by Ryk Brown
“That’s a lot of systems, Captain,” the major admitted, “but I’m sure we can handle it. How soon do you need it done?”
“The sooner the better. If we’re going to fight a full-scale war against the Jung, we need time to repair and upgrade our ships, and to develop more weapons. To do all that, we need infrastructure and support, not just from Tanna but from Earth as well. So I need to know where anything that could eventually attack us is located. The Karuzara will be here in just under two months, and I’d like to know how much we can do to our ships before she arrives. To make those decisions, I need a time frame.”
“Understood, Captain,” Major Prechitt said. “We’ll make it happen, ASAP.”
“Thank you, Major,” Nathan said. He nodded at Major McCullum as well. “Major.”
“Captain.”
Nathan walked away and exited the flight operations room.
“The reports you wrote about the captain were not accurate,” Major McCullum said under his breath, so that only Major Prechitt could hear him.
“How so?”
“He does not seem indecisive to me.”
“He has grown considerably as a commanding officer the last few months. There was a time when he was always second-guessing himself, sometimes to the point of frustration.”
“If that is the case, I am surprised that you tolerated him as long as you did.”
“He has always had good instincts,” Major Prechitt explained. “Instincts that have served him well in difficult situations. Besides, the poor man was thrown directly into the fire and has been in it ever since.”
“I’d say he’s doing quite nicely, then,” Major McCullum said.
* * *
Captain Nash climbed down the ladder from the topside airlock tunnel, dropping the last two rungs to the deck below. The artificial gravity in his ship was back at Earth-normal now that his ship was getting its power from the Aurora through the docking hub that the Aurora’s chief of the boat had slapped together. The jerry-rigged apparatus wasn’t pretty, but it was functional.
He turned forward and hollered. “Wellsy, come aft for a minute.” He bent over and looked into the open access panel in the deck, trying to see below as Ensign Wells came into the compartment from the forward hatch. “Anyone down there?”
“Keesh and Tweety. LT is in the aft systems bay; Toosh is in the head, and Fritz is at Aurora medical learning about nanites.”
“Get Keesh and Tweety up here for a meeting,” Captain Nash ordered.
“Yes, sir,” Ensign Wells answered. He bent over and yelled into the opening in the deck. “KEESH! TWEETY! SKIPPER WANTS YOU ON DECK! PRONTO!”
“Jesus, Wellsy,” Captain Nash said, rubbing his ear nearest his comm officer. “I could’ve done that.”
“Sorry, sir.”
Captain Nash headed aft, stepping through the hatch into the main cabin. He reached to his left and pounded on the door with his fist. “How many times a day do you need to shit, Toosh?”
“I didn’t shit for eight months, Captain,” Ensign Agari called from behind the closed door. “I’m making up for lost time.”
“You didn’t eat, either,” the captain said as he moved to the aft end of the main cabin. “So where’s it coming from?” He leaned into the open aft hatch. “Donny! Ship’s meeting!”
“Be right there, sir,” the lieutenant answered from deep inside the Scout ship’s main power and propulsion section.
Captain Nash pressed a couple of buttons on the console directly over the center table, activating a holographic projector. He inserted a data card into the panel and pressed another button. A schematic of their ship appeared hovering over the table in the middle of the compartment. At the touch of another button, the outer hull disappeared, revealing the structures underneath. Several other pieces of equipment appeared along the top edge of the hologram, each of them labeled with special codes identifying their purpose.
“What’s all this?” Ensign Wells asked as he entered the compartment.
“You don’t recognize your own ship, Wellsy?”
Ensign Agari came out of the head to the left of Ensign Wells.
“Whoa!” Wells said, holding his nose. “Something die in you, Toosh?”
“What’s going on, sir?” Lieutenant Scalotti asked from behind after entering the compartment from the main propulsion section.
“Gather ‘round, gentlemen,” Captain Nash began, “and meet the new Scout-class, Armed Reconnaissance Vessel.”
“They’re not seriously planning on turning this thirty year-old bucket of bolts into a warship, are they?” Lieutenant Scalotti asked.
“Indeed they are,” Captain Nash replied, “and we start with the FTLs.”
More than one groan was heard.
“Hey,” Nash said, “look at it this way. At least you won’t have to keep fixing the damned things.”
* * *
“Good morning, everyone,” Nathan began as he took his seat at the conference table in the Aurora’s command briefing room. “I know we all have a busy schedule so I’ll just work my way around the room as quickly as possible.” Nathan turned to his left and looked at Vladimir. “You’re closest, so we’ll start with you.”
Vladimir looked across the table at Cameron. “Would you like to change seats?”
“How are repairs going?” Nathan asked directly, ignoring his chief engineer’s attempt at humor. “Everything ready for tomorrow?”
“Da, weapons, power, propulsion, and maneuvering, they are all operational… Some with, and some without redundancies. Of course, we still have plenty of holes in our hull.”
“Holes in the hull can wait,” Nathan said. “As long as we can jump, shoot, and maneuver, I’m happy for now.”
“Then we are ready,” Vladimir agreed.
“What about the antimatter mines?”
“Eight more of them are ready to go.”
“I’ve analyzed the data from the last encounter,” Lieutenant Yosef said. “Four mines should be sufficient.”
“How many antimatter cores do we have left?” Nathan asked.
“Eight,” Vladimir replied. “Four of them will be converted into mines by the end of the week.”
“Let’s stick with six again,” Nathan said. “We know it worked, and I don’t want to take any chances since we don’t know how many more times this will work.” Nathan looked at Lieutenant Eckert. “Any change in the target’s course and speed, Lieutenant?”
“No, sir. They appear to be making it easy on us, which makes me worry.”
“You think they’re trying to lure us into a trap of some kind?” Cameron wondered.
“Anything is possible,” the lieutenant admitted.
“Maybe they don’t believe we’re a threat to them?” Luis suggested, “Or maybe they adjust their FTL systems so that our mines won’t knock them back into normal space again.”
“Or maybe they just don’t want to waste the propellant to change course,” Vladimir said.
“All are possibilities,” Nathan agreed, “however, we don’t really have much choice at this point. We could wait, track them some more, but what would that tell us? If we strike now, as planned, and it works, our immediate problem is solved. If it is a trap, we jump the hell out of there and then we come up with something else.”
“Assuming we’ll be able to jump the hell out of there,” Cameron warned. “Their plan may include a way to prevent us from jumping away.”
“So we lure them into our trap instead,” Nathan suggested. “We do it the same as before. We lay the mines, execute our T-O-T attack, and detonate. Only this time we jump in a little further out, at an angle they aren’t expecting. The extra distance will give us time to react to their weapons. Remember, we’re not really trying to kill them with our plasma cannons. We just want them to think we’re trying to kill them with our plasma cannons. Then our KKV slams into them, and they’re done.”
“Captain, we don’t really need to launch a simultaneo
us time-on-target attack,” Lieutenant Yosef explained. “Our KKV will penetrate their shields with more than enough energy left over to cripple, more likely obliterate the battle platform.”
“But we want them to think it’s just another T-O-T attack,” Nathan insisted. “We want them to think that we are still not a significant threat. In fact, nothing would please me more than for that platform’s CO to decide to stay out of FTL a bit longer and try to take us down. The longer he does, the better chance we have of hitting him with our KKV. Remember, we only have one fully tested KKV right now. We won’t have any more for several weeks, so we need to do whatever is necessary to make this work this time, as we undoubtedly will not get many more chances.”
Nathan looked around the conference table, looking for signs of a dissenting opinion, but received none. He then looked at Lieutenant Eckert again. “I trust that the KKV is ready?”
“Yes, sir. We finished testing it yesterday.”
“Very well. We proceed according to plan. Departure is tomorrow at eleven hundred,” Nathan reminded them. “Lieutenant Commander Nash, you’re next.”
Jessica picked up the remote from the table and activated one of the large view screens on the wall. She also activated the holographic projector in the middle of the conference table. A 3D map of their sector of space appeared, revealing all the stars within fifty light years of Sol itself. “You’re all familiar with the Sol sector,” she began. “As you all know, a week ago our Falcons were tasked with locating and identifying all Jung assets within twenty light years of Sol. For now, their primary focus has been on mobile assets that can attack Earth. Because there are so many systems to search, the Falcons have started with the closest ones with the largest populations, which basically means the core systems. Unfortunately, we have already discovered some disturbing news.”
The rest of the view screens in the room lit up, displaying images of various Jung ships in various systems, fading from image to image every five seconds.
“The Jung have a strike force in each of the six core systems. Each strike force consists of at least a battleship, two cruisers, and four frigates. Some of them—for example, Tau Ceti—have an even greater number of ships. To make matters worse, each of the core systems also has a battle platform, and Tau Ceti has two of those as well. Altogether, there are sixty-eight Jung warships within twenty light years of Earth. Twenty-six of them are within twelve. That’s twenty-six ships that could reach Earth in just over seven months.”
“But it would take that long just to get word to them that they needed to come here,” Lieutenant Delaveaga pointed out. “So isn’t it more like fourteen months?”
“Probably,” Jessica agreed, “but don’t forget, we have no idea what the Jung plan originally was. For all we know, that extra battle platform was scheduled to leave tomorrow. We also don’t know if twenty times light is the top speed of a Jung comm-drone. Considering how little we know for sure about Jung military capabilities, we should always assume the worst-case scenario, and that would be that all of those ships could descend upon us at any time. For all we know, they may have fitted half their fleet with their own jump drives, and we just haven’t seen them yet.”
“Seems highly unlikely, doesn’t it,” Lieutenant Eckert argued.
“Actually, it isn’t as unlikely as one might think,” Lieutenant Telles said as he entered the room. “Apologies for my late arrival, Captain. An incident on Earth delayed my departure.”
“Quite alright, Lieutenant,” Nathan replied. “Comms notified me of the situation. You were saying?”
“Due to the amount of time required to move linear FTL assets from one theater to another, the orders to move assets toward Earth, for whatever reason, were probably issued long ago. Perhaps as much as fifty years ago, long after your people started emitting identifiable signals into space again. While their ships were in transit to Earth, the Jung would have continued developing new technologies, or stealing them from captured worlds. That could have included a method of instantaneous interstellar transportation. Remember, just because we have not seen it, does not mean it does not exist.”
“We can speculate all we want,” Nathan argued, “but we can only act upon what we know, or what is reasonably probable. To do otherwise would paralyze us since no matter how much we prepared, it would never seem enough. My plan is to destroy all Jung assets within twenty light years of Sol, starting with the ones in the core systems… Including those damned battle platforms.” Nathan looked back to Jessica, sitting at the far end of the table. “Given all the intelligence gathered to date, and excluding the platform currently en route, how long do you think we have until assets from core systems start showing up on our doorstep?”
“Assuming that their comm-drones have a top speed of twenty-C, and assuming that they launched a comm-drone toward every core system the day we arrived from the Pentaurus cluster, a safe estimate would be two hundred and twenty days.”
“That is a lot of assumptions,” Lieutenant Eckert said, one eyebrow raised.
“Yes, it is,” Jessica admitted, “but they are all conservative assumptions.”
“Ones that I would be inclined to agree with,” Nathan added. “So, we have forty-two days until the Karuzara arrives, after which we will have two hundred and eight days to overhaul and upgrade our ships. And that’s if we destroy the Centauri platform before it gets here. To be honest, I’d feel a lot better if we went out and destroyed all those ships as soon as possible. Preferably before they even heard about us.”
“If Lieutenant Commander Nash’s assumptions are indeed correct, then the nearest Jung assets will hear of us in twelve days,” Lieutenant Telles said. “Even if you are successful in destroying the Centauri platform tomorrow, it is highly doubtful that you can destroy the ships in the Cygni and Ceti systems in such a short time.”
“We don’t even know for sure when, or even if a comm-drone was launched, or to which system,” Cameron pointed out.
“Why don’t we just send someone one hundred and ninety-six light days out and check?” Lieutenant Delaveaga suggested.
Both Cameron and Nathan looked at the lieutenant.
“I knew there was a reason we promoted you,” Nathan said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Jump seven, complete,” Mister Riley announced as the Aurora’s jump flash faded away and the lighting on her bridge returned to its normal red-tinged state.
“Position verified,” Mister Navashee reported from the sensor station.
“Firing triplets on all tubes and cannons,” Lieutenant Eckert began, “in three……two……one……firing.”
The Aurora’s bridge became awash in brilliant red-orange flashes as the plasma charges left her weapons and streaked away into the black of space.
“All weapons away,” the lieutenant added.
“Jump eight,” Mister Riley announced right on cue, “in three……two……one……jumping.”
Again the bridge was flooded with blue-white light as the Aurora was enveloped in her jump fields. Nathan could imagine the ship streaking past the very plasma charges that they had just sent hurtling toward the distant battle platform, the ship slipping just under the glowing red-orange balls, leaving them behind as if they were standing still.
“Jump eight, complete,” Mister Riley reported as the jump flash subsided.
“Position verified,” Mister Navashee reported. “Antimatter detonation in twenty seconds.”
“Firing all forward weapons in three…”
“Jump nine, plotted and ready,” Mister Riley reported.
“…Two…”
“Stand by for course change, Mister Chiles,” Nathan reminded.
“…One…”
“Aye, sir.”
“Firing,” Lieutenant Eckert announced. A moment later, the bridge was again flooded with red-orange light that faded quickly as their weapons charges departed. “Weapons away.”
“Three degrees, down relative,” Nathan ordere
d.
“Three degrees, down relative, aye,” the helmsman answered.
“Ten seconds to detonation,” Mister Navashee reported.
“Mister Riley, jump us as soon as our course change is complete. Tactical, prepare to fire as soon as Mister Chiles brings our nose back onto the target.”
“Five seconds to detonation,” Ensign Kono reported from the Celestia’s sensor station.
“Two degrees, up relative, complete,” Ensign Hunt reported from the helm.
“Snap jump, Mister Jakoby,” Cameron ordered.
“Snap jump, aye,” the navigator answered as the Celestia’s blue-white jump flash washed over them. “Jump complete.”
“Position verified,” Ensign Kono reported. “Detonation confirmed!”
“Pitch us down,” Cameron ordered. “Put our nose on the target. Mister Delaveaga, fire as soon as you have a lock on the target.”
“New contact!” Ensign Kono reported. “A Jung battle platform, just knocked out of FTL!”
“Nice to know that trick still works,” Cameron mumbled to herself.
“Fire at will,” Nathan ordered.
“Jump ten, plotted and ready,” Mister Riley reported.
“Firing triplets on all forward weapons.”
“First eight rounds will impact in three seconds,” Mister Navashee announced.
“Weapons away,” Lieutenant Eckert reported from the tactical station.
“Stand by to jump,” Nathan said.
“Weapons impact!” Mister Navashee reported. “Target’s shields are down! Forward arm!”