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SAFES Liaison's Log, Science Vessel Searcher , September 23rd, 2555:

And so it comes. Almost from the moment that we arrived above Viisymel, some part of me has been expecting that our limited mission would eventually involve large-scale combat. I think that Admiral Williams has expected the same thing; more than that, I think she selected her command team with an eye towards having to face this situation. Given how much preparation has gone into this and how much competence has been gathered into one place, it galls me that my part in the plan would prove to be the weak link. I just got word from the science station Charles that the immense strain on the ripple gate systems caused by tunneling the Hammer and her escorts across the galaxy just barely avoided backfiring into the station's AI and essentially taking the gate down for weeks to come. But although we dodged a bullet, hundreds of fuses, breakers, and sacrificial circuits need to be replaced before we can attempt another mass-tunnel of ships. This means that, unless something changes, we won't have access to the Hammer-class ramming frigates to shield the transports and penetrate to the bulge spaces of Majesty. Moreover, Socrates has just finished calibrating our ultra-low frequency equipment and has discovered an extremely regular pulse of x-radiation... just like the pulse of a sonar apparatus and likely for the same purpose. This means that all this time, while we've been assuming that the Imperial Fleet has no way to pinpoint our position in space, they've had eyes on us the entire time-and our jamming equipment is not designed to disrupt sensors that operate on such a low frequency. I don't even want to try and wrap my head around the implications of this but the most obvious and immediate one is that their breaching ships will soon have the six points of location to draw a bead on the fleet. Our one saving grace is that there is no indication that the viis have ever pursued artificial intelligence technology and thus, they must rely on mundane supercomputers and the skill of their gunners to make the shot over an extreme distance on a moving target. All the while, thanks to skilled AIs like ATLAS, we'll be able to direct effective area bombardment against the Imperial Fleet. Still, that the admiral has to resort to area bombardment early and compensate for the absence of the Hammers partly due to my part of this effort is embarrassing.

On a different note, it's been a real treat looking over the equipment that SAFES designed especially for Lee's marines. The powered infantry armor is very flashy and a true engineering achievement but developing a limited-use specialized weapon is not nearly so impressive as augmenting the standard SAFA/G arsenal. Apparently, the armaments division designed a whole arsenal around the .45-70 pistol cartridge, taking advantage of the fact that the old round was revived for use in the standard heavy sub-machinegun. Their sidearms, their light automatic weapons, and even their rifles have been chambered to use a single cartridge. The most interesting, by far, is the lever-action copy of the 1873 Winchester repeater which is amusing to look at (since the original was designed over 700 years ago) but with modern engineering, it's fully as deadly as many of the standard assault rifles and enforces strict firing discipline because of the need to take a deliberate action to load each round into the firing chamber; all the advantages of a bolt-action gun with a much more efficient mechanism. They've also adapted a riot shield, of all the counterintuitive things, to be useful to a fast-moving hard-hitting assault force; if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I'd have scarcely believed it. No doubt, Lee's soldiers can make a very good fight of it if we can get them on board Majesty... which, it would seem, is the entire crux of the matter.

Dr. Melinda Campbell, SAFES

"As Ah see it, we have two objectives in this operation." General Lee said as Sera stood with him beside a holographic model of Majesty. "The first and most important is the capture of this Grand Admiral you seem so fond of. The second is the seizure of Majesty herself so she can eventually be hauled home and dissected by SAFES." He looked at her. "Am Ah correct, General?"

"Mostly." Sera replied. "They're more cocurrent than separate since a vital component of securing Majesty is killing or capturing the any forces on board capable of resisting. We regard the Grand Admiral as a vital target to take alive because he appears to have all the relevant information about viis tactics, dispositions, and armaments in his head. However, and please emphasize this to your marines, the ultimate purpose in even targeting the Grand Admiral is to take him off the board permenantly. His death would represent a grievious loss of intelligence but he is the only figure that we know of in their command structure with the intelligence and imagination to successfully prosecute a war. We can eventually learn what we need through other means; they have no way to replace him if he is captured-or killed."

"So...?"

"So make every effort to capture him alive but our mission will be considered a success if we lose Kaarchan but gain Majesty." Sera told him. "In fact, to be perfectly frank, if we deny them Majesty by destroying it, we'll still have removed the only ship in their fleet with the firepower to prevent a wholesale masssacre by the Haephestus Hammer's new weapon batteries. This is a mission that will be difficult to wholly fail, General, so it seems like an optimal assignment for a new form of infantry."

"My boys can take the ship if your boys can get them there." Lee assured her. "Regular infantry in standard armor with standard weapons could kill their garrisons and possibly their standard infantry as well. SAFES built a whole new arsenal for the marines."

"Including a full armored suit." Sera noted, thinking of Sergeant Zanardi.

"Oh, that's not just an armored suit, General." Lee grinned. "It's powered infantry armor. Those rigid plates on the limbs are covering a bunch of servomotors and they're carryin' enough battery power to go for up to 24 hours."

Sera stared at him. "Powered infantry armor? I thought SAFES chucked that in the scrap heap. Figured that infantry in armor that depends on electrical power would turn into sitting ducks if a wire got loose or something."

"Swastika changed their minds." Lee chuckled. "Came up with a design that allowed infantry to remain somewhat mobile in the event of a system failure. At least mobile enough to pop the releases and bail out at which point, the suits become good armored cover. In fact, some of my boys did this interesting trick in war games where they'd use the heavy carrying capacity to haul in tons of supplies and then just park the thing there as some sort of supply station. There were some mighty unhappy OpFor who thought my marines had run out of ammo only to get shot up when my boys reloaded from their empty suit."

"I'm guessing that the armor's pretty good."

"M50 staggers 'em but doesn't kill 'em." Lee confirmed. "They can actually fire an M40 with good accuracy but their standard weapon is an AR40. It's no fun trying to kill a marine in powered armor spraying you with .40 caliber bullets. And that, General, is just a taste; you should see some of my boys do hand-to-hand with enough power to penetrate a cinder-block wall."

"So what's the outfitted percentage?" Sera tried to keep calm but enticing visions of armor-clad marines maching straight through enemy fire with bullets boucing off flitted through her head.

"About... five, maybe six." Lee shrugged. "It's like any other weapon system, General, and its so exotic that you need extensive training. They're equivalent to tanks, ponderous and killed pretty easily if other infantry have the time to be creative and so, they're there to draw bullets while conventional infantry do most of the killing."

"Any other special toys your marines have that I should know about?"

"Riot shields. 'Cept bigger and better. In drills, we use them to rush a gun line becayse they're light for their size and damned hard to penetrate. Oh, and you can club enemies down with it. Usually, they never get back up." Lee paused thoughtfully. "There's a couple other things but they're still in combat trials. A shame... we could do some great things with the timed demolition charge launcher in corridors."

"Time demolition charge launcher?" Sera quirked an eyebrow. "Sounds like something you'd see on one of those old comedies about the army."

Lee smiled at that. "It's much more practical than Ah make it sound. It actually makes perfect sense, if you think on it. The problem for combat engineers is always getting their charges to the target so why not be able to plant the charges without physically walking there?"

"Yes, well, making a carrier out of an iceberg and sawdust made sense too, at some point." Sera chuckled. "So, we have the major objectives ironed out. Where are you planning on making entry?"

Lee tapped his chin thoughtfully as he looked over the model. "Obviously, we cannot make entry directly on one of the objective points." He observed. "Besides the fact that it will be heavily-irradiated, there's too high of chance that cutting tools will strike something important. Unless their design philosophy is astoundingly foolish, it is similarly impossible to make entry onto their bridge; it would be buried deeply and well-defended. We are certain that they must have at least two barracks areas: one for their slaves and another for garrison soldiers there to keep the slaves obedient. Likely, there are many of them spaced throughout Majesty for maximum coverage although they are important enough that we need not worry that we'll enter on one."

At this point, he stopped and continued looking at the hologram. Sera waited for a moment, thinking that the general was just taking a pause, before clearing her throat. "If those points aren't..."

"Give me a moment, please." Lee continued to look at the model for another minute before pointing to a point midway between the apparent front of the ship and the engines. "This will be the entry point for the first transport." He moved his finger to one of the hanger bays. "For the second." Then towards the front of the ship. "The third."

"With respect, General, it's probably not practical to go through the entry points for all twenty transports one-by-one and then go through the secondary points in the same manner." Sera gestured to the control pad at the base of the hologram. "Perhaps input them and have the projector highlight them all at once?"

"Of course." Lee nodded his assent. "Ah apologize, General... Ah am used to working with fewer transports." He turned and smirked slightly. "And more patient compatriots."

"Oh, I'm not the impatient one, General Lee... mistress Schedule, on the other hand, is extremely impatient." Sera smirked back. "The faster we decide where we begin, the more time we have to plan out what to do when we get there."

"Fair point." Lee began to input his proposed entry point while Sera consulted a data pad with an assets roster and combat team organization. Lee had apparently put a great deal of time and effort into building his squads, each one outfitted with the optimal weapon mix for heavy close quarters fighting, weighted towards shotguns and the excellent S30, a virtual carbon copy of the famous P90 of the 21st century. It was no surprise to Sera that each squad also had a rifle team, at least two sharpshooters who could pick off combat assets from a distance; Lee was, after all, American and to the Americans, every Marine is a rifleman. Interestingly, the command organization was very NCO-heavy, containing almost no commissioned officers at all.

"I see you're fond of your sergeants, General." She commented, scrolling through the list to see where the gunnery sergeant she'd met earlier was located.

"A Marine spends most of his life without hearing anything from headquarters." Lee replied, not looking up. "The sergeant is his general until he wins. Used to drive normal grunts nuts that they couldn't sow much confusion by cutting my squads off from their radios. They had to figure out which mean sonuvabitch was the boss and shoot him and even then, they spent more time than they liked getting shot up because my boys reverted to 'kill them till you're dead' when the boss 'died'. We taught lots of generals lots of hard lessons when we figured out how we wanted to fight battles." He looked up and grinned a bit. "Life's just not fair when you're fighting marines."

"How many of your boys have done real work?" Sera asked, finally spotting Zanardi at the head of one of the three-squad teams that would be packed into each transport.

"Every last one." Lee chuckled. "You think the old claw would let me use green wood to carve marines? No, each one has decorations, some of them have many." He furrowed his brow. "Ah am glad that we had a short time to rest after the long twilight. Another century or so to calm everyone down and Earth is finally at peace. Damn, General... Ah am so glad to fight somewhere other than my native land."

"It's been a few centuries since battles were fought in Virginia, General." Sera commented wryly. "It's a bit too well-defended to be raided like the savages used to. And a bit too far away from them."

"Don't be so provincial. Earth is my native land, General... all of it." Lee tapped a button and small red circles began blinking over the length of the model. "Here're my proposals for the landing sites."

Sera put her pad down and walked over for a closer look. Just like the squad organizations, the landing sites showed that the human was an old hand at this sort of thing: sites were dispersed enough that defenders couldn't concentrate their forces in one spot and counter them all but clustered enough that each site could immediately turn and pitch into the flanks of whatever forces were trying to contain another of the beachheads. Like Athena had reccommended, Lee had steered clear of the engineering sections, concentrating on the slightly narrower portion of the ship that ran between the rear and the bridge but even with his earlier protestations, there was a cluster situated to go straight for the bridge and Sera suspected that when it came time to plan out their attack, the bridge would be exactly where that cluster would go.

"I like it." She finally said. "Dispersed but concentrated, situated so that it'll be difficult to figure out exactly where our biggest blow will land until it does. I'm uncomfortable with the fact that their engine room is off limits; if they have a way to vent the radiation or that armor of theirs can be adapated for extremely high-radiation environments, they'll retain control of every vital system at its source. But there's really nothing to be done about it, I guess."

"We could see if Commodore Andropoli's bomber wings can torpedo it." Lee suggested. "It is, after all, unneccessary for it to move under its own power and if the rear section is just vaporized by their power source going up, that's one less part to worry about."

"I'll talk to him." Sera agreed. "So what are your plans for general command setup? I can see that Mr. Zanardi is in charge of that lower assault but how are we working the midship assaults?"

"You and Ah shall split command, naturally." Lee replied, looking taken-aback by the question. "Ah am considering reforming your infiltration team from the raid on the laboratory since you have worked at least once with all of the members and twice with most of them. They're not my marines but SpecOps wanted to steal each and every one of 'em at some point or another. Beyond that, however, Ah have worked with Sergeant Morris and Miles Prower is a legend."

"A legend in what way?" Sera perked her ears with interest. "I know that he's a gifted medic and has a perfect eidetic memory but legendary?"

"More among the medical community than the general public." Lee admitted. "Ah am only aware because my granddaughter was involved in a very serious mountaineering accident and Captain Prower's photograph was in the lobby of the emergency room she was taken to. Ah asked about it, having met him and been impressed by him, and was told that during his tenure at the hospital, he was called the 'Angel of the Emergency Room'. Supposedly, he had a 5-year career and never once lost a patient which even Ah recognize is extremely unusual."

"I'm not sure I buy that but he must have been extraordinary if he got his own legend." Sera smiled.

"Ah admit that Ah half believe it, General." Lee shook his head. "Ah have never seen a medic as good as him and Ah've been around for a good long time."

"I doubt all that many medics were trauma surgeons." Sera stared at the projection for a moment. "This is a big thing to wrap my head around, General Lee... wargames are fine and I have some experience slaughtering fools who run madly at my killzones but I've never really been in combat."

"Hell of a time to see the elephant, General, but it's high time you did." Lee commented wryly. "But take heart: the strategy side of your duo has already figured things out and Ah am here to help tactically. Tomorrow, our fleet expands by a command ship and our POW population adds a Grand Admiral; it's a time to be happy and eager, not gloomy."

Sera laughed. "We're not going to win with the power of positive thinking."

"How else do you win a fight?" Lee looked completely serious. "At the end of tomorrow, Ah will be triumphant on an alien warship; where do you plan to be?"

"Sharing a cup of tea with the Grand Admiral in an interrogation room, having returned safely after winning." Sera grinned impishly. "You see, I plan to win and return alive."

Lee laughed at that. "That's the spirit, General. Ah advise that you stand ready because Ah suspect that we move as soon as the ramming ships are in place. Ah'll be interested to see what the plan is."

"I thought Shadow already..."

"No plan survives first contact with the enemy." Lee shrugged. "Enemies never do precisely what you want them to and so, the best commanders are the ones who still have a plan when the rules change. Ah believe Admiral Williams to be one such commander and thus, Ah am interested to see what her plan will be."

"Probably some variation of 'kill them all; God will know His own.'" Sera chuckled. "Really, what else would she do? Whether the fleet is forced to withdraw or pull us out or something else, it will immediately become necessary to bombard the Imperial Fleet to limit its movements and attack options."

"Ah suppose that we will see." Lee crossed his arms and looked pensively at the hologram. "Well, Ah have preparations to make with my boys, General. Ah would estimate that the load order will come within the next day as all the Hammers require is fuel for their reactors."

"I heard. Robotic ships, are they?"

"We'd hardly be using them for kamikaze work if there was anyone alive aboard." Lee turned and looked at her. "Unless you actually believed that Admiral Williams would trade lives for progress."

"You would." Sera pointed out. "I would. Shadow would. If you're in command, there will come a moment when you need to achieve something important and order the people who're willing to die to achieve something important to risk their lives. Some of them will die; if circumstances are good, most will not."

"Point." Lee conceded. "But no, there is no living person aboard the Hammers. There are low-level AIs but as ATLAS will attest, they are incredibly sophisticated computing machines, not people."

"True enough." Sera agreed. "Well, I have a few people I need to consult with before I lay my part of our grand design. I'll be seeing you, General Lee."

"Yes ma'am." Lee snapped her a quick salute as he turned back to the hologram.

"Ladies and gentlemen, zero hour is upon us." Shadow announced from the makeshift podium at the front of the large briefing room. "Captain Sakura has confirmed arrival of the Hammer ramming ships, a combination of every one of the vessels currently operational in SAFN. As we speak, they are assuming a standard shield formation and will hold in place until joined by the boarding transports. The transports will embark as a group from the Haephestus Hammer and remain behind the shield in a holding pattern until cleared to move. Assuming that the snub attacks on Majesty and the jamming vessels are successful, you should enjoy fairly smooth sailing and close-watch fire support. We are fully expecting a second viis fleet to arrive as reinforcement; fortunately, you won't have to worry about what's happening outside your target."

"With respect, ma'am, why the hell not?" One of the soldiers called out. "If they come in with one of those superbattleships..."

"Simply put, they can't drop into a system close to a major gravitational body without those gates of theirs." Shadow replied, almost seeming to expect the question. "Their reinforcement fleet has to travel cross-country to get to us which means that we'll see them coming far enough away for the Manticores to draw a bead. We can't kill Majesty with the battleships because it's in front of an inhabited world; its reinforcements aren't going to be that lucky. The spinal cannon hit hard enough to crack even one of those superbattleships in half. In any event, unless the Grand Admiral's suicidal and has the reinforcements destroy Majesty to kill you, which would be stupid on an unimaginable scale with angry battleships kicking them in the ass, they can't interfere with your boarding action."

"And if the fleet is forced to pull out?" The soldier persisted. "We ain't capturing an island, boss, where we can just hunker down and hope for the best. You can't vent part of an island into vaccum."

"That's for your officers to know and you to find out." Shadow responded drily. "If your officers are too dense to make use of the information I'll be giving them, well, General Lee stole your ass from the Steel Corp because he thought you could handle a little hiccup like that."

Random chuckling broke out at the wry reply and, after waiting for a moment to see if anyone else would speak up. Shadow continued. "Your specific objectives, movements, and disposition will be given to you in unit briefings but your broad goal is to neutralize the superbattleship Majesty by either destroying its functionality or its crew. It is the belief of I and the other commanders in this task force that the most efficient way of doing this is capturing the main bridge. Your secondary goal, which does not supercede your primary goal, is to capture the Grand Admiral alive for debriefing by SAFI; if this proves untenable, you are to ensure that he is killed. Our intelligence indicates that he represents the most significant source of strategic vision and overall military command skill that the viis are in posession of; removing him from the playing field, therefore, is likely to do major harm to their military effectiveness. Moreover, gaining access to his knowledge of viis military assets and doctrines would represent a crippling blow against their ability to effectively threaten the task force."

"Respect, Admiral, but if our plan allows us to destroy their shields and bulge spaces so we can penetrate Majesty, why not simply bombard it to death?" Gunnery Sergeant Zanardi asked from his place near the front. "If the primary goal is to neutralize Majesty, it would seem that the best way would be to destroy it and remove the Grand Admiral from the playing field that way. It would not risk the lives of soldiers and both your goals would be achieved."

"Destroying the ship by bombardment makes it impossible to verify that the Grand Admiral is dead before he'd moved out of our reach." Shadow replied. "The only way to ensure verification is an observed kill and that method opens up two possibilities that simple destruction does not: capturing a functional example of viis technology, representing the pinnacle of their capabilities, and capturing the one source that posesses all the data we couldn't steal from the Imperial Archives. I would prefer that we could do these things without casualities but it is unavoidable."

"Well, boss, ours is not to reason why..." He grinned and turned back to look at the marines around him. "...but to shoot the foe and make him die."

"Hoo-ah!" The marines around him proclaimed.

Shadow laughed. "I think I like yours better than the original, Gunnery Sergeant." She told him. "Generals Wilson and Lee have formulated your specific plan of attack and unless I'm mistaken, they're prepared to give combat team leaders their assignments. The rest of your devil dogs are dismissed."

Sera looked over at Lee as the non-officers broke up and began milling around. "Given that my command experience is primarily on-the-ground squad command, General, I believe you're better suited to command briefings than I."

"Ah was hoping you'd ask me to fly solo, General." Lee smiled. "Ah believe that you'd be best suited to liason with the Admiral, especially over Major Obsydien and Sergeant Morris' suggestion that we augment our loadout with some of the more... exotic weapons in the ship armories. Some of the armory inventories list Mark Fives, for example."

"Bullets know no mercy and soldiers accustomed to regarding 'the other' as a lower creature cannot be counted upon to be honorable." Sera replied a bit defensively. Lee didn't even need to vary his tone; simply mentioning the goodly number of flamethrowers was a question in and of itself. "It is an evil weapon but it terrifies like none other; if anything can shatter unit cohesion and break the will to fight, it's the hungry growl of a flame rifle."

Lee looked curiously at her. "General, the Mark Five is a standard component of a marine urban assault loadout. Ah know that many officers are uncomfortable with flamethrowers, given the long history of international conventions banning its use, but war is hell and to the victors belong the power to decide what is and is not a war crime."

Sera smiled, feeling oddly relieved by Lee's answer. "I appreciate not having to defend flamethrowers to you, General Lee."

"Serafine, for the time being, you and Ah will be colleagues. Ah am not adverse to a superior officer calling me by my proper Christian name although Ah object to being called 'Jim'." He smiled slightly. "Ah believe we've been calling one another by our titles or surnames for longer than necessary."

"Of course." Sera acknowledged. "Well, it seems that I have a conversation to have with Admiral Williams and you have one with Gunnery Sergeant Zanardi and his brethren."

Barely had Sera turned away from Lee than she found herself face-to-face with Shadow, who had apparently been just as set to talk to Sera as Sera was to her. Shadow, who didn't seem at all taken aback by how close they found themselves, adroitly gave Sera a peck on the cheek before they both stepped back to a more polite distance.

"Great minds think alike." Shadow commented, indicating Sera should follow her away from the hanger to a more private location, nor to mention one removed from the dull roar of conversation around them. "I thought you looked like you needed to talk to me."

"Yeah." Sera nodded as they slipped through one of the bay doors. "First, a formality: Akeya and Boom think it'd be smart to open up Marauder's armories and augment Lee's marines' loadouts. Any objections?"

Shadow blinked and quirked an eyebrow at her. "Besides sort of wondering what marines fighting in ship hallways would need rocket launchers for?"

"I believe they were more thinking of things like supplementing their standard submachineguns with machine-pistols and Tommies. Maybe getting a few SH20Gs for heavy support that's a bit more portable than a full machinegun." Sera retorted wryly. "Marines are tilted towards the lightly-armed expeditionary unit end of things after all."

"Fair point." Shadow acknowledged. "That it?"

"So what happens if the fleet is forced to pull out?" Sera crossed her arms. "You got away with the comic answer because the grunts sort of expected it but I'd really like to know the answer."

"Frankly, the question is moot." Shadow grimaced. "The fleet isn't going to be forced to pull out because if it comes to a forced pull-out, it can't pull out. I suspect that all of Earth's fleets combined aren't large enough to screen a withdrawal if a multiple-system empire brings all its fleets home to crush us. Defeating the fleet that's here, and ripping into reinforcements as they come, is the only strategy available to us and it's only available to us because they apparently never developed the technology to get from any point A to any point B in a matter of hours."

"I can see why you didn't want to tell the marines that." Sera's brow furrowed. "So this is essentially a do-or-die engagement, isn't it?"

"It is." Shadow nodded. "But the deck is stacked in our favor at this moment and if we seize it, we improve our chances, especially if Leviathan decides to rush a refit and give us another supership."

"I really hope they plug in the right AI this time." Sera sighed. "I barely got to hear anything from Vulcan but it's clear that he doesn't have the disposition for a real fight. I hope we don't end up needing anything more than a fancy artillery battery."

Shadow patted her on the back. "Don't worry about it, dear... I have a solution to the Vulcan problem. And I'm definitely going to send a nastygram to Leviathan. Not a profane one, mind you, but asking whose bright idea it was to plug Vulcan into a warship embarresses them just enough for it to sting a little, without being outright rude."

"What sort of solution...?"

"Admiral?" ATLAS' voice suddenly intruded on the conversation, coming from no particular direction as it always did.

"Yes, ATLAS?"

"Big ol' heap of trouble." ATLAS sounded nervous, the first time Sera had heard any emotion other than lightheartedness from the AI.

Shadow's brow furrowed immediately. "The Imperial Fleet?"

"Scattering. Sort of like a bunch of ships expecting to be subjected to area bombardment and wanting to be in a good position to return the favor. Oh, and we can't put your cunning plan into action because there's some sort of complication at the Earth end of the ripple gate."

Shadow grimaced. "It's like they knew what we were planning and timed it just right."

"I wouldn't put mind-reading passed the Grand Admiral, boss, but I think we just got bitch-slapped by Murphy's Law." ATLAS responded with a touch of wryness. "Oh, and this latest news? Not the worst of it but you'll have to talk up Socrates to get the whole story."

"There's something worse than the Imperial Fleet making preparations to attack us?" Sera looked up at the ceiling.

"Oh, you betcha General." ATLAS's tone switched immediately to overblown cheer. "Socrates seems to think that their one-hit-kill breaching ships will soon have a bead on us. Much worse than a simple firefight, wouldn't you agree?"

Sera gaped. "How? We can't see one another with anything but the naked eye!"

"You're asking me? I'm not a science geek, General, and I don't smoke a pipe. Ask the eccentric fuzzy in a smoking jacket."

"We're heading to the command post on the next deck up, ATLAS." Shadow told her. "Get Socrates on the horn and ready to explain himself."

"Happily done, Admiral." ATLAS replied brightly. "He'll be ready when you are."

"Great." Shadow took off along the hall, walking, practically jogging, to the nearest lift.

"Think our smart friend in the giant ship made us?" Sera asked her, matching the vigorous pace easily.

"He couldn't have." Shadow shook her head quickly. "There's nothing he could possibly see that would lead him to conclude that we're preparing to assault the fleet. Haephestus Hammer looks, from the outside, like what it was originally designed to be and the ratio of forces is still extremely adverse."

"Then what?"

Shadow visibly thought about this a minute. "The Kaa." She concluded as they reached the lift and she punched the call button. "He must have gotten bored with the Grand Admiral waiting for reinforcements and demanded action."

"He must have a pretty short fuse then." Sera smiled slightly. "This standoff has been going on for only a few days."

Shadow shrugged as the lift arrived and she stepped on. "Who knows? Maybe he's pissed off about the palace raid. Maybe the Grand Admiral painted an overly optimistic picture for him. Maybe the reinforcements are so delayed that he didn't want to wait. Without the Grand Admiral in an interrogation room, it's hard to come up with even a good guess."

"So what are you thinking we'll do about this?" Sera leaned against the chest-high lift bars. "Assuming that they're scattering so they can attack with less chance of being destroyed, what'll we do?"

"Commence a full-scale bombardment immediately." Shadow replied instantly. "It's the only option we have without the Hammers. Doctor Campbell hasn't found any indication that the viis have ever tried to research AI technology so they have to rely on normal gunners which gives us a massive long-ranged advantage. ATLAS, for example, can hit a 500-meter drifting target with eighty-five percent success at just under two hundred kilometers."

Sera's eyebrows went up. "I'm no engineer but that must require insane amounts of computing power."

"It does. That's why ATLAS has access to six of the highest grade supercomputers working in tandem." Shadow smiled. "Irreverent she might occassionally be but the value of immense computing power, directed by a fully sentient intelligence, applied wholly to combat is why big ships like Executor have the BSY Core."

"So we commence area bombardment immediately, get them stunned and bleeding...?"

"And wait." The lift doors opened and Shadow departed, Sera beside her. "We do not have the numbers to cripple the Imperial Fleet, even with the advantage of precision at range, so seizing their biggest asset is the only way to come out ahead."

"So no matter what, we have to get the marines to Majesty." Sera shook her head. "I don't know how we're going to do that, Shadow, against an aroused foe that knows they're being attacked."

"Have some faith, dear." They reached the doors to the command post ans Sera blinked a moment, realizing that the doors were thickly armored, almost identical to the setup for the armories aboard the Marauder. As the doors creaked open to admit them, she half expected a large room full of highly sophisticatd equipment; that it contained only the simplest of machines and was just large enough that a 10-person command team could squeeze in took her aback as they entered.

"Tad spartan, is it not?" ATLAS has apparently lost no time in routing him because the face of Socrates' robotic avatar, placidly smoking his pipe, was waiting for them on the communications screen.

"It has the essentials and it's thickly-armored." Shadow replied with an indifferent shrug. "That, however, doesn't matter nearly as much as how their breaching ships can be tunneling through our jamming."

Socrates blinked and then sighed. "What were ATLAS' exact words on this matter?"

"That the breaching ships would soon have a bead on us." Sera told him. "Which sort of implies that they can see their targets through the jamming."

"Well, of course they can... the jamming doesn't make us invisible."

"You know what I mean."

"I do, in fact." Socrates switched the pipe to the other side of his mouth. "To be more precise, it is not the breaching ships themselves that are tunneling through the white noise we're generating. Because of the signals that we ourselves are using to jam their sensors, I cannot be entirely sure of the source but I have noticed extremely intense surges of x-rays on an extremely regular basis, much in the way that someone recording the ratio waves from a radar set would notice regularly-timed pulses of radio signal. I thus conclude that the x-rays stand a better than 90% chance of being used for the same purpose. Whatever the source of these surges, it is evidently removed enough from us that it can transmit a signal to the breaching ships supplying them with precise aiming coordinates."

"Have you eliminated astrological...?" Shadow trailed off as Socrates fitted her with a very dim look. "Never mind... of course you have. So why isn't our jamming suite scrambling those surges?"

"We do not use x-rays for that purpose nor were any scientists to this point aware that they could be used for that purpose." The pipe switched sides again. "Our jamming gear interferes with every form of detection apparatus of which we are aware; we were unaware of this one and thus, it is unaffected."

"Clever." Shadow grimaced. "Is there anything Searcher can do about this?"

"Nothing." Socrates looked a bit ashamed. "The ship is designed to be hypersensitive to all forms of radiation for scientific purposes, not to in any way affect them. However, I suggest that you speak to Captain Santos as the monitoring suite of a Delpi-II warship is specifically designed for the purpose of electronic countermeasures and electronic counter-countermeasures. If they are told what to look for, it is concievable that they could find it."

"I'll have a word with her. Thank you, Socrates."

"I am always pleased to be of assistance." Socrates smiled. "If I may, Admiral, while I have no scientific basis for the postulation, I do have a statistically probable guess as to the source of the x-ray surges."

Shadow quirked an inquisitive brow at the badger. "I'm listening."

"Based on the lack of other artificial objects in this space and taking into account predictable signal decay influenced by local cosmic background radiation, and also factoring in the high levels of artifical signal influencing said..."

"Socrates..."

"Those ring-like structures that the viis use as a hyperluminal transit network." Socrates concluded. "They are outside our strongest ECM envelope and could thus theoretically be taking readings and conveying them to the Imperial Fleet."

"So we'd have to start attacking stations about which we know nothing to stop their breaching ships from drawing a bead on important warships and killing them." Shadow sighed. "Perfect. And we still don't have the Hammers to go forward with the attack on Majesty."

"No plan survives first contact with the enemy, Admiral." Socrates observed sympathetically. "I deeply regret adding to your burdens."

"You're doing your job in an exemplary fashion, Socrates." Shadow replied quietly. "It's not your fault that doing your job well makes mine harder."

"Still, I regret the circumstances." Socrates bowed his head and the communications screen went blank. Shadow immediately thumped the nearby table with a fist.

"Dammit... I should have accounted for the possibility that this would happen." She growled. "Allowed myself to think that they did everything our way instead of considering that they might have different technical methods."

Sera sighed and hugged her friend from behind. "You're not perfect, dear." She said, giving one of Shadow's ears a friendly nip. "These things just happen."

Shadow sighed and leaned back against the hug. "I suppose they do." They remained like that a minute, Shadow leaning into the hug, Sera resting her jaw on her friend's shoulder, before Shadow turned her head slightly. "If only we had a way to breach the Majesty's armor enough for the assault transports to drill through. It's hard to believe that there's only one weapon in all of SAFN's arsenal that can do the job."

"Well, it's not as if we can jury-rig some sort of superlaser onto the..." Sera stopped for a moment and thought. "Hey Shadow... how many Stryker-class frigates do we have in the fleet?"

"Three... four... I'd have to ask..."

"Seven, Admiral." ATLAS supplied. "Marauder, of course, and the escorts for the Yamato Banner and Haephestus Hammer."

"Thanks, ATLAS." Sera pecked Shadow's cheek. "OK, next question: how efficient is that ablative material at preventing the armor from being heated by constant fire?"

"Heated?" ATLAS sounded confused. "Well... marginally but... that's..." She paused. "General, you're a genius."

"She is?" Shadow leaned forward enough that she could look back at Sera.

"Yeah, I am." Sera grinned. "Hypothetical question: how much do you have to heat the steel beams in a skyscraper to cause it to collapse?"

"Thirteen-seventy celsius. Why?"

"Mmm... nope." Sera grinned. "Nine hundred eighty. Starts losing strength at four hundred and loses ninety percent by one thousand."

Shadow frowned and then her eyes widened. "You're thinking that if the Stryker-class frigates prepare the armor by concentrating their SIB batteries, the transports can slice through it."

"Exactly." Sea hugged her tighter. "Well... almost. My thinking is that the SIB batteries can heat the armor enough that it'll collapse inward from whatever artificial gravity setup Majesty has, thus opening up the inner hull to the cutting instruments of the transports. It'd be delicate manuevering through the resulting hole, but not too much more intricate than getting your orientation and elevation exactly perfect on a moving target while defensive batteries are spraying lead."

"It'd be very hazardous." Shadow pointed out. "The Strykers are large enough to be hit by anti-capital batteries and don't enjoy the extremely thick shielding and armor of a converted asteroid-smasher."

"So pull your solution to Vulcan and have the Hammer suppress enemy batteries." Sera responded. "It's not a warship but its big guns are designed to be ship-killers with a fast enough recycle rate to single-handedly kill multiple capital ships in an orbital assault scenario. Granted, the stripped-down versions aren't nearly as powerful individually but they're amply powerful enough to rip the fangs out of Majesty."

"I don't know about that, Sera." Shadow frowned. "I'm reluctant to play my trump card early and turning the Hammer to 'kick-ass-take-names' mode before I really need to is a pretty valuable card."

Sera looked curiously at her. "What kind of solution are you contemplating? Short of replacing Vulcan with ATLAS..."

"Athena, actually." ATLAS interjected. "Speaking of such, Admiral, she wishes to remind you that she will kick your tail up between your ears if you let her body die while she's in the Matrix."

"You can do that?" Sera stared, open-mouthed. "You can hook a living person up to a BSY Core and have them take over?"

"I can hook an AI up to a BSY Core and have them take over." Shadow corrected her. "Like a wholly biological person, all that makes Athena who she is resides in her head; the rest is just flesh. And because her brain is actually a high-powered machine, disconnecting Vulcan and connecting Athena is quite simple."

"And when you plug my sexy copy into a supership with big guns, she can kick ass just like I do. But her guns will be bigger." ATLAS added, sounding excited. "It'll be like watching my little girl grow up and go into the family business, with the obvious exception that the little girl is me. But the Admiral is right: you want to flip the switch when it'll do the most good and the best time is when everyone assumes that the giant mobile dock is nothing more than an artillery battery."

"Sounds sort of... uh... risky."

"As long as we keep the primitive brain simulation module online, it'll keep her body alive." Shadow sighed. "In theory, at least. It's never been easy to determine how much of a crossover there is between the part that keeps the body alive and the part that does the rest but no matter how pissed Athena would be if her body died, there's no risk to Athena herself."

"That's something, at least." Sera nodded. "So, when should we get this party started?"

"I'm thinking... immediately." Shadow slipped out of the embrace and looked up towards the ceiling. "ATLAS, tell all carrier captains, especially Andropoli and Wong, to scramble attack groups, special emphasis on attack groups with dumb weapons. Get the marines into their transports, or at least getting ready to roll out, and start chatting up the littoral warships to get them into an assault formation with bombardment emphasis. Emphasize to Santos that she'll remain in battle-control mode and in a very safe place until I, you, or Andropoli says otherwise. Make sure the Manticores are ready to snipe their counterparts, carriers, and battleships in that order when the jamming goes down but emphasize that if Searcher gets an eye on incoming heavies, they're to abort whatever they're doing and prepare to kill the biggest baddest thing that pops out onto their radar."

"Acknowledged, Admiral." ATLAS replied, now business-like. "I already have repeats and confirms from the carriers. They estimate that all assets will be flying within three minutes. General Lee replies that his marines still need to get to the arsenals on the Strykers to be best-prepared, but adds that his boys could take Majesty with just their sidearms if you asked it."

Shadow smiled at that. "Tell him that he's got as much time as he needs; pulling the fangs and killing the dangerous ships in that fleet is going to take time."

"Telling him, ma'am." ATLAS reported. "Any other orders to convey?"

"No. Raise Captain Santos." Shadow turned to Sera. "Despite what I had ATLAS tell General Lee, dear, we'll need to get the marine mobile at a moment's notice. You'd better collect the team from the laboratory raid and get them topped off. This time, General, it's your squad."

"Yes, I sort of expected that it would be." Sera smiled. "Small unit command. The thing I was trained to do, have experience doing, and do well at."

"Making you work on the higher strategic tier hasn't hurt anything." Shadow observed. "Now you'd better get going. Have a safe trip, love."

"Don't try to be a hero, Shadow, and I'll have a safe trip." Sera leaned over and gave Shadow's cheek a quick affectionate lick. "See you on the other side, hun."