20
Their time expired with the jump of Antietam still incomplete. Mary, for her part, was still working hard on at least raising a defensive field over Bellus, but was otherwise silent. Clement checked in with his crew, and they reported progress, perhaps ten minutes until Antietam could attempt the jump. “This is rocket science, you know,” quipped an irritated Nobli. Clement could only wait. If this jump didn’t work, they were doomed.
Clement fired the shuttle’s thrusters to attempt to put some distance between them and the incoming fleet, which was decelerating heavily now onto the battlefield. They had to get out of range of the Solar League ships, which were in range and preparing to attack, but stay close enough to Mary’s “rendezvous point” to be in range of the Antietam when she jumped in.
He felt helpless as he watched a group of twelve destroyers break away from the main fleet. The destroyer pack (broken into two groups of six) took up positions over the Hill Place mountain camp where all of his people no doubt sat huddled in fear, five hundred kilometers below. They had good reason for their fear.
The leading group of six launched missiles from their forward launch tubes. The missiles descended on the mountain and Camp Alpha. If they were conventional, they would cause a great deal of damage. If they were nuclear, he didn’t see how anyone on the surface could survive. He swallowed hard. His parents were down there. His heart started racing in fear.
In mere seconds the missiles impacted the ground. He let out a deep breath of relief when he saw the signature of the missile explosions; they were conventional and not nuclear. As the second group of destroyers took up position to launch their volleys, he switched to a visual display of the damage below. Thankfully just Camp Alpha and not the mountain had been targeted first. The bunkers that they had so rapidly and robustly built had been reduced to a smoking ruin. If his people had been outside the cavern during the attack, it would have been a bloodbath. He had no idea if the Solar League ship commanders knew that the bunkers were empty or occupied, but their intent would become clear in the next few minutes.
The second volley of conventional missiles struck the camp again, with one exception: a single missile targeted the Hill Place complex on the side of the mountain/pyramid and completely destroyed it. By this time his tactical board showed a single heavy cruiser had joined the grouping. According to his telemetry, the ship moved into a position that placed it directly over the mountain where all of his people were hunkered down. There was little doubt in Clement as to its intent. It was preparing to launch a nuke.
Desperate to stop it, Clement looked anxiously for the shuttle’s manifest to see if it had taken any weaponry on board from either Agamemnon or one of the other ships. As he expected, the shuttle had only small arms aboard, but it did have one other thing that could be used as a weapon—a nuclear engine.
An engine with a nuclear reactor was not designed to be detonated, but it could be used as a “dirty bomb” to try and stop an attacking vessel. What Clement was contemplating was suicide, and the death of both Mary and his friends. Had he been alone in the shuttle, his choice might have been different. He looked over to Mary, whose hand motions in the hologram displays were a whirlwind, and then up to the tactical display. The enemy destroyers were now backing away as the cruiser took its time setting up the missile launch.
“If you can get this done, now would be the time,” he said to her. “Otherwise . . .”
Without moving her attention from her work, she replied, “Two minutes,” which was at least encouraging.
It took Mary less than the two minutes promised to come through. She activated Bellus’ defense grid with the pop of a yellow holographic button, and an orange latticework of energy engulfed the entirety of the planet. Ironically, the defense field over Bellus looked markedly similar to an electronic shield that had taken out the Beauregard in its first life as a Rim Confederation gunship. This field, however, appeared to be much more powerful.
The cruiser was now stuck above the shield (while the shuttle was below it), but she must have been too deep in her countdown or too slow to react to the new tactical situation. She fired her missile.
She was only a dozen kilometers behind the shield when the missile launched. It hit the energy field almost immediately and exploded on contact. The field seemed to absorb some of the explosive energy, but at the short range the detonation could not be fully stopped from rebounding against the cruiser.
She was completely engulfed by the explosion, disappearing into the white-hot light of the nuclear flame. He had to look away from the shuttle windows as the light from the explosion penetrated the pilot’s nest. When he opened his eyes again, the tactical display showed only a fragment of the vessel remained intact. He switched to his visual display and saw the cruiser burning for a few seconds, until all the oxygen and combustible fuel was exhausted. Then the hulk of the cruiser was dark.
“A ship of that size probably carried five hundred sailors, or more,” said Clement.
“They should not have been attacking my people. As you can surmise, I was able to initiate the defensive field over Bellus, but I was not able to activate the system-wide defensive weapons. The planet is safe for now, but the damage to the defensive systems has required me to initiate a complete ‘reboot,’ as you would call it, of the Machine. All of Trinity is still vulnerable to attack until I can make my way to Camus and integrate with the Machine there.”
“And what of my people?”
“I do not know how long the shield over Bellus will hold. Even Maker technology has its limits, and with the damage done to the system, repair time, or even if the system can be repaired, is still a question I cannot answer until we get to Camus.”
“I’ll check on my people and see if they’re ready yet for Antietam to jump back to us. But I have a question: Will the gunship be able to jump back through the shield?”
“The shield will know a friendly ship from an enemy.”
“How?”
“Remember, Jared, I am now part of the Machine. What I know, it knows.”
He nodded at that cryptic answer, then went back to check on his bridge crew.
“What do you have for me, Nobli?” he demanded.
“Well if you’re done blowing things up with nukes up there, we’re getting close. I’d like to do one more test run, though, before we start the two-minute clock.”
“Start the clock now,” ordered Clement. “There’s no time to waste. Bellus and the camp are protected by a shield at the moment, but the system is damaged and Mary can’t make us any promises about how long the defense systems will last.”
“That’s pushing it pretty fine, Admiral,” said Mika Ori. “The Antietam’s crew has no experience with this process.”
“Understood, Pilot, but we don’t have the luxury of time. Start the clock,” he repeated. She did so and that was followed by a flurry of communications from each of his officers to their counterparts aboard the gunship. Clement took up a position behind Nobli to monitor the process as it was carried out.
Mika counted the clock down to zero and suddenly the gunship appeared to their starboard, about six kilometers away. Within seconds they got acknowledgement that Antietam had arrived safe and sound, even if their stomachs were a little unstable.
“Take the controls, Pilot,” Clement ordered, “and get us docked as fast as you can.” With that Mika disappeared into the pilot’s nest and the ship started moving, for once in this long mission it seemed, in the right direction.
After the shuttle was stored in Antietam’s cargo bay, Clement sent Nobli and Reck to the engineering room and motioned for the rest of his crew (plus Mary) to follow him to the bridge. Once there he relieved Captain Kagereki with his thanks and settled his own people into their familiar positions: Mika at Helm, Ivan at Navigation, and Kayla at Coms. Mary sat in the empty XO’s chair, looking anxious for this part of the mission to be over. The XO position itself was empty, and he felt a twinge at Yan’s absence; but he decided for this mission, he could live without an XO, and he preferred not to have Kagereki in that slot as a captain’s advice about his own ship would surely come into conflict with an admiral’s opinions.
After taking the captain’s console he called down to the engine room and got ahold of Tech Reck. She insisted Nobli was too busy inspecting the reactor to come to the line, but after arguing with her for a few seconds he ordered her to put Nobli on.
“Dealing with that young lady is like wrestling with a wolverine,” Clement commented once his engineer was on the line.
“Damn smart wolverine if you ask me,” replied Nobli.
Clement smiled. “What’s the condition of our LEAP reactor?”
“She’s in good enough shape for what you’re going to ask of her. Some microfractures of the casing, but that’s to be expected now that we know what kind of strain we put on her with these in-system jumps. At least I don’t have you pressuring me to give you a new MAD weapon.”
“Believe me, in these circumstances, I would if I could.” Nobli laughed uncomfortably, and to Clement’s surprise Mary approached this console then.
“Perhaps I can help you, Jared. I understand the technical issues of creating this weapon. Are there other reasons why we cannot use the ship’s power to give you this advantage?”
“Well, for one,” said Nobli through the com line, “if we let the LEAP energy out of the reactor through our normal Directed Energy Weapons piping, we’d probably disintegrate everything in this system.”
“Is this the only problem?”
“Well, technically, yes,” said the engineer. “Our admiral here had all of our ships retrofitted to possibly accommodate a MAD weapon in the future.”
“That’s true,” Clement said. “Can you help us, Mary?”
“Where is your reactor located?”
“Three decks down and to the rear of the fuselage.”
“I will go there.” And with that she left the bridge.
“Looks like you’re going to have company, Hassan.”
“Great,” he replied sarcastically.
“Give her some leeway. She’s smarter than either of us, that’s for sure. Oh, and be sure to keep her and Tech Reck separated.”
“Always wise advice, Admiral. I’ll let you know what she recommends.”
“I’m sure you will, Engineer. How long until we’re able to make the jump to Camus?”
“Well, Reck is sealing microfractures now. To be safe give us fifteen minutes.”
“Will do, but no more. And do everything you can to get that MAD weapon operational.”
“Yes, sir.”
With that Clement sat back in the captain’s couch. “All stations, full diagnostic check in preparation for LEAP jump. I’m setting the ship’s clock for fifteen minutes,” he said, then watched as his people went about their business.
With five minutes to go Nobli called up to complain. “Your native girl has gone a little crazy down here, Admiral.”
“In what way?”
“Well, right at the moment she’s pouring some sort of purple goo out of her veins and in to my MAD weapon piping.”
“I’ll be right down,” said Clement, cutting off the com. “Bridge crew, hold the clock at five minutes.”
“Five minutes, aye, sir,” replied Mika.
With that Clement jumped up from his couch and ran down to the engineering room. When he came through the door he wasn’t ready for the sight that he saw.
Mary was on one knee on the floor, draining the purple nano-goo from her open wrist into the piping system and holding Tech Reck off of her feet by her coveralls with the other hand. Reck, for her part, was cussing and swiping at Mary’s arm to get free. Nobli was merely standing to one side, staying out of the fray.
It would have been amusing if the situation wasn’t so serious. He elected to address Mary first.
“Um, Mary, what’s going on?”
“I am attempting to introduce the nanobiology in my system into your energy weapon’s piping in order to coat it at a sufficient enough strength to handle the output of energy from your reactor that you use for the weapon. This woman was interfering with my process.”
“Goddamn it!” said Reck. “Get this robot freak off of me!”
Clement was growing concerned. “Um, Mary, won’t you eventually run out of the . . . nano-material? Won’t that kill you?”
She looked up and shook her head no. “My body can produce whatever I need. I have the seeds of the material inside my body.”
“Do you mean like stem cells?”
“Something like that, Jared, but the biomechanics are much more complicated.”
“I see,” he said. Reck continued to struggle and curse, to no avail. “Mary, could you put my crewman down please?”
“Of course,” she said, and promptly dropped the tech unceremoniously on to the reactor room floor. Reck scrambled to her feet and rolled up her coverall sleeves.
“You goddamn—”
“Tech Reck, stand down,” ordered Clement. Reck looked at him and then backed off.
“Aye, sir,” she said, still fuming.
Clement turned his attention back to Mary. “How much longer will this process take?” he asked.
“Just a few more seconds,” she replied. The goo continued to pour out of her arm at an alarming rate, but just when he thought she couldn’t give anymore she abruptly stopped, snapping her wrist back into place seamlessly. She stood and addressed him. “You should now have all you need to fire your weapon, if that’s what you wish. I will have much more powerful weapons at my disposal once we get to Camus.”
More powerful than the MAD weapon? he thought. That would take some doing. “My hope would have been that we wouldn’t have to use any advanced weapons to resolve this situation, but that’s a faint hope at this point.”
“I understand, Jared,” she said.
“Um, how did you manage that feat that you just did?”
“As I’ve stated my failed union with the Machine gave me certain physical enhancements, but not the link that I need to activate the full defense grid. The nanotechnology comes from the material you found all over the cavern. While it hasn’t replaced my human blood, it has enhanced it and given me the ability to reproduce it on a large scale. I am biomechanical now, a hybrid of machine technology and human physiology,” she finished.
“Plus, there’s that whole superstrength thing you’ve got going on.”
“That is another byproduct of the merging.”
“Well, uh, good then. Thank you for the help, but if you’re finished here I’d like you back on the bridge.”
“Of course, Jared,” she said, and promptly walked out of the room. When she was gone Clement turned to face his crewmen.
“Tech Reck, return to your duties. Immediately.” She trundled off back to the reactor, her pride hurt as much as her ego. “As for you, Mr. Nobli, please analyze that material and make sure that it’s up to the task of holding onto the MAD weapon energy.”
“From what I’ve seen there isn’t much it can’t do. I’d love to get a look at it back on Kemmerine in my engineering lab.”
“That will have to wait for now. We have an entire star system and millions of inhabitants to save first.”
“Understood, Admiral. I’ll have your stress test for you in a few minutes.”
“Better hurry,” said Clement as he left the lab. “I’m starting the jump clock again as soon as I get on the bridge.”
Then he exited the reactor room, anxious to get back to his bridge.
Once on the bridge Clement swung into the command couch and restarted the LEAP clock. As time ticked down he scanned his bridge, looking for any situation to be concerned about, but found none. Finally he turned to Mary, who was once again at the XO’s station, but seemed to be in a state of meditation.
“Mary,” he said, as her eyes opened in response to him. “The jump is almost here.”
“I know, Jared.”
“I was wondering, when you were in the reactor room, did you have a chance to repair the reactor casing as well as coat the energy weapon’s pipes?”
She shook her head, still a very human gesture. “I did not. The biomechanical material is very versatile, but in its virgin state it could not fuse to the reactor while it is functioning. It would have to be introduced when the reactor was shut down and in a cold state. I am sorry if that’s inconvenient for you.”
“Don’t be, not at all. We’ve worked through these problems before, we can do it again.”
“You have a very reliable crew.”
“Thank you for saying so.” Absently he thought about the term she had just used, “virgin state.” She was giving up a lot, making sacrifices: sex, love, family. He remembered how she had been on their first mission to Trinity, a carefree young girl who pursued the pleasure of human contact at every opportunity. He wondered if that girl would give all of those things up had she had a say in the current course of events: first enhancement by the Machine from which she could never go back, and then the partial merging with the Machine which had made her something even more now. He felt sorry for her, a victim of circumstance. She could never have known the Machine would call her, and take away all the possibilities of a normal, human life.
“One minute,” called out Mika Ori, then she updated every ten seconds thereafter. At the count of twenty Clement ordered all ship’s personnel to prepare for the LEAP jump. At ten seconds Mika started the countdown to zero.
The universe shifted as it normally did during short-range jumps, and Clement and the bridge crew fought off the momentary nausea brought on by the jump. As his head and his stomach both settled, he imagined the regular crew of Antietam were faring much worse than their more experienced counterparts. “Let’s give the ship’s crew two minutes before we start ordering them around, shall we? The first few jumps are always the hardest.”
Pomeroy flashed him a knowing smile from her station and the others nodded their agreement. Mary, however, popped up from her couch and was more than ready to go.
“We must get to the surface as fast as we can. I estimate that the shield over Bellus can only stay up for another few minutes. Those Earth ships are weakening it even now. If that shield goes down, the planet will once again be open for attack.”
Clement couldn’t argue with the need for urgency. “Very well then. Commander Ori, you have the con.”
She jumped up from her couch. “I should be going with you. I’m the best pilot you have, even better than you, sir. You know that.”
Clement was about to argue when Mary stepped in. “If she can get us down there faster, you should take her. Time is of the essence.”
Clement made his decision. “All right, Mika, you’re in. Ivan, please allow me to borrow your wife for a while?”
“As if I could stop her, sir,” the navigator said.
Clement turned to Pomeroy at the com console. “Call Captain Kagereki and his XO to the bridge, Commander. He has the con until we return.”
“Yes, sir,” she replied, and made the call.
Clement turned to his colleagues. “Let’s get to the shuttle,” he said, and they were off the bridge in seconds.