Conflict!

by Dale Moorhouse

  “We have confirmed the destruction of the last remnant of the mega-swarm that was threatening Terra and our fleet. Unfortunately, four of the globe ships in the swarm were able to enter FTL and get away. We believe they have used some of our FTL knowledge to get an FTL engine of their own design working. This is based on the difference of their FTL signature when compared to what we use. Ours flares blue just before the jump while theirs flares red. We don’t know if the dissimilarity ends there or may include capabilities our system does not. We don’t know if they can change course while in FTL or whether they can accelerate, decelerate or perform other manoeuvres that we cannot.

  “What we do know is that at the time they jumped they were heading on a course that will bring them to the edges of Sol space. We think they will most likely stop in the Kuiper Belt to gather materials they need for reaction mass and to rebuild their fleet to attack us or to flee farther so they can build up more and possibly band together with other swarms to create another much upgraded force before they come for us.

  “I propose to seed as many of our AI fighters as we have along with AI and non-AI Swift Fangs throughout the Kuiper Belt as well as above and below the ecliptic to keep watch for them. It is entirely possible that they may be stranded in that dimension their FLT drive takes them to. The records from the battle suggests the Plague FTL engines are not as stable as ours especially since one of their trios only travelled a few light-ticks before their Jump drives failed and they dropped out right next to a string of armoured carriers that were preparing to annihilate them.

  “I have forwarded all of you unedited copies of the images and logs of the principal ships in the battle. Please study them and feel free to draw any conclusion you want. If you find something you think we may have missed, please forward it to us, when verified, the information will be included in our analysis. In the meantime, we will begin dispatching our ships to keep watch for the globe ships.

  “There is also at least one swarm our scouts are watching about five or so light-kilocycles down our back-trail and across the arm towards galactic centre that we should attend to before the FTL capable globe ships find them and link up. The swarm is at least a three million strong and may be larger. We need to go after it and remove it from temptation.

  “That concludes what I have to report at this time. If any of you have questions, now is the time.”

  To my surprise and Jase’s, no one asked him anything.

  He signalled his staff to remain as the elders left, and the Confederation Council disconnected from the big screen. The he said, “Chocolate, I want you and Sarah to review Ginger’s AAR from her battles with the swarms back and to core-ward of us. Pay particular attention to her notes concerning the tactics employed by her and the swarm leaders.

  “When you think you have a handle on how to proceed put together a strike force and go after them. Do what you have to do, but annihilate them. The two of you should be more than enough to handle them, but if after a fresh scout report you think you may need extra help we will try to get you what you need.

  “Ginger, I want you and Blue to bring your forces to maximum compliment as soon as you can and begin deploying scouts in the Kuiper Belt as soon as you are ready. I’m giving you the lion’s share of the AI ships because the watch duty will be boring and the AIs are less likely to get lulled into complacency by lack of action. They can also stay on station longer since they don’t need the level of life support a meat crew needs. If possible, deploy them in pairs so one can short-jump to us with updates while keeping radio silence. Silence and stealth will be the requirements for this mission.

  “Once you two have that up and running I want to start forward scouting again. Pick up where the last ships left off and send a courier back every five cycles with a report. Again, radio silence and try to scout in pairs if you can, but I want as much saturation in your mission as possible. Try to fly by every star but pay particular attention to stars with hydrogen lines and metallicity since your records show most life you came across in your earlier travels was around stars of those types.

  “As usual time is the essence, but I'd prefer you leave a few cycles later and have all that you need than to hurry your departure and find out later you need something you don’t have with you.

  “Oh, and both of you, report back to me in person in intervals of no more than fifty cycles for resupply and rest leave.”

  I asked, “Just us, Ser, or our flotilla as well?”

  Jase chuckled and said, “Your flotilla and you. Clear?” He grinned.

  I grinned back and nodded, “Yes, Ser.”

  35

  Sarah White-Stripe

  CHOCOLATE AND I SPENT A couple of cycles reading and viewing everything from Ginger’s mission down our back-trail. Our first time through we made notes on everything that we had questions about and then went back through the records again trying to figure out why certain tactics had been used and others not. Most interesting was that the trios in the swarm used the forting up tactic in an identical manner to the swarms we had just finished killing. Forting up didn’t seem like a swarm drone tactic, and in all of the histories, I’d read it never showed up once. Why now? I didn’t say anything to Chocolate about it and waited to see if she tumbled to it.

  She did. She also didn’t hold back when I told her I’d seen it too. She was pretty pissed that I waited to tell her and made a point of telling me that she didn’t like being tested by junior commanders. When I thought about it, I could see why she might think I was testing her. I decided to tell her my reasoning.

  “I wasn’t testing you, Chocolate, I was testing myself. I know I’m not as experienced as the rest of you and I was hesitant about mentioning what I thought I saw because I wasn’t sure if I saw a pattern here or if it was just wishful thinking on my part. I’m new at this leadership thing, and there is bad blood between our species. I wanted you to confirm what I thought I was seeing and chose not to influence you by telling you what I saw first.

  “I trust you to know what you are talking about, but I don’t trust myself with my judgements about Squids, or Plague drones. I was afraid I was reading more into what I was looking at than is really there. I’m sorry for the miscommunication.”

  She replied, “I’m sorry I jumped you like I did. I’m a better commander than that, and I know you are new to this level of responsibility. Please, don’t ever be afraid to bring what you see to me straight away. If you are wrong about something, I’ll work with you to explain why. If you are right, as in this case, I’ll be asking you how you would like to go about proving your theory. Then I will work with you to prove it or disprove it whichever it may be.

  “Now, how would you like to proceed investigating what you have found?”

  “I would like to fly out there with a task force equipped to eliminate the swarm but be prepared so that if it is being directed by Squids or some other real intelligence, we have the force necessary to do the job. I would recommend tactics similar to what Ginger used on the first two swarms but perhaps come in with two flotillas for the first strike plus before the actual strike seed the escape routes with Dopey Joe IIs. That might make them blink and think they were dealing with a more significant force than what is actually on station.

  “I would have our third and fourth flotillas only light seconds away so they could jump in and rat-pack the swarm as they are passing though the DJ-2 killing field.”

  Chocolate stared at me for a moment then grinned, “I like the way you think. Write it up and let us give it a try on the battle simulators. How soon would you like to go on this?”

  “I think we should be able to have our forces assembled in four cycles, five at the outside. I’ve sent a message to the scouts tailing the swarm to send as much detailed status as they can as soon as they can, but to move away from the swarm before they transmit—I don’t want the Plague catching on.”

  “Good plan. Keeping the Plague in the dark as long as we can is the only sure way I kn
ow of to hedge our bets. As soon as you have it written up, you will take it to Jase and his deputies and make your case. I’ll be with you, but you will do the talking.”

  Jase looked at me after I made my pitch the next cycle and asked, “When would you like to leave, Sarah?”

  “We will be ready to depart at 0500 cycle after tomorrow, Ser,” I replied.

  “Good hunting then, Sarah, your plan is approved.”

  ◆◆◆

  Our first two flotillas dropped out of FTL three cycles later, and we proceeded to take up positions on either side just out of the Plague’s sensor range. Chocolate sent out scouts to provide operational security while I sent both groups’ armoured freighters carrying the Dopey Joes IIs ahead of the swarm. Our scouts told us they haven’t deviated from their present heading for over a hundred cycles, so the freighters were to sow an area four-thousand kilometres in diameter which was the width of their front, and twenty-thousand kilometres long. The swarm was only a little over fifteen thousand kilometres long, and we would wait until they were entirely in the cloud of death before we activated it.

  We formed up our carriers on either side of the swarm and held our fleet trains outboard of us by a couple of light-ticks. It was going to take the best part of a cycle for the swarm to reach the optimum position within the kill-box, so we brought the crews to standby and let them eat and rest by sections. We wanted our bomber crews to be tip-top, so we held them aboard and let the AI fighters we had with us carry the security and watch duties.

  Shortly before all-balls or 0000, the Swarm was where we wanted them, and we gave the activation signal to the DJ-3s. We had the latest version with the MIRV warheads which I’d never seen deployed before. The kill-box looked like hell had let out for noon. Our freighters had launched nearly a million DJ-3s, so there were a little less than five million explosions that occurred in less than a centa. Where there had been three million Plague ships accompanied by three trios of globe ships, there were less than a thousand of the large harvester ships left and most of them were not moving. I counted six globe ships disintegrating as if in slow motion and just as I turned up the magnification of the third trio, I saw a flare of red around it, and it faded away to nothing.

  I immediately dispatched every AI scout forward along their line of travel and had them short-jump, stop and look then short jump again in ten light-centa intervals. They had orders to return after they had travelled more than two light-kilocycles or immediately if they found the trio. While I waited for some results, my bombers, along with Chocolate’s finished off the swarm survivors.

  Our fleet train ships jumped in and collected all of the wreckage that was practical to retrieve and processed it into reaction mass to send home in our empty freighters. Eventually, all of our Swift Fangs returned with negative results on their search for the trio, and we headed back to Saturn Station and the nearby ship yards. I was disappointed that one of the trios had gotten away, but we had a valuable datum: more than one swarm had a working FTL drive, and the red signature suggested it was one of the Plague’s derivation—I dreaded giving Jase the bad news.

  ◆◆◆

  Jase

  Sarah White-Stripe reported her failure to find and destroy the last trio in the swarm she and Chocolate had killed so efficiently. It took some strong reassurances from both Chocolate and me to stop her from beating up on herself. For one so new to senior command she and her flotilla had acquitted themselves well, they had no way of knowing some, if not all, of the trios in the swarm, had developed FTL capability. To take her mind off her “failure”, I sent her and her flotilla out on a mission to scout the systems lying core-ward from Terra. I suggested she search both up and down that part of the galactic arm and to not dismiss some of the stars outward of the edge of the arm. Those isolated systems could well be the perfect hiding place for a trio that needed to refuel and rebuild. Five cycles later she took her flotilla and headed out, taking a couple of extra armoured freighters with her.

  Chocolate was cruising through the Kuiper Belt contacting our scouts with living crews on laser tight-beam comms keeping her radiation emissions as low as possible by using her gravitics instead of her fusion torches. Twenty cycles into her tour around the belt she contacted a scout pair who were hunkered down on a small asteroid observing some suspicious activity around a metallic dwarf planet half the size of Makemake and seemingly solid nickel-iron based on spectral analysis. Something was causing spurts of light to come from the object, and the scout crew was quick to bring their spectral sensors to bear while concealing their presence behind the asteroid.

  Destiny came in behind the asteroid and launched two probes and a couple of AI fighters to get a closer look. It took four more cycles to slowly sneak the probes in, and when they finally were able to get visual, they found a globe ship and a small cluster of breaker/sorters and harvesters mining the small planet at a furious pace.

  After getting more detailed data on the mining operation, Chocolate slowly exfiltrated her assets and retrieved them. She had the scouts remain and keep watch while she retreated from the asteroid being careful to keep its mass between her and the globe ship. Knowing there were four globe ships believed to be on the loose in this area she began working her way along the belt again searching for more activity and keeping an eye out for the next scout pair. While continuing her search, she prepared and transmitted a report via FTL communicator and sent a short, compressed message using her laser comms knowing it would take cycles to reach Saturn but because of her FTL message, someone would be looking for it now.

  Ten cycles into her continued search she came upon two more scouts who reported they had seen nothing so far and were slowly weaving in and out of the small bodies and generally moving in a counter-clockwise direction along the belt. After drifting along with them for a couple of cycles, Chocolate moved on for another cycle when she saw a small flash on one of the sensors looking towards the outer edge of the belt. Once again, she launched her probes and AI fighters and had them merge with a few small bodies that were slowly moving towards the area where the flash had appeared.

  She brought Destiny in closer as well, moving behind various asteroids and keeping them between her quarry and her ship. It took almost eight cycles, but her probes finally got close enough to observe the area of the flash. They were in a position where they could use a tight beam to send data to one of the AI fighters who could relay it to Destiny and when Chocolate opened the data files she saw three more globe ships mining a binary pair of asteroids both of which were high in metallic content although not solid metal like the lone globe ship was mining. In the next files, she observed the trio assembling a large force of vessels similar to Swift Fangs. They appeared to be a next generation of the Plague’s earlier version and were equipped with external racks that looked usable for both missile pods and plasma cannons.

  Leaving the probes and AI fighters in place with instructions to continue observing unless the Plague started in their direction, she worked her way out of the belt and used her gravitics to move in-system and to space clear enough where she could go FTL. When she got to Saturn, she used one of her Swift Fangs to make the run to Mother of Glory and brought her records straight to me.

  She sat in my office with Sarah, Jacky, Johnny, Silent, Winston and me and walked us through her data. When she was done, I smiled and asked, “Well, now that you have found them what do you want to do about it?”

  Chocolate stared at me a moment and then said, “Why, destroy them, of course.”

  “And how do you propose to do that knowing they can jump away before we can get in tractor beam range. It appears from the way they are mining smaller bodies that they are aware of the limitations of their FTL drives and it would also appear their drives won’t build in gravity stronger than what the rocks they are mining produce. If it did, they would be mining bigger, better rocks.”

  After some thought, she replied, “There are a couple of things we have never tried because we never
had to deal with them having FTL. One is we haven’t developed a way to track ships in that weird dimension we travel through while in FTL. The other thing we haven’t done is create some kind of damper that would prevent them from going FTL.

  “I don’t know how hard the first would be to develop, but we have everything we need to build an FTL damper sitting on shelves all over several motherships.”

  “Explain that.”

  With a slight smile, she said, “I propose we build some kind of small probe that contains a gravitic module like those we use to create tractor beams. It should be optimized to do only that and has an ample and independent power supply. We could even just set them adrift in the area where the globe ships are operating and let them attach themselves magnetically to the target’s armour. When the probe senses the FLT field start to build it would switch on the tractor beam and when the FLT field collapses turn off again, making the probe challenging to locate other than by visual inspection.

  “We could equip our AI fighters with racks of them instead of Goblin Guns, and I would make the fighters as stealthy as our technology will allow.”

  “Ok, I’ve heard enough for now. Winston, I want you and Jacky to work on getting some probes like Chocolate is proposing built. Johnny, I want you to see to stealth modules being adapted to the AI fighters. I’m going to go visit Rusty and brief him on what we are trying to do. I may have him go out to Saturn Station to talk to the folks with the high foreheads and see what they can come up with for a tracker that works in FTL.

  “We should have a few cycles to put this together, but time is of the essence, we can’t let these ships get out of our sight again.”

  I stood and said, “We all have stuff to do, so let’s get about it and reconvene here at 0820 tomorrow.”