The kids—I realized with a shock that these were Buster’s grandchildren
—had started a game of tag while the adults talked, and one of them barreled into me. There was a moment of tense silence, then I laughed and poked the child with a finger. The tension dissolved and Diana passed around some jerky.
Just family.
72. Battle
Bill
February 2217
Delta Pavonis
All warfare is based on deception.
-- Sun Tzu, Art of War
The defensive crews were less than a week away from Delta Pavonis, and their tau was now down to the point where it was worthwhile having a conversation. Rather than asking them to jack up to our time rate, we would be slowing down to theirs. Because of the numbers, I was hosting the meeting in the moot VR.
“First and most significant,” I said, “is that we’ve cracked the cloaking tech. It took a lot longer than I expected, so Jacques has only been able to retrofit about half of his nukes. There’s no time for you to do anything, so all the non-stealthed hardware—including Bobs—is going to be considered decoys.”
I looked around the room at a sea of somber faces. We’d all gone into this with the attitude that it was probably a suicide mission. With remote backups, suicide missions weren’t as final as they used to be, but still… the person restored from a backup was not the person who created the backup. It was some comfort to know that your memories would go on, but it didn’t feel that it would be personal in some way.
I glanced at the status window that I had put up. It showed the Others’
armada only two days farther out. We had very little time to deploy a defense.
“How are we doing this, then?” asked Andrew, one of the squad leaders.
I nodded to him, acknowledging the question. “I’ve discussed strategy with Butterworth. Unfortunately, most space battle strategy is theoretical, since there’s only been one space war. But I discussed options extensively with him, and the colonel did have some suggestions about deployment. He
can’t be personally involved, of course, since he operates on biological time.
For what it’s worth, I’ll be acting as his proxy.”
There were silent nods around the circle. I added arrows and icons to the status window. “Your group is coming in from this side, and Jacques’ group will be coming in from here and here. We’ll hit in three waves, staggered so we’re not taking each other out. Hopefully the Others can’t redeploy defenses quickly enough and will have to split their assets into three groups instead.”
The animation in the window played out a visual of my description.
“While the Others are fending us off, the stealth bombs will come straight in. We hope that they will be able to get in close and do some significant damage.”
I sat back, chin in hand, and studied the graphic. There was no subtlety at all. On the other hand, it was nice and simple, with few unknowns.
* * *
The first attack group was five minutes out when the Others registered their presence. The group’s trajectory brought them in at thirty degrees off of their approach line. I could see in the SUDDAR window that the Others were deploying drones to act as a first wave of defenders. There wasn’t enough detail at that distance to be able to tell, but we assumed they were rotating the death asteroids to target us as well.
There was very little conversation as we approached. Each Bob presumably took the time to make peace with his own thoughts. Or update his backup. Either or.
At about three minutes distance, there was a whoop from one of the dreadnaughts. “Just took a hit from a death ray,” he announced. “I got sparks, but no significant damage.”
I smiled but didn’t comment. At this distance, even a version-3 Heaven vessel would have survived. We had to assume they were either massively overconfident, or that had been just a probe of some kind. At least one death asteroid was now discharged. It was unlikely it would be able to recharge in time to participate further in this battle.
At one minute, I activated the general channel. “Time to rock, boys.
Deploy all busters and nukes. Let’s light up the sky!”
The Bobs did as ordered. Seventy-five ships became almost four hundred signatures. Now the Others would have to react. Death zaps would simply not
be an option for taking us down.
And sure enough, SUDDAR indicated a massive rearrangement of vessels.
We had a couple hundred drones to deal with. Statistically, we should be able to get through the defenders with about half of our units, but that wouldn’t be enough to take the Others’ main vessels down. I was sure the Others must be smiling—or whatever they did—with glee at our pathetic showing.
And finally, contact. Andrew’s group was the first to pass through the Others’ armada. At the speeds they were travelling, there was no chance of any actual visual contact. Star Wars notwithstanding, ships didn’t buzz around each other like World War II fighter planes. Everything happened in microseconds, and showed up only in status windows.
Results from the first pass showed we’d lost about half of our busters and bombs, and eight dreadnaughts, but we’d taken out about twice as many of them. That was pretty good, and should wipe the smile-equivalents off of the Others’ face-equivalents.
Apparently the Others agreed, because half of the death asteroids released zaps at our armada.
“Report,” I ordered on the general channel.
Responses came back. No further Bob casualties, although a couple of the dreadnaughts were doing emergency repairs. They must have been caught square in the middle of a beam.
However, the bombs and busters weren’t particularly shielded, and any unit caught anywhere in one of the death-rays was dead. We had made a decision, based on this likelihood, to equip these units with regular radio comms only. No advanced SUDDAR, no SCUT, and no chance of giving anything away to the enemy.
The second wave came in right away, not giving the Others time to regroup. They approached from thirty degrees off the Others’ flight line as well, coming in from a vector at 120 degrees of rotation. I watched in the status window transmitted by the group leader.
The second wave passed through the Others’ armada as quickly as we had, but with much less organized resistance from the Others. We were able to put several nukes into a couple of big cargo carriers, and even into one of the death asteroids. The nuke must have hit a charged accumulator of some kind, because the pyrotechnics were truly epic—far more than could be accounted for by a low-yield fission bomb. Twin jets of white-hot plasma, glowing right
into the x-ray band, shot out of the vessel in opposite directions. The surface of the death asteroid peeled back, then it completely disintegrated, spewing pieces in all directions. Cheers went up from all the video windows.
The Others responded with a volley of something—possibly drones, possibly missiles—aimed at the receding attack group. The bogeys displayed truly incredible acceleration, in the hundreds of G’s. It took only moments for us to find out what they were.