Exploration (19 page)

"OK, now you've got me worried."

"Your ship's engines seem to be designed to handle about 10^4 times more power than they should ever need. If it were to fully employ that much power, then potentially everything within a five hundred kilometer radius would translocate with you."

***

Seeing the big ship dwarfed by the weapons platform that suddenly appeared next to it was sobering.  Muddog had amended his previous orders and engaged in an immediate pursuit of the new ship. He wanted to disable them before they could crawl far enough out of the planet's gravity well to initiate a hyperfield.

"Helm!" Captain Muddog yelled. "I want a random short jump in the buffers ready to go at my command."

"Aye, Sir. Where to?"

"Damn it! I don't care. That's why I said random! It does
n’
t have to be far, a couple of planetary widths at most. As soon as we execute a jump reload the buffer with another jump."

"Aye, Sir. First jump loaded."

"Weapons, I want rail-guns and torpedoes locked on the bigger ship. Plasma and lasers are to target the smaller ship. Fire simultaneously as soon as you have a firing solution. Helm, as soon as you feel the rail-guns fire you are to jump this ship. Is that clear?"

Both officers acknowledged the command.

"Weapons firing!"

"Jump initiated!"

"Reset! Get ready to do it again as fast as possible," he barked.

On the forward viewscreen the crew of the
Divine Retribution
watched as the energy beams fired at the fleeing ship simply struck the larger ship's extended shields and were reflected back towards a position the
Retribution
had previously occupied.

"Open a channel to the fleet. New engagement protocols. Fire weapons and immediately jump no less than one hundred kilometers in a random direction. No ship is to fire in place."

"Sensors...get me a reading on those shields. Are we having an effect?"

"Negligible, Captain. Those shields are off the scale."

Muddog cursed.  "Signal the
SilverFin
. Have them ram those shields while engaging their jump nodes."

The
Retribution's
First Officer leaned forward to speak privately with his captain. "Sir, that's a risky maneuver for the
SilverFin
. Ships have been ripped apart when hyperfields entangle."

"It's our best chance to destabilize their shields. If we fail the Chairman will indenture our families for seven generations. Captain Dorsal knows this, and she has more experience using that technique to breach a hyperfield shield than anyone in the fleet."

He looked up at his First Officer. "If it works we all may be doing it..."

Chapter Nineteen: Destination Unknown...

"
Admiral, we are getting ready to jump," Ken informed Cat. He paused to examine a readout and confirm the display's translation. "There seems to have been a sudden surge of energy into the secondary ultra-capacitor array feeding the hyperjump nodes."

Yhsif, who was monitoring the sensor station, suddenly spoke up in alarm. "Ma'am, the WhimPy's shields are beginning to destabilize. One of the syndicate ships just rammed it with their drive nodes energized. It's only a fraction of a percent but if they hit it again before it stabilizes there could be breach points."

Cat opened a link to WhimPy-101. "Everything OK there, big guy?"

"I have my proverbial hands full. The Modos fleet has adopted an unusual form of attack. They are trying to destabilize my active shielding by intertwining their shields with mine."

"Are you in danger?"

"No, not really, but they are. I'd prefer not to fire on ships this weak but I may not have a choice. I suppose I can target their engines and leave life support functioning. It's safer for them then what they are doing now. An overloaded jump drive is indiscriminate about what it destroys."

Suddenly the lights on the
SXS 4400
dimmed and were replaced by an orange-red glow from recessed lighting panels.

"101, I think we are about to jump..."

"I concur, Admiral. The energy density of your hyperfield is astronomical. It is possible your destination is trans-temporal or trans-dimensional, not just spatial."

"That would..." Cat began just before the bridge shook wildly, the ship groaned, and the world went dark.

WhimPy-101 watched in a strangely detached awe as three things happened simultaneously. First, the Suhtii ship began to enter a truly massive hyperfold of its own making.  Second, sixteen Modos ships micro-jumped into his shields as a unit and in the process breached them. Third, and perhaps most concerning, his shredded shields interacted with the Suhtii hyperfield, causing a large contingent of Modos fighters to enter the same hyperfold as the Admiral.

***

Ricky and Honey sat on the bridge of their modified survey shuttle, the
GCP Honey Dipper
, and played Euchre. Ricky threw down a card. Honey smiled and Ricky knew he was in trouble. Trying to win a game of cards when you are playing an AI with an intellect measured just north of a thousand had to be the height of stupidity.  Her continuous offer to make it strip-Euchre was just down-right distracting. 

He and Honey had made their way back to the now fully restored shuttle after the automated repair systems had successfull
y—
and covertl
y
—
harvested sufficient raw materials from the
MS Vengeance's
hold. In addition, Honey's nanites had completely usurped computer control of the
Vengeance
. The best part of the takeover, from Ricky's perspective, was that the captain and crew were completely unaware that control of their ship had been taken from them.

Logs had been changed to reflect a transfer from medical to a slaver barge. The result was, no one was looking them.

With control of the computers Honey had been able to download the access codes for each of the other ships in the
Vengeance's
battle group. With these codes Honey was able to program and upload custom routines that gave her exclusive control of each of the ships in question. In essence Honey had effective command of all twenty-four ships in the task force.

"Admiral Faragon is relaying a message through Cat's pet WhimPy," Honey cooed seductively as she played her right bower.

Seizing the opportunity, Ricky quickly threw down his cards. "Lucky for you...I had you on the ropes..."

"Dreamer," Honey snorted.

"What can I say? I'm a man of vision."

Honey began to gather up the cards while shaking her head.

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"The Admiral?"

"Oh, right," Honey said as she brought up a hologram of Admiral Faragon.

"How can I help you sir?"

Admiral Faragon sipped his holographic coffee before responding. "Been a long night over here, son. The Modos armada had a few tricks up their sleeves. We were not able to completely contain them. I could use some good news. Is our little surprise ready?"

Ricky looked at Honey and she nodded. His face split in a wide grin.

"Admiral we were born read
y—
just let us know when you want the fun to start."

"Very good," Faragon leaned back cradling his coffee cup. "We are pulling away from SgA, ostensibly to chase down the ships that have broken through our blockade. If our analysis of their tactics is correct they will have a monitoring probe watching our fleet deployment. As soon as they realize the bulk of our forces are leaving the area that probe will like make the jump back to the beta-verse with that information."

"S
o…
" Ricky grinned. "...unless the syndicate knows how to duplicate Cat's temporal manipulations, we should expect to hear from the aforementioned probe in about eleven hours."

"Our guess," the holographic image of Admiral Faragon said, "is that is when the main Modos fleet will make the jump to our space. As your battle group will be part of that force, we will need you to keep things interesting for them. Misinformation, misdirection...that sort of thing."

Ricky's only answer was a grin that threatened to go from ear to ear.

***

Junior Engineer Roinuj scratched his Suhtii's left ear. He ran his eyes across the
Vengeance's
diagnostic board yet again. He had the oddest feeling that the board was lying to him. He'd run a systems trace and the trace would follow a weird path off into strange directions but when he checked it a second time the results would always show the proper sequence of network connections.

It was the oddest thing. He would have been inclined to dismiss it, except that it happened on multiple occasions and on multiple platforms. It almost seemed like someone else was controlling the ship's computers...but that was crazy.

***

Cat adjusted the sensitivity of her optic nerve. The bridge was essentially dark with only a handful of system displays active.

"Engineering, report!" She yelled into the ai
r—
hoping the internal ship intercoms were still operational.

"Engineering here, Admiral," came Ken Kirkland's familiar voice. "How can we help you?"

"Our systems are dead up here. I take it this is not true for the entire ship?"

"Negative, Admiral. There was an unexpected feedback that surged through the hyperfield nodes that blew a bunch of breakers. We are still tracking them all down. I should have the bridge power restored in a moment. In fact..."  As he was speaking the power came back on in the bridge.

"Thank you, Commander!" Cat said, as she quickly scanned the bridge. "How long before we can have sensors?"

"You should have them now. The computer interface is just about done rebooting."

Yhsif waved a trunk in her direction. "Ma'am, I'm getting telemetry from various ship's systems. I should be able to bring the main viewscreen up."

"Make it so, Mister," Cat said.

"Will you look at that!" Captain Running Stream said from the navigational console he was manning. The screen was filled with a vaguely familiar violet aurora. "Unless I miss my guess, that is a trans-dimensional hyperfield corridor."

"Without the need for a supermassive black hole," Commander Ben added. "Impressive."

"We may have a problem." All eyes turned to face Yhsif. "There seem to be a lot of ships in here with us."

"Confirmed," Running Stream announced.   "It looks like we sucked half that damn fleet in with us."

"Can they attack us in here?" Ben asked.

"Not unless they want to be destroyed, too," Cat answered. "The physics in a conduit like this involve a tightly coupled energy cascade between the universes. The last thing anybody wants is to perturb that cascade. The energies involved would tear a ship apart."

"Ok, so for the moment we are probably safe. The question is how long?" It was Running Stream who asked the question.

Cat turned towards Sassi. The Ashkelon computer prodigy had been silent up to this point. It was clear from the way both his high and low frequency antennas were undulating that he was upset.

"What is it Sassi?"

The moth-like bird looked up at her. His expression was unreadable, other than agitation. "It has to be a coincidence."

"What has to be a coincidence?"

"Eleven hours...the computer is saying eleven hours until we reach our destination."

***

Cat jogged down the long corridor towards engineering. For Cat the jog was faster than taking the turbolift that Captain Running Stream and Commander Ben were taking. Besides, Cat wanted to see more of the ship. Her Heshe enhanced senses scanned the various rooms and compartments as she raced by them. Her internal AI, Cal, was storing the information away for later retrieval should she need or desire to see it. Over the years she had developed an almost intuitive relationship with her AI, so much so that sometimes she wondered where Cat ended and Cal began.

The interior of the Suhtii ship was in a word...beautiful. Not in terms of color or artwork but simply in terms of pure engineering elegance. He-who-speaks' ancestors were master builders. Cat sincerely hoped that the builders of this ship, or more specifically their descendants, were still around and willing to help their long lost brothers.

She rounded the corner and spotted engineering straight ahead. It was more a vaulted stadium than an actual room. It was so big, in fact, that Cat suspected it generated its own weather. The hyperdrive unit which was used to feed energy into the hyperfield nodes that dotted the skin of the
4400
was as large as Cat had ever remembered seeing. Even the
Yorktown's
engine was dwarfed by this behemoth.

She spotted a team from the
Bluefin
as well as several of the Hupenstanii that had been taken captive along with Cat and the others. Seeing the Hoppers filled Cat with a twinge of remorse. She missed her friends Gibby and Trifa. Before she could continue reminiscing, Commander Ken Kirkland spotted her.

She saw his familiar red-bearded face look up at her and wave. "Over here, Admiral!"

As she made her way towards her friend, the turbolift which was behind the engineering team opened to deposit Ben and Running Stream.

"Did you have a nice jog?" Ben asked.

"Certainly did...surprised you didn't want to join me."