Chapter 1: The Matador's Cloak

"Battle stations! Battle stations! No drill. No drill. Prepare for hyperspace emergence in fifteen minutes," Flag Captain Müller ordered. When arriving in a Sa'arm occupied system, being at battle stations before emergence was essential. If you were unlucky, it might be too late afterwards.

The fleet emerged from hyperspace exactly on the tick. "Sensors. Anything close?"

"No, sir. The nearest enemy are at the first objective, as expected."

"Navigation, how are we doing?" Captain Müller asked.

"On the nail, sir. First objective dead ahead."

"Emergence on time and on target, sir," the flag captain messaged the admiral. Not strictly needed since the admiral had repeater screens in his separate Command Centre, and the ship's AI was keeping him current with events on the ship's bridge.

The fleet had spread out for the journey; arriving from hyperspace at the same point in normal space as another ship could ruin everyone's day. Once all ships had emerged, the fleet closed up into cruising formation and headed inwards towards the primary.

This system didn't have a name, just a number. It was the nineteenth previously unnamed system in the Waller sector, so it started as Wa19. Because the Sa'arm occupied it, the required prefix meant it appeared on the charts as Sa'Wa19. The Sa'arm had been here long enough to have a small production line going. There were three large Voluptas Hive Spheres under construction in orbit round the second planet: one almost complete, one part-finished and one barely started. Those three Spheres were the major target of today's attack. However, they weren't the fleet's initial objective. Two of the system's gas giants had fuel collection facilities, and the outermost of the two was in the fleet's immediate sights.

"Sensors, how many enemy vessels at the outer fuel processing station?" Rear Admiral Bob Blake asked.

"Seven, sir. Three Vacuna scouts, two Vagitanus corvettes and a Venti destroyer are powering up. I have no power signature yet from the seventh, sir, but from its size, it is probably a Volturnus freighter."

Bob could see the information from the scan repeated on his own display. Seven ships was within expectations. Scouting had shown between five and ten vessels normally present. These seven could easily be dealt with by the twenty ships in his fleet.

"Fleet, proceed with phase one of the plan," he ordered.

The three Sa'arm scouts ran for the inner system – it was nice when the enemy did exactly what you expected. Their three warships came out to meet the fleet and were duly destroyed in a brief and brutal one-sided action, a small hors d'oeuvre for what was to come. The freighter, for such it was, managed to disconnect itself from the station, but was too slow to escape the pair of corvettes sent to chase it down. By the time they had caught and destroyed it, the fuel facility itself was a cloud of shattered debris in a decaying orbit round the gas giant.

In his mind's eye Bob could see the enemy reaction to his attack. Light speed delay meant that he couldn't actually see it yet, but he could make a reasonable prediction. The escaping scouts would have spread the alarm. A large force would be moving towards him from the inner system. At least forty vessels, better to assume that many anyway, including some Vervactor cruisers, heavier than almost all the ships in his fleet. He only had one light cruiser, his Flagship CL025 Ljubljana. Everything else with him was lighter: destroyers and corvettes. There was no way he would be able to meet the likely reaction force on equal terms, so he wasn't even going to try. The Sa'arm were generally keen to overwhelm any opposition, and their three scouts would have told them the size of his force. The only question was whether they would arrive where he'd just been or where he was going next. Better to assume the worst. Either way, there was some time before the enemy would become a problem.

"Fleet, secure from battle stations. We will carry on as planned to the second objective. Make any immediate repairs and take a natural break. We will have more excitement soon enough."

The rear admiral spent some time with the AI and Navigation, confirming the timings of his planned moves. So far, the Sa'arm had reacted as anticipated. That was good, but he didn't expect it to last. He worried that they might have something unexpected waiting at the second target.

Once the fleet was far enough away from the outer gas giant it did a short intra-system micro-jump to the next objective – the Swarm's remaining fuel facility at the inner gas giant. This time, the fleet's approach was far more circumspect. Sensors showed that the Sa'arm had already gathered a dozen warships here, and there was the expected reaction force from the inner system to think about as well. They would likely hyper in soon.

Some scouts and a Volturnus freighter were already fleeing towards the inner system. They had too much of a head start, and Bob wasn't going to split his force trying to catch them. The enemy here was alert, so he didn't want to give them any chance to catch him with his ships scattered. His fleet would stay together to meet the dozen warships accelerating towards them. The Swarm were playing things simply, staying together and heading directly towards him. He did the same, though he did tell two slightly damaged corvettes, the Rhuddlan Castle and the Karlstein Castle, to stay at the rear of the formation and keep their active scans going to pinpoint the Sa'arm counter-attack as soon as it arrived.

«Decision point Alpha, » the AI notified him via his internal link. The Swarm reaction force would be accelerating towards the edge of the inner-system gravity well so they could hyper in to join their forces here. They knew he was here because their scouts would have told them. They couldn't know exactly where he was because of light speed delays – the Swarm's telepathic communication, if that's what it was, didn't reach from here to the inner system. By the time the light from his fleet reached the inner system, the Swarm reaction force would already have left. That gave him time to move somewhere unexpected before they arrived.

He marked the new fleet vector on his display. «AI, pass this vector to all ships.»

«Done, sir.»

"All ships," Admiral Blake ordered. "Steer new course indicated, in ten seconds from my mark ... Mark." If the Swarm tried the obvious tactic, making his ships the meat in their sandwich, they would find that the filling was slipping out to one side and escaping. The fleet would pass close enough to the smaller, local, group of the enemy to damage them, but would be better positioned to evade when the larger reaction force arrived. Slugging it out against superior enemy forces would only result in heavy losses, and that was not the point of this operation.

Bob thought that the battle had become boring. No, boring wasn't quite the right word, but it was close. Predictable, maybe. They were leading the combined Sa'arm fleet, using their superior acceleration to maintain a long enough range that the Swarm's missiles were essentially ineffective, while the Confederacy's missiles, fired back at the oncoming Swarm ships, could still hit. So far they had done more damage to the Swarm, but neither side had scored any significant hits. There was always some danger, any engine problems could deliver the affected vessel straight into the middle of the pursuit. The risk was acceptable. Their job now was to keep the bulk of the Sa'arm forces distracted until the other part of this operation was complete. The major danger was more Swarm vessels hypering in ahead of them, and everyone was keeping a good lookout forward for any sign of that. A small group of five ships had joined the enemy's main fleet shortly after the start of this phase of the battle, but there hadn't been any further enemy reinforcements. That was probably a good sign.

The clock showed eighteen minutes to go until they absolutely had to break off. That was good. If the anticipated signal arrived too early, that would probably mean that the other part of this mission had only partly succeeded. Waiting the full eighteen minutes might be bad as well, that might mean the destruction of the second force. Bob waited to see what would happen.

A single small hyper footprint off to one side had everyone jumping, fingers poised on the 'get me out of here' button. The tension relaxed when it turned out to be a Confederacy drone, transmitting a short coded message. At this point it didn't matter what the message actually said, the mere presence of the drone was enough – the other part of the operation was complete.

"All ships, hyper out to rendezvous point three," the admiral ordered. There were audible sighs of relief round the bridge as the Swarm fleet was left behind. Soon they would be back at their mobile base in Sa'Wa19's Oort cloud.

Reviewing events so far, Bob thought his plan had worked out well, the parts he could see at any rate. That was a pleasant surprise, since overall it was more elaborate than he was really comfortable with. Relying on the enemy to do exactly what you expected him to do was usually a recipe for failure. That advice assumed a human opponent, and the old rules didn't always apply to the Sa'arm. It was not too difficult to predict their reactions in many cases. The problems came later when the hive decided that its standard reaction was not working and pulled a different, non-standard, idea from its collective memory. He hadn't used this attack plan before, so in this case their standard reaction had been reasonably easy to predict.

Rear Admiral Blake surveyed his ships' Captains gathered round the table. "We will shortly be carrying out our normal thorough After Action Review of yesterday's engagement. However I want to start by introducing Lieutenant Nemeth, Captain of PC-067 Scamp, one of the two Archerfish boats involved in the attack." The lieutenant smiled and nodded generally to the other Captains. She was the stranger here today and would not be staying for long. The admiral continued, "Captain Nemeth has completed her patrol and will shortly be returning to base. I will ask her to cover her part in the recent action first, so as not to unnecessarily delay her departure. Captain Nemeth..."

Zsuzsa Nemeth thanked the Admiral and began her narrative. "As well as Scamp, there was a second Archerfish boat involved in yesterday's action, PC-010 Corvina with Lieutenant Zheng Yao-ting in command. They were just starting their patrol while we were finishing ours, which is why I'm here presenting this report...

Zsuzsa waited for her cue. She'd met up with the Corvina, and Lieutenant Zheng, two days ago. That had been well away from Sa'arm shipping lanes, and they had spent those two days stealthily moving to their starting point, ready for the action to begin. She'd conferred with Yao-ting and they'd agreed their roles in the forthcoming attack, together with a few tweaks required by the situation. She only had five missiles left this late in her patrol, so she wouldn't need to reload; with six tubes available, one was starting empty. Yao-ting had his crew practising reloading. His magazine held its full complement of missiles, and fast reloading was essential to their plan.

"Two small hyper footprints appearing, sir," the concubine on the forward sensors reported. "They have Swarm characteristics ... Confirmed as two Vacuna scouts."

Only two? They usually appeared in threes. Perhaps the admiral had managed to kill one before they fled the outer gas giant?

"Release the probe and set course for jumping-off point. Ahead slow." The arrival of the Sa'arm scouts was their signal to move in closer. They were still moving slowly to allow the Swarm time to gather their counter-attacking force and send it on its way. Their assault would only start after the bulk of the Swarm warships had left to chase the admiral, leaving the field clear. They would use the interval to move in closer, from undetectable range to almost undetectable range. They knew they needed to get as close as possible to have the maximum effect on their targets for today.

She could see Yao-ting's boat moving as well, not that she'd expected his crew to miss the arrival of the two scouts. This operation was timed to respond to the Swarm's reactions, so both crews were keeping a close eye on their sensors.

When they were two-thirds of the way to the jumping-off point the mystery of the third scout was solved; it arrived on its own. Perhaps it had diverted to warn some other group of Sa'arm? Ideally she would like to pass a message to Rear Admiral Blake to let him know, but stealth and the slow speed of light prevented her. Whatever was coming the admiral's way would arrive at trans-light speed, long before any light-speed message of hers could reach him. She put her worry behind her; she couldn't do anything about it so there was no point in wasting time thinking about it. How much easier things would be if all ships had FTL communicators, like in some pre-Swarm Sci-Fi film.

The plan allowed for a short delay at the jumping-off point to give the Sa'arm reaction force time to get well away. It wasn't needed. The aliens could be frighteningly fast organising their response to a perceived threat. Even before the two Archerfish boats got into position, there were forty-five Swarm ships moving out. A large group of forty were heading towards the inner gas giant, and a smaller group of five to the outer gas giant. The size of their reaction was within expected limits, even if the short time taken wasn't. So far the plan was holding up reasonably well. She formally confirmed with Yao-ting, "Captain Zheng, are you ready to proceed?" They had decision points before each phase of their attack in case the Swarm's reaction was not as anticipated. Both captains needed to agree before proceeding.

"Affirmative, Captain Nemeth. Confirm ready to proceed."

"Start attack run in five seconds from my mark ... Mark!"

The two Archerfish boats accelerated to attack speed, closing in on their first objective, target Alpha, the most complete of the three Voluptas Hive Spheres orbiting the second planet. Currently it was drifting passively in space: no active scan, engines down, not even any shields. The admiral's attacks on the fuel stations had drawn away the bulk of its protecting warships so it was sitting there dumb, immobile and almost undefended. Paradoxically, being powered down made it a more difficult target to hit. Their missiles were designed to home on enemy emissions: engine exhausts, active scanning and the like. This target wasn't doing any of that, so the missiles were going in half-blind. Zsuzsa had discussed the problem with Yao-ting beforehand and they'd agreed to move in to close range and fire their missiles unguided. From that distance, the big Hive Sphere was easy enough to hit without any guidance. With its engines off-line it couldn't dodge, so it was just a matter of steering directly at the target, getting close and firing their missiles straight ahead.

With only five missiles remaining, Zsuzsa had allocated two of them for this first target. Yao-ting had four aimed at it, with his last two tubes reserved for either any remaining defending warship that interfered, or the construction tenders gathered round the massive Sphere. The warships and many of the tenders were under power, so were easier targets for his missiles to seek out.

The first attack went smoothly. The two stealthy attackers weren't noticed until after their missiles struck, six hitting the Sphere, with the first of Yao-ting's last two damaging a Vagitanus corvette and the second destroying a big construction tender that had the misfortune to be under way when the attack began.

At the second Sphere, target Bravo, the Swarm were obviously alert, but had not pinpointed the two attacking boats. The few warships were actively searching and the unarmed construction tenders were all trying to escape the threat by moving away from the Hive Sphere. The decision to proceed was easy to make.

This Sphere was further from completion. Zsuzsa could see big openings left in the outer hull for installing large components. The largest void was around the engines, so they obviously hadn't all been fitted yet. She had planned two more missiles for this target, while Yao-ting had allocated three. Expecting the Swarm defences to be alert, he kept back the other three of his six tubes to prevent any interference from Sa'arm defensive forces.

This second attack didn't go quite so well. Only four of the planned five missiles hit the Sphere, counter-missile fire from the defenders knocked one out. The disadvantage of an unguided missile was that its course was very easy to predict. There wasn't much they could do about that, a guided missile would have chased after one of the active ships and ignored the passive Hive Sphere, which was the real target. Yao-ting's other three missiles destroyed one enemy warship, with a nice engine hit that set off a huge secondary explosion, and damaged two more.

Zsuzsa could imagine the Corvina's crew scrambling to reload their six tubes again, ready for the third target. Her crew didn't have that problem. With an empty magazine and four of her last five missiles fired, she only had one loaded tube left.

Target Charlie was the least complete of the three Spheres, which was why they attacked it last. If they'd been forced to abort the mission early, then they would have attacked the more nearly completed targets. She saw from the passive sensors that the Sa'arm were aware of their attack, but they still hadn't pinpointed its source. Their two boats were very stealthy, almost invisible to Sa'arm sensors, and were moving away from the area of their earlier attacks. The defenders were alert and searching, but had not locked onto their attackers. Captain Zheng agreed to proceed and they embarked on the last phase of their mission.

Approaching the third Sphere, it was obvious that construction had barely started. Only about a quarter of the outer hull plating was in place, another quarter was just open framework – struts and girders. The last half of what would be the Hive Sphere wasn't even there yet, it was still empty space. She targeted her one remaining missile on the completed section of the Sphere, along with two of Yao-ting's six. He reserved his other four for the defenders. Given the state of this target, they would only be damaging easily repaired metalwork, not any of the more complex systems that would be added later in the construction cycle.

Again, the Swarm managed to intercept one of the unguided missiles. Not Zsuzsa's, which hit very satisfactorily. Yao-ting's other missiles destroyed one Swarm warship and damaged two others.

As she watched the fading explosion of the destroyed Vagitanus, Zsuzsa ordered the AI, "Load a trans-light message drone with the message 'Success three', encrypt with today's key, and send it to the inner gas giant."

"Confirmed, Captain."

Slowing from attack speed to stealth speed, and with a couple of course changes to throw any trackers off the scent, the pair of Archerfish recovered their probes and headed towards the edge of the gravity well.

"Thank you, Captain," Rear Admiral Blake said. "That covered what happened very thoroughly." Zsuzsa smiled in acknowledgement. "What parts of the plan worked well from your point of view?"

"The distraction attacks worked perfectly, sir. We were sitting there waiting and most of the Swarm fleet took off for the outer system, leaving the three Hive Spheres almost undefended. That made the attack itself a lot easier."

"It's good to know that part of the plan worked as expected," Bob said. "What about the parts that didn't work so well? There is obviously an issue with targeting passive targets like ships under construction. Your solution of a close stealthy approach worked for you, but I doubt if it would work for most of my ships. It is very difficult to make a whole fleet as stealthy as your boat."

Zsuzsa nodded her agreement. That point had already occurred to her. The solution they had used wasn't practical for everyone, though it had worked well for Captain Zheng and herself. Archerfish boats were a lot stealthier than the average Navy ship. "We did have an alternative, sir. If the first Sphere had been testing either its engines or its active scan, then we could have used our missiles in normal active seeker mode. That wouldn't need such a close approach."

The admiral nodded. "A good point, and something else for our scouts to look for." He continued, "That is one problem we will have to work on. Were there any other issues that you or Captain Zheng saw?"

Zsuzsa leant forward, "Yes, sir, there was something we both noticed. When we recovered our probes and saw what had happened behind us, we found that we hadn't done as much damage as we'd expected with that number of hits on the targets. We thought that was probably because of the lack of secondary explosions. You can't set off a reactor or a magazine if the reactor hasn't been installed or if the magazine is empty. On an active ship, there is a good chance of a secondary explosion – as happened with the two warships Captain Zheng destroyed. On an empty hull with no engines, there is zero chance of an engine explosion. Target Charlie especially suffered from that problem. It was just a metal framework in space, with absolutely no potential for any secondary explosions."

"Do you have any thoughts on how to solve that problem, Captain?" Bob asked.

"Not immediately, sir. Perhaps it is something to pass to the weapons research people on Azahar. I'm sure they would find it interesting."

Rear Admiral Blake mounted the podium in front of his assembled ships' officers as the first slide appeared behind him: a large silverback gorilla. "This is our problem," he started. "We have to fight an eight-hundred-pound gorilla. If we assemble all the ships we have here and charge straight in, we'll be defeated. We will certainly do a lot of damage to the Sa'arm in the process of losing the battle, but lose we will. They have enough forces here to win any such straight stand-up fight. So, the first step is a simple one; we don't just charge in, all guns blazing. That's why they sent the Navy here, not the Marines." That got the expected laugh from his audience of Naval officers. The admiral continued, "The second step needs a little more thought."