by Mark Wandrey
They all watched the new arrivals come around the horizon of the planet and pass to either side of their lumbering cousin. Both disgorged a trio of missiles that raced towards them. “Aaron, break orbit. Pip, call Var'at, tell him to not enter orbit, brief him on what's going on up here. If they make orbit that beast is sure to swat them out of the sky. Come on Aaron, get us some maneuvering room!”
The Kaatan heeled over and shot straight away from the planet as fast as the impulse drive could manage. The missiles matched the maneuver, crossing the T to intercept them. Minu looked down and saw a new display come alive. On it were five weapons and a tracking screen showing the missiles. She clicked each weapon in turn and assigned it to a missile, then pressed the engage button. Outside the hull of the Kaatan lit with dozens of crisscrossing glowing filigrees of laser light. Collimators drew in the laser energy, focusing them and unleashed pulses of coherent light. These were the same lasers they’d used to destroy the shuttle on Enigma, only the beams were now split and pulsed. One at a time the missiles exploded until only one was left. The missile closed in at a breath taking speed.. The screen showed the lasers were recharging and would be available in ten seconds. The sole remaining missile was five seconds away from impact. “Pip!”
“Prepare for detonation!” he yelled.
“Oh no,” Ted moaned and worked furiously at his controls. Trying to manage the dozens of shields was like juggling spaghetti. He threw as many as he could to the side the missile was approaching at the last second, then it hit.
The Kaatan shook violently, almost dislodging them from their ethereal seats in the CIC. A dozen displays popped into life in front of Cherise and several more before Bjorn where he'd had very little to do overseeing the ship’s engineering systems.
“Hull breeches, several of them.”
“Primary power loss to one of the impulse engines.”
“I'm down to eleven functional shields.”
“The helm is responding sluggishly.”
Minu looked over her smaller little displays all echoing what they were telling her. The Kaatan was badly hurt. One more of those deadly sub-fusion ship killers, and it would be game over. Then she saw a new screen to her left that was brighter than the others with Concordia script flashing. It was instructions from somewhere. Spin up the gravitic drive, head for the star.
Minu looked around, trying to figure who'd sent her the message. All her people were giving their respective controls every ounce of their attention. Even Pip was talking to Bjorn, telling him how to bring the damaged engine back on line at a lower power level. Was it the ships computer? “Bjorn, spin up the gravitic drive!”
“It won't activate,” he said, “it asks for a code this close to the planet.”
On the new screen appeared a line of Concordia script. Minu repeated the script, having to take an extra second to get the complicated word forms out. Bjorn summoned a script panel and entered the code. The gravitic drive came to life. Slowly, wrote the display. Minu relayed the order.
“Another spread of ship killers,” Pip warned.
“Punch it, Aaron, as much as the drive provides under Bjorn's direction. Head for the sun.”
“The sun?”
“Just do it.” Aaron swallowed and nodded his head.
The ship shuddered as it jumped ahead, the tortured hull groaned audibly. The missiles ceased gaining and quickly began to fall back. Behind them the two warships were breaking orbit and trying to pursue as fast as they could. Even the massive lumbering city killer was pulling out of orbit. “Var'at,” Minu spoke into the radio, “the other ship is leaving to chase us. I think we're on to something. Make orbit on the far side of the planet opposite us. We'll be back for you in a few minutes.”
“We'll be waiting! Give them hell, boss.” The connection broke into static and Minu looked back down at her array of screens.
“You know what you're doing?” Cherise asked.
“I have no idea.” The new display was blank as the seconds ticked by. Outside the system’s sun began to grow rapidly larger as they neared light speed.
Chapter 15
March 14th, 522 AE (subjective)
Rasa Leasehold
Singh-Apal Katoosh, high tactical leader of the T'Chillen was in a foul mood. High above the cursed Rasa home world the war of eradication was proceeding, but not well. Many thousands of brave warriors were gone, along with their assets. He'd obtained permission to take two invaluable battleships along with the carrack purely on the possibility that the Rasa would meet them with their stolen ship. He knew nothing of its capacity, but surely two battleships and the one carrack were more than a match for the tiny thing. It would be a shame to smash it, but even then something might be learned from the debris.
Now a month into the final assault, he'd lost patience with the entire operation. He'd planned to pound the legged creatures into submission and then plunder the planet, but time and time again the cost to take the cities was so high that he was forced to call down fire from space. The carrack would lumber over and atomize another city. Four days ago the technicians told him they'd passed the point of no return, the world was dying. He'd killed the technician in anger, and unleashed the carrack to finish the job. Now only a few hosts were still on the surface neutralizing high interest targets with hopes of finding some plunder to offset the losses. They were going to ensure they left no remnant of the Rasa behind.
When one of the hosts began taking sudden and horrendous damage, Singh quickly called in orbital surveillance to observe. It arrived just in time to see the shuttle land. It was just like the ones used to flit around the Enigma system, only smaller. The host was ordered to take that facility, estimated to be a breeding center, at all costs. And meanwhile his ships began searching for the Rasa craft.
Just as the shuttle was making its escape, the carrack found the enemy ship. They traded fire for a few minutes as he commanded the two battleships to make all speed to intercept. Now he was watching from the bridge as his wave of irreplaceable ship killer missiles raced for the enemy. All but one was intercepted, but he knew from the explosion that some damage was done. There were now dark streaks and a couple gouges on the once sleek sides of the ball and needle, and thin trails of gas escaping through damaged sections. He gritted his teeth against the cost and ordered; “Another full spread of ship killers! Finish them!”
But just as the missiles left the ships, the enemy vessel accelerated improbably fast. But they were too close to the planet! Even thousands of kilometers away his own ship was buffeted by the gravity wake of the fleeing ship. “Pursue, pursue!” he hissed in a rage. Far too slowly, they broke orbit and fell in behind. The quarry was wounded, and he could taste their blood.
“The enemy ships are far enough from the planet to engage their own gravitic drives,” Pip informed them. “They are gaining.”
No more instructions appeared for her. Minu gritted her teeth and sucked air through them. She hadn't studied these sorts of tactics. The movement of ground troops in any terrain was her specialty, not fighting starships in deep space. Their ship was wounded, and power was below three percent. Even if they could recover the shuttle, could they get away? How many years would it take to get back to Bellatrix, both subjective and actual? “Okay, prepare for a close pass of the sun and we'll haul ass back around to the planet. Those other ships don't look as advanced, maybe they can't take the heat.”
“Uhm,” Aaron said and punched buttons, “the helm isn't responding.”
“What? Is it damage?”
“Doesn't look like it,” Cherise said.
“Pip, what's going on?”
“I'm working on it.” But Pip was having almost no luck. In a flash he'd found himself locked out of ninety five percent of the computer. And unlike the earlier limitations, this was a dynamic attack to cut him back. It had an almost human feel to it. Suddenly he wished he'd said something earlier about the missing shuttle, and how it was back when they arrived at the Rasa home
world. Or how he'd found communication logs showing the ship conversed and shared data with some distant source. A little went out, but vast petabytes had come back. And now the ship was being taken over by what felt like a virus. He fought with more and more of himself, until there wasn't anything left with which to talk.
“Pip!” Minu yelled over and over, without response.
One after another the bridge systems ceased to respond to the human’s commands. The ship continued to dive towards the sun, and was now speeding up as the star’s gravity pulled at them.
“We better get to a shuttle,” Aaron suggested.
“Stay where you are,” the little screen told Minu, again in ancient Concordia script. “Watch this.”
“Don't bother,” she told them even as they started to get up, “I think we're going to be okay.”
“That's a sun we're falling in to,” Ted pointed at the screen. The vast body of the stellar mass was projected from one side of the CIC to the other. They were now close enough that erupting solar prominences could be seen on the surface. It was a yellow sun, almost just like the one earth had enjoyed.
“I know,” she said and leaned back, “but we're not in charge anymore.” Pip floated in space, looking like he usually did, but she could see sweat on his face. Was this his doing?
The Kaatan finally began to change course, but only slightly. It angled though the corona and into the chromosphere. Ted watched as the shields began to align faster than he could follow. Systems ejected accumulated plasma into their wake as previously topped out shields came on line. They were expertly layered over the nose of the ship, making plasma pass around them like a bullet splashing into a water barrel. They passed through the deadly ten thousand degree maelstrom untouched.
At fifty thousand kilometers per second they skimmed the chromosphere, a water skier sliding over lava. Specially designed forcefields came alive, dipping into the photosphere miles below, and drawing it in.
“Power levels are going up!” Ted yelled. They'd all been watching, mesmerized as death came up to meet them, and was then held at arm’s length. They knew the ship had leveled off, but not why. “Reserves are one hundred percent, main power twenty percent and climbing! Forty, seventy, approaching one hundred!”
The Kaatan pulled back, having traveled most of the way around the sun deep in its nuclear atmosphere, then began to climb back out. As it climbed, a new subsystem came alive. Gravity generators normally used for propulsion were linked with powerful forcefields. The ship’s engines strained, the ship began to slow slightly as it climbed, bogged down by what was happening in its wake.
“We're climbing out of the chromosphere,” Ted told them. “Sensors are coming back on line. We've orbited the sun and are coming back out the way we came.”
“Targets in the threat bubble,” Minu announced as the tactical system began to come alive. “Whoever is in charge better do something.” She glanced at Pip and prayed it was him and not some crazy computer, indifferent to the life it carried inside.
“We just flew through a star,” Bjorn babbled, “that was amazing!”
“I think I need to change my shorts,” Ted laughed.
“Enemy ships, dead ahead,” Minu told them. The display showed their forward view. The smaller two enemy ships were racing towards them. They were quickly widening the separation between themselves, bracketing the onrushing Kaatan. “They're firing.” Two waves of six missiles emerged this time, twice as many as before. She could see all five lasers were armed, but it wouldn't be enough.
Instead of waiting for the missiles to approach, the Kaatan instantly launched a pair of the deadly sub-fusion plasma ship killers. Minu had never seen a lock on the displays; instead the missiles were guided towards the incoming swarm with incredible precision. When they detonated, only two enemy missiles remained, and they were easily picked off by the anti-missile lasers. The CIC broke out in whoops.
“Why isn't the ship attacking them now?” Aaron asked, already starting to treat the ship like it was an intelligence all its own.
“I don't know,” Minu said. Just then the forward A-PAWs battery opened up, pouring fire into the enemy warships. Each impact made their shields flash brighter and brighter. Ted caught the significance immediately.
“They don't have the same kind of mobile shields we do! Now I understand the advantage. But it would take dozens of crew members to manage the things.”
“Or one hell of a program,” said Bjorn.
The attack was more effective against the ship on their right. The forward shields were overloading and the ship was heaving over to try and turn another facing of shields against the relentless attack. The Kaatan adjusted its course and concentrated its fire on that one reeling ship. The other started firing its own A-PAWs now, but unlike their shields, whoever controlled the Kaatan defenses rotated individual shields against the attacks with such pinpoint accuracy that each shot only hit one shield. Ted whistled in appreciation as he watched the show.
When they were within a thousand kilometers, the Kaatan quickly changed course. One second it was racing straight towards the enemy warship with deadly intention, the next it veered away. In that instant, the special forcefields were shut off. “Watch the rear view,” the little display told her. Minu switched the main view and gasped. Behind the Kaatan, seemingly only meters away, was a huge stellar prominence. “Oh lord,” Bjorn gurgled.
The Kaatan had ridden the swirling masses of plasma in the star carefully, building in its wake a vortex of energy like a contrail behind an airplane. As it climbed out the forcefields helped contain the wave charged plasma as the hoverfields shaped it. As they passed the enemy warship, the improvised weapon was unleashed. The target ship’s shields were already badly depleted by the Kaatan’s A-PAWs. In a second it was fully engulfed by the hundred kilometers wide stellar prominence like a bug caught in a blowtorch. The intact shields fought against the onslaught, and only succeeded in routing the million degree plasma energy through the window of damaged shields. The hellfire washed across the thousands of meters of hull, melting dualloy like butter. The first internal explosions overloaded the remaining shield capacitors, and the ship was consumed.
For a split second they saw the warship briefly rival the dissipating stellar prominence, but then it was lost as the short lived nebula of gas plasma spread out over thousands of cubic kilometers of space. The second warship was only brushed by the attack, but it still reeled as half its shields failed. The Kaatan fired a trio of bursts from its rear A-PAWs battery, punching fiery holes in the ship and setting off a series of explosions inside the superstructure. As they left it behind, it was dead in space and beginning to spin lazily towards the star.
A hundred thousand kilometers away, the final alien warship, still struggling to catch up to the fight, fired a few desultory weapons blasts at them. They were ineffectual and the Kaatan ignored the attack, continuing on towards the planet and leaving it once again far behind. Deciding they weren't something to be further messed with, the ship ponderously moved off towards its stricken comrade, straining to reach it before it fell into the sun and met a similar fate to its cousin.
“What's our power situation?” Minu finally managed to ask, breaking the awed silence.
“Just under ninety percent,” Bjorn told them.
“Take that snakes,” Aaron whispered, not aware any of them could hear it. Minu just nodded.
“We have your message,” came Var'at's voice over the speakers, “and we're climbing to intercept.” Minu looked around but everyone else just shook their heads. They hadn't sent the message. “You're really hauling ass, we're going to be almost out of power when we rendezvous.”
“That won't be a problem,” Minu told him, “we've refueled.”
“I can't wait to hear that story, or how you dealt with those ships! Var'at out.”
Minu stood and looked around. Pip was coming vertical, standing on the 'floor' now, a look of profound confusion on his face. Not at all w
hat she hoped to see. “Tell me that was you, please,” she said.
“I can't,” he replied simply. “I was bottled up quite effectively.”
“Why? Who?”
“Why? I think to be certain I didn't cause any problems. Who? Well, I should have said something weeks ago, but the ship has been...working on something for a while. It got a big data upload from somewhere and began a covert project.”
“Huh? What project?”
“I don't know, but it even took a shuttle for a few weeks.”
“Took a shuttle?” Aaron asked. “Where could it go? The shuttles can't travel FTL.”
“And you'd die even trying to pass through the luminal envelope,” Ted agreed. Minu had listened to enough of their conversations to understand the basics. The sub-space bubble around the ship when they traveled faster than the speed of light was a mishmash of swirling probabilities and dueling chronological distortions. If you ever passed through you'd probably come out the other side as a mutated million year old turtle, or a toaster. You just didn't do it. And it was dangerous to the ship, as well.
“Where is this construction taking place?”
“Deck three, next to the medical bay.”
Minu was out the door of the CIC and down the jump shaft in an instant. The door next to the medical bay was just like any other. She'd looked in there months ago when they got the ship. An empty room, not even configured as a cabin or anything else. Pip guessed it was possibly extra space for a larger medical bay. The ship seemed to have a great deal of flexibility in design. She stepped up to the door and it instantly slid aside.
Inside was a completely different space than before. It was a miniature of the CIC, completely spherical but almost dark inside. Floating in the center of the space was what looked like a human. Not standing like they did on an artificial floor, but floating in the center like a scuba diver. It was difficult to see but the figure appeared to be making intricate hand gestures and manipulating fields full of symbols.
