by M. D. Cooper
She stood in the room’s entrance and stared for a full minute.
The Intrepid’s bridge was more like a colony command and control center than simply the helm and ship duty stations most vessels possessed.
For starters, it was almost a quarter the volume of Sabrina; nearly thirty meters across, and twice as many deep. A large holo tank dominated the center of the room, and beside it stood Tanis, frowning at what she saw. Surrounding her, in concentric circles, were rows and rows of consoles, smaller holo displays, and department liaisons and automatons.
It bustled like a beehive with its queen at the center.
Tanis looked up and her and locked eyes with her.
Tanis threaded her way through the consoles and bridge personnel, moving toward a doorway on Sera’s right. They stepped through the portal into a small, utilitarian office; where, behind a desk covered in holo displays, sat Captain Andrews.
She caught him glance at her body, something that certainly understandable given the shimmering silver skin tone she had selected for the day.
Helen gave the mental equivalent of a snort in response.
“Good afternoon,” he addressed both women. “Tanis, did you see the latest message from the AST ships?”
“I did,” the general replied with a chuckle. “Claiming that they own this ship due to late interest payments on loans is pretty weak—especially given that the loans, small as they were, were handled through the GSS, not the Sol Space Federation.
“Well, they did absorb the GSS before they shut it down,” Sera said. “It was part of an attempt to stop the exodus of the brightest and most adventurous people from Sol. After you left Sol started to get pretty stagnant. People had no drive or ambition. Even their birthrate almost hit zero.”
“Trust me,” Tanis said while shaking her head. “That trend started long before we left.”
“Either way,” Sera replied with a shrug. “They wrote off all their GSS-related debt millennia ago.”
“That’s good,” Captain Andrews replied. “The only thing worse than enemy fleets chasing you across the stars are bureaucrats who want their money.”
“It seems they’ll even chase you across millennia,” Sera added.
“Do you have the details on that write-off?” Tanis asked. “It would be nice to send a response for them to chew on. Keeping the dialog going never hurts.”
“I’m pulling up what we have on Sabrina,” Sera said as she accessed her ship’s archives. “Here it is. After the breakup of the SSF and the eventual formation of the AST, the new government performed a century-long audit of all the assets and debts they possessed.
“Somewhere along the line, someone realized that the government had an ownership stake in several dozen colonies, and colony ships, that no one had heard from in nearly a millennia. They didn’t like the potential liability, so they simply wrote off the whole lot and passed legislation that any property the AST would have owned, or had a lien on was transferred to whoever possessed it at the time of the law’s passing.”
The captain rain a hand through his hair. “How…indiscreet of them.”
Tanis laughed, and Sera passed the relevant information to her.
“Great, I’ll have the comm officer organize a response and send it to our friends out there. Should shut them up for a bit.”
Tanis turned to Sera, her expression carefully schooled. “You sent your message, the captain and I would finally like to—ah shit.”
“What is it?” Sera asked as Tanis turned toward door.
“One of the fighters is having a malfunction and heading straight for Padre’s ships.”
They rushed out to the main holo tank which already displayed the situation at the Fierra’s south pole.
“It’s the Black Death,” a duty officer supplied. “One of their Arc-6’s is acting up; they’re trying a system restore from crystal backup.”
“And if it doesn’t finish in time?” Sera asked.
“Then they’ll pass right through the middle of Padre’s formation,” Tanis replied.
“Sorry, my story will have to wait for another time, this could be the start of things,” Sera looked from Tanis to Captain Andrews. “I need to get out there.”
She could see Tanis and the captain exchange thoughts over the Link before Tanis nodded.
FIRESTORM
STELLAR DATE: 10.29.8927 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Near Kithari, South of Fierra
REGION: Bollam’s World System, Bollam’s World Federation
Jessica goosed her fighter to match Cary’s vector with several quick burns she barely noticed.
Com’on, Cary, Jessica thought to herself. Get that thing fixed.
She counted down the seconds it should take for a system restore to complete and Cary’s silence continued after her count completed. The pilot did not come back on the squadron’s combat net.
Another minute passed and Rock’s voice broke the silence.
The pilots silently signaled their acknowledgement, coordinated their flight paths, and selected targets from the five corvettes closing in on Cary.
Jessica nodded to herself and signaled her acknowledgement of the order.
The relative velocity between Cary’s fighter and the five pirate corvettes put intercept in twelve minutes. Jessica kept an eye on her NSAI’s estimation of lethal range—just under ten thousand kilometers—which they would reach in five minutes.
Space close to Fierra was full of dust from mined asteroids and no small amount of swirling gas from the jovian itself. It was far from empty, and a dust, or hydrogen cloud could make all the difference when it came to striking a lethal blow.
Jessica checked the updated scan. Though the five corvettes had accelerated rapidly to reach Cary, they were now breaking, attempting to match v to snatch her up.
The maneuver made little sense to Jessica. With the rest of the squadron surrounding Cary, the pirate ships would become stationary targets—relatively speaking—if they attempted to grab the disabled fighter.
Rock seemed to have the same thought.
They acknowledged the order and eight Arc-6 fighters accelerated toward the pirate corvettes.
They split into two formations, each targeting one of the pirate vessels and none firing until they were well within beam range. It was deemed best to save their power for maximum effectiveness in this stellar soup.
The corvettes were still slowing to match v with the rest of the squadron, and their prey, Cary’s ship, when the eight Arc-6’s flashed past them, laying withering beam fire on the two lead vessels.
Jessica spun her engine and applied full thrust, the now pointless readout telling her that without the dampeners she would be crushed under a 100g’s of acceleration. Scan showed that the enemy corvettes had returned fire at the fighters, a salvo of over seventy beams, and two rail slugs.
The slugs knocked their target Arcs around, but none of the fighters showed any damage.
Jessica sent an affirmative response, feeling giddy as the adrenaline coursed through her body. It was going to be like shooting fish in a barrel. The fighters slowed, and then stopped before their engines drove them back toward the pirate corvettes. Almost lazily they drifted over their enemy, shrugging off the beams and rails before dropping directly into the stream of gamma rays that flowed at light speed from the AP engines.
It took conscious effort to drop her ship into the engine wash—normally such action would result in certain death, but the stasis shields brushed off the luminal impacts with ease.
In unison, five of the eight fighters lanced streams of protons into the pirate ship’s engines.
As predicted, the beams penetrated the antimatter containment and the pirate ships exploded in tremendous displays of plasma and shrapnel.
Rock gave the order for the eight fighters to form up with the rest of the squadron. Jessica adjusted her relative v to zero with a quick burst from her AP engine.
she commented to Jerry.
“That’s amazing,” Tanis commented from beside the bridge’s main holo tank. “It’s like the enemy wasn’t even firing.”
“It’s a game changer, alright,” Sanderson observed.
“The bulk of their fleet is engaging,” Tanis cautioned as the tank lit up with an explosion of energy surrounding Black Death’s position. Nearly two hundred corvettes and four cruisers focused every beam and railgun in their fleet on the fighter squadron’s tight cocoon around Cary’s disabled vessel.
She tasted blood and realized that she was biting her lip.
Angela had no response, though concern flowed from her into Tanis’s mind.
The salvo lasted only seven seconds, but it felt like an eternity to Tanis.
The assault ceased as if a switch had been flipped. Scan took a moment to clear and then the bridge erupted with cheers. The squadron was still there, surrounding their comrade’s ship, all undamaged.
The pirate fleet had passed the fighters and split into two groups, each looping around to re-engage the squadron, a maneuver they were executing while taking great care not to expose their engines to the Arc-6’s.
Tanis watched the trajectory estimates and corrections scroll down a secondary holo. It was going to be a direct hit.
She finally let out her breath.
Both groups of Padre’s armada passed right through dense fields of grapeshot courtesy of the Enterprise and Defiance. The lead ships were torn to ribbons under the barrage and even one of the cruisers blossomed into a cloud of hot gas and jets of fire.
Seconds later twenty-two new signatures lit up on the display. The relativistic missiles seeded by the Andromeda came to life and sought their targets with ruthless efficiency. The enemy fleet was completely obscured by the nuclear fireballs, their explosions just far enough from the squadron of Arc-6’s that they evaded everything but the light from the blast.
When scan was finally able to get a clear picture, less than a hundred enemy ships remained and only fifty of those appeared to be operational.
Calls of surrender flooded the comm channels while two cruisers and a dozen of the corvettes altered course, pushing for a tight loop around Kithari to gain an outsystem vector.
On her command the 42nd squadron, consisting of newly deployed Arc-6’s, broke from their approach to Fierra’s northern hemisphere and pursued the fleeing ships, beams flashing and missiles flying from both formations.
Tanis turned her attention back to Jessica’s squadron. The Excelsior Nova was matching velocity with Cary’s fighter to effect the pickup, and the Black Death squadron was maintaining a protective shield should any of the remaining pirate vessels get any ideas.
“What happens when everyone gets shields like these?” Captain Andrews asked softly. “What level of destructive power will two ships need to level against one another?”
Tanis cast the captain a sidelong glance. He had never opposed it, but she knew he had never been comfortable with the military buildup of the Intrepid and its fleet. Though, on deeper refection, she had to admit that he was right. If fleets could no longer do battle with conventional weapons, what would they resort to? Planetary destruction? Stellar destruction?
Tanis took a moment to consider her feelings on the matter before replying.
“You’re right, captain. I’m passing orders to ensure that the keys to this technology never leave Bob and Earnest’s minds,” Tanis said to Captain Andrews. “It’s too dangerous to ever let loose.”
The captain nodded slowly, and Admiral Sanderson gave her an evaluating look before inclining his head in agreement.
During the battle with Padre’s ships, Tanis had observed The Mark fleet repositioning itself. Rebecca’s ships were now five-thousand kilometers beyond the effective beam range of the Arc-5’s in position north of Fierra.
Tanis was beginning to think she shouldn’t have been so rash in sending her other Arc-6’s after the remnants of Padre’s fleet. They had destroyed or disabled the fleeing ships, but now needed to pass around Kithari before coming back into range.
With Padre’s fleet taken care of, Jessica’s squadron could fill the gap, but the Boller fleet had also shifted to a more aggressive stance.
She addressed the ISF over the general fleet net.
Tanis looked around the bridge, every crewmember’s eyes were on her. She took a deep breath and continued.
Tanis felt her mental tone waver at the last word. She hoped it didn’t detract from her speech—though from the expressions on the faces of those around her, it seemed to have had a positive effect.
There was a moment’s pause after her words, and then another round of cheers erupted across the bridge.
“Ok, ok, back to work,” Tanis said with her hands raised and a small smile. “We still have go survive the next thirty hours.”
