Kill Before Dying (Tau Ceti Agenda Book 5)

by Travis S. Taylor

  Nancy took a breath and focused her mind on the image and could see the that blue beam was only dispersing across the barrier shield at its outer periphery. It wasn’t being completely redirected as any other kinetic or directed energy weapon would. The interior of the beam seemed to stop millimeters before the barrier and do something else. The brightness of the image was so far beyond saturation it was difficult to see in great detail and on such a small scale what was actually happening. But something unusual was happening at the beam’s point of incidence. Then the barrier shield flickered about that point and a wave of blue light pulsed in ripples like dropping a pebble in a pond—the pebble being the blue beam and the pond the ship’s Buckley-Freeman quantum barrier shield. As the circular wavefront rippled, the waves crested and spread from the center. Then the centroid opened and the blue beam passed through, hitting the super alloy of the hull plating on the ship.

  “Son of a bitch.” Nancy tilted her head sideways as if it would help her change her viewpoint in the virtual world. “Play that back.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I thought you’d find that interesting. I’m not exactly sure what to make of it just yet,” the STO replied and ran the sensor loop again.

  Allison? What the hell is that?

  The quantum barrier field has been negated, rerouted, or simply opened, the AIC responded. I’m not sure that is a possibility within physics we know of. The actual spacetime would have to change in that local region.

  My thoughts as well. We need some bigger brains on this.

  “What are your thoughts, STO?” She asked.

  “Well, there’s more, ma’am.”

  “More?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Watch this file now.” The Teena clone appeared to be pleased with herself. Nancy wasn’t sure. But what she was sure of was that the next video was just as perplexing and interesting.

  The tines of the tuning-fork spires on one of the alien porcupine-snail megaships lit up with a blue beam. The sensors tracked it and the video froze just as the beam made a hard left turn. Then it zoomed in and was highlighted. Nancy watched patiently as the motion in the video was slowed to almost a stop. The time sampling rate was labeled in her mind as one frame per femtosecond and the video frames were clicking by about once every two seconds to give Nancy time to take it all in.

  “Now watch just before the beam turns.” The STO grabbed the spot and spread it out to expand it more, and then pointed with her armored pointer finger. “Right here.”

  Just as the image cycled to the next frame, the same ripple that appeared in the shields appeared just in front of the beam. As the beam passed through the ripples its direction was diverted, just as if the beam had passed through a lens or hit a mirror.

  “Holy shit. What is that?” Nancy asked. She was very intrigued now. If she had to guess she’d say that the ripples were miniature hyperspace fields or warped regions of spacetime that were being used to steer the beam. They almost looked like the ripples a QMT jump made at the larger teleportation facilities when the gate was opened or closed. But had it been QMT technology it wouldn’t have functioned because whatever was dampening the Fleet’s jump systems and snap-back wrist bands would have shut those down too.

  “I’m not completely certain, ma’am, but I can tell you that I have been checking all sensors across the fleet and there is one anomaly. The gravimetric sensors from each of the Fleet ships’ data logs show that there is a very small gravitational disturbance that coincides with every turning blue beam,” the STO told her. Nancy knew this was important and good work. She needed to percolate on it and so did Allison, but she also knew that people like Buckley and Snow and the other STOs and CHENGs and all the AICs of what was left of the Fleet needed to see this. Somebody would know how to use this to an advantage.

  “So, it is gravimetric.” Nancy reached up to rub her chin but remembered she had her helmet and gloves on. “Hmm. Miniature gravitational lenses. How do they project them?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am, but with your permission I’d like to make this my priority right now.”

  “Absolutely, uh,” Nancy hesitated just long enough to read her full name in her mindview. It was Teena84119832. “Teena. That is great work. I’d like you to contact Commander Buckley and Commander Snow on the Madira immediately and discuss this with them.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Nancy sat in her chair of the captain’s conference room. She looked around the table at her staff. The only two humans were Commander Rackman, her XO, and herself. She had to keep telling herself that the clones were human too, at least biologically they were. Just because the sentience within them was an AIC didn’t make them less alive. Or did it? The philosophical and metaphysical aspects of what Sienna Madira had done by creating tens of billions of AIC driven clones was new ground. Was she playing like a god or was it a justifiable necessity? Nancy had to admit that without the clones there certainly wouldn’t be enough soldiers to defend against what was coming. Even with them she wasn’t sure if there would be enough. So, for now, she gave the brilliantly mad schemer Madira a pass. For now. That crazy bitch was the Moores’ albatross to bear and to take responsibility for. But Nancy would be glad to help out if the woman started overstepping and the Moores weren’t able to contain her.

  Nancy fell back on years of training and quickly caught her wandering mind and focused it on the task at hand. She had to put first things first. And the first thing was to come up with a plan. She needed to figure out why they were there at that star system, hopefully gain some advantage to use against the Chiata. And she had to save the downed teams stranded on that damned planet. She closed her eyes just long enough to let her mind wrap around all the information and tasks. Then as she heard more motion she let out a sigh and straightened herself up in her chair. She watched as her senior staff all took their seats and the STO rushed in at the last minute and sat in her assigned place. Nancy nodded to her. She was beginning to like the STO, clone or not.

  “Sorry, ma’am, I was doing some last-minute analysis and discussion with Commander Buckley’s AIC. The Commander is presently unavailable,” the clone Teena84119832 told her. Nancy thought about their names. They were too long and confusing to normal people. AICs understood them. The name was the original DNA donor’s file name, not the actual donor person’s name, and the number was the number clone created from that genetic material. Her STO was an eighth-generation clone, which meant she was fairly young by clone standards. Her COB was Franklin 773, which meant he was much older as a third generation clone.

  “Any good news, STO?” Nancy thought that she definitely needed to start assigning nicknames to the clones.

  “Maybe, it is still too soon to say,” Teena replied. “Uh, Captain. Perhaps with more time.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the Commander of the Expeditionary Fleet, General Alexander Moore,” the voice of the General’s Chief of Staff said as his virtual form appeared in the middle of the conference room. The senior crews from all the other ships were there sitting at virtual spaces around a much bigger virtual conference table than would fit in any of the ships’ conference rooms.

  All of the virtual personas stood at attention as Moore clanked into the virtual mindview room. Behind the General was his XO, COB, Air Boss, Ground Boss, and his CAG. Nancy had never been so happy to see DeathRay in her life. He didn’t look much worse for wear than he ever had. Nancy raised a mindview avatar eyebrow at her husband and his, likewise, in return winked at her. Nancy couldn’t help but notice that CHENG Buckley was missing from the meeting as well as Mrs. Moore. She did a quick blue force tracker view and saw that Buckley was still in medical and Sehera was there as well. Their dots were practically on top of each other. That meant she must be helping in whatever procedure Joe was getting. That in turn led her to think about the AEM that Joe had been seeing who was among the survivors stranded on the planet with Dee.

  “Please, be seated, all of you.” General Moore’s mindview avatar told them
all. “This is an informal staff call and planning session to determine what our next move must be. We have people still behind on that planet and I want to know how we are going to get them back. Also, we need to figure out why this planet is important to the Chiata. Captain Penzington, you were in system longer than any of us from the first wave, we’d love to hear what your analysis of the situation is.”

  You’re up, slugger, Allison joked with her. I’m uploading all of the STO’s data now.

  I won’t have time to assimilate it, she thought. You go through it and tell me the high points if they are relevant.

  I’m on it. Give me a moment.

  “Well, sir, it is a mess. You should thank your Ghuthlaeer buddies for shit intel on the size of the alien force in system. As soon as attack wave Alpha jaunted out, Chiata megaships came popping out of hyperspace like a swarm of angry hornets. They were everywhere. We fell back to the system’s asteroid field and deployed the bots and played cat and mouse as long as we could. We managed to pull in fifty-four of the seventy-three fighting mecha jocks left behind by Alpha, but we lost many supercarriers in the process. The remaining pilots were lost. We made two attempts at pushing through the ball to get to the teams pinned down on the ground and could not. By the time this had transpired, all of the ground teams except for those in the Northern Region continent had been totally wiped out. I should also note that none of our attempts to emplace recon teams were successful. None of the teams even made it to the surface. Our only hope for ground intel is from either the seven Maniacs, eight Slayers, or six Juggernauts that remain there. Again the only survivors on the ground, with one exception, are of those teams. They are a mix of mecha and AEMs alike, and are pinned down in ruins along a river at the basin of the Northern Region canyon systems. For whatever reason, the Chiata will not enter the canyon basin. But, any attempts the teams have made to fly out have been met with overwhelming resistance, forcing them to take refuge back in the canyon. I ordered them to stay put, dig in, and investigate why the Chiata will not engage them there. It is very possible that the reason for us coming to this planet has something to do with these ruins, which our imagery data shows are scattered about the Northern Region along the rivers.” Nancy paused to wet her lips and take a breath and to judge the reaction of the General. He hadn’t made any motion at all and he had one helluva poker face. Either that or his mindview avatar was programmed to be that way. But she knew the man fairly well, in real life he was just as perplexing.

  “The other intelligence-gathering possibility will come from the one exception I mentioned earlier, Major Moore from the Archangels. She was shot down and crashed very far north in the Northern Region, almost near the planet’s axial pole, too far from the other teams for them to join up. For whatever reasons again, the Chiata have only responded to her presence with a minimal ground team. The first ground team, Dee, uh, Major Moore, managed to take mostly out and evade the rest. This is pretty much the limit of our surface level intel, sir, I wish we had more. Imagery and sensor analysis of the ruins taken by the AEMs, tankheads, and mecha jocks are on the net and available for analysis.”

  “I see.” Moore didn’t linger on her before he turned to Admiral Walker. “Fullback, what have you figured out? You’ve had longer to lick your wounds than the rest of us. Have any of your looney bin folks come up with anything from the imagery data in system?”

  “Well, General,” Fullback started, “our assessment isn’t much different than Captain Penzington’s. Although we have generated a map system of all the ruins found in the imagery and scanner data that will be highly complemented by the new data from Beta wave. All of the ruins are in the Northern Region Continent only and they are mostly along the rivers, as noted already. While the losses were staggering and horrific, it is quite interesting that the ground teams over that region are the only ones to survive at all. This does suggest that there is something that keeps the Chiata from inhabiting that continent. And it cannot be just a coincidence that this is the only continent that has these ruins on it.”

  “I agree,” Moore replied while rubbing his chin. “I think we need to focus on a plan that takes us to this region of the planet, but from the data we have thus far I don’t believe we have enough forces to penetrate and hold cover long enough to extract our teams and to investigate this anomaly. Perhaps this is why the Ghuthlaeer haven’t cracked this nut themselves.”

  “If I may, sir,” Fullback interrupted. “I have some analysis and a thought on that.”

  “Go ahead, Sharon.”

  “Yes, sir.” The Admiral appeared to be discussing something very briefly with her AIC, and then a virtual battlescape appeared over the conference table. “As you can see from our initial engagement here, our standard naval battle tactics are antiquated for such a large number of forces spread out into an attack structure that mimics what the mecha jocks refer to as ‘the ball,’ sir. And, if you look at our supercarrier movement tracks, each of the individual ships fought very similar to fighters but without wingmen to cover their six. A supercarrier will tend to choose a target and stay with that target until it defeats it. Even as the blue beams began to target that ship the supercarrier jaunts to a new location and continues to engage that same target. This is a somewhat sound tactic in that it allows the supercarrier to keep hitting the same alien ship until its shields and armor weaken and can be destroyed. But this tactic also leads to the supercarrier taking on severe damage and casualties. And this is the tactic widely used by all of the supercarriers during our attack.”

  “Any questions so far?” Fullback scanned around the room but got nothing but affirmative looks from the senior officers. Nancy watched and did her best to size up the clones in the process. The clone captains and senior staff were all completely deadpan with no facial expressions at all. Nancy percolated on the Admiral’s report a bit and realized that they had been fighting the Chiata all wrong, and she suspected this was what the Admiral was about to tell them.

  “Good.” The Admiral continued. “I have modeled and simulated this attack several different ways to find an optimal outcome. The one thing I have noted here is that the Chiata ships, even at the megaship level, all follow a swarm-like attack strategy. An attacking ship will attack the closest threat and several will follow suit. They do not leave that ship until it is done for. Our spreading out of the fleet and attacking one ship per ship has helped to mitigate the swarm defensive posture the Chiata take, but their numbers advantage has been enough to remove our tactical advantage. We need a new tactic.”

  “Would a phalanx type attack work?” Moore asked once Admiral Walker paused for a breath. “If we used every ship to attack a single megaship and then move on to the next one and so on, that might reduce the engagement time per ship.”

  “Well, sir, it takes us on average over one hundred seconds of engagement time to cause an alien megaship to weaken and then another twenty or more to deliver a lethal blow. During this time that ship alone has been able to target and fire their blue beams many times.”

  “And, excuse me, Admiral,” one of the clone captains interrupted. “As we just saw today, they are doing something different in their targeting, and our old rule of thirty seconds and jump was no longer working. We had to cut that to ten seconds per engagement and then jump.”

  “Yes?” The Admiral raised her eyebrows as if she wasn’t aware of that outcome. “That is something they hadn’t done before the Thatcher had to evac. That is, uh, unsettling. And we will need to adjust our models to that. But to answer your original question about the phalanx approach, General Moore, all I can say conclusively is, perhaps. I actually thought of that and simulated it. While initially the phalanx approach will enable many more hits per single enemy target leading to destruction of it sooner, it at the same time makes it easier for the Chiata to target and use the blue beam weapon. The tradeoffs were almost equal.”

  “Make sense to me.” Alexander shook his head in a gesture that appeared to Nancy to be of fr
ustration. “We need something better, more powerful, more out of whatever box the Chiata are in. I’m open for any suggestions here.”

  Do I interrupt and tell him about the STO’s findings or wait? Nancy thought through what proper protocols would be. Is it a good idea to interrupt the general officers while they are talking?

  Give it a minute. If they devolve to only speaking about drivel then I’d say what you have is more important, Allison added. Otherwise, I believe I’d wait and tell him offline.

  I agree. So, now is a good time to brief me on her findings.

  Okay then.

  But keep an ear out for what the General and the Admiral are talking about in case it is pertinent to any of this. Besides, we need to brainstorm this tactical approach as well. I’m thinking on an out-of-the-box idea we can discuss later.

  Roger that. Allison shifted gears and placed several pages of images and charts in front of her mindview. The most interesting to her was the chart showing energy requirements needed to create the miniature warps or ripples in the spacetime structure so precisely and at will. There was more energy there than in the entire remaining Expeditionary Fleet ships combined. Each of the Chiata porcusnail megaships had some sort of power source or capability to apply power at random points about the local space around them at energy density levels of a small neutron star. Allison, or maybe it was the STO, believed that they might be projecting virtual quantum black holes. Once she assimilated that information, her mind wasn’t sure what it had assimilated and just what in the hell any of it meant.

  What is the difference between a virtual quantum black hole and a regular one? Nancy asked.

  Well, Allison began. The virtual quantum black hole is a theoretical concept that Commander Snow developed suggesting that the Chiata are using a projector similar to a vortex projector to create an event horizon the size that would exist about a quantum black hole. Quantum black holes are permanent and were created in the very early local known universe, possibly after collisions of universal quantum membranes, what used to be thought of as the Big Bang. But the virtual ones would evaporate almost as soon as they are formed. Our STO has used the sensor data to determine how long they last, and from that she has been able to calculate the Chandrasekhar limit for the mass-energy density needed to create them.