destroyed by the island itself, fortified as it was with lasers and the like. In that case we’d smashed them against our strongest defensive point. The enemy had helpfully come against our strength, beating their heads against a rock. Unfortunately, fortifying Andros Island further wouldn’t win the next battle. I didn’t think they could be talked into attacking only that single spot on Earth again.
The trick then, I thought, was to put something like Andros Island out near the rings themselves. The reason Andros had managed to stop a hundred ships was because it wasn’t a ship, but an island, a brick of land bristling with weaponry. I decided we needed a platform like that in space. A huge structure we could drag out into place or build on the spot. It would have to be big, and it would have to put all its power into weapons.
The key problem with ships was the fact it took more power to run engines than it did to run weapons. Most of every ship’s power went to the engines, and the guns were therefore comparatively small. But, if I could build a static defensive platform, I could mass heavy weaponry on it and blow away enemy ships as they wriggled through the rings a few at a time. A fort placed in range of a ring would be able to concentrate its fire, outgunning each ship as it came through. That was the key, the enemy would be blind easy to ambush, and they couldn’t all come through at once. If I could generate enough firepower to blow away one ship at a time every few seconds, they could throw a thousand ships into an attack and lose them all. And, knowing the Macros, they might just do that.
Minefields weren’t going to cut it, and I couldn’t station the fleet at every ring forever. We had to build a fortification. Something… huge.
I smiled to myself. Possibly, I had the tail of an idea that could win this war-not just another battle.
