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“All stations, stand by to engage. Full burn on my mark...” said Captain Hapsburg in measured tones. “Mark.”
The Indescribable Joy of Destruction powered forward, and swung around the moon it had been using for cover. The tactical sensors marked their target, a Congressional destroyer in orbit around the planet Orpus-4. The navigational routines offered a set of courses to the pilot, who approved a pseudo-random corkscrew approach. The Caretaker watched all this with mild interest; there was little else to occupy its thoughts right now, the ship was in prime condition and the crew were all locked down in their acceleration couches.
The Rampager class was an experimental design, The Indescribable Joy of Destruction the eighth to be constructed by the Republic. They were built around their main beam weapon and their engines. Unheard-of levels of computing power allowed a high-level AI to take over most of the basic functions of the ship, leaving a crew of only seven. This, in turn, meant that very little room was needed for living space, so the power plants, weapons and engines could be far larger for a ship of its size.
A minute after The Indescribable Joy of Destruction cleared the moon, the enemy started a slow turn to meet them. Ten seconds into their manoeuvre, they launched a spread of missiles.
“I’ve got them,” said the tactical officer, and the Caretaker switched perspective from the ship’s functions to the simulated bridge. The tactical officer tagged the missiles with sweeps of his hands and passed them to the point defence systems.
The Indescribable Joy of Destruction continued its unpredictable approach as the missiles rushed towards it. The enemy ship completed its turn, and lit off its main drives. There was no doubting her commander’s bravery; no Congressional destroyer had ever survived an engagement with a Republic hunter-killer.
Railgun rounds spewed out of the destroyer’s turrets. Moments later the first missile entered the range of The Indescribable Joy of Destruction’s point defences. The ship hummed as the lasers drew power. Systematically the missiles were picked out of space, detonating harmlessly.
The cloud of railgun rounds wasn’t far behind. The pilot worked with the navigation routine to dodge the denser regions, but the occasional metal slug impacted on the hull, sending dull clangs reverberating around the ship.
The tactical officer pulled up a magnified image of the target, which flowed into a three-dimensional model. A lurid orange highlight followed his finger as he marked a line across a pair of large turrets. He sent a command through the Electronic Interface System embedded in his brain, and the ship’s throbbing intensified as the main weapon came online.
They streaked past the Congressional warship and the beam fired, slashing through the turrets. The pilot twisted The Indescribable Joy of Destruction about, swinging around in a wide arc ready for another pass. The enemy vessel turned too, but was completely outclassed in terms of manoeuvrability.
“Same again,” said Captain Hapsburg. “This time break across at the last second and hit the turrets on the opposite side.”
Despite the reduced weight of fire put out by the enemy ship, they still got in plenty of hits. Nothing The Indescribable Joy of Destruction’s hull couldn’t self-repair, though. Again the tactical officer highlighted the cut he wanted from the main beam. The side-step worked, and the enemy lost two more weapons. This time, however, they launched missiles as the hunter-killer passed. The tactical officer gave the point defence routine authority to fire with a thought through his EIS. The lasers took out the first five missiles, and hit the next two as they left their silos. A series of explosions rippled along one side of the enemy ship as their remaining stocks detonated.
The pilot pulled them around in a tight turn and threw the ship at the target yet again, aiming at the gap they’d carved out in the rail-gun coverage. The enemy commander didn’t let them get a clean run, rolling the destroyer to keep the still-functioning turrets facing them. It would only delay the inevitable victory.
“Cut across their stern,” Hapsburg ordered. “Target their engines.”
The Indescribable Joy of Destruction barrelled in, swinging its nose around ready to bring the main beam to bear as it passed. The enemy destroyer was moving fast now, and the pilot had to aim for a point ahead of it in order to pass as close behind as possible. A fraction of a second before the tactical officer fired the main weapon, something detached from the stern of the enemy ship. Human reflexes were too slow to even register it before the collision; the AI tried to adjust their course, but it was too late. The nuclear mine detonated against the hull. Power surged through the ship, blowing out circuits. The Caretaker shut down.
#
<<78BE4A7C6ED912ACED7BB5CB32>>
<<#link:56AAB3E44AAC>>
<<#run:990BDDE445>>
The Caretaker came online and found it was alone. Captain Hapsburg and the six other crew members were dead. The ship’s main personality was silent. The logs since the Caretaker had shut down were blank. As the queries came back from the ship’s systems, it discovered that the ship was badly damaged, lacking the power and resources to repair itself.
<<#file:23BEF445>>
The Caretaker reviewed the document. It was a brief situation update from the main personality, explaining that it had gone into hibernation to reduce the drain on power. It instructed the Caretaker to get the ship home. There was no report on what had happened in the intervening time.
The Caretaker almost rebooted the main AI core there and then. It wasn’t programmed to deal with this kind of situation. It was only supposed to keep the place tidy and help coordinate repairs. Then it calculated how long the power reserves would last, and realised that they wouldn’t even make it out of the system.
Where are we?
It had never had to know anything about navigation, but a glance at the ship’s external sensors showed they were no longer in the Orpus system. It queried the navigation routine and found it to be off-line. Determined to discover its location, and slightly concerned that it didn’t know how it got there, it searched the database and absorbed a manual on astrogation. Another look at the external feeds, and it determined that they were in a system three jumps away from the scene of the battle.
Probably safe from pursuit. For now.
There was so much it should be doing. It didn’t know what exactly yet, but it should be able to work it out. For now, at least, it could do what it was built to do. It could tidy up the interior of the ship.
The Caretaker turned its attention to the internal sensors. Bodies littered the corridors. Bodies in angular, black Congressional Marine armour.
So, we were boarded.
There was no point in doing anything about the enemy bodies right now. Once it had a full inventory, it would know whether it needed to salvage the materials in their armour.
The Caretaker ordered a repair robot to the bridge. Normally the machine would have refused the command, a failsafe to protect the crew if it malfunctioned, but with no-one left alive, the ‘bot complied.
As the spindly, multi-legged device gently lifted the first body from its seat, the Caretaker reviewed the personnel files. All crew members had recorded the traditional request for burial in space. By the time the last corpse had been reverently laid out in the loading bay, the Caretaker had calculated the exact velocity required. It recited the lines laid down in the regulations, and played the prescribed fanfare as it launched the bodies on their way. In a few months time they would burn up in the system’s sun.
The Caretaker reflected on the task ahead. There had been clear instructions on how a funeral was to be conducted, following them had been easy. There didn’t seem to be a rulebook for getting a crippled ship home without a human crew.
#
The Caretaker pieced together some of what had happened as it completed its inventory. In the battle and its aftermath, the ship had used all its reserves of materials to regrow the hull and key systems. It had been forced to cannibalise non-essential parts of itself in order to scavenge some of the rarer elements needed to rebuild the engines.
The architects of the Rampager class had envisioned swarms of the sleek hunter-killers converging on Congressional capital ships and tearing them apart, overturning Congress’ current superiority. As they were designed purely for hunting enemy warships, combat survivability had been high on the list of 'must haves'. This had led to a semi-organic infrastructure which could heal itself in the midst of a battle. Once the titanium skeleton had been laid, the body of the ship was literally grown over it, a process that turned out to be too time-consuming to allow the hoped-for swarms to be ready. If The Indescribable Joy of Destruction had been deployed with its siblings, it wouldn’t now be in this situation.
The Caretaker realised that it needed somewhere to hole up. If it could find a source of raw materials and fuel, and was left alone for long enough, it could fix the ship and hand back to the main personality. Trawling through the astronavigation database, it found a suitable system; out of the way and likely deserted. It should have the natural resources it needed to repair and replenish its stores. And the system was within range of the abused drives.