I connected to the local sun, as what I intended doing would take some effort, and I wasn’t totally sure it could be done. By the time I had the intent in my mind, we had a grid of fighter walls in space, with all ships pointing down to where the Rawtenuga ships were oblivious to us.
With a thought, I initiated what I had in my mind, and a rift formed in front of each capital ship, and each squadron, all at the same time. The other ends were against the hulls of the ships below us, and moving with the ships. So far, so good. That had worked better than I’d expected.
“All ships,” I said into the open channel to everyone, “This is Commander Bud. Fire torpedoes and main guns on my command. For those new to the Excalibur Five, you’re firing nine torpedoes at a time, and it should only need one button press for the squadron to deliver enough to destroy the ship. Let’s not be wasting torpedoes when we don’t need to. If any enemy ship needs a second go, orders will be given for it.”
I waited for comments, but there were none.
“Fire.”
Most of the Rawtenuga ships came apart instantly, but the fire from a half dozen squadrons was all over the place across several seconds. It made no difference. I’d aimed each rift at the engine section, and each squadron had delivered eight more torpedoes than the destroyers had.
I was quite surprised there were no second firings, or other oops events, which indicated their simulator time hadn’t been wasted. As far as I knew, everyone had fired, although I’d need to check that.
The rifts vanished with another thought, and I waited now for escape pods to stop launching.
“Everyone home jump, please.”
Some of the squadrons vanished as a group, but most of them blipped out in ones and twos across the next five seconds.
I nodded at Tamsin, and the channel closed.
“Tell the squadron leaders to keep their people in their fighters,” I said to her.
“Are we going to do the other fleet while we’re here?” asked Serena.
“May as well.”
Tamsin said nothing, and now I noticed we didn’t have leader hollos on the console. I made a point of looking at that side of the console until she noticed it, and then they appeared. Most of them looked surprised, to be seeing me on their consoles.
“Keep your pilots in their ships,” I said again. “We’ll do that again with the other enemy fleet while we’re here.”
There were nods from some of them. Several looked a bit bewildered. I didn’t blame them. Nothing like being thrown in the deep end of the bay, with no warning.
“Do we have any dinosaurs still left on ships?” I asked Leanne.
“Yes. Give me a moment.”
A moment turned into a minute, then two, before she looked at me again.
“I can’t get into their computers, but I sent a drone into a damaged section, carrying a butler droid. The droid found a functional airlock, and went in, and is now hiding. The flagship has some power, and the fleet admiral is trying to stop ships in the same condition from launching pods. Unsuccessfully I might add. There’s a lot of loud noise going on.”
“I think I can do something about that.”
I pulled up a navmap, shifted it rapidly to my home system, and then zoomed it in to the planet Thorn had used as a penal planet. I chose an uninhabited island I thought a dinosaur might be able to survive on, concentrated on all living beings remaining in the ship hulks, and moved them all to the island.
“And now there’s no-one on the ships,” confirmed Leanne.
With another thought, I moved all the escape pods to nearby the nearest titan transport. Then it was just a matter of rifting the hulks and debris back to next to the previous dump I’d made in my system. There were some exclamations from the hollos on the console as everything vanished. With an afterthought, I brought the drone and the butler back.
“Next time,” I said to Leanne, “just say so, and I’ll move a drone right in there.”
“Oops.”
Serena and Tamsin were grinning. Leanne turned a bright pink colour for a few seconds, and then it vanished.
“We’re jumping to the other enemy fleet now,” I said to the hollos. “Tell your people to stand by to jump out, and we’ll be doing the exact same attack profile again.”
This time I got acknowledgments from the squadron leaders.
The jumps to get to the next fleet took a few minutes, as they were on the other side of the cluster. This time there were forty eight ships. We had forty one firing units, which included each capital ship and each squadron wall as a unit.
I grinned to myself as I had a thought.
Before ordering the fighters to jump out, I concentrated on seven of the ships in the front rank of sixteen, and moved them to an orbit above my home planet, followed by placing everyone on those ships onto the same island as before. A ping to Hubaisha told her she had intact ships to do something with. A female squeal came back to me.
“Same grid jump, please Tamsin.”
A few moments later, all the fighters were out in space again. I let go of the previous sun, and connected to this one. A few moments establishing the intent from the new tactical map, and the rifts came into being.
“Fire.”
Again, not a perfect firing pattern, but marginally better than last time. Same effect though. I removed the rifts.
“Home jump.”
And again rather raggedly, the fighters vanished. I turned to Tamsin.
“Why is jumping out perfect, but jumping in is a dog’s breakfast?”
“You’d like a dog’s breakfast both ways?”
She was grinning at me, and I conceded the joke.
“Perfect both ways, if you please. Let’s do both ways as a fleet wide AI jump, and at least look like professionals to anyone who’s looking.”
Several of the squadron leaders flinched.
“You can stand down your squadrons now. We have a lot of work to do, but that was a good introduction to what we’ll be doing. The bar is open for the next couple of hours, but anyone getting drunk will sleep in a care unit, and not their own beds. We are officially on call, so we could get called out again at any time of the day or night from now on. Make sure your pilots know that. Also make sure they know when training will be in the morning, and where the running track begins. Assuming nothing interrupts us, I’ll have a meeting of squadron leaders after breakfast, here on Judge.”
They all acknowledged, and vanished a few at a time.
“Are we done with escape pod launches?”
“Seem to be,” said Leanne. “There are life signs on quite a few ships though.”
“Not for long.”
The pods moved to where I’d sent the last lot, where there was now a lander doing pickup duty. The dinos left on the hulks appeared on the same island, not far from the others. It freaked all of them out. The hulks and debris formed a third mess in my home system. I looked at my captain hollos.
“Captains, as soon as we get back, you can join your crews in whatever revels they’re now starting. You better make sure they know about training in the morning. Metunga, don’t run your lot around your track at your speed until they learn to negotiate it without smashing their heads into anything with a sharp bend.” He grinned teeth at me. “The other cats need to be told to take the track cautiously until they learn it properly, and then make damned sure they know you might be on it as well, so they don’t mow you down.”