A Faded Star

by Michael Freeport

  “It sure will be nice to see how the new drones perform.”

  “I want you to work up an exercise schedule. Run it by Mister Kri. Rook will be shaking down at the same time. You may want to include a few joint exercises. Show their tactical officer how it's done.”

  Patho caught himself grinning at the Commodore. “I will, sir. If their tactical officer was in my graduating class from tactical school, he won't stand a chance.”

  “I think he is. Make sure you use it as a teaching tool and not a way of embarrassing the other ship, though.”

  “Of course, sir. I'll give him a few openings to see if he takes me up on them.”

  “Good. One last thing, Mister Patho. I've heard a bit of information that I deem reliable. Agent Cobb is gunning for your family. You might end up caught in the crossfire. If he comes at you again, let me know and make sure you get legal representation. I won't have that man tearing your career apart.”

  “Thank you, sir. I will keep you informed.”

  “Good. If there's nothing else?” Patho shook his head. “Dismissed then, commander.”

  Chapter 11

  Captain Erickson paced back and fourth behind the command chair on the Saber. Her arms were crossed behind her back, and her eyes darted back and forth between points on the floor in front of her. She watched the timer on the screen. The offensive squadron was scheduled to arrive at L262 in less than ten minutes. She tried to calm her nerves. Her mind kept wandering over the absence of crab forces in M673. Something about the situation made her skin crawl.

  “Ma'am, we're getting a signal from the Broadsword. They want us to override FTL system safety and go into the system to this point,” Commander Hoskins said. The executive officer put a point up on the small tactical display.

  “Very well, override safeties and continue to the designated point.”

  “Aye, ma'am,” Hoskins said. He worked for a moment before saying, “Ma'am, I can't get the system to accept the override.”

  “Keep trying. We still have a couple of minutes.”

  Hoskins worked as hard as he could, but the system refused the override again and again. They ran out of time and Saber slowed to sublight speed right at the edge of L262.

  “Sir, we've come out of FTL,” Hoskins said. His voice was tight, and his tone clipped, betraying his frustration at failing to get the ship to obey him.

  “Very well, exec. Full sensor sweep, Lieutenant Thurman.”

  Thurman, the operations and navigational officer said, “Aye, Ma'am.” There was a pause before he said, “Ma'am, the rest of the offensive squadron completed their transit and arrived at the target coordinates. It looks like a large crab force is waiting in the system. Multiple crab ships are mobilizing all around the other four ships, ma'am.”

  “Signal the Broadsword, our computer did not accept FTL safety override. Lieutenant Samson, plot an intercept along the Broadsword's current heading. Make sure we can meet up with them.”

  “Aye, sir,” Samson said. After a moment, the tactical officer said, “Ma'am, we can meet up with them about twenty million kilometers along their current heading, we should be able to avoid most of the larger crab formations.”

  “Very well. Mister Hoskins, put me through to Admiral Drogue.”

  A moment later, Drogue's wizened face appeared on the comm screen. “Admiral, looks like the crabs were waiting for us. My tactical officer says we have a good chance of making a rendezvous point with you about twenty million kilometers along your current heading.” Erickson felt a huge knot of fear settle into her stomach as she said the words. Taking that action would virtually guarantee the deaths of everyone aboard the Saber.

  “That's a negative, captain. I am ordering you to make for the alliance base. Signal the alliance salvage ship on your way out and let them know to retreat to their base as well. Our chances of escape are poor at best. We flew directly into a trap.”

  “Aye, sir. I will do as you order. Is there anything else I can do?”

  Drogue's eyes were distant for a split second before he said, “Survive, captain. With luck, I'll see you again. Drogue out.” The admiral's face vanished from the screen.

  Erickson said, “Signal the alliance salvage ship and have her return to the alliance base. We'll be right behind them. I intend to stay and record the battle until it's over or we're forced to leave.”

  “Aye, ma'am,” Hoskins said. He turned and began passing orders to see the captain's wishes seen to. “Ma'am, we have a response from the alliance ship. They're returning to the alliance base.”

  “Very well,” Erickson said. She watched the tactical display as Drogue's formation pivoted along their course and with machine like precision and took out a formation of five destroyers. Just as things looked like they would get through, a trio of battlecruisers started their drives and began firing at the formation. She watched in helpless anger as first the Poniard was destroyed, then the Dirk and finally, the brave fall of Broadsword herself. The entire bridge crew watched silently along with their captain. Someone was crying softly behind Erickson, but she didn't care to find out who it was. She watched Rapier brake hard and maneuver to pick up most of the escape pods that were drifting along on their inertia imparted by the ships they'd escaped from.

  Rapier began thrusting forcefully along to the departure point, and Erickson felt a moment of joy before seeing a battleship, the most powerful crab unit, begin active maneuvers right in front of the Rapier.

  “Make triple copies of all sensor logs, Mister Thurman.” Erickson's voice quavered as she spoke. Hundreds of brave men and women were dying as they sat and watched, helpless to do anything about it.

  “Aye, ma'am,” Thurman said.

  The Rapier suddenly streaked, and the battleship vanished in a furious ball of discharging energy. Hoskins gasped and then said, “They used their FTL drive as a weapon.”

  Erickson shook her head, trying to clear it. “How many escape pods are still in the system?”

  “Looks like seventeen, ma'am,” Hoskins said.

  “Very well. Let's lurk here and see what the crabs do. We have plenty of distance and can go into FTL at any moment. If they leave the system, we can go in and pick them up.”

  The Saber watched as a single crab ship methodically moved in and began gathering up the escape pods. Then Erickson got the shock of a lifetime. Thousands of engine signatures lit off throughout the system. The entire crab fleet was in there. It was waiting for the tiny formation of human led ships.

  “Get a full sensor scan before we leave, Mister Hoskins,” Erickson said. “Let me know when we have a complete scan of the crab fleet. Be ready to engage FTL if there is even the possibility of us coming into engagement range of any of their ships.”

  “Aye, ma'am,” Hoskins said. The crew worked quietly for a few moments. Erickson reflected on what she'd just seen. The crabs were either foolish or arrogant concentrating their forces in this way. They'd brought hundreds of times the amount of firepower needed to defeat the offensive squadron. The fact that they'd let the offensive force maneuver so freely after arriving indicated they were trying to gather intelligence as much as pluck a thorn from their collective side. She was surprised at the speed with which so many ships had been put in place.

  Her thoughts were interrupted when Hoskins said, “Sensor scan complete. Head for the alliance base?”

  “Yes, commander. Engage FTL.”

  The Saber left L262 behind. The six day journey was tense and sad. Many of the crew knew those who had perished in L262 and even those who didn't were affected by the loss of so many fellow naval comrades. By the time Saber made its approach to the alliance base, the mood aboard was quite dark.

  Erickson came to the bridge ten minutes before Saber was scheduled to arrive. She relieved Hoskins, who was normally in command on second watch. “What's our status, Mister Hoskins?”

  “We're scheduled to arrive at the alliance base in ten minutes, ma'am. Sensors indicate some high level of ene
rgy activity in the system, but we can't definitively say what it's from.”

  “Very well, Commander. Send the ship to battle stations.”

  “Aye, ma'am.” Hoskins tapped his console, and an alarm began blaring from every loudspeaker in the ship. The crew was awakened and hustled to their assignments with time to spare for the arrival at the alliance base. “Battle stations manned and ready, Captain,” Hoskins said.

  “Very well. How far behind us is the alliance salvage ship?”

  “Roughly three hours. We made the transit a lot faster, but we stayed at L262 for a long time as well.”

  “When we enter comm range with the alliance base, send a signal that we've arrived along with the status of L262. The crabs have pulled a fast one on us, and I don't want to find out they've outmaneuvered us again. Besides, we might be able to persuade the salvage ship to go to Lashmere instead of the Xalcek system if the need arises.”

  “Arriving at the alliance base, now, captain,” Thurman reported.

  “Very well. Bring us out of FTL and begin active scans of the system.”

  The Saber dropped to sublight speed and swept with her active sensors.

  “Ma'am, we have multiple crab drive signatures, looks like the same force that was in L262. Near on a thousand point sources across the system. They appear concentrated at the base.”

  “Put the data on the tactical display, exec.”

  The screen displayed the massive fleet swarming around what had once been the alliance's forward base, the second most powerful defensive structure the alliance had in the field, second only to the Xalcek system itself. Hoskins and Erickson leaned forward and studied the display.

  “Looks like the closest hostile is more than an hour away, ma'am,” Hoskins said.

  “Agreed. Send a signal to the salvage ship and advise them they should change course to head to the Lashmere system.”

  “Aye, ma'am. Sending signal now.” There was a wait of several minutes before a response was received. “They insist on inspecting the situation themselves, and they will push on to the Xalcek system if the situation here is as bad as we are telling them.”

  “Fair enough. I guess they need to see it for themselves.” Erickson rested her chin in her hands for a moment while she considered the situation. “I wonder how they could have gotten here before us. They must have flown the exact same course as we flew. How could they have flown past us without being detected.”

  Thurman said, “I don't think it’s possible. The gravity displacement wave they would have produced moving such a large fleet, especially at such a high multiple of C, would have made them impossible to miss even with our sensor degradation while at FTL speeds.”

  “Which means this is not, in fact, the same fleet as was at L262, but a second fleet of nearly exactly the same size and composition.”

  “It's a rather unsettling thought, captain,” Thurman said. “What are we going to do?”

  We'll make our way to Lashmere. Set an initial course to Xalcek. Once we clear sensor range, slow and turn for Lashmere. I don't want the crabs to extrapolate the position of Lashmere in case they don't know where it's at yet.”

  “Aye, ma'am. Helm set course for Xalcek and engage FTL soonest.”

  “Aye, sir,” the helmsman said.

  The Saber flickered and vanished into a brilliant flash of light before the crabs had even noticed that they were observing the system. After two hours, Saber stopped and adjusted her course to make the twenty day flight to Lashmere.

  Marli Simmons had a huge grin on her face as she sat on the bridge of the Aeternum. Since her assignment to the initial design board for the new Lashmere Navy ships, she'd had a lot of time to sit and browse the information contained in the database. Her first sweep through the database had revealed most of the places she wanted to go, but the more she dug in the system, the more information she found and the more she was able to refine her goals. The original Terran Empire had held sway over thousands of star systems. Many of them had had advanced research facilities. Her goal to find the ones that were focused exclusively on the enhancement of the human lifespan was nearly complete. The empire had also held its cards close to its chest when it came to classified research. Simmons had to break through multiple lockout encryption routines and to create a fake set of login codes to allow her repeated access to the most classified sections of the database. Six locations were now on her primary target list. Originally, none of these star systems had appeared to have anything worth investigating, but the more she dug, the more pieces of the puzzle fell into place.

  Now all she needed was a plan that would allow her to get Lashmere Naval Command to send an expedition to these bases and facilities. The sooner they got their hands on this hyper advanced medical technology, the sooner the people of Lashmere, and more importantly, Marli herself, would live far longer than they did today. She finalized her data and got it wrapped up in her data pad. She would present her findings to Commodore Stokes as soon as she saw him.

  She walked out into the passageway outside the bridge and saw Halford Kri walking towards her. He paused when he saw her then broke into a huge grin and waved.

  He jogged up the passageway to her and said, “Marli, good to see you. How's things going?”

  Simmons cast about in her head for a reason to be here. She said, “Just getting some data in line for my initial proposal for new ship designs.”

  Kri peered at her for a moment before saying, “Marli, you're turning bright red. Are you okay?”

  Simmons wanted to slap herself. She knew she was a terrible liar. “I'm fine, just surprised to see you is all. I thought you were still assigned to Rampart.”

  “I am.” He looked Simmons up and down with his eyes. “You're looking good, Marli. How is your new assignment going?”

  “Thanks, Hal. We're trying to use the best of the available technology in the manufacturing ship's database to build a fleet to defend Lashmere.”

  “We can't build too many ships. We don't have enough people to get them fully crewed.”

  “We're looking at using high levels of automation for the ships. A ship the size of a destroyer could be crewed by as few as thirty people with the designs we're looking at now.”

  “Thirty? We need almost four hundred to crew a ship like the Bastion right now. It might be considered a destroyer compared to Rampart,” Kri observed.

  “Imagine being able to operate twelve or thirteen ships with the same crew. So far we're getting a lot of resistance from logistics. They still can't get their heads wrapped around how much these ships can be automated. We might manage to squeeze the crew down to sixty or so. That would provide a lot of redundancy of expertise and still maintain optimal fighting ability on board. So it would still be six or seven to one. A ship like Rampart, which has a crew of over a thousand could be maintained by a crew of less than two hundred. More than half of that would be Marines.”

  “That's remarkable, Marli. Let me change the subject for a moment. Have you seen Aden recently?”

  “Not since he reported back aboard Rampart. He was pretty wobbly getting out of the hospital. I tried to get him to use a wheelchair, but he wouldn't hear of it.”

  “The man has a stubborn streak. How are the two of you doing, by the way?”

  Simmons looked off into the distance for a moment before replying. “I think the attack is weighing on him. That damned agent, Cobb, has been after him since it happened. He thinks Aden might be complicit in the attack.”

  Kri snorted. “That's a load of crap. Aden would be my last suspect. All he ever talks about is how happy he is about being in the space navy. I don't think he's ever thought about anything else in his life.”

  Marli nodded in agreement. “I know the commodore's in his corner. Cobb might be putting his hand in a meat grinder, going after Aden.”

  “Well, it doesn't matter. No matter what silly crap they say, allegations aren't proof of misdeed. Cobb's grasping at straws. What he should be doing is
looking into the actual Karn separatist movement rather than trying to besmirch a good officer.”

  “Perhaps you should forward your comments to Lashmere Intelligence.”

  “Oh, yeah. I'm sure they'd love to hear my opinion. Could you imagine it?” Kri's voice took on an odd tone, imitating speaking through a comm unit. “Uh, pardon me, you intelligence types, but you're on completely the wrong track here. Go do your jobs as if you knew what you're doing.”

  Simmons laughed at the joke. Kri grinned at her. The pair had spent some fun times talking aboard the Rampart and on Aeternum. Marli considered Kri silently for a moment. His sense of humor was so appealing. Aden, for all his physical attractiveness, was so serious sometimes. He had a melancholy streak he could never really hide. Kri was almost carefree by comparison. Kri made her laugh every time they spent time together.

  Kri noticed her sudden scrutiny. She cleared her throat. “Well, I better get back to the design commission. It's nice seeing you, Hal. Let's grab dinner next time you're on the space dock.”

  “I'll send you a comm when I know what my schedule's going to be like. See you later, Marli.”

  “Bye.”

  Kri walked into the manufacturing center while Simmons headed to the lift down to the docking port. Her thoughts had become a jumble while talking to Kri. She blamed part of that on the fact he'd caught her doing something she wasn't technically authorized to do. Patting her pocket to reassure herself the data pad was still there, she stepped into the lift and punched the docking level.

  Her comm beeped, reminding her she had a design commission meeting in fifteen minutes. She was going to be a minute or two late, but that couldn't be helped at this point. She nearly ran, trying to make up the time, her heels clacking loudly on the hard surface of the space dock deckplates. A second lift took her to the conference level of the space dock. She walked through the door just as Admiral Brand was calling the meeting to order.