Primary Inversion

by Catherine Asaro

  We had a problem, however. As we had pushed close to light speed, our time had dilated, which meant it passed more slowly for us than for Tams. It jumped us a few hours into the future, stealing valuable moments we desperately needed.

  Blackstar, plot pastward course, I thought. Compensate for the time dilation.

  Course plotted.

  Good. At superluminal speeds we could travel into the past. If anyone on Tams could have watched, they would have seen this: after we left Delos, four new ships and four antimatter ships appeared in the Tams system, eight in all, each pair-produced from photon annihilations. The matter ships and their pilots were identical to our squad. In fact, they were us.

  While the matter ships continued to Tams, the antimatter squad flew backward to Delos in a time reversed path, at superluminal speeds, gaining fuel rather than losing it, like a movie run in reverse. At the point where I had told Blackstar to go pastward, the observer would see our ships meet the antimatter ships—and annihilate. The energy created by our mutual destruction would balance that lost when the new ships and their antimatter siblings were created near Tams.

  Of course we saw no bizarre creations or destructions. We were at rest relative to our ships, so as far as we knew, we simply traveled from Delos to Tams. The end result was the same; our four Jags arrived at Tams sometime after we left Delos. I vehemently wished we could reach Tams before we left, with enough time to evacuate the planet. But no ship had ever succeeded in thwarting the laws of cause and effect by coming out of inversion before entering it. The best we could do was reach Tams the instant after we inverted at Delos. Usually it took longer, anywhere from hours to days. The farther we traveled, the more errors accumulated and the bigger the discrepancy. I just hoped we made it in time. Although Qox’s flags had farther to go, they carried entire systems dedicated to optimizing spacetime variables.

  However, we had an advantage they could never match.

  No electromagnetic signal could reach a superluminal ship. The only way to communicate among ships in inversion was to shoot superluminal particles—tachyons—at one another. No one had yet figured out how to make tachyons reliably carry information, particularly given that during inversion, the signals could arrive before they were sent. So inverted ships traveled in limbo, drifting. A squad that entered in tight formation could leave inversion spread out across both space and time.

  Except for Jags.

  Rex, Helda, Taas and I were one mind. More than one mind. We were a part of the Kyle-Mesh, which gave us instantaneous communication with a star-spanning network. We coordinated our actions with a precision that defied light speed itself.

  Even Kyle space had limitations. If we entered the Kyle-Mesh after time dilation jumped us into the future, we would link to a future timeline. In theory, it could let us look ahead in time. But if we then returned to the past, as we were doing now, the timeline would be off. Given the situation at Tams, even the small amount of time we would need to dissolve and reform the link in the right time could kill us. All our peek at the future would tell us was that we died in battle because we weren’t prepared for what the Trader ships were doing at the moment we actually engaged them. The very act of checking our future increased the chances we would learn we died in combat. So I kept us in the timeline consistent with the time we left Delos.

  Blackstar, I thought. Check the Kyle-Mesh. Any readings on Qox’s flags?

  One of our sentry ships has sighted Eubian warships on approach to Tams. Estimated arrival times appeared in my mindscape.

  How many?

  A display of Trader vessels appeared in my mindscape. Two battle cruisers, an orbital platform, and three Shieldcraft. Also one labcraft.

  I grimaced. Those had to be the flags. A labcraft could convert even moons into chemicals to react with the Tams atmosphere. At least the flags had no idea we were coming. I wanted to be in and out of Tams before they showed up.

  What about the Streamliner that took off from Delos? I asked.

  Blackstar replaced the display with images of Jaibriol’s ships. Their present course puts them at Tams at roughly the same time as the flags.

  Any data on the Tams situation?

  The last reports indicated the rebels controlled the ground defenses. However, all of their links to the Kyle-Mesh are inoperable.

  No surprise there. The Traders would have destroyed those links as fast as possible to make sure our intelligence was dated.

  Taas sent a thought. What about their orbital defense systems?

  He sounded calm, but I felt his tension. Blackstar responded to my concern by showing me an image of Taas in his cockpit. Data flashed under it: pulse, blood pressure, temperature, breathing rate, brain activity.

  Hey, Taas thought. I’m fine.

  I let the image fade. We’ll probably find hordes of sat-bangs in orbit. Sat-bangs were a nuisance, low-value decoys that were only good for one missile or an old style laser. Their electronic signatures made them appear as high value targets, though, so they seemed far more dangerous than they actually were.

  Robot drones too, I thought. Possibly a robot crewed Sentinel.

  Why a Sentinel? Helda asked. Putting a platform in orbit makes it vulnerable.

  I swapped that over to Rex, who had the expertise on platforms.

  They have no moon to use for a base, so they need something in orbit, Rex answered. They have to have something up there like a Sentinel, because the rebels control the ground defenses. That could outweigh the Sentinel’s vulnerability, especially given they’ve no reason to expect our attack.

  The prospect of a Sentinel worried me. It would add vicious fangs to the orbital defenses. In theory, a Jag squad coming out of inversion could take on an orbital platform and survive; realistically, if we didn’t knock it out immediately, with the advantage of surprise, our chances plummeted.

  How about manned Solos? Taas asked.

  It was a good question. The Solos were the closest Trader counterpart to our Jags.

  Only a few, Rex thought. Normally ground based. But they may be in orbit here.

  Especially given that Solos carry sophisticated EIs, I added. If the rebels capture even one, they have an EI to adapt for their own ships.

  What about tau missiles? Helda asked.

  Solos have them, I thought. Just hope it’s not too many. Taus were equipped with inversion drives, which turned them into miniature starships. The Traders were concerned with what was happening on the planet, though, not in space, which I hoped meant they put the expensive and bulky tau missiles low on their list of priorities.

  Of course, they could cripple the rebellion by smashing a tau into Tams at relativistic speed. The rebels had made the same assumption as had the rest of the sane universe, that Ur Qox wouldn’t destroy such a desirable territory. We had been wrong, all of us. The Tams resistance was a symbol of defiance, one far more potent to Qox than we had realized, powerful enough that he wanted them destroyed in the most dramatic way possible as a warning to any others who thought to defy his rule.

  Considering our options, I thought our best bet was to come out of inversion as close to Tams as possible, launching a cloud of smart missiles. Well-settled planets had defenses against relativistic attack, but Tams was a small station in a backwater region. That might give us a chance of success. Whether or not it was more than a vanishingly small chance was another story; I had seen partial stats on its ODS, or orbital defense system. It wasn’t trivial.

  When we reach Tams, I thought, our advantages will be surprise, speed, and our Jag link. Disadvantages: we’re four Jags against a full ODS and we can’t communicate with the rebels until we come out of inversion. Strategy: reinvert close to the planet, only twenty million kilometers out, in a close formation. We transmit our warning to the rebels using neutrino comms and exhaust modulation. The Traders would be hard pressed to stop either; the gamma source produced by our exhaust would be a spectacular beacon, and neutrinos went through almost anything. Immedi
ately release a cloud of MIRVs. The MIRVs, or multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles, would be traveling at relativistic speeds with us, giving them the energy equivalent of megaton bombs. After we knock out the ODS, we deliver the EI’s brains to the colony.

  Understood. The response echoed from all four ships.

  Ready to reinvert, Blackstar thought.

  I fired the photon thrusters—and went into stasis. The only way I knew I hadn’t been conscious while we decelerated was by the discontinuous change in speed on my displays. The Jag slowed down in a series of jumps I perceived as continuous. The stars moved forward, converging on a point in front of the ship. Their colors shifted toward blue, then went ultraviolet and disappeared from my screens. Blackstar created a holomap showing the stars as they collapsed into the point—

  —and we roared out of inversion in perfect formation, blasting our warning to Tams as we hurtled toward the planet, preceded by a swarm of relativistic missiles.

  Blackstar flooded my mind with data; the Tams ODS reacted to our attack by sending what looked like an entire fleet of Sentinels. But I recognized those signatures—most were decoys.

  Enemy taus sighted—and disappeared, Blackstar thought.

  Evade! The taus would disappear only if they inverted—

  —and I came out of stasis. Blackstar had thrown the Jag into such an abrupt course change that the stasis coil had kicked in, protecting me from the lethal accelerations.

  Taus detonated to port, Blackstar thought. Stats poured into my spinal node faster than an unboosted brain could absorb. Tau missiles equipped with inversion drives were catching our MIRVs and inverting. They targeted our positions and reinverted, exploding both themselves and their MIRV captives in violent bursts of radiation. The taus had to invert to catch us, but their foray through inversion threw them off. If they could have tracked us while they were superluminal, they might have caught us, but they came out either seconds too late or in the wrong place.

  We hurtled beyond the planet’s orbit and headed for the sun, accelerating, faster, faster—

  Invert, I thought.

  My stomach wrenched as we entered superluminal space. We kept accelerating, up to millions of times light speed. Time went faster for us than for Tams, so we could come around and re-enter the system with only seconds passing there. We came out of inversion a few million kilometers from the planet, flying “out of the sun,” spraying our last MIRVs in a cloud ahead of the squad.

  ODS sterilized, Blackstar thought.

  Data poured into our mindscapes. We had eliminated the entire system: taus, decoys, drones, and a Sentinel orbiting platform. Helda whooped, and Rex sent me an image of his wickedly exultant grin. We had done it!

  Taas’s laugh rumbled in my mind. The ODS were against us, but we beat them.

  I groaned. Continue dumping velocity on approach to Tams.

  We “braked” down, flicking into stasis, again, again, we were nearing Tams now, slowing for atmospheric entry—

  I came out of stasis to the scream of alarms. Stats reeled through my mindscape: Solos and cybernetic drones were boiling up from the planet.

  Damn! Engage shrouds!

  Three thoughts answered in a light speed pulse. Engaged.

  We vanished. Blackbody shielding turned our hulls into surfaces that reflected no light. It was minimal stealth; the Traders knew we were here, and every time we accelerated our exhaust gave us away.

  Helda, get down as far as you can, I thought. We’ll cover you. Drop the EI’s in a drone. I didn’t know if the rebels could recover it, but we no longer had choices. We had lost our advantage of surprise and used up our MIRVs. Nor could we do more inversion tricks, because if accelerated to relativistic speeds, it would leave Helda undefended while she tried to do the drop.

  Blackstar gave me its analysis of the Solos and drones. They were coming from the remains of an underground base, the only beleaguered remains of the ground defenses. It looked as if the Trader military had overcome the rebels, and the insurgents had blown up most of the defense installations rather than let them be recaptured.

  Prime Annihilators, I thought. Like Jumblers and photon thrusters, these mammoths worked on pair annihilation. But Annihilators were the mammoths. They used antiprotons, with energies two hundred times greater than positrons, millions of times greater than wimpy bitons. No matter that beams were easier to avoid than smart missiles; Annihilators offered the best offense against ships in stasis. A ship with its quantum state frozen could survive immense forces—including enemy fire. They were more fragile to beams than missiles, however, because annihilating matter was easier than deforming it.

  Blackstar, I thought. Do the Trader ships have inversion capability?

  Yes. Blackstar showed me images of four drones and five Solos. Three of the Solos also carry MIRVs.

  Damn. Those Solos could try the same gambit with their MIRVs that we had used. We had warning now and could use decoy dust to confuse their missiles, but I needed no EI to tell me how slim our chances were. At least the Solos couldn’t coordinate during inversion or come out of it simultaneously, especially not with us harrying them. It meant they could hit one another instead of us when they launched their MIRVs. The question was: were they willing to kill each other to kill us?

  I didn’t want to find out. We had to destroy them before they had a chance to try. As Redstar and Goldstar closed on two of the Solos, Blackstar showed me a drone on an intercept course.

  Get him, I thought.

  Firing.

  Mag-shields protected the drone, magnetic fields that deflected charged particles. No beam was perfectly neutral, but most of my shot reached its target. Where it hit the drone, the annihilations created pion showers, which started other devastatingly high energy processes, giving birth to particles and radiation that tore through the fusion engines, weapons bays, inversion engines, the generators powering the antimatter containment fields—

  —and the drone disappeared in a silent burst of radiation and exploding debris. Part of it vanished with the eerie sucked away effect created when real matter collapsed into the complex space within a fuel containment bottle.

  Warning: Blackstar thought. Greenstar detected.

  Taas fired at a Solo bearing down on him. Blackstar highlighted his shot on my display, red for a tau missile. The miniature, volatile starship streaked out at the Solo. Jags couldn’t carry many of the bulky taus; Taas had just used a fourth of his supply—

  —lost a fourth of his supply. The Solo caught it with an Annihilator. The tau exploded close enough to destroy the Solo, but the ship remained whole, thrown into stasis by its EI. It sped away from Taas and toward me like a rigid body in frictionless motion. Then the Solo dropped out of stasis—and I gasped as terror punctured my mind.

  Blocking, Blackstar thought.

  Although the fear receded, it didn’t vanish; with my boosted concentration so focused on the Solo, I couldn’t shut out the pilot’s reaction. He was so scared, so young, barely more than a boy, one who had never expected combat on this simple assignment

  …I never wanted to fly a Solo, never wanted to be near one. How could I have believed it would make my dreams reality, lift me up—I’m paying for that dream—

  Blackstar, block! Tears ran down my face, the tears of my enemy. The block psicon flashed futilely in my mind, over and over.

  Firing, Blackstar thought.

  My Annihilator caught the Solo point-blank and detonated it into oblivion. I gasped as the boy’s death scream vibrated in my mind.

  Blackstar. I drew in a sobbing breath. Disconnect my emotive centers.

  Disconnected.

  The part of my brain that cried in protest against the killing was suddenly locked in a glass-walled prison, its protests muted, unable to stop me from doing what had to be done. After the battle, if I survived, having used the disconnect would leave me feeling as if it had parched my soul, but without it, I couldn’t function.

  Red and Gol
d have been detected. Blackstar flashed images of Helda and Rex engaging two drones and a Solo. Another three drones were on intercept courses with us.

  Evasive pattern two, I thought.

  Blackstar fired the maneuvering rockets, using “cold” thrust from the fusion engines, changing course every second or less. The cocoon protected me against lesser accelerations, and Blackstar snapped us into stasis during lethal forces.

  My Annihilator exploded one of the drones in a violent flash of radiation. An Annihilator shot from another drone stabbed through space where I had been an instant before. Robot ships had no need of stasis to keep a pilot alive, which meant they were more maneuverable than Jags. But their EI brains limited their strategy. A mature, well developed EI came close to human reasoning power, but it wasn’t enough. Blackstar and I had worked together for over two decades, a synthesis that had evolved beyond what any EI or human could do alone.

  My Jag hurtled past the third drone, and I caught it with an Annihilator. As the drone exploded, Blackstar showed me another Solo. It was thousands of kilometers away, running stealth, hiding in a shroud as it hurtled toward me. Even without the warning, I would have known it was there. I felt the pilot. He was a taskmaker, part Aristo, the same as Jaibriol’s guards. I couldn’t hit his ship with my Annihilator; the beam had no fuel left. A Jag could only carry so much antimatter, and a good portion of that went to our positron fuel.

  Switch to Impactor, I thought.

  The Solo came at me like a knight in a stealth jousting tournament. As we hurtled past each other, I fired the Impactor, a stream of clusters that fused on impact like little H-bombs. The Solo was veering in its own evasion pattern, however, and releasing clouds of smart dust that confused my tracking systems. My shot missed, stabbing uselessly into space. The Solo winged my mag-shields with his Annihilator, and particles spiraled madly off into space. Stats said I had been in stasis several times. Mercifully, so far my Jag hadn’t sustained damage.