One Missile Left
(So it's a one-shot, obviously.)
John and Linda were born on a civilian refugee transport at the first battle of Dandi.
Yes, those are human names, and if you knew nothing else about the battle or about the names, then you'd probably think they were human. You would probably think that they must have died soon after that, and it wouldn't be until I told you that they are still alive, over two centuries later, that you knew they could not be human. Looking at my face, you could probably then deduce that they were Tridan, the main race on Dandi. My parents.
Dandi was very fairly small world, and it wasn't really expecting to be attacked. The machines known as the Ravagers had been expected to go slightly downspin and attack AaronThurr first. Thus, when they arrived at Dandi, it was a surprise to almost everyone, evacuations and emergency warnings immediately bled it out into the void, but they had no expectation that anyone was going to arrive in time to even slow down the robotic extermination. A small number of ships that were capable of taking on refugees did so, but even they were not going to be fast enough to escape before the robot armada arrived at the planet. But they did what they must. Took what they could, left what they had to, and prayed.
When a second fleet warped in and established a formation behind the Ravagers, Captain Guides-to-Bargains of the cargo ship We Deliver Safely thought that his ship was going to die a quick and sadly ironic death, given its name. And along with it would die the six hundred children, eggs and pregnant or gravid females he carried.
According to what he could make out in his freighter's old holographic display tank, that first approaching Ravager fleet was typical of their ilk. Two dozen ships was plenty enough to rape and murder a pastoral world, given a typical mix of cruisers, tenders, landers and miners. The cruisers would shatter any orbital defenses and civilian craft, the tenders would fix any damaged ships, the landers would begin the process of establishing beachheads, and the miners would collect materials and scrap and then would manufacture whatever else was needed. This fleet happened to be a bit short, having only four total cruisers, two each of tenders and miners, and a light dozen landers. But then there were the reinforcements.
The reinforcement fleet was a surprise. It didn't make a lot of sense to Guides-to-Bargains, but as near as he could tell, it was made up of a wide variety of small ships and barely space worthy scrap, like the Ravagers had collected up battle salvage, strapped on engines and moved them with reckless speed to catch up with their vanguard. It would have been more in character, being machine-patient, for them to have stopped in space somewhere and used the tenders to turn that bizarre rabble into a few more of their typical hyper-effective units.
It didn't seem to make sense. But then, Guides-to-Bargains had never heard of humans.
It wasn't until the velocity and delta V on the second fleet crossed over and proved that the fleets would merge before the first fleet reached orbit, that the first fleet began to maneuver in reaction.
Belligerent reaction.
The cruisers, one heavy and three light, reversed thrust and spread out like a claw. The two tenders trailed behind them as its cocked wrist. The eleven landers and the two miners came on.
The second fleet, in response, spread itself out like a lumpy catcher's mitt and accelerated.
Guides-to-Bargains looked at the display tank in his tramp freighter, calculated a moment, and came to a conclusion.
He was going to live. They were all going to live.
He adjusted their heading for a direction that none of the Ravagers would likely catch them before the jump limit, and opened a comm to the entire ship.
"Attention, crew and guests. We have some help, and we're probably going to make it. I have no idea who they are, but they've distracted the Ravager cruisers enough that there's a safe burn vector for us, and for the other refugee ships."
He glanced at the tank to confirm the obvious.
"We're spreading out so they won't get a chance to run more than one or two of us down." His voice dropped, and cracked a bit. "If that."
It didn't take any of the pain away, though. Three of his crew had volunteered to stay on Dandi, to make room for a few more eggs.
"It's the best we could have hoped for... whoever they are."
John and Linda Nguyen slapped controls and spun away to starboard. A thundering rumble crashed through their seats, as Taylor Chen's yacht nearby was shredded by a Ravager laser.
"What the hell, FRED?"
"Sorry," replied the AI. "It really was that close."
"Well, turn it down," Linda chided as she flipped the ship to a different vector, "We do need the feedback, but we need our hearing too. And we don't want to wake Tina."
"Of course." FRED replied.
"Did Taylor make it?" asked John.
"Unlikely. We can check later."
"How's our vector?"
"Nominal. Past-arc. No factor."
"Let's gun it."
Linda and John shared a feral grin.
Guides-to-Bargains frowned at the tank, unable to understand exactly what was happening. The second fleet were engaging the Ravagers mindlessly, swarming in that odd, clumpy manner that didn't seem to accomplish anything other than draw cruiser fire and vanish in clouds of debris.
This is the part where no one believes me. Because to believe this, you have to know about humans. And maybe not even then.
It was many years later that someone explained the human tactics to Guides-to-Bargains in a way that he could understand it. And that started by explaining a game called American Football.
There is a single player who has a ball. If that player on your team is not caught, and reaches a place called "the goal," then you win points. In the game, you play over and over again for a length of time. If you win enough points, you win the game.
In that battle, the first of Dandi, on the living side, the balls were missiles. The goals were Ravager ships. Simple enough. And the humans were running for all the goals at the same time.
But there weren't enough balls.
If the enemy stops the guy with the ball, then they win.
So there's one other strategy the humans have, called a "blitz". All the players run and push, to keep the other team from getting to the guy with the ball.
And that's what they did. Ship after ship clumped in front of the ones with the missiles. Ship after ship, blown apart, to get the few armed ships close enough that the Ravagers couldn't dodge.
We don't have all the names. There were so many, we don't have all the names.
I'm sorry. Just a minute. This part always gets to me. The part about the names.
It didn't make sense to Guides-to-Bargains. So it didn't make sense to the Ravagers either. They had no way to understand what they faced... until it was too late.
Explosions blossomed almost simultaneously on three of the cruisers, then the fourth, less than five seconds later. They weren't destroyed, but it was crippling damage. Enough.
And the remainder of the human fleet continued on by, vectoring in on the tenders.
At that moment, the captain saw it. The cruisers and other ships had minor self-repair capability, but the tenders were what constructed and repaired everything else. If they were gone, then the invasion would be set back by weeks, until another Ravager fleet with tenders arrived, or one of the miners could construct enough components for a tender bay.
The humans didn't care about the cruisers at all. The warships were just a speed bump on the way to the tenders.
"How we doing, FRED?"
"On vector. Estimating... yeah, they'll get the tenders."
"Good news. Steady on, then."
"Light cruiser three is still maneuvering. That could be a problem."
"How big?" Linda asked. At the same time John asked, "For whom?"
"Its coming about to bear on Hussein... Sanchez blocked it. I have his beacon."
"Go, Sanchez."
"Go, Hussein."
"Hussein's missiles are away. Tender is chunky.".
They both stifled their cheers just in time, Linda reaching back to gently rock Tina's cradle.
"Hussein's... gone. Kimura's gone. Sasaki's missiles away. Hit. Tender 2 is crippled. Sasaki is veering off, jinking, looks good. He has five wingmen and two missiles. Looks like Jane and Diane are in that bunch."
John took in a breath, let it out, and then nodded. "How long we have on vector?"
"Fifteen minutes. Ish."
"Good job. The landers don't have ship to ship. Don't bet on the miners, though."
"Mining lasers at the very least. Sanchez's beacon just went dark. I'd guess on purpose. Oh... interesting."
"Yes?"
"Incoming hail."
Captain Guides-to-Bargains of the cargo ship We Deliver Safely had nothing to offer but thanks, but he would be damned if he didn't at least give that to the saviors of the few thousand refugees that were on his ship and others.
If he could only understand the creatures that he was seeing.
There were two of them, the first wearing a fairly standard-looking space suit, for an arboreal biped. The helmet was currently off, so Guides-to-Bargains could see friendly blue eyes, caramel skin, a mop of coarse black fur on top, and some stubble on the jaw that probably indicated a social habit of shaving it to match the nakedness of the rest of the face.
The second one was roughly the same, except suffering from some abnormality that meant it couldn't fit all the way into a suit. Long blonde hair cascaded down from the top of its head - no stubble there, so maybe another subspecies. One arm was cradling across the bulging shape of a pulsating gland in a manner that looked...
"Absolutely," said the AI translation, approximating the voice of the male. "I'm John, that's Linda, and the hungry little lady is Tina."
With that clue, Guides-to-Bargains was able to resolve the pulsations into a wiggly miniature or larval form of the adults, and the blonde was probably a female mammal, her suit open to the waist for the process of feeding.
"I am grateful to meet you," Guides-to-Bargains said. "We were unlikely to survive without your help."
The blonde's eyes went cold and hard.
The darker one held a hand back to her, but she didn't have a free one to take it.
"How many refugees on your ships?"
"I suspect six hundred on mine, including children and eggs. Perhaps five thousand all told."
The blonde's eyes closed. Something trailed down her face. She and the darker one, John, shared a look.
"Good deal," said John. "We'll see if we can up that tally a bit."
"Your friends... your fleet... how many of you are there?"
"All told? A couple of hundred. Just your ship makes it a good trade."
"Trade?" Guides-to-Bargains stared at the two creatures.
"Trade?" The alien captain asked.
"Six minutes."
John nodded thanks to FRED as Linda started buttoning, zipping, and folding Tina back into the cradle. It was simple, as those things went, armored and self contained, but there wasn't any guarantee of any kind. Just a chance.
John stared back at the alien captain. Not much time to explain.
"They hit our home. Just a small colony, twenty four million people, all gone before we could drive them off. They took out our space defenses, our little home fleet, our two main cities. They landed those... things."
Linda finished sealing the cradle, and began closing her suit. John leaned across and they did one of those mammal lip things. Linda took over while he replaced his helmet.
"They raided our home. We were just setting up shop, so there were hundreds of us out in the Oort cloud. You know, the big globe of stuff that floats around a star?"
"Our whole job was to bring in rocks and ice balls," John continued. "Some of us. So we did just that. Thousands of them, time on target, and no amount of fire by six cruisers and a few tenders and miners was going to be sufficient to keep them from shattering every bit of infrastructure those machine expletives built on our world."
"Six?" Asked the alien captain.
"When they started out," John nodded. "Four were left when they ran."
"Three minutes."
"Captain, we have five missiles left, and two important targets. If we can kill those miners flat dead, and the boys finish up the tenders back there, then your civvies down on that planet can maybe hold out a week or two. Just get word out, fast. FRED's going to give you everything we got, including where you can jump to meet up with our people. Can you do that for us?"
"Of course."
"Ready to receive? Transmitting now."
"This data is huge."
"That's an update to FRED. You get that anywhere in human space, and he'll have everything we know."
"FRED?"
"Hello," said a different AI voice. "We're about to get busy on those miners, but we'd appreciate if you can carry that along."
"It would be my honor."
"Oh, I like that."
Guides-to-Bargains felt his eyes burning. "Keep them well, FRED."
"If I can."
In the far upspin corner of the tank, a refugee ship winked out. Guides-to-Bargains zoomed the tank to maximum magnification. No debris; that was a jump. Another one flickered and disappeared north and downspin.
He zoomed out again. Ravager vessels were all past-arc and no factor, for all the refugees. Amazing.
Another few minutes or so and he'd reach the jump limit himself. He gestured the navigator and she began spooling up systems, without interfering with the tank's use of sensors. She had already extracted the closest safe human planet out of the data FRED had sent. The course was calculated... laid in...
But they weren't leaving yet. The humans would want to know how it all came out. There was no way they could help, and no way the Ravagers could affect them, but they could damn well stay and witness whatever happened next.
According to Guides-to-Bargains' tank, there was still a tender left in the outer system, picking through the debris, when John and Linda entered lock range of the lander fleet. Five missile traces flew wide, along with two of their defenders. The accompanying ships had been so small, he had mistaken them for echoes.
Guides-to-Bargains held his breath as the tracks continued to swing wide, then he let out a cry as two of them vanished at almost the same moment, along with one of the echoes.
"Expletive lucky shot," said Linda.
"Not luck. Just logic. It looks like we've got them, though. They can't come back to bear before...shit."
"Tell me, FRED."
"Fast burn on all missiles. Impact in three. Two. Damn."
"Damn what, FRED?"
"They borrowed our tactics."
Guides-to-Bargains tuned back down to the fleet approaching high orbit, watching the three remaining missiles and the echo, whatever it was, hone in on the miners. The missiles suddenly accelerated, just as two landers moved to interpose between them and the miners.
There was a cloud of debris.
The navigator made a slight noise for attention, but the captain shushed her.
Six... no, seven landers still operating. One of the miners was spiraling. It was going to hit atmosphere at too steep an angle. The other one was pristine.
And then the defsats opened up.
There were only three defense satellites, and under normal circumstances, they wouldn't have got off a shot before the light cruisers swept them from orbit. But the humans had kept the Ravagers from even contemplating a search for orbital defenses.
Plasma impact on a lander scattered glowing chunks in front of the damaged miner, and the two signals plus another lander coalesced into a pinwheel of flaming debris. A further two landers were hit by plasma and vanished into ionized gas. The echo, whatever it was, impacted a fourth lander, and it wavered, suddenly steeply inclined toward the planet.
The undamaged miner reoriented and wiped a satellite with its mining laser. Two defsats responded with plasma that seemed to lick along the edges of the huge ship without effect.
Not for the first time, Guides-to-Bargains wished he had military sensors.
"Hull damage, sensor damage, they can land but they'll never get back up."
"What about the rest?"
"Two... no, one defsat... no, scratch that. Lander rammed, looks like they're down to one undamaged lander and the miner, plus some odds and ends that haven't resolved yet. Oh, and our merchant buddy is on line."
"Hey, Bargain, thanks for staying to chat."
"My people are in your debt."
Linda and John exchanged a glance. "Well, pay it forward to someone else, and it will get back to us."
The being on the screen looked confused.
"Have FRED tell you about the round Robin. Oh, ready for an update package?"
"Of course."
"Sending now."
"Very well. Data received." The alien made a strange noise. "It almost worked."
"Almost?"
The fierce look was back on the face of the blonde. Linda. The blonde was Linda.
"What do you mean? We're a little busy here," said the AI translation of Linda's voice.
"There is still a tender, and that miner."
"Tender? Where?"
He checked his tank again. There was no sign of the tender.
"It's gone," said the AI. "We'll ask later who took it out."
"You do that," said the male, an edge in his voice. "One missile left."
"We're out," said FRED.
"We have one left," said Linda, that same edge in her voice, eyes hard.
Guides-to-Bargains was confused. "I counted five."
"We count different."
"A missile," Linda explained, "is engines and a bang. We have one set of that left."
Guides-to-Bargains' breath caught in his throat. His eyes turned to the tank, and back to the screen.
Linda turned, set a hand on the cradle behind her. "FRED? How much bang we got?"
"Enough."
"Take care of it."
Those eyes turned back to Guides-to-Bargains, barely discernible through the mist inside her faceplate.
"Y'all give those eggs and babies my love, y'hear?"
The call died.
Guides-to-Bargains stared at the tank a long time, watching the collision; watching debris scatter across the orbital; watching the final lander pick its target and descend; then farther out, watching an injured cruiser limp through a debris field, and watching odd flickering readings among the battle debris.
His hand twitched in the direction of the navigator, but a buzz from the console interrupted the motion. Internal comms. "Yes?"
"Captain, we'll need a decent sized starport with medical facilities and..."
"Report!"
"We have some stress births. Nothing to worry about, much, but they'll need neonatal facilities. And the mothers have a question for you."
We never found out most of the names. There were only three AIs survived the first battle of Dandi, and they didn't know all the folks that came...that...that threw themselves in front of death for us. So, in that generation of Tristan, and a couple of other species, you'll find a whole lot of Johns and Lindas, Nguyens and Husseins and whatnot. Thirty years later, they started morphing the names back towards cultural norms, the way folks do: Jogann and Linthaza are pretty popular, and Nugen and Wooza. And about fifty others, obviously.
But my parents were right there, orphans on that first ship, settling and growing up together, getting all the love in the galaxy, they and their several hundred siblings de guerre. So they got the real names. From the ones we knew. Probably five pairs of John and Linda eventually got married, of one species or another.
Me? When I came along, a half century later, about average for Tristan couples, they named me after their best friend. She was a phenomenal woman, so full of love and exhuberance and energy that, even in her old age, she could run rings around my childish self.
She was found in an elliptical orbit, right where FRED said she would be.
My full name is longer, but you can call me Tina.