Super World Two

by Lawrence Ambrose

  She accelerated toward the smaller ship that had fired on her with everything she had – so fast that it was as if she'd jumped rather than flew through the space between them. It launched another missile which she immediately turned away toward the alien vessel. It attempted to circle back but she held it on course with little effort. Maybe the ship's captain would get the idea, or maybe the missile might do some good. She felt it stop resisting her and she released her hold on it. The missile continued, on line for the closing breach in the alien ship. Her people had accepted the course correction and possibly understood what it meant.

  Now came an awkward moment that Jamie hadn't fully appreciated until she coasted up to the triangular craft's broad port window. She wanted to believe that the darkness of space obscured the details of her nude form, but she had no choice but to get close enough to be clearly seen. The shocked expressions on the crewmembers' faces told her that she'd achieved that goal.

  Inside the ship, Captain Zane Cameron's gaze was so locked on the holographic image directly below the port window – still digesting the disappearance of the two Proteus missiles and the abruptly altered course of the SHE rocket – that he barely registered the timid, disbelieving voice of Chief Engineer Dan Mueller behind him.

  "Ah, Captain..." Mueller cleared his throat. "There's something – someone – at the viewing port..."

  Captain Cameron glanced back. The Chief Engineer was pointing weakly over the Captain's head. The wide-eyed, mouth-opened gazes of his crew converged on whatever Dan was pointing at. Except Lieutenant David Mallory, whose disbelieving grin was somehow more disturbing.

  Cameron turned, raising his head. A ghostly specter of a woman hung in front of the window, ship instrument lights speckling her body. Her nude body. She was motioning downward and tapping on the plastisteel.

  "Dude," said Lieutenant Mallory. "If that's an alien, I'm switching sides."

  Captain Cameron waited for this latest surprise to filter through his system.

  "I believe that's Jamie Shepherd, sir," said his Chief Medical Officer, Keira Quinn. "I believe she's signaling for us to let her in."

  Jamie Shepherd. When the MAME detonation was detected, theories ran wild about whether or not she'd survived, the alien ship had been destroyed, their actions had just started an interstellar war – or all of the above. Cameron had not even been quite sure she existed – the descriptions of her superhuman abilities sounding more mythic than real – until this moment.

  "Open the hatch." He coughed to free his voice. "Keira, meet her outside the airlock. And, uh, get her a uniform."

  "Yes, sir."

  "I think I should handle that," said Lieutenant Mallory. "She could be dangerous."

  "She's immune to a vacuum and just survived a near-pointblank 30 kiloton blast. Not to mention redirecting a SHE missile..." Cameron's gaze returned to the holographic image tracking the SHE missile toward the alien ship, roughly two minutes from impact. "I don't think there's much you or any of us could do, David, if she were dangerous."

  Keira departed the deck and with some effort Captain Cameron renewed his focus on their target. If they survived, he could easily see them laughing at this over beers – the pretty naked woman knocking on the port window to be let in –the stuff of Space Command legend. But there was nothing laughable about facing extinction or a hostile alien civilization hundreds if not thousands of years more technically advanced.

  A cluster of objects, each a tiny pinprick of red light on the tracking holograph, converged on the SHE missile still hundreds of miles from the alien craft. Captain Cameron wasn't about to watch a repeat of the obliteration of two ten billion dollar Proteus missiles.

  "Lieutenant Mallory," he said. "Detonate the SHE."

  "Yes, sir."

  The Super High Explosive expanded in a glowing white sphere on the holograph while shining through the overhead port window. The fireball appeared to consume the cloud of surrounding objects. Cameron leaned toward the image, adrenaline burning in his chest. Was he seeing a way to forge a path to the alien craft for the remaining Proteus missiles?

  "PAT," he said. "Status of the intercepting objects?"

  "The objects disappeared an instant before the missile detonated, sir," the ship's AI replied in its gender-neutral voice.

  "Disappeared? Not retreated?"

  "Correct, Captain Cameron. They evidently detected either our transmission or the explosion initiation."

  "Where did they disappear to?" asked Lieutenant Mallory.

  "I suspect teleportation," said the AI. "They may have used that same technology against the Proteus missiles. The logical implication is that they must reach a certain proximity and/or swarm density before being capable of executing that capability. They appear to engage and destroy an incoming at a safe distance from their ship."

  "In other words," said Lieutenant Mallory, "they'll either eliminate our missiles or force us to detonate them too far away from the alien craft to cause it harm."

  "I believe so, Lieutenant."

  "And if these objects respond too quickly to be harmed by a detonation..."

  Captain Cameron trailed off as a tall, blond woman in blue and grey USSC fatigues entered the bridge with Kiera Quinn. Cameron stood up, reining in his surprise at the utterly normal-looking if exceptionally attractive young woman approaching him.

  "Jamie Shepherd, I presume?"

  The woman gave him a faint smile. "How did you guess?"

  "I'm Zane Cameron." He extended his hand. "Captain of this little renegade ship we call the Cheyenne."

  "Nice to meet you."

  "Sorry about trying to blow you up. We didn't know what was coming at us."

  "I figured that out."

  "When you altered our missile's course toward the alien ship, we kind of figured you weren't the enemy."

  "Was that missile you shot at me nuclear?"

  Cameron shook his head. "Super High Explosive. But with a thirty kiloton yield equivalent to a small nuclear bomb – minus the radiation." He hesitated, an awkward smile forming. "Is that what burned away your clothes? I assume you were wearing some."

  "No. That was the antimatter bomb that was teleported along with me into the ship." She smiled. "I'm afraid I have an long history of my clothes burning away."

  "And to think I never liked history," Mallory chuckled from behind them. Cameron's cool backward glance silenced him. Cameron edged aside, allowing Jamie to join him in viewing the holographic image of the alien craft from a close-up perspective of a few hundred miles away.

  "How did the missile I turned toward the alien ship do?" Jamie asked.

  "We detonated it as a group of small alien objects closed in. Those same objects eliminated our previous two missiles before they reached the ship."

  "I saw that. If you could get your missiles past the objects, you might be able to shut the alien ship down permanently. I had it shut down, but it has pretty freaky self-repair abilities."

  "Not too surprising, since our ship has them as well."

  "They aren't that much more advanced than us, Cap," said Lieutenant Mallory. "If she shut it down with one MAME, we should be able to torch it with two – plus our SHEs."

  "I beg to differ on the first point," said Chief Engineer Mueller. "I wouldn't draw any conclusions about our comparative technological development based on some similarities. The Ancient Romans used steel swords and knives. So do we. What would you infer from that?"

  "I'd 'infer' that the Ancient Romans could still kick our asses under the right circumstances."

  As Mueller rolled his eyes – a frequent event when arguing with former Space Reconnaissance Marine David Mallory – Jamie spoke up.

  "I may be able to help you deliver those missiles to the alien ship, Captain Cameron. If I can keep the alien objects off the missiles and escort them most of the way in."

  "How would you do that?"

  "I've assembled a large ball of the ship's own debris," she said. "It's made of alien ma
terial, which is much stronger than ours" – she shot a dubious glance around the bridge – "at least anything I know about. And if we're lucky, the Elementals' defenses might not even recognize it as an enemy attack."

  "To what velocity can you accelerate this ball of yours?" asked Mueller.

  "I'm not sure." Jamie frowned. "Between here and the ship maybe one hundred thousand miles per hour. Possibly more."

  "Considering our railgun can only manage 33000 KPH, that's rather impressive."

  "If I started further away I might be able reach a million, but we're running out of time. We need to act now."

  "I agree." Captain Cameron gazed at the holograph. "Here's how I see it: you lead in as you said with your ball of alien debris. We'll follow you with a Proteus from one of the starcruisers. Not too close, because we can't control the missile's speed, which is roughly one hundred and twenty thousand clicks per hour. When you get up to what you judge is your maximum speed considering the space-time limitations, leave your meteor and 'ride shotgun' on the Proteus missile, if you can. Hopefully, your object will give the alien defenses something to think about – or if they ignore it will punch a nice hole in the ship. We'll monitor your progress and PAT will calculate when to launch the Proteus."

  "Pat?"

  "Post Artificial Transcendent. Our resident AI genius."

  "Oh."

  Captain Cameron smiled. "My best suggestion is that you get your 'meteor' on its way and we'll do the rest."

  "How many of these Proteus missiles do you have?"

  "Six, now. The cruisers come with four each."

  "Any other powerful weapons?"

  "SHE missiles and rounds, proton beam, railgun, a laser cannon appropriate for more precise strikes. The Proteus is our biggest club."

  "Okay. Well..." Jamie backed away. "I guess I'd better go, then."

  "Good luck, Jamie. And thanks, by the way, for what you've already done."

  "Good luck to you, too."

  Keira escorted Jamie off the bridge. Cameron turned back to the holographic display. David Mallory walked over and stood beside him. Technically, leaving one's station under combat conditions was a violation of Space Command code, but he and David went back a ways – cementing a friendship ten years ago in USSC training classes – and technicalities didn't hold much sway with either of them.

  For years, David had groused about the "superiority complex" and "fucking arrogance" of the few alien species they knew had any dealing with – the Alphas, Zetas, and Luminates – and spoken of his longing to "teach them a lesson," despite the extreme ill-advisedness of that. Mallory dreamed of the day when humankind – more specifically, the United States Space Command – had evened the technological playing field. "Then," David mused with a dreamy expression, "we can stop kowtowing to these uppity sons of bitches and start kicking some alien ass." It was as if their large technological lead on the other nations made them unworthy opponents and Mallory wanted a real enemy to cut his teeth on.

  Now, Zane Cameron thought grimly, they were going to get that opportunity.

  "You always longed for this day," he said, too softly for anyone but Mallory to hear him. "A chance to go toe-to-toe with an advanced alien civilization."

  "That was only when we were ready, Cap," Mallory grunted. "When the time is right."

  "Well, the right time better damn well be now."

  JAMIE HAD a little more difficulty corralling the spherical mass of alien debris than she'd hoped. The mass of the alien ball under hard acceleration fought her. One thing to kick it along at a few thousand MPH, but when she tried for her "hyperdrive" it was like pulling an ox in mud. The top speed she estimated reaching might amount to little more than a distraction. But then if it distracted the objects enough to let the antimatter missile in...

  Jamie was concentrating so hard on accelerating her ball of debris that she never saw the objects approach. She was in clear space one moment and enshrouded in a hornet's cloud of black triangular objects about the size of carry-on luggage the next. She backed off the sphere, wondering if the triangular objects would stay with her or with the sphere.

  The sphere. The objects appeared to be circling it frantically, as if seeking out a weakness. As Jamie backed off and slowed she gained a better feel for the debris sphere's speed – which now resembled a cannon ball much more than a lumbering ox as it dived on the crescent-shaped ship. The triangular guardians swarmed and clumped onto the debris ball. What looked like an electrical storm started up along the surface. Optimism bloomed in her chest. The alien objects were struggling to handle her little improvisation!

  Jamie turned back to the U.S. starships that had lined up in a half-ring a few hundred kilometers between them. A tiny blue speck caught her eye, which she magnified: a Proteus missile! She had the immediate sense that it was moving faster than her blob of debris. They had of course been measuring her progress and calculating when to launch – she assumed with the intent of following her debris-ball's impact as closely as possible.

  Her ball was slowing. Unable to destroy it, the alien triangles were opposing its momentum. Closing within fifty or so miles, her sphere now appeared on course to tap the ship with the force of a flicked marble. Jamie was tempted to give it a telekinetic boost but now it was too late to regain anything resembling a lethal speed. Meanwhile, the Proteus missile was streaming in, maybe only fifty miles out. By now, if the past meant anything, the objects should be intercepting it. Was there a cutoff point when it would be too late for them to stop it? Probably not yet, she thought.

  Jamie accelerated to match the approaching missile's velocity. Moving at high speeds was now as always an intuitive and surreal experience – going from zero to one hundred and twenty thousand MPH in a second or two exceeded both the speed of her thoughts and vision: one instant it was an impossibly fast-moving object, the next she was cruising alongside – P-R-O-T-E-U-S spelled out in bold black letters on its sleek, white spear-shaped form. She thought of climbing aboard and riding it like that Air Force major in Dr. Strangelove, her favorite scene from the movie. Hopefully, absent his explosive ending.

  The alien ship swelled to fill her forward field of view. Ahead and below, the cloud of small triangular objects released their hold on the debris sphere and raced up to meet Jamie and her missile. The sphere disappeared through the narrowing rupture into the ship. She guessed she had only seconds to impact. This was going to be close. She waited. The cloud of small objects enclosed her, blotting out the stars and the alien ship.

  Now.

  Jamie imagined her telekinetics blowing out in all directions in an enormous pulse of power. The cloud cleared. The rupture in the alien ship was the size of the Grand Canyon now. Without thought, she launched off the missile, clearing the alien ship in a blur with an explosive burst of speed.

  Light flared from the other side of the sickle-shaped ship. The Proteus had detonated inside! A few seconds of slowing and then reversing her momentum – even she couldn't completely flout Newton's Second Law – and Jamie was drifting a thousand miles or so above the black crescent. The six circles had dimmed to pale flickers of light.

  Beyond the alien ship to the ring of starships, a cluster of tiny blue orbs sprouted among the stars. A telescopic look confirmed that several missiles had been launched – not just the five remaining Proteus from the larger cruiser ships, but four from one of the two smaller USSC craft, and two from the Cheyenne. Jamie guessed that meant they were throwing everything they had.

  Jamie flew into the missile's flight paths, expecting the swarms to resurrect themselves a few hundred miles from the alien vessel, but the missiles entered that zone and continued on unmolested. Jamie was soon witnessing the biggest fireworks show of her life: starbursts everywhere – even two of the formerly glowing circles – all in a deadly, eerie absence of sound.

  When the lightshow was over, the giant alien ship hung black and silent. Not a glimmer of light anywhere. The original rupture had expanded in ripples that looke
d like frozen waves. She was buoyed to see stars shining through. The missiles had blown out the other side! The rest of the ship, twisted and punctured by an assortment of holes, reminded Jamie of one of those rural traffic signs near her home that bored or angry teenagers had peppered with shotgun and rifles. But was it enough? Would the alien ship rise from the ashes once again?

  The four starships flared briefly – impulse engines or whatever they ran on, Jamie thought – and rolled in with a cautious air. Smaller craft that Jamie assumed were shuttles raced ahead. With the help of her telescopic vision she could make out uniformed individuals inside. Some of them appeared to be soldiers bearing rifles. Lot of good that would do them if there was anyone or anything left inside. Unless they were rifles unlike anything she'd ever seen, which she supposed was a possibility.

  Jamie moved in closer to where the shuttle craft were congregating at the main rupture and flying inside. She thought of insects entering their nest. They were going to probe the alien ship and "secure" it. They'd want to salvage whatever technology they could find. She guessed the ship would be a long-term study, if it cooperated and remained dead.

  If it did remain "dead," her job here was done. And then what?

  It was a question she hadn't spent more than a spare moment here and there thinking about. Surely, President Tomlinson and the government would be grateful for what she'd done? Maybe give her a commendation or at least a pat on the back and let her go on her way? She'd proven that she was a good, loyal citizen and not some terrifying, super-powered "domestic terrorist," hadn't she?

  One shuttle angled over toward her. She recognized the lone pilot, Captain Cameron. He waved and pointed to the hatch. She guessed once they knew what they were looking for she wasn't that hard to track.

  The hatch opened and Jamie slipped inside. The airlock pressurized and the cabin door slid open. Captain Cameron was waiting with a dry smile and his hand outstretched.