The Memnon Incident: Part 2 of 4 (A Serial Novel)

by Marc DeSantis

  The

  Memnon

  Incident

  Part Two of Four

  Marc DeSantis

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination, and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Marc DeSantis

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Chapter Ten

  RHS Steadfast, Memnon system

  So Tartarus had indeed come to Memnon. One of the prisoners was willing to talk. The two ashigaru remained tight-lipped. More was unsurprised. They were professionals, every bit as capable and belligerent in outlook as his own Halifaxian marines. They refused to give out any information about either themselves or their mission. The scrawny fellow, however, he was a different matter. He was a young technician, palpably intellectually vain, and he lacked the martial resolve of the ashigaru, from whom he was kept separate. He didn't immediately spill the beans about what he and his companions had been doing, but when prompted to talk about the technology he operated, he beamed with pride.

  That technology was a supposed impossibility. It could determine, based upon a careful real-time analysis of a jump capable spacecraft's displacement envelope, the location in space where it would emerge with astonishing accuracy. It had long been known that displacement field energy was directly related to the distance of the jump being undertaken. The sheer mass of roiling energy that went into creating and sustaining the envelope put calculating the exact distance a ship would go beyond the observational reach of the most sophisticated computers. The observed target destination could never be more precise than a star system, and this required that an observing platform be stationed very close to the departing ship to take its readings. A hostile ship would have been destroyed before it could take those readings.

  Yet the Tartareans had brought a ship deep inside the Halifaxian system, parked it beside More's squadron undetected, and recorded their displacement signatures. This gave them a hyper-precise exit destination for the group. So that was how they knew where to place the mines. More's heart sank as he recalled the loss of Amethyst, Rose, and Starfire. It didn't explain how the Tartareans were able to get the information back to Memnonian space in time to set the trap. Nothing could travel faster than the fastest jump ship, so even if the Tartareans had read the envelope and had known where More's group would exit, they still had to beat the Halifaxian ships to Memnon to set up the minecloud in that tiny pinhole of space. That would mean outracing a handful of the fastest warships in the Great Sphere.

  That meant some other kind of unholy high tech.

  "You're not telling me everything," More accused. That is when the tech's story got even more interesting.

  The technician - he identified himself as Ensign Jonah Lawrence of the Armada of Tartarus - blinked several times. He had no training in resisting interrogation, More saw immediately.

  "How did you get to Memnon before we did? It must have taken days to lay that field. You couldn't have overtaken us if you left with us." More leaned in close. Lawrence's wrists were bound by manacles to the table between them. "You know what? I think you are making all of this up. I think you are a two-bit, low-rent techie who was along for the ride and was lucky enough to avoid getting his head splattered by a gauss pellet."

  "This is the truth!"

  "This is a story concocted to make you look important. Maybe land yourself a better deal with us. Tell me the real story. Who leaked the coordinates to you?"

  Lawrence's eyes widened and his nostrils flared. "I'm telling you the truth!"

  "Then how did you get ahead of us? You are not good enough to have pulled this off."

  Lawrence seemed to hold back for a moment. He didn't want to say anything else. But he was young and cocky, and had trouble handling being demeaned by More. He had probably been disparaged by the Tartarean ashigaru and others during his mission, and wanted to be seen to be competent and important.

  "We had a special ship," the tech said at last.

  Now this had become interesting.

  "What kind of ship."

  "A courier ship. Nothing fancy. It was called Black Moon."

  "There are lots of those kinds of ships. They're mighty fast, but none can outrace Steadfast."

  "This one could."

  "How?"

  Lawrence shook his head. "I'm not sure. I'm not an engineer. I wasn't permitted to go near the displacement drives, no one except the engineers could. It pushed us fast, very fast. Faster than anything else. It made the jump from Halifax to Memnon in ten days."

  Now it was More's turn to blink. "Ten days! That's four days better than a destroyer going flat out. How was that possible?"

  "How do you think it was possible?" Lawrence snorted. "Very advanced tech. I wasn't allowed to know much about how my own system worked, just that it worked and how to operate it. We talked, the other guys and myself. We thought we must have had some cool new techno drive system to move so fast."

  "So you had four days to prepare for our arrival?"

  "Yes. I didn't lay the mines. Not my job. I just figured out where you would displace, and the captain did the rest."

  "Your captain, Edison Figaro, was not among the dead. What happened to him?"

  Lawrence sighed. "Exactly what I told your other interrogators already. The big ship smashed ours. The captain died instantly. We were venting atmosphere. No chance to save the Black Moon. We jumped into lifeboats and made for the ship. We landed there."

  "The ship that destroyed your own, you boarded it?"

  "Yes. We hadn't attacked it. We scanned it, tried to figure out what it was. Captain Figaro wanted to send a boarding party but the ship struck before we could come up with a plan. We had never seen anything like it. We couldn't identify it. We were in a rustbucket courier. Encyclopedia stuff isn't aboard."

  "What did your people think the ship was?"

  "Old."

  "I would expect they did," More said. "Was your captain interested salvaging it?"

  "I don't know. I guess so. It all happened so fast. We had a contact and everybody perked up. We thought it might be hostile, you, we expected you, but we could not make out what the ship was. It was unknown."

  "So your captain decided to check it out?"

  "Right."

  "Why didn't you hit us right after we displaced? You must have known that we had been hit hard. Why didn't you finish us off?"

  "We had already been taken out."

  More decided to try a different tack. "So when you boarded, what did you do? Why did you weld yourselves into the astronavigation spaces?"

  "We were going to try to signal for help."

  "Someone else was supposed to come to take part in your mission? Where are they?"

  "Beats me," Lawrence said. "We were promised relief. That's what the other guys, the officers, and the ashigaru, kept saying. 'Where are they?' they would complain."

  "That doesn't explain why you sealed yourselves in. You were on the ship for quite a while. A little over a month."

  "The ship was trying to kill us. It succeeded a couple of times too."

  "How?"

  "Two ashigaru were blasted into space when a cargo bay airlock underwent an emergency decompression." Lawrence smirked. "Three more were killed when superheated plasma was vented into their quarters."

  "You don't seem too broken up about their de
aths."

  "Ashigaru are arrogant bastards." More's intuition had been correct. The techie had been pushed around by the Tartarean marines aboard his ship. He was glad to be rid of them.

  "So what happens to me?" Lawrence's bravado disappeared. "You're the captain. You must know what will become of me," he pleaded.

  "You won't be going home anytime soon," More said. "This is an ongoing mission. Your fate won't be decided until we finish it."

  Lawrence seemed deflated. "I want to go home."

  More shook his head. "That will depend on your future cooperation with us. This is an explosive situation. Someone on your side is trying to start a war, in case you haven't realized."

  The tech inclined in his head, as if questioning this concept. He was bright, More saw, but politically naive. He was so focused on the technical aspects of his work that he had not before considered what his mission might mean in the larger context.

  "That would be bad."

  "Yes," answered More.

  Later, Matt Heyward and Bill Calder held a conference with More. Heyward came over from the Kongo, while Calder, whose Cormorant was too far away for a timely shuttle ride, was tighbeamed in. His bearded face filled the screen in front of the other two captains.

  Heyward put down the report on the interrogation of Ensign Lawrence.

  "He blabbed a lot."

  "It was almost like he wanted us to know everything," added Calder. "Can we trust him? Maybe this is disinformation?"

  More shook his head. "Not likely. I think he realizes that he is in a cesspit of trouble. He also has no love for his officers. He told us what he knows."

  "That leaves unanswered questions," More continued. "Someone went to a lot of trouble to plan this operation, a very dangerous one that was orchestrated in such a way as to make Memnon look like it had taken out Republican ships. So where were the other ships that Black Moon was supposed to link up with? We've been waiting over a month to be hit by someone else. Where are they?"

  "Maybe Morrigan destroyed the follow-on AT ships too," Heyward speculated.

  "Cormorant's been doing passive scans for high energy radiation," said Calder. "If they were taken out, their reactors likely would have gone up also, and we should be seeing the energy residue somewhere. We aren't."

  "Perhaps the ship ran into Morrigan but escaped?" asked More. "If it ran away, that would explain why we see no residual energy, and why Black Moon was left to fend for itself."

  "We don't know if it was just one ship or a squadron of ships," Calder reminded.

  "Right, we can't rule anything out yet, but bear with me. I'm getting a little ahead of myself. This is my hypothetical: Tartarus has the ability to take us all out if it hits us with enough ships. Those ships never materialize. Here's why. If the AT gets into a fight with us there is a chance that we will also take out one of their warships. How does Tartarus explain the presence of their ships in Memnon's space in the same location as this minecloud? It can't, so Tartarus just wants to hit us hard with the mines, get clear, and have us blame Maurice. They might not have been here to fight at all. It would have been better for them if there were survivors to run back to Halifax to tell High Command what had happened in Memnon. What they didn't anticipate was that we wouldn't cause a ruckus. We are sitting tight out here because we found Morrigan and don't want anyone else to know about her."

  "Then why have the Black Moon stick around to wait for its back-up? Shouldn't it have left the system as soon as its job was done?" Heyward asked.

  "Perhaps they wanted to make sure their plan had worked, and the back-up was there to provide support if Black Moon ran into trouble," More offered. "Maybe they kept the involved units to a bare minimum to avoid detection."

  "The whole operation seems so uncharacteristic of the AT," observed Calder. "It isn't like them to take such risks. They are a lot like us. They're careful and professional. This doesn't sound like one of their ops."

  "No, it doesn't," Heyward agreed.

  A troubling thought came to More's mind. How much did they really know about the inner workings of the secretive Monarchonate government? Not much at all. The Sphinx and a small coterie of advisers handled the political-military decision-making of Tartarus. Who knew what the Sphinx might hope to gain from a clash with Halifax?

  "This has gone on long enough, and we've all got work to do," More said. "We'll get to the bottom of this eventually. Our primary task right now is to get Morrigan operational again so we can move her. Either that, or we blow her to atoms."

  Chapter Eleven

  Darien, Tartarus Prime planetary surface

  The Royal Palace in Darien was a vast edifice, with soaring crystalline towers interspersed among large gardens and fountain-filled plazas. It was a city within a city, buzzing with activity as high-ranking officers and low-level functionaries rushed about their business. King Evander I of Tartarus was scarcely seen during the day, preferring to allow his trusted subordinates to carry out his edicts as they saw fit. It had been a beneficial system. Over the course of thirty years the boundaries of the Tartarean Monarchonate had expanded outward, with his fleets and armies taking control first of the world of Tartarus Prime, then the other planets of the Tartarus system, and then several nearby stars. At all times he had been the guiding hand, but had delegated significant responsibilities to others to enact his wishes. Nearly all had gone according to plan, with every year bringing successes, some greater, some lesser. Today, however, he had called an emergency meeting of his senior military advisers. Events outside of the Monarchonate were not going according to plan.

  It was a rare thing for Lieutenant Arjuna Donner to be allowed to attend a meeting in the presence of His Majesty. Ordinarily, he would have been too junior a staff officer to warrant admission to such a lofty council. The current situation was very different. His superior, Grand Admiral Etienne Otis, was on the hot seat, and needed his aide in attendance if the king demanded detailed information concerning the research projects that had been blown open by some unidentified actors. The insignificant Lieutenant Donner would supply that if necessary. Otherwise, he was to remain quiet and inconspicuous.

  He had no desire to be noticed. This was easily the darkest period for the Armada of Tartarus that he could imagine, and he fervently wished to avoid being associated with it. The facts as he had learned them as a military intelligence officer were worse than awful. Just the day before, word had come that the Snow Tiger, a Sunsword class destroyer of the Armada, had made an emergency displacement into the Tartarus system. It was so badly damaged that it had barely held together under the stresses of the unplanned jump. The story that the crewmen told was astonishing and disturbing in equal measure. The Snow Tiger had been struck hard by an unknown warship while transiting in the farthest reaches of the Memnon system, just inside its Oort cloud. The damage was so severe, and the pursuit by the assailant so relentless, that the only path of survival lay in an emergency displacement. All of the Snow Tiger's return fire was ineffectual, the crew reported. After entering hyperspace, the captain, Cornelius Duarte, one of the Armada's leading lights and a hero of the recent war with Ajax, had committed suicide. Papers found afterward in Duarte's safe pointed cryptically to a plot to lay a trap for incoming Halifaxian warships. The means of their destruction would be hundreds of thousands of nuclear mines laid just for them by another Tartarean ship that Snow Tiger was to meet in-system. The encounter with the unidentified ship ended any chance of that happening. But the import of the story of the Snow Tiger's crew was that at least two warships of the Armada had been used in an unsanctioned operation across interstellar boundaries in what could only be deemed, by the political standards that prevailed in the Great Sphere, as an act of war.

  There was utter silence in the meeting chamber. None of the ranking officers wished to speak first. To do so would seem defensive, and make it appear that the speaker thought he might be to blame for the unfolding fiasco. So the king broke the silence himself.

&nb
sp; "Someone must explain to me how an element of my mighty military machine could have done this." He looked at each of the admirals and generals in turn. These were the foremost officers of the Armada of Tartarus and the Grand Army of the Monarchonate. They would have willingly faced death on any battlefield, but now they were too timid to answer.

  "No one?" asked the king, his lips curling in brittle amusement. "I would expect that one of you would have an idea of some sort. I suppose the service academies don't breed talkative types, do they? I will have to drag this out of you." He pointed to one admiral, his uniform festooned with decorations for bravery and other accomplishments. "Admiral Thorpe? What do we know of who was behind this disaster?"

  Grand Admiral Benjamin Thorpe cleared his throat. "Your Majesty, we see it as a rogue operation performed by a dissident faction within the Armada. They are probably getting their funding from a group on one of the other planets, one that we have taken control of but have not completely won over."

  "That could well describe almost every world of my domain," the king said. "But how did they get their hands on two ships and such advanced technology, not to mention so many mines?"

  High General Trent Simpson spoke now. "We think that the sensor tech they used to monitor displacement envelopes came from one of the digs on Kenmore III. We have been researching the artifacts found there for several years. There must have been a transfer of some of the discovered materials and also the research findings to an outside entity."

  "I thought that our security was airtight," said King Evander. "I have been assured that we have the strictest security protocols surrounding such ancient technology. These are said to be the blackest of black programs. Have I been misinformed?"

  "No, not at all, your Majesty," replied Admiral Otis. Otis was in charge of the MMI, Monarchonate Military Intelligence, and this included keeping a watch over black tech programs. Someone in his organization had failed, spectacularly. "When breaches of this kind occur, it can only be because someone on the inside leaked the information. An enemy organization couldn't penetrate something this tight. Tech like this doesn't walk out of a high security facility on its own. It was walked out by someone with regular access. It had to have been one of our own who turned."