One thing she kept close to the vest was between her, the Commonwealth and Reslorian high command, dozens of gamma sites were being pursued. They were awash in small ships “liberated” from the Zikars and awash in Gates. It cost next to nothing to send these expeditions.
“By the way, how’s Sylvia?” she asked, changing the topic in a very obvious manner.
“She’s doing great in the program. This group is going to be a truly elite fighting force. But it takes time.”
“Time?” Jackie asked.
“Yeah, they want to be there now, but there is no rushing this. It will take a few years to fully hone their skills. Listen, she was touched you allowed her to come to Earth with a few of her pals. Even though she was officially ‘on duty,' she got a taste for being your personal guard, a duty I am reluctant to share,” he said with a grin.
“It really had a deep impact on her,” Rick went on. “Seeing Earth, humanities home. Seeing Orlando, with the piles of bones. I think what impacted her the most was seeing you vulnerable. There’s no small amount of hero worship over you in her group. But seeing through that and that you are still human, let me just say it was a very special moment in her life.”
“Please dissuade the hero worship,” Jackie said looking at him.
“I do! But your legend is growing faster and larger every day!” he said with a smirk.
“You know how I feel about that,” she responded with a bit of sadness.
“Again, I do, and that is because I’m on the inside, or as inside as you let me be.”
She started blushing.
“I want you in my life, Rick. I know I’m a tough nut to crack, but I really can’t do this without you.”
“And you won’t have to. I keep my promises.”
##
“Okay, what am I looking at?” Jackie asked, looking at the projectile.
“This, High Queen, is our first set of Automated Combat Projectiles, or ACPs,” said the lead scientist, Autor Tolt.
“Autor, I recognize that is close to the acronym for Automated Combat Unit, or ACU, but what does it do?” she asked, with her hands on her hips.
“Over here is another ACP, only without the shell, and deactivated.”
What she was looking at looked like nothing she had ever seen before. It was a spider. A robot spider.
More killer robots? she mused.
“Okay,” she said, “you’ve made yourself a new pet. What does the pet do?”
“Well, the ‘pet,' as you put it, goes inside the casing, which is fired from a railgun. It has basic maneuvering thrusters to adjust to target. Once it is near the target, the housing comes off, and the ‘pet’ is exposed, living in a suspended gel. The gel helps it to stick to the target ship and not bounce off into space. Once it is affixed, it releases a chemical that turns the gel into a brittle, solid substance, allowing it to break free easily. Then this ‘pet’ invades the target ship with its brethren in a hive-like fashion. It is based on the repair bots, so it has an understanding how to subvert ships in addition to fixing them.”
Now it was Jackie who was speechless.
Tabitha piped in, “so what about the different size railguns? The ship classes all use different ones.”
“The machine reconfigures itself to fit in several casing sizes. This will work in anything as small as a heavy cruiser,” Autor answered. “So, your heavy cruisers, battleships and dreadnoughts will all be able to utilize this.”
Jackie’s mind was already spinning. “The casings, how stealthy are they?”
“Very, they have a light coat of nanofibers.”
Indeed, the nanofibers were one of the key components to enhancing the stealth of every ship in her fleet.
“What about the ability to subvert these? I know Pari designed the ACUs to be foolproof, but what about these?” Jackie asked. She would hate for a smart enemy to turn these against her.
“While these accept wireless signals for operating in a hive mentality, it only accepts directives, such as friend-or-foe while loaded in its casing, with some of the internal systems being air-gapped, even in such a small machine. Also, it cannot be ‘re-gifted’,” he said with a smirk. “Once it comes out of its casing, it has a limited shelf life and will begin to degrade over the course of a day or two. These are disposable weapons.”
“Autor, I think your team just gave us a huge force multiplier,” she replied.
“Wow, San Agustin is paying dividends!” Tabitha said excitedly.
This was one of the many top-secret projects being developed at there, and most certainly an important one. If they could subvert ships, even partially before boarding, they would gain a significant advantage in ship to ship warfare. Not that they were at a disadvantage technology wise, but the reports coming from the Westerly Federation were bad. Far more ships from the Zikar Empire were there than first believed. With the large numbers the Zikars had, little to nothing could stand in their way. Once they were done with that nation they would certainly consolidate their forces and roll over the Commonwealth and whomever else, whether or not they had better tech.
“How many of these do you think it would take to subvert an enemy battleship?” Tabitha asked the scientist.
“Oh, probably twenty to thirty. More if the ones stuck to the hull don’t work right. This is experimental technology, firing robots from rail guns,” Autor said.
“So up against a fleet of five hundred capital ships, we would need about ten thousand rounds,” Jackie added.
“Well, easy enough, we’ll have to reconfigure some of the railgun ammunition storage and autoloaders as it seems they are going to become a lot more important!” Tabitha added.
“There is a bonus, High Queen!” Autor said with a look of mischief.
“Oh, do tell.”
“They each act like an explosive! So, if they are having trouble getting into a ship, some may sacrifice themselves so the others can get in. But more importantly, once they subvert a ship, which usually includes no real damage, if the repair crew finds one of these, it goes BOOM!” he said, motioning with his hands. “Anyway, a demonstration is in order. These demo models do not go boom, but rather I wanted to show them in action.”
On the wall screen was a captured Zikar battleship. It had a skeleton Askirti crew on board performing maneuvers. A few minutes later, one of the new Askirti heavy cruisers just came into weapons range of it, with its stealth suite fully engaged. It immediately opened fired on the battleship with its railguns, causing more than a few in the viewing area a bit of concern.
Camera drones launched from the battleship, pointed at the hull of the massive ship, providing a view as to what exactly was happening. The cameras picked up a few of the drones as they went spat against the hull. After a few minutes, the cameras had found all of them, all except for two that had apparently missed their target.
“Did these drones have a layout of the ship already in their systems?” Jackie asked.
“No, it was by physical examination of the ship in the closing split second that they mapped out the visible areas. They figured out the likely points of entry all on their own.”
Indeed, they were gathering around three spots on the hull, all appeared to be small access hatches. In all three cases, they burned through with small lasers. Within five minutes of breaching the hatches, the ship lost weapons, life support, propulsion, and communication.
“I am officially impressed,” Jackie said. “What is the status of our intrepid crew?”
Autor pressed a button causing the battleship to suddenly come back to life.
“The crew is wearing vac-suits to be safe, so they are all right. But the ship is now under our complete control.”
He demonstrated by changing the flight path of the great ship and rotating its empty railguns.
“Repair crews may impact our ability for remote control if they set up jammers, but we have initial control of primary, secondary and tertiary systems and can do neat tricks like target nea
rby enemy ships. It’ll be an advantage for at least a few minutes in that capacity.”
##
Jackie was excited to get her hands on these new munitions as they would make a huge difference in the upcoming battles. Production needed to happen right away, and in parallel with the Commonwealth as they needed these just as badly.
Many of the smaller Westerly systems had fallen, and some not so little, as the ruthless priesthood of the Zikars descending on the hapless populations. Jackie knew good and well what was happening on those planets, with the people being outright terrorized. Cold logic dictated fighting this smart, not wearing out her forces, and not making emotional decisions. She could take back the smaller worlds quite easily, but it would stretch her forces out, and she did not want to come up short when confronting the main enemy forces. Not even the Commonwealth with its many thousands of ships could manage that while keeping its own borders secure.
No, they needed to defeat the enemy fleets, then concentrate on taking back the captured worlds. Taking the supply conveys helped to slow down the enemy and give materials to the allied forces at the same time. It would not stop them, as they could source the supplies within each conquered system, but it would make it much more challenging.
“How are the repairs coming along on the first fleet?” she asked Tabitha.
“Almost complete, except for three ships. They will require significantly more time in the slip,” her admiral answered.
“Good enough. What’s the progress on the next set of fleets?”
Tabitha filled her in, much to her delight. Jackie was quite excited about these. The captured Zikar fleets were being converted into the Askirti fleet across many shipyards. As the Commonwealth had wrapped up its refits, soon-to-be-Askirti ships took their place in the shipyard slips.
“That’s quite an empire. I might need more admirals,” Jackie quipped.
“At least there won’t be as many positions to fill,” Tabitha replied.
The new ships would need less than half the crew that her current fleets had, such was the level of automation. Still, it left her with three fleets for now, and many, many Zikar ships to fight.
“But still, what are we going to do if we can’t find crew for them all?”
“Well,” Jackie started with a twinkle in her eye, “we start using ACUs for the smallest ships. As we move people up and off the smaller ships, it frees up more personnel for the larger ones.”
“I’m not sure everyone will be pleased if we take that road,” Tabitha stated.
“I know.”
Tabitha did not know it, but that was already the plan.
Chapter 17
Somewhere in deep space
“High Queen,” Alesium said, running onto the bridge, “I’ve got it!”
“Step into my ready room,” she answered, moving in that direction.
The ready room was very spartan and quite cramped on the former Zikar dreadnought.
“What exactly have you got?” asked Helen.
“I’ve finished putting together a gravity drive! Our first working one!”
“About time! I feel like these things are flying death traps!”
“I couldn’t agree more! I would never have believed it had I not seen it, real thruster-driven propulsion. Even their FTL drive depends on it, quite dangerous,” he said. “I’ll have crews start upgrading the ships, soon all of them are using something resembling a sane propulsion system.”
“When do you think we can have shields?” Helen anxiously asked.
“I know these ships are death traps, I’ve never heard of a ship without shields of some sort! But these people seem to rely on them. It will be another few weeks before I can create some from the surplus junk in the hangar deck.”
The Askirti’s had given them not just a small Zikar fleet consisting of two hundred and ten vessels, but some excess battle junk, mostly destroyed fighters and pieces of ships. The Homem’s cherry-picked the junk to ensure they got what they needed for the short-term, but the real need was staffing the fleet. Thankfully they were also gifted thousands of ACUs, which Helen felt very uncomfortable around, especially since they were loyal only to Jackie. But she knew there were too few of her people left for what she needed to do.
“Have you seen our new habitat?” Helen asked him.
“No, I have not. Not much to see in the pitch dark anyway. Besides, I’ve been too busy trying to work with this junkyard of a ship to make it safe.”
“An absolute priority. And by the way, thank you for not giving the Askirti woman your final FTL plans.”
“Yes,” Alesium said, “I gave her some tweaks, but once I finished our upgrades to that crap, it took us only a month to get here. Are you going to contact her now that the Gate is in orbit?”
“No, that will have to wait. Let them think it took us six months. In the meantime, have a look at these scans.”
“What am I looking at, High Queen?”
“Something that shouldn’t be possible.”
There were structures on the rogue planet they were in orbit of. This is not something any of them would have expected as they were in the middle of nowhere and there was no reason to believe any rogue planet was previously populated.
“Should we continue to another target? We are in a rather sparse region, but we can be at the next one in two weeks’ time.”
“No, these structures should not be here. I want to send a team to investigate. In the in the meantime, I wanted to discuss another topic with you.”
“What is on your mind, High Queen?”
“Okay, first of all, there are just over twenty thousand of us left, I don’t think ‘High Queen’ is a suitable title anymore. I recognize everyone has been loyal until the end, and even beyond. But perhaps we can downgrade it to just ‘queen.' I’ll make an announcement to that affect. Also, I wanted to wait until the right time to tell you this…Project Ishtar is in play.”
That drew a hard stare from her chief engineer.
“How can that be, H-my queen?”
“Remember that experimental AI, Pari?” Alesium nodded his head in hard recognition. “It has embedded itself into that Askirti woman, Jacqueline Campo.”
Alesium’s mouth was hanging open. Then jumped up and began pacing while throwing his hands in the air.
“How? Why? It’s impossible! That’s incredible! This is a disaster! Has it disclosed the plans?”
“Apparently, the AI was corrupted. Same reason none of our AI’s are operational, it’s been too long,” Helen said in an exasperated voice.
“We will fix them, my queen. You will have Terisa back, I promise.”
Terisa was Helen’s sentient AI, and her best friend for almost six hundred years. Not having her around was…distracting.
“What about my legs?” she said gesturing at her wheelchair.
“A few weeks at the most.”
Bodily injuries of any sort were simple to repair, but much of the fundamental technologies were just absent in the civilization they awoke to.
“There’s more,” she said.
“Well, please! While we’re at it, do tell?”
“Jacqueline shares my exact DNA, she admitted as much. She had both of ours tested.”
“So, she admits she is a clone?” he said, in a tone that indicated he was expecting as much.
“She has a history that far predates our imperial dreadnought’s recovery, and I mean real history. Verifiable history. And I seriously doubt their technology can produce a viable clone. She’s no clone.”
“What is she then?” Alesium asked, clearly shocked by this development, as it was obvious to him she was a clone.
“I don’t know. Could be a friend, or could be an enemy. I think I want her as a friend.”
“She holds the key to Project Ishtar…does she have any clue?”
“That’s the thing. She claims a prophecy that has her battling Apollyon. I’ve checked into that prophecy and it is over five hundred years
old,” Helen answered.
“Huh.”
“That’s all you’ve got to say? ‘Huh’?”
“You know good and well how my family feels, felt, about prophecy. But it would be impossible for her to know any of that.”
“Or for her to know her real gifts.”
“My queen, what is your plan?”
“We set up shop, gather our strength. This civil war among their nations is not our concern, we will sit it out. They have no access to the galaxy as a whole, just this spine and have no awareness of the real threats. We must prepare for what follows after this war. I intend to throw my full support behind her…eventually.
“The first course of action is the planet below. At a bare minimum, the infrastructure we see down there gives us access to refined materials without having to mine for them. But if we can find answers of any sort, I want to know whose planet this was and what happened to it.”
“What do we do about Project Ishtar if the Askirti woman dies?”
“Oh, I have plans. I intend to keep an eye on her. Worst case, we’ll extract her from her circumstances.”
##
Taking the shuttles to the surface was a horrible event. The shuttles used thrusters, which the Homems viewed as very dangerous. And to make matters worse, these were Zikar shuttles, considered much lower quality than that from the other nations.
The planet below was completely black as there was no light that made it out this far, not enough to provide any level of illumination. The pilot switched to computer generated imagery to guide them down.
Below were more than a few structures, it was a city. It was also not the only one nor was it the smallest one. It only took a glance to tell this city was constructed for millions. The shuttle passed between twin towers, soaring kilometers into the non-existent atmosphere, passing by large spires and colosseums. There were great highways and transportation centers. All of it looked in good condition, all of it was completely dark and abandoned.
The shuttles set down in what seemed like a city square. As the ramp lowered, the shuttle turned on its floodlights, illuminating much of the surrounding area. Sergeant Maron Gaines of the imperial marines was the first to step out of the two shuttles.
Rumors of Wars: The Askirti Chronicles - Book 2 Page 17