Setta’s sister Prema asked, “So what is your first name, Centurion? I’ve been expecting Smriti to start calling you by it but it’s always been Hiroshi in her letters.”
“It is my first name,” he answered. “I don’t have a family name.”
“How do they tell you from all the other Hiroshis then?” asked her father.
“My full name is Hiroshi, son of Nobunaga, of Moon Shining on Still Water.”
“Very poetic. Is that . . . traditional on Shishi?” said Mr. Setta.
“My family is in the Shogunate Revival, so it’s our tradition. But there’s a lot of other traditions on Shishi.”
“Don’t press the boy, Jagat,” broke in Mrs. Setta. “Everybody, sit, sit.”
Dinner was as spicy as Setta expected. Hiroshi didn’t flinch. The restaurant crawl she’d taken him on had paid off.
After some getting-acquainted chat Setta’s younger brother asked, “What do you think of this alliance the Fusion is pushing?”
“Kalraj, no politics,” said his father.
“It’s all right,” said Hiroshi. “I’m all for it. The Betrayers are dangerous. If we can smash them we can all breathe easier. Plus we won’t have to feed all those prisoners any more.”
“I don’t know about getting our boys killed for Demeter,” said Mr. Setta. “That’s a long way from here.”
“Not that far. We’ve made the trip. We were there when Demeter fell. People were killed in horrible ways, ground into slurry. That needs to be kept as far from here as we can.” Hiroshi added, “Sorry, it was a rough time,” to apologize to the family for his intensity.
Setta reached under the table to squeeze his hand.
“I understand that,” said Kalraj, “but how can we be sure the Fusion won’t betray us? Our ships would be in their space and surrounded.”
Hiroshi shrugged. “They could. And then there’d be a few surviving ships, pissed off, armed with missiles, and right next to their planets. At full acceleration a single missile can devastate a whole city.”
Mr. Setta let out a deep breath. “Even at their worst the Fusion Navy never launched indiscriminate bombardments on us. Doing that would . . . well, I don’t think we’d ever have peace after doing something like that.”
“We don’t need to do it. We just need them to be afraid of it.”
Setta said teasingly, “The Skipper’s being a bad influence on you.”
“She’s not that bad,” replied Hiroshi.
“How would you describe her?” asked Prema.
Setta cut in before her boyfriend could answer. “Nasty, brutish, and short. But she’s kept the ship in one piece through many fights.”
“Too many fights, if you ask me,” said her mother. “I hope you don’t wind up doing something dangerous in this offensive against the Betrayers.”
Hiroshi put his hand on Setta’s shoulder. He said, “Ma’am, we’re on a freighter. The fleet’s on the offensive this time. We’ll be in the rear with supplies. Smriti will be perfectly safe.”
Chapter Fourteen: Offensive
Demeter System, acceleration 0 m/s2
The stars shifted as Joshua Chamberlain passed through the gate. Demeter’s sun appeared in the center of the bridge dome.
“Feels awfully lonely,” muttered Hiroshi. Mthembu nodded.
Mitchie chuckled. She’d been in Betrayer-owned space before. She drew comfort from knowing that hundreds of ships waited to join them as soon as she gave the word. But being the only living humans for light-years around was lonely.
The junior member of the bridge crew started taking sights.
To pass the time Mitchie fiddled with the full spectrum receiver. The constant chatter of human life was gone. She couldn’t even find a distress call from some besieged outpost. The only traffic was irregular bursts of high-frequency noise. She presumed they were the AI nodes talking among themselves in compressed data.
“Good position, Skipper,” said Mthembu. He moved to the plotting table to lay out a course toward the gate back to Coatlicue. The plan was to park a short distance from the gate, just far enough for a steady burn to get them up to minimum safe transition velocity, then unleash the infoweapon on the AI fleet.
Mitchie didn’t have much hope of it working. Gaia’s Hand must have survived the infoweapon if Waja had been reduced to smashing it. The Swakop AI had to be even more divergent from human processing architectures.
They were only doing this because the Fusion admirals had insisted on the mystery weapon that devastated their Navy being the first used against the Betrayers. It was an easy concession for the DCC. If something went wrong they’d only lose one cheap ship with less than a dozen crew.
Mthembu announced the course vectors. Hiroshi made an acceleration warning and lit the torch. A few radar pings confirmed no ships were loitering by the gate.
When they flipped to decelerate Mitchie scanned the stars for any sign of AI ships. None appeared until Hiroshi cut thrust. Then seven stars lit as one.
Mitchie aimed the telescope at them. Bright blue circles with a black dot in the center. Torchships headed straight for Joshua Chamberlain. She commed Setta. “Get the antenna deployed. We have customers.”
Setta and her two techs set a record getting the oversized antenna out through the cargo hatch. The power up checks went almost as fast. She reported, “Entropy ready, ma’am.”
Mitchie and Hiroshi took turns aligning the beam with each oncoming ship. He’d learned to maneuver the clumsy freighter with precision, but still kept wasting fuel with overcorrections. His commander didn’t complain. She just demonstrated how careful timing of burns could do the job with less time and less fuel.
Unlike their Fusion Navy victims the AI ships kept coming.
“Could the beam alignment be off?” wondered Hiroshi.
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” said Mitchie. “That whole set-up is a kludge. Trace expanding circles around your current target.”
Mthembu put the telescope back in its clip. “They’re another order of magnitude brighter.” He checked the plot and worked his slide rule. “If they don’t turn over they’ll be in laser range in fifty minutes.”
Mitchie did some mental math. “Right. Hiroshi, you have five more minutes. If we don’t get a kill by then secure maneuvering.” She switched to Setta’s comm. “Are you running at full power?”
“Yes’m,” replied the petty officer.
“We haven’t seen any effect on them. As soon as we stop maneuvering pack it up and secure for acceleration.”
“Aye-aye.”
When the chronometer clicked to the deadline Hiroshi hissed in frustration. A quick thruster burn took the spin off the ship. The edge of the antenna, barely visible from the bridge dome, folded in.
Another set of ships lit their torches, well behind the ones closing in.
As soon as Setta reported her team secure Hiroshi flipped the ship around and lit Joshua Chamberlain’s torch. Twenty-five gravs pressed everyone into their couches hard.
A missile could still reach them before they jumped. Their own plume would hide the attack until it hit. Mitchie made herself breathe normally as they approached the gate.
Moments after Coatlicue’s sun appeared a BDF cruiser challenged them. Mthembu sent the password.
“Welcome back, Jay See,” said the cruiser. “What’s the word?”
Mitchie lifted her mike. “The word is canal. Repeat, canal.”
“Roger. Relaying canal.”
In twelve minutes the message would reach the courier waiting at the Argo gate. In less than an hour the ships lined up in two systems would start jumping to Demeter, warned that the enemy was alert and invulnerable to the Disconnect superweapon.
“That was a waste of time,” complained Mthembu.
You’re alive, kid. Don’t whine, thought Mitchie.
Demeter System, acceleration 0 m/s2
The people coming through the airlock were familiar to Mitchie: Pete, Chetty, and one of
Chu’s intelligence analysts. She welcomed the first two warmly and the last politely. “So what’s this mission about?
“Our first look at some enemy gear,” said Chetty. He was over his grudge, or at least professional enough to not let it show. “The Fuzies disabled it and sent some Marines aboard to clear the bots. They can’t figure out what it is so it’s our turn. Here’s the coordinates.”
Mitchie took the hardcopy he handed her. “Huh. On the way to the Swakop gate.” She passed it to Hiroshi. “Get us there.” Taxi duty would be more fun than the supply runs they’d been doing.
He saluted to impress the guests and kicked off to the main deck hatch.
Mitchie turned to Chetty. “Why were we bothering with a fleeing enemy?”
“Target of opportunity,” he said. “The Betrayer’s been sending a steady stream of big ships to Swakop. It was going on before we returned. When we sent some scouts to check them out the AI directed warships to block them. We sent cruisers to take out the blockers. More were diverted. It’s been clumsy about it, too. Pure sacrifice-play stuff. We’ve actually destroyed more of their ships than we lost. Usually we lose three to take two at best.”
Pete said, “It’s very out of character for Swakop. We’ve never achieved tactical superiority on the advance to the planet. It always withdraws units before we can take advantage of positioning. Except for these ships. It’s sacrificed six warships to let one escape. I hypothesize that they must be closely linked to the AI’s primary order.”
“Is it trying to retake the ship?” asked Mitchie.
“No,” Chetty answered. “Puzzling given how hard it fought to protect it.”
“We’ll know more in two days. It’s almost dinner time here. Would you care to join us?”
***
The Marines named the ship “Target Theta.” Pete and Chetty watched from the bridge as Mitchie flew a circle around it. She thought it looked like a three-scoop ice cream cone after the cone was blown off by precision directed energy weapons.
Chetty said, “They’re pressure vessels. Sturdy ones. You can see on the rear one where shrapnel from the torch explosion dented it without penetrating. No provisions for aerodynamic maneuvering.”
Pete grimaced, impatient to look at the contents.
The other side of Theta had no more revelations.
“All right, let’s suit up and go inside,” said Mitchie. “Hiroshi, you have the con. Please line up with the Marine’s breaching lock.”
***
A Fusion Marine Senior Lieutenant waited inside the temporary airlock. Mitchie saluted him. “Commander Michigan Long with party of four. Permission to come aboard?”
Startlement delayed his response a moment. “The—uh, yes. Welcome to Target Theta, ma’am.”
As Guo came through the hatch next she asked, “Couldn’t you get the regular airlock working?”
“There is no airlock ma’am. Or hatch. Or door. Or easily split seam. It’s a solid shell.”
“That makes sense if this is a one trip vessel,” said Guo, taking off his helmet. “We didn’t see any of them coming back. It may just be dismantled at the destination.”
Mitchie looked around. A pile of broken bots and smaller pieces was netted against the hull. The sphere was filled with black blocks. At first glance she thought of coffins but they were bigger than that. Metal racks held them spaced apart so each had at least one side exposed to an aisle.
When everyone was inside the lieutenant gave his safety talk. “There’s oxygen in here, but it’s what was sealed up with the hull when they built it on Demeter. There’s no replacement and no circulation. Watch your air monitors. Don’t take your suit off. Everyone will have a Marine escort at all times.”
The squad of Marines was the residual left after the assault force had pulled out. Noticing that several were old for the ranks they wore Mitchie wondered if some intel types had been brought in to eavesdrop. Fine by me. Pete might subvert a couple.
With that Pete was unleashed. Chu’s analyst and the oldest Marine followed him. He slapped his datasheet against the nearest block and pulled up a magnified view.
Chetty disappeared into the labyrinth of blocks. Mitchie decided to watch Pete’s show.
“It’s a data storage medium,” he proclaimed after a few minutes. “Incredibly high density. Carbon crystals with data marked by impurities and irregularities in the bonds. Brittle. The air may be for thermal stability.”
“Can you read it?” demanded the analyst.
“Eventually, of course. We’ll need to understand the interface first.”
Guo examined the other faces of the block. “There’s an array of metal contacts here. Hmmm. I wonder how standardized its designs are?”
He pushed over to the net of robot debris and rooted through the pile. A matching grid came off an arm. Other bots donated cables. Half an hour’s work with his toolkit produced a piece of hardware that could connect the black block to a datasheet.
Pete accepted it with effusive thanks, then went silent as he began trying to decode the Betrayer’s data.
Mitchie went to check on Chetty. He and his bored Marine shadow were returning from the aft end. “All the same,” he reported.
“So what would Swakop want with data from Demeter? And why send it by ship?” she asked.
“For this much data a ship makes sense. Better data rate than lasercomm to a jump courier.”
“But what is it?” said Mitchie. “I’ve seen the back-up cubes they made of Demeter’s planetary archive. It wouldn’t fill one of these ships.”
“Possibly Swakop’s working on a calculation and wanted Demeter to do part of it that exceeded its capacity. These are the results.”
“Could be. But this is a lot of work to get more processing power.”
Lunchtime came without Pete coming up for air. Setta delivered BDF-issue cold rations, which the Marines found a refreshing change.
A few hours later Pete proclaimed “Eureka!” He had everyone’s full attention. “It’s a physical object record.”
“What kind?” asked Mitchie.
“Many kinds. If there’s a pattern I can’t see it.” Pete patted his datasheet. “This poor little thing can only hold a small piece of it at a time. But it’s clear what’s most common.” Pete held up his datasheet and sketched a large circle with small ones attached on top left and right.
“It’s a Disney media?” asked Mitchie.
“No, no, it’s a water molecule. But in such detail. It has its attitude in 3D space, temperature effects on the bonds, even a fractal surface for the location probability distribution of each electron.” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine what would need such detail on a simple water molecule.”
Chetty said, “It could be a record of one instant in a chemical reaction simulation.”
“Yes, that’s something parallelizable,” said Pete.
“All this, for chemistry,” said Mitchie.
“That’s just one block,” said Guo. “The others could have anything in them.”
Pete agreed. “Yes. And this one might not be all chemistry. I’ve just been poking around at random. To really explore it I’ll need to take the block back to Aurora.” He’d been given a laboratory on the converted passenger liner hauling researchers, politicians, and other civilian hangers-on in the wake of the allied fleet.
“Is that safe?” demanded the Marine officer.
“Dr. Smith is fully proficient in data isolation protocols,” snapped Mitchie.
“I might be able to scrounge up enough memory to read an entire block. That’d let me index it and move on to the next.” Pete turned to Mitchie. “How many can we bring back?”
“A run to Aurora wouldn’t be mass-limited, just volume. We can fit scores of these in the hold. Wait . . . is the torch on this thing repairable?”
Guo and Chetty shook their heads together. “It’s scrap,” said the mechanic.
“Then we’ll have to load them. Can’t bring the whol
e ship back. The tugs are busy dealing with battle damage,” she said.
The Marine offered to have his troops blow open a hatch in the hull.
“No!” said Pete. “They’re far too fragile to survive explosive decompression.”
His suggestion to build a full-pressure tunnel to the Joshua Chamberlain wasn’t practical. The compromise was a small hole drilled in the data ship’s hull to slowly let the air out. Guo went back to his ship to rig the crane lines for hauling the cargo out.
A few minutes after the hole started whistling a massive CLANG shook the ship. Chetty and a pair of Marines bounced off to investigate. He returned to report, “An airtight door just closed this sphere off from the next. I’m glad we didn’t have anyone wandering around. It came down like an axe.”
Before long Mitchie’s ears were popping. The men’s stubborn refusal to be the first to close their helmets amused her. Once she closed hers the rest followed in less than a minute.
When the air pressure was down by a third a crack appeared in Pete’s pet block with an audible snap. “Plug it! Plug it!” he yelled.
A marine slapped his glove across the hole, silencing the whistle. In the sudden quiet they could hear more snaps and pops. Most of the blocks showed spreading cracks.
“Oh, God,” moaned Pete. “They’re under so much stress they need compression to stay stable.”
The cracking grew louder, thunderstorm-like in intensity. Flakes flew off the surface of blocks and ricocheted around the labyrinth. Then the storm subsided, trailing off with a last few rattles. Like popcorn, thought Mitchie.
“Do you want to bring some pieces back?” asked Chu’s analyst.
“Why?” said Pete. “The data’s destroyed. The molecules reverted to their blank state when the stress came off. If we could get some from the other sphere into a pressure vessel . . . no, then we’d lose the rest. I’ll have to bring all my gear here. If I can get the admiralty to authorize it.” He didn’t sound hopeful.
Torchship Pilot Page 31