Conflict!

by Dale Moorhouse

  Simone, my intelligence officer, reviewed the logs from the scouts and commed. She reported, “At first glance, there appeared to be no anomalies on the recordings. When I ran the data through the filters, artefacts were coming from the void area that suggests activity took place there for ten cycles or so before coming to a stop. Just before the artefacts stopped being recorded, there was a slight flare in the infra-red band. It built quickly then faded slowly, leaving us with a bearing almost due North from the ecliptic and slightly towards the centre of this star system.

  “My conclusion is that they may be getting ready for an attack on Terra or our fleet. We put out enough emissions they surely know we are in the system and Terra almost glows with emissions. I would advise placing the system on full alert.”

  I quickly scanned her report, “Communications, please send ‘Attack Immanent Condition One’ emergency alert to Saturn Station and add the ‘Repeat to All’ modifier code,” I ordered. “Then broadcast a recall to all of our ships and have them rendezvous with us at this location plus ten AUs North.”

  “Helm, as soon as our ships are recovered set a course due North at best possible speed. When we are clear of the belt, and it is safe to jump, you may short-jump us to our final position.”

  I turned to Simone and said, “Well done, and please pass that to your group.”

  Simone scrambled out of her seat and quickly strode back to her team’s nook off the bridge.

  Two decas later, we were just approaching our rendezvous location when I caught the braking flares of my other elements and the fleet train. I sent them Simone’s intelligence estimate and gave my commanders time to read it then ordered them to a wide circular formation and had them begin long-range scans. I had the element I’d left guarding the fleet train and announced, “We are going to perform reconnaissance in force and will be heading out to a point forty AUs north of Saturn. I want all ships’ passive and active sensors searching both normal and eleventh dimension space for any signs of the Plague. Your operators all know to pay attention to the red band of the electromagnetic spectrum. We are going to find this bunch and end them. My navigator has sent the base course, and I want all of your ships in globe formation and moving in five centas from my mark. Mark!”

  I closed comms and waited for the element to form up and then we moved. The globe formation would make a series of short-jumps of two-hundred and twenty-five million kilometres or about one and a half AUs then stop and ping the hell out of space for ten centas then jump again. We were also in condition one—all weapons crewed and primed, ready to fire the instant we dropped out of FTL. The rest of my battle group was following in ten centa intervals with the fleet train bringing up the rear with their escort. All of them were running condition one as well. If my group stepped in the poop, I only had to keep us alive for ten centas before help arrived.

  Things went well for the first five jumps, no sign of anyone and my second element was arriving as we began our sixth jump. Then all hell broke loose. When we dropped out of FTL, we were only a few hundred kilometres above a swarm of close to a million ships. Our carriers instantly jumped away so they could deploy their bombers and ran right into the teeth of a second swarm. Before they could jump again, the swarm buried them in missile fire. Only a handful made it to FTL space and safety. Almost a quarter of my battle force was gone in the blink of an eye.

  Protocol in a situation like this was to jump back to the previous exit point squawking our emergency code. This would put us behind my second element and hopefully stop them from jumping into the crap. We got there with time to spare and joined up to await the next element. Our sensor operators were picking up Plague jump signatures, they were casting a net around our location searching for us. Knowing it was just a matter of time before we were found I ordered our Dopey Joes deployed while we prepared to jump when the Plague found us. We could tell that one whole swarm was jumping by the massive signature they were leaving with each jump while the others were probably holding position until the searching swarm found us and reported back.

  As soon as our third element showed up, I had them send a scout back to the fleet train and their escort with orders to jump back to Saturn and stand by. Then we launched all of our AI fighters and bombers from the second and third elements and the five remaining carriers my element. We had well over half a million bombers and a little more than seventy-five hundred AI fighters and most of the thousand Swift Fangs I had with my element had survived. Added together we had almost two-thirds of a million ships and I felt we could give the swarm that was waiting at the jump point we had retreated from a good rumble. I had our navigator send the coordinates I wanted our elements to deploy to and ordered the jump.

  When we dropped out of FTL this time, we had the waiting swarm surrounded but were out of their detection range. As we slowly closed on their position, my sensor operator who had been monitoring the jumping swarm, reported they had just jumped into space we had left and right into our trap. She said, “We didn’t get them all, but it looks like close to half didn’t make the jump back out.”

  “Thank you,” I replied, “Keep watching them and let me know if they start coming this way.”

  My people know their jobs, and they were exceeding my expectations in this fight. The AI fighters short-jumped into the middle of the swarm who appeared to have chosen to stand and fight. The fighters flooded the area with FTL damper shots to keep the swarm from jumping away and immediately went after the two globe ships remaining with this swarm. The two massive beasts had forted up paying close attention to keeping their open launching portals screened, so our fighters didn’t have a clear route to jump in. The rebels were learning and all too quickly.

  With my fleet train back at Saturn, I would be forced to flood the swarm with Cracker-3s using my bombers and Swift Fangs; and that meant this was going to be a long hard slog. My bombers were doing a good job. After a few centas, they began whittling down the enemy ships quickly. This swarm wasn’t performing as well as others I’d fought, and it made me wonder if the rebels were once again directing the entire battle from the globe ships. I was hoping this was the case, but I wasn’t counting on it.

  We fought on for two more decas before some of the swarm tried to run. A group of harvesters with the Plague version of Swift Fangs stuck to them like remoras, broke away from a group of bombers that were trying to kill them. They made it far enough away to launch their Swift Fangs which came barreling back at us attempting to ram our Swift Fangs which were wreaking so much damage on the harvesters forted up around the globe ships. Our bombers were simply too fast and destroyed all of them before they got close enough to be effective.

  One of the harvesters and two of the breaker/sorter ships guarding a globe ship’s launch portal got out of position while defending themselves from an intense Swift Fang attack and five AI fighters made it past them. Three of the fighters clipped the edge of the portal and died, The other two made it inside, released their Cracker-3s and tried to break back out before the Crackers exploded. The explosion blew them out of the launch port and into a harvester screening a portal on the other globe ship. A nearby AI Swift Fang took advantage of the situation, launching all of its Cracker-3s in one go. With eight missiles inbound from such close range there was no defence, and three of the eight exploded inside blowing away a huge piece of the outer hull. It wasn’t a kill, but it opened up too large an area for the swarm to keep screened. Missile after missile found its way inside and one eventually hit something vital. Both globe ships died within a few centas of each other, and from there it was a mop-up operation that lasted another half cycle. The swarm didn’t go down easily.

  We were just finishing up SAR operations when our fleet train jumped in to sweep up the wreckage and grind it up. We quickly reloaded our munitions and covered the clean-up for another cycle, running reduced crews so our people could get some rest. I redistributed our bombers from my five remaining carriers to the other three attack elements and sent th
e now empty carriers back with the freighters loaded with reaction mass. My sensor operators were still tracking the other swarm which had slowed down the frequency of their jumps and were far enough away now to not be an immediate threat. My ship commanders were game for pressing on and taking out the other swarm, so we set out after it with wishes for good hunting from our departing ships.

  We spent the next five cycles playing whack-a-mole with the remaining swarm and its two globe ships until they finally gave us the slip when they made a long jump in the general direction of the galaxy’s centre. We wished them a journey that would take them to the enormous singularity there and that they would get sucked in. Not likely to happen, but we could dream.

  38

  CHOCOLATE REPORTED BACK FROM HER mission twenty cycles ago and was much annoyed with herself for not finding and finishing off the last of the Plague swarm that had jumped her attack element. Having had similar experiences, I sympathized with her and sent her on ten cycles of downtime while her ships were checked over and repaired and her crews had a chance to rest up.

  When she got back, she and my other senior commanders met with Silent, Jacky, Johnny and me to review and revise our TOE and it was decided to reorganize our forces based upon how many Mammoth carriers we had left. We’d had over five-thousand when we started seriously prosecuting the war against the Plague. Now we were down to four-hundred and ninety-three. We only had enough bombers to arm three-hundred and thirty-five of them. We decided to mothball one-hundred and fifty-eight and split the remainder into six fleets of fifty, holding the remaining thirty-five as a home fleet at Shipyard One in docks next to the construction bays.

  We also slowed production of bombers to one-third until we had enough to fill our mothballed carriers and then cease production at all facilities except Russia who would continue to manufacture replacement parts and the occasional bomber to replace any that were damaged beyond repair or destroyed outright.

  To lead the two new fleets, we were going to need two more senior commanders. I decided to let the current group make the selections. This had worked out the last time, and I felt the exercise should become part of the process. It would eliminate politics in no small degree because none of my senior commanders would want to fight beside a REMF who had been kicked to the top and had never seen a battle much less participated in one.

  The vote on selection also had to be unanimous and would help prevent favouritism. They didn’t let me down, this time choosing Sol Rosenblum our senior CAG and Weasel carrier commander, Frederik Longbow, who had risen from ship’s maintenance on Weasel vessels in the span of his career on sheer bravery and ability. Sol knew him reasonably well and had watched his exemplary performance in every action Frederik had participated in.

  Sol and Frederik were promoted in a small ceremony involving their families, my senior staff, the Mother of Glory’s Elders and of course the Weasel Emperor Wiley and his mate Sonja the Commander of Forces for the Weasels. Frederik’s mate and two adult children were there, both also served in our forces.

  We still had six Leopard-Class carriers sitting in Shipyard One, Frederik chose Panther while Sol chose Cougar as their flagships. Each ship came with a full complement of two-hundred and eighty-eight AI fighters, four crewed and four AI Swift Fangs and sixteen Elsies making them quite formidable and versatile. After the ceremony, each senior commander was escorted to their new commands and introduced to the senior officers of their fleets.

  ◆◆◆

  My senior staff together with my senior commanders met with me to review readiness to deploy and discuss deployment with a focus on finding any Plague swarms, possible allies and a world or worlds for our Confederation members to make into a home. We chose to send Blue and Frederik forward to look for Terra-like planets or a system with planets that could become liveable with some Terraforming. Ginger would command the home fleet and patrol the area within eight light-kilocycles of Terra with Sol. She would be trading places periodically with fleets on scouting missions towards the edges of our galactic arm. Chocolate and Sarah White-Stripe would patrol along our back-trail looking for Plague signs and checking F and G class stars for planets that survived the Plague. They would also look for signs of life in the vicinity of systems the Confederation had passed through on their travels towards Terra. We knew from their records that many populated planets had been sensed or contacted on their passage and I wanted to know if any had been missed by the Plague.

  The four fleets on long-range reconnaissance would stay out for three-hundred cycles then report back to Saturn Station to refit and resupply the ships and R and R for the crews. The two most experienced crews would switch places with Ginger and Sol who would resume the long-range recon where the others had left off, and the cycle would start again. In the meantime, I would be busy with the next part of my plan.

  When the six fleets departed on their assignments, they left with our latest generation of quantum communications systems capable of transmitting voice and images albeit both types of communications needed to be compressed so they took less time to transmit and required less energy. The new system was much better than what they replaced, but nothing in the universe is free.

  I commed Tuxedo and Ishmael and asked if they had time and interest in continuing the discussion we had concerning what to do after the war was won. Ishmael had intrigued me with some of what he had said, and I wanted to review it and perhaps move it a little farther along. I got messages from both of them saying they were on Mother of Peril and if I wanted to join them there I might find it to my advantage. I decided to take them up on the invitation. When I got up to leave my office, Jacky stopped me at the door and said, “Ish thought you might want to join him, so he left a shuttle on standby in Hangar One Port to run you over to Peril.”

  I chuckled and said, “Why is it that every time I turn around that guy is reading my mind? What is he cooking up this time?”

  “Well, Jase, you are just going to have to go see. My telling you, wouldn’t be helpful.”

  I commed Elaine to see if she wanted to join me, but I got the same do-not-disturb notification I’d gotten yesterday when I’d tried to reach her when she was late for our evening meal. I just figured she was busy at the medbay and I didn’t think anything of it when she didn’t come home or meet me for breakfast. “Whatever she is working on must be pretty critical,” I said to Serena over my implant.

  She replied, “It must be because I haven’t heard from her either and it is rare a day goes by that I don’t talk with her. Can I go with you, I haven’t been off the ship in a while, and it might be fun, different sounds and smells and all?”

  “Sure, let’s get you in your armour and go see what Tux and Ish are up to.”

  We quickly changed and headed for the shuttle.

  The Weasels build a small shuttle that is a bit bigger than an Elsie and is FTL capable. They are also quite comfortable and have seats that can adjust to different sized passengers automatically. This one was part of the Weasel’s Royal Fleet and had a few appointments that are less utilitarian than our shuttles. No gold plated faucets or diamond toilets or anything like that, just nicely finished surfaces and higher quality fabrics and a really nice menu on their food replicators. I decided to take advantage since it was lunchtime and was amazed that pizza and raw meat were some of the offerings.

  The steward running things in the small galley chuckled when I asked about it and said, “We’ve added Terran and felid meals to our ships most likely to encounter Terrans, Mmrrreeowwn and cats so you would feel at home although I’ve been told many of you also like our cuisine. You are welcome to have anything you want, Ser, just tell me your selection, and I’ll get it started for you.”

  Serena told me, “I’d like my usual raw meat, thank you.”

  “I would like the many-meats pizza, my companion would like a kilo of raw meat, please.”

  The steward smiled and said, “Coming right up Ser and young miss, if you will take a seat, I’ll
bring it to you when it is ready.”

  Serena sat next to me on the carpeted deck while I sat at a small table just outside the galley. Less than a centa later the steward came out with my pizza and Serena’s meat in a bowl almost identical to hers back on MoG. When we were finished, the steward came out to fetch the platter and bowl and gave a slight smile of surprise when he saw Serena’s place was perfectly clean but otherwise acted as it was perfectly normal.

  “She has always been a fastidious eater, unlike her siblings,” I said, grinning.

  The steward replied with a chuckle, “She has better table manners than many of the adults I serve of any species.”

  “Thank you, Ser,” Serena said, catching the steward by surprise.

  He looked flustered for a moment then said, “You are quite welcome young miss. I didn’t realize you are enhanced. You are the first of your kind I’ve met, I’ve only ever just heard conversations about felids and some of the work they do with our warriors. My name is Randle. I apologize if I may have offended you.”

  “No offence was taken, Randle and my name is Serena. I have a feeling you and I will be seeing more of each other.”

  Tuxedo and Ishmael were waiting for me when I docked, accompanied by Wiley and Elaine. We reboarded the shuttle and lifted out of the hangar and headed out again. About ten centas later we came to a rest and when the hatch opened this time I looked out on a field of new grass. The shuttle was parked on a ship’s deck within an airlock, and the pilot had turned our ship sideways and drifted close to the inner lock door before setting us down.

  I smiled as what was going on fell into place. My mate had really taken Tuxedo’s words to heart and had worked with him, Ishmael and who knew who else, on the globe ship to convert it from a giant ship carrier and factory to, for lack of a better term, a colony ship. That this one could go FTL and was almost the size of Terra’s moon made no difference, it was a colony ship and was designed to give the illusion of living on a planet under a sky filled with light during the day and probably stars at night. With a ceiling two and a half kilometres high, the illusion was easy to create. With a little photo reactive paint that turned a slightly dark shade of sky-blue when exposed to light and was a dull black at night, all that was needed were some small point sources of light in a pattern like we would see in the night sky to complete the job. The curvature of the deck added an extra dimension to the image and pillars and supports were painted to resemble large tree trunks, steep hillsides or mountains helped even more.