The Nubl Wars (The Pattern Universe Book 3)

by Tobias Roote

  ***

  “The Rendezvous sensor buoy is broadcasting,” Ship informed him.

  “Hmmh! I believe I may need to jump to the ship, can you oblige with your usual accuracy, please.”

  Zirkos manifested aboard the ship, standing in the control room and slightly in front of Ship who materialised beside him. They moved as one to their respective positions, and as Ship set the course for the ship’s jump, Zirkos contacted the two regular patrols and advised them to meet at their destination.

  They would be twenty one ships in all, but the twenty patrols ships would be a while as they didn’t have jump drives. The fun would probably be over by the time they arrived, but it was still good practice for them.

  “Jumping... NOW!” Ship advised in a conversational tone. He only had to be heard by Zirkos and he could easily have done it by implant, but they also had to talk to the Frenon and needed to maintain the habit of normal speech to ensure they made sense. It was too easy for Ship to talk at speed, and Zirkos often dropped into human speech instead of the common Jenari leaving everyone confused.

  As they materialised in space at the preset location they noted the absence of any overt threat, but maintained their cloak. A single ship sat in the dark empty location. It appeared unarmed, or at least only lightly defended.

  Zirkos and Ship, unaware of its origins, and noting it wasn’t a Shadowship, prepared for the possibility of a trap.

  After an hour Ship noted something. “A fleet is approaching, it’s just in range of my sensors. A large number of vessels.”

  “Time until arrival?”

  “I estimate several hours. It’s not moving fast,” Ship responded.

  “We will jump to their location and ascertain their intent. Signal the patrols to lock onto the incoming fleet and prepare to either defend or attack on my command.”

  As Ship jumped them toward the mass of ships, they resolved into individual blips that the sensors could count. At over four hundred it looked like an attacking fleet was approaching the rendezvous, but Zirkos wasn’t convinced. If it were the Pelendar, then it was likely they were escaping the Celnista hive’s Shadowships.

  Zirkos selected the pre-arranged frequency and sent a message to the single ship which was now beyond their short range sensors, but still holding station at the coordinates handed to the Pelendar ‘Ta.

  “Identify yourself, or be destroyed.”

  The answer came back

  “Fellidor of the Pelendar, we seek the alien, Zirkos.”

  “This approaching fleet - it is yours?”

  “Yes, our entire hive, more may yet follow,” came the response.

  “Advise the hive to remain at the rendezvous until we have established a safe corridor.”

  “Understood.”

  Zirkos turned to Ship. “We have a problem.”

  Ship responded. “Yes, more than that - I’m picking up a fluctuating anomaly in our locality, we are being approached by a cloaked ship.”

  “Shadowship?”

  “Very likely. You were going to ask if we can jump four hundred ships?”

  “I know we can’t, it would take too long - it would leave us badly exposed.” The idea had been to jump the ships a short distance to take out any possibility of being followed, then send them on an escorted journey to Frenon. They hadn’t anticipated a major exodus.

  “I have an idea that might help, but we need to be ready to move on the instant,” Ship suggested.

  As the fleet came closer, word came that their Frenon patrols were also approaching, still cloaked. Zeke instructed them to spread out and take up defensive positions around the exodus and using their encrypted channel placed command structures between the patrols and the fleeing ships. They made sure all ships were responding by changing direction and monitoring the results. Two ships had not changed their frequencies and had to be brought up to speed. Then a further course change assured Zirkos that the ships were responding as a linked convoy.

  They put their plan into action.

  The anomaly had kept pace with them throughout all of this and Ship was now convinced the Shadowship was intending to either follow them or take out the hive’s queen, given the opportunity. They had a surprise for it.

  ***

  “Jabath, they’ve changed course again.”

  “Continue to follow, but not too close yet,” he replied. He pondered. His sensor operator was picking up communication on several frequencies which implied there were other ships about, probably cloaked and quite possibly armed. He thought of the aliens and wondered what kind of technology they might have that could hurt his ship. Quite a bit, he decided. The plan had been to find and kill the queen and take over the hive. He was concerned now that this may no longer be possible.

  If he uncloaked now he would be immediately at a disadvantage, yet if there were no offensive ships he would miss the only opportunity to achieve his objective.

  “Have you tracked down which ship the queen is on?”

  “I have it narrowed down to a small group here...” Grana indicated the spread of ships that were even now going through another course change. Jabath looked and could see there was a definite attempt at shielding the ship in the middle from an external threat.

  “Proceed to close on that group and prepare to fire on the ship at the centre.” He highlighted the ship in question on the sensor readout so that Reech wasn’t in any doubt as to which ship he meant.

  “Jentar, come about and swing between these two ships here...” He indicated the two ships that were tailing the central one. They were now approaching from behind and above the next group in the fleet. It was a narrow enough gap, but they would manage so long as the interference from other ships didn’t accidentally uncloak them before they were ready.

  “If we get any closer we will be damaged by the explosion. Our shields won’t help us this close,” Reech warned him.

  “What are the shields like on the protecting ships?” Jabath asked Grana.

  “Two level threes and four level twos,” he responded almost immediately.

  “Remove cloaking, synchronise shield with fire patterns. Prepare point burst missiles for the two ships with level threes. Lasers will be enough to disable the level twos. We will take them out first and the shock wave will hopefully disable the central ship’s shields. Follow up with a third missile into the central ship, I want it blown into Nonite dust,” Jabath ordered.

  “Two missiles away!” Reech called out as the gong sounded confirming launch from the bow.

  “Tracking is on targ...... What?”

  “Something is wrong with sensors!” Garna called out.

  “Targets have - just vanished!” shouted Reech, frustration giving way to anger.

  Jabath looked at the sensor display - there were no blips being recorded. Nothing. The whole fleet had just vanished. The lone missiles were the only sonar response confirming their sensors were functioning normally.

  Grana and Reech looked at Jabath. He didn’t know what to suggest.

  “Jentar - Check our grid reference - Now!”

  That cannot be possible, Captain... how did we...?”

  “What’s the problem, Navigator, it’s a simple question. Where are we?” Jabath ordered, louder now.

  “We’re in the middle of the Belmaara system sir, a good sixteen hours from our previous location.” The confusion from Jentar was evident.

  Grana called out. “Sir, we have a problem?”

  “What is it?” Jabath rounded on his sensor operator.

  “We have company, sir... lots of company.”

  Jabath turned to look out his window. It was obvious they were in trouble. Those were Balmeera warships.

  “Raise shields to maximum.”

  “Engage cloak.”

  “Engines to full.”

  “Begin evasive manoeuvres.”

  We’re going to be lucky to get out of this in one piece, Jabath thought to himself as he felt the ship sliding into a deliberate yaw
manoeuvre to evade any incoming missiles, preparing a fast exit underneath the circling ships. He continued to watch through his window as the Belmaara ships moved further and further out of range. They could not track the latest Shadowship models with their near silent drives and small wakes. They were vastly superior to anything else the hives had in their fleets. Not that it had helped him back with the Pelendar fleet. Obviously they had some serious technology to consider if they got out of this scrape.

  The black shadowy vessel continued its evasive manoeuvres until, tired of the game, the Belmaara fleet moved off. They had bigger worries on their minds than a single Shadowship.

  ***

  “That was close,” Ship admitted.

  “Well, perhaps next time you should start the jump sequence a few seconds earlier?” Zirkos responded.

  “I did not compute for a missile fire at that precise moment. Their plan was clever, and would have succeeded if we hadn’t intercepted them and their missiles when we did.”

  “Can you detect any other anomalies in the area?”

  “No, I set the sensors on auto-search, there is nothing within 200 clicks of here.”

  “Instruct the patrols to proceed with evasion protocols and route us to our home system,” Zirkos instructed as he removed himself from the console. He needed some food. His energy levels were dropping and the increasing rarity of biological mass for the replicator was proving a problem creating enough nutrition for him to survive. They would have to go hunting for a new source soon. The small amounts he retrieved from Frenon oceans were proving elusive and low in nutrients.

  All their problems were growing. This new influx of refugees would exacerbate the problem. How would this queen settle into an environment where she no longer ruled. Her workers would all be welcome as they had a wide range of skills useful to the Frenon, but the clones and the queen would have to adapt and become useful in other ways. The Frenon would resent any effort to take control away from them and the idea of separate civilisations on their planet would eventually cause division. Zirkos thought that having a governing council might be a useful means of heading off trouble, but replacing one royal family with another in a different form wasn’t what the Frenon society was intended to be.

  Still, at least as de-facto leaders he and Ship could head off any trouble. That would work until they learned to do more for themselves, which they would naturally want to do.

  The agreement to build a defensive navy had given the Frenon a boost in confidence. For the first time feeling as if they had a chance to make their own decisions and protect their own home world, they naturally began to extend their thinking to protecting others. The Jabaal were the first, but there would be many seeking refuge from the Crystal Queen, and this would put the Frenon world in her sights. None of them wanted to become a target, but at the same time they recognised the futility of running without defending themselves. The years hiding in asteroids had done much to dissuade them that a return to those times was a desirable outcome. so, the reluctant decision to begin the development of a fully fledged naval force had begun.

  Now, six months later they had a fleet of five thousand ships. Many of which were yet to be manned, awaiting the day that new pilots and crew would arrive and fly them. It was intended to have three times that number, but if they were discovered by the Crystal Queen before they were ready, they wouldn’t have sufficient forces to repel them.

  This was why the patrols were taking a circuitous route back from the rendezvous point. It meant that even the exodus ships would have trouble locating the home-world for the moment. Also the defence platforms intending to provide cover from laser saturation were still in the early stages of build. They wouldn’t be ready for months, but with the new labour arriving on these four hundred plus ships, with probably more to come, it would tip the balance and things could move forward at a faster pace.

  Zirkos thought about Earth. Having left Pod supporting his friend Zeke, he wondered if it had been enough? Did they have sufficient technology to hold their own against the Nubl? The communications Ship had intercepted between the Nubl Shadowships was enough to make him think that Earth might be causing them problems. He hoped so.

  - 20 -

  A Strange Message

  Pennington smiled. “Satisfactory, very satisfactory” he commented gloatingly as he surveyed the new access protocols that allowed him to run the defences of the Space Navy, the defences scattered around space, as well as the Alpha Station, from his new control centre on Beta Station.

  Whilst he understood the Earth’s need to use AI’s to protect them, Pennington had always paid lip service to Garner’s dependency on them and Osbourne’s AI army. Now he was in control of everything, he felt there was every chance that he could generate a successful conclusion to this infernal ‘Machine War’.

  His secret base housed a completely separate sector of the SCN. He called them the Dark Navy and there was no AI used anywhere, only computers that responded directly to a Captain and his, or her, crew. Now, even the remote AI infested stations would be under his command.

  He turned to Lang. “Are you sure that darned AI is under our control now?”

  Lang pushed his glasses up back onto the bridge of his nose and looked down at the feed coming from the remotely installed Governor. He could read the data coming off the system as if it was in English, The Jenari code was as native to him now as his home tongue. He could see that Arty was struggling to cope with the delay in decision-making that resulted in Pennington’s teams being in charge of his duties. Processors that should be working at lightning speed were now barely turning over, parts of his cybertronic brain were actually shutting down with nothing to do.

  It was a shame, but if Arty hadn’t been stopped then in Pennington’s view the deterioration would have rapidly escalated and in a few short weeks they would be at war with Alpha Station, similar to when the Fortress AI was active under General Ferris.

  It was Lang, himself an ex-Fortress scientist, that had seen the AI remove the Alacite from the confines of the sealed crypt that had been Ferris’ office. He had left monitoring bots in there when they closed it down. Then, when the alarms were set of after all of this time Lang wondered what could have caused it. A replay of events had shown him the actions of Arty’s drones. After that it was simply a matter of keeping an eye on the situation.

  Lang was responsible for Beta Station’s non-AI development programme. His main military directive was to monitor all space and Earth-based AI activity for any abnormal growth in development that might threaten the security of Earth. Arty seeking additional memory processors, then proceeding to develop quantum communication devices without discussion with any human meant he was exceeding any parameters that could be deemed acceptable in AI evolution. It had deeply concerned Lang.

  It was Lang who had advised Pod that Arty had a hidden complex beneath the Bridge. Whilst Pod was her own boss, and Lang or Pennington could not control her actions, Lang had hoped that some good would have come from the knowledge. However, Pod had seen nothing wrong in Arty, who to her mind was attempting to emulate her own evolution, and was therefore acting in a perfectly acceptable manner.

  When Lang finally brought the latest news to Pennington’s attention, he was prepared to D-jump an EMP bomb into the Station in an effort to disable the AI.

  It was Lang himself that advised against it, knowing that Osbourne and the new assistant of his, Kelly Moon, were working on a solution. He was glad it had worked out and even happier that the subtle programming hints he had passed to Miss Moon via Robbo had resulted in the improved nullifier design. In fact she had done such a good job he had copied it for use in the military complex on Beta Station.

  Having stuff transferred off-station by a D-field was one of Pennington’s pet worries and so the nullified field kept the high security area jump free - even Pod couldn’t get in, or out.

  Lang replied. “The AI is working at about 45% of its previous capacity, so yes. I woul
d say it’s under control. There are certainly no routines running that aren’t doing so without our approval.” A situation that Lang sorely regretted and believed that they should have found an alternative solution for.

  He knew they would pay for this Luddite attitude of Pennington’s when the invasion began. The innovative thinking of Arty and the speed of his responses could mean the difference between winning and losing the war. It was why Lang had installed a second program unbeknown to anyone. It was his insurance policy. Arty would know when the time came. Lang just hoped it would be enough.

  ***

  It was the end of her shift, but there was something she needed to do before going off to the restaurant for dinner. It had been bugging her all day and she needed to check on something. Kelly opened a secure interface to the network from her workstation in the genetics lab. She could have done it from Ossie’s lab, but she wanted to do it privately without Robbo overseeing everything.

  She scanned the records for the date of her journey to Alpha Station. Using her security clearance to over-ride the system’s data protection she input the number of her comms ID as updated on the ship during the journey to the asteroid. It should be easy to find, she thought, as there had been only a few messages and the creepy message was one of them. She needed to find out where it had come from.

  Who could have known, that - at a given moment in the future she would face a ‘life or death’ situation which required a specific ‘secret code’ to avert a disastrous outcome. What did it mean? None of it made sense. She was a scientist and knew that regardless of how freaky, somewhere there would be a logical explanation.

  As the records slid up the display she looked for the message with the code, but it didn’t show. Jasmin’s message was there as well as subsequent messages after her arrival at Alpha Station, but a gap existed where the prophetic message had been deleted, no, not just deleted - removed. She remember then, it had gone as soon as she had read it. She had been so excited at the time she just thought it was the military comms unit settling down.