by Isaac Hooke
It was closer than the one hundred thousand kilometer minimum distance Jain had demanded, but at least they had stopped. Jain was of a mind to jump out of the system right then, if only to make his displeasure clear to Maxwell. He knew from his SEAL days that when you set down a line in the sand, and it was crossed, you never let that go unpunished. The deal was off as far as he was concerned.
But then Jain looked around the bridge. It was clear that the others were still hoping they could work out this deal. They wanted to see home. Hell, Jain did himself. And the only way to do that was by going along with the admiral, for now. He still didn’t like it, especially with Maxwell’s dominance play, but he would just have to make the best of it. For his brothers and sisters.
“All right then, now we just have to wait for the jump vectors to finish calculating,” Jain said. “How long do we have?”
“Another thirty minutes,” Sheila said. “I’m having all three rift ships perform the calculation, so we’ll be able to use any of them to make the jump.”
Jain leaned back, and pressed his virtual fingers together. He knew they weren’t real, but the way the skin felt, the smooth texture, the press of hidden bones against one another, was indistinguishable from reality to his mind. There were still small quirks that gave away the illusion of course—two textured polygons impossibly overlapping here, a smell that was wrong there—but even so he was so used to them that this virtual environment was completely real to him.
What an odd train of thought to have at a time like this, he chided himself, and so human.
“This is strange,” Xander said.
Jain glanced at his Accomp. “What?”
“I’m detecting a faint thermal signature, fifteen thousand kilometers out from starboard, at twenty degrees inclination,” Xander explained. “It barely stands out from the background radiation. And it’s on an intercept course.”
“Are you able to get a visual?” Jain asked.
“That’s the thing,” the robed Accomp said. “On the visual band, there’s nothing out there.”
Jain accessed a starboard camera, and zoomed in on the area Xander highlighted. There was nothing there on the visual band, but sure enough, when he overlaid the thermal, he could see a small thermal pattern.
“Does that pattern match anything we’re familiar with?” Jain asked.
“No,” Xander replied. “But I should note, the leakage is similar in intensity to what we observed with the alien vessel we fought in Andreas V, when they turned their engines online for the first time.”
“They’re back,” Medeia said. “It has to be them.”
Jain couldn’t help the sudden tenseness he felt in the pit of his stomach. Those subroutines of his were good at simulating virtual emotions.
Jain glanced at Xander. “Could it be a smaller ship or craft, like a shuttle or transport of some kind? Something large enough to detect on the thermal sensors, but still remain imperceptible on the visual spectrum?”
“Ordinarily I would say yes,” Xander said. “But at fifteen thousand kilometers, our telescopes should see something at maximum zoom. If a shuttle was responsible for those weak thermal emissions, we would definitely pick it up at our current range. And yet all we see out there is empty space.”
Jain sat back in his chair and thought for a moment. “They’re using their holoemitters to mask their approach, blending in with the background radiation. They knew we had their thermal emissions on file, so they changed them subtly, to confuse us.”
“So what are we going to do about it?” Mark said. “We still have half an hour before we can jump.”
“No, we can jump whenever we want,” Jain said. “Just not to the system the admiral wants us to.”
“I wonder if we should bother to open fire,” Gavin said, “considering our lasers are the only thing that will reliably hit them at this range. We’ll only poke a few minor holes though, if past experience is any predictor.”
“Then why open fire?” Mark asked. “Why let them know we’ve detected them?”
“They must know we’re reading something by now,” Jain said.
“It could be a distraction,” Medeia said.
“From what?” Jain said. He examined the tactical display closely. “There’s nothing else in the immediate battle space.”
“I don’t know,” Medeia said. “But my sixth sense is on fire.”
“I didn’t know you had a sixth sense,” Mark said. “Considering you’re a robot.”
“We all have one,” Medeia said. “You normally call it your gut. Your intuition. Your instincts.”
“Now’s not the time for semantics,” Cranston said.
“Let’s try changing direction,” Jain said. “Xander, alter course. Increase speed, and begin leaving orbit. Void Warriors, follow. Let’s see if our incoming friend matches.”
The Void Warriors altered course.
A moment later, Xander said: “The heat signature is changing course to intercept.”
“The admiral is hailing,” Xander said.
“Put him on,” Jain said.
Admiral Maxwell appeared on the virtual bridge. “What’s going on? Why have you changed course?”
“We have a problem,” Jain said.
5
Jain explained the situation.
“We’re not detecting anything on our end,” Maxwell said. “Are you certain it’s not a sensor malfunction?”
“Actually, we are,” Jain told him. “Unless you’re trying to say our sensors have failed across the board. Because if any members of my fleet had differing sensor readings, I would have heard by now. I’m more inclined to believe that there’s something wrong with your sensors, since you’re well within range.”
“If there was something there, we would have detected it, I agree,” the admiral said. “Which is why I’m not sure what to think. We’ve never seen behavior like this from the alien vessel. Wait.” He cocked his head. “Yes, now it’s showing up. I’m not sure why it didn’t reach us until now.”
“Maybe there are two alien ships out there,” Medeia commented. “One of them is in front of the other, drifting, masking the thermal signature, at least from the viewpoint of the Thucydides fleet.”
Jain nodded. “When their inertial drives are offline, they produce no emissions, so it’s certainly possible.”
“We could work together,” Maxwell said. “Defeat them in an outflanking maneuver.”
“They’re far closer than you are,” Jain said. “You won’t get here in time to outflank them.”
“Then perform a flyby,” Maxwell said. “Get in as much damage as you can. And then we’ll come in and attempt a second pass. Think of it as a practice run for when we return to the border system.”
“Is a flyby the best idea?” Jain asked. “When we pass them, they won’t have to decelerate: remember, they’re not bound by Newtonian physics. They can change course immediately and close to within striking distance. They’re faster than us.”
“We’ll be there by then,” the admiral said. “And ready to back you up.”
“You won’t be able to reach us in time,” Jain said.
“We will,” the admiral said. “Gravitational wave detection technology isn’t the only thing that has improved in the last ten years. So have our engines. Distract these aliens. Buy us some time to approach.”
Jain stared at the admiral. “Or we could just jump out… I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to take on the rest of you without us.”
“But you’re not done computing the rift calculations,” the admiral said.
“No,” Jain said. “We’d have to jump to an intermediary system, first.”
“By doing so, you’re only delaying the inevitable,” Admiral Maxwell said. “You agreed to help us. This is your proving ground. We have forty-four ships in total. They have one. Maybe two, if the captain of the Arcane is correct, and one of them is masking the signature of the other. If we’re going to do this, let’s d
o it. If things turn south, we have more than enough rift ships between our two fleets to get out of here.”
Jain stared at the admiral for a long moment. Then he glanced at his tactical display. Finally, he nodded. “We’ll perform a flyby. You get to make the second pass.”
The admiral nodded. “Afterward, we’ll rendezvous on the other side and make a combined pass.”
“Assuming they haven’t simply tagged along with my fleet, picking us off one by one,” Jain said.
He disconnected for the time being. Having the admiral there felt too much like Maxwell was micromanaging him.
“The Thucydides is accelerating,” Xander said. “They’re on an intercept course with the hidden vessel… it will take them past the planet and to our present position before intersecting the thermal signature.”
“They’re already within the one hundred thousand kilometers minimum distance we set, how much closer are we going to let them come?” Gavin asked.
“If we’re going to team up with them, we have to trust them at some point… “ Jain replied.
“They’re definitely moving faster than they did before,” Sheila commented. “Look at them go… the admiral wasn’t kidding when he said they’d improved their engine technology over the past ten years. They’re at least as fast as the alien vessel, I’d say.”
“They were hiding their true acceleration ability from us the whole time,” Gavin said. “Sneaky bastards.”
“All right,” Jain said. “Let’s turn toward the thermal signature and plot our flyby…”
“Why do I think this is going to go badly?” Cranston commented on a private line that included only Jain and him.
Jain ignored the remark. “I want the closest point to be over six thousand kilometers.” That was the range at which the alien vessel could use its lightning beam. The weapon could disable an unarmored human ship in a single hit; worse, it could arc between any nearby vessels. “Seven to eight would be preferable.”
“Medeia, once you’re on course, you might as well cloak,” Jain continued.
“Should she get close to the enemy?” Sheila asked. “Or do we want to risk that, given what the admiral told us, how they can detect cloaked ships…”
“No, I suppose not,” Jain replied. “Cloak, but stay with the fleet for now, Medeia.”
“Will do,” she said.
Xander’s computed trajectory appeared on the display. It would take them no closer than eight thousand kilometers at the closest point of the flyby.
“Void Warriors, accelerate to intercept course,” Jain said. He instructed the three autonomous warships directly under his command—the Crater, Peltast, and Warwolf—to follow the same trajectory as the rest of the fleet. The other Mind Refurbs did likewise.
A minute later, after they had achieved maximum acceleration, Medeia vanished from the virtual bridge. Her course was set: she would maintain radio silence while her ship drifted in space, keeping emissions at a minimum. It was part of her stealth protocol.
“The thermal signature just vanished,” Xander said.
Jain glanced at the tactical display. The red dot representing the hidden enemy had vanished.
“They know we’re onto them,” Gavin said.
“So they shut down their inertialess engines…” Jain said. “That doesn’t change anything. We’ll assume they’re on the same course and trajectory, carried by their former momentum. Drifting. Xander, continue calculating their expected position, and keep my tactical display updated.”
“Will do,” Xander said.
“Wait,” Sheila said. “Is that a valid assumption? That they’re drifting, I mean? If their drives are truly inertialess, if they shut them off, wouldn’t they cease all motion relative to the local star?”
“I don’t think it works that way,” Cranston said. “Conservation of momentum still applies. Unless they decelerated the instant before shutting off their drives. Or changed directions. I didn’t detect either before the signature vanished.”
“Neither did I,” Jain said.
“I tend to agree with Sheila,” Medeia said. “This is alien tech. We can’t be sure precisely how it works. Though I suspect Cranston is correct. If they shut off those drives while already in motion, they’re going to stay in motion.”
“I’m going to assume they’re continuing along their previous path,” Jain agreed.
“Which raises the question,” Mark said. “Why didn’t they shut off their drives earlier? Why let us detect them in the first place? Why not just drift to our coordinates, with the drives shut off, and then ambush us.”
“The obvious answer is they had to make course adjustments,” Gavin said. “They probably were coming in with their drives offline, and when they got close, they reactivated the drives to line up their trajectory with our own. They knew it would be too late for us by then.”
Jain studied the tactical display. “Looks like the closest point of flyby will be three minutes from now. We’ll be just underneath the eight thousand kilometer mark.”
“Should we fire missiles?” Medeia asked.
“With their drives, they’ll avoid any ranged weapons we hurl at them…” Jain replied. “Hellraisers, barracudas, black holes, you name it. Herding won’t work, either: they’re just too maneuverable.”
“Then how do you expect to win this?” Medeia said.
Jain suppressed a smile. “We’re going to have to come up with tactics that are a little unorthodox.”
“Like what?” Gavin said.
Jain stared at the tactical display. “Gavin, when we’re twenty seconds out from the closest point of our flyby, I want you to unleash your shockwave weapon.”
Gavin nodded. “That’s something they won’t be able to dodge.”
“No,” Jain said. “Also, the rest of you, fire your stingers two seconds after. The slugs won’t be detected by them until the last possible moment. By then, even their inertialess drives won’t be able to avoid them. At least, that’s the hope.”
“If they don’t detect them, we’ll certainly cause a few pockmarks…” Medeia said. “But given how strong their armor is, not more than that.”
“But it’s a start,” Jain said. “Cranston, you might as well deploy a few micro machines as well. Place them in the path of the enemy.”
“None of them will survive the impact,” Cranston said.
“Yes, but it’s a few more pockmarks…” Jain told him. “We’re also going to fire raptors, fleet-wide, shortly after the stingers. More pockmarks… the damage will begin to add up after a while. And Sheila, now’s the time to start that gate to Granalus. I want the option to jump out of here when things go south.”
“On it,” Sheila said.
“So now it’s a matter of when things go south, rather than if,” Gavin said. “At least you’re being realistic.”
“I am,” Jain said. “I don’t care what the admiral thinks, if we start losing ships, he can stay here and battle them on his own if he wants.”
“What about our temporary alliance?” Mark asked.
“Hey, we’ll still have an alliance as far as I’m concerned,” Jain replied. “And the admiral will more readily understand the terms of that alliance. We’re willing to help, yes, but not give up our lives in the process. If that’s not good enough to grant us the forgiveness he promised us at the hands of the Brass, and the weapons tech, then so be it.” He shook his head, and muttered: “I should have never agreed to this.”
“You did it for us,” Sheila said. “Because we wanted to do this. We wanted a chance to be useful again.”
“Useful, yes,” Gavin said. “Dead, no.”
Jain studied the tactical map over the next minute.
“The admiral is requesting communications,” Xander said. “He’s detected the distortion beam from our jump ship, and wants to know why we’re trying to open a rift.”
“Tell him it’s just a precaution,” Jain said.
“He wants to know where the
rift leads,” Xander said.
“Tell him Safarius," Jain said.
Gavin glanced at him. “I thought we trusted him?”
“That trust only goes so far,” Jain said. “Besides, if we have to jump out, going to Granalus gives us the chance to opt out. Once we’re there, we can decide if we truly want to continue down this path; if so, we can travel to Safarius and rendezvous with the admiral at that point.”
“The thermal signature has returned,” Xander said. “And it looks like you were right: it kept up its original course after all.” On the tactical map, the red dot indicating the hidden enemy had reappeared. “But it’s altering course now… attempting to bridge the gap that will remain between us during the flyby.”
“Alter our own course to compensate,” Jain said. “Keep the closest point of flyby to eight thousand kilometers, if possible.”
“Altering course,” Xander said. Jain transmitted the signal to the ships under his command, as did the other Void Warriors.
Jain watched the changes on the map, and was satisfied that the hidden vessel would come no closer than eight thousand kilometers during the flyby. The red dot remained on the tactical display.
“We’re twenty seconds from the closest point of our trajectories,” Xander announced.
“Gavin, now,” Jain said.
6
Jain watched as the Hippogriff launched its shockwave weapon. Gavin was able to selectively blank out portions of his hull that produced the wave, leaving gaps in the expanding sphere so that the other members of the fleet wouldn’t be impacted.
“Fire stingers,” Jain said.
Railguns activated across the fleet, targeting the hidden vessel.
“Cranston, let’s get a hundred micro machines in their path,” Jain said.
“Done,” Cranston said.
“Finally, fire raptors,” Jain said.
The vessels all had their starboard sides facing the hidden target, and they unleashed the laser banks on that side at the same time.
