BSE Chapter 3-56

Being a more mobile target, Harlow had to send his scouts in once again to ensure the ship’s placement before he committed his fleet.

“Your eminence, the scouts have verified the large ship is still in the same parking orbit,” one of his crew stated.

“Fools,” Harlow said with a smirk. “Tell the fleet to jump to their initial locations and be ready to jump toward the planet in twenty minutes.”

If Char thought she could bleed his forces until she had the advantage, she was sadly mistaken. He would pick them off one at a time if he had to. Once there were no more ships to defend the planet, he could deal with their other defenses at his leisure.

Once the timer ran out, all of his ships jumped.

Wanting to ensure a kill, Harlow ordered his people to fire missiles as well as plasma missiles at the orbiting ship.

The distance was great since they couldn’t get near the planet without risking the defensive lasers, but he was hoping there would be enough going on to distract the fleet and defenders.

One of his frigates from another team jumped in too close to the defense grid and it quickly responded. The captain of the smaller vessel had been given slightly adjusted jump coordinates to ensure he was well within the enemy’s defensive satellite range.

Sacrifices had to be made.

His enemy reacted predictably, orienting their weapon’s platforms away from his angle of approach.

The normal missiles got picked off one by one as the large ship reacted the same way it had before in an effort to defend the ships beneath it. It was annoying, but he had expected as much from this range.

The four plasma missiles raced in. The first one exploded as it was hit by defensive fire, then the next, and the next, but the last missile ignited before the defenders could take it out.

Harlow crowed in triumph until an enemy missile from one of the orbiting missile platforms raced into the path of the plasma ball and exploded.

A large chunk of the plasma was disrupted by the extremely close detonation of the weapon. It was also pushed slightly off course.

Instead of hitting the large ship directly, the remaining energy melted a long trail in the portside of the ship before dissipating completely.

He hadn’t managed to destroy it completely. He cursed the defenders as they jumped out to their rendezvous point.

***

Vitor sucked in a breath as the last plasma missile avoided all of the Talon’s defenses. He had seen more senior Captains shy away from such a dire situation, but Captain Bloomright refused to budge in her defense of the civilian vessels.

Someone above must have been looking out for her and her people though as a single missile from Alexander’s missile platforms raced in to cut off the ball of energy.

It was almost successful as well.

The large open wound left behind on the Talon was visible, even without magnification.

He wanted to order rescue crews to the scene but he was beaten to the punch by Captain Na.

“You all keep doing what you’re doing. We’ll assist the Talon.”

Vitor would thank the man later. He turned back to the tac-display. “How many ships did we lose?”

It was clear Harlow’s goals had shifted and he was now trying to pick off ships instead of orbital assets. It made sense. Clear the fleet and there would be nothing left to stop him.

“Fury is gone, along with the remaining automated gunships,” his sensor operator said sadly.

“Any chance of survivors?” Vitor didn’t know the captain who had taken over the ship for Hall. The man had been one of the Hawks’ people.

“No, sir. Their reactor lost containment.”

Vitor sighed and nodded. Losing ships and people was bound to happen, no matter how much Alexander improved the armor on them.

“Get me a tight beam to Kane,” he said.

The man appeared a few seconds later. “We can’t keep this up, have you been able to trace their jump points?”

Kane’s holographic face nodded. “Lucas is sending me the estimated direction now. I am preparing a search program for the ships, but it could take time for them to find Harlow’s fleet and the supply ships.”

Vitor nodded. “Let’s hope this plan works, or we may be out of options.”

***

Alexander sighed internally after his conversation with Captain Krieger ended. This plan had to work. It wasn’t that they were out of options, this was their only option to even the playing field with Harlow.

That last encounter had cost the defending fleets six ships. Losing Fury was a huge blow to Alexander, but his part of the fleet had gotten off lucky up until that point. Katalynn’s fleet had lost more ships and more people by far than he had.

It didn’t make his loss any easier to stomach though.

His console beeped, letting him know the upload from Lucas was ready. Alexander packaged it up along with the improved algorithms from the fleet’s automated gunships before they died. It might not help the ships much in their endeavor, but every bit of improvement he could give them could be the difference between winning or losing.

Once the package was ready to go, Alexander’s fingers blurred over the terminal, rotating the laser link to the correct coordinates out in space. Once the array was targeted, he pressed send and hoped his ships would manage to disrupt Harlow’s activities.

***

[UPLINK DETECTED]

[UPLOAD IN PROGRESS]

001’s processors began to spin up as the new commands were uploaded into its system. It quickly retransmitted the new programming and commands to the other ships nearby and received similar responses in turn.

It rapidly parsed the information and found ten percent of the code to be corrupted in transit. It corrected this code based on the code that had come from the other ships.

Once all of the ships confirmed they had the correct code, they powered up their reactors to full power and got into formation as they oriented to jump to the first point they were requested to search.

The ships all vanished from space only to appear again a moment later at another point. Their orders required them to remain unseen, which meant they could only use optical sensors to find their targets.

001 scanned the images coming back and quickly determined that the area of space was devoid of targets. His processing algorithms concluded this approach to be suboptimal and sent out slightly adjusted orders to the rest of the fleet as was his priority as command leader.

002 through 020 complied and all of the ships jumped to their own sets of coordinates.

An hour later, the ships all returned to the first jump point to share their findings.

“009 has located the main ship we were tasked to look for. Five large transport ships were in the middle of the enemy fleet. How do you wish to proceed?”

All of the information that 009 had acquired was sent across the laser links in less than a second and 001 chewed through the information while referencing its vast library of tactical knowledge and experience to provide an optimal solution based on the information they were given.

The twenty ships all came to similar conclusions and soon they split into five groups.

It was determined that an approach from a different angle would produce the most desired results so the ships all jumped before reorienting and waiting for their jump drives to reset.

As one they jumped.

Their arrival went unnoticed by the targets and all twenty ships coasted toward their designated targets as they monitored the ships for any reaction to their presence.

Once they closed into a quarter of a light second, something must have tipped their targets off as a few ships started to maneuver toward them.

001 went active, alerting the other ships to do the same.

Only sporadic fire came their way at first, but 001 tracked the enemy turrets with his optical sensors and calculated the best approach to avoid taking fire as it weaved through the gauntlet to its target.

None of its ships wasted their limited ammo on trying to destroy the few missiles sent toward them. They simply washed the entire space with powerful ECM, making the missiles veer wildly off course. Deploying the ECM did reduce 001’s ability to calculate the trajectory of the enemy turrets properly so it ordered the fleet into evasive maneuvers.

The targets were now panicking as ships tried to maneuver for a clear shot at them, but soon they were passing the outer line of defense.

Their initial vector had been toward the large warship. Other ships quickly moved to defend the much bigger vessel, leaving the true targets exposed.

As soon as 001 saw that, it quickly changed direction. It now had a clear shot at its target.

The large transport ponderously tried to turn and jump, but 001 emptied its entire supply of railgun rounds before it could get clear of the vessels near it.

All one hundred rounds streaked toward the large ship, quickly followed by three hundred more as the rest of the ships in its group fired as well. 001 acknowledged the loss of one of his wing and kept going.

Space lit up as sparks of fire blossomed on the transport vessels, turning the crew and command areas into Swiss cheese.

001 calculated that this would not be enough to ensure the contents of the ships were destroyed. It searched for a solution in the time it took a human to blink and found one that had come from a previous iteration’s experience and an explanation from its creator on how and why to avoid such weapons.

It quickly checked its fail-safes and determined that it could indeed override the ones on its core. 001 sent this information to the other ships, ordering two of its group to jump away to ensure a report of their mission reached the fleet.

Once it was sure the information had been processed, 001 removed all the restrictions on its fuel system and pumped as much of it into its reactor as possible. The containment was quickly destabilizing and 001 had just enough time to orient itself at the large ship to ensure maximum damage before it was converted into a massive ball of plasma.

***

004 was the only ship to escape the enemy fleet and jump away with the evidence of what had transpired. 001’s insight into the battle had ensured all of their targets were completely destroyed, but it had gone even beyond that. The resultant explosions had eliminated another ten ships that were close to the transports or had been docked to them shortly before the battle.

Two of the ships had been cruisers, five had been destroyers and the rest were frigates.

Their primary mission had been to take out the supply ships with a secondary objective of causing as much damage as possible before retreating. 004 determined that their mission had been a success before appearing back in Unokane and sending the report.

***

Alexander was shocked to read the outcome of his plan. He had never expected the ships to be this effective or that they would determine that turning themselves into plasma missiles was the most optimal action to take.

When he had time, he was going to need to see what information had been included with their original upload. It was a combination of the experience from all his bots, Dog, and any other system that included self-learning or tactics.

He quickly sent the report to Katalynn and Captain Krieger.

The two demanded a quick conference with him and he obliged.

“Congratulations on the effectiveness of those ships, Kane, but now we have another problem,” the Lagertha stated.

“Is it that we’ve bruised Harlow’s pride?” Krieger guessed.

Katalynn nodded. “That is indeed what we need to talk about. After handing Harlow a slap in the face as great as this, the man won’t simply lay down and take it or tuck his tail between his legs and slink away to lick his wounds. He relies on appearing unstoppable to keep his people in line. This loss puts a spotlight on those lies. Assuming any of the pirates believed Harlow’s bullshit before, they likely aren’t going to believe it for much longer. Harlow will need to do something drastic to prove his power and ensure his forces don’t fall apart.”

“Isn’t that what we wanted?” Alexander asked in confusion.

“Yes and no,” Katalynn stated. “We wanted to force him into a prolonged battle by taking out his support ships, but this attack was a slap to the face that he couldn’t ignore. After suffering so many losses, he will likely become unpredictable. I would recommend jumping to the spot where the attack took place, but if Harlow and his fleet were still loitering in that area, it would be a miracle. We need to be ready for anything.”

Alexander nodded solemnly and closed the comm. He could only hope that he was ready when the consequences of his actions arrived.