“Switch MHD to tactical view,” she said, giving a verbal command to her control station.
A top-down, 2D map appeared on the main display, and Audrey saw the ship’s lasers vanishing abruptly to all sides of the Liberty.
“What the hell?” she muttered under her breath.
“Multiple enemy contacts!” Fields reported. “We’re surrounded!”
“Cease fire! Cease fire! Section One orders Weapons hold!” Bates called out from the comms.
“Aye, weapons hold!” Gamble acknowledged.
“Mapping the vanishing points...” Fields put in from sensors.
Audrey toggled a 3D version of the tactical map and used her hands to manipulate the display, rotating it around the Liberty. An open cylinder of yellow dots appeared around the ship, each one marking a point where a laser had been fired and abruptly cut off by an unseen obstacle.
“They must be flying an entire fleet of ships around us in a tight formation,” Major Bright said from the security station.
Audrey nodded slowly as she studied the cylindrical pattern of dots on the tactical map. “Or... just one very big ship.”
“In the shape of a hollow cylinder?” Bright replied.
“It would have to be unbelievably large,” Fields added from sensors. “At least five kilometers in diameter with a length of more than ten. No ship ever built is that large.”
“That we know of,” Audrey said. “How else do you explain the uniform distribution? Our lasers all vanished at exactly the same distance.” Audrey nodded down to her XO. “Major, do we have any news from the drones we sent to Section Eight?”
“Not yet. Almost there, Commander.”
“What’s the point of surrounding us if they’re not going to fire back?” Lieutenant Gamble asked.
Audrey set her jaw. “The same reason they breached our hull, but didn’t cause any major damage in the process. They’re trying to capture us, not destroy us. Flight Ops—I want eyes on our hull breaches from the outside. Have our pilots launch a pair of drones on remote links and put the holofeeds on screen.”
“Aye, Commander,” Lieutenant Commander Ivanov replied.
* * *
Remo glared out the cockpit of his Phantom IV fighter at the dimly-lit launch tube, his whole body itching with anticipation. It was hard to know if that feeling was real. All the visuals and interfaces inside the cockpit were virtual, while his physical body floated in a G-tank pumped full of ICE (Inertial Compensation Emulsion) to buffer the effects of extreme acceleration. Without that, pulling more than ten Gs for anything but the briefest periods would turn him into jelly.
“Raven Lead, this is Section Seven Command—you are ordered to remote launch two drones and inspect the damage to our hull. Be advised, an invisible, cylindrical barrier has encased the Liberty at a range of 1900 meters.”
Remo frowned. An invisible cylindrical what? “Acknowledged, Command. Launching drones.” Switching to the squadron frequency, he said, “Lieutenant King, you’re on my wing in Mosquito Drone 218. We’re cleared for a recon flight.”
“Roger that!” King commed back.
Remo switched his virtual viewpoint from the cockpit of his Phantom Mark IV to that of Mosquito Drone 217. The virtual cockpit of the drone was cramped and circular, like an eyeball. A weapon hardpoint jutted out below the cockpit, long and pointed—affectionately known as the stinger.
As he went through the automated pre-flight check, a robotic voice echoed in his ears: “Navigation systems online. Weapons online. Engines online—” An accompanying roar of thruster tests accompanied that statement, making the cockpit rumble and shake. “—All systems green. Magnetic catapult initiating.”
The launch tube ahead of him lit up with the yellow bars of mag boosters above, and two bright red lines below to mark the launch track. Metallic clanking sounds echoed through the cockpit as the doors at the end of the launch tube opened up. “Launching in three—”
“Hang on to your crown, King,” Remo quipped over the comms.
“—two, one.”
The catapult released.
Remo felt his guts flip as acceleration virtually pinned him to his chair. Red and yellow lights flickered through the cockpit, faster and faster, and then...
Nothing but an infinity of stars and wide-open space. Except it wasn’t wide or open—something had caged the Liberty in.
“Woohoo!” King crowed.
“Lets head to the first waypoint,” Remo replied as he jerked the flight stick sharply to one side, flipping back the way he’d come and bringing the Liberty into view.
“Roger,” King said.
He set the throttle to 10% and acceleration pressed him back against his chair once more as the Mosquito rocketed forward. Up ahead an open green diamond marked their waypoint, the range ticking down from five hundred meters.
Remo magnified the area at the waypoint and a hole appeared in the otherwise pristine curvature of the Liberty’s hull. Section Eight had been breached all right. The hull had crumpled inward in the shape of a crater, but there were no obvious signs of blast damage.
“Command, this is Mosquito 217, are you getting this?”
“All eyes are on you, 217. Get us a close-up as you fly by.”
“Roger.” Remo hauled back on the throttle as he drew near, making sure he captured every possible detail.
“It’s like the hull is made of dough and someone stuck their finger in it,” King said.
Remo nodded. “Damage isn’t extensive, but it looks like it goes through several decks. Some kind of armor-piercing rounds, maybe?” They flew past the first waypoint and on to the next, this one on the other side of Section Eight. Remo rolled his fighter over and followed the curvature of the Liberty’s hull until another green diamond appeared.
“Coming up on the second waypoint,” Remo announced.
This time he flew slower and closer to the hull. He planned to stop and hover above the damage, maybe even fly through the breach if cleared to do so.
Lieutenant King rocketed out overhead, singing a vulgar song from a popular Martian band. Just as he was getting to the good part, a flash of light obscured his drone from view. When it faded, King’s drone was gone.
King came back on the comms, cursing, and Remo sailed through a pelting rain of debris from his drone.
The command channel crackled with, “217, report!”
“I’ve lost 218. No sign of what hit him. Coming up on the second waypoint now...”
Remo slowed right down as he came to the damage. Again, the hull breach was crater-shaped.
“Still no signs of blast damage, Command. Permission to enter the breach?”
“Standby, 217...”
Remo crept slowly forward, anticipating his request would be granted.
Bang!
He leapt against his flight restraints, and they dug roughly into his shoulders and chest. His neural connection flickered as the primary comm array took damage. The backup array took over a split second later, and he was back. Remo saw the stinger was crumpled into a useless mess under his drone.
“What the hell?!” he roared.
“What happened, 217?”
Remo shook his head, his gaze flicking over the various displays inside the cockpit. The nav showed him sailing backward at four meters per second. “I appear to have collided with something,” he said, but sensors showed he was too far from the Liberty, and there was nothing else nearby. “Something invisible,” he added.
“Light it up, 217. We need to know what’s there.”
“Roger. Arming cannons.” Fortunately he’d only lost his lasers with the crumpled stinger.
Reversing thrust to put some distance between him and whatever was out there, Remo passed his targeting reticle over the empty space where he’d hit an invisible wall. He let loose a short burst of fire and bright golden hypervelocity rounds shot out in staggered lines to either side of his cockpit. They collided with something invisible and flashed brigh
tly as they exploded into clouds of microscopic shrapnel. He waited for those miniature explosions to fade, hoping he’d made a dent in whatever cloaking armor the target had, but nothing happened.
“There’s something there all right,” he said.
“Try to find out where it begins and ends. We’ll track the impacts from here.”
“Acknowledged,” Remo said. This time he held the trigger down for a sustained burst. The simulated roar of cannon fire rumbled through the cockpit as he tracked his targeting reticle back and forth. Rounds exploded with continuous bursts of light, but at the more extreme angles his fire sailed on unhindered, marking the peripheral bounds of the target. From there, Remo tracked his targeting reticle away from the Liberty’s hull. Hypervelocity rounds exploded all along that line, tracking furiously upward until the explosions grew too far away for him to see whether he was hitting or missing.
“Weapons hold, 217.”
“Roger that. What’s it look like, Command?”
He didn’t have time to hear the reply. Suddenly he was back in his Phantom IV, staring down the launch tube. “Damn it! Command—what the hell happened out there?”
“All outbound comms are being jammed, Raven One. You were disconnected from the drone. Please stand by for further orders.”
“Acknowledged, standing by...”
CHAPTER 7
“It almost looks like one of the spokes between the Liberty’s rings and her core,” Fields said from sensors, pointing to the main holo display where a long line of yellow dots protruded from the Liberty’s hull.
Commander Audrey Johnson considered that. Each dot marked an impact from one of Mosquito 217’s hypervelocity cannons. Collectively the impacts traced what looked like a giant spear sticking out of the Liberty’s hull.
“Incoming comms from Admiral Urikov,” Lieutenant Bates announced.
“On screen,” Audrey said. They must have finished analyzing the recon data, she thought. “Admiral,” she said, inclining her head to him as he appeared. Dim red battle mode lighting on the bridge cast his features into sharp relief, and the lower half of his face all but disappeared under his shadowy beard.
“Commander. It appears that we may have been breached by some kind of... boarding tubes. I’ve deployed marines to guard the breaches, but so far nothing’s tried to come through, and our preliminary inspections haven’t told us anything we don’t already know. There’s something there, but it’s completely invisible to anything but direct physical contact.”
Audrey nodded. “The VSM drones I sent to Section Eight found the same thing. I’ve sealed off all the bulkheads between us and the rest of the ship as a precautionary measure.”
“Good. I’ve informed Admiral Rathers of the situation, and the First and Second Fleets are moving into position. Until then, we’re going to attempt to break free using our thrusters. I doubt a few boarding tubes will be able to stop us, especially not if they’re as long and slender as your data indicates.”
Audrey nodded. “I agree, sir.”
The admiral turned aside from the camera and said, “Helm, ahead fifty percent, ramp up slowly.”
The helmsman’s muffled reply came back over the holofeed, “Aye, fifty percent ahead.”
A soft, but persistent thrumming rumbled through the walls and floor of the ship. Audrey waited, her pulse racing. She expected to hear Lieutenant Reed call out the damage from the engineering station, but nothing happened.
“Engineering, report!” the admiral bellowed, obviously just as confused as she was.
“Nothing to report, sir,” came the chief engineer’s reply.
“We’re not moving,” the helmsman reported.
The admiral’s expression clouded darkly. “All ahead full!”
“Aye, all ahead full...”
Audrey waited, expecting to hear that they’d broken free, or to feel the deck suddenly leap out from under her, the acceleration pinning her to her chair.
But nothing happened.
“Our speed’s not increasing, Admiral,” the helmsman added.
“How is that possible?” Audrey asked. “If we’re accelerating, then our forward velocity has to increase—that’s Newton’s first law of motion.”
“Maybe we’re not actually accelerating,” Admiral Urikov replied. “The engines might be damaged, or else whatever is surrounding us somehow detected our acceleration and it’s exerting an equal force in the opposite direction.”
“That would only double the stress on whatever rods or tubes they have holding us in place,” Audrey said. “Even if those structures are made from materials of infinite strength, they’d rip straight through our hull and out the other side. Our engines must be disabled. What happened when we executed emergency thrust?”
“It worked,” Admiral Urikov said. “We accelerated up to fifty meters per second and then killed the engines. Somehow the engines must have stopped working between then and now. I’ll have engineering look into it. Until we find out more, make sure you keep your section sealed. Section One out.”
Audrey scowled as the admiral disappeared and the tactical view of the Liberty returned. Something very strange was going on.
“Ma’am... I’m getting some unusual readings from sensors.”
“What kind of readings, Fields?”
“Negative gravitational lensing, dead ahead. It just came out of nowhere!”
“Speak English, Lieutenant.”
“It’s a wormhole, ma’am. Range at 4,950 klicks and dropping.”
“The Looking Glass? How the hell did we get all the way over there already?”
“No, ma’am. That’s still almost five hundred thousand klicks away.”
“You’re telling me another wormhole just magically appeared beside the first? Is that even possible?”
“The first one magically appeared sometime during the last century. This might be a continuation of whatever phenomenon spawned it.”
Electricity sparked in Audrey’s fingertips as adrenaline saturated her blood. “If that wormhole is directly ahead of us, are we on a collision course with it?”
“No, ma’am. We’re still orbiting Mars. At the nearest point between our orbits we should only come within about 2,000 klicks.”
“Check that, Lieutenant.”
“Checking... wait. No, I’m wrong. That can’t be right.”
Audrey felt suddenly cold. “What is it, Fields?”
“We’re accelerating toward the wormhole at more than fifteen Gs.”
“We’d be blacking out if that were true.”
“Aye. Our sensors must be mis-calibrated.”
“First our engines stop working and now our sensors? Engineering—”
“Yes, ma’am?” Lieutenant Reeds replied.
“Have you detected any damage to those systems?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Okay... hypothetically speaking, if our inertia were to be somehow compensated or removed from the equation, how would the ship be able to measure its own acceleration?”
“We’d have to extrapolate it from our range to nearby objects or celestial bodies.”
“Celestial bodies like a wormhole. Bates, get me Admiral Urikov on the comms!”
Admiral Urikov appeared on the main holo display a split second later. Audrey sucked in a deep breath. “Admiral, please tell me we’ve fixed the engines and we’re the ones accelerating toward that wormhole.”
“What wormhole?”
“My sensor officer detected a second wormhole directly in front of us. Something about negative gravitational lenses.”
“Negative gravitational lensing,” Admiral Urikov corrected. He summoned a holo display to life on his end to check for himself, his features bathed in a cold blue light. “Incredible...” he breathed, shaking his head.
“What’s even more incredible is that we’re headed straight for it at over fifteen Gs and I can still wave my hands in front of my face. We have zero detectable acceleration, Admiral.”
“That would explain why our engines didn’t appear to work.”
“So our engines work, but the laws of physics don’t? For all intents and purposes we no longer have any inertia.”
The admiral gave a thoughtful frown. “It seems more likely to suggest that our sensors and our engines don’t work. If true, it should be easy enough to check. Please hold, Commander, while I contact Admiral Rathers to confirm our speed and heading.”
The main display went to a waiting screen with the Solarian flag on it, and Audrey scowled. “Fields, how long before we reach the wormhole?”
“According to our sensors—one minute and fifty seven seconds.”
“That fast?”
“We were already headed toward it thanks to our orbital velocity.”
“Put the time on the clock, and get me a visual of the wormhole.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A green timer appeared above the main display, counting down from 1:42, and then the tactical map switched to a glassy, bubble-shaped orb full of stars floating in an otherwise nondescript patch of space. The bubble-shape came from a bright halo of light around the inner rim of the wormhole’s “mouth.” Audrey spent a moment watching it grow larger until it all but filled the main display.
“Fields, what magnification are we at?”
“No magnification, ma’am.”
“Then the mouth must be hundreds of kilometers wide!”
Admiral Urikov re-appeared before Fields could reply. His expression was grim. “I can’t reach Admiral Rathers—or anyone else for that matter. Our comms can’t get past the jamming, but I have been able to verify that we are accelerating. I launched a pair of drones to check, and as soon as they left our hull, they began falling away behind us at a rate of one hundred and eighty-two meters per second.”
“That’s over eighteen Gs of acceleration!” Audrey said. “We should all be dead by now!”
“And yet we are not.”
Audrey’s eyes snapped up to the timer above the main display. Forty seconds. “What’s happening with the First and Second Fleets? They must have seen what’s happening.”
New Frontiers- The Complete Series Page 72
