Recover meant rearming, providing medical aid, rationing, and preparing for the next engagement, all as quickly as possible. The PB weapons were all good for nearly a thousand firings before they required a power pack swap. And all of the injuries were currently manageable. Pearce would let everyone take a breather for a moment but then they would move on to the last part of SARA.
Attack.
TWENTY-ONE
Interstellar Transit Zone, Jericho System
Unknown enemy vessel
Pearce was ready for another pitched battle but his fireteam made it to the CIC without encountering any further resistance. Only the ship’s captain and three other junior officers remained, and they were waiting with the heavy security doors to the CIC wide open, arms raised in surrender.
They stood in the center of a typically laid out Fleet combat information center, with stations for approximately a dozen spacers arranged in a hexagon facing the center of the compartment. It was a standard Fleet design, where they could easily interact with each other and monitor the large holotable displays in the center, which were all currently shutdown. There was nothing to suggest that this ship was radically different than any other he had ever served on.
Pearce and Lillywhite carefully cleared the room corners-in before signaling for the rest of the team to enter. They quickly detained and searched the four officers but there didn’t seem to be any other tricks hidden up their sleeves. Once they had all been secured and lined up on their knees, Pearce addressed the captain.
“Why didn’t you attempt to scuttle the ship?”
The captain sneered. He was in actuality a two-star Rear Admiral according to his shoulder epaulette. That meant he was most certainly black ops, as such rank for a ship captain was virtually unheard of on the Fleet side. He was tall, fit, and well-groomed with an olive complexion and an air of aristocracy about him. He looked younger in appearance than was otherwise associated with such a high rank, although that didn’t mean much with modern anti-aging therapies. He could be a hundred years old for all Pearce could tell.
“You are no Marine,” the admiral spat the words out as he appraised Pearce in his armor.
“And you are certainly no United Sol Confederation Fleet Admiral.”
The man’s face reddened and a vein throbbed in his neck. “I have served the Confederation for longer than you have…”
In mid-sentence Pearce snapped a front kick directly to the teeth of the man speaking. It was almost gentle by Pearce’s standards, just really a slap with the sole of his boot. Even so, it sent the admiral crashing to the deck.
“You just destroyed thirteen USC Fleet ships and murdered thousands of your fellow Confederates,” Pearce said while glowering over the supine body of the admiral. “Not to mention the civilian ships that you also wiped out, and whatever role you played in the destruction of an entire fucking colony. All in a convoluted plan to drag the entire Confederation into a massive war with this ship.” Pearce gestured to the command center around them.
He leaned further in towards the visibly shaken man and causally aimed his rifle at the admiral’s head. “The only thing you will be serving from this point forward will be a lifetime prison sentence. If I decide to let you live. So I’ll ask again, why didn’t you try to scuttle the ship?”
The admiral didn’t balk. “This ship is a prototype and is far too valuable to simply destroy. Your assault is ultimately a futile effort; the ship is completely locked down and already in slipspace. It will return to base automatically where an entire legion of troops will capture you all and take great pleasure in extracting every last ounce of information under great physical duress. You may have defeated my crew, but you have failed to capture this ship and will soon face a reckoning the likes of which you never witnessed.”
Pearce was inwardly surprised. He had felt no indication whatsoever that the ship had gone to FTL. Apparently the itchy-crawly sensation Pearce could detect from the A-Drive was completely absent with this “slipspace” drive. Outwardly, Pearce smiled.
“Do you think your lockdown will stop me for long? Did you stop to think how I took out your ASI so easily?”
Somewhat alarmingly the admiral smiled back in response. “You hardly ‘took out’ our ASI. You used a backdoor exploit to force the system to reboot, which is nearly complete. All of the control systems have been slaved to the ASI, and our independent cyberwarfare systems have disabled any further attacks from your Omega library. ”
At the mention of Omega, Pearce flinched. There was no way that anyone should be privy to the ultimate black ops organization. Its knowledge was limited to less than a dozen people outside of the group itself. Supposedly.
“Oh yes, Agent whoever-the-fuck-you-are. We are aware of the vaunted Omega group and all of your capabilities. You will not be able to further muck about with this ship. You have lost. If you surrender immediately, I may secure you a speedier death. If I decide to grant it.”
Pearce glanced over at Pilosni and Dewey, who had been attempting to access the ship’s controls for a few moments. A quick knock later and they both responded through his VIA that they were indeed blocked from accessing anything. Venano likewise reported that all systems had gone into lockdown, and he was currently looking for a way to manually bypass the electronics.
“You’re an unusually well-informed man for a Fleet-puke, but there are a lot of other ways to gain control of a ship that don’t rely on the computerized systems. My engineer can pull the power to the engines, and I can take my time taking apart your ASI’s systems until I have the access I need.”
Now the admiral actually laughed. “And you’re an overconfident fool. Sure, go ahead and cut the power to the slipstring drive while it is in use. It will only cause a local singularity that will crush the ship into subatomic particles.”
Pearce sent the threat to Meson, who confirmed that it was possible but that he did not have enough information to determine how likely.
“The only reason I was keeping you four alive was to help us understand how this ship operates. It sounds as if you are telling me that there is no longer any purpose to your survival.” Pearce noticed the three junior officers stiffening as he made the threat. “Perhaps it is just a question of the proper motivation.”
Quicker than lightning, Pearce shifted the aim of his rifle and fired, disintegrating the foot of one of the officers, who fell to the deck writhing in pain and agony. The smell of burnt flesh wafted rapidly across the area. Pearce aimed at the second junior officer. “I’m sure I could carve off a significant portion of your bodies before we reach your secret base.”
Somehow, the admiral saw through his act. Pearce noticed it when the man’s eyes suddenly widened, and he threw up a jamming field before the pompous prick even opened his mouth to speak just in case he had any last ditch surprises.
“Why aren’t you trying to hack the system?”
“Who says I’m not?” Pearce replied with a straight face.
“You’re stalling,” the admiral said in realization, before he attempted a pathetically executed leg sweep. Pearce merely stepped over the kick and then slammed the heel of his foot into the nose of the man with a resounding crunch. Without even sparing a glance back Pearce then casually made his way in front of the third prisoner again, this time sticking the still hot barrel of the rifle right under the man’s chin, pushing the head upwards until he was looking straight up at the ceiling.
“Maybe you’ll be the cooperative one. Or maybe you’ll be the first one I kill.” To his credit, the officer didn’t flinch.
“I’m in,” Emma transmitted. Suddenly the screens and systems in the command center came back to life, displaying various ships systems, sensor readings, and controls. Pearce stepped back from the officer and spoke out loud.
“Emma, status report.”
“I have successfully neutralized this vessel’s artificial shipboard intelligence, and taken control of all of the systems it had access to.” Emma’s sult
ry voice sounded strange coming out of the shipboard speakers.
Pearce watched the astounded face of the admiral as he replied. “Excellent. Please bring the ship out of FTL.”
“At once,” Emma replied, and a second later several screens changed significantly. “Done. I have disengaged the slipstring gravity drive.”
Pilosni had jumped into the pilot’s chair and suddenly shouted out a string of vile curses. “I don’t believe this. We’re in interstellar space, more than two light years from Jericho.”
Pearce was likewise incredulous. Hearing about the proposed capabilities of such life-altering technology from Meson was one thing. Experiencing it was another. This was without a doubt a massive game changer. He turned back to the prisoners again.
“What is the range and top speed of this thing?” he asked them under the barrel of his rifle.
“There is no need for more violence,” Emma said. “I have all of the technical information about this ship available for you.”
The admiral had slowly raised himself to a seated position, still looking incredulously at Pearce. “How?”
Pearce flashed a smarmy grin. “I brought a full-fledged A-Gee-I with me. Never know when one will be handy. For the last ten minutes she’s been tearing your systems apart from the inside, setting up a bootloader trap for your ASI. As soon as it tried to bring up the primary control interfaces, it was isolated and subsumed. Emma now controls the ship. As a matter of fact, Emma now is the ship.” Pearce turned to Lillywhite and slapped him on the shoulder.
“Congratulations Captain, the Emma is now yours to command.”
***
It took less than a day for Pearce and his companions from the ill-fated Nightingale to settle in on the newly christened “Emma”. With the AGI in control of the ship’s systems they could have gotten under way immediately, but there was no need to rush. They were currently sitting in deep interstellar space, as safe as a ship in the great dark could possibly be. Meanwhile, they had many injuries and a few prisoners to deal with, in addition to needing to learn how a completely new type of ship operated.
The prisoners were quickly secured in the ship’s brig. Aside from the four command officers, there was the spacer that Pearce had left injured earlier with the blown out knees and a handful of others throughout the ship and in engineering. It was a tight fit but they lacked any spare manpower to try and secure them anywhere else. The brig was designed to be secure and would suffice for now. If it got a little ripe, it was the least that they deserved.
Pearce was by far the most injured of the crew that had stormed the CIC, but Private Allison had taken some hits to the chest that had melted through his armor plate and badly burned his upper ribs, collapsing a lung in the process.
Luckily this ship was as well-equipped as any Confederation Fleet vessel and carried a full Level I combat trauma center. Pearce and Allison both spent a few hours in trauma pods getting patched up. The pods were capable of everything from 3D printing entire organs to complete intracellular radiation therapy and were fully automated.
Pearce refused to be put down fully for the treatment, preferring to have his body’s sensory functions temporarily disabled by his VIA so that he could remain conscious to converse with Emma. The AGI had been able to piece together the actions of the last few weeks by examining the ship’s logs and decrypted transmissions. It was hardly a complete explanation of the operation, only including the activities this ship had been directly involved in, but it filled in a lot of holes.
The ship, christened Janus, was launched three months ago and had taken a whirlwind shakedown cruise that Pearce found nearly impossible to believe. It had traveled the entire span of settled space and back in just a few days, a trip that would have taken months with the A-Drive.
They had performed several systems tests before capturing the mega-freighter used to attack New Shanghai about six weeks ago. There were regular, if concise, progress reports about a project that was clearly the modification of the freighter, up until just a few days before the attack. They had spent days accelerating the ship to near relativistic speed to heighten the destructive effects. Of the Alesshia’s crew, there was no mention at all.
Then there were coldly calculated after-action reports, detailing the destruction wrought on the unsuspecting planet and the initial reactions in the Shenzen system. It was clear from the data and Emma’s analysis of the slipstring drive that Meson was correct that the ship was unable to “see” outside of the gravity bubble when it was fully engaged.
Somehow, as Meson also suspected, the ship was able to partially “phase-in” and gather intelligence. It seemed to do so for extremely brief periods of time; there were still images and snapshots of sensor readings but no video or data over time.
Most chilling of all were the reports leading up to the destruction of the fleet. The Janus had waited patiently for the Nightingale to dock with the Scorpio before finalizing their attack plans. The order from above for all ships to hold station was definitely coordinated with the strike. Only the fact that Pearce had found a loophole had saved their lives.
Luckily, the Janus didn’t seem to have any actual gravity-wave weapons. The sneak attack on the ships in the Shenzen system had been carried out by an old-fashioned time-on-target attack. The Janus had used its fantastic speed to launch a coordinated volley of heavy railgun slugs, timed to all impact their targets at precisely the same instant. Although the gravity ship was small, it possessed an out-sized rail cannon system that used the massive power of the enormous reactor to exceed the destructive firepower of the largest Fleet dreadnoughts.
Pearce was again struck with how radically this technology would change modern warfare. Using a similar method, this single small ship could conceivably destroy entire battle fleets without any warning at all. A handful could wipe out the entire Confederation military.
And he had just put a sentient artificial general intelligence in control of the prototype.
***
Pearce emerged from his pod, naked and dripping with a combination of medical fluids, and was greeted affectionately by Jula despite the mess and the accompanying smell. She threw her arms around him in her best impression of a bear hug. Pearce hesitated to return the embrace, his slimy and dripping arms held awkwardly in the air over her shoulders.
“Just hold me you big ape,” Jula said softly.
Pearce gently wrapped her in his arms and smiled. “You may regret this later when it takes you twenty minutes to wash the smell away.”
“That’s twenty more minutes together, so I don’t think I’ll regret it at all.”
“This is a military ship, Jules. Even the Captain’s shower won’t be bigger than a coffin.”
Jula just sighed in response. For a moment they didn’t speak, and Pearce’s mind wandered into thoughts of their last shower together. Then she spoke up again.
“I don’t even know what to call you. Buxton? Pearce? Colonel?”
Pearce broke the embrace and held Jula’s upper arms, gently pushing her backwards so he could see her face.
“My friends used to call me Dar.”
She smiled and nodded in response.
“I like that. So Dar…are you just happy to see me, or is that a normal reaction to reconstructive pod surgery?”
Her grin was wicked and infectious. Pearce glanced down, surprised at his body’s betrayal of his thoughts.
“Oh, that’s definitely the pod.”
***
Later, after a healthy breaking-in of his repaired body, Pearce quietly slipped from Jula’s embrace and began to dress himself. As he tugged on a standard military jumpsuit he’d appropriated, his thoughts drifted from the comfortable afterglow of sexual release and budding romance.
He was now in control of one of the mightiest military devices ever created by man. And at the same time the novel drive system represented the greatest technological advance in centuries, one whose impact would be felt galaxy-wide and that would ush
er in a generational leap in human expansion.
That technology had already been used to commit the single worst human atrocity in history, committed by treasonous oligarchs possibly at the highest levels of the Confederation government. The fact that the conspirators had the capability to outfit one of the slipstring drives on a suicidal mega-freighter strongly suggested that the drive tech was mature enough to install on a number of other ships. How many other ships like this one were already out in the wild? How many standard warships had already been retrofitted?
Pearce couldn’t help but recognize the symbolism of the attack on New Shanghai. These events had all been placed in motion with an orchestrated impact event that caused a mass extinction. Even without war imminently looming on the horizon, the introduction of the slipstring gravity drive to the galaxy was sure to be its own form of impact event. How measurable of an effect would it have? How much damage would it ultimately end up causing?
He couldn’t answer those questions yet, but as Dargo Pearce walked out of the Captain’s quarters he swore that he would do everything in his power to make those responsible pay.
EPILOGUE
Arcadia, Beta Canum System
United Sol Confederation Capital
Nearly half of the explored galaxy away, Zachary Allard was once again sitting in his favorite high-backed chair and sipping a new whiskey.
He had spent an exhausting few hours issuing orders to the teams that would end up supporting Agent Pearce’s rapidly expanding mission. Additionally, he had been activating and deploying new sensitive assets that he’d carefully cultivated over a lifetime of spycraft. There was no direct evidence of the Directorate’s involvement in these matters, but the strong circumstantial details that Pearce had uncovered warranted some extreme measures. Using some of his invaluable secret resources would eventually burn them but hopefully provide results.
Impact Event (Dargo Pearce Chronicles #1) Page 27
