by Kal Spriggs
“The weapon itself?” Rory asked. He pursed his lips, “They'd need a plutonium core for each weapon, substantial capacitors to trigger the fission reaction and extensive gravitic tech to lens the gamma rays...”
“A dozen, you think?” Feliks asked.
“No, that would be too much...” Rory shook his head. ”You have to remember they've built these in secret, hiding their production somehow...”
“Eight, then,” Feliks said with a nod.
“Right, eight,” Rory nodded at Daniel.
“Eight total?” Daniel asked. ”We saw fifteen of those ships!”
“No, no, no...” Rory waved his hands, “They could build eight of those ships in a month. Assuming they have full access to a decent shipyard, of course.”
“Eight a month?” Forrest asked incredulously. ”One of those ships got off one shot and badly damaged us. The Goronto will be facing twelve of those things...”
“Assuming they have had time to ramp up production and they've been in production since the fall of Ghornath Prime,” Feliks said, “Taking into account limits of production, labor and materials shortages, and that sort of thing, they could easily have two thousand or more of these vessels.”
Daniel rubbed a hand over his face. ”Two thousand, you're certain?”
“The thing is, none of these components would be difficult to individually procure. The knowledge of how they would go together, the actual assembly, that's the difficult part. Whoever these people are, they clearly have a much greater understanding of the technical processes. Now, this is all a shot in the dark with some very big assumptions...”
“You said the fall of Ghornath Prime,” Chuni asked, “why did you pick that date?”
“Oh, that?” Rory asked, “Isn't it obvious?”
I really need to have a talk with these two about their use of “obvious” and “trivial”, Daniel thought to himself.
“The Akris system is the key,” Feliks said. “The primary star was made to go supernova and collapse into a black hole to act as a blocking move, to prevent any vessels from transiting the system for as long as possible.”
“But they couldn't count on it stopping your people forever,” Rory nodded. ”So they would have started building a fleet then. Of course, that's assuming that your people are the primary threat to these people. Otherwise they might have tens of thousands of vessels.” Daniel restrained a wince at that thought. “Then they could have been building ships since the fall of Amalgamated Worlds, in which case...”
“Easily tens of thousands of such vessels,” Feliks said cheerfully. “In fact, they could hide some of their actions behind the efforts of the Shadow Lords or the Balor, so long as they left minimal evidence to indicate that others were the perpetrators of such attacks.”
“But if that was the case,” Forrest protested, “they wouldn't have just light ships like this, right? They'd build larger ships?”
“More than likely,” Rory nodded. “You can probably scale down the overall numbers by fifty percent, assuming they build bigger vessels. Of course, those ships would be markedly more capable, especially as their shield projectors and weapon mounts grow bigger.”
Daniel spoke up, “We've gone a bit far off track. Let's examine what we can do against the enemies we've faced, not some potential fleet that may not exist.” He didn't want his officers becoming too shell-shocked by the possibilities. These mysterious enemies were far more formidable than the Chxor and more of an immediate threat than the Balor. “What about our offense. You said they calibrated their shielding systems to counter the exotic particle technology of the Ghornath. Is there any way we can modify our projectors to counter that?”
“Possibly,” Rory said with a glance at Feliks. ”That's going to take a lot of thought, though. The hardware has been configured extensively for the particular 'brand' of particles your generators produce. If we modify them too much, we might have some severe results to the arrays, possibly damaging or destroying them.”
“Their anti-missile systems, what about those?” Forrest asked.
“Well,” Rory waggled a hand. “What it looks like is that it's an alternate fire mode for their main weapon. I'd guess they alter the containment field to project through a dozen or so emitters.”
“Each beam is less powerful,” Feliks said, “but the energy release is identical. They probably use this method for engaging smaller vessels rather than capital ships.”
“So... they couldn't fire both missile interception and their main weapon at the same time?” Ensign Giovanni asked. Daniel gave her a nod as he considered the importance of that question himself.
“Well, no,” Rory said. “And both firing methods would be relatively slow, though no longer to switch from one to the other, I'd guess.”
“That might be useful,” Daniel said with another nod. “We'll run some simulations to see how this can play out, but we might be able to time a missile salvo to coincide with them firing their main weapon.”
“Assuming we survive multiple hits from their main weapon,” Commander Bowder said.
“Anything else in the system?” Daniel asked without acknowledging the comment. Now that they knew more about the enemy's capabilities, they could and would find ways to counter them.
“Not much, sir,” Lieutenant Cassat said. “From what Leader Chuni said, the system's main purpose was military. They'd already mined out all significant mineral resources leaving just carbon-silicate asteroids. There's signs of extensive mining and weapons testing on several of the rocky planets as well.
“The Protectors destroyed our stations here when they destroyed the Argolim,” Chuni said.
Daniel nodded, “Navigation, what have you got as far as moving on to the next system?”
“What we can tell about shadow space, short of jumping, is that we're sort of at a plateau,” Lieutenant Forsberg said. “As best as I can tell, the systems in this pocket are easy to get to, short distance, maybe only a few hours. We'll still have to make short jumps to feel things out, but I think travel between this handful of systems will be easy, sir. I've plotted a small jump that should take us to the next one.”
Daniel gave a nod, “Well, since we won't find anything here and we already know there are enemies in the area, it's best to move with speed. Input the course and we'll move out, Lieutenant.”
***
“Ma'am, any news?” Gunnery Sergeant Tam asked as Alannis came through the hatch into the Marine barracks.
“We fought some of the unknown attackers,” Alannis replied, “other than that, we don't know anything else, there's no wreckage to investigate.”
“Roger, ma'am,” he said with a nod. “No real change down here, either. We're going to do some training in the empty supply areas.” He shrugged, “Honestly, I think we're hitting the upper limit of what we can accomplish by training. We've been hit so many times off-guard that most of our Marines are ready for a fight. If they don't find one soon, they'll go looking for one.”
Alannis grimaced at that. Not that she could blame them. She and Lieutenant Commander Douglass had been attacked. Then their platoon commander had been killed by one of the ship's officers gone mad. They had to feel cooped up and uneasy anyway, given their relative isolation. “Well, we'll try to give them something to do,” Alannis said. “This jump will only last six hours. After that, we'll be at the Forge of Angrahad. Chuni says it used to be the main fleet base for the old Ghornath Empire. If nothing else, I'm sure we'll want to send a team to investigate.”
“Any idea what we'll find, ma'am?” Gunny Tam asked.
“None at all,” Alannis said. “We didn't expect to find any enemy ships back at the Wastes of Argolim. We might find wreckage or remains of the shipyards and bases. We might even find something intact, we just don't know yet.”
“Roger, ma'am,” Gunny Tam smiled. “Threat unknown, enemies unknown, situation unclear. Sounds like another day in the United Colonies Marines, ma'am.”
“Oh,�
�� Alannis frowned, “one other thing, if we do send out a team, it'll probably include escort duty for our two scientists, Rory and Feliks.”
Gunny Tam's face went flat. “Where are you going with this ma'am?”
“I'll need you to assign a pair of Marines to watch over them. They're invaluable, but they can also be...”
“Pains in the ass,” Gunny Tam nodded. “I've dealt with both of them, during the assault on the alien base on Halcyon, ma'am.” His face went a bit pained, “I actually saw a Marine NCO step in front of a plasma round because of them.”
“Oh,” Alannis said, “I'm sorry.”
Gunny Tam nodded, “Good friend of mine, Gunnery Sergeant Victor Ramirez. He was in powered armor and he survived, but it took him months of recovery.”
“I'm impressed with his dedication,” Alannis said. “Stepping in front of a round like that to save them...”
“Oh, no, ma'am,” Gunny Tam shook his head. “He told me later that he did it just to get out of the baby-sitting detail, he couldn't take any more of either of them.” He grimaced then, “Bastard stuck me with both of them. I still owe him for that.”
***
Ensign Elvis Medica sat back on his bed and enjoyed the quiet.
The hit to Engineering had sent a jagged meter-long shard of metal spinning through his legs just above the knees. The instant of shock and pain had faded a bit after the ship's medics administered painkillers and now he had a distant, floating feeling. After the initial day or so, he'd come to terms with what had happened and he'd actually found he didn't mind the free time. He had just pulled up a book from the ship's library, some kind of fantasy novel, with ruthless characters who murdered one another with abandon. Not his normal thing, but it felt good to read something not related to work, for once.
He missed his legs, really he did, but the Fleet doctors were very good. He knew that once he got back to a Fleet Hospital, they'd get them regrown in a few months. It would be painful and exhausting, but in the meantime, he had a nice sample of drugs and most importantly, he had peace and quiet.
And I don't have to deal with Rory or Feliks for the rest of the trip, he thought with a relaxed smile.
“Ah, there you are!” Rory said as he and Feliks came through the door.
Oh, please no, Ensign Medica thought to himself.
“So, we heard you were trapped in bed here,” Feliks said. “Terrible what happened to your legs. I am told that they will need to regrow them, yes?” As he nodded in reply, Feliks continued, “Well, despite the risks of secondary infection, cancerous regrowth, or the exceedingly rare but still statistical possibility that the regrowth treatment will cause a lethal allergic reaciton.”
“I'm sure you'll be fine,” Rory said waving a hand. “But since you're otherwise unoccupied we have some things for you to dig into.”
“I'm on light duty,” Ensign Medica said quickly.
“Well, this is all pretty light. We just need you to do some basic partical analysis, back-checking some of the shielding data from the enemy ships we encountered against our database to see about weapons calibrations.” Rory said. “Something even you can do. It’ll be impossible to alter the beam projectors without a full analysis of the data. Don't worry, we'll come by three times a day to check your progress and give you some company.”
“Yes, we wouldn't want you to think we don't appreciate you,” Feliks said absently as he tapped at his datapad. “There, I've transferred the files. It's very large, so I took the liberty of overwriting some of your excess files, some entertainment files from the ship's library, that sort of thing.”
So much for finishing my book, Ensign Medica thought as he pushed the button that should have given him more medication. Perhaps if he was drugged out of his mind he wouldn't need to deal with them...
“Oh, and Lieutenant Wohlberg said we could cut back on your painkillers since we need you able to focus,” Rory said as he casually finished closing a valve. “This one, right?”
Ensign Medica told himself that whimpering was not something that an officer of the United Colonies Fleet should do. Yet any kind of stoic resolution faded in the realization that not only had his disfiguring accident trapped him where he couldn't escape, but that he'd be stuck doing only what Rory and Feliks had for him.
“Well, I can see we've already cheered you up,” Rory said, clapping him on the shoulder. “No need to go all misty-eyed. We'll leave you to your work!”
Please, he thought to himself, please let this be a nightmare.
***
“Well, that's unexpected,” Captain Beeson said as the Constellation finished its initial survey of the Forge of Angrahad.
That's a bit of an understatement, Alannis thought to herself. They had expected to find ruins or perhaps the remains of some stations around the planet. Chuni's knowledge of what had been here was vague, a description more about the origin of fleets and weapons, but rather sparse on detail.
Alannis had picked up a variety of signals and a glance at the main sensor display showed high resolution images of massive structures in orbit around the inhabitable planet.
“Captain,” Lieutenant Cassat said, “I'm seeing at least fifteen independent stations in geostationary orbit over the planet, in addition to the orbital rings. All of this is operational although I'm only seeing very limited traffic in the system.”
“What kinds of ships?” Captain Beeson asked. “And if they are active, why haven't we seen any response to our arrival?”
“They look like mining and fueling vessels,” Lieutenant Cassat brought up the image of one on the main screen. “Ensign Giovanni has a theory about those.”
Alannis felt nervous as the other officers looked at her. “I think they're drone ships, sir.” She brought up a sample signal, “We haven't decoded the transmissions, yet, but these vessels are all doing very simple tasks. If they're drone vessels, then the stations would send retrieval commands after receiving notice that the ships are full. We're also seeing some limited transmissions as vessels approach the defensive perimeter, probably a challenge and response.” She waited a moment and then brought up the display that showed the interaction between ships and stations. “There's no additional traffic beyond that.”
“Nothing?” Captain Beeson asked in surprise.
“Nothing, sir,” Alannis nodded. In this case, the lack of any additional signals was a sign that the system was otherwise unoccupied. High technology societies sent transmissions almost constantly. Entertainment signals, financial information, even simple telemetry and identification codes.
“Did your people make such extensive use of drones?” Captain Beeson asked of Chuni.
“I... I don't know,” she said after a long moment. “There was, occasionally mention of... well, what you might call servitors. But I'm not certain if these are somehow a part of that or if they're... something else.”
“The fact that we haven't been challenged suggests that Ensign Giovanni's theory is right. Automated systems might not be set up to pay attention to us unless we appear to be a threat.” The Captain stared at the screen for a long moment, “Clearly the stations are in good shape,” Captain Beeson said. They had approached to just outside three hundred thousand kilometers of the nearest station. “Are those weapon's turrets there?”
“That's our best guess, sir,” Forrest said. “Big weapon emplacements, larger than anything outside of some of the Dreyfus Fleet ships. We've also detected a variety of hatches that might be for launching fighters, missiles, or other drones.”
“Have we sent any kind of transmission?” Captain Beeson asked. “Leader Chuni, do you have any kind of, I don't know, access code?”
Alannis saw her friend hesitate. “I... I may know a way, but that would require some way to physically access a station, possibly a command terminal,” Chuni said after a moment.
“I don't want to get that close to those weapons emplacements without knowing if it'll work,” Captain Beeson said. Alannis saw the XO n
od in agreement. “Ensign,” he said after a moment's thought, “presumably, these things have some kind of command signal, do you think you could hack it?”
Alannis considered that for a long moment, “I mean, possibly, Captain, but that would take days. We haven't even decoded their signals yet and they're not related to any human coding I've ever dealt with...”
“Point taken,” Captain Beeson nodded. “Well, there's another option. Send the nearest station a hail and see how it responds.”
“Perhaps we should simply observe and depart, sir?” Commander Bowder said. “This is a major military base. The automated systems here may contain defensive protocols that could react poorly if we don't respond with the proper authentications.”
“True,” Captain Beeson said. “But we've already done plenty of observation. We need to know of these stations are capable of either allowing our allies a place of sanctuary or if they're inaccessible or if they're in the hands of our enemies. In case of the first, we've accomplished our mission. If it is either of the latter, we need to know.” He nodded at Alannis, “Ensign, send them a hail.”
Alannis cued up the signal and then hit transmit.
A moment later, the entire defensive sphere went active.
“Captain, they're hitting us with active sensors!” Lieutenant Cassat barked. A moment later he snapped, “Missile launch, multiple missiles!”
Chapter XVIII
Forge of Angrahad
The Sacred Stars
December 31, 2407
Alannis focused on her station but she listened with half an ear as Captain Beeson gave orders. “Navigation, reverse course,” Captain Beeson said. “Comms, any response other than the weapons fire?”
“Negative, sir,” Alannis said. She felt her mouth go dry as she saw just how many missiles had launched. On the sensor display she saw dozens on the way just from the nearest station. They were nearly a million kilometers from the other stations, but they'd also launched and tactical had begun to populate individual missiles there too.
