Rescue Branch (Kinsella Universe)

by Gina Marie Wylie

  “Aye, aye, Admiral!”

  Stephanie’s fingers flew over her own computer’s keys, doing the same calculation as the navigator. It wasn’t a vote of no confidence; it was the simple desire to make sure no mistake was made. Their numbers agreed, and forty minutes later they jumped again, this time to four light seconds from the planet.

  The litany of requests and reports started, to be cut short by the voice of one of the sensor operators, someone quite excited. “Admiral! A ship has gone to fan, near the moon!” the woman who spoke stared at her screen. “Preliminary data says they were in a very close orbit.”

  “How tight an orbit?” Stephanie asked.

  “We’re still working the original orbit, but it looks like it brushed the atmosphere. I’m sure the ship is human; the fans appear to be GE Model 6’s.”

  In other words, this didn’t appear to be mankind’s first contact with an alien civilization. On the other hand, Valley Forge was the first Federation vessel to visit this system -- or at least, the first registered vessel.

  There were thousands of stars within a hundred light years of Earth, and while you were welcome to go where you pleased and you didn’t have to tell anyone where you were going when you did, ships cost a great deal of money and it made sense to coordinate the surveys, rather than duplicate work. And, while a nation might send a mission to a star not currently slated for survey by the Federation, it made no sense at all to visit systems to be surveyed by the Federation, because as soon as Valley Forge returned home, the astrographic and planetographic data from her mission would be made public.

  “Transmit a greeting to them,” Stephanie ordered. “Tell them who we are. Oh, yes -- go to General Quarters.”

  The alarm was muted -- Valley Forge was already at something very similar to General Quarters. Exploring new systems was dangerous. All it would take would be one bit of cosmic debris in the wrong place at the wrong time to ruin a survey ship’s entire existence.

  The clock ticked and ticked, while Stephanie watched the plot of the other ship as it pulled away from the moon. The communications officer spoke up. “Now thirty seconds past reflection time.”

  If a ship had been able to go to fan within seconds of Valley Forge’s appearance, it stood to reason that they would have someone ready to answer a message. Unless, of course, they didn’t want to talk...

  Stephanie let another minute tick off on the clock. “Weapons, this is Rear Admiral Stephanie Kinsella, authorization Fox Zulu Fox Golf. Load two missiles, counter-ship. Load two missiles, counter-missile. Begin prep of the special weapon. Authorization Quincy Alpha Tango India.”

  She turned to the bridge communications officer. “Repeat the call, order them to cease acceleration and prepare to be boarded,” Stephanie’s voice was as calm as if she was reciting the jump arrival litany.

  “The other vessel is accelerating at three gravities. They are seven minutes and fourteen seconds from breaking orbit from the moon, and two hours and seven minutes from exiting the fan well, assuming they accelerate all the way,” Sensors reported.

  That was, Stephanie knew, meaningless. Valley Forge was outside the well. At a certain point Valley Forge would jump to intercept and the other ship would have no choice but to fight or surrender.

  Stephanie slapped her forehead. Relative velocities!

  “Navigation! What will the relative velocity of the other ship be, when it departs the fan well?”

  The numbers showed up on the screen. They were odd. The star was smaller than the sun, about .8 solar masses. The planet was larger than Earth, and the rest of the system appeared to be more or less larger than what was found in the solar system.

  Stephanie contemplated the ship. The other would have been a lot better off accelerating at a different angle, and not nearly as hard. As it was, they were going to exit the fan well at almost the same velocity as Valley Forge had now, making interception brain-dead simple.

  On the face of it, the other ship’s tactics made no sense. Well, it might make sense if she assumed that the other captain was an incompetent, who’d panicked as soon as Valley Forge had appeared.

  “Navigator, begin a two g deceleration, relative to the primary.”

  Everyone on the bridge looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.

  “Navigator, I want a jump that will put us six hundred kilometers from the planet surface, on a line that connects the center of mass of the planet with the other ship.”

  As if on cue, the sensor officer looked up. “A second fan source, Admiral! It just started up in orbit around that moon!”

  Stephanie knew better than to ask where it was going. It was deep in the moon’s gravity well, and until it had escaped that, it could be headed almost anywhere.

  “Admiral! The second source is accelerating at fourteen gravities!”

  Stephanie cast a baleful glance at the escaping ship. So, you’re a clever captain. There will be other days, Clever Captain. You lit off that missile as soon as you realized I was slowing, not accelerating.

  As if to confirm things, the sensor lieutenant reported the last piece of bad news. “Admiral! The first unknown fan source has turned off their fans! I can no longer detect them!”

  And the second unknown source was quite clearly a missile. It couldn’t possibly be targeted on Valley Forge, because Valley Forge could go to High Fan and be light hours away a few seconds later. Which meant the missile had to be targeted on the planet. Firing a high explosive missile at a planet of any size, much less this one, was a meaningless exercise. It would certainly do damage in the vicinity of where it landed, but it would be contained and otherwise be less impact than a pimple.

  Where was the missile aimed? What kind of a warhead was it armed with? A nuclear weapon was the most logical choice -- except no human-designed spaceship had ever fired a nuclear war shot. No one had, in fact, used a nuclear weapon on a target since the Second World War.

  And now the Clever Captain would like them to think it was a nuclear weapon, and that it was aimed at something important down on the surface of the planet and that Valley Forge should interpose itself and stop the attack. Of course, the Clever Captain would take the opportunity to escape the fan well, go to High Fan and depart the area, with Valley Forge no wiser to the origin of the ship than when it had arrived.

  Unless of course, they really were shooting at something on the planet’s surface -- like a small colony.

  “Navigator, interpose Valley Forge between the planet and the missile, at the previously ordered coordinates.”

  “Going to High Fan in a minute and twenty seconds, Admiral!”

  When they were back in regular space, the sensor officer reported that the missile was no longer under acceleration by fans, and that it would be about two minutes before radar and lidar could detect it and return trajectory information.

  The fire control team worked as they’d done in dozens of simulations, and at the right moment a missile of their own was launched. Their counter missile didn’t have a conventional explosive warhead; instead there was a shaped deployment charge that spread a fine wire mesh about a hundred meters across.

  However, the mesh never got close to the target, as twenty-five kilometers short, the missile fired by the unknown ship detonated. “A thermonuclear warhead,” the sensor officer reported, “about fourteen megatons.”

  “Crew, this is Admiral Kinsella. The missile fired at the planet was a nuclear weapon. I’ve always expected you to do your duty, and now I have to ask you to do more. We are localizing the target area as I speak, but in the meantime we are waiting for the other vessel to go to High Fan.

  “When that happens, we’ll make a cursory exam of the planet, then return to Earth at 88% of max power. This is undoubtedly a risk, but we have to beat the other ship back, and if possible, be there to greet it.”

  Valley Forge had, while she talked, been reorienting towards the planet, and before she finished, they were decelerating towards a stable geosynchronous orb
it.

  Two seconds after the other ship crossed out of the fan well, it went to High Fan, and Stephanie ordered the acceleration increased in order to shorten the period of time it would take them to reach their desired orbit.

  Less than a minute later, however, the sensor officer broke in. “Admiral Kinsella, we’ve detected a ship that just came off fan, near the dash III planet. They are just barely detectable now, on low fan, but we’re working to get numbers on the orbit. But I’m pretty sure it’s the same ship that just left here.”

  Stephanie closed her eyes for a few seconds. The Clever Captain had done something fatal, thus something not only not clever, but pretty stupid. Why would he do that?

  She opened her eyes and looked at the repeater screen on the bridge wall, at the orbit that was being calculated for the other ship. It kept bending closer and closer to the big gas giant, until it grazed the planet’s atmosphere.

  With a blink, she realized what was happening. The Clever Captain may or may not actually be clever, but the ship he was flying was an obsolete piece of junk. It was chemically powered! It had been at the moon fueling when they were detected the first time, and now, the reason for the detour was the same thing. Which pretty much indicated that they didn’t have enough fuel to safely go where they wanted to go.

  And that, whoever it was, hadn’t heard that Caltech had beaten MIT at their own game of gravity wave detection. The MIT detectors worked over a distance of about fifteen light seconds. The new Caltech version worked out to a light hour. The Clever Captain undoubtedly thought he was out of detection range and was safe.

  “Abort the run in to the planet,” Stephanie ordered abruptly. “Warn the crew: high acceleration over the next two hours, as we depart the fan well. Communications, I want to know if you detect any transmissions from the planet.”

  Three gravities for two hours was no joke, and most of the crew was strapped in doing only the most necessary of tasks. Finally they were out of the fan well of the planet and the acceleration eased.

  They hadn’t gotten a good look at the area where the missile had been aimed; not enough to be sure if anything was there.

  The other ship had set up a grazing orbit around the gas giant and shut down their fans once that had been done.

  Stephanie contemplated things. Was the other captain really clever? If he was really clever, the first time he’d turn on his fans would be when he was out of the gas giant’s fan well and he was headed out. They could detect when and where a ship went to High Fan, but they couldn’t tell where it was going. They could tell a ship’s intrinsic velocity, they could tell what the ship massed, but course and velocity on High Fan was, as yet, unknowable.

  Valley Forge was spherical, and there was little she could do to modify her course inside an atmosphere without using her fans. But even Valley Forge had attitude thrusters that could impart a couple of hundred meters a second velocity change if push came to shove. If the other pilot was as clever as he appeared, then they would as well.

  Stephanie recalled the reason the other ship was doing what it was doing and smiled to herself. The odds were pretty good that the ship was headed back towards the Earth’s Solar System. The ship’s relative velocity when it was back outside the fan well would be roughly the same as Earth’s, and in five hours, the vectors would be identical.

  Which meant that the ship would return to the solar system in a particular direction in relationship to the Earth, because they were going to be short on fuel. “Load the special weapon,” Stephanie commanded and gave her authorization codes.

  The weapons officer had to confirm the codes and her executive officer had to confirm the codes. They both promptly did so, and Stephanie’s next orders transferred the weapons release authority to the weapons officer. It wasn’t that she was contemplating actually letting the weapons officer shoot on his own authority, but just in case of a glitch.

  She directed the navigator to prepare to go to High Fan, with a particular destination she had in mind and then Stephanie waited.

  Orbital mechanics were orbital mechanics. A ship massing roughly so much, traveling at such and such a relative velocity when last detected was going to have a cone of possible locations when it reappeared. She opted to have them return to normal space off to one side, the side towards the Solar System, knowing it would be a risk.

  Valley Forge went to High Fan and then dropped back into normal space thirty-five seconds later. Lidar and radar began to hunt for their target, not to mention check to make sure no space debris was coming at them.

  There was no way the other ship could miss their appearance. If the captain of the other ship was truly clever he would ignore why or how Valley Forge appeared where she had, but would only be concerned about what to do now.

  Her nice plan was instantly derailed by the sensor officer. “Admiral, we just detected a ship going to High Fan back at the dash II planet. We’re getting just the tail end of the ripples... gone now. We have direction and a lower boundary on mass and original intrinsic. They are headed for Earth, Admiral.”

  She puffed a sigh. The problem about playing chess with people was that people were intelligent and wanted to win themselves -- thus they were prone to doing unexpected things.

  “Admiral, we’re detecting radar, but not lidar, from the ship coming up from dash III. Ah! There they are!”

  She turned back to the problem at hand.

  “Admiral, the target has fired a missile at us,” came the next report. “The ship and the missile are on collision courses for us.” Stephanie could hear the confusion in the woman’s voice.

  “What does the lidar say the exhaust is?” Stephanie asked.

  The sensor officer checked. “It’s a hypergolic, Admiral. Hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide.”

  “Navigator, I want a vector added to our current vector, at right angles to the current vector, a standard gravity for the next five minutes.”

  While they couldn’t turn at right angles to their course, they were moving off the original line steadily. In five minutes they would be traveling some ten kilometers per second at an angle to their previous course and would be 500 kilometers from where they would have been.

  “Missile is not tracking, Admiral,” the sensor officer reported. “It’s on a ballistic trajectory. The other ship as well.”

  Stephanie wanted to tell the woman there would be no other reason for the ship to be coming right at them, but it seemed overkill.

  “Admiral!” the sensor officer shouted. “The original ship is three, no five times its original diameter! They’ve exploded! There’s a lot of methane vapor, traces of oxygen, nitrogen and oxygen.”

  Stephanie froze. So, Mr. Clever Captain hadn’t been aboard that ship -- Mr. Minion had commanded her and Stephanie had been fooled worse than she’d ever been fooled before.

  This ship was the tanker, not the transport. It had been fetching more fuel because it had empty tanks -- which meant it had transferred fuel to another ship -- the one that had departed.

  She was now two hours behind the other ship and would likely be another two hours before she could go to High Fan. They were thirty-two light years from Earth. How much time could she reasonably expect to make up?

  Most ships would travel at 80% of max power, and be glad that they could travel a light year in twenty-six hours -- 832 hours flight time from Earth. If you were fleeing, however, you’d go faster. At 85% of max power you would have a chance in a hundred of losing a fan over that distance and traveling much faster -- you’d knock two days flight time off over that distance.

  She made up her mind. At 88% of max power she’d knock 80 hours off the flight time, which would put her in more than a day ahead of the other.

  “Captain Reinhardt and Sergeant Rampling, see me in my briefing room at once. Navigator, I want a course back to dash II at 1500 centimeters a second and I want us on it now.”

  There were several firm replies of, “Aye, aye, Admiral!” from a number of voices. />
  She met the two Marines and waved them to their seats. “Sit, we don’t have time for much talk. Captain, it is my understanding that your orders do not permit you to depart the ship, under any circumstances, until relieved. Is that correct?”

  The Marine captain frowned. “Yes, Admiral. We’ve talked about this before; those are my standing orders. I can only leave the ship if she faces imminent destruction.”

  “I just wanted to cement the thought in your head, Captain, lest you attempt to suggest something foolish. Sergeant Rampling, you and Captain Reinhardt will detail a dozen Marines and two of the ship’s biologists for a landing party. Sergeant Rampling, while I cannot give you orders directly, as your wife I feel I am permitted to say ‘Watch your hind end down there!’”

  “Yes, Admiral,” Dick Rampling said, hiding a grin.

  “There are likely quite a few armed people awaiting you down below. I cannot spare the time to engage them in any way, but I’d like you to at least try to chat with them about what they are doing if you think you can do it without causing a confrontation. Your party, Sergeant, will only attempt contact if you’re sure that you won’t be risking your command. Otherwise your task will be to observe and be ready to report on our return. Expect to be in the field three or four months and possibly as long as six months.”

  “Yes, Admiral,” Captain Reinhardt said with alacrity. “We can do that, easily.”

  “You’ll land in one of the shuttles in a secure location at a remove from the unknown base. You are to study and report, and you will make contact only after you are positive it can be done without incident,” Stephanie repeated.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Dick told her, a grin still on his face.

  “Go make it happen. Get with Charlie Rampling to pick the biologists. You can tell her that I specified that she is not permitted to accompany you.”

  Dick Rampling laughed and nodded to his boss. “Isn’t it a hell of thing? My wife likes her mother-in-law better than she loves her husband.”

  “Go!” Stephanie commanded.