by Dietmar Wehr
As Mirakova watched the group walk away with Harrow bringing up the rear, she mentally shook her head. The purpose of the simulations was to weed out the less competent tacticians, and while Harrow had clearly distinguished herself from the rest, it was the way she did it that was now threatening to give Mirakova a headache. Outguessing a surprise in the simulator was one thing, but she still didn’t know how Harrow would react in a real situation where anything might, or might not, happen. Sitting back with each squadron as a close escort and waiting for an attack was not going to accomplish the Seek and Destroy mission that the second scenario was meant to simulate, and it didn’t show Mirakova how Harrow would react to a real surprise. On the other hand, the others hadn’t exactly covered themselves with glory either, so right now she didn’t know who to pick to lead the raid mission. Her headache moved from threat to actuality, and as she walked back to her office, she sighed with the realization that it was going to be a long day.
Chapter Eleven:
Fleet Master Songorus felt his excitement rise as his fleet was about to drop out of hyper-space into the star system occupied by the race that called themselves Sheepul. As he recalled that name, he shook his head in disgust. What kind of a name was that for a supposedly intelligent race? It sounded entirely too pacifist. As the countdown timer hit zero, the tactical display came to life with an instant representation of the physical layout of the planets in this system along with all large objects, such as ships-of-battle, within detection range. A quick scan revealed the home world of these Sheepul, and a large orbiting object that could be a warship. Checking the detailed data on it, though, he saw that it was only about half as massive and long as a Ship-of-Battle should be, and there was only one of them.
When a full 90 cyclets had passed without any sign of long range fire, Songorus began to have a sinking feeling that the Sheepul weren’t going to put up much of a fight. A quick micro-jump by the fleet brought it close enough to the home world to attempt direct communication. The translation matrix in the Seed Drone would enable the Sheepul to understand Tyrell messages and reply the same way. Before Songorus could even compose a message, his Communications Master reported an incoming message that was scrolling across the bottom of the tactical display.
[WE SHEEPUL RECOGNIZE THE SUPERIORITY OF THE TYRELL TECHNOLOGY AND WARFIGHTING CAPABILITY AND WILL NOT OFFER ANY RESISTANCE. WE WILL CO-OPERATE WITH YOUR PEOPLE COMPLETELY.]
Songorus let out a howl of rage that jolted some of the other personnel with its intensity. His body’s hormones had built up in anticipation of the release that combat would trigger. To be denied that release was worse than not being allowed to consummate a coupling with a female at the last possible moment before climax! He began to tremble with frustration. Damn those cowards for robbing him and his people of their rightful fighting climax! His mind lost all capacity for rational thought. He and his people needed combat, and by all the Gods of his ancestors, combat was what he and they were going to get!
He thrust his clenched fist down onto the communications button on his console and said in a voice tight with barely controlled fury, “Fleet Master to all ships! These scum have shown themselves to be an Unworthy Foe, but they will not deny us our moment of ecstasy! Prepare to bombard their miserable cities! Fire as soon as you have targets identified! Continue firing until I order a halt! LET THEM TASTE OUR STEEL!”
The bombardment went on for a long time.
Thirty-four days later:
Harrow checked the Task Force Status data on her station’s number two display as the two carriers re-entered normal space in the outskirts of the Sheepul star system. By now she had gotten frustrated at the added delay caused by this detour to check on the status of the Sheepul in the aftermath of the Tyrell attack while on their way to carry out the main mission of attacking the Tyrell home system. The Task Force would wait out here on the edge of this system until it had a decent idea of what, if anything, was happening in this system.
“Mass detection is clear, Admiral, but…”
Harrow looked at her Flag Tactical Officer. “But what?” She saw that her F.T.O. had a frown on her face.
“Passives are not picking up any EM transmissions from anywhere in this system.”
Harrow was about to say that couldn’t be right when she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Was it possible that the Tyrell had attacked the Sheepul home world too? As far as anyone knew, that had never happened before to a target species, but the Alliance knew so little of how the Tyrell had behaved in the past that anything was possible. She knew she had to find out what had happened here before moving on to the rest of the mission. The question was, what was the best way to do that? She decided to ask for advice.
“Harrow to Commander Eagleton.”
“Eagleton here, Admiral.”
Harrow let a small smile cross her lips. Gort had always been careful to refer to her by her rank or last name, except when the two of them were having a private conversation.
“Please come to the Flag Bridge, Commander.”
He replied after a barely perceptible pause. “I’m on my way, Admiral.”
By the time he arrived less than a minute later, the Flag Bridge was eerily quiet as everyone on it realized that something potentially horrible had happened to the Sheepul. Eagleton found Cate standing next to the F.T.O. Both of them were looking at one of the tactical station displays.
As Eagleton walked over to them, Harrow looked up and said in a lower than normal voice, “We’re not picking up any transmissions at all from the Sheepul home world. This entire system has gone EM dark. We have to investigate this, and I’d like your recommendation on how best to do that, Commander.”
Eagleton didn’t try to hide his shock at the news, but he got over it quickly and pondered the problem. “Well, ah…I recommend sending one corvette to within ten light-seconds of the planet, and if nothing shows up on the mass detectors, then penetrate all the way to a high orbit.”
Harrow nodded. She had been thinking along those lines too. “Fine. Which corvette do we send?”
Eagleton didn’t hesitate. “Mine. I can have her ready in five minutes from the time you give the go ahead.”
“You’ve got it, Gort. Do I need to tell you to be careful?”
Eagleton gave a slight shake of his head as he turned and practically sprinted for the exit. Harrow decided to overlook his slight transgression in not responding verbally when questioned by a superior office. At least he hadn’t said ‘No, Cate’.
Eagleton’s corvette, nicknamed Angel of Death, managed to meet his boast of being ready in five minutes, but just barely. He and his crew were strapped in and ready to undock the corvette as soon as Flight Ops retracted the very large clamps that were holding the corvette up against its docking bay. Eagleton switched his head gear’s virtual reality display over to the corvette’s external opticals with computer enhancement. He would watch as the auto-pilot carefully maneuvered the corvette past the huge baffles that prevented any light from leaking out through the huge openings at both ends of the carrier. Eagleton was always reminded of the manta-ray on Earth with its open maw when he saw the carrier from the front. Since the corvettes themselves were big enough to be considered spaceships in their own right, there was no way that the carrier could open and close hangar bay doors big enough to let multiple corvettes exit and enter at the same time. The openings had to stay open all the time, and the cavernous interior where the corvettes were docked was constantly in vacuum. To minimize the risk of collisions, corvettes left the carrier from the front and entered from the rear.
“Angel D to Flight Ops. What’s the holdup? The Admiral expected us to be out there three minutes ago!”
Harrow, who was listening in on the Flight Ops channel, smiled. Gort liked to exaggerate, but this was an outright lie. Still, if it got Flight Ops off their butts a bit sooner, who was she to object.
“Flight Ops to Angel D. Cool your jets, Gort. We had a minor technic
al glitch, but it’s been cleared up. Docking clamps are retracting…now.”
“Thanks, Flight Ops, and for future reference it’s Squadron Leader Gort to you, Sub-Commander Tyson. Angel D is maneuvering.”
As the corvette pulled away from the docking bay, Eagleton made sure the auto-pilot didn’t run into any of the baffles. At the slow speed they were moving, a collision wouldn’t be serious, but it would be embarrassing. With the corvette just about to pass the final baffle, Eagleton switched to manual control and pushed the maneuvering engine to full power. Angel of Death leaped forward, narrowly missing the top part of the opening. Eagleton heard his co-pilot gasp.
“Damn, that was close! I almost shit myself,” said the co-pilot.
Eagleton laughed. “If it was almost, then I’ll have to get closer next time.”
“Never mind. Forget I said that. What’s the hurry? The Sheepul will still be there if we take a bit longer.”
The smile disappeared from Eagleton’s face. “You’re assuming they’re still there, Brad. I have a bad feeling that they may not be.”
When it was obvious that the co-pilot was not going to respond, Eagleton re-opened his com channel to the carrier. “Angel D to Ranger. I’m lining up for the first micro to the target. Waiting for the word.”
Harrow listened to Eagleton’s voice message. She turned to the Comm. Station and said, “Angel D has the word.”
“Ranger to Angel D. TFL says you have the word.”
“Roger that, Ranger. We are jumping in three…two…one…now!”
The jump was instantaneous, and Eagleton stayed silent as his crew did what they needed to do after each jump. The key was the mass detection system. At this distance of ten light-seconds from the Sheepul home world, Angel D would detect any Tyrell super-ships that might be in orbit or near the planet.
“The scope is clear,” said the T.O. after a few seconds hesitation. Eagleton nodded even though the T.O. couldn’t see him. He was checking the same ‘scope’ on a small screen on his Pilot’s console. He just wanted to make sure the scope stayed clear for a few more seconds before taking the next step.
“I have the target on visual for what it’s worth, Commander,” said the co-pilot.
Eagleton looked over at the main display, which showed a zoomed-in image. What he should have seen was a small blue and white planet. The Sheepul home world had roughly the same proportion of surface area covered by water as Earth. What he actually saw was a swirl of grey and brown streaks. They were still too far away to be able to come to any conclusions, but the trip down would bring them to less than one light-second distance. With the corvette’s enhanced opticals, that would be close enough.
“Okay, let’s get this bird moving. I have the controls.” Eagleton wanted to move closer at maximum speed but he remembered his promise to Cate and kept the speed down to 10% of light. He and his co-pilot said nothing during the short trip to the one light-second point.
A quick check confirmed no mass contacts, which at this distance would include much smaller ships too. The image on the display was clear enough that Eagleton could tell what those grey and brown streaks were. The brown were huge plumes of dust high up in the atmosphere carried by the planet’s jet stream. The grey streaks were made up of clouds heavy with snow. Here and there were gaps that allowed him to look down to the planet’s surface. Instead of green, plant-covered ground, he saw either the brown of bare soil or the white of snow. Eagleton’s first thought was some kind of nuclear winter.
“Brad, check how much radiation is coming from there.”
“Radiation levels are only slightly above normal, Commander. You were thinking nuclear winter?”
“Yeah, but rad levels are too low for that. It has to be those FTL missiles the Tyrell love to use. If they fired them at the planet, the kinetic energy from massive objects travelling that fast would kick up millions of tons of dust that would block out the light and heat from this star, and temperatures would start to plunge.” Before he could say more, the T.O. interrupted.
“I’m picking up something! We missed it before because the planet was directly in between. It looks like dozens of small objects that seem to be orbiting in a loose kind of formation. Can’t tell if those are spacecraft. None of them are large enough to be ships.”
“Are they maneuvering?” asked Eagleton.
“Not so far, Commander.”
“I want to take a look at them. What’s the bearing?”
“I’ve transferred that data to the opticals. You should be able to see something now, Commander.”
Eagleton saw something all right, but he wasn’t sure what it was that he was seeing. Could it be that some of those objects were tumbling?
“That one there seems to be tumbling,” said the co-pilot as if he’d been reading Eagleton’s thoughts.
“I wonder…could those things be what’s left of their shipyard where the super-ships were being built?” asked Eagleton.
The co-pilot called up data on one of his smaller displays. “Based on the last data we had, the orbit would be just about right for that.”
“Son of a bitch,” said Eagleton in a low voice as he shook his head. “Those Tyrell bastards shot that shipyard complex to pieces and then targeted the planet too. I guess the Sheepul didn’t put up enough of a fight to satisfy them.”
“So what do we do now?” asked the co-pilot.
Eagleton took a deep breath. “We go down to a much lower altitude and see if we can find any signs of groups of survivors. You take the controls and head for a low orbit. Five percent of light is fast enough. I’ll compose a message back to the TFL.”
Harrow had just turned away from the main display when it pinged to signify an incoming FTL message. The message scrolled across the bottom of the display.
[EAGLETON TO TASK FORCE LEADER. SHEEPUL HOME WORLD SEEMS TO HAVE SUFFERED MULTIPLE MASSIVE IMPACTS SUFFICIENT TO CAUSE GLOBAL TEMPERATURE PLUNGE. TYRELL BOMBARDMENT OF THE PLANET WOULD BE MY GUESS. A DEBRIS CLOUD IN ORBIT APPEARS TO BE WHAT’S LEFT OF THE SHEEPUL SHIPYARD COMPLEX. ANGEL D IS MANEUVERING FOR A LOW ORBIT TO SCAN THE SURFACE VISUALLY FOR SIGNS OF SURVIVORS. END OF MESSAGE.]
“Oh, God,” said Harrow in a low voice. Did we condemn the Sheepul to extinction when we decided not to help defend them from the Tyrell? She recalled the reasons why she was against helping the Sheepul, and while they still seemed like logical, rational arguments, she now wondered if humans had done the wrong thing for the right reasons.
When the corvette had dropped down to 200 kilometers altitude, Eagleton put his hand on the joystick and said, “Okay, Brad, I’ve got her.” He held the corvette at that altitude for a while as they tried to look down through the dust and the clouds. Checking the planet’s orientation, Eagleton saw that this system’s sun was just about to drop below the horizon behind them. Scanning the planet visually on the night side might actually be better if survivors had gathered in large enough groups to have multiple camp fires that would be bright enough to be seen from orbit. However, no heat sources were detected either visually by the opticals or via infrared detection by the time the sun re-emerged above the horizon ahead of them.
Eagleton turned to his co-pilot. “We’re still too high. There’s too much dust and water vapor in the form of clouds to get a good look at the ground. I’m taking her down into the atmosphere.” He pretended not to notice the shocked look on the co-pilot’s face.
“I don’t think a Mark 2 corvette has ever been flown in atmosphere, has it? This ship is basically a huge flattened tube with a flat front end, not exactly what you’d called aerodynamic.”
“You’re right about no one having tried this before, but when the design was tested in wind tunnels and at sub-sonic speeds, the data showed it was possible. We’ll have to slow way down and won’t be able to cover a large area in a reasonable time frame, but at least it’ll give us a better idea of conditions down there. I’m slowing the ship down now. We’ll dive through the next break in cloud cover we
see if we’re over land. No sense in spending hours over the ocean. You better warn the crew that there might be turbulence that the artificial gravity can’t compensate for.”
It was about eight minutes later when they saw an opening in the cloud cover and confirmed that they were over land. Eagleton had decelerated so much that the corvette would have fallen like a stone if he hadn’t directed the maneuvering engine thrust to point down instead of aft. As the ship started entering atmosphere, the automated safety system began to issue recorded warnings that quickly became annoying.
“Shut that damn recording off!” said Eagleton. He had enough on his mind without having to block out that repetitive warning too. Speed was down to half the speed of sound, and rate of descent was low enough that hull friction would not be a problem.