Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4)

by S J MacDonald

  Alex was, however, confident in his approach. They had looked at this from every conceivable angle, with a wide range of expertise, and had come to a very good idea, at least, of how not to go about this. Anything that looked like an attack would, naturally, be repelled. Going in there broadcasting any version of ‘we come in peace’ messages was evidently a waste of time, too. These were not, clearly, people who wanted to talk. An approach founded on non-verbal communication, therefore, was their best option.

  The only person on the ship who didn’t agree with that decision was Jermane Taerling. The linguist found it so hard to understand how anyone could approach first contact on the basis of not trying to talk to the other party that it was several days before he could be brought to believe that Alex was serious. Even now, as they zigzagged into Samartian space, Jermane was watching scopes worriedly. He had his battery of first-contact broadcasts ready to hand, just in case, he said, the skipper changed his mind.

  Alex, though, was not second guessing himself, here. There was just no point trying anything that they knew had been tried many times before, but failed. There was no information suggesting that anyone had tried this kind of approach. Logically, therefore, it gave them their best chance. Either it would work, or it wouldn’t. Either way, though, Alex could say hand on heart that it had been the best idea he or anyone else on the ship had been able to come up with, and that they had given it their very best shot.

  At a far less logical level, however, he felt instinctively that this approach was the right one. It was dangerous to try to put yourself inside the head of a people who might not even be human any more. Alex knew that he didn’t really have enough information to imagine what they might be like or how they might think. All the same, he had a strong gut instinct here that told him these people would respond to action, not words. And it would have to be the right kind of action, too, to get their attention, win their respect and open up the possibility of dialogue.

  They solved one mystery on day four, when scanners detected a tiny object high above them. A brief diversion revealed that it was a nano-satellite. It was less than two millimetres across, but equipped with nanobyte sensors and transmitters.

  ‘It’s transmitting at L55,’ Martine reported, and managed to say it quite calmly, too, though that was nearly twice the speed of the fastest comm-sat the League had developed. ‘Estimated range…’ this time her voice did betray surprise, as the range of the satellite was tiny in comparison with the standard in the League, ‘0.28 LS - Light Seconds,’ she added, knowing that that was so incredible that people might well think she’d made a mistake.

  Alex was also evaluating the technical sophistication of the sensor. Their own version of this – a micro-sensor which the Fourth themselves carried to scatter in areas where they wanted to monitor ship movements – was the size of a handball and had to be visited for its recorded data to be uploaded. Nanotech like this was not beyond their technical ability, but it would be very expensive to produce. The League preferred to invest in larger, cheaper systems. And while it was so much faster, that was, evidently, at the cost of operating on an extremely limited range.

  ‘It’s a global transmitter,’ Buzz observed, meaning that the signal was being broadcast in all directions, not focussed as League comm-sats always were.

  ‘That’s a number,’ Jermane said, running it through translation matrix. There were a hundred and eighty nine digits, repeating on a cycle.

  ‘That may be some kind of coordinate system, or a numerical code.’ Murg Atwood was running code-breaker software on the sequence. ‘I’ll keep working on it, skipper.’

  Alex nodded acknowledgement without looking up. He was sketching in a tentative idea on a starmap, working out how many of the sensors it would take to entirely surround the space around Samart at this distance. The answer that came back was mind boggling; quadrillions. It was hard to imagine a world having the resources to manufacture so many. Even if they manufactured at the rate of a billion a year, it would take a thousand years to make enough. The cost of such an enterprise would cripple any economy, too – there was just no way any League world would even consider it a feasible idea.

  Alex considered it, though. The Samartians had to have some method of detecting incoming ships, and a sensor cloud made as much sense as any of their other ideas.

  ‘That’s a lot of sensors,’ Alex looked up and gave Davie North an enquiring look. ‘Do you think that any world’s economy could support that?’

  ‘If their whole culture and economy is geared towards the defence of their world,’ Davie said, ‘perhaps.’ He was making notes, too, and gave a little shake of his head. ‘It would need very low cost labour, a low standard of living, perhaps even compelled work or food rationing.’

  They found a second sensor a few minutes distant from the first. It too was transmitting by the time it came onto their own scanners. This time, though, it was transmitting both the code already broadcast by the first sensor, and an additional nine digits. Within another minute, they had come upon another one, scopes showing that the density of the sensors was increasing as they approached Samart.

  ‘Oh, I see!’ said Shion, coming to the same realisation several others on the ship did as soon as they saw that data. ‘It’s like a spider’s web, transmitting the identity of each sensor that’s picked up an incoming ship.’

  ‘But you can’t seriously be suggesting that the entire sphere of space, at this distance, is full of these things?’ Jermane was incredulous.

  ‘Well, there are indications that they had something of the sort in place even eighteen hundred years ago,’ Alex observed. ‘They would need both manufacturing and deployment on a scale beyond our current capacity, but we know they have to be more advanced than we are in some ways, or how else have they beaten off the Marfikians time and again? We can’t know whether the web goes all the way to Samart, but I do believe it will go at least as far as some point where there are ships standing by for rapid response.’

  Just how rapid that was became apparent only a few hours later. It was mid-afternoon. The ship was quiet, many of the off-duty crew watching scanners with just as close attention as the officers and watchkeepers on the command deck. The instant that the first flicker of a blip appeared on the edge of their long range scopes, the ship came to action stations – people were already running and grabbing for survival suits even as Alex’s hand slapped onto the alert panel.

  ‘Action stations secured, sir.’ Buzz said, twenty eight seconds later. Everyone was in survival suits. All stations were manned. Guns were firing up in readiness. Fighter crews were aboard and prepping for launch.

  ‘Thank you, Commander.’ Alex replied automatically. His eyes were fixed on long range scopes. They were keenly alert, bright with suppressed excitement.

  It was obvious from the start that the other ship knew exactly where they were. The Samartian ship was on a direct intercept course with them at the point where it appeared on their scopes.

  They could tell a lot about it, even from heatscan. As the image clarified, they could see that it was a small ship – smaller even than a patrol ship, though long and thin by comparison. It had an extraordinary number of engines for its size. The League would not consider it either effective or safe for a ship of that size to have more than twelve mix cores. This ship apparently had twenty eight. It was travelling at L32, a speed way beyond that of the frigate and only just achievable by the League’s fastest formula one racing yachts and couriers.

  This was a critical moment. It might have been expected that in that moment Alex would have been keenly aware of all the eyes on him, the lives directly in his hands. In fact, he was entirely focussed on the Samartian ship, trying to get inside the head of its commander from no more evidence than the way it was manoeuvring.

  He was trying to imagine how that other skipper would be feeling right now, as they got their first sight of the warship of unknown origin which had appeared, approaching their world. The Heron
was ten times their size, carrying fighters and bristling with guns.

  Seeing how obliquely the ship was coming in to intercept them, and having a strong gut instinct, too, that it was not going at its fastest speed or anything like it, Alex sensed caution. The other skipper wanted to have a good look at them before deciding whether to fire.

  It was, Alex felt, vitally important at this stage not to make any sudden moves.

  Seconds slid by in breathless silence. Alex did not look up from screens. The other ship would come into their visual range in thirty seven seconds. By then it would already be within firing range of the frigate’s big guns.

  Still eighteen seconds out from visual range, however, the Samartian ship fired a barrage of missiles. Ten of them spat from the other ship simultaneously. Gunners all over the ship tensed their hands on controls, ready to fire intercept if the missiles got past automatic deflectors, but the missiles were clearly intended as a warning. They detonated while still a good five seconds from the ship, a scatter of explosions in their path that did no more than send a tremor through the ship with a slight hissing noise along the hull as they ran through the debris. At the same time, a tiny object launched from the Samartian ship, targeted to go past them rather than at them directly. It was clearly some kind of comms device, ripping past them at L56 and broadcasting a blitz of electronic shriek which lasted for less than a millionth of a second.

  Their newly refitted comms array processed the signal through to the computers as ‘kanta jay oris aballen’. The experimental translation matrix rendered that literally as ‘remove immediate destruction follows’ with a best-guess interpretation of ‘Leave our territory immediately or you will be destroyed.’

  It was a text transmission, voiceless, devoid of emotion.

  ‘Exit course,’ Alex commanded, without looking up.

  Gunny Norsten already had it laid in, and was passing those directions to the helm as soon as Alex started speaking.

  The Heron turned – not too quickly but in a tight arc that turned them around in obvious compliance with the Samartian ship’s command. Within seconds, they were on a route heading directly away from Samart.

  Alex smiled a little inwardly as the other ship fell into a shepherding position, keeping station on them safely outside their visual and gun-firing range. Alex could almost sense the relief aboard the other ship at their instant compliance. He could certainly hear the outlet of breath on his own ship as people saw the Samartian escorting them out of their space.

  Jermane looked at the skipper with longing in his eyes. He felt more strongly than ever that it was just criminally irresponsible of them not to attempt to open communication at this point. After all, the Samartian ship was right there, and what harm could it do for them just to slow a little in the hope that the other ship would come into their comms range? Or even drop a comms buoy broadcasting greetings and information about themselves.

  Something about Alex’s manner, though, told the linguist that he would not be open to re-discussing policy at this point. Those decisions had already been made.

  ‘Excellent.’ Buzz was beaming with pleasure as he saw the Samartian ship taking up that wary escort position, like a well-trained guard dog seeing them off the premises. ‘Just as we hoped.’

  Alex nodded. Damage control screens were showing that they’d taken some slight scrapes to their paintwork, but that had already been looking quite battered after the Ignite test and their journey through the nebula. It was entirely superficial. All that mattered here was that they had made contact with a Samartian ship, and were establishing their willingness to respect Samartian authority within their territorial space.

  ‘So – analysis?’ he asked.

  That was quickly forthcoming.

  ‘The mix cores appear to be of the same kind as our own,’ Morry Morelle reported. ‘And on core to mass ratio, I would estimate their top speed to be around L46.’

  Everyone stared at him.

  ‘No hull ever designed could take that kind of speed,’ Davie objected.

  ‘No hull we’ve ever designed.’ Morry pointed out. ‘All I’m telling you is that that’s how the numbers work out.’

  ‘The missiles launched at L48 and maintained that speed,’ Very Vergan said. ‘They detonated at 2.03 exojoules each - 4.2% faster and 1.6% bigger detonation than our own starbursts.’

  ‘Based on the size of the ship, I would estimate a crew of between fourteen and eighteen,’ Misha Tregennis said. ‘I believe it is a single deck ship with three or four inner compartments. Significant temperature differences in the immediate aftermath of firing missiles indicate that the compartments are sealed off and that they have little or no heat exchange on missile tech, and given how long it took for those temperatures to return to base levels, poor levels of atmospheric management.’

  Alex considered the implications of that, looking back at the blurred image on heatscan. That was the first indication that they might have any kind of edge on the Samartian ship, other than sheer size. Heat-producing technology on their ships always had heat exchangers built in as a basic safety system. If any failure of that did raise air temperature in a section, too, air processing would kick in and restore optimum temperature within a second or two.

  Alex did not kid himself, though. If the Samartians hadn’t fitted heat exchangers or powerful air processors aboard their ship, it was a safe bet that this wasn’t because they didn’t know how to make them. It was simply that they didn’t consider them important enough to include in the design. That in itself said a great deal about them, the risks they were prepared to take and the discomfort they were prepared to consider normal aboard their ships.

  They had time to discuss those observations over the following eight hours, as they continued on their steady course away from Samart. In all that time, the Samartian ship maintained its watchful station on them, just forty three seconds away.

  It was nerve-racking. Even though this was what they’d planned for and hoped for, the reality of having that ship hovering just out of sight would have tested anybody’s nerve. Many people glanced at least once at the image of the skipper, on the command deck, and felt comforted. It wasn’t merely that he was calm – any Fleet officer would have been expected to project an air of calm authority at such a time. It was, Simon observed, the air of honest, relaxed enjoyment that the skipper had.

  And Alex was frankly enjoying himself. He was not unaware of the stress his officers and crew were experiencing, but his own confidence was high.

  ‘I feel with every hour that passes, our relationship gets stronger,’ he commented.

  ‘Relationship, skipper?’ Jermane was mystified. They couldn’t even see the other ship, and had made no attempt whatsoever to communicate with it.

  ‘Yes, absolutely,’ Alex said, and reminded him of the basis on which he’d already made this decision. ‘We’re going along with them, not just in leaving their territorial space when ordered to do so, but in respecting their obvious desire not to be harassed by unwanted efforts to communicate with them. Every hour that goes by with us behaving in a courteous manner is building a relationship of – well, let’s not say trust, we’re nowhere near trust yet, but of calm.’

  He held that calm, too, when a second Samartian ship appeared on scopes. It appeared to be the same kind as the first, with an identical heatscan image. It swung in alongside their first escort and remained there.

  ‘That’s a well-established procedure,’ Alex commented, watching this with interest. ‘This is what they’re trained to do when an unknown ship enters their space, and they are doing it, for sure, strictly by the book.’

  Buzz nodded. You could tell a great deal about the character of a skipper simply from how their ship was handled. Those neat, precise movements and perfect station-keeping indicated a disciplined mentality.

  The Heron held discipline, too. Whatever stress the crew might be feeling, they handled it well. There was absolute calm and quiet on board for the eight h
ours and forty seven minutes the Samartians were escorting them out of their space.

  Then, just outside the zone of their sensors, the Samartians peeled away. They flipped about with astonishing speed, somersaulting back along their own line of flight more like fighters than warships. Clearly, they had now seen the invading warship out of the space they considered theirs to defend, and were moving away.

  ‘Showtime,’ said Alex, tapping his finger onto the control which authorised their combat skills display.

  For the next seventeen minutes, the Heron put on a show that would have stunned any League world and left the rest of the Fleet speechless.

  At various times in its long history, Fleet ships had taken part in displays, particularly to mark major events such as millennial celebrations. At the time of the last such event, however, the warships taking part had merely ‘dressed overall’ with rippling lights on their hulls as they processed in stately convoy. There was no record of a ship the size of a frigate taking part in acrobatic display – the Fleet, always mindful of dignity, would not consider that to be appropriate.

  The Fourth, however, had been practicing unorthodox manoeuvres even back when they’d had the corvette Minnow, and had been working up a whole range of combat skills to work most effectively with their fighters since getting the swarms the year before. Now, they had spent weeks putting together those manoeuvres into display sequences that would demonstrate their skill in spectacular style.

  When the Fourth went for ‘spectacular’, they did not go for half measures. From the moment when their fighters launched and began to interlace around the spinning frigate to the grand finale seventeen minutes later, the choreography would make even hardened spacers ooh and aah with astonishment. The frigate fired several broadsides during the display; all of the gunfire and missile fire directed away from Samart. At one point they launched a hundred tiny scatter missiles and destroyed them in a blaze of gunfire. In agility displays, frigate and fighters trailed plasma, ribbons of fire weaving in their wake.