Chapter One Hundred - Patchwork Fleet

Ivil was no stranger to feeling powerful, but she was also aware that there were different kinds of powerful one could feel.

There was personal power, her ability to rip and tear anyone at will. There was that strange sort of social power that came from people bowing and scraping in fear at the mere sight of her. There was economic might, there was that moral power that came from always knowing that she was right...

There were probably a few more broad, generalized, sorts of power.

What interested her now was a more unique expression of power. The one that came exclusively from riding in a ship alongside a fleet of other warships.

It was a very impersonal sort of power. After all, the power itself didn't come from the individual, it came from the many warships around them, all capable of projecting power of the kinetic and explosive sort in a wave of violence with nothing but an order keeping them restrained.

That sort of power had attracted her once. When she was but a small player in the grand game, without a thousand cores to her name, when a fleet of warships could lay her low. Back then, even just sitting in a ship that she had no control over felt strong. She was part of a greater whole, and that greater whole was strong.

Since then she'd gained personal power enough to eclipse any fleet in the solar system, so her interest in that kind of power had waned, but she was feeling a small echo of it now.

The Sappho had burned hot for a solid half-hour, but they'd since cut off their acceleration and were now coasting at a respectable speed in the general direction of Uranus. Behind them was the start of a proper warfleet.

It wasn't a fleet for the history books. The nearest ship to the Sappho was the Silent Sentinel Washer at the Gates, the Tech Maid of Mars pocket cruiser. It had been waiting for them to move in Ganymede's orbit, and when they started to fly towards Uranus, the cruiser had slipped out of its orbit and aimed itself after them.

The larger ship couldn't catch up initially, but since they'd stopped their acceleration, the Silent Sentinel Washer at the Gates had burned slower, but longer. It had allowed it to slowly catch up and now the cruiser was cutting the distance between them at a respectable pace. Within an hour or two it would be flying alongside the Sappho.

It wasn't the only ship to move out, of course. Two warships wasn't a fleet, it was... more of a suggestion of a fleet.

The League of Free Moons' navy had scrambled.

Ivil suspected that the higher ups in the navy were aware of just how important the Sappho was. If they didn't want to look like fools they'd need to be there when the Sappho inevitably caught up to the Earth Alliance fleet.

She also suspected that they'd left in too much of a hurry.

Ivil looked up as Twenty-Six entered the bridge. It was a little quiet at the moment. Aurora had left some twenty minutes ago as radio chatter died down--though she promised to return--and Pixie was taking a quick nap in her pilot's seat, entirely too comfortable with just sleeping despite all of the systems plugged into her feeding her reams of information. Ivil supposed that that was a side-effect of being a fighter pilot for years.

"Hello," she said, keeping her voice to a lower timbre.

"Hi!" Twenty-Six said. She rubbed some grease off her fingers with a rag, then smiled at Ivil. "Came up from Engineering to see something. Do you mind?"

"I don't," Ivil said. "But I am curious. What is it you want to see?"

"Ah, well, ship-watching's my number one hobby, you know?" Twenty-Six said.

"I thought that would be mechanical work?" Ivil asked.

"Hmm... no, I feel like that's more of a job than a hobby? I mean, I like doing it, and if I was a billionaire I'd probably have a few ships to tinker on just for fun, but when you're doing it for a living, it doesn't feel like a hobby?"

"That's fair, I suppose," Ivil said.

Twenty-Six blinked at her. "Do you... have hobbies?"

Ivil considered telling her that she spent about eight to twelve hours a day watching soap operas and reruns of soap operas. "Do you need help with your ship watching?" Ivil asked.

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"Huh? Oh, no, I think I can just use the Sappho's sensor suite. It's not that bad. Though it could be a bit better. If we ever get to a really nice port, I'd like to put in an order for an upgrade?"

"I think we can find room in the budget for that," Ivil said. Mars' GDP was pretty big. Giving Twenty-Six anything she wanted would probably not even be a rounding error.

Twenty-Six grinned, then skipped over to one of the free consoles. She flopped down in the seat before it booted the screen up, and then had the sensors' readings up after a few commands.

"See anything interesting?" Ivil asked.

"Uh-huh!" Twenty-Six said. "Looks like the League didn't send every last one of their ships, but it might be a near thing."

"I suspect that they launched in a hurry," Ivil said.

Twenty-Six had a list of IFF signatures up on a second monitor. She scanned through it, then nodded. "Yeah. Okay, here's the official fleet size... we've got nine cruisers, seventeen destroyers, thirty-one frigates, and about forty patrol craft. That's a handy little fleet. Like... more than probably anyone but the biggest pirate factions has."

"Nine cruisers is a respectable enough number," Ivil agreed.

"Yeah. It's a lot of ships," Twenty-Six agreed. "But we're talking Jupiter ships. Some of these are barely pocket cruisers. Half of them are lighter than the Silent Sentinel Washer at the Gates. Bet they're not as heavily armed either. There's two of these that look like heavy cruisers though. They'll pack a punch."

Ivil nodded. That was... actually not a terrible tonnage for a fleet, even if it was a bit of a mothball fleet of older vessels. If this many foreign warships were flying in Mars' general direction, she was certain the navy's brass would be sitting up in interest.

"And... I think you're right," Twenty-Six said.

"I usually am, but what exactly am I right about now?"

Twenty-Six snorted cutely. "Okay, look at these," she wiggled a finger at the IFF readout, then did something that had those ships be highlighted in blue on the main plotter map. "There's... nineteen ships here that are absolutely not warships. These are cargo haulers, two of these are repair and salvage ships. Looks like one's a mobile hotel of all things. There's transports, for like... people. One of these looks like one of those mining carriers. The sort that has a bunch of itty-bitty mining craft inside them? Could be filled with tugs or smaller fighters, I guess."

"If you were to guess," Ivil said. "What would you think all of that is?"

"Support," Twenty-Six said. "Most fleets have like... a semi-civilian support fleet with them, right?"

"Not the Martian Navy, but the Earth Alliance has flown into war with corporate fleets trailing after them," Ivil said. "Mostly support vessels, salvagers, and I've heard stories about pleasure barges as well."

"Yeah," Twenty-Six said. "War's a good way to make cash, but there's... a lot here. And look, some of them are real close to the navy ships. I think they're doing in-flight reloading. This one's a fuel tanker, and look, if I go back twenty minutes... yeah, this one just traded fuel with one of the destroyers and is moving on to the next."

"They're preparing the fleet for war while on the move," Ivil said. "Given the short amount of warning they had, that makes sense."

Twenty-Six leaned back into her head. "That's gonna be a disaster," she said.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, you don't do in-motion refueling and I guess rearming unless things have gone real bad. Like... people make mistakes when in a dock, where you have all the tools and things aren't moving around and things are just normal routine."

"I believe the Martian Navy has drills for just this," Ivil said.

"It's not fair, comparing this to the Martian Navy. There's nothing standardized here. Those repair ships are going to come up to... I guess novel situations every time they get close to a ship. It's going to be duct-tape and tie-wraps all the way."

"How likely do you think it is that the Earth Alliance will know that?" Ivil asked.

"Eh... fifty-fifty?" Twenty-Six said with a little hand wiggle.

Well... that certainly put a damper on that feeling of power that came from being at the head of a big fleet.

She supposed she'd just have to feel powerful the good old-fashioned way.

***

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