Command Authority, page 28
part #5 of Last Hunter Series
“If we try to avoid them, they may decide to head for the planet,” he said. “We also don’t know how this new effect will work if we’re deeper in the gravity well. Hell, we’re not even sure the effect will repeat itself when we try again. There’s just too much we don’t know, and we need a plan to figure this out fast. What are our options?”
“We can test skipping at certain intervals, but that’s going to get us close to the Novarites after one more skip,” Derek said. “Our only other option is to move sideways and test this more thoroughly before engaging.”
“I have to say that I’m a fan of doing at least a couple of more of these before we start shooting for real,” Amanda said. “We don’t know what effect this will have on our lasers, and it may cause damage to the missiles that we can’t compensate for. I’m not saying that we should run away, but we need to know more, and we need to know it now.”
“I suppose the answer will depend on what Commander Danek says,” Jack said as he thought about it. “If she feels comfortable doing another—what did you call it? A skip?—once she’s done her checks, we can skip off to the side and fire our weapons when we emerge. How is the enemy reacting to what we did, Derek?”
“They hesitated for a bit but changed course to come after us. We didn’t move far in the general scheme of things, but we did it quickly. They’ve adjusted to that, and I have to assume they’re wondering what we did. They definitely won’t figure it out before we engage them, though.”
Jack suspected the young officer was correct. The Novarites only knew of the hyperdrive, so something just skipping ahead like that was impossible for them to predict. If they’d ever seen an independent quantum drive in use, they might think it was some variant of that, but they didn’t have that knowledge to work off.
His comm went off a few minutes before the fifteen-minute window had expired. “Romanoff.”
“This is Danek. All the checks we can do for the independent quantum drive say it’s in perfect shape. I don’t want to trust that completely because we’re doing something it was never designed for. The hyperdrive is a little less clear to me, but it doesn’t seem to be in danger of failure. Frankly, we put very little energy into it in comparison to what’s normally required. I think all we did was energize the drive and put it into some kind of standby mode. It should be fine unless there’s some type of resonance.”
“That’s good news, but I’m going to need you to make a few guesses for me,” Jack said. “If we were to do this twice in a row very quickly, what kind of effect do you think that would have?”
“Damned if I know, but if you’re going to pin me down, I suppose I’d say it’s probably safe, but we’ll want to watch for that resonance I was talking about. If there’s any instability, we don’t want to push things. Right now, we know that one of these blips is fine. Let’s do another one and then another thirty seconds later. I should be able to give you an answer on how things look in less than sixty seconds after that.”
“Then get ready to check because we’re about to do it. Derek, take us off at about a forty-five-degree angle. I don’t want them to be able to shoot at us before we figure this out.”
The young helm officer tapped his console and Jack’s gut twisted as they skipped through space. Maybe that was a good analogy, and it would differentiate the word they used for the independent quantum drive. This new effect could be called the skip drive. It was as good as anything.
“It looks like we experienced roughly the same thing as we did the first time, sir,” Derek said. “The sensors are scrambled, but they’re clearing up again. I’m still not able to make heads or tails of what’s causing it, but it could be something to do with the quantum boundary. I’m not sure it’s dumping energy in the way Amanda said, but maybe it’s somewhat out of phase with our reality. It’s hard to say if that’s even accurate language.”
He turned around to face Jack. “When we jump—and for that matter, when we use the hyperdrive—the field around the ship protects us as we slip from one reality into another. I’m not picking up any large-scale dumping of energy, but I can definitely detect something along where the boundary should be. What if instead of taking us into hyperspace, the area around us partially phases, and we skip ahead like pinching a rock between two fingers and snapping them. We could be seeing the remnant energy of an attempt to open a passage into hyperspace, but because there wasn’t sufficient power to do so, it never fully formed.”
Jack raised an eyebrow and looked at Amanda, but she shook her head. “Don’t look at me, sir. This is one of those things where you want to ask Commander Danek and Regex. They can maybe explain what we’re seeing. The only thing I can add to the discussion is that it’s difficult to imagine any accuracy during the first few seconds after we emerge from whatever this is. We need to try firing our lasers and see if we can detect any deviation. If that is a boundary between our space and something else, it may not be clean and may truly do something unexpected.”
“Thirty seconds,” Derek said. “Skipping again.”
Once again, Jack’s guts twisted slightly, and they appeared a little further around the Novarite warships. At this point, they were at a forty-five-degree angle from the incoming vessels, and the enemy was still altering course to come after them. They were getting to the point where they could open fire before much longer.
His comm chimed. “Bridge.”
“Engineering. Everything still looks clean on our end, so you’re going to do another one of those and cut some of the time off. Maybe fifteen seconds this time.”
“Keep taking us around the rear side of the enemy,” Jack ordered. “Maybe we can lure them back out into the zone where we can use hyperspace, and they can’t. That would give us a definite advantage.”
The second skip increased the twisting. It wasn’t unbearable, but it was sharper than they’d experienced before. Something had changed.
“That put a little more strain on our systems,” Danek said. “Nothing too extreme, but I don’t think I’d feel comfortable if we did anything more than that. At least not without knowing a lot more about the theory. What you felt there was some of that resonance I was warning you about. It looks like if these little hops of ours come too close together, the boundary between our space and wherever we’re going doesn’t quite have time to settle, and doing it again too soon gets us a bit of turbulence that we probably want to avoid.”
“But fifteen seconds is acceptable?”
“Let’s try it with twenty seconds and keep a little buffer between us and what’s happening. Do two skips in a row, and let’s see what happens.”
Jack nodded toward Derek. “You heard the lady. Two skips, twenty seconds apart.”
The twisting was less intense than the shorter interval, though it was still notable. Maybe doing them every thirty seconds when they were just trying to get somewhere fast and every twenty seconds when they were going to fight someone might be a good initial stratagem.
The two quick skips had gotten them on the other side of the Novarite forces, forcing the enemy to react to them. Unfortunately, the way they chose to respond was to turn away from Hunter and begin running in toward Argent. It seemed they’d decided the big ship could come to them rather than waste their time chasing after something they wouldn’t be able to catch.
That definitely wasn’t what Jack had in mind, but he could only control the tactical situation so much. They still needed more information before he was ready to engage the enemy. If they didn’t dare use the skip drive for twenty seconds once they arrived, they’d be at the mercy of whatever weapons the Novarites chose to use.
It was entirely possible the unsettled boundary between their space and something else would be catastrophic for any weapons trying to pass through them, which would be great for defense but terrible for offense. If their lasers didn’t work and their missiles malfunctioned, they were useless.
“Amanda, once we make the next skip, I want you to fire the lasers the moment we come out. Assess their effectiveness along the curve from when we emerge to when we might be ready to skip again. We’ll repeat that for missiles, but I want to get a good data set for one weapon system before we move on to the next.”
“Sir, I suggest we drop off a cutter before we try that and let them get some good sensor readings,” she said. “We need to know what it looks like when we arrive and see what’s happening from the outside. The resolution we’re getting from inside the effect will make the data unusable.”
“That’s a good idea,” he agreed. “Make that happen, and let’s get it done quickly. We’ll drop off the cutter, skip away, and then come back to open fire at a safe distance. I want the cutter off to one side when we open fire just to be sure our lack of accuracy doesn’t put anyone in danger.”
Arranging to get one of their pilots out and waiting for them took about ten minutes, during which the Novarite warships continued toward Argent. Jack was confident he would hear some strong language from Admiral Allen for letting those ships past him after making a big stink about going to meet them somewhere other than planetary orbit, but the situation had changed.
Once everything was ready, they skipped away from the cutter, then skipped back and opened fire with their lasers. Even without the sensors working at full capacity, Jack could see something was happening. A lot of energy was reflected back from the boundary layer toward the ship. Not enough to be dangerous—not quite—but far more than should have been. As the seconds dragged on, the effect lessened, and at about the five-second mark, the lasers were firing normally.
Amanda communicated with the cutter and received some of their sensor readings. She studied them for a minute, unconsciously shaking her head before she turned and faced the command chair.
“Our weapons will be almost useless the first few seconds after we emerge, sir. During the first second, it didn’t look like anything was coming out of the boundary. It radiated a lot of energy but nothing that would be harmful beyond a few dozen meters. Honestly, I’m not sure that had anything to do with the lasers. There’s a lot of energy being pulled from whatever we went through. The cutter said we were glowing brightly on their sensors along all spectrums, including the visible.”
That wasn’t unexpected news. “And what about after that? I assume the lasers became more dangerous fairly quickly.”
“By the two-second mark, some of the energy was getting through the boundary layer, but they were coming out at an almost twenty-five degree angle. Something was seriously warping their path and attenuating the beam. As weapons, they were still useless. By the three-second mark, things were much clearer, and they might’ve been dangerous to a ship at point-blank range. At the four-second mark, the effect had mostly faded, and there was only a minor effect on our lasers, either for accuracy or power. At five seconds, all was as expected.”
Five seconds was a lot of time in space combat, especially if you were at point-blank range. Far too many of their recent fights had been conducted at those distances, and he wasn’t sure this one wouldn’t be. After all, they hadn’t tried to emerge at a specific location yet. Right now, they were skipping ahead and coming out wherever the drives dropped them. For precision work, that was unacceptable, but they didn’t have time to learn how any of this worked.
“Let’s repeat the test with the missiles. Once again, now that we know that the boundary affects the weapons, let’s be sure the cutter is in no danger. Do we have any missiles without warheads?”
She nodded. “I took the precaution of ordering some to be loaded when we started doing the weapons testing. We’ll be firing three at a time, which is enough to get us data on how the missiles react. Even so, I suggest we use one live warhead per salvo. We need to know if the boundary layer will cause the warheads to malfunction.”
That sounded risky to him, but she was right. They had to know how the weapons behaved or they didn’t dare use them at all. If worse came to worst, they’d have one of the warheads detonate close to their ship, but their thick hull could stand that. Far better, they’d know what would happen with certainty.
“Then let’s make that happen,” he said. “Same flight regimen as before, and fire the weapons in the same sequence. Let’s hope we don’t have any loud surprises.”
Derek and Amanda coordinated with Danek, and off they went. In this case, the worst did happen, and the first nuclear weapon exploded as soon as they launched it. The blast was close enough to set the hull ringing, and he was certain it had destroyed the launcher they’d used as well as any nearby laser emplacements. None of the missiles without warheads survived either, but that was the blast.
The second salvo of missiles malfunctioned when they tried to cross the boundary and seemingly went in almost every direction except where they’d been fired. The third salvo behaved much the same, though at least they were going in the right general direction. The fourth salvo was almost on target. Almost.
Only the fifth salvo seemed to go true. Just like the lasers, it appeared that was how long they’d have to wait before whatever phenomenon they were experiencing calmed down enough for them to fire their weapons effectively. Irksome, but it was better than being caught unable to maneuver around their enemies.
“It seems we have enough information to at least try to engage the enemy,” he said. “We’ll need a better understanding of where we’ll come out each time we skip, but there’s only so much we can do to master that before the fight. Derek, how long until they reach Argent?”
The young man checked his console. “Ninety minutes, sir. We also can’t count on being able to use this hybrid drive long enough to catch up with them if we hold off. What if it needs to cool off after doing it five or ten times? If we let them get too far ahead of us, we might not be able to catch up with them in a pinch.”
Jack grimaced. “That’s very prudent of you to say. We can’t take the technology we just discovered for granted because we don’t know any of the parameters under which it operates. We’ve got to be conservative, so that means we need to engage them now. Amanda, what effect will the field have on their weapons?”
The young tactical officer shrugged. “I’d imagine it’ll have a disastrous effect on the phased plasma packets. Even so, I’m not sure how that will affect us. That field will disrupt the packets during those first three seconds or so. Maybe even a little longer. Will it reflect some of that back, or will most of it still strike our hull? I don’t know. There’s a possibility they have a much more powerful beam weapon of some kind. I have no idea how something like that would react to the distortion. The only way we’ll know for sure is to have them shoot at us.”
That wasn’t the best news, but it wasn’t unexpected either. In the end, they’d do what they had to do.
“Bring us around, Derek. We’re going to come at them from the side and see if we can dissuade them from going directly after Argent. I’d rather not lose the space station, and I certainly don’t want them getting into range to hurt anybody on the surface.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Try to measure how far we’re going with each skip,” Jack added. “If you feel comfortable doing so, you can play with the power levels for the independent quantum drive just a little. I’m talking tiny amounts to see if that makes a difference in either the distance we’re going or how long it takes us to stabilize again. This isn’t the time for true experimentation, but don’t feel locked into using the settings you’ve been using.”
The young man nodded. “I’ll see if I can get us a little more data without putting us in danger, sir.”
“Excellent. Engage the enemy.”
30
They’d barely disembarked from the cutter when David saw trouble headed their way. Admiral Allen was coming out of the nearest building at the shuttle port and stalking toward his cutter with a furious expression. That wasn’t surprising considering everything that had happened, but he’d have rather avoided this. Too bad he didn’t have any choice in the matter.
He put himself between his traveling companions and the enraged flag officer. “I’m glad to see that you made it down safely, Admiral.”
“What the hell does Romanoff think he’s doing?” Allen demanded, ignoring what David had said. “He’s left this planet undefended and proven he’s unsuited to commanding a dinghy, much less a warship. You’re his intelligence officer. Why doesn’t he have the common sense to protect this world and everyone on it?”
“I’m sure if you ask him, he’d be happy to tell you what his reasoning is. I don’t consider myself qualified to make military judgments, so I don’t bother. I’ll leave that to the professionals.”
That was as politely as he could tell him to take a long walk on a short pier without actually saying so. Allen was looking for a fight, and David wasn’t going to give it to him. Besides, they still didn’t understand Allen’s connection to the conspiracy. Hopefully, some of the data Lisa had extracted would help them understand what they were dealing with, but the man’s motives weren’t pure. Of that, he was sure.
“It doesn’t matter what he thinks he’s doing because if he survives this nonsense, I’ll have him in the brig for disobeying a direct order. He may think he’s immune to taking orders from superior officers because of some ancient regulation, but I won’t tolerate it.”
“I think that may be… premature, Admiral,” a female voice said.
David turned and saw Commodore Robin Monahan walking over from a freshly landed old-style cutter with Sara Nastasi at her side. He found himself frowning a bit at their arrival. Hunter had left orbit hours ago, so why were they just now arriving?
That’s when he noticed they weren’t alone. Trailing behind them were Bronson Rowe and a short, thin woman in a very expensive-looking suit. Behind them was First Assistant Lana McElroy.
