1815 hours, June 24th, 2673; the bridge of the Skate

The Skate had broken contact with the fighters, but at the cost of the last two decoys. The boat was drifting silently on an angle that brought it closer to the dreadnoughts, aiming at a set of asteroids beyond. All of its turrets had been withdrawn again as it did its best to maintain the lowest sensor profile possible.

“Sensors, mark each contact with the highest probability of detecting us,” Murphy said from his chair, his eyes on the tactical plot on the screen. He watched each of the contacts get marked with a sphere. The sensors on the dreadnought and carriers were not as sensitive as the ones on the smaller, dedicated defense ships, but they could still find the Skate if it drifted too close.

Lead Hart kept watching the tactical plot from the helm and kept manoeuvring the Skate to present the bow to the biggest threat. The sensor cross section was the smallest from the bow, and it also gave them the best shot if they had to use their last torpedo.

The drifting continued as they got to their closest point to the capital ships; fortunately, there were no ships within half a light second of their closest approach. The fleet was not in a very tight formation, covering a large volume of space. Only the searching fighters had any detectable radar emissions. The carriers controlling them had communications emissions; the rest of the fleet was silent.

Another hour passed before the boat started to decelerate and set up for a landing on one of the largest asteroids. The chosen asteroid was over a kilometre in length and should be enough to hide the boat while officers worked out what to do next. By the time they had docked with the asteroid, the fighters had increased their search area and had killed their radars. It became a case of the blind trying to find each other.

With the heat sinks drilled into the core of the asteroid, the hull of the boat quickly cooled down to the temperature of the rock, masking them from thermal images. For now, they were relatively safe.

They had discovered sixty-seven ships in the area: three carriers, eight mainline dreadnoughts, six more point defense dreadnoughts, eight missile battleships, a command ship, fourteen cruisers, eleven destroyers, and sixteen frigates. It was a very dangerous force if the Clearwater fleet did not know about it.

Their primary mission was to get the message out. The torpedo boat carried three message beacons, and they had already sent one of them when they discovered the first fleet. Murphy had to find a way to get the second beacon out safely. It had only been three hours since the launch of the Mark 15, but the extended high-G acceleration and stress of combat had taken its toll on Murphy and his crew.

* * *

1830 hours, June 24th, 2673; Alpha-Hotel Flight

“Alpha-Hotel Flight, this is control. Return to the carrier.”

“Control, this is Alpha-Hotel lead, repeat.” Captain Wilmore could not believe his ears. The second pilot in his group, his own wingman, Dante, had died, and control wanted him to return to base.

“Alpha-Hotel, return to base. You are out of missiles. You did not launch with a full load of fuel and are running low. Acknowledge.” The space control operator sounded tired and irritated, not something Jorge had the energy or desire to deal with presently.

“Roger, control, Alpha-Hotel group is RTB at this time.”

Wilmore switched to his patrol’s short-range channel and gave them the vector back to base.

“Lead, are they serious?” Sara asked.

“Yes they are, three. It’s time for us to rearm and refuel. We aren’t going to do Dante any favours by dying out here through negligence.”

Jorge looked at the defensive status of the fleet. All but the standard patrol of three flights were returning to the carriers. Control did not take the threat of the Rake seriously anymore. After a moment of thought, he could understand why, and the professional officer in him had to see the point. The boat had tried to shoot a torpedo at the Fitzgerald and failed. Their intelligence said that the torpedo boats would be carrying sensors in two of their bays instead of torpedoes. They could carry four torpedoes and still be stealthy, or eight and lose all chances of sneaking around.

The Rake was definitely hiding, and it was using every trick it could to keep itself hidden. The boat could not have carried the eight-torpedo assault package. And they were surveying the system, so that left them with only two torpedoes. One was used to take out the shield ships, and the other was a dud. The torpedo boat could not even threaten a corvette now, and it was only a danger to the fighters that patrolled the fleet. All the fighters had to do was keep the boat from reporting in.

The fleet’s shield ships had redeployed, and the cloak was being reconstructed. If the Rake was still within the shield, it was not going to get back out again. As long as they kept up the patrol in the area, the torpedo boat could only hide. If it could only hide and could not run before the shield went up, then it was effectively neutralized.

Jorge tried to look for the bright spot of the encounter; at least the Republic of Terrace had the occasional equipment problem like they did. The focus on optimism left him when he realized that even with equipment failures, the boat had still killed Dante. That incident still burned in his thoughts, and he wanted to destroy the Rake for what it had done. The group had been together for over a decade.

The three fighters kept the acceleration and deceleration to a simple one G. There was no need to rush, and the one-G acceleration allowed them to feel comfortable in the cockpits again. Heavy acceleration was tiring, and drifting could cause the inner ear to lose track and cause some vertigo, especially when the pilot was tired. The one-G trip helped them to recover.

Landing on a space-based carrier was both easier and harder than landing on a waterborne carrier or landing strip. Like naval aviators in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the fighters approached the carrier from the aft. But unlike airplanes the space fighters did not have to worry about stalling their craft. The spacecraft had to match vectors in three dimensions, which was easier when the carrier was not manoeuvring like it was now.

The first step was to get close enough to the carrier to switch reference points. This made the carrier the centre of their universe. All distances and speeds were calculated relative to their home base. Everything that was not the carrier and themselves was ignored. The fighters slowed down to an approach speed of ten metres per second when they were at the one-kilometre mark. At this speed the fighters would not take any damage or do any damage to the carrier.

The landing gear was extended. It was the typical tricycle arrangement used for hundreds of years. Two smaller wheels were at the nose, attached to the same pylon and axle, with two large wheels at the back, one to each side of the fighter. Jorge manoeuvred his fighter to touch down between two sets of rails that ran along the surface of the carrier. As the fighter moved along the deck, the rails grew closer and closer together, guiding the fighter directly into the centre of the landing track.

Ten seconds after touching down, about one hundred metres along the hull, each rail was in firm contact with the fighter’s two outer wheels. The rails changed shape and formed an upper lip that locked the fighter to the surface of the carrier. With the fighter still travelling along the surface of the hull, the carrier applied electricity to slow the fighter down, and the fighter was guided toward an air lock door.

Behind the air lock was an elevator that brought the fighter into the receiving hanger, where Jorge could disembark into atmosphere. The fighter would also be drained of any liquid hydrogen and oxygen that remained, before it was pushed into the servicing hanger. After inspection, rearming, and servicing, the fighter would be taken to the launch tube, where it would be refueled right before launching. Only the ready fighters had a full load of fuel in their launch tubes.

Jorge waited by the hatchway for the remaining two members of his group. He hoped he did not look as upset as they did. Sara was not taking it as well as Bill was, and he wondered if she had something going on with Dante. It was not his place to ask, not with them being so far out of contact with military authority, and he did not really want to know.

“Let’s get going,” he said to the two. “No one has told me about being on ready alert. I think I still have some gin left from our last raid.”

* * *

1830 hours, June 24th, 2673; the flag bridge of TRFS Glasgow

There was a full watch on the flag bridge when the admiral came in. The fleet was in formation and was waiting for the final items of the checklist to be completed before the run up toward the transition to interstellar space started.

The last patrols of interceptors and recognisance craft were on their way back to their carriers and should be within the arrival hangers and strapped down well before the beginning of the run. The torpedo boats were safely tied down in their bays on the John Charlie and would not be making the transition on their own; instead, they would rely on the tender’s curve drive to make the trip to SD-Four. This suited the admiral, since the larger ship had a more efficient interstellar drive than the small, derelict torpedo boats.

The admiral was firmly in the same camp as the rest of the admiralty when it came to the size of ships. Bigger ships were better. They were fewer in number and cost more, but they were easier to administer on a per-person basis. They even carried their own administration department, so the paperwork they filed was usually filled in correctly and did not cause a problem with the filing back home in Terrace. Frigates and corvettes did not have their own administrative personnel and were not as orderly, with the executive officer usually handling the bulk of the paperwork. The lack of proper paperwork from those smaller ships always went against the grain of Admiral Hirlay’s orderly universe.

The admiral much preferred the way the cruisers and larger ships operated; they were large and orderly. She would not even notice the torpedo boats if it was not for the fact that they made good scouts, and the fact that Robertson was in charge of the fleet’s squadron. Supporting Robertson despite his rampant incompetence was good for her career. Terrace did not have a war to worry about, which removed the problem of the junior commander’s lack of ability.

The time for the transition was approaching, and all the small craft had docked and were secured. It was now time to give the order for all ships to start their 0.8-G trip toward the sun. An orderly beginning to the trip would help mitigate the chaos of the exit transition into SD-Four. It always took time for the fleet to reform after an interstellar trip. The less time it took for the fleet to reform, the better.

Admiral Hirlay gave the order and watched as the fleet reorganized for the trip. The fleet pulled into a tighter formation that looked very much like a cylinder on the 3-D tactical plot. The frigates and destroyers were at the fore and aft, with the larger ships positioned in the middle. The command ship was at the rear of the formation, just to the fore of the point defense cruisers that guarded the capital ships from the rear.

She was just admiring the formation as it moved toward the transition as her eyes caught something wrong. The gunship squadron was accelerating faster than the cruisers before it. The cruisers themselves had bumped their acceleration to keep the massive dreadnoughts from running into them. It was like a chain reaction. As the cruisers increased their acceleration, the destroyers started to accelerate faster, which forced the frigates to push harder to keep out in front. The cylinder was breaking in two.

“What the hell is Brown doing?” she almost screamed as her orderly formation was not so orderly anymore. The time was 1900 hours, and the first of the corvettes and frigates passed the transition point and vanished from the tactical plot.

“Order the rest of the fleet to catch up.” Her voice had risen as her anxiety came to the surface. “And get me Commodore Brown on the radio!”

The frigates at the front of the formation had all made the transition as her orders were being relayed to the rest of the fleet. The rear elements had started to accelerate; the forward elements of the second part of the formation were the point defense dreadnoughts. The leading destroyers of the first part had started to make their transition following the frigates.

The orders were still being relayed five minutes later when Brown’s squadron started to disappear; final acceleration of the dreadnoughts had been pushed to 1.5 G after the last of the defensive cruisers’ transitions. The communications light on her console was active for only a few seconds before it went out again. The TRS Rapier was one of the first dreadnoughts to make the transition.

“Hasn’t he ever heard that a commander doesn’t lead from the front?” Admiral Hirlay complained. Almost half her fleet had already made the transition, and the carriers were getting into final position to make the trip. Once the leading elements had started their transition, there was no way she could stop it. The entire fleet had to make the trip, or else she would look silly. It did not even cross her mind that stopping a fleet transition once it had started was extremely dangerous.

The admiral planned to have words with the commodore when she saw him on the other side. She was going to relieve him of his command at the very least, even if she had little or no justification.

* * *

2000 hours, June 24th, 2673; the bridge of the Skate

Time passed as the torpedo boat sat on the dark side of the asteroid. The crew was still at their battle stations, though they had started to relax. Most of the patrols of fighters had landed on their carriers, and there were three groups that they could detect. The fighters would take half an hour or an hour to be serviced and ready for launch again.

Murphy spent some time thinking. He had to decide what to do next. He did not want to sacrifice his crew meaninglessly; he did not want to sacrifice them period. Failure to get a message out to the Clearwater fleet would be just that: meaningless sacrifice. He watched the tactical plot as the ships moved to cover the holes generated by the attack of the initial Mark 15. They could still spot the various ships, but mostly they had lost contact with those that were on the other side of the asteroid.

He had only two options before him—really, only two options he thought were worth contemplating: the torpedo boat could sit on the asteroid like a scared field mouse, or he could fight his way free of the fleet and launch another message beacon. The first option would ensure the survival of his boat, but would probably mean that the NTF fleet would win the engagement with the Clearwater fleet. The second option would probably mean the destruction of his boat.

Murphy hated to run from a fight, even one he had no hope of winning. The NTF fleet was not acting right; it should not have been in the system so close to Clearwater, not without breaking the recent peace treaty with Terrace. The war was still too fresh in everyone’s mind for them to do that. And it was unlikely they had bounced back from it enough to start a new offensive. There was still the question of the other fleet, the pirate fleet, and what it was doing in the system.

There was no way to figure out the answers to those questions without boarding one of the ships and stealing its databank. The information would not be in one of the small ships either. He would have to go for the command ship, carriers, or dreadnoughts. They would contain the information he needed to figure out what was going on in the system. With a crew of less than fifty, and none of them marines, there was no way he could pull that off.

He thought of the Clearwater fleet and how it would fare against the two fleets in the solar system. Without warning, and if it moved to engage one of the fleets, there was a good chance that the Clearwater fleet would be caught in a pincer and destroyed. His thoughts turned to Anna. She would be on the command ship, being the fleet’s signals officer. He suddenly realized he had not thought of her since the Skate had entered the solar system. He was a touch ashamed of that when he realized it, and he made a note to write her another letter when he had a chance.

He looked at the tactical plot on the main screen again. Only those three groups of fighters were patrolling now. There might be more, but they were the only ones with anything like active emissions. He knew more could be out there, just drifting like the Skate did to remain hidden. The fleet had enough cruisers to cover the hole caused by the Mark 15 when it first attacked.

“OK,” he thought out loud as he came to his decision. He flipped on the intercom and called down to engineering to retrieve the heat sink from the asteroid. The hull of the torpedo boat was already as cold as it was going to get.

“Helm, pull us away from the asteroid belt, and aim us toward shield ship echo,” he said and marked a shield ship about a third of the way around the perimeter of the fleet from the Skate. “Bring us up to two-G acceleration.”

Murphy watched the response on the tactical plot. The groups of fighters were probably not a big threat to the torpedo boat. Their rail guns and lasers were good against fighters, bombers, and missiles. They were not as well suited for the bow and stern armour on his torpedo boat. As long as they did not surprise him or attack him in large groups, he could lower the priority of that threat.

It was the frigates and destroyers that were the danger to the torpedo boat. The weapons carried on those ships would not even notice the armour the Skate carried. The larger ships also carried shields that would be able to deflect the RSG’s shots and refract the point lasers away from the critical portions of the hull. Their turrets were light enough to track a fast-moving boat if it got close.

The small ships of the fleet would also be carrying light anti-ship missiles. The missiles were typically armoured. They had enough armour to force a defending ship to task more time to the missiles, allowing other missiles in a salvo to get in closer for the kill. It would take more than one missile to kill the Skate. To kill the boat, its point defenses would have to be overwhelmed like any other craft’s, but the fleet had not done that yet. None of the ships had launched an anti-ship missile at it yet.

The actions of the fleet were a mystery to Murphy, and he had to report about it. He had to survive long enough to do that. So, he decided to test the response of the fleet by exposing the Skate and making an obvious run at a shield ship.

The fleet did not react to the torpedo boat as it started its run toward her target. The target was still far enough away, and none of the weapons but the Mark 15 would be in range for at least another ten or fifteen minutes. Murphy thought they should have reacted by now, but they were ignoring him for the most part.

“Expose all the turrets, activate the radar, and make sure the hull is being cooled by the stealth system for now.” Torpedo boat doctrine ran contradictory to what he was doing. On one hand he was exposing the boat by using his active systems, and on the other hand, he was trying to hide the thermal characteristics of the hull. The fighters’ lasers were not effective against the hull while it was being cooled by the stealth systems, but he had something more in mind.

“Lieutenant Ridgard, lock onto the shield ship in front of us. Make sure they know we have them in our sights.” He waited and watched the plot. Some new contacts were reported. Some fighters were spotted as they launched from the carriers, but not as many as before. The active groups of fighters had started to vector toward the boat.

“Lieutenant Ridgard…,” Murphy started, an idea forming in his head, a possible way to get away from the fleet and still accomplish his mission.