“They’re locked on,” Gary confirmed. “They’re ready to generate the tachyon field now.”
“Check with the Footsoldiers,” Andrew ordered. No one was quite sure how the Killers would respond to being transported across the galaxy. If the starship really was dead, it shouldn’t matter, but humanity used AIs to serve as emergency commanders and there was no reason why the Killers couldn’t do the same. It was a calculated risk. “Ask them if they want to be pulled out before we remove the ship.”
Gary worked his console. “They’re saying no,” he said, finally. “They want to continue exploring the dead ship while we transport it out of here.”
Andrew took one look back towards the Observer’s icon on the display, watching everything from a distance, and turned back to his console. The picket would remain in the same general location of space for a few weeks, just to see what — if anything — the Killers did in response. Andrew expected nothing less than a large fleet to kick ass and take names, but no one knew how long it would take the Killers to respond. If they figured out how to read the starship’s computer banks — if the Killers had computer banks — they might actually discover just how the Killers worked and the location of all of their bases. They might finally be able to take the offensive.
“Jump,” he ordered.
Space twisted around the remains of the attack wing as the fleet jumped out towards Star’s End. He found himself tensing again as the Killer starship and its tugs followed, knowing that the tachyon field might refuse to form. The Battle of High Singapore had included a desperate attempt by a human destroyer — identical to the Lightning — to destroy the Killer starship by using a tachyon field to tear the Killer ship apart, but the field had simply refused to form. No one knew if it had failed because the field hadn’t been able to encompass the whole hull — although theory had suggested that part of the ship should have been cut away from the hull — or if the Killers had countered the field somehow, but there was no other way to move the Killer ship. A warp bubble might have worked, but the Killers would easily have been able to detect it and give chase, when their response force finally arrived.
The icon of the captured Killer starship flickered into existence on the display and he allowed himself a sigh of relief. Any starship using a tachyon field travelled at inconceivable speeds, but larger starships seemed to move slower, although no one was quite sure why. Even Thande, the composite of Professor Anderson and some of his brightest students in the MassMind, didn’t fully understand what they had created. The Anderson Drive had limits no one fully understood.
Andrew had read a speculative paper that suggested that it was really a function of the amount of mass being taken through the jump — which had struck him, at the time, as stating the obvious and taking thousands of words to say it. The author had gone on to speculate that tachyons, being particles without mass, could attain infinitive speeds, while anything with mass could only come close to infinitive speed. There might even be only one tachyon in existence, occupying all possible locations simultaneously, and what the Anderson Drive really did was nothing more than re-determining where the starship actually was. At that point, he had given up with a headache.
“Transit confirmed,” Gary said, softly. Andrew heard the awe in his voice and shared it. No one had believed that they would actually get away with it, but now… now, the entire human race would get a massive boost in morale. The men and women who were born and spent the majority of their lives in simulated environments, generated by the MassMind, would get something else to live for. They might even join the Defence Force in greater numbers. There were trillions of humans in space, occupying millions of asteroid colonies, and yet the Defence Force was always short of manpower. “We have arrived at Star’s End.”
Andrew looked down at the single star glowing on the display. Star’s End was a star right at the edge of the galaxy; indeed, it was practically a separate object, only kept in position by the galaxy’s vast gravitational pull. The Killers had never shown any interest in it and, more importantly, it was thousands of light years from any human colony. The Technical Faction had used it as a research base for hundreds of years, building their experimental weapons and researching objects recovered from dead alien worlds, but now… now it would be playing host to the first captured Killer starship.
“Contact System Command,” he ordered, formally, and then grinned. “Tell them we’ve brought home the bacon.”
“System Command confirms,” Gary said. They shared a look. The mere sight of the Killer starship would probably have triggered a panic as the defenders braced themselves to fight a delaying action while the scientists evacuated the base. “They’re welcoming us to the base and offering our people leave.”
“Not now,” Andrew said. The recreational facilities onboard the starships would be sufficient, while keeping the crews ready to fight if outraged Killer fleets arrived to recover their lost starship. There was no sign of any emergency signal emitting from the Killer starship, but that proved nothing. There were any number of ways to transmit an FTL signal without being detected. The researchers would have to make shutting any such system down their first priority. “We’ve done our part, so… tell them good luck.”
He stood up. “Stand down from red alert,” he added. “And general signal to all ships; well done.”
“Yes, sir,” Gary said.
Andrew nodded. He’d have to make a full report to the Admiral, of course, and then he would have to arrange for a ceremony for those who had died in the battle, but for the moment, he could afford to relax. It wouldn’t last.
“Move us into observation position,” he ordered. “I’ll be in my cabin. Inform me at once if anything changes.”
The interior of the Killer starship was, if anything, far more daunting now that the lights were out. The starship’s gravity field had failed along with the power, leaving the Footsoldiers and Paula floating in the middle of the chamber. Paula wasn’t sure that that was such a bad thing. She had the uneasy feeling that the starship wasn’t dead, just resting. The absolute darkness was worse than the mists. She kept thinking that she saw something out of the corner of her eye and, when she turned to illuminate it with her suit’s lights, saw nothing. The darkness was getting to her, no matter what the suit did to keep her stable, and she was seriously considering having it sedate herself before she collapsed completely.
“We have arrived at Star’s End,” Chris confirmed. Paula nodded. She’d felt the wrench that marked the use of an Anderson Drive, but she’d been more aware than the Footsoldiers of every little thing that could go wrong. If the tugs had messed up their calculations, they might just arrive in the heart of a sun instead, or on the other side of the universe. There were just too many unknowns surrounding the Killer starship and its capabilities. “Has there been any sign of activity?”
It took Paula a moment to realise that the question was addressed to her. “Negative,” she said, as crisply as she could. She would never match the Footsoldiers for professionalism, but she could try. “The only power source in the ship is the power core and it appears to have gone into a form of stasis.”
She heard Chris’s snort though the communications link. “Are you sure?”
“No,” she replied, dryly. Whatever the Killers used — and she was starting to suspect that it was either a singularity or a micro black hole — was a complexly unknown technology. “All I can tell you is that it is no longer emitting the high levels of radiation it was emitting before we — I — killed the Killer. It may actually be fading away completely.”