Vaughn Heppner - Star Fortress

The opposite was quite different. As one journeyed toward the Sun, the planets squeezed more tightly together. Being at Uranus put one much nearer Saturn, while Jupiter might as well have belonged to the Inner Planets, it was so near Mars as compared to the distance to Neptune. That meant taskforces sent in-system were much nearer the next objective than those that traveled out-system. Therefore, it was much more profitable to go in-system than to send military forces out.

My offensive strategy capitalized on Neptune’s solitariness .

The Prime had capitalized on another critical element. Cyborgs were superior soldiers. Compared to Homo sapiens the difference was startling, several orders of magnitude. The difference was less with Highborn, but still significant. Militarily, it meant cyborgs outclassed their enemies by a higher percentage in face-to-face encounters than in any other forms of combat. Therefore, logic mandated stealth insertion tactics. This included boarding enemy warships and invading planets or inhabited moons.

Using distance to its advantage and personal military encounters, it had conquered the majority of the Solar System in a relatively short time.

I am clearly superior .

The thought lasted forty-two seconds as it exuded in its forethought and planning. Then an invading truth dampened its gloating.

If cyborgs were superior soldiers in personal encounters, the Doom Stars were better by a daunting degree in ship combat. Twice, the insertion of Doom Stars had thwarted cyborg strikes. The first had occurred at the Third Battle for Mars. The second time it had happened against the planet-wreckers launched at Earth.

The Saturn-launched attack should have succeeded .

It had to a degree, and the Prime concentrated on that for a full two minutes. Then it switched back to the Mars battle. The Highborn defeated them, although it had cost the great enemy one of his critical vessels. Both times the enemy had inserted himself into the conflict it had cost him one of his great warships.

Five Doom Stars—a shudder ran through the Prime. Facing five would have been a disaster. It was bad enough the Homo sapiens had allied with the Highborn. Fortunately, Social Unity only possessed a remnant of its once vast fleets. There were also three Jovian vessels following, a surprise. But the meteor-ships were damaged and likely depleted of offensive power after their battle with the Uranus-launched moon-wreckers.

The Prime used the Neso observatories to study the enemy, the approach and their likely operational choices. It weighted each possibility by percentages. Then it examined Neptunian defenses. Unlike the Highborn or the Social Unity and Jovian Homo sapiens, it relied on stealth technology, mass of ships and mass of turrets.

Every moon and habitat was a fortress with endless laser-turrets. There was nothing breakthrough about them other than their incredible number. Unfortunately, the Doom Stars outranged all the defensive armament.

That was a problem, but the Prime didn’t believe it an insolvable one. Range was important, but there were other critical military factors.

I have made the superior choices .

Those decisions had been made long ago. Logic dictated certain military realities. One of the chief factors was opportunity costs. The logic was relentless. One had a limited amount of time, energy and matter. Yet the wants were unlimited. As one used resources, it meant there was less to buy other choices. Therefore, one should logically maximize each decision to give the greatest benefit possible.

This was even truer in military affairs than other matters. The Prime had long ago made a strategic decision regarding which battlefield technologies to acquire and improve. Its choices involved a key tenant, one critical in all forms of armed conflict. It was possibly so simple a thing that lesser beings ignored its truth. One needed to sight a target before one could hit it. Meaning, the most powerful weapon was useless if it missed.

In space, finding the enemy often proved difficult. Therefore, the force that spotted its enemy, without the enemy spotting it, gained a decided tactical advantage. With this advantage, the cyborgs had captured several of the Outer Planetary Systems. With everything else remaining equal, the force with highly developed sensors and merely adequate weapons would defeat the force with incredible weapons and poor sensors—or good sensors unable to detect a cloaked enemy.

Therefore, the Prime had pursed new stealth technology and sought improved sensing equipment. Because of this, it had built a completely different type of space fleet to defeat the humans. The key cyborg offensive ship had until now been the Lurkers and stealth-capsules. Their task was to turn every battle into a face-to-face encounter. Afterward, the cyborgs had fought several battles with captured enemy warships and stealthily-launched planet-wreckers. Those wreckers used the technology of the captured power: Saturn and Uranus. Now, however, it would for the first time fight with a war-fleet of its own design.

The enemy approached with eight warships. The Prime gloated. It possessed hundreds of vessels. Each of its heavily cloaked ships directed a fleet of equally cloaked drones. With their greater numbers, they would swarm the enemy by using innovative tactics.

Rationality programs surged into action and quickly grabbed resources, using more and more of MONITOR’s brain mass. Soon, soothing chemicals dampened the gloating. Perhaps MONITOR overreacted with the dampening, for the Prime reconsidered its plan yet again.

The mass of cloaked ships and drones hid behind Neptune in relation to the enemy. It had considered mining the enemy’s approach, but it assumed the Highborn would redirect their flight-path for just that reason. The key to victory lay in obliterating the Doom Stars.

Question: was it wiser to destroy the accompanying battleships first or to concentrate everything on the Doom Stars?

A brain dome supplied the answer. It was a memory dome with access to all human history.

It ran through many examples, fixating on the World War Two Allied bomber campaign against Germany. At the time, heavy bombers had dropped thousands of pounds of explosives on the Axis factories, railways, oil wells and ball-bearing plants. German fighters had orders to attack the heavy bombers first, ignoring the accompanying allied fighters. With hindsight, it was clear the German fighters should have concentrated first on destroying the Allied fighters and then attacking the slower bombers, as the British and Americans fighters had taken a dreadful toll on the Germans.

The Prime accepted this. It would first remove the SU warships. Afterward, it would concentrate on the super-ships. With their destruction, total victory would merely be a matter of mopping up Earth, Venus and Mercury. That victory would occur with speed once it acquired the Sun Station.

Knowledge of the Sun Station was new—painfully new—only days old.

An important subsystem of the Web-Brain squirmed with worry. This had higher authority than the rationality and monitor programs. The thought gained profile as it computed probabilities and accessed a troubling reality: Humans were more creative than cyborgs.

Explain your worry , the Prime demanded.

The subsystem answered with one word: range .

The range of their weapons?

Subsystem: yes .

All their weapons?

Subsystem: no .

A specific weapon?

Subsystem: yes .

Which weapons are you worried about?

Subsystem: the Sun Station .

The Prime pondered that. Finally, it decided to interrogate one of its captured scientists. It was frustrating, but humans were move inventive than a web-mind. It was unreasonable and illogical, but it was still true.