No doubt the Brazilians were congratulating themselves on their fine shooting. But the purpose of those busters had been to use up their missiles. Medeiros’ behavior in Epsilon Eridani had shown that he was willing to sacrifice himself if he saw he couldn’t win. We wanted this group to use up their ordnance defending themselves instead of launching a suicide attack.
They still had four missiles in reserve, and four busters bearing down on them. We waited, trying to project an “out of ammo” vibe. A stalemate here would be a win for the Brazilians.
And finally, they committed. The Brazilians fired their last four missiles at the oncoming busters.
“Checkmate!” Homer yelled. Intent on the approaching busters, the Brazilians had failed to detect the cannonballs. Totally inert, with no radio or fusion signature, the cannonballs were invisible unless the Brazilians picked that specific moment to do a SUDDAR sweep.
Six of the eight cannonballs found their targets, just as the last wave of missiles and busters destroyed each other. We followed up with more cannonballs until telemetry indicated no activity in the enemy craft.
After days of preparation and waiting, the actual conflict had come down to who had more ammo.
Homer and I did omnidirectional SUDDAR sweeps, looking for any tricks or traps that the Brazilians might have unloaded before they were destroyed. A second sweep checked the area around the wreckage of the enemy ships. Finally, satisfied that nothing awaited us, we eased over and checked for any still-operational or partly-destroyed busters.
Homer thought this was funny. “Going to give them a proper burial?”
“No,” I responded. “I’m going to try to build a couple more busters. I’ve got the parts, except I’m a little short on massive balls of solid steel.”
Homer chortled like a kid who had just made a potty joke. “Balls of solid steel…” He snorted.
I sighed, and the words friendly fire flashed through my mind. “Homer, we’ve got six busters left, and the two Brazilians have four missiles each if they’re provisioned the same as the four we just destroyed. Not only can we not do the pairing-up thing to defend against the missiles, but we don’t have enough busters to take out the missiles and the ships, even if our luck is perfect. So I’m going to try to rebuild some busters, and I’m going to scoop up a bunch of scrap from the battle as well, for rail gun ammo. You might want to do the same.”
Homer looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded.
***
Phase two of the assault involved sneaking up on the two remaining Brazilian ships. We had deliberately chosen an approach around the sun that would require us to come around the other side at full 2.5 g acceleration in order to get to Earth. And we had been very careful not to display our full 5 g capability since coming in-system. Now we applied every erg of power to bending our course before we came around from behind the sun.
[Shutdown in five seconds]
I shut down my VR. In a few seconds, both ships would go dark. We would shut down the SURGE drives and go ballistic. We would stop using SUDDAR and shut down the fusion reactors. As far as the Brazilian ships would know, we and our pursuers had annihilated each other. When they didn’t see us come out the other side on the expected trajectory, hopefully they would relax their guard.
For two days, we would drift, surviving on power cells. We would lower our frame rates to minimum in order to save every milliwatt of power. The roamers would be set to refining the scraps from the battle into cannonballs for the rail gun, but as each roamer ran its power cell down, it would be shelved.
We would power up only when we had put Earth directly between us and the Brazilians.
[Shutdown]
I felt the ship go dark. I cranked my frame rate all the way down…
***
[We have arrived]
“Report.”
[Orbital insertion was successful. We are coming up on a point directly on the other side of Earth from the Enemy ships]
“Excellent. As soon as we’re sufficiently shielded, start everything up and accelerate to keep us in their blind spot.”
[Aye]
As power came up to full, I restarted my VR and relaxed into my captain’s chair.
Homer popped up in a video window. “I see you survived the trip.”
I nodded to him.” Let’s get the mission status up in the tank, Guppy.”
The holotank filled with a schematic showing the Earth, the location of our ships, and the location of the two Brazilian ships and the four asteroid masses that they were shepherding.
[Positions of enemy are extrapolations, but are high probability, based on orbital mechanics and most recent observations]
“That’s fine, Guppy. Our biggest problem will be if the Brazilians play hide and seek behind the asteroids that they’re herding. If they fire their missiles from hiding, they won’t have a lock-in and will have to depend on the missile’s AMI, which we’ve already established is not very smart. We can set our busters to seek-and-destroy, but they don’t have explosive warheads. Without a good head of steam, they won’t be able to penetrate the hull, let alone do any internal damage.”
“If we’re that close, we can use rail guns,” Homer said.
“True, but we have to be careful with our ammo.”
***
We came around the Earth, already doing over 150 km/s. The Brazilian ships might or might not have noticed us right away, but they had six hours to see us and prepare for our arrival. We were still only revealing a maximum 2.5 g acceleration. Let them expend energy wondering how we managed to get behind Earth.
When we were still five minutes away from the lead asteroid, we received a hail from one of the Brazilian ships. I put the call up on the holotank, while Homer observed.
The video was a still image of the Brazilian flag. No avatar, I guess. “You have shown better than we expected from a couple of FAITH babacas. However, now you are coming to us. You will not be so lucky this time. We will litter space with your corpses!”
I looked at Homer in surprise. That’s not Major Medeiros. Who is that?
“This is Commander Riker of the FAITH Space Navy. To whom am I speaking?”
“I am Captain Matias Araújo. I will be the last voice you hear.”
Without further commentary, the sender disconnected.
Homer and I exchanged looks. After a pause, Homer said, “So, what do you think is going on?”
I thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know. But that deep scan I did just before we destroyed our pursuers showed all fabrication systems had been removed to make room for the larger SURGE-based missiles. I didn’t think that through at the time, but now it looks like this may have been a last-ditch effort on the part of the Brazilian Empire. Maybe they were getting stomped, and the probe project was all they had left. They ‘volunteered’ some guy—someone disposable—, stuck his replicant into the ships, and tried to use them as gunships.”
Homer cocked his head. “Which might mean they didn’t have time to give this guy a lot of training in being a replicant. And these ships may be all that’s left of the war.”
[Missiles launched]
We checked our telemetry. The Brazilians had launched eight missiles.