There had to be a way to put a stop to this madness.
But she knew very well that the various black market sites were insidious, and extremely difficult to combat.
Several people told her that Colby O’Brien, a veteran gunner, actually had pics and vids of Captain Naero–real and digital–plastered all over his vidwalls like pinups, like some creepy shrine.
Stalk much?
She still had to see it for herself.
She contacted him, and he openly invited her into his small crew quarters to have a looksee.
The guy was in his fifties. Creepy.
Colby bragged about his obsession. He even started watching a new, top porn vid, with ‘Captain Naero’ rewarding her bridge crew with a swinging orgy–right after a decisive naval victory.
Haisha, again. This was just too much!
Thank the Powers they did not bother to have the real faces and scans of her actual subordinates. And, good, they got the classified layout of her bridge totally wrong, as well. Not that anyone would care about or notice anything like that.
But still, how would she ever be able to set foot on her bridge again without seeing those vile images as it was?
She winced several times and then had to look away.
“How can you watch this crap?” she asked Colby.
The guy was nearly drooling, his eyes riveted on the holoscreen.
With the real thing standing right next to him, and the moron didn’t even know, or care.
He shook his head. “Keep your opinions to yourself, kid. A goofy little inexperienced girlie like you could never compare to a smokin’ hot dish like Captain Maeris. And her aunt and her mom are almost as hot as her. But she’s the top. I can’t get her out of my head. Lots of crew can’t. That’s why her page gets so many hits, and so much business. There’s even a new one with her and Max Lii!”
Ick. “You’re a sick, twisted freak, Colby. You realize that, right? This isn’t real. People don’t do this kind of stuff.”
Well...Saemar...maybe.
Colby grew a little irritated by her protests.
“I said mind your own business, you little twit. You called me. You said wanted to see this–so take a good look. What the hell do you know? I bet she gets all the hot action she wants–every night–with anyone who’ll give it to her hard and fast. Haisha! I wish I could get transferred to her flagship, just one night. Man, all the things I could do to her to make her moan and scream my name.”
“I think you’ve lost it, buddy. Have a real relationship, with a real woman. Get some serious help.”
This guy was never getting anywhere near her flagship. She’d see to that. Let him live in his sick, little fantasy world–all by his lonesome.
Colby chuckled, pweaking the controls. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. I paid extra for the special, personalization package. Cost me a chunk of change, but damn–I can put a scan of myself directly in the action, right with my hot little love-bunny. I can make everyone of those guys look just like me. Just watch this.”
No thanks, mister. This was getting waaay too creepy fast.
Jooli-Naero shot straight up to her feet.
“Okay. I’ve seen waaay too much. Time for me to go...” She turned to duck out the open panel of his small crew quarters.
Her chortled and shouted after her.
“What, afraid you might learn somethin,’ you little punk? Good riddance. Get the hell outta here, and don’t come back. Who needs a chit like you...when I have my beautiful, little warrior goddess to dream about–every night and day?”
The panel slammed shut abruptly behind her.
Fortunately, that weirdo was the only one she met thus far who was actually obsessed with her. Naero rubbed her arms and felt like she needed about fifty mist showers.
The rest of the crew took some degree of fleeting interest, as a novelty, but more or less considered those porn sites little more than a glorified gag. Nobody else took them seriously.
Thank goodness.
Naero still blinked.
Then she raised both hands to her mouth.
Wait until she told Aunt Sleak. Her aunt would flip! There had to be something the Alliance could do to suppress such webnet pirate sites.
*
Naero met with Tarim at one of his ranges for a tek session, just the two of them. Neither of them needed anymore shooting practice.
Not being a Spacer or a tek, Tarim really didn’t understand how starships actually worked. Naero quickly set the parameters on one of her portable training holocomps that she brought along, and called up the holos of two warships above them.
Tarim already raised one hand to question her.
Naero chuckled. “We’re not in grade school, Tarim. Just ask if you have a question. But it might be better to wait until I’m done explaining a few basic concepts. Or, if I’m in the process of making a point.”
“All right,” he said. “I just want you to understand from the get-go, that I’m not a tek or a scientist. I don’t really have a clue about how starships or warships actually operate.”
Naero held both of her hands palm out in front of her. “Right now, I just want you to watch and listen. Let’s go over jump drive teknology. Without jump drives, starships would not be starships.
“N, I guess I roughly grasp the concept of jump tek from the vidgames with Ty, but I’ll never be a tek like Tyber. Is there a simple way that you can tell me how jump tek works, and what are its advantages in warfare? I know that the higher the jump rating, the better it is. But I don’t understand why.”
Naero froze the holo ships above them.
“Jump drives allow starships to ‘jump’ from one star system to another, within range and reason. They do this by going into, or travelling through, and coming out of a Space-Time shortcut called ‘jump space.’ Some call it hyperspace.”
Naero cleared her throat. “Using a jump drive to pass through the shortcut of jump space, starships can cover the vast distances of Space-Time much quicker, by folding Space-Time and travelling through the shortest space of the fold. So in essence, a jump drive is kinda like a time machine too. It saves people time by covering great distances faster, and getting people to their destinations quicker. Speeding up travel, trade, and warfare between worlds.”
The way Tarim’s eyes moved and then stared, he still looked confused.
“So, what are jump ratings on jump drives for?”
“Jump drives currently have ratings between 1 and 8. Theoretically, those are the only levels of jump that are currently available and possible, with all of the knowledge, tek, and construction materials at hand. The higher the jump rating, the farther and faster a starship can travel through jump space with each jump. And it’s always possible to compute a shorter, faster jump within the range of each rating.”
Tarim rubbed his face. “So, what’s the difference between all of the ratings?”
“Usually a difference in days, hours, or minutes. That’s why speed of advance can be crucial during war time. A navy that can jump farther and faster than another has a distinct, strategic, and tactical advantage.”
“I’ll take your word for that. Why does a starship come out of jump space, and still have to proceed to a system, planet, or starbase and such? Why can’t it just jump right to the destination and be there?”
Naero nodded and held up one hand. “Don’t get too far ahead of me, Tarim. There’s a good reason for that, and I’ll get to it. But let’s finish discussing jump drives. You started this. I want you to understand these concepts first. Higher rated jump drives are also more accurate and precise in their jump calculations, and can bring starships out of jump space, and back into regular, or standard Space-Time, closer to the target system, planet, or destination. Yet still within a safe distance.”
“Is it true that most military vessels have higher jump ratings than private vessels?”
Naero nodded. “In general, yes. Most private and commercial starships are rate
d Jump-1 through Jump-5. Military vessels currently have ratings between Jump-4 and Jump-7.”
“You said there was a Jump-8?”
“Most ships don’t have Jump-8. That’s still mainly experimental. But the theory and the raw tek is out there. Good teks and engineers modify and tinker with their own ships all of the time, attempting to gain whatever edge they can. But doing so can be perilous. A single malfunction during a jump–a misjump–can be extremely dangerous.”
“How so? What is a misjump, and what happens to the ship and the crew? Can it dump them into a star, or smash the ship into a planet?”
Naero shook her head. “Not so much that. Although such calamities have happened, on super-rare occasions. The odds are simply very high against that sort of thing. But when a jump drive misjumps, it sends a starship into jump space out of control, and out of balance. While the ship bounces out of control for a random space of minutes or days, the physical stress forces on starships is intense, and can even tear ships apart. Next, the ship could be damaged severely and dumped out of space into the middle of nowhere. Dead Space–where no one can hear or reach them in time before their systems fail, and all within perish.”
“So, is that part of the reason why starships have to pull a safe distance away from a planet, or even other ships, before it is clear to jump?”
“Somewhat. But anything with sufficient mass in close proximity to the jumping starship can greatly interfere with the entry into jump space. And those calculations are made automatically. Jumping too soon or too close to another large mass can trigger anything from a misjump to the worst calamity—a gigablast.”
“A what?”
“The ship and everything on it becomes a gigantic quanta-bomb. Protonic reversion reduces all the atoms into sudden, explosive energy. The starship blows up, obliterating itself and everything nearby it.”
“That sounds bad.”
“Exploding all of your atoms isn’t usually good for anyone. But sometimes, as a last resort, a doomed ship will use this technique as a desperate, last resort in wartime. If a ship is going to be destroyed anyway, such a suicide run, ploughing through enemies all around it, can do a lot of damage.”
Tarim nodded. “I remember stuff like that early on in the Annexation War. Not so much now.”
“No, thank goodness. Now things are pretty much conventional. One side simply trying to wear down the defenses of the other and crush them. I want to explain that, but first I want to make sure we’re clear on jump drives and what they do.”
“I guess so.”
His eyes still looked a little glassy.
Naero rolled her own eyes briefly. “Think of it this way. Two systems are separated by a stellar distance of say…ten parsecs, about thirty-three light years. A Jump-1 starship can reach that destination in about thirty days, or one standard month. Perhaps, even, by taking several smaller jumps along the way. That’s the way the first jumpships traveled. But a Jump-2 starship can reach the same destination in about half the time, say, two weeks.
“While a starship with a Jump-3 drive can reach it faster yet, in a few days. Jump-4, in a single day. Jump-5, a handful of hours. Jump-6, one or two hours. And a starship with Jump-7 can reach it in a matter of minutes–not even hours.”
“Jump-8?”
“Like I said, Jump-8 is still experimental. I don’t really know what it can do yet.”
“Got it. I can see why a navy reaching a conflict zone within minutes would have a decisive advantage over ships that would take days or weeks to arrive. Can a ship be tracked or followed through jump space, to pursue it or see where it comes out?”
Naero thought of Baeven’s unique vessel.
“Intel or some ships might have experimental tek to do such things, but those capabilities do not exist on most ships. When a ship goes into jump, you normally can’t tell where it is going to go or come out. You can plot and calculate all of the possible places that it could do so, but those variables are usually too many to attempt to track. And a ship could always come out of one jump, change course in any direction, and go right back into another jump. How would you know?”
“I see. Making a ship that gets away nearly impossible to track.”
“Exactly,” Naero said.
24
The Alliance spent almost two weeks containing, probing, and regrouping around both Helapine-3 and Kysarra-5. Yet that also gave Triax time to prepare and strengthen all of their defenses.
Oddly enough, the Alliance also busied itself with the pacification of several dozen Triaxian worlds, many with no apparent strategic value whatsoever.
Naero got called into one of the fleet labs one day.
Zhen was part of the medical research team working in conjunction with Intel.
They continued to study the Triaxian genocide devices, developing new ways to neutralize the various neurotoxins, nerve agents, and bio-weapons that Triax inflicted on its own civilian populations–and then blamed them on the Alliance.
Even Shalaen leant them a hand against all of that.
Intel had a plan to seed future Triaxian worlds with concealed or cloaked microfixers–well in advance of future pacification efforts. Sort of a genocide device inoculation that they could control.
The little nanomachines would actively seek out enemy genocide devices and stand ready to neutralize them as needed, on command, or in coordination with Alliance efforts.
Naero communicated with Zhen through a bio-hazard screenlink and a shielded, sealed environment.
“What’s up, Z?”
Shen smiled through the clear bubble of her hazmat face shield.
“Thanks for coming, N. I wanted you to be the first to inform Admiral Klyne and Admiral Sandusky. After months of research since Heaven-7, we’ve finally broken virtually all of the Triaxian cosmicide codes and formulae. A handful of them we cracked right here. Others have been de-coded at other research facilities.”
Naero clapped her hands together and grinned.
“What about the newest generation of microfixers? Are they ready to go to work?”
Zhen nodded. “Almost. Ty said they’ll be online in a few days, ready to mass produce in great numbers.”
“That’s great, Z. Excellent work. Then we can begin inoculating future liberated worlds against Triax’s cosmicide devices. For once, we’ll be one step ahead or our foes, instead of them being several steps ahead of us all the time.”
Naero put in a direct call to Tyber’s lab, in order to double-check.
His holo floated before them. “Ladies...what’s up?”
“Hey, sweetie. Miss you!” Zhen called out.
Naero kept going. “Nothing but good news on this end, Ty. I hear you and your team are close to wrapping things up on the tek side of things, with our new generations of microfixers?”
Tyber leaned eagerly on one of his counters, but he looked haggard and tired. Yet his excitement clearly overrode that.
“Better than we expected. The microfixers will be ready. And even more, the fixers will also be capable of detecting, tracking, and secretly de-activating and neutralizing the actual mechanics of the genocide devices, and rendering them completely inoperative.”
“Good work, both of you and your teams. You’ve really made a difference. Intel can’t implement this initiative quickly enough. And all of you have helped make this possible.
Zhen sighed. “We’re about to save countless lives. Billions, perhaps trillions, who might have perished needlessly.”
“We still need to be cautious and work in secret,” Naero said. “We know Triax will figure out what’s happening soon enough. Then they’ll try to counter us.”
Zhen nodded. “And we’ll counter them, until their time runs out, and Triax falls into the abyss of history.”
*
Naero helped prepare Strike Fleet Six for the next, all-out assault on the two Triaxian stronghold worlds.
Despite the fact that the Alliance forces found themselves vastly outn
umbered once again, they brazenly dared to attempt a two-pronged attack on both Triaxian bases. Strategically, their efforts looked insane to any military mind–even suicidal.
The Triaxian high command even hailed and mocked them, goading and daring them to attack.
Then, just before the lead elements engaged, something very strange occurred.
Over half of the massed Triaxian fleets and ships jumped out of the two systems–in the space of a few standard minutes.
Stunned, the Triaxian forces remaining made a feeble, confused attempt to pull back and regroup their scattered and broken remaining elements.
Naero laughed and gave the command.
“All forces, commence attack. Don’t give the bastards any chance to reset their lines. Charge in and gut them!”
Now the odds against them were only three or four to one at best.
Acceptable odds for any Spacer.
The right wing of the entire Alliance forces thundered at Helapine-3 with twenty-three massed fleets. Eleven held back in strategic reserve at key points, depending on whether things went well or badly.
They faced seventy-four enemy fleets, with ten in reserve.
Yet almost all of those fleets had lost one third to half of their complement of warships.
Admiral Sandusky, Spacer Intel, and the pacification fleets had done their jobs well in advance—and brilliantly.
Nebulae of fixers melted and dissolved the layered curtains of mines and death drones.
Admiral Maeris sent the massed Alliance fleets in in stacks of wedges.
Battleships and their biggest guns up front in three staggered lines.
Hippolyta and fourteen of her amazon sisters held a reunion of half of their total number, anchoring the core of the Alliance assault. They roared their war cries in rage and fury.
Sixty 16m, rapid fire quad guns were a blinding, terrifying force to behold indeed, especially when massed together. All threescore of those gigantic 16m batteries blazing. They lit up the entire sector like a gigantic super nova.
Enemy ships vanished before them, completely obliterated.
The best Triax had to offer fled the field before them or got taken down in bright sheets of destroying light.
Citation Series 1: Naero's War: The Annexation War Page 16
