Harvest of The Royal Fleet

A gash appeared in space, disgorging hundreds of ships of the Royal Fleet along the edge of an asteroid field. As soon as the last ship had emerged from L-space into real space, the gash faded from local timespace.

“Attention all ships of the Queen’s Expedition: We claim another system in the name of Queen and Empire this day. Let the Empire rejoice, and all others weep, for the presence of the Royal Fleet.” The communication device clicked off. “Scans, full fleet, full sweep. Route concerns to weapons and security, and all planetary and stellar scans to science.”

“Full scans, aye. All scans and telemetry linked.” The combat commander looked bored as she watched data scroll from left to right on her screen. The minutes passed by with the hum of a flagship bridge on another routine mission.

“Scans returning now.”

“Report.”

“Nothing from security or weapons, all flagged possible targets eliminated as false positives,” the combat commander answered.

“And from science?”

The science officer didn’t raise his head from where he studied his screens of text and images. “As expected. Planets one through three ideal for mining, including extensive atmospheric mining on the second and average atmospheric mining opportunities on the third.

“Best colony location is fourth planet, although atmosphere is thin. Gravity wells on two and three are too extreme for extended stay. But….”

“But?” The admiral’s antennae twitched. “Out with it, science.”

“The things weapons and security called false positives — based on the last few minutes of scans, they’re not natural. These signatures inside the asteroid field are moving under their own power, not in phase with orbital physics. These are ships. Two of them have reversed their direction.”

The communications device clicked again. “All fleet, all fleet, shields up, unknown vessels, contact starward inside the asteroid field. Combat stations.” The admiral clicked off the device. “Comms, hail on all channels and patch through any response immediately.”

“Hailing all channels, aye.” The communications officer’s antennae drooped in a way that indicated he was focused on something. “Radio communications, no known language or protocol.”

“Science, report on targets.” The admiral stood tense behind her chair. “We don’t want to start a war with our allies. Any idea who we’re looking at?”

“Negative, Admiral. What little we can scan of them before they hide behind the asteroids matches nothing known to the Empire.”

The admiral took a deep breath she was unaware she’d been needing. “Combat commander, you’re in charge.”

“Combat in command, aye. Helm, full standby power for maneuvers. Weapons ready in Fire On Open configuration, lock on nearest targets flagged by science.”

“Weapons FOO, aye. Obtaining locks … locking … locked on thirty-one targets last known locations. They’re cowering behind the larger asteroids.”

The combat commander’s antennae stood in anticipatory tension. “Comms, patch their radio communications through. Even if we don’t understand the language, we might get the mood.”

“Aye, Commander. Patching now.”

The sound of the radio communications from the unknown ships came over the speakers on the bridge. The science officer closed all eight eyes and focused on the sounds coming from the radio transmissions. The speech was guttural, clipped, and lacking in tonality. He listened to the different voices, and how efficient their messages were despite their vocal limitations. He began to notice certain sounds repeated and thought they might be identifiers for the different speakers. One two-syllable sound was repeated at the end of every message, as if to say, “I’m done talking now, someone else can talk.”

“They can’t multiplex their communications,” he said. “He raised his hand when he heard the sound again. That sound means they’re done talking and someone else can transmit.”

The admiral sighed. “Figures we’d end up in a system with primitives. Anything science can get on them, let me know. If any survive, they’ll be added to the Empire’s labor pool.”

“Aye, Admiral,” the science officer said.

The radio communications went silent. One of the primitive ships maneuvered out from behind an asteroid and turned face-on to the flagship. Lights blinked on the primitive ship, and the flagship sensors picked up pulsed, long-wave laser scanning the ship.

The combat commander gripped her chair. “They’re marking us for targeting. Helm, evasive action! Weapons, full hot now! Fire at will.”

The radio chatter from the primitives started up again as the flagship moved with a speed and grace her size belied. Energy weapons blazed at the ship still sending out its pulsed laser beacon but did very little damage. The ship retreated into the asteroid field once again.

“Science, what kind of shielding is that?” the combat commander asked.

“No energy shield signature, looks like ablative atmospheric shielding.”

The combat commander’s antennae twitched. “They take something that size into atmosphere?”

The combat commander, admiral, weapons officer, and science officer were still pondering their next move when the automated weapons systems began firing as a collision warning blared. The weapons broke the asteroid into pieces just in time for it to tear through the hull in hundreds of pieces.

As one, all seventy-four ships of the Royal Fleet were destroyed in a matter of minutes. A last, desperate L-space message was beamed from the last ship to die. “System held by primitives, they’ve killed us all.”

#

“Lucky, don’t go out there, they look mean. Over.” The voice on the radio belonged to her coworker, Amir.

She laughed and keyed the mic. “Don’t sweat it, man. I’m just going to try to get a read on the size. It looks tiny from here, but you know, it’s hard to tell when they’re outside the belt like that. Over.”

Lucky piloted her mining barge out from behind the asteroid Amir was parked against and fired up her LiDAR. No sooner had it started confirming that the ship was half the size of her barge, than the ship pivoted and squirmed in a way it shouldn’t be able to. Then the rays started.

Her re-entry shield heated up and began sloughing off as she got back behind the asteroid as fast as her tub could go. “They fuckin’ shot up my re-entry shield. Over.”

“So much for non-hostile intents. Q crew, y’all know what to do. Over.” Grayson, the foreperson, was far more subdued on the radio than usual.

“Yeet rocks at the bad guys!” someone yelled on the radio, a moment before keying back in and adding, “Over.”

The assortment of barges, tugs, diggers, and corers went full burn against the asteroids they hid behind, doing a hard ninety-degree burn at the last possible moment to get away from the impact. Within minutes, the alien fleet was an expanding cloud of detritus.

“I’m not going to be able to land,” Lucky said, “will have to put into dock at Mars Orbital for repairs. Over.”

“That’s gonna fuck the wallet,” Grayson said, some of their usual jollity returning. “Alright, folks, gather up all the trash from the broken toys. We’re gonna more than make up for Lucky’s shield with the new tech. Over.”

“Roger, chief. We’re already on it. Over.”

“Thanks, Diggity. Let’s get rich. Over.”

“Grayson, Corporate here. Sending half of P crew along with half of R crew to assist. Over.”

“Corporate, we got it handled. Two, maybe three barge loads from all their ships. Where should we deliver? Over.”

“I’ll cancel the call for assist. They want it straight back to home base. Landing at GSC. Sorry, Lucky, you’ll have to sit this one out. Over.”

Lucky sighed and keyed her mic. “Roger, Corporate, I’m heading for Mars Orbital now before something important breaks. Out.”

“Q Crew,” Grayson called over the radio, “squawk 0011 to vote full share for Lucky. Over.”

The radio chirped dozens of times. “Corporate for Lucky. Over.”

“Lucky, go for Corporate. Over.”

“Unanimous vote from Q Crew, you’re getting a full share from this haul. We’ll see you at MO. Out.”

“Enough ass-grabbin’ already. Let’s get this shit loaded and get it back home. Out.” Grayson sounded gruff, but the hint of playfulness was never far beneath.

Within a matter of hours, the once mighty Royal Fleet was loaded into three mining barges and headed back to Earth at a standard half burn. Grayson piped some music into the comms to entertain most — and annoy a few — of the miners.