Forerunner

by Isaac Hooke

  Jain ignored them. He was relieved when the moon’s surface slid away underneath, and he was flying past, safe. He shut off the engines, and some of the alarms ceased, but not all. Repair drones swarmed the conduits nearby to begin fixing the melted components.

  Jain quickly glanced at the external camera.

  Medeia’s sword attachment had only cut halfway through the alien vessel, which had stopped glowing red, at least. Both ships were drifting away from the moon, at ninety degrees to Jain and the others, having slingshot past the celestial body thanks to the gravity. The enemy’s inertialess drives seemed to be offline, since the vessel was making no attempt to extricate itself from her vessel.

  “A normal ship would have broken apart from an impact like that,” Mark said.

  “This isn’t a normal ship,” Jain said.

  “But obviously their armor isn’t as strong as the material in her sword,” Cranston said.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Jain said. “We can’t tell how much of the sword remains intact.”

  “Enough to keep her firmly lodged inside the enemy ship, though,” Cranston insisted.

  Jain nodded. “We might have to help. Change course, Space Machinists, to intercept. Xander, are you able to reach Medeia?”

  “I’ve been trying,” Xander said. “She’s still offline.”

  Jain and the others flew toward the drifting ships.

  “We should finish them off,” Mark said. “You know my black hole weapon is charged again, right? With their inertialess drives offline, they won’t be able to escape. Permission to fire.”

  “Not while Medeia is so close to it,” Jain said. “Though it probably wouldn’t hurt to soften them up with other means.” He glanced at his barracuda firing indicator—the weapon was still cooling off from the previous engagement and was currently offline.

  “We could poke some more holes with our lasers…” Cranston said.

  “Let’s hold off,” Jain said. “Let the raptors charge a bit.”

  The three of them passed the two-kilometer mark to the ship: the Arcane’s sword section was still firmly lodged inside the pyramid.

  “Do you see that?” Cranston said. “Zoom in on the exposed upper portion of her sword.”

  Jain zoomed in. Micro machines were crawling all over the sword attachment. At first he thought the machines were having no effect, but then he noticed the small chunks missing along the edges of the sword. The alien termites were breaking down metal that was supposed to be almost indestructible. The progress was definitely slower than he had witnessed aboard his own science lab, but they were making headway.

  “Those termites got some powerful short-range cutting lasers there,” Mark said.

  Cranston glanced at Jain. “At least it’s not swallowing her up, like it did with your compartment earlier.”

  “She’s too big for that, I suspect,” Jain said. “But it’s still planning on digesting her... Medeia, if you can read me, you have to get out of there!”

  Medeia finally reappeared in VR. She had a pale face, and a sick expression. It couldn’t have felt very good to ram a part of herself into that alien ship. “Hey.”

  “You have alien termites on your sword,” Jain said.

  “Why does that sound like something I’d say to you after you took an alien girl to your bed?” Medeia asked.

  Jain stared at her, unblinking.

  She chuckled. “Sorry, bad joke. Yeah, I see them, but I can’t dislodge it. I think I’m going to have to cut off my sword section. The same way you surgically excised your science lab; I’m going to have to place charges inside, around the base, where the metal is more normal. I already have rovers down there with demolition blocks. I’m sending more as we speak.”

  “You might not have to,” Cranston said, breaking from the fleet.

  “Cranston…” Jain said.

  “My micro machines can help,” Cranston said. “Let me do this.”

  Jain sighed.

  Cranston approached and came to a halt about five hundred meters from Medeia’s fore section. Panels opened in the side of his starship, and space-capable micro machines emerged in a dark mass. The cloud floated toward the intertwined ships. From the size of the swarm, Jain thought that was about half of Cranston’s inventory of the units.

  The micro machines landed on Medeia’s sword section, and like the members of an invading wasp hive, promptly engaged in mandible-to-mandible combat with the alien termites. Soon the entire exposed section was covered in a dark, seething mass of miniature battling units.

  “Why didn’t you send your micro machines in to help Jain when he had a similar problem?” Mark asked. “Instead of letting him blow away a part of himself?”

  Cranston didn’t answer.

  “I don’t think it’s working…” Medeia said.

  Cranston’s units were lighter in color than their alien versions, and they were also outlined in blue by his HUD, thanks to the identifiers those units transmitted, which in turn Cranston sent on to the rest of the fleet.

  Jain watched as those lighter units began to float away lifelessly from the surface.

  “Oh, never mind,” Mark said. “I see now why you didn’t help.”

  Soon, only the darker units were left, and around them remained the debris of Cranston’s micro machines. A quick zoom in told Jain that most of the units were beheaded.

  “That was only the diversion,” Cranston said. “Look along the edges where the sword section is lodged.”

  Jain focused his external camera along the seams where the hulls of the two ships met and magnified the view. He saw more of Cranston’s lighter micro machines there, scattered in clumps and so far, overlooked by the alien versions, which were concentrating on consuming Medeia’s sword. Like the alien termites, Cranston’s could similarly eat and process metal, 3D-printing it into more micro machines—the mechanisms were slightly different, but the concepts were the same. And Cranston’s micro machines were doing just that at the moment, digging into the alien hull along the seams, and loosening it up.

  Meanwhile, Cranston also fired his lasers at those seams, further loosening the hull sections.

  “Mark, let’s help him out,” Jain said.

  Jain and Mark joined in with their own lasers and melted bore holes into the metal that was keeping Medeia firmly lodged in place.

  “It’s working…” Medeia said.

  Her sword section tilted back, breaking away from where it was lodged inside the pyramid ship. She applied acceleration, and in moments had torn her starship completely away from the pyramid.

  Cranston recalled his micro machines, and they swarmed back to his ship, along with the new members he had created in the interim to replace those he’d lost.

  Medeia’s sword section still has chunks taken out of it. And it still had a substantial number of alien micro machines swarming over the surface.

  “Mark, place a black hole inside that pyramid!” Jain said.

  “Will do,” Mark replied.

  “Everyone else, concentrate laser fire on the termites still infesting Medeia!” Jain ordered.

  Medeia had sent crab rovers onto her hull, and they crawled along the sword section, knocking away the alien micro machines with a flick of their legs, sending them floating off into space. Some of the rovers were swarmed by the miniature machines, but that suited Medeia just fine as well, because when that happened, she promptly leaped the termite-covered units off the hull.

  Jain and the others unleashed their lasers selectively at her hull, picking off other termites. They didn’t have to worry about shooting through the micromachines and striking her hull with too much intensity, because, due to the nature of the metal that composed her sword section, it wouldn’t matter.

  Meanwhile, Mark fired a dark bolt at the alien vessel. It advanced toward the deep gash that had been cut halfway through the ship.

  But before it arrived, the alien vessel rotated slightly, just like it had the last time its inertialess
drives had activated, and Jain realized the ship had managed to repair its engines, likely with reserve metals it kept aboard from its mining expedition to the nearby moon.

  The alien ship immediately accelerated away as the black hole missed the gash; the tear in spacetime formed in the empty space behind it instead.

  “Damn it,” Jain said. “Disperse that hole.”

  Mark fired the dispersion bolt.

  The alien craft continued to retreat; at the same time, side panels irised open, and small, pyramidal-shaped objects deployed. They spread out and headed toward the Space Machinists.

  “Well that’s a change from their earlier blobs,” Mark said. “I’m guessing Medeia destroyed that particular weapon of theirs with her little slice and dice maneuver.”

  “But that raises the question: what are they?” Jain asked.

  “Fighters, I think,” Cranston replied. “From their movements, looks like they’re constrained by Newtonian physics, like ourselves.”

  “All right, let’s hurry up here,” Jain said. He zoomed in and concentrated his laser fire on Medeia; even with the charge on each raptor below three percent, a single shot was able to eliminate an alien micro machine at that close range. In a few moments he had cleared all that he could see, and the tiny machines floated away from her hull in a mass of drifting debris.

  “Well, I don’t see any more,” Jain said.

  “Same here, from my side,” Cranston said.

  “I think my rovers will be able to handle the rest,” Medeia said. “In the meantime, we have company.”

  “Yeah, I see that.” Jain swung his nose around to deal with the incoming fighters. While his momentum still carried him away from them, they were fast approaching.

  “They’re not firing…” Mark said.

  “Well, we are,” Jain told him. “Space Machinists, bring them down.”

  The firing indicator for the barracuda flipped to green, and Jain unleashed eight shots in rapid succession, targeting multiple incoming fighters at the same time.

  The enemy vessels vented propellant and tried to dodge out of the way, but Jain hit three of them dead on, and struck two more with glancing blows that disabled them. The others had enough Delta Vs to sidestep.

  Jain’s firing indicator went red again.

  Damn, should have let it cool down longer before attempting to fire so many shots in a row.

  As the incoming targets came closer, he activated his stingers, which were designed for point defense scenarios such as this. The dorsal and ventral railguns launched slugs in rapid succession; they produced bright smears of light, so it looked like he was launching streams of energy somewhat similar to what would be produced by the mini-guns on a gunship, or the Gatling guns of old. He disintegrated more of the incoming fighters, but others dodged yet.

  The vessels that he’d struck smashed into him, but because he was traveling in the same direction, their impact caused only minor damage to his hull.

  The others—eight in total—swooped inside the firing angle of the stingers, and still didn’t unleash weapons of any kind against the Talos; as they closed, they altered course to skim alongside his hull. He watched on his external cameras as they issued braking thrust.

  “They’re trying to land on our hulls!” Jain said. “Xander, evasive maneuvers!”

  13

  Jain felt the Talos fire both lateral and braking thrust, but it was too late: the vessel was constrained by Newtonian physics and couldn’t simply slide out of the way in an instant. The tiny pyramids compensated for the maneuvers and readily touched down on the surface. They latched on—probably magnetically—to his hull via their pyramidal bases. Legs emerged from each of the four sides of each pyramid and attached as well, further securing the units to him.

  “Damn things got me,” Mark said. “They’re like space parasites.”

  “Me, too,” Jain said.

  Medeia abruptly cloaked, vanishing from view, but the small fighters were able to extrapolate her position based on her previous momentum; they seemed to latch onto invisible walls in space—her hull.

  Cranston suddenly teleported from his location, appearing just above Jain. “Bastards almost got me.”

  More fighters were still coming at the Talos; Cranston launched his micro machines in a swirling motion in front of his vessel to protect Jain and himself; the micro machines combined to form a sort of drill, their momentum carrying them forward alongside his ship, and they chopped up several of the incoming targets. The fighters he had teleported away from decelerated and applied ventral thrust in an attempt to rejoin the attack. They were about a minute away from the main group.

  Jain launched his stingers at the newcomers, trying to protect the Forebode; Cranston was firing his own railguns. They got a good number of them, but inevitably several managed to skirt past the dual defenses of stingers and micro machines and latched onto both of their hulls.

  The second group of fighters came in shortly, and once more Jain and Cranston put up a heroic defense, but still some fighters got through. Five more landed on Jain’s ship, and another six on Cranston’s. The Forebode couldn’t teleport away again, not so soon, even though Cranston had made only a relatively short jump initially—the recharge still took a minimum of thirty minutes.

  “Damn it,” Cranston said. “I should have teleported the hell out of here instead of coming back for you.”

  “You tried to protect me,” Jain said. “I thank you for that.”

  “Yeah, but I can hear the disapproval in your voice…” Cranston said. “From a tactical standpoint, I should have abandoned you.”

  “Probably,” Jain agreed.

  “They don’t fire,” Mark said. “They latch onto our hulls. And then sit there. What the hell kind of fighters are they?”

  “The boarding party kind, apparently,” Medeia said. “Send your rovers out to deal with them. They’re not just sitting there: they’re trying to cut through our hull armor.”

  An alert sounded on Jain’s HUD. Sure enough, where the fighters were attached, his armor levels were quickly going down—they were using laser beams, or more likely superheated plasma weapons of some kind to drill through his hull.

  “I won’t be able to get rovers outside in time,” Jain said. “I’m going to have to send them to meet the attackers from the inside.”

  “I think that’s true about all of us!” Mark said. “Well except Cranston, maybe. Dude, you can just teleport away, right?”

  “Doesn’t work like that,” Cranston said. “If there’s anything small on my hull, it’s coming with me.”

  Jain glanced at the mothership but saw that the alien vessel was continuing to retreat toward the far side of the moon.

  Cranston recalled his micro machines, because there were no more fighters out there, at least none that weren’t latched on to the different members of the fleet. He redirected them toward the hull of the Forebode instead, and attempted to cut away the smaller pyramids. He seemed to be having some success, but no doubt some attackers had already boarded.

  Jain sent security rovers to the different decks where the alien pyramids had attached. He dispatched the highest number toward the starboard cargo bay, where the first breach was going to happen.

  He had the rovers line up in a row. They had only laser cutters built into their pincers, and none carried demolition blocks—he had yet to replenish his supply from the other Space Machinists, which he now regretted.

  He saw a red circle appear in the overhead as the metal overheated, and then it broke away entirely. A plasma beam slammed down into the deck underneath.

  “Yep, they’re using plasma beams,” Jain said.

  The beam shut off, and the alien equivalent of a rover—it looked like a robot lobster—dropped down.

  “Xander, keep an eye on the tactical situation,” Jain said. “And let me know if anything changes outside the ship.”

  Jain assumed remote control of the closest rover, and his perspective switch
ed to its viewpoint. He snapped his pincers in front of him experimentally—his consciousness may as well have been inside that unit, for how real and immediate everything seemed at the moment. He was that unit.

  Jain rushed the lobster and latched onto its claws with his pincers. He activated the laser cutters in his arms, and sliced right through the metal.

  But then something landed on top of him, and his viewpoint suddenly switched to a camera in the corner of the room. He was observing the scene from his usual AI vantage, and saw that another lobster had dropped down onto his unit and cut off his head.

  “Bastard beheaded me,” Jain muttered.

  “Do you need help?” Xander asked.

  “I thought you were watching the external battle space?” Jain replied.

  “I can multitask...” Xander said.

  “All right sure, control some of these rovers with me.” Jain allocated half of them to Xander.

  He switched to the rover in the lead, and rushed the two lobsters, one of which was missing its claws, thanks to Jain. A third dropped down.

  “How many units do those damn pyramids hold!” Jain said.

  In the overhead behind them, another plasma channel broke through, striking the floor, and then more lobsters pounced inside. Xander sent his group of rovers to handle them.

  In his crab body, Jain leaped onto the closest lobster and wrestled it to the deck. The lobster unleashed a plasma burst, and Jain couldn’t duck it in time.

  His vision once more snapped back to the corner of the room.

  “I feel like I’m playing some really crappy video game,” Jain commented.

  He decided to observe for a moment, and let the autonomous systems control the rovers for the time being. The lobsters launched plasma bursts from their mouths, melting each rover that came at them.

  Five alien termites descended from the hole in the overhead and landed on the deck. Another five dropped down from the hole in Xander’s area. The tiny machines promptly began eating into the deck. If they weren’t handled with soon, he would have a whole lot of those things to deal with.