"Michael 2, give me a nudge on that lateral thruster," Captain Paulo Velasquez said quietly, splitting his attention between his partner and the rest of his crew. The thrust moved the armor up against the bulk of the fort with a soundless stateliness until the targeting dot lined up perfectly in his sight. Since he wasn't standing on the hull of Fort Los Dios, he wouldn't have felt the shock wave when the two pieces lined up.
He'd been a yard dog at Bellerophon and never expected to be doing major repairs and refurbishments in deep space. He reached out one hand and the titanic waldo slaved to it, mimicked his motion. His powered work suit was a very large suit or a very small ship, called an "arc-angel" for some reason. His waldo closed on the armor of the fortress and steadied it in place.
"Roger, Michael 2 copies."
It was very strange to be working outside the safety of dock webbing, where anything dropped would be safely caught before it could head out on a trajectory all its own. Out here around the warp point it would eventually to fall into it, whether it was a tool or a person. He kept his mind on the job at hand rather than think about it. He also had to make sure his crews didn't think about it either.
He tabbed through the four main channels, hearing the soothing buzz of construction chatter, even while he applied the Rosy to the armor in front of him. He'd taken an interest in ancient forming techniques once and was still fascinated by the archaic art of welding, but it had nothing to do with modern techniques.
"Rafe 16, get your ass out of the way."
"Roger that. Up yours, Raphael 8."
That kind of sound was typical. It sounded like everyone, working tired, working frantically to put Admiral Krishmahnta's plans in motion, had adjusted well to working out here. There. That was done.
Time to get the crews in, let the flyboys play with their new kludged-up remote-control toys. "Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, Uriel. On the mark. Finish up and get inside, gentlemen." It was a monstrous mess, but it would work.
"Copy. Uriel all present, coming in."
"Gabriel, copy."
"Raphael, copy."
Against the velvet darkness the fort's armor was the only reflective surface under the work lights, the clusters of lights that twinkled starlike were his people moving inside to the relative safety of the ships they'd been assigned to. In the flight from Bellerophon the work shuttles, designed to hold racks of arc-angels, had fit neatly into the capitol ships' pinnace slots and they'd managed to get the work crews out before the aliens moved in.
He caught the double click from Abijit, rounding up Section Michael's lambs. "Good work, people. Let's not keep our ride waiting."
The duty cabin had the slightly tense, stale air of a room too often occupied by nervous, sweating humans. Krishmahnta had the lights lowered, rubbing tired eyes. She put down her cup in the clutter on her desk with a slight mental apology to her aide who would have to clean up, and turned to the captain of the Gallipoli.
Yoshi Watanabe looked just as tired as she felt, his lips pursed thoughtfully as he paged through the images they'd cobbled together. Flicker. Flicker. Flicker. He paged through the whole thing before stopping page one.
"We've based all this strategy on this assumption, Erica. I'm nervous about that." She leaned forward and indicated the recording of alien forces coming through the warp point, and tapped to bring up the battle report from Vice Admiral Miharu Yoshikuni at Andromeda.
"Run comparative," she said quietly, and the machine obligingly ran the tank images from both the assault through BR-01 and Pegasus. As the two battles silently ran through their courses she let the images speak for themselves but turned to him once they stopped again. "You and I spotted it together. Each of the two alien commanders have a distinctly different style. The one is far more profligate with its people and equipment than the other. You see Commander Yoshikuni is facing the more dangerous opponent because it is more careful of its resources." She absolutely refused to refer to the alien commanders as either he or she. "At the risk of assigning anthropomorphic tendencies to aliens, I think we can sucker the one we are facing."
"And with this plan, fewer of our people get killed doing it." His smile was sharp edged. "I see it. I was trying to be devil's advocate for you."
The attention chime sounded before the admiral's aide, Liam, spoke. "Admiral, Captain Watanabe, the work crews are reporting in."
"Thank you, Liam. Aren't you a bit over your watch?" Even over the voice channel she could hear the young man blush when he responded.
"Just going off, sir. Kausalya is coming on." Erica smiled. Liam Howitt was very inclined to overdo to see that she was looked after.
"Thank you, Liam."
"Sir."
She turned back to Yoshi. "And that gives us the first part of our trap." She spread her hand through the display and made a fist. "I'm willing to accept the loss of responsiveness to save our people."
The warp forts at Jason-Castor had now all been linked into the datanets of Gallipoli, Passhendale, and Temuchin and were entirely unmanned. They had also been loaded with the largest damned antimatter warheads that anyone had ever devised.
"And if this commander is still the one that doesn't mind interpenetration losses we should be able to keep them bottled up on the warp point."
"That's the idea. Then there's your brainchild." With a snap she wiped away the tank images before calling up Spiderweb, and Yoshi's cutting smile took on a molecular edge.
"If it works," he said. Spiderweb was within fifteen degrees of the ecliptic as though it was a warp point or some other important area in space. Which it wasn't. But the aliens couldn't know that. "Once they deal with the warp point, I'm betting that the alien commander is as much of a glory hound as it seems to be and will follow us here."
"Howling for blood, of course."
"It'll get plenty of that."
When the alien assault on Charlotte came, Vice Admiral Yoshikuni was almost prepared for it. The alarm sounded as she put her fork down. "Here we go," she said to the rest of the table who were getting up with her.
"Aye, Sir."
When she sat down in her command chair two minutes later, clipping her helmet into its brackets, the main tank already showed a split image. Both Andromeda and Demeter warp points were breached. That meant both Commanders Way Lem and Armand Dupres-Pacey had their hands full. "All right, Armand, Way. You've got them bottled up so far. Let's keep them that way."
"Yes, Commander."
With the drone from the vice admiral, Yoshikuni had an idea what tactics she'd face, and sat with a face of iron as the red icons gradually swelled out from the warp points until, despite the defenders, broke open like boils bursting. She ignored the flashing codes signifying damage and refused to see the Omega codes in amongst them.
"Commander! Some of those ships have the Desai drive!"
"How many? Numbers?" She leaned forward, fingers tapping against the arm of the command chair. Her face was calm but she could feel and smell her own nervous sweat wafting up the neck of her suit as her body fought the scrubbers built into the smart fabric.
"Only four, five now, Sir . . . Numbers are going up. It looks like eleven, Sir. Positive identification on eleven alien ships."
"Target them." She could see that Lem was going to have the worst of the mess on his hands. The aliens had sent the bulk of their faster ships through Polo and Demeter.
It was only the unified actions of the defenders that made the defense possible, with ships coordinating their fire and their actions. They stood off as best they could and smothered the aliens with missile fire, but they didn't have infinite ammunition. Kirin, Commander Lem's ship, vanished in an expanding bubble of energy. Omega code for everyone aboard. More ships dying. More people dying trying to hold against two fronts. Vice Admiral Yoshikuni drew a deep breath and spoke over the command channel.
"All ships fall back to Beaumont."
"Acknowledge, Admiral."
It was always a bitter thing to be forced to retreat but she had to back off again, for now. Her task force was a shambles and she hoped that Vice Admiral Krishmahnta had a better reception for these bastards.
Her wounded ships staggered away from the oncoming enemy, able to outrun all but a handful and those ships did not pursue.
Vice Admiral Krishmahnta was on deck when it came. The alien transits were simultaneous and the alien commander lost half a dozen ships interpenetrating the space where they emerged. The rest advanced into a hail of missiles from the forts. She smiled as the savage firefight erupted into space, light and radiation sheeting out in waves as the alien SDs pounded at the forts. She hadn't lost anyone yet, not one.
"Captain Watanabe, have you ever heard of a Marshal Zhukov?"
He turned and looked at her, wondering why she'd bring this up, now. "No, Commander."
"Ah. Well, there is something about this alien commander that reminded me. He had a 'thing' about how many losses were acceptable. But then he had enormous amounts of cannon fodder available." She shook her head. "Not important."
"Fort Zulu's just gone off-line, sir. It's dropped out of the net." Almost the moment the words were out of the comm officer's mouth the fort in question visibly moved in space from the impact of alien missiles. It was even visible in the tank and, for a moment, withstood the pounding before it vanished in a Hell-bubble of light.
On the Montuhoteph, Admiral Lankha's selnarm was enough to catch up every one of her command crew in a harmony full of emotional halftones, shrilling wild through everyone in the ship and beyond, an emotional wave roaring through and submerging anything else. (Glorious victory.) (Defensive rage.) (Love of battle.) The deaths were felt, but absorbed into the defensive rage. Everyone could see on the screen that the defending forts were firing more raggedly, somewhat less tightly coordinated than any they'd faced before. The Montuhoteph had come through on the second wave and Lankha felt she rode her ship as it shuddered, shaking off a near miss.
"Sir, they are holding our ships at the warp point."
The admiral dismissed the report, curling into a gleeful knot in her command niche. "Not for long. We're driving them ahead of us and they're tired. It's not as though they are truly thinking creatures. (Righteous fanaticism.) Bring up the reserve."
"This time I want you to bring every ship you have," Krishmahnta said softly to the red codes glowing so malevolently in the heart of the tank. She'd only lost hundreds of her people, not thousands, and she was almost ready to close the jaws of the trap. It wouldn't matter so much if equipment were destroyed, once Samantha Mackintosh got some industrial capacity running at Tilghman.
It was hard to wait and watch the aliens hammer at the unmanned forts, waiting for them to bring up more of what ships they had. They had to be running out of people, out of ships, out of will to continue. They couldn't have had more than thirty million on those Behemoths to begin with. How could they just fling their own into the furnace like this?
"Vice Admiral." At that scale, the tank couldn't show individual ship icons and the center of the area was a solid core of red. The tank blinked and adjusted its internal contrast to bring the ships clear again. The actinic light from the tank glanced off Captain Watanabe's face giving him a surreal look. "I believe that could be the best we'll get."
Krishmahnta nodded. "Tell the last of the hotshots to break off, Yoshi. I don't want them to get their tails in the vice when we snap it shut. No use saving all those lives and having the idi—ah, eager . . . pilots waste it."
That startled a smile out of him as he passed the word and the SMTs controlling the forts and providing bait moved back smartly. The anticipation was thick, even though no one smiled openly. They had all bled at these aliens' hands and it was time for getting some of their own back. Erica flipped the cover off a small button on the arm of her chair, put her finger on it and pushed down, gently.
Since they were almost five light-minutes from the warp point they waited, watching the SMTs continue their flight toward them. Time for the signal to travel in space. Time for the image to return. In human perception on the battlefield, a long, long time to gaze into the past.
The forts had been loaded with enormous antimatter warheads and the computers onboard had no quibbles about self-destruction. When the code came, every single fort surrounding the warp point and the alien invaders vanished in an explosion big enough to rival the destruction of a pinhole drive; a twisting glare that sent a pulse into the warp point itself. Radiation sheeted through space and time and dozens of the alien ships didn't merely explode, they sublimated, translating from matter straight to energy.
Those further out from point zero reeled in space, crippled, hulls damaged or outright holed from the force of debris driven at almost light speed. Then came those "dead in the water" with their drive busses melted, leaving them unable to maneuver.
A spontaneous cheer started up from the ensigns on the command deck of the Gallipoli. They hesitated and realized a ferocious "Yes!" still hissed around the deck from the admiral who watched the Omega icons wash over the enemy icons in the tank, fist clenched on the arm of her chair, eyes alight.
The Montuhoteph's gravity compensators hiccupped, flipped off before coming back at three-quarters their former strength sending everything that hadn't been secured raining down onto the decks.
Admiral Lankha clutched the edges of her command niche, her claws dug into the edges, holding her in place, staring at the screen as damage and injury reports began pouring in. (Pain. Minor injuries. Deaths. Humiliation.) Her command. Her beautiful command, that would overwhelm the griarfeksh with numbers, was decimated. She blinked her eyes closed for a second, reaching to seize the confusion of selnarm. (Reassurance. Calm. Will to fight. Rage. Humiliation.) It served to stabilize the embarrassment and disorder in her ship, spreading out to the others that had escaped that hellish trap.
"Admiral Lankha," her surviving third officer, Teti, spoke up, already showed a bruise rising dark against the pale gold on the side of his head. Medics had just bagged Uatchet where he'd been flung when the gravity had fluxed. "We're down to 50 percent strength." (Numb.)
"Illudor's claws and tentacles." (Humiliation.) All three of her eyes locked on the cluster of griarfeksh ships, running, still running. "We will repay this at'holodahk! They will regret trying to shame the people. Get us underway, Teti. Lesser claws, new orders. Pull into wedge wall. We go in pursuit. Many heroes will be reborn this day."
"And now we find out if we've pissed them off enough," Yoshi said, watching the alien ships sort themselves out. Krishmahnta laughed, shortly.
"Oh, I think so." She turned in her chair slightly. "Now comes your half of this little charade, Paulo. Are you ready to throw rocks?"
Captain Velasquez nodded from where he was sitting, at a board so hastily put together the joke was no one was to breathe on it. "Spiderweb's ready, Admiral."
"Good. Now drop our speed a bit, Yoshi. We want to present a suitably crippled duck profile."
"Acknowledged." He looked over at her. "A crippled duck?"
"Earth waterfowl."
"One crippled duck coming up, just fast enough to not let them catch us."
Ahead of them in space, ranged around a mythical warp point was a minefield seeded with missiles and the nasty surprise Velasquez had modified from the asteroid minefields.
The ecliptic of any star is often full of small space junk at fairly regular intervals, small nickel/iron dirtballs ranging from a cubic meter or so up to planetoids. Mining was about getting the raw ore to the refining ships as cheaply as possible and small reactionless motors designed to move these small chunks of rock around were cheap and had been regularly used since the Bug War. Set the refining ship in the right orbit, send out the robotic motors programmed to latch onto the asteroids and bring them back.
Velasquez had thrown his idea out, not thinking it could be used at all against modern warships, but the admiral had seized on it. The motors were all out there, with all their governors removed. Each one locked in place, cuddled up to an inert partner, no piece bigger than a hundred tons or so.
They had pursued and closed with the griarfeksh. Admiral Lankha could almost taste the victory she would snatch out of the shameful defeat they had handed her. She leaned forward as if she could somehow urge her ships along with the motion, an odd enough action that she could feel the nervousness swelling in her junior officers.
"We have them. (Confidence.) We are both converging on that warp point where they are running." (Revenge.) She let the selnarm flow as she spoke to whip up their matsokah. "We will crush—"
"Admiral! Hapshet is reporting—is gone, Sir!" (Shock.)
"Mines! Ware, mines!" (Fear. Fear.)
All around point sources sprang to life and her ships found the minefield the hard way, as first Hapshet, then Anknefhotep, Pertetis, and Nunefankh found mines.
"Incoming! Missiles at zero one, zero three, zero five . . . all around, sir!" (Concentration.)
And that was when Paulo Velasquez triggered his mining tools. The rocks, without shielding, cheap and plentiful, with the crudest of guidance, leapt from motionless to five hundred meters per second.
The iron in the asteroids melted almost instantly, from compression alone, and the shooting-star trails of ionized particles drew together, clearly visible, a silvery network whose endpoints all converged inside alien ships.
At that speed, at that distance, no countermissile defense was possible if one could even lock onto something as crude as a rock. Arduan ships blew up at the center of each of the spiderwebs of glowing iron. In the first thirty seconds three quarters of the remaining ships where scrap, or fast expanding radiation including Montuhoteph.
The last remnants of the force Admiral Lankha had led into Raiden tottered out of the second ambush and retreated. Of the ships that attempted transit back through the warp, under Junior Commander Osirii, only one in three made it, for the point itself was disturbed.