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

by Marc DeSantis

  The naval crew shuffled to stand directly behind the marines toward the front of the landing bay.

  "This weapon does produce a significant backblast," Jenkins told them. "You might not want to stand right behind it."

  The eleven crewmen looked at one another, and then sought the safety of the most distant corner of the bay.

  "I could have hacked my way through with an axe by now," Corporal Wilkes noted sourly. "These Navy types get more stupid with each passing year."

  "And they think that we're the dopey ones," wondered Private Brand.

  "The Navy takes all kinds," Cone noted. "Luckily, they have us to keep them safe."

  "Bear in mind, Jenkins said, "we still need them to be our ride. For that reason alone, they're worth saving." The marine lieutenant motioned to Cass. "Send it."

  Cass raised his RLG-9 to his shoulder. It was a small but powerful weapon system. Man-portable, it was self-contained, pre-loaded, single-shot, fire-and-forget, and disposable. The rocket's guidance was multispectral, as were all Halifaxian-manufactured missiles, capable of targeting and tracking a target across a wide band of the electromagnetic spectrum. Once launched it would pursue its target until impact. It was meant to defeat the meter-thick armor of maneuvering heavy gravtanks. An immobile door was no challenge.

  The rocket streaked across the bay with a whoosh, striking the door squarely in the center. There was a bright flash, and the landing bay echoed resoundingly with the noise of the explosion. Left behind, once the smoked cleared, was a glowing hole about one centimeter in diameter. Cass strode up to the door. I can see light at the other end," he announced proudly. "I can feel a draft too. Air is getting through."

  "Then let's get started cutting a larger means of egress," Jenkins said. "Brand and Sung, get going. Tikhonov - let them handle this alone. I don't want you rupturing any of the connections of your fancy new bionics." Tikhonov had been given a replacement bionic arm after losing his flesh-and-blood left one in combat with the Tartareans when they had first boarded Morrigan weeks ago. Chief Medical Officer Venn had cleared him for combat duty, but Jenkins never trusted flesh bonded to metal until a year had gone by and he had seen it not fall off.

  Brand and Sung busied themselves cutting through the thick titanium of the blast door. The going was slower than expected. The Second Empire's naval architects had been able to include better alloys laced with exotic synfiber bundles that were more heat resistant than ordinary stuff in use today. The plasma cutters still did the trick, but they took longer than usual. When the last of the trapped crewmen had been freed, Jenkins called all the Navy personnel together. Three shuttles had arrived in the meantime. Captain More wanted them all off Morrigan immediately. Jenkins job was to get these coddled Navy people off of their bottoms, into the shuttles that Steadfast, Kongo, and Cormorant had sent over, and back to their ships. How they groaned when Jenkins broke the news! Working on Morrigan had been their dream assignment, like being given the run of a candy store where the sweets were ancient pieces of technology. Jenkins couldn't blame them for not wanting to leave. He could blame them for being Navy dweebs.

  "I understand that this is not welcome news for you," Jenkins said. "It's pretty apparent though that Morrigan is trying to kill you. The electrical surges, the atmospheric evacuations, the plasma ventings that have already killed two of your people. This ship is haunted and is trying to off you. Let's not make the job any easier for her. Now get to your shuttles."

  There was a lieutenant in the back of the group. He had a superior air. He was one of the science officers on Cormorant, Jenkins knew. Jason Augerac was the name. His specialty was astrocartography. He began to plead with the other crew. "We can't leave! This is the find of a lifetime! It is priceless antiquakraft! Who knows what's left on the ship that could revolutionize all life back on Halifax?"

  "Captain More's orders. Time to return." Jenkins considered telling them all that he had also come to prepare the ship for self-destruction by overloading the auxiliary reactors that made life support and artificial gravity on Morrigan possible. Initially, he thought it might scare the crap out of them. Then he worried that he might have a sitdown strike on his hands if the crewmen refused to leave. Would they stay thinking that the captain would refuse to obliterate Morrigan if they were still aboard her?

  "Captain More is the commander of this expeditionary force," Jenkins reminded them. "There will be court-martial proceedings for any and all of you if you do not get aboard one of those shuttles. Have I made myself clear?"

  "You can't give orders to us," Augerac complained. "You are a lieutenant; so am I. You don't outrank us all. We don't have to obey you."

  This Augerac was such an idiot! "What part of 'court-martial' don't you comprehend?" Jenkins roared. "What part of 'the Morrigan is trying to kill you' doesn't compute?" It felt good to let his anger out once and a while.

  "The ship is old and malfunctioning. Morrigan is not trying to kill us," Augerac insisted. "I've never heard her talk. Has anyone else?" He looked to the other crewmen for support and received little that Jenkins could detect.

  Then came the voice. There was nothing unpleasant about it. Nevertheless, it made Jenkins' skin crawl to hear it.

  "On the contrary, Jason." It could only be Morrigan. She sounded tired and sleepy. "You infest my ship. I most certainly am trying to kill you all."

  There was complete silence as the Halifaxians froze, with most of them hearing the voice of Morrigan for the first time. Morrigan sounded as if she were in some pain. She also sounded very angry. Jenkins wondered if she was going to open the bay doors, and eject them out into the cold of space. If he had to die, he would prefer that it be in combat, not that he be murdered by a malfunctioning shipbrain. He threw on his helmet and immediately vacc-sealed his power armor. His marines did the same. The landing bay lift opened at that moment. Julius Howell, that dimwit Chandler, and Anastasia Venn emerged with several other officers and enlisted personnel collected from other parts of the ship.

  Howell looked at the stunned faces of the crew in the landing bay. "We received the evacuation order," he said. "What did we miss?"

  Chapter Nineteen

  RHS Steadfast, Memnon system

  More mentally reviewed what he knew of the Royal Memnonian Navy. Founded in 68,456 by King Alfred III out of a collection of lesser planetary and lunar navies in the Memnon system. Composed mainly of obsolescent warships armed with weapons and drive systems between one and three generations out of date. Concerned almost exclusively with system defense, the RMN maintained no permanent deployments outside of Memnonian space, though it did contribute ships on occasion to task forces formed by other powers in the Great Sphere to root out pirates and other threats to interstellar commerce.

  Professionally, the RMN was considered to be a fundamentally competent if unexceptional navy, capable of defending its own space against all but the major powers of the Sphere. In high intensity warfare, its ships worked best as adjuncts to more advanced navies. The RHN had maintained good relations with the RMN for centuries, and Memnon had benefited from Halifax's superior resources as well as preferential trade deals with her larger trading partner.

  Relations had begun to sour a generation ago when Halifax's central government had grown increasingly unhappy with Memnon's refusal to do away with serfdom in its system. Most Memnonians were free, and the serfs were not slaves in the same way that Ajax's bondsmen were, but they nonetheless suffered under several legal disabilities. Halifax's parliament had passed several measures, including trade sanctions, to compel Memnon to end serfdom. The current king, Maurice IX, had been insulted by what he saw as interference in the internal affairs of his kingdom, and relations between Memnon and Halifax had cooled considerably.

  Initially, the RHN had not worried itself about the diplomatic chill, as relations between the two navies had remained as strong as ever. The Republic had been the main arms supplier of the RMN since its inception, and Halifaxian instructors were ub
iquitous on Memnonian naval bases. Then Halifaxian intelligence reported that Maurice had signed a handful of arms deals with Tartarus, and the RHN began to grow worried. Though the total value of the weapons contracts was small compared to the flow of weapons from Halifax to Memnon, they indicated a new direction for Memnon's foreign policy, which, when it came right down to it, was anything that King Maurice said it was.

  Situated about halfway between Tartarus and the systems of the Republic, Memnon sat on the shortest route between the two largest economies in the Great Sphere. Tiryns, its capital planet, was a favored stopover for merchant ships plying the space lanes between Halifax proper and Tartarus. Memnon's wines were extremely popular, and had found favor with both the wealthy of Halifax as well as with the Tartarean elite. Other Memnonian agricultural exports, such as coffee and sugar, had secured sizable shares in a number of markets. Memnon was not a sleepy backwater, even if its social system was predicated in substantial part on the use of unfree labor.

  Once Halifax had made its distaste for Memnon's serfdom known, Memnon slowly pulled away from Halifax, finding a partner in Tartarus that was willing to overlook such a defect. The Sphinx had made his own dislike of serfdom and slavery known widely, having abolished it on all worlds now incorporated into the Monarchonate. Memnon's strategic position between Tartarus and Halifax had caused him to overlook its unpleasant labor practices.

  More could not do more than note the Sphinx's hypocrisy. There was no reason to feel superior. Halifax had courted and allied itself with plenty of awful dictators over the centuries in the interest of its security. Often a local strongman was the better or only choice between order and anarchy on its frontiers. Halifax's greatest interest was in preserving democracy in its own systems, not in encouraging it in others.

  Memnon's fleet consisted of two older battleships, the Royal Alfred and the Scepter. He pulled up their schematics from the Steadfast's database. Both were armed with heavy guns, with an emphasis on firepower over speed. Each outweighed the Steadfast but because of the Halifaxian heavy cruiser's superior technology and speed, in a one-on-one fight the odds would be even.

  Unfortunately, this would not be a one-on-one fight. More expected that both the Royal Alfred and the Scepter would join forces to take on Steadfast, the largest warship in the Halifaxian squadron. They would be supported by dozens of destroyers and system defense gunboats. The destroyers were of various types, some representing outdated Halifaxian classes, such as the Lambert and Ariadne, which were fine ships in their day, while several were of local Memnonian construction, such as the Anvil and Halberd classes. Solid ships, they were not the equals of any in More's flotilla, but they did not have to be since, all told, they outnumbered his destroyers by a huge margin. The rest of the Memnonian fleet was composed of SDG's, system defense gunboats. These were typically smallish but potent ships equipped with limited DP drives with just enough range to allow rapid intra-system travel though not enough to make an interstellar jump. The space saved on the drive was given over to more weapons, better armor, and more powerful maneuver drives. SDG's were popular with navies such as Memnon that had less interest in fighting wars far from home, since they were cheaper and more effective, ton for ton, than an interstellar-capable craft of equivalent tonnage. Memnon's SDG's were each about as powerful as a destroyer of similar technological advancement.

  When it came to fighter-carrying vessels, the RMN preferred light carriers, since they were easier to operate and maintain than larger fleet carriers. Like those of the RHN, they embarked only three squadrons of fighters, just thirty-six machines, plus a few ancillary craft. Scans showed that Memnon had deployed all three of its carriers, the Royal Timothy, the Crown, and the Harold IV, to this operation.

  "Amy, how long until the Memnonians are in range," he asked the Steadfast's ship brain.

  "Estimated time to weapons' range is one hour, ten minutes," Amy responded.

  "Have they launched their fighters yet?"

  "Negative, captain. Scans show only warship-size targets inbound, engaged in high-g deceleration."

  More had to give the Memnonians their due. They had managed to make simultaneous displacement exits in four different locations in the system, surrounding the Halifaxian ships with just a couple of hours travel time between them and More's squadron. It was an impressive feat of hyperjumping. More recalled what his instructors at Cold Bay had told him about hyperspace, that it was a dimension in which the verities of standard, three-dimensional space went AWOL. Transitioning to hyperspace made FTL travel possible. There would be no regular interstellar travel without it. Displacement operated by its own rules from those found in ordinary space. A displacing ship neither gained nor lost its initial standardspace velocity. When it exited displacement, it did so at the same speed it had before it entered days, weeks, or months before. Time spent in displacement did not matter at all. So the Memnonians had built up speed, a hard thing to do in standardspace where the physical laws of the ancient scientist Newton held sway. Energy was not a problem for most ships. Fusion reactors produced plenty of that. But reaction mass still had to be expended backward to propel a ship forward. That meant that ships either had to build up speed before DP entry, if its captain wanted to exit at a high speed in standardspace, or lose speed before displacing, if the captain did not want to risk overshooting the target once it left hyperspace. Standardspace acceleration and deceleration took time, since they obeyed Newtonian physics, and not the bizarre rules that applied in the higher dimension of hyperspace.

  "Have they hailed us yet, Amy."

  "No captain. The incoming flotillas have been silent."

  "What's the estimated time before Commander Imagawa's flight reaches our outbound fighters?"

  "Approximately one hour, captain."

  More had ordered the remainder of Steadfast's squadron of F243's, the Golden Sabers, to go to the rescue of Imagawa and her wingman, Tom Percy. Fleet space defense would be handled by Adonis' onboard squadrons. The ten Sabers had launched without hesitation, knowing that they were going into battle against a numerically-superior enemy, and that their captain, if he had to, might displace out-system to save his ships, leaving them stranded. It was a risk they had been willing to take.

  Aboard Morrigan

  Howell blinked. "Okay, so I have missed quite a bit."

  "You've been having conversations with Morrigan?" Jenkins asked, incredulous. "Just when were you going to inform us?"

  "He already did tell Captain More," Chandler said. "You must have been in transit when we sent the message."

  "And we've been kind of busy since," Howell added. "Just getting here was huge trouble."

  "I'm glad that you made it in one piece. It seems that Morrigan is not exactly friendly and has homicidal intentions toward us," Jenkins said.

  Sergeant Cone nodded. "It's not a good start when the first words you hear from some - thing - are a declaration of an intent to kill."

  "Yes, it seems that Morrigan views us a rodents and is trying to find a way to exterminate us," Chandler said.

  "I'm relieved then," said Jenkins. "At least we now know it's nothing personal." He paused, and pointed to the waiting shuttles. "I suggest you get aboard them right away," Jenkins said. "They'll take you back to your ships."

  "What about you?" Howell inquired, looking at the marines' assault boat.

  "We've got some business to attend to," Jenkins replied. "And not much time."

  Anastasia Venn came forward to stand in front of Jenkins. "Morrigan is sick," she said. "I can sense it in her voice."

  "What do you mean 'sick'?" Jenkins demanded. "It's a shipbrain, if a trifle murderous."

  Venn shook her head. "I don't think Morrigan is like any shipbrain we're used to. She's genuinely intelligent, she has real emotions. Not like Amy on Steadfast. Morrigan's hurting too."

  "She wants to hurt us!" Cone interjected. "She just evacuated the atmosphere from the next landing bay over."

  "Something dre
adful happened to her, I can feel it," Venn said. "It made her hide away for thousands of years."

  Jenkins nodded. "I still have my mission, lieutenant commander. I'll take what you say under advisement. My team and I have to be going. So, if you don't mind, onto your shuttles and take off. Now."

  Howell, Chandler, Venn, and all of the crew from Steadfast boarded their waiting shuttle while those from Kongo and Cormorant got on theirs. Warning lights began to flash and klaxons sounded as the outer bay doors opened, revealing a shimmering forcefield holding in the atmosphere in the landing bay. "It's a wonder," Chandler said admiringly, "that after millennia, this should all work so perfectly."

  "I hope the captain doesn't destroy her," Venn said. "Morrigan has been damaged in battle, but she can be saved."

  "I don't know if he will have a choice," Howell said. "Memnon's on the way, and that may force his hand."

  Chandler sighed. "What a waste." He signaled to the shuttle pilot. "Let's go."

  The Steadfast's shuttle rose from the deck and began to move on gravitic repulsors toward the shimmering screen separating the bay from the void. It was halfway to the opening when the outer doors began to slide shut. The pilot, with nowhere to go, set the shuttle down. "Who ordered the doors closed?" No answer. "I repeat, who closed the doors? Lieutenant Jenkins, was that you?"

  "Not me," Jenkins said. "We can't get out of the bay either."

  There was a moment of puzzled confusion. Venn asked "Then who . . . ?" The question died on her lips.

  "You are not going anywhere," said Morrigan.

  End Part Two of Four