StS6 Deep Space - Hidden Terror

by Laurence Dahners

  The strength of the signal was fading somewhat, presumably as the ship rolled. Diddiq knew this solution was just exposing a different part of the crew to the rending noise. It wouldn’t be a good long-term answer—especially if the hibernators couldn’t rest.

  He looked at Rabaq, hoping for suggestions, but the captain only shook his head and said he’d contact the physics team to see if they had any ideas.

  As if the physics team could be unaware of the problem, Diddiq thought with irritation.

  Suddenly the screeching signal vanished! “What happened?” Diddiq said in the blessed silence.

  “Checking,” Lt. Falaq said, looking at her instruments.

  Diddiq watched her anxiously, having the impression that most of the others were watching her with similar levels of concern. Just like I am, they’re afraid it’s going to start up again.

  Suddenly, he had a thought. Turning to the captain, he asked, “If they start doing that again, couldn’t we put on the shrouds we use to cover our antennae with during jump?”

  Rabaq’s eyes showed startled relief, “Yes! Though it’ll make it hard to hear one another.”

  “But we could at least shroud the hibernators so we don’t have to feel guilty about rolling the ship,” Diddiq said. “And, we could send each other electronic messages, even here on the bridge. At least to tell others to pull off their shrouds and listen for a moment.”

  Rabaq lowered forearms respectfully toward Diddiq, then began giving orders.

  Lieutenant Falaq turned his eyes toward the command chairs. “The aliens are turning their ship. I believe the rotation caused the beam they’re radiating us with to lose its lock… Um…” she hesitated, then continued, “They were also radiating Busux and Kranex with the same beam. Can I pass on your advice about the shrouds?”

  “Yes, yes,” Diddiq said, hoping that the infernal beam wasn’t going to come back on at all.

  A moment later it returned.

  Trying not to act frantic, Diddiq dug in the pocket of his saddle where he kept his shroud, pulling it out and slipping it over his antennae. For a moment he thought it was providing complete and blessed silence, but then he realized he could still hear the shrieking but only as a distant and mild annoyance. He spoke, saying, “Rabaq,” as a test to see whether the shroud blocked all his attempts to communicate, even with the captain who was only a couple of meters away.

  Rabaq didn’t respond, so Diddiq spoke louder, rotating his antennae and an eye toward the captain.

  Rabaq was looking suspiciously at Diddiq. He lifted his shroud a little and said, “Expedition leader? Did you speak to me?”

  “YES,” Diddiq shouted. “Did you hear that?”

  Rabaq’s shroud lifted, suggesting he’d lifted his antennae affirmatively. He pulled the shroud completely back down over his antennae, then Diddiq heard him shout, “This is what a shout sounds like through two shrouds. He lifted the shroud partially and said, “It works better if the person speaking lifts their shroud and speaks loudly. We sometimes have to do that around the time of a jump.”

  Diddiq raised his antennae affirmatively, assuming Rabaq would be able to see it move his shroud. Then he lifted his shroud somewhat and spoke loudly, “Good. Send a message out to all crew and to the other ships so everyone understands your strategy.” He wondered a moment why Rabaq, if he had such experience, hadn’t told them all to do this as soon as the aliens started their radio assault. I’ve seen it before, he thought. When confronted by something new, most haliq don’t connect the dots. During training, he’d often been complimented for his innovative thinking but hadn’t grasped how poorly others did at it. Now, arrogantly, he thought to himself, If all haliq made connections as well as I do, we’d have taken over the galaxy!

  Diddiq lifted his shroud a little and shouted, “Lieutenant Falaq. Have the solians finished turning their ship? Where do you think they’re going?”

  She turned, aimed her antennae at him, and partially lifted her own shroud. “They’ve turned toward us.”

  Upon receiving that answer, Diddiq realized she looked worried. Why? he wondered. Is there something to be concerned about? Surely, if these solians have any idea what happened to the first of their ships, they’re the ones who should be frightened.

  With a sinking feeling, he remembered the nuclear explosion hadn’t fully destroyed the first solian ship. Turning to Rabaq, he lifted his shroud a little and loudly asked what was going on with the solians’ first ship.

  Rabaq had to message someone to get an answer, giving Diddiq time to worry about what it might mean if that first ship looked like it’d recovered. What if both of their ships are coming after us because they’re freakishly invincible?

  A flashing light on his screen notified Diddiq that he had a message from Rabaq, something that would normally irritate him because he’d rather get information by speech, But I have a feeling I’ll need to get used to messaging until we can do something about the solians’ damned signal.

  He read Rabaq’s message. To his relief, it said the first solian ship was still rapidly tumbling and moving away on the same trajectory. It was still sending out a signal, but the message seemed unchanged. “Not like a communication, like a distress beacon.”

  Diddiq sent a message to Lt. Falaq. “Do you know where the solians are going yet?”

  The reply came quickly, “They seem to be aimed ahead of us. Perhaps at Kranex or Busux.”

  “You don’t know where they’re going?” Diddiq sent back, frustrated.

  “All I can tell from the imaging is the approximate direction they’re headed,” she replied.

  “Wait, you haven’t asked navigation? They should be able to use radar ranging to determine the vector and acceleration and thereby calculate which of our ships, if any, the solians are aimed toward.”

  “Sorry, sir. I’ll ask immediately.”

  Diddiq closed his eyes and tried not to droop in disappointment. How many foreclaws must I guide? he wondered. Accelerating his breathing a moment, he sent a message to Sibiq, the chief bioscientist. “How long will it take to finish designing a bioweapon against these damned solians?”

  A return message came almost immediately, “Did you know your haliq exposed the specimens to space?! Many of their cells were damaged by decompression and freezing!”

  His vaunted calm composure blown up, Diddiq found himself involuntarily rising all the way to just his hind limbs in fury. He got control of himself before he had climbed off his saddle to go down and confront Sibiq. Closing his eyes, he ignored the alarmed looks his reaction had generated on the bridge and settled back down onto the saddle. “You,” he wrote back to Sibiq, “will die by decompression and freezing if you don’t immediately answer my question.”

  “Sorry, Expedition Leader,” came the immediate and abjectly obsequious reply. “It will take at least three days. I don’t think it will take more than twenty days. Again, my humblest apologies. What else may I do for you?”

  Diddiq thought for a moment, then, to be sure Sibiq understood the full depths of his anger, he sent, “Send me a recommendation for who I should replace you with if this happens again.”

  When he closed that message, there was another from Lt. Falaq. It said, “Lieutenant Commander Bylaq from navigation says that the solian ship’s current trajectory would approximately intersect with our own, but that then they would just go on past to the other side of us. Instead, likely they will decelerate to parallel us from a closer position. Unless they alter their vector when they begin to decelerate, they will fall into a trailing position.”

  A trailing position? Diddiq thought. He felt alarmed because he couldn’t understand why they would want to trail. Then he realized that—since they were decelerating—a trailing position would align the solian ship with the bow of Nesex. Could they intend to fire some kind of weapon into our bow, or our atmospheric scoops? Because of the heat and stress encountered during an atmospheric scooping operation, the bow and the scoops were th
e strongest parts of the ship. Which the solians may not know, he realized. Or perhaps I don’t understand why the scoop could be a weak point.

  Diddiq sent out an all-bridge message, apprising the command crew of the solians’ apparent maneuver toward their bow and asking for thoughts on why their opponents might be doing it. And, how to counter the maneuver if it posed a danger. He thought about warning them that an atomic bomb hadn’t destroyed the first ship. I could ask for suggestions of alternative methods with which to attack the solians, he thought. After a bit, he decided that since the first ship seemed out of action even if it appeared physically intact, there was no reason to alarm his crew with the news that it’d survived.

  Captain Rabaq collated the bridge officers’ responses with the conclusion that, if the solians were to discharge a weapon at the Nesex, the bow and the atmospheric scoops were the parts of the ship least likely to be damaged, and that if they were damaged, it wouldn’t affect the function of the ship except during refueling. Just in case of failure during scooping operations, the bow had little of importance immediately behind it. He also said the scoops and the bow plating could be repaired by the time they might need to scoop more reaction mass.

  ***

  Lee stepped in to check the last of the timers they’d put out to check Maui’s stazing systems.

  They’d scrounged every mobile timekeeping device on board and carefully synchronized them, disabling any electronic systems that might update their time from the ship’s network. Then they’d put clocks in all the compartments they had clocks for—nearly half—and stazed the entire ship for two minutes. By going around and checking the time displayed on all the clocks they’d found one small compartment that hadn’t stazed—as evidenced by its clock being ahead of the others since it hadn’t been in stasis. Since that compartment only held supplies, they didn’t worry about it, simply moved those supplies into another closet.

  Then they’d moved the clocks to a second set of rooms and compartments and repeated the stasis test. This time they found to their dismay that two of the crew rooms didn’t staze. Lee briefly considered trying to figure out why those rooms didn’t staze and repair them, but since time was of the essence, instead she had the crew clear the room—removing everything including the furniture, right out to the wall and floor coverings on the Stade of the enclosure. They could replace the coverings if they tore loose.

  Now she let out a sigh of relief upon seeing that the last clock in the third and last set of rooms they were checking also showed a two-minute discrepancy, indicating its compartment had successfully stazed.

  She’d been agonizing over the possibility that some compartment containing critical components would fail to staze and that they wouldn’t be able to repair its stazing system.

  But it looked like her plan was a go.

  Thankfully, everyone aboard had volunteered to participate in the attack on the aliens. She’d offered to staze anyone who didn’t want to be a part of it, dropping them off with beacons attached so they could be picked up after the war—assuming there were humans left in the solar system to do it.

  No one had taken her up on that offer.

  ***

  Diddiq looked up when a message flashed on his screen. Captain Rabaq had forwarded a message from Lieutenant Commander Bylaq in navigation. “The solians have now continued beyond the point where, if they intended to assume a course that parallels ours, they should’ve turned over and started decelerating. Instead, they are continuing to accelerate. If they are capable of decelerating at a higher rate than the 0.143g they have been accelerating, they might still turn over and be able to pull alongside. Since this doesn’t seem likely, it would appear that they are intending to cross our course. We don’t know why they would do this but it’s the only physically possible outcome at this point—barring some surprising new technical capability.”

  Cross our course?! Diddiq thought wonderingly. Why in the first haliq would they do that? He messaged Bylaq. “If they continue as they are, will they still cross behind us?”

  There was a pause, then Bylaq replied, “They could cross in front, behind, above, or below. We can’t tell which way yet. They’re going to come very close to us and to be honest, I can’t imagine why they’d want to pass so closely. They’ll be going so fast they wouldn’t have time to do anything. They couldn’t possibly aim a weapon so it hit us when they were passing at that speed.”

  Something congealed in Diddiq’s gut. He partially lifted his shroud and aimed his antennae at Bylaq, saying “Could they hit us?!”

  Bylaq turned his eyes and stared. He lifted his own shroud to reply, “Hit us? Like ram into us?”

  Diddiq raised his antennae in the affirmative. That way he didn’t have to lift his shroud.

  Bylaq lifted his shroud, “Why would they do that?”

  Diddiq lifted his shroud and shouted, “TO KILL US AND SAVE THEIR OWN PEOPLE! It’s a suicide mission!”

  Bylaq looked horrified, but he turned his eyes to his screens a moment, then turned them back to Diddiq. “Yes, Expedition Leader, they could. Now that you point out the possibility, I’m sure that’s what they intend to do.”

  Diddiq looked back at Captain Rabaq to be sure he’d heard, seeing horror in the haliq’s eyes. He turned his eyes back to Lieutenant Commander Bylaq and lifted his shroud to say, “How fast will the solian ship be going by the time it hits us?”

  Bylaq checked his screen, then, with dread in his tone, said, “3.7 kilometers per second, Expedition Leader.”

  “What’s our estimate of the mass of the solian ship?”

  Bylaq said, “Fifty to a hundred and fifty tonnes.”

  Diddiq knew everyone else’s eyes were on him as he turned his eyes to Lieutenant Kasuq. “Lieutenant,” he said, “please ask your computers to calculate how much kinetic energy will be released by a fifty-tonne impact at 3.7 kilometers per second?”

  Kasuq turned her eyes to one of her computers, then back to Diddiq. “350 gigajoules,” she said.

  Diddiq snarled, “Can you give it to me in comprehensible units?”

  “Sorry, Expedition Leader,” Kasuq said, looking chagrined. She turned her eyes briefly to the computer, then back to Diddiq, “That’s the amount of energy released by eighty-three tonnes of TNT.”

  Diddiq looked the question at Captain Rabaq.

  Rabaq, evidently not wanting to further panic the crew, leaned down to input on his screen.

  Diddiq glanced at the bridge crew, seeing their fear, and thought he should’ve handled the communications less publicly. He looked at his own screen and saw Rabaq’s answer, “You could destroy Nesex with two tonnes of TNT if it struck in the right place. Eighty-three tonnes will destroy the ship almost no matter where it hits. We must avoid that impact. May I work on a strategy?”

  “Yes!” Diddiq replied, now wishing Rabaq wasn’t so protective of his crew’s emotions. If he’d spoken his message he could’ve started strategizing a few seconds sooner.

  According to Bylaq in navigation, they had about fifteen minutes until impact. After a moment’s further thought, Diddiq got up and walked over to Captain Rabaq. Lifting his shroud, he focused his antennae on the captain and said, “When you come up with a maneuver to avoid the impact, execute it. Don’t contact me for approval.”

  Diddiq headed for the shuttle bay. If the solians destroy Nesex, I need to have transferred my command to Kranex, he thought.

  Arriving in the shuttle bay he commandeered a shuttle pilot, a shuttle, and six crew. The bay’s commander appeared to be stunned to have the expedition’s overall leader in his little fiefdom. Diddiq told the commander he wanted to observe the next evolution from outside the ship and the haliq readily acquiesced.

  When Diddiq stepped into the shuttle, the first thing he noticed was the relaxation of the muscles that controlled his antennae. A moment later he realized it was because the metal hull of the shuttle was blocking the annoying radio pulses the solians were firing at them. He pulled
off his shroud and it was still tolerable. Even if the solians don’t damage Nesex, he thought, I’m going to stay in the shuttle until they stop beaming us. I’ve got to be able to think!

  He rushed the shuttle’s pilot through the preflight and getting them off Nesex. There weren’t that many more minutes until the solian ship rammed Nesex—or missed it…

  Once they were out in space, Diddiq ordered the shuttle pilot to quickly move forward toward Kranex. He sat next to the porthole and tried to look back toward Nesex, only then realizing that they seemed to be passing the big ship quite slowly. Primal haliq! he thought, What if we’re still in front of the Nesex when the solian ship arrives? What if it hits us? He looked at the time and decided they still had three and a half minutes. “Is this your maximum acceleration?” he asked the pilot. There was no response. After a glance around at the haliq on the shuttle, Diddiq spoke loudly at them, “Take off your shrouds! The hull of the shuttle is blocking those annoying pings.” That done, he again asked the shuttle pilot if they were at maximum acceleration.

  “Um, no sir. Maximum acceleration is uncomfortable and wastes fuel. Are you sure—”

  “MAXIMUM ACCELERATION, DAMMIT!” Diddiq shouted.

  The rockets slammed Diddiq down into his saddle and he wondered if he’d overdone it. He hadn’t felt anything like this pressure since they’d left E. Eridani and hadn’t been ready for it.

  His pride kept him from complaining.

  Diddiq looked out the porthole again and could no longer see Nesex. He leaned as far as he could to try to see it and didn’t.

  One of the crewhaliq said, “Do you want the pilot to turn the ship so you can see Nesex?”

  Pretending to ignore the suggestion, Diddiq called out to the pilot, “How far ahead of Nesex are we now?”

  “Twenty kilometers, Expedition Leader.”

  “Okay, cut acceleration and rotate the shuttle so we can see Nesex out the starboard window.”