New Frontiers- The Complete Series

by Jasper T. Scott

  “Of course. I’ll be waiting.”

  Catalina watched with a furrowed brow as the talking heads faded to black and a bar of text appeared.

  Classified Transmission from W.A.S. Intrepid - November 18, 2774.

  The text faded, and a new face appeared. The caption below read: Captain White of the W.A.S. Intrepid. He was a Caucasian man with straight brown hair and a nest of laugh lines around two eyes that were the purest black Catalina had ever seen, as if two matching holes had been bored into his skull.

  “Hello wretched creatures,” the captain said, his voice flat and emotionless, his posture rigid. Catalina felt a chill run down her spine. He sounded like a bot and looked like a human. League Party warnings about a bot revolution came to mind… “Your species sickens us. The time of your judgment is at hand.” The camera panned and zoomed out to show an assembled group of Alliance officers and enlisted personnel, all of them with matching black eyes and rigid postures. “Death you sow, and death you reap,” the captain said.

  The rest of the crew repeated that line in unison, all in exactly the same toneless voices. Then the camera panned back to show just the captain’s face once more. “We are coming.”

  The transmission faded to black, and another line of text appeared.

  End of data stream.

  Back were the talking heads from before.

  “And you say these people were infested by an alien intelligence—some kind of parasite,” the news anchor said.

  Becker nodded grimly. “Yes.”

  “I’m already noticing a few similarities to the Moon transmissions,” the anchor said, but we’re going to play those now so everyone can see. One moment, Admiral.”

  The screen faded to black once more, and another line of text popped up.

  Unidentified Transmission from the Looking Glass - November 18, 2824.

  As the text faded, a woman of Chinese descent appeared wearing a torn and stained Confederate uniform. Her eyes were the same empty black holes that Captain White’s had been. The transmission froze, and the previous one returned for a side-by-side comparison of their expressionless faces and soulless eyes. Then both transmissions began to play, and Catalina heard Captain White and the Confederate woman say exactly the same thing in the exact same toneless voice:

  “Hello wretched creatures.”

  Catalina shivered. “What the hell?” she asked, looking to Wallace for answers. He just shook his head, and went on staring at the screen. Catalina looked back in time to see the talking heads return.

  “Well, Admiral, it would seem that after all these years you may have been right.”

  “Indeed, though I can’t say I’m happy. I’d rather be a lunatic than have the Watchers come to Earth.”

  Wallace waved the screen off with a growl.

  Catalina regarded him. Her mouth felt dry; her mind spun with questions.

  “We should have executed that bastard when we had the chance,” Wallace said.

  Catalina’s eyebrows shot up. “I don’t understand… He was right.”

  “No, he was wrong, and he’s been duped into helping the Solarians to keep us jumping at shadows. The fact that he managed to convince you tells me just how serious this is. We need to act fast.”

  Catalina shook her head, not getting it, and Wallace regarded her with a look of strained patience. “What do you think is more likely, Senator, that some sort of parasitic aliens are invading us, or that someone is trying to make us think that? Someone who saw the transmissions Becker leaked all those years ago decided to copy them now. If we were being attacked by real aliens, why send us a warning at all? Unless they were planning to make some sort of demand, which they didn’t. Why tell someone that you’re going to shoot them just before you pull the trigger?”

  “What about the transmissions from the Intrepid? Those were real, weren’t they?”

  “Yes, but what you saw had nothing to do with aliens. The captain of the Intrepid went insane.”

  “And his crew? They were all singing the same tune.”

  “A tune he no doubt had them rehearse while he stood ready to execute the ship’s self-destruct sequence. It was coercion, Senator. Those videos have been analyzed a thousand times. Captain White forced everyone else to go along with his delusion.”

  “What about their eyes?”

  Catalina watched as President Wallace’s green eyes became two empty black pits. “Now I’m an alien,” he said, speaking in a mock toneless voice.

  Catalina was taken aback. For a split second she believed it, and she was about to make a run for the door. Then she realized what he’d done. Most people wore augmented reality lenses, including her. Besides enabling people to browse the net, take pictures, and watch holofeeds, those lenses also enabled them to change the natural color of their eyes as easily as they changed their socks.

  “So it was the Solarians that attacked us.”

  Warmth and color seeped back into President Wallace’s eyes, and he nodded. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Becker said it best—they would lose in a straight fight with us. That means they need plausible deniability, a way to pretend it wasn’t them. That also explains why they didn’t make a more concerted attack. They don’t want to utterly destroy the Earth because they want to take it for themselves.”

  “Do we have any evidence to implicate them?”

  Wallace nodded, his eyes unblinking, never leaving hers. “We have a whole ship full of evidence.”

  “I don’t understand. What ship?”

  “A Solarian ship, recently detected over a billion kilometers from Earth—in the same direction that those missiles came from.”

  Catalina gaped at the president.

  Wallace nodded slowly. “I have a battleship moving to intercept and capture them as we speak. We’re officially at war, Senator, and it’s time people knew it, before these ridiculous stories of an alien invasion get out of hand.”

  Chapter 12

  —Two Days Later—

  “Admiral, we are twenty minutes from ELR with the Crimson Warrior,” Frost announced from sensors.

  “Carry on, Lieutenant.” Alexander rapped his fingers on the armrest of his acceleration couch. In twenty minutes he and Captain Vrokovich could stop trading empty threats and start trading deadly blows instead. Neither of them was eager to start a war or else they would have already begun firing missiles and hypervelocity rounds.

  Alexander shook his head. The problem with waiting to reach laser range was that lasers would make short work of both ships. Missiles could be intercepted and hypervelocity rounds could be evaded, but lasers were sure to hit. Once they reached effective laser range (ELR), the engagement would be over in minutes.

  “We should have fired on them long ago,” McAdams said.

  “That would have given them the upper-hand, Commander. They have more guns, more fighters, more missiles—but lasers? It doesn’t matter how many they have, because both our ships have more than enough to obliterate each other.”

  “So your plan is to trade the Adamantine for the Crimson Warrior?”

  “Not exactly. Bishop, come about for reverse thrust at ten Gs.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “We’re leaving?” McAdams asked.

  “Hayes, get me Captain Vrokovich on the comms,” Alexander said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I thought you two were done talking.”

  “We were. It’s time to apologize for our bluff.”

  “Apologize for our…” McAdams shook her head. “Fleet Command hasn’t changed our orders.”

  “No, they haven’t, Commander.”

  “Then you’re going rogue. You’ll be court-martialed.”

  “The Crimson Warrior is responding to our hail,” Hayes interrupted.

  “On screen,” Alexander replied. Turning to his XO, he smiled and said, “If I were scared of being court-martialed for backing down, I never would have won a Nobel Peace Prize.”

/>   Alexander heard someone clear his throat, and McAdams gestured to the main display with chin and eyes.

  “Admiral Alexander, I see you are turning your ship around.”

  Alexander looked to the fore to see Captain Vrokovich’s by now familiar face—bony features, ghostly white skin, straight black hair, and startling red eyes. Alexander nodded. “If you were guilty, you would have fired on us by now.”

  “I’m glad to hear you’ve come to your senses. A bluff is only as good as the possible consequences of it being true—in this case, your ship and mine coming into direct conflict. The Crimson Warrior would survive such a confrontation, but the Adamantine would not. Your threats were, therefore, obviously empty, Admiral. Desperate and empty. I am sorry your government sent you on such a fool’s errand. Perhaps it would have gotten results if I was the fool you were looking for.”

  “We were just following orders, Captain,” Alexander said with a tight smile, a muscle twitching in his jaw.

  “Then let us be thankful that your orders were only to threaten war and not to make it.”

  Alexander nodded, and Captain Vrokovich returned his smile. “Goodbye, Admiral.”

  The holo display faded back to space. Stars sprinkled the void in dense clusters.

  “Bishop, what’s the combined approach velocity between us and the Crimson Warrior?”

  “One thousand and fifteen klicks per second at the moment, sir, but we’re still firing the mains in full reverse.”

  “Good. What’s our range to target?”

  “Four hundred and six thousand klicks, sir.”

  “ETA to reach the target at current speed?”

  “Still over six minutes to ELR.”

  “How long before we pass them?”

  “Four hundred and eight seconds.”

  “Good. Cardinal—dead-drop all of our laser-armed ordnance along our current trajectory, but hang on to our missiles with payloads for now.”

  McAdams eyes flew wide. “I thought you decided to risk a court-martial.”

  “I timed that comment so that Captain Vrokovich would overhear it, priming him to believe that we’re actually retreating. Between that, his assumption of superiority, and his assumption that we were bluffing all along, he won’t suspect a double-cross. They’re going to break off and return to their original trajectory, but four hundred seconds is not enough time for either of us to cancel our current momentum, so we’ll still fly by within spitting distance of each other. Perfect for a sneak attack.”

  “Remind me never to cross you, sir,” McAdams said.

  Alexander smiled grimly. “When facing a stronger opponent, sneakery is the only way to win, Commander.”

  “Sneakery… I’ll be sure to add that to my lexicon. What makes you think they won’t spot our missiles before they reach firing range?”

  “Because Captain Vroko isn’t looking for them.”

  “I hope you’re right, sir.”

  “I am, but just in case—Frost, keep our scanners checking for incoming enemy ordnance. We don’t want to be blinded by the same assumptions. If they so much as flushed a toilet in our direction, I want to know about it.”

  “I’ll be sure to let you know if I detect any space shit flying our way, sir,” Frost replied.

  “We’re about to start an interplanetary war and you’re cracking jokes,” McAdams admonished.

  “Black humor isn’t for everyone, Commander, but it does serve to emphasize the absurdity and irony of our situation. Who ends a terrible war and calls it The Last War only to have the same person who ended that war start another even more terrible war thirty years later?”

  “All of our laser-armed missiles are away, Admiral,” Cardinal announced.

  “Good. Set the clock with the time for the first wave to reach ELR with the enemy ship. Set a second clock with the time for us to reach ELR.”

  “Aye, sir,” Cardinal replied.

  “Bishop, give me an estimate of how long we’ll spend in laser range of the Crimson Warrior while we pass by each other.”

  “Calculating…”

  Two glowing green timers appeared at the top of the main holo display, one with the caption—Time to ELR, 1st Wave Ord. Counting down from five minutes and forty-three seconds. The other Time to ELR, ADMT. - C.W. counting down from five minutes and fifty-one seconds. The time discrepancy between the two clocks was exactly eight seconds. That was how long the Adamantine’s laser-armed missiles would have to make an uncontested first strike against the Crimson Warrior. After that, the Adamantine herself would pass into laser range of the enemy dreadnought and they would have to weather the assault for… “Bishop?”

  “Done, sir. We’ll spend about thirteen seconds inside ELR with the Crimson Warrior. Add another four seconds for extended ELR for a total of seventeen seconds.”

  Alexander winced as he imagined trading blows with the dreadnought for that long.

  “They could do a lot of damage to us in that time,” McAdams said. “We might both end up derelict.”

  “We’d better make sure that doesn’t happen. We have eight seconds to weaken them with our missiles before they can fire back on us.”

  “Hopefully that’s enough time, sir.”

  “It will be.”

  Chapter 13

  “Admiral, our missiles are ten seconds from ELR,” Cardinal announced.

  Alexander nodded, keeping his eyes locked on the countdown at the top of the main holo display. “I see it. Bishop, prepare to come about just before that count hits zero, and make sure you keep our engines facing away from the enemy at all times.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Cardinal, use our missiles to target the Crimson Warrior’s engines, and then her fighter launch tubes. We need to cripple them as much as possible with our first volley.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The countdown reached zero, and Alexander watched via the enhanced view on the main holo display as their warheads split into a thousand glittering shards. Each of them lit its thrusters and went evasive. Hot-white contrails appeared behind each missile, illuminating space with bright spirals and zig-zags as the missiles adopted randomly varying approach vectors. A split second later, the missiles opened fire and space came alive with a dazzling flurry of red and blue lasers, all of them vectoring in on the Crimson Warrior’s engines. Abruptly an explosion tore through the aft end of the ship and a giant chunk of it went drifting away. The ghostly green glow from the Crimson’s Warrior’s engines disappeared, and the remainder of the massive ship went on drifting through space, now carried only by its momentum.

  “Direct hit!” Cardinal crowed. “Target is derelict!”

  “Target enemy laser batteries with our hypervelocity cannons, and use our missiles to take out those fighter launch tubes!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Stone, launch our fighters! See if they can squeeze in a few shots before we fly out of range.”

  “Aye.”

  Hypervelocity rounds thundered out into the void: thud, thud, thud… and glowing golden lines of tracer fire appeared, tracking ahead of the enemy ship.

  Alexander watched the Solarian ship fire back with simulated streaks of green extended-range (ER) and yellow high-intensity (HI) lasers. The two ships were still out of range with each other, so all of those shots went straight for the Adamantine’s missiles. Fiery explosions pock-marked the void, and then the remaining missiles fired for a second time. This time explosions rippled all along the enemy’s hull, each explosion marking one of the dreadnought’s fighter launch tubes.

  “Enemy is launching missiles!” Frost announced.

  “Intercept that ordnance!”

  Another flash of green and yellow lasers took out the remainder of the Adamantine’s missiles before they could fire for a third time. Then the Adamantine’s own extended-range lasers screeched to life, adding sapphire blue to the mix of wavelengths flashing through the vacuum. It was easy to forget that those colors were all simulated. Lasers
were invisible in space. Then again, Alexander thought, with him and his crew commanding the ship from within a mindscape, technically everything was being simulated.

  All but two of the enemy missiles evaporated under the Adamantine’s barrage, disappearing before they had a chance to split into ten times as many independently-guided fragments. The last two were taken out by hypervelocity cannons.

  “Extended ELR reached!” McAdams announced.

  Alexander winced away from the main holo display as green streaks of enemy ER lasers vectored in on them from the Crimson Warrior. A loud sizzling reached Alexander’s ears with those impacts, as if he could actually hear the Adamantine’s armor boiling away. Then the deck shuddered with the distant roar of an explosion.

  “Hull breach on deck 119!” Rodriguez said.

  “Seal it off, and send in the repair bots!” McAdams ordered.

  The Adamantine returned fire with a deafening screech as all forty of its laser batteries fired at once. Each shot hit home, two or three to a target, disabling the remainder of the enemy’s fighter launch tubes on that side. Then the Adamantine’s first wave of fighters and drones joined the action, adding their own lasers to the mix. Streams of hypervelocity rounds slammed into the Crimson Warrior’s hull, taking out its remaining laser batteries on that side. Then they raced past the dreadnought and came into range of the batteries on the other side.

  Bright green and yellow beams angled in on them from several dozen different weapon emplacements. The Adamantine’s fighters fired back on those emplacements, silencing some of the batteries.

  Bishop kept the Adamantine’s nose pointed at the enemy as they flew by one another in order to keep their engines safe, but they were still taking heavy damage. The air sizzled and screeched with the simulated noise of enemy lasers impacting and the Adamantine’s own batteries firing back. Alexander squeezed the armrests of his acceleration couch until his knuckles turned white. He winced every time the deck shuddered with a new hull breach. The main holo display vanished and then returned from a slightly different angle as the holocameras on the bow took a hit.