by S. H. Jucha
Lydia momentarily tipped her head before she addressed Ellie. “Apologies, Admiral, there were too many variables to accurately predict the effects of the NNEMP on your fighter.”
Ellie waved away the apology. “I’m not here for apologies or recriminations. The weapon worked, and it worked well. I need to know what happened.”
“Admiral,” Descartes, a SADE, began, “the weapon was designed to penetrate the armored hull of a battleship. In that regard, the test banisher had a reduced power supply, a smaller coil, and a less-focused antenna. The data reveals that the electrical systems didn’t just fail, as in shut down. Instead, the metal in the circuitry superheated and ignited fires.”
“Explains the smoke,” Ellie commented.
“We surmise the pulse overloaded the hull and your cage,” Hector admitted. “Those were the electrical discharges that you recorded dancing across the control faces and the bars of the cage.”
“As to the Dagger’s detonation, Admiral,” Lydia said. “It’s believed that the superheating of metal piping that fed reaction mass to the engines detonated the fighter’s tanks. The moments it took to transfer the heat through the piping bought you the time to gain separation from your fighter.”
Under the table, Étienne reassuringly squeezed Ellie’s hand, and she gripped his in return.
Regarding the SADEs at the table, Ellie asked, “Was what you learned worth the test?”
“Assuredly, Admiral,” Hector replied. After the event, he’d had to reorder his algorithms multiple times to maintain his emotional balance. In hindsight, the decision to allow Ellie to test the fighter seemed a failure of his logic.
“We know that we can build an NNEMP weapon within a banisher’s shell that will compromise a federacy battleship,” Lydia added.
“What about the superheating of metal?” Ellie asked. “Are we in danger of starting fires in a battleship? With the ship’s auto-extinguishing system offline, the crew could suffocate even with environment suits before they’re rescued.”
“There’s no doubt that we’ll need more tests,” Adrianna replied. “I’m thinking that we should have the Sardi-Tallen platform construct a battleship mockup.”
“I like that,” Alphons said. “It doesn’t need to be an entire ship, but it should imitate the armor plating and contain some simplified systems.”
“I’d want to add two small reaction mass tanks, with active pumping between them,” Ellie added.
“It should be noted, Admiral,” Descartes interjected, “that there’s every possibility that our final device might be under- or overpowered when we employ it.”
Ellie considered what Descartes was saying. Too much power would probably result in the death of the crew aboard the lead battleship, which inevitably would be the intended target. That wasn’t what the Omnians wanted. It could incense the remaining wedge captains to attack with a fury. On the other hand, underpowering the device meant it would be ineffective in shutting down the lead battleship’s systems. Worse, it would be a declaration of war, and it would result in the same reaction as killing the crew.
“Let’s say that regardless of which way we might err, during a battle, what can be done and how quickly?” Ellie asked.
“The SADEs can calculate the changes required, and any chief can reset the banisher’s internal components in a matter of minutes, Admiral,” Hector said with certainty.
“In which case, I suggest we have the platform build several mockups for us,” Alain suggested.
“Yes,” Étienne said, continuing his twin’s line of thought. “Each one should be more robust than its predecessor.”
“Keep the distance to target and the power of the weapon the same,” Alain finished.
“Well-thought-out,” Descartes remarked. “SADEs have been aboard the federacy’s battleships, and we’ve excellent details on plating thicknesses, electrical systems, circuitry composition, and many other factors.”
“Then those are our next steps,” Ellie replied. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve a private conference to hold with a certain senior captain.”
Étienne grinned, as he rose and accepted Ellie’s hand.
Not a word was said or sent between the couple as they swiftly covered the distance to their nearby quarters, and they weren’t seen until midday meal the following day.
2: Curiosity
During the following month, the banisher tests continued, adding to the SADEs’ abilities to estimate the power required to inundate the mass of a targeted battleship.
Ellie kept the fleet occupied by conducting war games. She designed attack patterns with her two rear admirals, Adrianna and Alphons, who would employ the NNEMP weapons.
The vast majority of the commanders, captains, and fighter pilots were experienced veterans of the campaigns to depose Artifice, who’d ruled the federacy.
However, the recent graduates from Omnia’s flight training academy were unseasoned. Only the academy’s best would join a squadron’s fighter groups. The other pilots would take up duty ferrying passengers or freight.
Prior to Alex’s departure for alliance space, graduation exercises pitted the newest lot of lieutenants against each other in paired mock combats. The final contest of Lieutenants Neffess and Nata, a Dischnya and a human clone, ended in a tie.
In the most recent fleet mock engagement, Descartes’s command entered the system from below the ecliptic. The Tridents had shot inward and launched their travelers. That lent the fighters their warships’ velocities. Those fighters altered the outcome of the fight, as they flew through the defenders with the greater velocities.
After the engagement, Descartes directed the Trident command to recover the fighters.
Conveniently, Neffess and Nata, two new fighter lieutenants, were less than fifty thousand kilometers from Sawa, the Dischnya’s original home world. The pair had been part of a foursome who had targeted a defender’s warship.
One traveler was eliminated by the Trident’s mock beam shot. But Nata, Neffess, and the third fighter pilot had each scored strikes in passing, destroying the warship, according to the controller.
Nata and Neffess were ebullient.
In celebration of the moment, Nata took it into her head that she’d visit Sawa. She worked to sell Neffess, Queen Nyslara’s and Wasat Pussiro’s heir, that dropping planetside should be done for the sake of the Dischnya.
In reality, Nata thought setting foot on Sawa would be a poke in Alex’s eye. The Omnian co-leader had been the one to recommend to the Dischnya that they never visit their home world. Nata believed that Alex’s words weren’t a recommendation, but an edict that deserved to be ignored.
Nata sent in reply.
While the two were sharing thoughts, Nata entered Sawa’s atmosphere and descended planetside.
Neffess was torn. She didn’t want to embarrass her matriarch, Nyslara. Landing without permission on the Dischnya home world was a slap to the faces of the queens who had chosen to heed Alex’s advice.
In direct opposition to that thought was Neffess’s concern for her friend. She knew Nata was a wild one.
The term wild one, which was rarely spoken aloud, was applied to the human clones who’d roamed the deep reaches of the derelict colony ship, New Terra. However, in Nata’s case, it aptly identified her personality.
Neffess regarded her ship’s telemetry and watched her friend lan
d. She chose to stay in overwatch. Within moments, the hatch of Nata’s traveler dropped, and her friend exited the fighter.
Nata waved overhead, knowing she’d be observed by Neffess.
An ancient stepped edifice that was brutally worn from the planet’s harsh winds and sandstorms was near where Nata set down.
Nata had signaled her faceplate closed before she left the ship. It was protection against the heat and fierce swirling sands. She checked her air supply and decided she had time to investigate the structure.
The loose surface material was boot deep, the wind harsh, and the vegetation nonexistent.
The thought crossed Nata’s mind that there was no reason for Alex to recommend to the queens that the Dischnya should stay away from the planet. Sawa was a desert, a dead world.
A subtle mound caught Nata’s eye. It was an unnatural shape in that it was a perfect circle, and it protruded about twenty centimeters above the soft surface material. Everything pointed to a deliberate installation.
Nata chose to investigate the circle rather than the edifice. Her boots kicked up dust and sand, as she made her way toward the oddity. When she reached it, she kicked at the base and discovered it was metal. That piqued her curiosity. Scraping her boot around the circle, she was taken aback to discover it was a hatch.
Being the headstrong individual she was, Nata grabbed the lever embedded in the top of the hatch and yanked on it.
The hatch levered up, and thickly furred hands with dark nails reached out, grabbed Nata by the ankles, and yanked her off her feet. Then she was roughly dragged through the opening.
“Black space,” Petite muttered harshly, which drew the bridge crew’s attention.
Petite normally operated with a great degree of restraint. This was why the crew members’ nerves were rattled to hear their robust New Terran female commander this perturbed.
Before Petite continued her conversation with Neffess, she linked with her senior officers, Commander Descartes and Senior Captains Étienne and Alain de Long.
Neffess explained. She was well aware of who had joined the conversation, and her throat tightened in expectation of the rebuke Nata and she might face.
Petite was careful to halt her implant’s comms app, while she silently swore. When the two lieutenants were assigned to her Trident, she’d had premonitions of disasters. While they were skilled graduates, they were poor substitutes for the two excellent veteran pilots she’d lost to a new Trident that had come online. She’d also lost her first officer, who was the warship’s new captain.
Descartes received a link to vid files on Étienne’s Trident, and he took a few ticks of time to review the imagery. They were recorded long ago, when Alex first set foot on Sawa.
The vids showed that the planet’s Dischnya were unlike those on Omnia. Over the centuries, Sawa’s nests were driven underground by the degenerating climate. Desperation for resources had fueled horrendous clashes among the nests, resulting in loss of many lives.
When Alex and his team had landed, they were nearly overrun by a local nest.
<Étienne and I will need to execute the extraction, Commodore. We know what we’ll face in the tunnels,> Alain sent.
Descartes examined the positions of his command’s Tridents, most of which had yet to recover their fighters.
Hector quickly realized that of the Omnian humans who had made that singular visit to Sawa, only Étienne and Alain remained in system. The other visitors had been Sawa Messa Dischnya, but they’d remained aboard the Rêveur or aboard the traveler that had landed. There’d been a brief episode, when a queen exited the ship to rescue a desperate warrior and later his mates and pups. Other than those individuals, the Omnian Dischnya had no contact with other Sawa soma.
Descartes relayed the question to Alain, but the reply became complicated, and he added the senior captain to the link.
lay.