by Andrew Beery
Cat turned to the young African American man at the helm. "Lt. Carstairs, disengage all umbilicals; release all docking clamps, signal Orbital One that we are taking our lady out for a spin."
"Roger that, Captain. Umbilicals disengaged. Moorings are retracted." Reaching forward Carstairs toggled the port shields. "Orbital One, this is the Yorktown. We thank you for your hospitality. We are go for power up and flight testing."
Orbital One responded immediately. "Safe voyages, Yorktown. You have a lot of proud parents watching you. Be safe, and have a good flight. Orbital One out."
Cat nodded to the young woman at navigation. "Lt. Shelby, plot me a micro-jump course for Pluto. As long as we are going to kick the tires on this thing, let's take a look at whatever is left of that D'lralu ship"
"Aye, Captain... Course laid in."
Cat swiveled in her chair to face her First Officer. "Ken, let's try out those new hyper drive sensors."
"Sensors online, Captain."
"Helm... Take us out .5c relative."
".5c, aye, Captain," Lt. Carstairs answered.
The Yorktown surged forward, roughly fifteen hundred kilometers per micro-jump. At one hundred micro-jumps per second, the Yorktown effectively traveled at half the speed of light. True, she could jump directly to her destination, but by using the micro-jumps, a complete sensor picture could be generated along the flight path. The trip to Pluto took just a little over 11 hours.
***
Cat was twenty minutes into her jog when Cal, her AI, alerted her that the Admiral was requesting her presence. "Sir, I'm down in the gym... I was running some laps on the track. I can be there in a few minutes."
"No problem, Captain... Actually, if you're up for a little racquetball with an old man, why don't you join me at court three in fifteen minutes?"
"Fifteen it is... and I promise to be gentle... Sir"
Cat finished her run. Her nanites kept her body in top physical form, but she found the pace of the run helped her organize her thoughts. The ship was running smoothly, but already she could see areas where procedures could be tweaked to improve performance. The key to effective leadership, however, was to get the various team leads to see the changes for themselves, before she had to order them. Over the next several days she would schedule one-on-one meetings with all the section leads. She knew Ken, as her First Officer, was already doing the same thing, but this gave her a chance to take the measure of each of them. At the same time, she could guide the conversations to include process improvements.
She grabbed a towel off the rack, before heading toward the racquetball courts. The Admiral was just coming out of the locker room. He was dressed in white shorts and a tie-dyed shirt that was colorful, to say the least.
"If that shirt is an attempt to distract me from my game... You should know, Sir, that when I'm focused I don't give in to distractions."
Admiral Faragon wagged his finger at her. "Tisk tisk, Captain... I'm shocked that you would think so little of me, as to suspect that I would stoop so low... And even more disturbed to be found out so quickly, when I did!"
He grabbed a Spaulding racquet off the rack, and tested its fit in his hand. "Seriously, it was a gift from my granddaughter on Orbital One. Now, Captain, I have a deal to make with you... When we are playing racquetball or cards, or otherwise engaged in informal activities, I will call you 'Cat', and you will address me as 'Bud' or 'Your Holiness', whichever you are more comfortable with"
Cat grinned and responded without missing a beat, "Yes, Your Holiness"
"You'll forgive me, Sir, if I skip the second option," a familiar voice said from behind.
Cat turned to see Ken and Sherry walk out of the locker room.
"I always make allowances for a man of the cloth, Father Ken," the Admiral said with a chuckle.
Cat looked at the other three and said, "I take it we're playing doubles?"
"Seniors against juniors... You don't seriously think I'd take on those Heshe enhanced reflexes of yours, when I have the option of teaming up with them?"
"Never occurred to me, Sir..." Cat saw his head cock and eyebrow raise in admonishment, "...Bud"
"Better... Now, let's teach these young pups some humility"
Cat turned her Heshe enhanced reflexes off for the duration of the match, but even so, her natural skill, coupled with her perfect physical condition, meant that Ken and Shelly only scored in those infrequent moments when the Admiral couldn't get back to a well-placed corner shot.
As they were resting between rounds, the Admiral took a moment to talk long term strategy.
"If you'll forgive me for interjecting a little business with play..." he began. “As you can imagine, the recent D'lralu situation has galvanized the world government as nothing before. It seems clear, that there is a high degree of probability, we will be fighting them anytime we meet... At least, until (and if) we can find a way to come to peaceful terms with them.
That said, the D'lralu have come here at least twice that we know of. The Admiralty Board would like an option to fighting them in our own backyard. That SJ round, the Bowman deployed, scared the 'CaJebees' out of them."
"Frankly Bud, it did me, too. It's one thing to know on paper what something will do, but it's quite another to actually see it happen..." Cat mused.
"If the Bowman had been a little slower getting around the curve of Pluto, it would have been the last thing any of us would have seen..." Ken commented dryly. "It's a good thing God seems to want our Captain alive."
The Admiral grinned, "Why do you think I always want her on my team?"
"Good point!"
Cat was getting uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. “You mentioned 'wanting other options'"
"Exactly. Our current priority is protecting Earth and other population centers, but as we build up the fleet, we are going to begin looking for ways to contain the D'lralu threat. This may mean taking the fight to them. I just want you all thinking about this, and actively looking for opportunities as they present themselves... We all clear on this?"
***
On the far side of the solar system a small, automated probe jumped into existence. Because of its size and the distance, it went undetected by the human's nascent hyper-field sensors. By human standards, the onboard AI was not very sophisticated. But in reality, it didn't need to be. The probe's mission was simple. Engage its stealth systems; locate all population centers; record everything it saw, and then return with this information to the point of origin. It began to accelerate to .2c, and began actively cataloging everything it encountered.
Chapter Twelve – Encounter...
Cat was waving goodbye to her father. It seemed odd that she was on their catamaran in calm seas, with perfect visibility, and yet she could hear the distant drum of a fog horn. Slowly the horn got louder, until she realized it was Cal relaying a klaxon alarm to her auditory nerve, and waking her up, from what had been a sound sleep.
"Cal, report." Cat mumbled, while still half asleep.
"Captain, Lt. Carstairs has run into an anomaly, that has me concerned."
Cat came wide awake. For Cal to admit to being concerned, a situation must be truly grave. "Cal, loop Carstairs into this conversation, ASAP."
When the lieutenant joined a second later, Cat simply said, "Give me the details."
The lieutenant began to relay what had caused the concern. "At 23:49 I began a review of archived sensor sweeps, in an effort to develop a noise profile which could be used to enhance sensor sensitivity. Cal was helping me with the cleanup. With the background noise factored out, an anomaly appeared at 46AU 6 degrees above the elliptic... Approximately 103AU from our current position. The signature is unquestionably that of a hyper drive, but it's smaller than we have ever seen before."
"Cal, does the drive signature match anything you are familiar with?
"Yes, Captain, there is a high degree of probability, that this is an unmanned D'lralu probe."
"Wake the Ad
miral"
***
The Admiral's senior staff including Cat, her First Officer Ken Kirkland, Chief Engineer Thais Figarero, his executive assistant, Lieutenant Commander Sherry Melbourne, as well as Lieutenant Carstairs and of course the Heshe AI Cal. All were present in one form or another in the Ready-room just off of the Yorktown's bridge.
Admiral Faragon leaned forward. "First things first. I want to commend Lieutenant Carstairs and Cal for the work they did enhancing the sensors."
"Thank you Sir" the lieutenant said crisply.
Noticing how uncomfortable the young man was, the Admiral smiled. He remembered what that seat had felt like, the first time he had been the young lieutenant sitting in it.
"Relax son... I don't bite... Well not often anyway. You have a good head on your shoulders... Just keep using it, and we'll get along just fine."
"Yes, Sir"
"So!" the Admiral said to the room. “Fate has handed us an opportunity... The D'lralu have sent some type of automated recognizance craft into our space. The question is, how do we best take advantage of it?"
"There is an insect in the Amazon jungle... A type of ant, that secretes a sweet smelling perfume. The perfume attracts other insects and small birds. The ant allows itself to be eaten, after which toxins in its body incapacitate the other creature, and the ant colony overwhelms it."
"Who'd have thought our Chief Engineer was an entomologist?" Ken said with a grin at Thais.
"It's an interesting idea though," Cat said. "We know, from what the Heshe have told us, that the D'lralu like to capture technology and biological samples from species they plan to attack. Cal, does that apply both when they are using manned scouts and automated probes… or just in the case of the manned scouts?"
"Unknown, Captain. The Heshe have rarely encountered the D'lralu's probes. I suspect you are seeing one, because they have lost two ships now in this general vicinity. As you know, despite the D'lralu's generally inferior technology - the Heshe have never been able to discover their planet of origin... There is a lot about this race we do not know, or quite frankly understand."
Cat looked at Thais with what she hoped was an encouraging expression. "Let's assume that the probe is programmed to take opportunistic samples of our technology... How do we use that?"
Thais looked at first her captain and then the Admiral as if seeking permission to continue. "We could drop something in its path that was too tempting to pass up."
"OK," the Admiral began... "What can we drop that will be sweet enough to entice the probe to pick it up, and at the same time provide value to us... Especially in terms of intelligence as to the D'lralu home world?"
Ken spoke up, "It seems to me, Sir, the problem is even more complicated. If the D'lralu's home-world has gone undetected this long, then we must assume there will be special protocols in place to disable any captured technology... To prevent just what we are trying to do."
"That is undoubtedly the case. The question is..." the Admiral said sitting back, "... can we be smarter? No system is foolproof."
Ken steepled his hands in thought. "There really isn't any sane way to approach this without knowing more about their defenses... Maybe it’s a mistake to try to circumvent them on the first go around." The First Officer looked up. "I'm beginning to think we should deliberately fail. Drop a full load sensor package right in front of it. Let it disable the thing, but we use the opportunity to capture as much data as possible."
"Who'd have thought a chaplain could be so devious," Thais parroted.
"I like it... I think it's our best option at his point," Cat said. "We should probably build a second unit, that can either be adapted to take advantage of any flaws we find, or act as a backup to gather more data."
"Alright... We have an initial game plan," the Admiral said. "Let's place a cloaked observer far enough away to escape detection... Also, avoid using any Heshe tech in the probe to be captured... We don't want to tip our hand. Giving the enemy bad information, is almost as important as collecting good information.
***
It took the crew of the Yorktown three days to locate the alien probe. Even though they had a good idea where the craft had entered the solar system, it had engaged some of its own stealth technology. It was only the hyper-field detectors that were able to locate it. The Yorktown deliberately did not alter course to intersect the probe, instead preferring to maintain the illusion, that they were unaware of its presence. Several 'Decoy' probes, with the best non-Heshe human sensor technology and externally programmed generation one hyper-field drives, were prepared. These were setup to resemble and function like automated general mining probes, which would explain why they would be jumping in near the alien device.
"It seems..." Ken was telling the Admiral and Cat, "that the D'lralu are using a hyper-field, much the way we do, to deflect beam weapons... Only, they are using it at a much lower level and across a much wider spectrum to, in essence, cloak their probe. We can't see them, but we can see their hyper-field."
"You realize what this tells us..." the Admiral said, while reaching for a French-fry.
Cat pushed the ketchup in his general direct. “It means they probably don't use hyper-field detection sensors."
"Exactly!"
"Does it strike anybody else as odd, that they have had this technology for hundreds of years, and we who have had it for less than a year, are finding new things to do with it, that they don't seem to be using?" Cat mused.
"Speaking of new things..." Ken said, "I wonder if we can tune our deflectors to provide the same type of cloaking that they are using?"
Cat looked up from her sandwich. "Why don't you talk with Cal and Thais... See what you can do, but leave the primary deflector operational."
"Will do. When do we want to drop our present for our little friend out there?"
"Admiral?"
"I'd love to have as many sensors on that thing as possible. On its current course, it will be in a direct line-of-sight of both Mars and Jupiter in another couple of hours. What do we have in that area that will work?"
Cal answered thru the group's individual comlinks. "There are a number of asteroids within the zone of interest. 4179-Toutatis would be a good choice."
***
Reconnaissance probe Eleven paused, as its cybernetic components evaluated what its sensor arrays were seeing. 'Seeing' was a relative term. When Eleven had been truly alive, and a part of a pack, his eyes would have drunk in vivid colors, and his snout would have relished the scent of his prey... But that was before the masters came. That was before the humiliation of defeat in battle. The purgatory for such shame was eternal servitude in this half dead half living state... A thoroughly lobotomized cybernetic construct, destined to forever scout the enemy’s stronghold, but never know the glory of battle.
Eleven's sensors allowed him to 'see' a poorly shielded electromagnetic flux. The humans, as they called themselves, had some active technology in use nearby. A programming directive was triggered, and Eleven changed course slightly to investigate. The source of the signal was approaching a moderately large, dual asteroid. The craft appeared to have plasma torches and overly large reaction mass thrusters. Eleven's pattern recognition subroutines concluded this was some type of mining craft. Determining what the humans mined, as well as their level of technology, were both designated priority one objectives, so a second programming directive was triggered. The human machine would be neutralized and secured for further analysis by the home world.
Eleven charged its EMP canon. When the unit reached 20% it fired. A 10 mega joule energy blast enveloped the mining probe. Amazingly, the human mining probe shrugged off the energy pulse. Apparently its critical systems were shielded. A metal cage, surrounding the unit's AI with optical couplings to external systems, would be the most effective means of accomplishing this level of protection. Eleven filed this information for its report.
Eleven charged its plasma turret, and fired a short focused blast. The outer
shielding of the probe seemed ablative in nature. Several inches of material evaporated from its outer shielding. A spectral analysis of the vapor indicated some form of metallic ceramic. This information was stored as well. Eleven adjusted the length of fire to allow penetration of the outer shielding and cowling. As the energy beam ablated the mining probe's outer surfaces, Eleven continued to analyze the ejected material.
Eleven took its time. Care was essential. His programming required as much of the craft as possible to be preserved, so that the best quality sample was obtained for proper threat assessment. Once the hull was breached, Eleven fired another EMP blast. This time the desired result occurred. The mining probe's systems were overwhelmed by the electromagnetic pulse and shut down.