James Wittenbach - Worlds Apart 01

by Meridian

  “Can our shields protect us against a warhead detonation?” Keeler asked.

  “At close range, a detonation could weaken our shields. It would take a lot of damage before they could get inside.”

  “And if they did get inside?” Keeler asked.

  “One explosion of that magnitude could destroy the ship.”

  Keeler understood. “Let us make certain, then, that they do not get inside.” Alkema reported. “Pulse cannons armed and ready. Hammerheads in launchers. Aves standing by.

  Piloted and auto-piloted Accipiters standing by.”

  “Ready the Accipiters for immediate launch. Stand by on the Aves, Very good.” Keeler turned to Kayliegh Driver. “Status of non-essential personnel?”

  “All non-essential personnel have been evacuated to Battle-Shielded Areas,” she answered him.

  “We’re going to Situation 1. All personnel to battle stations.” The accent lighting that outlined the bridge went from amber to red. A pair of “oh-shit” handles deployed from every station.

  A holographic tactical display appeared on the front left side of the bridge; a scale representation of Pegasus surrounded by translucent bubbles of deflective shielding. Other displays showed the status of all weapons and firing solutions on the Meridian targets.

  So, this was battle. Keeler had once been the Reserve Grand Champion in the Battle Command Interactive Gaming Competition while an undergraduate at USNC. (Would have been Grand Champion, too, if he hadn’t been distracted by butt-cramps in hour thirteen, he thought to himself.) It had not been quite like this. Nothing had ever been like this.

  “Three minutes to intercept,” American announced.

  “Launch all Accipiters.” Keeler ordered calmly.

  Accipiters, the graceful fighting wings of the Pathfinder ships, enjoyed their own dedicated launch systems, capable of putting one hundred and forty-four into space within two minutes of the order.

  “You realize of course,” said American, “that each Accipiter will have to take out over a hundred spheres.”

  “Then, I suggest we enable some counter measures. Go to.”

  Alkema brought up his battle console. The display showed an array of missiles activating in Pegsaus’s foredeck. “Arming two braces of Hammerhead missiles. Maximum speed. Maximum yield. Launch enable at your order, Commander.”

  “Launch Hammerheads.”

  “Launching brace one.”

  Ten hatches opened, and ten bright and dangerous streaks of light shot through space.

  “Launching brace two.”

  The hatches opened and closed in less time than the human eye could register any movement. In the command center, the progress of the missiles was followed in the holographic battle display.

  The Hammerheads shot past the Accipiters and struck deep into the heart of the swarm, detonating into blasts of blue-white light. The first brace blew enormous dark holes in the swarm. A few seconds later, the second brace reduced the number of attackers still further.

  “How many did we take out?” Keeler asked.

  American reported. “Based on the reduction and dispersion of mass, it looks like kills were in the 65%

  range within 100 km.”

  Alkema reported. “Ready to launch another brace at your command.” Keeler told him to stand by. “Accipiters are moving into intercept range. I don’t want to risk taking any out by accident.”

  “Acknowledged. Arming point defense weaponry. Phalanx guns at ready.”

  “Thirty seconds to interception,” American reported.

  “Beginning final braking maneuver,” Change announced.

  Keeler and the command center watched the Accipiters tear forward, converging directly in Pegasus’s flight path. From ahead came bursts of red and yellow light. The Accipiters were decimating their targets, but not fast enough.

  “Twenty seconds to intercept,” American reported.

  The swarm began to resolve from points of light into tooth-belted metallic spheres, illuminated by their thrusters as they pitched and yawed, positioning themselves for their suicidal attack.

  “Twenty Seconds to intercept,” American reported.

  Keeler turned away from the screen long enough to ask Shayne American. “What happens when we intercept them.”

  “You’ll find out in less time than it would take to tell you, sir.” Space – Pegasus

  When Pegasus blew through the cloud of Meridian spheres, she was still traveling in excess of one-eighth the speed of light. She only spent a few seconds in the crowd, but they were very busy seconds.

  The front line of the spheres slammed into Pegasus’s forward shields like a swarm of Sellassian gnats on the windshield of a buzz-car. There was a chaos of a thousand small explosions. The smallest were simply the impact annihilation of the spheres against Pegasus shields. The larger ones were attempts by the spheres to detonate and disable their quarry. None of the explosions was great, compared with the bulk of the ship, but together, they transmitted enough energy through the shielding to send a shudder through the command tower.

  Pegasus – Main Bridge/Primary Command

  Keeler found himself grabbing with white knuckles onto a handle that hung over Eliza Jane Change’s Navigation Station. As he watched the spheres explode and burn over his ship’s shielding, all he could think of was how much better the battle effects had been in his games of “Battle Command.” He tried to think of an order to shout, but the battle seemed to be happening with no help from him.

  Now, the spheres were bursting and also bouncing off from the shields at oblique angles. He watched, incredulously, as one attacker skipped across the shields and then slammed into another sphere. It seemed to happen so slowly, he could see their metal bodies merge and swell before they exploded.

  He shook himself back into a proper time-frame and looked around the bridge. His crew held fast to their stations, doing their jobs with quiet intensity, defending and preserving his ship. He felt such pride in them that it took an effort of will to jerk himself back into command mode. “Damage report?” he asked Alkema.

  Alkema gestured in the air, bringing up three red displays. “Shields are holding, Probability of minimal damage to some vulnerable sections. All weapons systems appear to be intact.”

  “Good… Battle Status?”

  Alkema pointed to the schematic of Pegasus. The spheres were regrouping, turning back to attack the ship.

  “How can they keep up with us?” Keeler asked.

  “Some of them are caught in our gravity wake.” Change told them, then turned back to her navigation screen.

  Of course, that was it. The spheres were now being pulled in by Pegasus own gravitational field.

  Accipiters were chased them across the face of the ship.

  “Engaging phalanx guns,” Alkema announced.

  Keeler was inclined to say, “Good idea,” but this was not the time to make light. The phalanx guns were Pegasus’s most deadly close-in weaponry; filling a target area with so many plasma bolts that accurate targeting was not strictly necessary to destroy an aggressor. Across the ship, powerful guns were now tracking the spheres, locking onto them, and destroying them with deadly force.

  However, a few pockets had become apparent in Pegasus’s active defenses. A few of the spheres were hovering in these quiet zones. The spheres reached out with arcs of what looked like blue lightning, feeling for weaknesses in Pegasus’s shielding. Specialist American brought up an analysis. “They’re probing the ship with some kind of electromagnetic pulse field.”

  “Probing?” Keeler thumped his walking stick. Then, he added. “What does that mean exactly? What kind of probing?”

  “I think,” said American, “that they are trying to disable our outer defenses by scrambling their communication links and internal programming.”

  “Can they do that?”

  “Not with their current energy levels, but they are constantly adjusting power and frequency, looking for a vulnerability. They
might be trying to disable Pegasus without destroying us.” Suddenly, one of the spheres detonated near the stern. The explosion was silent, but the energy briefly overwhelmed the defensive shields and sent a backwash through the system. Two shield grids overloaded and burst, this explosion was carried through the structure of the ship, and came to the bridge as a rattle and rumble.

  “Shields down: 93 A, 92 A. Secondary shields damaged. Shield Grids 90 A, 89 A, 85 A and 87 A extending to compensate,” Alkema reported.

  “We need more active defenses,” Keeler said. “We can only take so many hits like that.” Another sphere moved in, aimed directly at the command tower. It disappeared in a burst of light and an Accipiter flew through the debris.

  Now that was a pretty good battle effect, Keeler thought.

  Four of the spheres detonated simultaneously against the forward shields in enormous, light-shattering explosions. The shields held, but the energy fed back into Pegasus systems, overloading the most vulnerable junctures. Pegasus’s shields absorbed some of the energy and redirected out into space, wiping out a few more of the sinister buckyballs of doom.

  Those red spots appearing on the Ships Condition Display could not mean good things. “Damage report,” Keeler demanded.

  American answered him. “Damage to forward shield grid. Estimating time to regeneration. Back-up shields undamaged and standing by to replace damaged shields.”

  “Can we sustain another barrage without them?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Save them until we need them.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Would I be correct in assuming our shields should be able to hold out until the last of those things is destroyed?”

  Alkema answered him. “I think you can have confidence in that… the battle … seems to look much worse than it actually is.”

  “How are the Accipiters doing?”

  Alkema enlarged the holographic battle display. The Accipiters were decimating the battlespheres.

  Suddenly, a large, golden-brown object swept into the field of view.

  “Hold,… what was that?” Keeler demanded.

  “That was a Nemesis Missile.” American reported.

  “Is it armed?” Keeler asked.

  “I’m tracking it now. Closing on forward Missile hatchery.”

  “Is it armed?” Keeler repeated.

  “I am scanning one remaining warhead, but it’s not emitting arming signals.” That didn’t mean anything. The warhead could self-arm in nanoseconds.

  “Target the forward batteries on the missile,” Keeler ordered.

  Alkem tried and failed. “I have no way of engaging the forward batteries. Full automatic.” The foremost arrays of Pegasus’s active defense grid examined the Nemesis/Big Damage Missile on their own and, recognizing it as “friendly,” let it pass without firing a shot. The missile came to the outer margin of Pegasus shielding and sent a disabling code to one of the shield sections. The shield dropped, opening a small aperture directly forward of the missile hatcheries.

  One of the spheres, seeing an open opportunity, dove toward the aperture, and entered immediately behind the missile.

  “Oh…. slag,” said Keeler, as he watched it on the bridge.

  But the Nemesis loosed a pulson bolt from its aft quiver and dispatched the intruder in a blaze of blue light. Before chunks of silver metal had time to touch the hull, the Big Dam sent another signal, closing the gap in the shields. The blast-shielded hatches from which the missile had emerged opened, and it settled back into its hangar, as though it had done nothing out of the ordinary.

  Keeler looked at the image of Pegasus projected in the forward part of PC-1. There were no explosions, no flashes of light, nothing. “They’ve stopped,” Keeler said.

  Alkema shook his head. “Oh…neg.”

  “Oh, neg, what?” Keeler asked.

  Pegasus final braking maneuver had involved looping around Meridian and establishing a high orbit.

  It had just completed its turn, and was heading back into the main body of what was left of the Meridian attack spheres.

  “The enemy craft are building up to a mass simultaneous detonation,” Alkema said. “And we’re drifting right into the center of it.”

  “Problem…” Eliza Change began.

  Keeler already knew. “Don’t tell me, we can not alter our course.”

  “Correct.”

  “Intercept in eight seconds,” Alkema reported.

  “Where are the Accipiters?” Keeler asked.

  American answered. “They’re trying to plow the road, commander, but there aren’t enough.”

  “Six seconds,” said Alkema.

  “Commit and fire a brace of hammerheads.”

  “Hammerheads enabled. Firing hammerheads.”

  “Five seconds.”

  The hammerheads streaked toward their target.

  “Four seconds.”

  As the Hammerheads reached the front of the line, battle spheres exploded, destroying scores of themselves and deflecting others from their courses.

  “Three seconds.”

  “Hammerheads failed.” Alkema reported. A second line of spheres filled in the gaps left in the first.

  “Two seconds,” American reported.

  “Can we survive this?” Keeler asked. American didn’t answer.

  “…one…” Alkema said.

  Suddenly, the external communications array activated. A monopulse signal was sent to the sinister buckyballs of doom.

  “Zero,” Alkema said.

  Space – Pegasus

  The cloud of silver spheres hung inertly in space as Pegasus passed through them, her deflector shields making a wake of them in her passing.

  Pegasus — Main Bridge/Primary Command

  “What… isn’t happening?” Keeler demanded, removing his fingers from his ears.

  Alkema checked the tactical displays. “No engine activity, no reactor activity, no sensor activity,” Alkema said. His mouth hung in complete mystification. “They’ve all shut down.”

  “Completing orbital insertion,” Change reported, as though she had ignored the entire battle. Pegasus, the Accipiters, and the three Aves swung around Meridian, watching the planet flash by underneath.

  There was no sensation of slowing, the gravitational damping fields held them steady. Change reported, “Pegasus slowed to orbital speed. Distance: 40,000 kilometers.” Keeler nodded. “Well done.”

  The forward monitor activated. The voice returned, the voice of Caliph. It spoke calmly, reassuringly, and perhaps just a little — a little — churlishly.

  ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS TURN THEM OFF.

  chapter twenty-three

  Personal journal:

  By My Estimation, the date is: 13 Octember 10 112 A.S.

  Twenty-eight days ago, Pegasus assumed orbit above the planet Meridian. Our Accipiters polished off the last of the battlespheres after Caliph assured us that it was important that none of these “Sinister Buckyballs of Doom,”as the landing party oddly chose to call them, survived because the Regulators could have downloaded their programming into any of them.

  Prudence returned shortly after we made orbit and docked in Landing Bay Six Alpha. Flight Lieutenant Matthew Driver reported immediately for debriefing. Technician Third Class Eddie Roebuck requested to be sent to one of our Mediplexes, saying he needed a good long nap. He stayed there for three weeks before being discharged to his quarters, which he has shown no inclinations to leave as of this journal.

  Basil returned carrying the remaining survivors of the landing party and twenty-five Warfighters, among them, Warfighter Specialist Taurus from the original landing party. She was taken to Mediplex Four for treatment of her injuries.

  Medical Specialist Partridge was sent to Mediplex Four as well, with some kind of parasite growing in his upper intestine.

  Flight Captain Jordan and Flight Lieutenant Driver were debriefed by Tactical Core.

  In the typical manner of the human
species, it was only after the fighting was over, and order restored, that they were able to look back over what had happened and answer the questions.

  Most of the pieces have been supplied by His Esteemed Incorporeal Presence, Lexington Keeler – the Old Dead Guy.

  Lexington Keeler and Commander Keeler strolled along a catwalk that overlooked an empty cargo bay. Previously, the cargo bay had contained the unassembled components of an Aves, which had been assembled and put into standby operation to keep flight operations at full strength, following the destruction of Desmond. It had been christened Desmond II.

  The Old Man’s eyes glittered with an unworldly light as he surveyed the work going on below.

  “When Caliph came to Meridian, there was already a probe in orbit a probe whose mission was far more malevolent than whatever hers was. God only knows how long it had been there, whether it had only recently arrived, or whether it had been manipulating planetary affairs for quite some time.

  “This alien probe was designed to attack any Artificial Intelligence it encountered, replacing it with its own program. It attempted to do the same to Caliph. Caliph fought back. In the ensuing battle, the alien probe was knocked out of the sky and fell, in a severe state of damage, to the planet’s surface. Caliph, also severely damaged, continued on to our system.”

  Living Keeler filled in some of the gaps from what the landing party had learned. “The Merids retrieved the alien craft and brought it to one of their laboratories for study. Unknown to them, the alien intelligence within had survived, and as soon as an opportunity presented itself, it migrated into Meridian’s planetary AI network, where it began reshaping the planet’s society and environment into a replica of the world it came from.”

  The Old Man nodded and folded his ghostly hands in front of him. “They were very different than we, philosophically as well as physically. We went into space primarily to explore and conquer it, assuring the survival of our species by colonizing unclaimed worlds. To the aliens, it was more effective, and more economical, to transform existing civilizations into copies of their own.” Living Keeler interrupted, trying to keep in pace with old man. “Our records … well, our legends anyway, speak of advanced alien races living in complex hive civilizations, some of which covered entire planets. The aliens who attacked Meridian may be the source of those legends, or maybe they represent some species we never encountered in our time, perhaps one that arose during the Great Silence. They may have been living in caves when we were colonizing the galaxy, and while we slept, they have gone to the stars.”