Earth Interstellar_Proxy War
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“Yes, I would like to have a full debrief of her experience while held by the Chzek-kin. Can you do that?”
“The debrief will begin once she is transferred to my ship. Our rendezvous will be in three days.”
Commander Kree, who was listening closely, asked, “Are we not going back to Earth?”
“You are. Along with Ambassador Dek. My station will be at the Rheas Homeworld to supervise their transition into a vassal of Earth. Too much time has already passed and I expect there to be a number of problems needing to be addressed. I will be taking the Rheas with me to be debriefed and returned home. A complete report will be transmitted to the UEG.” Continuing with an expression of concern, the ambassador said, “It is also necessary to prevent the Rheas from entering Human space without complete knowledge of anything that may have been done to her by the Chzek that could aid them in locating Earth. Do you understand?”
“Is that why no human has ever traveled to a Vrene or Rool world?” asked the commander on a hunch.
“That is exactly why. The galaxy is vast, even for the most advanced of races. Keeping your homeworld hidden from detection is a race’s single greatest defense against attack.”
Chapter 19: Tahiti, Earth
The new silver communicator on the back of Commander Mary Kree’s hand began to vibrate through her skin. She looked down, still getting used to the device after so many years using the ear bone conduction communicators required aboard a full immersion spacecraft. The new to the market device caught her eye a week after they returned from the Seventh Consortium hearing and a day after she was notified her ship, XSS Cousteau, deployed with its backup crew and she was without a ship. Commander Kree and her crew were in limbo while every other officer she met on Moon Base Four was putting in fourteen hour days preparing ships for departure or in the process of deploying.
The commander, for her part, recognized the free time she had was not meant for her convenience, she was being kept in Sol System so she could be at the beck and call of the UEG and her superiors. She also recognized she would not have a better chance to spend time on the beach and so booked passage to Tahiti where she met a rather handsome oceanographer who had finagled a grant to study the corals around the island. His Cheshire cat grin left no doubt in the commander’s mind he knew how much he was getting over on the rest of the world toiling in its drab existence.
“Hold on a minute, David,” she said while sending a thought to activate the communicator. She answered the device a moment later, anxious for news and praying for a new command, “Commander Kree,” she answered.
“Commander Mary Kree?” asked the caller, who continued upon her reply, this is Lt. Foxborough at EXSERVCENTCOM, please confirm,” the caller said.
“Confirmation Piper Delta Six Seven, unsecure,” was the commander’s reply.
“Commander, your orders have come through. You are to report to Vice Admiral Nelson, commander Rheas Front Joint Command HQ, at your first opportunity.” The order to report did not surprise the commander, but who she was to report to did. The last time she checked, Admiral Nelson was a rear admiral lower half. He was two ranks below vice admiral and there was no “joint command” when they returned from the consortium hearing.
“Thank you, Lieutenant. I’ll be on the next flight out,” she replied, relieved to have a purpose again. Turning to her handsome oceanographer sitting on the edge of the catamaran they were diving from, she admired the man. His personality was a nice fit for her right now. He was irreverent and fun with no thoughts at all to anything happening beyond a day’s boat ride from the island. As he was just about to flip over backward to dive the reef for the second time that day, she called out to him, “David.”
“What’s up?” he asked, hearing something in her voice he had not heard during their time together?
“I have orders. We need to head back.” She shucked the straps off her Oxi-Flo rebreather pack and brought her communicator up to contact the Exploration Service’s travel office to set up her flights. Maybe when I get back in five or ten years, he’ll still be single, she thought to herself, giving him another look as she moved to the catamaran’s solar motor controls.
Vice Admiral Nelson was sitting in a conforming gel chair in his office, jacked into the base’s virtual network, when he saw the message pop up in the corner of his vision. He was working on the deployment schedules and coverage for the entire region centered on the Rheas System. It covered everything between Earth and Rheas as well as everything beyond, which is presumably the region of space occupied by the Chzek and their vassals.
Doffing the neural interface webbing from his head, he yelled through the door, “Send her in, Rita,” and moved out of the immensely comfortable gel chair back to the faux leather office chair behind his desk. The admiral still wasn’t used to the intercom system in his office; it was archaic with far too many buttons for his taste as he was accustomed to neural interface systems in the VR environment aboard ships.
Commander Kree entered the office and approached the admiral’s desk, “Commander Kree, reporting as ordered, sir,” she said, coming to attention.
“Captain, it’s good to see you. Have a seat,” he said and stood to shake her hand before waving to one of the two chairs in front of his desk. “I have a new assignment for you. Are you ready to go back out?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve been on the beach long enough,” the commander replied, smiling while internally excited the admiral was calling her “captain,” which could only mean she was back in command of an Exploration Service ship. “Oh. Congratulations, sir. On Joint Command,” she said, sincerely happy for him. Between the time spent in the Rheas System, and the time traveling to the Seventh Consortium’s governing body for the hearing, the commander was convinced the admiral was an excellent choice for leading the war effort.
“Excellent. It’s time to get you back in the game. And, thank you. UEG decided we needed a unified command, and since I’m the only admiral with any combat experience, they gave me the job,” he replied. He pulled a folder from his desk and tossed it across the table to her, “Here’s your assignment. Take a few minutes and look it over while I make a call.” Ignoring her after that, the admiral tapped his communicator attached to the back of his hand. It looked exactly like the one on the commander’s hand.
Smiling at the admiral’s choice of communicators, the commander picked up the folder and opened it to see a holo-page of her new exploration ship, only it wasn’t any ship she was familiar with. The scale was off and it had several extra sensor suites, missile tubes, and laser mounts. The ship was one hundred eighty feet longer than the Cousteau and had two more engines. It retained the characteristic narrow profile all exploration ships had, but the engines were bigger than any she had seen before. Those were the visible differences. Based on the length of the ship, the commander knew the ship also carried additional crew and likely had extended legs for long deployments. If this was her new ship, it was a first in its class, she realized. Butterflies were beginning to take hold in her stomach with the excitement. This was a beautiful ship and bigger than anything previously deployed by the Exploration Service.
Finally moving past the holo-image of the ship, the commander went through the remaining pages of her orders. The first pages contained the specs for her ship, the XSS Nautilus. She had double the crew of the Cousteau, and four times the sensor capabilities, which were all integrated into a networked, multi-sensor suite that should increase her detection capabilities by an order of magnitude. The sensors were able to combine their readings to emulate much larger systems typically only found on ground-based stations. The weapon systems were the same as the systems she learned the UEAF used on fleet ships, however on the Nautilus, there were two additional systems; one for decoys and one for a larger drone system she was unfamiliar with.
Commander Kree’s rising excitement at her new command was tempered when she read her orders; XSS Nautilus was to deploy deep into enemy territory with th
e express purpose of locating the Chzek-kin homeworld and any other major facilities and planets associated with the Chzek and its alliance she came across along the way. The deployment term was shown as plus or minus three years from their departure date from the Rheas System.
“What do you think of your new ship,” the admiral asked, having finished his call some minutes prior. He was now observing the questions skittering across the commander’s face.
“It’s a beautiful ship, sir,” was her reply, without giving away the momentary pain she felt as she recalled her sentiment on whether David would still be single when she returned to Earth. She knew he was little more than a vacation date and she would never see him again. What bothered her wasn’t a future without him; it was the idea of how long it would be before she had anything close to her own family. It was not like she was pining for a normal life; she was Exploration Service to the deepest depths of her sould and expected a long career in the service. Having a family was not going to happen for the commander. It was her choice, but it wasn’t without some feeling of loss. The feeling passed as fast as it came and the exhilaration of a new command returned in force.
“That it is, Captain. It’s also over four hundred feet long,” he said, waiting to see if she picked up on the ramifications of commanding a ship of that length.
The commander snapped her eyes to his but refrained from commenting. She knew what it meant. Ships longer than four hundred feet called for an officer grade of captain.
“That’s right, Captain,” he said, sliding a box across the desk to her, “You’ve been promoted. Congratulations.” The admiral rose from his desk and came around to help Captain Kree doff her old silver oak leafs and put on her new gold eagle captain’s insignias. Some things will not change in an American controlled service, and using the historical symbols for rank was one of those things. So far the other nation members of the council had failed to get the service to adopt the two-headed eagles the Euros and Russians preferred on their officer insignia. To an American’s eyes, there was just something wrong with a bird with two faces.
Stepping back and offering a quick salute, the admiral said, “Grab your orders and let’s go. We have reservations at Viggo’s in the Civilian Sector. There’s a lot to discuss. You like Italian?”
Chapter 20: XSS Asimov, Unexplored Chzek Controlled Space
Captain Elton Spriggs was standing on the virtual bridge of the XSS Asimov, spending as much time watching the emotional profiles of his watchstanders as he was the giant holo display occupying the center of the bridge. The design of the bridge was Spriggs’ own creation; placing space as the central focus with the bridge crew wrapped around on either side. The layout featured the view of space while keeping the faces of his crew all within his view. He preferred that to seeing the backs of their heads most bridge layouts provided.
His first indication something was wrong came from the simultaneous changes in the emotional state of both the sensors and weapons techs. Their emotional states shifted into yellow then red. Weapons Tech, Michaela Thompson’s status bar showed a streak of dark green, indicating intense focus. Sensors Tech, Ken Northrom’s, emotional status lost all focus and was showing wild streaks of red and orange.
“Report!” ordered the captain, before either of the two could speak.
“Multiple contacts! Vampires inbound fifteen degrees negative ecliptic, bearing 328! Range,” the weapons tech paused as the ship’s quantum computers compiled the passive tracking data to get a triangulation on the range, “Range four hundred thirteen thousand miles!”
The missiles were right on top of them and it meant the ship had only seconds to respond. The captain cut off the report, shouting, “General Quarters! Activate all defenses!” Thompson was already activating the ship’s defenses as soon as she read off the range of the missiles. “Launch countermeasures!” the captain ordered, “Emergency full spatial expansion! Maneuvering, reorient to negative 250! Full emergency thrust!” Doing something, even if it wasn’t the right thing, was better than doing nothing, was a thought the captain had during many of the times he imagined the moment of an attack during their patrol; the time had come and he gave his orders without enough information to know what orders to give.
The order to expand space was contrary to intuition as, ideally, the ship would attempt an escape maneuver; the captain knew they needed to buy time to gather data and ramp up the thrust in the ship’s engines. He watched the holo display as the image was distorted by the Epson Drive, but at that range there was no mistaking there were missiles inbound.
The slowing was short lived. Seeing the defensive systems were activated and formulating a more thoughtful reaction to the attack, the captain ordered, “Set all defensive systems to Auto-Fire and shut down the Epson Drive. Standby to activate full spatial compression on my mark.” Flipping from full spatial expansion to compression would take time the captain did not want to give, so he shut the system down to collapse the field. That gave the defensive systems an opportunity to make solid target locks and fire without the distortive effects of the drive. If he timed it right, when he reactivated the Epson Drive to compress space, he would only have lost a couple seconds while making his defensive systems far more effective.
It was up to the captain to time the maneuver perfectly, to switch on the Epson Drive’s field to compression ninety degrees from the missile’s approach vector in an attempt to sidestep. With the few seconds until he would reactivate the Epson Drive, the captain ordered the launch of the ship’s ready drone. The drone’s single purpose was to escape a ship facing certain destruction and make its way back to a rendezvous point to report the loss. The drone’s AI was linked to the ship’s sensors and carried a copy of the ship’s logs, updated every fifteen milliseconds. The launch of the drone was felt by everyone on the ship and was another indication to the crew they were not having a drill. The crew reacted even faster to the clanging of the ships GQ alarm and the sudden power-up of the engines. They were keenly aware the only reasons to activate any active systems within an unexplored solar system were because a collision was imminent or they were detected by another ship or under attack.
The crew of the Asimov was made up of experienced veterans of the Service who reacted quickly and professionally to the alarm. They knew they would need to react instantly if they wanted to survive. Unfortunately, their drills were normally initiated with the call for general quarters. No drills were run where the crew reacted during an attack rather than upon detection of an enemy; a failing of the combat inexperienced captain of what was operated as a civil service for its entire history.
Materializing on the bridge directly in front of the captain’s view of the holo display Navigation Officer, Lt. Walt Fitzhugh reported to the bridge within seconds of feeling the launch of the ready drone. It was also right at the moment the captain began ordering the Epson Drive to be reactivated to full spatial compression so the ship could make its sidestep maneuver. Lt. Fitzhugh took two steps back as he realized he was standing at the edge of the holo image and stepped right into the avatar of the captain, making the captain’s head snap back even though no actual contact ever occurred as the digital avatars passed through each other. Recovering with a growl, the captain gave the order later than he intended.
Most of the missiles inbound went for the ship-shaped decoys that were firing their unfocused drone engines at over three hundred percent of their operational thrust to create a heat source comparable, albeit briefly, to the ship’s engines. The drones were designed to look and act like a ship maneuvering and sported reflective panels to match the sensor signature of the Asimov.
Several other Chzek-kin missiles were unable to correct their course enough to intercept the sidestep maneuver of the ship and flew past, harmlessly self-detonating as the missiles operating systems calculated they were passed their closest point of approach and would not be able to intercept their target. One missile retargeted and successfully intercepted the ready drone.
None of the crew was harmed as the missile did its damage to the engineering spaces of the ship. With a calmness belying their situation, the crew assessed their situation as backup generators began to come online. Damage Control and the engineers sent out the three remaining repair bots not destroyed by the missile’s impact to assess the damage. The crew was functioning like a well-oiled machine; they were cold and in control.
As soon as he was able, the captain launched all but two of his remaining drones, each with identical ship’s logs and data of the ship’s condition. The two drones drifted away from the ship along with the debris field from the engines.
It was two hours before the engineers admitted to what they knew was the case within the first twenty minutes of sending out the repair drones; the ship was dead. The engines could not be restored outside of a space dock, if at all. “Captain,” came across the sound powered phones, still in use even though basic power was reestablished.
“Go, EO,” ordered the captain, not wanting to hear the bad news he knew the engineering officer was about to report.
“The engines are done. They’re not repairable. We have life support restored and can maintain the crew indefinitely. The core scrammed when the missile hit, but it’s in good shape and we were able to put it back online. None of the ship’s life support or stores were damaged as the inertia dampeners did their job perfectly to protect them.”