by J. N. Chaney
“Could this be a passenger liner, or even a massive freighter? The ones that hit multiple systems on trade routes?” Dash said.
“There is no record of the Golden having such a craft,” Sentinel said.
“So a big warship then,” Viktor said.
For a moment there was silence as that sank in. Dash finally broke it.
“Okay. A big Golden warship has come to life, and we’re the sharp side of the knife. That means it’s up to us,” Dash said, clasping his hands one over the other. He looked like a fighter getting ready to step onto the mat.
Leira bit her lip in thought. “Well, if it’s going to head this way, and if we assume a worst-case scenario of it moving as fast as its own signal, that gives us…what, about a week and a half maybe?”
“Give or take,” Conover said, nodding. “I’d say a little longer, though.”
Dash frowned at the display, as though just staring at it hard enough would pull more information from it. “Then maybe two weeks, and ignoring it is out of the question.”
“Especially if it’s Golden tech that’s new to us,” Amy said.
Viktor scratched his ear. “Isn’t that just asking for trouble though? We might be waking a sleeping beast. Why not just let Custodian keep a long scan on it?”
“I think we have to assume that, whatever it is, it’s already woken up and probably won’t just hang around that battlefield.” Dash said with a wry grin. “If it’s like me when I wake up from a long sleep, it’s going to be cranky.”
“What if it’s damaged and can’t move?” Amy said. “It is kind of floating among a bunch of debris, remember. Maybe it’s too damaged to even defend itself. This could be a great opportunity to get a close look at something we might really want to know about.”
“But what if it isn’t damaged and can move and defend itself?” Viktor asked. “We could just as easily be delivering ourselves to the enemy.”
“Only one way to find out.” Amy turned to Dash. “We should go and take a look.”
“I have to intervene in your musings,” Custodian cut in. “There is a more significant concern, much closer to The Forge.”
Dash stiffened. “Explain.”
“A probe has just arrived in this system from deep space and is inbound at high velocity.”
They all exchanged tense looks. They all knew, after all, that the Golden would eventually be back. The Golden were like bad houseguests. They never stayed away for long.
Dash turned for the door to the engine room. “Let’s go, boys and girls. Company’s coming, and it would be rude not to greet them.”
3
Dash raced along the corridors leading back to the docking bay, keeping a running conversation with both Sentinel and Custodian as he did.
“The probe is traveling at high velocity on a broad, elliptical trajectory that will take it around this system’s star,” Custodian said.
Dash turned the last corner before the docking bay. Leira and Viktor hurried along behind him to get the Slipwing ready to launch if she was needed. Amy, Conover, and the monks remained in the engine room in case anything needed to be attended to in The Forge.
“Sounds like it’s planning to do a gravitational slingshot,” Dash said, glancing back at Leira. “Now where have I heard that before?”
Leira grimaced. That was the same maneuver she’d planned to use before, when things were bleak, and they had to take a gamble.
“It would have worked if it hadn’t been for the shoddy fusion drive on the Slipwing.”
“Shoddy? Shoddy?” He gave her a look of pure disbelief. “Don’t badmouth my ship, you ruffian.”
“Ruffian?”
“It seemed to fit. Not quite criminal, but better than pirate,” Dash said as they ran on.
“Good choice. I accept your term. But not with grace. That would be too cultured,” Leira said in between breaths. “Be careful.”
“You too.”
They reached the docking bay. Dash veered toward the looming bulk of the Archetype, while Leira and Viktor ran for the Slipwing.
“And don’t launch my ship, either,” Dash called out. “Not until I say I need you or it becomes clear I need you. No unnecessary risk!”
Viktor gave a thumbs up as he followed Leira up the ramp into the Slipwing. Sentinel folded the Archetype neatly forward and down so Dash could climb into the cockpit and settle himself into the cradle.
“Okay,” Dash said, lifting and turning the Archetype toward the gaping entrance to the bay, “what’ve we got, Sentinel? How long until intercept?”
“It depends. Do you prefer to make the fastest, most direct approach to the probe, or do you intend something more subtle?”
“Have you ever known me to be subtle?”
“Yes. In fact, you have approached most engagements using indirect strategies, as well as deception and subterfuge.”
He flung himself into space, briefly marveling at how routine launching himself at the stars in a huge, alien mech had become. If someone had told him a year ago that this was where he’d be now, he would have laughed and asked them for a drink of what was in their glass.
“Subterfuge and deceit? In this, we agree. I’m a man of intricate plans. Sometimes,” Dash said. “Do we have a visual yet?”
“I have calculated the most direct approach, reasoning that you would at least like to see it before you discount or destroy it.”
Dash studied the heads-up, which was augmented by data coming across the Meld. He could intercept the probe before it started its slingshot around the star, potentially stopping it well away from The Forge. But—and this was the part that made him dislike this sort of direct approach—it meant the probe would have ample time to see him coming and do whatever it was going to do. It also meant an egregiously high closing velocity. Even with its impressive ability to maneuver, it would take time to get the Archetype turned back after the probe if a single, head-on pass didn’t take it out. That meant a long chase, and it was all around cumbersome. Moreover, he’d learned to never underestimate Golden tech and its capabilities, which always seemed to be better than they expected.
“Yeah, I’m discounting that for sure,” Dash finally said. “So let’s try something else.”
Dash studied the heads-up, while sifting through more data on the Meld. The brown dwarf that had figured so prominently during his fight against the Harbinger was much too far away to be a factor. There were some asteroids and a barren, rocky planet closer to the action, but none of them inspired any real deceit or subterfuge.
“Okay, Sentinel, show me the probe’s likely trajectory. And I mean all of it, like if we just let it keep going.”
New data appeared on the heads-up, showing a looping arc around the star, followed by a straight shot at The Forge. By that point, unless the probe decelerated, it would be moving incredibly fast. Was that the plan? Just slam it into The Forge, like a projectile from a giant slug-gun? It seemed pretty crude, but sometimes crude was best, because crude was simple.
“The difficulty is that this trajectory presumes the probe does nothing to alter its course. It’s a purely ballistic path. As a result, there’s actually a lot of uncertainty as to where it may go.”
Dash gave a slow nod. “Right. Which means we need to know what it’s up to so we can be in the right place at the right time to stop it.”
“It is likely more than capable of detecting the Archetype,” Sentinel said. “That, by itself, could change its behavior.”
“Yeah. Or make it unleash some nasty surprise. I’d really like to keep out of its sight for as long as possible.”
He could just go back to The Forge and wait for it there. Again, though, Unseen tech might seem to ignore the laws of physics, but it really didn’t. If he launched from The Forge again from a dead stop, the Archetype might not be able to accelerate fast enough to do whatever it needed to. What he needed was a way of hiding—but he also needed to shed velocity while remaining close to the Forge.
“Bingo.”
“You have been inspired to something subtle, haven’t you?” Sentinel asked.
“Yeah, I have. The gas giant. It generates a lot of magnetism, radiation, that sort of thing. Kind of like that brown dwarf, right? The fields are similar?”
“It is considerably smaller and much less energetic than the brown dwarf, but yes. Except for scale, its emanations are not too different. Do you wish to use it as camouflage?”
“Worked on the Harbinger, with the brown dwarf. Sounds like a good way of dealing with this thing. Plus, we can orbit the gas giant, keep moving, keep our velocity up. I assume you can work out the orbital math.”
The heads-up lit up with the exact trajectory.
“Okay,” Dash said, “I guess you can. So that has us orbiting it, what, twice before the probe gets close to The Forge?”
“Yes. An elliptical approach, to ensure the timing is correct, followed by two orbits at slightly less than the gas giant’s escape velocity. The probe will be on the far side of the star for much of that time. We should complete the second orbit and emerge from behind the gas giant at a velocity that almost matches that of the probe, at a very short distance away from it.”
“I like it. Let’s do it.”
The Archetype smoothly surged toward a point well offset from the gas giant. As Sentinel had said, it would use up enough time to make sure the intercept happened exactly when and where they wanted it.
Assuming, of course, the probe didn’t have other ideas.
“Ah, well,” Dash muttered, “nothing’s a hundred percent, right?”
“Many things occur one hundred percent of the time,” Sentinel replied. “From a quantum level, right up to the largest, most macro scale. One example would be your snoring. I calculate it occurs every time you enter a state of sleep.”
“That’s not macro.”
“You’ve never heard yourself snore.”
Snarky. Definitely snarky.
Dash stretched, flexing his arms and legs and fingers in a bone-cracking movement that left him focused and loose. “Okay. Here we go.”
The swirling, vaporous surface of the gas giant blurred beneath the Archetype, its velocity smearing it into a diffuse wall of colored stripes. That had been Dash’s view for the past couple of hours—the vast, pastel expanse of the planet beneath him, the infinite starfield above. It hadn’t moved him the way the few moments with Amy on the surface of The Forge had, but there remained a lingering sense of the infinite as he sat, waiting for combat, high above the whirling atmosphere of the giant planet. He shook his head, ending the reverie.
Now it was back to business.
The immensity of the gas giant fell away as the Archetype broke orbit. The big planet’s magnetic fields and belts of radiation might be much weaker than those of the brown dwarf, but they were still enough to effectively blind anyone to the Archetype if they didn’t know exactly where to look. That would have left Dash blind, too, except Sentinel and Custodian had collaborated, keeping data coming to the Archetype over a tight comms beam. As a result, when the mech pulled clear of the gas giant’s emissions, he knew exactly where the probe would be.
And sure enough, there it was.
“I love science,” Dash said.
“Do you mean you love math?” Sentinel asked.
“Let’s not get crazy. I tolerate math. I love being right,” Dash said.
It had made no course changes, done no accelerating. It indeed seemed to be bent on plowing into The Forge like a bullet. And Custodian had finally decided it actually was Golden tech, so Dash was going to stop it.
He lined up the dark-lance and fired.
The ghostly beam flickered out, landing on the probe’s surface like a shadow.
At first, nothing happened. The probe just raced on. Dash narrowed his eyes, about to say something unflattering about the Golden, when the probe suddenly erupted in a blast of quantum discharge. Fragments were flung apart by the explosion, their trajectories rapidly diverging.
“Well, that was unexpectedly easy,” Dash said. “Kind of an entirely pointless effort by the Golden.”
“It was,” Sentinel replied.
“So why do I suspect they’ve still got something up their sleeve?”
“I have noticed that, being quite deceptive yourself, you expect it from others.”
“It’s not cynicism. It’s being careful,” Dash said.
“I appreciate your distinction and will make a note of it.”
“Please do,” Dash said, keeping his attention focused on the remnants of the probe. It was now a small cloud of debris, still following the original trajectory, but steadily expanding. Custodian had already energized The Forge’s energy shield, which would be more than enough to stop these remaining fragments.
Okay, Dash thought, maybe that was it. Maybe the probe had been defective, or maybe it was just a recon model, gathering as much information as it could before it was destroyed.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. He didn’t trust maybe one bit.
Dash didn’t buy it.
“You’re up to something,” he said to the debris cloud, now kilometers across. He accelerated, wanting to get closer.
“Some of those fragments are beginning to change their trajectory,” Sentinel said, and Dash gave a sharp nod. He’d expected nothing less.
“I knew it.” He readied the dark-lance, keeping the distortion cannon on standby. Ideally, he’d just destroy the swarm of bogeys, but the distortion cannon would let him yank them away from whatever mischief they intended. A mission interrupted was almost as good as one ended—they could gain information about the Golden, their tech, and just what the hell this new wrinkle in their weaponry might be.
“I am detecting six submunitions that are now accelerating toward The Forge. They are using a hybrid of unSpace translation and conventional propulsion, effectively reducing their mass to near zero.”
Dash was no astrophysicist, but he was a spaceship pilot and knew enough to get by. Even a modest thrust applied to something with almost no mass would result in a ferocious acceleration—and enormous kinetic energy when these things impacted.
Worse, these submunitions, as Sentinel labeled them, were tiny. It made them into ridiculously tough targets to hit.
For most people.
Dash accelerated harder and fired the distortion cannon, but the submunitions’ insignificant mass meant it had almost no effect, like shooting at a shadow. He switched back to the dark-lance and started snapping out shots as fast it could fire. The Forge loomed ahead now; these projectiles were only seconds from impact.
He hit one submunition, and it simply vaporized. Then he missed a second one twice before destroying it. The third he hit, but he missed the fourth repeatedly.
“Incoming! Custodian, can you take these things out?”
“The energy shield will not stop them,” Custodian replied. “Activating point defense systems instead.”
The Forge erupted with energy pulses, a torrential deluge of searing bursts that turned the dwindling space between it and the Archetype to a blizzard of scalding light. Dash finally nailed his fourth target; the point defense, for all of its impressive fury, only got one more.
The sixth, and last, slammed into The Forge.
As it did, a large section of the station where it hit suddenly shimmered then shone like mirrored quicksilver. The kinetic flash of impact almost vanished into the dazzle of reflected light. Then it was gone, as though it had never happened.
Dash blinked at the afterimages of the lightshow from the point defense and whatever had just happened. “What the hell was that?”
“The metallic shielding,” Custodian said. “It is very much a last resort defense, and very demanding in terms of
power, but effective.”
“Glad to hear you’re still in one piece,” Dash replied, letting himself relax a notch or two, but not letting his guard down entirely. Sentinel might think he saw deception everywhere, but when it came to the Golden, that was just smart thinking. “Leira, Viktor, how about you guys? All okay?”
“Ever been inside a bell when it’s been rung?” Leira asked.
“Uh, no.”
“Well, I have.”
“Messenger, scans are showing that some of the debris from the probe and its submunitions are composed of Dark Metal,” Custodian said. “I strongly recommend recovering all of it that you can and returning with it to The Forge.”
“Dark Metal. You mean what the Harbinger was made of?”
“One and the same. The Golden pioneered its use and likely has a somewhat more advanced understanding of it. The Creators have employed Dark Metal in some applications as well. There are small amounts incorporated into the Archetype, in fact.”
“You mean the Unseen stole it from the Golden?” Dash asked.
“Stealing it implies wrongdoing. The Creators liberated the technology involved in order to further their efforts—”
“That’s okay, I get it. And it wasn’t a criticism. Hell, I hope they stole a lot more from those Golden bastards.”
Dash took in the various bits and pieces of debris on the heads-up, noting the ones that the Custodian had identified as Dark Metal in particular. “Gathering this stuff is going to take a while. Do we really need all of it?”
“That would be ideal. It would save a great deal of time otherwise required to fabricate new Dark Metal,” Custodian said.
“Fabricate new Dark Metal. You can do that? And what will it be used for?” Dash felt his brows lift in surprise.
“It is a vital component in constructing new weaponry, among other things.”
“Okay, what new weaponry? And how are you going to build it?” Dash felt his curiosity rising with each new possibility.