“The interesting thing from my point of view is that we detected no tracking emissions,” the TACO said. “We still don’t have a good algorithm for using the lidars or radar while superluminal, so we weren’t pinging them. But they also weren’t pinging us. Everything appeared to be passive. I have no idea what that means.”
“Radar and lidar are relatively short ranged,” Weaver said, shrugging. “I doubt that they’re used much in space combat. The Hexosehr didn’t ping us, either. I’d say most space combat is more like traditional sub combat; you stay quiet and hope to hit the enemy when he doesn’t know where you are. The difference being that ships emit lots of particles. I’m still trying to figure out how that’s going to work. Assuming we ever come up with a weapon that will permit us to strike back usefully.”
“So we’ve got nothing useful?” the CO asked angrily. “Lasers, missiles? Nothing?”
“Not that I can think of, sir,” Bill admitted. The TACO just shrugged.
“Commander Weaver, what happens if you ram something like that while in warp?” the XO asked. “I’m not suggesting that we do it, mind you…”
“The big question is what the drive is going to do, sir,” Bill admitted. “It has some interesting built-in safety features. My guess is that it will stay in warp while we’re in the same space. Which means we won’t be; we’ll be in another universe. In that case, nothing. If it continues to cycle, it will depend upon where we are when we cycle into this universe. If we cycle in while we’re interpenetrated, I would guess one massive damned explosion, sir. And we’d both be dead. Another possibility is interpenetration without explosion. There’s a way that I could see the drive doing that. Then we’d cycle out and possibly take some of their mass with us while leaving other behind. Frankly, sir, I really don’t have the slightest clue, but those are some of the possibilities.”
“So it wouldn’t destroy them and not us?” Spectre asked.
“Unlikely,” Bill said. “I mean, the drive might do it that way, but I doubt it. Most likely, no effect at all. That seems to be the approach of the builders, sir.”
“Wait, there’s matter all through space,” Spectre said, frowning. “I mean, not a lot. But we’ve covered a lot of ground. Surely we’ve hit stuff before.”
“And there’s been no effect,” Bill said, nodding. “That’s part of my thinking, sir. Admittedly, if we are notionally in the same space as a micrometeorite or an Oort Cloud object, we’re probably cycled out. We spend about four times as much time cycled out as cycled in. But we’ve never picked anything up cycling in. Given the way the ship is built, if the drive was designed to allow interpenetration, by this time we’d have had a micrometeorite punch a hole in something. Its relative velocity would be high enough it would be like a gun being fired in the ship. It would be noticeable. Nothing like that’s happened, so my WAG is that there’d be no effect if we flew through this thing. On the other hand, if I’m wrong we’d be an expanding cloud of gas.”
“Yeah, let’s not try that,” Spectre said. “Look, we’ve got a bunch of smart people on this ship. Figure out a way to hurt that thing. Figure it out.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” the XO said.
“Do one more flyby,” the CO said. “I want shots of every angle. I want all the data we can gather. Then we’ll head back to the Hexosehr and see what they say.”
“It is a captured ship.”
Bill was using the wardroom systems to talk with the Hexosehr tactical officer about their findings.
“Not one of ours,” Favarduro continued. “I do not know what species it was captured from. Perhaps the one that supplied the sentient commander, perhaps not.”
“And the smaller ship?”
“Pure Dreen,” Favarduro said dismissively. “One of what we call the Squee Destroyer class. Plasma cannons larger than fighters, fairly fast. About five hundred of your gravities of acceleration. Faster in real space than we are. But easy enough to destroy with a chaos generator. No match for us. For you? Do not try to take it on in real space.”
“Any idea what the major gun on this one is?” Bill asked.
“It is not a class we have fought before,” Favarduro said. “I have no idea. It does not appear to be a chaos generator or a plasma cannon. A mass driver perhaps.”
“What happens if we manage to take this ship out?” Bill asked. “More Dreen?”
“The nonsentients will return to Dreen space and get orders,” Favarduro said. “More may be sent on our trail. But it will be weeks before they return. Our trail will be faded. They may not be able to pick it up. In which case we escape. That assumes there is not another dreadnought out there. And another and another. The Dreen fleet seems endless!”
“How are your repairs going?” Bill asked.
“If your time estimate is accurate, we will be able to escape them, once again.” The tonality of the reply was not pleased.
“You’d rather fight them,” Bill said.
“I would rather destroy their entire race,” Favarduro replied. “Four worlds we occupied. I am from the colony of Squee. I joined the military just before the Dreen encountered us. No negotiation. They simply landed on the colony world of Squee and took it over. We sent ships to battle them. We won the first battle, then their main fleet arrived. Ship after ship after ship appearing through multiple unreality nodes. Thousands, tens of thousands. Our fleet was beaten. No, beaten does not explain it. It was destroyed, vanquished, as if it was not there. They destroyed Dreen ships, in turn, but there were so many of them it was pointless. More came through and more. A few escaped to bring the news. But ships take time to build. We had few warships at the start of the war and were able to make few before the next colony was lost. And always more Dreen and more.
“Then we lost my homeworld. Then they came to Hessserrra. By then it was apparent we could not win. We assembled a fleet of the best of us and our few remaining capital ships. Our best fighters, scientists, technicians, even philosophers. All were put in hibernation, packed into ships in a near panic. The rest of our race remained to fight. Our plan was to destroy each city by nuclear fire rather than have the Dreen consume us. I hate them, Commander Weaver. I hate them in the bitter dregs of my soul. Yes, I would rather stay and fight. But we are the last defense of those entrusted to us. We flee until we must turn. Then we turn, we slow them, and we flee again. Until, like the Klingoddar and the Savaur and the Laldrintha, we are pulled down. Four Chaos Destroyers we were when we left. One remains.”
“Well, we’re not going to let you go down,” Bill promised. “We’ve got an interesting ship. We’ll figure out an interesting solution.”
The Blade stood off while the Caurorgorngoth went into unreality. The pods on the ship began to glow, then flared like lightning, engulfing the entire ship. What happened next was hard to grasp. The ship seemed to fade to a dot but at the same time go away very fast.
“XO, run that again,” Spectre said, blinking.
Even with the replay slowed down, the effect was the same. Either the ship shrunk to a dot and disappeared or it flew away very fast.
“That’s probably what we look like in warp,” Bill said. “But that’s not the direction they said they were going. I suspect it looks that way from any angle.”
“Or he’s not going where he said he was going,” the XO said.
“Only one way to find out,” the CO replied. “Astro?”
“Course laid in, sir.”
“XO, let’s go find that fleet.”
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