by Tori Harris
Flag Captain Ogima Davis approached from the forward entrance to the hangar deck with an outstretched hand. “It’s quite an honor to have a living legend aboard,” he said with a mischievous grin.
“Uh huh, you clearly haven’t read Ingenuity’s mission report yet. The ‘legend’ part I humbly accept,” Prescott mocked, bowing his head slightly, “but the ‘living’ part may only last until Admiral KP gets me alone somewhere. In fact, you might want to assign me a Marine security detail,” he laughed.
“What did you do now, Prescott, fly off on another top secret mission in that super frigate of yours and start a war or something?”
“Something like that, yeah. Hey, maybe your ‘babysitter’ will let you read my report if you behave yourself,” he said, raising his eyebrows. It was unusual for two senior officers to be afforded the opportunity for an open, friendly conversation aboard ship without being behind closed doors. In this case, however, the activity and background noise on the cruiser’s massive flight deck provided the two captains a rare moment of privacy.
“Oh yeah, the old man’s gonna have nothing but love for you.”
“In that, I have no doubt, my friend. It’s good to see you, Ogima. How’s life as a ‘flag captain?’” Prescott asked, referring to Davis’ current assignment as the officer in nominal command of the admiral’s flagship. Since the days of sailing vessels, the job had been considered somewhat of a dubious honor since the admiral’s presence aboard tended to significantly diminish the captain’s authority to exercise command of his own ship. For that reason, the role tended to be assigned to relatively junior captains even though the flagship itself, which was typically a major combatant, would normally warrant the presence of a senior captain nearing their own promotion to admiral.
“I can’t complain, or at least I don’t complain much … especially since there’s no one to complain to when you’re the boss. In all seriousness, most days I feel guilty and selfish for enjoying my job so much. You know, with the world coming to an end and what not,” Davis said, smiling broadly. “All the simulator training was great, and very accurate, but in no way did it prepare me for the reality of this ship. This thing is an absolute beast, Tom, and if we can get some downtime to incorporate all of the features the Science and Engineering guys are talking about …”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Prescott said, nodding his head. “Unfortunately, time is a commodity that’s in precious short supply at the moment.”
“True enough, and you know how much my ‘sitter’ loves to be kept waiting, so I had best get you up to the CIC. Right this way, my friend.”
Guardian Spacecraft
(1500 km from TFS Navajo)
In spite of their occasional failure to apply history’s lessons as a guide for their actions, the Makers were dedicated students of the past. In fact, documenting the cultural and technological effects of Pelaran intervention on cultivated species was an important aspect of the Guardian’s mission. The period of time immediately following direct contact was of particular interest, since it tended to be a reliable indicator of how well the cultivation program had been applied to date, as well as the likelihood of its long-term success.
So far, the signs were gratifyingly positive. The Terrans were going out of their way to avoid any sort of aggressive posture, which had often not been the case for this species when they perceived an obvious threat. In addition to discontinuing their use of active sensor scans, there had been no spacecraft launches from the planet’s surface since its arrival. Vessels already in orbit and in the immediate vicinity of Earth were holding their positions and very little activity between vessels had been noted. The single exception to this, which was clearly the Humans’ command vessel based on its emissions, had approached slowly and taken up a position at a respectful distance.
While all of this activity was taking place in the space near the planet, Terra’s nation states were busily attempting to be the first to make direct contact, saturating the frequency spectrum with requests to communicate as if they were ancients hoping to be the first to earn the favor of a newly discovered deity.
Supplication, the Guardian observed. Excellent.
Chapter 2
TFS Navajo
Prescott had followed Captain Davis on what seemed like an extended aerobic workout as they made their way from the cruiser’s cavernous flight deck to the CIC. Like the bridge, the Combat Information Center was located on the ship’s longitudinal axis, buried at the center of the most heavily armored section of the hull.
Trying his level best to apply the lessons of Admiral Naftur’s earlier admonishment, Prescott still couldn’t prevent his inner voice from working overtime — apparently in an effort to convince himself that everything would be fine. Surely he wouldn’t be receiving me in the CIC for a public berating, he thought. Then again, this is Patterson we’re talking about. He probably never leaves the room, especially in a situation like this.
“Man, I don’t think I’d ever need to hit the cardio equipment if I had to take this hike several times a day,” he observed, struggling to keep up with Captain Davis’ rather aggressive pace.
“That’s a fact. I’m telling you, the size and power of this ship still blows my mind. As far as walking yourself to death, though, the carriers are even worse. I was on the Jutland right before we launched and half those guys wheel around on electric scooters and such. It’s damned undignified, if you ask me,” Davis laughed, pausing at the top of the final stairway. “You know, it may just be that you’re getting old, Prescott.”
“I don’t know about that, but I do feel like I’ve aged several years in the past month,” he replied, drawing in a few deep breaths as they paused to authenticate their identities outside the heavily armored bulkhead door protecting the Navajo’s CIC.
“Welcome, Captain Prescott and Captain Davis,” the AI’s synthetic voice announced. “All activity in the CIC is currently classified Top Secret, code word MAGI PRIME. You may now enter the CIC.”
With the cruiser at General Quarters, the CIC’s lighting was even more subdued than usual, and tinted with a red hue as a reminder of the ship’s current status. Prescott paused momentarily just inside the entrance, both to allow his eyes to adjust and to give himself a moment to take in the room’s daunting scale. Unlike her more general purpose bridge, the Navajo’s CIC was dedicated to the task of employing the cruiser herself as well as various other military assets within her battlespace, as a single, coordinated weapon system. The fact that the ship was also acting as Admiral Patterson’s flagship meant that the CIC tended to be standing room only — twenty-four hours per day. Even with well over fifty TFC personnel on duty, however, the room was eerily quiet.
Davis nodded towards the center of the room where Admiral Patterson stood gesturing at a gigantic holographic table while speaking into a headset. Even though he was obviously heavily engaged in conversation, the admiral noticed the two captains immediately. Without missing a beat, he motioned for the two of them to join him, then held up a finger to let them know he would be with them in a moment.
“The man’s a machine,” Davis said, leaning in close so that only Prescott could hear. “As far as I know, he hasn’t slept in three days. He says he grabs naps in one of the attached conference rooms, but I’m not sure I buy it. Now that the aliens have finally arrived, we may have to take him down with a tranquilizer gun.”
Prescott noticed that as the admiral spoke he was manipulating the holographic table display to get a better view of the space immediately surrounding the flagship. As he watched, the scale of the display changed so that only the Navajo and Guardian spacecraft were visible. Patterson then rotated the entire display so that he could see the Navajo with the Earth itself in the background from the Guardian’s perspective. Seemingly satisfied with the result of his conversation, he removed the headset and approached the two captains.
“Welcome back, Tom,” he said warmly, extending his hand.
�
�Thank you, Admiral,” Prescott replied, still a bit apprehensive, but relieved that the CNO did not appear especially hostile.
“Pick up any other hitchhikers on your way back that I don’t know about yet?” the admiral asked, deadpan, his face immediately shifting to a well-rehearsed scowl.
Prescott felt a chill run down his spine. This was clearly one of those ambiguous situations that could be read either way, but where choosing incorrectly could provide a particularly bad result. Rather than commit himself either way, he simply stared at the admiral for a moment, waiting to be either skewered or let off the hook entirely.
The admiral, for his part, simply raised his eyebrows and peered over his glasses as if waiting for a response, seeming to take pleasure in his subordinate’s obvious discomfort.
Unable to endure the silence any longer, Prescott opened his mouth to respond. “Sir, I …”
“Relax, Prescott,” Patterson interrupted, chuckling in spite of himself and finally starting to feel a tinge of guilt. “There actually are a few things I’m going to need you to explain to me, but I’ve looked over the highlights of your AI’s log a couple of times already. So far, I haven’t seen anything you did that I probably wouldn’t have done myself. Besides, the truth of the matter is that you’re now the only combat veteran captain we’ve got, so I’d probably be a little reluctant to take you out of the chair no matter what you did.”
Captain Davis took a step back and stared in amazement. “Combat veteran? You did go out and start a war, didn’t you, Prescott?”
“He didn’t start anything, but he and our friend Admiral Naftur sure as hell finished something. Out at Gliese 667, they were attacked by a sister ship to Naftur’s Gresav as well as one of the big cruisers we saw get wiped out by the Guardian last month. Since Prescott is standing here, you can draw your own conclusions as to how that went for the bad guys,” he smiled, literally patting Prescott on the back. “Anyway, with the Guardian lurking around outside, I’m not going to have time to do a proper debrief, so I’d like the two of you to quickly document the lessons learned. I want what worked and what didn’t work in the hands of every one of our captains within twenty-four hours. Questions on that part?”
“No, sir,” they replied in unison, feeling a little like a pair of midshipmen who had just been handed an especially odious assignment for the following day.
“Next, I know that Naftur has some sort of bio-signature-scrambling gizmo that supposedly keeps the Guardian from detecting his presence. Frankly, I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with him remaining aboard one of our ships while we are sitting up here nose to nose with this thing. We have to assume it can read our encrypted comm, and we have absolutely no idea how it would react if it discovered we were collaborating with a Wek, particularly since that Wek happens to be a senior military commander. The picture that’s emerging of this ‘cultivation’ program tells me that the Pelarans are looking for what you might call an … uh, rather exclusive relationship with us.”
“So should we shuttle Admiral Naftur down to HQ to meet up with Admiral Sexton and Ambassador Turlaka?” Prescott asked.
“Yes, that’s your first priority. It’s critical that we get Naftur on the ground and see if we can get some additional information that might help us design a better defense against this potential ‘Pelaran Resistance’ attack. At the moment, we have very little notion of what to expect. I suppose we can hold out some hope that the loss of two of their vessels at Gliese 667 might persuade them to turn around and head home, but I doubt that’s something we can count on.”
“No, sir,” Prescott agreed. “In fact, Admiral Naftur indicated that the Resistance expects there will be little to no resistance from Terran forces when their task force arrives at Sol. Their chief concern is the Guardian, and they believe they have developed some tactics that will allow them to keep it busy while they attack Earth from multiple directions with stand-off weapons. I suspect they will attribute the loss of their two ships to the Gresav since they believed Ingenuity to be unarmed.”
“Well, that was an unfortunate mistake for them, but their intel was only off by a month or so.”
“True enough, sir, and given our power deficiency at the time, we would have almost definitely been either destroyed or captured after they finished dealing with the Gresav.”
“Precisely, and that’s why I want Ingenuity on the ground at Yucca for repairs immediately. Commander Logan seems to have a good handle on what went wrong, and doesn’t seem to think the fix will take long to accomplish — maybe a couple of weeks, tops.”
Prescott took a deep breath before responding. The admiral appeared to have granted his career a stay of execution, so quibbling over his orders at this point seemed foolhardy at best. Still, he believed the best place for Ingenuity’s crew was in space, working with Admiral Naftur to locate the Resistance forces before they could organize an attack.
Admiral Patterson paused, studying Captain Prescott’s face with narrowed eyes and an expression that seemed to issue a direct challenge. “Did you have something to add, Captain?”
The old expression, “The better part of valor is discretion,” echoed through Prescott’s mind, and though Shakespeare intended it to illustrate cowardice, the words had an entirely different meaning at the moment. “No, sir,” he answered evenly, realizing that he was by no means in a position to argue. “We’ll get her ready to fly again in short order.”
Patterson chuckled, “No, that’s not what I have in mind, Tom. Your AI’s report highlighted the fact that Naftur believes he might be able to dissuade the Resistance forces from attacking Earth if he can find their rally point. Honestly, that seems like a stretch to me, but at this point we need to pursue every available avenue that might prevent military action, because I can assure you that we are not prepared to counter a determined attack. We also can’t count on the Guardian to pull our collective arses out of the fire. In fact, we are already working on our own strategy for taking that thing out in case it comes to that.”
“Very well, sir, what are my orders, then?” Prescott asked, willingly taking the bait.
“I’m sure you recall that there were six Theseus-class destroyers nearing completion at Yucca while you were there. You may have also noticed that none of them are in space at the moment. Completion of the destroyers was always expected to run a bit behind the other warship classes … and that was by design. The idea was to field a credible defensive force with our frigates, cruisers, and carriers as quickly as possible and then integrate as many improvements as we could into the destroyers before they were launched. Obviously, I’m referring to fairly minor tweaks rather than any significant design changes, since we’re only talking about a few months since Ingenuity was launched. Understand, though, that the destroyers also included a number of major improvements from day one. Using this approach, we hoped to minimize the risk to our overall deployment schedule while still managing to field at least one class with significantly upgraded capabilities. I think it’s safe to say that Ingenuity’s battle performance at Gliese 667 has served to validate that strategy to some extent. Unfortunately, final systems integration was taking a bit longer than expected, which prompted us to throw all available resources into getting the first destroyer from each of our three primary shipyards ready to fly as quickly as possible. If all goes well, the others will only be a week or so behind. In any event, at Yucca Mountain, the first out of the barn will be the Theseus herself.”
“I’m assuming they have had their hyperdrives upgraded to include C-Drive capabilities then?” Prescott asked, taken aback by where it looked like the admiral was going with this line of thought and not certain that it made much sense from an operational standpoint.
“Yes, they have, although I suppose it’s not technically an upgrade since the inclusion of a C-Drive was one of those high-risk design improvements I was referring to that was always part of the plan. Since, in many respects, the Theseus-class destroyer is an oversized version of
the Ingenuity-class frigate, we’ll need to ensure she won’t suffer from the same power issues you experienced on your first run out to Gliese 667. I’ve already spoken with one of Navajo’s engineers who has been intimately involved with the hyperdrive program. He took a look at Commander Logan’s notes and does not believe the Theseus will have the same problem. Something about excess capacitor – energy density – something or other. In any event, I’ll make him available to assist Commander Logan, as needed. Otherwise, Theseus represents the very latest and best of every system we have — C-Drive for the ship, C-Drive-equipped missiles, C-Drives for her twenty-four RPSVs, plus a number of other enhancements that I won’t pretend I can adequately describe in any detail.”
“Admiral, what are you asking me to do?”
“Jeez, Prescott, do I need to draw you a picture? You will proceed to the Yucca Mountain Shipyard where you will relinquish command of TFS Ingenuity so that she can begin undergoing repairs and a reactor refit under the supervision of Captain Oshiro. You will leave Commanders Reynolds and Logan in charge of assisting with getting that process underway, as well as transferring Ingenuity’s crew to TFS Theseus. She’s a much bigger ship, Tom, so we’ll need to almost triple your crew complement. The good news there is that she already has a fully trained crew on standby. You can let your XO pick and choose whom she wants aboard. If I get my way, you’ll also be taking on a full platoon of spec-ops Marines and their assault shuttles. After all, you never know when you might need to send some of your people out to meet some of their people … and then kill them,” he smirked.
“You’ll get no argument from me there,” Prescott laughed. “Don’t get me wrong, Admiral, I’m honored that you would place this kind of confidence in my crew and me, but we are just now coming up to speed on Ingenuity’s systems. Is it wise for us to change to a completely different ship design at such a critical time?”