by Andrew Beery
Cat and Rasta-Tckner sat in a conference room with Captain Jeffries, his first officer Rudy and Ricky Valen. Rasta-Tckner was explaining what had happened to his people. The invaders had arrived a little over three months ago. At that time there were six habitable moons orbiting the nest host which is what Rasta's people called Kepler-47b. The actual name for the world was sacred and, like the name of the creator, could not be said. It seemed Rasta-Tckner's people shared a sense of the divine with many of the member races of the GCP. Cat was sure Ken would have a number of fascinating conversations with Rasta on the subject.
The invaders entered into orbit, just as the Heidman had, and within moments the most populous of the moons began to spiral out of orbit. Although they never developed interstellar travel, the Hymenopterans, or Buggers, had had interplanetary space travel capability for the better part of a millennium. Much of the population from that moon was able to escape the doomed satellite before tidal forces caused it to break up during its descent into 47b's thick atmosphere.
Unfortunately, much of their race literally lived in the clouds on 47b. They had constructed massive floating cities suspended by buoyant airships that never touched the surface of the planet. The altitude they floated at was controlled precisely to maintain the proper temperature and pressure for his people. The atmosphere at that level, about twenty-nine kilometers above the surface, was composed of primarily nitrogen and oxygen which meant it could be directly breathed with minimal need for environmental engineering.
As the first of the moons was destroyed by the invaders, this delicate balance was also destroyed. Turbulence and kinetic energy from the moon's demise caused most of the floating cities to be displaced within the atmospheric pressure column. Most of the cities either imploded if they descended too far or exploded if they were pushed too high. Less than 30 percent of the cloud-based population survived. As the next three largest moons were attacked and plummeted into the nest host the destruction of the millennium old floating cities was complete.
Finally only two nest moons remained, and each of these began their descent as somehow their orbits were made to decay. The invaders disappeared as suddenly as they showed up. Then, just as suddenly, the orbits of the two moons stabilized. Rasta-Tckner had no idea how or why. Cat suspected the Heshe had stepped in. This was confirmed when Rasta let slip that the star patterns had changed.
As Rasta-Tckner relayed this information to the room, Captain Jeffries bowed his head. It was clear he was just now realizing the scope of the disaster that had befallen these people. He could not forget the attack on the Heidman but he could understand why it had occurred.
Ricky asked the question that was on everyone's mind. "If your people had space travel capability, why were the floating cities not abandoned?"
Rasta-Tckner explained that every effort was made to do so but they just did not have the transportation assets to carry out such an evacuation.
The cities relied on a series of dual-purpose space-elevators that ran from the largest three moons into the planet's atmosphere. It was a brilliant design in which a tethered cable was lowered to the planet's gravity well from a position in orbit. The other end was then lowered into the moon's gravity well. This worked so long as the moon in question was like Earth's and tidally locked so that the same face always presented to the planet it was orbiting.
Traveling the space elevator provided a low cost means of moving between worlds. As an added bonus, the cables generated a considerable electrical potential by virtue of their interaction with the strong magnetic fields present. This energy provided the bulk of the needs for each of the three moons directly involved. To leave one of the floating cities, one simply traveled by dirigible to the nearest elevator cable which itself was traveling through the primary's atmosphere in sync with the orbiting moon to which it was attached.
When the invaders collapsed the orbits of the moons, they also destroyed the chief means of escape for most of the population. Those that had escaped joined in an unprecedented hive super-mind. The intent was to come up with a means of defending against the invaders.
Rasta-Tckner's people had never known war. It was an alien concept to them. Unfortunately the hive was ill-equipped to defend themselves. The best they could do was swarm the enemy ships and relegate them to the same fate as the moons that were being destroyed.
They never determined how the moons were being attacked. Their physicists speculated that it had something to do with enhancing the spacial interaction of matter with what the humans called the Higgs field. The effect was to increase the mass of the moons and thus degrade their orbits.
The hive super-mind, formed as a result of the attack, was unprecedented in size and scope. It was also out of control. The invaders had been gone for several months, but the super-mind continued to exert absolute control over the entire hive collective. Even worse, the highly ethical nature of their people was entirely supplanted by the super-mind and its unrelenting drive to eliminate any and all potential threats.
***
Mike Jeffries was on the refurbished bridge of the Heidman-2 when the Gold team skiff docked and off-loaded her personnel. The critical materials, extra supplies, and helping hands would mean the ship would be space-worthy in less than a day. The Dante docked at the secondary airlock, which was on the other side of the ship. She would off-load additional medical supplies and then depart for her role as a forward defender against any possible attack.
Captain Jeffries asked for and received permission from Commodore Kimbridge to hitch a ride with the Dante to the second crash site. He wanted to assess the state of the ship and his crew directly. He had taken a turn at controlling one of the Dextre avatars, but HR Telepresence,no matter how‘high-reality’ the HR system was, was never a substitute for hands-on observation.
He made his way to the combat shuttle. Had he realized this would be the last time he would see the bridge of this or any other GCP starship he might have paused to take a longer look. As it was, his mind was elsewhere.
***
"Hey Fluffy, how we doing up there?"
Sassi keyed open his mike with a deft flick of his lower mouth part. The Ashkelon was becoming adept at using the various systems integrated into his special encounter suit.
"Just fine, Chief. The medical team went on ahead. I'm taking advantage of a communications port to see if I can't get ship-to-ship working again. I'm also poking around the AI. I'm not an expert in computer systems, especially given that no one in my race had actually ever seen one up until a few weeks ago, but if I had to guessI’d say the logic core is online but none of the database systems are up. As it stands now, it’s a hyper-intelligent machine with no direction."
Chief Wroblewski chuckled to himself. The Ashkelon may not have known anything about electronic computers prior to meeting the GCP but they were a race of mathematical geniuses who had quickly mastered the fundamentals. Wroblewski doubted there was a single member of his team as proficient with this technology as Sassi, and that was after only a few weeks of playing around with it.
"OK, Fluffy. Once you get ship-to-ship going, why don't you take a shot at the computers. It would be nice to have a working AI on this boat."
"Roger that Wall-Worm, Fluffy out."
Sassi heard his friend chortle as he cut the commlink. The sound of humans laughing was surprisingly agreeable. He had power rerouted to the comms in just a few minutes. The ship's impressive automated repair systems had done a marvelous job putting the busted hull back together, especially given that this section had a fully working power system and so was not as constrained as the other piece of the Heidman had been.
The biggest problem was the lack of a functioning AI. The entire crew was in medical stasis because there was no AI to direct medical repairs. Nanites were an incredible resource but they could do very little on their own without an AI to guide their actions. Basic programming could keep tissue viable but it could not knit bone or reconnect neuron-pathways or repair a
ruptured vein.
As best Sassi could determine, when the ship determined it was going to crash, it immediately placed the entire crew in medical status; what the humans called temporary medically-induced morbidity or TMIM. This meant they could be revived, but the systems required to do so had not survived the crash.
Sassi keyed the newly restored ship-to-ship. "Heidman-2, this is Heidman-1. Do you copy, over?"
"Sassi," Cat responded almost instantly. "Good to hear you. You are coming in over a general communication channel. Is your new internal commlink working OK?"
"Yes, Commodore. I have a reason for wanting to use this channel."
"I see you have been busy. I've been getting updates from Chief Wroblewski. Seems the crew is fine pending their revival. Do you have anything to add?"
Sassi shifted his weight before answering. He was still nervous about the crushing gravity he knew to be just outside the confines of the Heidman's walls. He supposed it must be similar to the feeling of claustrophobia that some humans feel when in a cave, as his friend Chief Wroblewski had explained.
"The Chief asked me to look into the situation with both the comms and the AI. The comms are fixed but the AI is still down. The primary database is in your section of the ship. The backup in engineering was destroyed before it could fully come online and clone itself. It looks like the secondary database was completely compromised by the crash. The logic core is intact but it has no programming."
"I see. And actually I'm not surprised. The AI in this section was badly damaged as well. I suppose its humbling to know that even Heshe technology is not infallible," Cat said over the ship-to-ship.
"Indeed," Sassi agreed.
"I wonder if we can reload the database remotely?"
"That was my thought too. Can you ask Cindy if she can look into it?"
There was a brief pause which Sassi assumed was the Commodore having a conversation with the Heidman's AI Cindy.
"Ensign Sassi," The sound of a human female filled his head as the Heidman's AI utilized his GCP designed internal commlink.
"Go ahead, Cindy"
"There is a shuttle en route to you. Captain Jeffries has a quantum node which needs to be installed in the aft communications bay just off of engineering. All you need to do is place the module near the comm array. It will self-configure. Once it is in place I will be able to update the programming and database in the secondary core."
"That's wonderful," Sassi acknowledged. He still found it amazing that the intellect he was talking with was artificial.
"There are some things you can do before the Captain gets there."
Chapter Eleven - Battle for the Heidman...
Ben accessed his cybernetic implants to inspect the surface of the quantum node he and Thais had just finished constructing. Once an entangled quantum pair was obtained the regenerative circuitry would keep the unit functioning. As best he could tell, this was a perfect replica of the communication nodes used by Rasta-Tckner's people. Unfortunately it was useless as a means of establishing communication with the Hymenopterans without a properly entangled photon.
A portion of Ben's hybrid cybernetic mind was simultaneously reviewing reconnaissance data from Commander Kirkland's probes. If the decision was made to try and secure a working node, it was likely that this information was going to be critical.
***
Teek-Tra felt his small craft shutter. He directed his combat swarm deeper into the gravity well. As a single unit, something just shy of two thousand fighters separated from the primary defense ring orbiting the nest host. Their target was a pair of energy signatures on the planet surface. He estimated the swarm was about thirty-five minutes out from the target.
His race did not have and had never designed weapons per se. This meant their options for attacking were somewhat limited. The hive super-mind, however,had recently gained access to the enemy's weapons’ design schematics. Weapon systems were even now being developed but they would not be available for deployment for many days. A part of him knew he would never live to see the deployment of such systems and he was strangely comforted by this knowledge.
Still, even without weapons he and his family would attack this enemy. In the past the hive would swarm the opponent and force them into the deadly embrace of the nest host's gravity well. And although this had been attempted with this invader as well, somehow they had survived. That left precious few options for continuing the attack.
The hive super-mind was resourceful. In reviewing the information taken from the attacker’s mothership, the super-mind discovered that the enemy had described a means by which a submerged opponent could be attacked. Teek-Tra would employ such a technique against their opponent. There would be no survivors the second time.
***
Sassi finished connecting the last cable between the comm unit and the secondary AI's I/O buffer. He was ready for Captain Jeffries as soon as he arrived with the high-speed quantum interlink. Once in place the primary AI on the other piece of the Heidman could establish a data link and bring the secondary AI in this segment back online.
He accessed the external sensor array to see how far out the captain's shuttle was when he got the shock of his life. He screamed a warning out of both his low frequency and high frequency antennas before he realized no one currently on this ship could hear such a warning. He opened up his radio link and repeated his warning in a slightly calmer tone.
"Attention all stations, this is Ensign Sassi on the Heidman-1. I'm pretty sure we are about to come under attack. There is a massive number of craft converging on our location."
Chief Wroblewski, Commodore Kimbridge, and Captain Mike Jeffries all joined the link almost simultaneously. At first it was impossible to make heads or tails of what anyone was saying but Cat put a stop to the racket as she took control of the situation.
"Everyone hold your questions. Sassi start slowly and give us a report."
"Yes, Commodore," Sassi paused and took a deep breath. "I brought the Heidman's external sensor array online. I was looking for Captain Jeffries' shuttle while testing the side-band calibration. I saw a spike in the data stream. Since our AI was not yet online I did a Fast Fourier Transform in my head and realized I was looking at about two thousand discrete signals heading in our general direction."
Mike Jeffries broke in, "You crunched two thousand data points across three dimensions in your head in a fraction of a second?"
The channel was silent for a moment but when Sassi answered he sounded deflated and almost embarrassed. "I'm sorry Captain. I was so alarmed it actually took me closer to three seconds. In fairness it was roughly twenty-eight million data points and I had to use a heuristic. I did run the numbers twice. I am quite sure there are two thousand small craft on an approach vector."
"We believe you Sassi. Captain, Sassi's people have never had access to electronic computers and have been calculating interstellar jump coordinates by hand for years. They are natural mathematicians." It was Chief Wroblewski who spoke up for his friend.
"I'm bringing another person into this link. His name is Rasta-Tckner. He is a member of the Hymenopterans and may have some insight as to what we can expect. In the meantime, Chief Wroblewski – new priority. Get the defensive systems online. Everyone, and I mean everyone, gets in their high-pressure encounter suits."
Rasta-Tckner joined their conversation a few seconds later.
Captain Jeffries asked the question that was on everybody's mind. "What can we expect in terms of an attack? What types of weapons will they be using?"
"As surprising as this may sound, I have no idea. My people are not fighters. We have never had any need for weapons. A few of our construction tools might be converted to weapons but it would be hard to see how they could be of use on the surface of the nest host."
"Nest host?" Cat said.
"This world we are on now. You call it Kepler-47b."
"Is it possible they are not attacking?" Chief Wroblewski asked.
R
asta-Tckner paused before answering. "I just tried to contact them via my organic hive node. I should have been able to speak with them as easily as I am speaking with you. They rejected the link. The only reason they would do that is if they were still part of the hive collective, using their FTL quantum node. If they are part of the super-mind then I'm afraid that they are intent on attacking even if we don't know how they would go about it."
"OK," Cat said. "What are the possibilities?"
"They could drop rocks on us." Wroblewski offered.
Sassi spoke up "The math doesn't work. Yes the gravity would allow for quite a bit of kinetic energy, but the atmosphere is too thick. Most of the energy would be lost to atmospheric ablation. The rocks would burn up."
"What about kamikaze runs? A high-speed impact might do quite a bit of damage and these buggers don't seem to mind dying," the Chief continued.
"I assure you, we 'buggers' mind dying very much; but when an individual is under control of the hive mind there is very little we can do to resist its directives. I'm not familiar with how a kamikaze runs on your world but again the thick atmosphere would limit the velocity, especially near the surface. Several hundred impacts at once, however, might do quite a bit of damage. My guess is this is what they will attempt. Is there any way you can move so you are a harder target to hit?"