by GR Cooper
"Now," he continued, eying me with glee, "it's time for your first lesson. It's time to limber up the mathematical side of your brain and practice inputting navigational plots into the course computer." He stood and faced me, putting his hands on my shoulders. "My boy, you are in for some fun."
Math. Fun.
Did I mention that my mathematical abilities were functionally nonexistent? I began to scramble within my brain, looking for some possible excuse, some possible 'out' that would allow me to skip making a complete fool of myself in front of the bridge crew. I remember thinking please, God, get me out of this mess.
Be careful what you wish for.
The viewscreen on the bridge, dark with the nothingness of hyperspace, flooded suddenly with stars.
We'd dropped out of FTL travel.
"Oh, dear," stammered the captain.
"Battle stations," said the captain, more calmly than I could have believed. The quivering ball of excitement that was giddy about giving a midshipman his lessons was gone. I was amazed in the transformation. He was now calm. He moved with a liquid grace to his chair and sat in it, glancing to me and pointed to the deck next to him. I moved alongside him and watched, quiet. A red light suffused the bridge and a surprisingly calm klaxon sounded out several insistent but not overwhelmingly loud tones before quieting.
The bridge crew, attentive to their stations before, seemed to meld within them now. Each hunched over their controls and readouts, and began to read out status in succession.
"Shields ten percent."
"Drives seventeen percent."
"Weapons three percent."
All of the various ship systems were kept at minimal levels during hyperspace transit. Shortly before resolving back to linear space-time, those systems would be powered up. When transiting hostile areas, those systems were kept active, but the wear and tear on systems as well as the added fuel consumption precluded keeping them ready at all times during the normal course of hyperspace travel.
"Navigation, do you have a fix?"
"Working," a pause, "aye sir. We're in deep interstellar. Well out of the gravity well of any system."
"Nothing on passive scan, sir."
"They know we're here," growled the captain as the XO joined us on the bridge, "initiate active scan."
"Active scan, aye, sir." The woman at the control leaned forward and reached to her controls. A blue light rose around her, indicating (I would come to learn) and warning that the active scanning protocols were reaching out into space, searching for any contacts and, in the process, letting everyone in the area know exactly where we were. But, as the captain indicated, we weren't likely here on accident. We'd been brought out of hyperspace, and whoever did it knew exactly where we were, so our scan wasn't telling them anything they didn't already know.
The XO typed something I couldn't see into the back of the captain's chair and two more chairs rose on either flank, slightly lower and behind. The XO moved to me and gently prodded me into the seat, caught my eye to indicate that I should be paying attention, then began pulling straps and harnesses out from under and behind my chair. It was a five point belt system, and I moved to help him by holding each end of the five belts in front of me while he fastened them into the quick-release catch that held them in place above my belly.
He leaned in and whispered, "To quick release, hit the center of the buckle. Hard. You'll know when to release it if you need to. You probably won't." He then grabbed my left hand and placed it on the armrest, pointing to a button in front of my fingers, "Hold that until the straps are as tight as you can take it. Push backward into the seat with your head against the rear first." He looked up at me questioningly. I nodded, and he moved to the captain's other flank and began strapping himself into that chair. I looked up and saw that the captain and the rest of the crew had strapped in likewise.
I pushed back into the chair as far as I could, pressing hard with both my shoulders and head, then hit the button. Without a noise, the straps contracted, locking my body into position and damn near gelding me in the process. I squeaked a little at the pain, but quickly stifled myself. The bridge was eerily quiet.
Unlike the movies, where naval combat results in frantic screaming among the various crew members, those manning Royal Piraeus seemed almost at ease, calm, as they prepared for battle.
"Contact," said the scanning station, "elevation negative thirty, azimuth one eighty." They were below and directly behind us. "Range, three light seconds. Velocity point zero zero three C. Increasing. Intercept vector."
I looked to the captain. His face was furrowed in concentration.
"Seventy five percent power to rear shields," he barked, "twenty percent to engines." The rest would fall to weapons. "All ahead, flank. Lay course true, plus sixty." The captain was going to try to run, heading directly away from whoever it was. It would take the scan a while longer to get a better feel for exactly what was behind us.
I watched him countdown silently. After a short interval, he spoke. "Lay-to mines, pattern alpha. Maximum yield. Set time," he paused in thought, "twelve minutes."
"Mines, alpha max twelve aye."
"Contact! Elevation zero, azimuth zero," we were heading right for it, "range indeterminate. No velocity."
"They're running silent," grunted the XO. The captain nodded. We were in between at least two attackers. One was running us toward the other. The one behind us was the hammer, directing us toward the anvil. Hounds to the hunter.
"Don't lock him up, keep the scan moving," ordered the captain. I looked at the XO. He didn't react to the captain's order except to grin ferociously.
"Jump?" the captain asked.
Helm answered, "Fifteen point five minutes, sir."
The captain nodded. It took the better part of twenty minutes to spool up jump drives once a ship dropped out of hyperspace. That's what our attackers were counting on. They needed to prosecute their attack and destroy or disable us before we could leap back into hyperspace.
The captain nodded again then, shockingly, turned to me to recommence my lesson.
"As a starship moves through hyperspace," he began, "it creates a wake." My jaw dropped. We were in the middle of a battle and he was still teaching me. He smiled lightly at my reaction, "Don't worry. We have several minutes before anything else happens."
"The wake that a starship creates," he continued, "is made up of tachyons. These are faster-than-light particles that spread out from a ship moving through hyperspace." He shook his head, "You don't really need to know anything about tachyons or why they're created. The salient point is that those tachyons are detectable. Ships not in hyperspace equipped with the proper equipment can track FTL ships via their tachyon waves." He nodded once, raised his eyebrows questioningly.
I nodded. I followed so far.
"Apparently, sir, they can do more than track us."
The captain beamed. "Exactly. Well done, Mister Valor. Yes, they fired a torpedo at us. The warhead of that particular torpedo didn't carry an explosive, however. It carried a very powerful pinpoint disruptor. That disruptor interfered with our Hawking field. The field that allows us to plow through hyperspace. Once that field," he went into another of his asides, "which was named for some scientist in remote antiquity even though we stole the technology from the Arn," he chuckled, "is interrupted, our ship automatically drops out of hyperspace." He waved forward, to the stars on the viewscreen, "And, so, here we are."
He sat back in his chair but continued speaking, "Now. You have to be fairly close for the torpedo to work. That means they knew our track. They knew our track to a higher fidelity than just tracking our tachyon beam would provide."
The XO nodded along.
"We are in deep interstellar space. Usually miscreants like pirates who are intent on pulling ships out of hyperspace tend to congregate toward the system jump points. Those are the choke points in navigation that all ships must pass by." He thought for a moment, "Here, however, in deep space? Well,
hmmm, what would you say the odds are that not one but two ships are laying in ambush and just happen to be at the correct point in space and time? Given that since all of the star systems are moving relative to each other, just planting yourself in between two of them hoping to pick the path that some ship will be traveling down is highly improbable. XO?"
"Not bloody likely," growled the second in command.
"Indeed," agreed the captain.
"Someone knew not only that we were coming, they knew exactly where, in hyperspace, we would be."
"How could they know?" I asked. It was like being able know that a single fish was going to be traveling between San Francisco and Oahu and putting yourself in a boat half-way between the two ports and expecting to catch that fish. Even worse - San Francisco and Oahu were constantly moving relative to each other. Not much, but enough that even being a little off, time-wise, could put you well out of your target window.
The captain nodded, "Exactly, Mister Valor. How? There's only one way that I can think that they would."
"A homing beacon. On board Royal Piraeus," said the XO. His voice was low and threatening.
The captain nodded.
"As soon as we've wrapped up this lot ..." the captain left the rest hanging.
"I'm on it," said the XO, his voice barely above a whisper but pregnant with hostility and threat. I almost felt bad for whoever he found responsible.
The captain turned back to me, "Now, this particular situation presents some interesting possibilities. We can assume that our little friend running silent ahead of us," he waved forward, "is the one who fired the torpedo. His associate trying to run us down is the muscle. It's going to be his job, most likely, to engage us."
"But!" the captain waggled his left index finger in the air above his head, "But! They know that the likelihood of them being able to catch and engage us before we can spool up our drive and jump into hyperspace is, well, a coin-toss. Especially since we immediately began accelerating away from them. That gives us the advantage. They're closing and we're extending, so what does that mean, Mister Valor?"
I stuttered for a moment. I looked to the XO for help. He just frowned at me.
"Weapons?"
"It means," spoke up the weapons station crewman, "that our weapon range is functionally increased, while his is functionally decreased."
"Exactly! Thank you, Weapons."
"So," continued the captain, turning once again to look at me, "if we were to fire our missiles now," he smiled, "which we won't for another few minutes, he would be rapidly rushing toward them, while if he fires his missiles now ..."
"We'll be running away from them!" I exclaimed excitedly. The XO rolled his eyes.
"Exactly!" he beamed. "In any case, I think I've figured them out. Our little friend ahead, still, as far as he knows, hidden from our sensors, is waiting in ambush. Not to hit us with heavy guns. He's unshielded, if we hadn't run an active scan we never would have seen him. That tells me two things. One, he's familiar with naval doctrine. He knows that our protocols call for us not to begin an active scan if knocked out of hyperspace. But, that only makes sense within a star system. Here, in deep space, it doesn't matter. For the reasons that I said. They know we're here, and running an active scan this far from, well, anything, is so unlikely to attract further attention as to be negligible. I'll probably have to answer for the decision in the inquiry, but I'm comfortable with that."
"It was the correct call."
"Thank you, XO. I agree. So, if this fellow," he waved his hand forward, "is still awaiting in ambush, that tells me that they're planning ahead. Planning for the likelihood that I can jump before his friend can engage us."
"They've got another torpedo!" I squeaked.
The captain clapped, delighted. "Just so! I believe we are both correct in that assumption, Mister Valor. It's a good tactic on their part. If we jump and they launch yet another disruptive attack on our warp field, we'll be dumped yet again back into normal space. Then we'd be well and truly trapped. Since we turn our forward velocity into the energy used to make a jump," he looked back at me, "which is why we can't jump from a standstill but have to achieve a minimum percentage of the speed of light before engaging the jump drive," he paused again, "ah, yes, since we turn our forward velocity into the energy used to make a jump, when we drop back out of hyperspace we are, relatively speaking, motionless."
He raised his finger, "And then our little friend behind us, still accelerating as before, would be able to run us down, quick as you please. Forcing our hand."
He leaned forward, "Weapons, how long until the mines detonate?"
"Two minutes, sir."
"Sensors, how long until our pursuer enters the mine-field?"
I could hear a sense of joy in the crewman's voice as she responded, "Two minutes, sir!"
"Excellent!"
About the Author
G.R. Cooper has been a lot of things - retail clerk, construction foreman, tech support - but his career has been in developing online games. From Community Manager, to Producer, to Creative Director, and now, "Writer".
His favorite, however, and what he still thinks of himself as, is as a Game Designer.
