by D. R. Rosier
The enemy ship stopped firing, and the other two ships moved toward the damaged one to join the fight.
“Fire again, full strength pulse from another point on the shields. Randomize the location of every subsequent pulse we send. Make that a standard procedure.”
Chrystal said, “Acknowledged.”
The second pulse of energy shot out… and was absorbed by the enemy’s shields.
He suppressed the curse on the tip of his tongue. Unless they made themselves vulnerable again with the continuous fire, he wouldn’t be able to break through again unless they got very lucky. That wasn’t a good sign.
The ship bucked, and his face mask closed at the immediate drop in internal atmosphere.
Nadia was stiff as a statue in her chair, and she gripped the arm rests.
He checked the readings, they’d fired at a hundred and sixteen percent of their subspace field’s ability to absorb energy. He hoped that had been a pulse at their full power.
“Back us out of range, if they try a continuous beam hit them back.”
Chrystal said, “Moving away at point four light speed. Clear in ten seconds.”
The enemy wasn’t foolish enough to try a continuous beam again, he’d knocked the cockiness out of them, but they continued to fire pulses, and his ship was holed over twenty more times before they got out of range. One of them just a few feet from where the three of them sat.
Nadia asked, “What are we doing?”
He replied, “Strategic retreat, otherwise known as running the fuck away.”
She laughed a little nervously, “And then what?”
“I’m still working on that.”
Chrystal said, “All three ships are pursuing.”
“Can we stay ahead of them?”
Chrystal nodded, “If that’s their top speed, yes.”
He nodded, “Well, it’s better than them landing troops on the surface, but they’ll probably give up in a minute.”
He turned to Nadia, “I may be… unresponsive for a few minutes. Chrystal too.”
Then he did what any young man would do.
He removed all his perception filters, and then called his mom, specifically, the one who happened to also be the best engineer he knew…
Via quantum communication he logged into the online world, and appeared in a virtual lab with Chrystal. It took his mother Trudy a few moments to respond to his request, no doubt it took that long for her to get his message and remove her own perception filters.
Trudy asked, “What’s going on?”
“The enemy ships invading the empire edge out my ship’s capabilities by sixteen percent. I had to retreat, and Chrystal is currently fixing our hull. Power isn’t the issue, we’re barely even using twenty percent power availability for the cores we have on ship, except when using the matter/energy converter. The power conduits are equally not even close to saturation, what we need is to increase the power load specifications on the emitters to strengthen the fields.”
Trudy frowned, “That isn’t so simple. Some of the elements in those emitters, necessary ones we can’t replace with stronger materials, will burn out with more power applied.”
“I know, I looked at this briefly when designing my ship. I didn’t see a way to do it, and the current emitters were good enough for level two subspace, so I decided that was good enough. But obviously the aliens found a way to do it. Also, it’s only a guess that they were firing at full power, and not eighty percent or something else. Honestly, I won’t be happy unless we can increase the power load the emitters can handle by another fifty percent.”
Trudy asked, “Did you get field readings, were they actually stronger, or maybe configured differently?”
Chrystal replied, “I didn’t see anything odd in their configuration, their field strength just appears to be stronger.”
“More than that, if we do figure it out, I want a vote. If it’s just these three worlds and nine ships I can handle it, but if it’s the beginning of a full scale invasion, I’ll either need help from our fleet, or agreement to share our advances in power and field emitters with the Xarans.”
Trudy asked, “You’d be willing to give this to the Xarans?”
He nodded, “If, and only if, they need it to repel a large scale invasion. They keep the peace, and can be trusted. Plus, they don’t mind killing things that deserve it, and I know all the other A.I.s beside me will. They might do it, but it would hurt them, wouldn’t it? I can do it easier, but it still bothers me that it’s necessary.”
Trudy nodded, “We’ll put it to a vote if it turns into a full-scale invasion, otherwise you can handle the nine ships I think. Assuming we can figure this out that is.”
Nine weeks’ perceptive time later… thirty minutes of real time…
He’d gotten frustrated, it seemed to be impossible. He knew he must’ve been missing something and he went back to the scans of the fight. That’s when he came up with a new theory for the data, and did some checking.
He said, “I think I see how they’re doing it, take a look at these scans. They haven’t randomized their pulses at all, they always feed from the same places on the hull of the ship. At first I just thought it was more cockiness, but what if not all their emitters can interface with subspace.”
Trudy frowned, “To what end?”
He said, “The electronics necessary to simply create the field to disperse or concentrate subspace energies on their own can handle a much higher load, sixty-five percent higher power throughput than the current emitters. The current limitation on power loads is in the elements that are necessary to create the apertures to subspace. What if only some of their emitters do both, while the rest only create the field?
“I estimated we could still enter and leave subspace, and pull energy from subspace, if only a third of the emitters had those electronics. The rest of the emitters would be a shield only, which would increase the shield capability by around forty-three percent. We would lose twenty-two percent of the sixty-five because of the other third still being less capable.”
Trudy smiled, “That might work, let’s run some simulations.”
The simulations checked out, but there was only one way to be sure it would really work.
“Chrystal, upgrade two thirds of the sensors in this configuration, and update the software from the settings in the simulation. Thanks mom.”
She shook her head, “You figured it out, not me.”
He logged out, and re-enabled his perception inhibitors.
He looked over at Nadia and smiled, he’d missed her, it’d been over two months since he’d seen her beautiful face, and bright green eyes.
Nadia said, “What?”
He shook his head to clear his thoughts, now wasn’t the time they were in the middle of a battle, “I think we have an idea.”
She raised an eyebrow, “In twenty minutes?”
“For you, it’s been longer for me.”
Chrystal said, “The… software will be ready in two minutes.”
He almost laughed, truth, but not the whole truth. With two types of emitters, the control software had to be changed as well.
Nadia had no way to know they were rebuilding two thirds of the emitters right now, of course, she could hardly have failed to see the hull fixing itself in here.
He wasn’t sure that was a big enough clue for her to figure out what they were capable of or not. He was half tempted to make their ship larger, but decided against it.
He turned to Chrystal, “Randomize a spin and flip cycle, to keep them from accurately targeting our load points, and move us into position as soon as the system is updated.”
When they fired, their enemy’s sensors would see where the lines of energy started from on the hull, if they managed to guess the split second of when they fired, and hit one of those partially saturated places, they could still pierce the hull.
But sensors would always be behind, once the enemy saw them fire, it would already be too late and hitting the en
emy’s ship. Randomly spinning the ship meant they couldn’t accurately estimate what part of the ship they’d hit exactly, since the spin speed would vary and again, their sensors would be a second or so behind. They could still get randomly lucky and hit the right spot, at the right time, but the odds were very much in Mike’s favor against that.
Of course, they were moving toward all three ships now, the shields could take multiple hits at once, but too close together and simultaneously could cause problems. He was fairly sure it would take more than three enemy ships with the edge they had at this point, but there was no point in taking chances.
“Keep one of their ships between us and another of theirs if you can.”
Chrystal replied, “I’ll try, but they’re spreading out to surround us.”
“That’s not a bad thing.”
Nadia asked, “It’s not? Sounds bad to me.”
“It’ll make it harder for them to target the same area on our hull with any accuracy. Of course, they don’t think they’ll need to do that, and are trying to cut off our escape.”
Chrystal said, “Coming into energy range, and our gravity shields are holding back the formation of a gravity field.”
He looked over at her, “How is that possible from their distance? The power requirements would be astronomical.”
The power requirements for artificial gravity fields went up squared by distance, the further away the sharper the power curve.
Chrystal shook her head and looked mystified, “Unknown. In range… now.”
“Fire two pulses in three second intervals randomly up to plus or minus a second. If necessary skip a cycle when they fire on us, and just enhance their shot and send it back.”
He felt a small sense of relief, when the subspace energy beams knocked two holes in one of the three large ships, but they were far from done, and that ship was huge. It was like trying to destroy a bus one needle hole at a time.
“Try and concentrate the shots in the same area, and take out enough emitters to cause a gap in their shielding.”
She replied, “Acknowledged.”
The aliens didn’t give up, or try to communicate in any way as they traded fire back and forth for quite a while. His small scout ship got holed three times from lucky shots, but he’d put hundreds in one of the large ones.
Chrystal reported, “The gravity field hasn’t gone up appreciably as they’ve gotten closer.”
That was just one more impossibility, unless…
“Do you think they could be creating it through level two subspace? In that smaller space our ships would practically be kissing at this range.”
Chrystal looked thoughtful, “It’s possible, gravity can be propagated in subspace, and it does leak across dimensional layers.”
Something else to look into… later.
The three ships still surrounded him, and fired, hoping to get lucky. It wasn’t outside the bounds of possibility, and had already happened three times. If they hit the wrong spot, they’d have a real problem. The longer this fight went on, the more danger they were in.
“Close to our gravity weapon range on one of the unharmed ships, and try to crush their hull.”
The ship changed course and started to close with the enemy.
Chrystal said, “We’ve opened a fifty-foot gap in the shields on the ship we’ve been hitting.”
He nodded, “Fire a fifty-foot pulse at ten percent power through the hole, maybe we’ll get lucky.”
The larger the beam, the more danger they were in from return fire, and a fifty-foot beam would be a good percentage of their hull, but at ten percent power they could still absorb an attack, and with no shielding on the enemy ship in that area, ten percent was plenty enough to drill a fifty-foot diameter hole through their entire ship.
The beam jumped off of their ship’s shields, and cut through decks, equipment, people, and anything else that got in the way. Two seconds later, there was a secondary detonation of a power node which blew the ship into fragments.
“Did you read the location of that power system through the downed shields?”
Chrystal nodded, “Approximately. But it was one shot in a million, we must have shaved it. If we’d taken it out completely it wouldn’t have exploded.”
Right, lucky hit. He wouldn’t complain.
Chrystal said, “We’ve reached gravity weapon range, engaging.”
He smiled as the gravity field formed, their gravity technology was stronger, even if they couldn’t use it from a distance like the enemy. At least, not until he figured out how to do it through subspace.
The enemy’s hull crumpled and the emitters in that whole section were turned into scrap.
“Continue making large holes in their shields with the gravity weapon, and fire at ten percent power into the holes.”
The second ship still took time to destroy, even if the holes were closer to fifty feet wide, as opposed to the normal six inch ones. At close range, the enemy could read them well enough to shoot accurately, but since he was firing at ten percent that didn’t even matter, his shields absorbed the punishment, and sent it right back.
He tore the second ship to pieces, until it finally like the first, ignited secondary explosions.
He relaxed a little, with two ships destroyed.
“Close with the third.”
Chrystal turned to him, “They’re coming at us at top speed, I think they intend to ram us.”
Well, these guys don’t give up. He’d half expected them to retreat, but no such luck.
“Retreat, but keep us just in range of our gravity emitters.”
The third ship died even faster, just six shots after the gravity had cleared a section, because they were facing the front of the enemy ship. The energy ripped through the entire length of the two-mile ship leaving nothing but vacuum on several decks.
“How are we?”
Chrystal replied, “I’ll have the damage cleared shortly.”
He looked over to Nadia, who had a very relieved, but also suspicious look on her face.
“You have that matter energy thing, don’t you?”
Chapter Fourteen
“What make you say that?” He asked innocently.
Her eyes narrowed, “Because hulls don’t just fix themselves.”
“Well, what if ours did?” he asked nonsensically. It wasn’t his fault, she was damned distracting.
She rolled her eyes, “I’m thankful we’re still alive, I get the feeling we wouldn’t be otherwise. Why hide it?”
He shrugged, “Technology has always been a bone of contention between us and Earth.”
Nadia nodded thoughtfully, “I guess that makes sense.”
She got up and walked over to him, and stood on her toes to kiss his cheek. Then she put her hand on his arm.
“Thank you for taking me along, that was terrifying, but enlightening at the same time. I’ll get us some coffee. We have two more worlds to save, correct?”
“So far yes,” he replied, “just two more unless we hear otherwise.”
He watched her as she walked out with a strange look on his face. He hadn’t expected that at all. Her scent, and the warmth of her sexy body near his had his body reacting. It had been two months since he’d been with Chrystal after all, subjectively at least, and he was very attracted to the strikingly gorgeous woman. He also couldn’t help but notice she took it very well, or was she just in shock? Or maybe she was used to violence?
Chrystal interrupted his thoughts about a certain raven haired beauty.
“Umm, Mike, we’ve been contacted by the ruler of Selana-Esari. He wants to see us, he knows we have to go quickly, and says it won’t take long.”
He frowned, “Any idea what about?”
Chrystal looked thoughtful for a second, “I’m not sure, except the Esari have a concept of life-debt. They probably want to thank you, for… saving everyone?”
She hadn’t sounded very sure.
“Head for the planet, as
long as it’s very fast we can spare a few minutes. How long would it take you to change to the destroyer configuration?”
He figured if they were going to be delayed before heading to the next world, they might as well gain the slight advantage of a larger ship. Now that the energy to matter secret was out of the bag as well, they might as well take advantage of the capability.
The destroyer configuration was just three times the size of the scout ship, a hundred yards long instead of a hundred feet, and was meant to be crewed by twenty instead of just two. The top level wouldn’t look much different, just a slightly larger bridge with a holo-table instead of a screen, and the corridor would just go back three times further, with ten more rooms on each side for the crew.
The only addition to his original schematic was to keep the kitchenette and storage rooms, which would partition the first two rooms by the bridge from the rest of the rooms. Humans liked to cook sometimes, and he took his father’s advice. Sometimes shortcuts should be avoided when possible.
It would also be wider, but not on the top level, or the current bottom level which would become the middle level, engineering. A new bottom level would be a hundred feet wide, instead of fifty, and hold twenty shuttles, with a barracks type area for the pilots, and a small boarding or ground force.
He thought the shuttles could probably be remote controlled, and have them swarm the larger ships and tear holes with gravity attacks for the main ship to fire into. The shuttles would have subspace tech in them for shielding, but only from energy attacks, they wouldn’t be able to fire a very wide beam because they’d be approximately the size of a van.
They would however, be able to rip those holes in the enemies shields with widespread gravity attacks, which would speed things up, and give the enemy other targets to shoot at.
He also thought they might be able to fly into one of those breaches, and then from the inside nothing would stop it from using a constant thin beam to chop it up into pieces, like the enemy ships had cut the Esari fleet in half. Even a weak thin beam could do a tremendous amount of damage from inside the ship’s shields as it spun around.
Now that he had more than one way to destroy a ship, he could even attack all three at once with those shuttles.
