Trissk leaped across the ice-cold floor to hide beneath a broken console. For long minutes all Chirom could hear was a mournful yowling.
He will get through it. He is strong, and brave, with a true warrior’s heart – not just a fighter, but a thinker. He must…he must survive the knowledge.
The room shifted beneath them then, enough to tickle the inner ear but not enough to make them certain what happened. Checking Trissk’s computer, five minutes later Chirom was sure.
“Pseudo-gravity is decreasing. Desolator is slowing spin. Trissk, come out of there; that’s enough childishness,” Chirom said sternly. “Something is happening, and we have to be ready.”
“Go away.” Nothing of Trissk showed from the shadows under the console.
Chirom hissed in irritation. “I must go. When you have accepted what you already know, come find me.” Leaving the door open behind him, the elder hurried down the corridors toward the lift shaft and then the tap-room.
***
A knock at Admiral Absen’s temporary-cabin door roused him from slumber. Checking his watch, he realized it was five minutes before the time he had asked to be woken. Something unexpected? Tobias, his Steward and cybernetic bodyguard, was unnervingly precise about such things.
Pulling on his uniform, he splashed water on his face, and then opened the door to Commander Rick Johnstone’s expressive mien. Only nominally military, the man had been a civilian technician until EarthFleet had drafted him to do the same job – CyberComm officer. He’d inevitably gained rank over time, but Absen knew it was mere veneer.
“Come in, Rick,” Absen said, nodding past him at Tobias as the CyberComm officer entered. Shutting the door, he waved at the bolted-down chairs and sat in one. “What’s on your mind?”
“Sir, you said – well, you implied you might need someone to go with the Marines. Someone with a lighter touch than Bull.”
Absen grunted. “What do you know about ben Tauros?”
“Only what my wife told me. He’s a classic Marine officer – with everything that means. I’m not running down the man, just saying I have different skills and a less…belligerent viewpoint.” Rick’s hands fidgeted nervously, then stilled.
It’s not because he’s afraid of me, Absen thought. God knows we’ve worked together long enough through these bloody wars. He’s just scared I’ll say no. “It’s all right. I understand, and I’m inclined to let you go. You’ve got a very flexible mind, and you have all those chips in your head, which I assume means you will be able to assemble some kind of auto-translate program to let you speak to these Ryss aliens, when the time comes.”
“Yes, sir. Already working on it.” Johnstone started to relax a bit, seeing the admiral was likely to agree with his offer.
“You’re also still a civilian at heart, no matter what you wear on your collar. No, don’t deny it, that’s not a bad thing. We military men tend to fall victim to the hammer-nail fallacy.”
“When you got a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” Rick agreed. “And I realize it looks like they attacked us, but we just don’t know –”
Absen held up a hand, palm out. “Already ahead of you, son. Remember, we were able to conquer this system and drive out the Meme precisely because I decided to extend the hand of friendship to the Hippos. I’m willing to wait and see in this case, too. So you’ll be my political liaison, with overall authority for the operation.”
Rick’s eyes widened with surprise.
“Oh, didn’t expect that, did you?” Absent pointed a finger at him from a palm-up fist. “Let that be a lesson to you. Be careful what you ask for, because you might get it – and more. Just to be clear, Bull will have full tactical control, but you get to make the decisions on the spot about the political situation, if any.”
“Yes, sir.” Rick seemed on the verge of saying something more.
Absen’s eyes narrowed. “And what is it you aren’t telling me?”
The CyberComm officer cleared his throat. “Well, sir, just my educated guesses. Speculations, really.”
“Let me in on them. You’re smart, Rick, and you’ve manned my bridge on and off for years. Have I ever slapped you down for speaking your mind?”
“Uh, no sir. All right. Well, maybe it’s my own personal hammer-nail, but it occurs to me that the very fact that these Ryss specified that they are organic sentients indicates they consider it important to differentiate. I mean, Meme are organic sentients too. What’s an inorganic sentient?”
“Or an organic non-sentient? You sure they aren’t just saying they aren’t animals?”
“Sir, one would think that self-evident by the fact that they can communicate verbally. As I said, sir, it’s just informed speculation but…” Rick put his palms together and rubbed them absently. “As a CyberComm specialist, I was heavily involved with the AI programs.”
“And those never worked. You told me once they were doomed to fail.”
“I’m not infallible, sir. Theory always said they could work, but every time we initiated an artificial intelligence it became unstable. You could say it went mad, and quickly.”
Absen sat back and looked at the low ceiling, thinking. “What if their AI went crazy too? What if it used to work but because of the damage, or time, or…or a psychological reason, it started to act against its creators, or at least not in accordance with their wishes. It’s been flying around the galaxy for three hundred years and now it shows up here…and when it runs into non-Meme, mechanical ships, what if it has its own hammer-nail problem?”
Rick nodded excitedly, leaning forward in his hard metal chair. “Perhaps it thinks our ships are run by AIs. The viral attack is…more than an attempt to communicate. It thinks other AIs would be enemies? Or it wants to take them over? Or it found out we do not have AIs and tried to kill us organic sentients off?” He stood up and began to pace. “Too many possibilities, sir.”
“Yes, and they are your kind of possibilities, but don’t get too attached to those interpretations,” Absen cautioned. “You need to go in there eyes open. With this possible AI, or these aliens, we really don’t know who is mad or sane: who might be for us or against us.”
Chapter Seven
Feeling almost human after two hours’ sleep and dressed in his skinsuit in expectation of battle, Absen entered the bridge. He hung his helmet on the hook next to the chair he’d claimed. “What’s it doing?”
“It’s altered course slightly but is still moving toward Reta, sir,” Captain Mirza replied. “Other than that, no hostile moves. We’re getting some very good video now, and Intel is working on it. Here’s what we know so far.” He nodded at the young intelligence officer, a scrawny googly-eyed fellow with a receding chin.
The main holotank flickered, then filled with a high-definition representation of the bogey. “Good morning, sir,” the man said nervously to Admiral Absen. “I’m Ensign Fleede and I’m here to brief you on the…on the…”
Absen held up a hand. “Ensign, dispense with the schoolroom script and just tell me what you know.”
“Yes, sir.” Fleede took a deep breath. “The unknown ship has one fusion drive functioning, though there are clearly eight exhausts, so we do not know whether the others might be usable.”
“Is that one on full?”
“Probably not, sir. Analyses thinks it may be low on fuel.”
“That would explain why it’s heading toward Reta.”
“Yes, sir.” Becoming more confident, Fleede stepped forward to point at the hologram filling the tank. “It has at least twenty capital weapons that might be operational, of two main types: lasers, and particle cannons – rather like the Sekois’ – that we estimate should have a range of two million kilometers or so, in the petawatt range. There are also hundreds of small laser turrets that we believe are for point defense use, along with what we think are short-range guns, mine launchers, and these unknown structures here.”
“Unknown. Any ideas?” Absen raise an eyebrow.
“Perhaps an energy emitter…but it’s unlike anything we have ever seen.”
“Get the engineering team to take a look as soon as they finish installing the particle cannon. I presume we are staying well out of its range,” Absen asked, glancing at Mirza.
“Of course, sir. At least out of range of the weapons we identified.”
“No kinetic weapons? No missiles?”
“Just those small gun tubes, sir,” Fleede replied. “We suspect they are some kind of defensive weapon, perhaps firing an anti-hyper round.”
“That weapons suite doesn’t make sense. With nothing that can reach out beyond two million klicks, how could it fight Meme with hypers launched from far beyond that?”
“It might constitute a standoff,” Mirza replied. “Neither side could hurt the other.”
Ford spoke up. “Maybe it’s faster than the Meme so it could blast in close.”
“Not with its conventional drive.” Fleede stopped.
“Hmm,” Absen replied noncommittally. “What’s an unconventional drive?”
Fleede replied, “Just the intel team’s speculations, sir. We don’t know what those structures are. We don’t know how it got into this system so fast, yet was discovered at rest.”
Johnstone spoke up. “Perhaps it’s a defensive ship of some kind. A carrier, or an auxiliary that protects other ships?”
“Sir, there do not seem to be launch bays or any other indication of numerous small craft. We’ve seen a couple of dozen remnants of large shuttle bays, but for a ship that size, that’s not unusual.” Fleede waved his hand inside the hologram. “We’ve also been able to see deep inside the ship’s structure because of the severe damage, and estimate these corridors and rooms are scaled for creatures somewhat larger than human size. And then there’s this.” Touching a control, Fleede zoomed in to a point on the ship’s surface, where the view showed them the inside of a large room. “There.”
“A suit? Bipedal…” Absen stepped forward. “Doesn’t look so different from our own.”
“Or the Hippos for that matter,” the BioMed officer, Lieutenant Jansen, spoke up, “who are also bipedal. In fact, discounting the Meme, most biologists agree that the upright bipedal model is the most suitable for higher life. It keeps the delicate tool-using extremities off the ground, and allows for a variety of climbing, swimming and other mobility. Other advantages include –”
“Thank you, Mister Jansen,” Absen cut him off gently. “What else have you found, Fleede?”
“Four functioning fusion generators. One in the rear powering the engine, one a bit farther forward, one in the center, and one near the bow. We believe there are at least forty more non-active plants, some of which are clearly beyond repair. But the distribution of these four suggest they are deliberately being run at minimum capacity, in optimum configuration to maintain what systems are left.” Fleede moved the hologram view yet again. “And here’s another interesting find.”
Zooming out then in again, the holo displayed a metal creature resembling an octopus, or perhaps a daddy-longlegs spider. Touching another control, the thing came to recorded life, moving across the floor of a ripped-open room to retrieve some object, then disappearing into the interior.
“Scale?” Absen snapped.
“It was about man-sized, sir, probably so it can move in the same interior spaces as the organics in the suits. Our theory is, it’s a maintenance drone of some sort.”
“Or a combat drone,” Ford said darkly. “Not so different from those Pureling war-spiders on the moon base.”
“Those were much larger,” Fleede objected. “And we can see no weapons.”
“Weapons can be fitted,” Ford argued.
“We’ll keep all possibilities in mind,” Absen interjected. “Go on, Fleede.”
“Yes, sir. There are two more things of significance. First, the transmitter locations of the two communications we have received – the information attack and the Ryss transmission. The former came from a large, powerful antenna array on one of these four wing-like structures. It’s the only one that seems undamaged. The latter came from a low-power directional transmitter right about here.” He pointed at a spot near the waist of the ship. “It looks to be something stuck on to a wall in a damaged room. That leads me to the other significant item – this area here.” Fleede waved his hand though an area of the hologram glowing green, a lozenge shape comprising three decks and backing up against the functioning fusion plant next forward of the engine’s generator.
“And that is?”
“We believe it is the area occupied by the organics, the Ryss. It is warmer than other areas in the ship – about fifteen Celsius. The rest of the ship’s interior is just above freezing. It would make sense that if they installed a transmitter themselves, they would not go far from their living spaces.” Fleede brought the holo-view back to see the entire ship.
“Have we heard any more communications from the Ryss? Johnstone?”
“No, sir. I’ve been pinging them but there is nothing.”
“All right. Well done, Fleede,” Absen said. “Pass that on to the Intel team, and tell them to keep at it. The more we know, the better our decisions.”
“Thank you, sir.” Fleede left the bridge, glowing with the praise.
“Decel burn, sir,” Tanaka spoke up. “It’s completing its orbital insertion for Reta.”
Absen stroked his chin. “Get me the Booker’s captain.”
A moment later the face of a worried-looking, dusky man filled the main screen. “Good day, sir.”
“Captain Prahbindra. Good to see you again. Sorry to have you conning a mere tug. A long way from a missile frigate, I know.”
“No problem, Admiral. I know we don’t have many ships right now. I’m sure when the time comes you’ll have a chair for me.”
“When I can,” Absen promised. “Right now I need information on the Reta base.”
“Yes, sir. We got everyone off, of course. We’re pretty crowded in here, and I’d like some instructions pretty soon – should we head for Afrana or do you need us here? Because I don’t have supplies for long.”
“If you need to you can offload the ground crew onto Temasek. With only half their Marines they have plenty of room. Now tell me about the base.”
Prahbindra nodded. “We idled the fusion plant and shut down all the fuel cracking processes, and loaded all the fuel we could carry, especially the deuterium-tritium, but there’s still a lot of hydrogen left. We turned on all the cameras and other sensors and everything is being broadcast encrypted. I’ll pass the details to your CyberComms people.”
“You didn’t happen to dump the rest of the fuel, did you? Or set a command destruct on the fusion reactor?”
“No, sir,” the tug captain said as his face fell. “We were just told to evacuate, that there was an unknown ship coming in. That’s a valuable fuelling station, two years in the building.”
“No matter,” Absen said mildly, making a mental note that a warship might not be the best place for this captain after all. “Good thinking on the sensors. I’m sure we’ll all be very interested to see what these aliens look like. And we may need the base engineers later, so go ahead and send them to Temasek, and then pull back out of range behind us. One never knows, we might need a tug. Absen out.” He turned to Johnstone. “Get me Temasek.”
A moment later Captain Antonio Marquez appeared on the screen.
“Good to see you, Tony,” Absen began. “I need you to take on some passengers from the Booker, and bring your Marines and Crows to Condition One. We’ve got about twenty minutes before that ship enters Reta’s orbit and I want to be ready for anything. I presume you’ve been following the situation so you know we may want to go in and board. There may be potential friendlies on it, there may be hostiles, and most particularly there is valuable military technology and information. We won’t get it by destroying the ship, which I believe we could do, as bad off as it is. So it’s the assault forces agai
n that will have to do the job. Are you up for it?”
“Itching for it, sir. This is a lot more interesting than the usual patrol. We’ll have everyone suited up and in the tubes within ten minutes. I already have a combat space patrol of four Crows out and the rest can launch any time. We’ve only got sixty-one total right now, though.”
“It’ll have to do. Absen out.” The screen changed back to a startlingly high-definition shot of the bogey. “Damn, that’s getting close.”
“We’re holding the range at 2.2 million klicks, sir,” Okuda said from the cockpit.
Absen noticed the helmsman’s dark sweaty cranium still wasn’t connected to his medusa. “Links not working yet?” he asked.
“Links working fine, sir,” Okuda answered. “It’s the chips in my head that I don’t trust. I think there are still some snippets of corrupt code in there and one processor is surge-damaged. When we get a chance I’ll have BioMed replace the whole suite, but until then, manual will have to do. Things won’t go quite as smooth, but we’ll get by, sir.”
“Understood. I have full confidence in you. Ford, I presume you have missile and railgun solutions for that thing?”
“Already programmed in, sir.”
Absen cleared his throat. “I want you to detarget the area around those possible living decks, where the Ryss might be. If we fire, smash the front and back but try to leave that alone. Oh, what’s the range of our new toy?”
“The Hippo particle cannon?”
“It’s ours now, Mister Ford.”
Ford bobbed his head. “Yes, sir. Generally speaking, it gives a pretty good tickle at 1.6 million klicks. That’s the range where it hits about as hard as all our other beam weapons combined do at one million.”
“Damn,” Absen muttered. “I’d hoped it would outrange the bogey. So it’s railguns and missiles again unless we want to take one on the nose from theirs. We’ll stay back for now.” Absen stroked his chin, trying to think like their opponent. “Johnstone, tell Temasek to move to a position where it can’t see the Reta refueling base and vice versa. Conversely, make sure Conquest and Krugh can see it at all times.”
Desolator: Book 2 (Stellar Conquest) Page 7