Hunting Dog

by Andrew Beery

  Boneyard Dog #3

  Hunting Dog (v1)

  Copyright 2019 by Andrew Beery

  It’s odd the way some things work out. You expect to wake up dead, and instead, you wake up to the beautiful face of your wife. I was confused. I had died… or at least I sure as heck thought I had. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I’ve been alive for a number of years now and to be honest… I’m quite fond of it. I just didn’t understand ‘how’ I was alive.

  My name is Fleet Admiral Jeremy Riker… but my friends call me Dog. This is the rest of my story.

  Chapter 1: Broken Dog

  No matter how you slice it, the last several hours were never going to among my favorites. The last thing I remember was that the Gilboa’s backup bridge was a mess and the pain meds that my Jabesh buddy, Arquat or Arty or whatever, had given me were wearing off. I’m not the type of guy who wants to give up on life and yet… a few hours ago… I essentially committed suicide… or at least I attempted to.

  The idea was a simple one. There was an invasion fleet headed towards Earth. I was out of options. I could let the bad guys reach Earth… or I could blow them up by flying the Gilboa into the middle of their mini-armada and then scuttle my dreadnought.

  Dreadnoughts that lose their containment fields tend to make very big bangs. I’m told it’s quite a sight. Sadly, if everything went according to plan… I was going to be on the wrong side of this one to enjoy the view. Such is life… or death in this case.

  The thing is… when has anything ever gone according to plan in my life?

  There was only a fifty percent chance that the Gilboa would even be able to enter Skip Space for the micro-jump. There was only a fifty percent chance the ship would exit Skip Space when and where I wanted it to… and there was a fifty percent chance that the ship would blow up when it did emerge from Skip Space.

  I know that’s a hundred and fifty percent but as I said… the pain meds were wearing off, and my noggin was not operating on full thrusters.

  As it turned out, the Gilboa exited Skip Space on target and without blowing up. Go figure. The old girl didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘quit.’

  I remember watching my finger move in slow motion to depress the containment override button. I also remember being profoundly sad. The ship had done all that anyone could ever have asked of her… and here I was putting her down. It felt like I was betraying her… the fact that I would be dying with her seemed an empty consolation.

  At first, nothing happened. I wasn’t sure the override was even working. I went to press the button a second time, but before I could, the wall in front of me started glowing red and then flashed to a searing bright white light. At the same time, I felt a static electric charge build up all around me. All the hairs on my arms stood up.

  In these types of situations, my mind tends to go to strange and nefarious places. I was thinking to myself, ‘Self… this must be what the roast chicken feels like when you warm it up in the microwave.’ Did I mention the pain meds were wearing off? Then everything went dark.

  Imagine my surprise when I woke up in sickbay… with my wife Lori’s beautiful face staring down at me. The fact that I had just blown that sickbay up didn’t even occur to me.

  “Hey, gorgeous… you free for a drink later?”

  Lori smiled and nodded to a man behind her. It was her father, Admiral Spratt.

  “He’s flirting with me, so he’s going to be fine,” she said to her father. “At least until I kill him for being a boneheaded, inconsiderate, selfish imbecile!” she growled.

  If I were a betting man… and I am… I’d say she was mad at me. Oh, it’s good to be alive!

  ***

  Eight hours later, after a thorough going-over by the medical staff and some regeneration therapy to deal with my half-mended ribs, I was declared fit enough to take an anti-grav wheelchair to a conference room. The chair was a pretty slick bit of tech. I wouldn’t mind having one to play around with. I had seen something similar, a gurney, on a Defiler cloning world where I had been a ‘guest,’ but I had never seen anything like it in human hands.

  Lori walked beside me as I guided my chair down the corridor. As I traveled through the ship, I have to admit I was impressed. It was as modern as anything I had ever encountered. It looked eerily similar to the interior of the Gilboa but with a number of functional enhancements. The turbolift was twice the size of what I was used to, and all of the wall-mounted control surfaces seemed to be height adjustable. They were little touches, but they added up to a nice improvement.

  Although no one had said as much, I knew I had to be on the Ticonderoga. She had been modeled and designed using the Gilboa as a reference. Unlike the Yorktown which was a renovated pre-contact Earth ship, and the Faqqa which had been a partially completed Galactic Order ship that human and J’ni engineers had simply completed… the Ticonderoga was a built-from-the-keel-up interstellar dreadnaught fabricated by humanity.

  I knew that Earth’s newly constructed orbiting shipyards were working hard on a number of sister ships. What I didn’t know was whether or not Earth would ever get a chance to finish them. Somehow the odds didn’t seem good, but I was going to do my damndest to buck those odds.

  As I guided my wheelchair into the conference room… which, I might add, was located exactly where it would have been on the Gilboa, I was startled by Commander Shelby, who was in the room, yelling loudly, “Admiral on deck!”

  Immediately everyone, all twenty-five or so inhabitants of the room, rose from their seats and stood at attention. It was very impressive. I hated it. Shelby knew I hated it. She also knew that the troops needed it. She was a good Executive Officer. I was going to miss her; now that the Gilboa was gone she would undoubtedly get her own command.

  I looked about the room briefly before saying, “As you were,” with a bit of a wry smile. Shelby winked.

  I spotted Whiskers and to my delight, Commander Sa’Mi. I wasn’t sure the little guy had made it. The last time I had seen the J’ni engineer, he had been on the bridge of the mortally wounded Gilboa. Arty had used some type of Jabesh transporter to evacuate the crew.

  I saw a number of faces I recognized. My father-in-law, Admiral Spratt, and my twin, Rear Admiral “OD” Riker, and a few others. There were a number of other faces… mostly nerdy scientist types that I did not recognize. The one person I had expected to see was Captain Kimbridge, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  Commander Shelby called the room to order.

  I looked over the crowd once more and then cleared my throat.

  “I want to thank all of you for taking time out of your preparations to give me a status briefing. I’ll be honest, I was expecting to see only a handful of people. I’m assuming this means you have a lot to share. Please keep your comments succinct and to the point. I expect I’ll be circling back with most of you over the next few days.

  What I need to know is the status of our defensive preparations. How far out is the Ticonderoga? What the final outcome of our engagement with the Defiler fleet yielded? And finally, what intel, if any, do we have on the main body of the Defiler fleet?”

  I looked around the room one final time. I was somewhat confused. I turned to Shelby.

  “Commander, is there some reason Captain Kimbridge is not here?”

  Shelby looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

  “Sir, he’s on the Ticonderoga.”

  “I understand that. So why isn’t he in this meeting. He’s the ship’s captain is he not?”

  Shelby turned to look at my wife. That was my first clue that something was up.

  “Out with it,” I barked. I was in no mood to be playing around.

  “Sir,” Shelby said with just a hint of concern in her voice. “Where is it yo
u think you are?”

  Now it was my turn to look confused.

  “Unless the United Earth Alliance has two Dreadnaughts, one of which I am unaware of, I’m on the Ticonderoga,” I responded dryly. I wasn’t sure I liked being treated like I was three cards shy of a full deck.

  Admiral Spratt shook his head.

  “Son, you’re not on the Ticonderoga. You’re on the moon.”

  ***

  The next hour and a half left my head hurting. It became painfully obvious, literally, why there were so many boffins and geek-types in the room.

  To give you a little history, shortly before I was injured, a group of J’ni engineers had been kidnapped and compelled to work for a Jabesh artifact with a built-in AI. The AI’s name was Arquat… or Arty because I liked nicknames. This was the same Arquat that had presumably saved my life when the Gilboa had self-destructed. For the better part of a week and a half, they worked to build some type of ancestor device on the dark side of the moon.

  At first glance, it had appeared to be a weapon of some type. I was coming to understand it was much more than that.

  After the J’ni had left the facility, I had had my chief engineer start exploring the massive construction site. What neither I nor the team I had left behind had appreciated, was that the machine that the J’ni had built… was now expanding on its own. Thousands of tiny machines, most no bigger than a basketball swarmed over sections of the underground facility. When they left an area, there would be a new corridor or a series of rooms. Most of these rooms were fully furnished… sheets for beds, plumbing.

  The boffins had done some measurements. It seemed the ancestor bots were building a starship… underground. And here was the thing… if their estimates were correct… it would be the exact size and shape of the ill-fated Gilboa. Given the sections I had seen already, it appeared to be modeled roughly after her on the inside as well. It seemed whatever they were building… they were roughly three weeks from being finished.

  Whiskers had just passed this last piece of news on to me.

  “I’m curious how you came up with that number. Our young Doctor Bjorge,” I nodded towards the young Norwegian physicist that had obviously caught my friend’s eye, “seems to estimate the ship is only six percent complete based on the completed curvature.

  “Given that Arty’s robotic minions have been working for about a week now… that would put the completion at about what… three and a half months? Don’t get me wrong… that’s mind-boggling fast. Why do you think it's going to be done even faster?”

  Whiskers smiled. “Ada figured it out. It seems some of the little buggers do nothing but build other little buggers. The number of bots is growing almost exponentially. Three weeks may be a conservative estimate.”

  “Ada?”

  “Doctor Bjorge”

  “I see. Just a question. Has anybody thought about what happens when Arty’s little army of construction robots finish their work?”

  Ody, my twin, smiled.

  “I asked the same question a few days ago. The short answer is we have no idea… and whatever the hell they want.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  A short, balding man named Renaldo Figaro leaned forward with a glint in his eye. He wanted to say something in the worst way but seemed reluctant to interrupt. He was one of those people who always appeared high-strung and barely under control. After watching him for a few seconds, I decided to give him a break.

  “Senor Renaldo… correct me if I’m wrong, but you look like you may have something to add?”

  “Yes, yes. The A-Bots, that’s what we’re calling the Ancestor robots… get it A… bots?”

  I nodded… hoping he would continue.

  “The A-Bots… they are different than everything else down here. We can’t scan them. We can’t touch them. We can’t even trap them. They just phase-thru anything we put in front of them... and,” he looked at me and said in a hushed whisper, “they go places we can’t.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning,” Admiral Spratt explained, “There are sections of this ship… if that is indeed what they are building, that are strictly off-limits to anybody or thing except the bots.”

  “A-Bots,” Figaro corrected.

  My father-in-law gave him his patented ‘shut up’ look. Renaldo didn’t seem to notice. Ya gotta love civilians.

  “I think we can assume the Ancestors have our best interests in mind,” Lori interjected.

  I glanced over at my wife. My heart warmed, seeing her. I had truly believed that I never would again. It’s not often that I’m wrong. It’s even rarer that I’m happy to be wrong. This was definitely one of those times.

  “I agree,” I said. “I have my own reasons for agreeing… but I’d be curious as to what yours are.”

  My wife looked at me and smiled… I was in love… all over again.

  “If Arty’s goal was simply to build a ship, he could have started anywhere. He could have prioritized… Oh, don’t know… military stuff. Bombs, lasers, engines… those types of things. Instead, he created a fully functional surgical suite and medical bay… and stocked it with exactly the things I would need to save you.”

  “In all fairness, Lassi, he did have me J’ni engineers build a fairly impressive antiproton arc cannon. There not be much that would be willing to take on such a beastie if’n they knew it was here,” Whiskers interjected.

  Lori nodded. “Thank you, Commander. You’re making my point. If the Ancestors wanted to use that weapon to attack Earth, wouldn’t it make sense to build it on the other side of the moon? If they wanted to use it to attack anyone, wouldn’t it make more sense to put it on a ship of some sort?”

  I turned to Whiskers.

  “She makes a good point,” I agreed. “Its current placement is defensive. Arty was trying to defend this installation. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “I know you think I’m a miracle worker,” Lori said. “but there probably aren’t ten facilities in the solar system that that would had have the tools necessary to heal your injuries. Forget the fact that you were bleeding internally and had more broken bones than I could count… You had three times the lethal dose of radiation. When you arrived, you were in a state-of-the-art life support pod… beyond state-of-the-art. If I hadn’t been trained in Galactic Order medical techniques… you’d be a corpse right now.”

  My wife looked at me. She had moist eyes. With a sudden chill running up my spine, I knew she was right.

  “You should have died. Without the equipment, in that room, you would have.”

  “I think I understand.”

  “No, you big dumb dog… you don’t,” she sobbed softly… almost under her breath.

  “That surgical suite was completed just three minutes before you arrived. I know because Commander McGraw and I were teleported into the surgical waiting room while the ‘A-bots’ finished building the damn thing. We hadn’t gotten two feet into the room when you suddenly appeared.”

  2100.1289.8804 Galactic Normalized Time

  General Ahithophel scanned the engineering report and smiled. The ship was still running silent and cloaked while repairs were underway. The Earth fleet that had briefly inspected the debris field had not spotted them. It was probably a function of inferior sensors and the background radiation caused by their exploding Dreadnaught. He had to give the Earthers credit. A suicide run using their biggest and best weapons platform had been a bold move. Unfortunately for them, it was not enough. The chief engineer estimated they would complete repairs in the next day and a half.

  Chapter 2: Restless Dog

  It had been a solid week since Arty had miraculously saved my life by ‘beaming’ me to the med-bay. Ada Bjorge had become a regular fixture in our staff meetings in as much as Whiskers was a regular fixture, and she and he were keeping close company as of late.

  It turns out the good doctor was right about the construction bot population growth. As a side note, I and most of the
senior staff refused to call them A-Bots. For some reason, this irritated Renaldo… maybe I’m a bad person… but I was OK with that.

  What the doctor was not correct about was completion time for the ship they were building. It was now about twenty-three percent complete, and there could no longer be any doubt that it was indeed a ship.

  I took the turbolift to the recently completed bridge. Everything seemed to be in place. If I hadn’t been on the Gilboa when it literally blew up, I could easily have been fooled into thinking that I was in fact, on the Gilboa. Oh, there were little differences. As I noted before, the control surfaces seemed to be more adaptable so as to accommodate human, alien otter, and alien raccoon-type hands.

  There was one other major difference between this ship and the Gilboa… and it saddened me greatly. There was no popcorn machine and in fact, the alcove that would have housed it instead housed a device the defied explanation. It was solid black with no identifying features. It was smooth and painfully cold to the touch. You would think that it would cool the air around it, but it did not. I had the feeling that the coldness was a security feature. Whatever it was, the Arty bots did not want us touching it.

  Shelby was in the command chair, going over reports. Without a ship of our own and with me still recovering from my injuries, she had taken to monitoring the scientific teams going over every inch of the construction and well as sifting through the reams of data coming in the various UEA sensor stations operating throughout the system.

  Admiral Spratt had returned to the Ticonderoga where he and Earth’s only fully functional dreadnought tried to single-handily defend an entire star system. It was an impossible task before we lost the Gilboa… doubly so now… and yet what choice did we have?

  We knew the enemy was coming back. We just didn’t know when or from where. I ordered the Yorktown to start scouring the nearby Skip Space jump points… looking for any sign of an advancing fleet.

  Captain Tilly had recently taken temporary command of the Yorktown after the death of that ship’s captain and bridge crew. The assignment was temporary because the experienced captain was slated to assume a permanent position as the Captain of the UES Intrepid, a Ticonderoga-class starship being finished in an Earth-orbiting shipyard.