"Shit," Hale said. "Story time later, come on."
It was a short trip from the conference room to the ship's control center, complicated only by the warship's sudden maneuvering. Once through the doors, Hale didn't break his stride as he went straight for the holotank dominating the room's center. After a moment of hesitation, Constance followed, stepping into the holographic representation of near orbit.
"Hundreds of contacts on their way up from the atmosphere," the acting commander said without even looking their way. "Small and slow, no hard returns, just thermal output."
"Like Luna?" Admiral Hale asked. Constance was lost. Another area where her briefing had been sparse. She knew Luna had been attacked, but hadn't gotten any details.
"We think so," the captain said. "Can't be sure, we've never seen them operating in the atmosphere before. Our friends on Bismarck weren't much help either."
Bismarck, the warship run by the Minnesota Freehold. Surprise allies that had been hiding in the Belt. There were at least a dozen problems Constance had with that convenient little story, especially now, but not much she could do about it.
"I'm sorry," Admiral Hale said as he looked back to her. "I thought I'd have more time to explain, well, everything. There are terabytes of data we couldn't risk sending you by courier."
Constance didn't respond, instead turning her attention to the hundreds of icons climbing through the atmospheric interface. Like all of the Paladins (with the possible exception of the Ghost Paladin), she was a military officer with all the requisite experience, however her specialty had been in ground operations and logistics. Even so, as she selected and called up detailed information on one of the inbound contacts, she knew that what she was seeing didn't look right. "What am I looking at?" She asked.
Admiral Hale sighed. "The enemy," he said. "Beyond that, we don't know." He slipped a hand up to toggle the headset he wore to transmit. "This is Admiral Hale to all ships. Weapons free, engage at will."
----
Dragon Flight, on Combat Space patrol
"You heard the man," Dragon Lead called out to his provisional squadron as he kicked up the thrust of his Poignard. "Remember your briefings and keep sharp. Engagement range is at least two hundred klicks, and there's no fire control signal to give you warning."
Being the only survivors to escape from Luna, as well as the only pilots to have engaged the... aliens (that was going to take some time to get used to) had its privileges, and its drawbacks. Dragon Lead and his wingman had spent a day in debriefing after parking in the Bismarck's landing bays, digging up every last detail they could from their brief engagement over Kepler.
Right after that came orders for Dragon Lead to take command of an entire provisional squadron in support of the evacuation effort. In addition to his wingman, he had six survivors from Terra under his command, flying a motley collection of whatever was available. They'd made it through so far, conducting combat air patrols and air strikes to support the evacuation in Turkey, but most of them were still pretty shaky. Even with his own brief exposure to this "enemy", Dragon Lead knew he couldn't even begin to imagine what it was like to have actually been on Terra when this nightmare had started.
Hundreds of targets filled his heads up display as his squadron closed in on a course that would skate just above the interface. Just like at Luna, they were all small targets, low acceleration, their thermal output almost like primitive chemical rockets. "One minute to engage," he called out. Waiting was the hardest part. A few of his squadron mates had longer range weaponry, some were already firing, but his own Poignard would have to get closer, close enough for the enemy to shoot back, before he could do much.
Behind them, both the Triumphus and Bismarck opened up with their capital beam weapons, sweeping the approaching cloud of contacts with dispersed fire. Entire groups of targets began to disappear in brief flashes of light. Knowing that this enemy could be killed offered a brief moment of reassurance to Dragon Lead, before his own fighter began to shudder under multiple impacts.
"Damnit!" he shouted as he threw his craft into violent evasive maneuvers. Fault sensors popped up all over the craft. His comms were alive with reports from his squad. The enemy had engaged. "Maximum thrust!" he ordered. "Go straight through!"
As the range indicator on his hud spun down, he triggered his weapons, spraying shells and laser fire across the enemy.