by Chris Hechtl
~~*^*~~
Task force Two's Consort Two easily detected the alien beacon. It was transmitting on a broadband so it was a simple task to home in on its spoor and then get within firing range.
A day later they were in comfortable energy range. The ship's Alpha bull ordered the tactical crew to destroy the target. A series of shots followed. The third gun managed to hit and destroy the device.
“So much for that fly,” the ship's Alpha bull stated. “Guns, you need more practice,” he said coldly. “Comm, report the destruction of the alien beacon to the herd. We will return to our station shortly.”
“Understood,” the tech stated. “Signal sent.”
“Good. Helm, return us to our proper station.”
“Understood, Alpha bull. We will obey.”
~~*^*~~
“Do not decelerate. We have no intention of jumping, so we will run them down under our hooves as they continue to brake to jump,” Consort One's Alpha bull rumbled. “We will catch them between our and Consort 2's hooves and destroy them utterly.”
“We will have a very short firing window,” his tactical technician warned.
“Can you still do the job?”
“If they do not maneuver or change course suddenly … possibly,” the technician stated.
“I do not like possibles. Make it happen,” the Alpha bull ordered.
~~*^*~~
“They aren't slowing down,” the sensor tech warned.
“I see that. They aren't jumping. At least we've got that in our favor,” Captain Holt stated. “Engineering, how goes the repairs?”
“We've finished and have run the diagnostics. We're ready when you are, Skipper,” the chief engineer reported.
“Good. I think we'll need that hyperdrive sooner rather than later,” the captain ordered as he watched the navigator plot the enemy's course with more precision. It was obvious the two chasing ships had split up to box them in. What they didn't know was what sort of weapons they had and what their ranges were.
He'd give just about anything he could name to find that information out. Preferably before they got a chance to use them he thought. His sensor techs had reported the destruction of the satellite, but they hadn't gotten a good look at how it had been done unfortunately.
“Helm, jink us,” he ordered, getting a thoughtful look.
“Jink … sir?”
“You heard me,” the captain said, turning to the helmsman. “Just jog us a bit in a random direction, then back. Keep our base course, but keep us moving. Do random jinks,” he ordered. “We need to keep these bastards guessing.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Engineering, what's our safest jump speed?”
“The slower the better,” the chief engineer replied instantly.
“We can jump in another twenty minutes, sir. It will be bumpy. We'll need to parallel the hyperbridge though before trying to slip in,” the navigator said.
“You're sure, Willy?” the captain asked. The navigator nodded.
“Okay. Comm, let all hands know it's going to be a bumpy transition,” the captain ordered.
“Pre-jump check list commencing,” the XO ordered. “All hands secure for jump early. It is going to be bumpy,” the XO said over the intercom.
~~*^*~~
“Energy signatures consistent with a hyperdrive charge sir,” the sensor technician reported.
“Are we within range to stop them?” Consort One's Alpha bull demanded. He shook his massive head after a moment. “No, I see not. Fire anyway. Fire ahead of them, try to force them to maneuver and draw power away from their hyperdrive,” he ordered.
It bothered him that the alien ships were faster than his. They were nimble, despite the bulk and the obvious design as a transport, not a herd protector.
It bothered him even more when the ship's energy signature peaked and space began to fold around it.
“Break off pursuit. Signal the flagship that we did not get to them in time,” the Alpha bull ordered through gritted teeth.
Cold hating eyes watched the alien ship as it flashed into hyperspace.
~~*^*~~
The Beta bull was furious that the enemy had escaped. “They will bring warning of our coming! We must follow and grind them beneath our hooves! Stomp on the enemy before they have time to react!” the Beta bull seethed.
“Herd Leader …,” his flagship's Alpha bull protested.
“I am the Herd Fleet Leader here and now!” the Beta bull roared. “Task force Two will remain here to secure the jump point and blockade it. Prepare a dispatch boat. I am using my command prerogative to go after the enemy. Task Force One prepare for jump!”
The ship's Alpha bull stared at him and then nodded once. He turned to his bridge watch. “You heard the Fleet Leader. Prepare the task force for jump,” he ordered.
~~*^*~~
Once the first task force was refueled and prepared, it split off from the second task force and made its way to the jump coordinates.
“We need to track them down, hit them hard before they can disperse their herd or rally their defenses,” the Beta bull stated in a signal to the fleet.
Only when his task force was gone did the Alpha bull in command of Task Force Two dare send one of his two dispatch ships to the fleet with his report. He knew the Fleet Herd's Alpha bull would be furious, but he was not to blame for the actions of a superior.
He then dispersed his consorts to wait under cover of low power emissions while his own flagship and support ships sat on the jump point to the hyperbridge for more prey or orders from the Alpha bull.
Act II
Chapter 12
Sol Star System
Trevor Hillman shook his head as he walked through the computer, A.I., and cybernetics department of Mars University. He'd been asked about what he planned to do with the expansion of the late Athena's various projects. He was still struggling to juggle all of them, even eight years after her “death.” He might be a cyborg, but that didn't mean he was in any way up to the late Athena's abilities.
It still hurt a bit to lose her, even eight years later. He was still grappling with the why. He might never know or fully comprehend it. But she'd left enough clues and observations of her state for him to help diagnose some of the other A.I. To date two of the older A.I. were also showing symptoms of what some were calling A.I. Alzheimer disease.
There were other projects too however. One of her various projects was to use her processors and memory to help the physics department simulate physics and to improve not only hyperdrives but also force emitter tech in general. A wave of minor efficiency improvements was being quietly ushered in and no one knew Athena had been behind it. Nor did they know how much she'd had a hand in tweaking the code to get the most out of the hardware either.
One of the projects was one personal to him, the concept and implantation of uploading an organic consciousness into a network. Volunteers from terminally ill. A lot of those due to genetic damage from Earth unfortunately.
Some of the projects had little or no success to their credit. That was the nature of science. You created a hypothesis based on observations, then tried experiments to recreate the results of something or to improve on something. Many times they didn't get it right, but they kept trying. At least, while the funding held out he thought. Learning from the failures was a big thing.
He stopped at a classroom and nodded to the instructor. That was another thing; Athena had handled multiple classes at the same time. He'd had to hire on several dozen people and a couple dumb A.I. to keep up. The college dean hadn't been happy about the cost increase. They'd been getting Athena's services practically for free for decades. Even eight years after her death, he still got complaints about the lack of a free ride. Like he didn't have better things to do than to drop everything to do some favor for someone he didn't know?
He turned and headed to a lab he had keen interest in. Athena's death had dampened it somewhat, but he still wanted to give it a go. “How are w
e doing?” he asked as he entered and took a lab coat off the hanger by the door and put it on.
“I think we're still stinging from the last failure,” Cassie, his Neochimp assistant, said from her stool, not looking up from what she was looking at. “And I think we need more A.I. support to go over the code. I've been staring at this until I think my eyes are ready to bleed, and I haven't found the bug. Every time I think I do it's something minor.”
“Keep trying,” Trevor said with a nod as he took a stool nearby. “You know the drill; we learn more from a failure than success.” She looked up and snorted at him. “Seriously! If you succeed and don't know why you are left scratching your head and then when you have to recreate your success for your peers, you are screwed,” Trevor said.
“Okay, well, there is that. The whole luck thing,” Cassie muttered. She'd been into A.I. and coding in college before Lagroose Industries had broken with the Neo community. She'd lost her free ride to college and had been forced to look for a job. She'd been surprised that Trevor had hired her. It wasn't until later that she had found out that some of her instructors as well as Athena had recommended her for the job.
“How did the doctor's appointment go?” she asked.
He frowned as he scanned the logs and then checked the progress of the bots he'd set loose on the data. Finally, he grimaced, knowing she'd persist until he answered. “I'm … okay. I'm not backsliding anymore. They want to try more cloned replacement parts again.”
“Tissue rejection issues still?” Cassie asked sympathetically.
“It is the damnedest thing to have your own body reject tissue that had been cloned from you! It isn't supposed to work that way but …,” Trevor threw one hand up in the air in exasperation.
“But everything is functional?” Cassie asked.
“For the time being. For how much longer … I don't know,” he said with a helpless shrug. “So, this project is near and dear to my heart,” he said, turning to look at the simulation of a brain. They were trying to upload a consciousness, an organic consciousness to an electronic mainframe. They weren't the only ones to have tried over the past two centuries but every other effort had been abandoned, especially during the A.I. war.
It was a project personal to him since his body was aging and beginning to fail. His remaining flesh was beginning to reject his cybernetics as well as cloned replacement parts. He no longer allowed nanotech to help sustain his body.
“We've had another doctor call with a patient interested in trying her luck, Doc,” Cassie said.
“We can't even get a rat's brain up and running. It's not stable!” Trevor said with a shake of his head. “No, I know most likely the person is terminal. They'll either have to go into stasis or face their mortality.”
“I know,” Cassie said, clearly troubled by the idea.
“We'll get there. We're missing something somewhere. Perhaps a two-prong approach is in order? Or more than two? Combine various approaches, write a program to compare the data and use the various data sets to fill in any gaps and correct problems?”
“It's possible,” Cassie said. “You suggested it before but then the science ethics board rejected it. It amounts to intentionally killing a subject and slicing their brain and then scanning it into the computer.”
“Which we can't do, damn it. Not until the brain is dead, and when that happens, we begin losing neural connections or making new ones that can lead to failure.”
“Random new ones are …”
“I know. Theory but it’s there. And we're not getting further with passive means, are we?”
“No.”
“So, we need to look into other means,” Trevor said firmly. “And while we're at it, work on the neural network. Finding a way to copy the neural network is tricky. There are billions in a single organic brain. There has to be a way to get it done.”
“Automated. Which means the involvement of another A.I. but then we bring in the question of if it is the person being transferred or the existing A.I.?”
“I know,” he said as he checked his internal clock. “I've got an hour before I've got my next appointment. Let's see what you've got and if I can find something you missed.”
“Okay,” Cassie said, not taking any umbrage at that statement. She knew the value of having another set of eyes on a project, especially something so tedious.
~~*^*~~
Captain Lewis checked the computer. The game was up and running, he was ready. The problem was the kids weren't online yet. He was fairly certain they weren't online for a reason, and it wasn't school or their social life. No, undoubtedly, they were scheming to take him down.
Well, let them try. They'd learn another lesson in respecting their parents he thought, cracking his knuckles.
“All set?” Tiffany asked as she kissed him on his ear as she looked over her shoulder to the status board.
“Not quite. Undoubtedly they are trying to figure out a plan.”
“Most likely. I did give them some pointers,” Tiffany said with a grin.
He turned to give her a bemused look but she merely smiled and went over to her seat and took up her tablet. She sat on it primly, feet and knees together, posing, and he was about to say something when someone pinged him. He glanced at it, but it wasn't one of the kids, just someone wanting to play him. He sent his regrets and then turned back to his wife.
She'd sat back and was no longer looking at him. Pity, he thought as he returned his attention to the screens before him.
He had a full VR rig, but at the moment, it wasn't needed. On his right was the ship's status board. Everything was going smoothly, nothing on the engineering board worth noting he thought absently as his eyes shifted to the other two screens. He glanced at the clock.
“They'll be on time. Patience is a virtue,” his wife said airily from her seat.
“Sure it is,” he growled, ready to play.
“Anxious?” she teased.
“Just … it's been a while,” he said.
“Afraid there is a bit of rust? That the kids have improved?” she asked.
“They'd have to improve a hell of a lot to get to my level. Why I agreed on four on one I'll never know,” he said with a shake of his head.
“Ego,” she reminded him. He snorted. That was probably true he thought as he scratched at his short spacer buzz cut. There was a lot more silver up there than he'd like to see, and a lot fewer hairs than he'd like to see, but it was all natural and all his. Tiff kept his vanity firmly in check he thought in amusement as he caught sight of her bare feet and curling toes out of the corner of his eye. He turned to see her and saw her looking at him over the edge of her tablet. He snorted and went back to the game. She was teasing him, something she seemed to relish from time to time.
Okay, something he relished too. But he was also cerebral, and he loved a good challenge. And when it came to naval battles, Tiff sadly took a back seat.
He came from a long line of serving officers. A Lewis had been in the merchant marine or a professional wet navy for several hundred years according to the family genealogist.
In other words, serving on a ship ran in their blood. His wife was his XO. Both were third generation spaceship captains. Tiffany had given up her command to be with him as his XO and to raise their children. Now that the kids were all off to college, he expected her to move on too, but she'd stayed on so far. She occasionally chafed under his leadership when he got a little overbearing, but they made an effective pair when they were in sync with one another. And she wasn't afraid to cut him down to size in private if he did get a bit too big for his britches he thought with a slight smile of approval.
Walter's younger brother Ludwig, the musical one, was also a ship captain, but he ran a starship, the colony ship Sea of Space. He had two kids, both were on Mars training to become ship officers eventually and follow in their family's footsteps.
Their baby sister Denise was a newly-minted ship's captain. The list went on and on, with co
usins all over the merchant marine fleet. Walter's own four kids were teenagers who'd served on their father's ship a few times and were in Mars University getting degrees in engineering, navigation, and command.
Walter, like his aunts, uncles, brother, and wife, had run supplies for the Space Marines during the A.I. War. During that time, he'd amassed a nest egg that had allowed him to have a down payment to purchase Belmont Victory when the Liberty class ship had come up for auction after the war. His nest egg, reputation, and character references had secured him a loan, which had allowed him to purchase the ship. It had taken years to pay off the mortgage on the ship, but they'd done it. Not without the occasional misstep along the way, dealing with the structural cracks the ship class was famous for had been one ongoing problem for him. He'd known about them in advance and had thought he'd had the problem licked early on. That hadn't been the case, but he hadn't had any issues once they'd gone over the ship thoroughly during the last refit cycle.
He'd also been smart enough to avoid the saturated market which was the run from Earth to Mars or the Moon. Instead, he'd plied his ship on runs to the belt and then to the outer colonies early on. The pay hadn't been lucrative, but it had been enough to pay the crew, parts, mortgage, and a bit left over for a rainy day. The pay had picked up in parallel with the economy, and he'd made good contacts before anyone else did.
Walter's biggest accomplishment, his claim to fame, was as the grand admiral of the most popular naval strategy game in the star system. He was well-known for his mastery of the game as well as his fairness and his interest in training others in the game. He'd coached Jan Kepler, the number two in the game, and was quite proud of her despite her constant nipping at his heels on the status boards.
Belmont Victory easily slipped into her assigned docking space in Mars orbit without incident. While her crew waited their turn to dock and transfer their cargo, they lit up the communications channels. For Walter and Tiffany, it was the perfect opportunity to really catch up with the kids. For Walter, he did what came naturally for him, he dived into his favorite naval strategy game with the kids on the planet. Walt missed the times when they could play as a family. Now that the kids were on the planet, it was much harder to get the game time in.
