“Good,” said older Jane. “Rogue is in as bad shape as she looks, but the crew survived. I need to take care of them until Jon gets here. Take care of anything which presents a threat until he does.”
Older Jane vanished again.
“Just how many avatars do you have, Jane?” asked Jill.
“A lot more than three,” said normal Jane. “We’ll be there in about five to ten minutes I think. Take care of anything which needs to be taken care of. The Trixone are at war with the Rawtenuga, but the dinosaurs seem to be working on ‘the enemy of my enemy is my enemy’ principle. You are authorized to destroy them to protect local civilians.”
She vanished, and a moment later, so did her civilian avatar.
Leanne cocked an eyebrow at me, and I nodded. The channel to the civilian ship reopened. No-one on the other bridge appeared to have moved.
“What is happening?” asked the frog.
“A battle just ended. Rogue destroyed the giant ship, but was badly damaged. Arthur’s three ships are still operational, but we don’t know their actual condition. No casualties as far as we know. The system is now interdicted by the Imperium, and nothing will be allowed in.”
“What about traders?”
“Not even traders. If you wish to trade with the Imperium, we can probably arrange something, but we’ll need to deal with the new threat before that can happen.”
I was just guessing.
“We represent a number of species which will want to, including some Trixone civilian sub-species. We already know what we need to arrange. The problem is getting there. Can you help with that?”
“You’re in the same system as you were, but much higher up the plane than before. If you continue to the jump point from here, we’ll take care of the dinosaurs if they try to pursue you again.”
“With these little ships?” asked the llama from the back.
“They may be little, but we are lethal.”
“I’ll take your word for that,” said the frog. “Who commands that we should contact once we arrive at our destination and have made arrangements?”
“You know Admiral Jane?”
“We do.”
“Send messages addressed to her. She’ll ensure they get to the right people.”
“Thank you for saving us. We’ll be in touch.”
The channel ended.
“We will need to deal with these dino ships pretty soon,” said Leanne.
“Dino ships?” asked Jill.
“Jane said that’s what the Rogue people called them.”
Obviously a lot of data was being shared with our AIs, but not with us. Although technically that was the same thing once they told us. I changed the subject.
“Any inhabited planets in this system?”
“Yes,” said Tamsin. “Fourth orbit out. And currently on this side of the sun. If one of the dino ships keeps on going as it is, it’ll be in orbit in a couple of hours.”
“So they already know there is an inhabited planet?” asked Woof.
“Yes. And a station in orbit. You want a channel to the station?”
I nodded, and one opened, showing an office with Trixone in it. But they were civilian type and their sizes were all different, as were their flowers, and colours.
“Yes?” said one with a red flower.
“You have a hostile force inbound towards your planet. Do you need assistance?”
“Who are you to offer it?”
“An Imperium squadron sent to search for a missing ship, which we have now found, but in the process it seems we now have a mutual enemy.”
“The Rawtenuga? They’re here already?”
“Yes. We’ve distracted most of them for now, but several are still heading towards you.”
“Too soon!” exclaimed one with a yellow flower.
“The nearest Trixone fleet which can get here is about a day away, sir,” said Leanne.
“We can deal with this fleet should you require our help,” I said to the red flower. “I know we are enemies, but unless you decide to be hostile towards us, we will consider you neutral for the moment.”
“We have no way of being hostile towards anyone. And technically, we are not at war with your Imperium. The military sub-species are at war with you, not us. We only want trade. We formally request your assistance, and will intercede with our wayward cousins on your behalf, when they finally arrive too late.”
“We look forward to that. We’ll be back in touch in due course.”
The channel ended.
“I’ll be back,” said Jill, in a low and almost mechanical voice, and then proceeded to start laughing.
The rest of us looked at her hollo, not understanding why she’d said it, or why it was funny.
“Sorry, very old joke,” she said, when she had herself under control again.
“How old?” asked Norden.
“I’m not exactly sure. More than six hundred years?”
“And you know it how?”
“The Imperator’s entertainment database.”
“Is this relevant?” asked Mel. “Don’t we have some dinos to deal with?”
“We do,” I said. “Channel with the ship closest to the station.”
The bridge was much larger than ours tended to be, and the creatures on it were nothing like I’d ever seen before. Jill gasped, so she’d obviously seen something like them before, or images of them. Long necks and tails off a large muscular triangular body, with powerful legs underneath, and short stubby arms with animal like hands but with fingers, hunched over consoles designed for them to use.
“Rawtenuga ship. This is an Imperium battle group. You will leave this system the way you came, or we will disable you and send you back.”
Something I interpreted as laughter came back, and the channel closed.
“Bit of an exaggeration?” asked Gitte.
“BigMother,” said Tamsin. “Just appeared near Rogue.”
“Have any of the dino ships changed course?” I asked Leanne.
“Most of them.”
“Where are they going?”
“Towards the station.”
I sighed.
“Fine. Let’s give them some love taps.”
“Love taps?” laughed Mel. “How big a tap?”
“Stand by for single ship fire, on my order.”
“Fighters launch?” asked Eagle.
“Not yet. They don’t know we have fighters, and I don’t think we should educate them just yet.”
“They know Arthur has fighters,” said Tamsin. “Larger ones than we have.”
“But Rogue didn’t?”
“No.”
“Fine. We’ll hold fighters in reserve if needed.”
“Holding,” said Eagle.
It occurred to me Eagle really didn’t want to be a flag officer, and nothing more than a Wing Commander taking orders from someone else. He was accepting orders from a junior way too easily for me to be comfortable with it. Focus.
I concentrated on the dino ship nearest to the station, seeing it using magic sight, and placing one end of a rift in front of Long Water, and the other against the side of the hull right at the rear, guessing at how much I needed to hit to destroy only the engine section.
“Long, fire.”
Serena fired our guns and torpedoes, and the back end of the ship vanished. It continued on balistically, but now had a wicked shimmer, and was badly off its original course. I removed the rift, and put another one in front of it, with the other end on the other side of the jump point they’d come through. It promptly vanished, appearing where I’d put it, and continuing on with the same ballistic speed and lack of stability.
I chose the next nearest dino ship, and repeated the rift.
“Thin, fire.”
Jill fired this time, and the same thing happened. Another movement rift in front, and it joined its sister ship in the next system.
“Are any of the other ships turning to go back?”
“No,” said Tamsin.
I’d seen it, but I wanted to be sure.
“Fine. They want to do it the hard way, we’ll do it the hard way.”
I set up the next rift.
“Surging, fire,” and Gitte pulled her trigger, and tapped her buttons.
I worked my way through all sixteen ships, with the first three of ours firing a second time.
“That should be enough to make them think about taking us on.”
“Did we reveal too much of our capabilities?” asked Loren.
“That was just a taste test,” said Jill. “Even if they don’t know that, it should have still shaken them up.”
“Orders from the Imperator,” said Leanne.
Fifty Seven
Everyone stood down, but me.
We remained where we were, with Tamsin on navmap watch in case something started going pear shaped. Word came in Rogue had been evacuated, and it wasn’t long after when she vanished into a rift. Arthur’s ships moved to planetary orbit of presumably the only inhabited planet.
The system had two jump points, and at one of them, a new fleet with another one of the titan class ships was heading towards a jump point they obviously didn’t know was closed to them.
At the other jump point, a huge Trixone armada was waiting at the jump point they could no longer get through, although it was unclear if they knew that or not. The really interesting thing was, they were in a defensive formation facing back into the system, and another Rawtenuga fleet was heading towards them. It also included another of the huge titan class ships, and as well as an armada of battleship sizes, there were also hundreds of the smaller destroyer sized ships.
Armada. A new word for me, suggested by Leanne. My homeworld had never had enough of anything to even need such a word. But I’d happily adopted it.
The dinos had more capital ships, but the plants had so many fighters all the navmap was showing was blocks of red colour, even when you zoomed in. I didn’t bother asking how many, but ten thousand was probably too low, and the exact number wasn’t going to make any difference to me. It was obviously going to be one hell of a battle.
As I watched, with Serena having gone to bed already, BigMother vanished, appearing in between both armadas. I had no idea what was going on, but I could guess. The Imperator had big brass ones, and he was telling both sides to go home. Yes, something else I’d picked up, from Jill this time.
As if to back that up, Admiral Bentley’s six dreadnaughts appeared, forming an arrow head formation with BigMother at the point. More dreadnaughts appeared by squadrons, and finally all six titan ships appeared, in full fighting mode. The titans usually remained in their box station look unless a fight was imminent. As such they were non-threatening to look at. But in full battle mode? They should make any conventional fleet admiral start gibbering.
The Rawtenuga ships turned. There was a pause as they demonstrated they were genuinely heading back the way they’d come, before our ships began vanishing in reverse order of arrival. BigMother vanished last, appearing over the planet near Arthur’s ships.
Things stopped happening for a while, and Leanne let me know even the Imperator was asleep. Since I’d had the most sleep of anyone, and my dark sun energy was keeping me fully functional, I decided to be officer of the watch, even though the AIs normally had the job. But I took the opportunity to relieve myself, and order both a snack and a drink from the butler.
Hours passed as Jane’s freighter expanded the network in this area, and the extent of the Rawtenuga invasion became apparent. While we didn’t know where they were coming from yet, they did seem to be spreading out from somewhere on this end of Long Bar. The fleet sizes varied, but always in multiples of sixteen, except where they’d obviously tangled with Trixone forces, and had lost some ships.
“Jane just woke up the Imperator,” said Tamsin, bringing me back to a bridge perspective.
“What’s happening?”
“I thought you were following things closely,” said Leanne. “So I didn’t point out what I thought was obvious.”
The Rawtenuga armada had turned back, and were close now to hitting the Trixone one. The force approaching the other closed jump point was almost there as well, and about to find out what happened when the jump point wouldn’t let you through.
“Oh. No, I was looking further afield as Jane added new systems. There’s a lot of invading ships out there. And a lot of plant debris as well.”
I studied the main battle site.
“Any orders for us?”
“None,” said Tamsin.
“The Imperator isn’t going to join in?”
“Not according to Jane. Since both sides seem to want to have a battle, we’re going to let them annihilate themselves.”
“Who else is awake?”
“The Colonel who stole Rogue is awake and watching from his bed. Eagle is doing the same, as is Woof.”
“Why’s Woof awake?”
“I think he expected this, and set an alarm to wake him. He’s got munchies and a drink on hand and appears to think he’s watching a sporting event.”
“Maybe he is.”
Both of them grinned at my joke, and an image appeared of Woof sitting on the end of his bed with a small table in front of him, on which was a bowl of something revolting looking, and what looked like wyvern beer. He obviously slept naked. His attention was on the screen in front of him, and the delight on his face was obvious.
The three of us settled down to watch as well.
It was a slaughter.
On both sides.
The Trixone fighters were able to fire in huge groups, easily taking out Rawtenuga capital ships with each slow methodical shot, but the titan class ship kept on coming at them. Both sides were losing ships at an alarming rate.
“Well this is going to be interesting,” said Leanne.
“What?”
“Their titan isn’t slowing down. Looks like they intend to power straight into the jump point regardless of what happens first.”
“That will be interesting.”
Not to mention highly destructive when something so big reappeared.
“Just how big is that thing?”
“A lot larger than ours in outward size. Ours are much wider, but a lot shorter, even though they are a square five kilometers to a side. But their ship is substantially taller than ours. So while ours are a flattened cube when the turrets are retracted, theirs is a long rectangle.”
“Troop ship, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Ours can carry a division. Jane is estimating two to three divisions of even their larger than ours troops.”
“Why the difference?”
“The center of their ship is all ground surface, designed for parade ground use while loading hundreds of smaller transports. Our internals are used for the retractable turrets, leaving very little in relative terms for troops. Theirs has the armament of one of our dreadnaught squadrons, while ours were designed for a different enemy fielding ships in the millions at a time.”
“So they have bigger ships, with far less hitting ability, but two to three times the troop capacity.”
“That sums it up, yes. In a straight fight one to one, ours would simply blow theirs away with less than one full broadside. But if they landed their whole force on a planet, we’d currently have to field the entire Imperium army to match them.”
“I wonder how many they have?”
“About to be two less,” said Tamsin.
“Why two?”
“Jane’s chuckling to herself, but not saying.”
“The Imperator has something up his sleeve you think?”
“Always.”
And so he did.
A now damaged titan had slowed a bit, and the other one arrived at the jump point first. It vanished from its system, and to my surprise, arrived in the middle of the battle, along with its battleship escort. Ships annihilated each other as they merged together from the jump, the new titan t
aking some damage, and suddenly being on a collision course with the other one. The two giant ships attempted to avoid it, but had space transmitted sound, the crunch as they hit would have been a very satisfying sound indeed. For us, not them.
Woof did a fist pump.
The Trixone rallied, and with most of their capital ships gone, relied on massed hits from fighters, as they progressively exacted a cost in blood for attacking them.
When the dust finally settled, the debris field was immense, and both fleets were gone. All that remained was a few thousand fighters, and instead of doing the sensible thing and heading home, they attempted the jump point, in spite of seeing what it had done to their enemies. They appeared back where they jumped from, and most of them perished on the debris field they hadn't expected to encounter after jumping.
Barely two hundred survived. They did do the sensible thing, and began heading home.
I didn’t expect them to survive for long.
Fifty Eight
“Get everyone up.”
It was an hour short of when they would normally rise for training. I was still up and still monitoring things. The navmap had continued to expand, and I’d just spotted a problem only we could solve quickly.
“ALL PILOTS TO THEIR SHIPS,” bellowed Tamsin’s voice through every ship. “This is not a drill,” she added the obligatory motivation.
It took two minutes to get all the normal hollos on the console. Slow, but not surprising.
“What do we have?” asked Eagle.
“We’re about to jump to stop a Rawtenuga fleet from capturing a civilian station.”
“Let us at them,” said a voice.
“Pipe down,” yelled one of the squadron leaders.
Eagle looked conflicted for the first time.
“How many ships?” he asked.
“Thirty Two. We’ll do it the same way we did the last lot.”
“Fuck!” said the same voice.
This time the squadron leader said nothing.
“Stow it,” said Eagle, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it.
I wondered which side of his bed he’d rolled out of this morning. This was not like him at all.
“Jumping in five,” said Tamsin.
Lieutenant Spacemage (Imperium Spacemage Book 3) Page 23
