(C) copyright 2005 by Steven Sharpe
Another day, another red dwarf.
Luke Fried, Captain of the Interstellar Union exploratory vessel Segin, shifted in his chair, and it creaked under him. His own bones ached as well. He and the ship he commanded shared this in common: they were both well past retirement age.
"Can't you get a better image than that?" he asked the young woman at the helm, waving his arm in the general direction of the main viewscreen.
"Sorry, sir," she said, and not for the first time since this voyage had begun, "But the circuits are twenty years old in that unit, and replacements aren't being manufactured anymore."
She was a reserve cadet, barely 19 years old. She, and 200 others like her had come aboard the old cruiser two weeks earlier for a month of training on an actual ship. Most of them could barely wait to get back off of her.
Fried squinted his eyes and regarded the image on the screen. It was flecked with snow, and the colour control was off. The faint image of the red dwarf star in the centre of the field was actually tinged with purple.
"I detect at least one dwarf planet in orbit, sir," said the only other person on the bridge, a civilian astronomer named Dirk. He stood at the sensor unit.
"So you want us to go in?" the captain asked.
"Please, captain. It is not often that we find a red dwarf with small planets, but the ones we have found are usually rich in light elements."
"Helm, you heard the man. Sublight factor 0.75," said Fried in a tired voice. The girl at the helm, whose name was Taurus, manipulated the controls, and a low vibration was heard through the deck plates, as the engines responded. As the Segin accelerated the familiar relativistic tunnel effect became more pronounced on the screen.
Once a first line cruiser in the Royal Pleionese Navy, the Segin was now 42 years old, and relegated to the role of border patrol and exploratory vessel. In a way it was appropriate: when first commissioned her initial voyages had been outside of the then known areas of the old Central Field, searching for new systems to colonize. Now, in the last days of her lengthy career, she was once again performing that task for the new Interstellar Union. There was a difference nowadays, however: back then she had been a state of the art vessel, manned by a first class crew. In the meantime she had fought in two outright wars and numerous smaller skirmishes, been damaged many times, and successfully undertaken the longest voyage made by any ship in the past century from the Orion Arm: across the Euroch Gap to the Sagittarius Arm. All of this had taken its toll on her. Now, she was obsolete: made so by the technology of the civilization which had conquered hers, and who in turn had been defeated by the Segin's crew. The new ships were faster and more heavily armed...and more comfortable. The Segin should have been retired in honour, but the Union was only a decade old, and needed ships badly. So, after being laid up for six months, the old cruiser was pressed back into service: not as a first line warship, but as a border patrol and exploratory vessel. Her crew was reduced to half its previous complement, and she was also pressed into occasional use as a training ship. Right now she carried 350 regular crew - mostly people as old and obsolete as the ship itself - and 201 cadets.
Her current mission was primarily one of discovery. Two weeks out of the Union colony of Alnitak, she was near the outer edge of the Orion Arm, surveying star systems for planets. It was slow, tedious work. The routine seldom varied: Jump, drop inside the star's Lipsey Barrier for a quick sensor scan, head back out again when the scan came up negative and Jump to the next star. Occasionally, though, their sensors would detect a planet or two. When that happened, they would drop into the heart of the system for a close look. They had discovered a star with a small planet a week and a half ago. Now, they had done it again.
"A small, stony body," said the astronomer at the sensors, some six and one half hours later. The other man beside him nodded, and pointed at a display on the monitor before them.
"A strong magnetic field, though. Indicates a metallic core in this kind of body. Probably nickel - iron. There may be deposits near the surface."
"Is it worth asking the Captain for a landing party to collect samples?" Dirk asked, with an involuntary glance towards the now vacant chair.
Choo the geologist pondered for a second.
"At this stage, no. The Union is swimming in both nickel and iron. If our scans turn up anything more interesting during the next orbit, though, we should consider it."
In silence, the two continued to monitor the readouts. The door onto the bridge slid open behind them and they paid no attention. Neither did the cadet manning the navigation controls...until it was too late.
"Pukus!" barked the voice of Vit, the octogenarian chief helmsman at the cadet, making the scientists jump as well, "Get your feet off the panel!"
The teenager snapped to his feet, dropping the magazine that he had been reading, and turned to Vit, his blotchy face turning a beet red in colour.
"Obviously you do not have enough duties to keep yourself occupied," Vit continued, "So here is a little exercise for you to pass the time. I want you to plot our current position using only the marker buoys that we have dropped off in other systems over the past two weeks. Nothing else. And remember to take their own orbital motions into account as well!"
"Yes, sir," replied Pukus, and sat down at the navigation console again.
Vit watched him for a moment, then walked over to where the scientists stood. They had turned around to watch the scene with amused expressions.
"He's a good kid," Vit said in a low voice, "Just needs some direction."
Choo and Dirk nodded, and turned back to their sensors.
Vit left the bridge again, but returned a short time later holding a cup of cocoa.
"Well, Pukus, got that calculation done, yet?"
"Yes, sir," the cadet replied after a pause, licking dry lips.
"And where are we?"
"Umm, right here, sir."
The boy showed the officer a screen.
Vit snorted.
"That puts us somewhere in the Small Magellanic Cloud! You'd better check your quadromonitry."
"Yes, sir."
Pukus went back to work while the officer looked over his shoulder.
"There's your mistake. You have that one beacon travelling at almost the speed of light! Better take another reading."
"Yes sir," the cadet replied, and manipulated the monitor controls again. After a moment he stammered, "Sir? Can you help me? I - I'm getting the same result."
Vit muttered something and took a reading himself.
"What the..?" he said after another minute, then said, "Let's track that beacon from communications. Maybe there's something wrong with your system."
The two of them went over to the communications console while the scientists watched with growing interest.
"Same result," the chief helmsman said after a few more minutes. "Must be something wrong with the main communications array."
He sat down at a keyboard and started to type out a maintenance requisition.
"Now it's vanished, sir!" Pukus exclaimed suddenly.
Vit looked at him and then at the readouts.
"No, there it is," he said, pointing at a display.
"But it's moved, sir!"
"Well, of course it has. Remember its orbital motion...wait a minute..."
Vit looked closer at the display.
"It's moved a good twenty light years!"
"That's a lot of orbital motion, sir," quipped the cadet.
Vit threw him a look.
"Are those beacons equipped with any type of superlight drive?" asked Dirk.
Vit shook his head.
"Thrusters for station keeping only. Where is it now, Pukus?"
The cadet read out a string of coordinates.
"Just outside of K7e21785," said the helm chief, "That's another star system altogether. We were there last week and dropped off another buoy."
"Velocity just under 1c but decelerating," added Pukus.
"If I did not know better, I'd say it just Jumped," suggested Choo.
"So would I," said Vit, sounding mystified. He punched a button on the communications console. After a long pause a sleepy voice answered.
"Sorry to interrupt your rest, George, but we're getting some strange readings from a navigation beacon we dropped two weeks ago."
"So?" replied George, sounding irritated. "Those things are not a hundred percent reliable."
"I don't think it's the beacon," replied Vit, then quickly outlined the situation.
"Sounds like I'd better come up and run some tests," George muttered when he was done. "Have you alerted the captain?"
"Not yet."
"Well don't until we make sure it's nothing at this end. Remember what happened last time."
Vit nodded, remembering an incident a month ago when they thought that they were picking up transmissions from a new, advanced civilisation...and then it turned out to be the chief engineer singing in the shower.
"So we have the beacon that we left in orbit around M428S99 thirteen days ago now closing in on a star twenty light years away from there at a significant fraction of the speed of light?" Fried asked an hour later, rubbing his tired eyes and looking at Vit.
"Right, sir," the chief helmsman said uneasily, knowing how ludicrous it sounded.
"Somebody's trying to steal it," the captain said. "Why do these things always happen to me?"
"Those things aren't cheap," said George.
"But the technology in them isn't very valuable either," said Fried. "And to come all the way out here to steal one? It doesn't make sense."
"What shall we do, Luke?" asked his first officer, a middle aged woman named Trut.
"I guess we go to K7e21785 and see who the culprit is," the captain replied. "At least it will be easy to track them down."
Trut turned from the group of officers by the communications console and said to the helm chief, "Plot a course for K7e21785 and engage when ready."
"Already plotted," Vit replied, "And engaging. We should be able to do it in two Jumps."
Choo and Dirk watched with regret as the planet dwindled away to a small point in the rear viewer.
"I think I'll go and have some breakfast," the astronomer said.
"I think I'll join you," said the geologist, and they headed for the ship's mess.
"The second Jump was successful," announced Vit, a note of satisfaction creeping into his gravelly voice. "We are just outside of K7e21785's Lipsey Barrier."
"Ready for an active scan, Captain," said Lt. Carras, the intelligence officer.
"Belay that," said Fried suddenly. "We don't want to announce our presence until we know what we are dealing with. Passive sensors only."
"Prepare for silent running?" asked Trut.
"As best we can," replied the Captain.
George spoke into his microphone and a moment later the lights dimmed and the sounds of the ventilators was reduced.
"Sensors?" asked Fried.
Lt. Carras shook his head impatiently. "Passive sensors take awhile to build up a picture; you know that, Luke. I'm detecting electromagnetic radiation from a source following a hyperbolic orbit through the system. It was not here when we passed through this system last week. I've got our visual sensors following it...should have an image shortly."
"What kind of EMF?" asked Fried.
"Just noise. No communications that we can discern. Extrapolating its course, though...it looks like it is closing on the marker buoy we left here when we passed through."
"Getting ready to take another one," said Trut.
Fried nodded.
"It seems to be decelerating," Carras continued. "Getting more readouts from engine exhausts...Looks like an ion warp drive. Actual power source is unknown for the moment."
"A generation or two behind us, then," observed Fried.
"True, but it seems like a very large and powerful drive. Here comes the image."
The main screen flickered and then more or less steadied, showing a rapidly moving blip against a background of stars.
"Humph. Not much to look at," snorted the captain.
"Considering that it is half way across the system and shows up at all, I disagree," countered the intelligence officer. "That vessel must be on the order of kilometres long...I'd estimate three kilometres."
Fried sucked in his breath.
"And how fast is it moving? And how far away from us?"
"Just passing below 0.25c. Range is 3.31 light hours."
"So that blip on our screen shows where it was over three hours ago," said Fried, thinking fast. "It's probably already snatched the second buoy and is heading out for the Lipsey Barrier for another Jump. Can you extrapolate to where it is now...and where it will come out of the system?"
"I can do better than that," interjected Vit. "Tracking the first beacon's tachyon signal I have its exact current position. It will be crossing the Lipsey Barrier in 22 minutes."
"I want to be at that exit point within twenty minutes," said Fried, sounding grim.
"I think you can take that as an order, Miss Taurus," said the navigator to the helm cadet.
"Aye, sir," she replied, and worked the controls.
The image on the viewer shifted, as the Segin veered away from K7e21785's Lipsey Barrier and maneuvered into position to make a series of small Jumps to get around to where the mystery ship was aiming to exit the system. These were carried out without incident, and the Segin arrived at the designated location with ten minutes to spare.
"Full stop, sir," announced Taurus.
"Engine status?" asked Fried.
"Engineering reports a green board, captain," replied Cadet Veronica. "Both reactors online, currently sufficient capacitor charge for a 20 light year Jump."
"Weapons?"
"Checking that now, captain," Trut answered.
Smith, the xenobiologist, who had been quietly analyzing readouts up until this point, finally spoke.
"Captain," she said, "While ordering preparations for a battle is certainly prudent at this time, we don't want to jump to conclusions about their intentions. They may be entirely peaceful. I suggest we attempt to communicate with them."
"I agree, Miss Smith. First, though, we don't know who they are. They could be an entirely new civilisation or they could be pirates. They are definitely thieves. I need to make sure that we are prepared should their intentions prove to be hostile."
"Weapons stations report ready," Trut said at this point. "All of the ship's weapons systems are coming to full power, missile tubes are loading. Capacitors are strong, and we have a good supply of missiles and warheads."
The first officer added after a pause, "I'm glad you did not let them strip her, Captain."
Fried nodded. He was engaged in a constant battle with the bureaucracy, who were forever pressing him to deactivate his weapons or close off the Segin's missile launchers, thus freeing up more resources for first line ships. Why did he need all those warheads, anyway, when all she was required to do nowadays was survey red dwarf systems?
"My big concern is the quality of the people manning the weapons," he said, "They are inexperienced."
He turned to Carras.
"You can start active scanning now. No need to keep our existence a secret any longer."
He next turned to the communications officer.
"Broadcast standard greetings to the ship, and request identification. All languages."
They waited while that was being done, then waited longer for a reply.
"I've got some scan results," said Carras.
Fried stood up and went over to the intelligence control.
"Looks like a type I low efficiency fusion pile powering a primitive ion warp drive set," Carras said.
"They may be primitive, but that drive is a monster, and right now it is just ticking over."
"Is it one of ours?" Dirk asked.
Fried paused, studying the readouts.
"Its technology is a generation or more behind even the Segin's," he said, "It is way out in unexplored space. If it is one of ours, then it must have gotten very lost a long time ago."
"Going by the power potential curve, and the size of its drives, she looks like a warship," Trut commented.
"Then if it is one of ours, it must be the better part of a century old," Fried said. Then, he turned to the nearest computer access panel, and commanded the old unit to scan its memories for any ship which might resemble this one. A moment later the answer came up negative.
"Gentlemen, it looks like we have a new race on our hands," the captain said in a dry voice.
The bridge was silent but for mechanical sounds, while they digested this piece of news. They had discovered a new spacefaring race, or one had discovered them. This was a monumental discovery. The last new civilisation at the spacefaring level to be found had been the Orions, over thirty years ago.
That find had led to a war.
Finally, it was the computer which brought them back around with a beep, which drew their attention to a secondary viewscreen. Based on its sensor observations, it was attempting to construct an image of the newcomer.
Choo gasped, as the image developed.
"What a giant!" he exclaimed.
"Going by the scale, that ship is nearly eight kilometres long," said Trut.
"I may be wrong to try to apply our technological standards to an alien ship, but if I didn't know better," Carras said, "I would say that those look like gun turrets and missile tubes."
"Reply coming in," communications officer George said suddenly.
All eyes turned to him.
"Put it on," said Fried.
"Audio only, it seems," he said.
Suddenly a guttural, deep voice filled the bridge, uttering short, flat words.
"Anyone understand that?" asked Trut.
There was a chorus of negatives.
"Put it through translation," said Fried, and George complied.
"WORKING..." said the voice of the computer. "WORDS DO NOT FIT ANY KNOWN LANGUAGE OR DIALECT. MOSH ROOTS. HUMAN VOCAL CHORDS. WORKING..."
"Humans, anyway," muttered Smith. "Mister George, please forward a copy of that message over to my console."
"UNABLE TO PROVIDE VERBATIM TRANSLATION," said the computer at last, "HOWEVER, THE GENERAL GIST OF THE MESSAGE SEEMS TO BE A SERIES OF DEROGATORY COMMENTS ABOUT YOUR MOTHER'S SEXUAL HABITS."
There was silence on the bridge.
Then, one of the cadets unsuccessfully tried to suppress a giggle.
Fried threw her a look, then said, "Resend the greetings, and ask for further clarification."
More minutes passed.
The reply came in. The computer translated.
"THE GIST OF THE MESSAGE APPEARS TO BE A LONG DIATRIBE INSULTING YOUR REPRODUCTIVE ABILITIES."
Fried sighed.
"I hate using canned greetings, no matter what the regulations say. Put me on audio, George."
George nodded, and Fried took a long breath.
"This is Captain Luke Fried of the Interstellar Union vessel Segin. You are welcome to keep the sovereignty buoys that we have been dropping, though that does not relinquish our claims to the stellar systems that you found them in. Please identify yourselves and the reason for your visit."
There was a pause.
"Captain," said Carras in a low voice, "It may be prudent to call battle stations and prepare for evasive maneuvers. I am picking up capacitor readings from around their ship...they may be charging lasers."
Fried nodded, and klaxons started sounding through the cruiser.
"All set here," said Vit, looking over Veronica's shoulder.
"Message coming in," said George. "Translating."
"UNABLE TO PROVIDE VERBATIM TRANSLATION," said the computer again. "BUT THE GIST OF THE MESSAGE APPEARS TO SAY: 'CONGRATULATIONS. YOUR SORRY LITTLE INTERSTELLAR UNION HAS JUST BEEN CONQUERED BY COMMODORE VORX OF THE STRIKERS. PREPARE FOR BOARDING OR DESTRUCTION'."
There was a moment of silence on the bridge of the Segin. Finally, someone coughed.
"So," Fried said at last, "Were the contents of my message justification to threaten to attack the Segin along with our entire civilisation?"
"Possibly a faulty translation," said George.
"I am inclined to agree, but what if it is not? Applying our standards to an alien race is hazardous, but if the message is intended as a threat, how should we respond to it?"
"Run away?" suggested Trut.
"You've got it," said the captain. "When threatened by a superior enemy under circumstances such as this, I am sure that there is a regulation somewhere that would back up such an action. Helm, set a course out of the system matching the alien's vector. We will make a one light year Jump as soon as you are ready."
"Aye, sir," said Taurus, and the Segin began to move forward into her turn.
"Incoming!" said Carras suddenly.
On the viewer there was a deadly ruby sparkle from a half a dozen places on the Striker ship...all aimed at the point in space where the old cruiser had been an instant earlier.
"Missiles coming!" the intelligence officer said next.
"Defenses -" Fried started to say, and then it all became moot as suddenly the Segin was a light year away from the attacker.
"Jump again, random vector!" Fried barked, fearing that the Striker ship was coming after them. "Two light years."
"Dropping mines," Trut said.
The stars on the viewer wavered, then steadied again in slightly different positions.
"Jump again, random vector," repeated Fried, "Another two light years."
The Segin Jumped.
"Still tracking that beacon they took," said Vit with a chuckle. "They've Jumped to the location of our first Jump...Oh! Major blip in the tachyon transmission. I think one of our mines caught them!"
Veronica clapped...then stopped, looking self consciously about.
Fried smiled.
"We should be safe now," he said, "Unless their sensors have triple the range of ours."
"Orders, sir?" asked Trut.
"Lay in a course for Alnitak," Fried replied, referring to the Segin's home port. "I would rather deliver the news of a hostile new advanced race in person, than risk our transmission being tracked."
"Laying in," said Vit.
"Keep tracking that beacon, as well. I want to know where they go next. And good job, crew," Fried said, then added, under his breath, "And Segin, you did a good job too...again."