Miklos shrugged. “A wise man listens to the winds,” he said.
I glanced at him sharply. Was he trying to suggest Star Force should retreat? He didn’t meet my gaze, but instead busied himself with the command screen. I frowned down at the debris from the ships and the reduced count of mines. They’d shot down a fair number. Still, there were about seven thousand of them active out there. We’d lost about a thousand, but they’d done their work.
I slapped my hand on the command table. Fortunately, I’d removed my gauntlets, and the screen didn’t rupture. A few staffers flicked their eyes to me, then back to their work.
“Maybe we should call on the Worms,” I said. “They might come to support us.”
“You think these Nano ships are that big of a threat?” Miklos asked.
“Not really, but I like to operate from a position of strength. Right now, I believe we have the best ground forces in the system. But we can’t use them if we don’t control space. The Crustaceans are a new unknown in the equation. A newly hostile neighbor. They’ve obviously destroyed our scout ship on their side of the ring and just made their first aggressive move into this system. I need allies, not new enemies!”
Everyone else in the control room stayed quiet. I supposed I had a rep now for temper tantrums. No one wanted to get in my way. Miklos looked like he would have exited the room himself if he could have come up with a good excuse.
“How did the test flight go on the new gun ship?” he asked.
“A blatant attempt to change the topic,” I said, then sighed. “Really, the tests went well. They are nowhere near as sleek and maneuverable as these destroyers, but we can produce them twenty times faster-maybe thirty. Pitted against Macro cruisers and these Nano ships…I don’t know. If we have enough of them, we’ll do fine. Let’s talk about our new battle formations and tactics.”
Miklos looked relieved. “Yes, let’s do that.”
After several hours, we’d hammered out a plan. Once we had more gunships than destroyers, we’d implement it. The gunships would lead the fight on the front line. They took more damage, but had a lot less range. They would need to get in close to be effective with their railguns. The Nano destroyers would tag behind, but not too far behind. They would use their lasers to cover the gunships, shooting down incoming missile barrages. Once the formation was in close enough, the railguns and the lasers would be used to target and take out individual targets in coordination.
Really, it came down to numbers. If the Macro cruisers outnumbered our smaller ships we were doomed. If we outnumbered them two to one, we’d win. In-between those two numbers, it was iffy. It was hard to predict how the battle might go.
I had a contingency plan, however, in case the battle did play out with us on the losing side. The front line of gunships would take their beating like little bulldogs, but would eventually be taken out by the larger cruisers. If they lasted long enough to intermix with their formation however, they would have done their work. Aboard every destroyer would be a platoon of troops. These men would deploy like tiny independent attackers and swarm the cruisers. We’d done well with those tactics in the past, and I prayed the Macros hadn’t yet come up with an effective defense against marine boarding assaults.
I recalled that in ancient times, sea battles had really been land battles between ships linked by boarding planks. The slow, wooden galleys of the Greeks, Romans and Carthaginians had missile weapons, but the real fight began when they closed with one another. They rammed, boarded, and set fire to one another. They fought close battles on blood-slicked decks that often involved hundreds of ships and thousands of marines. I reflected that battle tactics had come full-circle over time, once again making marines a significant factor in ship-to-ship combat.
After hammering out plans for rosters of ships I hadn’t even built yet, I retired when my eyes no longer focused properly. By that time, I had four new gunships, and more were on the way. But I knew I needed forty-or better yet four hundred of them. I wouldn’t feel comfortable until I had a serious fleet.
I was awakened by an alarm klaxon. Something big was up. I bounced out of my bunk and cracked my head on the ceiling. Wincing and rubbing, I reached for my battle armor and slapped on the lights. I connected to the general command channel and almost broke my headset pulling it onto my head.
“What’s going on?” I demanded. My voice was drown out by the babble of others. There seemed to be some kind of action going on.
There was regret on my face as I passed by the shower compartment. There simply wasn’t time. I pulled on my armor as quickly as I could and staggered out into the hall. An Ensign rushed past on his way to the command center. I followed him stiffly.
Everyone aboard was in the command center, and they were so focused on the display they didn’t even notice me at first. I didn’t care. I stumped up to the board and worked on adjusting my battle suit. The Nanos did most of the work in that department. It was nice, having a million or so tiny robots to dress you. All a marine had to do these days was get himself stuffed into the suit, then the smart metal took over. It closed the gaps, sealed the openings and gently cinched up every inch of the frame until it fit like a thousand-pound glove.
I didn’t have to ask anyone what was happening, as the facts were plain to see on the big board. I’d expected to see a mass of Macro cruisers, fresh from their berths under domes on every world, rising up to attack us. But instead, I saw a depiction of Hel and the distant, dark ring.
When I’d gone to sleep aboard Actium, there’d been over seven thousand mines out there. They were tiny yellow contacts, one pixel each, forming a gentle cloud that obscured the entire region of space. Much had changed, apparently. Now, fully two thirds of that cloud had vanished. In the middle of it was another cloud of larger objects. Nano ships-hundreds of them.
“It’s a full attack, Colonel,” Miklos said, spotting me for the first time.
“Have they broken through yet?” I demanded. A half dozen people recognized me and threw me significant glances. I ignored them all, and they lowered their voices. They still conferred with others on station around the planet we all orbited.
“This vid is four hours old. The conflict is still on-going.”
“Is this as close as we can get? Zoom in.”
“We’ve lost that capacity, sir.”
I looked at him. He looked back significantly. I could tell he thought we’d lost control of the ring.
“This is exactly why I wanted to build a battle station out there. Something tougher than a mine field. They came through with what-three hundred odd ships? With two guns each, that’s six hundred guns. They knew the field was there after their little scouting mission, so they came in nice and slow. Our mines are ineffective if the enemy isn’t charging into them blindly.”
“Yes, sir,” Miklos said.
“So, we have to assume the field is lost, and they’ve managed to punch a hole right through it.”
“That is a logical assumption, Colonel.”
“Where are they headed?”
“We won’t know until the battle plays out.”
It was a hard thing, watching a battle that had already happened. I kept wanting to press some kind of fast-forward button and get to the conclusion. The Nano ships were taking no chances. They edged forward, almost drifting. Arranged in a layered ovoid mass, they fired their hundreds of guns relentlessly as they detected the tiny mines and destroyed them one at a time. Beams stabbed out in every direction from the central mass of ships as they advanced, destroying our mines almost without a loss.
“Total numbers?” I asked about an hour later when they’d passed the minefield successfully.