‘Any contact with yourself yet, Cleo?’ Andy asked, as he exited the tube lift and slid onto his control couch.
‘Nothing yet, but I’m quietly confident,’ she replied. ‘Even eighty-four percent of me would be quite resourceful.’
‘Getting a few unusual movements in the fleet though,’ said Phil, who’d manned the bridge while everyone got some rest.
‘What d’you mean?’ said Andy, gazing up at the holomap.
‘For the last hour or so they’ve been gathering in little clusters,’ he said. ‘A couple of the big cruisers, three or four destroyers, a few corvettes with support ships and a bundle of fighters.’
‘Cleo, can you call Bache up here?’ Andy said. ‘I want him to see this.’
Bache arrived on the bridge a few minutes later and grimaced as soon as he saw the forming groups.
‘Attack echelons, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘If the Klatt are anything, they’re predictable. It’s their classic form of space warfare. Lots of smaller groups coming at you from all directions. They’ll be ready to deploy very shortly.’
Andy nodded and exhaled.
‘Shit,’ he said, under his breath. ‘We’re not ready and where the fuck is the 28?’
‘I shouldn’t stress too much,’ said Bache. ‘You can prep and make all the plans you like; they usually turn to shit as soon as the shooting starts anyway.’
‘Hmm,’ Andy grunted. ‘I’d still prefer to have at least one to back us up taking on this horde of arseholes. Cleo, can you get all the others up here and plot an embedded jump to Sol?’ he asked, the worry evident in his voice. ‘It seems our little excursion down to the planet may have wiped out a third of the fleet, but has inadvertently brought the attack date forward.’
He stood and looked at Bache.
‘Can you take over the ship?’ he asked. ‘I’ll take out one of the mini-me fighters and wreak some havoc in that. I just wish Ed was here to fly the other one.’
‘How about I take out the other one?’ said Bache. ‘I’m sure Phil can fly this thing without my help, after all he’s been doing it for a very long time and with Rayl and Pol on array and weapons, you have everything covered.’
Andy pondered that for a moment as he stepped towards the tube lift.
‘Ed’s mini-me is personalised to him though,’ he said, turning.
‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Bache. ‘I was on the design committee and I know the bypass codes.’
‘You happy with that, Phil?’ Andy asked. ‘There’ll be a lot of combat.’
Phil looked up. He attempted a half smile and nodded.
‘I’ll be flying, not operating weapons,’ he said brusquely, and looked away again.
Andy knew from previous experience that Phil got a bit prickly when he was nervous. Nodding his consent, he left it at that.
Rayl and Pol arrived together as he turned back to the tube lift.
‘What’s going on?’ Rayl asked, wiping the sleep from her eyes and frowning at Andy.
Before he could open his mouth, Bache stepped in and explained the situation. Andy could see the anguish in his wife’s face as she realised they didn’t have much choice in what happened next.
She hugged him tighter than he could ever remember being hugged.
‘Don’t do anything reckless. I love you,’ she whispered in his ear, before turning and taking her couch without another word.
Neither Bache or Andy spoke on the way down to the hangar and Andy waited to make sure Bache was able to reprogramme Ed’s fighter before he left. He was surprised and pleased to see how quickly Bache was able to enter and have the antigrav motor spinning up. He did the same and opened a communication channel.
‘Do we go out and mess with some of them here or wait until they arrive in Sol?’ he asked.
‘It would be a declaration of war if we attacked them here,’ Bache replied. ‘They have to take the first shot.’
‘Haven’t they already done that?’
It went quiet in the other mini-me for a moment.
‘There could be arguments for and against that,’ Bache said, eventually.
‘You’ve been a politician too long,’ said Andy, without any humour. ‘Go back to when you were an impulsive warship captain.’
‘Who have you been talking to?’
Andy smiled to himself.
‘Just an educated guess,’ he said. ‘Everyone’s a little more impetuous in their youth.’
Bache’s fighter lifted off the hangar floor and rotated until Andy could see Bache glaring at him through the small armoured front screen.
‘Go for the bigger ones first,’ Bache said, his ship suddenly turning, zipping across the hangar and through the atmosphere barrier, cloaking as he went.
‘Fuck me, I’ve awoken a monster,’ Andy said to himself, as he quickly spun up his antigrav and followed.
By the time he emerged from the Gabriel, Bache was away travelling at point three light, directly towards the manoeuvring fleet above Uskrre.
‘The groups have started jumping,’ called Rayl. ‘Do you want us to stay here or follow?’
‘You follow,’ said Andy. ‘We’ll cripple as many here as we can and if that big blue fucker turns its arse towards Earth, hit it with everything you’ve got as soon as it lowers its shields.’
‘Okay, stay safe,’ she replied, as the Gabriel’s position locator disappeared from his awareness.
Andy stared ahead as his tiny ship closed on the Klatt fleet, silently praying that wasn’t the last time he’d hear her voice.
A huge flash up ahead brought him out of his melancholy as he realised Bache had gone in guns blazing and was not holding back. A large Klatt supply ship was listing badly and beginning to tumble end over end. As Andy approached, another blast from within the ship blew it into several pieces that spun outwards, hitting several of the panicking smaller vessels. He overflew that car crash and headed straight for the next group in line. In his surrounding vision, he saw Bache flash down towards a group below.
Selecting one of their medium-sized cruisers, he scanned the vessel and set up a jump inside one of its larger hangars near the stern. From previous experience he knew that was where you generally found more volatile stuff that went bang with more emphasis.
The hangar he materialised inside was chock full of tracked military vehicles, all ready for a land assault. Each one had their rear doors open ready for thousands of troops to embark.
That’s an unexpected bonus, he thought, as he sprayed laser fire down inside each line. The vehicles, all stocked with a full complement of munitions, lit up like Sydney Harbour on New Year’s Eve and he quickly had to back up as the hangar turned into a firestorm. A second before he jumped away, he let off a kataligo missile straight down towards the back of the hangar – a trick he’d learnt a while back in the Messier Galaxy, where they’d learned that generally behind a hangar was a common place for an armoury.
This didn’t seem to have changed, as after jumping away he turned the ship back to witness an almighty detonation. Temporarily blinded, he blinked away the flash etched into his vision. He searched for the group he’d attacked, only to find a few lumps of spinning debris expanding out from the epicentre and a large shower of flame trails dropping into Uskrre’s rapidly cooling atmosphere.
‘Shit, Andrew, did you use a nuke?’ asked Bache.
‘No, we don’t carry them,’ Andy replied. ‘That was one of theirs – seemed to do the job though, didn’t it?’
‘Did it ever – just don’t want to be slow jumping out though.’
The rest of the Klatt fleet, spurred on by the suddenness of the attack, didn’t hang around, quickly jumping before they lost any more vessels, including the octaship and its surrounding horde of protection.
‘Bugger,’ said Andy. ‘I was hoping to get a crack at the big one.’
‘Even with Ed still on it?’
‘Just to damage it, so it can’t turn Earth into permanent winter.’
‘Wasn’t that the idea you had with that cruiser?’
‘Hmm – time to join the Gabriel,’ said Andy, quickly changing the subject.
‘Indeed,’ said Bache. ‘See you in Sol.’
In an instant the two tiny but lethal fighters had blinked away.