Forerunner

by Isaac Hooke

  He had the rovers closest to the gaping hole in the deck perform a complete inspection, crawling through the thick tunnel to the outer hull, and when he was satisfied that there were no alien termites still attached out there, he recalled the robots.

  “Who was it who said I wouldn’t cut it away in time?” Jain asked. “Oh wait, that was you, Medeia. Ye of little faith.”

  “I never said I was an optimist,” Medeia replied. “But I am relieved. Though not as much as you, I’m sure.”

  Something struck the drifting object from the side. A thin cord now led away from the severed compartment, traveling past the edges of the ragged hole in the deck he was viewing the scene from.

  “Who did that?” Jain asked.

  “Wasn’t us,” Medeia replied. “You think we want those termites infesting us?”

  The jettisoned compartment changed directions as it was jerked toward the source of the connected cord. Jain switched to the forward-facing external camera.

  The pyramidal ship had launched the grappling hook, and was drawing the compartment in.

  “Well, well, well, looks like they want their micro machines back,” Cranston said. “That would be fine, if they weren’t taking a part of you with them. We’re not going to let them steal our property, are we?”

  “No,” Jain said. “Open fire.”

  10

  “Actually, belay that,” Jain said. “Let me clarify. Open fire on the cord.”

  “But surely trying to install ship-digesting termites on your ship counts as an aggressive act, worthy of a full-blown assault on our part,” Cranston said.

  “It could have been a communications attempt,” Medeia said.

  “A communication attempt?” Cranston asked. “They attempted to digest our command ship. I’d say we got the message loud and clear.”

  “Sever the cord first,” Jain said. “Then we’ll decide what to do next. I would like to try communicating one last time.”

  “Thank you,” Medeia said.

  “Still think it’s a waste of time,” Cranston said. “But hey, you’re the boss.”

  Jain targeted the cord with his starboard laser array. He had all the lasers target the same spot a few meters away from the compartment, and then released. He cut the cord cleanly, and the two severed ends drifted apart.

  The other members of the fleet also fired their closest raptor lasers in rapid succession and sliced the cord in three different places in addition to Jain’s cut.

  “Well that was overkill,” Cranston said.

  The alien ship promptly launched another grappling hook, latching on to the jettisoned compartment and continuing to reel it in.

  “What?” Cranston shook his head at his VR station. “Morons. Every time they launch a cord, we’ll just sever it. We can do this all day.”

  Jain’s lasers would take ten minutes to fully recharge, however he suspected even a low charge would probably be enough to sever the cord at this range.

  He waited until he was at five percent and tried to fire. The cord remained intact.

  The others had similar results.

  “Next time, I’d recommend concentrating all of your fire, fleet wide, on the same target,” Xander said. “If you insist on firing your raptors with such low charge.”

  “Or we can just turn around.” Cranston fired lateral thrust and began rotating his port side toward the target.

  Before he completed his revolution, several more grappling hooks shot out and impacted the abandoned compartment. They, too, began to reel it in, so that it moved toward the hull at a faster rate.

  “They really want it badly,” Mark said.

  Eight more grappling hooks shot out, these ones attaching to the Talos.

  “Uh…” Cranston said.

  Those cords weren’t able to reel Jain in—at least, he didn’t think so, because his vessel didn’t move, though he wasn’t sure if the aliens had tried.

  But he noticed something else: alien termites were crawling on those cables, heading toward his hull.

  “Do you see them?” Medeia asked.

  “I do,” Jain replied.

  “We’ve also got termites climbing our own cables,” Mark said.

  Jain took a quick survey of the carbon fiber cords that joined the Space Machinist ships to the pyramid: sure enough, the bases swarmed with micro machines that were slowly making their way toward the host vessels.

  “Do you still want to attempt communications with these bastards?” Cranston said.

  “Nope,” Jain said. “Jettison existing grappling hooks. It’s time to let go of the ship. And help me cut away these alien cords.”

  Jain ejected his existing grappling hooks, and the ends broke away from his ship. The termites continued to crawl up the loose cords.

  The Talos was still attached to the alien ship via the cables the pyramid vessel had unleashed, however the port side of Cranston’s Forebode was just coming to bear—he was at the very edge of his one-hundred-and-eighty degree firing range. Cranston fired his raptors, targeting two lasers per cord. They struck, and he freed the Talos of all eight cords.

  “Engage enemy vessel,” Jain said. “Fire at will.”

  The fleet let loose with their stinger railguns. Unfortunately, since they were traveling at relatively the same speed and direction as the enemy craft, the reverse momentum applied to the slugs from the railguns proved negligible: most of the slugs merely bounced harmlessly off the surface.

  The reeled-in compartment struck the hull of the alien ship, and as Jain watched on the external cam, he saw the hull split apart, opening up to swallow the unit whole.

  Jain fired his starboard-facing raptors, and the relatively low charge of the lasers didn’t affect the alien hull at all. He released a burst of aft thrust to start putting some distance between himself and the alien, and then engaged his lateral thrusters to begin swinging his nose toward the enemy ship. He intended to fire his barracuda cannon at the vessel; at this close range, the impact from the energy weapon would be devastating.

  He hoped.

  On the external video feed, Jain watched as all of the severed grappling hooks were withdrawn into the ship, including those the Space Machinists had jettisoned.

  Cranston was launching his space-capable micro machines.

  Medeia meanwhile was turning around, getting ready to perform a flyby with the large, sword-like protrusion attached to her fore.

  Mark fired several missiles from his aft quarters—likely his last, and those impacted, causing dark stains on the surface of the hull, but otherwise no obvious damage.

  The vessel abruptly began to shift, revolving slowly on its axis as if coming online. And then it began to speed away. There was no acceleration. The ship simply jumped from at rest, to fully in motion.

  Mark fired a dark bolt toward the alien ship; it moved at about half the speed, and then formed a rip in spacetime about a thousand kilometers away from the Space Machinists. But the alien ship wasn’t affected by the black hole at all.

  The Space Machinists, however, were immediately drawn in. Along with Cranston’s micro machines, which it looked like he was attempting to recall: they were having trouble.

  “My micro machines!” Cranston said.

  “Whoops,” Mark said.

  Jain’s nose section had come to bear, and he tried an energy bolt. He compensated for the gravitational pull of the black hole when he fired, but it didn’t matter, because the ship was moving too fast for the energy bolt to catch it.

  Some of Cranston’s micro machines, those closest to the black hole, were beginning to spaghettify; meanwhile the Space Machinists continued to be drawn toward it.

  “Mark…” Jain said.

  The Grunt fired a dispersion bolt and the black hole winked out. The remaining micro machines, free of the pull, immediately rushed back toward Cranston.

  “Sync any lasers that have the target in the line of fire with me,” Jain ordered.

  He waited for the sync ale
rt to appear on his HUD, and then he fired his port side lasers, which had just come to bear. The other lasers fired at the same time and hit at the same spot on the alien hull. He formed a large bore in the surface, but the pyramid continued its flight unabated so that in moments, the vessel had become just another star among the myriad of stars around them, at least on the LIDAR band. It didn’t show up on the visual band at all.

  “I see why we lost the first time…” Cranston said as his micro machines docked.

  “We can’t let it get away,” Medeia said.

  “We’ll never catch it,” Cranston said. “Its top speed is a little higher than our own, and besides, it’s got too much of a head start, no thanks to that black hole.”

  “My hellraisers had no effect,” Mark said.

  “Yes, but our lasers did something,” Jain said. “So, they’re not invincible. We just have to hit them in the right spot next time.”

  “Yeah, good luck with that,” Mark said. “It’s a pretty big ship, with a whole lot of surface area. And did you see how it jumped from at rest to full speed, instantly? It also ignored the gravity of the black hole entirely. Has to have inertialess drives.”

  “Does it still have no thermal signature?” Jain asked Xander.

  “If so,” Medeia said. “How are we going to track it?”

  “There’s a slight thermal leakage, now that the engines are online,” Xander told them. “So as long as they’re in motion, we’ll be able to see them.”

  “It went online as soon as it swallowed the Talos’ severed compartment and our jettisoned grappling hooks,” Mark said. “That means the ship must have used the materials as repair elements. Once aboard, they repurposed the newly-created micro machines, melted them down, and used them to mend internal damage. And quickly, at that.”

  “But it wasn’t much,” Jain said. “Just one compartment.”

  “But evidently enough to fix the engine damage to their vessel,” Mark said. “They’re going to want to seek out more elements now that they have their engines back online. They’ll be repairing their weapons, next, I’m guessing.”

  “Great,” Cranston said.

  “Why didn’t they just swallow the transport when we landed on them earlier?” Medeia said.

  “My guess is, they calculated that the one transport wouldn’t be enough,” Mark said. “Or maybe it was, but they wanted to wait for the motherlode. They figured they’d take a chance, try to capture one of our ships instead, so they could absorb the whole thing and fix all of their systems in one go, rather than their engines only. Luckily for us they failed.”

  Medeia turned toward Jain. “So, we’re just going to let it go?”

  “We’ll track it, for now,” Jain said. “If Mark is right, and they intend to seek out more elements to repair their other systems, they’ll probably stop at another one of Ol’ Faithful’s moons, considering there are over two hundred of them in the neighborhood.”

  “So, we strike then?” Medeia pressed. “Before they can repair?”

  “We probably won’t be able to reach them in time,” Jain said. “Even if we departed now, look at how much of a head start they have on us. Depending on where they stop, it’ll be at least three hours, maybe half a day, before we reach them. Assuming they actually do stop. Maybe if they see that we’re pursuing, they’ll head to a metal resource much further in-system, to give themselves that much more time to respond. But even if they do stop somewhere in the planetary neighborhood, giving us time to close with them, you saw how fast they repaired their engines… so as far as I’m concerned, our best bet is to retreat. Join up with Sheila and Gavin. And plan a defense.”

  Mark nodded. “Strength in numbers.”

  “Yeah but those numbers didn’t help us the last time around…” Cranston said.

  “No,” Jain said. “But we have an advantage here. They won’t catch us by surprise, like they probably did the first time. We know what we’re facing, and we know we’re outmatched.”

  “We actually don’t completely know what we’re facing,” Mark said. “Their weapon systems are still a big unknown.”

  “That’s not true,” Jain said. “One of their weapons is stealth. Likely, the first time we met them, they came to us under the guise of a human class vessel. Maybe even in the form of the Oberon, just like we found them here.”

  “It’s just too bad we don’t have more time,” Medeia said. “If we did, we could complete the rift ship and get the hell out of here.”

  “There won’t be any jumping out of this system for us,” Jain agreed. “Not until we defeat this ship.”

  “I have some news,” Xander reported.

  “Go ahead,” Jain said.

  “Well, it’s more of an aside, but the surface probe has returned,” Xander said. “It finished exploring the debris scattered across the surface of the moon. There’s nothing of note: it was indeed an ordinary Builder. The AI core is destroyed. The rovers have collected the black box, and the flight recorder reveals the ship was coming here to replenish propellant supplies, as we already suspected. The Mind Refurb recorded damage to her engines shortly before arrival, from an unknown source. Because of the damage, she couldn’t decelerate, and struck the moon at speed. This was two weeks before we arrived.”

  “Confirming that we were sent to investigate the disappearance of the Oberon and its Builder…” Medeia said.

  “Damage from an unknown source…” Jain said. “That tells me they were using their holoemitters to blend in with the background radiation. If they remained motionless, the Builder wouldn’t have detected the thermal signature at all.”

  “Sounds similar to my own cloaking device,” Medeia said. “Except that I don’t produce a thermal signature while coasting. As long as I don’t have to alter course, no enemy can detect me.”

  “Whereas these aliens and their inertialess drives produce a thermal signature at all times while in motion,” Jain said.

  “It could be a ruse,” Mark said. “They could be pretending to emit a signature to confuse us and keep us guessing at their abilities.”

  “Could be,” Jain said. “Xander, swing us back toward the crash site. Let’s pick up our remaining rovers. After that, Space Machinists, we’re heading back to Metal Moon. It’s time to prepare for the battle we know is coming.”

  11

  Jain retrieved his rovers with a transport, and collected the telemetry probe he had recalled from the moon’s polar orbit. Then he and the other Space Machinists set course for Metal Moon. As soon as they were out from behind the current celestial object, the radiation bursts from Ol’ Faithful picked up again.

  “Ah, rads, how I’ve missed you,” Cranston said.

  “Xander, transmit an update to Gavin and Sheila during the next lull in radiation,” Jain instructed.

  “Will do,” Xander said. Ten minutes later: “Message sent. Gavin and Sheila should receive it in two hours.”

  Xander continued to track the alien vessel, which indeed seemed headed to another of Ol’ Faithful’s many moons. The dot’s position updated every few minutes on Jain’s tactical display. A dashed red line in front of it indicated the vessel’s planned course, which intersected the one hundred and twenty-third moon.

  “What do we know about that moon?” Jain asked.

  “According to the pioneer logs”—those were the logs of the first ever visitors to the system, usually automated probes that cataloged the different celestial objects along with their resource contents and life, if any—“it’s high in tungsten and fluoride.”

  “Tungsten and fluoride?” Jain said. “An alien race that relies on tungsten and fluoride...”

  “It can be used to make tungsten hexafluoride,” Medeia said. “A highly covalent metal compound. Humans use it to make low-resistivity metallic interconnects for semiconductors. We also use it for most of the connections in our neural networks.”

  “That would make sense if they were gathering it to create neural networks or othe
r computer chips,” Jain said. “But weapons?”

  “You need semiconductors in weapons, too,” Medeia said.

  A reply from Gavin arrived four hours later. By then, the Space Machinist fleet was well out of range of the radiation bursts from the gas giant.

  Gavin sent a holographic message this time. Ordinarily, Gavin would have transmitted by voice alone—his small way of continuing to defy Jain by not fully participating in the VR environment, as it were—but instead, here he was appearing with his full avatar, as if to appease Jain.

  The reason why became obvious as soon as Gavin spoke.

  “Sorry to hear about the attack,” Gavin said. He seemed genuinely concerned, but Jain thought he might be faking it. “But I’m even sorrier that you’re leading them back to us. I respectfully request that you turn around, buy us some time to finish the gate, if you can.”

  “It’s just like him to want to refute your order,” Mark said.

  Jain glanced at the tactical map. According to the latest update, the alien vessel had reached the one hundred and twenty-third moon. It was staying there a bit longer than expected. Jain thought it would have been done with repairs by now.

  “Xander, send back this message to Gavin, hologram mode,” Jain said. “Gavin, Sheila. The aliens know about your presence by now: they would have detected you as soon as the ‘Oberon’ first came into view above Ol’ Faithful. Any attempt for us to distract or divert them will be realized for what it is: a diversion. And they will most likely head straight for you. It’s what I would do.

  “So, any attempt to buy you time, as you say, will be futile, assuming we survive: after the flyby, they’ll continue toward your coordinates and stop you from creating the rift ship. Your only hope, our only hope, is to return, and combine our abilities to defeat this ship. We’ll talk again when we reach Metal Moon.” He glanced at Xander. “That’s it.”

  “Sending message,” Xander said.

  Now that the ship was out of range of the radiation, Jain sped up external time to make the journey pass by faster. He kept it at a reasonable speed, however, so he could keep an eye on the tactical situation.