IronStar (2 page)

“Aww, no one expected much from
that old bachelor we did, what, three weeks back?” Doris replied, rubbing her
cheek with the back of one hand. Kirrah recalled the system: a sterile old red
sun, deep asteroid belt, no planets at all. “Boring as two rocks. Perfect for
mining, though. The Mercs will bid themselves into the usual frenzy over it.”

“Fine with me, Survey's been flying
on Mercantile House money since
I’ve
been in space.” Sammy answered.
“So, Kirrah, what's your guess?”

“Hey, I’m just the driver. All I
need to know is, it’s S22041 on the charts, Astro says it’s a solo G2 with
multiple planets, and the mission spec says go there next. What about you,
Sir?” Kirrah asked, turning to the fourth person at the table. She was still a
little shy talking informally with a senior officer, but slowly getting more
comfortable around Captain Leitch. Eleven years of service aboard much larger
and more bureaucratically run merchantmen, made her appreciate the
near-civilian informality he maintained aboard the
Arvida-Yee
: not quite
family, and not quite crisply by-the-book. It worked well for this crew of
nine.

Such little things became important
on missions lasting half a year or more. Discovery of the superluminal
Tubedrive had opened the stars for humanity, but since a ship under Tubedrive
was at rest in its own Tube’s metric, there was no handy time-dilation to
shorten the subjective duration of a voyage. Thus their Survey vessel, a
compact 12 by 50 meter, 1,300 tonne rounded-end cylinder, sported luxuries not
typically found in such a small craft, or even in most much larger merchant or
Navy vessels. Luxuries like the small private cabin Kirrah had quickly come to
treasure, or a big window in the mess hall, or a Captain you could talk to.

The
Arvida-Yee
was presently
running two hundred sixty-odd lightyears and four months’ mission time from the
borders of the Regnum Draconis and home, twenty-three days from their previous
charting assignment. Three more systems to explore, another fifty days, more or
less. Then a fifty-two day leg back to home port, then three weeks leave, and
do it all over again.
Join the Survey Service, see the galaxy
. They just
didn’t tell you how
big
it all was…
 

Captain Leitch replied: “
I
think
you’re all going to be late for watch. Older, wiser heads will let the new
system speak for itself, when we get there in about… six hours. Plus two to set
out standard probes, four to analyze the data… I figure by oh-eight hundred,
I’ll be back on watch just in time for the executive summary. Have a nice
nightshift, children, starting in,” another, more suggestive glance at the wall
chrono, “ninety-five seconds.”

Under his friendly but pointed
gaze, the other three gathered up the remains of breakfast and headed for the
galley. “Sammy!” he called, as the Engineer waited his turn at the disposal.
“While these two hotshots are flitting us around the next system, why don’t you
see if you can find that intermittent in the shuttle’s docking lidar? I don’t
want anyone seeing ‘range unknown’ next time we try to put the bird in the bay.
You never know when you’ll be in a hurry.”

“Aye, Cap. I’ve got the kit down
there already, think I can nail it this time.”

“Good man. Let me know if you need
anything. Sara’s good with that type of sensor, you have my permission to
bother her off-watch, if you need an ear to bend.

“Just don’t bother
me
off-watch,”
the Captain’s words ran after the departing crew. “Because if you bother
me
,”
his words followed Kirrah down the portside manlift, “that means something
interesting
is happening, and you know how I feel about
interesting…
”

The lift buzzed softly through her
soles as it took Kirrah sternward, ‘down’ in the ship’s current drive
configuration. Past her cabin on Crew 1, past Stores and Mechanical, past
Engineering 1, it stopped with a solid
snick
at the bridge, second-last
deck near the stern.

It’d taken her months to get over
the sense of awe as she stepped onto a starship’s bridge. Years later, the
now-familiar sight of rounded dark gray surfaces, central command chair and arc
of colorful workstation displays still gave her hindbrain a small tingle, even
as it brought her mind to a clear, professional focus. Everything seemed to hum
with competence and sheer technological proficiency.

The main viewtank showed only the
scant external data available to the sensors of a ship under Tubedrive: a
hundred-meter black ovoid bubble around their vessel, seething with quantum
micro-fluctuations. The blackness glowed ever so faintly in the far infrared as
occasional degenerate photons tunneled across the superluminal boundary, but
conveyed no coherent information whatsoever about the outside universe.

The First Officer, Lieutenant
Commander Howell Docking, was already at his place in the command chair, Kirrah
noticed with a tiny twinge of guilt as she quick-stepped to her post. The
deceptively soft-looking man was amicable enough, but not someone to indulge
inefficiencies. She stepped up behind the Helm station located in the center of
the arc.

“Good watch, Jerry?” she asked.

“Clean’n’green, all shift,” the
thin, sandy-haired man replied. “Lonely, boring, and spot-on trajectory. Just
the way the boss likes it. Have a nice one.” Lieutenant JG Gerald Sykes, Second
Helm, stood and stretched his back, pronounced the formal words that
acknowledged Kirrah’s control of the small starship: “You have the Helm.”

“I have Helm,” she replied,
formally accepting the responsibility, and slid into the contoured seat
directly in front of the command chair. Her eyes scanned the array of screens
and indicators with practiced competence, hands and mind integrating in seconds
into the familiar, intimate pilot’s connection with her vessel.

 
“I have the Eyes”, Lieutenant Finch’s voice
came from Kirrah’s left, as her friend completed the same small ritual with
Ensign Sara Roe at the master sensor station.

“I’m setting my wake-me for oh six
hundred,” that youngest crew member said as she stepped back. “I don’t want to
miss First Approach on this one. Angela says it’s just
perfect
for
hablets. See you all in the morning!” Doris looked over at Kirrah, mouthed
First
trippers!
and rolled her eyes covertly.

~~~

Six hours later, true to his word
Captain Leitch, along with the dayshift half of his crew, was sleeping as the
Arvida-Yee
swept towards the outermost approaches of their destination. The bridge was
quiet, almost hushed.

“Eyes, we should be coming up on
our final nav sighting,” said Lieutenant Commander Docking softly behind
Kirrah.

“Right, Howell, I’m on it,” replied
Doris. Her brown fingers flitted with practiced ease across her board, readying
her sensors for the job ahead. Tubespace vessels found it prudent to
periodically re-enter normal space for navigation sightings and course
corrections, especially just before entering a new star system.

Kirrah prepared the helm commands
which would drop their small vessel into nearly the same metric as normal
space, allowing a sensor pod to be deployed for Lieutenant Finch. The Tubedrive
generator in the bow made a soft thrumming vibration as it shifted the shape of
space outside their vessel.

“Sub-cee transition in
four…three…two… mark!” Kirrah recited.

“Deploying sensors, display to the
main tank,” added Doris.

“So,” said Lt. Commander Docking as
the viewtank came to life, “what have we…”

“Hey! That’s grav-track!” Doris
interrupted. “
Missile
grav-track!
Hostile launch!
Holy shit! Something’s
firing
at us!”

Her words were punctuated by the
urgent rising wail of the automatic collision alarm, and the sharp ‘blatt’ as
she punched for General Quarters. In the main viewtank, the ship’s AI switched
automatically to tactical mode. The high-resolution display showed the
destination system, still light-hours ahead, and a red pip indicating an
unwelcome intruder. A thin red line traced the grav-track of a missile - wait,
three, now
four
missiles spreading across their path from the unknown source,
already well on their way to englobing the
Arvida-Yee
’s projected
course.

“Helm, get us back up-Tube,
Stat!
Auto-evade,
now!
” snapped Lt. Commander Docking, as Kirrah began winding
in the sensor pod. “No delay, dump the pod!” With a twinge of guilt at the loss
of the expensive sensor suite, she dropped the cable and dialed full standard
acceleration. The ship's auto-evasion Tactical AI began twitching their course
randomly around its baseline.

Cocooned at the center of its grav
tube, her crew felt nothing but the thrumming of the drive as the small ship
leapt deep into its own pocket metric, separated from suddenly hostile normal
space by a dense double fold of induced pseudo-gravity. On the main display,
the thin red lines converged on the green cone of their projected course
envelope.

There was a small
snick
as
the spinal manlift behind the command chair deposited someone on the bridge.
Rapid footsteps made straight for the vacant Engineering workstation to
Kirrah’s right. Sammy, looking worried, came into her peripheral vision as he
took his seat there. Lt. Commander Docking snapped off a course change:

“Helm port two-five pitch minus
four zero, activate! Tubewall to maximum depth! Eyes, launch a mailtube on my
signal. We don’t know what we’ve found, but we
know
NavInt wants to know
about it!”

“Already feeding sensor data to the
mailtube, Sir… holding for launch on your A2 panel, tube one,” said Doris.
Funny
how quickly military formality returns when they start shooting at us
,
Kirrah thought, as she swept the ship around to their new course.

“Spitballs loading in tubes two and
four, Sir,” Kirrah added, attempting to anticipate the next orders. A faint
rumbling vibration echoed through the scoutship’s frame as servos pulled the
chubby 1.5 meter weapons from the magazine just behind the bow, and trundled
them to the adjacent launch tubes. Another
snick
sound from the
starboard manlift marked another arrival.

“Thank you, Lieutenant Roehl. I
have the conn. Howell, please take the weapons board,” said the deeper voice of
Captain Leitch as he strode onto the bridge. Kirrah always found the presence
of the stocky, competent captain reassuring, and something tight between her
shoulder blades unclenched a notch or two as he settled his muscular frame into
the command chair.
Sorry we bothered your sleep, Sir
, part of her mind
whimpered irrationally.
And how did you get here so fast? Sammy was working
just one level down, did you sleep in uniform?

“Helm. Please load two Spoofs in
tube three, and queue three more mailtubes to launch at opportunity… anyone
know who’s out there?” Silence answered, all eyes on the main display tank
watching hostile missile tracks converge on their old trajectory.

The tracks, unfortunately, from the
moment they’d gone up-Tube, were only their own computer’s projections. The
good news and the bad news about engagements between FTL vessels, was that no
signal from normal space could reach a ship while she was under Tubedrive.
However, as long as the missiles themselves stayed sub-light, they could track
the
Arvida-Yee
just fine by her drive’s gravity waves. While sub-c they
couldn’t catch her, but with a little foresight they could arrange to be in her
path… as at least one was very likely to do - that was an
excellent
missile
spread, ahead of them.

Seconds oozed by. The atmosphere on
the bridge thickened with anticipation. The red lines on the display reached
the green cone representing their available course changes, moved deeper into
it. More seconds. Suddenly yellow lights flared on everyone’s boards. Their
Tubedrive staggered briefly, then resumed its resonant hum. Outside the small
ship, a vicious sleet of hard gamma photons and subatomic particles was swept
into the gravity well of the Tubefield, around the ship, and ejected in a spectacular
glowing roostertail that would finally fade into a five thousand kilometer
plume of weightless embers behind them.

“Kruss! That was a
Kruss
warhead!”

“I know, Lieutenant Finch, I know…
wonder what our friends are doing ‘way out here. Ready with the Spitballs… and
let’s give them a Spoof to play with at the same time. Might cover the mailtube
launch when we dip in for a moment. Helm, starboard 5, plus 20, continue
accel.”

Another sudden angry flare of
yellow, another moan from their drive generator. This time two amber lights
remained on Engineering’s board. “On it!” said Sammy at Engineering, and Lt.
Commander Docking from the Weapons board, at the same time. Both men queried
the ship’s AI for the exact damage. Sammy spoke first: “No problem, shunt three
down, isolating… clear!”

“Captain to all hands. Alright,
people, we’ve found a Kruss vessel where they’ve never been before. We’re going
to drop sub-cee for exactly three seconds. We will launch two mailtubes on
random evasions, two Spit-5 seeker missiles, and a Spoof. We will acquire
maximum sensor data, return to Tubespace and run like hell. Anyone see a
problem with that?”

More silence, as the bridge crew
reflected on the fact that there was no Kruss warship known which could match
their speed, nor one that would even break a sweat, converting a Regnum
scoutship into a relativistic ball of incandescent plasma, if it came to a
standup fight. No more yellow lights, the one missile spread seemed to be it…

Thirty seconds later, forty… Kirrah
dialed back the Tubefield, everyone else’s eyes glued to the main tank. They
slipped into normal space, heard the thuk-clang as the ready tubes flushed
their loads, a light rumble and another clang as the second mailtube cycled out
tube one. They fled back into trans-light on schedule, changed course again.
The display showed the green tracks of their outgoing missiles, the destination
system a few light-hours ahead, and nothing else at all.