CHAPTER 7
It took just over two days to conclude the time-delayed meetings with the government of New Hyderabad. Finding out who was in charge was easy, taking Mitra less than a few minutes of parsing the thousands of messages, news broadcasts, and data transfers happening across one of the planet’s continents. There were radio sources in other parts of the planet, but very few. New Hyderabad had a prime minister, a parliament, and various semiautonomous regions they called “administrative areas.” Overall, the message traffic portrayed a relatively stable, self-sustaining settlement still coming into its own economically. Their standard of living had not regressed much, as had been the fear of many when the colonization efforts began. Establishing an industrial infrastructure sufficient to sustain a twenty-second-century standard of living had been thought to require at least a million inhabitants. So far, here, on Nikko, as other settlement worlds, that had not been the case. On just about all the settlements they had contacted or studied thus far, none had seriously regressed. This was good news for those wishing to continue the settlement effort.
What had not progressed, however, was New Hyderabad’s military. They had none. Violence was one of the many reasons colonists had fled Earth in droves. Many were sick of war and conflict; others were idealists who wanted to create a society free of the violent disagreements that had plagued humans since the dawn of history. New Hyderabad was a textbook example. Their constitution forbade them from establishing anything more than a national police force. War they had so far avoided; crime they had not. People were still people. But a police force equipped with stun guns would be no match for a starship dropping nuclear weapons from orbit.
Because Earth’s own combined military was relatively small, Anika was unable to offer any concrete promises of military help. She did, however, agree to provide the New Hyderabad government with three drones that could be quickly activated at the Oppenheimer Limit for transit to Earth in the event of an attack. With luck and enough warning time, Earth might be able to send ships to help defend the settlement. If she could spare the ships and were not under attack herself. That was a lot of “ifs.”
As Anika prepared the ships for departure from the system and transit to Jaipur, she did ask the prime minister why the settlement stopped communicating with Earth those many decades ago. The answer surprised her.
“We simply didn’t care about what was happening on Earth anymore. New Hyderabad was established, our food supplies were more than sufficient to meet the needs of our population, and our industrial base was growing rapidly. Since no one from Earth bothered to reply to our updates or provide an update to us, the government at the time assumed that either the Earth had destroyed itself or nobody cared. So, they voted to stop the update program.”
It was a neat and concise answer to the question that had been bothering Anika since before they left Earth. With her mind nearly always racing to the negative side of the possible answer set, she was a bit surprised. When they arrived, Anika’s preconceived answer had been that either the settlement had been destroyed or regressed to the point where sending future updates would have been impossible. That they might stop because they simply did not care had not occurred to her. In hindsight, it was perfectly reasonable.
Six hours after the last data dump from New Hyderabad, they made the jump to Jaipur.
Jaipur was the third settlement established by any group from Earth and the first by India. Named after a bustling Indian city back on Earth, the planet was barely in the habitable zone. Jaipur’s star was a bit smaller and cooler than Earth’s, which meant that the planet the settlers selected was much closer to its parent star than the Earth was to Sol. The conditions on the surface were suitable for humans and biological life, but few would call it generally hospitable. From the data provided to Anika by Mitra, it appeared that those early settlers might have been better off waiting on more Earthlike planets being found before they selected one to call their home. Jaipur was cold, with a daily average temperature at the equator being barely above freezing and little seasonal variation. The planet had no axial tilt, which might have been a good thing since such a tilt might have led to seasonal low temperatures extreme enough to make the planet unhabitable. The planet also had no moon to stabilize the normal wobbling of the planet’s rotation over long timescales, making the long-term climate extremely variable. Jaipur was not very livable.
Nonetheless, Jaipur was not only settled, but it actively traded some of the native biologicals with Earth and other settlements. It seemed that whatever drove evolution on Jaipur tended to infuse the local flora with a compound that produced hallucinogenic euphoria in humans. So far, there had been no serious side effects from the compound, driving up demand in some circles. Despite the best efforts of scientists on Earth and elsewhere, synthetic versions of the compound were inferior in inducing the euphoric effect. This, of course, drove up the demand, and the price, for the real thing. Like the poppy farmers in Pakistan, the farmers on Jaipur were never lacking for a cash crop.
The last shipment of anything to or from Jaipur occurred a little over a month ago, which was on the long side between contacts, but not unheard of. The frequent contact also meant that the locals would know about the war, making Anika’s job just a little bit easier. She was just there to check in and fly the flag, as it were.
Unfortunately, Jaipur ships loaded with the hallucinogenic compound had proven to be a tempting target to pirates. Unfortunate only because of the incidents; fortunate because it meant that Jaipur had a few space-based ships that were armed with which they could defend the planet. They were not warships, so Anika doubted they could stop a determined and well-armed enemy, but they could at least put up a fight.
Upon arrival in the Jaipur system’s Oppenheimer Limit, Anika was again momentarily distracted by the beauty of the starscape on the bridge display. She was jolted from her reverie by Mitra’s abrupt interjection.
“Captain, there is a problem,” said Mitra.
“Explain,” she said, now giving the AI her full attention.
“I am receiving no radio traffic whatsoever. Jaipur control should be broadcasting a navigation beacon and protocol for visiting ships, but the frequency band they normally use is silent. From what I can tell, there are no RF emissions from Jaipur,” Mitra replied.
“Show me the inner system in optical,” Anika ordered. The virtual screen appeared with its usual clarity and three-dimensional projection of the planet and nearby space—as seen forty light-minutes away and as things were on Jaipur forty minutes ago. She did not like what she was seeing. The entire planet was encased in a cloudlike haze.
“Mitra, show me the view from a previous ship that visited here,” Anika asked.
Mitra responded by showing the view of Jaipur taken by a merchant ship as it had recently departed the system for destinations unknown with its cargo. The view contrasted with what she saw now in that Jaipur used to have significant and noticeable water and ice cover, plus a few distinctive land masses. By contrast, the new view of Jaipur looked like there was either a planetary dust storm, one hell of a large weather event, or atmospheric dust and debris resulting from a devastating bombardment of the planet. As much as Anika hoped it was one of the former, she feared it was the latter.
“Lieutenant Patel, are there any obvious threats here?” Anika asked.
“I’m still waiting on Mitra’s system scan to be complete, but as of now, it looks like we are the only active ship here,” replied Patel.
“Lieutenant Patel is correct. I do not detect the drive plumes of any ships and no thermal emissions beyond what appear to be naturally occurring. Like New Hyderabad, if there are any hostile ships here, then they are either quite far away or powered down. However, I urge caution. There is a high probability that the planet was attacked, and we are seeing the aftermath of what has been some sort of planetary bombardment.”
That was it then. Another settlement had apparently been attacked and destroyed with hundreds of thousands dead. They could not discern any more details from this distance and there was little point in going sunward to find out more. That might come later when they had the luxury of time and resources. This was not that time. She needed to get back to Earth and report as soon as possible.
“Lieutenant Utreja, spool up the Hawking Drive and calculate a jump that will take us back home,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” replied Utreja as he began the prejump routine.
“Captain, I have detected a distress beacon emanating from the minor asteroid belt approximately eighteen light-minutes from our current location. The signal is weak and highly irregular. It was not there when we arrived, so it is either on a timer, turned on after the light from our arrival reached the source of the signal, or a timing coincidence,” Mitra said in his usual matter-of-fact manner.
“Lieutenant Utreja, stand down the Hawking Drive. Lieutenant Patel, what do you think? I don’t like coincidences,” said Anika as she rose from her chair to approach the projected image of Jaipur with its cloud-shrouded surface. She stretched out her hand, seemingly to stroke and comfort the planet.
“The signal is from one of the Jaipur defense ships. The ship is severely damaged and reports having many casualties. They are requesting rescue,” said Patel.
“Mitra? What do you think? Is this for real or some sort of trap?” asked Anika as she continued to stare at the wounded world so many millions of miles away. As she did so, she could not help but think of Winslow’s words to her when they were last together: “I can’t see you turning around and leaving” when there were wounded to be rescued. Could she?
“Eighteen light-minutes is too far for our telescopes or sensors to discern space mines or a powered-down ship, so I have no way of knowing,” Mitra replied.
“Mitra, use the optical comm to let them know we are coming to render assistance. There is no need to broadcast our intentions to the entire solar system,” said Anika.
At full burn with the fusion drive, it would take the Mumbai about two days to reach the damaged ship from their current location. Two days of a very bright fusion plume allowing anyone within two light-days to know where they were and deduce where they were going.
Anika’s orders were specific. If the aliens were there, do not engage. If there were people in need of rescue and the aliens were there, do not engage. But in cases where there was no obvious threat and people needed rescue, the decision to render aid was at her sole discretion. Winslow was right; she could not ignore a plea for help. Remote mines or not, she was going to render aid.
“Lieutenant Utreja, take us in. Tell Dr. Pillai to prepare for casualties.”
They were three hours out from the damaged ship, which they now knew was one of three antipirate “Space Guard” ships from Jaipur that had engaged the invaders in a valiant, but doomed effort to stop the attack. Anika was in communication with the wounded captain of the Jaipurian ship, Sachet. According to the captain, the government of Jaipur knew that they were at risk of attack and came up with a plan to use their limited space self-defense forces to at least make the attackers feel some pain in their attack. From what Anika learned, they were successful.
Since the planetary government did not know when and from where the attack might occur, they kept two of the three ships hidden in the glare of the system’s sun at the L1 Lagrange region, one and a half light-seconds from Jaipur. L1 was where the gravitational pull of the star and the planet came together to create a region of space sunward from the planet where a spacecraft could remain without using much propellant. The ships were not powered down since they would need to potentially activate their fusion drives at any time to engage the enemy. They gambled that to any ship coming into the system toward the star, the thermal emissions of a fusion reactor on standby would be difficult to differentiate from the star’s emissions. They were correct.
The third Space Guard ship went about its normal duties, acting as a deterrent to pirates and performing space search and rescue, as needed.
Three weeks ago, five of the now all-too-familiar alien ships appeared in the system. The citizenry had already been dispersing around Jaipur as best they could, but the tempo of departures from the cities and towns increased once news of the ships’ arrival began to spread.
The alien ships thrusted toward Jaipur while the lone Space Guard ship not hiding at L1 boosted outward to engage them, only to reverse course back to the planet at the last possible moment before any sort of engagement could begin. To anyone observing, it would have looked like the Jaipurian ship decided to not sacrifice itself in what would have otherwise been a suicide attack with little tactical or strategic gain.
Once the alien ships entered high orbit around Jaipur, the lone Space Guard ship placed itself in a highly elliptical orbit that would maximize its time away from the attackers but would set it up for a high-speed pass at the lowest part of its orbit that just happened to occur when the enemy ships would be on the sunward side of Jaipur. Meanwhile, the two Jaipurian vessels hiding at L1 began low-thrust boosts that would have them reach the same region of space as the attacking ships at the same time as the ship in the elliptical orbit. They were counting on the star’s infrared glare to hide the thrust plumes of the two Space Guard ships until it was too late, and they could launch an attack from an unexpected direction, essentially attacking from behind.
It was while this sole military engagement was being implemented that the alien ships began their devastating attack on Jaipur. As on Nikko, the major and minor cities were hit by nuclear weapons, vaporizing them and their remaining inhabitants. Then, the attackers launched a swarm of nuclear missiles at the planet’s northern icecap. Huge swaths of ice were vaporized, sending plumes of radioactive steam and debris into the planet’s atmosphere, and causing what would undoubtedly be a prolonged nuclear winter, perhaps a century or more in duration.
When the engagement finally occurred, the object of the war was over. Jaipur lay in ruins with whomever survived doomed to freeze or starve during the nuclear winter. As expected, and easily determined by the laws of orbital mechanics, the Jaipurian Space Guard ship’s speed increased from its modest one and a half kilometers per second speed at apogee to nearly ten kilometers per second at perigee. The engagement would last only a few seconds, during which both sides would launch missiles and use their point defenses to stop any missiles launched by the other side. As the ships converged on the area where their orbits would coincide and the battle would occur, the two “hidden” Jaipurian ships arrived and completely surprised the attackers from the rear while they were distracted with obliterating a seemingly hopelessly outnumbered defending ship. Each Jaipurian ship launched two missiles, their entire complement, neither of which carried a nuclear weapon. Space Guard ships were designed to deal with pirates and police actions, not fight wars.
As the orbiting Space Guard ship was destroyed, all four of the missiles converged on a single Kurofune ship, with two breaching the target’s late-to-activate point defenses. Moments later, after the sneak attack was recognized, one of the two remaining Space Guard ships was destroyed. The third, which the Mumbai was now approaching, took a direct hit after it had reached sufficient speed to escape orbit from around Jaipur and place it on an outbound trajectory away from Jaipur and the attacking fleet.
Taken by surprise, the damaged alien ship was apparently beyond repair. As best as the Sachet’s captain could discern, the attacking fleet did not pursue him because they were busy offloading the injured from their own damaged ship. Several hours after the brief engagement, the Sachet detected the telltale signature of a ship’s fusion drive having a containment breach and exploding. He could only surmise that their attack had either directly caused enough damage for the reactor containment to fail or that the ship had been damaged enough to be unusable and was self-destructed. From this distance and without looking more closely at the remaining debris, there was simply no way to tell.
The audacity, cunning, and bravery of the Jaipurian ships reinforced Anika’s decision to affect a rescue. These were brave men and women who did not deserve to be left here alone to die in the cold. Not on her watch.
“Lieutenant Patel, Mitra, in less than three hours we will be close enough to the Sachet to offload the remaining crew and wounded. This is also the most dangerous part of our mission. Are there any signs of mines or anything else that might threaten us?” Anika asked.
Mitra was the first to speak. “No. I have been reviewing the optical, thermal, and RF data taken by the Sachet on its outbound trajectory, and it appears the attackers made no effort to follow them—they or their remote weapons.”
Patel simply nodded.
“Very well, I want these brave people offloaded on board as quickly as possible so we can make our next move. Lieutenant Utreja, lay in a course for Jaipur orbit. A low one, less than three hundred kilometers, circular.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Utreja, hands flying across the control.
Anika turned to toward to door to leave when Lieutenant Chatterjee approached her and began to speak in a hushed tone, joining the conversation for the first time.
“Captain, I realize you have great discretion in your orders if there are no active enemy forces in the system, but I must remind you that we are to minimize our time here and return to Earth as soon as possible. May I ask what you are thinking with your plan to proceed to Jaipur? Any planetary survivors are likely to be few and exceedingly difficult to find, perhaps impossible to find,” said Lieutenant Chatterjee.
“Jenya, I appreciate your advice, as always, and reminding me of my orders. As XO, that is your job. But we have an opportunity here to find out more about whoever it is that is so eager to wipe us out and I intend to take it,” Anika said. She then turned to the rest of the crew and spoke.
“Captain Anand said that the one of the enemy ships exploded in orbit around Jaipur. That means there will be debris, perhaps bodies, that could provide valuable intel about the nature of who we are fighting. We have to go in to see what we can recover and return it to the Earth for analysis. We don’t currently know anything about the enemy, and this might just be our chance to change that,” said Anika.
Lieutenant Chatterjee grinned in response. Anika looked at the rest of the bridge crew and saw similar reactions. They were all eager to get into the fight, and right now, getting intel on an enigmatic and unknown enemy might be more important than any direct military engagement they might get themselves into. Her crew was with her and it felt good.
Now I know why I wanted to be a captain of a warship. To lead a crew like this doing something that really matters.