by J G Clements
After some exchanged looks, the Prime Minister himself motioned several policemen over. “Take this man anywhere he wants to go and let him fish.” Then looking directly into the eyes of the senior policeman, “You are relieved today of normal police duties. Extend to him every courtesy of Scotland.” Somehow I knew this meant something about single-malt Scotch, but I held my tongue. Thomas, rod in hand, was off the ship and threw me a backward look of astonishment as he left with the cop. The Prime Minister and I exchanged looks, both satisfied with ourselves: Me for testing him, and him for how he handled it. We took off ten minutes later, emphasizing we would have our negotiations while in orbit.
I explained we needed a deep water port, one that could move lots of cargo and it had to be adjacent to our spaceport. Polite to a fault, they all seemed to understand exactly what we wanted and they expressed what they wanted to get out of it. But taking them for a few trips around the Earth definitely gave us the upper hand, making negotiation easy. But there was one incident that really helped to clinch the deal.
One of the cabinet ministers, I think it was the Minister of Culture, was quiet as we orbited the Earth and pointed out landmarks. While the everyone else were oohing and aahing, he remained silent, a bit aloof. At first, I thought that he might be ill, so as an ice-breaker I asked him what he thought of our efforts. His reply surprised me. “Would it be possible to fly near the McKinsie Fleet? Are the ships still there or have they been scrapped?”
I signaled Helen who was out of earshot about the request and she told me, ‘you’re the boss, sweetie’. With no time for a snarky comment back at her, I made another executive decision. “Its our objective to keep the McKinsie Fleet ships where they are, in orbit, forever. We will preserve it as the miracle it is and encourage everyone to see how it all started.” My voice must have carried because everyone was now looking at me. I decided to lay it on a bit thick. “McKinsie was a Scot, wasn’t he?”
The Minister who had asked me for the tour smiled and nodded. I wasn’t sure if ‘old man McKinse’….wherever he was…had ever been to Scotland, but whatever works, works. I had us not only fly over the McKinsie Fleet, but remain in a stationary orbit there while we finished negotiations.
It turned out to be pretty simple, too. We were to put our cargo ships…our atmospheric ones…down close to one of the ports, with the promise that they would be fully loaded within twelve hours. There was some incredulity about the fact that we didn’t care what order they loaded them, just get them loaded so we can take off. It was Helen who said we’d be sorting them out when in orbit…a much simpler process than on gravity-bound Earth. In exchange, there were some simple trade pacts made…the Crekie did more bartering than using money…and we also decided they’d get first crack at one type of inertial dampener. That would take care of the cash part of the agreement.
It was also pointed out that we would also be accepting passengers here and we wanted Scotland to grant us a waiver on immigration. At one level, anyone with a valid passport allowing them into England could apply for a berth off planet. The other part, one they didn’t like, was that anyone applying at the borders without valid papers, would be brought to us and we would make the decision if we would accept them. If we did, we’d keep them. We more or less agreed that they’d have a day…twenty four hours…to try to identify them before bringing them to us. If they were identified as criminals, we’d negotiate with Scotland about taking them anyway. I have no doubt there are a lot of illegal things on Earth that the Crekie aren’t really interested in. But if we did reject someone, they would escort them out of the British Isles.
I didn’t know how much tourist traffic the docks got in Scotland, but as long as the tour boats didn’t block the harbor for the cargo ships, I was fine with that. I was beginning to see a motto: “Walk, drive, boat or sneak in. The Crekie are hiring.”
After the final handshakes, we were invited to play golf, but we declined. Helen was toying with me, knowing that I’d never played a round of golf in my life. I tried to explain that Legends…such as me…can’t be seen duffing a golf ball around Saint Andrews. I was going to suggest she give it a go then realized how drained she was. It reminded me of the incident at the Louvre.
She had enjoyed the Louvre, and though Jean-Marc had guided her toward the Mona Lisa, it was the “Liberty Leading the People” that caught her attention. So rapt was her attention that for several minutes she was not present in my mind at all. It was as if she was almost frozen, mesmerized. Jennifer saw Helen’s behavior too, and did a nice job distracting Jean-Marc toward something else so he wouldn’t pester her.
When she had returned to the present, and was back in my mind I had asked her.. “Have a nice trip?”
Understanding my snarkiness, she trumped me at several levels. “Yes. I promise someday to show you.” I knew there was a message within a message there, but didn’t get the chance to try to unravel it. She was content to move on and didn’t bring up the subject again.
Having come to an understanding with Scotland, we called ahead before we landed, and there was a small public ceremony between the Prime Minister and myself. Helen’s behavior had convinced him she worked for me, so I naturally went along. As we posed together for a photo, I couldn’t help myself. Out of the corner of my mouth, so only he could hear, “We’ve come to kidnap your women and take your Scotch”.
Without missing a beat, he put on a stronger brogue than he normally had. “You can take our women, laddie but if you touch our Scotch, there’s going to be trouble”. Both of us smiling, we shook hands for the camera and the deal was done. Our timetable was set…we’d be landing two ships within the week, and we’d have a crew to get everything going. I had made it clear to him that nothing should interfere with our progress, and he seemed genuinely to agree.
With the crowd that had gathered, our departure was going to be a public event. Personally, I’d preferred to have just slunk away but the Troy does tend to draw a crowd. Helen and I were about to board…up the stairs so I could turn around and wave goodbye, when I realized I didn’t know where Thomas was. It would be a crummy deal if I left him here. I mindlinked to Helen and she informed me he was already on board.
That detail having been taken care of, Helen and I boarded the ship with me bringing up the rear. A turn and a wave to the crowd, then I left their sight while they closed the door. I wasn’t four steps down the hall before I smelled something…something great. “Is that fish?” I inhaled as deeply as I could, savoring it.
Jennifer was there, a smile on her face. “Thomas kept what he caught today, and insisted he cook it. And you’ll never guess where he caught them?” I had no clue. “Off the coast of St. Andrews. I’m not sure if he interfered with the golfers, but he seemed to have had a good time.” Then as if deciding to say something further. “I think some single malt was involved.”
I glanced at Helen, and she seemed to be totally enjoying it. “I’ve had fish before, but never fresh. Is it good?”
At a loss for words, I shrugged. It was Jennifer that threw a comment out. “Wait till you see where Thomas got the wine to cook it in.” My head jerked around at that. Every one of my bottles of wine were over a hundred dollars. The fish had better be worth it.
Chapter 30. Swarmers.
Ceres Report: Home
With the exception of food, I’m pretty self-sufficient. I can obtain and purify water to the point where I have a hot tub in one of the tents. I can make hydrogen and oxygen, and can even obtain nitrogen by heating it off of some of the rocks out here. I’m getting better at metal work, and one of my goals next year is to manufacture a motor. Maybe not a great motor, but a motor.
Between the two tents and my ship…or what’s left of my ship…I have over a thousand square feet of living space. For power and heat, my reactor will last a long time: Unlike an Earth reactor, I won’t mind as the power degrades a bit. I get all the shows and ballgames from Earth I want…in fact, more than I can watch. I’m cer
tain I can use my low melting point metals to construct a third room. Instead of using the ice-mortar, I bet I can pour the metal over the tent, then deflate the tent itself. If I can get enough metal, it’ll be enough to form the inner structure of a true cave.
I set out to prove that man can live in space. Give me enough time and I know I can beat the food problem.
The Sisk’s journey home had been uneventful, and they found themselves among an increasing fleet of ships orbiting Earth and the moon. The Crekie had at least some number of volunteers leaving Earth, so there was a brisk amount of travel. Normally, there might have been some change of personal between ships but in the case of the Sisk, there wasn’t any. No one wanted off, and the Crekie needed all the humans leaving Earth for other purposes.
The entire crew of the Sisk by now had transformed themselves into thinking differently. Instead of seeing themselves as a capital ship that controlled the space around itself, they now behaved as hunters. Silent and alert. Yet at the same time, they maintained a level of decorum, and crew members that were not on duty were relaxed. And the Sisk was a large enough ship to give them diversions. Unlike a submarine, there were gyms to work out in, a spa, and plenty of recorded entertainment. And in contrast to a sub, all the crew had their own quarters. One benefit about being back in Earth orbit was the availability of manufactured goods. Everyone stocked up with everything they could afford, based on some barter system the Crekie had. However it operated, the Crekie has plenty of things to trade to Earth for retail goods.
The Oddjob was also in orbit, ostensibly to take another group of humans to a training area to familiarize themselves to ship operation. Jack had a few hours to visit Jake, and after he explained the fine points of the mini-jump operations, he detailed how he thought his tactics would work. Jumping into a system, he would allow his ship to be gravity locked. Then steaming toward the outer orbits, ostensibly to jump away, he’d do a mini-jump instead. If the Swarm was in the same system, they would see the jump and assume they left the system. That is, until or unless they saw him materialize only a few light-seconds away. But until they had that tactic figured out, Jake felt he’d have the advantage.
The two Captains and Jim spent several long evenings together. Jake and Jack looking for guidance on how best to use the mini-jumps, Jim asking them questions they didn’t have answers to. The discussions were wide and free-ranging, but always centered on one question that Jim asked repeatedly. “When the Swarm sees a ship in a system, steaming to get out of gravity lock, what do they do? What tactics do they use?” Jim had explained to them that the answer to that question would un-lock a lot of the mystery surrounding them and their behavior. He reminded the Captains that there were still ships lost every year. Almost always individual ships, and not groups. So his conjecture was that at least sometimes the Swarm didn’t run. And the Sisk needed to know why. For instance, if the Swarm saw the Sisk’s outward trajectory, did they merely get out of the way, and run silent until the Sisk jumped? Or, had they already jumped away when the Sisk first arrived, knowing how long it would be before the Sisk left so they could return? Or, if the Swarm had an overwhelming force in the area, what criteria did they use in deciding to attack?
Jim pointedly asked Jake what happened after the Sisk steamed to get out of gravity lock, but then loitered there for a few days instead of jumping? Was there a chance the Swarm returned, but wasn’t noticed by the Sisk?
And that’s how Jake decided on what his tactics would be. Steam out of gravity lock, but immediately jump as if he was jumping away. But instead of jumping away, mini-jump. In fact, perform a series of mini-jumps around the system and see what you find. When Jim pressed him further if he would stay in the ecliptic plane, it was Jake that said he hadn’t decided. Jim gave him a half-smile, and suggested he stay in the ecliptic plane, at least for now.
Jack had listened to Jake’s plan with very little to say. Nodding, he seemed happy to wish Jake luck, and parting as good friends, he returned to his own ship.
******
A day later, the Sisk jumped. And Jim’s advice was good, because in the first system that Jake put this strategy to work, they ran into the Swarm.
It was the eighth or ninth mini-jump around the outer orbits, and though the crew were used to their duties by now, they were not complacent. Immediately after re-entering normal space, four observers hit their red buttons, and within seconds it seemed everything happened at once. The observer board was almost totally red…everyone could see Swarm ships. The tactical officer took only a second and made the decision to put the information up on the 3D displays. This told Jake that the Swarm ships were not just off in one direction, but were likely to be around the Sisk.
Tactical started speaking. “Large Swarm, Haulers and Swarmers present. No Beamers visible.” That took a bit of the pressure off of the Sisk, since they could manage the two types of smaller ships without having to fry the Beamers first. Not to say that the situation was trivial…that many Swarmers could take down the Sisk if it didn’t do a good job of neutralizing them. “Current estimate count is eight-hundred to one-thousand ships.”
Jake took one glance at the tactical display and immediately was giving orders. “All beam weapons free. Concentrate on the Haulers. Fighter pilots to ships but do not launch. I say again, do not launch. Kinetic weapons hot but do not shoot.” Taking his thumb off the button, his eyes remained fixed on the display. “Helm, maneuver under them.”
Though all directions were relative here, long practice made it clear to both the Captain and to the helmsmen what was requested. The result was the Sisk was now moving under the collection of Swarm ships in an effort to put them all on one side of the Sisk. This slightly degraded the Sisk’s use of beam weapons but no Captain wanted to fight while surrounded.
This size and makeup of this Swarm group was something that Jake had not seen before. Though Haulers were a name for their ships, it really encompassed a group of ship types: Larger than the one-being Swarmers, but not large enough to truly be considered capital ships. What their function was, no one really knew but by agreement they were called Haulers.
The ship’s firing solutions were already having an effect. Haulers could usually only take a beam weapon hit for a second or two without collapse. Enough energy was transferred in that time to raise the temperature of the Hauler to something that the Swarm beings couldn’t tolerate. The inexperienced beam operators played the beams too long on a Hauler, while a couple of the beam operators seemed to intuitively understand what to do: Fire for a two to three seconds, then aim elsewhere without waiting to see if the Hauler collapsed.
If the Sisk got the first dozen shots off, it didn’t take the Swarm long to strike back. The group of ships scattered into a random pattern, each ship seemingly moving to get a free trajectory onto the Sisk. At less than a light second or two away, everything was being viewed in realtime, or as close to it as it could be managed. Like most battles with the Swarm, there seemed to be no pattern to their movements. Instead, they morphed into a chaotic cloud of firing ships that seemed to be moving toward the Sisk.
But it was Jim who made the first observation to Jake that let him see their strategy. “The Haulers will be moving away, the Swarmers towards us. I predict the Haulers are preparing to jump and leave the Swarmers behind to fight us.” Jake, not used to having anyone discuss tactics during a live fight, swiveled his head to look at Jim for a second, then made a decision.
“Helm, steam toward the Haulers. Beam weapons concentrate on Hauler ships only. The Swarmers aren’t an immediate threat to a ship our size. We can take them down later.” Jake continued to stare at his display while his ship and his crew fought. Like Captains from the beginning of time, a sense of helplessness came over him as he could only watch and direct: He couldn’t take part in the fight personally. Instead, as he watched the display in front of him, he saw that Jim had rightly predicted what the Swarm was doing. Making a mental note to examine the data later, a part o
f his brain wondered how Jim could have seen this tactic before anyone else?
The Swarmer’s beam weapons could not seriously damage the Sisk, the use of asteroid stone being a much better material than either ice or metal. Many feet thick, it just absorbed the energy. The real problem was the loss of the Sisk’s sensors. When the firing started, all human observers were removed from harm’s way and the ship used indirect observation and sensors to map the display. But over time the sensors would be reduced to slag. New ones could be mounted, but it always resulted into a degradation of ability.
The Sisk wasn’t able to overtake the Haulers. Instead, they were moving away faster than the Sisk could catch up. Trying to ignore the Swarmers, they were still getting in the way between the Sisk and the Haulers. Because of this, the Sisk failed to destroy any more Haulers. After destroying over twenty of them, the remaining ten or so were out of effective range.
Jake, being a realist knew that he couldn’t catch them, and ordered his beam weapons to now concentrate on the Swarmers. As the 3D tactical display re-centered on this effort, Jim did something odd. Moving quietly as if not to bother the crew that was actively engaged, he moved to one of the unused consoles and sat down. Jake would not have tolerated that from anyone else on his crew, but knew what the Crekie thought of Jim and let it go.
Returning his attention to the close-in fighting, he oversaw it to its inevitable conclusion: The Swarmers would never retreat. Instead, they would keep attacking the Sisk until they were all destroyed. Using only the main beam weapons of the Sisk, it would take time, but Jake didn’t see the need in launching the one-man fighters. Grimacing, Jake was at least pleased that Jim wasn’t asking for water samples this time. Based on the rate the Swarmers were being destroyed, it would be over in less than thirty or forty minutes. Jake just needed to be patient and let his crew do their job.