by J G Clements
Jake watched with grim amusement as the Swarmers never gave up. At any given second, there were at least one and usually two ships actively firing on the Sisk. Occasionally several ships seemed to try to hit the same part of the Sisk’s hull, ostensibly to increase the damage they did. When not firing they…Swarmed. Moved or jinked in all directions in an effort to try to evade the Sisk’s beam weapons. But they never retreated. Though this was by far the largest group of Swarmers Jake had encountered, their tactics were the same.
Jim was playing back on his console the last few minutes of the fight. He was hunched over and Jake couldn’t see what part of the data he was examining. Finishing whatever he was looking at, he sat upright and stared off into space for a second. Turning to face the Captain, it was then that Jim made the most outlandish demand of the day. “Captain, I would suggest we launch the one-man fighters and try to destroy all the remaining Swarm in less than fifteen minutes. After that time, I’m expecting a much larger Swarm force to jump in and engage us.”
Jake seemed to freeze as he mulled this over, then without taking his eyes off of Jim, pressed the comm button on his right armrest. “All one man fighters…launch and engage.” Satisfied, he took his eyes off of Jim and watched the 3D display. Within seconds, the fighters were engaged with the Swarm and their ships began to vanish at a much higher rate. Not unusually, the Swarmers only attacked the Sisk, and didn’t engage or return fire on the one-man fighters. A tactic that cost them dearly.
With the added fire-power of the fighters, the Swarmers were completely eliminated in under 10 minutes. As the last enemy trace on the display went out, Jake turned to Damage Control.
The Damage Control station was actually Life Support. “No Casualties. Two fighters out of fuel and need retrieval.” Jake glanced at the Chief who nodded that skiffs were on the way. “Heavy damage to all external sensors. Forward Hull temperature now almost six degrees above background.” Jake did some mental calculations and tried to figure out how much energy the Sisk absorbed to raise its temperature by that much. He kept losing the decimal place in his head but continue to come up with a large number.
Jim, at his console, seemed removed from what was happening around him. Then, so calmly that someone who didn’t know him would think he was kidding, he turned around to face the Captain again. “Sir, as soon as we retrieve our fighters, I’d suggest we jump. I expect us to be attacked within the next ten minutes by a larger force than the one we just defeated.”
If anyone else had said that, Jake would have asked for an explanation. Instead, after no more than a seconds hesitation, Jake had his thumb on the comm. “Emergency jump imminent. All EVA personnel back to the ship. Safety protocols are suspended. I repeat, safety protocols are suspended.” Letting that sink in, he brushed his gaze over Jim, and focused on the Communications Officer. “The second we have all the pilots I want to know.”
The emergency jump transmission got all the away-pilots’ attention. When they heard the safety protocols were suspended, they really got it. Fighters came in too close together. As they bumped each other they were damaged. Not enough to injure the pilots, but it was like a fifty-car pileup on the interstate. But by now, their only mission was to get themselves aboard and not worry about their fightercraft.
Two skiffs had been dispatched to tow in the out-of-fuel fighters, but that changed too. Instead, the pilots ejected and were caught by the skiffs who then high-tailed it back to the Sisk. Coming in hot, they suffered damage as well but the result was that all away personnel were aboard within five or six minutes after the announcement.
The Communications Officer was covering his butt. “First count is complete and all are present.” Normally, there is a more complex method to verify that everyone is safely back aboard and the Officer wanted Jake to know that they hadn’t had the time to complete it.
Jake looked at tactical. “Any of our ships still out there?”
“Yes sir. I see two, and can personally vouch for their pilots having ejected and been retrieved.”
“Good enough for me”. Then with a glance to Jim, “Jump, or Mini-jump?”
“If you want to watch what I think is about to happen, sir, I suggest a mini-jump. But after that, don’t hang around.”
“Unplug”, and after waiting for a few seconds. “Mini-jump”.
Jim spoke up again. “Could I suggest a second mini-jump, sir? I think it would be safer to be a bit further away, and to expose our cold side toward them.”
With no debate, Jake barked orders and oriented the ship to put the coldest part of the hull toward the origin spot, then made the second jump. He, along with everyone else on the ship, watched the large tactical display that was focused on the spatial coordinates of the battle. Jim left his console and returned to his usual chair behind the Captain’s. Ostensibly, to get a better view of the tactical display. He had no sooner sat down than the display went wild.
Almost no one gets to see a ship arrive from a jump. It’s too hard to know where to look. But even with the degraded sensor arrays the Sisk now had deployed, it was trained on the right part of the sky. And so they saw the ships arrive. More Swarm ships than they had ever seen at one place. Though Jake was as slack-jawed as his crew, he knew what to say.
“Tactical. Apprise the number and type of ships”
The Tactical Officer resisted a look back at his Captain, whatever comment he wanted to make left unsaid, and instead, focused on a verbal report. Fortunately, all the weapon stations were sending him their data so he could try to compose something coherent.
“We count over two thousand Swarmers and that number is rising. Hauler class seems to be at a ratio of fifty to one to Swarmers.” He paused for a second to see if the weapons guys saw what he was seeing. “We see two new classes of ships. We categorize them as Dreadnought”…
Jake interrupted him. “Classify it as Destroyer class. We use Dreadnought class in our fleet.”
“Aye sir. We now classify Destroyer class. Estimate mass to be one hundred times Hauler Class.” That brought a few low whistles from the rest of Bridge crew. “We classify an additional class, estimated ten times larger than destroyer class.” Instead of offering a name, something that was in his purview to do, he waited. Did the Captain want to override his suggestion on what to name it?
“Please identify it by any class not in use on our fleets”. Jake didn’t want to take his glory away, he just wanted to avoid any confusion between Swarmer nomenclature and his.
The Tactical Officer understood this, and read some of the suggestions that the weapons crews were sending to him before he named it. “We classify this as Behemoth class”. He never told anyone, but he liked what the forward port gunner had suggested. Death Star Class. Yeah, it was that big. Keeping his commentary going. “We count minimum of thirty Destroyer class ships. We see four Behemoth class ships.”
Jake sat and contemplated what he was seeing. Clearly, the largest assemblage of Swarm ships ever. And two new classes that were much larger than anything they had encountered before. If they hadn’t jumped when they did, the Sisk would have been destroyed. He was about to turn to Jim to ask him how he knew when Jim cut him off.
“Sir, our cold side may still have too large an albedo. With that number of ships, if they are doing organized scanning, they might very well be able to see us. I suggest we leave a data drone and jump.”
Jake was a second behind Jim’s reasoning but saw it too. “Tactics…toss out a drone. Helmsmen. Aim in-system and jump”. Jake was maybe taking a chance here. They wouldn’t jump all that far, and they would become gravity-locked as well. On the other hand, if the Swarm followed them, they’d be gravity locked too, and there were no recorded cases of any of the larger Swarm ships ever becoming gravity-locked. They just didn’t come into a system far enough where their jump technology wouldn’t work. Even better, Jake would still be able to watch them and see how long they would linger with no enemy around.
“Captain”, it w
as Jim. “I’d suggest we jump away, to a different star system instead of jumping deeper in system.” By now, Jake was sold on anything Jim suggested, “Helmsman…jump away. Your choice”
The jump was made, and before Jake could ask, the Helmsmen volunteered the minimum gravity-lock time would be approximately two days…a pretty typical number for most stars. Nodding, Jake turned his attention back to the tactical display. They were replaying both the dog-fight, then the arrival of the Swarmer Fleet.
Though they were now several light minutes from where the Swarm had gathered, the Swarm had been there long enough for light reflecting off them to have reached this point in space. But since the Sisk had just jumped here, it would take that many minutes for any light now being reflected off the Sisk to reach the Swarm. Darn, the Sisk could set off a nuclear detonation and the Swarm wouldn’t know it until the light reached them. By that time, if the Sisk wasn’t gravity-locked, they could be long gone. Jake shook his head thinking about this, then putting the thoughts away for another day, asked his Tactical Officer to continue.
“No new ships in the last few minutes. No organized formation that we can detect. Fusion engines are off, ships are drifting.” He paused, nothing really to report. Then he abruptly continued. “Ships are jumping away. Behemoth and Destroyer class first. Now Beamers, Haulers and Swarmers leaving as groups.” Though everyone could see it on the tactical, him saying it made it more real.
“Leaving as groups? Do you identify any relationship between Hauler and Swarmers?”
“Yes sir. We see approximately fifty Swarmers leaving per Hauler. We’ll need to look at the data to see if it’s just random, or organized.”
From Jim, “It’ll be organized. The Haulers work with the Swarmers.” Seeing the blank looks, he explained. “The Haulers bring the Swarmers, but then they abandon them. The Swarmers can’t jump unless the Hauler returns to retrieve them. So they just fight to the death.” Jake had a million questions but kept his mouth shut.
“Very good”. Standing, Jake made it clear he was about to leave the Bridge. Sue stood by ready to relieve him, but instead Jake announced, “Helmsmen, you have the Bridge.”
“I have the Bridge”.
With that, the look from Jake made it clear that he wanted Sue to go with him. And both their looks made it clear they wanted Jim to come along.
*****
At one level, Jake should be fuming that Jim had behaved the way he did, but the more rational part of his mind also realized that Jim had probably saved his ship. Had they loitered there when over two-thousand ships arrived to attack, the Sisk would have been lost. With every step away from the Bridge he became calmer, and realized he owed Jim his gratitude, not his wrath. As he accepted this, he also realized that Jim had behaved in such a way so as not to have challenged Jake’s authority.
Turning into the mess hall, Jake took his usual table and shooing away the steward, motioned for Sue and Jim to be seated. “How on Earth did you know they were going to be back for a full scale attack?”
“Before I answer, can I get a jump technician to answer a question?” Jake was about to ask Sue to call the jump Chief, when he saw him and a technician at another table, pretending not to listen. Catching their eyes, he motioned them over. Not waiting for any permission from the Captain, Jim got right to his point. “If a beam weapon is streaming energy into our hull, can we jump?”
Neither jump crewmen needed a second to think about this, and it was the Chief who waved the technician to answer. “Or course not. The beam energy prevents the field from forming. We really need about a second or so for the field to form and get the implosion ready. Why?”
“Captain, the Swarmers were not firing at us randomly. They were organized. Unless I messed something up, they managed to continuously have at least one beam weapon, and usually two active against our hull at all times. We couldn’t have jumped if we had wanted to.” The two jump specialists looked at each other, and before they could ask permission to be dismissed, the Captain asked them to look into it and report back as soon as they were sure.
“Assuming what you say is true, then how did you conclude we were going to be attacked enmasse?”
“All attacks on our ships in gravity-lock situation have been by Swarmers. Typically, they are not a real threat to a ship this size. But we have lost ships in deeper space, and I conclude that could only have happened if ships larger than Swarmers, and probably Haulers were involved. That’s speculation on my part, but the alternative is that Swarmers and Haulers can fight better in deep space. No evidence to support that. So I’m left with the conclusion that the Swarm have more lethal ships than we have encountered, but that they only fight in deep space. Ok so far?”
Jake seemed to be following Jim’s logic ok, but Sue was still struggling. “So the larger Swarm ships attack us in deep space. I don’t see how you can connect that to what we saw?”
“Sue, if you were out-gunned in deep space…no gravity lock on you…what would you do?”
“Jump”. Then it hit Sue. “Unless of course if I couldn’t.” Jim’s smile seemed to encourage her to continue. “And since our jump equipment is always redundant, no lucky shot would have prevented a Captain from jumping out.” As these facts really sank into her thought process, she concluded. “Oh crap. So that’s why we lose ships and don’t know why.”
“So I think I have begun to figure out their tactics. Inside gravity-lock, we only seem to be susceptible to attack by Swarmers. But in deep space, it’s possible we can be trapped there until a large force can be summoned. The Swarmers just have to be numerous enough to keep a beam weapon active on our hull until the calvary arrives to finish us off. In all probability, that’s how we lost most of our larger ships through the years.
Jake was seldom at a loss for words. “So what did you see happening?”
“Sir…it was almost like the Swarmers were taking turns hitting us. You could focus on a specific Swarmer, for example, and it didn’t seem to fire for almost twenty seconds. Clearly too long for their beam weapons to re-charge. Instead, I surmised it was holding off, waiting to take its turn. Once I figured that out, I looked at our incoming display, and there wasn’t a single second where a beam wasn’t active. That’s when I figured out they were trying to trap us here.”
Jake nodded, mulling this over. Then giving Sue a penetrating look: “Ok Sue. You’re the commander of the Swarmer Fleet. What is your thinking right now?” It was something Jake had learned years ago: Ask his second-in-command to role-play the command of the enemy, and try to think like them.
Sue was off balance for only a second, then started in. “If my normal tactics are to jump back to destroy the enemy, I expected to find my Swarmers keeping the capital ship pinned down. Instead, I see they were all destroyed and the capital ship had jumped away. I might be a little surprised that he destroyed that number of Swarmers that fast, but otherwise I don’t think I’d see it as anything new or too unusual.”
Both Jim and Jake agreed with Sue, but waited for the point she missed. Sue took another second to think it over, then realized what she missed. “Gosh. They don’t know we mini-jumped away! They probably assumed we did a full jump.” Smiling, she looked at the men for agreement, “They don’t know we can mini-jump yet, do they?”
Jake smiled. “No they don’t. And it’s something I plan to make great use of in the near future.
Ceres Report: I know I can win here. I’ll get the food thing figured out and already have some ideas on how to extract the heavy metals from the soil. Probably some leaching process. But I need to take what victories I can, so I hung up a lot of the reflective mylar, concentrating all the light onto one spot. With no wind, it was easy to do using even the flimsiest supports. And at the center of almost 200 square feet of mylar reflectors is…me. And my chair. It gets enough reflected sunlight that it actually warms me while I’m sitting there. So its a good place to relax, and I think that is one of the colonizing space: Making a place to rela
x..
Chapter 31. Homecoming
The Sisk had remained in gravity lock, though in a high state of alert. If need be, they could be out of gravity lock in two hours and jump. Instead, no Swarmers appeared and after several days, the crew seemed to collectively exhale. All of the battle data had been beamed in-system, then re-transmitted from there to data drones already out of lock. These drones then jumped to their assigned star systems, and in less than a week, all the data was available to anyone who cared to view it. Most non-combat personnel were astonished by the larger Swarm ships the Sisk ran across. Most combat captains were much more interested in seeing how the Swarm cooperated to pin a ship down, preventing it from jumping. It was a grim lesson, and one that needed to be taken into account in any future encounters.
During the several days it took to repair the sensors and fix the one-man fighters, the Sisk received new orders: Stand-down and remain in gravity lock until the Oddjob and the Logan arrived. Though many of the crew seemed surprised at this, everyone was glad for the break. The last four or five months had kept them busy, and the near disaster of a week ago was fresh in everyone’s mind. Jake couldn’t help but comment to Sue, “This is kinda odd. It’s not normal to have us loitering like this. If they wanted us to hook-up with the Oddjob, I’m surprised we aren’t going to them”.
During this time Sue saw how distant Jim had grown, his mind still trying to integrate all his observations and data into some sort of cohesive model. Jack saw it too, but wasn’t as concerned. He seemed very happy working on new tactics that he could use to take the war to the Swarm itself. There was a lot that he didn’t understand about the Swarm, but Jim had taught him enough that he felt he could, along with some help from other ships, probably keep an entire solar system clear of them. Or so he hoped.
From Jim’s viewpoint, the more he uncovered about the Swarm, the more mysteries he was left holding. While everyone else thought they were closing in on how the Swarm operated, it was Jim that thought they had made scant progress. Because of this, he spent most of his time in the observation chair on the Bridge, thinking. Off the Bridge, when he wasn’t reviewing old records of Swarm encounters, he seemed normal. Normal to everyone but Sue. She saw the riddle of the Swarm as something preying on his mind. Like most of the crew, she left him alone, only insisting they relax for a few hours each evening. Watching movies together, Sue refrained from asking him what the movie had been about: He watched it with her, but he wasn’t paying attention.
