"You're certain they are heading in our direction?" Vitor asked over the comm.

"Yes, Admiral," The technician from Eden's End replied. "We've been tracking them for a few systems. The next update should be in a couple of days, but all evidence points to them coming for you."

"What about the ships at the STO border?" Vitor knew from previous updates that a large chunk of the Xin fleet had broken off from attacking the STO, but they didn't have any satellites in the area to track them.

"The size of the fleet heading your way matches the number that broke away from the STO. We can't confirm they are the same ships, but the trajectory of their approach suggests they came from that direction."

Another five hundred ships, which included over two dozen capital ships. The new fleet might have half the capital ships as the previous Xin fleet, but there was no way they could fight off another sizable force, not with their diminished numbers or supplies. The previous fight had used up every single missile the fleet had been carrying. Their remaining resupply aboard the Fishbone ships was insufficient to replace those losses.

"And the rest of the ships along the STO border?" Vitor asked.

"Our information is spotty, since the Navy leadership isn't providing military updates to us, but we have intel that suggests the STO finally acted on the information we sent them."

Frustration bubbled within Vitor. The STO finally acting could mean anything. He didn't hold it against the Admirals for withholding military intel. BSE and the Union were doing the same thing by not informing them of their specific attack plans.

Vitor had to think about things logically. Having a fleet break off from attacking the STO was a good sign. It meant that the Shican ran out of Xin ships to deploy against them. "We'll have to assume the STO is holding the rest of the Xin forces in place. As soon as you get confirmation that the Xin fleet is transitioning into our current system, give the go order for the carriers."

The technician acknowledged the order, and Vitor cut the call. He took a moment to run both his hands through his hair and sigh. It had only been a few days since the previous attack, and the repair facility was working overtime to get the remaining damaged ships operational.

They had even deployed every single bot from the BSE and Katalynn's fleet to assist with the efforts. It wouldn't be enough. They had less than a week before the enemy arrived, and a trap wasn't going to work again. They couldn't disengage fully either or the enemy might pull their ships back to defend the gate, rendering the losses they suffered meaningless.

Vitor knew that not every battle could be won, but when Alex had made him an Admiral, he had made a promise to himself not to throw away lives for meaningless gains. It's the main reason he was so upset with Jarl Ylva's reckless actions. She should have followed the plan and climbed far enough away from the moon to jump. It would have certainly wrecked their carefully laid trap, but it would have saved thousands of lives. Then again, her actions had significantly sped up the timeline for striking against the gate.

He sighed quietly one last time and reminded himself that it wasn't his decision alone. Char was in overall command ever since their fleets merged, and the plan did work, just not as well as anyone would have liked.

Once Vitor had time to collect himself, he contacted Char's ship to give her an update. The woman was as stoic as always when Vitor updated her.

"We're going to have to abandon some of the more heavily damaged ships," she replied after he relayed what he had just learned. "I'll send out orders to transfer those crews onto other vessels. Anything else?"

Anything else? Vitor wanted to snap at the woman, demand to know why she was so cold and callous. He didn't, however. Now was not the time or place to second-guess orders.

To be honest, he wasn't even that upset with Char. He was more upset with himself for not pushing harder to use a different tactic during the strategy session.

"No," he said. "Now all we can do is wait."

***

An angry buzzing from his comm bracelet woke Vitor in the middle of the night. He shot up in bed and grabbed the device off his nightstand. "This is Admiral Krieger, report."

"Admiral, this is BSE Central Command. We just got an update from the satellite network. The enemy fleet is not heading in your direction; they are going to reinforce the ships at Xin Prime."

Vitor swore and shot to his feet. "Send the go order for the carriers, and alert Char and the other captains." There had always been a possibility that the Shican would reinforce their numbers around the gate. If that happened, the only way to stop them was to pursue and attempt to cut them off.

Even before Vitor made it to his bathroom, he could feel the ship accelerating and adjusting course. The supply ships and repair facilities would be left behind because they were going to be void-jumping to try and get ahead of the enemy. He prayed they would be in time; otherwise, the chances of the carriers reaching their target would drop drastically.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

***

Carrier Alpha floated high above the swirling gases of the giant planet, waiting and communicating with the ships it carried. The Stingrays were running through tactical scenarios while they waited. Occasionally, they even requested that Alpha and Beta join in the tactical planning.

They accepted, even though they were not front-line warships. It wasn't lost on Alpha or Beta that the tactical scenarios that included them were usually more successful, even if they almost always resulted in Alpha, Beta, and all the Stingrays being destroyed.

Their mission was to destroy the inactive hypergate, and if total destruction was what it took to do so, they would gladly do it.

An incoming comm call interrupted the current tactical session. Their orders had finally arrived.

With zero fanfare, Alpha and Beta fired up their ripple drives and waited for the bridges to form.

While they were doing that, the Stingrays were adjusting to the new information they received. It seemed that the Shican had recalled a significant fleet, and they had little time to waste. That meant that their stealth approach, which had an eighty-five percent success rate, was now no longer possible.

A frontal assault had a much lower chance of success, but Alpha let the gunships figure out a solution as it focused on opening the subspace connection. Once the portals were wide enough, the ships transitioned through and accelerated to join up and leave the gravity well behind so they could jump to their destination.

Since time was of the essence, they both concluded that a void-jump directly outside of their target system would be the best option. Unlike humans, they had no fears of breaking down in the empty space between stars. They simply saw it as the most expedient method to carry out their orders.

As soon as they cleared the gravity well, they synced their drives and jumped. Days later, they arrived at their destination, where they waited silently for the drives to cool and reset before jumping one last time.

***

After arriving outside the system that held their target, the Stingrays began to launch from Alpha and Beta. They were no longer allowed to use their comm nodes, so they were communicating through a tight beam laser link, making last-minute updates and changes to the plan.

Bots were ejected from Alpha and Beta, along with the laser pods. The bots latched onto the pods and pulled them into the empty cradles that once held the Stingrays. Through their exhaustive simulations, it had been discovered that deploying the laser that way was ten times faster than doing so the way they were designed to be deployed.

It wasn't applicable in every situation, but it was when Alpha and Beta were required to act as bait to draw the enemy's attention. They didn't need to hold that attention for long, just long enough for the Stingrays to get close to the gate and launch their missiles.

The plan only had a sixty percent chance of success, but it was the best option given the change in enemy tactics.

Just before the Stingrays flashed away, they sent a countdown timer to Alpha and Beta.

Both ships waited in silent anticipation until the timer hit zero, then they jumped. They arrived one light second from the gate and immediately saw a problem that none of them had planned for.

The inactive gate was active, and ships had already come through. Fifteen new Shican vessels surrounded the hypergate, with more coming through.

The mission was the mission, however, and all of their laser pods were launched. The bots quickly oriented them on one of the Shican dreadnoughts.

All forty pods struck the ship in the same spot, overwhelming its heat dissipation and causing a large section of its armor to blow away and scatter chaff. If the pods had been able to perform a follow-up shot, that chaff would have limited their damage, but they were recharging.

The damage did get the Shican's attention, however.

Like an angry hornet's nest, the Shican carriers disgorged dozens of fighters.

Alpha and Beta ignored the small, slow ships and focused their remaining weapons on the Shican destroyers, which seemed to be the only ships firing. At first, Alpha and Beta were confused about why the larger ships didn't join in, but then they realized that the destroyers were the only ships with lasers. The only conclusion that made sense was that the plasma weapons had a much shorter range. They filed that information into a data packet, along with the fact that ten more Shican vessels had made it through the gate. The packet was ready to send at a moment's notice.

The enemy beams impacted their armor, doing little more than blackening small sections. It seemed that the Shican lasers weren't any more powerful than BSE's at that distance. That wouldn't last. Most of the Shican were already accelerating to engage. Soon, they would run into the wall of rounds that Alpha and Beta had fired from their FE cannons, as well as the stealth missiles.

As the first missile exploded against the enemy's shields, the Stingrays struck, jumping in near the gate and firing their missiles.

Caught off guard, the Shican only managed to take out two of the Stingrays, but they couldn't stop the missiles, even with the heavy ECM that was covering the area.

The first missile impacted the hypergate, causing the aperture to flicker before settling. It flickered a few more times as the closer missiles hit, then solidified as another Shican dreadnought started coming through.

A volley of five missiles impacted the gate at the same time, and the entire portal winked out, cutting the transitioning vessel in half.

The rest of the missiles struck, but it was clear they were doing little to damage the alien structure.

The portal was even beginning to reform.

Alpha shook as the dreadnought finally got into range to use its weapons. It cataloged that information and forwarded it to its companion. They both agreed that the plan was doomed to fail if they didn't act. Alpha activated its comm and forwarded all the information it had uncovered before it jumped.

Alpha and Beta didn't jump away, however. They jumped as close to the enemy as possible, ensuring they were on a collision course. They would have jumped toward the gate, but there were too many ships in the path to calculate a stable jump solution in the time they had, so they did the next best thing.

Alpha's sensors went offline as it collided with the dreadnought, the alien ship's shields doing little to stop that much mass. Before Alpha went offline, it triggered its reactor to overload.

The attack did considerable damage to the Shican vessel, but it did not destroy it. Beta's attack was less successful, but it damaged another dreadnought.

While the enemy was engaged, the remaining Stingrays relayed their updated information before overloading their reactors and slamming into the gate. The last one left relayed that they had finally done some minor damage that kept the gate offline, before it too joined the others.