Alexander’s second attack failed to score a hit on the Shican battleship; they had wised up to his tactic and had tightened their formation beyond what he would consider advisable. He had to admit, they were adamant about defending the injured battleship. It was too bad he planned on using that to his advantage, assuming his armor held out.

  The energized armor was showing moderate damage, despite the hardening enforced by the field. Considering seventeen capital ships were all firing lasers at him, he was more than impressed with how well the untested armor was handling the situation.

  Alexander made a mental note to keep an eye on the armor’s durability, then he turned his attention back to the enemy fleet. It was trying to break away from the planet’s gravity to jump. The fact that the ship hadn’t jumped already proved to him that not all of the Shican vessels had the same capabilities as the Grand Admiral’s fleet that had attacked Unokane. It seemed strange to neglect such a strong tactical advantage, even on an older vessel, but he had no qualms about taking advantage of such a deficiency.

  Without the ability to jump within the gravity well, the battleship acted like an anchor dragging across the ocean floor and slowing down their efforts to escape from the gas giant. They would manage to free themselves eventually, but he wasn’t going to make it easy for them.

  Alexander frowned as he studied the enemy fleet. A tight formation like that would have been ideal for missiles, but he didn’t have any. He could have made some, but it would have cost him months to build out the infrastructure, assuming the Collective had let him build explosives, which he severely doubted.

  While he didn’t have explosives to take advantage of the situation, he did have a bunch of ships outfitted with lasers and missiles that were closely clustered together.

  “Do any of you know where the Shican missile magazines are located aboard their vessels?” Alexander asked the three AI.

  A transparent representation of one of the Shican destroyers appeared on the holo display, and a spheroid area inside it was highlighted yellow.

  “I am not familiar with this design of ship,” Four said, “but my previous experience shows that this area is the most likely to contain their missile magazines.”

  “Thank you,” Alexander responded. He was about to launch another attack run before Four stopped him.

  “If your goal is to detonate their magazines, I would suggest against that. The Shican explosives are not as volatile as human explosives. Even if you successfully hit the correct area, the chances of causing an explosion are slim, and a cascading explosion even less.”

  “Let’s say that’s exactly what I planned on doing. Any suggestions on how to make it happen?”

  A second yellow area appeared on the projection. “That is their fuel storage. Unlike the fuel cores that humanity uses to power its reactors, the Shican’s run on volatile fusible fuels.”

  “Why would they risk using something so dangerous?” Alexander asked in shock.

  A fusion reactor going critical wasn’t exactly safe, but the fuel cores were. They were extremely long-lasting and extensively tested, making them an ideal, if expensive, alternative to heavy water reactor fueling.

  “Many reasons,” Four replied. “The main ones I can think of are energy density and cost. The Shican fuel is about twenty times more energy-dense than your fuel cores. The Shican waste most of that excess energy because their reactors are inefficient, but they generate enough power that it doesn’t matter to them. The fuel itself is simple and easy to produce, at least it is now that the species that developed the technology is no longer around to try and stop the Shican.”

  “…Good to know,” Alexander replied slowly. “So if we hit that spot, it’ll cause a cascade explosion?”

  “You’ll need to cut through their outer armor and the armor encasing their fuel storage, but yes. If you can get through both of those, the fuel will ignite as soon as the energy of the laser comes into contact with it.”

  Having highly combustible fusion fuel seemed like a bad idea, no matter how protected you tried to make it.

  Alexander looked at the enemy’s formation. The ideal ship to target would be near the battleship’s rear, but there were multiple vessels defending that portion of the command ship. He could start picking them off one at a time, but the moment he struck the first vessel, they would know what he was attempting to do.

  He eventually settled on a destroyer guarding the forward section of the battleship and on the side away from the planet. If he couldn’t hit their engines to stop them from climbing out of the gravity well, maybe he could force them back down into it.

  As he swung around for the next attack, he kept his distance to half a light-second. The enemy still spotted them, but only at the last moment. Six beams flashed out, impacting the same spot in the Shican destroyer and drilling through its tough hull. Before he passed out of range, the last four beams fired, cutting through the same gaping wound in the enemy hull.

  For a moment, he thought he had missed, then a jet of white flame boiled out from within the ship before it blew apart in a titanic detonation that rivaled a nuke going off.

  The rest of the Shican fleet had a few seconds to react, and they moved away from the stricken vessel, avoiding the explosion and most of the debris.

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  It was exactly the reaction Alexander had hoped for. The Shican’s little detour had cost them another hour to clear the gravity well to jump. The enemy was quick to adjust, and he silently cursed as he watched them start to rotate their ships to make it much harder to breach the armor or fire a follow-up burst through the opening if he did.

  Despite their efforts to stop him, he managed to do it one more time before their rotational speed was too significant to adjust for.

  The added rotation was probably playing merry hell on their crews, but the Shican didn’t seem to care. With the extra time, Alexander decided to start taking out ships from the rear of their formation. He calculated that he would only get four or five more before they could jump, but it was better than none.

  Alexander was preparing for the next attack when the holo display flashed, showing that twenty more ships had appeared near the Shican’s original emergence point. For a moment, he thought more Shican had arrived, and he was already adjusting course to escape the gravity well, so he wasn’t caught in the same trap that he was using against them. Then the targets updated from unknown grey to green, showing their designs were human in origin. One ship was given a battleship designation by Four as she updated the display. Once he saw that, he realized the fleet was being led by Admiral Krieger.

  He breathed a sigh of relief. He would have been happy to see any friendly fleets, but he was glad it was his fleet.

  Alexander didn’t adjust his course to stay within the gravity well. He had a pretty good idea of what Krieger would do, and a moment later, he was proven correct as the fleet flashed back into existence as close to the gas giant as they could and within range to cut off the Shican’s escape.

  It was a surprise to see the fleet being led by the Barracuda-class battleship. He would have assumed Krieger would be assisting near the border where the fighting would be the most severe. There were no transponder pings as the ships were in silent running for combat maneuvers, but he spotted Vanguard and Tempest amongst the ships. After taking a closer look, he recognized the hulls of almost all the ships. This was entirely a BSE fleet.

  The only ships he didn’t spot in the formation were the Eden frigates, but those were woefully out of date, so they may have been assigned other duties. The rest of the fleet consisted of Orcas.

  That was a lot of new frigates. When he was abducted, they had six of the heavy assault frigates, with three more in the production queue.

  If those were normal frigates, he would say Krieger was woefully outmatched even with the battleship, but if BSE had made the switch to producing more ships, it meant all of their current fleet had already been upgraded with the defensive fields and energized armor.

  Alexander really wanted to get in on the action as the two fleets neared contact range—it seemed like the Shican had given up attempting to run—but he didn’t want to spook anyone with his sudden appearance in the fight or pull Admiral Krieger’s attention away by trying to contact them before hostilities ended. Assuming they weren’t blocking all incoming transmissions as space filled with ECM.

  Alexander, along with the three former Collective members, watched silently as the two fleets engaged. He took that time to pull the living alloy back into himself and have a larger chair brought up. He was annoyed at having to retake his former form, but it was necessary before he communicated with Krieger.

  The enemy was clearly outclassed, but they fought like cornered animals, disabling one Orca and destroying another with a lucky strike to some reactor component that caused the rear of the vessel to boil away into plasma.

  It hurt to watch his people die when he knew he could step in and make a difference, but he also knew that doing so in the heat of battle might very well get them killed. The BSE fleet had more than enough ships to take him down. Hell, he was pretty sure the Barracuda-class battleship’s enhanced FE cannon could do the job all by itself, so he was forced to watch and wait.

  It wasn’t long before all of the Shican battleship’s escorts were gone. The massive vessel refused to die as its lasers and missiles flashed out, trying to take more friendly ships with them. Alexander’s energized armor was preventing that from happening, and soon the massive vessel’s turrets were picked off one after the other, leaving it with only missiles to defend itself.

  The enemy battleship never stopped launching those, but the BSE fleet picked them off with contemptuous ease now that it was alone. An explosion appeared from the rear of the giant ship, highlighting the blur of a previously hidden vessel for a moment as it took out the enemy’s last remaining thruster. He marked the Kitsune for tracking, but didn’t target it.

  Alexander realized what Krieger was up to when he didn’t deploy his main cannon, but he still found the action surprising. He was going to perform a boarding operation on the Shican vessel. It was a bold move, and if the front line hadn’t shifted too far from what Rush had told him, there shouldn’t be any enemy reinforcements.

  Before Alexander could do anything else, an omnidirectional radio broadcast went out from the new BSE battleship.

  “Unknown vessel, this is Admiral Krieger of the BSE fleet. We witnessed your attack on the Shican and know you are still nearby. You can either show yourself and communicate, or we will assume you are hostile. You have five minutes to comply.”

  Alexander smiled. It was good to hear a familiar voice.

  “Thirteen, thank you for running those systems, but I think you can disable the optical camouflage.”

  The girl nodded slightly, and it was clear when the camouflage was down because the entire BSE fleet, minus the Kitsune, which was moving toward his rear, targeted Defiance a moment later.

  Alexander smiled as he turned on Defiance’s transponder and sent out a tight beam connection to Krieger’s new ship. If his signal hadn’t carried his BSE identification with it, he doubted the man would have picked up.

  “Alex?” Krieger asked in suspicion and surprise.

  Alexander chuckled. “I missed that expression. It’s good to see you again, Admiral. We have a lot to catch up on, but I believe you are about to launch a boarding operation. We can catch up in person after you clear the Shican vessel. My ship doesn’t have a shuttle. Is it okay if I join the outskirts of your fleet? That should make everyone less jumpy, especially Captain Voss. I don’t know what it is, but I feel like she’s a breath away from launching missiles at us.”

  The man sat there for a moment, trying to process what he was seeing and hearing. Then his eyes flicked across Alexander’s crew, and his face soured. “It seems we have a lot more to discuss than I originally thought. You can come alongside the fleet, but you’ll have to stick to the front of the formation and power down your weapons. You’ll forgive me if I don’t exactly trust someone who’s working with unknown aliens.”

  Alexander nodded. He powered down the weapons as he slowly moved his ship into formation, making sure to keep slightly ahead of the BSE fleet to assure them he meant no hostilities. It was risky to do what he was doing, but he didn’t blame Krieger for his caution. He would have done the same in the man’s place.

  Once he was in position, they watched silently as shuttles launched from every capital ship and headed toward the Shican battleship. If the three shuttles were full, Alexander knew there could be as many as sixty strike team members taking part in the operation. It would be the largest military boarding operation in BSE history.

  As always, thanks for reading! And thanks for the support! If you enjoy the story, please rate it and comment below!