Peggy Sue (The T'aafhal Inheritance) (40 page)

“Captain, sickbay.” It was Ludmilla’s voice, calm and professional. “We are receiving casualties, six so far. Mostly broken limbs and concussions, none life threatening.”

“Roger, sickbay,” Jack replied. “keep me apprised of the situation. Captain out.”

“What the hell did they hit us with?” asked Gretchen. Though she did not show it, Jack could tell his First Officer was shaken by the surprise attack and its aftermath. To this point, the Peggy Sue had always seemed impervious to harm from enemy action. Whoever these new foes were, they had weapons powerful enough to destroy the Earth ship. Chief Engineer Medina and Dr. Gupta were feverishly working on the ship’s gravitonic systems—the shields and deck gravity in particular had come close to total failure. If they failed in alter-space there was no telling what would happen.

“It appears to have been a form of plasma bolt, or, rather, a swarm of them,” reported the computer. “Meta-stable plasma structures fired toward us at 98% the speed of light.”

“Plasma structure?” replied the puzzled officer. “Did you understand that Yuki?” Dr. Saito had come forward to man the engineering station while others, more conversant with the ship’s gravitonic circuits worked on the actual repairs.

“Only at a rudimentary level, Commander. Theoretical and experimental results have proved the existence of certain nontrivial configurations of electric charges in layered plasma structures that can create self-generated magnetic fields. It is argued that the topological properties of these fields may permit the creation of some meta-stable plasma configurations that can persist with minimum dissipation when coupled to a knotted magnetic field.”

“Can you translate that for non-physicists, Doctor?” Jack asked.

“Sorry,” Yuki said with a slight bow the Captain. “It means that, in theory, self-contained packets of plasma can be created if the plasma itself is flowing in certain, complex patterns. Plasma consists of charged particles and moving charged particles create magnetic fields. The fields then act on the charged particles, reinforcing the movement pattern. Evidently our attackers have discovered how to form compact plasma knots and shoot them at their foes.”

“Plasma bolts, traveling at almost the speed of light,” Jack summarized.

“I would hypothesize that the bursts contained intertwined but separate plasmas made from matter and antimatter. They are not totally stable and decay over time, but traveling at close to the speed of light would allow the fields to persist longer in externally observed time-frames. When they do decay, or strike something solid, the plasmas mix and detonate.”

“Thanks Yuki.” Having deciphered the general nature of the weapons they were hit by, Gretchen asked the next question on her mental list. “Captain, you shouted orders a few seconds before the first plasma bolt struck. How did you know we were under attack?”

“I was running some calculations in my head, regarding where the alien ships would be given the time delay caused by the speed of light,” Jack replied. Seeing continued puzzlement on Gretchen’s face he continued. “We were almost 3.5 AU away from the other transfer point. It takes light 8 minutes to travel one AU, so our view of the aliens was from about 28 minutes in the past.”

“OK, transmission delay, I get that,” Gretchen replied. “But how did that indicate an attack.”

“First we saw the radiation from their emergence into 3-space. Then, about four minutes later we started to receive more high frequency radiation. Since X-rays travel at the speed of light they arrived a bit before the plasma bolts. I didn’t know what they had fired at us but the time delay matched too closely to be a coincidence.”

“You figured that they must have entered the system and, inside of five minutes, fired a salvo at us?”

“Yes, precisely. And a very impressive feat of gunnery it was—they emerged, calculated our vector from time delayed light arriving at their entry position, plotted an intercept point and fired a broadside across 3.5 AU. We were under attack before we could even detect that the enemy arrived in the system.”

“Talk about leading your target!” Gretchen said, finally understanding the nature of the attack. “The plasma bolts were in flight almost a half hour before they struck. Lucky we escaped into alter-space.”

“Yes, lucky,” Jack said. “Unfortunately, we are not on course for Epsilon Eridani. We were still several million kilometers from the transfer point when we were forced to flee 3-space.”

“That is correct, Captain,” the computer added. “I have been considering the parameters of our entry and I think that we are headed for a different star system: Alpha Canis Majoris, also know as Sirius.”

King Lewnhallooshna’s Flagship

“Is the target destroyed?” the anxious monarch demanded. His long spines rattled with impatience as others on the flagship’s bridge made themselves as small as possible, hoping to evade the King’s notice. “WELL?”

Being the King’s favorite and designated fleet commodore no longer seemed quite as appealing to Ooshlewnnalloo. “Oh great and wise King! The plasma torpedoes should have just arrived at the intercept point. Unfortunately, we will not receive light from the bombardment’s impact for another 25 minutes.”
Even you cannot make information travel faster than light in 3-space my King,
Ooshlewnnalloo added to himself.

“Head toward the other transfer point! If the vermin craft was not destroyed we must follow it at once!”

“Yes, my King. But we have no indication of what, if any transfer point they may have taken,” the King’s favorite argued reasonably. “Regardless, we must swing wide and realign our course vector to allow alter-space entry—that will take a day or more, great one.”

King Lewnhallooshna emitted an inarticulate shout of frustration. The enraged monarch lurched forward and impaled his unfortunate son with one of his longest spines. To his credit, Ooshlewnnalloo made no sound but simply quivered and died with a rattling of his own spines.

“Maarshennalloo!” the King called out to the nearest of his many remaining progeny. “You are now Commodore! Run the vermin to ground!”

“Yes, my King!” Maarshennalloo replied, flattening his spines in submission.
Damn, I knew being on the flagship was a bad idea…
 

Bridge, Peggy Sue, Alpha Canis Majoris

Damage control teams worked feverishly following the Peggy Sue’s escape into alter-space. The Captain remained either on the bridge or in the CIC, prioritizing repairs and urging his crew on. Chief Zackly was everywhere supervising, making sure all repair work was squared away. “Stand to, ya deck apes, yous got work ta do,” he was heard to say, “there’ll be no bent shitcans on my deck.”

After ten hours, most of the damage done by the alien plasma salvo had been repaired, though a number of crew remained in sickbay. Just prior to emergence, Ludmilla called Jack with a status report. The surgical team had managed to stabilize de Belcour: The alien ovipositor was removed, along with the eggs it had deposited in Jean-Jacques’ abdomen; His torn rectum and punctured intestines were stitched and glued back together. Pumped full of painkillers and antibiotics, the Frenchman remained mercifully unconscious.

Jean-Jacques had been on the operating table for 12 hours and Ludmilla was totally drained. Midshipman Tanner’s wound had also been treated and he was resting under observation. Kim’s non life-threatening wounds had been patched up by the corpsmen and she was released to quarters. Other crewmembers with various bruises and broken bones were treated and either returned to duty or confined to quarters. With all her charges out of danger, fatigue swept over Ludmilla like a wave. “Captain, all of the casualties have been stabilized or treated and released.”

“Excellent, Doctor,” Jack replied from the bridge. “Please commend your medical team for me.”

“I will, Captain. And then I am going to retire to our quarters and pass out for at least eight hours.”

“Rest up, Doctor. I doubt that I will be disturbing you anytime soon. According to the computer we are close to arriving at our new destination.”

“So quick? How is that possible?”

“Evidently this star Sirius is massive, reducing the transit time to just over 11 hours. But that also means that we will emerge far from the star. Our science staff reports that the possibility of any indigenous life is vanishingly small.”

“I think a boring, unpopulated system would be a nice change, my Captain. Tropsha out.”

* * * * *

Less than twenty minutes later the Peggy Sue shuddered and dropped back into 3-space. The Earth ship found itself seven AU from an immense blue-white star, 25 times more luminous than the Sun. Originally composed of two bright bluish stars—Sirius A and Sirius B—the system was between 200 and 300 million years old. Around 120 million years ago, the then more massive Sirius B finished consuming its supply of fusible hydrogen and became a red giant. Shortly thereafter, it shed its outer layers and half its mass before collapsing into a white dwarf. The two stars remain a binary system, with the distance separating Sirius A from its comparatively dim companion varying between 8.1 and 31.5 AU.

“Alpha Canis Majoris,” said JT in wonder. “Now that’s a star! At least twice as massive as the Sun and known to our ancestors as far back as you want to go.”

“You seem positively enthralled, Mr. Taylor,” commented Lcdr. Curtis, who had come to the bridge for emergence.

“It is the brightest star in Earth’s sky,” JT continued. “For ancient Polynesians its rise marked the start of winter and it was an important star for navigation around the South Pacific. Sirius also signaled the flooding of the Nile in Ancient Egypt and the “dog days” of summer for the ancient Greeks—hence the name the Dog Star.”

“The Freemasons teach about a ‘Blazing Star’ that is said to represent Sirius and another name for the Illuminati was the
Order of the Silver Star
,” added Bobby, the crew’s unofficial expert on fringe science and conspiracy theories. “Not only that, the Dogon people, a primitive tribe from Mali, knew that Sirius was a double star long before they came in contact with modern civilization, something they could not have known without telescopes. According to their legends, a race of people from the Sirius system called the Nommos visited Earth thousands of years ago.”

“I don’t know about that, Bobby,” said Elena from the navigator’s telescope controls, “but we are now closer to home than any time since we left, only about 2.6 parsecs. If we cross the system to the transfer point to Sol we can be home in half a day.”

“Which is precisely what I intend on doing, Dr. Piscopia,” said the Captain. “Given what we know and the damage we have sustained, I think we need to fall back and regroup.”

“I doubt you’ll get much argument from the crew on that decision, Sir,” said Gretchen. Though moral was still high, the crew had been beaten up rather badly as they exited Beta Hydri. None would question a return to base.

“Captain, I’m detecting an anomalous constellation of objects about 4.25 AU from Sirius A,” Elena called from the navigation station.

“Can you put it on the forward screen?”

“Yes, I am zooming in now with the large scope.”

As the cluster of strange objects swam into view in front of the bridge, several of the crew gasped. The objects, with a few exceptions, did not look like asteroids or comet bodies. They had odd shapes—some angular, some curving, some rounded with spires glinting in the harsh actinic light. In other words, they were made things, not likely to have been created by nature.

“What are those objects?” asked Elena.

“
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks; Ten thousand men that fishes gnaw’d upon;” recited the Captain, in a voice tinged with sadness.

 “All scatter’d in the bottom of the sea,” finished Billy Ray. “Shakespeare’s
King Richard III
.”

“It is a graveyard of ships,”
Jack said,
seeing the still puzzled look on the Italian astronomer’s face. “The ruined remains of hundreds of ships. Perhaps the wreckage of some great battle, fought here long ago.” 

Bridge, Peggy Sue, Alpha Canis Majoris

Word of the ship graveyard spread throughout the Peggy Sue with the incredible speed that rumors travel among sailors. From stem to stern, the crew was abuzz with speculation about the ‘ghost fleet’ orbiting the Dog Star. On the bridge, curiosity was also present in force, though the speculation was a bit more restrained.

“Captain, I count 462 objects large enough to be the wreckage of spacecraft, along with several thousand smaller pieces of debris.” As the ship’s computer reported a spherical robotic drone, similar to the herald used on Pzzst, silently edged forward from the port side of the bridge.

The Captain glanced left at the floating metal ball. “Welcome to the bridge, Ambassador. We seem to have stumbled upon a mystery, possibly of historical significance.”

“Thank you Captain; If the wreckage ahead is the remnant of a great battle they are ancient indeed; Are there any signs of life among the ruins?”

“So far, there have been no energy emissions or movement, no signals and no sign of recognition.”

“How did all those hulks collect in one small corner of the system?” asked Lcdr. Curtis. “If they were involved in a battle I would have expected them to be scattered all over the place.”

“The two stars orbit each other with a period of 50.1 years at an average distance of 19.8 AU, about the distance between Uranus and the Sun,” replied JT. “The system has a large orbital eccentricity and currently Sirius A and B are close to their maximum separation at 30 AU. The closeness in mass between A and B, plus the high eccentricity, pretty much rule out any stable Lagrange points, so the debris must be orbiting something of planetary mass.”

“
There has been speculation regarding a Sirius C, a Jupiter size planet or brown dwarf in a six-year elliptical orbit around Sirius A. But a search using high-contrast infrared imaging in 2008 failed to find such a planet within 25 AU of the binary stars,” Elena added. “However, there appears to be an object with the predicted mass at the center of the debris field. The wreckage is evidently in orbit around that object.”