Chapter One Hundred and Nine - Torpedoes... of Love

The torpedoes came racing in, violence in technological form, burning the last of their fuel like a sprinter seeing the finish line and hurling themselves towards it.

The Uranian fleet was going to survive them. The first volley wasn't so big to even take out the entire fleet, even if they didn't put up any resistance. But they were resisting, and already a few torpedoes had encountered ballistic rounds mid-flight that turned them into so much scrap, and a few well-tuned long-range lasers had turned others into slag.

But the math wasn't entirely in favour of the Uranian fleet.

"They're coming in close," Twenty-Six said. She'd awakened from her nap a little bit ago and came down to watch.

They, of course, were safe. The one torpedo aimed right at the Sappho had encountered a critical existence failure and was no longer a concern. The rest of the fleet... not so much.

Ivil had several cores that made her pretty good at calculating trajectories and probabilities and a few that let her glimpse into the future if she leaned on them. If she didn't interfere, something like a dozen Uranian ships would be damaged. One catastrophically.

The next volley would be worse, and the one after worse again.

"Twenty-Six," Ivil said. "If we were to lose a ship, which one would be the smallest loss?"

Twenty-Six blinked, then glanced over the fleet. They were in the midst of it, only a few hundred metres between the Sappho and the nearest vessel. The fleet was obviously spread out too, all according to someone's tactical doctrine for avoiding splash damage and accidentally overlapping fields of fire in a disastrous way. Combat in three dimensions was tricky business.

"Probably one of those little C-39 drone freighters," she said. "They're unmanned and remote operated, and they're kind of... crappy, to be honest? Old as heck, and those look like they don't have anything but a jury-rigged point-defence gun on them. I don't even know what they're doing here."

"Hmm, I see," Ivil said.

Then she turned her attention to the incoming torpedoes, and suddenly the rushing, screaming pieces of metallic death found themselves.. Somewhat unlucky.

Several of them were hit by kinetic rounds that only had a fraction of a percent chance of even being within ten metres of them. The shooters relied on blind statistical luck to hit anything.

Some found that the heat-shielding plates on their fronts, designed to absorb the warm glow of enemy laser fire, suddenly turned to slag as if they were made of paper rather than high-tech polymers.

Two torpedoes accidentally ran into each other. Then two more did the same because Ivil found it kind of amusing.

In the space of some fifty kilometres, a distance travelled through in only a few spare seconds, the torpedoes' numbers were reduced by half, then a quarter, and then there were only a dozen left spinning through the void where the entire Uranian fleet could focus on them.

Somehow, in that tense moment where they should have impacted into the fleet... nothing happened.

Then some poor unmanned freighter with some after-market modifications blew up in the middle of the fleet, but it was barely more than a pop and fizzle.

"Oops, one ship lost," Ivil said casually.

Pixie's lips twitched, but she wasn't looking Ivil's way. Obviously that didn't stop Ivil from noticing. "That's one on the tally, you know."

"I suppose so," Ivil replied. "But it's fine. Don't they say you should try everything once?"

Twenty-Six looked between the two of them, obviously curious. "What are you two talking about?" she asked.

"The Empress and I have a wager going on," Pixie said.

"Oh!" Twenty-Six replied. "I like that kind of stuff. What are we betting on?"

"How many ships Ivil can save," Pixie said. "Currently, she's down one. Which... I actually don't know if that means I'm winning or not."

Twenty-Six grinned. "It was just an unmanned ship! I vote that it doesn't count, and I want to join in! What are we betting with? I have a few dollars in my bunk!"

Pixie coughed awkwardly. "That's, uh, well."

"Mhm?" Twenty-Six asked.

There was a long sigh that Ivil very much enjoyed as Pixie decided to come clean. "For every ship saved, Ivil gets to, uh, kiss me once."

"Oh," Twenty-Six said. She flushed a little, but her smile only grew. "I like that kind of bet. Plus I'd get to keep my money! Wait, what do you lose?"

"Spanking," Pixie said suddenly, as if the word was torn out of her. "That's the lose."

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Twenty-Six blinked, then looked away. "I... I don't know if I can join in," she said.

"Oh? Why not?" Ivil asked.

"I don't know, it's just, I don't want to spank Pixie. That seems mean."

"Huh? No, I'm not the one getting spanked for losing," Pixie said. She pointed across the bridge. "She is."

"Oh!" Twenty-Six replied. "Well, that still seems a bit mean. I wouldn't want to spank Ivil either."

"You could always bet against Pixie," Ivil offered.

Twenty-Six took a moment to figure out what the logical outcome of that would be, then she proceeded to flush quite terribly. "I, um, I guess I'll join in on that. You said we were down one ship, right?"

"Well, just an unmanned ship," Ivil said. "I think you said it hardly counts at all."

"We can revisit that," Twenty-Six said.

Pixie rubbed at her face in the pilot's seat. "What am I getting into?" she asked.

"Exploring very light BDSM?" Ivil tried.

"Don't call it that, it makes it sound dirty," Twenty-Six said.

"And it wasn't already?" Pixie asked.

"Wait... were we going to be naked?" Twenty-Six asked, aghast.

"Oh my god," Pixie muttered. "This is too much for me. I just did it for the bragging rights. Can we return to the war at hand?"

"Certainly," Ivil said.

The Earth Alliance fleet was approaching even as they discussed important matters. The fleet was shifting into an inverted, three-spoke wedge formation. The kind of shape that would give them the best open angle for overlapping fire. Torpedoes were gently flying away from the ship on semi-ballistic courses to position themselves for future dives towards the 'jaws' of the formation, and thousand of missiles were likely being primed for a hard alpha strike.

Even while keeping her senses a little dull not to give herself away, Ivil could tell that the entire fleet's shield network was humming at maximum capacity.

The second wave of torpedoes, meanwhile, came rushing in, but the Uranian fleet held firm, having not really lost anything against the first. Again, Ivil waited until they were in the long range of the Uranian point defences, then she started to tweak flight patterns and nudge things very slightly to favour the Uranian fleet.

The advantage of the Earth Alliance pre-detonating bombs to create EMP waves in space that messed with sensors was that they likely couldn't tell that things weren't going according to plan for their torpedoes.

Still, Ivil had to make things somewhat believable, otherwise that rat coward Emperor of Earth would turn tail.

A few more unmanned ships exploded throughout the Uranian formation.

"That's, uh, five," Pixie said. "You're really going to let me smack your behind like that?"

"Oh, I've no concern for my own," Ivil replied smugly.

Her ass was harder than the toughest diamond. If anything, poor Pixie's hands might be in for a rude surprise. Twenty-Six, however, was looking increasingly and adorably nervous.

"What's that mean? That you're not worried about your own?" Twenty-Six asked. She turned to Pixie. "You're not using like, your belt, right? Or like, paddles, riding crops, whips or anything like that?"

Pixie's brows slowly climbed as Twenty-Six listed things out. "You sound like you know what you're talking about."

"No I don't," Twenty-Six said far too quickly.

Ivil hummed, then distractedly started swatting torpedoes out of space. There was a lot she still had to learn about the girls, it seemed.

And then Aurora stepped into the room, but not before yawning in an unladylike fashion just on the other side of the bulkhead. "Good morning," she said. "What are we discussing? How's the situation so far?"

"Spanking," Ivil said. "And I'd like to think that things are going pretty well, all things considered."

"I do hope that that's some poorly chosen wording and what you mean is that you're hitting the enemy fleet and punishing them for their transgressions," Aurora said.

"No," Ivil said. "I'm very much allowing myself to be distracted by my attempt to see how deeply I can make Twenty-Six blush."

"Hey!"

"She knows a lot about spanking, however," Ivil said. "She might be the expert around here."

"Really now?" Aurora asked. She looked at Twenty-Six, who was still looking for a reply. "And here I thought she was an innocent virgin?"

"This is bullying!" Twenty-Six said. "Stop talking about spanking, and destroy more enemies! There's like... political stuff, and bad guys. That's what's important here!"

Ivil smiled, but she knew that Twenty-Six was wrong about what was the most important thing here.

***

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