“Slow to Warp One,” Spectre said, looking at the screen. “Anything on visual yet?”
“There,” Weaver said, pointing to the lower right-hand corner. He hit a control and highlighted the item, bringing it to the center of the main screen.
“Pilot, I don’t want to hit them,” the CO said.
“Closest point of approach looks to be about one light-second,” Weaver said. “Right at three hundred thousand kilometers. Resolution will be high at that range. We should be able to resolve down to nearly a centimeter. But we’ll be going by fast. We cross one light-second in .00014 seconds. Keeping the cameras on track with us doing a flyby is going to be the hard part. They’ll automatically follow their aim point, but we may get quite a bit of jitter.”
“Tactical, Conn,” Spectre said. “I want full emissions analysis, hull shots, spectral analysis. I want this ship folded, bent and mutilated.”
“Conn, Tactical. Understood.”
“Come to think of it, though,” Weaver said as the range dropped and the picture began to resolve. “That doesn’t look like what I’d think a Dreen ship would look like.”
The approaching ship was now clearly angular, looking something like a battleship. And it was also, just as clearly, made of metal.
“Conn, Tactical. Target designated Sierra Two. Forward of Sierra One. Its signature was masked. Shifting visual.”
The main camera pulled back and panned. The bow of Sierra One was still in view for size comparison. The new ship was ovoid and covered in what appeared to be long spikes. It also was a nasty green and yellow and did not appear to be made of metal.
“Now that looks like a Dreen ship,” Spectre said. “I’d put it at about a hundred yards long. Could that be our visitor to the colony?”
“Possible, sir,” Bill replied. “Same overall length and those spines look as if they could have been the landing spikes we saw. But why all over?”
“Conn, Tactical. Energy spike on Sierras One and Two…”
“Pilot, evasive maneuvers,” Spectre said as both ships exploded in fire. There were more of the solid silver flashes coming from them and as the camera widened its view, again, small dots could be seen flashing out of the side of Sierra One.
“They just launched fighters,” Spectre said, nodding. “Given that we’re going faster than light, that’s pretty good.”
The ships approached fast on the screen, then flashed to the rear, just a blur to the human eye. The cameras panned for a receding shot as the Blade thundered back into deep space.
“Let’s take a look at what we got,” Spectre said. “Pilot, make for the edge of the system. We’ll do a partial chill while we analyze this.”
“These are two radically different ships,” Bill said, looking the images over. “Okay, the Hexosehr generate ‘unreality’ using those pods all over their ship. I’d guess that the spikes on the Dreen ship are the same thing, just without the pods at the end, for some reason. The other ship is interesting, though.”
He brought up a wide image of the ship from the side and zoomed in.
“Spectral analysis of the hull shows it to be steel,” Bill said. “I would guess that it’s what’s called high refractance steel, steel that has been specially treated to be about five times the strength of normal steel. We can only do that with micro-layers at this point. If it’s that way all the way through, that’s one tough hull. No way of knowing if it’s layered like Chobham armor, but that would be a good guess. It may have layers other than steel, that’s all we can see on the outside.
“Warp appears to work differently from the Hexosehr or the Dreen,” he continued, pointing to a long array on the side of the ship. “This might be part of their tactical system, but my guess is it’s their warp system. Their wormhole generator or whatever. But that’s just a guess.
“Drive system? Unknown. There’s major meson output, low neutrino. I have no idea what that means. We don’t even understand our own drive. But it’s definitely reactionless. If we postulate thirty percent inefficiency in the drive, given the output their engines are putting, they generate out about ten to the eighteen joules of energy, which is about the energy budget for Earth.”
“Whoooo,” the XO whistled. “Those are some massive engines.”
“They’d have to be to move that monster with any speed,” Bill said. “And they don’t appear to be quarkium; the signature is all wrong. At a guess, fusion. But that’s just a guess. Top acceleration appears to be about three hundred gravities. Which is a very good thing. But getting to this thing… Tactical?”
“The ship is a mass of weapons,” the TACO said, zooming in. “We’ve identified forty-seven mass drivers, twenty things we think are laser emitters and fifty-three more we’re not sure about. They might be plasma guns. The ship seems to be wrapped around a large opening on the front. No idea what it fires but I’d guess if it hit us we’d be nothing but a mass of smoke. When we were in warp, all of their fire was initially behind us. As we approached, though, and passed, watch this…”
He adjusted the controls to show the tactical screens that were tracking fire. As he’d said, the first bursts were well to the rear. Within a second, though, they were blasting all around the wildly jinking ship.
“Analysis and some shots from secondary cameras showed that the plasma fire was hitting us by the time we were passed,” the TACO said grimly. “They were able to figure out how to hit us even though we were superluminal and only in their engagement range for less than a second. That’s… amazing. They were having to anticipate where we were going. It’s a lot harder than hitting a quail, sir. It’s hitting a quail that’s always ahead of where you’re seeing it. A really really fast quail. No wonder missiles don’t work on these guys. Unless it was in warp, I don’t see how one could. The good news is, the fire was ineffective.”
“Yeah,” Spectre said. “But if we’re in warp, we can’t fire back. Are we sure it was a Dreen ship?”
“Look at the fighters, sir,” Bill said, cutting to another view. Just under the, possibly, warp generator, hatches flew open and pods ejected. They were either the same fighters that had followed them or remarkably similar. With the closer shot it was apparent that they were a brownish-yellow in color and had wings with pods on the tips that glowed purple. There was no apparent cockpit. They banked, hard, to the rear and followed the Blade as she receded, but were never able to catch up. Just before she went entirely out of range, they opened fire with plasma from the glowing pods on the end of their wings.
“Emissions were different than those from Sierra One,” Weaver continued. “More neutrinos, fewer mesons. Output, again, equivalent to a large nuclear reactor if they’re only seventy percent efficient. Love to know their power source. Oh, by the way, they’re a bit slower than the dragonflies from Cheerick. I don’t know which is more maneuverable. Their plasma guns, though, are stronger than the dragonfly lasers. It would only take a couple of hits to take down the dragonfly shields. But they don’t have shields according to the Hexosehr. I’d say that a dragonfly could take them one on one. Plasma energy will fall off over distance. The dragonfly should be able to outrun them and stay at range. Close in? That would be tougher. We’re still not sure on the cycle time of either the dragonflies or these fighters. It’s worth noting that there are thirty ports for fighters on this ship. I’d say it qualifies for the term dreadnought. I doubt there’s much it dreads.”