by Mark Wandrey
“Are those the drones?” the Jeha asked.
“Yes,” Rick huffed. He’d safed his suit after setting the crate down and was letting its fixed stance support him while he breathed. There was still a lot of pressure on his legs and groin.
“Excellent, put them on the lift, please,” the technician said and pointed with one pincer-tipped arm. The two Oogar grunted an affirmation and immediately grabbed their crate. Rick and Alvarado both groaned, took their suits off safe, and picked up the other crate.
The hangar decks were split in two, just like the supporting decks below. Somewhat resembling an old Earth carrier, each side had an elevator platform which was used to move small craft and equipment between the three decks. The lift itself was a big section of deck, sized the same for all three levels, with powerful hydraulic rams to push it up and lower it down. It was currently in the lowered position, its dimensions outlined with black and yellow paint on the deck.
The Oogar quickly placed their crate on the deck and stood next to it, while the two CASPer-suited marines took a little more time. Once they’d put their crate down, the technician moved over to them, and a buzzer sounded. The lift started up a second later. Rick guessed the Jeha had triggered the mechanism via pinplants.
The lift rose at a leisurely pace, something he later found out was a courtesy to them. The Jeha was one of the most G-tolerant races in the Union, and that was apparent on each of the hangar decks. Fully half the personnel who were moving and working were the long, millipede-like race. The elSha were common as well, though they did much less of their signature wall climbing. A fall in three gravities could be deadly.
The lift stopped on Deck 22. Here there were fewer machine shops, and more craft. Around the outside walls waited the ship’s complement of shuttles, while racks of drones were stored near the lift. A pair of unusual insect-like Vaga were also there. Like the Jeha, they were more adaptable to high gravity. They looked like dung beetles and used incredibly powerful pinchers to lift and move items. Rick always thought they looked like biological loader mecha. They were busy moving drones onto another lift.
As soon as the lift stopped, several Jeha and an elSha came over. The elSha was riding on the back of a Jeha like Rick had seen in engineering. They opened the crates quickly, and removed a pair of cylindrical drones. These drones had larger openings in their central section than the ones being moved on the other side of the bay.
Their main job done, Rick and the other three marines moved back while the crew got to work assembling the drones. You could tell they were incredibly experienced in the task as it only took them minutes. A hatch in the deck nearby opened, and a pair of elSha ran power cables to each drone.
As the crew finished initializing the new drones, Rick wondered why they were bothering. The floor-to-ceiling racks were full of drones already. The Vaga were only setting a couple dozen on the lift, barely a quarter of what appeared to be stored here, including a couple with the same ‘unusual’ payload potential. But as he was pondering that, a robot came trundling across the deck. It moved over next to one of the newly assembled drones and, without being prompted, extended a probe and linked itself with the drone.
Rick didn’t know why the appearance of the robot struck him as odd, until Alvarado spoke up.
“That’s the first robot I’ve seen on this ship,” he said, and Rick realized he was correct. Robots were as common in the Union as anything else you’d see in a technological society. Although the Union’s overall technology level had been more advanced than Earth’s at first contact, robots were not as omnipresent as had been expected, as artificial intelligence wasn’t as advanced as futurists had expected it would be. On Pegasus, though, this was the first robot he’d seen.
Rick looked at the other drone he’d brought up and saw another robot was linked with it. Now he was really curious, enough to temporarily forget about the misery of being stuck in a CASPer under three gravities. His curiosity was only getting warmed up, though, as first one robot, then the second jerked and fell over on the deck as if they had been shot. None of the technicians exhibited any surprise.
Lights and status indicators came alive on the drones an instant after the robots keeled over. Control thrusters moved, sensors swept, and the thrust nozzle of their tiny fusion torches gimbaled. An elSha went to each of the disabled robots and opened a little access panel. Switches were thrown and the robots, shaped a little like beetles, folded legs in on themselves to make themselves no bigger than small dogs.
“Will one of you marines take these robots up to drone control on Deck 18?” a Jeha asked.
“I’ll do it,” Rick said, volunteering immediately. The tech leader agreed and showed Rick how to pick them up to avoid damaging them.
“Never volunteer, rookie,” Alvarado chided him as Rick took the two drones and headed for the gangway.
“I’m curious,” Rick admitted over the squad net.
“You know what they said about the cat, right?” Alvarado asked.
“Not really,” Rick replied, “I shoot cats in the face.” As he walked toward the gangway, he watched on his rear camera as a Vaga took control of the new drones and rolled them on small built-in wheels to the elevator.
Climbing another four decks almost exhausted him, although each step brought him closer to some answers. Had those robots transferred their entire power reserves to the drones, and collapsed? That didn’t make sense, because he knew the drones were fusion-powered. What were the robots doing?
Rick reached his destination, Deck 18, home of auxiliary control, the backup in case the CIC was destroyed, and drone control. He had to stop at the landing for a minute to catch his breath. He eyed the suit’s stimulant reserves and considered it for a time. There was a wide variety of stimulants, but all came at a price. No one had told him how long they would be under this kind of acceleration, and there was a limit to how long you could push your body. Running out of steam was the body’s self-defense mechanism against serious injury. He resisted the temptation and rested a bit.
The deck’s air tight hatch responded to his touch, revealing a short corridor that ran down the center of the deck and ended with a hatch on each side of the passage. He clomped down the corridor, the hatchway closing automatically behind him, and reached the two doors. He touched the control for the one labeled “Drone Control.”
“Yes?” a voice responded. It had an odd timber to it, as if run through a translator several times. He’d encountered that once before with an exotic alien race known as the Izlian, squids that floated in the air and spoke through a combination of radiations. He’d seen one on Karma briefly. Rick activated his external speaker.
“This is Private Culper,” he said. “I was ordered to bring these robots to you.” Silence followed for several seconds. “Do you just want me to leave them here?” he asked. In response, the door popped open and slid aside. “Okay,” he said inside his suit, not activating the microphone. The room was dark. He slowly and carefully stepped inside, and the door immediately slid closed behind him.
He realized the room wasn’t completely dark. There were panels with slowly flashing lights, a few Tri-V displays showing views outside the ship, and a data track of multiple starships. One monitor displayed an incredibly complex computer code. He could have activated a suit light or switched to infrared, but both seemed rude and inappropriate. The occupant likely had the lights turned down for a good reason. A light sensitive race, perhaps?
“Place them on this bench,” the same strange voice said, and a low directional light came on illuminating a long bench covered with tools. Rick walked over carefully, so he didn’t crush anything—under three gravities, the suit weighed 1.5 tons—and he placed the drones on the bench.
After making sure the robots wouldn’t fall off the table, Rick turned to where the suit’s directional mics indicated the voice had come from. Without any of the suit’s visual enhancement systems, he could only see dim, shadowy outlines from the single light
shining on the work bench. There was a Human figure standing a few feet away, tall and thin, but not defined.
“You may leave, Private Culper.”
“May I ask who you are?”
“Let us just say, in a game of cat and mouse, I am the cat.”
“I thought there would be an entire crew to run the drones,” he said, and looked around. The person didn’t reply, so, having been dismissed, he turned and left.
On the gangway going down, Rick almost jumped out of his skin when a voice spoke over his shoulder.
“So, you met the drone controller.”
Rick spun and almost fell, and his elbow hit the wall and caused an indentation in the steel. Using his pinplants, Rick spun his visual sensors to look up and behind and saw a familiar elSha clinging to his suit, just above the power supply. He took a deep breath to steady himself before speaking.
“Hello, Kleena,” he said.
“You recognize me?”
“Of course,” Rick said. “elSha are easier to tell apart than a lot of races. Can I ask why you are back there?”
“After the drones were activated, I noticed one of the interface panels on your CASPer wasn’t properly locked shut. I hopped on to take care of it, and by the time it was secured you were halfway up the next deck.” Kleena gave his race’s equivalent of a shrug. “I didn’t figure you’d notice the extra weight.”
“And you were correct.” Rick resumed his trek down the gangway to where he’d left Alvarado. “Would you explain what that was all about?”
“To what are you referring?”
“Now you’re starting to sound like a Jeha.” Kleena gave a couple croaking laughs. “With that drone. Since when does a robot have to die to bring a drone to life?”
“Is that what you thought you saw?”
“That’s what it looked like to me,” Rick said.
“What if I said you weren’t far from the truth?”
“I’d want to know what the rest of the truth is.” They moved silently for a time, Rick carefully taking each step. Going down the gangway was physically easier, but mentally more taxing. It was twice as easy to misstep and sprawl face first down the angled ramp, and because of the acceleration, that fall would be three times as damaging.
“Private Culper, you are brand new to the Winged Hussars, and what you have already seen and wondered at is more than many who’ve been with us their whole lives understand.”
What the fuck? Rick wondered silently.
“Is the drone controller a Human?”
“That’s also difficult to answer.”
“Should I be afraid of this ship?”
“That’s for you to decide,” Kleena replied.
They reached the hangar deck, and Rick turned into the open space where two dozen normal drones were arrayed by the closed bay door, along with the two unusual ones he’d carried up with Alvarado. The crew was gathering equipment, lowering drone racks in the elevator, and scrambling toward the exit. Rick elected to take the express; he took several quick bounds and stepped over the edge of the elevator.
“Yikes!” Kleena chirped as they fell toward the descending elevator at three gravities. Rick expertly fired his jumpjets, timing the breaking thrust to account for the speed of the ship and the rate the elevator was descending. He hit the elevator at less than 5 miles per hour, easily absorbing the landing with a flex of his mechanically-enhanced leg muscles.
“Nice landing,” Alvarado remarked. Variable gravity jumps and landings were something they practiced a lot during his cadre training. Of course, that was all simulated within the software of the CASPer. The 20-foot fall in three gravities would have been like falling off a three-story building if he’d mistimed it.
“Thanks,” Rick said. A second later the elevator reached the bottom with a thunk, and the deck closed above them so the landing bay could be depressurized.
“All hands, set Condition One!” the intercom blared with the computer’s voice, “repeat, set Condition One. Prepare for battle.”
Kleena crawled down Rick’s suit leg and skittered over to a tool rack. His slitted eyes regarded the two suited Humans.
“You better get down to marine country,” he told them, then he turned to look at Rick. “Maybe we’ll talk more about this later.”
“I’d like that,” Rick said, and the two marines headed for the gangway to tromp back to the marines’ deck below.
* * * * *
Chapter 28
“Drones report ready,” Glick said as the signal came in from the hangar deck. A Tri-V showed the hangar elevator closing and the usual swirl of light FOD—foreign object debris—as the atmosphere was pumped down to near vacuum.
“Enemy will be in weapons range in fifteen minutes,” Flipper noted.
“Launch drones as soon as able,” Alexis ordered. The big Tri-V display showed the enemy ships closing on them. They had assumed a star formation a few minutes ago, with the two cruisers at the center and the frigates slightly further out. A minute later, the drones launched.
“Fourteen drones in the black,” Glick said. The Tri-V updated with the new tracks. On the display, Pegasus was in the center, a green miniature ship, while fourteen blue darts flowed out and away, quickly beginning to fall behind as the warship accelerated.
“Drone Control,” Alexis said, “initiate the program.”
The 14 drones fired their powerful micro-fusion engines. The short-lived power plants were expendable and could provide several thousand gravities of thrust, if necessary. The lifespan of the engine was rated in G-hours. Whereas the fusion power plants which drove starships contained a sustained fusion reaction, the ones which operated drones more closely resembled barely-contained fusion bombs.
Drones were the preferred way to engage in stand-off combat and could carry energy weapons, missiles, and ECM modules to distract or disable an enemy. Fighting at distances of light seconds or more made combat challenging. Missiles had long flight times, during which their targets could move considerably from where they should have been. Energy weapons required huge amounts of power, and the shot-to-hit ratio was often hundreds to one—not a great investment of power. Drones took almost as long to reach a target as missiles, but were semi-autonomous and could be sent to attack a target with a variety of engagement profiles. They had the mobility and range to pursue and fight far beyond a ship’s weapons range.
Riding their micro-fusion torches, in just twelve seconds, the drones accelerated to a speed of over 750,000 feet per second relative to their mother ship. Two cut their engines while the other twelve altered their vectors and burned for another twelve seconds. Now they were shooting away from Pegasus at a relative speed of one and a half million feet per second, or over a million miles per hour. If their power plants had the endurance, and if it were possible under the restraints of physics, the drones could have reached the speed of light in just over four hours. The drones revised their flight paths for an additional second. Angle of attack and velocity established, they went dark.
The drones coasted toward the pursuing ships which were pushing hard toward their target, Pegasus.
“Course and plot for drones set,” Drone Control confirmed.
“Helm,” Alexis said; one of Chug’s eyestalks turned toward her, “prepare to maneuver.”
* * *
“Possible missile launch!” SitCon called out in the Yushispa’s CIC. Captain Geshakooka instantly became more alert. He’d been mostly retracted into his shell to minimize the stress of the G forces. He extruded his head painfully from the shell and extended his eyestalks to look at the Tri-V display. The SitCon was a backup, the main one had succumbed to the stresses of the extended boost and was in sickbay under sedation. He wasn’t alone. Twenty-two crew on Yushispa were down so far, along with another 35 on the other cruiser and escort frigates.
Geshakooka examined the Tri-V, forcing his mind to fully understand. The sensors had picked up several electromagnetic radiation spikes from Pegasus. These
spikes had lasted for 24 seconds, then disappeared.
“Too long a boost for missiles,” he said. “Were you able to get a fix on what they were?”
“No, Captain,” the sensor operator reported, acting as slow as Geshakooka felt. “The enemy ship’s torch is putting out too much hard radiation. It is interfering with our sensors.”
The captain evaluated the info and decided the SitCon was right; it was a launch of some kind. Only what? Missiles didn’t put out strong EM spikes like that. Only ships with fusion power produced that kind of signature. Their prey didn’t have any frigates attached, so that meant one thing.
“Drones,” the captain said. “Notify the escorts to prepare for a drone attack.”
They were still half an hour from weapons range. Geshakooka berated himself for not expecting it. They hadn’t been fired on for the same reason they hadn’t fired on the other ship. Karma was a busy center of commerce. Dozens of ships were behind them near the planet and Karma Station, and more were ahead of them around the stargate. Missiles were smart enough to disarm themselves if they missed their targets, but lasers did not care. A wild laser shot could hit and damage a ship a light hour away, or even further.
Responding to his orders, Yushispa slowed, allowing the escorts to pull slightly ahead of the two cruisers. Bakulu escort frigates specialized in screening capital ships. They had relatively light shields, but formidable close-in laser defenses and disproportionately powerful sensors. Warned, they aimed those sensors at a smaller threat box to watch for the coming attack. The ships also began jamming to block any remote drone controllers.
The drones were less than a yard across, and shaped with stealth technology. Their tiny fusion cores were wrapped in jackets of F11 which absorbed radiation. While not actively firing their power plants, they presented almost no electromagnetic signature. They were black, nearly invisible, silent killers racing toward their targets. The escorts used every trick they had to find them, and eventually they succeeded.
