Excalibur's Quest

by Dietmar Wehr

  “We’ve received a message. I will paraphrase the contents. They have acknowledged that we did travel to P1 and back, thereby demonstrating the superior FTL technology. They more or less thanked us for bringing the craft back. They’re willing to send us the technical data on the atomic manipulation technology; however, they say that our translation matrix is not yet complete enough to be able to convey the data in a way that we will understand. If we’re prepared to wait and continue working on expanding the translation vocabulary, they’ll send the data as soon as it becomes feasible.”

  “What is your assessment of the translation matrix with regards to technical vocabulary, Com?” asked Koenig.

  “A majority of technical and scientific terms have not yet been translated. ComComp calculates a ninety-two percent probability that the Xenos believe what they’re saying.”

  Koenig didn’t like their response. It meant keeping the ship in the same spot for who knew how long, and the Xenos would be able to pinpoint its location by plotting how long it took for messages to travel to Excalibur and back. If they wanted to capture her, they’d know where to find her in spite of her hull camouflage. Although he wanted to ask Karine’s opinion, he didn’t, because she was in the middle of her sleep cycle.

  “Tell them that we’ll wait, and also tell them that we do not want any of their ships approaching us. If we detect any ship doing that, we will interpret it as an aggressive act and respond accordingly.”

  The reply came back quickly.

  “They say that no ship will approach us. We have nothing to fear from them. They are curious as to why we are so…paranoid.”

  “Explain to them that we’ve been told they are an extremely aggressive race and that we should exercise caution when dealing with them. By the way, find out what they call themselves too.”

  “The answer to the question of what they call themselves is not translatable as of yet. They’ve explained that they are not innately aggressive but had to conquer the race that developed the matter manipulation technology as a last resort when that race would not share or trade it. They also say that when they’ve built enough carrying capacity to save their own race, they’ll let the inventing race retake possession of the mining and construction facilities in order to save themselves. They’ve asked if we are ready to resume working on the translation matrix.”

  “Yes, go ahead and resume that process.”

  The next 74 hours were nerve-wracking. Koenig had ordered passive visual scanning only on the surrounding space in order not to give away Excalibur’s precise position because of a nagging worry that the Xenos would orient their ships’ hulls so that no reflections would be seen by the ship’s opticals. He kept the crew at alert stations continuously knowing full well that it was wearing them down.

  He was just about to hand the bridge over to Chen when the com AI announced that the translation task had been completed enough to begin the tech transfer.

  “Did they say how long it would take?” he asked.

  “Negative.”

  As the data started to flow in, Koenig had the engineering AI and the human technical staff start analyzing it to see if it was real or bogus. The preliminary verdict was that it was real.

  With almost nine minutes worth of data in hand, the tactical displayed pinged for attention, and a shiver went up Koenig’s spine.

  “Multiple reflection contacts bearing two hundred eleven degrees relative. Minimum of thirteen confirmed ships,” said the tactical AI.

  “Dammit!” said Koenig as he slammed his fist into his other palm. “They’re trying to ambush us from behind after all.”

  “TacComp calculates less than a thirty-four percent probability that these contacts are Xeno ships. Reflections are very faint, indicating extreme range. The bearing is consistent with ships that have crossed the gravity threshold if they came from the vicinity of the Zukas home system. It is highly unlikely that the Xenos could have moved thirteen ships around us without being detected until now.”

  Koenig looked at the tactical display carefully and nodded. The unknown ships were coming from a vector that made no tactical sense if they were Xeno ships, but which made excellent sense if they were Zukas ships. He tried to figure out why the Zukas would be sending that many ships here; the only answer that seemed rational was that they wanted to force the Xenos to give up the atomic manipulation tech rather than try to trade for it. And they knew where to go because humans had told them where the Xenos might be.

  This is our fault! That realization made Koenig uncomfortable. The smart thing to do now would be to not get involved in this fight, but that didn’t feel right. Besides, the idea of giving the Zukas a little payback was very tempting.

  “Go to Battle Stations,” said Koenig in what he hoped was a calm voice. “Com, give me inter-craft. This is the CO. We’ve just detected what is very likely a Zukas fleet, which may be here to attack the Xenos. They knew to come here because we gave them that information; so, if they attack the xenos, it’s partly our fault. I’ve decided that we will assist the Xenos as much as we can without putting the ship, her crew and our mission in jeopardy. Koenig out. Com, send this message to the Xenos: ‘A minimum of thirteen unidentified ships have been detected. Their intention may be hostile. We are ready to assist in your defense if you wish us to. We are coming closer to you to minimize communication lag.’ Okay, send that, and give them our astrogational data on the bogeys. Astro, head for the construction facility at max Gs.”

  The reply took longer to arrive than Koenig expected.

  “The message says that they’ve detected nine ships. They appreciate our warning and offer of assistance but say that their own defense fleet is capable of stopping the invaders, and they do not want our ship to risk destruction. Our FTL technology is too valuable to them to risk losing it. They suggest we stay well away from the construction site and the approaching ships.”

  “In that case, bring us around, Astro, and increase the range to the construction site to ten light-minutes. That should be plenty. Com, advise the Xenos that we’re withdrawing from their vicinity as requested.”

  When Excalibur was at the 10 light-minute range, Koenig cancelled Battle Stations, and Vasily quickly came to the Bridge. After bringing her up to speed, they watched the tactical display, which was not able to show the whole battle due to intermittent sunlight contacts. It took another 34 minutes before there was visual confirmation of fighting.

  “Sensors have detected three distinct nuclear detonations in the vicinity of the large object. Light intensity from the large object is decreasing,” said the tactical AI.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” murmured Vasily. In a louder voice she said, “What would explain the drop in light intensity, Tactical?”

  “If the object changed its orientation or the surface area was reduced due to battle damage, the amount of reflected light would drop.”

  Vasily looked over at Koenig and saw that his expression was grim. “I know this doesn’t make sense, but I don’t like sitting here and watching the Xenos get mugged,” she said.

  Koenig sighed. “I feel the same way. The Xenos haven’t done anything so far to deserve their reputation. Any more nuke blasts, Tactical?”

  “Negative, Commander.”

  “Is that good or bad?” asked Vasily.

  Koenig shook his head slowly. “I have a feeling it’s bad. The Zukas probably have gravity cannon, given that they didn’t show any interest at all in acquiring that tech. If that’s the case, then the nukes were probably missiles fired by the Xenos, and if we’re not seeing any more detonations, that implies they’re not firing any more missiles or their missiles aren’t getting through to their targets.”

  As the minutes ticked by with no further signs of battle, Koenig wondered if Excalibur should send a query to the Xenos concerning the status of the attack. His gut instinct told him to wait. It was almost an hour after the nuclear explosions had been detected when the Xenos transmitted an omni-direction
al message.

  “They say the Zukas have left after taking samples of atomic manipulation technology. The attack appears to be over. They also say that the Zukas have created so much debris from their salvage efforts that there are pieces of the atomic manipulation technology drifting in space that we’re welcome to take because it’s easier for them to rebuild from scratch what they’ve lost than it would be to repair the damaged equipment.”

  “I suppose that makes sense,” said Koenig. “Tell them that we’re on our way in, and we’ll identity ourselves with flashing lights. Astro, let’s head in closer, but I’m not in a hurry. We’ll go in at moderate velocity with our running lights on, the hull camo off and active scanning when we get close.”

  When the ship got within 100,000 kilometers, Koenig ordered the display switched to the external opticals with maximum zoom. Both he and Vasily gasped as they saw the extent of the damage. The large object was now clearly recognizable as a huge ship that had sustained some damage. There were hundreds of pieces of debris—from Xeno ships literally cut to pieces by Zukas’ gravity cannon beams—floating around. Excalibur had to decelerate to a very low velocity to avoid colliding with debris big enough to damage the hull.

  “What are those?” asked Vasily, pointing to tubular, skeletal structures, some of which were missing sections.

  “Engineering? Can you answer that question?” asked Koenig.

  “They are the atomic manipulation equipment that’s set up to build sections of the large ship. Those sections would be towed into place in the larger hull and then permanently attached to it.” There are some pieces of the skeletal structures floating freely. These have been identified by the Xenos as available for us to salvage.”

  “Will they fit into the hangar bay?” asked Koenig.

  “There are two pieces that are small enough to fit. The shuttle will have to tow them magnetically.”

  Koenig turned to look at Vasily. “I’d like you to supervise that operation, Karine, but no personal EVAs this time.”

  “Okay, no EVAs. I’ll go assemble the technical team I’ll take along.”

  Koenig now had the Bridge to himself. He watched as the ship came to a complete stop relative to the construction site and the floating debris. He was just about to look away when something caught his eye.

  “That piece of ship wreckage that looks like a triangle. Zoom in on that, Tactical.”

  As the image zoomed in and focused, Koenig smiled and nodded. “It looks a hell of a lot like a piece of hyperspace maneuvering equipment attached to that hull. Am I right, Engineering?”

  “Affirmative. The piece of hull has a different spectral signature from the rest of the Xeno debris. It therefore has to be from a Zukas ship that was partially destroyed.”

  “Yes,” said Koenig, “and that means that the Xenos don’t need to get that technology from us. All they have to do is salvage and examine that piece, and they’ll be able to duplicate it as needed. Let’s inform them that we’re in the process of salvaging the matter manipulation debris. Ask them if we have enough data now to fully exploit the salvaged equipment.”

  “They’ve replied that we do, and they ask if we’re ready to transfer our FTL technology now?”

  “Tell them that we can do better than that. We’ve identified one piece of Zukas ship debris that has the hyperspace maneuvering equipment attached to it. There may be more pieces. If they salvage it, they will be able to duplicate and exploit that technology. Let’s pinpoint that hull debris with a range-finding laser so that they know which piece we’re talking about.”

  The reply came a few minutes later. “They’ve seen our laser reflection and know which piece we’re talking about. Are we willing to wait until they’ve examined the equipment and are satisfied with it?”

  “Sure, why not? We need time to examine our salvaged pieces and the data they’ve already sent too. Tell them that we’ll hold position here.”

  It took almost two hours for the shuttle to magnetically maneuver two of the curved metal pieces, which had once been part of one of the dozens of tubular manufacturing structures, into the hangar bay.

  When Vasily arrived back on the Bridge, Koenig asked her how it went.

  “The hard part was getting them to stop tumbling. Once we’d done that, the rest was easy. You should see the faces of the tech weenies we brought with us on this trip. They’re almost salivating over the chance to actually touch and disassemble the technology that the data covers. I wonder how those tubular structures actually work though.”

  “Oh, that I can answer. While you were busy corralling those pieces, the engineering AI noticed one of the tubular structures, one that wasn’t damaged, in operation. Let’s see the replay of that, Engineering.”

  Vasily watched in fascination as a mining ship drew close enough to one of the tubular structures to almost touch it. It was seen ejecting bars of metal into the end of the structure, which was firing beams of multi-colored lights at the metal bars and seemed to disintegrate them. Further along the structure, a long, narrow metal object was slowly getting longer as a second set of multi-colored beams seemed to create matter out of thin air in a slow but steady stream. When the object was finished, it moved out into the open and unfolded into another tubular construction setup.

  “Wow,” said Vasily with awe in her voice. “How long did it take them to duplicate one of those rigs?”

  “Slightly less than six hours,” said the engineering AI.

  “So, one rig could become sixteen rigs in twenty-four hours?” she asked.

  “If there were sufficient quantities of each type of refined metal, then yes, that geometric progression is possible,” said the AI.

  She was silent for a while. “Can you imagine how many of these rigs they could have after a month or a year?”

  Koenig nodded. “Way ahead of you, Karine. The AIs have been crunching the numbers. The answer is many thousands after only one month, but the big challenge is having enough refined metal of the required types on hand when you need them. I suspect that it’s the mining and refining capacity that’s the biggest bottleneck to any kind of mammoth operation like this. That’s why they seem to have thousands of mining ships and are still building more. The Xenos have confirmed that each piece of the construction rig has all the necessary data and programming to build more rigs, and they can be scaled up in size so that one really large rig could build a complete light cruiser for example. That behemoth out there is too fucking large to build in once piece, which is why they have to do it one small section at a time. Once we get our own rigs up and running, the challenge will then be to program them to build what we want.”

  The com AI interjected before Vasily could reply. “They’re asking us if we have some idea of whether the Zukas might attack again. If that’s likely, then they’ll have to give a more powerful defense force top priority.”

  Vasily watched Koenig as he crossed his arms and paced back and forth in front of the main display with his head down.

  “I’ve been toying with an idea for what we could do next,” he said without raising his head or stopping. “It might help the Xenos by distracting the Zukas. Suppose we head for the Cloak-‘A’s next, and when we contact them, we let them know about the super-wave, the Zukas and their technological aggressiveness AND the fact that the Zukas have atomic manipulation technology that can save the Cloak-’A’s from the super-wave’s DNA mutations. We also offer the Cloak-’A’s information on where to find the Zukas and the hyperspace maneuvering tech in exchange for their cloaking technology. That capability has to give them a sense of tactical superiority when it comes to space combat, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they decide to use that advantage to do to the Zukas what the Zukas just finished doing to the Xenos. If we can pull that off, we get the Zukas off the Xenos’ backs and pick up some useful tech at the same time.”

  Vasily looked thoughtful. “What if the Cloak-’A’s try to steal our tech? The Vergon said they were opportunistic. With th
eir cloaking tech, they could sneak right up to us, and we wouldn’t know it until they spring their ambush. There’s also the time delay that a side trip would create. We’ve accomplished our mission in getting the atomic manipulation tech. Shouldn’t we be heading home, Wolfe?”

  Koenig sighed. She was right about the time delay a detour would generate. As much as he was tempted to help the Xenos out with a distraction of the Zukas, getting home asap was a higher priority.