[Sunday, July 30]

“Five… four… three… two… one… Emergence. Captain, we’re safely back in normal space.” Ltjg. Olivia Devons, the pilot of the HMS Archangel reports.

“Engineering reports that the jump drive is secure,” Ens. Janice Morales, Archangel’s comm officer, announces moments later.

“Nav?” Captain Sergey Petrov asks while turning to look at Lcdr. Idris Beho.

He looks up from his station. “We’re exactly where we’re supposed to be, a half light-year from Tau Ceti.”

“Weps?”

“Other than the fleet, the scanner is clear, Captain,” Lt. Adrianne Jacobs replies.

The Captain nods. “Admiral, we’ve arrived… Comms announce that we’re secure from Jump stations.” Turning in his seat to look at Admiral Jessup sitting beside him, he asks, “What’s the plan?”

“Well, Sergey, we locate Odyssey, then we jump in to kill as many aliens as we can while our ground forces take her and her crew back just like Her Majesty ordered us to. Then, we go home,” Jessup replies as he smiles wryly.

“Sir, who are we sending?”

Cal looks thoughtful for a minute. “Adam Pierce and Kathryn Jameson. We’ll send two RIF (Reconnaissance in Force) groups to locate Odyssey. I’m assuming that they towed her to a moon of one of the Jovian planets.”

Sergey nods. “Comms, you heard the Admiral, inform the Captains. We’ll be in the Admiral’s ready room.”

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In the admiral’s ready room, Cal and Sergey are looking at the holograms of HMS Aeon’s Captain Adam Pierce, and HMS Reliant’s Captain Kathryn Jameson.

“Adam, Kathryn, I’m sending you to locate Odyssey. Each of you is to choose 8 destroyers and 15 frigates as escorts. Listen, I don’t want you to engage with them, yet. Don’t worry though, you’ll get your chance to kick some ass. For now, all I want is for you to find Odyssey using her QC transponder. I’m assuming that they towed her to a moon of one of the Jovian planets. Once you’ve pinpointed her, send the coordinates, and we’ll jump into the system. Understood?”

“Aye, aye, Sir,” they reply.

Cal taps a button, and their holograms disappear. Then he taps the intercom button and says, “Janice, get me the Captains.”

“Aye, Sir.”

　◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇

“You already know the plan, but just to reiterate it: we’re splitting the group into two task forces. We’ll jump in at two separate points wherever Odyssey is located. Once we clear their ships from orbit, we’ll send in the ground forces to retrieve her and her crew.”

He then looks at the hologram of Midori Arima, the Captain of the supercarrier, HMS Essex. “Midori, sort out your task force and get ready to jump into the system. We’ll send you your jump coordinates once we have her located.”

　◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇

Aboard the cruiser, HMS Aeon, Captain Brian Pierce finds that he’s tense, although far less than he thought he’d be. He’s far more angry than worried about the survival of his ship. No, he isn’t troubled by those thoughts since he’s fully confident in his ship and crew. As Admiral Jessup pointed out in the pre-jump briefing in Sol, Odyssey took out 3 of the 5 warships that confronted her, and HMS Aeon has far more firepower than a scout ship.

What he is troubled by is the lack of intelligence concerning humanity’s enemy and how many ships may be waiting for them.

Shrugging to himself, he thinks, ‘Well, we’ll soon find out.’

“Ben, are we ready?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Andy, status of our escorts?”

“Ready and standing by for your order to jump, Captain.”

He nods. “At your leisure, Ben.”

Ben nods, taps a button on his console, and announces to the other ships, “Jump in ten seconds. Five… four… three… two… one… Jump!”

The 24 ships disappear into dimensional space, soon followed by the Reliant’s task force moments later. A half-hour later, HMS Aeon emerges in high orbit of a planet designated as Juliet 1, which is about a third larger than Jupiter, while HMS Reliant enters high orbit of Juliet 2, the other Jovian planet, which is trailing 4.5 billion kilometers behind Juliet 1.

Aboard the Aeon, they immediately begin scanning for Odyssey’s QC locator. Thirteen seemingly long minutes later, Weps calls out, “I found her, Captain! She’s on the 5th moon out from the planet!” No sooner has he said that than several dozen ships leave orbit of the same moon and head in their direction, making him think, ‘Damn quick response.’ “Sir, we have incoming ships, approximately the size of a destroyer,” Weps reports.

“Comms, transmit the coordinates to the fleet, and inform the Reliant that we found Odyssey. Pilot, jump us back to the fleet.”

　◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇

Slightly over an hour later, the split fleet from Earth jumps into the system on opposite sides of the moon.

Cal grins evilly for a moment when he sees several hundred ships in orbit of the moon. “Captain, clear my skies. Tell the task force weapons-free and to fire at will,” he orders Sergey.

Clouds of fighters and incredibly, what seems to be troop carriers, lift off from the moon to intercept the task force.

Sergey orders, “Comms, announce battle stations. Then pass the order to the task force to launch the fighters and fire at will,” as he stares at the display and wonders, ‘Why the hell are they launching troop carriers too?’ “Weps, shields, and as the Admiral said, ‘clear the skies’.”

A few minutes later, 1300 fighters and 1000 fighter/bombers sweep out in front of the task force and head out to intercept the enemy fighters and ships.

　◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇

Shi-Da’s blood burns as she anticipates the thrill of battle as they begin to engage the animals, who call themselves humans. Having no information on how big a fleet these animals may send against her or her sisters, the Empress ordered Shi-Da, her first priestess, to prepare her sisters to meet these humans in battle around Kal-tsa since the ones they captured said they would come for them.

Settling on a simple strategy that would ensure the troopships’ rapid intercept with these human ships, she divides the main attack fleet into two groups. Taking the honor of leading the first group of ships to meet the humans in battle, she orders the other ships to engage the other human fleet on the other side of the moon, along with half the fighters.

She was not disappointed. The group bound for the moons in high orbit arrived first, and Shi-Da is extremely pleased to note that the size of the human fleet arrayed against them is fairly impressive, even if it’s smaller than her own, and will provide her warriors with an acceptable challenge.

“El-Tra,” she calls out to the ship’s mother, who is the rough equivalent of a human ship’s captain. “Authorize the boarding parties, then engage at will!”

“Yes, priestess!” El-Tra responds instantly as she rushes to carry out her orders. Throughout the human fleet, troopships that survived long enough to close within striking distance disgorged thousands of warriors in vacuum combat armor, who then activate their suit jets to steer themselves toward the human ships.

　◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇

Admiral Jessup stands silently on the bridge, trying to follow the chaotic information on the tactical display. He’s pleased to note that they’ve already destroyed roughly half of the ships sent against them. His task force is now engaged at the equivalent of knife fighting range with the enemy ships while the second task force is just as heavily embroiled as well. He looks away from the main display as the sudden glare of another ship from his task force exploding flares all too brightly on the display. Glancing down at his data terminal, he sees that it was another destroyer, HMS Decatur.

Initially, the enemy force was far larger than his task force of 209 ships. In less than a half-hour, the task force had whittled the enemy down to 91 ships of various classes at the cost of 79 of his own, leaving the enemy heavily outclassed in terms of tonnage and firepower. Part of the reason for the disparity of losses is that their ships lack any shielding. Another would be the datalinks which allow his ships to coordinate their fire.

“Multiple ships are reporting that they’re being boarded,” the comms officer shouts.

“What?” Cal demands incredulously.

He knew that they had boarded the Odyssey, but had dismissed the notion that they would do it again in this engagement. To him, it was a ridiculous thought to do so in modern warfare. Like many other commanders before him, he’s based everything on what he would do in a given situation, and sadly, he is proven wrong in his assumptions.

“We’ve got boarders on multiple ships, Sir,” she repeats.

“Sir,” Weps begins, interrupting his thoughts, Cal’s worried expression turns to face him as he continues, “we’re seeing numerous small targets on a direct course for the Aeon from several of the troopships.”

‘Boarders,’ thinks Cal. ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me! What kind of enemy are we fighting who would so casually throw away their soldiers’ lives?’ Looking at Sergey, he orders. “Captain, defend the ship.”

Sergey nods. “Enya,” he addresses the ship’s AI, “take over the CIWS, and clear them out.”

“Aye, aye, Sir,” Enya immediately replies as she trains 6 of their 10 CIWS and begins sweeping the targets from left to right.

As effective as it is, several hundred warriors land on the Archangel and immediately begin to burn their way through the hull.

Sergey calls out, “Comms, all crew members are to deploy armor and arm themselves to repel boarders!”

“Aye, Sir,” She replies. And just then, there was the sound of an explosion somewhere aft, followed by an alarm indicating that the ship’s hull had been breached and was losing air. “Multiple hull breaches throughout the ship! Enya has sealed the breaches.”

　◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇

Li-Rah jumped through the breach, followed by several others, with her sword held at the ready as Enya seals the breach with an energy shield, and the self-repair nanites begin to repair the gaping hole in Archangel’s side.

Unsettled by the announcement, Stevens quickly opens up the section’s arms locker to pass out rifles and combat knives to her section. Almost done, the ship suddenly rocks violently, throwing her off balance. Losing her grip on the door to the arms locker, she tumbles to the floor. Grumbling, she stands back up only to come face-to-face with a being the likes of which she’s never seen before. She’d heard the rumors, of course, but she never expected to see one standing in front of her. After all, who attacks a ship with a boarding party these days?

The thing bares its fangs, and with a war cry that raises goosebumps on Stevens, it lunges forward, thrusting its sword at her stomach. Caught off-guard, she instinctively swings her rifle to deflect its attack, the sword’s tip skipping off the rifle and then skittering along the side of her suit, which again throws her off-balance enough to fall backward onto the deck. The thing growls in what Stevens guesses is frustration while raising its sword to strike again.

Closing her eyes, she readies herself for the blow she knows is coming, but it never arrives. She forces her eyes open to see the thing being blown back against the bulkhead after the sharp crack of a rifle tears through the compartment. It slams into the wall with a heavy grunt and slides to the floor bleeding profusely from the hole in its chest armor. Several more shots ring out as she sits staring at the thing, stunned into immobility. Finally, she tears her eyes away from the thing when the loud staccato bursts from several rifles come from behind her. She looks into the corridor to see many more of them laying there, either dead or quickly dying.

Standing up, she glares at the thing that tried to kill her and snarls in her native Dutch, “Rot op, Trut! (Fuck off, bitch!)” Looking at her crewmates over her shoulder, “I’m sure there’s more of these fucking things around! So, we’ve got business to attend to,” she states forcefully.

While more and more skirmishes break out in the passageways of Archangel, Cal is calmly issuing orders to his task force as the close-in slugging match between the opposing fleets intensifies. Cal recalls the fighter wings to defend his ships and orders the fighter/bombers to concentrate on the larger enemy ships that are devastating his escorts. While his task force has achieved local superiority for the moment, he wants to destroy or at the very least, disable every single enemy ship before deploying the ground forces to retrieve Odyssey and her crew.

When they open the hatch, Stevens and her team stare at the mass of aliens, who were regrouping in the compartment near the hull, and of course, they stared back. However, only for a second because then Steven screams, “Sterf, teven! (Die, bitches!)” A moment later, she snatches a device from her waist, smashes down on the activator, and calls out, “Grenade,” as she hurls it like a baseball into the face of one of them, then one of her team slams the hatch shut. Once the grenade detonates, she smiles savagely, and murmurs, “Ik hoop echt dat je van de maaltijd hebt genoten. (I really hope you enjoyed the meal.)” Reopening the hatch to check for survivors, she becomes nauseous at the gory sight in the aftermath of the grenade.

Over the next hour, the task force mops up the remaining ships, and the boarders are slowly but surely killed in short but vicious fights scattered along the length and breadth of the ships. Over 100,000 warriors survive to make it aboard the task force ships, yet none live to see the last of their warships go silent. Then the task force begins to move into low orbit of the moon to join up with the other task force.

Of the 547 ships that were dispatched from Earth, 2 carriers, 1 battleship, 7 battlecruisers, 22 cruisers, 83 destroyers, and 193 frigates were destroyed, although of those that survived the battle, many were heavily damaged. 1508 fighters and 2213 fighter/bombers returned safely to their carriers to be rearmed for the ground battle.

857 enemy ships faced Admiral Jessup’s task force. 609 were destroyed and the remainder were so heavily damaged that Admiral Jessup doubted they’d be returning to a battlefield anytime soon.

Skimming through the after-action reports as they make their way into orbit, he thinks, ‘We were extremely lucky. If they had shields, we’d all be dead.’

“Admiral, G-2 would like to speak with you,” comms announces.

“Patch him through…” A moment later, Cdr. Allen Reynolds appears on his screen. “Allen, what can I do for you?”

“Sir, I’d like to deploy some officers to inspect their ships along with some troops to guard them.”

“Sure, but take a few engineers as well. I want an intact data core or two from them as well.”

12 minutes later, 20 dropships loaded with 450 armored infantry, 15 intelligence officers, and 4 engineering teams streak away from the Archangel on a heading for the remains of the largest enemy ship.