by Mark Wandrey
“So, gravitic impellers and such?”
“No, gravitic impellers use a low-level gravity induction field. Gravitic channeling is necessary for the gravitic lens drives of starships and for a few limited technological uses in ultra-powerful gravity fields.”
“Come on,” she told the team and jumped toward the door. “I have an idea.”
The map of the complex firmly in her mind, it only took them a handful of minutes to reach Minu’s destination. Shortly before reaching the door they heard the low hum of operating machinery. It wasn’t the only time they’d heard similar sounds; the city was full of functioning support mechanisms and other apparatuses needed to keep a facility working kilometers beneath the ocean’s surface.
But this was the first time they’d seen any of the structures in operation. Warning lights flashed over reinforced pipes, and areas near other machinery sported pulsating floor blazons warning against getting too close. Finally, they came to the end.
A gravitic-powered conveyor was moving small, half-meter-on-a-side cases out of a machine, one every few minutes. As the cases emerged, robotic arms took them and stacked them neatly into one of the nearly ubiquitous Concordian shipping crates. The crate was nearly full. The team approached cautiously, but there was no one around the shipping area.
Minu leaned over the crate just after another case was added. The script on the side said ‘caution, gravitic sensitive material—korovite.’
“Now what?” Cherise asked, glancing inside as well. The robot’s arms swung and delivered another case. There was room for about ten more.
“Why don’t we find a quiet place and see who comes to claim this?”
“What if it is just some automated function?” Aaron asked.
“It isn’t,” she assured him, “someone told the system to produce this material and prepare it for shipping. And I think I know who it was.” The team hid behind a bank of robots and waited. Fifteen minutes later the last case was stowed in the crate, which automatically sealed itself. The ancient facility fell silent once more.
“Who knows how old this place is,” Aaron whispered in her ear, sending an unexpected shiver up her spine, “and you just flip a switch and it starts working. There are factory worlds all over the galaxy just like this. We call them junkpiles, but it looks more like they’re mothballed.”
“Right,” she agreed, “my father said the same thing. He says it’s like the Concordia decided to stop building stuff and go on strike. But what—”
She cut off suddenly as a doorway on the far side of the dock opened, and in walked the pair of Squeen they’d run into earlier. “Bingo,” she said with a predatory smirk. “Time to get some answers.”
Minu stood up and walked out from behind the robot she’d been hiding behind. “Hello,” she said and held up a hand in greeting, “I’m a friend of Quick Finder—”
She never got a chance to finish her question. The Squeen produced small ballistic weapons and opened fire on her.
Even after years of honing her combat reflexes, they caught her by surprise. The light scout armor she was wearing repelled two of the rounds, one off her chest and the other off her thigh. Aaron grabbed her by her backpack and jerked her backward, causing a round that would have blown her face off to wang off the helmet instead.
Cherise and Kal’at both came up firing. Minu would have screamed not to kill them if Aaron hadn’t been dragging her under cover at the time. She needn’t have worried, though; the Squeen defended themselves well.
The hypervelocity darts from Kal’at’s rifle drew a spectacular line of red sparks across the alien’s shields, and the shock rifle Cherise fired splashed energy off powerful force fields as well. The nimble grace of the two Squeen as they dove behind the crates would have kept the rounds from scoring even without defenses.
Minu rolled away from Aaron and came up with her new shock rifle at the ready. Aggression from the Squeen was a new phenomenon she hadn’t been expecting. The pair continued to fire as they worked on something out of site.
“We just want to talk!” Minu pitched her voice in their direction and received a salvo of bullets in reply. One of the rounds tore a piece out of the closest robot, and dualloy fragments peppered her shoulder armor, making her duck back.
“I don’t think they want to talk,” Aaron told her.
“Killing them won’t help the situation.”
“Dying won’t either,” Cherise snapped as a bullet found her shin armor and nearly sent her spinning to the ground. “Damn it,” she cursed and let a couple of rounds snap across the bay.
Minu dug into her pack and came out with a small case. Inside sat two gossamer dragonfly-bots, their wings folded back and green sensor eyes glimmering in the light.
“Activate,” she instructed, and they both came alive. “Mission, disarm. Two biologicals, ten meters east. Engage.”
Their eyes flashed, and the bots leapt into the air with a whine of wings and ultra-miniature impellers. In a second, they crossed the room and penetrated the Squeen’s shields. A second after that, they raced back toward Minu. “What the—”
The miniature energy beam that struck her between the breasts was more than powerful enough to be lethal, if not for the improved energy dissipation net of the scout armor. But it still felt like she’d been slugged in the chest by a baseball bat, and she nearly toppled over backward.
“Disarm,” she croaked from the floor, only to be shot in the left side. That one hurt, even through the armor, so she knew the energy defensive system was almost drained. The armor was hot enough for her to feel her flesh burning.
From nearby cover Cherise pulled out her PUFF, the little anti-bot scrambler Pip invented years earlier, and brought it to life. She deftly flipped the control to ‘All Bot’ scramble but nothing happened. The dragonflies continued to spray Minu with energy beams. Cherise stared at the glowing power light in utter amazement.
Minu spun away from the marauding bots, a pair of beams burning the floor where she’d been. She came up on one knee and tried to get a bead on a bot with the long shock rifle. Two huge reports shook the room, one after another in quick succession. Aaron stood there, an Enforcer pistol in each hand. Pieces of dragonfly-bot skittered in every direction.
“Those were expensive, you know?”
“Yeah, well you’re priceless.”
Minu checked to make sure they were still behind cover before crawling over to look out. The Squeen and the crate were gone. “Well damn,” she spat.
“The PUFF didn’t work,” Cherise said as she came out from cover. “It didn’t even slow them down!”
“Pip won’t be happy to hear that.” Minu bent over and began retrieving parts of the smashed bots. “Gather up as much as you can, we need to do a post mortem.”
“What about the Squeen?” Aaron asked, gesturing to the door with one of the huge handguns.
“I think they’ve made it painfully clear they want to be left alone,” Cherise said.
“We need to get more info out of them,” Minu insisted.
“I’m kinda with Cherise,” Aaron suggested. “Is the cost worth the gain?”
“They know the codes to get in here, and I know what I had to do to get that information. They led us to Enigma, and they seem to be hated by just about every one of the higher-order species. And, though their world was destroyed like the Rasa home world, they’re still around. That makes it worth it in my book.”
“Mother?”
“Yes, Lilith.”
“Your suspicion was correct; a ship is climbing into orbit. Records match that of a stealth frigate from the same era as this Kaatan, belonging to a species known as the Passcal. Pip says they are known to you as Squeen. Do you want me to disable it?”
Minu toyed with the idea for a second, but then worried about the capital she’d lose by shooting up a ship of a supposed ally. Of course, allies didn’t go around opening fire on each other for no reason.
“No, don’t engage. Track
it as long as possible, we’re heading back.”
* * * * *
Chapter 7
April 14th, 534 AE
Abandoned City, Planet Atlantis, Galactic Frontier
The shuttle docked with the Kaatan at speed. Aaron pushed the little craft to the theoretical limit as he climbed out of the ocean and rocketed toward space. As they closed on the Kaatan, the shuttle was going nearly twenty percent of light speed and had only two percent power remaining.
The two craft matched each other, and Lilith deftly caught the shuttle with the Kaatan’s force fields and slid it into the ship’s docking bay. They passed the light speed barrier before the shuttle touched down in the bay.
“It is not a fast craft,” Lilith said through the jewel as the team began disembarking from the shuttle, “but the nature of its stealth design makes it hard to track.”
“Do they know we’re following?” Minu asked.
“That is unknown, but they have not changed course, so it is possible we were not detected when you lifted off.”
The team moved down the hallway and up one of the ship’s unusual jump tubes to get to the CIC. Pip floated there with several of the Rasa soldiers looking at various views of the Squeen frigate displayed on the walls with lines pointing to some of its features.
“Tactical comparison?” Minu asked.
“Laughable,” Lilith replied, scorn evident in her voice. If there was anything the young woman routinely showed pride in, it was her ship. “Even when the ship was first activated and nearly out of power, we outmatched these stealth frigates ten to one. They are not ships-of-the-line.”
The Kaatan was the preeminent combat ship of their era. As Lilith described, there was nothing they couldn’t match one on one or easily disengage from to attack later in force. When Minu wondered why the design hadn’t resulted in The People winning the war; she’d only gotten silence. Whether Lilith didn’t know or wouldn’t say was anyone’s guess.
“Can we hail them?” Everyone looked at Cherise who looked chagrined. “You know, like Star Trek?”
“Regular radio does not work at superluminal speeds,” Lilith reminded her, “and attempting to use instant communication could result in contacting…someone else.”
Cherise blushed and looked intently at a display on her simulated console. “Just thinking,” she mumbled.
The pursuit went on for several hours. The display on the walls of the CIC showed the tactical evaluation of the stealth frigate as well as graphical representations of the two crafts’ relative positions. They slowly gained on the Squeen ship as the minutes ticked by, until the other craft suddenly veered and accelerated.
“We have been detected,” Lilith informed them.
“Stay with them,” Minu urged.
The door to the CIC opened, and Pip floated in, a tablet in one hand and one of the defunct dragonfly-bots in the other. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said then looked around. “You still chasing the squirrels?”
“Squeen,” Minu reminded him.
“Yeah, whatever. Anyway, the bucktoothed little bastards know their shit when it comes to bots.”
“Why?”
“They not only instantly overrode the command protocols on this bot, they overwrote the damn thing with an entire new set of code.”
“Wait,” Minu said and turned to look at him. “I thought there were a couple of gigabytes of data in one of those thing’s brains.”
“Six gigabytes in this model, to be precise.”
“And without a direct link, you can’t upload or download anything.”
“Give the girl a cookie.”
“I’d rather have some mead and a sandwich.”
Pip spoke up. “These little nut chompers are a lot more than just humble castaways from the Concordia.” He gestured at the tactical evaluation. “They have ships.”
“Many of the higher order and senior species have ships,” Lilith reminded him.
They’d spent a fair number of hours going over species in the database, trying to figure out which ones might have spaceborn naval power. Of course, they hadn’t checked the Squeen, who were officially an extinct species.
“Can you catch it?” Minu asked. “We need to talk.”
“Top speed of that class is only three thousand over C.”
“Lose the subtlety, then. Let them know we aren’t going to let them get away.”
There was no response, but the two ships began to close at an alarming rate. After a minute, the other ship realized it was not going to outrun the Kaatan, so it switched tactics. The Squeen ship began a series of dizzying maneuvers, all at nearly three thousand times the speed of light.
“It is slightly more maneuverable than I am,” Lilith admitted with a sort of grudging respect. “One well-placed missile...”
“No weapons fire,” Minu ordered, hoping her daughter would listen.
The Kaatan’s offensive arrays came online and targeted the wildly dodging ship. Minu held her breath and waited for the deadly missile to dart out and deliver a devastating wave of EMP. The missiles were capable of the same maximum speed as the Kaatan, which was much faster than that of the fleeing frigate. The target locked into the system, but no missile left its tube.
“The Squeen have proven they are capable of violence against us,” Lilith said over the PA. “I will defend myself.”
“Understood, Lilith. Just harry them. Don’t give them a millimeter. They’ll have no choice but to stop.”
A minute later the Squeen ship straightened its course and stopped trying to shake the Kaatan. Lilith adopted a pacing course, keeping a safe distance of several hundred thousand kilometers. Minu was about to have Lilith begin to pull even when all hell broke loose.
The space between the two ships lit up with a thousand brilliant charges, nearly blinding everyone in the CIC before the displays dimmed in response. When their vision cleared, there was no sign of the Squeen ship.
“That was a creative tactic,” Lilith admitted. “I have temporarily lost them.”
“What did they do to us?” Minu asked as she tried reading the displays.
“It was a release of negatively charged particles that reacted to ambient positively charged particles in the vicinity. The high energy discharge flash-blinded my sensors.”
“So, it wasn’t an offensive attack.”
“No, and that is why I wasn’t expecting it.”
The occupants of the CIC looked at each other. Either the Squeen knew they were outmatched and didn’t want to risk being annihilated, or they’d purposely chosen a non-lethal response.
“Target reacquired.” The display spun to show the frigate, now racing at top speed toward a billowing nebula.
“Can they make it into that nebula before we reach them?” Minu asked.
“No. The nebula is twenty minutes away at their top speed, we will intercept them in ten.”
“Cut them off.”
“Course is already laid in.”
The Kaatan swung around as quickly as it could and raced in pursuit. With a top speed nearly five times that of the Squeen ship, it was a certainty they would quickly overtake them.
Minu’s hope of a quiet little talk was quickly evaporating as their quarry proved to be both elusive and creative. They were again coming into close range, and she began considering coming abreast of the little ship and letting Lilith disable it. They could always offer to repair the craft afterwards, but what additional damage might be done to the crew or any relationship she hoped to foster with the Squeen?
I just want to talk, damn it.
“Additional ships are entering the threat bubble,” Lilith announced. All heads spun around as the big display fragmented, one new screen for each craft. First one, then three, then six new targets appeared, and these weren’t the same as the stealth frigate; they were much, much smaller.
“Fighters,” Lilith informed them. “Light intercept fighters, likely drones, of a kind used by the Passcal. These are
capable warcraft. In squadron numbers…they are a match for me.”
Minu found it surprisingly chilling to hear her daughter say those words. It wasn’t humility she heard, just an acknowledgement of an unfortunate truth. The stealth frigate darted past the advancing fighters, toward the nebula.
“Let it go,” Minu said.
“I said they are a match, not superior.” The tone of Lilith’s voice was unreadable, but her intentions weren’t. Each of the screens showing the six fighters began displaying tactical data and weapons lock. Those craft, in turn, began targeting the Kaatan.
“I know that, but it isn’t worth risking your ship to make a point. Besides, even if we win, it makes it that much more likely that likely that the Squeen leaders won’t want to talk to us. Let it go, there’ll be another time.”
The ships continued to close for a few more seconds, and Minu worried that Lilith was going to fight after all.
“As your commander, and superior Chosen, I’m ordering you to let it go and disengage.” Minu hadn’t wanted to say it that way, and she hoped she didn’t have to take it to a parent’s words next. Her grasp on the mantel of parenthood was as tenuous as she believed Pip’s grasp on sanity might be.
The target locks dropped, and the Kaatan swung away from the nebula. The fighters pursued for a few moments but held their fire. Minu offered prayers to whoever or whatever might be listening that the controllers of those craft would show restraint. She knew if even a single laser bounced off the Kaatan’s shields, nothing on heaven or Bellatrix could restrain her daughter’s fury. Like her mother, she was a redhead.
“We have disengaged. Fighters are breaking off and retreating into the nebula.”
“Thank you,” Minu replied into the quiet CIC.
She lifted her tablet and glanced at the display. She had already gone over the newly-opened files while riding in the shuttle prior to their pursuit of the stealth frigate.
“Next destination is designated in the Chosen database as Dervish, Sector C.”
“That’s hot territory,” Aaron whistled through his teeth. “Had a few run-ins there in the old days.”
