New Contract (Perimeter Defense Book #3)

by Michael Atamanov

  "Only an android would be capable of such a thing," Marian Sabati said. "There are thousands of them on Joan the Fatty. We are not conducting adequate surveillance to point the finger at a specific android, though."

  Bionica's face grew dark, but she did not object to the Truth Seeker's statement, as the hacking described was obviously far beyond the abilities of a person and was, in fact, reminiscent of the work of a robot.

  "Popori de Cacha, order your subjects to check surveillance systems and figure out which of our crew members were near a computer terminal when the sabotage took place, or immediately before that. Bionica, you check all of the androids from Joan the Fatty. Florianna and Marian Sabati, I expect you to check all living creatures on this ship without exception. Find me the bastard who did this!"

  Unnamed System

  "Are you sure, Flora?"

  "Yes, Crown Prince Georg. It's been a month and a half, and we have carefully checked everyone who was on Joan the Fatty. None of the forty-three thousand beings here was involved in the sabotage in the Sobj system. Marian Sabati and I have checked all races, even the Arites."

  That meant it must have been an android, though Bionica has already assured me that none of the anthropomorphic robots on Joan the Fatty would have done something like that. I stood up thoughtfully from the table, a mug of my hot morning beverage in hand, and walked up closer to the tinted panoramic window. Once upon a time, when my flagship was still under construction, I had insisted that my entertainment room have real glass installed in it, instead of a mere screen broadcasting an image from an external video camera. It was true that any gap in the chassis would lower the strength of the starship, but not even the most perfect screen could replace the experience of actually seeing space... Or could it?

  I involuntarily spun the ring on my finger. The same one I had looked deeply into on my very first day in Perimeter Defense, trying to see the pixels. I hadn't been able to see any then, and I still couldn’t now, though I could easily make out the individual points on computer monitors here. Was this ring evidence that what was happening was real? Or perhaps, in the game, the resolution on data panels was intentionally limited so that a human player would perceive it as a screen. In order not to scramble my brains in thinking over the nature of Perimeter Defense, I cast these thoughts aside. Just as Miya had said: " There is no difference whatsoever between a real and virtual world if you live in it, enjoy it and perceive it as reality." I suppose I had already started to agree with my wife on that count.

  Through the thick armored glass with anti-radiation coating, a view opened up to the blue-silver planet D56KT-V. Even from orbit, you could see sparks on the planet’s surface and smoke plumes rising up from a great many fires. For the second day in a row, the battleships and heavy cruisers in my fleet were conducting bombardment of Alien positions, helping the Alpha-Iseyek terrestrial troops along. The invasion was underway on all fronts, and this was the fourteenth planet in Alien space we were attacking. And though none of the systems we'd been to, even in Swarm space, had been fully cleared of the Alien presence, my fleet was sinking its teeth deeper and deeper into Alien space, destroying ships and enemy infrastructure as we went.

  Flora came closer and stopped her flying chair a step from me. One of the Beta Iseyek serving the paralyzed girl extended her a paper cup of juice, and she took it in her hand. The Truth Seeker's fingers trembled and falteringly interlocked around the paper cup. Her hand, grasping the object, began to slowly rise. I helped her a bit, as she was trembling quite a lot, spilling the orange drink all around.

  "Please don't. I can do it myself."

  The paralyzed girl raised the cup to her lips and opened her mouth with noticeable strain. She took two tiny sips, then her lifeless arm fell down, letting the paper cup fall with it, and emptying the juice out on the floor. In the paralyzed girl's eyes, I could read clear celebration, and I shared that feeling wholeheartedly.

  "You're learning to control your body better and better, Flora. A year ago, we couldn't even have dreamed of this."

  "Thank you, Prince. Marian Sabati is performing real miracles, trying to get me back on my feet. She is pouring oceans of energy into me, growing new cells and restoring my damaged tissues. I am very thankful to her, though her power seriously scares me. A Truth Seeker who lost her master shouldn't have such powers, even considering all the Beta Iseyek sharing energy with her on board the starship. After all, Marian Sabati has patients other than just me. There's also Ayna, for example. I do not understand what is going on. Something is clearly not coming together here."

  "I am reminded of the meeting with the Swarm Queen when Marian Sabati declared that she was extremely weak and so wouldn't be able to fight in the ritual duel. Only two months ago, she truly wasn't in shape."

  "Crown Prince Georg, was there anyone around then to check the veracity of her words?"

  "Am I understanding correctly? Are you saying you are not strong enough to check Marian Sabati?"

  "Yes, Crown Prince. Marian Sabati is many times stronger than me, so her thoughts and desires are totally hidden from me. The only thing I can say with any certainty is that I do not sense an immediate danger from her to myself or your Majesty."

  And in fact, the story of the runaway Truth Seeker turned out to be quite fraught with potential issues. We only knew about Marian Sabati's condition through her own words. Where, then, did Marian Sabati get so much power now, if after the death of her long-time master, Duke Avalle, she was supposed to have gotten much, much weaker?

  A beep came in over an internal channel, interrupting my thinking. It was Clay ton Avelle, captain of Joan the Fatty. I gave my permission to put him through.

  "Crown Prince Georg, you asked me to immediately inform you of any movements of large Alien ships."

  "Has the Alien Queen left Himora?" I guessed, worried. But the captain shook his head "no."

  "I’m afraid, it's something else entirely. The gravimetric scanners from Joan the Fatty have detected a massive object near the uninhabitable second planet in the D56KT system, though our visual detection methods come up with nothing there. As such, I sent a corvette to study the strange anomaly. My Prince, I suggest very strongly that you come to headquarters to see IT with your own eyes."

  It should be said that the captain succeeded at getting my attention. Taking quick steps, though still short of running in order to maintain my princely dignity, I set off for fleet headquarters. Despite the early hour on the internal ship clock, it was quite crowded. The night crew had already finished their shift, but was in no rush to leave the room. Many people were crowding around one of the screens, discussing animatedly. When I showed up, all conversations grew quiet, the officers made way for me to the monitor, and stood at attention.

  Valian ton Corsa took a step forward, saluted, and reported:

  "Your Majesty, this is a direct transmission from the corvette Cannibal-71. The quality of the picture isn't as high as it could be, and is often broken, but you can figure out what's going on."

  "Everyone, as you were. Give me the chair." I sat in front of the screen, trying to understand what I was seeing.

  There was some kind of colorful flickering with stripes running throughout... And suddenly the picture became clear, depicting a red-hot planet with oceans of boiling magma shot from low orbit. It then all abruptly shifted to the side and disappeared from the screen; the corvette made a turn. Then there was static, flickering, and stripes again until... The ship fell into a huge closed space.

  Inside, there were thousands of robotic arms shifting and undulating. Moving on special rails, magnetic crane arms were transporting all kinds of mobile constructions. I saw piles of huge armor plates, each larger than the corvette filming them. In the distance, arc welders could be seen. The picture shifted. The body of a titanic ship came into the scene. It had gaping holes where armor plates and modules that had yet to be built would go. It took me fifteen seconds to recognize the unusually shaped starship in such
an early stage of construction.

  "A Mammoth?!" I turned to the officers behind my back in surprise.

  Captain Clay ton Avelle, his face having dissolved into an ear-to-ear smile, confirmed:

  "Yes, your Majesty! It is a huge Mammoth inside an even more gigantic dock. And, what's more, none of it is visible from outside. There's a complex masking system at work here that distorts electromagnetic fields and even partially warps space. The Cannibal has already measured the size of the construction. It is a spherical ellipsoid, approximately nine miles in length, and four miles in diameter at its widest point. The internal volume of the orbital construction is around fifty cubic miles, and our scanners haven't detected any living creatures inside. It all appears to be fully automated. Now we are trying to evaluate if there are enough parts and materials at the docks to finish building the ship, and also to make an at least approximate evaluation of how long it will take to finish."

  I tried to digest all the new information and imagine the most obvious consequences of such an important discovery. The Mammoth itself wouldn’t be ready for a while, so my fleet wasn’t going to wait around here for it. That said, there would be plenty of people wanting to get their hands on the Alien ship, beginning with the Emperor and various civil servants from the Imperial Joint Chiefs, and ending with the Heads of the Great Houses, the Swarm Queen and her admirals. The discovery, in its present state, was nothing more to me than a huge headache. And it should be said that my head actually did start to hurt, and not just figuratively. I frowned and rubbed my temples. Bionica, standing next to me, walked up silently, and began massaging the active points of my skull, reducing the pain.

  "So, we've found the dock. Our first mission isn't even so much figuring out how long until the Mammoth is finished, as it is keeping this thing a secret. The Mammoth all on its own is an extremely powerful combat unit and, what's more, is capable of transporting quite a large fleet between star systems. Having such a ship could totally change the balance of forces in the region and far too many, even those we consider loyal allies, would stop at nothing to keep the valuable ship all to themselves. So, we need to limit the circle of insiders as much as possible, and collect nondisclosure agreements from the whole crew of Cannibal-71. Florianna can make sure they’ll be upheld."

  Everyone around went silent, recognizing the importance of the discovery and the complexity of the situation. In that silence, the communications officer's voice rang out especially sharply:

  "Crown Prince Georg, we've received an urgent message from our cloaked frigates in Himora. The Alien Queen has left the system with her entire fleet. There were no active warp beacons visible from there, so we do not know the direction she was headed in."

  With a smirk, I turned to those gathered:

  "So you see, even the Alien Queen thinks this is a watershed moment. Until now, we've destroyed Alien ships, landed troops on planets, and brought down communications centers and orbital constructions, but only now have we found the thing the Aliens truly considered important and were prepared to defend. Tell all our allies: in a few days, there will be a major battle against the Aliens in this system, which doesn't even have a normal name, and is called only by alphanumeric code: D56KT. For the first time, we will not retreat before their overwhelming forces, but instead stay for a decisive battle with the Queen. We have time to prepare, so let's spend it as usefully as possible."

  * * *

  "How much time do we have left until the Queen arrives?" My cousin, wearing a light silver space-suit, was lounging lazily in a chair. Her helmet was sitting next to her.

  In the seat next to that, exactly copying Katerina royl Unatari's pose and behavior, Bionica was sitting in an identical silver space-suit. The android couldn't have been tired from such a small excursion to the second planet, but I could barely hold back a smile from how authentic my synthetic assistant's imitation of tiredness was.

  Ten minutes earlier, they had returned with a division of scouts from the docks we'd discovered and were in an overstimulated state. According to Katerina, the colossal automatic complex boggled the imagination. It appeared to be a never-ending hangar, in which thousands of robotic arms were constantly moving, and hundreds of freight drones were scurrying about. And inside all that buzzing commotion, was the huge skeleton of a starship.

  "I believe we have six or seven days. That is precisely how long it takes to get from Himora to D56KT by normal warp beacons. And though the Alien Queen followed an alternative path, I do not think it will take more time than the transportation network we do know about."

  "Six days is too little. I mean, Bionica suggested dragging this huge dock in its entirety to Unatari space, but we would need a few dozen tugs to transport it. We would also need time to do a huge number of preparatory tasks and complex synchronization calculations to make sure the whole construction doesn't fall apart during warp jumps."

  "How much time is needed to bring the docks to Fia or another Unatari State system?" I wondered, and Bionica obligingly brought up her calculations on the nearest screen, explaining them.

  The upshot was that we needed no less than ninety heavy freighters to transport the docks without disassembling them, and two months to attach the huge assembly, calibrate our thrusters and actually transport the thing. I stroked the bridge of my nose in contemplation.

  "As for ships, let's say I find them. It would be much harder to guarantee secrecy though. Hiring that many heavy transport ships in the Empire or Swarm wouldn't go unnoticed, and any analyst would start to think about why such a strange contract was drawn up. It would also be hard to keep the thousands of civilians from the tug crews quiet, even using some fairly radical methods..."

  Ayna walked up with three sets of tableware. We waited for the girl to set the table, and continued our confidential conversation.

  "Cousin, there is one issue still tormenting me. That dock was found only by coincidence. Joan the Fatty, with its sensitive scanning systems, was next to it for a long time, and it wasn't until the second day that we noticed any anomaly in our instruments' feedback. How many such objects did we miss in previous Alien systems?!"

  I froze with a spoon full of soup half way to my mouth, greatly alarmed by my cousin’s deduction. I mean, it really was possible that there were dozens of such hidden complexes, and maybe even hundreds. Now I would have to undertake a much more thorough scan of all the systems we'd already captured. I said my thought out loud, but Bionica calmed me immediately:

  "There couldn't be too many of these docks. One, two at most. The main problem in building superheavy ships isn't docks, it's the tantalum concentrate it takes to build the ships. Today, when visiting the docks, I tried to calculate the amount of material needed to build one Mammoth. It would take millions of tons of tantalum concentrate. Tens of millions, in fact. The Aliens use similar materials for the armor plates on their ships. The demands for starship body material, having to withstand warp tunnel jumps, are just too specific, so there's nothing surprising in the fact that all different races have scientifically determined similar solutions to this universal technical problem. In the Aysar Cluster, there aren't any traces left of the Alien armada we blew up; they collected everything very carefully for meltdown. And also, here in Alien space, the tantalum armor plates have been removed from every space battle site. The Aliens would have to have destroyed thousands of enemy ships to scrape together the material to build just one Mammoth!"

  I started thinking on my cousin's words and laughed:

  "Now I understand why the Aliens are so interested in the Iseyek, and also why the Aliens moved through Swarm space so unhurriedly. The Iseyek, having been soundly decimated in the first few battles, were afraid of the military might of the enemy and began building giant ships to evacuate billions of eggs to a safe location in all their systems. This must have actually made the Aliens quite glad. Seeing this, they must have decided to simply allow the insects time to gather the ore in one place. Every unfinished Iseyek ship
could be used by the Aliens to make new Behemoths and Sledgehammers."

  Katerina agreed with me.

  "It was good that you ended this by bringing Nai Igir to power then. It was apparently not very beneficial to the Iseyek. As far as I heard, the Swarm Queen ordered the transport ship construction halted everywhere except in the Dekeye capital system."

  "Yes, that is true, cousin. How do you think the Swarm built so many combat ships in the last year? Meanwhile, the ship in the Dekeye system is already ready. I was told that not long ago by Advisor Triasss Zess. The insects finally finished the evacuation ship, and even loaded it with billions of eggs, but have yet to launch it."

  "What are they waiting for?" Bionica asked in surprise. "They spent so long building it, they rushed to finish, throwing all their resources into the project..."

  I obligingly explained to my assistant:

  "First of all, they are waiting for Nai Igir to lay her clutch in order to also save Iseyek Prime eggs. Second, the situation has changed: we came with an offer to begin a combined counterattack, and the Iseyek now have a glimmer of hope that the evacuation of eggs might not even be necessary."

  We spoke a bit about the docks, ores and unfinished Mammoth, then Bionica changed the topic:

  "Crown Prince Georg, with the Alien Queen's departure from Himora, isn't it a good idea to send Unatari landing ships there to capture the station and take control of the system?"

  "It is, of course. But every Alien station assault leads to thousands of victims and we have a very severe problem with manpower, especially in that region. Our allies, the Iseyek, have a different problem: there aren't enough landing ships. All eleven Trias are now dashing about the galaxy, supporting terrestrial operations in twenty-three star systems with fresh forces. That is why I suggest we give the honor of liberating Himora to a certain comely commander in our enemy's ranks."