Starcorp 1: Escape from Sol
Action Stations

“Holy crap!”

Commander Ronald Noonan’s astonished outburst went mostly unnoticed by all that heard it. They were too busy being surprised by what they were seeing. The digital animation on the large monitor in front of them was exhibiting a presence that was two times larger than their intelligence community projected. The UFP Armada that they spent the past two days approaching had just been enveloped by their sensor field. The radio transmissions that they had been tracking, the flickers of reflective light that they had been optically following, was suddenly a discernible mass.

“Dominic, give me a count,” Joshua bellowed out at the crewman two positions removed from him.

Joshua was seated in the command capsule of the Basestar Orion. The circular chamber had fifty acceleration pods that were constructed into the floor at a forty-five-degree angle down. The chairs were arranged in three successive rings and all were occupied by an RG01 Space Force crewman. Most of the personnel in there were superfluous. It did not take more than five crewmen to steer and control the basestar. And much of what they did was simply supervise and direct Orion’s computer. The remaining crewman were there to fill the seats, operate engineering robots that floated free throughout the basestar and wait their turns as second and third team bridge officers. The crewman that were essential to the operation of the Orion at that moment were seated in a cluster around Joshua.

“The computer is holding on a count of Three-thousand-eight-hundred and seventy-three spaceships, Admiral,” Dominic reported back after taking a moment to retrieve the data.

Seated next to Joshua was Commander Noonan, the commanding officer of Orion’s fighter-force. He was initially slated to be a wing commander. When he and the other veteran space pilots and security officers failed to measure up to the level of Pettorino’s test pilots, he was given the job of Spacefighter Commander. In this capacity it was his job to organize and prepare Orion’s fighter force for battle. At this moment, it was his function to relay orders to his wing commanders and to designate tactics to effect Joshua’s objectives.

“How are we supposed to win against thirty-eight-hundred spacefighters?” Noonan questioned with an inflection of incredulity.

“We don’t have to win,” Joshua returned in a softly somber voice. “We just have to delay them.”

Noonan took no comfort from this. After giving his head a brief shake and exhaling with a huff and a smile, he responded to Joshua’s declaration with more than a little sarcasm.

“Yeah, I believe that was the plan at the Alamo.”

The UFP Armada had been in freefall towards Mars for six days when they detected the sensor field of the Basestar Orion. After visually locating the source of the field they began following its approach. Because of the speed and trajectory of the Orion, they saw no need to alter their course. They knew that it was coming to them, and the speed of its approach left next to no doubt that the intention of the basestar was to intercept and engage. After another four hours, they noted that the basestar was decelerating. An hour after detecting this they noted that it was turning. Its course change and decreasing momentum were clear indicators that the basestar was settling into a trajectory and speed that was near to identical to their own. It took another three hours for the basestar to fix its position directly ahead of the UFP Armada and assume an edge on posture towards them. At this moment, the distance between them was too inconvenient for battle.

“What’s it doing?” Eckhart questioned General Gruenberg with a look of confusion.

Eckhart had been a fixed resident aboard the UFP Armada Command and Control Spacefighter from the moment it lifted off from planet Earth six days earlier. Four crewmen under the command of Major Lee Everett were positioned behind the control consoles at the front end of the spacefighter cockpit. General Gruenberg, the commander of the armada, was seated behind the four and to the left of the Major Everett. Seated behind them were Eckhart and Wilkinson. Kaplan and Carr were seated in the next pair of acceleration chairs back.

“It’s taken a position between Mars and us,” Gruenberg reported as he studied the large monitor at the front of the cockpit. “And it has assumed a defensive posture.”

“So, catch it. Destroy it.” Eckhart commanded with an inflection that suggested he was speaking the obvious.

Eckhart’s outburst was motivated by the fact that the UFP Armada was freefalling through space. The thrusters of the massive space force went quiet five hours after its launch from Earth and had not reignited since. Eckhart had been aware from the beginning that Gruenberg was tracking the approach of the starcorp basestar. He understood the logic of maintaining their course and speed towards Mars and allowing the basestar to come to them. What he did not understand at this moment was their continued inaction now that the basestar was in their path.

“We are catching it,” Gruenberg reported as he continued to study the monitor. “It will cross into our sensor fields in exactly ninety-two minutes. It’ll be in the lethal range of our primary weapon twenty-six minutes after that.”

The lethal range was a variable distance in space warfare. There was no limit to how far a projectile could be discharged. But there was a limit to how far it could travel and give the shooter reason to believe that it had a chance of reaching the target without being destroyed. This distance was dependent upon several factors: the speed and trajectory of the shooter, the speed, and trajectory of the target, the number of projectiles launched and most importantly the defensive capabilities of the target. Because of these variables, along with the vast distances and the astronomical speeds, space battles were effectively games of high-tech dodgeball between supercomputers.

At this moment, the Orion Basestar was beyond the sensor fields of the UFP Armada and it was trying its best to conceal itself with its narrow silhouette. The armada of spacefighters barely had the means to see it visually, and this was only because they knew where to look. Targeting it was also an extremely difficult task while it was outside of their sensor field. But Gruenberg had no doubt that this problem would no longer exist in one-hundred and eighteen minutes. The basestar needed only to hold its speed and trajectory.

Gruenberg’s plan was to initiate a fusillade when the basestar was inside the lethal five-second launch to impact range. He was confident that the basestar’s defenses could not fend off several thousand projectiles traveling at very high speeds across a five-second-wide span. With this scenario in mind, Gruenberg began positioning the 1st Wing of his spacefighter armada into a relatively compact firing box along the leading edge of his command. On his order, this was being done as inconspicuously as possible. Gruenberg did not want to spook the basestar into running.

Spacefighters were armored spaceplanes built around a primary weapon system. The length of spacefighters ranged between eighty to one-hundred and fifty yards. They commonly had three levels and they never had less than two. The front quarter of the spacefighter was where the personnel housing and the cockpit were located. The power plant, primary engines and the magazine for the primary weapon were situated in the rear three-quarters of the spacefighter. The primary weapon, a railgun, was situated at the bottom level along the length of the front half of the spacefighter. The railgun was capable of discharging one-hundred slugs per minute. Most spacefighters had a single railgun. The others had two.

The external configuration of most spacefighters had a resemblance to a blade of a doubled edge dagger. The front one-fourth of the spacefighter was sharply tapered and rounded at the tip. The back three quarters gently widened out until its width was twice that of the front quarter. The thickness increased from the outside in. There were no windows to be seen anywhere along its exterior. The port for the railgun was hidden behind a shield door. There was no lift producing wings. Flight was produced by the primary repulsor engines at the rear. The secondary repulsor engines at the top, bottom, and sides of the spaceplane were also used to steer and orient the spaceplane.

The crew area was an interior fuselage that ran down the center in the front quarter of the spacefighter. The crew cabin was a large compartment situated at the front and on the top level of the spacefighter. It accommodated seating for twelve. The compartment below the cockpit was generally used as an auxiliary and storage area. Behind the cockpit and the auxiliary compartments were the sleeping quarters. These were accessible from the rear of the auxiliary compartment. The sleeping quarters were small, twelve-foot-long, cubicles. They were wider at the back than they were at the entrance. The cubicles were situated in a semicircle around the top half of the fuselage and stacked to form three successive levels along the length of the spaceplane. The floor of the cubicle was situated along the side that put the front end of the spacefighter below. Routinely during long space flights, the spacefighter would maintain a flat spin as it freefell through space. This had the effect of simulating gravity within it. The entire armada discontinued this effect eight-hours after detecting the sensor field of the Basestar Orion.

The sensor field was a technology that was construed out of the research into the science of quantum entanglement. Its use was far superior to the radar technology it replaced a century earlier. Because of the vast distances that spaceships needed to peer into, and the great speeds that items in it tended to move at a device that provided instantaneous reports on its surroundings was superior, by far. It also had the added advantage of being able to note anything within the field. An object as small as a penny could be detected by its displacement of field energy. There was no deflecting or hiding from the sensor field.

The sensor field was seldom as large as could be produced by the power plant of the spaceship. The amount of energy needed to project them grew exponentially comparable to the growth of the field. Because of this potential strain on the power supply spaceships extended their sensor fields out as far as they felt was needed or could be afforded. Civilian spaceships seldom devoted more than five percent of its power output to the sensor field. It was rare for them to need a field beyond what five percent could produce. Military spaceships routinely devoted thirty percent of their power output to the sensor field while in freefall and no less than half that when the engines were in use. This percentage was determined by the amount of power they could afford to allocate to the fields production.

The act of projecting the field was likened to blowing up a balloon. The field extended out from its generator at the speed of light. The amount space perceptible by the spaceship’s computer grew as it expanded. All that was detected within the sphere of the sensor field registered inside the spaceship’s computer instantaneously.

The sensor field that that enveloped the UFP Armada was so large that the flight crews of the spacefighters could not immediately discern the location of its origin. The field washed over the entire armada within an instant. It took them more than a minute to correlate the data from all the spacefighters and use it to compute the curvature of the sensor sphere. From this information, they calculated the direction and distance of the spacecraft that was generating it. Another minute of visual scanning of the area produced their first image of the basestar. Another five minutes of examining the spacecraft told them that it was moving towards them from their four o’clock position, and that it was moving at a speed that was a third faster than their own.

Gruenberg was shocked by the size of the sensor field being produced by the starcorp basestar. He suspected that a military craft that was as big as a starship would likely produce an abnormally large sensor field. What took him by surprise here was the fact that this sensor field was a third larger than his most generous estimation. In Gruenberg’s report to Eckhart, he explained that if the diameter of a marble represented their sensor field then their spaceplane would be one-one-thousandth of the size of the tip of a needle and situated at its center. Keeping with that scale, he explained that a comparable representation of the diameter of the basestar’s sensor field would be a beach ball.

“What does that mean?” Eckhart challenged with an inflection of concern.

“Maybe nothing,” Gruenberg responded with a shake of his head. “Maybe everything.”

Eckhart was not satisfied with this answer. The fact that Gruenberg brought it up as a point of interest was enough to make him more than a little curious.

“What’s he talking about,” Eckhart questioned Wilkinson behind a quick turn of his head in his direction.

“The starcorp warship has a visual advantage,” Wilkinson began to explain in at hushed volume. “If it chooses to it can hide out there and orchestrate the battle while we search around in the dark looking for it.”

“So, is that it?” Eckhart questioned back with a look of alarm. “Are we beaten?”

“No,” Wilkinson answered without hesitation. “It just means we will have to find it first, that’s all. ”

“What about their spacefighters?” Carr questioned in a challenging tone. “Won’t this give them an advantage?”

Eckhart did not know the significance of Carr’s question, but the fact that he thought to ask it caused him to be very interested in the answer. He looked to Carr, and then back to Wilkinson, and waited for his reply.

“If the warship has fighter support then it should be able to direct their engagements from a safe location—Initially.”

“Initially? What does this mean?” Eckhart questioned with a confused expression.

“It means,” Gruenberg started with a quick interjection, “that we’re going to have to destroy its fighter screen first. But I don’t anticipate that to be a problem.”

Eckhart was not completely convinced by Gruenberg’s confident retort. After a quick study of his General, Eckhart looked to Wilkinson for confirmation that his offhanded dismissal of the situation had justification.

“It’s just a battle tactic,” Wilkinson assured with an affirmative nod of his head. “There’s no chance of them having the numbers to fight us.”

Eckhart looked to Carr for a sign that he agreed with this analysis. What he got was a shrug of indecision. Confused by this, Eckhart gave it a moment of thought and then turned to Kaplan, as an afterthought.

“What do you think?”

Up until this moment, Kaplan was not thinking about venturing an opinion on this subject. It did not matter to him one way or the other what the basestar could do. He had no interest in this conflict or its outcome. Kaplan was fully aware of how needless this entire adventure was. Eckhart’s question to him was the only thing that gave him reason to give the subject an assessment. After a second of thought, he commenced to give his answer with a nonchalant delivery.

“We should have a sizeable advantage in numbers.”

Eckhart derived some assurance from this declaration from his Minister of Public Works. He knew Kaplan to be a very smart man on matters of industry and commerce. He often had his suspicion that Wilkinson’s words were more bravado than brilliance. And he knew that silence from Carr was a defense mechanism. If he could not be brilliant, then he chose to be noncommittal. Carr feared to be wrong to an excess. But Kaplan was a thinker that Eckhart could count on to give his best assessment of any situation, and when his words were definitive he was invariably right.

“So, it won’t hurt us?” Eckhart questioned Gruenberg after a moment of reflection.

“It may slow us down, but it changes nothing.”

Gruenberg had little doubt that the basestar had a contingent of spacefighters to protect it. Despite this expectation, he thought it unlikely that it was equipped to accommodate any more than fifteen-hundred spacefighters. And he suspected that the actual number was far fewer than that. He took comfort from the knowledge that the basestar would have too few spacefighters to repel his command, but he found concern in the fact that it had a large advantage in situational awareness. He knew that it could stand off and orchestra its fighter force long before his own sensor field enveloped the space between them and the basestar. This was nowhere close to being an insurmountable complication by Gruenberg’s calculation. But it did give him reason to wonder if there were going to be more surprises.

Unlike Gruenberg, Eckhart gave no thought to tactics. He only wanted to know if they had the forces to do the job. With the support of Kaplan’s words, Eckhart was reassured that this was the case. He suspected that his General was inclined to be over confident, but Kaplan, by his estimation, was pragmatic and objective.

Kaplan’s competence in the affairs of industry, commerce and construction were not the reason behind his presence there. It was his widespread knowledge in the fields of engineering and science that earned him a seat inside this spacefighter. Eckhart insisted on the presence of his three most prized Ministers as advisors to him.

“I prefer to not get all my information from an underling that I have no history with. I have no doubt that the crew will tell me what Gruenberg wants me to hear. I want someone there who will give me the unvarnished truth.”

Kaplan gave this as his explanation for his decision to conscripting his three Ministers into this adventure. Wilkinson was a willing and eager participant. Kaplan and Carr were much less so. They put up strong objections to their presence within this expedition, but Eckhart entertained no resistance to what he wanted.

Nearly ten hours before situating his basestar ahead of the UFP Armada, Joshua transmitted a message to Eric Gourmand. In it, he reported the UFP Armada’s ETA to Mars. At the end of the message, he requested instructions on how to proceed.

“Admiral Sloan, be advised, at the UFP Armada’s present speed it will be upon us before we can make our escape. We need time. As much as you can give us. I am ordering you to engage the UFP Armada. Check their advance. We need forty hours. We’re counting on you. Good luck.”

This return message from Gourmand had come in an hour before the Orion began decelerating. One minute after it fixed its position ahead of the UFP Armada the Orion turned its primary thrusters into the direction of its fall and ignited them. The burn lasted for fifteen seconds. After this, the rate of fall between the UFP Armada and the Basestar Orion was no longer identical. The range between them was decreasing at a steady rate. After shutting down the burn, the massive basestar rotated its frame so that its aspect to the UFP Armada was edge on. This made it harder to see.

Joshua gave the order to deploy the first wing of mows the instant the basestar became fixed into its gradually deteriorating lead in front of the UFP Armada. Within three minutes of that command, the three docking bay doors on the underside of the basestar slid open and one-hundred mows began floating out through them, one after the other. By comparison to the UFP spacefighters the mows were gargantuan. Each mow was as large as twenty spacefighters clustered together. The mows had an inoffensive look about them as they drifted out into the space behind the basestar. From a distance, they looked like pumpkin seeds, minus the wrinkles and distortions on its surface. Up close it was plain to see that the circumference of the broad area had an egg shape. The back end was wider and more rounded than the front. Edge on, they took on the appearance of flying saucers. The broad sides of the mows had pronounced bulges, and the edge sides were rounded off. The surfaces of the mows were smooth and unblemished by external attachments. Thirteen small thruster holes were situated in evenly spaced locations about the craft. Two of these openings were positioned side by side beneath the wide end.

As the mows moved away from the basestar, they began to pair up. As they did this, they positioned themselves into a ten across, and five down, rectangular formation, two mows to a section. As soon as this formation was assembled, they extended this rectangle formation out into a front that was nearly as wide as the armada coming towards them. After this, the individual mows separated out into their respective box within this square. In ten minutes’ time, the mows were fully deployed. Each mow was so distant from the other that they could not be seen visually without the aid of a telescopic lens. In their rear, the Basestar Orion was a diminishing speck. The mows were falling towards the UFP Armada at a speed that was four times greater than their basestar.

Less than five minutes had passed in Gruenberg’s one-hundred and eighteen-minute wait when he began to get reports of movement around the basestar. Nearly all the reports were coming from UFP spacefighters at the head of the Armada. Their enhanced visual scans of the basestar appeared to be showing things moving about in the area where they calculated the basestar should be. Gruenberg noted these reports, but he showed no concern for them. Varied interpretations of these sightings began coming in at a growing frequency over the next three minutes. At the end of this time, Eckhart asked for an explanation.

“They’re coming,” Gruenberg reported without expression.

“Who’s coming?” Eckhart demanded back.

“The fighters,” Gruenberg explained without expression.

Gruenberg knew that this activity could only represent one thing, a force of spacefighters was being deployed. He saw no reason to be perturbed by this event. He expected it. In his mind, the number and the makeup of the fighters were equally irrelevant at that moment. He knew that the sensor fields of his armada would envelop them long before they came within lethal range. He expected to have a pristine image of the battle space when this happened. He needed only to wait for this to occur to see all. And he needed only to wait for the range between them to become advantageous to the weapons systems of his forces to destroy whatever was in front of them.

The UFP spacefighters were heavily dependent upon their Directed Energy Defense Systems. Particle beam guns were embedded into the structure of the spacefighter in a dozen different locations. A humorous moniker for this was the porcupine defense. Despite the comical name, the Directed Energy Defense System was an integral part of a battle tactic that was similar to the formation flying of daylight bombers during World War II. While moving as a compact group, the spacefighters were capable of overlapping fire. This was true of their defensive and offensive weapons systems. Maintaining this capability of mass fire was Plan A for all spacefighter forces. All other plans were motivated by a failure to succeed with Plan A.

The most common reason for this battle tactic failing was the weight of fire coming in. It was simple mathematics. A force comprised of superior numbers, or produced a superior weight of fire, or effected a superior number of hits invariably won the battle. To survive this onslaught, the opposing formation would have to break and run. Spacefighters that were engaged in full powered evasive maneuvers were harder to hit, but this also meant that they had abandoned the tactic of mass fire and lengthened the time it took to accurately aim their weapons.

The primary offensive weapon of the spacefighter was the railgun. Slugs were accelerated down a rail along the length of the lower half of the spacefighter and rifled out of an opening in the nose cone. Aiming the weapon was a matter of directing the spacefighter towards the target and holding it there for the duration of the volley. The design of the spacefighter and the defensive systems in it were engineered around this reality. The spacefighter had a thin silhouette when looking head-on at its target. The primary purpose of the Directed Energy Defense System was to protect the spacefighter while it was in this shooting posture. The Achilles heel of this posture was its rigid configuration. The spacefighter was, essentially, a stationary target.

When in a fully evasive mode the weapons platforms of the UFP spacefighter, both offensive and defensive, were all but useless. Extreme evasive maneuvers involved redirecting the primary thrusters. This could not be done without redirecting the primary weapon in the same motion. Extreme evasive maneuvers also had the effect of creating too much work for the targeting computer. This rendered the Directed Energy Defense Systems useless. These two realities made breaking formation a final option. Once a spacefighter commenced evasive maneuvers it was almost always committed to them until it was out of lethal range of its opponent’s weapon. These were all tactics used and learned in the Third World War.

In the twenty-second century, autonomous and remotely operated weapon systems are things of the past. Many things brought about the return of the fighter pilot, first among these was the fact that cyberspace was its own battlefront. The advent of sensor technology gave hackers an unfettered view of transmissions and electronic data. A zero-gravity field is the only defense against this kind of intrusion, sensor technology cannot penetrate its casing. This also mean that remote communication with the computer is not possible. After launch, autonomous computers must operate without any human instruction, but AI’s have the problem of being predictable. The greatest nemesis to an AI is another AI with the task of analyzing its decisions. New technologies also played a role. Sensor fields extended the battle space out across vast distances. The ability to make decisions in milliseconds was not a requirement for operating a spacefighter. Intuitive thinking and the ability to produce imaginative solutions became more important than computational power. Computer interfaces that accentuated the capabilities of the pilot was the motivation behind all cockpit design. And because a biological brain could not be remotely hacked and reprogramed, the inviolability of the human mind became the only secure operating system in this age of super high-tech cyberwarfare.

The fighter pilot operating the mow that was situated near the bottom right corner of the box one level down and one row across from the left was Starcorp RG01 Space Force Lieutenant Sawyer Beck. As a member of the first of three wings within the Basestar Orion, he was tasked with being a part of the first wave to engage the UFP Armada. He was selected to be a part of this wing because of his game scores and his character. During the abbreviated basic training that was given to him and the other newcomers to the force, he earned a reputation among most of his superiors for emotional stability. He was not alone in this achievement, but among that group he held the highest game score.

Being in the first wave of spacefighters was not a goal of Sawyer’s. His position in the First Wing was the result of his penchant for doing the best that he could. It was Sawyer’s hope that this conflict with the UFP would never come to a fight. When he climbed into his mow for this engagement he did so with a feeling of dread. As he and his wing moved closer to the moment of combat this feeling crept ever closer to a sensation of terror.

Sawyer was the only one out of his four friends within the RG01 Space Force to be selected for the 1st Wing. Oscar was placed in the 3rd Wing, CC and Martin were placed in the 2nd Wing. These positionings were not reflections of their game scores or skill levels, for the most part. There were two others that had game score highs that were greater than Sawyer’s, but their characters and temperaments relegated them to the 2nd and 3rd wings. Martin’s game score high was at the lower end of this gamer fighter force, but he was given high marks for temperament and maturity. Oscar and CC had game score highs that were greater than most in the 1st wing, but they were relegated to the 3rd and 2nd wings for immaturity and a suspicion of insufficient aggression, respectively. Commander Ronald Noonan, the officer-in-charge of Orion’s space fighters attempted to load the 1st wing with spacefighter pilots he believed to have the strongest combination of skill, aggressiveness, and character. The distribution of the 2nd and 3rd wings were organized to be as even as possible.

“Okay, people, let’s get ready.”

Commander Allen Doherty’s voice reverberated out of Sawyer’s headphones.

Doherty was not a gamer volunteer. He was a Security Forces volunteer with a high-ranking score in the cockpit simulator relative to the other non-gamers. His skill as a mow pilot was in no way comparable to the gamer volunteers. His position as wing commander was owed to his age and his many years of experience as a Starcorp Security Force Officer. All three wings of Orion’s fighter force were under the command of a security force officer volunteer with similar credentials. This arrangement was insisted upon by Commander Noonan and agreed to, with some reluctance, by Joshua.

“We are the wall,” Doherty continued with a flare of defiance. “Nothing gets through.”

Doherty’s call to the ready was for effect. All of them were at the ready from the moment they left the basestar and Doherty knew this. As the wing commander, he felt obliged to make some remark now that all the mows were fixed into their places. He also knew that he would have little time to be rousing once the battle commenced. And he anticipated the engagement was a few minutes away.

The mows made no effort to speed up or slow down their convergence with the UFP Armada. They fell through space without the aid of their thrusters. In actuality, the Orion, the mows and the UFP Armada were falling in the same direction. The basestar was falling at a slower speed than the UFP Armada and the mows were falling far slower than both. The mows maintained an edge on attitude towards the Armada as they fell. From the front, they looked like the heads of spears flying through space.

The interior of the mow consisted of a cockpit and a narrow tubular corridor to reach it from the exterior. The cockpit was identical to the interior of the Physalia virtual world gaming pod. And like the Physalia gaming pod it had no manipulator arm. The occupants floated in a zero-gravity field generated by the pod. The sphere did not spin or rotate. The interior wall of the pod was one large monitor that displayed a digital representation of all that there was about the spacecraft. A transparent visor attached to a helmet provided data that needed to omnipresent. The data stayed fixed inside the visor along the top, bottom, and sides of the screen. Telemetry of the mow’s surroundings extended far beyond what could be seen with the naked eye or with the aid of a telescope. The bulk of this data was fed to it by the Basestar Orion. Image sensors in the sphere and LED markers on the suits of the pilots enabled the onboard computers of the mows to capture the pilot’s movements. All the actions of the mows were designed to be controlled by by motion capture. In the event that the cockpit stopped functioning a secondary, hands-on, control system was built into the mow.

“What’s that?”

Eckhart’s sudden inquiry was motivated by Gruenberg’s interest in some blips that began appearing in the forward display monitor. There was little happening on these displays that he understood or cared to. He depended on others to tell him when something of significance occurred. The fact that Gruenberg sat up to take notice of these sensor contacts was all the motivation that Eckhart needed to be curious about them.

“They’re fighters,” Gruenberg acknowledged as he continued to study the monitor.

Eckhart noted the growing look of astonishment on Gruenberg’s face. He paused to examine the monitor, but the data continued to mean nothing to him. He then turned to Gruenberg with a question that was prompted by his confusion.

“What’s it doing?”

“Nothing yet,” Gruenberg rifled back with a hint of annoyance.

Gruenberg’s surprise was due to the appearance of the fighters on his monitors so much sooner than he expected. This detection was the result of the mows entrance inside the sensor fields of the armada.

“What’s the count?” Gruenberg bellowed towards the subordinates seated in front of him.

The space force crewman at the far front on the left respond to the inquiry without hesitation.

“One-hundred, and they’re coming fast.”

Gruenberg showed no surprise by this report as he continued to follow the approach of the blips on the monitor.

“They’re big,” the crewman at the far front on the right reported. “They’re too big to be spaceplanes.”

Gruenberg continued to have no reaction to the words of others. Eckhart was confused by this silence every bit as much as he was by the data on the monitors.

“Why aren’t we attacking?” Eckhart challenged with a stern look towards Gruenberg.

The urgency in Eckhart’s question appeared to have no effect on Gruenberg. The General took a moment to study the monitors before responding to it with an air of indifference.

“We have time. Let them come closer.”

Gruenberg’s thoughts were busy pondering the intent of this formation. He believed it too small to be the whole of the force being arrayed against him. His eyes were on the lookout for the fighter forces he believed to be lurking just beyond the range of their sensor field. But this thinking became increasingly unsound as the one-hundred mows fell deeper into their spheres of detection. Three minutes later Gruenberg was convinced that they were too close to escape an engagement with his forces.

“Colonel Trujillo,” Gruenberg beckoned into his microphone. “Detach a group and destroy that formation.”

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