Earth Strike: Star Carrier: Book One sc-1, page 19
part #1 of Star Carrier Series
Allyn could feel the ship crews around her sag as Spaas died-no one could have survived such a crash. They sagged, they turned away. She heard someone nearby mutter, “Shit…”
Allyn said nothing. Gripping her helmet tightly, she turned away and started walking toward the recovery deck elevators.
She had a report to file, a debriefing to endure.
She felt exhausted and bruised, and every step dragged at her like death.
Squadron Ready Room
TC/USNA CVS America
Outbound, Eta Boötis System
2022 hours, TFT
Gray stared at the ready room repeater screen, unable to tear his eyes away. It was one thing when a squadron mate bought it in a clean, silent flash of light out in space, quite another when you watched them zorch in for a trap and miss the sweet spot by a matter of scant meters.
He didn’t like Spaas. In fact, he’d detested the guy-an arrogant bully, a womanizer, as much the elitist hypocrite as his partner, Collins.
He’d still been family.
Numb, Gray ran through the members of the Dragonfires, startled to realize that where twelve had launched from the America out in the local Kuiper Belt early yesterday morning, only four, counting himself, were left. Sixty-six percent casualties was devastating for any military unit; when the unit was as small as a squadron to begin with, with members practically living in one another’s pockets, the sense of family was keener still…even when you couldn’t stand the bastards.
He wondered if the Dragonfires would be disbanded, the survivors sent as replacements to other squadrons.
The hell with it, He found he didn’t care right now one way or another, didn’t care about anything.
But an audio alarm caught his attention, and he switched the display screen to tactical.
God. That was all they needed now. The Turusch battle-fleet was emerging from behind Eta Boötis, swinging past the planet and accelerating toward the retreating carrier battlegroup. The rest of the Black Lightnings were still trapping in Bays One and Three, and it would be several more minutes before America could resume acceleration.
Things were about to get damned tight.
CIC, TC/USNA CVS America
Outbound, Eta Boötis System
2023 hours, TFT
“Lead elements of the enemy fleet now at eighty-two thousand kilometers, Admiral,” Hughes reported, her voice as matter-of-fact, as coldly professional as any AI’s.
“How long until the last of the fighters gets aboard?” Koenig demanded.
“Two more coming in at Bay One, three at Bay Two. Make it one minute twenty.”
Koening considered this. Over a minute until the America could accelerate. How close would the enemy fleet get?
Given their known acceleration capabilities, it looked like the battlegroup would be able to escape…just. The enemy might pursue them out of the system, but a running stern chase was pretty futile, especially when the fleeing vessels would be jigging and changing acceleration routes from moment to moment in order to throw off the enemy’s targeting computers.
“Comm! Make to Spirit of Confederation,” he said. “Have them lay down a barrage astern. See if they can discourage those Trash jokers.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
The view of the stars projected on the CIC viewalls darkened, returned, darkened again.
“Enemy has opened fire, Admiral,” Hughes pointed out. “KK projectiles and particle beams.”
“Right. Any damage?”
“Shields are holding, Admiral.” A pause. “Cruiser Montreal reports damage to targeting sensors and primary fire control.”
In the tactical display, the green icon representing the Spirit of Confederation was slowly turning, rotating ninety degrees until she was traveling sideways, her port broadside facing the enemy.
As on board the America, Confederation’s primary weapon ran along much of her kilometer-length and pierced her broad shield cap forward, a large-bore railgun that could accelerate one-ton kinetic-kill rounds to speeds of hundreds of kilometers per second. That was not her only weapon, however. Like an eighteenth-century ship of the line, she possessed an impressive broadside, turret-mounted weapons that could fire in every direction except directly forward, where they were effectively blocked by the shield cap. By rotating ninety degrees along her line of flight, the Spirit of Confederation brought about two thirds of her broadside weapons to bear. With the enemy now just half a light second astern, the battleship began hammering away, pouring immense volumes of fire into the narrow corridor just ahead of the Turusch vessels.
Koenig turned his attention back to the last of the fighters still coming aboard.
“Come on, people,” he murmured, half aloud. “Come on!…”
Tactician Emphatic Blossom at Dawn
Enforcer Radiant Severing
2023 hours, TFT
Tactician Emphatic Blossom watched the combat display, an emotion roughly equivalent to human anger beating behind its optical organs. A tentacle tip coiled and uncoiled reflexively, nervously. If it didn’t know better, if it had not felt the reassurance and calm emanating from the Mind Below, it would have had to assume that the Sh’daar didn’t trust it, didn’t trust the Turusch.
Abyssal whirlwinds! Emphatic Blossom at Dawn was a trained and experienced master tactician! It knew combat, knew how to lead an enemy into a trap, knew how to spring an ambush, knew how to hammer at the foe until nothing in the kill zone was left alive! The Sh’daar Seed’s orders of the past g’nyuu’m simply made no tactical sense whatsoever.
The Turusch fleet had been badly mangled by the enemy fighter attack, true…and there’d been a very real possibility that the Radiant Severing itself would be destroyed. That, however, was a part of combat, a part of war. Emphatic Blossom and every Turusch warrior on board the Severing was ready to sacrifice its life if that sacrifice would bring a decisive victory.
But no! The Seed had ordered, had demanded that the Turusch battle fleet abandon its prey, break orbit and withdraw toward deep space. And Emphatic Blossom had obeyed…as it must. The orders were from its own Mind Below, as inescapable, as relentless as Blossom’s own decisions.
And so the Turusch battle fleet had withdrawn, accelerating close to the speed of light, fleeing the battle.
And then the Sh’daar Seed had spoken again, giving new, and contradictory, orders. The Turusch fleet would turn around and return to the embattled planet, would launch fighters to go in ahead of the fleet and cause as much damage as possible, with the main body of the fleet arriving soon after.
Projectiles and particle beams would be fired into the region, timed to arrive just before the fighters appeared. And every enemy outpost on the target world would be deliberately obliterated, targeted by high-velocity masses aimed with mathematical precision at the locations of the alien surface outposts.
And that didn’t make sense to the Turusch tactician either. The Turusch had spent twelves of g’nyuu’m bombarding the principle enemy base and two others…but the intent had been to capture the humans, not kill them. Why change the point of the battle now?
The Sh’daar Seed, of course, knew what it was doing. Emphatic Blossom had to believe that, or its very existence, its role as master tactician, its very understanding of the cosmos all would be called into question.
But Blossom could not guess what their purpose was now, nor could it understand its role in the battle in these circumstances. As Radiant Severing and the other Turusch ships decelerated into the volume of space surrounding the target planet, sensors showed that the enemy fleet had already withdrawn, as Emphatic Blossom had more than half expected. On the planetary surface, seething, yellow seas of molten rock steamed beneath continent-sized hurricanes where the alien colonies had been.
An entire world rendered lifeless, useless to anyone. Why?…
Radiant Severing shuddered, the rock hull ringing with an impact against the defensive shields. One of the two largest of the enemy vessels had positioned itself at the rear of the human fleet, and was bombarding the Turusch battle fleet as it retreated.
“Threat!” Blossom’s Mind Above could be unpleasantly predictable. “Kill!”
“We can destroy that human vessel,” the Mind Here added. “We should…remind the humans of the risk they take in defying the Seed.”
The Mind Below seemed to consider this, weighing the options with a computer’s calculating efficiency. “Agreed. But do not pursue the enemy. The survivors should take the report of their defeat back to their homeworld.”
“Deploy all fighter fists!” The Mind Here commanded, its emotion as raw and as primitive as that of Mind Above. “Concentrate the full offensive fire of all vessels on that target!
Some thirty capital ships of the Turusch fleet adjusted their positions, then began firing at the distant enemy. Particle beams, fusion bolts, high-energy lasers, and kinetic-kill projectiles sleeted through emptiness.
And they began to find their target.
CIC, TC/USNA CVS America
Outbound, Eta Boötis System
2025 hours, TFT
“The Spirit of Confederation reports she is taking very heavy fire, Admiral,” Hughes told him. “Damage to aft shields, damage to primary broadside weapons, damage to two of the three hab modules. Fire control is down.”
Koenig was watching the Confederation’s struggle on a secondary tactical display, which was relaying the camera view from a battle drone pacing the retreating ships. Straight-edged patches of blackness kept popping on and off along the battleship’s length, responding to incoming fire. One set of aft shields was flickering on and off alarmingly, threatening complete failure. Several sections of her long, thin hull had been wrecked by energies leaking through the shields. The damage was severe, but she continued to fire back.
White light pulsed, dazzlingly bright, as an incoming Turusch missile detonated in a sand cloud a hundred kilometers away.
“Comm,” Koenig ordered. “Patch me through to the Confederation’s CO.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
A moment later, the image of Captain Paul Radniak appeared within the holodisplay field beside Koenig’s workstation. His face was worn, his uniform disheveled. Smoke wreathed through the image, which kept flickering on and off with sharp bursts of static as the battleship’s shields rose and fell, and as electromagnetic pulses from particle-beam hits and detonating nukes interfered with the signal.
“Yes, Admiral?”
“You’ve done what you can, Paul,” Koenig told him. “It looks like the bastards aren’t going to follow us.”
Radniak’s eyes flicked away as he checked a readout outside the range of the holo’s pick-up. “It looks like they’re sending fighters after us, Admiral.”
“Fighters we can handle. I recommend you ass-end it out of there.”
The Spirit of Confederation was taking a hellacious pounding. Koenig was suggesting that Radniak rotate his ship another ninety degrees, so that the vessel’s stern was pointing in the direction she was moving, and her broad, water-filled forward shield cap was pointed at the enemy. By “ass-ending it out of there,” Radniak would be able to protect his ship from further incoming fire as the Confederation continued to accelerate out-system. Without the water shield, the crew might be subjected to dangerous doses of radiation as the Confederation approached c, but that was preferable to losing the entire vessel when her quantum power tap lost balance and detonated.
Radniak’s image shuddered, winked off, then came back up, rippling with static. “I think you’re right, Ad-” And Radniak was gone.
In the drone-relayed image nearby, white eruptions of light ate their way up the Spirit of Confederation’s spine, ripping out massive chunks of debris. One of her hab modules detached and flung itself outward, tumbling end over end as centripetal force sent it hurtling into space. The aft end appeared to be crumpling, folding in on itself. The black holes in the power center were loose, devouring the ship’s aft quarter in multi-ton bites.
The final explosion sent large chunks spraying along the ship’s direction of travel. The largest was the shield cap, tumbling end over end, leaving glittering and intertwining trails of ice crystals from a dozen ruptures in its wake. The intolerably brilliant core of the final explosion faded slowly in a flare of cooling plasma.
“Make to the other ships in our detachment,” Koenig said quietly. “Go to maximum acceleration.”
Two thousand officers and crew, plus God alone knew how many Marines and Mufrid refugees-gone.
God help them, he thought. God help us all….
Chapter Fourteen
15 October 2404
Koenig’s Office
TC/USNA CVS America
Inbound, Sol System
0940 hours, TFT
“Dr. Wilkerson, Dr. George, and Dr. Brandt are all ready to link in, Admiral.”
Koenig looked up. Lieutenant Commander Nahan Cleary was his personal aide, which meant he often served as admiral’s secretary as frequently as Koenig’s secretarial AI. “Very well. I’ll take it here.”
He switched off the report he was currently writing and reclined his seat back. His office was fairly luxurious as military quarters went, more luxurious than he cared for, actually. There was a small lounge area over by the door, but he generally preferred to stay at his desk.
It was just as well he hadn’t gotten too used to the place. He couldn’t imagine that they would let him hold on to it much longer.
He brought up the link codes in his mind, letting the circuitry in the office connect with his in-head display. A window seemed to open and he stepped through…entering the carrier’s main med-research center. Earnest Brandt, the center’s senior medical officer, was already there. The virtual images of Dr. Anna George and Dr. Phillip Wilkerson winked on a moment later. Wilkerson was the head of America’s neuropsytherapy department, while George was a psytherapist on loan from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, and both had considerable experience with nonhuman psychology.
“Welcome to RC Central, Admiral,” Wilkerson’s virtual image said. “Thanks for linking in.”
“Does this mean you’ve gotten something, Doctor?” Koenig asked. “Something useful?”
Wilkerson shrugged, his lined face momentarily twisting in an expression of frustration. “That, sir, you’ll have to decide for yourself. We have established communications.”
“You know, sir,” Dr. George said, “it took over five years to establish basic communications with the Aglestch a century ago.”
“Yes,” Koenig replied, “and what we learned was LG. I thought you were using that with these…people.”
LG-Lingua Galactica-was an artificial language learned from the alien Aglestch. Evidently, it wasn’t one of that race’s native languages, but it was the way they communicated with the Sh’daar, their galactic masters. Koenig had assumed that the Turusch would know LG as well.
“We did, Admiral,” Wilkerson replied. “But it’s not that simple.”
“It never is.”
Wilkerson took a deep breath. “The Aglestch speak using phonemes generated through vibrating vocal cords like we do…except of course that they use air expressed from their first and second stomachs instead of from lungs or air sacs. The Turusch speak, we think, by modulating a humming or thrumming sound generated by vibrating diaphragms set within the dorsal carapace.”
“Meaning they don’t use words,” Koenig guessed.
“Exactly. Variations in pitch and tone, and the shifting harmonies created by four separate diaphragms, convey the information. Even the name ‘Turusch’ comes from the Agletsch. We don’t know what they call themselves.”
Brandt chuckled. “Maybe something like…” and he hummed the opening bar of a popular song, “We Were Strangers.”
“In four-part harmony,” Dr. George added.
“In any case,” Dr. Brandt said, “we did use LG as a basis-without it I expect it would have taken another five years or more to break the Turusch language and figure out how to speak it. We do appear to have established communication. At least…we’ve gotten some meaningful syntax out of them. But an awful lot of what they have to say doesn’t make much sense.”
“There’s also the xenopsych angle to consider, Admiral,” Dr. George told him. “I’ve been working with these two since we picked them up, and that was a couple of weeks ago. We don’t have a lot of leads on how they think.”
Koenig nodded. He knew how difficult it was to learn, not just another language, but a language spoken by a being with a completely nonhuman physiology and a completely alien psychology. One species-the primitive Glo of Epsilon Eridani II-appeared to communicate with one another by changing patterns of light and color on their black, oily torsos, using luminous chromatophores like the squid of Earth. The Glo had been known for almost two centuries now, and the experts still didn’t know if they were really talking…or if they even were intelligent enough to have anything to talk about. There was simply no comprehensible common ground from which to begin either a linguistic or a psychological understanding.
“I wasn’t expecting miracles, people,” Koenig told the three. “Let me have a look.”
“Yes, sir,” Wilkerson said. “Um…brace yourself. This can be unsettling.”
“We’ll be projecting into NTE robots,” Brandt added.
Koenig felt an inner shift, a momentary dizziness, and then he was someplace else, a ship’s compartment with blank, white-painted walls and one transplas wall. There were a number of machines in the compartment attached by universal joints and articulated metallic arms to the low overhead. Koenig’s own point of view now seemed to be residing within one of those devices, a white sphere supported on the end of a slender, jointed arm.
Non-terrestrial environmental robots-NTEs, or Noters-had been in wide use for almost three centuries, exploring places as hostile as the surface of Venus, the ice ridges of Europa, and the bottom of the Marianas Trench. The earliest versions had relayed photographs and telemetry from Mars and from Earth’s moon; later models had let human consciousness piggyback within their circuitry.
