Christchurch

The UNS Christchurch burned through Dark Space on its usual patrol route. She was an old Kiwi frigate, commissioned by the Royal New Zealand Space Force as their first and only proper warship years before anyone had even thought of forming a UN Space Force. The Christchurch had served as an escort in the famous Anglo-Sphere battle group, lead by the legendary American battleship Midway, which had held the line against the Diln when the militaries of Earth were on the ropes. The Rear Admiral in charge of the Midway's battle group, Sidney Kane, had rallied dozens of ships flying every flag, and managed to turn the tide in the war against the Diln.

The Diln were a species that thrived by dominating and enslaving others. Humanity might have become a "client race" at best, and good old fashioned slaves at worst if it hadn't been for the victory that day. Midway and her haphazard band formed from the remnants of the fleets of the Great Powers had been the basis for the modern UN Space Force. The situation made it clear that mere military cooperation was not enough, only with the benefits afforded by a unified and integrated Space Force could the human race hope to survive in such a competitive galaxy.

Out of desperation, the space-faring nations of Earth signed a treaty that put all of their space forces under the command structure of the UN Interstellar Council, a body which had previously been little more than a mouth piece, with no true authority. The fledgling United Nations Space Force had gone on to drive the Diln out of human territory, and forced them into a treaty that made it clear what would happen if they returned. The United Nations Interstellar Council had cemented itself as humanity's voice to the wider galaxy, and the United Nations Space Force had cemented itself as the protector of the human race. Christchurch had gained great fame and glory.

...Forty years ago, anyway. The doctrine of the UNSF had evolved since Christchurch's day. New methods and tactics had been developed. The UN had a team of humanity's greatest linguists spend years putting together the ideal "common tongue". It was an artificial language, designed to replace the awkward and challenging English language which had been the de-facto common tongue of humanity up to that point. It was designed from scratch to be easily spoken and learned by every major language group. The grammar was simple and straight forward. The consonants and vowels were clear and designed to be pronounceable for as many language groups as possible. The Space Force had served as the test tube for the language over the last decade or two.

The experiment had been a success, in the opinion of Commander Casey Walker, anyway. She, a self proclaimed "country bumpkin" from Nebraska, had managed to learn to speak it at a professional level during the five week crash course that was mandatory pre-training for the Space Force. She had barely touched another language in her life, other than the half-assed Spanish lessons almost every American high school student took. Now, eight years later, here she was speaking fluently with her crew, from all over the world (or worlds). An American, in the CIC of a New Zealand star ship, chatting with her Tibetan executive officer. She got a laugh out of it sometimes. Like little kids. Playing in our secret club house with our secret language.

Her executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Chetri, had a grim expression on his face, and it broke Walker out of her daydreaming in the Captain's Chair.

"What is it, XO?" she asked.

"Nothing good, ma'am. We've been getting fragments of messages...distress calls, we think. Obviously a distress call isn't going to get very far in dark space, but with the amount of fragments we're getting, and from how many different places we're getting them...they must be coming from all over the sector."

Chetri's first thought was likely the same as Walker's. Ivos. The rest of the CIC crew pretended not to listen. They'd all been following the news when they could, of course. They knew about the tensions, and like most of humanity they had thought they weren't anywhere near a shooting war yet. If Walker's suspicions were correct, then the Christchurch had been dumped right in the middle of an interstellar invasion. Stuck fighting one of the most advanced species in known space with a ship that was middle aged when the Space Force had been in its infancy. Not good.

Walker gathered her thoughts, and made a decision. "We're heading back for HQ. If we make contact with the enemy, there's not much we can do but fight. No way this bucket has the gees to outrun an Ivo ship, if they're as advanced as we think. Set vector for Vritra, 1.5 gravities of acceleration.

While her maximum acceleration was technically lower than more modern ship's, such things didn't really matter for Christchurch. The power of inertia ensured that human ships rarely accelerated past 1 gravity for any meaningful length of time. Any higher, and it made doing the important tasks necessary to run a starship needlessly difficult to perform. 1.5 gravities was the Space Force's standard "in a hurry" acceleration. High enough to get where you are going more quickly, but still low enough to allow the crew to move about and work without serious risk of any long term injuries. The acceleration alarm sounded and any crew that hadn't secured themselves scrambled to secure any loose objects in their vicinity. From the perspective of the crew, Christchurch was like a giant flying tower, with the engines at the bottom, and the decks of the ship being more akin to floors in the tower. When the engines fired, to the crew the ship felt like it was travelling perpetually "upwards" towards its destination.

The ships engines fired. At 1.5 gravities, the crew felt like they were standing back on Earth (or whatever colony they might be from), but carrying 50% more weight (give or take). They could still stand, but it was not a pleasant experience, for the knees especially. In the CIC, Commander Walker felt the unpleasant weight from the acceleration, but the fear inside her was a far worse sensation. It was her duty to try and protect the humans in this sector, but there wasn't much a single elderly frigate could do against a fleet of alien warships. The trip took several hours, which dulled Walker's fears somewhat. It was hard to be afraid when you were bored. She focused on the system they were heading for, Vritra. The inhabited world of New Kolkata, with about one and a half million people living on it, was within that system.

Years before the war with the Diln India had finally established itself as a space faring power, and had eagerly sought out suitable worlds for its first true colony. Unfortunately for them, all of the best nearby worlds had already been carved up by the other space faring nations. So, they were forced to settle for a far flung world that barely met the criteria for long term surface colonization. "Habitable" had become a somewhat generous term in this era. It generally meant less "Planets like Earth" and more "Planets with gravity that humans could live with".

Life was surprisingly common in the wider galaxy, springing up even on seemingly barren rocks that would instantly kill any human standing on the surface. Complex life, however, was very rare indeed. Planets with conditions stable enough to not instantly slaughter anything more complex than bacteria were rare gems, and life spread with reckless abandon on those worlds. Unfortunately for the humans, where there was an Earth-like complex biosphere, there would almost inevitably be intelligent life. Intelligence was a useful survival skill, and the first organism or genus of organisms to develop even rudimentary sapience would almost inevitably rise to become the dominate life form.

So humanity, like so many other space faring species before them, had been forced to set aside their dreams of wonderful new worlds just like their own and instead resigned themselves to colonizing the barren rocks and proto-Earths that were conveniently unoccupied by anything intelligent enough to protest. New Kolkata was broadly similar to Mars, in that it was a big, cold desert with polar ice caps, albeit with grey sands instead of red.

The key difference is that New Kolkata had gravity high enough to make long term habitation possible, and a thick enough atmosphere to offer some protection against cosmic rays. The atmosphere wasn't breathable, but it was at least marginally better than nothing. New Kolkata's only remarkable feature was that it was the furthest inhabited human world from Earth. This placed it near the "border" of Ivo space, something which was proving to be problematic.

As they came up on the transponder buoy of the Vritra system, a thought occurred to Commander Walker. She turned to Chetri.

"Sound battlestations. If the situation is bad, we're going to want to be ready to fight."

The battlestations klaxon sounded, and astronauts scrambled to get themselves ready for combat, donning their helmets and sealing their vacuum suits. The rangers on board the ship headed for the armory to arm and armor themselves in case they need to repel boarders. The engineering team worked to get the ship's aging reactor powering up the weapons. The pilot of the Christchurch looked at Walker, waiting for her to give the order to transfer. She closed her eyes and exhaled, then she looked at the pilot and nodded. The pilot nodded back, and then she keyed some commands into the console.

Transferring to and from dark space was always a little unsettling, especially from the perspective of someone watching the ship. There was no distortion or flashy effect. The ship was there, and then it wasn't. It was always a little startling for anyone on the other side of a transfer. Watching a ship appear out of nothing was just...wrong. The human brain had difficulty processing the image.

Walker closed her eyes. Buoys were usually placed right next to the transfer station of any developed star system. They likely instantly saw the Christchurch as it appeared. It would take the Astronauts at the New Kolkata space port several seconds to notice, as that's approximately how long the light would take to reach them. Walker breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of the transfer station. The tactical display showed about a dozen warships orbiting New Kolkata, and dozens more civilian ships, most of whom appeared to be waiting to dock with the spaceport. More than half of the civilian ships were gas tankers of some kind. There was one civilian ship not to far from Christchurch which was burning hard for the spaceport, very hard for a civilian ship. It dawned on Walker. These are refugee ships.

The Christchurch burned toward New Kolkata, putting itself into orbit. While it did so, Walker received a communication-her eyes only. She went into her office and booted up her computer. The face of Commodore Nowak, commander of all UNSF forces in this sector, appeared on her screen.

"Good to see you, Casey." the Commodore said.

"And you, sir."

"I'm not interesting in wasting any time. We're being invaded."

Walker felt a stab of fear at the words. She'd been mostly certain that this was an invasion, but a part of her had hoped she was wrong.

The Commodore continued. "I've sent couriers to Space Command. They'll be aware of the situation within about a day, all things going well. They'll probably scramble every ship that isn't guarding the frontier with the Diln and throw them at us. It could be several days before we get reinforcements. Our duty is to hold the enemy as best we can until the Space Force can throw themselves at this invasion. I know Christchurch isn't built for a modern fleet battle, but we need every armed hull we can get. Hell, I've even conscripted cutters from the local Indian Space Guard unit."

It was true. Modern ships were equipped with spinal mounted hyper velocity mass drivers, a gun that was built directly into the ship's hull. It was something that had become standard practice in human warship design, as the Diln had used the same armament to route every human fleet they came across with highly coordinated long range volley fire. The Midway and her battle group had managed to turn the tide by closing to "knife fighting range" in a desperate charge. Christchurch didn't have a spinal gun to add to the fleet's volley.

"Where do you need us, sir?" Walker asked.

"Top off your propellant, and then send all your rangers to meet with Major Horvat. I'm sending our entire ranger contingent down to New Kolkata to reinforce the Indian Army garrison. They won't do any good in a fleet battle, anyway. There's no way in hell a boarding party is going to get past Ivo point defenses." The Commodore rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"I'm going to be honest with you commander. I've watched the footage stored on the black box. The Ivos sent just one ship, yet it wiped out the outpost and its interceptors without getting so much as a scratch. They nuked the farms, killing everyone who didn't evacuate from them, they even destroyed a few evacuation ships that didn't make it out in time. Then they circled back and fried all of the escape craft from the outpost." Nowak had a hard look on his face now.

Walker was genuinely shocked. She'd read about the Diln war, like everyone else at the Space Force academy. Even the slaving, atrocity loving Diln wouldn't have done something like that. Not out of the kindness of their hearts, of course. In space, infrastructure was often far more valuable then the resources it cultivated. Things like minerals and volatiles were not hard to find, but the machines that extracted them cost money to build. The Diln would never have destroyed such valuable hardware when they could just take it over and use it themselves. This told Walker one thing about the Ivos: whatever their motivation was, it wasn't economic.

Nowak went on. "If the Ivos plan on massacring the civvies on that planet, I don't know if we'll have the firepower to stop them. I've got the local government throwing together bunkers and hideouts for people to take shelter in. I'm conscripting all of the civilian ships to evacuate the colony, but there's no way we'll get more than one or two percent out in time. I've got everyone else ready to take shelter at a moments notice."

Walker couldn't hold her tongue at that. "Sir, it sounds to me like you think the space battle's already lost."

Nowak smiled without humor. "Just taking precautions, Commander. I'm sending you the footage from the blackbox. Watch it, and maybe your feelings will change."

---

Walker's little flotilla was coming along nicely, all things considered. It had been two days since the Christchurch had arrived at New Kolkata. More and more refugee ships had flooded in from the fringe outposts and resource stations that made up much of the sector. Nowak had put together an "assault squadron" with Christchurch as the flagship. It was made up of the three Indian Space Guard cutters, the New Kolkata space station's complement of six interceptors, and an old Q-Ship, Kent, that the local Space Guard unit had used for undercover patrols and escorts. None of these ships had a spinal mount, so they were lumped together out of necessity rather than any particular compatibility they had.

Walker had been relentlessly drilling the motley little unit in an attempt to turn it into something useful. If they were able to keep their unit cohesion, they might be able to strike a blow in the battle that was likely coming. Hopefully. The flotilla was currently on picket duty in dark space outside of the system by the navigational buoy. If they detected any Ivo ships, they were to immediately transfer back into the system and blare a warning. Walker had the flotilla on a small patrol route, close enough to the system to still jump in at a moments notice.

---

Some time had passed when Lieutenant Commander Chetri's voice called out in the CIC. "Captain, we've got one Ivo contact on the scopes." Only one?

"It must be an advanced scout. Fly us forward a little, so we'll be closer New Kolkata when we transfer. Hold off until my order, though. Let's see if we can get him to chase us. Maybe we can lure him into the main fleet." said Walker. She had seen the footage from the Caloocan blackbox, and harbored no illusion that her flotilla could handle the scout by itself.

The flotilla inched forward, and Walker watched the Ivo ship on the tactical display. It was performing a braking burn as it approached the system, so only its drive was visible. According to Christchurch's computer, the drive signature was identical to the one that had been at Caloocan. It was probably just the same class of ship, but it might be the ship from Caloocan. Either way, it was an opportunity for payback. The Ivo ship performed a turnover, clearly having spotted the flotilla. Evidently being outnumbered didn't bother it.

"Wait until they're right on top of us." Walker said.

"Right on top of us" really meant a little more than 5000 kilometers, as that was the maximum range that the terrible beam weapon from the blackbox footage had been fired from. It was well outside of the range of the main fleet's hypervelocity guns, which was a problem for later. If it was capable of greater ranges than that, Walker was in trouble. The ship closed rapidly, the kilometers between it and the flotilla vanishing by the dozens.

As it was coming into range, Walker gave the order. "All ships, transfer immediately. Burn for New Kolkata immediately after." She didn't have to tell anyone twice. The whole fleet transferred, vanishing instantly and then appearing from nowhere into real space.

Upon transferring, all of the ships burned for New Kolkata as ordered. A few seconds later, the Ivo ship appeared into the system and began doing the same, but not for long. New Kolkata was only a few minutes away, but all of the ships under Nowak's command were scrambling to get into formation and charge at the Ivo. The Ivo's capacitors likely weren't charged yet, or it would probably already be transferring back out of the system. It was too late now. That energy was going to be needed for weapons and point defense if the ship wanted to survive. Walker's flotilla linked up with the main battle group. It consisted of one cruiser, the flagship Czar, three destroyers, and fourteen frigates. More than enough for any Diln raiding party. Walker just hoped it would be enough for one Ivo. The Ivo scout, having turned over and revealed itself, was identical in shape to the frigate that had annihilated Caloocan. Definitely the same model then. Walker thought. The human ships charged at the Ivo ship, which was firing its rear thrusters and drifting away from them in an attempt to keep its distance.

As the fleet closed to within 5000 kilometers, the tactical officer shouted, "Energy spike detected!" and then a split second later that terrible beam weapon fired. A frigate, Tripoli, was completely bisected by the beam. The two halves went careening away. Walker would have been surprised if a single astronaut on Tripoli had survived. The human fleet burned harder, and Walker was pressed harder into her acceleration chair, with the tactical display feeding into her helmet.

The Ivo frigate fired again, and this time a destroyer, Ivanhoe, was hit. The beam stuck it at an angle, and shredded upwards through the nose of the destroyer. The destroyer went hurtling end over end away.

The tactical officer counted off the range. "3000...2500...frigate Juniper destroyed...2000...1500...fleet within mass driver range!" came the strangled cry from the officer.

Nowak didn't hesitate. His voice came in loud over the fleet comm network. "All ships, pour it on them!"

The human fleet lowered its acceleration and fired volley after volley at the Ivo. The Ivo frigate lurched and spun, burning and cutting its engines at precise intervals as its on board computer seized control of the ship for defensive measures. It dodged as many of the huge mass driver rounds as it could, using its defensive lasers to melt the ones it couldn't dodge. The fleet got closer, into railgun and gauss cannon range. The volleys of mass driver rounds were joined by a deluge of automatic fire. Despite all of the Ivo's advanced technology, there was nothing it could do against such overwhelming fire. Its point defense lasers were overwhelmed by the huge volume of automatic fire, and its outer hull started taking hits. Eventually, the outer hull was shredded into nothing in several places, and the inner hull started taking direct hits.

The Ivo computer did its best, prioritizing the larger Mass driver rounds that could finish it off in one hit over the tiny railgun rounds. It lasers were starting to break in the hail of railgun fire, and a gap opened in its defenses. One of the dozens of Mass driver rounds found its mark then, and it shredded through the Ivo ship and sailed out the other side. The shock wave that would have gone though the ships internal atmosphere had likely killed the entire crew. The human fleet kept pouring it on anyway, until all the ships lasers fell silent, and it was nothing but a ruin of bullet holes and scrap metal.

Walker sagged into her chair in relief while the CIC cheered. Three ships to take out one dinky little frigate. It did not bode well for the future. She looked out over the CIC. Only Chetri shared her grim look. She didn't blame the rest of the crew for their jubilation. They were just happy to be alive.

The celebrations were cut short by the voice of the signals officer, "Drive signatures detected! ...sixty total, all antimatter!"

Walker's stomach fell into her feet. There was dead silence in the CIC. Walker swallowed, and then said, "B-...Bring them up on the tactical display."

She'd rather look at literally anything else right now, but she had to see it. The tactical display showed sixty stars in the sky. Then, the Ivo ships turned over and revealed themselves. Fifty of the ships were the same class as the ship they had just fought. Eight of them were massive, crescent-shaped ships with the engines on the concave side. They dwarfed even the largest human battleships. The last two ships were even bigger. They were massive and spindle-shaped. They broke off from the main fleet with a half dozen frigates as escorts. Before the human fleet had time to react, the two ships launched dozens of long range missiles at impossibly high accelerations toward New Kolkata.

The surface-based defense lasers struggled desperately to shoot them down, but they were too fast. Major military and industrial centers were hit, destroyed in multi-kiloton explosions. The surface lasers continued firing, but they were far fewer now. Walker distantly heard Nowak's desperate-sounding voice screaming over the fleet's comm network for all ships to get into formation. Walker just stared at the tactical display, and watched another salvo of missiles streak towards New Kolkata.

This isn't an invasion. This is the end.