I’d reached Actium as quickly as possible after receiving the news from Fleet. Due to the significant distance out to the ring orbiting Hel, we hadn’t been given any time to react to the Crustacean attack. Instead, we could only watch vids of the aftermath and analyze them. In this case, the analysis was simple: the Crustaceans had gotten their collective shell-covered tails kicked.
They’d sent through a flock of nineteen ships, each of which was identical in appearance. They were all a familiar design of Nano ship. It was strange, seeing these vessels coming at us aggressively. I recognized them so intimately. I’d spent months inside Alamo, a twin to every one of them. I even paused to wonder if Alamo was among these attackers, and if the ship would recognize my voice if I attempted contact. It was a strange thought.
I didn’t have time to try to talk to them, however. Sixteen of the nineteen ships were destroyed by our mines. They tried to shoot them down, but it was hopeless. I’d laid thousands there, on the off chance the Macros would send a fresh fleet of cruisers at us from that direction. The mines didn’t work as well on the smaller more maneuverable Nano ships as they had on ponderous Macro cruisers-but they did the job. Each contained a tiny nuclear charge at the center of a dark, star-shaped metal object. Any contact, even close proximity to a vessel that didn’t broadcast the correct friend-or-foe code, caused detonation. As we watched the incoming vids we counted ninety-three detonations.
It was overkill, really. The surviving ships reversed themselves and exited back through the ring. Dozens of my mines followed them, attracted by magnetics and tiny brainboxes.
“I hate seeing fellow biotics killed,” I said. “Recall Socorro. There’s little point to sending a scout ship out there alone now.”
“Why are the lobsters attacking us, sir?” Miklos asked me.
“I don’t know. Have you sent every message you could asking for peace and a meeting?”
“Of course. But they never got the transmissions. The incursion was brief, and the mines pushed them back before they could have possibly received the messages.”
I nodded. Battle at great distances had logistic difficulties. On Earth, you could at least talk to someone on the other side of the world with a few seconds of delay tagging onto the end of each sentence. That was annoying, but it could be dealt with. Without much trouble you could have a comprehensive conversation. At greater distances, it was more like texting each other. There might be hours between transmissions and responses. In this case, the delay was something like four hours. That meant this video was old. Everything could have changed by now. The Lobsters could have broken through, or they might have given up and retreated for good. It was frustrating being fed old information. I wanted to see the battle in real time.
“This is all we need,” I said. “It’s not enough that the Macros are building up a fleet to push us out of this system, the Crustaceans seem to have the same goal. No one wants us here in the Eden system, do they Captain?”
Miklos shrugged. “A wise man listens to the winds,” he said.
I glanced at him sharply. Was he trying to suggest Star Force should retreat? He didn’t meet my gaze, but instead busied himself with the command screen. I frowned down at the debris from the ships and the reduced count of mines. They’d shot down a fair number. Still, there were about seven thousand of them active out there. We’d lost about a thousand, but they’d done their work.
I slapped my hand on the command table. Fortunately, I’d removed my gauntlets, and the screen didn’t rupture. A few staffers flicked their eyes to me, then back to their work.
“Maybe we should call on the Worms,” I said. “They might come to support us.”
“You think these Nano ships are that big of a threat?” Miklos asked.
“Not really, but I like to operate from a position of strength. Right now, I believe we have the best ground forces in the system. But we can’t use them if we don’t control space. The Crustaceans are a new unknown in the equation. A newly hostile neighbor. They’ve obviously destroyed our scout ship on their side of the ring and just made their first aggressive move into this system. I need allies, not new enemies!”
Everyone else in the control room stayed quiet. I supposed I had a rep now for temper tantrums. No one wanted to get in my way. Miklos looked like he would have exited the room himself if he could have come up with a good excuse.
“How did the test flight go on the new gun ship?” he asked.
“A blatant attempt to change the topic,” I said, then sighed. “Really, the tests went well. They are nowhere near as sleek and maneuverable as these destroyers, but we can produce them twenty times faster-maybe thirty. Pitted against Macro cruisers and these Nano ships…I don’t know. If we have enough of them, we’ll do fine. Let’s talk about our new battle formations and tactics.”
Miklos looked relieved. “Yes, let’s do that.”
After several hours, we’d hammered out a plan. Once we had more gunships than destroyers, we’d implement it. The gunships would lead the fight on the front line. They took more damage, but had a lot less range. They would need to get in close to be effective with their railguns. The Nano destroyers would tag behind, but not too far behind. They would use their lasers to cover the gunships, shooting down incoming missile barrages. Once the formation was in close enough, the railguns and the lasers would be used to target and take out individual targets in coordination.
Really, it came down to numbers. If the Macro cruisers outnumbered our smaller ships we were doomed. If we outnumbered them two to one, we’d win. In-between those two numbers, it was iffy. It was hard to predict how the battle might go.
I had a contingency plan, however, in case the battle did play out with us on the losing side. The front line of gunships would take their beating like little bulldogs, but would eventually be taken out by the larger cruisers. If they lasted long enough to intermix with their formation however, they would have done their work. Aboard every destroyer would be a platoon of troops. These men would deploy like tiny independent attackers and swarm the cruisers. We’d done well with those tactics in the past, and I prayed the Macros hadn’t yet come up with an effective defense against marine boarding assaults.
I recalled that in ancient times, sea battles had really been land battles between ships linked by boarding planks. The slow, wooden galleys of the Greeks, Romans and Carthaginians had missile weapons, but the real fight began when they closed with one another. They rammed, boarded, and set fire to one another. They fought close battles on blood-slicked decks that often involved hundreds of ships and thousands of marines. I reflected that battle tactics had come full-circle over time, once again making marines a significant factor in ship-to-ship combat.
After hammering out plans for rosters of ships I hadn’t even built yet, I retired when my eyes no longer focused properly. By that time, I had four new gunships, and more were on the way. But I knew I needed forty-or better yet four hundred of them. I wouldn’t feel comfortable until I had a serious fleet.
I was awakened by an alarm klaxon. Something big was up. I bounced out of my bunk and cracked my head on the ceiling. Wincing and rubbing, I reached for my battle armor and slapped on the lights. I connected to the general command channel and almost broke my headset pulling it onto my head.
“What’s going on?” I demanded. My voice was drown out by the babble of others. There seemed to be some kind of action going on.
There was regret on my face as I passed by the shower compartment. There simply wasn’t time. I pulled on my armor as quickly as I could and staggered out into the hall. An Ensign rushed past on his way to the command center. I followed him stiffly.
Everyone aboard was in the command center, and they were so focused on the display they didn’t even notice me at first. I didn’t care. I stumped up to the board and worked on adjusting my battle suit. The Nanos did most of the work in that department. It was nice, having a million or so tiny robots to dress you. All a marine had to do these days was get himself stuffed into the suit, then the smart metal took over. It closed the gaps, sealed the openings and gently cinched up every inch of the frame until it fit like a thousand-pound glove.
I didn’t have to ask anyone what was happening, as the facts were plain to see on the big board. I’d expected to see a mass of Macro cruisers, fresh from their berths under domes on every world, rising up to attack us. But instead, I saw a depiction of Hel and the distant, dark ring.
When I’d gone to sleep aboard Actium, there’d been over seven thousand mines out there. They were tiny yellow contacts, one pixel each, forming a gentle cloud that obscured the entire region of space. Much had
