by Andrew Beery
The Uruk monitoring AI assigned to this system noted the erection of the new shields but it was not concerned. The shields in question, while impressive, would ultimately offer little protection should the eradication order be confirmed.
The Chief Engineer on the newly recommissioned GCP Yorktown was also busy at work. The built-in nanite fabrication facility was put to good use, rerouting conduits and rebuilding power generation systems, as well as reconfiguring hyper field emitters to utilize the best of breed technologies from each of the member races in the nascent Galactic Coalition of Planets.
At the end of day four the Yorktown was ready. Her skin was now a flowing liquid mass of cooperating nanites, which could regenerate a fully functional hyper field emitter in seconds. The ships AI, Cal, was instructed to rotate the ship automatically in the event of an attack to allow emitters on the ship to constantly regenerate. Her beam weapons were many times more powerful than anything the humans had produced before.
In addition, the Yorktown had a new set of tricks up her sleeve. If she needed to fight she could generate a directional hyper field breach to the Galactic core, that essentially gave her an SJ class beam weapon.
Her shielding could be set to reflect a beam weapon 180 degrees with near perfect fidelity. Finally, her shields could be precision tuned, using Hupenstanii tech, to make the Yorktown essentially disappear. Normal hyper field detection techniques were of no use, because the Hupenstanii ingeniously utilized hyper dimensional cancellation fields which effectively canceled the cross hyper field interactions past a fractional AU.
***
Commodore Cat Kimbridge sat in her command chair aboard the GCP Starship Yorktown. Little had changed on the bridge, other than two custom acceleration couches near the engineering stations for the newly commissioned Hupenstanii and D'lralu officers. Lieutenant Commanders Trifa and Ben were systems specialists, whose sole job it was to keep the powerful new ship from tearing itself apart.
Her First Officer and friend stood behind her with his hand on her chair. He had his own station but he seemed to enjoy the view from the center of the bridge when they were getting underway.
"Ken, can I appeal to the chaplain in you for a blessing and a prayer?"
"Absolutely, Commodore"
"One second, Ken... Ziggy... Open this up ship wide... Everyone can benefit from a prayer."
Ken bowed his head for a moment and then said in a firm voice. "May God bless the GCP Yorktown and all who sail in her. May they sail in peace and harmony in the seas of far and near, above and beyond, on God's seas. May her crew always seek to do what is right in your eyes and may they be a blessing to all who encounter them... Amen."
"Thank you, Father Kirkland. Ziggy, I'd like a plaque with those words and the names of the entire crew complement produced and placed on the wall as you enter the Bridge. See to it please."
"Yes Ma'am. It will be up before the beginning of my next shift."
"Open a channel to Lunar One."
"Channel open."
"Lunar One, this is the Yorktown. We're ready to head out. Any parting advice?"
"Cat, this is Admiral Faragon. Keep your head down. I want that shiny new ship of yours back."
"Your concern is heartwarming, Sir. I'll bring your ship and your favorite chef back home just as soon as we move a couple of moons and send a message."
"God speed, Cat. The world is praying for you. Do what you do best... Succeed. Faragon out."
"Ken, take us out." Cat said.
"Yes, Ma'am," Ken said with a board smile. "Helm, lock in jump coordinates for the D'lralu system. Bring us in fully cloaked."
"Aye commander."
Cat swiveled her chair to face the weapons console. "Chief Wroblewski, I want simultaneous firing solutions on all designated targets as soon as we jump into the system. Beam weapons full intensity."
"Already on it ma'am. I have a preliminary lock in place, I'll update it the instance we have a confirmed position in system."
Ken accessed the ship wide intercom. “All hands prepare for jump. Helm, jump us on three."
"Roger that, Sir. Jumping on three, two, one... Jump!"
Chapter Twenty-Five – Bluff…
The Yorktown remained cloaked four light seconds from the major D'lralu population centers for the better part of two days. Cat was doing laps around the exercise track with Ben, her favorite running partner. Although he had a cybernetic body, his systems were programmed to send simulated responses to his organic brain which replicated both the fatigue and hormone rush associated with a workout.
For Cat, the run was not so much exercise, her nanite systems kept her in peak physical form, the run was more about the rhythm and settling her mind to think about the day ahead and how to best attack the challenges. The Yorktown was playing a waiting game -- waiting for the Uruk to make their move. If history was any indication, the "Masters" would be contacting the humans any day now to announce the impending destruction of the D'lralu.
Timing would be critical once that happened. Their plan to deal with the Uruk essentially came down to buying Earth time. The Earth's population was too massive to easily move off planet. Moving the entire planet on the other hand, while once the wildest of fantasies, was now vaguely within the realm of possibility. Unfortunately, even moving the entire planet to a compatible orbit around a different star would buy humanity very little, if humanity did not reconfigure the Earth's technological infrastructure to eliminate or mask radio emissions.
One of the mandates the exploration teams had been given, was to locate a dense dark nebula or Bok globule with a suitable sol-type star distal to the galactic core. The cosmic dust contained in these types of structures could aid in obscuring any radio signals the human technology produced. Finding such a structure was time consuming, and time was something humanity had in very limited supply.
"I'm afraid I must leave you to your thoughts Commodore." Ben said, while beginning to slow down.
"Sorry, Ben... My mind wants to be everywhere but here today."
"With the cubs and not the kitchen, my people would say." Ben said, as the two of them stopped near the entrance to the locker-room. "The plan is a good one. Regardless of what happens my people have a better future today than they did yesterday. "
"There is so much riding on timing... And even if everything works as planned, will they react as we hope? Every minute we can buy Earth is another life saved."
Ben paused to wipe synthetic sweat from his brow. "My father used to tell us as kids that the universe had two things. A temper and a sense of humor. The best way to live in it was to laugh when it was angry."
"What does that mean?" Cat asked.
"I have no idea, and I was always afraid to ask."
***
The Master Uruk AI woke when its countdown timer determined an eradication override was not forthcoming. Per its ancient protocols, it issued the orders that would purge the galaxy of a competing sentience. Three massive weapons platforms awoke. Once there had been dozens of such units but over the centuries even the sophisticated Uruk self-repair mechanisms had started to fail. Three of the massive engines of death were all that remained, but they would be enough for many generations to come.
As the weapons platforms came online and performed their prescribed diagnostics, the master AI invoked yet another subroutine. It learned the dominant language of the race to be subsumed, and constructed transmitters capable of saturating the target race's communications with a simple message...
"Send monitoring and recording teams to the coordinates provided within the next 24 hours or face total and complete destruction."
Within moments of sending this message, the three weapons platforms jumped to the target system to await the arrival of their audience.
***
Sensors on the Yorktown detected the three immense weapons platforms as they jumped into D'lralu space. "That's it! Battle stations!" Cat yelled. "Ken, decloak us... Ziggy open a channel to those bas
tards."
"Channel open, Ma'am."
"Attention Uruk craft. We are aware of what you intend to do. We will not allow you to destroy our enemies... Therefore, monitor the D'lralu worlds and be advised we will defend ourselves if provoked. Chief Wroblewski, fire main batteries on the designated targets."
Immediately a pair of tightly constrained hyper field conduits were opened to a point in space near the event horizon of the galactic core. Surrounding this conduit was a parabolic hyper field designed to reverse momentum and reflect radiation. The curvature of this hyperbolic field was precisely tuned to force anything striking it to coalesce at a position some four light seconds away.
Incredibly intense beams of almost pure energy lashed out of the bow of the Yorktown towards the inhabited but fully shielded moons containing the remaining D'lralu population. The moons simply disappeared as the energy beams hit them. The remaining energy boiled away most of the gas giants’ atmosphere in the fraction of a second before the beams stopped.
"Helm, pivot us to face those behemoths. I want a full tactical scan... Yesterday! Move it people!"
"Yes, Ma'am." the various stations yelled back in unison.
"Holy Molley! Cat, you have got to see this!" Ken said from his station. He must have realized he hadn't used her rank as a title in his excitement and started to apologize when she waved him off.
"Don't ever sweat the little stuff... What have you got?"
"Take a look at these energy signatures... Do they remind you of anybody we know?"
"Cal, access Commander Kirkland's station. Can you identify the energy signatures?"
"Affirmative. The pattern of energy output seems consistent with obsolete pre-diaspora Heshe technologies. The Uruk may have interacted with the Heshe sometime in the distant past."
"Commodore," Chief Wroblewski interjected. "Those platforms are powering up something really big on those dorsal arrays."
"I see it," Cat said while looking at Ken's monitor. "Analysis?"
"I bet they go bang." Commander Ben said from his station.
"I agree with our furry friend." Ken echoed. "I recommend we take an aggressive posture."
"Shoot first, ask questions later?"
Cat paused for the briefest of moments before turning to Chief Wroblewski. "Chief, knowing you as I do, you already have a lock on these guys... Target the one of the left, their energy signature seems slightly more erratic. We may be able to break thru whatever shielding they are using."
"Lock confirmed, Ma'am."
"Light'm up chief."
"Roger that, Ma'am. Lighting up. I have three SJ deploying immediately and two core beams following six point two light seconds later."
"Helm begin a series of random micro jumps centered around those three.... No closer than two light seconds."
"Yes, Ma'am."
The forward display went wild as the relative position of the Yorktown started to rapidly fluctuate.
"Cal, tie into astrometrics... Give me a simulated real time fixed position display on the main viewer with a one fourth size actual display in the lower left corner."
Immediately the forward view screen stabilized and became useful again.
"The SJs are hitting the target, Commodore." Wroblewski reported.
"Minimal effect. There was a two percent increase in harmonic oscillations of their shields... Stabilizing back to a one point two percent cumulative delta."
"Keep us moving." Cat said. "Chief, I want you to continuous firing SJ triplets every two to three seconds. Beam weapons too if you can get a lock fast enough."
Suddenly the ship rocked throwing everyone but Cat and Ben from their stations. Only her nanite enhanced muscles and his cybernetic strength allowed them to remain seated.
"Cal, report!"
"The Uruk have very good AIs. No random number sequence is truly random, and they calculated our probable location with sufficient accuracy to get a shot off that grazed us. The active nanite skin has already healed the damage. I took the initiative to jump us another four light seconds out. It is unlikely they will be able to duplicate their targeting success, as the potential number of random locations is a squared function of the radius."
"Good initiative, Cal."
"Ken, are we having any impact on their shields?"
"Definitely... They are down sixteen percent... The problem is going to be ammo. We are going to run out long before we take them out and we haven't even fired a shot at the other two."
"Commodore the primary target just jumped to inside the solar corona," Trifa reported.
"That's going to greatly decrease the effectiveness of our targeting sys..." Ken started to add as the bridge shook with a thunderous clap that burst several eardrums. The lights flicked and stabilized momentarily before the entire ship shook again and then again.
Cal reported before being asked. "The Yorktown was just grazed three times. None were direct hits, but the ship sustained considerable damage to its superstructure. Repair systems are compensating, but we will continue to vent atmosphere for another thirty two seconds. Beam weapons are offline. Active shielding is marginal. We will not survive another round like that."
"How'd they hit us?" Ken asked.
"They outsmarted us." Cat answered while helping a bleeding Lieutenant Zimmerman back to her seat. She tapped Ziggy's open scalp with the tip of a finger and flowed a couple thousand repair nanites into her wound to staunch the flow of blood and repair the skin.
"When they jumped their ship into the corona, we automatically changed our jump pattern to retain a line of sight for our beam weapons. This limited the range of random jump points and all three of their platforms were able to take advantage of it -- until Cal jumped us out of range." She added.
"Commodore... Drop an SJ into the convection zone just outside the sun's core" Ben yelled.
"Ben that will nova your sun... We can't do that." Cat said while scanning the displays looking for another road to victory.
"Ma'am," the D'lralu commander said calmly. "You must. With all the SJ rounds going off in this system and with the previous destruction of our home world... There is nothing for us here. Let us have this one victory... Please."
Cat turned to the weapons console. "Chief, have Cal help you. Target the convection zone between that Uruk platform and the solar core. Drop a SJ when ready and signal the helm to jump ten AU out as soon as it’s done."
"Aye, Ma'am, SJ away."
"Jumping 10 AU now." the Helm echoed.
***
Weapon Platform 23 and 41 watched as the relatively young star in this system unexpectedly went nova. The primary eruption was located to engulf Weapons Platform 6. Normally this would have been of little concern to the massively shielded machine, but Weapon Platform 6 was currently functioning well below specification, which is why it maneuvered itself into the star's corona. In this way it could concentrate its primary defenses outward.
The ejected superheated star mass slammed into the minimal shielding of the weapon platform and overloaded it before the machine's AI could take defensive action. A series of cascading overloads quickly overwhelmed the ancient machines redundant repair mechanisms, and it's power generation systems went offline. This exposed the craft to the full and unabated wrath of the nova, which reduced the now inert weapons platform to several billion tons of molten metal.
Weapon Platform 23 took command of the assault. A single Earth vessel had done what no race in countless millennia had done. They had defeated an Uruk weapon. There was no protocol for handling such an event. Weapon Platform 23 ordered a retreat to the home system to consult with the creators.
Chapter Twenty-Six – Homecoming…
Yarin viewed the console in front of him. It seemed incredible that the home-world had been found. The Heshe had left this system millions of years before the first microbe had formed on many of the worlds in this part of the galaxy, which now supported intelligent life.
Amazingly some of the systems were st
ill operational. Several of the AI platforms were reporting active ongoing operations. What these operations were, was still a mystery. Many of the ancient system's interlinks had failed over the ages. Yarin and the other members of his triad Yakin and Yurka were using specialized archeological nanites to selectively repair some of the systems interfaces so they could retrieve the system logs.
The communication console, which had been inactive began to flash a rapid sequence of multi spectral colors. Yarin was unable to understand the message. There had been too much semantic drift over the millions of years since his people had left this system. He engaged his encounter unit and was immediately devastated by what he was receiving.