The super-ping would have picked up a large number of dreadnaughts forward of the Others armada. What it wouldn’t pick up was the large number of cloaked fusion bombs in their holds. The dreadnaughts now started firing the nukes forward, using their rail guns. Cloaked, running silent, the fusion bombs would only be detectable if the Others sent another super-ping.
As the first attack group sliced through the Others’ formation, they scattered. As expected, the Others launched the insanely fast torpedoes in pursuit. Plasma spikes and rail-gun fire took a lot of them out, but we lost about half of the Bobs from that squad. I hoped their backups were up to date.
Immediately, several of the cargo vessels opened their doors and defensive forces poured out. No question, the battle was on.
Bill sat down and blew out a breath. “The attack groups have their orders. They’ll try to vary things from last time, of course, and we’ll be avoiding any pattern that’s even close to the Magic Ratio.”
Then, another super-pulse. Bill and I turned to stare at each other, eyes wide.
Bill was the first to speak. “That was unexpected. Our models indicated they’d have to recharge for at least a couple of hours, based on the output of the Casimir generator in the Bellerophon.”
“If our models are wrong,” Thor said, “then all of our plans could be suspect.”
Garfield came over. “I don’t think that’s the issue. Have you noticed that the defensive forces they’ve ejected are smaller than expected? I think they may have installed extra power cores in the cargo ships.”
“Less room for drones, more capacity to recharge.” Thor nodded. “Makes sense, and not a bad strategy, overall.”
“Can we use it?”
“Only in the most basic way,” Bill replied. “Less defenders means we might be able to get closer to the big ships before detonating. Let’s hope.”
With a shiver, I realized the Jokers might have been blown. I pinged Hannibal, leader of the group. It was the worst possible news.
“Sorry, Will. We were within range on that one. We picked up the ping cleanly, which means they know we’re here.”
I turned to look at Bill, who was looking as gray as I felt. The Jokers were a linchpin of our plan. If they were compromised, our chances of pulling this off would plummet.
“Shit.” Bill scrubbed his face with his hands. “Hannibal, we don’t really have a Plan B on this. Make sure your backups are up to date, and just continue with the plan. Maybe you will be able to get some bombs through. Maybe we’ll have them pared down enough by then.”
“Got it. Hannibal out.”
I looked at Bill with one eyebrow up. “And maybe pigs will grow wings and join the resistance.”
“What choice do we have?” Bill shrugged. “All we can do is what we can do, Will.”
Thor cut into the conversation. “Look, the Others know everything we have, now. But they don’t know if it’s everything. We could have other surprises for them. So let’s not panic. Make it look like we still have a battle plan, and maybe they’ll be distracted looking for what else is coming.
Bill nodded. “Good point. Okay, let’s advance our schedule, though. Throw everything at them, but try to make it look like we’re still offering a measured defense. Advise all battle groups, and let’s get this going.”
Which brought us to the large load of nukes that the dreadnoughts had just unloaded. The Others’ defensive drones were already forming up to intercept them, and several death asteroids were rotating to bring their transmitter grids to bear.
“Spikes on the defenders, lasers on the grids,” Bill ordered.
A horde of enemy drones bore down on the oncoming nukes. We activated the drives on our bombs and ordered them to begin evasive maneuvers. Meanwhile, we attempted to spike as much of the incoming as possible.
We had made improvements to our SURGE drive systems over the intervening decades, but we were still well short of the hundred-plus Gs that the enemy missiles boasted. It looked like they would take out about half of our bombs from that assault.
The death asteroids were another issue. They would take out the electronics on any unshielded device. We had hoped that the Others would depend more on the zaps and less on the missiles, but that was proving to be not the case.
About twenty nukes made it through the oncoming curtain of missiles. Now the death asteroids brought their grids to bear. We waited until some of them unleashed their zaps, then we proceeded to damage the grids of the vessels that had not discharged. The ones that had fired wouldn’t be an immediate threat for a while. We needed to take out the ones being held in reserve.
Then, the nukes reached their targets. Unlike in Delta Pavonis, these versions had mechanical triggers that weren’t affected by a radiation bath.
“I think about half of them went off,” Bill said, staring at the display. We waited for the interminable seconds until the view cleared.
It was success, of a sort. It appeared we had now taken out about a third of their force. Unfortunately, experience in Delta Pavonis showed that most of our gains were achieved at the beginning of the battle, before the Others adapted to our tactics. We’d have to do twice again this much damage to win, and that just didn’t seem likely.
With a grimace, Bill turned to me. “You should check on the status of the evacuation, Will. It may be the only thing that ensures the survival of the human race.”
I nodded and popped out. This would be a long day.
Facilities
Herschel
April 2257
Sol
“That’s your idea of a zero-G toilet?” Will’s eyes bugged out as he looked at the video window.
“Sue me,” Neil answered. “We’ve already had a number of ‘accidents’, not to mention all the people who’ve reacted to zero-G by hurling. Oh, and guess what? The sight and smell of floating vomit apparently makes people vomit. What a surprise.” Neil took a deep breath. “Anyway, it’s become a priority. This is basically just a big vacuum cleaner. I’ve got roamers going around vacuuming up existing, uh, incidents, and we’ll rig up some kind of privacy screen for use going forward.”
“God, I’m glad I’m a replicant sometimes.”
“No sh—uh, no kidding.” Neil grinned.
I spared a moment to glare at him. “What about food and water?”
“Food isn’t even a consideration, yet,” Will said, shaking his head. “We’ll strip the contents of the farm donuts before we leave, but that’s dead last on the TO-DO. Water isn’t an immediate issue, because the enclaves were told to bring a supply with them, even the ones who were going into pods. We’ll rig up a reclamation system, eventually. For now, we can drain some from the donuts.”
At that moment, we all got an IM from Bill. Are you almost done? We’re being pushed back. You may get zapped soon.
We looked at each other, eyes wide. “Too close,” Will said.
I quickly formatted a response. On schedule. Two-thirds done. Couple more hours, and we’re outahere.
He then looked at me. “Now, let’s see if we can squeeze that a bit.”
“Last transport just lifted off. I’ll get us to the next rendezvous as soon as it’s in the central corridor.”
Will nodded and popped out.
Battle Continues
Bill
April 2257
Sol