While Making Other Plans:
Chapter 35

  “Report,” Kathryn ordered as she entered the bridge.

  “All ships report ready Admiral,” Brinkerhoff answered.

  “Then by all means Admiral let’s get started.  We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

  Brinkerhoff nodded and turned to the comms station.  “Commander Grayson, please signal the fleet that we are opening the rift.  Ready all offensive and defensive systems.”  The woman nodded and touched her finger to her earpiece as she tapped on her panel.

  “All ships set Condition One throughout the fleet.” her voice relayed over the comm system.  “Ready all offensive and defensive weapons.  All hands to battle stations.  Prepare for rift transit.”  Kathryn could hear the nervousness the woman was trying to keep out of her voice, Brinkerhoff too, and she wondered how much they heard it in hers as well.  They were play acting, it was all pretense to experience which none of them had.  But that’s what the endless hours of training in the simulators were for, to reflexively know what to say, do, and think when nerves otherwise shut down the thinky parts of their brains and training was all they had to rely on.

  “Lieutenant Tarsis, Condition One please,” Brinkerhoff ordered their operations order, following his own orders once they were heard over the fleet wide channel as their training demanded.  The lights dimmed and red light perfused the bridge as shadow matter shielding overtook the heavy glass windows at the front of the bridge, immediately replaced with a large projected screen showing the CIC Combat Information Centre display showing the positions of all of the in-theatre ships relative to the crystal, a deadly convoy lined up for transport through the rift.

  “All ships report ready,” Grayson called out as the screen showed the last ship icon flip red.  Kathryn took a moment to steel her nerves and appreciate the gravity of the undertaking, the size of the fleet being unimaginable only a few weeks earlier.  It was a day that would never be forgotten if anyone was left to remember it afterwards.

  Kathryn touched the fleet wide comms control on the neighbouring captain’s chair.  “For Kobol,” she offered the fleet, before adding, “make the bastards pay.” her voice dripped with cold vengeance.  The sentiment was more for fleet morale, but when she said it, she was far from immune to the charge of vengeful blood lust it filled her with to remember what they’d done to her extended family in both marriage and species.  A chorus of ‘Hoo-Rah’s called back over the comm network.

  Brinkerhoff gave her an approving nod before offering a quiet, more thoughtfully determined Hoo-Rah of his own before to the situation on the view screen.  “Tarsis, trigger the rift.  Bill, ready the decoy ships.”

  Pillars of light from the secondary solar collectors poured their unfathomable energy down onto the giant crystal and after a few moments of glowing brighter from the increased energy it exploded into the familiar purple vapour cloud.

  “You’re up Bill.”  

  Kathryn shifted the CIC display to one of the smaller displays to the side of the main display and put their main visual feed up onto the main screen.  They watched as the first giant icosahedron ship disappeared into the void of the rift, and then the second, then the third.  They couldn’t afford to wait to see what if anything was reported back from the other side before continuing to file the ships through on hope and a prayer that it would work.  Every second of surprise with which they could deny the enemy an opportunity to react tipped the odds more in their favour.

  As the flagship, New Horizon II was eighth in line, first behind the heavy Bobbin icosahedron warships and ahead of the rest of the human ships and other smaller Bobbin ships.  As she watched the ship ahead of them disappear into the rift, she heard Grayson report: “Getting confirmation from the other side that the cloud screen had been successfully established.  Exit vectors are being fed into the fleet’s nav computers.”

  “Steady as she goes Mr. Byrne,” Brinkerhoff ordered the pilot, and a few moments later they were in the rift.  

  The primary view screen shimmered out along with the rest of reality as they passed through the rift, the same purple haze which always saturated their field of view on the way in, this time newly continued to do so as they exited.  The CIC display showed their new course being automatically locked in, but before they could engage the ship was rocked by the heavy strike of an enemy weapon.  

  The displays showed their orientation spinning out before the navigational computer automatically righted their trajectory and hauled ass for their designated exit point.

  “What the hell was that?” Kathryn yelled, for the moment forgetting to marvel at their not being a paste on the rear bulkhead thanks to the newly inertial dampening and artificial gravity systems the Bobbins had installed on all of the human ships.

  “REPORT!!” Brinkerhoff roared after too many moments of the question not being answered.

  “I need—” Another strong strike rocked this ship, but Kathryn could tell by feel that it was a more glancing blow than the first and their course was easily corrected.

  “Got it,” Tarsus yelled as he frantically righted himself in his seat.  “Looks like when they realized what was happening, they just started firing blind towards the last known position of the crystal.  They’ve gotten some lucky strikes but so far—"

  “Shit,” Kathryn interrupted him as the first human ship got blown apart by the blind fire towards the mouth of the rift, some of the ships coming through afterwards taking damage from striking the debris.  The encrypted data network shared between the friendly ships provided enough information about what was going on at the mouth of the crystal through the crystal vapour screen.  Though limited it was far better than the total blindness the enemy was having to deal with.  “Shit,” she repeated, “and that explosion will give them a better fix on where to target.”

  “Not a great start,” Brinkerhoff turned to her to comment.  It was neither an accusation nor admission of defeat, just a dry observation to which she nodded her agreement.

  “Could be a lot worse,” she answered.  “We’re committed either way now.”  They both turned back to the CIC display and watched the rest of the convoy exit, each ship heading in a new direction at maximum acceleration towards their designated targets.

  Kathryn studied the readouts.  It was bad, but within the error bars of their projections.  They were outnumbered almost three to one but not quite, and their lead ships had successfully mapped the enemy positions before everyone’s sensors became useless in the cloud.  They’d all certainly scattered from those positions since, but it was a place to start, and their computers could offer a range of possible locations relative to their starting positions.  Once the first friendly ships exited the cloud the fleet’s battle network would update their live positions.

  As they exited the cloud, their still screaming acceleration happened to be taking them on a trajectory that put them on a direct collision course with an enemy icosahedron.  Slamming maximum thrust in a perpendicular direction would be enough to move them just barely out of way, assuming the enemy vessel declined to shift their position in exactly the same direction.

  Brinkerhoff stood from his chair.  “Commander Sengupta, please put a torpedo up that ship’s ass as soon as we pass by them,” he calmly requested as he put his hands on the backs of the pilot and comm station’s chairs.

  “With pleasure, sir”

  It took too long for the enemy ship to acquire their position while they were so close in, and by the time they’d passed them and gained enough distance from them it was too late.  Less than a second after they’d passed them, their first torpedo fired back behind them, and on contact instantaneously vapourized most of the enemy ship in a flash of blinding light, the main viewscreen responsively dimming the view.

  “Direct hit sir, target down.” Sengupta reported.

  “Hoo-Rah!,” Brinkerhoff exclaimed with excited satisfaction.  “Target every ship in range and fire at will. “

  Four torpedoes exited the ship’s launchers in rapid succession and as they showed up on the CIC display with dotted lines plotting them to their target on meandering randomized courses, the ship was blasted by an enemy strike much harder than the one they’d suffered immediately after exiting the rift.

  “Jesus,” Kathryn uttered.  “I thought the first hit we took was at full strength!”

  “Apparently not,” Brinkerhoff remarked as they both looked at the CIC status bar indicating how much shadow matter remained and saw that the strike had depleted them by almost fifty percent.  Kathryn looked down at the missiles and their targets in the main view, and saw that one of the targets was the ship which had just hit them.  Her heart sank when one of the missiles was shot down and blinked off the screen, then sunk further when a second flashed and disappeared.

  “Sengupta, shield status.” she ordered.  

  “Already nearly depleted Admiral.  That last shot burned up half of the ablative shadow matter.  The point defence geometry system is successfully orientating the material towards the shots to shield us from the blast, but it burns off so much.  I think we underestimated the resilience of the shadow matter while integrated into our ships compared to how it stands up in ships made entirely of the stuff.  Might have to do with our ships having less overall power output to operate it.  Either way I don’t think we can take another shot at full strength.”

  The remaining torpedoes struck their targets in quick succession, and another two enemy ships were taken off of the board.  “Fuck yeah, gotcha bitch!” Brinkerhoff exclaimed.  It made Kathryn glance over at him in scrutiny.  He’d either given up or lost the ability to maintain his composure in the heat of the battle, but she concluded that given everything it wasn’t a problem.

  She surveyed the CIC screen and assessed the overall situation across the fleet.  They’d downed a lot of enemy ships.  They did seem blessedly unprepared or otherwise unable to counter the combination of Bobbin torpedoes and human anti-matter, but they were losing too many friendly ships compared to however many they were downing.  While they’d reduced the ratio from close to three to one to less than two to one, it was clear that they’d run out of ships before the enemy did.  “We have to be smarter…” she muttered to herself as she searched for an idea.

  “Bill!” she exclaimed, leaping out of her chair and coming over to crouch down beside him at his station.  “We need more shadow matter to replenish our shields.”

  It took him a moment to stop the chatter with the other Bobbin ships in their own language before turning to her, his mirror ball going from colourless to a dark purple mauve.  “I agree that would help but we just don’t have any,” he quickly answered.  

  “But listen, when we down their ships, they are only largely destroyed, right.  Enough material is annihilated to leave them inoperable but there are still pieces of them left behind, right?”

  The alien’s eye stalks tilted quizzically to the side before turning back to his station without another word to her.  His ball turned a shifting tiger stipe pattern of black and orange as he launched into a fury of chatter with the other Bobbins across the fleet.  The rest of the bridge erupted in cheers and Kathryn turned back to see that two more enemy ships had been destroyed by a subsequent volley of torpedoes.

  “Bill?” she asked as she turned back around to him.  He held up a three taloned arm in request that she wait.  She looked back at the screen.  Still just under two to one and losing ships too quickly.

  “Bill!” she yelled.

  “Okay, okay, I think we’ve got it,” he exclaimed.  “Nice!” he added through his mirror ball as it turned fully orange as he disengaged with the link and turned to address her.  For a moment she wondered what in his language he’d actually said for his mirror ball to approximate human slang.  His feet clacked as he turned around in place to face the front of the bridge.  “Admiral Brinkerhoff,” called over, “we have reconfigured the ablative shielding to absorb the shadow matter of the downed enemy ships.  You just need to make physical contact between it and your own ships.  Please retransmit this to your remaining fleet.”

  Kathryn saw open concern in Brinkerhoff face for the first time as he looked back up at the CIC screen, noticing possibly for the first time how dire the strategic situation was despite their own ship’s individual combat success so far.  He snapped his fingers and pointed at Lieutenant Commander Grayson, who nodded and swiveled back in her chair to her station to relay the instructions.

  “Safe impact speed?” Lieutenant Byrne asked without looking away from his flight controls.

  “Low, unfortunately.” Bob answered, correctly intuiting the meaning of the question.  “When released from control systems,” he explained, “it reverts to something like a liquid with the density of water in vacuum, so whatever is structurally possible given the situation of the ship of that kind of impact resistance.”

  “Understood,” the pilot responded grimly.  “That’s a problem,” he informed Brinkerhoff.  “That’s a pretty low relative velocity.  It’ll make us vulnerable.”

  “Understood,” Brinkerhoff offered with a note of sympathy. “Just do what you can,” he ordered as he put a reassuring hand on the pilot’s shoulder before turning back to resume his seat in the captain’s chair.

  “Damn, we’re already down eleven ships to six!” Kathryn exclaimed as she looked back at the screens.  It was all happening so quickly.  ‘Oh God, we’re not going to make it!’ her thoughts screamed.

  “Nearest reservoir found,” the pilot reported, “setting a course.”

  “Anything you can do?” Kathryn asked Bob, still crouching beside him.  The alien didn’t answer other than a grim purple mauve hue coming from his mirror ball before turning back to his console.  She noticed that an icosahedron marked ‘Goliath’ in the CIC was the last remaining Bobbin ship in theatre.  Her head sunk in sad acknowledgement of how many Bobbins must have just died alongside her own people, and what Bill must be feeling.  

  When she looked back at the CIC Kathryn was horrified to see the readout that there was only the Goliath and New Horizon II on the allied side left in the field, but five enemy ships left, four octahedrons and one dodecahedron.

  “I think they’re on to us,” Byrne said as they all looked up and saw the remaining ships bearing down on them.  They were all on the far side of the blob of shadow matter they were burning towards.

  “Goliath reports that it has exhausted its supply of antimatter weapons,” Bill reported grimly.

  “Sengupta?” Brinkerhoff asked.

  “Fourteen remaining warheads sir.”

  Bill seemed to sigh with the weight of his civilization on his shoulders, and Kathryn put a sympathetic hand on what she figured to be the closest thing to his shoulder, finding in that moment her ability to identify with him completely.

  “Goliath will clear the path for you,” Bob informed them with orange, cold resolve.  “We will not lose this battle.”

  “Acknowledged,” Brinkerhoff affirmed, understanding what he meant.

  New Horizon II fell into formation behind the Goliath, in its protective shadow from the enemy’s weapons fire.  They watched as the smaller enemy ships and Goliath exchanged devastating volleys of beam weapon fire.  The CIC showed in detail the rapid mass loss of the larger ship as a result, but it also showed Goliath’s weapons penetrating one of the enemy ships and destroying it, then another, evening the odds a little further.

  “I want a targeting solution on the remaining ships now,” Brinkerhoff barked.

  “Yes sir!”

  “Byrne we’ll need to thread the needle on this one, be ready.”

  “Yes sir!” the pilot called back, biting his tongue in concentration.

  “Count us down Bill.” Brinkerhoff ordered.

  After a few moments, Bill called out: “Three… Two… One… Now!!”

  At the signal Tarsus flipped the ship and burned maximum thrust to slow their approach to the shadow matter.  At the same time the goliath opened a narrow passageway through its core to allow the target matter to pass through, then reconfigured into a broad shield to absorb all the enemy weapon’s fire and give New Horizon II a chance to safely decelerate and absorb the blob of material.  They touched the resupply of shield material just as the Goliath exploded, and after quickly flipping the ship around again onto a parallel vector, New Horizon II fired a full spread of four torpedoes at the three remaining enemy ships as they exited the Goliath’s cloud of destruction and then fired a second volley moments later, sending two torpedoes at each remaining ship.

  The new shadow matter replenished their shields, and with Tarsus’ evasive maneuvering, the enemy ships were only able to manage a few glancing blows before they were all vaporized one after another.  

  The roar of cheers which erupted through the bridge were short lived as reality quickly burned away their excitement in the heat of the moment.  They had won but it was a pyrrhic victory.  Thousands of comrades both human and Bobbin had died in the battle on dozens of destroyed ships.  And though they had won, they were alone in their victory.  A single ship left to finish the job with an unknown number of enemy ships still waiting for them in orbit around their ultimate target.

  “Congratulations everyone, jobs impeccably done,” Kathryn offered as bravely as she could.  “Full damage and situation report to my office on the double,” she ordered before turning to exit the bridge into her office.

  Once the door closed behind her, she turned and leaned her back against the closed door.  Looking up at the ceiling with wide eyes she started gasping for air.  Her heart was beating so fast it felt like it was going to explode, and she tore apart the collar of her coveralls, rubbing her hands up and down her throat trying to assure her brain that it was indeed unobstructed and that she should be able to breathe.  Her body shook as her gasps for air gradually turned to panicked sobs as she slid down to the ground against the door, crumpling into a full-blown panic attack on the ground.

  They’d won but all was somehow still lost.  ‘What the hell am I supposed to do now?  What in the ever-loving fuck am I supposed to do now???’