Chapter 20

The fleet coursed through the thick smog of the nebula carefully, their combined sensors facing as many directions as possible as they scanned for contacts. To the rear of the convoy, the trio of Balokarid carriers took up an inverted wedge formation, each one accompanied by about half a dozen support craft, an even mix of human and alien fighters to help provide some light cover. The craft stuck close to the bellies of the carriers like remora fish, matching their velocities with impressive accuracy.

At the front of the fleet, both human and Balokarid strike craft pioneered the fleet’s movements, the spherical shields of the alien craft and the black stealth coating of the human vessels catching the light of the distant star as they moved. There were Raptors and several corvette types, from missile boats like Lambert’s to the anti- fighter class gunboats that were equipped with six PDC’s arranged into two rings on their bulky hulls, capable of going toe-to-toe with a squadron of Raptors. About eighty percent of the Gallipoli’s fighters were deployed, forming into defensive cordon formations, with the rest held in reserve on the carriers, which had more than enough room to spare than the human ships, given their prior losses.

Acting as the flagship which all the other craft in the fleet moved with, the Gallipoli frigate centralised the Hub forces, its many dishes and antennae working overtime as fleetcom tried to zero in on the Confederates, ready to coordinate the fleet once the shooting started. The missile bays and numerous high-calibre turrets on its belly and flanks were constantly swivelling, picking out anomalies in the energy-dense clouds and determining what was a threat. The two species’ ships combined into a force of about one hundred and fifty vessels, with the Balokarids doing most of the heavy lifting with their numerous heavy fighters. It was the largest number of ships Lambert had ever seen gathered in one place that wasn’t on parade.

Lambert turned his head from his external cameras to his ship systems. His corvette had been refuelled and reloaded, with all of its hardpoints loaded up. The Captain had been purposefully stingy with their ammunition before, but it was all or nothing now, and there wasn’t much point in conserving ammo. Their total missile count had gone up to twelve, finally the term missile corvette had some actual meaning behind it.

He wasn’t on the frigate’s bridge to witness it, but he knew the navigators were tracking the stubs Lambert had fired on the Confederate destroyer. It would be difficult to pinpoint them through the nebula, but the trackers could give them a general idea of where the UEC was, fleetcom radioing in every few minutes on the fleet- wide band to adjust their vectors.

Cloud after cloud, the muted hues of the nebula stretched on forever in all directions, creating a haze like a giant carpet of fog rolling in from all sides. The nebula’s concealment went both ways, even if it was slightly in the favour of the outnumbered, smaller Hub forces. The destroyer could be right over the next cloud, and they wouldn’t even know it.

“Corvette one-six, this is zero-one, over.”

Mezul’s soft voice crackled through his enclosed helmet. She’d been practising her radio formalities, familiar enough with the tech that she was coming through to him on a private channel of her own making.

“One-six here, what’s up?”

“Wishing we had some tunes over here, one-six. Something to help inspire us inside this dreadful quiet.”

They’d been sailing through the nebula for over four hours now, the silence making his skin and likely her feathers crawl. “Feeling the same zero-one.” His hand moved to the bottom of his chair, where the damage from the Raptor’s strafe remained, the fluffy lining spilling over his finger. God damn he missed that player already.

He looked ahead of his corvette, where a couple dozen Sala’ci fighters had formed a wall at the forefront of the fleet, a perfect box of heavy craft from his perspective, his tactical view filled with IFF tags identifying each one as friendly, Mezul’s in particular just to the left of the centre.

“What is this nebula called in your tongue?” Mezul asked, her voice slightly garbled. Maybe this was her way of coping with the silence – to fill it. Lambert hesitated before replying.

“It’s called Folium, after its shape, since it looks kind of like a leaf from a certain angle. Why?”

“One should know the name of the place where they achieve victory.”

Lambert nodded, even though she couldn’t see him. He felt like he should say more, some last final thing before they faced the enemy, but he’d already reassured her back in the bar, what else was there to say?

The fleet maintained low speed for half an hour, then another. If only Lambert could tune in to the fleetcom’s navigators and get some idea of whether they were heading the right direction or not, but the frigate maintained strict radio discipline, its transmitters were more powerful and were more likely to give themselves away if used too frequently.

“Lieutenant? I have a question.”

“Alice I’m trying to focus,” he replied curtly, fiddling with a camera even though his sensors would pick up anything before his eyes did. The quiet was drilling into him, but he wasn’t desperate enough to chat with the machine.

“The possibility that this may be the last day of my systems remaining operational overrides my respect for boundaries parameters,” the machine replied, its tone calculated to be sympathetic.

“You have those?”

“Yes, ever since I detected a consistent irritation in your voice whenever we interacted, I adjusted my engagements accordingly.”

“In case I haven’t been clear, I’d rather have you on someone else’s ship, so maybe keeping quiet should be your next adjustment.”

“You operate nineteen percent better when I provide verbal assistance rather than send you readouts formatted in numbers, the efficiency is staggering.”

“That’s cause you’ve got the voice of a sex-line caller, or something,” he replied.

“I am operating within the confines of my programming, my voice module is unable to be manipulated by anyone other than Hub security personnel, I do not mean any offence inflicted by it. Will you answer my question?”

If this was some scheme the machine was making to plead its case to him, it picked one hell of a time to do it. He decided to hear it out, it was either answer its question or let the silence reign.

“Fine, what do you want to ask?”

“Do you like Mezul?”

“Really? Wasn’t expecting that question.”

“What did you think I’d ask?”

“Why I hate machines, obviously.”

“Over ninety-four percent of all humanity dislikes artificial intelligence, asking you why would be an inert effort.”

Lambert didn’t like wasting time either, so he could appreciate its tactfulness.

“Alright, what makes you think I like her?”

“She spends most of her time aboard our ship with you, and likewise, you stay with her as much as you possibly can.” He put a finger up, about to make an excuse but it went on. “You also stare at her breasts fifty-one percent of the time you two are around. Your heartrate rises when she speaks to you through the radio, your eyes dilated when you first saw her...”

“Okay, b-”

“-you compliment her whenever you can, your heterosexual background compliments your impulses to touch her. You-”

“Okay!” he repeated. “I get it, you’re very analytical. Yes I do like her. There, happy? Why do you care anyway?”

“Does it not bother you that she is born from a different world than yours?”

“Well ... no, not really,” he said. “She’s a pilot, we’ve got similar interests, her world and culture’s a lot different than mine, but we’re all from the same Galaxy, aren’t we?”

“Does she know of this admission?”

“I haven’t had the time,” he replied. “we’re fighting a Confederate fleet, if you weren’t aware.”

“But with that logic, would it not be prudent to advise her on your emotions before disaster potentially arrives for either of you?”

Great, I’m taking relationship advice from a machine, Lambert thought, but he was more worried about how much sense it was making. “For once I’m glad of your cold reasoning, Alice,” he said. “maybe I should, but it’s too late for any of that now.”

“You two certainly hit it off a few times from what I can tell.”

“We even found a new universal language, one aside from mathematics, did you notice?”

“No? What language?”

“Hip hop and a bit of rock.”

“Perhaps in the event of encountering new life, we should add a musical score to introductory concepts.”

“Start blasting tunes at the UFO’s,” he chuckled, then his laugh turned into a confused sigh as he took a look at his situation. “How the hell did we get to talking about this anyway?

“If I turned the discussion into an uncomfortable topic, I am sorry. I would also like to apologise for interfering with your piloting career. I had as little choice in which ship to be installed in as you did.”

“Look, just ... I don’t know if this was your way of trying to get to know me, but ... you’ve been doing good work, I’ll give you that. Keep that efficiency meter up.”

“I will. And thank you for answering, Lieutenant.”

The gas clouds rose like mountains to either side of the fleet, the familiar voice of fleetcom telling the convoy to adjust to the right bringing Lambert back into the present. The fleet cruised deeper into the nebula, further into the concentration of gasses than ever before, was the UEC onto them? They’d been adjusting courses for almost five hours, they should have seen something by now.

There! A warning icon slid over to the cloud a couple of kilometers up and to the left, his camera zooming on a distinct metallic hull, gently disappearing into the distance as the nebula swallowed it up. He reported its vector to fleetcom, the woman replying back after a moment. In a way he was almost relieved, knowing where the enemy was and that the waiting was over.

“Excellent eye, Lieutenant. All units, fall out, targe’s in sector 114, adjust.”

That was their signal, Lambert pulling away from the formation, six other missile corvettes forming up behind him. It had been a last-minute decision to give Lambert tactical command over a squad of ships, but Mezul’s plan had been bold enough that the Captain had considered it, and who better to help her than the human she knew the most?

A dozen Sala’ci fighters, led by Mezul, disengaged from the fleet, flying just ahead of Lambert’s formation as the two groups circled round the UEC’s position, while the rest of the Hub forces continued on, keeping to one side of the UEC while Lambert’s group stayed on the other.

“Alice,” Lambert asked suddenly, the computer beeping like a radio ready to receive. “what are the odds of us winning this?”

“You never wished to hear my calculations before,” the computer noted, sounding surprised.

“Figured I might as well hear you out once. I might be dead in an hour from now.”

“Morbidity and flattery in the same sentence? How human,” Alice said. “Well, it’s higher than you might think. There is a thirty seven percent chance of victory. It’s a significant percentage!” it added, trying to put him at ease.

“Thirty seven, huh?” He drummed his fingers on the armrest, his tone all the machine needed to hear to gauge his disappointment.

“Did you know Lieutenant,” Alice began. “that in poker, the cumulative probability of having two pairs in your hand has roughly the same chance?”

“Really?” he asked. “I’m not half bad at poker...”

“You must be really nervous, Cap,” Carl began. “if you’re askin’ Alice about our odds.”

“Hell yeah I’m nervous,” Lambert admitted. “I don’t know how you calculate our chances, Alice, but ... if it gives us a good hand, I’m unlocking some of your restrictions on the flight assist systems.”

“You’re giving it the joysticks?” Carl asked, his voice somewhere between amused and amazed.

“No, more like ... letting it dip its toes in. Plus if I black out hopefully Alice’ll keep us from crashing. Think you can handle it, robot?”

“You won’t regret this, Lieutenant,” the machine replied. “I better not. Thirty seven percent...”

Carl probably had something to add, but he kept his mouth suspiciously shut. Lambert doubted he’d ever hear the end of this if they came out of the nebula alive.

Lambert’s flightgroup turned forty degrees upward in relation to the UEC, weaving between the clouds while keeping out of predicted sensor range. He could only make out glimpses of the hostile ships on his thermals, their engines flaring white-hot trails from their main thrusters.

The nebula began to lose its visible density, a pocket of clear space helping Lambert see the UEC fleet in its entirety. Like the Hub, they were travelling as a tightly-knit group, with the tanker hanging off to one side, and the Raptors and corvettes evenly distributed around the destroyer in the middle. It didn’t look like they’d detected the Hub fleet, which was barely a few sectors across from them at this point.

“Switch to IR search and track, everyone,” Lambert reported over the group-band, the corvettes pivoting side-on to the UEC fleet, like boats turning to broadside. Unlike certain missiles that required radar lock, thermal targeting didn’t give off a warning to whoever was unlucky enough to be on the receiving end. Coupled with the fact the Confederate’s engines were facing them, their heat signatures were lighting up like solar flares on his HUD, the weapon systems locking on quickly.

Mezul and the other Balokarid ships put themselves between the UEC and Lambert’s group, forming a wall, the ships at the corners hanging slightly back to try and wrap around as much of the corvettes as possible, their shields looking like a bunch of soap bubbles creating a protective net. They were packed very closely together, only hundreds of meters between each shielded vessel. He’d never asked Mezul what happened when two shields touched, but he guessed it was nothing good.

“In position,” Mezul reported. Lambert radioed in to the

Gallipoli.

“Kill box set,” he said. “We’re ready.”

“Copy, one-six,” fleetcom said. “Clear to engage.”

He thumbed the launch button on his armrest, ordering his team to do the same, launching the six of his missiles one by one. The payloads fired off their tail thrusters, spearing around the shield net of the Balokarids, before turning ninety degrees and gunning for the fleet. The rest of the corvettes likewise fired their salvos, a swarm of over forty missiles curing around the Sala’ci’s and burning towards the Confederate fleet.

Lambert’s feed zoomed through the flickering shield of one of the alien ships, the view shimmering as he watched the missile wave zero in on the heat signatures, impacting after ten seconds of silent flight. An entire squadron of Raptors were torn to shreds by a cluster of explosions, a pair of heavy corvettes ripped in half as his own missiles detonated just off the bows, ripping the internal compartments apart and sending the scraps flying. The rest of the ordinance found their marks in the surrounding escorting spacecraft, some of them forewarned enough to pull evasive manoeuvres, but to no effect, another three entire squadrons worth of ships decimated before the Confederates knew what was happening. For once, Lambert was glad the nebula was so full of distorting energy, their ambush had worked.

“Hit them again!” Lambert ordered, reticles on his HUD swivelling about to find more targets. When the successful locking tone filled his ears, he fired, three more missiles curving round the protective Balokarid shielding, the nose trackers mounted on the missiles doing the rest.

Watching the salvo was like watching a nest of disturbed fireflies, visible only on his tactical view as little dots aiming for the mass of red ahead of them. The UEC fleet broke apart, flying defensively as they reoriented themselves to this new threat. Dozens more of the Confederate tags blinked out from his view, yellow explosions on his cameras confirming the kills.

Point-defence cannons lit up the void as the UEC finally countered the incoming ordinance, their onboard radars tracking the missiles and leading them appropriately. They cut the salvo down by over half, but some still made it through, another ten or twenty UEC tags fading away, reduced to scrap as the missiles weaved between the bullets and found their marks.

Lambert, nor anyone else, had seen such a payload of destruction. He didn’t have time to count, but the fleet had been cut to size – it just went to show how much surprise meant in any battle, in a vacuum or out of one.

“Fire at will!” he said through the local channel. His fellow corvettes launched everything they had, but the Confederates had coordinated quickly, a formation of Raptors and missile boats moving to Lambert’s squadron. The missile boats were equipped with retractable blisters mounted near the aft of the ship, the launchers resembling an angled wall with eight holes cut into the surface in a grid pattern. They could deliver twenty four miniature warheads within three seconds, and that’s exactly what they did, the blisters firing off clusters of micro missiles, the ordinance twirling through the void erratically as they gained in speed, Lambert’s systems blaring proximity warnings at him.

There had to be almost a hundred missiles coming their way, the ordinance from both sides of the fight passing by each other around the midpoint between the groups. His systems were going off with warnings, the sheer amount of missiles coming for them could kill the whole squadron twice over, but this was Mezul’s fabled plan they’d discussed, they had to hold position.

The missiles were close enough now that he could make out their tail fins. Every instinct he had as a pilot urged him to pop flares and flee, but he had to trust Mezul and the aliens to keep him alive while he and the corvettes did their jobs.

The missiles closed to two kilometers, one, and there was a bright flash as a missile hit a Sala’ci just off to his right. He turned to see smoke and debris smothering the craft from one side, backlit by the bluish hue of the orbiting shield. It kind of reminded him of lightning flashing behind a cloud. When the explosive cleared, he could see the alien fighter was maintaining course, its shields a little duller but still operating.

The rest of the rockets met the alien shields, peppering the fighters with a devastating wave of explosions, raining down on the shield net like artillery raking a field. As the vacuum cleared the smoke, the Sala’ci’s came into view, knocked a little out of formation but otherwise unscathed. It was working! The net of shields was keeping the corvettes out of harm’s way without sacrificing their excellent firing position.

They knocked more and more Confederate ships out of the void, but their point defence was coordinating, and the sheer amount of tracer rounds filling the space was rendering their missiles increasingly obsolete. The destroyer was also reacting now, its sheer mass making it seem to stand still as it rotated on the spot, the thrusters on its left flank flaring orange as it turned to port, giving its devastating railgun a line of sight as it slowly appeared from around the destroyer’s bridge.

The missile boats saw what the aliens were doing, Lambert noticing that they were directing their noses off to the side, in hopes of going around the protective net to get a better firing angle, launching another volley as they moved. He turned his head and saw three of the Sala’ci’s break off from the net and barrel straight for the incoming missiles, pulling completely bonkers manoeuvres and ramming straight into them, their shields absorbing the resulting blasts.

The Confederate ships that survived the bombardment came together, creating a pair of full Raptor squadrons with a few supporting corvettes, a total of thirty-odd craft gunning straight for

Lambert’s group, it seemed they’d run out of options for dealing with Mezul’s shield cordon and wanted to use their nimble craft to out- manoeuvre them.

Seeing such a mass of ships making a beeline for them made

Lambert’s heart race, but once again Mezul’s plan came through. The Raptors opened up with their chin-cannons as they got into range, but Mezul’s net met them with their own firepower.

“Drop shields!” Mezul shouted to her group. “Slag them!” The Sala’ci’s deactivated their shields, their barrels going red- hot as they blasted great, green beams into the void. It was like watching a giant, deadly rave, the lasers melting armour and cutting lines through the incoming formation of ships, forcing them to scatter.

Lambert wanted to help, but he couldn’t risk sending a missile in and risk hitting Mezul or one of the Balokarids. Fortunately due to their shielding and preference for close-quarters combat, the laser- wielding weapons were winning out, and the Balokarids were now in their element. Lambert did watch one Sala’ci get cut down by a swath of gunfire after its shields depleted, the rounds hitting some vital component within and detonating, but for every Balokarid ship destroyed, three Confederates would join them.

To say the UEC attack failed would be an understatement, they were cut down until only five of them remained, the survivors turning to flee the deadly lasers, their limited range their only weakness. Being so close made Lambert glad they were on the same side.

“Shield wall, up!” Mezul ordered over the radio, the alien ships returning to formation, flipping on their axis’ and engaging their forward thrusters to slow their momentum, rebuilding their net with impressive speed and accuracy.

“We’re out!” one of the other corvette’s reported, followed by a few other admissions. Lambert was down to three missiles himself, turning his eyes to assess the UEC’s strength. A lot of the attack craft had been knocked out, but the Confederates had managed to protect their tanker, and the destroyer was completely undamaged, its numerous PDC’s blanketing its surroundings with suppressive fire.

He saw that the Confederates were rallying another attack, this one much bigger than the last, he counted at least fifty ships, splitting up into two groups to no doubt try and get around the shield wall and hit from two vectors.

“The railgun almost has us targeted,” Alice warned. He glanced at the giant barrel and saw it was almost angled enough he could see down its shadowy barrel, a laser that estimated its firing line appearing on his HUD swivelling towards them.

“Break off everyone, break!” he shouted, the squadron following him as they turned tail. They’d attracted too much attention, but that was exactly the plan, inflict as much damage and then get out of there.

From his tactical view, he saw another swarm of tags crop up on the borders of the render, but these were marked as friendly. He turned to his external camera view, and saw an inspiring display of Hub ships engaging the UEC fleet from the flank. Like their own squadron, the shielded Sala’ci led the main charge, ready to be the first to get a bit of revenge for all their lost friends, and Lambert’s ambush had given them the perfect window, railguns and ship noses pointing in the wrong direction.

Laser beams shredded the void, cutting down ships and missiles alike as they closed to minimum range. Confederate Raptors formed their own charge, and the two sides clashed in a distant, chaotic frenzy, so much closer than standard CQC should be in space, it looked almost like a dogfight in vacuum.