ShipCore

USD: Thirty-Six hours since hostile fleet incursion.

Location: Meltisar System, MNS Aegis Flag Bridge

Alex didn’t need Nameless to provide her psych eval reports for her to notice the undercurrent of fear and stress on the flag bridge. The flag lieutenant reporting to Admiral Parks had small beads of sweat forming on the side of his face, a signals officer’s voice cracked slightly higher than was usual, and the tone of the line section commanders was entirely grave as they reported their readiness.

Captain Young had retreated off the flag bridge to the MNS Aegis’ secondary CIC. As long as one of the two critically important compartments remained intact, the flagship would still be capable of continuing to fight.

Admiral Parks had already pushed the fleet into action, mirroring the 2nd and 3rd fleets as they met the Ertanites. Distance has disappeared between the intruding ships as the intruding ships dug deeper into Meltisar space to meet the response.

The Imperial Fleet loomed large as the 1st Fleet came closer, both sides heaping more and more sensitive and powerful sensors upon the other in order to discern the slightest advantage or new information. On the flag bridge’s primary tactical display, dozens of ships were highlighted hinting at individual weaknesses or issues.

Different combat plans were offered in real time to the Admiral who had an instant estimation and appraisal of any move the fleet could make. Traditional Line Battle, Decapitation strike, a wedged breakthrough… all were moot. There was only one option called for by the strategic plan that Alex herself had helped form: tactical retreat.

She squeezed the arm of her seat. Now that things were in motion, she wasn’t truly in command or have any way to steer events except for a very limited role as one of the flag communication officers, specifically relating to NAI coordination and with FHQ. Nameless took care of almost everything on his end without needing any prompting. With nearly a twelve hour round trip for communications back to Meltisar itself, there wasn’t much chance for her to do…anything but watch.

Captain Young’s voice crackled over her ear comm, his tone serious but calm. “Ensign, I need you to double-check the ship’s NAI link between the ship and the rest of the formation.”

Alex nodded to herself and flipped her HUD to the relevant screen that Nameless had made. This was one job that pretty much only she could handle, since the NAI links for the Meltisar ships were brand new and there wasn’t a regular interface for the crew to utilize them.

Nameless had been running cyclic simulations of point defense calculations she realized was akin to…practice. All the links were fine though, and she opened a channel back to the captain.

“Confirming all links are green, Sir.”

“Keep an eye on them, Ensign. Let me know if anything disrupts the links so we can fall back to the standard PD net,” Young ordered before closing the comm link.

Admiral Parks noticed the interaction and gestured toward the tactical map. “I could use a confirmation that the links are correctly propagated to the rest of the line sections as well, Ensign.”

Alex nodded and started calling the various captains of the battleships that were in control of their various local combat groups. Confirming those connections had to be done on both ends, and it took a lot longer.

That wasn’t actually a problem. It mercifully gave her something to do instead of sitting and feeling useless.

She relayed each status report as they came in. Everything was operational. The Admiral acknowledged with a nod but continued his briefing to the section commanders. There would be a missile exchange before falling back. The time it would take for the fleet to completely arrest their momentum and reverse course would allow for three or four full missile salvos despite the fleet having already bled off most of their momentum.

They were only going to manage to avoid an Imperial Fleet fly-by because the enemy, like themselves, was limited by their ship’s capabilities when approaching a considerable fraction of light speed. The acceleration curve of the Linear Drive meant that reaching .4c or higher was entirely possible, but at that rate of movement sensors and targeting systems struggled to make sense of the red and blue shift.

Which meant if the Imperial fleet poured on more speed to chase them, they’d ruin their ability to shoot while presenting themselves as easy targets for the Meltisar fleet. Well, fast moving ‘easy’ targets, anyway. Kinetics would be nearly useless, but lasers and missiles were more than capable of intercepting fast-moving targets.

A soft chime sounded in her ear, indicating she had received a message from Thea. Oddly, the notification was in the emotionless tone of her Main Computer, rather than Thea’s usual Avatar voice.

[Update: Moonlet Wormhole Transfer project is nearing completion. Estimated time until operational: 3 hours. 6th Fleet in compliance with navigational orders.]

Three hours. That was in line with the previously offered estimate, and Alex’s eyes lit up. Thea was really going to manage the impossible. The plan was going to work.

“Admiral Parks,” Alex said, stealing the attention of the senior officer, “I’ve just received an update from Thea. She estimates that the Moonlet will be operational in approximately three hours. The 6th fleet is standing by for transit.”

The admiral nodded in acknowledgement, but his attention was quickly returned to the incoming Imperial Fleet. “Keep me informed, Ensign.”

“Yes, sir,” Alex replied, turning her attention back to the tactical plot. Both fleets would be entering missile range.

Fifteen minutes until contact turned into ten, then five. The scattered conversations on the bridge reached a crescendo as all stations and sections reported ready for action, and then went silent. The tension was one thing the simulators hadn’t…probably couldn’t ever copy. She and her classmates had taken them seriously, but it was almost like comparing a game to the real thing.

Any mistakes now meant that people would die, maybe a whole lot of them.

Intel suggested that the Imperial munitions had nearly identical ranges to their Meltisar counterparts. It reminded her of the simulation battle where Rachel had been in command and both fleets had been mirrors, coming to collide. It wasn’t exactly the same scenario, but Alex was sure that if they engaged fully, there was no way the Meltisar fleet would come out unscathed.

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Maybe even broken. There was no guarantee the MNS Aegis would survive, either. The ship was the largest ship on the field, but that didn’t make it invincible, and it would be a prime target for the opposing fleet to take out.

The forward elements of both fleets crossed the dotted red lines on the tactical plot, indicating they had entered maximum missile range. Neither side opened fire immediately. The Meltisar ships continued to burn hard.

The rear flare of their drives would reduce their accuracy slightly, but the integrated sensor network would theoretically compensate for that with the small caveat of a slightly increased latency.

The Imperials, meanwhile, had a slight range advantage due to having already reached their assumed maximum speed before performance degradation set in.

Alex looked at the acceleration profile of the fleet. The Admiral had calculated their course change nearly perfectly. There would only be a small window where both fleets were in missile range before the Meltisar Fleet pulled away and began to slowly claw distance back toward the rendezvous point where the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd fleets were to meet, halfway back to Meltisar.

A red indicator light flashed as a low-pitched alarm sounded. An officer squelched the alarm immediately and turned to look at the Admiral. He pressed a key that lit up the comm channels to every line section in the fleet.

“All ships, cleared for action, return fire, simultaneous launches.” Admiral Parks commanded with a steady voice.

Every ship had been waiting for the command, missile bays had been prepped and armed, waiting eagerly to discharge their munitions. Alex’s eyes were glued to the tactical map as she watched the incoming and outgoing missile volleys appear. A time stamp on both symbols indicated they’d both be arriving within 14 minutes.

Nameless went into overdrive, she could actually feel a slight fog in her head as he began to push the fleet’s sensors and their computronics to the limits to discern every possible detail and come up with a unified defense plan for the thousands of ships in the fleet.

Two minutes later, a second volley was exchanged. This time the Meltisar ships fired first, their systems reloading slightly faster by a few seconds. The salvos were slightly lighter because some of the older model corvettes had only carried a single launch of missiles, but that was only a small percentage of the weight of fire.

A few officers maintained hushed conversations as they discussed operation details, but for the most part, the bridge was a razor quiet, punctuated by the environmental systems. The distance between the fleets stopped closing, and then they began to separate again. A third launch followed after another two minutes, and then a fourth.

Eight minutes until the first volleys would arrive. Officers began to chatter as system operators began making slight corrections to their systems in an attempt to make sure they were operating at peak capability right when the volley arrived. That was the standard procedure for Meltisar ships. There weren’t normally any NAIs to do it.

Screens across the bridge suddenly flashed, then blinked a short reboot sequence, causing an uproar.

[Notice: Fleet system integration is complete. This unit will oversee all system configurations across units within 100ms latency.]

Alex cleared her throat, immediately stealing Admiral Parks’ attention from several panicked aides. “Sir, my MainComputer has taken over all the local system configurations to keep them at peak operations for the engagement.”

His eyes narrowed. She didn’t blame him. They hadn’t discussed it or planned it. Doing something like that across what amounted to hundreds of ships and causing a minor panic when everyone should have been laser focused wasn’t ideal.

He didn’t yell at her, though. He nodded, then pulled up the comms and relayed the information and instructed everyone to focus on their tasks. Even if Nameless had stolen control from a good portion of them.

Parks looked back at her. “Are the NAI PD links still operating correctly, Ensign?”

Alex nodded quickly. “No change, Admiral. Everything is working properly and Nameless can handle the additional strain from handling the systems. As long as the Aegis’ sensors, communications, and computronics stay online, that shouldn’t change.”

The admiral nodded, then turned back to the sensor. Alex caught what had fixed his attention. Both fleets were nearly out of range, but the time for reload for the fleet had also nearly reached zero. He picked up the fleet comm and pressed the transmit key.

“All ships, fifth strike authorized. Launch all ready munitions, simultaneous strike, 12:56 Universal, 22 seconds,” Parks ordered.

Alex flipped the tactical screen to present a map of the fleet’s missile readiness. Each ship was represented by a tiny square, black for not ready and green for ready to fire. Most of the ships were black with a small swath of green representing ships with faster reloading missile tubes. The order had only left 22 seconds for ships to become ready and fire, but that was necessary because beyond that, their missiles would be out of range.

As it was, if the Imperial fleet accelerated away to build distance faster, the missiles would likely miss completely. But if they continued on their course, they’d smack right into them.

Squares flashed green rapidly as ships reloaded, dozens then hundreds coming online in the last ten seconds. When the clock reached zero, nearly eighty percent of the fleet fired. It wasn’t a full salvo, and it had been launched at maximum range, but it was one that the Imperials wouldn’t be able to mirror.

Alex rubbed her temples as her head began to throb. Nameless didn’t tell her what was going on, but she didn’t need him to. She could feel it, although it was just a fuzzy sensation of concentration on the incoming missile volleys. She switched her personal screen to a detailed view of the incoming salvos.

Each cluster contained over a hundred thousand missiles. It was a mindboggling number, and no human had any business trying to do more than tweak their computer aides in how they were going to be dealt with. The fleet had given up most of that control to her—to Nameless.

Each swath of red icons was highlighted, every missile given a projected threat level and estimated target. Those wouldn’t be firm until they entered a final target lock and interception burn. Due to the missiles onboard evasive software, the missiles spent tons of reaction mass and acceleration in the final throes to avoid defensive fire.

The first wave entered long laser range, and a concentrated volley of deadly light lanced out, first from the heavier battleships and then a second later from the smaller forward picket ships. ECM and decoys erupted from both sides, but it was evident that Nameless had the upper hand in a serious way, as nearly all the enemy units remained locked.

The same couldn’t be said for the missiles, which veered off toward ship sized sensor ghosts and targets that had moved from their previous positions.

The volley was squarely targeted on the main line of cruisers and battleships. It gave the pickets extra time to engage with their point defense lasers and thin out the cloud of deadly munitions before they arrived.

And that was definitely needed because despite the long-range laser fire, there was still over half of the volley remaining and they were only seconds away from impact. Anti-missile missiles launched from the fleet’s defensive cruisers and heavier battleships, the guided projectiles shooting out to meet their counterparts.

On the tactical screen, different ships of the fleet were highlighted in different colors, but the Aegis and the other section leaders had their icons resized to be larger with warning icons underneath. Alex felt her breath catch. The enemy had gone for a decapitation strike. The targets on all the missiles suddenly rerouted at once to only target the Aegis and the other battleships acting as fleet coordinators.

She was on the Aegis.

They were aiming for her and everyone on board. The last few officers that had still been standing found their seats and clicked into place. She copied the gesture, sitting up a bit straighter and made sure her skinsuit was locked into her seat bracing.

Alex took a deep breath and released it. It wasn’t the first time she’d been under fire on a warship. But it was the first time when she wasn’t in command.

Something about being part of a massive fleet, with a smaller role to play, had disarmed the feeling of just how tenuous the situation was.

The next few seconds could be her last.

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