The Link

by Isaac Hooke

  A few minutes later Xander announced the admiral’s intention to connect.

  Jain accepted, and the hologram of Admiral Jacobs appeared in the middle of the virtual bridge. The admiral’s flagship, the Fieldhaul, was located in the middle of Task Force 88, a few thousand kilometers off starboard. That Task Force had been reinforced with another ten Piranha ships from Earth system since Sheila had uploaded the virus into the Mimics.

  “I just got word from central command,” the middle-aged avatar of Admiral Jacobs said. “Looks like Earth is under attack. The fleet we’ve left in place to guard the Eastern Galactic Front is also under fire.”

  “Is it the Link?” Jain asked.

  “Afraid so,” the admiral said. “The fleet has been recalled to defend Earth.”

  “Do they want the Mimics to help?” Jain asked.

  “Of course they do,” the admiral replied. “We helped them. It’s about time the aliens started fulfilling some of the promises they agreed to when they signed the treaty.”

  “I’ll let the Mimic admiral know,” Jain said, and disconnected. He turned toward Xander. “Put me in touch with Admiral Tempest.”

  A moment later another human avatar appeared on the virtual bridge. Tempest portrayed himself as a human being of an age much younger than the previous commander, Malice, whom Jain had arrested for violating the treaty. Tempest was so young that Jain almost didn’t take him seriously. That was probably the desired intent.

  I have to watch this one.

  “What can I do for you, Jain?” Tempest said, a little unctuously.

  “First I have a question,” Jain said. “What’s with the elevated comm chatter I’m detecting between your vessels?”

  “Nothing to worry about,” Tempest said. “We’re conducting some routine comm tests. Chatter will rise and fall during the process.”

  “Well, I’d prefer if you stopped those tests,” Jain said.

  Tempest nodded. “Very well.” He glanced to the side, as if making a muted order to a subordinate.

  Jain took the opportunity to similarly mute the alien admiral.

  “Their comm chatter just dropped to zero,” Sheila said.

  “No doubt it will start up again when they think we’re not looking,” Medeia commented.

  Tempest turned back to him, and Jain unmuted the alien.

  “It’s done,” the Mimic admiral said.

  “Thank you,” Jain said. “Get all of your Class A Nurturer vessels prepped.” Jain had his consciousness embedded within a similar alien vessel, which was pyramidal in shape. “We’re heading to Earth system.”

  “Is there something wrong?” Tempest asked.

  “You can bet there is,” Jain replied. “Earth is under attack by your former empire.”

  Tempest smiled maliciously. “Oh, good.”

  Jain scowled at the alien.

  The admiral’s expression softened. “I say that not because I wish ill upon the humans, but because we will finally have a chance to strike back at the aliens who have turned their backs on us.”

  “How do you know we’re going to intervene?” Jain said.

  Tempest smiled patiently. “Because we wouldn’t be going to Earth system merely to watch.”

  Jain smiled in turn. “Very good. I’ll expect you to be ready to depart in the hour.”

  With that, he closed communications.

  Jain created a shared rift gate for the Void Warriors and Task Force 88 members to use so that all of the Mind Refurb ships would appear in the same location, which ended up being a few millions kilometers outside Jupiter. The Mimics meanwhile passed into Earth system via two separate rifts.

  Jain ordered all the capable vessels to cloak before passing through so that the Mind Refurb fleets were the only warships visible on the visual and thermal bands.

  Tempest had argued that there was no point in cloaking at the moment—the Link members were familiar with the radiation signatures produced by Mimic inertialess drives, but Jain felt it would increase tension among the enemy ranks if they couldn’t actually see the Nurturer vessels or their heat signatures. After all, once the enemy recognized the Mimics had developed new countermeasure tech to hide from gravity sensors, they would wonder how accurate the radiation readings were. They would wonder if they were detecting the entirety of the fleet, or only a small portion, with the rest drifting, running with inertialess drives offline.

  Indeed, Jain had ordered the Mimics to shut off their engines after emerging and achieving maximum acceleration so that their inertialess drive signatures wouldn’t be detected. He still picked up the Nurturers when they first appeared in the system and set course, but they vanished after that. The first group emerged beyond Saturn, while the second appeared close to Mars. On his tactical display, he labeled the first Task Group A, and the second Task Group B. After both groups vanished, his display still updated their positions based on their previously computed speeds and directional vectors.

  Jain was cloaked as well, but he matched the speed of the Void Warriors before shutting off his drives.

  He had considered Mimicking different ships in the Link empire instead of cloaking, but Tempest had assured him that wouldn’t work. There were specific network handshake signals expected from each race, packet data that followed a unique cryptic pattern. It was possible to imitate those signals, but unfortunately the Mimics didn’t have access to the latest pattern database: the other races changed their handshakes before each engagement.

  The three fleets spent the next two days working their way inward; the Mimic group from Saturn passed them along the way, according to the precomputed trajectory data, as their Nurturer vessels were faster than the Mind Refurb vessels. Jain, embedded in a Nurturer vessel himself, could have kept pace with them, but he chose to remain with the Void Warriors.

  Before entering the system, he had already ordered the closer group, Task Group B, to leave Mars and proceed toward Earth, rendering what assistance it could to the Earth vessels, which were fighting off the Link empire’s attack runs.

  Jain instructed the second group of Mimics, Task Group A, to wait for them at Mars so that they could proceed together toward Earth.

  When he reached Mars, the combined Mimic Task Group A and Mind Refurb fleet headed toward Earth to join the other Nurturers.

  “Xander, get me Tempest,” he told his Accomp along the way.

  Tempest appeared on the bridge, and Jain hit his virtual broadcast button to share the encounter not just with the Void Warriors, but the rest of Task Force 88.

  “You’ve been observing the battle while waiting for us,” Jain said. “You’ve seen what ships the Link has brought with them. Tell me what to expect.”

  “Their forces are surprisingly light,” Tempest said. “Either their numbers have been substantially reduced in the battle against the Fresnal, or they’re still embroiled in war with them.”

  “The Fresnel,” Jain said. “I’ve seen that word referenced in the system manuals once or twice in passing, though it was never really stated outright what it meant. They are the enemy of the Link, I take it?”

  Tempest nodded. “Their greatest enemy. The Link has been battling them for a hundred years now. And still, the war has no end in sight.”

  “What started the war?” Sheila asked.

  “Trespassing,” Tempest said. “The Link entered their territory without knowing it. The Fresnal didn’t like this. They opened fire. The Link fired back. Things escalated. And here we are.”

  “That’s a bit of an abridged version,” Sheila said. “Though I suppose it will do.”

  “All right, so what kind of ships do they have?” Jain said. “What abilities? I need to know what to expect so we can plan some strategies.”

  “There are ships present from two races,” Tempest said. “Minor members of the Link hierarchy. The Gralos, and the Farseekers. These particular Gralos ships are Battlestar class, which utilize a series of fighters as their main weapons, and mostly stay back whi
le the fighters do the work. The fighters have inertialess drives, so you can expect them to be a little hard to hit and evade. They fire lasers, and plasma beams. If you can destroy the mothership, all of the fighters will go offline, as they’re directed by the AI core of the main vessel.”

  “So, the Gralos are AIs like ourselves?” Jain asked.

  “Very much like us,” Tempest agreed. “On the other hand, the Farseeker vessels are piloted by both organics and AIs, hence why they’re so much bigger. There are two types of Farseeker vessels present. There are Teleporters, which are difficult to target, as they can teleport once every twenty minutes. They can also transport energy bombs beneath your hull, so expect sudden breaches to appear when one is in the vicinity. The second type of vessel is the Minelayer. These leave a series of energy mines in their path, capable of inflicting damage up to three thousand kilometers away. They work in concert with the other ships to herd you down certain paths, usually leading you directly into the Teleporters, or fighters from the Battlestars.”

  “Well, they don’t sound like too difficult of an opponent,” Jain said. “Nothing like the Vaernastians, anyway.”

  “They will present their own unique challenges,” Tempest said. “You shall see.”

  It took another nine hours to reach Earth. As the fleets grew near, flashes began to appear on Jain’s external camera feed above the blue and white sphere that was once his homeworld.

  “Our poor little planet has borne the brunt of so many attacks of late,” Sheila said.

  “It’s not our planet anymore,” Medeia scoffed. “We left it behind years ago, when the humans forced our minds to wake up inside starships.”

  “We volunteered for this, remember,” Cranston told her softly.

  Medeia shot him an angry look, but then her features softened. “You’re right, I suppose we did. Just not this, directly.”

  “We didn’t really know what we were getting into,” Sheila agreed. “We thought we’d be exploring the galaxy for humanity, and expanding the frontiers of knowledge. Not dealing with constant alien threats. At least I did.”

  “Oh, you knew we’d be dealing with aliens,” Gavin said. “How could you not? Given when we all had our minds scanned, after the invasion?”

  “I suppose I thought we’d tussle with a few of them,” Sheila told him. “I just didn’t think it would be this bad.”

  Gavin pursed his lips, and nodded. “I guess none of us really did.”

  Jain zoomed in on the flashes and spotted individual ships. He noticed that most of the Mimics of Task Group B who had gone ahead of the main fleet were no longer cloaked. They had obviously taken damage: even a small drop in power output could affect the cloaking/Mimicking device. The countermeasures to the gravity wave sensors were also extremely vulnerable to impacts, as they were scattered across the external hull.

  Jain glanced at his tactical display. The Task Group B Mimics were marked in green on his overhead map, at least those that weren’t cloaked at the present moment, while the warships of Earth’s original defenders were marked in blue. He saw Piranhas, Dominators, and Narcissus classes out there, among others. He updated the display nomenclature so that Task Group B comprised both the Mimics and the Earth warships.

  The red dots of the Gralos and Farseekers outnumbered the members of that combined task group by two to one.

  The admiral connected.

  “The local admiral tells me the Link members have been engaging in guerrilla assaults,” Jacobs said. “They swoop in, raise all hell, and then pull out again.”

  “Sounds like Mark during sex,” Gavin quipped.

  “How is that even appropriate?” Mark asked him.

  “Hey, we’re muted, he can’t hear me,” Gavin said, pointing at the admiral.

  “Yeah, but the rest of us can…” Mark said.

  “So far the defenders have managed to fend off ten waves,” Jacobs continued. “Sometimes with enough ferocity that the Link ships create rifts to flee the system, but they always return with reinforcements. Looks like we arrived in time for the latest flyby attack.”

  “All right, Jacobs, get ready to engage them in a pincer maneuver,” Jain said.

  The admiral’s eyes twinkled. “So you’re giving me the orders this time around, huh?” He chuckled. “I suppose we never really did discuss the chain of command after what happened in Tantalus system. We’ve kind of been operating independently.”

  “But we can’t any longer,” Jain said. “We’re going to have to use teamwork to win this. Listen, I have the bigger fleet. And my ships are more powerful. I’m in command by default.”

  Jacobs cocked his head. “And you’re not really a human Mind Refurb anymore, are you? So you don’t really fit under my command. I can’t force you to obey me.”

  “I’m as human as ever,” Jain said. “But if thinking of me as an alien helps you obey my orders, then so be it.”

  Jacobs smiled. “I’ll think about it. First tell me what you had in mind.”

  Jain explained his plan.

  Jacobs nodded slowly. “Could work. It really could.”

  Jain smiled patiently. “It will work. Can I expect your obedience?”

  “I’ll follow you, at least on this one,” Jacobs said. “Switching to voice only.”

  His avatar blinked out.

  Jain glanced at Xander. “Well, my old friend, are you ready for this?” When the robed Accomp hesitated, Jain glanced at the other Void Warriors. “And what about the rest of you?”

  “How could we not be?” Xander finally said. “We live for this.”

  6

  Jain picked up a sudden burst of radiation ahead as the cloaked Nurturer vessels of Task Group A changed direction to intercept the enemy. Jain accelerated away from the Void Warriors and Task Force 88, joining those signatures before they vanished. He cut off his engines as well once his trajectory had updated. He also deactivated his comm system and engaged in radio silence so that the Void Warriors on the virtual bridge disappeared.

  The hidden Nurturers moved in behind a group of Minelayers and unleashed their lightning weapons. The plasma channels arced between the ships and the mines they laid, detonating large swaths of them. The Minelayers themselves were unharmed by the lightning weapons, but the Mimics followed up with their trademark blob and skirmisher attacks. Those blobs smashed into the umbrella-shaped mining ships, taking out big chunks from their hulls. Meanwhile those skirmishers that got through their point defenses latched on and began injecting boarding party robots known as lobsters aboard, along with micro machine “termites.”

  Radiation signatures appeared sporadically as Nurturer vessels updated their trajectories to take on new targets. But those momentary bursts from the inertialess drives gave them away: Teleporters appeared among the hidden ships, and must have teleported bombs inside their detected positions, because moments later the cloaked ships began to materialize.

  Nearby Battlestars unleashed waves of fighters at the revealed ships. Those fighters were about three times as big as the skirmishers, and readily appeared on his camera feed.

  Though they couldn’t see him, those fighters were directly in his path.

  “Watch the fighters…” Xander said.

  “I see them,” Jain told his Accomp. He was forced to make a directional change, momentarily giving away his position.

  A Teleporter suddenly appeared directly in his path. He felt several sharp pains in his abdomen.

  Damn it.

  “We just took several impacts in our core region,” Xander said. “Our reactor core output is down fifty percent. Inertialess drive efficiency and weapons throughput has been similarly reduced. Countermeasures and cloak are offline.”

  Jain altered course at the last moment, narrowly avoiding hitting that Teleporter.

  “The hell?” Jain said. “Was that a suicide run?”

  “Appears so,” Xander said. “Considering the Teleporter didn’t even try to move out of the way. I’d recommend yo
u continue evasive maneuvers… don’t let the enemy target your insides with those bombs so readily.”

  Jain began zig-zagging; he unleashed a wave of blobs and skirmishers at the Teleporter as he passed, and all of them struck. He felt more pain inside of him a moment later.

  “I hate to tell you this—” Xander said.

  “Yes, more breaches,” Jain interrupted. He glanced at his damage report screen. Reactor core output was the same. Damage seemed to be random this time. The zig-zagging had prevented the Teleporter from hitting critical systems. He fired more blobs at the receding vessel, but the range was enough for the craft to dodge.

  Jain felt stings in his forearms, and realized he was taking laser impacts from the incoming fighters. He swerved upward to avoid the plasma beams they launched next. He considered disabling his pain sense, but it was useful for the time being—it helped him remain oriented in the fight. He launched blobs at them until he ran out of his supply, and had to wait for them to regenerate. Most of the nimble fighters were able to avoid those blobs, but a few detected the incoming projectiles too late and were swallowed up.

  Despite the damage he’d taken, Jain was still faster than the shuttles, which allowed him to pull away from them; however, they still fired lasers at him relentlessly. The moment his lightning weapon recharged, he swiveled his ship about and let loose. It arced between eight of the craft, disabling them all in one fell swoop.

  He continued weaving in and out of the enemy units. Staying close to the other members of Task Group A as they performed a general flyby. There was no point in maintaining radio silence, not when he was fighting in plain sight, so he reactivated his comm system and the other Void Warriors reappeared on his virtual bridge. All save Medeia, who remained cloaked. Jacobs returned to the open comm line as well, voice only, as per the indicator.