Hannah Sawyer (Kinsella Universe Book 3), page 18
The others started to get up, but the navigator remained standing. “I’m sorry I no longer have your confidence, Admiral.”
“You have my confidence, Abbie, you’re just a lousy operations planner. But for all of that, for inside-the-box thinking, you did good. You got us away from stars and you had two choices. One of those would have saved you, both means icing on the cake.
“Now, Abbie, sit down.”
She did and Admiral Kinney made a high sign to her flag lieutenant, who nodded he was ready.
“The following report is tippy-top secret. Burn before reading, and we will for sure shoot you if you reveal the contents before you are authorized.
“Lieutenant, the lights.”
The lights in the compartment dimmed and Admiral Kinney simply announced, “I give to you Captain Colinda Drake’s after action summary report.”
The woman who appeared on the screen was young, perhaps thirty. Hannah stared at her in fascination. Colinda Drake’s father had founded Sky Masters, a company that did computer AIs for the Fleet. In fact, the AIs that were now ubiquitous on all ships in the Fleet. Between the two of them they’d built Sky Masters into a huge enterprise employing hundreds of thousands of people.
In a way, Colinda Drake was an older version of Hannah, except her father had valued her input. Her own father, Hannah decided on the spur of the moment, was a fool.
Captain Drake reported that on such and such a date and time, Master’s Game had been docked with a metallic asteroid where they had been in the last stages of installing an automated orbital factory. Some of the ship’s crew were down on the system’s third planet, which had an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere that was very similar to Earth’s.
They had detected a ship arrival in system, when the ship dropped from High Fan. They were debating who it could be, when it became apparent the other ship was unusual in that it was no longer on fans of any sort, high or low. And that the ship’s velocity was nearly half that of light. A human ship, entering a system as far out as the ship had, would have recomputed and jumped closer on High Fan. This ship did not do that, a significant anomaly, as was the high intrinsic velocity.
Human ships had traveled at that velocity, but they hadn’t been crewed, because it was extraordinarily dangerous. Most space debris created micro-craters on a ship’s hull; at 160,000 kilometers per second, solitary hydrogen atoms were significant radiation. Microscopic grains of sand left visible craters, something the size of a pea would punch through the hull, end to end. And something not much larger than a pea could convert the ship into gas. On top of everything else, it was expensive, fuel-wise, to do.
The AI aboard Master’s Game was probably the smartest AI in human space. It evaluated the ship as the loser of a battle, in flight. Using latch frame, the crew on the planet were alerted and told to remain quiet.
Several hours later, light from the unknown vessel arrived at Master’s Game and it was apparent that the ship was even more unusual than had been first thought. The ship had deployed a Bussard ram scoop, a magnetic artifice to sweep up the hydrogen of space for subsequent use as fuel.
Colinda Drake had been cogitating on the meaning of the information she had, when three additional vessels dropped from fan. Almost instantly, the first ship’s ram scoop was shut down, making it clear that they too could detect ships exiting from High Fan. An analysis of the first ship’s course was that it was heading down to pass very close to the star. The AI simply reported that the ship’s orbit was impossible to calculate. Even the smallest thrust, the least error of measurement would result in a very erroneous estimate of that ship’s final position.
The three latecomers jumped closer in-system and unleashed a thermonuclear bombardment at the oxygen planet where Master’s Game had people working. The crew of the survey ship was stunned. Moreover, there were some issues dealing with academics suddenly faced by military necessity. Captain Drake had a reserve commission in Fleet Aloft, activated it, and had missiles with nuclear warheads prepped -- and brigged a few reluctant academics.
The aliens hadn’t treated the planet to the same thorough bombardment human-inhabited planets received. Instead of a thousand gigaton weapons, there were only a dozen. Instead of sterilizing the planet, they had merely destroyed it, rendering it unfit for habitation. Some single-celled life would survive, but nothing higher. But none of the weapons had burst close enough to the survey party to immediately threaten them; there was time for them to get away.
The ship with the Bussard ram scoop coasted through the system at its very high velocity, then, just on the edge of the High Fan limit, launched what was thought to be a decoy. Shortly thereafter the decoy jumped and two of the three aliens jumped after it. Thirty minutes later, the ram scoop ship jumped, but not the stay-behind, which had remained close to the oxygen planet.
Master’s Game had been monitoring the plight of their people down on the planet and when they could wait no longer, undocked and jumped to intercept the alien. The alien fired on Master’s Game, and Master’s Game fired back. Humanity won another round against the aliens; Master’s Game rescued the twenty-six people down on the planet and immediately jumped away from the system, headed for Adobe.
“You will note,” Admiral Kinney said, when the lights came up, “Master’s Game made eight detours on its return flight, including waiting once for three days in the cold dark before their next jump. Colindra Drake and her AI came to the same conclusion we have: our enemies can detect and track ships on High Fan.
“The first alien ship is subject to great soul-searching. Why would a ship equipped with fans have a Bussard ram scoop? That’s just a complete waste of mass. However, if your best ship was a Bussard and you’d just discovered fans, you might see something like that. Or if it was a museum piece, being used for a desperate attempt to escape annihilation.
“Officially, there is still just one alien race and they are attacking us. The characterization of another alien species is too much for the civilians to deal with. Nonetheless, the consensus was that if it was a third species, they have either lost, or are about to lose a war very much like the one we are fighting. It is felt that they very likely escaped and evaded detection at the Master’s Game system.”
Admiral Kinney looked around the compartment, “It’s rank defeatism, but it’s also plain common sense. This wasn’t the decision point; it was New Cairo. Ships have been prepared with suitable colonial equipment and have already been sent out carefully, well outside the bounds of the Federation. Noah’s Arks.”
Hannah shivered. It wasn’t pleasant contemplating what it would mean to lose this war. She’d die. Everyone would die. It was far too unpleasant to think about. Yet someone had to and then do something to insure the survival of their species.
“But, what we’ve seen are four alien ships in a place where quite surely they weren’t expecting us, didn’t know that we were there. If they’d picketed the system, they’d have known Master’s Game was there. Master’s Game survived; QED, they didn’t know the ship was there. Moreover, we have yet another example that when our ships are vastly outnumbered, they have dealt out damage far in excess of what one could imagine possible.
“The question now is did they put a stealthy stay-behind in that system, that watched what happened or did Master’s Game truly destroy the last enemy ship and leave undetected?”
Admiral Kinney looked around the room. “We will form two planning committees. The offensive group, which will work out plans to survey the region around the system where Master’s Game was, and a second, defensive, group to plan security for Rome and her cohorts. Commander Ferris’ group will handle offense; Captain Bachman’s people will deal with defense. You are dismissed.”
It had been Hannah’s intent to return to her quarters and get some sleep. She felt terrible and suspected she looked worse. Instead, Commander Ferris just said, “The conference room, ten minutes. Zodiac, since you are junior, survey the group to see about preferred eats and drinks.”
Hannah just wanted some tea, but was afraid it would keep her awake later. Commander Ferris had laughed at that. “Later? We’ll be at this for the next umpteen weeks!”
The first thing was a quick update from Rachael. “Admiral Kinney gave me a head’s up. What we’re going to do, after we get underway is that Rome and just two of our escorts will go system north for a few light years. The instant we drop, we’ll launch two dozen missile-armed fighters and everyone else will be on standby. We’ll make a couple of more drops from fans after that, taking aboard the fighters before we jump.
“After six course changes we’ll jump to Caravalos, a small system that was destroyed. That’s another seven weeks or so travel time. Each time we return to normal space, we’re going to be launching fighters. You might as well get used to it.
“Once the task group is reformed, we will have a final planning meeting, then we jump to Adobe, the closest Federation colony to where Master’s Game met the aliens. At last word, we still held it; it’s never been attacked. Of course, that word is three months old and we’ll be another three months getting there.
“At Adobe we’ll hold one last set of planning meetings with the rest of the formation, then begin whatever survey plan we come up with. Admiral Kinney told me that we had a good start on a plan.”
Hannah spoke up when it was clear that Rachael was finished. “What about Colinda Drake and her ship? Where are they?”
“She’s still at Adobe, awaiting orders from the Federation. We’re carrying them to her. One thing she did do was unload her academics and load on some more missiles. She’s flying in-system defense with a skeleton crew. The senior Fleet Aloft officer at Adobe was a commander. The two of them put their heads together and Master’s Game is riding well outside the fan well, her fans on the trips. If anything comes off fans at all close she shoots and scoots automatically. Adobe only has a frigate assigned, that ship is also under the same orders. If it looks like they can win, they stay and shoot. If it doesn’t look like survival is possible, they go to Foucault, the big base out in that direction.”
While they were deliberating, Rome and her escorts made the first jump towards Adobe. Hannah slept only a few hours, and then was in the simulators, practicing a total squadron effort against a hostile battle fleet.
Later she met again with Commander Ferris and the rest of the study group, finally returning to her bed at 0130 the following day, looking forward to another day of the same.
She slept, dreamlessly at first, and then the dreams came.
First it was the awful recording of what had happened to Gandalf. Huge terrible fireballs that scoured the landscape, scouring it clean not only of life, but everything recognizable. Then she saw Gloria, standing, looking at her, her arms folded, a mild scowl on her face.
I’m missing something, Hannah thought. I’m missing something. What can I be missing? Gloria only came to her when it was important, when it was time to think, time to come to terms with things... What was Gloria trying to say?
The scenes from Agincourt, taken by Willow Wolf. Willow Wolf, just a little younger than Hannah; braver than her, Hannah thought, braver by far. Willow Wolf and her family had faced what happened to a system nuked to radioactive gas. Her own first reaction had been to throw herself at the enemies of man, and no matter what, die trying to kill even one.
But that was stupid. Nothing could be gained by trying to kill only one of them. Maybe if you succeeded, but even then, everyone knew humanity needed to kill billions of them, to make up for humanity’s losses. Willow Wolf and her family had stayed huddled, hiding, while the whirlwind of destruction passed over them. Moreover, Willow Wolf had recorded what happened, broadcast in what was clearly the hope of those transmitting, that someone would see it and remember.
And someone had. Someone had. Willow Wolf at Agincourt. Turbine Jensen at Gandalf. People had seen what had happened and remembered. Now everyone remembered.
Hannah woke up and had to run to the bathroom where she was sick, spewing up what little she had to eat for dinner.
She sank to the floor of her compartment, exhausted, barely able to move from where she came to rest.
Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong! She knew it, not just in her head, but in her heart of hearts. Where Gloria lived, where all the Swensons and so many others lived. People who were dead.
She was sick again, helplessly heaving, emptying herself of anything that could be emptied.
Something was wrong. She knew something was terribly wrong. Thoughts warred in her head; she staggered upright, demanding her body obey.
She’d gone about six steps from her compartment when one of the lieutenants from her squadron appeared in front of her. “Are you okay, Lieutenant?” the woman asked, concerned. Shapiro, Hannah thought. Lynn Shapiro.
Hannah looked at her and felt sullen anger. How dare she! How dare she stop her! How dare she look like Gloria? Without thought, Hannah reached out her hand and straight-armed the woman, sending her reeling back into the bulkhead.
Hannah ran then -- not chased by the lieutenant, but her own demons. She read data; she read more data. Lieutenant Arif was a thorough man. He’d done well accumulating the necessary information. She devoured it. Then more, then more again.
She felt a soft touch on her arm and she glanced in that direction. For a second she hoped it was Gloria, then she realized it was Donna.
“Hannah,” Donna said calmly.
“I found something,” Hannah told her. “We need to call Admiral Kinney. I think we need to stop and send a message home.”
“We’ll be stopping soon enough, but we won’t be sending a message,” Donna said. “Hannah, you need to get some rest.”
Hannah looked at her. “Soon. I’ve almost got it now. A few more bits and it will all be there.”
“No, Hannah,” Donna told her gently, “I think you should rest first.”
“Donna, this is important. Since the war started, this is the most important thing there’s been!”
“Hannah,” Donna continued, still trying to be soothing, “you hurt Lieutenant Shapiro. You broke her collar bone.”
Hannah looked at Donna, slightly befuddled. “She was in my way. This is important, Donna.”
“Hannah, if you don’t stand down on your own, they’re going to send you to the funny farm.”
“No one analyzed the data, Donna! They recorded it, but they never looked at it. If they’d have looked at it, we’d have known forty years ago!”
Hannah saw the expression on Donna’s face change. “What do you mean, Hannah?”
“We need to see Admiral Kinney! We need to get a message back to the Federation. We were stupid in the study group, stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” Her voice rose shrilly.
“Hannah, please, you have to explain,” Donna’s voice stayed soft, betraying little hint of her emotion. Beyond her, Commander Ferris entered the conference room.
“The data! The data! No one analyzed the data! Star Explorer’s last planet, the place where no trace of their visit was recorded! The radiological signatures! The third planet in that system had been nuked! How can you tell the difference a hundred years after, between a meteor crater, a volcanic crater and one dug by a gigaton weapon? You can’t! You can’t! Not unless you look closely! You have to look at the radiological signatures!”
Hannah looked at Donna. “Star Wind’s last system. The missing moon. They had readings from the debris! It was nuked! Think about that ship fleeing! They were wrong to write it off! They were wrong... Someone else is out there. Someone who lost everything, everyth...”
Nature and time caught up with Hannah. She stopped in mid-word and collapsed.
Rachael Ferris looked at Donna Merriweather. “Lieutenant, you recorded that, did you not?” Commander Ferris asked.
“Yes, ma’am.” What Donna was going to say next was interrupted by the arrival of medics, who quickly and accurately assessed Hannah’s condition before loading her aboard a gurney and wheeling her away.
“Do you know what Lieutenant Shapiro told me, a few minutes ago?” Donna asked Commander Ferris.
“She’s one of your squadron pilots. Let me guess, she slipped in the shower?”
“Lieutenant Shapiro said that she was running in the passageway and slammed into Lieutenant Sawyer. She said she was at fault and that Lieutenant Sawyer had inquired of her condition before she continued her urgent rush to an important meeting.”
“We have both messed up,” Rachael told her.
“I understand zeal. We saw a lot of that on Shenandoah. It’s how things work since Gandalf. I thought I recognized the worst symptoms. Hannah was always thin...”
“Have you read her file?”
Commander Ferris’ stony gaze told Donna the answer to that.
“She’s been lying to herself and to us, Commander.”
“I’m sure I will take great comfort in that,” Rachael told Donna. “As I’m sure you will too when they court-martial the both of us.”
From the door of the compartment, Roberta Kinney spoke in a flat, commanding voice. “The only court-martials will come if you don’t sit down and analyze the data she found.”
An hour later, Admiral Kinney looked at the others. All of them were pale and shaken.
“My call,” she told them. She spoke aloud. “Captain Mehlman, this is Admiral Kinney. Drop to normal space.”
A voice sounded in the compartment. “Admiral Kinney, we’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“Call Captain Huygeens and tell him that I require six pilots to return to the Federation; one of them is to be Captain Bachman. They need to have a reasonable chance of surviving the trip. They won’t be coming back. Have Captain Bachman report to me at once.”
There was a momentary pause. “Aye, aye, Admiral Kinney.”
Admiral Kinney turned to Rachael Ferris. “Commander, prepare the package. I want it ready in twenty minutes.”
“Aye, aye, Admiral!”
“Lieutenant Merriweather, see to your officers. There will be no proceedings against anyone.”
