"As you well know sir Kiker, their ships are small, dark, and hard to locate."
"We are the Preeminent. Locate it."
Joe Scheck ran back to the Magazine when Adrian Lucas reported that the Sleuth/Lance mashup was ready.
"It's a ragged job, Joe, but's it's on."
'Ragged' was a generous word for it. The head of a Lance was not much like the spy-head on a Sleuth. There were a number of knife cuts and strips of black utility tape wrapped around the weapon, but in Joe's eye, they'd done what he asked.
He was smiling broadly as he told them, "Get it on a rotary, and deploy the rotary as soon as it's ready."
As he turned to head back forward, his phone rang. It was the Surveillance tech.
"The one-eighty megahertz signal just came up, sir. FleetIntel thinks that might be an intruder detector and we're awful damned close. "
"Fine, on my way." He saw the questioning look on Adrian's face.
"They may be on to us. The one-eighty is up. Get that thing out!"
Joe turned and ran the hundred twenty meters back to the Bridge, thinking all the way that it would nice if their ships were, well, smaller somehow.
He went directly to the Weapons station. "As soon as the rotary is out, fire at the SLIP antenna!"
"But it's already out!"
The sound of alarms and frightened voices suddenly filled Wok's ears.
"There it is! Something just appeared close behind us, sir Kiker. We're leaving!"
Before Kiker could object, Scad Nee Wok was commanding his crew to engage the engines and depart.
He turned to Kiker angrily, "We could have left long ago. You may have killed us all."
When he saw the enemy ship shift slightly, Joe didn't hesitate.
"Switch to direct path, max velocity, and shoot!"
It took the tech perhaps five seconds to make the changes and release the Lance.
"Weapon's away. Ten seconds."
There was a call from the Surveillance station. "Something's happening!"
Joe looked at the display, the enemy ship seeming to waver, to shimmer.
"Shit. They're bugging out. Nav! Pull us back!"
"How far —"
"JUST BACK! I don't want to get caught up in their graviton flow." It would take a few seconds. Maybe he had time.
"Weaps! Fire at their drive!" The second Lance was quickly away.
"We've been fired on!" Wok reported. The only answer now, he knew, was to finish engaging the engines and get away as soon as possible. Just before the ship started to accelerate, there was a loud explosion below him. Wok had never been under attack. Few ship commanders that had been ever returned to tell the tale. The ship began to move more quickly and soon slipped into FTL.
They would be safe for the moment. The course was incorrect, but that could be fixed soon enough.
The important thing now was to escape, and that they had.
Barely.
"Dammit. They got away!" the Weapons tech whined after the second Lance exploded harmlessly in the flood of anti-gravitons generated by the enemy ship's rapid departure.
Joe returned to the Surveillance position.
"Show me the hit on the SLIP apparatus." The Surveillance tech ran it in slow motion, backward and forward. Joe saw the enemy ship begin to move, then a bright flash near the front. Then, pieces flying off.
"Are those hunks of the Lance or parts of the ship?" he asked.
"Hard to say, Lieutenant, but hold on." He ran the video forward a few frames. Just before the enemy ship departed, there was a single frame that showed the SLIP apparatus. Or, more accurately, the lack of one.
"There's just a hole. You did it, Lieutenant Scheck. They can run, but they can't talk."
Joe smiled. "I'll take it." He turned to the Bridge crew. "And I didn't do this. We did this."
Now safely in FTL, Scad Nee Wok seethed with anger.
"They are evil, these Vermin," he said through his sharp clenched teeth.
"We are the Preeminent. We will prevail."
Wok turned to Kiker. "They struck the communications device, Sir Kiker. They did not want us to be able to reveal their location."
"We are the Preeminent. We will prevail."
"They knew where the communication device was! How could they know that?"
"You should have detected them sooner, Wok. This is your doing."
"And had you not insisted on waiting so long, we would have been gone long ago!"
Kiker opened his maw to strike at Wok's neck but found himself restrained by the crew. Wok looked at his guards with satisfaction. He'd expected Kiker to strike at him, but he could not know when. But he was a Preeminent. He was prepared.
"Lock Sir Ashil Kiker in his compartment, and keep him there until I tell you otherwise."
"You'll suffer for this, Wok!" Kiker screamed.
"Feed me to the Council, Sir Kiker, if you can convince them that it is I, and not you, who is not Preeminent. But at least now we will all live to have that conversation."
Kiker, shocked that Wok would know of the Council's secret practices, struggled vainly to attack his keepers.
"Take him!" Scad Nee Wok was less positive than he sounded about his ultimate fate. And it would be a very long trip home.
Kiker gone, Wok's second-in-command, Tesn Lei Dott, came to stand with him.
"The crew has heard, Sir Wok. They all whisper of Ultimate Origin."
"Myths and legends, Dott, can have a root in some remote truth. I don't understand it myself, but I doubt there is any real meaning to it."
"But the crew, sir Wok, many in the crew believe."
"Let us not discuss it further, and instruct the section commanders likewise." Dott signaled his obedience, but his tail stump betrayed his inner conflict. He believes, Wok thought to himself, I would not have thought that possible.
These Vermin were different than any race they had previously encountered, and while they were Preeminent, these Vermin were well advanced in ways that the Preeminent were not. He was not supposed to 'worry,' as Kiker had said, but to blindly deny facts was the path to death, and that was a path Scad Nee Wok had no intention to tread.
Dobrovolski's battle report included the use of the Sleuth-Lance and the one image of the enemy's destroyed SLIP apparatus. Scheck also lauded his crew from the Weapons Maintenance Officer to the Surveillance techs.
Ron Harris frowned. "I really wanted the whole ship."
Yakovlev shrugged. "As did I. But now, they can't call it in. They'll have to get to another facility or another ship to phone home."
Fiona was rereading the report. "The intrusion detector came up right before they left. That makes me think they had an idea someone was there."
Ron was unconvinced. "But Dobrovolski would have been invisible to it. They weren't moving, and I don't think we're visible in that frequency anyway."
Jora Sultanov smiled grimly. "Until they deployed the rotary, that is."
"Oh, shit. The launcher!" Ron groaned.
Fiona nodded her agreement. "The downside of getting so close, I guess. I'd still want to know what tipped them off."
"Yes, we'll have to see what Scheck's thoughts on that are."
"So, Ron," CINC asked, "What should we be expecting next?"
"Their drive is slower than ours. Forstmann told us they might be able to do point-eight-five, no more. If he's going back to Enemy Station, it will take him, oh, maybe thirty days. If he's going back to Alpha Mensae, then, uh, more like forty."
Fiona looked from Ron to CINC. "I'd go to the Station. He can probably get repairs and call home from there. I doubt he'd spend the extra time to go all the way back."
Davenport nodded. "Yes, I think that makes sense."
"We can be at Enemy Station a week earlier. He's incommunicado for now. He can't call for help or hear messages from his commanders."
"So, wherever he's decided to go, that's what's going to happen no matter what we do?"
"Right. If we
smoke Enemy Station, he'll still show up if that's where he's headed."
"A nice thought, Fiona," CINC said with regret, "but we're not going to do that now. Let's get to work on the assumption that he's going to get the message back home in thirty days."
Intrepid
Big Blue
Monday, December 5, 2078, 0315 UTC
Joanne Henderson awoke to the alarm from her phone announcing a FLASH message. She sat up on the hard bunk in her duty cabin and struggled to focus on the small print. I'm not old yet, she thought to herself, but these eyes are not what they once were.
FLASH 207811211500UTC
TO: EAGLE, FRIENDSHIP, INTREPID
FROM: FLEETOPS
1) BETA HYDRI SENTINEL HAS REPORTED ARRIVAL OF FOUR
REPEAT FOUR ENEMY TYPE I VESSELS.
2) INTREPID HAS NOT REPORTED INDEPENDENTLY BUT IS ASSUMED
TO BE SILENT FOR OPERATIONAL SECURITY.
3) EAGLE AND FRIENDSHIP SHALL PROCEED IMMEDIATELY BETA HYDRI
MINIMUM EMR
4) ON ARRIVAL EAGLE AND FRIENDSHIP MAKE BEST EFFORTS TO COVERTLY
ESTABLISH COMMUNICATIONS WITH INTREPID.
5) ALL SHIPS SHALL NOT ACKNOWLEDGE THESE ORDERS.
6) HENDERSON TO COMMAND THE TASK GROUP ON ARRIVAL.
COOK
END
She dressed and headed up to the Bridge, where XO Bass was keeping watch. She sat next to him at the command workstation and showed him the message.
"So, how exactly do we 'covertly' establish comms?"
Joanne shrugged. "I don't know, Alonzo. We can ask Woodward in the morning." She looked around the Bridge, which seemed very quiet.
"It's just past sunset in the cities," he offered.
"What are they doing?"
"They pulled out maybe an hour before, no one left on the surface, best we can tell."
"They don't like the dark?"
"Yeah, maybe not."
"Interesting."
ISC Fleet HQ Office of the Commander in Chief
Ft. Eustis, VA
Tuesday, December 6, 2078, 0800 EST
Ron Harris looked up from the data on his tablet. "So, far as we know, there aren't any enemy locations closer than the sphere at GL 674."
"So, that's what, fifteen light years?" CINC asked.
"Well, about that, so, at point-eight-five, almost seventeen and a half days."
"Minimum."
"Correct."
"And from there to Alpha Mensae?"
"Twenty-eight. So, a SLIP could get there in about another forty hours. So, in round numbers, the word can't get to Alpha Mensae before nineteen days."
Fiona leaned back in her chair. "So, we have almost three weeks to decide what to do."
Kieran Barker shook his head at the irony. "Right. We have until Christmas day."
CINC nodded his understanding, then looked at Ron. "What is your assessment of yesterday's event?"
"My people have looked at that really hard, and we went late into the evening yesterday trying to digest exactly what happened."
"And?"
"We think they came to check out this system, much as we do other systems, but did not specifically come here for us. We believe they did not know we were here."
Barker was clearly uncomfortable with this. "What makes you think that?"
"First, their entry angle and course. They came in well outside the orbit of Mars, and nowhere near any planet. To me, that's not the kind of entry to make if you're planning an attack."
"What else?"
"If we think about Inor, and now this new appearance at Beta Hydri, when they mean business they come in force. Six ships at Inor, four at Big Blue. One ship, to me, is a recon, not an attack."
Barker was starting to be convinced. "Hmm. That does make sense."
"If they knew we were here and wanted a look, they would have come in much closer to Earth."
"Does any of this really matter?" CINC asked.
"Sir?"
"Does it matter if they knew we were here or just blundered across us?"
"It does to me!" Ron answered, agitated. "If I thought they already knew where we are, I'd be telling you to pull back everything we can and prepare for an invasion."
"Yes, I see."
"But they know now. And we need to be thinking about what that means."
"What do you suggest?"
"That's more a question for Admiral Cook, sir, but since you asked..."
"Go ahead, Ron."
"We've not been careful about resupplying ships when they return. We put the crews on leave, then take a week or more to get them reloaded with supplies, update their weapons, all the small tasks required to get them ready to go back out."
"You're suggesting we do that more quickly?"
"Yes. When a ship returns, we need to get it turned around immediately. The crew still needs some time off, so we might have to put in a temporary crew, just enough to run the ship and put it into a fight if necessary."
"OK, I'll talk to Admiral Cook about that."
Fiona agreed with Ron. "All that, sir, and we might want to beef up the pickets. Three might not be enough."
"Yes, a stronger defensive posture at our three important points makes sense. I'd already planned to do that."
"From a Plans point of view, sir, I think we should rethink the schedule for the offensive."
"Oh?"
"Yes, sir. If we commit forces forward against them, when they're actually coming here, seems to us that we'd be needlessly vulnerable."
"I understand your position, but for now the offensive is on."
"But, sir —"
"I understand your position, Captain Collins, and I will consider making some adjustments to accommodate it. I've given Admiral Barker his directions, and I expect him to move as I have ordered." CINC looked hard at Fiona, his body stiff, tense.
Fiona had made her point, there was only one thing left to say. "Please note my exception to that decision, sir."
"So noted."
Ron watched the old friends argue, wondering if Davenport would relent to Fiona's caution. If he were CINC, he would have. But Davenport was dead set on making a statement to the enemy. They walked out of CINCs office together.
"He's overplaying, Ron, he's being Len Davis." Ron nodded his agreement, recalling how Sigma's Captain had held on to a bad tactical idea too long and gotten himself and much of his crew killed.
"Let's see how much he modifies the forces. If he leaves us with enough to cover the three planets, maybe we can still support the offensive after all."
"Maybe. I don't know. I don't want him to throw me some minor concession that won't get the job done. This isn't about saving face."
"I know, Fiona, I know." He looked at her sympathetically. "Hard to tell the old man he's wrong."
"Yeah, very hard. I owe him a lot, but I owe him the truth even more."
Kieran Barker came out of CINC's office as Fiona was finishing. She and Ron looked at him, wondering at his silence during Fiona's discussion with CINC.
"For my part, I agree with both of you, but CINC is adamant. Let's talk tomorrow and see if we can pare back the offensive without weakening it too much."
"It's a zero-sum game, Admiral," Fiona pointed out, "Whatever we keep here, we take away from you."
Barker nodded his understanding. "Let's talk tomorrow."
They left for their own offices, promising to get back together and see what it would take to defend their planets against an enemy attack. The answer, unfortunately, turned on what assumptions they made about the numbers and types of enemy ships that would appear. Would it be like Inor? Twice Inor? Ten times Inor? If they found out too late that they were short-handed, there would be no time to get help back from Inor or Beta Hydri. Or, to get help to Inor or Beta Hydri.
They'd have to fight it out with whatever was on hand, wherever the fight appeared. Fiona liked that thought not one bit.
Intrepid
Big Blue
Wednesday, December 7, 2078, 1145 UTC
"Mr. Price!" Colin Garrett called from the workroom. Ben hustled out from his office, Ann Cooper right behind him.
"Yes, Colin, what's up?"
He pointed to a live video feed from one of Intrepid's long range telescopes. "This shuttle, it's not going where it's supposed to. It's heading towards the Seekers."
Ben picked up the ship phone. "Gonzales...Price here, Lieutenant. Are you seeing this shuttle heading east?" Ben hung up.
"Gonzales and the Captain are coming. Stay on it."
"Where the hell are they going?" Garrett asked himself as Henderson, Gonzales and Marine Captain Martin rushed into the Intel work area.
"Oh, no, oh, shit!"
"What is it, Garrett?" Joanne asked.
"The herd."
"What?"
"The herd, ma'am. I should have thought of this."
Ben looked at him. "Keep talking, Colin, and eventually we'll understand what you're talking about."
"Yes, Mr. Price, sorry. There's this area, a pasture, really, of about four square kilometers just south of where the Seekers live."
"OK, so?"
"They raise the little animals they eat in there, remember? The cliffs and the sea make for natural fences. They can't get out."
"Again, OK, so?" Henderson asked.
"So, that's not a natural situation, ma'am. They would not just be there on their own. They would have to have been introduced artificially."
"Shit. It's a tell," Joanne said, surprised she hadn't thought if it herself.
"Yes, Captain, I think it is. And I think the enemy might have figured that out."
Joanne picked up the ship phone without looking away from the display. "Kirkland...James, do we have firing solutions on the enemy ships? Good. Designate two Bludgeons each. Get with Marco when he gets back up there and target the shuttles on the surface near Capital City....Yes, I want a clean sweep if we can."
She hung up the phone as Marco Gonzales took the hint and headed back to the Bridge. She turned to Martin. "Get your Marines up and ready to deploy. If they actually land, which I'm pretty sure they will, we'll need to move quickly."
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