The rescue ship had managed to capture three out of four escape pods before having to leave the vicinity of the disabled ship. Apart from those three pods, a shuttle had managed to catch up with us, carrying about 20 survivors, which was then promptly brought into Lodos' hangar.
The fleet restored it's original formation soon afterwards the rescue, but with one missile cruiser missing.
"Commander..." said Professor Yamamari. "This is interesting. One of the motherships started to decelerate as it is now approaching the escape pod we left behind - the one with people in it. The other one continues to chase us."
"Maybe they are looking for something in the pod?" Mei said.
"The people..." I said. "What could they possibly want to do with them?"
"I don't know, just straight up kill them?" Mei said.
"Not likely." I said. "They could simple launch a missile if they wanted to kill the survivors. The escape pod is a sitting duck."
"Commander Kagan is right." the professor said. "But what... What could they possibly want to do with the pod?"
"Convert them into semi-androids and enslave them like others?" Mei suggested.
"Probable." the professor said. "But that would be very inefficient still."
"Perhaps we will find out later." I said.
"Commander..." Mei said. "I think the enemy stopped shooting at us."
I went to the sensors screen to see for myself. I watched both enemy motherships for minutes, and Mei was right; we were no longer being shot at.
"Alright." I said. "Mei, new plan."
"What do you have in mind?" she asked.
"Make sure to keep our acceleration high enough to maintain our distance to the enemy craft, but don't bring it to the maximum either; just do it as efficiently as possible. We will try to conserve the fuel reserves of The Fleet. All ships will match acceleration rates to follow you."
"Yes sir, calculating an efficient constant-acceleration brachistochrone transfer trajectory to Neptune."
We were safe for the time being, but the fate of 'the fleet state' was ultimately dependent on our good planning, and some luck.
"Huh." Mei took a deep breath. And then, she did it again. And again. "I thought we were not going to make it."
"Sure, it took a few hours, but we made it." I said.
"It also took a missile cruiser which would've been quite helpful later on, but oh well, can't have everything at once I guess." the professor expressed his thoughts.
"So?" Mei said with a questioning tone.
"So what?" I asked.
"I want to know more about that plan of yours."
"It is simple really." I said. "I will bring The Fleet down into Neptune's atmosphere. The AI motherships won't be able to effectively operate their drones in that dense medium, because those war drones are essentially designed for microgravity vacuum environments. We will attack the motherships head-on, without their drone support, which will be an easy win with our great numbers."
"There is something missing." said the professor. "Once our fleet starts decelerating on arrival to the destination, the motherships will just catch up with us on our Neptune approach, without us being able to even enter the atmosphere. If, however, you don't want that to happen, we won't decelerate on arrival and 'the fleet state' will have to enter the atmosphere with at least a couple hundreds of kilometers per second; which we all know is basically suicide."
The professor was right - I had not thought about this part. Once our fleet started its compulsory maneuver to decelerate and match orbital velocity with Neptune, the enemy motherships could simply choose not to decelerate and catch up with us on the last phase of our journey.
With that fact, my plan would not work.
"There is a solution." said Mei. "We will sacrifice some fuel and travel there on constant maximum acceleration. The motherships would be so far behind once we start decelerating."
"Hmm... Interesting proposal." said Yamamari. "Well, it is up to the fleet commander. Does he want to spend the extra fuel, or just switch to another plan?"
"There is no other plan to switch to." I said. "Mei's proposal seems to be the way. In that case... Cruise-nav, max fleet acceleration."
"Roger that, commander." Mei said.
In order to keep the fleet together, all ships were now accelerating at the maximum acceleration rate of the ship with the least powerful propulsion system, which was an old cargo ship.
"We were lucky to survive this surprise attack, next time may not be so easy." the professor warned me. "It is by sheer luck that our attackers can not keep up with our fleet's acceleration. We will eventually have to face ships with better propulsion systems, and we will have to be ready to take on them."
"I see what you mean." I said. "It was not anyone's fault perhaps, but only if we could launch the early warning satellite constellation in time, we would be prepared for such an event."
"Well, that's already in the past. We now have to get rid of our attackers, look for survivors stationed near Neptune, and if possible, return back to Makemake."
"Speaking of which..." I said. "I wonder how Tachibana's battle group is doing. I hope they made it to Makemake."
"Tachibana may have chosen not to go to Makemake." Mei said. "I think he would rather stay away from Makemake, since stationing fleets and fleets over that same dwarf planet could grab a lot of attention."
I looked at the professor, expecting a comment on the subject.
"Yeah, well, I don't know if Makemakians are better off with a fleet looking after them, or just by hiding underground in their little mines and city-holes."
"No use discussing this for now, we won't know until much later anyway, when we can contact them." Mei said.
"Sir..." Professor Yamamari was about to change the subject. "The mothership which decelerated to take a look at our escape pod has picked the whole thing up, with people inside. They are once again accelerating to continue pursuing us."