“I don’t think we did that,” the Captain replied. “So, where are our caterpillar friends?”
Morgan swallowed hard as the data started to feed back from the drones. Multiple angles of active radar and lidar pulses gave her the answer to Captain Vong’s question, and she didn’t like it.
“Here,” she said quietly, flashing an icon on the tactical display. “And here. And here.” Six separate icons appeared on the display. “Dispersal patterns suggest at least thirty-six hours from destruction, which would align with the distress signal we received.”
Nine hours for the message to reach Asimov. Five for the Duchy of Terra warship to get moving. Twenty-one for them to get to this abandoned patch of space.
“My god,” Vong murmured. “Six ships destroyed. All Mesharom?”
“Hull spectrography suggests so, yes,” Masters confirmed. “No other debris, sir. Just…six Mesharom battlecruisers that somebody blew to hell.”
“There’s no way someone punched out six Frontier Fleet battlecruisers without taking a scratch,” the Captain objected. “There’s got to be more debris out here, even if they were careful to clean it up. Casimir, Masters—find it.”
He shook his head.
“Someone just killed six Core Power warships. We need to know who. If the Mesharom are at war out here, that’s one problem. If it was the damn Kanzi…it’s an entirely different problem.”
“That’s it,” Masters said several hours later, his voice half-exhausted. “It’s good to know the fuckers didn’t get it all their own way.”
“I’d have been happier if they hadn’t been willing to vaporize any of their own survivors that happened to be aboard their wrecks,” Morgan pointed out.
They’d managed to pin down the distinct patterns of vapor that showed where the Mesharom’s enemies had destroyed their own wreckage. They hadn’t cared about the Mesharom wrecks, but they’d used what looked like massive antimatter warheads to obliterate the remnants of their own ships.
“They may have evaced before they wrecked the ships,” her boss said. “But it doesn’t look like it. The only way we’re getting any data here is to jump out and get old light.”
She snorted. It was doable, but the resolution sucked—and that was assuming that you calculated your jump close enough to make a useful scan in a reasonable time frame.
“I just can’t shake the feeling that the Mesharom wouldn’t have sent that distress signal without a plan,” she told Masters. “That they sent it at all tells me they were losing and they knew what was going to happen to them. They had to have planned something.”
“Got any inspiration?” he asked. “Because in the absence of a brilliant idea, I don’t see any choice but to tell the Captain we’re done here.”
She nodded, studying the wreckage.
“Antonova,” she called, turning away from the tactical department to look at the coms officer. “We’ve got Mesharom contact protocols on board, right?”
“Yeah, but there’s nobody out there to talk to,” the other woman pointed out. “We’d be shouting into the void.”
“Would we?” Morgan murmured, looking back at the screens. “Have we been post-processing for stealth fields?”
Masters blinked.
“You would have been the one doing it,” he pointed out.
The A!Tol Imperium knew more about stealth fields than they once had, but they still couldn’t detect them quickly. What they could do was go over several hours of scanner data and look for the recurring “glitches” that showed a stealth ship had been there.
“If I had Core Power tech and I were building escape pods, I’d build in the best stealth tech I had,” Morgan said aloud. “If we can’t see them, we can still talk to them.”
“And if they’re hiding, they’re sure as hell not dropping the stealth fields without some sign there are friends out here,” Antonova replied. “I can pulse a general hello and identifier. See if anyone responds.”
“Please, Lieutenant Commander,” Morgan asked. “If there’s anyone left out there, we need to help them.”
Morgan wasn’t quite holding her breath as the radio messages swept the wreckage. She was hoping that someone had survived and presuming that they had some way to receive the transmissions that Bellerophon was sending out.
The casualty list for a Mesharom detachment was shorter than it would have been for an equivalent Imperial formation. Each of the battlecruisers had only carried between sixteen and twenty Mesharom, with most of the “hands” that crewed the vessels provided by complex robotic drones.
Of course, the Mesharom had one of the slowest population growth rates in the galaxy—and none of the advanced races were reproducing particularly quickly. The hundred or so dead represented by the wrecked fleet were a painful loss to their species and especially to the much smaller portion of their race that could tolerate space travel.
If someone had survived, though… the Imperium might be able to find justice for them.
“Nothing,” Antonova noted. “Assuming they’re in the debris field, we should have a response by now.” She shook her head. “I don’t think anyone made it out.”
Morgan nodded stonily.
“It was a long shot,” she admitted. “Thanks, Antonova.”
“Wait,” Masters suddenly barked. “Vector one-seven-zero by oh-four-five. Out eleven million kilometers. What have we got there?”
Morgan tuned the scanners to the point her boss had flagged and saw the same thing he had. There was something new on the screens, something that hadn’t been there.
“Revectoring drones,” she said quickly. “Looks like something just dropped a stealth field but has a radar-absorbing hull. Trying to get a visual.”
The bogey started moving before her drones reached it, glowing on their screens as it brought up an interface drive and shot toward Bellerophon at half of lightspeed.
“Any response to our hail?” Morgan asked.
“No…wait,” Antonova said, echoing Masters’s earlier interruption. “I’ve got a text note requesting an interception and docking protocols.” She shook her head.
“And then they’re asking for one individual to board the pod for ‘diplomatic discussions.’” The coms officer met Morgan’s gaze. “You guessed right, Casimir.”
“Well done,” Masters told them both. “I’ll contact the Captain, but I can guess what his orders are going to be. Go make sure you’re checked out on the emergency hazmat suits, Casimir. I think you’re up.”
Morgan swallowed hard but nodded.
It looked like she was going to meet her third Mesharom ever.
If only she felt qualified to have that conversation.
Chapter Ten
The pod resting in the middle of one of Bellerophon’s small craft hangars looked huge. Almost forty meters long, the stark white ship filled the central space of the hangar, locking a third of the battleship’s assault and transport shuttles in while they worked out what to do with their new passengers.
“There’s no access we can see,” the Ducal Guard Sergeant leading the security detail told Morgan. “Sensors say the hull is active microbots?”
“Yeah, same thing Bellerophon uses as a support for her compressed-matter plates,” Morgan told the trooper. “They do the same thing but with smaller plates. Can’t tell where the CM ends and the microbots begin.”
She looked around the hangar. There were two dozen Guards in a rough encircling pattern around what she was pretty sure was an escape pod, plus several techs poking at the smooth white hull. She sighed.
“What part of ‘send one individual’ is so hard for us to grasp?” she asked rhetorically as another tech helped her into the skintight hazmat suit. She nodded her thanks and zipped up the transparent second skin over her uniform, leaving the hood and face cover unsealed.
“Let’s clear the hangar, people,” Morgan ordered. “Our best case here is an experienced Interpreter, used to aliens but not necessarily enthused with thei
r job. In any case, the sentient we’re dealing with is going to be extremely stressed.
“Let’s not push it. I’ll meet them alone.”
“Lieutenant Commander, that’s not sa—”
“Sergeant, that’s a Mesharom escape pod,” she cut off the Guard NCO. “Our intel suggests her power source is a small matter-conversion plant. If the Mesharom wants to kill us, they overload that plant and Bellerophon is history. Let’s not fool ourselves as to our safety, all right?”
The Guard swallowed but nodded her acquiescence. Troops and techs started to move out, and Morgan waited until the hangar was empty except for her and the pod. Then, closing up the face and head cover of the hazmat suit, she stepped over to the white ship and rapped on the hull.
“I am Lieutenant Commander Morgan Casimir of the Duchy of Terra Militia,” she said loudly and clearly. “I’ve been designated as our point of contact with your Interpreter. May I board?”
There was no audible response, but a portion of the hull a meter or so over from where she stood began to flex and run, almost as if melting, to uncover a standard-looking airlock hatch.
With a deep breath, Morgan crossed to the hatch, which swung open as she reached it. The airlock was large enough for a Mesharom, which made it extremely roomy for a human, especially a relatively small one like Morgan.
She stepped inside and the door slid shut behind her. The Mesharom was in Bellerophon’s hands for safety…and now Morgan Casimir was in the Mesharom’s hands.
The other side of the airlock opened into a cavernous space that likely formed most of the pod. Although it was large enough for thirty or forty humans, Morgan suspected it was designed to hold a single Mesharom. Maybe two.
A pair of worm-like segmented robots were waiting by the airlock door. Serpentine constructions built of flexible plates and a smoothly flowing black fluid she guessed to be similar to the hull, they were identical to the robots Morgan had seen before.
Even Mesharom escape pods, it seemed, came with servitors.
“This way, please, Lieutenant Commander,” the left robot told her. “Interpreter-Lieutenant Coraniss awaits.”
There were no subdivisions inside the ship, though Morgan thought she could pick out several lumps of microbots that could be used to divide the pod into individual rooms. As it was, however, she could see their rescuee from across the ship.
Interpreter-Lieutenant Coraniss—a First-Seeder, if Morgan remembered the cultural rules around Mesharom names and their seven genders correctly—was a three-meter-long fuzzy millipede with orange and blue markings. Dozens of long feelers, both hands and feet depending on the Mesharom’s desire, fidgeted nervously with a computer panel while Coraniss focused away from Morgan.
The robots stopped her about two meters from the Mesharom, who was clearly very unsure of themselves. Morgan knew it was dangerous to project human emotion onto even bipedal aliens, let alone something as different as a Mesharom, but she had the strong impression that Coraniss was terrified.
“Are you okay?” she asked before she could even think about it.
The fur and legs rippled in a way that gave Morgan a moment of nausea, then the Mesharom pulled back from the computer. They still didn’t look at her as they considered the question.
“No,” Coraniss finally replied. “I appreciate the concern, and no, I am not ‘okay.’ I was the most junior Interpreter of the Fifty-Third Flotilla, the only officer who could be spared. I was not consulted. Not advised. I was delivered into this pod and fired into space without warning.”
The alien shivered.
“I am not okay,” they repeated. “But I have a task, Lieutenant Commander Casimir, and I will see it done.”
“We received a distress signal from your flotilla,” Morgan told them. “We arrived as quickly as possible. Too late to save your people.”
“Such was expected,” Coraniss admitted. “The hope was not to save the flotilla. The hope was to save the one selected to bear witness. To save me…and the data I now possess.”
“You have records of the ships who attacked you?”
“I do. They are…strange,” the Mesharom told her. “I will provide you with all of the information I have and will assist your efforts against them as best as I can. A vessel will be sent to pick me up, but it will take some weeks to arrive.”
Morgan swallowed.
“Has…has a Frontier Fleet Flotilla ever been destroyed like this?” she asked.
“Never.”
The word hung in the pod for several seconds, and Coraniss turned to level their massive crystalline eyes on Morgan.
“Never,” they repeated. “Few powers in the galaxy would dare such. Fewer still would succeed.” They gestured to the computer.
“All of my records have been transferred to your ship. My servitor should be able to direct your crews as to how to interface with this vessel to provide air, power and food supplies, if you would be so kind.”
“Of course,” Morgan promised. “We will do everything in our power to see to your comfort.”
“My comfort is most easily seen to by remaining aboard this pod,” Coraniss told her. “I do not doubt that you would do all within your power, but I would not be comfortable aboard your vessel.”
“We can keep your pod aboard and inside our defenses while providing hookups, at least,” the human said. “We will keep you safe.”
“It is appreciated. You will hunt the killers of my crew as well?”
Morgan grimaced, then realized the alien probably wouldn’t understand the gesture.
“The decision is not mine,” she admitted. “But I do not know why we wouldn’t. We value our relationship with your people…and you were attacked in our space.”
The data dump from the Mesharom pod was huge, but it turned out to not have any real answers. Morgan stared at the ships that had emerged from nowhere in frustration.
The six battlecruisers had been hanging out in the middle of nowhere. How exactly they expected to know if they were needed was unclear, though Morgan guessed that they had a hyperfold relay network stretched through the area and spies everywhere.
Then, without any warning according to the files the Mesharom had given them, a hyper portal tore itself open in the middle of the Frontier Fleet formation. Twenty ships, each over twice the size of the ten-million-ton Mesharom battlecruisers, emerged in knife-fighting range of the Mesharom and opened fire.
There were data codes in the exchange of fire that the Mesharom hadn’t bothered to provide explanations for, but what the human officers could decipher told them it had been a brutal exchange of close-range fire. Proton beams, hyperfold cannons, interface-drive missiles and at least three weapon systems the humans had no basis to identify filled the space between the two fleets.
“No wonder they didn’t ask Coraniss’s permission,” Morgan observed as they played the battle again, at one third speed so they could go over it in detail. “I make it less than thirty seconds from the portal forming to their captain firing them into space.”
“And less than sixty seconds from the portal forming to the complete destruction of the Mesharom fleet,” Masters agreed. “The bastards bled for it, but they wiped out the only major Core Power formation out here.”
Twenty ships had emerged, each a twenty-million-ton-plus behemoth equipped with weapons Bellerophon’s computers couldn’t identify from the Mesharom data. Six had survived.
“The post-battle data is less clear,” Morgan observed. “Looks like it’s just from the pod’s sensors, through the stealth field. But…they didn’t even try to check for survivors. They just closed in and blasted their wrecks into vapor. If any of their people survived the fight, they killed them themselves.”
“There’s nothing about these ships that matches any of our files.” Her boss shook his head. “It’s hard to judge a lot of their tech level, though, since it’s not like we have solid files on the Mesharom’s ships.”
Morgan ran the post-battle data
on her own screen while several of the analysts starting running the battle again, at one-tenth speed this time. It still wasn’t going to take very long to run.
“I don’t know who they are,” she said slowly as she looked over the data and ran another progression.
“But?” Masters encouraged.
“I think I know where they went.” Morgan turned her screen, showing the projection to him. The vector the strangers had left on intersected with a major hyperspace current less than a day’s travel away. It didn’t lead anywhere the Imperium had noted as being of worth…but there were two stars and a black hole along its route.
“Well done,” her boss said with a broad grin. “All right, Casimir. Package it up. You and I get to go talk to the Captain.”
Morgan swallowed.
“Yes, sir.”
Chapter Eleven
Harold couldn’t quite help himself. When his fleet made the jump into the Lelldorin System, he closed his eyes and half-held his breath. He was hoping against hope he was wrong, but he suspected he knew what he was going to find.
“EM radiation is dark,” Ling Yu stated flatly in the silence of the flag deck. “We have no radio signals. No energy signals.”
He opened his eyes.
“What should we be seeing?” he asked.
“There was an Imperial destroyer echelon posted here,” she replied. “Eight ships. We had a Thunderstorm-class cruiser, Katrina, positioned here as well. No cloudscoops, but there should be at least one major mining platform in the belt.
“Plus, well, an orbital refinery complex and several transshipment platforms and two major fusion power centers on the surface.”
“All gone,” Harold concluded. He was studying the screens now. Lelldorin had six planets and an asteroid belt, but his eyes were only for the inhabited second planet, Arend.
“We’re launching probes to sweep Arend,” Ling Yu told him. “But all evidence suggests that Lelldorin suffered the same fate as Powell.”
Darkness Beyond (Light of Terra: a Duchy of Terra series Book 1) Page 6
