The Long Shot Pt. 12

The end result was an impossibility in interstellar warfare.

A choke point.

Admiral Yen Yen Ro pointed at the narrow tunnel of stable E-space that led from Voidbringer territory to Found and said: "That's our Brisgo Gap, starships." He looked at the whole room, his eyes growing more confident. "I know that the past few hours have been hard for everyone -- we've lost more planets, more people, here than in entire wars that lasted centuries. But finally, we can turn the Voidbringer's advantage into a disadvantage. They will only be able to send fleets through this tunnel, and they will be dropping out at these jump points." The map shifted from the galaxy to a map of Found -- showing the stable jump points in the system. "A mere ninety five jump points, each one a stable gravitational mid-ground between a planet or moon, star or planet. They have all been mined, locked in with railgun turrets, and surround by las-sats."

Everyone was nodding. Roxi leaned forward. [And how long will that last?] K'iren muttered.

"We believe these defenses will last between one to ten waves of attacks," Admiral Yen Yen Ro said, quietly. "Your task will be simple: Kill every last Voidbringer that fails to die. The rocket fleets will be providing support and cover. We've finished evacuating civilians, so every single restriction in ecoprotection and long term habitability is being rescinded by executive order from the Concord Parliament."

Soft murmurings. A ship two rows down raised her hand -- but it was her tactical officer who appeared in the air above her palm and asked the question: "Every restitution? How hard are we going, sir?"

"We're building a portal to an antimatter universe and aiming it at our jovian," Admiral Yen Yen Ro said, quietly. "If we lose their Lagrange points, we shall be removing them from the equation and as many Voidbringer ships as we can at the same time."

[Spicespit!] Heinlein hissed, while Roxi couldn't even bring herself to make a noise.

"We fully expect none of these to stop the number of ships we're looking at here," Admiral Yen Yen Ro said. "Our primay plan is to bleed the Voidbringers to the point where their fleet cannot effect a continual front along the entire galactic arm -- if we destroy sufficient numbers of them, then fall back, then the continual war along the galactic arm will be...significantly easier. War production along the entire habitable ring is ramping up. Every hour we fight here, another ten war rockets are built on every industrial planet." He nodded. "Every week, another starship leaves basic training and is sent to the Pantheon to be converted. And every ship we kill is another the Voidbringers must bring across the gulf between our galaxies."

Roxi shivered. "I didn't expect it to be so grim," she whispered to Sting, who whispered right back.

"I'd rather be worried and ready to run than an arrogant asshole from the holos who gets his balls kicked and dies wondering how it went wrong."

[...she's got a point,] K'iren muttered.

***

The CNS Approximating Apotheosis, CNS Sting in the Tail, CNS Tigerclaw and CNS Up Yours, Die all formed up approximately half an AU from the L2 point of Found's only jovian and one of her twenty six moons. Not every moon had the same number of Lagrange points -- simply because the orbital dynamics of a heavily populated lunar system made a lot of standard Lagrange points impossible or too tenuous for E-space jumps. That didn't mean that those places weren't guarded, but they didn't have the majority of munitions.

"All right, we've got smart limpets in a communication mesh, we've got railgun turrets, we've got Gattling coilguns that launch nuke boosted X-beamers, we've got grazers, mazers, and even a bunch of heatbeams and fucking conventional cannons to boot. We got missiles, we got rockets, we got the goddamn marines, baby!" Die said over their group chat. "Those Voidbringer fucks didn't think they'd be putting their dick into the meat grinder! Hah! They're so fucking fucked."

"Hey, Die," Sting said, her voice dry. "If you're done setting up your name being hilariously ironic, shut the fuck up."

Roxi snickered, while Claw let out a loud 'buahaha.'

The war-rockets that were supporting them were all Terran, launched from a colony world called Perryee-IX. The fact there were nine other worlds called Perryee had made Roxi snicker, until she had mentioned it to her crew in a private chat, and Heinlein had said, in his driest tone: "There are thirty, actually."

"Thirty!?" Roxi exclaimed over their shared chat.

Commodore Réginati Theyir sniffed over the radio. "There is only one Perryee. Our world is the closest in line to the others. We have best kept to the traditions of the ancestors that inspired us."

[Yeah, you don't want to step in that,] Hugh said, confidently. [I have no idea what it is, but it sounds like a lot of not a big fucking deal right now.]

Roxi nodded, internally -- and then turned her gaze back to the L2 point. As she watched several automated rockets swept in, dropping another load of smart limpets. They were all pretty dumb in so far as smart weapons went, only communicating in so far as they could prevent one another from targeting the same ship twice. But that was actually an advantage in this case, it meant there was less for the enemy to subvert and turn against them.

"We're picking up some E-space perturbations," Ship-Com said, a calm, quiet voice in their ears, beamed from the headquarters station back on Found. Ship-Com wasn't so centralized as that sounded, there were elements of it scattered throughout the system, all linked up to a string of quantum repeaters that bounced their signals through direct interlinks, rather than risking anything using line of sight or radio. It still felt like it was all coming from headquarters, to Roxi. "ETA ten to fifteen minutes. Look alive everyone."

Roxi felt her stomach tightening.

"So..." Sting said, her voice soft. "Did you expect this, when you first showed up?"

Roxi looked at her, her brow furrowing faintly.

"Did you think you'd be here, about to throw down against an extragalactic menace?"

Roxi shook her head. "Never even imagined it," she said, softly. "And...part of me kind of wishes that I'd just stuck to my original plan of...nailing my teacher a lot more." She smiled, shyly.

"Holy shit, what?" Sting asked, laughing.

[She's lying,] Heinlein said, his voice wry. [She only nailed her teacher once. And that was after she left college.]

Roxi was almost relieved when an E-space portal ripped open and an entire Voidbringer battlefleet dropped into the L2 point with a flare of ultraviolet light. The next two seconds were quite possibly the most violent thing that she had ever seen in her entire life -- and if the Terran brain was able to parse and understand the number of overlapping events, all springing at the same time, then she might have been more horrified. As it was...she just saw a flurry of flashes and explosions that overlapped into a smear of blinding white light, which her eye-cameras turned into something almost bearable.

Railguns pierced through capital ships. Ablative armor boiled off and then hulls detonated as X-beams and grazers intersected. Even conventional cannons were able to hit things, firing shells that were nothing more than binary explosives and contact charges with armor piercing noses, and at the rate of fire and the number of shots, they were able to bring down ships. Carriers, battleships, cruisers, frigates and subline escorts were turned into glowing clouds of debris -- some blown into so many tiny pieces that they had nothing lager than a molecule left.

"Ha HA!" Dies shouted.

Then the next wave dropped in.

The violence was almost more intense now. The guns were armed up. The gatling coilguns were whirling and each second, they sent down range five or six atomic bombs that detonated kilometers from their targets, the force of their fission blasts channeled into lasing arrays that lasted just long enough to hit their targets with streams of energetic particles. The cannons had sighted their ranges and were sweeping back and forth, while railguns had a hammerlock: The instant they fired, their demilightspeed slugs struck the target.

The effect on Found's primary Jovian was almost as terrible and beautiful as the effect on the voidbringer ships.

High energy particles, dumped into the upper atmosphere of a planet, into the magnetosphere, created a pair of effects. The first were thousand kilometer wide firestorms as the atmosphere was set alight by energetic impacts, which swept outwards in roaring catastrophes that transformed the swirling gasses of the planet's atmosphere into competing cyclones that could swallow entire planets, merging and breaking apart in storm systems so chaotic that it seemed as if the entire planet was writhing and squirming under a torturer's knife.

The second was the aurora. Just as a Terran planet would have a beautiful aurora borealis created as high energy particles fell into their magnetosphere, the Jovian was wreathed in shimmering, glowing purple waves of eerie light, which competed with the firestorms on the planet.

The third wave dropped into the railguns and grazers and x-beams.

The fourth wave dropped into cannon shells and PDC guns and surviving limpet mines.

The fifth wave dropped into long ranged missile barrages that exploded at a fifty kilometers and transformed the Lagrange points into hailstorms of kinetic projectiles, so dense that they created streaks of hissing flames across the bulk of the Jovian's atmosphere. By now, the entire Jovian was beginning to swell outwards, the atmosphere expanding under the heat being dumped into it. There was a new ring system, growing in leaps and bounds as ship after ship after ship was mulched.

This had all taken less than twenty six minutes.

Roxi watched it all, her mouth opening in slow awe.

[Nivin's beard...] Heinlein whispered.

[They should stop,] Carcass said. [They have to have alternative plans, right? This can't just be their plan?]

This is so stupid! Roxi thought.

The sixth wave came in...and the railguns were overheated. The cannons were out of ammo. The nuke boosted x-rays were out of radioactives. The las-sats were glowing, unable to dump their waste heat fast enough, and they had switched to their emergency liquid drop radiators -- literally spraying superheated Trimethyl-Pentaphenyl-Trisiloxane away from their hulls in a desperate bid to cool themselves enough to keep firing their beams weapons at the incoming Voidbringers.

Seventy five percent of the sixth wave was obliterated by the remaining guns and lasers.

That left nearly twenty six thousand battleships, fifty two thousand cruisers, five hundred thousand frigates, and nearly a million subline ships, with backup from ten thousand carriers, which dropped ten million fighters into the ring-system that had formed around the blazing Jovian.

"Lets fuck em up!" Dies said, shooting forward -- and immediately exploded as a kinetic projectile ripped through his face, spine, and back. As he flew into sparking chunks, Roxi barely had time to register it -- everything was dodging and evading as the main guns on the cruisers and frigates filled space with so much metal that it felt as if she was in a hailstorm. She corkscrewed around and around while K'iren targeted and launched. Several of her missiles ripped to pieces, but a few managed to evade the hail and slam into frigates which ceased to exist.

Roxi lifted her palms and let loose with both her grazers, while Sting and Tiger opened up as well.

Voidbringers started to rip to pieces -- and the battle was joined in truth.

***

There was no sound.

Not even beacons.

Roxi drifted, her eyes half closed, and didn't even so much as breathe -- the instinct repressed by sheer terror. Her movements slowly brought her around and around and around, and each time she came around, she could see the pale flash of ultraviolet light as more Voidbringers left the system and more arrived.

Every rotation, she saw Found below her. It looked as if a dark cloud, beginning at the north pole, had reached the equator. Everything to the south was fine. Everything to the north was shimmering, writhing clouds of darkness. Millions of Voidbringer drones. Billions of them. Trillions of them, dropped from the bellies of immense planetkiller ships.

[Okay,] Hugh said, his voice soft, a whisper, as if he was worried they were going to be overheard. [The issue is that any E-space portal we make is going to shoot up like a flare and they're going to chase us.]

[Yeah, it's a bit of a problem,] K'iren said, sighing. She sounded exhausted.

Roxi's eyes darted down and she checked again. The CNS Sting in the Tail was still approximately fifteen meters away from her -- their orbits were nearly identical and Roxi had risked the tiniest of a-grav fields to bring the other ship closer. Or at least...what was left of her. Sting had taken a particle beam through her belly, losing everything below her breasts to slag. Her brain had been put into an emergency coma and her simulation had been cut to a crawl to keep her computronium from melting away under the strain.

Heinline spoke: [Okay, I've, uh, finished the telescoping we can do. I think there are a few other ships that are pulling the same trick we have -- a few of them have even vanished between orbits. They either fell out of sight, or they took advantage of the Voidbringers being busy as hell.] He sighed quietly. [The only question is where the hell do we fall back to?]

What's the ansible saying?

Carcass was the one they had monitoring the quantum communications.

[It's bad, Roxi,] he said. [Voidbringer fleets are hitting every habitable system past Found -- they've hit the evacuation points, they've hit the shipyards. The ships that got away when Found HQ was taken down are regrouping with the surviving rocket fleets...but...] He trailed off. He didn't have to explain more. The worst possible outcome hadn't even come close to the reality. Roxi thought back to the battle -- and it was nothing but an endless, nightmarish hell.

It was like those dreams of being trapped in mud, unable to ever actually get away from the monster. Except the monster was there, and it was more than willing to sink its claws into your spine. Every ship, every fighter swarm, every battle formation that she and Sting and Tiger -- before Tiger had intersected a series of antimatter bombs and turned into a smear of white light and memories -- that they had smashed into...had been replaced. With more. And more. And more.

First one Lagrange point, then another, had stopped having defenders. Suddenly, they weren't in a turkey shoot, firing at ships as they emerged from E-space. Instead, they were caught between pincers. A whole section of the fleet had been ordered to retreat, and had managed to escape -- but the other sections hadn't managed to scramble.

Roxi's last order had been to run.

Now, she drifted and her crew effected what repairs they could using her automated systems.

[We're getting a signal,] Carcass said. [...shit.]

What? Roxi thought.

[It's Gyre.]

Roxi had almost forgotten Gyre. She didn't nod -- but she did say: Put him on. We might as well tell him that he might be in the better place for this.

[As if there's a part of the galaxy that isn't being turbofucked,] K'iren muttered.

Gyre's voice came over her head-connection, sounding tired but satisfied. [Approximating Apotheosis, I have some good news. I've found my own navigator. Once I wrap up everything here, I can join the war effort. Hows it going?]

Roxi was silent. Then she burst into tears. She couldn't help it -- the emotion exploded out of her.

[W-What...the...] Gyre was silent as Roxi felt her quantum-interlink being used by Carcass and Heinlein. The two of them were sending footage of the situation and a map of the galaxy to Gyre -- it was faster than words. [...holy shit.]

Roxi forced the sobs back. She gasped out: What the hell do we do, Gyre? We...we killed millions of them and they just kept coming! We blew up a gas giant! We... She trailed off.

[It's okay. It's okay,] Gyre said. [I just wish I had something useful! Damn it! They hit the High Observatory first. But I have nothing! Just some fucking numbers!]

[Send them,] Carcass said, immediately.

The numbers transmitted. But Roxi barely noticed -- she was too focused on the sun. Because the Voidbringers had started to do something around the primay of Found. Ships by the millions were sweeping through space, in clouds so dense that they were visible even from many AU away -- visible as an aggregate, rather than their singular shapes. She telescoped her view in and corrected for the rotation, allowing herself to see the writhing masses of ships, literally flowing together like liquid. The vehicles she had thought were each distinct ships proved they were able to interlink and connect together, and then create...something.

[What the fuck...] K'iren whispered. [Carcass-]

[One second, I'm doing something more important.]

The form of the Voidbringer construct became clear. It was becoming a mesh, a web that began to sweep around the star -- interlocking like a vast basket of glittering black metal.

[Fascinating,] Carcass said, quietly. [Did you send all the metadata?]

[Yes, why?] Gyre asked. [I tried to check the metadata, but I only got a little out of it.]

[Of course, you're not a programmer. This metadata says it's from the main telescope array of the Far Observatory. These coordinates are derived from a signal that was sent from Andromeda. This data is what the Andromeda Mumbling is about. The Voidbringers are an extragalactic threat -- these signals originate from Andromeda. It is entirely possible that the Voidbringers came from Andromeda as well. I believe that the Voidbringers attacked the Far Observatory to try and destroy this information.]

Holy shit, Roxi whispered. What does the information mean? What is it!?

[They are coordinates. Projecting.]

A map of the galaxy appeared -- stars spinning, curving, twisting in the stately movement of interstellar gravitational dynamics. A bright red line drew itself -- a hyperbolic that arced in out from the edge of the galaxy, swept smoothly around the core, then arced back out again, the gravitational nudge given by the supermassive black hole in the center transforming its orbital arc into an eliptic.

[It's a ship course!] Hugh said, excitedly. [A voidbringer ship?]

I don't know... Roxi said. Then...

The line continued...

The map zoomed in.

The red line arced towards a solar system with several jovians, several terrestrials, a boring G-type star, the kind that millions of people had over their habitable worlds. The red line swept in...and struck the third, moonless planet of the solar system, intersecting with it at what had to be incredible speeds.

What solar system is that? Roxi asked. Is it possible the ship survived?

[Yes, there are five or six ways that a ship could survive that impact,] Carcass said, quietly. [As for the planet?]

Yeah?

[Well, obviously...] Carcass sighed. [God, you're the Terran! It's your homeworld.]

Roxi shouted, aloud: "Fucking what!?"

But since, at the same time, Found's star exploded, no one noticed.

TO BE CONTINUED