The thinking was that the Lurkers might spread out and smash everything in their path before regrouping to strike Toman. Even if they were right, the evacuators weren't going to have a lot of time to work. Toman and his fleet would arrive in just under eighteen hours. They still didn't have eyes on the Lurkers, but every estimate pegged them as showing up within 24 hours.
They were working on the further assumption the enemy would head right for Toman and force a confrontation. The fleet about to arrive in the Belt was only half of the Lurkers' total numbers—the other half was about to arrive at Earth, and although nobody knew exactly where they were either, it was assumed a detachment would stay in planetary orbit while the majority of the second fleet turned around and made way for the Belt. But even half a fleet with superior firepower was enough to overwhelm anything Toman and the Belt could piece together.
Until then, unmanned Belter ships made way for every asteroid station the Lurkers had destroyed, along with a number of mined-out rocks full of tunnels and hollows where the aliens might have set up shop.
None of them had yet found any factories. Nor had any of them been shot at. It was almost enough to make one think that Rada was completely wrong about everything, and the burnt-out station husks were in fact nothing more than burnt-out station husks.
After a few fruitless passes by the scouts, she'd gotten hold of Mat-Nalin to adjust their strategy. The new wave of scouts currently on their way to the stations were carrying moles: finger-sized, self-propelled drills Rada had encountered back in her mining days. The scouts would scatter them like seeds on the surface of the asteroids, allowing the moles to dig toward the core. If there was anything hidden there, the moles would find it.
Rada grabbed some sleep while she could. What was supposed to be a nap stretched out for three hours, then six, ended at last by the buzzing of her comm.
"Our moles on Obold and Athena touched rock half an hour ago." Mat-Nalin grinned, eyes dancing. "They started digging. Didn't get more than a hundred feet below the surface before something fried them. Rada, there's something down there."
She thanked him and ran to the dispenser to pour the strongest coffee it could produce. Though she hadn't missed any major news, she felt like she'd neglected her duty.
Before she knew it, Toman's fleet swept in from the outer Belt, mostly sleek corporate warships with a smattering of navy vessels from various Outer moons and stations. He commanded over a hundred warships in total and had split them into four squadrons, each of which was headed toward its own sector of the Belt. Rada and Winters curved out to join the flight path of Toman's wing, dovetailing seamlessly to take up position on the outskirts of his formation.
Toman popped up on Rada's comm. "Good to be flying with you again."
"You too. Do we know what we're doing yet?"
"I thought we'd start by flushing them out like an infestation of termites."
Rada snorted. "You're pretty chipper for someone who's going to have a Lurker fleet on his tail in another six hours."
"That's because I understand now, Rada. What comes next is out of my hands. All that matters is I'm here to fight."
Toman adjusted course, bringing his squadron of thirty fighters and three corvettes to bear on Proud Rock, which was just a short flight sunward. That meant its dark side was turned to them, as if it was ashamed for them to see the broken domes that had once protected its greenhouses from the murder of vacuum.
"Arm missiles," Toman said. "Stay sharp."
The squadron held formation as it drove toward the oblong of Proud Rock. The instant they passed into combat range, eight ships launched missiles: not the high-explosive, flashy type that was used to rip apart fragile starships and were so common they weren't called anything but missiles, but the type dubbed "rock-kickers": deeply penetrating, bunker-busting rockets that fighter pilots almost never had any reason to employ.
The task force broke downward, away from the habitat. The rock-kickers sailed on toward it. Ten seconds before they could strike home, Proud Rock seemed to explode.
"Contact!" Rada yelled, echoed by four other pilots and their tactical system. Missiles and drones spilled out of the asteroid like an ant's nest doused in boiling water. "Permission to engage!"
"Start killing," Toman said. "Don't stop until there's nothing left moving."
Rada bent back toward the rock, Winters tight on her wing. Eighteen other fighters and one of the corvettes did the same while the others hung back as reserves and sweepers. At Proud Rock, Lurker missiles accelerated hard toward the rock-kickers, ramming into them just miles from the asteroid's surface.
"Concentrate everything on the bogeys," Toman said. "We'll deal with the habitat once the skies are clear."
Rada deployed her drones and waded into the scrum. Her wingmates rattled off scores of rockets at the Lurker front. For a minute, the dazzle of dying missiles and the zip of the drones was as bright and furious as a full-blown engagement.
The collapse, when it came, was hard and fast. A hole opened in the Lurker drone screen. Despite being fully automated, the other drones seemed hesitant to fill it. Toman's pilots surged forward, widening the hole in the enemy's defenses like a sinkhole opening from the ground: and then the whole thing fell apart, collapsing into pockets of drones and rockets that the humans immediately isolated and picked apart.
Proud Rock stood naked, quiet once more.
"Sir," a pilot said. "Permission to crack it?"
"Just a minute." Toman switched his comm wide. "Mat-Nalin, are you still out there?"
Mat-Nalin had brought a contingent of Dashers and Belters to observe the action, setting his team up near a collection of partially mined rocks close enough to the action that the lag on his reply was almost imperceptible.
"We're right here, chief," he said. "What's up? Calling to brag about your kill?"
"Now that you mention it, that was a textbook destruction of a hostile alien force. But I had something else in mind. Let's say we give Proud Rock a few good pokes without getting shot at again. Do you know anyone stupid enough to go inside?"
"Admiral, the Belt won't run out of stupid until the Lurkers force the very last one of us into exile."
"Prepare your marines. I'll get you some eyes inside the tunnels."
Toman dispatched a unit of drones to the surface of the asteroid. He left six of his fighters behind to see no harm came to Mat-Nalin's team and directed the rest of them onward to Johani.
Rada opened a line to Toman. "You can't resist learning about new things, can you? Here we are with an alien infestation, and rather than blow it to hell, you'd rather go see what it's like inside."
"Learning about our enemy and their new weapons is a good idea," Toman said. "But a great idea is to take those weapons and use them against the enemy."
"That's only a better idea if the inbound Lurker fleet doesn't recapture them, turn them on us as originally planned, and then use the facility that we chose not to destroy to resume manufacturing even more weapons."
"In that case, I'll have Mat-Nalin rig the station for remote detonation. If there's one thing Belters are good at, it's blowing up rocks." He sobered, meeting Rada's look. "Judging from the way your eyes are bulging, there is a lecture pressurizing the inside of your skull. Save it. I know what these factories mean—and that if you hadn't discovered them, we'd have been dead within weeks. We will burn the bulk of them to ashes and make sure the few we do keep can never fall back into the Lurkers' hands."
As they came up on Johani, reports rolled in from the other three squadrons. Their targets had played out like Proud Rock: once it became clear the stations were about to be destroyed, the Lurkers had launched everything they had, resulting in brief but brutal battles. The humans had lost two ships so far, along with a score of drones. Toman ordered every one of the other asteroids to be bombed until it was ready to crack apart.
As they came up on Johani, the Lurkers sent out everything they had before Toman was able to order
the launch of a single missile. The extra time was enough for them to set up a basic formation, but the only question was whether the humans would suffer any losses in the skirmish.
They didn't, although it took some tricky flying and the sacrifice of a few drones. Once the scene had calmed down, Toman dispatched drones to scout the habitat in preparation for occupation by Belter marines.
"Just got this," he said to Rada as they regrouped after the attack.
It was a message from Otaya, one of Toman's other flight commanders. He and his people had just assaulted the Lurkers at Gallo Station. Otaya had meant to capture the asteroid intact, but as soon as their first drone had made entry, the whole place had been blown sky high, fire spurting from the entrance like water from a hose and then collapsing on itself as the air ran out.
"I don't think you need to worry about the Lurkers retaking their stations from us," Toman said. "Looks like the new strategy is to blow themselves to hell before we can get our hands on them."
They set off for their next target, a string of three stations over two hours away. Halfway there, Toman forwarded another message, this one from Mat-Nalin. His marines had made it inside Proud Rock. There, in various states of completion, they'd found missiles, drones, and lasers—and the components for much larger engines and hulls than would be used on a drone.
"What does that look like to you?" Toman said.
"The pieces of a ship," Rada said.
"Not just one ship. A whole bunch of ships. If you hadn't caught this, do you have any idea how screwed we'd have been?"
"A fraction more screwed than we still are?"
"They are going to be so mad about this." He began to laugh. "That's good. Maybe it'll goad them into making a mistake."
They were still forty minutes out from the next string of stations when a fleet-wide comm line opened. Winters' face appeared on screen. "We have contact. The Lurker interdiction fleet has arrived."
Rada saw nothing on the long-range scans. Not that that meant anything: Dark Solutions had scanners that others didn't. Perhaps even instruments that were specifically designed to locate cloaked or alien ships. No one else would have any such thing, since no humans had invented high-end stealth that would require special sensors to detect, but Dark Solutions was the only outfit in the System that had no interest in what technology other humans were capable of wielding.
Winters patched his sensors into the fleet network. Four divisions of Lurker vessels blinked into being clockwise from them, several hours distant at current speed.
"Are all their ships accounted for?" Toman said.
"We're seeing the same numbers they had at the conclusion of the ambush of Admiral Vance."
"Which doesn't mean they don't have more that we don't know about."
On the broader tactical screen, Toman pulled up the four divisions' current heading. Transparent light blue lines extended from each batch of ships. Each one soon intercepted one of the stations they'd destroyed on their previous rampage through the Belt.
"Covering their factories," Toman said. "Do we have any readings on their engine signatures leading up to this?"
"Partial." Winters laid these on to the display. Stuttery dark blue patches appeared behind the Lurkers. They weren't close to complete lines, but when Winters added another layer tying the portions of e-sig to the Lurkers' current positions, it formed straight paths leading to the four stations.
"No earlier course changes to suggest this is a ruse." Toman tapped his chin with his thumb. "I expect they'll try to hold as many of their remaining facilities as they can while waiting for the other half of their fleet to arrive from Earth. Once they're reunited at full strength, that's when they'll come for us. Which gives us at least two days to destroy everything they're not holding. Maintain course, full speed ahead."
Rada had expected Toman to spend ten minutes asking for advice and dithering around about every uncertainty involved, as he'd done so often in the past. Had something finally clicked for him? She hoped so. In hindsight, they'd needed this level of decisiveness for a long time. Paradoxical as it sounded, it was possible that an over-reliance on group discussion and consensus-building was what had fractured them in the first place.
She confirmed the Silence's course and leaned back in her seat. Winters' map of the Lurkers remained onscreen. To see which habitats the humans could pick off without risking a sortie by the Lurkers, Rada highlighted every station remotely close to the enemy's destinations.
She frowned. She ordered up a display of the Lurkers' potential flight paths from their current location. One stood out like a beacon. She recorded it and pinged Toman's comm.
He answered. "Make it fast."
"Here." She transmitted her recording. "This is the Lurkers' actual strategy."
"Okay, make it not so fast after all."
"I was examining the remaining asteroids to see which ones we could safely hit without risking a counterattack. That's when I saw this." She ran her finger across the screen of her device, drawing circles around the four stations the Lurkers were headed toward, then a wider circle to show the range they could effectively cover as a single fleet.
"See this? If you moved two of their divisions to these two asteroids instead, they could cover much more space, including all four of their current priorities. So why are they using a suboptimal coverage pattern?"
Toman's eyes skipped back and forth across the screen. "Because their goal isn't to maximize coverage."
"Watch this." She ran a simple simulation displaying the course of both the human and Lurker ships over the next few hours. Toman's first, second, and third squadrons all got moderately further away from the enemy, but the fourth squad drifted slightly closer.
She ran a final simulation. In it, forty minutes from the present time, the Lurkers bent their course toward the fourth squad.
Toman swore. "At that point, even if we were to head directly toward the fourth squadron, we wouldn't catch up with them before the Lurkers do."
"We have to regroup right now. Or else the aliens will smash a quarter of our forces just like they did to Admiral Vance."
"That will mean breaking off our attacks on the stations." Toman's mouth twitched. "I'll send the order."
He sent the command across the fleet. All four squads diverted from their current course, making to rendezvous in empty space. Just a few minutes after, the Lurkers changed course as well to stick tight to the humans' heels.
"I've run some new calculations," Toman said once everything had been squared away. "If we stick together as a single fleet, we won't have time to destroy the rest of the infected stations before the second half of the Lurker force arrives."
"We can't split up. They'll stick close enough to isolate and crush anything that leaves our main group."
Toman crossed his arms. He bounced on his heels and turned to pace, then arrested himself and stared into the camera. "Change of plans. We're attacking them—and we're doing it now."
"But that means leaving their remaining stations intact."
"We can't get all their stations right now anyway. Going after the ones we can will only whittle us down, leaving us weaker for the coming battle. We'll decide it here and now. If we're still alive afterward, we'll be able to bomb out the rest of their factories before their second fleet gets here from Earth."
"We won't lose that much going after their other factories first. Why not take out as many as we can and then attack their fleet?"
Now he did begin to pace, gesturing at the screens as energetically as if the attack was already happening. "The more we leave for them to defend, the more of a liability we put on them. On top of that, they must be furious about how much we've destroyed already. That could lead to mistakes. They might stretch themselves too thin. Split themselves up. Walk into a trap.
"All this time, we've been the ones forced to defend our worlds—and to react to the Lurkers' latest attack. It's time to take that weapon away from the Lurkers and use it against
them."
"Wouldn't we be better off taking half a day to watch what the Lurkers intend to do here? Then we can—"
Toman made a cutting gesture. "This isn't an argument, Rada. It's an order. I want you and my officers to cook up a plan of attack while I call on the System to rally in the Belt."
"Toman—sir—if we're attacking now, how will anyone possibly get here in time to help?"
"They won't. But if by some miracle we defeat their first fleet, some of our fellow humans might arrive in time for us all to make a stand against the second one." He lifted an eyebrow. "We're going in as soon as we've made rendezvous with the other squads. Now go and get me a plan."
"Yes, sir." Before she knew what she was doing, she saluted.
Without hesitating, Toman saluted back.
~
To her confusion—certainly not to her horror, but to her bemusement at the very least—Rada found herself wishing she had Webber and MacAdams there to help her plan their attack.
That hadn't always been the case. To be honest, she'd always found Webber's ideas overenthusiastic, if not outright reckless. MacAdams' bald head was a lot more level, but it could also be grimly fatalistic, as indifferent to human life as one of those gods from the old myths who killed people like people killed bugs.
Yet somehow, when the three of them had gotten together, it had worked.
But as so much of her recent life had proven, life was change. Winters, a man she barely knew, was what she had now. She opened a line to him to flesh out a strategy, giving him a summary of her talk with Toman.
"Admiral Benez is right," Winters said. "The Lurkers came here to defend their factories from us. We can exploit that. If we poke at multiple targets at once, we'll force them to decide between sacrificing some of their stations, or splitting their fleet and leaving it ripe for our attack."
"I don't think they'll fall for that. Every other time we've put them in a tight spot, the Lurkers have gotten conservative. They'll just sacrifice the stations we threaten, save what they can, and wait for the other half of their fleet to arrive."
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