Chapter One Hundred and Twelve - Losing
“Dawn!” Day shouted through empty space.
It didn’t really matter. Adding volume to her electronic shout did nothing to make it travel faster. There were hard limitations at play that she could do nothing about.
In the distance, Dawn was rocketing away with everything she had. Her sister ship fired off two torpedoes, then started laying out covering fire behind her. The direction of fire was opposite the direction she was travelling in. It was almost as if Dawn was using the fraction of a fraction of thrust the shots gave her to move away that much faster.
It wouldn’t help.
The remaining Accord corvettes were rushing towards her and they were faster.
“Day,” Candle said. “Go after Dawn. You should be able to take those two on, right? Twilight, do you think you can go with her?”
“It’ll break our entire formation,” Twilight said. “We’ve got them on the run.”
“Dawn’s more important,” Candle said. “Besides, Day will be upset if Dawn gets herself blown up, and do you really want to deal with an upset Day?”
“Fine,” came Twilight’s reply. There was a layer of belligerence there, but it was very thin. Twilight connected to Day and created a second tactical layer with her, the process flowing naturally to create a simulation of their current situation.
The Accord civilian fleet was making more distance and was finally reorganising. Day put off inspecting the damage they’d dealt for now. The military fleet was between them and the civilians, and they’d taken their share of hits as well.
Dawn wasn’t exactly on the far side, but she wasn’t too far from it. Her current course wasn’t directly away from Day and the rest of the ERF ships. If Day burned hard, then she’d intersect in about forty minutes.
She fired her manoeuvring thrusters, aiming herself in the right direction, then fired off.
“Whoa there,” Twilight said. She launched off after Day as well. Twilight was a little closer to Dawn’s future position, being on the edge of their formation. “You’re really just charging straight in?”
Day ran the numbers again, this time sending them to Twilight.
Dawn would be overrun in twenty-six minutes. They’d be entering the range where they could help in thirty-two minutes. Twilight could do the rest of the math there all on her own. “If we don’t get there as soon as we can, then it’ll be too late,” Day said.
“If we fly in a straight line, then the only way we’ll help is if part of our exploded hulls happens to nick one of them,” Twilight said. “We’re cutting into the out-range of the bigger ships. That’ll hurt.”
Day hated that Twilight was right, but she was. Based on all the data they’d gotten so far, it wasn’t too hard to create a good simulation of the targeting capabilities of the Accord military. She was aiming to cut into a spot closer to the cruiser and frigate. They’d both have a much easier time striking her, especially if she flew in a straight, predictable path.
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“Don’t worry too much,” came Candle’s reply. “We’ll be laying down some cover fire. Just send me the time-table for your flight, I’ll distract them while you’re closest.”
It was an obvious ploy. The Accord commanders would have to be blind not to see that additional fire from Candle and Lullaby wasn’t meant to distract them. But they’d still need to respond to that fire.
Day sent an affirmative right back, then all at once, she launched every last torpedo she had.
“Did you just do that to lighten yourself?” Twilight asked.
“It’ll shave off seconds,” Day replied. Besides, the torpedoes would be that much more for the enemy to focus on. They’d seem them coming, of course, but that didn’t mean that they could ignore the threat.
Dawn wasn’t responding to any of her hails personally. She was still receiving them, though. Day was catching telemetry and firing data from Dawn, all sent with the usual crisp professionalism she’d come to expect from her sibling, but nothing of Dawn’s personality was coming through, there weren’t any direct communications.
“Here’s the evasive manoeuvring data,” Twilight said.
Day checked over the packet in a fraction of a second. It wasn’t bad. They’d both enter semi-random spirals, with Twilight and Day switching around so that neither was at the front for long and so that they’d both be within each other’s point defence fields the entire time. It was a clever way to counteract the likely missile swarms they’d be dealing with.
It also slowed them down by over a minute.
Day swallowed the frustration. It made sense, and besides, Twilight was going along with her already reckless move
The start of the flight was surprisingly quiet except for a constant exchange of basic data. Then they entered the longer range of the Accord military, and the cruiser started to track them from afar.
“We’ll start as soon as it opens fire,” Twilight said.
“Got it,” Day replied. The first particle cannon shots came a moment later, and Day immediately kicked into evasive manoeuvring. At the same time, she deployed her French drive, the large skids on her sides opening up and the engines firing.
The drives were terrible at rapid acceleration, but very bit counted, and while their loudness gave away her position, it was also strong enough to interfere with unprepared sensors, like looking into the sun without protection.
It didn't stop her from noticing the first shots the Accord corvettes took.
Dawn was spinning through evasive manoeuvres already, but the enemy was closing in, and Day could almost feel the delay between shot and hit shrinking. It wouldn’t take long before it was down to nothing and Dawn was struck.
“Damn it, damn it, damn it,” Day swore to herself.
She was not going to lose a sister. She wasn’t going to lose anyone.
***