Starfarer's Dream (Kinsella Universe Book 4)

by Gina Marie Wylie

  An hour later they dropped from fans, six light hours from the inner system. That was close enough to track ships under fan, but far enough out to have some chance of detecting any ship attempting to close with them.

  “Leave everything on the trips,” Captain Malforce ordered the navigator.

  “Battle map forming,” the sensor officer reported. “This is real interesting here -- I’d say that so far, Fleet appears to be winning. If the ships I think are Fleet are indeed really are ours.”

  Four ships began to blink. “These, I think, are Fleet ships. Probably cruisers.” One light flashed yellow. “This one, I’m not sure about. The fan signature is all wrong; their fans are out of sync. They’ve lost a fan -- maybe combat damage, I can’t tell at this distance. Still, that ship isn’t cranking like they should. These here, I’m fairly sure are bad guys.” There were two of them left; both in the fan well, maneuvering to leave it.

  The captain tapped codes in the computer, and then frowned. “There were eight cruisers and two frigates stationed here. The computer won’t even try to guess how many might have been in system when we arrived. Probably at least five or six.”

  “Still nothing coming after us,” the sensor officer added.

  “That’s a good thing,” Captain Malforce said quietly. “I believe a lot of good men and women have died here today. There aren’t nearly as many ships on the plot as there should be.”

  “Ten minutes until the first ship, thought to be hostile, leaves the fan well,” the sensor officer reported, indicating the wall screen, oblivious to the interplay between the civilians. “Captain, except for us, there are no detectable vessels outside the fan well.”

  “And there were earlier,” Dennis Booth stated, shaking his head, as if a fighter, shrugging off a blow. “Captain, make very sure we can jump quickly. Odds are, if they jump to close, we will be attacked from very short range and almost at once.”

  “Navigator, make it so. Prepare to jump with little or no warning, on the pre-selected course.”

  “Laid in, Captain,” the navigator reported and then added, “We’ve been working with sensors. Any vessel emerging within two light seconds and we’re automatically out of here. A tenth of a second later or less.”

  The captain nodded, and then his eyes lit on Dennis Booth as he spoke. “Admiral Booth, I think it would be a good idea if someone, a passenger, addressed the ship’s company. We may have to jump again here in a few minutes; we need to let everyone know why.”

  David was surprised at what happened next. “I agree, Captain Malforce.” Dennis Booth then turned to David. “Mister Zinder, handle it.”

  “Me, sir?” David was stunned.

  “Yes, you. Speak to the ship’s company.”

  Every instinct in David’s body screamed that this wasn’t his job. Yet, those instincts warred with the very clear realization that once upon a time it might not have been his job, but now it was. He told himself that it was no different than a pep talk before an action. How many times had he given those? A couple of times, even on City of Manhattan.

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Captain Malforce pushed a few buttons, and then handed his phone to David, curious himself.

  “Please, your attention,” David spoke, trying to gauge if he was too loud or too soft, before realizing that was the computer’s worry. “My name is David Zinder, like most of you listening, I am a passenger aboard City of Manhattan. I was a guest of Captain Malforce, on the bridge, during the return to rational space at New Texas.

  “I have been asked to explain the situation.” David sighed. “There is no good way to do that. A short while ago, an unknown vessel was detected very close to us, a vessel that appeared to fire a missile at this ship. While there was no way to be completely certain, prudence required a hasty exit.

  “Further, in our brief time rational, we detected other ships and from the orbital geometry, believed that some of them might be under attack as well.

  “We considered our options and Captain Malforce decided that we had insufficient data to report to a higher authority and he has elected to cautiously return to New Texas.

  “We have now returned. No shipping is currently detectable outside of the fan limit. Before we went to fan, there had been seven vessels detected, plus five unknowns, outside the limit. It is possible that ships outside the fan limit jumped or have simply cut power to their fans and are now undetectable with our sensors. However, one orbital habitat is no longer registering on the system’s active sensors.

  “A number of ships are maneuvering in the fan well of the New Texas system. Two of them, our sensor techs feel, are suspicious and are within a few minutes of being able to jump to High Fan. We are currently the only ship outside of the fan limit and thus we would be a natural target if they are hostile.

  “It is the captain’s intent, then, that if any ship jumps to intercept us, we will depart at once for elsewhere. If we jump in the next eight minutes, it will be a very, very serious thing. Beyond that, jumping or not, the situation is still very, very serious.

  “You must cooperate with any request by a crew member. You must stay in your staterooms; if you need anything, please alert the attendants. Captain Malforce has made a commitment to keep us, the passengers, informed of developments. If people behave badly, he reserves the right to do what has to be done, without reference to anyone, much less us, as he has every right to do.

  “If you have questions or comments, please, direct them to the ship’s attendants. Where possible, they will try to answer reasonable questions in a reasonable time frame, when it is safe to do so. Right now,” David glanced up at a clock, “there is roughly seven minutes until the ship may have to jump. Please, prepare yourselves.”

  He handed the phone back and Captain Malforce gave a nod of the head and said gruffly, “More than I would have said -- but, given the circumstances, probably not half enough.”

  “Well done, Mister Zinder,” Dennis Booth commented.

  The union steward/electronics tech laughed. “Now we just have to hope that after hearing that rousing speech, no one asks how old Mr. Zinder is. Dirty-feet haven’t a clue, eh?” There was laughter around the bridge and David felt immensely better.

  The clock ticked remorselessly down; the sensor tech intoned the words, “Unknown number one has jumped!”

  The tension was something David had never experienced before. Yes, he'd been in many battles, but underneath each and every sim he’d taken part in there had been the awareness that is was a sim and that it counted for points and not life and death. Adding a real threat to his life was a dimension to combat he’d never understood before.

  He took two breaths and then the sensor officer said, “Second unknown has gone to fans.”

  The next minute passed glacially slow; each tick of the clock was like a separate lash to those on the bridge. “Now plus ninety seconds,” the sensor officer said. “I make this a bug out.”

  “It’s too soon to be sure,” Dennis Booth said, “but I find I can breathe again.”

  “Unknown ship, orbiting New Texas, has cranked up her fans,” sensors reported. “It’s tiny, perhaps a jitney. It is the only small vessel detectable. Evaluate that they will attempt to intercept City of Manhattan.”

  David Zinder shook; jitneys were almost always used for local travel. They should have been a pair of corvettes at New Texas, ships assigned to local patrols. If they were missing, the cause was either a malf or they were gone. Jitneys had no business as far out in the system as City of Manhattan currently was. He stood staring hard at the map, trying to keep control of his emotions.

  “Fleet lost three or four ships,” David said judiciously. “Eight commercial vessels are missing as well as a habitat under construction. I don’t think the ships just turned off their fans and drifted. I think they’re gone. So is the habitat.”

  “Another ship, cruiser class, is changing orbit. My initial evaluation is that they will also attempt to intercept City
of Manhattan. They were in the outer system, off of fans,” the sensor officer reported.

  “Tell me the IFF is working!” Captain Malforce demanded.

  “The IFF is working,” Nav comms repeated. “We are talking to all and sundry using our special codes. They say they are coming to check anyway before letting us approach the inner system.

  “We can’t jump; we’d dump too much disinformation into the system,” the navigator concluded.

  The next day was a blur of events for David. They answered private hails; they sent their private codes. Finally, a cruiser stood off, while the jitney intercepted the passenger ship. A chief petty officer from the jitney inspected City of Manhattan very carefully and finally they were ordered to orbit well out in the system, fans off and to await further orders.

  105

  Starfarer’s Dream

  Chapter 6 -- Starfarer’s Dream

  I

  Everyone aboard Starfarer’s Dream sweated the four days to Gandalf. They emerged seven light minutes from the nav point; even from seven light minutes, the fate of the navigation point was obvious.

  “This is the visible side,” Captain Travers reported to the assembled group a while later. A screen lit up. “This is the thermal map of what we’re seeing. Note the lower left portion. There the surface of the nav point is reading nearly a thousand degrees centigrade. Best guess on the curves for temperature and radioactive decay, say this happened nearly two weeks ago.

  “Something really major hit the nav point. Even compared to what we’ve seen them use before, someone here must have really gotten their attention.”

  “You’re assuming it was their weapons?” the commander asked, shaken and pale.

  “I think so. At a guess, they didn’t get Gandalf like they got Agincourt. I think someone defended the nav point -- at least for a while.”

  There was a chirp, and Willow Wolf at the sensor station spoke. “Multiple ships have come off High Fan. Make that three ships. Preliminary data reduction says that at least one of the ships isn’t human.”

  “Why’s that?” Captain Travers asked, at the same time he was hitting the GQ alarm.

  “The non-human ship masses three hundred and fifty-six million tons. The other two ships are equivalent to large cruiser class vessels.” No human ship massed anything more than two hundred million tons and it was a one of a kind. Starfarer’s Dream could haul a hundred million tons. While fans didn’t care how much mass was being moved, what was being moved was either mostly inside gravity well that the fans created or the fans mostly didn’t work very well. Fans needed to be close to the center of mass of whatever they were moving, or they rapidly became less and less effective.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Commander Hoyt said, with an immediate chorus from others on the bridge.

  “Sensors, what are the unknowns doing?”

  Willow spoke patiently, “They are maneuvering in the vicinity of the nav point. With only passive ranging, I’m not certain what they are doing, but the largest vessel appears to be attempting to dock with something smaller. I would have to go active to see what they were looking for. There are no other detectable fan signatures.”

  “Negative on active ranging,” Captain Travers said hastily. “Nothing is emitted from Dream without my direct authorization.”

  “As ordered, Captain.”

  “Navigation -- compute a jump towards Gandalf; keep us well clear of the fan limit, but get us as close to the planet as possible. After the jump, maneuver towards our next destination, staying outside the fan limit. Prepare to jump at any time, at any threat.

  “I’d sure like to do some active ranging here,” Captain Travers whispered, half to himself. “Except it would be suicide. They’d detect the ranging before we could get the bounce back. We are out of the fan well; they’d detect the lidar, go to High Fan and be here before the pulses returned.”

  “Navigation, are we ready to head down towards Gandalf?”

  “Ready. Jump computation is complete.” Joachim Wolf looked at Captain Travers, waiting for the execute command.

  “Okay, everyone be ready! On my mark, jump! Ready... Mark!”

  They emerged a light minute from Gandalf. They had been less than half a minute in normal space, when two ships dropped from High Fan, within a fraction of a second of when they had.

  “Those are the two cruisers!” Captain Travers exclaimed. “Paul Revere jump!”

  Even as they jumped, Willow reported what appeared to be missile launches against them. Shaken himself, Captain Travers stared at the plots. “They followed us. They knew when and where we dropped from High Fan, and they launched at us the instant they were rational.”

  Everyone turned to look at him. A holy grail of Benko-Chang: when you were there... you weren’t here. Where you were, no one knew. No human knew which direction a ship was traveling once it went to High Fan. Along the fan thrust vector, certainly. But how to detect that vector once the ship was on High Fan?

  If you were actively ranging a ship that jumped, you could tell in what direction it had gone. That was it. But you had to be able to see them before they jumped; if their attackers had been able to see Dream, they’d have come sooner. But not only had they known which way Dream was going, they’d known when and where Dream had returned to normal space. In its own way, this news was on a level with the news that someone was out to wipe out the human race.

  “Next stop, Tannenbaum,” Bill announced. “The have a Fleet Class II base, like Gandalf had. It’s roughly a third of the way home; three weeks and two days. We were at forty-eight percent of our fuel at Gandalf; we will be at thirty-two percent at Tannenbaum. We will be severely constrained after that, on where we can safely go unless we can tank.”

  “I don’t want to be a party pooper, Captain, but if they followed us down towards Gandalf, do you suppose they know where we’re headed now? We could be leading them to another human occupied planet,” Commander Hoyt asked with concern.

  Captain Travers nodded grimly. “We’ll drop from fan in a day or so. That way we’ll see if anyone is directly after us. If someone is riding us close, we’ll make for Fleet World. If Fleet World can’t handle this, then we’re going to be toast along with the rest of the human race. But we can’t lead them back to Earth if they are following us and clearly a Class II base wasn't sufficient to defend the planet.”

  Everyone was looking pale, and their captain then made it worse. “However, there are nearly thirty human occupied planets between Gandalf and Tannenbaum. We’ve got to alert people according to the plan. That’s our only hope.”

  He turned to Commander Hoyt. “You have the codes for the full manifest of our cargo. I want them.”

  The commander opened his mouth to protest, and then decided that it was insane to be protesting. “I’ll have to log your access,” the commander said, considerably deflated.

  “Good, by all means, records are important. And, in case no one else noticed, Gandalf looked like Agincourt. There were nearly a half billion people on Gandalf.”

  The captain stood and left the bridge, leaving the others watching him go, not able to speak. Even his wife was loathe to follow him. Still, eventually she did.

  He was sitting on a chair in their quarters, leaning over, being ill into a wastebasket.

  “Good God, Naomi,” his voice was anguished, his face pale and tear-streaked. “Agincourt was beyond belief... this... this...” his voice cracked.

  She hugged him, hugged him tight. “Bill, there’s no one in the universe I’d rather have in command right now than you. But God, dear, I don’t know half the load you’re bearing!” He looked at her, and reached out and moved a small wisp of hair away from one of her cheeks.

  “Thanks.”

  A chime sounded and the captain took a moment to compose himself before he turned on the comm screen.

  “I’ve entered the access codes for you, Captain,” Commander Hoyt said.

  “I’ll be right there, Commander,�
� the captain confirmed. His wife gripped his shoulder tightly, giving him strength.

  Bill Travers spent a half hour going over the cargo manifests, feeling marginally better. Then he called a meeting of the major players.

  “Jake, after this, I want you, Allan and Toby, with half a dozen of the Marines, to go down to module twenty-four. I’ll give you the container numbers. Those are fire control computers, advanced sensors and the like. I want them installed. Fire control first, sensors second. Parallel it if you can.”

  “Aye, aye sir. That’s normally a yard job -- it would take weeks.”

  “You have not quite three weeks until we get to Tannenbaum.”

  Bill Travers turned to Commander Hoyt.

  “Commander, I know what a Lima Juliet mod 4 November is. What, pray tell, is a Lima Juliet mod 7 Alpha?”

  “Classified ordinance,” the commander replied without hesitation.

  He saw the instant displeasure on Captain Traver’s face. “That’s what they told me when I asked. I do know that they were to be installed in the cruiser and the two frigates at Agincourt. That was the first job the new yard was to do. Install those devices; I assume they are lasers.”

  “Captain Wolf, Willow is a laser tech, is she not? As well at being handy with sensors?” Captain Travers inquired. At Joachim Wolf’s nod, Bill turned back to Commander Hoyt. “Then, sir, she, Commander Hoyt and I will inspect the contents of Module Nineteen. Regrettably, Captain Wolf, you and your wife will not be able to accompany her. Or my wife, or any others of my crew.”

  Captain Wolf grimaced. “I can’t say no, but I would remind you that Willow is an almost seventeen-year-old laser tech. She’s old enough on the Rim, but I’m not sure how that stands up against what you have in the Fleet.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  An hour later two Marines cleared the last of the seals from the module hatch and Commander Hoyt keyed his personal code into the keypad.

  Bill Travers patted him on the shoulder. “You’re going to be court-martialed; I’m going to be court-martialed. That was before we opened this. Remember one thing, Commander. If we do the best we can and win, why, we’ll be alive when they court-martial us, and there will still be members of the human race alive to pass judgment on what we did to stay alive.”