James Wittenbach - Worlds Apart 06

by Crucible

  They wouldn’t be joining them. She would never see them again.

  “Over here,” called Chief Engineer Carlyle Duke a catwalk in front of the control center at the top of the dock. Duke was an older-than-middle-aged Republicker male. He was slightly built; salt and pepper ran through the steely hair framing his narrow, scarred face. Alkema had recommended him as the repair lead, because he had a background in salvage, once recovering an entire Guild Refinery Ship after an unscheduled cargo detonation. There were also a number of Guild technicians in the repair teams, as they had a disproportionate experience working in raw conditions in damaged ships.

  Duke steadied himself against the rail and addressed the technicians gathered in the bay.

  “All right. Listen up. We are in a severely damaged pathfinder ship. Our immediate mission is to assess, repair, and reactivate four ventral thruster units to lift this ship to a higher orbit.

  “As you have observed, the gravitational fields on this ship are dysfunctional. You will encounter this condition throughout the vessel. You will find some parts of this ship to be in even worse condition than this landing bay. You will find passageways with no atmosphere.

  You will find structural damage. You will find exposed energy cells. There will be radiation zones, areas choked with debris… and perhaps even the remains of this ship’s former crew.

  “It will not be easy. In all likelihood, the tubeways are non-functional. You’ll have to travel to the thruster access panels on foot. The nearest ones are eighty decks below where we are standing. Hopefully, the trans-conduits are intact… and with thruster packs, you might make it to them in time.”

  He squinted at them in an angry but somewhat inspirational way. “We are going to rescue this ship, because the pathfinders have worlds yet to discover, and because we don’t want to hand a victory to those Aurelian bastiches. But, mostly because our commander ordered us to salvage this ship, and that should be reason enough for all of us. Any questions?”

  “What about survivors, sir?” asked one technician, a Republicker whose last name, for some reason, was ‘Plankton.’

  Duke’s features shifted ever-so-slightly, as though he hated explaining the obvious to an obvious fool. “Our mission is to keep this ship from crashing into the mudball below us. If you encounter survivors, and they can’t help, send them to the Hangar Bay. There will be no dedicated searches for survivors until after the ship is secure, understood?” There were no further questions. He divided the personnel into seven teams of four, and two teams of six. And laid out for them the quickest pathway to the thruster arrays.

  “There is just one more thing,” said Duke. He made a point of strapping pulse-cannons to both wrists. “We were ambushed outside the ship. Make damn sure we’re not ambushed on the inside. Victor Alpha Team, you’re with me. Everybody else move out.” Scout and Fangboner ended up on Victor Alpha Team. Duke explained their mission.

  “We’re going to need a command center, and this bay is as good a location as any. The Flight Command Center should be serviceable. He indicated the long curved deck with windows overlooking the Hangar Bay. “Let’s go.”

  As he turned to head out, he suddenly found (Acting) TyroCommander Lear cutting off his escape. “I will need a central command post with access to all ship’s systems.”

  “That’s what we are looking to set up here, sir,” he told her.

  “I didn’t mean the Flight Control Deck. It’s inadequate,” she said icily.

  “I recommend you stay here,” Duke told her. “You can link in with any of the teams from your Aves. And, in the event we need to evacuate, you’ll get out in time.

  She shook her head. “That is not acceptable. I will set up my command post from the Secondary Command Center on Deck 10.”

  “Sir,” said Duke, “I don’t even know if we can get through to that command center, or if it’s intact.”

  “Preliminary scans indicate…”

  “The Command Tower is gone,” Duke reminded her. “The Secondary Command Tower is gone. There may be thirty thousand tons of debris…”

  “… that SC-2 is functional and intact. That is where I will make my command. If you manage to restore the thrusters, we can restore control of the thrusters from Secondary Command.”

  “You can do it from the Flight Control Deck, too.” Duke told her. The shift in his expression was less subtle this time.

  Lear would not be deterred. “I am going to do it from Secondary Command. Your job is to make that happen or I will relieve you and choose a new crew chief. Do we have an understanding?”

  Duke looked undefeated. “You can take Technician Scout and Technician Fangboner.”

  “I would prefer to help you with the command center here,” Scout said.

  “You’re better with bringing damaged cybernetic networks on-line,” Duke said. “Now, get the… Acting TyroCommander to SC-2. Pegasus owes us four more crews… if they don’t get blown up on the way.”

  Suddenly, the great ship shuddered. The deck slowly pitched upward. Somewhere, something must have given way. Maybe a deck imploded; maybe part of the superstructure broke off. The vibrations of its death throes carried even to the Hangar Bay, deep inside the mighty ship.

  “If you live long enough to get yours set up, link in with me from there,” Duke finished.

  Pegasus — Tactical Simulation and Visualization Laboratory, Beta — Deck 90

  Before the Tactical Simulation Lab had moved closer to the bridge, it had been housed in a simulation laboratory ten decks below. As Redfire and his tactical team worked in the lab above, Alkema and his team worked in this larger but mostly similar lab.

  The centerpiece of the laboratory was a holographic sphere two meters in diameter representing the second planet of the 15 215 Crux system. Painfully low in its screaming clouds of fury was a tiny simulacrum representing the Pathfinder Ship Lexington Keeler. Alkema and a team of Pegasus’s best and most creative engineering talent was trying to figure out how to bring Keeler out before it crashed into the planet, which would happen in four hours and forty minutes.

  “Parameters set, sir,” said one of the technicians assisting the exercise, a Republicker female with a roundish face and cheeks like that of some kind of rodent that stored seeds in its cheek-pouches and oddly-looping braids around her ears. Her name was Salacia No.

  Alkema crossed his arms and stared hard at the hologram. “Begin simulation.” A tiny hologram of Pegasus appeared above the tiny hologram of Lexington Keeler. It moved in closer until the two ships seemed almost about to merge. Pegasus’s course was smooth and steady at first, but began shaking as it entered the atmosphere. Keeler on the other hand was pitching and twisting. Pegasus hit Keeler with a barrage of specially modulated gravity beams of the kind normally used to guide Aves into the landing bay. When Keeler was steadied, Pegasus began deploying a network of cables between itself and the crippled ship. The engineers had calculated they might be able to position 240 recovery cables on the lower hull, so that was the number used in the simulation.

  When the two ships were joined together by a lacework of cables, Pegasus began to pull up.

  Lexington Keeler began to lift from the atmosphere. Alkema turned to a different display. An engineer read off as well. “Hull stress on the Keeler has increased 160 per cent, but it’s holding.”

  Alkema was beginning to think it might work, but then a tiny line snapped. Then another, and another until Keeler broke loose and began spinning out of control into an unstoppable death-dive that ended 32 seconds later in a big smoking crater on the planet’s surface.

  “O.K.,” said Alkema. “So, that plan probably isn’t our best option. Load the second scenario.”

  Alkema had had even less confidence in the second solution. It involved Pegasus flying under Lexington Keeler and nudging the other ship out of the atmosphere with her own shields.

  His doubts were validated when the demonstration ended in a fireball as both ships broke apart in the atmo
sphere, and then crashed to the surface in a double-mass of debris and flaming horrible death.

  “Oops,” said Alkema. “Let’s refocus. Peg, go back to trapezoid alpha. Usual problem statement.”

  The hologram reset to show the doomed Lexington Keeler spinning above the tormented planet. It made him feel like the obvious solution was to reach out with his hand and pluck the ship from the scorched skies of the planet. If only there were a way to make himself gigantic, and able to breathe in space…

  “My ideas are starting to get silly enough to make me reconsider the ones we’ve rejected,” Alkema said. A youngish engineer with bright blue eyes and closely shorn blonde hair almost spoke before Alkema cut him off. “Except for that antigravity wave pulse gun idea.”

  “It would work,” Engineering Specialist Anthem insisted.

  “Peg,” Alkema asked the ship’s braincore. “Analyze Concept Anthem One. Estimated time to complete antigravity wave pulse gun.”

  “Nine hundred and six hours,” the ship responded.

  Alkema continued. “Peg, demonstrate effect of firing antigravity wave gun.” Pegasus reappeared in the hologram. It fired a bright blue beam at Lexington Keeler, which disintegrated into billions of pieces.

  “So, there are at least two problems with the antigravity wave gun,” Alkema concluded.

  “You’ve got it wrong!” Anthem insisted. “You aim the gun at the planet. Blow up the planet and Keeler has nothing to crash into.”

  “Okay, next suggestion,” said Alkema.

  Engineering Specialist Kawasaki made her suggestion. “Launch all of our remaining Aves.

  Attached them to the hull. Use their engines instead of the thruster arrays to get Keeler clear of the atmosphere. It might not get them all of the way out, but it would buy some time to get Keeler’s engines back on line.”

  Alkema chewed the idea in his mind. Assembling all the remaining Aves crews and launching them could probably be accomplished in the time remaining. The Braincore could direct them to the contact points on the hull. “It might work,” said Alkema. He turned.

  “Technician Reynolds, input the parameters and run the simulation.” The simulation ran. Eighty tiny Aves flew out from the holographic Pegasus in waves of four. They were tiny… no more than pinheads of light as they attached themselves to Keeler’s hull.

  “Aves thrust to full,” Alkema ordered. According to the time index, the fleet of Aves would be in position with just under ten minutes left before Keeler’s irretrievable final plunge. The tiny Aves pooled their collective thrust and began to nudge the Pathfinder Ship upwards. Its progress was painfully slow, but they were definitely having an effect.

  “Keeler is 60 kilometers above the surface,” Reynolds reported. “Sixty-five… Sixty Seven…

  Sixty Nine…”

  “Its working,” said Kawasaki, with a mixture of hope and anticipated heroic glory.

  Alkema nodded. “Assuming ideal conditions, it does work. Now, Pegasus, repeat simulation assuming minute variations in thrust, timing, and thrust vector in a random sample of the Aves lifting Keeler. ”

  Lexington Keeler began to lift out of the atmosphere, but before it achieved full lift, individual Aves began to break loose. Some spun into space, a few crashed into the hull. Then, one tiny ship broke loose and crashed into several others.

  “In the simulation, we bought Keeler 18 hours of additional time,” Alkema read. “But in the process, we lost six Aves, and further damaged the outer hull.”

  “It’s still a relative success,” Kawasaki pointed out.

  “So, it’s our Beta Plan. Now, let’s come up with an Alpha Plan in which nobody or almost nobody gets killed.”

  Lexington Keeler— Deck 02

  Scout, Lear, and Fangboner had made it this far without too much difficulty. The sections of the ship above the landing bay contained the structural foundations of the command towers, and were the strongest and most heavily insulated parts of the ship, and damage was limited to broken wall panels, but Scout was taking continuous stress readings on the ship’s primary support structures. The gravitational pull of the planet was beginning to exert an almost critical level of torque on them.

  They had made their war almost to the access corridor on Deck 02, when Scout picked up something. “TyroCommander Lear…”

  “Executive TyroCommander Lear…” she was corrected.

  “Executive TyroCommander Lear, I have detected an anomalous energy reading… fourteen meters away, on that corridor.”

  “What kind of reading?” Lear asked, without much enthusiasm.

  ”Tough to say, but it could be a survivor.”

  Lear had to think about this for a second. “Let’s investigate.” She made it sound like an unwelcome distraction from her task.

  The reading came from behind a sealed hatch. The doors were undamaged and Scout and Fangboner’s combined strength was enough to pull them apart while Lear supervised. This particular corridor had suffered damage. Debris had rained down from the decks above, enough to clutter it, to make passage challenging, but not enough to make it impossible.

  Scout directed her light at the source of the energy reading. Trapped beneath some collapsing deck supports was a Mechanoid. It was unlike any of the ones Pegasus carried.

  Larger than human, with a cylinder-shaped metal body and four large, powerful arms. It turned its visuators toward them, and they seemed to glow with red-orange disgust.

  “It’s a mechanoid of some kind,” said Scout.

  “Duh,” called out the mechanoid. “Now how about a little less yammering and a little more shut-the-hell-up-and-get-me-out from under these structural supports.” Scout was stunned. Mechanoids on Pegasus were not programmed to talk… let alone sass.

  “Who programmed you to talk?”

  “The Electroids,” answered the Mechanoid. “They were much cooler than you pathetic piles of protein. Now, get me out of here.”

  “We’re here to rescue this ship, not get mixed up with a foul-mouthed mechanoid,” Fangboner said.

  “We don’t have time to rescue a mechanoid,” Lear said. “We have to get to Secondary Command, and I don’t think this corridor is viable.”

  The Mechanoid pointed an extremity at himself. “The Name is Move-O-Bot. And if you are trying to get to SC-2, you won’t make it without me. I got trapped here helping the rest of the meat-crew evacuate … and they left me here to die. I hate them.” His eyes softened. “But I might get to like you guys, if you get me out of here. Anyway, there’s about sixteen tons of debris between here and SC-2, and you aren’t getting through it without me.”

  “We’ll find another route,” said Lear.

  The Mechanoid sneered, which definitely should have exceeded his programming capabilities. “Yeah, good luck with that. This is the way the crew took when they evacuated.

  You think any of the other paths are any better?”

  “I think I can do this,” Scout said, and she began to insert herself between the fallen supports. “Hello, Move-O-Bot, I’m Technician First Class Scout of Pathfinder Ship Pegasus. ”

  “Great and who cares,” said Move-O-Bot.

  Pegasus — Tactical Simulation and Visualization Laboratory Tactical TyroCommander Redfire had taken the four questions that burned in his head and displayed them in luminous blue fontage on the slim horizontal screens that surrounded the laboratory at ceiling level.

  1. Who was the enemy? Aurelians? Or some other.

  2. Where did those attacking ships come from?

  3. Were there any more of them?

  4. When would they strike again?

  Also displayed were sensor records of the attack on the repair ships. The sensors had strained to get good data on the attackers. The images were distorted, but there was an impression of a knife blade melded together with asymmetrical fins running the rear third of the ships and a pair of cylindrical pods above and below.

  The Aurelians call their warrior class the “Swords,” he though
t. Would there not be some symmetry then, if their fighter-class ships were shaped like blades. He kept the complete thought to himself, not expecting them to understand.

  “I doubt they were Aurelian ships,” Saic insisted. “Aurelian ships are big and slow, those ships were small and fast.”

  “The Aurelians we’ve seen had big slow ships,” Redfire said in a voice notably calmer than that of anyone else in the TSAL. “But this system is about 1,100 light years from Bodicéa.

  Assuming there are a number of Aurelian Megaspheres moving throughout the quadrant, this ship could have assimilated a different technology.”

  Sark ran through the sensor data from Probe Two, which had been distant from the attack, but was in a position to catch the streaks of the attacking alien ships just as they closed on the Keeler.

  “I want to check something,” said Sark. She measured the time index from the ships’ first appearance to the end of the tape and calculated. “I know why it was so hard for us to track them,” she announced.

  She laid out the math for them. “These ships traveled about 440,000 kilometers in less than two seconds of sensor readings. Average speed. 1.06 c.”

  “They were moving faster than light?” Redfire said. “That isn’t possible. Not in our universe.”

  “I am saying the distance we tracked them over was crossed in less time than they could have crossed it at light speed,” Sark said. “How, I don’t know.” Saic had a suggestion. “Do we have enough course data to backtrack to see where they came from.”

  Redfire actually had already thought of that. And part of the Tactical Visualization Laboratory’s Capability was to automatically extrapolate the probable courses of attacking ships both before and after they engaged Pegasus’s defenses in battle. He pulled up a holographic readout in front of him.

  Course Extrapolated Subject To Following Caveats:

  1. Time of charted course too brief to accurately determine prior or subsequent course.

  2. Speed of enemy ships too great to adequately determine course.