“As a weapon this leaves much to be desired,” the CO said.
“What we need is twenty-four of them,” Weaver replied. “Fill all the tubes.”
“Now that might just work,” the CO admitted. “I suppose it’s no worse than the subs back in WWII with their faulty torpedoes. But I want it to get better. And more of them would be good. But we need to deal with what we’ve got. XO, ship still good?”
“Set at Condition One, sir. No damage.”
“Got a piece of Sierra Nine that time, sir.” Tactical flashed the replay on the screen in slow motion. It was apparent that the chaos ball had impacted and there was a flash of air and water that blasted into the void. But after a moment, the hemorrhage of material stopped.
“Well, that’s something,” Spectre said. “Not spectacular, but something. XO, I’m going to go to continuous evolution. Five times, adjust course and speed, then five more times. It’s taking less than a second for each evolution. We’ll do five attacks, assess, then go for it again. Stand by.”
“Any luck on getting the engine more precise?” Miriam asked as she wandered into the engine room.
Normally, people did not “wander” into the engine room, but the entire ship had taken up the linguist as some sort of mascot, especially after she cheerfully chipped, scraped and painted all the steam runs. Nobody had been looking forward to that detail.
“No,” Tchar admitted. “I have scraped the algorithm that controls the neutrino flow to the bottom. There is no way to get the neutrinos to stop being generated faster. There is just this lag I cannot resolve!”
“That doesn’t sound like fun,” Miriam said. “But I was just wondering while I was working on a pump. Doesn’t the box have null settings? Points on its surface that don’t do anything that we can figure out?”
“Yes,” Tchar said. “That is how we move to different warps by moving to different points on the box and adjusting the neutrino stream. Your point?”
“How fast does that ball move?” Miriam asked, pointing at the shining silver ball.
“Uh…”
“Okay,” Spectre said. “We got the programs right for the ripple attack?”
“All set up, sir,” Weaver replied.
“It’s not going to glitch, right?”
“Guaranteed bug free or your money back,” the astrogator said.
“Assuming I can collect.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Course and speed matched?”
“Course and speed matched, aye, aye!”
“Engaging,” Spectre said.
The screen flashed and flashed and flashed and then it stopped. They were back in deep space with only the scattered lights of the Dreen fleet, like lesser stars, speckling the main viewer.
There was a groan from the communications technician and he bent over and grabbed a vomit bag. Spectre just grabbed his head in both hands.
“Was that from watching the viewscreen?” the CO asked after a moment. “Weaver, what in the hell just happened?”
“Unknown, sir,” the astrogator replied, swallowing his gorge. During the overlapping warps he had experienced a massive sense of disorientation and the aftereffect was nauseating. “We’ve never had that sort of reaction from a warp jump, but we’ve never done several of them together like this. It may have been from looking at the screens or it may be an effect of the drive. It may even be the chaos ball interacting with the drive.”
“Right,” the CO replied. “Making it up as we go along, as usual. Pilot, match course and speed.”
“Course and speed matched, sir!”
“This time nobody watch the screen,” Spectre said. “Engaging.”
Weaver closed his eyes but that, if anything, made the feeling worse.
“Sir,” the XO gargled. “We’re getting reports of disorientation and nausea from throughout the ship. It’s not just the screen.”
“So it’s an effect of the drive,” Spectre said. “Tactical, did we get a piece of them?”
“Negative impact, Conn. Some were under, some were over, some were too far out and they dissipated.”
“And we can’t get things any more accurate with our current systems,” Spectre said, nodding. He pressed the 1MC and cleared his throat. “This is your captain speaking. The effects you just experienced are a side effect of the way we’re attacking the Dreen. There’s no way that we can damp them out that anyone’s found and we don’t have another attack method that works. So we’re going to have to suck it up until these Dreen bastards are constituent atoms or run home with their yellow tails between their legs. You’re the finest crew I’ve ever dealt with and I know that you’re going to handle this just like every other piece of weird assed shit we’ve dealt with. Prepare to engage.”
“Conn, Engineering.”
“Go.”
They’d managed to get some hits into the Dreen ship, a piece of one of the destroyers and a fighter that had been terminally unlucky. But the flotilla just streamed on. It was frustrating.
“Tchar and Miss Moon have managed to solve the warp adjustment problem,” the ship’s engineer reported. “We now have only a millisecond delay. I don’t know if that’s going to add to the effect or improve it.”
“Good to know,” Spectre said. “Is that going to make us more accurate?”
“Unknown, Conn,” Engineering said. “But it’s going to make us less vulnerable.”
“It’s also going to make it possible that we’ll fire inside the warp bubble,” Commander Weaver pointed out. “I’ll need to tweak the program that decides that. We don’t want one of those things bouncing around inside with us.”
“How long?” the CO asked.
“No more than ten minutes for that,” Bill replied, opening up the program and looking at the interface with the warp drive. He could see Tchar’s notes on the changes there. “But here’s an interesting thought. If we keep our normal open period, we can actually do some adjustment of the angle of the ship. Interface with the tactical computers and aim. But we’re more exposed.”
“Will that take more time?” the CO asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Can you write that code off to the side while we keep trying the normal way?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then do it,” Spectre replied. “But get the new systems set up first. We’re punching this thing. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Sooner or later we’re going to hit something vital. I don’t want to let up if we don’t have to. XO, get us into a planetary shadow and we’ll go to chill while Commander Weaver punches his buttons.”
“Good to see you, Staff Sergeant,” Berg whispered.
“Two-Gun, why are you using your external speakers?” Hinchcliffe replied, using the same method.
Hinchcliffe had rounded up Sergeant Priester and Corporal Nicholson from Charlie team. With Uribe dead, that left only Vote and Wagner missing. He’d apparently come in from the other side of the hangar. The two groups had spotted each other and cautiously met near the center of the vast enclosure.
“The Dreen can pick up electronic transmissions, Staff Sergeant,” Berg said.
“Point,” Hinchcliffe replied. “Priestman, over here.”
The three went into a “leadership huddle” while the others took up security positions.
“We’re going to go with radio for a second,” Hinchcliffe said over the leadership freq. “Because now that we’re in here, I’ll admit I’m stumped. I know we should be attacking, but we’ve got no clue where anything is on this ship.”