Star Force 11: Exile
Page 34
“Too bad you were wrong. Thanks, Marvin. Talk to you later.” I turned to Hansen. “Let’s get moving faster toward this new ring. Even if we don’t go through, I think Marvin’s right. We need to stay away from the golden planet.”
“Aye aye, Skipper. I’d rather not end up as an exhibit in a box.”
“Me too. Valiant, connect me with Kreel.” A moment later, I had the Raptor captain on the com-link. “Captain, please pass the word for your Nano frigates to trail behind Valiant and put Ox and Stalker in front.”
“What about the Macro dome? They still have a factory there, and I’m fairly certain it isn’t dormant.”
“Good point.” I thought a moment. “Do you have any nuclear weapons left of any sort?”
“We have twenty high-yield charges, Commodore, but no delivery systems.”
“Okay, this is what I want you to do. Take Stalker and sneak up behind the Macro factory on the far side of the asteroid. Send troops over and plant five of those charges—dig them in if you can. Back off and detonate them all at once. If that doesn’t finish the Macro base off, do it again, and again. Worst case, we’ll leave it with no fuel and no materials.
“I hear and obey.”
“Have you been told we’ve found the second ring in this system?”
“Our machine mind has informed me.”
“Are you all right with coming with us, or would you rather go home?”
Kreel paused before answering. “Why do you continually question my honor, Commodore?”
My headache grew stronger. “I’m just trying to make sure you really want to leave your home system, perhaps forever. You don’t even have any females in case we ever find you a colony world.”
“I’m sorry, Commodore, but you are misinformed. We have eggs in storage, fertilized and gender-selected to be females. If the opportunity presents itself, we can settle in a suitable habitat.”
Flashbacks to Hoon and his water moon came to mind. Maybe egg-based reproduction had some advantages over the ways of mammals—at least in space. “That changes things, I guess, Captain Kreel. Glad to hear it. Forget I asked. Riggs out.”
Every time I thought I knew what was going on, someone slapped me upside the head with new information. So much for a captain—or an admiral for that matter—being truly in control. I could only imagine what it would be like to have hundreds of thousands of subordinates. No wonder Dad had quit the first chance he got.
A telltale on the holotank caught my attention. Chief Cornelius was paging me on a private channel. I sealed up my suit and opened the connection. “Yes, Chief?”
“I have something you might like to see, Captain.”
“Five minutes.” I stowed the clumsy battlesuit in its niche with instructions for Valiant to link and monitor the quantum radio in it and then headed down to see Cornelius.
“Things look a lot better today, Chief,” I said as I stepped onto the gun deck.
“Nice of you to say so, Captain,” the older woman said with a subtle lift of her ample chest and a sparkle in her eye. Her red-veined, meaty face could have stopped traffic—and not in a good way—but her flirtations seemed to be a permanent part of her personality rather than anything serious. I imagined she’d broken some hearts in her younger days.
“Come take a look,” she continued, waving me into her cubbyhole and pointing to a seat behind her own desk.
On the screen I saw a rather salacious still-picture shot of a male. The shot was from behind, and he was going to town on a supine buxom female body with blurred-out features. Then I realized what I was looking at and I felt my face redden. “That looks like—”
“Moranian, yes it does—and you. This makes you out to be quite the lover, sir.”
“You watched it all?”
Cornelius winked. “Had to, of course. But as it’s not really you and not really Moranian, this is more in the way of graffiti on the toilet wall than a real problem, I should think.”
My voice rose in excitement. “So you’ve found proof that it’s fake?”
“Ja. Remember your moles?” She reached over to tap a key, and a complex grid overlay the picture with several measurements highlighted.
“I remember you took an image.”
Cornelius tapped another key, and the screen added a high-res shot of my back. The two pictures morphed and aligned until one overlaid the other. “I had one of my best techs create a video clone of your back and torso using my real image as a base. I then had him match its motions with the motions of the male vid-clone in the sex tape. This is what we got.” She touched yet another key.
On the screen, the male form moved vigorously—but something was wrong.
“The moles don’t match as they move,” I said.
“Correct. Real skin is very tricky to model. You can make it look convincing, but that won’t mean it exactly follows what the real thing would do.”
“This proves the tape is a fake!”
“Sadly, I have to agree.”
I stood and almost hugged Cornelius, stopping myself at the last moment. All I needed to do was ignite a new fire with Adrienne the moment I’d stomped out the last one. “Thank you, Chief. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
She smiled and patted my arm. “It wasn’t your heart’s bottom on display, Captain.”
I choked back laughter. “Encrypt and upload all of that into Valiant—and give me a separate copy on a data stick, will you?”
“Done and done.” She slid a thumb-sized drive out of a pocket and dropped it into my hand.
“Chief—”
“Never mind, sir. We all owe you nine times over. Just get us home, will you?”
“You bet your ass, Chief.” I said as I backed out of her tiny office. “I’m sending you a bottle of real scotch from the Captain’s stores tonight.”
Cornelius chuckled. “Now that will be appreciated.”
* * *
Back on the bridge, I was relieved to see that Kreel’s first round of five nuclear demolition charges had blown apart the entire asteroid leaving nothing but a spherical shield with Macros floating inside.
“Valiant, get me Kreel.” Once I had him I said, “Captain Kreel, good work. Can you rig some of your nuclear charges to act as mines with a trigger that detects when the Macro magnetic shield turns off?”
“Of course, Commodore.”
“Then please do so and leave them floating close to the factory.”
“A clever tactic, Commodore.”
“It’s all we can do if we want to get away from here fast. Riggs out.”
I kept all the working sensors we had focused on the golden planet and the space around it as we slowly left it behind. The first thing I noticed was the lack of other ships nearby. I knew that several had made it out of the globe.
“Valiant, search the sensor logs since we escaped from the golden planet. I want to know where the alien ships that followed us out went. Did they run for the Orn ring or what?”
“One moment.” The holotank divided itself into two areas, one showing the current view and the other displaying a vid file that ran at high speed. The fast-forward effect slowed down when alien vessels began to pop out of holes in the golden planet, each accompanied by an icon to make them easier to follow.
The first one headed immediately for the Orn ring. The second proceeded away and around the yellow dwarf star where our sensors lost it. Seven more, including four singles and a group of three, first spread out and then headed for the Orn ring.
However, partway there they began to disappear, one at a time, beginning with the closest and ending with the farthest. As the time of record caught up with the present, Valiant merged the two views back into one.
“The last alien, the one that’s almost made it to the Orn ring…how far is it from the golden planet?”
“Approximately eight AU.”
“How far out are we?”
“Approximately nine AU.”
“Hansen, go to max
acceleration. Valiant, pass the word to the Nano ships to match our speed but to stay staggered behind us. Stalker and Ox will aim for Marvin’s ring at full speed.”
I had an ugly suspicion about what was happening, so I marked and zoomed in on the last alien ship: the only one that hadn’t disappeared. A blocky thing that looked more like a retro boom box than a space vessel, it had taken only minimal damage that I could see.
Running several calculations using the holotank software, I determined that whatever was making the alien ships disappear took them about once every sixty-four minutes without deviation. Their speed or distance from the golden planet did not seem to matter to that interval, nor did their size, acceleration or any other characteristic.
On each occasion they were there one moment—then they were simply gone.
That reminded me of something. “Valiant, where are our pinnaces?”
“Both pinnaces are in the launch bay.”
I looked over at Hansen in surprise.
He answered my unspoken question. “We brought them back aboard on remote control.”
“Good work. How many total small craft do we have?”
“Two pinnaces, two shuttles.”
“No Daggers?” I glanced over at the drone watchstander. Bradley was off right now.
“No, sir,” the woman replied. “We lost them all, and we’ve been using the factory to repair damaged systems rather than build new ordnance.”
“Valiant, get me Turnbull.”
“Turnbull here,” Adrienne’s voice replied from a nearby speaker.
“How quickly can we produce a basic Dagger? No suicide bomb, no weapons, nothing but an engine and a way to control it.”
“We can’t. We used up all the salvaged material, and I’m already cannibalizing a few things for ship repair.”
“Do we have any missiles left?”
“None.”
I growled in my throat. “I need something that can move on its own.”
“Kwon still has a few surfboards. I took half of them to reprocess their metals, but he wouldn’t give me all of them.”
“Bless Kwon and his stingy ways. Thanks, Adie.” I called Kwon. “Sergeant Major, I need you to bring all the remaining surfboards you have to the assault airlock.” I clicked off before he could acknowledge.
“What’s going on?” Hansen asked.
I held up a finger, meaning wait one damned minute.
“Valiant, get me Bradley.”
“Chief Bradley is sleeping. Shall I wake him?”
“No. Wake up a drone technician instead and tell him to meet me and Kwon in the assault airlock with tools, ready to work.”
“Acknowledged…required personnel in transit.”
I turned to Hansen. “Something is destroying, or more likely taking, one ship every sixty-four minutes.”
“Probably the golden planet is reclaiming its collection.”
“Right. The one selected seems to be whatever’s closest to the golden planet. Looks like it only affects powered ships—none of the wrecks have been snatched.”
Hansen’s brow furrowed. “So…you’re leaving the two Nano ships to get taken.”
“Hopefully not, but better them than us. Trust me. I have a plan.” I clapped him on the shoulder and headed for the assault airlock.
Within the large room I found Kwon and a couple of marines in battlesuits. There were a dozen surfboards stacked near them. A drone tech stood off to the side with a heavy rolling toolbox.
I walked over to the tech to shake his hand, dragging his name out of my memory. “Chernov, right?” I said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay Chernov, I need you to take these surfboards and turn them into remotely piloted vehicles. Use spare drone telemetry modules or something. Nothing complicated. All we have to do is be able to fly them from a distance.”
The man looked puzzled. “What are they for, sir?”
“Bear bait, Chernov.”
“Huh?”
“If a big bear is after you, best to drop something for him to eat. Get it?”
“Um…no, sir.”
“Never mind. How soon can you get the first one ready?”
His brow furrowed. “A couple of hours?”
I checked my chrono. “I need it just as fast as you can. Get more help if you need it.”
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
“Good man.” I walked over to Kwon. “Leave the surfboards here. We’re making them into drones, sort of.”
“But…” Kwon saw the look on my face. “Okay, boss. Hope we don’t need them ourselves.”
“Just think of it this way, Kwon. If my plan works, the surfboards are sacrificing themselves for the ship.”
Kwon smiled broadly. “Since you put it that way, no problem.”
“Now get your guys out of here. Nothing we need less than ham-fisted marines getting in the techs’ way.”
Once Kwon and his men had departed, I decided to go wake up Bradley. Chernov seemed competent enough but a bit hesitant when I needed his best effort. Getting rousted out of bed was an on-the-job hazard of the senior staff.
Once I’d explained the situation to him, Bradley threw on a uniform and went to round up a couple more techs and supervise the process. More confident now, I returned to the bridge.
“Valiant, we have two shuttles, correct?”
“Correct, Captain.”
“Have them stripped down to their bare bones and prep one for launch within ten minutes. And yes, you’re allowed to use your utility arms to strip the vessels. Make sure you have a good datalink to its brain and don’t rip that out—you can fly one on remote, right?”
“Yes, Captain, after a transfer of key algorithms.”
“Good.” I chewed my lip and stared at the holotank.
Ten minutes later, the last alien ship vanished leaving my little fleet as the only group of powered vessels in the system.
Unfortunately, that made us the next targets.
-33-
Everyone on the bridge watched the sixty-four minute countdown. The numbers fell toward zero alarmingly fast.
On the same screen, the optical shot of our first shuttle was displayed. I’d had Valiant fly it back to a position trailing my fleet, but still under power, accelerating slowly in our wake.
The shuttle was my stopgap while Bradley and his techs got the remote-controlled surfboards ready. I hoped the Ancient’s algorithm that decided what to snatch would see it as a ship to be collected and not a mere piece of powered junk. Whatever device they used, if its sixty-four minute recharge time held true the shuttle should be disappearing right…about…
Now.
Within seconds, the little craft winked out of existence—teleported, I figured, back to the boneyard within the golden planet. The entire bridge crew breathed a collective sigh of relief.
“Okay, we have sixty-three minutes to get a surfboard and the second shuttle out there. Bradley, you there?”
“Here, sir,” Bradley answered from the assault airlock. “Just a few more minutes and we’ll have the first decoy drone finished. I also took the liberty of rigging a spare marine battlesuit in the same way as it has its own internal repellers.”
I wanted to slap myself in disgust. Why hadn’t I thought of that?
“Good work, Bradley. Put the battlesuit last in line. If it gets snatched, our problems are solved because we have plenty of those. Go ahead and deploy them when you can. Don’t wait for an order. And—keep making more.” I closed the channel. “Valiant, launch the second shuttle and put it in a position similar to the last one, behind the last Nano ship.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Forty minutes later we’d set up our decoys: the battlesuit trailing the farthest behind, and then the surfboard drone, and after that the shuttle in case our improvised bear bait didn’t work. I wasn’t at all certain how far down the food chain the Ancient’s machines would reach in collecting ships or if they might manage to bring more
ship-snatching devices online to grab two or more at a time.
“How long until we pass through the ring?” I asked.
“At current acceleration, fourteen hours five minutes,” replied Valiant.
“Dammit. Get me Sakura.” I waited a moment for the connection.
“Sakura here.”
“Chief, how can we get more speed out of these engines?”
“The only way to get more speed right away is to dump mass. The single engine we have is running at maximum as are all our repellers. The other engine isn’t going to be repaired for another two days because I had to cannibalize parts from it to get the first one running.”
“Thanks for the good news, Chief,” I said bitterly. I closed the channel, and then looked over at Adrienne. “Can we dump mass?”
“We can always dump mass if you’re willing to get rid of pieces of the ship, but we’ll also need that same mass for repairs afterward. As for weaponry to discard, half the weapons are down as well as a bunch of other vital systems.”
Hansen cleared his throat. I looked at him expectantly.
“I feel I must point out that we’re heading into an unknown system, and we might need every scrap of weaponry and equipment we have to survive when we arrive.”
“Duly noted, exec,” I said, and turned away. I paced in front of the holotank. “The only vital systems right now are those that let us get through that ring ahead of the golden planet’s teleporter. What about armor?”
Adrienne nodded slowly. “Armor is useless mass until we get in a fight. The same is true for the magnetic shield generators.”
“Okay, go get Kwon and some marines with cutters and tell them what to start carving off. Begin with armor on the top rear surface since we angle our belly toward the enemy in a fight. Once you have that underway, get with Chief Cornelius and see if she can sacrifice some nonworking guns—APs especially as they’re less versatile than lasers.”
Adrienne stood up to go. “On my way.”
“Valiant,” I said, “launch both pinnaces, and let them cruise right behind us. That’s some more mass off the ship.”
“Yes, Captain.”