“We have destroyed one of the large ships of the Jellies, as well as several from the lesser infestation,” Raklog reported to Ikthor. “The influx of pestilence has been neutralized by our carapace. Now those in front of us turn at bay to fight.”
“And what of the other Jellies?”
“They rush toward us from spinward, my liege.”
“Concentrate our primary beams on the Jellies. They are the greater danger.”
“What of the infestation that moves at lightspeed?”
Ikthor idly rubbed his claws together, his only sign of concern. “Maintain sufficient swarmships between us and them. Leave our weapons on automated override mode. If they venture too close, they will be destroyed.”
The Council Archon watched as those impeding his advance ceased running and began to close the distance again. “Raklog, reinforce my orders that assault craft are not to converge on the enemy outside of one standard planetary diameter. Discipline will be maintained. We must remain shielded.”
“Of course, my liege.”
“And tell those Claws to concentrate their fire on the largest infestations! Once those are broken, the rest will fall.”
A dozen slow heartbeats passed before Ikthor’s displays altered, flashes of light calling attention to the appearance of the lightspeed-equipped infestations to antispinward. He watched with satisfaction as the automated response system reacted instantly, diverting reserve energy to the closest primary beam and firing.
***
“Dropping pulse: mark,” Okuda’s voice echoed.
Absen waited breathlessly for the screens to clear. The enemy flagship should be appearing now only a million klicks away from Conquest, well within effective range for the main batteries of both.
“Evasive,” Scoggins said unnecessarily as Master Helm Okuda plied his board, working his thrusters long before he could even see what was in front of his ship, trusting that the odds of colliding with anything that could hurt Conquest were miniscule.
Taking that gamble was a lot better than standing still to be shot by one of those grasers.
“Sir, Corpus Christi just got hit,” Johnstone said. “No comms.”
“Let’s hope her sacrifice will save us, then,” Absen replied. “Fletcher, I need eyes on the battle!”
“Coming up, sir.”
When the holotank stuttered to life, Absen saw the cruiser Johnstone had named spinning hard through the void, slagged on one side. “There might be survivors,” he said, and then continued, “but that’s for later. Ford –”
“Firing, sir,” the weapons officer interrupted. Conquest shook as a significant portion of its stored energy dumped into its triple particle beams and reached out toward the huge enemy flagship.
“Missiles away,” recited Ford’s assistant weapons officer, and six hundred nuclear-tipped rockets leaped forth, a pittance in the face of the millions of small craft, but the time had come to throw everything at the enemy in one grand surge.
“The fireships?” Absen asked Michelle.
“Too far away to know, sir. Their programming will pulse them well behind the enemy and into the sun’s glare. Then they have to line up precisely in trail, the two cruisers behind Constitution, and trigger their pulses in perfect synchrony. As they’re coming in at lightspeed, we won’t know what happens until they succeed or fail.”
Absen wondered to himself whether the assault he’d initiated had a chance of success on its own, or if it was merely a diversion. The way he saw it, he’d given himself two throws of the dice instead of one, hoping for a winner on either.
One was all he needed. The swarm could be handled, in war to the knife on the ground if they had to. This damned super-ship, though...
“No apparent result,” Ford said. “We hit them, but a lot of our beam energy was attenuated with swarm impacts. The rest seemed to have been absorbed by their ablative.”
“I can’t believe it,” Scoggins breathed. “We’ve got enough juice to punch through a Monitor. How come we can’t hurt this thing?”
“Focus, Captain,” Absen said. “Signal the fleet to keep hammering away. We have to force them to commit more swarm ships up front and thin out their rear defenses.”
Task Force Charlie was now fully engaged, its densely packed Meme fusors chewing up everything in its path. It had paid, though, in the loss of another Monitor, leaving eight ships to weave a complex pattern, each vessel constantly evading while continuing to drive toward the enemy flagship.
Task Force Bravo’s wall of battle also blasted everything in front of it, but much of the swarm seemed to be bypassing it, flowing around and continuing to accelerate toward Earth.
***
“What the hell are they doing?” Vango snarled as he threw his Raven into a violent corkscrew to throw off the oncoming enemy fighter’s tracking. “They’re not coordinating against us.”
“Be grateful,” Token said as he snap-rolled to follow. “If they made more than one pass and moved on, we’d probably be dead by now. There’s just too many of them.”
“I’m bringing us in closer to the big boys.”
“Whatever you say, boss. Hope their IFF is working.”
“If it isn’t, we’ll never feel it.” He thumbed his comm to the wing freq and transmitted, “First Wing, this is Vango. Close with our ships to stay within their point defense umbrella. Too many leakers are getting through. We can’t fight them alone.” He could see that already he’d lost over a hundred fighters, but the two-thousand-plus kills they’d racked up hardly made a dent in the enemy.
This wasn’t working out quite the way he’d hoped.
Vango shoved the throttles forward to the stops and his fighter leaped toward the cloud of explosions and oncoming wreckage that marked the battered ships of Task force Bravo. As he closed with a cruiser, he lined up a Scourge gunship and triggered a full-charge laser bolt. His target vomited sudden plasma flame as its fuel caught fire, and it tumbled end for end, shedding parts.
And then the two fighter pilots found themselves in a zone of calm, except for the rattle of debris on the skin of their Ravens. Of course, there was no transparent canopy, not in this age of sensors and VR, and Ravens had tough skins for fighters, but Vango slowed down and took position in the wake of the cruiser – Portsmouth, it turned out to be – and Token slid in behind him.
“Watch that exhaust,” he said, pointing at the intermittent fusion flame that stuttered from the big ship’s rear end.
“We’re like a couple of Balearic slingers sniping from behind a Roman century,” Token said.
“I think I know what you just said, you obscure bastard. Just keep shooting.”
Token snorted and lined up another shot.
***
“Slow us as much as you can,” Absen said. “I need time to think.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Michelle reduced the apparent time flow in VR to its slowest possible setting, almost two hundred to one.
“They aren’t pulling craft off their rear screen,” Absen said once he saw the chronos in the screens grind nearly to a halt. “They’re playing it smart, using the swarm defensively while picking us off with their big guns.”
Task Force Alpha was down to seven ships now. Not counting the three suicide craft they desperately waited for, that meant the enemy grasers had destroyed or knocked out six of his heavy cruisers, most with all hands.
Thousands of men and women had died in the space of minutes. Somehow, he had to make it count.
“We’ll maintain our momentum when we drop pulse, right?” Absen asked Michelle.
“Yes, Admiral.”
“How many pulses do we have in the capacitors?”
“Two, sir.”
Absen rubbed his neck, thankful of the ability to nearly stop time. Stepping to the holotank, he reached inside to place an index finger at a point to the rear of the enemy flagship. “We need to pulse here. The whole task force. We’re slaughtering the swarm, but not fast enough, and we’re not drawing any to us.”
“That course takes us through dense portions of the swarm, sir,” Michelle replied. “If we do, we’ll likely lose every forward point defense laser we have. The mains have clamshell armor, but the modules don’t, and we’ll collide with thousands of small craft on the way.”
“Not if we go backward.”
Okuda spoke immediately. “We’ll lose the engines, sir, and all our mobility except TacDrive.”
“But we’ll preserve our forward weapons suite, and our conventional, pre-TacDrive momentum will carry us onward, ass-backward and firing the whole time.”
“We’ll be point-blank to the grasers, sir,” Scoggins said, her face turning pale. “Hit probability is going to climb to over fifty percent per shot. At that rate, we’ll lose a ship every twelve seconds and we’ll all be dead within two minutes.”
Absen held her eyes. “I’m counting on it...all except the being dead part. Michelle, what’s the ETA on our fireships?”
“Twenty to thirty seconds realtime, sir, depending on how long it takes for them to line up.”
“Assuming nothing went wrong,” Absen said.
“I doubt anything went wrong with Captain Huen to oversee the maneuver,” Michelle replied.
“What?” Absen’s head snapped around to stare at Michelle’s avatar. “What in all the blazing hells did you just say?”
“Captain Huen is aboard Constitution, sir. She’s been sending regular updates via datalink using her personal codes.” Michelle’s shoulders hunched and her posture deflated. “I’m sorry, sir. I thought you knew.”
“Goddammit, Sherrie!” Absen cried, looking up at the overhead to stifle a sudden surge of moisture in his eyes. “You didn’t have to go down with your ship!”
“Sir...Henrich,” Scoggins said quietly from his elbow. “She made her choice, and maybe it was the right one if it ensures success. I might have done the same in her place – and there’s no guarantee Connie will actually hit the flagship. She might be diverted and slip past.”
Absen took a deep, shuddering breath, wondering why he could contemplate the death of thousands without shaking, while seeing one brave and honorable captain embrace near-certain doom shook him to the core.
Scoggins’ reassuring touch on his shoulder steadied him, and he straightened, smoothing his face to a mask. “Then let’s make damn sure her sacrifice is worth it. Time our pulse to get there first and clear some of the swarm out with our point defense. As soon as the fireships get there, hit or miss we pulse backward and out of range to begin repairs.”
“That will take us out of the battle, sir,” Michelle said.
“I know. But with a little luck, there won’t be anything left of their flagship. The others can handle the swarm. Besides, we’ll eventually save up enough juice for another TacDrive pulse. I’m sure we can get to some part of the fight for Earth. Now less talk, more do. Get moving. Transmit the instructions.”
Within seconds, the seven remaining ships of Task Force Alpha flipped end for end. As they did, Absen saw another Monitor punctured, leaving seven Meme remaining.
Should I feel guilty that I’m glad it’s them and not us? Absen thought. Human lives are still more valuable than Meme to me, and that’s not going to change.
“This is going to be ragged,” Okuda remarked. “Pulse in two, one, mark.”
The TacDrive segment was short and more brutal than any Absen had ever experienced. He wondered what the crew would have felt outside of their crash cocoons, trying to operate in realspace. Probably they’d all be dead or injured.
Even insulated by VR, all around him the ship rang and shuddered as Conquest plowed at lightspeed into thousands of swarm craft, each impact in essence creating a small fusion explosion that ripped laser modules, sensors, heat radiators and warbots off her hull
Unfortunately, but as expected, a dozen or so happened to enter the exhaust ports of her fusion engines.
It was one thing to suffer thermonuclear fusion blasts on the surface of thick armor built to take such abuse; it was entirely another to withstand them within the plenum chambers of the engines themselves. While tough and hardened against tremendous heat, they weren’t built to absorb that kind of punishment.
So when Conquest emerged from her pulse, Okuda called, “All engines down, Captain. Forty-three percent power generating capacity remaining, and enough for one pulse in batteries.”
“Mister Ford, point defense to automatic,” Scoggins said. “No main battery fire! We don’t have the power.”
“Aye aye, Skipper,” Ford replied, fingers poised over his controls. As soon as the sensors came up, he stabbed at the touchkeys. “Firing on automatic. Hit rate approaching one hundred percent, we’re so close.”
“They’re landing on our hull,” Fletcher said.
Absen asked, “Fireships?”
“Fifteen seconds realtime.” Michelle made a chrono countdown flash to show him what set of numbers to watch.
The admiral nodded. “Johnstone, pass to TF Alpha to perform reverse pulses at the fourteen second mark, twelve million klicks and drop. We don’t want to be here when Connie comes in balls-out.”
That brought a chuckle from several on the bridge, and Absen relaxed just long enough to see one more of his cruisers blown to bits by the graser.
Then Absen swore as he noticed that Conquest was the farthest ship of the remaining six from the Scourge supership. His voice took on a dangerous edge. “Okuda, are you deliberately hanging back? Because if you are, I see a court of inquiry in your future.”
“Sir, I ordered him to do it,” Scoggins said, intervening.
“This is the biggest and best ship in the fleet, Captain. We’re not here to lead from the rear.”
Scoggins braced to attention, but didn’t back down, her Kentucky accent coming out strongly. “And we’re not here to lose the Fleet Admiral and the only human AI in existence – along with not one but two full ships’ crews and a brigade of Marines Earth may need for its defense. I’m your flag captain, Admiral. It’s my job to help you think straight and keep you from getting killed no matter how heroic you’re feeling. So if you want to convene a court of inquiry, sir, I’m your huckleberry.”
Absen shook his head, realizing the truth of her words. “No, Captain Scoggins. You’re right and I’m wrong. Thanks for keeping me straight. Carry on.”
Conquest and her dwindling escort of cruisers continued to slash at the endless ranks of swarm craft. In return, the enemy reacted instinctively according to their role – as Absen had hoped. All ships reported assault craft crash-landing on their hulls, with the warbots cutting Scourgelings and Soldiers to ribbons as they deployed.
Plasma torpedoes and point-blank laser bolts also chewed up everything on the skins of the EarthFleet ships, but only for fourteen realtime seconds.
As soon as the chrono hit that magic number, the remainder of TF Alpha pulsed out in retrograde, continuing in the same direction to spinward. This put them beyond graser range and behind the Meme as they continued to burn swarm craft with their fusors.
Absen, Scoggins and Riggin all stood close to the holotank as it slowly cleared and reloaded a realtime picture, hoping, hoping...
“We hit them!” Riggin’s shout echoed across the bridge.
“Thank God,” Scoggins said, gesturing at the display. “Looks like Connie missed, but Montgomery and Senegal hit them hard.”
“Thank God indeed,” Absen echoed. “Is the flagship dead? Zoom in!”
The view expanded until the enemy super-ship filled half the space, appearing a meter across at arm’s length and gaining detail all the time as data poured in. It tumbled, swarm craft buzzing around it like flies.
“It looks like a pumpkin I shot with my old .410 as a kid,” Riggin said.
“More like an apple with two big bites taken out of it...but is it enough?” Absen asked. “Can we run the record back and see the impacts?”
“No, sir,” Michelle said. “It happened during the two seconds of sensor downtime coming out of pulse. But, from what I can see, forty kilometers of ablative has been ripped away in the two places where our cruisers impacted. By those numbers, the enemy ship itself was not hit, though it might have been damaged by secondary effects.”
“Shit,” Riggin said. “We failed.”
“Not yet,” Scoggins replied, pointing. “Connie’s coming about.”
Absen could see she was right. Constitution, with Sherrie Huen on the bridge, now spun ponderously to bring her prow around toward the enemy.
“Why doesn’t she just use a backward pulse?” Ford asked.
“She’s not a trained Helmsman. She’s operating on instinct,” Okuda said from the pit below.
“Come on, come on,” Riggin muttered.
Absen refrained from comment. It was difficult to cheer for someone who would die even as she achieved her goal.
Abruptly, Constitution flared with energy and tumbled madly. “Graser hit,” Ford said with disgust and shock. “We’re...” he swallowed.
“Screwed,” Scoggins finished for him. Turning to Absen, she asked, “What do we do, sir?”
Absen grasped the rail in front of him. “Transmit to all ships: engage more closely. All main batteries to concentrate on the flagship. Tell the Meme to get in there and use fusors at point blank range. The enemy have to be reeling and in shock. Now’s the time to pile on.”
“Transmitted,” Johnstone said. “But sir, if I may...they fired their graser on schedule when they took out Constitution. That doesn’t indicate they’re in bad shape.”
“No choice, Commander. We have to try.” Absen looked down at Okuda. “How long until we can pulse again?”
“Twelve minutes, realtime, sir.”
“Crap.” Absen stared at the fight as his fleet dwindled under the pounding of plasma torpedoes and graser fire. He could see Johnstone was right. The enemy flagship had ceased tumbling and now flew serenely forward, beams lancing out regularly to often spear and annihilate another of his precious ships, despite their evasive maneuvers.
“They won’t last twelve minutes, sir. You have to pull them out,” Scoggins said urgently.
“You’re right, Captain. Johnstone, transmit for everyone to bug out and head for home. Tell them to preserve themselves and regroup near Luna for a final stand. The Meme too.”
Fifteen minutes later, a pulse had brought Conquest and the remaining five TacDrive-equipped cruisers of TF Alpha into the Earth-Moon space, but without conventional drive, the orbital shipyards might as well have been on Jupiter. Repair bots worked at high speed to do what they could, but without the specialized equipment and spare parts of the space docks, there was only so much that could be done.
One hour remained before the flagship and its attendant swarm of three million or so remaining craft arrived, allowing just enough time to put energy for two TacDrive pulses in Conquest’s capacitors. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re down to our final throws of the dice,” Absen said, looking around at his faithful bridge officers. “The simulations show we can’t beat the flagship in a slugfest. Its grasers are too powerful and accurate. Earth can, however, win the war against the remaining swarm craft alone, even if they all reach the ground for an assault. That means our only option is to turn our remaining six TacDrive ships into SLAMs.”
Scoggins, Ford and the rest stared at their admiral, some shaking their heads, others swallowing and nodding. None seemed able to muster an argument against his declaration.
Absen went on, “There’s just enough time to evacuate. Michelle –”
Michelle’s avatar braced to attention. “I understand, sir. I’m the only one that can’t actually abandon ship, so I’ll control the other cruisers and their attempts, and then send myself in last if I have to.”
“If there was any other way –”
“I know. Sir, you need to get going.”
“Yes, we do.” Absen turned to Johnstone. “Send my orders and make them plain. All hands of TF Alpha to abandon ship. No arguments, no disobedience, no heroics. We need everyone to stay alive and defend Earth, not make pointless gestures. Signal to all ships in orbit to assist in recovery of craft and pods. Move!”
Captain Scoggins nodded as the CyberComms officer passed the word to the cruisers. “COB, coordinate the evacuation. Michelle, you assist. Tell the BioMed staff to grab their aid bags, because we’re going to have a shitload of sick people dumping out of VR in about one minute. Tell them to do whatever it takes to get them off this ship, because in about fifty minutes the window will close.”
With this reminder, Absen belatedly remembered that everyone would have to reenter the real world, with its difficulties and dirtiness. A part of him rebelled, pleading to remain inside the virtuality even if it meant staying aboard to die as Conquest threw herself against the enemy once again.
Stiffening his resolve, Absen said, “Michelle, make sure everyone gets out of VR. Disable the overrides, no excuses. Use your bots to drag them out of their coffins and pile them like cordwood in the assault sleds if you have to. Everyone is evacuating. Oh, tell Bull to use his Marines to help.” They hadn’t been in VR at all, so they should be unaffected by the syndrome.
“That means you too, sir,” Michelle replied.
“Give me a minute,” Absen said.
“Sorry, sir, already initiated the sequence.”
“Dammit –”
Abruptly, the world dissolved around him and he found himself coughing as tubes withdrew from his throat and nose. He felt the stab of needles as injectors pumped brain stabilizers and stims into his veins, and he rolled partially out of the enclosure to vomit on the deck.
Next to him he saw Timmons reach for his coffee maker before he’d even gotten out of the crash couch. “Cuppa joe’ll fix you right up, sir,” the COB said.
“Thanks,” Absen replied as the stink of hot metal and fear hit him. Smell was deprioritized in VR, so upon reentering the real world, it was always one of the first things he noticed. Forcing himself to sit, and then stand, he took the cup of lifer-juice Timmons offered him and drank. “Mm.”
“Told you, boss.” The COB drank his own with one hand while tapping at his board with the other.
Half an hour later, Absen sat in the cockpit of a pinnace en route to Armstrong Lunar Base, staring at its wholly inadequate tactical display. Behind him, Scoggins and the rest of the bridge crew were packed in among others of Conquest’s personnel, whoever happened to be up next to board the craft. Without Conquest’s screens and holotank, bereft of his faithful AI assistant, he felt nearly helpless.
Get over it, Henrich, he told himself. You had a lot less when you skippered a submarine. Besides, the stage is set, the band is playing, the makeup won’t come off and there’s nothing you can do about it. The show must go on.
A tap on his shoulder made him turn to see Michelle’s avatar standing there, bringing a surge of relief. “How are you holding up, Admiral?” she asked.
“Michelle! How...of course, you’re telefactoring. I wish...”
“You wish this body was really me? I know what you mean, sir. If it makes you feel any better, I’ve downloaded a copy of myself into several different mainframes. I don’t know whether they will be me when they are uploaded, or even if they will represent true AI, but it’s the best I can do. At least you’ll know everything I do.”
Absen clapped the android on its shoulder, forcing himself not to think of it as her. “If any of us are alive to tell about it, Michelle, I’ll make sure you’re remembered and honored among Earth’s heroes.”
“Thank you, sir.” The android slipped its palm into his, and he didn’t reject this unusual breach of protocol. They remained that way for several minutes.
“The flagship is coming into effective graser range,” Michelle said, letting go of Absen’s hand. “We’ve lost another frigate.”
“Tell them to back off. Run around to the other side of the planet until that big mother gets close enough to hurt. No need to stand there like a bunch of Napoleonic soldiers taking cannon fire.”
“I’ve passed on your orders, sir. They’re falling back.”
“When are our fireships launching?”
“When you tell me, Admiral. I suggest we do it soon. Once our other ships are out of sight, they might become the targets of the graser and we’ll lose their use.”
Absen nodded. “Good point. How long until the moon lasers have the flagship in effective range?”
“About five minutes, sir, though they can start firing now at reduced effect.”
“Have them open fire. The distraction might save the fireships.”
“Aye aye, sir.” A pause. “They’re opening fire.”
Without his holotank, Absen could only imagine as the heavy laser arrays reached out millions of kilometers and began to chip away at the enemy flagship. He would have rather waited in order to strike hard with the first blow, perhaps surprising the Scourge, but right now the six fireships were his best chance. Two had torn away most of the enemy’s ablative layer; if only one of the six got through to impact in its hull...
“We just lost Helsinki, sir.”
“Dammit.” That was one of the fireships. “Launch them now, all together on converging courses. Then...follow them immediately if that doesn’t do it.”
“Yes, sir. Cruisers in pulse. Explosions registering.”
Absen held his breath, seeing nothing of significance on the small display in front of him. “Report, Michelle. What happened?”
Michelle’s voice fell. “They failed, sir. The Scourge must have anticipated them. The swarm craft in the way were especially dense and knocked them all off course.”
“Can they try again?”
“I’m attempting to line them up again and pulse backward, but...no, sir. They’re all too heavily damaged. They’ve lost most of their forward inertial field emitters. If they tried to pulse now, they’d fall apart like glass under the Gs.”
Absen turned to look into the almost-human face of the avatar. “Good luck, then, Michelle.”
“Thank you sir.” She blinked. “Goodbye, sir.”
He found himself suddenly looking at a dead thing, frozen in place like a statue, all light gone out of its superbly simulated eyes. “Goodbye, Michelle,” he said, fighting to keep his face from cracking in front of his subordinates. “Good hunting,” he whispered.
“Goodbye, Michelle,” echoed several people behind him, and Absen grimaced.
Abruptly, the android came to life again. “Sir, something’s happening.”
“Michelle? Thank God.”
The avatar shoved forward between Absen and the pilot. Her index finger extended a data plug to mate with a port on the cockpit console. A moment later, the main screen changed to show a close-up of the area around the flagship.
“I’m feeding this display directly so you can see what’s going on, sir,” Michelle said.
“Then what the hell is that?” Absen said, pointing at the vessel on the screen, a shape like a stubby-headed lizard with short, blunt feet. It hung in space directly behind the enemy flagship.