Rear Admiral of the White Anaïs de Chevalier suppressed a grimace as the close-in munitions warning klaxons played their horrible song. It was far from the first time they’ve played up today, and she was getting mighty annoyed with the unnecessary audio interruptions over the activity of HMS Victory’s flag bridge. She’d gotten used to it over the course of multiple actions, and these days the electronic noises only served to elevate her heart rate a little instead of sending her diving for her C-suit. As such she was standing ram-rod straight on the dais of Victory’s flag bridge, arms crossed behind her lower back with the helmet of her C-suit still lying in the cushioned seat of her flag officer’s command chair. She listened absentmindedly to the damage reports that her staff and flag bridge officers said out loud in professional and calm voices, whilst keeping most of her attention on the large flag bridge 3D holographic tactical plot. de Chevalier looked like a textbook example of a sangfroid and collected Royal Navy officer, tall and thin, with high cheekbones and long platinum blonde hair tied into a ponytail that was just the right length so that it could easily fold and fit into a C-suit helmet. Her dark gold eyes danced quickly between areas of interest on the plot, noting information and calculating possible outcomes and countermeasures. A further railgun hit sheared off another section of Victory’s reactive outer armour layer, and de Chevalier made a slight grimace that was gone as quickly as it had appeared.

Her fleet was neck deep into action at this point, the line of battle gallantly pummelling away at their opposites approximately eight-hundred k-clicks distant. That was a very conservative and cautious distance for railgun broadside warfare, considering no rangefinder or fire director of known human make could penetrate the several layers of obscuring electronic countermeasures and jamming that entire fleets –especially a full battle fleet with cruiser and destroyer screens– produced, sending shells off into the unending void instead of on a collision course with enemy warships. The long range was indicative of both fleet commanders’ unwillingness to actually commit to the proper knife-fight of line of battle brawl. But that didn’t mean that their rate of fire was any lower than it would have been at more conventional ranges, like two-hundred or one-fifty k-clicks. The tactical plot was a complete mess, munitions criss-crossing all over, to the point where the gravpulse was starting to give up with tracking all of it with their subpulse signals, and the much slower reacting LIDAR was taking over. The capital ships of both sides were choosing to annoy and frustrate more than to hurt and kill, but cruisers and destroyers dashed out from their screening lines, attempting to launch destructive torpedo spreads, which had to be countered with noisemaker or suicide anti-torpedo drones due to their internal computing systems which “laughed” at mere background jamming and ECW.

Anaïs de Chevalier had accounted for this contingency, and had a few cards up her black-and-gold sleeve.

“Mr Rohanon, call for the fleet to change course to converge to the previously established Alpha-point, and make sure the squadron and division commanders are made aware of all formation changes, and tell them to relay directly down their chain of command. We don’t want a battleship ramming a destroyer as they make course corrections.” Her voice was crisp and noticeably New Ontario in origin.

“Aye aye, Ma’am,” was the reply from her staff communications officer, “sending pre-recorded coordinates and bearing to the rest of the fleet now.”

“Please give my compliments to Captain Olivier, and have him command Victory on to the aforementioned course change. I want a further communiqué to be transferred down the line to ‘Engage the enemy in closer quarters’. Tight-beam only, do not under any circumstances easy up on our jamming.”

Staff officers relayed orders to their juniors, the Staff Communications Officer, Lieutenant Commander David Rohanon, ordered his crew of a dozen officers and enlisted to transmit the signal for the fleet to carry out the pre-planned battle manoeuvres. The fleet de Chevalier commanded was composed of sixty ships, sixteen of which were battleships –split into two overstrength battle squadrons–, and a further overstrength battlecruiser squadron split into two divisions fore and aft of the line; the rest were a smattering of cruisers of varying configurations and destroyers. The sheer amount of jamming, sensor obfuscation, and beam-walking that large a fleet in tight formation (relatively speaking, the battleships of the line of battle were still thousands of kilometres apart) made any sort of long-range radio or subpulse communication completely impossible. Advanced orders and plans had to be prepared way ahead of actual contact with the enemy, and only by using tight-beam laser signals could ships communicate directly with each other during battle. Modern communications laser could, in theory, carry infinite amount of data given long enough time to transmit, but like its LIDAR sister, it was limited by the speed by which its photons travelled, and by the fact it could only travel unidirectionally. The result was that warships had to communicate directly to each other down the line of battle just like their nautical predecessors, but the semaphore flags and signal lanterns of old had been replaced by lasers.

“Ma’am,” her Staff Chief Operations Officer said from her station near the large tactical plot, “Queen Alexandra is reporting engine output fluctuations, possibly due to malfunctioning fusion transfer-rod accelerators. Captain Shan requests permission to reduce speed and re-join the rear of the line in order to attempt repairs.”

“Signal her to retain formation, and maintain as much forward acceleration as she is capable of while repairing, we can’t afford to scramble our line of battle at this point in time.”

“Time to turnover at Alpha-point is T-minus nine minutes, Ma’am,” her Staff Astrogation Officer reported, and de Chevalier nodded before turning back to her comms officer.

“Mr Rohanon, my compliments to Commodore Sobhani, and he has my permission to carry out his squadron’s special orders. Impress upon him the importance of stealth but also decisiveness.”

“Aye aye, Ma’am, sending Signal Blue-Two-Niner-Niner to Heroic.”

Stealing a glance at the time display on the tactical plot, de Chevalier walked over to her command chair to pick up her C-suit helmet. Folding her hair into a rough bun with one hand, she put the helmet on with the other and drew in a deep breath as the helmet sealed with the gorget, a jet of air from the suit’s internal tanks filling the interior. The main view screen polarised for a few brief moments as an enemy torpedo that had been dummied by a noisemaker exploded some eight thousand kilometres off and to the “right” of Victory as the escorting light cruiser Queenston Heights finished it off with a flurry of rounds from one of her multi-barrel close-in gauss defence turrets. The admiral winced, for she hadn’t even seen the missile on the plot, but thankfully their escorts were on top of it. Both sides’ lines of battle, moving roughly parallel to each other, were formed into what was in naval nomenclature called “line astern, right flank staggered”, meaning that the battleships were lined behind one another at a slight “right” angle to the ship ahead of them, as well as a few kilometres “underneath” their x-axis. This provided each ship in the line of battle as clear a field of fire and sensor bubble as possible while still allowing for the entire line to be tied into the fleet fire control matrices and close-in communications, as well as the ECW net. Running along this massive formation of millions of tonnes heavy battleships were flotillas of light cruisers and destroyers split into divisions of two or three, there to intercept enemy lighter combatants and add their electronic warfare suites and jamming to their much larger charges. Closer to the main line of battle were squadrons of heavy cruisers which formed miniature lines of battle of their own, adding their not-insignificant firepower to the main line’s, or tried to fend off troublesome hostile light cruisers before they could conduct torpedo runs or throw out screens of annoying drones. A modern battle fleet in fighting formation was a tightly choreographed dance of death that required expert handling by every ship’s helmsman, the complete attention of their astrogation officers, the keen analytical eye of their operations officers, and of course their captains and admirals. But all that was easier said than done, and while Anaïs de Chevalier had been top of her class at King William’s in both Advanced Tactics and Formation Tactics (and indeed in most other subjects as well), leading scores of ship in an actual engagement was an entirely different beast. An admiral could only do so much, and was totally reliant on their subordinate squadron and flotilla commanders for the fleet to actually conduct itself according to battle plans.

“We’ve done all we can to lay the groundwork for victory,” she said out loud to the rest of the flag bridge crew, but using the external speakers of her helmet instead of the internal comms.

“We have a slight superiority in ships of the line over the enemy, but the fleet is now about seven minutes from changing course directly to full one-five-five by one-two-eight, before to correcting on the y-axis to three-one-zero. That will bring our fleet on a full ahead collision course with the enemy line of battle, and we’ll be punished it for it if we approach recklessly. The plan, as you all know, is to force the enemy to change course to attempt to strike at our soon-to-be exposed rear. Endeavour, Albemarle, and Blackrose will be horribly exposed to broadside fire from two-thirds of their line if they move as we hope they will. I need everyone on top of their game if we are to pull this off, and pray that the joker in our deck of cards is enough to tip the balance of scales in our favour.”

Anaïs smirked slightly.

“One final signal to Heroic, Mr Rohanon. ‘Now’s your time, Keyhan,’.”

“Message from Flag, sir,” the communications officer on the flag bridge of the Spartan class flotilla leader cruiser HMS Heroic said, turning back to look at Commodore Keyhan Sobhani, seated as he was in the command chair.

“Compliments from Admiral de Chevalier, ‘Now’s your time, Keyhan’.”

“I believe that’s a reference to the Duke of Wellington’s orders at the Battle of Salamanca,” Commander Nikolay Urzoy-Brewer said, brushing some imaginary lint off the navy and gold colour-coded shoulder pad of his C-suit, but Commodore Keyhan Sobhani shook his head while leaning forward in his command chair.

“Wrong battle, correct person who uttered it, but no points for half-correct answers, Nicky. It was the Iron Duke’s order to Major General Maitland to engage the French Guards’ advance during the last phases of the Battle of Waterloo with his own Guards Brigade.”

“Ancient history is what it is,” Lieutenant Inga Trollope, the Staff Operations Officer of Special Squadron Blue 9, said in a pejorative tone. “I would much rather focus on the here and now.”

Commander Urzoy-Brewer shrugged, an awkward gesture by the squadron’s Chief of Staff while wearing a full C-suit.

“The old lady does seem to be quite fond of Nelsonian sound bites. I mean, I’m pretty sure ‘Engage the enemy in closer quarters’ is what Beatty signalled his battlecruisers during the Battle of Jutland when his flag lieutenant couldn’t find the correct semaphore sequence for Nelson’s ‘Engage the enemy more closely’.”

“Let’s leave the history trivia for the time being and focus on our orders, shall we?” Commodore Sobhani said in a calm voice, but his commanding tone made it clear he needed his senior staff to focus.

“Lieutenant French, hit the big ‘Go’ button on your keyboard and send the go-ahead to the rest of the squadron. Then inform Commander Højberg to bring Heroic about to the new course specified, and please tell her to stay clear of Princess of New Ontario’s belly; I don’t want Dame Cecilia Arsenault to descend on me with the intent to rip me a new one if we dent her hull, provided we survive this engagement.”

The crew of the flag bridge chuckled a bit before they flipped a switch and turned into the consummate professional naval personnel they were. Orders were transmitted from Lieutenant French’s station by her and her techs, and after a short while the vista in the flag bridge’s viewscreen shifted from black space, dotted with semi-visible white-grey hulls that continuously flashed small pinpricks of harsh blue-white light, to the armoured underbelly of the massive Prince Consort class battlecruiser they had been hiding in the electromagnetic shadow of.

Sobhani grinned, his deeply tanned face splitting to reveal perfect alabaster teeth and his brown eyes shone with anticipation and something akin to a predator’s hunger. He watched the tactical plot and noted with satisfaction as the other nine ships of his special squadron cleared the wake of Princess of New Ontario’s division mates smartly as well, coming from up under the much larger warships at as high acceleration as their ion engines could give them, almost like a spread of torpedoes from a warship. Special Squadron Blue 9 had a different set of orders from the rest of the fleet. The rest of de Chevalier’s fleet was turning to attempt a risky line of battle breakthrough that would have made even Lord Howe at the Glorious First of June stop up and reconsider. But Lord Howe, among a lot of other things, hadn’t been in possession of the six Aggressor class torpedo cruisers that formed the core of Sobhani’s squadron.

The Aggressors were strange beasts, designed by Rear Admiral Charlotte Delaurier early in former First Lord Admiral Sir Damien Koyanagi’s first Admiralty, intended to be the first salvo in a series of designs which would cement the “First Strike School” doctrine as the new future direction for the Royal Navy. Unfortunately, the Aggressors were failures before even leaving the dockyards, going wildly over budget and the yard engineers had to fit untested and unfamiliar technology (much of it barely past the test bed stage) into hulls that were ostensibly too small for the tasks they were designed to carry out. At only five-hundred and ninety metres, the Aggressors were fitted with no less than fourteen revolver-reloading torpedo batteries –ten in the forward enlarged bow section, and four forward flank batteries–, but a large amount of torpedo batteries in a ship not even twice the size of an old M-class destroyer meant that the Aggressors only had the railgun broadside equivalent of a contemporary E-class destroyer, and only slightly better armour along its main and fore belts. Their fire directors and supporting ECW suites were also woefully inadequate when it came to controlling the large amounts of torpedoes the Aggressors could launch in the span of few minutes, meaning they were forced to reduce the amount of batteries actually firing torpedoes in favour of allocating tubes to sending out supporting pen-aid drones. But in the correct situation, many officers belonging to both the “First Strike” and “Fisherian” schools had theorised that the Aggressors could prove to be battle equalisers. And that was what Rear Admiral de Chevalier had told Commodore Sobhani two days ago in Victory’s main briefing room.

Special Squadron Blue 9 was following the exact same course correction that the rest of de Chevalier’s fleet was about to undertake, but they were conducting the turn seven minutes and change before the rest of the fleet. That meant as the rest of the fleet started turning (Sobhani noted with satisfaction that the rest of the fleet handled crisply into the new turn, escorts staying well clear of their heavy charges, and the battleships turned sequentially in almost parade order), Squadron Blue 9 were now parallel with the first third of the line of battle, pushing rapidly out from the rear of the line where they had tightly hugged Division 2 of 10th Battlecruiser Squadron, hiding in the huge jamming and electronic countermeasures bubbles of the massive Prince Consort ships.

“I was about to say ‘steady as she goes’, but I realised we’re on the wrong bridge for that sort of comment,” Sobhani said with an uneasy chuckle, watching as the bright orange sea of fuzzy outlines and ghost signals that might or might not be confirmed enemy warships pop in and out on the holographic plot.

“Once a master and commander, always a master and commander, sir?” his chief of staff asked, and Sobhani nodded.

“Wouldn’t have minded being on the bridge of old Artemis now, instead of a light cruiser.”

“We got Boston and Berg-am-Zee if anything comes snooping, they’ll see any destroyer or cruiser packing.”

Sobhani nodded, zooming in on the smaller holographic plot in his command chair’s computerised armrest. Squadron Blue 9 was composed of the flotilla leader Heroic, a large Spartan class ship designed for electronic warfare and C3, and though armoured to the gills (for a light cruiser at any rate), she also sported a decent broadside and four dual-gun fifteen inch railcannon turrets. In the centre of the formation were the six Aggressor cruisers Attacker, Assailant, Fortitude, Gladiator, Marksman and Powerful. They were frail things, just about able to see off large destroyers, so to protect them, posted on each side of the arrowhead formation of Blue 9, were the two Bristol class “large light cruisers” HMS Boston and HMS Berg-am-Zee. Much larger than your average light cruiser at eight-hundred and fifty-three metres, they had comparable armour to the two-hundred metre shorter Heroic, but they carried four triple-gun nineteen inch railcannon turrets, weaponry normally found on newer heavy cruisers. The Bristol class was a completely new class of cruisers, just off the Monckton slipyards in Angevin orbit, a heavy-hitting, fast class of ships that the Koyanagi Admiralty had labelled as “budget battlecruisers”. Parliament and the Naval Affairs Committee had gleefully signed off on the class, ordering twelve ships which shared some of the Aggressors’ teething issues with new and just-past-the-point-of-experimental technology and machinery fitted on them. Attached to the Boston was the E-class destroyer Enact while her sister Epicure followed Berg-am-Zee as tactical backup and general fire support.

In all, an eclectic mix of ships with varying capabilities and intended combat roles, but de Chevalier had convinced Sobhani that if deployed correctly and at the most opportune time, he would be in a prime position to strike the enemy line of battle as they turned sharply to deal with the breakthrough attempt that de Chevalier was leading. In essence, all the heavy elements of the fleet, and the hundreds of thousands of men and women on board the battleships and their escorts were the bait, while the less than five-thousand officers and men on board the relatively vulnerable light cruisers and destroyers under Sobhani’s command was the battle-winning stratagem.

“The enemy seems to be in the process of detaching a cruiser flotilla from their forward line of battle screen, seemingly headed for an advanced intercept course for our own line,” Lieutenant Inga Trollope interrupted the low back and forth between the different flag bridge stations.

“Ahead of the rest of their own line?” Urzoy-Brewer queried, and Trollope nodded an affirmative.

“Yes sir, signal and sensor confirmation from Duke of Camlann and Victory herself, it seems they’re trying to run a torpedo intercept ahead of the full course change of their line by running a cruiser flotilla perpendicular to our own fleet while their heavier ships come about. It seems their line of battle is having a harder time than our own to adjust speed to a new heading; their momentum star-ward must have been higher than ours.”

“Nothing for us to worry about then,” Sobhani commented, “10 BCS Div 1 will have them sorted out soon enough. How far are we from the enemy line of battle? And perhaps more importantly, what are we potentially up against and are there any indications they’ve discovered us yet?”

Lieutenant Trollope’s fingers flew over the keyboard of her station, the skin-tight gloves of the C-suit not hindering precision movement like typing or other delicate operations like fixing wiring or arming/disarming shells.

“It’s hard to tell given the absurd amount of jamming blanketing the battle space by both sides, but it appears that we’re just shy of four-hundred fifty k-clicks from the rear third of the enemy line of battle, but just what we’re facing is next to impossible to say. Close Battlespace Awareness SAI is giving the AIC tactical station targets ranging from everything between three-hundred thousand to six million tonnes, and I’m pretty sure we’re not facing off against some morons who’ve decided to put light cruisers in their line of battle. And if Heroic can’t see anything in this electronic soup, I doubt anything on their side can see us well either.”

“Give me whatever you can, Inga,” Sobhani urged, punching numbers in his command chair computer, trying to calculate an approximate firing trajectory for the large torpedo launchers of his Aggressors.

“It’s coming up on that time, ladies and gentlemen,” he said after a few moments and rose from his chair, “order the squadron to assume attack positions. I want a deep oblique on both sides of the Heroic; we’ll be lynchpin of the formation and we’ll lead the launch since we have the best eyes. Signal Boston and Berg-am-Zee, and tell them to hold back slightly, I want them in a position where they can swoop in if something comes in for a closer look.”

Orders were once again transmitted rapidly by his flag communications staff, and the ships of his squadron started to adjust their acceleration and heading, and soon Blue 9 looked like a chevron with four adjoining small stars on his tactical display.

“Excellent handling,” Sobhani said as the Assailant finally found her place and slotted into the squadron’s joint firing matrices that Heroic’s Action Information Centre was providing and constantly revising, updating as new information became available the closer they got to the enemy fleet and the ECW SAI started to crack some of the algorithms of the hostile jamming.

“Sir,” his flag tactical officer reported from his station, “Squadron Blue 9 is T-minus twelve minutes from entering first launch window, all ships designated for Launch-1 through -6 are slaved to Heroic’s fire directors and rangefinders.”

“Inga, have you found me a nice juicy battleship to shoot at?”

“I do believe I have something for you, sir. Those two that are starting their turn now, at roughly three-zero-three by one-one-niner, CBA SAI have them more or less guaranteed to be in the five million range or north of that mark, making them at the very least small battleships.”

“Well then, Mr Dunn,” Keyhan Sobhani said with another toothy grin, and crossed his arms over his chest, “it looks like you have your targets. I want Launch-1 through -3 targeted at those two ships. Order the torpedo crews to stand by for target reacquisition following -3, and we will conduct a full reassessment of the battlespace at that time. In all likelihood the enemy will have noticed our presence at that point and also locked in that we are the only likely source for a major spread of torpedoes. Therefore, I think we should cut acceleration now and prepare for emergency counter-thruster manoeuvres in order to facilitate a rapid relocation. Hopefully, by then the rest of the fleet will have grabbed their main attention, and our little contribution would have led to at least some confu…”

“Sir, hate to interrupt,” Lieutenant Trollope said in a hurried tone, “but the aforementioned hostile light cruiser formation has split into two, three of which have cut right across the T of our line of battle at two-hundred and ten k-clicks, but are headed straight for us.”

Sobhani wished he wasn’t wearing the C-suit helmet so he could scratch his head.

“Any other contacts headed our way?”

“Doesn’t seem like it, sir, the vast majority of the enemy fleet are having trouble adjusting to Admiral de Chevalier’s sudden formation change, apart from that one flotilla.”

“What of the rest of said flotilla, the other six?” Commander Urzoy-Brewer asked as he walked over to the tactical plot and leaned on the guardrail that ran around it.

“The remaining six are continuing on the same course as they have been doing so far, somewhat further out than that errant trio, but at speeds much more in line with what you’d expect from a torpedo run.”

“Strange,” Lieutenant Francis Dunn, the Staff Tactical Officer commented while rubbing his C-suit helmet’s “chin”, “if their intention was to conduct a torpedo run on our line of battle, why separate their forces like that, and complicate matters by increasing acceleration for a third of it? They’re pushing way too fast, almost as if…”

“They’re going for us,” Lieutenant Trollope finished for him, and with fingers flashing across her keyboard, she updated the most likely course of the enemy cruiser trio: they were coming right for Squadron Blue 9.

“That’s hardly anything to worry about,” Urzoy-Brewer said, pointing at the electronic signatures and 3D models of Berg-am-Zee and Boston, “a mere trio of cruisers will have a tough time dealing with our escorts.”

“Quite,” Sobhani agreed, but his lips were pursed in thought, “but just to be safe, Mr French, order our escorts forward to an advanced position to our ‘port’ in order to deal with those interlopers, lest they get too close.”

At more or less the exact moment the two Bristol class ships started to veer off from the rest of Squadron Blue 9, Lieutenant Commander Lorenzo Vaugeois, the Fleet Staff Operations Officer on board HMS Victory’s flag bridge furrowed his brow in thought.

“Ma’am,” he said out loud after running a few calculations by the ABSCOR (Algorithmic BattleSpace COntrol Relay) Smart Artificial Intelligence, whereupon he received more questions than answers, “there’s something awry about those detached cruisers.”

Admiral de Chevalier turned to look up at the officer, located as she was in the lower tier of computer stations on the Victory’s flag bridge, and had to walk up the short stairs to the main deck. Bridges on the larger Auroran capital ships were often tiered with several stations on several levels, especially when the number of optimal bridge crew started to exceed forty; the same went for flag bridges which had to accommodate the admiral’s staff officers, as well as flag specialist officers, a multitude of attached specialists and seconded ship’s ratings, yeomen and division liaison officers or NCOs.

“You’re going to have to extrapolate on the use of the vague term ‘awry’, Mr Vaugeois,” de Chevalier said in an annoyed tone, and the lieutenant commander swallowed. He typed in a few commands, and with pinched fingers swiped onto the main holographic plot a few bursts of added information and electronic data the ABSCOR had “reluctantly” provided him following a series of prodding queries.

“If those are indeed cruisers, they’re putting out a hell of a lot of electro-magnetic interference. And I mean a lot, those three that crossed our T about ten minutes ago alone seems to have provided as much, if not more, active ECW output as a whole flotilla of Canterbury ships.”

“Ma’am,” the Fleet Staff Tactical Officer half-shouted from across the other side of the flag bridge, “T-minus three minutes until optimal broadside range. Recommend course correction for pre-planned battle manoeuvres within one-one-zero seconds.”

“Noted, Ms Sikarwar, pass along the message to Captain Olivier, and have him stand by to execute according to Battle Plan Alpha-Five, zero conditions assumed. All ships of the fleet will follow Flag according to Alpha-Five, Contingency Red Reed. Someone sound the all-fleet close-in action stations, and keep me appraised, status updates every eighty seconds, if you will, Mr Yoshizawa.”

Vaugeois was tapping his right foot on the black metal deck impatiently, waiting for the admiral to finish giving orders. Finally she turned back to him.

“Continue,” she said, and the lieutenant commander cleared his throat.

“Ma’am, I can’t find any record of any ship capable of that type of speed being able to produce such a powerful EW bubble. They’re pulling close to four-thousand eight-hundred km/s, and that’s…”

“You’re sure they’re not connected to their line of battle’s EW joint bubble?” de Chevalier interjected, but Vaugeios shook his helmeted head.

“Not a chance, at the time of passing our T they were more than ninety k-clicks out, unless they’ve done a la Lune Gambit and stacked hundreds of drones on top of each other, but the cruisers were moving too fast for any layer of drones to continually cover them for as long as this.”

“Ma’am!” an agitated voice shouted from the tactical division of the bridge, “the Rivers has taken several hits to her port side! Multiple penetrations on her fore and central belt, overpen on her fore upper belt, fore lower belt, fore belly, aft belly. Commander Lee reports multiple casualties, her sensor suite is out of action, and he’s pulling her back!”

“What the fuck?” someone in the operations division exclaimed, the rest of the bridge murmuring in disbelief and shock.

Anaïs watched as one of Victory’s escorting cruisers veered off heavily, originally stationed twenty-two thousand kilometres off to Victory’s “port”.

“Someone plug that gap,” she ordered sharply, pointing at Lieutenant Commander Rohanon, “get the Shrewsbury or the Falaise over into Rivers slot in the defensive formation, now!”

“Rochdale is hit as well!” the same tactical specialist reported, “several penetrating hits along the upper belt, overpens all along her broadside and lower belt. Main belt seems to have buckled in several places.” As if to underscore the report, the flag bridge’s main view screen zoomed in on the stricken cruiser, and they could see the sudden flashes of exploding munitions from a likely magazine blowout on the Rochdale, just nine-thousand kilometres away.

“That’s absurd, what’s hitting them, not to mention overpenning?” Post-captain Sir Andrew Yoshizawa, de Chevalier’s Captain of the Fleet, asked no one in particular, and in return received only confused glances and halting reports from division techs which had about as much clue as he had. The amount of railgun munitions crisscrossing between the two fleets was as intense as before, but due to the confusion of the enemy in attempting to realign their formation to answer de Chevalier’s thrust, their fire directors were scrambling to find purchase as the range changed and the jamming intensified. Gravpulse was completely useless right now, providing long range scans only.

“Come on, ladies and gentlemen, provide some answers here; what in God’s good universe are capable of riddling Rutland class armoured cruisers full of holes? We know it isn’t the enemy battle line, they’re fully focused on us, so start coming up with some explanations!”

“It’s the rest of that light cruiser flotilla,” Vaugeois said in a hesitant tone, not quite believing what he was seeing on his plot. The six ships of what Victory, Albemarle, Queen Alexandra, Princess Serena and the rest of de Chevalier’s line of battle had noted as light cruiser classification and promptly ignored, were now less than forty k-clicks from the battle line, while the enemy line was slightly less than one-sixty away.

“Don’t be absurd,” Sir Andrew hissed, “the Rutlands are titanium fortresses for their size and configuration, no mere light cruiser broadside armament can penetrate their main belts, and there have been no reports of radiological alerts from either Rivers or Rochdale.”

An icy shiver suddenly ran down Anaïs de Chevalier’s spine and she froze in place, dark gold eyes locked on the small 3D models of the six ships on the tactical plot, now well within effective EW anti-obfuscation range of her line of battle, and more importantly, her flagship. As her mental gears whirred and the last pieces of the jigsaw slotted into place, she pointed to the plot, her voice suddenly very cold and detached.

“Because they’re not light cruisers, they’re battlecruisers.”

She didn’t wait for the rest of the flag bridge crew to absorb that information before she keyed the override to access the Victory’s ship-wide comms.

“Attention all hands,” her voice came over the hundreds of tannoys all across the Victory, “brace for impact.”

Lieutenant Inga Trollope did not need the desperate signals the flagship was sending to know they had walked straight into a trap. Heroic’s sensor suite was state of the art, the entire Spartan class designed from the keel out as a command, control, and communications flotilla leader, and Heroic had the advantage of being quite a fair bit away from any of the duelling lines of battle, meaning that their LIDAR line of sight was much less interfered with. Which meant that Trollope’s computer screamed its own little warning klaxon at her as Heroic’s ABSCOR SAI penetrated the EW obfuscation of the “light cruisers” and presented the real data to her human eyes. Her mouth went dry, and turned to her junior officer who looked just as horrified as she probably did.

“Sir!” the sub-lieutenant shouted at Commodore Sobhani, “we have a problem!”

“Can you be more specific?” the commodore replied, his eyes focused on the ticking timer on the holographic plot, denoting the time left before Launch-1, the first of six planned torpedo barrages that would hopefully cripple significant parts of the enemy fleet.

Trollope gave her junior officer a scathing glare, and the sub-lieutenant squirmed a bit in his upholstered seat.

“Sir, those three cruisers aren’t light cruisers, they’re battlecruisers!”

The flag bridge fell silent for just a moment, just long enough for the Operations SAI to helpfully update the tactical plot, switching out the tentative generic 3D models of unrecognised light cruisers, with three much larger electronic signatures, updating their probable weight from around nine-hundred thousand tonnes to close to five-point-eight million tonnes.

The Close Battlespace Awareness SAI of HMS Heroic, had it been capable of emotions, would have felt that it was working overtime to fill in the gaps of its nominal human masters. Naturally, Artificial Intelligence had been denuded of a lot of their internal logic processes that might in the long term evolve into true sentient intelligence over the last few hundred years, since humanity didn’t really trust their algorithmic partners; buggering with the human evolutionary data was too close to playing gods, no need to tempt fate further by creating galactic cloud-based, logic-core “children”. Yet the SAI did “feel” something akin to a gloating sensation as their human masters scrambled about, had they been able to put their supposed “feelings” into words. Instead, they carried on as instructed by their human masters.

Special Squadron Blue 9 did not go down without a fight. As Heroic ran the recognition scans and updated the rest of the formation, the escorting cruisers Boston and Berg-am-Zee rose to the occasion, their gunners loading the large nineteen-inch railcannon turrets, hoisting up half-a-tonne heavy shells from the through-deck magazine loader winches. Their fire director officers hit their mark as well, their anti-ship firing solutions punching through layers upon layers of obfuscation, ably helped by previously launched formations pen-aid drones. The first salvo from Boston hit the first enemy battlecruiser amidships, but unfortunately the reactive armour shaved off most of the explosive discharge of the nineteen-inch shell; there was some superficial damage, but nothing to inconvenience the five times larger capital ship. Boston’s gunners stared at the direct hit in disbelief, if only for a few moments before Courageous’ twenty-four inch railcannons obliterated the much smaller light cruiser, the first volley ripping apart the port railcannon broadside of Boston, before a follow-up barrage from the “regular” railgun broadside finished the job, killing the fusion reactors and Misaki gyro-bottles, no reactive armour left to divert away the incoming munitions. Berg-am-Zee didn’t fare much better, but her gunners did manage to fire off three full salvoes at the second battlecruiser target, the Glorious, but she suffered the same fate as her sister ship; ripped to pieces by large calibre shells.

“Launch them, launch them all”, Keyhan Sobhani was panicking, his squadron being ripped apart, and his window of opportunity quickly fading away, but the torpedo gunners on the Aggressors did him proud. As the enemy battlecruisers closed to what was essentially knife-fight range, the Aggressors pumped out torpedoes just like they had been designed for. Marksman launched twelve before she was reduced to space debris by heavy-calibre twenty-four inch shells, Gladiator and Assailant launching nine before receiving the same type of twenty-four inch shells to their main fore hulls, consigning them to scraps of titanium and nominal floating bits of organic debris. Heroic wasn’t immune to the enemy either, and an afterthought barrage from Glorious’ heavy guns found Heroic, decapitating her bridge superstructure. The AIC struck her colours once they learned of the bridge’s and flag bridge’s destruction, opening her boat bays for boarding my enemy marines.

“For the benefit of the log, I would ask you to surrender your command, Miss Anaïs.”

Anäis de Chevalier punched her command chair arm, her usual professional confident smile replaced by a very angry mien. The flag bridge crew looked at her in askance, but refrained from commenting.

“Fine, you have my fleet surrounded and mostly incapacitated. I therefore submit to you, Admiral Juliette Hunter-Jones.”

Sir Andrew Yoshizawa refused to look in his admiral’s direction as he received the fleet’s immediate after-action reports, and started to log them into Reserve Fleet’s systems, noting the angry tone of Commodore Sobhani’s flag command, but making a mental note to inform Admiral de Chavalier about it later.

Rear Admiral of the White Anaïs de Chevalier was not a fan of the Mess Dress Uniform; it was in her opinion a starchy mess with too high of a collar that would strangle/had strangled more than one officer at some point or another. But when called to the flagship, she was bound to dress the part. Her steward assured her that she was keenly looking as an admiral, but she doubted him, not confident she could have been able to put on her service medals correctly had it not been for her steward. Didn’t matter, as a Steward’s Mate announced her coming, the doors swishing open, and she was admitted into the holy sanctum of the Admiral’s dining room, she instinctively straightened her back and shoulders as she had been taught at King William’s Academy, slipping back into old muscle-memory training.

“Bonsoir, Contre-Amiral de Blanche, de Chevalier,” Alistair Carlisle, Marquess de Sélincourt, addressed Anaïs in the native French of New Angers of Angevin, her birthplace. She bowed politely, the curtsy only reserved for the Auroran royalty, regardless of the rank of the Auroran nobility in front of her.

“Thank you for inviting me to you flagship, and this dinner, My Lord,” she countered in perfect New Ontario dialect, and the Admiral of the White grinned in response. Anaïs couldn’t miss the other guests though. To the right of the Admiral of the Fleet, was Vice Admiral of the Red Lord Brandon Locke, Baron Locke, a tall and dark individual that reminded everyone of a serpent made humanoid; lanky, tall, and with an elongated face that did its best to imitate a snake’s. Brendan Locke was an Avalonian with nothing but his personal naval pedigree underneath his belt making him a peer of the realm, which made him much more “edible” to large parts of the rank and file and the commoner-officers, like Anaïs. Sitting next to him was Rear Admiral of the White Artem Sarkissian, a Kitezhian who looked more like a Royal Marine NCO than an admiral of the Royal Navy, his body very stocky but muscular compared to Sélincourt, or de Chevalier. A fifth-generation Ukrainian-Armenian, he was one of the few beasts from Kitezh who joined the Royal Navy instead of the Royal Army from that most particular Auroran Dominion world. He nodded his welcome instead of vocalising it, and Anaïs nodded politely in return.

The last to arrive behind Anaïs made a cold shiver run up her black-gold uniformed spine.

“Oh, Miss de Chevalier, good show out there, only too bad you fell short of the mark.”

Vice Admiral of the Red Juliette Hunter-Jones could barely hide her smirk, looking so much like Anaïs that is made her nearly jump at times. Although shorter, Juliette had the same long platinum-blonde hair tied in a ponytail, and though her face was less angular, they could still be mistaken for sisters.

“If only you hadn’t trumped my fleet that hard using such extremely elaborate EW, I think we would have gotten the better of you.” Anaïs was trying to keep her tone polite, but she was cracking in places. The result of the training battle was smarting hard.

“Oh come of it, Miss de Chevalier,” Juliette replied with a wave of her left hand, her Amaranthine wingviper scuttling up her right arm and onto her right uniform shoulderpad.

The two-foot long little scaly and feathery critter hissed a happy noise, just glad to be in the company of humans, and more importantly, human food.

“You commanded a fleet twice my size, what was I supposed to besides using my ships’ capabilities to their maximum?”

“What was that hellish EW by the way, Admiral Hunter-Jones?” Anaïs asked just on the correct side of politeness as she picked up a glass of Angevin neu-champagne, that Lord Alistair’s stewards had brought out.

“I couldn’t tell your ships were battlecruiser before they were all on top of my entire formation, you have to tell us your secrets.”

Juliette Hunter-Jones tapped the side of her nose in a knowing gesture, her wingviper bleating a happy sound as it travelled down her uniformed arm to launch itself at the appetizers laid out by the Fleet Admiral’s steward’s staff.

“Let’s just say that being able to give the Courageous-class the ability to stretch their legs out, physically and metaphorically, was an eyeopener.” The blink that Juliette gave Anaïs was not received in good ground, but Lord de Sélincourt grabbed the attention of the collected admirals.

“Quite, this has been an interesting exercise, but what have we learned?”

“That we should sue DYNACO for their extremely shitty sensor suites,” Baron Locke commented, smirking all the while which produced knowing smiles from the rest of the officers present.

“Yes, well, apart from the clearly obvious,” Sélincourt lightly directed the conversion in another direction, accepting a glass of rosé from his current flag lieutenant, Sub-Lieutenant Cleopatra Allencourt, one of the young scions of the New Forest dynasty.

“Well, we should update our sensor platforms to at least recognise the tell-tale signs of our own drones trying to obfuscate,” Anaïs said, and Lord Sélincourt nodded at her, making her feel something deep inside that she hadn’t felt for a while.

“Not to mention updating our SAI CBA platforms on our latest updates and how they fight obfuscation EW signals, that would go a long way,” Hunter-Jones commented as well, feeding her wingviper a piece of chicken from a side plate set out for her pet.

“Well, it that’s all we have to address following this close-to-debacle, I believe we can get down to eating.” Lord Sélincourt said amicably, Lord Locke and Admiral Sirkassian looking at him slightly awkwardly.

“Oh, come of it,” he replied as Sub-Lieutenant Allencourt filled their glasses, and as the Steward’s mates brought out the first appetizer, “we’ll have plenty of years to perfect our combat skills come any potential conflict.”

Anaïs heard that and downed the rest of her glass.