“Is there anything I can help you do?” He was thinking of the fact that Mirikami was working alone. Dillon wanted badly to do something. Anything, besides waiting for fate to catch up to him.
“Pray to the quantum gods for a Jump tac” Invited Mirikami. He raised the protective covers and threw the two switches that armed the particle beam systems, the lasers having been in Jake's control since re-entry. “Jake has his firing command. I've just released the interlocks to permit automatic firing when they come into the range where we can achieve the sharpest focusing.” Referring to his display, “That will be in a little over three minutes.”
Mirikami keyed the acceleration alarm and switched on the intercom. “Attention, Please. Attention. This is Captain Mirikami. We are under missile attack by unknown forces. We are attempting to evade the missiles long enough to capture a minimum Jump tachyon, and leave the Newborn system. There will be a minute of much higher acceleration than the previous four gravities sometime within the next few minutes. If you have not reached a couch yet, or are not lying down, your life may well depend on your doing so. If you can, remove your shoes, empty your pockets, and loosen tight clothing. But do it fast. You have just two minutes to return to a prone position. The ship's computer will inform you when two minutes have elapsed. Listen for the acceleration alarm just before we start thrust.
“That goes for us too, Doctor Martin,” as he kicked off his shoes and unfastened and dropped a utility belt.
Dillon was pulling off his second boot when a barefoot Noreen burst from the stairwell onto the Bridge. Looking winded, she barely gave Dillon a glance as she threw herself onto her couch. “Who are they?” she asked, between gasps for air, “Jake didn't say.”
“Don't know,” Mirikami spoke in curt sentences. “Made no transmissions. Impossibly fast. Clearly, the strategy is to hit us before we catch a Jump tac. Looks like it will work. Willfem's installing a shunt on the second field's regulator. If done in time, I'm pre-programming a last ditch max thrust right now. See if we can sidestep the first two, gain some time.”
“Thought so..., Jake told me most of it.” She was struggling to regain her breath, speaking between gasps. “Kicked off shoes in stairwell. ... 'Fraid I'd be there when you did it. ...Couldn't risk lift, ...ran up from deck three. ...Hi Dillon!” She tossed the words at him without turning.
He was about to offer details that Mirikami had omitted as the Captain punched in instructions. Then he recalled she would have been in contact with Jake and the Captain via her personal com unit. She was already busy at her console.
Dillon still couldn't see anything on the large view screens other than the normal galactic sky. On a small display at the Captain's console, and now Noreen's, there was a tracery indicating what was taking place. There was a cluster of red symbols moving in from the top of the display, with two well ahead, moving visibly towards a single green dot near the bottom. There were a number of constantly changing characters near each of the symbols, which were too small for Dillon to make out from his couch.
“Nan says she has the shunt installed, Captain.” Noreen informed him. “We have power for fifty eight g's of kick in our secondary when you need it, but Jake can't yet account for fourteen passengers. They never made it to a cabin or a couch and are probably on the deck. Three others appear to be unconscious on their couches. Internal gravity will hit at least twelve g's, this time,” she warned.”
Mirikami looked grim. “There were at least thirty or so on the deck when I overrode Jake on the first push. I hated to do it, but I had to at try to buy some time. Now I'm trying to buy their lives, and it may kill some of them even if the missiles don't get us. Sound the acceleration warning.”
7. Captured
“Here we go,” said Mirikami. “Watch the screen. If we do get them we might be able to see the explosions.” He clenched his fists as four bright designator lines suddenly lanced out from the ship's green symbol, two red, two blue, one of each color converging on the two nearest red symbols. The lines were only a computer representation, since in space the lasers and particle beams were invisible to the human eye.
Dillon finally had something on which to focus his attention. The lasers closed the gap at the speed of light of course, the particle beams arriving only a tiny split second later. The two points of convergence began to shift visibly on the screen. The targets were trying to evade.
Jake's voice was as calm as ever. “All beams are off focus and off track. Both targets executing rapid lateral movements combined with complex nonlinear acceleration changes. Backscatter from the laser strikes indicate an increase in target surface reflectivity, suggesting a mirrored skin has been activated. No ablation vapors are observed, and continued active missile steering indicates there was no structural damage from the initial hits. I am attempting to re-establish a firing track on both targets.”
Mirikami spoke rapidly into the intercom, “Ms. Willfem we need to Jump now! Can we do it?”
“Negative, Sir. But we just picked up another low-level tac in the secondary. It will add a little power for that big kick you wanted.”
“Here it comes, now or never.” Mirikami warned.
With fantastic speed, the two lead missiles were closing the gap. The program to try to avoid a direct hit was ready. Mirikami hit the activate key savagely, feeding the authorization to Jake. Dillon experience vertigo as the ship rapidly rolled ninety degrees. A savage acceleration of almost fifteen gravities slammed into their bodies.
The terrible crushing pressure lasted only seconds when it was unexpectedly cut, and the lights and screens went out. Dillon uttered a grunt through clenched teeth as he was thrown painfully against restraints. He heard another gasp from Noreen's direction, though he couldn't see anything in the dark. This was followed by a stomach churning sense of free fall, frightening in the blackness, which ended in seconds as the lights returned. Quickly after that, gravity returned at what felt like three quarters standard to Dillon's confused senses. An ear piercing claxon began shrieking.
Dillon felt an odd flash of relief at hearing the claxon. When the lights failed as the thrust quit, he had though his next experience would be hellfire and vacuum.
Mirikami, cursing loudly, slapped the alarm silent and studied the readouts and red telltale messages that were beginning to appear on his console. Noreen started calling up data from the Drive Room monitors.
Dillon glanced at the external view screens, they were restored but the drifting star field indicated the ship was making a slow roll. The red and blue tracers were gone. Checking the tracking display at Mirikami's console, he saw the first two red target symbols had passed the Flight of Fancy, and were moving away. “They missed us!”
Mirikami looked up, a puzzled expression on his face. “I don't think they missed. They just didn't do what I expected, which was to blow us apart. We should have boosted for a full minute, but we lost all power from our Trap fields. One or both fusion bottles are always on line, and number one kicked in automatically for gravity control. That three-second surge barely moved us out of harm’s way, but there wasn't any detonation. They apparently fired something at us as they passed, and knocked out all of the Trap field projectors around our hull. Every projector shows zero field curvature. I'm damned if I know how they did that kind of precision shooting at that velocity!”
Assimilating data as it was summarized on her screen, Noreen had to contradict him. “Captain, the power monitors don't indicate that any of the projectors are actually gone. They are all drawing energy from the fusion generator now. The secondary field simply contains no tachyons. That's why we lost thrust.
“Then there's still a chance!” Mirikami cried. He was nearly shouting as he called the Drive Room. “Nan, Is the main Trap still on tune for a Jump tac? The lead two missiles have passed and the main body is at least twelve minutes away and slowing.”
A man's face appeared on the screen, it was Chief Haveram. “Ms. Willfem is already checking on it now, Sir
. The secondary field is up, but it seems to have dumped all its particles.”
“Damn the secondary field!” Mirikami snapped, “We still have a pretty good chance to catch a Jump tac in the next twelve minutes if our primary is still tuned correctly. Check it!”
There was the sound of another voice approaching the audio pickup. A young woman's face replaced the Chief. She looked dejected. “Captain, both the primary and secondary Traps have broken down somehow. We show them tuned to their respective energy levels, but the field monitors indicate they have zero curvature now. The fields must have collapsed.”
Noreen signaled with her hand, catching the Captain's attention. She pointed to a string of characters on her own display.
“Can't be,” Mirikami said, hope still present, “we're still feeding them a lot of power from the reactor, so the fields have to be there. The field monitors must have been damaged instead of the projectors. They did something to us when they passed. Get me a video damage report of the hull, and make sure that primary field stays on frequency!”
“I was already on it Sir. I'm checking out the control console for the field strength monitors now.” Speaking off to the side, “Chief! You, Gundarfem and Yin-Lee, do a fast eyeball check on the projectors and hull. See if the field samplers were hit, the projectors may be damaged too since the energy to them is going somewhere.” There was the sound of running feet.
For the moment all that could be done was being done. Rather than distract his engineer from her work, Mirikami asked for a status report inside of five minutes and left the circuit open. “Let's find out what Jake recorded when those two birds passed us.” Mirikami selected the voice Link. “Jake, what did the two missiles do to us as they passed?”
The precise voice responded instantly. “We received focused bursts of N wave energy from each of them in turn as they passed.”
Mirikami shook his head in a gesture lost on the computer. “Their own Trap fields couldn't hurt us, particularly by pushing on our Trap fields. Those fields are not entirely in this universe, and there certainly would be no material connection to the ship from a Trap field in Tachyon Space. Jake, what about a laser or particle beam hit on the hull or the projectors? Our field sensors must be giving us bad readings because they show the fields down, but internally they seem tuned and drawing power.”
“Sir, there was no laser or beam activity detected.”
Mirikami had a question. “Jake, are there any unusual equipment malfunctions listed in your data base that can cause a spherically closed field to register zero curvature?”
The AI had a litany of negatives. “A closed field cannot change its curvature to become an open field; it would first require an infinite amount of energy to expand to essentially zero curvature. A closed field can only expand to the limit of energy furnished, or collapse. An open field must be generated from its origin as an open field, and can never become closed. An open field will also require a continual increase of energy input to support it as it radiates toward infinity. All open fields collapse when they reach the limit of their energy supply. It is extremely improbable that all of our independent sensors would have failed simultaneously, and virtually impossible for all of them to fail in precisely the way required to incorrectly register a closed field’s curvature as zero.”
“Jake, we are now feeding energy into all the field projectors, yet we measure zero field curvature. Despite what your physics programming says about a closed field, what purely hypothetical field configuration would allow these readings?”
The reply was not immediate this time. Several seconds passed as the computer re-evaluated the billions of bits of data recorded from the instruments, and information stored in the physics database.
“If both closed fields were actually changed to open fields, our field sensors would therefore register as zero curvature. Both fields would then tend to expand to infinity at a linear rate. However, our spherical fields could not become open, since they were not generated that way initially.”
Mirikami called the Drive Room again. “Ms. Willfem?”
“Here Sir” came a prompt reply.
“Nan, if the projectors were broadcasting open fields Jake says that we would see zero curvature readings. An open field will draw more power with time. Please check the power monitors for the field projectors.”
There was a momentary pause at the other end. “Captain, we do show a steady increase in power drain to the field projectors. I hadn't noticed it before, nor did I expect any change. The circuits are tuned for the tachyon energy we want. Except every field mechanic knows that you can’t open a closed field.”
“Nan we only have another eight or nine minutes till company comes again. Tinker with whatever you want on the secondary to see if you can determine where the energy is going, and why. Don’t work on the primary Trap. I'm reluctant to tamper with it in case it’s still really up and closed, and we can either catch or already have a Jump particle and just can't sense it.”
“I'll do my best Sir. Wait a second while I try something...” There was the faint click of a switch followed by another. “I toggled a single projector off and on for the secondary Trap. No indication from the sensors of a field curvature change, but when I sent the shutdown signal I saw a slight decrease in the total power drain followed by a slight step back up, as if that projector is radiating into a field. Impossible as it sounds, Jake may be right.”
“Do what you can Nan, but don't start anything that will take longer than five minutes to get results.”
“Yes Sir, I have a few things I can try, ...Uh, hold a sec Captain, Motorman Johnson is calling me...” She cocked her head and listened on her own com unit channel for a few seconds, then looked into the video pick up again. “No visible damage to any of the projectors.”
“Right, that fits Jake's picture too.” Mirikami replied. “Get hopping on those tests. Out.”
Dillon had been watching the tracking display on the captain's console. “Captain, does it appear to you that the first two attackers are not falling away from us as fast as they were when they passed us?”
Mirikami studied the figures next to the two targets a moment and shook his head in amazement. “They are now decelerating at two hundred standard gravities.” As if to deny what the numbers told him, he added, “There is no way a ship that small can hold those drives.”
“Someone's found a way,” Noreen countered dryly. “It looks like they're turning around to close the back door. Not that we can run anywhere. We're on a ballistic course out of this system into nowhere, unless they stop us, or we get our fields back in service. We don’t have enough fuel for our main thruster engines to make a difference at this high velocity. “
To Dillon the time seemed right to ask some questions without worrying about being a distraction. “I think we might be able to make some guesses about these people based on their technology. If we figure out who could possibly build missiles this advanced, we might have a clue as to their intentions. We can rule out the Planetary Union on grounds that they wouldn't need to attack Midwife to eliminate it. Who else has their scientific know how?”
Mirikami gave his lower lip a tug, and then waved his hand. “I'm certainly no expert, but I have a decent foundation in Trap field mechanics. I've keep up with current literature on Jump drives. I've never even heard of theoretical possibilities for a drive mechanism that can generate the acceleration these missiles produce. Drives of that power should be far larger than our own drives, too large to fit in those little hulls.
“But that isn’t the most disturbing thing to me.” Mirikami continued, “The people who built those,” he indicated the red symbols on his display, “have done far more than build a faster, smaller drive. They evidently have a means to penetrate and open a tachyon Trap field with a similar field. I haven’t a clue as to who it could be, but they seem to want us alive, at least for now.”
Something else bothered Dillon. “If these are remote piloted missiles, then w
here's the ship that fired them and controls them? How can they be remote drones if Jake never detected the control signals? If we have to accept that they have a better drive, why not a smaller manned ship?”
“You may be right Doctor.” Mirikami conceded. “What's one more defiance of what I was taught as being the Laws of Physics?”
Dillon started to say something else but was interrupted by Jake. “Communication arriving, audio only.” This announcement was followed by a quavering voice, already in mid-sentence.
“....to escape or you will be destroyed! Any resistance will be dealt with savagely. Please believe me; if you run or fight you will die. Your lives depend on submission and instant obedience. For God’s sake, don’t try to Jump, they can sense your Trap fields. Obey them exactly! A moment’s hesitation can be fatal.”
There was a moment of silence, then the broadcast repeated. “Make no attempt to escape or you will be destroyed! .,.” The remainder was a repeat of the same message. On the third playing Mirikami told Jake to take it off speaker, but to continue recording and report any change in content.
Noreen was the first to speak. “I think whoever made the recording is under duress, possibly a prisoner, and from his voice he sounds frightened. Perhaps someone from Midwife?”
“If so,” Mirikami mused, “he believes our attackers to be ruthless and competent enough to make armed resistance futile. After the flying and firing demonstration just witnessed I can't doubt their ability.”
Watching her own tracking display, Noreen saw that the twenty onrushing targets had modified their formation. “The main group is fanning out. They're netting us like a fish.”
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