The antimatter charges acted as detonators for blankets of uranium which surrounded crystalline rods. Rods engineered to absorb the rush of neutrons and radiation released by the detonating uranium, redirecting it into directional beams of coherent X-rays. Struck by the X-ray lasers, three of the four alien warships flared briefly, and then exploded as they lost their internal antimatter containment. The fourth, the farthest away on the starboard side, was hit but did not explode. It held position for a few moments and then began to fall behind.
* * * * *
At the torpedo stations amidships, whoops of joy could be heard. On the starboard side were Gunny Rodriguez, Lcpl. Mohamed Green and Melissa Scott Hamilton—a makeshift crew formed by volunteers since most of the normal torpedo crew were in the boarding party with Captain Jack.
“That’s for giving me a separated shoulder back at Beta Hydri, you alien assholes,” yelled Mohamed. He high-fived Melissa as the Gunny simply sat at the targeting board with a large grin.
On the port side of the ship, the torpedo crew was no less
ad hoc
. Jolene Betts, the only one actually trained in firing the torpedoes, led Jesse Low and Olaf Gunderson. In her melodic Jamaican accent Jesse exclaimed, “dat’s what you get fo’ tryin’ to bust up my bar, ya alien bastards! Ain’ notin’ go so while Jesse around.”
“You’re only worried about the bar?” asked a bemused Jolene. “What about the ship?”
“Well de bar is inside de ship, ain’ it?” Jesse replied with a big grin. “Ain’ dat right Dr. Olaf?”
“Yah, that’s right Jesse,” Olaf answered. “And I hope to be hoisting a few in that bar just as soon as we ditch these alien trouble makers.” Gunderson had volunteered for torpedo duty as a way of clearing his name with the crew. He had been pretty much shunned following his opposition to bombarding Pzzst, and he saw this as a way back into the crew’s good graces.
“Well that was some good shooting, guys,” Jolene said to her crewmates, shaking her head. Then she called the Gunny over the comm: “Hey Gunny, we smoked both of our bogies. One of yours didn’t go boom, what happened?”
“Out of action is out of action,” the Gunny replied. “As far as I’m concerned we’re two for two.”
“No way, you guys are buying after this little dust up is over.”
* * * * *
“Good shooting, torpedo crews,” Gretchen signaled over the comm. “Stay alert, I expect them to rush us just before we get to the transfer point.”
“Captain, we have incoming plasma shots,” called Elena from the science officers station. Immediately Gretchen snapped orders: “15mm crews give us some cover.”
“Ma’am, we are out of bursting dust rounds.”
“Use flechettes then, lay down a pattern aft. Strengthen the aft shields as much as possible, Mr. Medina.”
The 15mm close support weapons began to fire and almost immediately the space around the ship flared with the impossible brightness of an antimatter burst. Chief Engineer Medina called out, “close detonation, the rear shields are down to 60%, Captain…”
Bridge, M’tak Ka’fek
Damn, I wish I could talk to Gretchen and find out what’s going on,
Jack fumed. “Can we tell what happened?”
“The FTL sensors are clearing a bit, it looks like the Peggy Sue blew three of the hostiles out of space and a fourth is falling back, out of the fight,” replied JT.
“Captain, they are still about 20 minutes away from the transfer point,” reported Sandy. “Sir, the aliens are going to be on them before they can transit.”
“We need to do something.” Jack called the team at the particle cannon station aft: “Jacobs, what is going on down there? I need to fire on the alien fleet now, Mister.”
“Yes Sir, we’re trying Captain,” came Matt’s anguished reply. “But every time we go to aim the battery our heads fill with weird swirling colors and stuff. Both Jones and Hitch have already puked from it and I’ve come close.”
“Sir,” said Bobby, “How can we do anything anyway? I mean, even if we fire right now the shot won’t arrive before the Peggy Sue has to transit.”
M’tak! What are we doing wrong!
Jack thought furiously at his new command. Then the answers began appearing in his mind. Whether from implanted knowledge or by suggestion from the AI he realized that it was not too late. “There is still time. The particle cannon, like the sensors, are superluminal.”
“Sir?”
“They fire bursts of high energy particles that travel faster than light by skipping through some of those extra dimensions we normally don’t sense, Mr. Danner. The problem that the men are having is because they are require to mentally compute a multidimensional firing solution.”
“How do we do that?” asked Bear.
“I don’t know, but Dr. Ogawa and Aput are most familiar with the physics of alter-space,” Jack said, mind racing. “You two get to the weapons station, now!”
The pair acknowledged the order and left the bridge at a run.
* * * * *
On board the Peggy Sue things were getting desperate. “Incoming!” cried Elena.
“Flip the ship, Mr. Vincent! We’ll take this round on the forward screens. Fire the 15mm guns forward.” The ship snapped around and the rapid fire railguns spat out a wall of metal flechettes that just managed to detonate a knot of antimatter plasma a kilometer away.
The nose of the ship went opaque in reaction to the explosion as Chief Engineer Medina anxiously watched the shield readouts. “They held, Captain,” he reported seconds later, “but they are down to 48%.”
“That was the last of the flechette rounds, Captain,” Midshipman Palmer reported from the starboard gunner’s station.
“Thank you Miss Palmer. Mr. Vincent, could you and Mr. Lewis target the pursuing vessels with the main railgun?”
“Aye, Captain. How many rounds?”
“All of them, no sense in hording ammunition at this point. Torpedo crews, give them everything we have.”
If we are going down we’re going down fighting.
* * * * *
Mizuki took Hitch’s place at one of the fire control displays and began trying to decipher the targeting system. “This is some kind of six dimensional visualization of the space manifold all nearby objects are embedded in!”
“No wonder I’ve been puking my guts out!” moaned Hitch. “I have a hard time dealing with three dimensions most of the time.”
“I think I have identified the Peggy Sue,” said Mizuki, “the other targets must be the aliens. Do you wish me to fire on them, Captain?”
“Yes, as long as you are sure you are not firing on the Peggy Sue,” the Captain replied from the bridge.
“Firing now.” There was a deep thrumming sound and the light patterns on the display panels rippled. “I do not think I hit anything Captain,” reported Mizuki. The young Japanese physicist turned to Aput and said, “Aput, see if you can make more sense of these visual images.”
“Sure, Dr Ogawa,” the young polar bear replied, “but the chair is in the way.”
“No problem Aput, grab a hold and yank,” said PO Jones, happy to find a problem that could be solved by the application of physical force. With a grunt from both man and bear, the offending gunner’s chair was ripped from the deck and sent flying. Aput moved to the console beside Mizuki. As he came within range of the gunner’s station the visual display that had stymied Mizuki, and caused the others to become nauseous, lit up in Aput’s mind.
“Oh wow! I don’t just see them, I smell them,” he said, “and I can tell what direction they lay in from their scent!”
“You can smell them?” asked an incredulous Hitch. “What do they smell like?”
“Who care’s, Stevie,” yelled Jacobs. “If you got a bead on ‘em, fire the cannon, Aput.”
“I’m not sure how?” the young bear said.
“But I do!” said Mizuki excitedly. “You aim and I will fire.”
“OK, I’m targeting the alien ship closest to the Peggy Sue.”
“FIRE!” yelled Mizuki. Again the equipment thrummed, and the lights shifted. A little less than 30 seconds later, one of the points of light on the tracking display flashed and dispersed like a drop of oil on water.
* * * * *
On the Peggy Sue’s forward display, one of the approaching alien vessels flared and then exploded. “What the bloody hell was that?” said Nigel.
“We got one!” shouted Pauline. With the 15mm out of ammo she was reduced to being a spectator.
“Weren’t nothin’ we did,” replied Billy Ray. As they watch the display the alien ships began to change course. Seconds later, two more of their pursuers exploded into drifting plasma. The remaining aliens abandoned their pursuit, accelerating back toward the star while scattering in several directions.
I don’t know where that came from but I have a hunch,
Gretchen smiled herself. “We will be at the alter-space transfer point in less than five minutes. Mr. Vincent, flip the ship and get back on course. Peggy Sue, are we ready for transit?”
“Yes, Captain Curtis. We will enter alter-space in 4 minutes and 37 seconds…”
* * * * *
“Captain, It looks like Aput and Mizuki are picking the alien fleet apart,” reported JT. The positions of the hostile craft were marked and labeled on the bridge’s encompassing display dome. One by one the labels blinked, turned red and went out. “M’tak wasn’t kidding when it said the particle cannon would shred the attackers.”
“Indeed Mr. Taylor, the enemy has reversed course and are trying to disperse.”
Looks like the gamble has payed off. Oh, Luda, please forgive me, but I would rather you hate me than to have stayed together and watched you die along with the rest of us. This way you and most of the crew will live to see Earth again—and with any luck so will we. I will come back to you, I promise.
“I think they know where the fire is coming from,” reported Bobby. “The tracking readouts indicate the aliens may have fired some plasma bursts in our direction.”
“They won’t arrive for almost a half hour, if we can get the engines up we can easily move out of the target zone,” JT replied. “I’m surprised they know where we are. Those bursts from the superluminal particle cannon must have appeared out of nowhere from their perspective.”
“The impact of the particle beams would result in small asymmetries in the resulting detonations, from which the direction of the attack can be surmised,” M’tak explained.
“What I don’t understand is how Aput can smell alien ships half way across a star system,” Bear rumbled. “I thought the weapon station was projecting some kind of multidimensional imagery into the gunners heads.”
“Evidently polar bears have a part of their brains that is attuned to the targeting system’s projections,” the AI reported. “It is almost like they were designed to do higher-dimensional gunnery.”
The artifact always stressed that the bears would be important once we made it out among the stars,
Jack thought,
maybe this is why.
“We are natural hunters,” Bear said, trying to get his head around the rush of new ideas. “And our sense of smell is the best on Earth. But even I don’t think that smelling a seal under the ice two miles away is the same as smelling an alien starship 30 light-minutes away through six dimensional space.”
“Maybe it’s some form of synesthesia,” offered Corpsman White.
“Syntha what?” asked Bear.
“Synesthesia is a neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. Some people report tasting color or smelling sounds,” Betty explained. “The visions from the targeting system get interpreted by Aput’s mind as a scent.”
“That makes as much sense as anything,” Jack agreed. “M’tak, how soon can we get underway, now that we have learned to fire the weapons?”
“I am continuing to have problems with regrowing some of the gravitonic circuitry for the 3-space drive. The hull puncture caused more damage than I expected. It will be another hour or two.”
Chapter 22
King Lewnhallooshna’s Flagship
“Bring the fleet about!” bellowed the King. The King’s spines rattled with impotent ire. “The scoundrels dare set a trap for Me!”
“We are coming about, Sire,” reported the King’s Commodore. “But the enemy’s weapon cuts through shields and hulls like a solar flare through vacuum.”
“I grow tired of your constant complaining, Bonnahaamshna, your defeatist attitudes,” the King said crossly. Around the bridge, the crew shrank from the monarch’s growing fury. “Fire on the vermin! All ships, fire now!”
The five remaining ship’s of the High King’s fleet complied, sending several salvos of plasma knots streaking toward the cloud of derelicts, 4 AU away. As they were firing two more ships exploded, sending the King into paroxysms of rage, a rage verging on madness. Observing the King’s reaction, Bonnahaamshna could take no more.
The legends are true, this system is cursed! We should never have pursued the warm ones to this place,
He thought.
Now we are under attack by ghosts from the past.
Rather than wait for the inevitable royal impaling, the Commodore turned the tables on the fuming monarch, ramming a spine of his own into his sire’s flank.