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The exercise was as straightforward as a war game scenario could get. Three Proximan destroyer-class warships against three Core frigates. The human crews and commanders were deliberately placed at a disadvantage for one obvious and one not-so-obvious reason. The lords of the Hecatian clan had opposed any outside contact and any subsequent alliances almost since contact with human worlds had first been established. Their influence with the crown was substantial, given the manufacturing infrastructure their regions of Proximan worlds controlled. One of the ships participating in this early exercise had been, in fact, designed and constructed in a Hecatian factory. Its captain viewed the entire ordeal as pointless, since mankind had already been determined to be a small, weak and militarily unproven species. It was true that Jason Hunter claimed to be a decorated officer, but medals awarded to small animals who defeated other small animals were not all that impressive to a warship commander and vanguard officer of the crown’s finest dacort.

The technology installed on all six ships allowed a central tracking and datalink operations system to catalog SRS, LRS, point defense, simulated missile weapons, maneuvering, battle screens, engine operations and so forth. All the telemetry recorded during the fight was sorted and analyzed to provide both the participating officers and the higher-ranking observers and analysts to not only examine the data, but to reconstruct the battle using tactical simulators afterwards. The engagement itself would be conducted with real ships setting real courses in the space near one of Proxima Three’s moons. The opening positions of the ships were decided by the flag of each side, with a minimum range of zero point five megaclicks between the two closest combatants.

One fortunate surprise both Proximans and humans discovered when they began to discuss working together to meet threats posed by alien aggressors was the sophisticated analysis doctrine they shared. Both races were keenly interested in examining their own performance to find inefficiencies and mistakes so they could be corrected and re-integrated into their training programs. This was a profound enough similiarity that at least one high-ranking Core fleet officer and an even higher-ranking official in the human government’s defense department agreed it might be advantageous if Skywatch shared its sight-sound simulation technology with the Proximan officer corps. It was an intriguing idea from several standpoints, especially given the fact most Proximan senses were in some ways far sharper than those of humans.

Now they were going to have a chance to evaluate one of the Core Worlds’ finest officers leading an inferior force against a Proximan squadron led by one of the kingdom’s finest strategists. The predictions were the same across the entire feline leadership. In fact the whole affair was really designed to establish the already agreed-upon and obvious fact. There was nothing to be gained by inviting humans to fight alongside the vastly superior Proximan fleet and the unmatched might of the kingdom’s bladekeepers.

Vanguard Captain Teronae-Hecatia-Creesaww watched his tactical display with a combination of resigned boredom and growing contempt. The human squadron was in close formation on a slow oblique approach course roughly 0.35 megaclicks off Proxima Three’s second-largest moon. There were no other contacts in space. A moderately effective ECM field was in place, but it would be easily overcome if the captain ordered his formation to go active. All the weapons on both ships were real-world inactive, but in the simulation they were fully powered and waiting for a target.

Commander Jason Hunter reclined on the bridge of the Ontario-class frigate DSS Comstock. His escort vessels were almost exact duplicates of his own, which was to say they were underpowered, undergunned and outrageously heavy variants of a vessel that might have been a medicore idea ten years before humans and Proximans scheduled these war games. His ships were bog-standard combat hulls only one step up from a passenger shuttle. They had one credible advantage in combat, and that was their ability to coordinate energy fire. If all three ships opened up on a target at optimum range and everything lined up just right, they might score one mission kill on an equally boring opponent one out of every three engagements. What was far more likely was the formation would scatter to thwart long-range missile attacks, lose its point defense screen and close fire support and get run down one by one and destroyed.

“So what you’re telling me is we have one combat-grade weapons bank aboard that can engage enemy ships at a range both sides know in advance?” Hunter asked over the intraship.

“That is correct, commander,” came the weary reply. The Proximan engineer assigned to Hunter’s squadron was using “correct” phrasing so as not to confuse the automatic translators.

“And my brave opponent has both energy weapons and missiles,” Hunter added.

“They are commanding Bacawl-class escort destroyers, sir,” the engineer replied. “Their missile racks each only have four birds, but they can engage us at much longer ranges.”

“So we have a choice, then,” Hunter muttered. “Charge and get overwhelmed by missiles and guns. Or sit here and shoot down missiles hoping one of them doesn’t get through and make us weaker than we already are.”

This time the engineer didn’t answer. The captain looked at the tactical display and made a snap decision. He fastened his 12-point. “Helm, plot an intercept course for hostile contact kilowatt X-ray one! All ahead emergency flank speed! Continuous acceleration.”

“Sir?”

“You heard me. Direct intercept course. Maximum acceleration until further orders.”

All three Proximan captains saw Hunter’s ship suddenly break formation and advance towards their position. All three were equally confused. They knew the specs on the Ontario frigate. If all three of the human ships decided to suddenly close range that would be one of the more obvious tactical options. Get to energy range before the destroyers could break the approach envelope for their missiles. But one frigate suddenly rocketing out of formation, breaking data range with its escorts? None of them could imagine what the human had in mind. The reality of the situation didn’t dawn on anyone until the Proximan flagship’s threat board lit up.

Captain Creesaww’s tactical officer hissed. “Enemy vessel on collision course! Estimating forty seconds to impact!”

Computer controlled weapons impacts were one thing. But there was nothing in the simulation rules that made provision for a combatant warship deliberately crashing into its opponent. Weapons could be turned off. Ten thousand tons of ducimite, titanium and fusion mass traveling at thousands of miles a second couldn’t. As Hunter had often said, “the final victor in every deep space engagement is physics.”

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“We’ve got life signs aboard Tae San.”

The words of Commander Holt’s bridge specialist were replaying themselves over and over again in his mind. It was the news everyone suspected but nobody expected. It was the first shoe to drop. Everything that took place afterwards would either be confirmation of the commander’s evidence and the CINC’s working theory about enemy forces having fired on a Skywatch capital ship from aboard a vessel they intended to destroy.

The preliminary forensics surrounding the wreck of destroyer hull DDG 198 were no longer in dispute. All the available observable evidence clearly showed all the energy from the attack originated inside the ship, likely somewhere near the port-side deflector capacitors. There were no visible weapons impacts. There were no electronic residuals. The debris created by the explosion all followed conventional uninterrupted tracks away from the detonation point. Sai Lore had turned the clock back almost to the moment the catastrophic ordnance went off. At this point, any theory to the contrary of that established by Holt’s team would have a mountain of data and observations to overcome, to say nothing of the basic physics.

The only remaining question was how the saboteurs escaped. No escape pods were detectable anywhere inside Sai Lore’s sensor envelope. Granted the singularity was doing a tremendous job of making electronic noise, but one of the benefits of a vessel equipped with Commander Holt’s deluxe “analyze anything” scanner package was that it could cut through both radiation and electronic noise even if one or both were at positively indescribable amplification levels. Hiding from Holt’s ship was practically impossible even with the correct equipment and enough time. Unless the attackers had completely changed the physical laws of the universe since the Achilles engagement, there was no choice but to take the situation at face value.

DSS Tae San had apparently become a weapon wielded by forces hostile to Skywatch, had fired on an Alliance capital ship without provocation and had disabled that ship’s engines effectively enough to subject it to the overwhelming gravity well of the Omicron singularity. Then while Argent tumbled towards her destruction, Tae San suffered an inexplicable detonation from inside her own hull despite the fact no enemy vessel had fired on her. Then she was left behind by Admiral Hafnetz, adrift in a decaying orbit around Omicron 474.

By the time Sai Lore arrived, the mangled ship had only 12 days left before she crossed the phenomenon’s event horizon never to return.

But someone was alive aboard Tae San. Sai Lore’s mission was no longer a salvage. Now it was a rescue. And if what Holt and his team turned out to be even partially true, the ramifications would send shockwaves across the Alliance. Up to now, the anti-alarmists had done a magnificent job concealing their members, their motives and any stray evidence of their activities.

An intact Tae San would undo it all in one devastating blow. It was this above all other considerations that set Holt’s crew on edge. Did anyone else know DDG 198 had been drifting out here with survivors before now? Was there a possibility they might show up to finish Tae San off? All these things needed to be considered and most of all, kept quiet, at least for now. Opening a priority frequency back to base and alerting everyone on the command net that the most famous casualty of the Achilles engagement both survived and contained survivors could be more disastrous than the original battle.

Tae San was roughly 20,000 tons of evidence, perfectly preserved in the vacuum of space and now apparently harboring witnesses to the original attack and everything that had happened in the Achilles formation from yet a third vantage point. What emerged now would be as conclusive as a battle damage assessment could possibly get. All the questions would be answered, and the commander was willing to let the evidence lead where it must.

All this new inspiration drove the crew of the Sai Lore to a common objective: a first-hand examination of Tae San and the immediate rescue of her survivors. The ship had to be secured and it had to be evaluated. Once the systems and control check produced a picture of operational capacity post-detonation, the last piece of the puzzle would fall into place. From there, it was a simple matter of presenting the evidence to a board of inquiry and filing charges against those responsible for the attack.

The ranking bridge officer had been left in command. Holt, the ship’s doctor and his three most senior specialists had outfitted themselves with extra-vehicular activity gear, portable decon, an angel autonomous medical unit and a heavier version of the standard Copernicus trundlebot designed for both wheeled and zero-gravity survey and analysis inside a damaged ship.

Trundlebots were important for a couple of reasons. One, they didn’t require life support, which was most important because any malfunctions couldn’t harm their protective suits. Secondly, trundlebots didn’t degrade in extreme conditions like radiation discharges, extreme heat or cold or exposure to hard vacuum. They could go places humans couldn’t, especially small cramped spaces. If they were obstructed they could often saw, burn or pry their way through, and the whole time they were in operation they could beam both visual data and telemetry back to whomever was in command of the landing party.

The tendency for most ship’s captains would be to deploy as many units as possible, but the commander knew from experience that whatever might be waiting for them aboard Tae San could not be predicted with any confidence. Trundlebots were small and numerous, but there was a finite supply. Having a half-dozen of them go through the hull at high velocity and end up as permanent residents in the debris field would foreclose on their use in the future. One at a time was therefore the standard policy unless there was an extremely good reason to deviate.

From Last Charge of the Defiant

Book One in the Advanced Starship Tactics Series