Hunting Dog Read online

  The other piece of fun we had to deal with were the asymmetric forces working on the Gilboa II. With no gravity plating and no inertial dampeners, we were at the mercy to such forces.

  Imagine a billiard ball being hit with a cue stick slightly off center. The result was a rapidly spinning ball… a ball we were trapped in the middle of. Without the gravity plating and inertial dampers in place, we were thrown again the outer walls with enough force to break bones. My command chair’s restraint system held me in place, but others were not so lucky. Mitty flew across the bridge and likely would have been severely hurt or killed if he hadn’t hit Jowls first.

  The two tumbled and crashed into the wall. It was the type of hit that would typically leave a mark in the morning for your run-of-the-mill human, had they been involved. It seems the Rohar were made of stern stuff. The ambassador grunted but otherwise seemed fine.

  The only person who was completely unaffected was, not surprisingly, Arty the Jabesh AI. His holographic image continued to float in the center of the wrecked bridge. It occurred to me that the systems must be operating with an independent power source.

  “Admiral,” the AI said calmly, “I have succeeded in making essential repairs; however, the primary drive is going critical. I’m afraid I will need to take extraordinary measures.”

  2100.1289.8811 Galactic Normalized Time

  The landing craft settled without incident near the primary LZ. General Ahithophel quickly exited. He was met by his executive officer, RC182. As another Riker clone, he was identical in every respect to the general, save for the color of his uniform and his clone designation.

  That might very well change soon. Only senior clones were assigned names, so his exec currently only responded to 182. Should the day come that he was deemed worthy of a name, the master would assign one to him. The good news for RC182 was that the coming days would provide ample opportunity to earn his name.

  Chapter 7: A Dog with a Plan…

  I had learned when dealing with Arty that ‘extraordinary measures’ typically involved… well, extraordinary measures. This time was no different.

  Arty ejected the drive core moments before it exploded… and simultaneously activated a mysterious device his bots had been working on since our initial EMP mishap. The device in question was the matter transport mechanism we had be introduced to on a number of earlier occasions.

  I felt the familiar tingling of static electricity followed by a very bright light and a sudden shift in gravity.

  The bright light turned out to be the normal illumination of a hanger bay. The change in gravity was a return to Earth normal from that of lunar normal. A number of us fell as a result… I being one of that number.

  The first thing I noticed was that the entire complement of the Gilboa II was in this hanger. This provided me a certain degree of comfort. It appeared that I may have wrecked another starship, but at least my skeleton crew had survived. I owed the Ancestor AI for that one.

  My suspicions as to where we had teleported were confirmed a moment later when Captain Kimbridge entered the hanger. We were on the Ticonderoga.

  “Well, I guess we know what the ‘essential repairs’ were,” Whiskers said as he helped Ada up from the floor where the sudden shift of venue had deposited her.

  I looked around. The Ancestor AI was nowhere to be seen. That didn’t surprise me. The bugger had been known to go weeks without showing his holographic face. I suspected this might be one of those situations. He was undoubtedly coordinating repairs on the Gilboa II. I had a feeling that we might be needing that ship again… sooner rather than later.

  I hate it sometimes when my gut feelings are right.

  I turned to face Captain Kimbridge and saluted as per protocol. “Permission to come onboard, sir.”

  “Permission granted, Admiral,” he answered while returning my salute.

  “That’s a relief, Robert. I’m not sure we could come back the way we came,” I said with a grin. “Status report, please.”

  “Well Admiral, we’ve been pushing our sublights past the redline. We are about an hour out of Earth orbit. Reports coming in from the planet indicate the Defilers have landed just shy of 10,000 troops. Major military installations and planetary defense sites have been neutralized by a combination of KEWs and ground forces.”

  I nodded. My exec walked up as we were speaking. I motioned Mitty and Whiskers to join us as well.

  “It doesn’t make sense sir,” Shelby said. “10,000 troops on the ground sounds impressive, but they’re grossly outnumbered by our forces, not to mention the advantage Earth has from a logistics point of view. What are they hoping to gain?”

  “Don’t forget we took out their orbital support,” I said. “Selectively fired KEWs would have been an effective force multiplier for them. Also, my guess is their objective was not to win the day but to soften-up and occupy our defenses. I don’t expect their main forces will be too far behind.”

  “Actually, Admiral, that is the second part of my report,” Kimbridge continued. “Sensors have detected numerous Skip Drive entry events out past the orbit of Pluto.”

  “Define ‘numerous.’”

  “Dozens if not a hundred. More are appearing every few hours. My guess is they are positioning in a staging area before they advance.”

  ***

  It was almost a day later that the invasion forces finally stopped emerging from Skip Space. By then we estimated well over a thousand ships had entered the Sol system. I have to admit, it didn’t look good for the home team.

  I was back onboard the Gilboa II. As I expected, Arty had been busy making repairs and completing the ship. What I hadn’t expected was the progress he had been able to make in the short period of time we had been gone.

  The number of construction and mining bots that were being used to complete the work had grown exponentially… with more being added by the minute. Already the worker-bot count exceeded one-hundred thousand.

  Up until this point, I don’t think I fully comprehended the raw computational power of Arty. Watching the bots swarm over the Gilboa II like ants building a nest, I realized coordinating such activity would take a truly powerful AI, well beyond anything humanity or even the Galactic Order could bring to bear.

  If I was going to be honest with myself, Arty and his Defiler counterparts were almost as far above us technologically as we were above those ants the worker-bots reminded me of. I began to suspect that the Arty avatar was nothing more than a dumbed-down interface that operated at a level that we mere humans could understand. It was humbling.

  As far as the construction effort on the Gilboa II went, I could almost see the ship taking form before my eyes.

  The energy signature from the construction effort was virtually equivalent to the entire energy output of the moon prior to the Bogey-Four event. This meant the Ancestor’s bots were consuming the energy of a small city, say Green Bay Wisconsin… home to just over 1.5 million souls. From a sensor point of view, it must have lit up the dark side of the moon like a search beacon.

  It literally screamed, ‘Here I am, come and get me.’

  In a sense, it explained why the earlier construction efforts, as numbingly fast as the Ancestor fabrication technology had been, had occurred at a snail’s pace compared to the current effort. Given that the Defilers were now completely aware of the moon-based Ancestor shipyard, there was no longer any need to hide.

  I suspected the Defiler forces on the planet surface were beaming a steady supply of current intel via FTL communications to their compatriots holding place in the nether regions of our solar system.

  That meant the enemy would know that the Gilboa II was preparing to launch. The ship still wasn’t complete, but the hanger bays were loaded with raw materials, and the construction bots would continue to do their thing while the ship got underway.

  We were just welcoming the last of our permanent crew onboard… and by ‘we’ I mean Commander Shelby. Normally, I would have at least welc
omed department heads onboard, but my time was completely dominated with the Defiler build-up in the outer fringes of the solar system.

  Between Mitty, Whiskers, Jowls, myself, and, to a much more limited degree, Arty… we had come up with a partial plan for dealing with the armada that would soon be coming our way.

  I say ‘partial’ because there wasn’t a chance in hades that it was going to be enough to get the job done.

  The bad guys had roughly a thousand ships. We had the Yorktown, the Ticonderoga, and the Gilboa II plus a smattering of runabouts. Add to that a handful of half-finished ships towed from Earth’s orbiting shipyards… and hidden on the lunar surface... plus a whole lot of prayer.

  With the possible exception of the newly enhanced Gilboa II, our vessels were no match for the Defiler ships. Not to put too fine a point on it, the odds didn’t look so good.

  Despite what we had managed to do to the preliminary reconnaissance force, I was under no illusion. We were about to get our collective arses handed to us on a platter if we could not find some type of force multiplier to tip the odds a little more in our favor.

  “That’s it,” Whiskers said as he typed a final sequence of commands into the datapad, he was carrying. “If the numbers you and Commander Mitty gave me are accurate and if’n the Ambassador’s right ‘bout his part… we should be able to send’m crying back ta their mommas… if’n dey had mommas that is.”

  “There are a lot of ‘ifs,’” I said by way of an acknowledgment. “Good job, team. How long do we have to make our deployment window?”

  Mitty wrinkled his otter-like nose in thought. In point of fact, I knew his cybernetic link to the ship’s AI had already provided the answer, but I had learned it was best just to indulge his whims. His existence straddled the line between machine and organic. I suspected the façade of contemplation helped him deal with the duality of his nature.

  “We must deploy the net itself in four hours in order for it to have enough time to reposition itself optimally. The probes and decoys can launch up to two hours later but obviously the sooner, the better.”

  I nodded. My own estimates had not been far off the mark.

  I toggled the conference room comms.

  “Commander Shelby. How goes it with our stragglers?”

  My exec’s response came back immediately from the main hanger bay.

  “We have everyone on board now. Chief Warrant Officer Bagnoli broke his ankle, debarking his shuttle. He’s in medical now. The last of our supplies should be tucked away in the next ten to fifteen minutes.”

  “Very well, Commander. Ready the ship for launch in thirty minutes.”

  “Aye aye, Admiral.”

  I switched channels to the med bay.

  “Lori, I understand you have our chief cook down there. Anything I should be concerned about? We have a small window to get a replacement if need be.”

  Before my wife could answer, I heard a gruff answer from a person I was assuming was the Gilboa II’s new master of the mess hall.

  “Begging the Admiral’s pardon, but I’d hobble along on a peg leg before I’d let you throw me off this ship. I’ll be cooking for you tonight, or my name isn’t Oscar Bagnoli!”

  I smiled. I had heard about our new chef from my father-in-law. As far as warrant officers went, he was not a by-the-book type of guy. In fact, the rumor was he had never even seen the book, but he was one hell of a chef, and once he set his mind to something, neither hell nor high water could dissuade the Italian chef from it. In short, he was my type of guy.

  “Very good Chief. I look forward to sampling your work tonight. Riker out.”

  “Gentlemen,” I looked around the conference room, “I think we’re done here. Assume your stations, and let’s make this happen.”

  ***

  The bridge was unusually quiet. I think everybody knew we were playing a long card in the hopes of a miracle. Long-range sensors had just reported the Defiler armada was beginning to advance towards Earth.

  “Shelby, take us out.”

  “Aye aye, Admiral. Helm, maneuvering thrusters to one third. Navigation, set course for Jupiter... best speed once we leave the lunar no-wake zone.”

  “Aye aye, sir. Thrusters to one third.”

  “Course laid in and locked for Jupiter. Estimated time of arrival, three hours and thirty-six minutes.”

  I could feel the power of the ship as it forced its way up and out of the moon’s gravity well. The inertial dampeners were rated at over a thousand times the stress being placed on them by the launch… still… in my mind at least… I could feel the slight shudder as the Gilboa II raised off the surface of the moon for the second time in less than a week.

  I knew from an operational point of view, we were in much better shape than last time, but the Gilboa II was still a long way from being one hundred percent… and only the most dire of circumstances would cause a ship’s commander to take a vessel into combat without so much as a shakedown cruise. Sadly, a massive, technologically-advanced alien armada qualified as ‘dire.’

  I put my hands on the armrests of my command chair and stood up. It felt good to stretch my legs. I had only been sitting for a few minutes, but the tension on the bridge was thick enough to cut with a knife.

  Normally I’d encourage a more relaxed attitude, as people tend to not perform at their best when strung tighter than a piano wire for any great amount of time, but in this case, I decided the elevated awareness such tension brought to the table (at least initially) was exactly what we needed.

  “Mitty, Commander Shelby join me in my ready room. We have work to do.”

  2100.1289.8813 Galactic Normalized Time

  RC182 stood on a road designated 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. A large structure was smoldering in the background. His team had used a small tactical nuke to raze the building. To the best of his knowledge, it had been unoccupied at the time, but the edifice held a cultural significance to the indigenous population. It was important to eradicate such symbols as rapidly as possible.

  Chapter 8: Snapping Dog…

  “That’s da last of da wee little buggers,” Whiskers announced from his station.

  “I’m reading five by five on all transponders,” Shelby added. “We should be good to go in twenty minutes.”

  I nodded. “Give me ship-to-ship to both the Ticonderoga and the Yorktown.”

  A moment later a split holographic image floated in front of my command chair. On one side stood my father-in-law Admiral Spratt, as well as Captain Kimbridge, both of whom were on the Ticonderoga. On the other side stood Captain Tilly onboard the Yorktown.

  “Admiral, Captain, Captain,” I nodded towards each of the holographic images. “I’m not even going to bother laying out the odds against us. You know what they are. I’m hoping for a miracle, but I think we all know that we cannot count on one… not at three-hundred to one.

  “Your orders once the engagement begins are to do what damage to the armada you can and then escape. It's better we live to fight another day than to die and leave our home with no hope for the future.

  “Our rendezvous point is Wolf 359 in no more than seventy-two hours. Are we clear?”

  Captains Tilly and Admiral Spratt nodded. I noticed that Robert stood stoically on the bridge of the Ticonderoga without moving so much as a muscle. To be fair, I had expected nothing less.

  This was the man who had led a disparate group of refugees in a months-long guerilla warfare campaign against the warlords that had briefly attempted to gain control of the Earth in the power vacuum created by the Bogey-four event. There wasn’t an ounce of quit in him.

  “Robert, leaving the field of battle in order to preserve the ability to fight another day… goes against every fiber of my being. I’m betting you feel the same way.”

  “You’d win that bet sir,” the Ticonderoga’s captain responded stoically.

  “I’m asking you to make a sacrifice for the good of our species and our planet…it may well be the only respons
ible choice we have at the end of the day.”

  “I don’t have to like or agree with an order to obey it, Admiral. You have my word, when the time comes, the Ticonderoga will leave the field of battle and join with the rest of the fleet at Wolf 359.”

  I nodded. In the back of my mind, I felt several red-flags raise. I also knew that this was the best answer I was going to get from the captain, and frankly I needed him, so I did something that is far more difficult for me than it should be… I kept my mouth shut.

  Twenty minutes later, Shelby announced everything was in place.

  “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more! Set course to intercept. Bring shields, inertial dampers and sublights up to one hundred percent. Let’s see what this new ship of ours can do.”

  All too soon, we began to enter weapons range. The Defilers fired first. Their doing so erased any notion that the thousand plus ships had entered the Sol system to invite us to afternoon tea… not that we ever really thought their intentions were peaceful.

  Thirty high-energy antiproton beams struck the forward shields and bounced off harmlessly. Now to be fair, the shields in question were as thin as tissue paper and did nothing to deter the powerful weapons. That’s not what the bad guys were seeing though.

  The Gilboa II was fully cloaked using far more advanced technology than humanity or the Galactic Order had previously demonstrated. What the Defiler first wave was firing on was one of many decoys designed to match our acceleration curves and energy signature.

  The decoys were an enhancement of a technique I’d used before to confuse adversaries. In those previous encounters, the original Gilboa had been the vessel transmitting false sensor data designed to make one ship look like many.

  In this case, the Gilboa II was running silent, and several dozen hypervelocity probes were serving as the distraction. The decoys were quite small. Once the Defiler energy beam struck their minimal exterior shields, the decoys would modify the sensor image to simulate a successfully repelled attack.