Covert Alliance

by Blair Wylie

  They always met at midnight for this recurring, daily meeting. Of course, the selected scheduled time for the meeting was irrelevant, since they were now far away from New Earth, and rigidly incommunicado with higher command. The members of the twelve-hour night shift faced exactly the same workload as the folks on the twelve-hour day shift. And the darkness of surrounding space never varied.

  No one was missing any daylight because of the shift they were on, because there was none.

  The command staff used the small meeting room adjacent to the bridge of the battlecruiser for these mostly information-sharing meetings. The room was well equipped with highly useful gadgetry, even if it was also totally alien gadgetry.

  All nine members of Chamberlain’s naval crew on the Indefatigable battlecruiser were now as familiar as he was with the ship’s intricate and alien systems and instrumentation. That was by no means a trivial accomplishment. Almost every device on board had an artificial intelligence component that was linked into an overarching, ‘mentoring’, computerized architecture.

  Mentoring was probably close to the right word, but not quite right.

  The alien builders obviously had a different way of thinking, and of solving problems. But ultimately, logic was logic, and that had helped the human naval crew steadily work their way up a very steep learning curve.

  Holistically, the ship was operated by a mostly self-controlling and almost self-aware system. It basically functioned as a Chief Engineer. It made sure every device was working properly, and every device had what it needed to fulfil a specific request or task. It told the naval crew exactly when something needed to be repaired or replaced, and exactly where to find the right spare parts in stores.

  At the highest-level, the robot-like ‘controller’ on the vessel wanted to maintain the security and full-functionality of the battlecruiser at all times. Thankfully, it worked extremely well, and it allowed the non-machine, human crew to focus on other important things, like getting ready to fight battles. And the AI controller had quite willingly and completely changed its allegiance from its alien builders to the human crew.

  Chamberlain was spending his free time by taking another hard look at the latest holographic, highly-detailed, three-dimensional image of the disabled Warrior Flagship. The disabled craft was nearby now, and moving through space at a speed of 53,214 kilometres per hour. The Indefatigable was holding a relative position of about twenty-one kilometres away from the equally massive, Master-constructed vessel. Thankfully, the Warrior Flagship still appeared to be quite inert.

  Four New Earth robot scout ships, or frigates, were positioned much closer to the Warrior Flagship. They were radially spread apart, and holding relative positions of about one kilometre away from the Warrior vessel.

  The robot scout ship search-and-destroy mission had been protracted, but in the end, successful. However, one of the New Earth robot frigates had been completely destroyed, and two others had been moderately damaged. It had all come to a climax about three months before.

  The three small, presumably one-Warrior, attack ships had proven to be immensely powerful for their size, and impressively nimble. But they each had been under independent control by a living, mortal creature. Thankfully, New Earth’s robot frigates were collectively smarter, and they had worked in close coordination with each other.

  The commodore and his naval staff had noted with great interest how closely the tactics employed by the frigates had resembled those used by wolf packs on ancient Earth. Also, the Warrior ‘prey’ must in the end have been completely exhausted. The last Warrior counter-attack appeared to have been one of pure desperation.

  The three command staff officers all arrived for the handover meeting at the same time. In addition to Ranger Captain Fitzpatrick, and Ranger First Lieutenant Sweetwater, the command staff included the commodore’s executive officer, Naval Commander Yamato.

  Fred Yamato was a good natured, rather short and swarthy fellow, in his mid-thirties. He had short, immaculately trimmed, jet-black hair. He was also a computer system genius.

  As the three officers took their seats, Chamberlain froze a static holographic image of the Warrior Flagship over the centre of the circular table, which was itself positioned in the centre of the darkened room.

  There was a ring of flush-mounted spot lights in the ceiling near the circular wall of the room. Chamberlain dimmed those lights to enhance the clarity of the holographic image.

  Then Commodore Chamberlain performed his usual routine of carefully studying in turn the face of each of his command staff officers to confirm they at least appeared to be fit for duty.

  Then Chamberlain said loudly and bluntly, “Commander Yamato, please provide us with your watch report.”

  “Yes, Commodore!” Yamato barked. “Our situation is nominal, sir! We have no impairments with any of our systems. There have been no changes of note with the condition of the Warrior Flagship. We have had no incidents of note, either with naval crew members or with Ranger personnel.

  “Oh, one trivial item can be noted, I suppose. The coffee maker in the bridge had to be repaired. It gets a lot of use, of course.

  “That’s about it, sir.”

  “Okay, nothing is ever wrong with nominal and boring, of course, Commander,” answered Chamberlain with a quick smile. Then he frowned, and said quietly, “But our well-established, comfortable routine is about to be broken, of course.”

  Chamberlain then took another closer, harder look at the two Ranger officers. To someone who did not know them, they might have appeared calm and relaxed. But he could tell they were a bit tense, and eager to talk about something. He thought he knew what that was, so he asked, “Captain Fitzpatrick, are you closer to recommending a final tactical attack plan for our consideration?”

  “Yes, Commodore, we have settled on a plan, and we are pleased to report that we have also obtained full concurrence from our platoon leaders,” Fitzpatrick replied immediately. Then he added for explanation, “Strictly speaking, sir, platoon leader concurrence is not required, of course. We only need your concurrence. But I thought you should know we involved Commander Yamato, and all of our officers and non-commissioned officers, as we put our tactical plan together, and we now have their complete buy-in.”

  “Acknowledged, Captain,” replied Chamberlain without any sign of emotion. His muted reaction was not especially concerning to anyone, because the commodore was usually inscrutable. Then Chamberlain ordered, “Provide us with an overview of the tactical plan now, Captain.”

  “Yes of course, Commodore,” replied Fitzpatrick crisply. “Lieutenant Sweetwater will work with your holographic image, while I do the talking, if that is all right?”

  Chamberlain simply grunted in reply, and slid a keyboard over to Sweetwater. He had guessed correctly that the image of the Warrior Flagship might prove to be useful in today’s meeting.

  “Okay, sir, our first problem is entry,” Fitzpatrick began in a confident-sounding voice. “Our primary, overarching goal, as you have clearly defined for us, is to determine where the Warrior Armada originated. We believe that means we need to obtain full access to the computer systems controlled from the bridge, which we know is located in the toroidal section of the vessel. And for those alien computer systems to work properly, we will first have to restore power to the crippled ship, or at least to key, controlling sections of the ship.

  “As you know, the Flagship is moving through space, and we are currently keeping pace with it. It is still rotating around its long axis, so there will be artificial gravity in the toroidal section. However, the centripetal acceleration will be slightly lower than what we are used to, at about 8.9 metres per second squared. But that’s no big deal.

  “Because the Flagship is disabled, the vessel has unfortunately taken on another very slight toppling spin around its centre of mass. Currently the bow of the vessel is pointed at about eighty-two degrees to its direction of travel. However, we believe we can successfully accommodate
for this awkward reality. Of course, we must successfully compensate for the complex spinning motion to be able to successfully dock with the vessel. Commodore Yamato tells us that successful docking will require a tricky but manageable ‘space dance manoeuvre’, so to speak.

  “There appear to be seven, relatively large hatches arranged around the outside of the torus. There are also seven similar hatches around the circumference of the main body or fuselage of the ship. But we suspect none of those hatches were used very often.

  “They might just be escape hatches, but more likely they were only used to move machinery, waste and supplies in or out of the vessel during construction and re-fitting operations. They probably all have elaborate, electronic, password-protected security systems. And we also believe those security systems are now locked, as the power systems on the ship are down.

  “But there may be an accessible hatch, where a scout ship used to be docked. As you know, six scout ships are still attached to the Flagship, which can also be viewed as a ‘mothership’. The missing scout ship was destroyed by one of our robot ships a few months ago.

  “The hatch of interest is located on the after-body of the cylindrical section of the ship, just forward of the engine compartment. Thanks for pointing it out for us, Lieutenant Sweetwater. Now, maybe you can rotate the image and zoom in a bit so we can have a closer look at it? Thanks again, First Lieutenant.

  “As you can see, Commodore, this hatch is much smaller, and less substantial than the other hatches we think we can see. But the structural frame around this particular hatch is flat, metallic and smooth, which introduces an ingress opportunity for us.

  “The first part of our tactical plan is to attach a work module to the Warrior Flagship right over this hatch. Commander Yamato will pilot this module remotely for us, from this room actually. After docking, we will have to depend on a glue-like sealant and electromagnets to remain attached to the metallic skin of the alien craft until we can get some lag bolts and proper welds in place.

  “Our work module will have a working end that is sort of like a caisson. And it will have a docking end too, which will include an airlock. We will use the docking end later, to attach our transport ferry when we are ready to send over the Ranger boarding party. The transport ferry only holds the two-person naval crew and up to ten passengers, so we’ll have to make, ah, twelve, trips with it in total.

  “A partial, spearhead squad of specialist Rangers will travel with the work module. They will work within the module to either open the hatch, or more likely, force entry into the vessel by cutting their way through the hatch.

  “To be more precise, there will be four Special Weapons and Equipment Rangers in the ‘caisson’ work party. Those Rangers will be Lieutenant Clayton, Sergeant Ngubo, Corporal Mitterrand and Private Klopp.

  “We have no idea really what conditions will be like on the other side of the hatch. We hope there will be some kind of atmosphere, and a bit of pressure. It will be really cold, no doubt, but we are not sure how cold exactly.

  “So, the work party guys will probably be fully suited-up for a long time. It will be awkward and uncomfortable for them, but they have been training really hard for this critically important operation. I believe they are now fully ready for the challenge.

  “So, the first step will be for the work party to drill a small hole, either through or beside the hatch. Then the specialist Rangers will push a cable-mounted probe through the hole to measure and assess whatever we can. If things inside the vessel look okay, or okay enough, then they will open or cut away the hatch. We know that all sounds a bit fuzzy, but there will have to be a judgement call or two made during this phase of the operation, as we will probably have to work with insufficient information.

  “If there is an atmosphere inside the Warrior Flagship, and if it is not too cold inside of it, we will then deploy a drone for initial interior surveillance.

  “Commander Yamato will fly that drone, steering it from this room. I know I do not have to attest to his competency with you. The commander will want to fly the drone everywhere it can go to obtain as full a threat and condition assessment as possible. He will then seek my concurrence before we co-present to you a full discovery report, and a detailed forward recommendation.

  “Our recommendation might be just to proceed as currently planned, or to proceed with a modified plan. Bottom line, however, we will not enter the Warrior Flagship and start deploying the Ranger boarding party, until we get the final go ahead from you.

  “The next step in the current plan calls for Lieutenant Ghandi’s platoon to make its way to the bridge. Commander Yamato and Lieutenant Sweetwater will go with Ghandi’s platoon, as will Sergeant Gonzalez from the Special Weapons and Equipment platoon.

  “Gonzales is a computer systems expert. Commander Yamato is no slouch either in that regard, as you well know. And I want Lieutenant Sweetwater on board but well away from me at all times. We do not want to risk being, ah, taken out, together. Sweetwater will have to assume frontline command, of course, if something should happen to me.

  “First Sergeant McIlroy and I will be with Lieutenant Yang’s assault platoon. Our job will be to eliminate any threats we discover, search through every nook and cranny in the vessel, and visually assess its overall condition.

  “The second, overarching goal that you have given us is salvage. The first part of the salvage operation will be to find out everything we can about the vessel. Also, we want to know more about this Warrior caste of Masters. All of that investigative work will take time, which we might not have. So, that part of the plan is especially fuzzy, but we cannot improve upon it until we gather some first-hand information.

  “Okay, Commodore, that’s about it, sir. We apologize if our plan seems uncomfortably nebulous in a few places.”

  Commodore Chamberlain shook his head slightly. Then he scratched his chin, sighed, and said quietly, “No, thank you, Captain, I understand the data-gap issues, and the inherent risks with this operation. I think you have all done very well.

  “Bottom line, I agree with the plan. When can we be ready to start?”

  Captain Fitzpatrick smiled for a very brief moment, then sat bolt upright in his chair and barked, “The equipment we need is all ready to go, sir! I would like to give the caisson module work party, ah, six hours to grab some more shut-eye and a full, hot breakfast. Would that be acceptable to you, sir?”

  Commodore Chamberlain abruptly stood up, and the others followed his lead. Then Chamberlain said loudly, “I concur fully, Command Staff! Consider the plan you have outlined as my plan now, and I order you to carry it out. Everyone knows how important this mission is to the survival of our species.

  “Failure is not an option! Now, do your duty, and make us all proud. Dismissed.”

  The staff officers then came to rigid attention, and saluted smartly. Commodore Chamberlain returned a snappy salute, and the meeting was adjourned.

  24

  There was a bit of a jolt when the troop-carrier shuttle craft docked with the caisson module. But there actually needed to be some momentum transfer to ensure the dogs on the docking mechanism were all properly displaced, and then rigidly locked into place.

  Commander Yamato was seated at the co-pilot station of the shuttle craft. Captain Fitzpatrick watched over Yamato’s shoulder as he systematically reviewed all of the items in a long checklist.

  After a fifteen minutes or so, Yamato turned around and said quietly, “Everything looks pretty good, Captain. As you know, with the hatch now completely cut away, they are wide-open over there. They have now fully equalized to the conditions inside the alien vessel. I’m reading an atmospheric pressure of 92.4 kilopascals, and an ambient temperature of minus 66.4 degrees Celsius, within the caisson module.

  “So, we have indirectly confirmed that there is pressure integrity, and a heat source of some kind, inside that alien vessel. The atmosphere within it is as dry as a bone with respect to water vapour. That aligns with wha
t we observed with the drone flight. Water vapour has condensed out of the internal atmosphere and become a layer of frost on everything inside.

  “The atmosphere is predominantly nitrogen-oxygen, with about 31.2 percent molecular oxygen. So it’s a little richer than what we’re used to, but using some of your favourite phraseology, ‘that’s no big deal’. I don’t pick up much in the way of organic compounds in the air. And I don’t see any obvious toxins. But we’ll have to wait to confirm all that when we get inside, and do a full suite of analyses.

  “We’ll also have to wait a bit to see what the air inside smells like. That’s because we’ll have to stay suited-up until we get the power back on, and straighten things up a bit in there.

  “Not being able to smell the air inside right away is not such a bad thing, however. Remember, we believe that our Alpha robot ship killed quite a few Warriors in that vessel with an artificial gamma ray burst. And the air inside that vessel would not have been circulating since then, with the power off.

  “Bottom line though, we’ll have to equalize the shuttle craft atmosphere before we can safely open up the hatch to the caisson module. So, let me know when you’ve got everybody fully suited-up. And then have everyone hang tight until I give you the final thumbs-up to proceed inside.”

  “Will do, Commander,” replied Captain Fitzpatrick in a whisper. “Thanks for reminding me about the dead Warriors over there. I hope there’s a lot of stink in the air actually, and that they’re all quite dead. But we’ll assume of course that at least some of them are still alive, somewhere in that vast ship, until we know for certain otherwise.

  “You know, I’ll bet we’ll want to leave our suits on until we pitch all of their corpses out into space, and you get the air well circulated through filters. There could also be rotten food over there, and sewage. Who knows?”