Off Track 2

"For reference, can I get an idea of our fuel and supply levels?"

"Full load, a good twelve months of flying if the escorts occasionally take some food material from the larger ships. Fuel is also good, all ships have newer reactors with recently replenished fuel reserves. The only concern might come from the Calibration's squadrons as we only have enough of their burner fuel to last a few hours."

"We can operate without constraints on our movement then. What's the word on ammo?"

"Slightly less plentiful. The dreadnought and the large cruisers have about 80 percent of their rods remaining, but our battleship is reporting they have less than four hours worth of broadside firing. We can have some of the others' rods transferred, but that will take a long time to bring them to parity."

"And the missiles?"

"You should act as if we don't have any. A good half of our total stockpile by mass was fired during the raid and the majority of what remains are interceptor and swarm missiles. We have precisely eight operational torpedoes and they are all variants to be attached to transport craft."

That was less than satisfying news. Torpedoes had shown themselves as a trump card in the attack on the shipyards. The battleship's lack of ammunition was disconcerting for sure, but the precision he provided would more than make up for it.

With both of the most concerning matters addressed, the difficult part was finding the best course of action.

There were options, plenty of options, but that was just as much a problem as it was a relief.

Don knew just as well as the admiral that the path they had previously taken had clearly signaled their intent to attack a second dockyard, so attacking that dockyard was a definite no-go. In fact, attacking any other port was out of the question now.

The mobilization of the Oligarchies' fleets would undoubtedly progress far faster now that there was an established and tangible threat. They currently lacked the raw numbers in order to draw themselves into a standard engagement, even with the Noah's support.

Noticing his hand on his chin and a pensive expression on his face, Admiral Adirondack further clarified her orders. "While our initial orders were to attack the harbors, if things were to go wrong I was told to prioritize the Noah's secrecy first and foremost. Following this was the emphasis on fleet preservation. I was told nothing beyond this." It wasn't much, but it was everything she knew.

"Can you pull up our current position and velocity in relation to the sun?"

"Would you like to see acceleration?"

"Not really, I just wanna know where we are and where we are headed."

He was going to suggest raiding supply ships so as to draw vessels away from the front, but if there was a priority on preserving the fleet then that was off the table.

In a holographic display much like the one aboard the Noah, the fleet was shown as a dot with an arrow. If the plane of orbit could be considered the face of a compass, then the position of the Earth during the northern hemisphere's summer solstice would be north.

Likewise, the position of the Earth at the time of the northern hemisphere's Winter solstice would be south.

For the same reason, the Earth spins counterclockwise, the northern hemisphere being on top.

Currently, they were a great distance away from the little blue dot they called home, speeding away at breakneck speeds from a substantially larger, pale blue dot.

Speeding away is used very loosely as when dealing with a scale on the size of a solar system, only moving a few times the speed of sound is barely noticeable. Hence the arrow.

Right now, the fleet was heading on a northwest course, currently being only slightly west of the dot denoting Uranus.

There were a few other dots that gave the estimated positions of various important facilities, suspected fleet locations, and notable environmental hazards, but they were few and far between outside of the core.

Aside from the fact there wasn't much out here, intel on the Oligarchies was sparse. It was incredibly difficult to both infiltrate stations and setup listening posts.

"The only way to describe our trajectory is 'off track.' We aren't headed towards anything we know about."

In a grand thirty degree cone in there direction of travel, there was no known entities aside from a few clusters of asteroids. The only thing that came close was an abandoned mining outpost that was operational before Skinnik.

Extremely unlikely that there was anything of value near there, tactically or materially.

"I say we remove ourselves from the plane of orbit." Don's recommendation was not orthodox.

"Wouldn't that cost us more fuel and time?"

"It would, but it will also make us harder to find. My money is on them assuming we are keeping to the plane, which will buy us time if we get off of it. Right now our very existence is tying up resources and manpower, so we need to remain a ghost for as long as possible."

"Are we not going to attack? I had taken you to be the aggressive type."

"No attacking. I had considered raiding, but staying silent is likely to waste more of their resources in the long term. Having a freighter go missing without so much as a distress call would immediately alert them to our general location. We might need to harass a small station every week or two as a means to keep ourselves established as a threat, but beyond that we should stay as far away from their stations as possible."

"I hadn't considered the cost of searching for us. Should we go up or down then?"

"Down. Definitely down. Not sure if you know this, but most people will choose up when given the chance. The best place to hide is going to be the bottom hemisphere of the solar system."