course that would avoid most of the Deeper capital ships, but dove under the ecliptic plane to try and split the enemy fire.
He glanced at the overall tactical display. The sand cloud hadn’t been as effective here, because the first Deeper missiles through it were in instant contact with every other Deeper missile and ship. This gave Conover his first chance to try a countermeasure he’d developed. Triggered by the Pulsar, half of the Realm ships began pouring out electrical energy configured as random noise in an attempt to flood the Deepers’ short-range, electro-telepathic comms.
The smooth coordination of the Deeper missiles suddenly fell apart, the projectiles’ formation spreading, becoming ragged. A moment later, they resumed comms on a slightly different frequency. This provoked an ongoing game of chasing the Deeper comms across the spectrum, flooding one frequency, then another, every time the aliens switched.
Dash gave a quick nod. It wasn’t perfect, but it did degrade the effectiveness of the Deeper attacks somewhat, giving the fleet’s point defenses more time to take down incoming missiles.
Dash yanked his focus back forward. A single squadron of Deeper ships, two capital ships each with three escorts—the more usual Deeper arrangement—were moving to block the approach of the mechs. The trouble, of course, was that the mechs were split, coming at the Deepers’ base from two different directions. The Deeper ships wisely chose not to split in turn, and instead accelerated toward Amy and Jexin.
“Do my eyes deceive me?” Leira asked. “Do we have a clear run in to the Deeper base?”
She and Dash were still taking fire from the Deeper capital ships, but it was sporadic, the range opening by the second. Moreover, their attention was fixed mostly on the approaching combined Realm and League fleet, whose missiles had begun to detonate among them. A ferocious firefight was now spiraling up, filling the space within and around the opposing fleets with an ever-increasing orgy of destructive energy.
Dash looked back ahead. Sure enough, Leira seemed right. There was nothing between them and the Deeper anchorlets to hinder their approach, aside from their own defensive fire.
Which made Dash deeply suspicious. Had the Deepers really just screwed up and deployed their fleet too far forward, leaving their base uncovered? If so, that was great. As the old adage went, when your enemy is in the midst of making a mistake, don’t interrupt him. But Dash found it tough to believe the Deepers could be so careless.
“Leira, I—”
“Think it’s too quiet,” Leira finished.
“Right?”
“Yeah. Still, if it stays clear like this—”
A torrent of fire lashed out of the big base and both anchorlets. X-ray lasers, missiles, and something similar to a rail gun pounding away at the mechs, a hail of fire that lit up every screen with chaotic signal overload. Dash and Leira both began to jink, dodge, and weave. Their Blur drives, which had so much more power than the original drives built into the mechs, let them fling the mechs about through wrenching course changes that simply didn’t seem possible for spacecraft. The downside was that all the maneuvering ate up time, slowing their approach—and they needed to get within virtual touching distance of their targets to deploy the Stingers.
A missile detonated close by the Archetype, bathing the mech in a ferocious blast of x-rays. Then there was another burst closer to the Swift, an EMP warhead that filled the comm channels with a brief burst of deafening static. Fortunately, they’d further hardened the mechs against overpowered EMP, so the effect was minimal. X-ray laser barrages followed, beams of invisible, ultra short-wave energy reaching out for the mechs.
“Leira, priority targets are the weapons mounts,” Dash said, lining up firing solutions and snapping shots back. He saw one x-ray laser battery on the flank of the base vanish in a burst of light, grinning broadly at the destruction. “Amy, Jexin, what’s your status?”
“We’re trying not to get tangled up with these Deeper ships that intercepted us, per your orders,” Jexin said.
“Trouble is, they really want to play with us,” Amy put in. “We might have to take the time to roast them—” There was a pause as she recovered from a hit. “Anyway, we’re doing our best to get past them!”
“Understood. The sooner you can threaten this base, the more we split up their fire,” Dash said, hissing as he banked hard and turned the Archetype in a dizzying burn.
“Got it, we’ll be there as soon as we can, Dash,” Amy replied.
Dash took a breath and turned