ZNS 1006, TERRA (5 LS)
POV: Stsinkt, Znosian Dominion Navy (Rank: Ten Whiskers)
The seventy remaining destroyer squadrons of the Grand Fleet — over eight hundred space combat ships, with the thousands of troop carrier and fire support ships they were escorting — they dived down at the enemy home planet near the system plane. Stsinkt saw the sensor signals showing the rough volume estimates of the four enemy squadrons of their Peacekeeper destroyers, and she knew that this was the end for her. Even if by some miracle the two enemy squadrons of their prized, invisible Python destroyers were not present, the little she could see on her screen would wipe out her entire fleet to the last Znosian.
But the Grand Fleet had bought the time and distance they needed: to bring the Great Exterminators into range of the Great Predator home world, just five light seconds away.
The relatively large figure — almost 1.2 meters — of the Greater Exterminator chief, Ten Whiskers Knushosht, appeared on the 1006 main screen at Stsinkt’s summoning.
“Great Chief, we are going to do as much as we can to hold off the predators,” Stsinkt told him. “That should give you time to complete the extermination as planned. Are you ready to complete this mission without us?”
Knushosht nodded at her solemnly. “We are prepared. Everything has been perfectly planned, to the last Znosian Marine. If our planetary tugs do not work, the nuclear hellfire will. And if that does not work, our tens of millions of Marines, backed by our orbital fire support— In our grand masterplan, we have built redundancies into our redundancies. The Will of the Prophecy will be fulfilled, one way or another.”
“Good, good,” Stsinkt praised, feeling his joy second-hand. “May the Will of the Prophecy be fulfilled through you. Because It likely will not be through us.”
“Our lives were all forfeited to the Prophecy the day we left the hatchling pools,” he said, bowing his head in respect.
Stsinkt sighed, taking one last look at the blue and white planet of the predators on her console. She was so close, yet so far. At least she would die knowing she participated in the Great Extermination. That was as much as any loyal Servant of the Prophecy could dare to pray for.
“All ships, maximum burn to engage,” she ordered. “Burn out your thrusters and inertial compensators if you have to. Every one of those enemy ships we take out will save the lives of hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of your fellow Servants.”
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TRNS SONORA, TERRA (0.1 LS)
POV: Catarina Ibarra, Terran Republic Navy (Rank: Captain)
Captain Catarina Ibarra looked unhappily at the unsightly patch of black metal in the midsection of her ship’s hull from the external cameras. “That’s the best we can do?” she complained.
“Yes, Captain. A full repair — they’d need to take out the whole module, and well… Ceres Shipyard is not exactly available right now.”
“What is our side-on RCS now?” she asked, referring to their additional vulnerability to the enemy’s radars now that the original custom-painted radiation-absorbent hull had been damaged by an enemy missile.
“Still small enough to fool their sensors, hopefully.”
“I’m not hearing a lot of confidence in your voice, XO.”
“Still small enough to fool their sensors, hopefully!” he repeated in a much more upbeat voice.
“Are you mocking me, Commander?” Catarina looked at him severely.
“I would never think—”
She interrupted him. “And remember, it is illegal to lie to your captain.”
He pretended to be deflated and sighed, “Fine, then. Yes, Captain. I was mocking you.”
“It’s okay, I forgive you,” she said magnanimously.
He grinned. “And I’d do it again.”
Catarina slapped a palm to her forehead in mock horror. “A mutiny! On the eve of battle!”
“Not a mutiny, Captain. It’s insubordination. A mutiny implies at least two members of the crew… I asked Lieutenant Reed, and she refused to join my conspiracy.”
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ATLAS NAVAL COMMAND, LUNA
POV: Amelia Waters, Terran Republic Navy (Rank: Fleet Admiral)
“Put the latest disposition of Bun Battlegroup Ears on screen,” Amelia ordered. “Sam, do we have the data we needed from Panoptes?”
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19 DAYS AGO
Samantha Lee sized up the middle-aged corporate executive with a visitor’s badge around her neck.
This is the woman who’s supposed to be the key to saving us all?
She forced a smile and held out her hand. “Commander Samantha Lee, nice to meet you.”
“Martina Wright, Raytech. Amelia told me you guys needed some extra technical help.”
Samantha nodded. “Yes, we have some heavily encrypted data we need your people to break into. And we need it now.”
“Sure, what is it?” Martina asked as she produced her tablet.
Samantha held out a data disk. Martina grabbed it and plugged it into her tablet.
“Out of curiosity,” Martina asked. “What is this supposed to be?”
“The entire memory data bank dumped from one of their battlecruisers. The contents include biometric and interrogation data from two of their engineering officers. We want their order of battle. The manifests of every ship. Who commands what. And where in their fleet their commander is hiding… Eight Cretan Marines died for this information.”
“My condolences for your loss, Commander.”
“Just make sure it wasn’t in vain. How soon can your prototype machine intelligence decrypt all of its contents?”
“As soon as possible,” Martina said as she initiated the decryption job on her tablet.
“And how long is that… specifically?” Samantha asked, her eyes narrowing.
“It’s done,” Martina replied, looking toward the corner of her eye. “Anything else?”
“Already?”
“The Buns’ new encryption scheme… took our computers 13 milliseconds. Compiling and aggregating it all in a format you wanted… another calc frame. The Znosians are improving. Not as fast as Panoptes though.”
“That’s not bad, I guess,” Samantha sighed in relief.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Wanna see it do that again?” Martina smiled cheekily.
“No, that’s fine. Just send that data to Atlas—”
“Already done.”
“Well… thanks.”
Martina shook her hand. “Commander, good luck. We’re all counting on you.”
“Yeah, and don’t we know it?” Samantha eyed Martina’s hand gripped around her suitcase. “You heading somewhere else? Evacuating to one of the… rich people bunkers out in the asteroid belt?”
She guffawed. “Bunker? Asteroid belt? Nah, I’m flying back to Olympus tonight.”
“You sure?” Samantha asked. “You know… it’s hard to tell, but it’s probably safer here on Luna than on Mars—”
“Yeah,” Martina smiled. “I’ve seen your battle plans and how—”
“You have System Defense Secrets clearance?!”
“Not— not exactly… But Mars will be fine. Your Martian defense will hold.”
“How are you so sure?” Samantha asked.
“Panoptes assured me.”
“You almost make it sound like it can see the future.”
“Psychohistory? Hah. Not quite, Commander, but we’re getting there. One day in the distant, distant future, maybe.”
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PRESENT DAY
“Send a message to all ships and orbital batteries in the Thermopylae Defense Zone,” Amelia ordered.
Samantha pulled up the battlemap on her tablet, now showing the ships in Terra orbit. “You know what happened at Thermopylae, right?”
“The last stand of the three hundred Spartans? I’ve seen those movies… They held off like a million Persians, right?”
“Technically they had more than three hundred for the whole battle, but more importantly, they lost. And the sacrifice was strategically meaningless,” Samantha replied. “As it turned out, the Greeks didn’t hold off the Persians for long enough to matter; they stopped them… somewhere else.”
“Welp. Thanks for ruining the movies for me.”
“Funnily enough, a couple thousand years later, two infantry brigades from Australia and New Zealand defended the exact same position against the Nazis in World War II.”
“Oh? Did they win?” Amelia asked, perking up.
“They held it against two Kampfgruppen for about sixteen hours. Hopefully we are a little more ambitious than that today.”
Amelia rolled her eyes. “Okay, you can pick the names next time, Herodotus.”
Samantha smiled as her tablet pinged. “The fleet reports it is ready for weapons release, Fleet Admiral.”
Amelia stood up and faced the camera. “All ship captains and computers, prioritize and coordinate targets.”
“Which priorities?” Samantha asked, entering a new order queue into the computers.
“Priority one, orbital fire support ships carrying strategic weapons: planetary tugs and megaton-plus nukes.”
Samantha tallied them as they appeared as red triangles marked with numbers on the screen. “56 targets.”
“Priority two, orbital fire support ships carrying tactical weapons: kiloton-plus nukes and those biological weapon payloads.”
“124 targets.”
“Priority three, naval leadership decapitation. By importance of position. Squadron leaders and up.”
“72 targets.”
“Priority four, Marine leadership. By importance of positions. Transports carrying nine whiskers and up.”
“280 targets.”
“Priority five, naval veteran leaders. Any missile destroyer captained by an officer who has commanded in more than three space battles.”
“149 targets.”
“Priority six, target all remaining missile destroyers. Rank targets based on estimated threat level to our mobile fleet and their State Security outlier ratings.”
“618 targets, ranked.”
“Priority seven, all remaining transport ships, then fire support ships. Rank targets based on estimated threat level to surface population.”
“All targets prioritized and ranked,” Samantha reported. “Atlas Command strategic computers detected 235 exceptions and recommended adjusting their positions. Panoptes concurs with ranking adjustments, suggests two additional launch parameter directive modifications. These are high certainty, but we can run additional simulations if—”
Amelia took one look at the screen. “All modifications approved. Mobile fleet, full burn to engage. CIC, launch for simultaneous time-on-target, kill tracks one through seventy—”
“Engaging track one. Launch. Engaging track two. Launch. Engaging track three. Launch…”
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ZNS 1006, TERRA (4.8 LS)
POV: Stsinkt, Znosian Dominion Navy (Rank: Ten Whiskers)
“They’ve fired at us, Ten Whiskers! Dozens of launch flares detected! The enemy ships are burning away to reload!”
“Will we be in range for a full return volley?”
“Not until after they reload once or twice!”
“Then, it is up to the Great Exterminators now,” Stsinkt said calmly.
Stsinkt sat down in her command chair and straightened her EVA suit. She began to lead her bridge crew in their recitation of the Prayer of Death. “My eternal gratitude to the Prophecy for this insignificant life of service. May It prevail through the will of others, and may the service of Its faithful and worthy Servants bring about Its coming. For Its glorious purpose, our lives were forfeited to the Prophecy the day we were hatched.”
Her affairs fully settled, Stsinkt kept her eyes on the sensor screen, watching the ships of the fleet desperately and valiantly try to resolve the near-invisible Great Predator missiles that were flashing in and out of their sensors intermittently.
As she watched, a few ships of the Grand Fleet began disappearing from the sensors.
“All space combat squadrons report combat effective, Ten Whiskers… Enemies have launched again…”
Stsinkt frowned. “Huh. That’s… odd. Why would they attack the ground attack and boarding ships first? They can’t possibly think they’d clear out the Great Exterminators before we get to them, can they?”
“No, Ten Whiskers, our margins should still be high enough, and we are now resolving all their Peacekeeper class warships… Predators opening fire again! We are not yet in range.”
She watched as a second set of accurate missiles plucked another few dozen ships from her fleet — mostly still ground attack ships under control from the Great Exterminators. She muttered a short prayer for the hundreds of thousands fallen as the predators loosed yet another volley.
“Ten Whiskers, the Great Exterminator chief is on the line with an urgent message.”
“Put him on.”
Ten Whiskers Knushosht appeared on her screen, his expression unsettled.
She started to ask, “Ten Whiskers Knushosht, I see that the predators are mostly targeting your ships—”
He interrupted her. “Ten Whiskers! The Marine ships! The predators— they’re hitting the—”
His image disappeared into static.
Stsinkt turned to her computer officer, who reported, “His ship has been destroyed — unfortunate, but we are almost in range. Ready to launch on your orders in two minutes.”
“Huh.”
Inspecting the sparse pattern of dark gray dots indicating the fallen ships in the Grand Fleet on her sensors, Stsinkt saw something odd.
“Huh.” Her eyes opened wide. “Why did— How did they know about—”
Her last thought was cut off as a Falconet medium range anti-ship missile found her ship’s reactor in a single hit.
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ZNS 1039, TERRA (4.8 LS)
POV: Motisn, Znosian Dominion Navy (Rank: Nine Whiskers)
“Nine Whiskers, the Ten Whiskers’ ship has been destroyed! The Digital Guide reports that since you were second in command of the battlegroup, you are now in charge!”
“How is she the only one of our destroyers confirmed hit so far?! Did they target her ship intentionally?”
“It is uncertain. And it is suspicious of some of the hits on our critical Marine transports as well. What are your orders?”
“What does the Digital Guide recommend?”
“It’s still calculating, Nine Whiskers. There is confusion as to which ships are still available for tasking in the Grand Fleet.”
Ten seconds later, another Falconet missile found the reactor of the 1039 before her strategic computers could finish deciding what to do.
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ZNS 9201, TERRA (4.8 LS)
POV: Valkem, Znosian Dominion Navy (Rank: Nine Whiskers)
“Nine Whiskers Valkem, the 1039 has been confirmed destroyed. The Digital Guide reports that since you were third in command, you are now in charge!”
“Which other ships are still alive—”
A Falconet missile found the 9201’s reactor before its captain had time to finish her first — and last — question as new master of the fleet.
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ZNS 4729, TERRA (4.4 LS)
POV: Krotssufske, Znosian Dominion Navy (Rank: Nine Whiskers)
“Nine Whiskers, there is notable ambiguity in which of our ships are still combat effective, but the Digital Guide reports with moderate confidence that since you were 74th in the line of succession, you are now in charge!”
“But— but I didn’t participate in the fleet battle scenario planning! How did they kill so many of the higher numbered squadron flagships?! What are we supposed to do?”
“The Digital Guide is uncertain. None of its contingencies have finished calculating yet!”
“What about the Great Exterminator fleet? We’re supposed to escort them to the predator planet, right?”
“Yes, Nine Whiskers. They appear to be as confused as we are. None of their chiefs are responding, and their ships are giving conflicting directives as well.”
“What about the enemy fleet? Ask it: should we fire on them?”
“Digital Guide says we might not be in effective range of them yet given their electronic countermeasures and anti-missile defenses. It is unsure but it tentatively recommends we wait—”
“I don’t care. They’re tearing us apart over here! Better to die with deliberation than to wait on indecision! Override the combat computers. All ships, fire at will!”
“Yes, Nine Whiskers!”
The squadron leader and captain of the 4729 did not live to see his command executed, but the order was correctly transmitted to the remaining and dwindling number of ships in the missile-capable fleet.
As the remaining hundreds of Znosian missile destroyers began to sporadically return fire towards their killers, the diminishing number of still-effective combat computers in the fleet noted with dismay that few of the squadrons or ships were firing with enough coordination or mass to efficiently overwhelm the organized countermeasures or point defenses of the enemy mobile fleet at this range.
But none of them offered a superior alternative.