Artifice
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The SADEs kept the Trident admirals constantly updated. Each knew of the others’ success or lack of it.
Deirdre’s command had eliminated two battleships. The wedge had closed and the fleet continued to advance. Deirdre understood and sympathized with their plight. The fate of their race was at stake, and they had chosen to carry Artifice’s programs to eliminate another race and save their own. It was an ugly situation created by a monstrous entity.
This time, there was no artistry in the Tridents’ attack. They accelerated on grav engines directly at the fleet and launched banishers before arcing away. In desperation, the battleships launched missiles at what they perceived to be Omnian missiles.
However, the Omnian banisher was more maneuverable and equipped with a controller programmed by the engineering SADEs. The banishers expended the energy in their power cells in an attempt to evade the short-range missiles fired at them. The ones that neared the battleships were often shredded by slugs emitted by the close-in defensive armament.
But even semi-destroyed banishers delivered hundreds of kilos of Libran-X, either by detonating in the path of a ship or by slamming into it. In Deirdre’s lesser fleet, the lead battleship was destroyed. Darius eliminated one ship, and Ellie’s command scored two.
A total of seven battleships were adding debris to the galaxy’s collection, but many more were heavily damaged. Ships were losing way, as crews fought to extinguish blazes by opening areas of the ship to space. More often than not, bows had been struck, and the ships were operating from secondary bridges, with less-senior officers.
The battleships that lost way were left to fend for themselves, as the remains of the lesser fleets sailed on in an attempt to defeat the Omnians who stood between them and the survival of their races. It was tragic that they knew nothing of the curtailment of Artifice’s comm network, but none of the elder races knew how to speak to them. Then again, it must be remembered that this was the way that Artifice preferred it.
The final blow to the battleship fleets was the launch of the auto-controlled travelers. According to Reiko’s plan, the Tridents should have launched their fighters en masse, but Ellie had other ideas.
Each admiral signaled the launch of two, auto-controlled fighters. The SADEs hurriedly programmed their ships’ targets even while the fighters exited the bays.
The fighters gave the battleships larger targets, but the damage done by the minelettes and the banishers limited the battleships’ responses. The lesser fleet was loaded with missiles of all sizes, which prepared them for battles with opposing fleets. The flurry of small, destructive weaponry that the Omnians unleashed left them ill-prepared to defend themselves.
The battleships emptied their bays of antimissile missiles, which the Omnian fighters easily evaded. In close, a wall of high-velocity slugs riddled the fighters’ shells, but not before they found their marks. Six fighters were launched, one battleship was destroyed, and two were out of action.
Darius and Deirdre adopted the idea, and a second set of travelers was launched. They accelerated until they reached the midpoint and then performed a few acrobatic maneuvers before they remained stationary.
When the admirals queried the SADEs on the exhibition, they found Cordelia had entered the fray and added her twists to the controllers’ programming.
To a certain extent, Ellie’s plan worked.
A third of each of the three battleship fleets was destroyed or out of action, and another third had suffered considerable damage. Yet, the lesser fleets found two more of the deadly fighters waiting in front of each of them and behind those were the Tridents, the aliens’ deadly warships.
The lesser fleets had yet to close into an active missile launch envelope, but they’d already suffered incredible casualties to ships, officers, and crews. The destruction had a crippling psychological effect on the remaining commanders and their crews.
Only one fleet commander had survived the confrontation with the Omnians. He attempted to contact the others. Like the six elder races, the fleet commanders of the lesser fleets communicated regularly, but unlike their counterparts, they spoke in the open. They were too fearful of Artifice to attempt betrayal.
The fleet commander’s forces were above the ecliptic with one other fleet. He spoke rapidly to a junior commander aboard the other fleet and tried to convince him to halt their advance.
The junior commander was emotionally torn. Failure to carry out Artifice’s directives meant death for them and their citizens. Unfortunately, to execute its directives and sail into the Omnian warships might well mean their deaths too.
A data stream officer aboard the junior commander’s damaged ship relayed the news of the explosions around Toral.
“Commander, I believe Artifice’s comm platforms are down,” the data stream officer announced. “The elder fleets are turning back.”
“They’re no longer chasing the Toralians?” the junior commander queried incredulously.
“No, Commander.”
When the junior commander conferred with the opposing fleet commander, he ended their conference with, “Your advice has merit. We’re decelerating and will adopt a fixed position. We’ll attend to our wounded and wait.”
The fleet commander couldn’t contact a ship of the fleet that operated below the ecliptic. That fleet, which was composed of the less-powerful battleships of the three fleets, had suffered the greatest damage. Commanders were either dead or under medical care. Senior and junior bridge officers were in charge of most ships. They executed their standing orders and sailed resolutely forward to meet the Omnians.
Ellie and Deirdre, who momentarily cheered when the fleets they faced decelerated and came to a halt, were aghast that the fleet Darius confronted chose to attack.
Darius’ attenuated command emptied their bays, launching the remaining banishers and auto-controlled fighters at the advancing fleet.
The bedraggled battleships employed close-in defensive fire as best they could to destroy the swarm of armament they faced. They shredded banishers, which they mistook for missiles. However, the ones that slipped through the fierce round of slugs targeted the nearest contact points, which were the ships’ bows. Three bridge suites were turned into debris and hot gases as the banishers tore through the bows and their Libran-X exploded.
With their defensive fire exhausted, the battleships struggled to stop the travelers. What remained of the fleet was struck repeatedly by the fighters’ energy beams, tearing great chunks of armored metal from the hulls, opening the interiors to space, and detonating missiles. When a traveler was ripped by slugs, the controller selected the option to ram the nearest ship. Within a few minutes of the fighters entering their beam weapon envelopes, the remaining battleships were either dying in a cascade of explosions or drifting off course, as undirected hulks.
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Toral
The Chistorlans couldn’t wait any longer to engage the remaining two entities. They moved around Descartes’ crowded cargo shuttle, preparing to connect the final competitor to Herrick.
> Miftra wasn’t present to argue his point to challenge Herrick with a reduced adversary. Instead, Tittra dominated the conversation, and the programmers fell back on the old ways. The challenger’s responsiveness and aggressiveness were tweaked, supposedly for the better.
When the programmers finished, and the techs completed the connections, Tittra gave the word to proceed. Within a few moments, a case’s orange glow faded. To the Chistorlans’ surprise, it was Herrick who had prevailed. Doubt niggled Tittra’s mind, and his question became, Had Alex been correct in his assumptions?
Descartes received word of the Chistorlans’ outcome, while he monitored the battle for the system. He knew when the probes and comm platforms were eliminated, but he waited for permission to signal the approach to Toral. When it didn’t come, he calculated the probabilities that Alex had some other aspect of the plan that was still maturing. He connected to Cordelia, and she provided a link to the events surrounding the admirals’ fight to detain the lesser fleets.
“When will we journey to the planet?” Tittra asked an Omnian crew member.
“When Alex approves,” the crew member replied. Her patience was being worn thin by Tittra’s constant questioning on the same subject.
“Perhaps Alex isn’t aware of our time constraints,” Tittra pursued.
“If it involves any sort of numbers, Alex is aware of them,” the crew member replied, keeping control of her temper. “And, if for some reason, he isn’t, the fleet has SADEs to keep track of timelines and remind him of critical action points.”
Tittra wasn’t mollified, but he chose to be silent.
Several hours later, Descartes witnessed the defeat of the lesser fleet, which had been challenging Darius’ forces. The fight to contain the last elements of the Talus system was finished. Within moments, Descartes received Alex’s notification to proceed. He signaled the twins, and their three Tridents approached the planet from under the ecliptic.
When the squadron neared Toral’s lower polar region, Descartes communicated to Miranda that the Tridents were ready to launch the shuttles, and she assumed command of the pilots. The bays cleared, and the shuttles launched.
Miranda laid the courses for the travelers, which descended rapidly to keep the planet between the Omnian ships and Artifice’s antennas. They entered the atmosphere and continued to descend until they were a mere three hundred meters above the surface. Navigating with the aid of signals from the Tridents, Miranda guided the travelers toward the opposite pole. Passing over the equatorial zone, the shuttles slowed and sought an even lower elevation. Miranda directed the ships around hills and through mountain passes.
In the pilots’ helmets, they compared their positions, as transferred from the Tridents’ telemetry, with the terrain in front of them. The farther they flew; the slower they flew.
The landscape was inundated by streams and rivers flowing off the tall mountains, the peaks of which glistened with ice crystals. Thick compositions of multicolored vegetation crowded the spaces between the waterways. Finally, Miranda spotted a flat area between two streams. It was probably a flood plain, but for now, it was dry, which suited her perfectly.
Miranda pinpointed the site for the pilots and configured the ships’ landing positions. Then the shuttles dropped until they touched down on soft, sandy soil.
a pilot sent to Miranda and indicated the depth that the landing gear was sinking into the surface.
The rear ramp of the Chistorlans’ shuttle was lowered to let them eye the strange new world. In the meantime, the Dischnya piled off their ships with their grav pallets in tow.
Homsaff gave her warriors a moment to scan the land. It was important to give them time to become accustomed to the new world, especially to let their olfactory senses work. Carnivores, which might exist on Toral, would have detectable odors, which would develop from their diets. The flesh they absorbed would signal their presence.
Simlan and Hessan kept an eye on Homsaff. When she chuffed, they quickly organized their squads.
Myron unpacked a plasma rifle and approached the rows of warriors. He spent the rest of the day and the next two teaching the Dischnya about the weaponry — safety, monitoring the remaining charge, changing power packs, tweaking the rifle’s discharge range and spread, and operating as a fire team. He dwelt especially hard on the concept of overlapping fire. He regretted he wouldn’t be with them to direct their operations. His fear was that the bots would be merciless in their assault, and the warriors wouldn’t possess the skills and experience to repel them.
Two-and-a-half days seemed short for training with such dangerous weapons, but Myron knew this group well. Unlike humans, the warriors were raised under a queen, who completely dominated her nest. Homsaff might not be their queen, but it didn’t matter. Her rule over the warriors was absolute, and the squad leaders, for all intents and purposes, were Dischnya commanders.
In sympathy to the Chistorlans, who were desperate to engage Herrick with Artifice as soon as possible, the travelers departed on the morning of the fourth day. They lifted and flew south, leaving the Dischnya and their grav pallets on the sandy spread of ground between the two streams.