by Randy Dyess
Owen looked at his sister with dread. As a boy, he’d often heard the tales of the centuries of battles with pirates his ancestors had faced while trying to build Sullivan Shipping. His own sister, Dakota, had more than three dozen pirate hulls painted on the side of the Sullivan’s Pride to mark her victories. His older brother, Robert, had often gone undercover with Sullivan security forces to attack pirate bases directly. Owen, however, was not ready for action against pirates. Unlike most boys, he hadn’t grown up, dreaming of fighting pirates or commanding a warship. His dreams had been more sedate.
“Sensors do not report any active signals,” Owen reported. “There’s nothing out there.”
The Terran Navy didn’t bother with pirates, and the Sullivans had no patience with the speed of the Senate. Over the years, they had taken matters into their own hands. In fact, the Sullivan’s Pride had been designed and built for just that purpose.
“Captain, the debris we are scanning is pieces of three Galaxy-class freighters. I’m also seeing two slabs of metal I can’t identify.”
“Galaxy-class? That’s impossible. No pirate ship can take on one of those things and live—they’re six times larger than anything else out there. Show me,” she commanded.
“Aye, Captain.”
Dakota stared at the nine large pieces of wreckage from the massive ships. It would have taken the firepower of the entire Terran Navy to completely destroy three Galaxy-class ships at once. No pirate group she knew of had even a fraction of the firepower needed to destroy a single Galaxy-class freighter, let alone three. “Show me the metal slabs.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Skip, make sure you plot a course to keep us away from that debris. This ship is new and I don’t want to bang into something.”
“Aye, Captain,” Skip responded.
“Captain, I have the slabs on the main viewer,” Owen said.
“Magnify. Why do they look melted?”
“I don’t know. What could produce something like that out here? It’s like they poured heated metal out of a foundry.”
“Owen, can you get me a makeup of that metal? Try to figure out what’s in it and what could have slabs like that.”
“I’ll try. Hopefully it was just something one of those freighters was carrying—some new way to move ore around.”
“Maybe, but I doubt it. Match up the mass of those slabs to known ship types.”
“Ship types?” Owen asked. “What for?”
“I want to know if they match a ship. Start with Candus Security patrol vessels and our own freighter types. If you get a match, let me know.”
“Okay, but I think it’s a waste of time,” Owen said. “Nothing could melt a ship, like that—you would have to fly one into a sun, or something.”
“Just humor me and follow my orders,” Dakota responded.
“Captain, look at scanner five’s monitor. I’m seeing what looks like an asteroid field over Candus,” Skip reported.
“Switch views.”
Dakota and the rest of the crew stared in disbelief at what looked like a hundred or more asteroids moving over Candus. “Damn, the largest ones are the size of cities,” someone from the bridge whispered. “No wonder those ships were torn to pieces.”
“They’re not moving,” Owen whispered.
“What?” Dakota asked.
“They’re not moving! If they were asteroids, wouldn’t they be moving? It’s like they are parked in formation over Candus.”
Dakota’s eyes grew wide. “Get us behind those two pieces of wreckage. Turn off all active scanning and power down the weapons. I want anyone out there to think we are just another piece of blasted junk.”
The crew jumped to accomplish their orders and placed the Sullivan’s Pride between the two pieces of Galaxy-class freighter they had almost collided with earlier. Once all systems had been powered down, Skip turned to Dakota and arched his eyebrow.
“They’re ships—that’s why they’re parked in formation over Candus. This was an attack by those things—not by any pirate we know about, and not a meteor shower,” Dakota said to the crew.
“You’re joking. Those things are bigger than cities! Who makes ships that look like asteroids?” Skip responded.
“I don’t know and I don’t want to find out. Turn on every passive scanner we have, and batch up everything we’ve recorded so far and prepare to send it to headquarters, Candus Corporation, and Senate Intelligence. Don’t send anything until I tell you to, though—I don’t want them to hear us. Skip, take over the nav station and figure out the quickest jump.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Owen,” Dakota said, “Did you find out anything about those slabs?”
“The computer is matching the mass and makeup to Orion-class patrol vessels. Does Candus Security use Orions?”
“They do. What else can you tell me?”
“Nothing else—just that they match the mass and make-up of the Orions. I can’t tell you if they are Orions or not.”
“Okay, people, I want answers. Use every passive sensor we have and get me some. Find out what the hell those things are.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Skip, where are you on my tunnel?”
Skip punched some numbers into the nav station and said, “We can jump to Meltus in ninety seconds from go.” Creating an FTL jump point involved multiple calculations and power adjustments that had to be done in a precise pattern. The farther the jump, the more numerous the calculations and the more exact the power adjustments had to be. A large, complex jump missing by only a fraction of a percent would send the ship thousands of light years away from its intended target.
When humans were first learning how to travel by FTL in large numbers, hundreds of ships went missing each year as they messed up their jump calculations and steps. Many of those ships found themselves too far away from human settlement to travel back, and they were never seen or heard from again. After all, you couldn’t jump if you didn’t know where you were. “Put the jump into the nav system. If one of those ships turns and starts coming this way, hit the button—don’t wait for my command. Get us out of here.”
“Aye, Captain,” Skip responded.
“Henry, can we communicate with the relay without being heard?” Dakota asked her communications officer.
“Not yet—some of those things are still between us and the relay.”
“How long?”
“Thirty minutes, if things stay the same. I’d need at least a two-second burst.”
“Okay, as soon as we are clear, burst out as much as you can. Count it down, so we can be ready to boogie if they hear us.”
“Aye, Captain,” Henry said.
“Patch me through to the entire ship,” Dakota commanded.
“Aye, Captain.”.
“Listen up, everyone,” Dakota started. Over the next few minutes, she described their situation. “We’re going to hang around for a few hours and see if anything comes our way. This is going to be boring for most of you, but I want everyone at battle stations and strapped down. I may not be able to give you any warning if we have to run. Right now, we’re hiding and watching.”
Green status lights lit up the battle board: all stations were ready for action. “Dakota,” Owen said, “didn’t Cheyenne design probes for situations like this? I thought she loaded prototypes when I came on board.”
“You’re right. Skip, have engineering pull one out and get it ready. I want to use one it to test the range of their scanning and see what’s out there. I don’t like hiding here and not knowing what’s going on.”
“Aye, Captain,” Skip said. Ten minutes later, he turned to Dakota, “We’re ready.”
“Okay,” Dakota said. “Everyone get ready. I want to launch the probe, but use thrusters only. Just poke its nose over one of those pieces of junk, so I can see what’s going on. Don’t go fully active until I tell you.”
“Aye, Captain,” Skip said.
The crew hel
d their breath as the prototype probe left its launch tube and started moving the few hundred meters to the wrecked ship they were hiding behind. Everyone watched as engineering maneuvered the probe so the first third of it was poking over the wreckage.
“Anything?” Dakota asked.
“Getting visuals,” Skip responded. “Putting it on main screen.”
“What about sensor signals?”
“Nothing. No sensor signals and no comm traffic. Either those ships are not talking to each other, or the probe’s not working.”
“There’s too many of them to not be squawking. Go active on the probe. Can you clean up the visual? All I’m seeing is static.”
“Working on it,” Owen said. “Should clear up in a few. There seems to be some disturbance between us and the asteroids.”
“Still getting nothing from the asteroids,” Skip said. “The probe sees and hears us, but nothing else.”
“Okay, people, as hard as it is to believe, they’re not asteroids, but ships. Let’s start calling them that,” Dakota said.
The crew watched the large, asteroid-shaped ships as hundreds of smaller blurs moved around them. “That’s the best I can do on the visual,” Owen said.
“Owen, use the output from the probe to create a flight plan for it to the next large cluster of debris. I want to move this thing closer to see if they are watching for us.”
“Aye, Captain,” Owen said.
Three agonizing hours later, he had maneuvered the probe to the last cluster of wreckage between the Sullivan’s Pride and the enemy ships. “Still nothing,” he reported. “They either have sensors we can’t pick up, or they’re not watching for anything.”
“I have a hard time believing we can’t pick them up. We aren’t picking up any kind of transmissions or signals,” Dakota said.
“Maybe that’s it,” Skip said.
“What?”
“There’s thousands of those things over Candus—maybe even tens of thousands—and the biggest ones are bigger than anything we have even designed, let alone built. They’re bigger than our space stations.”
“So?”
“So, they’re not afraid of us. If they know we are here, they simply do not care.”
“Maybe. That’s hard to believe, but maybe. Let’s test your theory. Move us out from behind this wreckage and get us in the clear.”
“Aye, Captain,” Skip said, wishing he hadn’t spoke up. Once again, the crew held their breath as the Sullivan’s Pride slowly made its way from behind the wrecked pieces and into open space. Skip sat in his chair with his finger posed over the FTL button. One move toward them by the asteroid ships and he would push the button and get the Sullivan’s Pride to safety. He wasn’t going to let Dakota put the ship in danger if he could help it.
Minutes crawled by as the Sullivan’s Pride moved closer to the planet. “Doesn’t look like they care we’re here,” Dakota finally spoke up. “Henry, package all of this up and send it out. Let everyone know what we’ve found.”
“Aye, Captain,” Henry replied.
“Let’s poke them a little. Go active on all sensors. I want to know everything about them.”
“Aye, Captain,” everyone replied reluctantly.
Screens all over the bridge started firing up as data poured in. “I count twenty, no thirty-thousand ships. They range from ten meters to over five hundred,” Owen reported.
“No recognizable ships in orbit,” Skip reported. “Everything flying is one of those ships.”
“Can you tell what they’re doing?” Dakota asked.
“No, they’re still too far away,” Skip responded.
“Okay, then move us closer.”
Skip flinched, but input the orders into the nav system. “Moving another forty thousand kilometers,” he reported.
“Keep updating your FTL solution,” Dakota said.
“Oh, I am. I can get us out of here in less than ninety seconds, if needed.”
“Good. When we get to our new position, hold there for a while. Henry, put me on throughout the ship. It’s time to give everyone an update.”
*****
The Sullivan’s Pride hung over Candus, moving to avoid the debris. “Owen, fire up the telescope and see if you can see anything on the surface,” Dakota said.
“Aye, Captain.”
While the maps of areas surrounding the core worlds were very detailed, it was not the same with the space surrounding the outer-rim worlds; large amounts of space between them and beyond them were still unexplored. When Cheyenne had designed the Sullivan’s Pride, she’d had her team install a large telescope. Its purpose was to automatically capture information on the space surrounding the routes they flew.
Sullivan Shipping had recently decided to move into mining operations. In order to do so, they needed information about moons and uncontrolled planets, which might hold mineral wealth and help them decide where to start their mining operations. To gather this information, the Sullivan’s Pride had advanced scanning equipment installed during its construction that would normally only be found in Terran Senate exploration vessels. It was hoped that the telescope would allow them to actually view the surface of a potential planet without having to alter course to be close enough for normal scanning equipment.
“Those things look like potatoes,” Amy, the weapons officer, said.
“You think everything looks like a potato,” Skip retorted.
“If you grew up on a potato farm, you’d think the same,” she joked back.
“They look like rocks, to me,” Dakota said. “Skip, you don’t think someone figured out how to use asteroids to make ships, do you?”
“I don’t know. Looks like someone may have, although I haven’t heard of anyone trying to do so.”
“Captain, look at the scope’s output. It looks like a bunch of smaller asteroids are flying back and forth to the planet’s surface.”
“They must be hauling off everything they captured in the raid,” Dakota said. “That means they don’t intend to stay.”
“What could they get from Candus?” Skip asked. “There’s nothing there but a bunch of food products.”
“There’s the Candus Metal Works plant,” Amy said. “There might be something there.”
“That plant makes farming equipment. Who would want to raid an entire planet for farming equipment?”
“I don’t know what they want,” Dakota said. “I’ve never heard of anything of value being built or stored on Candus. Once we get done here, I’ll ask Robert if he could dig around and see if there was anything here worth stealing.”
“Still,” Skip said, “except for U-981, what would be valuable enough for someone to go through all this trouble? Those asteroid ships are huge—there can’t be enough U-981 here to make it worthwhile. Now, if they raided Wethea, that would be different. Peterson processes most of their raw material there, and they would have enough U-981 on site.”
“Even then,” Dakota said, “this is a major undertaking. Those small ships having been flying back and forth for hours. What could they be carrying?”
“I wonder if this is a corporate move to seize and hold the planet,” Owen said. “I know it’s been hundreds of years since the last corporate war, but U-981 is becoming valuable enough to kick off another.”
“You may be right, but why here?” Dakota asked. “There’s no U-981 anywhere nearby.”
“Don’t know. Maybe we should ask the AI what military value this planet would have.”
“Good idea.” Dakota instructed the ship’s combat AI to work on scenarios in which Candus would play an important role.
“They seem to be done. I haven’t seen anything coming up from the planet in the last twenty minutes,” Amy said.
“Captain, FTL endpoint forming in front of the formation,” Skip said.
“They’re jumping?”
“Looks that way, Captain. It’s strange that only one endpoint is forming. Maybe only one ship is jumping.”
“Keep on your toes, everyone. I don’t like this,” Dakota said
“Crap!” Owen exclaimed.
“What?”
“The FTL endpoint is growing. It’s the largest one I’ve ever heard of—almost large enough for the entire fleet to use.”
“Turn on all active scanning and capture everything about that endpoint you can. Package it and send it to Cheyenne’s lab and headquarters. Do not include it in the data you are sending to the Senate or Candus Corporation.”
