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Grass Eaters 3 | 26 | Third Chances
🕑 Added 2024-12-23 16:47:01 +0000 UTCSRNS My Other Ship, Cretae (24,000 Ls)
POV: Sophie Garnier, Saturnian Resistance Navy (Ace of Clubs)
The pinpricks of light on the external view monitors imploded into the coherent starfield familiar to human eyes.
“Post-blink preparations complete, Ace,” Felix reported about a minute later.
“Damn, that was slow,” the Ace of Clubs said, staring at Krizvum’s back. “Are you deliberately sabotaging my ships, Krissy?”
The Znosian officer turned around, bowing low. “I take full responsibility for my crew’s unacceptable pace, Thirteen Whiskers.”
“I don’t want you to take responsibility,” the Ace snarled. “I want you to go faster next time.”
“If I may suggest an improvement, Thirteen Whiskers?”
“What?!” she snapped.
“The bottleneck is in the… new engineering deck. Back in the… Bad Znosian Navy, we would retrain the crew in the engineering deck for more efficient operations. Or if they were too new to waste training resources on, they would be considered defective and replaced. Would you like to—”
“Replaced?” she asked, mildly curious.
“Recycled— they would be… executed, Thirteen Whiskers.”
“That doesn’t sound very efficient of your people.”
“A single defective can spoil an entire batch, Thirteen Whiskers,” he said, matter-of-factly. “And replacement for inexperienced crew is cheap.”
“Fascinating,” the Ace said, considering the alien practice. She turned to Felix. “Who’s in the new engineering deck?”
Felix made a few taps on his new tablet console. “That’s Holden’s crew.”
“Human?”
“It’s a mixed crew: half alien, half ours… Ace, are we actually going to uh— recycle—”
She rolled her eyes. “What are you, stupid? We don’t have a breeding pond pumping out a bajillion ship engineers a day, human or alien. Tell them to do extra post-blink drills or they’re getting their pay docked until we get it down to under thirty seconds.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Felix said, poorly hiding a sigh of relief as he directed the ship’s computers to draft a scathing memo for the underperforming crew. “Right away.”
“Krissy, status update on the star system.”
Krizvum bowed, reading from his tablet, “Thirteen Bad Znosian squadrons, exactly as reported by the— the Rep ships. Six anti-ship mine volumes detected in our vicinity, but we are clear of them. One of the enemy squadrons is deployed near our position. Two are deployed near the blink limit on the other side, and the remaining ten are assembled a light-hour away. They have begun jamming our FTL radios, but the signal is mostly ineffective against our frequency hoppers.”
“Lucky thirteen.”
Felix pointed at one of the squadrons on the battlemap now on the main screen. “Ace, that’s their new radar ships near the far blink limit. They might have enough radar resolution to see something’s different with the stealth panels on the Endurance.”
Technically, the former Republic ship Endurance — the parasite carrier secretly captured by the Resistance over twenty years ago — was renamed Jefferson’s Revenge. But with much of its computer intelligence systems still refusing to recognize the new name decades later, Resistance spacers had given up on enforcing the rename.
“Let them see.” She shrugged. “Not like they’ll know what they’re looking at. Krissy, keep us out of the mine volumes and bring us in range of that closest enemy squadron.”
“Yes, Thirteen Whiskers.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
POV: Fskokh, Znosian Dominion Navy (Rank: Nine Whiskers)
“We’re getting a transmission on the FTL radio, Nine Whiskers!”
Fskokh looked up in confusion. “I thought we were jamming the system with those experimental ships?”
“It’s— it’s the Great Predators. Their signal can apparently burn through our jammers up close.”
“Of course they can,” he said resignedly. “What do they want this time?”
His computer officer tapped a button on her console, putting the familiar face of the defected captive — Eight Whiskers Krizvum — on the main screen.
“Get your abomination captors if you want to talk, apostate,” Fskokh waved impatiently.
Krizvum acted like he hadn’t heard the command, and Fskokh wasn’t sure if he was more annoyed by that or at the message the traitor delivered. “We are Free Znosian Navy Battlegroup Cottontail. We are here to take command of Cretae. Nine Whiskers Fskokh, you are hereby ordered to cease all engine acceleration and send all senior officers to the 2239 for a—”
“Cut the nonsense and get the Great Predators.”
Perhaps they were flattered by the Great Predators as an honorific, or perhaps they were simply impatient as he was, their leader from last time got on again. She moved Krizvum out of his command chair again, plopping herself into it. “Oh, hey, it’s Socks again. I’m surprised you’re still alive. I thought you’d be facing the wall for that last one by your own people.”
Fskokh put his entire lung volume into it to give her the loudest derisive snort of his life. “It was not yet my time to rejoin the Prophecy, abomination. What do you want this time?”
“Well, you’re in luck. Because we’re about to give you a third chance to live. In my people’s culture, that is considered beyond generous. But this would be your third strike, and if you don’t do what we say this time, bad things are going to happen to you. Very bad things.”
“I will not evacuate the system this time,” he snarled. “Your ships are outnumbered.”
“Oh my, are we?” She revealed all her teeth at him. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“You are!” he insisted. “I know you can see we have many more ships than you!”
“Hm… It does all seem rather… hopeless to me.”
Fskokh’s face brightened. At least this predator was smart enough to do basic arithmetic. “We will let you live if you surrender.”
“Sure, we will surrender. Why don’t you come over in a shuttle and we can discuss the specifics?”
Fskokh shook his head vigorously. “Predator lies! We are not so foolish to believe you. Cut your engines and send your officers—”
“I have a better idea, Socks. Why don’t you cut your engines and send your officers over?”
“No! You should.”
“No, you!”
“No, you!”
“No, you!”
“No—” he frowned as the main screen disappeared into static. “What— what happened?”
“They’ve cut the connection from their end, Nine Whiskers,” his computer officer replied as she examined her console’s readouts.
“But we weren’t finished with our conversation!” he said, mildly annoyed. “What are they doing now?”
A few moments later, she replied, “The predators are moving towards Squadron 1. We’re about to find out what their captured ships can really do.”
“Is Squadron 1 ready?” Fskokh asked.
“Yes, Nine Whiskers. Their lives were forfeited to the Prophecy the day they left their hatchling pools.”
He lowered his eyes as he muttered the prayer with her.
It took less than an hour, and another hour for the light of the battle to reach him. The enemy got into position, and as they did, a precise wave of predator missiles — the Pigeons — wiped away Squadron 1 on the battlemap, exactly as he knew would happen.
“Analyze the effectiveness of our countermeasures this time,” Fskokh ordered.
“Our new countermeasures degraded their probability of hit by about twenty percent this time, Nine Whiskers!” the computer officer said excitedly after a moment of analysis.
“Is that enough by our measure?” he asked urgently.
“Yes, Nine Whiskers. Just enough!”
“Good. What are they doing now?”
She examined her console before replying, “They’re holding position near the battle site with their engines warmed up.”
“Good. Burn us towards them.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
POV: Sophie Garnier, Saturnian Resistance Navy (Ace of Clubs)
“Enemy squadron destroyed,” Felix reported calmly as the notification appeared on his screen.
“And those radar jammers?” she asked, raising an eyebrow in mild concern.
Felix frowned at his screen. “Slightly effective. Our ship computers have completed their analysis on the signals they’re using—”
“Slightly effective?”
“Twenty to thirty percent. It’s a slightly newer one from what they used against the Reps over the inner planets.”
The Reps — shockingly — refused to share any of the electronic signals data they collected on the Znosian Grand Fleet during the Battle over Earth and Mars. But that didn’t pose an insurmountable obstacle to the good people of the SRN. The aliens didn’t do subtle electronic warfare like humans did; their countermeasures desperately blared out in every direction, and Resistance listening posts in Saturn received their noises a mere eighty minutes after the Reps’ supercomputers did.
According to her spies, the sensitive sensors on the Rep ships correctly deciphered and then ignored those primitive signals after a few microseconds, the amount of time it took their machines to chuckle quietly to themselves about the primitiveness of Znosian electronic warfare.
The Resistance was no stranger to the EW game. The SRN did not have the trillion credit budget of the Rep Navy, but where its inventory lacked in mountains of cash, its people made up for in experience and tactical ingenuity. Between flare ups, operatives on asteroid bases and orbital stations would identify the exact right moment when the Reps needed their sensors and communications the most, like when they were docking or leaving port — a perfect time to test the Resistance’s new electronic warfare tricks against them.
Even though it was technically Rep Navy procedure to ignore them so they wouldn’t know whether their tricks were actually working, in practice, rash or inexperienced Rep captains and EW officers would have obvious tells in their behavior. After all, docking with a station without being able to talk to it wasn’t exactly the easiest thing in the galaxy. In a few cases, they would straight-up call the transmitters, angrily demanding they turn it off or threatening legal consequences if they didn’t.
The operatives would comply, of course, and then they’d do it again the next time the Reps came around. What were they going to do about it? Shoot a railgun volley through a civilian residential module just because it had a jammer transmitter mounted on its hull?
By the time the last Free Zone war came around, the Resistance had gotten pretty good at the electronic warfare game. Not better than the Reps, no, not even the Ace was delusional about that, but it was enough to be a real nuisance.
But offensive EW was only one side of the equation.
On the other side, the Reps didn’t often use their sophisticated missile jammers against the Resistance. Until their recent oppression campaign, it’d been decades since a SRN missile battery fired on a Rep ship in anger. And when it came time to, the results were… disappointing. As far as she could tell, despite the propaganda, none of the dozens of modified Pigeons they fired at the Reps in the latest conflict actually reached point defense range, much less connect. Their expensive dazzlers did the job they claimed to do.
Unfortunate, but not unexpected.
What was unexpected was how poorly the aliens performed against the SRN Ghost Fleet, especially how few of their long-range missiles seemed to be able to find their targets once the Resistance repeater bases began to broadcast false signals. Indeed, some defense-analyst think tank in Atlas commented that it appeared “at the Battle of Saturn, the Resistance had the same EW advantage over the Znosian Navy that the Republic Navy had against the Resistance”. Of course, that was the kind of Rep-centric garbage you’d expect out of some defense establishment mouthpiece on Luna, but… it wasn’t entirely untrue.
Twenty to thirty percent degradation. These Znosians she was now facing, the Ace mused, seemed to have improved on their record.
Slightly.
But improved nonetheless.
“Slightly newer,” the Ace repeated in a calm voice. “How so?”
“They appeared to have adapted. Their radar jammers appear to be similar to the type used by Rep Marines,” Felix answered.
The Ace narrowed her eyes. “Their Marines?”
“One of their older models, ma’am, but they still use them.”
“It wouldn’t happen to be similar to their old anti-drone swarm defenses at Cassini, would it?” she asked dryly.
Felix arched an eyebrow at her. “How— how did you know?”
She snorted. “The ones they gave their damn pets for their ground campaigns. Of course the Buns learned from it.”
“Yes, ma’am. We’ve sent a request to the Reps for countermeasures, but their liaison has been… uncooperative.”
“Who is it?”
“Rear Admiral Ibarra and her Sonora. They’ve arrived in system, and they’re sitting at the blink limit, just watching us.”
“Connect me to her now.”
A few seconds later, the increasingly familiar face of Catarina Ibarra appeared on her main screen.
“What is it this time, terrorist scum?” Catarina asked casually without bothering to look into the camera.
“Not much, Rep bootlicker, but we need everything you have on your radar jamming tech—”
“Having second thoughts about that big, bad alien fleet over there? If you’re trying to run away, now would be—”
The Ace snapped at her. “Hey, asshole, in case you haven’t noticed, the Buns are using your radar jammers against our missiles. So if you Reps have secret countermeasures against those, now would be a good time to let us know.”
Catarina finally looked up. “We did notice those new model jammers, probably attempts to copy our Eureka-4s. What’s the matter? You guys can’t handle a little signal interference?”
“We haven’t been hit yet, but aren’t you at least a little bit concerned where they got these?!”
“Oh, yeah, the tech transfer to the Puppers. We knew the Buns were going to observe closely and steal as much of our tech as they could. That’s why we handed out the old stuff.”
“Your old stuff is annoying as it is, and it’s not your ass on the line here. What’s your counter-jamming procedure against Eurekas?”
Catarina seemed to look away on her screen for a moment, then she looked back at the camera and sighed. “None.”
“What?!”
“There are no known vulnerabilities in the Eureka radar jammer protocol. At burn-through range, it’s about a theoretical four-in-five chance your missiles are still seeing the right target, max. No getting around that.”
“Bullshit!”
Catarina shrugged. “If there were identified exploits, don’t you think we’d have fixed them before we gave them to the Puppers?”
“So what are we supposed to do?”
“Are you familiar with the concept of… shooting multiple missiles at a target?” Catarina suggested innocently.
“Don’t patronize me, Rep! Are you really going to let our people die out here just so you can keep your secrets?!”
“There are no secrets or backdoors in our technology, terrorist.” Catarina held up a finger before the Ace could begin shouting. “But… just for today, you can have the Sonora’s gravidar on FTL datalink. That should be enough for you to avoid eating vacuum for lunch.”
With a flick of a button, a trickle of new data appeared in her command console, showing her the data from the Reps’ sophisticated new sensors. That was not new. They’d fed the Ghost Fleet that information during the Battle of Saturn, but they didn’t fully rely on it, much less depend on it.
You never know when the Reps are going to screw you over.
“So…” the Ace summarized, “your bright idea for our fleet’s sensor strategy for the coming battle is… to just trust you?”
Catarina shrugged again. “Or you can die out there instead.”
“In your dreams, Rep.”
Catarina rolled her eyes. “Well, you kids have fun, and don’t get too many of your ships killed. We only brought so much popcorn on the Sonora.”
And before the Ace could come up with a suitable retort, she closed the connection remotely.
“Typical Rep,” the Ace muttered angrily. She looked at Felix. “What’s our game plan now?”
“Assuming the Reps don’t try to screw us over,” he said. “We have a range advantage over the enemies with our Pigeon missiles, and our acceleration is only slightly lower than theirs with our heavier mass. The Tactics Cell predicts they’ll probably charge us, try to get us within their range bubble. But… if we keep them at their powered missile range like we did in Prinoe, and with the Rep data feed… despite their numbers, we’ll kill them all right before they get in range.”
“We can keep them out there for that long?”
“That’s… what we’re projecting.”
“Assuming everything works.”
“Yes, Ace, that’s assuming everything works. If one of our ships can’t maintain maximum acceleration, it’s going to fall behind and die.”
The Ace of Clubs looked down her list of ships, most of them heavily crewed by former Bun prisoners. And the ones that weren’t… had parts decades out of their maintenance schedules.
Razor-thin margins and fatal consequences. What can possibly go wrong here?
“Please tell me we have a Plan B too.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
POV: Fskokh, Znosian Dominion Navy (Rank: Nine Whiskers)
“Nine Whiskers, they are following the same playbook they did in Prinoe: once we get into their range, they’re going to full burn to keep us out of ours. Then, they will shoot at us until we are all dead.”
“And? What is the Digital Guide’s assessment?”
“It’s a narrow safety margin, but it predicts they may be able to pull it off again. We have a lot of ships, but they have some range to work with.”
“Interesting,” Fskokh muttered contemplatively. “That is assuming their captured ships can maintain their maximum acceleration of 28 to 32 gravities.”
“Yes, Nine Whiskers. We believe they can. After all— after all—”
“Our former crews aboard those ships are just as well-trained as we are?” he suggested.
“Yes, Nine Whiskers. Their lives— their lives— their…” she stuttered, clearly unsure whether to say a prayer for the defected apostates.
“Their lives are their own,” Fskokh said, shaking his head. “This will not be a day of glory for the Prophecy. But… an infected flock must be culled. And we are the ones who have been given that responsibility from the Prophecy. We will do it without pride or joy, but with satisfaction in the knowledge that the Prophecy will be fulfilled.”
“Yes, Nine Whiskers,” she replied softly.
Fskokh examined the battlemap for another minute, then nodded with finality. “Their current course — it is the logical tactic for them, given what they know. That is… admittedly a more aggressive margin than sane predators would usually go with.”
“Indeed, Nine Whiskers. Have you made a final decision on our course?”
“We’ll go with the original as planned,” he said as he took a deep breath. “All ships, go to maximum burn.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
POV: Sophie Garnier, Saturnian Resistance Navy (Ace of Clubs)
“Maybe they believe we’ll blink and run. Or maybe they don’t think we brought enough missiles,” Felix speculated.
The Ace snorted. “Or maybe they think we’ll screw up somewhere.”
“The physics is clear, Ace. They’re not going anywhere. Once we start maximum acceleration away from them, we’ll keep them locked in that bubble for at least an hour. Just enough time to blow them all out of vacuum before they get in range.”
The Ace stared at the main screen, projecting the image of the dark void, without speaking. “They must know, right? That even if we screw up here… badly, they are all dead anyway. By us, or if we fail, by the Reps.”
Felix spoke after a while, tracking the enemies as they burned ever closer on the battlemap. “Well, they’re no cowards — that’s for sure.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
POV: Fskokh, Znosian Dominion Navy (Rank: Nine Whiskers)
Learning from his previous engagement with the predator fleet at Prinoe, Fskokh took the optional sleeping medication during the approach, keeping him far better rested this time. And from the freshened look of his bridge crew, most of them had done the same. The shifts were even timed so the most experienced primary crew would be on duty during times when important decisions would need to be made.
Despite its best-in-galaxy training regime, the Znosian Navy knew that combat experience was even more valuable. But Fskokh had never appreciated the full importance of that himself until he’d been in battle against the Great Predators. Suddenly, a lot of the practices in the institutional memory of the Znosian Navy made sense; traditions that had resulted in marginal returns or seemed pointless against the other predators they rolled over in their sleep… it was now clear why they needed those.
As they approached the enemy fleet and crossed an imaginary line he’d set, his computer officer reported right on time, “Nine Whiskers, we are almost at the enemy’s maximum powered missile envelope. We are… exactly ten minutes out.”
“Good.” Fskokh examined his battlemap satisfyingly. “We’ve come far enough, Six Whiskers. Secure the ship and prepare for the contingency.”
With a quick acknowledgement and as his order went out on the intercom, the bridge crew got to their emergency suits, donning the unwieldy equipment. All over the ship internal cameras, he saw officers and crew members get into battle stations, securing themselves and their equipment to the ship with their seat restraints. They’d rehearsed this movement as part of their combat station drills, and they did not disappoint; the full procedure was completed within three minutes.
“All crew in all squadrons at contingency stations, Nine Whiskers. Your orders, sir?”
Fskokh suppressed the elation and excitement rising in his chest. There would be time for that later. He cleared his throat and took a deep breath.
“Broadcast the State Security kill codes.”
Comments
Eric E
ill be honest. i thought it was some sort of genetically built in bomb to kill the buns not the ships. ships make more sense LOL.
Valdis Trautmanis
On the contrary, if it is what it appears to be, it would only be logical for every ship to have remote self-destruct codes in case a vessel falls into enemy hands. Think Prefix Codes for Starfleet ships and navigation lockouts on Goua'uld ships in Stargate
AnAbsoluteVillain
Kill codes! Oh nooooo... Anyway, I've acquired footage of Sophie training Krissy. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/LZK0BrmO3Tc
87894354
Quite the risk. Catarina said that the Republic stuff doesn't have backdoors. That makes sense. Time and time again, people have demanded the installation of backdoors while claiming that none of the Bad Guys would ever work out how to use them. And time and time again, the Bad Guys worked out how to use them. Now we find out that the bunnies have installed backdoors. And the bunnies are broadcasting the access codes while the Sonora is around to watch. If the bunnies are competent, the kill codes are likely different for each vessel. But if there's some database somewhere containing kill codes various ships, and if the secret squirrels somehow gain access to segments of it...
Nicolae
but at the same time biggest fuckup you could have ever done.
Nicolae
well done bunny's.
Eric E
if that is what i think it is. wow. i did not see that coming.
