Excalibur's Quest

by Dietmar Wehr

  “Graser hit on port side,” said the engineering AI quickly. Koenig waited one full second for the cloaking system indicator to switch from ‘off’ to ‘on’ but it didn’t. Something was wrong.

  “EVASIVE!” he yelled. The system indicator now showed the cloaking system as damaged.

  “DAMAGE!”

  “Hull breach on decks three and four portside aft including Main Engineering. Power two is down. Maneuvering is down by seventeen percent. One hyperspace maneuvering unit is disabled. Cloaking system is operating below minimum acceptable levels. Part of the ship is not being cloaked. Maximum acceleration is down by seventeen percent.”

  Koenig said a silent ‘shit’. Excalibur was hurt. “Status, starting with Astro, then Tactical.”

  “The ship is evading and accelerating at our current maximum. Range is increasing,” said the astro AI.

  “Both gravity cannon and all missile tubes are undamaged. We are still on the same trajectory as during the attack. Do you wish to change course, Commander?”

  “How long until we’re out of effective graser range?”

  “Seventeen point two minutes if we maintain our current acceleration.”

  “Then maintain our current evasion and general heading for another…twenty minutes. Advise me when we reach that point.” Koenig hesitated. There was one more thing to check; he was reluctant to ask, but he needed to know.

  “What’s the report on casualties?”

  “Five reported injuries. No reported fatalities. Correction, one fatality.”

  “Who?” asked Koenig in a stressed whisper.

  “Senior Lieutenant Chen.”

  That name reminded him that protocol required the XO to report to the Bridge directly if the ship took damage. He hadn’t heard from Vasily yet, and that worried him.

  “Koenig to XO.” When there was no reply after a few seconds, he said, “Koenig to Engineering.”

  “CEO here. We’re still assessing the situation. Damage control robotics are working on repairs.”

  “Why isn’t the XO answering my call?”

  “She’s one of our injured, sir. She’s on her way to Sick Bay now.”

  “Understood. Your repair priorities are cloaking first, power second, hyperspace maneuvering third. Questions?”

  “No questions but I can tell you right now, sir, that repairing the cloak isn’t possible until we get back home. The graser beam hit one of the cloak projectors dead on and vaporized it completely. We don’t have the necessary parts to rebuild it ourselves. Same goes for restoring full hyperspace maneuvering. The jury is still out on repairing Power Two. Lots of secondary systems, especially life support, need minor repairs too, sir.”

  Koenig took a deep breath. The situation was bad but could have been a lot worse. “Okay, Chief. I’ll let you get back to it. Keep me informed. Koenig out.”

  He checked the display. At least the new detection system was still working. Excalibur was increasing the range rapidly now that the seven undamaged Jab ships were once again accelerating towards the colony planet. None of them were attempting to pursue her, and Excalibur still had a long way to go to reach the 20 minute mark set by Koenig.

  “Tactical, if we swing around and catch up to the Romeos on a parallel trajectory within cannon fire range, will we have enough power to attack them?”

  “There is sufficient power for either gravity cannon or evasive maneuvering, but not both. The ship’s radar-deflecting hull geometry has been compromised by the hull breaches. Without a fully-functional cloak, enemy radar will have a high probability of detecting us at cannon-firing range. Therefore, evasive maneuvers would be required to reduce enemy fire hit probabilities,” said the AI.

  Koenig closed his eyes and shook his head in dismay. With odds of seven to one, any attempt by Excalibur to stop the Jab fleet now would almost certainly end in her complete destruction. The colony could not be saved from a renewed Jab occupation. They had to be warned.

  “Com, send a message to the Colony. Seven Jab warships on their way to Roark’s Drift planet. Excalibur is damaged and unable to stop them. We’ll try to send word back to HQ via the FTL relay. Tell the colonists that the TOSF won’t give up on them and will send another relief force as quickly as possible.” When he got confirmation that the message had been sent, he turned his attention back to the ship’s trajectory.

  “Astro, let’s head for the FTL relay. We’ll hold position near it until it’s finished building itself. Com, give me inter-craft. This is the CO…”

  The relay device was operational just over three days later. Koenig sent a detailed report of all the events since Excalibur’s arrival in the system, her current condition and a request for instructions. He knew it would take hours for the message to get to HQ and for their reply to get back. He had agonized over the request for instructions versus requesting approval for a return to Earth. Excalibur in her current condition was only marginally useful at best and certainly wasn’t in any shape to go into combat again. He hoped that would be obvious from the ship’s status report.

  The reply assuaged his fears. Excalibur was to return to Earth as quickly as was safe to do so. That begged the obvious question of how fast was safe.

  “Three of the four hyperspace maneuvering units are still functioning, but two are only barely within operational limits and may fail if pushed too hard,” said the astro AI.

  “Could we still decelerate back into normal space with just one functioning unit?” asked Koenig.

  “Affirmative; however, one unit will not be sufficient to adjust jump trajectory. If the ship’s jump trajectory needs adjusting, we’ll have to drop out of hyperspace, adjust our heading with standard maneuvering engines and then re-accelerate to jump velocity. Recommend minimum pre-jump velocity.”

  “If we make one jump directly to Sol, how long will it take at recommended velocity?”

  “Twenty-two point five days,” said the AI.

  Koenig almost cringed at the news: over three weeks just to get back, plus whatever time would be needed to get the ship back into fighting trim. He wasn’t even tempted, though, to ignore the AI’s recommendation regarding pre-jump velocity. He had learned the hard way that the smart thing to do was accept the recommendations.

  “Com, advise HQ of our ETA. Astro, line us up for a direct jump to Sol at recommended velocity and execute.”

  The trip back through hyperspace turned out to be a nightmare. No sooner had the ship entered hyperspace than the jump drive went off line. Koenig and the crew were terrified that unless it could be repaired, one of two things would eventually happen. Either the ship would miss Sol’s gravity well, or it would be forced to decelerate with minimal control until it dropped back into normal space a long, long way from Sol and Earth, with no way to get back into hyperspace. Somehow, the combined efforts of the human engineering crew, the engineering AI and EngSysComp managed to get the jump drive back online. That was the first crisis. The second crisis was the first attempt at maneuvering while in hyperspace. A second maneuvering unit failed, leaving only two working units, and both of them were on the same half of the ship’s hull. That meant that if they were used again, even if only to slow down, the ship would start to veer in that direction. The third crisis was the dropping output of their only remaining power unit. The damaged unit had not been repairable, and the other unit, which had not suffered any direct damage, was showing premature degrading of critical components. The CEO and engineering AI believed this was being caused by running the unit at higher than normal power output levels in order to compensate for the loss of Power Two. If Power One failed completely, the ship would have to operate on emergency backup power, which was barely enough to maintain life support and would not have enough surplus power to slow the ship down.

  The final crisis was the ship’s trajectory. With less than two days to go, the astro AI reported that the ship would miss Sol’s gravity well. Slowing the ship down until it dropped out of hyperspace was the only real optio
n, but that would put additional stress on Power One. There was no feasible alternative. When the ship was at its closest approach to the Sol system, they would try slowing down and pray that the power unit continued to operate long enough to use normal space maneuvering engines to aim the ship at Earth.

  Somehow, everything held together just long enough for Excalibur to drop into normal space 55 million kilometers further out than the orbit of Pluto, head for Earth and then decelerate on its final approach so that it could slip into a high orbit around Earth. When the AI confirmed that the ship was now in orbit, Koenig realized that his hands were shaking from the stress and tension. Excalibur was finally home. Four of the five injured had survived the trip back. Vasily was one of the four. She would need a cloned eye to replace the one that was too badly damaged to repair, and that would take months. She was determined to continue active service until the clone was ready to be implanted. Koenig admired her drive but thought it unlikely that HQ would let her stay on as XO with only one good eye. The TOSF wasn’t so short of officers that they couldn’t find a temporary replacement.

  As the shuttle took Koenig, Vasily and the rest of the crew down to Earth, he noticed that Durendal was no longer in orbit but there were two Javelin-class light cruisers that were. A query to Space Traffic Control revealed that they were Tizona and Curtana, and the shuttle managed to pass by close enough that Koenig could make out the telltale signs indicating that both ships had cloaking technology installed.

  It was the middle of the night by the time the shuttle landed at the spaceport. Koenig found the cool breeze a refreshing change from the sterile re-circulated air on the ship. When he and the crew boarded the TOSF bus expecting to be taken to temporary quarters, he was surprised to learn that the CSO himself was still at HQ and wanted to see Koenig right away. There was scarcely a soul inside HQ, but the CSO’s personal staff were all there, and they didn’t look happy to see him. He wondered if his arrival was the reason why they were still at work long after the normal work day should have been over. He was ushered into Corrigan’s inner office without any delay.

  Corrigan looked up from his desk and gestured for Koenig to sit down in one of the two comfortable chairs facing him. Corrigan’s uniform was open at the neck, a shocking breach of decorum for the most senior officer in the TOSF, but Koenig was not about to make an issue of it or even appear to notice it. If the CSO wanted to meet with a junior officer like that, who was he to object?

  “I’ve read your AA report, Koenig.” Did Corrigan’s tone have a hint of disapproval in it, or was that just Koenig’s imagination? “You and Excalibur have, prior to this mission, earned a reputation for pulling off difficult missions. Some are even saying the Excalibur is a lucky ship. I have to confess that a major reason for sending Excalibur to Roark’s Drift by itself was my belief that you and your ship would be able to pull it off successfully, and you almost did. In hindsight, I should have held your ship back until a second ship was ready to go with you. Our civilian masters are understandably unhappy with the fact that we couldn’t hold on to that colony planet after liberating it, and the blame for that will fall on me, not you. So, I didn’t send for you this late in the day to chew you out. I did it because I wanted to hear from you directly your impressions of the Jab warships, their technical and command capabilities.”

  “Yes, sir. I wasn’t exaggerating in my report when I said that I think we’ve underestimated the Jabs. Not only are their ships just as capable as ours, excluding the advanced tech we’ve gotten recently, but they may actually be more capable than ours in certain areas. Their optics have to be better than ours to detect a Javelin-class light cruiser against background stars at the ranges that they apparently did. The Tong weren’t that capable. The Jab graser that hit us did more damage than a Tong graser would have done. My engineering AI is convinced the Jab weapons are more powerful, and their ability to aim accurately is first rate. Considering that it hasn’t been that long since we gave the Jabs some obsolete ships, they’ve managed to improve upon that level of technology in a very short period of time. If we didn’t have the gravity beam, cloaking and hyperspace maneuvering tech, we’d be in serious trouble, Admiral.”

  “You make it sound as though we’re not in serious trouble now. We are, but I understand what you meant. Tizona and Curtana will be heading back there within 24 hours. I didn’t want to cut them loose until we’d gotten your report. If Sting wasn’t keeping an eye on the Tong frontier, I would have sent all three, but we have to make sure the Tong are living up to their agreement. Excalibur and Durendal will follow Tizona and Curtana in about ten to twelve days.” He paused when he noticed Koenig’s look of surprise.

  That’s right, I forgot that you don’t know what’s been accomplished back here while Excalibur was at Roark’s Drift. We now have a fully functional atomic manipulation assembly unit that’s large enough to create a Javelin-class cruiser. It’s completely programmed with everything it needs to know about that process. I’m curious to see if you can guess how it was programmed.”

  Koenig shook his head. “Sorry, sir. I have no idea.”

  Corrigan smiled. “We took Tizona, which had just been retro-fitted with the cloaking technology, and had the unit disassemble her atom by atom, storing the necessary data on location of each atom as it went. While it was disintegrating Tizona on one end, it was re-assembling the ship at the other end. The entire process took about seven days. Now that it knows how to create a Javelin, we can make copies very quickly. Durendal is already being fed into the machine. With just a little bit of additional metal, a completely operational copy of Tizona, which will be the new Durendal, is already coming out the other side. When it’s finished with Durendal, we’ll put Excalibur through the process. The new Excalibur will not be an exact duplicate of the old one, because each ship in a given class has a few minor differences, but she’ll still be a Javelin-class light cruiser with all the bells and whistles. By the time those two Javelins are done, we expect that Tassafaronga will have been recovered, and we can then use it as raw material for at least two more brand new Javelins. With six light cruisers equipped with cloak and the other tech, we should be able to liberate and hold onto Roark’s Drift, New Shangri-la and maybe even demonstrate our capabilities in the Jab home system. That’s the plan. Since Excalibur won’t be ready for another mission for at least a week, you and your crew can take some R&R. You’ve all earned it. Be back here in eight days, Commander. Questions or comments?”

  Koenig suddenly had an idea. “Well, Admiral, now that we’ve got the atomic manipulation tech working, I’m wondering if we should transport one of these assembly units to Roark’s Drift. There are at least three Jab warships that Excalibur literally cut to pieces. We should be able to find those pieces, and if we can use them as raw materials, that would go a long way to rebuilding the Fleet. And if Tizona and Curtana can generate some more pieces, well, that would be even better.”

  Corrigan stared off into infinity for a few seconds before responding. “That IS an intriguing idea. Moving an assembly unit big enough to do the job will be the big challenge, but maybe there’s a way to do it. I’ll have my staff look into the idea. Anything else?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Okay then. You’re dismissed.”

  Koenig managed to get to the hotel that the TOSF used for temporary quarters just a few minutes after the rest of the crew. He checked on Vasily. She would spend the night at the hotel, then report to the military hospital to begin the long and painful process of replacing her ruined eye. When he told her about the new tech’s ability to build copies of ships, she brightened up immediately.

  “Then by the time I have a new eye, there should be a ship that needs a newly-promoted CO, don’t you think?”

  Koenig laughed. She was right. If the new technology was soon going to be pumping out more Javelins like hotcakes, there would be a lot of new promotions to find the crews to fill them.

  “I think you’re right, Karine. Let�
��s talk about it some more over breakfast, okay?”

  The breakfast meeting never took place. When Koenig arrived in the hotel dinning room, he learned that Vasily had gotten up early and finagled a ride to the hospital to get the healing process started. When he thought about what she’d done, he couldn’t really blame her for wanting to get on with it. If he was in the same situation, he’d be in a hurry too.

  With the pressure off, he felt more relaxed but also bored. So, when Excalibur was towed over to the large tubular assembly unit to be re-forged, which was how he now thought of it, he got permission to observe the process. The unit wasn’t really built to accommodate spectators, but the engineers overseeing the process would be in a shuttle that was parked a hundred meters away, and they grudgingly let him on board.

  The trick was to get the ship moving VERY slowly in just the right direction. When that was finally accomplished after several hours of making careful adjustments to her velocity and vector, the unit was powered up just as Excalibur began to enter one end of the structure. Koenig experienced mixed feelings as the unit generated the blue circular field where solid matter would be taken apart literally one atom at a time, but with almost zero time in between atoms. He knew the ship wasn’t really going to be destroyed, but that’s what his eyes were telling him. When Excalibur’s nose touched the blue circle, nothing appeared on the other side. What did happen further down the structure was the appearance of a red circle, and Koenig gasped as the bow of the new Excalibur began to slowly emerge on the far side of it.