Conflict!

by Dale Moorhouse

  “Sure, I can do that. Johnny and Jacky are both here and can handle anything that comes up. Where do you want me to be at 0200 next cycle?”

  “We will depart from Hangar One Port, see you then Jase.”

  Ishmael is not an excitable individual by any stretch, but from his phrasing and brevity, it was pretty obvious he had something to show me he thought was critical and useful. I commed Elaine, “Anything to spend more time with you my love,” she said.

  “Then how about you and I get some lunch together then spend the cycle doing whatever occurs to us?”

  She replied, “I’ll meet you at Benji’s Place by the WTC in twenty centas and don’t be late,” with a chuckle.

  Serena and I headed for Benji’s right then. As I passed by Jacky’s work station, I told her I would be gone for the rest of the cycle. She just smiled and nodded.

  The next cycle Elaine, Serena and I got to Hangar One Port at 0155 and found Rusty and Silky already there and the hangar doors open. One of those small shuttles the Weasels favour was just entering the hangar and quietly set down a few metres from where we were standing. We were all in our ship-suits except for Silky who was riding in her satchel equipped with a life support bubble.

  As soon as the shuttle door opened Ishmael came bounding out and he was definitely excited. He was so animated, if he were Terran, I’d have sworn he was on industrial strength coke. Ish was even twitchier than Rusty, which was saying something. He herded us into the shuttle, and the hatch immediately closed. He sprang into the right seat at the controls and beckoned me to take the left seat while Elaine and Rusty took seats at consoles right behind us.

  We rose from the deck and were propelled through the hangar door by a pressor beam. When Ishmael brought the gravitic engines online, he climbed above Mother of Glory where he met up with a small flotilla of larger shuttles and latched us onto one. As soon as we were secured, the flotilla got underway, and we headed for the jump zone. When we were past Neptune’s orbit, we came out of FTL and detached from the shuttle and Ishmael manoeuvred us away where we could watch the proceedings more easily.

  The large shuttles opened their loading doors and began launching fighters. As they came spewing out their “wings” folded forward and locked in place, then the small ships ordered themselves into squadrons and flights. With the folding wings, each shuttle was able to transport three full squadrons of the fifteen-metre ships. When I zoomed in on a couple of them, I saw they were fully armed. I’d heard about the new folding wings, but this was the first time I’d seen them.

  Ishmael switched our comms over to a squadron frequency, and we could hear the chatter between the small ships as they assumed their positions and formed up. Ishmael switched comms again to the flight frequency where I heard one voice directing squadrons to begin moving out.

  Ishmael pivoted his seat around so he could address us all and said, “The blue flight are the bad guys, and the red ones are the good guys. Each squadron leader had one white stripe around its spine and wings while the flight leaders have two stripes. All are loaded with practice munitions and the exercise today is to demonstrate their flight capability, particularly their ability to short jump with precision no crewed craft can come close to matching.

  All of these ships from flight leader on down are all flown by Rusty’s latest AI version which is housed in a pod tucked in the spine underneath where a life support module would usually be located. Without the additional external stores required for life-support, we had plenty of room for a nice armoured case for the AI, so the only thing sticking up above the spine is the Goblin Gun.”

  For twenty-five centas, we watched as the two flights went through multiple variations of dogfights and just as it was starting to get routine one flight short-jumped away and were out of sight. The remaining flight moved around and soon had a formation identical to what the swarm usually flew until a battle started. Suddenly, red ships were appearing in the middle of the formation. They launched one missile and popped out of existence again. On Ishmael’s main screen we could see red icons turning black indicating a confirmed kill.

  Then we saw the Opposing Force squadron leaders, who had formed up as trios when the red force had jumped out, start to fort up just like the Plague trios have been doing in most of our latest encounters. Once several shells had been built up around each trio, red ships started jumping. “OpFor trios are maintaining the same spacing from each other the Plague trios have in every battle. The same is true of the shell members. Watch what happens next,” Ishmael explained.

  The trios started to turn black on the main screen while the OpFor tried in vain to stop the red force from hitting them. Some of the red force also “died” but in just a few ticks all of the trios were black, and most of the shell members were as well. Some were yellow, indicating disabling damage and these were picked off in ticks by the red force. When the exercise was over losses to the OPFOR were 100 per cent while the red force had forty-one survivors including a handful of yellow ships.

  I looked at Rusty, he was grinning like a Cheshire cat. When I turned my gaze towards Ishmael, he was smiling too. Elaine was staring at the screen open-mouthed, which was how I was feeling. I just shook my head and asked, “How long have you been practising this?”

  “It is only the second time with full flights, and this is consistent with every model we have run and every smaller field test as well. The only meaningful test now is to try them in combat and see how they perform,” Ishmael replied as he handed me a thumb drive.

  “This contains every exercise we have performed since we started the project including this one. Please show it to your commanders and your strategy and tactics planners and see if they can make use of it. When we get back to Mother of Glory, my crews will clean these ships up and will make sure all four thousand we have are ready to go as soon as you give the word.”

  It was a quiet and thoughtful trip on the way back. When we got off the shuttle, I said, “We will use them on the next raid. I don’t know how, but we will use them.”

  31

  TWO CYCLES AFTER THE AI fighter test my four senior commanders and I met to discuss the upcoming raid, and I briefed them on the new AI fighters being produced by the Eastern Consortium and the Weasels. I had forwarded them copies of the thumb drive I got from Ishmael and asked them all to review it so we could discuss it when we met. We also reviewed Ginger’s success when she went up against the swarms on our back-trail.

  After her report, she said, “I would have loved to have those fighters along on this mission. While our tactics worked, the mop-up would have been significantly easier. I can see where a combination of tactics would be useful against the mega-swarm survivors. We still have close to half a million ships in that swarm and an additional two million in swarm three with five trios at last report.

  “I would like to try the new machines against mega-swarm two and see how that plays out. If we have the kind of success, the test suggests then I would like to come back and rearm then strike back-trail swarm three with all we can bring to bear using the armoured freighter tactics. We could deploy the AI fighters as a part of the missile load and have each flight target a trio. We have twenty-seven flights, so there are some backups in the event six flights can’t do the job. We would also be using our normal carrier elements working on the swarm from the periphery, that isn’t a guarantee of success, but with the new tactics combined we stand a reasonable chance of eliminating the swarm.”

  I looked around the room and saw nods from my other senior commanders as well as my deputies and Silent. “Ok, form up your fleets and get ready to deploy. I’d like to see you depart as soon as you can so keep me apprised of your progress and departure date. Dismissed.”

  “Johnny and Jacky, would you please stay for a moment? You, too, Silent and Winston.”

  When the room cleared and we were alone, I said, “Jacky, I’d like you along on this mission while Johnny stays here. I would also like you, Winston, to accompany me
and head up my intelligence unit on Thermopylae. Silent got to go last time, and I want to spread the wealth around.”

  This got a grin from Silent who commed me, “Winston is more than ready for this assignment, but don’t tell him that right away, I don’t want him getting too cocky.”

  “Ok, mum is the word, Silent,” I commed back then aloud I said, “ok, let’s get about it,” and stood.

  Jacky was smiling as she headed back to her workstation and Winston was clearly pleased as he could be. Silent had been grooming him since his part in the interrogation of the nuclear terrorists over four-hundred cycles ago. He had also had a lot of training from Ishmael who along with being a provider of ships and weaponry was a first-class intelligence operator himself.

  Sarah White-Stripe won the honour of leading the first attack element against the remaining swarm two which was down to a little over half a million ships that we could count. The two trios were no longer forted up but still had close to a hundred harvesters each girdled around them for extra propulsion and were moving at just under .35C. Using calculations provided her by the AI Swift Fangs in her flotilla she launched her armoured freighters and set their jumps up in a random fashion such that they appeared all over within the Swarm and never in the same place twice.

  She had ten freighters in her string, and they all made it through without a scratch. While her freighters were making their strikes, her carriers launched their first strike from just outside the Plague’s sensor range. The first wave started nipping off enemy ships from the outside working their way along the edges of the swarm when the AI fighters that had been launched as the freighters were passing through went active. Within ticks, they destroyed two members of a trio that hadn’t had a chance to fort up yet.

  The third globe ship began disgorging harvesters and the ships its girdle began accelerating at full thrust pushing the globe ship past other ships in the swarm. One of the AI fighters said goodbye to its brothers, and short jumped into the huge globe then detonated its Cracker-3s, a tick later the last of the trio went up in an actinic flash as its antimatter was liberated from the containment field and tried to annihilate all of the matter surrounding it. When the second flotilla jumped in, the mop-up was almost completed, and the fleet train had already started the process of converting the broken ships to reaction mass.

  The remaining flotillas stood down, and Sarah’s fleet was ordered back to Terra for a full debrief. When she arrived, I took her AAR and logs and told her to take the next two cycles as downtime knowing full well she would be with her flagship and her crew going over everything that had occurred. If I needed her, I knew she would be on Cheetah, the fourth Leopard-Class carrier we had gotten from the Squids. Blue had Lion, the remaining six were out at Shipyard Two trailing Saturn. We had held back commissioning them, hoping to use them for long range scouting when the threat to Terra was eliminated.

  I couldn’t help feeling eliminating the second swarm had been too easy and was wondering when the other shoe would drop. I commed Jacky who was still aboard Thermopylae and told her our departure was suspended until the Intelligence Directorate had time to digest the logs and AAR Sarah had turned in. She smiled at me over the comm screen and said she was going home and would see me in the morning.

  The rest of Sarah’s flotilla arrived at Saturn over the next two decas, and their crews performed their maintenance and repair routines before turning them over to the maintenance watch and heading for the recreational facilities on Shipyard One.

  When I reviewed Sarah’s logs, I found she had only lost five of her AI fighters out of the five flights she had with her. Her overall butcher’s bill was quite small at only those five ships plus seventeen AI Swift Fangs lost and forty-one damaged but operable and not a single life lost. This was unheard of, and when watching the battle scenes, it looked almost like the swarm had given up and let themselves be slaughtered. There was a rat in the barley, but not one of Sarah’s doing. I commed Winston and Silent and filled them in on what I’d observed, they promised me if they found anything untoward they would comm me straight away.

  I looked at my timepiece and saw I had time to take a shower and dress for the pilot’s graduation ceremony I would be addressing before pinning their stars on their tunics or harnesses depending on the species. My friend Pete Sandusky as top of his class would also be making a short speech and would be the first one “pinned” when the parade started. I had my address written out, but I decided to scrap it and talk of our victory last cycle and how we still had more work to do and swarms to defeat before it was all over.

  The ceremony began when the class marched in and filled their chairs in the large gymnasium at the WTC. Benji had reserved his bar and restaurant across the quad for me tonight. I was hosting a celebration inviting the new graduates. I would put in a brief appearance then Elaine and I would go to dinner at Ishmael and Jacky’s quarters where we would meet Tuxedo and Ginger, Dimitri and Svetlana and Sergei and Sasha. There were to be other guests there as well, but I didn’t know who and didn’t care. If Jacky had them on the guest list, they would people I should meet and spend time with. She and Ishmael didn’t have parties for the hell of it, they always had a purpose.

  After the fledgeling pilots had filed in and were seated Mordechai got up to address the group then had Pete give his speech which was mostly about the learning he’d gotten, the technology he had fallen in love with and the friends he had made along the way including some of those who had washed out. He wrapped it up, saying, “Now I’d like to turn this over to an individual who will always be considered a friend. He has saved my ass more than once since he broke up a fight where I was badly outnumbered and in fear for my life and the life of the young lady with me. His latest save was when he warned me that a group with ill intent was on my trail shortly before I left Terra. Please let me introduce Jason Weatherby, our Warlord, boss and my guardian angel.”

  The room exploded into the loudest applause I’ve ever experienced anywhere, I sincerely hoped they were just blowing off steam, and it wasn’t all for me—I really don’t like being in the limelight. When I stood and stepped to the podium, a hush fell over the room, every face I saw was eager to hear what I had to say.

  I started by saying I’d had a speech written and all ready to go but decided to drop it because they had already heard that message from the previous speakers. I was going to tell them about the latest battles, one of which concluded just the cycle before and none of the information had been made public yet. I went on to describe Ginger’s back-trail mission and how she had wiped out two swarms. I recounted the losses she had taken, the lives lost and told them, “And this was on a good day when luck was with us, and everything worked as it should. Those are very rare, and usually, we lose one ship for every hundred or so of theirs. That is a lot of people when you consider there are millions of ships in each of their swarms.

  “Now let me tell you about a fluke of a battle that finished up just last cycle. We had been fighting a mega-swarm of over fifteen million ships when treachery on the part of the Squids almost turned that battle against us. The Plague split their huge swarm up into three parts and sailed on courses that diverged from each other but still generally towards Terra. We were able to eradicate one swarm, the largest, at just over four million ships fairly easily.

  “The second swarm was not nearly so easy. When we approached, it was with tactics we had used against other swarms, and they had worked well. This swarm was an entirely different case. We had set a trap for them, just as the trap started to close the enemy did something they had never done before, they turned towards our surrounding formation of ships and charged us. We were able to contain them but not before we lost a lot of ships and were able to cut their numbers down to a half million from three million. We were also forced to withdraw because we were running out of munitions, the munitions the Squids used in their act of defiance.

  “Two cycles ago after rebuilding some of our stockpile and developing a
new weapon we were able to go back to that swarm and end it with a relatively small number of ship losses, and miraculously, no loss of life. Before you cheer and start thinking the war is almost won let me caution you; those of you who understand statistics know this already, for those who don’t understand—it won’t happen again. The next battle we fight will be much worse and will cost us much, much more. The enemy, the Plague, has been learning from us as we have been learning from them. They have begun to deploy new tactics, and I expect they are going to be much smarter when we engage them in the next battles.

  “So, after you get your stars I expect all of you to think about what you have heard tonight and think about how you want to be remembered in the coming battles. You can start down that road tomorrow, tonight after you all have your stars you are invited to participate in a party in your honour across the quad at Benji’s Place. I know most of you know where it is. Those of you who don’t just follow your classmates.

  “Now it is time to start pinning. Good luck to all of you.”

  There was a long silence, then the room erupted into clapping, whistling and yelling and when I glanced at Serena, she had her head pressed tightly against Elaine’s leg covering one ear and Elaine had a hand over the other. She breathed a sigh of relief when the noise stopped, and Mo called them to order.

  After I pinned Pete, he stood off to one side as the new pilots marched quickly by in good order to received their stars. A half deca later we were at Benji’s place for a quick grip and grin where I exchanged a few words with some of the pilots before we headed for Ishmael’s home and another party.

  I’m not one for parties and noisy crowds although I can tolerate them for a short time. Jacky’s party met none of my preconceptions, it was quiet and serene and started with some appetizers and drinks with introductions all around. The unknown guests turned out to be some of the highest ranking Weasels including Ishmael’s cousin the Emperor who turned out to be every bit as down-to-earth as Ishmael. The two looked so much alike, if I hadn’t made body language a study, I would never have been able to tell them apart. He immediately asked me to call him Wiley, telling me that was a close translation of his first name and a pretty slick double-entendre.