Chapter 157

  I received a few updates from Bradbury on the Void Phoenix. It was headed for Silverstream station before the tracking aspect of the gravimetric sensors was turned off. I could not dwell on this any longer as Admiral LaRoche had arrived with his Federation fleet.

  The Admiral had an entire bubble fleet formation. Outside the bubble were sixty-two screening frigates designed for missile intercept and fighter targeting. The core fleet was his large capital ships. His command battleship was the same generation as Samantha’s. After that, there were six heavy missile battleships and six gunship carriers. Our scans came back with the carriers having leech-class gunships which attached to the outer hull. Each gunship carrier had forty gunships on the outside of the hull and docking bays for another twelve.

  Zoe, Elias, and their crew had been assigned to a gunship. It was a terrible class of warship. It was bigger than a fighter, so it could have good shields and firepower. This meant they could damage larger ships and defend against fighters. But they were generally slower and less maneuverable compared to actual fighters. They also could not stand up to hits from capital ships. In the Union, they were considered expendable. Pilots who were not good enough for a fighter or capital ship and crew who were deemed insufficiently trained. Zoe had been a great pilot but rebelled against authority as had most of her crew.

  The terrible thing about gunships was they were usually crewed with three, four, or five people. So, the idea that these people were expendable was not palatable to me. Admiral LaRoche was transferred to my ship with four staff as the two fleets came together. We gave him and his staff the luxury accommodations for his stay during the joint operation. With my ship’s superior capabilities, the Fateweaver would serve as the flagship for the combined fleet. We were going to do seven days of joint exercises to familiarize ourselves with each other.

  The first three days were going to be completed in VR. This was to conserve fuel and iron out larger mistakes before live exercises. The first simulation we ran chained all the ship’s AI together, included about half the crew and was a disaster. We had projected the strength of the quadruped defense forces for the simulation, and Julian managed their tactics based on collected data. Admiral LaRoche was given command of the entire fleet. Admiral LaRoche lost sixty percent of his fleet, and I had lost four Slipstream fighters. He had been too aggressive. We had inflicted serious losses on our enemy, but it was too heavy-handed.

  The VR sim the next day was more successful, except we lost three Slipstream fighters and almost two hundred gunships. The Admiral was willing to use the gunships as disposable units. We had two VR runs on the third day with me in charge and Julian switching the quadruped response. The first one, I was actually killed, and the Fateweaver was lost with all hands. This happened when the simulated quadruped aliens fired a continuous spread of subspace disruptors and sent endless waves of fighters at me, ignoring all the other ships. It was a highly unlikely scenario, but I think the AI wanted to show me we were not invincible.

  The second scenario on the third day went too well as I fired Armageddon missiles in stealth, surprising the enemy and destroying what we identified as their command ships and the heart of the shipyards. The Admiral at first did not believe we had missiles with such capabilities. I did not like to use them as they were essentially massive kinetic rounds, and when they destroyed their target, the debris field made the system unsafe. Since we only planned to enter the system, do as much damage as possible, and then leave, it seemed like a good tactic to conserve our forces. The only aspects of my ability I did not utilize in VR were the assault shuttles and the Marine’s ability to capture enemy ships.

  During all these simulations, we monitored the Federation fleet with our sensors and found a trio of spies, probably from the Brotherhood or Godfather organizations. We revealed the spies to the Admiral, and he silently took the men into custody. We discussed how we identified the agents with the Admiral using our sensors to track the movements of his crew. The Admiral understood we were protecting ourselves.

  Admiral LaRoche had been getting a front-row seat to the sensors being on the bridge and commanding the fleet in VR. Every meal we had together, he was slowly playing his interest in becoming closer allies and a technology exchange. The flow of technology would be going mainly toward the Federation. I humored him, but I let it be known we could not risk given the Federation technology that might be passed on to the Brotherhood or other enemies of Bradbury.

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  The fourth day was live fleet maneuvers with the integrated fleets. This burned a lot of fuel but gave us a chance to see the Navies interact—well, my three ships and fighters with the Admiral’s actual fleet. The Admiral’s fleet was disciplined even if the capabilities of his ships could not match our Fateweaver-class cruisers. On the fifth day, we set up dummy targets in space, did some live fire, and integrated the Slipstream heavy interceptors with the gunships. Now that we had all the data, we could sit down and plan for three days.

  The crews worked on maintenance and did more simulations together while the AIs and captains of the ships worked with the Admiral and myself for an attack plan. The system had four likely shipyards based on scan data. The goal was to cripple the quadruped’s ability to fight and construct ships. Their operations had followed about a seven-month buildup of forces and then a coordinated assault on a faction’s star systems.

  We needed to target all the manufacturing facilities and the aquatic race that staffed them. That was something the Admiral had learned. There was a subservient aquatic race that built all the quadruped starships. I had encountered them in the Squirrel home system as they had crewed the massive repair stations that arrived in the system in the middle of the assault. Those mobile shipyards, capable of subspace travel, were a massive advantage for the enemy. They could be set up anywhere; at a battle, in deep space, near large mining facilities.

  After much discussion, it was decided that the Fateweaver and Cloud Jumper would scout the system, and the attack would commence two days later. The fleet would arrive on the edge of the system, away from the concentrated activity. As the quadrupeds responded to the fleet, the Fateweaver and Cloud Jumper would launch their Armageddon missiles at the shipyards in the system. In the confusion, Admiral Laroche’s fleet would sweep the enemy ships’ outer system and retreat.

  The Fateweaver entered the system under stealth on one side of the system and the Cloud Jumper on the other side. We could communicate instantaneously with our binary gravity sensors, exchanging data as we scanned. The quadrupeds had so many ships coming and going that they missed both ships exciting subspace. The scans of the system showed us what we expected and more. Five massive shipyards were scattered throughout the system. One inhabited planet that was focused on industry. The system was still being mined, but heavy freighters were arriving every few hours and headed for the shipyards.

  We assessed the combat strength of the system. It looked like as ships were being built, they were being sent to groupings in the open. An interesting observation the Admiral made was passenger ships were entering the system and going to crew the newly built fleets. The Admiral explained the quadrupeds must be training crew in another system and then staffing the new ships.

  There was limited information on the species. The Federation had studied the biology and reproductive cycle of the quadrupled species in captivity. There were seven to ten born together in a brood. They normally competed for food from their parents, and only one normally survived. This continued even as the species gained technology and access to space. They had a survival of the fittest mentality.

  Something must have changed that they now allowed all the offspring to live. They were considered expendable and quickly trained and sent to crew spacecraft. Those ships were then sent to conquer more star systems. The quadrupeds refused to communicate with other species they deemed inferior.

  We continued around the system, and there were thousands of spaceships. Even with our sensors, we were not going to be able to scan every ship. What we could do was prepare our Slipstream fighters to target large cruisers and battleships that had not yet been crewed when the attack began.

  As our two days of scouting came to a close, the Admiral had tasked us with finding the origin of the passenger ships. He wanted to know where the quadrupeds were training. If we could find their breeding center then maybe we could slow them even further. We got a rough vector based on the ship transitioning in from subspace. It gave us four star systems within twenty-eight light years.

  The Cloud Jumper and Fate Weaver positioned ourselves for the arrival of Admiral LaRoche’s fleet. They arrived on time, and the system immediately turned over like an ant hill that had been kicked. After all the data we had gathered had been transmitted to the Admiral’s ships, it was time for the fight to begin.

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