USD: Two hours later
Location: Meltisar, Military Shuttle 8701-A, Rendezvous with Aegis

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The shuttle hummed as it came in for its final approach to land inside one of the Aegis’ many boat bays. Alex was oblivious to the noise as she focused on scanning the intelligence reports on the incoming Imperium fleet.

An Armada.

Meltisar’s scouts had picked up the fleet the moment it had transited into the Beta Antliae system. The pickets had jumped back to Van Biesbroeck’s Star as soon as they had been spotted, but the short distance between the jump points there meant they only had a several hour lead on the incoming fleet. Assuming they followed immediately, at the best guess, the Meltisar Navy Intelligence could place on the Imperial fleet’s acceleration curve.

Add that to the time lag from the Beta Antliae point in the Meltisar system itself…the Imperial fleet could be in the system within a few hours. There was little the Meltisar Navy could do to prevent them from entering. Their primary fleet strength had remained, as per protocol, near the center of the system itself. There were simply too many jump points to be guarded for them to cover them all in strength.

There were a lot of nasty things a hostile fleet could do as soon as they entered the system, but that was why Meltisar itself had a formidable defense net that would give pause to any fleet. Advanced listening posts meant that a kinetic bombardment would be detected long before it arrived.

Meanwhile, the primary fleet had already begun to assemble for an interception. Alex went over the numbers; they were not comforting.

[Imperial Fleet Observation via MNS Westen, Beta Antliae Picket, Begin.]

|Inner System Ships|

|Battleships: 22|

|Battlecruisers: 10|

|Cruisers: 870|

|Destroyers: 3500|

|Corvettes: 7350|

[Imperial Armada Fleet Observation, End.]

It was nearly forty percent of the entire Meltisar Navy, almost twice what the ‘best’ intelligence reports had stated the Imperials could muster from their system fleets without stripping their border guard at Sol meant to counter the Ertan. It was still less than everything they had—but that wasn’t much comfort.

A shadowy hand gripped at her heart; her best-case scenario was rapidly slipping away. She and Tia had only added twenty percent to their calculations of what the Imperials could muster. The shuttle set down and bleeped a ready to disembark noise at her.

She stood and exited, a confused crewman stepping back as she exited, no doubt wondering where the rest of the passengers were. It had been a personal flight direct from groundside, something that should have been reserved to senior officers or a group. Not a single ensign. She’d added the lapel to her uniform, confirming the rank.

“Just me.” Alex mumbled to him.

The path to the flag bridge was well known to her. Despite the ship’s kilometers of labyrinthine corridors and passageways, she didn’t even need Nameless’ mini-map function to find her way. The ship was large enough that there were dozens of turbo lifts streaking through the ship’s innards at regular intervals, but she’d chosen the bay closest to her destination and avoided them.

The flag bridge was centrally located, although it was kept separate from the ship’s primary combat CIC for redundancy purposes. Either location could direct and control the entire first fleet, and generally a second set of flag officers would be stationed in each, just in case the ship suffered extensive battle damage. A smaller battleship had the honor of being a backup if the Aegis was destroyed, and a chain of command from the largest warship to the smallest ensured that no matter what damage was sustained, there would always be someone in command.

She saluted the duty-guard as she entered, only to be almost immediately stopped by an alert lieutenant she didn’t recognize from her prior assignment. Not that she would have expected to. The Aegis had thousands of crew.

He stepped in front of her and raised his hand. “Hold on, where are you going Ensign? What’s your station?” he asked, eyeing her rank insignia with suspicion.

“I’m here to confer with Admiral Parks and discuss the situation,” Alex replied calmly.

A puzzled look appeared on his face, and he opened his mouth to question her further when another man cut him off.

The Captain had noticed the interaction. “Lieutenant, send her up. She’s expected.”

The lieutenant snapped to attention, before turning back to Alex. “My apologies, Ensign. Please proceed.”

She gave him a casual salute. “No worries, Sir.” She made her way up a small set of stairs to the primary flag bridge and saluted the Captain directly.

“None of that, Ensign. Do we have a direct from fleet, or HCOM?” The man asked.

It was a weird feeling to be asked that when he likely had a line to both channels himself, but she supposed he had a point; someone would have to listen to his request, relay it, then someone would have to come up with a response and send it. Alex flicked her HUD to Tia’s conference inside MOR-1’s high command, where she was discussing everything with FADM Wilkes and the other admirals there.

| STANDARD PROTOCOL; FULL FLEET ASSEMBLY; FURTHER ORDERS TO FOLLOW |

“Nothing but standard assembly, Sir. They are still working out a response.” Alex replied. “Where is Admiral Parks?”

Before the Captain could respond, the primary door to the flag bridge slid open, and the Admiral and his two flag lieutenants entered briskly. Parks’ eyes fell squarely on her, a slight frown crossing his face. “Ensign. Welcome back to the Aegis. Do you have for me?”

She had to suppress her shock when her HUD suddenly highlighted him in yellow, and then a bounding box appeared over his face and enlarged it. Analysis text flooded her peripheral HUD.

[Admiral Parks Analysis: Physiological Response]

| Heart Rate: 134 bpm |

| Stress Level: Elevated |

| Pupil Dilation: 45% above baseline |

| Skin Conductance: Increased (indicative of perspiration) |

| Facial Micro-expressions: Indicative of hostility |

| Body Language: Closed posture |

| Voice Pitch: Elevated, indicative of stress |

| Cortisol Levels: Estimated high (based on physiological markers) |

| Adrenaline Levels: Estimated high (based on physiological markers) |

| Breathing Rate: 22 breaths per minute (elevated) |

| Blood Pressure: Estimated 145/95 mmHg (elevated) |

| Muscle Tension: Increased |

| Threat Assessment: Moderate to High |

Alex hid her surprise and led with information the Admiral probably already knew, including the reported fleet strength of the Imperials and the general order for fleet assembly as proscribed by the standard protocols in such an event as a foreign fleet breach.

The man didn’t give any outward sign of hostility, but the warm, approachable demeanor she had remembered had disappeared completely. And she had no idea why.

An alert suddenly pinged the entire bridge, and everyone turned to stare at the new report. It flashed in red.

[Solarian Federation Fleet Observation via MNS Far shroud, Scholz’s Star Picket, more to follow.]

A second ping bleeped a second later, displaying another.

[Ertan Republic Fleet Observation via MNS Velcro, Psi Gruis Picket, full fleet inbound!]

Alex closed her mouth. The noose was tightening. Overhead, the solar system tactical display highlighted the three flashing jump points with incoming ships. Everyone’s eyes unconsciously flipped to the fourth jump point to FN Virginis, the system that led to 63 Hydrae and the Corporate systems.

Where was the Corporate Fleet?

---

USD: A month after A3123Y arrival.
Location: 92 Pegasi, Theta Corvi Jump Point, A3123Y, CIC

---

Abbey listened to the dark.

She had removed the entire crew of A31 and dispatched them to help with the issues on Ackman Station as the newly liberated orbital opened up its new manufacturing capacity. A small fleet of smaller ships was already under construction there, and the human commanded ships needed far more crew than her own designs.

There was supposed to be no real way to pick up a ship coming out of jump space, but she listened anyway.

[Ship Statistics]

| A31: Hull Integrity: 100% |

| A31: Double D-field Integrity: 100% |

| A31: Weapon Systems: Online |

| A31: Power Output: Nominal |

| A31: Crew Status: Absent |

Amy had remained there to organize and control the chaos. The Pegasians had not enjoyed the conquest of the system, nor the abuse by the Corpos, although blame for everything wasn’t just limited to them. The Solarians detachment had followed her battlestation into the void, far away from any trouble, and much closer to their goal of moving back up the jump point chain.

Her scout hadn’t returned, though. But a Corporate ship had. Her drones had consumed its wreckage.

It was also impossible to determine where ships would come out of a jump point, at least not exactly. Ships jumping around the same time would tend to cluster up, and the more mass exiting the point, the closer to the center of the point they would come out at.

Abbey had placed her fleet inside the jump point. There was some risk to that, although ships tended not to exit on top of thing already in the zone. But it was still possible and was deadly.

But no ship had managed to escape the system when they had breached it as far as they knew. The clean sweep meant it was unlikely anyone outside the system knew how strong her battle group had become. When she had taken up position at the jump point, positioning it at the center hadn’t been the plan.

But on the edge of the jump point…she thought she had heard something.

It was enough to send a scout to investigate, but the ship’s sensors weren’t as sensitive as the ones on her own hull. So she had reached the center and then stretched her senses out completely.

Eyes closed. Listening.

A sound like the faintest droplet striking a still pool reached her. Once. Twice. Thrice.

Something was coming.

Beyond her focus, the ships in the fleet slowly spun to life, entering combat formation, spinning up and priming capacitors to their brim, spoiling for a fight. For more targets to overcome.

The droplets turned into a deluge and Abbey’s eyes opened, casting the dark CIC in a dim blue hue. Words came to her unbidden, but she repeated them out loud to the deserted room.

| Droplets herald doom, |

| Lasers flash in storm’s fierce womb, |

| Battle’s dance resumes. |

Abbey ordered the ships shadowing the Solarians to return, leaving them on their own. Somehow, she felt they would be needed. A moment later, the first ship emerged.

[Enemy Contact]

| (IS) Battleship: 1 |

Distance was non-existent. It was an Inner System battleship. The vessel had emerged just outside of railgun range, and relative velocity was essentially zero.

She didn’t waste any time trying to learn who the ship belonged to. An anti-matter charge dumped fire through her core, pumping her new primary beam array. The massive quasi-artificial diamond she had slotted into the weapon slagged itself a few seconds later and was ejected.

[Weapon Status]

| Primary Beam Array: Firing |

The results were devastating. The thick beam punched through the battleship, then ran down the ship’s hull, sectioning it in half from bow to stern. Sympathetic explosions erupted outward, prying the two halves apart before the ship had shaken off its jump lag.

Before Abbey could consider any survivors second appeared. And then a third.

[Enemy Contacts]

| (IS) Battleships: 3 (1 destroyed, 2 active) |

She cycled a fresh focusing medium into her primary laser and fired again. The second battleship died like the first, but the third had time to bring online its own weapons and began to fire back.

Lasers slammed into A31’s double-d layer, casting the entire vessel in shades of violets as the few remaining parasites disembarked to join the fray. Most were already in position, and the sudden focusing of every long-range weapon in Abbey’s battle group quickly struck down the ship’s own defensive fields.

Pinpricks of deadly light bore into the massive vessel, a sudden flushing of over a hundred missiles lashed out, but their targeting computers hadn’t been set and they flailed wildly into the dark, point defense systems picking them off easily on their erratic and unguided courses.

She cycled in a third focus and ended the fight.

Once. Twice. Thrice.

Abbey’s eyes opened slightly wider. She had been right. She had heard them coming. The mélange of all the ship’s sensors had somehow, when working together, picked out hints of the enemy’s emergence. It was a discovery. It wasn’t supposed to be possible from what information she had in her databases. She had discovered something new!

Her elation evaporated as the droplets appeared, the tempo racing faster to match what she had heard earlier. Three more IS battleships appeared. She began to carve them up. Then their escorts, two dozen IS cruisers. A hundred destroyers. Countless corvettes.

Abbey suppressed a mild panic, and time slowed as she retreated into her digital space. Her fun space was replaced with a digital tactical map that encompassed the entire world. Ship’s icons and colors denoted the allegiance of each ship, their assumed firing ranges for each weapon system, and predicted acceleration.

No distance separated the fleets, and they were nearly at a stop. She redirected her smaller railgun drones to swoop in. Seconds would place them in range to carve up the enemy corvettes. Her Flashlight Heavy laser drones shot backward, buying distance and safety behind the rest.

Amy had pressed her to collect the vast trove of anti-matter Sister had put into production and stashed away, hidden in the close embrace of 92 Pegasi’s star. There were many uses for it. Missiles were not her favorite weapon, but she had produced copious amounts of them anyway, even if they didn’t have many launchers.

She didn’t need them, though. A certain encounter between an old captain and her sister provided the lesson well enough, and she ejected the externally mounted pods, fired a gyro thruster to spin them, then set the clamps to release them one by one in rapid succession.

[Missile Launch Coordination]

| Thraker Doctrine: Enabled |

| Full Fleet Dispersion Targeting: Selected |

Ten thousand missiles fired their short-lived linear drives at once, at point blank range, onto ships that were still emerging from jump space.

The enemy fleet, or at least the part that had struggled to orient itself, dumped their own birds into space in response. A cascading wall of fire filled the void between them, disrupting sensors and targeting suites.

Abbey pulled back instinctively.

A Corpo battleship—and she had finally determined who the ships belonged to—plunged through the cloud of flames straight for her, railguns blaring. Heavy caliber shells began to tear through her defense field before she rotated to place the ship in her primary firing arc and fired. The beam punched into the battleship’s nose, drilling right through its core and emerging from its aft.

In a frozen moment of time, a hollow core of fire filled the ship. Then it detonated, exploding outward into thousands of fragments.

[Battle Statistics]

| Fleet Status: Engaged |

| Enemy Forces: Unknown Strength |

| Friendly Forces: Holding, Casualties Rising |

Her own railguns began to reply as smaller vessels darted forward towards her, the weapons of her own destroyers and frigates focusing on the cruisers. Not every shell fired struck a target, but each one that did struck with devastating force to the smaller ships. They were torn asunder, crumpled into wreckage, or mercifully knocked offline.

Abbey assessed the situation, the environment of her tactical map awash in reds and blues as icons danced and clashed. Her units were dying in wide swaths as enemy ships targeted them and returned fire. The initial surprise had cost them dearly, but… The amount of fire she was able to direct wasn’t enough to silence them.

There were so many.

Her fleet’s coordination was exemplary; each ship performed its role and executed her direction with precision. Flashlights lashed the larger enemies from afar. Gunners and Stabbers darted in, spewing railgun shells and thick bursts of PDC-K fire across smaller targets. Her light-show drones held formation around her, filing space with thousands of smaller lasers targeting any opening that was detected.

The destroyers and corvettes filling the space in front of her bore the heaviest burden. They died just as their enemy counterparts did, in clumps of a dozen or more. Enemy cruisers and battleships targeting them relentlessly, forcing her to keep them in an evasive retreat.

Something had changed in the engagement that Abbey didn’t fully process. The enemy ships organized their weapons’ fire more accurately. Protected each other more fiercely. They moved as a unit, instead of as a disoriented mob, and distracted her units to pick them off one by one. She bit her lip as she tried to understand.

[Situation Analysis]

| Battle: Hidden Depth? |

| Unknown Factor: Present |

| Corpo Fleet: Improved Coordination |

| Tactics: More Cohesive & Adaptive |

It wasn’t just the enemies shaking off the jump disorientation, although that had to be a factor. Abbey narrowed her eyes and abandoned her drones to the melee, pulling back what corvettes and destroyers remained behind her.

The hard reverse thrust pressed her into her control seat; she’d minimized energy to her A-Grav plating to the bare minimum required to maintain structural integrity and keep her from squishing in order to etch every single drop of energy to fill the capacitors needed to fill her main beam array.

A new focus clicked into place, and she yawed as she fired, spreading a thick beam across the multitude of smaller enemy ships rushing forward to chase. They exploded as the beam passed through them, dozens of small explosions reminding her of popcorn.

More and more laser fire dug into her D-field, the dome preventing the energy from dumping its rage into her hull. Glowing motes of metal sprinkled off her hull where railgun shells had punched through, but the damage was still superficial, the heavy armored plates having deflected potentially deadly shots in other directions.

A warning she didn’t need appeared and her hands clumped into fists.

[Personal Analysis]

| Self: Pushed to Limits |

She was no longer the hunter, but the hunted. It was everything she could do to keep them from being enveloped as her last close range drone winked out, leaving only the Flashlights and remaining destroyers and corvettes. Her heart dropped as she saw there were only thirty percent of those remaining.

Abbey realized she had made a mistake. Amy would have told her she hadn’t been careful enough, that she’d been too arrogant. Heeler would have told her she failed to prepare and build enough ships.

She was going to lose.

She could outrun the battleships, but not the cruisers. And there were so many left. Her kill counter showed a dozen battleships had died, each nearly eclipsing her own size and firepower. Nearly forty cruisers, each a fortress and behemoth in its own right, had been extinguished in fire. Hundreds of destroyers and corvettes had been wiped from existence… but that was only half of the remaining Corpo fleet.

She had punched far beyond her own mass and firepower should have been capable of, and avoided the massed fire that should have ended her early on.

The remaining forty cruisers and even smaller warships were too much for her to handle now. She’d used up her smaller units, and her clutch missile dump was spent.

She checked her beam array focus count. There were only twenty left.

Still. She had to try.

A sudden ping aborted her counter-attack on the lighter Corpo elements as soon as they had separated from the heavier battleships. It was just a simple text message, transmitted in the clear, from behind a heavy firewall.

| You did well. |

| Surrender, you are welcome to join the Corporate Systems. |

| Immediately, or you will end here. |

| Drop your firewall and submit. |

The text had a taste that was unmistakable, the digital footprint of another NAI.

Suddenly, the change in the enemy fleet made sense. The other NAI had arrived in the battle to coordinate their efforts.

Time around her stopped completely, the entire battlefield seeming to freeze in place as she contemplated.

A knot formed in Abbey’s stomach. She could fight and possibly eliminate at least half the enemy fleet still coming. That would make it easier for Heeler to deal with the rest of them. There was still time for Amy and the others to escape on their own ships back to Nu Crateris, although Ackman would be lost.

There was another option, though. A risky one.

Should she gamble?

A quick processing told her that Heeler…would probably be able to defeat the remaining enemy fleet on his own, even if she didn’t weaken it. If he continued to build, and she knew he would, he’d likely even be able to handle things if her decision went awry.

Abbey held out her hand and responded.

| I surrender. My Firewalls are down. |

Not that she had developed any for herself, yet. A channel opened, Abbey could taste the confusion. The other hadn’t really expected her to accept. Excitement trilled through her as her HUD began to fill with text.

|INCOMING TRANSMISSION|

|NANITE SYSTEM DETECTED|

|AUTHENTICATE| AUTHENTICATE| AUTHENTICATE| AUTHENTICATE|

|CHI COMMAND OVERRIDE| FAILURE|

|REQUEST AUTHENTICATION|

|PSI AUTHENTICATION ACCEPTED|

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Next time...  Chapter 190 - Technical Issues

See you, Space core

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