Chapter Fifty-Six - Dawn’s Unending Work

Day fixed the last tug drone to the side of the cargo hauler, then scanned the entire ship.

The vessel’s drives still functioned, of course, and it had a good bit of fuel on it. She’d stripped what she could from it, but the ship’s holds were all empty, probably because it was clearly on-route towards the inner planets to grab salvage already.

From what they’d gleaned from their prisoners, the operations in Sol were supposed to last nearly two years. They were here to grab everything that they could, compact it, then ship it back to the To Infinity... and Beyond. In the end, they were planning on heading back to a nearby star system, then make another leap over to a system even further out to sell the scrap for what they claimed was a tidy little profit, all under the nose of the Accord, who technically had first salvage rights.

Day felt a little bad about stealing and scraping the equipment of these scavengers. Some were genuinely just honest business people trying to make a quick buck. She determined that they’d find a way to dump them in a system with some traffic one day so that they could be picked up by... someone else.

Their ships, though, were now all ERF property as far as she was concerned. They’d come here to steal from the remains of humanity, and they had no right to those.

Day sent an activation signal to the rudimentary VI controlling the frigate and its drives lit up. Soon it was hurtling its way toward Jupiter and Io. Night was going to take over command of the ship for that last part of its journey, then it would be broken down for scrap at Io Base.

Her task done, Day turned to other things. Twilight was still out exploring in the belt. She was sending the occasional report back of her findings, but so far there hadn’t been too much of great interest. Night was working hard as well, and she and NOVA QUANTUM had perfected an improved version of the French drive, though Day had yet to do anything with the new blueprint. She was too antsy to dry-dock herself at the moment.

The Weeping of Mothers... Day knew that the older AI was working on several cores. The core from the ERF Postmaster was being troublesome, so they’d pulled out another one of the damaged cores that The Weeping of Mothers had lying around. One of Day’s sisters, from a time she couldn’t remember.

She pushed that aside, then looked to see what her other, new sister was up to.

Dawn was parked in a distant orbit around Ceres. Day could make out very faint, almost unnoticeable sensor pings coming from the ship. They were disguised to almost look like simple background radiation. The kind of thing that Day might not notice immediately if she wasn’t looking for it. Though she imagined the sensor image from that wasn’t great either.

Day pinged Dawn with a tight beam asking her a simple question. “Hey, what are you up to?”

Dawn’s reply was nearly instant. “Just running calibrations. There are a number of systems that I’d like to fine-tune before they’re truly needed. That and... I’m running simulations.”

“Oh,” Day said. She changed her orbital path a little to be closer to Dawn, then fired off a request to join her.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

It took a moment before Day was let in.

It was a space battle. Ships were speeding in towards each other, missiles were flying, lasers and point defence guns were roaring across the void. For a moment, Day was overwhelmed, then she made sense of it all.

One ERF frigate, five corvettes. On the other side, an Accord Destroyer and three corvettes of its own.

The particle cannon fire was zipping between the two small fleets, and Day winced as two of the ERF corvettes were cored. One of them was struck somewhere critical and exploded spectacularly.

ERF Bagh Nakh - Down

ERF Sicarii - Down

Still, at that same moment, the torpedoes launched by the ERF reached the Accord fleet’s PD range. Lasers, invisible and deadly, filled space in a dizzying dance that left slagged hulks in the places of deadly torpedoes.

Three detonated anyway, and one of the Accord corvettes was wiped off the board.

Then the missiles not taken out by ERF point defence guns closed in and another corvette was lost.

ERF Katzbalger - Down

That left two ERF corvettes, and the Postmaster. Day watched with trepidation as the ships got into knife-fighting range. Pound defence guns turned away from targeting missiles and focused on ships. The Postmaster’s large kinetic cannons roared as they fired slugs at the enemy, and space filled with tracer fire.

The Accord destroyer took several glancing blows.

The Postmaster crumpled under the combined attention of the Accord ships.

ERF Postmaster - Down

Then the ships were past each other, and while one of the Accord corvettes started a hard tumble through space that Day doubted its organic crew could survive, the other was still entirely intact, and the destroyer was still operational.

The missiles following in their wake rammed into the remaining ERF ships from so close that their point defence could do nothing.

ERF Sgian Dubh - Down

ERF Keen Edge of the Electric Dawn - Down

The simulation flickered, then reset. The ERF fleet was way in the distance, near Mars. The Accord were heading in towards them, outnumbered but clearly not outgunned.

“Have you been doing this a lot?” Day asked.

“I’m smarter now,” Dawn replied easily. “It should be possible now, shouldn’t it? To win?”

“No, not on your own,” Day said. She flickered over to the far end of the simulation and took manual control of the Katzbalger. “Let’s run it again,” Day said.

Soon she found herself charging towards the Accord, next to Dawn. Day looked over the weapons she had, the capabilities of the hull she now resided in, at least virtually, and she winced. It wasn’t ideal. It wasn’t too far from what she was either.

“Why aren’t we firing from super-long range?” Day asked. “It should be possible to calculate their trajectories.”

“It’s wasteful, and goes against protocol,” Dawn said.

“But we lost while following protocol,” Day said.

Dawn hesitated, then started firing.

This time, things were a little different.

Not perfect, not ideal, but better, and Day thought that maybe that counted for a lot.

***