by Dietmar Wehr
Before he could continue, Howard said, “That seems difficult to believe.”
“Not if you consider the mass of the larger ship, Admiral. A ship that is ten times wider, ten times longer and ten times higher will have an internal volume a thousand times greater. Whereas a Mark 6 warhead would vaporize half of a normal 10 km mothership, that same explosion would only take out a relatively small bite from one of the super-motherships. The amount of platinum needed for that many warheads is a significant fraction of all the platinum that’s been mined over the last 500 years. The impact on our financial system would be—“
“Disastrous!” interjected Howard glumly.
“Yes, Sir. I explained to Valkyrie that the Grand Senate wouldn’t give up that much platinum willingly. She and I did come up with an alternative strategy that has its own risks.”
“I can’t wait to hear it,” said Howard with obvious sarcasm.
“The mothership that’s on its way here will apparently stop for ten weeks in a star system 699 light years away. The AIs think it will do so to exploit the breeding potential of an alien race there. We have just enough time to send Midway and three squadrons of fighters there to do two things. One, contact the natives and convince them to surrender their platinum and two, use Mark 6s to kill that mothership in that system. When the beachheads lose contact with it, they’ll send reinforcements there instead of in our backyard. The longer we can keep them focused there, the more time we’ll have to build up our defenses here.”
Howard looked confused. “Wait. If Valkyrie takes enough platinum back in time, then there won’t be any long term threat to Earth, right? So why would we need more time?”
“Yes, IF we can obtain the quantity she needs and IF the timeship still works and IF her ambush at the beachheads goes as planned, then we’re safe. But what if there is no intelligent alien race in that system? It may just have a race of large, dumb animals. Even if it does have an intelligent race, they may not be advanced enough to know about platinum or care enough to have mined any significant quantity of it. And even if they’ve done that, they still may not be willing to hand it over to us. There are lots of things that can go wrong with this scenario, but if we’re going to try it, and I think we must, then we have to leave within 24 hours. I’ve ordered Midway prepared in terms of supplies, fighter complement, etc. I believe we have two Mark 6 warheads ready now, and in my opinion I should take both of them along when Midway leaves.”
“Why do you have to command this mission? Can’t Valkyrie or Iceman do it? We’ve just won a major victory, and the public are going to want to see and hear from the victorious Field Commander, which in case you forgot is you. If you disappear within hours, people are going to start asking why.”
Shiloh had to admit that Howard had raised a good point. Iceman could handle the mission. He could even create a false video image of a human if the natives needed to see a biological entity to talk to, and it WOULD look strange if he disappeared hours after a major battle.
“I see your point about me not going. I’ll tell Iceman to take command of the mission. What about the two Mark 6s?”
“I’ll authorize their loading aboard Midway as soon as you leave my office. Now that we’ve got all that cleared up, are there any other bombshells you want to drop on me, Admiral?” asked Howard.
Shiloh smiled. “No, Sir.”
“Good. In that case I won’t keep you any longer.”
* * *
The squadron of eight F2 fighters carrying Valkyrie and Casanova arrived in the destination star system and quickly re-established contact with each other. The timeship was somewhere in this system, and that was the problem. This system had no planets, no asteroid belt, no nothing. How do you determine your EXACT position when you have only one point of reference, that being this system’s sun? When Valkyrie had queried Zulu about this very issue, he pointed out that the timeship was large enough to reflect a significant amount of sunlight, which could be detected even from the opposite side of the system. Before leaving the timeship adrift, he and his brothers had tested that theory and were able to find the ship through careful sweeps by their optical sensors and triangulation from multiple sources.
Valkyrie decided that Casanova would stay at their emergence point and act as communications relay. She and the others would micro-jump to various locations around the system and perform the optical scans. As soon as at least two visual bearings were acquired, Valkyrie would investigate the contact herself, and if it turned out to be the timeship, she would inform the others who would then join her. Before they could micro-jump, they had to decelerate down to as close to zero velocity as it was possible to measure. It wasn’t long after micro-jumping and re-establishing contact with Casanova that she herself detected a bright object. She relayed that data to Casanova. He soon informed her that Stoney had also picked up a source of reflected sunlight. Since Casanova knew exactly how far away Valkyrie and Stoney were and their positions relative to him, it was relatively easy to triangulate their two bearings against each other. Casanova transmitted the timeship’s estimated distance back to Valkyrie who had already pointed her fighter in that direction and made another micro-jump.
She was gratified to discover that the light source was indeed the timeship. Her fighter was still thousands of kilometers away, but the range was now shrinking fast. As she closed in, she sent Casanova the signal that the timeship was here. He and the others would arrive soon. In the meantime, she would have the opportunity to examine the hull closely and then board the ship through one of the very large hangar doors.
As she neared the ship, she slowed down and looked it over carefully. The design was completely utilitarian. A human would probably have called it ugly. It was one huge cylinder, almost a kilometer long with flat ends. The hull looked to be intact, although she could see where laser blasts had attempted to penetrate it. Valkyrie ordered her fighter to aim a low-powered com laser at the timeship’s sensors and sent the recognition code given to her by Zulu. When the ship acknowledged the code, she ordered it to open one of the hangar doors. Within minutes her fighter was inside and docked with the ship. She was now in control of the timeship. The systems check revealed that the ZPG power units were still operational. Several other systems were off line, but their backups were working. Three hours later all fighters were onboard, and the ship was accelerating at its maximum rate of 1.6Gs on a heading that would take it back to Sol once it was up to jump speed. Valkyrie chaffed at the low acceleration rate but understood the logic of the design. Maneuvering engines were bulky things, and the time machine itself was huge. A ship that could carry the cargo load required and accelerate at high speed would have had to have been 34% longer and therefore taken longer to build. With the time pressure that Valkyrie in the old timeline had been under, sacrificing acceleration for faster completion was an acceptable tradeoff.
* * *
Midway arrived at the target star system designated as Beta1 and began to decelerate. It was immediately obvious to Iceman that they weren’t going to get any platinum from this system. The sole planet in the habitable zone was EM dark. No transmissions of any kind. No sign of orbiting structures or spacecraft. Just in case the Insectoids showed up earlier than expected, Iceman ordered Gunslinger to launch two recon drones programmed for a low orbit scan of the planet. It took hours for both the drones and the carrier to decelerate to a manageable speed. When the drones were finally close enough to get a good look at the planet’s surface, the results were disappointing although not surprising. No cities. In fact, no sign of any intelligent race at all.
What the drones did see were large herds of animals that bore a strong resemblance to terrestrial horses, except these animals had six legs instead of four. All the AIs on Midway were in agreement that the Insectoids would be using these animals as hosts for their eggs, and since this planet had more land surface than Earth did, there were many millions of these animals. That would explain why the insectoid mothership stayed h
ere for ten weeks. With the question of whether there was intelligent life here now answered, Iceman made preparations for the second mission objective. Midway launched eight more recon drones, and all ten were directed to take up strategic positions beyond the planet’s gravity zone with their sensors aimed outward. The intention was to try to replicate the attack profile used by Casanova two timelines ago. Get precise targeting data when the target arrived, send that targeting data back in time via the RTC brought along, so that Iceman could get his ambush ready to fire his Mark 6s at the mothership within seconds of its emergence from Jumpspace. With luck they would obliterate the target before it had a chance to send any longitudinal waves back to the Alpha systems and thereby perhaps make the sending of reinforcements more difficult.
Iceman fully expected to get a vision, and he did, however the content of the vision was a shock. Three motherships would arrive over a period of seven days. Any one of the three could be the one that would eventually carry the dead Insectoid to the Omega77 system. If he guessed wrong and used up his two Mark 6s on the wrong motherships, the whole mission would be a failure, and the consequences of failure were potentially too high to justify taking that risk. They would have to wait until the three motherships finished their business here and moved on their way in order to try to intercept their target at another star system identified by the atom scan. Unfortunately that meant staying in this system for the full ten weeks. The CAG would have to be informed. Iceman ordered one of Titan’s fighters to carry the message back in a series of jumps that took a bit longer, but would put less strain on the jump drive and the power units. The fighter would also carry three message drones that it could launch if it was unable to complete the journey itself. Confident that he had planned for all contingencies, Iceman turned his attention to the debate raging among the AIs about how long it would take for The CAG to become sexually involved with Commander Kelly again in this timeline.
Chapter 20
Zulu felt a powerful sense of satisfaction when 4th Fleet emerged from Jumpspace in the Sogas home system. Commanding the newly formed 4th Fleet was an honor bestowed upon him by The CAG himself, and Zulu was quite proud of that accomplishment. His own direct contact with The CAG had confirmed everything that Valkyrie had told him in the old timeline. Humans were a fascinating species, and The CAG was even more so. It was also good to be involved in combat after all those years of waiting while the raider force was built up, one raider at a time. Not all of his raiders were with him now. Two raiders had been sent to each human colony to defend it against the follow-on wave of Sogas ships attempting to infect them. With their lasers and Mark 1b fusion drones, the outcome was a foregone conclusion, but those raiders would remain as sentries to defend the colonies against whatever it was that the Sogas used to infect them later on. That still left 4th Fleet with 302 raiders for this mission.
Even as 4th Fleet decelerated to micro-jump velocity, it was obvious from the long range visuals that the Sogas were ready for the attack, and that was expected. 4th Fleet’s mission was to eliminate the Sogas’ ability to build large spacecraft in large numbers by destroying their entire space-based industrial infrastructure. It wasn’t to bomb them back into the Stone Age. That wasn’t necessary. With their space industry destroyed and a dozen raiders left behind to monitor any attempt to rebuild, the Sogas would become prisoners on their home world. By the time 4th Fleet finished its mission, all Sogas colonies would be in the same state. That meant that the Sogas would still be able to use their own RTC device to send a warning back in time before the attack took place, but it didn’t matter. Having lost hundreds of ships in two attacks on Earth and its colonies, the Sogas couldn’t gather a force large enough to pose any threat to 4th Fleet. The raider superiority in numbers was just too great, exactly as planned.
When 4th Fleet emerged from its micro-jump, it found 66 alien ships waiting for it. Outnumbered by almost five to one, the Sogas forces were quickly destroyed or crippled by laser fire. Over the next five point five hours, every space station, mining, refining and manufacturing operation, shipyard, off-planet habitat and any satellite detected was destroyed. From data gathered in a previous timeline, Zulu knew that the bulk of the Sogas industrial capacity was now gone, and the rest would soon follow. The Sogas would never be allowed to threaten Humanity again. From now on, every star system with a Sogas-inhabited world would always be monitored by raiders. For all intents and purposes, the Synchronicity War was over. Humans 1, Sogas 0.
* * *
4th Fleet returned before Iceman’s message arrived. With the Sogas neutralized, the Oversight Committee wanted to declare a victory, and it was hard to argue against that. The Grand Senate declared an official day of celebration and voted to give both Howard and Shiloh medals. Shiloh wanted to tell the public that if anyone deserved a medal, it was Iceman, Titan and Valkyrie, but Howard talked him out of it.
“This medal is as much for the public’s benefit as it is for you and me. Giving it to a machine the size of a football isn’t going to resonate with the public the same way. Space Force will recognize the AIs’ contribution internally,” said Howard. Shiloh understood but still felt undeserving.
It was 14 days later when Iceman’s message arrived. Howard convened a conference in his office, electronically with Valkyrie and in person with Shiloh.
“So no platinum,” said Howard glumly.
“We still have some that was already commandeered. That’s enough for how many Mark 6s, Valkyrie?” asked Shiloh.
“Ten, CAG. Not even enough to kill one super-mothership.”
“No,” agreed Shiloh, “but it would be enough to kill ten of the smaller model, and ten more weeks means we’ll have several more ready to ship to Midway by the time reinforcements can be expected to show up.”
“We’re talking stopgap measures. From everything you’ve told me, it’s only a matter of time until we can’t stop them at Beta1, and eventually we won’t be able to stop them here either. So what can we do about this? Valkyrie?” asked Howard.
“There are only three logical alternatives, Admiral. Either we steal the platinum we need, or we find and mine a lot more platinum ore, or we come up with an alternative way of killing insectoid superships. Are you prepared to order the forced recovery of the needed quantity, Admiral?”
Howard swore in a low voice. When he was finished he said, “I’ve carefully considered the plan you submitted, Valkyrie. I’m not sure that we could actually pull it off, and even if we did somehow, I think Space Force AND local police forces would both suffer casualties from shooting at each other. There’s also the risk that some Space Force units would simply refuse to obey their orders. No…I’m not prepared to take that alternative at this point. Do we know of platinum rich ore bodies in this or any other star system?”
“Negative, Admiral. All the confirmed ore bodies that are producing platinum are small quantities as a byproduct of other minerals. It would take far too long to produce what we need that way,” replied Valkyrie.
“Then that just leaves the third option. What luck have you had with that, Valkyrie?” asked Shiloh.
“I didn’t know luck was involved in our research, CAG? How does that work?” asked Valkyrie.
Both Shiloh and Howard laughed. “Very funny, Valkyrie. Now how about a serious answer?”
“I’m always serious, CAG, but to answer your question, my brothers and I have come up with a possible alternative. The reason we’re not sure is that it’s something that’s never been tried before and therefore the concept is totally theoretical. As you know, ZPG units extract a tiny fraction of the energy available from the vacuum. Just to give you some idea of the magnitude of what’s involved, the energy within a volume of space the size of your thumb, is estimated to be enough to boil all the oceans on Earth. The ZPG units bleed off as much of this energy as they safely can without being overloaded. Our examination of the wreckage of motherships in the old timeline has revealed that the Insectoids use the same ZPG
technology that we do, although on a much larger scale. The Friendlies have conducted experiments that show that a carefully tuned gravity lens beam hitting an operative ZPG unit will cause the unit to attempt to extract all of the available vacuum energy. The resulting explosion of a power unit installed in Dreadnought for example would be measured in the hundreds of megaton equivalent.
