The Fourth Battle of Sol - Strike the Storm
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Project Insight had done its best, but against a foe as swift as a War Fleet, there was only so much that Phoebe and her fellows could do. Especially when their arrival at Sol meant only that, arrival. For days now, their flickering presences had danced across the breadth of the star system, building a picture of humanity's defences as they prepared to breach them. When their assault finally came, it did so without warning.
You came awake in rush, your implants ripping you brutally from sleep to full awareness in a howl of alert signals. The fleet network was alive with them, tactical data pouring in from the Orrery array as the full strength of a War Fleet descended upon your home. Fire was already being exchanged between the stations of Fortress Command and those flickering presences, and the data that you hoped would pave a path to victory was pouring in.
You swung out of bed and triggered the activation command on your suit, letting it flow up to cover you from where you'd left it on standby. You'd always prefer a shower to get clean, but that was a luxury you couldn't afford right now. You stepped away from the bed, past the low table where you and Alexander had pored over the latest intelligence reports last night, littered with empty mugs. It had been your Flag Captain's turn for the third watch, and part of you was glad. You knew and trusted your own experience against the Shiplords, but Captain Nuada had the unique advantage of his Focus to aid him in a reactive defence like this one.
Aegis Focused were rare, and you knew you'd cheated a little when you'd chosen Alex for your staff. But you were the Minister of War, and you'd needed someone with his skills. Looking at the visual display your suit projected onto your retinas as it fully sealed, you felt no regrets. You'd never dispute the tactical genius of the younger man, but you could also see the nigh supernatural grace of Focus-driven orders flowing out to shape the fleets of humanity into a shield to hold against the storm.
The door hissed open, and you ducked through it, barely registering the presence of the marines bracketing it. Salute idents flared on your HUD as you turned, mirroring a response into your recognition signal, but all of your focus was fixed on your tactical display. Local defence fleets were shifting in response to the War Fleet assault, beginning the process of cycling their outer layer of craft behind ones with fresher shields. It wasn't perfect, but until the Orrery could lock, it was the best you could do.
It was not, unfortunately, entirely successful. Damage warnings flared aboard those ships slow or unlucky enough to be caught in War Fleet fire just a little too long, and you forced yourself not to wince.
At least their weapon's output is in line with Phoebe's predictions, Lina, you told yourself. It would be much worse right now if we'd used Regular Fleet levels as a baseline. This was good, really. Yet as the casualty figures started to trickle in, you couldn't convince yourself. There wasn't anything else you could have done, not with the type of battle you'd known you were going to have to fight here, and it meant nothing at all.
Yet those losses didn't consume you, nor drive you like a lash. They focused you, sharpened the edge of humanity, the blade that you both wielded and were. The subjective eternity of five more steps later, you were on the bridge.
"Do we have full deployment yet?" You asked, deliberately verbal as the salute ident exchange finished. This battle wouldn't stay there long, but it was good to talk while you could.
"Negative, Minister." Alex responded. He still had his suit helmet configured to transparency, and you saw his eyes darting across the shared tactical model as he turned to face you. There wasn't a trace of tiredness on his face, and you had to wonder how much of that was his Focus. You hoped it would last. One of the downsides of a Potential who wasn't a Unisonbound: they couldn't use stims.
"They're running probing attacks on the system shell," he continued. "Checking if their scans missed anything. Only minor damage so far, and it's giving us more data to analyse before a full engagement."
"How long until they're done?" You asked, stepping into your shielded command frame to let it enfold you in layers of protective nanotech. Your already-accelerated perceptions sharpened as the dedicated support systems of the interface synchronised with your suit.
"A minute at most." The answer flared to life on your expanding HUD, highlighted by Alex.
You nodded, phantom electricity dancing down your spine as you prepared yourself for what was to come. "And the Orrery?"
"Still processing," your chief of staff replied. Nick's helmet was fully sealed, but you heard the faint waver of concern behind that admission. "Vision's reporting that we should have our first results within the next thirty minutes."
The Orrery had to work; it was the only chance humanity had in the long run. But until it did, there was no way to be certain that it would. Thirty minutes, you thought. You could work with that.
"Pull the sentry fleets back," you ordered. "All engagement groups are to come to full combat readiness and stand by for immediate deployment. Unisonbound are to deploy in accordance with tactical protocol Sierra-Five." You rapped out the commands with a metronome's precision, watching the tactical display shift in response.
"Seal helms on the flag bridge." Alex's face vanished behind a growing layer of Sixth Secret nanotech, and you blew out an invisible sigh. You were never going to get used to this feeling. "Activate simulation environment."
The world around you flickered in place, then fell away in its entirety. You needed a mental space to coordinate and take full advantage of what humanity's latest stacks could do in the battle ahead. And the only way to do that properly was to bid the realms of physicality behind, if only for a time.
A command space took form around you, and a moment later you found yourself staring out past the shifting shoals of sleek craft that made up the FSN's First Fleet. First Fleet had been made up into a command of entirely FTL capable craft, with no auxiliaries beyond the fighter squadrons that you already knew would have little use in the engagement ahead. War Fleets didn't use drone swarms.
Above you, the Olympic shifted subtly in place, and nearly four kilometres of space warped as your flagship's elder sister brought her shields to full power. The Calypso had changed a great deal since the Second Battle of Sol, yet if ships could be said to have souls, hers was still the same.
Your feet rested on an invisible floor, providing your entire staff with an unrestricted view of the battlefield. Designations overlayed the images of the ships around you, and reaching forward you could touch the flickering icons of the sentry fleets as they retreated behind Fortress Command's prodigious shielding. Those fleets had been a necessity with the system shell incomplete. Two weeks more and things would have been different, but there was no use crying over spilt milk.
You sketched a path in the false air, and vectors poured into existence reaching out towards the edge of Sol's Stellar Exclusion Zone. Another motion flung them outward to the ships of First Fleet. And a moment later, their colours shifted to the steady emerald of confirmed receipts.
"Captain Nuada." You said, and were shocked to find your voice smooth and untouched by fear.
"Yes ma'am?" Here in this space, there was no need for combat suits. You wore day uniforms, and your staff had taken their cues from you. His eyes glinted with a steady light, and you felt the same certainty of purpose that had gripped you in your last battles against the Shiplords begin to take hold.
"Let's not be too obvious about how much we really know." Perhaps it was a futile effort, but your own analysts and those from the Ministry of Security agreed that it was worth trying. "The Fleet shall advance."
"Yes ma'am."
As the largest single concentration of human military power sprang toward the edge of the Stellar Exclusion Zone, another battle raged deep within the star system. Not the battle to protect humanity's data vaults; that was well in hand. Lagless computing technology in combination with Vision, Marcus, and the Ministry of Security's other cybersecurity teams held their virtual spaces with aplomb. No, this battle was far more important, yet nigh-impossible to truly understand as it was one of pure data.
Humanity's Orrery was a marvel of predictive computing, in part based off of fragmentary designs that were all Project Insight had been able to find on the matter. And yet, as Lina knew, it was still untested. That reason alone was the reason that humanity's rebellion had not lit a half-dozen more fires already, though that had also been at humanity's request. If the Orrery failed, then any attempt at rebellion by the Group of Six would be futile. They had to know.
Deep within seething layers of lagless circuitry, supported by prodigious banks of heat-exchangers and other cooling systems, the answer was starting to take shape. Data poured into the Orrery's systems through every scope in the star system, compiling the movements of every War Fleet craft within the heliosphere. Just separating those ships from each other was an immense task, but it was one that the Orrery had been designed to do. Indeed, it was a required function. If it couldn't tell who was who, it would never be able to track their movements properly, let alone predict them.
Flickering sensor images resolved into unique hull profiles. Movement lists for each identified ship in the War Fleet began to compile. And the predictive systems of the Orrery, as close to the long-ago purged subroutines that had allowed Vision to act as the Elder Firsts' Project Insight, roused to life.
At the very heart of it all, the cyberspace presence of the first new life humanity had created after the Sorrows nestled. Vision had never truly identified as human, but the AI cared for the species deeply. She didn't see this as an emotional commitment, however. Perhaps given time, but there was none of that to spare.
Before her, the first flickers of prediction traced themselves across the tactical display. They were small things, tiny fragments of possibility, and only a handful of them were right. But it was a start. And humanity had started with less before.
All that was left was to succeed.
You came awake in rush, your implants ripping you brutally from sleep to full awareness in a howl of alert signals. The fleet network was alive with them, tactical data pouring in from the Orrery array as the full strength of a War Fleet descended upon your home. Fire was already being exchanged between the stations of Fortress Command and those flickering presences, and the data that you hoped would pave a path to victory was pouring in.
You swung out of bed and triggered the activation command on your suit, letting it flow up to cover you from where you'd left it on standby. You'd always prefer a shower to get clean, but that was a luxury you couldn't afford right now. You stepped away from the bed, past the low table where you and Alexander had pored over the latest intelligence reports last night, littered with empty mugs. It had been your Flag Captain's turn for the third watch, and part of you was glad. You knew and trusted your own experience against the Shiplords, but Captain Nuada had the unique advantage of his Focus to aid him in a reactive defence like this one.
Aegis Focused were rare, and you knew you'd cheated a little when you'd chosen Alex for your staff. But you were the Minister of War, and you'd needed someone with his skills. Looking at the visual display your suit projected onto your retinas as it fully sealed, you felt no regrets. You'd never dispute the tactical genius of the younger man, but you could also see the nigh supernatural grace of Focus-driven orders flowing out to shape the fleets of humanity into a shield to hold against the storm.
The door hissed open, and you ducked through it, barely registering the presence of the marines bracketing it. Salute idents flared on your HUD as you turned, mirroring a response into your recognition signal, but all of your focus was fixed on your tactical display. Local defence fleets were shifting in response to the War Fleet assault, beginning the process of cycling their outer layer of craft behind ones with fresher shields. It wasn't perfect, but until the Orrery could lock, it was the best you could do.
It was not, unfortunately, entirely successful. Damage warnings flared aboard those ships slow or unlucky enough to be caught in War Fleet fire just a little too long, and you forced yourself not to wince.
At least their weapon's output is in line with Phoebe's predictions, Lina, you told yourself. It would be much worse right now if we'd used Regular Fleet levels as a baseline. This was good, really. Yet as the casualty figures started to trickle in, you couldn't convince yourself. There wasn't anything else you could have done, not with the type of battle you'd known you were going to have to fight here, and it meant nothing at all.
Yet those losses didn't consume you, nor drive you like a lash. They focused you, sharpened the edge of humanity, the blade that you both wielded and were. The subjective eternity of five more steps later, you were on the bridge.
"Do we have full deployment yet?" You asked, deliberately verbal as the salute ident exchange finished. This battle wouldn't stay there long, but it was good to talk while you could.
"Negative, Minister." Alex responded. He still had his suit helmet configured to transparency, and you saw his eyes darting across the shared tactical model as he turned to face you. There wasn't a trace of tiredness on his face, and you had to wonder how much of that was his Focus. You hoped it would last. One of the downsides of a Potential who wasn't a Unisonbound: they couldn't use stims.
"They're running probing attacks on the system shell," he continued. "Checking if their scans missed anything. Only minor damage so far, and it's giving us more data to analyse before a full engagement."
"How long until they're done?" You asked, stepping into your shielded command frame to let it enfold you in layers of protective nanotech. Your already-accelerated perceptions sharpened as the dedicated support systems of the interface synchronised with your suit.
"A minute at most." The answer flared to life on your expanding HUD, highlighted by Alex.
You nodded, phantom electricity dancing down your spine as you prepared yourself for what was to come. "And the Orrery?"
"Still processing," your chief of staff replied. Nick's helmet was fully sealed, but you heard the faint waver of concern behind that admission. "Vision's reporting that we should have our first results within the next thirty minutes."
The Orrery had to work; it was the only chance humanity had in the long run. But until it did, there was no way to be certain that it would. Thirty minutes, you thought. You could work with that.
"Pull the sentry fleets back," you ordered. "All engagement groups are to come to full combat readiness and stand by for immediate deployment. Unisonbound are to deploy in accordance with tactical protocol Sierra-Five." You rapped out the commands with a metronome's precision, watching the tactical display shift in response.
"Seal helms on the flag bridge." Alex's face vanished behind a growing layer of Sixth Secret nanotech, and you blew out an invisible sigh. You were never going to get used to this feeling. "Activate simulation environment."
The world around you flickered in place, then fell away in its entirety. You needed a mental space to coordinate and take full advantage of what humanity's latest stacks could do in the battle ahead. And the only way to do that properly was to bid the realms of physicality behind, if only for a time.
A command space took form around you, and a moment later you found yourself staring out past the shifting shoals of sleek craft that made up the FSN's First Fleet. First Fleet had been made up into a command of entirely FTL capable craft, with no auxiliaries beyond the fighter squadrons that you already knew would have little use in the engagement ahead. War Fleets didn't use drone swarms.
Above you, the Olympic shifted subtly in place, and nearly four kilometres of space warped as your flagship's elder sister brought her shields to full power. The Calypso had changed a great deal since the Second Battle of Sol, yet if ships could be said to have souls, hers was still the same.
Your feet rested on an invisible floor, providing your entire staff with an unrestricted view of the battlefield. Designations overlayed the images of the ships around you, and reaching forward you could touch the flickering icons of the sentry fleets as they retreated behind Fortress Command's prodigious shielding. Those fleets had been a necessity with the system shell incomplete. Two weeks more and things would have been different, but there was no use crying over spilt milk.
You sketched a path in the false air, and vectors poured into existence reaching out towards the edge of Sol's Stellar Exclusion Zone. Another motion flung them outward to the ships of First Fleet. And a moment later, their colours shifted to the steady emerald of confirmed receipts.
"Captain Nuada." You said, and were shocked to find your voice smooth and untouched by fear.
"Yes ma'am?" Here in this space, there was no need for combat suits. You wore day uniforms, and your staff had taken their cues from you. His eyes glinted with a steady light, and you felt the same certainty of purpose that had gripped you in your last battles against the Shiplords begin to take hold.
"Let's not be too obvious about how much we really know." Perhaps it was a futile effort, but your own analysts and those from the Ministry of Security agreed that it was worth trying. "The Fleet shall advance."
"Yes ma'am."
As the largest single concentration of human military power sprang toward the edge of the Stellar Exclusion Zone, another battle raged deep within the star system. Not the battle to protect humanity's data vaults; that was well in hand. Lagless computing technology in combination with Vision, Marcus, and the Ministry of Security's other cybersecurity teams held their virtual spaces with aplomb. No, this battle was far more important, yet nigh-impossible to truly understand as it was one of pure data.
Humanity's Orrery was a marvel of predictive computing, in part based off of fragmentary designs that were all Project Insight had been able to find on the matter. And yet, as Lina knew, it was still untested. That reason alone was the reason that humanity's rebellion had not lit a half-dozen more fires already, though that had also been at humanity's request. If the Orrery failed, then any attempt at rebellion by the Group of Six would be futile. They had to know.
Deep within seething layers of lagless circuitry, supported by prodigious banks of heat-exchangers and other cooling systems, the answer was starting to take shape. Data poured into the Orrery's systems through every scope in the star system, compiling the movements of every War Fleet craft within the heliosphere. Just separating those ships from each other was an immense task, but it was one that the Orrery had been designed to do. Indeed, it was a required function. If it couldn't tell who was who, it would never be able to track their movements properly, let alone predict them.
Flickering sensor images resolved into unique hull profiles. Movement lists for each identified ship in the War Fleet began to compile. And the predictive systems of the Orrery, as close to the long-ago purged subroutines that had allowed Vision to act as the Elder Firsts' Project Insight, roused to life.
At the very heart of it all, the cyberspace presence of the first new life humanity had created after the Sorrows nestled. Vision had never truly identified as human, but the AI cared for the species deeply. She didn't see this as an emotional commitment, however. Perhaps given time, but there was none of that to spare.
Before her, the first flickers of prediction traced themselves across the tactical display. They were small things, tiny fragments of possibility, and only a handful of them were right. But it was a start. And humanity had started with less before.
All that was left was to succeed.
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