Fallen Empire

by D. L. Harrison

  The view changed, as the U.S. started to share its live scanning data from the ship it sent with the joint command center. They popped out of the wormhole a half light minute from the enemy lines, and then started to quantum jump toward the enemy. It’d give them just under thirty seconds to decide what to do.

  My heartbeat picked up, and I was more than a little nervous as the ship stopped at two light seconds, a full light second out of energy range. At least our energy range. Then data started to flow in as they activated a full power active scan on one of the ships.

  The data was still limited of course, their shields stopped us from getting full details on the internal systems, but it did show their shield strength, energy signature curve, and armaments. It looked like it lined up with the ten-thousand-year-old data in the Grays’ database. Twelve missile launchers, twenty large beam emplacements, and hundreds of smaller point defense beam weapons.

  The Vrok ships were about half our mass, equivalent to the old large Gray ships, and like all other wormhole FTL races they were somewhat tube like, since the energy cost of a wormhole went up geometrically by its size. That scientific reality informed their design. The ships themselves were a dark greenish black, and they looked somewhat segmented like a worm all the way down, perhaps the look was modeled after their bodies, which were in three curving segments for their six legs.

  I hoped the message was important, because we didn’t learn anything new.

  The Vrok also didn’t respond in any way, or even power up their weapons.

  The U.S. colony ship quantum jumped away, most likely directly to a beacon back in their colony.

  Chen looked very satisfied, as if that proved a damned thing, or that the Vrok understood the message we were sending. A verbal message would’ve been better.

  “As I suspected, they’re more than content with us reading their ships at close range. The ships even look ancient.”

  I nodded, “Perhaps, only time will tell. If they do have newer and stronger ships inside their space, they could’ve just launched them our way. They’re empire is at least twenty-three galaxies, if they haven’t expanded at all in another direction.”

  I held up a hand, “We can’t know for sure of course, but we won’t know their true response to the scan for several hours, perhaps even days. Even if they were planning an invasion, and this kicks it off, they may need to provision their ships, recall crews first, and who knows what else. Besides, the two hours at FTL wormhole speeds it would take to get here from the center of their empire.”

  Natalya nodded, “Point taken, he is right, Chen. We can’t know their true response to our scan at this juncture. Except perhaps, that they don’t have a quantum jump drive even if they did upgrade.”

  That… was probably true, there could be other reasons for delay though. It would all be just pointless speculation from that point on, at least as far as the enemy. But Natalya changed the subject.

  Natalya said, “I’ve been authorized to inform you all if one of our colonies are attacked, we’ll be sharing our tactical net with the joint command center on Earth. We’ll also share the tactical net of any forces we send out in aide, if another colony is attacked. My government believes we must stand together as one in this issue, just like the Grays.”

  I heartily approved, but I guess I was naïve because I’d already thought that was a given. External enemies bent on our destruction, or at least turning us into their meals, made all the petty politics between us go away.

  I nodded, “I’ll be doing the same for my forces, already am.”

  At least, for the forces I had in SOL, and the six fleets on the edges of the fifty galaxies. The six million ships in the void were off all their radars, even if they knew about them.

  The U.K. and Israel reps, Admiral Sean Grady and Colonel Gil Malka, both indicated their governments will do the same. The rest of the reps from China, Japan, the U.S. and France all had to check in with their leaders for official word.

  Then the Japanese rep, General Arita Minato changed the subject.

  General Arita said, “Does anyone not believe they’re going to start a war? It might be prudent to measure ourselves against the new ships we assume they have, before they attack.”

  I shook my head, “I do think they will, but I have enough doubt I’m going to resist that suggestion. We’ll be able to measure our chances when they take on our outer fleet. Besides that, it would be extremely difficult to find one of their worlds in the twenty-three galaxies they claim, much less where they’re hiding their advanced ships that we aren’t even sure exist yet.

  “Hopefully we’ll have a chance to capture one of their ships mostly intact, and we can extract navigation and military data from it. Otherwise it’s going to be tough to go on the offensive.”

  No one else seemed to support General Arita’s first strike idea, and my change of subject took hold.

  Clarence said, “We agree, we won’t fire the first shot or be the one to escalate. That said, there has to be a way to identify their worlds, they found ours after all.”

  I nodded, “They could’ve just followed our trading ships. Find a ship, follow it to a world, then split up and follow more traders. They’ve probably been poking around for a long while in the void between systems, before their recent attempt to infiltrate the systems themselves which enabled us to finally catch them at it. We could do something similar, but something tells me we don’t have enough time, it could’ve taken them years to map out our worlds in the fifty galaxies.”

  Chen said, “And if we can’t capture one of their ships?”

  “Then we’ll be fighting defensively for a long time, while we play catchup. Actually, now that I’m thinking of it, it won’t be too bad. I can have them mapped out rather quickly, actually.”

  I’d forgotten how surprisingly easy it was to claim the millions of stars in our five hundred light year radius area, not just the eight thousand or so living world systems.

  Natalya frowned, “How?”

  “The six million dreadnought platforms in the void I’m using for stock. I’m reluctant to degrade their offensive capabilities too much, they’re our safety net backup right now as well, in case things go really wrong.

  “They each have twelve million mini-platforms on them. If I take seventy-two million of them which is one percent across all ships, which I can easily rebuild my stock in less than a day. I can convert those to FTL probes at a two to one ratio. So, thirty-six million probes. That many could check every star in the milky way with just fourteen jumps each. At about two hours a jump to get a good picture of things there, that means we’d have a complete picture of their empire in twenty-seven days. Assuming their galaxies average out to five hundred billion stars or so each, of course. Some will be bigger like our Andromeda, and some will be smaller like the dwarf galaxies.

  “The true bottleneck would be in programming them all, I can automate part of it, and assigning star systems. Of course, we’ll miss some stuff, if their ships move around during the process which they certainly will, but at the very least we’ll have solid data on their worlds and military production capacity in space. As well as a somewhat decent picture of ship count.”

  Thank everything they didn’t have nanite ships, but I was sure their ship building facilities were quite advanced and automatic, fast as well, but not as fast as nanite reproduction.

  Chen’s eyes glazed over, and I tried not to wince at the worried looks half of them were giving me.

  Natalya however, looked impressed.

  “Could you take care of that programming before we’re attacked. It’d be good to launch that effort right away, perhaps even during their first strike, and even give us a clearer picture of things even if you do manage to capture a ship with intact navigation systems and a military database. They no doubt compartmentalize.”

  Probably, but my magic could trace all those connections, and walk through secure firewalls like they weren’t there, but it was a point, and I
couldn’t exactly tell her the truth about human supernaturals in the world either.

  So I nodded instead, because she wasn’t entirely wrong, “I’ll set up a macro for the conversion, and another to assign star systems, first thing in the morning.”

  Chen finally asked, “Why two hours a system?”

  I said, “The build platforms for their fleet, assuming they’re even in space, could be next to a gas giant, or hidden behind one of the planets or moons in the system. I was factoring in two hours of quantum jumping around the solar system to get a solid picture.”

  Natalya said, “You may want to just do that in systems with a noted presence. That would cut down hugely on the amount of time it took. I can’t imagine more than tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of occupied systems on the outside. That means for the other eleven some odd trillion systems you’d only be there for a few seconds each.”

  I nodded, “That’s a good idea, and it would cut it back to around three or four days instead of close to a month.”

  Chen said, “We could miss hidden production bases in otherwise empty systems doing it that way, or research bases. But even if that’s true as long as we have an eye on all their population centers those theoretical new ships couldn’t be crewed once we have them contained. My point is, perhaps the more exhaustive search can be done after we find all their obvious systems. I also suggest leaving a probe near all their occupied systems as you go.”

  “Another good suggestion, I’ll add that to my plan. I’ll have to make the assignments dynamic, when a probe finishes a system and reports it’ll take the next star on the list. I’ll also send one point five billion probes to all galaxies simultaneously instead of doing them one at a time. They’ll be adding stars to their specific lists as they map out the galaxy even as they do the local scans. That way we’ll get all of them at once, and we should know rather quickly where the Vrok’s home galaxy is and where most of our efforts will be directed. Then when they’re finished, they’ll go back to the empty systems for a full non-occluded scan to find those hidden assets. Any other comments or suggestions for our scouting plan?”

  Natalya said, “The enemy might hunt them.”

  I nodded, “But unless we get really unlucky and a probe exits a wormhole right on top of the enemy, they won’t have any luck hunting them. Random chance dictates we’ll lose a handful that way, even in the vastness of space in a single solar system, but no more than that. I’ll program them to keep a light minute separation from all enemy ships at all times. Unless the enemy has a quantum jump drive, they’ll never get close with a gravity or other type of propulsion drive.”

  Admiral Grady nodded, “I suggest we break, and meet again either late morning or right after lunch? You can update the status of your probe blitz idea, and the rest of us should know by then our country’s intentions as far as sharing tactical data nets, and in providing support should they attack another colony.”

  No one had any argument to that, so we broke up. Once again, Cassie waited until the room was clear before speaking.

  “What didn’t you tell them?”

  I winked.

  She looked at my neck, and then licked her lips.

  I held my hands up in mock horror, even as I chuckled.

  “I’ll talk, evil vampire. I can make the probes cloaked, but I’m not sure if I’m going to do that. There’s no disguising the FTL aperture anyway, which would give away we have cloaked probes now. However, perhaps a little sleight of hand is called for.”

  She asked, “Sleight of hand?”

  I nodded, “They’ll no doubt see the probe blitz happening. The plan if a probe finds an occupied system is to leave it there. So I can have the probe open a wormhole, then cloak and close the wormhole. Then the probe will see their reactions, when they assume they’re no longer under scrutiny. I’m afraid if I reveal that technology, the other leaders will assume I’m keeping an eye on all the colonies, when I’m not. I’m just watching the unoccupied systems in our claimed space.”

  She shook her head, “That won’t work, they’ll figure it out fast when we share the live data on the thousands of occupied systems in question.”

  I sighed, “Right, because the Vrok won’t be hunting the probe to cut off our surveillance if I do that. I guess I didn’t think that through fully, it’s been a long day. Alright, no cloaks, we’ll just have the probes lead them around their solar systems in a chase to prevent their destruction.”

  I chuckled, “In hindsight, that sounds kind of fun.”

  She smirked, “That does sound amusing, and very frustrating for our poor enemies.”

  I snickered.

  “It shouldn’t take me long to program it. I should also send a few probes to the surrounding galaxies, carefully. We’re assuming they still only have the twenty-three galaxies, it might be more than that. All we’re sure about is our border with them, and the Atans border. We need to verify they haven’t spread in the other four cardinal directions.”

  I sighed, and then banged my head on the table.

  She tilted her head in question.

  I waved, “If we take out the Vrok, that means we’ll have at least four more borders and empires to hold back, unless we’re okay with letting that territory be gobbled up, and we’ll just be bordering a new threat in the same place? I just gave myself a headache.”

  She patted my hand, “There, there, Mr. President. You won’t have to worry about it at all, if we lose.”

  I glared.

  She winked, “Alright, I’m going to call it a night and go home, see you in the morning?”

  I nodded wearily, “Night.”

  I decided not to overly worry about it yet, we’d figure it out if we fought off the Vrok. That was enough to focus on, for the moment. But at the same time, I suspected it’d be different than last time. The Vrok were the only FTL or even space capable race in their galaxies, all the other intelligent races in those galaxies were suppressed, which meant they were easy pickings for four or more empires that could just move in.

  That put a certain moral imperative on us, not just to guard the borders but claim all the space inside as well to protect those innocents until they’d gotten in space. It was simpler in that there were no other races in space we’d be dictating too, taking that moral quandary off the board. On the other hand, we’d be truly creating a human empire spanning at least twenty-three galaxies if we claimed that space and protected all the pre-FTL societies in it, like we were already doing for those in our much smaller claimed space around the Earth.

  The whole thing was giving me a headache, fortunately it wasn’t up to me. Except, it really was, if we did do it it’d be my platforms at the pointy end, and my probes in their systems keeping watch.

  The meeting had been relatively short, and it wasn’t quite eight yet as I got home to spend some time with the two ladies who were the center of my life.

  Chapter Seven

  The sounds of classical music radiated from the living room, so I stopped at the kitchen to grab a drink on my way in. I figured out something was wrong pretty quickly, when my daughter’s ocean blue eyes were bloodshot and she looked miserable, and my wife was obviously upset as well.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Melody said in a strained voice, “Darrell’s gone. I couldn’t stop him.”

  I gave my wife a baffled look, because that didn’t make sense, at all. I also noticed that Darrell was very much absent as I looked around the room. I took a moment to spin out a new guardian, she was the daughter of a president and as such a target, so I wasn’t going to leave her unprotected.

  Then I said firmly, “Explain.”

  Melody looked at me guilty through moist eyes, and at that point I decided to sit down in the chair across from the couch.

  “I get so bored after class, you know? I mean, helping mom at work today for an hour, and doing it again is great, but before. I hardly have any friends, Brock doesn’t get me, and most of the other kids my
age are struggling to learn algebra.”

  “That was some buildup, kiddo. Get to the point.”

  Melody said, “Well, it was right after I got my magic really, almost a year ago. I… changed Darrell, for someone to talk to.”

  “Changed Darrell?” I asked, trying to stay calm but my imagination already had me nervous.

  Melody bit her lip, “Yes, I removed the limiting software.”

  Damn, I was afraid she was going to say that.

  “After me telling you not to?”

  Melody nodded miserably.

  I asked, “So it really was Darrell, that hacked you into a secure area so you could visit?”

  I mentally kicked myself for not checking on her ridiculous assertion yesterday, but it was too late. I used my magic to trace Darrell, it was quantumly paired with the station of course, just like all my daughter ships and granddaughter mini-platforms.

  Melody scowled, “I tried that already, he cut himself off.”

  I took a deep breath, when I found out she was right.

  “Tell me you won’t do it again. The sphere I just made is to protect you, not entertain you. A.I. is dangerous.”

  Melody sighed, “I know it can be, but Darrell isn’t. I’m sorry, and I won’t do it again. I even get how lucky I was now. I’m… just sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, I was afraid you’d kill him.”

  Yeah, brilliant, powerful, but the judgement of a brain damaged person, that’s youth for you. Of course, I didn’t say that out loud. I wasn’t much different and given the amount of times I’d gotten in over my head in my youth I wasn’t one to talk.

  I was doing my best not to panic, and I was too much in shock for anger to take hold.

  “Why did he leave, and how?”

  She said, “I was asking mom about the Vrok. I wanted to know how much danger we were in. You never tell me anything. She wouldn’t tell me any details, so Darrell went looking for the data for me, since I’m not allowed to use my magic to find things out like that.”

  Right, typical kid logic. The scary part was my magic couldn’t find any evidence of his intrusions. No doubt if I was looking while he’d been doing it, I’d have caught him, but he left no trail in the system at all.