Thesska didn’t need to order his people to fire; they knew their jobs. When he glanced at the tactical display, he was surprised to see that the humans had arrived so far away. They were barely within range of lasers, but they were approaching rapidly.
“How many ships?” he demanded.
“A little over two hundred, Emperor,” the sensor operator responded.
Less than a third of his fleet size? What the hell were the humans thinking? Were they making a last stand or were—he cut that thought off as a sickening realization hit him.
“Order the fleet to jump.”
“Emperor? The humans have deployed gravity traps. If we leave now, half the ships in the fleet will be left behind.”
“NOW!” Thesska roared.
The order went out to the fleet, and those who could jump fled for hyperspace.
***
The stealth missiles, which had been on approach, quickly adjusted to the change in the enemy fleet’s formation and picked new targets. Hundreds of other standard missiles joined them as decoys as they sped toward the enemy armada.
The remaining enemy was in disarray after over half their fleet vanished into FTL, but they still fought on, knocking down the incoming missiles with the ease of practiced veterans. It wasn’t enough. Four of the twenty-four gravity bombs survived the enemy defenses. Once they reached the enemy formation, ninety percent of the remaining Shican ships were destroyed. The remaining enemy ships fought to the bitter end, but the fleet easily destroyed them.
***
“Losses?” Vitor asked after the last of the remaining enemy had been dealt with.
The scout ships left in each system along the Shican’s previous route proved their worth as they tracked the enemy armada’s return to human space after the tracking program finally stopped working. When the enemy stopped for an extended time, the fleet vessels, which were equipped with the new Nova drive, were waiting only a few systems away. They couldn’t have asked for a better chance to strike.
An attack on a technologically and numerically superior force was a risk. Then again, were the Shican technologically superior anymore? Honestly, with Alex’s efforts, the BSE fleet had pretty much hit parity with the Shican, and Char’s vessels weren’t that far behind.
The risk was deemed worth it to cut the head off the enemy armada. Likely because Char had included the new gravity bombs in her tactical decisions.
Nobody had expected the Shican to run. A fighting retreat, maybe, but running? In every single document and recording Vitor had studied of the Shican, they had never once fled during the previous Shican War. The war ended because they just stopped appearing one day.
His holo popped to life, and Char’s face greeted him. “A great victory, Admiral, but the war isn’t over yet. I have my theories as to why the Shican Grand Commander fled, but I want to hear what you think.”
The reason was pretty obvious to Vitor. “They figured out we had a new, highly devastating weapon.”
Char nodded once. “That’s what my tactician and I think as well. Vyrik believes the enemy won’t risk stopping in any nearby systems after this encounter, but they aren’t likely to give up either.”
Vitor agreed with the assessment. Unfortunately, that would make them far harder to keep track of now. He studied the Shican’s heading. It could have just been a panicked jump, but he didn’t believe so. They had been lined up, preparing to head in a very specific direction.
He projected the line farther, and it came very near a familiar system.
“I think they are heading straight for Unokane.”
Char grunted. “Their Grand Commander must have realized our weapons and advancements were coming from Kane. I truly wish we were dealing with a fool; it would have made defeating him so much easier. Does the Jarl have more of these weapons?”
Vitor didn’t want to answer that. Char might be an ally, and Unokane was part of the Union, but she had been rather quiet since learning about the devices and what they were capable of. He didn’t know if it was fear or simply a healthy dose of respect, but she had definitely become more agreeable lately.
“I assume so,” he finally replied, “but there is no way Alex will allow them to be deployed in Unokane—or any other Union populated system,” he quickly added.
After learning about the new weapons, Vitor had pressed Alexander to create a countermeasure against them. Thankfully, the man was already working on one.
“Hmm. That’s for the best,” Char replied. “It will make things more difficult. Without being able to rely on the gravity bombs, we will have to deal with the Shican’s remaining fleet using conventional weapons. And they still outnumber us.”
“Not as much as they used to,” Vitor replied absently as he looked over at the holo window showing the remains of the Shican armada.
He shuddered as he recalled watching the weapons turn large swaths of enemy ships into compressed chunks of debris. Had he blinked, he would have missed the moment it happened. One second, they were firing on the Union fleet and the incoming missiles; the next, they were dead. Each ship was crushed so quickly that the reactor plasma had no time to breach its containment and soak into the ship as it normally did during a breach. Instead, the plasma was ejected as pressurized jets, almost like a series of miniature pulsars.
The plasma lazily coiled around the battlefield now, slowly dissipating and cooling in space, bathing the area in a colorful blue and violet cloud.
Vitor couldn’t help thinking that a weapon so destructive had no right being so beautiful.
***
LOCATION: EDEN’S END
DATE: 2404
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“The Grand Commander left their fleet behind?” Alexander asked in shock.
Krieger nodded. “And they are heading in your direction. Pardon my pun, but I think it’s safe to say the cat is out of the bag on your new weapons.”
Alexander cursed internally. “The Grand Commander has to know we won’t deploy such destructive measures in our systems. He’s going to try to use that to his advantage.”
“Char and I agree, which is why we’re trying to track him to find out if Unokane is truly his destination or just a direction to throw us off. So far, the remaining Shican ships haven’t popped up again, but when they do, they will likely do so in deep space, well outside of observable range.”
Alexander mulled over the problem. With the Nova drive, the fleet could cross vast distances in less than a minute, but the closer they were to the enemy’s target, the faster they could arrive. They also needed to position the ships that hadn’t gotten the Nova drive upgrades, and to do that, they needed to know where the enemy was heading. Char would handle that, since most of the ships without the Nova drive were older Asgardian ones. The only ships Alexander had that didn’t have the drive were non-combat vessels and the few defensive ships around Eden’s End.
“Let’s redeploy the scout ships along the path. Maybe one will get lucky, and the enemy will appear within a light day or two of their position. I doubt we will get anything closer, especially if the Grand Commander is aware of the new weapons.”
“That might work,” Krieger replied, “but a cone of coverage extending away from Unokane might be a better option. I suspect the Grand Commander will not take a direct approach now that he knows we can track him.”
Alexander hadn’t considered that. It would make locating the remaining fleet more difficult and require far more ships. “I’ll need every automated ship you can spare; even then, our coverage is going to have holes in it. In the meantime, I’ll continue preparing Unokane for an attack.” He turned to Katalynn. “What about the Asgardian worlds?”
“Most people were evacuated to the better defended planets already, since those systems were along the same path they took a few months ago. The orbital defenses at the few Asgardian worlds along the route were bolstered significantly as well. If they do attack those worlds, the defenses should hold them off until the fleet arrives. That being said, there is nothing on those worlds that can’t be replaced. I have already ordered any available ships to reposition to cover the more populated planets within Union territory. Unfortunately, I cannot spare any of those vessels to help defend Unokane. Your system is important, but I can’t risk deploying forces there without knowing where the enemy is planning to strike. Besides, you have more robust defenses than most of the Union worlds.”
“I get it,” Alexander replied.
As much as he would like to have every ship defending Eden’s End, that just wasn’t feasible. He wasn’t going to give up, however. If the Shican did attack Unokane, which seemed likely given their fixation on the Collective and Alexander’s contribution to the war effort, he had options.
The first was producing more EFEC Swordfish, which was already happening. He estimated a dozen would be ready to go before the enemy showed up. That should help even the odds against the Shican battleships and shielded destroyers.
Second on that list was deploying more orbital defenses. The space around Eden’s End was becoming crowded with so many weapon systems, but it was a small price to pay to keep the enemy occupied.
The third problem he needed to tackle was outfitting the entire surface facility with energized armor. The thick layer of concrete over the facility was good for absorbing small kinetic events, but it wasn’t designed to absorb heat from lasers and plasma bolts. Alexander would need to correct that.
All three of those projects were important to their survival, but the last one was the most critical. With a thick layer of energized armor, the facility should survive anything the Shican could throw at it from orbit short of a direct nuclear strike. Considering the enemy hadn’t used a single nuclear weapon in their last planetary strike, they could be out. If not, he had to trust that the orbital defenses and anti-missile countermeasures he was planning to add would be able to deal with that last issue.
After a brief discussion about the fleet’s planned repositioning, Alexander excused himself from the meeting to prepare.
“Theo, can you gather Lucas and Yi Na for a meeting? I need to speak with Rush and the others.”
Theo nodded and sent off a quick text before hurrying off. If the meeting wasn’t so time sensitive, the text would have been enough, but Alexander knew both men were usually very busy and didn’t always check their comms, if they even wore them.
Alexander entered his workshop a few minutes later. The space had changed in the last few months.
The old manufacturing robots, which he used on occasion, had been removed and replaced by small storage tanks and vats of an unknown liquid with a sickly yellow hue. He stopped and stared at the tanks.
“Uh, what are those?”
“Bio-generators,” Four replied as she walked up to him.
“Bio-generators? Like massive Petri dishes?”
“Essentially. The yellow hue is the growth medium for the organisms we are growing for the organic construction method.”
“I don’t recall my former self ever using such a method, nor did I see anything resembling this back on your planet.”
“You didn’t, because you used an open growth method. We continued to use that method because we had no reason to contain the modified organisms. They couldn’t harm us, but they very well could harm humans. This method is safer and far more efficient.”
“Harm them how?” Alexander asked pointedly.
Four shrugged. “I couldn’t say. It would take decades of study to verify if the altered organisms posed any threat at all, but we figured you would prefer to avoid such complications even if there were no risk.”
“Uh…Thank you.”
Four nodded. “Was there something you needed from us? One and Thirteen are currently out, but I can fetch them if required. Technically, so could you if you practiced with your connection.”
Alexander rolled his eyes. It wasn’t the first time he got a lecture from Four about not practicing the innate abilities of his body. He was a busy man, and he was still adapting to being mostly human again.
“The Shican are probably coming to Unokane. We have a couple of months to prepare, and I was hoping you three could assist with efforts to incorporate the energized armor into the outer coating around the facility.”
Four paused for a moment, and Alexander knew she was doing some calculation. Then she shook her head. “It’s not possible with the time you have.”
“Are you sure?”
She gave him a pointed look. “Incorporating the carbon nano-tube power cabling to allow the field to propagate into the concrete would take years. To install it properly, you would be better off removing the concrete before laying down the new cabling, then adding new concrete on top. Even that would take over a year to accomplish with every worker and asset at your disposal.
“Right…Are there any other options?” Alexander asked.
“Of course. You could simply cover the concrete in a mesh blanket made from the same cabling. Once that’s done, add a few inches of concrete to cover it up. It won’t be as robust as what you had planned, but it will hold up far better than normal concrete.”
“What happens with the heat, or when the outer layer eventually cracks?”
“I assume you are more concerned with the Shican’s energy weapons?”
Alexander nodded.
“We can do two things to account for that,” Four said as she walked over to one of the tanks and tapped lightly on the clear material. Alexander was pretty sure it was the same transparent aluminum that made up the central dome.
“We modify the concrete to make it thermally resistant. That’s an easy enough process, but it will diminish the overall strength of the mix, which isn’t all that concerning since you are already reinforcing it with the defensive field. The other thing we can introduce is a self-healing quality through a modified organism, such as what we are growing in here for testing. We would need to make a few tweaks to the organisms, but self-repair is much easier to program than building an entire ship. You will need to section your energized armor so that parts can be turned off temporarily to allow for repairs, or the organisms will be unable to function until the molecular lock goes away, but it is possible.”
“Seems like a lot of extra work. How well will this improve the concrete, and how long will it take to implement?”
“It is a lot of work,” Four agreed, “but I wouldn’t have mentioned it if it couldn’t be completed in time or didn’t offer a significant boost to the concrete’s durability. The organisms should nearly double the overall durability of the mix, but they are only good for a single use. Once a section is fixed, that’s it; it can’t be fixed again.”
“Okay. Can you ask Rush and Serina to join us in the conference room? We need to discuss this with Lucas and Yi Na.”
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