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0105 hours, TFT
“Looks like the pursuing fighters were able to close with the target, Admiral,” Commander Dean Mallory told him. “I wish there’d been more than four of them, though.”
“All they need to do is slow that damned alien down a bit,” Gray replied. “That, and keep him from transiting over to metaspace.”
“We don’t know how far up the side of the sun’s gravity well they need to be in order to jump,” Mallory said, thoughtful. “Would the idea be to just try to damage him?”
“It’s a long shot, I know,” Gray replied. “If you or your team have any ideas, tell me now.”
“Your old sand trick occurs to me, Admiral,” Mallory said, grinning. “‘The Gray Maneuver,’ they called it in Tac-Combat download training.”
Gray snorted. “It’s a dangerous option here,” he said. “We’d risk vaporizing those four fighters we have on the alien’s tail.”
“Sandy” Gray had gotten his nickname two decades earlier, when he’d released clouds of sand—the warheads of AMSO anti-missile weapons—at close to the speed of light. Even a single grain of sand traveling at that speed was deadly, and a cloud of them could disintegrate a ship, wipe out a fleet … or even scour the hemisphere of a world with flame. Under certain circumstances, it could be a highly effective weapon, but targeting something as small as a ship was chancy at best, and the danger of scoring an “own goal” in the rough-and-tumble of space combat made the tactic one of desperation.
“True. Of course, only the Concord would be positioned to deliver the shot, anyway.”
“I know—and risk or not, it’s what I asked them to do. Those fighters aren’t going to be able to do much, so it’s probably our only chance.”
AMSO rounds fired by those USNA ships chasing Charlie One and its fighter escorts would be completely ineffective, because both they and the targets were traveling at close to c. But sand released by the High Guard ship, approaching from slightly off the alien’s bow, would impact Charlie with its velocity plus that of the target, which was very close indeed to the speed of light.
“My concern, then,” Gray continued, “is that he might hold off for fear of hitting the USNA fighters behind it.” Something dawned on Gray then, and he scowled, calling up a data feed from America’s AI, looking for biographical information on Concord’s captain. He’d pulled down a bare minimum of biographical data on the man before, just enough to verify that he was North American. Right now, Gray needed more.
There it was: Commander Terrance Dahlquist. Born in Windsor, Ontario, but with most of his life spent in New New York, up the swollen Hudson from Gray’s old stomping grounds. Well-to-do family. He had an uncle who’d been governor of Manitoba … and a cousin who’d been a USNA representative to the Confederation Senate. Joined the Navy in 2016. Naval Academy at Oceana. Commended for valor at Freya in 2020—He’d been skipper of a gunboat, the Ajax, during an operation against renegade H’rulka fleet elements there. Transferred to the High Guard in 2022.
Why? To leave a career with the Navy proper could be seen as a less-than-positive career move. Ah … there it was. He’d been passed over for promotion to full commander while skippering the Ajax. By taking the High Guard posting, he got an immediate promotion.
Gray shook his head. Nothing in the data raised any flags; nothing particularly unusual or of concern.
It was frustrating, though. The nature of modern space warfare meant that individual ship captains and flotilla commanders often had to fight alongside fellow officers whom they’d never met and didn’t know. With typical operations encompassing volumes of space many astronomical units in diameter, often there was no way to coordinate with them during the battle. Speed-of-light time lags could mean the passage of hours before a reply to a message could be received. Was a given officer aggressive? Cautious? Slow off the mark? Meticulous? Hotheaded? Incompetent? Daring? It made a hell of a big difference, and not knowing could royally screw combat strategy.
He took a big mental breath. Worry about it later, he thought. There was nothing he could do about it until America and Concord were closer.
On the flag bridge tactical display, the four pursuing fighters were drawing gradually closer to the fleeing Charlie One and its Confed escorts.
He checked the time. Concord should have received the message ten minutes ago and be getting into position now. The High Guard ship was just too far away for the light carrying that information to have reached America. Hawes and Elliot were still on the chase as well, but like America, were still much too far astern to take part in the coming clash.
Dahlquist better be moving …
Because without the Concord, those four Starblades were on their own. And, as always, it would be the fighters that bore the first, hardest shock of contact with the enemy.
VFA-96, Black Demons
In pursuit
0120 hours, TFT
Megan Connor thoughtclicked a mental icon and enlarged the object visible now within an in-head window. It was tough to make out details; the view of the surrounding universe outside was wildly distorted by her fighter’s speed. At relativistic velocities, incoming starlight was crowded forward until it formed a ring ahead of the ship, with chromatic aberration smearing the light into a rainbow of color: blue ahead, red behind.
Somewhere within that “starbow” was the light from the fleeing alien, also distorted by the near-c velocities of pursuer and pursued. The AI running Connor’s fighter was extracting that light and recreating what the alien would have looked like to human eyes at more sedate speeds … a beautiful assembly of fluted curves, sponsons, teardrop shapes, and streamlined protrusions that looked more grown than assembled. It was five thousand kilometers ahead, now, and seemed to be struggling to maintain that dwindling lead. The image was being transmitted by one of several battlespace drones the USNA fighters had launched moments before. Their acceleration was just good enough to let them creep up on the alien, meter by hard-fought meter.
The pursuing fighters were now within missile range … but USNA ship-to-ship missile accelerations were not much better than the fighters themselves. Piloted by small AIs, it might be hours more before they could close the remaining distance.
Drones possessed better AIs; they had to in order to maneuver for the best views of a target, to assemble the clearest picture of a contested volume of space, and to avoid enemy anti-missile defenses. They also had somewhat more powerful drives so that they could quickly fill an entire battlespace volume, and to give them long-term endurance on station.
All of which gave Connor an idea.
USNS/HGF Concord
4-Vesta
0121 hours, TFT
Commander Terrance Dahlquist studied the tactical display on Concord’s bridge. The out-system craft tagged Charlie One was just over one AU from Vesta, now, and was reaching the closest point to the asteroid on its outbound path. Four USNA fighters were in close pursuit.
The images he was seeing, thanks to the speed-of-light time delay, were about nine minutes out of date, which meant that alien craft had already passed the nearest point and was well beyond now.
And Dahlquist was worried.
“You know, sir,” Lieutenant Commander Ames told him, “you could land yourself in a world of shit.”
Ames was Concord’s executive officer, Dahlquist’s second in command. She was a GM transhuman and he respected her intelligence, a carefully crafted intellect connected to in-head systems that purportedly made her as good as that of the best AI.
“It’s a kind of a nebulous area,” he told her. “I don’t take my orders from … people like him.”
Both the line Navy and the High Guard answered to HQMILCOM, the USNA’s military command center located on and around Mars, and, after that, to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Earth. Until one or the other of those command entities officially directed him to follow Gray’s orders, he was in the right if he ignored the man’s instructions. It was a technicality, but the military was built on technicalities.
“Not as nebulous as you might think, Captain,” Ames told him. “Admiral Gray is still a flag officer, and that puts you in probable violation of Article Ninety-two.”
“Article Ninety-two?” Dahlquist asked, smirking. “Not Ninety?”
“Article Ninety specifies punishment for disobeying a lawful command of your superior commissioned officer,” Ames told him. “It also covers actually striking a superior officer. So yes, it might apply. But Article Ninety-two applies to failure to obey any lawful general order or regulation. It also covers dereliction of duty. So it’s probably the charge they would use against you. Sir.”
Dahlquist sighed. He liked Ames, and she was a hell of a good ship’s first officer, but talking with her was like discussing calculus with a computer. Once, just once, he would like to hear her admit that she didn’t know something. He sighed again, as he knew that was unlikely.
Some claimed that the entire human species was headed the way of the genetically modified transhumans, but Dahlquist sincerely doubted this. GMs tended to increase mental efficiency by sacrificing passion—emotional involvement. Without said passion, they often didn’t pursue success in career or relationship as tenaciously as unmodified Mark I Mod 0 humans. As such, he couldn’t envision anyone giving up their ambition just for the sake of knowledge. Emotions were just too important to the human experience. The old idea of the emotionlessly logical genius was a myth. Fact was, there were studies linking high intelligence with emotional swings and disorders. Dahlquist couldn’t help but think about all the geniuses throughout history that had also been emotionally disturbed.
In any case, cybernetic implants were good enough now that anyone could have access to any data almost as efficiently as GMs, and without the loss of what it was that made humans human. For Dahlquist, that would always be raison d’être.
Nonetheless, Dahlquist valued Ames’s ability to pull raw data on the most obscure topics out of the seemingly endless depths of her memory. And that’s what he needed at the moment.
“So what do you recommend?” he asked.
“That we maneuver Concord to intercept Charlie One, as ordered.”
“I have a better idea.”
Ames blinked. “Sir?”
“We have available a potentially devastating weapon in the VLA. We can use that.”
Dahlquist was pleased with himself for thinking of it. The Vesta linear accelerator was the mining facility’s magnetic launcher. They could use it as a monstrous cannon to disable or destroy the alien from here, a full AU away.
“With respect, sir,” Ames said, shaking her head, “it won’t work.”
“No?”
“Not even close. Check the numbers, sir.”
He did so, pulling down stats from Concord’s AI on the mining accelerator and applying the TDA formula, then scowling as the answer came through. At its very best, the one-kilometer magnetic rail gun, accelerating a one-ton payload at twenty thousand gravities down its one-kilometer length, would boost the package to twenty kps—a respectable velocity across interplanetary distances that would cross one astronomical unit in … shit! Just over eighty-six days. It was amazing. Even with all of his training and experience, it was still so damnably possible to underestimate the sheer vastness of space.
And Ames was right. He could be making a hell of a lot of trouble for himself by disregarding those orders … and a Prim like Gray wasn’t worth landing himself a court-martial.
The realization steadied Dahlquist, and helped resolve the issue a bit in his mind. He’d not been aware of just how jealous he’d been of Gray’s advancement up the career ladder, but he recognized it now as her thought about the possibility of crashing and burning over an Article 92. He and Gray were about the same age, with roughly the same time-in-service. Yet he was just a commander, struggling to make captain, while the damned Prim had had his four admiral’s stars handed to him on a plate. There was scuttlebutt to the effect that Gray had friends in very high places; his former commanding officer was now president of the United States of North America. And those friends could cause Dahlquist a lot of trouble.
It wasn’t fucking fair.
He rather neatly disregarded the hypocrisy of a Ristie being jealous of a Prim’s “advantages.”
“Okay, Amesie,” he said. “Take us out. Rendezvous course with Charlie One.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
He heard Concord’s communications officer requesting departure clearance, heard the clearance being given by the AI that ran the mining facility. Ceres, a rugged, splotched, and cratered sphere over five huindred kilometers through, dwindled away into the distance, lost among the stars almost instantly. Contrary to popular belief—and countless docuinteractives and in-head sims with a very bad sense of scale—the asteroids were not so thickly sown through the belt that they formed any kind of obstacle. At the moment, exactly one other asteroid was naked-eye visible from Vesta—a fifth-magnitude speck of light a million kilometers away. The Asteroid Belt was very nearly as empty as the rest of interplanetary space.
Dahlquist was embarrassed by the gaffe of suggesting that they use the VLA to bombard the alien ship. Years of chasing rocks, he thought, must have contributed to acute hardening of the cerebral cortex.
He would have to find some way of recovering from the gaffe, or Ames and the members of Concord’s crew would be spreading the story on their next visit Earthside.
Besides that, though, he was also seething from being shown up, not only by Ames, but—in his head at least—by the Prim.
There had to be a way for him to prove himself, as someone brilliant instead of an idiot …
VFA-96, Black Demons
In pursuit
0120 hours, TFT
The problem—as was always the case at relativistic speeds—was one of energy. Every kilogram of mass moving at this speed carried more energy than a fifty-megaton nuclear warhead—the size of the titanic “Tsar Bomba” detonated by the then Soviet Union in the early 1960s. Firing nuclear antiship warheads at the enemy might have unpredictable effects … especially when you realized that the artificial singularities serving as gravitic drives were created and fed by extremely large amounts of energy of their own, drawn from the quantum foam. Add more energy, in an uncontrolled rush, and well …
Connor was not at all anxious to try the experiment.
Instead, she’d elected to try something more subtle: launching one of her battlespace drones as a missile.
Her consciousness was filled by the magnified image of Charlie One, an enormous, organic form of curves and flowing shapes; the twelve accompanying Todtadler fighters were dwarfed by the giant starship. How, Connor wondered, had the aliens gotten that thing past Earth’s defenses and down to the planet itself?
She’d fed specific instructions into the drone’s pocket-sized AI; the relativistic time dilation at this speed was just too sharp to allow precise control. Right now, for every four seconds that passed, over a minute slipped by in the outside universe, and the spacetime fabric around each of the fast-moving vehicles—Charlie One, her own Starblade, and the drone—was distorted enough to scramble data packets and affect fine, long-range control signals.
Closer, now. Charlie One was a few hundred kilometers ahead, though her AI had magnified the image so that it felt like she was just a few meters from the alien’s hull. The twelve fighters appeared to be drawing off now. Connor couldn’t know for sure, but she had the feeling they were getting clear in anticipation of the alien switching over into its equivalent of Alcubierre Drive.
Closer still …
The drone shuddered violently as it passed the gravitic bow wave. Ships under gravitic acceleration projected a field around themselves, a kind of bubble within which mass fell toward the on-off flickers of the projected singularity ahead of the craft’s prow. Hitting the interface between normal space and the space within that highly warped bubble could be like hitting a solid wall.
The image from her drone flickered, broke into static, and vanished.
Connor could only hope that her instructions to the device had been both complete and comprehensive.
Chapter Five (#ulink_e6b8e0e6-dd77-5c14-9383-5ee8613dc660)
29 June, 2425
USNS/HGF Concord
4-Vesta
0128 hours, TFT
With Charlie One having already passed the closest point to Vesta on its outbound trajectory, Concord could no longer move to block the alien’s path. She could start chasing the other ship, however … or, more specifically, she could start accelerating toward the point far ahead of Charlie One where the alien should be when Concord intercepted it.
An intercept would be possible, of course, only if Concord could pile on a little more acceleration. Fortunately, while High Guard cutters weren’t armed to the teeth, they were designed with high-velocity intercepts in mind. An asteroid flung into a dinosaur-killer trajectory by unpleasant aliens might well have a considerable velocity once the course change had been discovered, and the sooner the ship could rendezvous with the incoming rock, the easier it would be to nudge it once more onto a safer course. Concord was a Lexington-class WPS-100 cutter, streamlined to reduce the drag that became significant at relativistic velocities within the dust-filled volume of the Sol System. She would be able to catch Charlie One in another hour—unless, of course, the alien flipped over into metaspace.
Regardless, she would make the rendezvous before the star carrier America.
Back home, in New New York, Dahlquist had a dog—a genetically modified pocket mastiff named Bumble who had a psychotic tendency to chase aircars when they passed overhead.
Like Bumble, Dahlquist wondered what he was going to do with Charlie if he actually caught the thing.
VFA-96, Black Demons
In pursuit
0131 hours, TFT
Connor was flying blind. Her scanners still showed the alien craft about five hundred kilometers up ahead with AI-resolved magnification enough to show some detail, but she wasn’t getting any signal at all from the drone, which minutes earlier had dropped into Charlie One’s pocket of intensely warped space. The device should be falling forward along the alien’s hull, now, in free fall toward the intense, flickering point of projected gravity out ahead of the alien’s nose … assuming, of course, that the alien’s flight technology worked along the same line as that of human ships. Everything she’d seen suggested that the technology was the same, right down to an apparent upper level of acceleration.
The escorting fighters had worked well clear of the alien and were decelerating now. Connor and the other three Starblades were already past them. Possibly, they were deploying to engage the Hawes and the Elliot, which still were following in the fighters’ wakes, but that wasn’t her concern.
She needed to stay focused on Charlie One.
Her Starblade shuddered, and an inner awareness—her link with the fighter’s AI—warned her of trouble: gravity waves. Powerful gravity waves. Her fighter literally was passing through ripples in spacetime.
And then Charlie One was tumbling, its power plant dead, its acceleration at zero.
“Got him!” Connor yelled over the tactical channel. Communications between squadron members were always a bit iffy at relativistic speeds, but she got an immediate acknowledgement from Commander Mackey. Still accelerating, Connor’s fighter closed with the alien very swiftly now, passing it within a hundred kilometers. There was no response from the vehicle, and no indication that she was being tracked or targeted. There was power being generated on board, she noted, but the main power plant appeared to be off-line.
Good. Flipping her fighter end for end, she began decelerating. Rendezvousing with Charlie was going to be touch and go, since the alien spacecraft was still coasting along at very close to the speed of light. But with its singularity drive switched off, it was no longer accelerating, and that made the problem a little bit simpler.
