by Dietmar Wehr
“Enemy radar intensity is increasing. They’ll be able to see us soon,” said the tactical AI.
“Astro! Maneuver the Fleet to keep the intervening distance from dropping any lower!” With that order acknowledged, Dejanus watched the missile icon intently. When it reached the halfway point, the number inside dropped from 98 to 85, then seconds later to 72. Dejanus checked the time intervals and saw that they were a consistent 11 seconds. The question was would there be any missiles left by the time the range dropped to zero.
With 10 seconds to intercept, the icon number dropped to 20 and Dejanus knew that at least some and maybe all 20 of the missiles would get through. When she saw the detonations on interception, she realized that she’d been holding her breath and exhaled.
“All targets have been hit and appear to be destroyed. No further radar emissions detected,” reported the tactical AI.
“Com, tell Leyte and Savo to break formation and get within active scanning range of the enemy formation’s projected position. I want to make sure there’s nothing left but pieces. Astro, you can bring the rest of the Fleet back to a rendezvous trajectory with Excalibur. The Fleet can stand down from Battle Stations.”
Chapter Eight:
The Fleet stayed in F1 for almost two weeks. Volunteers ate the plant samples with no ill effects. That was a major breakthrough. The Fleet had enough protein supplements to keep the crews going for almost a year if the bulk of the carbohydrates and fibre came from a plant source. The XO had taken the shuttle back down to the same farm and found it destroyed completely by what looked like some kind of energy weapon. She did not find any survivors. Additional teams landed at other sites, including several small towns and other farms. After some rough starts, friendly contact was made, and the farmers agreed to exchange food for portable electronic items such as radios. The combination of communication with the inhabitants and searching through city ruins gradually filled in the picture of this alien civilization.
They called themselves the Aren. At the height of their civilization, they had colonized a dozen star systems and built a defence force consisting of semi-intelligent robotic warships, which were the wing ships found by humans earlier. A plague of unknown origin proved to be far more deadly than any plague in their history. An astonishing 98.8% of the population died. The survivors were unable to keep their technical base operating and gradually had been forced to return to a more primitive level. Over time, the robot warships became inactive either through malfunctions, or from lack of commands from their biological masters via a fail-safe function. Then, not very long ago, aliens came and destroyed all of the orbiting bases and ships. After making sure that the Aren were no further threat to them, they left. Koenig told Dejanus that if the aliens thought Javelin was an Aren ship that had somehow gotten overlooked in the first sweep, it might explain the arrival of the alien fleet. And that implied that when the alien fleet was declared overdue, another one might be sent here as well. Dejanus kept the fleet on a heightened level of alert.
The planet no longer had what anyone would call a working planetary government, but one local leader did give humans enough technical information to enable technicians to access the computers that had controlled the robot fleet. In them, the humans found how to activate the warships and obtained technical data on their weapons, which revealed that the turrets on the wing ships’ hull were able to manipulate gravity as a focused beam that ripped apart ordinary matter. It even looked possible to mount the Aren gravity cannon turrets on human ships in place of the gamma-ray laser turrets. Dejanus was only momentary tempted by that idea. In theory, it could be done, but none of her technical people were certain they could do it, and there were no gravity cannon on F1C or in the F1 system. The only location where wing ships and gravity cannon were known to exist with certainty was MR7, and going all the way back there to possibly get some alien weaponry, the usefulness of which was unknown, did not appeal to her. Koenig tried to point out that if the Aren were attacked again after the Fleet left, they would suffer for what humans had done, and he wondered if some closer wing ships could be found and re-activated in order to bring them back to F1. An attempt was made to access the defence force computers to find out where other wing ships might be located, but that data was too corrupted to be useful. When the locals were informed of the derelict Aren fleet orbiting a former colony in MR7, they pleaded with Dejanus to take some of them back there to recover at least a few of those ships in order to use them to concentrate what survivors there were in one place on the home world. Dejanus refused. She was already hearing grumbling about the Fleet taking too much time here with a long way remaining to get home. There was also the practical problem of exposing the Arenians to human micro-organisms while on board human ships and vice versa.
With the Fleet provisioned with literally tons of edible plants, there was no good reason to remain any longer. Dejanus now had to make a decision about Excalibur.
“Com, I want a discrete audio channel to Excalibur Actual,” she said as her status display showed each ship’s readiness to leave orbit.
“I’m here, Tyler. You have new orders for us?”
“Yes, Wolfe. I’ve been wrestling with the question of whether to detach Excalibur for the gauntlet path attempt. The fact that we have plenty of food now does not eliminate the need for reinforcements at MR66. The final 23 jumps will take 7th Fleet right through the heart of Tong space, and if we have to fight our way through, we’re going to need a lot more missiles, and more ships would help too. That’s assuming High Command is willing to risk a war with the Tong, while they’re fighting the Jabs, to help us get home. I don’t even want to think about the possibility that they might write us off in order to keep the peace. Relying on Saratoga’s Hail Mary roll of the dice is too risky. That means that—”
Koenig finished the sentence for her. “—Excalibur will run the rest of the gauntlet.”
“I hate it when you finish my sentences,” said Dejanus with a smile.
“Sorry. I do that when I’m nervous. Do you have any special orders or messages for me?”
“I will, but they’re not ready yet. 7th Fleet will leave orbit together, and we’ll escort you to your jump point. I’ll send you conditional orders, plus messages to carry back before you jump.”
There was an awkward pause. “I notice that you haven’t said anything about switching the crew for volunteers,” said Koenig.
“No, I haven’t, and that’s because there isn’t going to be any switching. After what happened to Javelin, the remaining volunteers have all withdrawn their offers to volunteer. Your ship and your crew will run the gauntlet because they are being ordered to, end of story.”
Koenig was glad Dejanus couldn’t see him at that moment. His crew weren’t going to like being ordered to undertake a dangerous mission when Javelin’s crew had individually been given the option to refuse it. Koenig himself wasn’t thrilled with the prospect. He had already decided that he would volunteer to lead the mission, but only because Excalibur was his first command and he didn’t want to give her up. But forcing his crew to participate somehow didn’t seem fair. He realized this was his emotional response. Intellectually, he understood why Dejanus had issued that order. If there weren’t enough volunteers to undertake the mission, then the shortfall would have to be made up of officers and technicians ordered to go. That being the case, it made sense to order the ship’s current crew instead of ordering others to replace them.
“I understand,” he said finally. “I’ll tell my crew to look on the bright side. This way we’ll get back sooner and can go on R&R sooner.”
“Very good, Wolfe. We’ll talk again before you jump. Out.”
When Koenig informed the crew, they took it better than he had expected. Excalibur was now a special ship in their eyes, and that gave them a kind of elite status among the other crews. As one technician put it, ‘When you can’t send the rest; you send the best.’ Koenig felt better about their chances now. A confi
dent and proud crew was more likely to overcome the inevitable challenges than a scared crew motivated to volunteer by who knew what.
When the time came to line up for the jump into the gauntlet chain, Dejanus spoke to the Excalibur crew on a video channel. She gave a pep talk that she probably thought was necessary, but Koenig felt was superfluous given the crew’s morale. With the speech to the crew over, she and Koenig had a final private moment.
“Good luck, Wolfe. I’ve tried to think of all possible situations that you might run into and have addressed them with your conditional orders. In the final analysis, you’re the commander on the spot. If you find that my orders don’t make sense, then use your best judgement. Those orders are meant to be guidance more than anything else. Give my regards to Admiral Tory when you see him.”
“Thank you, Tyler. I can’t promise that High Command will let Excalibur participate in the re-supply fleet, but if it’s up to me, she will, so maybe we’ll see each other again in MR66. Good luck to you and to 7th Fleet.”
“Thanks. I have a feeling we’re going to need all the luck we can get. Carry on, Commander Koenig. Out.”
The jump to G3, the star system that was near F1, was routine. G3 was a blue giant, and the jump from there to G4 would be a long one. In anticipation of exactly this situation, Excalibur’s astro AI had been taking sightings of the G4 star every time the ship arrived at a new system. That gave AstroComp the data it needed to project the G4 star’s actual position compared to where it appeared to be based on the light that had left it, in this case, almost 46 years ago. The AI was also looking at the G5, G6 and G7 stars to get as much data on them as possible. As the ship moved along the gauntlet, the AI would continue to look at least four jumps ahead.
The G3 system turned out to be devoid of anything interesting. Blue giant stars typically did not have a lot of planets, and no life-bearing planet had yet been discovered orbiting a star that big. As Excalibur made its way around the giant sun to the other side, Koenig gave his AIs lots of time to gather their data, and the ship took its time lining up for the big jump. It would be the longest jump Excalibur had attempted on her own so far. When the astro AI informed Koenig that the alignment with G4’s projected location was as good as it was going to get, Koenig gave the order to jump. The jump transit took almost 11 days, and Keonig was a nervous wreck as they reached the end of that time.
Excalibur’s re-entry into the G4 system was so far from the star’s center that Koenig’s heart seemed to skip a beat in shock, but the astro AI confirmed that the ship was well within the star’s gravity well and that the jump had not been on the edge of a miss. However, the jump had been so stressful for the entire crew that Koenig declared the ship would spend a day in a parking orbit so that all crewmembers could stand down for 24 hours and celebrate their first big, solo jump.
The jump to G5 was successful, although the deviation from the G5 star’s center was greater than for G4, and it was close enough to the edge of the gravity well that AstroComp calculated a 5.9% chance of missing G6. That was too high for Koenig. The astro AI recommended three short jumps to neighboring stars to get additional astrogational data on G6. These bearing jump destinations were designated G5A, G5B and G5C. The first two were uneventful. G5C proved to be potentially significant because EM transmissions were picked up there from another system that was 5.6 light years away. Those transmissions were similar to what Javelin had detected coming from the planet in F1 before the plague wiped out its technical ability to continue doing so. That implied this new source was, or at least had been, an Aren colony, with the possibility that there might be ships still in orbit that were similar to MR7.
Koenig checked his conditional orders. Dejanus had in fact foreseen this exact possibility and had ‘ordered’ Koenig to NOT make a detour to the Aren colony system because it would, in her words, ‘create an unnecessary delay in getting back to human space’. He conferred with Soriya. She felt they should investigate the EM source system for the possibility of finding powered-down wing ships that could be re-activated and sent back to F1 to protect that world from further attacks by the hostile aliens. Koenig was sympathetic to the idea of helping the Arenians defend their planet, but he was also concerned about more delays. The three side jumps had already pushed back the ETA to human space by four days, and there were sixteen more long jumps to go.
The decision whether to investigate was settled by the astro AI’s report that the additional data on G6 had only reduced the chances of missing it from 5.9% to 5.5%. Going further away from the gauntlet path would help get that probability down even lower, and checking out the EM source system would allow them to accomplish that goal. With that as the reason to make another side trip, Koenig was able to rationalize disregarding Dejanus’s order. The jump to G5D, as the target system was designated, was successful.
Excalibur approached the planet slowly and with active scanning. There were objects in orbit that were large enough to be ships. The planet itself was radio quiet, and orbiting objects did not respond to Excalibur’s radar. A close look at the planet showed that it was like MR7 all over again, except this planet had a lot more land, and much of it appeared to be arable. The colony turned out to be a single settlement that Koenig estimated was large enough to hold 50,000 Arenians, but there was no sign of life now. Even a low shuttle flyby over the settlement did not reveal any signs of living Arenians. Quite the opposite in fact. The shuttle’s optics, which relayed its image to Excalibur, showed lots and lots of bodies lying in the streets. Koenig ordered the shuttle back to the ship. His concern now was with the two wing ships in orbit. 7th Fleet’s technical people had managed to download enough technical specs from the Arenian computers on F1C to understand how the gravity beam weapon turrets on the wing ships operated and were powered. The idea of removing one of them and retrofitting it to Excalibur’s graser turret was tempting but at the moment impractical. The ship just didn’t have the depth of expertise or the right equipment to try it.
It did, however, have the knowledge and equipment to attempt to re-activate both wing ships with instructions to return to the home world and defend it. How the re-activated wing ships would react if Excalibur was nearby, was hard to estimate, and Koenig wasn’t ready to take that risk, so he had two transmitters assembled and programmed. Each one would be magnetically attached to a specific spot on each wing ship’s hull. After Excalibur retreated to what Koenig hoped was a safe distance, the devices would begin transmitting the re-activation and deployment codes. Soriya volunteered to command the shuttle that would take one of the technicians to each wing ship, where the device would be planted during an EVA.
As the shuttle floated near the wing ship, it sent images back to Excalibur. Koenig was surprised by how big wing ships were, given that they weren’t designed to carry a crew. Both devices were planted without problems, and when Excalibur was half a million kilometers away, it sent the execute signal. Within seconds, both wing ships started boosting out of orbit on a curving path that AstroComp calculated would take them back to F1C. Koenig felt a high level of satisfaction over having done something to help the Arenians. The crew seemed to feel the same way, and the miss probability for the jump to G6 was now down to 5.25%. It was not quite the 5% level that would have made Koenig sleep easier, but it was low enough to consider making the attempt. Soriya still wasn’t satisfied.
“I recommend we make another sideways jump to get more data, sir. The AI says that not only would it improve the odds for the G6 jump to below 5%, it would also help reduce the odds for the G7 jump too.”
“Show me on the display,” ordered Koenig. A star map appeared with the gauntlet path in green, the detour to G5D in yellow and the proposed jump to G5E in red. “G5E is roughly the same distance from G6 as G5 is. Will the data from that angle really help that much?” asked Koenig.
Soriya shrugged. “Maybe not, but 5.25% percent makes me nervous. That’s less than one chance in 19, and we have 16 more jumps. If we keep jumping
with those odds, we’re bound to roll snake eyes somewhere along the line.”
“Is that correct, Astro?” asked Koenig.
“The XO’s analysis is correct in general terms. If each of the next 16 jumps has a 5.25% chance of missing the gravity well, then the probability of successfully making all 16 jumps is 42.2%. In order to have a 50% chance of making all 16 jumps, the maximum chance of a miss on any single jump should not be more than 4.24%.”
Koenig was surprised that the overall chance of success was that bad. Keeping the miss probability below 5% for each jump had seemed like an acceptable risk. The first five jumps had each been below 5%, or had they?
“Remind me again of the odds of missing each of the first five jumps,” he said.
“In chronological order of jumps, the probability of missing the gravity well was 3.5%, 3.6%, 3.8%, 4.4%, and 4.9%.”
“And why are the miss odds going up? I thought we were taking bearings of future jump targets as we went along,” asked Koenig.
“The first five jumps along the gauntlet path had data gathered from wide angles as we and the Fleet moved along the milk run path. Those wide-angle bearings were also of different distances, which meant that the light we were seeing left the target stars at different times. That enabled AstroComp to compute the star’s vector and project its current position. Once the ship began moving along the gauntlet, which is relatively narrow, the bearings had less differentiation in time, and the vector analysis error began to accumulate. If Excalibur continues to move along the gauntlet path as it has been, the cumulative error will grow to over 10% by jump 21, and the probability of missing at least one gravity well over the next 16 increases to 96.6%.”
