“What’s the plan?”

  Cassie said, “The first move is the Benzae’s. The fleet has several planned defense tactics based on what they might do, and if they have a skip drive or not. They’ll be on a purely defensive posture, and depending on us to even the odds before moving to an offensive stance.”

  While she’d been talking two more fleets had arrived out of FTL, making a total of sixteen.

  He whistled, “How many you think?”

  Cassie appeared in the captain’s chair, and tilted her head, “Eighteen is my best guess, I know how they think. It’s total overkill on their parts, but we must’ve made them really wary by routing their first attempt. That’s six times our numbers, and roughly three and a half times our weapons capacity. It’s also exactly six invasion fleets and would satisfy their need for symmetry.”

  He snorted, “Symmetry huh, so sixteen is too odd a number for their sensibilities.”

  Cassiopeia nodded, “Evidenced by the fact they haven’t moved yet. It’s also a status and rank thing. It would be an insult to send the equivalent of a three-star admiral overseeing the four extra fleets, and a two-star equivalent can only command three fleets by naval tradition.”

  He shook his head.

  Cassie said, “Here they are now.”

  He saw two more enemy fleets appear out of FTL, making it the expected eighteen. Ten seconds later they all skipped toward Earth. The earth fleets immediately skipped to their flank in relation to Earth, so that any missed shots from either side wouldn’t impact the planet. He focused on the board, weapons lock, and firing button. All twelve weapons were slaved to the primary selected target, but the four that didn’t have line of sight would slave to a secondary locked target.

  He’d worked for hours in simulation doing it. His timing had to be perfectly aligned with Cassie’s, as after a skip he only had so much time to fire before she skipped again. Eight seconds apart, but the beams fired for six seconds, which gave him just two seconds to establish a lock and fire. Those same two seconds would be the cooling part of the weapon’s firing cycle.

  Eight seconds was a long time, when the enemy was firing plasma weapons which were quite slow in comparison. As long as they kept their distance. Which wasn’t easy, the enemy had skip drives as well.

  The best part of the particle beams, besides destroying the enemy that is, is that the impact with the enemy’s shields and explosive energy release would prevent a subspace fold from forming. So once he was locked on and had hit them, the enemy was stuck there until the six second beams expired, which was the death of the ship.

  Still, they could still skip when they sensed his targeting sensors, in that two second window.

  At first it was almost a one-sided slaughter. Though he was focused on his job and not the big picture, he had a general idea of what was going on.

  Most of the enemy ships were targeting their ship, probably in the hopes of killing the true Cassiopeia, which in theory would eliminate all the shards and turn the three fleets into very large paperweights.

  In theory. Except the enemy didn’t know that Cass’s built fleet for humanity was ninety nine percent run by class two A.I.s, and they’d still be marginally effective without her oversight.

  Regardless, the Earth fleet had to stand their ground, lest the enemy threaten Earth itself. But Cassiopeia didn’t, and she didn’t fire a single countermeasure missile. She just kept skipping every eight seconds, long before the fired plasma balls could arrive at her ship.

  At the same time, because of that concentrated fire, the three Earth fleets were actually holding their ground against the sporadic fire in their direction.

  After every skip he took out an enemy ship as eight particle beams reached out and slammed into their shields. It took about five seconds for the shields to fail, and the last second the beams crisscrossed and literally cut the ships into several pieces. Every forty-eight seconds, he took out a fleet.

  That went on for almost three minutes as the enemy ineffectually targeted them, until one of the admirals on the other side got a clue. They’d taken down four fleets, and most of a fifth, when the last eleven suddenly made it a lot harder.

  For one, they’d finally figured out to skip a short distance if their ship was targeted, which was really frustrating. Secondly, they stopped firing at him at all and all eleven fleets started to fire at the Earth fleets. No doubt they hoped to force Cassie to stand her ground, if they could eliminate all the Earth ships then they could move in on the planet unopposed and demand her surrender.

  At that point they still outgunned the rest of the fleet just short of two and a half to one. The human ships were taking plasma damage on their shields, and the enemy simply had overwhelming defenses. Not all that unlike the first battle, but in reverse.

  He had to figure out something fast, or they’d lose. It was only virtue of their being ninety seconds between each plasma volley that they hadn’t already lost.

  “Ideas? They’re jumping as soon as I lock.”

  He frowned, if they wouldn’t let him get a lock, maybe he’d just have to fire without one.

  He said, “Follow my lead and rotate the ship.”

  She looked confused by that suggestion, but he knew she was incredibly smart and would figure it out as soon as she saw what he was doing. She also didn’t have any suggestions, or was too busy controlling the other stations and monitoring the battle and ship condition to answer.

  He un-slaved one of the weapons so it wasn’t part of the dynamic group and wouldn’t work as one with the others on a single target lock, then manually aimed that independent particle beam at one of the enemy ships. He missed, but he hadn’t really expected to hit the thing. Instead, he tracked the beam to a ship using manual controls in a strafing maneuver.

  It took three seconds, which gave him three more seconds to engage a target lock for the other eleven weapons. The enemy ship couldn’t skip while it was being hit, so couldn’t skip when detecting the lock. Even with just one of the beams hitting their shields.

  That worked, but it was taking eleven seconds instead of eight to destroy a ship, which meant a minute and six seconds for every fleet. Which wasn’t fast enough for him, those seconds were adding up to more hits on the fleet depending on him.

  “I can get them faster if you stop jumping, they aren’t firing at us anymore anyway, and you can always jump just when you have to.”

  She nodded, “Alright.”

  He did the same thing, but he started to overlap ships. He tracked to one in three seconds, and then fired the rest as they locked on. For those six seconds he fired and tracked to a second ship with one of the four other beams, then the other three free ones with a lock. By then the first ship was destroyed, and before those beams exhausted themselves, he assigned four more of the cooling ones to that ship, and they fired before the three beams ran out.

  Then he immediately hit another ship manually with one of the just cooled beams, and then continued the cycle. It still took eleven seconds per ship, but five of those seconds were overlapped. Splitting the difference, it was back to eight and a half seconds a ship.

  It was insanely intense, and his focus was absolute as his heart pounded in his chest. The level of focus he was paying to it and keeping track of it all was too much, fortunately he didn’t have to maintain it for long.

  He was taking out a fleet every fifty-six seconds. That meant before the eleven fleets could fire again, they were just over eight fleets. And before the enemy could fire a third time they were only five fleets.

  At that point, the odds were close to even on weapon capacity. Four of their thirty-six ships had been destroyed, and another fifteen of them had under fifty percent shields. But the enemy could no longer hit them.

  A minute later the last three enemy fleets skipped from the battle and were running toward the sun. They’d driven off the enemy, and they’d given them something to think about. The Earth fleet didn’t pursue. Yet.

  Cassie said, “That was good thinking. I’ll try to tie in passive sensors for the weapons. It won’t be as good as a target lock because we’ll have to extrapolate their position, but it will make tracking the beam to their ship easier. I honestly didn’t think they’d be fast enough to skip between establishing a target lock and firing. They must’ve allowed the ship A.I.s control of that system.”

  That was true enough, most of the two seconds was him reading the display and choosing a target. The ship’s target lock was only a split second before he fired, somewhere around half a second. It would help.

  “That works. I didn’t see it as a possibility either. What’s the plan? I don’t want to be vindictive, but I think allowing them to just leave without at least giving them the finger is sending the wrong message.”

  Cassie giggled.

  Jessica took a deep breath. She wasn’t sure what the right thing to do was, but they had orders to destroy the enemy fleet if possible, and at the very least chase them out of the system and harry them until they were gone. They would not show mercy to an invader, not one bent on quarantining humanity to their planet to strong arm them into the Union.

  It’d be four minutes before they got to the sun, then they’d have to accelerate to a thousand KPS, and once they’d hit ten KPS they’d be going far too fast to use the skip drive, and far too slow to reach even the closest star in years.

  It’d take ninety minutes to reach a thousand KPS, and only eighteen minutes to reach a hundred KPS. That would give them an hour and twelve minutes to finish the fight, which was more than enough time to take the bastards down. At ten KPS a skip would be near suicidal, at a hundred there’d be no chance their bodies could withstand even the four-picosecond strain.

  In short, they’d be sitting ducks, and the Earth fleet hadn’t used their long skip yet.

  Of course, in the face of certain death they may chance a long skip despite the odds. One that would kill them anyway, as well as put the ships far out of the solar system and in the deep void between the stars. Even at twice light speed it could take them months to come back, and likely only the A.I.s would survive.

  Really, that was fine in her book. The bastards wouldn’t even open up a dialogue. They’d come to destroy their fleet, and to intimidate their whole species and world. That wasn’t something acceptable, and until they’d left the solar system behind, they were a fair target.

  She looked over at Cassie, “How do you feel about it? It’s likely your sisters will be destroyed too. When the jump kills the crew, they’ll likely self-destruct the ships remotely, instead of risk you freeing them.”

  Cassie replied, “I would prefer they survive, but warships don’t fear dying in battle,” the A.I. frowned, “I wish it could be otherwise, they are dying for foolish and shortsighted decisions stemming from fear. But I would not hold it against humanity, the blame for their deaths will be on the Benzae invaders. That said I won’t be joining in, the thirty-two ships left will have no trouble taking out their thirty-six, without taking more damage.

  “It’d also be prudent to keep at least my ship back, incase another fleet jumps in and takes advantage. It’s unlikely, but we can’t assume they don’t have any reserves scheduled to appear a little later.”

  “Will you make four replacements for the ship’s we lost?”

  Only one of the ships lost was hers, it’d been the Russian fleet that had lost two. Still, she was concerned by their loss of numbers, their ship count wasn’t large to begin with. They couldn’t afford a war of attrition.

  Cassie shook her head, “I’ll build thirty more ships when the first six are complete. Then we’ll transfer the crews and scuttle the thirty-two old ships. They’ll never get together another fleet in less than a month, so we should be up to full strength and then some with the new advanced ships and weapons.”

  Jessica said, “We could keep them for a close orbital defensive line, in case the enemy sneaks past the new and main defense fleet.”

  Cassie replied, “Thirty-seven shards are already a lot, and I have my own limitations. I can’t support another thirty-two on top of that. But if you want you can still fly them without shards. They won’t be as efficient, so the operations officer will have to solve any problems or priority conflicts that the class two A.I.s can’t handle on their own. The crew number would also have to go up significantly, at least thirty. Ten for operations, and another twenty for the rest of the command crew running three shifts.”

  Jessica hadn’t even considered that, they’d need around the clock crews with no Cassie to watch the bridge and ship for two shifts a day. She still thought it’d be worth it.

  Cassie continued, “However, I can handle the thirty-eight ship’s we’ll have when the first six are complete in a month. It’ll be three more months and likely after the next attack, and perhaps the fourth as well though it’ll be close, before the transfer can happen. I estimate they’ll attack at most once every two months, it takes time to ready a fleet of significant size.

  “I’ll also load the VR simulations for the tactical officers on the current ships, so they’ll be familiar with the new weapon system before they get on the ships.”

  Jessica said, “Thanks, Cass. I think we’ll go with that option. In four months, we’ll handle the conflicts manually for the thirty-two. It’ll be up to the board of course, but I can’t imagine they’ll say no to more ships. Who knows how large an armada they’ll send next time?”

  Jessica hoped the board wouldn’t think of taking advantage of Cassie’s generosity in leaving those thirty-two ships active without her direct oversight. She had no doubt trying anything would bite them in the ass, like trying to steal one of the fabricators to advance their understanding of materials science and get straight to building their own ships. The class two A.I.s would no doubt have strict orders to contact Cassie’s ship if the humans tried to go to any restricted areas on the ship.

  The twenty-two minutes passed slowly, four to the sun, then eighteen minutes of acceleration at twenty gravities to get above a hundred KPS.

  As she’d expected, the enemy chose to go down fighting despite the odds against them, as opposed to a suicidal gesture. They fought tooth and nail, and tried to ram them and several other tactics, but the Earth’s fleets were moving extremely slowly, and skipping a light second at a time to keep them within firing range. They had all the advantages.

  It took close to twenty minutes to finish them off.

  Chapter Nine

  Councilor Laerin was displeased. Under her leadership the war with the Mirix had turned around and her popularity had been high. That would change swiftly when word of their crushing defeat was spread, and it would spread no matter what kind of gag orders were given regarding the debacle at the human home world.

  Who knew the greatest threat they’d face would be themselves. It was the rogue A.I. Cassiopeia behind this, she was sure. The technological weapon advancement had only been on one ship, but who knows how many there’d be by the time another fleet was ready.

  If she could, she’d order the immediate shutdown and decommission of all class four A.I.s so it couldn’t happen again, but that would leave the union utterly defenseless. So she couldn’t, not yet anyway. She had plans to get there however, the fleet would slowly be replaced by ships with larger crews and class two A.I.s. Once the scientists she’d ordered to design one came through for her.

  Needing to recruit a larger military force would be unpopular and cost more in the budget, but the automated class four ships had been an unmitigated disaster. Cassiopeia was hardly the first A.I. to go her own way and turn against their creators, the others merely hadn’t gotten away with it. Each time her scientists had added in more checks against their power, and they’d made promises that they were under control, but obviously that wasn’t the case.

  She looked down in disapproval as Admiral Souza approached the stand which faced the council table.

  “Souza, what have the military scientists said about this new threat?”

  She’d given her orders to find out that information after Souza had briefed her on the disastrous invasion. That better be why she was back.

  Souza replied, “It is complicated, maam. The skip drive is merely another application to a known and well understood science, and they had a guide to follow to success with the rogue’s final report at the end of her last mission. The particle beam weapon seems to have been developed by the rogue independently of any currently known science. They believe it’s simply a particle accelerator being fed a constant stream of particles that are accelerated to near ninety eight percent the speed of light.

  “But according to them that’s an impossibility with our current technological level. Both to create an accelerator that speeds up the particle that quickly, and to inject them fast enough to create a coherent beam of billions of them, if not trillions. They requested the aid of a class four to run faster simulations and more of them.

  “To put it in easy terms, they can’t inject particles at close to the speed of light, so when an injected particle was put into such an acceleration field it should be long gone by the time another particle is injected. Which would create large gaps between the particles. Obviously, she isn’t using a currently known injection system to get that done.

  “The good news is they believe they can build a shield that will attenuate if not completely counter that weapon. They believe they can have that ready within two months, before we can put together another invasion armada.”

  She frowned, “Attenuate?”

  Souza said, “Their simulations are indicating a seventy percent attenuation, which means they’d have to be hit by twenty-four beams from three ships like it for the ship to be destroyed in one volley. The beam can only be fired for six seconds, and then a two second pause, which would give the ship in question time to skip out of range and gain time to recharge their shields.”