Chapter One Hundred and Nine - Missfield

Trouble started three days into their campaign of harassment.

So far, Day and her sisters had been skirting along the far-range edge of the Accord-Earth fleet. Just far enough that the fleet could, in theory, hit them with a particle cannon round, but also far enough that dodging their attacks was relatively easy.

She’d been counting the rounds they fired from the start.

They couldn’t rely on these military vessels being identical to the few wrecks they’d dissected or discovered over the years, but they could assume that they weren’t entirely dissimilar. Which meant that Day and her sisters knew, roughly, how many rounds of ammunition the average Accord ship had.

It was a lot.

Particle cannons, by definition, fired small rounds. The casing that held the actual fired particle were actually substantially larger than the ‘bullet’ itself, but even those were no bigger than the knuckle on a human’s pinkie. Thousands, tens of thousands, could be stored in a single crate.

They didn’t know if the Accord fleet had started the engagement fully armed or not, but it was safer to assume that they had.

So far, they had fired six hundred and thirty-one rounds at the ERF over the last three days.

It wasn’t a sustainable rate of attrition. Had the Accord been firing faster, then there was a chance they’d eventually simply run out of ammunition, but Day suspected that wouldn’t be the case.

Still, it was an additional means of pressure, and those particle cannons could only fire so many rounds before their barrels warped or the turret suffered some minor malfunctions. That might also require thousands of rounds fired, which would mean weeks of playing tag with the enemy.

Candle fired her own particle cannon, and Day rolled her digital eyes.

Her... friend was very enthusiastic about returning fire whenever she had a good enough excuse, and that mostly amounted to her firing whenever the ships lined up in such a way that she had a minuscule chance to hit several thanks to overpenetration.

Day calculated the trajectory of her round, then checked the position of the Accord-Earth fleet. “No way that’ll hit,” Day said.

“No, but I have been looking at how they reposition themselves,” Candle said. She fired a second round, then a moment later, a third. “There.”

“Huh?”

“The ships are communicating. That civilian cruiser is the one detecting the shots and telling the others to move out of the way, but it’s been predictable about it.” Candle sent an information packet over. She sent it smugly, and Day had to restrain herself from another digital eye roll as she looked over the data.

It did check out. The cruiser saw the shots coming and would tell the fleet to change course. It usually gave a very similar set of orders. “A military ship wouldn’t do this,” Day said. “Using the same evasive manoeuvres more than once is just asking to get hit.”

“They’re not military,” Candle pointed out.

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That was a fair point. Day watched with a critical eye as the fleet neatly dodged Candle’s first shot. Then there was a panicked flurry of activity as one of the civilian ships, a small destroyer-sized vessel, ambled into the path of her second shot.

A fresh warning arrived, and the ship ducked to the side.

Just in time for Candle’s third shot to ram into and through the smaller vessel’s port side.

“Bingo!” Candle cheered.

The hit wasn’t catastrophic. It wasn't even enough to take out the ship. There was a short-lived gout of flame as the vessel was partially depressurized and something caught aflame, but it soon ended and the ship resumed its flight.

“Do you think you can do it again?” Twilight asked.

“Eh, maybe, but I doubt it,” Candle replied. “They’ll see it coming this time, and it might not work again. Besides, it didn’t even take one ship out. But I bet it’ll keep the whole lot of them awake for a while.”

“Keep trying,” Day suggested. “At worse, it’s a bit of ammo wasted. At best, you might hit another ship. The most likely option is that they’ll discover the flaw in their plan and correct it, which will take time and focus and coordination.”

“And organics only have so much attention to give,” Candle agreed.

“Oh, Dawn sent a message,” Lullaby said.

Day was surprised. Both that Lullaby had noticed the message first, and that she was awake enough to point it out. The transmission was sent in low-band radio, disguised to look like background noise. It took Day a moment to notice it.

Dawn was in position. She was ready.

“Good,” Day responded, her metaphorical eyes never leaving the mass of Accord ships in the distance. The micro-kinetic manoeuvres, the constant game of predicting and avoiding the incoming particle cannon fire, had started to feel like a dance. A dangerous dance, filled with tension and ever-looming death, but a dance nonetheless. “Once the Accord fleet is in position, let her know to trigger it.”

The trap was a simple one in concept. The Accord was looking their way, so they wouldn’t see the minefield deploying before them.

Because of the nature of space travel, the minefield had to be massive to make up for that. So it was. Hundreds of small explosives, with very limited manoeuvring and sensors, all spread out in a cloud that was flying towards the Accord even as they flew towards it.

Each mine was capable of creating enough shrapnel to rip through any lightly-shielded ship. The larger vessels would likely weather indirect hits, but cumulative damage was still a threat.

Yet it wasn’t the physical damage they were betting on. The ERF knew that every shot fired, every threat they posed, bore weight on the psychological state of the Accord. And while the ships' commanders were likely able to withstand such pressure, the crew and passengers were a different story.

Just as Candle's hits had led to chaos, the thought of invisible, silent death floating in the void would gnaw at the Accord's resolve.

They wouldn’t just destroy the Accord.

They’d make them suffer first.

***