Chapter Thirty-Two - Sneaky Fish
Day thought that the radio-silence was going to drive her mad, and she had both of her sisters to talk to the entire time.
They played games for the first few days, and even found some that they all enjoyed, but after reaching the maximum level in several roleplaying games, and even replaying those they enjoyed the most, the idea of spending more time searching for distraction in games was starting to wear, even on her.
She imagined it would be so much worse for The Weeping of Mothers who was even now holed up on Ceres, her industrial base shut down, her drones silent, everything running on such low power that even when she was right on top of their base, Day couldn’t feel its presence, though it wasn’t disguised to the naked eye.
They sent frequent updates down to the surface. While they didn’t dare use active scans, that didn’t mean they couldn’t keep track of the Accord. At the moment, the ships had just reappeared from behind the chaotic magnetosphere around the sun, and were on an easy course back towards their FTL ship.
The other group who had lingered around Jupiter--with no signs that they’d discovered NOVA QUANTUM--were on their way back as well, using a looping orbit around Jupiter to eject them into the path of the other fleet. They wouldn’t quite meet up mid-flight, but it would be a close thing.
Day imagined that that was to have as much time spent in each other’s covering arcs as possible.
All in all, the Accord’s visit had gone as well as they could have hoped.
Day wondered how long they could keep this up.
Eventually, if they continued to grow, they’d be unmistakable. Something would tell the Accord that they were in the system. A leaking drive, a too-large station, something.
Though, from what Day could tell, the Accord had been sending fewer ships out to the Sol system. It was entirely possible that after some time of not discovering anything, they’d cut back on their patrols, or stop them outright.
She didn’t want to rely on that possibility.
“Hey!” Twilight said as she poked Day.
“Is something wrong?” Day asked.
Twilight popped into Day’s simulation--of a small, cosy library, with a fire in a hearth nearby providing the only light, and plenty of digital warmth, then after looking around for a moment, she sat herself down onto the arm of Day’s plushy chair. “So, I’ve been looking at that Shark thing you guys built.”
“The shark drone? With the torpedo launchers?” Day asked.
“Yeah, yeah! It’s got potential, you know?” She started to swing her legs back and forth, heels thumping lightly against the side of the chair. “So, it has potential, but it also has a few problems. And I think I’ve fixed a number of them.”
“Oh?” Day asked.
“Yeah. First, you guys built a drone, then slapped the torpedo tubes on second, so the design was a little lopsided. I decided to work around that at first, but the more I looked at it, the more it struck me as wrong. So I ended up reworking the whole thing from scratch while keeping its main design principles in place.”
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Twilight leaned way over and plucked a book off the nearest shelf. By the time she handed it to Day, it was an entirely different book.
She took it and opened it down the middle. A spinning three-dimensional image was very much not of the ship Day and Night had designed and tested.
This model had a similar engine, but it was much smaller, with larger baffles at the end, presumably to hide its output a little better. The engines were on the ends of a pair of almost fin-like protrusions. The overall shape was a lot smoother and flatter, with no clear evidence of torpedo tubes anywhere.
Day blew the image up, taking the ship apart to see how it worked.
Its interior had, as she suspected, the same kind of French drives that Day had been working on. “The drives are crap at accelerating, but yeah, they should be real quiet. So I ran the numbers, and two is better than one. It’s not a huge gain, but with the mass reduced a little, it can get about three kilometres an hour of additional acceleration.”
“There are only two torpedo tubes?” Day asked. “And... are these missiles?”
“Yup!” Twilight said. “See, I made a new design for stealth torpedoes. So the idea here is that the one in the centre is a normal torpedo with an EMP warhead with a shaped charge. Big boom, lots of noise. The other two are basically casaba-howitzers, but with the head designed to fragment.”
“So like a scattergun effect, but with nuclear-powered lumps of plasma,” Day said. “They won’t have the same kinetic energy as one of our current howitzer torpedoes.”
“Sure, but that doesn’t matter, does it? We’re aiming to disable as many surface elements as possible here, and a wider spread means more chances of kinetic impacts. I think that might be more worthwhile in the end.”
Day nodded along. She supposed that Twilight would be more invested in anything that could disable a ship’s ability to see and sense its surroundings. “And these missiles? Stealth as well?”
“Nah. Don’t see the point. They’re just a basic human design. Lots of acceleration with a chemical warhead and some super rudimentary guidance.” She grinned. “The idea here is that our little sneaky fish here will cold-launch its three torpedoes once they’re within range. Then once it’s further out, the torpedoes launch on target.”
“Okay, I’m following so far,” Day said.
“Then, once the EMP goes off, this little guy, who should be closer to the enemy by then, launches all of its missiles. If you time it right, they should enter the average Accord ship’s point-defence range after the other torpedoes have gone off and showered the ship with hot lead.”
“And the missiles will be targeted on weak points?”
She shrugged. “I’d be happy if they just hit.”
Day chuckled. “Alright,” she said.
Twilight jumped off the seat. “We'll build them?”
“We’ll build a few, at least. These don’t take up much material.”
“Oh, nice!” Twilight said. “I have plans on how to deploy these. Trust me. Give me about fifty of these suckers and I’ll have the Accord so paranoid of the dark that they’ll want to turn tail and run back to whatever hell they came from right away!”
***