“You might say,” Gina agreed, not bringing up the disadvantages such as the likelihood of mania and death by whigout. The regiment’s smoothies came to mind as another downside, a disgustingly foul tasting one, and then there was the fact that all vipers were sterile and cut off from a normal family life. Yeah, instant access to data was great... right. “Yeah.”
Stone was first. “I have a few fleet engagements.”
Kate nodded. “Same.”
Gina agreed as the data came in. “No serious incursions, or what we would call serious today. No doubt the colonists back then would disagree. The worlds we lost have long since been folded back into the Alliance, but none were in this sector.”
“There were a couple in the Arcadian Sector,” Kate pointed out. “That’s pretty close relatively speaking.”
“So there was Merki activity in the region?” Franks asked and they all nodded. “Would it make strategic sense from the Merki point of view to colonise our target system?”
“Hell yes!” Stone growled. “Three of those planets almost have to be gas giants going by their size. Just from a logistical point of view it would make sense to drop an outpost there.”
“We don’t have data confirming that,” Kate warned. “But assuming the graphics in the tank are right, I agree it’s likely those big ones are gas giants.”
The silence stretched out until Janice broke it. “We need more data, and the only way to get it is by going there for a look.”
Everyone nodded.
“For that we need the navy,” Stone announced catching everyone’s eyes. “We wait.”
Gina nodded. It was all they could do. For now.
* * *
25 ~ Leviathan
Aboard ASN Warrior, Approaching NGC 1511-2262
Gina shifted in her seat at the observer station of Captain Colgan’s bridge and watched the quiet efficiency of his crew going about their business. Colgan hadn’t surprised her with his willingness to listen to Stone’s pitch when James had requested a meeting. He was a veteran of the Shan campaign and knew firsthand the dangers of complacency where the Merki were concerned. No, his reaction didn’t surprise her; it was Captain Vardell’s almost eager willingness to throw over her mission in favour of this new one that made her pause.
Colgan’s opinion and reputation had weight of course; that helped, but for Vardell to go off mission was a big deal. She would have to account for herself and back up her reasons when the time came to report to higher authority, especially when she would be reporting directly to the person who had originated the mission she had ditched. Showing the flag wasn’t a glamorous one, but Commodore Walder had felt the mission was desirable and had value. Persuading her that it did not, or had less at least than the Hail Mary pass they were embarked upon would be hard. No doubt that was part of Vardell’s reasoning for dispatching a drone to Beaufort detailing what they knew and were doing about it. Stone had also launched a drone with similar information but home to the general.
Stone and Kate were aboard Shannon. It had seemed sensible to split their force between the two ships. God forbid they lose one to enemy action, but if it happened they hoped at least one viper would survive to report in. Gina had decided to stick with the boffins aboard Warrior. It gave Kate time alone with Stone; something she felt they needed. They hadn’t spoken with her about it, but she sensed all was not well between them. She hoped they could work it out and regain their closeness. They had been good together.
“Time?” Colgan asked.
“Three minutes to translation, Skipper,” the helmswoman said without turning.
“Tactical on main viewer,” he replied after a brief nod.
“Aye, sir,” the XO replied.
Gina turned her attention to the main viewer in time to see the swirling otherness of foldspace disappear to be replaced by blackness filled with red lines—the sensor grid. Sensors were useless in foldspace, but as soon as they translated back to n-space those lines would have meaning, sectioning the system into understandable areas that could be used for navigation and targeting.
“Bring us to battle stations if you please,” Colgan said powering his station around to face the comm shack.
“Aye sir,” Lieutenant Ricks said and the battle stations alarm sounded throughout the ship.
Gina could easily imagine the marines scrambling down in the guts of the ship; the rest of the crew too of course, but she had been a marine once. She had never been assigned to a ship, but had travelled aboard many and heard the stories. She had been a line marine, not a ship puke, but they’d all been marines and therefore only one order away from duty aboard a ship. All marines were trigger pullers first; specialisations came second only after that. Nope, no ship action for her. She wondered what it was like firing one of those monster lasers in local control, right on the mount, rather than remotely. She bet it was satisfying. She just bet it was.
“...all clear, Anya?” Colgan was saying.
“Aye, sir,” Anya Ivanova at tactical responded. “Stealth mode to the max upon emergence.”
“Good. I don’t want a whisper leaving this ship until we know what we’re getting into. Point defence free, but nothing that can break our bubble until I say so.”
“Aye, sir,” Anya said, not pointing out the order was obvious.
Everyone knew what to do, but they expected their skipper to give orders, just as he expected them to not need those orders in extremis. They did it the navy way, just as Gina had done things the marine way in her time, and now did them the viper way. Everyone did their duty. That’s what it came down to in the end.
“Thirty seconds,” the helmswoman said.
Gina secured her borrowed helmet’s visor, and the bridge crew did the same. She was wearing a navy shipsuit given to her when she came aboard, as was James and the rest of the team. She glanced at her life support umbilical, just making sure. She knew it was secure, but habit had her checking.
“Ten seconds... five... exe—”
The world turned inside out.
* * *
Aboard ASN Warrior, NGC 1511-2262, Border Zone
Colgan finally pulled his eyes away from his monitors and took a moment to rack his helmet. He was the last one to do so. He hadn’t wanted to take even a moment’s attention away from the data coming in. Voices on the bridge were hushed and tense as his people worked at their stations, but there wasn’t much yet to concern them.
He glanced up at the main screen where it displayed the tactical situation, populated now with meaningful data. The sun and planets including their orbits were clear. The system contained two gas giants, not three as they had expected, and four other planets two of which were in the liquid water zone. Various other bodies were being plotted and added as the data trickled in; moons, asteroids and the like. It was slow meticulous work, but something familiar from his Survey Corps days.
The sight of Shannon skulking along beside them was reassuring. Both ships were in full stealth and sucking in data for all they were worth using passive scans alone. Silent running was the order of the day, the week, and the bloody month if it took that long to unravel the mystery of this place. They had comm between ships using TBC, and that gave them discreet instant communications at such short range. They were sharing data, and the load required to obtain it, in an effort to provide redundancy and speed up the process in case they needed to run.
So far that possibility seemed unlikely, and the lack of threat made him very nervous. He knew Merkiaari had been here, knew it beyond question. Tait had obtained his cargo here, and the how of that was occupying his every waking moment. He couldn’t conceive of how such a man had accomplished it, and their passive scans were not helping, so far at least, to discover the secret.
They had elected to translate back to n-space on the very edge of the zone for safety, and that meant any activity within the system took a long time to reach them. The light speed limit was exactly that; a limit that could not be circumvented. They we
re about as far out as it was possible to be and still be nominally within the system and that meant every damn thing took an age. He was actually used to that but in different circumstances. Surveying an unexplored system like this would have felt nostalgic if not for the fear they might screw up and bring the Merkiaari down upon their heads.
He glanced at Janice’s board, but as before the jump drive was in the green. Of course it was. He’d ordered it charged from auxiliary as a precaution the moment they’d arrived. He was sure Shannon’s drive was hot as well. They couldn’t keep it like that forever... or rather they shouldn’t do so. Components could fail, and fully charged jump initiator coils could fail catastrophically. Liberating all that energy inside a ship would do bad things to the crew and the ship. Even if the coils didn’t fail, keeping them at full charge for too long would knock years off their lifespan. BuShips would not be pleased.
He turned to the comm shack. “Anything, Mark?”
Mark Ricks was listening hard for comm traffic as well as analysing the incoming data looking for Merki electronic emissions. He shook his head. “Nothing. This system is dead.”
“Keep at it. We know from the Shan campaign that the Merki have better jamming than us.”
“But I’m not being jammed, Skipper. I’m getting background noise and that’s it.”
“Even so,” he said. “Jamming and stealth tech go hand in hand. We don’t know what they have.”
Ricks obviously wanted to argue, but he just nodded. “Aye, sir.”
He turned to face front again, and used his station’s screens to review the raw data coming in from the ship’s sensors on its way to Scan and Francis Groves’ eagle eyes, as well as the refined take piped to the bridge from CIC to Anya’s station at Tactical. It wasn’t that he doubted his people’s abilities down in CIC; he didn’t, and he had confidence in Warrior’s ability to alert him if she saw something they needed to know. Her computer was second only to that installed in the Washington class of heavy cruiser—only one generation removed from cutting edge tech. No, he was just used to seeing patterns in raw data from his Survey Corps days, and therefore might see something others missed. He was vein enough to think his oversight had some value.
Warrior and Shannon continued their cautious approach to the inner system. Both were at battle stations and maximum stealth. They were twin holes in space; their nanocoat dialled to black, their sensors passive, and power plants dialled down so low they were barely operating ship’s systems. The only way to reduce output further would be by standing down from battle stations and taking all weapons offline. That wasn’t happening. As it was, Warrior had her tubes loaded and lasers at standby readiness, but all targeting was offline. They couldn’t fire a spit ball without targeting sensors, but that was fine. It would take barely a moment for them to go active.
“Contact!” Groves sang out and the main viewer updated to reveal a baleful red glow just rounding the fourth planet. “Contact designate: Alpha-One. Merkiaari ship!”
Colgan froze in horror. A ship that size? Impossible! It was bigger than the biggest station he had ever visited in the Alliance! No one built such things, no one! What possible use was there for such a ship? The Alliance wouldn’t do it, couldn’t do it! The power required to make it mobile would dwarf that needed by an entire colony! He calmed his yammering brain and tried to concentrate. It was here; it was therefore not only possible to make a ship that size mobile, the Merki had done so, and for a reason. What reason?
“Weapons?” he snapped.
“Unknown class, unknown armament, sir,” Groves said sounding appalled. “It’s huge... might it be a station and not a ship?”
He liked the possibility, but no, its silhouette alone revealed the telltale structures required for all operational foldspace drives. He pointed that out to his XO and she nodded grimly.
“I have Captain Vardell on the line, Skip,” Ricks said.
He nodded, he wasn’t surprised. “I’ll take it here.”
“Aye, sir,” Ricks said switching Vardell through.
Louise appeared on his number two monitor replacing the raw feed that had been scrolling down detailing the leviathan just discovered.
“Jeff,” she said.
“Louise. What can I do for you?”
She grinned. “I think we found the source of your Merkiaari. Big sucker isn’t it?”
“Some might think the Merki have an inferiority complex. They certainly go for size over style.”
Vardell pursed her lips at that observation. “There’s a certain style in going for broke in my opinion.”
“Very true. Thoughts? Orders?”
“We’re doing all we can at this point. I say we keep doing it until the situation changes. That thing can’t be very fast or manoeuvrable. We should be able to evade it easily if it gets underway. I’ll want a conference by holo later... let’s say 1800 hours and invite the science team. I want their opinion on this thing.”
“Understood. I’m wondering if we might have our very first civilian Merkiaari ship here.”
“Do they even have civilians?”
He shrugged, he didn’t know. “I’ll ask. If anyone knows the answer, one of my boffins will.”
“I’ve read the literature,” Vardell said doubtfully. “There are all kinds of theories, but I don’t think anyone really knows the truth.”
“Professor Franks is one of the leading experts in the field. His best guess is probably as close to right as we’ll ever get short of meeting a Merki civilian.”
Vardell looked disgusted. “Not a pretty thought. Merkiaari and civilian... what could be worse?”
“A Merkiaari newsie?”
Vardell’s eyes widened.
Colgan chuckled. “Yeah, it’s a pretty horrible thought. I’ve had more than enough of the media, Louise. I know Commodore Walder thinks we all revel in notoriety over here, but the truth is we’re all sick of it.”
“I can believe it. See you in conference at 1800. Shannon out.”
The screen refreshed and the data stream reappeared scrolling down the screen. He read the data but nothing leapt out at him except perhaps for the complete lack of information relating to defensive or offensive capabilities. They were too far out for detail, but such things should... should be obvious by now. They weren’t. Was the ship cloaked in some way? It didn’t seem likely to him. Why cloak weapons but leave everything else open to chance and random passive scans? No, that made no sense at all.
“Anything to add, XO?”
Groves was ready with a report. “Preliminary, but yes. Mass is estimated at over seven million tonnes displacement. That’s six times heavier than our biggest carriers—the Hercules class—and it’s over double the volume of those ships leading me to suspect large open internal spaces.”
Colgan nodded, but he was appalled. The Hercules class of carrier weighed in at right around 1.2 million tonnes. It was the heaviest ship class in the list and had taken the crown from the previous holder of the top spot—the stupendous Nimitz class once known as a super carrier due to its size and speed. It had held the crown for the preceding fifty years; there were plenty of them still in service. Super dreadnoughts were nominally in the same weight class, but they were physically smaller due to heavy armour and design specs. Carriers were far larger in volume than dreadnought’s due to their flight decks and hangar design.
Groves went on. “We have nothing yet on its abilities. Until it powers up I can’t judge shield capacity, defensive capabilities, its speed or manoeuvrability... basically we’re blind on all that. Its power output is off the scale, Skipper. I’ve counted over a dozen point sources. Those reactors each have a capacity four times ours. My guess is they need them to power heavy shields to cover something that size, and to power a foldspace drive capable of moving the thing.”
“Or a big arse laser,” Ricks muttered and flushed when Colgan turned toward him. “Sorry, sir.”
“No it’s alright. That was a good point. Any e
vidence of that XO?”
“None. As I said we have nothing on its weaponry, but Merki ships never go unarmed. They have something over there. With the power available they could have hundreds of our super dreadnought 600mm lasers and grazers. They could have more or less than that, bigger or smaller caliber. They could have those giant PPC cannons the Shan like so much. I have no idea!”
Groves sounded frustrated by that.
He understood the feeling, because he was as well. “We’ll know eventually. Keep on it, XO. We have a conference at 1800 with Shannon and I want you and Anya there.” He turned to Ricks. “Inform the boffins of the meeting, please Mark.”
Ricks nodded and turned to do that. “Aye, sir.”
“Erm... may I ask something?” Fuentez said raising a hand for attention.
He powered his station around to face her observer station. “Go ahead, Lieutenant.”
“Look, none of this stuff is in my area,” Fuentez said indicating the main viewer. “And you guys probably already thought of it, or it’s so obvious you haven’t said...”
He smiled at the exaggerated diplomacy. “But?”
“But, if I’m reading it right that mother of a ship is in geosynch of the planet. Has anyone considered why that is?”
He hadn’t given it a thought. He turned to Groves. “XO?”
Groves was working her controls, but she looked up to answer. “Checking it now.”
Fuentez grinned. “Okay. Can we tell from here if the Merki have made landings at all?”
The thought chilled him, and he kicked himself for becoming fixated on that huge ship. Of course it had entered the system for a reason and taken up station around that planet. Of course it had. He should have thought to ask Francis long before now. He wondered if those aboard Shannon had investigated the reason, but no, they were sharing data. He would have known.
“Split attention between ship and planet, XO.”
“Aye, sir, already doing that... now anyway.”
He turned to Ricks. “Inform Shannon what we’re about and ask they do the same.”
Merkiaari Wars: 04 - Operation Breakout Page 32