“We gave her access to our scientific records and allowed her to design a ship based on that.”
“You are killing me,” Admiral Jevins said with a sigh. In what world does someone give an unrestricted AI access to scientific records and tell it to go build a giant ship of mass destruction. Green bars lit up above the fighters, indicating that they were refueled and ready for action. Jevins set a path for the fighters, sending them on their way ahead of the destroyers. “But you said there was a snag with her?”
“Yes,” Al said slowly. “We designed her so she could make scientific advances of her own. However, that failed. She has tactical insight, but nothing more.”
“So she cannot create new technologies?”
“Correct.”
“And by we, you mean yourself and General Sola?”
“Also correct.”
If Admiral Jevins was still connected to his body he would have been hitting his forehead with his hand right now in exasperation. The idiocy of these guys made him wonder just how they got into power. But then Admiral Jevins reminded himself of how dark these people were, and how rational they can be at times. It was a good thing he was giving him so much information. But that meant that Al thought Jevins was the only possible solution to this whole mess. “Did she ever tell you what the role or class the ship was?” Jevins asked.
“She called it a version of a cruiser from the age of sea bound navies.”
“Are there any humans aboard the ship?”
“None alive.”
“Why is she keeping the crust on top of the ship?”
“Possibly for further protection against kinetic and energy weapons. A physical shield perhaps?”
Admiral Jevins looked at the timer once more, noticing that there were eight minutes left until engagement. “I am about to engage her. Just tell me one thing. Why didn’t you go to the Senate to solve these problems? Or apply for becoming a Senator?”
“We tried. We were blocked. We were oppressed and beaten down. Hard to make laws when you have no say in them.” Al paused and looked down for a few seconds. “I made some very nasty decisions in the past. I regret only one of them, and that’s Jillian. But I did what was necessary to free my people. I just hope you can stop her.”
“I will try my best. You have my word on that.”
“I have no choice but to trust you on that Admiral.”
“I know, I know,” Admiral Jevins said and ended the connection. He was studying the orbital path of Ring Three in relation to their own path of opposite direction when Captain Eru opened up a channel with him.
“Sir, sensors are reporting energy fluctuations.”
“We aren’t even in an effective envelop yet for our kinetic weapons. They don’t seem to have anything like a mass driver on their hull. Maybe inside their superstructure?”
“It’s a possibility. The energy flux is within the electromagnetic fields. Visuals popping up now as well.”
A second window opened up, showing a close up window view of the enemy ship that was still accelerating. The little knobs began to glow a dull red and shine with a faint radiance. The crust on top of the ship began to shed off into dust. But the dust didn’t fall behind the ship. Instead it just hovered above the ship.
The crust all turned to dust within two minutes. Jevins got to see the true shape of the ship and noted that it indeed was a true ellipsoid, a kilometer long and a hundred and fifty meters at its widest. The dust began to glow, turning to a red than to a yellow then to a blue and then to a white. It was heating up through the spectrum. But then it turned to a dull red, as if the dust cooled down. As it turned to a dull red it began to circulate around the ship, covering the entire surface and masking everything underneath it.
“Captain… What is that?”
“Trying to figure it out, sir. Computer can’t figure it out. It’s only giving a temperature reading. We can’t read the surface of the ship anymore.” Captain Eru paused for a couple of seconds. “I got no clue either, sir.”
“Going in blind now aren’t we.”
“Seems like it sir.”
“Engagement in five minutes. Our kinetics is stronger than our lasers. Let’s see what our new ships can do,” Admiral Jevins said as he closed the channel. But in truth, he was more worried about what the enemy ship was doing more than he was excited to bring these destroyers to battle.
Jevins overlaid a faint green sphere on each of his ships and fighters depicting their weapons envelop. It was a bit less than five minutes until the destroyers got into range, but his fighters were almost ten seconds out. He zoomed in until he was right behind the fighters, the enemy ship right ahead with its dull red sheen of dust covering it. His fighters let loose with their smaller version of the Metal Storm weapons system, a series of rail guns. The fighters flew past their target as their rounds impacted the enemy ship. The rounds caused ripples to form in the dust as they hit as if it was a falling leaf hitting a still pond with little waves radiating out. He brought a path up for them, giving them exact timing to follow.
Bringing up the channel to Captain Eru again, he zoomed back out to where his destroyers were. Setting a path directly parallel to the enemy ship for his two main ships, he timed a countdown for a rotation and burn sequence to bring his ships coasting relatively behind Jillian. “Captain, thoughts?”
“Sir, all we are getting from the computer is the dust molecules are at incredibly high speeds. We aren’t seeing any change in the enemy ship, she appears to be undamaged. Officer Brut says he has something to share about this. I’m patching him in.”
“Admiral,” Officer Brut said as his avatar joined alongside Captain Eru.
“Officer Brut, you know what we are seeing?”
“Yes sir. It’s a cold plasma shield, but it’s only supposed to be theoretical.”
“Only theoretical?”
“Yes, our techs haven’t yet prevented the plasma from melting the host ship.”
“Well it seems that Jillian has done that. Any idea how she did?”
“Sir, our scientists don’t know how to manipulate the plasma like that. As far as they know, it’s impossible.”
“So this is new technology then.”
“Yes sir.”
“Is it possible for our main guns to inflict damage that our fighters couldn’t?” Admiral Jevins asked, knowing that his destroyer’s main rail guns should fire with nearly six times more power than the fighters, a benefit of longer rails and a larger power plant.
“I don’t know sir.”
“Thank you Officer Brut,” Admiral Jevins said as he closed the channel off from the junior officer, leaving himself and Captain Eru. “Let’s hope we do damage her at least.” Jevins looked at her trajectory. “She’s heading right for Ring Three.”
“Would the lasers do anything against the plasma?”
“They have a lower energy output than the kinetics.”
“Ah…”
“Two minutes until we are in range. Tell me if you get any ideas,” Admiral Jevins said as he closed the channel to Captain Eru and adjusted the course of the ships. It seems like Jillian was hiding more things from the Governor than he thought, Jevins thought to himself. An artificial intelligence capable to producing its own scientific achievements while having no restrictions in how it used them. The thought sent the feeling of a shudder through Jevins, even though he was not connected to his body.
As the destroyers flew into range their rail guns thundered silently in space, sending metal rounds spearing through the darkness. The destroyers turned nearly a full one hundred and eighty degrees while the main engines pushed as hard as they could. The fighters were already coming back around, their greater power to mass ratio giving them a higher acceleration. The destroyers would be able to get one shot in each until the ships passed each other.
Jevins was looking right behind the destroyers, watching as the rounds flew onward and as Jillian kept to her path. Twenty seconds until the rounds impacted
. Jillian only had to maneuver a bit to avoid them. Yet nothing changed in her path and the rounds slammed into her ship.
Plasma sprayed out from the impact, showing the metal hull of the ship with its little knobs. But the rounds never made it to the hull. The plasma was already being captured and forced back into place surrounding the ship. The destroyers flashed by the cruiser without anything happening. Jevins’ fighters then flashed past his decelerating destroyers. The fighters had only five minutes until they were within range again. He planned out a path for them and their rounds to impact a single spot at the same time.
A line of plasma parted along the sides of Jillian’s ship, showing an opening in the hull of her ship. Small spheres a third the size of his fighters starting streaming out of the ship. Admiral Jevins watch in amazement as the computer counted up the number of spheres. Dozens of them fired out of the ship, one after another and each ignited an ion thruster as it aimed along a path right for his ships. He watched as that number topped over a hundred and started approaching two hundred of the little craft.
Admiral Jevins watched as his fighters broke off their set paths to engage the new ships that blocked their path. He immediately cancelled the path, allowing the fighters to choose to fight how they saw fit. A creeping feeling of fear began to grow within Jevins as he watched the plasma shield close back up after over two hundred of the small ships left Jillian’s ship.
Lasers stabbed out, invisible to the naked eye. Yet the computer caught glimpses of the laser from its reflection off of ambient dust. The computer showed Admiral Jevins the path of the lasers as if they were open to plain view. But Jevins wish he never saw them as they penetrated his fighters. He watched as his fighters were torn apart and melted, never able to even engage the little craft themselves.
The little ships were Jillian’s version of fighters. Effective and small, they still heading his way at an acceleration rate unmatched by crewed fighters of the Commonwealth navy. Fear swam over Jevins as he sent a flurry of orders through the computer. One of the Collar Project units unclamped itself, igniting its own ion thruster to push it away perpendicularly from the parent destroyer’s path. The destroyers initiated their antimatter power plants, starting up their wormhole generators. Still moving backwards Jevins had wormholes opened up behind them, allowing them to use their current velocity to take them through. However, warning signs popped up into his view about initiating a wormhole at his current velocity. He cancelled out the warnings as he passed through the wormholes. It was a maneuver that could have killed them, but risks had to be taken.
They came out of the wormhole directly behind Callisto from where they were. Admiral Jevins watched as the little fighters were still coming as fast as they could. But they were never able to reach the wormhole before it closed. His point of view in the digital landscape showed a blacked out area where he once was, showing no sensor coverage. A minute later Admiral Jevins received a video from their Marines on Ring Three. He played the video as he tried to plan his next move.
The Collar Project unit, shaped like a donut, turned off its inner electromagnetic field and compacted its outer one. This caused the ring of antimatter, once suspended in place between the two fields, to be shoved against a depleted uranium ring. The fields compressed the antimatter against the matter causing the annihilation reactions to take place faster than they could have. The explosion blew outwards, reducing the unit itself to bits and flashing out energetic radiation in all directions. The little fighters broke apart under the intense energy, their circuits shorting out as they were forcibly blasted apart.
A few stragglers survived the explosion, but were heavily damaged and out of the fight. They flew along their original paths as their ion thrusters refused to turn back on. The sphere of hard energy expanded outward but dissipated before it reached Jillian’s ship. The plasma shield surrounded Jillian’s ship protected her circuits from any damage the hard energy would do.
The sphere of hard energy continued to expand through the inner Jupiter system, dissipating further as it moved away. But for some of the smaller facilities and ships in orbit it was too much. Succumbed to the energy pulsing through them and with walls too thin to protect their occupants from the radiation they were destroyed. The Rings and mining facilities had hulls thick enough to stop the energy from penetrating.
Admiral Jevins did not feel sorry for the people who died from the bomb. It was a necessary fact of war that people died. And according to Sun Tzu, Admiral Jevins thought to himself, every battle plan never survives contact with the enemy. It seems the Governor was wrong about another thing as well. Jillian’s ship was not a cruiser. It was something much worse. It was a carrier.
Chapter 16
With high temperatures and winds, the Global Collapse was created by many facets. War within humanity didn’t help. Records barely survive of the wars that ensued. Not much is known about who caused wars or who declared on whom. It is known that World War III was fought as each country tried to grab the few resources left as they dwindled. Most countries fought by themselves, few fought side by side. As population centers dwindled and the financial crisis fully collapsed the global and local markets, governments also collapsed in on themselves. Three governments survived. Of those three, two signed an alliance and treaty that formed the Earth Commonwealth. This treaty allowed for unified religion and race, meant as a means to an end to the fighting. This also started the Stalk Project that led to the creation of the Earth Ring and the prevention of the extinction of humanity. However, one country refused to sign based on the unified religious beliefs section. That country became known as the Islamic Theocracy and would be plagued by civil war between its various sects within its beliefs. They were feared by the rest of the world so much that an isolation policy would be put into place due to the suicide bombing tactics applied by the far right wing religious conservatives.
-The History of the Earth Commonwealth
Exsid clutched Betty’s unconscious body as close to him as possible in the cramp ventilation shaft. If someone would examine the hospital room he just left they would know someone had escaped. He had no opportunity for a clean getaway when bullets were punching holes through the steel walls.
A small trail of blood marked Exsid’s path as he wormed his way through the seemingly endless air shafts. He had thrown Betty up into the shaft first after he tore off the vent cover. But as he was pulling himself up a bullet hit him in his calf. When he was up in the shaft himself he looked down at the wound. His Biocomp had automatically shut off the nerves from reporting how much pain he was in, but the two dimensional view of his body in his Exovision he saw that his lower leg was in a critical red stage. The bullet when through cleanly, but took a chunk of meat along with it. His leg was pretty much useless.
Using the rest of the nanomeds he had, he sealed the wound against bleeding but he had no more nanomeds left to regrow the muscle tissue that was torn off by the bullet. But with moving through the shaft, the blood vessels his nanomeds had healed were beginning to reopen due to the exertion. Having gone no more than just a few hundred feet he felt he hadn’t gone far enough to escape from any curious people looking for them. He had to get further away.
Reaching a vertical main shaft Exsid crawled out onto a maintenance grate that had a series of ladders connecting to it. He sat up, leaning against the ladder and rested there for a moment. He held Betty there in his arms, her still body tight against his chest. His chest hurt, his lung labored to get enough oxygen into his body.
His panting and exhaustion was something his Biocomp couldn’t hide. He considered taking his last adrenaline packet that he had left stored in his chemical bladder. It would be a temporary fix for his exhaustion, but not for his labored breathing. He looked down at his calf, his body now naturally trying to close the wound. Adrenaline wouldn’t help that either, he thought. He dropped that train of thought and instead his thoughts went to his wayward partner.
He brought up a map of the Rin
g in his Exovision, trying to find if he could locate the water treatment plant Darvin was talking about. He tried to bring up a channel, watching the black mini-screen as it said it was trying to make a connection. Exsid breathed easier when he saw Darvin’s avatar pop up into the channel window. “How’s it going,” he said as cheerfully as possibly, not noticing that he hadn’t selected the channel to display his avatar. It was instead playing what he really looked like.
“You look like shit, you know that?” Darvin replied.
“What? Oh,” Exsid said, confused. He switched the channel to avatar display. “Better?”
“You never were really good with technology.”
“Neither was your father.”
Darvin hesitated, a bit taken aback. “Never knew that.”
“He changed in the end, you know that right?”
“You told me,” Darvin said curtly.
“We never really figured out why. It was like something took control of him. As if it wasn’t really him.”
“Uh huh.”
“And then we were all given upgraded Biocomps. Everyone on Jupiter was. Governor probably did it to take everyone’s mind off of what happened. Or that was what the media said.”
“Why are you saying all of this?” Darvin asked. He was perplexed as to why Exsid was saying all of this right now.
“Because I’ve lost a lot of blood. I’m starting to black out from the loss.”
“Did you activate your nanomeds?” Darvin asked as quickly as he could.
“Used them all up. Hospital was attacked. I’m sending you my location right now. Pick Betty up when you find the General and Chief.”
“You’re in a vent shaft?”
“At least it’s cool in here,” Exsid said as he looked down at sleeping Betty’s face. “Are you inside the plant yet?”
“Yes. I went through the river.”
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