Lady of the White Fleet - Hard science-fiction original

[GUTB]

Technical Forward
Time and Distance

All references made to distances relevant to outside of a ship are made not with units of arbitrary volumes of space, but with units of time. This measurement system is used to more easily encompass the vast volumes of space that would be impossible for the human mind to conceive of. For instance: “Ten seconds out” would be a measurement of how much distance a beam of light would cover in the space of ten seconds (approx. 18,600,000 miles, or about half the distance between Earth and Mars at their closest point).

Because of this great distance, objects are perceived in the same space as the observer, but in a different time. By the time the tell-tale radiation signal or photon strikes a sensor, that information is, essentially, old news, and the greater the distance between object and observer, the greater this dilation. For example, the light that you see from a twinkling star in the night sky has actually taken tens, hundreds and even thousands of years for it to travel all the way to Earth. In relation to military navigation and threat detection systems, this relative time-dilation poses a unique obstacle to effective operations over the vast distances made possible with faster-than-light technology. This issue is made even more difficult in a military environment because vessels can be designed to be invisible to passive detection methods – so that an active scan suffers from a twice the dilation for the round trip back to the observer’s sensors.

The best solution to this difficult problem is to make an educated guess about the relative position of an object in space based on its position in time. A rock floating through space at a certain velocity obviously cannot change velocity or vector under its own power, and so once the accurate information has been gained about which direction it is going in and how fast it is moving, a good estimate can be made about where it will end up after a given amount of time. In this manner, it becomes possible to accurately pinpoint where an object is in space the moment it is detected. In other words, an object’s moment in time and position in space can be joined by an observer across great distances.

A rock floating through space is a simple example. A powered space vehicle is something else entirely to predict, because while a good estimate of mass can be made, as well as an accurate measurement of velocity and direction – it is impossible to know when the crew will decide to engage the engines to speed up, slow down, or turn the ship onto a different course. Advanced tactical computers attempt to make predictions based on likelihood, like a farmer may judge the likelihood of rain based on past precedent, obvious signs, and known data. The broader the prediction, the more likely it will come true (the sun will come up tomorrow). The particular challenge for military systems in space is not broad predictions, but close, meaningful predictions. When a commander views a probability plot of a number of targets, the computer system generates predictions of based on known fundamentals of physics – such as mass and velocity – and presents these predictions as lines of probability that grow from the known location of any given target to represent where it may travel in the future.

In order to more closely plot this probability image, the tactical computer does much more than simply plug a set of physical values into an equation and crunch them. Future computational capability is far beyond the level of simple positive/negative logic gates, and can crunch mathematical expressions far in advance of what we have today, that quantify advanced non-numeric abstracts. This technology gives future probability tracking technology the ability to make predictions on known behavior of similar targets. In other words, the computer can approximate the process the human mind uses to predict abstract concepts. Under many circumstances, this system can come to the same conclusions a human commander would about a tactical situation and how to best handle a given a scenario.

Despite advanced technological solutions to this old problem, the fundamental issue remains unchanged: how can human beings predict the future? We’re still working on it.


Part 1

The relativity drives dumped off their energy, leaping the light boundary several times before settling down to a level well below light speed. From there it was just a matter of coasting the short distance to their objective while gently breaking.

The bridge of ACOV-01 erupted with purposed chatter.

"Position correct, say again, position correct."

"Five seconds, no contact."

"Command is nominal, checking coms standby."

"Nerves are green, running checksum standby."

"Delta wing nominal, command, standing by."

"Coms is nominal, checking sensors standby."

"Ten seconds, no contact."

"Checksum green, initializing core in five."

"Lenses nominal, standing by."

"Sensors return nominal strength, standing by."

"Fifteen seconds, no contact."

"Core is initialized, loading primaries now."

ACOV-01 (Advance Control and Observation Vehicle) blinked back to life with it's primary mission software active, and started crunching trillions of complex computations on the incoming radiant energy impacting it's various sensor surfaces. Passive resolution deepened dramatically, and the nav/threat screens began to expand beyond lightspeed as the probability software started to build a picture of the universe as it will probably exist tens of minutes from now.

With no threats immediately detected, 3rd Captain Paul Furlow could relax slightly. "Deploy the lenses."

"Deploying lenses in ten, standby."

"Nav, do we have an exact fix?"

"We are at location 0, error is negligible."

Furlow nodded to himself. Good. Outside the cramped hull of ACOV-01, the painstakingly-built lens booms would be rapidly unfolding, arranged perfectly spaced around the hull. "Get us resolution of target."

After several incredibly minute adjustments to the lenses, an image started to take shape. "We are un-occluded," reported his lens officer. The main tactical screen lit up, and the bridge fell silent.

An orbital station, that was much clear. Also clear was its alien construction – a jumble of gray and lighter-colored modules linked together in a seemingly hap-hazard fashion. “God, look at the size of that thing,” someone breathed. Around the gigantic structure, the hazy form of tiny ship-modules and the larger clusters moved lazily about. Behind the spectacle was a planet – fourth from its star, MLS-34 (Medium Life-Supporting). Blue, so much like the Earth itself. No one knew what the aliens called it, if anything. To Furlow and his crew, it was simply MLS-34-4.

Another on the bridge must have had the same thought. “Captain, we should send the image to the rest of the ship,” suggested the resident political officer, speaking for the first time since dropping in-system. Furlow didn’t like things which distracted him from his job, and the politicals were often adept at doing just that – but this time, he liked the idea. “Ops, can we get the feed ship-wide? The men should see this.” When did his heart get to be beating so hard?

But they were actually doing it!

Furlow gave command to his XO, gently pushing himself from his G-seat. Entering the next module forward through an armored bulkhead, he was met with a loud conversation which broke momentarily to note his presence and then continued. The intelligence module had an array of screens and still-tables, now all filled with images of the alien station activity.

“Big holds, small propulsion, little thrust – short range hauler?”

“That assumes they have the same economic system of time-value that we do. For what we know, it could be a long-range hauler or not a cargo vessel at all,” responded a political xenologist.

“Those cluster ships – see here, do you see those links? They’re pretty small, probably just tethers. Maybe they transport data and liquids to automated systems?”

“Notice only one of them seems to be rotational.”

“Different colors –assuming our image processing isn’t artifacting, could we be looking at a heterogonous design? It matches with what we know of their fighting ships.”

“I don’t see any weapons. It looks civilian.”

“Regardless,” Furlow broke in, cutting off the political xenologist. “We have an incoming Alpha strike in fourteen-hundred.” He didn’t miss how the faces of his Alien Studies Corps went quiet. “We have one shot at this, and we need a total-saturation target solution. The other data will be properly studied aboard Grand Prominence.” He turned his attention to the corner station that was focusing in on the planetary sphere. “Do we have enough data on MLS-34-4 for an attack recommendation?”

A waspish man with Intelligence tags shook his head. “Not at this time. Judging by the color of the atmosphere we think 4 has a fairly thick ozone layer. We can’t tell without a detailed laser scan or a sample. A close-by Giant burst would definitely irradiate the surface, but we can’t say to what effect. Anything more is pure guesswork.”

“Work on that, please. Gentlemen,” he bade them while floating across the room to access the crew modules.

The common crew module which joined the command modules with the ops sections was like a cafeteria back on any Earth office – except for the zero-g railings, ugly plastic fittings on every edge and lack of any hot food. A pressure-suited flight officer was munching on a sandwich, and Furlow caught his eye.

“How are you men doing?”

“We’re holding and all tensed up, sir.” The man impulsively scratched the hardwire neural interface on his neck.

“2nd Flight Officer Hamad, isn’t it? You’ve ever flown Forward Control before?”

“That’s a positive, flew Forward ten missions. With Roman’s crew.”

“You doing okay?”

“Yeah, Roman went down doing his job. This is my first command. I’m bench-warming for Harolds.” Empty, dark eyes met Furlow’s for a moment, and then glanced towards the screen that was playing the image of the alien station. “Burn, you fuckers,” he muttered, as if commenting on some insect infestation in the hallway outside his quarters.

After grabbing a sandwich, Furlow moved through the other crew sections, conversing with his men and trying to maintain the loose, easy camaraderie he felt characterized his command. Aboard Prominence he would have to be blockaded by ramrod salutes and shouted acknowledgments. Spirits were high: they going to observe the target, and deliver a huge blow to the enemy.

Command reported preliminary intelligence placed alien world-bound population anywhere from between one million at the very least, but closer to a billion. Despite the tremendous range of possibility, one billion was enough to raise eyebrows and not a few laughs. The orbital station? At least fifty thousand of what must be the best and brightest (so the political officers argued) of the aliens in this system.

“Gentlemen,” he told them in the general mess section, smile across his face. “I believe I can share with you now certain particulars of our mission. We’re not, strictly speaking, on a recon mission. We have been charged with delivering our White Lady’s most serious and grave misgivings to the doorstep of our foes. In twelve-hundred, we are due eighteen Alpha packages for delivery!”

A cheer went up.

A secret really only kept from the lower crew functionaries, but there was no reason to leave them in the dark. It helped morale.

After making his rounds, he returned to Command. There he read up on various readiness reports and non-critical operational data. While going over the lens service history, his tactical officer’s voice cut through the general chatter: “We have contact positive, grid 002881!”

Furlow punched his Command Priority View Channel button, flashing the nav/threat grid onto the central view screen as well as on every other console. Long familiarity with the grid system told him instantly that the new contact was at the extreme edge of tactical range, roughly fifteen light-minutes away. It was drawn in the orange square of an unknown contact picked up via passive detection.

“High-frequency pulse radio source,” supplied his tactical officer. “One burst so far, about point-five seconds. Definitely artificial.”

“Designate. Can we get a probability?”

“Designating target 001. Negative that, too far out for a good estimate.”

Furlow inhaled. Alright, so they couldn’t tell where it was coming from, where it was going or if it was doing something to indicate it saw them. He hit the comms channel to the Intelligence module. “Any guesses on 001?”

“Probably a mapping or exploration vessel. Short bursts, high-resolution – they want to take snap-shots of the area and conserve energy.”

That was also his own guess, but guesses weren’t good enough, they never had been. But they did carry with them the support of a FARV (Fast Attack/Response Vehicle) unit, riding out on the hull. A support company of six, the standard company for an ACOV.

“Vector in a recon flight, package one, eliminate any threats,” he spoke, and was followed immediately by a beeping noise which confirmed that the Command-and-Control software understood his verbal order, had generated a full-form set of mission orders, sent an abbreviated version to the FARV unit plus an automatically generated mission plan. Within moments, a pair of FARV-5s were cycling into launch position, their hard-wired pilots already having digested the mission plan and ready to go. The package loaders remained dormant, as a standard load-out recon team was normally always pre-configured on Forward missions.

“Bravo-1 is locked, envelope is green, discharge on command.”

“Discharge.”

Furlow could swear he felt the charge in the module, as the ACOVs capacitors dumped their energy into the relativity drive. Bravo-1, locked into the drive coil, was ejected out via catapult the instant before the coils pushed light past itself, and it was gone in a flash of light.

“Discharge complete, envelope successful.” On the tactical grid, the view zoomed to the contact area, and a green triangle appeared with a slash through it. This represented the expected drop-point for Bravo-1. The slash would disappear once they received its response communication. Bravo-2 was pushed out, and its designation appeared on the screen as well.

“Bravo is away, all nominal.”

Captain Furlow mused that “recon” really meant “kill it before it sees you”. At fifteen minutes out, he knew that his control of the tactical situation ended the moment he spoke the order to launch; the FARVs would be dropping out within a few seconds of the estimated contact event, and by the time he knew about any new contact they’ve acquired, they would already be committed to the attack.

An experienced bridge officer should know better than to wear himself out staring at a tactical screen that wasn’t likely to change in fifteen minutes, but he sat and watched all the same. When the all-green message finally arrived, on schedule, he let go of a silent breath. The slightest error in vectoring, or just a small miscalibration of the drive coils could have left one or both men either hopelessly lost in deep space or being dropped into a fractional-light state, from which they didn’t have close to enough fuel to de-accelerate from.

The mission plan created automatically by the ACOV mission primaries was the correct one, as it usually was. Two vehicles with recon packages, accelerating gently into a counter-rotating maneuver weaving an expanding double-helix towards the estimated contact point. They would emit nothing except narrow beam communication to the mother ship. Upon contact, one could accelerate hard into a direct attack vector, while the other stood ready to intercept any surprise counter-maneuver. Against a single target, this strategy coupled with the massive acceleration of the FARV-5 was an almost guaranteed success.

His XO, 3rd Captain Xue, approached him. “Sir, we should confer for ops meeting.” Glancing at the countdown, Furlow noted that his XO was correct. “Agreed. Staff conference now,” he replied, followed by the two beeps.

Part 2

Part 2

The conference section of the command module sat raised above the command deck, surrounded by sound-proofed clear plastic that allowed the ship officers to easily monitor operations. Along with his XO, 1st Flight Officer Harrolds, Officer of Science Gerald, Officer of Intelligence Rielly, and the State Liaison Officer Kemp – the total senior compliment of ACOV-01 – joined them there.

Guiding himself into the stiff padded bench, Furlow regarded his senior crew, and spoke the traditional word of commencement. “Report.”

By unspoken consent, Gerald started off by tapping his slate, initializing the center holo. A wire-frame image of the alien orbital station backdropped by 34-4. “What we’re seeing here, gentlemen, is an alien orbital facility. Geo-synchronous high orbit. Four outer rotational sections —“ the image zoomed and highlighted four sections. “We believe these sections, here, are cold holds. These long protrusions from the central ring could be communication arrays of some type. No indication of major armaments.”

“How can you be certain?” asked a sharp-featured Rielly.

“Nothing is certain, but even if they are alien, they are subject to the same rules of energy conservation we are. In high-speed attack craft, you have to have shielding to protect yourself from impact with dust or ice, so that box strapped onto a FARV could have anything inside. But on a relatively stationary object, why try to stuff everything into thick boxes, when that mass can be used for much more useful things – like storing food or equipment?”

“In other words, if it looks like storage, than it is storage,” Furlow summarized to keep the meeting moving. “Have your people got anything on the survival factor?”

Gerlad shook his balding head. “Against eighteen Giants? Overkill is an understatement.”

Furlow nodded, he didn’t think much of anything was going to last under several hundred gigatons of anti-matter reaction. “And 34-4?”

“We can’t be very exact without better data…”

He waved away the concern. “We have Giants to spare, here, anything that sounds reasonable we’ll give a shot at.”

“Here and here,” he replied, touching his slate, and markers appeared on holo. “Put two on opposite ends of the equator, close as you get them in. If the atmospheric composition and density is anything like Earth, you should be able to irradiate most of the surface. Should cause a significant disruption of its biological systems.”

“Permanent?”

“Can’t tell you for sure, nobody’s ever tried anything like this before.”

“So we’re still going to have Grand Prominence deliver the knock-out blow. But anything can turn up, so I think we’ll go with your recommendation, Officer, thank-you.” Furlow looked at his Intelligence Officer. “Do we have anything interesting on our enemies?”

Thomas Reilly, a man who spent the better part of his 43 years bent over photo stills and going through intelligence references and building reports and writing papers was perfectly in his element. “This facility is definitely inhabited. You can see portals on the rotational bulkheads with artificial light sources emanating from behind them, but the big give away are these—“ he tapped his own slate, zooming the view and overlaying with a real-time image showing openings blowing out puffs of white mist which quickly dissipated into space.

“Thermal dissipation. They do it the same way we do – take some ice and throw it into the heat-sink and then blow out the steam. As you may know, gentlemen, in space there is no atmosphere so nothing to transfer heat to, so whatever heat you generate you are basically stuck with. Habitable structures in space require constant heat blow-off to keep the environment inside healthy for people – or aliens.” Gerald looked like he had something to say to that, but he kept his peace. “We on Prominence are somewhat sheltered from that necessity, but much more efficient structures such as this orbital are not.”

He spread his hands. “The aliens have typically used thin low-grade alloys of various types for their other orbital habitats. If we posit that ninety-percent of the station volume is hollow, you could be looking at, say, ten million tons of iron-equivalent mass.”

Furlow nodded. “About the mass of a Home Station.”

“These regular spurts of blow-off show us that this station is heavily populated. There would be no other reason for so finely controlling the temperature.”

The State Officer shifted in his seat. “We can safely assume a Giant hit will erase this station. But what about defenses?”

Reilly sat pack and looked pensive. “That’s a good question. Nothing on the superstructure – at least, nothing visible to us – suggests any weapons platforms. We know they use lasers and missiles, but the target appears to be naked. Could be that they rely on low-earth-orbit defense platforms. No evidence of loitering combatant vessels, either.”

“Still, there’s quite a bit of traffic,” Furlow pointed out, zooming the image onto the central spine, showing smaller vessels moving in and out of dock.

“Lots of zero-g vessels. These big engine mass ships, here, link up with these canister ships. We’re still not quite clear on the relationship, but nothing we see here is a known combat configuration.”

“The current thought is that we’re seeing an aspect of the alien economic system,” interjected Gerald. “One trade association or clan handles the engines and thrust mass, while another handles resource extraction, fabrication, farming, or whatever else.”

“Put a stop on the Giants.” All heads turned to the sole wire-pilot in their company, Harrolds. “The aliens don’t have any defensive gear. Four f-fives could do this. Put one fusion package on the station and back him up with a laser package to take out loitering ships. Put a smart package in on a counter vector against the main traffic lane out of the station a few light seconds out. The two primaries can go low-orbit and eliminate threats launching from the surface. Let’s save some Giants.”

“Your recommendation is noted,” Furlow replied, quickly, to cut off the rebuttal that was soon to follow from Kemp. “But our orders are for complete annihilation of the target—“ he didn’t add that it would also play better on Earth “—and I can’t promise success with just four FARVs. Besides, I don’t want to have to explain to Prominence why I lost one of your men because I thought I could save a few missiles.” That last statement spread grins all around.

He relaxed as much as possible in zero-g and let out a breath. “And we don’t know what kind low-orbit or surface assets they might posses, plus the issue of our unknown neighbors.”

“I concur,” said Science. “Too many variables, we won’t be able to build a sound probability image without the assets aboard Prominence at location. At which point the issue becomes moot anyway.”

Intelligence nodded his agreement. The 1st Flight Officer smiled half-heartedly and nodded in turn. Curious, he often thought, was the appeal the wired pilots had for strapping themselves down into a steel cocoon and being hammered by tremendous g-force while in a half-conscious state. They never got tired of it, and leaped at every opportunity go under the wire.

And his XO, in charge primarily of ship ops, indicated that he had nothing to add. This was a good thing; that meant that nothing was seriously broken.

He was about to signal the end of the conference when a chime cut through meeting capsule. “Bravo has contact,” said the senior ops officer via the intercom.

Harrolds shot from the bench with long-experienced grace. “Excuse me,” he said as he angled through the exit port, presumably en route to the flight module. Furlow traded glances with his XO. “Well, that’s that. This conference has concluded.” He suppressed a smile of wry amusement as the acknowledging beeps answered his command.

Part 3

Furlow caught the headrest of his chief tactical officer, using it to gently pull himself to the deck. The tac display was a jumble of designation markers for range, relativity gauges, space body tracks and signal strength plots. If he wanted to, the operator could track every piece of rock above the size of a grain of sand. Those who were destined to go through the fleet academies were often given a demonstration of a bag of screws and nuts being flung out in front of a phased array hooked up to a Primary-8 nerve core, to watch in wonder as the display lit up with thousands of designations instantaneously, and the next moment predicted exactly where each piece would land before it had actually happened. But what interested Furlow at the moment was the tactical relativity plot quadrant that tracked the current status of Bravo flight – in fact, the pilot decisions that caused the colored vector-probability lines sprouting from their vehicles had already been made roughly fifteen minutes ago. In effect, ACOV-01 was only watching the replay.

“Bravo-1 has achieved passive contact,” spoke the tactical officer on watch. “Same high-frequency radio pulse. We picked it up at the same time we got it over the beam from Bravo, so it’s definitely a verified contact. Bravo in pinging for narrow contact now.”

Furlow nodded to himself as we watched the display intently. Both FARVs could estimate the source of the radio burst and would now be flashing their acquisition lasers into areas of space based on the best guesses of their PN/TP (Primary Navigation/Threat Probability) software, a procedure which is often referred to as “pinging” or “spiking”.

It wasn’t long before ghostly white Target 001 transformed into an orange square. “Bravo has a lock, and are slaving their lenses now.”

The jumbled image that appeared on the lens channel view quickly sorted itself out as the hundreds of apertures that composed a FARV’s compound lens adjusted themselves and the imaging software adjusted light information to account for the relativity lag. The image of a vessel took shape, with a large halo-type rotational hull ringing the slender central spine with spherical clusters on one end and one large dome on the other.

“A manned vessel?” Furlow mused.

“Looks like it,” commented his XO.

Strange, he thought. Mapping and in-system exploration was typically done by drones, because space was unimaginably vast and even if you confined yourself to pockets of asteroids or ice dust, like ACOV-01’s current position, such missions could take years for a thorough job. Moreover, he was certain that the aliens were also known to use drones.

Furlow punched the comms channel to the Intelligence module. “What do you think of 001?”

“Definitely manned,” came the response from Reilly. “This is a known alien Object-M class hull. We’ve seen it on several occasions, radio exploration is just one of many missions it can perform. That forward array can be replaced with a hydroponics module, cargo holds, fusion reactors, you name it. However, this class has always been found in the general vicinity of others. Could be a trade or some kind of societal organization.”

Furlow brought up the intel sheet on the Object-M class. Low-impulse conventional ion thrusters, but lots of reaction mass. Not designed to go anywhere in a hurry, but had the capability for long accelerations and long braking. It is also known to possess a sub-mass relativity drive in some configurations. Like the one equipped on the ACOV-01, such drives were too small to envelope themselves, so their primary function was to push out smaller objects and vehicles. It could be used for cargo transfer to remote locations in-system – or to carry messages. That thought made Furlow worry.

“It doesn’t look like 001 has a relativity drive,” commented his XO.

“But one of its friends may,” Furlow said, filling in the blank left by Xue.

The enemy learning of their existence in-system was something to be avoided, if possible. Even when everything goes as planned, Furlow knew it was unacceptable to take any risks. Not in this war. The stakes were unspeakably high. And while this particular operation wouldn’t end the war, not by a long shot, it would bring humanity that much closer to ensuring their continued survival.

Anything that threatened the operation had to eliminate quickly and quietly.

Bravo transmitted their intentions over the beam: they would stay quite, and move in on a gentle delta-v using their chemical-laser jets to keep their propulsion emissions directed away from the target. Furlow could almost wish they had decided to take the risk of trying an active scan to try to uncover any silent partners to 001.

He punched the comms channel to the Flight module. “Can Bravo’s SEW handle 001’s radio intensity at that range?” he asked regarding the Signal Energy Warfare system installed on the recon package.

“The SEW/F-7 system can defeat sub-millimeter band radiologicals,” came the response. “001 is putting out really tight energy with a lot of power, but its stupid power. Bravo’s system is a lot smarter, it should beat the odds. Assuming the aliens don’t notice a hole of nothing where a rock should have been.”

With Bravo tentatively committed to a gentle burn, there was nothing else to do but wait out the predicted three hours until interception or until something unforeseen happened. Furlow greatly preferred tedium.

“Anything else outstanding?” he asked Xue. Not that anything that went wrong aboard such a small ship would go unnoticed by the senior command, but asking had become his traditional way of relieving Captain’s Watch.

“Not at this time,” Xue responded.

“Alright, all Captains are relieved, senior ops has the watch.” He caught several wry smiles around Command – there were only two Captains aboard the ACOV-01 standing command over a single module not much larger than Furlow’s own quarters aboard Grand Prominence but the C&C software absolutely had to have the command logged, or it would show up as a red underlined entry in ACOV-01’s ops log that Prominence would spot instantly. Not a major concern, but it wasn’t a good idea to break even minor regulations during such an important operation.

“Can I offer you a drink?” he asked his XO.

“I think that you may,” he replied, tipping his head.

With all of the hectic operational procedures that always followed the dump in-system more or less over with, the various sec-ops (Section Operations) officers were relieving their commands. So when Furlow and Xue floated into the common module, it surprised neither man that that it was filled with off-duty crewmen. An ops tech by the chiller spotted the new arrivals and sent a pair of g-sealed containers floating towards them, which Furlow aptly caught and handed one to Xue.

Furlow pulled the mechanical seal on the container to reveal a ration of water and protein paste. “Fresh from the organics vat,” Furlow muttered as he threw out the horrid goop. It was the same stuff from since forty years ago, and the artificial sandwiches were just as good for you and tasted better, but you always got the paste.

Both men took some drink packets and stirred them into the water rations. It tasted almost like beer – just enough to be cruel to a spaceman who would otherwise face severe disciplinary action for even attempting to smuggle a bottle of rum aboard. But it was that or the “orange juice”. Well, certainly it was orange.

“Hey sirs, you better go easy on that stuff,” a nearby crewmen jeered as Furlow and Xue drank deeply from their rations. Xue smiled wanly at the loud jokes about how the Captains could really hold their water from a particularly boisterous gathering of crew.

“Ah, spring is in the air,” commented Xue. “Watching you kids makes me wish I was sixteen again and dating.” The crewmen laughed. Though Furlow knew Xue was just 34 years old.

“Oh, you wishing for someone else besides our perfect Grand Lady?” Furlow asked.

“Certainly not aloud. But, ah, I guess saying that much makes sure I’m going to hear about it when we’re back aboard Prominence,” he responded, making light of the fact that every word uttered was recorded and would be processed by Prominence. It was also a subtle warning-off from a subject that was too personal for Xue. Furlow knew that every man aboard held at least one thing private between himself and Prominence.

“I don’t know about dating, or if I really want any other woman after Prominence,” he said, making Xue grin by touching on what was often the subject of embarrassed chuckles with the less-experienced crew. “But I always wanted to tour the great museum cities. Spend a few years in Cairo, Hamburg, Wales, New York. Write my memoirs.”

“Didn’t get enough of Baikonur?” quipped Xue, referring to the location of the top Fleet Academy, which was also an official Museum City. “Having to look at that hideous Yuri Gagarin monument every day would be enough history to last me a lifetime.”

“And I always wanted to get an auto-home and cruise down the old roads running across the Americas. I want to get one with a clear dome to watch the countryside pass by, sit dry under storms and just watch things happen without trying to figure out a relativity table for them. And write my memoirs.”

“Well, no matter what you want to do, you’re definitely going to write your memoirs,” Xue commented matter-of-factly.

“Now that I’ve made myself the target for your biting wit, mind sharing your plans to rule the word?”

“World domination is best left to those like yourself who know enough about its history. Put me in charge and I’d call Baikonur ‘That Dump’. Seriously though, I want to get in on the Lunar Wonder Project.”

“The official Eighth Wonder? Wow, I had no idea I had someone that smart under my command,” he joked, but was sincerely interested and showed it by leaning forward.

“That’s right. Since they figured they ought to go for a significant portion of the lunar volume instead of all of it, this thing may even be on-line in our lifetime. But that’s just the beginning, there’s another lifetime worth of work to do on the software that’s going to run it; I want to get in on that.”

“I read that a couple of years ago after they got the North polar region done, someone tried to run pi on it.”

“Yeah, a couple of coders ran it through as a lark. Keep in mind just one region output several trillion terabytes in a matter of a second, this with just a very basic bootstrap primary control set. This sent the project managers into a fit – because, apparently, the output turns out to be much lower than what it should have been. They’ve been re-working a lot of nerve nodes, adding another hundred-thousand Primary-level bundles.”

Furlow whistled. Even compared to Grand Prominence’s massive Primary core, the Lunar Wonder was set to fulfill the expectations set by its name.

“Anyways,” Furlow said, finishing his ration. “Whatever we end up doing, here’s to ending this damned war once and for all.” Furlow thought that the war would probably continue for a long time yet as it had already lasted for 33 years. A lot of that time was spent building up while engaging the enemy in low-intensity combat in his systems, but now that the great anti-matter accelerators around Jupiter’s moons are on-line and the new gigantic shipyards around Earth would be finishing ten new super-carriers, the end may finally be in sight.

Furlow spent the next few hours chatting with crew and touring some of the smaller parts of the ACOV-01. He thought about waiting to watch Bravo’s engagement as it came over the beam, but decided to get some rest instead; there was no critical reason why the senior Captain had to watch it, he could always watch the recoding later.

His small quarters below the Command module was little more than a closet with a bunk and a tiny zero-g toilet. It was fit for a senior officer because it had only one bunk instead of three in the general crew quarters. Furlow strapped himself to the bunk with his g-harness and placed the two neural control wires on the base of his neck, and felt the cool tingle as the dermal agents penetrated and created a temporary link with his brain stem. Furlow didn’t know about the science behind it, but it worked. All he knew is that the sleep function in the brain stem was stimulated, and that the dermal link would dissolve harmlessly and be flushed out through his sweat glands. Nothing like the power or complexity of the Neural Control Facility aboard Grand Prominence but Furlow actually preferred this system greatly.

He imagined how nice it be to fall asleep from plain old-fashioned weariness. And then his mind relinquished his consciousness and he fell into deep sleep.

And then, he became aware of the universe again. As well as doing away with insomnia, the system also eliminated dreams – natural ones, anyway. He checked the countdown – they were at 372, so roughly six hours to go before the Giants dropped in-system. It also meant he was asleep for six hours, but the only hint to Furlow that he had been down at all was the slight drowsiness he felt, but he knew that would go away soon.

There weren’t any showers on an ACOV, which was a zero-g vessel. Instead, every crewman wore zero-g environment clothing that had and inner membrane that hugged the skin and soaked up sweat. After a day you just threw it away and donned a new one, which Furlow did before making his way back to Command.

“2nd Captain assuming command,” he said as he entered. His senior Operations officer, a small man by the name of Sol Kruse, pushed himself away from the command seat and snapped him a salute. When all Captains were disposed elsewhere, tactical and ship’s operations fell to the most senior Ops officer, although they couldn’t change the ship’s General Orders of Mission.

“Report.”

“No changes to the target status. We’ve been occluded twice by very small bodies, only for about two seconds. Bravo has engaged 001 and destroyed the enemy vessel and is currently on standby for retrieval. Flight already ran the intercept.”

“I’ll take a look at that, thank-you Officer. You’re relieved for three hours.”

Furlow plugged his personal earpiece into his right ear and tapped into Flight’s mission stores and opened the engagement image.

His personal display lit up with a simplified tactical plot. “At exactly 614 hours and 49 seconds, Bravo-1 under the command of 3rd Flight Officer Sanji Kapour executed his Military Mission Orders and engaged Target-001,” intoned the computer-generated voice. The image switched to a recording from Bravo’s lenses, showing the target ship. Suddenly, a streak of brilliant white licked across the big forward dome array, which then seemed to boil for instant before evaporating into space, leaving a terrible wound across the array. Furlow knew from experience that was the work of a high-discharge laser. Bravo’s recon package had a lot of SEW assets, so used a seven-shot SDCD (Super-Dense Capacitor, Disposable) free-electron laser system for the attack. This gave a standard recon package a strong and stealthy punch, but little combat endurance. The pilot chose to strike the enemy’s sensory capability first, which was logical.

After a few seconds in which the recon package would be ejecting the spent capacitor bank from the power bus, flooding the emitter body with inert super-cool gasses, and then ramming home the next bank. The next shot slashed a burning wound across a long arc from the rear fuel stores, across a section of the rotational hull, and down the central spine. This, Furlow thought, was supposed to be the knock-out blow; he guessed the pilot had wanted to ignite the fuel mass, but that didn’t happen. If you couldn’t ignite the fuel, chances were good that a ship would die stubbornly under a laser attack. That was why, he mused, the Fleet grouped all weapons into two categories: Low-Energy Potential and High-Energy Potential. Lasers were always fell into the LEP category.

Bravo-1 struck the target several times more, concentrating on the rotation hull. The target’s thin skin was rent apart by the intense laser light like a butcher’s cleaver splits open the gullet of a cow. Both were equally defenseless. They showed you in the Academies what lasers could do to a thin-skinned ship in space. And there was no intrinsic rule of the universe that said an ACOV was any less susceptible. You only saved yourself from it by doing it to the enemy first.

“Target-001 was classified as officially Dead at 615 hours and 11 seconds,” continued the voice, and the image changed back to the tactical plot, showing a probability plot line sprouting from 001. “Target-001 will continue to drift at velocity of 308km/s. Chance of Enemy Recovery: Improbable.” With that, the report ended. Furlow knew the chance of enemy survivors were slim with most their ship slashed open to the vacuum of deep space, and even if there were they posed no threat to the mission aboard a dead hulk destined to probably coast along it’s last vector forever.

Bravo-1 had a few shots left, so was still combat-ready. Bravo-2 remained virgin. Furlow punched up the Flight display, and noted that Bravo and braked to a stop. With their mission orders discharged, they would go deep under the neural interface as now all they could do is wait to be retrieved. If no one came, the FARV’s primary would self-destruct the vehicle. Each pilot knew the reality of their own expendability when it came time to be pushed out the relativity drive.

“Contact positive as six!” the voice of the tac officer cut sharply through the subdued chatter of Command.

Furlow ripped the earpiece out and hammered the Command Priority View Channel, and the nav/threat display grid leapt up to the main display. Six seconds out.

“Passive detect, it’s hitting us with narrow beams!”

“Designate!” Furlow barked.

“Designating Target-002 at grid 112321.”

“Do they see us?” he demanded of the tac officer.

“It’s putting out about a million watts at 90Ghz Doppler. At this range, our SEW is keeping up.”

Furlow considered that, and thought of a few more factors, and made a decision. “All ready Flight Company for package three.” He punched the XO channel. “Captain, we have contact. I need you down in Flight to oversee ops.”

“Affirmative,” came the crisp rely.

Furlow compulsively checked to make sure the package loaders were doing their job. The robot arms stripped the recon package and stowed them before connecting the new one. The countdown read six minutes remaining.

“Can we please get a lens on 002?” asked the senior Ops officer tautly.

“Slaving now,” came the reply, followed by the target display on the tac display lighting up to show the alien vessel. This one was a lot smaller judging by the size of the hull fixtures. Stubby unitary hull with an internal thruster.

Furlow punched the Intelligence channel. “Know anything about this one?”

“Object-K hull. Very little fuel mass, conventional ion thrust. Not much intel on this class, but it’s probably very short range. Could be a shuttle of some type.”

Furlow didn’t think it was coincidence. A vessel that small had to be acting as an outrider of sorts, it didn’t have the fuel mass for significant interstellar flight. If his hunch was right, he was going to need those FARVs cycled out quick.

“002 is spiking – damn, they have us! They see us clear!”

Furlow suddenly feared he made the wrong decision – but at six seconds out, there was no danger of an imminent attack.

“Battle stations! Prep for hard thrust!” he ordered, and two short siren blasts filled the ship. He didn’t plan on moving just yet, but they might need to shortly. The ACOV-01 had a laser and some kinetics, but these were 1-second or less defensive weapons. The FARV-5 company comprised the primary military force.

“When Charlie-1 is free, launch to intercept Target-002 with all possible speed. I want the full company out there, and I want them active,” he ordered. With his XO in place to direct the action he didn’t need to worry about it directly. But he did worry about the security of the operation.

“What’s 002 doing?”

“They appear to sitting there,” replied the tac officer.

Furlow thought about lighting the enemy vessel up with ACOV-01’s own radio arrays, but decided against it. Best to pretend they were hapless. When the loader finally finished with the first FARV, it was cycled into position, and pushed out the drive coil. It dropped less than a quarter-second from the target, and lit off it’s wide-band search radar. It already knew exactly where 002 was, and without the need for stealth, the pilot opened up the anti-matter collider jet, sending a stream of massive energy flaring out it’s backside.

The target didn’t stand a chance; by this time the alien crew had perhaps figured out something bad was going to happen to them and they began to adjust vector, Charlie-1 had already launched a nuke, and it was a matter of less than a minute before space flared white for an instant with nuclear fire. Target-002 was dead.

“Charlie has multiple active contacts!”

The nav/threat grid expanded to reveal the new contacts. Four in all, less than ten seconds separated from one another. They started sending active radio scans back. Charlie-1 acquired the closest one, and burned hard. Charlie-2 was less than thirty seconds before package cycle and would be joining in soon.

“Give the lens controls to Flight,” he ordered, relinquishing direct control of ACOV-01’s optic assets to the Flight Module command. It was pretty much their show now.

Furlow checked the mission countdown. Less than six hours. They weren’t going anywhere. They would either complete the mission or make this asteroid cluster their grave.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[Alyeska]

What a pathetically stupid story. Thread ought to be closed.

[FBHthelizardmage]

What a pathetically stupid story. Thread ought to be closed.

now Al theres no need to bitter just cause he flamed the solar system SD for no reason.

[Evil Sadistic Bastard]

Now what the HELL is this story about?

[haas mark]

What a pathetically stupid story. Thread ought to be closed.

Well THAT was pleasant.... It's a fic.....too long to hold my interest, right now, but a fic nonetheless. To say that the thread needs to be locked is unnecessary, and rude.

[Vympel]

It's pretty slack to call it "pathetically stupid", I quite liked the hard-core shit. I don't care if I don't get it yet ... I will.

[XaLEv]

I quite liked it and would like to read more.

What a pathetically stupid story. Thread ought to be closed.

I suppose telling us why it's stupid is too much to ask of you.

[FBHthelizardmage]

I think Alyeska is calling it stupid as retaliation since GUTB Basically did the same thing (I.E. called it stupid for no apparent reason) to a role playing thread that Alyeska and I are participating in on space battles.

[Vympel]

Ah ok. Fair retaliation then!

[XaLEv]

I think Alyeska is calling it stupid as retaliation since GUTB Basically did the same thing (I.E. called it stupid for no apparent reason) to a role playing thread that Alyeska and I are participating in on space battles.

Ah, petty bickering then.

[Stravo]

I think Alyeska is calling it stupid as retaliation since GUTB Basically did the same thing (I.E. called it stupid for no apparent reason) to a role playing thread that Alyeska and I are participating in on space battles.

Ah, petty bickering then.

And it WILL STOP or there will be consequences and reprecussions. No one should flame a fic writer like that on his first attempt on the board. Keep all the bullshit going on in SB there don't come dragging it into SD.Net particularly in one of my forums.

Carry on. That is all.

[ArmorPierce]

yeah you may shatter him from the inside and he'll never make another story ever again

[Patrick Ogaard]

The first instalment seems quite readable to me. I'd like to see where it goes in the next part.

[HemlockGrey]

Very cool.

[Jadeite]

I thought it was good, hope the next chapter is posted soon.

[Captain Kruger]

Pretty cool stuff so far. It shows interstellar warfare to be what it most likely really would be - complicated, tedious, and over quickly once the shooting starts.

I'm not a bit surprised at die-hard-Trekkie Alyeska's reaction. Since his favorite franchise shows space combat in the form of oversized hot-rods using WWI dogfighting tactics, he obviously couldn't grasp this. Still no excuse for his Raging Asshole(TM) response.

[Peregrin Toker]

I'm not a bit surprised at die-hard-Trekkie Alyeska's reaction. Since his favorite franchise shows space combat in the form of oversized hot-rods using WWI dogfighting tactics, he obviously couldn't grasp this.

Which franchise are you talking about?? Wing Commander??

[Captain Kruger]

Which franchise are you talking about?? Wing Commander??

Nope, Post-TOS Star Trek.

[Peregrin Toker]

Which franchise are you talking about?? Wing Commander??

Nope, Post-TOS Star Trek.

However, Wing Commander is probably the sci-fi universe with the most dogfighting, and Alyeska seems to be a Wing Commander fan as well as a Trekker.

[Glare]

[begin accent]Verry, verry nice Peterr[/end accent]

I enjoyed it immensely. Nice to finally see the laws of physics (as we understand them)make a relevant appearance in a fic - to my mind this is on par with the tech styles of Hogan and the like.