Starfarer's Dream (Kinsella Universe Book 4)

by Gina Marie Wylie

  Agrabat had lifted with only a third of its regular crew and exactly two of them had been able to walk off under their own power, and one of those had a broken arm. Half of those who had lifted aboard Agrabat had died, but before they died they had applied some serious hurt to their attackers.

  An hour later there was a pop on the intercom. “This is the captain. New Texas has dispatched us cargo as well as pax. We’re getting two new fans, one of which will be installed in Bay 5, when we get done with the repairs there. The other is a spare. We also received a bunch of stuff for the reactor. Our next stop is Earth!”

  II

  Two months after the dramatic sim, the City of Manhattan was scheduled to come off High Fan at New Texas. Dennis Booth had wrangled David and Bethany an invitation to City of Manhattan’s bridge for the transition. Routine, humdrum; the crew had done this hundreds of times. For David Zinder it was the first of what he hoped would be a lifetime of thousands of jumps that he would view from a starship’s bridge.

  The captain of the City of Manhattan was a wizened old man, only a few stray gray hairs on an otherwise bald head; he was quite dark skinned and the white fringe around his head made a startling contrast. He shook David’s hand. “Captain Ian Malforce, young man.” He nodded at Dennis Booth. “I’m glad to see someone could finally take a little of the starch out of this youngster’s britches.” He grinned. “Ironic though, you being another dirty-foot.”

  David had been tongue-tied and the old man had clearly enjoyed it. “So, Lieutenant Jiang will show you two young people around. We have twenty minutes before we are rational once again.” They were handed off to an earnest full lieutenant, who was, if anything, shorter than the ship’s captain.

  For ten minutes they stood behind the various positions. The engineering repeater, navigation and communications, sensors, life support. The captain’s station was last, and there they stood off to one side as the final seconds ticked away.

  “Down and rational,” the navigator reported. “Firming up our position.” The familiar white spot of where they expected to be had formed on the main screen, the larger blue sphere where the best estimate of the actual position was.

  “Captain!” A voice spoke up, loud, startled. “Sensors! Another ship dropped from fan! Right on our tick! DX is a shade less than a tenth of a light second!”

  “What course?” Captain Malforce barked. “Tell me it’s skew, Lily!”

  “Looks like it!” the navigator responded. “About a ninety-nine percent confidence. Looks like a cruiser. There was no cycle time when they dropped from fan.”

  “Captain!” The same voice as had announced the detection of the other ship a moment before; this time the voice was tinged with fear. “They’ve fired on us! Missile tracking, closing at 3.1 gravities. Time to impact... fifty-eight seconds.”

  “Jump system north!” that command came from Dennis Booth.

  “Jump!” David said loudly, forgetting that he should keep his mouth shut on someone else’s bridge, but then, so should have Dennis Booth.

  “Get us the hell out of here, Lily!” Captain Malforce spoke last, overriding everyone else’s voice.

  The transition to High Fan was a thousand times worse than David had experienced before -- normally the transition was done relatively gently, over a period of a second or so. This had been much less. He staggered, as did most of the others on the bridge.

  “This is the Captain! Now hear this! Now hear this! All passengers to their staterooms! All crew to assembly points! Do it now!” City of Manhattan was a civilian space ship; however virtually every single officer of the crew was Fleet Reserve and a goodly fraction of the ratings were as well.

  “Where are we headed, Lily?”

  “Wait one!” The navigator turned to the shaken sensor officer. “We’re building a map. Not one ship dropped on the tick, five did. We just got one close. We jumped system north.” Her eyes went to Dennis. “Sorry, Captain, it was the easiest to set up.”

  “I should keep my mouth shut,” Dennis Booth offered.

  “I apologize,” David added quickly.

  Captain Malforce shook a finger at Dennis Booth, then David. “I’m the master of this bridge! When I want people to be quiet, they will be in no doubt of it!”

  The main screen lit up with the sensor data. “We were only rational forty-six seconds,” the navigator reported. “Data is sparse. Unknowns dropped from fans here, here, here, here and next to us, here.” She was highlighting spots on the diagram of the system. “Vessels were detected underway, here, here, here, here and us, of course.” The second positions were all within a light second of the newcomers. “We didn’t wait long enough to get any sort of returns from anything at all removed -- just the fan gravity wave information, and not much of that. We were outside of the latch frame coverage.”

  There was a silence on the bridge. David waited for someone to say something; finally he couldn’t restrain himself any further. “Captain.”

  Everyone looked at him, most curious at the young man who felt like he had something to say at a time like this. “The ship that fired on us... they were less than a tenth of a light second distant, like all the others. It wasn’t a coincidence. They were rational when we were, dead bang on. They had to have been tracking us before we came off High Fan, while they were still on High Fan themselves.”

  “They were not only tracking us,” Dennis Booth said quietly, “they had a firing solution. If what they fired was a weapon, we’d have been eliminated if we hadn’t jumped quickly. I don’t think they fired a drone at us.”

  Captain Malforce nodded, his eyes locked on the meager information on the screen. Finally he took a deep breath. “All right, we’ll make this official.” He flipped the ship intercom switch.

  “Listen up you, the passengers and crew of the City of Manhattan, this is Captain Ian Malforce, commanding. I have declared a Flight Emergency. At this time, all passengers should be assured that Fremda Lines will see that you reach your destinations in the most expeditious fashion, consistent with the resolution of the emergency. Crew not assigned emergency flight quarter stations, please inspect the passenger cabins -- all passengers must be in their assigned bunks and strapped in. Passengers, as of this moment you are confined to your bunks in your staterooms. Failure to obey the lawful order of a ship’s Captain during a declared Flight Emergency is a felony. You’d better read the fine print in the ship’s information if you haven’t already. This isn’t something you can fool around with.

  “We will do our best to keep you informed as to our status in as timely a fashion as we can. At this moment we are not at immediate risk -- however the situation is a matter of concern. That could change at any moment, and then we will be in serious, serious danger. Please cooperate with the crew. Thank you.”

  He turned to the navigator. “Lily, what have we got?”

  “I’ve brought up the secondary lidar; it’s now hot. Given two minutes I can score against one missile at twelve thousand kilometers. Two at six thousand. Anything else...” She shook her head.

  Captain Malforce nodded, and then met the eyes of Dennis Booth. David wasn’t entirely sure what passed between the two men in that instant.

  “Ship computer -- this is Captain Ian Malforce. Verify voice print. Fleet override. Fox, Quincy, X-ray, Charlie, Golf. Day code is Charlie Mike. Command set is Poppa Romeo.”

  A disembodied voice spoke clearly. “Authentication verified. Integrating designated command set. Wait an estimated forty-five seconds for completion message.”

  “Should we visitors leave the bridge, Captain?” Dennis Booth asked. He seemed stiltedly formal, David thought.

  “Anybody want Dennis Booth to leave the bridge?” Captain Malforce asked, speaking to the bridge crew. “Anybody want the young man who beat Dennis Booth in a stand up fight to leave the bridge? Or should they stay here and give us the odd bit of advice? Like reminding us the bad guys tracked us while we were on High Fan?”

  A yo
ung man, wearing the flashes of a senior petty officer, waved a diagnostic probe. “I’m the union shop steward, as well as senior electronics tech for Nav comms. You ask them to leave and we’ll file a union grievance the first chance we get.”

  David was startled but Ian Malforce was laughing. “Not to worry; I was just checking. No, I don’t want them to leave either.”

  “Command set integration complete,” the computer voice announced. David wanted to tell the captain: that had been well done! Which command set?

  “Talk to me about my Paul Revere options, computer.” Captain Malforce said into the air.

  David kicked himself; what a dummy he was! Those options!

  The computer obligingly listed half a dozen options. Captain Malforce turned to Dennis Booth. “Do you have an opinion, Dennis?”

  “Not Gandalf -- they have a similar base, but they are further away from the center, more or less in this same direction. Fleet World.”

  “No,” David interjected, startled himself as well as the others. “We have to go back to New Texas.”

  Captain Malforce shook his head. “I have eleven hundred and eighty-six passengers and two hundred and twenty crew manifested. That’s not an option, young man.”

  David nodded. “Yes, sir. But -- what do we know? That?” He waved at the main screen, now empty. “That’s nothing. Really, it’s nothing. Who will believe it? No one -- not until other events confirm our report. Right now, we have practically nothing. A ship jumped close to us and there is what appears to be a missile launch. Other ships dropped from fan at roughly the same time. It could simply have been a Fleet Ex, using pre-computed jumps against stable targets... and we were on the end of a long series of very long odds. Unlikely, but possible.”

  The navigator spoke in agreement, “I wouldn’t believe our story either -- and I was here. I’m not entirely sure I believe it now.” She gestured at David. “Maybe he’s right.”

  Dennis Booth nodded his head. “David’s right on both counts. We have to know. You have more than fourteen hundred people on this ship, but there are 175 million on or near New Texas. There are more than ninety billion people in the Federation. We have to be sure! Even if it means a risk.

  “We drop from fans, after an hour. Zero cycle time again. Everything on the trips and then we head west, only this time about 45 degrees from the line to Fleet World if anyone pops out after us. If not, we go back to New Texas. There we’ll drop a few light hours from the inner system, far enough out so that we can zip back to fan if we must. And if we’re chased again, we go straight for Fleet World. Otherwise, we practice being a fly on the wall. We observe what’s going on.

  “From that...” He waved at the screen. “Fleet’s still going to be fighting two hours into the attack. We pick up what we can, then we scoot, if need be. Right now, we just don’t have enough data. Even if we risk destruction, we have to come away with some real intelligence.”

  Captain Malforce stared at the screen for several minutes. No one on the bridge spoke as the pause dragged on and on.

  Eventually, Captain Malforce looked up at his navigator. “Lily, plot me two courses. Assume we drop from fan in another,” he glanced at the mission timer before speaking, “forty-eight minutes. I want one course, more or less Galactic west. We will follow that course for 23 hours and a random number of minutes -- you pick the minutes. From that position we will immediately go to Fleet World -- plan on emerging at the Nav Aid system north.

  “The other course is to take us six light hours system south of New Texas. You will prepare a course from that point to jump us galactic west again, same time frame, with same ultimate destination. All jumps at zero cycle time.”

  “Chief O’Steen -- what are the effects likely to be with so many jumps, so close together at zero cycle time?”

  “Aside from the sick dirty-feet?” the City’s engineer asked lightly. No one on the bridge smiled. “We have eight fans. We will be running at 100% of max, I assume?” Captain Malforce nodded. “Of the eight fans, the last two add a mere couple of percent to our velocity, they are mostly redundant. An hour back to New Texas... safe as a church.

  “Running to Fleet World is another story. Call it one chance in four each day that we could lose a fan. Since the voyage would be two and a half weeks, we will lose a fan. Then we will have to cut back to 97% or so. Then we will make it, without problem. The difference of 3% of power would extend the flight time something like a day and a half at this distance, prorated less as we get closer.”

  The captain nodded. Those numbers were more or less what he’d expected. “We’ll do that.” He looked around the bridge. “I hope to God this was that long shot David Zinder was talking about. I will buy everyone aboard this ship dinner at the best restaurant on New Texas if that’s the case, and then stand up and apologize to them all.”

  Bethany spoke for the first time in a while. “I’d bet that you never have to pay up; except I don’t think anyone would go against the odds.”

  Captain Malforce smiled thinly. “A typical Rim Runner bet -- always willing to take a bet, so long as the odds are a million to one for.” There were chuckles around the room.

  He turned to Nav comms. “Make double sure the IFF is working -- if there is a battle in progress and we’re detected, either it’s functional or we’re space gas.”

  “Oh my, yes,” Dennis Booth said softly with considerable feeling. “Double and triple check the IFF. Then check twice more. Every weapons platform in the system is going to be tracking us, friendly and those others.”

  “And now,” the captain said, “I need to explain things a bit more to the passengers and crew.” He picked up the phone to speak to those not on the bridge.

  “This is Captain Ian Malforce, commanding the Fremda Lines vessel, City of Manhattan. First, I want to reassure everyone that we have not experienced a technical malfunction; all ship systems are functioning nominally, none show the least signs of failure.

  “However, arriving at the New Texas system we detected an anomalous situation. I do not feel confident at this point to try to characterize what we detected. I have conferred with crew and passengers and we have developed an approach to the problem.

  “In forty minutes we will drop from High Fan again. As before, this will not be a comfortable event -- circumstances require a very short cycle time. At that time we will have a period of anywhere from almost at once to five minutes before we again go to High Fan, again with a very short cycle time.

  “Certainly short cycle times on a jump are uncomfortable in the extreme. If you are ill, please signal a crew person -- one will come promptly, I assure you. I also require that all passengers remain in their stateroom bunks until we have a better handle on the situation. Please cooperate with the requests of any crew person. I will keep you apprised the situation as it develops, as soon as I assure myself of the actual circumstances. The flight emergency remains in effect; please, you must do anything requested by myself or one of the crew.”

  There was silence on the bridge for a few minutes, then a message chime. Nav comms answered it, held the phone for the captain. “Captain Malforce.” The captain listened, and then glanced at Dennis Booth. “We have Fleet Lieutenant Tin Tin Roeser aboard. He has asked if he could be of use.”

  Dennis nodded. “He’s a good man and unless there’s someone slumming on the pax list, he’s the senior serving officer aboard. Since he’s a line officer, and if this is actually what we think it is, he has legitimate grounds to assume command. However, he’s not a total idiot.”

  “I am ever so reassured,” Captain Malforce said dryly, then turned and spoke into the phone.

  A few minutes later Lieutenant Roeser arrived on the bridge. He watched the very short replay of the events. He wiped his hands across his eyes. “Again.” They showed it again.

  The lieutenant sighed. “I am here with the absolute King of Sims; I’m sorry, really sorry, but I have to ask: Mr. Booth, is this a runaway sim? Some little trick y
ou’re playing on me?”

  The navigator rose from her position. “You and me! As soon as the all clear is given, we’ll go down to the gym. And I’m going to beat the living you-know-what out of you.”

  There was a moment of strained silence, and then Dennis Booth interjected, “While such things are permitted on civilian ships, if this is true, so sorry, Lily, you’re federalized. You can’t.”

  “I have a duty to check,” Tin Tin Roeser explained. “What is the plan?”

  They explained that and the young lieutenant shook his head. “I agree with Captain Malforce. Fleet World is a far better choice. Even if we look like idiots.”

  “Looking like an idiot I can deal with,” Dennis Booth explained to him. “What I couldn’t deal with is arriving with functional zero. Someone would have to come all the way back to check what was going on and if they survived, return to report what they saw. That would take six or seven additional weeks. As opposed to little more than three. Absolutely unacceptable.”

  Lieutenant Roeser sighed. “I know.”

  He turned to the captain. “I only sound stupid; I’m just covering my heinie for the court-martial I will surely undergo wherever we end up. Captain, I feel that you and your battle staff,” he waved at Dennis Booth, his daughter and David Zinder, “are quite capable of doing what has to be done. I will not attempt to assume command.”

  Eventually they came off fan. Everyone on the bridge watched the sensors for signs of another ship. After five minutes they jumped again, back towards New Texas.

  The Fleet lieutenant coughed, and then swallowed a few times, fighting the nausea. “I can’t help thinking -- they appeared to track us on High Fan. What if they can change course under fan? What if they can maneuver? Speed up or slow down? They would be out here, chortling.”

  “Then we are well and truly screwed,” that was the union rep, echoing the opinions of everyone on the bridge.

  * * *