The Cresperian Alliance (23 page)

"But I didn't know, Tom!"

"And that makes a difference?” Waterman's gaze went coldly furious. “As if it's perfectly fine to treat a human that way? As if it wouldn't have mattered if he'd been an ORDINARY Cresperian? No. You're going to have to learn that your ideas aren't always right. And it looks like you're going to learn the hard way. Beginning immediately."

"But..."

"And one more thing,” Waterman added, ignoring her attempt to protest. “So help me, if you try to defend yourself using classified information, Sandra, I WILL see to it that you are prosecuted as a spy. I will make it my personal mission in life. Do you understand that? Good. Dismissed."

"All right, ladies and gentlemen,” Special Forces commander Colonel Peter Chadwick told his assembled teams. “We've got a primo assignment, but it's dangerous. In fact, I can't emphasize enough HOW dangerous. Our first new clipper ship has been officially christened the
USSS Starskipper
, and it's about to go out on its first real mission. That mission is to infiltrate Snapper controlled Cresperian space. There you will ascertain the state of the planet complete with as much evidence as you can obtain, including not only the condition of the planet and its inhabitants, but the Snapper weaponry, and get out, all without attracting the attention of the Snapper fleet. We had planned on normal staffing of the clipper for its first real mission, but the extremely hazardous nature of this first mission requires us to utilize volunteers. The vessel is a small stealth fighter, carrying a crew complement maximum of sixteen. We'll also need some Crispies on board, in order to tell us what's what. So the Crispies must be willing to be part of the crew."

Bang met Piki's eyes across several aisles of chairs, then together they stood. Jan Wersky stood, followed by Peggy Nunez and her lover, Jeffrey Thomas. Shane Taylor and Douglas Bain stood. Tomlinson glanced at his wife Sira, and they both stood. Further over, the Leversons stood, as did Dr. Trung and Mr. Stuart. David McAllister rose, followed by Michael Wang, and finally Hank Anderson.

"Full complement, complete with Crispies,” Chadwick said. “With a nice spread of abilities. Mrs. Tomlinson, do you have the genetics research in hand?"

"I do, sir. Since I was so recently on honeymoon, the Lees and Chris Roberts have been on top of things."

"Good. You're approved, then. Get the bare minimum of gear—the quarters are very tight, for reasons that will be explained to you—and report to Transport. Personal gear is limited to a hygiene kit and one change of clothes. You'll be gone about four days."

The sixteen filed out.

[Back to Table of Contents]

"The reason for the small size of the clipper ship line,” Chadwick briefed the crew of the
Starskipper
at the spaceport, “is that its stealth capability is enhanced with an invisibility cloak, and that's as big as we can make the field. The scientists and engineers found that, if we tried to scale it up any bigger, we started getting... uhm, maybe internal reflections is a good way to term it. Technically that's not really the right explanation, but it sort of gets across the idea. In addition, most of the room inside is taken up with equipment; it's outfitted with the newest offensive and defensive weapons going. Plus a new kind of comm system. And one hell of an unreality drive to power it all. The comm diverts through unreality space, and insofar as human or Crispy scientists have been able to tell, is not possible to intercept, since it only comes out of unreality space at its pre-programmed destination. The
Starskipper
also has two full concentric magna-quantum shields, as the upgrade has been dubbed; three laser cannons; four real, functioning versions of Nikola Tesla's teleforce ray; and four upgraded, long range disintegrator beams."

"Excuse me, colonel, but how did you manage to upgrade our disintegrators?” Jeri Leverson wondered, as Bang studied the large black sphere behind Chadwick in the hangar.

Chadwick took a deep breath and sighed. “I was afraid somebody was gonna ask that,” he admitted. “Okay, I'm not a technical guru, but let me give it a shot. The disintegrator acts through the quantum foam to dampen meson action. This tightens the nuclear bonds through the strong force to such an extent that individual nuclei can and do collapse into Stephen Hawking's mini black holes. With me so far?"

Bang noticed that even Jan Wersky, who wasn't exactly known as a rocket scientist, nodded.

"Good. Now, because of the extremely high potential energy levels near a black hole, virtual particle pairs are formed; some fall into the black hole, and some get away. This is known as Hawking radiation. For a normal sized stellar black hole, or even the core of a galaxy, the amount of the black hole's mass lost through Hawking radiation—because, of course, the mass energy has to come from somewhere to avoid violating mass-energy conservation—is negligible. But for a mini black hole, every particle lost is a substantial fraction of the black hole's mass, especially in the case of one formed from a nucleus. But the nature of the disintegrator, being based on unreality physics, shunts this particulate radiation into higher dimensional spaces, and instead we observe supersymmetric photinos, gravitinos, and neutrinos, which is why the whole area around the target doesn't get irradiated."

"Because they pass through the surrounding matter without interacting,” Mai verified. “Which is why it's such a precision weapon."

"Right. Now, as it turns out, the only real limit to what such a system can do is the power that's pumped into it to begin with. The device has a feedback loop through unreality that is able to re-utilize about seventy-five percent of the shunted radiation,” Chadwick continued. “So what you're really getting when you fire one is a pulse, and the duration of that pulse is determined by the entropic decay rate of the shunted energy. The more energy in, the more energy back, and the more powerful—and long distance—the disintegrator. The Crispies never looked into upgrading it to this level, because they never needed it. The hand weapons were sufficient for protection from predatory animals on unfamiliar planets, and the cannons were used on their ships in correlation with their shields to deflect space debris."

Heads nodded, some vigorously, some less so, but it seemed to satisfy Chadwick that he'd managed to answer the question to everyone's understanding.

"My turn,” Piki piped up. “Who is Nikola Tesla, and what is his teleforce ray?"

Chadwick grinned. “Tesla was a fascinating man. He was a scientist who lived around the turn of our 20th century. He came up with all kinds of brilliant devices, many of which have been considered either hoaxes, practical jokes, or outright frauds, partly because no one else was ever able to get them to work—until now. It seems not only was he ahead of his time, some of our scientific team is beginning to suspect he was half Crispy.” Everyone laughed.

"The teleforce ray is sort of like a laser beam,” he elaborated, “only it uses charged particles instead of photons. It can project a single row of particles to tremendous distances, even in atmosphere, because the cross section is reduced to nearly quantum level proportions. In atmosphere, in fact, the beam can actually become narrower in some cases, due to a phenomenon known as ‘gas focusing.’”

"So we've got some serious hot shit weaponry,” Bang noted, and Piki elbowed him. “Um, hot stuff."

"You do, at that,” Chadwick nodded. “We're adding said weaponry to the rest of the fleet as fast as we can, as well as to central city defensive systems. Also the teleforce ray will come out for infantry as well, as soon as we've miniaturized it. It'll probably be less a hand gun and more a... eh, more a rocket launcher size, they're estimating,” he added. “Maybe they'll get it down a little bit. We'll also have focused sonic beam guns, both infantry and cannon sized."

"Good,” Kyle noted.

"You'll note the ship is spherical. It's designed to be as compact as possible and to maintain the hull at a uniform distance from the shields to maximize protection. In addition, since the mass is substantially less than... well, I don't know if that applies to unreality drives,” he stopped himself. “At any rate, the drive is at least as big as the one in the biggest ship we've got, and they tell me she'll go like a bat out of...” he glanced at Piki, “Hades."

Piki raised a pale blonde eyebrow. Chadwick colored slightly.

"All right,” he continued hastily, raising a clipboard and reading from it. “Crew assignments will be as follows. Captain and mission commander will be Hank Anderson. First Officer is Kyle Leverson. Pilot will be Douglas Bain. Your astrogator is Jeffrey Thomas. Your tactician is David McAllister. McAllister's small but able tactical staff will consist of Shane Taylor. Chief Weapons Officer is Ed Bangler. His gunners will be Michael Wang and Jan Wersky. Chief Medical Officer is Jeri Leverson. Her medic will be Peggy Nunez. Chief Scientist is of course Mai Le Trung. Sensor Analyst is John Tomlinson. John, you're part of the scientific team as well as the weapons team, once you arrive at Cresperia. Scientific and Advisory Staff will consist of Jeri Leverson, Sira Whitman Tomlinson, Piki Burroughs, and Gordon Stuart.” Chadwick paused and looked up from his clipboard. “Is everyone familiar with their assignments?"

A chorus of, “Yes sir,” came back to him.

"Good. Load it up."

On board, there were only sleeping compartments, two heads with tiny showers and washers for clothing, and a deck that combined command, weaponry, and sensor analysis. It didn't take the crew long to stow their few belongings in their chosen sleep berths, move to the flight deck and take their stations, strapping in.

"Bang, invisibility cloak on, shields up,” Hand ordered as they moved from the hangar and began ascent.

"Yes, sir.” Bang studied his console and punched several buttons in rapid succession. “Invisibility, joy; shield one, joy; shield two, joy,” he reported.

"Good. Continue ascent."

Within five minutes the
Starskipper
was exoatmospheric.

"John, any sign of unfriendlies on the horizon?” Hand asked.

"None, sir. Ground control confirms no constellation detection of unfriendlies as well."

Hand nodded. “Institute standard comm silence; switch to unreality comm. Jeff, plot the most direct course to Cresperia and pass it to Douglas."

"Already done, sir,” Jeff noted, hitting the keystrokes that transferred the course from the nav computer to the pilot.

"Initiate, Douglas,” Hand ordered. “And everybody make sure they're strapped in. From what I understand, there's some disorientation when the drive kicks..."

Bang felt a wave of dizziness, closely verging on nausea, wash over him. Managing to raise his head enough to look around the flight deck without losing his breakfast, he saw almost everyone else sway with vertigo as they passed into unreality space more swiftly than even the Crispies had ever experienced. After a few minutes the dizziness died away.

"...In,” Hand finished lamely, with a rueful grin.

The little ship gave new meaning to ‘fast.’ In something over twelve hours they had arrived at Cresperia. They emerged from unreality outside the Cresperian system to give themselves time to recover and avoid crew disorientation in the midst of potential enemies.

"Shields and invisibility?” Hand barked.

"Holding at one hundred and two percent of spec,” Bang responded.

"Sensors?"

"Sir, we've got a helluva mess out there,” John Tomlinson noted. “The entire Cresperian solar system is swarming with Snapper vessels. And I do mean swarming. Computer indicates close to ten thousand ships, all told, sir. They range in size from what Mr. Stuart terms a spacecraft carrier, at least fifteen times the size of Earth's largest ship if not more, down to one or two man—er, being—fighter craft."

"Mm,” Hand considered. “All right. Tactical?"

David McAllister and Shane Taylor had been hunched over the Tactical station, murmuring together. McAllister looked up. “Run the gauntlet,” he said simply. “We don't see any other choice. They're pretty much uniformly distributed around the planet, equator to poles."

"I was afraid you were going to say that,” Hand sighed. “Okay. I need John, Jeff, and Doug to work real closely together. Mac, I expect you and Shane to interject anything you see, as well. Immediately. Your input has top priority. We've got invisibility to prevent photonic radiation detection, but that doesn't mean we can't be detected via our gravitational field. Work us through the fleet as close to Cresperia as you can get us. Have an escape course plotted and uploaded just in case. Weapons team, battle alert. Science team, begin observing. Place all sensors and cameras in record mode."

"Aye, sir,” several answers came back.

Slowly they inched their way into the midst of the Snapper fleet, striving to remain undetected.

"Sending ship locations in a fifty klick radius to nav comp,” John murmured. “Now."

"Locations received,” Jeff acknowledged softly. “Determining path of least effect. Oh, shit. This is..."

"What's wrong?” Hand demanded.

"It's the old multi-body problem, skipper,” Jeff replied. “Wish we had some Crispy navigators, not to mention computers. I can't get a solid solution because the nav computer is doing a numerical approximation. That'll take forever."

"We don't have forever,” Gordon whispered. “Cresperia doesn't have forever."

"We know, honey,” Mai soothed. “Hang on."

"I'm gonna go with a four digit round off,” Jeff declared, punching commands into the computer. “Then Doug, you and I are gonna have to fly by the seat of our pants and watch our instruments for the slightest deviation from course. That'll be the gravitational residuals, and we'll compensate by hand."

"Copy that,” Doug replied.

"Okay, ahead full system cruise..."

"Roger; ahead full cruise..."

The flight deck was silent for several minutes as they entered deep into the Cresperian solar system, rapidly approaching that planet and the horde of Snapper vessels clustered about it. Douglas alternated between moving the flight joystick and punching commands into his console. Foot pedals also gave him additional degrees of motion.
Not so much different from maneuvering a small plane, only it's in interplanetary space,
Bang realized.