The Coming Storm_A Pax Aeterna Novel

by Trevor Wyatt

  Jeryl took no offense at the gesture. He explained to him that he was having some of the wreckage brought aboard for closer examination.

  “Just give me a couple of hours to get a more complete report together, Admiral,” he said, remaining calm in the face of Flynn’s glare.

  Jeryl had dealt with Flynn before and he knew that despite the Admiral’s bluster, Flynn was no martinet. And Jeryl knew that he was not stalling.

  Flynn scrunched his face up.

  “All right,” he growled. “You’ve got three hours. Fair?”

  “Fair,” Jeryl said. He signed off and went down to the science section with the intention to build a fire under Dr. Lannigan.

  Three hours later he was back on the slipstream with Admiral Flynn at Edoris Station, sharing his findings. Even though there had never been any proof that a slipstream broadcast could be hacked, it was customary to encode them on the off chance the Outers have made a breakthrough.

  Flynn wasn’t happy with what he was told.

  “All my science team can say is that whatever destroyed The Mariner was an energy weapon of some kind,” said Jeryl.

  Flynn let out an impressive snort. “Well, it’s good to know that we haven’t got one of Horatio Hornblower’s ships of the line out here blasting away with a fusillade of cannon fire!”

  Jeryl bit his lips to restrain a laugh despite his sarcasm.

  “Send me the reports. I want to see ‘em.”

  Jeryl subvocalized a few commands to the ship’s computer; it responded with a low compliant tone.

  “On their way,” said Jeryl.

  Even though Flynn was light years away at Edoris, the slipstream, quantum miracle that it was, dropped the documents into his computer almost at once. Jerly knew the documents would not make him any happier. Flynn called them up on a read-screen, his scowl deepening as he scanned through the files.

  “Unknown energy signature...all remaining components give evidence of having been bathed in highly charged emissions. Super charged, in fact.”

  He grunted.

  “Whatever that is. No, no,” he added as Jeryl started to explain, “I know what it means. You’re saying that whatever hit The Mariner disintegrated some of its components, destroying enough of them that the ship’s hull couldn’t maintain integrity. The Mariner exploded. The wreckage is brittle, some of it, like old bread.”

  Admiral Flynn looked up from Flynn’s report.

  “They were on their way to investigate a neutron star in that damned nebula.”

  Again, the Admiral scrunched his face. “Could they have been caught in a GRB?”

  GRB, Jeryl thought. Gamma ray burst?

  He took a few seconds to ponder the idea. High-energy physics was not his field, but like all ship captains, Jeryl knew his astronomy. He supposed a concentrated burst of gamma rays could do the sort of damage they found, but, from what he knew, GRBs were rare; maybe half a dozen per galaxy per million years.

  GRBs were associated with the collapse of a dying sun into a high-density neutron star, but The Mariner’s target had been sitting in its nebula for centuries, at most.

  The biggest strike against implicating a GRB was that there had never been one in their galaxy; all observed GRBs originated from outside the Milky Way. An event of that size would have lit up radio telescopes dozens of worlds. A GRB in the Milky Way, if it happened to be pointing at Earth, could trigger a mass extinction event, potentially sterilizing the planet, and turning it into a lifeless cinder.

  Jeryl explained his reasoning to Flynn, and the Admiral nodded as if he had already figured it out. Jeryl thought he probably already has.

  “Well then, this last bit,” Flynn said, flicking a paragraph up onto the screen so that Jeryl could see it, too.

  “Lannigan is saying that he suspects a concentrated, highly charged beam of photons. Mixed in with a population of some unknown particle.”

  “Yeah, um...” Jeryl hoped his face remained passive; he hadn’t noticed that particular datum in the findings.

  Unknown?

  Jeryl cursed silently. Not that it was a surprise to him—everything about this situation smacked of the unknown, only he should have caught that detail. Jeryl nodded sagely.

  Fortunately, Flynn took it as an agreement with his assessment rather than Jeryl’s attempt to cover his mistake.

  “So we’re left with a particle beam of a previously undiscovered nature that can cause molecular breakdown,” said Jeryl, summing up for himself as much as for the Admiral.

  Flynn nodded.

  Jeryl scanned the rest of the report as quickly and unobtrusively as he could.

  “Lannigan says that only something focused could do this, not something dispersed, and the focusing device, platform, agency, whatever we call it, has to be something relatively small. Not the size of a star. Not the size of a planet, even.”

  “Something the size of a ship, you mean,” Flynn said with a low voice.

  The two men locked eyes through the slipstream viewer.

  “All right, listen to me, Montgomery,” Flynn said after a few moments. “This is strictly need-to-know, and I think that at this point you need to know. The Armada has been developing a gamma ray weapon for a number of years now.”

  Jeryl blinked. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” he says. “It’s an Intelligence issue. I’m in the loop because some of my technical team members are involved. They’ve been testing the thing on Tau Ceti 2.”

  Tau Ceti 2, Jeryl knew, was an airless chunk of planetary real estate about the size of Mercury, orbiting its primary at about as far as Venus was from Sol. It was lifeless—therefore an ultimately good place for weapons research.

  “I see,” Jeryl told him.

  “It’s still being tested. They’re having problems with shielding the—well, never mind. That’s information you don’t need to know. The short version is, it’s not ready for official deployment yet. I’m told they’re still at least three years away from that.”

  “But if we’re working on something like that, then the Outers could be also,” said Jeryl.

  “That’s right, Captain. Yet Armada Intelligence has not reported any sort of activity that would suggest the Outer Colonies have something even close to this kind of capability.”

  It was Jeryl’s turn to scrunch up his face. The standard service joke was that Armada Intelligence was an oxymoron.

  The official intelligence services did their best, and sometimes they were good at it. But it had long been an open secret that they relied too much on informers and embedded operatives whose reports were often unverifiable.

  “The Armada could be off the mark,” said Jeryl.

  Flynn shrugged.

  “We have a new president,” he said. “We have a new council. They are a bunch of mid-level bureaucrats who only care about the damn bottom line.”

  Not everyone shared this view, but Jeryl did. The new administration had been cutting funding in favor of channeling more money to the renovation of Earth’s environment. The widespread collapse of mankind’s interlocking social and technological edifice during the 21st century had severely devastated the planet; overpopulation, a stressed environment, and World War III were the overlying factors of Earth’s collapse.

  Analysts predicted after the end of the World War III, it would take roughly 500 to 1,000 years for the planet to recuperate, for humanity to be able to live again on the planet sustainably. But over the last one hundred and fifty years, the predicted numbers had dropped dramatically, to the point where most areas were now habitable and full renovation was something they should be able to see in the next ten years. Most of the planet had been rehabilitated, and for Jeryl, no one could argue that it was not money well spent.

  You couldn’t tour some of the places in Africa and Europe—and North America—and not come away with tears in your eyes and a determination to clean that mess up.

  Well, we cleaned it up, alright, thought Jer
yl. But what else did we ignore?

  The money to be able to do all those things did have to come from somewhere, and one of those places was the Armada Intelligence. The perception of the administration was that the Outers were a bunch of ham-fisted goons who could barely make their starships work.

  This view, however, Jeryl did not share. From someone tasked to patrol the stellar borders, Jeryl knew what the administration thought was not reality-based. The Outers lacked some resources, but they weren’t fools.

  The damn Administration, Jeryl thought. Far from the field, what did they knew about…anything?

  To some extent, Jeryl had always felt it left people like him hung out to dry. If they got in a jam they could yell for help and it would come, but for the most part they were expected to solve their own problems. Jeryl was generally good with that; he was not a big fan of relying on other people.

  Jeryl knew Flynn was thinking that at this point, he may have to concede. But Jeryl was not ready to give, not just yet. Flynn wanted his officers to be as autonomous and self-reliant as possible. It was why they had such carefully chosen and well-trained crews.

  “This is what we get for electing a bean counter,” said Jeryl, and Flynn barked out a laugh.

  “I know you want more information, son. I do, too—but I don’t want this to blow up in our faces.”

  “I won’t take any unnecessary chances,” replied Jeryl.

  “Very well. Proceed with caution, report regularly.”

  “Sir.”

  With the call to Flynn terminated, Jeryl put in a call to Dr. Lannigan.

  “I want you to work with Docherty in Navigation,” he told Taft. “Have him plot The Mariner’s course and follow it back.”

  Lannigan raised an eyebrow.

  “Somewhere along the line, they ran into something,” Jeryl explained. “Something that bit them. If we trace their course, maybe we can run into it too.”

  Ashley

  One of her jobs as First Officer was to keep track of the ship’s full complement. That included the three computer-based artificial intelligences as well as the fifty humans who were aboard. The AIs in engineering and navigation were sequestered to the ship.

  They were created to serve in the absence of crewmembers or in the event that crewmembers became incapacitated. They walked, talked, and operated in a way to mimic humans; this had been done deliberately to prevent awkward interactions with them.

  Early generation AI had been non-autonomous until the Armada Security received complaints that the AI units gave crews “the creeps." They did not have names, either, other than EngPrime and NavPrime, or usually just Eng and Nav. For Ashley, neither one had much in the way of personality.

  (That was a joke she had tried on Jeryl once, but the Captain just gave her a blank look.)

  For some reason, Ashley couldn’t figure out, AI in the armory was different. It was a later model than the others, its cognitive net more capable with faster connections. It wore clothes. Someone with a strange sense of humor had programmed a personality into it, something based on an old-time gunnery sergeant. It called itself Gunny. Gunny’s user interface was rough spoken, often obscene, and inclined to pomposity.

  Ashley found Gunney amusing herself, but she knew Jeryl was annoyed with him. He tended to avoid the AI as much as possible; Gunny was not impressed by anyone’s rank or social standing.

  Ashley had served on several other Armada frigates, and they all had a greater complement of AIs than The Seeker. She knew that having AIs on board was strictly at the captain’s discretion. A few frigates, however, had no AIs, for one reason or another—usually down to the captain’s discretion.

  Human prejudice against AIs ran strong in certain quarters and among certain demographic groups. Ashley had never spoken to Jeryl about the relative scarcity of AIs among the ship’s crew—but plainly put, she believed it was none of her business. If Captain Montgomery had a problem with AIs, she never heard him mention it, and it was not her place to ask.

  It would stand to reason that the AI’s presence was due to the recent victory of the Union’s new president in passing legislation for AIs to serve in the armed forces. This new president’s family had been involved in robotics and cybernetic development all rooting back for centuries.

  They had been using computers since the 20th century, Ashley was aware; the computers weren’t anything new to the military. But it seemed like the new laws were as no more than a payback to the powerful Cybernetic Science lobby that helped the new president to come into power.

  There were a lot of very conservative people in the military, which, for Ashley, was not a bad thing; she considered herself a conservative person, as well. Her father and his father before him were military men, and she was proud to carry on the tradition. She had ancestors rooting back from World War II, fighting aboard destroyers. They were a family of peacekeepers and law enforcement officers.

  Many of her fellow officers, including several aboard The Seeker, never liked AIs much, but they obeyed the letter of the law. For Ashley, she had nothing against the AIs, though she had known few as interesting and personable as Gunny. Most people thought of AIs as appliances having opinions, and never regarded them as being truly alive.

  Her feeling was that there were bigger issues to worry about in life. But she did know that ships with fewer AIs tended to have a happier crew. This led her to think that Jeryl was trying to have it both ways: he was obeying Armada custom by having several AIs on a given vessel, but he had limited their numbers—a shrewd attempt on his part to boost morale by having fewer synthetics on the ship.

  All these thoughts slipped through Ashley’s mind as she sat at her station in CNC, going over status reports. She could do those with half of her attention—maybe even less. This was why she had been daydreaming about the AIs.

  But as she had thought before, it wasn’t her business. If she and Jeryl grew closer, perhaps she could ask him.

  But of course, that was an entirely different affair.

  She found herself thinking again about that night. She really did not want to—it was distracting. She had duties to attend to. Supplies, nominal. Recyclers, fine...though number 45, outside the third-level lay, would only give out soap, no matter what’s asked of it. Nothing that couldn’t be dealt with once they docked.

  She had been trying, although unsuccessfully, not to think about it for weeks now. She was certain that they ended up at that resort together on New Sydney by sheer accident. They had been delayed on the ship by some administrative tasks, so she missed the main shuttle that took the body of the crew down to the planet for some well-deserved shore leave.

  New Sydney was something of a vacation spot, so there were resorts scattered all across its face. With barely any axial tilt, the planet enjoyed what was basically a yearlong early summer.

  With so many resorts to choose from, she found Jeryl at the same spot as hers. She was surprised; Jeryl was having a drink in the lounge as she walked in to register and he was dressed in an open shirt, shorts, and sandals. Jeryl was a good-looking guy, no one could deny that, but Ashley had never seen him in such casual garb.

  He didn’t see her, but after she signed in Ashley went over to his table. Jeryl looked up at her, surprised.

  “Ashley! I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “Well, here I am,” said Ashley, taking a seat. “What’s that you’re drinking?”

  “Oh, a really old liquor called tequila.”

  “I’ll have one, too.”

  Well, she had one, two, three, and the next thing she knew...

  She had never expected it. He said he never expected it. But for an unexpected liaison, it was amazing. She didn’t get to her room until the next morning. Jeryl’s was large, clean, and airy...with perfumed breezes from the flower forest nearby drifting in. They smelled like cool and sweet, like gardenias, her favorite.

  It was impossible—it was heaven. She was not inclined to be particularly submissive, but
he took command and four orgasms later, he finally let her fall asleep. She didn’t even get to reciprocate until just past dawn, after she woke to use the bathroom and then went back to repay her debt. The next three days were a repeat of the first, with time-off for tours of the forest, incredible meals—and a lot of sex. They were consenting adults after all.

  Since then, it was all business between them, and Ashley was fine with that. Not so much as a caress or a kiss had passed between them since New Sydney—but perhaps a meaningful glance or two. But they knew the truth of their positions: Jeryl was her captain, Ashley his first officer, and they had a job to do.

  What happened was a dalliance—a very pleasant one at that. It wasn’t headed towards anything, and Ashley was perfectly okay with that. In fact, she preferred it. She had a career and she was not about to settle down just yet. She didn’t even know if she wanted children.

  Frankly, they never appealed to her. She might not be good mother material, either. Ashley never spent time thinking about that...it wasn’t at all high on her list of priorities. In fact, last time she looked, it wasn’t on the list at all.

  She wasn’t looking for that to change. These were things they hadn’t talked about. In fact, they may never even get to talk about them at all, and that was okay…but she wouldn’t rule out another fling like the one with Jeryl, though.

  A security alert buzzed from her station, startling Ashley. A quick look at the code told her it was nothing internal, but when she glanced at the exterior monitors, her jaw dropped.

  It was a spaceship. But it was not one of theirs: nothing Earth ever built looked like the one she was seeing.

  She slapped the comm link and waited an endless three seconds until Jeryl responded.

  “Yes, Lieutenant?” His voice was all business.

  “Unknown craft sighted fifteen units away, northwest quadrant,” Ashley said as crisply as she could, linking him into the feed. “On an intercept course.”