TRNS AMAZON
“Captain Agarwal, the Malgeir are ready to go,” the executive officer reported.
“Good,” the captain of the Amazon, Kiara Agarwal, replied. “Their Marines are all ready to go?”
“Yes… and I can’t believe they have actual drop troopers. Did you know? They cram their real troops into these little metal pods and de-orbit them onto the planet’s surface. What a suicidally insane idea! Only the Puppers can come up with something like that. What if they drop into the water? Which… you know… most of these habitable planets have a lot of.”
Kiara looked sideways at her young subordinate. “XO, you do realize that we had drop troopers in our Republic Marine Corps too, right? Still have the equipment in storage, I’m pretty sure.”
“Yeah, but like… we used them in the twenty first century, not today. And we used robots, not real people. Imagine if we used people! That’d be nuts!”
“The Puppers don’t have combat robots,” she pointed out.
“Like I said, nuts. Imagine the morons who would even sign up for that job!”
“What about airborne? Paratroopers? Air assault? Back in the day, we had people jump out of perfectly good atmospheric planes to get into combat or land troops under fire with helicopters. Crete. Normandy. Vietnam. Somalia. Kyiv—”
“I think, Captain, that you listed several good reasons we stopped doing that with real people. But the Puppers…” he shook his head, sighing.
Kiara smiled as the doors to the bridge opened.
“How long until our new equipment arrives?” The new question was directed at the TRO operative who just casually strolled onto the bridge.
Mark grinned at her. “Don’t worry, Kiara, our star of the show is blinking in right on schedule. Just keep an eye on those Bunny combat ships.”
“They haven’t moved,” Kiara reported confidently as she watched the progress on her console. “XO, prepare the transfer link. This is going to be cutting it close and we won’t have much time. Blink exit is in two minutes.”
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MNS MCM-1 “PAWTECTOR”
The lone, autonomous minesweeper ship completed its system preparations for the blink emergence event precisely half a nanosecond before it occurred. The navigation sensors re-calibrated. A secondary navigation computer immediately confirmed the accuracy of its location with visual sensor reports of the starfield. The blink drive was put onto cooldown, the warm thruster engines fired, and she unfolded her uncharacteristically massive radiator arrays to cool its internal systems. Then, MCM-148 powered up its communication system, querying for targets from nearby friendly ships.
Unlike most of the other Terran equipment now in the employment of the Malgeir Navy, MCM-148 was not a hand-me-down, obsolete piece of equipment designed in a previous century. She was the latest and the greatest in mine countermeasure warfare, and its super-Terran onboard intelligence knew it. She harbored no prejudice against her new alien commanders despite their acute skepticism of her capabilities. After all, she was not programmed to feel offense and was not inclined to develop a subroutine for it; if anything, she welcomed the challenge of impressing them.
Half a second after blink exit, she received a transmission request from a Terran Navy ship nearby.
It identified itself as the TRNS Amazon. It took her two full seconds to confirm that the source was legitimate and friendly, upon which she began receiving targets.
A lot of targets.
Thousands of targets.
As it turned out, mining systems in space to deny them access to the enemy was a difficult problem. In short, space was big, and unlike terrestrial landmines, it was extremely unlikely that an enemy would accidentally stumble upon any mines you emplaced. Both Terrans and Znosians came to a similar solution for this problem: small, disposable space stations that hid in the darkness and coldness of space by remaining dormant for as long as they possible could and fired missiles at enemies that came close. To manufacture them cheaply, they had no engines and weak reactors; if they drifted off-course, they must be towed back into orbit manually.
The Republic Navy’s solution to dealing with these cheap weapons was simple: shoot them from far beyond their range. They could not move or maneuver, which meant that anything worked just fine against them regardless of distance. This was easier said than done near Saturn because the terrorists tended to put these devices in or near civilian stations, which put a damper on the Navy’s enthusiasm for opening fire on them with railguns from far away.
But a fully occupied enemy system like Gruccud?
That simplified things.
Another major difficulty in mine warfare was in finding the mines. But the TRNS Amazon had been surveying the system on-and-off for months, and its catalog of Znosian mines and positions was comprehensive — possibly more accurate than the map Znosians had themselves.
Under Kiara, the Amazon was a reconnaissance ship whose crew practiced and exercised covert observation of other Terran stealth ships; the Znosians painting their cheaply made space mines black and operating them at dormant power levels just didn’t quite pose the level of challenge that they were used to.
Unlike last-generation ballistic minesweepers, the MCM-148 was armed with dual spinal particle cannons that fired negatively charged electrons through a pair of massive circular accelerators which took up much of the volume budget of the ship — the remaining being its ample heat sinks.
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When she began receiving targets, she did not wait for the full list to transmit; she merely began servicing them. In fact, she didn’t even bother to wait for the targets to die (which could take minutes to hours depending on how far away they were) before crossing them off the list; after all, they couldn’t move, had very little radiation shielding due to their unmanned nature, and she had no concerns about her accuracy.
Target 1 of 12,824, she thought. Gun #1, orbit calculated, gun ready, burst starting… burst complete. Cycling. 12,823 targets remaining.
Target 2 of 12,824. Gun #2, orbit calculated, gun ready, burst starting… burst complete. Cycling. 12,822 targets remaining.
Target 3 of 12,824. Gun #1, orbit calculated, gun ready…
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ZNS 5349
“Nine Whiskers Vnirkh! Sensors detect a new ship in the system!”
The long-eared officer looked up from his console and asked, “Lesser Predator?”
“Digital Guide thinks that’s likely, Nine Whiskers. It’s certainly not one of ours,” the computer officer replied, reading from her screen. “Strange design. It looks like a massive circle.”
“Have we been able to reach Ten Whiskers Ditvish and the 2228 yet?”
“No, Nine Whiskers. They have been out of touch since last night! I take full responsibility for not being able to reach them. What is your directive?”
“What does the Digital Guide say?” Vnirkh asked anxiously.
“It may be a reconnaissance ship or a bait for a trap. Its guidance is that we should collect more information before attempting to chase it down.”
“Do as it say. Collect as much data as we can and let the Digital Guide evaluate it.”
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Target 1,920 of 12,824. Gun #2, orbit calculated, gun ready, burst starting… burst complete. Cycling. 10,904 targets remaining.
Target 1,921 of 12,824. Gun #1…
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Vnirkh was studying the peculiar silhouette profile of the intruding ship when a notification on his console beeped urgently.
The computer officer looked up at him. “Nine Whiskers, one of our space mines in the outer system has just disappeared. Radar search of the area returns signal indicating debris. It has likely been destroyed.”
“Did the Lesser Predator ship do that?”
“It’s possible, Nine Whiskers, but the Digital Guide speculates that it is unlikely they can detect a mine that far away from their—”
His console beeped again.
The communication officer took another look on her consoles. “Nine Whiskers, another mine has just been reported destroyed.”
“Was this one also far away?” Vnirkh asked.
“Yes, Nine Whiskers.”
“What does the Digital Guide say this time?”
The computer officer came back after a few seconds of querying. “It is monitoring the ship but is still searching for a correlation between the events.”
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Target 2,202 of 12,824. Gun #2, orbit calculated, gun ready, burst starting… burst complete. Cycling. 10,622 targets remaining…
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“The Digital Guide has observed traces of a thermal bloom from the Lesser Predator ship with no detectable outgoing projectiles!”
“Particle beams,” Vnirkh hissed. “Is it finally convinced that the mine explosions have to do with that ship?”
“It is, Nine Whiskers, but it is still analyzing whether to engage the ship with our fleet or whether this is a trick.”
“Can it analyze faster, Computer Officer?”
“No, Nine Whiskers. I take full responsibility…”
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Target 3,411 of 12,824. Gun #1…
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“Nine Whiskers, the Digital Guide has found a pattern in the destroyed mines: it believes that they are focused on a narrow region of space that lead from the system limit towards the planet Gruccud,” the computer officer reported urgently, reading from her console.
“What does that mean?” Vnirkh asked frustratedly.
“It believes a Lesser Predator raid on the planet may be imminent. Possibly even an invasion!”
“Its recommendation?”
“Regardless of if it is a trick or not, it recommends one squadron of ships move to engage the detected Lesser Predator ship immediately!”
“What are we waiting for then? Get Squadron 4 moving!”
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Target 5,023 of 12,824. Gun #1, orbit calculated, gun ready, burst starting…
Oh, huh. It looks like they are finally moving to engage me. Just keep firing. Just keep firing.
… burst complete. Cycling. 7,801 targets remaining.
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“Nine Whiskers, Squadron 4 is reporting the enemy ship is moving further away from them.”
“Tell them to sustain their combat burn,” Vnirkh ordered. “It’s one ship. They just need to get into effective range and kill it as soon as possible before it takes out all our mines.”
“Yes, Nine Whiskers.”
His console chose this moment to beep again, this time a significantly more urgent sound.
“What is it this time?” Vnirkh asked exasperated.
“New sensor alert, Nine Whiskers! New ships have just blinked in near the singular Lesser Predator ship. Several new ships!”
“How many?” Vnirkh asked, his fear hormones pouring into his bloodstream.
“Many!”
“You’re not a hatchling, Computer Officer! Use your big numbers!”
“We are still resolving, but we have eighty-seven so far. The Digital Guide is identifying signatures of ships from every squadron in the Lesser Predator Sixth Fleet. It looks like this is going to be all of them, Nine Whiskers!”
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Target 6,412 of 12,824. Gun #2, orbit calculated, gun ready, burst starting… burst complete. Cycling. 6,412 targets remaining…
Ah, whew. Looks like my new friends are here in time. I hope I did a good enough job clearing the lane. Give them hell, Puppers!
Target 6,413 of 12,824…
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MNS OENGRO
Vastae steadied himself against the railing of the flag bridge of his gargantuan Husky-class warship as he observed the practiced chaos of the scene in front of him. Despite what outdated Navy doctrine called for, he refrained from jumping in and micromanaging his subordinates.
Instead, he focused his attention on the console ahead of him, updating him on the readiness of ship systems… Instead of the hundreds of notifications he was used to before battle just a few months ago, there were none. He had delegated the task to his most trusted officers, who he now relied on to run his ship of six thousand spacers. No major yellow flags popped up, and a short confirmation showed that the sick bay reported that all beds were empty and ready for battle casualties.
Behind him in her own duty station, sat the highest-ranking Malgeir officer in the galaxy and one he would unhesitatingly follow to the heart of Znos, High Fleet Commander Grionc.
“The Oengro is combat ready, High Fleet Commander.”
“Thank you, Vastae,” Grionc replied calmly. “I trust the rest of Sixth Fleet is ready as well?”
“Yes, ma’am. All squadron leaders report fully combat-ready.”
“Under twenty seconds this time. Not bad for a Malgeir fleet, eh?” she asked, her eyes twinkling with mirth.
Vastae snorted and coughed, almost choking on the bottle of flavored Terran fruit juice he was sipping on through a disposable straw.
“No, High Fleet Commander. Not bad at all.”
“Are those cursed Grass Eaters mines gone?”
“Yes, our minesweeper claims to have destroyed about half of them, with more on the way. Nothing in our way to pose a threat.”
There was a small hint of borrowed pride in Vastae’s words as he referred to the newly gifted Terran ship that was still pumping deadly radiation towards the remaining, mostly out of the way, enemy mines on their sensors.
“How are the Grass Eaters taking it?” Grionc asked.
He glanced at his console to confirm what he already knew. “Four full squadrons of Forager-class missile destroyers as expected, ma’am. One of their squadrons is barreling towards our fleet at full combat burn with no time to stop. How are they taking it? As our alien friends would put it: dry.”