by M. D. Cooper
“They’ve patched us into their scan,” Misha said as the holo updated with a view of all twenty of the TSF interceptors adrift in space. Four Arc-6 fighters were also highlighted as damaged, and Jessica hoped the pilots had survived whatever had managed to penetrate their shields.
“From the looks of those fighters, it would appear that someone spent some time thinking about how to get past your stasis shielding,” Finaeus spoke for the first time since the initial explosion.
“So it would seem,” Cargo muttered.
“Makes sense,” Jessica sighed. “There has to be an opening for the thrust…so the shields don’t cover everything when we’re underway. I guess a stream of relativistic atoms can make it through the wash and hit the engine.”
“I suppose they would have figured that out,” Finaeus replied. “Inner Stars ships don’t have the power to punch atoms up to the speed of light’s doorstep, but our CriEn modules give us the juice to pull that off. And atom beams are standard fare on all TSF ships.”
“Check the scan,” Misha said. “Things are getting hairy back there.”
Jessica set the holotank to show slaved scan data from the Daedalus, and when it came up, she let out a slow whistle.
The Transcend and New Canaan fleets had begun to engage one another.
CLOSE QUARTERS
STELLAR DATE: 03.27.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: TSS Galadrial
REGION: Roma-Normandy L1 Point, New Canaan System
“Let me out of here!” Adrienne screamed at the top of his lungs, pounding on the door to the officer’s mess. He had been trapped in there with two of the Galadrial’s crew for the past twenty minutes with no access to the shipnet and no idea what was going on.
“If no one has let us out yet, yelling’s not going to help…sir” one of the crewmembers, a commander by her insignia, said.
“If the shipnet is down, then how else will anyone know we’re in here? What if those soldiers we saw have taken the ship?” Adrienne asked.
“Then I’m more than happy to spend as much time in here, out of their way, as possible,” the other crewmember, an ensign, replied.
Adrienne watched the ensign pour himself a cup of coffee, apparently nonplussed by the fact that they were trapped and didn’t know what was going on. Enemies could have control of the ship, or worse….
After general quarters sounded, he had been on his way to the bridge. The ensign and commander were rushing down the same hall when weapons fire erupted down a passageway ahead. None of them were armed, and the commander had ushered them all into the mess—right before the doors all sealed and the shipnet went offline.
“Well, I’m not,” Adrienne replied tersely. “We have to get out of here!”
The two naval officers shared a look before the commander answered. “Sir, I understand that you’re nervous. Maybe it’s the confined space, or maybe it’s the lack of Link access, but there’s no way out. We’ve already established that none of us can hack the door, we’ll just have to wait to see what happens next.”
“Who knows what could be going on out there!” Adrienne said. “I need to get to the bridge.”
“That’s just the thing, sir,” the ensign said calmly as he sipped his coffee. “We don’t know what could be going on out there. It could be vacuum for all we know. We’re not equipped for combat, either, so if it’s enemy troops, we’re dead. This is the safest place we can be at the moment.”
Adrienne tried to Link with the shipnet, but the net refused his tokens, as well.
Adrienne sighed.
He turned to glare at the commander and ensign who were discussing what could have happened in far more casual tones than he cared for, and as he did, the mess’s door slid open behind him. He whipped around and saw a woman’s head floating in the air. She appeared rather upset, and a weapon waved in his direction.
“Who’s making all the ruckus in here? I have a whole fucking deck to check over and every time I pass this corridor I hear you wailing.”
“Who are you? I demand—” Adrienne began.
“Yeah, yeah, demand all you want. No one’s going anywhere anytime soon.” The woman turned, and Adrienne rushed forward, reaching for her shoulder. She seemed to sense him coming, sidestepped and spun about before he reached her.
“You have something else to say?” she asked, with her rifle pointed at his face.
“I…uh…who are you?” Adrienne stuttered. He didn’t think he had ever been this close to the business end of a weapon raised in anger.
“Corporal Macy, ISF Marines,” the woman replied smartly. “We’ve taken over temporary management of this ship ’til some things get sorted out.”
“Pay up,” the ensign addressed the commander behind him.
“I can’t, the Link is down, remember?” the commander replied.
Adrienne managed to recover himself. “Well, I’m Secretary of State, Adrienne Grey. I demand that you take me to the bridge.”
The ISF Marine looked him up and down. “Don’t say? OK, I’ll run this past the LT, see what he thinks. Sit tight.”
She waved her weapon at him and he took her meaning, stepping back only moments before the door whisked shut.
“Not the same as the other soldiers we saw,” the commander noted.
“Saw that, too,” the ensign replied.
“What do you mean?” Adrienne asked. “I didn’t see anyone before we rushed in here.”
“We spotted them on the shipnet before it went down,” the commander replied. “They were in heavier armor, not stealth gear like that Marine.”
“Then who were they?” Adrienne asked, his brow furrowed.
“Who do you think?” the commander asked. “I’m glad the ISF won. These Canaanites seem a lot more reasonable than the Orion Guard would be.”
“Canaanites? Really? I thought we were all going with Caners,” the ensign said.
“What? No! It sounds like they beat people with canes, or that all they do is can food.”
“What is wrong with you two?” Adrienne asked. “We’re stuck here while the enemy is in control of our ship.”
“Well, our sorta-enemy, right?” the commander asked. “I heard we were really close to signing a treaty with them. For all we know, they boarded us to save us from an OG assault.”
“Yeah,” the ensign nodded. “I mean, what else could it be?”
Adrienne thought of the scene on the shuttle and what Jeff did to Sera. There certainly was another option.
He leaned against a counter and tried to Link again. If he could reach Kara and Aaron, he’d feel a lot better. They would be beside themselves with worry about him by now.
Next time they were in a situation like this he would keep them closer. That Marine would have been no match for his children, and he’d be on his way to the bridge, where he belonged.
BEAMFIRE
STELLAR DATE: 03.27.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: ISF I2
REGION: Near Roma, New Canaan System
“They’re powering weapons,” Lieutenant Ferris reported. “The whole fleet!”
“What about those interceptors in the lead?” Joe asked.
“Not yet, but they’re two light minutes ahead of us,” Ferris replied. “They could already be shooting for all we know.”
“Layer the jinks, Ensign Karl,” Captain Espensen ordered. “Things are about to get dicey.”
Joe rose from his chair and approached the holotank. This is where Tanis guided her fleets, never
from a chair, but standing before the holo, studying everything, seeing all the angles—as only she could do. He wondered, what she would do at this juncture?
She wouldn’t wait.
Under Admiral Joseph Evan’s command, the Intrepid Space Force fired first.
Shots arced out from half of the twenty-thousand ships, peppering the TSF vessels with lasers and particle beams. Kinetics and nukes remained off the table—the goal was to wear their grav shielding down enough for strategic strikes on the enemy’s engines.
He saw that Captain Espensen had the gunners refrain from using the I2’s atom beams as well. It was a wise move, the levels of radiation those weapons would create in the TSF ships made them too dangerous—for now.
However, the AI controlling the enemy ships had no such moral compunctions. Proton and atom beams lanced back into the ISF Fleet and stasis shields flared brighter than Canaan Prime as they shed the kinetic energy of hydrogen atoms travelling at near-c velocities.
The immense energy discharge clouded sensors, making targeting difficult.
Joe took the advice and sent the command out to the ISF fleet.
As have ours, Joe thought.
The I2 took up a position directly behind the bulk of the TSF fleet, and Captain Espensen directed laser and electron beams at the ships in front of them. One by one, the I2’s weapons fire wore down shields and disabled the enemies’ engines.
Escape pods began to pour from the TSF ships as crews abandoned their vessels. Many of the pods were also coming from undamaged ships, and Joe wondered if they were doing so out of fear of their rogue AIs, or if the pursuing ISF fleet had prompted the evacuations.
He was glad that at least AIs fought predictably, by the book, always taking the course of action with the highest probability of success. That was their main weakness, and it was why humans still crewed warships.
Even so, the battle was not one-sided. A dozen ISF ships were already disabled, drifting through the dark. Each of those ships had been taken out by shots made through the shield openings around their engines. He reviewed ship placements to ensure no more engines were vulnerable, and saw a group of TSF cruisers bring concentrated atom-beam fire to bear on an ISF ship.
The energy readings nearly went off the charts as the ship’s stasis shields reflected the incoming kinetic energy across the entire EM spectrum. Scan attenuated the view, and Joe could make out the vessel, still intact within the bubble of its stasis shield.
Everyone on the I2’s bridge held their breath, praying the shield would hold as the ISF fleet concentrated return fire on the enemy ships. Then, the cruiser’s stasis shields failed and the enemies’ atom beams tore through the vessel in a dozen places.
A second later, the ISF cruiser was gone—vaporized in a single, blinding flash of light.
Scan registered the flash as antimatter explosion, and Joe could only assume that the ship’s antimatter bottle had been cracked. The blast overwhelmed the shields of two ISF vessels—which were also taking concentrated atom beamfire—as well as three TSF ships nearby.
Joe did a quick calculation and saw that it would still take fifteen minutes to disable the rest of the TSF ships. Over that length of time, the enemy would be able to destroy dozens of his.
“Sir, Sabrina has been hit,” an ensign in Scan called out. “One of their engines is offline, our fighters are engaging the TSF’s interceptors.”
“Where the hell is the Daedalus?” Rachel asked.
“Hundred and thirty seconds,” Scan replied.
Joe took a deep, calming breath. It was going to be close, but there was nothing he could do to speed it up. Once the Daedalus had Sabrina, the ship could boost out and engage its stealth systems. The enemy would never find it.
In the meantime, there was still the TSF fleet to deal with. Their AI were not going to just power down once Sabrina got away.
“Except us,” Joe said to Captain Espensen aloud. “Hold our position.”
“Yes, Admiral,” Espensen said with a sharp nod.
The ISF fleet reduced acceleration, and the TSF ships began to pull ahead. Joe’s fleet began to disperse, increasing their jinking patterns until they formed a wide half-sphere behind the enemy fleet, no ship closer than a hundred-thousand kilometers. Except the I2, which still trailed the enemy ships by ten thousand klicks.
“Captain, are you sure we’re far enough back?” A Lieutenant on the scan team asked.
“Yes, Lieutenant Alan, our shields can take a lot more punishment than any of the cruisers n’ destroyers in the fleet,” Captain Espensen replied. “We’re safe enough from their beams for now.”
Joe appreciated that Rachel was trying to keep her crew’s morale up. The volume of weapons fire now hitting the I2 was so great that their forward sensors were completely blind. They could only see space in front of them via feeds from the other ships in the fleet.
Captain Espensen rose from her chair and approached Joe. “Sir, there are a lot of big O’s we can take here, many of the TSF crews have completely abandoned their ships.”
Joe nodded. “Yes, Captain, offensive opportunities abound. But remember, we’re going to need those ships. Bob may yet manage to undo whatever Myriad has done to them.”
“Understood,” Rachel nodded.
“Still,” Joe glanced at her. “Ready everything.”
“Search and recovery vessels are en route from Gamma IV and the Roma station,” the comm officer reported.
“Get every ship in this sector of the system on that search effort,” Joe said. “It’s going to take some time to round up all those pods and get people back to their ships.”
Joe understood. Those ships could be destroyed in seconds.
Joe considered that. How long would it take to get hooks into trillions of AIs without them, or any humans, knowing about it? Or did some know about it and were willing agents? He was about to press Bob on it further when he saw the Daedalus reach Sabrina and swallow the starfreighter.
Cheers erupted on the I2’s bridge as Joe leaned against a console. One crisis down, two or three more to go.
CORRECTION
STELLAR DATE: 03.27.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: TSS Galadrial
REGION: Roma-Normandy L1 Point, New Canaan System
Tanis took a deep breath as the medic started working on the severed end of her left arm. She distracted herself by looking around the bridge at the aftermath of the attack…murder… coup?
To her left, Viska and Greer were speaking in low tones. She could have picked up their words if she chose, but decided not to bother. Angela would let her know if it was anything concerning. The pair stood near one of the consoles, and Greer glanced at it periodically—likely ch
ecking on the status of the drones. A couple of Marines were keeping a close eye on them, and another group stood near the bridge’s entrance.
To her right, two medics were carefully bracing Sera’s back so they could place her in a med-chair—the knife Elena had stabbed her with still on the deck next to her.
The medics had tried their best to get her down to the medbay, but Sera had adamantly refused, telling them she’d rather die than step foot in there again.
Elena and the Orion Guard soldier—a Colonel Kent, it turned out—had both been removed and were now under guard in separate rooms near the bridge. President Tomlinson’s body, however, was still nearby, covered by a sheet taken from a supply closet down the hall.
Tanis frowned.
Tanis drew a sharp breath as the medic began to clean the wound on her chest.
“Sorry…Sir…Ma’am?” he said apologetically, apparently uncertain which form of address the ISF used.
“Ma’am, and it’s OK,” Tanis replied. “Not my first time getting my heart cut apart…or second…or third.”