Soundless Conflicts

by S. Walker

  Three flashes of pinpoint light and a swirling miasma stuttered across Siers' console like a bad animation, moving in a freeze-jerk fashion until it halted where the red dot of coordinates indicated the flower would be. They both leaned back, surprised. "And that's us, right now in real time. That vessel arrived less than," he checked system time. "Eight minutes ago? And what was that incoming path? I could barely track it. Some sort of visual fault?"

  "I am... not sure." Paul frowned, then leaned in to backtrack the display. "Can you take it back to before, but advance at- hmm. One quarter speed?"

  Siers nodded, dragging a slider backwards until the ship skipped out of the display again like a stop motion blip. "Alright, here's before sensors started picking it up. Advancing at one quarter speed."

  They both watched empty space with intent eyes, anticipating the blur of a superfast object approaching. Instead they got the exact same result-- exactly between one second and the next space between the Corporate arrival point and the inner gas giant was empty, then suddenly three stutter-step flashes resolved into a sleek, folded-petal ship.

  "No, wait. That cannot be right." Paul frowned, bothered. "Play it again, please? Change speed back to normal?"

  Siers obliged, backing the recording up and returning speed to real-time. They watched empty space skip-flash three times over one second and become a ship. But now he was frowning as well, something from long ago triggering in his memory. "I see it, Paul. That shouldn't be happening."

  "Good. I was beginning to believe the sensors were faulty. Again, at... try one-fiftieth speed now, just to confirm. Those flashes should take nearly ten seconds to watch at that ratio."

  Once again the console reset to black space, this time moving at a snail's crawl that made the associated timer look like it was counting milliseconds like a lazy stroll down the corridor. Space waited, doing nothing at all, until between one real-time breath and the next there were three stutter-like flashes that resolved into a ship.

  Siers paused, then thought deeply. "Always three, and always at our real time one second, no matter how fast or slow we play a recording of it. The recording itself isn't changing, but the ship arrival is always happening during our observational time." Something about that seemed familiar, somehow. But where? When? Or, with the way his memory worked... with who?

  Paul looked certifiably spooked, eyes just slightly too wide. "Well, we know for sure whatever it is-- they do not use a Krepsfield device." He indicated the system map, quiet and attacker-free. "However I do not mind saying the idea of a ship drive ignoring the correct flow of time is... concerning."

  "Not ignoring the flow of time," Siers muttered, eyes half closed. That wasn't correct. Close, though. Like Janson and Jackson. He almost had it...

  Paul suddenly frowned, then stood upright in a single concerned motion. "Wait. That was eight minutes ago? The arrival?" He looked down at Siers, catching his nod of agreement. "But eight minutes ago was when the lieutenant-"

  Siers shot upright as well, eyes wide. They both turned as one to look at Emilia, currently engaged in a smug verbal tussle with a defeated-sounding Jamet. She caught them both looking her way and frowned back, visor flashing rainbow hues. "What?"

  He beat Paul to the punch by a millisecond. "Lieutenant? Under no circumstances are you to power down anything at your location, starting right now! Acknowledge immediately!"

  Paul piled on, shouting. "It is extremely important you do not turn anything off, especially the magnetic-"

  "What?" Jamet shouted back over the link, audibly confused. A horrible clacking sound like ball bearings hammering a hull rode over her voice, making it nearly impossible to hear. "Sorry, I can't- what? Hold on! The plasma bottle is going offline and the damn thing is loud, I can barely-"

  An angry brass buzzer suddenly took over, blasting through the speakers on Siers' console. He looked down at the display and winced. Paul immediately did the same and groaned, long fingers coming up to cover his eyes. "Well, that answers the question."

  "Indeed." Siers grabbed the console display and flicked it back onto the forward workspace for Emilia to see as well. On his system outline the flower ship was suddenly moving, heading directly inward for the smelter.

  And angry red dots blazed to life in the asteroid belt, accelerating to intercept.

  "This trip," Siers leaned forward, resting both elbows on his console. "Has been one of the most interesting things I have ever done. By far."

  Chapter 41

  Familial Swarms

  Jamet was pretty sure her right arm was a lost cause.

  Oh, she couldn't feel it-- at least, not at the moment. That warm, heavy blanket of numbing agents in her blood was doing a bang up job. But while the pain wasn't there, not yet, a definite feeling of wrongness was creeping in around the edges. Things were moving over there that shouldn't be, like a bulky package in a coat pocket that bumped around just often enough it couldn't be forgotten about. Not to mention the throbbing: It was an interesting sensation having two different heartbeats at once. One in her chest, rough and predictable, but another a split second later from the pile of broken things attached to her shoulder in an air cast.

  And she'd just lost an argument with Emilia, of all people. Which was galling on a different level. Possibly just as permanent as losing an arm could be.

  "Okay. Fine." She cut the short technician off the communications link, eyes rolling so far back the portrait drawn on the ceiling came into view. He-- Thomas Minyer, she guessed-- looked away to one side with the wry look of a man not wanting to get involved. "You were right." Emilia cackled gleeful joy. "But for the record this plan would have worked. It still might, actually! Now what the hell am I looking at? What is this you're sending?"

  "-and years of caf, I am talking a lifetime of the best- what? Oh, that."

  "Yes! That!" Jamet awkwardly adjusted callout windows on the console's workspace, using increasingly chilled toes to push the display around. A dedicated feed from the Kipper was in the box, showing long range video of some kind of incoming craft. It looked long and sleek, tapered like a blunt cone backwards into a fat-bottomed base sporting a blazingly bright ring of light. Dozens of lines spiraled backwards from the tip almost to the base, giving it a weird look like a drill coming directly her way. "What the hell is it? Another drone, like the huge one that rammed us?"

  "Uhhh, we're not sure?" The pickup went to half volume as Emilia turned away from the broadcast unit to speak across the bridge on her side. "Paul? Hey! What are we calling that? A what? That's adorable." The connection scratched briefly as something hit the pickup. "Paul and the captain are calling it the Tulip Ship."

  Jamet tried to zoom and failed, then settled for leaning as far forward as possible without taking her wrist ID off the reader. She squinted at the display, eyebrows and cheeks scrunching nearly together. "Okay, I can kind of see that. It looked like a drill to me, but a closed up flower sort of works. How big is it? Are there any weapons, or am I just going to get rammed into pieces like a sitting target?"

  "Ah can help you there, ma'am." Janson's lifeboat-quality comm link sounded like garbage compared to Kipper's signal. But that didn't matter because it came alongside a hauler full of guilt. "It's about the size of a warship, give or take a couple points."

  She cringed into the chair like his voice was going to hit her. "Um. Thank you. And sorry about..." how did one apologize for cold-blooded betrayal? "Things. I guess." If Jamet had a free hand it would be crossing her face at lightspeed.

  "It's alright, ah understand. Just didn't like your plan, but ah respect you f' trying. No grudges, seems like everythin' turned out ok. But uh, sorry for," now the big man seemed just as awkward. "Your arm and all that. Is it bad?"

  Throbbing like a supernova, swollen beyond all reason and more crooked than a Corporate budget review. "It's fine, actually. No problems."

  "I highly doubt that, lieutenant." Paul's voice, in contrast, sounded like he was standing next to the chair. "
That you are even functional at the moment is a credit to the lifeboat medical kit. Have you bothered using the analgesics, or the anti-clotting agents?"

  She leaned over, glancing down at the floor by the chair. Pieces of the medical kit lay scattered in a wide fan around the pillaged case like casualties of her mad scramble for anything to stop the pain. Some of them were, presumably, the drugs in question. "Yup, definitely took them all. But really, can we focus please? All I have is a stream of an incoming ship. While that is highly interesting can I get some sort of big-picture view? What's the speed, how long do I have, should I be leaping from the airlock right now?"

  "Oh, she doesn't know yet." Emilia sounded chastened. That, more than anything, scared Jamet to the core.

  "What don't I know!?" She started hitting menu options with her heel, looking for anything remotely related to an exterior sensor camera. It was a long shot: Even modifying a facility into some sort of one-person smelting operation didn't mean Corporate would splurge for sensor suites to look at nothing. But sitting in one spot completely blind while something terrible came was rapidly becoming her own personal phobia. "Em, are you hiding something from me?"

  "Uhhh. Nooo?" Sincerity practically evaporated off the speakers.

  "Comms," Siers took the conversation in hand with a gentle touch, stopping the argument before it could start. "Would you forward a system picture to Sera, if you haven't already..?"

  "Who?" Jamet and Emilia chorused in confused sync.

  "Our lieutenant. I believe she could benefit from knowing the full details, or at least we can talk through what is going on here." If he seemed bothered by the slip it wasn't showing it, voice staying steady and directive. "Jamet." He annunciated very carefully. "It seems the new arrival and our local adversaries are not mutual friends. Are you receiving the system picture now?"

  Yes, she was, but Jamet almost wished to be back in the dark and blissfully ignorant. The system map Emilia forwarded looked like someone poured red paint on the entire arc of the asteroid belt. So many red enemy dots were moving at once they combined into one long smear, aimed like an arrow at the incoming green dot that was the Tulip ship. "Umm. Yes. And am I miscounting, or are there more construction ships than we thought? That's got to be two hundred plus, right?"

  "Ah think so, ma'am." Janson sounded a little slurred and still fighting through residual medication effects. "If ah had to guess what we saw before, that came after us? That was their version o' attack ships. Support stuff didn't move enough f' our sensors to catch. But this? Looks like everythin' all at once, headin' hell bent for a fight."

  "Well that's terrifying. We missed all of that?" Jamet squinted hard at the map, trying to anticipate vectors and course paths. If she had to approximate speeds that giant red smear and the lone incoming contact would meet up in something like two minutes at the most. "Wait. That many didn't come out for us, or that Corporate warship-- why now? What changed?"

  Siers sounded thoughtful. "That's a good question. Perhaps we weren't a threat?"

  "Oh yeah, I definitely don't worry about a freaking Fiscal Enforcement warship dropping in!" Emilia did sarcasm like some people painted walls-- liberally applied, heavy on the edges and double coated everywhere. "How could anything look at a warship and decide not to pull out everything at once?"

  "Actually..." Jamet frowned. "Janson?"

  "Ma'am?"

  "We're absolutely sure those boarding drones use gravity-based power sources? Our local grav was giving them enough juice to get around, but something like the Krepsfield is a... I don't know, a buffet?"

  She could picture him nodding agreeably, bushy beard scratching over the front of the skinsuit. "I'd put a bet on it, sure. Same for the big ones, too: Ah bet each one's built around a tiny singularity. Explains why they're shaped like that an' move so quick."

  "Oh! They're basically torpedoes!" Emilia sounded impressed. "They're living Cormorents! Or I guess... intelligent Cormorents? Although they act pretty stupid. Maybe they're Academy graduates."

  "Okay, that fits." Jamet's eyes unfocused slightly, wandering around the dirty room in thought. "Maybe they don't see us-- I mean, our ships-- as threats? What if they see us as food, or a power source? Free resources?"

  "That is... fairly consistent, actually." Paul sounded just as thoughtful as she was. "Although the ramming does not make sense. Unless they assume we are the same? Perhaps it is not a ram, but a failed merge?"

  Her mouth dropped open. "We both use singularities! Just in different ways! Captain: If you didn't know what either the Kipper or the attackers were, if you were ignorant of both, wouldn't we just look like the same thing in different versions?" She was on fire now, mind racing and ignoring the growing ache from her arm. "Just one version with an internal power source that moved around while the other used an external one that did the same?"

  "Perhaps. But there is a world of difference between those."

  Emilia jumped in, excited. "Not really! We're even made of the same stuff! Uh, the ships I mean. Not the people. Or whatever's crawling around inside those things out there." She got back on track. "Paul and I burned 'em out of the storage area, but they were quite happy to sit in there and use the ship parts as material for themselves. From the outside? Yeah, practically family."

  "Thirty seconds until both groups intercept, everyone." Siers managed to announce it coolly, as if there was interesting weather going on in deep space. "While this is highly interesting-- and trust me when I say that is a very good thing from my perspective-- does it tell us anything useful?"

  Janson clicked onto the link. "Well, it definitely means the new ship isn't anything friendly to 'em."

  "Agreed," Paul's voice cracked hard enough to require a throat clearing. "Whatever that method of travel is, whatever materials are in use for the ship? They are antithetical to our hostiles currently in system."

  "They're what?"

  "Opposites, Emilia." Jamet was nodding at nothing, too excited to care. "They're so incompatible it's an all-or-nothing battle when they get together. I mean, look at that display!" Red contacts swarmed the display into a single large crimson blob, stretched forward until it was almost on top of the green dot. "Not a single runner or holdout. Everything at once. What could be so bad it takes that level of response?"

  "We're about to find out, lieutenant. Comms, focus every sensor we have that direction. Center on the Tulip, half closeup and the other half at," he paused, thinking. "Let's say fifty thousand mile zoom. Forward everything to the lieutenant as well. Jamet?"

  "Sir?"

  "You have not powered anything else down, correct? Only the fusion bottle?"

  She blinked, then double checked. "No sir. Power plant still online, Krepsfield and the fusion bottle charged but not active. Why?" The comm link updated into a larger callout, two long range sensor images side by side.

  "Just a suspicion I have, although we'll know if I'm right in a moment. Comms if you're not recording then now is the time. Here they go."

  Jamet leaned forward, eyes bright and alternating between callout windows on the console. On the right were the asteroids and construction ships, a mix between rock-encrusted hulls and the angry hexagon shapes of completed vessels. They moved in a swarm, over and around each other like fish in water or birds on migration, never ceasing and always in motion. When one darted out another moved smoothly into the gap left behind in an incredible display of split second timing that looked effortless and liquid. It was only when the swarm came close to the Tulip they finally changed motion, dividing into two long columns of equal thickness.

  "Janson!" Siers was a directive force on the link. "Their hulls!"

  "Ah see 'em, sir. So that's what they look like when they're actually tryin'?"

  Her right input shifted, zooming closer on the lead of the swarm. Jamet's jaw dropped as the front vessels-- the most complete units, entirely oval and patterned in hexagons-- began shifting. Hexagon plates slid toward the front of the ship, moving underneath
each other in double- and triple-thick layers until the bow of each vessel looked grotesquely thick. Devoid of a plate covering the stern looked almost fragile, a black oval barely half the size of the bow, smooth and black like a reflective egg.