Earth Song: Twilight Serenade (24 page)

Minu couldn’t stop smiling as her best friend went utterly gaga over Mindy. Cherise cooed, cuddled, and tickled the baby through dinner to such an extent that she hardly touched the food offerings.

With her youngest daughter occupied it was a good opportunity to get to know the Ranger officers better and strengthen ties with the two Beezer ship commanders. Well, with one of them anyway.

The Beezer ate standing, as was their way. Lilith was of course aware of the disagreement between her mother and the new Beezer captain and had placed them as far apart as possible. Aaron sat on the other side of Minu, opposite Cherise and her youngest. Besides her was Lilith then the Beezer. Next to Aaron was Bran and then Tyler with his two lieutenants.

Minu had just finished her description of the battle of Dervish, embellished by Lilith with strategic details only she could truly appreciate. Up after that was Aaron’s tale of imprisonment at the hands of the Tanam.

“So there I was, in an equipment locker not much bigger than the space suit I’d just managed to stuff my ass into before the ship was blown completely to hell and gone.”

“How long were you in there?” Cherise asked him.

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “A couple hours? I was beginning to wonder if I’d survive. The suit smelled like cat, and I couldn’t read the displays. For all I could tell it only had a few hours of life support.”

Dinner finished and snacks were served as Aaron talked about his time with the Squeen. The Beezer hadn’t been too interested in the conflict aspects of Aaron’s story, but as he got to talking about the Squeen their interest increased.

It was something about their level of interest. The way the Beezer were now all ears as he talked about them and his proposing a deal to buy his passage back. And finally he got up to his return just as Minu was giving birth to Mindy.

“I would recommend caution,” Bakook warned, “when dealing with that species.”

“The Tanam hate them,” Minu said. “We learned that during the… incident on Serengeti.”

“Many older species do,” Gilsook said, speaking up for the first time.

“Can you say why?”

Bakook chuffed. “No, I cannot. And I think you know why.”

“Something to do with the awakening,” Minu guessed. Their looks said it all. Minu wondered for yet another time what the Squeen had done, and what the awakening would actually mean to allow access to such supposedly forbidden knowledge.

“All these ships,” Bran said, “so many, and most warships. Tell me, First, what are you going to do with all of them?”

“My mother has a grand plan,” Lilith said, her face emotionless as usual, looking at Minu. The two women exchanged looks, and slowly both smiled.

“But it’s going to take a lot more ships,” Minu said. “A lot more.”

Chapter 23

April 27th, 535 AE

Deep Space, Ghost Fleet #2, The Frontier

It turned out that seventy-two hours had been far too conservative of an estimate. Bran Esterosa was true to his word. He’d worked out a number of options to bring the larger Lost ships back to life and under control of human or Beezer crews. Unfortunately they all turned out to be unsuccessful.

The pronouncement on the Fiisk was a simple one. It had had its brains blown out. There was no computer core or even a CIC remaining. Lilith conjectured a couple of well-placed shipkillers had penetrated shields and killed the craft in one fell swoop. It was in excellent shape, except for that one minor issue. Since their one working Fiisk was in a similar predicament, only mitigated by using the crippled Kaatan as its nerve center, there was little they could do except bring it under tow.

The two Kiile were in much better shape when it came to command and control. Their CICs were fine, both of them. Each Kiile had two, one for flight operations, one for ship operations. Likewise their computer cores were fine. They lacked any AI for them.

Both carriers were crippled as a result of drive and power supply hits. The power supplies could be temporarily mitigated by using ship class EPCs, of which they had a multitude, rigged up in cargo holds and strung via plasma cabling. But the engines were another matter.

A small team of the technicians and scientists continued to work on the control system fabrication while the majority were moved under Kal’at to try and get the fabrication plants operating.

“I am certain replacements can be made using the plants,” Lilith assured them. “I’ve consulted with the other Kaatan CI, which assures me it was common for the Kiile class carriers to produce replacement parts for drives.”

“Parts,” Aaron repeated, “not entire drives.”

“What is a complete drive except many parts assembled?”

Of them all, Lilith had worked the hardest. She split her time between salvage of the remaining wrecks, helping the bridge control project, the fabricator project, spending time with her little sister (on which she placed a high priority), and assisting Sergeant Selain in training the Rangers for zero-gravity and space ship familiarity.

Her average day was nearly twenty hours in length. With the decreased need for sleep from her implants, Lilith didn’t notice the effects as much as most humans would. However, it did begin to show after time.

The Kaatan had limited fabrication ability. It was not meant to accept the component blocks, though it could use the materials. Huge bins full of debris from the exploded block were fed into the Kaatan’s system and it obliged by producing a new human vacuum suit every hour, a Beezer suit every two, or smaller replacement parts as necessary.

As March disappeared and then the end of April loomed, a routine was established and that worried Minu. It was all too easy to become complacent with so much going on.

“One week,” she finally announced at a staff meeting that morning. “I’m giving all teams one week then we’re moving on to Ghost Fleet number three.”

“What about all these ships we’ve finished and can’t move?” Bakook asked.

“Ibeen Zeta is operations, correct?”

His huge head nodded. “The flight crew has finished simulations and the ship’s systems check out. It has damage but we plan to repair that en route.”

“So we strip as much as we can from these ships and leave,” she said and made a chopping motion with her right hand. “We’re a sitting target here. A target that’s been here for going on two months. We generate a lot of heat and ambient energy as well. And the longer we’re here the farther that is detectable.”

“She is correct,” Lilith said, to many of their chagrin. “I am keeping six of the newly reactivated Eseel gunboats out on observation beyond our signature range. They are travelling just over lightspeed away in all six cardinal directions, just ahead of our oldest power signatures. They are now sixty light days out, and eighty-five light days apart. Even at their modest five thousand times the speed of light max speed they can be back in only twenty minutes, but it is their spread out coverage that becomes a concern.

“Can’t you send out more Eseel?” Aaron asked.

“I can,” Lilith said, “if I double up I’ll have to send another eight boats out. Even with all those we got from the Kiile, it represents a lot of our gunboat force.”

“Could you handle that many on remote?” Minu asked her daughter.

“I could,” Lilith said, “and not much more without sacrificing some other activities. I’ve considered handing this off to the CI from the Fiisk, but the Chosen technical team is running almost constant control simulations and Mom’s project from home is being examined as well. Handing the gunboat sentries on and off between myself and the CI is problematic. There is a risk of missing something.

“We also have to remember that having all these gunboats out could itself draw attention. They spend most of their time coasting just below the speed of light to avoid generating a tachyon wave front. However they do have to accelerate past our detection event horizon once a day.”

Minu spoke up. “Even with the Fiisk taking some of the load, there is still the issue of fatigue.” She looked pointedly at her daughter. There were dark circles under her eyes and her hair lacked the usual luster of burnished copper.

“I’m as capable as the situation calls for,” Lilith said simply.

“But not forever,” Aaron said. “You are still human.”

Lilith’s expression darkened slightly but she said nothing more.

“Look,” Minu said, “we must draw the line somewhere. It’s that simple.”

A few hours later Minu was feeding Mindy and Aaron was pretending to study schematics while actually nodding off, Lilith showed up at their quarters.

Minu looked up as the door slid aside showing her older daughter floating there. Her tired, worn look tugged at Minu’s heart. But she could see a look of excitement on Lilith’s face.

“What’s happened?” Minu asked. She got up and gently placed her sleeping infant in her crib. Aaron still looked bleary eyed but he was watching as well.

“I sent out another eight Eseel gunboats.”

“You didn’t even ask?” Lilith gave her mother the look and Minu let it go. “Fine, what did you find?”

Lilith gestured and the omnipresent holographic projectors located through the ship came to life in Minu’s quarters showing space around the Ghost Fleet. Their location was in blue at the center; first six points were described in a sphere around them, then fourteen.

“After sending them out, I pushed the entire squadron out to one light year for maximum affect. I found a number of passive returns shadowing our trajectory, though at a fractionally different course.”

“I thought we were stationary,” Aaron said.

“Only in a relative sense. The entire ghost fleet is moving relative to the nearby star systems at about twelve thousand kilometers per second, or about 0.06 C. The CI from other Kaatan confirms the trajectory matches ours suggesting that is more battle damage, possibly before The People set up this salvage operation.”

“Any idea what it is?” Minu asked.

“None, Mom. I was waiting to check with you before I went in.”

“Oh, nice to know I’m still in charge.”

Lilith and Aaron exchanged little sidelong grins while Minu double checked that Mindy was asleep.

“One light year out? That’s about half an hour in the Kaatan?”

“A little bit more when you consider speed up and speed down. Call it an hour to the nearest signal.”

Minu nodded. “Detach us from the fleet. Send details to Bakook of our plans. Tell him he’s in charge and we should be back in less than a day.”

Chapter 24

April 28th, 535 AE

Deep Space, Near Ghost Fleet #2, The Frontier

The Kaatan held position a light-minute from their target, the largest of the objects detected by the gunboats. Along with the ship of the line were their own squadron of Eseel gunboats, six in all. Along with the fourteen of the sensor group, that only left four remaining of the newly reactivated and the two they’d had for years now. The bare minimum Minu was willing to leave with the Fiisk to protect the salvage operations.

The six Eseel were arrayed around the Kaatan like gems in a crown, all holding position a perfect kilometer distant and controlled by Lilith like extensions of her own ship. Together they were a vastly more powerful sensor system, and should the need arise, weapon of war.

Lilith was in the CIC with her husband and daughter as the sensors slowly, pixel by pixel, using passive IR background scanning, assembled an image of their target of interest.

“Looks like an asteroid or something,” Minu said as the shape slowly got clearer. It was roughly potato shaped and slowly spinning on all three axis.

“Density scans doesn’t match an asteroid or comet,” Lilith said. “It’s light metallic or plastic.”

Another minute passed then Aaron suddenly snapped his fingers and called up an interface terminal. He gestured into it and created another display next to the mystery potato. It was a Fiisk battlecruiser. Aaron isolated the drive section with a gesture, it separated and expanded. He created some damage and set it spinning. The match was clear.

“Well done,” Lilith said and after a couple gestures the match was perfect. “It is almost certainly the drive section of the Fiisk.”

Over the next hour Lilith used active sensors to build images of what was a debris field. “This is likely what is left of the battle that precipitated the ghost fleet,” Lilith explained.

Within a light hour’s distance was more than a hundred large pieces of destroyed ships. Some were as big as half a ship, other just one ball-like section, ubiquitous to larger ships of The People.

While Lilith worked to assemble a detailed inventory of their newest find, she flew the Kaatan to within visual range of the identified Fiisk debris. Just as Aaron had said, they could all see on the image relayed from cameras on the Kaatan’s hull and the dim starlight what was the drive section of a Fiisk.

Minu tried to imagine the firepower it would take to tear the two hundred and fifty meter ship in half. She largely failed.

The display began to itemize the partial ships, further showing the magnitude of the fleet that had been involved in this epic defeat of The People, and how big its opposition must have been to deal them such a blow over and over again.

“Many of the large pieces can be considered parts of entire destroyed ships. As we surmised, they’re following the last trajectory. Since they’re so close to the ghost fleet, perhaps this engagement was more of a draw.”

The images moved and resorted. “Some of these partial ships are not designs used by The People.”

Aaron had been observing the sorting of parts and getting more excited. He had a tablet out and was making notes. Lilith finally noticed.

“You see something, dad?”

“It looks like parts of at least twenty ships that were The People’s designs, and all capital ships.”

“That appears correct,” Lilith agreed.

Aaron taped at his tablet and the main display highlighted twelve of the floating chunks of debris. “These are all drive sections,” he said. “Can’t we use them on the Kiile?”

“They’re not Kiile drives,” Lilith said.

“Does that really matter?”

Minu glanced at her husband then at Lilith who was considering. She called up more screens showing the schematics of both the Fiisk and the Kiile. Their engineering sections were highlighted in side-by-side comparisons.

“The drive of the Fiisk is a much more powerful drive,” Lilith said.

“Why would the Fiisk have a more powerful drive?” Minu wondered. “The Kiile is much bigger.”

“The Kiile is not intended to perform combat maneuvers,” Lilith explained. “When it comes to gravitic drives, size is not so much the factor as is desired gravities of oppositional sheer. The Eseel gunboats are relatively tiny, yet their drives are more powerful than T’Chillen frigates. This enables them to produce gravity sheer forces in excess of 1 million gravities.”

Minu whistled. Aaron had tried to go into details of gravitic theory with her more than once. It was more effective than a glass of mead and a hot bath.

“But only for a few seconds,” Aaron added, to which Lilith nodded. He looked at his wife. “It’s enough force to allow an Eseel to make a nearly right angle turn at several thousand kilometers per second.” Minu whistled again.

“That’s nothing compared to what my tactical missiles are capable of,” Lilith said.

“I’ve always wondered why dodging missiles isn’t an option,” Minu said.

Aaron returned them to the subject. “So these drives are all more powerful than the Kiile drives were. Big deal?”

“It will cause considerable problems with the power system and navigation.”

“Problems that can be handled in programming,” Aaron countered. Lilith considered then slowly nodded. “It’s got to be better than towing the damned things.”

“Immensely,” Lilith agreed.

“Come on,” Minu said and headed out of the CIC.

“Where are we going?” Aaron asked as he followed.

“Suit up, we’re going to use our escort Eseel and get that nearest one under tow. Hours count.”