Hunting Dog

by Andrew Beery

  I ordered the J’ni and Admiral “Ody” Riker to accelerate the work on Operation Diaspora. If we were given the time, the UES Diaspora might be the only hope for humanity. Sadly, I was under no illusions. The massive colonization starship needed weeks to be finished and even longer to provision and populate.

  That problem was the one I was trying to address today.

  Shelby made to get out of the command chair. I waved her back down. Lori kept my activities to a minimum while my red blood cell count was still depressed. In short… I was going stir crazy. I needed to be up and about. I needed to stretch my legs.

  “Status?” I asked.

  “The Ticonderoga is investigating a Skip echo out past the orbit of Pluto. It may be a sensor glitch, but they can’t know until they check it out. They micro-jumped about ten minutes ago. We’ve lost contact with two sensor drones near final Gilboa engagement zone. I’ve dispatched the Nimitz to do a quick flyby. It’s very likely that they were taken out by High-Vs.”

  “But we won’t know until we check it out,” I finished for her.

  High-Vs were typically high-velocity rocks racing through space. Obviously, after a battle like the one that destroyed the Gilboa and a half a dozen Defiler ships… there would be a lot of High-V shrapnel buzzing about. Still to lose two drones at essentially the same time was somewhat odd. I didn’t like odd.

  “Is the Diaspora team ready?”

  “Affirmative Admiral. The question is, are the bots willing to play?”

  For any inquiring minds that may be out there… we were going to try and steal some of the Ancestor construction bots and see if we couldn’t convince them to help us build the colony ship. The particular bots in question were asteroid miners.

  We had discovered a few days ago that not all the metals being used in the lunar site construction were actually coming from the moon. In point of fact, there was a huge population of Near-Earth Orbiting asteroids. Many of the NEOs were rich in the very exotic rare materials that were apparently needed for the lunar construction activity. As a result, many of these NEOs were now teeming with Ancestor-designed miner-bots.

  If you are wondering what the difference is between a miner-bot and a construction-bot… so were we. They looked the same, so we were hoping for the best.

  I toggled the ship-to-ship comms.

  “Admiral Riker, this is Admiral Riker. We’re going to initiate the capture in two minutes. We estimate your team will have two to two and a half minutes to make any trajectory changes you need to.”

  “Understood, Fleet. My team is standing by. Ody out.”

  I nodded to Mitty.

  “Mephibosheth, if you would do the honors.”

  “Aye aye, Admiral. Doing the ‘honors’ now,” the Archon responded.

  I knew the little alien had just put a whole string of operations in motion, but from the bridge of semi-completed starship buried deep in the moon’s crust, we saw and heard nothing. To be honest…it was kind of anticlimactic.

  “Can we monitor what’s going on using the viewscreen?” I asked, hopefully.

  “I’m afraid not, sir. It’s not hooked…” Shelby began and then paused as the main viewscreen lit up with a detailed view of the activities outside.

  “Never mind sir. Main viewscreen now online.”

  It was either one hell of a coincidence, or whatever was serving as the ship’s AI had overheard the request and somehow made things happen. I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Arty since the Gilboa incident… I found myself wondering if he wasn’t hiding somewhere in a secret computer core.

  “Best available view on screen,” I requested.

  “Switching view to Lunar Two outpost feed,” Ensign Roe responded.

  The screen filled with a black void. A fraction of a second later the computer-enhanced the image of what appeared to be a massive rock in space. I knew from our planning meetings that it was a NEO called 2133AC or “Hammer” because from one angle it looked like the head of a hammer. The view we currently had made it look more like one of those floating yellow rubber ducks that seem to find their ways into people’s bathtubs.

  I knew the asteroid was rich in both dysprosium and thulium… rare earth metals. It seemed modern, state-of-the-art starships needed vast quantities of both. Who knew? Apparently, Arty’s construction bots did… as there were dozens if not a hundred plus of the little buggers crawling over a very specific section of the surface of 2133AC.

  A few hours earlier, a team of engineers under the watchful eyes of Commander Whiskers McGraw launched a small probe towards the asteroid. The specially constructed silver sphere entered orbit around the massive kilometer-wide rock. The sphere was a gravity tractor. Once activated, the tractor would use a Higgs-field enhancer to greatly increase its effective mass. The small device would suddenly weight a hundred times more than 2133AC.

  The result would be startling. As the center of mass shifted from the asteroid towards the tractor, the giant asteroid would find itself falling into orbit around the silver sphere rather than the other way around.

  Sadly, our view was after the transition had taken place. I knew this because there were several dozen bots flying in a straight line directly towards a series of capture nets. In short order, those nets would be pulled in by the Diaspora team.

  Now you may be asking yourselves, ‘Self… how is it that there is a line of floating mining bots suddenly flying toward our waiting nets.’ It’s a reasonable question that deserves a reasonable answer. The long answer comes in the form of angular momentum and a gentleman by the name of Isaac Newton.

  The short answer is that the activation timing of the gravity tractor’s Higgs-field enhancer was such that the little buggers were tossed off the asteroid’s surface in the general direction we wanted them to go… at least that had been our plan… and initially what we thought had happened.

  About halfway towards the awaiting nets, about a third of the bots in question started accelerating back towards 2133AC. The remaining sixteen bots clumped together and adjusted their course as well… directly towards the center of the nearest net.

  If I were a betting man… and I am… I would guess the bots had just agreed to help us. This helped to bolster my belief that Arty was still out there pulling the strings.

  There are moments when I hate being right. This was not one of them. I didn’t know it at the time, but we would soon need his help desperately.

  ***

  “The little guys are nothing short of amazing, Fleet Admiral,” the holographic image of Commander “Wally” Montgomery said from the engineering bridge of the Diaspora. He was standing next to my twin. The two had been briefing me on the Diaspora’s progress.

  I adjusted the angle of the remote camera pickup to get a better angle to see the work going on in the background.

  Major construction on the Diaspora had been essentially complete for a month. The problem was all of the minor details… things like tying the various control interfaces together, system checks and validations, purging and cleaning the ventilation conduits and a thousand other essential details had been left undone when the J’ni had been stolen by the Ancestor AI for construction of its moon base. Human engineers had taken over and made good progress, but it was time-consuming at a time when there was no time.

  The Ancestor bots arrived and immediately began completing the work. They even disassembled and reassembled the Skip drive. The result was still being analyzed, but it matched the configuration of the recently completed drive on the ship being on the moon.

  My knowledge of Galactic Order engineering was as good as any of the officers working in those departments… this thanks to the Da’Tellen memory transfer device that I had used shortly after encountering the Galactic Order for the first time. Even so, I was hard-pressed to understand the changes I was seeing.

  My best theory was that the modifications were intended to allow the drive to safely eject a ship from Skip Space at an arbitrary point along its journey. Our curr
ent systems basically rode the Skip wave until it petered out. The enhancements, if they did what I suspected they did, would be a game changer.

  “I’m glad they are working out for you, Commander,” I said. “My brother told me that you had some initial concerns, but I assume you are past them now?”

  “There are still some niggling little details, but by-and-large things are proceeding far faster than I could have imagined. Another week and we should be fit to fly.”

  Ody and I exchanged glances. For the Diaspora to be complete in a week had been unimaginable just twenty-four hours earlier. Sadly, neither my brother nor I believed we had a week. I was about to say as much… when all hell broke loose.

  2100.1289.8805 Galactic Normalized Time

  Finally, the Avner-class battleship began to move forward. Her cloaks were fully engaged, and for the first time in days, she was fully operational. An entire battalion of the best scientifically grown and conditioned human soldiers were hours from making landfall on Earth. General Ahithophel called his senior officers to the planning room. There was still time to review the invasion plan one last time.

  Chapter 3: Kicking the Dog

  Suddenly the air was filled with the all-too-familiar sound of an alert siren. I tapped the comm-link on my wrist.

  “Bridge, report!”

  Commander Shelby responded immediately.

  “Sir, long-range sensors just came online. They are showing a single Avner-class battleship advancing on Earth under heavy cloak. ETA about three hours.”

  “Under heavy cloak? How did we detect it?”

  “None of circumsolar sensors did. It was the Gilboa II’s sensors that did. It would appear that sensors are one of the systems that have been enhanced.”

  It seemed the little gift Arty had left us on the moon was a gift that kept on giving.

  “What’s the status of the rest of the fleet?” I asked, hopefully. I knew the answer already, but it didn’t hurt to confirm what I suspected.

  The Ticonderoga and Yorktown are both sixteen hours out. They were picketing out past the Asteroid belt,” Shelby said after a brief pause to examine the newly operational long-range sensors.”

  “Fleet, if I may?” Ody interjected. I had been so focused on Shelby, I had forgotten the other Admiral Riker was holographically present.

  I turned to face him again.

  “What are you thinking, Ody?”

  “The Diaspora is operational. We have defensive weapons. I could get a minimal crew up to the ship in less than two hours. We could attempt to hold them off until Captains Tilly and Kirkland can get here.”

  I nodded. My doppelganger had the genesis of an idea. Sadly, he was not going to like the changes I was about to make. He wanted to defend Earth. I needed him to defend humanity.

  I had Mitty, who was acting as my communications officer for the moment, tie in Earth Fleet Command. I needed them to hear and acknowledge what I was about to say. When they were online, I gave Ody the bad news.

  “Admiral Riker,” I began formally. “You are to expedite crewing the UES Diaspora… and provisioning her for extended travel. Get as many class-one civilian specialists onboard as you can. I’m signaling the Admiralty Board. Diaspora now has the absolute top priority… civilian transports and supplies are to be commandeered and utilized for the duration. You have your two hours. Then you are ordered to break orbit and vacate this system.”

  I have to give Ody credit. He looked shocked, then furious. He kept both out of his voice as he responded to my order.

  “Fleet Admiral Riker. I protest your orders in the extreme. Earth is our home. We are in a position to help defend it. Surely that has to be our priority.”

  I shook my head. My twin was genetically and experience-ally me in almost every way. It was that ‘almost’ that came into play here.

  “Ody, these people practice global genocide. If they attack Earth with a bioweapon, our species could be wiped off the face of the universe. I’ve seen the results on multiple worlds with multiple races.”

  I paused for a moment to gather my thoughts. I could see my brother start to say something. I held up my hand to stop him.

  “I can’t allow this to be humanity’s fate… no matter how small the risk. I know that two hours is not enough time… not by weeks… to get the Diaspora ready to function as a lifeboat for the human race. Two hours is what we have. I’m not asking you to agree with me. I’m asking you to trust me and to carry out my orders.”

  I was relieved to see the other Admiral Riker slowly and reluctantly nod.

  “Orders received and understood Fleet Admiral. We will put those two hours to good use.”

  “Ody, one other thing.”

  My brother, who had looked down at his tablet to begin tapping out his own orders, looked back up.

  “I’m reassigning Captain Ming Xi and the Nimitz to your command. Take them with you. When you feel the Diaspora is reasonably safe, use the Nimitz to checkup on our situation. At that point, if you deem it safe to return you may do so. If not, you are to find a permanent home for your colony as far from here as you can reasonably travel.”

  Riker looked grim but after the briefest of pauses, saluted again and said, “Sir, yes sir.”

  “God be with you, Ody.”

  “And you too, Fleet. You too.”

  ***

  The next several hours were… intense. The Gilboa II, as we had taken to calling Arty’s miracle on the moon, was still only about sixty percent complete. Not only was she not combat ready… she didn’t have a complete hull and outer skin. She was not going to be a factor in the coming confrontation.

  The good news, if there was any, was that Earth now had a sizable collection of orbiting defense platforms. They had the best defensive systems the Galactic Order was able to develop and field. That said, the enemy had better weapons. They also had stealth systems that our platforms could not penetrate.

  Those two facts had the potential to seriously compromise Earth’s ability to defend itself.

  I have to admit, I felt somewhat powerless sitting in my command chair in a half-baked, not-quite-ready for primetime, starship. We couldn’t fly. We couldn’t fight… at least not directly. That said, I had a plan. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it made the best use of what I had available to work with.

  My mamma used to tell me that you can gripe about the cards in your hand or do the best job playing the cards you were dealt. My momma was a wise woman, at least when she wasn’t drunk or in jail… but that’s another story.

  My plan was to feed targeting data to those defensive platforms using the Gilboa II’s sensors. That wouldn’t mitigate the Defiler ship’s technological advantages once the battle began, but it should provide quite a surprise before the party. To make this work, I had to convince the bad guys that their stealth was working. This led me to my current conversation.

  Captains Tilly and Kimbridge were both standing in front of me… at least their holographic images were. They were both several light hours away. That fact alone should have made a real-time conversation impossible. Another Arty system upgrade was at play.

  My guess was that it was similar in nature to the FTL communications the Tas occasionally gave us access to. This version only worked within a quarter lightyear of the base station; which made it great for interplanetary communications but useless for interstellar.

  “It’s imperative that you divert to Mars,” I said without any preamble.

  To his credit, Kimbridge didn’t change expression and didn’t say a word. Captain Tilly… well, that was another matter.

  “Admiral, respectfully, I’m going to need more than your say-so to divert course. That battleship is headed towards Earth not Mars… unless the sensor feed you’re supplying is as bogus as this order.”

  I smiled. Tilly and I went way back. I had the utmost respect for her, but having said that, she never hid her feeling. If she saw a cold turd on a stick, she called it exactly that. There was no beating a
round the bush and no calling it a poop-popsicle.

  “You are aware I have been placed in full command of joint military operations?”

  “I am sir… which is why I said ‘respectfully.’”

  My smile deepened. I liked Tilly. I could see from the twinkle in Captain Kimbridge’s eyes that he was very familiar with Tilly’s antics as well.

  “Right now, your two ships will be a minimum of twelve hours late to the party. We know that the battleship’s weapons and defenses are better than yours. The Gilboa II is days, if not weeks from being able to join the fray… and that’s assuming the ship will be under our control when it's complete.

  “Our only advantage is that we know the enemy is out there, and they don’t know that we know.”

  Kimbridge nodded.

  “You need us to make a show of diverting, so the Captain of that Defiler ship does not suspect we are on to him. I assume your plan involves a first strike surprise of some sort,” the holographic image of Robert said from the bridge of the Ticonderoga.

  “Exactly right,” I agreed.

  Tilly continued to press her point.

  “How long do we need to make a show of diverting? You are eventually going to need our help. Heading all the way to Mars will add almost a day to our homeward trip.”

  I nodded. She was right on both counts. Fortunately, I wouldn’t need them to hold the ruse for long.

  “I agree. But you need to make a show of changing course to Mars now. In fact, both of you launch sprint shuttles. Make it flashy and make damn sure they are pointing towards Mars. I want nice long exhaust plumes pointing straight at Phobos.

  “Meanwhile, our earth-orbiting platforms should be in a position to engage the battleship in another…” I paused to check my watch, “2 hours and 12 minutes. If we are lucky, we will get a few shots in before they realize we are on to them.