Max targeted the missile on the KBO.
Its launch and flight completely shielded from Hotel 1 by the twenty-nine kilometer wide KBO, the Spoonbill flew straight and true toward the gigantic lump of ice.
Seventy-two hundredths of a second before Hotel 1 reached its closest point of approach, and three ten thousandths of a second before the missile would have struck the KBO, the weapon’s 17.9 megaton thermonuclear warhead detonated.
The explosion vaporized about fifteen percent of the KBO instantly. The rest of the object’s enormous bulk was transformed in less than half a second into flash-vaporized gas and enormous chunks of frozen material travelling at thousands of feet per second, some of which had masses in excess of a million tons. Max and the Nightshade’s computers had timed the explosion such that the shock wave had just enough time to propagate from the epicenter of the explosion to the point on the KBO’s surface closest to Hotel 1 and for the shattered pieces of the KBO to travel into the ship’s path.
With no time to evade, Hotel 1 plowed into a hailstorm of rock-hard frozen volatiles and a gale of water vapor, methane, and other gases. Even with its powerful deflectors, Hotel 1’s enormous kinetic energy and the tremendous mass of the KBO fragments and swirling gases overwhelmed the vessel’s deflectors and vaporized the ship more thoroughly than if the Spoonbill’s warhead had detonated fifty meters away from the fighter’s hull. The ship disappeared in a brilliant flare of plasma that quickly faded into the night.
As soon as the glare from Hotel 1’s destruction was no longer visible on the visual feed, Max turned his attention back to the tactical display to try to figure out what the hell he was going to do to deal with the other three ships, one of which would be arriving in his vicinity very soon. As he was squinting at the display, the computer’s label for the ships changed right before his eyes. Where the enemy ships had been labeled HOTEL 2—UNK, HOTEL 3—UNK, AND HOTEL 4—UNK, they were now labeled, HOTEL 2—IKUB, and so on.
What the hell?
A theory started to gel in his mind. Max inserted his hand into the 3d projection in the air in front of the console pointed his index finger at the IKUB notation and moved his fingertip in the shape of a question mark. The computer interpreted the gesture as a request to explain the notation. Max turned to the main database screen.
QUERY: IKUB.
RESPONSE: IKUB IS THIS VESSEL’S STANDARD TACTICAL DISPLAY ABBREVIATION/NOTATION FOR AN IKUNIAN FIGHTER, TYPE B. FURTHER INFORMATION AVAILABLE ON IKUNIAN CIVILIZATION, IKUNIAN BATTLE TACTICS, IKUNIAN FIGHTERS (ALL TYPES), AND RELATED SUBJECT MATTER. QUERY “IKUNIAN” FOR COMPLETE TOPIC LISTING.
Max’s theory was looking more plausible with every second. He typed quickly.
QUERY: EXPLAIN DIFFERENTIAL IDENTIFICATION—IKUNIAN SHIPS AS UNKNOWN VESSELS BEFORE DESTRUCTION OF HOTEL 1 AND AS IKUNIAN AFTER DESTRUCTION OF HOTEL 1.
The computer answered immediately.
RESPONSE: DATA AVAILABLE REGARDING IKUNIAN TYPE B FIGHTERS IS SUFFICIENTLY COMPLETE AS TO ALLOW THIS VESSEL TO ELUDE THEM WITH LITTLE DIFFICULTY. THE TEACHER OF FOREST FOLLOWERS IN CHARGE OF YOUR TRAINING DID NOT WISH TO MAKE THIS INFORMATION AVAILABLE TO A FRUIT EATER UNTIL YOU HAD PROVEN THAT YOU HAD THE SPIRIT AND CUNNING OF A HUNTER INSTEAD OF MERE CALCULATING CAPABILITIES OF UNWORTHY TOOL-USING PREY.
“Son. Of. A. Bitch. I was right. Those Vaaach bastards wanted me to show that I was worthy of their help. Nice guys.”
Max shuddered. If he hadn’t proved himself to their satisfaction, it appears that the Vaaach would have been perfectly content to let the Ikunians kill him.
Inspired by that cheerful knowledge, Max dived into the newly-available information in the database about the Ikunians. He first satisfied his curiosity about why they were after him. He learned that the Ikunians were essentially pirates. They had this entire region of space seeded with sensitive detectors one of which had probably picked up the arrival and departure of the Vaaach ship. If the Ikunians had followed their standard procedure, a small, fast carrier had brought the four fighters to the datum and dropped them off, after which the fighters were able to track and overtake him. Their standard practice was to force people like him to surrender, take them as slaves, and sell their ships to the highest bidder.
That would have been fun.
It didn’t take Max long to determine that the Ikunians had been tracking him by means of a weak metaspacial resonance emitted by any metaspacial transceiver array when pinged by a low frequency metapulse. The database contained everything Max needed to know in order to dampen the array’s resonance when pinged. Max simply had to program the transceiver to modulate the array with a signal 180 degrees out of phase with the ping, which took him only two minutes to accomplish.
That done, Max re-engaged his stealth systems, changed course, and spent the next six hours creeping far enough away from the Ikunians that he was able to engage his compression drive. Finally, the right lights turned the right color, he flipped the right levers, and he zoomed away from the Kuiper belt, leaving the remaining Ikunians behind.
Chapter 5
16:02 Zulu Hours, 4 July 2304
Max had spent the better part of two days slipping into Species 2297’s star system in the stealthiest manner he could manage. He was not concerned that the natives would detect him. Defeating the phased array radar systems in low orbit around their planet presented no difficulty to even the least stealthy Union vessel. Max was concerned, however, that the Plunderers, whose technology was considerably more capable but about which he knew very little, would detect him. He didn’t know what this mysterious species would do if it found out that Max was prowling around the system, but he didn’t want to find out. At least, not yet.
He had put the time to good use, though. First, he logged his observations of the system in his formal Log of Record, which meant that, as the first human to observe the system in detail, and because the name given by the native sentients’ name for their own world was a series of light flashes instead of something humans could pronounce, Max had the privilege of naming it. Most people in those circumstances name the system after themselves, but Max’s research showed that there were already thirteen Robichaux systems (his great, great Uncle Théophile had been something of an intrepid interstellar explorer). Robichaux 14 sounded too much like the first half of a score in American Football: Robichaux 14, Ohio State 10. As if the name for the star system wasn’t bad enough, the names for the planets would be even worse: the insectoid aliens would live on a world named Robichaux 14 II and that world’s moon would be Robichaux 14 II A.
Nope.
So, Max compromised. His exploration of the ship’s database revealed that there was as of yet no Tindall system. Not only was Tindall Max’s middle name, but Max’s aerospace engineer father had gotten the name from the brilliant and offbeat NASA engineer Howard W. “Bill” Tindall. Max (and apparently his late father) believed that Bill Tindall had never gotten the credit he deserved for his seminal contributions to so many of Jurassic Space’s triumphant achievements. So, Max made up for that slight, at least to some small degree, by naming this star and its planets, asteroids, comets, Kuiper Belt objects, and other assorted and sundry bodies the “Tindall system,” which made the inhabited planet “Tindall II” and its inhabitants “Tindallans” or “Tindallites” or “Tindallings” or something like that. Which was a hell of a lot better than “Robicheauxans” or some other hideous demonym.
Second, Max had tied together his main communications array, his main sensor array, and the auxiliary comms array, parked his ship right next to a 1584 kilometer nickel-iron asteroid to block any energy leakage in the direction of the inner Tindall system that the natives might detect, aligned everything with minute precision, accumulated the maximum energy in the comm system’s main and auxiliary capacitors, and transmitted a burst signal toward the Union communication relay station nearest his current position. By his calculations, the transmission should just barely be strong enough to catch the signal processing co
mputer’s attention and cause the relay station to forward the message to Max’s superiors. Even at the absurdly high speed of a metaspacial tunneling transmission, the signal would take more than a day to reach its destination.
The Navy couldn’t send help, but at least they would know he was still alive and, just maybe, have some useful advice.
Third, Max had seeded the system and near interstellar space with stealthed sensor drones that would alert him if the Plunderers approached from any direction. Further, the probes would allow him to easily monitor transmissions from Tindall II without having to be in close orbit around the planet. The Nightshade was a superlative intelligence-gathering platform and, given the uncertainties of the current situation, Max intended to use its capabilities to their limits.
But he wasn’t learning very much that was of any use. Even though the Vaaach had provided a translation matrix for the Tindallite language, his ship’s computer was having a hard time translating the language in actual transmissions. The Tindallites’ equivalent of radio wasn’t posing much difficulty—their radio receivers converted pulsed tones of various length and pitch into a light display that emulated their own bodies’ light displays. The computer had no trouble running that process in reverse and then translating the result into Standard.
It was the analog visual RF transmissions, similar to the analog television used on Earth before that medium went digital in the early 21st Century, that were causing problems. Sometimes, there was a Tindallite on the screen “speaking” with the lights on his body, and sometimes there was a “narrator” in the form of a stylized light display—just the lights, not the aliens’ body--in a corner of the screen, and sometimes there were both. Frequently, there were two or three Tindallites on the screen “speaking” to one another, sometimes taking turns, and sometimes talking over one another. Every now and then, one of the speakers would be standing in a posture that prevented the camera from picking up one or more of its lights. Presumably, Tindallites could fill in the omissions based on context much as humans fill in syllables or words that they can’t quite hear based on the rest of the sentence. The Nightshade’s computer, on the other hand, was frequently confused and rendered results that were ambiguous, contradictory, and even downright nonsensical.
Max flagged a transcript of what he surmised was a news program on the state of anti-Plunderer defenses as a good example of why he was confused.
[Visual: Program host standing in front of large building—probably the headquarters of an important government department.]
Narrator: Those Who Mark the Way [planetary leadership?] have devoted every available resource of our race to protecting our Precious Treasure against the Plunderers for more than four generations and have not deviated from their determination to repel the Plunderers at all costs. They have, however, had to contend with much random flickering in the darkness [dissention?] regarding the course they have chosen.
[Visual: Cut to image of an individual wearing the wing jewels of a Citizen 3rd Class—Senior-Grade Instructor of the Young, Intermediate Level, Subject Matter: Written Language and Literature.]
Citizen: We all know that Those Who Mark the Way are giving this problem their best efforts and that everything that can be done is being done, but where are the results? The Plunderers come and take our Precious Treasure without any effective resistance. How long will it be before we have the technology we need to stand up to them? Something different must be attempted.
Off Camera Interviewer: What would you have Those Who Mark the Way attempt?
Citizen: Look at my wings. Do you see any red shining in the sunlight? I do not chart the course for others to follow. It is given to me only to teach the young. I only know the commonsense notion that when one course of action fails repeatedly, another must be tried. We owe it to them. [At this point the citizen turns slightly to gesture toward a facility for the instruction of the young. Her change in stance obscures some of her bioluminescent panels. Translation of her remarks from this point is uncertain.] After all, one can fly into the pane of clear glass of a closed upper floor window only so many times before concluding that it is not going to engage in profligate mating behaviors of its own accord. One must, rather, attempt to eat the building by camouflaging it from the fungus that makes wings brittle. One must stand on one’s own six legs and walk in through the chimney on the ground floor or risk drowning in the worm-filled trunks of fallen trees.
Max blanked the display in frustration.
That was helpful.
He keyed several searches in his rapidly growing database on the Tindallites to try to get a better handle on the Plunderers: who were they, what kind of technology were they likely to be able to bring to bear when they next invaded, when would they come again, and—above all in Max’s mind—what was the “precious treasure” that they made off with every time they came. He could find no unambiguous answers to any of these questions in any document accessible by text search.
Maybe there’s some kind of visual record.
Just as that thought crystallized in his mind, the computer sounded a tone and an alert appeared on one of his displays. One of Max’s sensor drones had just picked up a burst of Cherenkov-Heaviside radiation indicating that a ship had just come through the Tindall system’s Charlie jump point. Max was thankful that he had thought to deploy the drones. The flash of radiation caused by a ship coming through the jump point, travelling at the speed of light, would have taken more than four hours to reach Max’s location. But, since the drone was posted only a few thousand kilometers from the jump point and had sent him the alert via metaspacial tunneling transmission, Max had found out only a few seconds after the event.
In a few minutes, Max had received enough data to plot the other ship’s course and speed. Max’s preliminary plot showed that it was headed toward Tindall II at just under 0.1 c. Max laid a course that would allow him to intercept the ship when it was still twelve hours away from the planet but that would, he hoped, be sufficiently stealthy to avoid detection. He would be within range to be able to take detailed sensor readings on the other ship in about ten hours. Max programmed the autopilot, set a wake up alarm, and went to bed.
Max was in the middle of a deeply erotic dream involving a red-headed girl, a stain-proof wrestling mat, and a canister of ultra-low friction fusion cooling pump bearing lubricant when he suddenly found himself awake and keying the accommodation cabin’s comm panel for display. The annoying incoming message buzzer had snatched him from the redhead’s warm, fragrant arms, leaving him and his raging erection both standing at the comm panel having silenced the alert before he was even fully awake and long in advance of his conscious mind’s recognition of what it meant. He keyed the display and sat down to read. Even without the FROM line, Max would have had no doubt who sent the message.
21:23 Z HOURS, 4 JULY 2304
TOP SECRET
URGENT: FOR IMMEDIATE IMPLEMENTATION
FROM: HORNMEYER, L.G., CMRE USN, CDR BG-I 84-3 ORANGE
TO: ROBICHAUX, M.T. ENSN USN, PLT SFR-52: KMRH-7239
RE: POSITION/STATUS REPORT OF 17:33 Z HOURS 4 JULY 2304
1. RECEIPT OF YOUR POSITION/STATUS REPORT OF 17:33 HOURS 2 JULY 2304 IS HEREBY ACKNOWLEDGED. RECIPIENT UNDERSTANDS THAT YOUR POSITION REPORT IS CONFIRMED BY MULTIPLE PHENOMENOLOGIES AND IS VALID BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT.
2. PATTON’S POLISHED PEACEMAKER PISTOLS, SON! NO ONE CAN ACCUSE YOU OF NOT BEING THOROUGH: WHEN YOU STICK YOUR ASS IN A CRACK YOU MAKE DAMN SURE TO SHOVE IN BOTH BALLS AT THE SAME TIME. WHEN BUSHMAN, THAT INSUBORDINATE STEWARD OF MINE, ALERTED ME THAT I HAD RECEIVED A COMM SIGNAL FROM A RAW ENSIGN WHO HAD GOTTEN HIMSELF CATAPULTED FOURTEEN THOUSAND LIGHT YEARS AWAY TO THE FUCKING CENTARUS-CRUX ARM, I DIDN’T HAVE TO READ THE GODDAMN THING TO KNOW THAT THE ENSIGN IN QUESTION *HAD* TO BE NONE OTHER THAN MAXIME THORN-IN-MY-FAT-HAPPY-ASS ROBICHAUX.
3. BE ADVISED THAT, DUE TO YOUR EXTREME DISTANCE FROM ANY UNION OR ALLIED FORCES OR INSTALLATIONS, NO DIRECT ASSISTANCE CAN BE RENDERED. W
HICH, I AM SURE, IS NO GODDAMN SURPRISE EVEN TO YOU.
4. I HAVE ADVISED RADM MIDDLETON OF YOUR SITUATION. AS YOU ARE AWARE, HIS FAMILY HAS MORE OF THOSE DRINKING DARJEELING TEA AND EATING CUCUMBER SANDWICHES WHILE EXTENDING THEIR PINKIE FINGER DIPLOMAT TYPES THAN JUPITER HAS MOONS. HIS CONNECTIONS ADVISE HIM THAT ALTHOUGH THE UNION HAS NO FORMAL DIPLOMATIC OR OTHER RELATIONS WITH THE VAAACH SOVEREIGNTY, THERE ARE SOME AVENUES BY WHICH THE UNION AND THE VAAACH SOMETIMES ENGAGE IN SEMI-OFFICIAL COMMUNICATIONS.
5. MIDDY ASSURES ME THAT A UNION ENVOY AT LARGE HAS ALREADY CONTACTED THE VAAACH AND INFORMED THEM THAT “THE UNION TAKES A GREAT INTEREST IN THE WELFARE OF ENSIGN ROBICHAUX AND WOULD BE HIGHLY GRATEFUL IF HE WERE TO BE RETURNED TO UNION SPACE IMMEDIATELY AND UNHARMED.” I WILL ADVISE YOU IMMEDIATELY WHEN AND IF THE VAAACH RESPOND.
6. YOUR ORDERS ARE AS FOLLOWS:
A. RETURN YOUR RIDICULOUS COONASS HIDE SAFELY TO UNION SPACE. THIS IS YOUR PRIMARY OBJECTIVE. ALL OTHER MISSION OBJECTIVES YIELD TO THIS ONE.
B. RETURN YOUR VESSEL TO UNION SPACE. IF YOU CANNOT ACHIEVE THIS OBJECTIVE, DESTROY THE VESSEL AND ITS CONTENTS BEYOND ANY POSSIBILITY OF ANY OTHER POWER OBTAINING ANY USEFUL INTELLIGENCE THEREFROM. DO NOT REPEAT DO NOT RISK YOUR LIFE IN ORDER TO ATTAIN THIS OBJECTIVE. THE LIFE AND SAFETY OF THE CREW (THAT MEANS YOU, DUMBASS) ARE PARAMOUNT.
C. YOUR TERTIARY OBJECTIVES, TO BE ACHIEVED ANY MEANS FEASIBLE THAT DO NOT INVOLVE RISK OF YOUR LIFE OR OF YOUR VESSEL ARE TO:
1). OBTAIN ANY AND ALL POSSIBLE INTELLIGENCE REGARDING THE VAAACH, WITH PARTICULAR ATTENTION TO THEIR SPACE PROPULSION AND WEAPONS TECHNOLOGY, THEIR BIOLOGY, AND THE LOCATION OF THEIR HOMEWORLD. WE’LL ALSO BE HAPPY TO LEARN WHETHER THEY PISS STANDING UP, WHETHER THEY LIKE ANCHOVIES ON THEIR PIZZA, OR ANY OTHER GODDAMN THING ABOUT THEM, AS WE DON’T KNOW JACK SHIT RIGHT NOW.
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