“Targeting!” cried Commodore Bonnahaamshna, attempting to deflect the King’s question to his brother. “Have we the vermin in our sights?”
“We have, Commodore,” the younger sibling reported. “The prey are hiding behind a cluster of asteroids and debris roughly 4 AU from here.”
“Are they running, like the timorous scum they are?” blustered the King.
“No, oh Great King. They are not under power.”
“Ah! They sit unsuspecting, oblivious that we are about to strike them a deathblow!” The King was almost beside himself with joy, anticipating wreaking vengeance on those who affronted his dignity. “Best speed, Commodore! Deploy the fleet! They will not escape this time.”
“Yes, your Majesty! Captain, signal all ships to assume battle formation and close on the target,” Commodore Bonnahaamshna ordered.
The vermin will become aware of our emergence in a little over 20 minutes, then we will see if they turn and fight or run like knavish reprobates as the King expects.
With their target in sight, a cautious eagerness spread throughout the fleet, Captains and crew alike anticipating the opportunity to win the High King’s favor by destroying the warm-life fugitives. None dared contemplate the alien ship escaping a second time.
Bridge, M’tak Ka’fek
“Do we have engines, M’tak?” asked an anxious Captain Jack.
“Not yet, Captain,” replied the AI. “Most of the ship’s equipment has been powered down for 4 million years, all of the circuitry must be carefully tested and broken pathways regrown. We should be able to maneuver in a few hours.”
“Define ‘few’, M’tak,” the Captain commanded.
“About 45.”
This AI has a lot in common with Peggy Sue’s computer,
Jack thought peevishly. “What about shields? Offensive weapons?”
“I am also running boot-up tests on those subsystems, Sir. Shields should be available in 24 hours and particle cannon a few hours after that. I would caution that powering up the particle canon will be detectable by even primitive equipment.”
“So you are saying we should play dead until we are able to fight,” the Captain nodded, “and preferably able to maneuver.”
Perhaps I should be thankful that the FTL sensors came online almost immediately. At least the Peggy Sue is away.
JT had returned from the fuel storage area and was working at one of the navigation consoles. “Captain, the Peggy Sue is about 48 hours from the transfer point. The hostiles are roughly the same distance from us as the Earth transfer point, with us sitting at the vertex of an equilateral triangle.”
“Yes,” said Bobby, who was busy plotting possible courses for friend and foe alike. “If they try to maneuver to enter alter-space, the hostiles probably won’t catch the Peggy Sue. But if they go for a simple intercept, they will be all over them before they can transit.”
“We have to hope that the Peggy Sue can evade or deflect the enemy’s fire until they leave 3-space. And we have to get the M’tak underway and capable of offensive action before the Peggy Sue can be overwhelmed,” Jack said, thinking out loud.
“The M’tak is sure that we can take the hostiles out once it is up and running?” JT asked.
“Yes, Mr. Taylor,” said the AI, speaking directly to someone other than the Captain for the first time. “Once the shields are up and one of the particle batteries is online we will shred them like the dawn shreds a morning mist.”
“You are much more poetic than the Peggy Sue,” JT observed.
“I am sentient, the Peggy Sue is not.”
“That we can handle the alien ships I’m taking on faith, it’s the timing I’m worried about,” Jack summarized. “It is going to be a damned close-run thing…”
Bridge, Peggy Sue, Underway
Forty four hours after their hasty departure from the spaceship graveyard, the Peggy Sue was at general quarters, shields up and all weapons crewed. At the helm, Billy Ray and Nigel were piloting a randomly jinking course, first accelerating at +30 Gs then backing off to only 10 to add even more variability to fleeing vessel’s path. Keeping his eyes on the course plot, Billy Ray said to his copilot, “we are getting close enough to the transfer point that the varmints behind us can guess where we’re headed. Unless I’m mistaken, we’ll soon get to try the doctors’ new plasma defenses.”
Did he really say ‘varmints’?
Nigel thought in mild disbelief. “Regardless, getting out of this system intact will not be easy.”
Listening from the captain’s chair behind and above the helm, Captain Curtis commented on her helmsmen’s exchange. “Come now, Mr. Lewis: for what, pray, is the pleasure of doing an easy thing?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” the helmsman replied. “I don’t know the author, but that isn’t Shakespeare or Chaucer.”
“That would be Edger Rice Burroughs,” drawled Billy Ray. “From
The Gods of Mars.
”
“The Gods of Mars, that certainly fits, Captain,” Nigel allowed. “We shall certainly need the help of all of Sol’s warlike deities before this day is through.”
* * * * *
“We draw close to the vermin, Great King!” enthused Bonnahaamshna. It was beginning to look like they would run the prey to ground before they could escape into the small dimensions.
Still, there was something odd about the way the vermin left the debris cloud almost a half hour before they could have seen the first emissions from the fleet’s emergence into 3-space. It seemed a strange coincidence, almost as though they anticipated our arrival. Whatever, we are close enough to start firing on them in earnest.
“By-your-leave, your Magnificence, but a salvo or two might help the alien scalawags realize the hopelessness of their situation.”
“Yes, excellent thinking my son! Tell the fleet to let fly. They will soon rue the day they so cavalierly waltzed across my system.”
“All captains, by the King’s command, fire upon the fleeing rapscallions,” the Commodore implored his captains. “Let the vermin feel the sting of our plasma!”
* * * * *
“Captain, I’m getting X-ray and gamma ray emissions from the pursuing vessels,” said Jo Jo Medina.
“Rear shields to Maximum,” Gretchen ordered, “we have incoming fire. Dr. Saito, perhaps it is time to try your countermeasures.”
“Yes, Captain,” the Japanese astrophysicist replied, his hands dancing across the panel in front of him. “Countermeasure firing now.”
From the aft portion of the ship, four of the 15mm close support cannon fired briefly, their multiple barrels describing short arcs as they discharged several hundred rounds each. Each munition traveled a short way from the ship before bursting in a cloud of metallic power. The Peggy Sue accelerated away from the expanding metallic cloud bank.
Five seconds later the salvo from the alien fleet collided with the tenuous cloud of metal dust at nearly the speed of light. While the dust cloud would have been easily handled by a ship’s shields, the effect on plasma knots traveling at relativistic velocities was instantaneous and spectacular—the entire salvo detonated far behind its fleeing target.
“That worked well, Doctor,” Captain Curtis remarked. “How many more times can we pull that trick?”
“The result was quite satisfactory, Captain. We can probably fire another ten times, given the amount of powdered metal we have. We took all of the supplies for the fabricators, less that needed to construct the shell casings.”
“It will have to be enough. Mr. Vincent, time to run straight for the transfer point. Maximize the time the cloud provides cover behind us.”
“Aye aye, Ma’am,” Billy Ray responded.
“Well that’s a bit of good news,” Nigel said in a whisper.
“Not really pardner. Right now the bushwhackers are about 10 light-minutes behind us and closing. That means about 20 minutes between salvos, assuming they wait to see the effect before firing another. With ten more dust clouds we have bought ourselves maybe three hours.”
Nigel blanched at Billy Ray’s tactical arithmetic. The helmsman swallowed and voiced the final, inescapable observation: “And we are still four hours from the transfer point…”
* * * * *
Behind the fleeing Earth vessel the High King’s fleet came on. Having figured out the Peggy Sue’s defensive ploy after two ineffectual broadsides, the Commodore ordered the faster ships to angle away from the main body of the fleet. This would broaden the cone of incoming plasma torpedoes and shorten the time that an ejected dust cloud could mask the vermin’s ship from offensive fire.
“These vermin are inventive, my King,” the Commodore observed. Then, realizing that the remark might be taken amiss, he quickly added, “of course, the harder they fight the greater your inevitable victory will be.” The Commodore watched as four of the fleet’s thirteen vessels pulled way, two each on opposing flanks. Despite their roundabout courses, those smaller, faster ships were rapidly closing the distance on the alien wretches.
Bridge, M’tak Ka’fek
Jack was anxiously pacing the bridge, trying to will the M’tak Ka’fek’s engines into operation. Most of the boarding party members, now the cruiser’s crew, were watching the bridge displays showing the alien fleet slowly closing the gap with the Peggy Sue. Lengthening transmission delay slowed the status reports from the fleeing Earth vessel.
“Captain, transmission delay has rendered my control of this avatar infective; Whatever counsel we might provide will no longer be timely; We fear that we must wish you the best of luck and hope our paths will cross again.”
Jack eyed the floating drone that served as the Triad Ambassador’s avatar, realizing that what they said was true. Moreover that the message must have been transmitted nearly a half hour ago.
“Yes, Ambassador, please render what assistance you can to Captain Curtis and those on board the Peggy Sue. I will see you when this vessel arrives in Earth’s solar system.” The drone beeped and slowly floated to the floor, no longer under NatHanGon’s control.
I guess he won’t get my last message then,
thought Jack.
I retransmitted your parting thoughts to the philosopher plant, Captain,
M’tak signaled.
They must be a unique specimen to venture alone into the wider galaxy.
Your animosity toward the Triads boarders on the irrational,
Jack replied
. I take it you found their behavior during the conflict 4 million years ago to be less than admirable.
Is it not a human saying, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend?” The Dark Lords are the enemy of all warm life yet the Triads were not our friends. A few of them traveled this arm of the galaxy, observing the hostilities but never taking a side—as if being neutral would protect them when the Paladins were gone. I am surprised that they survived, where did you find them?
We picked them up from what we took to be their home planet, in the star system designated Gliese 581. They may have been pacifists long ago, but they are not so neutral now and they definitely are not defenseless. I think they are curious about what happened since the Great Schism, as you call it.
We shall see, Captain. We will need as much help as we can get if the Dark Lords are again roaming the galaxy.
The entire conversation between the Captain and the AI took only a few seconds, not long enough to strike the crew as odd. “What is the status of the shields and weapons systems, Mr. Taylor?” Jack asked.
“We have shields in standby and a battery of what the ship claims are particle cannon on-line,” the science officer replied. “I’ve got Hitch, Jacobs and Jones trying to figure out how to fire the darn things.”
“Captain, the running battle between the Peggy Sue and the aliens seems to be heating up,” called Sandy. She and Bobby were seated at what was supposedly the pilot’s station. “It looks like some of the aliens are trying to envelope the Peggy Sue and she is firing on them.”
Bridge, Peggy Sue
“The ships that are trying to flank us are getting a bit too close for comfort,” Captain Curtis said in a loud voice. “Torpedo launchers, fire a spread at each of those ships, half and half.”
“Aye aye, Captain,” came the reply from both the port and starboard torpedo crews. Seconds later, status indicators lit on Gretchen’s screen indicating weapons away.
Two flights of torpedoes were fired at each of the four alien vessels—the first flight armed with high explosive antimatter warheads, the second armed with warheads of a different design. Those also carried antimatter charges but they were not HE rounds. Accelerating toward the alien warships at close to 1000 Gs for the first minute of flight, the torpedoes’ engines shut down and they drifted toward their targets with a relative velocity of nearly 600,000 m/sec.
A little over five minutes after firing, nearing a quarter of a million kilometers from the ship, the first wave of torpedoes detonated. At least one detonated on the shields of an alien vessel, but most were set off by counter fire from their intended targets. The explosion of the first wave was a signal to the second to maneuver briefly, adjusting their bearing. Once aimed dead on target, the second wave detonated while still a ways from the alien vessels, precisely as they were designed to do.