2954-02-18 – Tales from the Service: A Fiend in the Dark
Yes, I am aware of the rather terse announcement from Seventh Fleet headquarters last week about a fast raid on an enemy-held system here in Sagittarius. Rumors in the fleet are that it was a mixed bag, that things didn’t go to plan and the mission did not meet all of its objectives, but these are just rumors, and Admiral Abarca’s staff hasn’t responded to my queries on the topic. I’ve heard conflicting rumors about the name of the operation; there are at least two different names circulating, which is odd. Operational code-names are usually shared with everyone involved, even support staffs, so they commonly leak among service personnel before a force jumps off, even when the objectives remain secret.
Obviously, as has been hinted at in several interviews with the admiral, offensive operations have been imminent and in-plan for some months. That the first probing raid met more than expected resistance is, honestly, no real surprise. The Incarnation propaganda makes it appear invincible and irresistible, and to keep this charade up for their own people, they can’t really afford to have millions watch Confederated raiders smash up orbital assets unopposed.
I suspect we’ll have some clear details by this time next week.
The telescopes found stellar occlusions after a few more minutes of idly toying with the net, and once Raywhite had something to point its sensors at, data began to trickle in. There was indeed a main body to the strange entity; it was a nearly spherical ellipsoid with one distended pole, a bit more than two thousand meters long and about fifteen hundred across which emitted nothing and reflected very nearly nothing, excepting of course the grav-flux pulses. As far as they could tell, its surface was entirely smooth and featureless, showing no indication of its nature.
“It remains my intention to collect a sample.” Lieutenant Kato said, after analyzing the data on the main viewpanel for a long moment. “What are our options?”
“I recommend a high-ex wrecker load from the forward tubes, Skipper.” Snyder, the weapons officer, sounded excited to finally have something to do. “That’s bound to blast something clear.”
Kato nodded. “Can we get close enough for the axial cannon?”
Georgi Rye winced. He had been afraid that would be the direction of the skipper’s thoughts. A little cutter like Raywhite had a very small missile magazine compared to a larger warship, and theoretically they had a mission to complete on this cruise they hadn’t even started. Using even one missile body on this unexpected complication would mean a greater chance of running out before they had their next rendezvous with a supply tender.
“For an optimal strike with the axial plasma cannon we’d need to be within about five klicks.” Snyder shook his head. “I didn’t think that was wise.”
“Concur.” Georgi quickly added. “That’s close enough that it might interfere with our main drive.” He felt bad immediately; technically, they didn’t even know if the object had that capability.
“Shame.” Kato shrugged and stood. “Load tube one, wrecker load. Load remaining forward tubes with ship-to-ship cluster charge.”
“Wrecker load aye.” Snyder nodded and turned to his station, to issue commands down to the weapons bay. On a larger ship, the missile systems were handled by auto-loaders, but on a cutter, single missiles were housed inside the pressure spaces and the weapons bay crew was responsible for pulling it down from storage, mating on the warhead, configuring its dynamic explosive payload, and wrestling it into one of the four launch tubes. This crude system was slow and prone to mishap, but it had the advantage of being small and incredibly easy to fit out. Seventh fleet had hundreds of cutters of various configurations, most of them churned out by the score at Philadelphia and Madurai. In any case, any target that could withstand a volley of four standard ship-to-ship missiles from the forward weapons bay and a follow-up two from the aft bay was probably too much for such a small ship to be tangling with at all.
There was little doubt that the object out there in the dark would survive so many hits, of course, at least physically. If it was made mainly of metal, it was the same mass as one of the larger battleships in the fleet, and if it was made of any lesser and more flexible substance, the blast of a wrecker warhead, optimized as it was for demolishing fixed space installations, would probably have even less effect. Still, Georgi told himself, if it had anything more offensive in store than the net, it probably would have used it by now.
“Tube one arming.” Snyder added the weapons indicator overlay to the main display. The first one blinked yellow, while the next three remained a dull red, and the final two flat grey. A moment later, the next indicator switched to a blinking orange, and the first stopped blinking.
“Helm, get us into missile range.” Kato folded her hands. “Set condition one. All gunners stand by.”
At her words, the ship’s computer sounded the alert klaxon. They’d been at heightened alert since the first evasive burn, so most of the crew had very little to do but switch their stations over to combat condition. The overhead lighting on the bridge dimmed and became redder.
“Coming about. Mr. Sokol, keep tabs on that net for me.” Georgi switched the controls to manual and placed his hands on the control pads, which swelled into a pair of textured haptic bulges under his hand. Gentle pressure flipped Raywhite’s nose around to face the target, then he brought the drive up to twelve gees.
“I have a targeting beam lock.” Snyder announced.
“You may fire when we reach optimal range, Mr. Snyder.”
“Aye, Skipper.”
“The net has changed course to follow us. Estimate four minutes until we need to maneuver again.”
“Time to weapon range?”
“One minute, fifty seconds. The weapon will be in beam-riding mode, Skipper.”
“Proceed. Helm, maintain course after launch to ensure optimal tracking. Ready a full-power evasive run on my command.”
Georgi winced. “Aye, Skipper.” Locking the manual controls for a moment, he keyed in a random-evasive maneuver and a full fifteen-gee burn, ready at the push of a button. “Evasive course prepared at your command.”
The seconds ticked by. Though the terms of this encounter should have become predictable by now, Georgi’s skin crawled at the idea that he was piloting the ship right toward the object. His left hand itched to slide over to the button to engage evasive.
“Ten seconds.” Snyder called out. “Secondary missile arm. Five seconds. Four.”
“Net is still safely behind.” Sokol called out. Georgi appreciated this, even though it wasn’t strictly necessary.
“Two. One. Optimal range.” Snyder’s words were punctuated by a dull thump reverberating through Raywhite’s structure. “Tube one discharged.”
There was a brief flash from the bridge’s tiny armor-glass viewports as the missile’s solid fuel starter charge kicked it free of the ship, which quickly vanished as its main gravitic motor took over outside the disruption radius of Raywhite’s own drive. The missile appeared on the tactical plot as a speeding yellow dart, wavering slightly in its course as it acquired the targeting beam and then straightening out into a hurtling straight-line trajectory right toward the bulbous side of the mystery object.
“Give me visual on the main display.” Kato steepled her fingers.
Sokol put the feed from one of the forward telescope cameras on the main display. There was nothing to see; the missile’s gravitic drive was invisible, and the camera could pick out only the brightest few stars. By the displayed magnification, the invisible entity should have filled the middle third of the screen, but nothing could be seen but a blank expanse of void.
“Impact in three. Two. One.” The dart on the plot disappeared into the foggy indistinct area marked out as being occupied by the object. A moment later, the display blinked a white sphere over the area. “Detonation.”
A bright flash of light fading into an orange halo filled the camera feed.
On Georgi’s console, the grav-flux indicator spiked up to three, five, then, to his alarm, ten Mahans. It finally halted at eleven, then began to creep back downward.
As he was watching it, Georgi noticed that the eyes of Sokol and Snyder were directed forward. He looked up, only to see with his horror that the tactical plot had gone quite mad – now the ship’s sensors could see the target well enough, as a glowing red shell on infrared bands with a bright wound in its side, but all around it, space boiled with faint traceries of coiling red substance, as if more of the net-substance was issuing out from the object on all sides.
“Evasive, Mr. Rye.” Even Kato sounded shaken at the sight.
Georgi slapped the control, and once again, Raywhite wheeled and shot outward, away from the strange entity.
“Very good.” Kato took a deep breath. “Mr. Sokol, that had to have blown something clear. Find it for me.”