by Andrew Beery
“So, if it was a dead-end for humanity… how is it the Nesters are able to use it to go where we cannot?”
Thais entered the conversation at this point. She seemed to be bending over a piece of equipment that had been partially disassembled.
“Ring-gates were never a dead-end,” the Engineer said while hitting what looked to be a delicate part with a hammer. “They just weren’t especially useful when the GCP had the computing power to calculate specific jump-points. In theory, a ring-gate system deployed between two separate points would do away with the need for computationally complex math used to calculate the hyperfield conduits. They would operate much like entangled quantum communications. Once the link was established it would remain open no matter where each of the paired rings were located.”
“So, if what you are saying is correct… then what? We have to figure out how to reopen the gate portal from this end and send a team through,” Ken asked.
“My analysis of the computer systems on the breaching pod would seem to indicate that course of action would be impossible. The control systems are located on the distal end of the connection,” Yorky responded.
Ben tapped the table and brought up a holographic display. “I believe we may have a better solution. When we were attacked as we entered this system it seemed like we were facing two opposing forces. After the breaching pod hit us, one group quickly fled in a direction out of the solar system’s ecliptic. The other group retired to a moon orbiting a gas giant.”
The holographic display in front of him projected a model of the solar system along with highlighted flight paths of the two struggling powers that engaged the Yorktown.
“Neither group seemed capable of interstellar travel along the lines of the distances we are talking about,” Captain Kirkland said. “Are you proposing another ship… perhaps a mothership sitting in deep space above the planetary plane of this system?”
Ben looked over at Andrew Martinescu and nodded. The Yorktown’s First Officer brought up a second holographic display. It was zoomed out several hundred AU. A white oval was displayed along the path of the fleeing ships.
“What am I looking at?” Ken asked.
“I believe, based on neutrino field emissions, that we are looking at a massive ring-gate… something on the order of a kilometer in diameter,” the First Officer answered.
“How long before the fleeing ships reach the gate?”
“Our best estimate is they are already there,” Ben responded while adjusting his display. “They are using state-of-the-art ion thrusters and some type of Higgs-field inhibitor that nullifies their effective mass.”
The holographic display in front of Ben was now showing a chart of the relative velocities of the fleeing ships. It showed they had obtained twenty-seven percent the speed of light.
“We know that they have impressive shielding,” Commander Martinescu added. They shrugged off our defensive fire with ease. We think that shielding is allowing them to travel safely at that velocity.”
“Which begs the question,” Ben said while pointing at the path they took. “Why did they leave? They proved they could hit us and we were hard-pressed to hit them back.”
AG shifted slightly forward in his seat. The subtle but intentional movement caused the others to look in his direct… which had been his goal.
“I suspect the breaching pod was intended for a different target. It was used against us because we presented a better target of opportunity. Once delivered, the Nester’s attack ships were no longer necessary. Their role was the delivery of the smaller ring-gate… presumably to facilitate a ground-force invasion.”
“The question we have to answer would be… Is the gate still open?” Captain Kirkland added.
“Gravimetric analysis would suggest it is,” Ben offered. “Getting there is another matter. Our shielding is based on hyperfield emitters which are struggling to operate in this region of space. If we try to match the Nester’s speed… or anything even close to it… the ablative armor will be torn to shreds.”
“I believe I have that situation solved,” Commander Figarero’s hologram replied. “I’ve been adapting the shielding used by the Nester’s breaching pod. It seems to be multiphasic in nature. They modulate it at a specific harmonic that allows it to work in this region of space.”
“How long will it take to retrofit it to the Yorktown?”
Thais smiled. “It’s already done, sir. I had WhimPy help Yorky reprogram the nanites in the skin of our ship and the little buggers have retrofitted all of the emitters. This control console was the last piece to getting the system online and I just got it to finish a boot-up sequence.”
Chapter 8: Cold-Hearted Bastard…
Cat knew the Yorktown was on its way. In her mind, they could not get to her soon enough. The resistance group she had crossed paths with were intent on mounting a major offensive… an offensive they had no hope of winning. The kicker was that Cat agreed with their reasoning.
The Nesters had been fighting wars on multiple fronts for several decades. They were not an especially innovated race but they were adept at seeing how the innovations developed by their subjugated servant races could be used to further the goals of their empire.
Their drive to subjugate others seemed to be a major motivation in their society. It wasn’t so much a slave-master relationship as it was a caste system… with the Nesters occupying the top-most cast.
The rebels, most of whom were humans, saw the imminent arrival of the Yorktown as their best chance to throw off the yoke of oppression. The survivors of the FSS Longhorn disaster had been alone and seemingly abandoned for a long time. For them, hope was a fleeting mistress not often seen but always cherished. Cat’s arrival, however strange the circumstances surrounding it, was a sign from the Creator that their season in the wilderness was finally at an end.
Cat had argued, half-heartedly, for allowing the Yorktown, when it eventually arrived, to simply evacuate the human population. Her newly minted rebel friends would hear none of it. They felt the need to allow each of the subjugated races… and there were many… perhaps as many as a dozen… to seek their freedom. There was something in the core of the human spirit that ultimately rebelled against injustice.
By starting a general uprising, the resistance was hoping to force the Yorktown to enter the fray on their side. Joining yet another war was not high on Cat’s current to-do list. Sadly, sometimes you go looking for a fight… and sometimes… the fight comes looking for you.
***
AG looked out over the launch bay of the GCP Yorktown. It had only been a few months since he had flown out of this bay but even in that short time he could see changes. The row after row of Scorpion-class attack fighters were the same but he could see the fighters had undergone some major modifications.
The two wing-mounted plasma turrets had been upgraded. They now had a full 360-degree rotation and… if he could believe the specs… they delivered about 15% more energy output. The twenty KIMs, or kinetic impact weapons had been replaced with two more tactical nukes and four ship-buster AI missiles as well as a series of decoy and shielding drones.
These last changes had been made by the engineering team recently. The shielding the Nesters used made kinetic weapons next to useless. The nukes and ship-busters were outfitted with the same tech the Nester’s breaching pod had used to disable the Yorktown’s shields but in a more compact form that allowed each weapon to carry its own EMP generator.
The Yorktown was twenty minutes out from the massive ring-gate. No one knew for sure what would happen when they transitioned through the gate. Would all sentients be rendered unconscious? Would the other side of the gate even be in the vicinity of Nebi Prime where Cat Kimbridge was hiding with a group of human rebels? There were lots of questions but not a lot of answers.
AG had urged Captain Kirkland to allow him to send a group of his Marines ahead of the Yorktown in some of the Scorpions to scout out the lay of the land… it was an ar
gument that he ultimately lost.
The Yorktown had modified her shields to prevent the type of attack that had hit her before from being successful a second time. While the Scorpions now sported a similar set of modifications, there was no way to tell if the limited shielding on the smaller craft would be up to the task. Captain Kirkland had offered a compromise. AG and his Infinity Brigade could ride out the transition in the launch bays… ready to catapult into space the moment the Yorktown cleared the ring-gate and needed their offensive and defensive capabilities.
His marines had boarded their respective attack craft. He would be the last to board his.
“All set Commander,” the chief in charge of the launch bay reported. “She’ll fly a little rough until the onboard AI gets the hang of the new load balance.”
AG looked at his Scorpion with its special load-out. He hoped he wouldn’t need the modifications he had requested but… he suspected it was better to be prepared then screwed royally because he wasn’t.
The inside of his fighter was as cramped as he remembered it. There was very little space wasted on a Scorpion. As a result, the control system for his new enhancements, a single-fire nuclear pulsed EMP generator, was strictly via voice commands and his AI. He didn’t like not having direct control of a weapons system but in this case, there was nothing to be done about it.
“Delta squad, as soon as we emerge from hyperspace and get clearance from the bridge you are to launch,” AG barked over his command channel. “Alpha and Bravo follow two minutes later. I want a six-hundred-kilometer interval between flights. Charlie has CAS this round. Nothing gets through to the Yorktown… she’s our ride home and we need her.”
***
Captain Kirkland watched the holographic viewscreen that dominated the center of the Yorktown’s bridge.
The ring-gate was the largest artificial object he had ever seen, save for the Heshe WhimPy platform that was the Yorktown’s home base.
It was an order of magnitude larger than Commander Martinescu’s initial estimate. The structure was just shy of ten kilometers across. The construction was… interesting.
For the last several hundred years, humanity, and the rest of the member worlds of the Galactic Coalition, used construction nanites to build objects of any size… to include massive structures like what they were seeing now. Nanites has been a fixture of complex engineering projects even before the Heshe had gifted the GCP with even more powerful versions of the miniscule machines.
The massive structure floating in space a few hundred kilometers in front of them, however, appeared to have been built using manufacturing techniques that would have been more at home in the late 20th century. Power conduits and fusion power plants lined the outside of the device. A swarm of maintenance robots were crawling over its surface in what looked to be a continuous dance. A shimmering blue nimbus covered the interior of the gate. For all extent and purposes… it appeared to be a massively scaled up version of the ring-gate that had been part of the breaching pod.
“Sensors, give me a full active scan on that thing. Stem to stern. If we need to build one of these things to get home I want to know everything there is to know about it.”
“Aye, Captain. Scanning now,” Lieutenant Colson answered from his sensor station. “I’m reading a semi-stable hyperfield. Sir… Power generation appears to only be on the order of fifteen terajoules.”
Ken looked over at his First Officer and raised an eyebrow.
“Confirmed Captain,” Andrew Martinescu answered. “They seem to have created a self-reinforcing harmonic hyperfield. My guess is it took a hell of a lot more energy to establish but once in place, 15TJ seems to be all it needs to remain in place… and I suspect that even that level is only needed because of the relatively crude engineering used to construct the gate.”
“Will the harmonic field fluctuations adversely affect our travel?” Ken asked, his voice edged with a little concern. Hyperfield dynamics were a tricky business and potentially dangerous.
Commander First took a few moments to review the sensor feeds. He put a single finger up as he continued to analyze the data stream being fed to his station.
“Sir the jump will not be possible… unless we carefully synchronize our shield harmonics. If we are off even a few tenths of a percent… we’ll disrupt the gate harmonics and collapse the field and…”
“Crush the ship in the process,” Ken finished for him. He toggled his comm-link.
“Commander Stone, we are about to enter the ring-gate. Yorky will need to modulate our hyperfield to avoid disrupting the hyperfield event horizon. I’m going to have him upload the specifics to your scorpions. Should you need to use the gate yourselves at some point it will be critical that you match the gate’s harmonics.”
“Acknowledged Sir,” AG answered. “It was a good thing you denied my request to fly ahead.”
“I have a feeling you’ll get your chance for action soon enough.”
“Roger that, Sir.”
***
The jump through the ring-gate was uneventful. It felt more like a ‘pre-Great Disruption’ jump, in that there was no accompanying dizziness or blackouts.
However, as soon as the Yorktown did a single active ping on the far side of the gate, Ken knew they were in trouble. It seemed the Yorktown was in the middle of a massive minefield. It was a minor miracle that their emergence from the ring-gate had not triggered any of the mines.
“All Stop!’ Ken barked. “Raise shields! All point defense systems are to go hot but to hold fire until our fighters are clear.”
Toggling his comm-link again, he brought up his connection to the launch bay.
“Commander Stone, we have some automated heavy ordinance floating right outside the ship just waiting to ruin our day. I need your marines launched as fast as possible. Your orders are to put some distance between you and us. I suspect we could be taking some serious damage here in the next few minutes and you and your boys may be the only thing protecting us until we can get our sea legs again.”
“Are you sure you don’t want us to try and disable some of that hardware for you sir?”
“Negative AG… although I appreciate the offer. My guess is the Yorktown is much bigger than anything the locals are used to seeing. These mines might bang us up a little if our active shielding fails but they would do a real number on your scorpions.”
“Understood sir. Launching fighters now. We’ll provide cover until you can clear the mine field.”
“I know you will Commander. Kirkland out.”
Ken turned to his First Officer. “Number One, as soon as the launch bay is clear, I want a full spread of ‘sandies’ cutting a hole for us to fly through. Coordinate with weapons, navigation and engineering to make it happen.”
“On it sir!”
‘Sandies’ (or Mark-IV deconstruction nanite mines), were a special type of missile developed in the early days of the GCP. They carried massive amounts of specialized deconstruction nanites. The missiles detonated and spread the nanites like sand on a beach. Anything coming in contact with the microscopic machines… that could not provide the appropriate ‘Friend or Foe’ response… was torn apart at the molecular level.
Fortunately, all GCP ships were covered with shield emitters that could respond to the FoF request. The same could not be said for the alien mines floating around the Yorktown.
“Fighters have cleared the bays and are moving out of the minefield. Getting ready to launch the first spread of ‘sandies’,” Commander Martinescu reported.
A few seconds later… “Firing sandies.”
The distances in space, as well as, the darkness of the void made seeing meter-long metallic missiles and their respective targets impossible with the naked eye. Fortunately for the bridge crew of the GCP Yorktown, the ship’s AI, Yorky was able to enhance the three-dimensional holographic display to give them a good idea of what was going on.
Twenty-four ‘sandy’ missiles flew out of their linear a
cceleration tubes at two percent the speed of light. Their course took them in a thirty-degree cone-shaped arc in front of the Yorktown. Starting at a mere five kilometers and extending for another fifty kilometers the sandies ruptured and deliberately spread their nanite cargo. In only a few minutes several hundred explosive alien mines were deactivated.
Ken watched the results on the holographic display. So far everything looked good. One of the inherent risks in using a ‘sandy’ against an unknown weapon system was the possibility of causing the alien weapon to activate before it could be disabled. He ordered the VASIMR to fifteen percent forward thrust.
The Yorktown covered about two hundred kilometers without incident. Just as Ken was being to think they would escape the minefield unscathed the unthinkable happened.
Every few minutes another round of ‘sandies’ were fired to clear the next section of their route out of the minefield. The field itself seemed to extend for about another one hundred and twenty kilometers. As the latest round of ‘sandies’ made their way towards their target they ran into a different type of device.
The new devices were powerful continuous pumped laser systems that were fed by a small antimatter stream. It was yet another example of the technological mishmash they were facing. Antimatter containment fields were terribly difficult to maintain and yet this race that had not mastered a technology as simple as nanites… had deployed hundreds if not thousands of these pumped laser systems… all with sophisticated automated antimatter containment fields. The Yorktown would have easily dealt with the powerful lasers. Her shields were optimized for that sort of task. Unfortunately, despite their designer’s original intent… the laser mines were deadlier to the Yorktown as explosive devices rather than as energy beam weapons.
The moment the sandies disrupted the containment field around one of these devices it annihilated its entire store of antimatter… about an ounce, in a fraction of a millisecond. The resulting explosion set off its nearest neighbors… which in turn, set off their nearest neighbors.