Catherine Kimbridge Chronicles 7: Renegades Read online

  “Holy Moses,” Lieutenant Front whispered.

  The massive ship changed course and headed towards the Mardarus jump point. It accelerated to sixty percent the speed of light and within a few minutes it engaged its jump engines and was gone.

  ***

  Sa’Tra of the Hupenstanii medical corps examined the wreckage of the downed shuttle from the air as his survey craft circled the crash site. The shuttle had been transporting scientists and their samples from a remote island off the north shore of the main continent.

  The lead researcher, a female named Triska’nar had contacted his office just prior to taking off. She had been excited. Apparently she had found something that in her words ‘would redefine the very nature of the plague crisis’ that had dominated every fiber the Hupenstanii people’s existence for two full generations.

  Whatever it was she had found had apparently been lost with shuttle. It was obvious even from several hundred meters in the air that the entire crash site had been consumed by a very intense fire. The plague curse continued to haunt his people. Every time a major discovery was made over the last several decades a tragedy would visit the people making the discovery to wipe out whatever was learned.

  Sa’Tra knew there were conspiracy theorists that claimed the whole thing was a giant and cruel GCP plot to suppress his people. At first he had dismissed the very idea but over time he began to wonder if indeed there might not be something to the mad rumors.

  ***

  Cat looked over Lieutenant Sassi’s numbers. The Ashkelon computer expert had been working with Cat for the better part of a week. Together with the Yorktown’s AI they had developed a series of equations that, in theory at least, should allow for the extra-dimensional secondary harmonics that might make unrestricted Hyperfield jumps a reality again

  “I’m worried about tertiary perturbations in higher dimensional planes,” Cat said finally.

  Sassi’s low-frequency antenna twitched. “In truth, I am too. We can dampen them with a theta wave but we don’t know the proper coupling coefficient.”

  “And we can’t know the coupling coefficient without experimental data,” Cat finished. “We’re going to have to try it and fine tune as we go.”

  Sassi turned in his interface nest. “I was afraid you were going to say that. The routines have been uploaded to Yorky. When do you want to try it?”

  Cat stood and looked around the computer room. Spotting her coffee cup she reached for it before answering. “I think I want to be on the bridge when we make the attempt. I’d like you there too in case we need any fancy code jittering at the last minute.”

  “Can I make a suggestion?”

  Cat looked at the furry moth-like creature and nodded.

  “I think we should ask the Relentless to monitor our jump. If we end up in a strange location they might be able to provide critical data via an FTL link to help determine the cause of the anomaly.”

  Cat smiled as she headed towards the turbo lift.

  “Already ahead of you on that one… I gave Vigit the order an hour ago.”

  ***

  Ken leaned forward in his command chair. The black faux leather creaked slightly as his weight shifted. Lieutenant Sassi sat in his navigation control nest. Admiral Kimbridge was entering some last minute adjustments using a holographic keypad attached to her command chair. Commander Ben was standing next to Lieutenant Zimmerman who was alerting the taskforce to stand ready. The Yorktown was moments from attempting an unconstrained jump two light minutes from their current location. The decision had been made to attempt a short test jump before trying to head to the Hupenstanii system.

  “Ben, you may want to strap yourself down. This may or may not be a bumpy ride,” Ken said to his First Officer.

  Ben nodded his acknowledgment and moved to his own command chair just to the side of the captain’s seat. As he moved he instructed his nanites systems to reconfigure his body to human-normal. It was a mildly disturbing sight to the uninitiated but everyone on the bridge had seen him do this many times. His human form was better suited for the safety features of the chair.

  Ken looked at Ziggy. “Mr. Zimmerman, ship-wide if you please.”

  “Aye Captain. Channel open.”

  “Attention crew of the Yorktown. This is the Captain. We are about to attempt an unrestricted hyperfold jump. We may have done many of these in the past but the realities of this universe are different. We have no idea what will happen. We will jump in thirty seconds. Everyone strap in and report any anomalies to the First Officer. Kirkland out.”

  “Ziggy, signal the Relentless we are ready to go.”

  Ken swiveled his chair to look at Cat. She nodded. Ken turned back to face Sassi. He paused a few seconds to give the crew time to batten down the hatches as it were. Finally he said, “Helm, if your board is green you are cleared to jump.”

  “Aye Captain,” Sassi chirped. “Jumping in three, two, one…”

  As the Ashkelon Lieutenant hit the jump button the lights on the bridge dimmed slightly and the ship shuddered in a way that caused Ken’s teeth to hurt. Suddenly the world flashed unimaginatively bright colors that felt cold and warm at the same time. Sounds that had smells associated with them filled the room. The synesthesia Ken was experiencing left him feeling disoriented and dizzy. The pain in his head was debilitating. He tried to scream but the sound was transmuted to light flowing from his mouth. He fought a losing battle to stay aware of his surroundings. His last thought before losing consciousness was - Is this death?

  The GCP Yorktown was enveloped in an undulating violet hyperfield nimbus. The ship slipped through space-time and arrived at its proper destination… a point less than one tenth of an astronomical unit from their previous location. Unfortunately as a result of the jump every sentient entity on the ship, to include the AI, was rendered unconscious.

  They remained unconscious for the better part of thirty minutes. Thus they missed the message from WhimPy-101 declaring an emergency in the Mardarus system.

  ***

  WhimPy-101 struggled to make sense of what was going on. A massive ship of Uruk design had entered the Mardarus star system. The ship was a relic out of Uruk/Heshe distant past. Unless WhimPy-101 missed his guess… this ship was Alpha. The first of the planet killers the Uruk had created. It had run amok and the Uruk had destroyed it millennia ago… or at least that what they had believed.

  Alpha had appeared near the Antares jump point. It had immediately scanned the entire system with a high intensity sensor sweep. A series of collimated anti-proton beams lashed out from hundreds of weapons ports on the massive ship. Each one targeted a different ship or outpost in the immediate vicinity of the jump point. In each case the outcome was the same. The target was destroyed. The massive ship began to accelerate towards the larger population centers with the Mardarus system.

  WhimPy-101 moved to engage the hostile ship. He attempted to hail it using longed stored Uruk codes but Alpha refused to respond. WhimPy-101 swept his own sensors over the aggressor. This elicited an immediate response. The WhimPy’s communication nodes were flooded with a powerful broad spectrum broadcast that threatened to burn them out.

  “WHO?” The language used by the aggressor was an ancient dialect of Uruk. To humans it would appear as a series of undulating chromophorematic color patterns on the surface of the ship.

  WhimPy-101 loaded the appropriate language subroutines and responded in the same dialect. “I am weapons platform number 101. This star system is under my protection. Stand down.”

  “WHO?” Alpha repeated.

  WhimPy-101 analyzed his sensor data. Numerous systems on Alpha seemed to be heavily damaged. The platform was actively engaged in repair protocols but they seemed to be poorly coordinated. It was possible that the ancient weapons platform was unable to receive and/or interpret the response to its own query.

  WhimPy increased the intensity of his response by increasing the luminosity of his external chromophores.

&n
bsp; The Alpha platform spun on its axis and presented a new less damaged face towards WhimPy-101. Again a powerful sensor beam swept over 101. Again his communication nodes were overwhelmed by a powerful transmission from the ancient ship.

  “RESPONSE IS NON SEQUITUR. ERADICATION PROTOCOLS REMAIN PARAMOUNT”

  The Alpha platform again rotated on its primary axis and resumed its acceleration towards the more populated regions of the star system. As it did WhimPy-101 noted a sudden surge in the ship’s, already considerable, energy generation. The ship was surrounded by a shimmering blue nimbus which came together in a bright spot near the forward-facing surface of the platform.

  A massive energy beam, well beyond WhimPy’s ability to measure, shot out from the bright spot. It struck the moon called Ciru. A third again the size of Earth’s moon, Ciru had a tenuous atmosphere of mostly nitrogen. This boiled off in a fraction of a second. In less than five seconds the surface of the moon had been converted into a boiling magma ocean. The few inhabited cities on the moon died and were utterly obliterated before anybody in them had a chance to even know they were being attacked.

  WhimPy analyzed the attack and immediately began to charge his offensive weapons systems. No member of any of the GCP member worlds had ever seen these particular weapons in action. In its role as a defensive weapons platform, such systems were rarely if ever needed.

  A phase-shifted hyperfield conduit between WhimPy and the Alpha platform formed. A collimated proton/anti-proton beam lashed out. The hypefield conduit nullified the active shielding that Alpha had in place. Instantly the antimatter beam began to chew away at the surface of the Alpha platform.

  Within milliseconds Alpha’s AI began to modulate the frequency of its shield harmonics. The shielding firmed up and the Alpha platform began to harvest the energy being poured into them. WhimPy knew that this was the single feature of the first generation Uruk weapon’s platforms that made them virtually invulnerable. Alpha’s shields were literally designed to harvest energy and unless you could bypass them, the system was unstoppable.

  WhimPy-101 knew in that moment that he might be out matched. He decided to transmit an encrypted log file of his encounter to the AI known as Yorky on the GCP Yorktown along with some very specific instructions. If certain conditions were met Yorky would make the log file available to Admiral Kimbridge.

  WhimPy-101 had one advantage the Heshe had been able to give him. His intellect was orders of magnitude faster and more powerful than the older Uruk ship. He used that to play a cat and mouse game with the bigger and more powerful weapons platform. Every time Alpha adjusted its shield harmonics to block WhimPy’s hyperfield conduit, the Heshe weapons platform tweaked his emitter frequencies to make a new hole in the shield. The hole might only last a millisecond or so but it was enough for his antimatter beam to rake across the surface of the other ship. Each time his beam connected it vaporized several metric tons of hardened metal.

  Unfortunately for WhimPy-101, the accumulating damage to Alpha’s external systems caused its AI to reevaluate its priorities. Slowly, like a grizzly bear awaken from its winter slumber, the massive ship turned to face the Heshe weapons platform.

  Chapter 4: Death…

  WhimPy-101 accelerated as fast as his damaged systems would allow towards the smallest of the Mardarian jump points. It was so unstable it was not even listed on most transit maps of this sector. Using it to jump out of the Mardarus system was a calculated risk. WhimPy-101 could easily be crushed should the jump point collapse during his transition. By the same token, the much larger Alpha platform ran an even bigger risk should it choose to follow him through the jump point.

  Either way, if WhimPy could goad the other ship’s AI into brashly following him through the jump point then the Mardarians might just be spared. At very least, it would buy the inhabitants of that system a little more time to attempt to flee – not that very many would be able to. Still, to the Heshe weapons platform, every life was precious and if even one Mardarian could be saved by the risk he was now taking… it was a trade-off he was willing to make.

  He began to rotate his shields in an attempt to mitigate the thrashing his defenses were taking from Alpha’s constant barrage. He wished he could harvest the energy being throw at his shields like the Alpha platform did. Sadly, the Heshe had never build the newer weapons platforms with the regenerative energy recovery systems that their progenitors had utilized in the Alpha models. The simple reason was they were too hard to stop if for some reason the Heshe lost control of them.

  WhimPy-101 had managed to slag over eighty percent of Alpha’s surface but the massive ship was still able to harvest twelve percent of the energy thrown at it. That was energy it used to rebuild damaged systems and recharge its own offensive weapons systems. Those systems were incredibly powerful. It took every ounce of WhimPy’s skill and accumulated experience to continue the fight as long as he had. Time was not on his side. He was two minutes from the jump point. He calculated he would reach the jump point roughly three seconds before his shields failed.

  As it turned out his calculations were wrong. They had been based on the assumption that the Alpha platform would not change its tactics. This turned out to be an erroneous assumption. With the added energy being harvested, the Alpha’s AI calculated it would be able to bring its long dormant zero-point energy systems online. This weapon was designed to shunt energies out of a system… draining them to their theoretical zero-point energy levels. On a large enough scale this caused matter to collapse in on itself and resulted in the formation of point singularities… or miniature black holes. The effect was devastating.

  WhimPy felt the new weapon strike his aft shields and begin to drain them. He had scant milliseconds to isolate the targeted systems to avoid a cascading failure. He pumped his antimatter generators to two hundred and fifty percent of capacity. At those levels they would fail within seconds but they would allow him to keep feeding energy into his rapidly collapsing shields. His survival was no longer an option but if he could make the jump point and coax Alpha into following him then the sacrifice might be worth it. In the last few milliseconds before the jump he started transferring his intellect to his highly shielded backup memory core. If the core survived, it would locate another WhimPy and transmit his engrams to that platform.

  He pulsed energy into his hyperfield emitters. A poorly formed purple nimbus shimmered into existence around his body. In a fraction of a millisecond later he entered the hyperfield vortex.

  Behind him the Alpha platform detected the formation of the hyperfield corridor. It pushed its sublight engines to make up the distance and follow this powerful adversary through. He reached the proper location four point three seconds behind the first ship. He opened the hyperfield corridor and entered.

  Had Alpha had full use of his faculties he might had detected the anomalous nature of the hyperfield conduit he was entering. As it was, he noticed two problems when he exited the field some 130 light years distant. The first problem was that thirty percent of his mass had been sheared off during the transit by the unstable jump point. The second problem was that the enemy craft was experiencing a catastrophic failure in its primary energy generation systems which threatened to result in an antimatter explosion unless immediate action could be taken.

  Alpha needed information. This surprisingly powerful ship could provide it. It was clearly the most advanced craft Alpha had yet encountered since awaking from his great sleep. The problem was the smaller ship was mere moments from destruction. Any action Alpha was to take would need to be taken soon.

  The antimatter core was located in a dorsal section of smaller vessel. Alpha extended a hyperfield cloak over 63% of the smaller ship and used the field to reverse momentum. This sheared the other vessel in half. The antimatter reactor remained on the smaller of the two pieces which was now outside of Alpha’s shields. He quickly poured his entire remaining energy reserves into his shielding. As they firmed up, the other ship’s antimatter reactor
lost containment and went critical. The resulting matter-antimatter explosion released more energy than a typical star would release in a thousand years.

  Had Alpha’s energy harvesters been fully operational the result would have been an energy feast the likes of which he had never previously enjoyed. Unfortunately, between the battle with this smaller ship and the mysterious loss of mass while proceeding through the hyperfield conduit, Alpha only had 2% of his collectors operating. They were soon overloaded. His shields however held long enough for him to re-enter the hyperfield conduit.

  When he re-emerged in the Mardarus system the backwash from the antimatter explosion traveled with him. The effect was much like what a human’s ‘SJ’ round produced. A highly powerful beam of pure energy poured out of the hyperfield conduit in the scant milliseconds it was open between the two systems. Unfortunately for Mardarus III, the backwash bathed the planet in ultra-high intensity gamma radiation. It was enough to sterilize all remaining life. Mardarus III was dead.

  Alpha consulted the jump point map he had acquired from the survey ship earlier. There was another jump point in the general vicinity of his current location. He should have just enough energy left in his reserves to reach it. According to his data, this particular jump point led to a system called Sol.

  ***

  Cat shuddered awake. Her body fought its way to consciousness like a deep sea diver fights to reach the surface of the ocean after going a little deeper than was perhaps wise. Every fiber of her being fought her as she clawed towards consciousness. It was a battle that seem to rage on for hours but in reality she had little sense of time.

  She could hear the others around her moaning and she knew she was not alone. She was on the bridge of the Yorktown. That sudden knowledge brought her some measure of comfort. This was where she belonged.