Blockade

by Chris Hechtl

  "What?" Ivan demanded, turning to the group. He wasn't sure what to make of these lordlings. They were soft. It was good to be needed again though.

  "That!" the woman said, pointing a shaking finger at an ape skull and brain. Wiring was fed into the top of the jar. The ape's head lacked soft tissue like eyes and lips. The eyes had been replaced with camera lenses. The black glass was like pitiless eyes of a predator.

  "What?"

  "What does she speak of?"

  "Check the media feeds; they just came up," a Neogorilla cyborg growled, coming out from the shadows. He pointed an accusing finger at the group of pirate lords. "They have killed our kind. Hunted and killed any species other than their own. Now they have tried to do the same across the galaxy. They are no better than the Xenos!"

  His hot breath and rage-filled body made Ivan turn from the gorilla to the humans. "Is this true?" he whispered, good eye seeking the truth in each of them.

  "It is!" a Veraxin said, scuttling out of the shadows. She had her entire lower body replaced with a robot. "They have gladiator games where they bring other species in and labs where they dissect us!"

  "Oh, you fools! You poor sick, deluded fools!" Ivan said in rage as the howls began. "Get out!" he snarled, voice rising to a bellow as the chamber shook. "You are not of us!"

  "Betrayed! Our people have been betrayed!" a cat roared. Other roars answered. Evin shook in fear, aware of the terror in the others.

  "Run little pitiful humans, and we'll hunt you and your traitorous race down. We shall have our revenge!" another voice snarled.

  Evin began to sweat as he went from a backwards walk to a trot. When a robot leg came out of the shadows and stomped one of the soldiers flat, he broke out into a full on run, a whimper tearing at his throat. He heard weapons fire, but the crashing thunder and echoes were nothing compared to the sights around him. Another soldier was cut down and then dragged off into the dark. Soldiers wheeled and fired from their hips, trying to protect the pirate lords at the center of their group.

  He saw the body of a soldier who had recently died in an open doorway that robots were remaking into a gruesome cyborg thing. Some of the flesh from the victim was sliced off and used to repair flesh of some of the old cyborgs. Some was fed into a bubbling vat.

  "Move!" one of the sergeants said, pushing him forward urgently. He turned and tried to pick up the pace. A snick and gasp made him duck instinctively. He felt hot sticky something splash onto his back and hair but he kept running.

  Eden fell as something sliced into the back of her legs from behind. She whimpered and screamed for help but was dragged off. Another soldier in front of Evin fell as something with a lot of blades fell from above. Lights played out around them; some of the soldiers spotted and fired on the cyborgs frantically. Sometimes they hit home and blood or hydraulic fluid splattered them. Evin urgently wiped at something from his left eye and dodged a body but kept moving urgently forward.

  Chapter 34

  H002

  The Resolution class heavy cruiser Armando Diaz jumped into the outskirts of the H002 star system. The navigational team was congratulating themselves on the accuracy of the jump while plotting the next leg of their journey.

  While they did that, the ship's long-range sensors probed the darkness around them. CIC reported the faint signs of ships near the normal jump point. Some of the bridge crew were dismayed by the news. The captain shrugged such concerns aside. "We expected as much. Stick to the plan," Captain Stuart stated.

  She still harbored doubts about the survivability of their mission, but the water dwellers had helped over a few of them. Their efficiency in hyperspace had let her ship shave weeks off of each journey. It had also allowed them to come in on different vectors than the established jump point zones, therefore, away from waiting enemy defenses.

  The time saved was nothing to sneeze at. That meant they had that much more fuel for what was expected to be one of the hardest parts of their journey. Once in Nuevo Madrid, she would need to find some way to resupply before moving on.

  She wished she could communicate with the homeworld about what she was seeing but it was not to be. Still she knew the ships were there, so the Admiralty had been right.

  She wished she knew what was in Nuevo Madrid. Most likely the enemy had a picket in B-95a3. She knew her tactical department were drooling over the idea of getting in behind enemy lines and hammering a convoy. She had no intention of going off mission. Still, they had a right to dream so she didn't pop their bubble.

  "Course plotted, Skipper," the navigator stated.

  "Can we do a skip?" she asked. She expected the answer to be no. He shook his head. "Didn't think so. Okay, we do it the hard way. Get us underway. CIC, keep your eyes peeled for enemy ship movement."

  A chorus of aye ayes answered her.

  -~~~///^\~~~-

  The four Federation cruisers at the H001 jump point noted the intruder well outside the jump zone. After an hour of scans, the ship was identified as a Resolution class. There was no IFF, so she was tagged as a possible enemy.

  Two ships, both heavy cruisers at the Garth jump point, were detailed to intercept the ship. The others remained behind in case the ship was a ruse to draw the picket away from the jump point.

  The various bridge crews were surprised when the cruiser didn't head for the Garth jump point but instead headed for a halfway around the star system from it.

  They were even more surprised when the enemy didn't turn around at the sight of two heavy cruisers coming to intercept her. Captain Falling Drop had sent a division after the ship while keeping the second division back in case the ship got past the first.

  Several days later the enemy cruiser went to an unknown vector on the outskirts of the star system and then jumped into hyperspace a day out from any engagement date with the Federation cruisers.

  Both ships cut their drives and then warmed up their tachyon transceivers to share the news with the rest of the cruiser squadron.

  -~~~///^\~~~-

  Tony floated on his back, turning slowly as he swam ever so slightly against the artificial current in the tank. His masters were feeding him a simulation of hyperspace around the ship. He flicked the fins on his arms and legs and spread and flexed other fins to maneuver around the tangles of shadow gravity in hyperspace.

  He felt the harness around him adjust as his handler moved the ring with the feed to it so the cables wouldn't get entangled. He had a series of data lines hooked up to the implants along his spine and through them to his nervous system.

  He was shedding a little, flakes of skin were coming off because of the chlorine in the water. He was oblivious to the discomfort. He had a mission to complete. This was what they were there for.

  -~~~///^\~~~-

  When Captain Falling Drop got the news, he brought his senior staff in to pow wow about the situation. "Okay, that doesn't make sense. And when the enemy does something I can't make sense of, I'm worried."

  "Agreed, sir," the XO stated. "What are they up to?"

  "Nothing good I bet."

  "Sir …," the navigator paused when the captain turned to her.

  "Yes? What is it Tammy?"

  "Based on that heading and location, we've determined that the ship is making a blind jump to Nuevo Madrid."

  "And thus getting behind our lines. They could go after the convoys, even deploy mines and ruin someone's day," the captain stated. The TACO nodded in grim agreement. "We need to detach a ship to let Garth and the Admiralty know. Get everything to Shrilanka and tell them to not spare the horses."

  -~~~///^\~~~-

  Horath

  Captain Elvira Varbossa was finally getting a handle on her newest primary project. Her R&D department had been tasked with finding an answer to the enemy's fighter, bomber, and missile issue. She'd come up with a multi-tiered approach. She was running it through the tactical computers.

  Rail guns had obviously been the first to be explored. They used energy to
drive large amounts of metallic mass into the path of an incoming target. Kinetic energy from the two hitting each other destroyed the target. But you had to have good targeting and a lot of mass to spray into the path. The counters were obvious, using ECM and stealth along with maneuver to throw off the rain gun's aim.

  It was one reason why she wasn't overtly fond of them. She had, however, created a new “shredder” round that would explode into a cloud of pellets. She couldn't find a sensor system that could handle the G's and rail gun's EM field though. Her best effort had resulted in two destroyed rail guns before she'd finally hit on the right idea of using a mechanical timer to set off the charge to blow the shredder round apart.

  But it meant the timer had to be set by hand or preset for an entire series. Not good.

  There were three major problems with rail guns. Power demand was a big one. Rail guns were power hogs, taking up nearly the same amount of power as energy weapons. Second, they didn't track well and traversing took time as did firing them. But the big one was something she had yet to figure out a fix for. They tend to tear themselves apart by ablating the inside of the rail gun barrel with every shot. Plasma burst from the moving projectile wore away at the barrel liner and then came out of the muzzle of the barrel as an expanding cloud of gas.

  Accuracy was her sticking point which was why she'd gone for the shredder round approach. But her simulations had shown that by reducing the mass of an individual hit in order to generate the greater likelihood of said hit she'd traded off a bit more than she'd wanted. The less mass and kinetic energy the object had meant the less likely it was to penetrate the enemy's shield or wear it down.

  And that still didn't resolve the barrel wear issue; something that had haunted weapon designers for thousands of years apparently.

  That alone told her she wasn't going to find a quick fix. Which was why she'd taken her shredder round and applied it to create war shot counter missiles. She couldn't pack a force emitter and hyper capacitor into a counter missile so that was the next best thing.

  Her second tier was made up of interceptors. The interceptor fighters would go out to intercept both enemy small craft and missiles far outside the perimeter of the fleet or defensive instillation. Her plan was for them to carry loads of her war shot rounds over anti-fighter missiles. If it worked, they could fire a spray of war shot into the path of the enemy force or missile swarm, breaking them up or even performing mission kills during a ballistic stage.

  Her third tier took a page from the enemy and from the history books in the form of a defensive craft. Since they couldn't rely on A.I., she had designed the craft based on a generic fighter platform with defensive drone weapons. Two Point Defense Laser ball turrets—one dorsal, one ventral—were her only armament. The craft would also have a massive shield umbrella and good long-range sensors and tactical computers.

  Her plan was to have the defensive craft as the last tier of defense before the ship's defenses. The defensive craft were energy hogs though; they needed an onboard micro fusion reactor, which was a problem. They also would need big force emitters. Fortunately, she had designed the craft with the idea of taking an emitter design from a destroyer and adapting it to the craft.

  Based on her simulations the craft could employ the PDLs or the shield, not both. As a last minute improvisation, she'd left open the ability to have hard points so it could also potentially carry war shot counter missiles. The trade-off for the extra structural engineering and control lines meant a bit more weight and time to build, and the extra mass would reduce the ship's range before requiring refueling. But it allowed more tactical flexibility.

  The more they invested in computers, faster software, hardware, and better sensors the more likely they would be able to fend off the enemy. But she recognized it was a race; the enemy would be using their cyber warfare skills to find holes in any data net to get into and exploit. Her people really needed to better develop A.I. of their own.

  She paused as she ran a frustrated hand through her hair. She was aware that some warships still had some sort of A.I. on board when they were found by the Gather Fleet. Her people had learned long ago to disable any central computer network before powering up a ship. They went to great lengths to get the ghost out of the machine to keep the A.I. from killing or interfering with their salvage efforts.

  Which meant they had over the centuries stopped trying to find ways to utilize A.I. At best many considered them a dangerous liability. Only recently was the tech being explored again. When she casually took a look into the files, she was surprised to find that the latest advances in software and A.I. tech could be traced back to lessons taken from captured New Federation civilian hardware. The boxes and civilian training aids that some of the spy ships had brought in. She shook her head at that. Considering the source though, they needed to be careful on just how much they trusted the software. She played an index finger over her lip. Were the powers that be aware that there could be software exploits and back doors in the software? Hopefully so. She did a quick scan of the files but hit a series of security firewalls so she backed off.

  -~~~///^\~~~-

  The Admiralty received the first hot wash of Elvira's ideas the following week when Malwin demanded a progress report. Elvira was nervous as she did her pitch to the Admiralty. Catherine's wink helped settle her, but she could tell some, like the admirals she didn't know well, were highly skeptical. Some like Admiral Cartwright approved.

  Once she was finished and withdrew, Malwin surveyed the group. “We gave her a short time to find a solution to a problem that generations of officers have wrestled with. She did what I expected. She gave us a menu of options and each are structured to use tech we currently can build in-house with a few exceptions,” he stated.

  Lewis nodded. “I personally like the defensive platform. It takes away from the general purpose squadrons, but if there is no carrier to come back to, there is no point of fielding them,” he stated. “And they can do more than just protect one ship.”

  “Exactly. There are strategic and tactical options she barely scratched the surface on. I admit that we need more time to examine these options. I do like that she has outlined the steps in construction and even managed a few live fire tests,” Vice Admiral Rupert Bradley, head of BUSHIPS, stated with a shake of his head.

  “To think someone could do what she does, on a crushingly short deadline with little to no resources!”

  “I know,” Malwin stated. “Which is why she is indispensable. It is also why I am pushing for her to be promoted to commodore or right straight to rear admiral,” he said, looking directly at the head of BUPERS. Vice Admiral Latisha Nuert scowled. She was well aware of the fact that the captain was a protégée of Admiral Cartwright as well as the lover of the princess. “She needs the rank to pitch this to the House of Lords as well as to others.”

  “I agree,” Admiral Post stated.

  “Abstain,” Catherine murmured, flipping a hand up and then settling it down flat on the table when all eyes fell on her. Others around the table either agreed or abstained for their own reasons. No one was willing to object.

  “I agree,” Admiral Rico said from his position at the other end of the table. “Have the paperwork done by the end of the week. I want her promoted in a ceremony Monday,” he stated, looking significantly at the head of BUPERS. “We could use it as a spot of good news.”

  Catherine stilled.

  “And don't warn her,” Malwin said with a brief smile to the princess.

  “Oh, I'll behave,” Catherine chuckled. “Just as long as I can be in the room when she finds out!”

  That earned a chuckle from some of the people around the table.

  “Of the plan’s various tiers, it's clear her shredder rounds are the easiest to implement. I particularly like the shredder counter missiles. We have them but we've been using ball bearings. Her argument to use fragmenting iron is valid. I'm surprised none of our people thought of that before,” Admiral Bradley st
ated. “And what she said about mass shifting is accurate. We solved it with a resin holding the ball bearings together, but she's right, it evaporates during the payload dispersion explosion. It is a waste of mass.”

  “We can sort that out in what, a week?” Admiral Rico asked.

  “She has it worked out, even the logistics. That's one reason I handed it to her. I'd like more time to do a series of live fire dispersal tests. But I believe we can get the prototypes into production by then. The same for the rail gun rounds.”

  “Good.”

  “Alerting the suppliers could cause a problem,” Admiral Nuert said nastily. All eyes fell on her. “They may not take too kindly to the loss of the business.”

  Malwin scowled at the implied threat. “We'll figure it out. They've got enough business with other projects anyway. It's not like we don't need ball bearings for a thousand and one different applications!”

  Admiral Bradley nodded. He was relatively new to his position. Admiral Cartwright had made some recent effort into clearing out deadwood. That effort and the relentless pressure of running BUSHIPS had pushed him to his present position.

  “She has a point about the interceptors. The problem is they can't go toe-to-toe with the enemy fighters. Our files state that even with three-to-one odds in our favor they still tend to lose,” Admiral Post stated. “I'm not sure how much of an impact the latest round in refits will make.”

  “Which is a serious problem. I'm pushing for the latest fighters to be put in the carrier fortresses and carriers on the jump point. We'll cycle the other fighters into reserve units,” Malwin stated. More than one person began to object to that. He held up a hand. “I realize a lot of the reservists are … attached to their fighters. They can go to active duty or lose their seat. I don't care which but they damn well better make up their mind. And I think it's high time we call up all reservists. We need full time officers and enlisted, not weekend warriors. Not when Horath itself is under threat of invasion.”