by Tom Germann
Two was, as always, short and to-the-point.
“Something has gone wrong in this system. All current evaluation indicates that this is not an accident or some sort of coincidence. There is enemy action in the system.”
She waved her hand at the display on the table and the ship’s tracking plan altered. The ship was now going to slowly move around most of the system on a new path to the larger base.
This new flight plan would take us by most, but not all, of the satellites.
Two gestured at the display never taking her eyes off of it. “The captain is bringing us in on a new path that will allow the crew to scan for most of the satellites that were up and running. As of right now, we have no confirmation that any of them are still online. Most of those satellites though are supposed to be playing dead as part of standard operating procedure. As we pass them, the ship will try to raise them on directional comms. We will have more information later. For now, prepare your armour for a full assault. Next briefing will occur in twelve hours, after we have pulled data from those satellites that are still there. We’re done.”
With that, she shut down the display, turned, and left.
We all stood up and followed her. Preparing the armour for a full assault took a few minutes. It was already back to spec. The hard part was preparing all the weapon systems. Every missile launcher, heavy laser, and projectile weapon needed to be reviewed. They even pulled out something I hadn’t seen before.
A rail gun. A technology development that wasn’t that new, but was more delicate than one of our lasers.
The projectile was an inert lump of metal that could have been just about anything. Or, we also had specialized ammunition that involved a nasty explosive charge being put into the core of that lump of metal.
The simplest way to put it was that a series of powerful magnets hurled the metal down the barrel, which was really just a few tubes. It looked weird because the tubes were wrapped in wiring.
It was a pain because the power source was a huge battery backpack that connected to the gun via a huge cable. This gun was large and awkward to use. If you bumped the rails and they shifted at all when you fired one of the rounds, there was a chance that the magnetic field would fluctuate.
The weapon wouldn’t blow up in your hands.
It could blow outward, though.
I had seen recorded footage of one of these being used in a test environment. The tubes had been bumped out of perfect alignment. Once the round turned sideways and took the end of the gun off. The second time the round came out just past the halfway point on a nine-foot barrel. The entire barrel had just peeled off and hung there like a flower petal.
So why were these weapons used?
No flash, very little recoil and, since the round was travelling so fast when it hit a target, it transferred all its energy into the target, which was usually armoured.
In the same recordings I watched a rail-gun round punch through a suit of Marine armour and then almost smash through another plate of armour behind it. Modern heavy vehicle armour.
If you hit the target, you tended to kill it.
So based on this I knew that whatever was waiting for us must be big, if we were considering pulling out a weapon that was that powerful and problematic to use.
The hours passed and I tried to get some sleep, but I found I couldn’t keep my eyes closed. When I left my room I found everyone else was up as well.
Five was actually approachable, though, so when I saw her sitting in the small common room, I asked her to show me some diving and swim techniques. She just stared at me and blinked, then said, “Sure.”
Everyone else stared at me like I was nuts, but I couldn’t concentrate enough to study and I couldn’t sleep. A half hour in a sim on swimming made sense to me, and since I didn’t really know how to swim, I knew I could learn something. We grabbed two chairs and then entered an easy sim on the beach in Hawaii.
I had always found the water intimidating. I mean, I need it for my survival, but I could die by it easily enough as I am not really a swimmer.
Five took it easy on me showing me a few easy beginner strokes and while I paddled around close to the shore, she went farther out and dove and swam hard.
At a half hour she swam by me and walked out of the water. I followed, feeling exhausted. She stood there relaxed with the water dripping off of her in the heat, while I stood breathing heavily.
Swimming was hard work, and I had been trying to go far and fast, fighting the water every step of the way.
She shook her head and smiled. “Eight, you were swimming like an old-style robot. You don’t force your way through the water. You move into the water and then move with it. Next time we go out, you go farther out and submerge yourself fully. If you tried doing what you did in a real ocean or even just a pool, you’d be exhausted after a few minutes.”
She crossed her arms and regarded me critically while leaning back on one leg. “At least you didn’t panic, though, and you did do all right with the breathing. I’m going to go get some sleep. Don’t stay in here too long. It’s too easy to pull something in sim and your setting is too high for the reality. You could injure yourself in here.”
The next second she was gone.
I stood up and enjoyed the warmth of the sun on my back.
I felt exhausted but good at the same time. I looked down at my long swim trunks and then thought about Five’s one-piece sport swimsuit. I felt glad that she had taken the time to help me out.
I looked around. I had never been to Hawaii. It was nice. I exited the sim.
Back in the common room I stood up and felt how tired my muscles were from an exercise that I was not used to. I headed for my room and a couple of hours’ sleep.
Briefing Room 15 Hours Out
I walked into the briefing room and for once I was not the last one there. In fact, right after I walked in, Two followed, closing the door after herself and heading for the head of the table.
The lights immediately dimmed and the holographic display of the system came on. We were at the same scale as before and we were well into our flight path now.
All the different satellites were highlighted again so we knew where the dozens of man-made objects were. The difference now was that most of them were highlighted in red.
I noticed a pattern. All the larger ones that would have been actively using sensors and emitting an electronic signal were red. Just a few of the smaller ones were as well. I couldn’t get anything else out of the imagery before Two started speaking.
“As you are almost all aware, the red icons represent destroyed facilities. We have picked up a dozen feeds from satellites that are small and only use passive sensors. The feed is not as good, but this is what the data shows us.”
The image faded away and then came back. All the planets and orbiting satellites and everything else were in different positions. Nothing was highlighted red.
Two continued. “Moving forward at one hour equalling ten seconds. Now.”
A new icon appeared at the edge of the image and was moving in toward the core. With only passive sensors I was guessing that the computers were only showing us actual events not what was to come or the flight path.
The icon moved quickly inward and then, as it came to a space where there seemed to be several small satellites surveying the icon, it changed into the specific ship icon of a freighter. It started to close on one of the larger satellites and then a flashing light headed off from the ship. It moved toward the satellite and when the lights came together, the satellite turned red and stopped moving and transmitting.
Two’s voice seemed to come from far away. “Notice what happens now.”
The display zoomed in toward the ship and it appeared, indistinct and fuzzy. There were no good sensor reads on the ship. There was more blurring, and then it looked like part of
the ship broke away. Initially the two pieces moved together. But quickly, the smaller one angled off and started heading around the system.
Four and Ten both leaned forward and stared at the movement. Four was Tino and he liked vehicles; his face looked perplexed, like he was trying to figure something out. Ten, though, had a concerned look. She looked over at Two.
“Two, that looks like a shuttle deploying off of a mother ship. But it can’t be—not at that speed.”
Two nodded. “The AI agrees it’s a shuttle doing a high-speed unload from a carrier ship of some sort.”
“No way, Two. Any sort of high-speed unload like that is just as likely to damage the ship and smash up the shuttle. This would only be done for an emergency or high-speed unload in some sort of bad situation, like abandoning ship; the ship is going to be damaged during that action.”
Two looked at Ten. “It’s possible. It happened. The AIs are just figuring out how—and, more importantly, why?”
Everyone else was sitting back watching the display when Four leaned forward and pointed at the back of the ship. “Two, can you zoom in on the back of the ship? Right before that first satellite exploded?”
The view shifted around for a second and then we were looking at the back of the unknown ship. There was all sorts of fuzzy interference around the ship, and all we could see was a blob.
There just wasn’t enough data.
Four looked at One. “They took out that satellite with a missile.”
One looked bored and shrugged. “So what, Four? The satellite was taken out and they felt daring enough to launch missiles. I’m amazed that something didn’t go wrong and blow up part of the ship. It would have saved us a lot of hassle.”
Four shook his head no and looked around. “No, I think they fired a bunch of missiles and that’s part of the reason why the ship dropped a shuttle there.”
Two looked at Four and gestured for him to continue.
Four leaned back. “I’ve been studying some of the advanced space weapon theories. We can’t effectively mount missile launchers outside of a ship hull or even in a ship hull. The odds of damage in flight or of complications is too high. We all know that.”
He looked around at everyone and then an expression of concentration appeared on his face. An image formed above the display.
Four was using his implants to create a secondary image. A spaceship formed. While it was forming, Four kept talking—not to us, but at us, as he had a lecturing tone. “Deployable missile boxes is the idea put forward. A ship enters a system and deploys missile systems from the back of the ship, like a dump truck kicking dirt out the back while it moves forward.”
The image was formed now of a plain-looking spaceship. The back didn’t open, but suddenly boxes were behind it, floating along slowly and moving around on their own.
“The boxes are a complete system. As the ship or other deployed sensors pick up targets, the data is fed to the missiles and an AI plans the strike.
The image zoomed in on one box, which started rotating as if it was just floating in space, and then some sort of thrusters on the outside stopped the box’s movements and then it rotated.
“When it’s ready, the AI programs the missile and launches the missile. There are a lot of different theories about what would work.”
The box unfolded itself and inside was a large missile in a cradle. Small thrusters flared to life and moved the missile away from the box, and it slowly began to move forward.
“The missile could come in on a low-speed approach or just launch from the box direct.”
The missile was slowly starting to move forward. In the distance another spaceship appeared. The missiles main engine flared to life and it shot off. A few seconds later the other ship disappeared in a big flash and then debris was flying everywhere, including at us.
I flinched away. I noticed some of the others had as well.
Four looked around. “Sorry, everyone.” He looked over at Two. “That is a sim that is used by the weapons institute to demonstrate what a box launcher should look like if used in space.”
The frozen image of the explosion disappeared and the main ship and the shuttle that had launched reappeared.
Two looked like she was chewing on something that tasted bad. “Okay, Four. What’s the point, then, of the shuttle? If you could drop a hundred missiles, then every target could be hit. The initial AI thought was that the shuttle was delivering more missiles to other sites that the enemy had identified on the way in-system. That was when the thought was that the missiles were externally mounted.”
Six snorted. “No way—those are box launchers or something similar. If some race has that technology down, then you might as well turn us around and go home. We can’t afford to build that and deploy it like that. Every one of those missiles is going to be big to have the engine, guidance system, backup guidance system, and explosive payload. I’ve been checking out the feeds from home. If the ship dropped that many missiles, they would take a long time reloading, and it’s like intergalactic war . . . not financially feasible. Not for basic targets like they’re firing on.”
Four was biting his lip. “You know, I could see it working. The missile does not have to be that big. Hang on a second. I’m going to manipulate the system map.”
The image zoomed out and then there were twice as many satellite images. The two interposed and then started swooping around.
The display settled and all the satellites were now displayed while the enemy ship moved into the system. Most of those satellites that were highlighted red were along the ship’s path. Some were farther away, and some of the satellites were closer but still functioning.
Four, Two, and Six were nodding while Ten was looking at the display and frowning still.
Ten looked at Four and cleared her throat. “Okay, so I can buy all that about dumping missiles behind you. Why the shuttle, then?”
Four pointed at the shuttle. “It isn’t doing offensive operations; it’s heading back to pick up the box launchers. The missile doesn’t need to be that good. It looks like they missed a few satellites. Either that, or they didn’t scan them as targets,”
Ten finished for him. “Or the missiles missed and they didn’t finish them for whatever other reason.”
Four nodded. “Exactly. Missiles are cheaply made. If they come in fast, they don’t need much explosive. The missile itself is the warhead as it hits the target at an incredibly fast speed. In fact, if the nose cone was just a solid piece of metal. . . .”
Three leaned forward with a grin. “Forget solid. Pre-fragment it and when it hits, it’s like one of those old-style hollow points used in handguns. It’ll shred the target AND can still expend most of its kinetic energy.”
Four smiled grimly. “Like a nuclear device going off.”
“Wait.” That was Two. “So the shuttle is for what? Command and control?”
Four slowly shook his head no. “Maybe a dedicated command and control and to make sure there are no complications, but I think it would make more sense to say that they were collecting the launcher boxes. That would actually be the most expensive piece of equipment there. I am guessing that they can rebuild them and reuse them several times before the system is too damaged. Very expensive to build, but if you can get five shots out of it. . . .”
Six had a dreamy look on his face as he used his implants to work on something. “Very doable. We could afford to build a lot of those if that was the case.”
“What happened to the base, then? They couldn’t have used those missiles, could they?” I hadn’t realized that I was going to speak. Everyone stopped and looked at me.
Again, Four was frowning while behind him One was smirking.
Four asked, “What do you mean, Eight?”
I looked at the display and concentrated. I didn’t do this often and it was difficult g
iven how much concentration was required. I started moving time forward on the image via my implants. The two outposts suddenly disappeared while the ship was still advancing.
I stopped and highlighted the area where the box launchers had been dropped. Then I pulsed a line from the estimated launchers through to where the outposts were. The ship was blocking one of the sites.
I heard murmurs from around the table while I continued manipulating the data.
More lines appeared from the box launchers to where all the different satellites were. I then moved the display back so that the ship was backing away from the planet.
None of the missiles came even remotely close to the enemy ship when they were used to target the satellites.
I spoke slowly while I was putting my thoughts together. “If this is a new system and they’re familiar with it, they should also know its weaknesses. Would anyone risk a starship to a misfire or broken-down missile going crazy? When they drop what may have been the box launchers, they kept going for a while before one of them lit off to take out that satellite. That gives you an idea of how much distance that they might have needed.”
Four and Ten nodded while One looked like he had bitten into an onion at the end of the table. I had the feeling it was me that he didn’t like.
I didn’t know why, but he had hung me out to die on my own pretty fast when we had gone in on that last sim.
Two started talking, pulling me back to the meeting.
“Eight has a good point. New weapon systems can be twitchy and delicate. No one is going to risk a starship. Given that the one that came in-system looks to be much bigger than what we’re currently in, that makes it even more expensive. I would guess that that ship is a bit smaller than the Mama Pig, but not by much.”
Everyone turned back to the display and considered it.
The data that had come in so far was not all of it. There were likely more passive sensors out there. The problem with their data was that it was vague. These sensors were not dedicated to scanning space for combat. They were looking at a star or the different planets and moons in the system trying to figure out more about them.
