"What took you so long?" I asked the room generally.
No-one responded before I finished sitting.
"It's a big planet," said Margaret Boothby, causing me to double take, as for a moment, I hadn't recognized her.
Haven's grounds keeper hadn't changed as far as I could see, not having seen her in over a year. I’d had no idea she was still on the station, let alone had gone down to the planet. She seemed as formidable as ever.
"And?" I prompted.
"Large parts of it are perfect for cultivation, there appear to be huge herds of what for a lack of a better name you could call buffalo, and a very diverse ecosystem. Nothing intelligent as far as we could determine, although the apex predators will need dealing with."
"Any settlement will need walls for a start," said one of the men.
"And crops will need protecting as well," said another.
"A few challenges," went on Margaret, "but with a bit of preparation work, a good planet to settle on. But before anyone did, it should be fully explored. We don’t exactly have enough people to lose because we didn’t take the time to study everything first. And it's also not as if we need to leave the stations."
It was what I wanted to hear. I let them give me a full report, thanked them, put Margaret officially in charge of further survey work, and let them go off for some decent sleep. Melissa lingered.
"Sorry about how long it took. I couldn’t get them to leave."
"No problems. As Margaret said, it's not as if we desperately need somewhere to go. What do you want to do now?"
"Sleep in my own bed for a while. After that, I don’t know. It's not like you're going to need a shuttle pilot much, are you?"
"For the coming battle, no. In the future, no idea yet."
A germ of an idea popped in, and I asked her if she was interested in following it up.
She was.
Thirty Three
The Ralnor lined up in ranks before the jump point.
Every ship fired off a full salvo of missiles, all of which detonated progressively down the jump lane, before the mosquitos could reach them.
"Smart," I said.
And also unnecessary, but they didn't know that. The assumption was the Keerah, and possibly us, were littering the down jump lane, and they didn’t want to collide with the debris. Of course, missiles always created more debris, but shields could protect you from small stuff. But the last thing you wanted to do was jump into half a cruiser. I knew this, because I'd almost done it once.
The next salvo of missiles went equally for the square we'd used for the plants, and the square we'd used for the Keerah. Sound tactical thinking.
We of course, were at neither, divided in half on the sides' mid-way between the two. Once again, missiles not finding anything where they expected to, curved around looking for targets, and were picked off by mosquitos.
Once again, I left the battle co-ordination to Susan. My gut told me I wouldn’t be here for the next battle, although I had no idea why.
The Ralnor ships in the first rank closed up very tightly together, and all six jumped through together.
The battleships took eight titan turrets each from Hammer, the cruisers two, and the destroyer's one. And once again, the pulses hit half a second after jump, and there was no time to fire back at us.
The second line took exactly the same, from Hammer's underside, with the same result. The third line took fire from Sceptre's top turrets. And so it continued, line after line, until only a single broken destroyer remained.
Miriam had only goosed the ship with her cruiser turrets, and with its shields down, it had taken some very solid hits from large debris, before the shields came back up. Miriam had had the sense to not fire again. Its captain surrendered immediately, and George took Custer over, being very careful to avoid the obviously dangerous debris. Boarding was done without any problems, wounded Roos moved to the care units on Custer, and George took the battered ship in tow. Soon after, the Ralnor ship was docked to Redoubt, and the wounded were transferred to one of the hospitals. The rest were taken to a set of cells away from the Keerah.
The salvage droids began clearing away the debris again. I looked around at Roo. Not a happy camper, but he said nothing. Hobbes was also somber.
"Is there a problem?" I asked them both.
They shared a glance, and it was Hobbes who answered.
"Neither of our people have ever been destroyed so fast before. And by humans of all species. It’s a bit soul destroying."
"The Keerah are known for their hulls," said Roo, "and even in the toughest battle, they regenerate the moment you stop firing at them, and every gun has to recharge at some point. Taking out a fleet is no mean thing. Taking them out so fast, I would have said was impossible."
"The Ralnor have the best weapons," said Hobbes, "both in terms of hitting power and time before needing recharge. They can get off more shots than anyone else in the same time, and still be able to hit you while yours are charging. Taking them out so fast, I also would have said was impossible."
I looked over at Jane, and raised my eyebrows several times rapidly. She knew what I wanted her to say.
"The impossible we do immediately. It's miracles which take a little longer."
Neither of them got the joke. Although our two magicians certainly did, and Arthur had choked.
"Nothing is impossible," I said. "All it takes is the skillful use of something your enemy doesn’t expect you to have. In this case, they don’t know we can see into the next system and time their jumps to ten decimal places. It allows us to fire before they jump, and hit them too hard well before anything but a computer can react. Of course it takes a computer to calculate something that fine, and most militaries don’t trust them enough to give them firing control. So anyone who can combine enough firepower, with absolute timing, can destroy anything jumping in. It's as simple as that."
"Nothing simple about it at all," said Arthur. "It takes tech, military smarts, and a lot of practice to get it so accurately timed. And I gather you had the practice. What's next?"
"When do you intend to leave?"
"It depends on you."
"How so?"
"Did you really think I was going to settle for suit programs on pads?"
"I assumed you'd just copy them to your tech."
"Copy be damned. I only found out half an hour ago your computers are in your heads!"
All four of our alien friends looked stunned.
"You want?"
"Damned right we want."
"What are you offering?"
"Our complete navmap."
"For how many people?"
"A dozen now. Two more dozen when I can get my other ships here."
"Not enough," I said quickly.
"What then?"
"Your fighter shield emitters, and the power source for them."
"That’s too much."
I shifted my suit to chameleon mode. There were five sufficiently gratifying exclamations of shock. I shifted again to look like Jane, and quickly back to myself. The Jane shape was very tight in the crotch, but it was the only other person I had quickly available.
I looked at Arthur, and ignored the others.
"We don’t use spacesuits, we don’t need combat armour unless we want to use heavy weapons, we can survive the destruction of our ships for a short time, and we can to a certain extent infiltrate without being seen, or hide effectively if being sought. And you also saw, we can change our shape to be someone or something different, with a little pre-planning. You got the suits, and the basic package, but there is a lot more to them than you have at the moment. Most of it needs the PC though."
"How are your holographics?" asked Jane.
"Our what?"
I pulled up a hollo screen mirroring the navmap, and let them see it. Just to make the point, I waved it out into three dimensions.
"How did you do that?" asked Hobbes.
Jane laughed, and so did the
rest of the team.
"Do you know why," I asked, "humans never advanced as far as you militarily, at least until just before the Darkness got loose?"
"No, why?" asked Roo.
"Because we spent more time developing computers, entertainment systems, and luxuries. The holographics are part of the standard entertainment systems, and were easy to adapt to military uses. We don’t need hard data entry points, verbal command systems, or fixed dimension display screens. We build in some of these because of ease of use, but any human with a PC can read, write, watch entertainment, send messages, instantly communicate with anyone, and do it without anyone around them being able to see what they're doing. I can fly and fight this ship from under the covers of my bed."
"You did once," chimed in Jane. "Smaller ship, but the same controls."
"Oh yeah, I did, didn't I. Anyway the point is, we developed a lot of technology for luxury reasons, and adapted them to the military uses after. Even then, our military history never really did fast forward gun and shield technology, simply because we were not driven to. But as soon as the Darkness came along, upgrading was just a matter of lateral thinking. And what we have now, is giving us an edge here and now."
I looked back at Arthur.
"The suit has other applications. Given enough power, it can cloak a ship."
"You’ve done this?"
"With a corvette. And using a prototype power source we can no longer duplicate. If you want the ability to cross systems without being seen, we need help with a power source we can duplicate."
I wasn’t being strictly truthful. The Atlantean crystals we'd picked up on our journey to future Earth were unique, and I doubted we'd ever be able to duplicate them. Or even find more.
I waited, looking him in the eyes.
"Deal."
Thirty Four
I pinged Carter to expect sixteen for PC implantation as soon as they could get there.
She pinged back asking who and why? I told her Arthur and his eleven people, our two magicians, and Hobbes and Roo. The former fourteen should only need a confirmation scan for compatibility, while the latter would need a complete brain scan and PC workup. Those two would not be getting one immediately, but the others should be able to. Unless evolution had done some strange things to their brains, hence the scans first.
I looked at the two magicians.
"You want one as well?"
"Yes," they both said together.
"Amanda?" She shot to her feet. "Main hospital in the admin tower on Haven. Carter is waiting for them."
I looked around.
"You can all go." I looked at Grace. "You can get some sack time if you want. I've got the ship."
She was starting to look exhausted. She nodded, and joined the exodus out. I turned to Hobbes and Roo.
"Follow them. I don’t know if we can fit you for a PC, but you've paid for them already with our magician friends. I know it's been done for an alien cat, or rather will be done, so in theory it’s a matter of mapping your brains, and adapting the PC hardware. It may take a while, but you may as well get it started while they're doing this lot."
"I'm not sure it’s a good idea trusting your tech to my head," said Hobbes.
Roo nodded.
"Go and find out if it can be done." Neither moved. "Let me put it this way. At some point in the future, we are going to need to contact someone in charge with your people, and negotiate a peace. It would be useful if you could also cloak yourselves while we infiltrate, or need to escape after failing badly. We could rig it up on a pad, but if the pad is taken, you lose control of the suits."
They still didn’t look convinced. Probably because they thought we'd never be able to get into their space successfully in the first place. I had ideas about that.
"Ok, here's another thing. If you want to crew with me, you have to have the suits."
"Why?" asked Roo.
"Because being with Jon," said Jane, "is asking for shit to happen to you. He keeps his people safe by making sure they have the best survival equipment available. When he was first introduced to the belt suit, it could stop a few dozen side arm rounds, and one pulse rifle hit. Six months later, the team were the only survivors of a bomb blast which took out the top ten floors of a building, which subsequently collapsed. And that was with half the protection we have now. Someone wearing a suit survived minutes underneath a Darkness while it attempted to eat through the suit. It nearly did, but the suit lasted long enough for us to kill the Darkness first."
They still didn't look sold.
"Do you want peace between your people?" I asked.
"Of course," said Hobbes.
"Yes," said Roo.
"But you don’t think it's possible?"
Both of them shook their heads sadly.
"What did we say we did with the impossible?" asked Jane.
"This is in the miracle category I fear," said Hobbes.
"And miracles take a little longer," added Roo.
They had been listening.
"And that's why you need the suit, and the PC to run it. If you come with me, you're going to need them both. But it's also about communications. Team coms allows us to sub-vocalize to each other, without being heard. It’s a huge advantage in a situation where you can't talk out load, and need to give urgent information or complex instructions. And where I think the highers are going to send us, you'll need everything we use."
"We need to talk about our status," said Hobbes. "Never in my demented nightmares has it ever occurred to me I'd be cast out from my people, and find myself with humans. I can't ignore what is true, but I don’t work for you at the moment."
Roo had a look which said he agreed.
"You don’t need to work for me. You don’t need to do anything. Be a civilian on Haven for the rest of your life. I don’t actually care, and it is your choice. I would choose to have you both with me when the highers call on me again. But you have freewill the same as all my people do. For now, the suits and the PC's were paid for by saving our lives in that sun, and you can consider them gifts. Accepting the gifts is up to you. But I suggest before you refuse them, you find out if the PC implantation is possible or not. Push Doc Carter to the limit in proving it's safe by all means. But do at least that before you make a decision."
Doc Carter was Colonel Elisabeth Carter, head of everything medical. We'd picked up her and her daughter Jill on our travels before the Darkness War had started, and they'd been with us ever since. I think the challenge of doing PC implantations for two definite aliens was going to appeal to her.
Hobbes nodded, rose and left. The door still had a rift, and he vanished through to Haven. Roo hesitated.
"Your words seem wise, and I will follow them at least as far as this proof."
He too rose, and walked into the rift.
"That everyone coming through?" pinged Amanda.
"Yes," I pinged back, and the rift vanished.
On the other side of the door were Melissa and Eric Nielsen.
Thirty Five
I rose, and waved them to follow me.
In my ready room, I settled behind my desk, and waved them to chairs opposite. Angel shot in after them, and jumped up onto my lap.
"I thought you were out mapping these systems," I said to Eric.
"I was. Jumped in here to complete the job, when John told me to dock here. I gather its some kind of suicide mission?"
He was smiling. John was John Slice, his boss, who'd not appreciated being told to get his ship out of this system for his own safety after the plant battle. He had gone though.
"Still flying a Gunbus?"
"Of course, although my family are all on Haven."
"I'm hoping we can improve the shielding on them soon, but don't take any risks in the meantime. Nothing under battleship size has the shielding to take hits yet. You might survive a few missiles, but not the local guns."
"Hey, I'm quite happy being a civilian again."
"So you're
here now, why?"
"The boss sent me. He said there was no way he was allowing someone who knew nothing about nothing to do our work." He turned to Melissa. "No offense."
She beamed a smile at him.
"You understand what the job is, and the risks involved?"
"If I got the message right, Melissa here has a cloaked Lightning courier, and intends to sneak into each of the three systems out there, and drop cloaked comnavsats at the jump points on the other side. And at this point in time, we don’t know what is there. Could be one giant debris field, or could be fleets who reduced the Ralnor to a debris field. Or could still be fighting there. That about it?"
"Yes," said Jane, over the coms. "The Ralnor went in the other jump points around the same time they jumped in here, and so far, nothing has come back."
"Even if the battles are still raging," I said, "you should be able to nip in, launch, and jump out without too much drama."
"Why is Melissa here going?" asked Eric.
"Because the Lightning is her ship. Even with the cloak reducing its speed by half, it's still faster than anything else we have. As long as you don’t jump into some debris, or someone spots your engines before you can jump out again, you should be fine. But Melissa is the best pilot for this job."
"Better than you?"
"Better than me. I've not flown anything that fast. In fact I don’t think I've ever piloted the Lightning at all. Been on one a few times, but Jane was flying. I've done cloak work, but always in Gunbus, and here, I don’t want to send in anything that big, in case it is a debris field on the other side of one of those jump points. Small ship, slow speed jump, drop, turn, and jump out at whatever is an appropriate speed. Max speed across the system to the next one, and if there are no ships in the system at all, drop the cloak and use the full speed to reduce travel time. Cloak if anything jumps in. It’s a risk of being seen, but the faster you get this done the better."
"Comnavsats are loaded," said Jane. "The slowest part will be shoving each one out the airlock manually."
"After engaging its cloak first I presume?" asked Eric.
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