“Quite a good officer, according to Navy records and Interworld,” Maggi added, “Though he was turned down for a higher commission in the Planetary Union's Navy when that was formed after the Prophet’s Robe incident. Our good Captain was combat decorated several times, and eventually earned a command on a small scout ship with a crew of five. The first male to do so at that time.
“I suspect that the Captain learned that as a male from New Honshu, he was not going any higher in even the Rim Squadron of the Navy. He resigned to attend the civil Space Fleet Academy, graduated with honors, and then sought work with transport companies. In light of our present situation, his combat background is reassuring.”
She changed the subject. “I'm going to send you back to the Bridge, right after you have an early dinner. I'd like you up there all night if it's permitted, just to keep an eye on developments.” She flashed him a wry grin.
Dillon's heart sank. “An early dinner, Maggi? I could go up right now, then break for dinner at about seven, get a little sleep and be back on the Bridge in the wee hours.”
“Why?” she asked innocently. “Did you have plans this evening? Perhaps to let a certain tall dark and lovely Lady into your tights big boy?”
Damn, Maggi always seemed to know everything. “I'm just meeting First Officer Renaldo for a drink after dinner, to discuss our work at Midwife. Nothing more,” he ended defensively.
“Don't pee on my foot and tell me it's raining,” she chastised him in her usual crusty manner. “I know she was the reason you pulled strings to get that petty duty. I was having a little fun with you. It's a shame I'm too old to bed you myself. Don’t pump yourself exhausted just to prove what a stud you are.”
Dillon feigned shock. He had known Maggi to bed a few men back on Ramah, and she had shamelessly flirted with him often enough. She was probably old enough to remember times when women still outnumbered men by a factor of five or more. The male population needed all of the last three hundred years to rebound. “Aggressive birds get the worm” was an enduring women's expression that Maggi fully supported.
“Don't waste the opportunity, Dillon,” she urged. “Find out if she knows something about this situation that the Captain doesn't. Girls that work for a man sometimes keep a few things to themselves, maintaining that feeling of superiority. She might even brag to impress a big good-looking buck like you. I assume you have arranged to get her in the sack tonight, or was your plan to let her 'seduce' you?”
Dillon felt his face redden. “Uh, we..., I mean she hasn't...” Maggi cut him short.
“Don't play the schoolboy with me Dillon. You and I both know how you affect the Ladies with that retro manner you work so hard to cultivate. It will be a long sleepless night after that vigorous sex romp to tire you. You had better get a nap now to help you stay awake later. I was serious about you staying the night on the Bridge, but go up after the Last Night party, say by 0100? I'll clear it with the Captain, for whoever takes the night watch with you.”
Not waiting for a reply, she patted him right on his bulging red heart covered package, and abruptly turned and was out the door.
Tiger Lily my ass, he thought, and she didn't much behave like a Lady in the classic sense either, though he respected and admired her greatly.
With time on his hands, Dillon went to his cabin. He didn't feel like taking a nap, so he spent a couple of hours calling up old news reports from the library. He found nothing to indicate that the Midwife project had stirred up more than moderate protests from anyone, except for a couple of religious sects, the ones responsible for most of the “don't tamper with God's work” hate mail his department received weekly.
Stretching out on his bunk, he decided to take Maggi's advice. If he was going to spend most of the night sitting on the Bridge he had better catch some rest, because he certainly intended to let Noreen unwrap and stress test his “package” early tonight. He had been hoping he wouldn't get a lot of sleep for the entire night, but he had anticipated Noreen would be the cause, not Midwife’s ominous silence. He popped a fast acting “sleeper” and set a bedside alarm.
6. Ambushed
That evening, after dinner, Dillon went to the main lounge on deck 8 to wait for Noreen. He found it more crowded and noisy than usual, the Last Night party getting into full swing, as it would be on several lower decks. It was going to be a long night, but not spent entirely with Noreen he thought mournfully.
There had been no break in the communications silence. Maggi had called his cabin and cheerfully told him he was expected on the Bridge at midnight, an hour earlier than before, to coincide with the change of the Officer of the Watch, whoever that proved to be. She seemed to be taking a perverse pleasure in screwing up his planned night of debauchery.
Suddenly the loud dance music cut off in mid song. Over the noise of the crowd, he could hear the gong of the acceleration warning. The packed room immediately grew quiet. A smooth, calm sexless voice came over the speaker system. He recognized the voice as Jake's; it was the first time he had ever heard the AI, rather than a crewmember, directly address the passengers.
“Attention! Attention! We have experienced an in-flight emergency. All passengers and crew please secure yourselves in the nearest available chair, couch, or bunk immediately. Be prepared for accelerations of up to four standard gravities in five minutes. Please secure loose objects or place them on the deck if necessary. Thrust will begin exactly thirty seconds after the next warning gong.”
The message was halfway through a repeat before the hubbub went up in pitch as the revelers began to scramble for the few unoccupied seats in the lounge. The chairs would all morph into acceleration couches when occupied. The room had been overflowing, and people began jogging through the corridors, searching for vacant seats in the occasional alcove, or headed directly for their cabins. They hurried, and talked worriedly and loudly, but there was no sense of panic.
Before the soft-spoken voice had completed the first warning however, Dillon had been on his feet, dashing for the axial elevators. He was the official observer and he damn well intended to find out what was happening first hand, up on the Bridge.
Five minutes gave him plenty of time to reach the Bridge. Deck 8 was the highest a passenger could normally go. There were four more lifts at the sides of the passenger decks. The axial elevators required codes to access the highest and lowest crew decks. He had the code issued him as the Bridge observer.
Entering, he gave a verbal command to the auxiliary in AI, “Bridge, please,” followed by his code numbers. To his relief the elevator AI said “Thank you,” and the lift started.
He was shocked, when still several decks below the bridge, Mirikami's voice sounded from an overhead speaker. “Attention, we have a critical situation. Expect four gravity’s of acceleration in forty five seconds. Remain strapped in until instructed otherwise. If you are unable to reach the safety of a couch or bunk, lay flat on your back on the deck now, no matter where you are. You have to do it now!” The last words were a shouted command. The acceleration gong began sounding, and the lift came to a sudden halt.
A quick glance at the telltale panel told Dillon that he was still two decks from his goal. The lift had automatically halted to lock itself against the shaft walls in preparation for acceleration. He dropped to the floor, lying flat on the spongy floor covering.
There was a twisting sensation that told him the ship was rotating. The intensity of the sensation, while not severe, indicated a more rapid attitude change than any he had noticed previously. The acceleration gong started again, but sounded only once, just as the rotation ended, and acceleration hit.
It wasn't bone crushing, but it rapidly became damned uncomfortable on the now unyielding floor that seemed so soft a moment ago. Dillon couldn't recall the conversion function to figure Normal Space acceleration and internal compensation, and he knew it was not a linear calculation anyway. They were really boosting hard if a residual of four gravities remained.
Whatever they were trying to avoid, it must be an act of desperation. Four g's represented the maximum uncompensated acceleration the Flight of Fancy was designed to impose on its passengers. At least that was in the information printed on the back of each cabin door.
Seconds stretched into uncomfortable minutes and Dillon was compelled to try to shift his position repeatedly in an effort to ease discomfort as the floor pressed painfully against his spine, hipbones, shoulder blades, and the back of his head. Moving his arm required considerable effort when he attempted to check the time on his thumbnail watch. He felt foolish when he nearly smacked himself in the face as he brought his fourfold heavier hand up to see.
He had checked the time before as he ran from the lounge. Instead of the five-minute leeway promised by Jake, it had been barely two minutes before the Captain had initiated the course change. Mirikami had been forced to cut that promised safety margin. The ship had now been at acceleration for nearly four minutes. If it didn't let up soon, some of the older members of the scientific contingent would be in serious respiratory difficulty, if not so already.
Almost as if his thoughts had been overheard, the acceleration dramatically reduced, providing instant easing of his own breathing. The relief, though welcome, was not total. The internal gravity was still more than the one g the ship had been maintaining since it had slowly eased up to that level during the day. Dillon estimated it to be about one and a half times standard. That would translate into a ship acceleration of slightly under twenty gravities, he thought. They still seemed to be on the run, presumably away from some threat. A Jump might even be imminent.
He was startled when the door chime sounded. The telltale panel indicated he was at the Bridge level, though the door had not opened. He had been unaware that the lift had resumed moving. Evidently, it could function at this lower acceleration. With slow deliberation, he climbed to his feet, holding firmly on to the handrail around the sides in the event the full four-g's resumed without warning. If it did, he would hit the floor with the impact of about eight hundred eighty pounds.
He placed his palm on the door actuator. Nothing happened. Jake's voice promptly issued from the ceiling speaker, not the lift’s simpler AI voice. “Please state your name and purpose of your visit. Stand at the center of the elevator so the video monitor may clearly...” The computer's voice cut off, replaced immediately by Mirikami's. “Come in Doctor Martin, quickly please.” The door glided open.
Dillon moved swiftly as he could to his previous chair, which now had transformed itself into a semi reclined acceleration couch. He gratefully sank into the soft material as it automatically adjusted to his contours. Mirikami was alone, looking up at a display screen on what had been his lap console earlier. A quick nod and hand gesture was the Captain's only greeting. His gesture and attitude suggested that he was listening to something via his embedded com unit.
Dillon sat in impatient silence, quickly scanning each of the large view screens, which had partly rotated overhead, to be more visible from a reclined position. He saw nothing that offered him a clue as to what was happening. He heard Mirikami terminate communications with whoever had been speaking to him.
Mirikami immediately began to explain their situation. “Almost nine minutes ago Jake reported twenty-two small ship sized objects rapidly closing on us from the direction of Newborn. They are accelerating at an extremely high rate. Jake's assessment, as well as my own, is that these are some type of new design large missile. They must have been fired from one or more ships between us and Newborn, but the ships themselves have not been detected.”
“Damn!” Dillon swore. “Midwife was attacked after all. Wait a minute...,” Dillon thought of something. “You said twenty two missiles. That's a hell of an over kill for just one ship. Could they be small manned fighters?” He recalled Mirikami’s story.
“Not possible. They appear to be large enough, but Jake says their Normal Space acceleration is just over two hundred g's.”
Dillon knew biology, not military hardware. “How does that fact mean they're missiles and not small manned ships?”
“By eliminating the manned choice through the known physics of drive mechanics. The uncompensated internal g's would have turned anyone inside into jelly.”
He had more. “Twenty of them did a collective rollover shortly after we picked them up and now are decelerating at a fantastic rate, but still rapidly closing with us of course. They are no longer my main concern, since they will get here ten or fifteen minutes after the other two. The two lead missiles are still coming at us with the same enormous acceleration they had when the others turned over. I don't know what sort of advantage the other twenty would gain by slowing the rate of closure, except maneuverability. You don’t need much course adjustment for a large slow target like us. But twenty two missiles, as you said, is overkill anyway.”
Shaking his head, the Captain offered another conjecture. “Perhaps only the lead two are still targeted on us. The other twenty may have been sent in the event we were a naval flotilla.” He paused. “On second thought, our calls to Midwife have been on continuous repeat for hours, and our re-entry gamma burst would show as a single ship. No, the bastards know we are alone, and a civilian passenger ship.”
“What's the closest they'll get before we can Jump, Captain?” He assumed they were running to insure that the primary Trap had ample time to snare a tunneling Jump energy tachyon.
Mirikami grunted and cleared his throat before he answered. “The two lead missiles will reach us in...,” he looked at his display screen, “six minutes, twelve seconds. Unless the tachyon Trap beats the probabilities, we are very unlikely to capture a minimum Jump energy tachyon in time.” It came out sounding like an apology.
It was a couple of seconds sinking in for Dillon. Something didn't add up. “I don't understand. Why can't we keep running from them, stretch out the time to improve our odds?” Reducing acceleration for the Flight of Fancy now seemed suicidal.
Mirikami shook his head ruefully. “That was my first instinct, and the reason I made that course change and four g push. Jake ran a computation for me while we were trying to run. It was hopeless. We can't significantly counter a two hundred g real rate of acceleration! I could still buy us a minute or so, but it would drain energy from our secondary Trap faster than we can expect replacement low energy tacs. We would lose our best performance maneuvering system once the Trap field was drained, leaving our fusion generator and limited thruster propulsion. We’d have lasers, but no plasma beams at all without Trap energy.
“Statistically we won't catch a minimum Jump particle for an average of another fifteen or so minutes, that's an average, Doctor. When they close on us, we can't afford to be helpless, without full thrust, or power for the particle beams and lasers. That's why I stopped running as hard, to conserve energy since they will surely catch us if we don’t get that miracle Jump tac.”
Dillon's sat in stunned silence for long seconds. Then “What happened to our forty-minute warning from Jake, Captain?” It sounded more like an accusation than a question.
Knowing it was coming didn't make answering the question easier. Nothing could quell the terrible guilt that consumed Mirikami. His arrogance and clearly demonstrated ignorance was probably going cost the lives of his passengers and crew.
He made no excuses. “The fault is mine. Neither our sensors nor Jake's monitoring are to blame. The missiles were detected and reported to me at our maximum detection range. My previous military experience told me that I could stay out of range of any attacker for a good deal longer than the maximum time it would take to make a Jump. I was wrong! These missiles have some sort of new propulsion system that permits them to accelerate faster than anything I thought drive physics would permit.” He shook his head in dismayed amazement.
“A rocket engine on missiles this size, coming from Newborn, would have burned their fuel reserves out long ago. These have to be using Trap Drives. My promise of a forty-minute
warning has proven to be worthless. They will have covered that detection distance in less than 10 minutes, plus the seconds I gained in trying to get away.
“I ordered the Drive Room crew to retune the primary Trap for minimum Jump energy just as soon as the threat was detected. When I saw there was almost no doubt they would catch us before we could Jump, I started conserving power for a final defense and maneuvering.”
As if waiting for that cue, Jake's ever-calm voice intruded. “Particle beam plasma in chamber one is optimum; the plasma in chamber two will reach firing temperature in thirty-nine seconds. LDS one and two remain on line.”
Mirikami acknowledged, placing his left hand on an armrest that had extruded where he could reach it without reaching up to his now overhead console. Dillon observed two covered switches were under the Captain's hand.
Dillon knew the ship's lasers and particle beams, normally used to ward off occasional small interplanetary debris, were scaled down versions of military hardware. “What chance do we have of knocking out the two lead missiles?” he asked.
“Poor,” Mirikami admitted. “Even if we can stay locked on them. Our system wasn't designed to hit targets that accelerate on their own. Rocks move on ballistic tracks at a constant velocity, while a missile is armored, and defends itself by being reflective and spinning, twisting and altering acceleration. Only our own ship’s acceleration is included in tracking computations of orbiting debris. Jake will attempt to calculate the needed adjustments as changes are detected and feed the corrections to the targeting computer. We have to keep the beams and lasers on track long enough to try to penetrate the armor that I assume they have, or damage something in their guidance system. Neither possibility is likely.”
“Can we dodge at the last moment? If they're moving that fast, perhaps we can sidestep enough before they can adjust.”
“I doubt it, but I was going to give it a try anyway. With weaponry this sophisticated and expensive, they surely don’t need a direct hit. A small nuclear warhead would have to miss by over a kilometer for our hull to survive. I don't know if these contain nukes of any size, of course. If we can't disable them, I'll try one final kick to push us as far as possible from their paths as they get close.”
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