Archaea 3: Red (23 page)

“—attack! We request any assistance you can provide!”

“Little Sister, we copy and will do what we can. Please stand by.”

“Yak, keep that signal locked, and don’t stop scanning for other threats, son – we can’t afford any more surprises.”

“Aye sir”, I replied as confidently as I could, flipping through the target list at speed.

“Pauli, as soon as we are in range of Little Sister, I want a deep scan of her network. Can you and Janis do that? I may need control of their systems.”

“Absolutely sir... what about the red targets?” he replied as he loaded panels to his screen in anticipation of the work he was going to need to do.

“I don’t think they’ll be an issue, son. This is Sol System, and those are pirates, if I am not mistaken. I
might not wait until I see the whites of their eyes to fire, but nonetheless, I don’t want to miss our golden moment of opportunity to save our new friends.”

He mashed the General Quarters alarm.

“General Quarters, General Quarters. Man your battle stations and rig for impact. Condition Zebra will be set in 30 seconds.”

*****

I was deep in power band reports for the main gun when the alarm blasted off, damn near flinging me butt over boots out of my station. I felt the delicious tingle of adrenaline from my toes to the curling hairs at the top of my head, and shuddered involuntarily. A quick scan to make sure nothing was on fire, and I pushed greens to the captain’s board right as hatches slammed shut across the Archaea.

“Captain, weapons - good to go
, sir!” I called up on comms with a smile.

“Very well Shorty. Make our main gun ready for firing in all respects, including opening hull port.”

“Making gun ready in all respects including opening hull port, aye sir.” I replied immediately, fingers already working through the procedure to bring our weapon systems online.

“Captain, Engineering, I need 5 minutes. I have a klystron unhooked.”

“Is it necessary?”

“It is, Dak. I can’t get the tokamak up past thirty percent without it.”

“I can give you two minutes, Gene. Is that enough?”

“Blast… yes, sir.” Gene replied, sounding as grouchy and mean as ever. I laughed, but used that time to run through the systems-level status screens for our main gun. In some cases, it’s possible for the command view to show greens, when in fact individual systems may be reporting a green status by a
n unacceptable narrow margin.

My margin for safety was
somewhere between slim and none with a gun like ours, as overclocked as it was, tweaked to the nines, and using an experimental gateless discharge circuit. A coolant pump with a bad bearing, or a corroded Klein, and we’d be incandescent subatomic particles before we knew it.

I wasn’t scared, however. Th
e Archaea was damn near pristine. She was gleaming, glossy and glamorous – at least my deck was. The captain’s quarters were starting to look like a nightmare about to be born. Not that I was going to say anything, of course. We all studiously ignored his craven slovenly ways, and worked extra hard to clean around him.

I shouldn’t be too hard on him. His bunk wasn’t made, and there were socks on the floor –
all in all it wasn’t a total disaster… yet. There was still time.

“Captain, targeting
”, Yak called on comms. “I am tracking some high-order emissions from Little Sister, sir. It looks like they just took a direct hit!”

“
Very well, Shorty, please stand by to fire.”

“Standing by
, aye!” I replied and swallowed. I had a target ghost sidelined, and took a moment to let the reality of what we were about to do sink in.

“Targetting
, track… 2500 meters to twelve o’clock high above Master 6, if you please.”

“Aye C
aptain, I have our target adjusted”, Yak replied.

“Very well
”, he replied with a steady calm. I watched on the target as he oriented us to the point in the very center of the reticle and locked us in. As usual, his maneuvering was impeccable.

“Shorty, fire mission - charge and fire at will, single shot only.”

“Firing at will, aye”, I said, and dropped the hammer. A single thrumming sound pulsed through the deck into my toes, and tingled up my spine. Even at 2500 meters range, the energy output of the Archaea’s main gun was probably enough to flash-cook those pirates into jerky strips. The thought sobered me up a bit, as my eyes danced around the levels I felt that sinking pit in my stomach at the reality of what I do for a living.

“Main gun fired, sir” I said quietly.

“Perfect shot, Shorty. They’re probably alive, but I’d bet Pauli’s next cup of coffee they can’t see very well. I doubt they even knew we were out here.”

Yak weighed in,
“Sir, Masters 5 and 6 are maneuvering. Not very effectively, but they are both actively making course adjustments. Master 7 is still drifting on the same track.”

“Well,
Janis called that target, and it looks like she did a fine job, as usual. We can’t just go immolating every two bit pirate we come across. Let the punishment fit the crime. Their destiny is in the hands of the local patrol.” He paused for a breath. “Gene, you’re awful quiet back there.”

“Everything’s fine back here sir”, Gene replied. It sounded pretty quiet in the background, considering our charging level. He sounded as calm as if he just woke up from a nap. Maybe he had.

“Very well… Shorty, anything rattle loose on that last shot?”

“Weapons
are one-hundred-percent,” I replied back, “I am standing by, sir.”

“Very
well, let’s go ahead and keep her lit for a little while Shorty, just in case those grommets get their eyes back. Secure for endo and retros, maximum burn, Gene - it’s time to really set the gaskets.”

I laughed – I could feel the heat of his scowl from here.

*****

Full smash, here we go.

I gave my crash bars an involuntary jerk to make sure they were set, and
took a quick glance around engineering to make sure everything was ready. Our captain was determined to perform a proper ‘sea trial’, but he was not going to be very scientific about it.

Normally, we’d have logging, telltales running, and all sorts of number crunching to check the engineering against the behaviors, but he’s decided to
just do it. It was infuriating, but his confidence danced hand in hand with lunacy, a fine edge between knowing, and hoping what will be.

I just can’t do it – and that’s why I am sitting here, and he’s sitting up there. I am more scientific about it. I can’t just assume, and trust, I prefer to measure, analyze and quantify. Th
e reality of a complex system is that you really can’t know everything about it. Dak certainly can’t, and it’s crazy to trust that he does, but the truth of it is, he knows his limits. More to the point, he knows ours. He knows his crew, better than we know ourselves, most likely.

A snap decision
only appears that way to those who don’t know him.

“
All hands, secure for maneuvering. Stand by for endo and compensated burn in 15 seconds”, he said on comms.  We were moving right along after our Mars transit, and he was going to have to burn pretty hard to match vector with Little Sister. My screens looked good, everything sounded good.

The familiar hum of well-tuned machinery, the coolant pumps and tokamak klystrons sung a soothing duet of power and ferocious potential. I took a last deep breath as my stomach
told me we were flipping endo, and grunted involuntarily as he fed power to the reac drive, running them smoothly up to a teeth shattering roar. Luckily, I had my plugs in. In my career I have forgotten to wear hearing protection before, but just once. That’s something you just don’t ever forget twice, when you work in engineering.

We hadn’t dropped enough velocity to need compensation yet, so in a way, this was a perfect ‘sea trial’. Dak could push the drive all the way to the hilt, and hold it there. There was no lateral translation, no slip. The
drives were either balanced perfectly, or he was just compensating for it. Maybe Janis was on assist, or even running the burn – certainly from where I sat, it didn’t matter.

Even through the plugs, it sounded like I was inside thunder, and still he kept feeding it more power. We were at 80% of what Janis has set as our maximum
safe load, and climbing.

A sudden flash of orange caught my eye
.

*****

“Have you ever seen anything like this, Pauli?” Yak’s voice was pitched low, and calm, but a quick glance across the aisle was all I needed to know he was not at all comfortable with the sight.

The view forward was pretty epic, one of those sights that stick with you
, that replay late into your sleep cycle across the eyelids while you listen to the pulse pound in your ears. Incandescent bands of high energy particles were billowing past, back-lit by the blazing fury of our drives as we hurtled in reverse through our plume. The flashing waves of high energy particles lit the bridge with a pallid, pulsating glow.

“No, Yak. I’ve never had the luxury of a window seat for something like this.” I hissed through clenched teeth. We had both seen deceleration maneuvers, but not at maximum burn. This was intense.

“Gene, I know you’re probably busy back there, but did you see that spike?” Captain Smith’s voice rang out behind us as he called back on comms.

“That I did, Dak. I’m looking into it.” Gene replied.

“You sound pretty calm, Gene… so there’s nothing to worry about?”

“Not yet. It’s a redundant system, and I have it tasked to failover before it becomes necessary. It makes no sense thrashing gear if I don’t need to.”

“
So he thinks I am thrashing gear unnecessarily, eh?” he said across the bridge. “What do you think of that Yak?”

“Sir, I have no opinion, sir.” Yak replied, never taking his eyes off the forward port. 

“Well, be that as it may, I need you to keep a closer eye on your screens, mister.”

“Sorry sir, one moment.”
Yak leaned in and started working. I really didn’t have much else to do at the moment, but something told me it wasn’t really a good time to be gaping out the window.

“Pauli, are you working on anything important?” Captain Smith asked in a tone that assumed I wasn’t.

“No sir, nothing that can’t stand by.”

“Do you have coffee?”

“Um…” I checked my refill, and a part of me died when I realized I had barely a cup left, and I wasn’t going to be the one drinking it.

“Pauli?” he asked again.

“Yes sir”, I sighed. “Are you out?”

“No, I have a few cups left. I was going to offer you some. I can’t have you all edgy and cranky. I might be able to do Gene and Yak’s jobs, but I can’t do yours, son.” He chuckled.
“Speaking of which…Yak? Do you have anything to report?”

“Sir, Master 7 has punched in a burn and Master 5 and 6 look to be flipped endo. With all this,” he waved out the forward port, “there’s too much interference to get any emissions readings, but it’s likely that they are all burning for a course change, or a chase.”

“Well that is interesting. Keep me posted, son.”
He paused for a moment as the roar of the drives continued to climb behind us.

“Captain, Engineering.
We’re at one hundred percent, sir!”

“Can you give me any more”, our captain asked, predictably.

“Not from the drives, sir” he yelled into comms over what sounded like a sustained explosion in engineering.

“Very well, Gene. Hold it there, mister.”

“Holding, aye”, he yelled back.

I looked over at Yak, but he was too
busy to catch my eye. Janis was working pretty hard at trying to see through our plume, to give Yak enough of a glimpse to effectively track the movement of our targets. She hadn’t thrown up any sort of alert, so at least we knew they didn’t pose a threat. They were probably still trying to see after the shot the captain put across their bow.

“Sir, I can’t say for sure, but it looks like they might be firing on Little Sister”, Yak called out. “I’m seeing some high-energy spikes across their stern quarter.”

“Janis, how are we able to track energy spikes through our plume?” asked the captain, nonchalantly. He must have been pretty tasked with balancing us on our tail, but he sure didn’t show it. He was as calm as if there was nothing more exciting happening than his coffee getting cold. His serenity was offset by the screaming roar and thunder of our drives hammering astern.

“Captain, I am afraid I am unable to certify the accuracy of these readings, though the data available does appear to support these results, I am afraid much of this is subtractive extrapolation.”

“Hmm, well you’re going to have to help me understand this later. For now, it looks like we need to shed speed more rapidly.” A pause, as he clicked on the 1MC. “All hands stand by for compensated deceleration.”