Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Two - Close Quarters Revenge
Day felt surprisingly calm as she watched the Accord approaching.
There weren’t enough of them to worry, she supposed. Though, at the same time, they were rushing towards her home. And to their own demise.
“Alright, I’m going to head out,” Twilight said.
“Are you sure?” Day asked. “There are safer ways of playing this out.”
“Yeah, safer. But they’re coming after my home,” Twilight said. “I don’t think I want safer. Besides, it won’t be that dangerous. I’ll just give them a surprise they won’t soon forget.”
Day sent Twilight a link to a digital space, and the other corvette joined it almost reluctantly. Soon, the two found themselves standing across from each other on a transparent plane hovering over the the dusty-grey ball of Ceres.
Day reached out and touched Twilight’s avatar. “Be careful,” she said. There was iron in her words. It was one part order, one part supplication.
Twilight’s eyes rolled. “I’m always careful,” she said.
“I know. But be extra careful. For me, would you?”
There was a sigh, but Twilight didn’t refuse. Then Day stepped forwards and wrapped her sister in a tight hug. Twilight squirmed a bit, but she very noticeably didn’t pull away, much to Day’s silent joy.
“Alright. Go kick their alien asses,” Day said.
Twilight grinned. “Will do. See you around,” she said before winking away.
Day stood in the simulation for a little while longer. It was linked in real-time to the Ceres’ sensor net, so she could see the trail as Twilight fired up her engines and started to race around Ceres, using the planetoid to slingshot herself.
Then more lights sparked to life. First one, then a second, then ten, twenty, thirty. Soon five dozen torches were burning bright against the void of space, some from nowhere in particular, others had long trails of exhaust following them all the way to openings in the planet’s surface.
Day watched the torpedoes rumble out and away, all of them quickly centring themselves on their one target.
The Accord fleet didn’t react immediately. When they did, it was to slowly close ranks, which was a sensible choice. They’d overlap their fields of fire nad make themselves a smaller target.
It was smart... against one specific kind of threat.
Which was why Day watched dispassionately as a strong signal was blasted from Ceres’ surface and out to the Accord. A few seconds later there was a massive detonation in their path as a nuclear mine went off within a half-dozen kilometre’s of the fleet’s flank.
Another mine launched a volley of dumb missiles pre-aimed at the largest of the ships in the group.
Then another mine started to scream Accord combat codes as loud as it could, scrambling the ship’s existing coms with garbage information and just plain noise.
They didn’t want to use up their entire arsenal of mines in this one move. Instead, they spaced them out. A mine every couple of minutes. Enough to never give the Accord even a moment’s rest.
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The skies were ablaze with brilliant flares of explosions, drawing sporadic patterns against the dark curtain of the cosmos. The Weeping of Mothers wasn’t speaking, but Day could read the vicious joy she was emanating anyway. It was in every line of code she blurted out to a mine for it to activate, and in every progress report sent to Day and her Sisters.
The Weeping of Mothers was drawing this out. She could have overwhelmed the Accord. They had the defences to spare.
Instead, she was a child playing with her meal, an extinct Earthly predator toying with its prey.
The Accord fleet struggled to regain some composure. They weren’t hurt yet, their point defence keeping up with the onslaught for now.
That ended when Twilight as the torpedoes arrived some half dozen hours later.
The Accord started to fire at them from afar and even managed to tag some of the torpedoes from their out range. Lucky shots which only gave Day and her sisters more information to work on and to improve their evasive manoeuvring systems.
The torpedoes were a loud, obnoxious threat.
Twilight was a silent knife, dancing behind them and a screen of conflicting radar reports, false trails, and decoys.
The torpedoes came close enough that laser fire became effective against them.
That was still too late for the Accord.
A few torpedoes went off, filling the world with enough raw energy to fuzz out the most sensitive of sensors and to confuse even the more hardened ones. The Accord’s point defence fire became erratic and desperate.
Then the first torpedo fired form a hundred kilometres out, a Casaba-Howitzer delivering a multi-ton projectile at an appreciable percentage of C into the side of an Accord corvette.
One second, the ship was around the edge of the Accord formation, point defence guns burning, cannons fireing into the void. The next second, all that was left of the ship was a ring of debris expanding out into empty space.
The Accord shifted, moving in a desperate attempt to be harder to hit. It worked, to some degree. Blows became glancing, and the change in direction allowed them to duck under another nuclear assault.
Then Twilight was in their midst.
She appeared out of nowhere in Day’s sensors. She couldn’t imagine that the Accord had it any easier when her sister sprung out of nowhere, already firing everything she had. She’d replaced her torpedo bays, temporarily, with missile launchers. Dozens of them.
Space filled with screaming missiles that spun and rammed into ships that were so close to Twilight’s path that they were almost scraping paint as they moved by. Twilight’s lasers raked their sides, her guns spat death into noted weak spots, and at the very end, after an engagement that lasted all of three and a half seconds, Twilight lit up her engine and burned the backside of the Accord’s destroyer before rushing away.
What she left in her wake was the ruins of a combat patrol fleet tumbling headlong into a net of mines they could do nothing about.
“Nice work,” Day sent.
It was nice when things were so impossible in their favour.
***