by R. A. Ender
The same phrase continued to be broadcast. Robin looked over in Richard’s direction with a confused look.
“Isn’t he going to identify himself? There is no chance the Imps will obey that order without a clear idea of why they should?” Robin said to him, leaning in close to avoid having to shout over the repeating comm broadcast playing aloud.
Leaning in to speak to her, Richard lowered his voice even further, keeping it from being heard by anyone, save for Robin.
“If I had to bet, that is exactly what he wants. He wants them a little confused and looking around for the source rather than focusing on us. Gives us a clean and clear exit from that enemy fleet.” Richard answered. “I certainly appreciate it, if that is his goal.”
Robin began nodding, seeing the sense of his statement. Shifting in her chair and turning his tactical display slightly in her direction, she watched the current position of their fleet. All the squads were more or less clear of any enemy fire, though a couple had moved away at angles that ended up complimenting the enemy fleet movement. But, Richard could already see them moving in new directions to take a longer way around and avoid the enemy weapons range.
Suddenly, the repeating message clicked off mid-sentence, and a pause lingered for a moment.
The silence was quickly filled, though. A clear, commanding and live voice belonging to General Abad began to speak.
“Attention Imperial Alliance of Empires fleet commander. By this time, no doubt, you are listening to this broadcast. This is a direct message to you, Commander.”
A pause followed which lasted almost ten seconds, though felt far longer. Abad was making sure that his intended listener was indeed listening.
“I will repeat my order, all Imperial Alliance of Empires forces are to immediately come to zero station and prepare to be boarded. Any ships not following this order will be considered hostile and liable to be destroyed by my fleet.”
“I am High General Addisus Abad of the Watabaeg Militia. I am in Command of a Triumvirate Armada tasked with pursuing those responsible for the death of a Watabaeg Militia soldier. Our information indicates that one or more of your ships was responsible for the destruction of a Watabaeg shuttle transporting this soldier.”
Again a pause, this one brief enough for the High General to take a quick drink.
“As this action would be a violation of the neutrality agreement negotiated between our three triumvirate worlds, Watabaeg, Kukatush, and Minnipuka, we will take compliance as a sign of good faith and a desire to maintain this agreement in force.”
“Failure to follow our orders will be interpreted as a unilateral withdrawal from that agreement and the Triumvirate worlds will pursue whatever means are necessary to capture and bring to justice those murderers and assassins responsible for the death of our soldier.”
“Your choice is clear. Immediately bring all your ships to zero station and prepare to be boarded. This message will repeat once to provide you time to show your good faith. It will not be repeated a third time.”
And with that, there was a pause in the transmission, and then the same audio repeated itself. After a moment, Richard turned off the audio broadcast in the command center and brought his attention to the main display, still showing the tactical situation.
Beside each ship was detailed strategic information. With a touch of a few buttons, Richard eliminated all but the speed of the ships. It was clear that the IAE ships had yet to follow Abad’s orders. They were still traveling at a very fast speed, attempting to rejoin their second fleet. And just at that moment, Richard saw the fighters begin to pop up at the bottom of the display.
Zooming out the display, Richard attempted to capture the whole of the action. He brought it out to the point where the second IAE fleet, now completely turned, reformed and flying to meet the first fleet, was sitting at the extreme bottom left of the display. His various squads were still scattered in all directions, though most of them were randomly vectoring toward their position Z.
Looking back at the IAE ships, still, none of them were following the order to stop.
“There is no way they stop!” Robin said aloud beside him, looking at the main display as well.
“No,” Richard answered. “I don’t think they will. I’ll be interested to see what Abad will do about it.”
Robin nodded very strongly in agreement. “Seems like a pretty weak reason to consider a neutrality agreement broken. Sounds like something has changed and Watabaeg wants to be on the right side!”
Robin, you are absolutely right! Richard thought. But it can’t be us that have created the change. Anyone looking at our tactical situation would have waited to see what happened, not jumped to our defense. Especially the Triumvirate!
“What do you figure Abad has?” Richard asked Robin. “The Watabaeg Militia is powerful but I can’t see them pulling a ton of their fleet away from their home, resource and strategic systems to move against the IAE. That would be a huge risk. Not their style.”
Robin continued her nods of agreement, almost a constant unbroken nod at this point.
“Well, those ships that intercepted us weren’t part of the Confederate data on the Militia’s ships. Maybe they have more up their sleeve that we don’t know.”
A good point but, Richard thought. “But, there is a limit to the fleet one world, even a world as rich and populous as Watabaeg, can sustain without bankrupting themselves. Right?”
Robin turned to look at him with an evil smile and a raised eyebrow. “You never know I guess.” And she turned back to the display with a slight chuckle.
You never know! Richard thought.
Neither of them had long to wait, though. As Richard finished his thought, the tactical display exploded with activity surrounding the IAE fleet they had just nearly avoided engaging.
The tactical display zoomed itself to the new action and quickly updated its information.
The Watabaeg Militia had arrived!
Surrounding the Dreadnaught, in the center of the sphere formation, were almost one hundred ships which the computer identified as Watabaeg. The ships had exited hyperspace inside the sphere.
“Oh, my Jupiter!” Robin screamed out loud, unable to hold back.
Richard couldn’t even manage to speak, he was equally shocked.
How in hades did they coordinate that! Richard thought.
Events moved at an unbelievable pace. Richard could follow the action on the tactical display, but no one offered verbal commentary. The entire command deck crew was watching the action happen in real time and in amazement.
As soon as the Watabaeg ships exited hyperspace, each one performed a precise and rapid maneuver to bring its main guns directly on target. Hanging in a sphere formation within the IAE fleets sphere formation, all one hundred Watabaeg ships had their main guns trained on the enemy Dreadnaught. At the same time, incredibly, each ship was also nearly matching the speed of the Dreadnaught and traveling in the same direction, maintaining their position.
So far none of the IAE ships had fired a shot. Only a few could even target the Watabaeg ships with their main guns, mostly the ships in the rear of the sphere. But this was only a minimal number as all sphere formations concentrate ships in the direction of travel, leaving the rear sparse. Partially a strategic decision, concentrating power in the direction of travel, therefore the area most likely to encounter an enemy. But it was also the huge engine wash from the Dreadnaught that meant fewer ships could be positioned at the rear and those that were had to hang much further back. As it traveled, sphere formations tended to get distended and more tear drop shaped. The speed of the IAE fleet had made that form more exaggerated.
Few of the ships in the rear even had a Watabaeg ship in its weapons range. As for the ships in the middle of the formation, they had not fired their secondary side, top or ventral weapons.
Probably hard to hit those small Watabaeg ships and afraid of hitting the Dreadnaught with their mistakes! Richard thought to hims
elf.
Looking carefully at one of his displays, he pulled up the sensor information about the Watabaeg ships. The computer identified them as the same class that had intercepted them back when they first visited Watabaeg at the start of the war. Abad had called them Etruscan class system patrol ships.
Obviously, Richard thought, they were a little more than system patrol crafts if they are taking on a Dreadnaught!
And as if in answer to Richard’s assertion, the tactical display registered all the Watabaeg ships opening fire on the Dreadnaught.
They were pouring a massive amount of weapons fire onto the enemy. Each ship was pounding out what looked to be ten full-power pulse laser turrets. Given the amount of fire, it was nearly impossible to tell.
Turning to his visual display, Richard watched the attack live. The weapons fire was so intense, that all the colors blended together into an intense gleam of white light. The various colors of the pulse lasers merged as soon as it was fired into the glowing white hot mass of energy.
The white energy flowed all around the Dreadnaught, bathing the entire ship in an opaque shroud. The white energy blanketed the shield, and within only five seconds the Dreadnaught left visual and was replaced with a large white egg. The surface of the egg was teaming with activity, as the energy danced across its surface. Occasionally, so energized was the shell, that energy leaped from the surface and arced along magnetic lines created from the huge energy generation.
It was an incredibly beautiful sight. Richard could not take his eyes off of the display, even though a rational part of his mind wanted to see the tactical readout to understand the battle progress and damage those small ships were doing.
Those ships likely outclass most of the Defense Force fleet in offensive power! I bet Abad was not happy that we saw those ships a couple of years ago!
“WHOA!” Came a cry from a familiar voice behind him in the tactical tank. “Its shields just collapsed!”
Richard’s eyes never left his visual display, and he could see what Sara had obviously seen on her tactical readout. The shields of the Dreadnaught had collapsed. It had not even been ten seconds since the Watabaeg ships had opened fire.
Visually, the white egg shape seemed to deform and begin to collapse. As it did, the shape of the Dreadnaught, especially its large gun turrets and triangular shape was revealed. As the shape became defined, the white faded quickly to a warm red glow of burning and melting metals. The ship’s hull was being turned into liquid molten metal.
That was only visible for a moment. In unison, as if orchestrated and conducted by hidden gods, all the Watabaeg ships launched missiles. The same turrets that moments before had been firing pulse laser blasts each had a trail of gas and smoke flying away from it in the direction of the Dreadnaught.
As each ship fired its tenth missile, they all fired maneuvering thrusters, spinning themselves 180 degrees, facing away from the Dreadnaught. It was a ballet of united and elegant, yet violent and frenetic movement. The ships spun on their axis and blasted their thrusters again to come to a precise zero station.
And then, in an instant, they all accelerated for a couple of seconds and disappeared in a flash of light as they entered hyperspace. Every ship jumped within a second of each other. The lights of hyperspace entrance flashed like a mass of spectators in a Coliseum taking pictures.
In their wake were trails of gas and smoke, still driving toward the red colored Dreadnaught. As it was still traveling forward, the smoke and debris from the damage to the hull was beginning to stream back along the ship’s hull. As it reached the rear of the ship, it curled in toward the engines before being blasted out in all directions as it entered the wash of the Dreadnaughts still full throttle thrust.
It took only seconds for the missiles to reach their target. Whatever type of missile they were, they did not explode on impact. Each trail of smoke and gas hit the side of the Dreadnaught and nothing happened. A couple more missiles impacted the hull before the surrounding IAE ships began firing wildly. At first Richard wasn’t sure what guns were being used, but eventually, the clear telltale signs of Scintillate anti-missile fire was clear. Their automated systems had begun to attempt to target and destroy the missiles. The shots were enough to destroy a missile, but not likely to cause any more damage to the Dreadnaught.
Not that it could likely survive even scintillate shots! Richard thought to himself.
As the guns continued to fill the space within the sphere formation with tiny and thin color shots, the gas and smoke trails were lighted by the passing fire. A few missiles were hit and wildly flew away or simply vaporized. However, none of the impacted missiles had exploded yet.
Those are timed burrowing missiles, Richard suddenly realized. It won’t be long now! After impacting the hull, the missile begins to burrow into the hull. At some point, they would explode, and given that the missiles were arriving in different waves and the first had yet to explode, it meant they must be waiting for every missile to hit before they exploded in unison.
I don’t think that Dreadnaught is going to survive. My gods, to all holy Jupiter! The Watabaeg’s have destroyed a full power IAE Dreadnaught in less than a minute. That is absolutely unbelievable. Wow!
The moment the scintillate gunshots ceased, the visual display was blinded by a massive explosion. As the final missile hit the Dreadnaught, they all exploded. The visual display was just blank, nothing was visible except the explosion wave. Almost a thousand warheads blanketing every part of that ship just exploded together. It was an incredible show!
Almost as incredible was the deafening roar of celebration all around him. He could hear Robin’s screams and hurrahs the loudest, as she was standing right beside him and smacking him on the shoulder. But he could also hear the cheers from all around him as well. The command deck crew was celebrating what was an unexpected and impressive victory. Richard was not about to stop them, but he disciplined himself to return his full attention to the battle. The IAE force was not obliterated or beaten yet.
The display quickly cleared and the expanding explosion waves of the Dreadnaught itself began. Nothing was left to identify the ship as a Dreadnaught. Its hull was shattered and destroyed. Its interior hulk remained but the turret's power plants were exploding along with all the power plants feeding the main engines. Multiple explosions were blasting out from various parts of the ship. With each explosion came a massive amount of debris, including molten metals and gaseous explosions which blasted out violently and chaotically.
The IAE ships in the sphere formation were taking the brunt of the explosive forces. The ships closest were either crippled or at least heavily damaged. The visual display couldn’t show enough detail, so Richard finally pulled his eyes off of the visual show to read the large tactical display.
It showed that at least half of the IAE fleet had been disabled by the Dreadnaught. Quickly estimating the rest based on the color coding by the tactical computer, at least half of the remaining ships were heavily damaged and no ship was showing as fully operational. The best he could find was a single ship that had shields estimated to be above 50 percent.
Not surprising, Richard thought to himself. It would be very hard for a shield cooling system to handle such a shock of energy. Half their generators probably melted in the first few seconds from the feedback.
As he was continuing to analyze the remaining ships, an alert on the tactical display again zoomed out to include the exit from hyperspace of the Watabaeg fleet. Not all at once, but a few at a time, the fleet was exiting at a certain coordinate and was beginning to form up into a solid defensive fleet formation, though Richard could not yet identify it.
Seeing an opportunity, though, Richard acted quickly. He texted to all his squad commanders to rendezvous immediately at a new coordinate that would place their fleet within the estimated weapons range of the Watabaeg fleet. That way, Richard thought, we can combine our efforts and act as a united force against the remaining IAE fleet still flying
to intercept us.
Clicking a few buttons, the tactical display revealed that indeed, that fleet continued to power its way toward them. Seeing this, Richard added an additional order to use micro jumps, spaced far enough apart, to ensure the fleet reassembled quickly.
We need to be united to ensure we prevail with a minimum of losses, Richard thought.
He heard out loud that Robin ordered them into hyperspace. The micro jump required only moments, and they had exited hyperspace. The ship quickly reoriented itself and began driving toward the ever growing Watabaeg fleet.
A light indicating a private comm line transmission flashed again. This time it identified the caller as General Abad. Clicking to open the line, Richard heard his new best friend.
“See, Admiral of the Fleet,” Abad opened jokingly in his tone. “No regrets, I hope?” He asked.
“Abad, you are my new best friend! And I say that sitting right beside Robin, but I’m sure she won’t mind. Thank you very much! I’m not sure I can ever repay you.”
“Richard, do not worry. The Watabaeg people are happy to help. And my surprises aren’t over yet. Form up and you’ll see something special in a minute or so.” Abad finished and closed the comm line.
Robin, who had been able to hear the comm line because the computer had increased the volume due to the loud cheering earlier, a very good safety feature, leaned over to speak to him.
“What else can the Watabaeg Militia possibly have up their sleeve? A hundred ships that powerful, plus their full system security forces that we know about. They can’t have anything else, come on!”
