by Chris Hechtl
Debate raged for days about whether they should attempt to talk to the bugs. There was a legitimate concern over opening a new front with an unknown enemy.
But, under the guise of the enemy of my enemy is my friend, a decision was made to initiate first contact. One way or another they needed to know more about the bugs. It was better to do so in a controlled situation rather than in the field by accident. Accidents were where the Magellan incident had occurred after all.
He was concerned that Terrans were going to indeed open up a new front when they fumbled negotiating with another alien race. Fortunately, the expedition was in the early planning stages. They only had a few clues about the alien species in the alien database to go off of. The repeated references their species being to bugs had some wondering about hive minds and such. There was also little in the way of maps to their home star systems, just areas marked out to avoid.
That was not enough to go on, but it was enough to scout the periphery and learn more.
It also led to something else though. The references to the Forerunners and positive interactions with them from both parties told some who had worried over the Taurens not seeing reason or negotiating with them that their fears were unjustified. The Taurens clearly did have some good relations with alien species; they just needed to get them to see reason.
The question of how many of the other species survived such encounters was in doubt however.
Chapter 36
Finagle star system, Rho sector
“Well, this is a fine mess we're in,” Captain Shakira Lopez grumbled as she stared at the plot. It hadn't changed in months. “Anything from engineering?”
“No, ma'am. We're still stuck,” Trevor Welshille, her XO said.
“I thought not,” the captain replied as she sat back and looked out to the solar system beyond. It would be a nice place in oh, a hundred years or so if the terraforming held. Until then Finagle was more of a prison to her ship and crew than a welcome refuge.
They'd been doing so good she thought getting their assigned part of the sector scouted. But on the way back, they hit some harsh turbulence in hyperspace. So harsh it had forced them to drop to the low octaves of Alpha band. When the engineering team found the damage, crumpled sections of the hull where a couple of their force emitters had been, they'd counted their blessings that they were alive at all.
They'd managed to limp into Finagle to make repairs. As a scout ship, Thales had machine shops and parts to replace or rebuild virtually everything on the ship. Virtually being the key word, since they really couldn't have every part on hand. And some things you just didn't consider breaking down.
“They've gotten the hull buttoned back up. But no one is pulling any rabbits out of their hats as far as the hyperdrive is concerned,” the XO said.
“Right,” Shakira drawled. She glanced over to the helm team. Surfs by Night seemed a bit contrite still over the damage. She couldn't blame the fin; it had happened. It could have happened on anyone's watch and Captain Shakira had authorized the dolphin to run home at high speed.
She grimaced. “I'm going to suit up after breakfast and check the hull. We need to find another ice ball, right?”
“Aye, Skipper,” Trevor replied as some of the crew looked up in surprise.
“Good. Get sensors on that,” Shakira ordered. Trevor nodded. Not only would finding and mining the ice ball keep the crew busy, but it would also supply the ship. He wasn't certain for how long. Hopefully, someone would go out looking for them and not just declare them lost.
“I'm going to get my morning jog in. Page me if you need me,” Shakira said as she thrust herself out of the chair and off the bridge before she felt anymore helpless.
(@)()(@)
Once she was done her morning jog, she always loved to alternate between using the treadmill or jogging the corridors in the ship, she settled down for a light breakfast of an energy bar and powdered orange juice mix. The tartness helped wake her up some more. She missed coffee badly. They had run out of coffee two months ago.
“Going to check our work?” Magnus the Neoorangutan chief engineer asked with a saucy grin as she met him in the airlock.
She tucked her helmet under her arm. “Got a problem with it?”
“I like admiring the old girl myself,” the shaggy ape replied as he finished buttoning up his suit. “And if you think I'm going to let you go walk about on your own, have another think, Skipper, or not,” he said.
She snorted. That was one thing about Magnus she liked; he told it to her straight and didn't hold back even when she was in a foul mood. Not that she was in one now, she reminded herself as she checked her gloves.
“Do me,” Magnus said, turning for her to check his suit.
“Sure,” she said with a chuckle in her voice as she ran expert hands over his seals and fittings, then checked his readings carefully. “You are good.”
“Turn,” he said. It was easier to turn with him instead of a normal human she knew; he had longer arms but shorter legs. “No, I'm not looking at your ass. You did put the plumbing connections in this time, right?” he asked.
“Yes, dad,” she drawled. She caught his large lips quivering in a suppressed smile as his long fingers checked her seals.
“You're good. I'd give you a smack on the ass but you'd probably like it,” he teased. She shot him a glower, but it just bounced off of him as he turned and closed the inner airlock hatch.
“Someone's in a cheeky mood,” she said before she caught herself. He heard his chuckle and blushed. “You know what I mean,” she growled.
“Sure,” he chuffed. She turned a moderate glower on him as she lowered her visor and hit the pump down button. He hastily slapped his own visor down and dogged it. “Comm check,” he sputtered.
“Ah, shut up,” she drawled, hitting her own microphone.
“Comm check approved,” Trevor replied over the link. “You two know we can hear and see you, right?” he asked.
“Sure thing,” Magnus said with a one-finger salute to the camera in the corner of the airlock.
Shakira felt her ears heat. It would be all over the ship she knew. So be it. They needed to lighten the mood, even if it was at her pride's expense. There were enough jokes about her double D's going around anyway.
She checked the air readings and then made certain to let it go down below the 1 percent mark. Waste not want not after all. When the readings blinked, she shut the pumps off and then cracked the hatch.
“It's sticky. I need to get some graphene in the hinge joints,” Magnus warned her as he helped her open the door.
“Add it to the list,” the captain muttered as she took the lead. She exited the hatch and clipped her safety line into an anchor point, then floated aside to let Magnus out. Once he was clear and clipped in, she dogged the hatch behind them.
“This way,” Magnus said as he moved hand over hand to the next anchor point. Shakira had been tempted to use an MMU but they only had so many spare parts for them. Magnus was right; they could use the workout. She followed in his wake.
When they got to the first repair site, she paused and took it in. The sun was just cresting over the horizon of the ship so she dropped her sun visor and turned to examine the repairs. “Not bad,” she murmured.
“Not good. I think it will hold.”
“You think?” she asked. “Not very reassuring coming from my chief engineer, Magnus,” Shakira said.
“You try fixing that mess without a yard,” Magnus grumbled. She grunted as she examined his patch job.
Whatever they had hit in hyperspace, it had sent shockwaves through the shields to the force emitters. The emitter they were looking at had buckled and bent in place. The one off to her left closer to the bow had actually twisted in its mounts. Sheering forces in each case had torn up the skin around the emitters and the supporting structure underneath. Repairing it had taken the engineer months of time to cut it away, then rebuild out of the scrap and what metal they could
scavenge from the ship.
“You can see where we added gussets,” Magnus said, pointing to a few additions.
“You scanned each weld?” she asked.
“X-ray scan, yes. I'm not an idiot,” Magnus replied in a suffering tone of voice.
“Just checking,” she said as she engaged her mag boots and attached herself to the hull. She carefully stepped over to the hull and then knelt, looking into areas that were not easily seen. “When the emitter was damaged, you said it put stress on the other emitters?”
“Yes. And no, before you ask I checked and we patched them too. They were easier. I can't rebuild the emitters themselves however. If we can get back into hyperspace, we'll be limited to the low octaves of alpha band. Night surfer and her ilk can't hot rod,” he said in an aggrieved tone of voice.
“Surfs by Night,” Shakira replied in an absent tone as she continued to examine the welds and other repairs. She could see the tool marks here and there where they had to use brute force. There were also some torch marks where they had been forced to apply heat to massage the incredibly strong metal into place. Hopefully, it would hold she thought.
“The other one took some torsional damage. I'm less sure about that one,” Magnus said as he led her over to the other emitter.
She grimaced as she caught sight of some of the hull sensors that had been torn up as well as the skin buckling during the turbulence event. “You checked under this? The frames?”
“Wha?” he paused in his presentation to turn to her. She pointed to the ripples in the hull. He grimaced. “Yeah. Nothing we could see from the inside. You want us to pull the skin off and check from this side? I can't guarantee we'll get it back on,” he warned her.
“I'd rather know than not know. If you can stick a probe or something in, do that first,” she suggested.
“Yeah, sure,” he said, cocking his head.
“Or scan it. Whatever works,” she suggested.
He shook his head. “That damn stealth coating we've got makes it a pain in the ass to see into the hull,” he growled.
“If you've got to scrape it off, do so. Just repaint it,” she said. “You were going to repaint it, right?” she asked.
“I wanted to make sure we've got it fixed right first, Skipper,” he growled. “No sense doing the job twice.”
“Sure,” she drawled, knowing he had forgotten or forgone the painting.
“Skipper, you better get in here,” Trevor's voice said, sounding anxious.
The duo paused. Instinctively they turned to where the bridge of the ship was. “What's up, Trev?” Shakira asked.
“Yeah, you that lonesome already?” Magnus quipped.
“We've just gotten a spike on our neutrino detectors. We ran a sweep and picked up a gravitational anomaly. It's coming in this direction,” he warned.
“Shoot,” Magnus said, eyes wide.
“We're coming,” Shakira said grimly as she turned about and quickly led them back to the airlock.
(@)()(@)
Five minutes later they were inside. “Talk to me,” she ordered, looking up as she trotted to the bridge.
“It just appeared on our sensors. It's some sort of ship, but it's not matching anything in our database,” Trevor said, voice tight.
“Tauren?”
“It doesn't match their known signatures either, Skipper,” Trevor replied as she pounded onto the bridge. She dropped her helmet, snoopy hat, headset, and gloves in the hot seat he quickly vacated as her eyes stared at the main plot.
“We're trying to get a look at the ship now. It is moving at a good clip …,” Hiro, her lead sensor tech reported. “What the hell?” he said.
“Put it up on the main plot,” Shakira ordered.
Trevor whistled at the brown and yellow beetle-shaped ship. It had curved leg-like nacelles and antenna all over it. It was hard to tell which direction it was going.
“It's definitely not Tauren,” Hiro reported. “I don't know what the hell it is other than alien.”
“Agreed,” Magnus said, coming onto the bridge and staring at the alien ship. Shakira turned to him. He caught her look out of the corner of his eye and turned to her with a shrug. “Best seat in the house. Besides, engineering is running fine,” he said.
She pursed her lips and then turned back to the main plot.
“Ma'am, we're receiving a signal,” Frida said carefully, “from the other ship.”
“Put it through,” Shakira said.
“It's clicks and clacks and stuff. We're getting … we're getting a data channel with it. Binary, math …”
“Well, at least they want to make contact with us, instead of shooting at us,” Magnus said slowly. “Personally, I'd love to see if we can borrow some parts.”
Shakira turned to him and then to Trevor. Her XO shrugged. “What do we have to lose, ma'am? It's not like we can run,” he said.
Shakira's lips pursed in a thin line. He was right about that. “Let's talk to them,” she said, turning back to Frida. “Dust off our first contact protocols and feed everything they are saying to us into the computers,” she ordered.
Chapter 37
On the run to the Tau sector
The Alpha bull realized he was in full retreat out of the sector. There wasn't much he could do about it. There were places, star systems he could stop and picket, but the enemy could bypass them.
He was not sure where they could stand and fight. After that loss he was not even sure if it was even possible to do so. He had lost most of his fighters in the conflict and many of his ships had taken damage. None had been destroyed thankfully, but they were slow and hurt. Each time they jumped out of hyperspace to cross a star system, his bulls did their best to make good on what repairs they could.
They were getting all too good at such things he thought.
He was tempted to swing the fleet back, to cut back north and up to strike at the colony the enemy had come from. It would take many eight of days, but they could do it. But as he ran the numbers, he shook his head. Not only would his damaged ships still not be fully repaired, but he wouldn't have the fighter cover necessary to protect his ships. And the fleet would be low on fuel, a disastrous situation.
Then there was the other problem to consider. The enemy fleet might follow in his wake. He shuddered at such thoughts. They could cut him off from the home herd worlds. Or worse, they could follow for a time but continue on even as he changed course, going to the home herd worlds and tearing them up.
He had already sent a pair of dispatch ships to the home herd world with news of the loss of the colony and everything they had recorded. Would the warning get to the herd leaders in time? He wasn't certain. No, he couldn't chance it. His ships had to go to the closest home herd world and anchor there to make good on their repairs while trying to rebuild.
But while his bulls did their best to make what repairs they could, he had them replenish the missile stocks from the support ships. He also contacted Dreamer and demanded he find ways to counter the enemy's advantages. There had to be something they could do, another new idea that would shift the balance. They had almost had it. They needed a proper counter to the enemy's small craft.
And soon.
(@)()(@)
Despite not losing any ships in the last conflict, Dreamer felt the ashes of defeat tearing at him. For the first time, the realization was sinking in that they could lose the war. It wasn't a pleasant experience for him, despite the upbeat look of some of the others in the herd.
The herd Alpha bull had assigned him to go over the data from the last conflict and come up with plans to counter the tech. But he was limited on the computer processors he could use since they were in hyperspace. Besides, there had been no new weapons. The enemy had made steady improvements in the efficiency of their existing weapons. Their only new weapon was their great defenders. Based on what he had seen, they were built for mixed combat with missiles as well as turrets. Since they hadn't had anything in the area to watch th
e enemy when they fired defensively, he didn't know what those turrets were.
He wrote up what he could, then went through the motions of overseeing others who were working on various refinements of the herd's new hardware and software. He was grateful that his point defense upgrades had kept the fleet alive. But, for how long? He wasn't certain. There was no way to counter the enemy's small craft except with other small craft. The spray of rail gun turret fire took some out each time but drained the stock of munitions dangerously.
He looked into the historical record from the cloned database but too much of it was compressed. He took to pulling files out of the database, copying them, and then decompressing them, before translating them in a hand-held devices, a time-consuming process. The references he did find confirmed what he'd known; point defense turrets and counter fighters were the best defense. But as he looked at the references, he found himself reading more about the history of one of the Terran's world wars, specifically the conflict they called World War II.
He was confused by the lack of references to the other species until he realized that it had taken place prior to the Terrans achieving spaceflight. Since the conflicts were listed as taking place in the air, on the land, and at sea, that made sense. As he looked into how Terrans fought, his errant thoughts turned to questions on how the conflict had ended and how the victor had treated his vanquished foes. What he read made him even more puzzled. Instead of reducing them to ash they had rebuilt them? He shook his head in confusion.
“What are you reading?” the ship's Beta bull asked, startling him. He looked up and then waved the tablet.
“It's a historical file on the Terrans. It is only partially translated. The herd leader asked me to find a better way to counter the enemy's fighters and bombers.”