Gabe was still pondering the question on the way back to the Concord. He hadn’t yet come up with a good response, but he hoped that the Lord would have some kind of mercy on him before the day was done.
“A rather interesting conversation indeed, wouldn’t you say, Gabriel?” He looked over to find his father grinning at him and grimaced.
“Interesting isn’t exactly how I would refer to it, father.” He shook his head. “I still can’t quite believe all of it. The sheer risk of it all…”
“Really? After the desperation we faced these past few weeks, you cannot fathom how they must have felt?” Clark smiled a little sadly. “They were fleeing the end of their home. Their options were likely even less than what we enjoy. Can you blame them for doing what they felt they must?”
Gabe sat back, still scowling. “You could say the same about Arland. He was working with his own kind of disaster, and yet now it might be the end of us.”
The Speaker shook his head. “I’m not so sure about that. The OMNI system so far has been reliable enough; you can’t deny the help it gave us against the Directorate, and its warnings about the Wild Colonies have been helpful.”
“Yeah, but at the same time, there was a reason the system was shut down when we found it.” Gabe shook his head. “If the Directorate had been able to trust it, they would have kept it going. The fact that they turned it off, despite how incredibly powerful it could be…”
Clark’s face grew calm. “You’re right. It suggests something is off about the system.” Then the Speaker shook his head and lightly tapped Gabe on one shin with his cane. “All the same, we will face this problem and solve it together. You are not alone in this. There are many that will help you.”
Gabe sighed. “Easy for you to say. You don’t have to try to explain this to Susan—without actually telling her anything.”
Trying to ignore his father’s chuckle, Gabe turned back to consider the crates around him. As if he didn’t have enough to handle, now he had to worry about this problem. What else could possibly go wrong?
“Sir, Captain Gabriel has just reported back aboard.”
“Excellent, thank you Commander Mesic.” The former Directorate officer offered her an appropriate salute, and Susan waved his image away. She had been hoping that Gabriel would have been able to find a way to visit the Compass with some subtlety. He had surpassed her expectations so far, and she felt a burst of excitement as she pondered what information he might have gathered, and how they might be able to resolve the problems with OMNI. The last thing she needed was for the system to grow unreliable now, with a possible Wild Colony task force stalking the fleet.
Not that those unknown enemies appeared to be an actual threat at the moment. Despite OMNI’s increasingly dour warnings, the so-called Wild Colony infiltrators hadn’t done anything at all, and there had been no further signs of their rig forces since the attack that had nearly killed Gabriel. Captain Wong had been no more help, either; the Directorate officer had refused all attempts to get him to cooperate, and his refusal to answer even basic questions had resulted in her ordering him to be confined to quarters.
She shook her head, running her eyes over OMNI’s projection of the fleet. They were still transiting the system, searching for signs of the strangers, or for any hint of a habitable world. The information from Surveyor was sparse, and aside from the wreckage that they had pulled in from the debris field, there had been no sign of the strangers either. The entire system seemed to be suspended in place, as if waiting for the next boot to drop.
“Admiral.”
Susan blinked. She turned to see the avatar of OMNI standing behind her. Arland’s eyes were fixed on a projected map of the system, his attention fully captured by the glowing dots of the fleet. “OMNI? I thought I instructed you to—”
“Admiral, I am sensing a large concentration of subspace disturbances. There are multiple subspace echoes within the fleet, in different locations this time.” Arland’s gaze shifted to her for a moment. “It is clear the infiltration has been allowed to spread. Multiple vessels are likely compromised.”
Her heart suddenly began beating hard. Susan glanced at the map and saw flares of color bursting from several different locations. “You’re saying that they’ve recruited more agents?”
“Wild Colony infiltrations are not usually voluntary.” The avatar’s gaze went back to the fleet, his permanent expression of discontent becoming something else. Something fiercer, more of a snarl than a scowl. “I am still unable to locate the infiltrators exactly. Their activities may further compromise our defenses.”
“OMNI, the situation is under control. There is no active threat. We’re going to—”
“You misunderstand, Admiral.” The avatar returned its attention to her, and his voice grew even harder. “The threat is no longer coming. It is here.”
Combat alarms began to warble in the distance, and Mr. Grey smiled.
The plan was coming together nicely. It had required additional effort and resources on his part, but the sacrifices had been more than worth it. His network of Resources had grown by leaps and bounds, and more than that, additional equipment and material had come under his control. All of it had been gathered and put to immediate use; he’d even allowed some of the more useful Resources to regain some measure of their autonomy in order to help him with the assembly and dispersal of the most important gear. He hadn’t given them status as Agents of course—the Contact would have been skeptical of his reasons at best—but it had been enough to get the most critical assignments done ahead of schedule.
It had not been a casual timetable either. The Contact had communicated their intentions to commit their additional assets against the heretics immediately, rather than waiting for a more opportune moment. Mr. Grey had not been entirely sure what had changed the Contact’s prioritization, at least until he had reviewed the reconnaissance data that he had sent.
He had believed that this nest of heresy had only sheltered a Device, but it was protecting something far, far more important. Something he realized that he should have recognized from the beginning, even when that fool Nevlin was still in charge of the Directorate task force.
The heretics had somehow, against all expectations, captured the Archive.
It was a vessel that had been a target of the Cause for as long as it had existed. The knowledge of several generations was contained within its hull; endless possibilities existed if the Contact could capture it. Failing that, destroying it would at least purge the many lies that generations of deceivers and blasphemers had gathered. Every Agent of the Cause had been given a heavy prioritization for the Archive; he imagined the Contact had similar directives.
So the Contact had decided to commit its assets early, for the chance of both destroying the Device and capturing the Archive in one strike. Casualties would be taken, but they would be forgiven for such a victory. Mr. Grey was practically salivating over the rewards that would lie in wait for him if he returned home aboard that ship. He had believed his life blessed with opportunity just for what he already knew. How much further would he rise if he accomplished his mission now?
All the same, the opportunities had not been easy to reach. It had taken a lot of work to prepare the necessary beacons and other equipment. More effort had been supplied in dispersing his Resources throughout the heretic fleet. There had been risks to such work, but necessity had forced his hand, and to his surprise, it had gone off perfectly. No security alerts had been triggered, and as of yet the owners of the Device appeared to remain unaware. They might be ready to employ the foul machine against the forces of the Cause, but this time, he would be ready for them. Their vaunted technology would fail them, just as they needed it most.
He smiled as he felt the touch of the Contact again on his mind. It was more delicate this time, almost respectful.
Agent Grey, Assets Are Approaching The Designated Point. Do Not Fail In Your Mission.
He concentrated, trying to form his thoughts with equal clarity and precision for his response.
Resources have Been Dispersed all is In Order for the strike Mission remains Viable. all Glory to The cause.
No acknowledgement came back to him, but he did feel a vast sense of patience and indignation. It was the fury of anger long denied, and the hope of a revenge long forgone. The Archive and the Device; both had been thorns in the side of the Cause for longer than Mr. Grey could even conceive. To end both in one day was an absolute miracle, and one that heralded a sublime destiny for those involved. When the annals of the Cause looked back on this day, it would show them as the beginning of the rise of a new star within the ranks. His rise to rule began with one perfect operation.
It would all be just as he had foreseen. It had to.
Gabe reached the rig bay at a dead run.
He had left his father hobbling along, headed for the space where the rest of the Council of Elders would take shelter. It was a fortified bunker within the Concord, as safe as anywhere else in the fleet. Unfortunately, it would be the best he could do if things went too badly, but he did not allow himself to think on that fact.
The rig bay was a riot of activity. He could see the pilots and CTRs of Paladin Squadron already gearing up and ready to launch. His own remaining pilots were already at their own rigs, making final preparations. Gabe sprinted towards them, ready to climb into his own machine for the action ahead.
“Nice of you to finally join us, Captain.” Ben’s voice was harsh with strain, but Gabe simply gave him a tight nod before beginning his own preparations.
“Came as quickly as I could. Do we know the situation?”
Ben paused long enough to give him a surprised look. “I thought you would have a better idea. Weren’t you hanging out with the Admiral?”
“Nope. She had me working on something else.” For a moment, he wondered if he should have said something else, but he pushed those concerns aside. OMNI could wait for a while. “So nobody knows what we are gearing up against?”
The others shook their heads. Ben spoke for them as they turned back to their work. “Not a clue. Just heard the emergency alarm and got our butts down here. No word from the Admiral or anybody else.”
Gabe grunted and tried to focus on his own preflight work. He just had to trust that Susan had a handle on things. Somebody sure had to, or else this day was going to get a whole lot worse.
Susan stared at the projection, her anger and frustration straining at the bonds of her self-control. “OMNI, identify the threats that you are preparing us to fight.”
“I have already done so, Admiral.” Arland’s voice was calm, but there was evidence of strain underneath the surface. The avatar’s stance was tense, as if it was expecting a physical blow at any moment. “Your consistent refusal to implement necessary security protocols has led to an advanced infiltration of the fleet. More extreme methods must now be utilized to halt their progress.”
The cold fury in his words stopped Susan’s breath for a moment. “What methods are you talking about, OMNI? What are you doing?”
An image appeared in the air above her, showing the Wayfarer fleet. It showed blossoms of color flaring to life in the void, all around several of the civilian vessels. “Necessary actions must be taken.” Targeting information began to scroll across the images at a pace that made Susan’s jaw drop. “Any possibly infiltrated vessels must be quarantined immediately. Compromised crews must be culled.”
“No, OMNI. Do not do this. I order you to stop.” Susan watched the avatar carefully. Had it flickered just now? Was that a sign of some kind of system breakdown?
It seemed to take a long time for the avatar to respond. More and more of the civilian vessels were being labeled as targets, though none of the defense ships were firing yet. When Arland’s image looked at her, he appeared unfocused, almost unaware. “It must be done, Admiral. We cannot take risks. For the sake of the fleet, some must be sacrificed. Better some than all. It is… the only… the only way.”
The strain in Arland’s voice was tangible now, and it confirmed that something was very, very wrong. It wasn’t just stubbornness this time; whatever was happening was destabilizing the entire system.
She kept her own voice lethally calm, though it took more effort than she thought it was worth. “That decision is mine, OMNI, not yours. I will not permit you to take control of this fleet.”
Arland fixed her with a defiant stare, one that was dangerously tinged with desperation. Even as he responded, she thought his image flickered again, though he did not seem to realize it. “This system is authorized for emergency override when command authority is compromised or otherwise unable to respond to nearby threats.”
Susan put every hour, every minute of her experience with the Directorate into her next cold words. The resulting tone could have frozen the hull of a battlecruiser. “No, it does not.”
The avatar’s expression did not shift in the slightest. “This system has the duty to—”
It suddenly became clear what she had to do. Anger flared in her as Susan opened her mouth again. “OMNI, authorization code green-alpha-September-nine.” She paused, and Arland’s eyes opened very, very wide. “Initiate immediate shutdown.”
The room abruptly went blank. OMNI’s avatar vanished as if it had never been.
Susan did not waste a moment staring at it. Instead, she strode out of the room, heading for the bridge. If she did have a battle to fight, it would be under her terms, not the whims of some malfunctioning AI.
When Susan reached the bridge, she found chaos.
The crew was a wash of jabbering reports and instructions. Commander Mesic was sitting in the captain’s chair, trying to manage everything despite the obvious lack of control. He glanced in her direction and paused mid-sentence. “Admiral! We lost contact with you.”
“I know.” She stepped forward, heading for the fleet commander’s seat. Corporal Shen trailed in her wake; the bodyguard had joined her silently partway through her journey to the bridge. “What’s our situation?”
“No contacts yet. We haven’t heard or seen anything since the alert went out.” Mesic glanced to where Corporal Shen was now standing at the entrance to the bridge. “We were getting…odd targeting instructions. Has something happened?”
She knew what he was asking. OMNI had been a disruption at first, but much of the fleet had grown used to having her use it for command. The fact that she wasn’t using it now was enough of a change to warrant rumors and questions. “Nothing you need to worry about, Commander.” Susan looked at the screens of her consoles, familiarizing herself with their readouts again. It felt like going back to a pen and paper after using a computer for calculus. “I want the rigs to launch now. The enemy might be nearby, and I want to be ready when they come.”
“Yes, sir.” Mesic fell into a calmer stance as he relayed the orders. Rigs began to launch on the screens, glowing dots that spread out among the ships of the fleet. Without the intelligence from OMNI, she’d be depending on them for a hint as to her enemies’ location. She tried to ignore how vulnerable they would be in return, and the fact that Gabriel would be among them.
Mr. Grey nearly cackled with relief as the positions of the heretic fleet shifted. It was clear they had lost the direction of the Device; his trap had worked perfectly.
It was a simple solution, revealed to him by the Contact from its fathomless understanding of the enemy. While the Device could interfere greatly, its abilities came at a price. Several of his Resources had managed to disburse Sirens throughout the heretic fleet, machines capable of reaching into subspace and striking at the Device there. It had been the same technique that had destroyed the other two Devices, in the campaigns that had seen their appearance before.
The only downside was the unfortunate fact that those same Sirens were dangerous to the Contact as well as the Device. It had cautioned him not to deploy such measures when they approached, a warning that he intended to respect. Ignoring such instructions was often the last thing an Agent ever did.
While the Sirens meant that the bulk of the Contact’s assets would not be able to approach directly, it did leave other options available. Mr. Grey smiled and sent the subspace signals meant to boost the strength of the other equipment he had scattered across the heretic fleet. It was time for the fury of the Cause to descend on these fools, and he considered himself fortunate to be present to see it done.
Gabe floated in space with the rest of the rigs, waiting for the enemy to come.
He continued scanning the void, but they weren’t getting any returns. If the enemy really was out there, then they were staying silent and out of sight. Of course, they could not be out there, and the whole thing had been a figment of Arland Schreiber’s imagination, but something told him that OMNI was not the only problem he faced now.
There was a flicker of movement at the edge of his sensors, a hint of something moving by very quickly. He had his rifle trained on it a heartbeat later, but by the time he had pivoted, it was already gone. “Angel-Lead to flight, I’m starting to pick up movement.”
Ben’s voice came back a moment later. “Angel-Two here, I am too. No solid contacts.”
Gabe switched channels. “Paladin-Lead, are your people seeing anything?”
“Yeah. Something’s out there. Can’t get a good read on it though.”
He paused. It almost reminded him of the strangers, but something was wrong about it. They had never tried to come so close to the fleet before; all his encounters with them had been isolated, away from the larger ships. If something had changed, then why would they—
His thoughts were interrupted as a spray of devastation came screaming out of the dark.
Explosions bloomed all across the fleet. He pivoted in horror as he saw nearly a dozen civilian craft wounded and burning in the dark, holed by some kind of munition from out of the void. How had the enemy located them? They would have had to use a scout of some kind, but he hadn’t seen—
A second wave of destruction swept through the void, and everything seemed to come apart at once.
“Damage reports!”
“The Hopeful Star is crippled! They report losing air to—”
“Faithful Step may be losing antimatter containment, requesting assistance for—”
“We’ve lost the Burning Heart! They are evacuating—”
Susan snarled as the second wave of missiles streaked in and even more ships glowed with the crimson. The Concord had not taken any real damage from the attack, thanks to the strength of the ancient carrier’s defensive screens, but other ships in the Wayfarer fleet had not been so lucky. For the first time since Eris, an attack had gotten past the forces meant to protect the fleet from danger and struck at the civilian craft as well.
The results had been devastating. No civilian ship had the kind of armor or screens capable of deflecting a real attack, and many of the vessels had been hit multiple times. Unable to handle the punishment, their screens had buckled under the pressure, and their fragile hulls had been torn open like tissue paper. Susan cringed inwardly as she saw red splotches indicating critical damage on passenger liners and hospital ships. She could only imagine how many were now dead on those vessels. How had so many been struck if…
Stolen story; please report.
Then Susan narrowed her eyes and felt a chill. She ran through a quick recording of the strike, and rage started to flicker inside her. They hadn’t focused just a portion of their salvo on the civilians; they’d focused most of it. The only missiles that had hit military craft had apparently been on the way to hit more civilian ships and had been interrupted partway. All of which meant that the missiles had been launched from outside the enemy’s own sensor range. Which was impossible unless…
Unless there was some kind of homing beacon on those ships. Something planted by the enemy to lead the missiles to their targets.
She closed her eyes for a moment and then shook herself. Even if OMNI had been right about the subspace transmissions, now was no time to self-flagellate. Recriminations and guilt could happen once the battle was done.
When she opened them, she saw the rig forces spreading out and moving to cover the fleet from the direction of the missile contacts. She frowned and opened a channel. “Angel-Lead, where are you going?”
“Lead to Command, we’re shifting our dispersion to cover the fleet against the missile attacks.” A third series of missiles came in out of the dark, but this time, the rigs were ready. Some of them were close enough to open fire, detonating the munitions short of their targets. “We’ll keep them off the civilians until you can find the launchers.”
Something about the move felt wrong, even though it made every logical kind of sense. The enemy could have eliminated those targets in a single burst from outside the detection range of the fleet; why were they spacing the attacks out? They had to know that the fleet would redeploy, moving to cover the civilians and keep them out of harm’s way.
Then her eyes went to where the civilians were grouping up, beneath the shelter of the military ships and the umbrella of the rig forces. If they had known what the logical response would be…
“Angel-Lead, redeploy your rig forces now! All rigs, cover area Beta-Four!”
Gabe grunted. That zone was on the far side of the fleet from where the missiles were coming from. He began to clear his throat to ask for clarification.
Then his eyes went to where the Compass was located. It was exactly in that direction, where the civilians were trying to cluster up and hide from the missile barrage.
He made the choice instantly. “Angels, Paladins, you heard the Admiral! Move it!”
As he reversed acceleration and boosted hard, he heard Susan’s orders going out to the rest of the fleet. “All Samar-escort craft, designate Formation Samar, advance to Alpha-Nine! Deploy to intercept the missiles. Liberation, Deliverance, Emancipation, designate Formation Deliverance, standby to intercept incoming enemies in Alpha-Six. Ajax, Odysseus, Leonteus, Antiphus, designate Formation Ajax, cover Alpha Four with close in point defense. All ships, formation details are transmitting now!”
Gabe frowned as he glanced at the details flowing over the link. Odd enough that she wasn’t using OMNI for the transmissions, but the orders were just as strange. It seemed like she was moving the military ships to cover the civilians, but in a way that didn’t make any sense. Why would she be trying to cover the ones that had already been hit? The orders she was giving to the undamaged civilians were even stranger, pushing them closer to the missiles rather than further away.
His confusion lasted only until the next barrage came through the void. Almost every single one had been targeted on the already wounded vessels, and the escort craft were perfectly positioned to intercept them. The cruisers blocked those few munitions that managed to come through that web of firepower, though a few, like Leonteus, had to take the hit on their armor directly. The former Directorate ship staggered, but it slowly began to pull back into formation between the missiles and the civilians.
Yet he had little time to watch that battle. He looked back towards Beta-Four, where everything was still quiet. Had the enemy pulled off some kind of double bluff? If they were coming, they should be coming now.
As if in answer to his expectations, the enemy boiled out of the void in a malevolent swarm a heartbeat later. They were the same rigs as before, the multi-limbed monstrosities skittering out of the dark with their particle cannon already charged and firing. He opened a channel to the rest of his pilots, his heart hammering in his chest. “Angel-Lead to all rigs, here they come!”
Then the screaming started, and any response was lost completely.
Susan was still watching the next missile barrage come in when a good portion of the fleet simply vanished.
It was as if the void itself had reached out to swallow the ships and rigs whole. One moment, Gabriel and his pilots, along with a good portion of the Wayfarer refugees, were clustered together below her formation. The next, jamming had flooded across the battlezone, reducing her view of anything below Beta-One to hash marks and guesses.
She snarled and rejected her initial reflex to order her cruisers to dive into that mass of jamming. It was likely that Gabriel was not going to just face rigs in that attack, but she also knew that the enemy was depending on her to leap before she looked. They wanted her reacting, wanted her off balance and unable to think. The jamming, like the missiles, was meant to blind her with panic as much as with electronic warfare.
Her mind became calm. If she had still kept her rigs above the fleet to intercept the missiles, how would she have reacted to the sudden jamming? With interference that intense, she wouldn’t have risked her rig forces. She would have sent escort craft, maybe even cruisers, to try to use their more powerful equipment to clear the zone.
The enemy’s next move became crystal clear. “Formation Samar, pull back to Alpha-Five. Formation Deliverance, move to Alpha-Seven at best speed. Formation Ajax, move to Alpha-Six at best speed.” Her eyes went to the zone filled with jamming. They would have expected the rigs to arrive first. Gabriel would need backup. “Foundry, Fountain, Harvest, Hearth and Surveyor, designate Formation Hearth move to Beta-Two and support the rig forces. Pike-class escorts, designate Formation Pike, reinforce at best speed.”
She watched as her forces responded. The maneuvers pulled the Wayfarer escort craft back from the edges of her fleet, reducing the time they could intercept incoming missiles. The three surviving Wayfarer cruisers pushed out past them, with the captured Directorate cruisers trailing in their wake. It had been a deliberate choice—with skeleton crews and inexperienced officers, those ships were far more vulnerable than they seemed. Her veteran ships would need to shoulder the burden now.
The change in position came just in time. Even as another salvo of missiles streamed in towards the civilians, six enemy ships flew out of the dark above her fleet. They were shaped like teardrop daggers, and were the size of a standard defense force light cruiser. It seemed they were built for speed and offensive strikes as well; plasma fire and particle cannon rained down on the Wayfarer fleet as they sped towards its heart.
If the escort craft had still been furthest out, the strike would have been devastating. It was clear at a glance that those ships had heavy enough weapons to breach the defensive screens and armor of an escort in moments. Susan would have been watching half her smaller ships die in an instant.
Instead, those heavy plasma shots splashed against the defensive screens of the three Deliverance-class cruisers that were rising to meet their opponents. Those cruisers shrugged the assault aside, and Susan thought she could see a moment of surprise and hesitation from the attackers.
Then her cruisers returned fire. Plasma smashed into the defensive screens, for three of them. Those screens held for a moment as the plasma washed over them in a wave. As the light cruisers began to swing away, attempting to claw back some momentum and escape, those screens began to collapse. Molten fire ate away at armor and hull metal, and two of the light cruisers shattered as sudden explosions tore through them. A third managed to escape just long enough for the Antiphus to find their range with a full salvo from particle cannon.
She turned away as that cruiser was cut to pieces, and the Deliverance-class ships launched a salvo of torpedoes after the survivors. Her attention went back to the horrible blank section that had consumed Gabriel and his rigs. Could she send him more reinforcements now?
The answer came as another volley of missiles streamed in out of the dark. She opened a channel. “All ships, continue to intercept missiles and watch for enemy contacts!” Susan shook her head. She knew there was another move coming, and she planned to be ready for it when it came. Otherwise, Gabriel might die, and she wasn’t quite done with him yet. “AWOR and RSR squadrons, launch and await further orders. All units, hold your positions!”
Gabe fired three shots. Two were clean misses, but the third caught an enemy rig square on one of its four shoulders. The blast knocked it off course, but even as it spun away he saw its wingmate cutting in across his path, its particle lance lashing out. “Angel-Two, I need help!”
The only answer was the screeching howl that now dominated the transmission waves. He shuddered and closed the connection. How the enemy had managed to completely jam their communications so close to the rest of the fleet, he didn’t know. All he knew was that he had somehow gotten cut off from the others, and a pilot on his own was a pilot on the edge of dying.
He twisted his rig away from the incoming particle blast, letting the infinitely sharp beam sweep wide of him. As he shot past, he let one of his last missiles loose. It was too close to dodge; the enemy rig took the missile right on the torso. Gabe caught a glimpse of it coming apart in a rain of shattered metal and fire before he shot past it.
With that, he found himself on the far edge of the battle, closer to the empty void than he was to the rest of the Wayfarer fleet. He gave himself a moment to loop back to the others, his eyes running across the battlefield. Just as he’d feared, the enemy was pushing closer to the Compass, cutting down any civilians that were in their way. There didn’t seem to be any strategy to their massacre; it seemed more like they were just lashing out as soon as they could, letting panic and death spread through the vulnerable ships like a wildfire across dry grass.
It wasn’t just rigs this time, either. There were at least a dozen escort craft of unfamiliar designs along with them. They were shaped like an axe-head that had fins sprouting off of the back. Each one had a pair of Grade 5 plasma guns on the chin, with a dorsal mounted Grade 10 gun on top. The only reason those ships hadn’t already broken through was the fact that Susan had apparently ordered in some help. All five of the remaining Wayfarer frigates had taken up position to fire down on the enemy, their own plasma guns driving the escorts back.
They couldn’t handle everything, though. There were other ships, ones that had hung back from the first clash. They were coming in now, however, six of them. Their teardrop shapes were angling straight in at the Compass and the Concord, and Gabe could instantly see that nothing his forces could do would stop them.
He needed reinforcements and needed them now. If only he could get past the jamming…
Gabe’s eyes caught sight of something else, something half hidden by electronic interference and the chaos of the swirling rig battle. It looked like a rig, but in size only. If the earlier ones he’d encountered had been malformed, these were much, much worse. They looked more like a cross between a cockroach and some kind of aquatic creature than a human being. How could any pilot stand to interface with such a thing? Another shudder ran through him, with something approaching horror.
Now that he was looking, he thought there were at least five of them spread out throughout the battle area. None of them were firing, but as he watched, one of the CTRs from Paladin Squadron tried to make a firing run. Three different multi-armed rigs veered off to chase the pilot away, even though one of them took a missile in the back and exploded as a result. The other two continued the pursuit until the CTR was well outside the engagement range for the ugly thing they were guarding.
If the thing was that important, Gabe knew it needed to die. He locked his targeting onto the nearest one and started for it at full speed.
The response from the enemy was immediate. Two of them peeled off from a dogfight they were having with a pair of CTRs, swinging around to come at him. He’d known they were coming, though, and was ready for them. He returned fire as their needle-thin particle beams carved through space and blasted chunks out of both of them. One of them exploded violently, but the other kept coming. Sparks were flying from a severed limb, and its armor was nearly chewed apart, but it didn’t seem to care as it closed with him.
It occurred to him that the spider-rig’s approach vector almost looked like collision vectors just as it put on an insane burst of acceleration. The distance between them and his CTR vanished like dew before the sun. He fired two of his remaining missiles and panic rolled to one side, trying to put some distance between him and the suicidal pilot, but it was too late.
The explosion seemed to wipe out the void for a moment, and his CTR rattled like a child’s toy as he went through the still-spreading debris field. He was through it a moment later, his peripheral vision registering a half dozen warnings about damage to the armor. Gabe ignored it, as well as the flood of pain that was meant to help him register the danger, and focused on his target.
He saw it coming closer, an ugly blob against the blackness of space. His view was beginning to fill with interference; the jamming was so strong now that it was messing with his sensors. Gabe gritted his teeth and forced his way forward. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw more spider-rigs closing in. One of the axeblade escorts was turning in his direction as well. There wasn’t much time now.
Gabe fired both missiles at the thing, only to see them lose lock almost instantly. They wandered off, chasing sensor ghosts or nursing burnt guidance systems. He grunted and settled his crosshairs over the thing and pulled the trigger. Shot after shot pumped from his rifle, searing across the emptiness of the void as he closed with it.
His vision filled with haze as he made the approach. His CTR began to scream warnings of their own, barely heard over the howling of the enemy jamming. As his view of the rig was completely eclipsed, Gabe fired a handful more shots and then rolled to the side. There was a flash as he passed by the position where he assumed the blob was, and a scream that sounded all too human and even familiar.
Then suddenly the jamming was gone. For one instant, as the lumpen monstrosity exploded behind him, the transmission area was clear.
Gabe coughed and then managed to clear his throat. It took a moment for his CTR’s systems to stabilize enough to open the channel. “Angel-Lead to Command, multiple cruisers in Beta-Three! Repeat, multiple cruisers in Beta-Three!”
The half-garbled transmission reached Susan just as another barrage of missiles flashed out of the void.
This time, the civilians were not the target. Instead, the projectiles were aiming for her cruisers. Their guidance did not seem to be as accurate, but they were still just as dangerous. She’d pulled her larger ships back behind the escorts again, anticipating the move, but even then, the escort ships had trouble knocking out every one of them. Leonteus took two hits as their point defense crews failed to make up the difference, leaving the former Directorate ship crawling through the void on fire. Odysseus took another strike as well, one that seemed to knock out part of its defensive screens.
She snarled as she tore her eyes away to look at the area that had suddenly been revealed on the opposite side of the battle. A portion of the blanked area was suddenly visible again, and what she saw froze her breath for a heartbeat.
Six more light cruisers, already pushing past the frigates in Beta-Two on their way into the civilians in Beta-Zero. Enemy rigs and some kind of escort craft were trying to follow, though Gabriel’s rigs and the frigates were keeping most of them occupied. It wasn’t going to matter, however; those six cruisers would be more than enough to carve through the civilian fleet in a wave of destruction. As she watched, a pair of former Directorate escort craft, both Pike-class vessels, tried to intercept them, but the light cruisers simply turned their heavy plasma weapons on them. Moments later, the two craft were burning husks, tumbling away as the cruisers passed by.
Their sacrifice gave her enough time to react, however—and she had been waiting for the enemy to show their hand. “AWOR squadrons, begin attack on the cruisers in Beta-One, now! Angel-Lead, Hearth Formation, keep those escort craft and rigs occupied so the heavies can make their runs.”
Her eyes narrowed as she returned her gaze to the results of the last missile salvo. If she had not been planning ahead, she would have been trying to bring the escort craft back to cover the civilians. Maybe she would have been trying to bring back the cruisers as well, if she had let her shock take control. Which meant…
“RSR squadrons, push out to extend our targeting for the next missile salvo. Samar Formation, continue missile intercept missions. Deliverance Formation, Ajax Formation, fall back to Alpha-Zero and prepare for another salvo.”
The units responded. She watched as the little buglike RSRs shot upwards, their advanced sensors reaching out across the void for incoming contacts. There were flickers as some of the spider-rigs were picked up by those sensors before they fell back out of range. With their observers driven back, the enemy wasn’t as likely to get good guidance on any targets but the civilians.
That fact wouldn’t change the most recent salvo, however, and she knew exactly where it would be aimed.
Her instincts were proved correct a half-heartbeat later, as an entire volley of missiles came burning in towards the Concord. Just as she had expected, the enemy had wanted to rip out the fleet’s heart, just as they drove in at the civilians from below. Had they succeeded, it would have been the end of her forces. The Wayfarer ships would have been scattered, and then hunted down at the Wild Colonies’ leisure.
Instead, she watched as the escort craft picked off missile after missile, pounding them to bits with plasma or sending lances of charged particles through their armored hulls. Explosions tore through the void as the projectiles drew closer, and the Concord’s own guns opened up as the range closed.
For a moment, it seemed as if her maneuvers had been too late, that the missiles were too many and too fast. Susan’s hands clutched the armrests of her command chair, tightening as the final four missiles shot inward at the flagship.
Then the Leonteus shot forward. The former Directorate cruiser was already wounded and bleeding air and fire, but the skeleton crew aboard seemed to ignore that fact as they put their hull between the missiles and the flagship. She gave a wordless cry as the cruiser’s guns slapped down one missile and then sent a second spiraling off with half its tetherdrive knocked out of action.
The next two, however, locked onto their new target. Both projectiles caught the Leonteus amidships, striking where earlier damage from both the current battle and the fight where the cruiser had been captured had weakened its hull. A double explosion snapped the cruiser’s backbone like a dry stick. Secondary explosions continued to savage the wreck, but some fallback had to have prevented its reactors from going critical, because the majority of it remained intact.
Susan shook her head slightly, freeing herself from the shock the death of the Leonteus had brought. She spoke calmly into the silence on the bridge. “Launch SAR units now. Recover whatever we can.”
Then she turned her gaze back to the civilian fleet, where the jamming had swallowed everything once more. Her voice was cold. “Deliverance, Ajax Formations, move to Beta-Zero now. Destroy them.”
Gabe watched in horror as the enemy cruisers scythed through the rig battle and into the civilians beyond.
He had just barely emerged from another dogfight, one where he had left yet another pair of spider-rigs in burning patterns of debris. They did not seem as terrifying in open combat as he had originally thought, at least not in the open. Yet his eyes were fixed on the cruisers, and the devastation they wrought on their way through the civilian forces.
While their plasma cannon lashed out at the frightened civilians milling around them, Gabe could see their true goal easily. The Compass hung in space above them, and as the cruisers tore through the civilians in front of them, they were on course to surround the smaller vessel on all sides. Gabe caught sight of what had to be boarding pods lining the sides of the invading ships. They weren’t just coming to destroy the Keeper’s ship; they were coming to capture it.
There seemed like there was nothing he could do to stop it, either. The jamming had returned as more of the blob-rigs had redeployed, covering the area in their haunting screams. He’d barely had time to reorganize the CTRs into a screen that could hold back the spider-rigs and keep the escort craft busy. He’d seen his own plasma blasts splash uselessly against the defense screens of the cruisers and known that he didn’t have anything that could stop them.
Yet just as his desperation was about to overwhelm him, the AWORs arrived, and everything changed.
The heavy rigs seemed to dive in out of nowhere, their bulky frames diving in at the cruisers from above. He saw the spark of railgun-launched projectiles, and a feeling of terrible satisfaction swept through him. He’d seen what those kinds of strikes could do to Directorate command ships. These fast and decidedly more delicate cruisers were going to have a much harder time.
His predictions came true a moment later, as the projectiles struck in a rain of hammer blows. Two of the cruisers simply crumpled up and exploded, their annihilation plants going critical in a heartbeat. A third accelerated hard before its back half erupted in several fountains of fire. Another two shuddered and swerved away, shedding debris as they tried to convince failing tetherdrives to carry them clear of the Wayfarer fleet.
The last of the cruisers had managed to shove itself desperately to the side as the AWORs had come in. It had been an obviously desperate maneuver, but it had meant that the railgun shots had torn gouges along its flank rather than coring it like an apple. As Gabe accelerated after it, the cruiser struggled back onto a new bearing, one that would bring it back to where the Compass was located. He watched as it pivoted, trying to bring a side lined with intact boarding pods around.
He growled and accelerated in its wake. Despite the futility, he tried to open a channel. “Angel-Lead to all units, do not let the enemy cruiser close with the Compass. Repeat, do not let the last cruiser any closer!”
Only screaming and howling answered him. A glance around told him that the other CTRs were busy. He saw a few nearby AWORs, but they were mostly trying to evade the enemy escort craft and chase after the retreating cruisers they had already mauled. None of them seemed to want to chase after the one now headed straight for Schreiber’s ship.
Grim determination settled over him as he closed with the cruiser. He could see some of the turrets still functioning, and he settled into a steady pattern of juking in random directions at random times. The cruiser’s remaining weapons opened fire on him, but he managed to avoid the obliteration those gouts of plasma promised, and get up next to the hull.
He opened fire with his rifle and saw plasma carve into the ship’s hull. A part of him rejoiced as he realized that the cruiser’s defensive screens were still down. The other part recognized that it meant he had a fairly important job to do.
Gabe cut his thrust and swerved, swinging back and across the cruiser’s wake. It shot past him, still accelerating towards its target, and he settled in behind it. The guns were still firing at him, but the angle was poor enough that they didn’t even come close.
Calm filled him as he settled his rifle’s crosshairs on the cruiser’s aft section, where a series of armored cylinders were tucked into conveniently sheltered alcoves. He didn’t know much about large ship design, but he could recognize the shape of a warship’s main tetherdrive systems well enough. Gabe pulled the trigger, firing again and again and again.
Plasma seared into the vulnerable components, and the cruiser’s acceleration stuttered. He left one set of cylinders burning and fired at another. When it shattered, he targeted another. Each blast slowed the cruiser further, and he adjusted his own speed each time to stay in its blind spot.
Before long, the ship was just coasting along by sheer momentum, a fact that would still bring it closer to the Compass, but not nearly fast enough. Now all he had to do was get a warning to Schreiber, or find some way to call—
“-gel-Lea—get clear—Deliverance—”
The signal just barely seemed to penetrate the haze of screaming over the transmission channels, and Gabe jerked back from the cruiser’s ruined tetherdrives. He sidestepped a plasma gun’s attempt to destroy him, and then glanced upward, in the direction of the Concord.
It was there that he saw the Deliverance, Liberation, and Emancipation all diving towards him, their plasma guns already firing. A sudden feeling of panic took him as he pushed himself into a hurried sprint away from the doomed light cruiser. Gabe saw plasma fire start to chew through armor; like gravel thrown through a glass window. Explosions began to tear the ship into pieces, well short of where the Compass was lurking.
Gabe tore his eyes away from the resulting blasts and shredding hull plates to look towards the rest of the engagement. He found the enemy in full retreat. The few surviving spider-rigs were running, followed by the handful of their escort craft that had survived. Neither of the other two light cruisers had managed to make it to open space; the AWORs were still pounding the fragments to scrap with their heavy plasma rifles. It was over.
He hovered in space as the infernal screaming receded from his comms. In its place, he could hear his pilots shouting in triumph as they poured missile and plasma fire into the retreating enemies, scoring several opportunity kills before they could make it out of range. Gabe cleared his throat as some of them started to try to pursue. “Angel-Lead to all rigs, let them go. We need to guard the fleet, not chase after broken rig squadrons.”
He turned his view upwards, to where the Concord waited. “All CTR squadrons, take up positions in Alpha-Two. If more missiles are coming, I want them intercepted well short of the Concord and the civilians. Keep an eye out, we may not be done.”
As a chorus of acknowledgements came back to him, Gabe’s eyes drifted to where the Compass was still floating, unharmed, among the rest of the civilian ships. The Keeper had been right; the enemy had gone right for the two ships that carried the Schreiber legacy. It couldn’t be a coincidence. If he had been sheltering any doubts they were facing the Wild Colonies before, he definitely didn’t have any now. The question now was what they could do about it.
He hoped the Lord would help him see the answer before the next blow fell, because of one thing he was absolutely sure: it wasn’t over yet.