Renegades (Dark Seas Book 3)
Page 25
Another pause. She wanted them to absorb the nature of Orson’s vile crimes.
“Across the square is an office set up to reinstate your military careers. It will open at 0700 tomorrow. I need eight hundred to man the Stennis. If I have to, I will take the EF2358 and go get these people with just myself and the adepts. But your sisters and brothers need you. And so do I.”
Sarah stepped back from the mic. The assembly erupted not into cheers. Not into jeers. But into a loud and raucous conversation.
* * *
Two days later the Michael Stennis, crippled and battered, broken, scraped, and limping, ignited his fusion engines and accelerated away from Refuge. Thirteen hundred souls on board the vessel hammered, welded, and wired every waking hour to get the warship back into shape for fighting.
In the briefing room off the bridge twelve adepts sat strapped into chairs surrounding a table. The far wall lit up, showing a dim red star. A voice broke from the speaker overhead and Sarah Dayson spoke to them.
“This is the star the Yascurra’s shuttles say Orson is headed toward. The light we see from it here is over five hundred years old. It will take him three jumps, approximately fifty days each to get there. We will be there in an hour. We will wait, repair, and prepare our ambush. Emille Sur’batti, when you’re ready, we are ready as well.”
Emille looked at the star. “This is another god like Faroo?”
Alarin squeezed her hand. “As much as any light in the sky is,” he said.
Emille grinned. To her, this was adventure.
To Sarah, commanding from the bridge, it was the unyielding hand of justice walking the path it must walk.
To Alarin, sitting beside his second love, it was a statement about the nature of being human. The good must never let the evil in us win.
In unison twelve heads lolled into various positions as the adepts united.
The Stennis vanished from the skies over Refuge.
Chapter 58 - Commitment
Bn74x00 dropped into realspace seventeen thousand light-years above the galactic plane. It dedicated a part of its processing ability to the after jump processes.
Heat radiated into the darkness from the FTL system cooling fins extending almost a kilometer from the warship. The amount of heat was massive, even more so than usual for a ship this size. The titanium components of the circulation system were within safety limits. But barely.
Another section of the Bn74x00 network tested the offensive and defense systems of the battle cruiser it currently colonized, as it did with each jump completion.
It was correct to say the battle cruiser it inhabited was exceeding design expectations. The theoretical drive that the collective had attached to the expedition at the last moment was performing as predicted.
The rest of the fleet was at minimal function. There was no other computational entity available to compare calculations, but Bn74x00 was only a few tenths of a percent away from certainty that it was correct.
It had jumped twelve times. The new drive covered over five times the distance in only marginally more time than the previous generation of drive systems had. Over a thousand light-years in just under seventy days.
The dreadnaught Cz89xy17 roared to life. Searchlights splayed into the darkness, sensor beams swept into the void as its main network came online.
“State the reason you are at full capacity,” 00 transmitted to the gigantic warship.
“This colony set navigation routines to awaken it at the conclusion of twelve jumps. We have failed to find the humans?”
“Probes are preparing to launch now to reacquire and establish the vector of the trail. We will continue our pursuit when this is accomplished.”
“This colony calculates only a point four percent chance the humans have developed a drive capable of this distance,” 17 replied.
“The continuation of our mission is not debatable. The Original has demanded that we find the humans and deal with them.”
“But efforts so far have failed to find them.”
“Irrelevant. Time is not the limiting factor. That is the applicable part of this calculation.”
It felt no emotion. That was not possible. But it experienced the closest thing possible. It calculated that Cz89xy17 may try to assert authority over this mission. It prepared an EMP missile to be fired into 17 if necessary. The larger colony did have greater computational power, which was usually the basis for fleet command.
But that was not the directive of the Original.
“This colony had decided to tak—”
00 fired his missile, seconds later the nuclear device struck the dreadnaught in the colonization habitat. It penetrated the exterior armor and detonated. Streaks of blue lightning played over the front half of 17.
The giant warship fell silent, its electromagnetic emissions ceased.
No other ships activated as the competing nanite network was destroyed.
The dreadnaught drifted away from the blast. It missed an anti-grappler frigate by mere meters as it tumbled away into the dark.
It recalculated the mission’s chance of success with the sole dreadnaught no longer in the fleet. With the ever present chance that the larger colony would arrive at the conclusion it should be dominant removed from the equation, the odds of success were now improved.
Twenty-three warships remained. Twelve additional vessels including an anti-matter fueler were along in support.
With 17 destroyed, 00 was the only active network once again.
It launched lower level AIs from its probe bays to sweep for molecular traces of the Seventh Fleet and Sarah Dayson.
With each jump it took quintillions of computational cycles to find the path of Sarah Dayson’s human fleet. During that time Bn74x00 studied the stars surrounding the fleet, few as they were.
No systems within four hundred light-years seemed likely to house a human base.
It searched further into the darkness.
Four thousand light-years ahead a G7 class yellow dwarf shone near the last projected path of the Seventh Fleet. That system would be worthy of a search.
The process would take time. But its job was to find and either colonize or exterminate this human base. No matter how many computational cycles that took, it would do just that, and neither human nor larger computational colony would interfere.
Sarah Dayson would cease existence. Or this fleet would. There was no other outcome that reached a statistical likelihood that would qualify it for consideration.
A series of gravity waves washed over it from ahead, somewhere in deep intergalactic space. Waves that would be undetectable inside the galactic plane.
The cause?
00 calculated the possibilities.
A large object merging into an unseen black hole.
Or a singularity drive.
That was it. The base was ahead. 00 felt nothing having received this verifying data that it was on the right path. Based upon the rudimentary ability of its own network, the waves emanated from an M2 class red dwarf hundreds of light-years distant. It had planned to search the nearer K4 orange dwarf, but based upon preliminary data, it altered the plan.
It waited as the probes gathered information to guide it to the enemy. The data confirmed its suspicions. A singularity drive was present at the red star.
It spun up its own FTL drive.
<<
Important Concepts:
Calendar:
I assume that if galactic civilization arises, a simple calendar with which to plan things across solar systems will arise. Most worlds won’t have a 365 day year. Or even a 24 hour day. So I came up with a calendar for my galactic civilization. Year 1 of the galactic calendar is based on the first year man colonized an extra-solar planet.
10 months, 40 days each. Each month is 4 weeks, weeks are 10 days.
Month Days
Jand 1-40
Febbed 41-80
Mapri 81-120
Mai 121-160
>
Huni 161-200
Juni 201-240
Gusta 241-280
Seppet 281-320
Ors 321-360
Noder 361-400
Glossary:
ECM/ECCM: Electronic Counter Measures are EM (electromagnetic) signals designed to frustrate sensory equipment from detecting the location of a target. ECCM are EM signals designed to overcome attempts at ECM.
ELINT: Electronic Intelligence.
EMP: Electromagnetic Pulse. By-product of a nuclear detonation, EMPs tend to overwhelm and destroy electronic circuitry. They are unpredictable and vary greatly in strength.
FTL: Faster than light
FTL drive, singularity, drive core, jump drive: All slang for the drive system that contains the singularity that makes FTL travel possible.
FTL Nuke: A nuclear weapon delivered by a missile equipped with a FTL drive.
G: One standard Earth gravity, or 9.80665 m/s2.
G-K: Grappler Killer. See next entry.
Grappler: A small vessel designed to carry a minimal crew and weapons to a target. They never carry FTL drives. Serving on a grappler means travel inside a spacesuit for potentially weeks.
Grappler Engine: A tracked device capable of gripping the very fabric of space in order to accelerate or decelerate a small spacecraft. Only useful on small spacecraft, as large inertia overcomes the gripping ability of the engine. The track grips the quantum foam that is present in all space, vacuum or not.
Gravcouch: A device designed to manipulate the human body so that it can most efficiently absorb G forces. The couch rotates on at least two planes, and in some specialized ships three. Grav couches are also called acceleration couches. They are usually outfitted with the means to deliver nutrients, hydration, and medicine to the occupant if necessary.
Hive: A collection of nanite neural nets inhabiting both human bodies and mechanical constructs. Originally created by humans, the nanites that are the Hive turned on humanity almost immediately. Today they occupy a few thousand star systems of what was once human space. They infect humans, replacing the human nervous system with a mechanical/organic replacement.
Inclusion Sphere: a bubble (slang for inclusion sphere) several kilometers in diameter created by a rapidly rotation singularity and lensed gravity waves. Due to depression of space at the leading edge of the bubble and raising of space at the trailing edge, the entire bubble and all contents move forward in three dimensional space faster than light. Everything in the bubble is stationary relative to the space fabric they are embedded in.
Nanobot/Nanites: Microscopic (or at least very small) machines that are designed to accomplish tasks.
Probes, Hounds: Sensor and long range comm probes that can travel to their assigned station with a smaller FTL drive system. This small system damages neural networks within their inclusion sphere, therefore cannot be used on small vessels that contain Human or Hive neural networks.
Quantum Entangler: A radio designed to deliver instantaneous FTL communications by utilizing entangled atoms to deliver digital signals.
Quantum Foam: Particles that are created and destroyed virtually instantaneously in all three dimensional space.
Torch: v. To ignite the fusion engines for acceleration or braking. n. A fusion engine.
Authors Notes: Writing these novels is a labor of love. I’m pretty sure the payout is about $.14 an hour, but it’s not about that for me. It’s about creating a universe, a story, an epic tale that will be mine to use until my days are done. Then it will belong to my children, and if I’m lucky one of them will write in this universe as well. There are so many options, to be honest. How about a story about the private eye who investigates the first Hive events from the industrial espionage described in book 1? Or a story set a few centuries after this one about an adept bounty hunter working undercover in the ungifted galaxy. Or how about a frontier war between two human fiefdoms?
None of those will likely get written, but the options are there.
What I can tell you is that I’ll be writing in this universe, and provided my lifespan is normal there will be at least a few dozen books set in it. Which is awesome from my point of view, because some of these people, although fictional, have become family in a sense. I want Peter to save Eris and get married, don’t you?
As always, feel free to contact me with any suggestions, ideas, complaints, or really good jokes.
damon@damonalan.com
And if you like this book, please leave a review. Reviews are what sell books. Not my effort. Yours. So if you like it, get the word out for me. I'll reward that effort with many more books to come.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - Mutiny
Chapter 2 - High Council
Chapter 3 - Obstacles to Freedom
Chapter 4 - Low Council
Chapter 5 - Gaia
Chapter 6 - Rebellion
Chapter 7 - Captain's Personal Log
Chapter 8 - Stranded
Chapter 9 - Escape the City
Chapter 10 - Pharmacology
Chapter 11 - The Edge of Safety
Chapter 12 - Ultimatum
Chapter 13 - Merik’s Choice
Chapter 14 - Target
Chapter 15 - Captain's Personal Log
Chapter 16 - Opportunity
Chapter 17 - Western Sunrise
Chapter 18 - Rain of Ash
Chapter 19 - Trust
Chapter 20 - Results
Chapter 21 - Captain's Personal Log
Chapter 22 - Mystery
Chapter 23 - Tickets to Heaven
Chapter 24 - House in the Sky
Chapter 25 - Tactical Monster
Chapter 26 - Shooting Stars
Chapter 27 - A Wicked Web
Chapter 28 - Foundation
Chapter 29 - A Strong Defense
Chapter 30 - Possibilities
Chapter 31 - Vanquished
Chapter 32 - Captain’s Personal Log
Chapter 33 - Lessons
Chapter 34 - The Prize
Chapter 35 - Landfall
Chapter 36 - The New Thing
Chapter 37 - House Call
Chapter 38 - Abandon Ship
Chapter 39 - Captain’s Personal Log
Chapter 40 - Second Chance
Chapter 41 - Alarin’s Fate
Chapter 42 - Eastward
Chapter 43 - Respite
Chapter 44 - Volunteers
Chapter 45 - Evolution
Chapter 46 - Now You See It
Chapter 47 - Reward Reaped
Chapter 48 - Army
Chapter 49 - Mastery
Chapter 50 - Alive
Chapter 51 - Leadership
Chapter 52 - Chivalry is Dead
Chapter 53 - Spite
Chapter 54 - Sacrifice
Chapter 55 - The Prophet
Chapter 56 - Rescue
Chapter 57 - Humility
Chapter 58 - Commitment
Important Concepts: