LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Three

       29 October 2425

      TC/USNA CVS America

       Flag Bridge/CIC

       0507 hours, TFT

      Admiral Gray dropped into America’s Combat Information Center, the CIC, located in the carrier’s command tower just below the flag and ship bridge compartments. His physical body was still in the gentle grip of his command seat on the flag bridge, but the datastream feeding through his cerebral implants created the illusion—the perfect illusion—of standing one deck below, in CIC. Holographic projectors within the bulkheads gave him a realistic if insubstantial body.

      Mallory looked up from the tank, a 3-D display area at the center of the compartment. “Virtual admiral on deck,” he intoned.

      Gray nodded to Mallory as he approached. “What do we have, Dean?”

      “A very large number of Sh’daar fighters, Admiral. They were waiting when our fighters came through, and jumped them.”

      “Sh’daar fighters?”

      “We assume so, sir. They’re small—a couple of meters at the most. We’re not sure, but we think they may not be piloted by organic intelligence.”

      “AIs, then.”

      “Or remotely controlled from a command ship we haven’t spotted yet.”

      “That wouldn’t be likely. Knock out the command ship and we’d take out all of the fighters.”

      “Yes, sir. Exactly. More likely they’re acting as part of a massively parallel network.”

      “Meaning the whole swarm might be a single intelligence.”

      “Possibly, Admiral. Yes.”

      “Is there any chance that the swarm is part of some kind of sentry system?” Gray asked. “An automated defense network protecting this side of the triggah?”

      “We’re considering that possibility, Admiral,” a woman floating upside down from Gray’s perspective said. When he glanced at her, her ping data identified her as Lieutenant Commander Tonia Evans, and she was new to America’s personnel roster. “They act like an automated defense system.”

      He grinned. “And how would an alien defense net act?” he wondered. “What I want to know is why didn’t they challenge us, why didn’t they challenge the Demons when they first came through?”

      She looked unhappy. “Unknown, sir.”

      “One way or another, the Sh’daar have some explaining to do,” he said. “Attacking us for no reason at all was not in the armistice treaty.”

      Not that the Sh’daar necessarily understood that treaty, at least in the way humans did. Any agreement with such fundamentally different minds was going to be open to misunderstandings, misinterpretation, and outright confusion.

       Still, “Don’t attack us,” should be pretty straightforward.

      “We’re certain we’re in the right time?” Gray said.

      “Navigation has double-checked the star positions, Admiral,” Mallory said. “We’re definitely in the double-T. Between eighteen and twenty-three years after we were here last.”

       Good. We hit double-T—the temporal target. So what the hell is going on?

      Possibly, Gray thought, the attack on the battlegroup was simply the way the Sh’daar understood the treaty provisions: if the humans poked their noses into the N’gai Cluster of 876 million years in their past, they would get punched in the face.

      If that was the case—if they didn’t want humans hanging around in their epoch—they were going to love what the battlegroup had to offer them this time around.

      Making this a very short-lived armistice.

      “Targets within range,” Mallory announced. “Firing …”

      Beams lashed out from America’s main batteries, followed closely by beams and missiles from the battlegroup coming up astern. The enemy swarm began gathering, moving toward the fleet, even as 100-megaton blasts from Black Demon missiles continued to rip through the heaviest concentrations of Sh’daar ships. The carrier’s other fighter squadrons were just beginning to engage the enemy as well: VFA-31, the Impactors, and VFA-215, the Black Knights.

      A fourth fighter squadron, one brand new to America’s flight decks, hung back to provide close support for the battlegroup—VFA-190, the Ghost Riders.

      Gray heard the chatter among pilots as the fighters attacked, in tones ranging from ice-cold professionalism to shrill excitement.

      “Impactor Nine, moving in …”

      “Target lock … Fox One!”

      “Knight Three! Knight Three! You’ve got two on your six!”

      “I can’t shake them! I can’t—”

      America trembled as something struck the star carrier.

      “Hit to the shield,” Mallory reported. “We’re bleeding …”

      According to damage control, however, the damage was minor, a few hundred thousand liters of water spilling into hard vacuum and freezing as glittering grains of ice. Self-repair nano on the inner hull was already closing off the hole.

      “This is the Mitchell!” another voice called. “We’re taking heavy fire … damage to the main drive … damage to primary power … —Damn it! Mayday! Mayday!”

      A long stream of Sh’daar fighters had looped out and around, coming in on the frigate Mitchell from astern. On displays and within his own mind, Gray could see the ship, her stern crumpling as the artificially conjured black holes that plucked power from the vacuum spun out of control and began devouring the ship from within.

      Gray checked the tank to see which human ships were closest.

      “Diaz! Young!” he ordered. “Close in with the Mitchell! See if you can hold those bogies off!”

      It was too little, too late, though. The Mitchell died quickly, collapsing into her

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