“Remember that giant glowing jellyfish Mother encountered in Kang Dynasty space and then spirited away with, or what looked like a giant jellyfish anyway?” Skyhawk replied. “She’s been studying its nature. Neither she nor I fully understand it yet, but looking over Mother’s analysis of the data, I was able to glean enough to modify one of our firing options.”
“That much we figured out on our own, thank you very much,” Deadthrall said. “Get to the small print.”
“I infused the lasers and plasma torpedoes with bacterial nanites that feed off of pure energy,” Skyhawk explained.
“You borrowed off of the HAARP scientist’s work on Earth?” Rake sounded incredulous and disappointed.
“I’m sorry, I don’t remember when my name changed to Dr. Original. I was thinking more like Captain Whatever Works.” If they were going to throw around attitude, Skyhawk was always happy to comply.
“So, what, they suck the energy out of the ships, killing their ability to go on the defensive or the offensive, and then they crush the ships in their maw, as the nanites continue to feed and proliferate, which in turn explodes the targets’ nuclear-fusion engines, or whatever the hell they’re using to get about?” Deadthrall said.
“Yep.” Skyhawk glared at them daring them to try and sling any more shit his way.
Instead, all he heard was a chorus of “Cool,” and the sound of the copilots chairs rotating back into their original side-by-side positions.
Patent, still standing in the background nodded. “Best part is, once they’ve been hit, whenever they fire at us, they just hasten the energy parasites’ nanite proliferation, strengthening their grip on the ship and powering up the maw that will inevitably crush them.” He smiled. “Nice.”
The copilots swiveled in their chairs to glare at him. “I hate it when he says something intelligent,” Rake said.
“Yeah, just kills that whole Neanderthal thing we’ve come to rely on when under attack. You know, sic the dinosaur on it and all will be well.” Deadthrall swiveled his chair back to the port screen, as did the others.
“Just how many more of those sentient energy weapons do we have to fire?” Donovan asked.
Starhawk sighed. “That was the last of them.”
“Great. And there are battle cruisers left on the field with their own fighters. Just how many rapier minnows does it take to eat a whale exactly?” Donovan asked.
Evidently, Donovan had been rudely disappointed the sentient energy weapons hadn’t dispatched all of the Galaxy-grade Cruisers, the ones the size of a train’s length of airplane hangars.
“I swear, on every team there’s got to be one whining wanker.” Patent flexed his muscles tighter in hopes of releasing the growing tension in his body.
“What he said,” Donovan’s copilots intoned, all pointing to Patent without turning around this time. They were focused instead on what the hell to do about those remaining battle cruisers, still dumping fighters into surrounding airspace.
Patent was just glad Skyhawk had saved the jellyfish for the cruisers, or there’d be even more of them to contend with.
***
ABOARD CRUMLEY’S STARHAWK
THE LARRY NIVEN
“Alpha Unit is here, guys. Stand down, please. You’ll just get in the way,” Skyhawk’s voice rang out across the bridge loudspeakers. It wasn’t the volume that made Crumley cringe.
He took a deep breath, realized the Alpha Unit teens were probably right, but he was Omega Force. He was supposed to trade on experience over his slowing reflexes that came with age. Bad enough they had never been trained in the first place like those teens from day one on playing video games to get the fast-twitch muscles in their hands up to speed—pending further nano-enhancement.
“Draco,” Crumley said, addressing his Starhawk’s chief AI, “can you emulate Skyhawk?”
“I can prioritize his EQ, IQ and SQ algorithms over my own, yes.”
“No, not you. I want you to infuse me with his algorithms, prioritizing them over my own for the duration of this battle. And transmit the stratagem to the rest of Omega Force.”
“I’ve sent the signal to the Omega Force Starhawks. And I’m reprogramming the atmospheric nanite hive minds on the bridge, which are now burrowing their way into your body’s surfaces. You, of course, are also breathing them in.”
“How long…?” Crumley smiled. “Yolo.” He took over control of the Starhawk by signaling Draco what he wanted to do next directly from his mind chip.
Crumley’s Starhawk started teleporting about the enemy cruisers. Firing. Teleporting to another location and to another enemy cruiser before the prior cruiser could even get a lock on them, and firing again. As the Larry Niven was doing this, Draco had tweaked their weapons options to fabricate Skyhawk’s jellyfish weapons. The Starhawks came with their own robotized engineering bays able to synthesize new solutions on a dime so long as Draco shared Singularity-Time thinking with the AIs and robots in the engineering bay.
Less than thirty seconds was required to deploy the jellyfish—most of that time sacrificed to the manufacturing of the new weapons; there was only so much the real world could do to keep up with singularity-speed thinking. Less than thirty seconds after that before the cruisers firing their offensive weapons lent the jellyfish all they needed to do them in, and for the fireworks to begin.
***
ABOARD DEWITT’S SKYHAWK
THE PHILIP K. DICK
“Alpha Unit is here, guys. Stand down, please. You’ll just get in the way,” Skyhawk’s voice rang out across the bridge loudspeakers.
DeWitt was so pissed off at the disrespect coming his way that he actually threw one of the grenades strapped to his body at the port screen. The grenade, of course, passed harmlessly through the port screen, the Starhawk’s chief-supersentience able to react and shapeshift any part of herself well ahead of DeWitt’s reflexes.
Crumley’s transmission to his mindchip came next, helping to calm him down. “Those who can’t do, cheat, I suppose,” DeWitt mumbled, settling into Crumley’s idea that they take on Alpha Unit personas for the time being.
Raising his voice to Scorpius, his Starhawk’s chief supersentience, he said, “Give me a mix of Skyhawk’s persona for big ideas, Rake’s, for speed and maneuverability, and my actual persona, for the lucky dumb idea, in equal measure.”
“Adjusting atmospheric nanites now,” Scorpius replied.
DeWitt smiled, switching to mindchip communications and taking the ship forward. Already responding to a mixture of all three of his personalities, Scorpius had morphed the front of the disk that held everything but the rocket engines with their various choice of propellants into a giant maw.
DeWitt had his Starhawk playing sperm whale, gobbling up the “clouds of krill in the ocean”. The krill, of course, were the enemy fighters, whose numbers were legion. As the maw of the ship gobbled up thousands at a time, their explosions inside the Starhawk were recaptured, the energy used to bolster the Starhawk’s shields. Which was a good thing, because the pissed off “krill” yet to be ingested were firing on her and her alone. Ignoring the other Starhawks.
DeWitt used Rake’s fast-flying skills, using the armchair controls to create eddies with his “sperm whale” that were too much for the smaller fighters crowding him, causing them to crash into one another and sending their firing solutions at each other as well, instead of at him.
Between the two tactics, DeWitt was mopping up fighters by the millions now, their star cruisers no longer present to keep DeWitt off the fighters.
But he was out of lucky dumb ideas. And his Skyhawk persona, riding piggyback on his actual persona, was curiously mute as well.
DeWitt had become convinced that Techa had it out for him, ensuring that when things went his way for even a second… This moment being no exception.
***
ABOARD CRONOS’S STARHAWK
THE DOUGLAS ADAMS
“Alpha Unit is here, guys. Stand down, pleas
e. You’ll just get in the way,” Skyhawk’s voice rang out across the bridge loudspeakers.
Cronos, seated in his captain’s chair, in his Knights Templar getup, chainmail and red crucifix-emblazoned white linen smock and all, holding his flaming crucifix in his right hand off to the side of the chair, the same size as the one Christ carried on his back, gritted his teeth at the announcement.
Crumley’s transmission to Cronos’s mindchip came through next, carrying Crumley’s bright idea about emulating Alpha Unit personas to get them through this, which Cronos was just as happy to ignore.
“Do they really think they can compete with someone on a mission from God?” He sighed. “Show them, Brandon.”
Using his mindchip to pulse his command to the chief supersentience, Cronos relayed his orders.
The Starhawk Douglas Adams unfolded like origami.
It had been reduced to one very giant paper-plane of seemingly two-dimensional thickness, now in the shape of an early 21st-century stealth bomber.
On either side of the craft stood the entire crew of four-hundred-fifty, manning what looked like .50 caliber machine guns on tripods.
Standing, equally spaced, along every inch of the perimeter, the crew gripped their weapons in both hands and spit fire in all directions at the buzzing fighters.
The smart machine guns spat out arsenal best suited to taking out targets based on how they were deployed in the surrounding space from nanosecond to nanosecond. The guns themselves were loaded with AI on board and hive mind nano intelligence overseeing nano-factories in the munitions section of the assault rifles, also known as the gun magazines.
The Douglas Adams’ energy shields shattered the exposed fighters on contact, and would continue to do so—so long as they held.
The nanite cocktails percolating through the brains of the crew kept them in Singularity Time so the Starhawk’s chief supersentience, Brandon, could coordinate the shooting on such a complex moving mandala of fighters firing back at them, and moving beyond the speeds of un-augmented humanoid reflexes to keep up.
It was a massacre.
So far it was all going Cronos’s way.
Cronos, himself, stood in the center of the upturned side of the shape-shifted Douglas Adams, holding his flaming crucifix, standing boldly before God. He would need no other protection, not even the ship’s shields, as far as he was concerned.
He recited the Our Father prayer. “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…”
The explosions to all sides of him and the shrapnel flying his way from the erupting enemy fighters did not cause him to miss a beat of his prayer recital, or so much as flinch.
***
ABOARD SKYHAWK’S RAPIER
THE PEGASSUS
“No way. It’s just not possible, I tell you,” Donovan proclaimed, refusing to believe what his eyes were relaying from the port screen to his brain.
“No way those fossils reached across time to…” Rake echoed.
“I refuse to believe they figured out how to even get ten percent of what those Starhawks are capable of out of them,” Deadthrall chimed in.
Skyhawk was busy hacking the COMMS of the Starhawks, searching for an explanation for Omega Force’s sudden turnaround in performance. “All but Cronos downloaded Alpha Unit personas to the nanite cocktails saturating their brains.”
He and his copilots all swiveled toward Patent in tandem. “You cheat?” Skyhawk sounded flabbergasted.
Patent made a sour face. “Consider it an homage, and a concession both to the fact that they couldn’t keep up with you and couldn’t leave you out here without cruiser support at the same time.” He sighed. There was no point in lying to them. “Age is a terrible thing. Be thankful your generation will never have to experience it. At our age, most everything we do is a cheat.”
Skyhawk swiveled back to the port screen, followed by the others. He chuckled. “They pulled that out of their asses in a heartbeat, you have to give them that.”
“I suppose it was kind of brilliant,” Rake confessed.
“I’m so having a drink when this is all through with the Knights Templar guy. The dude is seriously bent,” Deadthrall said.
***
Patent sidled up beside Leon from Clone Team One to observe the Alpha Unit space fleet docking at one of the Nautilus’s holding bays. The wraparound hull metal-glass ports allowed crewmates to see everything going on about the Nautilus, depending on what deck they were on, unless they wanted to avail themselves of the smart-glass features, and simply scroll the view they desired from the countless cameras toward them.
“How did Alpha Unit comport themselves?” Leon asked.
“About that… They were so much better serving as a Space Navy for us than Omega Force that it was embarrassing. I suggest we limit Omega Force to ground operations for now. Until they can receive additional training. Even then…I doubt their reflexes will ever be fast enough.”
Leon took a long slow breath in, and a long, slow breath out, keeping his eyes on the arriving Alpha Unit warbirds. “So, the shift of power has already begun.”
“Who were we kidding? We were overdue for retirement anyway.”
Leon smiled half-heartedly at him.
“Omega Force isn’t going to take lightly to the idea of going quietly into the annals of history,” Patent warned.
“No, then again, maybe Mother can find a way to keep them relevant. She has more trouble letting go than we do.”
Patent frowned. “Not sure if I should be comforted by a supersentience more committed to my immortality than I am. Seems like I’ve earned an honorable death. We all have.”
Leon snorted. “Life goes on long after we’re tired of living. Isn’t that how the Billy Joel song goes? Maybe it’s time we exposed Mother to his thinking. Before her oversight opens up another rung in Dante’s hell for us.”
“Happy to, since we’ve been exposed to far too many rungs already Dante couldn’t be bothered to document.” Patent marched off in a huff.
Leon shouted after him. “Tell me Omega Force did something to redeem themselves!”
“You know they did,” Patent hollered back without turning around. Mumbling more to himself, he added, “Cheeky bastards.”
SEVENTY-TWO
EARTH
BLACK SITE
VINDICTA
Over a mile underground, in an undisclosed location in New Mexico, inside the Vindicta compound, General Schopenhauer beat a feverish path back and forth behind Dillon, who slumped in a swivel chair staring blankly at a computer screen. The soundproofed room they were currently in had been designed last minute just for him.
Schopenhauer was hyperventilating, and perspiring, in a fifty-degree temperature-controlled room kept cool to prevent him from sweating. Best laid plans…
To be fair, he was trying to keep a broken man together through his mental breakdown, all the while upping the pressure on him. It was a job for a trained psychologist. His specialty was in psyops, breaking minds, not putting them back together.
“Dillon, you did magnificently with the equations to teleport the Gypsy Galaxy wherever we want. Surely, asking you to link that galaxy with some carefully chosen others, can’t be asking that much more of you.”
“If I understand you correctly, you’re not only in the process of turning an entire galaxy into a war machine, now you want me to attach galaxies to it that will be part of its supply chain?” Dillon’s voice had taken on a whining quality that was worse than nails on a chalkboard.
“That’s right, Dillon. There’s no getting anything past you.” Schopenhauer made sure that communiqué transmitted zero sarcasm, nothing but awe and wonder at the man’s unsurpassed intelligence.
“That’s insane.”
General Schopenh
auer arrested his pacing, gazed straight at Dillon. “It’s war gaming, son. It’s what we do. If it weren’t more insane than the other guy can imagine, we’d be in deep shit. Trust me on this. This has been true all the way back to Lao Tzu and his Art of War.”
Dillon had been issuing commands to Rex, his service dog, from the command book the entire time he chatted absently with Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer had made sure to fill the room with soldiers just so the dog could go through its attack maneuvers with them, using them all as chew toys. Schopenhauer was determined to hold up his end of this relationship with Dillon.
The soldiers screaming and carrying on, their “Ahs!” at having their arms bitten down on, and their “Get this dog off me!” hollered epithets seemed to assuage Dillon, give him some sense of control in a very out-of-control situation.
Finally, Dillon looked up from his book and said, “Yeah, I can do this!”
“That’s my boy!” Schopenhauer shouted conveying relief and joy in the same breath. Tears erupted from his eyes as if he’d discovered the fountain of youth in the process, and it gushed through him, revitalizing him.
“What’s the first one you want to attach to the Gypsy Galaxy?”
“I’ve prepared you a list based on Xenon’s intel.” Never mind that Xenon was a Shadow Warriors spy running black ops missions that would make Lucifer bow with respect. Schopenhauer was used to strange bedfellows in wartime. Compared to Dillon, Xenon couldn’t begin to compete for the top spot in that category.
Dillon queued up the list of galaxy names and their star charts. “Holy shit. That’s one hell of a supply chain.”
“Look, here’s the thing.” Schopenhauer sponged the sweat from his forehead with his handkerchief. “Our relationship with these allies is still a bit testy. So let’s not make the barriers between the galaxies in this TGC we’re putting together too permeable. Leastways until we can get on a surer footing with them.”
“Yeah, okay,” Dillon said, straining to read the print on the first one. His eyes were shot from staring at a computer screen for so long. “Citro Galaxy, specializing in cyberwarfare. That does sound promising.”
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