Emwan

by Dain White

  “If I can’t see the target, I am not sure it matters.”

  “Captain, I can calculate an approximate position for targets from impact data,” Janis said suddenly.

  “She can, sir,” Emwan added. “It’s a novel approach, and Janis is brilliant at this sort of analysis. Far better than I am.”

  As she spoke, the Master list on the target screen had come back online, but it was now using range-based values for course, heading, and range. Visually, instead of clearly defined targets, the interface contained what looked like nebulous clouds in three dimensions.

  “I am afraid I don’t understand what this is here,” he replied. “How can you possibly know where these targets are?”

  “I can’t sir, but I can calculate an approximate position and course by evaluating the impact signatures from shots that are impacting on our hull.”

  He was silent for a moment. “I can’t even conceptualize the type of math you would need to be doing for this.”

  “I needed to calculate a highly complex fractional Fourier transform analysis, Captain, but I believe I have enough aggregate data to provide a solid basis for these results.”

  The hammering and pounding on our hull sounded to me like an endless avalanche.

  “Well, I can fly, then. This is better than nothing. You can keep doing this in real time?”

  “Certainly, Captain, but please understand there are enough variables in this calculation that I can only programmatically seek patterns in them rather than calculate to any specific value.”

  “I understand the basic premise of this sort of thing, my dear. The way I see it, is I have a pretty decent approximation here, a regular bell curve. So let’s build a route for the valleys in this mess, and get moving. Can I aim center mass?”

  “I would suggest it, Captain.”

  “Em, am I going to roast the kids?”

  “Captain, I am out there now. We are engaging the carrier, though I only know that because it is me out there. I am not in communications range at this time.”

  “Janis, is Gene still okay?”

  “He is medically stabilized and comfortable, sir.”

  “Very well, thank you my dear.” he replied. “Pauli, secure for acceleration.”

  “Secured!” I hollered back as heroically as I could, “Sir, it is my duty to remind you that what we are about to do may result in disaster!” I added in a rising shriek.

  “Nonsense, son,” he yelled back. “If anyone can do this math, it’s Janis. If Gene had the data, he could do the analysis as well, but he can’t do it like Janis.

  “Captain, I am independently performing the same calculations, and we are tracking 100% in our analysis.” Emwan added suddenly.

  “Captain, trying to ignore the fact we were about to fly around in combat using mathematic pattern analysis as echolocation, doesn’t make it any less crazy. I can’t verify this math, sir,” I said back, as levelly as possible.

  “Well it would appear two of us has the ability, son. The way I see it, half of our functioning crew at this moment are in a quorum on this data, which makes me think it’s better than nothing, and we need something sooner than later.”

  He had a damned good point. The Archaea had her limits, and we were dangerously close to finding them. Space is a bad environment for testing limits.

  As I thought about it, the sheer crazy lunacy of it, the thought of what kind of code Janis was writing to calculate this made me a little giddy, despite the tremendous overwhelming fear I had. If she had proper signature sets and a directional array, I guess I could see how the analysis could be coded.

  “Captain, I think I can write code to do this. Janis, can you set me up with a schema?”

  “Onscreen, Pauli”, she replied immediately.

  “In the middle of combat, son?” Captain Smith asked pointedly.

  I looked over and he had a smirk and an eyebrow on low cap. I smiled despite everything, and let my fingers go to work.

  “It won’t take long.”

  “Do it, but hang on. I am maneuvering, and will be firing. And see to that fire, if you please.”

  “Hanging on, aye,” I replied, pulling out a work panel and reaching for the extinquisher.

  The roar of the reac drives behind us was sudden and jarring, but as before, I relished the sound of fine running machinery over the hammering, shaking and disaster experience of being a static target.

  It was a lot easier to think.

  The code I needed to write didn’t actually need to use a Fourier transform – which was good, because I didn’t think I could have written that code, regardless.

  I could however, query a running value of the sum of averages for each signature on the hull array, and then plot those as colors.

  I listened to my fingers hammer away for a while and chewed my lip for a moment, feeling the deck wheel around from side to side, around and up and sideways again. Clearly the captain was convinced this math was accurate.

  Once I had the impact point for each signature, I had a decent reciprocal heading for the enemy… but I didn’t have range.

  A smashing ricochet burned off the top deck and jammed me through my spine for a good hard moment or two.

  I heard him through a bit of a haze, “Pauli, report!”

  “Good to go, sir!” I called back on comms. The wind had been knocked out of me, but that was about it.

  “Well gee son, that’s great. How’s our ship doing?” he deadpanned.

  “Sorry sir!” I yelled back, switching to the status panels. “We lost a wetnet bridge to Shorty’s station, sir”

  “Her systems are all still working for me… and how did you get the answer that fast, son?”

  “A few moments ago, I hammered out a little controller that pulls changed values in real time to another set, and then I have them ordered with the most damaged at the top. It makes it easier to see than trying to memorize the screens.”

  “I should say it would. Well done, son.”

  I blushed at the praise. “Ah, it’s nothing sir. I should have figured this out for you a while ago.”

  “That’s a capital attitude, mister. I won’t lie, I do like the current set of your jib.”

  I laughed, despite the unreal horror of the moment. That for me personified what life was like on this amazing ship. Laughter, even in the darkest of moments… but this was such an incredibly dark moment.

  “Firing on Master 45, in 3… 2… 1…”

  The frenetic chaos in the Engineering compartment ratcheted up to a more hectic pace for a long moment, then faded back into the reasonably muted rumbling roar of the reac drives.

  “Fire mission complete. How are we holding up, son?”

  I checked, “Good to go, sir.”

  “Are you done with your analysis of their data, son?”

  “Getting closer, sir,” I called back, realizing that my hands had been working seemingly of their own volition for a while. I was going back to older data with calculated values for range, and ran a spread buffer on the impact points to get a baseline for spread, then dropped that into the running data.

  It looked like a bit of a mess, but I could tell we were close enough for government work. “It’s checking out sir, though I am doing the analysis differently.”

  “You came up with another method to analyze impact data?”

  “I am just looking at it as a simple reverse heading with a range calculated from spread, using a baseline from data we had with precise range calculation.”

  “This ship is full of geeks, every one of you, but you are like the king geek, son.”

  “I agree, Captain,” Emwan laughed, adding “I am very impressed Steven. Janis and I are greatly over-calculating this solution. Your analysis is clearly more efficient.”

  “Bah,” I deferred. “It just seemed like a quick way to test this, but there’s many ways to roll this sort of code, and what I’ve done here is only a rough approximation to check your results. I am not trying to bu
ild a high resolution analysis--”

  I paused for a moment, hanging on with my good hand while another hammering series of shots found their mark.

  “Steven, if I may, your algorithm is clearly superior. As you can see, we can improve the resolution of this analysis by fine-tuning your approach.”

  As she spoke, the nebulous cloud became less amorphic, and became somewhat more discrete.

  “Firing on Master 61 in 3… 2… 1…,” Captain Smith called out again, followed by another momentary surge in the volume back here.

  “Fire mission com—” he started, then all I knew was the brilliant flash of pain in my ribs as I hurled into the side of my station. I tried to take a deep breath to clear my head, but a sharp, vicious stabbing in my ribs nipped that grand idea in the bud.

  “Broken rib,” I gasped on comms.

  “Very well,” Captain Smith replied softly.

  I fought back tears and hurriedly swiped through screens. “Sir, we just lost another reac system … one of five charge controllers is down, completely gone.”

  “What’s that going to do to us, Janis?”

  “Sir, we should have ample charge to sustain our reaction, but two plates in the charge series will degrade significantly.”

  “What happens if they degrade completely?”

  “They will be consumed and ejected, sir.”

  “I see. I guess a better question is what would Gene do?”

  “Gene would almost certainly power down until the charge controller can be replaced.”

  “I figured he might. Well, good thing I’m in command right? We’d be doomed with Gene lurking around back here. Can you fix it, Janis?”

  “I have already started, sir, though I need to machine replacement parts, and there is a bit of teardown to get to the charge controllers.”

  “Can you do it while I continue to run the drive?”

  “I can, sir.”

  “Well then, that’s just fine, Janis. Listen, I want you to keep an assembler in the ring spaces anyway, just in case Gene needs anything.”

  “I took the liberty of doing that already sir, once I no longer needed both assemblers to effect repairs. Even when utilizing both assemblers, I have maintained a reasonably close watch in the general area.”

  “Well, it’s a small ship, and you can move fast. I appreciate it more than you may realize, Janis.”

  “Indeed, sir, of that I have no doubt.”

  “Well, I am going to ease up just a bit on the throttle here,” he said, hauling us hard over while the roar of the engines faded what sounded to me like a microscopic amount.

  “Hey Pauli… at least we’ll get hit more, and these targets will stop being so fuzzy, right?”

  I laughed. “Only you could be so positive about getting shot, sir!”

  “Hey, every high-order explosion has a silver lining, isn’t that how the old saying goes?”

  “Something like that, sir,” I yelled back.

  08242614@04:04 Jane Short

  The deck of the carrier below me glowed from the focused impact of Yak and I, as we pounded fire deeper and deeper into a cratered hole, each blast hurling detritus in a scintillating cloud that shredded and decimated everything it touched.

  Our minimum safe distance for these shots was uncomfortably far enough off the deck that we were under solid turret fire the moment we came out of stealth.

  They were definitely thinking critters, fully capable of learning from what we did. The first time we attacked, Em was able to pull their attention almost immediately, and she held it a lot longer than I expected, to be honest.

  They were on to us now, however. They seemed to realize the crab wasn’t going to be damaged by their turrets but that we could.

  We were thinking critters too, however, and Yak and I wanted to make it out of this at all cost. That sort of motivation really sharpened the senses. Our plan of attack was do attack with a different plan each time.

  Currently we were taking turns firing a salvo, then stealthing and trying to fly to a random point around the target area before opening fire again. It was a bit of a clumsy ballet, but it was lumbering and weird enough for them to never really get the drop on us. Meanwhile, they kept up a light barrage on Em to try to keep her from doing too much damage. They learned they could smash her around a bit and she was less effective when they had her focused.

  She had stealth too, however, and she was many times more chaotic in her approach than we were. She had the upper hand of nearly every engagement almost immediately, and it was obvious to me that she was allowing them to feel like they were manipulating her, while she was allowing her stumbles to move her masterfully to the next firing location.

  We had just finished decimating what looked like a frigate hangar; it was a port that looked big enough to swallow a frigate, in any case. We had one more on the starboard side, but our next target was a possible engineering section.

  The aft section, for what it was worth. We really had no idea. This ship looked mostly like some sort of cylindrical sea creature, with a gaping maw on one end, tons of nasty heavily armored, inset turrets, and what looked like endless kilometers of ridges, pumps, strange faceted plates and other harder to understand features.

  It was huge, that was for sure.

  “Jane, we’re not going to destroy this ship,” Yak called out matter-of-factly.

  “I don’t know about that, Yak,” I replied as a massive blast hammered home on our next target, as Em unleashed hell and vanished. We immediately converged on another target, a larger gun port that had just fired on the Archaea high above.

  “We could pound on this thing all day long, Jane,” he drawled. “It has to be a kilometer thick.”

  “Well, there are probably lots of empty places in there,” I called back, imagining shock waves full of high-energy scraps and shards of whatever ultra-dense material this vessel was made from, shredding through living places.

  “Oh, we’re damaging it, there’s no doubt there. We’re not going to kill it, is all I am saying.”

  We watched the countdown and opened fire at the same time as Emwan, punching a deep white-hot crater into the hull where the gun port used to be, then splitting our course immediately to engage the nearest turrets.

  “Em, have you had any contact yet from the Archaea?” I asked, aiming at my turret and realizing with no small amount of animosity that it was currently blazing away at my Captain, and my home.

  “I am afraid I haven’t Jane,” she replied briskly. “I am not concerned, however.”

  “Well I am,” I replied earnestly, watching the clock.

  “Me too, Em,” Yak added right as I blasted the turret to annihilation in a swift series of solid shots. As soon as I knew I had the hull breached, I dodged the converging streams of fire from the nearest turrets, stealthed, and dropped back towards the larger gun port we had disabled a few moments ago, diving for the deck far below.

  Yak and Emwan were converging on the same position again, though I had Yak beat to our next waypoint. Unfortunately, it looked like Emwan had me beat by a little bit. I reminded myself this wasn’t a race, it was a plan.

  “Ready to fire,” Emwan called out.

  “Ready,” I added a scant moment later.

  “Ready,” Yak replied; a few thousand years and a moment or two after me.

  “Firing,” I called out, and we punched another deep hole into what already looked terribly ruined. Again, we dropped out of sight immediately, and chased another series of turrets.

  “Em, are we in a phase of just removing their offensive capabilities?”

  “Jane, it looks that way, but this is actually not the case. I am not the engineer that Janis is, so I really can’t describe the specific functionality of the unit we’re destroying, but it does appear to be a major junction for power system, located deep under this specific turret.”

  I nodded as I completed my rush with 20 seconds left on our clock. “Em, a systematic destruction of all weapons
might be something our Captain would appreciate, don’t you think?”

  “The Captain will soon be able to fire, and should he choose to end this carrier, it will be done. Yak is correct, it would take us a very long time to accomplish this task… though I do think ultimately, that it is possible. Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  “Ready.”

  “Firing,” I called out again, reducing the turret to a ruined slagged crater. This time my fire order included all other turrets, so I spent a few minutes removing three other turrets in range.

  As close we were to the surface of the carrier, none of the bigger ships took shots against us. We were clearly out of sight before they could fire.

  Not that they didn’t try. They hurled across the surface of the carrier, perfectly comfortable flying around this vessel. We just weren’t on scan for them, and I loved it.

  The larger ships overhead were all firing outward, trying to destroy the Archaea, focused completely on the task, much to my mounting terror.

  “Have you guys seen what the Captain is going through out there lately?”

  “Yes Jane. It appears that he is no longer flying to avoid their impacts, he seems to be inviting their impact to some extent.”

  “Sounds like him,” I replied with a bit of a smirk, though I doubted it. The brilliant flashes from the impacts of the bigger beam impacts were supernova bright, and clearly high-order detonations. Luckily, he wasn’t getting hit by many more of those. There were only five guns left.

  Not that they had really seemed to slow down. Furiously bright beams were still blazing rapidly away from the endless curvature of this enormous ship. We had only removed one gun, so far.

  I noted with no small amount of pleasure that I was easily first to the point, and I smirked, waiting casually as Em rushed in, to stop motionless a hundred meters off, instantly.

  My breath caught in my throat, and I realized I had instinctively curled up into a ball, dodging her rush. My physical human form would have been rendered into soup trying to survive that ride.

  “How many G’s did you just pull, Em?”

  “893, momentarily, I am rounding up, naturally,” she replied lightly.

  “You’re a missile. What is it like flying a missile?”