Etude to War (Earth Song Cycle Book 4)

by Mark Wandrey

  Minu thought for a moment before speaking. “That does seem to bring their age into question.”

  “Exactly,” Kal’at agreed, snapping his jaws. “How can they be more advanced in some ways and less advanced in others?”

  “Couldn’t they be models that were never fielded?” Aaron asked. Kal’at and Pip looked at each other before shrugging. It was amusing to witness from Minu’s perspective.

  “Lilith, do you have any input?”

  “The specifications of these combat suits are in my database. However, as stated, some of the features of these suits are not listed in those specifications.”

  “So, they are modified,” Kal’at said.

  “No,” Pip chimed in immediately, “they are stock. These four suits have never been activated.”

  “Okay, so The People came up with some innovations no one ever saw,” Minu said. “Maybe these are prototypes.”

  “The problem with that,” Pip replied, “is that these are not old products of The People.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The firmware is dated thirty-four years ago. If your father modified the suits, he wrote an entirely new operating system and installed it, leaving no evidence that he had done so. You can’t simply upload new firmware to this sort of machine, you’d need to pull the processor block and replace it.

  “This machine is factory fresh. There are none of the issues we typically encounter with salvage from junkpiles or even new stuff never taken out of the box, so to speak. When you unpack a hundred-thousand-year-old machine, there are going to be problems, no matter how carefully someone packed it. And these are purported to be more than a million years old.”

  “Perhaps it’s been maintained?” Kal’at suggested.

  “There’s no record of that,” Pip countered. “I’m one hundred percent certain it has never been activated.”

  “What about the Kaatan?” Minu asked. “It sat for a million years and was fine.”

  “The firebase kept it in operational condition,” Lilith told them. “It was stored in low power mode, but the bots did routine work at regular intervals.”

  Silence reigned for a long moment.

  “You mean this was made thirty-four years ago?” Cherise asked the question Minu couldn’t get out of her mouth.

  Father, what are you up to? Had he found some sort of manufacturing robot that built combat suits, like the little automated computer manufacturer she’d ‘traded’ the Beezer for years ago? That had turned out to be quite useful during the Rasa vendetta, and they still used it to this day. Minu began to think her father was making a statement, “Look what I can do!”

  “One question,” she asked. “If these suits were recently manufactured by my father, why didn’t he make them to our specifications instead of The People’s?”

  No one had an answer, not even Pip.

  “ETA to destination is twenty-nine hours,” Lilith announced. Minu guessed she’d find answers to at least some of her questions in a little more than a day.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 3

  April 21st, 534 AE (subjective)

  Deep Space, Galactic Frontier

  The Kaatan dropped out of super-luminal speed and coasted toward the coordinates from Minu’s father’s diary. Lilith, fully submerged in her pilot’s interface, nestled deep inside the ship. She tasted the space around them, looking for anything out of place.

  Every sector of space possessed unique characteristics. Background radiation, solar wind from distant stars, weakening of the space fabric and other characteristics defined a sector. Other than a somewhat young supernova two light-years distant, she found nothing of note.

  Lilith reported they were coming in at just under the speed of light. Since the cruiser could travel fifteen thousand times faster than that, it was a snail’s pace. Once they were under twenty million kilometers from the coordinates, her infrared sensors picked up the first signs of something in their path.

  “I have identified a number of heat sources,” she told the gathered personnel in the other CIC.

  “Any more details?” Minu asked.

  “I would guess it’s either one large station or a number of ships. The infrared radiation is only a few points above the background. I did not notice until we were close.”

  At their speed, the targets were only a hundred seconds away. Lilith slowed the ship considerably to give herself more time to respond.

  Should the targets prove hostile, a hundred seconds was precious little time, especially since anything that happened would only be apparent to her fractions of a second before they reached her. Light speed was a harsh mistress.

  “Reducing speed to one quarter C,” she announced. The Kaatan slowed at several thousand Gs, but the occupants never noticed.

  Minu was still adjusting to the casual mention of fantastic velocities. Only one quarter the speed of light? That was a mere 46,500 kilometers per second. Four times around Bellatrix in a blink of an eye.

  With their destination now more than seven minutes away, and their speed well under light, she could employ some of her active sensors. Radar was too risky to use. It would make the Kaatan a huge target.

  Instead, she used a neutrino backscatter scan. Another ship would need to be looking for it to even notice it. It wouldn’t provide any serious details about the targets, but it would tell her if they were starships or space stations. Ships typically showed up well on neutrino scans because of their robust construction, especially the powerful gravitic generators and fusion power plants. Space stations were usually all but transparent to a neutrino scan.

  Owing to the unusual nature of neutrinos, Lilith got her response almost before she sent it. Eleven hard returns. They were starships. She told her mother.

  “Are they active?”

  “Highly unlikely,” Lilith replied. “Even the most carefully concealed starship has to be able to dump its heat into a sump somehow. It is impossible that all eleven of these ships are masking theirs in the direction opposite our approach.”

  “Unless they were expecting us,” Pip suggested, “or they spotted your superluminal wave front.”

  “While it is possible they noticed our approach, they wouldn’t have had enough time to mask their infrared signatures as far as the distance we came from. That was, after all, the reason I precipitated two light minutes from the target.”

  “They could be hulks,” Minu suggested. “Let’s risk a radar scan.”

  Lilith still considered using radar a risk, but a minor one. An actively-crewed ship with functional sensors would have noticed their arrival by now anyway. She swept the area with a single pulse of intense radar and recorded the results. “There are ten distinct ships and the remnants of four more that have been moored together.”

  “Did you get enough detail to identify them?” Minu asked.

  “Affirmative. Six are Ibeen-class transports, three are Eseel-class gun boats, and one is a Fiisk-class heavy cruiser. I cannot identify the remnants until we maneuver around the other ships. They are all in close proximity to each other. All appear like the rest though; ships belonging to The People.”

  “How would the supernova have affected them?” Pip asked.

  “The radiation wave front would have been intense, even at this distance,” Kal’at commented.

  “Agreed. Had they been under power and operational, energy shields would have been sufficient to preserve the crew’s lives. Even then, they would have had to abandon the Ibeens and take any crews aboard the Eseel and Fiisk-class vessels. An Ibeen is a combat transport, not a warship.”

  As she spoke, sections of the CIC’s spherical wall became displays showing the ships in question. Like seemingly all of the long-extinct species’ ships, they followed the needle and ball configuration to one extent or another.

  The tiny Eseel resembled the shuttles on the Kaatan, only longer, with the needle bulging near the end. The display said it was thirty meters long with a crew of five. The Fiisk hea
vy cruiser was a monster compared to their ship. Three balls were pierced long-ways by three needles, around one in the center. It was over two hundred and fifty meters long, with a crew compliment of fifty, plus extra room for assault forces.

  And then there were the Ibeens. They were titans, even next to the Fiisk. Six clusters of five balls were grouped around a central shaft along its one and a half kilometer length. There were no needles like on the warships, but the front end of the central shaft narrowed to a point. Minu thought it resembled one massive needle. There were several whistles from the humans and hisses of astonishment from the Rasa at the description of the Ibeen.

  “Why doesn’t the big one list a crew?” Cherise asked.

  “They are automated,” Lilith explained, “and don’t require a crew. The ships can be configured for any job from commercial transport to military assault support to fleet base resupply.”

  “A kilometer-and-a-half-long ship with no crew?” Aaron asked, clearly agog. “There must be some functions that necessitate a biological crew, aren’t there?”

  “The intelligences loaded into the Ibeen were unique for their purpose, advanced and autonomous. They were the most advanced The People employed.”

  “They wouldn’t trust them with warships,” Minu guessed, and Lilith confirmed. “What are all these ships doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  “It appears this was a convoy,” Lilith explained. “The Eseel were most often employed as escort craft, as they were deemed unsuitable for line missions by the midpoint of the last war. The presence of the Fiisk is unusual.”

  They moved a little closer, but before she slowed further, Lilith ran another scan. “The four damaged ships are all Kaatan.”

  “Refugees from a fight,” Pip surmised. “They ran as far as they could, then stopped here and waited for help.”

  “Help that never came,” Cherise almost whispered.

  “How many people could those Ibeen hold if they were personnel transports?” Minu asked.

  “It depends on the use. Combat troops, seven thousand each. Military personnel and gear, ten thousand each. Civilians packed in for maximum occupancy, twenty thousand each.”

  Minu added the numbers in her head. There could have been as many as 120,000 souls if the Ibeens were full of civilians. A thought suddenly occurred to her. Had Chriso sent her after the EPC modules as a rescue mission? Was he aboard these ships with thousands of members of a species long thought extinct, waiting for her to come to his aid with power sources? The idea seemed ludicrous. Except for one thing...

  “Lilith, how many people could be in those ships in suspended animation?”

  “Such an undertaking would have been prohibitively difficult.”

  “Indulge me?”

  “Very well.” The girl was silent for a moment as she consulted her specifications on the transports. “Perhaps five thousand per ship.”

  “Okay.”

  Lilith continued to run more powerful scans as they approached. It wasn’t until they were less than ten thousand kilometers away that anything happened. “The gunboats are coming online,” she informed them.

  “They are manned?” Minu said incredulously.

  “It may be an automated response by their Combat Intelligences. I will attempt to contact them.”

  Lilith wasn’t really concerned. The gunboats were good combat vessels, but not against the Kaatan. Together, the three ships had roughly half the firepower she had at her disposal. Even before she opened communications, the three ships spread out and assumed a defensive posture. She sent out a coded burst with the fleet identifier for her ship.

  For a long moment there was no response, and she was afraid she’d have to disable the friendly ships. Then, they stood down. “We are clear,” she informed her passengers.

  “What now?” Pip asked.

  I wish I knew, Minu thought. It was obvious her father sent her here because he’d found these ships and knew they had no power. Why else would he want her to bring the ship-sized EPCs?

  “Do you know if the Fiisk is operational?”

  “I have established data links with the three gunboats, but none of the other ships respond. They are either coded to remain silent, are in sleep mode, or are inoperable.”

  “Start with the gunboats?” Aaron suggested.

  “Unlikely,” Minu responded, it wasn’t like her father. “Too obvious. Besides, we have a problem. Lilith, what would have happened if we hadn’t had the correct code? You are in communication with the gunboats, right?”

  “Actually, you are in command of them.”

  “What?”

  “You are designated as a ship’s commander. The gunboats had orders to surrender control to the first command-rated biological to enter the system. The command codes for all the ships were transmitted as well.”

  “Oh,” Minu said, too surprised to really communicate her feelings. Humanity had a fleet now, albeit a tattered and ancient one.

  “Admiral Groves?” Cherise asked, a barely-noticeable smirk in her voice.

  “Drop that shit, right now,” Minu growled back. Boss was bad enough most days; she didn’t want admiral catching on.

  “Commodore is more appropriate for a squadron,” Lilith interjected. “Lacking a proper composition for a combat fleet, squadron would be a more appropriate designation.”

  Minu looked around; even the damn Rasa held their mouths open in unmistakable, reptilian grins. Swell.

  “Lilith, query the gunboats’ Combat Intelligences. What would have happened if we hadn’t had the correct codes?”

  “We would have been warned off at nine thousand kilometers. Unless they recognized us as combatants of an enemy species, they would have fired warning shots at five thousand kilometers. If our vessel did not heave to, they would have fired upon us.”

  Minu nodded. No matter how many howlers her father pulled out of his hat, there was no way he had fleet operations codes from The People. He would have not been able to board any of the ships. “Lilith, scan the proximity of these ships. Start at five thousand kilometers and extend outwards.”

  “What precisely am I looking for, Commodore?”

  Minu blanched at the chuckles coming from around the room, then decided the best thing she could do was ignore them and hope they stopped. “Anything that stands out.” She could almost see the teenage girl rolling her eyes several decks away. “A message in a bottle.”

  “Very well. Performing intense scans, please stand by.”

  As Lilith worked, others used the ship’s cameras to examine the ships that were now only two thousand kilometers away. The Kaatan was coasting at a leisurely fifty kilometers per second and slowing. Even from half a continent’s distance away, the Ibeen appeared as giant constructs that made the viewer doubt they could fly through space. But being so big, their damage was more visible.

  “They’re all chewed up,” Pip noted. He floated in his customary reclined position and used his tablet to sort data with the help of his implant. “All the transports have damage, some severe.”

  The view shifted to the Fiisk. It was smaller but still nearly twice the size of the Kaatan. One of its three balls was torn nearly in half, and a huge gouge was missing from another. The front of one of the three outside needles looked melted.

  Those in the command center continued to voice their amazement. Finally, as they maneuvered closer, the clustered Kaatan became visible. Minu doubted there was enough remaining to make one complete ship. Lilith was uncharacteristically silent. Only the three gunboats appeared undamaged.

  “There are one hundred and sixty-two thousand, nine hundred and seventy-seven objects between five thousand kilometers and fifty thousand kilometers away. Should I continue searching outward?”

  “No,” Minu said quickly. “What kind of stuff is it?”

  “Objects vary greatly, with the majority being debris from the damaged starships at the center of the search area.”

  “Okay, rule out that materi
al. Also take out any natural items, such as asteroids and things like that.”

  “Done, new total is two hundred and three.”

  “That’s a lot better,” Aaron said. “We can go through them one at a time.”

  “Could take days still,” Minu said. “Lilith, remove anything smaller than a meter.”

  “New total is fourteen.”

  “And,” she said holding up a hand, “identify only those items stationary in relation to the derelict ships.”

  “One,” Lilith said.

  Minu heard the admiration in her voice. A small section of the wall resolved into a view of a standard Concordian cargo module. It floated in space, not moving at all in relation to their POV.

  “Please intercept that cargo module,” Minu requested.

  The ship silently slid across the void, reaching the floating cargo module in two minutes.

  It was the same series and size as the four they found the combat suits in. There were no coincidences when it came to Chriso Alma. He’d found the derelicts but couldn’t board them. The gunboats wouldn’t let him come close, so he’d followed standard Chosen cache rules.

  Lilith used the ship’s force fields to gently maneuver the cargo module into the Kaatan’s spacious landing bay. The doors were just closing as Minu entered, followed by Pip, Aaron, Cherise, and Kal’at. Minu walked over to the module as it settled to the floor. There was no encryption on this one. She guessed her father decided it wasn’t necessary. Of course, he hadn’t known the higher-order species were flitting around the galaxy in starships.

  Had he?

  Minu pressed the activation button, and the module folded open. It wasn’t as elaborate as the last one, it just split along the upward facing side and rotated open like the wing cases on a beetle.

  Inside was nothing more than a small metallic box. She took the box, opened it, and found a portal control rod and a data chip inside. She handed the PCR to Pip and took the chip, loading it into her tablet. The expected code was there, and it dropped into place. This final code unlocked the last of her father’s diaries.

  Pip had already accessed the PCR. Holographic script hovered above, instantly translated by Minu’s mind, even though she only glanced at it. Her tablet revealed a message as soon as the files accepted the code.