Hunter Legacy 12: Hero in Darkness

by Timothy Ellis

  "How much mass are we talking about?" asked Aline.

  Jane was quiet for a half minute.

  "The first one has the mass of a small planetoid. Say roughly the size of Bad Wolf."

  Even I was shocked. I’d often wondered what the size-mass limit for jumps was, but apparently there were none.

  "And the second?"

  "Small fraction. Wait a sec while I see if one of the comnavsats can get us a proper close image."

  We didn’t have to wait long. The image flashed up on a side screen. By the time it did, there were three dots.

  "Why am I reminded of peeling an onion?" asked Alison.

  "Because it does look like that," said Amanda.

  And they were right. It did look like on both sides of the original object, half a layer had been peeled away. The two smaller ones moved away, and suddenly there were two more.

  "I've got a bad feeling about this," said Amy.

  She was at the back of the Bridge, along with a cam operator, and a half dozen media types. I'd not wanted them, but it had been obvious not bringing them would damage the credibility of any claims we might make about what happened here. The media people had been chosen especially because they never agreed with each other. They were already doing sub-vocal commentary. This was all going live up the spine as fast as the comnavsats could move it. I hadn't liked it, but live coverage was the only way of getting everyone to take this seriously.

  It was conceivably possible that every human, everywhere except Gaia, had now stopped, and was looking at a screen.

  Now there were nine, and as we watched, it became eleven. The whole process seemed to be speeding up.

  I had a decision to make. Exactly when did I initiate first contact? Fifteen. Did I wait until they approached us, assuming it was a they, or did I go there and make ourselves known before they became too organized? Or did I simply send our first contact message through the nearest comnavsat?

  "Any signs of hostility?" I asked Jane.

  "None. No signs of life even. Although we have to assume there is some."

  Twenty three. I stopped paying attention to the ever widening area of black.

  "It's not happening like the nightmares seemed to indicate, is it Jon?" asked Aleesha.

  "No. It’s a lot slower than I expected."

  "Is that good or bad?" asked Dick.

  I looked at Jane.

  "I've no idea. But I think I know what's going on over there."

  "Do tell."

  "Closest analogy I can think of is a station jumped in, and Carriers and Battleships docked to it are steadily undocking."

  There was no response from anyone.

  "They jumped a whole fleet in as a single object you think?" I asked generally.

  "Why not," said George. "We've done it ourselves."

  "What does that tell us?" asked Annabelle.

  Nobody answered her. Our eyes were going from each other to the navmap, to the view, and back again.

  I think I knew. And only because I knew something I’d not told anyone else. Thirteen knew, but hadn't said anything so far. He was in Jack's second officer chair, since Jack wasn’t with us. For now, he was acting captain of Fearless.

  "Thirteen, are you just going to sit there?" I asked him.

  "I guess not. You want to come with me?"

  The whole concept of me going with him horrified me. It shocked everyone else.

  "How safe is it?"

  "For me, no problems. I can make another avatar if I need to."

  I shook my head violently, like I'd been attacked by a demon. Normally that was a bad thing. This time I think it was just terror taking hold.

  "And me?"

  "Do you think Kali would let you die just as things were beginning?"

  I didn’t want to answer that.

  "You'll be fine," he went on quickly.

  I nodded.

  Time stopped.

  In an instant, we were standing in space, far enough away from the ships for us to have some perspective, but close enough to see. They were not ships. Well they were ships. My brain gibbered for a moment.

  This was bad. Really bad.

  I could see the next layer in the process of peeling away. I could see what the layer was comprised of.

  Bad was the wrong word. It brought on a thought.

  "What's at the center?" I thought to Thirteen.

  We shifted. Now we were standing on the innermost layer. Except it wasn’t a layer.

  "Fuck," I thought. "I hate it when I'm right."

  I could hear Thirteen chuckle.

  "Inside," I thought.

  We shifted again.

  Black. All black. Nothing but black.

  "Home James. But let's be gone about ten seconds for the media."

  I was back in my chair, Thirteen standing next to me. Time started again. But for ten seconds, we were obviously not seen by anyone. It made sense. No-time protected us both from Pestilence, which used to kill anyone who entered here, albeit slowly. Thirteen had brought us back to the same moment we left but taken us both out of phase so it appeared like we were gone for ten seconds.

  I closed my eyes and face palmed. We came back into phase.

  "Was it that bad?" asked Annabelle.

  "Worse. Much, much, worse."

  "How bad can it be?" asked Amy.

  "What did you see Admiral?" asked one of the media types.

  I swiveled my chair around to face them. Those now behind me, except for George, moved so they could watch my face.

  "The last time we were down here, we missed a pirate Battleship. They'd stolen a new set of shield emitters, which were supposed to have been tested for crossing the Death system. Instead of engaging us as we jumped into Last Hope, they jumped out. We thought they'd been destroyed in the War system, but when we checked it about five months ago, there was no sign of it at all."

  I'd known there wouldn’t be, and had known it'd made it across the Death system. But it was something I hadn't wanted to get around. Now was different though. We needed a scapegoat, and dead pirates were a good one.

  "The Battleship is over there."

  I waved at the HUD. There was complete silence, as everyone waited for me to continue.

  "For those who just saw me vanish for a few seconds…"

  "Ten," interjected Jane.

  "…we have an ally with useful, if limited, abilities which enabled me to visit," I thought for a moment, "over there. At the heart of what looks like a gigantic ship, is an asteroid. Embedded in the asteroid is the pirate Battleship which fled past us. It looks intact. And it looks like its providing shielding for the whole mass, allowing it to cross the Death system."

  "You look like there's more to tell," said a different media type.

  "Yes. What we thought looked like an onion peeling, turns out to be a huge mesh of linked ships."

  "How many?" asked George.

  "What size?" asked Lacey, on a side screen from the cockpit of his Camel.

  "They looked fighter size to me. But each mesh looks to contain tens of thousands of ships."

  There were a number of shocked noises. I think I was too numb for noises.

  "Are you saying there could be hundreds of thousands of ships over there?" asked Amy.

  She was playing for the crowd, forcing me to be clear about what we faced.

  "Potentially? I think they have a hundred thousand deployed already, and that’s only the outer layers."

  "Fuck!" said the cam operator. "Sorry."

  "Fair summary I thought," I said as calmly as I could.

  "Was there anything you could do while over there?" asked Amy.

  "No," said Thirteen. "Time was stopped. Inside the Battleship was complete black, so we couldn’t see what's been done inside, or who we're dealing with. Even if I went back now, with time running normally, there is nothing I could do, since there is no light of any kind in there."

  "The Darkness," said Amanda, dropping it in on us at a dramatic m
oment.

  Three

  "Apparently," I said.

  "What are we going to do Admiral?" asked Annabelle.

  I swiveled back to the front. The cam operator would have switched one of his views to a cam at the front of the Bridge, so to the audience watching us at a short delay, I was merely being seen from a different angle. It had all been set up in advance. Along with a lot of other things. We'd had six months after all. It may not have been long enough, but it had been fully used.

  "Is the first contact message ready to go?" I asked Jane.

  "Confirmed."

  This was a benign greeting from humans to our new friends, in all known languages, including various forms of mathematics with which an intelligent space capable species should be able to build a cross reference for their own language.

  "Move the nearest comnavsat in as close as you can get. Let's see how close they'll allow it to come, and what they do about it. At their first movement, broadcast the message."

  "Confirmed."

  A screen popped up, with the vid from the comnavsat. It was approaching at a cautious speed. At first, it was if they were unaware of it. Now we could see what I'd already seen, the meshes of huge numbers of fighter sized ships, the next mesh peeling away from the huge mass.

  "Distance?" I asked Jane.

  "Ten kilometers. Seems odd they haven't reacted yet."

  "Surely they have sensors good enough to detect metallic objects?" speculated George.

  I noticed his hands were on the controls, ready to react at a moment's notice. Mine weren't. I was content to let him be the Helmsman if he wanted to be. I trusted his reaction times.

  "Or even movement," added Dick. "That’s right on top of them, and they don’t appear to be aware of it."

  At two kilometers, Jane stopped the comnavsat. It sat there, observing the continued peeling of the next layer. We also watched as the other layers flattened out into huge mesh sheets.

  On the HUD, there was now a small area of black. The icons were now black dots, but they were so close together at this distance, it was just a black blob. In the view screen, the area of black was growing. Nowhere near as fast as it had in my nightmares, but at a slow steady rate.

  I weighed the decision. And made it.

  "Send the first contact message."

  "Confirmed. Message sent."

  There was no apparent effect.

  "Did they get it?" asked BA

  "Unknown," said Jane. "It was sent over all known frequencies, including basic radio from seven hundred years ago, and frequencies above and below the human range."

  "Nothing," I said.

  "Are they blind, deaf, and dumb?" asked Grace.

  There was no answer to that, but I thought of termites all of a sudden.

  "Jane, move the comnavsat in slowly. If you can, lay it up against something, and repeat the message."

  "Confirmed."

  "You're going to tap it to them?" asked Aline.

  "Sort of. If they communicate using vibrations, we need to give them a vibration to be aware of."

  "What use would that be?" asked Abigail. "You can't send vibrations across space."

  "Could they read the solar winds?" asked Dick.

  Everyone looked at him. He was the most avid reader of us, after me.

  "They could be telepathic," I said. "In which case, until they can read a mind, we're not likely to be able to communicate."

  "Depends on their distance capabilities," said Abigail.

  "True. But they obviously can't detect us out here, so the range must be limited."

  "Assuming our minds are compatible," added Dick.

  I wondered what he'd been reading lately. He used to read detective stories, but he was sounding very rounded in science fiction all of a sudden.

  At one thousand meters, we had an instant reaction.

  The Comnavsat vanished, as did its vid feed.

  "Jane?"

  Rather than answering she threw up the last image it had sent.

  "Is that what it looks like?" asked Amy.

  "Yes," I said. "Thousands of guns shot it at the same time."

  "So," said Annabelle. "Hostile."

  "Afraid so," I agreed. "Jane, Foothold."

  "Confirmed. Received."

  Foothold meant a hostile force had a beach-head in our space.

  I carefully thought through the next step. But there really was only one course of action.

  "Movement," said Jane suddenly.

  The dots on the nav map suddenly became legion.

  "Expanding waves of small ships, heading out on all vectors around the line our comnavsat went in on."

  This wasn’t a direct line to us, but it looked as if we stayed here, we would be discovered, even with their apparently lousy sensors. It meant they didn’t know anyone was here, but they were looking all the same. So if nothing else, there was either intelligence there, or instinct. I wasn’t sure which was worse.

  "Oh shit!" said Jane dramatically, and the HUD vanished, the navmap vanished, and so did everything else electronic.

  "What the hell just happened?" came a voice from the rear.

  We had lights, air, gravity, but very little else.

  "Coms?" I asked Jane.

  "Negative."

  "Shit," I said.

  George was a second behind me with the same word. Abigail was a second behind him.

  "Computer room is down," said Jane.

  "Down? How can it be down?"

  "Repair droids on the way. Jon, I think the HUD software overloaded."

  "Huh?" came from somewhere behind me.

  "You remember during the Midgard war when we joked the HUD might overload because of all the missiles being fired at once?"

  "Yeah. And?"

  "I think it just did. Back then we were dealing with tens of thousands of dots. When those ship meshes suddenly became actual ships, one dot became tens of thousands. And all the original dots changed at the same time. I'm not sure the HUD was ever able to cope with hundreds of thousands of dots."

  "All the same, it shouldn’t have caused the ship's computer to go futz."

  "No, it shouldn’t have," said Abigail, "unless such a high number not only overloaded the variables inside the code, but did it suddenly, and in a way all the code became overwritten with data. But that shouldn’t ever happen."

  "It did," confirmed Jane.

  "How long to get it back up?"

  "Could be half an hour. They not only have to check for damage, but I'm going to have to reload the last full backup."

  "Are you okay Jane?" asked Amanda suddenly, looking very concerned.

  "This avatar is fine. It's autonomous. The ship me is gone though, or at least, is in storage and waiting for the hardware to be fixed so she can turn herself back on. If need be, I can clone myself back to the ship. Lose a few memories, but it's not a disaster for me."

  "Hardware damage?" I asked her.

  "Confirmed. Apparently there was a power spike at the same time, and the core is actually damaged. We have spares though. It'll just take time to fix."

  "Do we have the time?" asked Dick.

  Everyone looked to Jane.

  "I think so. They don’t appear to be very fast."

  "So bad sensors, and bad engines?" asked George "How slow are they?"

  "We don’t have sensors now, so I can only go by their initial acceleration. Where we take eight hours crossing this system, it looks like they'll take something around eighty five to cross from jump point to jump point. Less in smaller systems."

  "Three days?" exclaimed George. "Are they even a threat to us?"

  "Numbers," I said quietly.

  All eyes came back to me. I thought some more.

  "I understand the nightmare better now, I think. It was more symbolic than actual. When I saw the whole system go black in front of me, it was symbolic of the HUD going black suddenly, rather than the system slowly changing as they spread out."

  Even now, we c
ould see a much larger area of space blacked out, although it was patchy, with colour and suns shining though in some places.

  "Jon," said Thirteen. "They'd only just started deploying ships."

  I shivered.

  We sat there for a nerve wracking hour. It took only half the time to swap out the fried components. It wasn’t like the early days of computers where you pulled a circuit board, which changed a few dozen chips. Each component now was a miniaturized mega-computer in its own right, all interconnected. When something went inside them, you pulled the whole thing using a magnifying glass. It took specialist repair droids to work on computer cores. I had a serious bone to pick with Bob. This wasn’t supposed to happen. The redundant backups should have kicked in at the very least. They hadn’t.

  Hardware back up, Jane had to do a manual reload of the software. We held our collective breath waiting for the word on her ship persona.

  "I'm back," she said at last through ship coms.

  "How are we doing Jane?" I asked.

  "Just completing the diagnostics now. But I need to make some changes before I can bring the nav and HUD back up. We are not however, getting signals from most of the comnavsats, so I assume they've mostly all been taken out now."

  "Know what happened?"

  "Jon, the HUD overloaded."

  "We know that."

  "At one million ships."

  Four

  The only word to describe people's faces, was horror. It was on mine as well.

  "We lost our ship ID Jon," said Jane.

  "Hell!"

  "What does that mean?" asked BA.

  "It means our fleet thinks we bought the farm. Do we have full coms now?"

  "Yes."

  "Send 'Sorry about that, technical difficulties'."

  "Confirmed."

  I opened a vid.

  "This is Admiral Hunter in the Pestilence system. The question of if there is Alien life in this Galaxy is now answered. There is. Unfortunately, we have made contact with a hostile force. Our comnavsat was destroyed when it approached too close. As far as we can tell, they did not receive our first contact message. They arrived with an asteroid bearing a human ship, shielding giant meshes of smaller ships. Shortly after they took out the comnavsat, these large ship meshes became individual ships. Our nav software couldn’t handle it, and we've spent an hour rebuilding our computer room. At the end of this vid, will be a file for Hunter ships to replace their nav software with. Everyone else, before you come into sensor range of the enemy, you must upgrade your software to the specs included with this message."