by E A Wicklund
He stared down at the table as their voices erupted all at once. He didn’t want to face their disappointment, but he had little choice. A captain must command his crew. He looked up to see most of them grinning.
Gui raised his hand. “If you don’t mind me saying it, sir, it’s about bloody time.”
“Hear, hear!” called Piper. “I didn’t join the Navy to run away from the fire, I joined to charge the hell into it.”
McCray stared at their faces.
“It’s pretty obvious, to everyone, that you’ve been struggling with your first call,” said Bijou, her smile peeking through her exhaled vapors. “We’ve been waiting for you to turn us around for days.”
“Trouble is,” said Warwick. “We’ve got no space black ability. As soon as we enter the star system, Qalawun will see us. So what’s the plan?”
Internally, McCray shook himself, trying to change track. He had a rousing, patriotic speech all planned, and now he didn’t need it. “First of all, I have no intention of fighting Qalawun. She’s way out of our weight class. Our greatest weapon is deception, and we’ll use that to assume our role as a humble merchant. We will sail into Huralon looking fat, dumb, and happy, claiming to stop for supplies on the way to Inouye.”
“What if they want to board us for inspection?” said Piper.
McCray turned to Aja. “Ms. Coopersmith?”
“IS-3 planetside says Qalawun hasn’t boarded or inspected any vessels in Huralon space.” Aja crossed her legs with hands in her lap. “They want to look like the good guys just now. Aggressive moves like boarding ships might turn popular opinion against them. It’s doubtful they’ll try to come aboard.”
“Seems like a big risk,” said Raj. The ensign spoke in a small voice. “Why can’t we launch a message drone from a distance and run for it? If we’re far enough from Huralon, Qalawun would never catch us.”
Despite his timid voice, other officers began nodding their heads.
Zahn cleared his throat. “We are Elysian officers. It’s our job to take risks.”
“Jamming,” said Ando, unusually sober. “Broadcast from too far away and Qalawun can jam the signal. Launch from closer in and Qalawun can intercept us. Going all the way in to Hikonojo, looking like we have regular business there, and transferring our data directly is the only way.”
“It’s a captain’s job to manage risk,” said McCray, acknowledging Raj’s concerns. “While this approach is risky, we have a high probability of success. I will not send us into danger for no gain. And I promise you if Qalawun shows any undue interest in us, we’re running for it at flank speed. Nothing but assholes and elbows all the way to hyperspace!”
The gathered officers chuckled. McCray continued, “Count on your fellow shipmates. Count on your ship. Together we cannot fail. The people of Huralon and all of McGowan are relying on us, even if they don’t realize it yet. We cannot neglect our duties as defenders of the people. Now is there any compelling reason we should not execute the plan as described?”
Only silence answered him.
“Off you go then. We sail for Huralon immediately.”
Chapter 24
Springbok sailed back towards Huralon in hyperspace, her course clear, but McCray still had concerns to address. He sat in meeting room three, the real one, nursing a Kinkaid single malt whiskey. He swished the amber fluid around, searching for the right words to say. Perhaps in those swirls he might find wisdom. Nothing popped out at him, and he took another sip. He savored the peaty, woody flavors. It may not have contained the muse he hoped, but it tasted good.
He needed to hammer things out with Zahn, and neither of them were going to like it. They were sailing into harm’s way, and before they did that, he hoped Zahn would explain Raj’s behavior. This wouldn’t be easy, and McCray worried that squeezing the information out of Zahn might fracture their excellent working relationship.
The door to the room opened, and Commander Zahn poked his head in. “You asked to see me, sir?”
“Yes, Andy. Please, have a seat.” McCray activated his secret stash in the meeting room hutch. The hutch rotated until the coffee fixings disappeared into the bulkhead and an assortment of alcohol replaced them. “Drink?”
Zahn watched him a little suspiciously as he sat. “A Sambvca, I suppose.”
“Excellent choice.” McCray poured, enjoying the rituals of making and delivering actual drinks. He sat with his XO and said, “Lechaim.”
“Gesundheit,” quipped Zahn.
The two shared a chuckle and a moment of silence.
“Andy, I need your help.”
“Anything, sir.”
“I need to understand what Raj was doing when he veered to port.”
Zahn heaved an unhappy sigh. “Captain…”
“He placed everyone aboard at huge risk. The trouble is we are going back close in to the location of the anomaly Raj avoided. Whatever it is, it is probably still there. That makes it a real and present threat to this ship and that makes it my problem. You claim he made the right move. I need to understand what was so right about it.”
“Captain, the Navigator’s Guild emphatically discourages discussions like these. They tend to undermine a good working relationship between captain and navigator. I’m not in the guild anymore, but I still feel beholden to follow those restrictions.”
“I understand, Andy. But we’re sailing close by this whatever-it-is once more, and I need to know what my ship’s navigator is seeing that I can’t. We’ll be walking a knife’s edge when we re-enter Huralon space and if something out there is changing the tactical picture, I need to know about it. ”
Zahn stared down at the table, visibly distressed. “Captain, Vann, you put me in a terrible position.”
McCray leaned back. “Archimedes, please respond.”
“I’m here, Captain,” said the ship’s AI through the room’s speakers.
“Please turn off audio and visual recordings in this room.”
“Complete,” replied Archimedes. “Be advised, if I perceive a threat to anyone in the room, this order will automatically be rescinded.”
“I understand.”
“Exiting the room…now.”
McCray looked to Zahn. “Anything you say will only be known to me. I promise whatever you say will go no further. Give me something, anything, to help me understand.”
Zahn’s shoulders slumped, and he stared at the desk. “All right. Raj did the right thing because he saw a threat to the ship. He’s so good at spotting them, he reacted before the other ship did.”
“That’s why the Putnam Sound matched his move. They saw the danger, too.”
“Yes.”
“Okay, what was the threat?”
“Isn’t it enough to know the threat was real?”
“No, it’s not. Without understanding the threat, how can I act appropriately? What if I have to order us to run and Raj needs to juke the ship into a course that throws us into the lion’s mouth?”
Zahn polished off his drink and held out his glass.
Like a bartender squeezing out information from a troubled customer, McCray refilled it. For a moment he didn’t think Zahn was going to tell him. Then the other man shrugged his shoulders as if disowning the consequences and looked up to hold his gaze.
“It was a creature, a big one.”
“Oh, no,” groaned McCray. “Don’t say space monsters.”
“And this,” Zahn said, the frustration clear in his tone, “is one reason why we don’t discuss it. Anyone whoever reveals our primary motivation gets his sanity questioned.”
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. Please continue.”
Zahn stook a long pull from his drink. “We call them the Naeridae. We don’t know a lot about them. The only way we can detect them is by feedback through the dark paddles. Unfortunately, it’s the dark paddles that make them angry.”
“Strange.” McCray couldn’t believe he was hearing this stuff from a demonstrably level-headed nav
al officer. Still, he trusted Zahn’s judgement. It was worth hearing him out, at least. “So, what are they?”
“Well, a ship made of normal matter can pass right through them, and vice versa, with no effect. Near as anyone knows, they’re creatures made out of dark matter and energy. That’s why no one knew about them until the advent of dark paddles, which do affect the creatures.”
“Dark energy creatures? That’s a tough pill to swallow, Andy.”
“Is it really? Normal matter consists of five percent of the universe’s total energy balance. That tiny minority of five percent produced Humans who created a space-going civilization. Is it such a stretch that the other ninety-five percent of the universe might also produce living creatures?”
McCray smiled sheepishly. This was similar to the argument made by the Emergent Mind religion, one that he belonged to. The vacuum of space was not truly empty. Every square meter of space practically boiled with activity, virtual particles appearing and disappearing constantly. Practitioners compared this to the neural activity in the human brain, except this occurred throughout the universe. What scientists witnessed, they claimed, was the brain activity of a universal, Emergent Mind.
McCray coughed on his scotch. “Touche. All right, if these Naeridae are made of dark strata, they’re no more a threat than a knot, right?”
Zahn shook his head. “They’re far worse. You’ve read the accounts where emitters were rammed through a ship’s hull to the other side?”
“Yes. Freak strata waves destroyed those ships.”
“Those weren’t waves, at least not always. Often, it was a Naeridae.”
McCray felt a chill run up his spine. “Those things are that powerful? How big are they?”
“Some are the size of a small moon.”
McCray felt his face fall. “Mind help us. So why all the secrecy? Why not just present your evidence?”
Zahn took a sip of his drink and shrugged. “No one believed us when we did, at first. Once we had meaningful proof, times had changed, and it made sense to leave things as they were. The guild believes that definitive proof of ‘space monsters’ would frighten people so much that it could cripple whole economies. The space tourism trade, that so many planets rely on, would collapse. Insurance rates would explode. The cost of goods and services would rise too high for many to afford.”
“I suppose that makes sense. But a lot of people, me included, think you’re religious nuts.”
“Small price to pay, isn’t it?”
McCray nodded. Just as he expected, the Naeridae really did change the tactical picture. “How fast can they accelerate? What’s the chance we’ll see the same one we encountered coming out?”
Zahn thought a moment. “There isn’t good data on that. Far as we know they accelerate slowly, but don’t quote me on that. We do know that during attacks, their tentacles are incredibly quick. Faster than you would believe from such a large creature.”
“All right.” McCray stood and shook Zahn’s hand. “Thank you, Andy. I appreciate you explaining this to me. Don’t worry, this stays between you and me.”
“I appreciate that, sir.”
After Zahn left the room, new ideas bounced around in McCray’s head. If this were all true, it changed the terrain of space. Like all successful military commanders, he wondered how the terrain might be put to tactical advantage.
***
McCray sat at the conn, his right elbow digging comfortably into its habitual depression in the cushion. A screen, visible only to him, hovered to his right. The colored specks of hyperspace swirled across it like vast clouds of flocking birds. They formed continuously shifting shapes that appeared familiar, often beautiful, and frequently grotesque.
The shapes tended to trigger powerful memories and emotional outbursts in most people. For this reason, regs prohibited displaying the optics view in the tank while in hyperspace. By watching, McCray was technically committing a violation. Only navigators, like Raj, who were specially trained and psychologically evaluated to be resistant to the effects, could view hyperspace for long periods of time. The reactions to it were many. Some had sobbed, claiming to have lost a family member when they actually hadn’t. Others felt elation, saying they had finally found love, but couldn’t say with whom. The reactions were unpredictable, changing in degree of feeling and meaning with every viewing.
After a while, McCray rubbed his temples. He didn’t normally experience the emotions people felt, a quality that might have qualified him to be a navigator, but it did give him a headache after a while. He turned back to the display, briefly enjoying the ebb and flow of the clouds, a scene that reminded him of a surging ocean. Scientists claimed the dots were reflections of the dark strata in normal space. According to them, recalled McCray, everything in normal space was not limited to its familiar three dimensions. All known things: stars, people, whiskey, and even dark matter were much greater than just three dimensional objects. Everything humanity knew continued their multi-dimensional shapes by connecting the dots through the many levels of hyperspace, and thereby were related to the colored specks found there. If someone could pull back and view many striations of hyperspace at once, they would see humans were just the tip of something far greater.
Since dark strata amounted to the majority of all matter and energy in normal space, most of the colorful specks corresponded to dark strata. The points were ghosts of that unseen energy and material. Conveniently, the hyperspace ghosts of stars and planets were recognizable as such, but not as the familiar orbs. Only trained navigators knew how to identify them reliably, something McCray never had the patience for. Identifying the ghosts of living and made things was a far more complex prospect. As it stood, the hyperspace ghost of a person or a ship could look like nearly anything.
These continuations of things were not solid; better described as mathematical constructs or virtual particles. A ship could pass through any of them without damage, though the dark paddles, like in normal space, left a wake among the ghosts of dark strata. Ships could be tracked down via the disturbances of their passage. As McCray watched, he could see Raj steering the ship through the gaps in the clouds, leaving no traceable sign of Springbok’s movement. They weren’t being hunted at the moment, so Raj’s maneuvers weren’t strictly necessary, but McCray felt pleased to watch him practicing that difficult and important skill.
McCray continued watching Raj’s maneuvers for a while, admiring the Ensign’s talent. He guessed that any ship, trying to hunt them down in this place-between-places, would have a difficult time finding them. Most warships, chasing another vessel, could eventually find it—if within the same depth of hyperspace—by following the ship’s wake of disturbed specks. He smiled. If the battlecruiser tried to chase them, he had already planned to run into hyperspace. With Raj’s amazing skill at leaving no wake in the ghosts, their chances of escaping and leaving the big ship foundering looked very, very good.
He hoped things wouldn’t come to a fight. The odds weighed significantly against Springbok if it did, despite his best plans. And now a new battlefield element preyed upon his mind. Space monsters were real. He knew that at least one of the Naeridae prowled in the Huralon system. Could there be more? How might they affect a potential battle? Giant creatures on the field of conflict weren’t new.
Only recently, McCray had found something interesting while browsing Earth’s recovered history. During the Punic Wars 2,500 years before, Carthaginian general Hannibal employed war elephants against the Romans to good effect. Tactically, the huge animals proved to be difficult weapons to manage, but they did have the effect of instilling terror and disrupting enemy formations. Could the Naeridae be used in such a way? McCray shook his head. He couldn’t see how. If it came to a fight with Qalawun, they would have to run for their lives and hope their acceleration advantage carried the day.
One hour later, Springbok returned from her shallow dip into hyperspace. Blue Cherenkov radiation flashed away from her in a sphere
thirty kilometers across. The Q-ship was visible once more and wearing the red and gold livery of Jang-He Transport Ltd.
On the bridge, McCray said, “Helm, make cycles for 180 gees acceleration, extension to 6,000 meters. Set paddle tension to 0.44 Bosch. We’re sailing in nice and easy. Sorry for the unexpected change in plans, everybody. At least this way we don’t look like we’ve anything to hide. As of this moment, I am Captain Bartholomew Berry, ship’s master of the Precious Jade. We don’t know a thing about the ‘interesting’ events going on in Huralon. We’re just accidentally stumbling in on our way to Inouye.”
“I think I like this better,” said Piper. “If we’re discovered in space black mode, they know we’re up to no good.”
“I’m still concerned the Qalawun might come after us,” said Ando. “That beast is armed with capital ship missiles. Those things are like can-openers for battleships. What could they do to us?”
“Steady on, Ando,” said Zahn. “Ms. Coopersmith says they’ve got their hands full organizing this secession. I believe her. You should, too.”
McCray looked over at his XO with a thankful smile. Maintaining the good spirits of the crew was important. They had to believe they would come out of this alive.
***
Aboard the battlecruiser DPS Qalawun, servant Khalid waited while Senator Marcus Mallouk admired his reflection in the mirror. The stateroom, lavishly occupying a space the size of a small gym, smelled of lavender and myrrh. Ornamental rugs, piled upon one another, covered the deck across the unusually large expanse. Urns made of pure gold and loaded with the hand-made sweets the senator cherished dotted the room.
The Elite adjusted his silvery cravat, grimaced, and pulled it out again to start over. Gazing carefully at his reflection, he nodded in approval after finding no blemishes in his perfectly smooth skin. Though one hundred and seventy years old, he looked no older than thirty five. He benefited from the rare and expensive anti-aging nanomeds that only a few Elites ever saw. As rich as he was, It hardly mattered that the meds were stolen and smuggled in from Elysium at a cost that could buy starships.
