SYSTEM: INTERSTELLAR SPACE

  DATE: 2404

  The pair of automated stealth ships trailed the enemy resupply vessels as they communicated back and forth through their tight beam laser link to determine the best course of action.

  “We need to alert the fleet,” the first vessel indicated.

  “Obviously,” the second vessel replied. “We need to determine an attack plan first.”

  “That wasn’t part of our mission,” the first vessel added.

  “No, but it will improve the odds of success,” the second shot back.

  The pair fell into quiet agreement as they combined their processing power. The enemy support fleet was far larger than originally estimated, and it wasn’t without support. Ten Shican carriers and a hundred destroyers protected two hundred vessels. The support ships were massive vessels, dwarfing even the human mega-haulers. Four other ships stood out, even amongst the gigantic haulers.

  The pair also noted over a hundred modified Coalition ships nestled amongst the haulers. They couldn’t determine the role for those vessels, but estimated any contribution to a battle would be minimal, considering their outdated nature. Still, they included them in their report.

  “What do you estimate those four to be?” the second asked. He had already come to a probable solution, but he wanted to know what his companion thought.

  “Based on their configuration, some sort of mobile production or repair facility, similar to the Leviathans,” the first vessel replied.

  It was the same conclusion the second vessel had arrived at.

  The pair tagged those four ships as high priority as they continued their battlefield assessment and recommendations.

  Once the pair had an action plan with a high probability of success, the second vessel slipped away to report to the fleet while the first continued to shadow the enemy fleet.

  ***

  Vitor read the Swordfish’s report and frowned. The BSE fleet floated in interstellar space, just shy of the Shican’s current target system. He wasn’t upset that they had finally located the enemy supply fleet; it was just more ships than had been expected, especially the number of vessels left to defend them.

  He sent orders to the Swordfish to relay the information to Char’s fleet, which was waiting nearby after their brief engagement with the Shican.

  Char’s fleet had lent its power to the planet’s orbital defenses now that they also had zero-g plates in place, thanks to Alex and the AI’s assistance.

  The battle hadn’t been a bloodless one. Char lost over a dozen ships, and her fleet, along with the defensive screen around the planet, had taken down only twenty enemy vessels before she was forced to retreat. The number of enemy losses would likely rise as the defenses kept up their grisly work, but it wouldn’t net many more kills. The Shican were adapting to the laser pods and missile satellites by deploying their own missiles and lasers from max range. That was the problem with static defenses; they were easy to overcome without mobile support.

  The loss ratio wasn’t in their favor. If something didn’t change, the Shican’s sheer numbers would overcome even the most robust planetary defenses and the Union’s fleets

  That was why the strike on the enemy resupply fleet was so important.

  Vitor had hoped for a small fleet, which would mean the enemy would run out of missiles, food, and other supplies quickly, but the Shican seemed to have planned for a long offensive. Seeing the scale of their supply convoy meant the enemy had more than enough supplies to roll over every planet in the Union, and then some, before they would need to worry.

  He wasn’t completely discouraged by the information, however. He called up his captains and showed them the automated ship’s report. “What do you make of this?” he asked, highlighting the Xin vessels.

  “Reinforcements?” one of the captains asked.

  Another suggested that they were fodder ships for some attack.

  Vitor shook his head. “I don’t think so. If they were, the Shican would have used them already. We know the aliens disdain human technology. Considering they are using modified Coalition ships that were showing their age even during the Coalition War, I can see why they may think that way. But why keep them around at all?”

  “I have a suggestion,” Kaela cut in.

  Vitor was surprised to hear that. Not that Kaela Voss had something to say, but that she had something to say in a tactical meeting. She hadn’t been very vocal in any of them since joining the fleet. He nodded for her to continue.

  “Do you recall our search on that Xin enrichment facility?”

  Vitor had to think back. That was nearly eight months ago, and so many things had happened since then that he had pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind. Then his eyes widened with understanding. “You think those ships are carrying the missing nuclear weapons?”

  She shrugged. “Makes sense to me. What else would they be doing out there? By their distribution within the enemy supply fleet, they aren’t there for defense, and they aren’t clustered together like you might expect, given the Shican’s feelings. It’s almost like someone didn’t want them all close together for some reason.”

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  Vitor was surprised that he had missed it. Then he looked closer and saw that none of the human ships were near the four mobile production yards either. Keep the dangerous weapons away from valuable assets, even though nuclear weapons were nearly impossible to trigger by damaging them. It was much easier to crack a ship’s reactor casing and trigger a runaway fusion reaction. That might be enough to trigger the nukes.

  He smiled. “I think you’re right. Here’s the plan.”

  ***

  Char and the Asgardian fleet appeared a few hours later, and Vitor shared his attack plan with the Asgardian leader.

  She had come up with one of her own, but her people hadn’t realized the significance of the Coalition ships. To be fair, neither had he nor the computronics aboard the scout ships. Once she took that new information into account, she agreed with his plan.

  “This is going to be a tough fight,” she said. “It’ll need to be a quick one too, because as soon as they send out a distress signal, the Shican attacking the planet are going to come to their aid. We’ll have less than twenty minutes until they arrive, and we can’t be there when they do.”

  “I’m aware,” Vitor replied.

  She nodded at that. “Good. My fleet is ready. Since this is your plan, we’ll follow your lead.”

  Had an STO Admiral or Senior Captain said that to him, Vitor would have been surprised. Since it was coming from the leader of the Union, he was less so. This wasn’t the first time he had witnessed the woman defer to another fleet commander. Char was a pragmatic woman. She knew if someone had more information or a better idea, it was best to let them carry it out.

  Not all of the Union captains saw it that way, but most did. It made for a bit of a mess with the chain of command, but overall, it led to fewer conflicts of opinion when it came to the battle.

  Vitor sent the updated combat plan to the rest of her fleet, and they got into formation. Once their jump drives were synced up, the entire fleet entered warp.

  It was a short hop that took about ten minutes, landing them a few light hours shy of their target.

  The rest of the Swordfish corvettes that had been looking for their target were waiting. Once those ships were in place, Vitor sent a comm to the scout watching the enemy fleet.

  The Shican would detect the subspace signal, but not before the fleet arrived and locked them out of warp.

  A response came almost immediately, giving them updated coordinates of the enemy vessels in real time. Judgement’s onboard processors crunched the new calculations in less time than it took a human to blink, and the fleet vanished once again.

  When they reappeared, the enemy supply ships were already powering up their warp drives to jump away, while the defenders were moving to provide cover.

  That would have worked if Krieger had dropped behind the enemy fleet, but he had jumped their combined fleet amongst the enemy supply ships. The move would have been impossible without Judgement’s computers and the real-time telemetry data.

  Enemy ships started exploding almost immediately. The fleet had come prepared, with all weapons systems warmed up and ready. The warp bubbles of the Shican ships flickered and died as each vessel in the allied fleet projected gravity disruption bubbles.

  Judgement and the other capital ships pounded the four mobile docks, while the corvettes turned their deadly weapons on the Coalition vessels. The enemy had added defensive fields to them, but that did nothing to stop the powerful lasers from burning through the outdated armor.

  When the first Coalition vessel erupted into a small star as its breached reactor set off the nukes, it took a chunk out of a nearby Shican hauler. Vitor had placed the fleet closer to the enemy mobile docks to avoid a similar fate, and it paid off.

  The supply vessels tried to scatter away from the Coalition ships, as the human vessels tried to close on the Allied fleet, but it was too little too late.

  Dozens of stars bloomed across the blackness of space as the Allied fleet picked them off with contemptuous ease.

  The enemy defenders were firing into their own formation, destroying a few automated ships and some of the Union’s smaller ships, but their efforts weren’t enough to stop the destruction.

  By the time he was alerted to the arrival of the enemy armada, all of the Coalition ships were dead, the four mobile repair yards were drifting wrecks, and two-thirds of the Shican’s support ships were damaged to some extent. Vitor didn’t even have to signal a retreat; he simply pressed one button, and all of the surviving allied ships jumped at the same time. The pre-programmed emergency jumps scattered them, but each vessel had the coordinates of the rendezvous location. If any of the ships didn’t show up after a few hours, an automated ship would be sent to their last known coordinates to see if they needed assistance.

  ***

  Thesska fumed, letting the blood drip from his hand. His subordinate had made his move after they arrived to stop the humans, following the destruction of a significant portion of the supply fleet. It was a good attempt, because he had been so blinded with anger in that moment that he had nearly missed the man unsheathing his claw. Nearly.

  The young Shican was foolish to believe that Thesska would ever truly drop his guard, but he praised him for his attempt anyway. “You!” he pointed to one of the nearby bridge crew.

  “Yes, Grand Commander?” the man asked, not even glancing at the corpse.

  “Get someone up here to clean this mess.”

  The man nodded and turned back to his console.

  Less than a minute later, three technologues rushed in. Two lifted the body and hurried out, while the third mopped up the blood.

  Once that was done, he turned back to the destruction on his screen. His anger was back in control thanks to his implants, but it still simmered below the surface, waiting for a moment to rise once more.

  The humans had once again proven far more capable than projections suggested. Their ability to not only jump within the supply fleet’s formation, but do so without a single ship coming apart as its field ruptured, spoke of something other than just luck.

  They had to be using powerful computers to do so. Not just any normal computer would be capable of such a feat. It had to be something capable of thought.

  Early in their expansion, the Shican had encountered a species that had given their entire lives up to computer control. Even the thought of such an act disgusted Thesska. That species was wiped off the face of the universe eventually, but not before they proved to be one of the most difficult hunts ever recorded, despite their prey only occupying a single planet.

  That victory had also provided the Shican with the basic science that led to their current technology. If the humans had taken a similar path, that meant the hunt would be far more dangerous than initially thought. It also meant he couldn’t slowly whittle them away and break their resolve. He needed to expedite his plans.

  Thesska sent word of his findings back to the throne world. If his brother, the emperor, wasn’t a complete fool, he would ramp up production and send armada after armada into the human systems until none remained. He was going to need more ships to stomp them out as quickly as possible before their thinking computers gained them an unconquerable advantage.

  He had some decisions to make. With the loss of the additional nuclear weapons, clearing human worlds would take far too long with his current forces. Waiting would be the safest approach, but that gave the humans more time, and the Shican learned their lesson about allowing a species using thinking computers time to adapt.

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