by B. V. Larson
“It’s powered up and ready to go.”
“All right,” I said. “This is it. Cut engines, Dalton. Cut all external emissions.”
“Done.”
“Now,” I said, “phase us back in, Ensign Miller. The minute we have a fix, phase out again.”
We phased-in. The enemy ship was nowhere to be seen, but that wasn’t surprising. A warship looked pretty small when you were ten thousand miles away from it.
Using the sensors and my sym, I attempted to “see” the cruiser. I cast in the direction of the planet we were heading toward, then widened the search somewhat.
“I’ve got a fix, Captain,” Chang said after about twenty seconds.
He swiped, transferring the coordinates to me. I caught them and used my sym to follow them.
The cruiser zoomed in with sickening speed. She was off-course, running at about a ten degree angle. That didn’t seem like much, but at high speeds and long distances, ten degrees quickly turned into the width of a gas giant in space.
“Phase out, Miller!” I ordered. “Phase out!”
“Still cycling, sir,” he said calmly.
“Dammit,” I said, watching the enemy ship. We were smaller, and we were searching passively, but we were almost as easy to spot as they were.
“Phasing out,” Miller announced at last.
I cursed loudly just before the change in our state was completed. The crew all looked at me, startled.
“They saw us,” I said with certainty. “They fired a missile just before we phased out again.”
Dalton shrugged. “That’s no disaster, Captain,” he said. “The missile will never hit us at this range.”
“No, the missile was just to keep us ducking. But this also means they know we’re tailing them. And they know their gambit worked—they flushed us out.”
While they absorbed this, I went back thinking hard. In short order, I grew tired of this, and made an announcement.
“Miller, prepare to phase in again.”
They all looked at me in shock. It was the greatest fear of all phase-ship drivers to know they were exposed. They were much more comfortable while invisible in a ghostly state of partial non-existence.
“That’s right,” I said. “When we appear, I want us to send a data-blip to Ral. We’ll inform them we’re here, and they’ll be rescued soon.”
Gwen looked at me as if I’d gone mad. It was a familiar expression.
“Isn’t that a cruel trick, Captain?” she asked. “Those people must be desperate.”
“It’s a trick, but it’s meant to upset the Imperials, not the people of Ral. Think about it: If we have the balls to pursue a larger ship, and then we come into the clear to get a fix and announce to Ral help is on the way—well, do you think the Imperials might become nervous?”
She nodded slowly. “They might,” she admitted. “They might indeed. From what I remember of their personalities, they were arrogant, but not terribly brave.”
“Right,” I said. “Their bravery was like that of duck-Hunters. The ducks are supposed to quack and die when shot—not turn around and pull them out of their boats, ripping their throats out.”
She smiled at the idea, and I smiled back.
“Phasing in, Captain,” Miller said.
We sent our message, and phased out again. Dalton dove away at a semi-random angle without being told to do so.
Whatever else my crew was, they were constantly becoming more capable and experienced. I just hoped it would be enough.
=45=
A few hours later, my staff sat around a small table. Everyone looked glum, and the curved metal walls of the conference room were tight around us, making the space feel even more cramped than it was.
We’d been running silently, phased-out, for what felt like a long time now. We were still trailing the cruiser, but we’d never gotten a good opportunity to attack her.
“We’re on our own,” Miller said. “Whatever else we are, we have to accept that.”
“I agree,” I said. “If Ursahn hasn’t come here by now, she probably won’t until time runs out. At that point she’ll feel honor-bound to follow Fex’s final, suicidal orders.”
“You think she’ll come here to battle the Hunter alone?” Gwen asked.
I shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe she’ll bring help. It doesn’t matter, because it’s unlikely she can defeat the Hunter. For now, we’re stuck here, hidden in a system with two Imperial vessels that totally outclass us. What I need is an ingenious idea as to how we should proceed.”
Abrams, Gwen and even Miller frowned at the conference table. It was depicting a layout of local space. The central star and each surviving planet were displayed. There was only one world left between the Hunter and Ral itself.
Annoyed with their silence, I brought my fist down on the imagery. It wavered and vanished.
“Forget the map,” I said. “What are we going to do?”
Gwen answered first. Maybe she thought it was her duty as she was my acting XO.
“We have to wait for the enemy to make a mistake,” she said.
“A mistake?” I asked. “Like what?”
“They might drop their shields to send a shuttle down to a planet—or perhaps to collect some stolen material. They’ve been hanging around the next planet in line for destruction for more than a day.”
Abrams cleared his throat. I looked at him hopefully.
“I would council action,” he said, “rather than inaction.”
“Interesting, Doc…” I said, brightening. “So you think we should attack, regardless of the risks?”
Abrams looked startled. “Good heavens, no! An attack would be suicide. And even if we could destroy the cruiser, the people of Ral would still be on the Hunter’s menu.”
“So what, then?”
“We have to blow up that machine. It’s essentially a giant mining robot. It digests worlds rather than damaging them with energy releases. It grinds them down to rubble.”
“We’ve seen it in action,” Gwen said. “How do we stop it?”
“By giving it something it can’t digest,” he said. “A device of such great power its internal machinery is destroyed.”
“What would that take?” I asked.
“A fusion weapon might not do it… I’d think anti-matter would be superior. A full conversion from mass to energy. It would take no more than a few grams of prime material to do the trick, laid carefully like bait in the monster’s path.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere!” I declared. “Where do we get the antimatter, Doc?”
“That is the difficult part,” he admitted. “To process it would take several years, provided we had a powerful enough collider—which we don’t. There might be such an installation on Ral, but I’ve yet to find one in the data core.”
We all stared at him for a few seconds, but I was the first one to get mad.
“What?” I demanded. “You’ve got nothing!”
“Untrue!” he said, ruffling up immediately. “I’ve just presented you with a completely workable course of action—in theory.”
“I don’t need theories, Doc. I need an actionable plan!”
He sat back, crossed his arms, and glowered at the table. “You asked for a solution, and I gave you one.”
“But it’s not something we can actually implement, Dr. Abrams,” Gwen said gently. She turned to me thoughtfully. “Maybe we can reprogram the Hunter, Leo. The way we did the Imperial fleets during the last invasion.”
I shook my head slowly. “We’ve been trying to contact that behemoth. It ignores everything we send. I haven’t seen so much as a log-in screen from it.”
Everyone looked depressed for a moment—except for Dr. Abrams, that was. He was still annoyed, as if I’d wronged him somehow by pointing out his theories were worthless.
Still, Gwen’s idea—and even Abrams’ impossible scenario—had merit. She was right: if we couldn’t do battle with this monster, we should try to change
its artificial mind. Abrams had presented the idea of getting it to consume something disagreeable…
“I’ve got an idea…” I said suddenly. “A real one this time.”
Abrams gave me a sour glance. “Let’s hear it, Blake. We could all use a laugh.”
“What if we sneak close with Hammerhead? It’s an AI-driven machine. I doubt it’s been programmed to look for phase-ships.”
“That’s a dangerous presumption,” Abrams said.
“No… it’s probably true,” Miller said, speaking up for the first time. “Why would they design it to search for something so small that represented no threat?”
“Right,” I said. “So, we should be able to get close. Now, expanding on Gwen’s idea, we need to change its targeting choices. Even just a course-shift that got it to pass Ral by a few degrees would be enough.”
“Ah!” Abrams said, coming to life. “I see the situation clearly now—you wish to steal my idea and give me none of the credit for it. Unnecessary, Blake. I would have given you the rights to use my ideas without this ham-handed grandstanding.”
“I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about, Doc.”
“Of course not…” he said, leaning back with a smug expression. “By all means, Blake, continue playing the fool—you do it so well. What I’m saying is that you’ve combined Gwen’s thoughts and mine into a single plan of action—then immediately took all the credit.”
“I have to admit,” I said. “You and Gwen did present pieces of this puzzle. That’s why we have these meetings.”
“Wait a minute,” Miller said. “We’re calling this a plan? How are we going to implement it? I get the part about sneaking up on the Hunter—as suicidal as that sounds. But how would someone get aboard and disable or reprogram it from there?”
From that point on, the meeting took on a new life. We had the basis for action. A goal, at least, that sounded like it might work. We soon were buried in the technical details of landing a squad of spacers on the back of this monster and somehow gaining access to the interior.
The whole thing seemed insane to me when I looked at it objectively. But there was a populated world out there hanging in the balance. A world that had already lost all its ships and now lay helpless, awaiting destruction.
What difference did it make if we risked our lives if we had a chance to save billions of innocents?
=46=
By the following day we’d stopped phasing in to send messages and get fixes on the cruiser. They knew we were here, and they were never going to let down their guard enough for us to damage them.
Instead of chasing the warship, we began coasting and braking gently. We were maneuvering into the path of the Hunter. It was risky, but I felt it was the only play I had left to save Ral—and to save Mia.
When the hour came, I stepped onto the bridge again and took the command chair. I reviewed the night’s watch notes, and found them uninteresting. Moving them to the log folder with a flick of my index finger, I sat back and stared at the looming contact on our scopes.
The automated Hunter was such a behemoth, so gigantic in size, she had a gravitational pull that was a measurable two percent of earth-normal. That made her easy to spot as she drew us ever closer, growing in our view every hour.
We drifted under her unarmored belly and inverted ourselves. Our ship and the Hunter were now belly-to-belly, drifting slowly closer.
To say the bridge crew was nervous would be to grossly understate the case. They looked like cats in a dog kennel. They even took care when they moved around the bridge as if worried the giant that loomed near might overhear.
Everyone was quiet, that was, except Samson.
“This is great!” he said, beaming. “I’ve been getting sooo sick of sitting on this ship. We’re finally going to do something!”
“That’s right,” I said. “Who volunteers to accompany me aboard the Hunter?”
“Me!” boomed Samson.
“Great! Now, I need a technical team… hmm…”
The rest were silent, studying their boards. It was time for a military-style process of “volunteering” to begin.
“Excellent, Gwen,” I said. “I need your technical expertise with their computer systems.”
“Me?” she said in a voice that was almost a squeak, but she quickly recovered. “I’d be glad to join the team.”
“With Dr. Abrams as well, that will round out a team of four,” I said.
This seemed to startle people.
“He said he wanted to go?” Gwen asked.
“Yes. The last time we had a private meeting, he irritated the shit out of me. I decided right then and there he was getting assigned to the next suicide mission I cooked up.”
This statement gathered a number of chuckles. Dr. Abrams wasn’t loved on the bridge.
Gwen looked down, almost ashamed. “Captain, as your XO, I would normally—”
“…be left behind to drive the ship. I know, but I need you as a tech. Miller, you have command while I’m gone. No fair sealing the airlocks while we’re away, either.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Captain,” he said smoothly.
After that, it was all over except for the crying—Abrams did the crying.
“This is patently absurd, Blake!” he complained as we frog-marched him down to the sally-ports.
“What’s wrong, Doc?” I asked. “Don’t you want to get your feet wet now and then? I think it will do you good. You’ll get stale if you spend all your time cooped up in that lab.”
“I’m needed! I have a possible answer to our Imperial hacking problem!”
That made me halt. I looked him over.
“Really?” I asked. “You’re not just lying to save yourself for another hour?”
“Hardly,” he said. “And I never lie.”
“Right,” I scoffed. “I’ve seen your expense reports.”
“Those are confidential!”
Gwen and I exchanged amused glances. She knew I was bullshitting, and she enjoyed the fact that Abrams was taking everything literally.
We suited him up while he squawked. Once he was in the bag, his suit continued to cinch itself up tight, making him look even skinnier than usual.
“This is highly irregular,” he complained. “Are you accustomed to abusing key personnel like this?”
He was asking me, but Samson answered. The big man wore a grin that had been pasted there since we’d begun our efforts to shanghai Abrams.
“I do it all the time, Doc,” Samson said. “Ask anybody. Now, quit freaking out. If this thing kills us, it will probably be quick.”
“Is that supposed to mollify me?” Abrams asked.
The odd thing was, he did settle down after that. We all climbed into a pod and were released with a hiss of escaping gas. The pod was a tiny survival ship that was rather like Hammerhead herself, but much smaller and less capable.
The pod drifted down, and we guided it entirely with puffs of gas from the steering jets. We’d decided we shouldn’t alert the monster by giving it a spike of energy it could easily detect.
It was an odd feeling to be sneaking up on a ship the size of a moon. Hammerhead itself was phasing, of course, but as we left her surrounding field, we automatically phased-in. The pod was built to survive that transition without hopelessly scrambling our molecules during the process.
Only when we were outside the field could we clearly see the size of the Hunter. The enemy ship was beyond enormous. It wasn’t like a ship at all. It had a hull so large and thick it was more like the crust of a planet than an artificially built vessel.
The surface below us was uneven, and dirty. Boulders, rubble and dust coated the otherwise smooth hull.
“She’s messy when she eats,” Samson said over our group intercom.
We were linked via a wired system so as to keep our transmissions to a minimum. A thin cord connected each of us. Samson was at one end, me at the other, with Gwen and Abrams in the middle.
/> I was piloting, and it wasn’t easy. The pod steered like a shopping cart with jets attached. We wallowed and wobbled as we descended and glided a few feet from the rocks.
“Careful,” Gwen said, “I see a big one ahead.”
“Don’t worry about that,” I told her. “Look for an aperture. There were several vents along this section, according to our analysis.”
“That’s conjecture,” Dr. Abrams said bitterly. “You’ve killed us, Blake. Admit it. You thought you saw striations along this seamless monstrosity, but they were clearly imagined. We might as well be searching for Lowell’s fabled Martian canals.”
None of us answered him, because he might be right. Faced with the reality of what we were currently doing, it did seem like madness.
We’d left a perfectly good ship behind to venture here on an impossible task. The sheer enormity of this ship had me doubting myself. How could we hope to stop this monster?
“Keep your eyes open,” I said calmly, revealing none of my internal doubts. They wouldn’t have done the others any good anyway.
We traveled along the scored and pitted hull for about fifteen minutes without finding anything resembling the vents I’d seen from Hammerhead. By that time, the group had grown sullen. They were no longer talking much, not even Dr. Abrams.
With each passing minute, Abrams seemed to become happier. Marveling, I soon came to realize he was pleased to have his gloom and doom predictions proven right. The man wouldn’t mind dying to prove a point.
“There’s something!” Gwen cried out, pointing into the distance.
Despite the fact the ship was very large, it did have a visible horizon that was only a few miles off. Without asking for details, I directed our pod in the direction she’d indicated. We only had sixty pounds of propellant left. It wouldn’t last forever. After we ran out, we’d be down to using our own breathable air to fly further.
“That’s too far,” Abrams complained immediately. “It can’t be a vent.”
Samson turned to glower at him. “Doc, you should really just shut up. We’re all in this together, you know.”
Abrams sneered, but he did shut up.