Oh, bloody hell. We must be fucking crazy.
That might have been spoken out loud, judging from the way the others were grinning at him.
Acceleration began as Jessika activated their gravitonic drive. They rose amid the Olyix survivors from the siege of Salt Lake City, reaching for the relative safety of altitude. The tarnished white globe of Earth now had dozens of flotillas striving for the haven of the arkship at its Lagrange Three point orbit, three hundred and eighty thousand kilometres above the surface, directly opposite the moon.
When they were four thousand kilometres out from Earth, the various Olyix flotillas began to merge into larger groups. Callum kept watch through the fuselage sensors while experiencing the urges to congregate from the Salvation’s onemind. The impulses gradually began to make sense as the G8Turing refined its interpretation, enhancing the basic impulse into a multi-themed complexity; picking the individual strands apart was even more difficult, like trying to isolate a specific instrument from an orchestral symphony. He was amazed and impressed that Jessika could make any sense of it.
‘Alpha Defence is consolidating its cruiser fleets,’ Yuri observed.
‘Chasing us,’ Alik said. ‘And, oh, look, strategically never quite catching up. Bummer, huh?’
‘The cruisers were specifically built to have a lower acceleration than the transports,’ Kandara said. ‘Some of the transports have to be allowed to escape.’
‘That’s got to be suspicious,’ Callum told her.
‘The onemind isn’t thinking in those terms,’ Jessika said. ‘Its entire attention is focused on a strategic withdrawal, safeguarding the cocoons it has on board. Its main worry is what to do with all the ships retreating to it – including this one. There’s not enough hangar capacity on board. We’re being instructed to fly directly into the wormhole.’
‘Can we do that?’ Yuri asked.
‘The negative energy regulators are fully functional, so that won’t be a problem. But our mission is to stay with the Salvation of Life.’
‘What do you suggest?’
‘The Olyix retreat is still taking a lot of punishment. Plenty of ships are damaged. I can mimic impairment to our regulators. That might get us assigned to a hangar.’
‘Do it,’ Yuri said.
Callum kept watching their flight to the arkship. Cruisers were still firing barrage after barrage of missiles at the fleeing Olyix transport ships. The rate of dispatch was lower now, giving the wholly true impression that human munition stocks were depleting. There were almost no Calmissiles being fired at all, allowing the few surviving Deliverance ships to defend the transport flotillas more effectively.
Jessika’s request to the Salvation onemind was a whispered tune on the edge of Callum’s subconscious, a feeble little plea. He didn’t think the arkship would pay anything so diminutive the slightest attention. It was completely absorbed by the Strikeback attack.
‘Do you think it’ll conform to our strategy?’ he asked.
‘The son of a bitch goddamn should conform,’ Alik said. ‘We need that. We need it to do what we want. Strikeback is all about backing it into a corner. That’s why this whole attack exists. The only reason—’
‘It will,’ Kandara said. ‘The onemind has shown considerable tactical aptitude. It must know we could have launched our surprise attack directly against it. A thousand Calmissiles would have turned it into the universe’s biggest lump of Swiss cheese, and rotational inertia would have finished the job.’
‘Ah, Lord bless the mighty Calmissiles.’ Alik laughed. ‘Just look at those mothers go.’
‘We’re lucky to live in an age where such wonders exist,’ Kandara said levelly.
‘Oh, go fuck yourselves,’ Callum grumbled. ‘Using portal fuselages as a weapon was a good idea, and you know it.’
‘Don’t we just.’ Yuri smirked.
‘It was, Cal,’ Jessika agreed. ‘The onemind is genuinely disconcerted by them. It knows it’s incredibly vulnerable to a mass strike.’
‘It also knows we wouldn’t risk that,’ Yuri said. ‘We’re desperate, but not so much that we’d slaughter every cocoon on board, which is what would happen if it disintegrates. It knows we’re working on saving them, on reversing the cocooning process.’
‘Trust Johnston,’ Kandara said. ‘The strike against Salvation will be precise. The onemind will know we’re trying to cripple it by killing the wormhole now that we’ve eliminated the bulk of the Deliverance ships. That’s a logical move on our part. That leaves it with only one option.’
Callum felt the impulse from the Salvation onemind come – a multifarious incitement to all the Olyix transport ships in their flotilla. He was pleased he didn’t have to ask Jessika what it meant.
Time for the Avenging Heretic to flip over and decelerate towards the Salvation of Life. The manoeuvre would leave all the approaching transports vulnerable to the cruisers who had no such need. They weren’t going to rendezvous with the arkship; they were going to flash past at high velocity and launch a final massive barrage of missiles. He could even sense how disconcerting that was to the Olyix.
Deliverance ships clustered protectively around the Salvation of Life were dispatched to intercept the cruisers, as were the ones escorting the transports. The timing was going to have to be perfect.
Trust Johnston.
Fortunately it was more than just the Adjutant-General. Strikeback was two years of effort and planning, millions of people involved manufacturing warships, thousands of people managing the effort. Hundreds of tacticians crafting and analysing the plan, building in multiple contingencies. Six supervising, in conjunction with the most powerful G8Turing hypercube ever built. This was not simply throwing the dice and hoping.
Knowing that still didn’t stop him from fretting.
The Avenging Heretic was eight minutes out from the Salvation of Life, and decelerating at three gees, when four stealthed portals opened a thousand
