Ashley – Surprise

OK, so I didn't turn into the super Marine that I had planned to be. Still, Captain of the Enterprise is not such a bad deal! While Serina and Lance were down on Endor after we made it to the space-time location that Serina and Lance had targeted. Not to be boasting, but we arrived right on the tick. We saw the Port trigger on our instruments as we slid into orbit and Lance and Serina ported down in the next instant.

Erica reported, "Ma'am, Lance is requesting to be put through to you."

"Erica, Put him through."

"Ashley, we sending up a drone, please blast it to vapor, I want a huge flash and a loud bang please."

"Roger that Lance," I replied.

"Kieron, target that drone, I want a huge flash and loud bang. You may fire when ready."

The flash lit up the sky even brighter than daylight and was heard for over a hundred miles.

"Enterprise well done," Lance said via the communicators. "Serina and I are going to check on some friends that I left hundreds of years ago, or a few minutes ago depending on your point of view. Erin and Betty, Bit knows where the armory is, while Serina and I are checking on Beauty can you soup up the enterprise?"

"Yes Sir, we will take care of it just as planned," Erin replied.

I responded, "Be careful, Sir."

"Roger that, Captain Ashley. Lance out."

My attention was focused on getting Bit, um, the Enterprise, fancied up with the maximum firepower that we could find.

***

We offloaded almost the entire family to the base on that moon. Porting a ship through a port, even one designed for Imperial scouts is not a simple thing. There is a lot of risk moving something this massive. If not for the fact that ninety percent of Bit is made out of energy we would never have succeeded.

Now I was in my command chair. We had been tracking those incoming ships since they first appeared on our screens. Erin and Betty had not been idle the past hundred years. With Bit's help and his massive database of knowledge, we had improved on the imperial weapons as known at the time that Lance and Serina had been forced out of that space-time location. The new weapons that we had added were more icing on the cake. We had also improved detection and masking technology. The incoming fleet should be well within our range before they noticed us.

[Lance, are you going to make it back before that fleet gets in range?] I asked subvocally.

[Ashley, we are not going to make it back in time, you are the best one to handle this. Just remember what you learned in the virtual reality simulations. And trust your crew. Lance, Over, and out.]

"Erica put me on the ship wide channel." I paused to let her do so, and at her nod, I started my speech, "We have one carrier of the Nimitz class, two Ticonderoga-class cruisers, and a dozen Arleigh-Burke class destroyers on their way to rain fire down on Lance, Serina and a few hundred of our closest kin. Don't be confused, these ships have familiar names, but just one of these cruisers could have wiped out all the armed forces from when we left earth. I'm not certain, but I would not be surprised if one of those destroyers could do it."

Lance always liked referencing old classics, so I paused a moment before adding, "Think, Final Countdown from the nineteen-eighties. I know we saw that on movie night a few months back. Remember it was that alternate history science fiction film about a modern nineteen-eighties aircraft carrier that travels through time to the day before the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor? The concept was that one single modern carrier could have taken on all the forces in the Pacific at that time and won. Well, that is what we are up against now. Yes, we have the same modern weapons, but there are only a few of us and thousands of them. If we blow this one chance, thousands of highly trained, heavy armor wearing troops will drop on top of our people."

Another pause for effect and, "People just do your best. Erica let's go to battle stations. "

Just as Lance said, I let my people do their jobs. As I sat there, looking confident on the outside even though my heart was about to beat out of my chest, I saw status lights all over the ship turn green, and Erica fielded department reports, until she told me, "Ma'am, we are locked and loaded. We can fire on your command."

"Wanda, you may fire as soon as they come close enough to detect us. We only have one chance to take down that carrier, make it a good one."

"Yes, Ma'am!"

"Kieron, can you target both of those cruisers?"

"No, Ma'am" not from this angle and if we jink about they might detect us plus I'm afraid that it might mess up Wanda's targeting."

"Very well, be prepared to fire when Wanda does."

"Yes, Ma'am!"

Our beams raved out at their carrier and splashed against their screens for a few seconds before we overpowered them; first, because the composition of our beam was more advanced and second from sheer brute strength. One moment a massive carrier, the next a fireball expanding as a smooth sphere of blinding radiance. No bang, no flames, no smoke, just an enormous ball of light fading to sudden black.

One more blinding sphere of light expanding from one of the Cruisers and our sneak attack was over. The destroyers were weaving and dodging as if their life depended on it. Which it did. I noticed Wanda triggering off torpedoes. I wondered if they would work the way they did in virtual reality.

There are only a few atoms of matter per cubic centimeter in space. But even those few atoms proved to offer enough resistance that when our proximity triggered torpedoes exploded, that their targets could not avoid the shockwave and twisted metal and bodies floated away from the center of the blast.

Yes, there was some dodging and weaving as we sent out our armored mechs. Yeah, we could not resist. Lance had infected all of us with the Anime bug. Erica and Betty's teams had plenty of time… We could have built fighter jets or spaceships—whatever… But instead, we used the basic concept of Imperial armor and created an armored and powered mechanism that could transform.

A mech was fascinating to watch. In the flight mode configuration, your movement inside the cockpit, which was in the chest and thorax of the mech, created flight surface and thruster response rather than artificial muscle reinforcement. You still felt the feedback though. For instance, if you made an abrupt turn, you could feel the mechs resistance to the inertial change as pressure against your arm or leg. So, you had to push harder to counter it. You knew when you had reached operational max because you actually felt it viscerally.

Because of the physical size of a mech, we could load it with more weapons and power to drive the fields that protected it from things like disrupters. Also because of its size when one transformed to a human configuration, it had the power, plus the fields and material hardness, to punch through the skin of a ship, then leveraging your body like a weight lifter surge up ripping the skin off the ship. An unprotected human does not do well in a vacuum…

The destroyers learned rapidly that the Enterprise was not something to toy with. The sheer overwhelming power that it packed took a destroyer out like a moth in a flame. Yet the mobility of our mechs let them dance around a destroyer, kind of like when Lance shows off in combat training.

That cruiser was another story. One squad had managed to land on the skin of the cruiser, they were rampaging on the surface ripping gun emplacements right out of the ship. But otherwise were about as effective as a fly on horse's butt. Annoying but not worrisome.

"Wanda, forget the targeting system. Bit is smart but not all powerful. Use your feelings, as Yoda would say reach out with the force. Feel where they will be next and target that spot."

"Yes, Ma'am, I'll try."

"Daughter, there is no try, do or do not." And her laugh and smile made my heart speed up a beat in pride.

It worked, Wanda issued orders to leave the cruiser alone and for Kieron and the mechs to focus on the destroyers. One moment the cruiser was fighting like a Tasmanian devil, the next it was an expanding ball of light that faded to sudden darkness. "That's my girl," I screamed. Wanda blushed.