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Getting to Zebra19 would be the longest trip that Shiloh had ever undertaken. Over 240 hours just to get to Bradley Base, and then 3rd Fleet would start hopping along the Zebra chain of star systems with a bypass of Zebra9. In fact, they would give Zebra9 a wide berth. The recon frigate Ranger had carefully surveyed a course that diverged from the path starting at Zebra7, then curved around back into alien space in a long detour that ended with Zebra19. Shiloh knew that one of the less urgent tasks for the recon frigates was to eventually find a shortcut from Bradley Base to the closest point of the Zebra chain detour. For now though, 3rd Fleet had to follow the long way.
The arrival at Bradley Base was a welcome interruption of the repetitive jumping, refueling and more jumping. Despite the howls of protest, Shiloh insisted that all gas giant skimming be done the fast i.e. bumpy way. Refueling at Zebra12 and 15 was risky enough without making it worse by taking the more comfortable but longer supersonic procedure. He wanted the crews to get used to the stomach-churning rollercoaster sub-sonic version, and if the vibration and rattling caused any equipment problems, then the time to find that out was on the way there and not under the threat of imminent combat. The thought also occurred to him that if one of his ships, especially one of his carriers, developed a serious enough technical problem, he could use that to justify aborting the mission. Howard wouldn’t be happy if he did that, but Shiloh was damned if he would risk disaster by taking just two carriers into battle instead of three. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that Valkyrie was right. They had to hit the enemy systems with at least enough firepower to have a good chance of rolling right over the enemy. Otherwise, they were just asking to have their heads handed to them.
Korolev was still Base Commander, and when informed of Shiloh’s request to swap fighters again – which was backed up by Howard’s authority to do so – he agreed to the swap readily. The Base got 20 of the less experienced fighter pilots and 3rd Fleet’s squadrons picked up 20 pilots with at least some experience and more importantly, more maturity in terms of their developing personalities. With the Base’s refueling capabilities available, Shiloh relented and gave 3rd Fleet a break from direct refueling again. After Shiloh compared notes with Korolev, the Base Commander confirmed what Shiloh had heard. No sign of enemy activity had been seen since Defiant’s encounter at Blue2 and Green4, even though almost a month had gone by since then. Korolev was convinced that the enemy was planning another attack on Bradley Base. Shiloh thought it was far more likely that the enemy was diverting reinforcements to Zebra19 to prepare the ambush of 3rd Fleet but he kept his opinions to himself. Korolev wasn’t cleared to know the whole story about retro-temporal communication.
Refueled and rested, 3rd Fleet accelerated away from Bradley Base and headed for Zebra2, the closest system with gas planets along their path. Three hundred and thirteen hours later, 3rd Fleet emerged at the very edge of the Zebra12 star system. The crews were by now used to the routine of searching for each other after being scattered due to tiny differences in jump drive calibrations that made jumping and staying in a tight formation from one star to another impossible. Shiloh was on the Bridge, standing beside the Command Station. He was wearing the newly developed Flag Officer's Command Helmet that effectively allowed him to get the same visual information that could be displayed on the main tactical viewer. He could stay in contact with all ships and fighters whether or not he was on the Bridge, With sensors linked to the special gloves he wore, he could gesture with his hands to activate virtual controls projected in front of his eyes. By the time 3rd Fleet reached Zebra12, Shiloh had become proficient with the new technology. The Bridge had a spare acceleration chair if he needed to secure himself during violent ship maneuvers.
With his helmet now showing him the tactical situation within a radius of 30 light seconds, he watched as the icons representing all nine ships gradually returned to station around Defiant, the Fleet flagship. When they were back together, they would microjump to the general vicinity of one of the four gas planets in this system. Just like Sol, two of the gas planets were large giants, while the other two were significantly smaller. As luck would have it, they were distributed around the system sun fairly evenly, thereby making it even more complicated for the enemy to keep an eye on all four of them. Not impossible, but not easy. He was about to order the communications system to set up a conference call with all ship COs and Squadron Leaders when his vision faded to black. At first he thought the helmet’s virtual display was malfunctioning but then the scene in front of him changed to the real Bridge. Tanaka was standing in front of him and talking to him.
"How did you know that they’d be waiting for us at Z12D, Sir?"
The vision immediately dissolved and was replaced by the same tactical display as before. So if this vision were to be believed, the battle would be here in Zebra12 at the smallest of the four gas planets, designated as Zebra12D or Z12D for short. Shiloh switched his helmet’s internal display from the immediate tactical environment to the computer-generated image of Z12D. It was the only one of the four gas planets that did not have any moons. That couldn’t just be a coincidence and after thinking about that for a while Shiloh understood why. The enemy had used robotic surveillance stations on gas giant moons at Zebra9 and other systems to monitor the space around those planets for signs of human activity. If they had deployed the same surveillance stations on all the moons of the other gas planets in this system, and if 3rd Fleet tried to refuel at any of them, it would almost certainly be detected and the enemy would know which gas planet had been used and could then send that information back in time to deploy their ambush force there. While deploying robotic equipment in orbit around Z12D was certainly possible, it suddenly occurred to Shiloh that it wasn’t necessary. If none of the other stations reported sighting 3rd Fleet at any of the other three gas planets, then by process of elimination, Z12D had to be the refueling point and they could send THAT information back too.
Trying to think in temporal terms was starting to give Shiloh a headache. Retro-temporal Communication or RTC as Shiloh began to think of it, really did favor the defender. The question now was whether this vision was a friendly attempt to guide him or an enemy attempt to confuse him? Unlike the questionable vision at Green4, this one was visually clear and the audio was precisely in sync with Tanaka’s mouth but that didn’t prove it was sent by a friendly source. The aliens might just have gotten better at it, although that didn’t really make much sense because if they could send a vision back to ANY point in the past, then why not use the improved version to send a better vision to him at Green4? The other thing, that suggested this was a friendly vision, was that it hadn’t offered a specific course of action, unlike the Green4 version, which had tried to get him to do nothing and wait. Knowledge of the alien presence near Z12D still left him with multiple options.
The least risky option was to send a wave of recon drones at high speed with active scanning past Z12D. If enemy ships were waiting nearby, the drones would see them. Ah, but you’re not thinking temporally, Shiloh, he thought to himself. Active radar scanning would definitely be detected by any detection station in orbit, or maybe even hovering in the planet’s upper atmosphere. It would be simple to arrange for the station to send a contact report by narrow-beam laser to another device in deep space, which could then relay it to the aliens later so even if 3rd Fleet could locate and destroy the station, it might already be too late to prevent the ambush. But hold on ... if all the station detects are radar pulses from sources too small to be ships, and nothing else shows up later, then what would be the point of destroying those drones that will detect the ambush force as well? Come on, Shiloh. Think it through! Okay, so suppose he sent in the recon drones and they detected nothing. If that were the case, he’d then send in the carriers and frigates. If the aliens had at least one detection station in orbit, it would see the drones and then detect his ships afterwards. What could the enemy do with that information? If they sent it back in time so that their here-and-now counterparts could set an ambush near Z12D, then the recon drones would see them and 3rd Fleet would back off, which would then change the information to be sent back in time. In other words, you’d have a paradox.
That didn’t help him any. He only had two real choices. One was turn around and go home, but if he did that without making contact – REAL contact, not just a vision – Howard would face a lot of pressure to sack him. The other option was to send some or all of 3rd fleet to Z12D. That would then force the ambush. Iceman’s vision implied that there had been some kind of firefight with losses among the fighters. What if he just sent in fighters? Would that be enough of a carrot to entice the enemy to set up an ambush? If his fighters were ambushed, that would certainly justify returning to Sol but he didn’t like the idea of sacrificing them that way. It would be no different if they were human pilots. You’d still have to send them, he thought. That was the nature of fighters versus ships. Better to lose a few fighters than a few ships. He had to figure out a way to entice the enemy to set and spring an ambush while at the same time work it so that most of his fighters made it back to the ship, but how? Suddenly the answer popped into his head. Of course! The decoys. Each carrier was carrying two of the big decoys. They were almost as big as fuel shuttles and designed to reflect as much radar energy as possible, thereby making them look much bigger to the enemy than they really were. If he sent in all six decoys in a formation that suggested they were ships, and if that formation was escorted and preceded by fighters AND if they approached Z12D from an angle that just happened to generate a lot of reflected sunlight, then the alien detection stations were bound to see the fighters first and decoys following in their wake and perhaps the ambush force commander would decide to concentrate his fire on the ‘ships’ first on the theory that if the ships were destroyed, then the fighters would be stranded here and would eventually run out of fuel. He’d have to make the fighter/decoy formation look like it was intending to skim Z12D, and that meant that they’d be decelerating and there would be no active scanning that would give the game away. It had to look as though a group of ships had been caught by surprise and annihilated. The enemy had to believe that they’d won a tactical victory. If they believed that, then the information sent back in time wouldn’t change. Maybe that kind of tactical deception was the key to overcoming the advantage that RTC gave defenders although if humans managed to pull it off too often, the aliens would eventually get wise. But that was a question that could wait for another day. Right now he had a battle to plan.
It was almost six hours later when everything was ready and everyone was in their right position. 3rd Fleet had made a series of microjumps that brought them to within 100 million kilometers of Z12D and on a vector that would allow them to microjump past Z12D’s gravity zone to the other side. VF002 under Tumbleweed had launched hours ago and was now closing in on the rendezvous point that was 36.5 million kilometers away from the gas planet and just outside its gravity zone. TG 3.2’s frigates, each one carrying a decoy drone, had separated from 3rd Fleet and was now lined up for a carefully calculated microjump, that would place them just in front of Tumbleweed’s fighters, at the same velocity as the fighters.
Shiloh was strapped into the spare acceleration chair with his Command Helmet on. The Fleet was at Battle Stations. The Bridge seemed to be unnaturally quiet. Everyone knew what was about to happen, and were waiting for him to give the green light. He checked the countdown timer projected on the inside of his helmet. 45 seconds to go. TG 3.2’s microjump had to be executed at the precise split second and would be controlled by computer. All he had to do was withdraw the ‘hold’ command that was now in effect. As the time hit 30 seconds, he reached up with his right hand and deactivated the virtual Hold button. The Mission Status indicator shifted from red to green. TG 3.2 was already over 55,000 kilometers away from the rest of 3rd Fleet but was still in communication via tight beam com lasers. When the return beam disappeared, that would be confirmation that TG 3.2 had jumped. A fraction of a second after the timer hit zero, the communications status with TG 3.2 changed from CON indicating contact to LOS indicating Loss of Signal. The frigates had jumped and would emerge from Jumpspace almost instantaneously 53.5 million kilometers closer to Z12D. From this point on, Shiloh would be out of communication with VF002 and TG 3.2 until they rendezvoused on the opposite side of the gas planet. That rendezvous would be tricky. His carriers would have to be at the exact point where the fighters and frigates expected them to be but that was quite a few hours away yet.
In his mind, Shiloh went over the plan as to what had to happen now. As soon as TG 3.2’s frigates emerged from Jumpspace, any alien detection stations would learn that six ships had emerged from jump. The frigates would immediately launch their decoy drones, which the fighters would take up formation ahead of. Once the decoys were launched, the frigates would swing around as quickly as possible to a heading that would miss the gas planet’s gravity zone, at which point TG 3.2 would microjump far enough away to be sure of avoiding detection. It would then have to change course again, microjump again and then change course once more, to get to where the carriers would arrive after their microjump. When the fighters and decoys got close enough to be detected by reflected sunlight, the aliens would see exactly what they would expect to see. Six (apparently) large ships escorted by a number of very small craft that were decelerating towards the gas planet. Tumbleweed was in command of the fighters and decoys. Shiloh had carefully briefed him before launch. His orders were to veer off as soon as the aliens opened fire. The fighters would not engage in active scanning and they would only use their modular lasers if the enemy decided to fire on them. As long as the enemy left them alone, they would not fire back. It was a long shot to expect the enemy not to fire on them but Shiloh could make the case for not doing so. If he was the enemy commander, and he saw six big targets, he would concentrate on those first. Once they were taken out, he would evaluate the situation. Since the fighters had already demonstrated at Green4, that they could make themselves difficult targets to see and hit, the enemy commander would be faced with a tradeoff. Firing at fast, elusive targets using reflected sunlight only wasn’t likely to get a lot of results. If the aliens started using active radar scanning, they’d be making themselves into highly visible targets as well. If neither side used active scanning, then exchanging laser fire was pretty much a waste of energy, and in the case of the fighters, a waste of precious fuel too. So went the theory but Shiloh was astute enough to realize that these aliens might have a completely different way of thinking about strategy and tactics.
He turned his attention to the countdown timer that was seconds away from 3rd Fleet’s own microjump. Unlike the other one, this one would automatically go ahead unless Shiloh aborted it, and he had no intention of doing so. There was no longer any point to his carriers staying where they were. If they were going to be where they were expected to be at the right time, they had to jump now. The microjump went off without a hitch. All three carriers deployed a total of 24 recon drones that spread out to form a detection perimeter using passive sensors only. When he was satisfied that no enemy ships were anywhere near them, he ordered the carriers to stand down from Battle Stations but remain on heightened alert status. If there was no enemy presence near the gas planet, Tumbleweed would send a message as soon as it was confirmed, roughly 55 minutes from now. But if there was an ambush, Tumbleweed would not transmit any message because it might be intercepted and tracked. That meant they had a two hour wait before they could expect to hear anything from Bettencourt, and a five and a half hour wait before hearing anything from Tumbleweed. Such was the nature of space battles fought over millions of kilometers. Shiloh took his Command helmet off and sighed. He was tired after being awake for almost 20 hours now. Before returning to his quarters to get a few hours rest, he spent some time chatting with Tanaka, Falkenberg and the rest of the Bridge personnel. Fleet Admirals weren’t required to stand watches so the least he could do was to spend a few minutes boosting morale before catching some sleep. No thoughts of a pickle now.
When he woke up 4 1/2 hours later, he knew that Bettencourt’s TG 3.2 had arrived as planned without any problems. If that hadn’t been the case, Tanaka would have notified him as per his orders to her. There was also no point in asking the Bridge if they had detected any signs of laser fire. At this range, laser hits wouldn’t be bright enough to be seen. The fact that no fission blasts from Mark 1 attack drones had been detected either meant that nobody had used active scanning, which would have been necessary to pinpoint targets for the drones to aim at. In order to preserve the impression that there were no human ships left in Zebra12, the fighters were under orders to hold off on trying to contact 3rd Fleet until they were within 10 million km of the rendezvous point and even then, communication would be one way. The fighters would send out a highly focused burst of microwaves towards where 3rd Fleet should be and away from the Z12D gas planet. Any alien ships still near Z12D would not detect the outgoing transmission and 3rd Fleet would wait until their recon drones had direct and secure contact with the fighters using rangefinder lasers and only then would 3rd Fleet respond back.
With almost an hour still to go before they could reasonably expect to hear anything from VF002, Shiloh took a hot shower, put on a clean, crisp uniform, and grabbed some food and coffee in the Officers’ Mess before heading up to the Bridge. To his surprise, he saw that Tanaka and Falkenberg were back, even though they would normally have been off duty now. Falkenberg saw him first, and before Shiloh could stop him, he said in a loud voice that made some people jump with surprise.
“Admiral is on the Bridge!”
Tanaka turned to confirm the fact and then got up from her Command Station chair to greet him. “How did you know that they’d be waiting for us at Z12D, Sir?” She understood that the lack of any communication from VF002 meant that there had to be some kind of alien presence there.
Shiloh put on his most enigmatic smile and said, “Just lucky.” Tanaka’s expression said that she clearly didn’t believe him. Shiloh decided to change the subject.
“Aren’t you supposed to be off duty now, Sumi?” asked Shiloh.
She shrugged. “I did get a couple of hours sleep but I wanted to be here when we get the word, Admiral.”
He nodded and looked around. “Any message from TG 3.2?”
“Yes, Sir. Bettencourt sent a message wondering when his frigates are going to get refueled. I think he knows darn well when but just wanted to vent his frustration, Sir.”
“Yes I think you’re right, Sumi. And now that we know there’s some kind of alien presence at Z12D, it’s looking more and more as though we’ll have to head back and refuel at Zebra10.”
Tanaka nodded slowly, her expression now one of worry. “Unless they’ve moved to cover that one too after we passed through, Sir.”
Under other circumstances, Shiloh would be worried too but not this time. If the aliens were convinced that they had caught and destroyed the six-ship fleet at Z12D, then there was no reason to guard the back door. He patted her on the shoulder.
“When we get there, we’ll be careful approaching the GG. How long now before we can expect a message from Tumbleweed?”
Tanaka looked over Shiloh’s shoulder and said, “Less than five minutes now, Sir, if they’re on schedule.”
“Good. Well, I’ll just stand back here in the background. Just pretend I’m not here, Sumi.”
Tanaka smiled, rolled her eyes as if to say ‘Oh sure, like THAT’s going to happen!’, and said, “As you wish, Admiral.”
As she resumed her seat, Shiloh stepped back until he could lean against the wall. The five minutes seemed to take forever and Shiloh started to wonder what had happened when the five minutes passed along with another minute as well and still no contact. He was just about to ask the Com Technician to set up a conference call with the Fleet’s COs when the tactical display pinged for attention. Tumbleweed’s text message scrolled across the bottom.
[All decoys destroyed by laser fire from multiple enemy ships. Number unknown. VF002 did not receive any hostile fire. Recon drones deployed during escape did not detect any signs of pursuit. The mission appears to have been accomplished. End of message.]
Shiloh heard the Bridge personnel erupt into cheering and clapping, but he wasn’t celebrating. Something was off here. Iceman’s vision implied that they would lose some of their fighters. Otherwise, why would his future self say it was a good thing that Iceman wasn’t part of the Zebra19 mission? It wasn’t that he was hoping to lose some fighters, but rather that he was puzzled he hadn’t. When the background noise died down, he walked back up to Tanaka’s Command Station to speak to her.
“Pass the word to Resolute to recover VF002 as planned. By then, I want a jump plotted back to Zebra10 and distributed to all ships. We’ll jump as soon as all fighters are recovered.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Shiloh walked over to the Communications Station. “I want to record a message for Tumbleweed to be transmitted as soon as we have two-way communications.”
The technician nodded and said, “I’m recording, Sir.”
“CAG to Tumbleweed. You and your boys have done an outstanding job. I’m proud of all of you. End of message.”
“I’ll send that off as soon as I can, Admiral.”
Shiloh thanked him and left the Bridge for his quarters.