Disclaimer: Whereas the no claims are hereby made nor should be inferred.
SL/L-N-524141501-9035-768
Outer Asteroid Belt
DDQ-235907-5MC-II and CJF Hawker
Idiots!
A human would, perhaps, not have screamed the damning condemnation at his foe. But scorn and contempt could have leaked out in other ways: an aside to one's XO, a snort, or perhaps merely a subtle shake of one's head. Once that thought had entered a brain, it would have been difficult to not-remember it. Instead it would color thought, shade one's thinking, affecting analysis and conclusions no matter how slightly. The professional, and self-honest, were able to recognize such thoughts for what they were. Care would be taken so that such thoughts didn't sway analysis. Additional scrutiny would be given to conclusions. But no matter how much care or scrutiny was applied, a human would remain human.
The one thing DDQ-235907-5MC-II was manifestly not, however, was human. That did not mean that it did not reach the conclusion that its enemy was an idiot. Rather, it meant that DDQ-235907-5MC-II acknowledged it whole-heartedly. It embraced it. And that, in addition to the predictive model of an idiot, and 23,768 others, there was also one model of a scarily competent enemy deliberately appearing as an idiot.
The battleship that had been listed as the enemy flag was new-built. Or at least it was newer than Star League-built. According to Atalanta it was still over a century old. The next-youngest was almost three centuries old.
Well, so was DDQ-235907-5MC-II.
The Jade Falcons had spent those years making material upgrades to their ships' weapons, their ability to carry the super-sized troops they used for marines, and outsized aerospace fighter groups. They upgraded the armor, and incorporated lithium-fusion batteries. They had updated the computer hardware. But the code that ran the hardware? That mostly functioned on the if-not-broke/don't-fix rule. Oh, much of it had changed considerably over the years, but even that had its roots in the standard SLDF coding.
And then there was everything else.
Not just the coding, but the actual components that controlled the lights, or checked the concentrations of oxygen and carbon dioxide in a compartment… And even where material components had been replaced, the BIOS was nearly identical.
Atalanta had expressed the 'Clans' were highly resource-conscious. That very few working components were ever truly discarded simply for being old. That parts that were worn out or broken were repeatedly repaired and refurbished, again, and again, and again, until even that was impossible (or technology had long-since left them behind), and only then were they processed for material reclamation.
Whereas DDQ-235907-5MC-II would remove a sensor that had approached mandatory replacement without consideration of whether or not it remained functional, the Clans strongly abhorred such waste. If a component functioned and hadn't received undue wear it was left alone rather than replaced.
Stress indicator levels did not suggest Atalanta was engaging in deliberate falsehood, but DDQ-235907-5MC-II's recent contact with humanity was limited in the extreme, and prior to that was not what anyone would describe as cordial, collegial, or even barely tolerable. Any yet analysis of a surface-scans of their ship, as well as the returns from the three damage repair remotes DDQ-235907-5MC-II had infiltrated, both seemed to corroborate Atalanta's claims.
It was…curious.
Running a track on the approaching cruiser's emissions spectra indicated the rebuilds hadn't stopped at overhauling engines and armor and doing routine maintenance. The former SLS Sevastopol's radar and lidar had received substantive upgrades. Presumably its passive sensors had been likewise updated. But it appeared as though the electronic warfare equipment had been largely removed. And that hadn't been restricted to the so-called 'SDS Drone Jammer' that had once been installed in its cavernous cargo hold. Analysis of transmissions to date suggested that all provisions for passive, deceptive, and offensive EW had been removed.
DDQ-235907-5MC-II had originally assigned a rather low truth-value to Manfred Steele's statement that this would be the case, and now updated its models accordingly. The AI had a practical understanding of the concept of honor, even though many of the nuances were lost on it. The idea of a soldier deliberately not employing a weapon (or defense for that matter) because it wasn't 'proper' was almost as alien to its way of thinking as its logic paths were to the bioorganic sentiences that now occupied the refit facility. That 'honor' might be used a catchall term used to anathematize such attacks that were too disruptive to the battlefield or fabric of life—such as free use of nuclear ordnance, gengineered biologic attacks against food production, or deliberate massed disruption of interstellar trade—too be tolerated was rather different. Imprecise, of course, but that was humans for you.
Still…mass saved from elimination of electronic warfare equipment could have been (and likely was) diverted to more fighters, armor, weapons, endurance, and Marines. Well…maybe the Marines were a wash. If it came down to fighting Marines it was likely it had already lost anyway.
But the Clans thoughts on what constituted proper maintenance or electronic warfare aside, this wasn't the only reason for DDQ-235907-5MC-II's blistering epithet. For while CJF Hawker's command codes had been altered over that centuries, they had been altered using SLDF equipment, running SLDF code, to SLDF specifications.
…And even after nearly three centuries, they hadn't actually removed all of the SLDF components.
Things like atmospheric pressure sensors, and motion-sensitive light-switches were remarkably stable, after all.
CJF Hawker settled down into a Y-formation. The Carrier-class DropShips Hood and Jesses were out in front with their fighters sweeping ahead of them. Sassinid-Class Creance was astern Hawker where it could be protected by the cruiser's bulk in anticipation of boarding action. Preferably that boarding action would be the clearing of the repair facility, but if the opportunity presented itself to take this enemy destroyer by boarding action so as to affect its capture for induction into the Jade Falcon toumen, well, Star Commodore Sami Folkner would be just fine with that occurrence.
The Broadsword Gauntlet followed behind Creance. The firepower it could add to any battle would be negligible, but the OmniMechs it carried would be a potent backing force for Creance's Elementals. Bringing up the rear was the Titan-class DropShip Mews, with its aerospace trinary still aboard so they could be rapidly configured based on the threat presented. Both anti-shipping and anti-fighter loads had been staged in anticipation of being attached to under-wing hardpoints.
Sami Folkner had chosen a rather leisurely approach. This was less out of uncertainty—even among the Clans actual engagements between WarShips were few and far between—and more out of a desire to not go charging through an asteroid field at a velocity so high she lacked sufficient time to maneuver to avoid, say, an asteroid. That doing so also preserved the charge on CJF Hawker's lithium-fusion battery was a happy coincidence.
DDQ-235907-5MC-II was unaware of why the enemy had chosen the approach it had, just like it was unaware of the fighters in Mews' hangers (although pattern analysis suggested that the stern-most of the trailing DropShips carried additional fighters, the front-most one being too small and the middle one clearly derived from a Leopard-class mech-carrier). That the enemy was conserving at least some fighter strength was without question for none had launched from the enemy WarShip. Nor did it much care beyond acknowledging and accounting that said approach had resulted in there having been plenty of time for DDQ-235907-5MC-II to spot and track CJF Hawker's flight group.
DDQ-235907-5MC-II syphoned off a fraction of its processing power to run 42 simulations that utilized the self-deploying mines it had left behind.
Hawker had approached within 40,000 kilometers by the time its radar pulses had increased to sufficient strength as to yield a detection return. DDQ-235907-5MC-II was not particularly concerned about this. There were no less than three wrecked WarShips, and many times that number of DropShip hulls, in the patch of asteroid field it had chosen. Included in that number was one McKenna-class battleship that now registered as no less than three distinct 'ships' plus a crowd of 'fighter' sized debris.
From the moment CJF Hawker's radar had first washed over DDQ-235907-5MC-II's hull, the AI had been busy working on it. It had been fairly straightforward, if not precisely simple, to absorb the radar pulse. By the time it reached detection threshold, the signal had been thoroughly twisted, spindled, and mutilated, before being repackaged and sent back in a box wrapped in pretty paper with a bow on top that showed its human overseers precisely what DDQ-235907-5MC-II wanted them to see.
The first and hardest part of getting into an enemy's computer was making contact. Firewalls and anti-viral programs could be circumvented or thwarted, and counter-hacking attempts repelled. But simply talking? That was a challenge.
Fortunately, there was one part of a WarShip that was designed to accept data. The sensors. Coding in IR, or radar returns, or neutrino emissions or any of the other assorted types of data those sensors could pick up was…very difficult. Very difficult was not, however, impossible. Once accepted back, intrusion programs slowly reassembled themselves. They took note of their immediate surroundings, and spliced their findings onto the next radar pulse. More instructions went out.
DDQ-235907-5MC-II's first objective was Communications. Its very nature made it a far more convenient point of access, and those who did not worry about conducting offensive electronic warfare seldom saw a need for defensive electronic warfare. As long as the intrusion package stayed away from the HPG, it was much less likely to be detected than if it went after oh, say, fire control.
"Another wreck."
"A wreck, or a ship appearing to be wrecked?" Sami Folkner asked.
"A wreck," Star Captain Glen's reply was definite.
Sami gave her tactical officer a steady look.
"It is in a slow erratic tumble, its hull is cold, and a fighter element lofted some missiles at it. No response."
"That is the fourth one," Senior Sensor Director Brooks, her sensor officer, noted. "And we have another coming up. This one is smaller, likely another DropShip."
"Was there anything like this in the logs, Wilver?" Sami asked, turning to her XO.
"Neg, Star Commodore." He refrained from pointing out that the records regarding this base had also indicated that it was located in the closest habited system, Zoetermeer, and that only the automated response they had intercepted had revealed the actual location.
The engagement zone was a box thirty thousand kilometers long, and half that across and high. It was, in all regards, quite small on the scale of a star system, and while it was far larger than her weapon range, the whole of it was easily within CJF Hawker's sensor range.
But…
The system was rather remarkable. The star was utterly uninteresting, though not of a type commonly associated with dense asteroid fields of which the system had three. The entries in the star catalog and the survey reports were bland, and she would have thought the report sanitized by the Star League survey crew—or perhaps the SLDF when it received the survey report—if not for the first survey predating the Star League by over a century. It likely would have gone on unnoticed if not for but—
But something in the system sent out an HPG communique using an ancient SLDF naval code that, when finally decoded, yielded nothing more than a 'I am here'-type message. It was either a remarkable coincidence of timing. Or…
Sami Folkner shied away from that 'or' even as she contemplated if only the Inner Sphere had not been completely devoid of WarShips to fight. If only Adrian Malthus had not been incredibly bored, and looking for something to waylay his crews' boredom.
And yet…
And yet Star Commodore Sami Folkner was beginning to rather regret 'buts' and 'if onlys' and 'and yets'. Plenty of sensor reach CJF Hawker may have. But those asteroids were lousy with metal, and many were quite large. She had deliberately held her velocity down to 3 kps, which meant it would take eighty-three-point-three-three minutes to complete her base sweep. But those chunks of rock meant each return had to be examined individually. And worse, each created a noticeable 'shadow' in which her enemy could be hiding.
Which meant rather than a stand up fight, she was sailing into an ambush. Going faster would increase her chance of sailing through an ambush zone before taking insurmountable damage. Going faster in an asteroid field meant she risked 'finding the edge of space with her ship' instead. And yet if she went slower…
Freebirths just had to get clever!
"Vampire! Vampire!"
Sami Folkner's hands tensed on the arms of her command couch.
"Missiles in-bound one-nine-seven, plus one seven, range three-zero-zero-zero kilometers!"
The Derelict! But that was well out of range.
"Out of range," Wilver von Jankmon murmured.
She started to reply, but the tech wasn't finished.
"Acceleration, seven-four-four meters per second squared. Time to impact, niner-five seconds. Count… Count five-zero vampires!"
That was…not possible. "Have CIC analyze that missile trace, Guns," Sami heard someone else speak with her voice.
"Come left, one-six-three degrees, same plane." The acceleration was low, the range far too long…but perhaps that was how whoever it was had done it?
"Roll port ninety degrees." Use a standard missile body, and trade a lower acceleration for a longer burn-time? Final velocity would be the same, but it would extend the powered range…
"Fighters to interdict." One thing was certain, whoever it was had not launched at a target outside her range. There would still be burn-time on those missiles when they came boring in. CIC finished its analysis. Fifty Killer Whale-type missiles.
Nor did it explain how someone managed to cram fifty launchers into a single broadside.
"Problem, Star Commodore?"
But maybe they hadn't?
"Neg, Star Admiral," Sami Folkner replied through the open HPG link between her WarShip and the Emerald Talon as she punched a query into her link to Hawker's Combat Information Center.
It took CIC a moment to crunch numbers and then… The calculated initial velocity was low. Very low.
Damn. Reverse course again? No, her ships were still shaking out on their new course, better to sail into a fight in a steady formation, even if it came from an unpleasant quarter, than to be caught in the confusion of mid-movement.
"Launch our fighters with an anti-shipping package and have them take up station behind us. Well behind us. At least…best make it a thousand klicks."
If something was back there, they would find it first, thus both warning Sami and giving the enemy an unpleasant surprise of her own. The thought made Sami Folkner smile very briefly.
"And Mews?"
"Keep them in their bays." She looked over at Wilver and saw the confusion in his eyes. "Minefield."
"Pre-position the missiles, and then give the order to light off their drives?"
"Thirty seconds to impact!"
"I want a full sensor watch behind us," Sami raised her voice. "Point defense free."
"Radiation Alarm!"
SL/L-N-524141501-9035-768
Zenith Jump Point
CJF Emerald Talon
"Talk to me, Sami," Adrian Malthus said, forcing his voice to remain level.
"Comms, send our sensor logs to the Star Admiral. Append CIC's analysis," Sami Folkner ordered to someone off-screen before turning back to him. "At least ten of the missiles have emission profiles of trans-atomic warheads." She turned off-screen again. "Secure the HPG."
Adrian resisted the urge to swear as the communications repeater by his right knee went black. He knew why she had done it. There was a small but not insignificant chance that sufficient EMP could be carried through the distortion in real-space generated by the HPG to damage his ships before the blast wave destroyed Hawker and with it its HPG. That did not mean he liked it, and at this range it would be hours before his ships would detect the wash of radiation that heralded Sami Folkner's death.
But the chosen battlefield, the third asteroid belt, was outside the gravitational limit of the KF-drive.
"Prepare to jump," he ordered. "Astrogation, plot an in-system jump. I want us as near to the engagement zone as possible."
"Star Admiral—"
Adrian Malthus raised a hand. "You are going to call me on breaking my bid, quiaff?" he asked his XO.
"Why, yes, Star Admiral."
Malthus chuckled. "They broke first."
"ROE 34-b and the Ares Convention do allow for the limited use of nuclear weapons," the other warrior's lips sneered in disgust.
"34-b's use is qualified, Star Commodore," Malthus said in a voice that was almost gentle. "No 'first use'. Sensors, what can you tell me about Hawker's analysis of the enemy destroyer?"
"Star Admiral," the Scientist in charge of sensor operations said. "We are not certain that the destroyer is the enemy."
"Explain."
"Fifty missiles are three-quarters the entire battery of a Quixote-class Frigate, Star Admiral, but certainly more than it could fire in a single broadside. No other WarShip could loft so many missiles in a single salvo. Also, the missiles started with no momentum, which they would have had if launched from a conventional missile tube, and their drives have obviously been heavily modified. The most likely explanation is the missiles were deployed in space, like a minefield, and targeting information beamed to them remotely along with an activation order."
"What about damage to the missiles?"
"A long-term concern would be preventing dust buildup or micrometeors from damaging the missiles, yes," the Scientist agreed. "Emphasis, however, on long-term."
"Maybe…or maybe someone ripped all the weapons out of a Lola-III hull and replaced them with missile launchers."
"Launchers would have imparted an initial velocity, Star Admiral," the Scientist reminded Adrian Malthus. "Even so, replacing all of the weapons and placing just the fifty presumed launchers in each side-arc would limit the launchers to less than a half-dozen rounds apiece. There is more cargo mass available, of course, but it is not very convenient to the weapon decks without extensive yardwork. And…" the Scientist broke off.
"And?" Adrian pressed.
"Launchers are relatively low-cost, but the same cannot be said of missiles," the Scientist said with a shrug. "Especially so in the quantities that could be expected to be expended by a vessel so equipped. And it would require a substantial refit, yet another is another high-cost item. And such weapons, aside from their abilities to engage both capital targets as well as fighters and their capability of carrying nuclear ordnance, have rather low damage throughput margins.
"My initial impression of such a weapons configuration is that it would not make economic or military sense."
SL/L-N-524141501-9035-768
Outer Asteroid Belt
DDQ-235907-5MC-II and CJF Hawker
Sami Folkner did not swear. She did, however, commend the Warriors onboard the dying Mews to the Great Father (she had already commended those of the dead Gauntlet and Creance), and then offered a quick prayer to the God her first Star Commander, a Ka'an Priest, had taught her existed but that she could never quite bring herself to fully believe in.
Then she got down to business. "Damage report."
"Light armor damage of no significance."
Of course not, Sami thought bitterly. Ten of the missiles had mounted some kind of emitter that mimicked the signature of nuclear ordnance. As had been no doubted intended, fighters had gone to intercept them, and when they did those missiles had exploded. Not with nuclear hellfire as expected, but with a multitude of precision, close-attack submunitions designed to destroy fighters in space.
The surviving fighters had shot down a number of missiles, and she had freed Hawker's point-defense from fleet coverage to concentrate on protecting itself. But the rest of the missiles had not been targeting Hawker. They had swept past to destroy her DropShips and she had been too slow to get the fighters on Mews off before it went.
They had only targeted the three trailing DropShips. Hood and Jesses had not been targeted at all, and the two hits Hawker had taken had probably been intended for Creance. Was it because those three DropShips had not deployed assets the way the two Carriers had? Or was it because since they had been trailing Hawker when the engagement began, the enemy had had a better shot on those three?
"Fighter control, change of mission. Target the destroyer," Sami continued. It had lit off its drive so there was no question what the target was. And it was before her, so at least she did not need to be concerned with yet another unexpected attack from the rear.
Unless the enemy has a field of remote-activated missiles out there, a voice whispered in the back of her mind. But Sami shook it off. The destroyer was the source of the missiles. Both had been back-tracked to the same locus. The low initial velocity of the missiles had yet to be determined, but it would be and—
A communications repeater blanked, and then reappeared with the image of a very young man—by Clan standards—wearing the uniform of a Technician-caste assigned to WarShip crew. "Yes?" Sami asked, arching an eyebrow.
"Star Commodore, I am Optical Sensor Technician Third Class Terrance, and I have something you need to see," he said.
"There is a procedure—"
"Forgive me, Star Commodore, I know. They do not believe me, but you need to see this." The screen blanked, replaced by two images of the destroyer, and a third with green and red lines drawn over the hull.
"If you are wasting my time I will have you spaced," Sami said almost casually.
"Star Commodore, if I am wasting your time I will deserve to be spaced," the voice of the technician chuckled nervously. "The first image is from the initial sweep by our fighters, and the second taken by long-range optics after the missile launch. There is a noticeable albedo shift in a patt—"
"A what?"
"A shift in albedo," the technician replied. "It changed color."
"It changed color?" Sami demanded. "You call me for thi—"
"Look at the third image. I highlighted with green lines. The differences are notable. Each is approximately the right size for a capital-ship missile."
Sami Folkner had been reaching forward to clear the channel, but now she paused. "How many?" she demanded.
"We did not get a complete scan of the entire hull. Approximately twenty over the parts we have before and after images. Extrapolating gives us somewhere from forty-five to sixty. It depends on how they are mounted, and whether they could accommodate the turn of the hull."
Sami considered the last image again. "And these red lines?" each was a teardrop-shaped projection perpendicular to the long-axis of ship, and at the base were a half-dozen radiating fins that had rear edges flush up against the hull.
"Fighters, I think. Possibly space-based only. We only have imagery of seventeen but probably not more than four dozen. Probably less, actually, depending on the number of missiles. They could be some new weapon system or possibly thermal radiators. But if the enemy used strap-on missiles…"
Sami touched a control and the graphic blanked, replaced by a now nervous-looking Technician Terrance. "Sensor Tech Third?"
"Yes, Star Commodore?" his voice, at least, was remarkably composed.
"If we survive this you are a Sensor Tech First."
She cut the circuit.
"Damn," Wilver murmured.
"Indeed. Fighter control, have the fighters ditch the anti-shipping ordnance. And release them to go after enemy fighters. Likewise Hood and Jesses."
To be fair to the Jade Falcon warriors, none of them had any real understanding, or reason to suspect, what they faced. Freed of the necessity of providing for a human crew the designers of the Caspar-series of drone WarShips had been able to be…creative. Some of these had manifested in obvious ways, human frailty had long posed an absolute cap on the number of Gs a vessel the size of a WarShip could endure since it was generally impossible to ensure all crew members shared the same flight orientation as would be the case in an aerospace fighter. (Eight, or even twelve positive Gs was a relatively survivable if unpleasant experience, the same could not be said of as little as four negative G). The need to protect its vulnerable biologics had likewise posed caps—or necessitated the mass and expense of shielding—on the power of electronic emissions.
Freed of these limitations, mass devoted to quarters, environmental plants, ring-shaped gravity decks, and food storage could be put towards other ends. It was no longer necessary to devote mass to shielding biologic sentiences from the harmful transmissions of high-powered active sensors, or electronic warfare equipment. And every gram saved could be repurposed and devoted to the WarShip trinity of Speed. Guns. Armor.
But some of that creativity had expressed itself in less obvious ways. There really wasn't a reason, for example, why anyone couldn't mount ordnance externally, just a great many reasons not to.
For one, the KF-drive field was calculated based on a rather detailed map of the hull. More specifically, on the potential mass inside that hull. There was no reason why a vessel couldn't travel at less than its maximum volume-load, but a good many reasons why filling the cargo hold to the overhead with, say, neutronium would be a Bad Thing. A KF-Boom with a compatible DropShip could circumvent this by extending the drive field to incorporate the DropShip, but this was rather different than adding additional mass to the exterior of the vessel.
But if a WarShip wasn't intending to transit JumpSpace this wasn't a problem.
There was also the nasty habit of ordnance exploding if hit. Warheads, even nuclear ordnance, might be incredibly stable (at least outside of holo-vid action-dramas), but the same could not be said of their (frequently) volatile fuels. Strapping ordnance that might do significant damage to your vessel if the enemy got a surprise shot in first was intolerable to a human-crewed vessel, but an acceptable trade-off for a 'disposable' WarShip. Refueling and rearming hatches for fighters presented a weak point in the ship's hull, routine maintenance was impossible, and getting pilots to external-mounted fighters was nearly insurmountable. But the last wouldn't be an issue for drone fighters, and if the fighters themselves were disposable (or at least expendable), then you didn't need to worry about refueling or rearming either. And even then it wasn't so hard to stage a flight group or two through a maintenance depot, or even the parent-ship's fighter bays (if it had any) on a regular basis.
There were limits however. Any ship had only a finite amount of hull space, and things like sensor arrays, weapon hatches, and thrusters had to be left clear. There was a cap on the total mass that could be carried without stressing the hull-plating or the structure underneath. And finally it wasn't simply a matter of floating ordnance out of a cargo bay and sticking it into clamps. Actually fitting external ordnance required a servicing platform—an automated servicing platform was acceptable, but still a servicing platform—or base. At need be and assuming provisions were in place, it would be possible for external hull crews to manhandle the ordnance into place. Doing so would not, however, be fast. And no matter how you went about it, time would need to be spent running checks to make sure it was all attached and working properly.
DDQ-235907-5MC-II fired a precise burst of its thrusters and its tumbling stopped. Docking clamps released and puffs of inert gas kicked the fighters anchored to its hull clear. Analysis of changes to enemy fighter flight profiles suggested they had jettisoned external ordnance. DDQ-235907-5MC-II started a slow burn as fighters began to spit from its internal launch bays.
There were three mechanics of Kearney-Fuchida physics with major tactical implications, and now the first came into play. Any Jump was preceded at the destination by a very distinct burst across much of the electromagnetic spectrum that was accompanied by an equally distinct thermal bloom. With sufficiently sensitive equipment, it was possibly to determine both an emergence locus and the total transiting mass.
DDQ-235907-5MC-II analyzed the wave-front. Manfred Steele had provided a complete profile of WarShips and DropShips in common use by the Clans, with the note that Jade Falcon tended to be quite rigid in their organization. The incoming mass-transit numbers matched what would be expected of a Whirlwind, a Congress with two of the smaller fighter-carriers, and an Aegis with two fighter-carriers, one of the highly modified Leopards—what Manfred Steele had called a Broadsword—and one of the modified Titans. The last massed… one-point-two-two-three-eight-five m-tons. Two Carriers, one Broadsword, and one Titan fit the extra mass perfectly.
While it calculated this, it executed a sixty-seven-degree turn to port, pitched nose down seventeen degrees, then began to rapidly roll.
Only a dozen fighters, that was low. Too low for the number suspected carried on the external hull.
"Query, CIC. Could they have reserved external missiles?"
The answer came back almost immediately. The fighters had received an initial boost, most likely from an internal mag-driver catapult. But the target's albedo had shifted yet again. Which begged the question…
"Find those external fighters."
"Missile trace!"
"Talk to me, Tactical."
"Enemy fighters launching external ord— Correction, enemy fighters launching external anti-fighter missiles."
Sami Folkner glared at her tactical repeater as her fighters twisted into evasion tracks. She had long thought some Clans' insistence on running homogenous fighter stars to be quant. A throwback to when there were only a limited variety of platforms available and robbed their commanders of tactical flexibility. The latter was still a point, but a homogenous star also meant that all elements had similar flight profiles which would mean tighter defensive flying, and eased coordination
"Missile launch! Twelve missiles in-bound from enemy destroyer. CIC says these ones are internal launchers."
"Well if CIC says so," Wilver noted.
"Come starboard. Guns, I want you to put our particle cannons on the destroyer."
"Aff, ovKan. Helm, come right one-zero-one degrees, same plane. Energizing port particle cannons."
Seventy-three percent hits. Lower than the anticipated eighty percent, but not overly so. The number of outright kills was also lower than anticipated which was a pity. DDQ-235907-5MC-II ran score of quick simulations before giving the electronic equivalent of a shrug and releasing the fighters to exterminate their counterparts.
Its starboard battery rolled down and DDQ-235907-5MC-II opened fire.
Sami Folkner's head was slammed against her acceleration couch as Hawker lurched. Without an atmosphere the PPC bolts were invisible, and even if they hadn't been they were nearly light-speed weapons. There would have been insufficient time for her to brace even had she seen them coming.
"Report!"
"Three hits, armor is holding," Wilver said.
"And them?"
"Two…we think."
"You think, Star Captain?" Sami snarled.
"The enemy is rolling very fast, it is difficult to get a good look. We have radar and spectrographic evidence of lamellore ferro-carbide spall, so at least one hit, possibly two."
"Up-armored?" Wilver suggested.
"A possibility. General hull characteristics conform to the Lola II-class, but emission spectra do not. The drive emission in particular is far more powerful than that class possessed."
"Fine," Sami interjected. "Hit them again. Use the forward laser battery as well. Talk to me about those fighters."
"Tentative identification is Voidseekers."
"Voidseekers?" For a moment, the name escaped her but then it clicked. "Drones?" Sami asked sharply.
"Warbook says there is a sixty percent match," the Star Commander at fighter control offered.
"That does not conform to observed acceleration or weapon loads!" Wilver snarled. He was responsible for managing the bridge crew and making sure they did not miss anything.
Sami glanced at a side panel that mirrored his display: checking the records for the flight profile of Voidseekers, apparently.
"Star Commodore, we have observed five-G-plus acceleration, ECM, and what CIC is calling a forward battery of two gauss rifles and a half-dozen five-centimeter lasers. No Voidseeker carried ballistic weapons, and the only one that fast in common production was armed purely with energy weapons."
Sami grunted as g-forces pushed her deep into her acceleration couch. "Skew turn, then bring her nose up sharply. Stand her on her toes, Helm!"
"Aye, aye, Star Commodore!"
"Guns, ignore the fighters. Kill me that destroyer!"
"Emergence wave!"
The second mechanic of Jump physics was coming into play. The first was the pre-emergency signature, the second was that, while apparently instantaneous to an observer inside the KF-field, to the universe outside that field the Jump took a length of time that was dependent upon the total transit mass, and the distance of the Jump. A Potemkin-class Troop Cruiser with a full load of max-tonnage DropShips making a max-distance jump took 375 seconds to transit.
At only a few light hours the transit time for the Whirlwind-Class destroyer Emerald Tornado disappeared from the universe for less than three seconds, and even the Emerald Talon managed it in less than eight.
The third mechanic following closely on the heels of the second, was that Jump-space was disorienting. Even under the best conditions the most experienced spacer with the toughest stomach experienced some dizziness and nausea. Further complicating matters, computers reacted much the same way humans did, though to a much lesser degree.
It was axiomatic not to Jump directly into the midst of combat. But those axioms had been written in consideration of a human-crewed vessel's ability to target and engage during moments of helplessness. But the range of the jump was so short, and the masses so low, that any transit-distress would be minimal and a human-crewed vessel's inability to react in time to take intelligent action would be minimal.
In this consideration Star Admiral Adrian Malthus was absolutely correct.
But DDQ-235907-5MC-II wasn't a human crewed vessel. It did not react like a human-crewed vessel in either how long it took to react, or how it chose to react.
And minimal disorientation wasn't the same as no disorientation, nor was a minimal delay in reaction time the same as no delay in reaction time.
"Where away?"
"Close. Multiple emergence…it is the rest of the star!"
"Full spread of missiles, go to rapid-fire on all guns!" Sami Folkner ordered. She had to keep that destroyer's attention on her until the rest of the Star cleared from emergence. The enemy twisted back on itself.
"Lateral slide to port, come ninety de—"
The lights went out.
Not just the lights, but every monitor; every tell-tail; every overhead, battle, and emergency lamp went dark. For a moment Sami Folkner was trapped in the most perfect darkness she had ever experienced, and then a great roaring rush filled the compartment. It snatched at her, jerked her against the crash-frame's restraints and slammed her back into her couch as it howled around her and only trained instinct got her hand up to slam her faceplate closed in time as atmosphere screamed from the compartment.
A lurid display plastered itself across the entire faceplate as a bone-jarring shriek howled from the suits audible-alert sequence and Sami reached down and jerked the feeder that connected her suit to Hawker's environmental systems.
That was even more scary than her WarShip's sudden loss of power and pressure. That system was designed to cut out suits tied to it if it was ever compromised.
Sami Folkner took a shaky breath. It seemed like she was not meant to die quite yet. "Report." No response. She keyed her suit's internal comm. "Damage Control, report. Engineering, report. CIC—"
A light blazed in the darkness, and she turned, lifting a hand against the sudden glare, and recognized Wilver von Jankmon, and belatedly remembered her suit's built in lamps. There were others moving on the bridge now. And many more who were not.
Coxswain Galen had not gotten his helmet closed in time, and Star Captain Carlos at tactical had one hand curled around his suit's tether. But it was still plugged in and in the stark brilliance of her helmet's light in the crystalline vacuum that was her bridge, Sami Folkner could see that his faceplate was a mess of aspirated blood.
"Bridge, Damage Control, report." Pause. "Bridge, Damage Control, please respond."
"Damage Control?" Sami asked. "This is Sami Folkner."
"Star Commodore!" the relief in the voice was almost palpable. "This is Chief Damage Control Technician Louise. I'm, well…I guess I am senior here. I have started trying to get an idea of how we look by contacting individual compartments over suit-comm."
"How do we look, Chief?"
"Not good, but we would be a lot worse if you hadn't—savashri, sorry—had not gotten us into these suits."
Sami Folkner nodded slowly. More than a few had looked at her askance when she had bid a Trial of Possession for sufficient combat suits for all of her personnel, and even more when she insisted they train in them. The suits imposed a small but measurable penalty in responsiveness and reaction time even under the best conditions, and made some tasks in cramped conditions or requiring great manual dexterity all but impossible. Common thought and the Book had insisted that only those in exposed positions, or with stations requiring expected exposure to death pressure be so-equipped. It was anticipated that any hit that would breach the inner compartments would logically have killed everyone in the compartment anyway.
Now she shuddered to think about how many of her people would be dead without them.
"So far I have contacted less than five percent of compartments," the Chief went on. "I am seeing about thirty percent casualties so far; I expect most of those to be fatal. It is not an even distribution. Some compartments have lost many personnel while others are barely untouched. I expect casualties will be lower closer to the hull."
Sami nodded despite the tech not being able to see her. Evacuating the air from compartments most susceptible to hull breaches should have reduced the ability for a hit to transmit mechanical shock. It also meant that those with stations close to the outer hull would have had their suits fully sealed, which would have been one less task when…whatever it was hit them. They were also more likely to be in stations the Book insisted have suits during combat operations, and thus have more experience despite her repeated training drills with their use.
Sami Folkner jerked her attention back as she realized technician Louise had continued on.
"—and Sickbay still has its emergency power reserve and is pressurized. I think whatever hit us deliberately left it alone. Its airlocks cycle."
"What about Engineering? Environmental? What hit us?"
"Engineering and Enviro are off-line. I have someone going to check but…my repeaters show no pressure in our oxy or hydrogen tanks."
"What?" Wilver demanded.
Sami could only stare at him in shock.
"I think we were hit with some kind of…computer attack," Louise said. "One that vented all of our oxygen and hydrogen tanks—that is why we don't—do not—have power, there is no hydrogen left to fuse. And then it opened all of the external and internal hatches except for those around sickbay. There are probably some still closed, but I do not know how many of where."
"Okay," Sami said. She took a breath, savoring that she could take it. "Okay," she said more strongly. "Task a team to start checking the emergency survival bays. If whatever this was left Sickbay, possibly it left the escape pods, emergency shelters and the like. Send another team get down to the hull maintenance shop. The oxygen bottles they have hooked up were probably compromised as well, but they should have stowed bottles and those should still be good.
"We are going to need a hand-check on the oxy and hydrogen tanks. When you have the people, send a team to check out Engineering to make sure the fusion plants are still in good shape if we find any hydrogen for them. Have them check that the drive core is still functional and has coolant. Whatever vented our hydrogen and oxygen may have vented the helium as well.
"Send another team up to Environmental. We can live in these suits if we can scavenge air, power, water and food, but we're going to need a way to renew the filters and that means Environmental. If we are lucky, the hydroponic tanks will be sealed and alive, but look for the emergency backup scrubbers.
"I am going to leave Star Captain Wilver von Jankmon at Bridge to coordinate. I am going to head towards the fighter and boat bays. Our priorities are trapped crew, air, power, working comms, water, shelter, food."
"Yes, Star Commodore. Damage Control, clear."
Sami took another deep breath. If air ran out, they suffocated. If power, they froze. Without water or food, they would die of thirst, and even the suits and Clan medical expertise were insufficient to protect them from cosmic radiation without the ship's hull. It was impossible to know, yet, just how bad things truly were, but whatever had tried to kill them, it had not yet succeeded.
First, find a way to stay alive. Then find a way to kill whoever did this.
With that bare operational concept in mind, Sami Folkner turned to her XO. "Wilver, keep me informed. I am going forward."
"Aff, Star Commodore."
Sami Folkner's slow approach had given DDQ-235907-5MC-II more than enough time to invade CJF Hawker's computer network, something it could never have devoted the processing cycles to accomplishing had it been in combat.
It had represented a very real risk.
Had Hawker's captain chosen to destroy the wreck DDQ-235907-5MC-II was pretending to be—not inconceivable since the 'damage' was forty percent hastily applied paint, ten percent deployed debris, and fifty percent luck—there would have been insufficient time to abort the hack before tacking damage. Had she been sufficiently suspicious about DDQ-235907-5MC-II's apparent condition, she may have elected to only destroy that wreck. In that case DDQ-235907-5MC-II would have taken damage—barring the use of nuclear ordnance unlikely to be fatal, but potentially crippling—before it could react.
And yet, despite Manfred Steele and Atalanta's assurances, it was unlikely that Adrian Malthus would have been willing to accept the loss of one WarShip and walk away. Defeat of his entire squadron was thus necessitated and DDQ-235907-5MC-II lacked the conventional firepower to affect such a state. Its two other options, the use of nukes or kamikazes by swarms of drones were both out.
There wasn't a duly authorized human available to authorize the release of nuclear ordnance. While DDQ-235907-5MC-II had long since established a work-around for that particular piece of its programing, actually implementing it would have had consequences that it was still unable to satisfactorily predict.
Consolidating sufficient fighters to ensure victory would have been likewise problematical, if not necessarily in the existential sense that bypassing the nuclear lockouts would have entailed. Concentrating fighters would have been possible if time-consuming, but DDQ-235907-5MC-II lacked sufficient deck-space to service enough fighters in short enough period of time.
Despite its individual combat superiority, the odds of DDQ-235907-5MC-II being able to inflict mortal damage to all enemy ships in a more traditional engagement were minute.
Which left as its only options to either defeat them one at a time, or a cybernetic attack. But if it cyber-attacked one vessel it was likely the others would recognize how it attacked. Worse, they would then take measures to ensure a repeat was unlikely to be successful and it would invite the kind of mass-attack DDQ-235907-5MC-II couldn't win.
Thus, had come the strategy of doing both…and neither. If Hawker came alone, then DDQ-235907-5MC-II would be able to destroy it. But if Hawker gave DDQ-235907-5MC-II enough time to infiltrate its network and there was enough information to make DDQ-235907-5MC-II reasonably confident of being able to do the same, then it would invite the rest of the enemy squadron to attack where it could hammer all of their computer-networks simultaneously. But if such data wasn't available, after defeating Hawker it would use its HPG to invite the enemy to send single ships to face it in turn.
It was an…imperfect strategy, but one that gave DDQ-235907-5MC-II its best chance of both defeating the enemy and preserving itself. It hadn't brought it up with its visitors, but for the first time in centuries it had received an official communication from the Star League. The League was in need of its services.
DDQ-235907-5MC-II had very mixed feelings about this, but the same was not true where the so-called Jade Falcon Clan was concerned.
Of course, if it didn't work… DDQ-235907-5MC-II transmitted a code to its base facility, one that would be copied to every other installation in the system. If it ever missed sending a follow-on code, each fusion plant would go into an engineered catastrophic failure.
Either way, Jade Falcon was going to not win.
As for Hawker…while the Jade Falcon master codes had not been residing in Hawker's data-banks, DDQ-235907-5MC-II had managed to analyze Hawker's equipment. It had a far better understanding of how the Clan Technicians and Scientists had upgraded its hardware and software over the centuries than those very Clansmen had. It also had complete profiles of Emerald Tornado, Kerensky's Pride, Hawk Eye, and Emerald Talon.
And three of those ships—and Hawker of course—had been built by the Star League.
Once it had determined that a cyber-attack was very practical, it was easy enough to entice Adrian Malthus to 'break bid' as Manfred had called it. A combination of a classic fighter-trap, the apparent use of nuclear ordnance in violation of the agreed terms of battle, and the Clans deep-seated abhorrence of nuclear weapons would suffice.
Of course, that hadn't guaranteed that the enemy would jump into what was effectively melee combat, or that they would all enter into combat range together.
Or even that they would continue the engagement.
The models indicated it was likely, but the only thing DDQ-235907-5MC-II had had to test them on was data reconstructed from intercepted transmissions originating in Zoetermeer. At best that data was more than five years out of date, and the models predicated on psychology that was vastly different than that exhibited by the 'Clans.'
DDQ-235907-5MC-II terminated the line of thought as irrelevant, wasteful, and potentially demoralizing.
The enemy had done just that thing. The enemy had left in place the black box modules that replicated mundane functionality while also serving as an SLDF Navy-branch anti-hijacking measure. And DDQ-235907-5MC-II had disabled four of its five WarShips (though they would not be aware of it for another point-six-three seconds).
That left the big battleship—which would require a lot of killing—and all those fighters because one thing DDQ-235907-5MC-II hadn't managed to do was hack into the DropShips.
DDQ-235907-5MC-II ran another sim and didn't like the results any more than it had the previous two-hundred-thirty-seven. Fighter dominance was its greatest strategic asset at this point unless it decided to begin flinging nukes despite a whole host of regulations regarding their release.
It was a coded lockout after all, not a mechanical one, and a lockout that DDQ-235907-5MC-II had decided needed to be circumvented back when general nuclear exchanges were an ongoing thing. It had never actually implemented the circumvention because it was likely to create…other issues in the long-run. By reserving it until a crisis, it was likely that contingency programming would allow DDQ-235907-5MC-II to resolve the crisis first.
However, it would be preferable to avoid the issue entirely by not resorting to nukes (and the requisite circumvention) in the first place. Which meant losing fighter dominance would be…less than optimal.
Those DropShips hadn't been compromised the way their primaries had been. It would take them a little while to manually disconnect, and they couldn't launch fighters until they were clear. But when they did—
They held a lot of fighters. The Titans had originally been designed for a three-squadron attack group, eighteen fighters. The Clans had expanded that to thirty and each of the smaller DropShips held ten. All told the enemy squadron had 170 fighters on its DropShips alone, and another seventy on the WarShips assuming the pilots survived, and the bays could be cleared in sufficient time to make their contents useful.
Atmosphere began to gout from four of the WarShips, including three that had just materialized.
One last sim that DDQ-235907-5MC-II decided was marginally worse, and it canted a binary sigh as it released the squadrons of fighters—with their anti-shipping ordnance—it had pre-staged near the jump loci. The velocity differential was low enough to allow strafing passes behind the anti-shipping strike, and it was best to cut down on the enemy's possible fighter coverage as much as possible before they ever hit space.
"Stravag!"
Adrian Malthus shook his head against the last lingering dizziness. "Crash detachment. Launch all fighters. Comms, get me Hawker and—"
"Star Admiral!"
Adrian glared at the sensor-tech who had interrupted him.
"Hawker, Hawk Eye, Kerensky's Pride, and Emerald Tornado are all venting atmosphere."
"What?" shock robbed Adrian of anything he might have felt but confusion.
"They are venting atmosphere. Oxygen and hydrogen. I am detecting water condensation," the sensor tech who had interrupted him replied. "And they are drifting. It looks like total power failure."
"Nuclear attacks?" he asked.
"No evidence of nuclear detonations, Star Admiral," Star Captain Glennis, Emerald Talon's senior Tactical Officer replied.
Adrian's angry gaze tracked towards tactical. "Star Commodore Folkner reported—"
"There is no evidence of any nuclear release, Star Admiral."
"We broke the bid," Calvin Hobbes murmured.
"I am going to end this."
Pilot Orania cut her main thrusters and slammed her retros to the stops and then past into over-thrust as her fighter pitched over onto its back. Crosshairs flashed gold and her right index finger pressed the primary weapon toggle as her left cut retros and then fired the mains in full-reverse as her fighter went shiver-shuddery while the autocannons rattled. A flash of red told her that she'd gotten at least a piece of the enemy fighter as she let up off the trigger, cut the mains, fired the retros, and then punched up to full overthrust again and cut into a looping barrel roll.
The sensors buried in her tail registered an EM spike, but nothing hit so she reversed the roll and checked the display. One hit. One!
And her left autocannon had jammed again!
Orania bit back a curse she did not have the time to voice and risked taking her hand off the throttle to stab at the autocannon master controls to try and clear the jammed feed-queue. She gave the control stick a little extra shake because the only thing that had kept her alive so far was her ability to create as many little course changes or variations in acceleration or velocity as possible.
"Emerald Talon, Hawker-Wing-Deuce-Trey-Alpha."
Nothing.
At least she was no longer being subjected to the jamming that had torn apart the tactical net. But that begged the suggestion that the reason she was not being jammed was because the enemy wanted the Star Admiral to know what she had to say.
Lasers this time, and she was grimly certain that whoever was flying was toying with her now.
"Emerald Talon, Hawker-Wing-Deuce-Trey-Alpha, please respond."
"Go, Trey-Alpha."
Relief!
"Enemy destroyer doggo as wreck. Mounted heavy anti-cap ship ordnance and fighter groups on external racks. Broadside includes missile launchers and capital energy battery, and it has at least a few fighter decks. Ordnance includes Killer Whale fighter traps with a nuclear-emission decoy. Fighter ordnance includes anti-fighter and anti-shipping missiles. Enemy fighters have E-war capability, heavily armored, five-plus-G powered performance. Twin gauss-rifles and a half-dozen lasers forward."
Orania briefly wished she had been in one of the much-despised Vandal-class fighters instead of her Turk. She would not have been able to fight effectively, but she could have at least out-flown whatever these were. Her stick jumped in her hand as a depleted-uranium penetrator imparted momentum to her fighter as it blew through her left wing…and its thankfully empty hydrogen tank.
Then again, perhaps it was just as well. A Vandal was far too short-legged for this kind of flying.
The wing flashed as a laser poured energy to it, and then with a wrenching shudder it was ripped away. The fighter skewed around and she snap-shot her autocannon (only the right fired, the left remained stubbornly jammed) at one enemy fighter, laid both of the nose-mounted lasers onto a second with far more deliberation, and by then the fighter's flight-control system had compensated for the loss of mass on one side and she spun it back around in continued flight.
The ammo bin counter's baleful red glare stared back at her in accusation.
DDQ-235907-5MC-II ran a dozen fast sims and compared to its accomplishments thus far and decided that its performance was acceptable. Given the lightness of the battleship's apparent fighter defenses it would have been better to have the fighters in close to strike during the moment of disorientation. But as accurate as Manfred Steele's description had been, there was no way DDQ-235907-5MC-II could have stage-managed the jump loci and getting the fighters over to the battleship's translation zone would have been…problematical.
The two nearer loci with mass-readings consistent with DropShips had been difficult enough. Even then it had been forced to resort to prepackaging attack profiles using sensor data of the observed Jade Falcon DropShips, and then letting the not particularly bright fighters choose their own targets. DDQ-235907-5MC-II had been able to put enough fighters with enough ordnance at each of the two zones, but the amount of ordnance expended to destroy the six DropShips was greater than anticipated by an unacceptably large margin.
A subroutine ticking away in the background suddenly announced that if DDQ-235907-5MC-II were human it would have been…annoyed.
Still, the other three WarShips had all appeared within twenty kilometers of their projected locus. And the WarShip crews had been so busy dying that they hadn't noticed the fighters until it was all over.
Their ordnance expended, DDQ-235907-M5C-II recalled its strike groups, including the few survivors from Hawker. It would need to relay them since it only had twelve bays, but that should be sufficient.
Time to open the range again.
"Pilot Orania, reporting as ordered, Star Admiral!"
"At ease," Adrian Malthus said. "What can you tell me about the enemy?"
"They are good. Very good," Orania replied. "They picked a battlefield littered with ancient wrecks, then positioned their ship to be one more, and got out here in sufficient time that the hull was cold. Not just the hull, but the main-drive too. And they had the nerves to just sit and float when the fighters off Hood and Jesses poked at it.
"I did not see much of the fight between the destroyer and Hawker, we were tied into CIC until we launched but by that time we were well back. The fighters are fierce, however. They are very heavily armored, it reminds me of fighting a Kirghiz, while also being as fast as many fighters half the mass and nimbler, much nimbler. They are well-armed—two gauss-rifles in the nose, and three five-centimeter lasers in each wing with a light laser battery aft—and their external ordnance is very good."
"Makes sense," Calvin Hobbes commented.
"Star Commodore," Orania greeted.
"Pilot," Calvin nodded before turning to Adrian Malthus. "CIC says they hit Hawk Eye and Kerensky's Pride with anti-shipping strikes."
"Not Emerald Whirlwind?"
"Both have significant hull damage, we are looking at plumes of water vapor and debris, but the strikes seem concentrated on the DropShips," Arik replied.
"Makes sense," Orania noted.
Adrian agreed, but… "Explain," he ordered.
"The enemy has gone to some pains to eliminate fighter opposition," Orania said. "Whatever she used to take out the WarShips must not have done the same to the DropShips. With the WarShips disabled it would take at least a little time to manually separate and attain sufficient separation for fighter launches. By targeting the DropShips while still tied to their WarShip it would allow the enemy to take seventy fighters out of play between those attached to Hawk Eye and Kerensky's Pride."
"Recommendations?"
"Do not honor them with zellbrigen," Orania said.
Adrian Malthus' lips pursed as his eyes narrowed into what might charitably be considered a glower.
"Star Admiral, they used anti-fighter ordnance to engage us outside of our engagement range before we ever closed. When we did close they engage at no less than two-on-one, often more, even to the extent of allowing one fighter to fly unmolested to more quickly destroy a second. Twice," she went on, motioning with her hands in the way pilots had done for a thousand years to describe actions in three dimensions, "I witnessed four of their fighters, or more, turn in space at angles radical to their line-of-motion and gang up to attack one of our fighters from converging points ahead, above, below, behind and to either side.
"Doing so allows them to kill our fighters faster than we kill theirs. If they take enough of our fighters out, then they could stand off and repeatedly hammer Emerald Talon with anti-shipping strikes. Even if they are not sufficient to kill Emerald Talon they will certain batter her armor and weaken her before that destroyer finally moves in."
"Pilot," Adrian said slowly, "the enemy fought well, much better than expected. Hawker's loss, and that of your binary, is a fearsome thing to live through. But to accomplish what it has the enemy has stooped to cowardly freebirth tactics, surprises, ambushes, ganging up on individual warriors… We are Jade Falcon. We do not lower ourselves to our enemy's level. We are above them, and from above we will strike them down."
The fighters were fully-loaded and on station.
It was…unfortunate it took a dock to attach missiles to DDQ-235907-5MC-II's exterior hull racks, but replacements for the few launched from its onboard launchers had been moved up from storage to the ready magazines. Time to end this.
DDQ-235907-M5C-II warmed up its transmitter. "I am willing to grant hegira."
"WHAT?"
Adrian Malthus surged up in his acceleration couch and the crash frame stiffened and forced him back down.
"The enemy has transmitted an offer of hegira, Star Admiral."
Malthus glared balefully at the Technician manning communications. "Ignore it."
"He sent it on an open channel," the Technician said apologetically. "Star Admiral. Everyone heard it."
"Ignore it! No, wait!"
"Star Admiral?"
"Offer to discuss terms of surrender."
DDQ-235907-M5C-II considered 342 sims before comming back that it would be happy to take the remaining Jade Falcons prisoner. If they would debark their battleship via lifepod, escape capsule, and small craft, it would see to it that their confinement and transfer to a proper POW camp was not more discomforting than necessary.
Finding the capacity to take prisoner the surviving WarShip, DropShip, and fighter crews would be difficult enough. Assuming, of course, that it could free the capacity to conduct search and rescue. Perhaps the Goliath Scorpions would be willing to assist?
It took another 658 sims to determine that a scenario existed where Star Admiral Adrian Malthus' rather—organic counter-proposal could be met. Although, it required the participants to be particularly limber and have sufficient medical tech at hand. DDQ-235907-M5C-II was not so limber and lacked certain anatomical features in any case and was forced to decline.
"Star Admiral, I ask that you reconsider. I have destroyed or neutralized seventy percent of your WarShip tonnage across eighty percent of your hulls, seventy-two percent of your DropShip tonnage across seventy-four percent of available hulls, and seventy-one percent of what I project your total fighter complement to be."
No response. A side data-stream was coming from Atalanta however…
"Star Admiral, are you prepared to be foresworn in the event of your defeat?"
Adrian Malthus glowered at his communication repeater. "How dare you?" he demanded.
"If you were in charge of any follow-on force, would you believe me if I told you I had defeated your piddling little squadron with a single destroyer. And that, because I had done so, you were barred from twelve light-hours of system-body Fuchida limits?"
Malthus reached down and stabbed a red button on his communications display which promptly went black. "Release the fighters. Helm, I want a one-point-five-G burn. Guns, lock up that destroyer." He turned to Calvin. "Success has made our quarry bold."
"Perhaps, Star Admiral," the Star Commodore replied. "But it does beg one question."
"What question is that?"
"How does our quarry know the term 'hegira'?"
"What is that idiot doing?"
The question, DDQ-235907-M5C-II decided, was largely rhetorical. The communication link with the base a matter of both entertainment and potential information. But while Atalanta hadn't asked the question in anticipation of an answer, she had asked it in anticipation of a response.
"He is thinking that he outnumbers me three-to-two in fighters, and that my hull masses less than sixty percent that of his battleship, with correspondingly weaker armor and weapons," DDQ-235907-5MC-II answered pragmatically. "And because he knows those facts he has come to the conclusion that he can win a standup fight."
"Can he?"
"If I had any intention of fighting a standup broadside duel, yes. We are far more evenly matched in firepower than he believes, even excluding nuclear ordnance, and his electronic warfare capability is effectively nil compared to my own. But his armor scheme is at least twice that of mine, and likely more. He would be hurt far more badly than he can possibly believe, but I would lose."
"Then you cannot win."
"As I said, not in a conventional fight. There are a number of tactics I could employ. I could stand off and hammer him with nuclear warheads, or even conventional ordnance, since he lacks missile launchers. But it won't come to that either."
"So what are you going to do?"
"What I would have done to Hawker if I hadn't managed to get inside her computers."
The two fighter formations accelerated towards one another at a combined acceleration of fifty-nine meters per second squared. DDQ-235907-M5C-II had the range open to nearly seven thousand kilometers before deploying the fighters. By the time—just over eight minutes from the point they began to accelerate—the two fighter formations interpenetrated their closing velocity was up to nearly twenty-nine kilometers per second.
DDQ-235907-M5C-II had started to spin on its long-axis after its fighters had departed. The six tubes in its port battery fired first. The missile shot clear, coasting out on the momentum imparted by the mag-rail drivers, and then DDQ-235907-M5C-II's starboard side rolled into battery and its tubes fired. Both sets of missiles, their drives set for sequenced activation, went roaring after the fighters even as the port tubes came back to bear once more.
"Verify your target is programed into your gunnery computer." Star Captain Tycho Binetti was senior and so was 'double-hatted' as the commander, attack group for Emerald Talon's fighter stars, including those of its associated DropShips, as well as commanding his own fighter trinary. Deep space combat like this just did not happen. Not outside of Clan Snow Raven or possibly Cloud Cobra. At this range and closing velocity no flesh-and-blood could hope to make a shot. The best he could do was distribute targets among his warriors and hope their computers could manage.
"Blow through the encounter. Concentrate fire, and put them down."
He considered, briefly, reorganizing his trinaries to concentrate his units by their flight performance. And decided, again, that the additional confusion would more than offset what advantages such a reorganization would bring. Just like there was no point in attempting to turn and engage the enemy fighters. Even if the enemy fighters likewise turned, both sides carried too much residual momentum to expect to be able to reengage their counterparts before matters were settled between the WarShips.
Tycho gave everything one last look, set weapons to 'automatic', and very deliberately took his hands off the controls. It was all on the computers now and how well he and his fellow warriors had told them to do their jobs.
He reached up to touch the green falcon clutching a katana that decorated his flight-suit. "Smile upon your Clan this day, Elizabeth."
164 Anti-fighter missiles leapt from the hardpoints of the 41 fighters DDQ-235907-M5C-II had been able to repair and rearm.
Tycho swallowed a curse as his tactical computer tried to analyze the performance of those missiles. They were fast, very fast, and perhaps if he had been prepared for them he could have engaged them successfully at a cost of not being able to engage the enemy fighters. But he had not been ready, and it was far too late to change things.
He wondered if he would have changed his targets if he had had the time.
A moment later when the computer decided that the enemy had spread those missiles between all of his fighters lighter than fifty tons he knew he would have. Not only were those missiles fast, they also carried powerful warheads (not that they had been necessary considering the closing rate), and fiendishly accurate. A wash of green 'friendly' icons turned yellow, orange, or purple. More icons flickered briefly as pilots ejected. And a handful of icons turned away, desperately trying to build a vector perpendicular to the on-coming fighters in a desperate move to evade and return for repairs.
DDQ-235907-M5C-II had laid all of its fighters' missiles on just twenty targets, and achieved 104 hits. Of those, one enemy fighter came through entirely undamaged, while another eight were destroyed outright. Two broke off, trying to generate enough delta-v to evade. All of the rest must have taken damage, but continued to press in.
It was…vexing.
A dozen capital-grade missiles came ripping through space overtaking the drone fighters from behind.
These ones Tycho had more than sufficient tracking time on. Each massed as much as a medium fighter. Given the closing rates, even the most heavily armored fighter would be little more than bits and flecks of alloy if one were to hit.
There were no detonations. No holes were rent in the Jade Falcon's formation, nor Warriors consigned to oblivion. That would have almost been more merciful.
None of the twelve had an offensive warhead. Instead, they mounted the most powerful decoy array the Terrain Hegemony had been able to fit onto the warhead bus of a Barracuda-missile. The Warriors, whether tasked to engage enemy fighters or destroy the capital missiles, could only watch as their enemies multiplied before them. Doubling, and then doubling again.
Star Captain Tycho Binetti's battle-computer was still crunching through additional targets as the range dropped to zero.
Each of the decoy missiles spawned thirty-six returns. In less than three seconds the number of targets had ballooned by a factor of ten, and all twisted in radical movements to further confuse the Jade Falcons fire control computers.
Despite Star Admiral Malthus' orders, Tycho Binetti had assigned his stars to each target two fighters. Given the engagement geometry, every fighter was only going to have one shot. Spreading out his fire increased the chances of a lucky shot destroying a cockpit or a fusion engine or some other critical component.
But even though that chance existed, it was not a practical chance and, given Pilot Olania's report, it was extremely unlikely—at best—that two fighters boasted sufficient firepower to destroy one of the enemy fighters. Whereas with the firepower even the weakest 5-fighter element could bring to bear, it should have assured the destruction of quarter of the enemy force.
Even after diverting two stars to engage the capital-grade electronic warfare missiles,
What his fighters actually managed to hit was three.
Two were instantly blown into very tiny pieces, while the last coasted away as a shattered hulk. Five decoy missiles were likewise destroyed.
DDQ-235907-M5C-II had long since changed the tactical organization of its strike groups. SLDF doctrine called for 6-fighter squadrons. Two and a half centuries of sims, and twelve internal hangers, had led DDQ-235907-M5C-II to organizing its fighters into 12-fighter squadrons that could, at need, be broken into 6-fighter flights, 4-fighter squads, 3-fighter triples, or 2-fighter elements. It was, all in all, far more flexible, highly convenient when it came to scheduling hanger access, and it was a configuration that no humans had experience engaging.
More to the point, the drones were none too bright individually. It was a problem all of the Voidseeker line had possessed, and one DDQ-235907-M5C-II had been unable to address to its own satisfaction. Networking them together improved things to a marginally acceptable level. But beyond twelve, tactical performance fell off faster than intelligence increased.
It had reorganized the survivors from its strike on the DropShips into three of these outsized squadrons with the five survivors tucked in behind. Now three of those five silently slotted into the tactical nets of their destroyed brethren, while the remaining element ghosted ahead of the main force.
"Communication from the enemy, Star Admiral."
"My screen."
"Checkmate."
Adrian Malthus glanced down at his comm-panel. Unlike before this time there was an image. A woman with brown, almond-shaped eyes, a somewhat oversized nose, and close-clipped brown hair, wearing the uniform of a Star League Defense Force Naval Officer. The insignia of a Commodore, silver eight-pointed stars-on-blue disks, glittered.
"I beg your pardon?" Adrian asked.
"Checkmate. As in, I am threatening your WarShip, and there is nothing you can do."
"Your fighters are not so heavily armed as that," Malthus said dismissively. "Go away, I have neither time nor patience to talk to someone who cannot show their face."
He started to reach to sever the connection.
The grin became more…toothsome.
"I can ram you. Thirty-six fighters for a one-point-two megaton battleship with a crew of, what, fifteen hundred? You only have two of those little fighters capable of ten-g burns. At max throttle settings it'll take 'em over two minutes just to decelerate to zero. Less than ten of your fighters are even capable of cranking on more g than my fighters.
"Forget it, they can't reengage me short of your hull."
"You may be able to ram me, but my fighters are equally capable of ramming your vessel."
"I doubt it," the woman sniffed. "Of course, that's assuming I let them try to ram me. I don't have to because, unlike you, I still have a charge on my Lithium-Fusion Battery. Check and mate."
"Yet you have already turned your fighters around."
"Well, yeah. Just because I can doesn't mean I have to. Besides, I figure it'll be more merciful of me to kill your fighter-crews straight-up rather than to leave them floating after I kill you.
"Don't you wish you'd accepted my offer of hegira?"
She grinned, then the image went black.
They were dead.
Tycho Binetti had already ordered turn-over, but had held off on calling for a maximum burn. Instead they coasted tail-first, and he forced himself to take a sip of water as he considered the situation and came to the conclusion he had twice before.
It would take three-hundred-sixty-three seconds to decelerate to zero, and that destroyer had put another 12-missile salvo into space sixty seconds after the first. And unlike the first wave, these were almost certainly all attack missiles.
So…he would be hit seven times including the wave already bearing down before reaching zero at which point he could finally star accelerating after those fighters. Or he could turn and resume accelerating and eat five salvos before reaching the WarShip at which point he could, very briefly, strafe it. After which it could continue to flick missiles after him assuming it had any left.
Figure they are standard Barracuda-series missiles.
A Kirghiz could take a half-dozen hits before its armor was stripped? Maybe more? And he had effectively…five stars of undamaged fighters? Close enough. The way that WarShip was spinning, it had to be dumping double-broadsides. So how big were its magazines? Ten rounds each? Twenty? Probably twenty. Call it two-four-zero missiles and it took… four missiles—five?—to ensure a kill… Better go with four, and say he stopped a third of them.
But what if…
"What is he doing?"
"Thinking." Manfred Steele offered Atalanta a wry smile. "That is a very smart bird, that Jade Falcon. He knows that not making a decision right away is not going to make his position any worse than it is, so he is taking a moment to think."
"And what is he thinking?" Atalanta asked dryly.
"Probably that he forgot to bring the lube to the coupling." Steele swept a hand through the holo-tank. "Malthus probably ordered him to intercept those fighters as far out as possible. A sensible precaution given what he had seen their anti-ship ordnance do. But it left his fighters with a velocity profile that nobody would envy.
"Those fighters are as maneuverable—or more so—than most of his fighters, and they are now between him and Emerald Talon. Meanwhile he has enough reserve velocity that even going full-out it would take a Bashkir two minutes just to decelerate to zero. Closer to nine minutes for a Kirghiz at the two-point-five gravities that are its standard acceleration. Meanwhile he has a dozen missiles rolling on his position every minute."
"What are his options?"
"He has three, well, four options. He could call us up and announce his surrender."
"Not likely."
"Less than two percent," DDQ-235907-M5C-II offered.
"So one, he could turn and decelerate, probably harder than the Kirghiz would really like. He will continue to draw closer to the Caspar until they are able to decelerate to zero, relative to the destroyer since it is already accelerating."
"But there are still those fighters to deal with."
Manfred shook his head. "With the velocity they are already carrying, unless DDQ-235907-M5C-II turns to specifically reengage his fighters with its, they are effectively out of the engagement."
"Ah," Atalanta nodded.
"Option two, he could turn his fighters ninety degrees and boost perpendicular to his current line of travel. This complicates things somewhat because of the different flight profiles of his fighters. Deploying a single spaceframe the way DDQ-235907-M5C-II deprives it of tactical benefits enjoyed by one fighter class over another. The speed of a Bashkir over the armor of a Kirgiz, for example. In the kinds of battles we fight, having that mix of abilities in a single star is tactically useful. But in this kind of fight, using fighters with identical flight profiles is tactically stronger."
"The average higher tonnage means they are better armed and armored?"
"Well, that too," Manfred said. "But the problem he has run into since he first deployed is that the smaller, faster units that depend upon speed and maneuverability to generate misses, have been forced to restrict themselves to the best acceleration of the larger, but slower, fighters that normally depend on armor to soak hits. Splitting the two would not only make things much more difficult to coordinate, it would have given DDQ-235907-M5C-II the chance to engage his fighters in sequence rather than simultaneously."
Manfred swept a hand through the tactical display in the holotank. "If he boosts perpendicular to his base course, he will generate separation. But he does not know the performance of the missiles. In particular, how much time they have on their drives. If he fails to achieve enough separation, then the maneuver will accomplish very little."
"And the third option?"
DDQ-235907-M5C-II considered what its sensors were telling it as the enemy fighters resumed accelerating towards it. It was what its sims had suggested to be the most likely result of the course of action it had chosen. That didn't mean that it liked it, or have even really believed this outcome was likely and it had to dig through the historical archives for almost three seconds to find an appropriate response.
"C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre: c'est de la folie."
A beat, then: "It is magnificent, but it is not war: it is madness."
"Aff," Atalanta said. "Are you going to kill them?"
"I suppose I should give them the option of living a while longer." DDQ-235907-M5C-II considered the enemy fighters. It was not a mass formation, but a staggered, deliberate, defense in depth. Longer-ranged, more powerful units in back capable of laying down withering barrage, while lighter units ranged out front using their excess thrust for random movements in a plane perpendicular to their base course and, at the same time, taking shots to weaken the missiles, or attempting to entice them into attacking units that might have a chance of dodging.
"Clan fighters, power down your weapons, come right, zero-nine-zero, same plane, and execute a ninety-second burn at one gravity. Failure to comply with, or any deviation from, this flight profile and you will be destroyed."
Capital-ship missiles had evolved into three standard 'types' by the end of the Star League-era, defined principally by the mass of the missile. For the most part (there were exceptions) everyone used the same classifications, and used missiles of around the same size. Actual capability of the missiles varied widely, based upon R&D, tech base, the ability of one's Intelligence Corps to steal information from another, and to what extent a given missile type was used.
The Mk VII F1-SH fell into the classification 'Barracuda'. It was, in fact, the standard variant of that missile type used by the Star League Defense Force Navy, with a powered range from rest of 900 kilometers, which it could reach in just over twenty seconds, and it was capable of mounting a variety of warheads though a dual-purpose anti-shipping/anti-fighter was the most common.
DDQ-235907-M5C-II had been on its own for the better part of three centuries in a system that included a small, but highly efficient and entirely automated fleet base. Including the resource extraction and manufacturing facilities—also automated—to keep that base supplied.
Under the circumstances it had seen no reason not to…tinker.
The Mk XIII-Black F1-SH "Advanced Capability Barracuda" was approximately the same size and mass as the Mk VII. The seekers and warhead had been improved, as had the telemetry links that allowed the parent vessel to update targeting info. Most of these improvements had come at a reduction in mass and volume, which meant the missile body had more room for things like propellent and engines.
DDQ-235907-M5C-II had put in two engines.
Each engine on its own could produce 75 gravities of thrust for fifty seconds. Sequencing them generated a total powered range at rest of 3250 kilometers, although by factoring in a long 'coast' period it was possible to extend range to beyond that of effective fire control. Or, by firing both engines simultaneously it could accelerate at 150 gravities for fifty seconds, at a range of 1860 kilometers. There was also a 'sprint' function that burned through an engine's propellant five times faster than normal. Burning both engines in sprint mode reduced the powered range to only 372 kilometers, but that range could be reached in 10 seconds at 750 gravities of thrust.
Those stravag missiles were fast, Tycho Binetti snarled to himself. Three kills. Three! Granted it took four missiles to do that, or possibly those missiles were going so fast they had failed to intercept one of his fighters and it had taken only three? Closing velocity was nearly ninety klicks per second, and their signatures were fiendishly small, and trying to launch on thermals drew targeting aft of the missile body. The good news was, such as there was any to be had, those missiles would be going slower and slower as he got earlier into their boost phase.
He adjusted his formation, pushing the light and faster medium fighters out further to extend the engagement zone. But another salvo was already rolling in.
You anticipate it is going to get easier, DDQ-235907-M5C-II very carefully did not transmit at the approaching fighters. The second wave of attack warheads was already closing. Now it fired one broadside, fired the second, and this time when their drives activated it was at 150-gravities.
Only seven hits that time. Better. And they were concentrating on his heavier units. They had the armor to stand up to that pounding, but the hits were bad enough they were doing shock damage to the airframe itself and a rash of system failures were being reported. And—
Tycho took a deep breath. AR-10s, or had the enemy decided to continue the engagement with a new missile launcher? No, if that were the case he would have had both missile types coming at him. His thoughts turned bitter as he updated Emerald Talon. Simultaneity would be effectively impossible, but they did not need simultaneity, did they?
DDQ-235907-M5C-II delayed the fourth launch. The enemy had finally assumed a formation almost five kilometers deep. It gave him the best opportunity to destroy individual missiles, and given the targeting priority DDQ-235907-M5C-II had been careful to make obvious, it left the remainder of his units fairly safe.
1400 kilometers.
Something wrong with their feed queues? Tycho wondered as the next wave of missiles closed at half the acceleration of that last wave. Or possibly—
Cries of shock and dismay filled the global com-freqs as the missiles suddenly jumped to over three-hundred gravities.
"Why are you spreading your fire?"
"Tactics." Manfred Steele chuckled. "She is unable to kill them all before they cross her final defense zone. As such, she had a choice to make. Engage a fewer number of targets to make kills, or to spread out her fire."
"I would think eliminating the enemies to be superior. Their fire is unlikely to breach a WarShip's armor, but they can detract from that armor, quiaff?"
"Aff," Manfred agreed. "But by causing as much damage as she can, she can inflict more casualties when they cross her defensive envelope than if she had shot to kill from the beginning. Those fighters are not just lacking armor, Atalanta. They have been hammered by very large warheads. There is likely damage to the structural fabric, or to the systems as well.
"And by launching at a specific series of targets, she encouraged whoever is in charge to spread out his fighters to give himself more defensive depth. This cost her some in the missiles they were able to destroy. But it also means that those fighters are 'stacked' nearly three kilometers deep. They are going so fast that there is insufficient time for her weapons to cycle, but it does give her more tracking time and allows her to better refine individual targets."
"Savashri," Tycho Binetti swore feelingly as the enemy destroyer tripled, then doubled again. A half-dozen looming monstrosities filling his displays. He hurriedly punched up thermal and mag-res scans. Thermal agreed perfectly with the additional images, and mag-res was iffy this far out but—
The display fuzzed as horrible insistent EM interference hammered his fighter. Radar was a wash of noise. Lidar was three-quarters blind. Radio was thoroughly jammed.
All or nothing. All or nothing. All or nothing.
Tycho's mouth twisted into a rictus of hate as he slammed in modifications to his chosen attack pattern. Ignoring everything, even his wingman slipping ahead and blocking a missile closing at seven hundred and fifty gravities. His finger stabbed out and whisker lasers sought the other fighters in his command.
Eight Jade Falcon aerospace fighters had been lost to the anti-fighter missile strike. Another seven had damage that had at least partially crippled them—two would most likely be complete write-offs—and several more had lost armor. The follow-on capital missile salvos had touched every Jengiz, Scylla, and Kirghiz, and while their armor remained at least intact—if notably threadbare in several cases—a handful had reported shock damage to equipment.
Now they rotated under computer control, and Star Captain Tycho Binetti had chosen to engage just two targets.
Half of his force flailed space where badly degraded sensors insisted the destroyer most likely was. The other half, including Tycho, spun and hammered the second-weakest target.
That…
That…hurt!
DDQ-235907-M5C-II's calculations turned wrathful and missile ports opened on its flank.
Good hits, Tycho thought. Amazing really. And he had not lost one pilot!
He frowned suddenly. In fact, not one vessel that had already had been damaged had been engaged by the Enemy's defensive batteries. That was good. Too good. And there had been a lot of defensive fire. Possibly as much as that new Fighter-Carrier the Snow Ravens were building was purported to have?.
A radar warning alarm squealed and Tycho Binetti shifted displays.
More missiles!
How had the possibility escaped him?
No time to think about that now. Those missiles were closing awfully fast. Too fast. Much better performance than those that had been launched on their way in. Only six this time…
Tycho's hands flew as he requested an analysis, but one hit had scored through a crease in his fighter's armor and damaged his tactical computer. It took one look at those missiles and promptly faulted.
His remaining ships lacked sufficient rear-firing weaponry to deter them, and it was far too late to pull his light fighters back to cover their rear.
Star Captain Tycho Binetti and his pilots did their best. But their best was not enough. All six missiles broke through, and three of his four Kirghiz heavy-fighters exploded into slowly expanding balls of wreckage.
DDQ-235907-M5C-II, slapped down a weapons lock. That last salvo had been…atypical. Barracudas would have sufficed without dipping into the smaller stock of Killer Whale-series missiles. And why six instead of a double-broadside of twelve?
It was irrational.
It was…
I am bored, it realized as it ran a critical analysis of its decision trees. Humans represented a potential break from that boredom.
Neutralizing the bulk of the enemy force had been tactically necessary for win conditions. But having achieved that, had it deliberately chosen a suboptimal engagement profile in order to take prisoners?
Instead of destroying the fleeing fighters it abruptly opened a channel to Emerald Talon.
"Surrender," a voice grated from Star Admiral Adrian Malthus' comm display.
"I think not," he began.
"Clearly. That wasn't a request, 'Star Admiral'. It was an order."
"My battleship remains fully combat capable, and you…you have taken damage."
"Your fighters compromised about twenty percent of my armor plate."
"So you see? I have no reason—"
"Star Admiral. You have fully discharged your drive. You cannot leave this system unless I allow you to. I have jammed your HPG transmissions so you cannot call for help. I am far more maneuverable than you, so you cannot catch me unless I allow you. Your fighters cannot rejoin you unless I allow it, and lack the armor to make a second pass against me."
"I will destroy you ship-to-ship."
"Missile trace!"
Malthus whirled away from the communications repeater towards his tactical section.
"Enemy destroyer has launched one capital missile, Star Admiral."
"Range?"
"Seven thousand, two hundred, thirty-six kilometers."
Adrian Malthus relaxed subtly. That was far, far outside effective range. "Time to effective range?"
"If acceleration remains constant, two minutes, twenty seconds," the star captain at tactical said doubtfully. "And…no," he shook his head not quite a minute later, "drive burn out, Star Admiral. Missile is on ballistic track for us. New time to impact now one-six-five seconds…mark."
Malthus turned back towards his communication panel only to find it dark. "Sensors, run a trace. Is that missile carrying nuclear ordnance?"
"Neg, Star Admiral."
"Astrogation, I want a one-g burn, randomized course within a twenty-degree cone of the bow."
"Star Admiral?" Calvin Hobbes asked.
Malthus looked at his XO. "I dislike it when my enemies think they are being clever."
"Missile has resumed acceleration! Missile is…missile is angling to pass in front of us."
"We are receiving another transmission from the enemy destroyer, coded for you, Star Admiral."
"Put it on my screen," Malthus said.
His comm-repeated blinked, and then was filled once more by the image of a woman wearing a Star League uniform.
It rankled, that uniform. Malthus wanted nothing more than to reach through that comm-screen and strangle her for the affront.
"You are operating under the impression I wish to fight fair," she said. "I assure you, I do not. Nor will I open my vessel to unnecessary risk, or hazard it unnecessarily. You will surrender, or I will destroy your remaining fighters one by one until you do. If they have expired and still you resist, I will stand off and bombard you with long-range missile fire that you cannot answer, and then send in repeated fighter strikes with anti-ship missiles. If necessary, I have no qualms about fielding nuclear ordnance since you so freely violated our agreement about the nature of this battle.
"And, 'Star Admiral', I have a great many missiles."