Chapter 2: Ill Met by Torchlight

Rear Admiral Bob Blake welcomed his guest, "Dr. Singh, thank you for taking the time to visit us here. How was your trip from Azahar?"

"It is my great pleasure to be here, Admiral, though I must confess that the trip was somewhat tedious. At least it allowed my team to get caught up on documenting our recent experiments. I am only too happy to present our suggestions for your fascinating problems in person."

"I'm all ears, Doctor."

"You gave us two problems, sir. Firstly the passive nature of the Hive Spheres under construction that you wish to target and secondly the lack of potential for secondary explosions in such partially complete targets. We decided that the first problem has the higher priority, because if we can't even hit the target then any secondary explosions are moot. We propose to solve the first problem by changing the target from a passive to an active target."

Bob raised an eyebrow to question the doctor.

"We suggest using a laser to illuminate the target, so we can use missiles with simple active seeker guidance to home in on it. That means that the target is no longer passive, solving the first problem of how to hit it."

"There are some issues for further clarification, but in principle I can see that target illumination could be useful. What about the second problem, Doctor?"

"I am afraid our solution to that difficulty is rather less elegant, sir. We simply use brute force – an attack with a large number of missiles. If we cannot rely on secondary explosions in the target, then we have to compensate by causing more primary explosions with our own ordnance. It lacks elegance, but it is simple, and doable within the limits of what we can allow the Sa'arm to potentially capture.

"The obvious alternative was to use fewer missiles with larger warheads, but we decided to limit ourselves to the known power of existing Sa'arm warheads. Within that limit, the multiple missile solution is simplest. We always need to be wary of letting the Sa'arm capture something that they can turn round and use against us."

Bob thought for a second. "I can see two immediate practical problems. First, how do you protect the laser from attack? As soon as the Swarm see it they will try to destroy it. And second, how do you get all those missiles near enough to the target? Our fleet would be very vulnerable that close in. Our previous attack used stealth, and the entire fleet cannot be that stealthy."

Dr. Singh smiled. "We have ideas to solve both of those issues, sir. We have made more progress with the target illumination problem and have put together a paper with our thoughts: 'Aspects of stealthy long-range target illumination by laser.' Your AI has a copy. Our ideas for the delivery of the missiles still require some work, and we need a few experiments on the Sa'arm to determine some of the parameters required for a working solution."

"And how do you propose to experiment on the Sa'arm, Doctor?"

Dr. Singh smiled yet again, "We will throw rocks at them, sir."

The rock fell towards the primary, accelerating as the star's gravity pulled it inwards. For billions of years it had been just another piece of rock orbiting this star along with its many companions in the asteroid belt. This rock, however, was different. This rock had been nudged.

As the rock fell, the Swarm noticed it. They tracked it. They extrapolated its path. This particular rock was a bullseye, headed straight for the more complete of the two Hive Spheres they were constructing. The Sa'arm collective came to a decision, it was easier to move the partly completed Sphere a short distance than it was to destroy the rock or shift it into a different orbit. They started making preparations to move the Sphere to a safe distance. Such a thing could not be done instantly. Meanwhile, in the asteroid belt, other eyes were watching.

Captain McCluskie checked the sensor feeds. The Swarm were moving their Sphere away from the path of the rock. At its closest approach, the rock was 23.8 klicks from the Sphere. That was one of the figures the scientists wanted. Quite why it was so important she didn't know, but it was important enough to use an FTL message drone to carry the information back to base. Once the drone was on its way, her scout ship moved to a new position – no point in taking any needless risks. Launching the drone would probably be the most excitement she and her crew would have on this mission. Good. Excitement could be very bad news indeed for a scout.

Another rock was nudged. Slowly spinning on its axis, it fell towards the repositioned Hive Sphere. This second rock was just off a bullseye; it would pass 26 kilometres from the Sphere. Were the Swarm suspicious? Two close rocks was surely too much of a coincidence. Who can tell what the Swarm thought? All that the watchers could see was their reaction – they completely ignored the second rock. It would pass more than the 23.8 klicks from the Sphere, so they presumably considered it to be at a safe distance.

Ice filled the back of the pod; a carefully engineered arrangement of water ice and dry ice. A lot of cooling would be needed over a short time, and ice was a convenient way to provide it. Radiant cooling alone just couldn't do the job out in space. Ahead of the ice came the power sources. All that power needed the ice to cool it, the Second Law ensured that. The power came from batteries, capacitors, reactors and even some simple turbine-driven generators. No one source could supply the required level of power for the required time. Only a well-balanced mixture of sources could do that. Ahead of the power sources was the array of lasers that needed all that power. This was a Torch, a flashlight. A Torch the size of a pod, but still a Torch.

A third rock was nudged with intent. The third act of the play passed exactly as the second act had. The players all knew their parts and the script hadn't changed. The incomplete Sphere sat passively unmoving while the rock passed by at a safe distance. If something worked once for the Sa'arm they remembered it and repeated it. Why would they change a winning strategy?

"Everything went the same as before?" Admiral Blake asked.

"Yes, sir," Bittor replied. "Scouts have confirmed that the Hive Sphere just sat there twenty-six kilometres from the rock, exactly like the last time. They seem to ignore anything that's not too close."

"Good. Is the Torch ready?"

"Yes, sir. It has passed its tests and is in position."

"The fourth rock?"

"It's ready, sir. Loaded and tested."

"Excellent. Any reasons not to go forward with the operation?"

"No, sir. We've tested everything and it's all as ready as we can make it."

"Very well, Bittor. Start Operation Torchlight tomorrow. H-hour at 11:00."

"Yes, sir."

A fourth rock fell. Like the previous three, it was spinning slowly on its axis, taking about fifty seconds to make a full rotation. As with the previous two, it would pass 26 kilometres from the Hive Sphere. As with the previous two, the Sa'arm ignored its approach.

The Torch was warmed up and ready: reactors coming to full power, cooling systems running. The lasers were aimed at the target. The AIs had calculated the timings. Some of the players were still moving into position, but they would be ready on cue. Soon the stage would be lit. Everything waited on the final touch ....

"Switch on!"

Power flowed through the lasers, and heat flowed back into the ice. First the dry ice sublimated into carbon dioxide gas, clearing channels for steam to follow. Those channels led to turbines, which added their extra quota of power to the array of lasers. The gas left the pod through valves to keep the correct pressure inside the pod body. Further heat melted the ice to water, boiled it to steam and then to pressurised superheated steam. The steam followed the channels planned for it, contributing yet more energy to the turbines and so to the lasers. All the while, the AI-controlled attitude jets kept the lasers aligned correctly onto the target.

One minute. Two minutes. After two minutes and thirty seconds, the controlling AI adjusted the attitude jets slightly to begin moving the Torch slowly backwards, still keeping the lasers on target. After the laser burn finished they would be moving the Torch elsewhere, before the Swarm came looking for it.

Three minutes. The lasers shut off, the waiting tender grappled the slowly moving pod and towed it back to attach to the nearby transport. They would be in hyperspace before the Swarm knew anything about what had happened here.

The fourth rock fell. Five minutes before its closest approach to the Hive Sphere, clocks awoke monochromatic sensors on its surface. To the sensors all appeared dark. They waited .... Light! The sensors activated explosive bolts on the first set of covers, blowing them off into space. Underneath each cover was a densely packed array of missiles. Two seconds later, the missiles activated and ripple fired, racing away to seek their targets. The laser light was very monochromatic, so the seeker heads on the missiles were very simple – find the right colour target and hit it. A few missiles headed for smaller Sa'arm ships caught in the light-beam from the laser while the rest accelerated straight for the biggest, brightest target in the vicinity: the nearly complete Hive Sphere.

There were 512 missiles in the first wave. Three failed to fire, two collided with floating covers and the hastily activated enemy defences caught eighteen. The other 489 found Sa'arm targets lit up by the laser. As the rock rotated, more sensors came to bear on the illuminated Sphere and 505 more missiles launched successfully. And a third time. And a fourth time. By the time the fourth batch of missiles bore on target, the Sa'arm had reacted and were pounding the rock with everything within range. A rock was just a rock: not edible, not a threat, possibly a source of minerals. The Sa'arm quickly reclassified this rock as a threat, so it triggered their usual reaction to a threat. Despite the damage, some of the fourth wave of missiles managed to launch, adding to the mayhem around the Sphere. Close to two thousand missiles arrived in less than a minute, swamping the Sa'arm defences.

Almost every Swarm ship lit up by the laser had taken some damage from missiles, and many had been completely destroyed by the missile storm. The non-military construction vessels suffered worst, since they were not designed to withstand repeated hits. As for the Sphere itself, multiple missile strikes had torn a huge chunk out of its illuminated side.

The surviving Swarm warships, mainly those from within the shadow of the Sphere, completed the destruction of the rock, soon reducing it to gravel. By then the laser had switched off. They tried, of course, but they never found the Torch. All they found were traces of carbon dioxide and water in the asteroid belt, over twenty light minutes from the Sphere. The Torch had been long gone before they even arrived.

"What were the results from the Torchlight attack, Bittor?" Rear Admiral Blake asked.

"Very good, sir. We destroyed over one-third of the targeted Hive Sphere and about half of the support vessels and orbital infrastructure around it. That is almost the best result we could have looked for. A definite success, sir."

"I would have expected to strike half the Hive Sphere, after all, the Torch illuminated half of it."

"It did, sir, but the rock was off to one side, out of the beam of the Torch. If it had been in the beam, then too many of the missiles would have mistaken the rock itself for their target and attacked it instead of the Sphere. We ran some simulations which showed there was a real problem. The missiles were deliberately kept simple, with no intelligent target recognition capability, just the specific colour of the laser. With the rock outside the beam, the missiles easily found better targets. Because the missiles were coming in from one side, the Hive Sphere looked like a gibbous moon, not a full moon."

"Yes, I can see that. How did the Swarm react to the follow-up rock?"

"As we anticipated, sir. They sent out a couple of cruisers, smashed up the surface and knocked it off course."

"It was too much to hope that we could use the same trick twice. Still, we can use their reaction to do some damage to the ships they send out to attack the incoming rock. Two cruisers you say?"

"Yes, sir. Two cruisers. What about the Torch itself, sir."

"Keep it around in mothballs. I haven't thought of another use for it yet, but I'm sure I'll be able to think of something."

Somebody in Operations Section had a sense of humour, Bernice thought. They'd called the follow-ups to Operation Torchlight, Operation Roxanne – throwing rocks at the Swarm. Today's assignment was Roxanne 6. The rock would fall towards the Swarm's Hive Sphere, and as usual they would send some warships out to destroy any surface installations and knock it off course before it got anywhere close to their precious colony ship. This time, some of her mines would be drifting through the volume of space where the AIs estimated the Swarm would make their interception. It wasn't always mines of course. Sometimes there was a Confederacy force waiting in ambush and sometimes there were long-range missiles concealed on the rock itself, waiting for the enemy to get close enough to attack. Sometimes it was just a rock. That used up Swarm resources at very little cost to the Confederacy. Rumour had it that Admiral Blake rolled a die to decide what to do each time, just to make sure the Swarm couldn't detect a pattern.

Operations had specified eight mines for Roxanne 6, so she had both her mine-launcher teams ready to launch four mines each. The team from the rear-facing tube got so little practice that she usually had them sharing duties on the forward tube. Whichever team did better would get chocolate ice-cream. That was a trick she'd learned from one of her previous captains. The ship's AI was under strict orders not to let the replicators issue any chocolate flavoured ice-cream, including chocolate chip and all the other variants, unless she specifically authorised it. It gave her people something to work for.

Positioning and timing were crucial for this operation. The mines had to be in the right place at the right time to catch the Swarm ships. Even beyond that, their extended track took them near the orbit of the second, less complete, Hive Sphere. Any mines that missed the first target would have a chance to do more damage at the construction site before they self-destructed.

She wasn't crying. Fiona McCluskie felt the water running down her cheeks, but she wasn't crying. She was an officer, the captain of her scout ship, and ship's captains didn't cry. There wasn't anything she could do about it anyway, the disaster had already happened. She was observing from nine light minutes distance, so her comrades had died nine minutes ago. Observe and report, that was all. She would do that of course, and her not-crying wouldn't interfere with her duty.

It had started as a routine operation: a small task force ordered to trash one of the Swarm's asteroid mining operations. The rock had been scouted, and enough ships assigned to crush the Sa'arm forces in place. The fleet had run similar operations before – she had scouted for some of them herself – and all had been successful. This one had started like the others. The attacking force had approached and begun its attack. Once it was committed, the Swarm unveiled their ambush. Suddenly there were a dozen extra Swarm warships powering up and converging on the attacking Confederacy force. Despite herself, Fiona had to admire the way they did it. The enemy's ambush force had been very stealthy, completely undetected by the earlier scouting. As always with the Sa'arm, co-ordination between their units was excellent.

That was when things began to go badly wrong. Standing orders for such a situation called for immediate retreat, never mind completing the planned operation, just get out of there at top speed. Whoever was commanding this force didn't do that. Pressing on against those odds was suicidal, and he soon found that out. He did eventually retreat, but only after unnecessary casualties had forced him to do so. Such a stupid waste. The ambush was unexpected, but the extra casualties were senseless. She wiped the not-tears from her cheeks and ordered the message drone readied to take the bad news and the sensor data back to fleet base.

Once the drone was away, her scout moved towards its next destination, ready to observe the effect of some mines on another asteroid base where the Sa'arm had some ships stationed. This mission would be a lot less upsetting. The minelayer had left the area hours before, so there was no danger of another disaster.

"Feeling better, sir?" Bittor enquired as Rear Admiral Blake came into the office.

"No," Bob snarled. "I'm tired, my arms ache and my fists hurt. The punch-bag is well and truly dead though." He moved behind his desk and sat down, his hair still damp from the shower. "Has that idiot entered a plea yet?"

"Not yet, sir."

"Right," Bob said. "If he pleads guilty, demote him one grade and put him in command of a scout. We always need more scouts. If he pleads not guilty, then give him a fair trial, find him guilty, demote him and park him in some dead-end administrative job where his prospects for promotion are zero or less. Preferably less."

"Why the difference, sir?"

"If he can't recognise his own mistake, then I don't want him in my command. People can learn from their mistakes. If he doesn't accept that he made a mistake then he won't learn from it and he'll make the same mistake again some time. I knew someone like that back on Earth."

Bittor raised an eyebrow to ask for more.

"He was one of my husband's work colleagues. He believed that he was perfect and so he managed to convince himself that any mistakes were always someone else's fault. Always. Nothing was ever his own fault. Because he never made any mistakes, at least inside his own head, he never bothered to learn anything from them. It was always someone else's job to learn and to change, never his."

"Sounds like some sort of narcissist, sir."

"He was," Bob agreed. "He had a completely inflated view of his own capabilities."

"I can see why you wouldn't want someone like that on the team, sir."

"Anyway," Bob said, "that's enough about that idiot."

"Talking of your husband, how is Don?" the major asked.

"He's still flying a desk for the Fleet Auxiliary, and buried in admin work and children. I get the administration, but at least I don't have the children all the time." Bob changed the subject back to work, "How are we coming with finding out how the Sa'arm managed to hide those ships in ambush?"

"The AIs have gone over scout reports from the last few months. It's the Swarm's regular convoys, sir."

"We'd have noticed a convoy leaving a dozen ships," Bob said.

"It was never a dozen, sir. Just one at a time. They built up the ambush force gradually, one by one. Convoys were dropping off one more warship than they picked up. We assumed it was just normal ship rotation back to base for repairs."

"Sneaky bastards. Have the AIs identified any other ambush forces?"

"Four very probable sites and two possible sites," Bittor told the admiral. "They're still going through the older records, but some are very patchy."

"Like I said, we can never have enough scouts."

This was going to be interesting, Major Francis Downing thought. His small force of seven ships was heading towards a Swarm asteroid-mining outpost. Already the enemy were assembling their six Lactanus class local defence ships to counter his move. Their ambush force – the one intelligence had assured him was there – hadn't shown themselves yet. Of course, this time the Confederacy had a trick or two up their sleeve as well. The ambushers would themselves be ambushed. Twice.

To some extent, that was all routine. The really interesting thing was the admiral's orders. He was to let the enemy 'win' this battle. All the captains involved had been in a preliminary briefing two days ago.

"We have a problem with the Sa'arm," the admiral told them. "They have a larger force in this system than we do, and they are building yet more ships to increase it further. Every time we beat them, they just escalate their reaction. It is an effective tactic for them. 'God is on the side of the big battalions,' and they have the bigger battalions here.

"I want to try something to stop them escalating. They escalate if they lose; they don't escalate if they win. We need to let them win."

That had certainly caused a stir among the assembled captains. Lose battles? Deliberately?

"We're going to deliberately lose battles, sir?" came a voice from the audience.

"I didn't say we'd lose; I said we'd let them win. They aren't always exactly the same thing. What do you know about the New Zealand wars?"

"Erm ... Nothing, sir," came the reply.

"Not many people do. Some of the battles there were interesting. The rebels would build a fort on a hill, and make rude noises at the Imperials. The Imperials would gather troops to attack the fort. The Imperial objective was to capture the fort. But the interesting part is that the rebel objective wasn't to hold the fort – they could always build a new one on the next hill – the rebel objective was to kill more Imperials than they lost of their own people.

"That meant that both sides could meet their different objectives in the same battle. The Imperials could capture the fort, but take higher casualties doing it. Because their goals were different, both sides could achieve their objectives – it wasn't a zero sum game. Both sides could win.

"I want to try it with us being the rebels. We'll threaten one of their mining operations. They will engage us, and we will destroy most, but not all, of their ships and then withdraw. They will have part of their force still intact, and we won't touch their mining operation. They will have 'won' a defensive victory, and shouldn't see a need to increase their defensive force.

"We will have eliminated some of their ships at minimal cost to ourselves. That is our real objective, attrition of the enemy force."

So, here Francis was, two days later, approaching the small Swarm fleet. Pretending to attack the enemy's mining operation, while the enemy pretended to defend it with just six ships. The Swarm's surprise would be an ambush. The Confederacy had an ambush as well, but that wasn't the real surprise. The real surprise would be the lack of damage to the mining asteroid. Hopefully the enemy would see that as the 'victory' the admiral wanted them to have.

Intelligence had previously identified the six ships Major Downing could see in front of him, and they thought that there were about a dozen more hiding in ambush, probably placed below the ecliptic. Everyone was keeping a lookout in all directions anyway; you couldn't trust the enemy to do what Intelligence Section told them to do.

Since the ambushers were probably below the ecliptic, he slid his small fleet to pass above the oncoming Sa'arm force. That would keep up the illusion that he was trying to get round them to attack the mining operation and also put his force further away from the probable ambush.

The Swarm slid up to meet him, keeping between him and the asteroid. Soon they were within range and opened fire.

He'd seen the scout's video of the earlier Swarm ambush, when that idiot had pressed on instead of withdrawing. There, the ambush force had waited until the attacking force was engaged before revealing itself. That tactic had worked before, so the Swarm repeated it here. Right on cue, eleven enemy ships revealed themselves, ten more Lactanus and one destroyer-size Venti, moving in from below his small fleet.

Three of his ships had FTL message drones waiting, and within seconds the drones were on their way with data on the types, positions and vectors of all the active ships. That done, the Confederacy ships concentrated on inflicting as much damage as possible on the closer enemy force. They had already destroyed one of the six Swarm ships and damaged two.

Suddenly there was a series of large explosions that reduced the approaching ambush force from eleven ships to eight. An Archerfish PC boat was sneaking around below the anticipated ambush, and had attacked from behind. Six missiles took out three enemy ships, including the largest – the Venti. Nothing the Swarm had here could survive a double hit, and all three targets were destroyed. As he'd expected, Francis couldn't see the PC boat on the scan. Their design made them very stealthy, even on Confederacy equipment. He shouldn't see it at all, since by now it would be sneaking away to carry on with its patrol in other Swarm held systems.

The second Confederacy surprise arrived shortly afterwards, called into the battle by the message drones. Ten more ships under Commodore McMillan, including a cruiser, hypered in to join Major Downing's original force. That raised the Confederacy forces to seventeen ships, albeit with two damaged. The Swarm were down to thirteen, with three damaged. The odds were now definitely against the Sa'arm.

Today's objective wasn't to destroy the entire enemy fleet, so the new Confederacy arrivals didn't try to surround the suddenly outnumbered enemy. Pre-attack planning had shown that it was better for the reinforcing ships to arrive above the engagement, countering the Swarm ambush arriving from below. That way there was always an escape route available for the Sa'arm when they decided to break off.

At first the Swarm neither withdrew, nor tried any fancy manoeuvres. All their vessels simply converged on the centre of the fighting. Commodore McMillan decided to do the same – if the Swarm wanted to play things simply, then she was happy to oblige them. As her force joined with Francis' original ships, he passed overall command to her.

The idea was to destroy Swarm ships, so the combined fleet continued its slow withdrawal above the ecliptic. Slow enough that the enemy was able to stay within range, but giving them the impression that they were winning and driving their foes away from the mining operation.

By the time the Swarm broke off, they were down to six ships, with one seriously damaged and two having taken less serious hits. They had lost eleven vessels against five damaged in the Confederacy force. An excellent result. It remained to be seen whether the Swarm would consider it a victory and not bother increasing their forces further.

Bernice waited. The Swarm had suffered casualties, so they would need to replenish their defensive force and repair their damaged ships. Within hours, some reinforcements had hypered in. At the same time they dispatched a slow convoy with the replacements for local defence ships lost. The Swarm were mostly keeping back their hyper-capable ships in preparation for launching the delayed Hive Sphere. As soon as the Lactanus replacements arrived, the hyper capable Ventis would move back to safety in the inner system. That was what Bernice and the other minelayers were waiting for. Those Ventis were out here and vulnerable. This was a chance to hit some of them.

The slow reinforcement convoy was tracked by scouts, so its arrival time could be foreseen. The clock ticked. At the right time, Bernice and two of her colleagues laid a steady stream of mines to pass by the Swarm occupied asteroid. Any active ship would be in danger. They would catch the incoming convoy, the ships damaged in the earlier battle trying to leave and any Ventis with their engines active. She wouldn't be there to see the excitement, but she was well used to that now.

"Bittor," Bob said to his aide, Major Ibarguren, "I've thought of something to do with the Torch."

"Yes, sir? It's been sitting around doing nothing since Operation Torchlight. It would be good to find a use for it."

"Think about Operation Roxanne."

"Where we throw rocks at the Swarm?" the Major replied.

"Exactly. What we're doing there is replaying part of Operation Torchlight to make the Swarm react."

"Yes, I can see that, sir."

"So, what we can do is to replay the other part of Operation Torchlight. We know that they react to rocks. We also know that they reacted to the Torch the first time."

"Yes, sir. They sent ships out to try to find the laser."

"So if we shine the Torch at something of theirs, they will likely send ships out to investigate ...."

"And their ships will find a minefield or an ambush waiting for them when they get there," the Major completed. "Something similar to our tactics with the rocks in Roxanne."

"Exactly. It's another way to get the Swarm to send out an isolated force, small enough for us to attack and then skedaddle after we've done them some damage. Get the planning staff to draw up detailed plans. We're using the Torch so we'll call it Operation Lucifer."

What would happen if you threw a party and nobody came? Major Downing suspected that he was going to find out. All the decorations were up, the food prepared and the invitations sent out, but the guests of honour were absent.

They'd shone the laser Torch at the Swarm's fuel processing station, but the aliens were ignoring it. The first time they'd tried it, Lucifer 1, the enemy had sent six ships to investigate, all of which fell victim to a combination of Navy ships and some carefully placed mines. The second time the Sa'arm had sent twelve Lactanus; their usual reaction to a defeat was to double up. Eight of the twelve were destroyed and two of the four survivors damaged.

Lucifer 3 had only attracted a smaller response, just three Vacuna scouts. They had been easily smashed by the waiting Confederacy ambush, which was ready to deal with up to twenty heavier ships. A mere three scouts had no chance at all.

It looked like the Swarm were learning. Trying to find the Torch just lost them ships for no obvious gain. The Torch itself did no damage to its target. Presumably the Sa'arm collective had downgraded it from "probable threat" to "harmless" and didn't bother reacting this time. Lucifer 4 was obviously going to be a bust. Forty minutes later, Commodore McMillan ordered the task force to return to base. The admiral was going to have to find something else to do with the Torch.

"Admiral Bennett, sir," Bittor announced.

"Helen, welcome to my humble office."

The admiral sat, "Thanks Bob. Good to see you again."

"Tea for me, and water for the admiral," Bob told Bittor. He knew she took neither tea nor coffee.

"Still or sparkling, sir," Bittor enquired.

"Sparkling, please, Bittor," she told him.

Bob got straight down to business. "So, you have some big beasts for me?"

"Yes, you'll be glad to hear. You've been delaying the Sa'arm with inferior forces for a long time now, but we both know you can't delay them indefinitely with your current forces. I have six battleships available, together with their usual covering forces. I want to use some of them to come in here and really smash things up."

"Good. There are a lot of things that need smashing. One Hive Sphere is much too close to being ready to leave. I'm not at all comfortable with that."

"We know," Helen said, "that is why we've allocated you the temporary support. You probably won't get all six, but we'll be able to spare you at least four for a single strike. Perhaps five if you're lucky – we have a lot of calls for battleships."

"Five would be nice. Very nice," Bob acknowledged.

"We have preliminary plans for either a four or five battleship force. Basically we start at their fuel plant and destroy that. Then quickly into the inner system to smash the two Hive Spheres, concentrating on the more complete one. Hopefully that will attract a lot of their other forces to our fleet, so we can kill a lot of their smaller ships as well. We want to hit those two Vesta battleships of theirs before they become operational. Once we've done enough damage, especially to the Hive Spheres and Vestas, we'll leave. You get to clean up what's left. The main difference is that the five battleship force can smash more of their ships more quickly before it leaves."

"No chance of me keeping a battleship or two?" Bob asked, hopefully.

"No, Bob, I'm sorry. We need to keep them together, not spread them out thinly: Klotzen, nicht Kleckern, as General Guderian said."

Bob wasn't too disappointed. There were too few battleships available, so it made sense to keep them focused on important targets.

"Your draft plan sounds good," he told Helen, "but I have a few points. A lot of their ships here are local ships, Lactanus mostly, not hyper-capable. If you go in and out too fast, you'll miss them. Out in the asteroid belt, you'll only catch the ones near the fuel processing station. The forces protecting their asteroid mining operations will mostly be too far away to reach you in time. However, in the inner system they have some L-type ships on guard duty for now, and ready to load into carriers when the Sphere leaves. You need to approach slowly enough that those ships can attack your force. If you are in and out too quickly, you'll never get the chance to kill them."

"So we should micro-jump the fleet from the fuel plant to somewhere a little way from the inner system, instead of right on top of the Spheres. Give them time to gather their slower forces before we hit?"

"Yes, Helen. From past experience, we can assume that all their hyper-capable ships will gather quickly, but if you can kill a lot of the slower ones as well, then things will be easier for me once you leave. We'll just have their guard ships in the asteroid belt to deal with."

"You implied you had more than one point, Bob."

"Yes. The second Sphere is neither fuelled nor provisioned – they've put everything into getting the first Sphere and their two battleships ready. That means you won't get any secondary explosions when you attack it. You'll probably need to use more ordnance than you expected to do it real damage."

"Hmmm ... I can see that. What about the first Sphere?"

"There we're less sure. The engines are fitted, but we're not able to tell what mix of supplies they have on board. It may just be food for the crew, it may be fuel, it may be ammunition. If it's ammunition, then they'll be shooting back at you. Better plan on that, anyway.

"OK, we've allowed for that. Anything else on the plan, Bob?"

"Not immediately, though I'll have my people look at it in more detail and let you know if they come up with anything useful." Bob paused. "What about afterwards? After you've left."

"I'm afraid it will be business as before, Bob. The Sa'arm are going to start rebuilding their fleet and constructing more Hive Spheres."

"Yes, they're persistent bastards," Bob agreed.

"So, you'll be back to trying to slow them down. It should be easier, because we'll have made a big dent in their forces, so you will be at less of a disadvantage."

"Not as easy as you might think, Helen. They've seen all my old tricks, so I'll need to think up new ones."

"That's why you're an admiral, Bob, so you can think up new tricks," she smiled. "On another point, how are you doing on resources? Are you getting enough?"

"Resources are less of a problem than you might think, Helen. As long as I get the minimum, I can keep going pretty much indefinitely. I have a lot of control over the rate of consumption. Since I am always the one attacking, I can decide to make no attacks, a few attacks or many attacks. The Swarm don't know where this base is, and we move it regularly anyway, so all they can ever do is react to our attacks. There's a lot of Oort cloud out here for us to hide in.

"If I reduce my attacks, then I cut my resource consumption. That means I can keep going for as long as I want. I will never run out of resources because I can dictate the rate at which they are consumed, above the basic minimum of course. It is one of the advantages of being a guerilla.

"Two things I would like more of are scouts and minelayers. They are both very useful in a guerilla war. The scouts tell me where the enemy are, and the minelayers let me attack their ships without ever having to put my own ships and crews in danger. Guerilla war is not like a fleet engagement, so we need different kit to do the job well."

"No promises, but I'll see what I can do Bob," Helen replied.

"Battle stations! Battle stations! No drill. Prepare for hyperspace emergence in fifteen minutes," Flag Captain Müller ordered.

The fleet emerged from hyperspace exactly on the tick. "Sensors. Anything close?"

"I currently have four active enemy ships near the first objective, sir. Two more are approaching, but they are distant and well out of range. There are some large pieces of debris, which might be damaged enemy vessels."

"Emergence on time and on target, sir," the flag captain messaged the admiral. "Four active enemy ships within range."

Bob could see the information from the scan repeated on his own display. Helen's fleet, including four battleships, had passed through here. She had done a very thorough job of smashing up the Swarm's fuel processing station; the active ships on the scan had all probably arrived after she'd left for the inner system. All four were Lactanus types – local defence ships, without hyper capability, and hence slow to react. They were easily overwhelmed and destroyed, as were two of the larger pieces of debris: one damaged Lactanus and a very severely damaged Venti.

It was good to catch the Venti. These days the Sa'arm were keeping their hyper capable V-types in the inner system as far as possible. Bob considered chasing the two distant ships, but they were now leaving the scene as fast as they could, having spotted his fleet. Detailed active scanning didn't find any Confederacy casualties, so the fleet prepared for a micro-jump to its next objective.

Hive Sphere Bravo was looking distinctly the worse for wear. Bob crushed three late arriving Swarm ships and punched some more missiles into the heavily damaged Sphere. As expected, there was the same old problem with no secondary explosions. The battle here had obviously been more difficult for Helen, as there were a few Confederacy escape capsules to pick up: twelve survivors, including five wounded, and three dead. According to the survivors, no friendly ships had been lost, which Bob confirmed with careful scans of the debris. Some of Admiral Bennett's warships had taken hits, but all had been able to keep up with her fleet when she left.

Oh to have some battleships, Bob thought as he surveyed the battered remains of Hive Sphere Alpha. Helen's battleships had done a lot more damage here; this Sphere showed signs of some massive internal explosions. He'd done the usual clean-up job on late arriving Swarm ships and pumped some more missiles into the wreckage of the Sphere and the two Vesta battleships. A detailed search didn't show any Confederacy casualties. Bob surmised that Helen had stayed here a bit longer to collect her casualties before leaving. This was her last target for the day. It was Bob's last target as well. He formed his fleet and cruised out towards the hyper-limit and their temporary home.

Tomorrow they were going to have to do it all over again.

The End

Endnote: My thanks to Tomken, Smiley Smith, Nuke Danger, Medik_4_7, Zen Master and the Swarm authors for their editing help. All remaining errors are of course my own.