by Mark Wandrey
While keeping the ship’s sensors trained outwards, she spent a lot of time studying human history, helping them invent new things to make humanity more powerful, and watching dramas on TV.
She'd been watching one in particular, 'As Remus Orbits', the story of a handsome man named Chad and how he fought to become one of the Chosen. It was an impractical story, he was many years too old for the Trials. Just now he was professing his love for a woman who was not interested in him. He paid particular attention to her breasts, having difficulty keeping his eyes from them. They were quite large and bounced as she walked in the heavy gravity of Bellatrix.
Lilith looked down at her own breasts, such as they were. What was the human male’s fascination with mammary glands, anyway? They played no direct link in the reproductive act, at least that she'd read in technical journals. Like her mother who was small-busted, she was even more so. Gravity had a lot to do with how a woman’s body matured, and Lilith had only experienced it a couple times.
Where the TV woman’s bosoms stood out full and with a lot of cleavage, her own were quite tiny and pointed. What little fat that her body possessed was distributed to more important places. Lilith frowned and tried to use her hands to scoop them from the side and make them appear bigger. That was when she noticed that the sensor alarms had been trying to get her attention.
She cursed in the ancient language of the People and banished the show with a wave of her hand. Surrounded in the power of the Kaatan, she extended her awareness outward. In a split-second, her mind covered a full parsec of space.
Normally there was little to look at. The space that Bellatrix resided in was somewhat boring as space went. A minor pulsar and a small swarm of rare extra-solar comets was about it. But now there was the telltale evidence of a supra-luminal ship about to arrive. The distortion was unmistakable, as was its destination: Bellatrix. In a flash she brought the ship’s drives to life and opened the FTL radio link to her mother and told her what was happening.
“We'll be there in thirty minutes!”
“Do not attempt that,” Lilith warned; “the ship is already precipitating into normal space. It is inside the orbit of Valhalla and likely we are in their sensor range.”
Minu cursed and smacked a fist into her palm, luckily punching with the left. Aaron was up and next to her, a worried look on his face. She quickly brought him up to speed. “Are you ready to run?” she asked her daughter.
“I have moved to an orbit opposite the approaching ship, but a Kaatan warship does not run.”
“That may be true, but you are alone. You don't know what you’re facing; what if that ship is more powerful?”
Lilith snorted, something she'd picked up from her mother. She rather liked the expressive emoting without words. “Unlikely. But as you say, the drives are spun up, both gravitic and tactical. If they discover that I am hiding here, your world is in serious danger. The only logical course of action at that point is to destroy them before they can get word out.”
“Thanks, but you're more use to us alive than dead. Have you notified Chosen command?”
“Via data stream at the same time I called you. Hold one, data is starting to come in from passive sensors.”
The Kaatan sat still and quiet, settling its orbit over a massive impact crater on the outside face of Romulus. The natural energy-absorbing qualities of the crater added to the Kaatan's own stealth features to make it all but completely disappear. She knew they would only see her if they looked directly at her. So the important question was, who were they, and why were they here?
As the new arrival passed by the rings of Valhalla, it presented Lilith with a number of good images. The design was completely unlike the amalgamated messes of the T'Chillen capital ships. This was a sleek flying cylinder, its surface only interrupted in places by weapons blisters, sensor arrays, and docking bays. The front suggested massive shield systems while the aft contained powerful drives. The T'Chillen battleships were sledgehammers, this was a delicate foil. Delicate, but deadly.
The new ship swept the system efficiently with its sensor beams, wave after wave of multi-spectral energy prodding here and there. Some reflected data back, others illuminated worlds and belts so they were more visible to other passive sensors. Nothing about the sweep spoke of subtlety.
Lilith was certain this visitor had no idea she was here. One shipkiller launched on low power would catch it completely unaware. And in that moment she considered destroying it. One devastatingly swift attack and it would all be over. Once stunned it wouldn't matter how powerful those shields were; a full spread of six sub-fusion shipkillers would turn it into a glowing ball of plasma in a most efficient manner.
Ultimately it was curiosity that stayed her hand. The ship wasn't here for war, it presented a docile front. And it wasn't here for a stealthy reconnaissance, it was putting out enough radiation to nuke a sheep at a hundred kilometers. So what was it doing here?
As it drifted deeper into the Bellatrix star system, Lilith consulted her files. To her surprise, the answer came quickly.
“It is a Tog ship,” Lilith announced.
“What? The Tog have ships too? Why didn't you tell me that?”
“Well, I guess it’s a language barrier. All my files are in the language of the People. Only Pip has some command of it, rudimentary as it is, he often relies on me to translate. The Tog aren't known by that name to the People, they are the P'ing.”
“That's interesting,” Minu said. That just happened to be the name of the highest ranking Tog they dealt with. Many humans thought of her as the leader of the species, but Minu knew she was more like a council member on a ruling board. “How long have the Tog been around?”
“As long as the People. Very old.”
“How many other species still in existence have starships?”
“I cannot say. However, I will endeavor to translate as many existing species as possible, now that we are aware that more than one possess starships.”
If her daughter’s data proved accurate, and there was no reason to doubt her, that made the count two higher order species with working ships. Minu had a sinking feeling that she now knew the price of admission to that club.
Since she'd first starting learning about the Concordia, and before from stories told by her father, she'd believed spaceships a thing of the past. The story was they'd been abandoned as too expensive or impractical eons ago. Yet here was evidence that ancient species held onto those ships, and still used them. But did that also mean the T'Chillen had been around for eons as well? How could such a hostile species be so long lived in the Concordia without having learned to play well with its neighbors?
The commonly held belief was that species came and went, some ascending to the level of 'higher order' before eventually fading once more into obscurity. Maybe that was completely wrong.
“What is the Tog ship doing?”
“Just scanning now.”
“Can you tell what it’s interested in?”
Lilith contemplated the myriad sensor data coming in from the ship around her, the Kaatan gently sniffing the flavor and direction of emission from the other ship millions of kilometers away. It was indeed indicating particular interest. “Initially it swept the entire star system, now it is spending a lot of time analyzing the sun.”
“Can you tell what for?”
“Not without revealing my presence.”
“Don't do that.”
“I have no intention… just yet anyway.” Lilith didn't say the last part of that aloud.
“Is there—”
“Just a moment,” Lilith interrupted, “the ship is changing course.” She observed as it quickly orbited Valhalla and gained a much less obscured look of Bellatrix itself, and its two moons. “They are scanning our vicinity much more intensely.”
Down on Remus, Minu held her breath, worried what would happen if they detected the Kaatan in its hidden orbit. Would they attack? Would they come closer to investigate?
>
Much more worrisome was what would Lilith do in that situation? Regardless of her much improved demeanor towards her fellow humans, she was still a dangerous person in her ship, which she regarded as part adoptive parent, part home, part suit of medieval armor.
“Any idea what it is looking at specifically?”
“Yes. You. The settlements on Remus are under intense scrutiny right now.”
Minu considered telling Var'at to prepare for evacuation, then decided against it. She-knew that from Valhalla to Bellatrix was only minutes in one of the powerful gravity driven starships. It took the four shuttles from the Kaatan almost nine months of weekly flights to build, supply, and staff the settlements.
At best she could cram half the Rasa on this one platform into her shuttle, thereby also rendering it so overloaded that it would be easy prey for an attack. If the ship decided to attack the settlements, could Minu even bring herself to leave them alone to die? Save her own life and abandon the faithful Rasa allies? Luckily, she didn't have to answer that question.
“The ship is changing course,” Lilith reported; “to head out of the system.”
“Do you know where it's going?”
“I will report when I return.”
“Lilith! Don't follow that ship!”
“I thought we'd had this discussion and resolved my status long ago.”
“This is different; we don't know about the Tog and these ships! We don't know if they're even piloted by Tog, maybe some other species salvaged them.”
“Unlikely considering their very suspicious presence in your star system.”
“Regardless, you can't risk yourself.”
“Myself, or my ship.”
“Lilith, don't be that way.”
“I will be back.” And with that, Lilith terminated the connection.
“What happened?” Aaron asked.
“She's going after the Tog ship.”
The Kaatan came alive in a flash as soon as the Tog ship made the leap to supra-luminal travel. In seconds, full power was being channeled to propulsion. Lilith oriented the ship and shoved off the big moon's appreciable gravity well, leaping from standing still to thousands of kilometers per second in an instant.
It was one of the tactical advantages the Kaatan possessed, their ability to neutralize thousands of gravities of force while performing unbelievable maneuvers. The move delivered megatons of force to the moon. Even diffused across half its surface, a series of quakes rocked the planet. These facts didn't concern Lilith; the moon’s gravity well was just a means to an end. She'd analyze the orbit when she returned, to be sure no real damage was done.
She subscribed a half million kilometer arc, clearing the wider gravity well of Bellatrix and skirting the even more massive well of Vegas. All the while, Lilith recorded sensor data at a furious pace.
As her training dictated, she was looking for any nasty surprises left behind. Detection webs, gravitic mines, high energy traces indicating the ship was perhaps damaged in some way were just a few of the things she was looking for. In the five minutes since she'd boosted away from Romulus, Lilith passed within a hundred thousand kilometers of where the Tog ship scanned Remus. A few final sensor readings completed, she jumped past the light speed barrier in hot pursuit of the other ship.
There was no way to look at or scan a ship moving faster than the speed of light. You could, however, 'feel' its passage or sense the massive gravity shockwave before one arrived in your system.
That latter fact was what made the tactical drive so dangerous. There was no shock wave, just a warship appearing next to your fleet, or your world. The Kaatan would rain death on its enemies, and then use the same drive to blink away, leaving its adversaries no way to pursue, or even know where its harasser had gone off to.
Lilith quickly realized as the Kaatan sniffed out the path of the other ship and fell into course that this other ship was quite stealthy. She'd planned to follow closely to avoid losing her quarry, but the other ship accelerated to five thousand times the speed of light in less than a minute, something she wasn't capable of, and left an almost undetectable gravity trail.
She scoured her records on the ancient P'ing ships and found the information she was looking for. It was a stealth reconnaissance frigate; not much of a combat vessel, but difficult to corner and force into a confrontation. The Kaatan was more than a match for it in battle, but not in speed and stealth.
After a day at maximum speed, she was forced to admit it was hopeless. The trace of the other ship was almost undetectable, and if she considered, she risked having her much more noticeable gravity wave detected, which meant she must break off pursuit. Besides, now almost thirteen light-years from Bellatrix, she was farther afield than she'd chosen to go since arriving. With no further consideration, she dropped into normal space, came about, and jumped back to supra-luminal speed to return to Bellatrix. A cylindrical Tog ship watched from a light-year distant as the Kaatan turned around and headed back to Bellatrix. Its sensors tasted the nature of the other ship’s emissions and compared them to ancient records. Then, once the Kaatan was long gone, it set a new course and shot away.
Chapter 4
Julast 15th, 533 AE
Chosen Headquarters, Steven's Pass, Bellatrix
“What do you mean another starship?”
Minu looked across the desk at her second-least favorite person on Bellatrix and tried to control her anger. “Another starship other than the Kaatan.”
She pronounced the words with deliberate slowness, enjoying the way Jacob's face began to turn red. Minu wore her uniform, something she hadn't done in months. It was a calculated move and she crossed her legs, interweaving fingers and putting them over her knees. The two golden stars twinkled there to remind Jacob that she was beyond his reach now in almost every way. It took the entire council to mess with a council member.
“I meant, whose ship? Another like that one up there already, or like the ones she destroyed?”
A long time ago he'd stopped trying to refer to the Kaatan as belonging to him or the Chosen. The last time he'd tried to insist Lilith perform a mission for him, she'd left on a month long 'research mission'. When she'd returned she had reminded him that she was in control of the ship, and that he should remember his manners lest her next mission be at only a few hundred times the speed of light. He'd probably be an old man by the time she returned in that scenario.
“That's the interesting part. This ship is of Tog design.”
“What?”
Minu resisted the urge to tweak Jacob’s nose yet again. “Lilith identified it as being made by the Tog around the same time as her ship was built.”
“So that makes two current species with starships?”
“Both higher order species.”
“I wonder how many others are similarly equipped.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Minu didn't bother describing the issue with translating the Tog into their original name. She wanted some of her own face time to work on that one. “I'm intending to go to Herdhome and see what I can find out.”
Jacob cradled his chin in a hand and looked at her, no doubt weighing the benefits of her doing anything useful against finding an answer. He'd buttoned her up effectively for the last six years, and not having to look at her or deal with her attitude on a daily basis was worth taking her incredible intellect and problem solving ability off the table. But if there were other starships out there, they were potentially as dangerous, or more so than the Kaatan. He needed that information.
“Okay, that sounds like a good plan. Officially you are still the Tog liaison to Bellatrix. We'll word a formal request for information.” Minu smiled slightly and nodded, which was the full extent to which she’d grant him a victory for approving what she intended to do anyway. “But I want a full report.”
“Understood.”
Jacob looked like he was going to be ill. He seemed to be forcing himself to do something he didn't want to do. “Gregg Larson
tells me the quality of recruits he's getting for the Rangers is better every year.”
Minu looked at him, making the man actually say it.
“I admit I considered the War College of yours a complete waste of time. I appear to have been wrong. Every one of the best are all your students. If not graduates, then they've at least been part of the RCTP your graduates set up in their local schools.”
“Thank you. The Reserve Chosen Training Program was an idea of my father’s, I just extended it to encompass a much wider spectrum of recruit when the Rangers came on line.”
“Can the university go without you?”
“We're in summer break right now. Besides, I don't teach day to day classes any more. I mostly lecture. We've sent you a couple invitations to commencements. Having the First among the Chosen give the commencement speech would mean a lot.” If not to me, she thought.
“I will make time this year. Have your assistant, Ariana isn't it? Have her send to my scheduler and we'll make it happen.”
“She's having another baby, but she'll be back by then.”
“I'm sorry about what happened to your husband. He was lucky to survive.”
“Thank you.” Minu smiled at his clumsy change of subject. “Well, I think two successes is more than we could hope for, so I'll get to work.” She stood and turned towards the door.
“Why do you hate me so much?”
“Because you're an asshole, always have been.” Jacob's face turned bright red. “You've done everything you could to hold me back from day one. I'd never be wearing two stars if I hadn’t broken every rule in the book, and even then the council dragged you kicking and screaming to that ceremony.”