by Isaac Hooke
Sheila remained upon the virtual bridge. That was a good sign.
On the view screen, the sparks emanating from the Wheelbarrow’s hull faded momentarily.
Sheila looked up. “Well, I got some overloaded systems, but otherwise I’m still in the game.”
Jain exhaled in relief.
“But don’t get too excited,” Sheila said. “My shield has been completely drained.”
“As have my support drones,” Gavin said. “I have to recall them.”
“Okay, now you can sacrifice a different ship,” Sheila said.
“The two of you, get back into formation, ahead of the Daktor,” Jain said. That was easy enough, given that the Daktor was the slowest ship among them.
“Already on our way,” Sheila told him.
“Xander, how long has it been since they first fired the lightning weapon?” Jain asked.
“One minute,” his Accomp said.
“So they have a one-minute recharge interval,” Jain said.
“That seems to be the case, yes,” Xander said.
Sheila was opening fire with her stingers, trying to stave off the smaller pyramid craft that were attaching to her hull, and the Hippogriff’s. Gavin was similarly unleashing his railguns. Some of those enemy craft traveled past them to the Daktor, and also began affixing to its hull.
“The Daktor is being boarded,” Jain said.
So far, the beams emanating from the Daktor’s generation ring remained active, combining to form the single beam that would open the rift.
“I see it,” Sheila said. “I’ve dispatched security rovers and munchkins to intercept the boarding parties.”
“How long until we have our rift?” Jain asked.
“Another minute,” Sheila replied.
We don’t have a minute! he wanted to say but held his virtual tongue.
“Who gets to protect the Daktor from the lightning weapon in the interim?” Mark asked. “We got another pyramid vessel coming into range alongside the first…”
“Who gets to be the sacrifice, you mean?” Cranston clarified.
“I’ll use one of my Direct Reports,” Jain said.
He took control of the Crater and applied decelerating thrust, directing the warship toward the Daktor. The Crater fell behind the rift ship, and immediately the point defense systems began firing the stingers—the vessel had descended into the cloud of incoming boarding craft. The railguns couldn’t keep up with the sheer number of them, and alarms were going off on all decks.
“I’ve got too many boarding parties to stave off,” Jain said. “And not enough security rovers aboard. The Crater won’t last long.”
He glanced at the tactical display and saw that a whole lot more of those craft were heading toward the Daktor.
“Get missiles out there,” Jain said. “We have to eliminate those boarders!”
He launched several missiles at the incoming swarm, from his ship and his Direct Reports, as did the other Void Warriors.
“Target that swarm with raptors, too,” Jain said. “Fire regardless of charge.”
Jain not only fired his raptors at the incoming craft, he also released his energy canon sporadically, mindful that it was close to overheating.
“Mark, can you get any black holes out there?” Jain asked.
“Negative,” Mark said. “Still waiting for it to cool down.”
Jain glanced at the tactical display, and saw that the first pyramid ship was quickly approaching the six thousand kilometer mark. The Crater was too close to the Daktor—they were only separated by three thousand kilometers. When the lightning weapon struck the Crater, the bolt would arc to the rift ship, disabling it, too.
“Target the empty space on either side of the Crater with your hellraisers,” Jain said. “I want to see two launched from each of you. Program them to follow the Crater fifteen hundred kilometers on either side. Deactivate the warheads. Let’s give the lightning weapon something else to arc to. Fire.”
Two hellraisers launched from each ship, and moved into position. The swarm of alien boarding craft, afraid of those missiles, went out of their way to avoid them.
“If the lightning bolt weapon doesn’t arc to the nearby boarders—at least it hasn’t so far—why would it arc to our missiles?” Sheila asked.
“It might not,” Jain said. “But I’m guessing the weapon is attracted to objects of a certain size and conductivity. The boarders are too small, and probably not very conductive, allowing them to avoid drawing any arcs. I’m also hoping the arcs will be drawn toward closer targets…”
“I guess we’ll see,” Sheila said.
The latest pyramid vessel reached the six-thousand kilometer range and immediately fired at the Crater. The bolt hit full strength, and electricity sparked across the hull. The vessel’s running lights went dark, and Jain’s remote connection immediately failed.
The lightning arced outward from the impacted surface, and Jain was relieved when those arcs traveled toward the escorting missiles, rather than the Daktor. There were at least thirty-six arcs out there, one per hellraiser, and the missiles went offline en masse. They didn’t detonate, thanks to the disabled warheads.
“The other closest pyramid ship will be able to fire in five seconds,” Xander announced.
Jain glanced at his tactical display. The ship in question was moving up the Z plane to get into the line of sight of the Daktor. “Damn it.”
“The rift is open!” Sheila said.
“All vessels, emergency deceleration!” Jain said. “Enter that rift!”
But he knew they wouldn’t make it in time.
The battle was over.
8
Jain ordered his remaining Direct Reports to decelerate, and did so himself. He counted down the remaining seconds until the other nearby pyramid ship could fire again.
Three.
Two.
One.
A flash filled his external camera feed. But it wasn’t the lightning weapon firing.
He saw that Medeia had struck again, slicing clean through the upper section of the pyramid, as she had done to the previous vessel. The impact had bled away all her momentum, along with much of her opponent’s, so that they both drifted forward at a slower rate.
Medeia materialized on the bridge.
“See, I told you the admiral was wrong about cloaking,” Medeia said.
“He wasn’t wrong,” Jain said. “He was an alien. Of course he was going to lie about his vulnerabilities. But cloak, and get to the rift!”
She vanished from the virtual bridge as she cloaked again. Just in time, too, because she was almost within weapons range of the remainder of the pyramid fleet.
The base of the damaged vessel suddenly accelerated, as if intending to ram the Daktor now that it could no longer shoot.
Gavin was the first to reach the rift, and he passed through into the circular ring of purple gases. Mark followed just behind in the Grunt.
Several of the autonomous vessels arrived at the opening, and they too smoothly altered course to make the jump.
Jain dropped toward the rift, fired balancing thrust to cease his deceleration, then lined himself up with the opening; he accelerated again, squeezing between the beam and the gaseous outer edges of the spacetime anomaly, and traveled through to the other side.
Behind him, more ships barreled through. Autonomous vessels. The Wheelbarrow and Hippogriff.
Medeia hadn’t yet rejoined the bridge crew. Jain searched the tactical display, but there was no sign of her ship.
“We have to go back for her…” Mark said urgently.
Jain was about to send a few ships to do just that, but then the Arcane appeared, materializing as it passed through the rift. Medeia rejoined the virtual bridge crew.
“Sorry for the delay,” Medeia said. “But I was a bit farther from the rift than the rest of you…”
Finally the Daktor itself accelerated though, and the rift closed behind it. The electrical spark
s traveling across its hull told Jain that it had taken a lightning impact seconds before the traversal.
He glanced at his overhead map, and saw that large clumps of red dots had traveled through with the vessel: the boarding party pyramids.
“Fire missiles into those masses!” Jain said.
Alerts sounded as more of those small craft attempted to attach to his hull. He fired his stingers, but breached deck warnings sounded as the enemy units got past.
“Xander, handle the boarders,” Jain said.
“I’ve been handling them for a while, and don’t intend to stop,” Xander said.
“Void Warriors, we have to dispatch some transports to the Daktor to help it out,” Jain said. “Look at all the breaches she has. It was already overwhelmed with boarders before it was hit with the lightning attack, but now things will be even worse, considering that its security rovers and munchkins will be offline.”
The team members loaded up their transports with whatever security rovers and munchkins they could spare, and docked those vessels with the Daktor—after the transports physically forced the docking bay doors open. Then the extra units entered and proceeded to search the infested conduits, hunting down the lobsters and termites—the alien equivalents to the Mind Refurb security rovers and micro machines, respectively. The combat rifles the munchkins wielded offset the plasma weapons of the lobsters.
They weren’t done here yet, but the worst of the danger had passed. They had escaped the pyramid fleet, and somehow none of the Mind Refurbs had lost their lives in the process.
We got lucky.
It helped that Medeia had taken the initiative and risked her life, twice, to prove that cloaking still worked against the aliens. She would’ve had to change directions a few times while cloaked… that was the only way she could have approached the two pyramids. By momentarily activating her engines to change directions, she would have given away her cloaked position, due to the weak thermal leakage.
If performed correctly, the enemy would have never known what direction she was traveling in. Still, it was possible they could have shot her down during those few moments of vulnerability. But they were preoccupied with the bigger prize: the Daktor.
“By the way, can you confirm this is Granalus?” Jain asked his Accomp.
“Celestial bodies confirm that yes, it is,” Xander replied.
“The system is empty of hostiles?” Jain pressed.
“It appears to be,” Xander reported. “There is no life here, or signs of any alien vessels.”
“Good.”
In about three hours, it was over. The security teams had handled all of the enemy boarding parties, and thoroughly cleansed the Daktor of intruders.
“Now it’s time to lick our wounds,” Jain said. “Activate repair swarms. I want you to devote ten percent of your swarms to the Daktor. I want to jump to a different system ASAP.”
“So you really think they have the ability to trace the gravitational waves produced by rifts?” Gavin asked.
“That part I think is true, yes,” Jain replied.
“But it will take years for the waves from this system to reach them,” Gavin said.
“I know,” Jain said. “But there’s nothing to stop them from sending probes to all the systems in the interstellar neighborhood in the meantime. I want to jump out of here as soon as possible.”
Sheila leaned an elbow on her virtual station, and rested her chin in the palm of her hand. “Let’s say we do. Let’s say we eventually resettle in another system. If they can track rift gravity waves, eventually they’ll find us. Could be ten years. Could be a hundred. And then we’ll have to run again. We’ll be running for the rest of our lives.”
“She’s right,” Medeia said. “But here’s something else to consider. What about humanity?”
“What about them?” Gavin said.
“They’re clearly in danger,” Medeia said. “It’s obvious by now that these Mimics have captured and dissected more Mind Refurbs. Admiral Maxwell was a simulacrum produced from one such captive no doubt.”
“Not this again,” Gavin said. “Even if that’s true, we already gave up on humanity ten years ago, when they threatened to dismantle us. You want to go back to that? There’s no forgiveness pact in play anymore. That was a fiction put forth by the aliens. We go back, we’re fugitives. The aliens will hunt us down, as will the humans, via their Mind Refurbs.”
“So you want to keep running forever…” Medeia said.
“Maybe I do,” Gavin said. “Maybe I think it’s better if we never return. Hell, what we should really be working on is developing a new type of rift, one that can take us to a new galaxy. Let’s leave this one behind. There’s nothing for us here. Everyone wants to kill everyone else.”
Mark glanced at Jain. “You’ve been quiet all this time.”
Jain nodded slowly.
“What are you thinking, Boss?” Cranston asked.
Jain sighed. “I’m not sure I want to go back, either. For the reasons Gavin stated.”
“There we go,” Gavin said. “Finally the voice of reason.”
“Can’t we at least take a peak?” Sheila said. “Create a rift to a known human colony system. Send in a probe, and maybe transmit a message, then see what we get back?”
Jain considered that. “We could do that.”
“What about that so-called border system the alien wanted us to jump to?” Cranston said. “Far west along the galactic axis. Are we really supposed to believe humanity has expanded all the way out there? Maybe we should send a probe there, too, to check it out.”
“No, it was obviously a trap,” Mark said. “There are no humans there. Though I have to wonder, what if it’s of some strategic importance to the aliens?”
“I somehow doubt the aliens would give up a location of strategic importance,” Medeia said.
“Can you be sure, though?” Mark told her. “We don’t know how these aliens think. Hell, maybe they’d believe it a good idea to share such a base, hoping that we’d send vessels to take it down. From their point of view, that could mean a faster end to the war, especially if we sent a significant number of ships their way.”
“A probe might be possible,” Jain said. “But we’ll talk about it when the Daktor is repaired. Any estimates?”
“It should be five days from now,” Sheila said.
“Then in five days, we’ll send out a few probes,” Jain said.
Jain and the others needed their own repairs from the last battle, mostly from the boarding party attacks. They had enough metals stocked aboard their cargo bays that they didn’t need to mine for more, however it wouldn’t hurt if the opportunity availed itself.
More urgently, they needed to replenish their propellant and missile supplies. As such, they entered orbit above a protoplanet located near the outskirts of the system and proceeded to mine frozen blocks of nitrogen and water. The former could be processed into explosives for their missiles, while the latter readily broke down into the components necessary for their propellant.
The Void Warriors deployed a network of miners and transports to deliver the materials to their respective ships for processing; the process was automated, allowing them to go about their day-to-day activities.
Jain insisted on more combat sessions, to practice against this latest threat, and he created ever bigger fleets of Mimic enemies for the Mind Refurbs to face. They could win with relative regularity against three ships, thanks to Medeia’s cloaking ability, but when it got to any more than that, their odds quickly dropped, eventually becoming zero once the number of enemy ships was twenty. Xander, in control of the enemy fleet, would usually focus in on the heat signatures Medeia produced while cloaked, and as soon as he took down her ship, the rest of the battle quickly went downhill.
Jain still held the bonding sessions in VR afterward. And as usual, the multitasking Accomps kept watch on the real world to ensure nothing ambushed them while they were otherwise occupied.
Medeia was hosting the VR session today. They were inside the concourse of an orbiting space station. Large floor to ceiling windows provided a spectacular view of the sun rising on the planet below.
They sat on stools next to counters, and ate hot dogs. Bottomless beer pitchers were available on each counter, which the team members used to refill their mugs.
“Hot dogs,” Gavin complained. “She has the complete culinary database of Earth at her fingertips, and she has to go and choose hot dogs. A gastronome’s delight.”
“Hey, hot dogs and beer,” Medeia said. “They go very well together.”
“I’m certainly enjoying it,” Mark said.
Medeia beamed at him. “Thank you.”
“You know, something I haven’t been able to figure it out these past ten years,” Cranston said. “And that’s whether you two are getting it on.”
Mark took a big bite of his chili dog, and said with his mouth full: “The hell you talking about?”
Cranston lifted his palms. “Hey, I mean no offense. What you do in your private time is your own business.”
“Then why bring it up?” Sheila said.
Cranston shifted uncomfortably. “For curiosity’s sake. I’ve suspected they’ve had an ongoing relationship for a while now... from the way they often compliment each other, or the flirtatious arguments they sometimes have, or the glances they exchange when they think no one is looking. But they always behave platonically in front of the rest of us, even during our bonding sessions. That’s ten years, hiding their feelings from the rest of us. Like they’re ashamed of what they’re doing or something. But they shouldn’t be. Because I wouldn’t think any worse of the two of you if you were intimate. None of us would.”
“Well we’re not,” Mark said flatly. He took another bite.
Medeia very carefully kept her gaze focused on her own hot dog.
Cranston shrugged. “That’s fine, too. Myself, I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve created a few virtual companions over the years to satisfy me emotionally, and physically.”