With the vid sent off, I began another one to Grace.
“Sorry about not messaging you sooner. Been a bit busy. Some idiot put me in charge of an eighteen ship fleet, and forgot to give me any training in how to command it.”
I grinned into the cam.
“I missed you last night. Going into battle soon, so had to say that. Been a long while since anyone has gotten that close to me for me to miss them. It’s a good thing, even if we don't know where it's going.”
I paused, considering if I should say any more.
“Stop sitting there looking bored. Fearless might be under shielded and under gunned by standards now, but she's still a formidable fighter. Stop thinking of her as a troop ship, and start thinking along the lines of her being a single seat fighter, with troop capability. Get your AI to start building you an all-round cam view, so wherever you look from your chair during battle, all you see is what's going on outside in that direction. Practice it until you reach the limit of what you can be aware of at any time, and then drill yourself until you can use it effectively in combat. If you're not using strafe a lot, you're not…”
I stopped.
“Sorry. Grandmothers and eggs. I've got my pilots in the simulators, and I'm about to join them. If you don’t have one, get one built, or get a simulation mode added to your chair. I don’t want to survive what's coming only to find you died of boredom. In fact, lets both of us not do the dying thing. Okay?”
I suddenly felt awkward. And hoped it didn’t show.
“I'll try for a live link when I can. Catchya.”
I closed the vid, thought about it for a moment, and sent it.
Fifteen
We went to plan B.
The plants stopped about two minutes out from the jump point, and changed their formations into a two line oblong, one above the other.
We'd practiced for an hour, trying four different ways they could come through, and the second was the winner. Every pilot was getting a feed from the comnavsat on the other side, even though Jane would be controlling the firing this time.
“Do they know we're here?” asked someone.
“Of course not,” responded Hawk.
“They look like they expect to be ambushed,” insisted the same voice.
“They do, don't they,” agreed another voice.
And they did. I could see them moving turrets so most of the arc around them would be covered by at least some guns after they jumped. But the thing which interested me was, they were anticipating us. As in a single carrier, with three squadrons of fighters, and two support ships. The gun coverage was designed more for firing at fighters, than anything bigger. Sure, the battleships and cruisers were setting up to hit the carrier first, wherever it was, but they didn’t seem to be considering the possibility we'd been reinforced.
They were spaced so only twelve ships came through each time, battleships in the center of each line, with a cruiser next to each. The rest were destroyers.
We had plenty of time to adjust our positions.
“Stand by,” I called, as the first fleet began to move towards the jump point. “Remember, your AI will be firing first. Hold your positions unless you take so bad a hit, another will destroy your ship, in which case you peel off and RV with Blossom. If anything gets through in your zone, use your initiative, but stay in formation. This is not going to be a dogfight.”
I was reasonably certain this wouldn't become a dogfight. But I didn’t want anyone planning on it. Blossom was a good five minutes away, and if the fight reached all the way there, we'd probably have lost it. Unassailable was thirty seconds behind us, and Jane had factored in her firing when positioning ships.
This was one battle where Jane could and probably would fight it alone. Granted she had a lot of ship AI's taking orders from her, but hers was the guidance. Hers were the orders. AI speed orders.
There was a wild card in play here, but I thought we had it covered.
Unassailable started firing missiles. Followed by battleship pulses. The rest of us waited, seconds ticking down relentlessly.
Claymore was hanging above and slightly in front of the jump point, aimed at where the top battleship would appear, with the titan turret and underside battleship turrets aimed at the second one. The fixed guns were linked up to all fire at once.
Lined up on each side were the corvettes, pointing down at where a ship would appear. In the same relative position underneath and slightly forward of the jump point, the destroyers were also lined up, pointing up. Flights of Excaliburs filled the gaps. We all had capital ship missiles, torpedoes, and guns.
I watched as the first enemy fleet moved into the jump point, switching back to our side a second before they jumped. I was in time to see our massed firepower stream towards a still empty jump point, and half a second later, solidly hit the fleet jumping in. Torpedoes continued slamming home for another two seconds as the Excaliburs fired off ten singles each, and the corvettes and destroyers fired twice more each.
I’d seen what the Imperator had done. This wasn’t in his class, but none of the trees survived. The mess was substantial though, as ships had broken into large sections, and their momentum carried them along the down jump lane. We had enough firepower to put them out of action, but not enough to reduce them to the Imperator’s dust level.
Our ships all moved. Not much, not far, but enough to make a pulse aimed specifically at where we’d been, miss.
Nothing happened for five seconds. I watched turrets moving on the fleet about to jump, and marveled at how fast they were adapting.
Our capital ship missile launchers reloaded, turrets adjusted, sights aligned again.
And the second time was a repeat of the first. A few trees got off some shots, which was pretty amazing, and they all missed, because we’d moved. Definitely some sort of through the jump point communication going on in the second or so before ships died.
The Excaliburs were now out of cap ship missiles. The bigger ships reloaded again. We changed positions again.
The third wave came through, and this time four of the tree destroyers made it through our barrage. Damaged badly, but still intact, and they managed to hit four of the corvettes with solid punches before they died. Our shields held, but only just.
The wild card I’d worried about didn’t get played. If it’d been me on the other side, I’d have launched fighters before jumping, and come through like a cloud. There would have been no way we’d have been able to kill all of them. The wonder was, it appeared they hadn’t even tried to launch fighters this time. Either they didn’t have any, which was possible considering they had to have fleets left which predated having fighters added, or the plant in charge thought they had mass and firepower to take a carrier and a small number of fighters.
“Thanks Jane,” I said.
She nodded. The chatter going on was all high spirited, and I let them go for a minute, while Claymore plotted what the debris was doing, and Jane double checked all of it was inert. Taking control back myself, I pulled Claymore out of the line of ships, and up and away from the debris field far enough to make it safe for fighters to land. I even turned Claymore so her rear flight deck entrance was towards where the fighters were coming from.
“Excaliburs RTB,” I ordered.
Squadron leaders gave orders to flights, and one by one, each flight landed, and were taken down to the maintenance deck. When they were all aboard, it was the Corvettes turn to dock, and finally the destroyers. With all ships safely out of the debris zone, I moved Claymore back to join Unassailable, where Blossom was also moving.
The Imperator popped up as a hollo.
“Well done Commander. Text book jump point defense. Rather more debris this time, but understandable. Did I see them anticipating where you were the second and third times?”
“No anticipation. They knew exactly where we were, and what we were.”
“More evidence of intelligence would you say?”
“Intellige
nce yes. Creative thinking, no.”
“Yeah. They didn’t just stand off and fire through the jump point.”
“Or launch their fighters on the other side.”
“Did you see any fighters?”
“No, but we hit them hard enough and fast enough they probably couldn’t launch.”
“All the same, this was different.”
“We just have to be careful each time sir. At some point they will do both things, even if they have to sacrifice something to get zeroed in on us.”
“Carry on Commander.”
“Aye sir.”
He vanished.
Sixteen
Half the salvage droids started cleaning up the mess.
The rest moved ordnance to all ships to replace what they’d used, and then joined in the cleanup. The debris was taken to Unassailable for storage, to be fed into the fabricators as fast as they could make what we needed.
The pilots stood down for several hours, before going back into the simulators to continue their training. We hadn't needed to dogfight this time, but the time was coming, and I wanted the big ships integrated properly before then.
Fabricators. Something niggled at me about fabricators.
“Jane?”
“Chris?”
“Fabricators.”
“What about them?”
“Are they at full capacity?”
“Those doing repair fabrication are. So are the ones making new Excaliburs. I know we got more, but I think we need to make some more anyway.”
“I agree. Even if you just standoff with them at a distance, their cap missiles and torps would add a lot to what we can hit them with, and maybe give us that fourth and maybe a fifth fleet kill capability at a jump point. Can we speed that up?”
“Not with the fabricators we have.”
“Can the fabricators make new fabricators?”
She gave me a why would they look, and caught up.
“You want me to devote hangar space to doubling the number of fabricators we have making Excaliburs?”
“Or triple them.”
“I can do that. But there is something we can’t duplicate.”
“What?”
“The power augmentation crystal. Thorn made a stack of them before he vanished. I have a dozen, which will do six Excaliburs. Most of what I’m carrying is a smaller version for the Brawler drone. And they’re not compatible unless we redesign the Excalibur again.”
“Can we get more?”
“The shipyard in Haven probably has them, but the chances are they’re going to run out soon to, at the rate they’re being built.”
I looked at her, she looked at me, and we both looked at Shenaid.
“Don’t look at me.”
“We are looking at you,” I said. “You said you couldn’t move the ship any real distance. But you also said you could create things. Can you create more of the Excalibur crystals?”
“I’ve never tried.”
“Will you?”
“Sure, but I doubt I’ll be able to do more than a few before being too fatigued to do more.”
“What if we can supply you with an energy source so you don’t need to use your own?”
“I told you I couldn’t do that.”
“Have you tried?”
She hesitated.
“Sort of.”
“How sort of?”
“Okay, not very sort of.”
“What stopped you?”
“Fear of taking too much, and ending up with none at all.”
“What if I can supply you with an energy source where that won’t matter?”
“Can you?”
I looked at Jane.
“Monty?” she suggested.
“What’s a Monty?”
“The frigate parked back there,” I said, jerking my right thump back over my shoulder. “It can’t use its shields while parked there, so that power generation is not being used. No-one lives on the ship, so it doesn’t really need life support. It’s too under-shielded to risk in a battle unless we’re totally desperate, so while it’s parked, the vast majority of its power generation is unused.”
“And if you drain it all,” added Jane, “it won’t matter.”
She closed her eyes and concentrated for a moment.
“I can feel the energy there, but there isn’t much.”
“That’s because the ship is more or less powered down,” said Jane.
“Can you have a crystal brought over from Unassailable?” I asked her.
“Where to?”
“Monty’s cargo bay?”
“Should be enough room for a test anyway.”
“Don’t let me detain you ladies any longer.”
Jane rose, beckoned to Shenaid, who reluctantly rose, and the two of them left the bridge.
“Encourage her to experiment,” I pinged Jane. “Monty is nothing in the scheme of things. But if making crystals can strengthen her magic ability so she can use all that energy without tiring herself, step her up to using one of the destroyers as well. If we can get her to use the combined energy of all the docked ships, and even all the fighters, maybe she can jump the ship from system to system.”
“I thought that was where you were going,” she said in my head. “Don’t ping. Just talk to me.”
I knew that. But she made it so easy to forget she wasn’t human.
“Unless we get into a fight where we’re likely to lose fighters and need her moving ability, I’d just as soon use her to make more crystals, and learn how to use whatever energy is available to power her magic for really big uses.”
“I’m on it.”
Seventeen
It was dinner time before the mess was cleaned up.
Jane sent all the Excalibur threes through the jump point as soon as it was safe to do so, and they were spreading out across the system. The Lightnings went with them, with their extra speed sending them to the likely places for jump points on the opposite side of the system, which they could reach first.
We had maps of most of known space, taken from Keerah and Ralnor ships and stations, and from Trixone stations, but this spur of systems was unknown to any of them. Obviously the plants had found a jump point in, but what it meant was we didn’t know where the points in the next system were, or even how many there were, until we scouted the whole system.
And the thing which bothered me, sitting there in my command chair trying to teach myself to be a fleet leader, was the Trixone had to be scouting as well. Which meant there was very likely more of their ships around, if only scouts.
Except. I pondered what I’d seen so far. And it didn’t include scouts.
“Jane?”
Her face popped up in a hollo over the console, like the captains did.
“Chris?”
“Has it occurred to anyone the maps we have from the Trixone are either incomplete, or deliberately inaccurate?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because we’ve not seen any scouts. Two fleets have come through here as if they know where the jump points are, and where they lead. The Keerah obviously didn’t know this route exists, but the plants do. Granted the first fleet was recon, but they’ve moved like they knew where they were going.”
“Meaning what?” asked Claymore, looking at me intently.
“Meaning the plants know where the Lufaflufs moved to, and or they know where Thorn’s people are. I also suspect this backdoor through Keerah space must have a now overrun Keerah planet up ahead of us somewhere.”
“Are you implying there’s a Lufafluf traitor on their planet?” asked Jane.
“Perhaps. But didn’t we take in refugees of a number of species? One or more of those could be spies, and given the rift trade network linking the stations now, and the traders using it, anyone could have told the Trixone when the AMS found a new jump point, and the plants figured out where the other end was. They’ve had time for scouts to join up the dots, and remain undiscovered b
y the AMS drones. And it is possible they already knew the whole way with the exception of the jump into Lufafluf, and now they know it’s not a dead end. It also explains how Blossom was ambushed so effectively.”
“That’s a possibility. I’ll see what I can do to match up the maps. You want me to tell Jon?”
“Yes please. He needs to know, even if I’m wrong.”
“And if you’re right?”
“Lufafluf needs a defense force even more than before, because I don’t have enough ships to leave them behind here to choke the jump point. So as we move further along, the chance there’s an alternate route a fleet can go past us via, increases. If one does do an end around us, we most likely won’t be able to get back fast enough to intercept them, especially if we get engaged with a superior force at the same time.”
“That will be the Democratic Union Militia’s problem in the first instance. They have ships on the way there now, including two Scimitar class. They have several upgraded older cruisers on the way as well, with more to follow. I believe a small force of battle mages is heading there as well.”
“Good to know. At least they’ll get a week’s warning if anything does get around us.”
“What makes you think there’s a Keerah planet that has been overrun?”
“I can’t see them letting the plants through. Might not be Keerah either, but one of their conquered species. I think we’ll find either another dead planet covered in Trixone, or a planet fighting for its collective animal life, and slowly losing.”
“So I also should look for this Keerah planet?”
“Might be a string of them for all we know. They could all have been hit one after the other in a line from the frontier.”
“I’ll pass that thought on to Jon as well. Maybe he can get the Keerah to give us a list of lost planets around this area.”
Claymore snorted. I can’t say I disagreed with her. But it was worth the effort of asking.
I hesitated before saying anything more. Jane noticed it.
Legend of Dreamwalker (The Hunter Imperium Book 5) Page 8
