“Christ, that one did some real damage. I've got warning lights on both the shields and propulsion systems.”
“What is that blinking red light?” asked a terrified Kate.
“Missile warning. The blasts must have been antiaircraft missiles with nuclear warheads of some type.”
As Nigel struggled to right the craft Mizuki's voice came from the passenger cabin, “Is this normal, Lieutenant?”
“No Ma'am, we seem to be under attack. Something exploded in the atmosphere near us. Two somethings, both damned big.”
Still traveling several times the speed of sound the damaged shuttle descended rapidly toward the surface of the planet. The viewscreens recovered in time to show a wrinkled green carpet racing past—jungle draped across sharp rocky ridges.
“Oh bollocks! Everyone strap in, we are going down!”
Pilot skill managed to slow the shuttle to subsonic speed and stay out of a flat spin before the planet rose up and hit them. The shields and deck gravity held as the shuttle grazed the top of a verdant plateau. Leaves, vines, and branches were shredded by its passage, flying past the cabin viewscreens in a green maelstrom. Then they were in clear air again, but only for a moment.
Twice more they bounced. Careening off the rugged terrain slowed the speeding shuttle but it was still moving far too fast. Barely clearing the next ridge, they descended into the following ravine. Nigel looked out the windscreen and felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. Rising up out of the jungle was a dark wall of stone.
“Sorry love, we're going in!” he shouted.
There was tremendous noise as the shuttle plowed headlong into the rock face. Deck gravity took most of the deceleration but failed in the end as the nose of the shuttle crumpled. Failure was accompanied by a crushing blow, followed by darkness and then nothing at all.
HQ, Fakkaa Expeditionary Force
“Commander, we have just received word from the interceptor flight. They say the alien was hit by two missiles and crashed into the jungle.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant.” The Commander had been annoyed when the approaching fleet finally broke communications silence to inform him that he needed to have his air assets intercept a hostile alien craft that was trying to land. He barely had time to get the attack craft armed with nuclear tip interceptor missiles and into the air before the craft appeared.
It was only dumb luck that they were in a position to fire on the descending craft, which was traveling much faster than his atmospheric aircraft could fly. Even so they only hit the target as it passed by.
“Any sign of survivors?” After the interceptors had been scrambled word came from the fleet that these new aliens had managed to destroy five ships, including ships containing half of the reinforcements and all their air assets.
“There was only time for a single flyby before the flight hit bingo fuel, but they reported that the alien ship struck the ground at high speed and was most certainly destroyed. The flight leader said nothing could have survived that impact.”
“Excellent! Report our success to the Fleet Admiral.” Over 200 commandos dead in space! This was at least some small vengeance to soothe the souls of those departed warriors. The ground force commander tapped his digging claws together in agitation. I hate to question the wisdom of this operation, but it has been a total cluster fuck from the start.
“Where is the Princess's traveling circus?”
“They are still a week's march from the capital, Sir.”
“Fucking useless insects,” he muttered. After marching with the column for several days the Commander had returned to HQ. It was that or he was going to kill the ant Princess before accomplishing the mission. He left a lieutenant and sergeant to herd the ants in the proper direction. “Now that radio silence has been lifted I want constant updates on their progress, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Princess Timushi's Party
The kilometers long procession of guards and servants wound its way along the trail, passing in and out of woodlands. They had been marching uphill for days and were now crossing a stretch of highlands where the overhead cover was less dense. On the far horizon two bright flashes appeared in close succession.
“What in heaven's name was that?” demanded Princess Timushi, throwing up her arms to shield her large compound eyes.
“I don't know, my Princess,” said the Castellan, who was always near her royal charge. “Perhaps more daemonic sorcery.”
“Daemonic or not, at least it did not fall upon us.” In truth, since leaving the palace little had befallen the column. The occasional worker was lost to a predator here and there, but that was to be expected. At least they were not assailed by dragons or other monsters.
“Indeed, Princess,” the Castellan agreed, making a sign to ward off evil with her left hand. As if reading Timushi's thoughts she commented: “We will soon descend to the river basin, where the increased number of predators will keep the guards busy. We will be lucky to reach the high pastures on the other side with fewer than a dozen casualties.”
“The price of command is high, Lord Castellan, and I fear that it will be higher still when we reach the Capital. If my dear sister reaches the palace first the Queen's guard will start to defect to her. We may well be outnumbered.”
“I'm more worried about the allies she may bring with her to the fight. Your warriors will acquit themselves with skill and honor against all opponents, but daemons... who can know?”
“Truly these times are rife with strange signs and evil portents, my loyal friend.” The Princess nervously stroked the vestigial wings attached to her shoulders. Like the similar wings adorning the males of her species the wings were an evolutionary artifact, serving no purpose except to advertise her virginal status. “If my fate is to fall victim to dark magic, I cannot avoid that. All I know is I must fight for my rightful place on the throne, regardless of whatever evil comes from the stars to interfere with the affairs of mortals.”
“Making deals with daemons seems a dangerous thing to me, Highness. Besides, if the stars have sent daemons to aid Reishi they may yet send one to help us.”
“Dangerous such a compact might be, but I would not refuse the help of a daemon, should the Gods see fit to send one my way.”
Loud booming, like the sound of distant thunder, rolled across the hills, as though the Gods had heard the princess's words and were acknowledging her request.
Bridge, Peggy Sue
The bridge crew sat in silence, as though talking or making any sound could give them away to their enemy. The ship was adrift, the engines powered down. Even the deck gravity was turned off, in case their still unseen foe could detect those gravitonic devices in action. The officers and ratings floated in zero G, restrained by belts seldom used on a craft that could barely function without artificial gravity and inertial dampeners—the Peggy Sue was effectively dead in space.
“We are approaching a million kilometers from the planet, Captain,” reported Bobby from the helm. “If they were going to detect us they should have done so by now.”
“Yer probably right, Mr. Danner.” The return of Billy Ray's cowboy twang indicated that he was feeling more relieved than he was willing to show the crew. “Mr. Umky, any sign of our invisible nemesis?”
“Not even the faintest scent, Captain.”
“Now that we appear to have made good our escape, how do you propose we deal with the situation, Captain.”
“First we have to get our ship put back together, Number One. Officers and chiefs in my sea cabin in five minutes.”
* * * * *
The ship's officers, Chief Zackly, and Gunny Acuna all crowded into the Captain's cabin off the bridge. Present over a comm link from engineering was Chief Engineer Baldursson, as was the ship's omnipresent computer. Notable by her absence was the ship's science officer, Dr. Ogawa.
“Ladies and gentlemen, our first order of business is getting the Peggy Sue back into fighting condition. Arin what's t
he status of all critical systems?”
“The worst damage was done to the shield generators, Captain. On the starboard side most of the gravitonic circuitry was damaged when the shields overloaded. The other shield generators were also stressed and should be checked and rebuilt where necessary.”
“What caused the overload?” asked Bobby.
“From the sensor recordings and the impact on the shield hardware I can only guess that it was caused by several near hits by sizable antimatter warheads.”
“But how did they deliver them? And how do we fight back?” asked the Gunny. The Marines disliked being sucker punched by invisible aliens even more than the officers.
“We'll get to that next, Gunny, but first I need your estimated time to repair, Arin. How long until we can fight again?”
“I would say four or five days, a week at the outside, Captain. We are probably going to need to regrow all the shield circuitry on the starboard side and much of it elsewhere. Thankfully, the structural damage was light and can be re-knitted by the hull nanites in less than 24 hours. As far as I can tell, the reactors and drives came through with no damage.”
“At least there is some good new there, thanks Arin. Dr. White, what about the crew, any casualties?”
“None during the attack, though we did have one crewmember sprain an ankle when some of the large plants shifted in the hydroponics section.”
“Yeah, Tosh secured the galley and went up to 3rd deck to help with the... plants,” added Chief Zackly. “They didn't quite get things squared away before we went to zero G, and somehow a dwarf fruit tree landed on our cook.”
“Chef Dread will be fine,” Betty concluded, “that boy does love his plants.”
“OK, we can be thankful for that as well. Let's turn to our foe, do we have any analysis of who or what hit us?”
“You mean other than we were caught with our knickers around our ankles?” Beth raised a single eyebrow.
“Yeah, we almost screwed the pooch, but we didn't. We did manage to get in a few licks of our own.” The Gunny was feeling a bit defensive about the torpedo crews' performance.
“Yes, Gunny, the torpedo crews reacted well,” Billy Ray said, soothing ruffled feathers. “Sensor readings indicated we took out four or five ships in the alien formation.”
“Yes, sorry,” added Beth, “the crew's performance was exemplary once we knew we were under attack.”
Both Chief Zackly and the Gunny looked mollified with the officers' response. They were not used to coming off second best in an engagement and the outcome of the ambush was weighing heavily on both of them.
“Whatever it was that hit us, it wasn't those primitive tubs. There was something else out there, using the formation of slow ships as a decoy. How can we fight something we can't see?” the Chief growled.
“Not only that, Umky said the sensor readings, slight as they were, indicated objects moving at superluminal speeds,” added Beth.
“But not in alter-space, the T'aafhal sensors should have picked up objects moving in alter-space.”
“No, Captain, the tracking computer clearly indicated that the objects were moving faster than light in 3-space.”
“How is that even possible?”
“Captain?” the ship's computer said. “I have information that might shed some light on the situation.”
“Please enlighten us, Peggy Sue.”
“As usual, observing events has triggered retrieval of data I was previously unaware of. It seems that there are entries in our database regarding an alternative way of superluminal travel.”
“Other than alter-space transit?” Bobby said, looking for clarification.
“Correct, Sailing Master Danner. There is a way to create a Lorentzian manifold, a region of flat space known as a warp bubble. By warping space—compressing the space in front of and stretching out the space behind the bubble—it can move through 3-space. In the context of general relativity, this allows a warp bubble to appear in previously flat spacetime and travel at effectively superluminal speed. Inhabitants of the bubble feel no inertial effects and relativistic effects, such as time dilation, do not apply.”
“You're saying these unknown hostiles have a warp drive?”
“That is correct.”
“Cool!” In spite of himself, Bobby was still a science fiction geek to the core and finding out that warp drives were real impressed the hell out of him.
“Why didn't we know about this before?” asked the Captain, exasperation in his voice.
“As I explained, though I have access to the T'aafhal database from the artifact found on Earth and enhanced by the M'tak Ka'fek's AI, useful information often remains dormant until events trigger recognition.”
“OK, fine. What else can you tell us about this warp drive thing—like how we can track it.”
“A space warping drive is not very efficient and requires a quantity of what human physicists call dark matter to create the necessary spatial gradients. Our existing sensors will not detect a ship using warp propulsion, but the warping of space does cause disturbance, gravitational ripples. Though in 3-space such gravity waves cannot exceed the speed of light either, so no warning is possible if the ship is coming at us head on—the ripples would not be detected until after the ship passed by.”
“Like a jet flying faster than sound, it can fly past with the boom arriving after it has gone by.”
“An apt analogy, First officer.”
“So yer saying we can never see these jokers coming?”
“Not in 3-space, Captain. However, the movement of a warped bubble of 3-space does cause ripples in some of the alternate dimensions where the distance metrics are different. I have found information that describes a form of subspace interferometer that should be able to detect a working warp drive.”
“That's good news Peggy Sue, pass the info to the engineers and let 'em get started.”
“It will require extensive modifications to the shields and deck gravity circuitry to detect the subspace gravitonic resonances but construction should take only a week and can be combined with the current repair work.”
The Captain smiled for the first time since the attack. “One last question, Peggy Sue, can we destroy something traveling in one of these warp bubbles?”
“Yes, the space in front of such a bubble is merely compressed, once targeted the ship's X-ray lasers will be able to detonate the enemy torpedoes well away from the hull.”
“I'm more concerned with blowin' the bastards' ship out of existence.”
“The superluminal particle cannon should prove quite sufficient for such a task. I will interface the new sensors to the main fire control system.”
“OK, do it. Unless there are any other questions you're all dismissed. Bobby, could you stay a minute, please.”
The others rose and quickly exited the cabin, anxious to get on with the needed repairs. The door slid shut, leaving Bobby and Billy Ray alone for the first time since before the enemy engagement began.
“How're you holding up, pardner?”
Bobby looked his friend directly in the eye.
“I'm OK, been too busy to think about it.”
“We're going to get her back.”
“Yeah, but first we've got to repair the ship and neutralize the alien threat. I understand, Billy Ray, I've had a ship of my own.”
“Sure thing, Bobby. I just wanted to make sure you knew we're going after Mizuki and the others. We don't leave our own behind.”
Bobby smiled wanly.
“Damn straight, Captain. So let's fix the ship, kill us some aliens, and then go find my girl.”
Chapter 16
Shuttle Crash Site
Mizuki's first indication that she was alive was the stabbing pain in her head. Creaking and groaning sounds punctuated the silence, the sounds of cooling metal and tortured airframe members. Even with her eyelids closed the world spun crazily around her. As the spinning slowed she hazarded a peek at her surrounding
s. Pyrotechnic spots flashed before her eyes as she tried to focus.
As her vision adjusted to the darkness she detected dim light filtering in from above her head. Then she realized that she was laying on her back and the light was coming from the rear of the shuttle—or what was left of the shuttle.
She tried to move and was rewarded with more pain, particularly from her right leg. She was pinned beneath a rack of equipment. Trying to free her legs, Mizuki pushed up on the rack, moving it slightly. Her palms slipped off the top lip, dropping the rack and causing a rush of pain from both legs.
This isn't fair, she thought, on the edge of hysteria. This is my second set of legs and Betty might not give me a third.
Again, the world went black.
* * * * *
Pain, like an unwanted but reassuring old friend, signaled the return of consciousness. The stabbing head pain had diminished to a dull throbbing. Gingerly she felt along her sides, down to where a metal cross bar rested across the tops of her thighs. There was no feeling in her legs.
I'm not getting out of this unless I can raise the equipment rack, she thought, distantly pleased that her ability to reason had returned.
Feeling around in the darkness she located several empty equipment boxes and a length of angle iron laying nearby. Carefully working one of the metal boxes under the edge of the fallen equipment rack, Mizuki inserted the angle iron, forming a lever. Pulling down on the end of the makeshift lever raised the rack several centimeters, enough to allow blood to rush back into her legs. She gasped as feeling returned and pain reasserted itself.
Breathing in short, panting breaths while holding on to the lever, Mizuki waited for the pain in her legs to subside. Time passed, the pain became bearable again.
Gathering up her strength, Mizuki pulled her body a few centimeters toward the rear of the cabin while struggling to hold down the handle of her improvised lever. Renewed waves of pain forced her to stop.
More panting breaths, small painful movements in preparation for another move aft, followed by another couple of centimeters progress. Another respite, another small slide aft, rest and repeat. Eventually, her knees were clear of the bar that had pinned her legs. Leaning on the lever, using the weight of her upper body to hold it down, she reached behind her and slid the second equipment box under the edge of the rack.
The Queen's Daemon (T'aafhal Legacy Book 2) Page 13