"We're on schedule, Captain, with about seventy days left, plus the usual reserve."
"Good. I am open to discussion, but here is how I see our situation. Our first priority is the defense of the Seekers. The best way to do that is to keep the enemy ignorant of their presence; but, failing that, we'll act decisively to protect them." She looked around the table and saw no disagreement. "Then our second priority is our own safety and, of course, the safety of the ship. Again, if the enemy moves against us somehow, we'll act."
"So, Captain, if neither of those come to pass, what do we do?"
"That, Lieutenant Kirkland, is what we're here to discuss."
Several officers were skeptical of Henderson's 'wait and see' approach. They favored more direct and immediate action to eliminate the enemy presence. Others supported her stealthy patience but proposed other activities, such as running a Sleuth past the enemy ships or dropping into a lower orbit to better see what was happening on the ground. Big Blue was near its perihelion, and the weather was marginally warmer and drier, meaning clear skies for overhead observation.
In the end, Joanne decided against either. She hated doing nothing as much as anyone else, but in this case, inaction was action; they would remain observant and unobserved, and wait for Eagle and Friendship. Larry Covington reported that the current orbit was holding well, and would be stable for as much as a month without any further maneuvers.
They had time, they had plenty of supplies. They would keep their eye on the enemy. Tactical patience, hard as it was to maintain, was clearly the best option. If the enemy moved in the 'wrong' direction, they would counter.
Meantime, they'd wait.
ISC Destroyer Faith
Earth, Outer Picket Position
Monday, December 5, 2078, 1400 UTC
It was Faith's turn in the boring 'picket' work of guarding her home planet. She was orbiting the sun about three lunar distances, about nine hundred thousand kilometers outside the Earth's orbit, always remaining in opposition, so to speak, with the Earth between the ship and the Sun. Frigate Grissom had the trailing position, behind the Earth as it orbited the sun, with Komarov currently in the lead on the other side of the planet. The three ships maintained a laser link for instant, secure communications. Each also had a direct line to the Operations Center at ISC Fleet HQ.
It was a quiet, boring day shift until the Surveillance alarm sounded, making the young tech's head snap back from the casual conversation she was having with the Comm tech just a foot or two away.
"IR transient, 125 minus 15." She called out as she worked the identification process. When the answer appeared, all she could do was mumble "Holy God..." Collecting herself, she then announced in a clear voice "Assess IR target as enemy ship entry." She turned to the young Ensign manning the conn. He looked back at her in shock for a long second, then reanimated himself.
"Set Alert Status One! Comms — inform Grissom and Komarov." The bridge came suddenly alive with action as they prepared the ship for battle. The Captain arrived to take control, and the Ensign left the Conn and ran aft to his place in the Life Support section.
In a few minutes, they had a firm track. The Surveillance officer came to his Captain.
"Bastard came up from the south, Captain, pretty as can be. We have him for now."
The Captain called across the Bridge, "Weaps! Can I shoot at this thing yet?"
"If they can track it, we can hit it, sir. But closer would be better."
"Very well."
His command phone rang. "Faith actual," he answered. He was not at all surprised at the voice on the phone.
"This is CINC." Davenport was clearly aware of the transmission delay, about four seconds at this distance. "I want all three of you to hold your positions for the moment."
There was a ragged chorus of 'Yes, sir' responses.
"It could be a single, or they could be trying to pull us off the planet and come in behind. So, stand pat for now."
The Captain hung up and turned to his Surveillance station. "Keep on it, but we’re holding our position for now."
The Fleet had never detected an enemy ship in Earth's home system. That it would happen midday on a Monday was almost too lucky. Everyone was at work; every analytical resource was available.
Standing in the Fleet HQ Operations Center, Davenport turned to his new COMNORTH. "What do we have?"
"The pickets, then a few ships either just returned or about to leave."
"No, who do we have that is combat capable right now?"
"Dobrovolski is leaving tomorrow, but her Captain is here on the surface."
"Get her going, Stan. Now."
Yakovlev picked up the phone. "Dobrovolski."
The Comms officer on Dobrovolski, Dan and Carol's old friend Senior Lieutenant Joe Scheck, happened to have the Conn.
"Dobrovolski, Lieutenant Scheck."
Yakovlev didn't hesitate.
"This is Yakovlev. Get yourselves underway and put yourself in a position to attack the enemy contact."
"Yes, sir. But, sir, the Captain —"
"We're not waiting for your Captain, Lieutenant. Whoever's senior on board right now is in command. Now get moving!"
"Yes, Admiral, right away."
Shortly after this, Captain Sultanov appeared in the Operations Center.
"Admiral, I have a shuttle here. I can get back to my ship!"
Davenport shook his head. "No. I can't risk that. Who's in charge up there?"
"Comms officer, Senior Lieutenant Scheck."
"Weapons?"
"She's here with me. Weapons Maintenance Officer is there. He should be fine."
"Let's hope so. Listen, Jora, I don't think this is a major attack. Let's just see what happens."
Back on Dobrovolski's Bridge, Joe Scheck was on the move.
"Where is it?" he asked the Surveillance techs.
"It's about twenty degrees to the right of opposition, RA twelve hours ten minutes, declination five...looks like about one AU out. According to Faith, he's doing something like twenty klicks per second."
"Holy crap — that's outside the orbit of Mars. If he was coming here, what is he doing way the hell over there?" Joe rubbed his beard absentmindedly as he wondered where the enemy ship was headed, and why.
"Yeah, no clue here, Lieutenant. Mars is about 90 degrees behind us right now, so he ain't going there, either."
The second Navigation Officer, an Ensign, joined them.
"OK, what's it going to be Lieutenant Scheck?"
"Put me on his ass."
"Fast or slow?"
"Not FTL, but quick as you can."
"On it."
Joe went back to the command position. "Listen up, everybody." As they turned to face him, he could see their anxiety. The Captain, XO, and Weapons officer were on the surface, so this wasn't the best time to head into battle. He took a deep breath. "We've all done bandit intercept exercises before, both at the U and aboard this ship. You all know your jobs, so just execute like you've done it fifty times before and we'll smoke this guy if that's what COMNORTH wants, OK?"
They all nodded in response.
"OK. Cool and competent, take your time, get it right."
He sat down, wondering if that little speech had done any good, but at least it made him feel like he'd done something to set the tone.
As Dobrovolski accelerated towards the enemy contact, Ron Harris and Fiona Collins answered CINC's call to the Operations Center.
"I don't get it, sir," Ron said. "They're just passing through?"
"Yes, it makes little sense except as a diversion," Jora Sultanov agreed.
Fiona leaned against a console. "Unless..."
"Yes?" Yakovlev asked.
"They were just checking out the system like we have at any number of stars?"
"They just dropped by?" Sultanov asked, incredulous.
"I understand the rule about coincidences, Captain, but it is possible they didn't know we were here."
On the Preeminent ship's Bridge, Third Counselor Ashil Kiker stood stolidly at the view window as the chaos roared around him. They had arrived at System 201, but it was unlike anything Kiker or Scad Nee Wok had ever seen or heard of. The blue third planet was alive with radio transmitters. They detected numerous small and large artificial objects in orbit around it. It was beautiful to Kiker's eye as he examined it through the telescope. There was a red one, too, not very far from the blue. Then, a white one off to one side, but closer to the star.
A white, a blue, a red, rocks, a giant, then rings.
The Ultimate Origin legend, something he had always dismissed as a ridiculous myth, came to Kiker's mind. But it could not be so. This was just another species to be put to the knee.
"Wok, what have you learned?" Kiker asked impatiently.
"Thousands of radio transmitters, sir. Whatever this race is, they have tech as advanced as our own, and they make no attempt to conceal themselves."
"Good. They are naive, then."
"Perhaps, sir. We are continuing to detect objects in orbit at many places. The red planet has large ships nearby as well."
"And the blue?"
"I cannot tell you how many yet, but many. The ones that worry me —"
"You are Preeminent, Wok, you need not worry."
"We are indeed, sir Kiker, but we are one and they are numerous. As I said, there are objects as large as this vessel not far from us. If they are warships —"
"If they are warships, we will defeat them."
"I must remind sir Kiker that if these are the Vermin, no ship has yet come away undamaged from their sting."
Kiker's face displayed his disgust. "Their sting, Scad Nee Wok? Perhaps we should sting them!"
"I must remind you, sir Kiker, that the Council sent us to explore, not to attack. The knowledge we now have matters far more than the few vessels we might destroy. And we would do that at the risk of being destroyed ourselves."
Kiker, always the politician, the maneuverer, initially resisted Wok's advice but finally accepted it. There would be more credit in the knowledge gained than in a conflict that could very likely kill him. Death was never his goal, for in death one never rose further, one could never become The Revered First.
CINC turned impatiently to his ad hoc brain trust.
"So, what do we want Scheck to do?"
"Eliminate it," Captain Sultanov answered immediately.
Ron Harris shook his head in disagreement. "I don't know, maybe, or, we could have him put a Lance up its ass and knock out the Drive."
"What then?"
"He's only doing twenty kilometers per second. At that distance, he's below the Sun's escape velocity. Take out his Drive, and he's ballistic."
"So, he'd be stuck here?"
"Exactly. Then we can do what we want with him." Ron's enthusiasm was growing.
"He'll deorbit," Fiona reminded them.
"If he can, sure, he might. With no Drive, I don't know how he'd do that."
"They can still talk," came a stiff female voice from behind them. Frances Wilson had just run over to Operations from FleetIntel.
"Talk?"
"Yes. I just heard from Lloyd at Forstmann Propulsion. They already know about this intruder."
"How did they find out?" Ron asked, alarmed.
"I don't know, boss, but they did. Anyhow, he says he's identified the SLIP apparatus on Columbia's wreck."
"OK..." Harris wasn't sure where she was going with this line of thought.
"OK, so hit that, and they can't communicate. I heard a little of this conversation, and if you're thinking about disabling it, you need to silence it, too." She handed the photographs over to Harris.
"It will take Scheck a couple hours to get into position. When he calls in, we'll send him the image."
Sultanov looked at the photographs, making note of the long elliptical dome near the front of the ship. "That's a pretty obvious structure. A Lance should do it."
Scad Nee Wok kept his own counsel on the wisdom, or lack thereof, of remaining in this bizarre system. They knew of the pulsed radio-locating technology that had been seen at System 248 when Hess Tae Sim was defeated. Some of the radio transmissions they were hearing from the blue planet were pulsed in the same way. But nothing was close by, so there was no reason to believe they had been detected.
To Wok, those transmissions meant that this must certainly be the Vermin's home. Never before had they encountered a species so extravagantly advanced. There were ships everywhere, it seemed, and radio transmissions on a multitude of frequencies with a bewildering variety of signal types. It felt dangerous, threatening, even as a part of Wok's mind reminded him that they were the Preeminent. Still, Wok's tail stump quivered slightly, reflecting his nervous unease.
Wok considered sending a message to the Council telling them of this discovery, but Kiker refused, wanting to wait until more information was available. Waiting, Wok knew, meant more data to take home, which was good. It also left more opportunity for misfortune or miscalculation, something he, as a Preeminent, tried to dismiss. Still, the rational part of his brain told him over and over that this could end badly for him and his crew.
Pacing Dobrovolsky's bridge, Joe Scheck thought the two hours would never pass. Finally, his Nav came to him.
"We're almost in position, Lieutenant Scheck. We're about a thousand klicks off his butt."
"Good. Comms, get me a laser link to COMNORTH."
"Delay will be about ten minutes, Lieutenant, and at this distance, we're better off with the X-band channel."
"Whatever you think best, just get us connected and request instructions."
It was a full twenty-five minutes before the Communications tech called Joe back over.
"They sent a couple of photographs and a text order."
FLASH 207812051725UTC
TO: DOBROVOLSKI/SCHECK
FROM: COMNORTH
CINCFLEET ORDERS ARE TO DISABLE REPEAT DISABLE INTRUDER TO
PERMIT CAPTURE AND FURTHER STUDY.
PHOTOGRAPHS PROVIDED INDICATE SLIP APPARATUS ON ENEMY SHIP.
FIRST PRIORITY IS TO DESTROY THIS APPARATUS.
SECOND PRIORITY IS TO DISABLE ENEMY DRIVE.
CPT SULTANOV EXPRESSES HIS CONFIDENCE IN YOUR ABILITIES.
ALSO STRONGLY ADVISES YOU NOT DENT HIS GODDAMN SHIP.
YAKOVLEV
END
"Oh, don't dent his ship, huh? Very funny."
Joe Scheck laughed. "Sounds like Sultanov."
They put the photographs up on the large monitors above the Surveillance station. One was a wide shot showing the position of the SLIP apparatus on the enemy ship. It was far forward, under the 'chin' of the vessel as seen from the front. The second photograph was a detailed image of the apparatus itself.
Joe called his Weapons Maintenance officer, Ensign Adrian Lucas, over, along with the Surveillance tech. Adrian would stand-in for the Weapons Officer on this attack. He was a tall Oklahoman, dark of hair and his skin deeply tanned from years spent chasing steers on his family ranch. He was new to the ship, smart and insightful. The product, Joe thought, of working all those seasons on horseback.
"By the book, we should be able to hit this small a target, right?"
"Sure, by the book. The dimensions are on the image, so I could, I guess, tell it to find the front and then offset the target that far aft. Yeah, we can do it."
The Surveillance tech, the most senior member of his division aboard, was skeptical. "OK, but if they see it coming, they'll bug out. Or, shoot back. Both are, you know, problems."
"Lances are not stealthy, Joe," Adrian commented.
Joe thought about that for a few seconds.
"No, they aren't. But Sleuths are."
"What are you thinking, sir?" the Surveillance tech asked.
"I want to slap a Sleuth sock on a Lance, cut out whatever we have to in orde
r to make it work, and then bring the weapons in real slow, maybe final at something like ten meters per second. If we use only passive sensors, they'll never know until the warheads go off."
"Sneaky, Joe, very sneaky."
"Can we do it, Adrian?"
"Yeah, we can do it. I think. We're close enough to the sun that visual and IR should work. We don't need the radar. But, there's a thousand klicks to cover, Joe. At ten meters per second, I'm not sure the math works."
"We'll manage. Get it done."
Joe walked back to the Comm station to let the brass know his plan.
"Well, it's imaginative, I'll give him that," Admiral Yakovlev commented after reading the message from Dobrovolski.
"He's going to sneak up behind it and launch at point blank range?" Ron said, surprised.
"That about covers it, yes. He'll pull within ten klicks and then launch. When the SLIP attack goes off, he'll fire the second Lance at the Drive system at normal speed and pull back."
Captain Sultanov let out a low whistle. "Scheck. I should have known. Sneaky little SOB, that one."
Harris smiled. "He's part of that Hansen, Powell, and Smith group. Trouble, all four of them."
"Good trouble for us, sir, but bad trouble for the enemy!"
"Let's hope so."
Yakovlev smiled as he told the Comm officer, "Tell Scheck to proceed."
"Sir Kiker, we have seen a very strong radio message from something orbiting the blue planet. It is too intense not to be aimed at us, or at something close to us."
"What of it?"
"I believe it may be a communication."
"They're communicating with us?"
"Doubtful, sir Kiker. If this is the Vermin planet, as my crew believes it is, they may be communicating with a ship close to us."
"And you have not detected any such ship?"
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