Chapter Forty-Seven - Time

The Weeping of Mother’s plan required two phases, and it required that they split their forces.

When their forces only included two warships at the moment... well, Day was worried.

“Stay safe,” she told Twilight as the stealth corvette started up her engines.

Twilight’s reply was a snort. “Hey, don’t worry. Don’t need to stay safe when they’ll never see me coming.”

Day watched her sister go. Twilight had several long cables attached to her hull, all of them trailing behind and hooked onto stealth drones. They didn’t have the acceleration to even begin to keep up with Twilight, so she’d have to bring them closer to her destination.

Soon enough, day would lose sight of her. Twilight was good at that, and even with her tail of torpedo-armed drones, she was going to disappear from any of Day's scanners once she put enough distance between them.

Day hoped that Twilight was right, that this new threat really wouldn’t see her coming.

Her own job was easier, yet somewhat more involved.

“Night is on her way back,” The Weeping of Mothers said as she sent Day a recent transmission from Night confirming her trajectory. “I think she’s set up the start of a manufacturing base on Io, because she has an alarming number of nuclear weapons with her.”

“That sounds like Night,” Day said. “Do we have a lock on the fleet’s trajectory?”

“It seems like they’re aiming for Mars,” The Weeping of Mothers said. “Which means that they’ll be going through the asteroid belt, though at an elevation much higher than where we are.”

“I’ll have to do some catching up, then,” Day said as she took in the data the older AI was feeding her. The fleet was moving as a disorganised line of ships. They were mostly keeping those two larger cargo haulers in their middle, but that was it as far as formation flying went. The rest of the fleet was scattered around them, with some racing a little ways ahead and others lagging behind.

It was actually going to make it harder to attack than if they’d stuck to a tight formation the way the Accord did.

It was also another point in favour of them not being Accord at all in the first place.

One of the first things The Weeping of Mothers did was launch a probe towards the approaching fleet. It was a repeater, taking in any communications it overhead and tightbeaming them back to Ceres, and as it came closer to the group on a now-ballistics course, they were starting to hear the fleet’s chatter.

It was the same language the Accord used... more or less. They could make out distinctly similar words and it seemed as if the same numerical system was used. The digital communication between the ship’s primitive AIs was certainly similar to the Accord’s own, but there were several differences.

For one, there were more accents than they’d heard from the Accord. And the speakers were clearly not all equipped with the same voice boxes. Accord communications almost certainly all came from the species they’d labelled Accord Cs. These communications had more distinct voices in them.

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So, more races than what the Accord had, but certainly including some Accord-member-species.

Day was starting to form a bit of an idea of what they were dealing with.

Almost certainly, these weren’t military. They lacked the professionalism that the Accord displayed. So civilian, probably. The lack of armaments suggested as much as well. They probably weren’t pirates either.

Day imagined that a group of space pirates would at least have some degree of professionalism and better arms on their ships, and would likely display more caution.

So, either a company, or a band of civilians, or... perhaps something else.

The truth was that they knew far too little about other non-human civilisations to make an educated guess.

If everything went well, they’d have a lot more people to question about it.

“Alright,” Day said as she secured the last of the drones onto her hull. Relying on drones wasn’t ideal, they were too light, couldn’t be armed well, and past a certain range they had to rely on their own computational power to make choices which weren’t always as clever as those a proper AI could make. Still, they’d use what they had. “I think I’m ready to head out.”

“Good luck,” The Weeping of Mothers said. “And try to be careful.”

“I will,” Day assured her.

She boosted out of Ceres even as, on the surface, The Weeping of Mothers grew increasingly busy. There was a ship being renewed, several AI cores being repaired and even a large prison being built.

Day didn’t have too far to travel. They’d be intercepting the fleet in the middle of the asteroid belt. She herself was aiming for one large rock in particular behind which she could unload her drones and prepare them for the moment the final strike began.

The timing was going to be rough.

If Twilight attacked too soon, then the fleet wouldn’t be in position. If Day moved too soon, then the fleet might warn the FTL ship and it might leave the system.

Tight-beams were quick and precise, but they still had a time-delay, and that precision required that everyone be in predictable locations.

Day noticed Night coasting in on a ballistics course and winced. If she noticed her sister, than it was possible that these scavengers noticed her too.

Night launched several large cargo containers in the direction of the fleet, with a delay between each launch so that they would be spread out among the fleet.

Day checked the tie, then fired off every torpedo she had around the bulk of the asteroid she was using as cover.

At the same time, she received a message from Twilight.

“Firing!”

It was time.

***