by M. D. Cooper
Tanis nodded. “Sorry about that. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to give you your walking papers now.”
Admiral Sanderson shrugged. “Not your doing.”
“Isyra’s fleet got the recall,” Scan announced. “I’ve picked them up, heading toward the rendezvous we assigned.”
“How many did she lose?” Tanis asked.
“Hard to say,” Scan replied. “At least a dozen. We’ll know more once they make it further insystem.”
“Plus or minus a dozen, Isyra’s fleet is a drop in the bucket,” Sanderson replied.
Tanis wished that Greer and Joe could join in the conversation—if only there had been a bit more time before the inevitable invasion, they would have been equipped with QuanComm transceivers.
The next time she fought a battle like this, it would be with instantaneous communication between the command ships—the whole fleet if she was lucky. Between that, the stasis shields, jump gates, and picobombs—at least, the threat of picobombs—she hoped to end this war in years, not decades.
The firing solutions came back from the rail platforms and the countdown above the holotank updated to read two and a half minutes.
“Damn,” Tanis muttered. “They’re still jumping in. We’ll only hit the first group before they disperse.”
“Wasn’t that the plan?” Captain Espensen asked. “To get them to disperse?”
“Yeah,” Tanis grunted. “But I like to hit them to make them disperse, not have them do it first ’cause they wised up.”
“Twenty-nine thousand ships and counting,” Scan announced.
Admiral Sanderson rubbed his forehead. “These guys sure seemed to think we would have a lot of ships. Too bad Tomlinson didn’t. We’d have a lot more to defend ourselves with.”
Tanis nodded absently. When the Hegemony ships at the edge of the New Canaan system jumped in, they’d be outnumbered four-to-one. Granted, it was some of the best odds in recent battles, but this one was going to be hard to manage. She was almost glad that the New Canaan population hadn’t grown fast enough to fill out her fleet. With the fighters, there could have been a hundred thousand discrete units for her to command.
“Tanis,” a voice called out from behind her, and she turned to see Sera, followed by Finaeus, enter the bridge.
“Sera, Finaeus,” Tanis said with a rueful smile. “Welcome to the party.”
“You sure know how to throw one around here,” Finaeus replied. “What’s the countdown for?”
“Grapeshot,” Tanis replied.
Finaeus’s mouth formed an ‘O’ and he shook his head. “I’ve got over four thousand years under my belt, and I’ve never seen that stuff fired in anger.”
“First time for everything,” Tanis replied.
“At my age, even,” Finaeus added.
His words were punctuated by the holo registering grapeshot hitting the lead ships in the Trisilieds fleet. Scan marked hundreds of impacts, and it was almost impossible to pick out individual ship strikes, or assess damage as a whole.
For anyone but Tanis, at least.
She held the image of the Trisilieds fleet in her mind, able to pick out every one of the enemy ships, examining the damage to each, assessing the remaining shield strength, and determining the enemy fleet’s combat capacity.
She had the numbers before the Scan officer.
“Twenty-one percent of the enemy fleet has been hit,” he called out. “Five percent of their ships have lost maneuvering capabilities.”
“Look at them scatter,” Finaeus commented.
Above the holotank a number appeared: sixty-eight percent.
“What is that for?” he asked.
Captain Espensen replied, “It’s the percentage of their ships that have moved into the paths of the second salvo.”
“Damn, you’re ruthless,” Finaeus said softly.
“I meant what I said,” Tanis replied. “I mean to win this, and every engagement, as swiftly as possible. Whatever it takes.”
“No new signatures,” Scan announced. “Final tally is thirty-one thousand six hundred forty two.”
Finaeus let out a long whistle just as the second salvo of grapeshot hit.
Tanis nodded with satisfaction as she watched the impacts. This time, the damage was more extreme. Already weakened shields died entirely as grav systems were overwhelmed by the volume and kinetic energy contained in the tiny pellets.
Her final tally and Scan agreed. Another seven percent of the enemy fleet was incapacitated.
“And that,” Tanis said with a glance back at her guests, “is the last time this tactic should ever work—if these folks can manage to pay attention, that is.”
“Shouldn’t have been an option this time, either,” Captain Espensen said. “They should have jumped in with no ship closer than a hundred kilometers from any other. No way we could have made grapeshot effective then.”
“It’s a miracle none of them collided on entry,” Finaeus added. “They must be using a hundred jump gates to move this many ships so fast. Pinpointing an exit this well across light years.”
“Which means that their staging ground is close by,” Sera noted.
As Sera discussed possible locations for an enemy base near New Canaan with Finaeus, Tanis watched the holotank, waiting for the Trisilieds ships to make a move indicative of their goal.
She put herself in their commander’s shoes. She had just jumped into a system where seizure of their advanced tech was the end game. The plan would be to overwhelm the enemy with sheer numbers and force their surrender. Except she had already lost eleven percent of the fleet before battle had even been joined.
Given that her goal was attaining technology, not the destruction of the system, she needed to attain total domination of the system. However, given eleven percent losses in the opening minutes of the battle, she would be re-estimating the likelihood of achieving that end. She had two options available: move insystem and hold one or more of the worlds hostage, or flee.
Tanis knew what she would choose. No technology was worth throwing away thousands of ships and the lives of the people on them. But as the Trisilieds ships spread further apart and began to move insystem, she knew their commander did not share her outlook.
“FCO,” Tanis called out. “Flank speed. We are in pursuit. Best intercept course nav can plot. Sanderson, execute the polar plan.”
“Aye, Fleet Admiral,” Sanderson replied and disappeared from view.
“I have something,” one of the scan officers announced. “Not sure if…”
Tanis turned her attention to the holotank. A thousand RMs appeared in its depths, then a thousand more, then the counter began to climb faster than even her eyes could track.
“The hegemony ships must have fired them through Isyra’s jump gates,” Sera said. “You would have picked them up sooner, otherwise.”
“I sure have a love-hate relationship with those gates,” Finaeus said. “Would have been better if I’d never figured out how to make them.”
“Cat’s out of the bag now,” Tanis said.
“What are you going to do?” Sera asked.
“Nothing,” Tanis replied. “I already directed the FCO to inform all vessels to cease acceleration and prepare for full stasis. Point defense only on clear targets.”
“I guess we did survive a blast from a black hole’s relativistic jet,” Sera said. “How much worse could an RM be?”
“I’m impressed,” Tanis said. “We were under full stealth until we started boosting to intercept the Trisilieds ships. Either they can see through our stealth tech, or their commander has an amazing mind for strategy.”
“Or he’s pumped so many RMs into your system that they would have homed in on you no matter where you were
.”
Tanis chuckled. “Terrifying, but unlikely…aw shit.”
“If they figured out where we are so quickly, then they know our route in toward the terraformed planets.”
“Which means that they will have filled the space between here and there with RMs,” Captain Espensen said.
The scan data feeding into the holotank began to show the ships of Fleet Group 1 firing at the RMs. The relativistic missiles, and the ships were all jinking erratically, making the holo display appear as though it were flickering, or suffering some sort of bizarre malfunction.
“That’s going to give me a headache,” Finaeus said. “How sure are you that this shielding of yours can withstand relativistic missiles?”
“The elusive Bob makes his presence known,” Finaeus said with a chuckle.
“Hush,” Sera whispered at Finaeus and the older man fell silent.
Tanis cast Finaeus a worried look. “Don’t worry about us, worry about the Transcend ships without stasis shields,” Tanis said.
Sure enough, the scan data updated and the holotank showed more than fifty TSF ships under direct threat from enemy missiles. Their shields would not protect them nearly as well—or at all—under the incoming barrage.
“Helm,” Captain Espensen called out. “Max burn, get us ahead of those ships. Weapons, I want a grapeshot firing solution that will shield those Transcend cruisers, and not hit any of ours.”
“That’s a tall order,” Tanis said softly. “But maybe they can find one.”
She Linked across the fleet and aided in coordinating kinetic grapeshot rounds from a dozen of additional cruisers, adding to the wave of kinetic pellets that would—hopefully—destroy enough of the incoming RMs. Captain Espensen attained a solution from the I2’s fire control team, which Tanis integrated into the kinetic shield. With eighty-two seconds until the first estimated impact, the ISF ships let fire their grapeshot.
Beams from hundreds of ships in the fleet group continued to pick away at the missiles, and every second or two one struck its mark. However, only a fraction of the hits caused enough damage to destroy, or disable the missiles. It was simply too hard to track something moving at relativistic speeds for long enough to burn through its casing.
Then, in what looked like a spectacular display of fireworks, the first missiles hit the cloud of grapeshot and exploded.
“Great,” Finaeus shook his head in dismay. “You’ve created relativistic shrapnel. Well done.”
Tanis cast the man a cold look. “This is the bridge of a warship, and you are a guest here. Keep your tone and your comments respectful.”
Finaeus took a step back. Tanis was certain that few had spoken to him so bluntly in a long time.
“Yeah, um, sure,” was all he managed to respond with.
The I2 reached its position between the TSF ships and the incoming missiles, its thousands of beams lighting up the darkness, though the ship’s placement in the center of the fleet reduced the available firing solutions.
Behind them, the TSF ships burned hard, a hundred AP drives and fusion torches outshining Canaan Prime as they moved to evade the shrapnel, and the few missiles that had made it past the barrier.
Shrapnel impacts registered on scan, and two-dozen ships spun off course before killing their engines and drifting through the dark. Five suffered internal detonations and a number appeared in Tanis’s mind as the ships gouted eerie fire into the cold dark vacuum around them.
Two thousand forty-three dead. It would be just the beginning of her tally for the battle
Two more salvos of RMs came at Fleet Group 1, followed by a single attack on Greer’s Fleet Group 2, which was also boosting insystem on an intercept course with the Trisilieds fleet.
This time, the TSF and ISF ships were better prepared, and the ISF ships maneuvered to create protective shields, while the TSF ships fired countermeasures at the incoming missiles.
The tactic worked reasonably well and conserved the fleet group’s grapeshot. Only four more TSF ships were destroyed as the last enemy RMs were destroyed.
The tone on the bridge was muted, but Tanis was not displeased with the result. “All things considered, they just expended considerable resources to little effect.”
“I imagine they’re thinking the same thing,” Sera shook her head. “Once we get stasis shields on all the ships in the TSF, maybe this war will be over as fast as you hope.”
The holotank showed that Fleet Groups 1 and 2 would intercept the Trisilieds ships in seven hours—well before the invading ships reached the settled worlds deep insystem. Tactical showed that serious losses would be inevitable, but that victory was assured.
Captain Espensen had moved the I2 to the van of Fleet Group 1, which was now moving at just over a tenth the speed of light they raced to meet their foes. The ships could have accelerated faster, but too high a velocity would have sent them racing past the enemy ships, or necessitated braking heavily and exposing their vulnerable engines before engaging.
Tanis nodded absently and sipped her coffee, glad that Espensen had an officer somewhere that knew feeding the bridge crew was wise. As she set her cup down on a tray at the edge of the console, the Scan officer called out.
“Signatures matching the AST ships, dead ahead!”
Tanis spun back to the holotank and saw the space before Fleet Group 1 fill with ships. Number and composition matched the ships past the heliopause, which had attacked Isyra’s watchers. The notation on the holotank read twenty-nine thousand eight hundred seventy-four vessels, over four thousand of which were dreadnaught class.
“Orders?” Captain Espensen asked, her face paling noticeably.
“Throw up the scoop, reverse polarity, let’s make a shield for our fleet,” Tanis replied with more calm than she felt. “FCO, inform all carriers to disgorge their ARC-6 alpha wings. All ships, prepare to fire kinetic rounds.”
“Aye, Admiral,” the FCO replied.
While the FCO managed the coordination, Tanis reviewed the placement of all the ships and the projected paths of the fighters. She tweaked the placements and assignments while watching how the Hegemony fleet arrayed itself.
The enemy ships were also travelling toward the Trisilieds ships, and the inner New Canaan system, but they were coasting, their current momentum carried over from their acceleration before they passed through the jump gates.
Now, they carefully maneuvered into a large net, while keeping their engines facing away from the incoming ISF and TSF ships.
The net was wide, and Fleet Group 1 would pass through it, drawing fire from a fleet four times their size. Their shields should hold, but after seeing the Transcend fleet destroy her cruisers days ago, she was less certain about the effectiveness of stasis shields against concentrated enemy beamfire.
She wondered if the Hegemony ships would follow after Fleet Group 1 after they passed through the net, or if they would chase after Greer’s ships, a half AU away.
Tanis knew what she would do if she were the Hegemony commander. She would drive the enemy against the Trisilieds fleet, crushing them utterly before moving on to the next target.
Tanis directed the ISF ships to form protective shields around the TSF vessels once more. In the resulting formation, the ships were not tightly packed, and still possessed dozens of kilometers of maneuvering room, but it should be enough to aid in the blocking of enemy beamfire.
The tactic felt strange. All military doctrine dictated that ships should never bunch up. It was folly to create such an easy to grouping of targets, but Tanis had no choice if she were to save the Transcend ships from destruction.
As th
ey drew nearer to the enemy net, which was extending into a long funnel, she ordered the tactical teams to fire concentrated rounds of grapeshot into the enemy fleet. Her plan was to make multiple openings in the enemy net, more than her fleet group needed, and sow as much confusion as possible.
The I2, however, would punch right through the center. She was certain that the target her largest warship presented would tempt the AST to leave her smaller formations alone.
“Ready to flash the scoop across the Hegemony fleet,” Captain Espensen reported. “All batteries have selected targets and alpha wings are deployed.”
“Good,” Tanis nodded. “Delta-v between our fleets is a hair over fourteen thousand kilometers per second. With a maximum effective beam range of a hundred thousand kilometers, engagement length will be fourteen seconds. Pre-load all solutions, and backup options.”
As she had so many times in the past, Tanis spread her mind across the fleet, greeting the AIs across thousands of capital ship and fighter wings. The ISF AIs knew to expect her, though the TSF intelligences were surprised, but grateful to feel her guiding touch.
The ARC-6s darted ahead of the fleet, ten thousand engine flares lighting the darkness. It was as though an entirely different starscape had appeared, new constellations shifting before them. A second later, every ship in the fleet fired their kinetic rounds, and the battle began.
Tanis felt time slow down as she surrounded herself with a holographic display of the entire battlefield, the bridge and its personnel falling away from her vision. She and Angela thought as one being as they directed ships and fighters to shore up weak spots in formations and prepare to take out prime targets.
Ahead, the Hegemony fleet detected the kinetic rounds firing from her ships, and many jinked out of the way, though many more were too late. One ton tungsten rounds slammed into cruisers and dreadnaughts, overloading sections of their shield umbrellas, and some lucky shots punching clear through hulls.
A hundred enemy ships had taken damage from the kinetics, and Tanis directed the ARC-6 fighters to finish those vessels off. Short-range RMs lanced out from the fighters into the darkness, loaded with the ISF’s double-impact warheads that would kinetically disable weakened shields before driving their nuclear warheads into their targets.
