Her escorts now used even more powerful versions of those grasers as their main spinal guns, reinforced by the same turreted light particle cannons Vigil carried. Any of those strike cruisers could have fought the battlecruiser he’d arrived with to a standstill.
And all of it, combined, paled in comparison to what he was afraid he might have to face. The first Rogue they’d fought had nearly destroyed the fledgling ESF, and it had been a mere Sub-Regional Matrix.
A full Regional Matrix like XR-13-9 represented a level of industry, terraforming and manufacturing capability he couldn’t even comprehend. A Sub-Regional Construction Matrix would be responsible for the simultaneous terraforming—the titular construction—of two to three worlds.
A Regional Matrix was apparently responsible for the construction of at least ten, plus however many its Sub-Regional Matrices handled. XR-13-9, from what Isaac knew, was managing twenty planets.
The entire conflict he’d been dragged into had so far been fought with a miniscule portion of the AI’s resources. He wasn’t sure what the new Rogue would do when faced with a real challenge…but he doubted it was going to be pretty.
“Take us in, Lieutenant Roger,” he ordered the young officer flying the shuttle on the unofficial inspection tour. “That’s enough sightseeing for one day.” He smiled grimly. “We have a job to do.”
Isaac stepped off the shuttle to a small honor guard of Marines. The landing bay was mostly empty of people, but the Marines merged with his regular guard and ushered him across the open space anyway to where two officers were waiting for him.
Captain Cameron Alstairs was similar in height and build to Isaac, but with almost translucently pale skin and a neatly cut black beard. His new executive officer was standing to his right, and both men saluted as Isaac approached.
“Welcome aboard Vigil, Admiral Lestroud,” Alstairs greeted him. “I’d love to say welcome back, but despite the name, she’s a new ship. I like to think the spirit lives on.”
“So do I, Captain,” Isaac agreed. “Is everything in order?”
“Vigil has a few glitches and scrapes to deal with, but we’ll have them in order by the time we’ve reached Hearthfire,” Alstairs said. “Your staff came aboard shortly before you and are busily setting up your flag deck. Is there anything specific you need?”
Isaac glanced over his shoulder at his personal steward, Petty Officer Parminder Singh.
“Parminder?” he asked.
“So long as someone shows me to the Admiral’s quarters and helps me carry the luggage, I’m good,” the impeccably patient noncom replied.
“We can manage that,” Alstairs replied. “Would you like the tour, Admiral?”
“I’ve already had it, Captain,” Isaac admitted. “How long until we’re in motion?”
“Fifteen minutes or so, sir.”
“Then I need to get to the flag deck. I may not like speeches, but this seems like a time for them, don’t you agree?”
“I can’t argue,” Alstairs confirmed. “This way, sir.”
Isaac followed him deeper into the ship. A sight just past the access from the bay stopped him for a moment as he studied it.
The ship’s commissioning seal would be scattered all over the vessel. It wasn’t the same as the old Vigil—if nothing else, it lacked the ring of stars of the old Confederacy flag—but it still held the same logo for the ship: the Eye of Horus.
The eye held the center of the circular seal, above the three rockets from the flag of Exilium and below the letters BC-01.
The old Vigil had been the sixteenth battlecruiser built for the Confederacy, but this ship was the first battlecruiser ever built by the Exilium Space Fleet. BC-01 it was.
“Sir?” Alstairs asked softly.
“Lead on, Captain. I got distracted by an old friend.”
The flag deck on the new Vigil had been upgraded from the old one, but not by much. There had been other focuses, which meant this part of the ship looked familiar: a massive holographic display surrounded by various consoles for the Admiral’s staff.
Isaac knew most of the people in here by sight if not by name. They’d been scattered across the surface, Orbit One and Dante until Vigil commissioned, but now his staff was all in one place.
“Commander Connor,” Isaac said loudly as he stepped onto the flag deck. “Status report on the battle group!”
Commander Aloysius Connor was a tall man with thick red dreadlocks carefully arranged and cut to stay within the ESF’s generous rules. He turned from where he stood, leaning over a junior officer’s console, and saluted him.
Connor had been the old Vigil’s tactical officer and was now the operations officer on Isaac’s staff.
“All ships report warp drives and engines green,” he reported. “All of the warships are between eighty-five and ninety-two percent readiness status overall. All parts are aboard to repair all of that before we reach Hearthfire.
“Battle group is prepared to move out on your command.”
“Excellent,” Isaac replied. “Hashemi, get me an all-hands channel to all six ships.”
Lieutenant Naveed Hashemi was his communications officer, one of the handful of new officers who’d entered adulthood on Exilium.
“You’re on, sir,” he reported.
“Officers and crew of Task Force Vigil,” Isaac said calmly. “We are about to head out on another long-term mission, requiring us to endure months in warped space to deal with the Matrices’ homicidal cousins.
“Some of you have asked why. Why us? Why them? Why do we care what the robots get up to fifty light-years away?”
He smiled thinly.
“And in all honesty, if it was just the robots, I would not care,” he told them. “If there were a Regional Construction Matrix fifty light-years away that was just happily terraforming worlds and ignoring us, I’d let it be.
“But they’re not just terraforming worlds. They’re wiping out entire civilizations and they don’t even care. That kind of destructive callousness is all too familiar to me. Worst of all, though, is that if we stand by and permit the Matrices to destroy entire civilizations, entire sentient species…we have accepted that kind of destructive callousness.
“That is what doomed the Confederacy. What broke my mother’s honor and the honor of the Confederacy Space Fleet.”
He had everyone’s attention aboard Vigil, at least.
“We are here, seventy thousand light-years from home, because we decided that that wasn’t good enough. That we had to be better, to rise above the shadow that had consumed our nation. Now we are faced with the test of that resolve, that commitment.
“The Confederacy would have let the Vistans die. But we are not the Confederacy. We are the Republic of Exilium, and we have sworn to ourselves that we will be better.”
He realized he was clenching his fists and that everyone on all six ships could see that. He forced himself to release them as he was silent for a moment.
“So, we will be better,” he told his crews. “And when an entire species stands to fall into darkness unless we act, we will act.
“Today that falls to us. I know you will do everything in your power to see this task force achieve its goals and save the Vistans—and for that, I thank you.
“We move out in five minutes. Godspeed, spacers of Exilium!”
33
“Just because I can bind your arm up so that it doesn’t move does not mean you are in any fit state to be back on duty!”
Surgeon-Lieutenant Commander Dr. Youji Nakajima did not cut anything resembling an imposing figure. The Japanese-extraction Exilium Space Fleet officer was short, dark-skinned and chubby. With his hands on his hips and his dark eyes leveled at Octavio Catalan, however, he may as well have been Cerberus guarding the gates of the underworld.
“So long as my arm is bound, it isn’t getting in the way, and I need to get back to work,” Octavio replied. “There’s only so much I can do from a sickbay bed.”
“
Well, get used to it,” Nakajima replied, taking one hand from his hip to hand Octavio a plate with a sandwich. Octavio hadn’t asked for the food but dug into it almost unthinkingly as the doctor continued.
“You came back aboard with your left scapula in forty-six separate pieces,” the doctor reminded him. “You’d lost over a liter of blood by the time I had you on the table. Bone fragments finally collapsed your left lung while you were coming aboard ship—and if your lung had gone any sooner, I’m not sure you would have made it!”
“And you’ve done a fantastic job, Doctor,” Octavio replied, laying the plate on the neat stack of them next to his bed. “But it’s been almost three weeks. We’ve had the evacuation fleet return, reload and leave since you chained me to this bed. Hell, last numbers I saw were that we’ve moved a hundred million people into orbit while I’ve been in here.”
“Which is now on our Vistan friends.” Nakajima handed Octavio a protein bar of some kind. The Captain took it with an arched eyebrow at the doctor, who continued to speak.
“You’re getting updates, you’re in the loop and you’ve participated in more damn video calls than I bloody authorized—no, I’m not blind, Captain,” the doctor snapped. “Renaud and the Vistans can handle everything going on. You need to stay in here where I can keep you monitored, because you shouldn’t be doing anything more than eating and sleeping right now.”
“I’m awake and I’m not hungry,” Octavio protested.
The doctor returned the arched eyebrow. “Where’s the protein bar I just handed you, Captain?” he asked.
Octavio paused and looked down at his hand. He could have sworn he hadn’t done anything with the bar, but no…he’d unwrapped it and eaten it without even realizing it.
“You’re undergoing accelerated regeneration,” Nakajima reminded him again, handing him a second protein bar. “Normal healing would require bed rest for an injury of this magnitude, since your body would be absorbing all of your metabolic energy.
“With modern regeneration, that’s ten times as true.”
Octavio was aware of eating the protein bar this time, but it certainly didn’t feel like anything he had a choice about.
“So, you’re staying in my sickbay, under twenty-four-hour supervision, until your lung is fully healed and your scapula is fully reknitted. Then—and only then—will I sign off on your return to duty.”
“I’m pretty sure the Marines on this ship still follow my orders,” Octavio pointed out.
“And if there is an actual emergency, that might matter,” Nakajima said sweetly. “But right now, you need to rest and eat…and trust me, Captain, nobody understands that better than Marines.”
“No. Not a chance in hell.”
Octavio woke up to the sound of Nakajima’s voice clearly telling somebody off.
“If nothing else, the damn thing won’t fit,” the doctor continued. “And I’m not letting the Captain leave the sickbay. He’s well on his way, but this kind of accelerated healing is a delicate process.”
“Doctor, do you really think I’m trying to bring a Matrix remote into the sickbay because it would be funny?” Aisha Renaud asked. “ZDX is only willing to give me the roughest summary of what they found at Refuge and I agree with their assessment. The Captain needs to know.”
“Then the computer can get him on a video call in a few hours once he’s awake,” Nakajima countered. “Or wait until he can leave here without being hooked up to tubes. Refuge is six light-years away. Nothing there can be this urgent.”
Octavio’s curiosity was definitely piqued at this point.
“Commander, send them in,” he ordered loudly. A moment later, the curtain was yanked back and he could see the two arguing officers.
“Doesn’t matter what you order,” Nakajima told him. “They’re not getting the damn combat Matrix’s remote in here—and why am I the only one who finds the fact that the combat Matrices have remotes that can fit in our ship hallways disturbing?”
“Then sort out how you’re getting me into a conference room,” Octavio ordered, holding the chubby doctor’s gaze. “Youji—you’re right and you’ve been right all along. I know I haven’t been the easiest patient, but if the Matrices need to speak to me, that is the kind of priority I’m going to overrule you on.
“So, unless you want to yank the lever that allows you to relieve me of command, you’re going to put everything you need in a wheelchair and get me into a space where I can talk to the remote.”
Octavio forced a smile. He really didn’t want to have a fight there, but he also trusted Renaud’s judgment. If she said he needed to talk to the Matrix, he believed he needed to talk to the Matrix.
“Fine,” the doctor snapped. “Give me thirty minutes—and you get thirty minutes before I’m hauling you back in here, understood?”
“I understand,” Octavio conceded. He needed to talk to ZDX-175-14, so he’d overrule his doctor to do that. That didn’t mean he wasn’t aware of how badly injured he was.
Renaud wheeled the chair into the conference room with a surprising degree of delicacy. More than Octavio would have taken with himself, that was for sure.
He could walk, but he was also well aware of Nakajima’s point around both his need to eat and how quickly he ran out of energy. It would be another two weeks before he was fully healed, and until then he would be weak and easily fatigued.
Octavio couldn’t object too much. The kind of injury he’d taken would have crippled his arm for life at one point. He’d tolerate a few weeks of feeling like a wet kitten and being babied by his crew in exchange for getting use of his arm back.
The single occupant of the conference room was interesting, though. He’d barely noticed Nakajima mentioning that the combat Matrices had remotes that could fit inside human ships. Now, face to “face” with one of those remotes, he had to swallow a shiver of fear.
It had the same form factor as the diplomatic remote on Exilium that he’d seen pictures of, but it was slimmer. Still two meters tall and two meters long, it was only a meter and a quarter or so wide. It was still a broad and heavy centaur-like machine, but it could fit through the doors and corridors of an ESF warship.
It was also very obviously armed, at least to the eyes of an engineer. It had the same three-fingered arms as the diplomatic unit, but there were plates on its chest that were designed to slide away. Those potentially only concealed tools, but Octavio didn’t think so.
This was a battle remote, and he had to wonder just why the Matrices’ creators had decided to equip their terraformers with robotic units clearly intended to board and capture other starships.
“Captain Octavio Catalan,” the remote greeted him. “This remote is tachyon-linked to Combat Coordination Matrix ZDX-175-14. It is positive to see you recovering.”
“I’m lucky to have the best of care,” Octavio replied. Renaud locked the wheelchair in place next to the table and then took her own seat. “My doctor has informed me that I have thirty minutes for this meeting, ZDX. Commander Renaud tells me that I needed to hear what you’ve discovered.”
“You do. As the local authority of the Republic of Exilium, we require your assistance with an unexpected project of maximum urgency.”
“We have no resources here that aren’t already dedicated to evacuating Vista,” Octavio said carefully. “How urgent is this that it cannot wait?”
“Urgency is high, as we have approximately four thousand four hundred hours to act upon the intelligence before the target passes beyond easy reach of the Refuge System. You require information updating. May this node provide background?”
“Go ahead,” Octavio ordered. “Renaud?”
“Conference room systems are isolated from the main network. You should be able to link in,” she told the Matrix remote.
A moment later, a holographic presentation of the Refuge System appeared above the table. Four icons marked Matrix ships, and ten more declared the location of the warp-drive freighters.
&nbs
p; “This imagery is of the most recent arrival of evacuees,” ZDX told them. “It was the ability to interpolate data from fourteen sources, including their flight in-system, that allowed us to identify the anomaly.”
The hologram shifted, zooming out to add a flashing red icon. Octavio studied the scale for a few seconds.
“That’s over a light-year from Refuge,” he pointed out. “How is it of interest to us?”
“Because it is an artificial object traveling at ninety-nine point nine nine percent of lightspeed,” ZDX told him. “What data we have been able to extract from attempts at more detailed analysis give us this.”
The image that appeared on the hologram was vague, clearly limited by the amount of clean data the Matrices could extrapolate from an object moving at 0.9999c. It was still…distinctly of the same heritage as the Matrices themselves.
The object was an elongated ovoid, roughly ten times as long as it was high, with what Octavio presumed to be a thrust assembly at the back of the vessel. The engines didn’t look like anything he’d ever seen, but they had to be engines.
“Any idea of the actual scale here?” he asked.
“Difficult to say with relativistic interference,” ZDX admitted. “Estimate is two point two kilometers plus/minus point seven kilometers.”
So, anywhere from a kilometer and a half long to three kilometers long. That was a damn big ship.
“That’s the size of one of our colony transports, sir,” Renaud pointed out.
At the small end. At the big end, the strange object was a lot bigger than one of the transports the Confederacy had crammed a quarter-million people aboard.
“It’s one of yours?” Octavio asked ZDX. “I thought you all used a reactionless engine.”
“We do. The system we use for propulsion has a maximum sustained velocity of ten percent of lightspeed. Use of sacrificial propulsive units is required for our missile weaponry, but the destructive nature of that process would not enable it to be used for any vessel required to survive.
Refuge Page 20
