“Crap,” Colin muttered, then sighed. Life had been so much simpler as a NASA command pilot. “Well, at least we got some new data from it.”
“Aye,” Jiltanith agreed, “yet to what end, my Colin? ’Tis little enow, when all’s said, yet not even that little may we send home, sin Earth hath no hypercom.”
“I suppose we could turn back and deliver it in person,” Colin thought aloud. “We’re only two weeks out…”
“Nay,” Jiltanith disagreed. “Should we turn about ’twill set us back full six weeks, for we must needs give up the time we’ve but now spent, as well.”
“Fleet Captain Jiltanith is correct, Captain,” Dahak seconded, “and while these data are undoubtedly useful, they offer no fundamental insights necessary to Earth’s defense.”
“Huh!” Colin tugged at his nose, then sighed. “I guess you’re right. It’d be different if they’d actually attacked and given us a peek at their hardware, but as it is—” He shrugged. “I wish to hell they had, though. God knows we could use some idea of what they’re armed with!”
“True,” Dahak agreed. “Yet the readings the sensor array did obtain indicate no major advances in the Achuultani’s general technology, which suggests their weaponry also has not advanced significantly.”
“I almost wish there were signs of advances,” Colin fretted. “I just can’t accept that they haven’t got something new after sixty thousand years!”
“It is, indeed, abnormal by human standards, sir, but entirely consistent with surviving evidence from previous incursions.”
“Aye,” Jiltanith agreed, sliding deeper into the hot water with a frown, “yet still ’tis scarce credible, Dahak. How may any race spend such time ’pon war and killing and bring no new weapons to their task?”
“Unknown,” the computer replied so calmly Colin grimaced. Despite Dahak’s self-awareness, he had yet to develop a human-sized imagination.
“Okay, so what do we know?”
“The data included in the transmission confirm reports from the arrays previously destroyed. In addition, while no tactical information was obtained, sensor readings indicate that the Achuultani’s maximum attainable sublight velocity is scarcely half as great as that of this vessel, which suggests at least one major tactical advantage for our own units, regardless of comparative weaponry. Further, we have reconfirmed their relatively low speed in hyper, as well. At their present rate of advance, they will reach Sol in two-point-three years, as originally projected.”
“True, but I’m not too happy about the way they came in. Do we know if they tried to examine any of the other sensor arrays?”
“Negative, Captain. A hypercom of the power mounted by these arrays has a maximum omni-directional range of less than three hundred light-years. The reports of all previously destroyed sensor arrays were relayed via the tertiary phalanx arrays and consisted solely of confirmation that they had been destroyed by Achuultani vessels. This is the first direct transmission we have received and contains far more observational data.”
“Yeah.” Colin pondered a moment. “But it doesn’t match very well with what little we know about their operational patterns, now does it?”
“It does not, sir. According to the records, normal Achuultani tactics should have been to destroy the array immediately upon detection.”
“That’s what I mean. We were dead lucky any of the arrays were still around to tell us they’re coming, but I can’t help thinking the Imperium was a bit too clever in the way it set these things up. Sucking them in close for better readings is all very well, but these guys were after information of their own. What if they change tactics or speed up on us because they figure someone’s waiting for them?”
“Methinks thy concern may be over great,” Jiltanith said after a moment. “Certes, they needs must know some power did place sentinels to ward its borders, yet what knowledge else have they gained? How shall they guess where those borders truly lie or when their ships may cross them? Given so little, still must they search each star they pass.”
Colin tugged on his nose some more, then nodded a bit unhappily. It made sense, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it even if Jiltanith were wrong, but it was his job to worry. Not that he’d asked for it.
“I guess you’re right,” he sighed. “Thanks for the report, Dahak.”
“You are welcome, Captain,” the starship said, and Colin shook himself, then grinned at Jiltanith.
“Looking forward to sickbay, ’Tanni?” He put an edge of malicious humor into his voice as an anodyne against their worries.
“Hast an uncommon low sense of humor, Colin,” she said darkly, accepting the change of subject with a smile of her own. “So long as I do recall have I awaited this day—yea, and seldom with true hope mine eyes might see it. Yet now ’tis close upon me, and if truth be known, there lies some shadow of fear within my heart. ’Tis most unmeet in thee so to tease me over it.”
“I know,” he admitted wickedly, “but it’s too much fun to stop.”
She snorted and shook a dripping fist at him, yet there was empathy as well as laughter in his green eyes. Jiltanith had been a child, her muscles and skeleton too immature for the full bioenhancement Battle Fleet’s personnel enjoyed, when the mutiny organized by Fleet Captain (Engineering) Anu marooned Dahak in Earth orbit and the starship’s crew on Earth. The millennia-long struggle her father had led against Anu had kept her from receiving it since, for the medical facilities aboard the sublight parasite battleship Nergal had been unable to provide it. Jiltanith had received the neural computer feeds, sensory boosters, and regenerative treatments before the mutiny, but those were the easy parts, and Colin was fresh enough from his own enhancement to understand her anxieties perfectly … and tease her to ease them.
“Bawcock, thou’lt crow too loud one day.”
“Nope. I’m the captain, and rank—”
“—hath its privileges,” she broke in, shaking her head ominously. “That phrase shall haunt thee.”
“I don’t doubt it.” He smiled down at her, tempted to shuck off his own uniform and join her … if he hadn’t been a bit afraid of where it might lead. Not that he had any objection to where it could lead, but there was plenty of time (assuming they lived beyond the next two years), and that was one complication neither of them needed right now.
“Well, gotta get back to the office,” he said instead. “And you, Madam XO, should get back to your own quarters and catch some sleep. Trust me—Dahak’s idea of a slow convalescence from enhancement isn’t exactly the same as yours or mine.”
“Of thine, mayhap,” she said sweetly.
“I’ll remember that when you start moaning for sympathy.” He drew his toes from the tub and activated a small portion of his own biotechnics. The water floated off his feet on the skin of a repellent force field, and he shook the drops away and pulled on his socks and gleaming boots.
“Seriously, ’Tanni, get some rest. You’ll need it.”
“In truth, I doubt thee not,” she sighed, wiggling in the hot-tub, “yet still doth this seem heaven’s foretaste. I’ll tarry yet a while, methinks.”
“Go ahead,” he said with another smile, and stepped off the edge of the balcony onto a waiting presser. It floated him gently to the atrium floor, and his implant force fields were an invisible umbrella as he splashed through the rain to the door/hatch on the far side of his private park.