by Ryk Brown
“What if there is no valid message exchange signal?” Jessica asked.
“If no exchange request is authenticated within approximately five of your minutes, the drone will automatically accelerate and go back into FTL to continue its journey,” Ensign Willard explained. “It is during this period that the drone will be vulnerable to attack.”
“What if we miss?” Nathan wondered. “What will the drone do?”
“As far as I know, drones are not programmed to take any evasive maneuvers, Captain,” Ensign Willard explained.
“That seems a bit hard to believe,” Jessica stated with suspicion.
“FTL traffic within the Pentaurus cluster is restricted to either Ta’Akar warships or Ta’Akar controlled transports,” Tug interjected. “They do not feel the need for such programming.”
“I don’t know,” Jessica said. “One of the first things you go for in an armed conflict is the enemy’s lines of communication.”
“Yes, under normal circumstances I might agree,” Tug granted, “but given the technologies available in the cluster, it is nearly impossible to target something moving at ninety percent the speed of light.”
“He’s right,” Nathan stated. “Without the jump drive it would be impossible to intercept the drone.”
“So, we just keep telling the drone to drop out of FTL and shoot at it until we get lucky. Is that the plan?” Jessica asked.
“Basically, yes,” Nathan answered. “Sooner or later we have to hit something.”
“I’m afraid it will have to be sooner, Captain,” Ensign Willard insisted. “The drones are programmed to ignore all hails after the third interruption. It was necessary in order to avoid unusual delays in delivery due to malfunctions. There were several cases where a drone kept dropping out of FTL due to errant radio waves. A two week journey ended up taking two months, resulting in all manner of problems. They never figured out exactly how the errant emissions where causing the malfunction, but the three dropouts per flight subroutine effectively eliminated the problem and therefore was never removed from the standard programming package used in the drones.”
“So,” Nathan responded, “three strikes and we’re out.” Other than Jessica, Vladimir, Ensign Yosef, Abby, and himself, everyone else in the room looked puzzled.
“If you mean three chances are all we get, then yes, Captain, you would be correct.” Ensign Willard agreed.
“So we jump out to where we expect the drone to be, transmit a signal to get it to drop out of FTL, and then what?” Jessica asked. “We’ve got no rail gun ammo left to speak of.”
“I can engage the drone using my interceptor,” Tug explained. “The energy cannons do not require ammunition, only energy, of which there will be an ample supply, thanks to the new reactors installed by the Corinari.”
“How will we locate this drone?” Vladimir asked. “It will be traveling faster than light. By the time we see it, it will already be gone.”
“We jump just ahead of it and off its course slightly,” Nathan explained. “As soon as it passes us, we’ll be able to see it.”
“Our optical and radar suites are sophisticated enough to track the drone as it passes us by,” Ensign Yosef explained. “It will measure the range of the drone while in close proximity, and the optics will track the bearing to the drone as well as measure the Doppler component of the signal. All of this information combined will yield enough data to predict the drone’s position even over extended ranges.”
“Very good,” Nathan remarked. “Then all we have to do is jump in ahead of it and transmit the dropout signal using the codes and frequencies provided by Ensign Willard. The drone drops out of FTL and Tug chases it down in his interceptor and destroys it. Sounds easy enough to me,” Nathan stated enthusiastically. As he looked around the table at each of their faces, it quickly became apparent that they did not share in his enthusiasm.
“Captain,” Abby interrupted, “may I remind you that we have yet to test the new emitters?”
“Sorry, Doc,” Nathan said. “Your first test is going to have to be en route. We’re out of time.”
“I wouldn’t recommend that, Captain.”
“Is there any reason to think that they will not work?” Nathan asked.
“No, but…”
“Then I’ll give you one short jump on our way out,” Nathan interrupted. “If it works, the next jump will be about four light years.”
“Captain,” Tug began, “I will need someone to feed me navigational information. I will be much too busy with piloting and targeting to do it myself.”
“I could take second seat,” Josh offered.
“No, it is much too dangerous,” Tug insisted.
“It’s not like the drone’s gonna shoot back at us,” Josh argued.
“I will be chasing a target at ninety percent the speed of light, firing high energy cannons. I can think of few things that are more dangerous,” Tug told him.
“He’s right, Mister Hayes,” Nathan insisted. “Besides, I need you on the helm.”
“Yes, sir,” Josh answered.
“I could pilot the ship,” Loki offered.
“No, you’re going to be too busy calculating navigational tracks for both the Aurora and Tug.”
“Oh yeah.”
“Ensign Yosef, you’ll be responsible for locating the drone and calculating its position as needed. Abby will be running jump plots and operating the jump drive.”
“What am I doing?” Jessica wondered.
“You keep your eyes on that threat board, Jess,” Nathan urged. “We’re going to be coming awfully close to Takaran space, and we’re essentially unarmed at the moment.”
“What would you like me to do, Captain?” Vladimir asked.
“Same thing you always do, Cheng.” A smiled crept across Nathan’s face. “Hold her together so we can get the job done.”
* * *
“Comms, alert all hands. We’re about to get underway,” Nathan ordered as he entered the bridge.
“Yes, sir,” Naralena reported from the comm station.
“Mister Hayes,” Nathan continued, “are we ready for departure?”
“Aye, sir. All systems show ready,” Josh reported.
Nathan took his seat in the command chair at the center of the bridge. “Jess?”
“Threat board is clear, Captain,” Jessica reported. “And Tug reports his interceptor is powered up and ready to go.”
“Very well. Helm, take us out of orbit,” Nathan ordered.
“Aye, sir. Breaking orbit.” Josh fired the main engines, bringing them up sharply in order to quickly accelerate out of orbit over Corinair. Unlike the previous trip where he was trying to provide a smooth ride for the visiting dignitaries, this time they were on a mission and time was critical.
The Aurora surged forward as her engines roared to life, sending a low rumble throughout the ship. The image of the planet below them fell away rapidly as they climbed up and away.
Nathan turned to Naralena, sitting at the comm station to his left and slightly behind him. “Comms, notify the Corinari that we are departing.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ensign Willard,” Nathan said, “I trust that your calculations have been fed to our navigator?”
“Yes, sir,” Ensign Willard assured him, “both the standard comm-drone route between Darvano and Takara, as well as my estimate of the drone’s current position along that route.”
“Very good,” Nathan responded. “Let’s hope your estimations are accurate.”
“I had your navigator check them, just to be sure,” Ensign Willard assured him. “Even your physicist checked them over.”
“I took the liberty of plotting some jumps at various points along the area of the route where we expect to find the drone,” Abby explained.
“A wise precaution, as usual, Doctor.”
“Breaking orbit, Captain,” Josh reported.
“Bring us onto the intercept course, Mister Hayes, an
d bring her up to ten percent light,” Nathan ordered.
“Coming to intercept course. Accelerating to ten percent light,” Josh reported. Josh quickly accepted the course fed to him by Loki and instructed the Aurora to come to the new heading and accelerate. After pushing the execute button, the ship turned slightly to starboard and applied even more thrust.
“Doctor, run your test plot and initiate when ready,” Nathan told her.
“Yes, Captain.”
Tug sat patiently waiting in the cockpit of his interceptor, his flight helmet sitting atop the console in front of him.
“So where’s your girlfriend been lately?” Marcus asked, trying to make small talk as he checked Tug’s restraint system.
“Who?” Tug asked, his mind elsewhere.
“The rebel princess,” Marcus said, “at least that’s what Lieutenant Commander Nash calls her.”
“Oh, you mean Jalea.” Tug smiled, slightly amused by the reference. “She is supervising operations on Karuzara.”
“Where?” Marcus asked, his face in a confused pinch.
“The asteroid base,” Tug explained. “That’s what Josh has named it.”
“That boy shouldn’t be allowed to name anything,” Marcus insisted with a grumble.
“It seemed to fit well enough.”
Marcus noticed Tug’s distraction. “You sure you wanna do this? Chase a comm-drone across the cluster? Seems a bit crazy, if you ask me.”
“If given a choice, a wise man would surely say no,” Tug lamented.
“Guess you’re not as wise as you thought, huh?”
“Sometimes life does not give us choices, my friend,” Tug told him.
“Bullshit. It ain’t life that left you no choice; it’s honor.”
Tug looked at Marcus’s gruff old face. He was a bitter, sour man on a good day, but he was also wiser than he let on. “Perhaps you are correct.”
“Listen, those new reactors the Corinari techs put in are top notch. I’ll bet you can push them up to at least a hundred and twenty percent if need be.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Tug promised.
“Also, one of their computer guys programmed in some firing patterns for your main nose turret. I think he called them ‘algorithms’ or something. He said you might find them useful.”
“I just might at that.”
“Yeah, he said something about the old ones being geared for hunting forty-year-old ships or something. Couldn’t hurt, right?”
“No, it couldn’t.”
“Attention all hands. Prepare to jump,” Abby’s voice announced over the loudspeakers in the Aurora’s main hangar bay.
“I hate this part,” Marcus admitted.
Tug looked at Marcus with a puzzled look on his face, noticing how the old man was clenching his jaw as Abby counted down the last three seconds leading up to the jump.
“Jump complete.”
“Damn!”
“You can feel the jump?” Tug asked.
“Makes one of my fillings hurt,” Marcus explained, “only for a second, mind you, but for that second it hurts like hell.”
“Interesting.”
“Not to me it ain’t,” Marcus exclaimed as he prepared to climb down from Tug’s cockpit. “Good luck, Tug,” he said, holding out his hand.
Tug took Marcus’s hand and shook it. “Thanks.”
“How are we looking, Abby?” Nathan asked.
Abby was busy looking over the reports from the first test jump with all the new emitters installed. “That is unusual,” she reported.
“What’s unusual?” Nathan wondered.
“We’re still on the correct course, Captain,” Abby explained, “but we jumped approximately one point two five light hours instead of only one. Apparently, the new emitters are more efficient than the original ones. Less energy is lost in the initial generation of the fields.”
“Is that good or bad?” Nathan asked.
“Well, it means we might have increased our potential range a bit,” she told him. “I will need to do more calculations in order to determine exactly how much.”
“Is that going to cause us any problems with this mission?”
“No, sir,” she assured him. “I believe I can adjust the output parameters to compensate for the increased efficiency of the emitters, although it may take a few jumps to get it right.”
“Very well,” Nathan told her. “Plot the next jump to a point just ahead of the drone’s current estimated position.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Helm, bring us up to maximum velocity, smartly if you will,” Nathan ordered.
“Yes, sir,” Josh answered, excited to have a chance to bring the Aurora to her maximum speed.
“Captain, is that really necessary?” Abby asked. “After all, the maximum jump ranges were all calculated on fifty percent light. Even at half that we would still have enough energy in the banks to complete the mission.”
“Yes, I’m sure you’re correct, Doctor,” Nathan agreed. “But the faster we go, the easier it will be for Tug to catch up to the drone and destroy it.”
“Of course.”
“Will that present a problem, Doctor?” Nathan asked.
“No, sir. It’s just that we have never jumped at that velocity before.”
“Yeah, firsts are becoming something of a habit on this ship,” Nathan quipped.
“Passing twenty five percent light,” Josh announced.
“Hold at fifty percent until we complete our next jump, Josh. Then continue accelerating after the jump is completed.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
“Hey, I don’t want to take any more chances than I have to, Doctor.” Nathan turned his seat around to face Jessica at the tactical station directly behind him. “How are we looking, Jess?”
“Board is still clear, sir. Nothing but Corinairan traffic,” Jessica told him.
“Sensors?” Nathan asked, rotating to port to face Ensign Yosef.
“All clear as well, Captain,” the ensign reported.
“Ensign Willard,” Nathan began, “if we’re going to be following the same course as the drone, how are we going to keep from colliding with it? I mean, as I understand it, we don’t actually jump past anything. We still go in a straight line.”
“In order to avoid shipping traffic, the comm-drones have their own dedicated transit corridors,” Ensign Willard explained. “These corridors run from the outer edges of the system, rather than from their centers, so their corridors, although parallel to the main transit corridors, are sufficiently offset in order to prevent collisions.”
“So we’ll be coming in at an angle,” Nathan stated, “from outside the comm-drone corridor.”
“Correct.”
“Passing forty percent light,” Josh reported.
“Jump plotted and locked in, Captain,” Abby reported.
“Very good. As soon as we hold at half-light, make your jump.”
“Understood.”
“Comms?” Nathan called.
Naralena again activated the ship wide announcement system. “Attention all hands. Stand by for jump.”
“Tug, be ready,” Nathan called over the comms. “Hopefully we’ll get lucky with the first jump.”
“I am ready to launch, Captain,” Tug reported over the comms.
“Forty-five percent light,” Josh announced.
“Sensors and tactical, keep your eyes peeled for threats after we jump,” Nathan warned. “We’ll be jumping to within a light year of Takara. There may be patrols.”
“I think the odds are pretty slim that we’ll actually run into a patrol,” Ensign Willard insisted. “After all, we’re talking about a pretty vast area, Captain.”
“Yeah, you would think that,” Nathan agreed, “but so far we’ve found space to be a lot more crowded than you might think.”
“Velocity at half-light and holding, sir,” Josh reported as he cut the main engines. The Aurora was
now coasting silently through space at half the speed of light, and would continue to do so forever if left undisturbed.
“Abby,” Nathan prompted.
Abby switched on the ship wide announcement system. “Jumping in three……two……one……jump.”
The blue-white light flashed through the bridge, subdued just enough by the filters on the main viewer to avoid blinding anyone looking at the screen.
“Jump complete,” Abby announced.
“Starting sensor sweeps,” Ensign Yosef announced.
“Continue acceleration, Josh,” Nathan ordered.
“Aye, sir. Mains coming up again,” Josh responded as he fired up the main engines once more and quickly brought them up to full power. There was no discernible lurch this time, as the ship was already traveling at two-thirds her designed maximum velocity. The rumble of the main engines returned, and the velocity readout again began to increase.
“Threat board is clear, sir,” Jessica reported.
“Good,” Nathan commented. He had half expected to come out of the jump right in front of another Takaran capital ship.
They waited patiently for several minutes while Ensign Yosef continued to scan the area ahead of them for the emission patterns that Ensign Willard had told her to look for.
“Nothing yet, Kaylah?” Nathan asked, becoming impatient.
“No, sir, just the usual background radiation and lots of extremely low power radio signals coming from other systems.”
“Are you sure? Maybe it’s there and you’re just not seeing it?”
“No, sir. I’m sure,” Ensign Yosef insisted.
“Sir,” Ensign Willard interrupted, “we need to be patient.”
“What if we jumped short of it?” Nathan speculated.
“We would still be able to detect it,” Ensign Yosef added, “just not as accurately as if it flew past us.”
“Very well, then we wait,” Nathan decided.
“Passing fifty-five percent light,” Josh reported.