Pandora’s Crew

by Gorg Huff

  It was insane. “Sir, standard doctrine is to avoid fighting at a jump exit. It gives the enemy the first shot, and that can be decisive.”

  “I am aware of standard doctrine, Commander Cordoba-Davis,” Frankin said coldly. “But in the real fleet, we sometimes have to improvise.” He then went on to describe his strategy, which was innovative and so crazy that it might even work . . . if Huffington did exactly what Frankin wanted him to do. But if Huffington had any inkling of what the plan was, they were going to get slaughtered.

  Tanya tried twice more to point out the dangers in the plan, and each time Frankin pointed out her status as a grand stockholder as proof of her lack of understanding. Meanwhile, Senior Captain Rodriguez and most of the staff were acting like a Greek chorus endorsing Frankin’s view. Rodriguez was made the field commander of the operation.

  Tanya was afraid that the plan would leak. Free traders like Monsieur Duprey were loyal to their pocketbook. First, last, and always.

  Location: Big Dark, Drake Space

  Standard Date: 10 29 630

  “It’s alive!” Gerhard Schmitz cackled, leaping up from his work chair and raising his arms to the ceiling of his lab.

  Danny winced. “Really, Doc? You’re doing Frankenstein jokes?”

  The lab was a comfortable room. The walls were set to an eggshell white, and the floor to a textured dark brown. There was a console and the pillar stand that held Sally and a work table where a small brain the size of a pea was wired into the sim trainer case. It was that brain that Gerhard was cackling about.

  “Well, yep.” Gerhard grinned. “The thing about artificials that’s hard to manage is that they have to operate a long time in varying circumstances. They need to be able to learn and adapt, but that opens the way to them adapting in ways the builders don’t want. That’s the core of truth in all the fears about artificials.” Gerhard made a gesture with his right hand and the lab’s main screen lit up with graphics and a virtual world—the shield missile’s eye view of the space that the brain thought it was flying through.

  Danny nodded, and Gerhard continued. “With something like a hunter-nuke, that’s less of a problem because they have a really short life expectancy. Launch the thing and in a few hours it blows itself up. It has no concept of death and its only fear is failure. But what happens if one of them gets lost and wanders around for days or years? So even hunter-nukes are potentially dangerous, though the danger is grossly overstated.

  “But these are, in essence, defensive devices. Their job is to protect their ship from the evil hunter-nukes. It means that they are much safer. If they get lost, they aren’t likely to go hunting up a new target if they don’t find the one they were sent after. They can even be picked up after the battle by sending out the right signal.”

  “And that means?” Danny asked absently. He was watching as the virtual superconducting wire spread out from the shield missile body and powered up.

  “It means that they don’t need nearly the amount of restraints that a hunter-nuke would. They need some intelligence, but their character, if you will, can be more straightforward.”

  Danny watched as the speck of the virtual hunter-nuke approached the shield missile.

  Gerhard continued, “It has to figure out how to suck in the hunter-nuke, how to deflect the grapeshot, or sand, or wheat. That sort of thing. And that, in turn, means we can make smaller brains, and that we can set up training sims to train the master brain much faster. I’m pretty confident I can come up with a good anti-nuke shield missile in a few months, and I’ve already put together a workable one with a very simple brain.”

  The hunter reached the shield missile’s wing, and Danny could see a massive jerk. A dead hunter-nuke sailed out the other end.

  “Okay, Doc. Make up a couple of the idiot sort and let me and Pan find places to hide the missile bodies that Hirum and Robert designed. I want to have something other than a ship’s boat to do this with if we run into trouble while you’re working up the real one.”

  Location: Gray Route, Two Jumps from the Cordoba Chain

  Standard Date: 11 16 630

  They came through the jump, and Pandora reported, “A fleet is approaching the next jump, Captain.” She sent a visual to the bridge screen and a data dump to Danny’s brain. The next jump was short, less than two light hours.

  Without thinking, Danny reacted. “Kill the wings, now!” Then they were in freefall as Pandora stopped the flow of plasma to the wings and killed their power. Pandora was now a rock in space, emitting very little energy as the aurora of magnetized plasma dissipated.

  It took Danny only a few moments to realize why he’d reacted.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  In the galley, John was frying sliced kulava root, and suddenly there was no gravity. The kulava and the hot grease went up and kept right on going.

  John reacted out of years of experience. Using one hand to hold himself in place until he could hook his feet into the holds, he used the other to hit the emergency blowers that would suck the grease and the dinner into a filter and keep him from third degree burns. He got his feet placed and the emergency procedures going, then called the skipper. “What the hell happened?”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Angi was chasing Geri through the corridors, trying vainly to get a pair of ship pants on her brat of a little sister. Geri was having a ball playing keep away from her. Suddenly she was floating. Her last footfall pushed her up off the deck.

  Geri wasn’t completely unfamiliar with zero g. She had played in the zero g park at the center of the university station since she was a baby, and there had been drills since her daddy had signed on to the Pandora. She braced for a quick return of gravity, but it didn’t happen. Instead, she sailed on till she hit the ceiling. By then she had tucked, and she bounced feet first back toward the floor. Then her big sister grabbed her, which was cheating.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Robert was locked into his station, running a drone on the hull with his implants, so he saw the wings go down. The drone was locked down on the outer hull, but in the middle of a weld on a back-up support for the Mid D wing. He left the drone on auto while he used his interface to find out what was going on. First with his daughters, then with the ship.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  By the time Robert, John, and the others were calling and asking what was going on, Danny knew. “It’s the vector.”

  Rosita and Gerhard were still asking questions, but Hirum, John, and Robert were all watching the arching vector of the fleet.

  Danny might not have decided to explain to the professors, except Jenny and Checkgok were also looking confused. “If you come through this jump and release enough plasma to maintain a standard gravity, this is your course to the next jump.” An arc appeared on the screen and presumably in their virtual space as well. “But if you come through cold with just enough wing flap to make jump and go ballistic, you end up missing the next jump.” Another line appeared. This one much straighter, but still slightly curved. “These are both approximations based on assumptions about your vector coming into this jump.”

  Danny highlighted the jump point they just came through. “The ships up ahead are dumping a lot of plasma and seem to be running two point eight standard gravities of acceleration. That’s pushing harder than you ought to for anything but a very short time. Say, no more than ten minutes. But to get to the gate we know about, they are going to have to be at it for at least another hour.”

  Danny added a track based on the position and acceleration of the squadron of ships ahead of them. That arc, when traced back, didn’t intercept either the first standard transit route or the ballistic vector Danny put up, but it came a lot closer to the ballistic track than the power track. “When we add in the current vector and acceleration of the bogies, this is Pan’s best guess as to their track.” A new track appeared and all the old ones dimmed. “The intriguing thing about this track is how long the bogies stayed ballistic and dark before going active and b
right.” A point on the track blinked.

  “I’m intrigued, Captain,” Professora Stuard said. “But I don’t understand. By my read they went active fifty-eight minutes and forty-three seconds ago. But I don’t see the significance.”

  “That’s right, but add in the rest of their transit time to the next jump and you get one hour and fifty-three minutes.”

  “And?”

  “And, the light from the moment they lit off their drives will arrive at the far side of the next jump one hour and fifty-four minutes after they lit them, or one minute, to the second, after they arrive at the far side of the next jump.”

  Danny checked with Pan. “Pan is watching the far end of the jump, but she hasn’t seen anything yet. At this range, we won’t, unless whoever is over there lights off their drives.” Danny meant “fed plasma to their wings.” If they just flapped their wings, it was unlikely that the dim light of the aurora would be enough for Pan’s sensors to pick up.

  “Are we sure that anyone is over there?”

  “No, but it seems—”

  There was suddenly a point of light. At this distance it was very dim light, but Pandora had excellent sensors. It lasted for five seconds, then it was gone.

  When a ship—be it merchantman or warship—accelerated, it did so by flapping magnetic wings. Those wings imparted energy to the lonely bits of sand and stray atoms of space. Most of the energy changed the vector of that space detritus, but some was absorbed as heat, then given off as light. A wing ship flapping its wings through space glowed with a nimbus of fairy light which varied in intensity with the thickness of the space dust it was traveling through. But even traveling through the dust cloud of a not-quite-born sun, a wing ship didn’t glow like this.

  This was a ship venting plasma into its wings to produce the maximum possible acceleration. From the pattern and flow of the hot plasma, it was a warship. And by combining the acceleration and the amount of plasma glowing like a flickering torch in its wake, it was a small- to mid-range warship. Four ranks of wings, but it probably weighed less than half what Pan did when she was fully loaded, and Pan was a small freighter.

  “Just one ship?” asked Checkgok

  “So far,” Danny said, “My guess is it’s a scout on the jump and there’s a squadron further back. Pan, you see anything over near Jump 37,472,324?” That was the next jump in the gray route into Cordoba space. If there was a blocking force, that was where it ought to be.

  “No, Captain, but I wouldn’t unless they lit off their drives.”

  Location: Off Jump 37,472,325

  One Hour and Fifty-four Minutes Earlier

  Commander Tanya Cordoba-Davis grimaced as her ship went through the pre-planned maneuver. They hadn’t seen anyone since they arrived on station a week ago. The reports that the Drakes were planning an incursion were looking less and less likely. For the last week, they spent ninety percent of their time in freefall and the rest in these violent maneuvers that demonstrated that they were warships.

  Each ship adjusted its vector to stay near the jump, but doing it individually so as not to demonstrate to anyone that there was a fleet here, but spoiling the effect by accelerating at speeds only a warship or a pirate might use. It was, in Tanya’s opinion, an idiotic combination of ignoring the rules and slavishly obeying them. And it seemed likely to buy them the worst of both worlds.

  Tanya checked the ship’s systems and crew status through her interface. Exspatio Jorgenson was caught by the accel, as was Spacer First Binger. Someone had failed to lock down a stanchion in Leading A.

  “Ms. Allen,” Tanya sent over the ship net, “report to the flagship.” Then she traced the action as Ensign Petra Allen slipped the laser through the gaps in the flaming wings of their acceleration. Petra was doing quite well.

  The flag’s response wasn’t so careful. Their laser went through the plasma fields of both ships, and when a laser passes through gas and dust it is not only weakened, it leaves a visible trace. It was unlikely that the enemy could read the response but certain that they saw it happen. It was a curt acknowledgment of receipt of the Indi’s message, plus a note that Senior Captain Rodriguez was busy. Which was pretty much what Tanya was expecting. Senior Captain Rodriguez was very much of one mind with Admiral Frankin, and looked at this as his path to rear admiral.

  Tanya hadn’t been in favor of this deployment. They were at the wrong jump, and—worse—on the wrong side of it. Standard doctrine for centuries had been that you defended a jump point from the entry side, not the exit side. It gave you all the advantages of forcing the enemy to come to you and you could see them coming, rather than giving them the first look and therefore the first shot. You looked for a jump with a good distance between it and the next jump and you set a scout out near the exit of the jump, or jumps, into local space. But those were only as trip wires to get good reads on anyone coming in, then run like hell. You didn’t try to guard the exit of a jump.

  Location: Pandora, Off Jump 37,472,326

  “Do you think they saw us?” Checkgok asked.

  “Who?” Hirum asked.

  Checkgok used his mouth-hand to throw up a circle around the squadron that was approaching Jump 37,472,325.

  Hirum checked the clock. “The light from our arrival should be reaching them just about—” He paused for a moment or so. “—now.”

  Location: DSFS Mnementh, Approaching 37,472,325, Code Charley 5

  The Dragon-class warship Mnementh sailed through space, flapping five ranks of wings and dumping plasma like a drunken spacer dumping cash. It had twenty-seven telescopes of varying sorts that could be pointed in any conceivable direction. Twenty-six of them were pointing at the exit of jump Charley 5, just as they had been for the twenty-seven hours since they exited jump Charley 6. One of them was pointed back at jump Charley 6. It recorded the arrival of a burst of light from Charley 6, but the tech who was supposed to be watching was helping his fellow tech with the plotting of the movements of the Cordoba ship on the other side of jump Charley 5. “The admiral’s right. It can’t be a single ship,” he said. “First of all, there are at least two classes. My guess is Hero and Demigod class. Two Demis and four Heros. This last one was a Hero. See the swirl pattern here?”

  The Mnementh was the only ship in the squadron that even had a telescope pointing at Charley 6. They were sure there couldn’t be anything back there, and even if there was, it would just be a Drake ship. The important thing was the Cordoba plan. A plan that Admiral Huffington knew about.

  The eight ships of his squadron were spending all their time and energy watching the space around the exit of jump Charley 6 and comparing notes to get the most accurate possible read of the enemy ships’ location relative to the jump. It would be two hours old when Huffington’s squadron came out of the jump, but by now they had good tracks on what they estimated to be six ships. They knew where to point their sensors as they exited the jump.

  Now they were just waiting.

  Location: Pandora

  Time: 54 minutes later

  As soon as the Drake squadron made jump, Pandora powered up her wings and dumped plasma. There was a window—not exactly of blindness, but of delayed sight—and Danny wanted to use it to his best advantage. For the next hour and fifty minutes they would accelerate massively, then go dark again and watch whatever was happening over there right now.

  Chapter 17

  I make up my opinions from facts and reasoning, and not to suit anybody but myself. If people don’t like my opinions, it makes little difference as I don’t solicit their opinions or votes.

  William Tecumseh Sherman

  Location: Gray route, two jumps from the Cordoba Chain

  Standard Date: 11 16 630

  Tanya Cordoba-Davis jerked up as the alarms sounded. She grabbed her headset and pulled it on, sending out queries from her internal link even as she was pulling on the stronger headset. What she got back almost froze her. Almost, but not quite. “Flush plasma to the wings! Emergency o
verride! Get me a flap pattern on bogie four and adjust our flap to counter sand.” Then she started pulling on her flexsuit.

  The Dragons and Falcons of Huffington’s squadron came out of the gate as a complete surprise. And the lasers that followed only microseconds later blinded the main C-D sensor array. The backups came online automatically when the primaries went down, but the Jonesy’s ability to see was degraded.

  Worse, they came through in a group instead of singly, as Admiral Frankin and Senior Captain Rodriguez had done everything in their power to arrange. That was why they were set up here at the exit of a short jump rather than at the entrance of a long one. So short that the Drakes could see their ships if they were under power. They wanted the Drakes confident. They wanted them to come through one at a time, fat and happy, each perhaps getting off the first shot . . . but each and every one of them facing six to one odds.

  One at a time.

  Going through a jump singly was standard practice. It was easier and quite a bit safer.

  The whole of the plan had been based on that fact. The standard interval was two minutes, though that varied a lot depending on gate size and fleet velocity.

  This was a smallish gate and to get all the attacking ships into it at once took coordination. A safe interval at the standard velocity for this gate would be five minutes, each ship exiting the gate five minutes after the last, getting off one shot, then being swamped by the massed fire of six Cordoba warships.

  As that flashed through Tanya’s mind, the first sand hit the Jonesy.

  Damage reports poured in. That sand, like the lasers, scored half the C and half the D quadrants of the Jonesy. The wings were operational, though there was a fault in C forward, but the C-D laser array was gone. Just gone. So was the backup sensor array.

  “Spin us,” she flashed to the bridge. “Clockwise rotation, 180 degrees.” More damage and injuries, this time from the spin as the rotational acceleration of the ship produced sideways gravity. Then, a few seconds later, the completion of the maneuver reversed it. People at duty stations and in their bunks were tossed one way, then the other.