Three Square Meals Ch. 075

Tsarra shook herself free, her nervous state in the tense situation made much worse by Tashana's hysterics, and she snapped angrily, "You forget yourself, Tashana! How dare you manhandle me?!"

Holding her hands up in apology, Tashana said in a rush, "Sorry, Matriarch, I'm just worried, that's all!"

Narrowing her eyes in irritation, Tsarra glanced at her Fleet Commander, and said curtly, "Open the file. If the other Matriarchs are viewing it already, we need to see what it is, too."

With a respectful bow of her head, Aadya gestured to her Bridge Officers, and a few seconds later, the System Map disappeared. It was immediately replaced by a sweeping tactical overlay of the Lambda Aquarii system, with accurate representations of the forces arrayed against each other. One side was spread out as if on formation, but the golden ships were coloured white, instead. The other was coloured red, and it was disturbing how accurate the depiction of the fleet dispositions were, that Aadya had chosen for the House Perfaren forces.

"Is this application tapping into our sensor data?" Aadya asked, in alarm.

"No, Fleet Commander," her Intelligence Operations officer replied. "The program is self-contained."

While Aadya was digesting that, a purple girl, no more than five-feet-high popped into existence. She smiled at them disarmingly, and asked, "Hello! My name's Faye. Would you like to play a game?"

"That's the Progenitor's AI!" Tashana blurted out, in a panic. "You need to shut that fucking thing down!"

Shaking her head, the IntOps officer replied, "It's a VI; a self-contained Virtual Intelligence. They can only handle simple commands, and basic instructions trigger pre-programmed responses. I believe it's just there to operate this 'game'."

Tsarra glanced at the purple sprite warily, then said, "Yes, my name's Tsarra, and I'd like to play."

The image of Faye looked delighted, and said, "I hope you have fun! Our side is white, and your side is red. Tell me what orders you'd like to issue your forces, and I'll show you the outcome!"

"Don't, it's probably going to store all your responses, then send them to the Progenitor! He'll see how you're going to react to his attacks! Shut this thing down before it's too late," Tashana urged them.

Aadya looked apprehensive, and a shiver ran up her spine as she said, "No, that's not what this is for."

"What do you mean?" Tsarra asked, her Fleet Commander's tone unsettling her.

"If you'll just indulge me, Matriarch?" Aadya requested, gesturing towards the purple girl.

When her young Matriarch nodded her agreement, the Fleet Commander stepped forward, and faced the digital construct. "I'll play. Show me the forces at my side," she requested, staring warily at the complex formations of vessels.

Faye did as she was bid, highlighting the sweeping formations of House Perfaren ships, then including all the other aligned fleets in their coalition. Aadya reviewed her forces with a skilled and experienced eye, noting that the simulation accurately displayed the four-hundred-and-fifty large vessels at their command.

"It's your move," Faye said, smiling benignly.

Folding her hands behind her back, Aadya said, "Move forward with the picket line and cruiser screen, Battleships to support, and Carriers at the rear. Hold the reserves until I give the signal."

Faye nodded eagerly, and the red-swathed ships began to move as Aadya requested, following her orders for a no-nonsense, standard Fleet engagement. The white ships began to move as well, the way they suddenly sprung into action unsettling, after having remained motionless for so long. The formation they adopted was bizarre, with carriers front and centre, orbited by swirling groups of strike craft, while the rest of the forces hung back. The Invictus swung about, moving right around to the very rear of the entire formation, before turning to point at the opposing red vessels.

"Leading with carriers?!" Aadya muttered, and shook her head scornfully, a relieved smile appearing on her face. She glanced at Faye, and added, "Send in the cruisers to attack the carriers, support with strike craft."

"Your capital ships?" Faye prompted, highlighting the score of battleships halfway between the carriers at the rear, and the cruisers at the front of the engagement.

Aadya judged that the carriers were perfectly safe, with no visible threats to them, her sweeping wall of capital ships preventing any rush for the more vulnerable vessels. "Bring the battleship formations in closer, and prepare to time the use of Nova Lances as the battle commences," she ordered, decisively.

Faye smiled at her, and said, "Of course! Feel free to interrupt at any time, if you wish to change orders, or require further information."

"OK, go ahead," Aadya said, eager to see the results of the engagement.

The red cruisers increased the power to their engines, over one-hundred nimble Maliri vessels sweeping forward to engage the white carriers. The white forces hung there motionless for a long moment, only reacting when the cruisers were approaching Beam Laser range. Moving at a freakishly fast turn rate for a vessel of their size, the white carriers rotated smoothly, retro-thrusters on the vessels flaring as they pivoted towards the rear of the white lines, and began to accelerate away.

"Stop!" Aadya protested. "The white side is cheating! Maliri carriers can't move that quickly!"

Faye paused the simulation, and cheerfully informed her, "These House Valaden Carriers have undergone a refit with thrusters and engines obtained from the Trankaran Empire! Would you like to see the schematics?"

Aadya glanced at Tsarra and Tashana, suddenly looking very worried, and replied, "Show us."

The chirpy AI displayed the detailed schematics for everyone to see, and the startled gasps from the Engineering Officers on the Bridge was enough confirmation for Aadya to know they were authentic.

"Are you ready to continue the game?" Faye asked, politely.

Nodding with trepidation, Aadya waved the VI to continue, and said, "I'll hold position with the cruisers, don't pursue the carriers."

"Of course!" Faye agreed, as a dozen white battleships with the crossed-blades insignia of House Valaden rushed forward, moving much faster than should be possible. Aadya looked on in alarm, as they unleashed a savage volley of Nova Lance fire through the leading cruisers, obliterating well over a dozen.

"You're a sitting duck, you should attack them!" Tashana urged her, getting sucked into the simulation.

Aadya looked torn, then said to Faye, "Move the cruiser screen forward, and send in the strike craft. Bring the battleships closer, to support them."

Faye bowed to her, and said, "Moving your forces, as you command."

As the red forces moved to engage, the white battleships withdrew. They were slower than the red cruisers, but not enough to allow the red forces to close to Beam Laser range, yet. The red strike craft swept in, with the red bombers greeted by uncannily fast-firing Pulse Cannons.

"Faye, pause the simulation!" Aadya demanded. She pointed at the map, and objected, "My bombers are being cut to pieces, but Pulse Cannons can't fire that fast!"

"The Pulse Cannons on these battleships have been upgraded with heatsinks from the Kintark. Would you like to know more?" she asked, a pleasant smile on her face.

"Show me," the Perfaren Fleet Commander demanded.

A fresh schematic popped up in front of them, showing a strange, and clearly alien piece of technology. There were compressed ribbons in the heatsink, and from what Aadya could make out from the schematic, it offered a profound improvement on the Maliri equivalent.

There was some muttering from the engineering team as they examined the blueprints.

"It looks authentic," the Chief Engineer said, looking at the glowing blueprint in awe.

With an exasperated sigh, Aadya said, "Fine, run the program again, Faye."

She nodded, but before the unsettled Fleet Commander could respond, there was a blue flash on the far side of the map, behind the red carriers.

"What was that?!" Tsarra said in panic.

Faye smiled at her, and explained, "The Invictus performed a short-range hyper-warp jump for two-point-three-eight seconds."

"That's impossible!" Aadya snorted indignantly. "There's no technology that can make those kind of calculations."

"Would you like to 'see the math', so to speak?" Faye asked, with a pleasant smile.

Aadya was about to decline, but her Head Navigator nodded insistently. Aadya turned to Faye, and replied, "Show us then. How is it done?"

A holographic treatise on hyper-warp jumps within gravity wells popped into existence, and the Head Navigator stared at it with eyes as wide as saucers. One look at the woman's stunned expression told the Fleet Commander everything she needed to know.

Waving her hand in exasperation, Aadya said to the VI, "Fine, I believe you! Continue with the simulation."

They watched with a creeping feeling of dread, as the white House Valaden forces fell backwards in full retreat, with the red force in pursuit. Aadya noticed that some of the other Houses' ships were not able to travel so quickly, making the battle line for the retreating white forces bow out like a boomerang.

There was a bright flash of light from behind the red lines, as the Invictus ripped into the Freedom Alliance carriers. It had opened with a Nova Lance blast, sweeping the incandescent beam over three ships, and knocking out all their shields. Now, it began bombarding the huge majestic vessels with slugs from the pair of Singularity Drivers. Watching the battlecruiser tear its way through lifeless asteroids had been unsettling enough, but to see that dreadful weapon unleashed on a Maliri ship was horrifying.

Aadya watched impassively, as a series of slugs stitched a slew of impact craters across one carrier, blowing apart its engines, before driving rounds into the launching bays. There was a rippling series of explosions, as the vessel bulged grotesquely with internal detonations, an internal magazine explosion the downfall of the first carrier. The second met a similar fate, while the third was pounded in the rear, engines disintegrating in a shower of debris, before the chain of slugs smashed deep, coring the vessel through from the inside. Then the Invictus closed to Beam Laser range, and the levels of destruction intensified, more carriers blown apart in rapid succession.

"What's that number, Faye?" Tsarra asked quietly, looking at the rapidly-increasing number floating above their heads.

"It's a tally of the slain Maliri in your forces. Standard complement on a Kelamaen class carrier is fourteen-thousand personnel," she informed the young woman helpfully.

Tsarra was stony-faced as she watched the number jumping upwards, the Invictus eviscerating the carrier group, and turning each one of the massive ships into a ruined hulk. At a stroke, the remaining strike craft of the combined fleets had been obliterated. She heard Aadya curse, and turned back to look at the red cruisers and battleships, seeing the white forces suddenly sweep around from both sides, to envelop the pursuing forces. Caught in a blistering three-way crossfire, the cruisers were savaged by the white ships, losing vessels at a three-to-one ratio.

The white strike fighters were faster and fired more quickly than their red counterparts, allowing them to gain flight supremacy in a frighteningly short timeframe. Aadya queried their performance with Faye, and she informed her that they had received the same engine and heatsink upgrades as the capital ships. With the red fighters swept from the battlefield, waves of white bombers assaulted the battleship group with impunity, catching the huge vessels as they tried to engage in the sprawling close-quarters cruiser melee. Aadya watched in silence as her forces were torn apart, the death count spiralling upwards so fast, it was hard to keep track.

"Your flagship has been destroyed," Faye said, giving the troubled Maliri a sympathetic smile. One of the harried battleships had been struck amidships by a torpedo, and erupted in a Power Core explosion. "Would you like to start a new game, or see how this one plays out to its conclusion?"

Aadya was staring at the tiny fragments that were all that was left of her flagship, and said quietly, "Play a new one."

"Hold on!" Tsarra objected. She looked at Faye, and said, "Can you accelerate this battle to its conclusion, please?"

Faye bowed obediently, and the red and white ships slashed into each other, the red forces fighting a desperate, but futile last stand. When the battle had played out, the death count for the red side included a summary, and it read: "Your forces have lost Four-million-nine-hundred-and-forty-seven-thousand Maliri personnel, including all Matriarchs and Fleet Commanders. All cruiser-class or larger vessels have been destroyed."

"What about the white side? What did they lose?" Tsarra asked, looking in numbed disbelief at the scene of utter devastation.

"One-million-eight-hundred-thousand fatalities, with thirty-four percent of fleet assets destroyed," Faye informed her politely.

Tsarra shared a pointed look with Aadya, and said, "So, armed with no foreknowledge of their force's capabilities, we would have faced utter annihilation today?"

Aadya was about to protest, and explain that she had merely been observing the software to begin with, but her words died on her lips. She was forced to grudgingly concede to herself that she would have been caught out by all the surprising tech revelations. "Yes, that's correct, Matriarch," Aadya answered, her voice sober.

"Would you like to play again?" Faye asked, her mouth lifting into an encouraging smile.

Ignoring the VI for a moment, Tsarra nodded to herself as she said, "The Invictus attacking the asteroid belt; that was just to prove that this simulation is accurate, wasn't it? That John Blake's ships can do everything in the simulator..."

"I believe so, Matriarch," Aadya agreed, nodding her agreement.

"They just got lucky!" Tashana protested. She looked at Aadya, and said, "You basically gave up halfway through the battle! That wasn't a realistic or accurate prediction of how it would play out!"

Aadya turned back to the patiently waiting purple girl, and said, "I'd like to play a new game, Faye."

Everyone on the Bridge watched in silence, as the House Perfaren Fleet Commander started a second battle. Despite her many decades of experience, whoever had programmed the white forces, possessed an unmatched grasp of strategy and tactics.

Her adversary employed an unending flurry of feints and misdirections, cleverly interspersing them with genuine threats, all of which left Aadya bewildered as to which she should respond to. Even when she guessed correctly, her opponent always seemed to correctly gauge the exact strength of forces required to tie up her counterattack, while holding enough firepower in reserve to savage vulnerable red assets. Chief amongst these threats was the Invictus, and watching that monster rip apart a trio of battleships sent shivers down Aadya's spine.

Even though she had been forewarned of the capabilities of the upgraded Valaden fleet, Aadya faced one bruising defeat after another. Her most successful attempt still left over a third of the white forces intact, with the Invictus still operational, to the cost of every single red ship in their Armada.

Deciding to throw everything she had at the Invictus, in an attempt to execute Tashana's plan of "cutting the head off the snake", led to the most crushing defeat of them all. The Invictus was almost as fast as a strike craft, and the impenetrable blue globe of Pulse Cannon fire meant that no strike craft survived for more than a few seconds in that deadly hail. The battlecruiser led her forces in a merry dance around the battlefield, while the white forces fell on her chasing vessels and tore them to pieces.

"It's hopeless, Tsarra," Aadya eventually whispered, in a hushed voice. She was already well aware of the crippling toll on the Bridge Crew's morale, as they saw their flagship get ignominiously blown to bits in one simulated battle after another. "This John Blake must be some kind of tactical savant. I've never seen anything like it!"

"This simulation was built by Irillith Valaden, and the tactics developed by John Blake's companion, Calara Fernandez," Faye cheerfully informed them.

"She's just a mindless thrall!" Tashana objected. "This is just one of the Progenitor's tricks!"

"Matriarch, I've been receiving incoming calls," the Communications Officer said to them, looking deeply worried. "It's from the other Matriarchs. They're demanding to speak to you - they think it might be wise to parlay with John Blake."

"Those fucking fools! They've fallen for his trick!" Tashana swore vehemently, her eyes wild with fear. Whirling around to look at Tsarra, she added curtly, "Don't speak to him! You mustn't! You'll throw away everything we've worked for!"

The young Matriarch looked haggard, as she said, "Don't you see? It wasn't a trick, a bluff, or anything like that. If we proceed with this battle, we'll be slaughtered! He was warning us not to throw our lives away!"

Aadya nodded, and with the certainty of someone with the Reaper's scythe hanging over them, she said, "If we face them today, we'll all die. We have no chance of eliminating him."

"You're just fucking cowards!" Tashana raged, her temper flaring. She sneered with contempt, as she added, "Go on then, become one of his mindless whores! I'll never-"

She was knocked sprawling to the ground in a daze, as a guard thumped her on the back of the head with the butt of her laser rifle. Tsarra nodded gratefully to the guardswoman, then said, "Put her in the brig. I'll speak to her later, when she's calmed down."

Tsarra and Aadya watched the masked woman being dragged away by a pair of guards, before the Perfaren Fleet Commander asked, "What are we going to do?"

Tsarra looked thoughtful for a moment, then turned to the purple girl running the simulation, and asked, "Faye, what's the purpose behind this game?"

Faye smiled disarmingly, and replied, "This simulation was designed to show you the horrible consequences if our forces should attack each other. It's only a harmless game, but if we begin the battle in earnest, the outcome will be terrible for both sides. John doesn't want anyone to get hurt, and only wishes to arrange a parlay, to try to come to some kind of peaceful resolution to this conflict."

"A parlay..." Aadya noted, remembering the unusual Terran term the Comms Officer had used. She shared a pointed look with Tsarra, and added, "The other Matriarchs must have heard this same message."

Tsarra nodded, then appeared thoughtful for a moment, before she said, "Something doesn't feel right about any of this. Why would he give away all his technological secrets to us before the battle starts?"

"I have no idea, Matriarch. Revealing them as he's done eliminates any element of surprise he could have exploited in the battle," Aadya replied, her brow furrowed in confusion. She sounded uncertain as she added, "I would normally tell you that it was a grievous tactical error, but I'm inclined to agree with you, though. John Blake is not behaving in the way Tashana led us to believe he would."

Studying the purple construct, Tsarra asked, "Faye, is John a Progenitor like Mael'nerak? Is Tashana right about him?"

The VI of Faye blinked as the key words triggered more of her programming. She looked sad, as she replied, "Tashana correctly identified John as a Progenitor, but she doesn't understand that he's not the same as Mael'nerak. He wanted to explain to her that he's trying to help the Maliri, to heal the terrible wrongs that were done to your people, but she's too frightened of him, and can't be reasoned with." She leaned forward, and said earnestly, "Your DNA was tampered with by Mael'nerak. The gender imbalance in the Maliri is unnatural, and your bodies were modified by him, to provide endless armies of soldiers."