"I didn't realize we'd take major casualties to the crew," Radescu said. "The briefing book on the successful warp transition speaks of a few minutes of transit time, but no discomfort."
"They appear to be catatonic," she said, "not dead. I couldn't find injuries. Med instruments are all servile based, not working, but there's a pulse and a response of the eyes to light. It's been a long time since a real ship, not a torpedo, went through a warp point. Torpedos put their serviles to sleep for the transition. This may have been the first time modern American serviles have been checked for functionality during a warp."
"When we come out, and they come up, it may be a mess," Radescu said.
"I checked if I could tell them to go static until we do a wake-up call. We can't talk at them enough to tell them they should shut down. And runners to the rest of the ship are out -- airlocks are servile controlled, and manual open/close cycles take longer than we have," she remarked.
"I can think of several choices," he said. "We could stand here, fingers holding down the system reset keys, until we emerge. When we come out, everything resets itself, in as little as a few seconds. Alternatively, Fleet has spent lots of money on proving the servile codes. We test the boundaries of proof reliability," Radescu remarked. The two choices were not ones he greeted with enthusiasm. "Do you see other alternatives?"
"No, sir. Not with available time and resources," she said. "Sir, the reset time also has a probable value."
"Yes?"
"Sir, five minutes," she answered.
"We trust the software." Radescu opened a drawer at his station, wrote a few words on the side of one panel, and replaced the non-erasable marker in the drawer. "If they make it and we don't, they get a record of what I did."
"The changes in the outside screen are coming more rapidly," Radescu noted. "Go back to your acceleration frame." Raincloud slid across the deck and locked her suit in position.
The transition to normal space was completely featureless. At one instant, external instruments reported the warp tunnel. In the next, the North Carolina was in normal space. Lights flashed. Alarms chattered. A siren screamed. In an instant, Radescu took in the situation on the bridge. "All serviles. Crew is substantially incapacited. Take autonomous command under my orders." Raincloud waved. "You will also acknowledge Commander Raincloud. Respond to other persons who are awake, alert, and rational." That last word might cause some challenges to servile coding.
"Sir," Raincloud said, "System serviles appear restored. No incoming. Multiple to many tracking lidars."
Radescu looked at the display. Ship radars really did not have instant omniazimuthal scan, not with the damage they'd taken and range issues. They were still accelerating due south at max. And there was an incoming target cluster. Close. The servile brought it up on the screen. A large object and...escorts? What was the thing in the middle? At least the escorts looked like spaceships. "All weapons target large central ship." The targeting servile showed signs of confusion. It wasn;t sure the alrge central object was a ship. "That thing. The big one. At screen center. Fire all bearing weapons at it. Continue firing until it blows up. Non-bearing weapons, optimal available targets. Mable, please optimize non-bearing." He paused. "Ship: Sound, all stations, reveille. Repeat continuous, except here, maximum safe volume, until personnel awake. And all bonephones, maximum safe volume, until personnel awake." Radescu noted the thing being escorted was partly transparent to radar. Internal parts were rotating, but not the way rigid objects could rotate in normal three-dimensional space.
While he was speaking, North Carolina opened fire, its target an object less a ship than a hypertrophied head of coral. An ominous mouth loomed on one side of the head. The interwoven branches flared a brilliant white, glares merging almost instantly into a single expanding ball of plasma. Fluctuations in hard radiation outputs spoke of additional internal explosions as the strange ship's fusactors collapsed. The targeting servile shifted fire to the escorts, which were too close to evade and on the wrong side of a 100:1 ship mass ratio.
"Sir?" Flaherty's voice was unsteady. "Where?"
"Engineering status report, Mr. Flaherty, as soon as practicable," Radescu said. "If you're still not navigating yourself, just say so -- you were out cold for some minutes." Radescu turned back to the display. "Targeting, let's engage group after group seriatim." They were several minutes from the next group of enemy ships, with two further groups beyond that. Radescu sketched with the tricursor. They would make a pass at each of them, maintaining maximum acceleration, and then emerge from the warp point. Around the warp point were approximately 30 of the large ships, each with a half-dozen escorts. The escorts, once assembled, outmassed North Carolina, odds he would not accept in North Carolina's damaged condition, even though the individual escorts were rather small. Once North Carolina passed through the formation, they needed to be out of here. "Bridge, ship will need rapidity drive up as soon as possible.
"Got another," Raincloud announced. "Large opponents, designate Braincoral, estimated mass eight million tons, no apparent weapons or screens. Small opponents, designate Braveboy, estimated mass 20,000 tons, screens -- apparently Monitor-Class-Level or twice that. Armament is -- so far we've seen one fire a 1 terawatt xraser, mounted along the ship's main axis."
Radescu frowned. They were too close to dodge xraser fire from the three groups in front of them. The very small enemy ships had astonishingly powerful beam weapons, much heavier than what historic EU ships had deployed.
Collectively, they had far more firepower than the full output of North Carolina's 75 xrasers. "Mr Flaherty? Status yet?"
"Engines: seven of ten engine rooms, available to Emergency Max. Three engine rooms, out of action. Acceleration: max of thirty gees. Warp drive status -- unclear. Rapidity drive available in two minutes. Xrasers: 45 of 75 bays active. Torpedo launchers, 10 of 25 tubes available. Soliton projectors, 80% of capacity. Screens: no holes, 75% of screen generators operational," Flaherty reported. "No crew casualties. We have 22 of 39 crew, and the full MinuteGirl detachment, present."
While Flaherty reported, Radescu had signed directions through his tricursor. Torpedo launchers went to rapid volley fire. They had been overstocked with missiles before North Carolina lost 60% of launch capacity. Their chances of hitting were poor, but better with a fired torpedo than with a torpedo parked in stores. If the FEU got its act together, they were still in deep trouble. Against terawatt beams, North Carolina's screens would rapidly fragment. The first missiles detonated as they closed on the EU ships -- unknown defensive weapon.
"Priority xraser target: shift to Braincorals. Raincloud, go after the Braincorals. It's tonnage of something. Destroy, don't damage," Radescu ordered. Forwards of the North Carolina, another of the peculiar ships blew up. Radescu peered at monitors. The Braincoral took very minor damage, and then started losing fusactors in a chain reaction. "Those things mount an astonishing number of fusactors -- if their fusactors were shunted to vacuum, those ships would be a lot harder to damage."
North Carolina shuddered, once and again. "Hostile xraser hits," reported Flaherty. "About half are burning through the outer screens. Hull screen is depleting rapidly." Ahead of them, another Braincoral exploded.
"Multiple direct hits," reported Raincloud. "Secondary explosions. FEU fleet is maneuvering." Ships in the North Carolina's path were moving out of it. Ships sternwards of North Carolina were accelerating outwards. "Sir, I think they have a rate of fire limit on their xrasers. Neutrino flux of their fusactors agrees. The duty cycle must be about 5%."
North Carolina rang like a gong. Room lights dimmed. "Engine Room Four, emergency shunt to vacuum, is at no power," Flaherty announced.
"68% of screen generators operational," Flaherty said. Serious screen overloads fed back into the screen generators, eliminating their ability to recharge the hull screens.
Radescu stared at the technical monitor. The rapidity drive was rapidly coming on stream.
"54% of screen
generators operational," Flaherty said. The enemy ships in front of them were being shot to pieces by North Carolina's xrasers, one after another exploding, but enemy ships to sternward were getting in good shots against North Carolina. Radescu could see another death spiral beginning. Many of the screen generators had been in poor shape to start out with, even before the battle started, a product of decades of minimal maintenance. Now the enemy formation outmassed them, the inverse of the orthodox American position, and had some new weapons superiorities.
"Recommend stochastic evasion against stern fire," Raincloud interrupted. "They're that far away. And Braincorals are doing rapidity transitions, away from us. Their escorts, former escorts, are turning on us."
"Go stochastic," Radescu ordered. It would take them longer to escape under normal drive, but that wasn't his plan. The green light was coming up on the Rapidity Drive. "Course and engines. We must evade enemy xraser fire to make a rapidity transition. On my command, go to wormlike evasion. Drives to Ultimate Maximum Overload. Proceed."
The walls of the room seemed to sway. Very briefly, North Carolina's engines could hold 150% of All Ahead Flank without failing. The evasion path was now a serious of random longer linear paths, harder to hit at first, but far easier to target after the first few instants. "Prepare for rapidity transition." The drive servile did its analysis. Wormlike path trajectories were a poor choice for a battlefield, but an excellent choice if you wanted a few instants in which the enemy was highly likely not to score a direct hit. Radescu stabbed at the screen. "Rapidity. Dead ahead. There."
The servile timed the optimal instant. North Carolina's screens vanished like a candle flame in a high wind. The ship leaped ahead, its formal acceleration now over 106 gravities. There was a short period, longer than Radescu would have liked, during which a ship transiting to rapidity drive was totally vulnerable to enemy fire. It had totally constant acceleration and no screens. Once the drive was activated, speed was again constant, but superluminal. Flying toward or through an enemy formation while using rapidity drive, with speed a highly predictable constant, was a nearly sure way to die. Flying away from an enemy formation was safe -- if the enemy didn't wreck your ship before you went supraluminal. Only during the short activation phase did rapidity drive make the ship totally vulnerable to attack. However, these people seemed very slow off the mark when he changed tactics. Could they be slow again?
An enormous crash echoed through Radesu's ears. The ship staggered. The rapidity drive skimmed barely above its collapse surface and managed a recovery.
"Hit on stern," Flaherty reported. "Loss of torpedo tubes A and B, all rear xraser ports. No signals sternwards of frame X57. I make that three presumed dead, Hererra, Lee, Knight. Three Minutegirls in the rear boarding launch also presumed dead. It looks like the launch bay took a direct hit." The servile put the names of the three MinuteGirls on a display screen. They volunteered, thought Radescu, they came, they waited, they died, never complaining, never seeing their enemy. The hit was what Radescu had feared.
"Super-c transition coming up," Raincloud announced. "On three. Three, two, one, making random deflective course change." Radescu gasped in relief. North Carolina was now plowing through normal space, its position changing at close to five c. Nothing behind it could hit it. A fleet under rapidity drive could be detected, but so long as it did not fly straight at an enemy fleet at short range it would be challenging to engage.
"Flaherty. Full systems and crew, analysis and report. Raincloud, weapons, technical, intelligence -- where are we? And then, please go below to speak to the survivors of our MinuteGirl detachment. I'll go when we are squared away here, but you may hear what I'll miss," said the shaken Radescu. He expanded the main display field of view. The enemy fleet was dead astern, the Braincorals moving away from his ship. Raincloud brought data up on Radescu's screens. The system map display was active, showing a set of planets orbiting a K0 star. The system display showed a star name -- they had reached the system that was known to be on the other side of the warp point.
"All stations. Let's have a systemwide status check and report. Damage control to replace engines, rapidity drive, screens, and then down the line," Radescu ordered. He looked at the lidar reports. "That was a very peculiar enemy formation," Radescu said. Enemy ships had been spread out over more than 100,000 leagues. There was a moment's recognition. The set of enemy squadron locations was rather similar to the set of enemy emergence points in the Clarksburg warp point. He set the servile to back-calculating, and was surprised to learn that the emergence points had the same geometric pattern as the computed positions of the Braincoral-class ships at the appropriate times. The scale was different, but the relative positions were the same. What did that mean? He logged the anomaly, then passed it along to his crew. Someone might see the issue behind the coincidence. He certainly did not. The bridge servile reported passing the observation further, namely to American bitransit torpedoes still lurking in the system.
Where were they? There was limited survey data drawn from bitransit torpedo reconnaissance. Ignoring the large numbers of enemy ships passing through, the local planets were without exception seriously unattractive. Gas giants in highly elliptical orbits. Smaller planets were balls of nickel iron. There was speculation that the system had made a close pass by another star, and not that long ago either. A view of the starry sky said the system was not close to home. Masses of stars burned bright in every direction, many far brighter than any visible from Alpha Centauri. The stars and galaxies beyond were unsurveyed; approximate distances to the few nearest systems had been ascertained. A particularly bright G0 star less than a light month away sounded far more promising than anything here, not to mention being off the beaten path likely to be surveyed by the EU. There was no guarantee that a G-type star had planets you would want to visit, but the odds were extremely good.
The servile found the star. "Flaherty, as soon as we are sure the rapidity drives are good for a week's operation, this appears to be a safe place to set up shop for more permanent repairs. But let us not go there directly -- a path with three legs not precisely perpendicular to each other, not the same length, should mask where we went." Radescu tagged a prospective course change. The ship needed a lot of repairs, and he appeared to have found them the peace and quiet she needed to make them. Fortunately North Carolina had been designed during the period in which American planets had been expected to be closely invested by EU fleets, so American warships had to be prepared to operate independently indefinitely as commerce raiders. The quarter-million tons of electrical and machine shops, molecular foundries, universal libraries, bulk material processors... dispersed through North Carolina's hull allowed her crew to build full duplicates of the ship, at least if enough time was available. The five thousand ton planetary terraforming kit, presented with a somewhat restricted range of suitable planets, allowed reconstructing an entire ecosphere -- though the startup times were painfully long.
Radescu paged through system and personnel status files. The people he really needed had stayed with the ship. So long as North Carolina avoided the indignity of combat, everything appeared to be in good shape. "Detectors," he said.
The unsmiling triple-chinned face of his most corpulent crewman appeared on the comm display. Lieutenant Miles Erving was always entirely happy to explain why disaster was imminent, and why the failure of the previous disaster to eventuate promised an even worse disaster in the immediate future. Fortunately from Radescu's point of view Erving only expounded when asked by a superior officer; Radescu had redrawn the ship's chain of command until Erving reported personally to the Captain. When not expounding, Erving spent every moment polishing and tuning the ship's detectors. Radescu had deduced what the rest of the ship's company had not. Erving was driven, not by concern about the ship or the defense of Lincoln, but by raw fear that someone in authority would blame him however slightly for whatever befell the ship. He was also highly competent. Once his motives were understood, he wa
s an extremely valuable crew member.
"Sir, Observation Deck reports," Erving answered crisply.
"Lieutenant, we are now longer at Alpha Centauri. We are moving from wherever we now are to another solar system -- fortunately another solar system right in our laps. This means you get a one-light-week displacement for parallax determinations of relative star positions -- and our intermediate path will give extra observing points. It also means, since we have no astrographic charts at all, that if we are not careful we can get totally lost. Warden's 'Fundamentals of Astral Navigation' has a Section on this. See that you follow all of his recommendations, or copy me as to why they can't be done." Radescu smiled. Erving was the ideal person for this job.
"Aye, aye, sir. Sir? An anomaly?" Erving answered.
"Yes, Lieutenant?" asked Radescu solicitously.
"At the end of the warp transit. There are bow cameras with chemical film, recording images." Radescu's eyes rose in surprise. That feature must have been obsolete when North Carolina hit the drawing boards. "Most show the stars seen here. But some show two completely different sets of stars."
Radescu cupped his chin in one hand. "Remind me. Is this novel? I'd forgotten we had the bow cameras."
"Yes, Sir. Extra stars are completely new. Cameras in bitransit torpedoes just show the arrival point, visible before serviles come back on-line," Erving answered.
"Very good. Very observant. Log it," answered Radescu. "Don't forget it. But let's get astrographics and a search for FEU bases done now." He cut off the comm plate, leaving Erving with his orders. But what did those images mean? Nothing that affected North Carolina, it seemed, since they were where they were supposed to be.
Chapter 27
"Throughout history, the core challenge facing naval commanders has been...to engage the enemy simultaneously with all vessels in one's own force, whilst at the same time coming into range only of so many enemy vessels as could simultaneously be engaged and rapidly destroyed..."
Minutegirls Page 46