Stars & Empire: 10 Galactic Tales

by Jay Allan

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  THE SYNCHRONICITY WAR:

  PART 1

  DIETMAR ARTHUR WEHR

  Copyright 2013 by Dietmar Arthur Wehr

  All rights reserved.

  CHAPTER 1: At The Edge Of The Abyss

  Cmdr. Victor Shiloh noticed that the usual Bridge chatter had died down to almost nothing as the Squadron emerged from Jumpspace. Everyone knew the stakes. One of their own was missing, and they were here to find her. FE 319—Frigates didn’t rate names—had not reported back to base, and it hadn’t sent a message drone. This was very worrisome. If the ship had been able to return, it would have. If it had malfunctioned or there was some other reason for a delayed return, such as a major discovery of some kind, it would have sent the drone back. The entire squadron, seven Frigates under the command of Squadron Leader Torres, had been sent to investigate. FE 344, under Cmdr. Shiloh, was designated as the rear guard, staying behind at the point where the Squadron emerged so that it could jump back into Jumpspace with a warning for HQ if something nasty happened to the other six ships of the squadron. FE 344 decelerated to a crawl, relatively speaking, while it changed its orientation to enable it to jump away from this star system instead of closer to it. With that maneuver done, Shiloh relaxed just a little bit. They could now jump at a moment’s notice if they had to.

  “Now we wait,” he said, loud enough for the rest of the Bridge crew to hear him. He switched his command station’s main viewer to show the long range Tactical display. He saw his ship, at the center of the display, as a green triangle, with six other green triangles slowly moving to the top of the screen, spreading out as they did so towards the inner part of this star system. As he watched, the display showed clusters of smaller green dots moving away from the green triangles. The Squadron had launched reconnaissance drones for long range snooping. A star system was a big place for one small ship to hide in. By comparison, a needle in a haystack was trivial. Without the recon drones, it could take weeks to find the missing ship.

  Nothing of significance was occurring to engage Shiloh’s attention, and he began to ponder how the nature of faster-than-light travel determined Humanity’s expansion into the rest of the galaxy. The rate at which ships traveled through Jumpspace was determined by how fast they were moving when they entered Jumpspace. The more velocity a ship had, the faster the transit through Jumpspace, although the relationship was logarithmic rather than linear. If you wanted to go twice as fast in Jumpspace, you had to build a velocity that was ten times as fast in normal space. Entering and moving through Jumpspace required energy that was generated by the fusion of heavy hydrogen. The contra-gravity engines that moved a ship through normal space also required lots of energy. So when a ship’s limited supply of heavy hydrogen was low enough to be a factor in a planned transit between two star systems, the Astrogator calculated the optimum combination of normal space acceleration, Jumpspace duration and normal space deceleration at the other end, to minimize the total consumption of fuel. What irked Shiloh, and most of the other exploration frigates commanders, was the fact that their ships hadn’t been designed to be able to refuel themselves by skimming the atmospheres of gas giants, separating the tiny amounts of heavy hydrogen from the more abundant normal hydrogen. For some reason, which no one seemed to understand, the designers had traded the self-refueling capability for a larger fuel capacity. This meant that the frigates could operate for longer periods of time before having to rendezvous with tankers, but they still had a limited range of operation. That meant that explorations squadrons were tied to tankers, which themselves could only move forward if they were certain that the destination star system contained at least one gas giant, and not all star systems did. SFE144 was operating at the limit of its internal fuel supply. Regardless of what they did or didn’t find here, the squadron’s frigates had just enough fuel to make it back to their assigned tanker.

  It was an hour later when things started to happen. By that time, the rest of the Squadron was far enough away that there was an appreciable time lag in two-way communications. The other six ships kept in constant contact with 344 by tight beam, low-powered lasers, and 344 acted as a relay station, keeping each ship in the squadron in contact with the rest, albeit with an even bigger time lag. It was easier for them to stay in contact with one fixed location—344—than it would have been with multiple moving locations. The relay ship kept track of the moving ships by the direction of the incoming laser beams and by the navigational data that each ship provided about its speed and course. Computers onboard the relay ship aimed the return laser where the target ship would be by the time the laser beam arrived there. Theoretically, two ships could communicate from opposite sides of a star system, but the time lag of many hours made it not worth the effort. Shiloh became aware that his Executive Officer had arrived on the Bridge to relieve him.

  “You’re relieved, Skipper,” said Lt. Commander Angela Johansen.

  Shiloh nodded and swiveled his command chair around to face her. After getting up, he waited while she sat down and adjusted the command chair to better fit her body’s smaller dimensions. A properly adjusted chair made a four-hour duty shift a lot more tolerable. As she did so, he couldn’t help noticing—once again—that she had a very attractive figure. Not that he was actually tempted to do anything with that fact. While physical relationships between officers were not prohibited, they were ‘discouraged’ on the theory that anything other than a professional relationship might result in biased performance reviews. When she was finished, he leaned over so that their conversation wouldn’t distract the rest of the Bridge crew who were also in the process of being relieved.

  “No sign of 319 yet, or of anything else for that matter. The ship’s in stealth mode. Maintain the status quo. I’m going to hit the sack, but I want you to call me if there’s any new development.”

  “Understood. I’ll pass that on to Michaels when he relieves me. What do you think happened to the 319, Skipper?”

  Shiloh shrugged. “There’s no distress beacon, no message drone beacon. That’s not a good sign. It suggests to me that whatever happened to the 319, it happened so fast that they didn’t have time to launch a message drone, or else the message drone was destroyed or disabled.” He paused while both of them pondered the implications of that. “Listen, stay sharp and make sure everyone else stays sharp too. I don’t want us to be surprised, right?”

  The XO nodded. “Right.”

  Shiloh gave her an encouraging pat on the shoulder as he moved away, heading down to his cabin. He was surprised how tired he was. This mission was a lot more stressful than the survey missions the exploration frigate squadrons normally engaged in, and it wasn’t the first time an FE had gone missing. That first ship had belonged to another squadron exploring a different sector of space, and no sign of it had yet been found. When 319 was declared overdue, their nearest forward base had ordered their squadron to search for her under the rules of engagement that had been designed for war but never used—until now. Hence the ship was operating in stealth mode. There were no running lights and no energy emissions of any kind, except for the tightly focused communication beams that were impossible to detect unless another ship happened to pass exactly between the sender and the receiver.

  By the time Shiloh reached his cabin, he was too tired to think about their situation anymore. He didn’t even bother to remove his uniform as he let himself fall face down on his bunk. Sleep came almost instantly … and when his wakeup alarm sounded, he immediately woke up. For a few seconds he thought he must have set it to the wrong time. He checked it and realized that he had slept seven hours, which gave him one hour to shower, dress and grab something to eat in the Officer’s Mess before heading back to the Bridge for his duty shift. While he got ready to take a shower, he decided to check with the Bridge.

  “Intercom,” he said, activating the two com implants, one in his ear and one adjacent to his voice box. “Bridge…”

  “Bridge here,
Skipper.”

  “Status report, Michaels.”

  “No sign of the 319. The Squadron is continuing its sweep pattern. No change in ship’s status.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  By the time he had showered, dressed and began drinking a coffee in the Officers’ Mess, he was feeling much more alert. Just as he started to eat his breakfast, the Bridge called him.

  “Shiloh here.”

  “Skipper, 301 reports that one of their recon drones has detected a vessel at long range. It seems to be drifting. As far as they can tell at that range, the ship is the right size to be the 319. The SL has ordered 323 and 299 to rendezvous with her at the drifting ship. It’ll take them approximately five and a half hours to intercept the drifting vessel with zero velocity. The drone is being vectored for a flyby, and 301 expects to have a positive ID in approximately 34 minutes. With the time lag in transmission, we should know about 9 minutes after that. “

  “Did the Squadron Leader have any instructions for us?”

  “No Sir.”

  “Very well then. We’ll wait until there’s a positive ID before I inform the crew. Anything else, Commander?”

  “No Sir.”

  “I’ll be up to the Bridge shortly then. End message.”

  Shiloh pondered the information he’d just received. If that really was the 319, then perhaps it was just a malfunction of some kind. Anxious to get back to the Bridge, he finished his breakfast quickly and headed up. Even though he was almost 15 minutes early for his duty shift, he decided to relieve the Second Officer now. After relieving Lt. Commander Michaels, he did a quick check of the ship’s systems and status, and then settled in to await word of the drifting ship’s identity.

  The time-lagged word came through the comlink just about right on schedule. It WAS the 319. Squadron Leader Torres had ordered the drone flyby video feed to be retransmitted to the relay ship and then to the other ships of the squadron. Shiloh watched the video in real time and then replayed it in slow motion with maximum zoom. The drone got to within one klick of the 319, and the video clearly showed that the 319 had suffered some kind of damage to its hull. Shiloh could see in its hull what appeared to be a long straight gash that cut diagonally from the Bridge almost all the way back to the Engineering Section. He couldn’t imagine any kind of malfunction that would cause that particular kind of damage. What he could imagine was an attack by an energy weapon like a laser. He decided to keep his suspicions to himself for now, but the crew deserved to know that their sister ship had been found.

  “Intercom … ship-wide … Attention all hands. We’ve just received confirmation that one of 301’s drones has positively identified a drifting ship as the 319. No contact with her crew has been achieved, so there’s no way to know at this time what the status of her crew is. As soon as we get additional information, it will be passed on to all of you. Let’s hope the news is good. That’s all for now. End message.”

  Now that he’d gotten that duty out of the way, Shiloh checked the incoming data feed from Torres. The Squadron Leader hadn’t expressed an opinion as to the cause of 301’s situation either. However good the drones’ optics were, the definitive answer would have to wait until human eyes got up close and personal. What the SL had done, though, was to order the recon drone to swing around for another slower—and closer—pass. The drone would still make it back to the 319 before the 301, 323 and 299 arrived in the vicinity with zero remaining velocity. But once there, Torres would send over a ship’s boat with a boarding party that included not only medical and engineering personnel, but also an inspection team to look closely at the exterior damage. Until then, they just had to wait and see.

  The remainder of Shiloh’s shift went surprisingly fast. After being relieved by Lt. Cmdr Johansen once again, he went back to the Officers Mess for lunch. He was alone, as usual, since his eight hour ‘day’ just happened to coincide with most officers’ eight hour ‘night’.

  His lunch finished, Shiloh leaned back in his chair and lingered over his coffee. Even though he wasn’t tired, he felt the urge to close his eyes. Then something happened that had not happened to him since he was in his teens. He felt an unusual, yet strangely familiar sensation come over him. When he opened his eyes, he saw himself standing in front of Admiral Howard’s desk back at U.E.S.F. HQ. He heard the Admiral speak.

  ‘It’s a good thing you launched those recon drones when you did, Commander. The mission would have ended very differently if you hadn’t.’

  Then he felt that same urge to close his eyes for a few seconds.

  When he opened them again, he was back in the Officers’ Mess on board the 344. The last time he had a ‘vision’ like that was when he and some friends were climbing in the rugged wilderness of the Rocky Mountains. In that vision, he saw and heard a rescue paramedic congratulate him on having the foresight to attach a second safety line to his friend before climbing the cliff they had planned to ascend. So he did, in fact, attach a second safety line. Halfway up the cliff the first line snapped, and his friend only suffered a painful gash instead of a fatal plunge to his death. At the time he thought the vision must have been just his imagination, and yet here he was having another one.

  After pondering this situation for a few minutes, he took a deep breath and said, “Intercom … Bridge.”

  The XO responded almost immediately. “Bridge here.”

  Shiloh said nothing for a few seconds, and then said, “Angela, how many recon drones are we carrying this trip?”

  There was a slight pause as the XO checked. “We have four type seven drones, Skipper.”

  Shiloh said nothing while he pondered whether to follow his vision.

  “Was there something else, Sir?” Johansen asked with a puzzled tone to her voice.

  Shiloh came to a decision. “XO, I want you to program two recon drones for a circular track around the ship at a range of … 100,000 klicks, with minimal overlapping coverage. What’s the maximum duration we can get with that?”

  He waited while she asked the computer for the answer.

  “Approximately 48 hours, which means the drones will complete three trips around the ship. If you were thinking of extending our sensor coverage, then I would recommend using three drones with circular tracks in three dimensions, with one complete circle every eight hours. That would mean the drones would exhaust their power supply in twelve hours, but if we recover them prior to shutdown, we can recharge them. With four drones, we can have three on the go all the time if we launch one every four hours.”

  Shiloh shook his head. “But that would mean only partial coverage for the first eight hours, correct?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “No good. I want complete coverage from the get go.”

  The XO pondered that requirement. “Okay. Here’s how we do it. We launch three drones now, then retrieve and refuel one every four hours when we’ve replaced it with a fresh one.”

  “Okay. That works for me. Implement it right away and maintain until further notice.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir. Anything else, Sir?”

  “No that’s it. Shiloh clear.”

  Shiloh felt better for having taken that action, even as he wondered how he would justify it in his log. Somehow he didn’t think the brass back at HQ would think much of his admission to having a ‘vision’. Senior Officers tended to get nervous when the Commander of a 20,000-ton Frigate started ‘seeing things’. Shiloh decided not to mention his vision in his log. He went back to his cabin and sat down to go over the daily reports and the other administrative tasks that a Commanding Officer regularly needed to attend to during his free time between duty shifts. Halfway through the pile of paperwork, the Bridge called.

  “Bridge to Shiloh.”

  “Shiloh here.”

  “Skipper, we just received the video feed from the drone’s second pass. The level of detail is much higher. Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but the hull damage looks like what you would expect from laser fire. Torres
hasn’t expressed an opinion, but if you ask me it’s obvious as hell.”

  Shiloh felt a shiver go down his spine. “Based on what I saw from the first flyby, that doesn’t surprise me.” He pondered the situation for a few seconds before adding, “Okay, I’m coming to the Bridge. End message.”

  When Shiloh got to the Bridge, the XO started to get up from the Command Station, but Shiloh waived her back down. “Just pretend I’m not here,” he told her.

  Johansen just snorted in reply as Shiloh went to the Com Station and asked the Com Tech to replay the drone’s second flyby video. The XO hadn’t exaggerated. The video feed clearly showed a deep, straight gash with blistering around the edges. Laser fire was the only possible explanation.

  “Com. Is a message drone being updated with the data from the Squadron?”

  “Affirmative Sir.”

  “Intercom … ship-wide … Attention all hands, this is the CO. I’ve just seen evidence from the 301’s recon drone flyby that our sister ship, the 319, was attacked by unknown forces. The 301 will be sending over a boarding party to search for survivors. As soon as I hear what they find, I’ll pass it along. In the meantime, we have to be vigilant for whoever did this. If we need to go to General Quarters, you have to be ready to act instantly. If you hear the GQ alarm, it’ll be the real thing. I’m suspending drills for the duration of this mission. That is all for now. End message.”

  Shiloh was just about to walk away from the Com Station when the Com Tech turned to him and said, “Skipper, there’s a message for you from Cmdr Torres.”

  With the 9-minute time lag, it was going to be a one-way message.

  “Okay. Replay it from the beginning, Chen.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir. Switching now.”

  One of the screens at the Com Station suddenly showed the face of Commander Juanita Torres, who began speaking immediately.