by Dave Bara
“Get us moving, Mr. Longer,” I demanded. “Max sub-light speed. What’s our ETA to Impulse?”
He turned from his station. “Six minutes, sir,” he said.
“Make it three.”
“Aye, sir,” he said, then hesitated. “Should we wait to get the shuttles aboard?” he asked.
“Negative. They can catch up later.” With that Longer put us in motion back the way we had come. Then Babayan came up next to me.
“What was that you said about needing a bigger hammer?” she said. I shook my head.
“How many of the Mass Destruction Weapons do we have aboard?” I asked.
“Two,” said my XO. “Two-hundred-and-fifty-megaton yield each.” I nodded.
“Get them ready.”
“Both of them?”
“Both,” I said.
“Aye, sir.”
This wasn’t going as planned. At all.
“Ensign Layton, get on the com and have Historian Gracel report to the bridge immediately,” I ordered.
“Yes, sir,” the young ensign replied. I looked at her. She was petite, with blonde hair and the same blue eyes as her brother. And I thought, This is who we’re fighting for. The next generation of Lightship crew would be the ones who would take us back out, deep into the galaxy, into the realm of the old empire. If we could finish the business at hand, taking out the threats to the Union.
Presently Historian Gracel stepped onto the bridge.
“What can I do for you, Captain?” she asked almost casually. I motioned her over to my office and turned on the aural shield so we could speak privately. I leaned toward her from my side of the desk as she sat down.
“I assume you’ve been observing our combat situation?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“Those automatons have Impulse II in their grip again. They seem relentless. I need to know how we can stop them,” I said. Her answer was cryptic, as Historians often were.
“You have ample weapons at your command to stop them anytime you want, Captain,” she replied. “The question is, do you have the will to use those weapons?”
I stood up then and spoke more pointedly. I didn’t have time for puzzles.
“Cut the bullshit. Impulse is only in this situation because one of your Order betrayed her captain, who happens to be my friend. A lot of lives were lost, including John Marker’s, and it’s safe to say there won’t be any more of you serving on Carinthian Lightships anytime soon. So how about you stop talking in circles and give me some information I can use?”
She cocked her head to one side. “Ask your questions, Captain,” she said.
“First, what are those things?”
She responded, her voice quiet and her tone suddenly very serious. “Just what they look like. Self-perpetuating automatons, built for combat, run and controlled by a distributed AI consciousness.”
“So there’s no central control AI running all of this?” I asked. She shook her head.
“Not in the way you would perceive it. There is a certain amount of communication that can take place between the many distributed AIs under the right circumstances, allowing them to strategize and exchange intelligence. But each group you encounter is essentially autonomous from the larger whole. That way there is no single point of failure for the whole system and only individual risk is assumed,” she said.
I contemplated that. “Who built them?”
She didn’t hesitate. “The Founders, over four hundred thousand years ago. They were originally intended as a defensive military to keep the Founder civilization safe from outside aggressors. Until, of course, the aggression came from within.”
“So they destroyed the Founders?” She shook her head.
“No. There was a war, but the Founders built in safeguards, and for the most part those safeguards worked. But the cost was high. So very, very high . . .” She trailed off, her eyes glistening red. It was almost as if she took it personally.
“What happened?” I asked. She swiveled her chair toward me.
“The Founders cleansed their empire of these machines as much as they could. They set up a safe zone of planets—Earth was among them—and then they left. Their culture, their arrogance, were crushed by their failure of judgment and the mass destruction of their civilization. Essentially, they went away and left us, their children, to our own devices. When we rose to the stars five hundred years ago, it was the first time humans had gone into interstellar space in one hundred and fifty millennia,” she said.
“So, that’s why there were no alien races ever discovered in the First Empire’s sphere of influence, even at its height,” I stated.
She nodded. “And the First Empire only inhabited a portion of the area the Founder civilization encompassed. We believe the Founder civilization was almost ten thousand light-years across, not even one tenth of the entire galaxy.”
“And the First Empire was just one hundred light-years across, give or take.” Again the nod. “You said the Founders left, but where did they go?”
“Again, we believe—and it is only a belief—that they went ‘home,’ to the source,” she said.
“The source?”
“That’s what we call the Beta Lyrae star cluster, their original home system, which is about 960 light-years from Earth.”
“And you think they’re there now?” I asked.
“Possibly. Or possibly they went much farther. We don’t know,” she said.
I thought about the situation again, now that the history lesson was over. “So how do I fix this current mess?” I asked.
“That,” she said, “is up to you.”
At least I had one answer. Defiant did have the weapons to defeat the automatons. Gracel’s answers had raised almost as many questions, but they were questions for another day.
“XO, what’s Impulse’s situation?” I asked as I retook my captain’s chair.
“She’s bucking the gravity waves, sir, but losing ground as you would expect. I don’t know how those damned things survived the atomics,” she said.
“The nano-goo,” I said. “It’s something else altogether. Look how much weaponry it took just to crack the yacht. Obviously the mining colony is hardened against just such an attack, and my guess is that our first nuke didn’t even scrape the dust off that stuff. It did clear the robots out of the open area, but I’m betting that mine has been transformed into an automaton factory.”
“But why?” asked Babayan. I thought about that for a second. There was really only one answer that made sense.
“They’re building an army, XO. And you only need armies if you’re planning an invasion. We’ve got to stop this one before it starts. That’s why they wanted Impulse II and Starbound: transportation to their first target,” I said. Babayan sat back in her chair. I looked over to Gracel, who had taken the Historian’s station again. She sat quietly, just watching.
“Range and time to Impulse II, Mr. Layton.” He swiveled toward me.
“Thirty seconds to intercept, sir,” he replied. At that moment we were hit full-on with a gravity wave ourselves, which shook the ship until the inertial dampers kicked in and stabilized us.
“They’ve got us in their grip again, sir,” said the XO.
“Acknowledged,” I replied. “Status of our MDW, XO.”
“Both cued up in our torpedo bay, sir.”
“Pick one and transfer firing control to my console.”
“Aye, sir,” Babayan snapped. I hit the shipwide com.
“All stations, prepare for launch of atomic weapons. Full protection protocols until I give the stand down. All stations, all departments signal compliance,” I said. We waited another two minutes for the compliance signals to come in. Then I got a personal com call from Impulse II.
“What’s your strategy to get us out of t
his?” Dobrina asked.
“Two-hundred-and-fifty-megaton MDW atomic right down their throats,” I said. There was a second of silence.
“And if that doesn’t work?”
“There are other options, Captain Kierkopf,” I said. “The main thing you have to do is start creating some distance from Drava as soon as you’re free of the gravity field. I’ll take care of the rest.”
“You sound very confident,” Dobrina said. I turned to look at my Historian one more time.
“I have some reason to be, Captain. Now if you don’t mind, I have a two-hundred-and-fifty-megaton missile to launch.”
“Impulse out,” she replied. I turned back to Lena Babayan.
“Weapons control at your console, Captain,” she said. I looked down at the weapons control, primed and targeted.
“Let’s get this done,” I said out loud, then pressed on the firing icon and launched hell at the mine.
The missile arced out over Drava, pinging as she went, right on target for the mining colony. It was safe to say that any structure on the surface or even several kilometers deep would be wiped out, but my fear was that the factory was much deeper in the mine than that, below a protective nano-dome.
The three minutes it took our missile to complete its arc seemed to take an eternity. Finally she hit the mine, dead on target. The tactical showed an incredible release of radiation, heat, and light, enough power to vaporize a small continent. Then we waited. Karina scanned through her displays on the main viewer—infrared, x-ray, heat signature, longscope radio wave—looking for some kind of definitive result. Five minutes later we got it.
“Detecting movement, Captain, below the dome crown. From the energy outputs . . .” she trailed off.
“Lieutenant?” I prompted her. She turned to me, a distraught look on her face.
“From the readings, Captain, it looks like there is movement and power at full operational ranges for a factory or similar facility below the dome,” she said, “but I can verify that both Lightships are free of the gravity weapons.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” I said, then stood up. “Mr. Longer, get us out of here. Full impellers. Take us out to a hundred thousand clicks from Drava.” I turned to my XO. “Commander Babayan, contact Impulse II and have her rendezvous with us at Mr. Longer’s coordinates. Mr. Layton, Historian Gracel, in my office, please.”
Once they were both seated in my office, I turned on the aural field again. I looked at Gracel. “I take it hitting them with one of our gravity weapons would be useless?” I asked her.
She nodded. “They have effective countermeasures in place,” Gracel replied.
“So it’s the torsion beam or nothing,” I said.
“The what, sir?” said Layton.
“A new weapon, George. I’m authorizing you to prep it for me. Gracel here will provide you with the display icon to activate it.”
“It will use most of your ship’s power. You’ll have to recharge your battery reserves after you fire it,” Gracel said.
“How long will that take?”
“Approximately eighteen minutes to regenerate full power through the ship’s interdimensional singularity.”
“So we’ll be vulnerable during that time,” I said.
“Obviously,” she replied. I looked to Layton.
“Prep the weapon, George. Don’t worry about what it does; I’m the only one with firing control. Just make sure you target the magnetic core accurately,” I said.
“The magnetic reactor core of the mine, sir?” Layton asked. I shook my head.
“No, George. The magnetic core of Drava itself.” He stood and nodded.
“Aye, sir,” he said, and then he was off to the weapons station. I looked at Gracel.
“You said I had the weapons to stop them,” I said.
“And now I see that you have the will to use them, Captain,” she replied. “Good luck.” And with that she was back to her station, leaving me alone in my office.
We were powered up and ready to go ten minutes later. On my display console the icon for the torsion beam had appeared: a red phoenix. I tapped the icon, and the display came to life with an array of data: distance to the target, spin speed of Drava (about eleven hundred clicks an hour), an estimate of the time it would take to run the weapon and at what energy cost, etc. I chose the most rapid scenario, which would take five minutes. I wanted this over with now. Once I had queued up the weapon and set my parameters, the phoenix icon reappeared, larger and in the center of the display. I had the power of the gods in my hands. I hit the intraship com again.
“All stations, this is the captain. We are about to fire a new weapon. This weapon is very powerful, but it should be safe for us to use. I hereby order all nonessential stations to stand down to safe mode. We’ll be turning off the Hoagland Field to fire the weapon, and the only technical units on full alert will be the forward coil cannon teams. Once again, all other nonessential systems are to stand down in safe mode. This is the captain; it is so ordered.” I looked to Gracel for any further insight, but she remained a blank stone wall. I felt strange leaving the ship essentially defenseless in such a recent war zone with the enemy still active, so I added one more order before signing off. “All stations maintain standard radiation protocols during the weapon engagement,” I said. I looked back to Gracel again after shutting off the com.
“Not necessary, Captain. The weapon produces no radiation,” she said.
“Thank you, Historian. But those automatons are still active, and I simply felt . . . better safe than sorry.” Then I turned my attention to Babayan. “A ten-second countdown, if you please, XO.”
“Aye, sir, ten-second countdown.” She turned on the intraship com and began the count. When she hit the mark, I pressed the icon on my display and activated the torsion beam.
The effect was odd. I felt a bit of dizziness, but it passed in a second. There was no beam to see in visible light, so I asked Karina to switch to infrared. Then we could see the beam spinning and swirling, resembling a DNA strand as it swept out of our coil cannon arrays and streamed toward Drava.
“Close-up on Drava, Lieutenant Feilberg,” I said. Karina quickly switched to a visible-light close-up display of the moon. I could see its spin rate accelerating as the torsion waves penetrated Drava’s surface and impacted the moon’s magnetic core. It turned ever faster, second by second, like a child’s toy top spinning out of control. The pressures exerted increased exponentially. At the three-minute mark, the helpless moon started to break up, large chunks of its surface breaking off and floating into space as the power tearing it apart grew stronger than the gravity holding it together. Seconds later it was moving so fast that its surface started to glow a bright red-orange, which grew darker as the seconds passed. As this continued, the bridge stayed silent. I wanted to swallow, but my mouth was dry as a desert. Dry as Drava, I thought. Then the beam shut off as it hit the five-minute mark. Slowly Drava’s spin rate started to decline. What was left was billions of rocks a fraction of the size of the original moon. In the center glowed the molten magnetic core, the only thing left of the moon, surrounded by a massive cloud of dust and rocks dispersed over ten times the area of where Drava had originally been.
“Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” I said quietly. It was probable only Babayan heard. I felt strangely empty at what I had just witnessed, but I was confident that the outcome was a worthy one.
“Order stand down from all extreme conditions, XO. Plot a course to the jump point, and make sure we stay close to Impulse all the way,” I said.
“Aye, sir, but where are we headed next?” I shrugged my shoulders.
“The nearest Union system with repair facilities, Commander,” I said.
“That would be back to Pendax, sir. A twelve-hour ride in traverse space by our latest estimates,” she said. I looked at my w
atch.
“Announce that a wake is to be held in all departments to honor our dead. Day shift personnel first, starting at 2000 hours, then the other shifts as they come off duty. Have the command briefing room prepped for the bridge crews. Encourage them to bring remembrances of their lost comrades,” I said.
“Aye, sir,” Babayan responded. With that we both stood, and I walked off the bridge to retreat to my stateroom.
Back to Pendax
Going through John Marker’s things was difficult. As captain of Defiant I could have had someone else do it, but it felt right to do it myself, and I wanted company. I asked George Layton to join me after he got off shift at 1800.
We went through Marker’s things mostly in silence. I found his service medals and awards, things we could display at the wake. Layton, his best friend on the ship, found his stash of aged scotches.
“Should we bring these?” he asked me.
“Of course,” I said. “I’m pretty sure he’d want us to share it on an occasion like this.” Layton sat down on Marker’s bed, staring at the bottle collection.
“I can’t believe this is all we have left of him. Not even a body,” he said. I brought over a pair of glasses from the bookcase and cracked one of the bottles, pouring one glass each for Layton and me, then handed Layton his glass. He took it without really moving his gaze, almost like he was in shock.
“I believe the unofficial marine motto at times like this is, ‘May we fare as well when we die,’” I said, then raised my glass.
“May we fare as well when we die,” responded Layton. We clinked glasses and drank. The scotch was hot in my throat and bitter, much like I felt. I looked at the table: three scotch bottles and half a dozen military awards. The sum of a man’s life.
“Is this enough for a proper memorial?” I asked. It didn’t seem so. Layton looked at the paltry assortment on the table.
“Wait. There’s one more thing,” he said. He got up and went to Marker’s small closet, shuffling through the clothes until he pulled out an all-black rugby shirt with Marker’s name and the number three on the back.
