by Terry Mixon
They launched from the battlecruiser with no fanfare. He slaved her fighter’s controls to his and accelerated them as quickly as he dared. He’d need to reduce the acceleration as they got closer to the destroyer, but they’d have built up a lot of speed by then.
The fighters communicated on a shielded, encrypted implant link. He was able to status all of Kelsey’s systems. He could even see her through a vid feed in her console.
While he could’ve just communicated via implant, he preferred speaking. “We’ve got almost three hours before we have to kill our drives. Tell me about those things you found.”
“Owlet took the one we brought back to the lab as soon as we docked. It didn’t look like something an AI put together. There were touches to the design that indicated a human created it. Curves and pure design touches. They ripped the ship up so it could house them. That was AI work.”
“So, what would they be used for? Direct combat?”
She nodded. “That’s what it looked like. Since the Old Empire didn’t like putting machines in charge of weapons, I suspect these were designed by the Rebel Empire.”
“Or the Empire really got desperate at the end. Any idea how much range or speed those things have?”
“With that small drive, I’m thinking they’re very short range. They wouldn’t survive a drop into atmosphere. They could probably go ship to ship. I bet we find something inside them to give us a clue on how the enemy uses them. Maybe boarding actions.”
“Since they didn’t see fit to put anyone aboard that ship, they would need something like that.”
Kelsey was quiet for the next few minutes. “Why do you suppose there was no crew? The AIs haven’t been shy about enslaving people. And, based on what we’ve seen, the Rebel Empire is quite capable of crewing ships for them. What’s different here?”
That question had been bothering Jared off and on since he’d heard about the situation on the destroyer. “I don’t know. If we can get our people back and escape with enough lead time, perhaps we can find out.”
“What if we can’t rescue them?”
“If we can’t rescue them, we might have to make sure they can’t tell the enemy about the Empire.”
“How? By killing them? That has to be a last ditch solution.”
He sighed. “I hope to God I don’t have to make that call. I want to rescue them and slip away. But if I were in their place, I’d want someone to take me out before I broke. Remember the Old Empire. We can’t let that happen again.”
“Even if it means killing your fellow Fleet officers and crew?”
“Welcome to making command decisions. I never dreamed I’d be in such a situation, but can you honestly tell me you’d do anything differently?”
This time the silence went on for a long time. “No. Can we destroy Spear with what we have on these fighters?”
“Probably. Courageous can take out a destroyer if we can survive the firing run. Let me set up a few simulations on your console. We can at least practice while we wait.”
It turned out he was too optimistic. He hadn’t even finished setting the first scenario up when his fighter announced a situational change. Passive scanners had picked up five new drives entering the system from the flip point leading to Boxer Station. Even if they were only destroyers, there was no way they could fight them.
“Do you see the new arrivals?” he asked.
She said something unladylike. Too much time around the marines, he figured. She looked into the vid. “What do we do?”
“I take out Spear. You can change course to miss them.”
“Noble, but that won’t do anyone any good. Those ships will get to Spear before you do. They might get some of the crew off before you’re in range.”
“Not with fighting machines like you found. People have to breathe. They’ll have to send boats over to pick up the people. The destroyer we found didn’t have any. That might buy us some time.”
“Can we tap into the feed from the probe you have watching them? That might give us a better idea of what we’re facing.”
They’d moved the probe into position to watch Spear and her captor. The damage to the heavy cruiser was significant. They wouldn’t be taking her out of this system anytime soon. It would take less than half an hour for the new ships to reach her.
The destroyer guarding Spear looked like the one they’d just captured. The probe was too far away to see any of the boarding machines going back and forth, but he had no doubt that the war machines had killed or subdued Breckenridge and his crew.
The two of them watched as the new ships closed in. It became quickly apparent that one of the ships was significantly larger than a destroyer. Bigger even than Courageous. His stomach churned. There was no way they could defeat something like that.
The probe finally updated with information about the new ships. The big one wasn’t a warship. It was a huge open framework with engines.
It took him only a moment to grasp its purpose. It enclosed other ships and was able to flip them. They were going to take Spear back to Boxer Station.
The new destroyers fanned out and took positions all around what he’d decided to call the capture ship. They weren’t actively scanning, but they were far enough out to spot the fighters if they tried to make a run on Spear.
All he and Kelsey could do was watch helplessly as the new ship enveloped Spear and started back toward the flip point after only a few minutes. The escorts trailed along behind it.
When he was close enough to the probe to signal it without the enemy intercepting the signal, Jared set it on a course to follow the ships.
Their situation couldn’t be much worse. The enemy knew someone else had flip drives. They knew at least one other ship had gotten away. They might spot the probe and destroy it, but it wouldn’t tell them something they didn’t already know.
Well, other than the fact that someone was following them.
They watched on passive scanners as all the ships entered the flip point to Harrison’s World and departed. The enemy didn’t leave a watch behind.
“Do we head back to the ship?” Kelsey asked.
“No. We stay on course until Courageous signals us. They might have left a probe in the flip point. I would.”
It turned out they hadn’t. Graves called them just after their probe transitioned. Jared turned their fighters around as quickly as the laws of physics allowed. Courageous and the two destroyers boosted forward to meet them.
Their probe came back into the system ten minutes later. Jared went over the recording of the other system as the signal came in. He saw no signs of grav drives in the system, other than the ships that had just flipped, but that meant almost nothing. Given enough range, there could be hundreds of ships moving at slower speeds.
The probe detected communications signals coming from one area of the system. A lot of them. Probably Harrison’s World. Curiously, the ships escorting Spear hadn’t headed for the planet. They were going toward a point in the outer system consistent with the records of Boxer Station, the Old Empire Fleet base.
The mystery deepened. Why have unmanned ships when you had a Rebel Empire planet right there?
That gave them two missions. First, they had to scout the planet and get a better idea of who and what they were dealing with. Second, they had to probe Boxer Station and find a way to rescue their people. Or, worst case, make sure the enemy got nothing from them.
Jared sighed. He had no idea how they were going to make this work. And that probably meant death for the Empire.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Kelsey was down in the science labs when Courageous and her escorts flipped into the Harrison’s World system. They stopped inside the flip point, ready to flee if needed, but nothing responded to their presence. Didn’t any of their enemies guard their flip points?
Carl Owlet and Doctor Leonard were disassembling the weapons platform. In fact, they had it in pieces scattered across several tables. It didn’t look nea
rly as threatening this way.
“Have you found anything interesting?” she asked.
The older man smiled. “This machine is quite advanced and was not designed or assembled by an AI.”
“I can see how you’d be able to tell about the design, but how do you know it was put together by humans?”
“Look here.” He pointed to one of the sections. “Someone used tape to hold the cables out of the way. While a machine might do the same, it wouldn’t leave a human thumbprint. Also, there are small touches like this done all throughout the construction. Trust me, skilled human beings assembled this.
She nodded. “I’ll grant that’s interesting, but I’m hoping for a flaw in the construction that we can exploit. If these things ever come for us, I want to be able to stop them short of the ship.”
Owlet shook his head. “I’m sure they have some mechanism to prevent friendly fire, but I haven’t found it yet. Or, I suspect it’s buried in the control computer itself.”
“The way it works on a ship level,” Leonard said, “is that each ship transmits a signal that allies know means it is not to be fired upon. Identify Friend or Foe, or IFF for short. These things don’t transmit as a matter of course. They may have something in their memories that recognizes a friendly machine when they see one. They probably have some signal they look for in humans, too.”
Kelsey shook her head. “I wouldn’t count on that if I were you. These AIs love rewriting code.”
Owlet smiled. “Not in this case. The control code is on a non-writable chip. It’s been in place just as long as the rest of the equipment. I think the code is original. I’ll have it extracted in a few minutes. Then we’ll know for sure.”
Leonard took her elbow. “Look at this.” He gestured toward a small block of circuits and other machinery.
She picked it up when he nodded. It was about the size of her fist and heavier than it looked. She ran it through her implant database. Nothing popped.
“I give. What is it?”
“That is the machine’s grav drive and power supply.”
She gave him an incredulous look and examined it more closely. “That’s ridiculous. This is too small for both. Though I suppose the one in my armor is about the same size.”
“The one in your armor doesn’t have its own power supply. It draws on the armor. This is a self-encased unit with what I’m calling a micro-fusion power source. It can move one of these war machines quite speedily and won’t require recharging for decades. At a guess, the machine only activates it when it needs it. It’s almost fully powered, yet it was obviously constructed some time ago.”
“Can you make an educated guess on how long ago it was built?”
“Ten years, three months, fourteen days, six hours, forty-seven minutes, and…six seconds.” He glanced at the monitor as he said the last.
“That’s curiously precise. And suspiciously recent.” She raised an eyebrow.
“It has a timer that was activated when it was powered on.”
She considered the device in her hands. “It was only built a decade ago. The odds are good that the people who designed it are still around. Why aren’t they in control of it?”
The scientist shrugged. “Perhaps they are. Those people on the planet must work with the AIs in some way.”
Kelsey set the grav drive back on the table. “Still, why didn’t the Rebel Empire have these things? Why these unmanned ships? The ship that escorted the freighter wasn’t equipped like this.”
She waved her own questions away. “Never mind. Maybe we’ll find out when our probes get to Harrison’s World. Anything else?”
“Just this.” Owlet picked up a bundle of clear plastic. “This is an emergency life support bubble. It will keep a person alive for a short while in vacuum conditions. The machine had several of them in a compartment the manipulators could access.”
Kelsey picked one up. It had Fleet markings on it. “Someone stocked it, then. This is how these machines capture people in space. They blast their way into a ship, stun the people, and cart them back to a holding cell on the destroyer. Or, I suppose, they could just hold the ship until that capture vessel came along.”
She dropped the bundle on the table and checked her chrono. “I need to go meet Talbot. Thanks for showing me what you’ve found. Keep working on that code. We need to be able to stop these war machines before they get used on us.”
“Of course.” The two scientists turned back to their work as Kelsey headed for marine country.
She walked in on a council of war. Lieutenant Reese, Talbot, and other marine officers and senior NCOs sat around the table in the common room going over folders. Based on the number of people she didn’t recognize, the marines from New York and Ginnie Dare were here, too.
Kelsey grabbed a chair and wedged herself in beside Talbot. “What did I miss?” she whispered.
“Not much. The LT just started.” He slid her an extra folder and she started skimming it as the officer spoke.
Reese gave her a nod, but didn’t stop the briefing. “Now that we’ve covered what we know about this system, let’s discuss our operations. First will be the primary mission of rescuing the prisoners. Though we know next to nothing about the internal layout, we’ll need to penetrate the station, locate the prisoners, and extract them while under fire. Probably heavy fire. I’d like to hear some options on how we manage that.”
That gave Kelsey an idea. She opened a channel to Courageous’ computer system and accessed the diplomatic database she’d copied on Erorsi. A query brought up the data she’d requested in her mind.
“I have something that might prove useful, Lieutenant Reese.”
He gestured for her to go on.
“I picked up some Old Empire classified data on Erorsi. It has something about Boxer Station.”
She accessed the holo emitters over the conference table and projected an exterior view of the station. The projection startled most of the men and women around the table. It only belatedly occurred to Kelsey that they’d probably never seen anything like it.
“Sorry. This is Boxer Station.” She started the display rotating so that everyone could see all sides of the facility. “Suffice it to say that it dwarfs the orbital we destroyed in Erorsi orbit.”
Reese studied the station with more than a hint of worry in his eyes. “That makes searching it for our people a lot more challenging. They could be anywhere and we’d be stumbling around looking for them. We don’t even know how the thing is laid out inside.” He narrowed his gaze. “Or do we?”
She instructed the display to focus in on one of the docking levels. The detailed schematics unfolded in front of them. “I have the complete deck plans, including the layout of the brig area. Not that it could hold all our people. With the wounded from the battle, Spear had over three thousand people crammed into her hull. If even a fraction of them survived, they could be anywhere on that station.”
The marine officer nodded. “And that’s if the plans haven’t changed. We have no idea how much damage that station took during the rebellion or what modifications the rebels made when they repaired it. Still, this is a better starting point than a blank screen. Thank you, Highness.”
He looked around the seated marines. “I want an operational plan to present to the captain as soon as possible. Team leaders are to examine this data in detail and we’ll reconvene in two hours.”
The marine officer turned his attention to Kelsey. “The captain also wants someone to go over the intelligence gathered from Harrison’s World, Highness. I’d like you to handle that. It’ll be four or five hours before the probes are in range to detect ships in orbit.”
“Are we anticipating a need to go there in person?”
He shook his head. “Not at this time, but we can’t waste the opportunity to study a major rebel world.”
“We’ll see what we can figure out.” She rose to her feet and followed Talbot deeper into marine country. The two of them found a small
conference room and sat at the table. She looked up at the ceiling. It had a holo projector, too.
“Courageous, what can you tell me about the communications from Harrison’s World?”
“There are several anomalies worth noting. First, there are no other sources of communication in this system. Data from before the rebellion indicates that there were numerous mining stations and daughter colonies. None of them has transmitted since we arrived. Second, the communication from Harrison’s World is heavily encrypted. This unit has not detected any signals from Boxer Station or ships elsewhere in the system.”
She looked at Talbot. “That seems unusual. This is a secure system. They don’t even have ships on guard at the flip points. Why lock communications down so tight?”
“Because you don’t want someone overhearing you. The real questions are who and why. How long until we get better probe data?”
“Approximately four hours,” the ship’s AI responded.
Kelsey rose to her feet. “We’ve got a little time to burn. I should use it wisely. I’m going to talk to our ranking prisoner again. You should get some sleep.”
The prisoner had been very quiet since he’d gotten access to the ship’s library. Perhaps he would give her some information to go on.
The guards didn’t try to deny her access. They just opened up the hatch at her command.
Lieutenant Commander Richards looked up from his tablet and stood. Since he had implants, he didn’t require a tablet, but she’d seen no harm in granting his request for one.
“No need to stand on my account,” she said as they closed the hatch behind her. “Please, stay comfortable. I’ve just stopped by to make sure they’re allowing you the access I promised to the ship’s library and your people.”
He sat back down. “Yes, thank you. I seem to have all the access you indicated I could have and I’ve seen my people. I appreciate the courtesy. I thought I should stand for royalty, even if we are at war. It’s only polite, considering.”
Someone had told him about her. Oh, well. It was bound to come out eventually. She sat on the edge of the second bunk in the compartment. “I appreciate that, but I don’t stand on ceremony. Have you found your reading interesting?”
