinding energy slashed out of the moon, striking one of Svetlana’s cruisers, cutting through its stasis shield and hewing the ship in half.
The holotank had become a display of unmitigated chaos as assault ships and their escorts streaked through the moons’ nearspace, still closing with their targets while also attempting to avoid presenting clear targets to the DMG nestled within moon S1.
The black-hole-powered weapon fired again. This time, it clipped a destroyer, knocking out its shields before taking the nose off the ship.
“Five minutes!” General Lorelei called out, her knuckles white as she gripped the rim of the holotank.
Svetlana nodded absently as she watched Wing Eight’s thirty ships launch missiles at the firing aperture on the moon’s surface.
“You know that may not work,” Merrick said in a quiet voice. “That much energy can just blast through…”
“I know,” she replied, nodding stiffly. “I’m open to other suggestions.”
“Well, if they do open up their aperture again, we shoot right down the thing’s throat.”
Svetlana inclined her head in acknowledgement. She knew that any ship that shot straight into the DMG’s maw would likely not survive the attack. She considered lobbing missiles, but knew it wouldn’t work. Guided weapons of that sort would just be shot down by defense turrets on the moon.
It would take a ship with stasis shields to pass directly over the opening and fire particle weapons into the monster’s throat, and she knew it couldn’t be the Cossack’s Sword.
“Direct hits!” Scan cried out, and the forward display switched from the view of the Sword’s bow to the surface of the moon, where a pool of molten rock, surrounded by hotly glowing rubble, had taken the place of the opening into the DMG.
“Dammit!” Svetlana swore. “It’s too hot and soft, the weapon can shoot through that.”
“More apertures!” Scan called out, and the view of the moon pulled back to show a dozen firing ports opening on the moon’s surface, describing a five-hundred-kilometer circle around the main port.
“What the—” Merrick began to say, when readings spiked, and the ship’s scan suite went offline.
Svetlana bit her cheek while waiting for the secondary antennae and sensors to slide from off the hull, where they’d been protected from the EM burst that had fried the primary arrays.
The moment Scan came back, she sucked in a sharp breath. Fully half her fleet was without stasis shields, and dozens of those unprotected ships were dark, drifting through the void without power.
“It fired some sort of mass field effect,” the scan officer murmured.
No more dithering.
The woman’s response was instantaneous, her dedication enough to form a lump in the admiral’s throat.
Svetlana pursed her lips as she watched the cruiser shift vector, jinking its way across the battlespace, heading toward the moon, while staying outside its main weapon’s firing angle.
Merrick met her eyes and nodded slowly, but there was no time to worry over the fate of the Nimbus Light, as dozens of ships that had previously lain cold and quiet in the shipyards came to life, engines flaring as they boosted toward the inbound TSF fleet.
“Fuckers.” Lorelai shook her head as she cursed. “They couldn’t have known we were coming. How are they this clever?”
“The feint at Iagaentci and Akonwara always ran the risk of being seen as such,” Merrick said. “But a few half-finished hulls aren’t going to turn the tide.”
“Tell that to the Orion forces that tried to take New Canaan,” Svetlana replied before sending orders for the damaged ships to fall to the right side of the battlegroup, putting them as far away from the DMG-containing moon as possible. As she issued the orders, the superweapon fired again, blasting away the slag that had covered its main firing aperture. The beam that cleared the opening carried on to strike a TSF destroyer in the engines, blowing the ship apart in less time than it took to comprehend the events.