Exploration

by Beery, Andrew

  Ricky's only answer was a grin that threatened to go from ear to ear.

  ***

  Junior Engineer Roinuj scratched his Suhtii's left ear. He ran his eyes across the Vengeance's diagnostic board yet again. He had the oddest feeling that the board was lying to him. He'd run a systems trace and the trace would follow a weird path off into strange directions but when he checked it a second time the results would always show the proper sequence of network connections.

  It was the oddest thing. He would have been inclined to dismiss it, except that it happened on multiple occasions and on multiple platforms. It almost seemed like someone else was controlling the ship's computers...but that was crazy.

  ***

  Cat adjusted the sensitivity of her optic nerve. The bridge was essentially dark with only a handful of system displays active.

  "Engineering, report!" She yelled into the air—hoping the internal ship intercoms were still operational.

  "Engineering here, Admiral," came Ken Kirkland's familiar voice. "How can we help you?"

  "Our systems are dead up here. I take it this is not true for the entire ship?"

  "Negative, Admiral. There was an unexpected feedback that surged through the hyperfield nodes that blew a bunch of breakers. We are still tracking them all down. I should have the bridge power restored in a moment. In fact..." As he was speaking the power came back on in the bridge.

  "Thank you, Commander!" Cat said, as she quickly scanned the bridge. "How long before we can have sensors?"

  "You should have them now. The computer interface is just about done rebooting."

  Yhsif waved a trunk in her direction. "Ma'am, I'm getting telemetry from various ship's systems. I should be able to bring the main viewscreen up."

  "Make it so, Mister," Cat said.

  "Will you look at that!" Captain Running Stream said from the navigational console he was manning. The screen was filled with a vaguely familiar violet aurora. "Unless I miss my guess, that is a trans-dimensional hyperfield corridor."

  "Without the need for a supermassive black hole," Commander Ben added. "Impressive."

  "We may have a problem." All eyes turned to face Yhsif. "There seem to be a lot of ships in here with us."

  "Confirmed," Running Stream announced. "It looks like we sucked half that damn fleet in with us."

  "Can they attack us in here?" Ben asked.

  "Not unless they want to be destroyed, too," Cat answered. "The physics in a conduit like this involve a tightly coupled energy cascade between the universes. The last thing anybody wants is to perturb that cascade. The energies involved would tear a ship apart."

  "Ok, so for the moment we are probably safe. The question is how long?" It was Running Stream who asked the question.

  Cat turned towards Sassi. The Ashkelon computer prodigy had been silent up to this point. It was clear from the way both his high and low frequency antennas were undulating that he was upset.

  "What is it Sassi?"

  The moth-like bird looked up at her. His expression was unreadable, other than agitation. "It has to be a coincidence."

  "What has to be a coincidence?"

  "Eleven hours...the computer is saying eleven hours until we reach our destination."

  ***

  Cat jogged down the long corridor towards engineering. For Cat the jog was faster than taking the turbolift that Captain Running Stream and Commander Ben were taking. Besides, Cat wanted to see more of the ship. Her Heshe enhanced senses scanned the various rooms and compartments as she raced by them. Her internal AI, Cal, was storing the information away for later retrieval should she need or desire to see it. Over the years she had developed an almost intuitive relationship with her AI, so much so that sometimes she wondered where Cat ended and Cal began.

  The interior of the Suhtii ship was in a word...beautiful. Not in terms of color or artwork but simply in terms of pure engineering elegance. He-who-speaks' ancestors were master builders. Cat sincerely hoped that the builders of this ship, or more specifically their descendants, were still around and willing to help their long lost brothers.

  She rounded the corner and spotted engineering straight ahead. It was more a vaulted stadium than an actual room. It was so big, in fact, that Cat suspected it generated its own weather. The hyperdrive unit which was used to feed energy into the hyperfield nodes that dotted the skin of the 4400 was as large as Cat had ever remembered seeing. Even the Yorktown's engine was dwarfed by this behemoth.

  She spotted a team from the Bluefin as well as several of the Hupenstanii that had been taken captive along with Cat and the others. Seeing the Hoppers filled Cat with a twinge of remorse. She missed her friends Gibby and Trifa. Before she could continue reminiscing, Commander Ken Kirkland spotted her.

  She saw his familiar red-bearded face look up at her and wave. "Over here, Admiral!"

  As she made her way towards her friend, the turbolift which was behind the engineering team opened to deposit Ben and Running Stream.

  "Did you have a nice jog?" Ben asked.

  "Certainly did...surprised you didn't want to join me."

  "I lacked the proper incentive." Ben, in human interface mode, smiled a never-the-less intimidating full canine smile. "There was no chocolate at stake."

  "There is more to the world than chocolate, you know," Running Stream grinned.

  "Heathen!" the D'rlalu officer quipped.

  "Gentlemen...and I use the term loosely," Cat added archly. "We have a purpose in being here." She turned towards Ken and the Modos engineers that were helping him. "The floor is yours, Commander."

  "Thank you, Admiral," Ken said. "Ensign Kaskad and Lieutenant Skif were scanning through the computer's catalog of spare parts when they started seeing stuff that didn't make sense."

  "Explain?" Captain Running Stream said.

  Ensign Kaskad looked at Skif. The older man nodded in a very human gesture for the ensign to pick up the story.

  "Well..." he said timidly "..as the commander was saying, we started to find items in inventory that just didn't make sense, at least not for a starship. Things like dirt tillers, cement mixers, optical fiber fabrication equipment, micro-fusion generators...thousands of them."

  Cat looked at Ken speculatively. "Supplies for a colony?"

  "That's what I thought," Ken said. "But then I got to thinking, what would a colony need? And then I found this entry." He showed Cat a single line on the inventory screen.

  CLOSE COMBAT SUPPORT FIGHTER—QUANTITY: 500

  Chapter Twenty: Poor Decisions...

  "Admiral! With all due respect...you're crazy."

  Cat leaned forward to look Ben square in the eyes. They were all tired. Locating the fighters in the ship's inventory had turned out to be the easy part. The fighters were crated in one of the storage holds and had to be unboxed and moved to the open floor of the hanger. There were tools for making all of this easier, but they had to spend the time locating them and then learning how to use them. Seven hours and twenty-six fighters later they were finally done.

  Cat sighed and answered her friend. "Give me a better plan and I'll consider it."

  Ben slammed his forepaw down on the conference room table. "I'll give you a better plan. Send somebody else!"

  "Who? You? You won't fit in their cockpits. One of the Bluefin crew? None of them is a trained combat pilot rated on this equipment."

  "Begging the Admiral's pardon, but neither are you...not on this equipment, and not on anything newer than eighty-year-old chemical-powered atmosphere-only fighters jets!"

  Captain Running Stream tapped the conference room table with his trunk. Ben and Cat looked at him. He leaned forward to address Cat eye to eye like she had Ben.

  "Admiral, I've only known you a few weeks but I've come to respect you in ways that hardly seem possible. That having been said, I'm forced to agree with Ben. You are too important to risk yourself in a fighter."

  Cat sighed. "Look, we all agree that once we exit the hyperjump corrido
r we are going to be facing all kinds of hurt from those syndicate fighters that are in the corridor with us. I'm an extremely fast learner. None of us is trained on these fighters, but I have an advantage that none of you can match. My Heshe enhanced reflexes are orders of magnitude faster than yours, and I have an AI that is going to help me control an entire squadron. Those fighters I'm going to be facing will have no idea that only one of the fighters is occupied. If we do it your way, with live crews, we will lose people and there is a greater chance some of the fighters will get through."

  Running Stream looked at Ken. "Is she really that fast?"

  "Faster," he answered. "Still," Ken said, "I'm not feeling good about her heading out there on her own. If something goes wrong there is no backup plan."

  "Fine," Running Stream said, leaning back with a satisfied smile. "I take a small team of my best people and we join you. More fighters create a better chance of winning the fight before they can start taking pot shots at the ship."

  It was Cat's turn to smile. "I'll take the team, but you're staying here. We can't have the two most senior officers in harm’s way at the same time."

  Running Stream started to object but Cat raised a single finger to silence him. "That's the deal. Take it or leave it."

  ***

  Jason Ruck stepped over some cables strewn about the bridge of the GCP Mador. The Yorktown class ship had been severely damaged in the initial encounter with the Modos Syndicate. The ship's regenerative systems were quickly rebuilding the damaged areas, but they could not replace the lives lost. The Mador had lost almost her entire bridge crew, including her captain. Jason had just accepted command as her new captain. Two hours before he had turned the Yorktown over to Admiral Faragon, who would keep the command chair of that ship warm until Cat returned.

  Jason had perhaps six hours to get the Mador ready for battle. It would be close. Admiral Faragon had been gracious enough to allow him to borrow a handful of key personnel from the Yorktown to get the Mador operational. He had brought Commanders Thais and Martinescu to handle engineering and weapons, as well as Lieutenant Zimmerman to handle communications.

  He toggled his commlink. "Thais, can you give me a systems status?"

  "Aye, Captain. Hull integrity is completely restored. The hyperfield nodes are regenerating as we speak. We could jump now if we had to, but the ride would be a bit bumpy. I estimate another thirty minutes to complete nodal regeneration. The problem that the Mador had with their third fusion reactor has been identified and the AI is reconfiguring the intermix links to address it. In a nut shell, aside from the damage on the bridge everything should be battle ready in less than an hour."

  "Very good, Commander. And a time estimate for the bridge?"

  "The AI is ready to complete repairs but it can't do so until the recovery staff clears the area."

  "Understood. I'll give the order to clear the bridge ASAP. My team and I will be heading down to the battle bridge until the repairs are complete. Ask Commander James to meet us there as soon as you are done with him. Ruck out."

  ***

  Farnin the Elder stood in the Combat Information Center onboard the Orbital Defense Platform Final-Freedom. The CIC was the nerve center of the Suhtian's most advanced weapons system. The platform was one of three orbiting the planet. Every thirty years the oldest of the platforms was decommissioned and replaced with the absolute best of current technology. Final-Freedom was two years old.

  From the CIC Farnin could monitor feeds from both the other platforms. Sacred-Duty was the older of the two other platforms at sixty-two. It had sixteen fighter bays and four PetaJoule coherent proton beams. Shielding was provided by a triple redundant hypernode array that could actively displace energy fluxes in the ZettaJoule range. Her younger sister, Sky-Shield was virtually identical to Sacred-Duty except that her energy beams could fire continuously and she boasted hyperfold-enabled missiles that could microjump into a target prior to detonating.

  Unlike the others, Final-Freedom was the first of a truly new generation of defense platforms. The Suhtian had recently made remarkable advances in artificial intelligence. Final-Freedom was the first fully self-aware defense platform. Its prime directive was simple. Protect the Suhtian people. Final-Freedom could evaluate and target over a hundred simultaneous targets, each traveling at over half the speed of light. While it too had fighter bays, there were only four of them. The remaining space was used to house massive launch bays that were configured to handle automated drones that flew under the control of the central AI.

  Its energy beam weapons employed a new helical hyperfield technology that effectively allowed the beams to selectively phase through an adversary's active and passive shielding.

  It was hard for Farnin to imagine a Modos task force that would be able to mount a creditable threat to the Suhtian people given the current level of their technology. That said, he reminded himself that it was not technology that won or lost wars but the people using the technology. Besides, it had been scores of generations since their peoples had faced one another in conflict. Who could know what types of advancements their ancient enemy had made?

  It was this singular thought that had him most concerned. How far had the enemy come over the span of years? Was Farnin destined to be a part of the ruling council that oversaw the end of his people?

  His thoughts were interrupted by the deep metallic voice of Final-Freedom.

  "Sensors are detecting a hyperfold terminus forming at 63 AU. There appear to be forty-three vessels exiting the conduit."

  "Why so far away?" Farnin asked.

  "Unknown. However, the exit terminus is consistent with the preprogrammed jump coordinates initially used by the Expatriation Ships. The displacement from our current location is also consistent with the stellar drift across the timeframe in question."

  "The question one has to ask then," Farnin muttered, "is 'If the pilots of those ships were advanced enough to fly them—would they not also be advanced enough to make the necessary chronological adjustments?' It makes no sense."

  ***

  "Angel One to Bluefin Team leader. Form up on me. I'm going to use twelve of the AI controlled fighter's to form a wedge. That should force their formation to split. Isolate and engage targets of opportunity. Take the shots you can, but if given the choice shoot to disable...not destroy."

  "Roger that, Angel One," Cat heard Yhsif answer a second later.

  Cat smiled. The Modos pilots had been training using a human combat simulator built into a video game that her friend Ken Kirkland had brought over from his pinnace before they had boarded the 4400. As a result the Bluefin crew was picking up human combat slang.

  She looked out the clear canopy of her fighter. There were twenty-five other fighters in the main cargo bay. The main navigation computer showed thirty seconds until they came out of hyperfold conduit. The hanger was not designed for launches of this type. Normally in a launch bay a thin force field would provide atmospheric containment while allowing spacecraft to pass through it. The cargo bay had no such shield. That meant the cargo bay on the 4400 had to be depressurized before the hanger doors could be opened.

  Cat had given the order to depressurize five minutes earlier. Now that the air was gone the bay doors slowly began to open. The space outside the now open hold was filled with the undulating violet aurora indicative of a trans-dimensional hyperfold. Cat was briefly mesmerized by the intense colors and raw beauty. Suddenly, the aurora disappeared and was replaced with white stars against a field of the intense black you only truly get in the vacuum of space.

  "OK," Cat yelled into her commlink. "Here we go. I'll take my fighter drones out first. Yhsif will follow on my six in two minutes."

  She inched her ship towards the open hanger door. Her internal AI took remote control of twelve of the other fighters. Previously, Cat had Sassi and Ken work on a systems modification that allowed each of the fighters to receive a realtime sensor feed from the 4400.

  She saw that the M
odos fighters were still in a state of disarray. This didn't surprise her because, unlike her people, the Syndicate fighters had no idea when they would be dropping out of the hyperfold that had enveloped them eleven hours earlier. Sensors confirmed that some of the enemy fighters had not survived the jump. There was quite a bit of lifeless debris floating in and amongst the remaining Syndicate fighters. Likely some of the ships in question had not made a clean entrance into the hyperfold and were torn apart by the resulting tidal forces.

  She toggled her comm and attempted to open a channel to the eighteen Syndicate ships that remained viable.

  "Attention all fighters affiliated with the Modos Syndicate. This is Admiral Catherine Kimbridge from the Galactic Coalition of Planets. This ship and its passengers are under our protection. You are separated from your support fleet. We are prepared to render assistance and allow you to land in our cargo bay. No hostile action will be taken against you should you agree to surrender. Failure to comply will be met with all necessary force. Please signal your intentions."