Archaea 3: Red (13 page)

“Hailing, aye”, he said, then repeated my hail on
comms.  He waited a moment, and hailed again.

“Hit them spread-spectrum, Yak. Maybe they're not on the pilot channels.”

“Aye sir.” he said, and repeated the hail a third time. We waited a few moments, and he repeated the hail again across all frequencies.

“No return
on comms, sir.” He turned around and fixed me with a grim look. “Maybe we don't have a strong enough signal, or they have interference...” he trailed off, hopefully.

“Well, even if they can’t hear us,
they should be able to see this”, I replied, and flashed our forward arcs twice for the standard 'giving-way' signal using deliberate, long-blasts for each flash.

After I had burned their eyes out with our forward arcs
, I came around 35 degrees to port, and punched a one percent burn for 10 seconds. I counted off thirty seconds on the clock and hauled us back over 40 degrees to starboard, finishing the maneuver with another one percent burn. It was a perfectly executed side-slip maneuver, by the book.

On my waypoint screen, the indicators showing our course were located a few kilometers to starboard, but on the same plane. We looked good for a re
insertion once Sierra 16 moved past and our lane was clear.

“Yak, what's our rate of closure?” I asked across the bridge.

“Sir, rate of closure is 23km/s. That seems a little fast… is that us?”

“Negative, we're not going that fast, we're
hardly poking along right now. What mass do we have for them?”

“Sir, one second--” he stopped talking abruptly as his screens flashed red. “Janis is now designating Sierra 16
as Master 1, range 190k, dead ahead.”

Master designation means they have
gone hostile. Without firing on us, that could indicate they have willfully maneuvered to present a hostile aspect, or to maintain a collision course.

“Steady on, Yak.
They’re a few hours away yet, and we need to consider the possibility that maybe they didn't understand the give-way signal.  There are certainly a lot of scrubby pilots hauling tugs around Sol system.” I replied calmly.

On the other hand,
they were closing pretty fast, definitely faster than I’d expect an in-system tug to be going.

“
Yak do you have a mass reading on Master 1?”

“Sir, roughly 5
00 tons.” he replied, a little more calmly.

I pull
ed over the gravimetric layer, scanned at maximum resolution, and didn't see much that I liked. “Janis, can you pull any detail out of this scan?” I asked the air hopefully.

“I am sorry sir. If I perform any further extrapolation the object loses detail. I will continue to refine the topography as it approaches.”

“Very well Janis.” I wasn't really happy with what I was looking at. It looked like a crumpled ball of mystery, slowly rotating.

“Yak, I am going to shove a bit farther over, and see if we can't get out of this guy's way.”

“Aye skipper.” he said with a bit of relief in his voice. I guess he doesn't want to play chicken with a 500 ton object moving a few thousand meters per second, and who could blame him.

“All
hands stand by for maneuvering in 15 seconds.” I said on the 1MC, and beeped the collision alarm. Pauli was probably not sleeping at this point.

Right on the mark, I slewed us five more kilometers to port and
then burned a bit more to line us up and lock us in.

“Yak, how are we looking?” I said with my eye on the course plots. We were now eight-some-odd kilometers
off line, and should be well clear of whatever primate is in charge of that in-bound hunk of junk.

His voice was grim. “They have altered course again, sir, s
till holding a Master designation.”

“Well, that's interesting.” I considered our options. We could still be looking at something innocent here. Some scrub on early watches, mixing his reds with his greens.

No sense taking any unnecessary risks, however.

“Janis,
you have the conn”

“I have the conn, aye.”

“Please shape a two-hop slipspace course with a terminus of 500 meters astern of Master 1, with autopilot assist.”

“Certainly sir”, she said as the course showed up on my center screen with that shiny red button I love so well.
The stars wheeled slightly across our forward port as she lined us up.

“Thank you dear, please stand by and adjust
as needed to keep this valid while I rouse the troops.”

“Very well sir.”

I was about to hit the 1MC right as Pauli kicked in to the bridge, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Luckily for everyone aboard this old bird, he brought some coffee. I might actually stay awake long enough to save us.

“Good morning Pauli, just in time for the fun.” I said holding out my cup with hands so rock solid steady they looked like they already fell asleep.
For all I knew, maybe they had. I was cutting it a little close… it's dangerous to play games with coffee withdrawal, when it's a major food group.

  Once the cup was happily refilled, and I took my first soul-replenishing slug, I was ready. “All hands secure for free-fall and in-system slip – just a short hop, you'll hardly notice it.” I added
the last bit for Gene's benefit. Try as he might, he will never get over his fear of hurtling into a rock at hyper-luminal speed.

I took another sip, and continued on comms.
“As background, we are currently looking at an incoming bogey that has been designated hostile by their stubborn refusal to stop trying to run into us head-on. I will be maneuvering to a position on their six, using a triangle route of linked slipspace hops. Over the next... some-odd seconds, we will slip, maneuver, and slip again until we are in position.”

I paused for another sip.

“Gene, I’m going to need maximum power from the tokamak, and juice our plates to maximum as well. Shorty, I need the main gun hot, lit, and ready to burn. Hopefully this is just a drill, but I would appreciate it if everyone were to regard this as the real thing.”

“Aye skipper”, Gene said on comms
after a very brief, yet precisely calculated pause that shared with me exactly how he felt about going to full power with untried components. “We will have full power in 15 seconds.” I felt the tokamak cycling through its harmonics as it tuned up, tingling my toes. “Captain, our tokamak and plates are at 100%, everything is looking good, sir.”

“Very well Gene. Shorty?” I asked quietly.

“Sir our main cannon is ready now and standing by. Waiting for fire mission, sir.” she replied even more quietly.

I looked through my screens at Yak and Pauli,
saw their single eyebrows and raised them a table-winning pair of my own.

“Shorty, is there a malfunction?”

None of us felt the gut-wrenching, teeth pulling harmonics we normally feel when Shorty's gun warms up. The tokamak was tingling our toes, but usually Shorty’s gun dominated the senses as it warmed up.

“No
malfunction sir, we are at maximum charge and ready to fire.”

I swiped a ghost of her screen to my forward holo and looked at it cross-eyed for a moment, trying to make sense of the various telltales and figures. It looked lit to me,
but – where was the vibration?

“Shorty, is this expected behavior?”

“Yes sir. Our new focal rings are deformable and Janis has total control over their attenuation. She is able to ramp up to maximum intensity in a fraction of the time it used to take. The vibrations were caused by the old rings and steppers. Those components were barely a step above garbage, barely adequate. Our new gun is one mean machine sir”, she said proudly.

“Very well Jane, well done.” I was very impressed, even enough to use her given name. I try not to make a habit of it, but she seems
to really appreciate it when I do.

I can't understand it, myself. I prefer to
be called 'Captain’. If it wasn’t for Gene stubbornly reminding me I have another name, I would have forgotten it long ago.

“In that case, I believe we are ready for this evolution. All hands
secure for free-fall on the ten-count.” I said, while Janis rendered the countdown to every station.

While we waited, I called across the bridge.
“Pauli, I want you and Janis to do everything you can to take total control over Master 1 the moment we arrive.”

“Aye sir.” he said, bringing up some
new screens to his forward holo and leaning in to his work.

“Yak, keep your eyes on comms, they may want to get chatty pretty quick. If they hail us, I want an immediate response, Marine.”

“Oo-rah Captain.” he said quietly, while Janis precessed the Archaea towards our first transit. Her course looked simple, our first waypoint was one light-second away, roughly 300,000 kilometers, then another light-second back to the terminus, a point she was calculating at some unholy level of precision, probably to the nanometer.

Our stasis field charged, pseudomass engaged
, and we slipped. Before I could even register that it had happened, she pulled us out of stasis, and transited to our new heading while re-energizing the field. Her timing was absolutely perfect, the instant her translation completed, the field energized and we were off again – and just as suddenly, we were there, staring at the stern of Master 1, a little above and oriented downward, perfectly lined up for a hull shot through their topside.

“Sir, we have control”, Pauli called out, almost before I realized what I was looking at.

“Very well Pauli. Cut their drives and lights, and give Yak a channel to their bridge. Do we know the name of this...whatever it is?” I wasn't sure what to call it. It looked like a floating pile of garbage.

“Engines and lights are cut sir.
Janis reports the vessel as the Alene, an indentured materials hauler registered out of Diemos.”

“Yak, please open comms.”

“Sir, comms are open.”

“Attention Alene. This is Captain Dak Smith of the independent frigate Archaea.”

A moment of silence, while I tapped my fingers on the side of my coffee cup in a haunting syncopated rhythm that probably sounded like 'jitters' to Yak, but wasn't.

“Alene, this is Captain Dak Smith of the independent frigate Archaea. Please respond.” I said again, patiently.

In a burst of static, a man with a heavy accent replied. “Archaea, this is Captain Lars Bakke of the Alene, we seem to be having a systems failure at the moment. Please stand by.”

I had no intention of standing by, and replied sternly.
“Captain, were you aware that your vessel changed course two separate times to maintain a collision course with my vessel?  You did not respond to hails, and our targeting system had you painted red for maneuvering in a hostile manner.” I said this as matter-of-factually as possible.

We winced as another burst of static filled the bridge, as
Captain Bakke came back on comms. “Well now, I can't review our course at the moment, but I’d guess my watch stander may have confused his rules of navigation, Captain.”

“I figured something like that
may have been happening. Do you require assistance with your vessel?” I asked innocently.

“Pre-hostile, eh Yak?” I called across the bridge.
“Janis, this is an important lesson, dear. Things aren't always what they seem.  I know you were just helping us avoid collision, but maybe we need a different designation when we’re really talking about stupid.”

In the silence that followed, Pauli started really hammering the keys and working his screens.

“Pauli, report”, I said quietly.

His lips moved
, but made no sound that I could hear. “Pauli, please report, son…what is going on?” I asked, more concerned. He was really working hard at something.

He took a deep breath.
“Sir...we are under attack. Janis is...” he trailed off, as a flurry of screens opened and closed across his holos. I decided it might be a good time to shut up.

We sat in silence for a moment, watching Pauli melt keys.

After a much longer pause, Captain Bakke replied in another crackle of static, “Captain, I have a man working to bring us back up. She's an old ship, you know, probably rats in the cable runs again.”

I shuddered
involuntarily at the thought. “I understand Captain. Do you want me to stand by? This is a pretty active sector to be flying blind.” The sound of slapping keys filled the bridge.

“If you wouldn't mind, that would be most appreciated, sir” he replied.

“Very well Captain, standing by”, I said quietly, waiting for Pauli's report with an inquisitive eyebrow in low orbit.

Suddenly, he clapped his hands, and cried
out. ”Hot damn Captain, we did it!” He sat back and rubbed his eyes with both hands as if to push them back in to his skull.

“Did what, Pauli?” I asked, watching him closely just in case he went space-crazy.