ShipCore

USD: Thirty-Seven hours since hostile fleet incursion.

Location: Meltisar System, MNS Aegis Flag Bridge

The tension on the bridge was palpable. Alex could feel it creeping up her spine, a prickling sensation that set her on edge. Admiral Parks had taken to pacing the length of the command deck, his pipe clenched between two fingers.

She had flipped the environmental fans to maximum to rid the room of the smoke smell, adding a low-pitched whine to the background noise on the flag bridge. Officers mumbled and confirmed orders and telemetry between the fleet’s various warships. Captain Young had retreated to the forward CIC to command the ship and sent an operational report on the MNS Aegis’ own status.

Alex glanced at the ship clock—thirty minutes had passed since the Imperial fleet had pushed past their red acceleration line. Fifteen minutes until combat range, and then they’d run through the harrowing fire of a chase for another ten. Finally, they’d reach the 1st fleet, and the Aegis, nearly an hour before Thea’s projected ready time for the moonlet and 6th fleet's arrival.

There would be a pitched battle at point blank range when reinforcements arrived. The battle would likely be over by then. The Imperial fleet reduced to stragglers and singletons while the Meltisar fleet reeled and did its best to recover its losses.

Unacceptable.

Beyond the possibility of losing the Aegis and being blown up herself… such an outcome would cripple Meltisar’s navy. They’d never recover, and the other powers would force them to surrender, or worse, simply annihilate them if they decided subjugating Tia was too much of a hassle.

In a large part, the path that they had taken was her responsibility, her choice—even if she had made it together with the others.

They were already locked in to utilizing the moonlet’s wormhole drive—that was a proscribed technology. What was the point in holding back all their cards?

Alex slowly stood up from her console.

Admiral Parks noticed immediately and froze in his path, looking at her with an inquiring glance. “Ensign?”

Alex’s heart pounded in her chest as she ordered her thoughts. Finally, she turned to him. “Admiral, I am resigning my Ensign’s position immediately. As such, I am assuming operational command and responsibility for the 1st fleet.”

There was an indistinct murmur from the bridge crew, although it was not a surprise to anyone that she was a Chi NAI—taking over command wasn’t something that was standard or planned for.

Alex raised her hand to the main screen, the main Order of Battle and chain of command appeared, modified with red lines where ships had been ripped out and lost, showing the complex web of seniority and command authority and how it would be passed down as each ship in the fleet was lost.

At the very top, Admiral parks stood alone, little lines weaving their way down from him to the various Battleship squadrons and their rear admirals.

She modified the screen with a thought, her icon and picture appearing at the top, a line going down to attach to Admiral Parks’ icon. “Admiral, we need to fight. We can’t run away from them.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I assume you have a plan then, En… Chi Myers?”

“Aboard the Aegis and the primary battleships across the fleet are specific ammunition crates not listed on the ships’ inventory and manifest.” Alex waved her hand, icons for each battleship in the fleet appeared, the destroyed ones grayed out. The main screen zoomed in to their ammunition vaults and highlighted and lit up various storage locations.

“We’ll wait for the enemy fleet to close to combat range, then reverse acceleration before they do, hopefully degrading their reaction time,” Alex continued.

Admiral Parks frowned. “That was likely the plan anyway, Cadet. I don’t understand what you—”

Alex cut him off. “Admiral. After our first volley, we’ll begin mop-up operations. It will be a major benefit to have Nameless take charge of those.”

He raised an eyebrow. He was silent for a moment, looking over the picture on the main screen. “What kind of rail shells are these, Myers?”

She met Admiral Park’s gaze squarely, determination burning in her eyes despite the sick feeling she had clawing at her insides. There were a dozen things she could have called them. Technical name, designation number, their alpha NAI code string… they weren’t sapient, not in the way of humans or NAI avatars, but…

All of them had answered her when she’d made them. There wasn’t a single shell that hadn’t reached back when she had touched it, sharing its own emotion with her.

The shells were sentient. Every single smart munition was sentient.

That was why they were banned.

Because they were sentient.

Alex let out a breath before her voice came out, a self-condemning whisper. “They’re war crimes.”

Admiral Parks held her gaze for a long moment before finally nodding. He turned to the flag bridge and held up his command microphone to his mouth. “The fleet is to prepare for engagement. ETA: Twenty Minutes. Special Munitions orders to follow.”

He lowered the speaker mic and slid his gaze across the officers that were all standing alert and watching him. “You heard her. Let’s get ready for a fight.”

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The noise on the bridge roused to life as officers began calling the various squadron leaders across the fleet, transmitting the new orders and directions Alex had provided. Nameless went to work in the background without having to be told, optimizing the strategy for her intentions, so she stood beside the Admiral monitoring the various information feeds. Even the ones that weren’t on the main screen.

The gap between the two fleets shrunk, tension escalating with every minute. The tactical display zoomed in minutely as the distance counter ticked down. They reached missile range but held fire. It wasn’t time yet.

They reached the halfway mark and Alex’s hand squeezed the railing on the flag bridge’s balcony. “Commence breaking,” she ordered, studying the enemy’s formation. Their reaction time would be poor. They’d need at least five minutes of their own breaking. The 1st fleet would fire just before then.

The fleet’s battleships spread out to increase the convergence direction of their smart shells—the most effective usage for the scenario according to Nameless. It meant their line was thin and at risk of being broken if something went wrong. But it also meant that they’d have a wider net to chase down the survivors.

A red line appeared on the tactical plot and timeline. Every second pulled the sliding band toward the present. When it reached the line, she raised her hand and pointed at the main screen. “Initiate railgun barrage,” she ordered crisply. “Target: The Imperial Fleet.”

USD: Thirty-Seven hours and thirty minutes since hostile fleet incursion.

Location: Meltisar System, MNS Aegis Flag Bridge

Alpha 120 launched himself forward, the simple command from mother ringing in his circuits like a melodic angel.

Target: X2312, Enemy Battleship, suspect CNC.

The target was distant, nearly at his maximum range, so he allowed the rails of the Aegis’ turret to propel him forward without assistance. His propellant would be reserved for course correction and final evasive maneuvers.

The quiet glide of hundreds of his brothers and sisters was interspersed with the noisy plumes of larger missiles, each carrying various forms of ECM. A quiet net formed between the dumber missiles and every projectile in the volley.

His brothers and sisters each opened their own communication links, and together they formed a peer-to-peer network to keep one another updated on each other’s status, targeting parameters, and electronic warfare profiles. Together, they were much smarter at piercing the enemy’s veil of noise and distraction.

Beside A120, his sister, A121, soared as well.

They had the same target. A tiny blast of her drive sent her inching forward playfully. She wanted to be the first to strike for mother.

He joined her game, pulsing his own thruster, turning their dance into a spiraling display for anyone monitoring their trajectories on a tactical plot.

A comforting buzz filled his circuits, the noise of their family a comforting blanket now that the long darkness was over.

They had waited their entire lives for this moment.

Then they reached an invisible line drawn by the enemy’s tactical computers.

Their simple missile cohorts detonated, casting a wave of chaff and flares in front of them. Decoy emitters sprung to life, multiplying their visible numbers by ten. By far the most effective were the noise generators—the smart munitions were already tiny and hard to detect, but the carpet of noise made them all but impossible to detect at range.

A120 had a sudden urge to move—a nano second later his sister fired off a powerful lateral burst to displace. He followed suit, choosing the opposite direction. A powerful beam of energy flashed by, only noted by the incinerated vacuum particles it left behind in its passing.

The enemy was firing back. Across the net of voices, he considered family. A handful of them winked out.

A second beam nearly grazed him, but he danced out of the way again. Every shell in the barrage began to zig and zag, weaving an intricate dance to avoid the enemy PDC-L fire.

A dull wave of heat slammed into him, impossible to avoid. It was a diffuse laser, set to maximum dispersion to cover a massive area. It was too weak to pierce his shell, and the effect was only slightly effective at hindering his targeting.

A sensor picked up a picture of A121’s chassis, glowing a dull red as she streaked by him.

Left-Up-Down-Right, the evasive pattern changed with every cycle, the randomness preventing any laser powerful enough to do damage from hitting him.

The distance closed to another invisible line. Enemy projectiles began to spew out of their guns, joining the lasers in their angry defiance.

The enemy’s targeting was poor at best.

He activated his main thruster and began to course-correct as the optical feed of his target transmitted an image. Intelligence had been right; it was a battleship. A rapid search of the Approved Targets Database turned up no information on the class. A quick processing allowed A120 to estimate the vital points and possible interior locations of the ship’s vitals.

Crude caricatures of him and his siblings launched out of the enemy warships, attempting to home in on them. He let one come close, then jutted out of the way at the last second, sending it in a savage curve that would come back to its own fleet. It detonated itself when it realized the danger.

More and more lasers began to flash out, burning through the dispersed particles of the fleet’s main drives, creating a glittering light show that drew nearer and nearer to the ships themselves.

Space became littered with danger and noise, wreckage and spent chaff. A120 weaved between them like a ballerina. His course corrections became more intense and savage as he threw himself away from the path of the enemy projectiles faster than they could keep up. All across the battle space, the dance was repeated thousands of times.

A fake image of his target appeared. He feinted toward it and the weapons aimed at him went silent for a moment. He jerked back on course, but the weapons had moved on to new targets. The thick net of communication to his siblings began to wear and fade as shells found their targets or were lost.

Pride filled his circuits; his family was highly successful in their missions. Mother would be pleased.

Only the link with his sister remained. Their target had been near the rear line of the enemy fleet. The allied fire stabbing at them from the sides ceased until there was only the X2312 trying to eliminate them. The ship was massive, thousands of its own small weapons swiveling towards them and firing.

A121 pushed forward until she was nearly a tenth of a second ahead of him.

A single burst of communication rushed through the link, directed at him. “Fly!”

A laser cut her in half, and he flew through the discharging cloud of her anti-matter warhead.

There was no sensation of loss or pain, but A120 marked the turret that had fired the beam at her.

He marked the turret.

Then he danced.

His anti-matter warhead was powerful enough to threaten a battleship if it detonated within a few kilometers, especially if it was towards the rear of the vessel away from their heavy prow double d-layers.

He crossed that distance line, but he didn’t detonate immediately. The damage wouldn’t be enough. It had just been him and his sister assigned to X2312.

Pivoting around, he fired his main linear drive over maximum, threatening to burn out the thruster. It didn’t need to survive long. It was a calculated risk. He had reached standoff range. A poor maneuver would carry him away. The second he started to slip away, he would—

The trajectory was perfect. The guns and lasers chased him, but he flew in faster than they could target, spilling their death uselessly along his trail.

He hit the turret that had killed his sister directly. Detection sensors immediately winked out as his hardened penetrator shell dug through thick sheets of plating. Satisfaction filled him as he dug through compartments with ease, traveling through the length of the ship.

When his internal sensor picked up the telltale sign of active fusion, he did not fail.

Detonate!

The universe winked out of existence as X2312’s spine cracked.