The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knight

THREE light-minutes separated the two flotillas, each racing toward the other at point one light speed, for a combined closing rate of point two light speed. That meant fifteen minutes until the two forces came into very brief contact.

Very brief, but long enough for their weapons to hurt the other.

Iceni reviewed her flotilla’s readiness for at least the hundredth time in the last several minutes. Every unit at combat readiness state one, every weapon ready to fire, targeting systems locked on to the approaching flotilla. She had left her flotilla in the box formation, deciding that messing with that would be one change too many and probably more than she could handle anyway. Just because you may have figured out one thing about Black Jack doesn’t mean you’re anything close to being him.

“Here go the automated commands,” Marphissa reported as she tapped her controls. “Beginning countdown to activation.”

Thirty seconds later, the commanding officer of C-413 called in. “What kind of plan is this?”

“A plan ordered by President Iceni,” Marphissa replied. “Activation in twenty-five seconds. Failure to activate will have to be explained to her.”

“I— We’ll speak of this later!”

“Ten seconds to activation.” Marphissa gave a sudden look of alarm to Iceni. “Are you prone to motion sickness?”

“I hope not.”

“Activation!” the maneuvering specialist announced.

Heavy cruiser C-448 and every other warship in Iceni’s flotilla jerked into sudden maximum acceleration as the inertial nullifiers groaned in protest. Iceni kept her eyes on her display, trying to breathe slowly and deeply despite the pressure. It would be only a few more seconds until the other flotilla saw her flotilla altering velocity. Since any combined velocity above point two light speed complicated targeting solutions and started reducing chances of hits at an increasing rate, the automated systems on the other flotilla’s ships would respond by pivoting their units around and firing off the main drives to brake their velocity.

The force on Iceni halted abruptly as the main drives in her flotilla cut off. Other pressures jerked at her as thrusters pivoted her flotilla’s warships up and over, then the main drives kicked in again at maximum, shedding velocity as hard as they could.

Within seconds, the other flotilla saw the moves, kicking off its own drives, pivoting its ships again, then accelerating at maximum to once more try to compensate for the maneuvers of Iceni’s flotilla.

“Three minutes to contact,” the maneuvering specialist gasped as the main drives in Iceni’s flotilla cut off again. Once more, thrusters fired, swinging the warships up and over again toward the other flotilla, main drives lighting off at maximum before the warships had even steadied out.

“They are going to be hating us over there,” Marphissa got out with a strained laugh as they saw the automated systems on the other warships react again. Trained human crews would have seen the small time remaining until contact and known the need to override the attempts of the automated systems to match the maneuvers of Iceni’s flotilla.

The snakes controlling that other flotilla were not trained crews, and right about now would be feeling very disoriented.

The other warships cut off accelerating and started swinging again, this time down, at the same moments as the two forces rushed toward contact. The bows of the opposing flotilla, where most armaments and the strongest armor and shields were clustered, were actually swinging away from Iceni’s warships. She could imagine the curses that the humans on the other flotilla were uttering as their weaponry passed out of engagement envelopes just as Iceni’s warships flashed through that moment of close contact.

Iceni’s own ships were better aligned to fire, but far from perfectly because of the jumble of maneuvers. She felt the cruiser under her tremble slightly as hell lances and grapeshot tore out toward the other warships, her senses not really registering any of that until her flotilla had raced past the others. Iceni’s flotilla was adjusting vectors to aim straight for the increasingly close gas giant, while the other flotilla flailed around, the two forces diverging at something close to point two light speed.

Laughter broke out on the bridge, startling Iceni. “Can you imagine their faces right now?” she heard one of the specialists say to another.

“Quiet on the bridge,” Marphissa called, but not harshly since she was grinning, too. “Too bad we couldn’t score many hits ourselves.”