Mad Dog

by Andrew Beery

  ***

  “Ahead warp factor three!”

  “Sir?”

  I looked at Ensign Hendricks with a smile wide enough that it threatened to cause serious bodily injury. “Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy… I’m just having a little fun. Go ahead and set a course for jump point beta. Ahead best sublight.”

  “Aye sir,” the young man answered with just a little confusion in his voice. “‘Warping’ …now”

  It was gratifying to see the younger generation getting into the spirit of things. Commander Shelby just shook her head. This was Hendricks’ first time on the same shift as his Admiral, and I was determined to break him in right.

  “Course laid in Admiral. Sublight engines are running at ninety-five percent. ETA at the jump point is seven point four hours.”

  “Very well, Ensign.”

  I looked at Shelby. She gave me a slight shake of her head. I again smiled back at her and nodded slightly. My face was the picture of innocence. My First Officer looked resigned to what was about to happen. As I said, I believe in breaking in new officers correctly.

  “Mister Hendricks, I have another assignment for you.”

  “Yes sir,” he answered sharply.

  “There is a piece of equipment that is critical to the functioning of the bridge. I would like you to take personal charge of this equipment and make sure it is ready at a moment’s notice should we have a need to bring it online. Are you up for this responsibility?”

  “Absolutely sir!”

  “Very well ensign. I knew I could count on you. The device in question is right over there.” I pointed to my popcorn machine which was right next to the secondary sensor station at the rear of the bridge.

  “I’ll have butter on mine… and Hendricks… go easy on the salt.”

  ***

  Because of the vagaries of Skip Space travel, it took us a week to get to the 55 Cancri binary star system. I was happy to report that Ensign Hendricks had become quite proficient manning his secondary station. It turned out, much to Shelby’s dismay, that our young ensign was a big fan of what his Brazilian grandmother called pipoca or popcorn in Portuguese.

  “Cloak engaged, shields up and sensors online Admiral,” Shelby reported.

  “Very well Number one. Mitty, what are we seeing out there?”

  Mitty stepped down to my command chair. His cybernetic interfaces were tied directly into the ship’s systems. This meant he had immediate access to the wealth of sensor data flooding into the Gilboa.

  “As we anticipated Admiral. The primary star, 55 Cancri Alpha, is a type-k barium star. Its luminosity varies by zero-point-four-nine percent over a three-day cycle. There are sixteen planets and two asteroid belts orbiting it. All are well outside the Goldilocks zone. As expected, none support life.

  “Its companion star, 55 Cancri B, is a red dwarf and is in orbit approximately 2600 AU away. There is a single planet in its habitable zone. The Galactic Order has designated the planet Tarf. It was last surveyed six hundred and eighty-three years ago. At that time the planet hosted a wide variety of plant life as well as some low order aquatic animal species.”

  I nodded. All this I knew. The problem was that two complete star systems was a lot of space to search and conversely, a lot of space to hide in. If there was a Defiler base of operations here, we could spend years looking for it. Assuming of course that the Ish-Boshet were trying to hide it. My hope was they were not. I was tempted to head straight towards the only habitable planet in the binary star system. The problem was that we now knew our adversary was not a biologic. A habitable world would be helpful for their enslaved minions but not essential. Translation… if there was a Defiler base here… it could be anywhere.

  “What are the sensors telling us?”

  Mitty paused for a second as if he was listening to a sound none of the rest of us could hear.

  “We emerged equidistant between the two stars. Our passive sensors are receiving data that is about seven days old. Active sensors will not return a complete dataset for a full two weeks. The active sensors are showing the immediate vicinity to be clear of activity. However, there are multiple ionization trails consistent with sublight propulsion systems. I would say we are in a system that is either inhabited or had been until very recently.”

  I turned to Shelby again.

  “Commander launch a full spread of stealth drones. I want a sensor net out to half an AU. I don’t want so much as a housefly with a pissy attitude getting anywhere near us without the Gilboa knowing about it first.”

  “Roger that sir. No houseflies,” Shelby acknowledged.

  It took my First Officer less than twenty seconds to get the drones in the air. I suspected she had been prepping them prior to my giving the order. Shelby was good at her job. I gave the drones twenty minutes to get to their respective deployment areas. A half an AU was about four light-minutes away. Even traveling at sixty-percent the speed of light, it took the little guys a while to get into position.

  Long before the drones arrived, Mitty gave me another sensor update. The Archon had been working with Lieutenant Daniels at his station. They seemed to arrive at some agreement, and Mitty walked over to my command chair.

  “Admiral, our young Mister Daniels seems to have made a discovery. Tarf seems to be colder than it should be.”

  “Pardon?” I asked.

  Mitty waved a floating holographic display into existence in front of my seat.

  “This is 55 Cancri Beta. The green orb here,” he pointed to what looked like a single pea floating in the air next to an angry red star, “is Tarf.”

  Mitty cloned and expanded the holographic image of Tarf. It now occupied half of the holographic display. To my eye, it looked like any other wet, goldilocks zone, a planet with vegetation dominating its land surface and oceans dominating the rest. The red light from its primary made everything look a little darker than I would expect… but other than that it looked pretty darn normal.

  Mitty stared at me with his alien otter-like eyes. He was bouncing back and forth on the balls of his feet. I got the feeling he was expecting me to see what was, to him at least, very obvious. I hated to disappoint him, but I was drawing a complete blank.

  “And I should be seeing what exactly?”

  2100.1207.0183 Galactic Normalized Time

  Ish-Boshet monitored the activities at the cloning facility. To date, there were three models of clones. The first template developed was a Neanderthal hybrid genetically enhanced to be more intelligent and tractable. The second and third models were the Saulite Q’tar sisters. They had proven to be excellent cloning stock. For many years it had been the consensus view of the cabal that no other clone variants were required. Ish-Boshet was not interested in the consensus view.

  Chapter 12: Dog Tail…

  My little alien otter friend wrinkled his nose and sighed. He brought up a second image of the planet. This one was the same size but a bit brighter. I raised an eyebrow and was rewarded with yet another bout of nose-wrinkling.

  “The first image is the Tarf as we see it today. The second image is what we would expect to see,” Mitty explained

  “OK,” I nodded. “One is darker than the other. Dust cloud between here and there?”

  “Negative,” Mitty said. “A dust cloud would selectively absorb light based on the spacing between particles. We are seeing a uniform decrease across all measurable frequencies.”

  Suddenly I understood. “You think there is some sort of energy field surrounding the planet. Protection… or a cloak?”

  Mitty made a strange bark-burp sound. I’d only heard him make it a couple of times since we had met. I had no idea what bark-burp meant in alien otter, but he seemed pleased with himself.

  “I suspect it is a bit of both,” Mitty agreed. “55 Cancri Alpha and Beta interact gravitationally in a way that tosses a lot of rocks between the two systems. All the planets, including Tarf, show signs of repeated and recent impacts. Any effort to establish a major facility
would likely include a system to protect the facility from meteorite strikes.”

  About this time, Lieutenant Daniels who was manning both sensors and navigation reported that our sensor umbrella was in place.

  “Navigator plot a course for Tarf. Helm ahead half sublight. Don’t allow ourselves to get out and ahead of our sensor net. Let’s see what’s sitting behind that shield.”

  ***

  Our speed and course towards the suspected Defiler cloning facility would take three days. We could do it faster… much faster, but I wanted to approach cautiously. I had a bad feeling in my gut. A feeling I wished I had listened to. About a day out we began to run across more indications that this was an active facility.

  “Admiral sensors are detecting multiple ion trails converging on the planet,” Lieutenant Ramchandani reported.

  “Any sign of the ships that produced those ion trails Vigit?” I asked.

  “Negative Admiral but if they are behind the planet’s cloak, we won’t see them until we are close enough to kiss,” Ramchandani answered.

  “Understood. Keep a sharp lookout none the less. I’m not really in the kissing mood today.”

  I swiveled my command chair towards the turbolift as I heard its doors swish open. As expected, Commander Shelby was reporting for her shift. I rose to surrender my seat. It was time for a light supper with my wife and then off to bed so I would be fresh for tomorrow when I expected things to begin to get interesting.

  I made it about three steps when the emergency klaxon began blaring. So much for dinner with my wife.

  “REPORT,” I barked.

  “Two Defiler Avner-class battleships just decloaked off our port bow,” Ramchandani answered crisply.

  “Distance?”

  “Two thousand kilometers and closing at forty-five hundred KPH Admiral. They should be within weapons range in one minute thirty-six seconds.”

  “Are they heading straight for us or at an angle across our path?”

  In my mind, I was wondering if we had just gotten unlucky or had the enemy penetrated our own cloak? The first was unfortunate. The second was a potential game-changer and not one that helped us. A ship emerging from Skip space was pretty easy to see. Cloaks did not function in Skip space, so there was a small window of vulnerability. This was a large part of why we emerged well over a thousand AU away from either of the binary system’s suns.

  “Their course is directly for us Admiral,” Shelby reported from her station.

  “Weapons hot,” I ordered. “Drop cloak and reroute power to the shields. It looks like the locals aren’t interested in company today.”

  “Admiral there is an energy surge on both ships consistent with their weapons going hot.” It was Mitty who shared this last little bit.

  I hit my comms. “Flight deck get your birds in the air. Offensive posture.”

  “Roger that Sir. CAG out.”

  Our CAG was a somewhat gruff gentleman, and I use the term lightly, named Commander Robison. He and I butted heads on a number of occasions, but I considered him a friend despite his strange political views. He watched his fighter pilots like a rooster watches his hens… which is to say heaven help the person who messes with his pilots.

  The fighters would provide a second set of targets for the two battleships we were facing. Their shields and weapons were not as powerful, but they were a hell of a lot smaller and a hell of a lot more maneuverable.

  “Weapons engage the closest ship with a full spread of missiles and our brand spanking new enhanced plasma beams.”

  Our energy weapons had undergone a recent upgrade thanks to Whiskers’ Quark Fusion reactor. They couldn’t provide continuous fire because of heat dissipation issues, but they packed one heck of a punch… especially when compared to our previous generation energy weapons.

  “Firing now,” Lieutenant Brown yelled over the din of the alert klaxon. Thankfully Shelby chose that moment to kill the sound on the alarm.

  I felt the Gilboa shutter as a full spread of hyper-velocity missiles shot out of her tubes. These guys featured a neutronium casing that would have caused them to weigh more than the Gilboa herself if not for a Higgs-field inhibitor that reduced their perceived mass until the missile hit the enemy ship’s shields. It doesn’t take the equivalent of too many starship-size rocks hitting your shields to eventually beat them down… especially when you had powerful energy weapons draining them for a few seconds prior to the missiles arriving.

  Unfortunately, according to newly acquired information shared by the Taserites, everything we had weapons-wise… the bad guys now had as well.

  The uncomfortable reality was that despite our best efforts, we might well be fleeing into Skip space with our tail between our legs before this engagement was done. Which meant I was asking the CAG to put his men and women in harm's way knowing that we may have to bug out before they could be recovered.

  I had no doubt that Robison understood this, but he also understood that his fighter wings were there to take risks, so the Gilboa didn’t have to. The harsh reality was, at the end of any given day, his pilots might be asked to trade their forty lives to protect the hundreds of lives now on the Gilboa. It took a special kind of person to willingly take on that type of job. The CAG’s people were the best of the best. I was determined to give them every ounce of support I could. The CAG knew that too.

  “Bogie one is firing missiles!” Mitty reported. “Bogie two is now firing their missiles as well.”

  “Evasive maneuvers! Deploy counter-measures. Launch all racks.”

  Immediately the Gilboa started broadcasting bogus sensor data to confuse the incoming missiles. In addition, a select group of our previously deployed sensor drones began to transmit powerful EM emissions designed to exactly replicate the Gilboa’s electronic signature.

  “Once our birds are away, rotate, so our forward ablative shield is facing the closest bogey.”

  “Aye Admiral,” the various duty stations responded almost as one.

  “Thirty seconds to impact,” Mitty said. “Our missiles are thirty-five seconds out.”

  I nodded. Depending on what happened in the next few seconds the Gilboa may or may not be knocked out of this fight early. I suspected that being the side that launched neutronium-enhanced missiles first was going to become an essential strategy in our escalating arms race with the enemy. Sadly, the enemy had been first.

  I still had a few tricks up my sleeve.

  “Engineering prepare for a Skip-hop… two hundred kilometers should be enough. You have ten seconds. Weapons deploy flash-bangs and detonate a millisecond before our micro-jump. Prepare to flush all missiles tubes the moment we emerge from Skip space.”

  “The CAG reports his birds are away,” Mitty reported.

  I turned to my weapons officer. “Ready on the flash-bangs… Mitty, have the Gilboa take over both this jump and the pyrotechnics. Don’t let their missiles hit us… but make it look like they did.”

  “Aye Admiral,” both the organic and disembodied version of the Archon responded as one.

  “Counting down,” Mitty began. “Four, three, two, one – JUMPING NOW!”

  The star field shifted… not because we had moved far enough for a parallax shift but because Mitty and the Gilboa’s AI had changed the orientation of the ship so that our primary launch tubes would be facing the nearest Defiler ship. I felt the Gilboa shudder just a tad as her kinetic missiles exited their respective linear accelerators, having attained near-relativistic speeds. A fraction of a second after they cleared the tubes their Higgs-field generators shut down, restoring their relative mass.

  At the launch speeds obtained and the incredible mass of a neutronium tipped missile, these buggers packed enough of a wallop to overload just about any shield they encountered. The Gilboa might have been able to take one hit, but it was iffy. Three of our KEWs hit the closest of the Defiler ships. Its shields flared but remained standing. I can’t tell you how much this simple observation amazed, alarmed an
d generally disturbed me. This was going to be an issue.

  A fourth and fifth missile struck and finally took down the shield. The sixth and last missile punched a hole clear thru the enemy ship and miraculously made a glancing strike on the second Defiler’s shield… where it was easily shrugged off.

  While I was thrilled that we had evened the odds as far as ship count… I nevertheless had that sick feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you realize you have just kicked a hornet’s nest and were fresh out of bug spray.

  Where the hell did they get shields like that, I thought. Almost as fast as the various neurons in my noggin fired up to ask the question, another set fired up to answer it. Ancestor artifacts. Perhaps ones acquired during the Stanis invasion.

  I could see the enemy ship begin to rotate to bring her weapons to bear. We had three to five seconds before they would get a point-blank range weapons lock.

  “Helm get us out of here. Random jump. Two hundred kilometers in any direction,” I barked.

  “Skip drive still regenerating Admiral. Minimum jump charge in eighteen seconds.”

  I began to toggle comms to engineering to order all power diverted from weapons to the Skip drive, but even as my fingers brushed across the surface of the button in question… I knew it was too late. We’d never be able to jump in time.

  “Helm Crazy Ivan! Maximum power to shields! Damage control teams get ready to deploy. If I’m right, we’re about to get our derriere handed to us on a plate.”

  The sound of my last order was drowned out by the noise of the first enemy missile collapsing our shields. The second missile was only a conventional nuke… It had to be because I remember wondering why I was still alive as the bridge went dark and I flew across it from the force of the missile’s concussive impact.

  There was another loud sound as I hit the wall. I’m not a doctor so don’t quote me on this, but I suspect the noise I heard was the sound a shoulder makes when it shatters. Fortunately, I had the good sense to black out at that point.