The Darkness: The Conglomerate Trilogy (Volume 2)

by William S Frisbee Jr

  "I'll send the frigates forward," Luke said. "They have good point defense weapons and might soak up some of those missiles."

  "Good idea," Bruce said as Luke sent his orders to the frigates.

  "Two probes launched," Ensign One said. "Fighter Flight One is away. Fighter Flight Two is preparing to launch."

  The Ultio would have had all fighter flights deployed by now.

  "Any enemy fighters?" Bruce asked.

  "Negative Captain," Erica replied. "Trying to get a visual on them. They appear to have camouflage active. Probes are accelerating at max. When the fighters are out, I'll send out another set of probes."

  "Good," Bruce said, leaning back and staring at the display.

  "Anything on hailing frequencies?" Bruce asked, almost as an afterthought.

  "Nothing," Erica said. "All standard frequencies are clear."

  "Give me standard hailing then," Bruce said and glanced back at Luke.

  Luke nodded at him to continue as Commander Pavlis appeared in the CIC. His cocoon was in another section of the ship but he could now link in and watch.

  "Attention unidentified vessels," Bruce said, his voice would be translated to a standard Conglomerate language which was understood by machines and translated to a host race's native language. "This is the human warship Proud Infidel. We acknowledge your hostilities and will meet you in kind. Who are you and why are you attacking?"

  "Put that on loop until you get a response," Bruce said after he ended his transmission.

  "Why aren't they answering or broadcasting demands?" Pavlis asked. "Wouldn't pirates order us to surrender?"

  "Yes," Bruce said. "I doubt these are pirates unless they have decided they have no hope of capturing us. They've launched missiles and that shows they want us reduced to cosmic space dust."

  "Fighter launch from Tango three," Erica said. "Looks like four of them. No drone response from the others."

  Falla Shum, Leonessa and Brita entered the CIC and climbed into their cocoons near Luke. Other cocoons activated around him, Morals and Carmichael were now present.

  "All stations report as on-line," Erica said. "All personnel are in gravity restraints and secured. Cleared for hard maneuvers."

  The minutes passed as everyone watched the incoming missile tracks on the main display holoboard.

  "Anther missile flight has been launched," Ensign One reported.

  "No more fighters?" Bruce asked.

  "Negative," Ensign One replied. "No additional fighter launches detected. Infidel Flight One and Flight Two are still on intercept. Flight three has launched and will provide close support."

  Bruce nodded.

  "Looks like the hulls might be Broma make," Erica said. "Hard to say for sure with the active camouflage, but the basic design is bullet shaped with oversized heat vanes, classic Broma."

  "Crap," Luke said.

  "Broma?" Pavlis asked.

  Luke replied, "The Broma are ship builders like the Nalee and Kadesh, but not as good or selective about who they make ships for. These ships are as close to being 'unmarked' as they could because everyone buys from the Broma. The Broma also don't have licenses to build some of the higher end technologies into their ships. They build cheap but tough. Not to say the ships couldn't be upgraded, but they a whilebuilt to last hundreds of years."

  "You think Jangol sent them?" Pavlis asked. "Mercenaries?"

  "That is the most likely explanation," Luke said, surprised that Pavlis was assembling the pieces so quickly. He also didn't like the implications. It meant that Jangol might have a good idea of what it would take to blast Luke out of space and had resources far enough away to intercept Luke.

  "Missiles are Broma make, model fourteens, based on scans from probe one," Erica said. "Gravity signature is lighter than normal, almost one gravon."

  "What does that mean?" Pavlis asked.

  "Broma fourteens are also generic missiles," Brita said. "Everyone carries them. I don't think the basic design has changed for hundreds of years. The light gravity signature means they don't seem to have a standard payload, which is odd."

  "Something to cripple us?" Pavlis asked.

  "Maybe Commander," Brita said. "Or maybe to scare us. Military grade warheads are expensive. They might also have fewer warheads to cut costs. The fourteens have about four warheads packed in there instead of five. I'm guessing these have two or three."

  Pavlis nodded and everyone went back to watching.

  "What are the classifications?" Pavlis asked.

  "Conglomerate systems are measured in gravons, basically the gravity foot print of a ship with gravity dampers off," Luke said. "A smaller ship can have a higher foot print if it has heavy weapons and shields, while a massive cargo hauler that is empty will have a lighter foot print. The gravity foot print indicates the power requirements, armor, shields and weapons that may be mounted."

  "What is the Proud Infidel in gravons?" Pavlis asked.

  "The Proud Infidel is about two thousand four hundred gravons," Luke said. "My frigates are about a hundred gravons each. Fighters may mass around three to twenty. Missiles about one or two."

  "Thank you," Pavlis said.

  "Enemy fighters appear to be Tonkan make," Erica said. "Unmanned. Against our fighters they will be outclassed and out gunned."

  "Tonkan?" Leonessa said. "So, they are Jangol's mercenaries?"

  "Maybe," Luke said. "But the Tonkan make a lot of drone fighters, and are almost as prolific in making fighters as the Broma in making ships. They have their licenses."

  "You don't think Jangol sent them?" Pavlis asked Luke.

  Luke shrugged. "I won't rule it out, but without hard facts I can only guess, and if I assume that Jangol sent them, and he didn't, we might get a nasty surprise."

  "Who else would send unidentifiable assassins after us?" Pavlis asked.

  "The Bronkaw come to mind," Luke said. "I've made a few enemies over the years as a mercenary, but aside from Jangol and the Bronkaw, most of the others wouldn't have the resources to reach out this far and so quickly."

  "I've got enemies as well," Bruce said. "But like Commander Kishi, I doubt any of my enemies would bother coming out this far to get me, or even know I'm here."

  "Enemy fighters are engaging Proud Infidel's missiles," Erica reported. The probes would have been launched long before the fighters and were stealthy. Had the enemy thought the probes were missiles? "No hits. Six missiles are intact. Probe two is past hostile ships and decelerating."

  The minutes felt like hours.

  "Flight one is engaging missiles," Ensign One reported. "Three missiles destroyed by flight one. Flight two will engage in three minutes."

  The battle seemed to progress slowly and the second flight of fighters took out four missiles, leaving only five missiles which Luke's frigates picked off. Two enemy fighters and one of Bruce's fighters disappeared from the track when they entered range and slashed at each other, and then the last two enemy fighters were eliminated by Bruce's flight two.

  "They should turn tail and run," Bruce said. "I doubt this will go well for them."

  "I don't know who is on board those ships," Falla Shum said, sounding puzzled.

  Luke looked at Shum, barely fitting into his acceleration cocoon.

  "What do you mean?" Luke asked.

  "Even at this range I should be able to sense the flavor of their souls," Shum said. "They are not Tonkan, Srakka, Bronkaw or any other race I am familiar with."

  "The flavor?" Luke asked and Shum nodded, but his eyes were closed.

  "Yes," Shum said. "Pral can sense life, we can sense the meaning of souls, the color they cast up on the great tapestry. The ones on those ships. . . are dark. I have never seen their like before. In their souls, light fears to tread."

  "Missile launch," Erica said. "Twelve missiles in flight three."

  "Missile launch," Erica said seconds later. "Eight missiles from tango's one and two."

  "Missile launch," Erica said again. "Eig
ht more missiles from tango's one and two. Missiles in flights two, three and four, looks like they are forming a single volley."

  "Interesting," Luke said without emotion. They would try to get twenty-eight missiles past the fighters and frigates. By combining the missile flights into a single volley, they improved their chances of destroying the Proud Infidel.

  "Launch six missiles, two for each tango," Bruce said. "Prepare a volley."

  Luke knew there weren't many options. It would be a slugging match and the stranger's acceleration profile showed they had enough speed to run down the Proud Infidel if she fled. They were lighter and they could accelerate faster. There would be no outrunning the missiles either.

  "Two missiles lost to enemy point defenses," Erica said, her voice without emotion. "Warheads deploying. Full deployment on four missiles, twenty-four warheads active and seeking. Enemy ships starting evasive maneuvers."

  "A little slow, aren't they?" Luke asked nobody in particular. What he was watching on the screen had occurred less than a minute ago, the light was just now getting to them.

  "Point defenses have scored on sixteen warheads," Erica said. "Detonations detected. Trying to filter telemetry from the probes, fighters and frigates."

  "Flight one engaging enemy volley. Three enemy missiles reported destroyed. Twenty-five remaining," Erica reported as Luke watched the display. The hardest part was having nothing to do and not controlling your fate.

  "All enemy ships destroyed," Erica said a minute later but everyone watched the mass volley of missiles coming at them. "Not detecting any life pods or significant amounts of wreckage."

  "Recall the fighters," Bruce said. They wouldn't be able to catch up with the missile volley though.

  "Flight two engaging enemy volley. Three enemy missiles reported destroyed. Twenty-two remaining," Erica said and Luke heard a tremble in her voice. These weren't low tech Caliphate missiles, they were Conglomerate.

  "Broadcast acceleration alarms," Bruce said. "Begin evasive maneuvers. Launch the last fighter flight for close support and get everything we have out there to stop those missiles. Recall the other missiles."

  Luke liked Bruce's optimism in recalling the missiles, but he knew the score as the acceleration crushed everyone into their cocoon.

  "Prepare to abandon ship?" Erica asked after several minutes of silence.

  Bruce looked over at Luke.

  "You know your ship," Luke said. "We could move the frigates out of the way and retreat to them if you feel that is the better option. They are wormhole capable."

  Bruce scowled as his eyes locked on the display.

  "I'm going down with my ship," he said grimly.

  "Then fight your ship. Don't take us down with it," Luke said wondering how he had ended up in a position to tell that to others. "Expend the frigates as you see fit."

  Shum had not yet opened his eyes, but everyone else looked between Luke and Bruce.

  "Have the frigates and fighters accelerate to the edge of the warhead deployment range," Bruce said before Luke could order it. "We have to get as many as we can before they deploy and lay down a barrage of moly pellets, empty the stores."

  Luke couldn't hear the launchers kicking out the pellets, which would unroll, with three small pellets held together by a thin molecular wire. Fully extended, they were ten meters in length and if a missile impacted any part of the bolo pellets the kinetic force would destroy the missile. It was something humans had been experimenting with for a while but the Conglomerate had abandoned the technology a long time. They would create a fast-moving mine field that would eliminate the missiles, but space was vast. Even the most minor of change would cause the pellets to miss by a large margin.

  "Flight three engaging," Erica reported. "Four missiles destroyed. Eighteen remaining."

  "Flight four engaging," Erica reported. "Three missiles destroyed. Fifteen remaining."

  That was a lot for the frigates, Luke knew.

  "Pellet intersection!" Erica reported as Luke watched the number of missiles shrink. "Got one."

  The frigates fired as fast as they could and slowly the missiles winked off the display. Then two of the missiles popped releasing eight warheads, four per frigate, but the frigates continued to attack the missiles, the warheads homing in on them were secondary. The Kukri disappeared from the display and seconds later the Gladius ceased to exist. Luke felt their loss. They were the last of his ships. Now gone, cosmic dust.

  "How many are left?" Bruce asked.

  "Hard to say through the debris and radiation," Erica said. "Those weren't standard warheads. Something more powerful."

  "Three missiles, still on approach," she said, as calm as if she were discussing changing sheets on a bed. "Warheads deploying. Shunting all energy to point defense weapons and shields."

  "Brace for impact," Bruce said. "Damage control stand by."

  Luke looked over at Leonessa who was staring at him. Life was never long enough to say what you wanted to.

  Twelve warheads homed in on the Proud Infidel. With the radiation storm from the destruction of the frigates masking them, it was hard to tell their exact location but the point defense weapons operated too fast for humans, or sentient droids to direct them, they were just programmed to shoot anything even remotely like a warhead profile and threatening the Proud Infidel. Some warheads died a sudden death but nobody knew how many.

  The Proud Infidel shook as at least one warhead detonated, lights flashed and alarms screeched. Emergency lights flashed off as primary lights flickered back to life, then the primary lights went back off. The bridge looked different in the dimmer emergency lights.

  Again, the Proud Infidel shook, more violently this time. Each of the cocoons was a self-contained shelter, linking with each other through a wireless network and each had its own power supply, life support and medical suite.

  Luke watched around him, waiting for another explosion, waiting for the end. Was that it? Had they survived?

  Ensign Two had been shattered by an impact and drifted through the bridge in three pieces, slamming into different objects that lost most of their velocity as they slammed into things. Without gravity, there was nothing to slow it down or stop the drifting debris except for slamming into different things.

  "Getting a signal from engineering," Erica said. "Nothing from Aux bridge. Systems are still re-routing."

  Bruce worked his own board. The main display was blank and finally the pieces of Ensign Two stopped slamming around and began drifting more slowly.

  "I can't raise Aux bridge," Kevin said. "No signal, no remote activation either."

  "I'll stay here," Bruce said. "Thomson, you head to Auxiliary and check on Reeves. Desmond, I want you to head to engineering and link up with Nowak."

  The hatch to the CIC opened, showing Gray and Musashi entering the bridge to look around. Several other sentient droids followed them in. They didn't need life support or air and they seemed okay.

  "Both of you take some droids with you," Bruce said, not taking his eyes from the board. "I need to know how bad off we are."

  "We are alive though," Luke said. "That's step one. Now all we need to do is avoid changing that."

  "That could change at any minute," Bruce said. "As I recall, we are in deep space with no habitable planets or allies within light years. This isn't looking good."

  "Optimist," Luke said.

  * * * * *

  "It could be worse," Bruce said looking at his passengers and crew in the main conference room. They had just restored atmosphere to the command deck. It was still cold, and the smell of burned plastic was almost overpowering. "But not much. We aren't crippled and we can conduct repairs. It will take time though. The auxiliary bridge is a total loss."

  "I'm sorry," Luke said. Everyone there had been killed.

  Bruce nodded, keeping his grief and anger to himself.

  "How much time do we need for repairs?" Luke asked.

  "A week? Maybe two," Bruce said. "We wil
l need a lot more time in dock, but we can make a few transitions without it."

  "Will Jangol send additional forces?" Pavlis asked.

  "Unknown," Luke said. "Something was odd about these attackers."

  "Odd?" Morals said.

  "Mercenaries rarely fight to the death," Luke said. "These attackers did not break or attempt to escape."

  "They didn't have time," Pavlis said.

  "They had time," Luke said. "They also didn't try to communicate with us, to threaten us or get us to surrender. It is not typical of Conglomerate mentality, even for pirates and mercenaries."

  "You know a lot of pirates?" Morals asked and earned a glare from Luke.

  "Commander Kishi is correct," Shum said. "They were not mere pirates or mercenaries."

  "Why do you say that?" Morals asked.

  "The flavor of their souls was different," Shum said and Morals rolled his eyes. Even Bruce looked at Shum skeptically.

  "They did not meet us at the wormhole entering the system," Bruce said. "It looked like they were transiting the system as well and coming in our direction."

  "Were they after us then?" Erica asked.

  "Good question," Luke said looking around him. "I've never heard of anyone ever encountering such a military force in a dark system. To classify them as simple pirates isn't right. Pirates who try to destroy us, fight to the death or refuse to talk? Unusual to say the least. I'm not seeing anything in the archives, no budding empires or enclaves in this area either. They were fanatical assassins and well equipped."

  "What do you want to do?" Bruce asked. "We are leaking radiation from reactor three and hiding won't be easy. We can't make a wormhole transition yet either and I'm not sure we can handle another fight if we find any unfriendlies in the next system."

  "Nani five is the closest," Luke said. "Let's head there. There appears to be an asteroid belt closer in to the planet and a couple moons. That close to the gas giant there will be a heavy radiation blanket and we should be able to hide in the belt. Does the Proud Infidel still have sufficient radiation shielding?"

  Bruce checked his board and made queries of the systems through is InnerBuddy.

  "Yes," he said, still doing mental calculations. "As long as we stay inside the command deck and keep our belly to Nani Five, we should be fine and it will mask our leakage. My bots should be able to handle the radiation during repairs. The only problem with that is we will be sitting there blind."