Chapter One Hundred and Eight - The First Shot

The first shot of the battle came some hours later.

One of the Earth Alliance ships, a vessel that from the outside seemed like a freighter as normal as any other, spun on its long side and pointed its belly towards the Uranian fleet. The three-dozen torpedoes it launched were detected by all.

A few minutes later a second and then a third salvo were launched. In all, just over a hundred torpedoes.

Each one of them painted their target long before they were in anything approaching effective range.

In a military conflict, that would be the height of foolishness.

Ivil had seen torpedoes used to great effect during the last intersystem war. The Earth Alliance did love them. They were relatively inexpensive, and while Mars had a strong edge when it came to E-war deterrents and detection, the Earth Alliance had an entire civilized planet's worth of resources to draw upon. That meant a lot of torpedoes could be fabricated.

At some point during the middle of the war, the Earth Alliance had taken to creating what they called TCMAs, or Tacomas according to their officers. The crews called them taco-trucks. The Martians called them trailers.

They were these large boxy containers, attached to the rear of a ship with quick-mount points. They had a tiny set of maneuvering jets and could carry between six and sixty torpedoes, depending on the size and how much mass the vessel they were plugged onto could handle.

Once they fired, they'd be detached and left floating out in the void of space, entirely spent.

It allowed the Earth Alliance's smaller ships the ability to carry an outsized arsenal, even if it was a very temporary one. It had been one of the better ideas they'd had through the war, and had cost Mars several dozen ships and made a lot of Martian sailors have nervous breakdowns whenever their ECM detected a torpedo-lock.

Obviously, by the end of the war the average Martian warship had enough point-defence, chaff, and automated electronic countermeasures to make most torpedo attacks whiff entirely, but for a small period of a few months it had been a very valid strategy.

Equally obviously, the Martians called the Earthlings bed-shitting cowards for refusing to fight like hairy-chested men. By which they meant fighting exclusively within the range of the Martians' larger, more powerful warships where the Earth Alliance would get the clobbering they deserved.

Ivil hummed to herself as she watched this salvo of torpedoes approaching. It was spreading out.

The usual trick was to aim all of them at one big target. Point-defence could only do so much, and if the target was obvious, it would still make the enemy fleet shift their position to defend it, which might open them up to other trouble later.

The console on the Sappho buzzed a warning as one torpedo locked onto them. Just the one, however.

"That's scary," Twenty-Six said as she eyed the warning.

"You don't have anything to worry about," Ivil said.

It was just one torpedo. At most it had a mid-yield nuclear charge in it.

"I know!" Twenty-Six replied with a sweet smile directed at Ivil. "But I bet the rest of the Uranians aren't feeling so safe."

It was a fair point, and it neatly highlighted the purpose of the torpedo launch. A few civilian ships were already shifting out of their positions. Ivil listened in for just a moment to all the chatter and... yes, people were afraid. Some captains were complaining that they didn't have point-defence enough to take out a missile, others had ships with such awful E-war capabilities that their onboard computers thought that every last torpedo was aimed at them.

"How many do you think will come close enough to hit?" Ivil asked.

"Depends," Pixie said. She had her legs up on the figurative dash before her and was just looking ahead idly. "Probably none, if the fleet moves the right way. But the EA has some good tricks up their sleeves. Might have some torpedoes go silent and ballistic, others might self-detonate to throw out EMP waves that'll fritz out the most sensitive sensors. Might have a few MIRV torpedoes in there as well."

"MIRV?" Aurora asked.

"Multiple Independently-targetable Re-entry Vehicle," Pixie said. "The name's old, from like, the 1900s or so? But it kind of stuck. It's a missile that has multiple explosive heads in it that split apart. The re-entry part is about atmospheric re-entry, which doesn't apply here. Basically, a scattershot torpedo. Lots of smaller explosives means your point defence needs to be quick."

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Pixie's guess proved correct, but only about three hours later.

By then, Aurora had gone to sleep and Twenty-Six was in her bunk, tossing and turning and mostly reading off of a tablet instead of sleeping.

The first wave of torpedoes (now followed by two more) started to act strangely. They veered off course, shifted targets and started to roll. It was just in time to avoid some of the longer-ranged point defence guns as well.

Then a few exploded into what looked to Ivil like tiny pinpricks of light in the distance, little white stars appearing in the void of space. They were, of course, powerful nuclear detonations, but in the distance they were hard to scale with the naked eye.

Those sent out a wave of conflicting readings that the Sappho's sensors had a hard time parsing for a few minutes. She imagined it would be significantly worse on more... civilian-grade ships.

Out of the conflagration came hundreds of tiny pinpricks that she had to focus on to make out. Ballistic missiles. Little more than a warhead, passive sensors, and a few tiny manoeuvring thrusters. Enough to line them up with a target at the last moment.

They raced ahead of the rest, most entirely undetected by any sensor suite.

"Clever clever," Ivil said.

"Can't make out shit," Pixie said as she stared at the readings the Sappho had. "What's clever?"

"You are," Ivil said. "Your guess was spot on."

"Oh... thanks," Pixie said. "It's actually less of a guess than you might think."

"Oh?" Ivil asked. That was a curious statement.

Pixie shrugged. "When's the last time any of the big armies have actually gotten into a fight? And I mean like, more than two patrol ships flinging insults at each other over comms and maybe some sailors giving each other bloody noses in a bar somewhere."

Ivil snorted. "I think... oh, it must be at least six, maybe seven years? And even then, it was a small scuffle over something that wasn't that important in hindsight."

"Right. And during the last intersystem war, how quick did tech and tactics change?" Pixie asked.

"Rapidly," Ivil said. "Core-wielders like myself grew more powerful as the war dragged on, and we all gained a few tricks, or stole them, but most of that growth is slow and steady after a certain... plateau, let's call it. The navy's growth is more sudden. A major improvement takes time to roll out across a fleet. Still, I'd say new tactics came out every three months, and it would take three months more to counter them. Call it six months for entire tactical systems to fall apart and be replaced."

"Yeah, that makes sense," Pixie said with a nod. "Now, think about how long it's been since the war. That's a lot of six-month turnarounds. No active war to push things, so maybe it's slower, but there have been scuffles and fights between pirates, bounty hunters, mercenaries and corporations since the last big war. And a few little wars between some moons that never lasted too long."

"Ah, I see," Ivil said. "So, what you're trying to say is that despite everything, I'm a bit behind?"

"I wouldn't say that," Pixie said. "But... a lot of people will die if you're overestimating yourself and underestimating your enemy."

"I see," Ivil said. "Well then, let's make it into a wager then?"

"A wager?" Pixie asked, she half turned in her seat to stare back at Ivil. She had surprisingly soft eyes for such a clever little mercenary.

"A wager," Ivil agreed with a nod. "Let's see... for every civilian ship that the Earth Alliance takes out, you can spank me... once. As punishment."

Pixie blinked, then glanced away. The hint of red crawling across her face was telling though. Obviously, there wouldn't actually be any such thing... well... maybe Ivil was willing to experiment a little. "Wagers need two sides," she said.

"Ah, yes. Well then, for every ship I save, I get to kiss you once."

"There's hundreds of ships out there," Pixie said.

"Oh my, it does look like there are a lot of them."

Pixie stared, then broke out into a grin. "Well, alright. I guess I've never said no to a good wager."

"Exactly. It's just business."

***

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