Reality's Veil

by Damon Alan

  “No. Our quarters will be safest during the coming battle. I’ll be on the bridge and return to you when it’s over.”

  “Will we win?”

  “Father sent enough ships to kill our fleet. I don’t know what Admiral Dayson is planning, maybe she can turn the tide. We’ll see. If it comes down to our lives, I’ll order the retreat.”

  She nodded. “Then I’ll see you after. If not, I’m glad I came with you.”

  “And not purely because everyone on Mindari is dead now?” Bannick raised an eyebrow at his promised. “Not that I should find their deaths amusing. Our new ally would certainly be offended by that.”

  “You’re hard to read. I don’t know if you intend to honor your deal with her or not,” Palia said. “I’ve never seen you lie, but—”

  “— I am cold and practical, except with you. I have no intention of lying, but the fact is alliances shift all the time. If she becomes a burden beyond our agreement, our new friendship may be for naught.”

  “Makes sense.” She gestured at the ship around them. “Think of me when the hits start coming. Your father isn’t known for his lack of commitment when he gets a task in his mind.”

  “You know I will,” Bannick assured her.

  He watched her go. She was graceful even in 0G as each of her feet stuck to the mesh deck. Somehow, she made her movements look not only good, but natural.

  When she was gone, he moved to the same lift Cothis had used. Moments later he was on the bridge.

  “Status?” he asked.

  Admiral Cothis was at the helm station, speaking to the navigators. Captain Miko filled him in. “Admiral Dayson has called in an ally, Lord Komi. A ship of unknown design, the size of a heavy destroyer but registering much higher in mass.”

  “Does it have markings?” Bannick asked.

  “No, just strange shifting patterns of light on the hull. Our analysis AIs are working on it, but no results yet.”

  “Where is this new ship now?”

  “It left a short time ago. One of the fleets enroute to our position has dropped out of highspace and is currently engaged in nuclear combat,” Miko reported.

  “Are you suggesting that one heavy destroyer engaged a fleet of father’s ships, took them out of highspace somehow, and they felt the need to engage this ship with nuclear weapons instead of massacring it in a hailstorm of railgun rounds?”

  “I’m not suggesting it, Lord Komi. I’m stating it.”

  Bannick laughed. “You are a bold one, Miko.”

  “I fight for your cause,” Miko replied. “One has to be bold considering the odds we face.”

  “Agreed,” Bannick said, slapping the captain on the shoulder. “I’ll take my seat and let you do what you do so well. Run my ship.”

  Miko nodded his understanding at Bannick, then turned away. “Admiral Cothis, I’d like to bring the fleet to battlestations.”

  The next few moments were a haze as reports came in from the combat the Oasian ship was engaged in. One hundred and twelve ships were yanked out of highspace by the Oasian vessel and judging by the sensor returns indicating an expanding cloud of debris, the one ship was winning.

  It was starting to look much more as if Bannick should ensure the alliance with Sarah Dayson held. Breaking it would have a very high cost. Still, the question had to be asked. If the Oasians had ships like the one decimating his father’s fleet, why do they need ships from Bannick?

  It was a mystery. Any ship they’d get from the Komi would be nothing to them… unless that wasn’t their ship. Maybe the Oasians had another ally that was fighting with them?

  If so Bannick needed to make that faction his ally as well. Everything was a competition, and that included the strength of one’s friends.

  “What a glorious day,” he whispered contentedly as the other three fleets dropped out of highspace a few hundred thousand kilometers away. Rinou’s super-dreadnought, Extensor, was among them.

  Bannick scowled. “And a good day to clean up the family gene pool.”

  Chapter 23 - Reluctance

  Khala phased away from Sarah Dayson’s ship, and into highspace. There he looked toward the incoming fleets, picking the largest in number. A chimindik later he was colliding with the vessel that carried the FTL system for that fleet.

  The ship shredded as Khala’s body pierced it longways, he was careful to avoid the spinning singularity as the ship suffered a catastrophic failure and ejected the black hole away from the vessel. While the bubble of highspace wouldn’t last long now that the singularity was out of confinement, it lasted long enough that the ships on the other side of the bubble came into contact with the edge.

  A regrettable loss of life that was unavoidable.

  Khala watched several ships die, strung over a few dozen koplai as the edge of the bubble shredded them at an atomic level.

  Then highspace faded away and realspace was once more around the fleet.

  He phased to them, firing up his newly discovered method of communication, the tight beam laser.

  “I do not fight you as a wish. I am Khalamanthus. Khala. I am Khala. Mate of the Obedi Matriarch. Enemies we are not a reason.”

  The ships were in a jumble spread over thirty or forty koplai, it would take hours for them to reassemble into a functional unit. Despite that, the nearest ships engaged him without responding to his hail.

  He could feel the impacts of their railguns, but there wasn’t any effect. He knew from Sylange’s memories what was coming next. His energy stores were low as Sylange had warned him, but the nuclear weapons of the organics would recharge him.

  The first impact was small, but it still drove him some distance from the point of detonation. He phased to the ship that had fired the missile and ripped it apart. The passengers died almost instantly, exposed to the harsh vacuum around them.

  “I do not will to fight any more as my wish,” he restated to every ship that was within range.

  They stopped shooting at him. Then he noticed the laser links between them. Maybe they were discussing his superiority and would stop fighting now.

  Missiles ejected from several of the ships at once, a few of them with quite large payload packages. Several ships launched dozens of the things. That many missiles might overload even his ability to store energy, so he phased away, only to return moments later directly in the path of the largest ship in the remaining fleet. It looked, in fact, exactly like the one that Sarah Dayson had visited when he’d first arrived.

  His impact with the vessel took a long time, due to its size and the slowing effect so much matter had on his own velocity. The decks, girders, and life containment systems ruptured like the fragile bodies of the organics themselves. As the ship passed around him, it broke open as if it was spreading sensory appendages to collect data. But this wasn’t a productive thing. It was pure destruction. Deck plates shrieked, then ejected into space, torn from the main structure. A massive central support spar buckled over his body, the material melting with the energy of the impact. Sections of the ship exploded violently, further ripping the debris apart and spreading it widely.

  Finally, he reached what must be fuel tanks, and the shock of his impact ruptured them. Fuel spilled into space, creating a cloud of expanding volatiles that soaked his body with liquid even as it sprayed into mist, then as it lost heat, icy globs.

  He phased a short distance away then lanced a tight beam of infrared radiation across the fuel cloud. It detonated where his beam struck it, the explosion driving the ship’s debris even further from the impact site. He rested, motionless, and watched as the shredded material raced away in an expanding cone.

  Still the missiles came. He phased, dodged, ripped ships apart by impact, disassembled them with his arms, and a few times to shed excess energy he fried them with infrared radiation. Those ships melted into spray that lit up like the carapaces of his loved ones until the metals cooled into new shapes and disappeared into the darkness.

  He’d hoped to have ti
me to stop all four fleets. Instead, he’d only stopped this one. The others were out of highspace and closing rapidly on the ships of his new friends.

  Sad colors flashed across his carapace. This isn’t what he’d intended to do in order to secure an alliance with an organic faction.

  But it was what he had to do now.

  He phased back toward the main battle, into a conflict that was just starting as he arrived.

  Chapter 24 - Arrival and Engagement

  10 Ors 15332

  “Tactical?” Sarah requested.

  “The Komi fleets have fully engaged. Losses are coming quick for Bannick’s side. They’re outnumbered roughly two to one, it’s a bit worse than that,” Kuo reported.

  “Status of the Hyaku?” she asked.

  “On station, about twenty AU out. Attack ship launches are one fourth complete,”

  “Order Baratta to send what he has now, and each successive squad of four into combat as they are launched,” Sarah said. She tapped her mic. “Emille, be prepared. You’re going to be taxed in a moment.”

  “Wilco,” Stornbeck said as Emille/Alarin replied: “We are ready.”

  “The grapplers are showing up, Admiral,” Kuo reported.

  “Update the tactical, prepare to take the Sheffaris into the fray,” Sarah ordered. “I want one of those super-dreadnoughts to taste our missiles.”

  “Admiral, you’re being hailed,” Stornbeck said.

  “On screen.”

  Bannick appeared on the main display. “Admiral Dayson. Am I missing something—” the screen shook as Bannick’s ship took a hit, “— or do I not see your people in the combat?”

  “They should be showing up now, Bannick. Preparation took a moment, and we had to call in support from some distance.”

  The Palidragon took another hard hit, and a voice in the background sounded stressed as she gave a tactical report. “Captain, there are about three dozen small ships that just appeared on the screen. They’re blinking in and out like—”

  She was cut off as another hit shook Bannick’s dreadnought.

  “As you can see,” Sarah said, “we have arrived.”

  Bannick nodded and disconnected.

  “I have our target,” Algiss said. “It might take a few missiles to bring it down, depending on where we hit it. That thing is over ten kilometers long.”

  “Take us in,” Sarah ordered. “ECM to maximum, ECCM as needed.”

  The Sheffaris shifted and moments later a ship blotted out the stars as it appeared in front of her.

  “I’m bursting friend/foe ID’s to Bannick’s fleet and ours,” Kuo said. “To minimize Bannick’s crews firing on our ships, mainly. I think our grapplers may still get some friendly fire as this mixes up.”

  “Fire on that dreadnought,” Sarah ordered as she filed Kuo’s report away mentally. “Now, Mister Algiss, eight birds. I don’t think it even sees us yet.”

  The Sheffaris dove around the huge ship in a tight arc, but not so close they’d be heavily affected by the antimatter missiles. As they passed behind two of the eight missiles headed toward the ship’s huge engine nacelles. The rest spread out along the body of the vessel, a tactic to distribute damage to all systems.

  “Take us into the shadow of the vessel, Mister Algiss, relative to those impacts. If we wind up fusing the target’s fuel the explosion will be substantially larger than our radiation shielding will protect us from.”

  The missiles closed on tactical, from the rear, the one direction the dreadnought had little protection of its own. Nearby escorts were firing on the Sheffaris’s strike package, but it was too late. The missiles were already closing faster on the enemy than the railgun ammo chasing them could move.

  “We’ve transferred into the shadow,” Algiss reported. “It was the only way to get there in time. I don’t know—”

  The ship was rocked by a shockwave, Sarah’s gravcouch locked onto her and held her still as the Sheffaris rolled violently. Radiation alarms were going off, as well as stress indicators for hull structure.

  “The Abyssal of Kaoxan!” Algiss exclaimed.

  Sarah was really going to have to ask him about his recent flavorful additions to the bridge crew lexicon.

  “Damage control,” Kuo yelled.

  Heinrich’s voice was as calm as if she were buying groceries. “Minor damage, all three decks. One minor hull leak, and you should probably remind the Admiral that we have antimatter containment to think of. She shakes those missile payloads much harder than that and it’s all over. We don’t want to lose power to an EMP pulse, either.”

  “I heard her,” Sarah said. “She’s right. Put the dreadnought on screen.”

  The external cameras rolled to the enemy ship, which burned furiously. The back end was mostly missing, as was the habitation ring structure. Except for the forward third, maybe, there would be no survivors. Every porthole, every open shuttle bay burned with furious brilliance.

  “Administering anti-rad nanites,” an AI advised her through her earpiece.

  “The escorts are targeting us,” Algiss reported as a lock tone shared the same information.

  “Transfer us to our next target,” Sarah ordered. “We’ll use fewer missiles next time.”

  “Forty-two shots remaining,” Algiss told her.

  The ship moved once again, and a battlecruiser immediately began targeting them with its missile defense railguns. A string of the ten-gram projectiles slashed across their reinforced front armor.

  BRAAAAP!

  Fortunately, the ten-gram projectiles normally used in missile defense didn’t do massive damage, even at their speed of impact. But there would still be significant divots where each round struck.

  “Grappler engines to 6Gs, full evasive,” Sarah ordered. “This next target is a battlecruiser, gang, they’re going to have good defenses. We can’t stay long, but our missiles won’t get through if we shoot from too far. Eight birds again, Mister Algiss, for surety.”

  “I have lock. Target is fourteen hundred kilometers.”

  “Fire at one thousand,” she ordered.

  “We might be dead at one thousand,” Kuo said.

  He was as calm as Heinrich now. Inez was a good influence on him. Sarah was glad she pushed Kuo to pursue that relationship.

  “Then we’ll be dead,” Sarah said. “We’re mo-” the Sheffaris jinked hard as the grappling motors shrieked while tearing at the quantum fabric of space, “we’re moving too hard and unpredictably for them to target us easily.”

  As Sarah spoke four Oasis fighters flashed past them, their railguns blazing as they hit the battlecruiser. Brilliant but tiny explosions on the hull indicated solid hits not long after, although one of the Oasis fighters flared into an expanding cloud of debris.

  “Change of plans, Mister Algiss. Don’t delay firing our missiles. Give this enemy more targets to worry about. Fire now.” Sarah grimaced as another of the Oasis fighters exploded. Seconds later massive anti-ship rounds from one of Bannick’s ships slammed into the battlecruiser, exploding like small atomic bombs. The cruiser immediately began turning to bring its heaviest armor to face the new direction of fire.

  “They’re well trained,” Kuo observed. “The Komi, I mean. On both sides of this fight.”

  “Firing,” Algiss replied. “Missiles away, Admiral.”

  “The Hyaku reports all attack craft launched, Admiral. They want to know if you wish the carrier to engage,” Stornbeck asked.

  “Negative. If I see them in the fight, I’ll have Baratta scrubbing carbon off thruster nozzles.”

  Stornbeck grinned. “I’ll let them know.”

  BRAAAP!

  Another string of projectiles laced across the hull. This time from an escort ship some distance away. A lucky shot, or an unlucky jink by the Sheffaris.

  “Engine three is shutting down,” Kuo reported. “That leaves the two grappler engines and two main fusion thrusters. Max thrust is now twelve Gs in normal flight.” He studied his sen
sor display a moment, then flipped an image to the tactical screen. “And we have a tail.”

  On tactical a gun frigate was displayed behind them, trying to jink with every move of the Sheffaris. Orange streaks of railgun fire lanced out from it in their direction.

  Sarah nodded, but didn’t answer Kuo otherwise. She was staring at the weapons display as the missiles closed on the battlecruiser. Brilliant explosions flared as individual missiles detonated after being struck by defensive fire from the cruiser, but in space and at the ranges they were from the target, no damage resulted. Three of eight remained.

  Two.

  Impact.

  Both struck the battlecruiser amidships; the flash was bright enough the view screen temporarily dimmed to compensate. The Sheffaris, manually controlled by Algiss, rolled and dove away, preparing to transfer yet again.

  Their tail followed.

  BRAAP!

  Another string of railgun rounds crossed the Sheffaris’s path at just the right time, this time damaging a grappler track.

  The ship lurched sideways, and both grappler engines cut out as their combined thrust was now off balance.

  Main thrusters were all she had left, and only two of those.

  They needed to leave.

  Sarah looked at the visual of the cruiser, it was in two parts and burning much like the dreadnought had done, but across the entire ship.

  “I could have used that ship, and that capable crew,” she said as a last respect for the crew that had struggled so hard to survive.

  Satisfied with the performance of her crew and vessel in battle and convinced that to stay any longer would be suicide, she opened her mouth to order her ship to retreat. As she did alarms went off at the damage control station, another fusion engine was offline.

  She was interrupted by a call from Heinrich in engineering.

  Heinrich sounded alarmed, which worried Sarah immensely. “Admiral, we took a hit from the back side. Engine three is run clean through, and we’re leaking a bit of everything a bit of everywhere. I had to shut down engine one, and I have two dead down here from shrapnel.”

  Inez’s voice sounded masked; she must be wearing a breather.