She smiled, it both reached her eyes and was tinged with sadness.
“Thanks Michael, I won’t ask you to drink another one. I think I understand why you were such good friends, you’re a lot a like you know.”
She loaded the booze and glasses in her backpack.
She stood up, and there was a brief moment of awkwardness. I think she just wanted to give me a chaste hug or something, I could see it on her face, just an innocent shared action of comfort, but she eventually decided against it. I was still her superior officer, and despite my offer to call me Michael even a chaste hug would be pushing the boundaries a little too much.
It was just as well, I was afraid I’d have enjoyed it too much anyway, what kind of jerk did that make me anyway, this was my dead best friend’s fiancé, or was.
“Good night, sir.”
I nodded, “You’re welcome, next time you can tell me a story. Go get some rest.”
She nodded, “Yes sir, I will.”
I watched her turn and walk out, and stayed at the desk for a while before returning to the bridge. I just hoped Amy wouldn’t be reporting my indiscretion, but it was probably a vain hope. Not the meeting itself, that was fine, but the drink while on duty was another story. A.I.s really didn’t get the whole special occasion and exception mentality. I was fairly sure though, that the captain wouldn’t press charges.
Chapter Seven
Two days later, the captain came onto the bridge an hour early, and called me into her ready room.
“Take a seat Michael, and relax. I take it you won’t be drinking on duty in the future, or getting drunk?” her tone was laced with amusement.
“No maam. It was just a simple toast to Timothy. It won’t be my last, but it should be the last one while on duty.”
She nodded, “It isn’t really healthy to stretch it out, better to get it all out in a night, or a few days, but we have a duty, and a mission. And yes, I knew about Katy and Timothy so get that unsure look off your face.”
“Yes maam,” I said showing agreement.
She scowled, and for a moment I thought I was in trouble.
“Call me Samantha, or Sam, when we’re in private.”
“Maam?”
She sighed, “I’ve done you a bit of a disservice. While it’s true that fraternization between us would be out of bounds, a captain and her first officer should be on a first name basis after a relationship of mutual trust is built up between them. If not friendship, at least mutual respect and a degree of informality. Generally, they’re the only two on the ship that stand apart without equals. Even on our largest ships, where there is more than one commander, the first officer, executive officer, stands apart, just as much as the captain.
“There are exceptions of course, where personality conflicts precludes that kind of connection, but that wasn’t the case between us and usually results in a quick transfer of one or both officers.”
I had to admit this mission had been rather lonely, I’d just taken it as the price of my new rank. Apparently, it shouldn’t have been?
“Then why?”
She frowned, “Inexperience on my part, this is my first mission in the captain’s chair. At first I thought you a bit too young to have been promoted, especially for that stunt you pulled at Beta Hydri, you were lucky there were no other ships on that vector to draw off missiles, and none of the missiles destroyed the habitat.”
I grimaced, “I know. I just didn’t believe the shuttle, even a combat one with eight missiles would have a chance against the q-ship, where twenty missiles would definitely get the job done.”
She waved it away, “Point was, I held you at arms’ length at first, by the time I realized you were ready for the position you hold, a few months had passed. It also didn’t help that we work opposite twelve hour shifts, on other ships there are three shifts with a second officer, and somewhat of a balance between them. Most likely if you’re posted on a larger vessel next, as Lt. Commander you’ll get the second officer slot, or command of your weapons crew.”
She shook her head, “I keep getting off point. By then, we’d firmly established our professional relationship, and I just kept putting it off instead of pulling you in here to talk about it, like I am now.”
I was annoyed, but at the same time I sort of understood. Plus, she was still the captain.
“Alright, so what now Sam?”
She smiled, “Good. Let’s talk tactics. We’ll be there in just over a day’s time, and we’ve verified what?”
“Two gas giants far out, three other planets, one in the Goldilocks’ zone. Based on what we can see, the middle planet has oxygen. We’ve also detected at least twenty of the metallic ships, all of them deeper into the system, and the gas giant has a very large scoop system. If we could, I’d abort now and let command decide if they want to try first contact, but given how close we are, and our speed the best we can do is cross the edge of the system and hope for the best.”
That was somewhat of a relief, at least they needed reaction mass for their reactors, though I suppose that was still an assumption, for all I knew they ate hydrogen for breakfast. Still, all else being equal, it was probably the truth, and their storage systems were probably some type of hydrogen bottle, or bottles, either at the base or top of the reactor that got swapped out. The other piece of good news was that the ships were very similar to what we ran across, so there wasn’t a third species out there involved in this. Or at least, if there was a third species they weren’t in 61-Virginis
The captain raised an eyebrow, and I blushed. Hoping for the best was foolhardy.
“We should make sure we’re combat ready, and also send out that SETI greeting we have loaded on all the ships when we cross into the solar system. I’m not sure the latter will help any, they obviously don’t use radio frequency communications, I doubt they’d even hear it. Lastly, we need to run a Chavez-Teller scan as soon as we’re slow enough to pull it off, even if it’s slightly in system we may need to take a chance and get out of there fast.”
Samantha asked, “Do you think our missiles will be effective?”
I frowned, “It depends, quite possibly. If they all use gravity as a weapon instead of explosive missiles, I’d guess their defense would be some kind of gravity shielding? I suppose it depends if they use missiles themselves, and if they even have point defense systems. We didn’t see anything like a laser array on the outside of their ships after all. Then, it will come down to if their fast enough with targeting gravity to take out a missile accelerating at them at two hundred gravities.”
She nodded, “So best case scenario, in the event we’re attacked, is that we’re both relatively defenseless against each other’s primary weapons.”
“Exactly. Like shooting someone in an energy dispersal suit with an old-fashioned gun, the technologies are very diverse. Worst case they have some kind of gravity shielding around their ships that will just crush or deflect our missiles before they can explode. That might even be likely if they use it for the deflection systems against meteorites and the like.”
She smirked, “Not a rosy picture, but I get the point, we need to be ready to run away. Any other suggestions?”
“Yes, they’re more advanced than us, I know we wouldn’t even know where to start in tracking a ship through subspace, but we can’t assume they can’t. I suggest if we do need to run we don’t go straight to Sol, but instead to one of the old void scans, perhaps a few light years from 82-Eridani. They may not, but we have to assume they understand subspace far better than we do.”
I hated making that suggestion, risking a small colony, but that was a very small colony of miners, plus from where we were and the vectors involved they might not even realize we had a colony there. Best case, they didn’t even have FTL travel, and had never left their home system, but somehow I doubted that.
Thing was we had to choose somewhere to go, and Earth was nothing if not determined to place a habitat or colony around every star we’d
reached in the last one hundred years, since the first one which is a habitat in the Alpha Centauri system, on a planet with the right type of gravity and even a planetary EM field, but no oxygen in the atmosphere.
Backtracking along the line we took here would be even worse, as they’d figure out quite quickly it pointed to Earth. In fact, it might already be too late, if they can plot a reverse course from how we come in to their system it would backtrack awfully close to Sol.
Samantha said, “I agree, and had already determined to do just that. Anything else?”
I sighed, “We should prepare at least two Messenger missiles and get rid of them now, have them travel far at two hundred gravities, run a scan and wait. If we’re about to die, we can send out an activation signal along with a squirt of our logs to send them home. Hopefully even if they can trace subspace travel, the missiles will be far enough away from the system that they can’t. We have to make sure Earth knows that this species is aggressive and xenophobic. Hopefully they won’t go looking for our origin point, but we can’t count on that.”
She sighed, but nodded in agreement, “Anything else?”
I frowned, “Not for this mission, I have some suggestions for future missions though, so this doesn’t happen again.”
She asked, “Explain.”
“I’d suggest doing the breaking burn a month further out, and slow down to insertion speed two weeks earlier, which would add another month to the mission. Once we were going slow enough, launch a sensor missile ahead of us at two hundred gravities, and we’d find out quickly if the solar system had an alien presence. If it did, the missile would send the data and self-destruct, and we could run a local Chavez-Teller scan and abort the mission without intruding in their space, at least not without orders and a lot more firepower than a partially crewed scout vessel.”
She laughed, “I’ll make sure the admirals take that advice, it really isn’t a bad idea at all. I suppose no one ever thought of this contingency before, or dismissed it as negligible if they had.”
Translation, she agreed with me but telling the admirals how to run things wouldn’t be wise.
She added, “I want you, Carly, Ally, and Jerry in the auxiliary control room when we make transition and send the transmission.”
The auxiliary control room was small, and cramped, but it had the same consoles the bridge did, in case it was taken out. It was located in the corner of engineering furthest from the bridge, but still in the core of the ship. It was usually only manned in a battle stations situation. In theory, if the bridge was taken out and engineering was still functional we’d be able to control the ship.
She continued, “Your orders are simple, if the bridge is compromised in any way, get this ship and the rest of the crew out of here at any cost. If the aliens do not react aggressively to our presence or message, I’ll stand you down so you can all rest.”
“Understood. Anything else Sam?”
She shook her head, “I have the bridge, you’re dismissed.”
Chapter Eight
Almost thirty-six hours later I led the ensigns, minus Crossman who was on the main bridge, into engineering. I hadn’t much call for going in there, but the place was familiar enough.
Engineering took up almost three quarters of the central sphere, and was two levels. The bottom level was almost entirely taken up with the six large Ion drive engines and pressure stored Xenon. The top level of engineering held everything else, the central fusion reactor which used the hydrogen as reaction mass to power the Ion drives, along with everything else on the ship, including reclamation, life support, computers, lighting, attitude thrusters, deflectors, sensors, and everything else down to the kitchen stove.
There was a secondary and much smaller reactor as well, in case of emergency it gave enough power to give life support and even limp home in system, though it didn’t provide nearly enough power for the Chavez-Teller drive system, and the ion engines were restricted to a one point five gravity burn instead of the eight G maximum.
In the near left corner after walking in, was auxiliary control. It was less a small bridge, than a small conference room. There was a large central console that looked a lot like a table, but slightly angled near the edges with five sub-consoles.
I sat at the end of the table, which had the override console, and transferred the helm systems to my board. I wasn’t much of a pilot, just knew the basics, but if the main bridge was damaged I was all we had. Carly sat at Ops, Ally had navigation and weapons, and Jerry had countermeasures and point defense.
None of our systems were active, only the captain or I, if she was dead or unconscious, could transfer control of the ship to this room. The three walls across from the five of us each had two smaller displays, large enough to be useful but nothing like the large viewer on the bridge. We didn’t control those either, one showed a partial image of what the bridge display showed, the other showed a display of the bridge itself, so we could follow along and know what was going on in case we were needed.
Even audio was piped in from the bridge, though we wouldn’t be able to speak back unless I override the system. It was thought that would be more of a distraction than a help in a battle situation. The center of the table, the flat part before the consoles angled down, was filled with known data about the space we were in, and showed our position. Right now, it showed us closing right on the edge of the solar system, and where the major planets and sun was, as well as where verified alien ships were.
Of course, most of this information was over an hour out of date as our sensors picked up the light from so far away, the inner planets closer to an hour and twenty minutes out of date. The closer we were the more accurate it would become.
I checked on the ensigns, and they all looked determined, if a little nervous. I was proud of them, I felt the tightening in my gut as well. I hoped for the best, free lollipops and t-shirts, and a smile and a wave as we passed by, but we were ready for the worst. At least, as ready as we could be. We listened to the bridge.
Cindy reported, “We’re crossing into the solar system proper now captain.”
The captain ordered, “Katy, how long until we can start the Chavez-Teller scan?”
Katy replied, “Just five minutes, and we’ll be going slow enough to get all the data and still use it.”
The Chavez-Teller scan would literally scan ahead of the ship, and finish that scan when we approached the spot scanned to use it. It had a limited reach as an active scan, which meant we’d have to be going slow enough to time the rendezvous at that spot with scan completion. It was better to do it at a full stop, but just in case this turned out bad, a quick escape would be called for.
Not that thirty minutes was exactly quick.
Five minutes later, the gravity alarm went off, and ten seconds later the engines cut off. We were basically a rock crossing their system, with maneuvering jets to get around any large obstructions which weren’t plotted yet. We were barely cutting through the edge, so it would only take two days instead of two weeks. We also had no gravity.
The captain ordered, “Start the scan, and send the greeting message. I want overlapping Chavez-Teller scans every ten minutes.”
That made sense, once the initial thirty minutes were up we’d have a window of escape every ten. Chances were, we wouldn’t see any reaction for hours, good or bad.
Katy replied, “Aye captain.”
Then we waited, and wondered what the aliens would do. Technically there shouldn’t be anything they can do. By the time their ships even saw our transmission, assuming they could, it would take days at high acceleration to get out to the edge where we were. We’d be long gone by then. The only problem with that theory was I doubted we shared the same limitations. Yet, even they would have to follow the laws of physics.
Katy reported, “Captain, I’m getting some intermittent readings.”
Captain Kane asked, “Of what?”
Katy shook her head, “I’m not sure maam, very small r
eflections on the Lidar. Less than a foot in diameter. I’d dismiss it, but the contacts are regular. It could be nothing, or it could be a passive sensor net some kind. Our own sensor blisters would look a lot like this, if they didn’t transmit a location beacon for our systems to read. There’s another one.”
The captain opened her mouth, but closed it as she saw Katy’s face drain white as a sheet.
“What is it Katy?”
Katy cleared her throat, and for probably the first time in my memory sounded crisply professional.
“Maam, there’s an alien ship, it just appeared behind us to starboard at two light minutes away. According to the readings, it’s coming in at forty gravities of acceleration.”
Intersystem jump? They’d have to know a hell of a lot more about subspace to pull that off safely, especially if they came in from an inner planet. And forty gravities? Either the aliens had inertial dampening as I suspected, or their bodies were as dense as rock. Given the timing, they’d jumped in just three minutes after we’d started transmission, which meant not only was there a sensor net out there, but it could transmit messages faster than light. Much faster. Another impossibility according to our scientists, pure science fiction just like AG and inertial dampening.
Scientists were so full of crap.
The captain asked, “Time to intercept?”
Cindy replied, “If their acceleration is constant, they’ll intercept in just over twenty minutes, five minutes before we can reach subspace transition.”
The captain looked thoughtful for a moment. I knew what she was thinking, would they jump out here and burn at forty gravities if they wanted to make friends? All my instincts shouted no, and that we needed to get the hell out of here. There was also the matter of that intercept number, it was based on our weapons range, not theirs.
“How much time would we gain if we burned away from their vector, without exceeding minimum FTL scan speed.”
It was possible, if we burned at a steep angle, we wouldn’t increase our forward speed very much, just steepen the angle of pursuit.
Scout Ship: Rise of the Empyrean Empire: Novel 01 Page 6
