The ragged remnants of the Dragon Fleet hurtled towards Kal Amore Station the troop transport ships, now the bulk of the fleet, began to form into something resembling a formation. What could they possibly hope to accomplish? The twin anvils of the station and Dwarven fleets stood ready to receive them. The hammer of the Elf and Fae fleets closed in, promising death.
Ambushes were boring. Darius Elmagdamari sat in his Command Chair on board his station, watching his staff and the station’s computer coordinate supporting fire with the dwarven fleet, watching his Elven brethren on the assault force get to have all the fun. But even they had to be bored out of their minds, “You know Evie, I think we should go out for Gentak tonight. There is a new place in the west habitat wing that I have been dying to try out.”
His tactical officer and lover, Everet, glared at him and then aggressively pushed a button that launched a salvo of rail gun fire at the approaching fleet. “I thought that we had discussed the fact that you need to use proper rank and names while addressing your staff, Darry. I wish you’d take this more seriously. And Gentak food makes you gassy.”
“Um, that would be Commander Darry, I believe, lieutenant. I assure you that I am taking this situation as seriously as I need to. The enemy is almost dead and poses,” he made a show of checking the threat assessment, “Exactly 13.5 percent risk to my station. Besides,” he looked at ambassador Kiln Botre “It is not like any orders I issue to our Dwarven allies will be followed.”
Kiln was middle aged for a dwarf- about 257 standard years- and Darius had known him for a quarter of his life. He shrugged apologetically at his friend, “My people are thick headed at the best of times. I do not think that in the middle of dealing a fatal blow to an enemy fleet would be a good time to test out the strength of your command.”
“You see,” Darius threw his hands up, “You are coordinating the attack and the dwarves won’t listen to anything I tell them to do anyway. There is nothing for me to do except watch the light show.” An alert popped up on his command screen just then and he sat up- watching, “Ah, looks like someone out there finally decided to give a shit.”
The Eringar fleet had executed a flip and burn, which was driving them away from the station and planet and back towards the onrushing ships. The station’s guns fell silent as the enemy exited the engagement zone. While Darius was glad to see the threat counter drop from 13.5 to 6.8, he was still puzzled by the formation they were assuming. “Ambassador, what are we seeing?” Kiln had spent 23 years as the “guest” of Lord Sol Lot Eringar, and was considered the alliance’s leading expert on Dragon tactics.
Kiln studied the formation “It looks like the standard drop ship screening formation, with the warships out front in a screen and the drop ships clustered in groups behind them.”
“Okay, that makes a lot of sense, but I am puzzled as to one minor detail in this case, Kiln.”
“You mean why is it ass-backwards?”
“Yup.”
“No idea”
Captain Stone remembered the last time he had thought that life about what was fair or not was important. He had been 6 or 7, and had finished second in the barracks foot race after the winner had elbowed his nose. He had complained that he had almost won. He still remembered the barrack master’s harsh voice before the club had slammed into his head, “Almost counts for nothing boy. Not in war, and not in life. You’ll never get anything done if you bitch about almost.”
The allied trap had been almost perfect. They had only made one mistake when planning out the hammer and the anvil: they had placed the overlapping fields of fire right on the edge for both forces, counting on the Dragon fleet to continue falling into the waiting arms of the dwarves and Kal Amore station. But the Eringar fleet was burning Edgeward, away from the sun, taking themselves out of the engagement zone of both the station and the dwarven fleet.
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As the drop ships assumed the head of the formation, dumping all of their power into engines and forward shields, the crews joined the troopers in their own battle suits reported to their positions.
Second tapped Captain on the shoulder, “You know I was wondering why no one had ever tried this type of thing before.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, and the answer is that because it is plaking stupid and going to get a bunch of us killed.”
He grunted, not taking his eyes off of his fleet monitor.
The Elves and Fay were ignoring the drop ships coming towards themand firing at the much more formidable destroyers and dreadnoughts, who were spinning up their Ether drives. The drop ships were sitting ducks, and of no great strategic importance in a naval battle. Each warship taken was one more nail in the Sol Eringar coffin. Some of the ships had Ether drives on them and were already leaping into Etherspace, disappearing in flashes of light.
Goddess but his brands burned. They had still not dimmed to the customary black, but glowed a new color- gold. It was playing havoc with his suite’s HUD. He tried to calm down and keep his thoughts on the plan.
A proximity alarm glowed on his HUD. The enemy ships were almost “above” them, Their torpedoes and missiles were still swooping down on the battleships, most of which had abandoned their feeble attempts at escape and switched power to their rail guns, shooting the projectiles out of the sky. They were doing pretty well, but not for long- once the Allied fleet closed to rail gun range their sheet numbers would overwhelm the battleships. The dwarven fleet had started burning out of the station’s shadow and would soon be within range. It would be a massacre.
Captain exhaled and looked at Second, “Thanks, by the way, for saving my life.”
She grunted, “Pumped enough adrenaline into you to kill a star.” The proximity alarm started beeping, and was almost louder than his heart as she pressed the claristeel of her helm against his, “This is the craziest thing you've ever done. I love you. Stay alive for me.” Love was forbidden amongst humans- all types of familial connection was punishable by death.
“I love you too.” he said and then for the 2nd- or 3rd?- time that day, his world exploded.
Drop ships have to maneuver in atmo, so their thrusters are much more powerful than the average space ship. Their armor is also a lot thicker in order to withstand bombardment from the much bigger and more powerful planetary rail guns.
Still, it is one thing to know that a drop ship is manuverable., and quite another to see it spin into the path of an oncoming battleship. And a completely different thing to see it happening to scores and scores of them.
“What the hell was that?” Darius leaned forward in his chair. Collision alarms were going off across the fleet. .
“The drop ships rammed the warships, sir.” Dav, his sensor specialist said, unhelpfully.
“Ok, I can see that but why.”.
“Humans do not die easy.” Kiln murmured .
“Sir, I am picking up ship movement behind Hammer group.” Dav reported as maybe a flight and a half of dreadnoughts- the dragon ships that had spun up their Ether drives quicker than all the others, flashed into existence behind Hammer and started firing railguns, torpedoes, and missiles at a select number of ships, focusing their fire without any apparent rhyme or reason. The bulk of the Dragon warships had increased their speed and were almost upon the Elven ships that had collided with the troop carriers. Maybe the drop ships had just meant to slow the oncoming ships down? But if that was the case, why had the war ships attacked instead of escaping.
Kiln was humming. Kiln only hummed when he was nervous and when Kiln was nervous it usually meant a lot of things were going to die.
“Ambassador?” Darius asked with a raised eyebrow- keeping one eye on the station’s threat assessment of the battle. So far it agreed with him: the humans had only delayed the inevitable, and would soon all be dead.
“There is a human drop trooper saying” Kiln shook his head, “Better to die looking the enemy in the eye”
“What a lovely rhyme.” Darius grinned, but he noticed that Evie was frowning, “Oh now what is your problem?”
“I am picking up explosions on the hulls of our ships”
“Secondary impacts from the drop ships?”
“Maybe but…”
Now Darius was frowning, and a cold feeling had started at the base of his spine. “Pull up the collision data and put it on the main viewer.” The collision played, “Focus on the lead ship and play it again”
“What are you looking for?”
He irritably waved a hand and barked, “Again Lieutenant!”
The cold feeling in his spine grew as he watched the lead ship- the Stone Guardian, strike the Sure Destruction and the front part of the ship crumpled into the Sure Destruction... and stayed there. If suicide was the goal, why not overload their engines.
He spun, ”Issue commands to those ships not impacted, tell them to---” and that was when the Elven and Faye ships of the allied fleet began firing on each other.
