by Ingo Potsch
“We shall engage!” the junior officers were excited.
“The enemy is going after us”, declared the skipper. “I want to give the mining craft time to clear out. Told them to disappear, get out of hyperspace and hide at some planet.
“Not many around at the Great Void”, commented the medical man.
“You need to make do with what you have”, replied the skipper. “And what we have now is a functional ship to lure the enemy away.”
The destroyer was running at maximum capacity. The first lieutenant commanding it would never tell his brave and over-motivated junior officers, nor anyone else, for that matter, that he’d love his ship to be fast enough to escape the Aesuron battlecruiser. A destroyer ranked several classes below a battlecruiser and faced very slim chances in an altercation with the much bigger rival. On the other hand, the skipper was well aware of the punishment mandated for officers who did not do their utmost against the enemy, either in battle or pursuit. It was essentially an order to either fight with teeth and claws and overcome the enemy with mere aggression or to be punished for survival. While there was a great risk of kitting killed when fighting a superior enemy, the chances of getting away without punishment were even smaller. Taking care of two drafted mining craft so that the basically helpless vessels could get away and then turn around and engage the battlecruiser was within the permitted scope of actions, though. And, perhaps, there was some support to be met on the way. After all, the destroyer wasn’t the only Space Fleet ship around here in this part of the galaxy. The hyperspace sensors had as of yet failed to detect anyone else from the Human Nation, but there was a chance as long as one remained alive.
After catching up for a little while, the Aesuron battlecruiser then remained at a constant distance to the destroyer. A few minutes into that race, and with the civilian mining craft safely out of sensor reach, the skipper started to feel that there was something fishy in the behaviour of that enemy spaceship. Given that she had been identified correctly by the automated tactical systems of his own vessel, the enemy ship should be able to travel significantly faster, and catch up with the destroyer easily. But she didn’t. Couldn’t she or didn’t she want to? The skipper checked the pursuer’s hyperspace signature, the distortions caused by that ship and how regular her bow wash and wake were. His computer showed him that the sensor data pointed to a fully functional hyperspace drive. Therefore, he concluded, the enemy didn’t actually want to catch up. But why was that fellow so reluctant? – The most likely answer was a lack of missiles; probably all or at least most of them had been expanded. Engaging with guns only into a struggle with a fully equipped destroyer was then again something different, of course. Missiles had a far longer reach and struck harder.
It was time to be brave again, the destroyer’s commander decided. He had his spaceship turn around and rushed toward the enemy. Just as presumed, the enemy also turned around and hurried away, not increasing his speed so much that the destroyer was unable to follow. Shooting off missiles was a futile endeavour, for the distance was too great for them to reach their target.
It had been a heroic feat. First, drawing the attention of an enemy battlecruiser to oneself in order to save the lives of two mining craft, and then single-handedly attacking that major unit with a much smaller vessel and putting the Aesuron to rout. The destroyer’s crew cheered, the subordinate officers looked up to their skipper; and everybody was happy. That it had been good luck from start to end, the destroyer’s commander kept to himself. He had done the utmost! That counted most. That he and his ship and all the crew had survived were additional benefits for the government; and of course major factors for those directly affected.
CHAPTER II - The Recovered Relay Station
As reward for her good service and the great team work with the two mining craft, the destroyer Mandana was deployed to another mission, this time even more secret, though the Aesuron were to learn about it the hard way once it succeeded. Being tasked with retrieving a hyperspace communisations’ relay station, the Mandana and her two civilian consorts hovered above the wind-whipped waves of a stormy ocean. This ocean consisted of liquid carbon dioxide and it was very cold. Dropping into this agitated, churning sea was to be avoided at any cost, for it meant immediately freezing to death. The scanning equipment had to be managed from the open gates of the cargo bays, though, which gave the crews some exposure to the hostile elements. The mining craft were better equipped for the purpose, of course, yet even these were made to operate in the vacuum of outer space, where wind was naturally absent.
The hyperspace communications’ relay station had long ago been deposited on this planet, and her location should have been known. Unfortunately, the coordinates weren’t exact; which the Admiralty had anyway suspected. Therefore, some days had been scheduled to be spent on the matter of retrieving this item, though it turned out to be some weeks instead. Hovering in the storm above the frightening cold ocean was different from what was widely considered a pleasant task, yet even this came to an end.
About a kilometre on the destroyer’s port beam – just on the right side, in ground-parlance - the Nabonidus was backing gently astern in order to close with her consort. The Cassandane was pitching sluggishly, due to the forces that tore at her. Way had been taken off her, while over her rearward attached crane the carbon nanotube hawser connected to the retrieving grapnel was going straight up and down under the steady strain of some heavy and still submerged object, which apparently floated around. Adding to that the elasticity of the nanotube hawser caused the vessel to swing, too.
The situation contained an element of danger, for the hawser could break and then release all its energy in one go. Depending on where it broke, the remaining part could shoot up from the abysmal depth and punish severely anyone who happened to be in its unforeseen way.
From the destroyer's bridge the communications in-charge was signalling rapidly by means of standard commands. The Cassandane replied. The man had just finished forwarding the message to newly promoted Lieutenant-Commander Bergerault when Astley and the other officers gained the bridge.
"There's no doubt about it now," declared Bergerault breezily. "They've just reported that the thing is twenty two kilometres off the bottom. The Nabonidus is going to help take the strain."
"Hope it won't carry away, sir," remarked Astley.
"Never fear! Where this retrieving grapnel grips, it holds. It’s meant for much more tha this. What current do we have?"
The echo sounding with the sonic depth finder revealed that more than one hundred and ninety one kilometres of liquid carbon dioxide were between the space ships and the dusty bottom of the ocean, and that the tide produced by that cold planet’s moons had risen by seventy four centimetres. The tidal current was setting south-east a half east, with a velocity of just under two kilometres per hour. As the cold planet had several moons, the tides were extremely irregular, since the different effects influenced each other to result in ever new constellations.
"The tide will be slacking in half an hour," said the skipper. "The less strain we get the better. Signalman!"
"Sir?"
"Ask the Cassandane to report the state of the load”, the destroyer’s commander ordered, while keeping his own ship’s controls closely watched.
Promptly came the reply that already the strain on the grapnel hawser was above two thirds of the permitted maximum.
"We were told that we shall be cautious not to surpass four fifth of the breaking strain, sir," Astley reminded his chief. “The technical fellows spoke about undetected defects in the nanotubes and the locations where they’re attached to the winch and grapnel.”
"We'll get it all right," reiterated Bergerault. "Never fear."
His optimism was justified when forty-five minutes later the grapnel sullenly bobbed above the surface, holding in its tightly-closed jaws one bent horn of the hyperspace communications’ relay station.
"Let's hope we've hooked the right one," mutt
ered the engineer-lieutenant.
"You atom of despondency!" exclaimed Randolphfield.
"I state a possibility, not a probability, Coroner," reciprocated the fellow nicknamed Box-spanner. "It's a three-to-one chance, you know."
Already a number of artificers, who had been temporarily detailed for duty on board each of the mining crafts, were hard at work in connection with the retrieved hyperspace communications’ relay station. What they were doing in connection must remain a matter of conjecture, but the fact was obvious that the success or otherwise of unremitting toil depended upon the next few minutes.
Impatiently the young lieutenant-commander of the Mandana awaited a further signal announcing the result of the investigations. When it came it was highly satisfactory.
"Thanks be for small mercies!" exclaimed Bergerault fervently. "Signal Oakley and tell him to take due precautions in case anew tidal swell sets in from the eastward."
The relay was part of one of three lines of such stations that in pre-war time connected the outer parts of the Human Federation across the Grand Inter-Arm Void with the Aesuron Empire via the forward route. Two more such dotted lines of relay stations ran across the Void along the rearward route, the whole system being partly owned by the Human Nations and partly controlled by the Aesuron Empire.
Immediately upon the declaration of war the relay stations had been deactivated, both in the neighbourhood of the Human Nation’s boundaries and in the vicinity of the Aesuron planetary fortress bordering the Void. To all intents and purposes it seemed as if the remaining hyperspace communications’ relay stations were nothing more than now-useless pieces of junk, peacefully doing away time on their remote locations in the Inter-Arm Void.
Yet in spite of the most stringent precautions on the part of the Human Nation’s Government to prevent the leakage of news, the disconcerting fact remained that, thanks to an efficient and extensive espionage system, information, especially relating to the movements of the Space Fleet, did reach the Aesuron Empire.
Various illicit means of communication were suspected by the Human Nation’s concerned authorities, and drastic, cumbersome, self-harming, often highly un-necessary, if not counter-productive, regulations were put into force that had the effect of reducing the leakage to a minimum.
Simultaneously a campaign was opened against the use of private hyperspace communications’ installations, which of course had just a short reach and could only be used to transmit information to and from enemy spaceships nearby. Undoubtedly illicit hyperspace communications devices played its part in the spies' work, but their efficacy was doubtful, not least due to the short range. This kind of signals could be tapped, and its source could be located. However beneficial in times of peace, this kind of broadcasting was a two-edged blade in war.
For a long time the Human Nation’s Government failed to unravel the secret of how information reached the enemy so timely, until it was suggested that the ostensibly deactivated hyperspace signals relay stations had been repaired. And this was precisely what had been done. The Aesuron had promptly repaired their end of one of the relay station lines, while an Aesuron space engineers’ ship, disguised as a neutral cargo vessel, had re-installed the severed end just beyond the Human Nation’s effective limit of space surveillance.
For nearly eighteen months the secretly mended chain of relay stations had been in active operation. News culled from all the Space Fleet bases by trustworthy Aesuron agents was surreptitiously communicated via the Human Nation’s network of domestic communications and thence passed on to the enemy’s High Command. The forwarding of information within the Human Nation’s territory, where the network was dense and allowed for greater bandwidth, was by means of hiding the information in digital pictures. Passing it on via the Inter-Arm Void required extraction of that core data, which was then forwarded in different form.
For the task of recovering the manipulated relay stations the utmost skill, caution, and discretion were necessary. The vessels detailed for the work were sent from a far-off space port with orders to make no communication with anyone; while to protect them from possible interference the Mandana had been detached from the rest of the flotilla to stand by and direct operations.
The Cassandane was indeed fortunate in finding the relay station in a comparatively short frame of time, and, what was more to the point, in locating the right one of the three suspected to be in close proximity. Her crew was proud as this performance contrasted strikingly with that of the destroyer Arteshbod in another theatre of the war. That vessel tried for two months in comparatively shallow liquid methane to catch hold of the relay station at Planet White Paradise. The officer in charge had himself assisted to lay that particular relay station, but found it difficult to lay his hands on it again. Just like the other one which the Cassandane had found, the one for which the Arteshbod had hunted was also drifting, having severed its ties to its anchor by accident.
The only "fly in the ointment", as far as Lieutenant-Commander Bergerault was concerned, was the anticipated fact that the Mandana would have to dance attendance upon the mining crafts for an indefinite period, as the mission might now go on. Once the mild excitement of grappling for the absconding relay station was over, the Mandana was in the position of those who serve to only stand and wait. It was a necessary task to stand by, but with vague rumours in the air of Space Fleet activity on the part of the Aesuron, the officers and crew of the destroyer would infinitely have preferred to be in their generic role of destroyer work, rather than be kind-of detained within a few dozen light years of the barracks and fleet facilities at Planets New Iceni Homes and Which Bury. Being close to high-ranking base commanders and large numbers of administrational staff was a recipe for nuisance. Furthermore, the region was exposed to the enemy by virtue of her protruding into the void. Then Aesuron were expected to come along and strike with their entire fleet. At least that’s what the Human Nation’s Admiralty reckoned with; and that notion had percolated through to almost anyone on the entire military.
When at length interest in the proceeding had somewhat abated, Junior Lieutenant Astley went below to make up long arrears of sleep.
He had not slept for many minutes when Doctor Randolphfield gave him a resounding whack on the back.
"Wake up, you lazy bone!" exclaimed the surgeon. "Didn't you hear 'Action Stations'? We've got the whole Aesuron war fleet coming for us."
CHAPTER III - The Stranded Cruiser
"No such luck," protested Astley sarcastically, until, reading the serious look in the medical officer's eyes, and now conscious of a commotion on main deck as the spaceship's company went to action stations, he started up, leapt from his bunk, and hurriedly scrambled into his clothes.
Upon gaining the main deck Astley found that Randolphfield had exaggerated the facts - he generally did, as a matter of fact. The monitor there, mean to provide the most important current information to anyone of the crew passing by here showed much less than what had been announced. Just looming through the tender haze which currently pervaded hyperspace in the destroyer’s near environment were half a dozen large forms emitting tell-tale columns of dimensional distortions. The Aesuron generally managed to betray their whereabouts by ploughing forward at very high speed and dimensional dampers adjusted to be tough rather than accommodative. The advantage of this hard suspension was better control of the vessel, yet at the cost of higher strain in material and crew.
The ships were now rushing onward in double column, line ahead, and, having passed by Danny’s Dark Star well on the starboard hand, were running on a southerly course to clear the prominent Scape Fare System.
"Off to Planet Yardmaster Yester to cause trouble there at our supply facilities, I'll swear," declared Bergerault. "The bastards have got wind of the fact that our battlecruisers are well up above the seventeenths plane."
The Mandana was now approaching the two mining crafts. Grasping his microphone, the lieutenant-commander hailed the skipper of the Nabonidus.
"Aesuron battlecruisers in sight," he warned. "You had better slip and clear out."
The tough old fellow there shaded his eyes with a hairy, tanned hand and has his own ship’s sensors look in the direction of the hostile craft, and display the result on his main screen on the bridge.
"I will remain here, if you have no objection, sir," he replied. "After all this fuss, fetching the relay thing and all, I'm not keen on dropping it again. Maybe they will take no notice of us, thinking we are just some harmless folk."
"The probability is that they will blast you to pieces," said Bergerault, secretly gratified at the old man's bravery, and yet unwilling to have to leave the mining crafts to their fate.
"If they do, they do," replied the skipper unmoved. "It would not be the first to meet his fate like that. But since we have the relay, here we remain."
Old Corentin Oakley was of a similar opinion. Freeze or be pulverized, he meant to stand by. The Nabonidus and the Cassandane were to remain with the fished relay station, since it was just possible that the Aesuron might take them for ordinary mining crafts, as the vessels showed no guns.
The lieutenant-commander of the destroyer saw that it was of no use to attempt to shake the resolution of the two skippers. After all, they stood a chance. By remaining quietly, and holding on to the relay station which they had lowered again into the ocean, they certainly had the appearance of mining craft trying to grab something down below, while any attempts at flight might result in unpleasant attentions from the number of smaller units, frigates and destroyers, accompanying the Aesuron battlecruisers.
Accordingly the Mandana slipped quietly away, keeping under the long shadow of Pawel’s Pound, an old, dark star which rotated fast, to avoid being spotted by the enemy vessels. It was a genuine case of discretion being the better part of valour. Although not a single member of her disciplined crew would have blenched had orders been given to rush full speed ahead towards the huge Aesuron battlecruisers, Bergerault realized that such a step would be utterly useless. Long before the destroyer could get within missile-range of the foe, she would be swept clean and blasted to atoms by the long-range weapons of the on-coming Aesuron. Had hyperspace conditions been different, the Mandana would no doubt have attempted to get home with her mid-range missiles. The risk would be worth running. But, as matters now stood, it would be sheer suicidal madness on her part, without the faintest chance of accomplishing anything to justify the attempt.
