0600 hours, June 25th, 2673; the Skate

Only ten of the crew had suffered injury; six of them were fatal. Those ten dead crew members, plus the ones already lost, represented a little less than a quarter of the total crew. The disabled crew members represented a significant amount of Murphy’s available manpower. Ten of his men were dead, and four were injured.

They were drifting and tumbling. That much Murphy knew because of the way the boat was acting. Where they were drifting to, he did not know. The tumbling was not bad, since it did not affect their movements inside the ship, maybe two or three rotations a minute. But without a reference point, there was no way for him to be sure. He could send some crew to the extremes of the boat to do some high school experiments to figure out what the tumble rate was, but he thought that was just pointless busy work.

He had other busy work in mind for the crew, something he felt was worthwhile. He sent the camera operators from the depressurized sections up onto the hull of the boat to check out their camera mounts. Everyone in the navy had to be experienced with extravehicular manoeuvring and had to have at least twenty hours of spacewalking a year to remain certified. Sending them out onto the hull of the boat kept them busy and helped to keep them certified. His sensors were now entirely made up of Mark One Eyeballs, augmented by binoculars that were specially shaped to fit over the standard visor of the helmets.

He was almost happy about the bridge being in near-total darkness of the bridge; it made sure the crew could not see him shifting in his seat from his anxiety. He put on his best face for the crew when they could see him—the confident commander, helping to instill confidence in the men and women under his command. The fact that his stomach was tumbling from his fears had to be kept hidden from the crew.

The first half hatch covering the bridge’s window was pulled back and secured by four members of the crew who were on the hull. This gave him a view of the outside and some idea of how fast the tumble actually was. A few of the stars were moving in relation to some of the others, which meant they were most likely facing the NTF fleet. The other fleet should have been too far away to see.

Murphy was still looking out the window as the moving stars shimmered, wavered, and then blurred out as they disappeared. The lieutenant sighed to himself.

“Well, we’re safely outside the fleet’s protective zone at least,” he said to himself after checking to make sure his radio was inactive. “Now we just have to worry about asteroids and the vacuum of space.”

* * *

0705 hours, June 25th, 2673; Pirate Fighter Patrol Tango

The flight of four junkers, as the fighter pilots started to call them, was on the backward leg of their patrol. With a Rake torpedo boat in the system, they were mostly on the watch for message beacons on their way back to Clearwater. The whole plan was to make sure one of the Terrace Republic’s patrols disappeared, causing the Clearwater fleet to send more patrols to investigate the disappearance. They would then be able to eliminate the patrol, which they hoped would be small.

The plan was in ruins, though. The senior leaders of the fleet had assumed that a flight of four fighters would be able to take a patrol boat by surprise. The capabilities of the one torpedo boat in the system had surprised them all, and the leader of Tango Flight was not holding out any hopes that his small patrol would be able to stop a patrol if it came into the system.

The patrol missions were still quiet, despite the worries of the leader. The pilots knew that the Rakes carried only three message beacons. Two of them had already been sent; the second was destroyed, and the first was probably eliminated as well. They just had to keep a watch for the last one. Fleet control had determined that if the first beacon had made it out, the decoy fleet would have already been mobbed by the Terrace Navy. Nothing had come through from the Clearwater transit for days, nothing but “authorized” freighters. The pilots were still on the watch for transitions, even if they did not expect any.

The pilots’ alertness was not high, so it was a few moments before they spotted the transit signature of something entering the system. They probably would have missed it if not for the eleven other signatures of ships entering the system right afterward.

The flash of light from the first transition was not blinding, since they were not directly in line with it. Their sensors barely read the radiation signature. It could have been a sensor ghost, for all they knew, since they were facing away from it. The next eleven transitions in quick succession surrounded them. The flashes of light blinded them temporarily and knocked their sensors completely offline. The cockpits were hardened against radiation so the pilots themselves were not harmed, apart from the temporary blindness.

* * *

0650 hours, June 25th, 2673; the flag bridge of TRS Rapier

Commodore Brown sat in the command chair on his flag bridge. His was the lead gunship of the dreadnought squadron. The Fencer class dreadnought was huge, and each had enough extra space for a flag bridge. While the flag bridge was not as large or as well equipped as the bridge on the Glasgow, it still served the commodore’s needs for squadron command.

He had signals, fighter command, tactical control, defensive fire coordination sections, and his favourite, the offensive fire section. The dreadnought squadron was made up exclusively of offensive gunships. They had missile and torpedo tubes, but they were added on almost as an afterthought and put in places where the designers could not fit more guns. This was not exactly true, as no designer would send a capital ship out without a broad range of defensive armaments, but the crew always thought of the defensive armaments as secondary and unimportant.

The ships were made much like long and thin boxes. Three of the sides had gun turrets that fired out the sides of the ship. Ship sizes had grown faster than the size of gun armaments had. To increase the firepower of the large ships, the designers had slipped back toward the massive broadsides that marked the ships of the line during the Age of Sail. During combat the ship rotated to present its flank at a target, and then rolled after each salvo to expose a fresh set of loaded guns.

The fourth side of the Fencer class had two-thirds of the hull filled with other items: antennas, the conning tower for docking with other ships and space stations, and extra shield generators. The rest of the fourth side was the landing strip for the ship’s complement of interceptors and their launch tubes. The main boat bay was also squeezed onto this side. The shuttles, both assault and passenger shuttles, were housed there, next to the barracks for the two marine companies that were berthed on board the ship.

Brown wore his fabric skin suit. In fact, all the members of the crew were in their space suits. Before they made the initial transition, he had given orders that they would enter Sigma Delta Four as if they were expecting a hot ingress into the neighbouring star system. The Rapier was a battle station; all of the Rapier’s guns were manned and armed. The compartments between the armour belts were depressurized, and the pilots for the short squadron of interceptors were in their fighters and were ready for a ganged launch.

He had trained Murphy well as his junior tactical officer. He knew Murphy would not have been late with sending the message beacon unless there was something important in the air. Brown had made sure the junior officer knew what sort of havoc could go through the fleet if one of the outriders disappeared, and he would not have risked the wrath of the flag officers because he “forgot.”

The commodore knew in his bones that something major was going on in SD-Four. The rest of the fleet probably would not be prepared for it. If he knew the admiral, none of them would be. But his squadron would be. He made sure that his dreadnoughts would be the first through the transition, his guns ready to take on anything. He was unwilling to send one of his dreadnoughts in first where he was unwilling to go. The Rapier would arrive first, and his squadron would form up around him. His squadron would give the rest of the fleet a chance to pull their trousers up and join the fight.

“Commodore, Captain Mackenzie reports that the transition will be starting in thirty seconds.”

“Very well. No changes to the order of battle, or the rules of engagement,” he said in response to his signals officer. Changing the plan of battle would have to be transmitted to the rest of his squadron by the signals section as soon as the transition was made. Brown wanted to avoid any confusion in SD-Four by his squadron, and he had no good reason to change his plan at this late stage.

The dreadnought made the transition on time. Ten seconds later the passive sensors cleared, and the ship activated its active sensors. The Rapier accelerated at just under one G to clear the transition zone. The other eleven dreadnoughts of the squadron appeared on the tactical plot in groups every fifteen seconds. Each group accelerated to catch up with the flagship.

The commodore was not worried about stealth; it was almost impossible to hide ships the size and tonnage of a dreadnought. His squadron came in on a war stance, and he wanted everyone in the system to know.

“All ships have reported in, all manned and—”

“Radar contact!” The signals officer was interrupted by the senior tactical officer. “Four small craft, one-tenth of a light second away.”

“Launch the ready interceptors. Signals, jam their communications if you can.”

Three launch tubs at the back of each dreadnought opened, and their fighters were shot out into space. The three fighters from each of the massive ships formed up and moved to a defensive position between the unknown contacts and their mother ships, ready to fend off enemy fighters, small craft, missiles, or any other threat they could encounter.

“What do we have out there, what type of craft?”

“Rapier’s sensors report they look like fighters, but not of any known type. They appear to be a combination of other fighter designs, both Terrace and NTF.”

“Order the unknown fighters to stand down and to surrender; SD-Four is claimed by the Republic of Terrace, and fighter craft are illegal unless they are owned by designated organizations or the military.” He may have been acting beyond his strict authority, but no one was going to argue with a man who had twelve dreadnoughts to back up that authority.

“Sir, I have an emergency beacon roughly one light minute away in the asteroid belt.”

Brown froze for a moment. He had been dreading this. “Whose beacon?”

“TBC-473, sir.”

“What’s it transmitting?”

“Complete power failure, source unknown. No data from the crew’s life suits, status unknown. It has been drifting for over ninety minutes.”

Brown cursed under his breath and looked at the tactical display; the four fighters had started to run. “Fighter control, I want those fighters. I want them captured, not destroyed. Tactical, I want to know where they’re running to. Work with navigation and plot out their most likely course and destination.

“Fighter control, I also want an assault shuttle manned and ready to fly in half an hour, a full complement of marines. I want two passenger shuttles manned as well. Their mission will be to go to the location of the emergency beacon and pull out any survivors they can. Nine fighters will act as escort.”

Transition signatures were starting to appear as the rest of the fleet began to enter the system. Brown had his dreadnoughts already moving away from the ingress point to prevent collision with the incoming fleet.

“Send a report to Glasgow when it makes the transition. Let them know about the emergency beacon and the fighters. Also launch one of the recognizance shuttles on the vector those mishmash fighters are taking. Detail another nine interceptors as escort. I want to know where they’re running.”

* * *

0730 hours, June 25th, 2673; the flag bridge of TRFS Glasgow

Anna had come onto the flag bridge an hour before her watch was due to start. She did that for a variety of reasons; the main one was to avoid the admiral. The admiral was taking things casually, and Anna did not want to be caught coming onto the flag bridge while wearing her skin suit. She also wanted to be settled before they made the transition to SD-Four and ready to do her job, even if the initial report was the destruction of Murphy’s boat.

The transition of the Glasgow happened on time, twenty minutes after the scheduled transition of the first elements of the fleet, the forward elements of frigates and corvettes capable of interstellar travel. Anna knew Commodore Brown was going to be there and ready. She had captured the message traffic between the ships of the gunship squadron. She had also seen the logs from the afternoon watch of the fleet transition and how the dreadnoughts had made a hot initial transition.

She was half expecting to hear a pitched battle around the sun, but when her reception cleared after the transition, all she received was the jamming from the dreadnoughts and the emergency beacon from the torpedo boat.

A lump filled her throat, and she had to blink back tears as she decoded the beacon. She feared the worst: all hands lost, even if the message did not say that. She did not see the incoming message from the Rapier for a few moments. It took her even longer to prepare herself to acknowledge it and pass it on to the admiral. She did her job robotically; as she worked through her duties, they became easier and more distracting. Slowly she was able to put the dread behind her.

* * *

Admiral Hirlay was not happy, not happy at all. Her fleet was still transitioning into the system in an orderly fashion, despite the actions of her gunboat squadron commander. There he was, right in front of the fleet, his dreadnoughts spread out in a wall to protect them, like a shield. It was all very noble of him, but it was also completely unnecessary.

She read the report as it came in: TBC-473’s emergency beacon was active, and had been for two hours. It was drifting in the asteroid belt. That meant it had survived for close to three days alone in the system and had only sent one message beacon. Even a total incompetent should have sent at least one more.

Brown had also found some fighters who refused to surrender, and he had sent his own interceptors after them. The fleeing fighters were not high quality, and the Terrace interceptors were attempting to capture them. She could not help but approve of that action; she had too many questions of her own to answer.

She moved the bulk of the fleet into SD-Four. The only boats she left behind were those that could not travel on their own. She would now have to justify why she moved the fleet and left Clearwater virtually undefended. The first excuse that came to mind was to use it as an exercise in fleet operations. She did have the budget for it. Now that she had definite proof of illegal activity in Terrace territory, she could not pull the fleet back to Clearwater without investigation. It galled her that Brown had brought his dreadnoughts in hot and beat her and the rest of the fleet to the punch. He had even started to deploy his assets without her authorization.

She thought about the problem of Brown for a moment, and thought of a way she could still turn it to her advantage. Brown was her second-in-command for the fleet, and she could just report that she had assigned him the task of initially securing the system while the fleet was transitioning.

Official reports were useful things. They were written after the fact and did not have to be approved by her subordinates. If she played things right, Brown would not even see the report till later, after it had been through the admiralty a few times. For now, she would let his actions stand. She deployed the fleet in a defensive posture around the egress point to the Clearwater system. The fleet was roughly four light minutes away from the sun, which was just outside the point where most of the traffic entered and exited a star system like SD-Four.