Battleplans

The group watched the probe’s footage for the third time as Sola sped on her mission of mercy towards the Lemth. Dustin glanced around the table. “Thoughts, people?” he asked his assembled team. Beyond Sammie, who was flying, everyone had gathered - including both Aricia and Defia.

Of those present, Defia was the one to speak first. “Statement. The vessels are clearly Fractal in origin. Based on flight pattern and path, probability indicated 95.73% likelihood they are remnants of the cluster we attacked. Addendum. Erratic behaviour detected; cluster vessels on destruction of their node should retreat to nearest prime node. Formulating potential rationale for this discrepancy.”

Rye gave a grimace at the rogue Fractal’s words. “Think I can guess for ya there, Defia. Three options, one is they got orders to go wild if the cluster drops out, two is they’re not from that cluster at all and your initial probability’s wrong, and three is that they’re not able to re-join the cluster ‘cos they don’t have the flight paths in their databanks. Your kind can’t fly without pre-configured routes, that’s what ya told us.”

Defia hesitated, biting her lip in a rather human gesture of insecurity before nodding. “Statement. Your analysis is correct. Based on available evidence, I estimate that the latter option is the most likely. They are seeking biomass to provide new routes to reconnect to the cluster.”

“That… doesn’t sound good.” Aricia’s voice was soft, and Dustin glanced over to see that the butterfly woman was watching Naera’s expression closely. As to the chef herself, she’d more or less curled into Trea’k at the first sign of the Fractals on the recording - Dustin had offered the plant girl an opportunity to excuse herself, but she’d insisted on staying. Defia’s words unfortunately seemed to have brought back some of the Caenii’s trauma around her planet being destroyed, judging by the look on her face.

Reaching out to squeeze Naera’s hand, Dustin did his best to sound confident as he spoke. “Relax, love. We’ll stop them. We fought them off when they attacked the Yuran, and we only got word of that **** when it was already under way.”

Naera glanced up at him and gave him a weak smile before nodding. “Yea. We’ll stop them.” Turning to the others, she shook her head and gave the assembled group a grimace. “Don’t worry about me right now. What’s the plan. How are we going to stop them?”

Meli and Rye exchanged glances. “Defence in depth” the Velca said somewhat hesitantly, to everyone’s concern. “We don’t have the **** to match that fleet in a head-on fight. But if we layer our vessels, we should be able to channel them into firing lines for the bigger ships and Sola’s main gun. Ideally, we’d outnumber them to do that but…”

Rye shook her head as Meli trailed off. “I’ve got a couple of ideas that could help, but I’m gonna need ya to let me work on them. Think I’ve figured out a way even our smallest ships can do damage - if I can make enough of the damn things for ‘em before the fighting starts.” Dustin raised an eyebrow at his bunny girl; secret projects of hers tended to be concerning at the very least.

“Been working on those jump drives the fighters use to try and make them even smaller or more reliable. Not managed either of those results yet…” Rye said, grinning “…but I think I might have accidentally figured out a way to make them dangerous. Not spun one up to try it, but I’m pretty sure that… well, take a look at this nerd and see what ya think?” She skimmed a tablet over the table to Meli who caught it, flicked through the files briefly and glanced up, ears flickering into a position of **** concern.

“You figured out how to weaponize weave-drive technology? Rye, this is… both terrifying and brilliant. Love, I am unsure if I should kiss you or throw something heavy at you.” Meli’s words were tense, before she turned to Dustin. “Our love has managed to develop a kind of micro weave-drive design that in theory won’t ever work for transporting anything. But it will generate a short-lived weave-bubble; the resultant collapse would be extremely damaging to anything inside. If mounted on a torpedo, even our smallest fighters could prove effective against the Fractal’s larger ships.”

Dustin frowned. “How safe are these things to build?” He asked, turning to Rye. “And can you teach others to build them or…?”

The Rabyth woman kicked her heels up onto the table and stretched. “Very safe, until they’re hooked up to a trigger mechanism. I’ve got a prototype safety built in to the design too that should stop them going off if they’re too close to any of our ships. I could teach others to build them, but honestly building them at speed right now? I’d rather handle the bulk of the production myself… Less risk of a newbie blowing a hole in the hull of part of our fleet that way, if ya don’t mind me prioritizing working on them ‘til we get to Lemth space?”

Drumming his fingers on the table in thought, Dustin nodded after a moment. “Alright. Meli, work with Rye, make sure she has anything she needs to bulk produce the torpedoes; we’ll ship as many as we can to the rest of the fleet during one of the system crossings. Prioritize giving the smaller craft a few of them each, the bigger ships have more firepower already.” Turning to Defia at that point, he gestured once more to the still image of the Fractal vessels. “Anything you can tell us about how they’ll try and fight?”

Defia raised a hand and the holographic display flickered slightly for a few seconds, before shifting to show a rough mock-up of the Fractal fleet hovering in a generic system. As Rye pulled out a scanner and began checking to see what exactly their companion had done to allow her to control the display like that, the rogue Fractal spoke.

“Statement. Based on available data, it is likely they will try an envelopment strategy; their sensors should indicate that they outgun our vessels. Unit Rye’s speculative weaponry will not be detected. With that, they will deploy in an attempt to move in from all sides like so.” The hologram shimmered to include the human fleet in orbit around a planet, the Fractal ships dispersing into a wide cloud as they approached before tightening in. As the void-black images formed a ring around the placeholder world, the lights of the mock fleet blinked out.

“This is the most likely fighting pattern. Additional data. They have superior ships and equal or better numbers based on analysis of the remote recordings, so will be concerned with maximizing potential biomass harvest. Likely firing to disable rather than destroy vessels unless ****.” Defia fell silent as the assembled crew contemplated her words.

Yril’k clicked her blade arms against her back irritably. “It is’k a sensible strategy,” the Vex’ess warrior concluded at last. “We’k will be hard pressed even with Rye’s new’k weaponry. But that disabling’k will prove useful.”

The bunny girl nodded, setting her scanner down and returning her attention to the problem at hand. “Yea. If ya can get me enough manpower to do some of the grunt work, we should be able to keep the fleet capable of firing torpedoes even if they get their reactors knocked offline. Plus… Defia, do you think this fleet will know that we have additional reactors on our ships?”

As the Fractal woman shook her head, Rye grinned. “Well, in that case, we ought to be able to do some clever trickery there too. If we can convince them we’ve only got the one reactor, or two if we include the shields on the mid-sized ships, we can probably keep our craft flying longer than they expect. If our front wave act like they’ve been crippled in this defence in depth thing, maybe we can get some sneaky shots off at their backsides?”

That suggestion appealed greatly; while Dustin cautioned that it was vital to try and preserve life over setting an ambush, he was more than happy to dedicate Emely’s time entirely to conveying Rye’s instructions to the engineering teams across the rest of the fleet. The bunny girl’s plan was simple; instruct them where possible to set their reactors to run hot, flicking the output between systems. It’d cook the reactor power coupling if it went on too long, but between the Rabyth woman and Defia’s estimates they could potentially get the first wave of Fractal ships caught in an ambush. And after all, if it looked like it wasn’t working, they’d be able to just turn the other reactors back to full power in a matter of moments anyway.

With that, the meeting more or less concluded. There was a little more chatter on the exact details of their defensive stratagem that Dustin went over with Meli and Yril’k, and Emely and Rye broke off into one corner of the table to discuss the optimal method for getting the other ship’s crews up to speed on the modifications the bunny girl wanted implemented, but that was it. Drawing things to a close, Dustin leaned back in his seat and yawned. “Alright. Let’s get to work people - but make sure you take downtime too, especially you Rye. I need my senior officers at full strength when the Fractals arrive; the ability to adapt on the fly will do us more good than one extra torpedo.”