Falco quickly answered, “Commander Lee, 10th Fleet is in the direct path—”
“Based on the assumption, Captain, that the field is ‘leapfrogging’ by sixty-two percent of its area each time it grows, you would be correct,” responded the commander in a flat tone. “Thank you, Captain. Lee out.”
Station Pluto is alone, Falco thought; a potential bump in the road towards Earth and the only person in 10th Fleet he hoped he could trust, disappeared in a leaping dark field twenty-four hours ago. Falco knew the odds of Captain Fei surviving in that predatory soup were slim at best.
But Captain Fei gave off a quiet strength; Captain Falco had faith in that and belief in his crew.
A figure in white burst into the room and scrambled toward Falco.
Short of breath with his lab coat marked with sweat, Lab Specialist Campos held up the data-pad. “Captain, you need to read this.”
“Autopsy Report?” Falco was already grabbing the data-pad as Ensign Holts, Lieutenant Wallace and Commander Shar’ran joined the circle.
Captain Falco’s eyes locked on the scrolling data and exhaled sharply. “Son of a bitch. Back to work people. Meeting adjourned. "Ensign Holts, send a summary to all officer stations and Admiral Chen.”
The room cleared and Falco handed the data-pad to Holts who scanned the first few pages, her hand dropping to her side, the data-pad loosely swinging. Holts looked at her captain, mouth open and eyes wide.
“Station Pluto lab, ten minutes.” Falco looked to his officers. “All of you. Holts get your head right, you’re going to tell us,” Falco pointed to the data pad, “what the hell that means.”
39
Captain Fei
Battle Group
The Battle-Net roared to life when four, patrol boat sized flaming spheres, erupted from the black field and into open space, each heading a different direction. Two of the blazing masses arched back into the sides of the dark field, disappearing into its camouflaging depths only to burst out seconds later. The two other orbs avoided a collision when they broke through the field, erratically changing course at the last second.
They stabilized their paths and homed in on the beleaguered battle group. Commander Fei and his crew followed the flaming spheres burning toward the broken; drifting remains of their comrades and their once sleek, predatory vessels that were now tombs. Long fiery tails trailed behind them. The Kwan Yin floated a few kilometers above the four lifeless boats.
“Silence!” Captain Fei ordered the bridge. “Basic life support and Battle-Net only. Shut everything else down. I want the smallest signature possible.”
The Battle-Net tracked the four new enemy marks locked onto the battle group’s dying vessels below. Fei kept an eye on Commander Zhu’s station, the Battle-Net continued searching for additional threats while charting the course of the incoming enemy.
Commander Zhu turned toward Fei. “Twenty seconds to impact.”
“Hold current position, prepare for full burn,” Fei locked onto Commander Zhu, “ready the final missile. Fire on my command.”
Fei thought of the Anam Cara, her windows on the bridge and the need for the Americans to have visual access to the black of deep space. Thank the Lord Buddha for new windowless Chinese designs, as seeing the obliteration of four Viper class vessels would take the fight out of any crew and we are not finished yet, Fei thought. There is still hope.
“Impact.” Commander Zhu practically spat the word out. The battle screen glowed bright red a moment after the four fireballs engulfed the four dead vessels. Pulses of depleting energy washed over the bridge, vibrations coming in gentle waves. The grav-system softened each rolling swell until there was nothing.
The Battle-Net lit up. Another burning sphere ejected from the dark field.
“Incoming! New target locked.” Commander Zhu followed the Battle-Net data flashing across his screen. The sensors tracking the distant orbs movements and then it stopped, reversed course and stopped again.
Seconds past, Commander Zhu tracking the movements through Battle-Net feed.
“Target is dead ahead, Captain.” Zhu swore under his breath. “It’s partially hidden in the field, sitting on the surface.”
Captain Fei nodded to his commander. He assumed the enemy had locked onto their position. Locked onto the Kwan Yin’s faint signature from two thousand klicks away? Who knew? Fei again saw the beginnings of the connection that could save their lives.
Open space, he thought. Why leave us surrounded by your camouflage, but in the open? You burst into the open erratically to… avoid our weapons lock? No, Fei thought. Based on the initial battle, they would know how quickly his battle-group locked onto their vessels beyond the dark field.
“Energy signature growing, Captain,” Commander Zhu stated. “Looks like capture is off the board, sir. Signature gone, enemy has moved back into the field.”
“Low burn, keep us in the center, Lieutenant.” Fei had a good idea where the enemy would attack from and, if he were wrong, he would kill his entire crew. It wants us to flee through the area we came, Fei thought, where our experience tells us the black field is thinnest.
Commander Zhu was probably correct. Capturing the Kwan Yin may have been the goal in the beginning as nothing else explained why she was left without a scratch. But regardless of his battle group’s losses, they turned the trap of open space into a killing ground until there was nothing left to die. Well, almost nothing.
“Commander, switch the Battle-Net to manual fire. Make sure the enemy is close. You have one chance.” Fei looked toward his pilot. “Lieutenant Ko—”
The pilot spun to face him. “Yes, Captain?”
“Turn the Kwan Yin towards the area where the enemy first emerged. I want our bow pointing like an arrow at that spot.” Fei could see the confusion in the young officer. “When I give the command, I want a hard bow thruster burn, on my second command, kill the thrusters and initiate a full burn, thirty percent downward plane.”
“Captain, we will be heading away from Station Pluto.”
“Yes, Lieutenant, we will be heading away from home and away from the ambush that would shred us to oblivion.” Fei was betting the Data-Pods had met a similar fate. The captain observed his officers. There it was, the healthy look of fear that he needed to keep them sharp.
Leaving the battle group in open space had Fei puzzled as soon as they realized the enemy could move the dark field. Why leave us in the open where we can use our weapons and sensors? He had pondered long and hard. Now Captain Fei had a theory, one that would save his crew or destroy them.
The enemy cannot see in the dark field either.
40
Captain Falco
Station Pluto, Lab
Captain Falco, his officers and the lab personnel sat tensely. Ensign Holts with data-pad in hand, stood before them with a short man, balding with loose skin drooping around his mouth like a bulldog.
“Dr Torbose, I’ve heard great things. Nice to finally meet you in person.” Falco hated labs and they were always was too bright, too white, or maybe I miss the rust and welded seams of the Anam Cara, he thought. Either way a lab was uncomfortable in every sense of the word.
“Thank you, Captain. I have also heard things about you and your crew.” Torbose moved toward another room adjacent to the main area of the lab.
Falco shot a questioning glance to Ensign Holts who simply shrugged and followed.
Dr Torbose stopped in front of a hatch, turned toward the group and calmly held up his hand. “We felt a display would be easier to explain,” he said, releasing the hatch.
When Falco and his officers were all inside the room, a pair of straining lab techs wheeled in two black objects the size of hubcaps resting on a thick steel powered-lift, the wheels squeaking loudly.
Dr Torbose pointed at the lift. “We believe these – hull-pounders you call them – to be similar to ‘skulls.’ They are intact, cleaned and free of any known contaminant.” Dr Torbose took a step back a
s the techs parked the powered-lift in the middle of the gathering.
“Wait a second, Doc.” Falco took a deep breath. “Are you telling us that these are not the weapons, but the Oortians themselves? These hull-pounders that punched through our boat, killed crew members, these are fucking soldiers of some sort?”
Ensign Holts knelt down next to the dark shinning discs while Falco and rest of the group walked up and silently surrounded them. Dr Torbose launched into a scientific description of the autopsy findings.
Falco cut him off. “Doc, no disrespect, but I didn't understand a word you just said. I need layman’s terms. Time is short and we need to understand what we are dealing with.”
Dr Torbose turned a reddened face to Ensign Holts. “Science Officer Holts, please.” He stepped back and Holts stood.
“Most of the human body is comprised of mainly six elements. Carbon is the glue that bonds them, allows for the formation of DNA and enables dynamic organic chemistry to occur in our cells.”
Lieutenant Wallace look relieved. “And why, we humans are termed a carbon-based species.”
“Exactly.” Holts pointed toward the skulls. “These have many of the same elements as the human body or at least we have a record of the elements that comprise them, except,” she again knelt over the dark skulls, “they are not carbon-based.”
Dr Torbose stepped forward. “Carbon is roughly eighteen percent of human body weight and is synonymous with life on Earth.”
Falco just stared at the skulls. “If they are not carbon-based,” he looked up at Dr Torbose and down to Ensign Holts, “then what the hell are they?”
Ensign Holts tilted her head, “Our scanners found a material in these plates that had the closest match to material from a neutron star. But what the material is, we have absolutely no idea.” She continued to scan the data-pad. “According to the autopsy, there is no trace of carbon in the remains, but there is an element, or material that we do not have a record for.”
Torbose added, “And like the systems on the Anam Cara, the closest material that any of our scanners can match it to—”
“Is a neutron star.” Falco shook his head.
“We also found what looks to be the remains of ‘organ-type’ parts that were badly damaged and methane residue in a ‘sac-like’ pouch that ended in a type of orifice.” Dr Torbose shrugged his shoulders.
Commander Shar’ran nodded and for the first time spoke, “Organ-type?”
“Sorry, Commander, but we have no clear-cut data leading to theories that support any specific functions of the remains, but with time…” Dr Torbose shrugged. “Except for those.” He pointed at the black skulls. “The element that is foreign to us is what the skulls are comprised of and it also runs like veins or arteries through the softer, ‘body’ of the Oortians.”
“Is it possible to surmise that these Oortians have a bone structure made of something similar to a neutron star?” Falco folded his arms.
“If you’re going to fly through space without a suite, a neutron star skeletal frame… would come in handy.” Lieutenant Wallace swallowed hard, smiled and started shaking.
“Funny, Lieutenant,” Falco said, ignoring the high-five between Commander Shar’ran and Lieutenant Wallace.
Ensign Holts put down the data-pad and ran her hands over the dark discs. “Not a scratch on them, or a single detectable imperfection.” She looked up to Captain Falco. “These went through our layered, steel plated hull—”
“Without a mark on them,” Falco cut in.
Ensign Holts stood and faced Dr Torbose. “You stated that you refer to these,” she pointed to the black discs, “as skulls?”
“Yes, our only theory so far is based on a web-like ball made of the unknown material found on the underside of the skull. Its placement in the most protected area would suggest its importance, a brain or processor for the rest of it.”
“Was it damaged in any way?” Falco asked Torbose.
“Possibly compressed into the plate on impact, but we have no idea what it looked like before, Captain,” he turned towards Falco, “what we do know of this unrecorded element is that it cannot be measured on the hardness scale.”
“You have diamonds on board?”
“Station Pluto has a significant mining operation, Captain. Of course, we have diamond bits for drilling. But diamonds are not the hardest mining bits we have.”
“Pressurized Lonsdaleite.” Ensign Holts nodded. “Makes sense out here, just in case.”
“Fifty-eight percent harder than diamond, but we also have other materials made of carbon atoms that are even harder.” Torbose pointed to dark skull plates. “Our best drilling bits did not even scuff them.”
Falco turned to his officers. “Ensign Holts get a report to 10th Fleet ASAP.”
“Already on its way,” Dr Torbose stated. “Admiral Chen had an open feed to the earlier meeting, report was flashed his way as soon as it was finished.” Torbose looked sheepish, cleared his throat, “He is the admiral, Captain.”
“Of course,” Falco growled in the doctor’s general direction. “Let’s go people, we have work to do.”
“Captain.”
Falco spun towards Dr Torbose. “Yes, Doc?”
“Pick it up.” He pointed toward the two skulls on the power-lift.
“Excuse me?” Falco stated.
“Try and lift one.”
Commander Shar’ran smiled, squatted down, wrapped two massive hands around the smooth edges and lifted with all he had. The hubcap-sized disc did not move.
“Each one of those half meter skulls weighs over six tons.” Dr Torbose looked hard at the officers. “These things are battering-rams. They may be weapons or a type of Oortian soldier, or both. They are also the smallest ‘objects’ we have seen of the Oortians and possibly the most basic. We should proceed with great caution.”
“Point taken and make sure you add that to the admiral’s report.” Falco scowled. “Doc, any more information comes to light—”
“You’ll be the second to know, Captain.”
41
Admiral Chen
10th Fleet
The bridge of the Qing Long was energized. Admiral Chen scanned the autopsy report from Station Pluto. Commander Lee sat at his station reading the data file sent by Ensign Holts.
Commander Lee had listened intently to Ensign Sierra Holts’s thorough report. Her ability to scrutinize zona-bytes of data and create an in-depth report in layman’s terms proved that the officer was of the highest intellectual caliber.
“These ‘Oortians’ may be hiding an entire solar system?” Admiral Chen asked no one in particular and continued to read out loud at a mumbling pace. “Non carbon-based life,” he said and dropped the data-screen into its slot on the side of his chair.
“Oortians are a civilization that may be far older than humanity, but according to Ensign Holts’s report their technological capabilities are limited and seem to be based on an organic foundation.” The admiral rapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. “The autopsy findings back up Holts’s theories. So far.”
“Thoughts?”
Commander Lee spoke. “With great respect, Admiral, Ensign Holts’s most educated guess was that the Oortians were not technologically inferior, rather we have encountered their defensive perimeter. Similar to a space defense missile system and the simple existence of a controllable field of that size lends weight to an advanced civilization.”
“So Commander, are we currently clashing with something that has been on the edge of our solar system before humans even knew… we had a solar system? We’ve encountered some type of guarded boundary?”
“Yes,” Commander Lee stated, “a boundary protected by weaponry made of materials that can shred our hulls and possibly, adjust to our tactics independently as we have found no sign of a base or vessel beyond the small Oortians we have destroyed.”
Chen leaned back, folding his arms. “If this path is irreversible, have we awakened a massi
ve war machine that has sat silently in the far depths of our solar system?”
“There are many possibilities Admiral,” Commander Lee said as the Battle-Net screen registered friendly craft on its scanners.
“Admiral, we have twenty-five confirmed Data-Pod signatures on the long-range scanners,” Lee continued to scan the screen. “Three groupings, Battle-Net calculates five are heading towards 10th Fleet, five towards Station Pluto and fifteen towards Earth.”
As Commander Lee finished, the entire bridge fell silent. Every officer within earshot knew the sound of a final act when they heard it. The battle-group must have been destroyed and Captain Fei was trying to warn them.
“Should I prep the grappling-bot, sir?”
Admiral Chen grimaced, he could not remember the last time he had seen anyone use the robots for anything other than dust collectors. “Have them prep the bot, and Commander make sure they do not use a mag-lock to drag them in. Nets only.”
“Yes, sir.” Lee turned to his data-pad and sent the order.
“Commander,” Chen paused to allow his officer time to finish, “alert Captain Falco that Station Pluto will be picking up twenty Data-Pod signatures in the next eighteen hours and five will head their way.”
An entire battle-group gone. Chen had already lost five state of the art, Viper class vessels and knew little of what had destroyed them, no he thought, consumed them. What the admiral did know, 10th Fleet would respond in a manner the Oortians would understand.
42
Captain Falco
Anam Cara – Station Pluto
Even in his personal quarters in the stern of the Anam Cara, Falco couldn’t get a moment’s rest.
“Thank you for the heads-up, Commander Lee. Twenty Data-Pods en route. We will expect sensor contact in eighteen hours.”
Darkness: Book One of the Oortian Wars Page 20
