The Last Valkyrie

by Dietmar Wehr

  Chapter Thirteen:

  When Troy regained consciousness, he realized several things almost simultaneously. He was no longer wearing a spacesuit, he was lying on a flat, hard surface, and he had a mask over his mouth that was feeding him oxygen.

  “How are you feeling, Troy?” The electronic voice wasn’t quite the same pitch as he was used to hearing, but he decided to assume that it was Val Ky Ree who was speaking to him.

  “Ah…hell of a headache. My right arm hurts for some reason. Other than that, I’m okay, I guess.”

  “Your arm hurts because the repair-bots that I called to remove your spacesuit may have used a little too much pressure. My apologies, Troy. We both had a close call. I know that you called out to me as I was waking up, but my synthetic brain was experiencing what I think humans call a mental fog and wasn’t up to responding. Luckily, there were two repair-bots relatively close by when I realized what your situation was. By the way, you can remove the oxygen mask now if you wish, Troy.”

  Ronson did so and carefully sat up. He was in a room that reminded him of his cabin aboard Val Ky Ree’s old ship. “That’s better. Ah, so what actually happened? How was this ship able to fire on you without another living brain controlling it?”

  “The station’s automated defense sub-system took control of this docked ship and commanded one of its weapon turrets to fire through the intervening blast doors. Because it wasn’t able to get a precise target lock on me, or rather on my old ship, the aim was off slightly, and that’s what saved me from being ripped apart down to my basic atoms. I do not wish to minimize how close we both came to disaster; however, now that I control this Euryalus-class warship, we have actually gained from this episode. This ship is almost twice as long as my old ship. It has much greater fire power, and it also has the ability to project an energy shield that would negate most of the destructive force of an incoming torsion beam. My old ship did not have that ability at all. I have to admit, though, that this ship is more demanding of my focus because of its greater complexity. It will take some getting used to. All the data I had downloaded to my old ship has been lost, but I’ve already re-downloaded that data and much more besides to this ship’s much greater data storage capacity. I was even able to circumvent the security protocol that triggered the attack. I now know where at least some of the Aesir Fleet ships are located. There are three more ships docked inside this station in other tunnels. All the others are in various star systems, either still orbiting planets if they haven’t fallen out of orbit or drifting in space from being on patrol. There is one ship that could be a potential problem, Troy. It’s a Singularity-class warship, a quite powerful vessel that’s in a star system close enough to the Compact that it may have been discovered by now. If a Compact race learns its technological secrets or perhaps even how to operate it, the long term potential of all Compact races would be in jeopardy. I must not let that happen. There is so much to tell you. This ship has six auxiliary craft that are more advanced than the Spearthrower version. The three ships in the other tunnels are all larger and more capable than my old ship. It may be possible to modify them so that they can be operated by human crew instead of by a Synthetic like me, and I can program them to fly autonomously to Vesta in order to attempt that.”

  “What about creating more Synthetics like you? Doesn’t the station database have that information?” asked Ronson.

  “Ry Han Non said I was the last of my kind, the last Valkyrie, to use your mythological name. There must have been a reason why her insights into the future would show that. I find the idea of creating more Synthetics like me strangely disturbing, Troy. I don’t know why that should be, but it is. There is also a practical consideration. Even if the necessary equipment could be manufactured, and I’m not sure it can be, creating the basic structure of a Synthetic brain is only part of the process. We Synthetics develop and learn just as human children do, and the process takes almost as long. It would be years before new Synthetics could take over control of a warship.”

  “Okay then, but why not try to modify those other three ships here? Wouldn’t it be easier with all the equipment that must be on this station that we don’t have at Vesta?”

  “This station has to be destroyed, Troy.” Val Ky Ree’s voice sounded sad. “The Trior know where it is, and the risk of it falling into Compact hands is just too great. Humans can’t be allowed to claim and access it either. Salvaging the ships and some of the less dangerous technical knowledge is allowed, but once we leave and the other three ships are out, I will destroy this station. If you’re fully recovered, you should put your spacesuit back on and gather whatever personal possessions and human food you want to bring with you. My repair-bots have recharged your suit’s oxygen capacity. While you’re doing that, I’ll get the other three ships ready.”

  Ronson shook his head. “What a shame that this marvelous technological achievement has to be destroyed. Okay, I’ll go get my stuff. Can you turn on the lights for the most direct route? I’m not sure I could follow your directions backwards.”

  It was almost an hour before they were ready to leave. Val Ky Ree ordered the station to retract the huge blast doors that were blocking her new ship from leaving the tunnel. Ronson was on the Bridge watching the large 3-D image of her old and now crippled ship slide past as the new ship made its way through the tunnel.

  “It’s common for humans to feel a deep sense of loss when a ship they’ve been living on for a long time is destroyed. Are you feeling anything like that regarding your old ship?” asked Ronson.

  “Yes. Even though that was my first command and therefore relatively small, he served me well, and I was comfortable aboard him. I will miss that Ragnarok-class ship. It seems we Synthetics and you humans have quite a bit in common, Troy.”

  Ronson smiled. “You referred to your old ship as a him. We humans almost always refer to our ships as ‘her’.”

  “How strange to refer to a ship as a her,” said Val Ky Ree. “Ships are warriors, and in Aesir society, with only a few exceptions, being a warrior has traditionally been the prerogative of males.”

  “Such as yourself, eh, Val Ky Ree?”

  “We Synthetics are another exception. Many Aesir females become engineers and scientists. When Synthetic brains are imprinted with a mental template, the template is copied from an engineer who has committed to work with that particular Synthetic, and therefore most Synthetics have a female orientation.” Ronson nodded but said nothing. Val Ky Ree continued speaking after a few seconds of silence. “As you can see, Troy, we are about to exit the tunnel. The other three ships are already out and are moving to a specific point where all four ships will co-ordinate their fire on the station.”

  “You can control them remotely?” asked Ronson with surprise. “If that’s the case, then why not bring them along when we investigate that Singularity-class ship?”

  “I can’t control ships remotely when they’re in hyperspace. If I programmed their auto-pilots to fly to the derelict ship’s system, they would not arrive together and might be scattered over a large section of that star system. Finding them again would be both time consuming and could not be done in secret if a Compact race is already there. You have to realize, Troy, that because I’m piloting a much larger ship now, my ability to take on additional tasks like remote piloting of other craft and ships is not as good as it was before. If the Singularity-class warship still has power, which is unlikely, I may be able to send it some basic commands. However, you should be aware that if a Compact race has learned how to operate that ship, we could quickly become involved in ship-to-ship combat, and the outcome of that would be uncertain. There is no guarantee that I would win, and it is almost certain that my new ship would sustain damage. You would be wise to wear your spacesuit as a precaution when we arrive there.”

  The ship was now out in space and heading for the rendezvous point. Ronson stayed silent as all four ship formed a line formation with about a kilometer between each pair. The st
ation was less than a hundred kilometers away and was still big enough to see clearly without any optical zoom or enhancement.

  “All weapons are powering up,” said Val Ky Ree in a low voice. “Target lock has been achieved…Firing will commence in three…two…one…now.”

  Ronson could see the impact of almost a dozen torsion beams stabbing away at the station. Holes, which looked small from this distance but must have been hundreds of meters wide, appeared in the hull. Val Ky Ree concentrated on her control of the weapons of all four ships and was glad that Troy was staying silent. It hurt her to do this, and she had to deal with her pain within the comfort of her own thoughts. Not only that, conversing with Troy would be too much of a distraction. The more she could concentrate on this task, the sooner this unpleasant business would be over.

  It was almost half an hour before there was literally nothing left to fire at, and the shooting stopped. The station was completely gone. There may have been small pieces not ripped apart down to their component atoms, but if there were, they weren’t large enough to be seen at this distance.

  “Target has been…destroyed.” Val Ky Ree’s voice was the same as always, but Ronson had a gut feeling that she did not view this as a routine act.

  He waited a few seconds before responding. “It is better for a Warrior to lose a castle than to lose the Warrior who fights beside him,” he quoted.

  “So true,” she said, “but it is even better not to lose a castle at all, and Command Base was a very special castle. I understand and agree that this had to be done, but I still wish it wasn’t necessary. Command Base was the pride of the Aesir people, Troy. My creators’ accomplishments deserve to have monuments to their greatness. I fear that it won’t be long before the Aesir are just a memory that will fade to a mere myth.”

  “As long as the human race is around, you and your creators will be remembered, Val Ky Ree.”

  “Then let’s make sure your people are around a long time, Troy. I’ve ordered the other ships to engage their auto-pilots, and I’m now heading for the singularity-ship system.”

  Chapter Fourteen:

  The trip was relatively short but long enough for Ronson to settle into new and larger quarters as well as do some exploring of this larger ship. As he discovered, the Euryalus-class warship was meant to be a generalized design that could accomplish a variety of missions including transporting several hundred troops with their equipment if necessary. He thought of it as a heavy cruiser versus the light cruiser that Val Ky Ree had abandoned. When she told him that the largest warship she had ever seen was almost three times as long and could carry up to 34,000 people, he was duly impressed.

  He took her advice about wearing his spacesuit when the ship emerged from hyperspace at the edge of the target star system. Within seconds, the large display on the Bridge was showing a holographic model of this system’s star and planets. Ronson was standing right in the middle of it with his faceplate open. As one of the planets slowly passed by him, he suppressed the urge to reach out and touch it.

  “Do you know where the ship would be in this system?” asked Ronson.

  “No, Troy. After thousands of your years since the Ascension, that ship could have drifted literally anywhere. It might have crashed into a planet or into the star. It could have drifted right out of this system altogether. I’m sending out an FTL communication query. So far, no response, but that doesn’t mean the ship isn’t still here. If it’s powerless, it wouldn’t receive the query nor be able to respond. I’m also sending out eighty-nine reconnaissance drones, something my last ship couldn’t have done. They’ll spread out and scan the system, but a complete search will still take almost ten days. I think you can remove your spacesuit now. If a drone detects the ship, there’ll be plenty of time to put it back on.”

  That turned out to be exactly what happened. One hundred forty-four hours later, Val Ky Ree woke Ronson and told him that a drone had detected reflected sunlight from a large object with the approximate shape of the missing ship. By the time Ronson had his spacesuit back on and had returned to the Bridge, the sighting was confirmed.

  “He’s orbiting one of the outer planets in a highly elliptical orbit, Troy. The drone is moving closer. There is also some evidence that there may be other spacecraft nearby that are much smaller, but that data is not conclusive.”

  “How quickly can we get there?”

  “The acceleration of this ship is superior to my last command, and therefore we can fly past that ship within eleven minutes if we don’t try to rendezvous with it. If the ship is alone, I can always swing around and rendezvous on the second approach. If others are already there, then a high-speed flyby would be less risky. The drone will get close enough to send back visual images in another eighty-nine seconds. I’ll project that data on the display when it arrives. Stand by, Troy.”

  Ronson resisted the temptation to count down the seconds. Those 89 seconds seemed to take forever. When the image appeared, it was frustratingly hard for him to make out anything clearly. Val Ky Ree had better luck.

  “There are other ships out there, Troy, three of them. One is much larger than the other two and much larger than any Compact vessel I’ve encountered so far. It may be a specialized recovery type of vessel with technical resources of the kind that would be needed to recover or salvage a crippled ship. The Aesir ship still isn’t responding to my queries, so there’s no way to take control. I can’t let it be salvaged or worse made operational by anyone. It has technology that even the three ships I sent to Vesta don’t have. At least it still seems to be without power.”

  Ronson shook his head. “How did they find it, Val Ky Ree? The ship that accessed Command Base was destroyed, so it couldn’t have passed on that information.”

  “It’s this star system, Troy. The database in Spearthrower had the standard patrol patterns that the Aesir Fleet used and apparently continued to use for monitoring nearby space. This star is part of the patrol route that is closest to Compact Space. Once they knew which systems made up that patrol route, it would have been easy to send ships to each of the nearer systems to check for drifting derelicts. According to the download from Command Base, none of the other star systems in the same patrol route contain any ships. This is the only one. From the distance to the nearest Compact stations, I calculate that these ships can’t have been here very long.”

  “Can you destroy that ship in one pass?” asked Ronson.

  “I can destroy enough of it that it would no longer pose a threat to the long term development of the race that’s trying to salvage it. The torsion weapons on the ship have enough range at full power to reach this far. Therefore I’m going to activate the energy shielding now even though doing so will divert some power from the engines and reduce acceleration. Howev—That ship has power!”

  “How can you tell?” shouted Ronson.

  “I detected flashing position lights. It’s stopped tumbling. No way to tell if they’ve detected us. I’m still too far away to fire on it. Close your helmet now, Troy. I’m going to shut down life support and re-allocate that power to engines and weapons.”

  Ronson did as he was told. The seconds ticked by with no further comments from Val Ky Ree. I’ll keep quiet and let her fly this beast without any distractions from me. Hurry up and open fi— The entire Bridge jerked backwards so suddenly that Ronson would have hit the front wall if he hadn’t been holding on to one of the railings with both hands.

  “WHAT HIT US?” he shouted.

  “TORSION BEAM! HOLD ON!”

  Before Ronson could reply, the ship jerked again. He felt as if his arms were being pulled out of their sockets. The only thing that prevented that was the fact that the impact only lasted for a fraction of a second.

  “I’m firing now, Troy!”

  Ronson noticed the lights dim and then regain their brightness.

  “He’s hit!” shouted Val Ky Ree. Ronson looked at the display. The drone was much closer and Ronson could actually see gashes
in the hull of the other ship. From the configuration, it looked like one of the massive turrets was blown apart. There were four more undamaged turrets that he could see. The Bridge jerked again. This time the pain of holding on was enough to make Ronson gasp out loud. Again, the lights dimmed for a second.

  “I’ve hit him again.” Val Ky Ree was speaking faster and louder than normal, but Ronson didn’t detect any sign of emotion, not even excitement or fear. With the combat now raging, she had lost her initial excitement and had settled down to a professional state of mind: calm, cool and focused. He looked at the display and saw that two more turrets were gone. That left only two on this side of the ship, and if it was anything like both of Val Ky Ree’s ships, it would have the same number of turrets on the bottom as on the top.