Hunting Dog Read online

  “Ambassador, one minute before we pass beyond the lunar horizon relative to Earth, and at your discretion, I want you to start poking that bear with your stick. Keep poking until you’ve pissed it off, or we lose line-of-sight.”

  Jowls and I had had a lengthy discussion earlier when I outlined my plan. I was somewhat surprised when he took to the concept of ‘poking the bear’… that is once I explained what a bear was.

  His only response to my order was to extend a massive tongue and slurp up the long dangling lines of thick mucus dripping from his gator-like jaws. He was happy.

  The next twenty minutes or so were some of the longest of my life.

  The Gilboa II’s optical sensors easily picked up landing crafts exiting the battleship and entering Earth’s atmosphere. The piece that was especially frustrating was that even our limited weapons system could have taken out those troop carriers.

  The problem was if we poked the bear too soon, the bear would begin to charge at us before we were well and truly ready to put it down.

  At long last, my Exec leaned forward to glance at her status display.

  “Coming up on sixty seconds to loss of line-of-sight,” she announced.

  “Mister Jowls I believe that is your cue to start poke…”

  He was already firing so I didn’t bother finishing.

  Mitty brought up a holographic display that floated in the air near the forward viewscreen. Three dimensions was an effective way to take-in a fast-moving big picture. The floating image showed the moon and Earth, as well as the positions of the four remaining weapons platforms. The area near the Defiler ship was represented with an expanded bubble just off to the side. A dozen or more troop transport shuttles were coming to and from the battleship.

  A blue-green laser seemed to materialize a few hundred kilometers from one of the shuttles getting ready to enter the Earth’s atmosphere. The materialization was simply an optical illusion. Lasers can’t be seen unless some small part of their energy is scattered by dust or stray gases. The density of these gases increases exponentially as you approach a sufficiently large gravity well… say a planet. In short, a laser which had been invisible, suddenly begins to have enough of its energy scattered to become visible.

  The effect, while it did degrade the power of the laser in question, was negligible. Jowl’s B-B gun, while nowhere near energetic enough to threaten the Defiler’s shields, was more than adequate for punching through the much weaker shielding on the combat shuttles.

  The moment our weapon touched one of the Defiler’s landing crafts, its shields flared and then, in short order, collapsed. The targeted craft survived for only a fraction of a second longer before it broke in a short-lived fireball.

  Jowls managed to get four such shots off before the B-B gun overheated and shut down. A couple of seconds later the Gilboa II’s orbit carried her behind the lunar horizon. Sensor probes which had been left in lunar orbit continued to stream data to us.

  As expected, the four shuttles that had been targeted were each destroyed. The Defiler battleship broke Earth orbit and began a high-power acceleration towards our position. It seemed we had managed to piss-off the bear… which, to be honest, is all you can hope to do in these circumstances. What I hadn’t appreciated was just out pissed-off that bear had become.

  Remember when I said to Arty that if things went wrong ‘we would cross that bridge when we got to it’? It seemed we were there a lot sooner than I expected.

  “Bogy has launched missiles,” Mitty barked from his station. “They are vectoring to approach us on our orbital plane from both our forward and contra-orbital directions.”

  “Launch countermeasures,” I said automatically.

  “You’re kidding right,” Jowls answered with a sloppy slurp of saliva.

  OK, I thought, scratch countermeasures. To be honest, I had had a suspicion this was going to be the case, but hey… one can always hope.

  “Options?” I asked of the group on the bridge.

  “Let them hit us,” Mitty answered.

  As one the entire bridge crew turned to look at the Archon cyborg.

  “Pardon,” I said. “When I said, ‘options’ I was referring to ones that allow us to survive the encounter.”

  Mitty stepped over to stand in front of the holographic view screen. He zoomed in on the antiproton arc cannon that the J’ni had built under the guidance of Arty.

  “If we adjust our orbit three point eight degrees, we will be within the maximum protective shield range of the arc cannon.”

  “That protects us, but it also will force us to decloak our only weapon capable of taking out our friend out there. It won’t take them long to realize that all they need to do is keep the moon between themselves and the weapon. They could just continue to take pot shots at us with missiles or even KEWs if they kept below our orbital arc.”

  Arty materialized next the Archon and waved a holographic hand over the display. It changed to simulation mode.

  “If a series of EMP devices are detonated at precisely the right time, it will mask a temporary extension of the shield barrier.”

  The display showed a slow-motion simulation of the Defiler missiles arriving several seconds apart at the Gilboa II’s position. In each case, milliseconds before the enemy’s weapons detonated, the arc canon’s shield extended to cover the Gilboa.

  At the same time prepositioned EMP flash-bangs flooded the area with an electromagnetic pulse that would confuse the Defiler sensors. The nukes they were lobbing at us would produce a similar EMP, so it was unlikely that anything would seem amiss.

  “Aye, it’a seem liken we ‘ave working shields. They’d be force ta come after us,” Whiskers agreed.

  “Make it happen,” I ordered. “Arty, is our surprise deployed yet?”

  “Affirmative Admiral. Three deflectors are currently in position and cloaked. The fourth will enter lunar-stationary orbit within the next two minutes.”

  “Twenty seconds until missile intercept,” Jowls announced.

  I toggled my ship-wide comms.

  “Attention crew. Brace for impact. Damage control teams standby for deployment. Things are about to get bumpy.” What can I say? Sometimes I have a knack for understatements.

  “Enemy missile detonation in five… four… three… two… one.”

  As Commander Shelby finished counting down, the entire ship shuddered roughly. If I hadn’t had the good sense to strap in, I might well have been tossed from my seat.

  The emergency lights flickered on at about the same time the main power went down. I didn’t see any control panels blow, but there was definitely the smell of burning high-tech starship in the air. No sooner had that thought gone through my mind and the ship took a second massive wallop.

  This time things were worse… much worse. The grav-plating failed as well as the inertial dampeners. I felt myself being pulled to one side as the ship fought to right itself from what seemed like a spin.

  I could see the surface of the moon wobbling into and then out of view. Perhaps more concerning… it was getting closer... much closer.

  2100.1289.8811 Galactic Normalized Time

  General Ahithophel watched an external video feed from the landing craft he had boarded moments before. Soon he would be joining the over one-thousand shock troops on the planet’s surface. Meanwhile, at his order, the Avner-class battleship Divine Providence broke low-Earth orbit and headed towards the Earth’s moon.

  They were on their way to swat a pesky nat. It seemed his genetic homeworld had been working on a second massive battleship. Sensors indicated the ship was barely functional. It would be a shame to allow them to complete it.

  Chapter 6: Biting Dog

  “Status!” I yelled. “What the hell just happened? Why didn’t the shields protect us?”

  “Attitude thrusters coming back online,” Shelby yelled back. “Attempting to correct orbital decay.”

  I could feel both the grav-plating and the inertial dampeners ki
ck-in at about the same time. It was both reassuring and somewhat alarming. I say this because apparently both the Rohar and the J’ni are subject to extreme bouts of motion sickness. Further, both were capable of projectile vomiting. It was not pleasant and made operating some of the equipment more… challenging.

  Arty shimmered back into existence.

  “The shields operated as expected. Unfortunately, there was a three-point-six millisecond delay in triggering our EMP charges. As a result…”

  “The ground-based shields were already collapsing when our own weapons detonated,” I finished.

  “Correct Admiral. As a result, the Gilboa control systems experienced a sizeable but transient magnetic induction event. This rendered a number of primary systems inoperable.”

  “Why the delay in the EMP detonation and why didn’t secondary systems kick in immediately?” This time it was Shelby who was asking.

  “Commander, this ship launched three weeks sooner than anticipated. Many of her primary systems were… in Commander McGraw’s parlance… cobbled together. There are few operational redundant systems,” Arty explained almost apologetically.

  The Ancestor AI seemed hurt by my exec’s question. It was the first time I had seen him like this. To be honest, it was nice to know he could feel such emotions.

  “I think given the circumstances, you did quite well,” I said. “Do we have sensors? Is our friend out there still taking the bait?”

  “He is indeed, Admiral,” Jowls added almost gleefully from his freshly cleaned station.

  I had been relieved to see, as Arty had been speaking earlier, a low-power force field sweep across most of the vomitous-covered control surfaces. The field acted like a giant squeegee pulling the offensive material to one side where a small team of maintenance bots cleaned it up.

  I’d still want to be hitting all those consoles with the Galactic Order version of Lysol disinfectant… but at least between that cleaning and the air-handlers kicking into overtime… the smell of alien stomach juices dissipated. If for some reason I had failed to mention it before… Roharian stomach juices are unpleasant in the extreme.

  J’ni engineers, along with repair bots, were scrambling to bring various systems back to life. Most of the control surfaces around the bridge flickered on in short order. Within moments, the holographic situation-display shimmered in front of the command deck once again.

  The Defiler ship was indeed moving in for the kill. In a couple more seconds, it would clear the moon’s horizon and come into range of our weapon.

  “Deflectors six and four have a targeting solution,” Shelby announced.

  “Confirmed, Admiral,” Jowls agreed. “Four more seconds until the primary is locked. The orbital approach will mean deflector’s one and five will not have a firing solution at the same time as the others.”

  I nodded. It was unfortunate, I would like to hit them from seven directions at once, but I would settle for what we had… if for no other reason than I had too.

  “Optimum firing, Mister Ambassador,” I said calmly.

  Moments later, the massive antiproton arc cannon on the moon’s surface fully de-cloaked and belched a massive beam straight up from the lunar surface. Through some type of Ancestor magic, the beam split into multiple fragments… each bending a different direction.

  The largest beam segment struck the Defiler ship on its forward shields. I gained a healthy respect for their enhanced shielding. It held firm against the massive onslaught… at least in the beginning. Fortunately, our biggest surprise for our unwanted interstellar visitors was yet to come into play.

  Cloaked energy reflectors orbiting above the moon intercepted the secondary beams and re-directed them to focus on the Defiler ship. Now it was fending off attacks from multiple directions.

  The primary beam, which hit the bad guys first, was on the forward shields, so the Defiler’s AI had shifted the bulk of its shields forward. That meant that the secondary beams, all four of them, were facing a softer target. This was deliberate on our part to ensure the Defilers had a bad day.

  Their shields flared wildly. To the enemy captain’s credit, he started his ship rotating on its primary axis in order to dissipate the energy striking his shields over as wide an area as possible. It’s the type of maneuver I might have tried.

  It was a classic case of too little... too late. The shields shifted from a deep red to lavender and ultimately to a blinding white… and then they failed. The result was impressive.

  In less than a second, the battleship’s antimatter containment field was breached, and the ship exploded with enough force to raise a sizable dust cloud on the lunar surface some four hundred kilometers wide.

  The Gilboa II, with next to no shields was buffeted so hard I thought my teeth were going to be shaken loose. Barely working and roughly patched systems overloaded and failed for the second time in less than an hour. We didn’t lose gravity plating, but most of our attitude control thrusters, which we had been overtaxing in an effort to remain in orbit, failed completely.

  We would have been fine if the blast had come from another direction, but sadly, that’s just not the way my luck rolls some days. I suspect it might be divine retribution for past sins. The force of the Defiler’s explosion reduced our orbital velocity to the point we were falling into the moon rather than falling around it.

  “Get those thrusters back online!” I barked.

  Whiskers shook his head. “Not gonna happen, Admiral. The exhaust ports are crumpled shut. Short of replacing them, there don’a be a thing I can do. The two that can still fire up are fused in place.”

  That was decidedly bad news. I looked at Mitty.

  “Time to impact?”

  “Three maybe three and a half minutes if we pulse the thrusters when our rotation points them in right direction.”

  “Arty, what are the chances we can survive the impact?”

  The Ancestor AI paused before answering. His display sparkled in the smoky haze that was filling the bridge. Despite the fact that we might all be about to die, I found the light-show interesting.

  “It is unlikely,” The AI responded. “I would recommend attempting to abandon ship. I estimate sixteen percent of the current crew complement will be able to reach safety.”

  I shook my head. “I need a better answer, people...”

  I was going to say more, but something caught my eye. The tumbling of the Gilboa II brought the lunar dust cloud back into view. It was massive, and even now, it was continuing to spread.

  I had an idea. As ideas go, it wasn’t particularly a good one… but I was under the gun time-wise, so I went with it.

  “Commander Shelby, work with Mister Jowls. I want a pair of nukes launched and detonated on the lunar surface. Time them so they are under us just before we hit. Mitty, Whiskers… work with them. Whatever shielding we have, I want it concentrated on our underbelly.”

  “Aye, that could work,” Whiskers said. “It will be a bumpy ride but a damn sight better than go’n splat.”

  I slammed my fist on the comm-link built into my command chair. I hit it so hard, I was afraid I might have broken it. One thing was certain… it would not be the only thing that needed fixing if my crazy plan worked.

  “All hands, this is the Admiral. Radiation and venting protocols are now in effect. Shelter in place and brace for imminent impact. Riker out.”

  It turns out Mitty’s time estimate was optimistic. In order to make sure our nukes could reach their targets in time to buffer us from a full force impact… we needed to use our attitude control thrusters to position our launch tubes in the correct direction. This meant we were not using them to retard our decent. Translation: we were going to hit a little sooner and a little harder.

  Now the question might be asked… why would we want to do this? The nukes we were about to pop off would never be strong enough to bounce us back in orbit. That much energy would likely shatter the ship into a million pieces… killing everyone on board and, as a s
ide note, defeating the whole point of the maneuver.

  The thing is this… any object in motion… say a massive starship like the Gilboa II… has a certain amount of kinetic energy associated with that motion. Hitting the ground causes all that kinetic energy to be converted in a very small timeframe into potential energy. This produces a number of undesirable effects… not the least of which is an excessive amount of heat and of course… dead bodies.

  On the other hand, if the kinetic energy could be dissipated slowly enough, both the ship and the crew might survive the experience.

  The nukes were not intended to keep the ship from hitting the moon’s surface. Ironically, the nukes were intended to soften the impact. To my knowledge, this was the first time in the history of humanity’s violent existence that nukes had been used as a pillow.

  Now, I have to admit, I like being a trend-setter as much as the next guy but even this was over the top for me. I only hoped it worked so the crew could brag about it to their grandkids.

  “Collision in eight seconds!” Shelby barked from her station. “Brace yourselves!”

  Before she had even finished, Mitty yelled, “Warheads triggering now…”

  The ship shook violently… more violently then I had ever experienced… which was saying a lot.

  If I was a betting man… and I was… I would bet the ship’s entire electrical system shorted out at once. I suspect this was a combination the EMP caused by two nukes going off closer than any sane person would want and the resulting shockwave.

  The lighting panels were one of the first things to go, but the pyrotechnics from all of the electrical fires provided ample illumination. If the ship survived, it was going to take more than a dustpan and broom to clean up the mess.

  One of the problems with losing power in a situation like this was you also lost gravity plating, sensors, and basically anything else that might give you a sense of what was going on. I didn’t know if our gamble had worked. I didn’t even know how much of the ship had survived the explosions, and ignorance was most certainly not bliss.