The Net
Quadrant: Penumbra
Ship: Lupis, Leviathan Class Warship
A proximity alert chirped its warning across the command center.
The ambient light dimmed automatically, brightening the displays that now glowed at several consoles. The officers in charge of those stations busied themselves with their practiced assignments. In the center of the room, a holographic sphere illuminated over the tactical war table, where images of the fleet’s ships resolved into contoured shapes.
Commander Boone glanced around from the corner console. Cold beads of sweat formed under his collar. The other officers were too busy to see him delete the program he was running.
He stood, ran his fingers through his short brown hair, tugged his uniform jacket taut, and walked across the room to the war table.
Major Dudorr was already leaning into the holo to examine the three ships that had triggered the alarm. The highlighted contours of all the vessels in their vicinity etched glowing lines of light on his face. Dudorr appeared confused.
Boone recognized the opposing ships at once. Seven revs at the Coalition Academy had burned a history of Coalition Navy ships and their standard formations firmly into his brain. These three, however, were relatively new, having only been in service for the past five.
Data streamed in from the bridge and other external sensors on displays around the table. Their own fleet of eight warships—three destroyers, four battleships, and their Leviathan Class capital ship—converged into a six-point defensive formation. They formed a star around the enormous Lupis. One battleship sat outside the formation.
The three wedge-shaped ships that had appeared stopped twenty kilometers off the front ship’s bow.
Boone shivered from the droplets making their way down his back. He wasn’t sure if Dudorr was familiar with the three ships, but without General Greming’s presence in the command center, Boone didn’t dare speak up out of turn. It gnawed at his gut to know that each second of delay put them in danger.
Dudorr pinched his fingers, and the three Coalition ships enlarged, pushing the Lupis’s fleet out of view. Boone shoved his hands into his pockets and waited. “Kingship,” Dudorr said confidently. “Two drones. Should be easy to take out.”
“Just two?” came a voice from the command center’s only entrance. Boone turned around to see General Greming walk in, still fastening his black uniform jacket. “Where are the other twenty-two?”
With Greming present and aware of the problem, Boone's confidence surged. That Greming knew these ships and Dudorr didn’t was no surprise. “It’s a decoy,” Boone said. “We need to jump right now.”
“We can take three ships, Commander,” said Dudorr, crossing his arms over his chest. Boone was convinced that Dudorr had no idea what was about to happen. The major might have fifty years to Boone’s eighteen, but he was at a disadvantage when the Coalition’s newer vessels were involved.
Greming turned to Lt. Jamond, the combat control officer, and relayed the order to jump. But before he finished his sentence, the holo’s image snapped inward, revealing twenty new drones forming a sphere around their fleet. Two more drones flanked them beyond the rear point ship. A burst of data streaming in from the bridge lit up Jamond’s console.
Boone winced visibly. This was exactly what he was hoping to avoid. “They’ve captured us in a higgs net,” he said. “We can’t jump, and we can’t punch through because they’ll have a disabling field between the drones.” Now that they were trapped, Boone wished he had risked speaking up sooner. Not that Dudorr would have listened.
“General, the bridge says we can’t lock on to higgs coordinates beyond the drones,” said Jamond. “Also, the kingship is moving to board us.”
If being trapped in a higgs net by the galaxy’s most oppressive empire was not enough to make Boone's heart race, the thought of being exposed to a C.N. boarding party certainly did. He was not the only fugitive they would find on the Lupis. Greming’s life and many crewmen and officers were on the line, too. The Coalition had bio-identity scans of all their citizens, and those records did not disappear when someone defected.
Greming gave Dudorr a sideways glance, then turned to Boone, who snapped out of his momentary panic. “Did you work the kingship simulations at the Academy?” Greming asked.
Boone nodded.
“Good. Boone will call this,” he announced.
Stunned, Dudorr glowered at Boone as if he had stolen the rank insignia off Dudorr’s shoulder. Boone mostly understood why. The general had handed off the survival of the entire fleet to a young recruit with one-tenth Dudorr's experience. However, Greming’s judgment prevailed, and he hadn’t recruited Boone out of the C.A. for nothing. Boone lit up inside, excited to lead the battle rather than observe or merely contribute. In the past three years, these opportunities were rare. He would show Dudorr how capable he truly was.
The kingship had already traversed a quarter of the sphere on its way to the fleet’s front point ship. They had only minutes to make a move before the kingship arrived at the Lupis and docked.
Boone examined the holosphere, then closed his eyes to recall the scenarios he had faced at the C.A. in which the simulation involved a higgs net. The arrays that projected the anti-higgs field into the sphere were forward-facing and mounted on either side of the wedge-shaped drones. The concentration of all twenty drones’ field generators focused most strongly on the sphere’s center. That meant that if some of the drones turned, the anti-higgs field would lose strength close to those drones.
In their six-point defensive formation, the one extra battleship that was not on point was in a position they called the alpha, which happened to be situated closest to the drones. The Clandestine was currently at alpha. The battleship hosted over 200 men. Boone wished a smaller destroyer had been at alpha, because what he planned to do made him queasy. This was not a simulation. Real lives were at stake.
Before Boone voiced his plan, Dudorr jumped in. “I can’t imagine those tiny ships can outmatch ours. We have eight warships that are five times their size.”
Dudorr’s lack of imagination frustrated Boone. Dudorr’s old-school ideas were exactly what the kingship captains were trained for. “Look at their shape,” Boone said. “The wedge makes them a difficult target for direct fire, and the angle deflects most of what hits it.”
“We don’t have time to argue,” said Greming, never raising his voice. “Commander, what do you want to do?”
“Send the Clandestine to this gap here, between these drones.” Boone pointed to where four drones in the sphere hovered closest to the Clandestine. “If it penetrates with full cannons, the drones will be forced to return fire. When they turn to fire, it will weaken the net in that region.”
While Greming relayed the order, Dudorr leaned forward on the table, the glow from the holosphere exaggerating the impatience in his face. “Why not take out some drones and break the net?”
Boone kept his tone steady. “We will, but that is also exactly what they expect us to do.”
In the holo, the alpha broke formation and accelerated toward the spot where Boone had indicated. Lightning-fast plasma bolts burst out in front of it. As predicted, the nearest two drones returned fire and rotated to follow the alpha’s path. When the Clandestine reached the edge of the sphere between them, it decelerated abruptly to a stop. It continued firing at the nearest drones with all its batteries, forcing four drones to turn ninety degrees toward it. Boone quietly thanked a lucky star.
Pointing to the destroyer that had been nearest to the alpha, Boone said, “Accelerate the destroyer to here.” He drew his finger in front of the alpha’s starboard-side stern. “If they have coordinates plugged in, and they can lock outside the drones, they can jump immediately.”
“And if they don’t?” Dudorr tested him.
“They will.” Boone spoke with confidence, but it was false. If this didn’t work, the destroyer would be caught up in the fire between the alpha and the drones, and neither were going to win that fight against those wedge-shaped hulls and massive shield generators. They would be back to square one—and closer to being boarded.
The kingship was halfway across the space between the drones and the Lupis. A scar behind Boone’s ear itched.
In the holosphere, the destroyer’s outline darted toward the designated spot, and although its trajectory put it in line to ram the alpha, it vanished. Boone let out a long, quiet breath. It worked. “Send the rest in rapid succession before they figure out what we’re doing.”
Again, while Greming was relaying orders through Lt. Jamond, Dudorr pressured Boone. “You’re leaving us unprotected. We should go first.”
“We can’t. We’re going to have to make a bigger hole, or we’ll be ripped apart in a partial higgs field.” If the ship did not extend its higgs field around the entire ship, or if some parts of the ship were still within the anti-higgs field, only some of the ship and its occupants would transport through quantum space to a new destination. Usually, that meant anything from hull breaches to explosions. The hole they had created was large enough for a battleship, but Boone was not so sure it would work for a ship the size of the Lupis.
Greming must have heard the exchange because he warned the major to stand down. “This is Boone’s operation, and you’ll show some respect.”
Dudorr retreated to a shadow beyond the light of the sphere, and Boone was glad to be rid of him.
The kingship was now three-quarters of the way across the net, passing where the front point ship had been moments before. The alpha continued to blast its nearby drones with everything it had, but even in the holosphere, Boone saw it taking on damage. Its shields would only hold out for so long. A drone near the alpha vanished from the holo, indicating it had been destroyed. Boone hoped this would help enlarge the hole.
The remaining warships were lining up, accelerating almost in unison toward the escape point the alpha had formed. The first two jumped.
Kingship captains were the most arrogant fleet commanders in the C.N., not because they were smart, but because their operations were nearly impossible to beat. Boone could almost hear this captain’s frustration—but then the kingship captain finally caught on. By the time the third ship arrived at the hole, the two drones from the flank moved inward with the intent to surround the space around the hole.
“Turn the keel battery on the kingship before it docks,” Boone said. He needed to distract and delay. “Ready to turn and jump. Fire at both these drones and at the kingship.” Greming hesitated, his brow rising. Attacking the kingship would incite drone fire from all directions. “We won’t be under fire for long,” Boone assured him, but another cold droplet of sweat trickled down his back.
A few seconds later the kingship was overwhelmed with plasma from the Lupis, most of which absorbed into its energy shield. The idle drones unleashed their own salvo, the streaks hurtling toward the Lupis.
The remaining ships approaching the hole took some damage but jumped out successively before the flank drones closed the hole.
Watching the Clandestine falter in the holosphere, Dudorr asked, “Are you going to leave the alpha to take all the heat?” His tone was only slightly less hostile.
“Yes. If alpha jumps we lose the hole.”
“If they don’t jump, we’ll lose the alpha.”
“They can take it,” Boone lied.
In the holosphere, another one of the drones that had engaged the alpha disappeared. Outside the drone net, the three battleships that had escaped now returned, firing on the drones from the other side. Boone nodded to acknowledge the extra tactic from Greming. However, he didn’t think they would be able to free the Clandestine at this point. At best they would prevent the eight shifting drones from tightening the noose.
Despite the pressure from the plasma storm, the kingship was still on approach to the forward dock, and the flank drones were almost in place to close the hole. Of all the ships in either fleet, the kingship’s shields were the most powerful. Boone needed a way for the gargantuan Lupis to evade the smaller, nimble kingship. But Greming was already on it, saying into the interfacer hooked above his right ear, “Keep that kingship off our hull.” While the Lupis remained steady, the images in the holosphere began to spin sideways, then shot toward the alpha. They had turned and rolled, but the sudden complex motion in the holo forced Boone to turn away.
When he looked back, the contours of the Clandestine shifted. A new gap with new vertices and edges appeared near its midships. “We have to jump now,” said Boone. “Keep firing at the drones.” Although the Lupis might still be in the anti-higgs net, it was a risk they had to take. If the alpha broke apart, and the drones returned to their anti-higgs focus, they would all be taken prisoner, defector or not.
There was a moment of disequilibrium. To Boone it felt like the sensation of waking suddenly from a dream. They were in new space, and there were no reports of damage.
The sphere showed the three destroyers and the Lupis. A moment later, the three battleships arrived.
“You knew the alpha was doomed the whole time,” said Dudorr.
“Did you want to get out of there?” Boone retorted, but he also retreated into himself. He was pushing his luck with Dudorr, who had the authority to make his life more miserable than usual.
Greming put his hand across the holo, ending the discussion. “Sacrifices are a mark of good leadership,” he said. Dudorr huffed away to stand over a crewman and turned his back to Boone. He was going to find a way to make Boone pay, for sure.
As the command center’s lights came up, the holosphere receded into the table. Boone leaned down on the war gaming table with both hands. The posture pressed his damp undershirt against his back. A knot throbbed in his stomach, tightening with each breath as he realized the weight that had been put on his shoulders by sacrificing the Clandestine.
Rationalizing it wasn’t helping. If he had tried to replace the alpha jump by pushing another battleship there, the Coalition would have used that time to change tactics. As long as the alpha had the drones engaged, the hole would be open. Its sacrifice had been the only option—but it was a huge sacrifice that left Boone feeling nauseous. It was not his first sacrifice, and if he wanted to command, he would have to expect more in the future, but he never felt right about it.
His eyes wandered to the displays reading out from the table. Their coordinates put them well into the Fringe Quadrant on the opposite side of the galactic core from the Coalition. They were near the Fringe-League border. There was no real border, only a few outlying civilizations that considered themselves members of the League’s relatively weak republic. From that border, through the Fringe and Penumbra to the Coalition border, the galaxy was a wild frontier.
Boone’s arms began to tremble, and he stood up to hide his nerves. Fringe space meant they were near Reia’s fleet, much too close to one of her operations for his stomach to ever relax. If they found Reia or any of her associates, thousands of innocent people would die.
Behind him, the door slid open. Boone knew who it was without turning around. The crackling of static energy in the air preceded only one man. The warlord had come, and someone was going to pay.
