Intergalactic Union

by D. L. Harrison

  I just hoped I wasn’t being naïve, it didn’t exactly sit well either, but that was my fear talking.

  He also wasn’t wrong. I’d been so afraid of what my allies would think about a stealth network, that I’d foolishly not been keeping an eye on anything. He’d been right, when he said we could’ve discovered the Vrok’s intentions rather easily thirteen years before they’d attacked us, if I’d just bothered to cloak some drones and sent them to take a look at their empire.

  The intelligence world could be ugly, but it was a simple reality as well, and as the president of Astraeus it was a resource I couldn’t willfully ignore anymore just because it tweaked my conscience.

  Jessica said, “Well, wasn’t that mildly terrifying.”

  I snickered.

  I’d barely managed to get my concentration back on the implant idea when Jessica interrupted my train of thought again.

  Jessica said, “The newest ships being built by the Russians have a different power signature. The closest match we have is our older model ships, when we were using the first generation vacuum nanite reactors.”

  I frowned, “By first generation, you mean the ones that blow up when that subspace wave was sent out by the Grays?”

  Jessica smirked, “That’s the one, yes.”

  “I don’t think we ever shared that data with our allies.”

  Jessica shook her head.

  Cassie said, “Only the Grays and Stolthrim know about it. The first isn’t a problem, and the bugs aren’t a threat to us.”

  I grunted, “Maybe, but I’ll feel guilty if we don’t give them a heads up, and they lose a whole fleet one day. What if we just send them the problem, the wave and how it’s made, why it makes vacuum nanite reactors blow up, and that’s it. Let them figure out the fix. It’d make me feel better, and at the same time we won’t be handing them more advanced technology, they’ll have to reinvent it or go back to fusion reactors.”

  Jessica asked, “Will they believe us?”

  I shrugged, “They were there thirteen years ago, when the Grays blew up a two hundred ship fleet with a subspace wave. Plus, if they’re that stupid, and refuse to even test it, then it’s no longer my problem. My conscience will be clear, once we reveal the crippling weakness in that older technology. If they want to keep using it… well, we can’t fix stupid.”

  Cassie giggled, then glared at me as if it were my fault? She must’ve been on a call with someone.

  Jessica said, “Alright, I can gather up the data from that battle, along with the scans we never shared that led to the subspace device, and I’ll include that as well.”

  I nodded, “Do it, and send it to Natalya. What they do after that isn’t our problem. None of it is really, I’m just too damned soft.”

  I tried to get back to the implant power problem, which was a pain. I wasn’t quite sure it was worth it, having a separate external cellphone data and router wasn’t that big a deal was it? They could still do it all in augmented reality. Maybe I’d just send it to Diana or my daughter, let them figure it out.

  Speak of the devil herself, my gorgeous wife walked in dressed in frumpy geek clothes that made her look sexy as hell, but that was probably just my perception. It also tossed me out of my train of thought again.

  Diana smiled, “Just came by to let you know we’re starting the testing. The software is finished, but we did so much of it there’s bound to be bugs in the systems, which we really need to find before updating the fleet. That goes double for the station which has people on it.”

  “Sounds good, gorgeous. Just let me know when it’s ready. Three days?”

  Diana shrugged, “Could be a little less, or a few hours more. It depends how fast the tests we have planned goes. It also depends on how many bugs we find and have to fix.”

  That made sense.

  I told her about Darrell’s return, and the stealth network that would be coming online in a couple of months. I also told her I’d put him in charge of securing our nanite network. It made sense, if I couldn’t keep him out, or even figure out how he got back in, then he should definitely be in charge of that effort.

  Diana said, “That’s a clever idea. Without the need for wormholes or offensive weapons, our cloaked spy vessels could be tiny and the size of softballs. Our current sensor search wouldn’t pick them up, but I’m worried our enemies might be more paranoid than we are, even if they’d get a lot of false alarms.”

  “How could we fix that?”

  Diana said, “Easily actually. Once they jump into an enemy solar system, they can change shape immediately. They don’t have to be a solid ball, the nanites could form a net of sorts, with the nanite strings being no wider than a couple of molecules. All the holes in the net would be filled with radiation and dust, with only microscopic breaks, which almost certainly wouldn’t be recognized by sensors.”

  She tilted her head, then shook it, “Even better, it could constantly change patterns, become a long string, a net, a ring, a spiral with space in between, a three-dimensional spiral, a pyramid outline, and any number of other things. That would prevent even someone paranoid enough to look for molecular holes where nothing existed in a consistent pattern, it would always be changing and therefore be thrown out by the sensor software.

  “Unless we ran into an empire advanced past our imagination and wildest dreams, our stealth-net would never be detected, even in solar systems. I’ll suggest it to Darrell, it’s a simple software change, just like changing the shape of one of our ships, and it wouldn’t effect operations at all.”

  “Would sensors work that way, I mean… just a couple of molecules thick? How could the nanites make anything?”

  She nodded, “Passive sensors would, an active sensor would need to be bigger of course, but that would also give us away, so it doesn’t matter. Stealth probes can’t have active sensors.”

  I felt dumb as she pointed out the obvious, but in my defense my wife was really distracting. That’s my excuse, anyway.

  “Sounds perfect, as long as the enemy holds off for three more days, we’ll be ready for their next move.”

  After Diana left, I got back to work. Nothing interrupted me for the rest of the day, but so far, I still hadn’t been able to get it work.

  Chapter Seven – Interlude

  The bridge of the ship was vast to accommodate twelve of the massive Vrok. All eleven of the consoles faced inward in a semi-circle to the back of the bridge where the ship’s captain sat. Their predatory instincts would allow no other setup, turning their back on another predator even of their own race would be unthinkable for long periods of time.

  Hunt Master Oldun vibrated with violence as the female entered the bridge, and he was barely able to keep his furious instincts under control. The hunt should’ve started thirteen hours ago, but it’d been one thing after another. First, the new device had taken four thousand of his ships out of the comms loop. The ship’s shields stopped the resonance pulse, unless you happened to be on a ship with the device.

  He’d almost attacked anyway, so what if one percent of his ships weren’t exactly in sync, until his tactical officer had noted fouling their communicators also took them off TAC net, so those ships might be targeted by his weapons officers once everything went crazy. The techs had to build some older version communication devices for those ships in each fleet, actually using physically and quantumly paired elements, to get their comms and connection to data-net restored.

  Of course, once that was done, they had to modify the software control systems on four thousand ships to get them inside the tac net and to properly route those communications. The changes had to be made on four thousand other ships, because it would be foolish to tie them all in to one command ship. If that ship died in battle all four thousand of his special ships would’ve been disconnected from TAC again.

  At least this way, they’d only lose two, if one of those special comm routing ships were destroyed it’d only cut off one of the quantum resonance beacon s
hips from TAC net.

  “Report.”

  She said, “Master Hunter, the ships are ready to hunt.”

  He shuddered, “Dismissed.”

  She bowed her head, and then fled the bridge.

  He knew he should’ve congratulated their accomplishment, but it was all he could do not to tear her throat out. It wasn’t a fair thing, since new tech always had development problems, and they weren’t exactly being built under ideal conditions. But his instincts cried for blood ever since the humans’ attack on their fleets and worlds. The cowardice of running and hiding burned.

  He took a deep breath, “Comms, status on our hidden spears?”

  The comms officer replied, “In place, and still undetected. The foolish humans are bunched up over each planet’s capital city instead of spread out, leaving a rather large sensor blind spot right on the other side of the planet.”

  Humans were idiots, what was the point in hunting in a pack of five around ten of their planets making demands, if they weren’t deployed to watch each other’s backs? His hidden spears however were connected to the planet’s TAC net, and they could see the other side of orbit just fine.

  He asked, “The shield fleets?”

  The comms officer replied, “Prepared and in place.”

  He nodded, he was well aware the spear fleet was in place, a mere two hundred light years from the human’s home planet, all six million of them save the few hundred thousand they’d lost in the human’s ambush.

  He took a deep breath, “Send out the orders, now. Remind them if anyone attacks before their appointed time in the plan, I’ll personally gut them myself.”

  The comms officer replied, “The hunt begins.”

  The Hunt Master watched the status monitors as one of their ships entered a wormhole. It was a great honor to be on the tip of the spear, and it was the one thing he hated about being Hunt Master. The one that directed the hunt couldn’t be risked in such a perilous position.

  It didn’t take more than a few moments for a ship to travel two hundred light years, and he kept his eye on their status and scans while they dropped out on the edge of humanity’s FTL line. He sneered in contempt, when it took the humans a full ten seconds to start launching those dreaded jumping unmanned fighters from the closest ship on their outer patrol.

  The missiles started to jump a light second per second while the tip of their spear accelerated in that direction. He took in a huge breath, when he realized he’d been holding it. His four hearts were hammering in his torso, and it was all he could do to restrain his bloodlust.

  When the human fighters reached two light seconds of separation, they failed to jump again, to the light second range, and he smiled grimly.

  The comms officer reported, “The resonance beacon is working as expected.”

  He snorted violently, like he hadn’t noticed?

  “The hunt goes forward, send the all-clear.”

  A moment later, all six million ships opened a wormhole, only to drop right back out on the human’s FTL line. The fleet leapt forward at a hundred gravities.

  “Hunt Master, the humans are demanding we back off, or they will destroy the seat of government and main cities on ten of our planets.”

  The Hunt Master would’ve smirked, if their species were capable of it, as he checked the status screens.

  The fifty hidden spears were moments away from removing that problem.

  “Ignore them.”

  The hidden spears were simply modified cloaked probes. It’d been impossible to upgrade their power systems and install their latest weapons, but it had been possible to turn them into mines that worked similar to shaped explosions. There was a slight possibility of destroying the planet if there was an error, but at least it gave a chance of saving the Exalted Hunter from the despicable humans in orbit who would think to hostage a whole planet.

  But there wasn’t, an error that is. The fifty spears maneuvered between the human ships and the planet in each solar system, and then the specially designed and quite large containment systems started to create vast quantities of subspace energy. Far more than in one of their turrets, and the explosion would be the equivalent of thousands of those beams. If it was done correctly all that energy would explode toward the human ship and away from the planet.

  If it didn’t work, the atmosphere of the ten planets would be scoured off their surface.

  When it came, the explosion was vast, beyond the ability of the ground-based sensors on the planets to measure. The energy exploded out like a rounded cone that completely covered each of the ships, and when the flash of energy was gone there was nothing left. The human ships had been destroyed down to the last atom, according to sensors.

  It was a bittersweet moment, because the success of his plan meant he wouldn’t become the Exalted one anytime soon. It was also a cowardly weapon, but there was no way he could’ve gotten ships to the planet before the humans could fire on the surface, they’d have seen their hunt ships from a long way off.

  As it was, their planets were safe as they raced inward toward the cradle of humanity. He was looking forward to claiming the honor of eating the first one himself.

  He frowned, as he looked at the shield borders, and the human fleets there hadn’t moved. There were only a couple of hundred thousand ships in the system between him and his goal. The humans had time of course, with their blasted jump drives, who could understand their actions anyway?

  Still, his instincts didn’t like it when the prey didn’t act as predicted.

  He ordered, “Signal the shield fleets to hold their place, until the humans retreat, or our battle is done.”

  The comms officer complied.

  He shook off the momentary doubt, as the tip of the spear finally reached weapons range of the human missiles, and he started to slap them out of space with their point defense just as easily as expected. The humans were just odd, that they’d continue to guard Vrok space when their home world was being invaded by six million ships was unthinkable, but they were doing it.

  He imagined their strangeness wouldn’t change their taste, though.

  He shook his head, “Speculation, why are their two hundred thousand ships just sitting there at Earth, and not racing out to meet us.”

  That was even stranger than the humans leaving thirty-two million ships on their outer shield borders when they were being attacked.

  The tactical officer said, “They may be waiting to launch their unmanned craft like missiles, or they may be arguing about what to do next. If it’s the first one, they’ll fire in four hours, so our fleet and their ships meet at the highest possible speed in opposite directions. It would cut down our time to just five seconds of point defense. They can also jump across the system quickly, so perhaps they are simply unprepared for this invasion and deciding what to do next, hunt master.”

  He frowned, “Very well, if they do that, we’ll move the fleet into defensive formation with covering fire positions and widen our main beams for complete and overlapping coverage. We’ll still have six and a half hours to change back once they’re taken care of.”

  He looked at the status screens again. The fleets on their defensive borders still hadn’t moved at all. Humans were… strange indeed. He considered ordering the shield fleets in to wipe them out instead of just replacing them when they leave, but he stuck with the plan. Without their blasted jump drives, his six million ship spear fleet will easily cut them down, even outnumbered over six to one.

  There was also the matter of the humans additional five, million ship fleets. He had no idea where they were at all. They also had two hundred colonies, but he wasn’t worried about those. Their probes had revealed most of their ships were controlled from the space station above Earth, if he destroyed that he could split his fleet and take on the other two hundred at his leisure.

  Thousands of ships started to come out of wormholes behind them, at the FTL border, in tiny thousand ship fleets, and he smiled grimly. Maybe it’d be
even easier to take out those colonies than he’d thought. He had no doubt that’s where they were from, only the human colonies had eleven hundred ship fleets.

  Chapter Eight

  “Business hours. Is that really too much to ask?” I asked as I stretched, and then started to get dressed. It was four o’clock in the morning for goodness sake.

  Diana looked at me like I might be crazy.

  “Seriously, love. Is it too much to ask our enemies to schedule their attacks during my workday?”

  She giggled, as she pulled on some clothes as well.

  “You’re a bit silly, when under stress.”

  She wasn’t wrong, stress brought out my weird sense of humor. She was also coming along with me to the command center. We had almost thirteen whole hours before humanity was screwed, so we had some time to figure out what to do.

  I’d been hoping the testing would be done before they attacked. I bit my lip and saved the obvious questions for later, no point in repeating things once we’d met up with Cassie and Jessica in the command center.

  “Coffee?”

  She said, “I’d love some.”

  I gave her a quick kiss, and then headed downstairs leaving her to finish getting dressed while I brewed a couple of cups. My overlay showed me they brought six million ships, the same offensive fleet, which meant there were twenty-four million more running around somewhere. I pondered that for a moment, maybe they’d been broken up into eight fleets of three million each, reduced fleets, but still more than powerful enough to hold their eight borders.

  Still, why hadn’t they attacked my fleets on the border yet. At the moment, my ships wouldn’t have a chance considering the enemy’s jump drive suppression beacons.

  Kind of weird, the enemy was strange, but I wasn’t going to look a gift-horse in the mouth. Still, I set up the fleets to jump away, if they detected a large number of wormholes dropping in their lap, before a ship could arrive in real space and jam my ships’ jump drives. I could always reclaim the borders later back from them, after the upgrade. I just wasn’t going to leave them unguarded if I could help it.