“That’s true, we can hold them back a bit and catch them before they get to the Trojan Cluster,” she said.
“No need,” the captain said. “I asked my helmsman and he said if they hold to high cruise and stay with the icehaulers they captured, we can easily rendezvous before they can get to Neptune L-4.”
Katryna blinked several times. “That’s what, 4.5 billion klick? In the time they cover 3.2 billion?”
“Yes ma’am,” she said. “We’re holding at 1500 KPS now because we’re crossing the belt and there’s a lot of crap that might get in our way. Once we clear it and start into the Jupiter Gap, we can double that if we push the sensor whiskers out another half million klick.”
“That puts us at about twenty-one days from the cluster,” the admiral said. “Counting deceleration on the far end.”
“Is there any safety margin in that?” Katryna asked. “Will we have any reaction mass left?”
“A little and some,” she said. “But based on what Captain Mei said, they’re about fifty-five days from L-4 because the icebarges aren’t safe above 800 KPS. They have to cruise with the slowest of them if they want to stay together.”
“A multi is only safe at 800 KPS so that’s got to be bleeding dangerous for the barges,” the chancellor said.
“They’re using the Challenger and the Archer to do sensor sweeps out front. The ice haulers are in the middle, with the Galen making sure nobody goes sidewise.”
“You’re saying we can join the rest of our fleet in—”
“Just over fourteen days,” Jeffers said, nodding. “Then we’ll take another forty to get to Neptune L-4 from there. Unless you do want to get there first to start the party.”
“Now I know what we spent all that money on,” Katryna said, shaking her head.
“Not yet you don’t,” Nakamiru said, almost smiling. “The captain and I have been discussing getting us armed and ready.”
“That’s probably a good idea. We might have bull-rushed our way over the security cordon at Galileo, but I doubt that will work when we’re facing an armed ghost fleet,” Katryna said. “Do we have any idea of what we might be up against yet?”
“I had Quintana working on an assessment of how many ships we’ve scrapped in the last twenty years that were still space worthy.”
“Do you honestly think they’ve been conspiring that long?” Jeffers asked, raising an eyebrow in surprise.
“We don’t know, but if so, they’ll have upward of 450 ships. About a third of them are icebarges,” he said.
“I think the Challenger has just proven how ineffective those are in a fight,” Katryna said.
“Perhaps,” he nodded, “although if Mei and Takata hadn’t been able to pull a tactical surprise, it could have gone much differently. An ice hauler might not have much in offensive power, but at close range and in a pack they might be like rats.”
“That means we have to keep them at arm’s length,” Jeffers said. “How many of their ships would have the range to hit us from stand-off distance?”
“It’s a function of reactor power and beam collimation,” he said. “The lasers on an icebarge or a freighter are limited, because they don’t have the power capacity for heavy weapons. Anything that has a good energy reserve could be dangerous.” He pulled a thinpad out of his pocket, looked at the screen, and scrolled down the list. “I count forty-six Sagan and Hawking Class science vessels with reactors above one gigawatt, plus two multicruisers, and a hospital ship. The Deepstar cruise liner Columbia could be formidable if they gutted the power-guzzling snob-trim. The rest of those would be logistic and support ships that we can’t anticipate how they might have repurposed the design.”
“Then we’re looking at a minimum of fifty ships bent on cutting us to shreds,” Katryna said, feeling her heart sink through the floor plates. “And we’ve got nothing but us and three multicruisers. I don’t think this will end well.”
“That won’t be much of a fair fight,” Jeffers said, looking defiant despite the numbers the admiral had just delivered. “Maybe they need to bring more ships?”
Nakamiru laughed aloud at Katryna’s face.
“What am I missing here?” the chancellor asked.
“We can hold our own,” the captain said. “We’ve got ample power to take the fight to them.”
“How do you figure?”
“As the admiral pointed out, armament is all about reserve power,” she said. “We’ve got 210 terawatts in reserve capacity … give or take.”
The chancellor’s mouth fell open and she blinked several times.
“The Armstrong was chartered to provide long-term logistical support anywhere in the Union,” the captain explained. “We’re capable of providing backup operational power to the largest of the asteroid colonies in an emergency, and we’ve got a nanowave transmission array hooked directly to the reactors that can deliver as much as we need at a range of 1000 klick.”
“While that is not precisely a weapon,” Nakamiru said, “there isn’t a ship built that could handle that kind of hit.”
“And that’s what FleetCom really paid for,” Jeffers said.
Jakob Waltz: Orbiting L-4 Prime:
Jeph sat on the ConDeck with Danel. Alyx was working on the far side at her sensor console while Kiro dozed in his pilot’s seat. Everyone else was asleep.
“I’m starting to wonder if Anju might be right,” Jeph said. He floated above the deck with his hands laced behind his head. He hadn’t slept well since Chei returned and he was rummaging through his thoughts, with Danel along for the ride.
“That it’s aliens?” Danel asked. “The scientist in me says we need to remove every other option from the table first, but damned if finding that message coded into the shockwaves isn’t hard to explain any other way.”
“I know what you mean,” he said. “I suppose some scientist could have jumped centuries ahead of where we are now technologically and figured out how to send a message in gravity.”
“Sure it’s possible, but an extrasolar intelligence is an easier answer,” Danel said.
“Do you honestly think so?”
“I don’t know, but if not, why the hell would anyone trap us and the Hector in this quantum quicksand and then beat us shitless to get our attention? If it was just prime numbers, maybe it could be a distress call—”
“Like Chei did with the TICS transmitter,” Jeph said.
He nodded. “But there is a lot more coded into that message than that. Dutch and I are working on finding what else is there. We already know the reset period is based on the ratio of earth’s orbit and the orbit of L-4 Prime itself.”
“Really?”
“And the force of the first impact cycle was exactly Earth gravity. Then there’s the decay in amplitude which follows the inverse of Phi,” Danel said. “That’s just so classically what I remember scientists thinking alien contact would look like when they worked on it 200 years ago.”
“That’s persuasive in itself,” Jeph said, “What I can’t shake is that when I talked to Chei, my gut level reaction is that he sounds like he’s stared into the face of God.”
“Yah,” Danel agreed. “I got that from him too.”
“I had Anju do a brain scan on him to see if maybe he had something like Ian’s strange brain issue going on. Better to rule out that possibility first.”
“She told me,” he said. “She also said he’s good to go.”
Jeph nodded. “I’m running out of arguments.”
“Hey boss,” Alyx interrupted from across the deck. “We’ve lost the sensors.”
“Is it something on the Hector?”
“I don’t think so. We’ve lost the link,” she said. “Looks like the antenna is offline.”
“Kiro, do we see anything going on at the Hector crash site?” he asked, pushing off from the edge of a console and sailing across the deck.
The pilot brought up an optic of the Hector on the main screen. “Doesn’t look like it,” he said, yawning
.
“I think it’s the dish on the Waltz,” she said. “It’s off alignment.”
“Dutch what’s up with the antenna?” Jeph asked.
“The link antenna has been realigned,” it said.
“By whose authority?” Jeph anchored his feet in place and glared at the screen.
“Under command code authorization of Dr. Soresh,” Dutch said. “Transmission in progress.”
Jeph punched into his comlink. “Anju are you transmitting something?” Silence answered him.
Danel floated up and grabbed the edge of Alyx’s workstation. “Where’s the dish pointed?” he whispered.
“Anju are you using the external com?” Jeph asked, his voice laced with urgency. Once again no answer.
“It’s pointing down-system,” Alyx said. “Near Mars.”
“Dutch, where is Anju?” Jeph asked.
“Primary terminal console. Main Computer Interface Deck,” it said.
“Anju, what are you doing with the dish?” Jeph asked. “Are you sending a message down-system?”
There was a long pause before she said, “I was.”
“What the frag are you doing?” Jeph asked.
“I need to speak to you in private, before you lock me up. Please.”
Sentinel Operations Center: Below New Hope City: Luna:
“Saffia, we have an Odysseus hard-call,” the alpha-tier said over her implant. “Tech only.”
“Interesting,” she said, calling up the list of Odysseus protocols on her command screen. A Tech Only contact was one of the lower probabilities on the list. “Is it confirmed?”
“Embedded carrier-modulation confirms authenticity of the operative,” the alpha said. “It appears to be legit.”
An Odysseus hard-call. Saffia leaned back in her seat and drummed her fingers on the edge of her console. In spite of her training, she hesitated to believe it could be real. From the day she took the appointment to the Sentinel Team, she doubted it would ever happen. After all, humanity had been alone for its entire existence.
“Where is it?” she asked.
“Field operative identified as 101-027. Arika Sokat aboard the Jakob Waltz. Last known location was Neptune L-4 Trojan Cluster.”
“That’s a long way out there,” Saffia said. “That’s probably good news.”
“Agreed,” the alpha said.
“Do we know the extent of exposure?” she asked, knowing that her position required her to move forward regardless of how far it had spread. It wasn’t a matter of containment as much as doing what was needed to be able to meet the threat on an even footing.
“Negative,” the alpha said. “There was nothing in the message except the hard-call.”
“Then we follow the root level directives.” Saffia leaned forward and paused for several seconds before she keyed in her release authorization. Her heart pounded in her chest and she took several deep breaths to steady her voice before she issued the first orders. “Take our cores offline and initialize the gateway.”
Clearing her throat, she flipped over to OpsCom and said, “Sentinel Command to all staff. Odysseus protocols are now in effect. Prepare for deployment.”
“Thirty seconds to send the alert across the grid,” the alpha said. “Stand by for Odysseus launch.”
Saffia used the brief break in activity to record a personal message. She knew it was a breach in security, but she didn’t care. “Odysseus reveals his intent. Sails unfurled. Meet me soonest. Good luck, my love.” She could only risk a few words, but it would be enough to let her wife know what was coming. Saffia knew the message might take a lot longer than normal to reach her at Galileo, but hopefully she’d get it before the deployment got too far. She’ll know what to do.
Saffia punched the transmit icon and watched her display as the status of their hardware shifted from green, to yellow, and then to blue as the network around them closed itself off from the outside.
She listened to her alpha-tier controllers march through the deployment procedure.
“Facility check, complete. Sentinel Ops is locked down.”
“Power systems, set to internal.”
“External com, secure.”
“Gateway ready.”
It was her turn to do her part and once again, she hesitated. But only for a moment. “Launch the payload.”
Fifteen hundred meters above the Sentinel Ops Center, darkness tossed humanity back to the primal terror of the Stone Age. Fortunately, it wouldn’t last long.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Jakob Waltz: Orbiting L-4 Prime:
Seva and Cori floated outside the door to Anju’s quarters when Jeph arrived to listen to her side of the story. He pulled her command authorizations and even reset her biometric door lock, so posting two guards was more about making a statement to show how angry he was, than a necessity.
He didn’t knock before he went inside and he found her as he expected, sitting at her console staring at her hands. She didn’t look up as he came in. She could have been carved from stone.
Dutch provided him with what little data it had from the computer record. He opened the thinpad file and stared at it. The silence hung like a wall between them for several minutes.
“Odysseus, his sails unfurled. Epsilon, Sigma, Tycho. Contact confirmed. 101-027,” he read out loud. “You sent this to Mars Relay-Six.”
“Yes,” she said, still not looking up at him.
“Dutch confirms that’s a dead bird and has been for years,” he said.
“I know,” she said.
“What does it mean, and why did you feel compelled to send a secret message by tight beam to an inoperative relay satellite?” he asked.
“I’m not sure where to begin,” she said, shrugging and glancing up. Her face was a tangle of emotion that made no sense given what he expected from her. There was no fight in her expression. It was empty. Maybe confused.
“First tell me what you’ve done and why you needed to do it without permission.”
“I’ve completed my mission,” she said. “And I did it without talking to you first, because I figured you’d say no.”
“What mission?” he asked. “I read every word of the charter background Roja sent and I couldn’t find anything about you having additional orders. Chei was all over it, but your name never appeared anywhere unusual.”
“That’s not surprising,” she said, finally making eye contact. “I don’t think any of the caveats would include my instructions. Odysseus doesn’t officially exist.”
“Odysseus? As in the dead Greek general?”
She nodded. “It’s a joint project between several cartels. It’s so low profile, it’s invisible. I wouldn’t be involved at all except that my … history … made it possible for someone to compel me to participate.”
“Your history? Being a Redback?”
She winced like the words lashed her soul, but she nodded. That explained the strange expression. He’d seen it when she confessed to being an illegal. She was afraid of something.
“I’m lost and that’s not something I’m fond of being,” the captain said. “I hate to put it this way, but you need to start making sense or you will have a lonely trip home, assuming we ever get there.”
“Yah, I know,” she said. “It’s just complex.”
“Simplify it for me,” he said. “Let’s start with, what the frag is Odysseus?”
“Odysseus is a project to keep humanity from imploding in the event that we encounter an advanced Extrasolar Intelligence,” she said.
“Imploding?”
“Exactly that.” she nodded. “The real danger we face is not from an alien species trying to take us over, it’s from us realizing that we’re not the center of the universe and bombing ourselves to dust.”
“We’re not children,” he said.
“Actually, yes we are,” she said. “Throughout history when a less advanced human culture encounters one that’s far ahead, the more primitive one comes apart.
Rather catastrophically. It’s human nature that although we may feel all grown up, when we realize we’re not all that mature, our collective ego folds. We may bluff ourselves into a sense of security, but when a superior hand comes along we tend to give up.”
He was struggling to take her seriously in spite of the fact that they might truly be facing something non-human down on L-4 Prime. “You’re saying that you’re involved in somehow keeping us from melting down?”
“I wasn’t involved with planning or building Odysseus. I don’t even know for sure what it is,” she said. “I was recruited to keep an eye out and ended up assigned to this mission. Other than being told that there was something unexplained going on in the L-4 Cluster, my orders were only to report back if it was an ESI.”
“You’re serious?” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Someone down-system thought there were aliens out here, and they sent us anyway?”
“I don’t think they sincerely expected we’d find something,” she said.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I tried,” she said. “Several times in fact, I brought it up and—”
“I shut you down,” he said, pushing back against the door and closing his eyes. She was right. She had opened the door. More than once.
“I don’t blame you,” she said. “It’s not easy to think about this kind of thing in a real way. That’s why the whole project is secret, because none of this is easy to think about. Your reaction is also what proves we’re not ready for an ESI contact. Imagine a billion people all trying to come to grips with the idea at the same time.”
“I can see that,” he said, nodding. “What are you supposed to do now? Are you done with your mission?”
“I don’t have instructions beyond sending the com,” she said.
“If you’re done, what happens next?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know what the next step is. They must have something planned that will protect us from ourselves. I just don’t know what it is.”
“Do they come out here and bomb it out of existence?” he asked. “Is that why Chei is here?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “When I asked him if he was part of Odysseus, he had no clue what I was talking about.”
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