by Jim Rudnick
“We are going to use the Ansible to send the invader ship a countdown timer, with it being replayed every minute for a full hour. Once the timer reaches zero time left, we will destroy one of those ocean-reaping ships. AI tells us that, like all their craft, the ocean-reaping ships are unmanned, AI run and controlled only. So we will begin that at the top of the hour. Counsel here?” he said, and not a single captain spoke up.
Like Tanner, it seemed that all of them agreed that the only way to get the aliens to listen was to act first. To simply destroy an ocean-reaping ship and then once again ask for them to talk instead of just taking vital assets from KappaD.
Tanner nodded to the admiral and noted that most others did too, and the Ansible conference call ended.
He took a sip of the tea his steward had just refreshed, and he smiled at the bridge crew.
“We wait then as I get the time line, for about an hour. Helm, sound battle stations in fifty minutes. Ansible, full encryption, please, back down to the mining camp I targeted for you yesterday—directly into Major Stal’s PDA, EYES ONLY, and tie-in CWO Hartford’s PDA as well. I want to be able to talk to them STAT when the shit begins to hit the fan—got that, Lieutenant Irving?” he said, and everyone on the bridge knew he was serious.
They waited. Once more, Tanner thought, a navy captain’s life was either report after report or waiting.
Just waiting …
CHAPTER TEN
While the ten Team Memories ships remained about five miles away from the mother ship, the admiral’s ship, the Nugent, continued to blast its countdown Ansible alarm. Tanner could see the visuals up on the sidebar of the Atlas view-screen that showed that the alarm message was being transported to the invader ship, and each and every minute, the alarm changed to show the aliens there was going to be an end. “An end,” Tanner said to himself, “to the message as well as to the RIM ships just standing around.”
At T minus ten minutes, the Atlas went to battle stations and the klaxons began that dull background soft alarm as the interior lights went to the reds that accompanied such a new state for the ship. All crew members were now at their stations, and all were ready for whatever might come next.
Down in engineering, teams were manning the Atlas weapon stations all the while being under control of the ship’s XO up on the bridge who was the Atlas tactical officer. Both the plasma cannons and the energy pulse weapons were fully charged, and the laser was charging and would be up and ready for use in a few minutes.
On the bridge, the Wing Commander, Colonel Richards, was double-checking and then triple-checking his more than one hundred single and dual fighters as they were all being moved up to the landing bay decks ready for takeoff squad by squad. Major Stal had his teams of marines, all now in full combat gear, ready, and each was stowed in their jump seats on the marine shuttles too. All would be deployed only if there were combatants to deal with or as had happened before, if the invader ship suddenly lost its pink force fields, and the marines could then storm the alien’s landing bays or ports.
All was ready and the sidebar showed there were only three minutes left until the Ansible alarm hit its target of zero.
They waited.
And then the time ran out, the Ansible message quit being flashed, and from the Nugent came the attack on the mother ship.
Their energy pulse weapon with its telltale bright teal pulse of light jumped out from the Nugent to the invader ship. It hit the pink force field and was stopped cold. More importantly, AI on all the RIM Team Memories ships recorded the phase variance of the force field and noted that it took a dip of almost 0.03 percent as it spurned the teal pulse and then built back up to full strength in seconds. While the Nugent continued to fire off sequential energy pulses, and the record of those hits and loss of force field strengths were noted.
The laser off the Nugent suddenly fired directly at the invader ship, playing back and forth over the pink force field in a narrow range, as if to try to wear it away. It too was repulsed, but Tanner noted that the addition of the laser hits to the energy pulse hits meant an even bigger dip in the force fields strengths and a longer recovery time too—almost triple the time to rebuild. As the Nugent then added in their plasma cannon hits, again over a small-targeted field of the pink force field, it too was rebuffed, and the balls of plasma snuffed themselves out in the depths of that pink force field. The plasma cannon, of course, needed a full thirty seconds to recharge and shoot once more, and that too was added to the analytics the Team Memories ships all were gathering.
And the mother ship just sat. And did nothing. The Nugent attacks had lasted almost a full ten minutes with multiple hits on their targets, and yet not a single hit had done anything to the mother ship.
As the Nugent stood down, Tanner thought, Science officers in all their ships were locked onto their consoles too as he looked back over his right shoulder to see that his was oblivious of all else. Studying the numbers that the Nugent hits had made on that pink force field, Lieutenant Commander Sheldon nodded finally and then looked over at his captain.
“Sir, there’s not enough of us. That is, if all ten of our RIM ships shot every single weapon at the invader ship, it could rebuild its force fields within time to prevent us from ever breaking the field down. They have too much power for us to make a dent in, is what I’d say—course, there are others here who might see it as different, but I’m not sure they’d be correct. We’re outgunned—well, out ‘force-fielded’ is perhaps a better way to put this, Sir.”
Sheldon looked like the fault was his, and his face was dejected and actually quite sad, Tanner thought.
“And when their reaper ships come back, to accept them, they have to lower shields, correct? Is that our only hope?” Tanner asked but he knew the answer.
Sheldon nodded. “Sir, yes, we will have a window where the force field will go down to accept an incoming reaper ship—but that timespan is like less than a second or maybe two. If they schedule their incoming ships with some degree of smartness, we can get perhaps a shot or two to make a direct hit—but that is going to be more luck than anything else, Sir.”
And Tanner knew he was right. No ship could pass through a force field, and to allow a reaper ship to enter the mother ship, the fields would need to drop for a second or maybe two and then flash up behind the reaper ship. With great top-notch AI, one could see that the timing needed to be exact to even attempt to get an energy pulse or a plasma ball through the same hole in the force field that the reaper ship would be using. Timing indeed.
Tanner got up, went over to the bridge tea station, and poured himself a newly steeped cup of green tea. He hated green tea, but it was a green tea kind of day, he thought.
While he really doubted it, he hoped his own Science officer was wrong. Maybe someone else had come up with a way to get around those pink force fields, he reasoned. Most likely not, he thought as he sipped the bitter, bitter tea and wondered if yes, he’d cheated and put in three heaping spoonsful of sugar.
The view-screen lit up with the admiral’s face, and the rest of Team Memories captains were down in the bottom of the screen with the current Ansible conference call.
“Captains, you saw what we saw. We were unable to make a dent in those pink force fields for long enough for us to plan a combined attack before they can be re-built. Anyone see it at all different? Anyone?” he asked again, and all that Tanner could see were all nine captains shaking their heads negatively, just as he was doing.
It was time, he thought, and he hit the TALK button on his console. When recognized by the admiral, he began to speak.
It took him only three minutes to outline his “insurance” plan to the group. There were few questions. There was some discussion about the ability of the aliens to perceive urgency, but that was moot at this point. The admiral had only one question concerning the refugees and the cost to them, but that too was a moot point. KappaD was going to be harvested of all its valuable ores and metallurgical elements and
much of its oceans too, if Team Memories did nothing.
This could work, Tanner finished off, and in doing so, perhaps end this kind of planet asset-reaping invasion forever.
That got a few nods from the other captains, and they all looked to the admiral.
“Captain Scott—won’t say well done ‘til we’re through with your plan, but it’s a doozy. One day you must tell us how you came up with it … but it’s a go. Have you got any ship’s assignments as yet?” the admiral said.
Tanner was smarter than that. “Sir, not at all—that’s your area of expertise as I’ve only just met some of our captains, Sir,” he said and then sat back while the admiral checked with some others on the Nugent and then made his assignments.
Two ships would be sent down to take on one of the reaper ships over an ocean. One would lie above to provide cover and target the massive diamond-shaped ship, while the other would come in at cross-angles to fire their laser, if possible, directly up and into the intake waterspout. If it was done right, the admiral figured they had a very significant chance of getting the reaper ship’s storage of hydrogen to explode, and that would be fatal.
Five more ships would also leave the pole to drop down on the opposite side of the planet from the ocean reaper ship that was going to be attacked. They would seek and destroy those mining reaper ships. This too was important, and the admiral made some good choices on whom to send on that duty.
Remaining up above the pole, still surrounding the mother ship, the Nugent, the Atlas, and the Gibraltar maintained their security posts to watch for the hoped for sudden in-flight of the balance of the reaper ships. “Hoped for, being the real factor that the RIM Confederacy itself depended upon,” Tanner said, and he took another bitter swallow of tea.
Now for the plan to work…
#####
As Bram was just about to get up from his Adept officer’s chair on the bridge, he caught that smell—the smell of burned pineapple—that for him meant he was being called into a mind session by his Master Adept. He looked at the view-screen and realized they were still at battle stations and he had duties too, but he knew he had to beg off for a few minutes, so he turned to his captain and got up to lean over him.
“Sir, permission to use your ready room, Sir—I believe I have incoming intel from our Master Adept?” he said as quietly as he could.
Tanner nodded and waved to the ready room doorway which opened to admit Bram and then closed behind him. Bram sat at one of the chairs at the small conference table and said out loud to the room’s AI, ”All sensory input off, please.”
Immediately the huge view-screen shut down, the lights went down to minimum levels, and the only real item at all was the soft diffuse light from the ready room console’s monitor with its display turned off.
He waited. He knew what this was like now after many successful mind group sessions. It was like falling. He waited and a moment later, though he was seated and rock solid in his chair, he was falling. Total blackness for a few moments and then below, way, way below, a pinpoint of light suddenly appeared. As he fell toward that light source, it slowly grew and grew until suddenly he was in a room on Eons in the Master Adept’s apartment, along with others all seated and waiting.
He looked around and noted that Gillian, the Issian assigned to the Lady St. August was there and the Adept twins he had only met here once before from the moon around Eons called Tavira. They, as he remembered, helped run the RIM Naval Academy base on the moon in the city of Aporia. There was also a couple of new Adepts who he didn’t know, and yet their minds sat tantalizingly close enough for him to look over the edge and within if he dared. “Poor metaphor,” he said to himself, “as well as a stunning example of what not to do.” He almost grinned but then noticed that while he’d been goofing off, the Master Adept had appeared at her place in the circle of Issians.
She looked at each, and to each, she said her careful and polite hellos. When she got to Bram, she gently smiled at him as if to say that his flaking off was to be allowed, and he blushed at being caught but nodded his apology to her and to the twins as well, and that got him the same careful and rewarding thank you.
The Master Adept spoke to them—not with her voice, of course, but with her mind. Each of them present was tuned into her, and she made the most of that now as she had always done before.
“Welcome, one and all,” she thought.
“I have asked you all to come together now so that I can bring you all up to speed, as they say, on our latest plans. And how we are going to have the chance to be more successful than we’d hoped, due to some recent developments,” she thought.
What followed was, for Bram at least, a series of items that he’d known nothing about at all.
He listened to her summary of the current climate problems for Eons and what that meant for trade and agriculture too. He listened to details about the extensive expansion of the RIM Naval Academy and the very important help and sponsorship of the Barony in much of this. He listened to the balance of items that to him, while new, were not enough for him to be called away from battle stations—which got a sideways glance at him from the Master Adept.
She leaned toward Bram as she went on.
“As well, we have some issues, as only a few of you as yet know, about our Secure Medical Ward and Lab up on Tavira in Aporia. Our twins here have more on that, but the most important thing to note is that the most important part of our plan for that action is the inclusion of Captain Tanner Scott. We have just been notified that he will be taken off the Barony Navy ship the Atlas and seconded to Eons for work in the new Barony Academy merge and meld duties. Also, he will then be assigned to teach as well as an adjunct professor for a further full Semester too. This is very private and very fresh information—so caution all here that this goes no further than we Issians within this room,” she thought.
Bram felt like every single eye in the room was trained on him, and he faced them all back without flinching.
Tanner was leaving the Atlas—probably not of his own choosing. And helping merge one college into another would be sheer maddening teensy detail stuff—stuff that Bram knew Tanner would despise. And then a Semester of college classes and lesson plans and rubrics? Even more boring than before.
He shook his head.
Yet for some reason, Tanner was needed by the Issians for something else that he as yet didn’t know about.
So he sat and waited, and in a few minutes, he sucked in his breath.
Tanner … yes, Tanner could certainly handle that kind of issue, and it should be no surprise that somehow someone had arranged all of this to happen—cure for the disease and all.
He half-smiled at the Master Adept who dipped her head to acknowledge that, and the mind meeting wrapped up moments later.
He rose in the ready room and told the AI to resume normal environment systems, and the lights came back on as the view-screen lit up with a screen full of the mother ship over the frozen ice pack at the pole. He realized that he’d now have to not tell his captain anything. “How hard could that be,” he said to himself as he went to the doorway that opened, and he went back to the bridge.
As Tanner raised an eyebrow, Bram just shook his head and pointed over his shoulder to the mother ship and said, “Not really important now, Sir … what’s our time line on the plan?”
“We start in twenty minutes,” Tanner replied, his attention already back on his own console as the sidebar timer clock counted down toward zero.
#####
Those twenty minutes came and went quickly, and on the view-screen on the bridge of the Atlas, all eyes took in the various views that were going to show the plan in action.
One top pane held a view from the TN Fendi, the Tillion destroyer, that now sat above an ocean reaper more than a thousand miles from the pole. As it moved down to sit almost directly above, drone cameras launched and the view shivered for a moment as those drones dropped down to sit away from but at the same height as the
huge waterspout that rose from the ocean and entered the reaper ship.
As they watched, the smaller Eran cruiser, the Orc, flew across the ocean surface coming in to slow a mere mile away from that waterspout. From above, the Fendi suddenly launched a laser that purposely missed the ocean reaper ship but attempted to force it to move sideways and toward the Orc. It took a moment for the reaper ship AI to catch on, but that huge laser worked like a prod, and the reaper ship slid sideways to avoid the laser.
Once the reaper ship was within distance, the Fendi and the Orc appeared to sync, and suddenly the Orc fired their laser at an upper angle, slicing into that waterspout at first but then moving up as it boiled away the water and the beam entered the port within the reaper ship’s lower hull.
It took no longer than a blink of an eye—and the reaper ship exploded. Pure hydrogen meeting electric currents via a laser spelled disaster, and the pieces of the ocean reaper rained down on the sea for miles and miles.
The ocean reaper just disappeared, which got a huge shout of success from the Atlas bridge crew.
Part one, done and done well, Tanner thought as the view-screen filled with the next part of his plan.
Across the view-screen, in several panes, were mining communities on the same continent as the KappaD capital city but well out in the foothills of the major mountain chain that ran north to south. One could see that it was busy; trucks and railway cars were moving about, and there was a bustle that anyone could see meant business as usual was being carried out. The fact that a reaper ship sat off to the side of the major railway yard was not a point of anyone’s attention; it sat and did nothing.
The bottom of the view-screen held three more panes of the same kind of mining sites, yet these were different. There, the reaper ships were using tractor beams to pull vast selections of ores and even rolls of metal that had come through the processing part of their foundries into their cargo hold. The reaper ships held their positions a few hundred feet off the ground, while their tractor beams seized the contents of whole railway cars. The ores and even finished metal goods were slowly lifted up and disappeared within the reaper ships. Only about three hundred feet long, it meant that each couldn’t hold much cargo, but the way they scanned the goods below and made choices and subsequently used their tractor beams to steal what belonged to KappaD was uncanny, Tanner thought.
