Penance (RN: Book 2)

by David Gunner

  “With the then duty operations officer, Senior Petty officer Cummings, still in the medical unit and well on the way to recovery. I’ve asked Petty Officer Wheyer to join us to try and explain something of what occurred, and hopefully answer some questions regarding the recent confrontation. Which I’m sure we all have. So without further ...Wheyer …if you could,” Canthouse motioned Wheyer forward with the sweep of a hand as he stepped aside.

  Wheyer moved to the front of the room where he nervously considered the hastily prepared notes he’d brought with him. “As Lieutenant-commander Canthouse has already stated, we’ve consulted the EDP database and there are no previous records of anything even remotely connected with such an entity. So all the data that currently exists in regards to such an event is contained in the data core aboard this ship. And, as hesitant as I am to say it, as thick skinned as she is the Bristol is no science craft as her sensors are limi –“

  “It’s that thick skin that you can thank for us being here,” the chief engineer said to the nods and murmured agreements from several other officers. “That thing shorted out two, fifty megawatt generators as if they were nothing, and if she’d never had the armoured belts we’d have lost the rear section in an instant.”

  Wheyer stalled. Being checked in front of the other officers broke the momentum of his hastily prepared report and drained his face of all colour, “I never meant any disrespect to the Bristol, Chief. I was merely –“

  “The chief understands what you mean, Mr Wheyer. He was simply stating his gratitude for her solid bottom,” Canthouse said from where he stood next to Avery.

  The chief engineer’s high cheeked smile was lost in his bushy moustache as he dipped his head in acknowledgement of Canthouse’s statement.

  Canthouse circled a finger indicating the operations officer should continue.

  Wheyer glanced about the gathering uncertain who to address, “What I meant by my last statement was, as tough as nuts as she is, the Bristol is no science vessel. Her sensors are calibrated for solid metaloid structures and complex energy signatures a great way off, which on the face of it would seem ideal given the clouds heavy ferrite composition. Yet the cloud expanded at such a rate that the computer struggled to classify it as a natural phenomenon and started looking for military patterns where none existed. This led it to classify every movement of the cloud as a separate entity, and as you would expect with so much activity the influx of raw data was overwhelming and the system simply, well …not so much lock up as throttle back. This is the reason the sensors were so delayed in detecting the presence of any super-fauna entities even though they were well within scanning range, and even when we could physically see them.”

  “So now we know why we couldn’t detect these super-fauna creatures, can you tell us what they were and where they came from?” said sub-lieutenant Hewton. A full bearded man of imposing physical and intellectual abilities, and perfectly suited to his role as senior weapons officer.

  “As to what the cloud is, what the creatures are and where they come from, I can’t tell you anything,” Wheyer said separating his hands and raising his shoulders in a surrender to ignorance.

  The small group looked amongst each other with murmurs of dissatisfaction being exchanged.

  “There must be something you can tell us,” said McWhitney to whom intolerance of lesser ranks was considered a virtue.

  “I will relay the information in the order the computer categorised it, sir,” Wheyer said and consulted his notes. “The first sensor contact was on the limit of sensor range and categorised as an unknown event, though the computer later recategorised this to nebulonic formation as we got closer. Initial close up scans of the cloud indicated bulk ferrite materials, essentially a great cloud of rust that reflected our sensor emissions so effectively the computer registered it as solid. This is when the computer problems initially occurred. Next, there was the initial super-fauna sighting, which the computer classified as amphibian based solely on its movements. This was followed by the second entity, which the computer classified as reptile based on it physical construction. Putting the creatures aside for the moment, the sensors were unable to penetrate the cloud to a sufficient depth to determine a center point or source of origin. Now some things we think we do know.”

  Many of the group shifted in their seats with several wearing a look of disappointment as if anticipated news had failed to enliven.

  “The tendrils that were only visible through the Gausmeter were definitely generated by the cloud and advanced as its perimeter did. They appear to be the magnetic equivalent of water seeping through cracks preceding the failure of an earthen dam. As they advanced they interlaced to the extent that the Bristol’s mass became an element that worked against her, and attracting the filaments to the extent that the close packed web impeded the ship’s ability to navigate.”

  “I’ve a theory about that,” the chief engineer said a wagging a finger to accentuate the thought. “If you overlay the gate attenuation fields and rotate them against each other, they’ll cancel out the interference and – “His hands formed a cat’s cradle as he spoke only for Avery to intervene.

  “If you could save it for the moment chief. This is where it gets good,” Avery nodded at Wheyer. The chief engineer sank back giving Avery an aggrieved look.

  “I believe, and I don’t fully understand how, that the creatures can influence the formation of these magnetic filaments at will. They may even generate them deliberately to entice or ensnare prey.”

  “You mean like an Angler fish!” said Stephenson, the life sciences chief.

  Wheyer nodded at the man’s supposition, “Yes.”

  “Can you elaborate, Mr Wheyer,” Canthouse said.

  “I’m no expert on marine zoology, but I believe an Angler fish is a deep ocean dwelling creature from Earth that uses a small bioluminescent bulb suspended in front of its face to lure prey towards it. What’s important in this reference is that the fish moves about in its own sphere of artificially created light where no natural illumination exists. From what the computer recorded during the encounter, the magnetic forces increased and diminished relevant to the creatures proximity to the ship, I believe these creatures use the same trick as the Angler fish only with magnetic influence instead of light.”

  “And this is why we freed up when it went away,” said Hewton with a nod of understanding.

  “Exactly.”

  “And what about the noise?” asked Stephenson. Several of his colleagues turned to face him but no one responded. “Oh come on, Gentlemen, I can’t be the only one who heard it. The noise! It was a deep dull roar that shook nearly everything off the storage shelves.” He glanced around the inquisitive but unresponsive faces.

  “I heard it to!” Hewton said with a nod. “Deafening it was. Like being in the belly of the beast. And it near dislodged an entire rack of munitions before it was done.”

  “Roar!” An incredulous McWhitney said looking over his shoulder at Hewton. “How could the creature roar? There’s no atmosphere to act as a medium.”

  “I believe I may be able to answer that,” Wheyer said. “At the time of the ‘roar’ the creature was in direct contact with the hull, and the time stamp for this sound incident coincided with the creature enduring some form of magnetic spasm. I believe it was this magnetic burst that shook the hull like a rod in an electro magnet. The fibrillation was transmitted to the atmosphere inside the ship and we heard it as a roar. Magnetic resonance may be a form of communication within the cloud.”

  “And what about the creatures themselves?” asked Hewton.

  “The entities themselves are more of a mystery. We recorded hundreds of terabytes of data but we can’t spare the cpu time to scrutinize it to any useful degree. We’ll need a serious mainframe to make any sort of sense out of it in a meaningful time frame. But what we do know is we can distract them, and we can even hurt them. Wherever they’re from they appear to be just as mortal as the rest of us, which
is a good thing judging by their size. ”

  “D’you think we’ll see them again?” asked Hewton.

  “Well,” Wheyer scratched the side of his face as he considered. “Before coming to this meeting, I scanned everywhere within sensor range for further evidence of the clouds signature, and, well –“

  “And!” McWhitney almost barked as he sat forward, his face a fine impatient blush.

  “I detected nothing even close to the clouds signature.”

  “So they’ve gone?”

  “I believe they don’t pose any immediate threat to the ship, sir.”

  The group again muttered amongst themselves. Wheyer caught Canthouse stifling a wide yawn as Avery said something too low to be heard, only to pause and habitually look up at the intercom, as did every man present when a double gong sounded. Canthouse automatically reached for his tablet and gave the screen a curious look. He passed it to Avery who considered it and departed immediately.

  “Gentlemen, I’m afraid we’ll have to pick this up later as the commander is awake and I’m needed on the bridge. You’ll be made aware of any urgent updates as and when they occur. Thank you.” Canthouse recovered the tablet and departed with Wheyer following close behind.

  ***

  Denz was zipping up his overalls and wholly ignoring the doctor whose tone had risen from sound advisement to near beration, as hefailed to impress upon Denz the need for more rest. Canthouse hurried into the medical unit and nodded a greeting to the doctor. “Commander. I’m glad to see you up and about.”

  “Up and about!” Denz spat as he straightened his overalls with a snap. “I should never have been allowed to sleep, Lieutenant-commander.” Denz snatched his things from the bed and proceeded to leave, only to give the doctor who restrained him by the arm a savage look.

  “Wait! I’ve not cleared you for duty yet, commander. You need at least twenty four hours more rest and monitoring as you suffered a severe psychotic break. You may relapse and cause permanent damage. I need to monitor you.”

  “Do you hear that doctor?” Denz pointed upwards and they listened to the repeating gong for several seconds. “That’s the proximity threat warning that lets the crew of the ship know there’s a possible threat within one AU of our current position. As we speak dozens of professionals are preparing the ship for a possible confrontation. And with the teeth marks of our most recent contact ringing the aft hull, I strongly suspect there is a measure of unease amongst the crew that will not be assuaged by the thought of their commanding officer lying in a surgery bed twiddling his thumbs. Now, you’ve scanned me, prodded me, poked me and invaded every crevice your finger will fit in and found nothing wrong. I have no history of psychotic disturbances. My physical health is top notch and I feel perfectly fine, so can you please tell me what is to be gained by my staying in this accursed room any longer?”

  The doctor, a man considerably younger than Denz, gave the commander a despairing look. “Fine, you’re right. You have no history and I could find nothing wrong. So it’s because of this, and only this, that I am allowing you to leave this infirmary. However, for the record, and in front of witnesses, I have to state that I’m wholly against you leaving the surgery at this time. And I must insist that if you show even the slightest sign of another episode I’ll be keeping you here for forty eight hours of observation. Can you agree to this?”

  “Absolutely, doctor,” and without further adieu, Denz stalked out of the surgery with Canthouse hot behind him.

  “Double time it, Lieutenant Commander,” Denz said and proceeded at a brisk jog with Canthouse keeping pace. They covered the ground quickly. “Bring me up to speed.”

  “All the repairs we can make have been completed, and all munitions have been replenished from stores. The shield generators have been swapped out and the expected splash damage to the other generators has not been proven. We now have one hundred percent shield capacity and she’s as purpose ready as we can make her, sir.”

  “Excellent. And the proximity warning?”

  “Ops detected an emergency beacon matching an EDP signature and we will drop out when –“

  Canthouse’s explanation was cut short by a loud, whump, like a gas cloud igniting and Denz’s forehead driving into his left ear as the Bristol jumped and then staggered sideways. Powerful gyroscopic forces threw the two officers hard against a bulkhead, where they were pinned as the ship was ejected from its gate path and sent spinning into normal space.

  The ha-roo, ha-roo of the calamity alarm sounded throughout the ship as Denz pushed himself off his first officer and rolled to the floor. His head rung from when he had struck Canthouse, and he gingerly picked himself up checking for broken bones and extra joints before turning to assist his first officer. Canthouse clasped his right shoulder and grimaced as Denz assisted him to his feet. After a cursory examination of the pained areas, Canthouse insisted he was ok to continue and both men proceeded to the bridge.

  The bridge was a repeat of the creature attack with people and equipment strewn all over. A temporary medic assistant relieved him of Canthouse who cautiously lowered himself into a chair and submitted to a medical examination

  Denz moved to where Avery squatted near a prostrate form lying near the far left wall. The second officer looked old, pale and broken.

  “What happened here? What’s our condition?” Denz barked as he gazed about the disorder around him.

  Avery stood to face Denz, “Something forcibly overloaded the gate drive, which caused the gate systems to crash, ejecting us from the gate stream. I’m not sure what it was, but Wheyer mentioned something about an enormous pulse, like an EMP, moments before it happened. I’m suspect the two events are connected.”

  “Any ideas where it came from or what caused it?”

  “Not as of yet, sir, no. Most of the systems were knocked off line by the event and are only now reinitialising.”

  Denz despaired. He believed the Bristol’s systems to be hardened against such events. “Our condition?” They moved to the operations console where the ops officer ran through a series of reboot sequences as he watched.

  “Well,” Avery wiped his dripping brow with his sleeve. With the life support systems yet to reinitialise the room was growing hot and humid. Avery’s fingers gestured magician like over his tablet, “Initial reports say the hull’s fine. The stability dampers took the brunt of it, but with so much inertia they overloaded and tripped out. That’s the reason for the mess and the light footing. What voice reports we’ve received report the motive units are OK, with the sub-light units rebooting as we speak. Shields and weapons are unknown, though we do know the forward torpedoes are out of action due to a collapsed munitions rack blocking access to the cyclic magazines. Status of the LAW is unknown.”

  The ops system completed its validation and data poured down the screen.

  “Operations, what happened? What took us out of transit?” asked Denz.

  “I believe it was a magnetic pulse, Commander.” Stavener, the replacement operations officer and a man had no formal knowledge said. “A pulse of sufficient strength to overload the drive safeties and kill the repulsion charge that keeps us ahead of the wave. Rather than just being pinched from the rear, we were also pinched from the front and spat out sideways.”

  “A magnetic pulse! You mean an EMP? Damn it! I thought we were hardened against these things?”

  “Under normal circumstances we are, sir. But this event was highly focused and of unprecedented scale. It was far beyond the standoff EMP weaponry we’re hardened against.” Stavener said. “If the most powerful EMP weapons the EDP forces have, those on the Russian Tirrol class destroyers, were a stubbed toe. This event would be like having a house dropped on you.”

  “Where did it come from?” asked Denz.

  Stavener shrugged in a, search me, gesture that infuriated Denz, but now was not the time for recriminations.

  “Casualties?” Denz snapped glancing at Canthouse who had joined them, his ri
ght arm in a sling and hurriedly strapped to his chest.

  “Injuries are being reported all over the ship.” Avery said looking over a constantly refreshing list on his tablet. “There are a lot of impact traumas, some concussions and possibly a fractured skull in engineering. There are two people unaccounted for and we have one fatality, sir.” He indicated the still form with an inclination of the head.

  Denz looked past him to the man on the floor. “What happened here?” He walked across to the body partially covered with a service jacket, which he pulled back to reveal the ashen face of operations officer Wheyer. Blood had matted the hair on the left side of Wheyer’s head to pool about his shoulder, with an angry purple black bruise running from beneath the matted hair to cover the left side of his white face like a lightning strike, before disappearing inside his uniform at neck level.

  “It’s operations officer Wheyer,” Avery said with genuine sorrow. “The force of the ejection threw him sideways against the bulkhead and broke his neck.”

  “It’s these damn sideways located consoles,” Canthouse said. “I made an objection in the prelaunch spec review but nothing was done about them.”

  “He should have been wearing his safety belt,” Denz said with grim soberness. He glanced at first officer, “And you Malcolm?”

  “The medic suspects a fractured scapula, sir. There’s no quick fix, and as the surgery is over capacity I asked him to bind it until I can attend.”

  “See that you do,” Denz again looked around the recovering disorder. “Gentlemen, let’s clean this up and make good on any repairs we can. Lieutenant Avery, I’d like you to arrange a search party to locate our missing crew men. I’d hate the thought of them lying injured under some displaced equipment somewhere.”