nudging the drive.
“Fine,” Sentinel said, in a clipped tone.
Dash threw back his head and laughed. “Perfect.
“I thought the tone was just right. Leira is teaching me so much about nuance. And may I say that humans are more complicated than I ever knew.”
Dash snorted, then kicked the drive even harder. “You have no idea.”
Dash watched the tactical display as the Victory, the Relentless, and their accompanying squadrons emerged from unSpace. They’d done so sixty degrees around the system relative to the rest of the fleet. It had cost them almost an extra hour, during which time Dash had taken the other four mechs on a run into the system, attracting a salvo of missiles from each of the big Deeper ships.
But he wanted the carriers to launch their Denkiller and Mako fighters from behind the Deepers, relative to the rest of the Realm fleet. His reasoning was that they could deliver their attacks directly toward the swarm of nimble but potent fighters, or toward the powerful, massed capital ships of the rest of the fleet, but not both.
And what attacks they were. Dash saw a wall of missiles inbound, rivaling even the massed missile barrage they’d fired at the start of the Cygnus Realm’s attack on the Scrapyard.
“That is a whole heluva lot of missiles,” Amy said. “You sure you want to stand here and try to take them all down?”
Dash had just finished conferring with Sentinel about that very thing. “Sentinel says that our best-case scenario is that our five mechs take out as much as seventy percent of the Deeper missiles.”
“Huh. I’m impressed,” Leira said. “Didn’t think it would be that much.”
“That still leaves us facing thirty percent,” Jexin put in. “And that’s, what, almost two hundred missiles.”
“That’s gonna hurt,” Amy said.
“It will,” Dash replied. “Which is why, as soon as they’re in range, we’re going to open fire—but we’re also going to pull back toward the fleet and hope they don’t launch another massed salvo.”
As though on cue, Sentinel interrupted. “Dash, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but—”
“They just launched another salvo, yeah,” Dash said, studying the tactical display. “Okay, this makes it more interesting. Weapons-free as soon as that first salvo’s in range, we back away, then we and the rest of the fleet do our damnedest to shoot down the rest.”
“The lead missiles will be in range in thirty seconds,” Sentinel said. “That’s interesting.”
“What’s interesting?”
“The Deeper missiles are separating, rather than remaining as a single, coherent salvo. Those in the lead appear to be larger and faster than those following, while the smallest and slowest are falling behind.”
“Different types of missiles, I guess?”
“We’ve seen that Deeper technology tends to be quite generalized,” Sentinel replied. “There is little distinction among their ships. They may not even give them unique designations, the way we do ours. To have developed several different types of missiles, differentiated by size and acceleration, seems to run counter to that.”
“Well, once they start detonating, we’ll know just how different they are. And speaking of detonating, we’re in range,” Dash said. “Okay, everyone, weapons-free. You know what to do.”
Dash dodged a missile and struck out at it with the power-sword as it flashed by. He connected, neatly slicing a chunk from the Deeper projectile and sending it tumbling out of control. He didn’t celebrate, though, because for every missile they destroyed, there seemed to be two more right behind it.
They started destroying Deeper missiles the moment they first opened fire, dark-lances and nova-cannons slamming out shots to their maximum range. It was almost a continuous, running battle—Dash pulled the Archetype and the other mechs back, firing all the way, until they were able to integrate their counter-missile fire with the rest of the fleet.
Once the first missile barrage had been almost entirely defeated, they had to contend with the second, which was much harder. It managed to get much closer than the first before it even started taking losses. The fleet powered ahead, the mechs in the lead, determined to take the fight to the Deeper ships and not just play the long-range, standoff game the aliens seemed to prefer.
Two missiles raced in toward the Archetype. Dash targeted one with the dark-lance and landed a hit that sent it momentarily tumbling. He switched fire to the other, missed, then managed a glancing impact that knocked it into a spin. By then, the first had recovered and renewed its attack. It seemed determined to bore straight in at the Archetype, as