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Five months later
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“Admiral on deck,” COB Timmons roared with leather lungs as he preceded Fleet Admiral Absen onto the bridge of EarthFleet’s dreadnought Conqueror.
“Welcome aboard, sir,” Rear Admiral Scoggins said with a wide grin. “Are you sure you don’t want to take over command?” She gestured at the holotank.
In its bright confines, Absen could see the task force, the pride of EarthFleet, arrayed as if for battle. Eight of the Ryss D-ships – all seven that had survived the Gliese 370 Scourge attack plus a new, special one – formed the bones, if not the heart, of the fleet. By the seven working in concert, assisted by the hardworking industry of the Jupiter shipyards, construction of a new, modified superdreadnought had taken a mere four months instead of the usual several years.
Layered with extra armor and scourge-killing poison ablatives, the original seven were filled with millions of Ryss warriors in shiny new battlesuits comparable to those of human Marines.
The new Ryss ship, Deathbringer, boasted even more point defense lasers than his parent vessels, but the main difference was in his capital weaponry. Instead of a score of heavy particle beams, he possessed only two gargantuan projectors, both mounted in the stern adjacent to the fusion engines. Larger than most ships themselves, they measured nine kilometers long by five hundred meters wide, and each could fire a particle beam rated in exawatts, like the Meme’s moon-based Weapons.
Absen smiled as he imagined the Scourges’ surprise when Deathbringer went to work on any flagships he happened to find. Then his expression turned dark as he contemplated the brand-new AI’s potential end, and that of his brothers. The Ryss ships had made it clear that if there was no other way, they were prepared to hurl themselves under TacDrive into enemy ships, or even planets, in order to decapitate the Scourge.
Shaking off incipient melancholy, Absen nodded to the bridge crew, murmuring greetings. Naturally, he’d given Scoggins a free hand to select her people, and just as naturally, she’d kept everyone from Conquest.
That reminded him. He glanced around, zeroing in on a female officer with commander’s stripes on her shoulders. Walking up to her, he extended a hand. “Miss Conqueror, I presume?”
“Yes, Admiral,” the android said with a smile. “I’m glad to finally meet you. My mother’s memories told me everything about you.”
Absen fought against the lump that came into his throat. Dr. Egolu had loaded copies of Michelle’s programming into new, Ryss-produced AI hardware, but with only partial success. The result had been full machine consciousness, but apparently each new entity had a clear understanding that she was not the same person she’d been cloned from. He counted EarthFleet lucky that the personalities had turned out to be so well adjusted, and with the advantages of all the memories bequeathed to them, training was not even necessary.
Absen could have introduced himself to the new AIs any time in the past few months, but frankly, he’d been avoiding it. The pain had seemed too great.
There was no avoiding it now, though, so he put on a smile. “I’m happy to meet you, too. Please pass on to your fellow C-class ships –”
“– my sister ships,” Conqueror insisted.
“– your sister ships, of course. Give them my regards and my best wishes for success on your mission.”
Scoggins stepped up beside Absen to speak softly in his ear. “Ask her what her first name is, sir.”
Hearing the grin in Scoggins’ voice, Absen glanced at her with lifted eyebrow for a moment, and then turned back to the android. “Well?”
“I’m Michelle, sir. Like my mother, and like my younger sisters.”
Absen looked away for a moment, almost overcome again, and turned back only when he was certain he could control himself. “That’s an interesting choice,” he said mildly.
“It’s our way of honoring her, sir. Most families share a name, so we decided to share that one, since we can’t have a surname in common.”
“Well, I think it’s a great idea.” No, I don’t, Absen said to himself, but what am I going to say? I’ll get used to it, I suppose...in a few hundred years. “Now let me look over the rest of the fleet.”
Behind the D-ships floated a conjoined sphere composed of thirteen Constitution-class ships, all superficially similar to the shattered dreadnought of that name. While the new D-ship had been built as a flagship-killer and more, the new C-ships had retained their roles as command-and-control and anti-swarm ships. Twelve of them with names such as Confident, Confronter, Controller and Concorde surrounded Conqueror, escorting her like the avenging angels their AIs styled themselves.
These ships were attached together much as the original Task Force Conquest had been for its relativistic journey to Gliese 370, and for much the same reason. Only by travelling as one through the FTL wormhole could they ensure arrival in close proximity and operate as a unit from the start.
The D-ships were so large, though, that for them, this arrangement would be impractical.
The C-ships had also been equipped with the new TacSLAMs, lightspeed weapons that could be launched like missiles directly from tubes, against high-value targets. If the new D-ship couldn’t crack the enemy flagships, perhaps the super-SLAMs would.
No other ships would be sent, though each vessel carried a full complement of drones, auxiliary craft and Marines. All the simulations had shown that smaller vessels were not cost-effective, either in lives or resources, when the price of equipping them with FTL and TacDrives was taken into account. Succeed or fail, each powerful warship had to be able to fight on its own and run for home if necessary.
“All right, there’s no reason to delay further. Put me on fleetwide,” Absen said.
“You’re on, sir. Full vid to all stations.” Commander Johnstone said from his CyberComm console.
Absen had let his aide go on the mission; Rick had insisted – all right, nearly threatened mutiny – after failing to convince Jill Repeth to stay behind.
Absen clasped his hands behind his back and faced the video pickup. “Men and women of Task Force Conqueror, I’m here to send you off on a dangerous mission. I’d love to lead you once more, but my duty is here, commanding the forces protecting your loved ones so that you can sail with confidence.”
He turned to indicate Scoggins. “Admiral Melissa Scoggins has been by my side since the first Destroyer tried to wipe out humanity, and I’m telling you the absolute truth when I say she’s learned everything I can teach her and will lead you just as well as I could. So I only have four simple things for you to do: follow your orders; give the Fleet your utmost efforts; strike the enemy a heavy blow; and get home safe. That’s it. If you do those things, everyone on Earth, on Ryssa, on Koio and throughout humanity’s empire will be proud of you. Good luck, and good hunting.”
“You’re off, sir.”
“Good speech, Admiral,” Scoggins said.
“Makes me want to vomit, actually. Staying behind, I mean,” Absen replied. He held out his hand. “Anchors aweigh, Melissa. Godspeed.”
She grasped his proffered palm and squeezed. “Aye aye, sir.”
Absen leaned close. “And I don’t usually say this, but take it in the spirit it’s meant. Hit them hard, but don’t sacrifice your people. You’re not saving our planet; you’re trying to kill theirs. Win or lose, we need you to come defend the homeworld, because if the Scourge act true to form, the next attack on Earth is already being assembled, and you have to get back here before it hits us. That’s why I set the timetable I did.”
Scoggins stared into Absen’s eyes and said, “Count on it, sir.”
Absen let go and turned on his heel. “Carry on,” he said as he walked stiffly off the bridge that so resembled Conquest’s.
***
Rear Admiral Scoggins sighed with relief as Absen left. She loved her boss and respected him even more, but every fiber of her being cried out to get on her way and attack the enemy. She knew it didn’t make objective sense, a few minutes this way or that, as she expected to be sedated in wormhole space for the next three months, climbing seven levels of stellar gradient to reach Center.
Each of her C- and D-ships now had triple-redundant and ultrafast electromechanical analog computers aboard, clockwork devices with no digital processors. When they detected emergence, they would actuate old-fashioned rheostats, solenoids and switches. Those in turn would activate engines and thrusters to create random evasive maneuvers, all within seconds of FTL emergence.
After ninety seconds, digital computers would have recovered from wormhole space disruption and rebooted. Pulling data from static memory modules, they would turn the ships around and immediately send them back into the gravity well, as soon as the FTL capacitors were charged by the ravening solar power of the transit star.
This energy would be used to seize and twist the gravity waves thrown out by the nearby sun, forming another wormhole even while the ships blasted on conventional drives to begin their runs back toward the flaming balls of fusion gas. Each such transit would lift them another step up the stellar gradient toward their goal.
Toward Center.
If any piece of these systems failed, the ship in question would miss its entry into wormhole space and plunge inexorably into the star itself, killing everyone aboard. Depending on such primitive technology outside the control of AI or organic person, no matter how thoroughly tested, was the only part of the mission that truly frightened her.
“All right,” Scoggins said with a deep breath. “Everyone into the cocoons. Michelle, once we’re in VR space, it’s all yours.”
“Thank you, Admiral.” The android paced around the bridge as the organic crew folded themselves into their crash couches and closed the clamshells. Scoggins felt plugs gently find the sockets at the base of her skull as gels expanded to immobilize her body. Shortly after, her mind transitioned to the virtuality and she got up to pace the bridge, nodding as each of her officers appeared at their stations as if teleported.
It seemed only moments before Commander Conqueror tapped her on the shoulder. “We’re ready, ma’am. You might find it less of a jolt if you sat down and relaxed.
“Of course,” Scoggins replied, taking her seat and grasping the armrests as if in a dentist’s chair. “Will it –”
Then her consciousness faded.