Ghost Fleet

by Isaac Stone

  “Tran, the chain cannon!” I yelled as I ran past him to my command tower. “Blow that hanger door open!” I leaped on the ladder of the command tower and began to climb up it.

  I heard the chain cannon open up and vibrate the FAS as I strapped into my position. I activated the screens. The image of Tank’s FAS spitting destruction at what remained of the doors was the first thing I saw.

  The next thing I saw was the face of Tank in one of the small internal helmet screens. “After you, old buddy!” he yelled. In front of me, I watched countless shades fade away.

  “Orlando!” I screamed into my microphone, “Get us out of here!”

  I was slammed against the back of the tower as Orlando slammed down on the controls of the plasma engines. I felt them rattle the FAS as we shot out of the ghost ship into the emptiness of space, the stars in front of me, but not my destination.

  In the rear screen, I saw Tank’s FAS join us. Both ships pulled away from the ghost ship as fast as we could go without damaging the ships. I watched the ghost ship retreat in the distance.

  Seconds later, the flare of a Starkiller class missile roared past us from the other direction. I looked at my timer. Four minutes since we had the warning. I made a mental note to buy extra flowers and candy for Alyx the next time we put in for some recreation time.

  “I think we're out of the blast....” I heard Medoro speak over the audio.

  The signal was overpowered by the nuclear detonation of the missile impacted and detonated inside the ghost ship. The EMP flare squelched it, but we were still alive.

  I glanced over the one of the screens and saw Tank and his ship still flying with us. We’d made it out, but not all of us.

  11

  Over the next few weeks, the UDF realized the extent of the ghost ships’ penetration into their frame of interest. The Spear Cluster was gargantuan, and there just weren't enough patrols to keep the enemy fully screened, and every day more and more ghost ships slipped through our line. Some just fought their way through. Ghost ships spread across the systems that made up the UDF, destroying commercial ships and military ones where ever they were found. It was no longer possible to hide the extent of the threat from the public. There was only so much monitoring the military could do to keep the words from leaking out into the general information. And when the damn of information burst, it turned into a floodgate.

  But what no one suspected was the amount of support the governments that made up the UDF would receive from their citizens. The danger became known and citizens signed up for any kind of duty they could perform to keep the threat from beyond known space from destroying humanity.

  The offices of the Goat Squad were filled with requests of paranormals who wanted to use their abilities to save humanity. Every mineral dowser, ever crystal ball reader, every mirror gazer in the galactic civilizations began to offer their sources for the UDF to use against the invaders.

  Small offices were opened on every world within the UDF. Forms were filled out and thousands of tests were performed to find paranormals who could fight against the threat. I remember the reports that flashed through the news feeds from the central committee. Every possible talent was explored.

  Every major religion and most of the smaller ones ransacked their libraries to find any information that could be used. If there was a report of a phantom ship that appeared on the sea in the distant past, it was recorded by operatives from the Goat Squad. Talismans and sigils of all manners were pulled out of sacred chambers and museums to be tested against the ghost ships.

  Tank and I were interviewed over and over by the navy. They wanted all information we could furnish about those shades and how they became substantial once I stabbed one of their number. I lost count of the naval officers I talked to over video feeds.

  Across the UDF worlds, watch posts were organized to report any sightings of ghost ships. After a month passed, the UDF Navy had them characterized in to three basic forms. The overall patterns were distributed to the watchers, who would send a sighting to any government operative in the area. Since they could jump around the systems too, it was important that any sightings were relayed to a central location immediately. Bonus points were rewarded to people who made the best and most accurate observations.

  Within two months, the entire UDF was on war footing. We were no longer colonies of a border patrol, but fully integrated into the military might of the government.

  The destruction created by the ghost ships had no end. They would appear in some remote location and devastate entire planets. Since it was theoretically impossible to track any ship traveling through the Insubstantia that separated the vast distances of space, there was no way to know where they would strike next. The UDF did what it could to analyze where the ghost ships might appear, but no pattern of attack was ever discovered by the Goat Squad.

  Yet there were a few instances of the ghost ships stopped in remote parts of the UDF that no one expected. Three of them appeared in a small system known as Svardheim. This was a single sun that only had one inhabitable planet in orbit, which was known as Frigg. Frigg had few people to defend and the UDF Navy couldn’t spare any starships to give it protection. So, when the ghost ships appeared outside its orbital range, there was nothing more than a regional militia to defend it.

  The ghost ships finished ravishing the outer colonies and supply stations in orbit. Then they headed for the only inhabitable planet in the system.

  Frigg was one of the first colonies established after the great migration from Earth. It had a small population, due to the lack of much in the way of raw materials. Most of the planet was involved in farming or other agricultural work. It seldom had much to worry about from pirates or other raiders, since Frigg didn’t have anything anyone wanted to steal. Therefore, it only fielded a regional militia and lacked any kind of UDF military presence. This was fine with the Friggians as it meant less money they had to pay to the central government in the way of upkeep.

  However, it did have an ancient tradition of seers who lived in a remote part of the planet. They claimed to have the power to see into other worlds that existed at the same time as the present one. It wasn’t a large sect and few people paid it any attention.

  This all changed the day the abbot of the seer monastery showed up at the nearest town hall and told them that Frigg was on the verge of destruction, but they could prevent it. The local administrator was about to send the man away with a chuckle when a screen materialized next to him began and began to squawk about an incoming wave of ghost ships.

  “I know how to defeat them,” the seer told him. “Get me and my fellow monks to the capital so we can guide the defense of the planet.”

  The entire monastery was transported by VTOL in a manner of hours to the militia base.

  It was one of the few successes in the early war against the ghost ships. Each monk was pared with a starfighter and guided them into where the ghost ships would strike first. The monks informed the crew the exact second the ghost ship would fire, which allowed them the necessary two seconds they needed to strike.

  Although the militia lost half its available starfighters and the monks who went up with them, the first wave of ghost ships was destroyed, as were the next three. After the fourth wave was destroyed by the militia and monks, no more ghost ships came to attack the planet of Frigg.

  It was the greatest victory humanity scored in the first few months of the war, and one that was poured over by every military mind available.

  The UDF Navy rushed to get the monks into every sector of the war, but there were too few of them. The mastery of perception they held was too vast to be used to train regular recruits in their techniques. Every battle meant one less monk and humanity needed all that remained.

  Worse, the Spear Cluster began to spew Dark Matter of out of its core. This was the fundamental building blocks of the universe, but too much of it in one area caused temporal de-stability. Entire moons and asteroids vanished as the dark matte
r came forth from the Spear Cluster in waves. When it cleared, more ghost ships would emerge. At least we were far enough back not to be affected.

  I spent most of my days bringing Dredge up to speed on how the Hard Rain was run. The Marshal, with Captain's blessing, was grooming Dredge to found a new Starwing pack aboard Thunder Horse. There wasn’t much resistance in her appointment, as with the war being what it was, we knew that Starwing needed the numbers and the ship. Captain was allowing Dredge a chance to get a feel for running our operation, and had taken the former pirate under her wing to show her the ropes. It was a bit hard of me to think of the ship with two captains, but most of us learned to talk about Captain Sophia or Captain Dredge after a while. They seemed to do well together and had few arguments over the way to handle issues on the ship. I attributed it to my ability to merge the consciousness of the crew every night for a few brief minutes when we slept. It made for a harmony on board I’d never witnessed before. I realized that this is what the Captain had been doing the whole time, but with my elevated powers I was able to take it to a much more intense level.

  One other thing was that Captain put herself and Dredge on the roster as a team until they’d rotated through each man on the ship. Although Dredge already was on the roster, Captain Sophia wanted to ensure there were no issues and that they would respect her in the same way they’d always respected the original captain. By now, Captain Sophia no longer de-aging and her appearance stabilized. This placed her at a similar age to Dredge. Most of the crew convinced themselves that it was the prolonged use of enhancements and perhaps some off book stem cell therapy that Cherish wasn't admitting to. Thankfully the process halted, had she appeared any younger it might have sparked an investigation, and the last thing we wanted on board our two ships were Goat Squad agents.

  It was right about this time that the Cosmic Seed was found.

  With the Goat Squad and the rest of the UDF Navy working hard to find anything that could stop the assault of the ghost ships, people began to look through old artifacts and records left behind from the out migration from Old Earth. Archives were scoured, and every kind of occult master interviewed to see if she or she could furnish a weapon to be used against the invaders. After the monks from Frigg were used to stop several genocidal attacks on the outer planets, the Goat Squad sent out representatives to look at reports of miracle workers from all over the inhabited galaxy.

  One of these groups was The Communion of the Cosmic Mother, a small group of religious who’d been around since the days of Old Earth. They had a few settlements on some obscure planets and few people paid them much attention. They got along with their neighbors and didn’t cause much trouble.

  While trying to decide where to travel next, Lieutenant Hugo Ramirez, who’d interviewed me some time ago, received a cryptic message. It told him that a Communion settlement was under attack from a ghost ship and had used the power of their “Cosmic Seed” to repulse the ship. He checked the records and discovered a ghost ship was spotted near their star but vanished before anything else was determined about it. Lt. Ramirez decided it was enough information to warrant an examination.

  When he made planetfall, the officer was greeted by a man who claimed to be one of the few survivors of the ghost ship attack. Most of the settlements not part of their communion was destroyed by the ghost ship that appeared without warning. While it bombed settlements from orbit, one of the elders in their temple brought out their most sacred possession, a round sphere made from crystal about three feet in diameter. It was supposedly tossed from the sky after The Cosmic Mother defeated The Evil One in some celestial war. They decided it was worth a chance as none of them had weapons to oppose the ghost ship.

  In the middle of a prayer meeting for deliverance, the sphere flashed green. All present claimed they saw this happen. In addition, the orbital bombardments ceased. The ghost ship vanished without leaving any sign it was ever there.

  All Lt. Ramirez could find out from the overworked central records office in the war department was that the ghost ship appeared and laid waste to the surface of the planet before it vanished. They didn’t know where it went, if it made the jump through Insubstantia to somewhere else, or if the ship met with an accident. It just wasn’t there all of the sudden.

  This was proof for the local faithful that the Cosmic Seed delivered them from the hands of their enemies. When Ramirez arrived, he was informed of this by a large celebration. He’d expected to find people huddling in fear and discovered them dancing in the streets.

  It was right about that time that Captain Sophia found out about the Cosmic Seed. I was with her when it happened.

  She’d kept herself in rotation on the roster, although the duty to make it had been temporarily passed to Captain Dredge. Dredge used her powers wisely and made sure everyone slept with a different person each night, although this wasn’t easy with the ratio still a bit out of balance. I noted there were fewer and fewer nights that I was expected to please two women.

  Even with her age reduction, which no one could still explain, Captain Sophia was still the same person on the inside. Whenever I was assigned to her, I’d wait to shower down for the evening until she gave me the nod. There was still plenty to do with the ship in constant combat mode. Somedays the roster changed overnight. I noted the assignments were spaced out evenly so that I wasn't always with the most energetic women (such as Candi), nor the most experienced (such as Talia).

  That night she’d waited a bit before our lovemaking began. I was on top of her for a change when she began to climax. I held off long enough for her pleasure to reach its height before I was ready. After I’d spent, I lay on top of her for a few minutes.

  “The seed,” she whispered into my left ear. “Not your seed, but the seed. It’s been found.”

  I was a bit confused and still in that sedentary state that arrives with the cessation of sexual activity. She seemed a bit winded, despite her health. I rolled off her and lay to one side. I could feel the heat from her body as it radiated into the room. The sound of Captain Sophia’s breathing was the only thing that met my ears.

  “Did you have another vision?" I asked her. I didn’t want to probe her mind currently. Captain Sophia was in a state of heightened awareness and stars only knew what I might find inside there.

  “The Cosmic Seed,” she told me again and grabbed my hand. “The one we need to bring this war to an end.”

  I rose up at her and looked into Captain Sophia’s eyes. They were white, which startled me. Was she having a seizure? I nearly jumped off the bed and started to go to her desk to call the medical station. However, her tight fingers held onto my wrist.

  “I want you again,” she told me. “I need you inside me once more, so I can see where it's at. Lay on your back, I need to be the one in control.”

  I laid back. In seconds, her weight was upon me. I could feel the soft warmness of her as she rocked back and forth. Captain Sophia reached down and grabbed my hands. She brought them up to her breasts and I understood. With the tips of my fingers, I lightly touched her nipples.

  Her hands gripped my shoulders and she lowered her head. “The Seed, the Seed,” she spoke in between thrusts.

  I obligated several more times that night. Hours later, she lay across me and went to sleep. “I know where it is,” she spoke with a small grin on her face.

  She was up before me the next morning and seated in front of a screen that hovered over her desk. “I’ve found it,” she said, while wrapped in the sheet. I’d wondered why it felt so cold while I slept.

  I placed one leg over the bed and sat up. “Do you need anything else, Captain?” I asked her. “Sophia,” I added.

  “You stay there,” she told me.

  She tapped something on the screen and ruffled her short hair, which she’d allowed to grow a bit longer than usual. Most of the packmates kept their heads shaved or short. It made it easier to get a helmet on when you were in combat.

  By now, every able-bo
died person with paranormal abilities was thrown into the battle against the ghost ships. There were people who attempted to use seer stones in the same ships as deep EMR probes for trace particles. There were few people such as even Tank or I who had the ability to mind probe. The navy made several requests to transfer both of us to another theater of operation, but the captains wouldn’t hear of it. They’d even gone to the Orders Marshal to keep us in the Hard Rain.

  “I've found it,” she announced. “It’s on some hellhole planet in a system few people even know about.” She placed both legs under her on the chair and sat down. I hadn’t seen her to that in a long time.

  “I'm glad you found whatever you needed to find,” I told her. “Is the schedule still the same? I’d hoped your change was enough to only send me to one woman tonight. You had me with two of the women who came in with Captain Dredge. I haven’t had a chance to spend an evening with Precious in a while.”

  “Sorry, she spoke from across the table. “You’ll have to satisfy Widow and Kane tonight. I know that’s a tall order, but I expect every packmate to do their duty on this ship."

  She turned and gave me an odd look. “Are you having trouble with those ex-pirates? I thought you helped them through their issues. None of the other men complain. Most seem to like their new wives. Is there something I need to know about?”

  “No, I love my new wives, same as everyone else. But, well, Precious is special to me. Am I making sense?’

  Captain padded over to me and sat down next to me on the bed. She put one arm around my back and leaned on my shoulder. As I waited, she looked up to me.

  “Corwin," she spoke in her sultry voice. “You know about special arrangements on this ship. That’s not what we are about. You’re not supposed to show favoritism to any of your packmates. You’re not supposed to love any one of your wives more than another. Likewise, no one of your wives is supposed to love you more than any other man. If we have a problem with that, I must address it. I don’t like to have these conversations, because I work so hard to keep them from coming up in the first place.”