Manxome Foe

by John Ringo

  "Still out, sir," the CO responded. "Given her condition, Dr. Chet is unwilling to bring her out of the drugs rapidly. There are ways to do that but—"

  "It's the doctor's call," the admiral said with a sigh. "She probably won't have much more information than we already have. The experts in such things are unwilling to open the gate, even for long enough to shove her through."

  "Did they say why, sir?" Bill asked neutrally.

  "Just that we don't know the true abilities of the Dreen," the admiral said with a shrug. "They're really exercised about them possibly breaking through. They also wanted to ensure that she's in isolation and that she gets a very full physical."

  "She was brought in in a quarantine stretcher," the CO replied. "And has been in the isolation area ever since. That's SOP under the circumstances. I'll ask Dr. Chet about giving her a full pre-mission phys. But given the way her body's scrambled up, I'm not sure he's going to want to add the chemicals he needs to her system. Not any time soon, anyway."

  "I'll pass that on," the admiral said. "Make sure that she's not removed from isolation until you return to Earth. That's not negotiable."

  "Understood, sir," the CO said. "So what now? Do we head home?"

  "Negative," Townsend replied. "We need to find out what's happening out there. Probe for the Dreen. Carefully. Try to find out where they're at, what they're up to out there, what their order of battle looks like. Hell, what their ships look like. It's an old-fashioned intel gathering mission. You're the boat snuggling up to the Soviet backyard to get intel. Go get it."

  "Yes, sir," Spectre said thoughtfully.

  "Leave this lash up in place," Townsend added. "But camouflage it if you can. If you need to talk or seriously need support, we can use the gate. Same orders as before, use your discretion but don't get into any furballs if you can avoid it. However, if you get an opportunity to jump a lone Dreen ship and determine that it's possible to win, do so. Capture it if possible. The idea is to get a look at what their hyper tech and weapons tech consists of. We need a system we can use other than the Blade's. Anything you need that we can shove through the gate quickly?"

  "XO?" the CO asked.

  "I doubt we can get the critical spares we need to the base quickly, sir," the XO said, looking at a pad. "But if we come back this way, it might make sense to have some stockpiled by then. I have a list. Other than that, fresh food."

  "I'll get with the liaison at the base," the admiral said, nodding. "Send the list over and we'll get them down there if it's feasible. Anything else?"

  "Permission to send and receive Family Message Forms, sir," the CO replied.

  The FMF was a method that sub crews had of keeping in contact with their families. It was highly limited and highly censored, being only a ten-word message either way. Families were not permitted to send negative news; putting more stress on guys stuck in a tin can under water was never a good idea. "I hate you and want a divorce" was not a message the Navy was going to send to a guy who could fire a nuclear missile or cause a melt-down of the nuclear core. Sub crews, being smart, had of course set up a code system so that they could get more than "I love you. Everything's fine" messages through. More than one submariner had gotten word that his wife was having an affair despite being at six-hundred-feet depth, several thousand miles away and through a system specifically designed to prevent such news. So far, none of them had tried to fire off a missile although a few had tried to open up a hatch and walk home. For those few, there was a very pleasant tranquilizer and an "I-Love-Me" jacket until they could be evacced.

  "Authorized," the admiral said, wincing. He knew the weaknesses of the FMF from long experience. "Anything else?"

  "I think we're done, sir," the CO said, looking around the group.

  "Get back into space, find the Dreen, find out what they're up to, try to get any tech you can acquire and report back," the admiral said. "And do all that carefully. You're still the only ship we have."

  "Yes, sir," Spectre said. "Can do."

  "Weaver," the CO said as everyone was filing out of the wardroom.

  "Sir?"

  "Stay."

  When everyone was gone, the CO looked at the astrogator thoughtfully.

  "What do you think the chances are you can find some trace of the Dreen ship in space?"

  Weaver thought about the question for a few seconds, then blanched.

  "Effectively zero, sir," Bill replied. "Do you want to know why?"

  "Yes," the CO said. "Because I don't think you've thought it through. We make waves as we pass through space. You've talked about it. Disturbed solar wind, ionization from destroyed particles, even bits of our forward armor that get flaked off. Surely the Dreen have got to leave some traces."

  "I'm sure they do, sir," Bill said. "And if the track was fresher, I might be able to sort out which ions are from a passing Dreen ship and which are just from solar wind. If I could do a survey of the local area for about a month and figure out what the solar winds look like. But a Dreen . . . wake, if you will, is going to look like a ship's wake. Sure, you can detect one of those for the first few hours. But after that, waves, current, wind, they all tend to erase it. There's a bit more thermal image for a tad longer time, but even that eventually goes away. The Dreen were here thirty days ago, sir. Any trace is long gone. Even the holes we found were filling in from dust. And those are much more permanent than anything you'd find in the solar wind."

  "So how do we find them?"

  "If it's only one or two ships and they're in EMCON, it's going to be tough, sir," Bill said, referring to shutting down transmissions so as to remain less noticeable. "I don't know what sort of traces they leave behind until we find one. And finding a ship in space, well, space is a very big place and ships are very small. I think we're just going to have to hope that they're broadcasting or otherwise being noticeable."

  "You know," Favarduro said as the Caurorgorngoth's lasers eliminated three of the Blin fighters, "in between five and twenty kleng this is going to be noticeable to anyone inhabiting the nearer stars."

  "In between five and twenty kleng, anyone inhabiting the nearer stars is going to be Dreen food," Ship Master Kond replied. "Shields are at less than forty percent. Concentrate on the central fighter pack. Stop some of these Manaeg-spawned plasma bolts."

  As plasma fire slammed into the ship, being disbursed by the ion shields, he whistled for a control to shift some power to long-range scanning but the Blin dreadnought was still impossible to detect. At least fifteen kleg until the ball generator was online. And more than four hundred until they reached the unreality node. The fleet had escaped, through, leaving them to limp outward on their own, with not so much as a shield ship by their side.

  As the mighty Chaos Ship rocked under the hammer of the missiles, he hoped that there were no races within five and twenty kleng. Unless, of course, they were powerful enough to save his ship.

  "Home again," Berg said, collapsing into his bunk. For a wonder, there wasn't a caterwauling of Asian tortured cats from overhead. He had made his peace with Portana and could even handle the armorer's sister's singing. Didn't mean he enjoyed it.

  "God, I'm glad to get out of armor," Himes replied. "How's the chick we picked up?"

  "How the hell would I know?" Berg asked. "Last I saw of her was last you saw of her, being carted back to the ship."

  "Mail call," the first sergeant said from the front of the compartment. "We're in commo with Earth through the gate. Nobody's going home, though; they're not opening up the other side. But you've got Family Message Forms on your systems. If you want to respond, you have about thirty minutes. Then we're out of this system."

  "What's the mission, Top?" Corwin called. "We're done here, right? We going home?"

  "Negative," the first sergeant replied. "We're going to go Dreen hunting. Now read your mail."

  Berg wasn't really expecting any. His parents weren't in the loop of Navy communications. They could get an emergency message through
to him, but by their very natures emergency messages were rarely put into FMFs. "Dad died" was right up there with "I want a divorce."

  So he was surprised to see the message light blinking on his system when the first sergeant left. He hit the "Receive" icon and a short message popped up.

  "Love you Miss you Be Homeward Bound in Time Brooke"

  FMFs were limited to ten words but the short message pretty much covered the subject. Except for the last bit, which was puzzling.

  He opened up a search function and typed in the last, puzzling, phrase. The search function was actually built by GooCharn, the Adari-human corporation that had absorbed Google and a similar corporation on Adar. The Adar servers on-board the Blade only stored about thirty percent of the combined human-Adar hypernet. But that was a lot of data. Much of it was useless, but occasionally somebody needed a scrap of really esoteric information that was stored away on it somewhere.

  About halfway down the first page he found it, a poem that was linked to a flash animation.

  He watched the animation, wondering where Brooke had dredged it up. It was from way back in the War On Terror, mostly shots from Iraq. It was kind of like watching a film clip from Vietnam. The gear they were using was so antique he had to wonder how they'd gotten anything done. No Wyverns, no Mojos, no particle detectors, no scanners. Just Kevlar body armor and peashooters. Of course, the terrorists they were fighting didn't have any better.

  But the sentiment of the piece was timeless and he quickly found himself tearing up. He dashed the water off his face and sucked it up to the end. Okay, now he knew how Brooke felt.

  And the more he examined the lyrics, the stronger he felt. She was asking him to come home, but only when the time was right. She was saying she wouldn't hold him back, that he was "free to find his calling" but that she would be there when he returned.

  And his calling was right here. He wondered if she understood just what that meant. How could she? He didn't even know what it really meant. Except a lot of separation.

  He considered the undersize keyboard for a moment then typed rapidly, hit "Send" and vowed that if she had the strength to let him "find his calling," he had the strength to find a way home.

  "No messages for you, Commander Weaver?" the CO asked as he sat down in his chair in the conn.

  "No, sir," Bill replied. "Footloose and fancy-free bachelor. I get an occasional e-mail from my parents, but they don't even know how to access the FMFs."

  "Admiral Rickover would have approved," the XO said, grinning. "He felt an officer should be married to his career and not 'chick hatching' all the time."

  "And where are we going to find the next generation of Junior Spacemen?" the CO asked. "It was one of those points Rickover never quite got around to addressing. So, what's your recommendation, Astro?"

  "I've set up a search pattern of the nearest stars, sir," Bill replied. "My recommendation is that we enter on the outer periphery of each of the systems, do a chill while simultaneously looking for any indicators of Dreen presence, then jump around the periphery, slowly working inward. When we get to about one AU from the local star, we'll have looked about all we can. Then we go to the next. With stops at each of the jump points to let the instruments really get in a good scan, I'd say about one full day at each star. We do that until we find something or you call it a bust."

  "All right," the CO said. "XO, Set Condition One on each system entry. At each move inwards, we'll go to GQ again, figuring that is the most likely point that we'll encounter the Dreen. Tell the Marines to just sit tight. I don't want them running around doing a drill when we could be going into battle at any time."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  "Let's head outwards," the CO said. "Astro?"

  "Come to heading three-one-six mark neg dot two and head for the star," Bill replied, pointing at the forward viewscreen.

  "Make it so."

  Brooke checked the caller ID on her cell phone as it sounded out with "Sunshine and Summertime." It was the Bergstresser's home number, which could be good news or bad or none at all. She took a deep breath and answered the call.

  "Brooke, it's Amanda Bergstresser."

  Mrs. Bergstresser sounded cheerful. A good sign so far.

  "Yes, ma'am?" Brooke said. "Have you heard from Eric?"

  "We have indeed," Mrs. Bergstresser said. "I know he wasn't supposed to be able to send a message for at least ninety days, but you got a response to yours. It's a bit cryptic, though."

  "Go ahead," Brooke said, swallowing.

  "In the quiet misty morning Eric. That's it. Does it make any sense to you?"

  "Yes, ma'am," Brooke said, sniffling. "Yes, it does."

  "Brooke, I know all this is rather sudden and terribly dramatic, but I have a question: Do I need to start getting to know a future daughter-in-law?"

  Brooke thought about that for a few seconds, then sniffled again.

  "I sure hope so, Mrs. Bergstresser."

  "In that case, you'd better call me Amanda."

  13

  "Adjusted to system Tycho 714-1046-1," the pilot said, tiredly.

  The ship had been doing an expanding sweep of the area for the last two weeks and it had been a very boring process. Most of the stars in the region, which was a fairly tightly packed local cluster, were within ten light-years of each other. Ten hours to reach a new system. About twenty hours scanning the system and then on to the next. And with GQ being called at least five times a day, nobody was getting any sleep.

  "What do we have?" Spectre asked, his voice a bit too steady. The CO was on the ragged edge as well.

  "G3V star, bit hotter than Sol but otherwise very main sequence," Bill replied. "Waiting on readings, sir."

  "I'm getting a bit tired of waiting on readings," the CO said bitterly.

  "So am I, si—" Weaver paused and leaned forward, running his hand down one of the lines on his monitor. "Sir . . . ?"

  "Conn, Tactical."

  "Go," Spectre snapped.

  "We're getting some quirky readings on the particle detectors," Tactical replied, clearly puzzled. "The system is just saying higher than normal background of neutrinos. I'm not sure what that means."

  "Weaver?" Spectre asked.

  "Just . . . Give me a moment, sir," Weaver said, opening up another screen and typing rapidly.

  The CO walked over to look over the astrogator's shoulder but the math he was working on was way over Spectre's head. Another example of how difficult it was going to be to create a space navy. Too many times he simply had to go on his faith in Weaver's knowledge.

  "Concur on that, sir," Weaver said after about a minute. "Furthermore, the extra neutrinos are generating from a point in the system. It's at about six AU from the star on the far side from us. Something created a bunch of neutrinos there about nine hours ago. What, why and how I'm not sure. But I'd say that it's probable that it was not a natural event. More than that . . . I can't say without checking it out."

  "Can we do that quietly?" the CO asked. "Come in from the side or something? Maybe duck around a planet?"

  "We still don't have a planet map for the system, sir," Bill said, checking the update from the astronomy department. Since it consisted of two overworked SF staff sergeants, he wasn't expecting anything any time soon. Especially since their position was poor for finding planets. They usually didn't get a good map until they moved in-system. "I would suggest moving in an arc across the outer fringes of the system, getting a look at the anomaly from another angle, then possibly moving in to no less than ten AUs from the anomaly for a visual."

  "Right," Spectre said, rubbing his face. "Gimme a vector."

  "Heading zero-nine-six, sir," Bill replied. "Warp Two for twenty-three minutes. Then come to normal space for another survey."

  "Pilot, make it so," Spectre said, keying the 1-MC. "All hands. All hands. Ship remains at Condition One. There's an anomaly in this system. We're going to spend some time checking it out. Stay tight while we do that. Missile crews t
o ready positions."

  The second check had just repeated the first. Turning even their largest telescope towards the anomaly didn't tell them anything.

  "Astro, we're going to go insystem unless you have another idea," Spectre said.

  "I actually do, sir," Bill said, musingly. "We need to get farther away."

  "Say again?" the CO asked, rubbing his face. "What are we going to learn from farther away?"

  "We can move faster than light, sir," Bill replied, getting excited. "If whatever this was made a big enough signature, we can back out of the system and look at it. It's sort of like going back in time. If that doesn't work, we can still go insystem. We're only talking about ten light-hours out in a direct line from the anomaly."

  "Okay, that's just about weird enough to work," Spectre said. "Gimme a vector and let's do it."

  "Should be coming up pretty soon," Bill said, looking at his chronometer. "If there's going to be . . . whoa!"

  It was almost pretty. Where there had been more or less empty space on the viewer, only the distant stars showing, there was suddenly a flurry of lights.

  "Conn, Tactical," the intercom chimed. "We're getting a mass of particle readings from the direction of the anomaly. I'd say that multiple nuclear detonations are occurring."

  "Roger that," Spectre said. "We're watching it in—"

  "Try 'unreal' time, sir," Bill said, grinning. "Somebody was fighting somebody else. Who and why is the question, now."

  "Is this maximum magnification?" Spectre asked, walking over to the main viewer. "All I can see is the detonations."

  "They're more visually obvious than whatever's causing them, sir," Bill pointed out. "That's all we can get out of our systems: we're not up to Star Trek level yet. And ours are as good as any that are made, sir. But at this distance, it's like trying to pick out individual sand grains on Earth from a satellite. It's easy to spot a spotlight pointed up. We're going to have to go insystem to find out anything else."