Koban (8 page)
Authors: Stephen W Bennett
He was about to offer details that Mirikami had omitted as
the Captain punched in instructions. Then he recalled she would have been in
contact with Jake and the Captain via her personal com unit. She was already
busy at her console.
Dillon still couldn't see anything on the large view screens
other than the normal galactic sky. On a small display at the Captain's console,
and now Noreen's, there was a tracery indicating what was taking place. There
was a cluster of red symbols moving in from the top of the display, with two
well ahead, moving visibly towards a single green dot near the bottom. There
were a number of constantly changing characters near each of the symbols, which
were too small for Dillon to make out from his couch.
“Nan says she has the shunt installed, Captain.” Noreen
informed him. “We have power for fifty eight g's of kick in our secondary when
you need it, but Jake can't yet account for fourteen passengers. They never
made it to a cabin or a couch and are probably on the deck. Three others appear
to be unconscious on their couches. Internal gravity will hit at least twelve
g's, this time,” she warned.”
Mirikami looked grim. “There were at least thirty or so on
the deck when I overrode Jake on the first push. I hated to do it, but I had to
at try to buy some time. Now I'm trying to buy their lives, and it may kill
some of them even if the missiles don't get us. Sound the acceleration
warning.”
7. Captured
Dillon finally had something on which to focus his attention.
The lasers closed the gap at the speed of light of course, the particle beams arriving
only a tiny split second later. The two points of convergence began to shift visibly
on the screen. The targets were trying to evade.
Jake's voice was as calm as ever. “All beams are off focus and
off track. Both targets executing rapid lateral movements combined with complex
nonlinear acceleration changes. Backscatter from the laser strikes indicate an increase
in target surface reflectivity, suggesting a mirrored skin has been activated. No
ablation vapors are observed, and continued active missile steering indicates there
was no structural damage from the initial hits. I am attempting to re-establish
a firing track on both targets.”
Mirikami
spoke rapidly into the intercom, “Ms. Willfem we need to Jump
now!
Can we
do it?”
“Negative, Sir. But we just picked up another low-level tac in
the secondary. It will add a little power for that big kick you wanted.”
“Here it
comes, now or never.” Mirikami warned.
With fantastic speed, the two lead missiles were closing the
gap. The program to try to avoid a direct hit was ready. Mirikami hit the activate
key savagely, feeding the authorization to Jake. Dillon experience vertigo as the
ship rapidly rolled ninety degrees. A savage acceleration of almost fifteen gravities
slammed into their bodies.
The terrible crushing pressure lasted only seconds when it was
unexpectedly cut, and the lights and screens went out. Dillon uttered a grunt through
clenched teeth as he was thrown painfully against restraints. He heard another gasp
from Noreen's direction, though he couldn't see anything in the dark. This was followed
by a stomach churning sense of free fall, frightening in the blackness, which ended
in seconds as the lights returned. Quickly after that, gravity returned at what
felt like three quarters standard to Dillon's confused senses. An ear piercing claxon
began shrieking.
Dillon felt an odd flash of relief at hearing the claxon. When
the lights failed as the thrust quit, he had though his next experience would be
hellfire and vacuum.
Mirikami, cursing loudly, slapped the alarm silent and studied
the readouts and red telltale messages that were beginning to appear on his console.
Noreen started calling up data from the Drive Room monitors.
Dillon glanced at the external view screens, they were restored
but the drifting star field indicated the ship was making a slow roll. The red and
blue tracers were gone. Checking the tracking display at Mirikami's console, he
saw the first two red target symbols had passed the Flight of Fancy, and were moving
away. “They missed us!”
Mirikami looked up, a puzzled expression on his face. “I don't
think they missed. They just didn't do what I expected, which was to blow us apart.
We should have boosted for a full minute, but we lost all power from our Trap fields.
One or both fusion bottles are always on line, and number one kicked in automatically
for gravity control. That three-second surge barely moved us out of harm’s way,
but there wasn't any detonation. They apparently fired something at us as they passed,
and knocked out all of the Trap field projectors around our hull. Every projector
shows zero field curvature. I'm damned if I know how they did that kind of precision
shooting at that velocity!”
Assimilating data as it was summarized on her screen, Noreen
had to contradict him. “Captain, the power monitors don't indicate that any of the
projectors are actually gone. They are all drawing energy from the fusion generator
now. The secondary field simply contains no tachyons. That's why we lost thrust.
“Then there's still a chance!” Mirikami cried. He was nearly
shouting as he called the Drive Room. “Nan, Is the main Trap still on tune for a
Jump tac? The lead two missiles have passed and the main body is at least twelve
minutes away and slowing.”
A man's face appeared on the screen, it was Chief Haveram. “Ms.
Willfem is already checking on it now, Sir. The secondary field is up, but it seems
to have dumped all its particles.”
“Damn the secondary field!” Mirikami snapped, “We still have
a pretty good chance to catch a Jump tac in the next twelve minutes if our primary
is still tuned correctly. Check it!”
There was the sound of another voice approaching the audio pickup.
A young woman's face replaced the Chief. She looked dejected. “Captain, both the
primary and secondary Traps have broken down somehow. We show them tuned to their
respective energy levels, but the field monitors indicate they have zero curvature
now. The fields must have collapsed.”
Noreen signaled with her hand, catching the Captain's attention.
She pointed to a string of characters on her own display.
“Can't be,” Mirikami said, hope still present, “we're still feeding
them a lot of power from the reactor, so the fields have to be there. The field
monitors must have been damaged instead of the projectors. They did
something
to us when they passed. Get me a video damage report of the hull, and make sure
that primary field stays on frequency!”
“I was already on it Sir. I'm checking out the control console
for the field strength monitors now.” Speaking off to the side, “Chief! You, Gundarfem
and Yin-Lee, do a fast eyeball check on the projectors and hull. See if the field
samplers were hit, the projectors may be damaged too since the energy to them is
going somewhere.” There was the sound of running feet.
For the moment all that could be done was being done. Rather
than distract his engineer from her work, Mirikami asked for a status report inside
of five minutes and left the circuit open. “Let's find out what Jake recorded when
those two birds passed us.” Mirikami selected the voice Link. “Jake, what did the
two missiles do to us as they passed?”
The precise voice responded instantly. “We received focused bursts
of N wave energy from each of them in turn as they passed.”
Mirikami shook his head in a gesture lost on the computer. “Their
own Trap fields couldn't hurt us, particularly by pushing on our Trap fields. Those
fields are not entirely in this universe, and there certainly would be no material
connection to the ship from a Trap field in Tachyon Space. Jake, what about a laser
or particle beam hit on the hull or the projectors? Our field sensors must be giving
us bad readings because they show the fields down, but internally they seem tuned
and drawing power.”
“Sir, there
was no laser or beam activity detected.”
Mirikami had a question. “Jake, are there any unusual equipment
malfunctions listed in your data base that can cause a spherically closed field
to register zero curvature?”
The AI had a litany of negatives. “A closed field cannot change
its curvature to become an open field; it would first require an infinite amount
of energy to expand to essentially zero curvature. A closed field can only expand
to the limit of energy furnished, or collapse. An open field must be generated from
its origin as an open field, and can never become closed. An open field will also
require a continual increase of energy input to support it as it radiates toward
infinity. All open fields collapse when they reach the limit of their energy supply.
It is extremely improbable that all of our independent sensors would have failed
simultaneously, and virtually impossible for all of them to fail in precisely the
way required to incorrectly register a closed field’s curvature as zero.”
“Jake, we are now feeding energy into all the field projectors,
yet we measure zero field curvature. Despite what your physics programming says
about a closed field, what purely hypothetical field configuration would allow these
readings?”
The reply was not immediate this time. Several seconds passed
as the computer re-evaluated the billions of bits of data recorded from the instruments,
and information stored in the physics database.
“If both closed fields were actually changed to open fields,
our field sensors would therefore register as zero curvature. Both fields would
then tend to expand to infinity at a linear rate. However, our spherical fields
could not become open, since they were not generated that way initially.”
Mirikami
called the Drive Room again. “Ms. Willfem?”
“Here Sir”
came a prompt reply.
“Nan, if the projectors were broadcasting open fields Jake says
that we would see zero curvature readings. An open field will draw more power with
time. Please check the power monitors for the field projectors.”
There was a momentary pause at the other end. “Captain, we do
show a steady increase in power drain to the field projectors. I hadn't noticed
it before, nor did I expect any change. The circuits are tuned for the tachyon energy
we want. Except every field mechanic knows that you can’t open a closed field.”
“Nan we only have another eight or nine minutes till company
comes again. Tinker with whatever you want on the secondary to see if you can determine
where the energy is going, and why. Don’t work on the primary Trap. I'm reluctant
to tamper with it in case it’s still really up and closed, and we can either catch
or already have a Jump particle and just can't sense it.”
“I'll do my best Sir. Wait a second while I try something...”
There was the faint click of a switch followed by another. “I toggled a single projector
off and on for the secondary Trap. No indication from the sensors of a field curvature
change, but when I sent the shutdown signal I saw a slight decrease in the total
power drain followed by a slight step back up, as if that projector is radiating
into a field. Impossible as it sounds, Jake may be right.”
“Do what you can Nan, but don't start anything that will take
longer than five minutes to get results.”
“Yes Sir, I have a few things I can try, ...Uh, hold a sec Captain,
Motorman Johnson is calling me...” She cocked her head and listened on her own com
unit channel for a few seconds, then looked into the video pick up again. “No visible
damage to any of the projectors.”
“Right, that
fits Jake's picture too.” Mirikami replied. “Get hopping on those tests. Out.”
Dillon had been watching the tracking display on the captain's
console. “Captain, does it appear to you that the first two attackers are not falling
away from us as fast as they were when they passed us?”
Mirikami studied the figures next to the two targets a moment
and shook his head in amazement. “They are now decelerating at two hundred standard
gravities.” As if to deny what the numbers told him, he added, “There is no
way
a ship that small can hold those drives.”
“Someone's found a way,” Noreen countered dryly. “It looks like
they're turning around to close the back door. Not that we can run anywhere. We're
on a ballistic course out of this system into nowhere, unless they stop us, or we
get our fields back in service. We don’t have enough fuel for our main thruster
engines to make a difference at this high velocity. “
To Dillon the time seemed right to ask some questions without
worrying about being a distraction. “I think we might be able to make some guesses
about these people based on their technology. If we figure out who could possibly
build missiles this advanced, we might have a clue as to their intentions. We
can rule out the Planetary Union on grounds that they wouldn't need to attack Midwife
to eliminate it. Who else has their scientific know how?”
Mirikami gave his lower lip a tug, and then waved his hand. “I'm
certainly no expert, but I have a decent foundation in Trap field mechanics. I've
keep up with current literature on Jump drives. I've never even heard of theoretical
possibilities for a drive mechanism that can generate the acceleration these missiles
produce. Drives of that power should be far larger than our own drives, too
large to fit in those little hulls.
“But that isn’t the most disturbing thing to me.” Mirikami continued,
“The people who built those,” he indicated the red symbols on his display, “have
done far more than build a faster, smaller drive. They evidently have a means to
penetrate and open a tachyon Trap field with a similar field.
I haven’t a clue as to who it
could be, but they seem to want us alive, at least for now.”
