u/Chorval

<First> <Prev> <Next> <Last>

McBride sat in a chair in a large lecture hall. Notionally this was Dagger’s after action report, but functionally it was set up like a courtmartial. McBride sat on the right, with Admiral Mitchell. On the left leading the ‘debriefing’ was Captain Price. In front was a Fleet Admiral, standing in as a Judge Advocate, and a board of 4 Captains and a Rear Admiral. In a courtmartial the judge would rule on matters of procedure, and the board would rule on matters of guilt or innocence. For a debrief, they were just supposed to ask questions. But as the discussion had proceeded it became clear it was a courtmartial in all but name.

The court had already reviewed the logs, and it had come to summary statements. There would then be deliberations, any extra information needed, then a ruling.

Captain Price stood and began his summation.

“The staggering cost of Commander McBride’s actions should stand enough to move to judgements. In addition to sending UCS Dagger to the shipyards for a full overhaul and refit, he risked UCAS Aegis, and caused the destruction of 4 of her tenders. 

This is a direct cost to the Fleet of 57 million credits. 

The civilian cost of Commander McBride’s actions is truly breath-taking, with destruction of 358 ships, damage to 153 more. Waste of mined ores, and the forced destruction of 15 mining stations, and 5 transit stations, with damage to 23 further stations. 103 mining tugs destroyed, along with 230 mining robots, ore reserves from 50 asteroids lost. This adds up to well over 73 billion credits.

Beyond those costs we also have the cruise ship Empress of the Stars, and hauler Caliban destroyed in the evacuation. The Empress of the Stars is worth in excess of 500 million credits, whilst hauler Caliban is insured for 23 million credits, the cargo lost was insured in excess of 250 million credits, Finally Commander McBride’s orders prevented the evacuation of another 200 million credits of cargo on hauler Calista. 

This brings the cost of Commander McBride’s negligence in Taurus ringing in at 74.73 BILLION credits of Fleet liability”

Captain Price glanced into the audience behind him. As it was a closed session, most were Fleet personnel, silent and angry. But surrounded by bodyguards, Governor Bailey sat with a huge grin. He nodded back to Captain Price. The Captain pressed on.

“In addition to this financial cost, we have illegal creation of 654 Class-1 AI citizens, most of which Commander McBride immediately put in mortal peril.

Gross negligence in failing to warn the Fleet of the impending Hive attack.

Cowardice in the face of the enemy, but sitting behind the 3rd Fleet as they engaged the Hive invaders.

Gross Misconduct, in the direction of the civilian evacuation.

Gross Insubordination, in ignoring legal directives from the civilian government.

Misappropriation of civilian assets, as outlined in my summary of the costs

And finally, exceeding the scope of his orders, he should have ordered Dagger, Aegis and Monarch of the Sky to jump out from Taurus, just after the Fleet did.

The fruits of all of this, the destruction of two Hive Dreadnoughts can be characterised as a mix of staggering waste of resources and dumb luck.

I’m aware that the pure facts of this situation mean we can’t demote or otherwise publicly punish Commander McBride, due to the public perception. My recommendation is that he be detached from his crew and sent on a morale tour of the Commonwealth, until his celebrity dies down, and then be given a command in a remote post where he can do no more harm”

There were quiet murmurings from the audience. The Fleet personnel listening had other views, but the Judge Advocate stayed solemn and the board members took notes, and exchanged a few quiet questions.

After a few moments, the Judge Advocate invited Admiral Mitchell to give her closing summary.

Admiral Mitchell stood.

“As Commander McBride’s commanding officer, I'm in a position to refute several of Captain Price’s assertions outright.

Commander McBride’s creation of 654 Class-1 AI citizens, was authorised as an emergency measure, under military intervention.  Every AI created is classed as Fleet personnel, and during the battle all but three AIs were successfully backed up to UCAS Aegis.  The whole system was in mortal peril, but the Fleet’s AI crew accelerated the civilian evacuation, and contributed immensely to the destruction of the two Hive Dreadnoughts.

In the charge of gross negligence in failing to warn the Fleet of the impending Hive attack. Dagger’s logs show Commander McBride discovered the Hive attack at 0442, and had reported it directly to me via Fleet privileged Omega priority call 2 minutes later at 0444. 

I would observe that 2 minutes to confirm your data and check alternatives before waking an Admiral in the early hours of the morning, can hardly be called any sort of delay.

In the charge of cowardice in the face of the enemy, by sitting behind the 3rd Fleet as we engaged the Hive invaders. This was my direct order, I needed someone steady to oversee the civilian evacuation. This charge can be removed from the list entirely, it’s provably false.

In the charge of gross misconduct, in the direction of the civilian evacuation. I think there are two relevant features. 

First the Caliban-Empress collision occurred after McBride had explicitly ordered hauler Caliban to resume evacuation operations. Hauler Caliban jumped away in contravention of safe gravity warp jump protocol, against orders.

If the court will accept a single observation, there were two comms calls placed to hauler Caliban after Commander McBride’s orders. The final one, terminating just 15 seconds before the collision, both were from Governor Bailey’s yacht”

The audience reaction was muted, but clear. The whispered conversations from the Fleet personnel combined to almost drown out the Admiral’s final words. Governor Bailey glared at the Admiral, then McBride, and finally Captain Price.

Captain Price spoke “Objection, the Governor is not on trial. This is clear speculation”

Admiral Mitchell smiled as she responded deliberately “Judge Advocate. This is an after action debrief, not a courtmartial. There is no protocol for an objection. Furthermore, the statement of comms from Governor Bailey’s yacht is a simple fact, and given its timing, entirely relevant. I request my statement, in full, remains in the record. If I can continue my summation?”

The Judge Advocate spoke "Silence in court” She banged her gavel on the table for emphasis a couple of times, and the court settled down.

Admiral Mitchell resumed addressing the Judge Advocate and the board “The final charge to refute is of gross insubordination, in ignoring legal directives from the civilian government. This again has no merit. The situation was clearly a military one, an emergency where the primacy of civilian authority is suspended. This should be enough to settle this charge, but I'd like to draw attention to two further items.

First, there was a measurable increase in the speed and effectiveness of the evacuation after Fleet authority is exercised. Many civilians owe their lives to Commander McBride due to that speed and focus on people over cargo. I can’t proffer a number, as that would be true speculation.

Second, when we examine Commander McBride’s interactions with the civilian authorities. We must disregard about 60% of the communications, as they are just insults and threats, with no bearing on a legal basis for an order. Additionally the bulk of the actual orders were just focussing on illegal orders to prioritise cargo movements and release vessels that had not taken on any civilians at all. All of these calls came directly from Governor Bailey, and all are available in full in the UCS Dagger’s logs. Two calls were placed with an Omega priority, that is restricted to Fleet personnel and as such a restricted channel. I suggest an investigation to determine how Governor Bailey had access to a clear Fleet secret.

There is a final matter, somewhat outside Commander McBride’s actions, but within the purview of an after action report for the events in Taurus 4.

The cargo manifests of hauler Caliban, and freighter Calista showed the whole cargo as emergency supplies. 

During the actively encouraged undocking of freighter Calista, the cargo was determined to be in high security containers, and the contents of the 3 containers opened were luxury goods, see schedule 12 for the list of items, including a sports car. A full inspection of the cargo offloaded to the cruise ship Monarch of the Sky, also confirms high security containers, all marked emergency supplies, and all containing luxury goods.”

Seeing Captain Price stand again, Admiral Mitchell raised her voice slightly “These are verifiable facts, entered to the record. Hauler Caliban has been impounded, in the Wolf system en-route to Earth. There are 2 further vessels that left early and carried cargo marked as emergency supplies, that we suggest are also impounded. 

Speculation on the cargo of those vessels is not warranted at this time. But what is on the record is that each vessel is owned and operated by Tempest shipping, a company that Governor Bailey has a controlling interest in. The vessels all originated in facilities at Taurus 4 that Governor Bailey also owns, and the comms logs show all received calls directly from the Governor’s yacht several times, until they jumped out of Taurus, all without evacuating a single additional person. Additionally aboard freighter Calista were 12 employees of Governor Bailey, including his head of security.

We also have 5 vessels that were overridden by AI control protocols, that did participate in the evacuation, and the Fleet has impounded, but are still involved in evacuation duties so their cargo has not yet been scrutinised. They are also owned and operated by Tempest shipping.

Captain Price has listed out the cost of Commander McBride’s actions and gave some alarming numbers, let me pluck out 2 figures. Hauler Caliban’s cargo of emergency supplies is valued at 250 million credits, and freighter Calista’s cargo was listed as 200 million credits. These are figures entered into liability claims directly to the Fleet, and also claimed in insurance claims made separately. The insurance claims will be settled in civil courts, but the claims of 450 million credits for emergency supplies, is a direct fraud…” 

On the words 'direct fraud’ the audience erupted most standing and talking, yelling. Governor Bailey’s bodyguards stood to shield the Governor, and started to move to the exit.

Admiral Mitchell raised her voice rising to almost a shout to be heard over the crowd “...perpetrated by Governor Bailey on the Fleet itself”

To get back control the Judge Advocate ended up ordering the lecture hall cleared of all personnel, leaving only the court recorder, Captain Price, the board, Admiral Mitchell, Commander McBride, and the Judge Advocate herself.

The Judge Advocate spoke, addressing Admiral Mitchell “Ellen, do you have anything further to add to the report?”

“Yes, your honour. Since Captain Price has cited misappropriation of civilian assets, I’d like to summarise the value that Commander McBride has created against the 74 billion credit cost quoted”

The Judge Advocate nodded, and Admiral Mitchell continued “The simple value is that Commander McBride has completed the evacuation of Taurus, including saving all the people trapped alive on the crippled Empress of the Stars. 

He saved the UCS Dagger, with all crew alive.

He completed his assigned orders to test the advanced sensors, protecting UCS Cloak and UCAS Aegis, and all data.

And, finally, he has directly caused the destruction of 2 Hive Dreadnoughts. This has a staggering material impact on the Hive’s expansion into Commonwealth space. It’s also something the 3rd Fleet didn’t manage in Taurus, and 5 other Fleets didn’t manage across the frontier.

It gives us breathing room, as it will certainly slow or even halt the Hive’s progress.

The scans UCS Dagger completed on the Dreadnought, and several other classes of Hive vessels are also invaluable. This data will undoubtedly assist the war effort considerably.

Finally, Commander McBride is a symbol, and a proof point that the Hive is not unbeatable.

The cost of 74 billion is one side, the value of the assets saved from destruction in Taurus is ten times higher, the time for the Fleet to prepare for the Hive is ten times higher, the hope that Commander McBride has given the Commonwealth is ten times higher.

It’s my recommendation that Commander McBride be recommended for a Distinguished Service Order, and promoted to Captain”

*****

With summations over Captain Price headed to the exit, followed by Admiral Mitchell and McBride. At the exit crowding around were Liv, Boomer, Belle and Liam. Chief Tara was with Dagger overseeing an extensive refit, she didn’t trust the shipyard to catch all the structural damage. Dr Wallace and Coop were over with the Fleet research teams.

“Well, what did they say?” asked Liam Mitchell.

“They are deliberating. I’ve recommended a promotion and the DSO” answered his mother, she continued turning to McBride “You’ve embarrassed the Fleet, and several Admirals personally. You proved them to be lacking by doing what they could not. Every captain and admiral that retreated in the face of the Hive is now in doubt, and worse you’ve knocked their self image. 

You may get everything I recommended, they need to publicly reward your victory. 

You’ve turned the tide of this war, but you’ve made some new enemies, including several Admirals and Governor Bailey. 

Watch your back McBride, but don’t forget you have friends too. I owe you one”

McBride turned to his crew “Liv, Boomer, Belle,...” He paused and looked directly at Midshipman Liam Mitchell, and smiled “Dash, let's get out of here”

<First> <Prev> <Next> <Last>

Mitchell gawped at McBride. Chief Lakshmi answered over comms “We can extend the gravity effect about 350m from the hull within safe parameters, over 500m if we don’t need to make another jump. We can push the engine to 135% for the jump itself and that may extend the effect further. Difficult to predict”

McBride immediately decided, they needed to give Lima all the extra time they could. “Programme Dagger to jump when we get 1300m into the armour. Mitchell. MITCHELL!”

McBride demanded the Midshipman’s attention “Drive Dagger into the hole, as fast as you can, go, go, go”

Mitchell snapped to, and almost on subconscious instinct swung Dagger about, still dodging fire, directed the ship directly into the narrow gap their weapons fire had created.

The speed of the ship meant that from the crew’s perspective no sooner had they gone into the hole, Dagger snapped away, jumping for a very short time before all the energy systems overloaded.

In the engine room, the jump capacitors erupted in sparks, power arcing across the room. The crew in the engine room were protected in a faraday cage, set up for exactly this contingency.

On the bridge, McBride looked at the plot, the jump had taken them less than 10km from the Dreadnought, fortunately they’d taken a couple of cubic kilometres of armour with them, creating a debris field so dense that they’d blocked their signal to the sensor drones that had been feeding the tactical plot. The main screen and McBride’s tactical plot were black.

Calling Chief Lakshmi “Damage report?”

“Well, we’ll be in refit for longer than we’ve been operational if we try something like that again. The Fleet is going to take this out of my paycheck. Hull integrity is still nominal, and life support is operational. I’ve dialled the reactor down to 85%, we can’t push it again. The jump drive capacitors are fried, we’ll need to swap them out for a working set, I have partial shields and the main engine is offline until I can figure where the problems are. I have 2 crew injured, none critical. There are stress indications in Dagger’s internal frame”

McBride absorbed the information “Get working on the engine”

Belle spoke “Re-routing sensor feeds. On main screen now. Shields at 12% and holding”

On the main screen the Hive Dreadnought finally looked like it had been in a fight, its massive bulk was marred by a crater over 3km wide extending into the interior of the Dreadnought, puffs of atmosphere and minor explosions flared from inside the crater. The Dreadnought was still under power and the ruined section was rotating away from the debris, and the asteroid belt to protect the vulnerable spot from the ongoing mass driver bombardment.

“The target reactor core is still intact. No evidence of damage on sensors. I’m getting signal artefacts, disruption. I think the overload might have fried part of the control systems”

McBride snapped out “Boomer, do we still have the main cannon charging?”

Boomer checked a couple of screens, then rechecked “Yes, but reactor output is at 85% we’ve got a couple of minutes to firing”

“Throw up the countdown on screen. Liv, recommendations?” 

“We are still inside the minimum range for the Dreadnought’s main weapons, but the point defences can still damage us. They’ll be attenuated by the debris though. 50% or less effective”

“Get me a line to Aegis” McBride asked.

Dr Wallace appeared, quite pale “What did you do?”

McBride smiled at the normally calm Doctor “No time, send it, send it now”

Dr Wallace turned and gestured to someone off screen “Flight time will be instantaneous” the screen flickered to black.

The tactical plot showed a huge energy spike from Aegis at staging area Lima, McBride turned to the main screen. The Dreadnought floated, seemingly implacable. At first nothing seemed to happen. Then McBride noticed two things: 

One a faint cloud of debris rising from the top rear of the Dreadnought. 

Two, the Dreadnought was rotating to point towards the debris field they were hiding in. McBride’s first thought was that the Dreadnought would ram them. Their huge bulk making it impossible to miss. 

But as he watched an aperture started to open in the nose of the Dreadnought. With horror he realised that the Dreadnought also had a main cannon built into its spine. There just hadn’t been a threat big enough for them to use their true main weapon.

*****

No one spoke. Belle sent annotation data to the main screen, tagging the energy build up from the Dreadnought, speculations on the energy output from the Dreadnought’s main cannon, projected charging time. Each extra detail, a nail in Dagger’s coffin. Without the main engine or jump capacity they couldn’t escape.

Mitchell spoke “Sirs, it’s been an honour to serve with you all”

McBride smiled “Likewise, but it’s too soon to give up yet”

McBride called Chief Lakshmi, “Tara, we need a jump in 5 minutes or we’re dead. The Dreadnought has a main cannon like Dagger, and it’s going to use it on us. I think we made them mad”

“I can hook one of the main weapon capacitors up to the jump drive system, it’ll give us a 50 light minute jump. I can’t guarantee we’ll be able to move from that spot again though”

“Do it, right now, pull everyone you need”

The Chief responded “I can do it with the engine room crew, no one else needed” again she immediately started giving precise orders to her crew as McBride cut the comm

“Belle, get me a secure line to Aegis. Whilst I chat to Dr Wallace, you upload our full logs”

Dr Wallace looked a bit embarrassed “We missed, I…”

McBride interrupted him “No need to apologise. Under pressure you and your team did magnificently. No one could ask for more. I’m sending you our full logs. There are some items regarding the Governor that the Fleet should be aware of. See you on the other side Henry” McBride smiled, then saluted. He cut the comms call before Dr Wallace could respond.

The bridge was eerily quiet. There was nothing for most to do. Belle however was still monitoring the Dreadnought. The Dagger’s original target, the redundant reactor was now rotated out of reach from both Dagger’s weapon and the rocks flung from the asteroid belt, the mining stations continued to fire, but on the undamaged armour it was utterly ineffective.

The silence stretched out, then Liv spoke to Mitchell “If you think about it Liam you are quite lucky” she paused to let the comment sink in “However this shakes out, you’ll never need to buy yourself a drink ever again”

Mitchell thought about it and burst out laughing. Boomer joined in, then Belle. 

McBride smiled widely too. Liv had relieved some of the tension “I think we’ll all be safe from that too, me because I’ll be locked up by the Governor”

Boomer stifled his laughter enough to get out “I’m going to be a professor at the academy, one of those ones who you get butter up and get an A if you buy me a drink”

Belle added “I’m going to go to Fleet research, and dine out on all the detailed scans I’ve made of the Hive ships”

With that comment she turned back to her sensors. She seemed to be working on something.

McBride glanced at the timer on the main screen, the countdown to the Dreadnought’s main weapon being fully charged clicked down, but there was time. 

The seconds ticked down.

McBride looked at Belle furiously typing “What are you looking at Belle?”

Belle spoke as she still worked “There is an energy buildup from that redundant reactor we were targeting, but I think the main weapon is leaking distortions into subspace, I'm finding it harder to get a good scan. It’s almost like… wait” 

She pulled up the readings over time from their approach to the Dreadnought. She plotted the signal data, with all of the movement over each other. Belle spoke “The distortion is getting more intense, but the area of effect is reducing, it’s just like we observed before the Dreadnought jumped in. Another Dreadnought is coming, very soon”

The mood on the bridge swung from jovial, to chilly to downright freezing. A fresh Dreadnought would be the death of everyone in the system, Dagger first.

“Can you predict where and when it’ll appear?” 

“It’ll be right here, and pretty much right now. I’ll plot the simulated location as a reducing sphere on the main screen, when it goes to a dot, they’ll arrive. It’ll be about 15s”

On the main screen a large sphere appeared, initially engulfing the Dreadnought, but rapidly shrinking, reducing down to smaller and smaller.

McBride called the Chief “Update chief, our timescale just reduced to 20 seconds”

Lakshmi barked “I won’t have anything for a minute or two”

“ASAP Tara, when it’s ready, jump. Don't wait for confirmation. Anywhere but here”

On the main screen the sphere collapsed smaller and smaller, then a dot. There was a moment, then a second huge Dreadnought hung on the screen. It was like a before and after shot. The new Dreadnought hung there surrounded by its defence screens, immaculate and untouchable. They’d played their last card.

“Wait” Belle shouted “I’m getting an energy reading, a massive spike. I think our target reactor is unstable. The energy is building. Yes, it’s gone critical”

On the screen point defence lasers reached out and probed the debris field, the sheer volume of fire was staggering. From the side of the damaged Dreadnought there was a burst of light, whiting out the screen for a moment, then as it cleared a huge jet of fire reached out to the second Dreadnought and slammed into the hull. The crater seemed to magnify the fury of a reactor explosion forcing the raw plasma directly against the second Dreadnought, straight away the defence screen winked off, and the hull melted away, the plasma acting like a torch cutting right through the huge Hive ship.

“Shields! Boomer route the remaining main weapon energy to shields”

Toggling the intercom “All hands, brace, brace, brace”

The first Dreadnought broke into two, just as the second broke apart into many pieces and then exploded, the huge size making it seem like slow motion. A blast wave radiated out towards Dagger.

Dagger jumped. 

<First> <Prev> <Next> <Last>

McBride looked around the ward room. Liv, Belle, Boomer, Mitchell, Chief Lakshmi, and he were all crammed in. They'd been discussing the problem, it was time for focus. Cutting across Boomer and Chief Lakshmi discussing some fine point on the main cannon, McBride said “Ok, time to pull all these threads together. Trust me, I have a plan. Mitchell state the problem”

Mitchell looked up sharply, a little surprised to be called on “The Dreadnought will be in engagement range of staging area Lima in a little over an hour, Monarch needs 2 hours to clear the wreckage of Empress of the final survivors. How can Dagger delay the Hive by an hour, when the whole 3rd Fleet lasted 35 minutes.”

McBride nodded “Exactly. Now we can slow the Hive down and we can speed up Monarch. We need to do both. The Marines will remain with Monarch, we’ll get them to rescue the remaining children, then for the adults they can go a bit faster, take a little more risk. We’ll end up balancing the lives of thousands for the remaining 3 or 4. I don’t want to give that order, but the priority will be clear once we get there. Any other ideas for speeding up Monarch?”

McBride looked around the table and didn’t see anyone with ideas, “So, what are our assets for slowing down the Dreadnought? We have the mining stations, we have over 500 abandoned in-system ships. What else?”

“Mining robots, and tugs, and the asteroids they are working on” Boomer chipped in.

“Sensor data, and the Fleet data from the battle” Liv added.

“The sensor drones from the task groups” Mitchell said.

“We have Dagger. We also have Dr Wallace and Aegis” McBride completed.

“Is the 3rd Fleet really gone?” Mitchell asked. McBride replied “Yes. For the purposes of this engagement, yes”

“Belle. What does the data show, are there weak spots? They seemed to regrow the defence screens as quickly as the Fleet took them down”

The meeting discussed several detailed aspects, finally Belle summarised “We need to overload the whole system at once, doing it bit by bit allowed the regrowth we have seen so far. When we target at the screen fringes where the harmonic overlap reduces screen effectiveness the sensors show we can land single hits and destroy individual screen emitters. Over time this will lead to screen collapse”

Liv then took the chance to speak “We have seen reaction times, and main weapon capabilities. If the Hive get a solid lock on us we’ll be dead. So, we need to confuse their sensors and mask our emissions. We can use the mining robots for that”

Boomer took the thread “The sensor data suggests that we can drill about 450m of armour, so any internal target above that we can strike”

Belle shook her head “The shallowest target is a redundant reactor core, but it’s in a void with about 1500m of armour” She brought up the scan of the Dreadnought, and indicated the feature and the depth.

Chief Lakshmi said “We can fire every 2 minutes, so we’ll need to get 4 shots off and hit that exact target repeatedly” 

McBride asked “What impact will taking the reactor to 120% have, and can we use your precharged capacitors to shorten the time too?”

She already had the numbers calculated “The reactor overload will take the charge time down to 100s. I’ve made it so 2 of the 6 weapons capacitors can be hot swapped, and that takes the recharge down to 67s. We have 5 replacement capacitors, so we can speed up 2 shots to the full 67s. I’ve made modifications to the shield bank too, so we can hot swap a capacitor there too” 

Boomer kept total “For four shots that takes us down to 201s in range”

The Chief muttered “It’ll cost us 7 days in dock to restore Dagger to spec, and replace the damaged systems”

McBride asked “Does range make a big difference to the penetration, what if we’re at point blank range?”

Belle had the answer this time “We only have the one impact to the Dreadnought’s armour, we have a penetration range of 350-500m. At close range we could say 450-600m, but probably less. With one data point the confidence is low. We might need a fifth shot”

The mood around the table was chilly. McBride asked the obvious question "And how long will our shields hold?”

Liv had a view “We can’t withstand a single shot from the main weapon, under a point defence laser we’ll lose our shields in about 12-15 shots. We saw the point defence lasers can detect and engage at 2 light seconds, so we’ll be in range for the whole time we are able to attack the Dreadnought. Cover will help, but we can expect our shields to hold up for about 2 minutes. We need to find a way to reduce the effectiveness of the point defences”

Belle jumped in “The shield emitters seem to be in clusters with detectors and point defences, just by taking the shields we’ll take out about a fifth of point defence lasers, and reduce their tracking capability. We can use our torpedoes and point defences to destroy some more, and maybe direct mass driver fire to focus on creating debris and confusion”

McBride liked this, his plan was taking shape “Do any of the in-system ships have a mass similar to Dagger?”

They worked through the list, and identified 5 ships that would show up like Dagger under an initial sensor scan.

The group looked at the track the Hive Dreadnought was taking, It’d curved away from its track directly to Taurus 4, and now was headed to staging area Lima. And the only armed opponent left, Dagger.

McBride smiled, mostly for the crew, there was a lot that could take their plan and turn it on its head “We have our plan, let’s get the asteroids, and ships into position”

*****

Back on the bridge, McBride was pleased with the progress, the trap was almost set. Over 350 of the abandoned in-system ships had been able to jump to their start points. The remainder didn’t have jump capability or were too slow to get to position. They were left at the staging areas. 

The plan was to use them to draw attention at critical phases. It might work or it might not have an impact, it’d be difficult to know until an after action report dissected all of McBride’s decisions. McBride hoped they’d be able to attend in person.

McBride thought that stacking the deck in his favour would hold up as a plan, and using the stray ships for distraction didn’t use any extra time, as the AI pilots were already in place.

A call came in from Monarch, McBride answered expecting Captain Elhami, the ex-Empress Captain, or Lieutenant Torres. 

Instead it was the Governor “How dare you ignore my calls…” 

As the Governor ranted, McBride tapped a text to Lieutenant Torres “Escort the Governor to his stateroom, it’s for security. Make sure he stays there. He will participate in the after action report at Fleet HQ”

The Governor continued his rant without any need to breathe apparently, shortly he was interrupted as Lieutenant Torres arrived with her 2 marines. On screen he was replaced by a tall lean man of about 40, he looked like he should be a pirate, tanned from the sun, rakish stubble “I apologise Captain. The Governor assured me that he had important information”

McBride reassured “These things can happen, no harm done. I’ve ordered the marines to guard the Governor’s stateroom to protect him from the passengers. I hear the survivors from Empress aren’t pleased to have him aboard”

“Yes the data you’ve sent over makes for interesting reading, I’ll make sure it goes to the right people when we arrive at the evacuation point. The Governor has made his stateroom very comfortable” 

The view switched to a large well appointed room, filled with boxes, a couple were opened with an ornate marble statue showing from one, and several large paintings from the other. The Governor came into view and started yelling, still red faced. The view cut as the call ended.

Addressing no one in particular McBride observed “The Governor is safe now, surrounded by his masterpieces”

“How are the mining robots getting on?”

*****

Soon the trap was set, 14 groups of ships were spaced in the forward arc of the Dreadnought’s course, each had a large asteroid and several mining robots attached. The asteroid would provide some cover, and the robots would kick gravel and dust to make sensor locks difficult.

The actual attack would take place inside the sensor drone cloud left behind by task group Artemis, the other three drone clouds were programmed to emit comms and energy bursts to suggest other Fleet vessels arriving or hidden.

McBride had deliberately ensured the largest asteroid was in the centre, with the second largest on the edge slightly out from the natural perimeter. Both asteroids had twice as many mining robots assigned, to kick up more sensor interference. The thought was that the Hive would initially assume Dagger would be in the centre, where it would be best protected, or in the group on the edge where it could gain some advantage. 

Two each of the Dagger-a-like ships were placed with those asteroids, the remaining Dagger-a-like was holding with Dagger itself. McBride had positioned Dagger with one of the other attack groups, they’d be using Dagger’s own abilities to provide further levels of protection from the Dreadnought’s sensors.

McBride clapped his hands together “Right it’s time for the outer mining stations to start sending packages. Stand by for go /no go”

“Ship?” “Go, hull, structure, engines, power systems nominal, spare capacitors charged” the intercom crackled as Chief Lakshmi spoke.

“Shields?” “Go, fully charged, countermeasures online, point defence grid ready” Belle confirmed.

“Weapons?” “Go, cannon fully charged, torpedoes target locked” Boomer said.

“Comms?” “Comms green, Sensors green, drone link green” Belle stated.

“Helm?” “Propulsion, go. Jump, go. Thrusters, nominal” Mitchell spoke fast and a little breathless.

“XO confirm go /no go?” Liv calmly spoke “All systems confirm Go!”

McBride nodded “Commit, set the clock running. Execute the plan.

Liv turned to her station and toggled the master go command. They’d preset the initial sequence and all the automated systems triggered. To start with the mining stations started throwing 50 tonne rocks, these were strictly out of range, but they’d arrive during the engagement window, adding to the confusion and destruction. 
The asteroid belt was a broad band to the port side of the Dreadnought.

“Ok, bounce the message from all ships” From subspace, mirroring the Hive’s challenge a response rang out.

“This is UCS Dagger, McBride commanding. Am I prey or am I bait?”

*****

All around the tactical plot mining tugs flared up their engines, pushing large asteroids towards the Hive Dreadnought. The mining robots on the asteroids started to push out debris to build a cloud of metallic grit surrounding each asteroid. Extensive mining operations meant they were able to push over 50 asteroids towards the Dreadnought, 14 of the asteroids were escorted by in-system ships. They’d use the asteroids as cover, to build up speed and ram the Dreadnought independently, targeted at defence screen weaknesses. This was planned to cause damage to screen emitters, sensors and point defences, to cause a less effective response to Dagger’s attacks.

The Artemis’ sensor drone net provided near real time data, but nothing really interesting from the Dreadnought yet.

The general picture was good, shots from the close in mining stations would start to hit the Dreadnought, just before the asteroids crossed into the 2 light second range of the point defences.

McBride spoke “Right, time to show the Hive not to mess with toothless, curious monkeys. Liv, time distraction package 1 with the initial kinetic strikes”

Distraction package 1 was two things, the whole sensor drone network left behind by task group Apollo would flare up, with ten drones detonating. The rest of the drones would send data out to the stranded ships at the two nearest staging areas (Kilo, and Delta), the in-system ships there would respond, turn on their IFFs and turn to accelerate towards the Dreadnought, they’d also charge their shields and comms lasers. This would send a weak sensor trace to the Dreadnought. The idea was that the Hive would interpret the low level energy signatures as warships, with emissions control protocols in place.

“No reaction, ok next thing” McBride shifted his focus to the space surrounding Dagger, they were nestled behind their asteroid, fully protected, with the Dagger-a-like nearby. 18 other ships were in the protective shadow of the asteroid as it started to move with real purpose towards the Dreadnought. The mining robots on their asteroid were kicking up enough debris that Dagger no longer had a good picture from their own traditional sensors, and had to rely on the new sensors, and data piped in from the sensor drones. 

In practice it made little difference, as all the sensor information was combined by Dagger’s computer and made available to the tactical plot. The main screen showed an image of the Dreadnought, point defences had started to fire, and finally the first rock struck. There was a minor flare from the defence screen, but nothing else. More and more rocks struck, but the diffuse nature, and the longer range meant concentrating fire was not really possible. 

As a test, over on the edge, the first Dagger-a-like pushed itself out from behind its protective asteroid. It sat in the debris cloud and was moving slowly.

Without any build up the Dreadnought’s main weapon stabbed out and reached for the ship, it missed, but then swept in and tagged both the Dagger-a-like and a portion of the asteroid. The ship exploded. It was a small freighter, and didn’t carry military grade shields. The explosion caused a momentary void in the clouding debris, which was quickly filled with vapourised material from the asteroid, where the main weapon had struck.

Belle flinched slightly and tightened her grip on her station.

McBride turned to Liv. She said “Response time around 5 seconds. They’re a little fast. Let’s run the second decoy”

McBride confirmed “Execute”

From the centre largest asteroid another Dagger-a-like poked out, this time it used two countermeasure drones donated from Dagger’s inventory and created a dense cloud of sensor deflecting debris, the countermeasure drones split into 6 parts, each started to emit a signature, similar to the Dagger-a-like, and moved away from each other in a random track.

This time the Dreadnought’s weapon stabbed out into one of the emission drones, quickly stuttering to a second, then third. The Dagger-a-like seemed to be temporarily ignored in the countermeasure debris. 

Following the predetermined script, the Dagger-a-like accelerated to keep between the middle and edge of the expanding countermeasure debris. It created more and more emissions. There was a pause in destruction, then the main weapon fired again, this time skewering the Dagger-a-like directly. “Report”

Liv spoke "Emissions limit established, countermeasures effective. Feeding the parameters into the AI net, next orders will follow new parameters. It worked well”

Dagger was almost to target velocity, McBride gave Liv a nod “Distraction package 2, and Dagger-a-like phase 2”

The sensor drones from task group Ajax and Achilles fired up, and every remaining stranded ship started accelerating towards the Dreadnought. AI pilots chatted between each other, sending simulated Fleet coordination data, and trying to look like a threat. The handful of ships that held message buoys fired them towards the Dreadnought, simulating a torpedo launch. 

“Still no reaction from the Dreadnought”

At the same time, the second Dagger-a-like ships started their moves. All the remaining Dagger-a-likes were mining prospectors, and had heavy shielding, and mining lasers. They also had 2 countermeasure drones attached to their hulls. They fired them off, causing the 6 emission drones to fly off, evading wildly, they went to maximum acceleration. A mining prospector is seen as a slow ship, but part of that perception is that it’s almost always towing a load. Without any mass in tow the two prospectors shot away and headed directly towards the Dreadnought. They managed to keep the acceleration under the emissions limit for detection, and as the Dreadnought fired, it focussed on the evading distraction drones. It took quite a while to catch all 12 evading countermeasure drones. The Dreadnought didn’t fire the main weapon again, it seemed to realise the approaching Dagger-a-like ships were too fast to hit. But the point defences didn’t have the same problem, they lanced out making contact with the prospector ships, but the shields held up.

Belle on sensors gave running updates. They’d designated them Fake Dagger 2 and 4, but Belle dropped it to two and four. “Two, shields at 70%. Four, evaded their hit, holding at 85%. Two hit twice, shields now at 35%, approaching target, adjusting for new readings, 3.2.1”

On the main screen Fake Dagger 2 and 4 rammed directly into the Dreadnought. Fake Dagger 2 just missed the target, when the reactor detonated, the defence screen winked out, then was replaced a moment later. 

Fake Dagger 4 struck exactly at a harmonic edge, cutting straight through the screen and slamming into the hull, the reactor explosion was briefly held against the hull by the screens, expanding to incinerate several point defence lasers, a detector, and two screen emitters. The section of screens winked off, and stayed off.

“That’s more like it, yeah” Mitchell said excitedly, Boomer relaxed into his seat.

McBride looked over to him, but didn’t comment.

McBride looked again at Liv “Time to take the rest of the screens”

Liv signalled the remaining ships, behind the 14 asteroids, over 350 ships came out from cover and accelerated directly at the Dreadnought. 

The Dreadnought’s main weapon flashed out again and again, but could only destroy 20-30 ships as they closed. Belle’s hands flew across her station as she updated the targeting information as it changed.

The bridge crew watched the short “battle” in silence, almost as if any sound would trigger failure.

The main screen showed the impact, but flared to white, it cleared down to show the Dreadnought wreathed in flame, its screens flickered off, leaving the bare hull.

Relief erupted from Mitchell, Boomer and Belle. Even Liv shifted in her chair.

“Well only a kilometre or two between friends” called out McBride “Accelerate the asteroids to ramming velocity, and signal mining robot separation. Time for Fake Dagger 5’s time in the spotlight” he nodded to Liv.

In the front sector of the Dreadnought all the Asteroids shot forwards in a final push. Launching from the asteroid’s surface, the mining robots darted away. They provided further targets, and were aimed to land on the surface of the Dreadnought and start drilling down, ideally homing in on a screen emitter, detector or point defence laser site to further damage the Dreadnoughts defences.

On the main screen light flared again as the point defences and main weapon tried to engage the new targets.

McBride focussed again on the local plot, the final Dagger-a-like was moving out and fired its single countermeasure drone, it emerged from behind the asteroid and stood proud for a moment.

Toggling his intercom McBride said “Chief, take the reactor to 120%, stand by on weapons capacitors swap”

The Dreadnoughts main weapon fired and obliterated Fake Dagger 5, shearing off a huge chunk of the asteroid at the same time.

McBride seized the opportunity “Fire 2 countermeasure drones out through the debris field, on a narrow spread and programme 9 of the emission drones to evade, and 3 to fly together along the countermeasure debris path. Emissions control to max. Mitchell, ease us out the farside, keep all manoeuvres below 70% of the emissions threshold”

The Dreadnought’s main weapon stuttered through the expanding debris field, going almost wild compared to previous shots.

Suddenly the Dagger shook, and alarms fired, small sparks flew from the ceiling. The Dreadnought had hit Dagger.

A scream echoed across the small bridge.

*****

The environmental systems quickly cleared the light smoke, multiple redundant circuits routed around the fried components.

McBride barked “Mitchell, you ok?”

“Aye sir! I got sparks in my eyes, but I’m fine now”

“Boomer, check him”

“Belle, status?”

Belle’s station had remained active during the attack, but many systems had overloaded, and the Dagger was only just feeding live data back to the console now. She took in the new information and said “It looks like we caught the edge of a main weapon shot, pattern suggests random fire, not a deliberately aimed shot. Emissions dampening is still in effect”

Liv added “A follow up shot would have killed us by now, if they’d detected us”

Boomer had opened a first aid kit and was splashing some eye wash in Mitchell’s eyes, he turned to McBride “He’ll be fine, no damage. One singed eyebrow”

Mitchell turned to McBride “I stand ready Captain”

McBride glanced at the plot, it was 20 seconds or so from their rude interruption “We are coasting in, just as we planned. First manoeuvre in 50 seconds, await my mark”

Around Dagger the Dreadnought fired its main weapon repeatedly at the incoming asteroids, succeeding in vapourising more than half. The pulverised debris and surviving mining robots continued down towards the surface of the Dreadnought. The Dreadnought’s point defences were useless against the asteroids, so started to target the mining robots.

On the main screen the first asteroid arrived, slightly behind the horizon from Dagger’s position, but well in view from the task group Artemis sensors providing the picture. A huge fireball erupted, but the surface impact and explosion itself meant that there was only a 100m crater. The difficulty aiming the asteroids accurately and the low impact to the armour was a reason that the plan hadn’t included the asteroid impacts as more of a feature.

Belle nodded in satisfaction, the targeting solutions for the asteroids had been hers.

The asteroids continued to fall, some had been broken up to many smaller objects, which scoured the surface of the Dreadnought of all protrusions. Reducing the point defence capability further.

McBride ordered “Passive release on the torpedoes. What is the point defence density on the target sector?”

Boomer released the torpedoes, they’d drift out to about a kilometre, then fire up, curve out and then back into target point defences and detectors.

Belle used the new sensors ”We’ve degraded the point defences by about a third, increasing our survivability into the 3 minute range” If they needed 4 shots, they’d need to push that to 4 minutes or more.

“Boomer, use our point defences to target their point defences, we need extra time on target. Hold fire until my mark. Then fire the main cannon and start to reduce the point defences”

“Liv, where do we lose target lock from their main weapon?”

Liv double checked “We are riding into the red line, in 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. The Dreadnought’s main cannon can’t track us”

McBride quickly ordered “Boomer, Mark. Fire. Take the point defences”

Boomer’s hands flew over his console. Weapon’s Officers were seldom needed, and this was his time. 

The Dagger shuddered slightly as the main cannon fired. It was a battleship grade single cannon built into the spine of the ship. Firing caused power fluctuations in many systems including the inertial dampeners. The beam shot down and struck the target directly. The armour instantly vapourised, and shot out of the impact site like a jet of steam.

Belle called the shot “Direct hit, confirming 440m penetration, we’ll need the 4 shots”

Boomer had clustered groups of point defences to fire together, to ensure a killshot, in practice it meant that 3 of the 5 clusters he’d designated would be pointing towards the Dreadnought at any time. 

Boomer muttered to himself as he worked, mechanically calling out targets and destruction. It took 4-5 seconds of continuous fire to confirm destruction of a Dreadnought point defence laser structure. “Target set, Port cluster firing, maintaining lock, target destroyed, Fore cluster firing, belly cluster locked, target destroyed, target destroyed… target destroyed” His words becoming a little mechanical.

Belle spoke over the top “The rate of degradation is slow, we won’t reach target”

McBride toggled the comm “Get me Dr Wallace”

“Dr Wallace, how are the modifications to the shuttles coming? We’re going to need them in 3 minutes, or never. Aegis should prepare to jump, coordinate with Monarch”

Dr Wallace flashed on screen “Acknowledged, we’ll be ready”

Disconnecting the call, McBride said “Belle, shield status”

“Good news and bad news. Good news, the point defence lasers are less accurate this close in. Bad news, we didn’t recharge back to full after that hit from the main weapon”

Flicking the intercom McBride spoke to Chief Lakshmi “Use the remaining charged capacitor to boost the shields. Can we charge the released discharged capacitor without impacting our plans?”

The intercom was interspersed with mild static, but the Chief came back clear “Aye, Captain. We can not charge empty capacitors without reducing reactor output to other systems”

McBride nodded to himself, he’d known that already.

Background orders came over the intercom, as Chief Lakshmi ordered the shield capacitor swap. McBride cut the call.

A couple of seconds later Belle reported “Shields have risen to 55%, survivability estimated at less than 2 minutes”

“Mitchell, we are going to need to be more evasive. Do what you can”

Mitchell had been studying the point defence laser shot pattern, timing and reactions, he nodded and relaxed to his chair. Dagger started to dodge more abruptly, every two or three turns they touched the limits of the inertial dampeners and a shock of g-forces bled through, the erratic and sharp course changes were working.

McBride turned to Belle. She smiled, but her body language indicated uncertainty more than relief.

McBride looked to Boomer “Charge status for the next shot?”

“12 seconds, Mitchell get ready to flip Dagger on target”

On the mark Mitchell twisted the whole ship so it pointed directly at the hole they’d created with the first hit, the main cannon fired and then Mitchell accelerated off in a new vector.

On the main screen a short beam of light struck the Dreadnought.

Belle reported “Hit, confirming cumulative penetration 914m, if we can get in close we can do it with 3 shots”

Boomer waited for Chief Lakshmi’s crew to finish the final swap of the pre-charged capacitors. “57s to full charge”

McBride called to Mitchell “Make sure you can position us close when we get to the 10s countdown”

Mitchell’s erratic evasive flying continued to impact the point defences’ effectiveness, and Boomer continued to strike at the local point defences, the rate of accurate fire declined but most of the point defences left were outside effective range for Dagger’s own point defences, so they reached a point where there was little impact of further point defence work.

McBride ordered “Boomer, power down the main point defence lasers, keep the navigational lasers charged. Chief? Route the point defence power to shields we might need extra time on target”

“Aye!” sounded out from both Boomer and the Chief.

McBride kept an eye on the timer. 24s to go. Shields had trended up momentarily, but had just dipped back below 30%. The rate of decline was now lower, but still by no means comfortable.

McBride spared a glance at the main screen, showing the Dreadnought from the position of the task group Artemis sensor drones, the perspective had shifted slightly, showing more of the side and back, rather than the predominately front view that had been the starting position. The asteroid strike locations were mostly shallow craters, blackened and still misted in floating debris. The mining robots had drilled out of view, but their progress was slow, most barely 50m into the armoured shell of the Dreadnought. They would be a cause of concern, but would be unlikely to determine the rest of the battle. Rocks thrown by the various mining station massdrivers continued to rain in, but the range, and localised debris meant that no aiming was really possible.

Boomer’s voice brought McBride’s focus back to the Dagger’s situation “10s. Mitchell start positioning for our shot”

Mitchell swung Dagger about, for a second g-forces hit 2g, even with the dampening fields in place. It slacked off quickly and Mitchell dove straight at the hole they’d created with their 2 previous shots. 

Boomer quietly said “Firing” just as a point defence laser hit Dagger squarely rattling her for a moment.

Once the shot was away, Mitchell threw Dagger into evasive action. 

The rest of the bridge waited for Belle’s sensor readings.

Belle sank into her chair. “We have a partial hit, we’ve got to 1291m penetration. We hit the side of the hole when the point defences hit Dagger”

McBride fired off rapid fire questions.

“Charging time?” “94s” The advantage of pre-charges capacitors had been used up, meaning they were back to 100s full charging time.

“Shields remaining?” “18% projected 54s on station” not enough, they’d be forced to jump away before firing.

“Options” he looked to Liv, then Belle. Nothing. Looking to Boomer, McBride saw he was running calculations.

Mitchell spoke despairingly “What do we do now? We can’t win”

“We fight, but on our terms, our strengths to their weakness”

“What strengths, what weaknesses, all we can do now is run away!”

McBride marvelled, “Run away?” he said softly, to himself. There was an idea “Trust me, I’ve got a plan. Helm” he barked, shocking Mitchell out of his train of thought “What’s the largest we can push the Jump field?”

<First> <Prev> <Next> <Last>

McBride arrived on Dagger’s bridge. Liv quickly moved back to her station and McBride occupied the captain’s chair. He looked up at the main screen, it showed the Hive ships, still concentrated around the gas giant, but there was evident movement out towards a major orbital in the asteroid belt, evacuated already. 

More Hive ships moved than really needed, and McBride could see why, Taurus 4 lay behind the orbital, with the bulk of the Fleet. Somehow the Hive recognised armed ships and would more or less ignore unarmed civilian vessels until the threat of armed ships were removed. It had allowed the evacuation to proceed without enemy incident so far. 

McBride toggled quickly to the evacuation status, the view showed green across the board. All staging areas except Lima would be clear in an hour or so. Lima remained delayed.

Lima was impacted more than just the recovery operations would explain. One of the haulers from Taurus 4 was docked to a large freighter, meaning the rest of the ships had to cycle using smaller secondary airlocks, slowing the process.

McBride saw Boomer had spoken to both vessels recently “Boomer, what’s the situation with Freighter Arne and Hauler Calista? They are slowing the evacuation”

Boomer turned and answered “Calista claims to have essential supplies, they clamped onto the loading lock and have been refusing any further instructions. Arne confirms containers with emergency supplies are moving across. They have not been able to inspect the containers directly, as they are security bonded, which is strange. Usually emergency supplies are in regular containers”

McBride made a decision “Load Torres’ marines onto shuttle Feynman, and have them clear the lock. People have priority. Make sure they know to leave Calista able to manoeuvre, we might have time to load the supplies after the people are aboard”

McBride focussed on his duty, the evacuation in general, the Empress rescue operation, the Calista boarding operation, and the repositioning of the ships queuing to load people aboard Monarch. In the background Midshipman kept a running commentary of the Fleet’s attack “Task group Ajax is under fire… destroyed a Hive escort… Ajax shields holding at 95%... Dreadnought weapons hit… Task group Apollo inside engagement zone…” there was an excitement in his voice, like he was narrating a football match. 

Mitchell seemed to be hoping for a surprise 1 - 0 win for the Fleet. McBride had no doubts that it would end 0 - 5 to the Hive. But the time gained would save tens of thousands of lives. In previous attacks once armed human ships had been destroyed or routed, the Hive massacred the civilian ships too.

McBride asked “Belle, can we get a quick scan of the Calista, feed the floorplan to the marines, with the locations of the 3 crew listed, we can avoid any bloodshed”

Belle pressed a few buttons “Hive fleet initial scan complete. Dreadnought detailed scan at 100% for main systems, 76% for internal voids, I want another pass for the solid structure, it’ll take 45 mins. Initial results on Calista shows… 13 people aboard. I’ve created a floorplan and the locations of the people. I suggest another pass, just before boarding”

McBride mused “13 people, could be more difficult. Send me the floorplan too. Get back to the Dreadnought scan, but do the scan before boarding, that’s a good idea”

In the background Mitchell continued his commentary “...away… Task groups holding formation… Task group Artemis reports escort destroyed… Missiles away… Hit!... at 78%... Sensor buoy system deployment…”

McBride was only half listening as Dagger’s shuttle got nearer to Calista. Belle’s floorplan showed 2 people on the bridge, 1 in an engineering space, 8 in the living space, 1 in a cabin, and 1 in the loading airlock. A standard entry from a lateral airlock would work well. 2 marines could head to the bridge, 2 could take the engine room and the remaining marines could swing by the loading dock and bottle the remaining people in the living spaces, jamming the doors would prevent the need for violence.

Belle’s 2nd scan showed no real movement, one person had moved to the cabins, and the person from the loading airlock was moving back to the crew space

Moments later the marine Lieutenant Torres called from shuttle Feynman “2nd dorsal lock confirmed. Hostile lock on, confirm for go” McBride replied “Go for operation, let me know when you have control” 

He’d expect no further comms until the Marines had completed their op. McBride refocussed on the evacuation, 5 staging areas were complete, 11 were on track to complete within 15 minutes. Staging area Echo reported more people than planned, but within capacity. Only Lima was having real problems. Belle’s scan of Empress had confirmed remaining survivors, the body recovery was abandoned in the name of speed. The extra time was because there was cutting work to get them out. Dr Wallace on Aegis was still in progress on his engineering works.

McBride used Dagger’s regular sensors to provide a basic view of Calista, he could see the shuttle attached to the spine of Calista, he overlay the floorplan, and added the Marine locator information. They showed 2 marines on the bridge, 2 on their way to the engine room. 4 marines surrounded a fifth marine in the loading airlock. 

After a few seconds the formation broke, and they headed to the crew space. 4 marines going first in good formation, the 5th lagging behind, possibly Lieutenant Torres.

A change in Mitchell’s tone caught McBride’s attention for a moment “Mistral destroyed, Achilles moving to collect escape…” 

The comms chimed “Confirm boarding op complete, we have control of Calista. I’ve ordered the bridge to clear the dock” McBride looked at the local plot, and could see Calista start to move from Arne. Monarch was big enough to allow Calista to dock, without slowing other evacuations… they would head there.

McBride listened to Mitchell’s commentary, the battle seemed to have shifted, and the Fleet was having more problems. 

Minutes went by, McBride keeping everything on the surface of his mind, focussing on nothing, a kind of break. 

Then Lieutenant Torres called again “Captain, the containers aboard are full of luxury goods. We opened one and it had a sports car in there. The 2 others we opened had art and clothes inside. I have 3 crew, and 10 civilians in custody. The civilians are friends of the Governor, we have one injured. He tried to resist when we cleared the loading airlock. He says he’s the head of the Governor’s security. We’ll arrive at Monarch in 4 minutes. Recommend we offload no supplies. The Shuttle is fused to the hull, it can happen with a hostile airlock attachment, recommend I offload all civilians to Monarch and then join them there. We’ll leave the AI pilot to move Calista away”

McBride was relieved “Good work Lieutenant. Evacuate to Monarch, we’ll pick you up when we get the chance. I suggest you take up guard on the presidential suite. Some people might be angry about the luxury “emergency” supplies. Grab a copy of the Calista’s full log, and give it to Monarch’s captain. There might be more there”
McBride sighed. The evacuation was back on track.
 
*****

McBride turned his attention from the evacuation to the tactical plot. Admiral Mitchell had organised 4 task groups, and used in-system jumps to space them evenly around the Hive Dreadnought. Ensuring each attack would not overlap or endanger the other groups. 

Task group Ajax maintained position between the Dreadnought and Taurus 4, notionally tagged the front. task group Achilles approached from the bottom back, in line with the Dreadnought’s engines. Task groups Apollo and Artemis took high port and starboard locations. 

The task groups all showed heavy wear, but no real damage. Only a handful of Fleet escort ships had jumped away. 

The Hive Dreadnought had shrugged off every missile sent, its defence screens holding. The subspace emissions that would betray a load on the defences as it tried to emit energy overloads were tellingly low. The Dreadnought’s defences were nowhere near a collapse. Data from Belle’s scans also showed armour between 1 to 2 km thick, so even after the screens lost effectiveness there was a lot of heavy lifting still to do.

Massive beams of energy radiated from the Dreadnought stabbing across space towards the task groups. 

Each task group was led by a capital ship, Flagship Ajax was the largest human vessel, with battlecruiser Achilles a close second. Heavy Cruiser Apollo was about two thirds the size of Ajax, with cruiser Artemis massing only a half, but with a speed advantage. 

Each task group was intact, except task group Achilles which had lost the heavy destroyer Mistral. Mistral was a different class, but more or less the same as Dagger. She had taken debris damage and then a full hit from the Hive Dreadnought’s main weapon.

McBride worked around the command crew. “Liv, I want tactical analysis of the Fleet’s attack, we can send it out on a message buoy. See if we can access the Fleet’s deployed sensor drones. Belle, stand ready for a status update, and support Liv with point sensor support. Boomer, generate concerns for the evacuation. Mitchell, flag any concerns to Boomer, and then shadow Liv with the Fleet analysis” toggling the intercom “Chief are we complete on preparations? Do you have any recommendations?”

Chief Lakshmi came back straight away "Captain we are complete. Combat effectiveness is 100% versus baseline. We can increase yield from the engines to produce more power up to 120%, we could also charge the capacitors in storage to give us some unconventional options. I think we can swap them in to discharged capacitors for a quick boost. We’ll need a new set of spare capacitors in our next refit, they aren’t designed to sit with a full charge”

McBride paused to consider for a moment “Get the charging stations setup, but hold off actually charging them up, make the changes to the weapons bank and shield bank to allow hot swapping. Minimise the risk to your team. Make sure we can swap them under a full G manoeuvre” 

McBride turned to Belle “Go”

Belle delivered her update in a clipped tone “Dreadnought internal voids scan at 100%, solid structure scan 55%, it’ll take 15 mins to complete. My read is that we have a 6 way symmetry, with distinct structures fore and aft. I’m complete fore and aft with detailed scans, and am half way through a third hull segment, it’s identical to the 2 segments already scanned. Comparisons to the high level scan and internals scan verify that we can expect the other 3 segments to be the same. I recommend after I complete my third segment scan, I assist Liv’s analysis with detailed scan data”

McBride nodded, and turned to Boomer “Any items from the evacuation?”

“Echo and Lima still operating, all other staging areas clear. Echo will be complete in 10 mins. Rescue ops at Lima will be live for some time. They have 15 people still to recover. They are confirmed alive, 9 are children. They left the hardest rescues to the end”

“Recommendations?” McBride asked.

“We could task the Marines, with individual entry kits, and shuttle support. Shuttle Feynman is welded to Calista, but Aegis has 4 shuttles suitable”

McBride flushed, feeling like he’d made a mistake in committing all of Aegis’ shuttles to Dr Wallace’s scheme.

“Does Monarch have suitable shuttles too?”

Boomer brought up some data and answered “They’re bigger, but there are 2 we can use”

“Coordinate with Torres. Send 3 marines out with each shuttle, leave Torres on Monarch to coordinate and 2 marines with the Governor”

“Aye, Captain” replied Boomer.

McBride turned to Midshipman Mitchell “Anything Mitchell?”

“Can’t we help the Fleet? We could fire from here”

McBride took a breath and decided to help the Midshipman think his statement through. “Ok, say we did fire. How does the Hive react to warships?”

“They attack them”

“And what happened when the Hive fired at the destroyer Mistral?”

“It was destroyed, but they…”

“And what would happen to the civilians we are helping?”

“They would be alone”

“And if we desert our post, what will Admiral Mitchell have to do? To the captain that disobeyed her orders?”

“Courtmartial” Mitchell looked downcast, McBride couldn’t decide if it was because he realised he couldn’t fight, or if he realised his recommendation would get McBride courtmartialed.

“And how long would it take for our shot to land, firing from outside the engagement zone?”

Mitchell glanced at the tactical plot and said “44 minutes”, they could probably hit the Dreadnought even though it was moving, but it would unlikely to help the Fleet, a random uncoordinated shot 44 minutes late.

“And finally, what is the effective range of our main weapon and why?”

Mitchell paled slightly and said “Effective range is one light minute, as attenuation in the beam reduces energy per area delivered” Now he looked really embarrassed, the beam of energy would spread out over the distance to be about 2km wide, bathing the Dreadnought in a harsh spotlight for a split second.

“Anything else Mitchell?” McBride asked, he’d leave it there. Everyone on the bridge had been that young once. Maybe not Liv…

Mitchell was staring at the tactical plot “Sir, we have AI control of the civilian system. We could use the mine transit system, they are effectively mass drivers. The Dreadnought is within engagement range of 3 mines, and 2 more transit stations”

McBride looked at the plot too. It was brilliant, and wouldn’t get him courtmartialed “Work up a plan, they’ll only get 3 or 4 shots before the Dreadnought responds. I’ll contact…” pausing to select the closest task group, of course, Ajax. “...Ajax for targeting information. Belle, get me projected energy ratings for the 5 locations”

McBride toggled the intercom for Ajax, asking for the Adjunct weapons officer, he didn’t want to distract the weapons officer, XO, or Admiral with a hairbrained scheme. He waited for the call to go through. Eventually a frazzled looking sub-commander came on video. Quickly she asked “What can we do for Dagger, do you need covering fire?”

The screen fizzled with static for a moment and then the image stabilised again, something must have struck the Ajax’s shields. McBride outlined the ask “We have AI control of all Civilian vessels and stations in the system, there are 5 mining mass drivers in range for the Dreadnought, where can we send our friendly greetings?” He looked down at Belle’s messages “They are rated for 50 tonnes, transit time would be 82 seconds. Impact in the 10 megaton range. We expect to send 15-20 packages before the Dreadnought responds in kind”

The adjunct turned off screen and spoke to someone off comms, the time stretched on. McBride glanced at the evacuation plot, Echo winked blue, then went black indicating all ships jumped. Idly he noted the abandoned in-system ships floating there. There were haulers, mining vessels, transports, shuttles, even a couple of sightseeing ships. 40-50 ships just floating in space, abandoned.

The adjunct brought McBride’s attention back to the call “Target this section arriving at either 5 mins or 7 mins to coincide with shots from the task group, have all initial shots land together. Suggest sending first shots slower and follow up shots fast to delay Dreadnought’s reaction fire. You might get off more shots. Ajax out” the screen winked to black.

McBride turned to Mitchell “You heard that? Work up a fire plan, and check it with Boomer. You have 2 minutes for calcs, aim for the 7 minute window to maximise the impact of the slow then fast plan. Liv, do we have an idea for point defence reaction distance?”

“At about 2 light seconds, so at about 18 seconds for the mass transit” Liv responded.

McBride pushed the data to Mitchell, to use in the firing solutions. He looked at Boomer, and lifted an eyebrow in question. Boomer returned a short nod. He was watching the middie work, ready to suggest corrections. 

McBride tracked the task groups, Artemis was struggling, and had lost 2 escorts, although in this case they’d both jumped to the Fleet rally point, about 2 light years out from Taurus. They wouldn’t return to the fight without visiting a shipyard though. Ajax took a heavy hit, but the shields seemed to be holding well, telemetry showed her down to 45%.

A solution popped into his message queue, McBride glanced at Boomer, who smiled and gave a thumbs up out of Mitchell’s view “Summarise Mitchell”

“15 shots will land simultaneously spread on the target section, stations will fire on auto at the same location until they are stopped. Given transit times we should land 25 shots to target. For 5 mins window firing commence in 13 seconds, for the 7 mins window commence at 133 seconds. We’re ready”

Earlier is better McBride thought “Send it for the 5mins, Fire authorised”

Mitchell smiled and pressed a button to allow the computer to send all the orders for prerecorded times. The subspace comms allowed realtime reports from the distant mining stations.

Mitchell looked intent, the flushed excitement from early having fallen away “All stations report green across the board” 20 seconds later “Second set away, Bravo site reporting overheat warnings, overriding” 20 seconds later “Third salvo away. I have overheat warnings at Bravo and Delta. Firing continuing. Damnit, Bravo is reporting coolant flush, it’ll delay their 3rd shot, switching Bravo to fire as ready. All stations switched to fire when ready” 

McBride switched to the tactical plot, knowing the point defence reaction time would be soon. A lance of light shot from the Dreadnought towards the incoming rocks, the lance danced slightly before locking on. A flash of light bathed the Dreadnought in silvery white light, a second lance danced out, then a third. The second lance stopped after 3 seconds, but the third caught a rock bathing the Dreadnought in orange light.

Mitchell started a countdown “6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…”

Liv threw up video from one of the sensor drones in Ajax’s network to the main screen, light erupted from the Dreadnought’s defence screens, in subspace a reaction rippled out too.

Belle spoke “Screens showing load, but holding”

The main screen erupted in more light, the coordinated shots from task group Ajax. Suddenly a section of the Dreadnought’s hull was clear in focus, the defence screens in that section had collapsed. Into that hole slammed the late rock from the Bravo mining location. Debris expanded out and the hull was obscured. Then the blurred screening effect returned.

Belle commented “Dreadnought restored screens, they must have shaped the emitters at the edges to cover the hole we created”

McBride watched as a main weapon shot out towards the mining locations, they must have decided they were civilian facilities, as they pulsed as they stuttered to the 5 launch sites. Not enough to challenge a warship, but more than enough to destroy a mine. The incoming rocks were vaporised too, so the follow up shots were useless.

McBride talked to Mitchell “That was well done, we landed a shot thanks to your idea. I want recommendations for another time. What could be improved?”

Mitchell flushed this time “Aye sir, thank you sir”

McBride turned to Liv, “Did you see the main weapon modulation there, it was like it was 5 cannons for smaller targets. That’ll be interesting for the after action report” He knew all of the sensor data would make it out on a message buoy, but commenting in the log would draw specific attention to that capability. “How was the point defence capability? Write it up for me”

Belle spoke “Captain, a moment?” McBride nodded, and Belle continued “I’ve been reviewing the logs aboard, and on the civilian systems. Calista and Caliban are both operated by the same shipping company, Tempest, they both carried Emergency Supplies, and their last comms were with the Governor. I’ve found 2 other transports that left Taurus with the same fingerprint” 

McBride placed a call to the bridge of Monarch. On screen the Captain of the Empress of the Stars came into view. “I’m assisting Captain Elhami. How can we assist the Fleet?” 

McBride simply said “I’m sending over a packet of information, that needs to be investigated by the authorities, there’s a link between Caliban, Calista, the Governor, and falsely marked cargo, listed as emergency supplies. On the Calista it was luxury goods, including a sports car. I’d suggest…” 

Mitchell’s horrified grunt interrupted them, after a moment looking at the tactical plot “I’ll call back”

Task group Achilles had disappeared from the plot. They had jumped away, but the data showed an expanding debris field. McBride stepped back the plot 20 seconds and watched the Hive main weapon bathe 4 escort ships, burning away their shields and armour. One exploded, but Achilles positioned herself to screen the 3 remaining ships as they jumped away. Just as the last ship jumped Achilles shields failed and she started listing, dead in space. She hung there for 10 seconds, then a second shot from the Dreadnought skewered her, enveloping the whole ship. Achilles didn’t explode as much as dissolve away, vapourised without her defences.

McBride scanned the tactical plot “Survivors?” he asked.

Belle shook her head, “Nothing on scan”

Horror weighed on them all. Liv spoke “Artemis has jumped away, minimal damage”

The remaining task groups Ajax, and Apollo were also mauled. Suddenly a priority message light winked.

McBride accepted and Admiral Mitchell came on screen “I’m jumping the Fleet out, to retain the force as a threat to the Hive. I expect most Hive escort vessels to pursue. The Dreadnought might jump after us, but Fleet intelligence suggests it’s slow to make jumps, so it’ll be in-system for several hours.”

The Admiral narrowed her eyes “Take command in Taurus, complete the evacuation. We owe you, that tweak to the shield harmonics helped us to hold. Don’t get my son killed. Fair stars Commander McBride” The comm winked off.

The remaining Fleet task groups disappeared from the plot. The harassing Hive escorts swiftly followed, leaving Dagger facing the terrible Hive Dreadnought alone.

<First> <Prev> <Next> <Last>

The whole bridge looked on silently for a moment, but McBride had his orders already “All hands, all hands. Emergency jump, brace, brace, brace. Helm now. Now!”

Midshipman Mitchell glanced quickly to the Admiral, and a minor unconscious nod. The Middie triggered the jump to the fallback location, 30 light minutes away. The sub-second delay felt like an hour to McBride. He’d need to speak to Mitchell privately about that.

As the nausea from the emergency jump faded, a claxon sounded, a simple signal was transmitted through subspace at a strength that meant it was almost weaponised. Dagger’s computer helpfully read the text message “YOU PREY!” loudly, but with no inflection, making the message even creepier. 

It was the standard Hive message, but was also their message for every human world they stripped of all life and technology. The Fleet had had limited success so far, but never when a super Dreadnought was involved, they were simply too massive to hurt. From their new position the light from the Hive ship would take over 20 minutes to reach Dagger, but the new sensors were near instantaneous in-system. 

On the bridge Dagger’s officers were watching the Dreadnought. Its defence screens were actually powerful enough to screen the sensors to some degree. Belle spoke to the hushed bridge “I think I can write a programme to track the weakened shield fringes and scan deeper into the hull. It’ll take a bit of time, I’m getting a lot of interference, but we should end up with a fairly accurate internal structure”

McBride nodded “That’s a great idea Belle, get it going and let me know if we need to reposition to fill in data gaps. The better a view, the more we can feed to the Fleet, the longer we can provide screening for the evacuation”

On the tactical plot the Fleet gathered to their formations, initially it was a capital ship and 10 to 15 smaller vessels, each group would close to engagement range behind the capital ships’ shields and then spread out to engage and cause maximum damage. This was vital, as the smaller ships could only survive one or two shots from the Dreadnought’s weapons.

McBride asked “Belle, get me Ajax. We need to know what our order of battle is”

Instantly the bridge of the Ajax showed Admiral Mitchell was in the background surrounded by officers drawing lines on a tactical plot. As they watched the whole plot flashed red and reset to black. After a few moments the Admiral started to draw lines again. 

In the foreground the Ajax’s XO glared at McBride, openly showing his distaste. “What is it, we’re busy” 

McBride stayed professional, even though he wanted to bite back “Where do you want us? We have a Mark 5 cannon that could do some good” 

The XO actually smirked “Your tin gunboat is going to coordinate with the planetary government and the Fleet auxiliary to ensure the evacuation goes as fast as possible. What’s one 10,000 tonne destroyer going to do? Clear my line and contact the Governor”

“Aye, sir” McBride replied. He felt a surge of anger, and a bit of dread. His only dealings with Governor Bailey had not gone well. He’d only attended one diplomatic party in Taurus, and somehow he’d insulted the Governor. McBride wasn’t even sure how he’d done it.

In his message queue the evacuation plans, and the comms protocols arrived, he ignored the note “Even you can’t make this any worse” a parting shot from Ajax’s XO.

McBride pushed the Comms protocols to Belle and Boomer, and shared the evacuation plans to the whole bridge crew. 

The reactions were varied, Belle immediately got the comms codes loaded into the system, and started the validation processes, Boomer engaged the weapons lockout, and reconfigured his station for Comms work. Liv looked up, angry. Her normal face was pretty fierce too, but to McBride her look said “I can’t believe we called it and they are sidelining us”.

Mitchell looked up “I can’t believe they are sidelining me. I want to fight with the Fleet” catching a flash in McBride’s eye, he modified slightly “We could make a difference”

McBride thought for a moment “We are making a difference, we can help the evacuation and coordinate with the Fleet. There will be families alive tomorrow because we stood to our duty” 

“Right, Liv you read the evacuation orders in detail and make sure we are sticking to the spirit at least. I want people prioritised, goods and materiel are secondary” 

“Belle, I want you on sensors, get me a scan of the Dreadnought, and every other Hive vessel in range”

“Boomer and Mitchell you’ll be on comms, get hooked into the space controllers and help them keep on track. Any problems push them to me”

“Chief? I want a full damage control check. We need to be ready for combat, in extremis”

“Boomer, get me hooked into Cloak and Aegis. I need to chat to Coop and Dr Wallace”

*****

They’d been talking on video in the ward room for 30 minutes, and they’d swung around the topics 3 or 4 times now.

Coop was speaking again “I don’t like leaving you both in an active warzone. I want to jump out at the same time as you” 

McBride let Dr Wallace cover a well trodden retort “There is no advantage, Cloak doesn’t have primary weapons, and you don’t have upgraded sensors, the footage you’ll capture will be the same as 10 other Fleet engagements. The raw sensor logs from Dagger are new and potentially a seismic shift to our understanding of the Hive fleet and operations. It will be like winning the lottery twice. We’ll have detailed scans of the Dreadnought and several escorts, but we also have the records of the distortion and emergence; it could give us the ability to predict Hive movements and even track them between stars. It’ll shift the war in our favour. Any additional data captured after you leave can be sent in Fleet buoys, or with Aegis or Dagger ourselves”

Coop said for the seventh time “I don’t like it, but I will do it. Are there any personnel you want evacuated from the Aegis?” 

Dr Wallace nodded and arranged a rendezvous at the staging area that Dagger had been given. It was designated Lima, on the far side of the system from the gas giant, and closest to Taurus 4, the seat of system government

McBride had one final topic to discuss with Dr Wallace “We need to talk about your in-system tenders Doctor. I think we can make some adjustments to help our efforts”

Each tender was a small jump capable ship, designed to serve a Fleet auxiliary, like Aegis, to help move materiel and personnel to where they are needed. They are designed to be simple to fly and include a lot of safety lockouts. “Let me show you what I have in mind…” 

Dr Wallace listened intently, asked a few questions. At the end he said “My team can do that, but it’ll take time, possibly more time than the evacuation schedule” 

McBride replied “Focus on one tender first, get that one ready. Then the others won’t take so long. The obvious stuff, like disabling the human protection systems you can do all at once. But the rest will be easier with more people on task” 

Dr Wallace grimaced and observed “You clearly haven’t worked in academia. If you get 4 professors in a room, after 4 hours you’ll have 5 or more deeply held beliefs that they’d all die to defend!” He then smiled and said “I’ll keep them on task. It’ll work out”

Later, Belle on the sensor station, packaged up the data; the Dagger’s logs, all her analysis and programmes, the sensor configurations, the tweaks Chief Tara made. More or less every bit of relevant data from the whole ship. She put it in one file and pushed it to McBride. 

McBride smiled and nodded in thanks, Belle immediately went back to her screen, running another Hive vessel through the sensors. “Make sure you stream new results to Cloak right up until they jump” Belle didn’t look up, a quiet grunt her only response.

McBride connected to Coop on Cloak “I’m sending you the data, remember if this is the only thing that escapes from Taurus, it’ll still be a net win for the Fleet. We have a full tactical scan of the Dreadnought in there” Coop was flat in his response. He still hated the idea of leaving without making sure they were all safe first “Don’t do anything stupid James”

McBride smiled “Who do you think you’re talking to? Of course I'm going to do something stupid” There was a smile in his voice, that he didn’t really feel. It was a response that was in the form of a joke, but had a ring of truth too. Commander Cooper did know Commander McBride well.

“See you on the other side”

*****

Boomer’s voice was betraying a little strain. The Governor’s staff was still in overall charge of the civilian evacuation, but they were going slowly. There was clearly an approval step with the Governor that was taking too long. Suddenly Boomer turned to Belle “Have you completed the scans on the main Hive ships?”

Belle looked a little startled for a brief moment, but looked at Boomer with a big grin “We have completed basic scans on every Hive ship type in-system. I’m actually starting a detailed system scan on the Dreadnought, Their defence screens are causing interference, but I can start to get a basic systems understanding of how their tech actually works. Their drive tech is a mystery. We can…”

Boomer cut over her. “Ok, ok. Can I get you to scan a civilian vessel - Caliban? It’s acting strangely and I want to know why”

Belle thought for a moment “I don’t see why not. It won’t take long to get the scan, but I’ll send it to you and you can do the analysis” After no more than 10 seconds “There, it’s on its way now”

Boomer looked at the scan, his face getting redder and redder “Captain, can you look at this? I think we have our first escalation”

McBride looked at the details on his screen. Even on a quick glance it was obvious that Caliban didn’t have any passengers at all. “Divert them to staging area Lima, they can take on some of the refugees from the refinery. Empress of the Stars will be full before they have all the refugees embarked. The other ships will arrive after Caliban”

Boomer gave the order, and Caliban diverted to staging area Lima.

A few minutes later a priority Omega call came from the Governor’s yacht. McBride answered it. Governor Bailey was on screen and yelling, he took almost no breaths “What gives you the right to divert my ship? Caliban is tasked by me personally and is on a critical mission. I demand you release it to my original orders. I will have you demoted, I will have you flying garbage scows dumping garbage in Epsilon. I’ll have you left for the Hive. Your family will owe me for just breathing… “ Having gone all out he ran out of breath and paused for a moment to breathe. 

McBride jumped in “Our scans show Caliban was almost empty and certainly not carrying any evacuees. We have diverted it to pick up families from the refinery that was attacked first. It should carry at least its complement before jumping to the Rendezvous Point”

In the background on the Governor's screen a woman asked “Do you want some more wine?” accompanied with giggles showing that there were 3 or 4 people out of view. The Governor waved her away. Governor Bailey regained some composure “How can you possibly know it’s empty? That’s slander”

McBride glanced over to Belle, who mouthed “Too fast” 

McBride said “It’s simply moving too fast to be loaded” The Governor didn’t know about the sensor test, there were over 40 Fleet vessels in-system and the Governor simply didn’t know what each ship’s assignments were.

The Governor seemed to disregard the comment “You will allow Caliban to resume its course, or I'll have you busted down to midshipman, where you’ll remain for your whole career”

McBride responded “Governor, the Fleet has ultimate command of the evacuation. It has to prioritise the people. Things can be replaced, not people”

“Some things can’t be replaced, and I can get refinery workers on every street corner” the Governor said.

McBride internally counted to five "Regardless, Caliban will take on refugees and will continue in good order. Discipline must be preserved. A panic could be catastrophic. Please feel free to speak to my commanding officer, Admiral Mitchell aboard the Ajax”

At the mention of the Ajax a switch seemed to turn on in the Governor’s eyes “I demand you order the Ajax to pick me up and evacuate my entourage”

McBride took a moment to calmly piece together a response “Ajax is leading a fleet to oppose a Hive super Dreadnought. No Human fleet has succeeded in delaying a Dreadnought for any time at all. They are likely to die in defence of the people of your world. They will not divert from combat to evacuate anybody, not even President Etranger”

Governor Bailey paused only a moment “I demand that you empty the Empress of the Stars of that rabble and dedicate her to my evacuation” Clearly thinking this was a negotiation.

McBride smiled broadly “I will not disembark 2,000 women and children to allow you to use a cruise ship at 5% capacity. It will take too long and potentially cost the lives of everyone at the staging area. I’m going to end this call. Thank you for your time” McBride smiled again, just as the Governor started with “Don’t you know who…” he disconnected. 

McBride pushed out a huge puff of air and breathed in heavily. It helped a little.

Boomer stared at McBride “He’s calling back”

Instead of answering McBride looked at Caliban on the tactical plot, it was veering off and speeding up. Civilian ships had a minimum speed to achieve a jump. Caliban was not pointing at the Rendezvous Point, and looked to be too close to staging area Lima. “Boomer, what is Caliban doing? Belle, what can we get from their engines?”

Belle ran the sensors “Caliban is building to jump, and she isn’t at a safe distance. The drive field will be expanded due to the low mass”

McBride didn’t pause to give Boomer or Belle further orders. He got on comms himself “Caliban. This is Captain McBride, commander civilian evacuation. Cease all jump prep now. Stand down, stand down, stand down. You are not at safe distance for your load. Stand down” McBride continued to broadcast to Caliban, but there was no response and no reduction in speed.

Belle spoke, alarm in her voice “Captain, they are going to jump.”

McBride switched to Empress “Empress, raise your deflector screens and brace for impact. Brace, brace, brace” McBride got a quick video image of the Empress of the Stars captain, she looked like a kindly grandmother, then to Boomer and Mitchell “Get the incoming ships to speed up, and ready for rescue operations”

McBride turned to the tactical plot. The dots for Caliban and Empress almost touched, then Caliban winked out, followed a second later by Empress. “Report, what happened to Empress?”

Belle threw the sensor plot onto the main screen; it showed Empress mostly intact, but with the rear quarter sheared away due to gravitation stresses. Caliban had jumped away.

*****

Sombre silence was broken by McBride “Give me the whole plot, what is the current position of all civilian vessels versus their flight plan?” The plot took up the main screen. There were over 500 vessels plotted all initially tagged green. Suddenly 2 went amber then red. Indicating deviation from plan and then jump drive charging. More and more went amber then red

McBride said “Belle, give me a civilian fleet broadcast”, then addressing the civilian fleet “All vessels return to assigned flight plans. Evacuation is not complete, over half the population of Taurus is still on route”

3 more vessels went red, one went amber then green. 10 went amber. It was all falling apart.

McBride ordered “Belle, send the AI override and get Dagger to help you get everyone back on track. Can we use the AI to speed things up?”

Belle grimaced, then smiled “I’ll see what we can do”

McBride toggled the civilian broadcast again “Civilian fleet. I have ordered an AI pilot override. All vessels are under Fleet control. Please stand by new orders and evacuation orders incoming”

Liv spoke, with her hand muting her comm,  to remind McBride “With the ships and stations, we’ve just created over 700 class-1 AI citizens. They are technically Fleet personnel, and the imprint is set up with an assumption of risk, but…”

McBride caught her meaning immediately “Agreed, coordinate with Dr Wallace to set Aegis as the backup hub. We’ll take them with us when we leave Taurus”

McBride turned back to the tragedy “Boomer, what is the status of Empress?”

Boomer gave his report grimly that nearby ships had locks on over a thousand people, but the remaining thousand were unaccounted for. McBride ordered Belle to use the sensors to direct rescuers to people.

McBride looked at Liv for support. She had resumed talking on the comm. “And then what happened Governor?”

McBride silently patched himself in, reviewing the comms log it seemed that Governor Bailey was 5 minutes into blaming the Caliban-Empress collision on McBride’s orders. It was so clearly wrong even the Admiralty board wouldn’t convict anyone but the Caliban captain.

McBride blanked the noise and brought up the whole plot again, it was back to a sky of green, the one or two amber dots quickly flipped to green. He asked “Belle, is it working? Any friction points?”

Belle gave a thumbs up and turned back to her screen.

As an after thought he added “Belle. Add a stream of statistics on the civilian broadcast to show the progress of the evacuation against the baseline, against the progress they were actually making under human control, and the new baseline. Make it so they can see overall, and their vessels specifically”

Belle thought for a moment, then tapped a few instructions into her station, after about 15 seconds she announced “Done”

“Flag anything that’s more than 5% slower than previously to the main screen” On the main screen the sky of green suddenly had a streak of red, there was a whole section that was flagged up, looking closer McBride could see that some of the vessels were more than 50% slower under the new plan. There didn’t seem to be any common factor, but none of them had been heading to a staging area, they were all previously just heading for an out-system jump. 

McBride tagged 5 vessels “Belle, quick scan. What’s the status of the tagged vessels?”

Belle quickly responded “5 people, 100 people, 2 people, 50 people, and 15 people. They are all not to passenger capacity. Although the two haulers tagged are showing at maximum load” 

McBride dug into the logs. He could see that the vessels all originated from 3 locations on Taurus 4, a park in the planetary capital, the starport, and a location about 100km from the capital. The rural location was the Governor’s residence. Looking at the comms logs, where other ships received their orders from the space control, these ships were in regular contact with the Governor’s office and yacht.

McBride looked at Liv, who was still reacting to the Governor’s tirade. He toggled a switch and joined the call.
“... is a clear breach of the planetary powers act. The military can only override civilian authority in very narrow defined circumstances. I demand…”

McBride cut across the Governor “Would you list those circumstances?”

The Governor spluttered “Well. I mean… you see that. <breath> Insurrection, civil war, planetary disaster…” trailing off. 

McBride completed “or any circumstance that requires a military intervention”

The Governor brightened “Ah. you see, because the government of Taurus hasn’t formally invited military…”

McBride cut over him again “I see, so would you like me to ask Admiral Mitchell to cease defending the system whilst you fill in a form? Military intervention is underway, and in cases with a clear inciting incident can be invoked without formal request. The Override stays. Governor, your AI pilot will take you to a staging area. Your closest is…” McBride glanced at the plot, “staging area Echo. The Fleet will complete the evacuation. Over and out”

The Governor was bright red and opened his mouth. McBride cut the call. “Liv, monitor the Governor’s yacht. If anything threatens it I want to know, but otherwise no comms with them at all”

*****

On the tactical plot the Hive ships spread out from the gas giant into the asteroid belt, destroying every fixed facility they found. The Fleet was still positioning with a clear objective to defend Taurus 4 and protect the various staging areas, all set on the far side of Taurus 4 from the Hive ships.

McBride signalled Mitchell “Midshipman, join me in the ward room”

In the ward room McBride took a seat, and gestured to Mitchell to sit too. The midshipman looked at ease, occupying the space with an air of ownership. He sat in next to McBride.

“Liam, I wanted to ask you what happened at Taurus 5. You paused before you jumped Dagger out of danger. It was only a moment, but under the guns of the Hive, it was a very long moment. I need you to obey my orders immediately”

Liam finally looked uncomfortable. “My mo… the Admiral always says that a Mitchell doesn’t run from a fight, ever. I couldn’t let her down in my first action in combat. I knew I needed to jump, but I needed to process it and fight the impulse to fight. You are the Captain, I know that” 

McBride nodded “Ok, you obeyed. And we had the 57 light second buffer, so there was no real danger to Dagger. When we are in engagement range it will be different. If we need to reposition for advantage, if we need to regroup to maintain a formation, if we need to retreat to protect Fleet viability. You can’t be worrying if your mother will think you’re running away. It’s on me, you are just being a great helm and junior officer. Do you think you can do that?”

Mitchell brightened up “Aye sir! Yes captain, I can do that. Thank you sir” Mitchell stood to leave, then turned and saluted "Permission to resume my post sir?”

McBride dismissed him and paused a moment in the ward room. The next thing was to watch the Fleet engage the Dreadnought, and that would not be fun.

“Liv, what’s the status?” McBride asked.

Liv looked up, then back at her plot “AI control has us at 109% ahead in general, but rescue ops at Lima are behind, possibly critically. We do have one piece of luck, the Empress of the Stars sister ship just jumped in, we are routing the Monarch of the Sky to Lima, the extra 20000 seats will make a big difference. It also has a presidential suite” Liv smiled

McBride smiled back and looked at the position of the Governor’s yacht. It was closest to staging area Echo, but given the Governor’s previous stateroom request, the lack of Hive activity on the route, and the fact he’d still be evacuated slightly faster than originally planned, he gave the order “Re-route the Governor’s yacht to Lima, and assign him the presidential suite on Monarch. Let’s give him the evacuation his position deserves”

McBride composed a message to the captain of the Governor’s yacht explaining the changes, and pushed it out.

Turning to Belle McBride said “What is the progress of recovery from Empress?”

Belle held a professional tone “It’s slow and getting slower. The passengers in the free spaces are already out, and moving to Monarch. There are a lot of people trapped in the rear, and it’s taking more and more time to free them or recover the bodies”

McBride simply said “I want a full accounting. Anyone in the shear zone will have been vapourised, but everyone else I need to know we got them. What’s the completion estimate?”

“It’s pushing out, we earmarked 2 hours, but we’re at more than 3 hours, and each rescue or recovery is more complex than the last. I’d say it’ll be in the red zone. I think we are at 98% accounted. I’ll use the sensors to locate the final few people” Belle replied.

Nodding McBride finished the exchange “Push them Belle, there won’t be much time after the Fleet is forced to jump away”

Mitchell waved at McBride “You have an priority Omega call from the Governor”

McBride kept a neutral face “Close the call, I don't want to hear the Governor’s many suggestions about the shortcomings of my parents. We need to focus on the evacuation” McBride thought to himself; that’s the second time, how did he place a priority Omega call, that’s Fleet only?

Seeing a lull in the situation McBride sent Boomer, Belle, and Liv for a break, 30 mins later he and Mitchell hit the galley. Leaving Liv with orders to reposition Dagger on staging area Lima’s periphery.

The galley was empty, but the engineering spaces surrounding were a flurry of activity as the crew confirmed Dagger was ready for combat. Chief Tara came into the galley just as McBride was leaving.

McBride smiled “Chief, how’s the prep coming. Are the energy banks holding your new mods?”

The short older woman answered quickly in a clipped manner “Yes, they should give us more energy throughput, it’ll be worth the effort. The Dagger is combat ready” She moved off to select some food, leaving McBride smiling.

Over the intercom Liv spoke “Fleet engagement commencing in 3 minutes, set condition yellow”

McBride returned to the bridge, he didn’t rush, but he certainly didn’t keep his normal deliberate pace either.

<First> <Prev> <Next> <Last>

McBride (Commander James McBride, Commanding Officer UCS Dagger) looked down at the tactical plot, he could see they’d won all victory conditions, again. Looking up he remarked “Good test everyone. Get ready for reset and new grid. We have to lose contact and reacquire. We’ll have a 10 minute break, then jump to the next grid and resume. You OK with that Coop?”

McBride glanced at the bridge crew. A destroyer like Dagger had a reduced crew compared to most other Fleet vessels. 

He smiled at Liv (Lieutenant Commander Olivia Carter, XO UCS Dagger) as she glanced up from her own tactical plot she smiled back, wrinkling her scarred face. On the plot she had a view of the new sensor data superimposed, there was some troubling distortion that Dr Wallace had so far failed to explain. 

Looking to his right he looked at the back of Belle (Sub Lieutenant Isabella Foster, Communications Officer UCS Dagger). She was absorbed in the sensor data, seemed to be running an advanced diagnostic, and 2 retrograde analysis, whilst also somehow managing to keep a tight beam link to Coop (Commander Aiden Cooper, Commanding UCS Cloak).

On McBride’s left was Boomer (Sub Lieutenant Harper Russell, Weapons Officer UCS Dagger). Boomer was leaning back, with a confirmed target lock on his screen. For the test the main weapon was powered down and locked out. 

Dagger punched well above her weight, but it came with compromises. She had a battleship grade single beam cannon built into the spine of the ship, but it meant her torpedo capacity was reduced, and she had no secondaries. She did carry a full set of point defence weapons for her secondary role as a screening ship versus missiles and fighters. Boomer looked bored.

Knowing he still had the comms to Cloak open, and not wanting to miss an opportunity to tease his best friend, McBride said “Boomer, at least look like you had to put some effort into destroying Cloak”

Coop had been responding that Cloak might need more than a 10 minute break, and that he regretted the bet that he’d made with McBride before the test series began. He paused, and took a deep breath “Roger. 10 minutes, I'll see you in Grid 8 (003,143,245) for the start of Cloak’s triumphal winning streak. Best 8 out of 15 I always say” He cut comms, and the bridge was silent for a moment.

“Ha! Eight for eight if you count the practice run. My drift vectoring rules” Mitchell exclaimed in front of McBride’s station (Midshipman Liam Mitchell, Helm Officer UCS Dagger), Mitchell was too new to the crew and too junior to have a nickname. 

McBride addressed him formally. “Midshipman, please stick to military standards. Comms discipline is vital on the bridge of a warship, any distraction could be fatal” This was strict for a normal officer, but for a Middie, 5 days into a deployment, Mitchell was too quick to drop the discipline. 

Mitchell responded quickly “Aw Commander. It's not exactly hard once you know where to look, the middie on the Cloak said we had no chance” Belle didn’t look up.

McBride cut in “You’ll address me as Captain. Commander is my rank, but I’m the Captain of the Dagger”

“Aye Captain” Mitchell looks crestfallen, so McBride shot a quick smile to him, to take some of the sting away.

McBride brought the crew back to focus “Use the 10 minute break, we’ll resume at 1404 ship time”

He looked down and toggled the intercom “Chief (Lieutenant Commander Tara Lakshmi, Chief Engineer UCS Dagger) test 8 includes a directed discharge of the main weapon. Once you’ve had your break could you start to release the lockouts and charge the weapons capacitors?” 

Tara responded immediately, she’d clearly been waiting for the order “Aye Captain. The lockout will be immediate, it’ll take 2 minutes to charge the cannon to fire. I don’t like firing the gun when we don’t need to, it brings us closer to a major refit, one wasted shot at a time” McBride had had this conversation with the Chief several times, so he just let her register her complaint. 

In truth she was right, but in training or combat operations they’d fire many many times, so the impact to design life was slight.

Looking at the time McBride started to queue up the orders for the next test run. He fiddled with the intercom again and placed a call to Dr Wallace (Dr Henry Wallace, Subspace energetics professor at Cambridge University, Earth. Research lead advanced sensor test 2574.05.01.0a. Commander UCAS Aegis). McBride always itched to call him Wally, but nothing in Dr Wallace’s demeanour indicated that he’d appreciate it, at all. 

“Dr Wallace, do you have the firing resolution for test 8? We’ll need to run triple checks as per standing orders for non combat weapons discharge”

Dr Wallace didn’t respond for 10 seconds, McBride was just wondering if he should restate his request when Dr Wallace finally replied “Ah, yes. I have it here. We’ll coordinate safety protocols again when we have confirmed locations for Cloak and Dagger. Sending. Over and out” the connection ended abruptly and a file sat in McBride’s message queue, he pushed it to Boomer’s station.

*****

At 1404, with the crew all back to stations, McBride gave the command to jump to the new test location. The bridge was hushed and everyone spoke softly, even Mitchell.

“We hit the nail on the head. I mean jump nominal, drift 0” The academy should have worked this kind of thing out of Mitchell, but he seemed to have been given some leeway, because of his family connections.

“Boomer, weapons status?”

“Fully charged, solution locked, awaiting final confirmation” McBride pushed the data out to Aegis for Dr Wallace to confirm. As the research lead he had a full telemetry feed from Cloak and Dagger to confirm the weapons fire would be close enough for the test, but harmless. The idea was to see the impact of high energy weapons on the new sensor performance.

“Belle, do the baseline sweep”

On receiving the confirmation from Dr Wallace, McBride pushed the data back to Boomer for final match, and also to Belle.

“Belle, can you confirm that we’ll miss Cloak?”

Almost instantly Belle responded “Yes, I have Cloak’s location and the shot will miss them by a 1km or so. The new sensors are great, I had a lock on them almost immediately after the jump. I think the sensor distortion is reducing”

“Weird, keep a log of the distortions. It shouldn’t change, according to Dr Wallace. Give me a broadcast frequency, no need to let Coop know we have them again, and he’ll need to go to best 9 out of 17”

“Comms open Captain”

“Cloak, brace for close fire. Triple check complete”

“Boomer, send it” With such a titanic discharge you’d expect to feel something, but the bridge was quiet and still. The enormous beam of energy was almost invisible, unless it struck something. McBride breathed a sigh of relief, he really didn’t want to explain another incident to the Admiralty board.

“Belle, take the second sensor baseline”

The test run continued, with little impact of the weapons fire on the performance of the sensors.

“OK, Boomer, take command of the tight beam system and get me a target lock on Cloak. I’ll have to give Coop the bad news”

Just as the comms laser connected to Cloak Dr Wallace spoke “Amazing, the sensors are performing even better than I modelled, the subspace continuum…” McBride tuned out the suddenly enthusiastic doctor, if past experiences told him anything they could expect anywhere from 15-30 minutes of subspace physics launched at them. 

Using the tight beam connection, McBride sent Coop a text message
1416 McBride: Caught you again. I’m going to enjoy my Whiskey :)

1416 Cooper: :( We can swap and i’ll use a cheat code built in to the universe to spy on you

1417 McBride: Come on, it’s not cheating, it’s more like cat and mouse… cat and really obvious mouse

1418 Cooper: Cloak is the most advanced stealth ship we have, it’s supposed to have less signal emissions than the cosmic background. I can’t believe the sensors saw us

1420 McBride: Yup, we are building something special here. It could help against the Hive. It’s nice to be doing something useful rather than a punishment detail.

1421 Cooper: You know you’re here as punishment. The Admiralty board is mad they can’t publicly punish you

1421 McBride: Yup, it’s a shame, such a shame. I have my own command, and I'm out playing laser tag with my friends

1422 Cooper: Lol. You could have had a real Fleet command if you could just play the game, even a little. Make them feel safe, like you’re less of a threat.
1424 Cooper: You know I'm right

1429 McBride: I just can’t stay quiet. I have to say something, if I can do better

1430 Cooper: I know buddy :) Hang on Wally asked me a question

The test debrief concluded the planned tests for the day. Idly McBride scrolled through the logs, looking at the sensor data collected. 

He caught Belle’s attention “Those calibration diagnostics you’ve been running seem like they really paid off, the distortions are reduced by over 90%” 

Belle looked happy, then a little confused “None of the diagnostics I ran should have had any effect on the sensor performance, it’s like the distortions are reducing by themselves”

“Must be something on Dr Wallace’s end then” McBride remarked.

Dr Wallace’s comms chimed in “We should conclude with something harder. Why don’t we calibrate the sensors against something bigger? What’s the biggest vessel in-system?”

Belle with sensors and comms responsibility responded straight away “There is a refinery vessel in orbit around the gas giant, a mining mothership in the asteroid belt, and the 3rd Fleet flagship, Ajax, in orbit around Taurus 4. The civilian vessels have deflectors active, but Ajax has full defence screens and military energy emissions protocols. Ajax would be my recommendation, it’s slightly less mass than the refinery, but is a better target for combat sensors”

Uncharacteristically, Dr Wallace didn’t think for a moment “Yes, Ajax is perfect. Get a sensor lock”

“Order confirmed and logged” Ajax’s commanding officer, Admiral Mitchell was quite fond of McBride, but the XO wasn’t. Logging the orders had saved McBride in the past. “Let’s see what we can see”

The tests continued.

McBride said “Good work today, this is real progress for the Fleet”

Widening to the whole crew McBride toggled the shipwide intercom “Great work today everyone. We’ll go off duty from 1600. Lieutenant Russell you have second watch command”

McBride went to the small crew galley and grabbed something to eat. He stayed for 25 minutes talking to some of the enlisted crew, listening to the chatter. A small ship like Dagger had a tight crew and the enlisted typically stayed with the ship, even as the command staff rotated.

McBride went back to the bridge to see Boomer. 

On the bridge he found Boomer and Belle deep in discussion, “Come on, it's interesting, what did the new sensors say about Ajax?” Belle looked up and saw McBride, but Boomer had his back to McBride and continued trying to convince Belle “We could find something that would get you a science medal, I bet you’d like that?”

McBride cleared his throat “What trouble are you talking Belle into Boomer?”

Boomer turned around “The Sensor picture of Ajax, I thought it would be cool if we could have a look at it. Dr Wallace is going to take a year to publish an academic paper about it. It could be cool now”

McBride and Belle exchanged a look, which he took to mean ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’

With a smile McBride agreed “Belle, why don’t you throw it on the main viewer? Dagger can alert us if there is anything threatening”

Belle also smiled, it seemed like she was always going to do this, and was glad to have an audience, her fingers flew over the keyboard, and she started muttering to herself. She did have a digital interface to the ships’ systems too, and she was communicating on the physical, verbal and digital links all at once. Quickly a picture of the Ajax emerged on screen, at first it was the same as a video image from nearby, but then for a moment it was as if the hull and armour was transparent and there was an image of the interior decks, then the image on screen swung into a particular section, one of the main guns. They could see detailed wiring runs, and even a figure reclining in their seat at one of the weapons stations. 

Belle commented “That’s way more detail than I'd expect from a quarter of the way around the star, it’s a little alarming even. Nobody tell the middies about this”

Finally the view swung away and gave a view that McBride interpreted as a field strength map of the defence shielding. There was a strange byplay at the places where the forward shield emitter and the port emitter overlapped. Belle flagged the harmonic frequencies and the differences in the time sequence, with a suggested fix. It was a potential weakness in the huge battleship’s defences.

Sweating, it was apparently hard work, Belle finally looked up to the mesmerised Boomer and McBride “Do you think we should tell them?”

“Yes, package it up and push the recommendation to me. I’ll need to send it to Ajax’s XO. Let’s see where we can get” McBride sat in the Captain’s chair and used the console to type a simple message to the XO. “Re: Shield weakness…” McBride reflected that the XO was likely to file it in the trash, but he had to send the information anyway.

McBride returned to his Captain’s cabin to sleep. 

*****

McBride awoke at 0400 ship time, after stepping in the refresher, he put on his uniform and headed up to the bridge. In the night Boomer had passed the watch to Belle. She was working on something at the comms station. McBride looked over her shoulder and it seemed to be a plot of the sensor tests, with all of the movement and signal data plotted all over each other. At first glance it didn’t make much sense. Belle spoke “It’s like the distortion is narrowing and focussing, as it reduces. The wider distortion reduces, but the rates near the centre I predict are higher now, than we observed during our readings”

McBride asked “What would it take to support your hypothesis?” 

“We’d just need to jump to anywhere in this region, and the distortion should be higher than before, rather than reducing. It’s like it’s a sphere, as it gets smaller the distortion at the edges gets lower, but in the centre it gets higher. Look we even saw that effect in test runs 3 and 5, when we jumped here, closer to the projected centre” 

As an after thought “The final readings should allow us to predict the actual centre, at the moment it could be anywhere in this area” she indicated a large swathe of the plot, including some of the asteroid belt and the gas giant refinery complex.

Something tweaked at McBride’s mind, the gas giant? The gas giant! Even though they were comfortably behind the frontlines in the current war with the Hive, they always attacked the gas giant and surrounding installations first. It was something. Making a decision “I’ll take helm, give me the grid for the closest jump where we can get your reading”

Jumping into the Helm station, McBride brought the jump engines up. Quickly he called the engine room “Engine room, we need to make a short jump, go /no go for operation” A bleary voice came on the intercom.

“Go for short hop. In system is fine, we’d need charging time for an inter-solar jump”

With that, knowing that the inertial dampeners would mean that no one other than Chief Tara would notice the manoeuvre, McBride hit the buttons and jumped.

The sensor data showed the sphere would collapse to a point 500k km from the refinery at about 0543.

McBride took a deep breath knowing that this was going to potentially cost him again. “Belle. Get Liv up here, I need a second opinion before I wake the Admiral up”

When Liv walked onto the bridge McBride looked tired, but determined. He was going to get himself in trouble. 

“Liv, let Belle brief you. Then head over to me in the ward room” McBride got up and headed to the small conference room attached to the bridge. It was rated for 8 people, but really only held 4 comfortably. McBride always joked it was rated for 8 very close friends. After 5 minutes, Liv entered the room with a quick look.

McBride indicated the door closed, which was a signal between them that Liv could speak frankly. She started “What are you thinking?” 

McBride summarised quickly “I think it’s a Hive attack, they always start with the gas giants. What else could it be?” 

Liv considered the question, her scar in shadow giving her a slightly sinister appearance. She was older than McBride, and had seen more action. But somehow she’d gotten into more trouble too, so she was a Lieutenant Commander and would probably end her career there. They had bonded over their shared opinion of the admiralty in general, got in and out of a couple of situations, and had been a team ever since. “We know that the Hive don’t use gravity warp drives for their inter-solar jumps, we’ve never seen anything like this” Liv followed up “What does Dr Wallace think?”

“It’s too early. The data is sat in his message queue, but I wouldn’t expect a response before 0855. You know what he’s like in the mornings. The data shows something will happen a 0543, so about an hour”

“You have to report it to Fleet command, and that means the Ajax and Admiral Mitchell” McBride agreed mentally, he’d been hoping that Liv would come up with something he’d overlooked.

McBride connected to the comms officer on Ajax “Dagger requesting priority Omega directly to Admiral Mitchell” the comms officer immediately transferred the call to Admiral Mitchell’s quarters, voice only. To her credit she only sounded slightly bleary “Commander, this better be either really good or really bad”

McBride launched in immediately “There is a high chance of a Hive attack at 0543, we have a novel sensor distortion focussed on the gas refinery at Taurus 5”

The Admiral responded sharply “Is this from the sensor tests? What does Wallace think? What does Commander Carter think? Send me the analysis”

Over the next 20 minutes they validated the data, ordered an evacuation of the refinery and preparation for further evacuation of the facilities nearby the gas giant, and set Dagger to jump to 20m km to closely observe the phenomenon at the distortion centre. 

They’d jump just before 0544, so that the light from their position would arrive at target after about a minute, but Dagger should witness whatever emerged almost immediately. They’d have real-time links to Aegis and Ajax for recording, orders, and analysis support. 

Aegis’ 3rd watch were standing by, but hadn’t been able (or willing?) to rouse Dr Wallace. On Ajax they had video comms set up. The XO was glaring at the screen with a clear distaste. Admiral Mitchell was keeping a more neutral face, but her eyes were smiling. She didn’t seem too upset… but with Admiral’s you could never tell if that was a good or bad thing.

The bridge crew filled out, Boomer arriving at 0530, and Mitchell arriving a few moments later. The Midshipman’s eyes flickered with recognition as he walked in and saw the two from Ajax. He gave a quick wave to the screen and took his seat at the helm.

Time went by slowly, until the time hit 0543, Belle reported “The distortion snapped off. I’m getting a reading from the sphere centre. I’m waiting for interpretation”

“We’ll need to jump to the observation post” McBride switched to shipwide “All hands, all hands, potential high G, brace brace, brace” turning to Belle “Set condition red” The claxon sounded, with a quiet whine of capacitors powering the shield emitters. “Helm, at my mark jump. Mark” 

Dagger jumped just before 0544. “Bring sensors to full, what do we see?”

Belle called “Still analysing the new sensors, nothing on visible light yet”

The time wore on. On the screen the Ajax’s XO turned to Admiral Mitchell and said “I told you, it’s a massive waste of…”

Dagger’s warnings kicked in over the complaining XO. “Sensor contact” said the Dagger’s computer on screen they could see details coming in. A star occlusion plot chimed in “9 x 5 km”, subspace sensors added “600b tonnes”. 

Belle stated over the top of everyone “Holy hell, it’s a Hive Superdreadnought”

<First> <Prev> <Next> <Last>

I was again sitting with my back to the bar. It hadn’t been a hive of scum and villainy since Tom’s reputation as bouncer became well known. Teaxii and I were drinking and talking. I had a beer and Teaxii had a watered down orange juice, the sugar and citric acid functioning in a similar way to alcohol for me.

Teaxii asked “How can Tom face down a Telephe warrior? Tom is far smaller and lighter” expressing confusion and interest via body language. I responded “It’s not the size of the entity in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the entity”

Teaxii thought about that “That makes no sense. What does that mean?”

I rephrased “When there is a fight, we fight to win. Why would we choose to match our small size and weight in a situation where that determines the outcome of the fight? When Tom faces a Telephe, he chooses a way to match his strengths to the Telephe’s weaknesses. That’s the way he wins. He has a plan”

Admiral McBride remained popular, since the 2nd Fleet, Admiral McBride commanding, was still in port. So I picked an example. “How about I tell you a story about Admiral McBride facing down two vastly superior ships, by just refusing to quit?”

Several patrons nearby leaned in to pay attention too. I’d hooked them, hopefully this would be good for a couple of beers afterwards.

Many years ago in a human system called Taurus, McBride was given the task to help the whole system evacuate. Initially there was a whole Fleet defending the system, but they were forced to retreat. The civilians took much longer than planned, so McBride rode out in his 10,000 tonne destroyer, UCS Dagger, to buy the civilians time” 

I stood and weaved my hand this way and that, imitating a swooping ship “Using camouflage and fancy flying he took away the Hive’s advantage in guns” 

I slammed my hand to the bar, several nearby aliens flinched “Using local mining equipment and asteroids, McBride took away the shields”

Then I jabbed my finger at the bar “He used his own targeting knowledge to strike several times at a weak spot. He managed to destroy not one, but two Hive Dreadnoughts” I was careful not to point at any individual, as it was a heavy insult in several cultures.

One of the listening patrons said loudly “That’s bullshit, it’s like a shuttle destroying a moon. A Hive Dreadnought’s mass is at least 2 billion tonnes. There’s no way any 10,000 tonne ship did anything to a Hive Dreadnought”

I replied “McBride had a plan. He used his strengths, and the Hive’s weaknesses”

A spectator stage whispered “Yeah, he planned to get vapourised” 

“I can see there is an appetite for the true tale, about how McBride turned the tide of the war and showed the Hive why they don’t mess with humans. Did I ever tell you the story of the unkillable Admiral McBride and his clones?”...