Twilight Serenade, page 19
part #6 of Earth Song Series
“Do you still have a problem with that?” Minu asked. “I’m beginning to regret saving your asses.”
“Many of our people still hold grudges after that incident,” Bakook said, reluctantly. “I completely understand what you did. Time and operating these fine starships have… sculpted my understanding.”
“Sounds like you are saying my generosity changed your opinion,” Minu said.
“I did not say that, only that it has helped shape my new perspective. Of the thousands of species within the Concordia, only a handful have ships. And those that do have one or two. The Beezer have five ships!”
“Six in a few days,” Minu said, reminding him that the Ibeen Zeta was nearly operational.
Bakook bowed in acknowledgement.
“All I’ve ever asked is that you help when called.” She turned and looked at Gilsook. Despite being a dozen centimeters shorter and fifty kilos lighter, she stood less than a meter away. “If that’s going to be a problem, I can find another species that will happily take your place.”
Gilsook growled angrily and leaned forward. Bakook slid between them.
“This is merely a disagreement between captains,” he tried to assure her.
“See that it is cleared up,” Minu said, trying to sound deadly serious. “There may come a time when all our lives depend on there being no hesitation by either of us. The last thing I need is one of your captains deciding to delay a few hours to make some political point.”
“We’ll work it out,” Bakook assured her, turning and not so gently pushing Gilsook away. Minu listened to them growl at each other for a minute, before turning back to the work that continued.
From inside the other Ibeen came a group she’d been expecting, almost two dozen humans, mostly Chosen, wearing the silver stars of the Science branch. “Welcome, Bran.”
Bran Esterosa was in Science when Minu first became Chosen. He’d made the Trials his last year of eligibility, after completing several master’s degrees in various sciences and engineering. Even though he was several years older than Minu, he wore just three silver stars. She’d worked with him a dozen times, and he was one Ted’s and Bjorn’s top-recommended technology specialists. Service had always been more important to him than rank. Minu knew he’d been Bjorn’s preferred choice as his successor over Jasmine Osgood.
“Glad to help. I’ve been reviewing the details of your project and have some ideas.” Most of those with him were young Chosen, and a few were civilian employees. All carried cases of equipment, tools, and parts.
“Great, I have set space aside aboard this Ibeen for your labs and work rooms. I hope to get this fleet mobile in seventy-two hours.”
“That’s not much time to work with,” Bran said, looking thoughtful but not discouraged.
“I’m sure you can get something going. It’s not a hard wall, but it’s important we move as quickly as possible. We’re generating a lot of power, and the chances of being noticed by a passing ship go up every hour we delay. As I mentioned in my briefing, there are six ghost fleets we know about, and three of them are easy marks. We want to get to the other three ASAP.”
“We worked all the way here, and once our gear is moved, we’ll pick up where we left off.”
“Great,” Minu said and clapped a hand on his shoulder.
He took charge of his personnel and moved them along. Back in the lock, Beezer were operating massive bots and using powered suits to move cargo aboard the newly arrived Ibeen. Their share of the already-located salvage would be taken home and sold for profit. Once again, she found herself grateful the Beezer weren’t interested in military hardware.
A few hours later, aboard the Kaatan, Lilith hosted a dinner for senior staff, friends, and family. Her CIC was the largest space aboard the ship, not counting the three cargo holds that were nearly full of ordnance and the shuttle decks. Since the latter really weren’t suitable, she’d tasked her CIC.
Minu couldn’t stop smiling as her best friend went gaga over Mindy. Cherise cooed, cuddled, and tickled the baby through dinner to such an extent that she hardly touched her food.
With her youngest daughter occupied, Minu took the opportunity to get to know the Ranger officers better and to strengthen ties with the Beezer ship commanders. Lilith was aware of the disagreement between her mother and the new Beezer captain and had placed them as far apart as possible. Aaron sat on one side of Minu, opposite Cherise and Mindy. Beside Cherise were Lilith and the Beezer. Next to Aaron were Bran, then Tyler and his two lieutenants.
Minu had just finished her description of the battle of Dervish, embellished by Lilith with strategic details only she could truly appreciate. Aaron began his tale of imprisonment at the hands of the Tanam.
“There I was in an equipment locker not much bigger than the spacesuit I’d managed to stuff my ass into before the ship was blown completely to hell and gone.”
“How long were you in there?” Cherise asked.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “A couple hours? I was beginning to wonder if I’d survive. The suit smelled like cat, and I couldn’t read the displays. For all I knew, I only had a few hours of life support.”
They finished dinner as Aaron talked about his time with the Squeen. The Beezer didn’t seem overly interested in Aaron’s story, until he began talking about the Squeen. Then they paid attention.
“I would recommend caution,” Bakook warned, “when dealing with that species.”
“The Tanam hate them,” Minu said. “We learned that during the… incident on Serengeti.”
“Many older species do,” Gilsook said, speaking up for the first time.
“Can you say why?”
Bakook responded, “No, I cannot. And I think you know why.”
“Something to do with awakening,” Minu guessed. Their looks said it all. Minu wondered, again, what the Squeen had done and what supposedly forbidden knowledge awakening would allow them access to.
“All these ships,” Bran said. “So many, and mostly warships. Tell me, First, what are you going to do with all of them?”
“My mother has a grand plan,” Lilith said, emotionlessly. The two women exchanged looks and slowly smiled.
“But it’s going to take more ships,” Minu said. “A lot more.”
* * * * *
Chapter 23
April 27th, 535 AE
Deep Space, Ghost Fleet #2, The Frontier
It turned out that the 72-hour estimate was far too conservative. Bran Esterosa was true to his word. He’d worked out several options to reactivate the larger Lost ships under control of human or Beezer crews. Unfortunately, they all turned out to be useless.
The Fiisk’s brains had been blown out. There was no computer core or CIC remaining. Lilith conjectured a couple of well-placed shipkillers had penetrated its shields and killed the craft. It was in excellent shape, except for that. Since their working Fiisk was in a similar predicament, mitigated by using the crippled Kaatan as its nerve center, there was little they could do except tow it.
The two Kiile were in much better shape when it came to command and control. Each Kiile had two intact CICs, one for flight operations and one for ship operations. Their computer cores were functional, but they lacked AI for them.
Both carriers were crippled by drive and power supply hits. The power supplies could be temporarily bypassed using ship-class EPCs, of which they had a multitude, rigged up in cargo holds and strung together via plasma cabling. But the engines were another matter.
A small team of the technicians and scientists continued to work on the control system fabrication while the majority were moved under Kal’at to try and get the fabrication plants operating.
“I am certain replacements can be made using the plants,” Lilith assured them. “I’ve consulted with the other Kaatan’s CI, and it assures me it was common for the Kiile-class carriers to produce replacement parts for drives.”
“Parts,” Aaron repeated. “Not entire drives.”
“What is a complete drive except many parts assembled?”
Of them all, Lilith worked the hardest. She split her time between salvaging the remaining wrecks, helping the crews on the bridge control and fabricator projects, spending time with her little sister, and assisting Sergeant Selain in training the Rangers in zero-gravity and starship familiarity. Her average day was nearly twenty hours long. Her implants decreased her need for sleep, so Lilith didn’t notice the effects as much as most humans would. However, the lack did begin to show after some time.
The Kaatan had limited fabrication ability. It was not meant to accept the component blocks, though it could use the materials. They fed huge bins full of debris from the exploded block into the Kaatan’s system, and it produced a new human vacuum suit every hour, a Beezer suit every two, and smaller replacement parts as necessary.
As March disappeared and the end of April loomed, they established a routine, and that worried Minu. It was too easy to become complacent with so much going on.
“One week,” she finally announced at a staff meeting. “I’m giving all teams one week, then we’re moving on to Ghost Fleet number three.”
“What about all these ships we’ve finished and can’t move?” Bakook asked.
“Ibeen Zeta is operational, correct?”
He nodded. “The flight crew has finished simulations, and the ship’s systems check out. It is damaged, but we plan to repair that en route.”
“We’ll strip as much as we can from these ships and leave,” she said, making a chopping motion with her right hand. “We’re a sitting target that’s been here for almost two months. We generate a lot of heat and ambient energy, and the longer we’re here, the farther away we’re detectable.”
“She is correct,” Lilith said. “I have six of the newly reactivated Eseel gunboats observing out beyond our signature range. They are travelling just over lightspeed in all six cardinal directions, slightly ahead of our oldest power signatures. They are now sixty light days out, and 85 light days apart. At their maximum speed of 5,000 times the speed of light, they can be back in twenty minutes, but it is how far apart they’re spread out that is a concern.”
“Can’t you send out more Eseel?” Aaron asked.
“I can,” Lilith said. “If I double up, I’ll have to send another six boats out. That’s a lot of our gunboat force.”
“Can you handle that many remotely?” Minu asked.
“I can,” Lilith said, “but not much more without sacrificing other activities. I’ve considered handing this off to the Fiisk’s CI, but the Chosen technical team is running almost constant control simulations, and it is examining Mom’s project from home. And passing the gunboat sentries back and forth between me and the other CI is problematic, as there is a risk we’ll miss something. We must also remember that having that many gunboats out could draw attention. They spend most of their time coasting just below the speed of light to avoid generating a tachyon wave front. However, they do have to accelerate past our detection event horizon once a day.”
Minu spoke up. “Even with the Fiisk taking some of the load, there is still the issue of fatigue.” She looked pointedly at her daughter. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her hair lacked its usual luster of burnished copper.
“I’m as capable as the situation calls for,” Lilith said.
“But not forever,” Aaron said. “You are still human.”
Lilith’s expression darkened slightly, but she said nothing more.
“Look,” Minu said, “we must draw the line somewhere. It’s that simple.”
A few hours later, as Minu was feeding Mindy, and Aaron was pretending to study schematics while actually nodding off, Lilith showed up in their quarters.
Minu looked up as the door slid aside, revealing her older daughter floating there. Her tired, worn look tugged at Minu’s heart. But she saw excitement on Lilith’s face.
“What’s happened?” Minu asked. She got up and gently placed her sleeping infant in her crib. Aaron still looked bleary eyed, but he was watching as well.
“I sent out another six Eseel gunboats.”
“You didn’t even ask?” Lilith raised an eyebrow, and Minu let it go. “Fine, what did you find?”
Lilith gestured, and the omnipresent holographic projectors activated, showing space around the Ghost Fleet. They were highlighted in blue at the center; six points were described in a sphere around them, then fourteen.
“After sending them out, I pushed the entire squadron out to one light year for maximum effect. I found several objects shadowing our trajectory on a fractionally different course.”
“I thought we were stationary,” Aaron said.
“Only in a relative sense. The entire ghost fleet is moving relative to the nearby star systems at about 12,000 kilometers per second, or about 0.06 C. The CI from the other Kaatan confirms the trajectory matches ours, suggesting that is battle damage, possibly from before the People set up this salvage operation.”
“Any idea what it is?” Minu asked.
“None, Mom. I was waiting to check with you before I went in.”
“Nice to know I’m still in charge.”
Lilith and Aaron exchanged sidelong grins while Minu double checked that Mindy was asleep.
“One light year out? That’s about half an hour in the Kaatan?”
“A little bit more when you consider speed up and speed down. Call it an hour to the nearest signal.”
Minu nodded. “Detach us from the fleet. Send details of our plans to Bakook. Tell him he’s in charge, and we should be back in less than a day.”
* * * * *
Chapter 24
April 28th, 535 AE
Deep Space, Near Ghost Fleet #2, The Frontier
The Kaatan held position a light-minute from their target, the largest of the objects detected by the gunboats. Along with the ship of the line was a squadron of six Eseel gunboats. They left behind four of the reactivated gunboats and two they’d had for years; that was the bare minimum Minu was willing to leave to protect the salvage operations.
The six Eseel were arrayed around the Kaatan like gems in a crown, controlled by Lilith like extensions of her own ship. Together they were a vastly more powerful sensor system, and should the need arise, weapon of war.
Lilith was in the CIC with Aaron and Mindy, watching the sensors slowly, pixel by pixel, using passive IR background scanning, assemble an image of their target.
“Looks like an asteroid,” Minu said as the shape slowly became clearer. It was roughly potato shaped, and slowly spinning on three axes.
“Density scans don’t match an asteroid or comet,” Lilith said. “It’s light metal or plastic.”
Another minute passed, then Aaron suddenly snapped his fingers and called up an interface terminal. He gestured at it and created another display next to the mystery potato. It was a Fiisk battlecruiser. Aaron isolated the drive section with a gesture, it separated and expanded. He created some damage and set it spinning. They matched.
“Well done,” Lilith said, and after a couple of gestures, the match was perfect. “It is almost certainly the drive section of the Fiisk.”
Over the next hour, Lilith used active sensors to build images of a debris field. “This is likely what is left of the battle that precipitated the ghost fleet,” Lilith explained.
Within a light hour’s distance were more than a hundred large pieces of destroyed ships. Some were as big as half a ship, others just one ball-like section.
While Lilith worked to assemble a detailed inventory of their newest find, she flew the Kaatan into visual range of the Fiisk debris. They could all see the drive section of a Fiisk on the image relayed from cameras on the Kaatan’s hull.
Minu tried to imagine the firepower it would take to tear the 250-meter ship in half. She failed.
The display began itemizing the partial ships, further showing the magnitude of the fleet involved in the epic defeat of the People and the size of the enemy necessary to repeatedly deal such a blow.
“Many of the large pieces can be considered parts of entirely destroyed ships. As we surmised, they’re following the last trajectory. Since they’re so close to the ghost fleet, perhaps this engagement was more of a draw.”
The images moved and resorted. “Some of these partial ships are not designs used by the People.”
Aaron had been observing the sorting, and he was getting increasingly excited. He pulled out a tablet and began making notes. Lilith noticed.
“Do you see something, Dad?”
“It looks like there are parts of at least twenty ships that were the People’s designs, and they were all capital ships.”
“That appears correct,” Lilith agreed.
Aaron tapped his tablet and highlighted twelve of the floating chunks of debris. “These are all drive sections,” he said. “Can’t we use them on the Kiile?”
“They’re not Kiile drives,” Lilith said.
“Does that really matter?”
Minu glanced at Aaron, then at Lilith who was thinking. Lilith called up more screens that showed the schematics of the Fiisk and the Kiile. Their engineering sections were highlighted in side-by-side comparisons.
“The drive of the Fiisk is a much more powerful drive,” Lilith said.
“Why would the Fiisk have a more powerful drive?” Minu wondered. “The Kiile is much bigger.”
“The Kiile is not intended for combat maneuvers,” Lilith explained. “When it comes to gravitic drives, size is not as much of a factor as are desired gravities of oppositional sheer. The Eseel gunboats are relatively tiny, yet their drives are more powerful than those of T’Chillen frigates. This enables them to produce gravity sheer forces in excess of 1 million gravities.”
Minu whistled. Aaron had tried to teach her the details of gravitic theory more than once; it had been a more effective cure for insomnia than a glass of mead and a hot bath.
