“They were hitting us even in warp,” the XO pointed out. “I suppose if we use evasive maneuvering… I’m worried about their fighters. That gives them a whole other vector of fire.”
“Fighter sweeps to start,” the CO said. “We’ll go in and taunt them out. Then use the chaos ball or missiles to take them out one by one. Or two by two or six by six, I don’t care.”
“What about their destroyer?” the XO asked. “That’s capable of taking us out in normal space.”
“You will not be fighting alone,” Dugilant said. “The Caurorgorngoth and our corvettes will be fighting with you as well. If we can lure the destroyer away, it may be that you can test the system on the destroyer. The entry point for this system is on the far side of the sun. They will exit there, a few hours behind the Caurorgorngoth. Then it will take them nearly one of your days to reach this position. We have that long to stop them.”
“You forgot to add installing the system,” Spectre said dryly.
“You forget that we have many hands to do that,” Dugilant said. “Already, our finest technicians and scientists are being awakened. We will install it on your hull along with a generator to run it. If you return to your planet, whatever the outcome of this battle, you may keep both. Good luck understanding the technology if we don’t survive.”
“Good point,” Spectre said with a chuckle. “I have to ask, did you mean for that to be dry humor?”
“Yes,” Dugilant said. “I’m glad you got the point.”
“I have been examining the information you have on planets,” Baelak said. “You have been very free with information.”
“We’re trying like hell to be friendly,” the CO said.
“Yes, but did you realize that the location of your home planet was on your open system?”
“No,” Spectre said, swallowing. “It is?”
“You have astronomical data on various stars,” Baelak said. “I was unsure, but I had Rimmild take a look at it. He found it very easy to backtrack the information and its general location in relation to other stars was on another file. By matching the information about the stars in one file with that it was very easy to find. If the Dreen were to find this information…”
“I get the point,” the CO said, shaking his head. “We’ll look into it.”
“However, there is information on some other planets,” Baelak said. “That, too, was helpful. Although it will take us nearly two years to reach it, I think the planet called Runner’s World would suit us.”
“Well, yeah,” the CO said, wincing. “Except for the crabpus. Don’t go near the water.”
“We appreciate the warning,” Baelak said. “I saw the report on your previous mission and regret your many losses. However, we can deal with the fauna. The air is not perfect for us but it is close enough and we can terraform the soil to grow our foods. It is not ideal but it is good enough.”
“I’m sure that everyone will agree you’re welcome to it,” Spectre said. “When do we get this chaos generator?”
“Our technicians are being woken up right now,” Rimmild said. “Give them some time to get things explained to them then they will get to work. If you permit it?”
The CO sat back and thought about that for a second. So far, relations with the Hexosehr had been too good to be true. Admittedly, they were in a cleft fork. But the Dreen had tricked humans once. This could simply be a more elaborate ruse.
The flip side to that was that the Hexosehr could have tried to take the Blade several times. Yes, he’d prepared against it, but they could have. Doing an installation only raised the ante slightly. And the chance to get a weapon that was slightly more than the popguns they currently had—
“Engineer?”
“Sir?”
“Make sure that the mount is somewhere that’s not going to be an issue. Then get on it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We have one more piece of information that you need,” Baelak said. “I have discussed this with Fleet Master Lurca and he is in agreement that you should be told. We were able to gather information, as part of our intelligence gathering process, on Dreen spread before the final Fall. We think we have a fairly accurate estimation of their rate of spread, methods and probable direction.”
“Okay,” Spectre said, leaning back.
“The Dreen spread through two methods,” Rimmild said, picking up the thread. “The first is sub-light. They create pods which in turn deploy a solar sail and move towards distant stars. This, of course, takes decades or centuries but it is most thorough. They appear to have a database of some sort of all targeted stars. The pods are generated on captured worlds, yes, but also sometimes in portions of space which simply have a large abundance of stellar or semi-stellar carbon.”
“I don’t get that one,” Spectre admitted.
“Jovians,” Weaver said, shrugging. “There are some clusters of leftover bits scattered around which appear, from spectral data, to have up to low-volatile organics floating in some concentration in deep space. Big area around Vega, for example. I take it that’s what you’re discussing, Rimmild?”
“Yes, exactly,” the Hexosehr said. “But we believe that this is a legacy method. The Dreen may have begun their initial spread through sub-light but at this point they are primarily spreading through FTL means. And their rate of spread is increasing as they absorb more worlds.”
“You humans have a term,” Combat Master Dugilant said. “ ’The bottom line.’ What my colleagues are having a hard time saying is that based upon Baelak’s location of your home planet and our analysis, the Dreen will arrive there in between twelve and eighteen of your years. The best estimate is fifteen. You humans have that long to prepare. And you have no chance to survive without our technology and the technicians that exist in our refugee fleet.”
“I’ll admit that’s a hell of an incentive to help you guys out,” Spectre said calmly.
“The Philosopher of War Faet said it best: Alliances are based upon mutual need, not love,” Dugilant replied. “We need succor, you need our technology and technicians. Let us both hope for the best outcome to our forthcoming battles.”
“Whatcha doing?” Miriam asked.
Weaver had moved to the more-or-less deserted science department. There were just more flexible computers there. He was currently working on doing modifications to the astronomy mainframe.
“Working on a model for the attacks,” he said. “From our previous run we got a lot of data. Cycle time of their guns, accuracy of their guns, a feel for how their sensors work. I had a program for combat modeling on my laptop but it couldn’t crunch the numbers fast enough for me. So I’m loading it into this system and now I’m inputting the parameters. I don’t like the response.”
“Why?” Miriam asked.
“The only way this is going to work is if we start from outside their sensor envelope, come in very fast, probably at Warp Four, drop out of warp, fire almost simultaneously, and go back into warp again. The range on the weapon means that lightspeed in the control runs is going to matter. Their tracking and engagement time is just unreal. And we’re going to be out of warp for a minimum of a half a second, plus. Firing, during that phase, will bump that to nearly a second, possibly more. It’s more than just the transmission of the orders. There are information gates that are going to have to be sorted through. That’s enough time, based on previous information, that their plasma guns could get in a shot at that range. And one solid hit from those things and we’re toast.”
“Cut down the information lag,” Miriam said.
“How?” Bill asked.
“Set up the decision-making processors closer to each other,” Miriam replied. “Move the central node closer to the line between the drive and the chaos generator. By the way, has anyone asked if the chaos generator is going to interfere with the drive?”