Chapter 23: Target - Random

As CSS Pendennis Castle crawled away to find succour at the closest outpost, a message arrived from CSS Morocco, captain to captain.

"Read it," Captain Wygant ordered, hiding her concern. CSS Morocco was commanded by her brother - she desperately hoped nothing was wrong, as she was in no position to assist.

"It reads, 'From Captain, CSS Morocco, to Captain, CSS Pendennis Castle. Just because you have a hole in your bottom, don't think you're a flowerpot.' Message ends."

As her bridge crew manfully restrained their chuckles, Wygant did a slow burn.

She rolled her eyes at the ceiling as she took a second to compose a suitably sarcastic reply to her brother. Undoubtedly right now he was doubled over with laughter at his cleverness.

"Message from Captain, CSS Pendennis Castle, to Captain, CSS Morocco. Little Flower requests Shitting Bull stop spreading fertilizer. Message ends."

Now her crew were snickering openly.

It would be some hours yet before the twinkling lights from the battles at the far edge of Hesperusat and the orbit of Hesperus itself arrived at the tiny, largely unarmed fleet orbiting around the system's gas giant. All the crews of the assault transports CSS La Grange and CSS Lanier, the research vessel CSS Arthur C. Clarke and their guardian sheep dog CSS Caldecot Castle could do was sit and sweat it out.

Suddenly, the battle was a hell of a lot closer.

The sensor operators on board research ship CSS Arthur C. Clarke noticed first.

"Lieutenant Payne, we have superluminal traces - ships materializing!" The concubine manning one of the sensor stations in the Research Sensors compartment, deep in the warren that was the Laboratories Deck, sounded understandably scared.

Payne raced into the compartment and confirmed the report - not that he really needed to. Nerves, he decided, just nerves. He raised his eyes to the ceiling and called out, "Skipper! The damnyankees have come, an' done brought the whole of the Army of the Potomac with 'em!"

On the bridge of the Clarke, Toddy turned to his Executive Officer, Lieutenant Barry Bothington. "It's finally happened," Toddy sputtered. "Payne's lost what little is left of his mind."

Just then, the bridge sensor operator cried out, "Confirmed, Captain. Superluminal traces at heading two-seven-five, up seven-two. Standard Sa'arm drive signature."

"Or maybe he hasn't," Toddy amended. "How many?"

But Payne knew how many, and knew this little fleet was no match. There were just two Sa'arm vessels materializing. One was the presumably unarmed Volturnus freighter with who-knew-what in its holds, but the other was the last surviving Vervactor class cruiser - more than enough to cut the far smaller CSS Caldecot Castle into scrap metal without burping.

The three captains of the unarmed vessels were too busy trying to throw their weight around to listen to their escort, who was screaming at this point. Payne realized he had to step in to prevent disaster.

"AI, I acknowledge SOPA."

The AI was as emotionless as usual, fortunately for all concerned. "Aye aye, Admiral Payne. You are SOPA."

One of the concubines glanced at Lieutenant Hotchkiss. "What's 'soap-ah'?"

Hotchkiss didn't take his eyes off his boss. "'Senior Officer Present, Afloat'. He just took over all four ships out here."

Across all four ships' bridges, the voice of Lieutenant Payne cut across the confusion. "As SOPA, I'm orderin' the following: Caldecot Castle, swing between us an' them, and empty your torpedo tubes - not too close, jes' try to draw their fire for a bit. La Grange, Lanier, Clarke, Evolution Sir Robin."

Captain Hardesty, skipper of CSS Caldecot Castle, swiftly acknowledged and swung his bows in the general direction of the enemy, preparing for an arcing attack.

Looks of complete confusion passed among the crews on the bridges of the two assault transports. Obviously their captains and executive officers were not fans of Monty Python.

Toddy was not really up on British 1970's popular culture, but he did comprehend enough of the Sir Robin reference. As a result, the next events didn't strike him with complete surprise.

"Sir," the helmsman reported, "helm controls are locked and unresponsive!" At the same time, the helmsman's counterparts on the assault transports were reporting the same information to their captains,

The utterly emotionless voices of three AI responded simultaneously in an insane chorus before Toddy could. "Preparing to flee like a scared little girl. Requesting course heading."

"Twenty-five point six three, up twenty," responded Lieutenant Payne, buckling into an acceleration chair in the Science Division's Sensor Compartment. "All hands brace for acceleration. Visors down, suits go to internal life support."

"Heading two five point six three, aye," the three AI agreed, still responding as one. Then they added, "Multiplying heading by the cubed root of three nine four seven point three nine."

As the two assault transport captains spluttered in a mixture of indignation and disbelief at the recalculation of the heading, Toddy reacted with resigned acceptance of the inevitable madness that came with Payne's method. "Of course," he said to nobody in particular, "it makes perfect sense. I don't know why I didn't think of it myself. The cubed root of ... something-or-other."

"Execute 'Sir Robin'!"

A cute little concubine aboard the Lanier flinched, momentarily regretting the Christian name that her parents had bestowed upon her. Fortunately for young Robin, the Lanier's AI understood the command and left her unmolested.

"Aye aye, fleeing like a scared little girl," the three AI advised, still as unemotional as ever.

On the bridge of every ship in the diminutive fleet, a small screen in the corner of the Tactical display showed an old cartoon clip of a scared little girl in a red riding hood. She was running and screaming from an anthropomorphic wolf in ragged knee-length pants and suspenders. The cartoon provided the necessary sound effect to the Sir Robin manoeuvre.

For Captain Hardesty, the sound track was more than a little irritating. "AI, please change sound to Wagner's Götterdämmerung."

"Aye, Captain." The AI obediently changed the sound track.

The three fleeing vessels' sublight drives kicked in at that point, taking them on a course that was neither Payne's nor the calculation that the AI had just made. Their escort CSS Caldecot Castle launched herself into an arc crossing the path between her charges and the Sa'arm, fired all of her FTL torpedoes somewhat randomly in the general direction of the enemy's emergent traces. She completed her arc in the general heading as the three unarmed vessels with sublight engines straining at flank speed, reloading her torpedo tubes as she went.

The hive sphere blasted its landing thrusters, throwing up fine sand in every direction. Its shields were still holding, if only barely, but the sooner it landed the better. Three legs lowered from the rapidly descending ball of metal.

This landing zone was not ideal, but with the constant collisions with orbital debris - the Sa'arm aboard could not fathom the "debris" as anything unnatural - it was land or perish. They landed south of the equator, in a large flat plain that held the promise of easy tunnelling. It would be needed in such a hell world, to protect the gestalt against meteorite impact.

The sand beneath the ship would not support the mass of the giant ship for long. No sooner had the ship settled down on the sea of sand than it began tilting toward the northwest.

Aboard CSS Barnegat and the two fully-operational battle stations in orbit, rail guns began firing on a preprogrammed course of destruction. This pattern had nothing to do with the actual Sa'arm landing site, as the Marines on the planet below were quick to observe, if not understand.

Sergeant Viletti of the 1224^th Armoured Regiment was one of those, observing that shore bombardment was coming nowhere close to their pest.

"They're over that way!" he yelled impotently, head tilted back to address the unseen shore bombardment vessel, arm pointing in the direction of the grounded hive sphere. The enemy's craft was a distant speck on the horizon, even through the powerful monoculars that hung around his neck.

Yet another mushroom cloud erupted on the far horizon, at about ninety degrees away from the indicated target.

"Jesus Christ!" he spat in anger. "What the FUCK are they aiming at?"

"Random, apparently," one of his corporals offered cynically. The other soldiers manning the Rommel main battle tanks shook their heads ruefully.