“Fine. Then make good those orders. And — to be clear — only fire on actual, overt hostile action from the Culture ship; not just targeting. We all got that?”
“Sir.”
“Targeting,” the combat officer said.
“Split the fleet,” Tyun ordered. He could hear and feel the ship around him hauling itself away from its earlier, straight course, starting to curve to one side along with two of the other ships. On the screen, the view swung, keeping the approaching Ronte fleet at one edge as the elongated dot that was the Beats Working swept past between the separated halves of the Liseiden squadron.
“Fleet split as prescribed,” the navigation officer reported. “Culture ship maintaining — correction: target slowing, rapidly. Target… now stopped relative to us. Accelerating. Catching up. Level with us in four seconds.”
The screen view swung slowly, keeping the smeared dot of the Culture ship at one edge. The view hazed oddly, as though they were running through a gas cloud.
“Sir, the Quiatrea-Anang reports total loss of engine control.”
“Sir, the Abalule-Sheliz reports total loss of power.”
“What?” He had two junior officers from fleet control talking to him at once. The main screen hazed grey then blanked out entirely.
“What the fuck—?” Tyun said, glancing at the display in his own helmet. The helmet display was still working but seemed to be having trouble locking on to his eyes to present a true holo image. A stray flash briefly dazzled him.
“Main screen in shut-down,” the damage control officer said, sounding puzzled. “Cause unknown.” The screen flashed, shivered woozily, went blank again.
The damage control officer broke in. “Effector attack, on us, targeting engine control and main sensors.”
“Sir, the Quiatrea-Anang reports total traction loss.”
“Culture ship level with us now, sir. Starting to draw ahead. It’s not changing—”
“Sir, the Quiatrea-Anang reports total sensor loss.”
“Engineering telemetry down.”
“Sir, the Laskuil-Hliz reports total loss of power.”
“—velocity. We’re slowing. Fleet formation breaking up.”
“Sir, the Abalule-Sheliz reports it’s being targeted by the Quiatrea-Anang’s Target Illumination Systems.”
“What?”
“Our engines beginning stepped disengagement on false telemetry, sir. Trying to head them off and re-initialise but they keep—”
Tyun could hear and feel something alter in the ship; a single great deep note was deepening still further, like something winding down, while a forward drag stirred micro-currents into the waters around him.
“Sir, the Abalule-Sheliz reports it’s being targeted by our own TIS.”
“That’s shit,” the junior combat/targeting officer said, voice shaking. “That’s just shit, not true. Sir.”
“This is an attack!” Tyun said. “This is hostile action! Fire to disable.”
“Hard small target, sir. Doubt we can be that accurate.”
“Well, just hit it!”
“Sir, the Fulanya-Guang reports total loss of engine telemetry.”
“No weapon control. All weapons aboard shutting to fail-safe mode, active systems powering down.”
“Hit it with something! Disable it, destroy it, I don’t care!”
“Nothing to throw at it, sir.”
“Sir, the Quiatrea-Anang reports total weapon control loss.”
“Sir, the Culture ship is within quick strike range of the missile platform launched earlier. Might not have spotted it.”
“Can the platform fire? Have we comms with it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sir, the Fulanya-Guang reports total loss of main power.”
“Well fire it!”
“Sir, how many—?”
“Everything! All the missiles!”
“Six missiles firing,” the combat officer said. “Four sec — one missile gone — two destruct — three, four gone, five… five gone… Shit!”
“We… we hit it.”
“Last one got it. Holy fuck.”
“We got it, sir.”
“The fucker’s dust.”
“We got it! We fucking got it!”
“Order on the bridge,” Tyun said.
“Sir.”
“Engine telemetry re-established,” the damage control officer reported.
The main screen went into start-up mode, checking itself out with quick darting blocks of colour and sudden scrolls of text and logos, gone too quickly to read.
“Sir, all other ships reporting all controls and telemetry returning to normalcy.”
The main screen came alive. It showed a view on medium magnification, looking twenty degrees astern at one edge, of a small cloud of expanding, radiative debris. Dotted alongside, leading away into the darkness, were five even smaller clouds.
“Ronte fleet ahead, sir. Within range. They’re targeting aggressively.”
Tyun tore his gaze away from the puff of slowly cooling debris falling further away into the night behind them. He switched his attention to the Ronte fleet as the screen view swung back round. The Ronte ships were close now; they had started moving around in one of their odd, forever-changing patterns, as though unsure what formation to fly in. Not that that would make any difference to the targeting AIs. It was even quite pretty, in a pathetic sort of way. Tyun collected himself. “Send the hail.”
“Sent, sir.”
“All systems aboard at prime, sir. Minimal radiation damage to rear sensors.”
“All ships at prime, sir.”
“Confirm that, sir. Back to full battle-ready state, zero damage, all ships.”
“Positive locks on all twelve Ronte ships, sir.”
“Ronte reply in, sir.”
“And?”
“Obscene, sir. Absolute non-compliance.”
Tyun looked at the message on his now properly functioning in-helmet display. It was indeed obscene; almost inventively so. The Ronte must have been doing their homework on Liseiden physiology.
Salvage and Reprocessing Team Principal Ny-Xandabo Tyun floated back a little in his command bubble. He checked the distance and the time to Vatrelles system, or to any other known ships. Nothing around for light days. They had hours to play with.
“Officers, we are going to fire to disable, targeting their engines.”
“Historically, they don’t disable too well, sir,” the combat officer said.
“Yes. They tend to explode. I know,” Tyun said. “Let their high command regard what’s going to follow as an incentive to improve their engine design. All combat officers?”
“Sir?” was said in chorus.
“Concentrate all fire, full squadron, flagship combat officer coordinating,” he commanded. “Pick them off, one at a time, nearest at all times unless they turn and attack. They probably will. Then each ship to deal with the most immediate threat to it. The flagship will re-send the hail to stop and submit to inspection to all remaining Ronte vessels after each successful engagement. Begin.”
The first Ronte ship became an expanding flower of plasma within a minute. The Ronte employed better tactics than had been anticipated and each subsequent ship took a little longer to destroy than the one before; nevertheless, the whole engagement lasted less than a third of an hour. The Fulanya-Guang was lost with all hands when what was left of the last Ronte ship, believed to be the fleet flagship, rammed it.
This last development was, Tyun felt — secretly — almost a relief. To overwhelm an inferior fleet with no losses at all made it look like a dishonourably unequal contest; almost a massacre. Losing a ship made everything look a lot better, and would give him an opportunity to sound grave and caring for the dead and their loved ones when he wrote his memoirs.