Burnt Worlds (21 page)

“Sir!” called the sensor tech.
 
“It’s doing something.
 
Something’s moving toward the planet; it’s distorting our readings, sir.
 
I don’t—”

Cho’s voice interrupted through the speaker.
 
“It’s a gravity wave, Captain!
 
It’s fired a gravity wave toward the planet.
 
Aimed right at the settlement on the surface, sir.
 
Impact in twenty seconds.”

Dillon pointed at the comm tech.
 
“Warn the Palani!
 
Tell them to get everyone suited!
 
Get to cover!”

“Aye aye, sir!”

“Chief, when the hell are we in range?”

“Sir!
 
Target is now fully visible to sensors.
 
Locked on.
 
Seven seconds to maximum range, sir.”

“What the fuck?” said the Captain.
 
“We can lock on?
 
Main armament, stand by!”
 

He watched the large display that hovered in front of the bridge windows.
 
The small dot that represented the
Borealis
moved up the screen, pushing a narrow wedge-shaped firing arc closer to the angry red dot that represented the intruder.
 
The wedge touched the red dot and promptly turned green; an urgent tone sounded from the display.

“Main armament, one round per barrel, shoot!”

A loud buzzer sounded throughout the ship, followed by a brief
whump
.
 
Out the bridge window, a line of softly glowing blue light appeared at the left side of the
Borealis
, stretching off into the distance as the hypervelocity slug streaked toward the enemy ship.
 
The blue streak swirled and faded as the buzzer sounded again.
 

Dillon’s vision flashed totally white, leaving him dizzy as a second blue streak appeared at the ship’s right side.
 
He grabbed the arm of his chair.
 
Other crewmembers braced themselves.
 
“Damn it,” he said to himself.

Atwell’s voice came through the speaker, a slight quiver in her tone.
 
“Magnetic field leak, starboard barrel.
 
Barrel offline, shunting ammo.
 
Port barrel ready.”

Barely visible twenty thousand kilometres away, two tiny yellow sparks appeared in the distance, one after the other.

“A hit,” said the sensor tech.
 
“Two hits!”

“And?” asked the Captain.

“The target is still in four sections; we hit the bottom two.
 
We dented it, sir.”

Dillon stared blankly at the technician.
 
“Come again?”

The sensor tech looked over the top of her console at him.
 
“Confirmed, sir.
 
Sensors show two dents, each about two metres deep and ten long.
 
That’s it, sir.”

He turned and looked at the Chief.
 
“A hundred kilotons a shot, and all we get is a goddamned dent?
 
This is going to take all day.”

A voice came from behind the comm console.
 
“Sir, report from the surface.
 
Very heavy damage.
 
They have numerous casualties, sir.”

“Damn it,” said Dillon.
 
“What’s that thing doing?
 
Anything?”

“No sir,” said the sensor technician.
 
“Still in four equal parts, still just sitting there… wait, sir!
 
We’ve just lost targeting lock.”
 
The woman’s fingers danced across her console.
 
“I can’t get it back, sir.
 
Sensors can’t see it any more.”

Dillon tilted his head to speak to the console on the ceiling.
 
“Cho?”

“I see it, sir,” came the tinny voice of the Lieutenant.
 
“It’s not moving.”

“We have to get it’s attention away from the planet.
 
Main armament?”

Atwell’s voice came through right away.
 
“Standing by, sir.”

“Can you hit it?”

“I’m eyeballing it, sir.
 
We’ll get it.”

“Very well.
 
Two shots, when ready.”

Immediately the buzzer sounded, followed by the
whump
of the weapon discharging.
 
A blue streak appeared at the ship’s left side.
 
A second later the buzzer sounded again, and the port side weapon fired a second time, the new streak of blue light dissipating the first.

“I can’t see the enemy ship,” said the sensor tech, “but I can see the shots, sir… first shot glanced off… second shot, direct hit.”

Dillon nodded.
 
“Good shooting.
 
Cho, result?”

“Nothing, sir.
 
It might have been pushed a bit by the… wait, something’s happening sir, I think it’s fired.”

The sensor tech’s voice was loud and high-pitched.
 
“Confirmed, sir!
 
It’s fired at the planet again.”

“Shit!” exclaimed the Captain.
 
“Warn the settlement.
 
Damn it!
 
We have to get that thing’s attention!”

“Sir, I have it on sensors again.
 
That last hit burrowed a crater a metre deep and fifteen across.
 
We have weapons lock again.”

Atwell’s voice came through the speaker.
 
“Starboard barrel back online, sir.
 
Thirteen rounds remaining.”

Dillon shook his head.
 
“We don’t need thirteen rounds.
 
We need an entire battlefleet here.”
 
He looked over at the communications console.
 
“Comms!”

“Aye, sir!” came the reply.

“Is the Dosh tunnel cell connected?
 
Can we send secure data?”

“Connected, sir.
 
We can communicate securely with Dosh command.”

“Good.
 
Set up a data stream.
 
Send them everything from us:
 
sensor logs, weapon logs, comm logs, voice logs, ship telemetry, the hockey betting pool, everything.
 
Ask them to forward it to New Halifax and to the Palani.
 
I want everyone to know what’s going on...”

Dillon glanced over at Chief Black, who was watching him.
 
In her eyes, he could see her finishing the thought.

He looked at the Tassali, who sat at the supervisor’s console.
 
Just a few moments ago she had been slumping in the chair, looking deflated and despairing.
 
Now she was sitting bolt upright, her head high, watching out the bridge windows.
 
Only the flush of blue in her cheeks betrayed any emotion.
 
As if feeling his gaze, she turned her head to look at him, and he hesitated when he saw the determination in her eyes.
 
For a few moments he looked at her, studying the set of her jaw and the slight tilt of her head.
 

“Plan, sir?” asked the Chief.

Dillon turned back toward the window and the large display.
 
The
Borealis
had closed most of the distance to the attacker, but was still over five thousand kilometres away.

The screen showed a cluster of blips behind
Borealis
, each one a fragment of the shattered space station now being tracked by the ship’s sensors.
 
A new blip silently appeared in the cluster as a yellow dot.
 
The dot sprouted a small box with several lines of sensor data that identified it as part of the station’s destroyed jump drive.
 
Dillon raised an eyebrow.
 
“Full stop,” he said.

“Full stop, aye,” repeated the Chief, stepping over to stand behind the helm console.
 
“Helm, full stop.”

Dillon looked up at the ceiling.
 
“Sap?” he asked the comm speaker.
 
“You listening in?”

“Of course, Captain,” came the Dosh’s calm reply.
 
“How may I assist?”

“Sap, safety be damned, it’s time for human engineering.”

“More reckless self-endangerment, Captain?
 
I am excited by the prospect.”

“Be straight with me, Sap.
 
Do we have a jump drive?”

“We do, Captain.
 
It is quite untested.
 
It is idling at a very—”

“Low simmer?” interrupted Dillon.

A moment’s hesitation.
 
“Yes, Captain.
 
A low simmer.”

“Start charging the capacitors, we’re going to—”

“The capacitors are all fully charged, Captain.”

Dillon’s smile grew.
 
“Sap, you and your new engineers are legends.
 
Extra beer rations for everyone.”

No response.

“Or coffee,” amended Dillon.

“Thank you, Captain.”

The Captain chewed furiously on his pen.
 
“Okay,” he exhaled, “We need to get that thing’s attention.
 
It seems to have a thing about people using jump drives, so…”
 
he waved his hand vaguely at the large display, as if looking for something.
 
“...there.
 
That moon.
 
Plot a jump to that moon.”

The crewmember at the helm immediately began to tap at her console, but her voice conveyed her uncertainty.
 
“Aye aye, sir.
 
Plotting a jump to the moon of Iralan.
 
Distance is… eight hundred thousand kilometres.
 
Estimated search time is… ten seconds, sir.”

“Thank you, helm.
 
Begin jump.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

The crewmember tapped her console one last time, and all the displays on the bridge popped up blinking red windows.
 
A low hum started to build through the ship; felt more than heard, gathering in intensity.
 
Out the bridge window, four threadlike beams of blue light came from emitters at the bow, meeting at a single point a hundred metres ahead of the ship.
 
The four beams quivered in unison, their dance becoming ever more frenetic as the power built and the humming increased.

While Dillon’s pen continued to be brutally chewed, the Tassali looked up at the Chief, who stepped over to stand next to her.
 
“My apologies, Chief Black,” said the Palani in a quiet voice.
 
“I have never been present on the bridge during a jump.
 
What is happening?
 
Why are we waiting?”

The Chief leaned over so she could whisper to the Palani.
 
“Everything’s fine, ma’am.
 
Here’s the short version:
 
every second, at every point in space, millions of subatomic wormholes appear and then dissolve.
 
They're each connected to a random point elsewhere in the universe.
 
By putting in a little negative energy, we can grab one of them and hold it open to see where the other end goes.
 
If it’s where we want to go, we use a huge amount of negative energy to stretch it wide enough for us to fly through.”

The Tassali looked at the Chief in bewilderment.
 
“A random point in the universe?
 
The chances of finding an end point near to somewhere specific—”

“Are quite good,” said the Chief.
 
“It’s not entirely random; it has to do with probabilities and statistics and stuff.
 
Plus, the energy needed to grab the wormhole is proportional to the distance.
 
So we set the energy level to grab only the right-distance wormholes, and all the others slip away without being grabbed.
 
At full power, the drive can grab and check a billion wormholes a second.
 
It won’t be long.”

The white-skinned woman looked out the bridge windows, her eyes wide.
 
“Intriguing, Chief Black.”

The Chief smirked.
 
“Want to know my theory?
 
I don’t think anyone has the faintest clue how it works.
 
I think someone was trying to invent, I don’t know, a new dishwasher or something, and accidentally made a jump drive.
 
Wrote up a hundred pages of bullshit, collected their Nobel Prize, and retired.
 
Everyone else just makes copies of the failed dishwasher, and as long as it keeps working, no one asks any questions.”

The Tassali looked back at the human woman, who nodded enthusiastically.
 
“Chief Black, you have a… unique perspective.”

“I know, right?
 
It’s obvious when you think about it—”

“Sir!” said the sensors technician.
 
“Target is moving!
 
Accelerating toward us.
 
It’s closing up into a single section again.
 
Four thousand kilometres and closing.”

“Okay,” said the Captain.
 
“We have its attention.”

“Single section,” said the Chief.
 
“I’m starting to think the different configurations are for different functions.”

Dillon looked at her.
 
“Yeah, I think you’re right.”

“One piece for travel, four pieces for shooting at planets, and two for shooting at ships.”

The Captain nodded.
 
“What’s taking the jump so long?” he asked the bridge as a whole.
 

“Three thousand kilometres,” said the sensor tech.

“What’s next, sir?”

Dillon didn’t answer.
 
He looked at the display, muttering to himself.
 
“How about today?
 
Can we jump today?
 
Today would be nice.”