Fortunately he was right about the friendly firing pattern.

This far away from the intended target, the shots would spread out, but they would still be lethal for small craft and there would be plenty of pellets to hit something. On their own, the chances of them hitting anything were tiny, but the warnings were there to make sure even that never happened.

The next fire warning came where Cam had expected, if a moment later than he thought. But he had to take it. He would be well away from the line of fire before the guns fired again. He juked his fighter, left and then right to line up the missiles and slow them down for that key moment. It let them get even closer but it wouldn’t matter. Either this would work or one of the six would missiles would get to him before he could blow them up. His path took him the warning zone at close to max speed. The missiles followed him.

He probably should have taken the easy route and flown away from the asteroid where he would have more space to outrun the missiles, but he always liked testing ideas out. He only did this because he figured it was going to work. He sure did not want to die out here and miss more of the action, but what was the point of playing a game if you did not take risks you couldn’t otherwise? Where was the fun in that?

The friendly shot was a projectile. A full salvo had been fired just a moment before from a destroyer that had gained line of sight on the frigates. The majority of the projectiles hit the frigate but plenty of the shot missed. They continued through space at speeds far beyond any fighter or missile. They did not have anything to slow them down in the space out here. Cam had flown through, timing the arrival of the buckshot with the missiles.

It only had to destroy one. The missiles were moving together on their optimal path to catch Cam. It put most of them tight enough together that one explosion would damage the others. He could have done something similar if his fighter had some sort of chaff it could eject--assuming the missiles could be fooled by it--or he could have tried sacrificing a drone too and hoped that worked. He had chosen this option in the heat of the moment, but he belatedly realized he should have kept a drone with him as a backup plan. One was still forward with Will and he had left the other two with Tophet to get scores on some more kills.

A moment after he passed through the danger zone he saw the explosion. It wasn’t his shot so he couldn’t see impact damage, but it was enough to take one of the missiles out. The explosion of the first took out three other missiles. He only had two left to deal with.

The lead one had made it through, but his weapons had already taken the shields off of it. He used his laser to burn through the front armor and blow up its ordinance. The explosion scorched his shields, but they held solid. The last missile had been damaged by the explosion. It was at half shields, but more importantly, the impact forced it off course and gave Cam some precious distance on it.

He made a wide circle, taking the time to line up a good shot on the missile. He was going too slow to outrun it and he only had a few shots between when it would be within his optimal range and when it would catch him, but he figured it would be plenty.

He had a moment to see how Tophet was doing as the missile reapproached him. She had fallen back back due to the enemy numbers, but was still doing well against them. One of the enemy fighters was already a wreck and another one was going down as it foolishly pushed ahead of its friendlies while chasing her. His drones were with her, trying to do what little damage they could. He could sense that his third drone that had been with Will had blown up, but only after it scored damage on four kills for Cam, including one corvette.

The last missile took two cycles of his guns to finish off, but the explosion didn’t even touch his shields.

With the missile down he headed back to Tophet. This was his first chance to watch her fight without him being distracted by pesky things like enemies, missiles, or other things that might destroy his fighter. The unlucky fighter who had been chasing her had realized his mistake, but too late. He tried to reverse direction, but she tailed him long enough to finish him off. It put her close to the other two craft but she pulled range before they could take down her shields.

Her fighting was a thing of beauty, full of carefully thought out choices, both in her ship before battle and in her tactics on the battlefield. It was like she was dancing with the enemy. She knew her moves, and knew her enemies’ moves seemingly before they did. Her weapons were slightly longer ranged than the standard enemy ships, and she abused the fact to its fullest. She kept the other ships where her weapons were in falloff, doing reduced damage, but where the enemy weapons barely did any damage at all. If they ran, she chased, if they approached, she orbited, making it difficult for their guns to track. When Cam came close enough to help, she had lost half of her shields, but had shaven almost all the shields off of the lead enemy. It would have gone down without his help but once he was there it was quick work to pound through the his little remaining shields and then armor to disable the craft.

The last enemy realized he was deep behind enemy lines and in a two-on-one situation. He reversed direction, but all that did was allow Cam and Tophet to head towards the front lines while also securing the kill on his ship. The enemy ship exploded well before it was close to safety, so the two accelerated to top speed to get to Will and the front line faster.

“Can’t believe you took all those missiles by yourself and flew towards the asteroid,” Tophet said after the last enemy was taken care of.

“Thought it was the fastest way to deal with them.”

“Me too. I just thought it would also end up being the fastest way to deal with your ship.”

He chuckled. “I suppose it looked like that. Got me back to you faster, but not sure you needed the help.”

Tophet didn’t have time to respond as Will’s voice came over the comms.

“Tophet, Calvara, hurry your butts over here! We’re still in a firefight.”

“We’re seconds out, hold on!” Tophet said as they flew in.

The front line had changed drastically in the last few minutes. Five friendly destroyers had peaked over what the coordinates called the north end of the asteroid. They were moving in to help the defense, taking shots along their approach, but the enemy still had superior numbers. Destroyers were the smallest ships with jump drives and therefore the fastest that could move to help the battle lines. Fighters, corvettes, and frigates were too small to have jump drives, and relied on carriers or battleships to move them around. The destroyers had disabled or blown up most of the frigates, but the enemy corvettes had closed in on them.

One friendly destroyer went down to the concentrated power of a dozen corvettes as Cam and Tophet arrived on the edge of the battle. The enemy’s triumph was short lived, however, as they slowed down to line up the last few shots for maximum damage. The remaining destroyers spread their fire to take down as many of the corvettes as fast as they could. They were able to pick several off as the enemy tried to pick up speed again.

“Form up for defense on the destroyers,” Will said. “We’re to give the corvettes a tempting target if it means diverting their attention away from the friendlies.”

“We can’t take on the corvettes and the fighters both,” said Lant into the comms.

“We’re getting low on time. We’re stalling, even if it means sacrificing ourselves.”

“Roger that.”

From what Cam could tell the battlefield was unfolding better than he had expected. But it would really depend on the next few minutes. The larger enemy craft were slower than he expected as they approached the asteroid, but the friendly fleet was herding them in without taking many losses. This was the time to press and force the enemy’s hand.

The entire rest of the wing were already with the friendly destroyers, arranging themselves into a defensive formation. It looked like about fifteen Caelestis fighters had gone down, over a quarter of the wing, but the enemy had faced far larger losses.

Cam heard Will click him over to a private channel as he arrived to the wing.

“Cam, can you look over this and see if there’s anything you think I should change?” Information showed up on Cam’s view. An overlay on actual space of Will’s plans over the next few minutes, laid out in the space over where they were supposed to happen.

Enemy fighters came in while Cam was looking over the data, looking for a quick kill. They were disorganized, and uncoordinated with the corvettes. He followed Tophet, keeping half an eye out for fighters trying to blind side them, but his attention was on the plans. Twice he almost lost a drone when it started to take damage, only saving it because of the shock of pain he felt as it was hit.

The plans seemed solid. They were more straightforward than even at Pantanda, since there were no facilities here they had to protect. Everything was going well, except the front line of the small enemy ships was pushing too far in too fast. It was opening too much ground for the larger ships to push in after. They needed to stall.

In a moment where the squad was pulling back and had no enemies on their tail, Cam finished a few suggestions to the plan and sent them back to Will. The biggest one being how to slow down the front line of the enemy.

“That’s all I can think of,” Cam said.

“You’re right about Aluvius being too spread out,” Will said a moment later. “Let’s see if we can force them closer together.”

Will clicked back over to the general channel.

“Check comms everyone. We’re going to push for this point here,” he said as a location appeared. It was near where the wing had first formed its defensive line, just a little farther back. The location must have been sent to the entire fleet as even the Engra reversed its engines to not drift farther away. “That will be our hill to die on, so let’s get to it.”

A chorus of acknowledgements came across the comms.

“It’s a good day to die anyways,” said the Blue squadron leader.

“Let’s do it,” said several voices in unison as if it was some sort of ritual. No one else spoke as Will gave out the assignments.

The fighters formed up with the destroyers, each getting ten fighters as an escort. The two ship sizes synergized well against the corvettes. Corvettes were great for killing both destroyers and fighters, but only separately. To not get hit by the destroyers they had to keep moving, and to hit the fighters they had to slow down to line up the shot. The destroyers provided the solid anchor for the fighters, allowing them to push out against the corvettes and have a safe place to return. Any corvette foolish enough to chase the fighters as they flew back or slow down to take a solid bead let the destroyers line up a shot. The corvettes were forced to keep moving and changing course, giving the fighters the room to dart in and out as needed. It was the enemy fighters that made the work difficult. The destroyers were all but useless against them, forcing the wing to defend against any groups of larger than five or six.

They pushed forward as a group. The destroyers kept formation: tight enough to help each other, spread enough to not get in each other’s way. The Aluvius fighters pressed in as soon as they started moving. This attack was far more organized than the earlier ones. Cam wondered if it was because the enemy knew their goal, or if it was just because they were pushing forward. The first attack from the fighters came in fast and hard, trying to cripple the lead destroyer that Cam and Tophet were helping defend.. Will wasn’t going to be anywhere except where the action was the thickest, and that brought Cam and Tophet along too. They came in with more than twenty fighters, but fast like the Caelestis squads had done against the enemy at the start of battle.

“Missiles free at ten klicks,” Will said. Just a few moments later a salvo of missiles launched at the enemy craft. Cam just wished he had one to launch with them. The enemy was barreling in at almost a kilometer a second. By the time the missiles locked, the targeted ships had only a few seconds to react and get away. Only about half found their target, but the confusion helped more than the thinning of ships. Will shot forward to engage, and Tophet along with him. Cam followed Tophet, although with such a brawl as this, he had to stay back and let her do most of the work. He just added his damage in where he could.

Other similar sized groups engaged the other three destroyers just a few seconds after. They would have had a better chance focusing on fewer targets. The fighters at each were enough of a threat that the enemy had to split their attention. Soon Cam’s group had chewed through enough fighters that the rest pulled back. Cam’s shields had dropped to half, but he had managed to escape unscathed other than that.

He saw how lucky they had been earlier in avoiding a destroyer’s deadly shot. One of the friendly fighters had lead some enemy fighters on a chase, ending with them moving in an almost straight line. Cam’s destroyer lined up a buckshot at the group and fired. No one spotted the trap like Will had, and six fighters disappeared in a flash.

The Caelestis ships did suffer losses. Six fighters went down over the course of the push. Even once the enemy fighters were dealt with, giving the corvettes tempting enough targets meant there had to be some attrition on their end. Cam participated in several passes on corvettes as they moved, not all securing kills, but doing enough damage to the shields to force the targets away or risk getting blown up. Two lucky shots brought Cam’s shields back down once and he had to pull back to safety while they charged up again. His armor was down to half. He left his drones with Tophet to keep tagging targets but other than that he was useless for three minutes. Eventually the destroyers secured some kills against the corvettes and the enemy to gave up their harassment, pulling back and waiting for the next chance to strike.

The formation reached their goal with all four destroyers intact and ready. The Engra had a line on the defensive point, but it was only a matter of time before the enemy pushed in with such numbers that the defenders could not hold. The bulk of the Aluvius fleet was still waiting just around the edge of the asteroid, gathering together before pushing up over the edge. The allied fleet had done a great job of harassing them while they formed up, but now the enemy was ready to peek over the asteroid and go for the big prize: the Engra. A minute later a line of cruisers and destroyers pushed over the horizon, followed by the battlecruisers and the two carriers. It was an impressive formation of dozens of jump capable ships. It had enemies on both sides of it, but it was ready to blast the Engra out of existence and use the cover of the asteroid to deal with the rest.

The killzone appeared on Cam’s view of space, along with several timers, providing estimates for how long they needed to delay. The Engra had approached the kill zone, an act that would hasten its demise, but also allow it to rain down destruction for a precious few seconds and slow the enemy down. Most of the larger ships ignored the fighters and destroyers, and elected to fire at the true prize. The Engra’s shields started dropping. It had avoided most of the fight once the friendly fleet had jumped in and its shields had mostly regenerated, but it was going down fast.

Cam was certain the other pilots didn’t have access to all of the tactical information Will was letting him see. Commanders were there to make the big decisions and let the other pilots do the fighting. Will had given Cam access because he trusted him and because he knew that Cam had done this type of maneuver before.

A few of the smaller enemy ships started firing on the formation. The corvettes reengaged now that they had the larger ships behind them. It forced the destroyers to keep moving, and made them slowly give up ground.

Too many ships were already near the close edge of the kill zone. They would be past it before the trap was ready. The killzone was so small. Cam wished it was just half a kilometer wider. It would trap far more enemy ships that way. A flight of ten corvettes engaged the lead destroyer. It couldn’t out run them and couldn’t stop to get a good shot. The fighters could help, but without pulling back, the destroyer would drop in seconds. Once the destroyer was down the fighters would have to scatter. In the distance he saw the long ranged enemy cruisers had pounded through the remaining Engra shields and started stripping through its armor.

They didn’t have enough time. The only thing Cam could think of was to fool the enemy into where the kill zone was at.

“Formation, scatter from two five two, zero three seven,” Cam shouted over the general channel. “We need the fleet to move in five klicks on the double and the Engra to back up those five klicks as well.”

“Rookie, get o—”

“Do it!” Will shouted, cutting Lant off. Cam’s suggestions popped up as orders on the tactical display even as everyone started to react. Will had pushed the message out to the entire fleet.

The destroyers broke and angled away from the asteroid from the point he had ordered, the escort fighters moving along side of them. The corvettes followed for a moment before hesitating, heading back to their fleet. Cam shot his drones towards the enemies, hoping to get one or two more easy kills. The Caelestis fleet started pushing forward. They would incur some losses, but it was having the effect Cam hoped for.

The Aluvius fleet realized they were being herded right towards a point that the Caelestis fighters and destroyers had just scattered from. Immediately they pulled back and fought against the push. It took them a few precious seconds to regroup and turn direction. With the Engra pulling back they might have overwhelmed the Caelestis fleet.

Except that before the bulk of the enemy could engage a warning in Cam’s vision finally went off. Ironically if they had kept pushing forward most of their fleet would have survived. Turning around had put them into the true killzone.

As the timer hit zero Cam saw William’s plan unfold. The plan that, in more than one way now, Cam also had a share of responsibility.

Erupting above the Aluvius fleet were a dozen nuclear warheads, strung out in two groups along the center of the killzone.

In space, nuclear weapons had only a fraction of the range in an atmosphere. Ironically the air around a planet allowed a proper nuclear blast to convert most of its energy from electromagnetic waves into a full on blast wave, greatly magnifying its destructive power. In space the electromagnetic waves spread out in three dimensions and diminished without much damage. How precise the game had made nuclear blasts in space was about to be seen. The kill zone was larger than than conventional nukes should be able to achieve.

One way to increase a blast range was creating a shaped charge, pushing most of the nuclear blast in one direction. Another way was to aim the blast at a large piece of matter that was large enough to absorb the high energy electromagnetic waves. Like an asteroid, for instance.

The allied fleet pulled back as the nukes ignited. As explosions went off, the heart of the blast shot through parts of the Aluvius fleet and towards the asteroid. The downward explosion was narrow enough to miss most of the ships, but the ones it hit were instantly obliterated. Enough energy passed into the asteroid, breaking it apart and ejecting large debris upwards at high velocity. The main bulk of the asteroid shattered, albeit slowly. Large chunks moved in several directions, but the fast moving pieces were almost entirely heading at the gathered enemy. Allied ships near the edge received their fair share, and a couple blew up on the spot, but most were able to get away with merely their shields stripped off and moderate armor damage.

With no chance to escape, the asteroid chunks tore through the rest of the enemy fleet, obliterating almost all the larger ships and most of the smaller ones as well. The few stragglers were no match for the Caelestis fleet, and would be picked off soon enough.

Cam’s group was far from the asteroid by the time the nuke hit the asteroid, but they still had to angle away from the center of the blast to avoid any fast moving debris.

“How long did you have this planned?” Cam asked Will over a private line.

“We seeded a few places like this. Nukes aren’t that expensive, but it’s tough to herd the enemy into their small kill range,” he answered. “This spot was in jump range when we were found, so I decided it was a nice place to try it out. Perfect that you were here to witness it. I doubt they’ll eagerly rush towards a large asteroid like this again.”

From there it was just clean up duty. First they had to circle around the asteroid, to avoid most of the large debris. A few small rock showers hit them, but not enough to penetrate their shields. The Engra had to blow up one of the larger chunks that had headed towards it. The combined fire power of its guns and missiles was enough to spread fragments out. Most still headed towards the Engra and with its shields only having regenerated a tiny amount many blasted into its armor and hull.

A splattering of injured enemy fighters, corvettes, and cruisers survived. Most of the survivors were the ones on the edge of the blast. They were cleaned up quickly, with only one more allied cruiser going down. It had been injured in the blast but had survived. The remaining Aluvius fleet jumped on it to do any last bit of destruction before they were overwhelmed.

After the cleanup was finished, they docked up with the Engra. Turning off I-Flight felt like snapping back into reality. The exhaustion washed over him. The battle had only taken less than an hour, but it felt like he had been flying for a day. Once they approached the tubes, the Engra’s auto docking system took over and brought his ship into the bay, where he was finally able to rest for a few moments. It was only a moment’s respite, however. There was still more to do. This engagement had been exciting but it wasn’t even the reason they were out here in the first place.