Well-Traveled Rhodes (Kinsella Universe Book 6)

by Gina Marie Wylie

  Sarah Shannon spoke up. “She left him behind because they'd discovered how contagious the disease was that the Iranians had left behind -- the one that came to Earth and nearly wiped us out.”

  Cindy stared at Chief Irgun; there was no doubt in her mind that this was another Rim Runner story about Kinsella. Clearly she needed to read up on her.

  “This is history; I have duty here and now to deal with,” Cindy told the others. She saw the grimace on the chief's face and caught Sarah Shannon's look. It was going to take getting used to.

  “We need,” Cindy said firmly, “to talk about what we can see when we drop rational once again.”

  “We will see what we see,” the chief told Cindy.

  Further discussion was impossible as the crew began to assemble on the bridge and in the weapons modules.

  Finally they emerged in the exercise area. Tin Tin Roeser was in charge of sensors and he was crisp and clear. “No vehicles are detected in range that are under fan, either with our active fan sensors or our passive gravity wave gear.

  “The exercise area is about ten light hours in diameter; it's going to take that long to get active lidar returns from anything not under fan -- like those rocks.”

  He turned to Captain Hall. “Captain, I recommend that we secure from action stations and let the crew go to breakfast. Some of them have a date with Master Chief Shinzu here shortly. Those of you that have that date might want to go light on breakfast.”

  Three boring hours later the lidar bounce from the closest rock returned. There was nothing to report. Twice more there was nothing to report -- even from the largest rock in the area. Number four, though, that one was interesting.

  Chief Irgun had spelled Ensign Roeser so that he could eat, and she simply reported. “We have something at Rock Four.”

  “What?” Captain Hall queried.

  “At this point, we still don't have the data. We're detecting some very small objects orbiting the rock.”

  “A moon isn't that uncommon.”

  “We've detected two so far and that is uncommon. Even more uncommon is that each moon is a sphere, 3.2 meters in diameter -- exactly, as near as the lidar can determine.”

  In a few minutes, two more objects had been detected, all four of them the same size.

  Once again, all of the original crew, except Chief Shinzu, were clustered on the bridge. “I think we're seeing four of six,” Tin Tin explained. “The rock is obscuring two behind it. The aliens are so fond of the number six.”

  He shrugged. “What they are, I have no idea. They are very, very, very dark. They absorb more than 99% of incident light. We can detect them, but there aren't enough photons coming back to tell much about what it is we're seeing.”

  “If we can detect them, can they detect us?” Cindy asked.

  “Yes and no,” Tin Tin replied. “A solid maybe. I have no idea what they are; we don't see any evidence of active emitting from them, so they aren't painting us with lidar or radar. I don't think they are large enough to have a telescope that could detect us either. What sort of passive sensors they have is unknowable.

  “Odds are, they can detect the lidar, if they have sensors in the frequency range of the lidar. However, we only sent a single series of pulses, without locking onto them. It is possible that they don't know we can see them. Their abilities in the visible spectrum are unknown, but, we think, more limited that ours.”

  “I'm open to suggestions,” Captain Hall announced.

  Cindy spoke right up. “We have a schedule of tests we plan on running with the shuttles. I say we ignore that rock until after we run those tests. If that's where the ship is hiding, they might make a mistake -- or grow impatient when we don't seem to react.

  “They are, I think, too far away to reach us without fans. If we keep a scan going, say every couple of hours, we can detect any ship headed our way, or change in the geometry of these what-ever-they-are.”

  “Anyone else?” Captain Hall asked.

  There were head shakes. “Tin Tin, you said their missiles were larger -- but could these be something like mines? Or just sensor sats?” Cindy asked.

  “If they were mines, they'd be a lot smaller than any of their previously noted weapons. It is intelligence's belief that their electronics lack integrated circuits and microcircuitry in general. However, if this is Captain Drake, all bets are off. These could be weapons or mines, as well as sensor platforms. I don't believe they are large enough to be Blues, however.”

  “That would be egregious cheating,” Captain Hall said darkly.

  “That it would -- except at some point the aliens are going to develop laser technology. Don't forget it only took the human race forty or fifty years to get quite handy with the technology. If we'd known it was possible, we might have been able to cut some of that time from the clock.”

  “So, we can't assume anything,” the captain asked.

  “Not safely, no.”

  The captain spoke openly. “Lieutenant Shannon? Is the first shuttle ready for launch?”

  “Aye, aye, Captain. As soon as you give the word, I'll synchronize the clocks and then we'll start the test protocol.”

  “Launch, then,” the captain commanded.

  For hours they measured and measured, doing simple tests at first, before moving to more complex experiments. They broke for dinner, while Lieutenant Shannon prepared the shuttle to fly on autopilot later.

  The first test, they made six fan transitions -- alternating between High and low fan over three complete cycles, with zero-cycle times, and with a millisecond between transitions.

  After the first test, Tin Tin Roeser turned to Cindy. “I have no idea what you were hoping for, Cindy. I'm not sure how to characterize the results. We can't detect fan transitions a millisecond apart -- I suppose that's good. However, the butter-side is that we detected where the shuttle ended up -- even though it shut down its fans after the last transition.”

  Cindy nodded. “To Captain Drake, though, it looks like one transition to High Fan, and then a short time later, down from High Fan?”

  “Yes, but like I said, the position we got was accurate.”

  “Let's try it again. This time, let's run a dozen tests... one right after the other. If the shuttle breaks, it will be good to know.”

  Bob Shannon chuckled. “Back on Tannenbaum I was so pleased that Willow Wolf's uncle gifted me with a shuttle. This isn't it, you understand, but it's still a wrench to consider that we might be destroying it. I love shuttles!”

  “The thing is, Lieutenant, we don't know what's going to happen,” Lieutenant McVae say. “I've never heard of this kind of testing before -- but it's something we should have done long ago.”

  She turned to Cindy. “You better watch your step back at Adobe. If my former boss thinks he has a shot at it, he's going to try to shanghai you and send you back home. And I'm not kidding. Girl! You go!”

  It turned out the magic number was eleven milliseconds. With gaps that far apart, the sensors simply lost track of the shuttle and couldn't tell where it ended up. True, the estimated position didn't have a tremendous error range, but the error range was a light hour -- and that was a huge volume of space to have to comb for even something the size of Pixie. Human lidar could find it, if a ship would jump close, but it would be simple to jump away again.

  The problem was, of course, whether or not the repeated jumps would kill the crew. No one was eager to find out.

  The second day of the exercise there was something from the rock that had the odd devices around it; for a few instants when the regular lidar sweep checked it, there was evidence of a ship, peeking over the limb of the asteroid in their direction.

  Cindy button-holed Tam. “I want a blue missile that can be programmed to do a sequence of eleven millisecond fan transitions.”

  “How many?” Tam asked.

  “A millisecond on High Fan is four tenths of a light second,” she told her friend. “So, eleven milliseconds is roughly four
and a third light seconds. We need three and three quarters light hours.”

  “Thirteen thousand five hundred light seconds, fan transitions at eleven milliseconds... that would be, oh, a million and a quarter fan transitions. No offense, Cindy, I think that the odds the fans would still be working would be rather low... halfway through the mission.”

  Tam paused. “If you'll let me, I'll put a Blue right in their breadbasket and they'll never know it was coming.”

  “How?” Cindy asked, honestly baffled.

  “You're trying to make it too complicated,” Tam told her. “We send a Blue here,” she marked a spot forty degrees away from the rock. “Then we direct it here, about fifteen degrees closer. Then here, a couple of degrees further off line, instead of closer... there's nothing like disinformation!

  “Then we drop about five light minutes out. That's when we start the rapid transitions.” She looked steadily at Cindy. “That's still a lot of eleven millisecond transitions; it would be good to parameterize just how many we can make before the fans fail.”

  “What happens if the Blue can't detect a ship?”

  “We miss,” Tam said. “However, if I knew a Blue was coming my way, you'd need a lot steadier nerves than I have, to sit still, wondering if it could detect you.” Tam gestured at Tin Tin Roeser sitting a few meters away. “Would we detect them, Ensign?”

  “It's Tin Tin. Yes, if there's a cruiser-class ship hiding behind that rock, we'd detect it. I offer one caution, however. They are trying to be obvious; if I was a betting person...”

  Cindy grimaced. She'd learned that if a Rim Runner prefaced a bet with “If I was a betting person...” you were going to lose.

  “I'd be behind one of the other rocks.” He nodded at Tam. “Lieutenant Farmer has a good idea. Far be it from little ol' me to improve on a good idea, but we have 40 Blue missiles and just five lousy rocks. Shoot at them all.”

  Tam laughed. “Now there's a thought! Yes!”

  Captain Hall had been sitting in her command chair, looking like she was asleep. She sat up. “We are supposed to be out here three days. We've used up two. I think we need to set up those missile shots. Shucks, I'm feeling like spending the Federation's money today! Three shots at each rock!”

  Tin Tin Roeser laughed. “And who says a good idea can't be improved! How long on the flight plans, Lieutenant Farmer?”

  “Why, with all four of your weapons officers working the problem -- maybe a half hour if some of my mates are a bit slow.”

  “Do it,” Captain Hall said. “I, however, get the pleasure of launching.”

  “Foo!” Tam said, laughing.

  Forty minutes later, missiles started to fly.

  After they were off, Captain Hall looked at Tin Tin. “Colinda Drake is sneaky. Is there any way she could be sneaking up on us?”

  “For the life of me, I don't see how. However, we've been sitting here since we arrived. Why not move?”

  “Move where?” the captain asked. “Cindy?”

  “Here, Captain,” Cindy said, pointing to a spot that was away from the various rocks.

  Captain Hall laughed. “Ah! Navigator! Plot a course at 90 degrees down left from what the XO wants!”

  A few seconds later they were on the course that the captain had requested. “You know why I did this, right?” she asked Cindy.

  “No,” Cindy replied.

  “Why, they know you. Master's Game knows you even better than anyone other than yourself.”

  Suddenly Tin Tin started laughing.

  “What, Ensign?” the captain asked frostily.

  “I checked Lieutenant Rhodes' preferred vector. Sitting out there is a lousy seventy-five meter rock.”

  “That can't be a ship,” the captain mused.

  “No, the rock isn't a ship, but that rock obscures a cone beyond it, Captain. That's where they are.” He turned to Tam. “Lieutenant Farmer, three Blue missiles, directed past that little bitty rock.”

  Two seconds after the first missile headed towards the rock, a ship went to fans behind it.

  “They're coming right at us,” Tin Tin reported.

  “Jump for Adobe!” the captain ordered. She grinned at her lover. “Our job is to observe and report. Going there and doing that.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain!” he told her and gave her a thumb's up.

  Tam spoke up. “Captain, Lieutenant Rhodes has modified the second shuttle's programming to mimic a High Fan homing missile. I'd like to fire it at the pursuit.”

  “Knowing that we've never made a successful High Fan homing missile?” Irene Hall asked.

  “There's a first time for everything,” Tam replied. “The lieutenant has some good ideas. Maybe...”

  *** ** ***

  Three days later Cindy, Captain Hall and Ensign Roeser stood at Admiral Gull's conference table, with the admiral and Captain Drake facing them across the long side.

  “You have a request, Captain Drake?” the admiral asked to start the meeting.

  “I know you are fond of the commodore, sir. Still, I'd like permission to give odds that Pixie can clean her clock. I'll even go evens that Pixie can defeat her entire squadron.”

  Admiral Gull cleared his throat. “You can't do the latter, Captain, sorry. She lost most of her squadron in the Big Battle; don't go there. Suffice it to say, 'We can beat you' and leave it at that.”

  “I can make the bet?”

  “You can make the bet. I would caution you, Captain, that while you are clever and your AI is clever, so is the commodore.”

  “Ah, but I'm not going to put money on me! I'm going to be putting good money -- maybe even a dollar -- on Pixie's crew!”

  Admiral Gull chuckled. “Commodore Heisenberg is a dirty-foot, Captain Drake. She believes in playing for serious stakes. It might cost you ice cream.”

  “I'm willing to risk that, sir.”

  Admiral Gull turned to Captain Hall. “You did well, Captain.”

  “We learned a lot, sir.”

  “You launched missiles at a number of rocks, with a roundabout approach. Of all the things you did, that made the least sense.”

  “That's because we know something you don't, sir,” the captain told him and proceeded to explain, showing the test results.

  “Master's Game?” Colinda Drake asked. “Your evaluation of the tactic.”

  “I would have been wrong if I'd made the evaluation on the basis of available data. The missile, had we been behind one of those rocks, would have acquired and destroyed us. I've reviewed that data. I don't know if the aliens could track missiles operating with such short cycle times -- but we can't. At least not currently.”

  “Certainly you can adjust?” Colinda Drake observed.

  “No. To a degree, perhaps. But the fact is that the sensors require a finite amount of time to gather data. These transitions completely spoof the detectors. While we could change the timing, it would be a simple matter to adjust the timing until they were undetectable once more.”

  “They'd have to know they were detectable,” Captain Drake said, thinking quickly.

  “Yes, Captain. However, when the other side shoots missiles at your current missiles' actual location and not the false one you thought you were showing them -- you'd know. You would then change timing until missiles no longer came at them. In a battle, the entire process might take mere seconds.”

  Admiral Gull looked pained, then thoughtful. “We're going to adjourn for dinner. Captain Drake, you stay. Lieutenant Rhodes, you stay. The rest of you, go get a start on cocktails.”

  Captain Hall stood stiffly. “I'm hoping my XO isn't going to get a purple rocket. We did no human testing on this.”

  “A purple rocket?” the admiral's face was lined with stress and worry and he looked a little sad, Cindy thought.

  “Nothing like that. Nightmares, but that's part of the job description.”

  Everyone left, leaving just the three of them. “Captain Drake, normally I'd send the junior out for beverages. H
ave Master's Game send in whatever anyone wants. Something strong, very strong. Maybe a Jolt Cola for the lieutenant.”

  Cindy opted for orange juice with no paint thinner added. The others, not so much juice, but plenty of paint thinner.

  “Captain Drake, I've considered a couple of times telling you about this. I'm not sure if you might not have figured it out for yourself.”

  “Figured out what, Admiral?”

  The admiral turned to Cindy. “You are philosophically opposed to genocide, I understand, but don't see that Hannah Sawyer could have done any differently.”

  “Honestly, I've heard people who had no objections to genocide saying she should have done it differently.”

  “Do you understand what she did?”

  “She destroyed one of their planets, just like they've been doing to ours.”

  The admiral took a long swig from his drink. “Not exactly.

  “First, it was most likely an outpost. Our enemies appear to inhabit gas giants.”

  “I've heard that,” Cindy said. “Whales with hands.”

  Colinda Drake growled. “You've heard that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You will have to send me that data, Admiral,” the Master's Game captain said bitterly. “I really, really would like to see it.”

  “Compared to the other thing, it's nothing.”

  “I'd be surprised.”

  “Hannah Sawyer didn't destroy their planet like they destroy ours.”

  “In what way was it different?”

  “They drop a thousand or so large bombs. We used one very large one. To put it bluntly, it initiated a fusion reaction of the planet's hydrogen. All of it.”

  “That would be -- difficult,” Captain Drake said evenly.

  “We've done it now to two planets. The first was a crazy Ivan gas giant in an uninhabited system. At some point the wave front will reach a Federation planet and we'll have to do some damage control -- they are going to want to know where the second star in the system came from. The boffins think it'll burn for a couple of million years.”