by Bob Mauldin
Kitty looked down at the bodies on the deck. “You know we can’t do that right now, Daniel. There is no way Galileo can match the speed those two vessels were making. But I promise you we’ll get them. The only question is when. But get them, we will.”
Walking over to the row of bodies on the floor, Kitty knelt and uncovered the face of each of the seven. At the last one, she fell to her knees and gazed down for a long time. “This will not go unpunished, Toni. Not one day will go by that I won’t look for a way to pay them back,” she whispered. For so long did she kneel there that Simon began to worry. As he was about to go over to her, she finally slipped the sheet back over Toni Putnam’s face and stood up. “Simon, if there is anything that can be done, I’m going to do it. I helped her pack, for God’s sake!”
It was a Kitty that Simon had never seen before. Steel tinged her voice as she added things up, tears streaming down her face. “Seven dead. One missing. One fighter destroyed and one missing. Damage to the base. What do you need from us, Daniel?”
Daniel corrected her. “That’s three missing, Kitty. Two of my construction pods haven’t checked in. I need pilots out in shuttles looking for them and the other fighter.”
Looking him in the eye, she responded, “I’ll take care if it. You and Simon get started figuring out how we’re going to get back on our feet here. I’m going to contact Stephen.”
An hour later, six shuttles and all fighters were searching in ever-widening spirals for the missing. It was not an easy task since it had to be conducted in three dimensions. Space had never looked so vast to Kitty as it did from the deck of a rescue mission. The pilots were all from Galileo as Daniel’s people had enough to do. Just getting air-tight seals into place and putting in a new antenna array was a strain on already frayed nerves. After several hours of fruitless searching, one shuttle stumbled on a curious item. A piece of debris that had no business being where it was, much less existing. Where it was, was in the middle of a slowly expanding cloud of plasma. What it was, was an engine pod of a design that didn’t exactly match anything in their data-banks.
Simon and Kitty, joined by Stephen, were sitting in Captain Baylor’s office. Simon began, “Dan, I’m sorry to have to start on this, but we need to. I know you need time to mourn. But, we need to get to work to prevent this from ever happening again. Gayle will take care of matters as far as seeing that our dead are cared for until we can get them home.” He shook his head. “Daniel, I thought we had a few years at least. We all did. I think we still do have years ... if we’re talking about the people who built Galileo. What information we have shows that the drive fields of the two ships that ambushed you are not typical of the types of drives we’re using. We speculated early on that the original owners had enemies. Because of the weapons that is. Well, apparently we were right. I wish we were wrong, but there it is. I don’t know if we were attacked because they thought we were the original owners or if they just don’t like the new guys. It doesn’t really matter, does it?
“What we need to do right now is to start analyzing all the data we have and see where it takes us. But I need to know just what you have on scans that might shed some light on this. I already have everything from Galileo’s data-banks. Precious little, that. We were too far away to get good scans.”
Daniel reached over and picked up a comm link. “I’ll have everything sent down immediately.” He spoke at length and put the link back on the table. “We were running the shuttles and fighters as much as possible, so we have a lot of data to go through. Flight Ops should have recorded all of it. We were bringing material into station area for two weeks and parking it all around, so we wouldn’t have to fight just to stay ahead of the factories. Then the bastards just popped up out of nowhere. Or so it seemed at the time. Now we know that there were three of them and where they were hiding. How they got there is anybody’s guess. We weren’t looking for trouble, waiting around for the smelter to go on-line full time. The construction pods could move ‘em around as easily as a shuttle in the area of the base. Easier in fact. Smaller and more maneuverable. Communications was running as well. And we do have hard data on what happened. Those bastards just popped up out of nowhere. Or so it seemed at the time. Now we know that there were three of them and where they were hiding. How they got there is anybody’s guess. They hit us and they ran. Distress calls from two of my pods were cut off in mid-word. We didn’t have time to get a fix on that, but the missing pods were scheduled to start bringing in smaller rocks from the rear of the base.”
Simon’s next comment was deeply impassioned. “More than anything else, I want to know why they ran. They had enough time to turn this base into toothpicks. Why didn’t they? I’m glad they didn’t, of course, but what stopped them? What did they want and what stopped them from finishing what they started?”
Finishing what they started was an apt comment. Aside from two destroyed fighters and two destroyed or missing construction pods, the only real damage to the base were three well-placed shots, one that took out the antenna array and two that hit the base proper. Of the seven known dead, two had been outside of the base at the time of the attack, a crewman repairing an antenna housing and Toni Putnam, the other fighter pilot. And there were still the two pod jockeys to account for.
Hours of poring over data was giving everyone headaches. They were reduced to going over and over the same things with no progress. Stephen had been called in to get a fresh viewpoint, to no avail. Charts and diagrams covered all available surfaces. Breaking for dinner, they were still going in circles. As they pounded on the same points one more time, Simon said, “I don’t understand. It looks like they had a perfect operation planned. They came in from your rear, made a pass, and took out one section of the base. There were two of them at that time, and apparently one missed, if he fired at all. They knew when to strike and what to hit. They waited till we were out of range, came in, took out the antenna array so no signal could get out, and then the records show them high-tailing it out of here. What happened?”
Kitty jumped up. “I’ll be right back. I have an idea. I think I may know.” She took off so fast, Simon didn’t have time to ask what it was she knew.
He looked at Stephen and shrugged. “Any idea is better than none. Let’s see what she has.” Five minutes later, Kitty was back, accompanied by an unruly stack of papers.
Sitting down between Simon and Stephen, she pointed. “We’ve got the scans of the intruders, but nobody thought to add the ones of the legitimate traffic. Look here. See. This is where they made their first pass and this is their second.” She set one scan above the other so all traffic was visible. “Here is pass number one. Notice where the fighter is. Hidden from their position by these asteroids.” Another chart. “Here is where the Mayday went out. Watch the fighters.” She kept moving back and forth between the two sets of data. “The bogies rendezvoused back at what I call position one. Here comes Quinn’s fighter. See. He got close and something upset his containment field. It blew, and now we have the engine pod of their third ship to study. Here are Toni and Miranda heading back to base to see what the shouting is about. Okay. The other two bad guys panic. Maybe. Want to bet they weren’t expecting us to have left fighters behind? So they make another pass, maybe hoping that Quinn was the only one. They already got the antenna array, so they make a second pass. Toni fires two missiles without her targeting computer, misses, and gets hit herself. Then Miranda fires and hits one of their ships. I know one of those ships was hit. Here are the scans from Galileo. See the drive traces? The lead one is strong and steady. The other one is fluctuating. It’s having trouble keeping up. They panicked. They ran.”
Kitty leaned back in her chair, breathing hard. “Those ships are bigger than a fighter by a long shot. They could have stayed and taken out Miranda, the base, and caught us by surprise, but they ran. The work of cowards. Backstabbers. Now that they know that we know they are out here, I don’t think they’ll be back unless they hav
e an overwhelming superiority. And they don’t. Or they would already have done it. They’re just sitting out there somewhere ... watching us. Waiting for us to screw up or else waiting for back-up. That’s the way I read it. And I’m right, damn it!” She stood up, glared at the three men sitting there, turned on her heel and left.
The two staffs were gathered in one of the mess halls on Orion since they needed the extra room they couldn’t get in Daniel’s office. They began to discuss options. Gayle was of the opinion that since they weren’t a real military outfit, many their people were going to want out now that the situation had turned so sour. Too many people, in fact, for them to continue to operate both Galileo and Orion.
Daniel looked at Gayle and spoke deliberately. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve already spoken to my people. There were only two or three who wanted to go home. And when they found out what a minority they were, they changed their minds. It wasn’t cowardice, it was simply that they were thinking the same way you were.”
He glared around the room. “We’re not talking fear here, we’re talking anger. My people are royally pissed. You people realize what we are forging here, don’t you? I think that only Simon and Kitty truly see what is happening. My people don’t want to go home. They want revenge! And if it is in my power to help them get it, then I’m here for the duration!”
A plan worked itself out of the confusion.
First, the Sundiver was going to have to be re-conditioned and sent back for another load of coronal material. Since she was unpowered for the entire voyage, except for the initial boost in-system and docking at the end, it was considered an acceptable risk.
Second, delay the building of the first battle-cruiser. Instead, start building a fleet of fighters using plans from the computer. Slightly larger fighters than the ones originally provided by the Builders. Still a one person vessel, but capable of carrying four missiles instead of two and having a more powerful beam capacity. Engineering estimates gave them almost one hundred fighters of the new class in the three months it would take for Sundiver to get back. There was enough material, Stephen’s people estimated, to power several dozen of the new fighters almost immediately.
Third, Galileo would remain on-station for two additional weeks, adding her production capacity to the newly commissioned Orion.
Fourth, send Galileo back to Earth, recruit more people and return. Simon’s original idea of having a carrier-type vessel was hauled out, dusted off, and approved. When it would go into production was another matter.
Fifth, maintain full scans at all times, reporting any anomaly immediately. So many things needed doing all at the same time.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Simon pushed as many distractions aside as he could so he could concentrate on the report of the recovered enemy engine pod. “Like an older version of what we’re using,” Stephen said. “My people don’t have any answers, but it looks like what we have is several up-grades better than what they have. They’ve just got to use a lot more power to achieve the same effect. And that doesn’t include our own improvements. If they think we’re the Builders, they won’t expect some of our up-grades, and if they are the Builders ...” He just couldn’t think of an appropriate end to the sentence.
The tentative conclusion arrived at after much analysis of available data and even more guesswork, was that the three alien vessels probably crewed around forty beings apiece. This assumption was based on the apparent engine output and relative speed of the vessels as they appeared on the scan records. While it was theoretically possible for ships, the apparent size of the ones that attacked Orion to have power cores big enough to give them warp drive, space limitations should prevent that unless they gave up something in weapons space. Another bit of evidence for the smaller ship theory. It was therefore suspected that there was a mother ship hiding somewhere farther out in the solar system.
Realizing that the mood aboard the two vessels was near the flash-point, some way was needed to divert the attention of officers and crew alike. The gaze of the staff fell on Ensign Miranda Lee. As the only survivor of the little fighter wing, and having computer verification that she actually damaged one of the vessels and most likely been instrumental in driving the intruders away, thereby possibly saving the lives of all aboard Orion who had survived the initial attacks, the combined staffs decided to honor her.
A ceremony was called for. It would take the undirected anger that was beginning to manifest itself in unhealthy ways and re-direct them. Ensign Lee probably wouldn’t like the idea of a ceremony in her honor, but she would see her duty. And if that didn’t work, she’d just have it forced on her. She had to surrender her anonymity for the greater good. At least, that is what she would be told. Simon suggested a medal. The idea passed by acclamation. Stephen wanted to call it The Stellar Cross. Kitty and Gayle wanted to design it.
Three days later repairs were finished on Sundiver, and she began her second voyage to the sun without ceremony. Repairs to Orion were almost done and her antenna array had been replaced. There was now a maze of small asteroids around the base itself that required a rather circuitous course to be steered to get in or out.
Six shuttles were bringing material to the two smelters and parts and assemblies were beginning to stack up. The new fighters were going to be assembled in record time, it seemed. In honor of the pilot lost in the explosion that gave them the enemy engine pack, the new fighters would be called Quinn-class. A new class of missile was being constructed as well. Once more, technology was being changed to fit new circumstances. There was enough material on hand to give power sources to twenty of the new fighters. And enough material left over to convert into anti-matter for warheads and propulsion systems.
The new warheads were a marvel. Equipped with proximity devices as well as contact fuses, they would wreck enormous damage, if not total annihilation, on whatever they hit. The missile itself was normal enough by all the standards of construction supplied by the Builders: a small fusion drive pushing chemical explosives very fast. The differences were that the warhead was now a small amount of anti-matter riding in a containment field powered by an externally mounted field generator. Mounted ahead of the containment field it generated, the generator and field died if the missile impacted anything, releasing the anti-matter at a fraction of the speed of light, followed instantly by the explosion of the drive generator, hopefully deeper within an enemy vessel, multiplying the damage exponentially.
Twenty improved ships carrying a total of eighty much more destructive missiles and improved beam weapons. The original owners would be hard pressed to recognize their own equipment. Or combat it. And rudimentary shields were being tested in hopes of mounting them on the new fighters as well as Galileo and any ships Orion turned out.
Kitty stepped up onto the dais and the milling crews began to sort themselves into their various sub-groups. When it looked like everyone not on duty was present and in their appointed places, she called them to attention. They stood in Galileo’s lower hold, in the larger section, beneath the factories. It had become Engineering’s project area when not needed for one of the ongoing construction projects associated with Orion. Weeks of work had gone into the project that emerged after the attack on Orion. Changes were made and assessed against other changes, dead ends were reached and circumvented, obstacle after obstacle was surmounted in a prodigious effort to bring this latest project to fruition.
Before the assembled group sat a thing of deadly grace. Sleek, flat-black, and about a third again as large as the original version, this new vessel, the Quinn-class, was already being called a Mamba, after the snake with a deadly reputation. Simon stood to one side and looked the vessel over for a moment.
Turning to the assemblage, Kitty ordered, “At ease. Ladies and gentlemen, we are here for several reasons today. One is to commemorate the lives of our dead. We will miss them, but their efforts have not been in vain. I will miss them as well. But we will build on those effo
rts and carry on.
“Another reason is to present our latest innovation, the Mamba, and give recognition to those who have brought this new fighter into being. From department heads down to factory operators, engineers, pilots, pod jockeys, and all the support personnel who made it possible for those directly connected to this project to get the job done in an amazingly short time, you are all responsible for what has been accomplished here. You all deserve that recognition, and after this ceremony, will be released from duty for twenty-four hours. Except for skeleton staffs who must remain on duty. Sorry. You’ll get your twenty-four after those shifts. It can’t be helped.” This last was said with a small grin. “And still another reason is to give special recognition to one of our company who has, through her dedication to duty, and her selflessness, brought that recognition upon herself. Ensign Miranda Lee, front and center.”
As Kitty spoke Simon walked up beside her. While the new Mamba was no surprise to any of the crew, it had been rumored that something else was to be announced at this ceremony. The unveiling was expected by one and all, of course, so almost everyone found some excuse to be on Deck Eighteen for the event.
Kitty stepped to one side and Simon took over the microphone. He looked out at the expectant faces, letting the suspense build until the ashen-faced ensign walked stiffly up to him. “Ensign Lee, reporting as ordered, sir.” Her salute was crisp and sharp, though her eyes said, “Scared”.
Motioning for Kitty and Daniel to join him, Simon pronounced, “Ensign Lee, you have shown a greater than expected devotion to duty. It is an unfortunate fact of life in any military organization that dedication of that kind is never rewarded, but instead the individual is punished.”
The silence that had grown on the deck when Miranda was called forward was broken by a buzz of low conversation as the crew listened in confusion to Simon’s pronouncement. Hadn’t she saved damned near everybody’s lives? Hadn’t Kitty herself just said so? Simon’s smile took some of the sting out of his words and the unfortunate Ensign’s emotions flew across her face in a steady progression from confusion to consternation to total befuddlement. “The punishment you will be subjected to is more responsibility, Ensign,” Simon said, causing her face to return to confusion. It also caused the noise to die down in anticipation of ... something.
