A4 - Chapter 181 – Cold Engagements (Patreon)

USD: Eighteen hours after Jump point battle

Location: 92 Pegasi, SR Destroyer Squadron, SR02

Alpha Yalof remained in his command seat, observing the colored blips on SR02’s tactical screen. Over the months of his command of the ship, he had found little reason to leave the captain’s chair. His lower body had slowly merged with the seat until it was impossible for him to move if he had wanted to. The organic parts of his body were sometimes a hinderance, requiring expensive amounts of his limited computation capacity to maintain.

He had pared down as much as was possible until only the flesh required for maintaining his neural pathways remained; everything else was directly interfaced into the ship’s systems. Other specialized members of his crew had done the same; melding with whatever specific system they were assigned to operate.

The only crew members who were still mobile were the damage control and security units. They were no less integrated into the ship’s control network, however. Despite his rank as Captain, they were all Alpha units, with limited capacity. The ship’s computers had been expanded and upgraded to allow all of them to enjoy less strained computational bottlenecking, but Yalof disliked listening to the whispers of his fellow crew’s thoughts.

They were much too tortured.

Unfortunately, the circumstances did not allow for that. The destroyer squadron under his command was controlled by GAIs, so it was left to him to direct their movements. They had outpaced the rest of the elements of the fleet; given an early order to avoid the first battle in 92 Pegasi and chase after the fleeing Corporate ships.

Yalof’s few remaining motor control units twinged slightly as he thought of the now fleeing Corporate ships. He could even feel a small thread of sympathy for the commander, who had just witnessed a much larger and more formidable fleet than his be wiped from existence by Starlight Revolution’s grand battle station that more and more resembled what most would consider the pinnacle of IS class warships.

The group of lighter destroyers he chased had fled before the fleet’s arrival; no doubt warned by the fleeing ships from Nu Crateris. His mission would not have been as dire, except for the fact that their escape path crossed into a close orbit of the sun, bringing the force closer to Planet Ackman and the operations there.

A yellow dot representing Ackman Station orbited the system’s singular frozen planet. Thousands of confused dots predicted possible civilian vessels, mining operations, or even potential ambush locations by hostile warships. Until they were closer, the sensors would not be able to discern more clearly.

There were too many variables for Yalof to consider in extensive detail, and in any event, his orders from his creator were clear: “Chase down those destroyers and destroy them. Don’t allow them to attack Ackman Station.”

He had replayed Psi Abbey’s command in his mind repeatedly, like a mantra. The ships in his squadron were a hodgepodge of different units and some had been forced to overdrive to over 200% Linear Drive output for the entire chase. Maximum Military Power levels were hard on the ships’ systems and yellow maintenance and overdrive warnings had slowly begun to populate his HUD, but he left those to the ship’s engineers to worry about.

They had closed the distance rapidly, cutting in towards the sun as fast as possible to bring their orbit inside of the Corpo detachment and prevent them from slowing down to intercept the station.

None of the enemy ships were Inner Systems class, but the numbers weren’t exactly in his group’s favor. They were decidedly outnumbered in hull count, although the Corporate ships were not as well equipped as the Starlight Revolution destroyers, except for a few of the oldest ones like SR02. It made for complicated tactical equations. Even the requested assessment assistance to Psi Abbey had only been able to determine that the most likely outcome would be both groups crippling each other.

Reinforcements had not been offered or allowed, despite the numerous available units after the jump point battle concluded. His processing dedicated to strategic planning told him that this was a mistake, a waste of resources. They could strengthen his detachment and intercept the Corpos at another point with more force and enforce a surrender or destroy them with little loss.

And yet, his request had been denied. It was as if his mission was a challenge—or that the losses were somehow desired.

***

USD: One day after Jump Point Battle

Location: 92 Pegasi, A3123Y, En route to Ackman Orbit

Amy felt her stomach twist as the two blips on the main monitor slowly merged. She knew that the events depicted had already happened; the light lag meant that they were watching what amounted to a recording rather than events in real time.

“Updated telemetry analysis confirms previous estimations that both detachments will probably be destroyed.” Abbey said.

Amy glanced from the console to the command dais, searching for any emotion in the young NAI’s face, but finding nothing. That bothered her just as much as the fact that they had both confirmed the engagement. Most of the ships in the detachment were automated, and the attack could have been considered wasteful at best under normal circumstances. But SR02 had Yalof and his crew on board.

They’d denied sending reinforcements, not because they needed them for recovery efforts around the jump point, but because… Amy swallowed the icky feeling in her throat. Because it would be convenient if the captain and his ship disappeared.

The distance between the two groups of ships narrowed, and a familiar dance began in earnest. Missile leapt out at maximum distance from both sides. The telemetry feed carried by tight beam became less consistent as the Starlight Revolution ships began to maneuver, and A31’s sensors were too far to render everything in high detail.

PDC-Ls opened fire on the incoming munitions and the missile wave was destroyed completely as both sides’ PDC-Ks finished off the stragglers. Yalof didn’t have the capacity to wield the standard EWAR suite that most of their ships carried, and Abbey was too far away to utilize it. Both groups of ships closed further, and lasers began to flash between ships with angry energy.

The telemetry feed died completely as both sides popped their chaff cannisters and covered their hulls with refractive clouds. The tactical screen turned into a nearly useless fuzzball.

“Can’t we get a better resolution? This doesn’t tell us anything.” Amy complained.

Abbey frowned, and the screen sharpened slightly, but then she shook her head. “Any higher and it will become useless. It’s just too far. I’ll switch to wireframe and energy signatures.”

The tactical map flipped to the different mode. Everything was relatively clear, but ship positions glitched around slightly along their courses while energy pulses formed larger or smaller explosion waves wherever they were detected. It was slightly easier to read, but not by much.

Ships on both sides winked out of existence randomly, but Amy’s eyes locked on the icon meant for SR02. It remained at the center of the wedge formation that Yalof had adopted, blinking defiantly on the screen as the two groups of ships closed the distance.

Abbey’s Rev23 Class Destroyers were almost thirty percent bigger and had at least twice the firepower as the Corpo ships, but not all of Yalof’s fleet were of the newest design. While the weapon types had been standardized early on, the weapon counts and system capabilities had stepped up with each version.

“They’re almost to railgun range,” Abbey said quietly as she redrew the force estimates as ships disappeared. They only had a rough guess as to what the Corpo ships were equipped with, but each lost ship on their side cut the numbers down according to what class revision the ship had been.

SR02 was the oldest destroyer Abbey had ever built. Amy watched as it survived anyway, causing her to bite her lip. Even though they had cut Yalof loose to die without any reinforcements, she kept hoping that he would survive, anyway.

***

USD: Forty-five minutes after engagement

Location: 92 Pegasi, SR Destroyer Squadron, SR02

Smoke filled the CIC compartment, blocking Yalof’s view of his screen. He disabled his eye units to save the processing capabilities for other tasks. His soft-brain tissue has begun to degrade as he pushed more and more complex calculations onto it to make up for a lack of capacity.

Laser communication had become impossible as both squadrons entered laser range, and stealth had been abandoned in favor of using encrypted high-band communications to synchronize and coordinate his ships’ efforts.

The ship had taken a single laser hit at the beginning of the combat, but it had been a heavy blow that had severed multiple ship systems, including their entire port side PDC-K control feed. That had been part of the reason he had decided to deploy refractive chaff immediately, but in hindsight, it would have been better to utilize the heavy lasers of his high revision destroyers on the way in.

That had not happened, instead two volleys of missiles had traversed the space between the ships as they closed. PDC-Ls struggled to cut down the numbers, and ships disappeared in angry blazes.

For some reason, no enemy ship had targeted SR02, and Yalof realized they might have thought his ship was disabled. He plunged the ship into darkness and cut power to thrusters, leaving the ship in a slight spin.

Forty ships had desperately clawed each other until there were only twenty, then ten, five on each side as they finally reached railgun range.

None of his higher-revision destroyers had survived, and the remaining vessels were inadequately armed for the railgun exchange. The trajectory of both squadrons took the ships past each other in just seconds, but that was enough for the deadly bolts to lash out and score deadly hits on both sides.

All the remaining ships of Yalof’s squadron blinked out, destroyed or disabled. The Corporate ships took several hits but four survived.

But they had made one fatal mistake.

SR02’s main thruster flared to life, burning hard against its course to keep the range close for as long as possible. The moment just before it left railgun range, its two railguns fired at the rear of the closest two enemy ships. They spun in a dead cartwheel almost immediately.

Lasers lashed out from SR02 at nearly the same time while the enemy ships desperately swung their weapon systems around to target the new threat. Chaff clouds had dispersed enough for laser energy to dig into hulls with a vengeance. The three remaining ships fired PDC-Ks filling space with hostile clouds of bullets that mostly dinged off ineffectively, but no chance to spit back hate at the enemy was wasted by either side.

Yalof’s seat harness held him in place while damage control units were flung into bulkheads as the ship bucked a nearby missile explosion. Their own missile magazines had run dry, firing at the highest ROF possible. Control lines to weapons were momentarily severed, before units literally bridged the gap with their own bodies, integrating themselves into the ship to maintain critical system functions.

One enemy destroyer’s fusion core ruptured then ignited its stores before ejecting, causing the ship to explode abruptly, its outer hull bulging into a balloon before rupturing and spilling energetic fire and gas from its front and rear.

The remaining Corpo ship continued to slash at SR02 with its laser, hacking at it like it was a stubborn piece of meat. Calibration errors had rendered accurate fire impossible, and Yalof coldly processed the data in an attempt to strike their last foe down.

Both ships lost control at the same time. Their few remaining weapons continued to fire well beyond maximum range as the ships drifted away from each other before finally stopping and ending the engagement.

A dozen distress signals blared out into 92 Pegasi, begging rescue and assistance from both sides as humans and AI units did their best to preserve their ship’s functions and restore systems back to operation.

Yalof counted his crew. Half of them had perished. Their own distress signal began to blip as their damaged communication suite hummed back to life, although he questioned whether their superiors would come for them.

***