2-72: Airborne Tank Battle
"Arvie, I want you to get the loudspeakers on all of our ships floating around out there ready to broadcast this out loud,” Varis said.
I turned and glanced at her as I gunned it for the bomber that was still resolutely making its way towards us. Apparently, the empress had decided she was going to go for a tank bomber rather than a stealth bomber.
Which made sense for the tactical situation over Imperial Seat. It wasn't like anybody was going to be able to hide much of anything in some of the most watched airspace in the galaxy. At least it was some of the most watched airspace in this part of the galaxy. I'm sure there was some other planet over on the other end of some spiral arm humanity and the livisk hadn't reached yet that might potentially be in the middle of a war where they...
I was getting distracted. Distraction wasn't good. I kept having these little non-sequiturs in my mind when what I should be doing is concentrating on that bomber.
The point was, the thing was heavily armored and it seemed to have a shitload of antigrav plates on it. Plates that, upon reviewing footage from our drones moving in on the thing to try and destroy it, could switch out whenever a missile got close to it. So every time it looked like a missile was going to hit, the antigrav would go inside so that unit wasn't affected and then the regular armor would come back out.
“Clever girl,” I muttered, staring at the thing.
Of course they could put their antigrav inside the thing, but having antigrav inside had its own set of problems where it started to mess with localized gravity for the crew. In a worst case scenario, that kind of setup could turn the crew into a fine paste against the walls if one of the antigrav units took damage and started creating localized tidal forces on the interior.
Larry Niven eat your heart out.
Another thing I didn't need to be thinking about right about now when I was in the middle of trying to take care of this thing.
"I want you to send all the drones with explosives packages that we have flying at that thing," I said.
"I doubt any of them are going to be able to actually knock it off course,” Arvie said.
"Maybe not," I said. "But we have to try."
A bunch of explosions went off all around the armored tank thing floating through the air. Explosions that would've been big enough to utterly vaporize a traditional fighter craft or a good old-fashioned bomber. But those explosions didn't come close to being able to blow this thing up. Though it did drop a little bit in the sky.
"Damn," I muttered. "Still not working."
"I'm not sure what else to do," Arvie said.
"Let's at least try to knock it off course, or keep it occupied," I said. “Maybe we can get them to panic and make a mistake.”
The thing had launched from over by the Imperial Palace, which meant we had a little bit of time before it reached the detention facility. Not to mention it seemed to be taking a leisurely pace. Like maybe the person who ordered this strike wanted everyone in the city to have a chance to get a good long look at it and contemplate all the ways they didn’t want to cross the empress if they didn’t want this sort of thing happening to them.
As though in time with that thought, a missile shot out from the thing.
"Is that aimed for us, or at the ground?" I asked.
"The loudspeakers, Arvie,” Varis said, a hint of irritation coming to her voice.
"Apologies, General," he said.
"Wait, why the loudspeakers?" I asked, my attention going back to my girl. "Why not go out over one of the comm bands?"
"Because strictly speaking, we're still under the peace of a Grand Gathering," Varis said.
"Aren't we kind of pushing that to the limit with what we're doing here right now?" I asked.
"Oh, we're certainly doing that," she said. "But there are some things the empress might be willing to ignore, and there are other things she can't ignore. One of the things we need to do is attack the empress while doing our best to make it look like we’re trying our best to make it look like we’re not attacking the empress and breaking that peace.”
"You livisk make no sense to me," I said.
"And things like having a conditional retreat make no sense to me, but I go along with it," Varis said with a shrug.
"Point taken," I said.
"We do the loudspeakers because then there are no comms for the empress to listen in on. If there are no communications for the empress and her people to listen in on then I don't have to worry about her overhearing it and potentially having to do something about it, like break the Grand Gathering peace."
"And you think that's something she's likely to do if we upset her?"
"I know that's something she's likely to do if we give her an excuse, but it has to be a justifiable excuse. Especially with all of the trouble she's been causing."
That missile was still coming for us. A drone appeared in front of it and there was a sudden warp in space-time as it activated a fold drive, and just like that the missile was gone.
"Where did you send that?" I asked.
"I sent it out to..."
There was a notification of a nuclear explosion going off somewhere in between Livisqa and one of its moons. That was going to cause a little bit of consternation with everybody living up on that moon, but at least it wasn't causing death for anybody living down here.
"The loudspeakers are ready to go, General," Arvie said.
I was having trouble keeping track of everything that was going on. I almost forgot what she was even doing. Right, she was giving a speech to all the ungrateful bastards down there who were about to be saved because we were doing our best to save their ungrateful asses, even if I wasn't sure half of them deserved the effort.
"Right," Varis said, leaning forward.
"You don't have to lean forward against the console," I said, hitting her with a smile.
She flipped me the bird. She really was getting quite adept at all the various ways humans could tell each other to go fuck themselves.
She paused, opening her mouth. Meanwhile, I kept our fighter on a course right for the bomber. I fired off everything we had in the fighter, and then I started firing off the plasma cannons. Only everything that was hitting this motherfucker was hitting it and glancing off of it.
"Damn it," I muttered, watching as another missile came down from the bomber’s bay and flew off towards the detention center.
"What am I supposed to say?" Varis asked.
"You're supposed to tell everybody that we’re trying to hold off an attack from the empress, but there's no guarantee we’re going to be able to do it for long. So they need to move."
"You know none of them are going to be able to make it if the Imperials do get a shot off. There isn't enough time. They’re all going to be turned into so much radioactive slag that becomes another bit of decoration for part of the Undercity that will confuse future archaeologists because it’s slightly older than the other irradiated slag when this whole city eventually gets glassed by the next succession crisis.”
"This is the point where I would like to remind the general that you are on a live microphone that is broadcasting to everybody who is within the blast radius of a potential nuclear weapon the empress unleashes on the city.”
"Fuck," she said, looking down at the space in front of the console. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."
"You've got this," I said, turning and grinning at her.
Then I turned and winced at Arvie inside the simulation space. I could only imagine the panic down on the ground as a result of Varis’s outburst. I looked up at the display that showed a top-down view of everything that was happening on the streets, and then I blinked.
"Holy shit. That looks like it actually worked."
Varis looked up at me. "You were able to take out the bomber?”
"No, you were able to convince people to move their asses. Look."
"Look at what?" she said.
"Apologies," Arvie said. "Allow me."
A moment later, the holoprojector in the cockpit popped up and showed us a view of the streets down below. In particular, it showed people who were suddenly disengaging from fighting each other and making a quick retreat.
"Holy shit. They're leaving," Varis said. "Why are they doing that?"
"I imagine it had something to do with you letting all of them know they were going to die a certain death no matter what they did. That convinced them they didn’t want to spend their last moments fighting.”
"Well, shit," she said. "Maybe I should try that kind of tough love more often."
"You'd be surprised how often it works," I said.
I was splitting my attention. I worried a little bit about doing that, but I also wanted to make sure we caught that next missile the bomber had fired off. A drone went up and tried to hit the thing, but it didn't work.
"We seem to be having a little bit of trouble with this one," Arvie said.
"Yeah, let's try what we did the last time around," I said.
I threw the drone up until it was within range of the thing, and then I activated a brief fold jump. Again, the missile was thrown out into space, and again, I got another notification that there was a low-yield nuclear explosion in between Livisqa and one of the moons up above. I could probably look up and see it, but I didn't have the time.
Then I blinked as it suddenly hit me what was going on.
"Arvie," I said, "do we have any bigger fighters with fold drives on them?"
"We do," he said. Then he paused. "Why do I get the feeling you're about to do something that I would consider to be highly inadvisable?"
"Probably because I'm always about to do something that would be highly inadvisable."
"What are you doing?" Varis asked. We'd gone quiet for just long enough that she clearly realized we were having a conversation in computer space.
"I want to try something, but I'm going to need you to take the controls for a little bit."
"But we've already established that you're a far better pilot than I am," she said.
"And it warms my heart to hear you say things like that, baby," I said, turning and winking at her. "But I also need to take over a fighter to do this, and I don't want to risk splitting my attention and accidentally doing something that ends up with both of us dead."
"Right," she said, taking the controls. "Should I continue to press the attack against... Wait, where are all of our weapons? All we have are the plasma cannons."
"Yeah, the empress is sending a flying fucking antigrav tank through the air at us right now, and me firing all our weapons at it and doing nothing shows we need to think outside the weapons bay. We don't have long."
"Well, then do whatever you're going to do," she said.
Fighters were already rising over the city and heading for the bomber. Probably to provide an escort. Or maybe to provide more stuff for us to fire at before we could fire on the bomber again.
"I don't know if we're going to be able to do this," I muttered, staring at the situation. "I need you to get away from that thing, Varis."
"Get away from it," she said.
"I'm about to do something where we don't want to be in any of the spacetime around where that bomber is when I execute my plan.”
Her eyes went wide as she suddenly realized exactly what I was getting at.
"You're crazy," she said.
"Maybe I am crazy," I said. "But right about now, if we’re going to protect those people on the ground, we need to do something a little crazy."
The problem was, it would appear that all our antics had awakened the vast Imperial apparatus that was designed to keep things the empress didn't like from happening over Imperial Seat. Anti-aircraft missiles and plasma danced through the air, trying to hit our fighters and drones.
"Shit," I muttered. "She really wants to get us this time."
"It would seem so,” Varis said.
I also blinked as I realized some of those Imperial fighters rising over the city were all starting to converge on us.
"Shit, not only does she want to kill all our people on the ground, it looks like she also wants to kill us."
I frowned as I stared at the threat board. Because I saw some of those Imperial fighters suddenly blinking and then being overlaid with a red X that told me they'd been hit.
I looked through some of the drone feeds, frantically trying to figure out what was going on, and I held my breath in shock as I realized that not all that anti-aircraft was coming from Imperial installations.
No, some of it was coming from various towers, and it was aiming for the Imperial fighters. Not us.
"What the hell?" I said out loud.