by Jean Johnson
“Aye, sir, preparing to receive the helm in te—er, make that in twenty, sir,” the dark-haired woman agreed.
Loewen spoke up as well. “Plotting a first course, vector 196 by 203, and a second course for KLM 88-B, sir.”
“…Do we at least get to know the main cannon’s specs, Captain?” Morgan asked Ia once the helm transfer had been made.
Ia shook her head, unstrapping her left hand from the thruster pad. “It’s big, it’s ugly, and it takes ten seconds to charge before it can fire. It also has a very ugly overshoot range. I’m the only person who can foresee the lining up of enough ships during a fight to make it safe to wield inside an inhabited or commonly transited star system. That’s all you need know for now.”
“It also extracts a lot more energy out of the system than the other cannons,” Crow said. He was replaying the meters from the four brief shots on his main screen. “Not just the buildup to fire it, but in actually firing it. I only noticed how much energy it retained because the scale is so huge.”
“More energy than you know,” Ia admitted, calling up the duty roster for that hour. “The current design siphons off most of the excess heat, converts it back to energy, and pours it right back into the cannon. I can tell you that much because that part’s just an upscale version of the Starstrike cannon’s energy-feed design; it has nothing to do with how the Godstrike itself actually achieves its high caloric rating.
“That’s also one of the reasons why it takes ten seconds to fire, and why so much of the ship near the core isn’t inhabitable,” she stated, glancing at the chrono on her leftmost lower tertiary. “It looks like we’re scheduled for lunch, next. With the main galleys still locked down, how about I fix everyone some sandwiches from the bridge galley?”
“Th’ Cap’n of this ship isn’t s’posed t’ cook,” Spyder argued, reaching for his restraint straps. “I’ll go fix us sommat.”
“Oh, no. I’ve foreseen your cooking skills, Spyder, and they’re worse than mine,” Ia joked, unstrapping as well. “I may not be as good a cook as my biomother, but at least I won’t poison us. Besides, everyone pulls triple duties or more on this ship. That includes me, because I don’t ask my crew to do something I’m not willing to do myself if I have the skills and the time to do it.
“Right now, I have the time, and sandwich making is just within my skills. You have the bridge, Lieutenant. Corned beef on rye okay with everyone?” Ia asked.
A quick survey of the others showed them all nodding. Sighing, Spyder complied, shifting from his seat to hers at the back of the bridge cabin. “Aye, aye, Cap’n. Corned beef on rye’ll be fine.”
FEBRUARY 11, 2496 T.S.
SIC TRANSIT
“Sir, yes, sir,” Ia stated, shoulders square and chin level. She felt like she should’ve been standing At Attention, rather than seated at the desk in her office. “I am absolutely confident the overshoot from our lasers and the main cannon will not hit and damage anything of consequence.”
“What about those rock missiles?” Admiral Genibes asked her, leaning back in his own office chair. The entire conversation was taking place at just over a two-second delay, making it almost feel normal. “You released them at near lightspeed. They’ll continue on course until something stops them, and they’re too small to be easily noticed at that velocity.”
She had an answer for that. “Only three will cause problems,” Ia admitted. “I’ve already arranged for timed messages to be delivered to ships in the affected areas, with exact tracking coordinates for their destruction. The rest will eventually be snagged by gravity and either smack harmlessly into other stellar bodies or burn up in various atmospheres.”
Admiral Genibes raised one of his brows at that. “Timed messages? Arranged with whom, Captain Ia? I don’t recall receiving any messages.”
This was the tread-carefully part of her report. Lying to a superior was a fatality, but she didn’t want to bruise the ego of anyone reviewing this conversation later. “With the Afaso Order, sir. The Terran military will be too busy with the war at that point to be bothered with that sort of thing.”
Genibes frowned thoughtfully at her. “You’ve sent a lot of packages over the years to the Afaso Order. Same as you’ve shipped home. If all of those packages were precognitive prophecies…when is the Space Force getting its fair share?”
“The Space Force as a whole is a competent entity, sir,” Ia told him. Again, not a lie. “You won’t need all that much from me precognitively to carry out your duties. Those few sections in need of my assistance will receive it at the appropriate time.”
“You said you’re fighting a war three hundred years into the future,” he reminded her. “But not even a Feyori half-breed will outlive its matter-based life expectancy. What about the intervening two hundred years?”
“You’ll receive a war chest of prophecies, suggestions, and directives at the appropriate time, sir,” Ia promised him.
“Why not now?” the admiral asked.
Ia restrained the urge to roll her eyes, though she did sigh. “Because there’s an entire queue of things that have to happen first, and if something gets nudged out of alignment now, I’ll have to rewrite all those prophecies to compensate for the ripple effect it’ll cause.”
“What about the first battle of the war?” Genibes asked her. “You’ve successfully proved in these four attacks that your ship would be invaluable. Where will the Salik strike first?”
That, she could tell him. “Two places. The Terran and Gatsugi Motherworlds.” A quick dip into the timestreams allowed Ia to nod in confirmation. “It’ll start two weeks from now, give or take roughly a day—it varies too much to pin it down closer than that, depending on how my crew and I handle the next few prewar fights.”
He folded his arms over his grey-clad chest, arching one grey-salted brown brow. “Do you at least have a location for the first main push?”
“Two locations, Admiral. They’ll happen simultaneously,” Ia stated. “The Terran Motherworld, because we not only kicked their frogtopodic asteroids last time but have been instrumental in keeping the Blockade going. They’ve gotten around it, but not as freely as they might’ve otherwise, and we pissed off the Salik because of it. And they’ll go after the Gatsugi because they’re in the linchpin location. Damage the center of the edible Alliance members, and we can’t use the Collective’s systems and stations as safe transit hubs, let alone for gathering and resupply.
“The Salik are feeling cocky, but they’ve got the forces to be cocky. They’ll throw several fleets at the other Motherworlds, strong enough to tie up our various allies,” she added, cautioning him. “But the strongest attacks will be those two worlds. They’re also watching the movements of all our fleets, so you can’t move everyone in to protect Earth.”
“Because they’ll just shift gears and attack wherever we’re weak,” he agreed. He thought a moment, then asked, “What about pulling out a single ship here, a single ship there? And having them sit beyond the Kuiper belt a few days before?”
“That might entail several days of those crews doing nothing; I can’t guarantee exactly when the Salik will strike, only that they will,” Ia told him. She held up her hand in case he was about to speak, stating, “Let me check the timestreams before you make up your mind.”
It took a few seconds of real time to sort through the potential possibilities. When she had what she wanted, Ia pulled back into herself and sent a jolt of electrokinetic information into her workstation. Tapping a key, she sent it to the Admiral.
“I’ve attached a list of ship registries you can safely pull in over the next two weeks to defend Earth. It’s not many, but you shouldn’t need that many.”
“Well, no; we shouldn’t need that many more if you’ll be there,” Genibes agreed, touching a control on his own side of the comm link.
“I’m sorry, Admiral, but we won’t be there, sir.” Ia didn’t wait the two plus seconds for his head to snap up at her words. She continue
d briskly, explaining herself. “Earth has plenty of defenses and doesn’t really need us, whereas the Gatsugi can ill afford to pull in ships from their various colonyworlds just to defend Beautiful-Blue. The Hellfire will be assisting them when the time comes.”
“That ship of yours represents a very significant investment in military research and development, Captain,” Admiral Genibes reminded her, stressing her title slightly. “It is Terran property, and should therefore be used to defend Terran property.”
“According to the Terran United Planets Charter, duly registered with the Alliance,” Ia countered, “the Terran Space Force is to render both sentientarian and military aid to its allies when and where endangered by a mutual threat. The Salik most definitely qualify as a mutual threat, Admiral—and I tell you, as a precognitive, we need the Gatsugi Motherworld to come through this first fight relatively intact.”
“Ia, as much as you—” he started to say over the two-second delay between them.
Ia kept talking, cutting him off. “Sir, if we send only the Hellfire, every other ship in the Terran fleet can do their job defending Terran and joint colonyworlds, and the Gatsugi will have all the help they need. If you tried to pull the Hellfire back to Earth, I’d have to insist on sending eighteen to twenty Space Force vessels to Beautiful-Blue to ensure their war-machine efforts would survive in a shape suitable for helping the rest of the Alliance in the future…including helping us Terrans. But that much movement on our part into Gatsugi space would be noticed far more by the Salik than simply reassigning a bunch of patrol routes entirely within Human space, which is something the Command Staff already does on a regular basis. The Salik will see it coming, and send more ships than our side can defend against.”
He waited four extra seconds to be sure she was done talking, then spoke. “You’ve planned all of this, haven’t you?”
Shoulders back and chin level, Ia answered At Attention. “That is what I am supposed to do, sir, as an officer, a soldier, and a precog. I am to use my abilities to ensure the maximum number of lives are preserved with the most efficient use of the resources I have available.”
John Genibes snorted. “Don’t pull that officer’s duty shakk with me. What’s your real reason for wanting to help the Gatsugi?”
Ia dropped her soldierly poise and gave him a flat look. “That is my real reason, sir. It is the single most efficient use of all our resources. I did tell you and the others when I bargained for this ship that it would have to be sent places the rest of you might not think are all that vital but actually are. This is one of those instances.”
He studied her for longer than the two-second delay. Finally, he asked, “Carte blanche?”
“Admiral, yes, sir. You’ll see how effective I am in wielding it when the Terran Council receives the gratitude of the Gatsugi Collective, sir,” she promised.
Sighing, Admiral Genibes sat back in his seat and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Right…Well, at least you’re using it for the good of the war effort. I’ll promote it that way to the Admiral-General. What’s next on your itinerary, between then and now?”
“What I would’ve had the crew do before I knew about the anti-psi menace. Attack hidden shipyards and crèches.” She waited for his reaction.
He lifted his head at that. “…Crèches?”
“They’ve been breeding and training generations of workers and warriors on the sly, all dedicated to building up their war machine,” Ia told him. “They’ve been on short rations, working in harsh conditions, but it’s how they’ve managed to come up with enough bodies to craft the robotics and other manufactories to build everything they’re planning on throwing at us. My plan is to make those secret resources too costly to repair, forcing them to make their opening attack before we can destroy too many of them.”
“More rocks flung at near-Cee?” Genibes asked dryly.
“No, sir. Mostly, it’ll be the Godstrike, since the things are located a light-year or more from anything else, which means overshoot won’t be as much of a problem. These are mostly my original targets, the ones without anti-psi shielding—though we will be hunting down more of those as the war gets going,” she promised. “Not just the Hellfire, but other ships, too. I’ll need you to pass along rerouting and attack orders for a number of ships within the year, to see that these interstitial-space enemy bases get destroyed when the odds are highest on our side.”
“About attacking those crèches,” her superior stated after another extralong pause. “It won’t play well if word gets out you’re hitting targets with children. Whether or not they’re Salik tadpoles, they’re still children. Mind you, I won’t object on my end because I know what those things are. I’m talking about someone in your crew talking about it to the Nets. If it gets on the news…”
“I know, sir,” Ia admitted quietly. “I accepted the cost long ago. The goal is to cripple their facilities beyond use, not just to kill. We want to concentrate their numbers in other, more heavily defended locations deeper within Salik territory. The Salik intend to stab at Alliance members in between cleansing the Blockade presence from their various territories, dividing our attentions. We can’t afford to let them continue to train replacement soldiers, and we can’t afford to let them spread out any more than they already are.”
“How are you going to put it to your crew?” Genibes asked. “Or are you going to even tell them what the targets actually are?”
She shook her head. “A lie by omission is still a kind of lie, sir. I’d prefer to limit the number of omissions I make because eventually the truth does get out. The first few targets will be manufacturing stations and shipyards, that sort of thing. I’ll find the best moment to tell them about the crèches when we come to that point. Anything else you wanted to discuss, Admiral?”
“Not at this time. Don’t abuse your carte blanche, Captain,” he warned her.
She gave him another dry look. “Considering what I could be doing with it, I’d hardly call the careful, rational selection of vital targets an abuse of my position—but yes, I am aware that others’ viewpoints may not match my own, sir.”
Some of those viewpoints weren’t even Human. She wanted to warn him about the Feyori who were going to move against her, but refrained. Instead, they said their good-byes and ended the call. Ia rested only a moment before reaching for the comm again, this time making an audio connection with the bridge.
“Captain Ia to Lieutenant Spyder.”
“Spyder ’ere, Cap’n,” he replied. “What can we do f’ you?”
“Tell the members of the 1st and 3rd Platoons they may have half an hour to contact their loved ones, up to bandwidth capacity. They are not permitted to say where we are or what we are doing, save that we’re on a deep-space patrol, as per the Company Bible. The 2nd will have to wait until it’s their off-duty turn next time we’re in sublight. After forty minutes, resume course at FTL speed to our next target,” she directed.
“Understood, Cap’n,” Spyder said.
FEBRUARY 25, 2496 T.S.
SIC TRANSIT
This time, Ia didn’t bother to square her shoulders before stepping into the boardroom. Her fellow soldiers had already used it a few times since leaving the shipyards, if mostly for group briefings rather than Company-wide ones. This one involved her image being broadcast to tertiary screens at duty stations around the ship for those members of the 1st Platoon who weren’t in attendance since the ship was in motion, which meant priority stations had to be manned.
This time, she wasn’t in her formal Dress Blacks, just in a grey shirt and trouser set with her service and rank pins in place. Lieutenant Rico was up on the bridge, serving as the officer on watch, but the other members of the cadre were gathered at the officers’ table. Some of the soldiers lounging in the tiers of seats looked half-asleep, having been dragged out of bed for this meeting.
They did sit up when she came into view, but didn’t rise or salute since she wasn’t in formals and wasn’t wearing a
cap. That was in the Company Bible, which meant they were doing what they were supposed to do. Coming to a stop before her seat at the table, Ia began without preamble.
“At Ease. Up until now, our targets have been considered legitimate under the Alliance joint military code of conduct for all of its sentient members. Mainly because we have been operating under the Alliance-agreed provisions against Salik-crafted and -manned communications hubs, war-matériel-manufacturing facilities, and minor shipyards located outside the Salik Interdicted Zone, and thus outside the law.
“Our next target also falls outside what the law permits the Salik to legally occupy and operate.” She paused, taking the time to meet the gazes of several of the hundred-plus men and women seated around her. “This means they are legitimate targets in the eyes of the law. In the eyes of common, sentientkind morality…some of you may have objections.”
She did not display anything on the screen. She did not sit down, either. Bracing her hands on the table, she leaned forward, again meeting the gazes of the soldiers around her.
“Right this minute,” Ia stated, “in the ponds of the city of Shnn-wuish on the Salik Motherworld of Sallha, the senior-most members of what we Humans would call a high school are undergoing their version of a graduation ceremony. The top twenty students are being permitted the chance to hunt and kill the five worst-performing members of their graduating class. They will do so in the ancient way in a deep lake in the heart of that city, without any weapons other than their tentacle-hands and teeth…and yes, they will eat what they kill, while they are still killing it.
“The hunters are cheered on by everyone, and the hunted are scorned,” she continued. “Unless the hunted successfully kill all twenty of their hunters, they will not be permitted to leave the pond. Those among the hunters who are killed by the poor-performing students they hunt will not be avenged by their family or friends. They, too, will become reviled as weak and useless. These are not Human children,” Ia stressed, hardening her voice. “They do not operate under the same rules as the rest of us. So when I say our next target is a crèche, a deep-space facility designed to spawn and rear Salik children, I am not talking about defenseless younglings. They are trained from birth to hunt and kill.”
