<Good news, we cut the enemy fleet in half,> Reiko announced. <Bad news, there’s nearly a thousand enemy fighters left.>
Z and Miranda furiously calculated options.
<Admirals,> Z sent. <Examine these tactics.>
The holo-vid displayed icons representing the Omnian fleet’s trailing forces, the enemy fighters, the Freedom, and the moons and clump of larger rocks surrounding the city-ship.
<We can expect the enemy fighters to separate into three distinct groups,> Z sent. <One group will come overtop the rock field, another from below, and a third through the field. Although we don’t know the quantities in each group, it would be best to prepare your defenses to repel the alien fighters from all three directions.>
Reiko was about to order Ellie’s forces to separate, as Z’s advice intimated, but Julien waved a hand in negation. He was focused on Alex, who was staring at the holo-vid.
<Maybe not,> Alex said, more to himself than those assembled. <The fighters will separate into three even groups, coming at us in the manner Z has analyzed.>
<Three equal groups?> Tatia queried.
<Equal, Admiral,> Alex replied. <The aliens like orderliness. There’s not much cunning in them. Cleverness invites the wrong thinking in their societies.>
<If we divide our trailing forces into thirds, the command chasing the enemy fighters through the rock fields will have to decelerate too, and they’ll never intercept the enemy before they reach this ship,> Reiko concluded.
<Agreed,> Miranda stated firmly. <It’s better to split our chasing squadrons into two equal groups. They should run down the enemy fighters, which will approach us from above and below.>
Julien reviewed Z and Miranda’s calculations. <There will be a single opportunity for our forces to attack the two groups above and below the rock fields, as the enemy fighters slow. If they can eliminate the majority, if not all, of those fighters, Ellie’s command and the Freedom’s travelers can concentrate on the enemy coming through the rock fields.>
<And if our forces don’t eliminate the two enemy fighter groups before they enter the rock fields from above and below?> Reiko posited.
<Then there’s little that our forces can do to prevent the demise of the Freedom and the freighters,> Tatia said, with finality.
<No,> Alex sent with power. <The fighters coming through the asteroid field have to be blocked from the front and attacked from behind. If they’re not chased, they can take their time finding ways though the fields that evade Admiral Thompson’s forces.>
Tatia agreed with Alex and signaled Reiko. The vice admiral ordered Svetlana’s command to chase any fighters that flew above the rock field. Darius was assigned the fighters that attacked from below, and Deirdre was left to chase the fighters through the rock fields. Reiko divided the travelers into three groups to assist the Tridents.
The alien ships, which would be chased by Deirdre’s commands, would be forced to slow to navigate the thick screen of rocks and boulders that gently tumbled, as they orbited the ice giant. The admirals were hoping the more maneuverable travelers in Deirdre’s commands could catch the enemy fighters from the rear.
Renée, who had stood aside while the battles were fought, sent a shipwide message. She directed all nonessential personnel to clear the spaces near the city-ship’s hull. <Move toward the mid-decks and away from the hull,> she urged.
Reiko’s last directive was to Ellie’s command. <Keep your forces close to this ship, Admiral,> she said. <We don’t know how many enemy fighters will break through the fields from every direction.>
<With respect, Vice Admiral Shimada, negative,> Cordelia said firmly and privately. <This will be my fight, and I suggest you let me coordinate it.>
Reiko tipped her head in acceptance, and Cordelia sent. <Admiral Thompson, you can’t hope to counter the enemy in the strength they might approach from multiple directions. You haven’t the forces. We will count on our forces eliminating the majority of the enemy fighters from above and below. Your command must counter the craft coming through the debris fields. Furthermore, I suggest that you sail to meet them.>
<Leave you unguarded?> Ellie sent.
<You would do well to slide around heavy rock areas and moons in three-pronged attacks,> Cordelia continued. <This attack method should take the alien fighters by surprise, which will give you an advantage. In any event, your forces need to clear my firing field.>
<And a battle commander is born,> Tatia’s thought whispered to Reiko, who nodded in admiration.
Alex visualized the city-ship, its beam weapons wrapped around the ship’s mid-decks and its vulnerable areas. <Franz, Z, Miranda,> Alex sent, highlighting the city-ship’s indefensible positions, which were directly over the top and bottom of the broad ship. <Gather some pilots. Use our last twelve travelers.>
As a matter of operational procedures, twelve travelers remained with the city-ship to facilitate the transfer of passengers off the ship in an emergency. This was an emergency, but not the kind imagined. The travelers wouldn’t be of use to anyone if the ship was destroyed.
The SADEs and Franz raced from the bridge. Z sent orders to the flight chiefs to ready the launch of the remaining travelers. Franz ran down a roster of pilots, who were still aboard, and called to those with the highest fighter pilot rankings.
Crew members looked at their chiefs in alarm when they were passed the orders. It boded ill for the ship, if the remaining fighters were launched.
As the threesome separated to run toward different bays, Franz sent, <Z, Miranda, take two fighters each. Make them your wings. Station yourselves at the Freedom’s bottom. I’ll take the other five, and we’ll guard the top.>
<Remember, Admiral, Cordelia will be rotating this ship on two axes to position her beams. Warn your squadron to be observant,> Z sent.
<Understood, Z. Thank you,> Franz replied, as he met up with the pilots who would be launching from his bay.
Cordelia detected the launch of her ship’s remaining travelers and monitored the positions that they took up to protect her vulnerable angles of approach. She slowly gazed around the bridge.
Most personnel were immersed in the holo-vid or the data spooling from the ship’s controller, as they observed the closing gap between the expedition’s forces and the enemy fighters. One person was closely watching her — Alex. Now she knew who had sent the fighters to guard her ship, where she had no beam coverage. She gave Alex a wink, and he grinned at her.
-12-
Ice Giant
<With respect, Admiral Thompson,> Senior Captain Descartes sent to Ellie. <I request you take our travelers under your immediate command. The three-pronged approach that you’ve ordered us to conduct is our specialty. Furthermore, I request that you allow our Tridents to lead the attack.>
<Why?> Ellie asked, horrified at the thought of Étienne, her partner and a Trident captain in Descartes’ squadron, rushing headlong at the enemy.
<Efficiency,> Descartes replied tersely.
<If I may?> Étienne offered Descartes privately.
<Please,> Descartes replied, recognizing that, while he could visualize the strategic advantages of what he suggested, he might not be the best one to argue its merits.
<Admiral Thompson,> Étienne sent, <your command is effectively blind to the oncoming fighters. They could be slipping past you, and you wouldn’t even know it. We don’t intend to fight prolonged battles. In fact, I would recommend we accept Alex’s thinking that the enemy has every intention of ignoring confrontation to reach what the aliens believe is our leader’s ship.>
<What we can do for your command, Admiral Thompson,> Alain, who captained the third Trident in the squadron, added, <is provide you with visuals of the paths the fighters are taking. You can
assign your squadrons to intercept them.>
<Request approved, Captain Descartes,> Ellie sent sharply, her gut churning even as the thought left her implant.
<Black space,> Yumi Tanaka muttered. She sent an image to the bridge holo-vid of Descartes’ squadron, as it shot forward. The three Tridents were flying closer together than operational procedures allowed. As they approached a large asteroid, they flowed over and around it, as water did around obstacles in the city-ship’s streams.
Yumi stared openmouthed at her admiral, and Ellie merely smiled. The twins had found someone who thought and acted like them. He just happened to be a SADE.
The admiral’s controller blanked the bridge holo-vid and replaced it with a visual from Descartes’ ship. There was nothing in sight but rock debris, but Ellie expected that to change soon. Knowing she would have advance warning of her adversaries, she formed her command into distinct groups, spread them out in a grid, and assigned them quadrants. When Descartes’ squadron spotted enemy fighters skirting his Tridents, she would receive the images and send her ships to intercept them.
It occurred to Ellie that the plan had a significant weakness. There was the chance that each time she sent ships to intercept the incoming fighters, they might not be totally successful, which meant she would have enemy fighters racing past her position.
Ellie ordered sixteen travelers to post themselves forward of her command. They took up positions in the quadrants she’d marked and waited silently for the enemy to pass. It was doubtful the travelers would have time to engage the fighters from a rest position. Their job was to warn her command and let the Tridents deal with them.
* * *
Admirals Svetlana Valenko and Darius Gaumata were glued to their holo-vids, which maintained icon displays of the oncoming ice planet, its moon, its rock fields, and the enemy fighters fast approaching the same. Both of them knew they wouldn’t get a shot at every fighter. Their controllers calculated that the lead fighters would disappear into the mass of space rock before their commands reached them.
As much as Svetlana and Darius wanted their travelers, which were slightly ahead of the Tridents, to engage the enemy fighters first, they were ordered to join the commands’ wall of ships. There was too much danger of the Tridents running afoul of fighter wreckage if the travelers attacked the alien forces’ flanks.
Svetlana and Darius spread their commands out to enable every ship a clear target of the enemy fighters. Each Omnian ship would have time to discharge its beams once, and controllers positioned the Tridents to get an opportunity to target several alien ships with their twin, heavy-beam weapons.
As the enemy fighters decelerated hard to make entry into the rock fields, the commands of Svetlana and Darius swept past them. The combined Omnian forces eliminated most of the enemy fighters. Between them, they lost three more travelers, which had struggled to keep up due to damage from pieces of hull and engine debris encountered in the initial battles.
<Apologies, Admiral Cordelia,> Svetlana sent over the fleet channel, <it’s estimated that eight, maybe more, fighters eluded us in the rocks before we could make our pass. The remaining enemy fighters, which were attempting to enter from above, have been destroyed.>
<Thank you for the update, Admiral Valenko,> Cordelia replied. She checked Svetlana’s controller for the exact time when the fighters entered the debris field and passed it to Julien. The two SADEs had maintained a constant link, and, in this case, Julien was calculating the potential arrival times of the enemy fighters.
<And I must report, Admiral Cordelia,> Darius sent, <that we’re unable to give you an accurate count of the number that eluded us. The best estimates are between seven and eleven fighters, which ducked into the rocks, before we eliminated the others.>
Cordelia thanked Darius and handed off the time stamp to Julien. He was linked to the Freedom’s controller and its detailed telemetry scans of the planet, its moons, the large asteroids, and the rock fields. With each new piece of information, Julien updated the attack scenarios for Cordelia. With Julien’s data, Cordelia planned her ship’s movements to prepare for the enemy’s charge.
Essential personnel, who were required to remain in the Freedom’s bays, were ordered to don environment suits and take positions behind heavy equipment for safety’s sake.
Tatia picked up on the positioning of Franz and his five traveler pilots atop the city-ship. She passed the telemetry link to Reiko, adding, <Your partner has a penchant for protecting females, when they’re most vulnerable.> Tatia was alluding to the time at Sol, when Franz placed his traveler in front of Reiko’s destroyer to defend her ship against enemy missiles.
<Let’s hope he’s as successful defending Cordelia as he was with me,> Reiko sent back.
As the number of adversaries, coming the Freedom’s way, accumulated, Reiko wondered how successful Cordelia would be defending the city-ship. What scared her was that she anticipated the travelers, which guarded the city-ship’s top and bottom, had little chance of survival. They couldn’t withstand the tremendous impact of high-speed kinetic projectiles, while the Freedom could absorb a great deal of punishment before it succumbed.
After Svetlana and Darius’ commands executed their flybys, eliminating the vast majority of enemy fighters, their ships desperately reversed course to chase the few enemy ships that escaped. Unfortunately, reality said that the fighters would have ample time to severely damage the huge city-ship before their fleets arrived. It was understood that the kinetic weapons would penetrate multiple decks before their energy was absorbed. If enough fighters reached the Freedom, they could damage the main engines or burst power crystals in the bays.
Deirdre’s force decelerated to enter the rocky fields, moments after the enemy’s rearmost fighters disappeared among the debris. The travelers assigned to her command gave chase, while the Tridents reduced their velocity even further to navigate the crowded and dangerous place. Deirdre’s heart sank when her controller updated its telemetry. Her Tridents couldn’t catch the more maneuverable enemy fighters. Her final hope was that her travelers could.
* * *
Descartes and the twins skirted rocks, boulders, and large asteroids, heading toward where they anticipated they would intersect the center mass of the incoming enemy fighters. The Trident team had solidified around Descartes’ incredible capability to calculate options. The twins flew in support, positioned off Descartes’ port and starboard sides and often anticipating his movements. Occasionally, Étienne or Alain suggested alternative strategies, which Descartes readily accepted. The twins added improvisation to their gambits, which had often caught their training adversaries off guard.
However, the games were over. This contest was for real, but they communicated, strategized, and flew with the same intensity they always had. The threesome was an awesome blend of Descartes’ ability to generate strategic variations and the twins’ implementation of their hand-to-hand combat techniques, using powerful warships.
Descartes, Étienne, and Alain were under no illusion. Deirdre’s report told them that fully a third of the enemy fighters, which had survived the fleet’s initial attacks, had reached the safety of the rock fields. Although travelers pursued them, there was little opportunity for the Omnian fighters to do much more than catch the stragglers.
<I don’t visualize a successful encounter against the number we face,> Descartes sent to the twins. <I would welcome input.>
<Don’t focus on eliminating the enemy fighters,> Alain sent in reply. <Think disruption.>
<They pursue a single target, the city-ship,> Étienne added. <We become the obstacle that they must circumvent to reach their goal.>
<Understood,> Descartes sent. <We force them to spread apart, and we give Admiral Thompson’s command a better opportunity to engage them.>
<We want to be as broad an obstacle as possible,> Alain said.
<Yes,> Descartes agreed. <In forcing them to decelerate, we allow Admiral Canaan’s forces to overtake the rearw
ard fighters,> Descartes concluded.
<I would suggest the whirlwind movement,> Étienne sent.
<Concur,> Alain added.
<Agreed,> Descartes sent.
The Tridents shot around a small moon. Instead of merging into a tight formation, they took up the points of an equilateral triangle, separated from each other by hundreds of meters. Immediately, they initiated a spin, revolving around one another like a spinning top, and they flew at the mass of fighters that emerged from a thick debris field.
The Tridents, who had spotted the enemy fighters first, loosed beam shot after beam shot. They carved such a huge swath through the enemy that they had to abandon their swirling movement to dodge fighter debris and decelerate to navigate the field the fighters had just exited.
The Trident controllers totaled sixty-three enemy fighters destroyed. Then the tri-hulled warship controllers warned Deirdre’s approaching travelers of the Tridents’ presence. As the Omnian fighters flew past, they were updated by Descartes’ ships, as to the directions the enemy took to avoid the Trident squadron.
<Well done, Captain Descartes,> Ellie sent, when she received the controller’s detailed telemetry reports.
<Credit must be given to the de Long captains, Admiral,> Descartes sent. <An inventive strategy was necessary, and they are the possessors of impromptu tactics.>
<Yes, they are,> Ellie sent, her humor bubbling through her thoughts and echoing her relief for Étienne’s survival.
<I’d hoped we could have prolonged the engagement, Admiral, but velocities, being what they are, necessitated our encounter be brief,> Descartes added.
<Brief but telling, Captain,> Ellie sent. <You spread them wide. Now, my forces, which have already launched, have a better opportunity to encounter smaller numbers.>
After the comm call ended, Descartes reviewed his squadron’s status. The Tridents had survived remarkably well, but they would need repair. The enemy’s kinetic projectiles couldn’t have been entirely avoided, and they had chipped the warships’ hard shells in many places and penetrated in others. The question was: Could Emile Billing’s clever faux shell technique be repaired as well as the Swei Swee had demonstrated in repairing their constructions?