Rumor also had it that the Alliance was assembling a great fleet to protect the route . . .
Liberty Ships
The center of gravity of a liberty ship is the singularity, the pinpoint black hole that powers the ship and also serves as the focus for its hyperstate nodule. The singularity masses as much as a small moon and can be accurately located by even a low-power gravity wave scanner out to a distance of several light hours.
The singularity is held in place by a singularity bottle, a spherical magnetic cage three stories high; this is the ship’s engine room. Three hyperstate fluctuators are focused on the singularity; one from above, one from either side. They are spaced 120 degrees apart. The fluctuators extend out through the hull of the ship and into three massive spines that give the starship its characteristic spiky look. The length of the fluctuators is a function of the size of the ship; it is necessary for precise focusing of the projected hyperstate bubble around the vessel. Hyperstate is also known as irrational space, producing the oft-quoted cliché, “To go faster than light, first you have to be irrational.”*
For sublight acceleration and deceleration, the liberty ship has three mass-drivers mounted around her hull. A mass-driver is a long thin tube, lined with superconducting magnetic rings. Ions are introduced at one end, accelerated to near-lightspeed, and shot out the opposite end, producing the necessary thrust. The direction of particle acceleration can also be reversed for braking maneuvers. While the operation of the mass-drivers is not as easily detectable as that of the singularity stardrive, the vessel’s wake of accelerated ions can be detected by a ship with sophisticated scanning gear.
Aft of the engine room, you will find crew’s quarters, storage areas, aft torpedo bay, cargo bays, and the internal shuttle bay. The shuttle bay is equipped to function as a cargo lock; but there are also smaller airlocks at the stern of the vessel. A liberty ship usually carries two shuttles and occasionally a captain’s gig. Used as lifeboats, the shuttles can carry ten individuals each; fifty if they are put into short-term hibernation.
Forward of the engine room, are officers’ quarters on the top deck, the ship’s brain and main mess room on the second deck, and the keel and equipment storage bays on the bottom level. Forward of that is the Operations complex. This is built around a large U-shaped Operations deck; the forward half of which is a sophisticated viewer. At the rear of the Operations deck is the Bridge, a high, railed platform overlooking everything. Directly underneath the Bridge is the Operations bay, where the ship’s autonomic functions are maintained.
Forward of the Operations complex are more crew’s quarters, sick bay, the weapons shop, forward torpedo bay, forward access and airlock. Running the length of the ship is the keel, a utility corridor which also functions as the ship’s primary channel for cables, ducts, and optical fibers.
On the hull of the ship, you will find three large arrays of scanners, detectors, cameras, and other sensory apparatus. There are also twelve arrays of disruptor-beam projectors. The ship is double-hulled, with both hulls required to maintain 99% or better atmospheric integrity. Both hulls are also internally and externally shielded against particle-beam weapons. Class V magnetic shields are standard on most liberty ships, although most captains upgrade to Class VII or better whenever the equipment is available.
The liberty ship has a multiple-redundancy, optical nervous system. Autonomic functions are maintained by an array of Systems Analysis boxes. Higher-brain functions are handled by one or more HARLIE series synthesized-consciousness modules. The HARLIE series has been designed to be more anthropomorphic than other constructed identities, and therefore tends to perceive the starship as its own body; this produces a measurable increase in the unit’s survival motivation.
Standard crew on a liberty ship is 120 persons.
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*The singularity itself is tended by the “Black Hole Gang,” generally an insular crew with their own jargon and mystique. On most ships, the singularity team regard themselves as the masters of a particularly arcane and esoteric discipline; they do not casually welcome outsiders to their domain. Relationships with the “Front Office,” their name for the Bridge crew, are occasionally strained.
The LS-1187
The LS-1187 was three years old and had not yet earned a name.
She was a destroyer-class starship, a liberty ship, one of many. On her side, she wore the flag of New America: thirteen horizontal stripes, alternating red and white, and a dark blue field showing seven white circles around a single bright star.
The liberty ships came off the line one every eleven days. There were seven assembly lines building ships. This one was like all the rest; small and desperate, fitted with just enough equipment to make her survivable, and sent as rapidly as possible out toward the frontier. It would be up to her port of assignment to install her secondary fittings, internal amenities, auxiliary systems, and weaponry—whatever might be necessary for her local duties.
The LS-1187 had not yet earned her name because she had not yet “bloodied her sword.” Until she did, she would remain only a number.
She was a lean ship: a dark arrow, three hundred meters long. Two thirds of the way back along her hull, three sharp fins projected out and forward. These were her fluctuator spines. The end of each one culminated in a bulbous stardrive lens.
Her cruising speed was subluminal, but the realized velocity of her hyperstate envelope was 750 times the speed of light.
Her orders were the simplest possible: a time, a location, and a vector.
Translation: Proceed to The Deep Rift. Arrive at a specified here at a specified now, pointed in a particular direction and traveling at a particular speed. Don’t be followed. Do all this and you will be part of the Grand Convoy of a thousand ships: a thousand separate vessels all arriving at their respective places in formation at the same moment.
It was a daring gamble, but if it worked . . . the outworlds would have the protection they needed against the raids of the marauders.
If it failed . . .
Admiral Wendayne stood on the Bridge of The Moral Victory and frowned. He was a stout man, short and stocky and solid. He was also bald and very sour-looking. He was studying a holographic display of the entire convoy as it came together.
He should have been proud; the idea of the Grand Convoy had been his; but he wasn’t proud. He was annoyed. He hadn’t been given half the ship strength he felt he needed; and too many of the ships assigned to the convoy were the smaller liberty ships, untried and untested. Too many of them had numbers instead of names. Nothing ever worked out as planned.
An aide stepped up to the admiral then. “The LS-1187 has joined the convoy.”
Admiral Wendayne was underwhelmed. “Hmp.” Then he realized that the aide was waiting for a response. “All right. Welcome them.”
The aide, a young man, turned to a console and murmured a command to IRMA, the ship’s computer. A screen on the console lit up with a set of official-looking codes, followed by the crest of the fleet, and finally by the image of the admiral. “Greetings—Captain Lowell and the crew of the LS-1187—your participation in this operation represents a vital contribution to the security of the Alliance. On behalf of the—”
The message was encoded, translated into a series of pulses, and channeled to the modulators of the flagship’s hyperstate envelope. The envelope shimmered. Every ship within scanning range of the flagship’s envelope could see the shimmer of her hyperstate bubble, but only those with the appropriate codes would be able to translate the shimmer into a message. All of the Alliance codes were one-time cyphers, to be used only once and then never again.
Aboard the LS-1187, the message was translated and played as it came in. Its header codes identified it as a standard greeting signal, not requiring acknowledgment.
“—Admiralty, let me thank you, and let me welcome you to the Combined Allied Star Force special operations at Marathon. You may now open up your sealed orders. A
gain, welcome aboard.”
Captain Sam Lowell nodded wryly at the image of the admiral. He was an older man, almost kindly-looking. Beside him on the Bridge stood Jonathan Thomas Korie, his executive officer. Korie looked preoccupied; he was listening to something on his headset. Now he frowned. He turned and looked down toward the large, elliptical, holographic display table in the center of the Operations deck. The Bridge—that part of the ship that was actually called the Bridge—was a high-railed platform at the rear of the Ops deck. There were command chairs there and two exit doors, one on either side. The Bridge overlooked the whole chamber; Korie could oversee the duties of all eight officers at the consoles beneath them.
The entire front half of the Ops deck was a giant curving screen that wrapped around half the chamber and most of the ceiling as well. At any given moment, it was like standing under an open sky, a great panoramic window onto the void. At the moment, the forward image was a simulated view of the distant stars, with shadowy grid lines superimposed over them; the starship seemed to be moving up through a three-dimensional framework, with a delimiter every five light-minutes.
Korie glanced over as Captain Lowell said, “All right, I’ve heard enough.” He reached over and tapped the message off. To Korie’s questioning look, he explained, “I’ve heard this speech before. And you’ll hear it enough times too when you’re a captain. You’ll learn the whole damn repertoire.”
Captain Lowell took a dark envelope out of his tunic and carefully broke the seal. He removed three sheets of gray paper, unfolded them and scanned them quickly, passing them to Korie as he finished each one.
“Mm,” said Korie. “No surprises here.”
“Did you expect any?”
Korie shook his head. Captain Lowell unclipped a hand-mike from his belt. His voice was amplified throughout the ship. “This is the captain speaking. We are seven point five light-years from Marathon. We’ve taken up our assigned position in the convoy and we’ve been officially welcomed by Admiral Wendayne. From this point on, we’ll be operating at full alert.”
There were audible groans across the operations room—not very loud, but loud enough for Korie to look annoyed and Captain Lowell to look amused.
The captain continued. “All right, can the chatter. The admiral thinks there’s a good chance of engaging the enemy here. Personally, I don’t think so, but maybe the admiral knows something I don’t. That’s why he’s an admiral and you’re not. So everybody, just stay on your toes. That is all.”
As he clipped the mike back to his belt, Captain Lowell looked to his executive officer. “Do you understand why I did that?”
“I think so.”
“This ship is going to be yours very soon. I want you to take care of her. She’s a proud ship.” He nodded toward the Bridge crew. “It’s all about trust. You have to be straight with them, Mr. Korie. Never ever lie to your crew.”
“I promise you, sir. I never will.”
“Keep that promise and you’ll be a good captain,” Lowell said. “I’ve never lied to this crew and I have nothing to be ashamed of.” Wistfully, he added, “I just wish . . .”
“. . . That she could have earned a name, right?” Korie finished the thought for him.
Captain Lowell nodded. “You know me too well.”
“We’re going to miss you, sir.”
“I’m not dying, Mr. Korie. I’m only retiring. In the meantime,” he smiled, “you’d better pay attention to your screens.” He pointed. “What’s that?”
Korie glanced to the console before him, then down forward to the Operations deck where Flight Engineer Hodel was working at the holographic display table.
Mikhail Hodel was a young man with a very professional demeanor, but he was also dark and wild-looking and was known to be obsessive in all of his various pursuits. Now, he was intently studying the schematic of a too-bright shimmer moving through a shifting grid work. He looked up as Korie stepped down to join him.
“She just came up out of nowhere, sir. I don’t recognize the signature. I’ve never seen a ripple-effect like that—like it’s being held in. Suppressed.”
“Where’d she come from?” asked Korie.
Hodel shook his head. “I don’t know. One moment she wasn’t there. The next—”
Korie peered intently at the floating display. “I’ve never seen a scan like that before—not even in simulations.”
Hodel looked unhappy. “I think she followed us, sir.”
“Not possible. We’d have seen her. If she can see our bubble, we can see hers.”
“Maybe not, sir—” Hodel blurted what he was thinking, “There is one way to do it—a large bubble can be damped down. It’ll still have a longer visual range than the same-size envelope from a smaller engine.”
Korie started to shake his head. “The density would—”
“—would look like that,” Hodel pointed.
Korie stopped himself from replying. Hodel was right. The bogey was coming in too fast. “HARLIE?”
The ship’s computer answered immediately: “My best guess: A dragon class battle-cruiser running with her engines damped to prevent long-range detection.”
“Confidence?”
“Eighty-eight percent.”
“Good guess,” Korie said to Hodel, but he wasn’t happy.
“I’d rather have been wrong.”
Korie turned toward the Bridge, but Captain Lowell was already stepping down to the display. “There’s only one ship it could be—the Dragon Lord—but she’s reported to be on the other side of the rift. The Solidarity doesn’t have a lot of heavy metal to spare.”
“How reliable was that report?” asked Korie.
“Reliable enough for the High Command.” The captain shook his head unbelievingly. “If the admiral had known that a dragon class anything was lurking in this neighborhood, we’d have never assembled this convoy.” He scratched his head thoughtfully. “Well, it can’t mean anything. She’s traveling alone. Probably sharking us.”
“Well, it’s working. I’m scared,” said Hodel.
“Relax,” said Lowell. “She’s not going to attack. The Solidarity isn’t that stupid.”
Suddenly, the shimmer brightened and expanded. And expanded. And expanded again.
“Oh my God—” said Hodel. “Look at the way she’s expanding her envelope.”
“That’s an attack run.” Korie was already reaching for a terminal.
“No!” said Lowell. “No. They can’t be that stupid. They can’t be! Nobody attacks alone—”
The operating lights went suddenly to red. The alarm klaxon screeched throughout the ship.
Korie was suddenly listening to his headset. “Signal from the flagship, sir—”
“It is the Dragon Lord,” Hodel said, still staring horrified at the shimmering display. “The signature is confirmed.”
“And she’s got a wolf pack coming in behind her!” added Captain Lowell. The blood drained from his face. He looked suddenly gray.
Korie forgot his headset for the moment and turned back to the display. It was his worst nightmare. Behind the expanded shimmer of the Dragon Lord, too many other lights were appearing on the display, winking into existence like tiny stars, one pink shimmer after the other.
Korie looked to the captain. The old man was frozen.
“Sir—?”
Captain Lowell started to lift a hand, as if he was about to say something. A thought flashed through Korie’s mind. He’s never been in a real battle.
Korie whirled. “Targeting—? Get a lock on her. Battle stations! Stand by to fire.”
HARLIE replied instantly. “Targeting now.”
Captain Lowell blinked, as if abruptly realizing where he was. “Uh—what did the flagship say?”
“Scatter and attack.”
“Uh, right.” Captain Lowell nodded. “Uh—disruptors, fire at will!”
Korie looked up sharply at that. What was the old man thinking? The attackers were still in h
yperstate, fifty light-hours away, two minutes in real time. Disruptors were local-space weapons. The only way to destroy a ship in hyperstate was to hit its envelope with a field-effect torpedo.
Maybe he was just momentarily confused, Korie thought, but he knew the truth of the moment even as he tried to deny it. The captain was paralyzed by the enormity of the disaster. The huge holographic display dominated the Operations deck and every officer on duty could see the horror for himself. The bright pink shimmers of the Morthan wolf pack were sweeping ruthlessly down upon the convoy’s flank. The darker, blue shimmers of the Alliance ships were scattering now—but slowly, much too slowly. They didn’t have the same mass-to-power ratio as the much lighter vessels of the Morthan Solidarity. The marauders could easily outmaneuver the cargo and passenger vessels—and most of the destroyers too.
The only hope for the unarmed ships of the convoy was to scatter into the darkness of the rift, leaving the warships to slash and parry and dodge. The battle would spread out across a hundred light-hours of hyperstate—it didn’t matter; what counted here was visibility and interception velocity. The wolf pack would chase the fattest targets. The destroyers would chase the wolf pack. The battleships would weave complex evasion patterns.
And in the center of it all, like a fat red spider in the center of a glistening web, was the largest brightest shimmer of them all—the Dragon Lord. Her immense hyperstate envelope was a lens for her hyperstate scanning devices that would let her see farther than any other vessel in the battle. She would be able to track the ships of the fleeing convoy for days—and she would be equally visible. She could ripple orders and directions to every ship in the wolf pack. Nothing would be able to get to her, but she would be able to see the whole battle. The Alliance ships would be helpless before such an advantage.
Korie saw the whole plan at once. It was brilliant. He could only admire the beauty of it. This wasn’t just an attack on a convoy. This was about cutting The Silk Road and isolating all of the Alliance worlds on the far side of the rift. The Dragon Lord would sweep everything from here to Marathon—and then beyond. With the fleet in shambles, there would be no protection for the outworlds.
The Voyage of the Star Wolf Page 2