Forerunner

by Isaac Hooke

  He had instructed Xander to snap him back to ordinary time if anything changed, and about thirty minutes into his sped-up time session, Xander did just that.

  “The alien ship is leaving orbit above the moon,” Xander said. “It’s setting course to intercept.”

  Cranston, seated at his virtual station, turned to face Jain. “Who wants to bet that they’ve just repaired their weapons? And replaced any ammunition?”

  Jain glanced at the tactical map on his HUD and saw that the route had just updated. The dashed red line cut in front of his current position and intercepted his own dashed line just above Metal Moon.

  “So they’ll reach us just when we arrive at Metal Moon?” Jain asked his Accomp.

  “According to my current calculations, yes,” Xander answered. “It’s possible they’re flying at reduced speed at the moment, to deceive us.”

  Jain nodded. He glanced at the robed man. “It’s what I would do.”

  “I know,” Xander said.

  He surveyed the other captains on the virtual bridge environment. “The enemy wants a battle after all. I always said you’d get your chance to fight, and it looks like it’s finally coming. Here’s what we’re going to do.”

  And he laid out his strategy.

  Cranston nodded. “It could work. It’s just too bad we don’t know what their own weapons are capable of.”

  “I know,” Jain said. “That’s a big unknown we have to work with. I’m open to suggestions.”

  No one had any. How could they, given what they faced?

  “All right, Xander, transmit the news to Gavin and Sheila,” Jain said.

  He sped up external time once more, and watched the red dot approach the retreating fleet. When Gavin and Sheila received Jain’s message, they immediately retreated to the far side of the moon, and out of view, just as planned. Sheila towed the shipyard she’d built with her.

  Meanwhile, the four Space Machinists formed a single file line, so that from the point of view of the enemy, their heat signatures overlapped, making them appear to be a single object on the thermal band. Medeia rotated her nose, and the long, sword-like appendage it contained, to a perpendicular angle to their trajectory. Then she activated her cloaking device and vanished. She continued to coast forward, applying no other thrust changes so that her thermal signature remained invisible.

  The other three Space Machinists simultaneously altered course, moving downward from the perspective of the enemy, while remaining in line so that they would continue to appear as a single object to the aliens.

  “You think the enemy will buy it?” Mark asked.

  The question was rooted in normal time, and Jain’s time sense ratcheted down to match.

  “As long as they don’t have some way to detect Medeia that we don’t know of, then yes, they won’t know she’s no longer in line with the rest of us,” Jain said.

  Jain decided to keep his time sense at normal as the Space Machinists approached the intercept point. The alien vessel hadn’t yet altered course, and there was no indication it was going to.

  “The enemy has crossed within heavy laser range,” Xander announced. That was the one-hundred-thousand kilometer mark.

  “Yes, but I’m reluctant to open fire just yet,” Jain said. “Given how little damage those lasers caused to the alien hull at near point-blank range, even when we combined lasers fleet wide. When they get to within the twenty K range, then we can start covering their hull with pock marks.”

  “Just pock marks?” Cranston asked.

  “That’s probably all they’ll be,” Jain replied.

  “What if we kept firing at the same spot again, and again, and again,” Mark pressed.

  “We’ll try,” Jain said. “But I suspect they’ll merely rotate a different side to face us. Xander, how long until flyby? And at what distance?”

  “At the current course and speed, the alien vessel’s flyby will occur in thirty minutes,” Xander replied. “They will pass within five thousand kilometers of the fleet.”

  Jain nodded. “I wonder if that’s the range of their weaponry.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Cranston said.

  “Xander, it’s time for our little experiment,” Jain said.

  The robed man nodded beside him. “Ready when you are, Admiral.”

  Jain smiled. The Accomp knew he loved being called Admiral.

  Jain glanced at Medeia. “Are you ready?”

  “More than ever,” she said.

  She vanished from the VR environment, switching to radio silence. Jain was worried, rightly so, that the enemy would detect her position if she continued to maintain communications, especially now that Jain and the others were dropping out of alignment with her.

  “Change course so that at the flyby point the enemy will be six thousand kilometers out,” Jain instructed his Accomp.

  “Changing course,” Xander said.

  The three members of the visible group moved down at the same time, staying in formation.

  Jain waited, but the alien craft didn’t alter course. “They should have seen our updated location by now. Move us again, so that the flyby point is eight thousand kilometers out.”

  All three ships moved down once again.

  “Done,” Xander said.

  Jain waited. He thrummed his fingers on his hand rest. “Come on. Give me something. Anything.”

  Finally, the alien ship changed trajectory.

  “They’ve updated their course to bring the flyby point to a distance of six thousand clicks,” Xander said.

  “All right, bring us down another three thousand kilometers,” Jain said. “Let’s see if we can get him lined him up with Medeia.” Of the four Space Machinists in this portion of the fleet, she hadn’t yet altered course. She couldn’t, not without revealing herself.

  Jain waited as the three vessels moved a third time.

  “Alien ship is altering course again,” Xander said. “They’re maintaining the six-thousand kilometer flyby point.”

  Jain glanced at Cranston. “So the ideal range of their weapon is between five and six thousand klicks.”

  Cranston nodded. “You got him lined up to pass right by Medeia.”

  The alien craft had moved down a total of five thousand kilometers so that, when it reached the intercept point, it would almost perfectly align with where the fleet had left Medeia. He saw her calculated trajectory, and that of the alien, overlap in high orbit above the moon.

  “You’re assuming that they won’t break away at the last moment,” Mark said. “Maybe they don’t want to get that close to the moon.”

  “It isn’t all that close,” Cranston said. “Besides, they have inertialess drives. They’re not going to care about the moon’s gravity at all.”

  “But maybe they’re worried about an ambush from Sheila and Gavin,” Mark said. “They saw their two ships flee over the horizon.”

  “We’ll just have to see,” Jain said.

  Fifty thousand kilometers out from the intercept point, the enemy vessel launched three projectiles. They moved away from the alien vessel at about twice its speed.

  “Well, what was that you were saying about their weapons range?” Cranston asked.

  “These are probably meant to herd us,” Jain said.

  “Well then, given how fast they’re going, it looks like they’re going to succeed,” Cranston said. “We’ll have to move out of the way.”

  The Grunt was trailing in the formation. “Mark, fire your black hole weapon. Give those projectiles a gravity well to escape.”

  “You got it,” Mark said.

  A dark blue dot appeared on the tactical display, moving away from the Grunt. Halfway to the incoming projectiles, the dot halted and instead became represented as a swirl on the display.

  “You’re assuming their projectiles don’t use inertialess drives, too,” Cranston said.

  “I somehow doubt it,” Jain said.

  On the display, the lead dot plowed directly i
nto the black hole and vanished.

  “Told you,” Jain said.

  The next projectile attempted to swerve past but didn’t have enough lead-time and spiraled to its doom.

  “Gotta love the death spiral,” Mark said.

  The third projectile managed to build up enough sideways momentum to slingshot past the black hole.

  “Too bad,” Cranston said.

  “Want me to fire a dispersion bolt?” Mark asked. “Eliminate the black hole?”

  “No,” Jain said. “Let’s leave it for now. Give the aliens something else to factor into their calculations if they want to hurl more of those things at us."

  Jain zoomed in on the incoming object. It looked like a big, black, amorphous blob.

  “How is something like that even able to move?” Cranston said.

  “Have to be propellant vents hidden somewhere inside,” Mark said. “We already know that the projectiles can change course. That one avoided the black hole, after all.”

  “Fire another black hole,” Jain said. “Open it up just in front of that thing.”

  Another bolt of dark energy escaped the Grunt and traveled out to intercept the incoming blob.

  This time the blob adjusted course early so that when the hole set in this reality—the trigger distance was predetermined by Mark before he fired—the projectile was easily able to avoid the pull.

  “I’ll have to wait until the blob comes closer if I want to get it,” Mark said.

  “Except if we do that, the gravity will affect our speed and course, too,” Cranston said. “Ruining our well-laid plans.”

  “All right, no more black holes for now,” Jain said. “Sync your lasers with mine. Spread out on the Z plane by the two ship lengths, then rotate one eighty. I want starboard lasers facing it.”

  The others separated on the Z plane, with Mark’s Grunt moving upward, and Cranston’s Forebode downward, and the Talos remaining in place so that the three ships had effectively moved out of each other’s line of fire. While their momentum carried them forward, they rotated so that their starboard sides were facing the incoming object.

  Jain focused all of his lasers on the same spot and fired. The raptors of the Grunt and Forebode were synced to his, and they hit the same spot area on the target simultaneously.

  The blob dissipated immediately upon impact.

  “Well that was easy,” Cranston said.

  The vessel launched more blobs.

  Many more.

  Jain counted at least twenty out there.

  “You spoke too soon,” Mark said.

  Jain noted that those blobs approached the three visible Space Machinists alone, ignoring Medeia’s cloaked ship, which evidently hadn’t been spotted.

  So far, so good.

  In a way.

  “It’s time for you to create an array of black holes,” Jain said. “Spread them horizontally and vertically in front of those incoming masses.”

  “Okay,” Mark said. “But my launcher is going to overheat. I’ll have to give it a rest for five minutes.”

  “Get as many as you can out there,” Jain said.

  The Grunt started launching the creation bolts in rapid succession, and soon a cross of black holes formed in front of the blobs.

  “That’s it,” Mark said. “My black hole system is offline for the next five minutes.”

  “The gravitational pull is slowing our speed,” Xander said.

  Jain glanced at his tactical display. Medeia wasn’t as affected as the others because of her current location. That was bad.

  “Alter trajectory to compensate for the gravity,” Jain said. “Make sure that alien ship also changes course. I want it to pass right by here at the flyby point!”

  “Adjusting course...” Xander said. The Accomp paused. “The alien ship is matching. It will still pass within two hundred meters of Medeia.”

  Jain exhaled in relief.

  The mini black holes managed to capture eight of the incoming blobs. Twelve made it past.

  As they put distance between themselves and the holes, they gained speed; Xander continually adjusted their course to compensate.

  Meanwhile, the blobs quickly closed.

  “All right,” Jain said. “Let’s try firing one raptor at a time. Let’s see how many hits it takes to disperse a blob.”

  Jain removed the sync on the lasers of the three-ship fleet so that they could all file individually. Then he chose a blob as his target and highlighted it so that Mark and Cranston would know which one he was aiming for. His raptors hadn’t recovered yet from the last shot and were only at thirty percent charge. There wasn’t time to swivel around to bring his port side weapons to bear, so that would have to be good enough.

  He fired a single raptor. At twenty-five thousand klicks, that wasn’t good enough to disperse the target. He fired another raptor. A third. Finally, it went away.

  “Looks like three shots does it, at this range and charge,” Mark said.

  “That lines up with my experience,” Jain said.

  He targeted the next blob, and released three at once, dissipating it. He repeated the action, until there were no more blobs left to target.

  The alien ship continued to fire those blobs, keeping the lasers of the Space Machinist vessels occupied. They never had time to fully charge and operated at between ten and thirty percent of their capacity.

  “You know what?” Cranston said. “I think it’s firing those blobs to keep our lasers occupied.”

  “I agree,” Jain said. “But what can we do?”

  “You guys have a few hellraisers left, right?” Mark said.

  “Yeah, but you saw how useless they were against the alien hull...” Cranston said.

  “Use them against the blobs,” Mark said.

  Jain frowned. “I’d say only as a last resource. We need to find some frozen nitrogen, remember, if we want to replenish them.”

  Mark turned around at his station to look at him and shrugged. “I’m sure there’s lots of frozen nitrogen in the outer planets of the system.”

  “Yeah, but we won’t have time in the middle of the battle to make a diversion to the outer planets,” Jain said.

  “Good point.” Mark turned back around.

  As the ship grew closer, occasionally there were breaks in the blob attack, and the team members synced their raptors to fire at the ship itself. As Jain had predicted, when he attempted to drill into the same spot again and again, the pyramid merely rotated a different side to face them, rather than allowing the lasers to penetrate too deeply into its armor.

  As the alien ship entered the ten-thousand kilometer range marker, Jain rotated his nose to face the enemy. He fired his barracuda energy weapon. It traveled fast, losing intensity along the way, but the enemy easily glided aside.

  Jain fired five more shots in rapid succession, in a diamond formation, so that no matter which direction the pyramid swerved, an energy bolt would be waiting there.

  But once more the pyramid moved out of the way, narrowly squeezing between two of the bolts.

  “Nice driving,” Cranston said. “Now if only your energy bolts were steerable...”

  The alien responded to the latest barrage by releasing the most blobs yet. There were at least fifty out there.

  “Well this is going to be fun,” Mark said.

  Jain fired at those blobs with his energy weapon, and to his relief, was able to break them apart with one hit each. Unfortunately, his energy cannon overheated after he’d eliminated twelve of them.

  “Well come on, keep it up,” Cranston said.

  “Can’t,” Jain said. “I just overheated.”

  “Now you know how it feels,” Mark said. “By the way, my black hole weapon cooled down enough to fire a while ago.”

  “I know,” Jain said. “But the range is too close now. If you use it, you’ll mess up our trajectory too much, and the alien ship will pass too far away from Medeia.”

  “So, we’re going to be the bait
right to the bitter end, huh?” Cranston said. “Maybe this is how we died the first time.”

  “Doubt it,” Jain said. “Fire lasers.”

  Their lasers had actually recharged a decent amount since the last blob attack: Jain’s were at sixty percent.

  “Dial down the power output of each laser,” Jain said. “To thirty percent each. The intensity at this range should still be enough to take down a blob with every shot.”

  He was right, and the fleet was readily able to dissipate the remaining blobs before they reached the ships.

  The moon was coming up fast behind them.

  “Um, when are we going to alter course?” Mark said.

  “Not yet,” Jain said. “Not until the alien does its flyby with Medeia.”

  Mark shook his head. “It’s gonna be close... we’re going to have to pull up with emergency speed.”

  “We’ll do what it takes,” Jain agreed.

  And so they continued toward the moon. Medeia mirrored their trajectory six thousand kilometers above: all that time, she had kept her original course and speed, drifting along with her previous momentum, cloaked from even the sensors of the other Space Machinists. Jain had to wonder if she was really there; what if their calculations were wrong?

  “She should be at the closet point of flyby in three, two, one...”

  12

  Jain stared at his external camera feed and waited a tense moment.

  The alien ship glowed a bright red. He thought Medeia had impacted at first, but realized that wasn’t the case; instead, the enemy was preparing to unleash the weapon it had been saving for that particular moment.

  “Where is she?” Jain mused aloud.

  Medeia would have had to make only a minor adjustment to intercept the alien vessel at that point. She—

  And then the Arcane abruptly flashed into view as the sword-like appendage on her fore crashed into the alien ship.

  An alarm pulled Jain’s attention away from the video feed: the moon’s surface was fast approaching.

  “Pull up!” Jain said. “Emergency speed.”

  The three vessels released propellant past the recommended safety limits and redlined their engines in the process. Hydrogen oxidized at a furious pace, and the heat that distributed to the surrounding components set off alarms.