Hope Springs Eternal
A rose. It was the damndest thing, but it was also the first thought that came to mind. A rose in pointillism, shifting, twisting, expanding and moving. At some moments, it seemed to curl back in upon itself, then swell again.
The red cloud of dots on the plot seemed to lack any sense of purpose or cohesion as they writhed, yet every movement was in perfect mathematical synchronism.
This was something new, Darvin Caseton realized. The fuzzy crimson mass approaching from the system's Kuiper Belt wasn't following any of the normal Core tactical approaches. His own ships, reading as a cold blue formation on the three-dimensional plot, were moving into a position between the incoming enemy and the planet they were here to defend.
"They're up to something," he murmured with a sidewise glance at the officer seated on his right behind a small multi-function console.
"Do you think they know what they've found, sir?" Like Caseton himself, Vern Powells was new at his assignment, only recently promoted to Flag Captain of Caseton's task force, TF 28.3 of the Altair Sector Fleet. Unlike some officers though, who'd risen through the ranks on the basis of connections back on Empyrrean, Powells had earned his rank. More remarkably in many officers' eyes, he was still a natborn, which was a distinction few officers of his rank could claim, and made him younger than many of the junior noncoms. He'd never been killed in the line of duty, and in large part, that was because he'd never lost a ship under his command. Caseton himself could no longer remember how many times he'd been killed himself – lifetimes seemed to blend together after the first few dozen times.
He didn't need to think on his response though. "No, I don't think they know what it is they've found. But they sure as sark know they've found something big." That much he could tell from simple experience: the Core specialized in adaptation, but it was normally a ponderous process that took them years, sometimes decades, to apply across their vast fleets and quintillions of minds. The fact that they were making such a novel approach in this instance told him that they had either devised a new tactic, or were simply expecting unconventional resistance.
It was the former thought that worried him more though. While the Core were slow to change, they were masters of perfection. So if this was a new tactic, it was going to be a finished concept, not a spontaneous approach that might have weaknesses to exploit.
Caseton scratched his chin thoughtfully as he watched the ugly red cluster swim slowly in-system. The ranging data displayed alongside each individual spark told him that the Core fleet was still more than twenty-five AU's from the system's cool red K7 primary.
The bridge of his flagship, which had been whimsically named Indestructible by the yard staff at the Aldeberan fleet facility, was more than large enough for the fifty people that staffed it while the heavy cruiser was at battle stations. Even so, the careful design of its acoustic balance meant that in the very command center at the heart of the room, the constant prattle of internal communications traffic was muted, while allowing even the most softly spoken command from the center chair to be audible at every other station.
"Sensors, any idea what it is we're looking at here?" Caseton didn't look up from the holographic plot when he spoke. The behavior of the Core fleet was worrying enough, but the lack of composition estimates on the plot made it virtually impossible for him to begin planning his strategy. Just the sight of that writhing mass of Core ships made the newly minted Rear Admiral's straps on his shoulders seem to gain several kilos.
Senior Lieutenant Vanya Heringer came back with her reply almost instantly, but it wasn't one he wanted to hear.
"I'm sorry Admiral, but their ECM is extremely heavy," she said crisply. "At their current rate of closure, they won't enter the range where we can burn through for another four hours."
At Caseton's elbow, Powells leaned closer. "We could have one of the destroyer pickets make a closer approach." He illustrated he suggestion with his index finger on the command plot. "Tergiverse and Speedwell can go silent, and make their run at sublight. They can be there in eighteen minutes, pass within twenty million klicks of the Core fleet, then slingshot around Odious, and fire us a hyperspace packet on the inbound." He stabbed the grimy yellow image of the system's largest gas giant for emphasis. Legend had it that it had been named by a drunken noncom in the ship that first scouted the system centuries before.
Many senior officers would have discounted most of Powell's advice offhand on the basis of his significantly less experience, but Caseton had found his flag captain to be remarkably perceptive. So it was that after only a short consideration, he worked out his next series of decisions, and gave the orders rapid-fire.
"Sensors, keep alert for that h-space packet. Comm, signal Captain Rumiez, and tell him to pass the orders along to Tergiverse and Speedwell. Order him to detach two of his squadrons to cover the planet, and position the rest of his flotilla in a screen five million klicks out. And make sure he understands that this is a direct order." Inwardly he grimaced. He shouldn't have even had to clarify that, but the commander of his destroyer flotilla was only barely on the right side of competent as far as Caseton was concerned. Rumiez had friends in high enough places to keep him in his current slot, if not enough to promote him any further.
Continuing his clipped litany, Caseton said, "Order all ships to jettison their memory cores, two copies of each. No sense in taking chances." Even he did not know the pre-programmed destinations of the hyperspace computer pods each ship was now launching in pairs. If the worst happened, and he were himself captured and patterned, the pods containing the most recent memories of the fleet's crew would escape unmolested.
"I hope everyone remembered to make a recent backup," he commented. A low murmur of laughter ran around the bridge at his gallows humor. "Vern, have the rest of our cruisers outfit their first volley of missiles for a mix of ECM and sensor bots. Guns, start plotting a long-range missile intercept on the Core fleet. With any luck, our first volley will make so much noise that they'll never even notice our tin cans." He grinned hawkishly. "Time the launch so our missiles hit the Core formation thirty seconds before our ships get into range."
The senior lieutenant behind the master tactical console opened both feeding orifices in its equivalent of a feral grin, and all six of its segmented torso-limbs flowed across the board with a precision and speed no human could match.
"Admiral, we're getting a communication from Commodore Yanakawa," one of the junior communications officers told him.
"Put it through to my personal screen," Caseton said, mentally bracing himself for another round of arguments with Monika Yanakawa, the CO of his light cruiser battalion.
Almost instantly, the severe, angular features of his technical second in command flashed into existence above a small emitter conveniently located beside the command plot. "Commodore," he acknowledged. "You have some thoughts you'd like to share with me?" he asked dryly, already well aware of the answer.
"Yes sir, I do," Yanakawa said, as usual pulling no punches. "I don't like… rather, I disagree with your placement of our destroyers, Admiral." She might be blunt, but she was as aware as he of the thin line which had sprung up between them since they had last served together – that had to be at least fifty or sixty years ago now, he thought wonderingly. But a Commodore had more limits on what she could say to her Admiral than a Commander did to her Captain, and hot-tempered though Yanakawa might be, she knew that as well as he did.
"Sir," she gestured to her own command plot, but the hologram was carefully arranged to match her movements to his own, and the motion looked as natural as if she were sitting there beside Powells and himself. "If we divert our destroyers like that, not only do we lose a vital link in our system pickets, but we're also exposing the planet unnecessarily. Two destroyer squadrons won't have the point-defense to hold off a concentrated h-missile bombardment."
"I understand your concerns, Monika," Caseton told her truthfully, "and I share them. But look at that fleet out there." It was his turn now to jab a finger at the red smear at the edge of the system, slowly rolling inward at sublight, and still contorting. "They're playing it cautious. We hid this system well, and I'm betting they stumbled across us by accident. The last thing they'll do is fling a random volley at the planet and let us catch them reloading from hyperspace. No, they're up to something, and I think we're their main target. If they can knock us out, they'll be able to move in and hit Erehwon any time they want."
Yanakawa wasn't convinced. "Admiral, we were able to mask an entire planet's gravity, and they have to know that any mobile forces in the system are going to be light as part of the illusion. Meanwhile, we can only guess what they've brought out of hyper."
"Which is exactly what we're trying to find out right now, Commodore," Caseton replied with exaggerated patience. "Once we know what we're dealing with, I'll reposition the fleet if necessary."
"Sir, with all due respect, by then it might be too late," she said imploringly. "I believe that the Core finding this system was no accident, and they they've come prepared. If I'm right, we might be able to save the planet, at least long enough for an evacuation. If I'm wrong, we lose nothing by prudence. But sir… I don't think I'm wrong."
Who ever does? Caseton wondered. Then he put the thought out of his mind, and reminded himself that he knew something that no one else in the fleet did. "Commodore," he said aloud, "Erehwon is in no danger. Trust me on this." He started to go on, but was interrupted by the measured voice of his chief sensors officer.
"Admiral," Heringer said crisply, "our picket will reach scanner range of the Core fleet two standard minutes from now."
Caseton nodded an acknowledgement, and said, "Commodore, I'm afraid we'll have to put this discussion aside for the moment." She looked faintly rebellious, but he cut the connection with a curt, "Caseton out."
"Comm," he said, turning to glance in the direction of that department, "pass the word to launch our probe volley now."
"Aye sir."
From dozens of cruisers staggered across more than fifty million cubic kilometers, more than five hundred missiles shrieked out into the void at nearly half the speed of light… and they were still accelerating. On the master systems plot housed deep in the bowels of the Indestructible, a white hail had suddenly erupted from the gently pulsing blue icons. Of course, even at their incomprehensible speeds, it would take them literally hours before they reached the Core position far in the outer system.
"Core fleet is showing no reaction, sir," Heringer said unnecessarily.
The next two minutes dragged by at an astonishingly slow tempo, while Caseton glared at the plot, determined to at least look confident in front of his crew. In truth, the hair on the back of his neck was bristling, and he had the awful sensation that he was missing something very important. I won't be in just a few seconds, he reminded himself sternly. The senior surviving officers on both sides of this war knew better than to second guess themselves once they'd committed to a plan of action. Popular belief suggested that was a major reason for the Core's crushing defeat at the Battle of the Five Fleets. He felt the inclination anyway… even knowing that nothing short of a Core dreadnought would be able to leave this system alive.
Finally though, Heringer glanced up sharply from her station. "ETA for our destroyers to the Core fleet is now three-five seconds."
Caseton nodded, ignoring a loud inhalation from beside him. "Guns," he said, "you know what to do."
The knotty-looking Ter'wilik hissed an acknowledgement in a small puff of noxious gases, and its limbs flailed at the console.
Finding himself leaning right over the plot in concentration, Caseton saw the cloud of white sparkles suddenly vanish. Hyperspace had swallowed the barrage of missiles whole. And less than five seconds later, spat them out again, nearly on top of the Core formation.
This time there was a reaction.
From dozens of Core warships, weapons of every description lanced out at the missiles, trying to swat them out of the sky. Core sensors flared to life, burning through the cloud of ECM and decoys, and trying to pick out the real from the noise. Countermissiles flashed to life and erupted in careful salvoes at nearly the speed of light. Light laser batteries swept the skies as the range closed; trying to fill the vacuum with such a sheer volume of energy that nothing could get through. Gauss cannons added their fire to the mix as the range closed to under a light-second, adding a terrific volume of relativistic shrapnel to the boiling inferno that the space in front of the Core fleet had become. In mere hours, the light from that display would transform the night sky of Erehwon.
Caseton sat, transfixed, as the white cloud in front of him splintered, dissolved, and finally evaporated. The sensor data returned from the probes revealed almost nothing about the composition of the enemy fleet, but the weight of fire from the Core screening elements was nearly on par with what his own destroyers could unleash. It suggested an unpleasant parity of forces, and he grimaced.
Even as he considered that disturbing possibility, his eyes tracked two blue icons as they swept in past the Core fleet at nearly ninety-percent of light-speed. The two destroyers had cut their forward thrust, and were gliding on a parabolic arc towards the gas giant that was their turnaround point. Caseton tensed, hunched over the plot, hoping that their stealthy progress would hold.
When the icons blinked out of existence, his pent-up breath came out explosively, with the same sudden violence that had just claimed two of his ships, and twelve thousand of the people under his command.
"Dammit!" Powells hissed from beside him.
Caseton felt the muscles in his jaw clench and knot, but he couldn't allow himself the luxury of saying anything out loud.
"Admiral," the senior communications officer said quietly, "we're receiving an h-space packet from Tergiverse, but it's badly degraded. We should have it unscrambled in just a minute."
"Very well," Caseton told him, "Squeeze whatever you can out of it, but make it fast. They know we're on to them now, and whatever they're going to do, it's going to be soon."
No sooner were the words spoken than the comm officer's fingers raced across his panel, and Heringer snapped up from her own console with a sharp, indrawn breath. She swallowed hard, double-checking the damaged sensor logs that had been shunted to her board from the communications section. "Admiral," she said urgently, now positive about what she was seeing, "I'm updating the plot now, and I don't think you'll like it, sir."
Acknowledging her with a nod, Caseton propped his head up with his curled fist under his chin, and studied the new readings flashing on to the holographic projection before him. His stomach knotted almost instantly, and he asked, sotto voice, "Are these readings confirmed?"
Powells whistled softly.
"Aye sir," Heringer said flatly. "I've checked those readings six times now, and what you're seeing is what those tin cans spotted."
Caseton grunted, and narrowed his eyes at the force the Core had unexpectedly thrown against him. The center of their formation was a fuzzy red smear, too heavily swathed in ECM for any reliable data. On three sides though, that smear was being escorted by ships whose tags suggested an estimated mass between twenty and eighty billion metric tons each. That error range meant that the computer couldn't positively identify the contacts, but Caseton could make a pretty good guess. The only current Core design that fell into that range were their battleships, which the Arm had designated the Belial-class. Each one packed more firepower than Caseton's entire complement of heavy cruisers. And those three ships were covered by an additional six positively identified battlecruisers and more than forty tin cans.
In all, that Core battle fleet outgunned his by almost twelve to one. And that didn't even account for the mass in the center of that formation, which, based on the tenuous mass-reading, could easily have been several more battleships, or even a pair of dreadnoughts.
"Sir, recommend you advise Commander Stantz on Erehwon to begin the evacuation immediately," Powells said. "We might be able to give them enough time to get their Galactic Gate on-line and withdraw before –" he gulped – "Before."
Before we're all blown into our component atoms, Caseton heard in his voice. "Belay that," he heard himself saying. "Comm, send a triple-encoded h-packet to Erehwon, coded for Commander Stantz only. Include our latest sensor logs and current fleet deployments. Tell him we'll provide cover for as long as we're able. From this point forward, send him sitreps every thirty seconds."
Both of Powell's eyebrows arched towards his hairline, but he didn't speak, and despite their own surprise, the communications section handled the details swiftly. Caseton regretted the necessity of hiding anything from his subordinates, but that order had come from the highest levels.
The atmosphere on the bridge was tense, but restrained, until Powells' head suddenly whipped around from where he'd been keeping an eye on the command plot. His shout coincided with Heringer's soft gasp from a few feet back. "Admiral, they're on the move, headed right at us, ETA twenty seconds!"
Caseton's mind froze for a critical moment while the realization sank in. No matter what would follow, he and his fleet were already effectively hors de combat. Behind that terrible thought, lay another, more defiant. Though the outcome was never in doubt, he intended to make sure that the enemy knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that they'd been in a fight.
"Sir," one of the junior comm-officers said quietly, "Captain Rumiez is making a speech, and broadcasting it to his entire command."
Caseton knew the type. It would be a pompous, overblown, half-coherent monologue, full of rhetoric and inane for-Arm-and-sentients-everywhere sentiments that few real soldiers could bring themselves to care about anymore. For most of them now, the issue was more straightforward – kill the Core, and keep on killing them until there was no trace of them left in the galaxy. "Cut him off," he snapped irritably. "Tell him to get his ass into position: we'll need the point defense on his tin cans if we plan to survive the first volley."
"Aye sir," the officer returned, no doubt going on to cushion those orders before relaying them.
Powells inhaled sharply, his nostrils flaring, eyes riveted on the display in front of him.
And then that swirling red rose was back in real-space, only fifteen million kilometers away, and there was suddenly no more time for speeches, for contemplation, for rational thought… or for fear.
Space came alive.
Five of Caseton's remaining eighteen destroyers vanished in the first exchange of fire, overwhelmed by just the fraction of firepower than wasn't directed at his heavier ships. It was with a guilty, yet savage, pleasure that he noted one of those five obliterated ships had been Rumiez's flagship. Truth be told though, he'd expected that first exchange to decide the battle immediately, and was briefly surprised to find that he was still alive. Then the reason hit him with just a glance at the now-seething plot. He was only facing six Core battlecruisers.
"Sensors, where are the rest of them?" he barked. The deck suddenly lurched beneath them, which told him immediately that his ship had just taken a very bad hit. Nothing else would have been felt on the heavily armored and shock-proofed command deck.
Heringer regained her balance quickly, and scowled at what her console was telling her, before reporting, "The rest of their fleet is making a run at the planet, Admiral. And Admiral, we've just burned through their jamming." He voice tightened to a whole new level of tension, and she told him what she was seeing.
That obscure, clouded center of the Core formation hadn't hid more battleships, or even a dreadnought. It was a planetoid. They'd grabbed a rock several hundred kilometers across, towed it along behind the three battleships at half the speed of light like the galaxy's largest bullet, and aimed it right at the planet Erehwon. On impact, the energy release would briefly outshine the nearest dozen stars, and the few tiny fragments of both planet and projectile that survived without being vaporized outright would be hurled outward with such force that it would be as if Erehwon had never existed at all.
The sheer audacity of it left Indestructible's officers speechless. All but one, that is. Caseton felt a corner of his mouth tug upwards involuntarily. Alone of more than twenty million Arm personnel aboard his fleet, he felt only a hazy satisfaction and a flash of morbid amusement. "Helm, bring us around, I want our broadsides focused on those battlecruisers. Comm, order the rest of the fleet to follow suit."
Powells glanced up from the plot anxiously. "Admiral, we've got to stop that thing! If we pull out all of our tin cans now, we can throw them up in a cordon around the planet. All they have to do is break it up enough to let the planetary defenses handle it."
"And then what?" Caseton asked his flag captain philosophically, "Hope that less than a dozen destroyers can live long enough against a Core battleship division to take that thing out? It would be a miracle if they were able to hit it even once. No," he continued with gesture at the plot, "We're getting torn up by just those battlecruisers, and that's with the point-defense on those tin cans. We move them out, we'll get blown out of space, they'll wind up the same, and we'll have accomplished nothing."
Sensing a challenge, Powells' eyes flashed. "With all due respect sir, that's not the point. Our mission is to defend that planet, and you're suggesting we abandon our post for nothing!"
Normally, a comment like that from a subordinate would have drawn a furious response from Caseton. That defensiveness went with the territory – no commander could afford public friction with his closest officers. He let it slide this time, however, since he could easily understand Powells' reaction based on what the flag captain knew. "That would be true if that were our only mission, Captain," he murmured softly.
Sensing some significance to the way his Admiral had lowered his voice, Powells looked at him askance. "Sir?"
Caseton pondered his response, making sure to choose his words carefully. "You'll see very shortly, Captain; if we survive the next few minutes."
Powells seemed to be on the verge of asking another question – a more pointed one that he could not answer yet – when all hell broke loose. The deck beneath them suddenly heaved, and the damage-control section went bananas. Klaxons howled, lighted panels strobed dire warnings, and several officers were hurled from their seats by the sudden motion.
A Core D-cannon shell had caught Indestructible amidships, just fore of her command deck. A spherical volume of nearly unlimited energy, the shell punched through the shields as if they were so much tissue paper, and burrowed through kilometers of heavy armor like a shotgun slug through cardboard. Matter in the path of the shot destabilized, its nuclear binding energy overcome completely, and the very atoms of hull, bulkheads, computers, and crew, shattered into a subatomic spray. Those free-wheeling particles sleeted through the surrounding areas with such force and density that plating which could have shrugged off a point-blank nuclear detonation ran like water. In some places, it caused massive splinters of armor and decking to slash through bulkheads, instantly killing thousands of crewmen who had escaped the fury of the actual weapon. The entire drama played out in less than a quarter of a second, leaving behind a shaft more than a kilometer wide that bisected the ship from port to starboard.
On the bridge, one of the damage control officers called out, "Admiral, secondary command is gone!"
Powells' face drained of color. He'd just lost his executive officer and entire backup command crew. The blow hit him hard, since no vessel under his command had ever suffered remotely comparable damage.
But Indestructible's weapons crews returned the favor with interest a moment later, despite having lost a sizable portion of their broadside armament, when one of their own D-cannon shells struck a Core battlecruiser head-on, drilling through that much more massive ship lengthwise, and setting off its enormous power plant.
Powells managed a vindictive grin at that, thumping his fist against the arm of his chair. Several of the tactical officers at the rear of the bridge whooped and cheered. "Gotcha, you bastards!" he crowed. A killing shot against a battlecruiser from a heavy cruiser wasn't unheard of, but it certainly wasn't routine.
Caseton's own smile was more reserved, until he noticed red icons suddenly vanishing from the plot as they approached the planet. The moment he saw that, he was grinning more wildly than even the enthusiastic crewmen. Tugging on his flag captain's sleeve, he jabbed a finger at the plot. "Watch this."
About five light-minutes out from Erehwon, everything started to go wrong for the Core fleet. Their own destroyers, more numerous, larger, and more powerful than the Arm version, were paced ahead of their interstellar missile, in an arrangement designed to provide cover for their real weapon. The plan would have them break off several minutes out, at which point even heavy surface defenses would be incapable of reducing it fast enough to prevent the annihilation of the planet. At their current velocity of point-five-cee, even a five kilo rock would strike the atmosphere with a force equivalent to a fifteen megaton thermonuclear device. The entire planetoid massed more than one hundred and fifty billion tons.
But that plot unraveled in a matter of seconds. The Core sensors had already burned through the planet's minimal jamming field, but all that meant was that they were easily able to see the impossible salvo of missiles it launched at them. Two hundred thousand of the high-yield weapons belched from Erehwon, pouring out of volcanic craters, ocean basins, and carefully disguised launchers located all across the surface of the deliberately misnamed "planet."
The total time between launch and impact for that lethal sheet of hyperspace-equipped projectiles was barely three seconds – which allowed the electronically patterned minds of the Core fleet more than enough time to analyze their impending ruin. Before the second volley had even streaked away from the surface, the space around Erehwon became a seething furnace of electromagnetic, gravitic, and dimensional contortions that completely blinded the Core sensors. That no longer mattered, however.
The Core destroyer formation had simply ceased to exist, and the hail of unimpeded missiles ran headlong into the larger battlecruisers; and the planetoid itself, which began to liquefy and fragment almost instantly. By the time the third equally large volley arrived twenty seconds later, most of the missiles slashed harmlessly through the field of rubble and debris that had once been a full Core battleship division and a small moon.
The shield protecting the planet was a band of gravitational flux so powerful that from the surface, the entire night sky was dramatically red-shifted. When the scattered wrecks and chunks of cooling rock arrived with most of their original velocity eight minutes later, the energy release transformed night into a day brighter than any Erehwon had ever known.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
"Admiral?"
Caseton recognized the voice at once, and leaned back in his chair towards the starry window behind him, pushing off from the polished obsidian of his desk. He'd been expecting this visit, having requested it himself, but he'd gotten caught up in paperwork and lost track of time. A thought, delivered as a command to his desk, wiped clean the displays and status reports that scrolled across its slick ebony surface. The second command caused the door – a heavy, armored thing, airtight as most objects were on the ship – to roll open. He waved to the two figures in the doorway, motioning them to the pair of chairs arranged in front of the desk.
Captain Powells waited for Commodore Yanakawa to seat herself before he claimed the remaining chair. In contrast to Yanakawa, who was immaculate in a crisply pressed uniform, Powells had just come from personally directing his damage-control teams into the gaping wound caused by the Core D-cannon, and his hair was disheveled, and uniform smudged and gritty. Both politely waited for their Admiral to come to the point, which he did immediately.
"I'm sure you both have a lot of questions about our recent battle, but let me get the preliminaries out of the way," Caseton told them, calling up just the relevant reports on his desktop. "First, our losses. Given what we were up against, we came out well – very well, and I want you to commend your crews on my behalf. We're down to less than half strength now, and that isn't even including the fact that we are now down to four destroyers." He paused significantly at that news. Since the fleet had begun with more than twenty tin cans in total, it meant that they would be severely handicapped in terms of point defense and patrol units until they could be replaced.
"As a result," he warned, "we're being recalled from active duty for the time being. But –" and he held up a hand, forestalling their inevitably angry and disappointed reactions – "we're being upgraded. We'll be returning to Altair base, and our surviving ships here will be added to Independent BatRon 19."
Now Powells did react. He jumped to his feet angrily. "Sir, how can they do that? We earned this posting, and now we're just going to be shuffled into some blasted task force somewhere after winning a fight like this?"
Caseton waved the captain back into his seat. "Sit down, Vern, and let me finish," he said mildly. "As I was saying, these ships will be added to BatRon 19, which is a new unit. I'll be in command of that 'blasted task force,' in fact." He nodded to Yanakawa, and said, "The Commodore here will still be my XO. Only, this time, you'll be getting this ship, and command of 19's entire cruiser wing," he told her. "And you," he said, turning back to Powells, "are going to be my flag captain. Unless of course, you'd rather not trade up for a Valhalla-class battleship."
Powells reddened visibly, looking appropriately abashed, while wide eyes were the only outward sign of Yanakawa's reaction. Powells started to say something, then seemed to think better of it, and dropped back into his seat, finally processing Caseton's first comment.
"Now, I suppose you both have some questions for me?"
Yanakawa's face twisted into an ironic smile. She had felt betrayed at first, unable to understand why her perfectly sensible recommendations had been thrown out. Now she knew. "You could say that, Sir. I was going to ask you about our sudden advancements – High Command isn't in the habit of bumping people up to more important slots after only one battle. Unless of course, it was more important than we realized." She paused expectantly, but wasn't rewarded with any reaction. "But," she concluded, "that would probably have to do with what the hell happened to Erehwon, now wouldn't it?"
Now Caseton allowed himself to smile slightly in return, and said, "Indeed it would, Commodore." He swiveled in his chair, until he was half-facing the window behind him. The window of course, was not real: the office was buried at the heart of the ship adjacent to the bridge, many kilometers from the hull. The starfield winked out in response to a mental command, and a new image came up on the large screen.
Caseton was amused to hear small, short gasps from behind him. "This," he said grandly, sweeping his hand across the large cutaway holograph, "is the real Erehwon. It started out as a rock – not much bigger than the one the Core tried to use as a missile, in fact. We dragged it in from the Kuiper Belt here, and spent the last ten years funneling in resources secretly to build it up. From the outside, it looks like a lot of habitable planets. But on the inside, it's packing the firepower of two of our dreadnoughts, and enough manufacturing plants to out-produce some entire systems. Aside from that basic armament though, it also has one of the largest, heaviest D-cannons ever created." At their expressions, he chuckled, "You didn't think the Core had a monopoly on planet-building, did you?"
Powells picked up on the idea first. "It's a Q-ship!" he exclaimed out loud. "Or a Q-planet, rather, I guess. But that's the idea, isn't it?"
Picking up where he trailed off, Yanakawa's eyes widened visibly, and she glanced again at the holo behind the Admiral's head. "That D-cannon's got a bore diameter almost big enough to swallow this ship lengthwise! They're going to use this thing to ambush Core superdreadnoughts, aren't they?"
Caseton grinned, and there was something very dark, and very ominous in his eyes directed at the mortal enemies of organic life everywhere. "We know they can't build any more of those monsters, so our job with BatRon 19 will be to find them, and start arranging little… accidents. With any luck, that will give us the edge we need to finally win this war for good."
Behind him, the blue and white swirled marble continued its innocent spinning.