by E A Wicklund
Chapter 21
McCray didn’t even bother heading to his stateroom. He ducked into a meeting room near the boat bay and jacked into the socket at the table. It wasn’t as good as using his coffin. Without it, nothing would maintain his limp body while experiencing the ship’s virtual world. It didn’t matter. They had little time to waste. The battlecruiser entering the system was likely bad news, and they needed to leave the Huralon star system fast.
The bridge appeared to him quickly, like stepping into another dimension. The Alpha team worked intensely at their stations, preparing the ship for a possible battle.
“Attention on deck!” called Zahn.
The bridge crew answered with “Aye, aye,” but remained focused on their stations, forgoing the naval tradition of standing at attention until released. At times like this, battlestations, McCray appreciated that the Navy made an exception to tradition.
Zahn stepped away from the Conn, and McCray plopped into it. “What do we have, Prime?”
“We’ve identified the battlecruiser as DPS Qalawun,” answered Zahn. “She’s already begun braking maneuvers and is 3.84 hours away from a zero-zero intercept with Huralon III. She’s 2.4 degrees off the ecliptic, bearing 3-4-3 mark 0-0-8. We are in a stable orbit and space black with dark paddles in standby. Agrawal screens are dispersing inbound radiation to system north. No ships are close enough to detect the directed radiation cone before it disperses. So far, there’s no indication Qalawun has seen us, though passive sensors indicate she’s peppering the system with Recon Drones.”
“Uh huh. That’s a violation of the Zagreb Treaty.”
“Yes, sir. She wouldn’t launch drones if she weren’t planning some kind of action. This is no social call.”
“Eyes,” said McCray. “What sort of RDs does the Nassar class carry?”
“Alshamu Mark VIII,” said Warwick. “Definitely an improvement over the Mark IIIs, though still half blind compared to our own.”
“Configured the way we are, how close would they have to get to see us?”
“Space black with no paddles? They’d have to get within twelve-thousand kilometers. They would almost have to run into us.”
“Good. What if we were cycling the paddles at say, 24MHz at extension two-thousand meters?”
“Wait one, sir.” Warwick’s fingers flew across her screens. “About seventy-thousand kilometers—0.37 light seconds.”
“What’s the closest an RD will come to us as it stands now?”
Warwick’s fingers danced again. “0.24 light seconds, sir.”
McCray rubbed his chin. “We’ve gotta get away from this planet. That was a smart move going to space black, Prime, but it puts us into a bind.”
Zahn nodded. “Qalawun looks like she’s on a war-footing. If she sees us in space black, she’ll think we’re a true Black Ship and might engage us.”
“Exactly,” said McCray. “She’s prepped for action, not a state visit. If she detects us, and she will eventually with her warship’s sensors and a cloud of RDs, Qalawun will blow us out of space. We cannot count on them not shooting to avoid provoking a war. Madkhal doesn’t seem worried about starting one, for some reason.. We need to get away from here, fast.”
“We’re pinned up against the planet,” said Zahn. “If we accelerate appreciably, we leave a wake in the strata and that might be detected. We do need to leave soon, though. We’re leaving a trail of dispersed radiation from the Agrawal fields. Someone will eventually figure out what those clouds mean.”
“Or someone will be in perfect position to see us eclipsing the planet.” McCray gazed into the tank. “What would people think of a ship-shaped hole in front of Huralon?”
“I can imagine the conspiracy theories already.” The two huddled, almost shoulder to shoulder, like teammates upon a playing field. Zahn gestured around the tank. “I see a lot of civilian ships scattering and heading away from Huralon.”
“Well, I can’t blame them for bailing out, and that can work in our favor. Ando. Any chance you’ve been listening in on communications between civilians and Huralon Space Control?”
“Aye, sir.” Ando worked his screens feverishly. “There’s tons of chatter just now.”
“I’m looking for ships receiving clearance to leave Hikonojo Port within ten minutes.”
“There’s three preparing to leave right now.”
“Excellent. I’m looking for the biggest hauler, the one with the most paddles. I want to hide in the noise of their strata wake.”
“That would be the Putnam Sound. She’s pulling out in five mikes.”
“Well done, Circus. Helm, break orbit and set a course to match Putnam Sound on her way out. Make cycles for 20MHz, extension two-thousand yards. Set paddle tension at 0.33 Bosch. Let’s minimize our own wake as much as we can.”
“Aye, sir,” said Raj Kongsangchai. “Breaking orbit and making cycles for 20MHz.”
“When we reach her, match her course and speed and snuggle up close. Circus, set Springbok’s skin to dead black. After that, Warwick, slowly drop our Agrawal fields, we don’t want to stand out like a searchlight when we drop space black and our hull becomes visible. I do want to look like a piece of Putnam Sound’s superstructure if a drone gets close enough to see us.”
Raj said, “I can get you where you’ll see their faces through the viewports with the naked eye.”
“Thank you Raj,” McCray said, chuckling. “But I think my heart couldn’t take that. I’ll settle for mighty close. ”
He addressed the entire bridge. “We’re sneaking out of here and heading for New Chicago, people. Full EMCON as we go, Warwick. Keep an eye out for any unnecessary emissions.”
“I take it you don’t want to tangle with Qalawun?” said Zahn with a wry grin.
McCray snorted. “Sure, lemme just pull this battleship out of my ass and we’ll do that.”
***
Hours later, Ando’s foot tapped incessantly on the floor. Warwick’s eyes were bloodshot and intense as she flipped through her screens, trying to see everything at once. Zahn shifted constantly in his seat, obviously unable to find a comfortable position.
They sailed forty-three light minutes away from the monstrous Qalawun, but still remained in danger. Following at the piddling acceleration of Putnam Sound, it would take several days to pass the heliopause, where the influence of the star’s gravity well tapered off significantly. Once there, they could finally escape into hyperspace and be on their way to New Chicago.
McCray looked around at the faces of the crewmen. They faced hours of heart-pounding stress until they left detection range of the RDs; all the time hoping they wouldn’t be discovered by the battlecruiser’s drones. He resisted the urge to stand up and pace the bridge. A physical expression of his tension would just add to theirs. Instead, he kept his eyes on the tank. The optics view displayed the mountain of gray altoferramic, named Putnam Sound, just above them. The giant vessel sailed so close, McCray felt he could reach out and touch it.
Ensign Kongsangchai had indeed brought them in tight with the big hauler. Her monstrous stern bobbed a mere three-hundred yards above Springbok’s number two hyperengine tower. According to The Book, this was madness. Standard separation between vessels in tight formation was eighteen-thousand yards. Granted, Putnam operated no paddles in the position where Springbok lurked. The merchant’s drives wouldn’t cut the Q-Ship into ribbons, but the chance of collision was still very high.
Aja stood beside him, watching the tank as well. She normally had no place on the bridge, watching remotely instead. But after recent events on the planet, she had cemented her position in his mind as a member of the crew, and someone he deeply trusted. At this time of high tension, he found her presence a comfort, rather than a distraction.
“Why are we so close?” Aja whispered.
Whisperering made no difference of course, but it was a natural reaction while doing something secretive. McCray leaned towards her, whispering too, “We’r
e hiding in Putnam Bay’s baffles.”
“Baffles?”
“Ships detect each other by the ripples their paddles make in the strata. By staying so close, we’re hoping our ‘paddle noise’ is lost in the larger paddle noise, the baffles, of Putnam Bay. Downside is, we have to get very close for it to work.”
Aja shrugged. “At least we’re doing this in space, as opposed to water. There’s nothing to push us around and move us unexpectedly closer. We just set a course, and we’re fine, right?”
“Unfortunately, that’s not true.”
“Huh?”
“Dark strata moves. It undulates with waves like a rolling sea on a water planet. Look, this ship moves because the tips of the paddles pull us through the strata.” McCray gestured with his hands as though rowing. “But since dark strata also moves in unexpected ways, it likewise pushes ships around through mechanical feedback. A large dark strata wave could hurl us one-thousand yards in any direction.”
“And we’re how far away from Putnam Sound?”
“Three-hundred yards.”
Aja shuddered. “Okay, I was relaxed until just now.” She watched the view of Putnam Sound in the tank. “Mind help me, it’s close.”
McCray pointed his chin towards Kongsangchai. “Raj is the best I’ve ever seen. He’s got a near-supernatural ability to anticipate freak waves and the knots of dark strata that can damage ships or push them around. We’ll be fine.”
“Looking at your hands, I don’t feel like we’re fine.”
McCray looked down at his white-knuckled grip on the armrest, and eased his hold on it.
Aja murmured, “How can dark strata damage a ship? I thought it didn’t interact with normal matter.”
“It doesn’t, at least not on a small scale, but it can grab a dark paddle at the tip where it interacts, and through the same mechanical leverage that provides propulsion, rip the paddle emitter from the hull or even ram it through the hull. Freak dark strata waves have torn whole vessels apart before.”
Aja took a deep breath. “Gimme a gunfight in a closet any day.”
McCray chuckled softly Explaining things to Aja helped to calm him down. It helped center him and focus his mind on the problem.
“What happens if the Madkhali does see us?”
“Well, we can hardly claim to be a merchant any longer. I believe the Qalawun would attack us, believing we’re a Black Ship. The fact that she’s deployed recon drones already proves she’s unwilling to honor long-standing treaties and happy to risk starting a war. If I’m right, we’ll find ourselves in a fight with a warship capable of killing battleships.”
“We could survive it, right? Aren’t we faster?”
“We are, but not faster than missiles and lasers. So if it comes to battle, we would have two choices to make. The first is to go back to space black and fight that way. It would be very hard for their weapons to lock onto us and she wouldn’t see us clearly enough to realize what we were. Our mandate to keep the fact Springbok is a Q-ship secret would be upheld.”
“That sounds good to me already.”
“But there’s a downside to that.”
Aja rolled her eyes. “Of course there is.”
“While in space black, we cannot operate the particle shields. We run Agrawal shields instead, but they are designed for indirect radiation sources like sunlight or search-radar sweeps. Highly concentrated energy easily overwhelms them. Against laser fire, they’re like no shield at all. We couldn’t take more than a couple hits without being shattered.”
“So option two is better, right?”
“Drone is reaching the closest point of intercept,” said Warwick, the loudness of her voice after their whispered conversation making them both jump.
“Standby, Aja,” said McCray.
He switched the view of the tank to a tactical display of the Hurlon system.
No one made a sound as McCray stepped up to the tank. Symbology showed Springbok and Putnam Sound as merged contacts with identical leader lines indicating course and acceleration. The recon drone cruised abaft the pair on a perpendicular course, approaching far too close for comfort.
“Active scan!” called Warwick. “It’s looking us over.”
Everyone on the bridge jumped slightly at her barked alert.
“Scanning us or Putnam Sound?” said McCray.
“I can’t say.” Warwick worked her boards like a concert pianist. “It’s standard procedure to use actives on nearby vessels and keep on going. If the drone slows or changes course, we’ll know it found something unusual.”
“Can the drone shoot at us?” said Aja.
“No,” said McCray, “but it will broadcast an alert to Qalawun. It will take about thirty-eight minutes for Qalawun to receive that. While that signal is going out, we’ll be running for our lives.”
McCray noted the rest of the bridge crew watched as the drone slowly moved past on the tactical plot, everyone waiting tensely between every update. McCray also kept his eyes on the Qalawun, still approaching the planet. The big ship hadn’t strayed from its course, though that didn’t guarantee anything. If the recon drone sent an alert, they wouldn’t know Qalawun had received it for over an hour.
“Drone is maintaining course,” said Warwick. “Still maintaining…no changes…” After several tense minutes, she leaned back. “I don’t think it saw us.”
Murmurs of relief filled the bridge. McCray released a breath he didn’t realize he’d held. “All right, we’re not out of the woods yet. I want a lot more distance between us and that drone before I’m comfortable. Raj, you’re doing great. I know this is hard, but hold our position in Putnam Sound’s baffles. Warwick, keep an eye on that drone in case it reverses course.”
“Aye, sir.” Raj remained stock still like a statue, completely focused on his screens.
Warwick shot McCray a terse look. Clearly, she intended to watch the drone whether he asked her to or not.
Aja gently placed her hand on his shoulder as he returned to his seat. He felt a pleasurable tingle at her touch, just as he always did. He wondered how the ship’s AI knew to recreate the sensation of Aja’s touch in VR. “Maybe I should go?” she said.
“No, you’re fine. If it comes to combat, and it still might, I’ll ask you to go then.”
Warwick suddenly hissed at her station. The whole bridge snapped their attention to her. “Janicek! Pull that repair drone back in. Your remote control signal is broadcasting like a beacon.”
A voice at her station answered, “We’ve got hull deformation at frame 2237, ma’am. It’s causing a malfunction to shield emitter 224. If shooting starts, we might need it.”
“I don’t care, Janicek. You’re shining a light in a dark room. Shut it down.”
The bridge crew seemed to be holding their breath.
“Any reaction, Eyes?” said McCray.
“Not that I can see, sir,” said Warwick. “Drone is steady on course. If she broadcast an alert, we won’t know for nearly an hour and a half.”
“Copy that. Good looking out, Eyes. Keep me updated.”
Aja breathed slowly into the silence that followed. “Okay. So, what was that second option in case Qalawun spots us?”
McCray changed the view in the tank to the optics and the closeup look of Putnam Sound. “Put our particle shields at max and run for it at flank speed. Hopefully, we can escape into hyperspace before the Qalawun gets any solid hits on us.”
“Couldn’t we fight back at all?”
“Oh, we could...while running our asses off in full retreat. We might even take down a chaser weapon or two, but at that point Madkhal would know we’re operating a Q-ship. Or we could hold fire and thus maintain secrecy, but be at much higher risk of taking hits, hits we cannot sustain for long.”
McCray watched the tank as he spoke. Then he saw Springbok suddenly veering to port, away from Putnam Sound. He leaped to his feet. “Raj! What are you doing? Stay with the hauler.”
Raj grimaced,
his face taut. “There’s a knot in the strata, sir,”
“Alright, get back into formation with that hauler, soon as you can.”
Before he finished speaking, he saw Putnam Sound shift course to port as well. Shortly, the big ship moved back above Springbok, as though Raj anticipated their maneuver in advance.
“We’re back in position, sir,” said Raj
McCray cringed inside. If Raj detected a knot, then he had every right to avoid it, but his quick reflexes may have sounded the death knell for every soul aboard. “Raj, you’re the best in the fleet at this, but if you see any more knots, give Putnam Sound a chance to move with you. You know roughly where they’ll go before they do, so use that to your advantage.”
“Aye, sir,” said Raj, still staring at his screens with that peculiar intensity of his. ”But there’s a chance they may hit us if I wait.”
“That’s a risk we’ll have to take. I trust your reactions, Raj.”
“Aye, Sir.”
“Eyes, if the drone saw us pull away from the hauler, how would it react?”
Warwick looked up from her screens. “It would run an active scan on us for certain.”
“If it does, how long before we detect that scan?”
“Eighteen minutes, sir.”
McCray returned to his seat, anxious, wondering how to respond to this new development. Just run now, or hope the drone didn’t detect them?
Zahn opened a private channel with McCray. “Eighteen minutes until we see if we’re going to fight for our lives.”
“Those will be some long minutes, Prime. In the meantime, help me with something. If Putnam Bay reacted so slowly, or more correctly Raj acted with his characteristic speed, to the knot, they should’ve been buffeted around by it more than us. I saw no indication of that.”
“I don’t know what happened there,” said Zahn, shaking his head, “but now I’m wondering if we shouldn’t accept the inevitable and break away at flank speed. We could get a jump on Qalawun if she decides to come after us.”