The Phoenix trembled from the force of our missile launchers. Our point defense systems were running them on full auto. Enemy missiles, too small to show up in the gravimetric haze of the long range scanners, appeared as if by magic only seconds from hitting our ship. Our Defense Ranging And Targeting System could barely keep up with them. It seemed the battle station at L1 had joined the fight.

I flash messaged Mia, my fleet tactical officer. "Have the ships move in and concentrate our fire on L4."

"Sir, won't that put us outside the D-RATS response safety margin?"

"Slightly. But we can't stay here and get hammered on both sides. We have to end this fight now and, if we're lucky, L1 will help us finish off L4."

"Acknowledged."

I waited a tense minute, feeling the Phoenix shudder around me while the tac officer calculated and relayed the fleet's movement. I glanced at my pressure helmet strapped to the inside of my pod, making sure it was available if we got hit, then heard the acceleration alarm.

The fleet moved in closer, staying on the station's equator to avoid the concentrated fire at its polar regions. While the attack continued, I planned the fleet's next move. I don't know if L1 helped us out or not, but L4 soon stopped firing and, seconds later, fell apart under our assault.

I flash messaged my tac officers, "stand by for course change," then called up the 3D navigation display. Our momentum was carrying us away from the moon at an oblique angle. We would have to turn toward the moon and burn off our momentum with the reaction drives, but first we had to get out of the range of the battle stations' missiles.

I rotated the display, lining up L2 and L5, determined the angle we'd need to approach, the length of burn to get the speed we'd want and worked backwards to our next destination. I sent the data to the fleet tac officer. "Boost as soon as you've crunched the numbers and get your confirmation from fleet," I told him.

The attacks from L1 continued, but we were now able to concentrate our defenses on them. The missile launchers quivered another minute then stopped as the fleet went FTL. We dropped out of FTL well beyond the moon's range, turned, fired up the reaction drives and began accelerating back. I was tempted to turn the optical sensors on L4 and watch the last minute of our fight as its light caught up to us, but instead I trained my sights on the moon.

I found the enemy's base burrowed into the side of a crater. The Shattered remains of the troopers' landers outside its front entrance had given it away. Someone, most likely L2, had blasted them on the ground.

I messaged my coms officers.

"Yes, sir?"

"Can we reach the troopers on the ground?"

"I'm talking with specialist Lesko right now."

"Add me."

The com officer paused. "OK, you're in."

"Specialist Lesko, this is Commander Phon. Can you hear me?"

"Yes, sir."

"What's your situation?"

"We've secured module A, but cannot access the interior modules."

"Is your position currently threatened?"

"Not at the moment. The aliens sent an assault team out through a secondary entrance to attack us from over the moon's surface earlier. We destroyed them and sent a team to go find the other entrances when the battle station overhead attacked."

"Well, we're about to make a flyby of L2. Hopefully we'll keep them busy."

"What do you want us to do?"

"Wait until we engage the battle station, then if it not too hazardous, send your teams out to destroy any of the surface defenses you can reach."

"We can do that."

"We'll have to turn the fleet around to come back and get you. When the surface guns start firing a second time, get your troops back to the base. We'll take them out from orbit."

"You do know they destroyed our birds, right?" Her voice had a worried tone.

"Yes. I'm working on your transport next. Hang tight."

"Acknowledged."

I messaged Chief Master Engineer Michael Droemer. "Chief, would it be possible to remotely land a breaching pod on the moon, load it with troopers and launch it again?"

Chief Droemer frowned. His gaze drifted upwards and he leaned back in his chair as he made quick mental estimates. "You should have enough thrust. The landing will be a bit rough. I don't know how stable the thing will be on the ground, especially heavily loaded...."

"Good enough. I want you to get together with the remotes commander. Have him pick out five pilots and get them hooked up to five pods in the next ten minutes."

"That's not a lot of time," Droemer said. "It might be better to just have them jump off the moon and pick them up in space. I think their armor could probably accomplish that and they even have maneuvering jets for zero G."

I found the mental image of two dozen troopers leaping off the moon startling, but then, even with their cooperation, gathering them all on board would be a nightmare. "We'll save that as a last resort. The enemy fleet is probably headed toward us right now, we need to snatch them up as quickly as possible."

* * *

Once we had increased our velocity towards the far side of the moon enough, I confirmed the receipt of the flight position information and the targeting assignments with my tactical officers. I also assigned one of them to log the firing positions of the moon's defenses during the attack on the station. Since we were now moving in the right direction, I started the thirty second countdown. The wings acknowledged and when the countdown hit zero, the H-drives kicked on and suddenly the moon swelled large beneath us.

We stopped at close beam range to the battle station at Lagrange Point Two. Our particle emission weapons sliced through their support structures with robotic precision. Glowing drops of metal sprayed out in a burst of atmosphere and a large section of the station tore loose and drifted away. A single missile platform fired off a volley of undirected missiles in the feeble spasm of their dying defense grid. Warning icons flashed on my display. The moon had launched a wave of relativistic missiles mixed with surprisingly powerful directed energy weapons. Had their targeting been more accurate, or if we had given them more time, they might have seriously hurt us.

The automatic point defenses kicked in, shooting down those missiles coming toward the Phoenix even as others slammed into the battered remains of the battle station and sprayed us with the shrapnel of its corpse. The missile swarm grew thicker. I signaled the fleet. "Proceed to next target."

Battle station L5 had already launched their missiles at us, forcing us to swing wide and come in at an oblique angle. The end result, however, was the same as with L2. We carved it up and left it a venting ruin as we swung towards L1.

During our assault, the alien ships had tried to turn in toward us. Task Force Sigma switched from pursued to pursuer and pushed back, forcing them into ever widening spirals, buying us the time we needed to destroy the remaining station.

A short burst of the H-drive and we were in energy weapon's range carving up L1. The moon's planet-side defenses lashed out at us, overwhelming several of our ships' point defenses and inflicting significant damage. I signaled the S.S. Hudson and the S.S. Medved, our two most damaged cruisers, and waited in mounting frustration during the slight delay of the communication laser network. "You two head back to L4 and look for survivors from the Xerxes and the Westerfeld. I want you finished by the time we recover the troopers."

"Acknowledged."

"Yes, sir."

I transmitted the new attack plans to my tactical officers. We hadn't burned off our momentum when we jumped to L1, so our momentum had been carrying us away from the near side of the moon. When the countdown finished, we were back on the moon's far side, our momentum once more carrying us toward the moon.

The moon's defenses barely had time to fire before our gunners, working down their list of last known firing positions, systematically destroyed the enemy's weapons in a spreading ring of destruction that billowed out from the base. The remote pilots launched the breaching pods and I watched, praying I had given the troopers enough time to get back to safety, praying the pods would survive the landings and praying the troopers would get back alive. The gunners stopped firing, having reached the end of their target list and waited for possible return fire. I'm sure they were scanning the moon's surface looking for missed targets or mobile units that might have been hiding.

At the edges of the system, more alien ships had trickled in through the other gates, formed up and moved in to support the other alien defenders. Together, they forced Task Force Sigma to withdraw. I estimated we had less than ten minutes before the enemy ships were upon us.

I tapped into the optical scanners, found the base and watched the troopers running out to their pods. I waited for an uncomfortably long period, waiting until I saw the dust clouds of their engines firing. They didn't seem to move at first and I feared, their engines couldn't handle that much mass under gravity, but then they started moving. As they neared the Phoenix, they seemed to accelerate until they shot toward us like missiles.

I flash messaged Harlow. "Have the rest of the fleet go hide behind the transit station."

"Hide? I don't understand."

"While we load the breaching pods, have the rest of the fleet position themselves on the far side of the station. Leave the fastest craft just barely visible from this side as if we were trying to set up an ambush, but have the other ships go ahead and transit."

"Do you think it will really hold them back?"

"They've been pretty cautious so far and we've just stripped their orbital defenses. I think I'd be careful in their place."

"What if they don't fall for it and catch us while half of the fleet is transiting?" Harlow asked. His voice held a slight note of accusation.

I shrugged. "If they don't back off, the FACs and LCs can launch a feint attack as we did escaping The Swords' territory. We only have to buy time for the slower ships to get a decent head start."

"Very well. I'll pass it along to the other tactical officers."

"Tell them to boost immediately."

Harlow disconnected and I sat staring at the data panel, scratching my chin thoughtfully and wondering if I'd lost his confidence. He almost seemed to blame me for our lack of better options. How different from the first days after our commanders were betrayed and murdered. Then everyone eagerly looked to me to rescue them. Now that we were back at the edge of Solarian space and they imagined themselves safe, I couldn't keep them from running off into danger. More and more of my commanders were questioning my orders as if I'd suddenly gone stupid.

The fleet disappeared. I tracked them on the gravimetrics with one eye as I waited for the breaching pods to finish loading, while keeping the other eye on Task Force Sigma. I had no way to communicate with them while they were playing tag with the aliens. I could only hope they would figure out what we were doing and respond accordingly.

Finally the flight deck master signaled to Commander Brennon that all the breaching pods were loaded and he gave the order to race for the transit station. I watched Task Force Sigma, waiting to see if they would follow, or if they would go back to the moon for the troopers and, likely, be trapped there. The rest of the fleet disappeared behind the transit station, invisible even on gravimetrics, except for a few LCs just visible beyond the station's edge. Behind us, Task Force Sigma scattered and raced toward the gate.

Was our trap too obvious, I wondered, or was it obvious enough? The alien's gravimetrics didn't seem to be as sophisticated as ours. They might not even see our ships waiting in pretend ambush.

The Phoenix whipped around the station and slipped into the queue behind those few heavy cruisers that had not yet transited to the next system. The rest were already racing to the next gate. Task Force Sigma slotted in behind us and some of the waiting LCs and FACs had to move aside, exposing themselves to the enemy to make room.

From our recon drones, it appeared the aliens dropped out of FTL and formed up in a forward-pointing cone within a funnel. It was an offensive formation within a defensive one. I could only assume their commander was hedging his bets, ready to attack at the first sign of an opportunity, but fearing to be caught off guard if we attacked first. Either way, he gave us the time we needed to slip through the gate. But as the FACs and LCs transited, he surprised us by chasing us into the next system.

Our trailing ships violated about a hundred spacing laws and vented raw anti-matter behind them. Given the vastness of space, it was a long-shot, but it paid off when one of the leading alien ships ran into a clump of antimatter and was destroyed. The rest of the aliens dropped out of FTL and we escaped.