9 Years, 6 Months, 15 Days After Eridani Landing
The [Singer]
The explosion hit and [Vann] watched at the lights on the main hologram and different panels flashed a blinding white light, before dying and plunging the entire bridge of the [Singer] into darkness.
“What were we supposed to do?” asked someone near the weapons console.
The main hologram flickered back on, “You’re dead.”
[Vann] stared up at [Reece] as he set his mug down and stood up in the center of the bridge.
“I know the point of these exercises is to try and adapt and counter the more novel strategies that might be employed by class C’s in space. Blowing up a star though? Does that not only seem excessive by their standards, and not to mention impossible?” asked [Vann] incredulous.
[Reece] looked down at his own console, he was in main engineering and had been for the last several days concocting and running all of the newer drills. [Vann] was actually surprised by the fact that he had woken up to his alarm, and not the ship wide alert. It had been at least a week since that had happened [Reece] once again proving that he was a taskmaster when it came to anything resembling training.
“I told our friend to give me even the more outlandish scenario’s possible when in regards to class C’s and especially C1764. They have only theories towards how to use a star in combat, but even the fact that they have theories about using stars as weapons means it is a strategy they are working towards.”
[Vann] shook his head, “Was he sober when he gave these scenarios to you?”
[Reece] looked up at the camera, to anyone else his face remained impassive but [Vann] having lived next to the man for so long saw the faint sparkle of mirth in his eyes.
“When have you ever seen him sober?”
[Vann] grunted in agreement and slowly stood up, “I don’t suppose you can tell me what I was supposed to do in the event I’m near a star when some mad class C’s blow it up?”
“Take a few of them out with you. You could have attempted a random tachyon jump, but more than likely that would have taken you into the core of the collapsing star. Not the best place to be I think.”
“No.”
“Still if you weren’t going to try and fight back that .15% chance you would survive would have been better than nothing. You are adapting well to their abilities to nullify the shields as well as the blink capabilities,” said [Reece].
“As well as I can, it goes against almost all doctrine I have trained with.”
“We have only ever trained to fight our own ships Emperor, the largest threats we have ever had in space have been rebelling factions of the Empire. Factions your own lineage has put down every time. This has been a blessing and a curse, military doctrine is so ingrained that it comes down to the commander’s ability to respond quickly which decides an even battle. Against a new threat though?” [Reece] shrugged.
“I get that. Still we have only two points of data on how they utilize their blink maneuvers. I doubt it’s conclusive. Dealing with the light speed lag, is troublesome.”
“I’m attempting different strategies playing the class C’s, but you are correct. Do not when we encounter them assume the strategy in these drills will be the same. I have little doubt that they have further technological advancements in reserve. As for the light speed lag? I’m looking into a few older projects and I think I might have found something that will help us against the class C’s”
The man at the tactical station let out a small chuckle.
[Vann] turned to him, “You have some thing to say lieutenant?”
The man stood still for a moment before spinning on his heel, “These drills are nothing but fantasy. No class C species will ever be this powerful, this blink maneuver, allowing them to move instantly from one position in space to another? It violates physics! You speak as if they are a threat Emperor! Surely against your Empire they are nothing?”
[Vann] looked at the man for a moment, “Be that as it may, they are a threat and one I will take seriously as laughable as it is. They have used these strategies in combat before, and combined with the ability to defeat our shield technology it is a scenario that must be seriously considered.”
“Emperor, we’ve all seen the reports. What happened to the Imperial above Jikse? That was a fluke, nothing more! The shields on out ships are impregnable!”
“We will continue to run these drills Lieutenant, and if you are so concerned I will throw in classical drills as well for the [Singer] to deal with. As dull as trading salvo after salvo of plasma is.”
The man paled slightly as others on the bridge groaned and looked up to glare at him.
“Yes, sir,” said the lieutenant his voice and posture stiff.
“We’re going to continue with the drills. Bring all systems online, [Reece]!”
“Sir?”
“I want a shuttle prepared to go down to the surface.”
“Yes sir.”
The screen went blank and the simulation behind it quickly fell away, the false layer over all of the windows disappeared, revealing the true image of the home world.
[Vann] stared down at it for a moment, it was amazing to think that a few thousand years ago it had been the only territory of the Empire, the only place in the universe with the Dorvakian species. Now they were spread across hundreds of worlds.
“A shuttle?” asked [Syn] leaning down to [Vann]’s ear.
“I need to convince [Charles] to join us up here, and possible for whatever mission I am assigned as well.”
“He’s not going to leave that class B of his, [Yuka].”
“I know that, have you been able to figure out why he’s so attached to her yet?”
[Syn] huffed in annoyance, “No, he seemingly picked her at random out of a pool of assistants that was presented to him when he was discharged from service and the hospital. She’s got no references, and as far as I can tell he’s got no business or familial relationships with anyone she knows.”
“So she was just a random choice?”
“Nothing’s random Emperor.”
“You don’t think he’s degenerating do you?” asked [Vann].
“No.”
“You can answer that quickly?”
“I can, his psychological profile and the way he acts with her is protective, in almost a father like manner. He’s got no children though, and he never suffered large casualties under his command that could cause a break like this. The only gap on his record is the time he spent as the prisoners of the class C’s.”
“After which he became a drunk, and a recluse, only ever talking to this assistant.”
[Syn] nodded, “I pulled his medical files. As far as can be determined the class C’s never did anything physical to him, besides a slight nutrient imbalance he came back from captivity with them as fit as when he left, ignoring the injures he received in the assault to rescue him.”
[Vann] groaned, “Meaning the damage is…”
“Psychological.”
“You get to figure out what it is.”
“How are you going to convince him to come up here?”
“I’m going to put his class B in the medical wing of the [Singer] treat her as a class A.”
[Syn]’s eyes widened at that, “Really?”
“He’s the only one who remotely understands the class C’s. I need him.”
“Understandable,” said [Syn] hesitating slightly.
“What?”
“You seem to be convinced of the fact that we’ll encounter them again.”
“You aren’t?”
“I’ve no data to backup or make predictions on encountering them again, but yes. As much as I hate to consider the possibility.”
“You agree they represent a threat?”
“Their technology does, only because it’s alien. Their strategy should be predictable. We simply don’t have data on what that strategy is, hence why [Reece] keeps changing the scenarios.”
“And they’re all based on the tech for the Blink and the shield nullification. For all we know they have another trick in their arsenal. Wait,” [Vann] scowled, “Are you helping him build scenarios?!”
“Yep.”
[Vann] opened his mouth to say something and then sighed and leaned back in his chair.
“Question after question. when are we going to make an error that costs us something significant, that makes everyone see they might be a threat?”
“Wasn’t the error not completely eliminating the class C’s? The edict of technological acquisition and all of that?”
[Vann] considered he words for a moment, “It’s something we’ll have to consider in the future, if a class C race has technology that might allow them to survive. We don’t try to acquire it, we simply destroy them.”
“Other class C’s have survived.”
“They didn’t have original technology though, and we’ve not heard from them in a thousand years. They simply want to live. C1764 though? They want to die, and they’re going to try and take us with them.”
[Syn] snorted.
“What?” asked [Vann] indignant.
“You need to work on your speeches.”
[Vann] stood up, and shaking his head turned to walk off of the bridge for the shuttle, “Thank you for volunteering to do my filing!”
[Syn] glanced down at the Comm sitting in his chair and then back up at the Emperor as the doors of the ancient ship slammed back shut.
“Damn it,” muttered [Syn].
9 Years, 6 Months, 17 Days After Eridani Landing
Chront
“This, this, this,” Anil continued to stammer for several moments.
Derrick slowly extracted himself from the control panel for the Canada’s power distribution systems and looked over at the woman, “what?”
“Your history.”
Anil turned the small tablet over displaying one of the images to Derrick, an old picture of a human who had survived the first use of a nuclear weapon on Earth. The man’s skin was burned off, and healed showing little more than a skull covered in scars, the eyes were blind and staring off into infinity.
“What about it?” asked Derrick as he turned back to continue working on the electrical systems the hair on the back of his neck standing straight up.
“You actually used nuclear weapons on each other? Why?”
“It was to end a war I think, I’m not the best at history,” muttered Derrick as he moved further into the panel.
“The first use of nuclear weapons in human history was an effort by one nation and its allies who had defeated a coalition of nations on one front, to convince those on another front to surrender. The justification for the weapon was that by showing such devastation, a war or attrition could be avoided.”
Anil was silent for a moment, “This is, horrible! Your species, you say this like it is nothing!”
“That happened a long time ago, we’ve created far more devastating weapons. Ones that we at one point used against one another.”
“Worse, than this?” asked Anil as she looked back down at the picture.
She frowned and paged through the tablet, “The Earth-Mars war?” asked Anil.
“You have been reading.”
“It was one of the first things in the historical archives but I skipped most of it, I was tasked to try and understand your species better by looking into your past politics. War seems to be at the forefront, much like my own world, so I was going through all of the larger conflicts in your history in sequence.”
Arik chuckled, a small buzz coming from every speaker in the compartment, “A disturbing kinship, is it not?”
Anil slowly nodded, “What happened in the Earth-Mars war?”
The Human engineer and AI were silent for a moment, neither willing to speak first.
“I’m sorry if I said something wrong.”
“No, it’s something neither of us saw it, or at least not combat. I was a kid when it ended. The war, it was probably the most devastating thing Humanity has ever endured up to that point. We were using weapons that traveled between planets, 400 million were killed. That was with both sides trying to avoid civilian casualties.”
Derrick paused, “The largest attack, was what prompted the end of the war to be honest. The Martian’s fired a kinetic round that was set to hit an asset in high Earth orbit. It was a critical military relay I think, not really important. Earth command tried to deflect the kinetic round like they had with other attacks, by shooting their own kinetic weapon at the incoming projectile.”
Arik slowly brought a rough image of the trajectories up on the screens in the engineering section. Giving the crude retelling of the events a visual.
“The kinetic round hit, and redirected the incoming Martian attack. Instead of putting the round on a trajectory to dive into the atmosphere and burn up, the redirect put the projectile on a course directly down to Earth. It was to late to fire another redirect round, and the cities below had only minutes to even try and evacuate.”
“Moscow, Russia. It’s a city that had been on Earth for thousands of years. The kinetic round hit, and decimated the city in an instant. It was an explosion of pure energy and kinetic power. The projectile was tipped with antimatter, something both sides had agreed to never use on a planetary target.”
Derrick juggled a tool in his hands for a moment, “40 million dead in a flash. Civilians, military, men, women, children.”
The compartment fell silent except for the sound of machinery and cycling life support.
“This did not incite further conflict?” asked Anil slowly.
Derrick shook his head, “No, like with the first nuclear bomb it was a sign. A warning of what could happen. This time though, it wasn’t a warning for one nation. It was a warning for all of humanity. We were on two planets, a dozen moons, inhabited dozens of structures in space but we could still destroy ourselves in an instant. Both sides had hundreds of these kinetic rounds, we could have launched them all destroyed life in our solar system in under a day.”
Arik slowly brought up the image of the signed peace treaty.
“Humanity as violent as it is, has always demonstrated an uncanny ability to survive. I would argue that our being here now is proof of this. Our entire world was decimated, the two planets we nearly destroyed killed by one ship. Out population reduced to almost nothing, and yet we endure. Looking back on it now, the death of 40 million seems small, but at the same time it seems more significant. Those who died were after all killed by Humans, they were mourned. If we all died when the aliens attacked, not one would mourn for them, remember them.”
Anil looked at the image of Arik, “You speak as if you’re human. Aren’t you a computer?”
“I’m human, doesn’t matter if I have a body or not.”
“Well, I can guarantee you this. You now have one more person who’ll remember them, and your entire world.”
Derrick’s eyes widened, and he slowly nodded, “Thank you.”
“Can I make a guarantee as well?” asked Arik.
“Yes,” said Anil
“We’ll make sure you don’t have to.”
9 Years, 6 Months, 20 Days After Eridani Landing
Bellona
“Any progress with the kids?” asked Megan as she slowly sipped at her cup of coffee.
“We will inform you if anything comes to light Engineer-Megan, we have already said this!” said Yern through the communication channel.
“I know, but that’s only if you find something big.”
“Bob’s neural activity spiked when we were attempting to stimulate Alice’s pain reflex. We switched and did the same with Bob, Alice responded in kind.”
Megan took a sip of her coffee and stared at the communication for another moment, “I just woke up, what did the neurologists say this means?”
“The two brains are so interconnected, that even their instinctual responses are intertwined. There is also another disturbing implication.”
“That is?”
“These brains, they were never in the confines of a skull. From what I am told all signs of development point to the two having been grown in the confines of their cases.”
“So they weren’t like Arik.”
“No.”
“The interconnected behavior does mirror what a Tanuin would experience.”
“It takes nine months for a human embryo to develop, these brains cannot have been grown in the time since we came into contact with your species!”
“It looks like other procedures were attempted to cause this, crude when compared to the interconnectivity of the Tanuin brains but deliberate in any case. Once the researchers of this lab had something to work with? They were able to engineer an analog.”
Megan sighed, “Thank you Yern, keep up the work.”
Closing the communication Megan slowly drifted out of her sleeping closet and looked around the small room. It was reminiscent of the one on the Yamato in the style and cramped accommodations, but at the same time it felt too big. The Yamato cabin despite being built for one, had on most nights held two after all.
Slapping the mug of coffee onto the wall Megan looked at her reflection in the mirror, she had cut her hair back to military regulations so that it was out of the way as she worked on the ship. it was a task that was progressing slowly, and quickly at the same time.
Large components and systems were being completely diverted from the China to the Russia, in fact most of the China’s systems had been stripped out leaving her with only an outer frame and hull. The section that had been blown out into space, had been directly ripped from the China and moved into place on the Russia, leaving a gaping hole in her side.
Still those larger pieces were the hold up, with the Tanuin now allowed to help in full force small details were remarkably taken care of with ease. The smaller creatures, able to move in all but the smallest compartments and innards of the ship could trail wires, fix circuits, repair and fix in locations that would have normally taken a human engineer hours to get to.
Punching her door open Megan drifted into the central corridor of the ship, and into the hubbub that was the norm for her construction.
“Ma’am!” said one engineer pausing his arms full of cables.
“The crew in the forward point defense gun bay are having trouble with the installation of the targeting systems, they would appreciate you checking in!”
“I will.”
The engineer nodded and tensing again bounced of the wall down towards the aft compartments.
“Engineer-Megan!”
A small Tanuin, one that looked to be even younger than Night hit Megan on the chest as it used her to stop its flight through zero-g’s several other bodies quickly impacted her.
Megan looked down at the creature, “Yes?”
“We are unsure how to install the power safety systems in the port midsection stations for the operation of the ACE is non-functional, we are unsure what the problem is.”
“I’ll be there in a minute, try and figure it out. Make sure you’re not looking at the starboard schematics.”
“Yes Ma’am!” the Tanuin leapt off of her and latching onto the strips that had been added to the wall began to quickly scuttle away. The strips were an addition that had been made for the Tanuin, and where complex macro fibrous sheets of material, otherwise known as carpet. Placed in the corners of each wall and in most rooms they were out of the way for the humans and provided the Tanuin paths to crawl, since the sections of the Human ships were far to large for them to safely float in.
Turning and pushing off of the wall before anyone else accosted her Megan shot towards the bridge of the Russia.
James glanced up as she rushed in, and stood up at his chair feet in the small footholds.
“Good morning, sleep well for…” he glanced down at his Link, “Four hours?”
“Don’t say anything. It’s better when I’m working.”
“I get that, but your going to burn yourself out.”
“Then I burn out, anything new?” she asked changing the subject.
James crossed his arms and glared at her for a moment, “The Council is questioning the wisdom of stripping down the China to make sure the Russia can launch earlier, and they’re apprehensive about sending us out with the China stripped like she is.”
“Why?”
“They liked the idea of having a warship to patrol the system, and not just the defense platforms and the Fort.”
“We’ve not had a ship to defend Bellona for nearly a decade, now they’re getting antsy?”
James shrugged, “What do you want them to say? The Fort’s got more firepower than all three ships combined.”
“The ship would be a symbol. Is that not obvious?” asked Alpha from his perch on the back of the captains’ chair. It was a small half sphere, with small alcoves built into it for Tanuin to settle into. The back of the sphere and was hollow, and allowed the Tanuin to better hear each body when seated in it making it easier to relax like any human chair.
“That makes sense,” muttered James.
Alpha glared at the two for a moment, “I thought Humans had ships in their own history which were symbols, names to not be forgotten, ships and crews that are remembered and honored as new ships are constructed.”
“We do Alpha,”
“A ship would be a symbol, the Fort might be more functional but ships have a mystic, do they not? My own ship was named after one of the first that traversed the ocean’s of our home world. It was perhaps the tenth ship with such a name.”
“What was the name?” asked James.
The XO of the Russia let out a low warble, “I’m unsure how to translate it. ‘Effort’ might be the closest name I think.”
“The Effort? Describes its Captain rather well.”
“I was the third Captain of the ship, but thank you.”
Megan nodded, “I’m going to go and help in the forward guns, the replacement engine plant will be here this afternoon and the install will start.”
“Alright, after that though you’re going to get 8 hours of sleep at least.”
“I won’t.”
“You will otherwise I will have medical personnel examine you. Will that end well?” asked James.
Megan frowned, “what do you mean?”
“You’ve not gotten more than three hours sleep every night for the past week. You’re either a robot or about to snap. That’s the last thing I need at the moment, understand?”
The two glared at one another, “I’ll do six hours.”
“Eight.”
“Seven.”
9 Years, 6 Months, 13 Days After Eridani Landing
Jikse
“Anything?” hissed [Orin]
“I’ll tell you when I see something, asking me if I’ve seen something every three minutes is not going to help,” growled Diana as she scanned the dense almost rainforest around them.
“We need to get [Hal] back to the city!” hissed [Orin].
“I’m aware, but as soon as we make a call out Sek’s going to trace us here!”
“Well we stay here any longer and [Hal]’s going to die!”
Diana growled several choice curses under her breath, “I’m going to go deeper into the forest, in a west direction and loop around to the other side of the city. That’ll take me ten hours or so given how thick this all is. Once I’m their I’ll make a call for aide like we’re all still together. Ten minutes after that, you make your own call. Sek’s going to already be heading towards me.”
[Orin] frowned, “You can’t make it around to the other side of the city in ten hours! Not in this forest!”
“I’ll make it.”
“Transport!” whispered [Hal] from behind the two women.
[Orin] and Diana both quickly ducked down beneath the large outcropping of rock and moss where the transport had crashed. The impact of the event had been rather mild for everyone, except [Hal]. He had been on the side of the transport that had slammed into the rock, and his right arm crushed between the rock and the heavy gun he had been holding onto for dear life as they plummeted.
The impact had broken the bones in at least four places from what Diana could tell, and already out of nano-machines their was nothing that either [Orin] or Diana could do to help him except try to stem the bleeding.
They had been arguing for over three hours now about what to do, even as they watched several Transports slowly sweep over the forest, Empire and civilian ships alike.
“It’s a better plan than anything else I’ve heard,” coughed [Hal] from where he sat.
“You’ve only been lucid enough to listen to a quarter of the plans!” snapped [Orin]. He ignored her, and looked at Diana.
“You’ll be fine in this wilderness on your own?”
Diana raised the laser rifle, “I’m not a fan of these, but they work. I’ll be fine.”
“Then it’s a good plan.”
“Don’t call before I do!”
Diana spun on her heel and darted into the undergrowth.
“Diana! Damn it!”