Hunting Dog Read online

  I shifted in my command chair. I was still sore and healing from my earlier injuries.

  “My guess is,” I continued, “they can’t be running full shields while cloaked… which means we have a shot at softening them up considerably before you get here.”

  “And when would that be sir,” Tilly asked.

  I had to give the gal points for persistence. I suspect ‘most people’ would get all bent out of shape by constantly being challenged. I guess I’m just not wired like ‘most people.’ I relished the pushback. It meant my officers were thinking on their own.

  “Once you get my OK via FTL comms, alter course and make best speed towards Earth. You can join the party once you get here.”

  “Sir,” Tilly said in an exasperated voice, “with all due respect and decorum and whatever-else makes you happy… your plan… well, the technical term would be… sucks hind teat.”

  I’d always been curious about that particular turn of phrase. I imagined it might derive from the runt of a dog’s litter being forced to make do with whatever was left over from its siblings first go at mom. I shook my head. Now was not the time to contemplate such heady matters.

  “I always appreciate frank opinions. Granted, the plan has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. That said, we don’t have a lot to work with. Do either of you have a better plan?”

  Both Tilly and Kimbridge slowly shook their heads.

  “No, sir but the plan still stinks.”

  I nodded.

  “Hind teat it is then.”

  ***

  The Gilboa II’s bridge was full. The ship couldn’t fly, and its role was little more than that of a spectator during the current engagement, but somehow it felt wrong to be anywhere else during the battle. Mitty and Shella were by the sensor and astrometric stations. Shelby was seated next to me. Although we had no need for navigation and helm, those stations too were manned. Whiskers stood behind Shelby’s chair, and my wife, Lori, was by mine. Even the Rohar Emissary ‘Jowls’ was present.

  The UES Diaspora had broken Earth orbit on schedule with only about a third of the supplies she should have had. She had entered Skip Space fifteen minutes ago. I hoped I would see her and her captain again… but it made me feel better knowing that she was out there and that some small fraction of humanity was safe… for the moment at least.

  “Here he comes,” Shelby whispered.

  On the forward viewscreen, seventeen defensive weapons platforms in high Earth orbit defended the moon-facing side of the planet. Another seventeen defended the far side. The platforms were too small to see relative to the planet, but the Gilboa’s systems provided an image enhancement that made it easier to see their placement. It wasn’t terribly different from watching a football game on the holovid.

  Off to the right-hand side of the screen, a lightly glowing red image continued to decelerate and enter Earth orbit.

  “There you go,” Shelby continued to whisper. “We’re just one big happy family. Nobody knows that visitors are coming for dinner. Just come a little closer… the dog won’t bite… yet.”

  My exec snapped her fingers and turned to me with a big grin on her face. “The enemy is within optimal range of four platforms.”

  It was my turn to smile. “It’s clobbering time!”

  2100.1289.8810 Galactic Normalized Time

  The Divine Providence slowly entered Earth orbit. The ship had recently been renamed as had been the Mahanaim custom before battles egos ago. In less than thirty minutes, the testing of Earth’s defenses would begin. At least that had been the plan.

  Chapter 4: Yipping Dog

  Within six point eight milliseconds of each other, four Yotta-watt lasers, each 10^24 watts of energy, slammed into the cloaked and lightly shielded side of the Defiler battleship. The result was impressive but sadly not definitive.

  The Defiler’s cloaking was stripped away almost immediately. The limited shielding that had been in place with the cloak field managed to dissipate a good percentage of the lasers’ energy, but not enough. In those areas where the beams were getting through, the ship’s ablative armor began to bubble away. Within a fraction of a second, the hull was breached, and there was a limited explosive decompression.

  At about the same time, the invader’s full shields snapped up. At this point, it became a slugfest. We had hurt the enemy, but if we had been hoping for a knockout blow on the first swing, we were sorely disappointed.

  Antiproton beams from the Defiler ship lashed out from a port turret and splashed against the nearest of the defense platform’s shields. Where the beams hit, the shields quickly went from a deep red to a violent white… but they held.

  Telemetry being fed to the Gilboa’s bridge indicated the single strike had depleted the shield reserves by 89 percent. Unless the platform’s six fusion reactors could recharge the storage cells quickly, the next hit would penetrate and begin to chew away at the station’s own ablative armor. Sadly, that armor was ill-suited to defend against antiprotons.

  By this time, three more weapons platforms were within striking range. The equivalent of over ten yotta-watts of energy lashed out across space to splash against the Defiler’s shields. It was like shooting a charging rhino with a 22-caliber rifle. It would sting, but there was no way in hell it was going to do anything other than piss-off the rhino.

  Our platforms were also equipped with antiproton particle weapons. Sadly, they were orders of magnitude weaker than what the enemy was using. They also required so much power to fire that energy had to be redirected from the shields… effectively making the weapons platform more vulnerable for a brief period of time.

  The nearer of the defensive platforms must have decided they were unlikely to survive the next hit and so they rolled the dice. Their shields dropped, and a particle beam fired. It was obvious that it had a bigger impact on the Defiler then the energy beams had. That said, it was not enough. Not nearly enough.

  Moments later, the weapons platform that had fired that shot was retargeted by the Defiler. Now that its shields were down, nothing stopped the Defiler’s blast. Within a fraction of a second the station, DP-14, was little more than an expanding cloud of plasma. Thirty-eight yotta-watts of energy striking bare ablative armor left little room for any other outcome. There were no escape pods launched.

  Lori must have seen my fist clench in frustration. She placed her hand on my shoulder. I shrugged it off. I was angry and frustrated. The last thing in the world I wanted was to be comforted. I stood up.

  “Shelby setup a direct line to the remaining DPs. I want them to continue to coordinate their firing. Antiproton beams only. As soon as one DP fires, the next in line is to fire no more than two seconds later. Keep the rotation going. Number 14 just gave their lives to show us what we need to do.”

  “Acknowledged sir,” my exec answered.

  I could see the same frustration I was feeling on her face. We sat on the bridge of what was potentially the most powerful starship in known space, but we might well have been sitting on recliners in my living room for all the good it did us.

  “Aye, I knows what yer doing,” Whiskers mumbled softly to himself. “They have a bigger gun… but we have a lot more guns.”

  “I’m glad you approve Commander McGraw. Now that we have congratulated each other, do you have any ideas? Any ideas at all?”

  I looked around the bridge.

  “Our homeworld is under attack. We have every reason to suspect this is just a reconnaissance-in-force maneuver intended to show just how strong our defenses are,” I said dryly. “We are supposedly the best of the best. I need options. How do we engage the enemy?”

  Whiskers and Shelby shook their heads. Jowls and Sheba began to whisper among themselves. I let them hash out whatever it was they were thinking of.

  Surprisingly, or perhaps not, it was my wife that came up with an idea that might get us in the fight.

  “The Gilboa is not combat ready… but does she need to be?”

  I tu
rned towards my wife. I was standing close to her. Her hand was still on the back of the chair. I gently placed mine on top of hers. To be honest, I was feeling a tad guilty for snapping.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Just this,” she said. “When a person breaks a leg, we give them a splint and a crutch. They’re mobile again but not ready to run a marathon.”

  “We don’t need to run a marathon. We just need shields and a firing solution,” I whispered. “You’re brilliant!”

  “I know,” my wife sad with a smile. I was guessing she had accepted my tacit apology.

  “Whiskers and Mitty. I need an assessment. Is this ship launchable? Could we get it into a geostationary orbit around the moon?”

  As one, Mitty and Commander McGraw shook their heads.

  “We have no engines and barely enough control thrusters to keep the beastie from roll’n over on us… and that’s suppose’n we could dig her out and get her up there, to begin with.”

  I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Sa’Mi and several of the other J’ni were suddenly huddled around one of the engineering consoles. I smiled to myself. I had a suspicion I knew what was going on.

  “Hull integrity is at seventy-five percent. Big sections of the ship would be open to the vacuum of space,” Mitty added.

  “Would we have weapons?” I asked.

  “Aye, if’n ya want to throw rocks at them. We have light-duty ranging lasers. I suppose we could overcharge them to produce a quarter of a petawatt… not much more than that… and one or two shots at the most before we burned’m out,” Whiskers answered in an exasperated voice. “We’d be lucky if they even noticed we took a poke at them.”

  I shook my head.

  “I wouldn’t be taking a shot at them. My guess is that in short order we are going to see landing craft begin to deploy. Would we be able to take one or two of them out once they are beyond the main ship’s shield?”

  “Aye, bonnie lot’a good it will do us. As I said, one or two shots, and we’re done for the day.”

  At this point, I looked at my J’ni engineers.

  “I take it you’re seeing sudden rapid progress on systems critical to launch, weapons and perhaps shields?” I made it more of a statement than a question.

  Commander Sa’Mi clicked on his VOX.

  “Affirmative Admiral. Curious. How did you know?”

  Rather than answer, I walked towards the center of the bridge.

  “Enough of these games. We both know you’re here. If you’re going to pull a rabbit out of a hat for us, why not just be upfront about it?”

  The image of the Jabesh AI, Arty shimmered into existence in front of me.

  “You are a singularly annoying human,” the AI said.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be,” Arty said dryly.

  I ignored his sarcasm. I had a good idea why he had tried to remain hidden. He had knowledge that humanity would desperately want and yet was not mature enough as a species to safely handle. Truth be known… I agreed with him. I would discuss my ideas on that matter with him later.

  “How long before we can attempt a launch?”

  “I estimate between forty-two and sixty-five minutes,” the AI responded.

  Whiskers stepped forward.

  “I din’a understand. Why such a wide window?”

  The holographic image of Arty turned towards the engineer.

  “Completion within this timeframe will require human and J’ni assistance. Organics are inherently inefficient… ergo, the imprecise nature of the completion estimate.”

  “Commanders McGraw and Sa’Mi, give our Jabesh friend here your complete cooperation. Arty, are you planning on going corporeal for the duration?”

  The AI looked at me with what I believed to be a modicum of irritation. When I first met Mitty, he’d been nothing more than a hologram and yet by the judicious use of force-field emitters he had been able to move chairs and the like.

  It seemed a reasonable guess, given Arty’s access to superior technology, that he’d be able to do the same… with even a higher degree of fidelity. I suspected it was one of those abilities the Jabesh AI had wanted to keep to himself. That I had put two and two together and concluded that if Mitty could do it… then he could as well… was likely the source of the irritation. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy irritating him every now and then.

  “Very well, Fleet Admiral Riker,” the AI eventually responded. “In that case, our window for completion improves to thirty-eight minutes. Mister ‘Whiskers’ and J’ni Sa’Mi I will meet you in main engineering. Please dispatch teams to environmental services, navigational array six and the quantum fusion core. We will begin the process of ‘de-hatting’ the rabbit.”

  ***

  Thirty-six minutes later (I guess we poor humans were more efficient than Arty estimated – but hey, I’m not bragging), the Gilboa II began to shake loose from its rocky lunar womb. That was the good news. Sadly, the bad news outnumbered the good news three to one.

  First, the Defiler assault on the weapons platforms orbiting the Earth had not abated in the interim. Six of the remaining defensive stations had been destroyed outright. Four more were no longer able to power their shields of fire their weapons… in essence, they were dead and no longer in the fight.

  Ground bases on the Earth had attempted to launch missiles, but the missiles in question were effortlessly swatted out of existence the moment they broke free of Earth’s atmosphere. In addition, the enemy ship dropped hypervelocity Kinetic Energy Weapons on the launch sites. The KEWs struck with enough force to vaporize thirty square kilometers and throw such a plume of dust and debris into the air that it would take the better part of a year to fully settle.

  Second, the Defilers had already started to deploy landing crafts. Their attack strategy was a brutal one. They would launch a series of small KEWs into an urban area and then land their troops in the ensuing chaos.

  Third, while it was true the Gilboa was entering the fray, she would barely be able to maintain lunar orbit, much less engage the enemy in any meaningful way. She had basic forward shields and two-thirds of her hull was complete and sealed from the vacuum of space, but little else beyond sensors was operational.

  Arty had kludged together one marginally operational weapons system. A ranging laser array had been reinforced with upgraded power conduits and cooling systems. They would produce a little more than a petawatt, which would have exactly zero effect of the Defiler’s shields.

  Fortunately, or unfortunately – depending on if you were a glass-half-full or half-empty type of guy – I had a plan to address that.

  2100.1289.8811 Galactic Normalized Time

  Admiral Riker, the original, sat back in his command chair aboard the UES Diaspora. The ship was making its way out of the Earth system. His was the largest ship ever built by the hand of man… and it was woefully incomplete and understaffed.

  Fortunately, these were both temporary inconveniences. The bulk of her crew and colonists were in suspended animation. At the last minute, the Ancestor AI known as Arquat had cloned itself and joined his crew as the ship’s AI. Thousands of stasis pods, complete with occupants, had suddenly appeared in the one operational hanger bay. Two of the three massive cargo holds were likewise filled with food stores and terraforming equipment.

  Worker bots slaved over the exterior of the ship welding additional hull-plating and attaching shield emitters and sensor pods. A similar contingent of advanced bots were finishing interior features such as hydroponic bays and crew quarters.

  By any standard definition, the Diaspora was an unattractive ship. Missing were the slick lines of a combat ship that needed to provide the smallest possible profile to an attacker. The Diaspora was not a ship of war… she was a massive lifeboat.

  Chapter 5: Barking Dog

  “Orbital status in three point two minutes,” Shelby announced from her station.

  For the
first time in days, I was stoked. Hey, don’t get me wrong. I knew we were up a creek without a paddle. I knew this. I knew that we were effectively defenseless. I knew that we had all the offensive capability of a geriatric cat with no teeth… but we were in the fight… and it was exhilarating.

  “Weapons status?” I asked.

  Jowls snorted derisively.

  “Our B-B gun is armed and ready.”

  The Roharian Emissary had taken over weapons as we were pretty understaffed at the moment – that and he like shooting things. I could have been reading things wrong, but I suspected he was hoping for a bigger gun when I had offered him the post.

  “Mister Arty,” I said with a big smile on my face. “Is our surprise ready?”

  “Indeed,” the hologram answered dryly.

  I shook my head slightly.

  “Arty, you really need to get into the spirit of things. If things go well, we are about lay down some serious whuup on our friends out there. Isn’t that worth even a modicum of simulated excitement?”

  I had taken to calling the Ancestor AI by that nickname a few days ago. I could tell he didn’t care for it… which is probably why I continued to use it. I’ve got a perverse nature about such things. Besides, it helped take him down a notch. He had a disturbing habit of acting superior. That fact that he was, in almost every way – at least from a technology point of view, was irrelevant.

  “Have you stopped to consider what will happen if things do not go well?” The AI said with just a tinge of irritation in his voice.

  “’Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.’” I was quoting from a book called the Bible. “Besides we can cross that bridge when we come to it,” I added.

  “We have orbital insertion,” Shelby confirmed. “We will have line-of-sight in less than a minute.”

  “How long before our orbit carries us back around the dark side of the moon?”

  “Twenty-two minutes.”

  I turned back towards the Roharian Emissary. I could see from the saliva dripping from his snout that he was genuinely excited. Boys with guns got that way… even when the gun in question was little more than a B-B gun.