The Battle of Tangine

by Will Crudge

  “I know, John. Trust me. But the only available cruisers that have the resources to restock a mine layer have been crippled or outright destroyed. Plus, there isn’t a single UAHC Soldier aboard the Foehammer at the moment. Their crew got caught covering the troop recall, and they could make the last transport. Technically speaking, the Foehammer is no use to us beyond fodder. I see no point in holding them back.” Gordon crossed his arms.

  John just shrugged and threw his hands up in the air as if to say he didn’t have anything else to add. General Gordon studied the Admiral a moment longer and waited for a response.

  “What do they plan on doing? It’s suicide to try and dock. Even remaining stationary for a few seconds would make them a textbook firing solution target,” John finally spoke.

  “They’re not docking at all. Apparently, Steve is intending on modifying some escape pods. Plus, the Unum Cutter, Aegis will be providing covering fire to keep the enemy fighters and destroyers at bay.”

  “Steve?” John’s expression shift from apprehensive and went straight to a weak smile. “Well that crazy AI hasn’t steered us wrong yet. He’s the reason why this ship can even cloak. I have no choice but to trust his judgment.”

  The Admiral had been resigned to allowing the casualties mount as they were. But now he reconsidered his mindset. If he could pull of a rescue of even one Soldier, then that might instill just enough hope in his fractured squadron to fight on. He had no doubts that his men wouldn’t fight to the last, but it never hurt to glean inspiration by use of heroism.

  Gordon just nodded and stepped out of the situation room. Nothing more needed to be said. John decided he’d been pacing around long enough and decided to at least check in with the CIC. He picked up his sidearm from the holster embedded in his armor and placed it in the auxiliary holster he had on his sub armor. With a quick nod to himself, and an exasperated sigh, the Admiral stepped out into the corridor and walked down to the CIC.

  The CIC was ablaze with officers and NCO’s manning their stations and darting back and forth between displays to cross-level data. General Gordon was seated at the command console and seemed to be studying the combine data overlays that contained truncated forms of general combat information. The more detailed information was held and tracked by the myriad of stations that filled the CIC working space, and the command console accepted the filtered data to provide only the most critical data that the Squadron Commander may need.

  “Situation?” John asked as he peered over Gordon’s shoulder and directed his eyes at the main 3D battlefield images.

  “We’ve lost over three thousand Soldiers, and not one vessel has reported zero combat damage. Bottom line, it’s a shit show, but your strategy is holding,” Gordon replied without taking his eyes off the data feeds.

  John knew his strategy was the only option. The untested firepower of the Hailstorm was supposedly greater than the most advanced dreadnaught configuration available, but even with the most optimistic sim data, it would only be able to take out half dozen cruisers, or perhaps two out of three of the Crimson dreadnaughts before being destroyed. The smaller vessels in the squadron had been marginally successful at drawing out the smaller Crimson cruisers and destroyers to search for the ‘missing’ UAHC flagship. All the while, the Hailstorm was right under the Crimson Admiral’s nose. He had toyed with the idea of sliding past the obstructive refugee ship, and parking directly on its stern, but he thought better of it. Nobody knew the true limits of the cloaking system and having ten thousand meters of warship try to sneak within thirty meters of another vessel was problematic.

  “Sir.” John heard someone’s voice sound off and he raised his eyes towards the direction of the sound.

  “What is it, Major?” John asked.

  “Three contacts incoming. Two Unum IDENT codes, and one is UAHC,” The Major said.

  “And? We are in a battle, if you didn’t notice. Let the battlespace manager handle tactical traffic.” The Admiral scowled.

  “Sir, we’re are being hailed. You were the intended recipient.”

  John and Gordon both shared a confused glance, and then both men turned their eyes back to the staff officer. “Patch it through the command console,” John said, and then stared back down at the display.

  The icon for the coms connection populated a moment later, and John tilted his head at the heading data. Fleet Marshal? In a fighter? John connected, and the view of Darius appeared on the console display.

  “Sir! What are you—?” John was cut off.

  “No time to explain. Where is the Hailstorm?” Darius replied. The Fleet Marshall looked as if he were multi-tasking, and John suspected he was closer to the active combat space than he had originally suspected.

  “Sir, the ship is cloaked. But we’re facing down the Crimson Capital ships undetected,” John replied.

  “Cloaked?” Darius tilted his head and looked confounded.

  “Recent upgrade, sir. Hard to explain,” John replied.

  “I take it coming aboard will reveal your position then?”

  “I believe so, sir.”

  Darius nodded. “Very well. I’ll need a battle update to my fighter HUD ASAP! And where is Kara… the Foehammer?”

  “En route on a rescue op, sir. Heading in-station along-side an Unum Cutter, known as the Aegis.”

  Darius’ eyes looked like cold steel, and his facial expression didn’t betray any emotion. He just maintained eye contact with the Admiral, and then a moment later he spoke once more. “I’m going in to clear the path for the rescue op. Maintain operations as you see fit and pretend I’m not in Tangine space.”

  John just nodded, and Darius cut the connection from his end.

  ***

  Darius had just cut the feed to the Hailstorm, and now looked at the combat data begin to populate on his HUD. We are being slaughtered! He thought to himself. But he instantly recognized the strategic intent of Rear Admiral John. The station was surrounded in a bubble of carnage, and the smaller UAHC vessels were actively engaging the smaller swarms of Crimson fighters and destroyers that were fanned out in every direction. The Crimson forces formations were spreading thin, as if to be hunting for an energy or visual scan of the Hailstorm. If the Crimson fleet didn’t know where the most dangerous threat was, then they couldn’t afford to just shoot their way to the HAL launchers and disperse to their primary targets throughout the inner and mid solar system.

  Impressive, he thought.

  Even more impressive that you analyzed his strategy in a matter of seconds, Jep spoke directly into Darius consciousness.

  Darius let out a labored smile and replied via audio net. “Stay out of my head, Jep. I need all of the brain power I can muster right now, without you occupying my skull space.”

  “I wouldn’t have been able to see into your mind, had you not opened the door to mine,” Jep said with an uncharacteristic laugh.

  “Looks like the UAHC forces are getting pummeled. They’re less than fifty percent combat effective, and the casualties are mounting. We need to get Jimma and Kara off that station and then move on to the final phase.” Darius switched back to a more serious tone.

  “Agreed. There’s a pair of Crimson destroyer at flank speed heading directly for the Foehammer and the Aegis. Give me thirty seconds,” Jep replied with steely calmness. The Death-Nail accelerated at full burn, and barrel rolled into an intercept vector with the Crimson warships.

  Darius and Val didn’t speak a word. There was no need. Their minds melded as one, and they both adjusted their vectors to provide covering fire for Jep. Doom must not have needed any prodding either, and already was deploying the weapons bays of the Doom-Raptor. Targeting data began to dart across the HUD, and Darius knew that his NAV system was actively scanning for potential threats. By the time Darius could recognize a potential target, Doom would already have applied a targeting solution.

  The three invincible fighters tore through open space with thrusters fully fired. Nothing the enemy co
uld bring to bear would be able to match their speed, and almost nothing could even hope to strike them with any prayer of a direct hit. Darius could see the tiny luminous spec of the Death-Nail’s oversized thruster array, as the LRF had already covered several hundred kilometers of space. The zoomed in image on the HUD picked up a flash of the intensely powerful forward energy shields snap into existence. The atmospheric variant LRF was deadly in planetary atmospheres, but Darius hadn’t considered how the exaggerated wedge of energy would be useful in space combat. Normally the energy wedge would cut through atmosphere and create a vacuum bubble around the fighter’s hull. This action caused a near frictionless environment for the LRF to accelerate to speeds that would otherwise vaporize any other solid object at the same velocity. The hypersonic shockwave it produced became an unstoppable weapon that could smash all but the most powerful energy shielding.

  Darius watched in amazement as the Death-Nail hit the broadside of the first Crimson destroyer like a missile, only to emerge from the other side with no discernable loss of forward momentum. The destroyer heaved in protest, and then a moment later plumes of flaming atmosphere erupted from the point of entry. The exit point had been blown out in a violent funnel, but before Darius could see the size of the gash, the entire destroyer exploded. The blackness of space was momentarily illuminated by the two-kilometer diameter fireball. Darius scanned the visual feeds with earnest to ensure his friend had survived, but he knew Jep was unharmed. He could feel the War Master’s life force was as strong as it had ever been and allowed himself a crooked smile. He was lost in his own thoughts, which was why he didn’t notice the second explosion.

  By the time the debris field had been sorted and decluttered by the sensor array, the second destroyer was no more. Jep had successfully used his overpowered energy shield as a mighty ax blade, and literally cut straight through two full-sized enemy ships.

  “Aegis is engaging a flight of Mark-4 fighters, and a pair of gun-frigates. Shall we join the party?” Doom asked.

  “We shall. Ping both ships and let them know friendlies are inbound,” Darius calmly replied.

  “Already done. The weirdo at the helm of the Foehammer apparently isn’t even UAHC,” Doom said with no small measure of sarcasm.

  “At this point, I don’t care if he’s John the Baptist, just as long as he’s trying to get our people out of harm’s way!” Darius replied.

  “True, but if you and Kara survive, I’m gonna need you two to get nasty somewhere other than my berthing, OK?”

  “What’s the matter? You don’t think I look good naked?” Darius smiled.

  “I could care less how you look. The one thing that Raptor can’t upgrade, is the Nano-filtration system, thanks to your obsession with aftermarket garbage. I don’t want the smell of evolved monkey pheromones to muck up my atmospherics.”

  “Well, tell Raptor that if we survive this battle, I’ll ask Val to have all the aftermarket junk replaced with original equipment.”

  “He can hear you.” Doom chuckled.

  “I thought only you could talk to him.”

  “Anyone can, really. He just ignores anything he doesn’t want to hear,” Doom explained.

  “Sounds like my ex-girlfriend.” They both erupted in laughter.

  After several moments the targeting HUD flashed with targeting data on seven Crimson fighters and a single frigate gunship that were closing in on the Aegis. Darius manually selected the electron cannon and checked the solutions for optimal engagement ranges.

  “Nice choice. What made you go with the electron beams?” Doom casually asked.

  “Because I’ve never fired one before,” Darius said with a playful tone.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen. This is your strategic messiah, Darius,” Doom spouted with a festive voice.

  “Dick.”

  The beams unleashed with a single squeeze of the trigger, and the invisible thin beams of concentrated electrons closed the twenty-kilometer gap in a few microseconds. One fighter vaporized in an instant, and the remaining fighters broke off in a seemingly random defensive pattern.

  Nice survivability maneuver. Darius took a mental note of appreciation for the enemy fighters’ choice in evasive maneuvers. However, their choice of maneuver was pointless against an electron beam. Electron cannons were extremely effective, but very scarce to come by. The tech was expensive, and therefore outfitting small craft or even hand-carried weaponry was impractical at best. No conventional fighter tactics in any part of the human sphere had ever needed to be developed.

  They must think they were blind-sided by a plasma cannon. Any other energy beam weapon would have been visible and would reveal the shooter’s location. Darius didn’t wait for the flight of fighters to get wise and selected a wider attack pattern. Standard evasion methods would normally end with a regrouping maneuver, by which the fighters would converge to form up once more. Several seconds later they did.

  Now in a wedge-shaped dual over watch formation, the fighters resumed their attack pattern on the Aegis. By this point, the two LRF’s had to peel away from one another in a wide arc to avoid a direct collision, and the sudden loss of velocity exposed Darius’ and Val’s locations. Darius switched to short-range missiles and watched as Doom had already programed solutions for a multiple simultaneous launches. Val had done the same, and Darius could see Kindle’s own solutions populating on the joint targeting overlay.

  The enemy fighter formation split, and then the lone frigate joined the smaller group. Four fighters were attempting to maneuver behind Darius for a stern shot, and the other two, along with the frigate gunship attempted the same against Val.

  Darius cracked a smile. Trying to outfly Val would be suicide for any pilot… even himself, he supposed. Val had been dog-fighting in space fighters since before the technology existed to even design the already ancient LRF-90’s. They were already dead, but apparently didn’t get the memo.

  Darius slowed his velocity even more and allowed the fighters on his tale to be lulled into a false sense of security. Then he abruptly jerked the throttle lever, and squeezed the handgrip lever, which allowed him to control the attitude of the fighter’s hull without changing course. Essentially flying backwards, he could see streaks of plasma harmlessly streak past his canopy. He hit the button for the hardened canopy shield, and now the metallic armor shell emerged, which form-fitted the transparent canopy itself. An audible thud reverberated through the inner atmosphere of the fighter as the armored shell seated itself and just in time. A plasma bolt had snuck past the energy shielding that had just been disengaged a split-second earlier. The plasma dispersed its kinetic energy, and intense heat onto the shell armor itself, and Darius swallowed in a nervous response. That was too close!

  The shielding had to be brought down to allow for the flurry of missiles to erupt free from their cradles, and they did so a moment later. Darius knew the energy weapons could pass straight through the energy shield without issue, so long as it were leaving the field versus incoming. But kinetic weapons would simply impact within the energy field, and consequently ruin the shiny finish that made the olive colored hull sparkle in the starlight. Perhaps, it would destroy the LRF as well. If destroying an LRF with such simple weaponry were even possible. But at least then, Darius supposed, he would never live to see the horrific sight of his beautiful bird looking dingy.

  The energy shield snapped back into full array once all missiles were deployed, and the armored shell retreated from sight just as quickly as it had emerged.

  Now the streaks of missiles began to find their marks, and all four fighters were blasted out of existence. The relative closing speeds of the short-range missiles were far too extreme to be avoided. By the time they knew they were being fired upon, they’d already breathed their final breaths.

  Darius righted the hulls attitude to allow the thruster array to burn at a forward vector. He glanced down at the joint targeting display and smiled as he saw that Val had been triumphant as well. He missed
out on what the ancient monk had done to take out his foes, but he could see the aftermath all too well. Wreckage and debris were all that could be seen as the Blood-Reaper sped away and turned to match Darius’ vector.

  The Death-Nail was already matching vectors with the two allied ships, and it appeared to Darius that a nearby debris field indicated the aftermath of another small-scale engagement.

  “Foehammer, this is Fleet Marshal Darius. Respond if you can hear me.” Darius sent the signal over the audio net.

  “F-fleet… Marshall?” A single male voice came back through. The man’s voice was unfamiliar and was noticeably flabbergasted.

  “Who is this? Identify yourself.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m James,” the man responded.

  “Alright, James. I don’t know who you are, and I don’t care. Give me a status update!” Darius scoffed.

  “It’s alright, Darius. I’ll get you spun up on things,” Steve chimed in.

  “Steve? Is that you?” Darius said while he looked around, as if to see someone who wasn’t physically there.

  “Yes, Darius. It’s me. I’m the Foehammer’s AI.” Steve sent an icon of a wink to Darius’ HUD.

  “Where’s Kara?” Darius asked with intense concern.

  “We’re coming to get her. We could use your help.”

  Kara’s Dream

  Location: Unknown

  Date Time: Unknown

  System: Unknown

  Kara’s mind was now drifting through a stream of endless colors. She didn’t feel her body, and she realized she wasn’t seeing with any human eyes. The images she was experiencing were far more vivid than anything she could have ever described.

  Her conscious mind could only approximate any sort of identity. She didn’t truly know what or who she was, but she didn’t seem to care. None of that mattered. It was all just pure timeless bliss. A cascade of being that she didn’t question. Why would she? Everything made sense. Everything had a pattern. No linear time, and no discernable dimensions of space. Only energy.