by J. N. Chaney
“I had the pleasure of flying and doing battle alongside some of your fighter pilots back on your homeworld when we helped liberate it from the Deepers. Very impressive,” Dash said.
Steenowat offered a nod of gratitude. “Long ago, the N’Teel used to be naturally capable of flight. Our distant ancestors moved among the thick rainforests that cover much of our world by gliding from tree to tree.” She lifted an arm, revealing the prehensible, wing-like membrane that extended from her elbow to just above her knee. “We’ve mostly lost the ability to do that, but it does live in our love of flight.”
“Well, that being the case, then perhaps we can get you rigged up to fly our Denkillers or Super Makos,” Viktor said.
“Rigged up?” Steenowat asked.
“Our fighters make use of a neural integration between the pilot and his craft to assist in maneuvering and fighting. When doing battle in space, timing can often come down to fractions of a second, and no humanoid being has the reaction time,” Jexin replied.
“Ah. So their pilots are . . . modified?” Steenowat’s tone carried a hint of horror. Of course, she’d encountered the Deepers and was probably well aware of their gruesome amalgamation of the organic with the inorganic. Viktor chuckled and raised a hand.
“The only modification is a small chip implanted in the back of the head, at the base of the brain stem. The whole process takes about an hour, including time to rest afterward.”
“And we will all be required to do this?” Steenowat asked.
“No. Or, rather, we’re not sure. What we’re proposing is a test, using two of your pilots, to ensure that your central nervous systems are compatible with the process and with our technology generally,” Custodian said.
Steenowat looked up, something everyone tended to do when Custodian spoke. The Forge’s intercom system made his voice omnidirectional, seeming to come from everywhere, but it never failed. Even Dash still did it. It said something about disembodied voices, he thought.
“That was your artificial intelligence speaking, correct? Named Guardian?”
“Custodian, actually,” Jexin said.
“Although I do rather like Guardian. It has more panache than Custodian, which makes me sound like a glorified housekeeper. What do you think, Messenger?”
“Custodian, I think you can call yourself Fred, or Suzy, or whatever the hell else you’d like. You’ve earned it,” Dash replied, grinning.
“I’ll remain Custodian, at least for the time being. It saves changing all the database entries.”
Steenowat looked back at Jexin. “Just to be clear, you wish for two of our pilots to undergo this procedure in order to test whether it works with your fighters?”
“We’re proposing that. It’s your decision.”
Steenowat turned to her people, all of whom began to crowd forward, obviously wanting to be one of the selectees. After a brief conversation with several, though, she turned back.
“My people wish to know what the other eighty-six will be doing in the meantime. And, more to the point, what will happen if we are not compatible with your technology.”
Dash, who’d been leaning against one of the Slipwing’s landing-struts near the discussion, but keeping apart from it, straightened.
“You know what? This is a great chance to go see our friends at the shipyard. They must be getting tired of cranking out the same designs over and over. I’m willing to bet they’re in the mood to build something new.”
The Forge was massive and could build and sustain a formidable fleet all on its own. But their experience during the Life War had shown Dash that even the station’s enormous capacity couldn’t support the numbers and different types of ships they’d needed to fight the Golden while also delivering on the multitude of other fabricating and support tasks that came up. Their solution, in conjunction with the Local Group, a premier ship-building consortium back on the other side of the Black Gate, had been mobile shipyards.
They’d already brought two of the massive structures through the gate and deployed them into the small constellation of support vessels that surrounded the Forge, like the Greenbelt, their huge farming ship. The shipyards were modular, so they could be transported in sections and then assembled into any configuration desired. They could be reconfigured, their modules being moved around, to accommodate new projects. They’d even contemplated deploying a third but ran headlong into their biggest construction bottleneck—they only had so many raw materials and resources available. There was no point building a third if it was mostly going to sit idle.
Dash stepped out of the shuttle from the Forge, hanging in space just a few thousand klicks away. The shuttle had docked at one of the sprawling shipyard’s control modules, an enclosed habitat some hundred meters on a side and six decks high. Most of the crew who worked in the shipyard lived here or in a second control module on the opposite side of the expansive structure. Through an overhead-to-deck viewport, the N’Teel had a magnificent view. The massive bulk of the Stalwart dominated the foreground, enclosed in gantries and surrounded by construction remotes and tiny, suited figures. Bright points of welding-glare flared and faded across her hull. Wei-Ping’s ship was undergoing the finishing touches to the repairs she’d needed after the battle for the N’Teel homeworld. Off to the left, two destroyers and a light cruiser sat hunkered in their own berths, undergoing repairs and upgrades of their own. More ships kept station nearby, either awaiting their turn to enter or just in the process of departing. Backdropping all of it was the looming bulk of the Forge.
“Pretty impressive, isn’t it?” Dash said, ambling up beside Steenowat.
“It is. It certainly makes our efforts at transluminal space flight seem almost laughable in comparison.” She glanced at Dash sidelong. “Even my pride in the Tuvanit has been—let’s say it’s been put into a new context.”
Dash smiled. “Do you remember that ship I was leaning against back in the Forge while you guys were talking to Viktor and Jexin?”
“Yes. The—Wingslip? “
“Slipwing.”
“Yes. Right. It stood out as a unique and somewhat cumbersome design compared to the rest of your fleet. I gather it was a failed prototype?”
“No, it was actually my own ship. Not that long ago, all of this”—he gestured out the viewport—“would have just been a fantasy story to me. It was just me and the Slipwing, and a perpetual struggle to scratch out a life as a courier. That’s a sort of combined merchant, mercenary, and delivery guy.”
“Oh. My apologies, I didn’t mean to insult your vessel.”
“No, no, that’s okay. I’m still really fond of the old girl, but yeah, even as upgraded as she is, she’s still a long way from being as capable as even our smallest corvettes. But the point is, that’s where I started. One guy, one ship. And now…”
He gestured out the viewport again.
“You’re saying we have to start somewhere.”
Dash nodded. “And this is that start. We’ll get your people outfitted with a new fighter design and give the Tuvanit some sister-ships.”
“I find it difficult to properly express my own appreciation for what you’ve done and are doing, much less that of my people. The whole arrangement seems rather one-sided, though. We benefit from all of this new technology and capability, and I believe we’re providing you with food.”
“Hey, don’t discount the importance of food.”
“Still, for someone who just described himself as a mercenary, it seems awfully altruistic.” Steenowat turned to face Dash squarely as she spoke.
Dash smiled and nodded. “You think I’ve got an angle.”
“An angle?”
“Sorry. You think I’m in this for something, the same way you are.”
“I do.”
“Well, you’re right. I am. I’m after something you’ve got. But it’s got nothing to do with this shipyard, or those ships out there, or new fighters or raw materials or anything like that. What I’m after is t
he most important resource there is, the one that will ultimately win us this war.”
“And that would be?”
“People,” Dash said, turning and gesturing this time at the gathered N’Teel. “People are our most critical resource, our biggest force-multiplier, and the most mission-critical thing we’ve got. I can build more ships. I can’t build new, capable and motivated crews for them.”
“Your AIs seem more than capable. Surely you can just make copies of them.”
“Essentially all of our ships have AIs aboard. But they exist only to support the crew. They’re great at doing routine tasks, nav calculations, overseeing engine and powerplant operation, that sort of thing. But to fight and win? That takes some things AIs just don’t have, like instincts and gut feelings.”
Steenowat nodded her understanding and turned back to the panorama. She seemed about to say something else but was interrupted by the arrival of Elois and a stern woman Dash recognized as the shipyard’s chief design engineer. His mind attached the name Bailey to her, but he couldn’t recall if that was her first name or her last.
They eased through the assembled throng of N’Teel and stopped near Dash and Steenowat.
“Good news,” Elois said. “We’ve been running some tests and simulations on the N’Teel, to determine how compatible they are with neural interfacing. Of the ten N’Teel we’ve tested now, all have been compatible.”
“We’ll have to make some changes to our existing interface architecture to accommodate them, but I think it’s doable. More to the point, it shouldn’t be too hard to configure a new architecture that’s designed specifically for them,” the engineer said. Dash noted that the name-tape on her coveralls said BAILEY, so it had to be her last name.
“So are we sticking with the plan of trying to get two of the N’Teel plugged into our fighters while you guys work on the rest?” Dash asked.
Elois nodded. “I think it would be good to know what we have to do to make sure they’re compatible. I’m thinking some sort of adapter we can plug into the fighter.”
“It’s for redundancy. If we’ve got an N’Teel pilot without a ship because theirs was damaged or destroyed, it would be nice if they were plug-and-play with our Denkillers and Super Makos. That way, we don’t have a perfectly good pilot sitting around,” Bailey added.
“Good point, yeah. Steenowat, what do you think?” Dash asked.
“How soon can we start?”
Dash chuckled. “Well, I’m going to hand this over to you guys. I hear you’ve got some preliminary ideas for a new fighter—”
“Messenger, apologies for interrupting, but the Deepers have launched a significant attack,” Custodian put in.
“Shit. Where?”
“They are attacking the Eastern Anchor. Twelve capital ships and a number of smaller craft.”
Dash thought for a moment. They’d been rotating people in and out as Anchor commanders, the theory being to give as many people as possible both tactical and administrative experience. The current commander of Eastern was Ragsdale.
“Custodian, do you have contact with Ragsdale?”
“I do. He is on this channel.”
“Hey, Dash,” Ragsdale said.
“What’s your SITREP?”
“Mine? Well, I’m sitting in a freakin’ corvette, hiding out in an asteroid belt about an hour’s flight from the Anchor. I was on my way to visit the Eastern Task Force commander aboard her flagship when the Deepers came calling. And now I’m kinda stuck because the bad guys are effectively between me and Eastern.”
Dash started to frown, but it struck him that even their corvettes had the comm capacity to plug him right back into the Anchor’s command and control. The bigger problem was the Deepers detecting his transmissions, understanding their significance.
Wait.
“Shit, Ragsdale, you should be radio-silent! You’re going to bring the Deepers right down on top of you!”
“Way ahead of you, Dash. We’ve got a tight-beam comm link back to Eastern, so this transmission’s being relayed from there.”
Dash let out a breath. He was so used to working with people like Conover, Harolyn, and Amy, who had no military background before joining the Realm. Ragsdale, though, was an old soldier with a military past he either wouldn’t or couldn’t talk about.
“Okay, I’ll leave the battle in your hands.” He nodded and waved to Elois, Bailey, and Steenowat, then started to walk back to the airlock, gesturing for Jexin to follow him. “Just hold tight. The cavalry’s on the way.”
10
Dash watched as the Stalwart dropped out of unSpace in the star system Eastern currently occupied. She had three full squadrons with her, two of four heavy cruisers, and one of three heavy cruisers lead by the battlecruiser Resolute, the Stalwart’s brand new sister ship. Two squadrons of light cruisers and destroyers rounded out the relief force. Dash wondered how Wei-Ping had been able to get the Stalwart underway so quickly, considering she’d been laid up in the shipyard. But she clearly wanted payback for the beating her ship took at the N’Teel homeworld and wasn’t going to let being stuck among a bunch of gantries get in her way.
Dash and Jexin were already en route toward Eastern, which was locked in a vicious firefight with a half-dozen Deeper heavy cruisers. The station had ample defensive systems and some heavy-hitting firepower, but it wasn’t the Forge. Dash could see that the station had taken hits, at least one of which had penetrated both its outer and inner hulls, judging from a shimmering veil of venting atmosphere.
But at least the Anchor was holding its own. The same couldn’t be said for the task force based at Eastern. The carrier Relentless, Wei-Ping’s old flagship, led six heavy cruisers and two squadrons of lightships. But the Relentless was a repurposed enemy ship captured during the Life War and didn’t have the same capabilities as, say, the supercarrier Victory. Worse, two of her accompanying heavy cruisers had already been battered into submission, one of them likely beyond repair, while all of the other four had taken some sort of damage. And the Relentless herself was struggling. She was primarily a carrier and had launched her own wings of Denkillers and older, original Makos but otherwise had no more firepower than a cruiser.
Overall, the situation wasn’t good.
Still, Dash held back. He could have kicked the Archetype up to some fearsome speed and pulled away from Jexin and the Stalwart’s force, but he gritted his teeth and waited. He wanted to hit the Deepers hard, with as much force as possible, all at once. So he kept the mech on an acceleration curve that matched Jexin’s and grimly watched the range tick down.
“We will be at maximum effective missile range in seventeen minutes,” Sentinel said.
Dash could see that on the tactical display. The only reason Sentinel was telling him something he already knew was because she was obviously trying to give him a nudge, get him to speed up. Instead, though, he switched to the operational display and took in the big picture. His worry was that this attack might be a diversion, with the Deepers hitting somewhere even harder. But there wasn’t even a hint of Deeper activity anywhere else.
Except here. Or, more to the point, just beyond the volume of space covered by the tactical display. Three Deeper ships were inbound from almost directly above the system’s ecliptic plane and would appear on their tactical display any moment now. They were trying to outflank the Anchor and split its fire.
“Jex, you and Wei-Ping lead the charge. Get in there and relieve Eastern as soon as you can. I’m going, um, up.”
“Up? What? Dash, what are you talking about?”
Dash threw the Archetype through a hard turn, reorienting upwards relative to the ecliptic. “There’s three of the bastards trying to sneak attack from this system’s up direction. I’m going to head them off.”
“What? I don’t see—”
Three new icons popped onto the tactical display.
“Dash, have you added some psychic abilities to your repertoire that you haven’t told us
about?” Jexin asked.
“No, just a kick-ass operational display. Remind me to talk to the AIs about getting it installed in all the mechs.”
“I’m right here, remember?” Sentinel said. “And I don’t forget things.”
“Ah. Good point. Anyway, Jex, you and Wei-Ping do your thing.” With that, Dash finally gave the Archetype its head, once more making a rail gun slug look less like a slug and more like a sluggard.
Dash chuckled. He’d have to remember that line. It was pretty clever.
The three Deeper ships slammed headlong into a rude surprise. Far from outflanking the Anchor, they found themselves confronting the upgraded Archetype, flown by a pilot who’d actually started getting the hang of the mech’s new capabilities. Moreover, the intercept happened well outside their effective range of Eastern. In fact, despite the extra distance he had to cover, Dash still caught the three Deeper ships before Jexin and Wei-Ping had even engaged.
He applied a bit of reverse thrust, slowing the Archetype, while randomly weaving through a wide range of pitch and yaw angles enabled by the mech’s fearsome power. The Deepers struggled to gain, much less maintain, a weapons lock on him. He flew straight into a barrage of missiles, then firewalled the drive, blasted through a tight turn, and left the Deeper projectiles wondering where he’d even gone. The Deeper ships themselves only managed to land a pair of x-ray laser hits, both blocked by the shield.
