A brief summary on Redoubtable: She’s a Redoubtable-class dreadnought., making her the second-largest ship in the Terran Fleet and the largest hull ever laid in a human shipyard. (Only the twelve-kilometer Ram is larger, and that ship was captured from the Galactic Compact, not constructed in Sol.) 212 graser blisters, ten missile pod bays, and a full complement of eighteen Grasshopper-class Fast Attack Craft (FACs), a squadron of eight Aphid-class scoutships, and two landing shuttles.
CIC, TAS Redoubtable. Sol Gate
“They want to do what?” asked Captain Merkel. Surprise was plain in her normally calm voice.
“Launch a scoutship, sir,” replied the ensign delivering the news. “They have an experiment they want to test on the repls.”
Repls. Half an hour since they’d classified the invaders and they already had a nickname. From the way the crew was treating the new info dump, it seemed like they were only one brilliant master plan away from driving the swarm back through the gate.
Only they weren’t. Lieutenant Dross’s weapons console had access to the full tactical plot, and he could see that they were losing. They might kill a thousand of those bastard’s ships for every Terran hull they lost, but their odds were a hell of a lot worse than a thousand to one. Fleet’s best estimates put the swarm at close to a billion unique platforms.
“There’s a reason–” Merkel paused as a graser blow shook the ship. The screens weren’t even whining any more. If the colossal TAS Ram hadn’t been the target of nine out of every ten incoming shots, they’d have gone up in flames an hour ago.
“There’s a reason we haven’t launched any of our insects,” continued the captain. “One unlucky hit and they’re done. We need to sit tight and bide our time. Tell them no, ensign”
Merkel stared straight forward as she said those words. Dross, who’d turned his head to watch the exchange, was shocked at the deadness in her eyes. Her voice might be confident, but she’d reached the same conclusion as the weapons officer had. They had no ace in the hole. No boarding party steadily working their way towards the enemy flagship’s bridge, and no doomsday weapon that could wash over the repls and leave behind a harmless cloud of carbon dust. No hope, really.
And now Merkel was just going to sit there, complacent in her own death. In all their deaths. She might not have been the admiral in charge of this clusterfuck, but she was still responsible for every man, woman, and xeno aboard the Redoubtable.
God damn this conscience, thought Dross. I’m no fucking hero.
He rose from his station and suddenly became aware of the two Marshall sentries posted just inside the CIC’s door. They wore full battle armor and carried loaded flechette cannons, just like they’d done since the distant Unification Wars. From back when mutiny had been a very real threat.
“Excuse me, Captain Merkel, but I think you should reconsider. We need that ship out there.”
“Pardon me, lieutenant?” Merkel’s tone was sharp and cutting.
Dross waited for the Redoubtable‘s armor to finish absorbing another graser blow before continuing.
“We’re losing this fight, sir. We don’t have any ships smaller than a battleship left, and it won’t be long before we’re running awfully low on those too. What happens when we start losing dreadnoughts? The Ram? We’re the most effective naval force in the system, sir, and we’re just sitting here reacting. Where’s the initiative that let us beat the Galactic Compact with tech a hundred centuries out of date?”
The Redoubtable‘s deck heaved again and Dross paused. Merkel broke in before he could resume.
“And what would you have me do, lieutenant? Piss away lives on an endless string of fool’s errands? Break formation and leave our squadron to die? We stand together or we die alone. Return to your station before I have you removed from the CIC.”
Dross stayed standing. He swallowed as one of the sentries stepped forward, the marine’s expression hidden behind his matte-black armored helmet.
“At least try something, sir. Have someone qualified look at the scoutship’s proposal. Maybe Lieutenant Slater — he’s supposed to have a degree from Kuiper Tech, I’m sure he could make sense of it. But don’t just dismiss it out of hand. You yourself said that the strength of the Fleet has always come from the men and women serving aboard it. Every man and women, not just those with admiral epaulets.”
That last line seemed to get through to the captain. She waved off the sentry and slumped back in her chair, not even trying to hide her exhaustion anymore.
“Very well, then. Dross, see that Lieutenant Slater receives a copy of this Haverford’s proposal. Keep me updated on developments. You’re not doing anything at your console that can’t be automated.”
Dross winced a bit at that. He’d already written a small script to tweak the Redoubtable‘s firing pattern as their graser blisters fell offline and returned to active. It would be trivial to have it prompt for human input if the flow of the battle changed.
“And give that scoutship permission to launch,” continued the captain. “At least one of us should have the chance to decide their own fate.”
Redoubtable Scoutship 05, Sol Gate
Sub-lieutenant Sleek-wings-gentle-glide slid her Aphid-class scoutship out of the Redoubtable‘s port hangar with some trepidation. When Chief Petty Officer Haverford and Master Spacer Walker had first pitched the idea, it had seemed great. Get outside the dreadnought’s hull, determine exactly how far the repls had spread, and test out Haverford’s contraption. Easy, straightforward, and simple.
Wouldn’t even take ten minutes, they’d said. One loop around the ship, a short stop, and they’d be back in the relative safety of the hangar.
Now Sleek was starting to wish she’d turned her human crew down. Rather than the wide, open expanse of freedom she’d pictured from inside the hangar, the scoutship hovered on the edge of a claustrophobic deathtrap.
The bright flashes of graser beams ripping paths through space-time lit the scene, revealing the tightly packed Terran warships that stood against the swarm. The broken, shattered hulks of dead freighters and cruisers drifted amidst them, forcing the formation to bulge out in awkward places. Sleek couldn’t see any escape pods.
Worse than any of that, though, was the lack of stars. The swarm of repls was so thick that it hid the sun and stars.
Whenever Sleek had read that phrase in human books, she’d always dismissed it with a brief chuckle. Clouds blocked out the sun and stars all the time, yet nobody was afraid of clouds. It had always seemed such a trivial thing to be afraid of, a weird human quirk that Nedji didn’t posses. Now, however, the full weight of the phrase hit her.
This was space. You should always be able to count on the sun and stars.
Haverford’s hand settled on her shoulder.
“You can do this, sir. You’re the best damn pilot I’ve ever had the pleasure of serving under.”
There was something comfortable in the weight of the portly engineer’s hand. Sleek could feel the raw power and strength of the grip — she didn’t doubt that Haverford could have crushed her shoulder with barely a grunt of effort — but there was also a deliberate, gentle tenderness.
Sleek turned the nose of the scoutship back towards the hull. Beside her, Walker gasped — the first sound he’d made since they’d launched. The Nedji was more than a little surprised that he hadn’t fallen back asleep.
“That’s a lot of repls,” said Walker. “How the hell are there that many repls on the ship.”
The matte-black hull of the Redoubtable was marred by huge swathes of boiling grey. Probably as much as two-thirds of the ship.
“It’s the damn swarm,” complained Haverford. “Too many emissions flooding the ship for us to be able to distinguish between the ones in spitting range and those firing from the bleachers.”
“At least we’ve got your invention,” said Sleek. Conversationally, she added, “By the way, how exactly did you attach it to the hull? All I saw was grey tape.”
“That’d be it,” said Haverford. “No way I’d get a welding rig for a personal project in the middle of this goddamn scrum.”
If Sleek’s implants had still been functioning, she’d have calmed her sudden spike of anxiety with a quick search of the ‘net. Instead, she tried to convince herself that Haverford knew what he was doing and that there was no risk of their device — a pulse rifle, with all its safeties stripped, strapped to a portable EM generator — flying off and blowing a hole in the Redoubtable‘s hull. Or their hull, for that matter. The human engineer was too clever for that.
Sleek flinched every time an enemy graser strike came within a hundred meters of their scoutship. Their energy screens whined from near-misses more than once on their circuit of the Redoubtable‘s massive hull.
They completed their loop and Sleek brought them in tight against the dreadnought. This close to the gathered repls, the Nedji could just make out the dizzying array of geometric shapes that rippled across the surface of the sludge. It was unsettling.
“Ready, Haverford?” asked Walker. The bastard sounded bored again.
“Firing it up now, Walker. You keep our grasers hot just in case.”
“And risk punching a hole in our own ship? Not a chance. Point-defense is on standby, and the gimpy little anti-personnel turret is deployed, but the grasers won’t have lick of juice in them until I’m convinced they’re necessary.”
“Whatever you say, kid. Activating the generator at 70% now.”
The sludge reacted instantly. Before Haverford’s fingers had left the switch it had shied away from the scoutship and condensed.
Sleek watched with disbelief as the shapeless goop transformed itself into hundreds of small, spider-like forms, with a handful of larger silhouettes mixed into the mess. Flashes of distorted light struck at the scoutship, and Sleek heard their screens begin to rumble.
Grasers, thougt the Nedji. They’re firing miniature grasers.
Beside her, Walker let out a whoop. “This is something I can get behind. If you’d be kind enough to angle us down slightly, sir, I’ll bring the top point-defense cannons to bear on the buggers. Oh, and Haverford, pump up the juice on that generator. Let’s see if we can’t force them to make even bigger targets. This could be fun.”
Marine Armory, TAS Redoubtable. Sol Gate
Lieutenant Slater stared at the schematic in front of him in disbelief. “CPO Haverford is insane.”
“Why’s that?” asked Major Galad. The commander of the Redoubtable‘s marine complement had been watching Slater with interest ever since they’d received orders from Captain Merkel to ‘scour the ship clean of these fucking stowaways.’
“He cracked into the mini-reactor on one of the Mark VII pulse rifles, sir” replied Slater. “They used stripped-down Mark VII’s as fucking bombs during the Mylar Insurrection. Haverford pretty much used the same procedure to bypass the safeties. Well, minus the last step. That’s the one that makes it go boom.”
“Damn. So what exactly do you want to do with this, then?”
“Make more.” Slater glanced around the armory, mentally adding up how many generators were needed to equip every scoutship, fast-attack craft, and marine fireteam on the Redoubtable. “Although we can use field batteries instead of rifles for the next batch. Far less likely to blow a hole in our own ship.”
Continued in comments.
Dewdrop, Mt Mons Spaceport. Mars
Tweetie watched Calloway stare at the forward display in the Dewdrops small bridge, wondering yet again how anything could stand so still. It seemed to be a uniquely human trait. A formation of Nedji could only last four of five minutes before one of them twitched a wing or fluffed a crest, but Tweetie had seen entire companies of humans stand unmoving for hours at a time. It was mystifying.
Jenkins was slouched in a chair near the back of the bridge, nursing a fizzy, non-alcoholic drink. Without Calloway’s vehement refusal to allow alcohol onto the bridge, the man would probably be well and truly drunk. Naomi, Calloway’s wife, was probably still in the ship’s engineering compartment. She’d only popped up briefly to talk with her guests before returning to whatever project kept her occupied below.
The Dewdrop had been sitting in the hangar awaiting launch clearance for the better part of two hours. Civilian liftoffs had been suspended while the Home Fleet dealt with the incursion.
Not that we’re likely to come out on top, thought Tweetie bitterly. If the reports are accurate, the Terrans may have finally found their match.
The Council hadn’t made an official pronouncement since they’d declared a state of ongoing invasion, an emergency measure that granted near-total power to the Office of the Chairman. That meant martial law, the activation of local militias, and an increase in the already massive powers afforded to the Terran Marhsalls.
And, of course, it had grounded the Dewdrop and trapped Jenkins, Calloway, Tweetie, and Naomi on the ship. They wouldn’t be going anywhere without Fleet’s say-so.
“You heard anything from the Flock, Tweetie?”
The Nedji was surprised to hear Calloway speak. The bridge had been silent for quite some time.
“Yes, actually, although only rumors. The flocklords are being cagey, as usual. Some of the larger clans are trying to prepare for an evacuation, but they’re having difficulty assembling. The cities are fortifying as if we’re about to get hit by Compact slavers.”
“Of course we’re still fighting the last war,” said Jenkins. “I thought we moved beyond that after Unification.”
“Fat chance of that ever happening,” said Calloway. “We’re human, after all. Tweetie, my contacts are pretty much saying the same thing — lots of digging in and locking down, not enough evac prep.” He paused. “Everyone here’s seen the leaked reports. This isn’t a Galactic Compact invasion, however the brass has decided to treat it.”
“We can’t do much about it from here,” said Jenkins. “The Dewdrop won’t get clearance to launch until we’re waist-deep in repls, and there’s no way in hell we’re getting out of the spaceport on foot. They’re turning this place into a citadel.”
“I might have a solution to that,” said Calloway. “A friend of mine in the local Fleet detachment has been kind enough to bring a convenient gap in the navy’s launch schedule. There’s a three-minute window at quarter-past the hour. If you guys are fine with some mild and easily avoidable treason charges, it’ll be trivial for us to launch.”
“I’m in,” said Tweetie. “We can do a lot more in space than we can down here.”
“Me too,” said Jenkins. “But when this is over, you’re going to tell us exactly what you did before you wrote poetry. You’re starting to scare me.”
Redoubtable Scoutship 05, Sol Gate
Sleek grimaced as Walker let out an admiring whistle. The human had absolutely no sense of pitch — she could have produced a purer note by waving her wingfeathers back and forth through the air.
Haverford didn’t notice Walker’s abysmal tuning, though. He was too busy watching the carnage below.
The line of Aphid-class scoutships and Cricket-class fast-attack craft was sweeping across the hull of the Redoubtable, scouring the vast swathes of replicator sludge that covered the dreadnought. The sheer number of interference generators attached to the Terran vessels forced the repls to cluster into forms the size of small cars. Once those masses were cracked open, the scattered sludge was quickly dissolved by the generator’s strong EM fields.
Wallace and Haverford were having a blast. Sleek wasn’t. While the humans were caught up in the thrill of the slaughter, she was fixated on the number of ships they were losing in the process. The swarm’s graser bursts were starting to focus in on the line of Terran small craft, and more than a dozen vessels had already been picked off. Their ship could be shot down any second.
The retreating sludge left behind visibly weakened armor and, in some places, gaping holes where the repls had burrowed into the Redoubtable‘s hull. The sludge had been dug in for quite some time. Why had they only noticed the extent of the damage now? It seemed like this much damage should have made itself known far sooner than it had.
There was no use worrying about that now, though. Sleek had her orders, and the Nedji would be damned if she’d let Walker or Haverford down.
CIC, TAS Redoubtable. Sol Gate
“Lieutenant Dross, what’s the status of our anti-boarding operations?”
“They’ve scrubbed nearly a third of the hull, sir. Marine fireteams are responding to internal incursions as we become aware of them, too, but there’s a lot more repls inside the Redoubtable than we expected. It’s a miracle that we haven’t suffered any–“
The lights on the bridge suddenly shut off, plunging the compartment into near-total blackness. Dross held out a brief second of hope that it was just an isolated incident, but the banks of consoles lining the CIC soon followed the illumination system.
“–systems failures,” finished Dross lamely. The dull emergency lights cast just enough illumination for him to see Captain Merkel glaring at him.
“Thank you for your useful insight, lieutenant. Comms! You’ve got enough redundancies in place to survive a nova, what’s the status of the fleet.”
“Not good, sir.” Ensign Peters sounded tired. “Everyone went dead at once. Even the Ram.”
“Goddamn repls must have been biding their time,” mused Merkel. “Waiting to take us down together. Any way to get eyes on the situation?”
“We’re still receiving updates from the small craft we deployed, sir. They’re reporting that the enemy has ceased fire.”
“Well, that explains why we’re not dead yet,” said Merkel. “Anything else.”
“Yes, sir. The swarm’s beginning to close in. If we don’t do something fast, we’re going to be overrun.”
TAS Redoubtable. Sol Gate
“All hands, this is the captain speaking. The enemy has effected a catastrophic loss of power across the entire fleet. We’ve been crippled.”
“Most major systems are inoperable, but we still retain communications amongst the fleet and to our deployed small crafts. The crew of one of our scoutships — Sub-lieutenant Sleek-wings-gentle-glide, Chief Petty Officer Haverford, and Master Spacer Walker — have volunteered to fly in formation with the Home Fleet until the last. They will inform us when we are about to be overrun. The rest of our small craft will attempt to break through the swarm and inform the Terran Council of our fate.
“We will not be launching escape pods. None of us will fall into enemy hands today.
“Engineering, you are hereby authorized to detonate the ship’s reactor on my mark. Just because they’ve cut our conduits doesn’t mean we can’t still blow the generator. Everyone else should destroy any potential sources of intelligence these replicators could exploit. We’re not taking any more chances today.
“It’s been a pleasure serving with you. Now let’s give them hell.”
Engineering Deck, TAS Redoubtable. Sol Gate
“Huh,” said Slater when the intercoms cut out. “That could be a problem.”
“What could possibly go wrong now?” Master Corporal Smith glanced over at the towering lieutenant with a frown. “The fucking ship’s dead in the water.”
“We never did figure out if those things understood our language.”
Off in the distance, the faint echoing of small, sharp claws tapping against the ship’s metal bulkheads could be heard. It was growing louder.
Slater glanced around. Behind him was the thick, heavy door to the reactor compartment. There were no visible air vents or ducts in the room, thank god, but there were also no other officers. Only Slater.
One day, he thought, the universe will realize that I’m not a goddamn combat trooper.
“Weapons ready,” he barked. “They’re coming.”
The dozen marines assigned to Slater trained their weapons on the two doors leading into the workshop without a word. Only two of them were armed with anything more than their flechette sidearms, and none of them wore battle armor. The clicking grew louder.
Slater nodded to the handful of engineers who stepped out of the reactor compartment with drawn sidearms of their own. All but one of the spacers took up a position in the firing line. The last one, a graying Chief Petty Officer, stood ready to twist the bulky key that would turn the Redoubtable into an expanding fireball.
“When they make it through the doors, we fall back into the reactor compartment. Don’t forget the interference generators. Whatever happens, we do not let them gain access to the control systems.”
Slater’s gaze drifted across the prototype generator that Haverford had slapped together. He grabbed it by its still-attached strap and idly slung it over his shoulder, wishing that he could fire it instead of his sidearm. The pistol looked tiny in his oversized hand, and his burnt right palm made it awkward to hold.
The tapping rose to a crescendo and an unseen wave crashed against the sealed doors of the compartment. Small holes began to open up the thick metal, and the marines opened fire.
Graser 37, TAS Redoubtable. Sol Gate
“I guess this is it, boys,” said Petty Officer Gregor as the announcement faded. “It’s been fun.”
“At least we don’t have to buy that marine ground-pounder a bar.” Master Spacer Wallace’s voice was tight with strain. “My wife would’ve shot me if I spent that much money.”
“Y’know,” began Spacer Chan, “just because our consoles are down doesn’t mean the graser’s offline. Its core is on a completely different circuit…”
“Which means we can set the safeties to pop after the reactor goes critical,” finished Gregor. “Add a bit of dirty radiation to the mix.”
“I’ll spread the word among the nearby blisters,” said Wallace. “You guys rig this gun up to go nova.”
Redoubtable Scoutship 05, Sol Gate
Sleek, Haverford, and Walker watched the swarm grow closer.
“Reckon the fireball will get ’em all?” asked Walker.
“Doubtful,” replied Haverford, “but we don’t need to wipe them out. Just to thin the ranks a bit. Give Earth and Mars and the Belt some time to respond.”
Sleek didn’t say anything. The Nedji just stared at her tac plot, silently counting down the seconds towards her death.
“I never did get a chance to introduce you to my wife.” Walker pulled a picture out of a pocket on his skinsuit and held it up for inspection. “Damn pretty, ain’t she?”
Sleek glanced up at Haverford’s chuckled. She certainly couldn’t see anything funny about the picture.
“She puts up with your ugly mug?” asked Haverford. “Now I’ve seen everything. You must’ve been one smooth bastard to land her.”
“Hardly. Things just kinda happened.” Walker frowned. “Kinda wish we’d gotten around to having kids before I shipped off to the Redoubtable. We’d always looked forward to raising a family.”
“Hey, at least you’ve got us. We’re quite the family,” Haverford’s gesture encompassed the entirety of the small crew. “Eh, Sleek? Remember that one furlough on Europa? Couldn’t ask for a better bonding trip than that”
Sleek shuddered. “You guys were so drunk you could barely walk. And you talked me into spending the night at that marine bar. You’re goddamn lucky nobody in there was armed.”
“I was a little surprised when you jumped onto that one guy’s back and started biting,” said Walker. “He’d have laid me out for sure if not for you. What sparked that?”
Sleek lifted her wings a bit in a crude approximation of a human shrug. Her crest lifted with embarrassment. “It felt like the kind of thing you guys would do for me. Only fitting to return the favor.”
“Well said,” said Haverford. “Y’know, you xenos didn’t turn out half as bad as we thought you would.”
Sleek glanced down at her tac plot and sighed.
“Funs over, boys. That look close enough to you?”
Walker nodded, and Haverford said, “Time to make the call.”
He rested a hand on Sleek’s shoulder as the Nedji keyed the fleet-wide channel. Its weight felt good.
Engineering Deck, TAS Redoubtable. Sol Gate
Slater had a pulse rifle now. He’d picked it up off of Smith’s corpse while the surviving marines and engineers had scrambled back into the reactor compartment.
They’d sealed the heavy containment door behind them, but it hadn’t taken long for the repls to start tunneling through. He could hear them munching away at the reinforced walls that enveloped the reactor chamber, but so far they’d only broken through in a handful of places. The nine remaining humans in the compartment were more than capable of blasting apart any replicators that tried to widen the holes further.
“What do we do when they bring the door down?” asked one of the engineers. Spacer Conner, Slater dimly remembered. He hadn’t been paying much attention to names.
“Don’t worry, son, I’ve got a plan for that.”
He didn’t. They’d lost the last compartment when the repls had eaten through the door’s manual locking mechanism. That had let them pour in all at once. They could repeat the trick at any moment, and Slater had no idea how to react when they came swarming through again. There was nowhere else to run.
The strap holding Haverford’s prototype dug into Slater’s soldier. The lieutenant removed it absently, setting it down on the ground beside him. An idea struck him.
“Corporal, want an upgrade?” He tossed his functioning rifle to one of the remaining marines — Slater wasn’t even going to try and recall the woman’s name — and picked up the prototype. The crudely modified weapon was, after all, only one step away from a bomb.
When the locking mechanism gave way, Slater was ready. He ripped the door open and dived out into the seething mass of replicators. Sharp claws stabbed into his flesh and he screamed out in agony, but he held onto his strength long enough to hear the dull thud of the door slamming shut.
Then he jerked the screwdriver he’d jammed against the pulse rifle’s last remaining safety circuit and squeezed his eyes shut tighter.
CIC, TAS Redoubtable. Sol Gate
Lieutenant Dross jumped as an explosion rang through the ship. It sounded like it had come from the engineering deck. Had they overloaded it too early? Had the replicators gained access to it?
No, of course they hadn’t. They still held the reactor. When they did blow the matter-annihilation core, the explosion would be a lot bigger than whatever that had been.
A Nedji voiced crackled out of the speakers on the comms officer’s console. It was the only operational station left in the CIC.
“All ships, this is Sub-lieutenant Sleek-wings-gentle-glide. It’s time.”
“That’s it, then,” said the captain. Her hand hovered over the switch that would broadcast her voice out over the ship-wide intercom, one of the few systems that remained functional. She paused. “Every last one of you is a goddamn hero.”
She stabbed her thumb down onto the control panel. Merkel’s voice rang out through the Redoubtable one last time.
“This is the captain. Detonate the core.”
Sol Gate
The swarm closed in on the crippled Home Fleet. If it had been capable of feeling emotions, it might have felt satisfied. If it had been capable of anything like rational thought, it might have thought that it had won.
A spear of scoutships and fast-attack craft launched themselves at the swarm, grasers and missiles tearing open a small, treacherous path. One scoutship, sheltered in the middle of the formation, survived long enough for its message to break through the swarm’s jamming, but none of the vessels escaped the replicators. They bought the Terran Alliance a warning with their lives.
One scoutship kept back, holding formation alongside the TAS Redoubtable. It watched the swarm approach.
The replicators drew to within a hundred kilometers of the fleet. The Terrans did nothing. They closed the distance to fifty. Then ten. Still the Terrans did not respond. It wasn’t until the swarm was a mere hundred meters away that every human warship overloaded their reactors and exploded. One ship burned ever so slightly brighter than the rest.
The fireball tore through the swarm with the fury of a small nova. Millions of the invaders were ripped apart, vaporized by the intense heat and radiation. Light from the explosion sailed out across the solar system. It would eventually carry to the bridge of the Dewdrop, where two humans and a Nedji waited to salute the sacrifice of thousands.
The Home Fleet did not go quietly, and the swarm’s victory cost the invaders dearly. But some of the machines escaped destruction. Some of the machines turned their attention towards the heart of Sol.
Towards the Belt. Towards Mars. And towards Earth.