by Andrew Beery
"As far as attacks go, two missiles… fifteen minutes out... doesn't seem like much of a threat," she said in an inquisitive voice.
I nodded. “I’m not convinced that an attack is what we are dealing with.”
I turned back towards the main view screen.
“Bring up the objects accelerating towards us. Full magnification.”
Immediately the Gilboa’s AI displayed an enhanced image. The missiles, if that’s what they were, were hard to make out even with the AI enhancements. All we could really see at this distance was the exhaust plumes of their fusion drives.
“Run a spectral analysis,” I said. “Any matches?”
“Affirmative, Admiral,” Daniels replied. I suspect he had already started the analysis before I gave the order.
“Both objects match the drive signatures of GO Mark Four Hidey-Hoes.”
“Send the disarm codes. Once they acknowledge and shut down their drives, secure from red alert and go to yellow alert,” I ordered.
Hidey-Hoes was a slang term for cloaked mines that the Gilboa and Faqqa could deploy. If they detected an active drive signature in a designated interdiction zone, they went hot and attempted intercepts.
Typically, they were deployed in massive numbers. The fact that only two responded to our incursion seemed to indicate they were part of a larger mine-field that had already responded to a threat in this sector. These would appear to be the remnants. That would certainly explain a large amount of floating debris. It was also a source of concern.
The Faqqa should have taken the time to recover their unused ordnance. The only reason they would not is if they had been severely damaged or destroyed or if they found it necessary to exit the system quickly. My hope was that it was this last and not the first option that had occurred. The question was… did they make it?
2100.1207.0122 Galactic Normalized Time
The level of resistance to the fulfillment of the Primary command was greater than anticipated. A second race was targeted for selective extinction. This one was responsible for leadership within the Galactic Order. Their elimination would remove any remaining resistance to the recovery efforts.
Chapter 7: Dog’s Day Out …
As we explored the system, we ran into a number of other expended minefields, as well as two entire minefields that were still lying-in-wait. All told, we recovered about six-thousand of the Faqqa’s Mark Four Hidey-Hoes.
The dig site on Stanis had been obliterated by some type of powerful nuke. All that remained was a kilometer-wide hole in the ground and a radioactive cloud that would circulate in the planet’s upper atmosphere for several decades.
Our biggest find… quite literally… was an immense but thoroughly trashed starship. While heavily damaged, it was still about seventy percent intact. It was clearly a Defiler ship and potentially represented the largest intel bonanza of the war.
“She took a pasting,” Whiskers said from just behind my command chair.
I nodded. “She looks to be about twice our size. I wonder how the Faqqa took her out… especially given she was vastly outnumbered if she was defending this system alone.”
Just then the turbo-lift swished open and both Mitty and my Marine Commander, Mike Morrison, walked onto the bridge.
“Wow! She took a pasting,” the Colonel said in awe.
Whiskers and I shared a smile.
“Our Engineer just offered the exact same expert opinion,” I chuckled.
“Great minds think alike,” Mike acknowledge. “Do you want me to assemble a boarding team?”
“Yes, and I want Mitty, Whiskers, Docs Emerson and Merab, and Jowls… if he’s willing to join us. The more diverse the set of eyes looking around, the better the chance we are going to find something useful.”
The Marine Colonel turned to face me. I could see a look of concern in the tension of his face.
“By ‘us’ and ‘we’ do you mean to say you intend to join us on the away mission?”
“Absolutely… can’t deny a dog his bone.”
“Admiral, I…”
“Not open for discussion Mike. I’m going. I’m quite confident you will assign enough Marines to keep us safe. Besides, it’s time for a Dog’s day out.”
***
I’ve never been a fan of powered combat armor. Somehow the boffins who designed the stuff always managed to put something in the middle of the back that induced an itch. Of course, with all the tech they build into the things, you would think a small windshield-wiper assembly mounted so as to strategically scratch said itch would be a piece of cake. Apparently, Skip drives were easier to design… who knew.
I had been enduring my misery silently for the better part of an hour. We were approaching the Defiler wreck in an assault shuttle. The Gilboa had parked herself a respectable distance from the behemoth. I didn’t want to be taken by surprise if the Defilers decided to play possum – assuming they had something that resembled possums.
That meant the Dante had to ‘head into the inferno’ from several thousand kilometers out… ergo the long shuttle ride. The closer we got to the disabled vessel the more intimidating it was. The oddest thing about the wreck was the type of damage.
“It looks like it exploded from within,” Mike said over our command channel.
“I was thinking the same thing. I wonder if there wasn’t some vulnerability in their armor that a lucky shot managed to hit,” I answered.
“It would be worth knowing what caused this much damage. I have the nasty feeling we might run into more of these guys.”
I nodded. It would be nice if there were a vulnerability we could take advantage of. Sadly, that was often not the way the universe worked… and this was no exception.
***
Entering the big ship was simplicity itself. Somebody had been good enough to open several kilometer-long gashes in the butt-end of the beastie. We used magnetic grapples to hold the combat shuttle in place on the exterior of the wreck. We entered on foot about six hundred feet into the larger of the many rents torn in the hull of the derelict ship.
We made our way past a shattered bulkhead. Mike’s Marines led the way. Fortunately for me, my HUD gave me a visual feed of what our guys in front were seeing. I thought the interior of the WP23 platform had been bad. It was nothing compared to what I was seeing now.
There was twisted metal everywhere, as well as signs of intense heat. From the way, the hull was torn… added to the fact that the surface charring seemed to be getting worse as we moved deeper into the ship… I was rapidly becoming convinced that the ship had been breached by an internal explosion. What I didn't see was any indication of exterior damage that would have caused the explosion.
I toggled my comms.
“Mike, Mitty… what’s your take on what we’re seeing?”
“To be honest, Sir, it looks like some type of self-destruct protocol that failed,” the Marine Commander responded.
“I concur,” Mitty Said before continuing. “There is one other possibility that we should not discount.”
I nodded. “A force or forces inside the ship attempted sabotage.”
“Interesting,” Mike mumbled softly – almost to himself.
Turning back to face me, he added, “That would explain the apparent result. The ship was wrecked but not destroyed. It’s possible that the saboteur… if that’s truly what happened here… was only attempting to disable the ship.”
“This seems a little excessive,” I said as I stepped over another shattered bulkhead.
“It’s possible that once the ship was disabled, her captain attempted to self-destruct, but the pre-existing damage rendered the effort ineffective,” Mitty added.
“I suspect the answers are going to be on whatever they use for a bridge. Mike, I think it’s time to deploy the ENOs.”
ENOs were a TLA (three letter acronym) for Enhanced Navigable Observers. They were essentially autonomous drones.
Why the military chose not just to call them d
rones was beyond me. It seemed ‘big guys with guns' had trouble with big words but loved their TLAs. As I was one of those ‘big guys with guns'… and I liked TLAs… I suppose there might be some truth to the supposition.
***
About twenty minutes into our exploration we began to run into the bodies. Many were the Neanderthal-types we had run into in the 55 Cancri system.
In the vacuum of space, corpses behave strangely. The lack of atmospheric pressure causes them to bloat before they freeze in place. This is different than the bloating that is caused by decomposition. In addition, many of the corpses exhibited what could be called ‘freezer burn.' The end result was it could be very difficult to recognize an individual who had died in the explosive decompression of space.
I bring all this up not because I have some morbid fascination with death and decay, but because it helps explain why we were caught by surprise by something most unpleasant… something we would discover later in the day.
Besides our Neanderthal friends, there were a number of other races represented by the frozen ‘meat-sicles’ floating around. Some of the corpses were of GO member races like the Jessites, while others… like the warlike Amorites… were known to the Galactic Order. Still, others were a complete mystery… including a reptilian species that Mitty couldn't identify.
By the time we got to the bridge which the ENOs had located… we had identified a good dozen alien races represented on the ship.
All were dead. It seemed most died as a result of miniature explosives embedded in or near their brains. It seemed a pointless redundancy because the ship has so many holes in its skin that the atmosphere must have bled out of most sections in less than an hour.
The bridge held the biggest surprise. It was obvious that there had been a flash fire on the bridge. This was, in and of itself, a bit of an odd duck. No spacecraft that I was aware of utilized flammables in a way that would allow for such a flash fire event.
Fourteen beings occupied various stations around the control center. Each and every one of them looked human… that said, they were not… although it would take us a while to figure that out. This was because of both the flash fire and vacuum desiccation I had discussed earlier. All that said, every one of them seemed eerily familiar – same size, same build, same gender.
“Whiskers see if you and Mitty can pull anything useful from the ship’s computers.”
“On it Admiral.”
I turned to Doctor Merab. "I need you to run a genetic scan. Is the bridge crew human, Saulite or something else? It's hard to tell, but they all appear female and nearly identical. Coincidence or something more?"
Rather than saying anything the armored Saulite doctor walked stiffly over to one of the bridge stations and pressed a series of buttons. I was at a loss to explain her strange behavior.
It almost looked like she was entering a keycode. A panel slid open next to the station she was at. I could see what looked like a series of four plasma rifles inside the cabinet. As She reached towards the weapons, the hair on the back of my neck began to stand up. That was never a good sign.
Her hand froze a good six inches from the rifle she had been reaching for. It almost seemed as if she was fighting herself.
“Admiral, I need you and the others to leave now,” she seemed to gasp between clenched teeth. “I don’t know how long I can hold the compulsion off. Please…” she gasped again as she struggled. “GO!”
Mike and his men heard her odd inflection. Like a well-oiled and synchronized machine, as one they turned their weapons on her.
That was apparently all it took to break the doctor's concentration. Her hand reached for the nearest of the weapons, and it pulled out. She swung the plasma rifle around and aimed with a speed that was hard to comprehend. Even worse, from my perspective, it seemed I was her first target.
Fortunately, Federation Space Marines are undoubtedly the most highly trained and elite fighting force ever deployed by humanity. The Colonel and two of his men fired simultaneously. The force of their kinetic rounds hitting her combat armor spoiled the doctor’s aim. Had that not been the case, it’s likely I would have been a crispy-fried Admiral.
Before the Saulite doctor could line-up for another shot, Mitty activated a failsafe on her suit that locked it up. She was effectively trapped in a hyper-alloy shell that held her as effectively as any twenty handcuffs… at least that was the thought.
Before Mike's team could reach her, the Saulite's armor unlocked, and she quickly slid through a hatch which sealed behind her. Again, her movements were impossibly fast.
2100.1207.0124 Galactic Normalized Time
The Mahanaim AI cabal was perplexed. Strategic genocide had been utilized on a number of occasions. It had been believed in each instance that the combative nature of the indigenous populations would be eliminated. The anticipated response did not meet with calculated expectations. There appeared to be an error in fundamental assumptions.
Chapter 8: A Dog Trap
I sat at the Ready room’s conference table.
"Report," I said dryly, although I pretty much knew the answer. The search team had come up drier than a month-old biscuit. If they had found something significant, it would have already been reported.
Mike Morrison confirmed my suspicion.
“There was no trace of Doctor Merab. Nor did we find any sign of others alive on the ship.”
“Shuttle or escape pod?”
The Colonel shook his head.
“Unless it was cloaked using tech we are not familiar with, I don’t see how that would be possible.”
Whiskers leaned forward.
“That last might be a real possibility. If the doctor was working with the enemy, she might have had access to whatever it was they dug up on Stanis Prime.”
“The question is, was she working with the Defilers?” Lori said. “The recordings and voice patterns seem to indicate some type of duress.”
I looked at my wife. I knew she and the Saulite doctor had formed a bond… or at least it seemed they had. I knew what I was going to ask next was going to upset her, but it had to be done.
“I need you to perform autopsies on the bridge crew and representatives of the various alien races we encountered on the Defiler ship. Question – did they have brain implants like the Neanderthal hybrids we encountered earlier? Could those implants do more than just kill them… could it be some type of compulsion device?”
Mike leaned forward. He seemed reluctant to speak.
“Mike, you look like you want to make a comment. Spit it out.”
“Sir,” the Marine Colonel began but paused.
I knew something was up because Mike and I were well past the whole ‘Sir’ thing. I raised an eyebrow and encouraged him with a hand gesture.
Mike coughed a little and then spoke up. “I hate to be the voice of doubt, but I’m not buying it… respectfully.”
“Go on,” I prompted. I was genuinely curious now.
“I don’t think what you’re proposing is going to answer our question. There is simply no way in hell that Doctor Merab had an implant. She was a clone.”
I nodded. I had already thought of that, but I decided my lovely wife could confirm my suspicion. I turned towards Lori.
“Actually, I think my husband is on to something. Our clones have their memories and conditioning transferred from their host. The original Merab might well have had a control device. If she did, and if it had been implanted a while ago, there is a good chance the plasticity of her mind adapted to the device… or more to the point… to the control it exerted. If that were indeed the case, she wouldn’t need the actual implant to motivation her. It would be like having two personalities inhabiting one body… each fighting for control.”
“Then why did she wait to attack?” Whiskers asked.
“Something on that bridge triggered her,” I answered. “The thousand-dollar question is ‘what was the trigger’ and ‘how do we break the conditioning?’”
“Two,” Mike said.
I turned to look at him with a quizzical look on my face.
“That was two ‘thousand-dollar’ questions… not one.”
***
We rummaged through the Defiler wreck for another week. We learned a few juicy tidbits, but it seemed like the law of diminishing returns was beginning to rear its ugly head. It was time to go.
Several times somebody had spotted what they had thought was the Saulite, but in each case, it appeared that they had been chasing shadows. Unless the good doctor could suddenly turn invisible, our best guess was she had somehow managed to find a hole to hide in that we were never likely to locate… not without a lot more time and resources than I could afford right now.
I was still wondering what became of Doctor Merab Q’Tar as the Gilboa fired up her sublight thrusters. We began to move towards the outer reaches of the solar system where we could safely engage our Skip drive. It turned out my concerns regarding the good doctor were well founded. I didn’t know it at the time, but a small cloaked ship drifted free of the Defiler wreck and eventually attached itself to the Gilboa’s hull. As we had feared earlier, the cloaking technology was derived from Ancestor technology. It was 100% effective against our sensors. That little tidbit would come back to bite us at the worst possible moment.
“Approaching jump point, Admiral” Shelby announced.
“Very well, Commander. Initiate jump to coordinates zero-four-two mark six.” Those coordinates were for a rallying point known only to the Gilboa, Yorktown, and Faqqa. It was time to see what the others could tell.
“Initiating Skip drive in three… two… one,” Ensign Nelson reported. “Time to destination, twenty-eight hours and fifty-three minutes.”
“Commander, you have the bridge. Secure from yellow alert. Return all stations to a six-hour rotating shift until we reach the jump terminus. I’ll take shift two. Mike, you’re with me in combat ops.”
“Aye sir,” my two senior officers responded as one.
“Mitty, I’m going to want you to join us too.”