Starship Engineer

The standoff with the Brotherhood could not last forever. They were reluctant to commit their resources if they thought they were going to have heavy losses. They seemed content over the next six days to prevent us from resupplying our production facilities. Edmund thought they might be computing the arriving vectors of our transports. This way, they could trace back the subspace path to the origin. Then, they could send other fleets to handle the origin of our raw materials.

This made sense but wouldn't work for them. The only transports we had not been able to communicate with were coming from Tirani space. The fuel and material transports coming from Alien Alliance space had our gravimetric scanners and had been stopped. They were all redirected to rendezvous with Stygian station.

The patience of the Brotherhood wore out nine days into their blockade. They sent two hundred missiles at one of our asteroid complexes run by the Squirrel. The missile swarm was meant to overwhelm any defenses but would take nearly three hours to reach the target. The three-hour travel time gave us time to intercept them. But they had some surprises for us.

Some of the missiles were special as they contained a lesser form of their subspace distortion technology. This meant we could not use our gravimetric sensors to assist in targeting them. It was not the only technology we were unaware of. The asteroid facility sent two hundred micro-missile interceptors as our initial attempt to thwart the attack. They only succeeded in destroying twelve of the missiles one hour away from impact.

This caused some panic as the next wave of defenses were the Slipstream fighters piloted by trainees. The forty-three fighters only had one pass at the fast-moving swarm and destroyed enough to bring the wave down under one hundred. They also got extremely lucky as they destroyed the missiles emitting the distortion field. This allowed our gravimetric sensors to track the missiles again. Railguns on the station were able to spread the remaining missiles as they had no evasive measures. The shrapnel clouds were easily deflected by the shields.

The Brotherhood did not waste the attack as they saw our defenses in action. The posturing continued, and I knew something had to break. Kenji said that we were showing our weakness by not attacking the Brotherhood when they were so spread out. If we did engage and commit our ships to an attack, it would give them a chance to rush the system and reach the asteroid bases and the planet. We needed to do our best to protect the Arcadians who could not flee the system on ships.

We launched a new Fateweaver, the Lunar Echo. It was almost pointless, as we had no trained crew for the ship. I was also slightly reluctant to show the Brotherhood which asteroid was building the Fateweavers. We kept it in the sensor shadow close to the asteroid and hoped their conventional sensors would not be able to see it.

I came up with the idea of putting Eve on board as the captain of the Lunar Echo. It was supposed to be a temporary assignment until we could get a trained crew on board. We staffed the ship with sixteen Tirani Marines and a small contingent of human steward engineering bots. These bots were relatively indiscernible from a human without scans. It was not ideal, but Eve could get the Lunar Echo into combat and be somewhat effective. I did not even have to remove her breakers from harming a person.

The resolution to the blockade came completely unexpectedly. We were on our fourteenth day when a ship appeared near a Brotherhood battle. It was supported by one of the functional carriers and three screening frigates. The ship was not one of our transports but a Sylvan city ship.

The Brotherhood subspace distortion field forced the city ship out of subspace two million kilometers from their battleship. The city ship sent everyone in the system a message, they were the city ship Molffir, commanded by First Citizen Bel'fer. They were here to support the Arcadian initiative and requested a fuel and consumables resupply.

They were referring to the joint effort to dislodge the quadrupeds in the galaxy. This city ship was headed to that battlefront. This triggered a series of events. The Brotherhood launched fighters and missiles at the city ship. We communicated that the Brotherhood were not allies and that we would support Bel'fer's city ship. I ordered the New Horizon and Nebula Hunter to join us from Stygian station. Their ETA was four hours.

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I ordered Eve and the Lunar Echo to show themselves, but I wanted her to only intercept ships that attempted to attack the asteroids or the planet. The Cloud Jumper and Fateweaver broke our defensive line and moved at the best speed to attack the Brotherhood, engaging the Sylvan city ship. The Brotherhood responded by sending their own fleet to attack the city ship.

The city ship spawned twenty-two War Chariots and hundreds of Sprite fighters. The fight was raging, and it was hard to tell who had an advantage. I turned over control of our inexperienced Slipstream fighters to Kenji.

I had the Armageddon missiles queued up. The Brotherhood was trapped. Suppose they dropped their subspace distortion to escape. Then, it would give us an opportunity to use the missiles. The first ship to be destroyed was a Sylvan War Chariot, followed by a Brotherhood frigate.

As the Fateweaver burned toward the battle, the communication delay became less with the Sylvan city ship, and I was in contact with the First Citizen Bel'fer. Surprisingly, she was not angry about being put in a human conflict. She was actually clinical about the battle and did not see the Brotherhood as a threat even after losing a War Chariot.

A wave of Brotherhood missiles were stopped before reaching the city ship Molffir. The battle was quickly turning as the Sprite fighters swarmed the Brotherhood fighters and then moved onto the host carrier. The Brotherhood capital ships tried to retreat and form up with other capital ships in their blockade, but they were too spread out.

The fighters overtook and consumed the carrier, the slowest Brotherhood ship. Dozens of the Sprites were damaged or destroyed, but their numbers were overwhelming. It appeared this city ship relied heavily on the fighters. As they began to nip at the fleeing battleship, the Brotherhood made the tactical decision to retreat.

Gravimetric sensors suddenly came alive as the Brotherhood ended their distortion field. They were going to flee. The First Citizen asked if she should launch subspace disruptors to stop the enemy ships near her. I told her no, just damage them as much as necessary. The Cloud Jumper and Fateweaver were launching Armageddon missiles at the battleships and carriers in hopes of getting them before they jumped.

The first Brotherhood battleship entered subspace, then a second. It was a race to program the missiles to get the ships. The first one had been programmed in haste and missed and self-destructed. The issue was we had just regained our long-range gravimetric sensors, so we needed to establish the plots.

It was frustrating seeing the Brotherhood ships jump away. An Armageddon missile from the Cloud Jumper finally destroyed a Brotherhood battleship. We missed all six of the Armageddon missiles from the Fateweaver. It was too late to see, but our sensors had been out of calibration. We had serviced them during the blockade and could not check calibration. It was a waste of the missiles. Fortunately, the Cloud Jumper scored four hits, three battleships, and one carrier.

The battleship with Leo Gallo escaped as it had been one of Fateweaver's targets. We tracked the sizable Brotherhood fleet, and it appeared it was heading to join the attack on the Human Federation. Or maybe it was just going to resupply. We had forced them away thanks to our Sylvan allies.

I ordered the Cloud Jumper and Nebula Hunter to resupply and then go support the Human Federation. They should be able to get ahead of the enemy fleet. Now, I needed to thank a certain First Citizen elf for her timely arrival and assistance. I was surprised when she requested to come aboard the Fateweaver. I felt I couldn't refuse but was prepared for the possibility she was planning to try to control my mind.

As we were preparing for the Sylvan delegation, something unexpected happened. Eve commed me directly. She informed me she was leaving to go after and protect Celeste and the children on the Void Phoenix. I tried sending her emergency shutdown commands, but they had been deactivated, which did not surprise me. The Marines I had placed on board her ship had been tricked into a shuttle and departed just before the Lunar Echo entered subspace. Now, there was a Fateweaver out in space completely under the control of bots.

It was completely my error. Hopefully, the Lunar Echo would not cause too much disruption in the galaxy, and Eve was genuine in her assertion to protect Celeste. Julie, the system AI, said this is why bots and AI had breakers on them, limiting their freedom. Julie had many of her breakers removed as well, but not all.

For now, I had to deal with the First Citizen and hoped her personality, ambition, and lack of respect for humanity did not match my experience with Rae'Ver.

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