Chapter 17 - A Tale In Which the First Rescuers become the Rescued (Some few of them anyway).

  The bioanalysis lab on the Wanderlust was crowded with just two people, shoehorned behind sickbay as it was. The ship supported minimal research facilities, just enough to diagnose a bizarre parasite or compare DNA and proteins, identify strange organisms and that kind of thing. The Lab AI was arguing about the results from the sample of the dead soldier ant, and refusing to accept the scan data, asking for resubmits and refusing to issue a report. Tunney finally pulled the AI out of the circuit and switched in several expert systems and they slotted their PIMS to sift the data from the sampled dead frozen bug. The Special Ops guys bagged them a soldier bug from the supply ferry medical Operating Theater. It was definitely dead as opposed to mostly dead, no residual cell processes going on at all.

  The reports finally streamed in and Rainwater blinked, “Well, that is odd.”

  “What is odd? I see straight DNA pattern couplings organized into genes, chromosomes and pairs. These are Terran ants. The AI can’t identify the species, though. Are you funning me? This cannot be the sample we pulled,” asked Tunney.

  “You were with me when we pulled the sample, we used the standard chain of custody form so there were no mistakes. I am not ‘funning’ you. I agree, they’re ants. Giant, subspace traveling, power sucking, super-strong ants, right out of a bad B-movie,” said Rainwater, “I even watched that movie, it's called 'Them', but that’s not what I meant: ‘Odd’ is that there seems to be a separate cellular structure, with a completely separate cell reproductive scheme. Each cell has a little nano-generator in it. I don’t understand how it works at all. Hell I don't understand how it functions. ”

  He fiddled with the monitor and brought up a cell slice from their sample, ”This is the pattern that freaked the lab AI out. Each cell has a little subspace stress engine embedded in it. I have no idea how this would work. This stress pattern here,” Rainwater pointed at the screen and a group of lines across the cell, “Is the stress pattern that causes a normal space rejection and subspace immergence, that’s what people like me tune the subspace generators to create, maybe a little bit different. This bug exists in 6 dimensions at the same time.”

  Tunney said, “I don’t really understand how this is happening, but each cell striation pattern is a little different, but the two next to each other are nearly identical. I would be very interested to see reproductive cells.”

  “The other structure isn’t protein, it’s metallic and some rare earths. Lithium, palladium, osmiridium and some rhenium. The same proportions as the subspace drive coil. Each one of their cells has am itty-bitty subspace drive coil. I was under the impression there was a minimum field generator size. It’s hard to credit,” said Rainwater, “Intellectually, I mean. I understand that they travel in subspace and go where they will, but this is absurd. I don’t see any way this could evolve. ”

  “Have you met Perez yet?” said Tunney, "You keep saying that phrase, maybe you should figure out how it's working."

  “No, haven’t. Heard about the guy, how he’s 30 meters tall and walks on flaming lava,” said Rainwater, “Eats rhinos for brekkie.”

  “Yes, that’s him,” said Tunney, blinking inscrutably, ”...In addition to his vast culinary capacity, he is probably the leading expert in extra-dimensional theory around here. He and his thesis advisor designed that new sub-molecular coating that you propulsion engineers are fainting over.”

  “I’d hardly say ‘fainting’. I’m mildly impressed for sure,” said Rainwater, "It's a darn good hack."

  “He’s still around the ship, I have him on light duty for another day. He’s helping Jose Ortiz with some projects, that stick the soldier bug was carrying, that new dropship Jose designed, stuff like that,” said Tunney, ”I think he would enjoy a look at this.”

  “I’ve got no problem with it. Going in front of the command group with this all alone is a bit scary. I’m thrilled that I was right, and they are regular old ants from earth. That parallel evolution thing was hard for me to swallow right off,” said Rainwater, “I think that would have put me in a looney bin. I’m having a hard-enough time with subspace-traveling ants from hell.”

  Tunney walked out of the closet/lab and over to her office and contacted Perez, “Randy, Mr. Rainwater here has found something extremely interesting, and I thought you might want to take a look. How soon can you get up here?”

  “Jose and I are finishing up with the weapons and the bug chunk stuff. I can do the write up later. Will twenty minutes work?” asked Perez.

  “Perfect. See you soon,” said Tunney.

  Rainwater spent those twenty minutes with his PIM putting together a presentation on their discoveries, cleaning up the samples and double checking his results. Tunney worked on patient records and updating ‘EEMU’ with new procedures regarding ant-bites.

  Perez entered Medical right on the predicted twenty-minute mark and walked into the office. He bowed and said, “Ohayōgozaimasu, Shindou-chan.”

  “Ohayō, Randy-kun,” said Cindy, “Steven doesn’t speak Japanese, so let’s be polite.”

  Rainwater stuck his head in the office and said, “Why does everybody here speak Japanese?”

  Perez turned around, stuck his hand out and said, “Wow... that’s a really good question and a long story and it has a pretty funny and complicated answer, so why don’t we save it for later and not quite ‘everyone’ speaks Japanese. I’m Randall Perez, and the Senior Chief here said you had something you wanted me to see?”

  Rainwater followed his head with his hand and shook Perez’s hand, “Nice to meet you, Chief, I’m Specialist Steven Rainwater, I was drafted as the ‘bug guy’ by Chief Warrant Wamamere from Grasberg.”

  “I heard about some of that. Wamamere is back over there now cleaning up. I guess about a third of your former crew volunteered to join the Navy, which let us know that something evil was ‘afoot’,” said Perez.

  “I just kept my head down and did my job, didn’t buy anything I didn’t have to... before I knew it, I was 20,000 cred in debt and no idea how that happened,” said Rainwater.

  “Seen that before... quite a few times. I’m sorry it happened to you, and welcome to the Navy. We treat people better than that,” said Perez.

  “I’m fitting in pretty well here. I thought it’d be different. My expectations were reversed I guess... I thought the military would be like the base was... and here is more like working in a company. I can see where it’s sort of dangerous, but you guys try not to let people get hurt... The NCM Co-op didn’t care,” said Rainwater.

  “That’s ‘cause they were taken over and owned by an organized crime syndicate,” said Perez, “Not that huge conglomerates are much better.”

  “We didn’t know. I didn’t know. All I knew is my shares were worth nothing, prices kept going up and my salary was disappearing. Then they put out a policy that you couldn’t leave the company in the red... and no matter what you did you ended up in the red. Several people in my division committed suicide,” said Rainwater, “Some of the shipowners lost their ships, confiscated for unpaid debt.”

  “Well, Chief Wamamere will fix it, then go liberate the other base. They were under the same co-op. It might get messy, but we have a lot of experience cleaning up sewage,” said Perez, “... Now that the polites are out of the way, what did you want to show me?”

  “It’s in the lab. I’m working on a presentation on this stuff and Ms. Tunney said you’d be interested. She implied that subspace physics was your specialty,” said Rainwater.

  “Subspace physics applications, yep,” said Perez, shrugging.

  “Take a look at this,” said Rainwater and he ducked back into the lab and showed Perez his cell model, “Had to shut off the lab analysis AI. We thought it was going to jump out of the lab and come at us for joking with it.”

  “Well, now... That’s odd,” said Perez.

  “That’s what I said,” said Rainwater.

  “Do you mind if I snarf your data into my PIM? She has some analysis routines that are particular to multidimensional analysis,” asked Perez.

  “Not at all. I asked Ms. Sevrinofsky if I could upgrade my PIM, but they haven’t got around to it yet. I’ve only been here about seven days and it feels like an eternity,” said Rainwater.

  “I can do some, but the Wing Commander is the real genius at AI,” Perez slotted his PIM and started fiddling with the basic pattern data. His AI blinked the monitor twice. He asked, “Okay, Sally’s got your basic data, and I think this is awesome. Do ants have brains?”

  “Not really. They have junction ganglia and some basic programming. They are around as complex as an ancient-style desktop computer with four or five hundred thousand transistors,” said Rainwater, “Queens and soldier ants are slightly more complex, workers slightly less.”

  “We need to get a chunk of those neurons and look. Lookie here,” and he pointed to the screen, excitedly, “It looks like the mitochondria, here, are hooked into that cesium spiral structure that connects to that dimensional pattern generator, there. It’s using ATP, you know, respiration to power a mini subspace pattern generator. This is cool. Hey, look here... this node right here, “ Perez pointed at a bizarre structure in the upper part of the slide, “That looks like a micro-capacitor to me, and this is an electron tunnel.”

  “My guess is that turns it on,” said Rainwater.

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Perez, bouncing in his chair like a little kid, “We need to do a cell by cell analysis of this thing, look! All the cells are slightly different!”

  “Your saying that it builds up an interference pattern? In our generators that keeps the ships from going into subspace,” said Rainwater.

  “Yeah, because they’re identical and the pattern locus interferes! But these are slightly different, they overlap incrementally. We need to test this. Sally... can we build a nano-structure similar to this?” Perez asked.

  The border of the monitor blinked twice.

  “Steve, can I call you Steve? Can you come on down to our lab in Fusion Two? Lookie here, during cell division the patterns flip in two of three dimensions! We have a bunch of nano-factories for building and testing nano scale devices... Cindy, can we get a sample of the bug brains?” asked Perez bouncing in his seat.

  “Onii-chan, calm down. I’ll get those scans for you,” said Tunney.

  “This is important, this could be a simple solution for minimum size subspace entry requirements! It’s a three-hundred-year-old problem,” said Perez excitedly, "We could fix this today!"

  “Randy! You are still on light duty. I’m sending Barbara down to get you in about 8 hours, you hear me? You must eat and sleep, or my healing patches won’t hold.” asked Tunney.

  “You don’t understand! This is important!” said Perez.

  Tunney stood up and thundered, growing 20 meters tall in the process, “If it’s that important, you need to be alive to see it!”

  Perez turned white, said “Gomen-ne, Gomen-ne, I’ll calm down!”

  Rainwater said, “Now I understand what Reagan was talking about.”

  * * *

  Reagan looked around and said, “Brrr, chills just ran up my spine.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Frenchie.

  “A goose just walked over my grave,” said Reagan.

  They were flying CAP over at the local cluster solar LaGrange Point, a place where the local stellar gravitational field stresses balanced out and created a flat spot about 8 light minutes across. Subspace and normal space are congruent there, or so Perez said. Reagan figured that meant, ‘The same’ in smart guy speak. He chuckled to himself, because he was at least as nerdy as the theoretical dimensional physics expert, just not in nano-scale applications.

  “Nerdboy, you are so weird,” said Nathan.

  Frenchie said, "Does that mean someone is talking about you?"

  “Only good things I hope, from the guy who talks like a reject from the ‘Holy Grail’,” said Regan.

  “What’s that?” asked Nathan.

  “It’s an old movie, from Pre-Space Europe,” said Regan.

  “A movie? You’re getting on me about a movie?” Nathan drawled.

  "Not you, Frenchie!" said Regan.

  They floated gracefully around the corner buoy set as the top of the diamond of the patrol. The four subspace buoys marked exit points for ships passing by the system, because calculating an exit was error prone on the subspace side, just due to discrepancies in distance between the spaces. The bugs didn’t need exit buoys though, they could enter and exit subspace at their pleasure. They had ships and capital ships for unknown reasons, maybe to go places their own internal subspace transport couldn’t go.

  The two fighters widened their formation and skated off to the next cardinal point, Reagan pushing the envelope the entire time. The data from the patrols allowed the Engineering group to continually update the performance of all the ships with the new power plants. In the 9 or so days since they’d engaged the aliens the performance of ships and crew had risen through the stratosphere, metaphorically speaking. The flight engineers found ways of improving maneuverability, reducing power and increasing overall thrust almost every shift. Small improvements to be sure, but they were adding up. The acceleration compensator allowed for small fluctuations in the gravitational constant, more or less analogous to changing the local curvature of the space. Perez’s film or coating made the field generation logarithmically easier by isolating the edges and preventing energy loss. Jose Ortiz estimated that overall it doubled efficiency in every system it could be used. Reagan estimated that the current flight group had the firepower equivalent of the entire InSystem Guard. He also suspected it wouldn’t be nearly enough.

  The diamond was far enough apart that the fighters could build up some serious delta-v and Reagan could test some of his partial control structures. Warfare in bug space involved a whole new dimension of tactics, small ships, relativistic concerns. Previously space battles were missiles and EM rail weapons against large targets. Lin and Liu doped out a system that used the acceleration compensator to predictively gain micro-seconds in time for a millisecond, then using that time to gain an advantage in relative fire control speed to target and launch against the alien ships without allowing them to respond. Against the bio-mechanical ant-bugs it had yet to be tested.

  Perez’s coating also allowed them to downsize an Mass Detection Indicator and fit it into a fighter. They’d gone beyond the EVA module design and regularized the fighter design itself. Perez was saying yesterday that if they scaled it up a bit, they might be able to get a full fusion plant in the thing, but then the carrier would need to be scaled up, and it might not be effective and there was plenty of power already. Reagan shook his head and said, “How do you feel about running some tests? We have about an hour of requested performances,” asked Reagan.

  “It’s fine, I was bored anyway,” said Nathan.

  “Okay, good, I’m uploading Lin’s new test package. He wants to test the new firecontrol interface. Our Partial Neural Interfaces are hooked in under passive response,” said Reagan.

  “It’s fine,” said Nathan.

  “Lin said there might be some small discomfort if the Partial Neural Interfaces were new. Ours are new,” said Reagan.

  “It’s fine. What does that guy call ‘small discomfort’? Isn’t he the one that can hold his breath for five minutes and eat nails?” asked Nathan.

  “He doesn’t eat them, he lies on a bed of them,” said Reagan, “I asked a similar question and he said, ‘don’t be a wimp’.”

  “Well, it’s fine. I won’t be bored anymore,” said Nathan.

  “You are flying in a beyond state of the art killing machine at around 10 percent light speed. You need to shut up!” said Reagan.

  “Boooooooring!” said Nathan.

  “Initiating. This is probably going to hurt,” said Reagan.

  A little bell and some circles and lines flashed over the HMD and then Reagan’s hands started to tingle.

  A voice appeared in his head, the words coasting along the sea breeze, making shadows in the intent of the silence. Reagan blinked, and Lin’s face appeared in his vision, “Good Afternoon, Lieutenant. Welcome to Special Operations and the new Flight Specialty. I know it’s been three days, but I’ve been a little busy. This sequence means that your Partial Neural Interface is complete, and your adjustment programming is destroyed. We were a little worried at first, but you seem to have come through it just fine. This training video is personalized to you, your wingman is seeing a similar video at this time, personalized to him. We’ve added some Interface training with the fighters to the sequences. This video takes place in memoriam, in other words, it actually takes no time to run, milliseconds in real time upload...”

  “I’ve disconnected your motor functions for a few seconds, so as to run this training, and implant the necessary stimuli to learn you the good way to use your nano-enhancements. Our nanotech is a bit beyond InSystem in development so some of this stuff will be new to you. There is an upper limit on the time I can manipulate your nano, before your brain reroutes, so we do it in little bits. We updated your wetware in about three days, because your original bosses implanted the stuff in you before now. I don’t know how much you’ve been told, but you were wired for almost complete surveillence, and your nano-interface to your sensory system is complete. I should mention that this is illegal without your consent. Should you ever choose to open a case, the documentation is being held in the Medical AI. What was not complete was the conscious interfacing. I should mention that there is no way to override neural impulses in any body without killing it. That’s why the whole thing is illegal.... There are no nano-zombies. Sorry. Can’t even install a supervisory AI, the whole thing is too complex. AI’s are faster than us, not smarter.”

  Time stopped and he dropped off the edge of the cliff into night. Then Lin’s face appeared in the HMD of his suit. Reagan was standing on a cliff on the edge of night, winds buffeting his face in the breeze, still in the suit. The incongruity of it all was a bit much. A screen appeared in front of him with a doll like model of a Chinese person in a formal robe.

  “This simulation is the basic familiarization of the neural connection function. It allows you to control the next set of testing function for the craft. We designed it to use the suit nano-ware on purpose, it is well tested on the interface side, and we know exactly how it interfaces on the neural side. Dr. Tunney set up the initial parameters, and InSystem did you sort of a favor when they implanted the behavioral drivers that caused you so many problems. You were reporting monthly to a drop point and then the act itself would wipe your memory. This produced anxiety and rage making you an asshole, so if you were wondering why your personality differed so much and you couldn’t fix it, that’s why. We wiped all the drivers, gave you a supervisory network, internal diagnostics and a firewall, but the basic sensory setup remains the same. You aren’t ready to handle strength augmentation, but the flight extra sensing is enabled. We changed your icon models to avatars from vision, because vision representation is stupid and distracting, to eliminate uncanny valley uneasiness and some other basic mods. InSystem is something like half a century behind in their applications, they reserve the newer nano to their important government and corporate personnel. A highly simplified explanation: Nanotech is really just creative chemistry. The molecules interact physically with their environment, and each other. A partial Neural Interface uses miniature discrete ganglia implanted at lymph node junctions and they communicate via low power, medium frequency EMF by varying your bodies galvanic field. Your PIM talks to the control nodes and builds up a set of responses over time, blah, blah, blah. If it sounds like a lot, it is, and you aren't ready, but you know... giant killer bugs from space.”

  “To continue; take a look over at the monitor, and it will show a basic click interface. You can move the selections by imagining moving a mouse over the menu, then scrolling it up and and down. Double confirmation to select. Try it now. Eventually you will be able to build a consistent set of sensory images for a set of physical responses. If you want to use the Superhero image set? It works. Be an Avian? That works too. Vectors and gravity compensation are displayed graphically as lines and arrows, and as your mind sorts out the impulses and gets better at predicting behavior, so will your displays reflect this.”

  Lin took him through a class on using and configuring nano functions, how it interfaced to the ship and the suit, and what the sensory feedback felt like. That was weird. The tutorial felt like about 20 minutes of time passed, but his ships chronometer told him about two seconds passed in real time. Reagan was familiar with the basics of nano-interfacing and DNI, but thought he’d never been exposed to it. He selected the Avian interface set and moved his hands on the pads and felt the little ship respond. It felt like wings. He didn’t have wings, but that’s what it felt like. It was amazing! Reagan stretched his wings and rolled them to make the little ship somersault and recover on the same vector.

  “Nerdboy! What the hell are you doing?” asked Nathan.

  “Testing my imagery,” said Reagan.

  “Do it further away!” said Nathan.

  “Sorry!” said Reagan, "Sorry!"

  They continued the patrol with both pilots testing out their new functionality. Two hours into the CAP, both ships AI screamed out with the new Mass Detection Interrupts, and the east subspace beacon alerted to incoming presence.

  “Ships detected, Republic mass signature, but no energy profile. Suspect alien internal incursion,” said his PIM, "Scanning."

  “Right, contact the Wanderlust immediately and get us some support. Warthog would be nice too. Perez and Muschivk are going to have to get off their butts for this one. There’s 10 ships in this convoy,” said Reagan.

  “305 second delay due to various subspace anomalies. Buoys should reconfigure in five minutes. Wrapping up tactical scans and recon and sending them along with your request for immediate assistance,” said the PIM.

  “Good. Once that leaves, wake everyone on board the pico-carrier up and get them moving. There’s only 6 fighters and a gunboat but we need to go check it out. The SAR isn’t with us right now, right?” asked Reagan.

  “No, Robert. It left shortly before your patrol this morning. The next vessel to arrive is the Phoenix herself in about 6 hours, but my estimate is they’ll speed that up. She can probably make it in 3 hours at the North buoy,” said the PIM, “That thing you call the pico-carrier can barely move itself around, it’s no help to you.”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “I guess Cohen and Muschivk are clicking. They figured about 12 hours from now is the earliest any reinforcements could arrive and that’s pretty close,” said Reagan.

  “Most likely these ships are from an outlying station or stations, but without ID beacons it’s impossible to tell,” said the PIM, “But the mix of medium to light craft ensures it is not a sector generated relief mission. We have no IFF on any of these vessels.”

  “ETA to ship location?” asked Reagan.

  “90 minutes straight,” said the PIM.

  “All right, Reagan, you’re the officer type, what do we do now? You know those ships are overrun with ants. Is it a trap? Where are they from?” asked Nathan.

  “We go check it out, don’t know, and without a scan don’t know, in that order,” said Reagan.

  “You getting everybody up? We should all get there at once,” said Nathan.

  “I’d figured we’d join up about a megaklick away and roll in together. We can do assistive scans in one pass. I suspect we’re going to find what Muschivk and Perez found on the ferry,” said Reagan, “Someone came to check this out and thought ‘we are all crazy’ and didn’t take precautions. It’s sort of understandable. Likelihood of everyone losing their mind at once is much higher than alien bug-eyed monsters. Someone like I used to be made that call.”

  “Glad you said that,” said Nathan.

  * * *

  “Ma’am, Lt. Reagan from the LP has a transmission you should see,” said Mrajel, who irritated her immensely, especially when she just woke up.

  Morgan sighed and gave up. There was no way she could ever fix this dude, “Mrajel, bring the ship up to Flank, head for the North buoy, and get everybody rotated off to get a full meal. One hour before arrival sound Action Stations and get the pilots in Squadron Two in their ships. Can you handle that?” asked Morgan.

  “Yes ma’am,” Mrajel said, “Aren’t you going to look at the transmission first?”

  “Yes, but the only thing that would make him send a transmission special is an incursion of something, and I have the same orders for you regardless of what it would be. Think it through!” said Morgan.

  “Yes ma’am!” he said and ran off toward Control like a kindergartner to the bathroom.

  “God, what an idiot... PIM, send a response to the LP, and an action message to the Wanderlust. Did Reagan request the SO team and that new drop ship, what did Ortiz call it?” she asked.

  “Warthog, ma’am, after the A-10 Thunderbolt. He said you would all know what it meant, and yes he did,” said the PIM, “He also requested Perez and Muschivk personally, gave an excellent sitrep, and made three suggestions to you, in 227 words. This individual has improved.”

  “Hope it lives up to the name. We could use 20 of them. Not that we could man 20 of them,” said Morgan, “Does Jessica’s SAR still have that cannon attached? She’s the new Team One chauffeur, right? Scatora said no?”

  “Yes ma’am, and the three cannons are still stationed at the LP. We randomly move the beacon every 12 hours after the broadcast,” said the PIM, “And the cannon as well.”

  “What are Reagan’s suggestions?” asked Morgan.

  “One, get Han back here in Warthog; two, when you arrive launch two HV - ESM drones, in sequence of about 180 seconds on an intercept with the convoy; three, move the carrier to cover the South and East cardinal points,” said the PIM.

  “He thinks it’s an ambush as well then... but he thinks it’s for the relay. That could be, but I don’t think so... I think they’re better than that,” said Morgan, “They’re good suggestions, tactically... it won’t hurt so we’ll do it that way. I have an awful feeling about this. Tell Cohen I think this is the first intelligent move the bugs made against us. They know we can’t just destroy those ships. It’s a setup,” said Morgan, “Contact SAR-2 and tell her to go get Warthog, or have someone ferry it over to her, suggest to Cohen that he gets those new people up to speed a little faster. I want to set up a counter-trap.”

  “You think they’re going to hit the Wanderlust?” asked the PIM.

  “Yeah, that’s what I think, it’s what I’d do if I were them. At the same time we go after those ships, they’ll attack whatever seems the most important to them. I’m guessing the Wanderlust but it could be any of the stations. They were really attracted to Cerro Verde,” said Morgan, “Tell the wardroom steward, whoever it is, that I’ll be down in 15 minutes. Message Mrajel and tell him to be ready for relief in an hour, after that eat and rest for another hour, then meet me on the bridge.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the PIM.

  Morgan showered in her new shower recycler, dressed in her new skinsuit and threw a new uniform tunic and pants over it and headed down to the new full mess about five minutes later. She got rid of the officer’s mess and combined the galleys to save space right after the Phoenix was converted. There wasn't enough space for everything the flight crews needed.

  * * *

  Captain (Commander) David Cohen stuck his head out of the head and said, “What!” in response to the intense chiming of his PIM. Cohen’s PIM was a Sevrinofsky special mod, and carried a name, ‘Ada Byron Lovelace’.

  “Incoming message from Squadron Two Commander, Robert Reagan, currently patrolling at the LaGrange Point. Marked Priority One, Threat Unknown,” said Ada, “With a rider relay from the Phoenix.”

  “Hang on,” said Cohen, then he stuck himself back in the shower and rinsed off, “It’s not like my getting dressed will hang things up then. The message took 30 minutes to get here.”

  “This message was Priority One,” said Ada, “It’s only 18 minutes old. He boosted the power on the relay to put it in the lower subspace dimensions.”

  “Either way!” said Cohen, hitting the button to suck all the water back into the reclamation tank, and started the towel and blow-dry sequence to get the water off.

  He walked out, said “Play it,” and started getting dressed.

  “Priority One, GRS Convoy, origin unknown, arrived LP 1512 hours and is dead in space. Squadron Two enroute to recon. Suggest: one, dispatch Warthog to meet up with Han at North buoy; two Phoenix, arrive North, dispatch two HV recon convoy in advance of Squad Two recon; three reposition carrier to South East Cardinal. Request Muschivk/Perez lead rescue team. Squadron Two regrouping approx 1 mega klick west of convoy point. Forces in locality insufficient to repel full assault, even with Phoenix on station” said Ada, “There’s more but it’s exact positioning of the list of ships and current location of the relay beacon, and the velocities of prospective intercepts. It appears the incoming convoy is dead in the water relative to the center of the LP, much like the ferry when it arrived.”

  “He thinks they are bait,” mused Cohen, “That boy might work out.”

  “I concur, both with your surmise and his analysis. The probability of events similarity too low to calculate. Must be manipulation by intelligences involved,” said Ada, “Lieutenant Commander Morgan concurs with Reagan’s estimate but suggest the real target is the Wanderlust, with a secondary target at Cerro Verde.”

  “Well, he’s right on all counts, except I think the trap is here, not there. Maybe I’m giving them too much credit. It would be too much for them to have found the Wanderlust in 160 hours, though I suppose it’s possible. I’m guessing Cerro Verde. There’s something there they want, and want badly,” said Cohen.

  “CWO Perez and ETCS Ortiz believe the alien technologies are on par with the Republics, a shade better InSystems public tech level and somewhat lower than OutSystem tech level. They’ve built a number of models to simulate behaviors and most of their models predict a small number of driving intelligences, widely spaced over the area of control. Specialist Rainwater refuses to accept that Terran ants would suffer multiple queens in a colony, so he surmises a special form of ant that has a much higher number of neurons. ’Brains’ if you will. He suggests that Queens and these Brains have a very high neuron count, perhaps even as high as ours as determined by the level of technology in the base ships and fighters.”

  “My gut feeling is he’s right. It feels like there are smart people somewhere in this. The initial setup of their transit routes around the station show that,” said Cohen, “They had a very good idea of our capabilities in subspace, and a not so good feel for our capabilities in normal space.”

  “I concur. My programming is biased in favor of humanistic viewpoints, but regardless the data supports intelligent decision making,” said Ada.

  “Get Muschivk and Perez in Warthog over to the LP. Reagan is right, we’re going to need them there. Send Crunich as well and get Sevrinofsky on the horn and tell her to plan a battle around Cerro Verde. I know that’s where it’s going to be, there’s something on that planetoid that they want. I don’t know why but see if Joe concurs with me. I’m thinking we need to be prepared to move the Wanderlust as well. Move the system defense hardpoints to defend that base and see how many of the newbies Wamamere liberated are willing to crew some of the lighter stuff that we’ve modified,” said Cohen.

  “Yes sir,” said Ada.

  “Tell Wamamere to get back over here, and bring as many bodies as he can, and tell him to give us an ETA,” said Cohen.

  “Right,” said Ada.

  “Tell Kosnar to get the crew fed and get them an hour of rest each shift,” said Cohen.

  “Got it,” said Ada.

  “Oh, just a hunch here, but I bet they attack when the SO team enters the first ship on the convoy,” said Cohen.

  “You believe that they have some kind of instantaneous subspace communication?” asked Ada.

  “Yes, I do. I think that when we analyze all this, we’ll also find that they’ve never run into any race that can oppose them,” said Cohen.

  “I see. That’s promising,” said Ada and the Captain finished dressing and headed over to the Wardroom mess for coffee and breakfast. He was living in the Captain’s cabin in the ferry module blister, it was roomier and closer to the center spindle, and he could enjoy his coffee in peace. Nobody hardly ever came down to the aft living spaces.

  * * *

  “I’m not sure where to go with this,” said Muschivk.

  “Go with what,” asked Sevrinofsky.

  “Where I should be,” rumbled Muschivk, “I know Cohen can handle any tactical situation and I think he’s dead on the money on what the bugs will do. I think he’s over-complicating the response.”

  “Joe, you can’t take your axe and beat the crap out of every situation, you know?” asked Sevrinofsky, “Besides, if you don’t go over to that convoy and lead the recovery teams, then I have to trust Randy’s health to Reagan’s judgement.”

  “If Randy is with me, then he won’t be jumping in front of any high velocity debris to save you... so there’s that,” said Muschivk, “And you won’t be showing off to impress him.”

  “That’s not fair!” said Sevrinofsky.

  “I’m curious about your definition of fair?” asked Muschivk, “In any event, from the database of ships, these aren’t any sector reinforcement convoy, and they are definitely OutSystem in design. We’ll know in a couple of hours which ships and the life signs but getting over there is problematic.”

  “The new power systems and shielding have allowed Ortiz to refit the SAR’s with normal space propulsion that about double the acceleration of the old thrusters. Just like the detector systems, everything’s efficiency and ranges seem to have about doubled. That means we can get you over there in about two and a half hours instead of six or so.”

  “Reagan is running a sweep of the convoy, it will take him about 180 minutes, because he’s linking up with his squadron to get there and another 20 or so to do an analysis. I guess that could work, “ said Muschivk, “Tell Perez to suit up, and that dude Rainwater as well. I want him with us, because Cohen is hanging us all out to dry. If he’s wrong, and the wind doesn’t come up, I want to know as soon as possible. Reagan wouldn’t have done that a month ago. That’s good.”

  “It’s not likely that Cohen is hanging us out to dry, he’s got your touch,” said Sevrinofsky, "I know he's dispersing all our assets, but he's banking on at least one easy fight."

  “I can’t tell on this one either way. Maybe we’re being too cautious?” asked Muschivk, “I can only feel the bugs when they’re close. I’m not getting any hints. I feel that he’s right, but I don’t know, which is odd for me.”

  * * *

  Randall Albert Perez and Steven Michael Rainwater were hanging out in the Propulsion Control division labs, where the specialty sub-atomic analysis equipment let them take apart the molecular structure of the cellular overlay in the bugs, or that one bug, when Sevrinofsky buzzed Perez.

  “Perez, here. What’s up?” asked Perez.

  “The bugs captured a convoy and sent it to the LP, so says Reagan. Morgan concurs, but thinks it’s a decoy and the actual target is here. The Captain thinks Cerro Verde is the target, but he wants to cover all the bases to be sure. He’s asked you and Muschivk to recover the ships for us. I agreed that you would be an excellent candidate for that duty. I asked Cindy if you would be up to it, and she said fine, as long as you don’t pull any heavy g’s for another 24 hours,” said Sevrinofsky, “So no flying, Maverick.”

  “All right, Bosslady. I... We... have another surprise for you. Rainwater and I got to talking about how the proton-pair coating works and how the bugs use it, and he suggested that we could modify a subspace generator to project an EM field across all energy bands and all 11 base dimensions. How about that?” asked Perez, “Even better, as far as we can tell, it will absorb energy and charge an accumulator when impacted. I mean it's supposed to do that, but it might do something else.”

  Rainwater said, “We haven’t tested that part yet. The whole thing could blow up in our faces.”

  Sevrinofsky said, “... You said what? Did you just say you invented a full coverage Star Trek like deflector shield?”

  “Well... yeah,” said Rainwater.

  “You got me antimatter blasters and now deflector shields? How big an area can you cover?” asked Sevrinofsky, "Have I told you I love you today?"

  “... Cough... I'm not alone here, Commander. Skin of an object. It needs a medium, like the coating on the fighters,” said Perez, “Umm, it absorbs... light... em radiation... all energy with some tuning. Like quarks, mesons, neutrinos. Don’t touch it. It will freeze your nads in pilotspeak.”

  “Holy shit!!! Does anyone else know about this?” asked Sevrinofsky.

  “Ortiz. That’s why I’m telling you. He’s fitting out your fighter with it and replacing your EM generator. It takes about half the power, so it adds about a quarter to your overall power budget. Don’t turn it on till you leave the ship,” said Perez, “This comes out of Rainwater and Ortiz and my analysis of the buggy type material that they pulled out of my fighter. It’s the only thing we could figure out to cut it.”

  “Make sure no other civilians find out about this!” said Sevrinofsky.

  “I’m not a civilian anymore. I enlisted the day you conscripted me,” said Rainwater, “I was worried about the company pulling me back.”

  “Congratulations, Specialist,” said Sevrinofsky flatly, “Randy, get suited up. Go get those ships back. I think I need to separate you two before you break any more laws of physics.”

  “Yes, Wing Commander,” said Perez, and Sevrinofsky broke the connection, muttering to herself.

  “I guess we’d better get moving. She’ll figure out what all else we did to her ship in about 3 hours, and we need to be way gone by then!” said Perez.

  “Did she mean me, too? I suspect she’s going to be really angry with you when she finds out you modified her nano,” said Rainwater.

  “Yep, you too. Wouldn’t be the first time,” said Perez, “I think she’s been mad at me for twenty years or so. Let’s move.”

  * * *

  Muschivk shrugged into his suit and hefted his axe. It felt a little different than usual. He looked at it and frowned. Something was different. He brought the silly thing up to his face and looked it over and noticed someone had added a couple of thin plates, one on each side of the head. He chinned the comm button and said, “Perez.”

  “Yes, Master Chief?” asked Perez over the comm.

  “What did you do to the axe?” said Muschivk.

  Perez looked off screen and said, “You owe me five,” and he looked back and said, “Rainwater and I modified it a bit based on some stuff we figured out from the buggy material you yanked out of my fighter. Hold it out, that should explain everything. Oh... we added the return control right onto your right gauntlet.”

  “What does ‘a bit’ mean?” asked Muschivk.

  “It’s a surprise, Joe! Try it! Hold it out and engage your suit targeting protocols and you’ll see,” said Perez as he cut the circuit.

  Muschivk swore and held out the axe and flipped through the targeting menus and a cross hairs appeared on his helmet visor, fading in and out. Muschivk lowered the axe and the target went away. Raised the axe and the target came back. He turned around and looked up, the target crosshairs followed his eyes and the faded in and out. Muschivk tossed the axe up in the air and it turned over and the handle smacked his suit gauntlet. He drew his arm back over his shoulder to make a throw and a window appeared in his visor and a menu dropped down with the header, ‘Target selection protocol:’ and a list of objects around the ship appeared, some nearer than others, along with a countdown display. Muschivk selected one of the targets that seemed close and hurled the axe. It disappeared as it left his hand and the countdown timer started decrementing... after a couple of seconds the object disappeared, the countdown timer reset and started decrementing again. At zero the axe appeared about an inch to the left of where it left his hand and dropped to the deck.

  Perez's face appeared in the visor display, "Hey Joe, you figured it out! Good on you. We've placed some more targets around outside the ship for laughs, if you want more practice. We think the interface needs some more work, but it's functional. You can hit any object your internal mass detector can identify and target, in normal space or subspace. You can tie it in to any ship with compatibility, right now... that's our ships. There are some icons I want to show you right now. The cross X in red means something interfered with the delivery and it can't return. The cross X in green means hit and returning. A red circle means lost locater and it points to the last location. Hopefully you'll not see this one. All the other are obvious and the same as the suit weapons interface. Use it in good health."

  Perez's face clicked off and Muschivk swore again. He hated surprises. He stowed the axe on the back of the suit and tromped off grumbling to join the boarding crew on the shuttle. They'd have to intercept Warthog on the way back from Cerro Verde and head out from there. He chinned the comm button again and started transcribing emails about touching his stuff ...again... without permission.

  * * *

  The Warthog's message face popped up on the console, while enroute from Cerra Verde to the Wanderlust and Jessica Han said, "What is it, Warthog?"

  "We have a new mission package, Jess. There's been some activity at the LP; an OutSystem convoy appeared there with no comms, no warning and no apparent power. We are to pick-up the varsity boarding squad and go get those ships and save anybody who can be saved. Cohen appended a bunch of notes and tactical diagrams which I can barely interpret, but it looks like he thinks that the bugs are going to hit Cerra Verde as soon as we try and take the ships back. Phoenix and Fighter Squadron Two are going to support us and Squadrons One and Three are backing Wanderlust. Wamamere has added about 10 of those two place mining craft and Ortiz put that chain cannon on all of them... he's calling them Light Gunboats. They are supporting Wanderlust. It's all in the briefing," the ship's AI drawled.

  "You've got a personality upgrade from Sevrinofsky, didn't you," said Han.

  "Well... I asked her and she said she had a set of templates she called the 'The Duke' that would fit me really well," said Warthog, "I didn't understand the reference, but I like it... little filly."

  "Great... a misogynistic AI... Warthog, if you ever say that to me again, I'm ripping your CPU out and wiping your memory... and I might just jump up and down on it for good measure. You hear me?" asked Han.

  "I was just kidding! Sorry!" said Warthog in a panic, as the AI realized she wasn't joking at all.

  "Remember it!" said Han.

  "Ahem... Anyway, we have an intercept and a set of targets, and I hafta to reconfigure the normal space drives and subspace module. According to Perez and Rainwater I can make it to the LP in about 190 minutes, maybe a little less. I can expand my cargo bay in about 10 minutes using the Expansion Module that Senior Chief Ortiz gave me and we can rendezvous in about 15 with the shuttle. Oh... There's a note from Commander Morgan saying ‘Good Luck. You've been selected as the new driver for Team Seven’. She said, ‘Take no prisoners and keep your head down’," said Warthog.

  “I'm the new pilot for our team? You have self-repair capability?” asked Han.

  “Some. I can repair some modules, I have some small servo-bots under my control, and I have a little nano factory and a small template module. Can’t do any structural repairs,” drawled Warthog.

  “All right, get us going to that meet and we’ll pick up our trained killers and blow some doors off,” said Han.

  “All right... pardner! Saddle us up and let’s ride,” said Warthog.

  “I’m going to really give Commander Sevrinofsky a piece of my mind,” said Petty Officer First Class Han.

  * * *

  “300 seconds to intercept,” said the PIM.

  “Acknowledged,” said Reagan as he woke up out of his quick nap, “Give me some coffee, please.”

  “Coming up. Half a cup?” asked the PIM.

  “Yeah,” said Reagan and he waved a hand over his suit helmet to peel it back and a cup of hot black coffee rose up out of the armrest of the flight couch, and the smell was amazing.

  “Nerdboy, that’s not fair. I can smell that from here,” said Nathan.

  “That’s the biggest lie I’ve ever heard,” said Reagan, “you are 200 klicks away!”

  “Can’t be the biggest lie ever. You have a girlfriend,” said Nathan.

  “Do not!” said Reagan.

  “You’ve been spending a lot of time with whatshername... Miyuki,” said Nathan.

  “Cut that out. We’re just going over supplies and loadouts!” said Reagan.

  “Loooooaaaadoooouuuts,” slurred Nathan, “Is that what they call it now?”

  “Cut the crap, Frenchie. Get your own coffee!” said Reagan.

  “I have expresso, Mon ami,” said Nathan.

  “If we planned this right, we should get two or three sweeps of the convoy and then the rescue force should pop out of subspace, surprising us but not the bugs,” said Reagan.

  “I hope you’re right. If not, this could get messy. On the other hand, we have the ever-popular strategic withdrawal available. We can’t concentrate fire with the convoy ships right here,” said Nathan.

  “The Phoenix should be here in about 15 minutes, if I’ve figured all this right. It holds two Light Gunships and another wing of fighters, plus a couple of those remote cannon in addition to the ones we already have. So... we’ll have plenty of actual firepower,” said Reagan, “I heard they were fitting her out to add another wing, but can’t come up with the pilots. Just not enough Navy people.”

  “You’re not listening! I don’t have a problem with that... We can’t just pummel the area with anti-matter, you idiot. Those are our ships! We have to reclaim them and move them first!” said Nathan.

  “Yeah, I guess not,” said Reagan, “It’ll probably be a job for us and the other squadron, mostly, and Warthog. The Wing Commander will be with the Wanderlust. This promises to be very messy.”

  Reagan rolled his ship to align the sensors with the convoy and decelerated hard, taking a constant 3g’s to kill some of his hard-won velocity, and the rest of the squadron followed suit. They dumped lateral velocity into the compensator sump and took a few 200g jerks to align on an opposite vector to the drifting ships. Interestingly enough, they were all drifting on the same vector within a tenth of a degree or so in three dimensions. The rest of the squadron slowly curved to match his vector about 200 klicks astern and they spread out to increase the depth of the scan. The sensors lived in the base of the little ship, as all aspect would take up a lot of needed critcal space.

  “Emergence... Emergence...” said the PIM, “We have a single emergence astern in the 80,000 ton range at approximately 20000 klick toward the SW. MD footprint first scan indicates Phoenix as a probable. Request permission to query.”

  “Granted,” said Reagan, but before he finished the word a ping came across the communicator and a familiar icon popped up.

  “Robert, this is Hedwig,” said LCDR Morgan’s face avatar, an owl that looked remarkably like the Captain of the Phoenix, “Whatcha got?”

  “Welcome, Captain. We are just starting our scanning run, but preliminaries indicate no life forms, no power and no active AI. That’s three right? Everything is supposed to be three?” asked Reagan.

  “Funny. We are launching our gunboats and we have to three fighters to join you, they are part of a partial squadron Four. We picked up a couple small craft rousters from the moonbase, and they wanted to come out and get killed with you,” said Morgan, “Phoenix herself is lining up our main batteries on the spaces between the convoy ships. We have a one-klick radius burst for small craft suppression set up, so stay on the vector lanes we give you unless you tell us in advance.”

  “That’s a good idea. Artillery barrage support. I love it,” said Reagan, “Who came up with that?”

  “Your good friend Mei Liu,” said Morgan.

  “Give her a medal or something,” said Reagan.

  “Sevrinofsky promoted her and cited her, yep,” said Morgan.

  “Good,” said Reagan, “Starting our first recon pass now. How long till Warthog arrives?”

  “Fifteen minutes, max,” said Morgan, “Ortiz and Perez and your new friend Rainwater can perform magic on small craft, but something the size of the Phoenix would take weeks like the Wanderlust did. We got the conversion started on one powerplant, but it's slow going.”

  “Okay... our route is plotted, we’ll be through the convoy in about 15 minutes, what a coincidence... talk at you then. Reagan out,” said Reagan and he signed off.

  “Morgan, out.” said Morgan.

  The ships themselves were just blips on the monitor as they went by, and not really visible to the naked eye. His helmet display showed them as enlarged boxed displays, and a bunch of light craft, frigates and scouts, one destroyer. Reagan shrugged and set up his scanning run and directed the other fighters to follow him on vectors that surrounded each ship about a 500 klicks apart. He and the PIM built a set of interlocking flight paths that covered every millimeter of the derelict fleet and then they sent the commands out to the rest of his enlarged squadron.

  About 5 minutes into the scanning run, every PIM in the squadron began to build a 4D composite of the ships, and three of the 10 had enough identifying detail to give a name to them. 2 frigates and a destroyer, and it looked like they’d get enough to ID the rest. The ships had no shields and only small pockets of electromagnetic activity. The PIM queries received no ships data at all, and no response from pods, emergency systems, consistent with the condition of the ferry on arrival. In other words, no real surprises. Another 5 minutes and the squadron had full topography data on all of the vessels, and no reaction from any in-ship systems. Seven minutes later the run was completed and a nearly complete 4D map of all the ships in the convoy relayed up to the Phoenix with annotations from the pilots and their PIMs. All of which changed nothing.

  No life signs, and the ships ID’s came in slowly as Phoenix updated the fighter database.

  “Odin,” said the PIM.

  “All the ships are from the Odin System?” asked Reagan.

  “Yes,” said the PIM.

  “Okay, why Odin. This has to be most of the fleet they have?” asked Reagan.

  “No clue,” said the PIM, "I can fathom no reason for this behavior."

  “How many troopships do we have coming?” Reagan asked.

  “One, possibly two.” said the PIM.

  “Warthog and a SAR?” asked Reagan.

  “Yes.” said the PIM.

  “I have an idea,” said Reagan, “I’m betting that they are waiting for life signs, carbon based life forms, energy signatures to appear on the ships before the ants emerge.”

  “That seems to be the prevailing notion among the gentry,” said the PIM, ".

  “Why don’t we dock with all the ships at once? We have fourteen fighters available, plus a gunship, troop carriers, a couple of small craft," asked Reagan, "We can force them to distribute their numbers?"

  "Don't ask that question over the net, Robert," said the PIM, "These are insects we're fighting. They have basically unlimited numbers."

  "Oh," said Reagan, "Computer, put together a report for command, and plot us a new scanning pass till the squaddies get here."

  "Don't call me Computer, Robert or I'll start calling you Meatbag," said the PIM, "You need to pick a name for this unit."

  "Bugs," said Reagan, "I'm going to call you Bugs, as in Bugs Bunny. The most powerful animated character in history."

  "Hmmm... " said the PIM, "Bugs Bunny is male? I accept this appellation. You need to request an appropriate character overlay from Dr. Sevrinofsky."

  "Dr. Sevrinofsky?" asked Reagan, "She has her Ph.D.? What is with these people?" asked Reagan.

  "It seems that the Special Operations Group is made up of some very select individuals," said Bugs, and it burbled quietly for a minute, an obvious time waster, "Report generated. Please review, and I will send it along to the relevant PIM's"

  Reagan brought up the report on his desktop interface as the ship purred along it's second scanning pass, reviewed it, added some notes about timing and positioning, and recommended they tackle the destroyer first.

  "Report sent, Robert," said the PIM.

  "Thanks, Bug," said Reagan.

  "We have a bit of time, Robert," said the PIM, "How about we talk about you attending Special Operations School, assuming this groups survives the next two weeks.

  "I dunno, I haven't really thought about it. I'm doing pretty well in this job though and I think Flight Operations is definitely for me," said Reagan.

  "I agree, but I believe you will greatly benefit from the rest of the Special Operations modifications and wetware. The damage that the InSystem.. Intelligence... I guess did to you is healing, but you will do well to consider finishing the mods. It will increase your reaction time, your G-tolerance and you will get a lot of training on HeavyG worlds," said Bugs.

  "Still dunno," said Reagan, "A lot has happened in a really short period of time. Not to mention, don't you get some pretty good upgrades from the Special Operations Group?"

  "That's true, but it's not really relevant. I will get those regardless due to our association with the Flight Operations," said Bugs, "Like everything else, we have too much work, and not enough time or people to do it. AI's are stepping up into higher roles because of that."

  "Why are we talking about this now?" asked Reagan.

  "Why not? It needs to be discussed and you aren't discussing and we have about 10 minutes of free window here," said Bugs.

  "Because I just got debrainwashed, reassigned, recalibrated and I'm completely lost in what I am supposed to be doing," said Reagan, "I just want some time to process this."

  "I hear you Robert," said Bugs, "Formally joining the Master Chief's team will give you a home, a place to land, if you will, which I think you sorely need."

  "I'll think about it," said Reagan.

  "Think harder," said Bugs.

  "Great, I've got an AI that has to have the last word in every conversation," said Robert.

  "I do not," said the Bugs, haughtily.