Chapter One Hundred and Eight - Walking Blind
Day kept firing her sensors every minute on the minute. It was loud, it was obvious, it was screaming her position to the enemy, and she didn’t care.
The feedback she was getting was entirely worth it.
The Earth-bound fleet had fifty-nine ships and mobile stations within it. They were actually moving relatively slowly. Day knew that some of the civilian ships could definitely outpace the rest of the fleet.
Or they could, if they had any choice in the matter.
As it was, they absolutely didn’t.
On top of the fifty-nine civilian and industrial ships were six Accord military vessels. A cruiser, a frigate, a destroyer and its accompanying logistical vessel, and a pair of corvettes.
If the oncoming battle was just going to be between Day, her sisters, and the Accord military craft, then she her simulations suggested a thirty-four percent chance of victory, and it would come with some losses.
Those odds were awful. The ERF ships were, kilo-for-kilo, more potent than their Accord counterparts, but they were still outnumbered slightly and outmassed. The enemy cruiser, especially, was a threat.
But they weren’t going to fight such a symmetrical battle. That would be foolish. The Accord military had civilian vessels to protect. And they needed to protect them.
It all came down to long-term victory conditions. The Accord could wipe out every ERF ship and station in the system and yet still lose if that left their civilian and industrial fleets destroyed or crippled, because at the end of the day, they needed to eat.
If Day and her sisters destroyed the orbital stations, they’d win.
Or perhaps they wouldn’t. There were some simulations that suggested that the Accord had a number of civilians capable of turning the wrecked stations around Earth into a staging ground from which to fight back.
They could, in theory, bootstrap themselves the same way the ERF had.
The military would need to be resupplied. They’d need new munitions. They’d need food, and a place to rest, and if they knew that they’d be stuck in Sol for upwards of thirty years, then they’d have to know that they’d need new recruits eventually.
Essentially, Day knew that the Accord absolutely needed to protect the civilian fleet, and the Accord probably knew that she knew.
From there, the whole argument became somewhat circular.
Day and her sisters flew after the Accord-Earth fleet until they entered the maximum range for their torpedoes, then all four of them fired two torpedoes each, aiming them at the centre of the still-distant fleet.
At the ranges they were firing from, it would take days for the torpedoes to reach their destination, and that was while the torpedoes were clearly visible to the enemy.
There was no way they Accord wouldn’t blast them, but the torpedoes were set to move somewhat randomly to evade any return fire.
It served a two-fold use to fire them now.
First, it would allow Day and her sisters to get a good idea of how effective the out-range Accord weaponry was and how well the military part of the fleet reacted to an attack.
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Second, it would put pressure on the entire Accord-Earth fleet. The psychology of the average Accord-native alien was quite dissimilar to the average human, but their reaction to knowing that a nuclear-warhead-tipped torpedo was flying their way was pretty similar to a human’s reaction.
Lots of stress, lots of anxiety, and that tended to cause its own troubles.
Finally, while the Accord were focused on Day and her sisters and the torpedoes, they might not be focused so hard on what was ahead of them.
The moment the torpedoes were off, Day and her sisters turned, then burned to the side.
A few minutes later, particle-cannon rounds zipped through the space where they’d been.
Day decided to split more weapons along three range-axes based on an old human weapon prioritisation system. Weapons were effective within three ranges. Outrange, Far, Close, and because humans couldn’t live without exceptions, they also included danger-close.
Outranged weapons were those similar to the Accord particle cannons and the ERF torpedoes. Weapons capable of hitting a foe even if that foe might be hours or days of travel away. There would be a long reaction period between firing that weapon and the weapon striking.
Far ranges were similar, but the time delay was much shorter. Minutes instead of hours, and it was within the kind of range where dodging became an involved affair and where a target could be trapped into having to pick what they’d be hit by instead of being able to avoid everything.
At Close ranges, aiming and firing happened so close to striking time that dodging was pointless. At the same time, some weapons only became effective at these ranges, notably laser-based weapons.
And finally, Danger-Close, where ships were so close together that nothing mattered.
“We should shoot them,” Candle said. “We’ve got particle cannons too.”
“They have shields,” Day said. “Wait until we’re in position, then we’ll start.”
Because as they slowly circled around the Accord fleet and kept their attention, the space ahead of the fleet silently became more dangerous.
Dawn had left Ceres a while ago on an intercept course, and she’d brought enough mines to wipe the entire fleet away.
The plan was simple. Distract the fleet, maybe pull the Accord military away from the civilians they were protecting. Then deploy enough mines in their route to blow them all the hell.
It was simple on the surface, but it was the sort of operation that was only possible because this was the ERF’s system. This was their home that they were defending, they knew where to hide stocks of weapons and explosives and where to let those drift into the enemy’s path.
In the end, the plan relied on Day distracting the enemy.
She fired another ping, her sensors pushed to their limit to blare like a siren in the enemy’s ear.
“Come on,” she muttered. “Look here. Look at us. We’re the big bad threat. That’s right, don’t look at where you’re going or the pit you’re about to step into.”
***