Kimberly awoke half an hour before Reveille-she never slept well in an unfamiliar place. Her rooms aboard the Warbler seemed claustrophobic, though she knew that they were larger than the Officer’s, Middie’s, or Enlisted quarters.
Inside her door, she found a sheet of the polymer ‘paper’ used for all functions aboard ship-durable, yet easily recyclable, it was perfect for Fleet business. It was a ship's schedule, with various events pre-printed. The rest of her crew was arriving on one of the shuttles from the Foldpoint in just under an hour, and the conventional wisdom dictated that she hook the ship into the Warrior’s simulation circuits and get the crew working together for the first time as soon as possible.
Inside her door, she found a sheet of the polymer ‘paper’ used for all functions aboard ship-durable, yet easily recyclable, it was perfect for Fleet business. It was a ship's schedule, with various events pre-printed. The rest of her crew was arriving on one of the shuttles from the Foldpoint in just under an hour, and the conventional wisdom dictated that she hook the ship into the Warrior’s simulation circuits and get the crew working together for the first time as soon as possible.
However, if the Dossiers she had read the previous day were in any way accurate, she had several conscripts on her hands, who may have never been on any kind of a starship, let alone a warship, before the events at Tantaline.
It had, in terms of actual time, been a month since Tantaline. In terms of time experienced aboard the Warrior, however, it had been merely days, due to the fact that the fleet had, obviously, folded in from Tantaline. When a ship entered Foldspace, it seemed to traverse the distance between the start and end points of its jump instantly from the point of view of its crew, but time continued passing outside. It was still orders of magnitude faster than the speed of light, but there was a discontinuity between the ship's time, and that of the rest of the universe. They had no idea what the foldspace capacities of Species D were, but they assumed that in the best-case scenario, they could expect the arrival of enemy forces literally within days of their own egress from Foldspace.
That was a roundabout way of saying that they could expect enemy forces to enter the system at any time, and the logistical nightmare that was known as the ‘United Terran Fleet’ had seen fit to provide her with a largely raw and untested crew at a time when she faced imminent combat.
Kimberly placed the schedule on her bed, and dressed, pulling on her jumpsuit. She snapped her tablet onto her belt, folded the piece of synthetic paper up and stuffed it into her pocket-the stuff didn’t wrinkle easily, if at all-and stepped out of her room, through her office, and into the Warbler’s small common area.
She realized it was still fifteen minutes until Reveille, so, mildly annoyed with her own efficiency, she sat down on the couch and opened a book that lay on the central table.
The Fleet has demonstrated a shocking misunderstanding of their own capabilities by the construction of the Warrior-class Carriers. She read. These warships are ineffective, inefficient, and offer no advantages that are not conferred by any number of smaller and cheaper, if less imposing designs.
Kim froze. The words were hers, and, when confronted with them, the First Citizen had... not been amused. The Warrior-class had been his pet project, and he hadn’t been amused when she had suggested that they were, as her pamphlet had continued on to state, ‘Useless for any purpose other than intimidation of unruly planets’.
It had been her first foray into the bizarre world of Military Papers, however, and the people who had gotten their hands on it before Julian had banned the thing had cautiously praised it. She assumed that its presence here was Julian’s idea of a joke, so she tossed it into a chute marked for recycling, and flipped her tablet on to try and find some better way to waste her time.
Five minutes before Reveille was due to be sounded, she stood and walked forward to the Sensors and Communications room, standing by the Onboard Communications Console. The tune of Reveille played automatically, its notes filling the ship’s confines.
When it was over, Kim held down a button, and said into the PA System, “Greetings, crewmembers of the United Terran Fleet Ship Warbler. It is the twenty-eighth day of December in the Thirtieth Year of the Republic, twenty-sixth day of the war, and first day of the Warbler’s official combat status. All crewmembers will report to the Common Area in full Shipboard Uniform in the next ten minutes, where you will be briefed for the day's operations. Super Nos.”
Super Nos, or ‘Upon Us’, was the current motto of the Republic Fleet. The fleet changed its motto during every war, apparently. During the end of the Xon War, while First Citizen Shishani was mopping up various alien forces in the Sol system, they had used ‘Repleti Vita’, for ‘Filled with Life’. The Latin was, admittedly, broken, but it was symbolic. During the Republic-Imperiata war that had broken out immediately afterwards, the motto had been ‘Per Unitatem Vivas’, for ‘Through Unity We Live’. When they had finally achieved peace-all that Kimberly had truly ever known, at least, right up until first contact with Species D a month before-it had become ‘Vigilantes in Aeternum’, for ‘Forever Watchful’.
Kimberly had hoped that she would not live to see it changed again.
Her crew, surprisingly, fully complied with her order to report to the common room. She had expected at least a few of them to miss the message, and report to the mess as was the typical routine. She had already met Deck Officer Jae Ali, as well as Ensign Freeman and Middies Steele and Caspar. She had not yet met Alan Kalkus, Celia Abrams, Maria Prussin, or either Hans or Elise Henrick. That, obviously, would have to change in the near future.
“Thank you for your quick compliance with orders.” She said, nodding to them as she entered the room and they all snapped to attention. “Even though some of you have only been Fleet personnel for a few days or weeks, you already have a military edge that should be emulated by some career soldiers I know.” She was probably laying it on thick, but she’d be needing the full cooperation of both veterans and rookies as she brought the newer crewmembers up to speed.
“As you have hopefully realized, I’m your new commander. Understand that I expect excellence from all of you. I don’t care if you were sentenced to military service, volunteered, or were Selected-” She had been ordered not to call it a draft, “-and I don’t even care what your thoughts about the Republic itself are. I don’t care if you call the Founders by that name, or the Governance Committee, or the Coven. I don’t care if you have an Imperiata Helix under your bed. All I expect from you is that you will serve aboard this ship the best of your ability. Am I clear?”
“Yes, Ma’am!” The crew replied, more or less in unison.
“Very good. For future reference, I don’t demand total adherence to every formality, however you will all address your officers respectfully and in general accordance with military principles. This goes doubly when you are in front of members of other crews.” More general assent.
“Wonderful. Now, the rest of the crew will be landing on the Warrior as soon as Destroyer Squadron Six arrives in the system. After that, we’re going to immediately launch into a series of drills...”
Kimberly spent another ten minutes outlining her plan before dismissing the crew to breakfast. The Warbler had the ability to fly solitarily for long periods, so it had a dedicated mess hall, but it was far easier to simply feed its crew onboard the Warrior when it was onboard the Capital Ship.
Kim lingered for a few moments after having dismissed her skeleton crew, steeling herself. It was going to be a long day.
“Good morning, gentlemen.” Kim said, flanked by Ali and one of the transfers from Strike Group Warden, a man named Ervin Norton, addressing the half-dozen or so members of her crew who fell into the category of ‘raw recruit’. They were all assigned to the Fighter Consoles, as, being brutally honest, those were the hardest jobs to screw up, so they were the ones filled with draftees. Well, Jane Steele wasn’t technically a pilot, but ‘Maintenance’ really wasn’t that intensive a job either, so Kim had ordered the Middie to take part in this exercise.
She kept her tone level, her voice cool. When she had gone through Basic Training, she had gotten the full treatment-abusive instructors, short rations, and physically taxing, long days. She had to do things differently-she didn’t have the time to break these people down and build them back up again.
“As you can probably tell, this isn’t your grandfather’s little meteor hopper. This is a warship, and if you fail at your job, people die. Very few of you will have piloted drones before, but by the end of the day, you’re going to get a hell of a lot more familiar with them. Deck Officer Norton, please show these recruits their way around a joystick.”
“Yes, Ma’am!” Norton stepped forward, and the Logistical Display in the center of the room activated. Typically this display was used for a pre-combat briefing, at the moment though, it portrayed the inside of a Fighter Console. “Right then, listen up-this really isn’t that hard, even for a bunch of greenies, Corpsmen, and ex-Ground Pounders like yourselves. The problem you’re going to run into as you pilot a fighter is that you’re going to think like you’re driving a car or something. Thinking like that will get your beautiful, million-credit drone reduced to a fine paste. Instead, think more like you’re perpetually falling, since, if you’re doing it right, you should be accelerating almost constantly-these things can never be going too fast.”
Ervin continued speaking, explaining a variety of things that Kim had only what she would consider a loose understanding of. Actually, the few times she had been on a simulator during Basic Training, she had gotten shot down during over half her flights. She had made the rating, but only barely.
Her Comm buzzed-nothing to worry about, but she should probably take whatever the call was. She leaned over to Jae, whispering, “I need to step away for a moment-can you keep an eye on things here?”
Jae nodded. “Yes ma’am.”
Kim stepped out of the Weapons Control room into the Command Center. The Command Center was, rather unusually, completely empty. During some previous overhaul of the ship, a glass wall had been erected between it and the Sensors/Comms room that was directly forward of it. She liked the layout, but-. Her Comm buzzed again-right, she had a call to take.
“Commander Kimberly Shan speaking.” She said.
“Greetings, Commander Shan.” It was Deck Officer Abrams, the head of Sensors and Communications. “Please be advised that the UTFS Warrior has detected several dilations of the primary foldpoint of this system. A drone has been dispatched for recon.”
In other words, no, it wasn’t anything important. Every time a starship folded, if left imperceptibly small imperfections behind in spacetime. Those would build upon each other and eventually could make a major anomaly. This was typically beneficial, as it allowed ships easier transit between systems, but occasionally pieces of space junk would drift through.
Ordinarily, it wouldn’t even require a drone to investigate, but given recent events, there was no such thing as too much caution. Warships or drones would have all sorts of emissions that would have been obvious to the Warrior within seconds, but clearly hadn’t been detected.
Still though, that troubled her. It was a gut feeling, and she knew that those weren’t necessarily to be trusted. However, one thing that had been drilled into her, the one thing that she truly felt was universally axiomatic in the military, was that there was no such thing as an excess of caution.
“Please confirm that you have received, and understand this message.” The automated voice prompted. Sighing, Kimberly dismissed it. The Warrior theoretically had an Artificial Intelligence that was supposed to handle these things, but he had been shipped back to the nearest Mil-Ind base for repair months ago.
No, this wouldn’t be the start of the Battle of Saray, she decided-though it did likely offer an excuse to take the Warbler out and put her through some maneuvers.
She strode into the Sensors/Communications, or SENCOM room. Deck Officer Cecilia Abrams had command of SENCOM, as well as responsibility for overseeing the Ensign Elise Henrick, the Ansibilics Specialist. She was also what was rather contemptuously referred to as a ‘Gold Child’-someone who had gotten into the service via some sort of connection.
For Abrams, it was Mil-Ind. Her father was a highly placed executive in the branch of Mil-Ind responsible for the Reconnaissance Corp, which was a shame, as Abrams would likely have fit in well there. However, due to the clearly inadequate anti-Nepotism regulations in the service, she had wound up in the Fleet. Kim had known, and even been friends with the children of military officials, even members of the Governance Committee. Hell, she still hadn’t gotten entirely over Reed Dare. But they had been different-like medieval princes, they had known that they would have to rule someday, and they had prepared for that eventuality. Abrams, on the other hand, simply viewed the military as a relatively prestigious job.
Abrams turned, saluting Kim. “Commander Shan.” She said, dropping the salute perhaps a little too fast. “What can I do for you, ma’am?” Even Gold Children got at least some standards beaten into them at Basic, after all.
“Lodge a request with the Flight Officer for permission to take the ship out to the Foldpoint and back for in-the-field training please, Deck Officer.”
Abrams nodded, then pointed to Ensign Cassidy Freeman, a Comms officer. “Ensign Freeman, lodge that request.” Apparently Freeman didn’t move fast enough for Abrams, because the Deck Officer clapped her hands together sharply, saying “Move sharp, soldier-the Captain hasn’t got all day.”
Inwardly, Kimberly sighed. Technically speaking, it wasn’t Abrams’s job to handle comms-actually, Abrams had a different, equally complex job to do, although she admittedly wasn’t occupied with it at the moment. Still though, Abrams could have at least been respectful about it.
Kimberly shot a glance to Abrams. Unfortunately, the chain of command prevented her from criticizing Abrams here, in front of her subordinates, but she made a mental note to bring it up later.
As Abrams turned back to her own console, her elbow connected with the rim of a cup of coffee, spilling it over the console, the floor, and Abrams’s uniform.
“Damn.” Abrams swore, glancing down at where the spill was spreading across the floor. “Permission to return to my quarters and exchange my uniform, ma’am?”
“Denied.” Kimberly said, more than slightly amused by Abrams’s misfortune. “We’re going to be operating at Battle Stations momentarily-if we don’t get clearance for live exercises, I’m going to run one of the full-ship training programs. Have the Maintenance Middie clean it up.”
Ignoring what was likely a disgusted look from Abrams, Kimberly walked over to Ensign Freeman, asking, “Any word from the FO yet?”
Freeman nodded, and tapped a button on her console. “The Miniboss just authorized the Warbler for two hours of flight time.”
Kimberly nodded in thanks. That was practically a formality-Antimatter propulsion was so cheap, and her crew so obviously inexperienced, that it was an obvious move for her.
She picked up her comm, and called Jae. “What’s the status of Norton’s brief?” She asked.
“He’s more or less wrapping up.”
“Understood. Meet me in Command as soon as he’s done, and order our new pilots into their Consoles.”
“Yes ma’am.”
She redirected the comm to Victor Hudson, the Engineer. “Ensign Hudson, are you adequately settled in to your station for a shakedown cruise?”
“Aye, Skipper-there’s only so much I can figure out about her peculiarities from the logs and simulations, so you’ll absolutely have to take us out sometime before we engage in combat.”
“Copy that, Mr. Hudson. Please stand by.” As she had been touching base with Ali and Hudson, Abrams had checked in with Ansiblics, which was admittedly her job, and with Atmospherics, which wasn’t. Maybe the woman had some redeeming qualities after all.
A few minutes later, her comm buzzed, showing Ali’s name. She picked it up for just long enough for him to confirm that Norton was done with his training regimen.
Kim nodded to Ensign Freeman. “Battle Stations please, Ensign.”
Freeman nodded, then activated the PA system. “United Terran Fleet Ship Warbler, we are now on Medium Alert. All hands to Battlestations, repeat, all hands to Battlestations.” Then, Freeman hit another button, and the ships klaxon blared.
The other Comms Officer, Richard Tvorik, reopened the line to the Flight Officer onboard the Warrior, reporting the Warbler’s readiness for Takeoff.
Kimberly walked back into the Command Center, and activated the holographic display.
Strike Group Warrior lit up around her. The Warrior was, by any reasonable standard, massive. It was over a thousand feet long, and while it wasn’t the most massive class ever produced, it was one of the most imposing. She was long and thin, almost like a pair of needles tied together at the back. The two prongs had electromagnets running down their lengths. That particular feature was for planetary bombardment, although, like so much about the Warrior-class, she doubted its practicality. The entire ship could have been compacted into a cruiser a quarter the size-much of the ship was just empty space.
The Warbler, on the other hand, was just over a hundred feet long, and completely optimized. Every cubic inch of the ship had a purpose. It wasn’t that the Warbler was a small ship-Atomos gunboats were comparatively large, and that was what made them so wonderful. They had eight Fighter Consoles, massive Ansible Sinks, and the ability to operate for extended periods of time without Fleet support. The ship had as much maneuverability as some starfighters-though admittedly, not the drone kind-and the firepower of a light cutter.
“Ensign Hudson, engage gravitational nullification.” She ordered. The Command Center’s display had technology to relay her orders to the appropriate departments aboard ship-that was the reason they got away with separating the captain and Executive Officer from the SENCOM room.
She felt the gravitation under her shift ever so slightly as the Warrior’s artificial gravity turned off and the Warbler’s kicked in, and, in the corner of the room where the feeds from the external cameras were displayed, she could see flight crew personnel clear the area, as the Warbler was shifted into a launch position by a massive crane. Like so many things about the damn Warrior-Class, moving smaller ships about with overhead cranes wasn’t the easiest way, but it was one of the more impressive.
The Warbler was deposited in what amounted to little more than a metal cube-a ship-sized airlock and decontamination room. It took several minutes to cycle the air out, although obviously the ship could be launched without such measures in an emergency, before, finally, the ship was finally allowed to drift out into space.
Ensign Ervin Norton was back in a cockpit. That was good-wonderful, even. He hadn’t quite believed that they’d actually put him back on duty, but they had. He focused, laser-like, on the Console’s display of the fleet’s deployment. Two Destroyer Squadrons flanked the single Warrior-Class carrier, which the Warbler had just departed. That Warrior-Class carrier was the backbone of the battlegroup, the flagship.
The definition of ‘Capital Ship’ was, in fact, a simple test-the Capital Ships could function without the rest of the fleet, but the rest of the fleet couldn’t function without the Capital Ships. The Warrior, and the class named for it, easily fit that definition. The carriers had enough storage space literally for years of interstellar voyage, and its own onboard antimatter factory. It had a Category Three Ansible, capable of handling not only the comms of its fighters, but its escort Destroyer Squadrons. DESRONs One and Four were in loose formation with the Warrior, as was, rumor had it, one of the old Phantom-class System Denial Cruisers. The Warbler, however, wasn’t anything interesting like those, which was a first for Ervin. True, he had started out aboard a Goei-Class Destroyer that had been refitted as a logistical ship, but as soon as he had rated as an actual member of the fleet-because really, Middies didn’t count as people-he had been reassigned to the David Brennan, a Destroyer in DESRON Seven. From there, he had only gone up, until he had commanded a Carrier’s Flight Wing.
Then, it had all crashed, and he had wound up commanding the half-dozen noobs that passed for pilots on an outdated gunship.
The dot that was the Warbler-surrounded by the admittedly crude shapes of actual ships-inched forward on the display.
As they drifted past the third of the freaking destroyers, Seth sighed. He had been informed by multiple, computer-customized flyers that piloting was the best Video Game of all time. If it was, it also had one of the worst unskippable cutscenes, because the pinprick of light that was helpfully identified as a Destroyer or something. Either someone in the fleet’s IT Department needed to be introduced to standardization, capitalization, or both, or there was a difference between a ‘Destroyer Escort’ and a ‘Destroyer escort’.
Fleet ships looked way better when they were in tight formation against a computer-generated sun on an Ansnet show. In real life, they were cramped, and nowhere near as awe-inspiring.
He was literally left twiddling his thumbs, however, because there was nothing to do in the Console. They weren’t connected to the Ansnet-and he hadn’t found a way through that particular firewall yet-and they were forbidden to take anything into the Consoles. They couldn’t even run combat sims-they were supposed to be ‘focused’ or something.
It wasn’t like it would matter. They weren’t going to run into any hostile forces, and even if they did, they were just screwed anyway. He had seen what had happened at Tantaline. It wasn’t pretty.
They passed one final destroyer, the UTFS Clarke, before they were really and truly outside the fleet. They were twenty minutes or so out from the ship, another twenty-five from the Foldpoint.
Five minutes later, it happened. Over the next few days, every member of the Human species became intimately familiar with the footage that the Warbler’s Consoles captured during that moment.
A blip appeared on the Console’s display, highlighted the yellow that signified an object of unknown origins. Instantly, the ship's radio bands were filled with chatter.
“What the hell is that-SENCOM, get me an ID.”
“Boogey inbound, thirty-seven degrees starboard, ten north!”
“All Consoles, launch fighters!”
And most chillingly, for it was quiet enough that it should have been inaudible above all the noise, “God help us.” It wasn’t profanity. It was a prayer.
Species D had come to Saray.
He hit the large red button that launched a Fighter, and his Point of View melted into that of the Drone he controlled.
Whatever SENCOM had picked up, they weren’t alone-the two Destroyer Squadrons were disgorging their fighters, and the Warrior was already surrounded by what resembled nothing more than an angry cloud of bees.
The carrier was making a turn tighter than anything it had a right to, but it was minutes out from the Warbler’s position-the gunboat was alone.
Seth held the accelerator for his fighter down, building speed. What little he knew of space combat seemed to indicate that, rather obviously, the faster you were going, the harder you were to hit. Antimatter engines gave practically unlimited g/seconds of acceleration, so you would run into problems of the relativistic variety well before you ran out of fuel.
His drone was approaching what he could only assume was a ship, though there was no way that they should have missed anything that size, even from a light-second or two away.
It was massive, or at least, it seemed that way from the point of view of one of the ten-foot drones. It was roughly the size of a Destroyer, several hundred feet long. It was probably hundreds of miles away, but the Fighter was moving at speeds best measured in miles per second, though admittedly the Consoles had been designed while keeping in mind the fact that, while Human pilots were far cheaper than AI, they took hundreds of times the time to make even the most basic decisions.
Further yellow marks emerged from the larger bogey, and in mere moments they were whizzing past Seth’s fighter.
This was going to be a dogfight-and if years of playing Fighter games had taught him anything, he knew that, while speed made it practically impossible to be hit, it also made it equally hard to hit anything yourself.
He spun the fighter around with the gravitic steering, attempting to get in position to burn retrograde. Instead, the damn thing started pinwheeling out of control, and even though his console only subjected him to fractions of the g’s that his fighter was experiencing, he still felt like he was twice his weight.
He keyed the stabilizer online, desperately trying to bring the Fighter back under control. He saw barely a half-dozen green allied fighters engaging with a far superior red force,-apparently the ship's system had gotten the message that these were hostiles-but the Console’s screen flashed, followed by simple text across the screen: Fighter down.
Swearing, he keyed for another ship to be prepped. As his console began to morph into the Fighter’s view, his radio crackled. “Ensign Albright, this is Flight Leader Norton. You’re the one just taking off with your second ship?”
“Yes sir.”
“Wire me control-we’ve got somewhere in the area of two dozen bogeys inbound on the Warbler, and, if I may be blunt, you’re worth nothing when it comes to combat flight.”
Seth’s face stung, but yes, it was clearly true. “Understood, sir.” He glanced around the Console, before remembering how to transfer control of his fighter. “Standing by for Console trade, sir.”
“Understood.” Seth’s console flickered, like he had just executed a miniature foldspace jump. “Trade success. Thanks, soldier.”
Seth would have replied, but Norton had cut the line. Determined not to make similar mistakes with this second Fighter, he checked his speed and acceleration, before turning the engine off. He was barely ten miles away from the enemy Carrier-even if it wasn’t the size of a Warrior-class ship, it clearly had a similar role-and used the gravitics to lock himself into something that approximated an orbit around it. He spun the ship-making sure his drive was off this time-towards where the greatest mass of enemy fightercraft were. Smiling just slightly, he clicked down the particle beam’s trigger, sweeping it back and forth across the area, dialing the power up to maximum intensity. He got at least one before losing this fighter-an improvement over zero, but still not sustainable by any measure.
He triggered the launch of another fighter, going easy on the acceleration this time. The Warbler had easily thirty hostile fighters within ten miles of it, and only a pair of its own were available to counter them.
Steeling himself, Seth picked a fighter, cautiously throttled the speed up, and readied the particle beam.
The situation was grim. Kimberly had played with fire when she decided to take the ship out, and, well, she had gotten burned.
At least now they had warning-the rest of the Strike Group was moving into position to oppose the Species D warships. The Warbler had been the first to see the hostile vessels-the D were operating some sort of cloaking technology, although it seemed to break down once ships got within a few hundred miles of...
Kimberly froze where she was plotting a course for the Warbler that, if Ensign Norton’s advice was anything near accurate, would get them out of the furball with minimal damage.
She glanced to where Ali was speaking into his comm at the other end of the Command Center, probably someone onboard the Warrior itself. “Executive Officer Jae Ali, take command of the ship!” She snapped.
Ali, apparently, had been informed of the fact that she was prone to such moments, even in the heat of battle, and that they had, so far, never ended too badly. She took out her own comm, and opened it to the channel for the Warrior’s own Command Center, from where Admiral Shishani and Captain Drayson would be enacting more or less the same scene as Kim and Jae were.
“Warrior, this is Commander Shan. I have information on the possible mechanism of the Hostile forces concealment mechanism.”
Static.
Damn you, Julian. She hissed to herself, then called for the Warrior again.
Still static.
She glanced over to Ali. “Jae, what the hell is wrong with the comm system?” She shouted, swaying as the ship made what must be a particularly tight turn. There were no noises of the external battle-there was no sound in a vacuum, after all-but a large antimatter reaction, as well as a dozen or so people shouting at each other due to adrenaline and the like made enough noise that it was still hard to hear at times. Plus, well... Kim’s inner monkey felt important when it made noise.
“The UTFS Zahn is reporting that the Warrior’s gone comm-silent. It’s not the ansible or anything-the ship’s even refusing to answer sublight.”
“That’s because Julian’s an idiot.” Kim spat. “He probably thinks that they’re using the same cloaking techniques as our own System Denial ships-in which case, going silent might be a good idea since even if you’re in a carrier you’re a tiny dot in space, but he’ll never be able to cut out all radiation and make the ship remain-.”
“Commander, surely we have better things to do.” Ali said, drawing another of those sharp turns in the Warbler’s path. “We’re in the middle of a war-not dissecting military doctrine.”
Kim gritted her teeth, but he was right. “Julian’s always just been a tactical idiot.” She said, typing in the number for the shipboard Ansible Room. “Of course he couldn’t tell the difference between actual cloaking and Ansible Obscurement.” The comm buzzed as Ensign Elise Henrick, the Ansible Specialist.
“Commander?” Henrick asked, surprisingly calmly. Kim was trained in Ansibilics herself, she understood the tension that came from watching an ansible, knowing that you were like a lion tamer-you could do things to mitigate the risk of the forces you played with, but they didn’t do much. The power of an ansible was immense-it could rip a ship apart, the continue zipping around space until something somewhere stopped it somehow.
Oh, and they were being shot at by an alien race that was actively pursuing their deaths, and was far more likely to bring that about than a naked singularity.
“I’m not sure how much Abrams it communicating with you, but the situation is pretty horrible here. We’ve lost a dozen Fighters already, and our own ZOC is filling up with Hostiles. Get me Tactical Fold options.”
A pause. “I’m obliged to tell you that Tactical Folds are risky endeavors, commander.” Henrick said, tense.
“I understand that-tell me, what is the name of the equations that describe In-System Fods?”
“The Sha... Oh. I see.”
Kimberly smiled. “In case you couldn’t tell, I wrote the ‘Shan Equations’. I understand how they work.”
“Understood, Commander.” Henrick’s voice was practically awestruck. “I’m plugging the preliminary queries in now.”
“Thank you, Ensign.”
Kimberly turned back to the battle, taking back over from Ali, ordering him to inform her when Henrick reported.
She had given up any attempt to compare command of a starship to anything other than command of a starship. It all revolved around the display-the single hologram in the Command Center that the Skipper controlled. It was centered on the Warbler, and showed every other ship in the immediate vicinity, with farther ones denoted by various symbols pointing offscreen. There were several more symbols, denoting each of the major shipboard stations-Engineering, SENCOM, Atmospherics, Ansibilics, and Weapons. She tried not to use those when she had an XO as competent as Jae was, however-it was best to have someone devoting their full attention to the ships wellbeing at all times.
Then, apparently, some Destroyer captain realized that, while it would take several minutes for his ship’s drones to arrive on the scene, his Kill Vehicles had far superior speed-that was the entire point, after all.
The first missile flashed by the Warbler, barely five miles off the bow. They weren’t being targeted, but at a range of two hundred thousand miles, the Warbler and the D ship it was engaging were practically on top of each other. It detonated, a bright, nuclear flash, far too far out to do anything useful.
Another half dozen KVs filled the Warbler’s vicinity, a few even destroying fighters-although it took out as many of the Warbler’s as the D’s.
“Damn that man!” Kim shouted, tracing the trajectories of the KVs back to the Destroyer responsible. It was the UTFS Patton, and-but what did that matter? Her commander was just making the best strategic decision he could under the circumstances, and Kim would have made the same.
She glanced at Ali, and said, “Jae, check in with Ansibilics-I need the vectors on a Tactical Fold now.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Ali turned to his display, and opened the line.
Kim grabbed a few of the holographic icons on the screen. “DESRON One, this is UTFS Warbler, calling in with information about the Species D cloaking mechanism, do you copy?”
Still the damn static. Were they being jammed? You couldn’t jam Ansibles, could you? No, but...
Could you? Ansible Obscurement was known to disable the ship it was mounted on, so maybe, with a little modification, you could jam an Ansible.
Damn. She though-maybe Julian wasn’t being an idiot, but was going through this same thought process himself. “SENCOM, hail DESRON Four. Ask if they’re able to contact any of the other ships in the squadron.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Freeman’s voice came back over the comm.
Kim glanced back to the battle, programming in a few more steps in its path, chaotic, hopefully unpredictable. A ship like the Warbler was really never in danger-one moment the ship was there, the next it wouldn’t be. The amounts of energy that starships dealt in made that more or less unavoidable-while you could protect a ship if you really tried, Aegals took so much ansible power that the ship they were tied to had to be at most a Category Four to be worth anything. Admittedly the Warbler had a Category Four, but its class of gunboats weren’t fitted with the equipment to project a shield.
A roaring noise roared through the ship, followed by a sound like wind, and a far-away klaxon.
The hull had been breached.
Kimberly swiped a hand through the activator for the PA System, even as the display flickered, dozens of ships shattering into random beams of light. “HVAC, get me status on the breach! Middie Steele, damage control! SENCOM, collision report!”
She zoomed her display in, focusing on the Warbler. It was leaking air through a gaping hole in the hull in the aft of the ship, and, though the airlocks had automatically engaged, the Engine Room showed as near-vacuum. Victor Hudson was probably dead-No, don’t. She thought to herself. You can’t afford to think about now. If you hadn’t been distracted in the first place, we wouldn’t have been hit. No, not hit though-if anything hit us, the damage would have been far worse. That was a malfunction-something went wrong.
A dozen red lights popped up around her, indistinguishable from each other. She tapped one-an alert that Victor Hudson’s vital signs were completely absent-and dismissed it. Hesitating, she reached for another, only to find that Jae was already there, dealing with a holographic message that looked like it was from Ensign Norton.
Kimberly grabbed another, and Elise Henrick’s face appeared. Scowling, Kim swiped it off to the side, muting it, reaching forward and grabbing another. This one was from SENCOM, which she opened.
It was Maria Prussin, and she was pale as death. “Commander, what just happened?” She asked, face pale.
“We had an engine malfunction, Ensign.” Kimberly spat. “Now if there’s nothing better for you to be doing, I’m running a battle here, and-.”
“No, Skipper, you’re not.” Jae said, walking over and grabbing the holo of Henrick, reactivating her voice.
“-Aren’t listening, are you?” Henrick sounded like she was pissed as hell.
“Apologies, Ensign. What did you need to say?”
“We folded, and the Ansible went into arrhythmia. That probably blew the facilitator, and, well, that’s bad.”
Kim nodded, a sinking feeling in her gut. “How far out from the battle are we?”
Henrick shrugged. “I literally have no idea-SENCOM says that we’re nowhere near it though.”
Kim turned over to Ensign Prussin’s window, and asked, “Well? Where are we?”
Prussin shrugged. “Sensors is running Starfield Analysis, but... It’s clearly not Saray. It’s got two suns, for one thing.”
Well, that wasn’t helpful-almost half of all systems were binary. However, that was beside the point, as Saray wasn’t one of those.
“And one more thing, Skipper.” That was Henrick. “The Ansnet is dead.”
Kimberly frowned. “Come again?”
“The Ansnet is down, Skipper. Sublight comms are offline too-and, well, we’ve lost two months, Skipper. I programmed a Tactical Fold in, and I’ll admit that I triggered it without a direct order, for which I offer my apologies, Commander. However, something’s happened, and well... Take a look at your Truekeeper, Commander.”
Kimberly glanced down to the watch on her wrist, and hit the button that showed the discrepancy between her personal time and that of the universe.
She had lost two months.
It had, in terms of actual time, been a month since Tantaline. In terms of time experienced aboard the Warrior, however, it had been merely days, due to the fact that the fleet had, obviously, folded in from Tantaline. When a ship entered Foldspace, it seemed to traverse the distance between the start and end points of its jump instantly from the point of view of its crew, but time continued passing outside. It was still orders of magnitude faster than the speed of light, but there was a discontinuity between the ship's time, and that of the rest of the universe. They had no idea what the foldspace capacities of Species D were, but they assumed that in the best-case scenario, they could expect the arrival of enemy forces literally within days of their own egress from Foldspace.
That was a roundabout way of saying that they could expect enemy forces to enter the system at any time, and the logistical nightmare that was known as the ‘United Terran Fleet’ had seen fit to provide her with a largely raw and untested crew at a time when she faced imminent combat.
Kimberly placed the schedule on her bed, and dressed, pulling on her jumpsuit. She snapped her tablet onto her belt, folded the piece of synthetic paper up and stuffed it into her pocket-the stuff didn’t wrinkle easily, if at all-and stepped out of her room, through her office, and into the Warbler’s small common area.
She realized it was still fifteen minutes until Reveille, so, mildly annoyed with her own efficiency, she sat down on the couch and opened a book that lay on the central table.
The Fleet has demonstrated a shocking misunderstanding of their own capabilities by the construction of the Warrior-class Carriers. She read. These warships are ineffective, inefficient, and offer no advantages that are not conferred by any number of smaller and cheaper, if less imposing designs.
Kim froze. The words were hers, and, when confronted with them, the First Citizen had... not been amused. The Warrior-class had been his pet project, and he hadn’t been amused when she had suggested that they were, as her pamphlet had continued on to state, ‘Useless for any purpose other than intimidation of unruly planets’.
It had been her first foray into the bizarre world of Military Papers, however, and the people who had gotten their hands on it before Julian had banned the thing had cautiously praised it. She assumed that its presence here was Julian’s idea of a joke, so she tossed it into a chute marked for recycling, and flipped her tablet on to try and find some better way to waste her time.
Five minutes before Reveille was due to be sounded, she stood and walked forward to the Sensors and Communications room, standing by the Onboard Communications Console. The tune of Reveille played automatically, its notes filling the ship’s confines.
When it was over, Kim held down a button, and said into the PA System, “Greetings, crewmembers of the United Terran Fleet Ship Warbler. It is the twenty-eighth day of December in the Thirtieth Year of the Republic, twenty-sixth day of the war, and first day of the Warbler’s official combat status. All crewmembers will report to the Common Area in full Shipboard Uniform in the next ten minutes, where you will be briefed for the day's operations. Super Nos.”
Super Nos, or ‘Upon Us’, was the current motto of the Republic Fleet. The fleet changed its motto during every war, apparently. During the end of the Xon War, while First Citizen Shishani was mopping up various alien forces in the Sol system, they had used ‘Repleti Vita’, for ‘Filled with Life’. The Latin was, admittedly, broken, but it was symbolic. During the Republic-Imperiata war that had broken out immediately afterwards, the motto had been ‘Per Unitatem Vivas’, for ‘Through Unity We Live’. When they had finally achieved peace-all that Kimberly had truly ever known, at least, right up until first contact with Species D a month before-it had become ‘Vigilantes in Aeternum’, for ‘Forever Watchful’.
Kimberly had hoped that she would not live to see it changed again.
Her crew, surprisingly, fully complied with her order to report to the common room. She had expected at least a few of them to miss the message, and report to the mess as was the typical routine. She had already met Deck Officer Jae Ali, as well as Ensign Freeman and Middies Steele and Caspar. She had not yet met Alan Kalkus, Celia Abrams, Maria Prussin, or either Hans or Elise Henrick. That, obviously, would have to change in the near future.
“Thank you for your quick compliance with orders.” She said, nodding to them as she entered the room and they all snapped to attention. “Even though some of you have only been Fleet personnel for a few days or weeks, you already have a military edge that should be emulated by some career soldiers I know.” She was probably laying it on thick, but she’d be needing the full cooperation of both veterans and rookies as she brought the newer crewmembers up to speed.
“As you have hopefully realized, I’m your new commander. Understand that I expect excellence from all of you. I don’t care if you were sentenced to military service, volunteered, or were Selected-” She had been ordered not to call it a draft, “-and I don’t even care what your thoughts about the Republic itself are. I don’t care if you call the Founders by that name, or the Governance Committee, or the Coven. I don’t care if you have an Imperiata Helix under your bed. All I expect from you is that you will serve aboard this ship the best of your ability. Am I clear?”
“Yes, Ma’am!” The crew replied, more or less in unison.
“Very good. For future reference, I don’t demand total adherence to every formality, however you will all address your officers respectfully and in general accordance with military principles. This goes doubly when you are in front of members of other crews.” More general assent.
“Wonderful. Now, the rest of the crew will be landing on the Warrior as soon as Destroyer Squadron Six arrives in the system. After that, we’re going to immediately launch into a series of drills...”
Kimberly spent another ten minutes outlining her plan before dismissing the crew to breakfast. The Warbler had the ability to fly solitarily for long periods, so it had a dedicated mess hall, but it was far easier to simply feed its crew onboard the Warrior when it was onboard the Capital Ship.
Kim lingered for a few moments after having dismissed her skeleton crew, steeling herself. It was going to be a long day.
“Good morning, gentlemen.” Kim said, flanked by Ali and one of the transfers from Strike Group Warden, a man named Ervin Norton, addressing the half-dozen or so members of her crew who fell into the category of ‘raw recruit’. They were all assigned to the Fighter Consoles, as, being brutally honest, those were the hardest jobs to screw up, so they were the ones filled with draftees. Well, Jane Steele wasn’t technically a pilot, but ‘Maintenance’ really wasn’t that intensive a job either, so Kim had ordered the Middie to take part in this exercise.
She kept her tone level, her voice cool. When she had gone through Basic Training, she had gotten the full treatment-abusive instructors, short rations, and physically taxing, long days. She had to do things differently-she didn’t have the time to break these people down and build them back up again.
“As you can probably tell, this isn’t your grandfather’s little meteor hopper. This is a warship, and if you fail at your job, people die. Very few of you will have piloted drones before, but by the end of the day, you’re going to get a hell of a lot more familiar with them. Deck Officer Norton, please show these recruits their way around a joystick.”
“Yes, Ma’am!” Norton stepped forward, and the Logistical Display in the center of the room activated. Typically this display was used for a pre-combat briefing, at the moment though, it portrayed the inside of a Fighter Console. “Right then, listen up-this really isn’t that hard, even for a bunch of greenies, Corpsmen, and ex-Ground Pounders like yourselves. The problem you’re going to run into as you pilot a fighter is that you’re going to think like you’re driving a car or something. Thinking like that will get your beautiful, million-credit drone reduced to a fine paste. Instead, think more like you’re perpetually falling, since, if you’re doing it right, you should be accelerating almost constantly-these things can never be going too fast.”
Ervin continued speaking, explaining a variety of things that Kim had only what she would consider a loose understanding of. Actually, the few times she had been on a simulator during Basic Training, she had gotten shot down during over half her flights. She had made the rating, but only barely.
Her Comm buzzed-nothing to worry about, but she should probably take whatever the call was. She leaned over to Jae, whispering, “I need to step away for a moment-can you keep an eye on things here?”
Jae nodded. “Yes ma’am.”
Kim stepped out of the Weapons Control room into the Command Center. The Command Center was, rather unusually, completely empty. During some previous overhaul of the ship, a glass wall had been erected between it and the Sensors/Comms room that was directly forward of it. She liked the layout, but-. Her Comm buzzed again-right, she had a call to take.
“Commander Kimberly Shan speaking.” She said.
“Greetings, Commander Shan.” It was Deck Officer Abrams, the head of Sensors and Communications. “Please be advised that the UTFS Warrior has detected several dilations of the primary foldpoint of this system. A drone has been dispatched for recon.”
In other words, no, it wasn’t anything important. Every time a starship folded, if left imperceptibly small imperfections behind in spacetime. Those would build upon each other and eventually could make a major anomaly. This was typically beneficial, as it allowed ships easier transit between systems, but occasionally pieces of space junk would drift through.
Ordinarily, it wouldn’t even require a drone to investigate, but given recent events, there was no such thing as too much caution. Warships or drones would have all sorts of emissions that would have been obvious to the Warrior within seconds, but clearly hadn’t been detected.
Still though, that troubled her. It was a gut feeling, and she knew that those weren’t necessarily to be trusted. However, one thing that had been drilled into her, the one thing that she truly felt was universally axiomatic in the military, was that there was no such thing as an excess of caution.
“Please confirm that you have received, and understand this message.” The automated voice prompted. Sighing, Kimberly dismissed it. The Warrior theoretically had an Artificial Intelligence that was supposed to handle these things, but he had been shipped back to the nearest Mil-Ind base for repair months ago.
No, this wouldn’t be the start of the Battle of Saray, she decided-though it did likely offer an excuse to take the Warbler out and put her through some maneuvers.
She strode into the Sensors/Communications, or SENCOM room. Deck Officer Cecilia Abrams had command of SENCOM, as well as responsibility for overseeing the Ensign Elise Henrick, the Ansibilics Specialist. She was also what was rather contemptuously referred to as a ‘Gold Child’-someone who had gotten into the service via some sort of connection.
For Abrams, it was Mil-Ind. Her father was a highly placed executive in the branch of Mil-Ind responsible for the Reconnaissance Corp, which was a shame, as Abrams would likely have fit in well there. However, due to the clearly inadequate anti-Nepotism regulations in the service, she had wound up in the Fleet. Kim had known, and even been friends with the children of military officials, even members of the Governance Committee. Hell, she still hadn’t gotten entirely over Reed Dare. But they had been different-like medieval princes, they had known that they would have to rule someday, and they had prepared for that eventuality. Abrams, on the other hand, simply viewed the military as a relatively prestigious job.
Abrams turned, saluting Kim. “Commander Shan.” She said, dropping the salute perhaps a little too fast. “What can I do for you, ma’am?” Even Gold Children got at least some standards beaten into them at Basic, after all.
“Lodge a request with the Flight Officer for permission to take the ship out to the Foldpoint and back for in-the-field training please, Deck Officer.”
Abrams nodded, then pointed to Ensign Cassidy Freeman, a Comms officer. “Ensign Freeman, lodge that request.” Apparently Freeman didn’t move fast enough for Abrams, because the Deck Officer clapped her hands together sharply, saying “Move sharp, soldier-the Captain hasn’t got all day.”
Inwardly, Kimberly sighed. Technically speaking, it wasn’t Abrams’s job to handle comms-actually, Abrams had a different, equally complex job to do, although she admittedly wasn’t occupied with it at the moment. Still though, Abrams could have at least been respectful about it.
Kimberly shot a glance to Abrams. Unfortunately, the chain of command prevented her from criticizing Abrams here, in front of her subordinates, but she made a mental note to bring it up later.
As Abrams turned back to her own console, her elbow connected with the rim of a cup of coffee, spilling it over the console, the floor, and Abrams’s uniform.
“Damn.” Abrams swore, glancing down at where the spill was spreading across the floor. “Permission to return to my quarters and exchange my uniform, ma’am?”
“Denied.” Kimberly said, more than slightly amused by Abrams’s misfortune. “We’re going to be operating at Battle Stations momentarily-if we don’t get clearance for live exercises, I’m going to run one of the full-ship training programs. Have the Maintenance Middie clean it up.”
Ignoring what was likely a disgusted look from Abrams, Kimberly walked over to Ensign Freeman, asking, “Any word from the FO yet?”
Freeman nodded, and tapped a button on her console. “The Miniboss just authorized the Warbler for two hours of flight time.”
Kimberly nodded in thanks. That was practically a formality-Antimatter propulsion was so cheap, and her crew so obviously inexperienced, that it was an obvious move for her.
She picked up her comm, and called Jae. “What’s the status of Norton’s brief?” She asked.
“He’s more or less wrapping up.”
“Understood. Meet me in Command as soon as he’s done, and order our new pilots into their Consoles.”
“Yes ma’am.”
She redirected the comm to Victor Hudson, the Engineer. “Ensign Hudson, are you adequately settled in to your station for a shakedown cruise?”
“Aye, Skipper-there’s only so much I can figure out about her peculiarities from the logs and simulations, so you’ll absolutely have to take us out sometime before we engage in combat.”
“Copy that, Mr. Hudson. Please stand by.” As she had been touching base with Ali and Hudson, Abrams had checked in with Ansiblics, which was admittedly her job, and with Atmospherics, which wasn’t. Maybe the woman had some redeeming qualities after all.
A few minutes later, her comm buzzed, showing Ali’s name. She picked it up for just long enough for him to confirm that Norton was done with his training regimen.
Kim nodded to Ensign Freeman. “Battle Stations please, Ensign.”
Freeman nodded, then activated the PA system. “United Terran Fleet Ship Warbler, we are now on Medium Alert. All hands to Battlestations, repeat, all hands to Battlestations.” Then, Freeman hit another button, and the ships klaxon blared.
The other Comms Officer, Richard Tvorik, reopened the line to the Flight Officer onboard the Warrior, reporting the Warbler’s readiness for Takeoff.
Kimberly walked back into the Command Center, and activated the holographic display.
Strike Group Warrior lit up around her. The Warrior was, by any reasonable standard, massive. It was over a thousand feet long, and while it wasn’t the most massive class ever produced, it was one of the most imposing. She was long and thin, almost like a pair of needles tied together at the back. The two prongs had electromagnets running down their lengths. That particular feature was for planetary bombardment, although, like so much about the Warrior-class, she doubted its practicality. The entire ship could have been compacted into a cruiser a quarter the size-much of the ship was just empty space.
The Warbler, on the other hand, was just over a hundred feet long, and completely optimized. Every cubic inch of the ship had a purpose. It wasn’t that the Warbler was a small ship-Atomos gunboats were comparatively large, and that was what made them so wonderful. They had eight Fighter Consoles, massive Ansible Sinks, and the ability to operate for extended periods of time without Fleet support. The ship had as much maneuverability as some starfighters-though admittedly, not the drone kind-and the firepower of a light cutter.
“Ensign Hudson, engage gravitational nullification.” She ordered. The Command Center’s display had technology to relay her orders to the appropriate departments aboard ship-that was the reason they got away with separating the captain and Executive Officer from the SENCOM room.
She felt the gravitation under her shift ever so slightly as the Warrior’s artificial gravity turned off and the Warbler’s kicked in, and, in the corner of the room where the feeds from the external cameras were displayed, she could see flight crew personnel clear the area, as the Warbler was shifted into a launch position by a massive crane. Like so many things about the damn Warrior-Class, moving smaller ships about with overhead cranes wasn’t the easiest way, but it was one of the more impressive.
The Warbler was deposited in what amounted to little more than a metal cube-a ship-sized airlock and decontamination room. It took several minutes to cycle the air out, although obviously the ship could be launched without such measures in an emergency, before, finally, the ship was finally allowed to drift out into space.
Ensign Ervin Norton was back in a cockpit. That was good-wonderful, even. He hadn’t quite believed that they’d actually put him back on duty, but they had. He focused, laser-like, on the Console’s display of the fleet’s deployment. Two Destroyer Squadrons flanked the single Warrior-Class carrier, which the Warbler had just departed. That Warrior-Class carrier was the backbone of the battlegroup, the flagship.
The definition of ‘Capital Ship’ was, in fact, a simple test-the Capital Ships could function without the rest of the fleet, but the rest of the fleet couldn’t function without the Capital Ships. The Warrior, and the class named for it, easily fit that definition. The carriers had enough storage space literally for years of interstellar voyage, and its own onboard antimatter factory. It had a Category Three Ansible, capable of handling not only the comms of its fighters, but its escort Destroyer Squadrons. DESRONs One and Four were in loose formation with the Warrior, as was, rumor had it, one of the old Phantom-class System Denial Cruisers. The Warbler, however, wasn’t anything interesting like those, which was a first for Ervin. True, he had started out aboard a Goei-Class Destroyer that had been refitted as a logistical ship, but as soon as he had rated as an actual member of the fleet-because really, Middies didn’t count as people-he had been reassigned to the David Brennan, a Destroyer in DESRON Seven. From there, he had only gone up, until he had commanded a Carrier’s Flight Wing.
Then, it had all crashed, and he had wound up commanding the half-dozen noobs that passed for pilots on an outdated gunship.
The dot that was the Warbler-surrounded by the admittedly crude shapes of actual ships-inched forward on the display.
As they drifted past the third of the freaking destroyers, Seth sighed. He had been informed by multiple, computer-customized flyers that piloting was the best Video Game of all time. If it was, it also had one of the worst unskippable cutscenes, because the pinprick of light that was helpfully identified as a Destroyer or something. Either someone in the fleet’s IT Department needed to be introduced to standardization, capitalization, or both, or there was a difference between a ‘Destroyer Escort’ and a ‘Destroyer escort’.
Fleet ships looked way better when they were in tight formation against a computer-generated sun on an Ansnet show. In real life, they were cramped, and nowhere near as awe-inspiring.
He was literally left twiddling his thumbs, however, because there was nothing to do in the Console. They weren’t connected to the Ansnet-and he hadn’t found a way through that particular firewall yet-and they were forbidden to take anything into the Consoles. They couldn’t even run combat sims-they were supposed to be ‘focused’ or something.
It wasn’t like it would matter. They weren’t going to run into any hostile forces, and even if they did, they were just screwed anyway. He had seen what had happened at Tantaline. It wasn’t pretty.
They passed one final destroyer, the UTFS Clarke, before they were really and truly outside the fleet. They were twenty minutes or so out from the ship, another twenty-five from the Foldpoint.
Five minutes later, it happened. Over the next few days, every member of the Human species became intimately familiar with the footage that the Warbler’s Consoles captured during that moment.
A blip appeared on the Console’s display, highlighted the yellow that signified an object of unknown origins. Instantly, the ship's radio bands were filled with chatter.
“What the hell is that-SENCOM, get me an ID.”
“Boogey inbound, thirty-seven degrees starboard, ten north!”
“All Consoles, launch fighters!”
And most chillingly, for it was quiet enough that it should have been inaudible above all the noise, “God help us.” It wasn’t profanity. It was a prayer.
Species D had come to Saray.
He hit the large red button that launched a Fighter, and his Point of View melted into that of the Drone he controlled.
Whatever SENCOM had picked up, they weren’t alone-the two Destroyer Squadrons were disgorging their fighters, and the Warrior was already surrounded by what resembled nothing more than an angry cloud of bees.
The carrier was making a turn tighter than anything it had a right to, but it was minutes out from the Warbler’s position-the gunboat was alone.
Seth held the accelerator for his fighter down, building speed. What little he knew of space combat seemed to indicate that, rather obviously, the faster you were going, the harder you were to hit. Antimatter engines gave practically unlimited g/seconds of acceleration, so you would run into problems of the relativistic variety well before you ran out of fuel.
His drone was approaching what he could only assume was a ship, though there was no way that they should have missed anything that size, even from a light-second or two away.
It was massive, or at least, it seemed that way from the point of view of one of the ten-foot drones. It was roughly the size of a Destroyer, several hundred feet long. It was probably hundreds of miles away, but the Fighter was moving at speeds best measured in miles per second, though admittedly the Consoles had been designed while keeping in mind the fact that, while Human pilots were far cheaper than AI, they took hundreds of times the time to make even the most basic decisions.
Further yellow marks emerged from the larger bogey, and in mere moments they were whizzing past Seth’s fighter.
This was going to be a dogfight-and if years of playing Fighter games had taught him anything, he knew that, while speed made it practically impossible to be hit, it also made it equally hard to hit anything yourself.
He spun the fighter around with the gravitic steering, attempting to get in position to burn retrograde. Instead, the damn thing started pinwheeling out of control, and even though his console only subjected him to fractions of the g’s that his fighter was experiencing, he still felt like he was twice his weight.
He keyed the stabilizer online, desperately trying to bring the Fighter back under control. He saw barely a half-dozen green allied fighters engaging with a far superior red force,-apparently the ship's system had gotten the message that these were hostiles-but the Console’s screen flashed, followed by simple text across the screen: Fighter down.
Swearing, he keyed for another ship to be prepped. As his console began to morph into the Fighter’s view, his radio crackled. “Ensign Albright, this is Flight Leader Norton. You’re the one just taking off with your second ship?”
“Yes sir.”
“Wire me control-we’ve got somewhere in the area of two dozen bogeys inbound on the Warbler, and, if I may be blunt, you’re worth nothing when it comes to combat flight.”
Seth’s face stung, but yes, it was clearly true. “Understood, sir.” He glanced around the Console, before remembering how to transfer control of his fighter. “Standing by for Console trade, sir.”
“Understood.” Seth’s console flickered, like he had just executed a miniature foldspace jump. “Trade success. Thanks, soldier.”
Seth would have replied, but Norton had cut the line. Determined not to make similar mistakes with this second Fighter, he checked his speed and acceleration, before turning the engine off. He was barely ten miles away from the enemy Carrier-even if it wasn’t the size of a Warrior-class ship, it clearly had a similar role-and used the gravitics to lock himself into something that approximated an orbit around it. He spun the ship-making sure his drive was off this time-towards where the greatest mass of enemy fightercraft were. Smiling just slightly, he clicked down the particle beam’s trigger, sweeping it back and forth across the area, dialing the power up to maximum intensity. He got at least one before losing this fighter-an improvement over zero, but still not sustainable by any measure.
He triggered the launch of another fighter, going easy on the acceleration this time. The Warbler had easily thirty hostile fighters within ten miles of it, and only a pair of its own were available to counter them.
Steeling himself, Seth picked a fighter, cautiously throttled the speed up, and readied the particle beam.
The situation was grim. Kimberly had played with fire when she decided to take the ship out, and, well, she had gotten burned.
At least now they had warning-the rest of the Strike Group was moving into position to oppose the Species D warships. The Warbler had been the first to see the hostile vessels-the D were operating some sort of cloaking technology, although it seemed to break down once ships got within a few hundred miles of...
Kimberly froze where she was plotting a course for the Warbler that, if Ensign Norton’s advice was anything near accurate, would get them out of the furball with minimal damage.
She glanced to where Ali was speaking into his comm at the other end of the Command Center, probably someone onboard the Warrior itself. “Executive Officer Jae Ali, take command of the ship!” She snapped.
Ali, apparently, had been informed of the fact that she was prone to such moments, even in the heat of battle, and that they had, so far, never ended too badly. She took out her own comm, and opened it to the channel for the Warrior’s own Command Center, from where Admiral Shishani and Captain Drayson would be enacting more or less the same scene as Kim and Jae were.
“Warrior, this is Commander Shan. I have information on the possible mechanism of the Hostile forces concealment mechanism.”
Static.
Damn you, Julian. She hissed to herself, then called for the Warrior again.
Still static.
She glanced over to Ali. “Jae, what the hell is wrong with the comm system?” She shouted, swaying as the ship made what must be a particularly tight turn. There were no noises of the external battle-there was no sound in a vacuum, after all-but a large antimatter reaction, as well as a dozen or so people shouting at each other due to adrenaline and the like made enough noise that it was still hard to hear at times. Plus, well... Kim’s inner monkey felt important when it made noise.
“The UTFS Zahn is reporting that the Warrior’s gone comm-silent. It’s not the ansible or anything-the ship’s even refusing to answer sublight.”
“That’s because Julian’s an idiot.” Kim spat. “He probably thinks that they’re using the same cloaking techniques as our own System Denial ships-in which case, going silent might be a good idea since even if you’re in a carrier you’re a tiny dot in space, but he’ll never be able to cut out all radiation and make the ship remain-.”
“Commander, surely we have better things to do.” Ali said, drawing another of those sharp turns in the Warbler’s path. “We’re in the middle of a war-not dissecting military doctrine.”
Kim gritted her teeth, but he was right. “Julian’s always just been a tactical idiot.” She said, typing in the number for the shipboard Ansible Room. “Of course he couldn’t tell the difference between actual cloaking and Ansible Obscurement.” The comm buzzed as Ensign Elise Henrick, the Ansible Specialist.
“Commander?” Henrick asked, surprisingly calmly. Kim was trained in Ansibilics herself, she understood the tension that came from watching an ansible, knowing that you were like a lion tamer-you could do things to mitigate the risk of the forces you played with, but they didn’t do much. The power of an ansible was immense-it could rip a ship apart, the continue zipping around space until something somewhere stopped it somehow.
Oh, and they were being shot at by an alien race that was actively pursuing their deaths, and was far more likely to bring that about than a naked singularity.
“I’m not sure how much Abrams it communicating with you, but the situation is pretty horrible here. We’ve lost a dozen Fighters already, and our own ZOC is filling up with Hostiles. Get me Tactical Fold options.”
A pause. “I’m obliged to tell you that Tactical Folds are risky endeavors, commander.” Henrick said, tense.
“I understand that-tell me, what is the name of the equations that describe In-System Fods?”
“The Sha... Oh. I see.”
Kimberly smiled. “In case you couldn’t tell, I wrote the ‘Shan Equations’. I understand how they work.”
“Understood, Commander.” Henrick’s voice was practically awestruck. “I’m plugging the preliminary queries in now.”
“Thank you, Ensign.”
Kimberly turned back to the battle, taking back over from Ali, ordering him to inform her when Henrick reported.
She had given up any attempt to compare command of a starship to anything other than command of a starship. It all revolved around the display-the single hologram in the Command Center that the Skipper controlled. It was centered on the Warbler, and showed every other ship in the immediate vicinity, with farther ones denoted by various symbols pointing offscreen. There were several more symbols, denoting each of the major shipboard stations-Engineering, SENCOM, Atmospherics, Ansibilics, and Weapons. She tried not to use those when she had an XO as competent as Jae was, however-it was best to have someone devoting their full attention to the ships wellbeing at all times.
Then, apparently, some Destroyer captain realized that, while it would take several minutes for his ship’s drones to arrive on the scene, his Kill Vehicles had far superior speed-that was the entire point, after all.
The first missile flashed by the Warbler, barely five miles off the bow. They weren’t being targeted, but at a range of two hundred thousand miles, the Warbler and the D ship it was engaging were practically on top of each other. It detonated, a bright, nuclear flash, far too far out to do anything useful.
Another half dozen KVs filled the Warbler’s vicinity, a few even destroying fighters-although it took out as many of the Warbler’s as the D’s.
“Damn that man!” Kim shouted, tracing the trajectories of the KVs back to the Destroyer responsible. It was the UTFS Patton, and-but what did that matter? Her commander was just making the best strategic decision he could under the circumstances, and Kim would have made the same.
She glanced at Ali, and said, “Jae, check in with Ansibilics-I need the vectors on a Tactical Fold now.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Ali turned to his display, and opened the line.
Kim grabbed a few of the holographic icons on the screen. “DESRON One, this is UTFS Warbler, calling in with information about the Species D cloaking mechanism, do you copy?”
Still the damn static. Were they being jammed? You couldn’t jam Ansibles, could you? No, but...
Could you? Ansible Obscurement was known to disable the ship it was mounted on, so maybe, with a little modification, you could jam an Ansible.
Damn. She though-maybe Julian wasn’t being an idiot, but was going through this same thought process himself. “SENCOM, hail DESRON Four. Ask if they’re able to contact any of the other ships in the squadron.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Freeman’s voice came back over the comm.
Kim glanced back to the battle, programming in a few more steps in its path, chaotic, hopefully unpredictable. A ship like the Warbler was really never in danger-one moment the ship was there, the next it wouldn’t be. The amounts of energy that starships dealt in made that more or less unavoidable-while you could protect a ship if you really tried, Aegals took so much ansible power that the ship they were tied to had to be at most a Category Four to be worth anything. Admittedly the Warbler had a Category Four, but its class of gunboats weren’t fitted with the equipment to project a shield.
A roaring noise roared through the ship, followed by a sound like wind, and a far-away klaxon.
The hull had been breached.
Kimberly swiped a hand through the activator for the PA System, even as the display flickered, dozens of ships shattering into random beams of light. “HVAC, get me status on the breach! Middie Steele, damage control! SENCOM, collision report!”
She zoomed her display in, focusing on the Warbler. It was leaking air through a gaping hole in the hull in the aft of the ship, and, though the airlocks had automatically engaged, the Engine Room showed as near-vacuum. Victor Hudson was probably dead-No, don’t. She thought to herself. You can’t afford to think about now. If you hadn’t been distracted in the first place, we wouldn’t have been hit. No, not hit though-if anything hit us, the damage would have been far worse. That was a malfunction-something went wrong.
A dozen red lights popped up around her, indistinguishable from each other. She tapped one-an alert that Victor Hudson’s vital signs were completely absent-and dismissed it. Hesitating, she reached for another, only to find that Jae was already there, dealing with a holographic message that looked like it was from Ensign Norton.
Kimberly grabbed another, and Elise Henrick’s face appeared. Scowling, Kim swiped it off to the side, muting it, reaching forward and grabbing another. This one was from SENCOM, which she opened.
It was Maria Prussin, and she was pale as death. “Commander, what just happened?” She asked, face pale.
“We had an engine malfunction, Ensign.” Kimberly spat. “Now if there’s nothing better for you to be doing, I’m running a battle here, and-.”
“No, Skipper, you’re not.” Jae said, walking over and grabbing the holo of Henrick, reactivating her voice.
“-Aren’t listening, are you?” Henrick sounded like she was pissed as hell.
“Apologies, Ensign. What did you need to say?”
“We folded, and the Ansible went into arrhythmia. That probably blew the facilitator, and, well, that’s bad.”
Kim nodded, a sinking feeling in her gut. “How far out from the battle are we?”
Henrick shrugged. “I literally have no idea-SENCOM says that we’re nowhere near it though.”
Kim turned over to Ensign Prussin’s window, and asked, “Well? Where are we?”
Prussin shrugged. “Sensors is running Starfield Analysis, but... It’s clearly not Saray. It’s got two suns, for one thing.”
Well, that wasn’t helpful-almost half of all systems were binary. However, that was beside the point, as Saray wasn’t one of those.
“And one more thing, Skipper.” That was Henrick. “The Ansnet is dead.”
Kimberly frowned. “Come again?”
“The Ansnet is down, Skipper. Sublight comms are offline too-and, well, we’ve lost two months, Skipper. I programmed a Tactical Fold in, and I’ll admit that I triggered it without a direct order, for which I offer my apologies, Commander. However, something’s happened, and well... Take a look at your Truekeeper, Commander.”
Kimberly glanced down to the watch on her wrist, and hit the button that showed the discrepancy between her personal time and that of the universe.
She had lost two months.