by Bob Mayer
In this case there was a lot of cargo as the Niviane rocket had been designed to lift over 400,000 pounds into high orbit. The contents were the material that Perdix’s scientists had determined could be used to establish a life-support system in part of the mothership if the crew was unable to get any power from the STL engines or gravitational drive.
The pilot maneuvered the Niviane very gently into the mothership’s cargo hold, the first time she’d flown the not-very-nimble craft outside of a flight simulator.
As they entered, they could see the wreckage from the explosion, but the interior bulkhead of the hold appeared intact, a testament to Airlia construction. While four of the talons were crushed or in pieces, the fifth had damage but was in one piece.
Once clear of the hull, the Niviane settled on the deck of the hold.
CYDONIA, MARS
Watching via talon relay, Nyx was impressed with the skill of the human at the helm of the craft entering the mothership. The bulky canister slid inside with only a few feet to spare and was gone from her surveillance.
The craft approaching her vantage was thirty-two minutes away. Nyx zoomed in on it. Much smaller than the other craft, this one was more of a spacecraft than a cargo hauler. It was not, however, the Fynbar.
Visually she couldn’t identify which human country was behind the spacecraft. There were no markings on either but they’d originated from west Texas, which was in the process of separating from the rest of the United States.
What truly disturbed her was that she’d been able to pick up nothing about the building of these two craft or the launches from her infiltration of the human’s World Wide Web. She’d followed other private enterprises attempting launches such as Space X, Blue Origin and others, but this was none of those.
Unprecedented. How could such a major operation be kept completely off the Internet for so long? Who could do that? As importantly, why would someone do this?
A status bar flashed on the right side of the display. She finally had the talon’s defense system on-line. Weak, barely functional, limited range, but on-line.
Nyx directed the main weapon at the incoming craft. Locked the aiming system.
At its current speed the craft was seven minutes away. Given that it would take five minutes for any command to reach the talon from Mars, had only a two minute window to make a decision.
TRAVERSING THE HELIOSHEATH
The heliosheath lies between the heliopause and termination shock. Solar wind is turbulent in this area, being compressed by the interstellar medium it’s approaching. It lies between 80 and 100 AU.
One of the Swarm warships made contact with more evidence of intelligent life: an Airlia Sentinel. The Sentinel scanned the warship, then began transmitting a system-wide alert. The Sentinels, small stationery satellites, were spaced around the outer edge of a solar system in order to have coverage of the entire perimeter.
The first generation of Sentinels the Swarm had encountered had been rudimentary and with a serious flaw built in: they had a laser communication system directed inward toward the Airlia base inside the star system. The Swarm had learned to secure the Sentinel, align along the laser path and thus find their target.
This had worked for a while until the Airlia finally realized the flaw. Now Sentinels had a laser array transmitter that randomly and continuously flashed alert signals upon contact in many directions.
It didn’t matter. The key was that the presence of Sentinels meant the Airlia was here. Or had been here.
The warship sent a species-confirmation message back to the Core, destroyed the Sentinel, and continued star-ward.
Surprise had been lost, but the Swarm never counted on surprise.
It didn’t need to.
As soon as the Battle Core received the alert, sixteen warships were launched, to supplement the original 16 surrounding the Core. They assumed a defensive alignment further out in case there was an Airlia fleet in the system.
Fifteen additional warships were launched, embarking on long journeys around the perimeter of this system to destroy the remaining Sentinels.
Several million individual Swarm were brought of out dormancy and directed to their battle stations on the remote possibility attackers broke through the warships and tried to board the Core.
The situation took a twist, though, when one of the warships, which had rendezvoused with the buoy, arrived the Core. It brought with it the artificial object it had detected and deposited it in a holding chamber on the surface of the Core.
Once the chamber was pressurized, an individual Swarm entered. It was a gray orb, four feet in diameter with eyes spaced evenly about the body so that it had a complete field of vision in every direction. Spaced between the eyes, also in all directions were a dozen knobs from which tentacles, ranging from four to eight feet long, extended. Each was thin, barely an inch or two in diameter. The end of each tentacle consisted of ‘fingers’, ranging from three to six in number.
Autopsies conducted on the corpses of Swarm yielded interesting results. The orb was a large skull, the bone two inches think, essentially an exoskeleton that protected the interior. It contained a very large four-hemisphere brain and the bare minimum of internal organs to process water, oxygen and sustenance. There were no ears or mouth or nose. In fact, there were no external nerve endings on the orb, meaning it would never experience pain.
Each tentacle, however, contained a basic brain stem that communicated with the hemisphere closest to its attaching point. The key part there was ‘attaching point’. Each tentacle could detach from the orb. On their own, a tentacle was limited in what it could do. However, if a tentacle entered another living organism, it could ‘attach’ to that being’s nervous system, and thus brain, and take over.
The physiology of a Swarm made it extremely adapt in zero to low gravity environments. An orb could move with equal facility in any direction, having no front or back and top and bottom. With even just one tentacle attached, an orb could move with ease inside the Core or other zero/low gravity environs.
This orb had six tentacles attached. It pulled through a hatch, which sealed behind it. It floated to within a few inches of the object. It had already been remotely scanned. Trace radiation had been picked up, nothing dangerous. Its design indicated it was a rudimentary probe that was no longer transmitting.
The probe had a hexagonal body, roughly fourteen inches deep with each panel thirty inches long. There was a parabolic dish, nine feet in diameter on one end. The radiation came from four radioisotope thermoelectric generators; primitive at best.
Definitely not Airlia design.
Three arms extended from the body of the craft. One housed the generators. Another had an ultraviolet photometer. And a very thin extension had a helium magnetometer on the end.
The orb grabbed hold of one arm and slowly worked its way around the probe. Since the probe had been on an interstellar vector, it was safe to assume it had been launched from one of the interior planets of this system. The design and loss of power due to decay of the generators indicated its mission had been surveying this solar system.
Not an interstellar threat.
However, it meant there was Scale species, or had been, in the system.
The orb paused. Bolted to struts was a gold anodized, aluminum plaque. The outer side of the plaque was scored by microscopic debris. There was something drawn on the inward side.
One tentacle signaled and a second orb entered the hangar with tools. They cut the six by nine inch plaque loose and the one with the tool cradled it with another tentacle and took it inside the Battle Core to be examined.
TESLA’S LEGACY
EARTH ORBIT
The pilot of the Nimue had been one of the first women to enter the Navy’s fighter pilot program. She’d graduated flight training, been deployed to a carrier and then her career was cut short because of an accident under cloudy circumstances. After several futile years trying to get reinstated, she’d been recruited by
Perdix to be an astronaut; more accurately, the pitch was for her to be a ‘space pilot’.
Beyond the more-than-outrageous pay offered, it was the idea of flying outside the bounds of gravity that appealed to Kara. She’d gone through intense training for eight months, with thousands of hours of simulator time and three releases from the top of a 747 in the Nimue with successful landings at Perdix’s base in west Texas. She knew, however, that none of that prepared her for actually being in space.
This was her first time and it was everything she’d anticipated. The Nimue was a joy to drive, the engines responding instantly and accurately to her inputs. The only irritant was that her co-pilot had his hands hovering over his set of controls, constantly ready to take command.
It was SOP, something dictated by higher, but it implied she might fail. Or, worse, make a mistake. She wondered if the SOP would be the same if someone else, without her past, was chief pilot. But she also had to consider the fact she was chief pilot.
What was irksome was that her co-pilot, Marcus, was, in his own words, a ‘real’ astronaut, a NASA dinosaur who’d flown one space shuttle mission. Something he brought up often enough to show his insecurity at having a woman outrank and out-pilot him. The functional shuttles had been brought out of mothballs during recent events with the Airlia and every one had been destroyed.
“Six minutes out,” Marcus announced, as if she couldn’t see the heads up display projected on the thick cockpit glass in front of her. Of course, this too was SOP. Redundancy. Someone high up in Perdix was beyond anal.
They were both in their space suits, helmets sealed, breathing off a line linked directly to the Nimue’s oxygen supply, even though the cockpit had a breathable atmosphere. They both also had a portable, fifteen-minute emergency supply built into the suit. Another SOP, this one not quite as anal in Kara’s estimation.
“It’s big,” Marcus said. “Bigger than I thought.”
Kara bit back a snarky reply, because he was right. The talon appeared larger than she’d anticipated, even though they studied imagery of it. They’d also looked at it through telescopes and knew the dimensions by heart. With a base twenty meters in diameter, the ship curved over two hundred meters to a fine tip. The talon was shaped like a large claw, thus its designation. The hull skin was the same smooth black metal as that of the mothership. It had been determined that each mothership carried a contingent of talons on the exterior of its hull, attached either on the front or rear of the larger ship. They were warships, designed for battle at STL, in effect making the mothership an interstellar version of an aircraft carrier.
“Five minutes,” Marcus said.
“Fuck me,” Kara muttered as the tip of the talon began to shimmer with a golden glow.
“It’s powering up,” Marcus said.
“Really?” Kara said.
“I thought the ship was dead and off line.”
“Stop saying what I already know,” Kara said, scanning the heads-up display, checking their speed, fuel remaining, and direction.
“I’m aborting,” she announced.
“The master guardian defense system is off line,” Marcus said. “This is probably just the remnants of—“
“I’m aborting,” Kara repeated.
“Negative,” Marcus said. “We have to implement the contingency.” He flipped up the red lid covering a button on his controls. “You need to match me. I’ll count down.”
“You’re crazy,” Kara said. “We’re too close. The nuke will take us out, too.”
“It’s what we agreed to when we signed on,” Marcus said, his thumb hovering over the button.
“We don’t even know if the talon is a threat,” Kara said.
“It’s powering up, just as it did when it took out the shuttle,” Marcus said. “Damn it, this is what we’ve been ordered to do.”
Kara didn’t flip up her lid. She focused on the gathering glow at the tip of the talon, then slammed the control stick to the right and forward.
A golden bolt flashed from the tip of the talon, missing the Nimue by twenty meters.
“We have to fire,” Marcus said.
Kara shoved the stick back, no longer as focused on the heads up display as the tactical scenario she was playing out in her mind, projecting her position relative to the tip of the talon.
“I’ve got to get below it,” she said as she looped the Nimue to intercept a line directly below the base of the talon and in the shadow of the weapon’s field of fire.
Marcus unbuckled and reached across, trying to open and press her button.
“Get off!” Kara screamed.
“You damn coward!” Marcus yelled. “You panicked in the Navy and now—“
Kara cut off whatever else he was going to say by going full thrust. The sudden acceleration threw Marcus to the rear of the crew compartment.
Just as the talon fired a second bolt.
It hit the Nimue, blasting through the hull behind Kara and breaching it. The spacecraft tumbled violently from the impact, slamming Kara hard against her harness and knocking her out.
AIRSPACE, SOUTHWESTERN UNITED STATES
As her plane landed in Texas, Mrs. Parrish opened her eyes. Not because of the landing, but in response to the buzz of an alarm. Maria was standing next to the screen, typing on her flexpad.
“We’ve lost the Nimue, Mrs. Parrish,” Maria said.
Mrs. Parrish saw the data feed from the Nimue on the screen go blank. She hit a 10-second replay button and watched the golden bolt flash toward the Nimue, then nothing. The telemetry feed was flat lined.
“It fired twice,” Mrs. Parrish said. “Why didn’t they use the nuke after the first shot?”
Maria didn’t answer.
Mrs. Parrish tapped the com-link button on her flexpad. “Nimue? Come in Nimue?”
Static.
Mrs. Parrish scrolled through the various possibilities her computers had projected. This was one. She keyed on that thread, expanding it for how and why.
There were several, but one stood out above the others.
Even this setback could be useful, though.
She tapped another button. “Major Turcotte, the talon just fired on my spaceship. I’ve lost all comms and the data link is dead. The Nimue has been destroyed.”
AIRSPACE, WESTERN UNITED STATES
The Rocky Mountains were looming ahead, the bright concentration of Denver’s lights part of an unending belt of civilization that stretched along the Front Range from Loveland in the north to Pueblo in the south.
Turcotte let go of the controls as he considered what Mrs. Parrish had just told him. “The automated defense system went down when Duncan crashed the mothership with the master guardian on board. It should be inactive.”
“I am aware of that,” Mrs. Parrish said.
“There’s no one alive on the talon.”
“I agree,” Mrs. Parrish said. “I don’t think there is anyone alive on it.”
Turcotte suppressed a surge of irritation, sensing that the old woman was testing him, waiting to see what he came up with. “You don’t seem very upset about losing your ship.”
“The Nimue is gone,” Mrs. Parrish said. “There’s nothing I can do about that.”
“How many in the crew?”
“Two.” There was the beat of a pause. “I am concerned about the fact that someone fired the talon’s main weapon system. As you note, the automated defense is down. And it is very doubtful anyone is alive on board the ship.”
“Remote control,” Yakov said. “Someone is controlling the talon.”
“Very good, Mister Yakov,” Mrs. Parrish said. “Watch.”
The talon firing on the Nimue played out on the flexpad.
“The question is who is controlling the talon,” Mrs. Parrish said.
“Why don’t you tell us?” Turcotte said, tired of the repartee.
“We’ve locked onto a link from Mars to the talon,” Mrs. Parrish said. “Very tight beam, but I have a sate
llite in position in a lower orbit on a direct line.”
“That’s convenient,” Yakov muttered.
“That’s thorough planning,” Mrs. Parrish said, “and being prepared for possibilities.”
“Is it coming from Cydonia?” Turcotte asked, regretting making it a question as soon as he uttered it.
“Yes,” Mrs. Parrish replied.
“So there’s Airlia at the base,” Yakov said.
“At least one,” Mrs. Parrish. “The positive news is it appears that the talon’s power level is quite low. It fired twice and the first bolt, which missed, dissipated within six kilometers from the talon. It didn’t fire on my other ship at eight hundred kilometers range.”
“That didn’t do your other crew any good when the second bolt hit them,” Turcotte noted. “Anything happening on the mothership?” he asked. “Any remote control there?”
“Negative,” Mrs. Parrish said. “My crew is on board. It is powerless. They haven’t had time to deploy further than the cargo bay and—“
“What about radiation?” Yakov cut in. “Several bombs went off in there along with the ruby sphere.”
“That’s the first interesting thing they’ve discovered,” Mrs. Parrish said. “Levels are slightly high, but not dangerous. It appears as if the ruby sphere exploding negated the radiation to a large degree.”
“In the Russian Army,” Yakov said, “they used to issue an anti-radiation pill. It was, of course, nothing but a placebo.”
Mrs. Parrish understood what he was implying. “My crew on the mothership have their own instruments. This is what they’ve reported to me. There is no sign of life on board. My people will—“ there was a pause. “Hold on. Something else is happening.”
