Hell's Razer

by S. F. Edwards

  The data available on the sloop was limited. The Wolfsbane had plotted a rough course vector, but it didn’t tell them much. Thanks to their proximity to the craft’s apparent goal however, they had a good picture of the Sloop’s dark energy profile. From that, they could read a rough approximation of the vessel’s velocity, and more importantly, deceleration. Arion could already tell that the Sloop would drop well within the light-pulse distance. He plotted a reversion area a few hundred kimets away. Bichard and Matt had plotted similar intercepts, and they overlapped in several volumes. Arion highlighted the overlaps and received confirmation from the other two WSOs.

  Arion pumped the navigation zone up to Blazer. “This looks like our best intercept.”

  “Copy that,” Blazer replied and twisted the fighter about. “Nach Four, Six, Lead, on me. Spread formation.” He switched channels. “Reluctant Favor, move clear of the jump point and slipstream back to the Wolfsbane.”

  “Copy that Nach Lead,” Alieha replied and Arion watched the Reluctant Favor vector away. He had to resist the urge to reach out towards her, - instead he focussed on the situation at hand.

  Arion felt the gees pour on as Blazer raced towards the target. “Blazer, targeting that thing is going to be tricky,” he let his pilot know. “We’re lucky to be able to detect its dark energy flux as it is,” he continued. He threw up a hologram of the craft for Blazer; highlighting key features. “The plasma drives are baffled and screened to scatter the exhaust and prevent anything tracking its radiation trail. The hull is made from an alloy that’s tachyon-blind at anything outside of twenty degrees perpendicular. Even then, we get a minimal return due the hull faceting, and don’t get me started on high band EM.”

  Arion could almost feel Blazer mulling it over, and knew his next question before he’d even asked it. “What about…”

  “Gravitational tracking? No, they’re too small to get a grav-lock with our sensors.”

  “Okay then. Recommendations?”

  “Armament is strictly offensive, missiles and torpedoes,” Arion remarked, highlighting launch ports along the outer leading edge of the diamond-profiled craft. “The engines are a good bet, but they’re embedded and shielded by the hull. Good luck finding the cockpit, the top and bottom of the ship are mirrors of each other.”

  “Bugger me sideways. Time to reversion?”

  “A little over a pulse by our estimates,” Arion replied.

  Blazer’s targeting window focussed on the rapidly approaching black diamond. Arion highlighted it, otherwise it would prove nearly invisible against the dark of space.

  Times like this made Arion truly appreciate being a WSO. The whole battlespace was his to observe and even tiny fluctuations, something that a pilot would never see, stood out to him. One such fluctuation alerted him now - an interruption of the Sloop’s deceleration curve. Matt and Bichard had spotted it too. Their calculated intercept zone shifted: it was now behind them. Arion didn’t even wait and cut the fighter’s thrust before flipping it and handing control back to Blazer.

  Blazer grunted. “What the Sheol?!”

  “They boosted. New intercept vector plotted.”

  It was too late. The Sloop slipped right past them, reverted between the fighters and the jump point. Blazer gunned the throttle, crushing the afterburner switch to kill their previous momentum before vaulting back after the Sloop. Arion’s sensor picture was horrid. Nothing wanted to lock on. That limited all of them to visual recognition only. But even his eyes just wanted to slide right off the vessel. He scanned the whole thermal spectrum as the Sloop accelerated away: nothing. Not even the exhaust baffles or most efficient ZKEPs should have been able to do that. Arion focussed on reflections.

  Starlight still reflected off its hull. The skin of the ship wasn’t coated in vantablack like Confed stealth recon craft. It gave an incomplete picture, but revealed a significant design change. “Shreg me! What are those?”

  Matt seemed to have the answer a moment later as the fighters raced after the craft. “Gavit is cursing up a storm here about PDEs”

  Particle Duct Engines? Arion had to think about that. Those engines had never been successfully fielded on anything larger than a torpedo except for atmospheric craft. The power requirements were just too great, and the stresses on the gravitational coils would burn them out in no time. But that did give Arion an idea. He brought up his gravitational sensors. They refused to lock on, but they did reveal a gravitational disturbance ahead of them. He fed the data to the others.

  “How in Drig’s name did the Geffers beat us to ship-scale PDEs?” Blazer blared.

  To Arion’s surprise Zanreb replied. “They don’t even have PDE weapons. Could they have stolen the tech? Could your traitor have fed it to them?”

  That stung deep. Mikle’s betrayal of them all had been a shock beyond any expectation. But even if he had fed the Galactic Federation everything the Confederation had on PDE tech, that still wouldn’t explain this. Confed had worked for over a century with no significant advances. A tickle on his sensors drew Arion’s focus.

  The dark energy profile around the ship was active, just at a lower level. They hadn’t fully deactivated their slipstream drive, instead tuning it to keep their apparent mass and thrust requirement low. It wasn’t dissimilar to how the Synthetic Sentient’s fighters operated, and that gave Arion an idea. He correlated the various readings together to create a proper sight picture. It wasn’t much, but was enough for the pilots to focus a cannon shot on and all accomplished in the span of two heartbeats.

  Range, velocity and acceleration data appeared on Blazer’s targeting display. “Got it.” He opened fire. His shots went wide as did Gavit’s. Zanreb scored a glancing hit that jostled the craft. Arion understood why. At the lowered effective mass, every hit would shake the craft if not push it. The trio continued pouring on the fire, but the craft kept accelerating. To Arion’s shock, its apparent mass continued to decrease as more dark energy enveloped it. Arion felt his body shudder as shots began to deflect away. The crew had pumped enough power into their slipstream drive, and the dark energy field, to have it act as a shield.

  “That’s dangerous as Sheol!” Matt hissed over the link. The risky maneuver by the crew of the Sloop was sure to not only consume a prodigious amount of power, but also to generate an enormous amount of heat. Without active radiators, all that thermal energy had only one place to go: the ZKEPs. And those had limits. The crew would face a burnout in short order if they didn’t act fast.

  Arion ran the calculations. The crew was good. They might just make the jump point before the system burnt itself out or cooked the crew. Whether they’d be able to get their hyperspace shield up in time was another matter. That was when Arion spotted what awaited them at the jump point.

  The Reluctant Favor had not even attempted to escape the battlespace. Instead, Alieha had placed her craft in a blockade position between the Sloop and the jump point. “Reluctant Favor, get out of the way!”

  “Negative Nachs,” Alieha replied. “Feed me your targeting telemetry or get clear.”

  Arion focussed on the Reluctant Favor. The energy profile had changed, four thermal hotspots appearing on the hull along with high band EM. Arion recognized the signature: plaser turrets, single cannon GP-T-62-LLs by the readings. The turrets each featured a battery plaser like their fighters had along with independent fire control suits. “Favor, cut me into your fire control.”

  “Just this one-time sweetie.”

  At any other time, Arion would have blushed. Instead, he directed the four turrets onto the Sloop and fired. The combined force of the assault halted the vessel’s acceleration. That was all the trio of fighters needed. All three fired again. Their united attack overwhelmed the dark energy screen and shields. From the other direction, Arion dug the turrets into the boxy added-on PDEs on the Sloop’s dorsal and ventral surfaces. His strikes sheared away the front of the drives, disabling them. The hull lit in thermal energy. Two more hotspots appe
ared. The crew lit their plasma rockets in a final desperate gamble to escape. It also presented the team with their clearest image yet of the craft.

  “They’re mine,” Gavit whooped and raced ahead. He poured plaser fire into the engine exhausts before Matt lanced out with the Narfic cannons. The plasers tore the engines to shreds, exposing the delicate interior, before the energy lances fried the ship’s electrical grid. It went cold once again. Only the residual heat of the pummelling they’d given the Sloop was evident before thermal sails burst forth and the craft’s banks of ZKEPs vented. The crew had surrendered, venting all their waste heat in a desperate attempt to stay alive.

  Arion breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Target disabled,” Gavit hooted.

  “Reluctant Favor, Nach Three, thanks for the assist,” Blazer called.

  “Happy to oblige,” Alieha replied with an obviously fake drawl. “But you can thank your WSO for the fancy shooting,” she continued, her turrets retracting into hidden alcoves.

  “I do what I can,” Arion replied and sent a mission update to the Wolfsbane. The response came immediately. “We have a corvette inbound, ten pulses, with heavy escort to recover the sloop. We are clear to vacate upon arrival.”

  “Copy that,” Blazer replied, pulling their fighter alongside the sloop. “See what kind of scans you can get of these drives in the meantime.”

  All three WSOs complied, training their sensors on the partially-destroyed engines. Alieha pulled the Reluctant Favor in close as well. Deep gashes tore across the Sloop’s hull, exposing vital systems beneath and frozen clouds of vented atmosphere. If the crew hadn’t transitioned to their suits they’d be dead before the corvette could ever hope to recover them. “I’ve got panties thicker than that thing’s armor,” Alieha quipped.

  “Is that accurate, Arion?” Gavit laughed. Even Blazer chuckled from the front seat.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Arion bit back, flashing a holographic rude hand gesture back at Gavit through the link. Only Zanreb failed to laugh.

  “Actually, most stealth Sloops, even Confed’s, aren’t armored in the conventional sense,” Zanreb corrected them. “The skin is little more than a few layers of nanosheet or blackbody radiators over a plasteel sheath. There are no composites or repair layers. It keeps the mass down. Sloops rely on stealth, speed and shields to avoid damage.”

  “Almost worked,” Matt replied. “We burnt an accelerator coil catching up to them.”

  Arion looked over Gavit and Matt’s fighter. He wasn’t exaggerating. Matt had poured extra energy into their engines to try and catch the Sloop. That had overstrained the fifth-stage magnetic coil in their left plasma drive. It wasn’t in any danger of immediate collapse, but if they got into combat, it had the potential to knock them out of the fight. Worse, their power transfer box flashed red-yellow. The secondaries had kicked in, but they weren’t in fighting shape.

  “Arion?” Blazer asked through the cockpit.

  “They’ll be okay, as long as we don’t run into more trouble.”

  “Copy that. Six, take it easy on the trip back.”

  “Corvette on sensors,” Bichard commented. “Crew reports that the Explosions are aboard and ready to secure the Sloop.”

  “Understood,” Blazer replied. “All Units, clear the way and make for slipstream vector.”

  Bridge, UCSBS-Wolfsbane

  Captain Sardenon didn’t like it. Not only had there been a Galactic Federation Stealth Sloop snooping around, it had almost got away clean. Worse, the Galactic Federation had somehow leapfrogged the Confederation on PDE tech. How in Drig’s name had they managed that?

  The bridge was abuzz with activity. Every sensor analyst poured over the logs of the past decle, searching for the Sloop. They had to find out how long the craft had been in-system and where it had been snooping. Get the name of the tech who’d spotted it, and write up a commendation. See if they’re looking at becoming an officer too, he thought to himself. He was never one to let good potential go to waste, even if it cost them in the short term.

  Meanwhile, his Chief Engineer, Crae Baltrow, and Lead Scientist, Mah Roa, began their analysis of the Sloop and its engines. He looked out the portside view wall. The Sloop was there for all to see, tied down to the port-dorsal corvette docking area that led to Hangar 3. It was an ugly thing, especially after how his pilots had torn it up.

  “What do we know so far?” he asked the room.

  Commander Vetter stepped up, macomm in his twin-thumbed hand. “Not much at this point. It looks like the crew followed standard procedure. They demoed their navigational computers, along with their sensor recorder.”

  Captain Sardenon accepted the macomm and looked it over. He found the images of the crew intriguing. “Are those Satan patches?”

  The Commander nodded. “Yes sir, the Sloop appears to have been launched off the GFS Barker.”

  The Captain leaned back, flicked at his nose several times in thought. Images of that red and black monster on his SIS danced before his eyes. “And the crew?”

  “One left alive sir, but barely. His euthanasia injector had either malfunctioned or he’d attempted to disable it once he’d realized it was there. Dr Nereist in Med One isn’t sure he’ll pull through. The telepaths are working him over, but they haven’t reported yet.”

  “Cararia will do what she can. What do we know about those engines? We have some of the Confederation’s best engineers and most advanced prototypes onboard and can barely get a few hects of use at half their predicted thrust.”

  “Not much, not yet anyway. Preliminary reports indicate that they are PDEs and are somehow tied into the slipstream drive, ingenious really.”

  “More like suicidal,” the Captain remarked and looked back at the ship. “Confed tried something similar ages ago. The test ship couldn’t take the stresses, and no pilot could control it. Do we know how the Geffers beat us?”

  “My guess sir - espionage.”

  Almost as if in answer to that the Captain caught the whiff of sudden fear sweat following the sound of the bridge door opening. He turned his chair to the ladderwell leading up to the command level and waited. The sound of silent boot steps screamed at him with how out of place they were as they climbed the steep ascent. Commander Vetter stepped back as Tadeh Qudas’ grim skull-faced visage presented itself. He approached the captain with an aloof calm and waited there, standing at attention. “How much did the spy in your ranks leak to the Geffers? Especially regarding PDEs?”

  Tadeh Qudas nodded to the Captain’s macomm: it beeped. “The details are in that report. After his discovery, security forces ransacked his quarters and scrubbed his intraweave history all the way back to his enlistment. All they could find on engine tech is in there - maintenance and technical manuals as well as general articles on the subject. Mikle wasn’t an engineer and didn’t have the need to know to access anything higher. Nor did he have the weaving ability to search deeper than unclassified data. As you can see, they also scanned the data trail of everyone he worked with, and everyone else came back clean.”

  The Captain perused the list. Technical manuals on the SEAW-304-LL Shark torpedo did little to describe how the PDE actually functioned, more on how to diagnose problems and replace components. Otherwise they were largely a black box on the diagrams.

  “It’s highly likely that the Galactic Federation reverse-engineered weapons and prototypes kept aboard Cathedral Six. They-d also have had unfettered access to any data aboard that was not destroyed,” Tadeh Qudas reminded him.

  Homi, the chief communications officer twisted about in his seat to face the Captain. “Sir, we’ve just received priority orders from High Command. They are dispatching a freighter to haul the Sloop back to Core for further analysis.”

  The Captain grimaced. “Inform High Command that we acknowledge the order.” He sat back in his seat, not quite defeated. He had one of the greatest technological prizes in his hands and Command was about to steal it away from him.
If they could somehow meld it with their prototypes, then maybe, just maybe, they could field something useful. “Damn. I wanted our people to study it.”

  His XO stepped up. “Sir, they’re likely bringing in the top PDE scientists and engineers from around the Confederation to study the ship. They’ll reverse-engineer the tech in no time.”

  “We’ve been saying that since before this war began. No, they’ll be too bogged down in bureaucracy, fighting over which contractor or lab gets what first.”

  “Um sir,” Homi called. “They want our PDE team and prototypes too.”

  The Captain bit back a curse. “Acknowledged,” he growled, pinching the bridge of his nose.

  Tadeh Qudas looked over at the Sloop for a moment. “It has six engines. And our after-action report did not state the extent of damage to any of them. Did any of yours back to High Command?”

  The Captain felt a wry smile cross his lips and he looked up at the old Telshin. “No, it didn’t. I didn’t think subterfuge was a Telshin strong suit.”

  Tadeh Qudas remained impassive. “We adapt to our battlefield.”

  “Good man. Commander Baltrow?” he called down to the tactical hologram. “Instruct your engineering teams to list one engine as scrapped or destroyed and have it taken to the PDE lab once the team’s been cleared out.”

  The Captain turned towards his tactical officer. “Sia, find me the best PDE engineer out there. I don’t care if they’re a Confederate, a Civilian, or a blob of protoplasm, but the best, and someone High Command won’t think to ask. We’re about to make them the most famous engineer in the last century.” Sia Caudalle was more than a brilliant Tactical Officer, but also someone who kept a pulse on who the best of the best was throughout the Confederation. It only made sense, given how hard he’d had to fight to get her added to his crew, every fleet carrier wanting her on their roster.

  A thought occurred to the Captain. “Chief Slaik?” he called to the Chief Sensor Officer, Reil Slaik. “I also want a full spectral and radiographic analysis done on that Sloop’s hull. Let’s figure out what systems she’s been in. That should give us a clue as to where the Satan is hiding.”