“This is the wandering soul speaking,” said Ecryua. “What is your business?”
“No ‘business,’ just want to tell you that you can dock. Or are you planning to cruise through inertial navigation until the exercise ends? Please reply quickly; the exercise is ramping towards the main stage, so if you want to dock, it’s now or never.”
“No need. The dead rest in the dead of space.”
“As you like. Enjoy your dally with death. Over.”
The line dropped.
“Why did you turn it down?” asked Jint.
“Because I want to be alone with you,” said Ecryua, looking him in the eyes. “If I said that, would you be happy?”
“I suppose,” he said, not taking it at face value for a second. “But why, actually?”
“Because it’s not fair.”
“What do you mean?”
“Our weight will hamper the ship’s mobility.”
“Our weight? Have we been putting on the pounds?”
Ecryua looked at him scoffingly. “The conveyance ship,” she grumbled.
“Ohh.”
Just as she’d brought to his attention, the mass of the conveyance ship was non-negligible even for huge raid ships. Of course, the crew aboard the raid ships knew that, too. Jint didn’t quite buy that logic.
“By the way,” said Jint, “can we communicate with the landworld?”
“No, of course not.”
“No?”
Ecryua nodded. “We can only place a call during an emergency.”
It appeared they could only send a message after the exercise was lifted. In point of fact, it was probably loopy to expect to communicate with the landworld using a conveyance ship. In any case, it wasn’t exactly an atmosphere conducive to calmly resolving the challenge facing them.
The image of a zoomed-in Martinh was still visible on the wall in front. Jint leaned forward. “Could you enlarge the picture a little more?” he asked, pointing at a place on the screen. “Just make that bit bigger.”
Something was rising up from the blanket of green. It was very low-orbit, and looked as though it might stop at the tropopause. “Could you enlarge it more?”
Ecryua did so without complaint, perhaps because of the urgency in Jint’s voice. Due to the thin-but-extant atmosphere, the object was distorted as though viewed through a shimmering haze. Still, it was clearly a raid ship. What was it doing near a landworld?
“Message that ship!” shouted Jint.
“I already told you why I can’t.”
“This is an emergency!”
“Why?”
“Because it might be striking the surface!”
“No, it’s not.”
“Based on what!?”
“It’s leaving.”
It was as she said. The raid ship was about to break away from planetary orbit. Had it already launched anti-surface strikes?
“Let’s get closer to the landw—...” But he thought better of it. He yearned to see what had become of the surface, but so long as he was in the dark regarding whether the Forr Da Antohbeeta were fully operational, it was just too dangerous. For a small vessel like a conveyance ship, it would be one-hit-and-lights-out.
“Second thoughts?”
“Yeah. It’s too risky,” said Jint, though his anxiety hadn’t gone anywhere. “When’s the exercise gonna end, if I may ask?”
“Dunno. Hungry?”
“Who, me? Oh, are you in for a meal break? Sounds good, actually,” he replied. He wasn’t that hungry, but some food would help turn his mood.
“Kay.” Ecryua got up, and it wasn’t long before she was back with combat rations.
Jint thanked her, took his portion, and stuffed his cheeks. After all, “eat” was about the extent of what he could do at the moment.
“The only one that’s yet to return is the Flicaubh’s conveyance ship,” said Atosryua. “We sustained less ‘damage’ than I was psyching myself up for. Of course, in an actual battle, we want that percent to be zero.”
Why did the damage, however small, have to be in the form of my subordinates? Did I pick the wrong people? Sobash felt slightly attacked, but naturally, he was overthinking it. Atosryua was not the type to mince words.
At any rate, the Flicaubh was now forced to fight without its navigator. That being said, the navigator didn’t usually have much to do while in 3-space. Assisting a busy Deca-Commander Idlia and the Communications Officer was the name of the game. And he had ordered her to serve as the conveyance ship’s Skipper.
The Blue Team of Trample-Blitz Squadron 1 had fused space-times right before passing through the portal, and conducted the necessary information link. So far, they’d released several waves of conveyance ships to scout out the other side of the Hyde Portal. According to the first recon trek, the six “enemy” ships were spread out, but no sooner did they receive the report than the ships began to gather, already assuming the formation to intercept them.
“It seems the enemy’s decided to intercept us in 3-space.”
“Then should we plunge in without splitting space-times?” said Vice Hecto-Commander Direrh, Ship Commander of the Batcaubh.
“No, let’s split for the time being,” said Atosryua, shaking her head. “Hecto-Commander Roiryua isn’t about to wait.”
In 3-space, a portal looked like a big phosphorescent orb. In planar space, it existed as a curve in the cosmic fabric. There was no connection between any given point on the sphere and a specific point on the curve. Practically speaking, that meant that one could have no inkling which specific point on the planar space side they’d emerge through when entering a portal from 3-space, and vice versa. Even if they entered the portal in an orderly line, the formation would inevitably be broken up on the other side. This wasn’t much of an issue in times of peace, but it was a huge liability in a space battle — it could make for easy pickings for the enemy.
However, this did not apply to groups of ships within single space-time bubbles. It was the bubbles that got scattered, not the ships inside them. A corps that shared a bubble could maintain formation while passing through a portal. However, space-time bubbles had mass limits. It was impossible to encompass a large fleet in a single bubble... but six raid ships could be managed. The problem was that bubbles that were that close to capacity were sluggish things. In order to speed things up, they would need to split space-times and advance toward the vicinity of the portal before re-merging.
“The reassembly point is here,” said Atosryua, a blue blip lighting up on the window-screen showing the map of planar space. It was a point right by the Hyde Portal. “After that, we just fight. No specific strategy — we fuse space-times, we run the info link right after, and I’ll give you your alignments then. That is all. I’ll see you at the rendezvous. All ships, split space-times.”
The six raid ships fused once again.
“Information link completed,” reported the Communications Officer.
That moment, something came flying from out of the portal. It could only be an enemy raid ship.
“Judging by its mass, it’s a single-ship bubble.”
“What are they playing at!?” Atosryua placed a hand on her forehead. “Oh, I get it. Wonder if they’re planning to use the same tactic in actual war? Oh well, for now we need to deal with what’s in front of us. Flicaubh, split away.”
“Do we intercept?”
“No need. Unless, that is, the enemy picks a fight with you. If that happens, we won’t be able to swoop in to rescue, so please beat them.”
“Roger that,” said Sobash. He looked at the unoccupied Navigator’s Seat, before turning his gaze to Rearguard Yatesh, who was filling in for the role. The way Sobash had shifted his glance was smooth enough to obfuscate the fact that Ecryua’s absence had temporarily slipped his mind. “Split us off, if you would.”
And so the Flicaubh left its comrades’ side.
He understood both the enemy ship’s intentions, and the point of Atosryua’s orders. A seventh raid ship would exceed the mass limit of the bubble they were in, spurring the physical laws of planar space to rupture the space-time bubble without mercy. The raid ships did each have their own space-time bubble generator engines, so it wouldn’t spell their doom, but it would serve to throw off their formation if they transitioned through the portal individually like that. Which must be what the enemy was plotting.
There was a number of measures they ought to take. The first was to split off and intercept. For example, they could split into groups of three — that way, they could fight in an advantageous position even if the enemy ship were to merge with one of the bubbles. Yet three-ship bubbles were slower than single-ship bubbles. The enemy had stolen away the initiative as to whether or not to split space-times. Moreover, the enemy ship had only to predict whether they’d be in an inferior position if they fused with its potential target; there was nothing forcing it to do so. If the Red Team passed through the portal in the form of three-ship bubbles, they could just wage battle here in 3-space and have the advantage. And if the Blue Team set about recombining, then the Red Team would poise themselves to follow suit.
Ultimately, the Blue Team had two options: pass through in groups of three, or surrender. Splitting into single-ship bubbles was a recipe for defeat. They would gain speed, but whether they fled into the portal or had a scrape with Red Team ships was, again, in the enemy’s hands. The Red Team was running the show now.
There was one other option — forcing space-time fusion. With this method, no one knew what would happen after the bubble ruptured. How many lesser-mass bubbles would it divide into? How many raid ships would be in which bubbles? They could only guess in terms of probabilities. The enemy wouldn’t seize the initiative, but neither would the Blue Team. Control of the battlefield would fly off like a ball glancing off athletes’ grasping hands.
Taking into account various factors, having just one ship split off could just have been the best maneuver. If the enemy fused into five bubbles, they could easily pick off one such bubble’s worth of enemy firepower. If they fused into a single bubble, they could fight on equal terms.