“Aye, ma’am.”
“Nav, plot me a course that will put us right up behind those ships, maximum performance,” Celesta said, her adrenaline starting to spike as things were about to go live.
“Course plotted on last known locations,” the nav specialist said. “It’s going to be a bit fluid since we’ll be doing updated via the passive sensors and we’re not—”
“I understand the risks,” Celesta cut him off. “Helm, execute your new course and be ready to make instant adjustments. All ahead full.”
“All engines ahead full, aye!” The Icarus surged forward on a wave of gravimetric distortion, quickly reeling in the ships that had already passed them and were heading back into the inner system.
“Let me have a running estimated range to target,” Celesta ordered.
Lieutenant Commander Adler looked distressed and didn’t answer right away.
“Tactical!”
“Targets are gone, Captain,” Adler said after a moment. “They disappeared from passive sensors and now there’s no trace of them on thermals … that shouldn’t be possible even if they did a full engine shutdown.”
“They jumped away,” Barrett said. “The question is, did they spot us, or was this part of a predetermined course?”
“Helm, zero thrust,” Celesta ordered. “Steady as she goes, no braking maneuver … just maintain your heading for now.” She was just buying herself a few moments to think while not having her ship dead in space. She could either alter her course and start the mission as they’d originally planned, or she could use the superior speed and acceleration of the RDS to try and relocate the patrol and try to take it out prior to the main body of the fleet arriving. Three less ships was not insignificant, but there was also no guarantee her destroyer would be successful in taking out all three.
“Helm, come about onto your original course, ahead one-half,” she said. “Coms! Inform Flight OPS that they’re to begin deploying our Jacobson drones.”
“Aye, Captain,” Ellison said.
“Back to the original plan?” Barrett asked.
“We don’t have the luxury of a hunting expedition right now,” Celesta said. “The fleet isn’t that far behind us, and we’re going to need the drone data sooner than later. OPS! Initiate the Link. Put all of our received drone data onto it once it starts coming in along with our own sensor data.”
“Link active, ma’am,” Accari said. “Flight OPS is reporting all drones have been launched and are inbound to the target area.”
Celesta watched on the screen as all her expensive Jacobson drones began to fan out away from the ship as they flew at maximum acceleration down into the system. Once they were within the orbit of the sixth planet, all the drones would bring up their active sensors and begin to map out the enemy positions near the objective while also, hopefully, causing one hell of a distraction that would allow the three destroyers to move down to be of better use when the main body of the fleet arrived.
She thought back again to the three ships she’d lost track of, her instincts still wanting to hunt them down. Logic overruled her instincts, however, as she knew time wasn’t on her side. There was no doubt in her mind there was a CIS asset somewhere out there observing everything, and she’d rather not have to explain to her superiors why she had been unable to prep the system for their arrival as had been her one and only task.
“Receiving Link updates from the Atlas and Hyperion,” Accari said. “Adding their drone data to our threat board. Both ships are underway and moving into position.”
Over the next four hours the crew watched as the projected tracks of the drones reached out from their three-ship formation. It would be another six hours at least before the tiny ships would fire up their active sensors and give them a much clearer picture of what they were dealing with further down the system. So far all they could really tell from the passive sensors was that there did indeed appear to be a substantial Darshik presence about where the Ushin had said it would be.
“First of the drones are going active,” Accari reported, stifling a yawn as Celesta walked back onto the bridge after grabbing a quick meal in the wardroom. “We’ll have a much clearer picture of the enemy numbers once they update on the Link.”
“When are the first ships of the main body supposed to arrive?” Celesta asked as she sat down.
“Still another twelve hours away at the earliest if they departed on schedule,” Accari said.
“Call up your relief, Mr. Accari,” Celesta said. “You too, Lieutenant Commander Adler. I want first watch rotating out for five-hour breaks and I want everyone rested and ready when the rest of the fleet arrives. I don’t expect we’ll see any action until they do, but sleep in your uniforms anyway.”
There was some grumbling but her crew didn’t question her orders, and soon the relief watch officers began trickling onto the bridge to receive turnover and begin their own long, tense watch. Sitting in an enemy-controlled system while all was quiet was worse than a running battle. At least that’s what most of the spacers said until they were actually in a running battle.
“Captain, I think you should take this chance to get some sleep,” Barrett leaned over and whispered. “We’ll need you fresh.” Celesta opened her mouth to argue and then the weight of her exhaustion and the stress of sitting in an occupied system seemed to crush in from all sides. She turned to her XO and nodded once, standing to leave.
“XO, you have the bridge.”
****
Celesta had only slept for a little over three hours, but she felt enormously refreshed as she strode back onto the bridge in a clean uniform and a mug of coffee grasped in her left hand.
“Report!”
“Drones have gone active and the data is just now coming over the Link,” Ensign Accari said. She looked at him suspiciously, but the young officer did appear to be fresh and rested. It wouldn’t be unusual for him to wait until she left the bridge and then just stay on duty.
“How does it look so far and are any of the enemy ships reacting to the active sensor net?” she asked, sitting down and logging into her terminal.
“There are a lot of targets flying in twelve distinct groupings, all flying along the orbit of the Ushin planet,” Accari said. “There also seems to be no reaction to the drones’ high-powered tactical radars. Not even so much as a directed scan.”
“That’s interesting,” Celesta mused. “Keep me updated as we get better resolution on the makeup of those formations. Has there been any word from either the Ushin planet or their ships that were supposed to meet us here?”
“Negative, Captain,” Accari shook his head. “The only thing making noise in this system right now is us.”
Over the next ten hours the bridge crew was in constant contact with the CIC as the drone sensor network Celesta had employed began to gather more details about the enemy formations. They knew there were at least one hundred and nineteen ships, almost four and a half times the number of Terran ships that would be in the fight and more than twice as many as the Ushin had claimed would be in the system.
The high-resolution radar scans were picking out over sixty of the cruiser-class vessels they’d already tangled with, along with a more or less even distribution of what looked like smaller frigates and support craft. The emitted radiation scans of each formation were inconclusive given the range the drones were operating from, but she could see that over two-thirds of the enemy armada was showing signs of active weaponry. So why weren’t they reacting to the drones? They knew from the previous engagements that the Darshik could detect their RF-based sensors, so why weren’t any ships coming out to investigate?
“OPS, I want one of our Jacobsons reconfigured to try and slip in through the gaps of the Darshik formation. I want eyes on the Ushin planet,” Celesta said. Something didn’t smell right about the entire situation, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. The hell of it was she had no idea if this new behavior she was seeing in the ships down in the system was
at all normal. Their lack of knowledge about the Darshik, and in fact their new Ushin allies, was something that she felt was an avoidable and potentially dangerous oversight by CENTCOM. It was one thing to enter into a protection pact, but they’d committed most of their combat-ready forces without much due diligence that she could see and now they were already facing more than double the ships they had accounted for.
“Ready to upload the new parameters, ma’am,” Accari said. “Flight OPS will send it in the next burst transmission. We just want to divert one drone?”
“Yes,” Celesta nodded. “Just the one. It may not make it through, but I want to see what the state of the surface is.”
“The closest Jacobson should be on its way down to the planet within the next forty minutes,” Accari said. “We also have some handshake requests on the Link. Four distinct queries.”
“Confirmed, Captain,” Ellison said over his shoulder from the com station. “Leading elements from the rest of the taskforce are emerging from the jump point.”
“The drones are already raising a hell of a racket down near their lines,” Celesta said. “Let’s keep our own emissions to a minimum; passive sensors only and directional burst transmissions when needed. If the Darshik move at the new arrivals, a few more ships broadcasting as a distraction won’t make much of a difference. Lieutenant Ellison, please tell the new arrivals to pass along that we’ve seen at least three Darshik ships free-flying through the system but have lost track of them.”
“Aye aye, ma’am.”
Celesta discreetly popped a few stim tabs into her mouth and washed them down with a healthy swig of coffee. The ship’s chief medical officer would lose her mind if she knew what the captain was doing, but Celesta instinctually knew that things were in motion that wouldn’t allow her to leave the bridge for any length of time. It also meant that she would be required to stay for an extremely long watch since all the players were spread out across the system. The com delays alone were just over an hour between the Icarus and where the rest of the fleet was deploying.
“OPS, keep an eye on the Link feed,” she said. “I want to know when the New York arrives and I want to know when the Ushin fleet gets here.”
“Aye, ma’am,” Accari said. “How many ships are the Ushin sending?”
“Unknown,” Celesta said. “I wouldn’t expect more than a token amount, and then I wouldn’t expect them to actually do much. From what I understand about the treaty agreement we’ve signed onto, neither CENTCOM nor the Ushin expect their fleet to do any real fighting.”
“You’d think they’d be willing to put a bit more effort into liberating their own star system,” Barrett grumbled while rubbing his bloodshot eyes.
“You’d think,” Celesta nodded slowly.
Chapter 17
“Good morning, Director Wolfe.” Jackson looked up in irritation, saw who it was, and just nodded as he continued eating his breakfast. Some people were simply incapable of using his given name apparently.
“What can I do for you?” he asked politely after swallowing.
“I was told you’d want this.” The orderly handed him a sealed hardcopy envelope. “It was from that special analysis you had the Cube running that Danilo brought down.”
“Ah! Thank you.” Jackson placed the envelope beside his tray and continued eating, making no move to open it. The orderly took an awkward step back before turning and walking out, almost looking like he was retreating. Jackson shrugged and kept eating. Although the Pontiac had all her galleys in operation, and Jackson had taken to using the same quarters he’d occupied aboard her sister ship, the Blue Jacket, he’d been taking his morning and afternoon meals in the aft enlisted mess hall. Dinner he still took in the officers’ mess up in the superstructure.
“He served aboard your old ship, that’s why he’s so nervous around you,” Danilo Jovanović said as he sat his tray across from him. “If I’d known you were eating breakfast so late I would have hand-delivered those results.”
“Do you remember which ship?” Jackson asked, thoroughly chagrinned that he didn’t recognize one of his own spacers even if modern starships did house anywhere from five hundred to a few thousand people.
“Apparently he was aboard the Blue Jacket for a short time,” Danilo said. “I think he might have actually been a Marine … he talked about someone named Major Ortiz.”
“That would now be Brigadier General Ortiz of the United Terran Federation Marine Corps,” Jackson said. “Same person, though. I’ll have to talk to him later as there were some interesting events on the old ship that I’d probably like to know if he was involved in. Was there anything interesting in the analysis?”
“Nothing I understood.” Danilo began eating. “I only just glanced at it though.”
Jackson opened the envelope and began reading through the cover sheet summary while his assistant and only real source of companionship aboard the ship ate in silence.
Jackson saw right away that it was extremely dry reading so it was likely he was looking at something the Cube itself had actually written. The machine still seemed to have a strange affinity for Jackson even after all the artificial intelligence specialists and behavioral scientists that spent time with it all day and all night, fussing over it and trying to understand it. They cringed when Jackson walked in the room and treated it like an unwelcome houseguest, barking requests at it. He still had bad memories of where the thing came from and who had sent it, and he wasn’t entirely sure he trusted the story of how it came to be sentient, if it really even was. He’d seen a lot of interfaces on Arcadia that gave a more realistic simulation of intelligence than the Cube.
“This damn thing,” Jackson muttered in frustration. “For being so intelligent it certainly seems to have a hard time with such simple requests. These conclusions make no sense.”
“Dr. Allen thinks it does that on purpose so you’ll have to go down to the cargo hold yourself and talk to it.” Danilo said around a mouthful.
“Absurd,” Jackson scoffed. “But it looks like I’ll be taking a trip to the cargo hold to talk to the damn thing anyway.”
Danilo just waved as he got up and deposited his tray in the recycling chute.
He felt slightly guilty at how short his temper was with the Cube, but it seemed like the project had run its course, at least as far as he was concerned. When it had asked for him specifically he’d been there to coax it through its “infancy” until it was able to comfortably communicate with anybody that tried to talk to it. Now, nearly five years later, he felt it was unnecessary for him to be stuck on the Pontiac and away from his wife and children. Even the novelty of being back aboard a Raptor-class ship had given way to frustration and anger as his children took their first steps and began talking, all while not really having any connection to him other than Jillian telling them he was their father. He’d petition Marcum again to be let off the project and, if that failed, he would take more drastic action and simply resign. The pay as an assimilated O-7 was nice, the civilian equivalent of a brigadier general, but he felt it was no longer worth the hardship.
The other factor was that the Cube was no longer producing results at the breakneck speed it had during the early years of the project. It had developed practical applications and techniques for much of what they only knew in theory, as well as reviewing and improving the designs of five new classes of Terran starships. Now it spent its days trying to convey concepts and theories to scientists, most of whom seemed unable to grasp even the base concepts. The application engineers fared no better as the Cube was now trying to describe technologies to them that they couldn’t duplicate.
“I need to speak with it alone,” Jackson announced as he strode across the rough textured deck of the cargo hold. “I won’t be long. Thank you.” There were some grumbles and hostile looks, but people had learned early on that the director was not a man who enjoyed having his orders questioned or ignored.
“Hello, Director Wolfe,” the Cube said simply.
“You ran an analysis on all the information that was on that data card?” Jackson asked.
“Of course,” it said. “That is what you asked, was it not?”
“Then how come I’m looking at the results of a single incident?” Jackson flipped through the report. “This is all just the raw data from one engagement ... looks like maybe Celesta’s run-in at Xi’an. Where is the data for the Ushin ships that were destroyed in the DeLonges System?”
“I was afraid you would not understand the context,” the Cube said in its condescending tone that made Jackson want to kick it. “Your own CIS did an admirably thorough job of the individual post-incident analyses. After a cursory check I saw nothing to be gained by repeating their work. Instead, I concentrated on finding correlation between all the separate engagements.”
“Since they all involved Darshik cruiser-class warships I wouldn’t think that’d be especially interesting,” Jackson said.
“You would be incorrect in that assumption,” the Cube said.
“Wait! You’re certain about this?” Jackson asked, holding his hand up to silence the machine now that he knew what he was looking for in the report. It was all there, spelled out plain as day.
“I am as certain as I can be working with evidence I did not procure,” it said. “Would you like me to further explain my conclusions?”
Jackson was already walking away and pulling his comlink out.
“Danilo, it’s Wolfe,” he said, looking back at the Cube one more time. “We need to send a priority message to New Sierra. Access the com drone platform and have one of the new point-to-point drones standing by. Use my personal access codes if you need to.”
****
“Still no reaction from the enemy fleet,” Adler said. Celesta just nodded and shifted uncomfortably in her seat. The stimulants she’d been popping were tearing her stomach up and she was struggling to find a seated position that helped.
New Frontiers (Expansion Wars Trilogy, Book 1) Page 17
