‘Very clever, Commandant.’
She appreciated that she didn’t need to explain her idea to Thomas. “Do you think the Connexus will be able to identify enough of a variation?”
‘Given the significant size and weight of the missiles, I estimate a 43% probability, in 52% to 68% of the targets, which is—’
“Better than nothing.” She cringed inwardly as another explosion flared on the far side of the engagement zone. The small perceived size due to its distance belied the damage she knew it had caused. “Unfortunately, they need to hurry.”
Admiral Rychen (Virginia): “That left a mark. Not to give them ideas, but why don’t they simply fire all the Igni missiles and be done with us?”
Commandant Solovy: “Cascading explosions of such magnitude will take out most of their vessels in addition to ours. It’s a suicidal tactic.”
Alexis Solovy: “The Machim Navarchos will sacrifice his entire fleet in a heartbeat if it means victory. They view their ships and crew as disposable, because, well, they kind of are. No, it’s something else.”
Miriam smiled. She might chide Thomas later for giving Valkyrie access to the command channel, but…probably not.
Commandant Solovy: “Hello, Alex. Brilliant job at the Gateway.”
Alexis Solovy: “Hi, Mom. Thanks for the firepower.”
Commandant Solovy: “Okay, so it’s something else. If we knew what, we may be able to use their reluctance against them.”
Thomas (Transcendentally Hallowed Overlord of the Milky Way, AEGIS Sector): ‘They expect to be surprised again.’
She rolled her eyes and quickly deleted the call sign moniker from the system. She was definitely going to chide him for that, however.
Commandant Solovy: “What do you mean?”
Thomas: ‘You have caught them unawares twice in a row. They are accounting for the non-negligible possibility you will do so a third time. In such a scenario they will want to have their remaining missiles on hand in case the weapons are needed to counter the new threat, the nature of which is, by definition, unknown.’
Admiral Rychen (Virginia): “Good. It means we’ve already earned their respect.”
‘The Connexus has identified the fifty-four Machim battlecruisers likeliest to be carrying Igni missiles based on anomalies in their movements and engine output.’
“Excellent work.” They weren’t all accounted for, but each missile disabled in a contained manner was a win.
Now she switched to the Stalwart II’s internal comm channel and contacted Logistics on Deck 5. “Commander Lekkas, has ESC Flight One returned intact and unharmed from its mission?”
“It has indeed.”
“Good to hear. See that they’re resupplied, then have them join up with Flights Two and Three to drop targeted negative energy bombs on top of the battlecruisers marked by the Connexus. We need to take those craft out before they decide to fire their Igni missiles.”
“Fun. We are on it.”
Admiral Rychen (Virginia): “It’s starting to resemble a stalemate out here. Other than the Sabres, our weapons aren’t causing enough damage to do more than whittle down their still ridiculous numbers. Any chance we do have a third surprise?”
Alexis Solovy: “Oh, yes.”
Commandant Solovy: “Alex….”
Alexis Solovy: “Don’t freak out, Commandant Solovy, but you might want to look to your…right.”
Miriam’s gaze darted to her right automatically, assuming Alex meant on the bridge. Her daughter was a ship junkie; if Alex had meant to the right of the ship, she would’ve said ‘starboard.’
She didn’t freak out at the sight of the Metigen swirling into solidity beside her, because ‘freaking out’ was not something she did. Ever. In fact, she even waved down the two MPs who had leapt to attention.
“Mnemosyne?”
I am known as Lakhes, Commandant Solovy.
She’d learned quite a bit about the Katasketousya in the last couple of months. “You’re the leader.”
An imprecise characterization, but it suffices. I recognize you have no time for idle consultation, so I am here only to convey this message to you: our vessels are at your disposal.
“Your—”
“Commandant, we’re picking up multiple new energy signatures eight megameters distant past Quadrant Four.”
“I need a visual.”
A new feed materialized in front of her to zoom past the chaos of the ongoing conflict. Out of the darkness a host of ships emerged from her nightmares—from most humans’ nightmares.
Column after column of superdreadnoughts entered the engagement zone as hundreds of thousands of swarmers detached and sped straight into the melee.
She spun to Lakhes. “What is this?”
They fight for you, and with you. On this you have my word.
A little warning would have been nice, and might have prevented a few heart attacks which were likely just suffered out among the crews.
Miriam drew in a breath and activated the all-forces channel once more.
Commandant Solovy: “All ships and all personnel. The superdreadnoughts and their swarmers are allies. Do not fire upon them. I say again: do not fire upon the Metigen vessels. They are here to…help us.”
She turned back to her unexpected guest, and found that a second Metigen had joined Lakhes on the bridge.
Hyperion commands our vessels and will see to any tactical requests you have for them to perform. I wish you victory, Commandant. For all our sakes.
Lakhes faded away, leaving Miriam standing facing the Metigen who had orchestrated the slaughter of over fifty million people a short year ago.
There were limits to even deals with the devil, lines which should never be crossed…but she was beginning to wonder when she might find one.
She swallowed past the acrimony in her throat. “Follow the lead of our cruisers in choosing your targets. Fomenting disarray in the enemy ranks is one of our primary goals, and your swarmers are well suited to this task.”
Hyperion’s form coalesced into an ethereal representation of a giant horned owl. I understand. Do you have any further guidance you wish to impart?
“Yes. Betray us, and no corner of this or any other universe will be safe for you.”
63
ESC FLIGHT TWO-CHARLIE
MILKY WAY SECTOR 41
* * *
TRICKY TASK, PLACING a negative energy bomb with high precision and slipping away before it detonated and took you out along with the target.
The target in question was invariably moving, of course, so proper placement required analyzing its trajectory and historical movements and predicting where it would be in another five seconds. Except this was a space battle—a tremendous, unprecedented and chaotic space battle, to be more accurate—so the targets rarely moved in a straight line.
Seeing as she had hitched a mental ride and wasn’t actually doing any of that difficult work, Morgan took the opportunity to soak in the ambiance of the clashes going on around her.
The amount of debris littering the field surprised her; the fact the vast majority of it originated from the enemy cheered her. The Machim ships were tough and robustly shielded, but with enough firepower applied, they were destructible, and by conventional means.
On the other hand, thanks in part to some creative hit-and-run combat tactics employed by a bunch of not merely unshackled but fucking unleashed Prevos, only the nasty Igni missiles had managed to take out more than the odd, unlucky AEGIS vessel. Missiles she and her little cadre of Artificial ships were here to remove from the field of play. Go adiamene.
Do you wish you were piloting for real? Your adrenaline level is well below its typical level during hostile engagements, and I seem to recall you enjoying the rush.
Sure I do, Stanley. But supervising isn’t so bad—and being able to relax and soak in the view isn’t terrible, either. Besides, yesterday I was in a coma, and I suspect you, Harper, the doctors and half the Connex
us would kill me if I tried to get in a cockpit today.
We would probably opt for tranquilization rather than murder, but for certain.
The Eidolon she vicariously inhabited—ESC Flight Two-Charlie by name—glided unseen beneath the hull of a mammoth battlecruiser. The vessel cut an imposing profile, but mostly it was ugly. The Anadens, or at a minimum their Machim branch, clearly had no sense of style or panache. Not when it came to starships, anyway. She’d reserve judgment on their style in other venues, but she didn’t harbor high expectations.
HarperRF: How are you doing?
Commander Lekkas: Flying around leaving surprise gifts for a few select Machim battlecruisers—virtually, so don’t freak out. My weak and kitteny body is still safe in its lounge chair on the Stalwart II.
HarperRF: Kitteny? Really, Lekkas?
Commander Lekkas: I’m simply trying to entice you. How are you doing?
HarperRF: Hunting for something to land on while Malcolm shoots at all the ships. Do you think you could convince Solovy to let us infiltrate the Imperium?
Commander Lekkas: Not today, I’m afraid. Do what I’m doing and appreciate the show.
HarperRF: But I want to stab one of these assholes with my fancy new blade. Or twenty of them.
Commander Lekkas: You do realize they just come back to life in a lab somewhere, right?
HarperRF: Then I’ll find them there and stab them again.
Commander Lekkas: That’s my girl.
The hull shuddered as the force from the detonation of the negative energy bomb they had placed earlier washed over it. But it was hardly a tickle as she, Stanley and Charlie wove through the acrobatic symphony of combat in its highest form on the way to their next target.
SIYANE
MILKY WAY SECTOR 41
“There. Thirty or so degrees starboard. One of their strike fighters looks as if it’s trying to sneak up the ass of one of our…did they call them Sabres?”
“I see it.” Alex let Valkyrie handle the flying while she readied a delicate power-balancing routine that put an extra oomph into the Siyane’s lasers then pivoted on demand and raised shield strength to maximum. “I desperately want to use the Rifter.”
Caleb chuckled. “I know. But we’re fighting close. You don’t want to accidentally take out one of our own.”
He’d been surprised to hear of the unanticipated side effect of the Rifter’s energy diversion, but Alex had been shocked…for roughly ten seconds. She’d spent the next thirty minutes muttering on and off about how obvious it was. Easy to say, but many things were obvious in retrospect.
Like the fact the diati was without question an intelligent, sentient life form, and as much without question was tied inextricably to the Praesidis bloodline. His bloodline. A cold, hard truth he had better find a way to accept, and soon.
After the battle was won sounded like soon enough, though.
He checked his hands and was relieved to find them neither glowing nor trembling. It had taken hours, but he could now feel his body absorbing and incorporating the new diati’s essence with its brethren, and the process didn’t feel as odd, or alien, as it rightly should. The buzzing in his head had also quieted, which meant he could concentrate on other matters, so he filed away the puzzler as something else for soon but later.
He peered out the viewport as they flew deftly through the bedlam, a tiny spec in a sea of starships waging war on one another.
The degree to which their efforts were making an impact on the tide of battle was debatable, but it was important that they help. They’d brought everyone here, after all; by their actions they’d been leading everyone here for more than a year. When the pivotal moment finally arrived, it wasn’t like they weren’t going to join the fight.
The Machim strike fighter had just opened fire on the Sabre when Valkyrie glued them to the tail of the enemy craft, stealthed, and Alex let loose on it.
The data they’d stolen from Machimis had, among so many other things, enabled them to pinpoint a number of small weaknesses in every Machim vessel’s design, and she targeted the small conduit running from the power core to the engine to space. The limited shielding covering the engine’s exhaust nozzles and the conduit were two of those weaknesses, and the ship blew apart in seconds.
Alex boosted the Siyane’s shields—less to protect against return fire, although the Machim weapons were soberingly powerful, and more to protect against the high-velocity debris which resulted. Chunks of metal and multiple dagger-shaped shards bounced off the strengthened shield as they sped away.
She rolled her shoulders gamely. “Next?”
He began scouring the area for another suitable target. “What about—”
A rush of blue-white lights flooded the dark cabin with light, and they both spun around. Unusually for a Kat, the entry appeared more fevered than dramatic, and the lights continued to dart around in agitation following their arrival.
Alex frowned at the vague outline of their visitor. “Who are you?”
She would’ve checked, and if she didn’t recognize its base avatar…. Caleb tensed, instantly on guard. At least one Kat had already turned traitor, and several they knew could not be considered allies.
It is Paratyr. I come to you bearing a dire warning—late, far later than I should. I did not understand.
The identity of the Kat would not have led Caleb to relax in any event, as after the stunt the Sentinel had pulled in the Mirad Vigilate, he didn’t trust or particularly care for Paratyr. But the Kat’s words removed relaxation as an option.
Alex remained equally perturbed. “How did you find us? You’ve never been here and we’re stealthed—not as if that’s stopped half of Amaranthe from randomly showing up in our cabin whenever they feel like it.”
Mnemosyne instructed me on how to locate your vessel, but it is not important. You must know this information, and you must know it now.
She nodded. “Okay. Talk.”
The Imperium vessel situated at the rear of the Machim fleet carries inside it a weapon which, if detonated, will annihilate every ship, life form and molecule for many parsecs. If not countered, it will then destroy the galaxy, followed by the universe.
64
AFS SARATOGA
MILKY WAY SECTOR 41
* * *
CHAOS. MAYHEM. PANDEMONIUM. Any number of colorful descriptives sprang to Malcolm’s mind, yet none did justice to the scene surrounding his ship.
Thrust into the heart of the conflict on Commandant Solovy’s command alongside the bulk of the AEGIS fleet, he might even be responsible for a portion of the chaos himself.
The AFS Saratoga’s primary function was to serve as a troop carrier, and it was presently filled with Marines going stir-crazy on account of having nothing to shoot at. But as a custom-designed AEGIS vessel, it wasn’t only a carrier.
The added motive power from the engines of the four modular, detachable transports which made up the bulk of its frame meant that when it was whole, it could move. While hardly Sabre-level, the lightweight but precise firepower the modules wielded brought its aggregate weaponry up to respectable status.
Not unlike the ship, Malcolm’s primary function was to serve as the AEGIS Marines Director, but it turned out it wasn’t his sole function. His time on the Orion had earned him a reputation as a fair ship captain, and here, outnumbered and possibly outgunned, they needed every able-bodied ship in the fight.
So here he was, flying through the center of the maelstrom where order had long since departed—because that’s where he’d taken the Saratoga.
Their current target blew apart from the inside out, and immediately a new one revealed itself through the wreckage. They were finding targeting the engines to be the most effective strategy, though it did tend to create something of a mess. “Frigate due ahead. When you lock on him, Ettore, let’s play chicken.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ettore was a Major in the Earth Alliance, and he was also a Prevo. As of three week
s ago, his Artificial counterpart resided in the walls of the ship.
The arrangement was taking some getting used to, but not because he didn’t trust Ettore or the Artificial. Events had taught him the greatest of respect for their capabilities, and while he hadn’t worked with Ettore prior to his becoming a Prevo, the man’s record was above reproach.
No, the arrangement was taking some getting used to because it upended the traditional roles of everyone on the bridge. There was a navigator in the pit, but the Artificial was really the navigator. Same with weapons and most other positions. The crew wasn’t standing around with nothing to do—that honor was reserved for the Marines on the lower decks—but the evolving give-and-take was unfamiliar. New.
It seemed like Malcolm kept trying to settle into the familiar, and ‘new’ kept kicking down the door.
A shudder chilled his bones as two dozen Metigen swarmers latched onto one of the enemy frigates in their field of view. He accepted the reality that they were fighting on the same side, for their masters were the reason AEGIS existed in the first place. But he would never look kindly upon the monstrous vessels that had killed so many.
A Metigen death beam cut across the viewport to tear into a Machim battlecruiser, reminding him why.
The explosion when the battlecruiser ruptured gained an eerie corona from the detonation of a negative energy bomb beyond it. When the light faded, the Machim Imperium was framed perfectly in the span of the Saratoga’s viewport.
He watched as it fired on one of the nearby Alliance cruisers. Its shockingly robust weapons ripped through the shielding until the adiamene was under full assault. Jesus, use your Rifter already!
A Federation cruiser crossed between them, taking the brunt of the fire for several precious seconds—then the chaos of the battle swallowed up his view of the engagement.
In the corner of his vision an entire regiment of Federation ships vanished under the blast of an Igni missile. The Eidolons were taking out the battlecruisers suspected of carrying the antimatter weapons as fast as they could get to them. But, perhaps realizing what was happening, the missiles were being deployed with increasing frequency.
Aurora Resonant: The Complete Collection (Amaranthe Collections Book 3) Page 39