Star Wolves (The Tribes of Yggdrasil Book 1) (13 page)

Gina Russo nodded. “Captain, I think that’s a great idea. I don’t like the idea of leading a large force into unknown space—not one little bit.”

This was perfect—Hal needed to do something, he dreaded the thought of waiting in his grief stricken state for weeks with nothing to distract him.

“Haldor- Captain,” Eva Joubert corrected herself, “I could also make good use of that time to take astronomical observations. Perhaps there are local phenomena we could use to our advantage? Gas clouds for example, or asteroids perhaps?”

Hal suppressed a smile at Eva’s use of his first name. Years before, they had been lovers for a few months while he was working in London and she was attending Cambridge, and he’d almost proposed to her. Hal’s work took him away and their relationship ended, but if he hadn’t met Siobhan, he may very well have reconnected with her. It'd been over long enough that he didn’t feel any conflict of interest having her under his command; although he chided himself for drifting back and remembering some very
pleasant
times they’d shared. He chalked it up to a coping mechanism.

“Good, anyone else?” Hal asked.

Nobody answered.

“Ok, then here’s a few things I want done…”

T
he matte
black predator soared silently and steadily on a ink-black sea; an outside observer would have seen nothing. Even with highly advanced sensors, the
Sleipnir
was nigh undetectable; thermally shielded, with dampened electro-magnetic emissions, and a light absorbing coating on the hull. These advantages all conspired to hide the very existence of the
Sleipnir
. But she was there ... on the move, and ready.

Hal rested in his command-chair in a state of zen-like alertness. The bridge was dimly lit under third-shift lighting, and Hal recalled a passage from 'The Havamal' which his grandfather had taught him years before:

Hal’s mind was full of questions, endless questions: What lay ahead? What plans should they make? How would they deal with potential conflict? So many unknowns and risks. A century of peace and prosperity had left Earth quite unprepared for a conflict on this broad a landscape. The countries of Earth had united, which had assuaged people's fears over most internal security issues. And apparently, the Alfar hadn't really prepared humanity for what they might encounter beyond the Solar system. In fairness to the Alfar, the SID knew there were other civilizations out in the beyond, but had never travelled far enough to encounter one.

The SID had been conducting very localized exploration until they could build an appropriate interstellar military force, which was in the planning and design stages, but would now have to be greatly accelerated. What was planned to be accomplished in decades, would have to be achieved in a couple of years, but until then ...

For now, Hal had to focus on the mission at hand, which seemed to keep changing by the minute. The SID was playing defense, and allowing the Hrymar to set the tempo; this was a bad situation to be in. He hoped to find some way to regain the initiative, but had to reconcile himself with the fact the
Sleipnir
was not going to exact vengeance all by itself. It had a pivotal role to play, but Hal was used to being in control of a problem and its solution. Being part of a much larger operation was something he left behind with his military career several years before. But here he was again, in uniform—although this time with a more critical role, and a much more influential mandate.

The journey, so far, had been uneventful. They’d jumped from system to system inhabited by Alfar colonists or their allies. The present jump, which was near completion, would take them beyond friendly territory for the first time.

Cadfael was at his combatives station, and like Hal, seemed highly alert but relaxed, which was Cadfael's default state of being. Now that there was imminent danger in the galaxy, Cadfael's life made sense. He'd trained for decades to combat threats and enemies that no Alfar had seen in centuries ... until now. Hal had initially met a man who was tightly wound and anxious, but now that Cadfael was fully engaged in his life's purpose, he was a paragon of confidence and focus.

"Whad'ya say, Cadfael?" Hal inquired.

Cadfael responded with a cocked eyebrow and a look of puzzlement. "Excuse me?"

Hal smiled at his friend's confusion. "It's just an expression, more like a question. As in, what are you thinking, how are you feeling, etc."

"I see. I was evaluating potential tactical responses to a series of possible hostile encounters."

"Good. And how are you feeling about our chances?" Hal asked.

Cadfael stood up from his combatives station and stretched his arms high above his head, culminating in a low grunt. "Our chances of survival are highly variable, depending of course, on what we encounter.” Cadfael sat back down, “I’ve been making assumptions based on our knowledge of Hrymar technology, but that knowledge is centuries old. The last war we fought was close to a century ago, with a race called the Ysgar. But their technology was vastly different from ours, or what we predict that Hrymar may have now.“

Hal squinted his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose. "Haven't you heard reports from your trading partner- these Dvergar?"

"Reports, yes, but nothing overly specific. We have a general idea of their number of ships and types of armaments. We believe we have made advances in the areas of propulsion, weapons and armor, while they have not. Their strategic efforts seem to have been focused on numbers, and picking their engagements carefully. The Hrymar spent centuries building a slave empire. Individual achievements seem to have been limited to personal hand-to-hand combat and their proficiency trading slaves."

"That's good for us. Them sitting on their technological laurels could be a great strategic advantage. I would really like to start hitting them first for a change. We didn't start this, but I'm happy to help finish it."

Cadfael looked at Hal with a somber expression. "Being a warrior is a bittersweet calling. On one hand, we do not want the pain and suffering war brings our people, yet we train for it, yearn for it ... relish it," he said, with a conflicted passion.

Hal nodded in agreement. "Indeed, I think - "

Helmsman Glaw interrupted the discussion. "Captain, exiting hyperspace in 1 ... 2 ... 3."

The
Sleipnir
shuddered slightly as her inertial dampeners tried to compensate for the change in the ship's place in space-time.

"All stations report," Hal said.

“
C
aptain
,” Eva reported, “I am seeing a Class K star on sensors. It is about five light-hours away. It has three planets and seven moons total among them.”

“Idwal, anything on comms?” Hal asked.

“No, Captain. Nothing to report.”

“Ok, Glaw, take us in closer to the star and let’s poke around a bit—slowly please. This is our first stop in non-allied space. I’d like to be cautious.”

Glaw nodded and the Sleipnir began creeping slowly and stealthily closer to the star; slow was a relative term of course, she was accelerating at five hundred gravities—about half her maximum military acceleration.

“Captain!” Mared from Engineering burst onto the bridge, “It’s Adrianna. She’s dead!”

Hal might have looked shocked, if not for recent events. Little could match having your home-town nuked.

“Cadfael, grab Gina and investigate immediately. The rest of you, put it out of your minds and focus on your jobs. That's an order!”

H
al gave
Cadfael and Gina an hour to do a preliminary investigation of the scene and events, before he left the bridge; after which, he walked the short distance aft to the crew quarters.

Flanking the door to Adrianna’s quarters were two marines: Kasper Vollan and Grigori Utkin.

Hal opened the hatch and found Doc McGregor, Cadfael, and Gina talking. Nothing looked amiss. The room was spotless—except for the dead woman lying on her bed. There wasn’t even a pool of blood. She could have been sleeping, but she wasn’t.

“Cause of death?” Hal asked.

The trio stopped talking and looked over at him. “Massive trauma to the brain,” Doc replied. “Looks like a small spike was driven in behind her right ear, up into the brain. Very small hole, lots of damage, and instant death. Also very neat, and very little blood loss.”

Hal shook his head, then punched the bulkhead. “What the fuck?”

The three in the room looked shocked. None of them had ever seen Hal lose his temper, not even after the news about New Midgard.

“Why her? Why now? Loki’s balls—after all we’ve just been through now someone is murdered on our ship?”

The Doc gave Hal a gentle look, the kind of look he might have used for dying men, a look to sooth and console. “It seems so, Captain. There is no way this was an accident of any kind. There’s some bruising on her face as well. Best guess is someone grabbed her face from behind, and shoved the murder weapon up behind her ear. She wouldn’t have been able to cry out that way.”

Hal took a deep breath, exhaled and sat down at the chair near what had been Adrianna’s desk. “I won’t tell you your jobs. Gina, you were an MP, you know what to do here. I don’t need to tell you how dangerous this is. My concern is, was this a murder over something personal? Or something bigger? Is there a saboteur on board my ship?”

“Captain, I’ll make sure everyone has a buddy going forward.” Gina said, “Every person on this ship will be paired with another, and will go nowhere without them. It might be a little inconvenient on scheduling, but I don’t see any other way.”

“Do it. You have my blessing.”

“We have exactly nineteen souls aboard the ship now, so that’s nine pairs and you.” Gina said.

“Captain to the bridge!” came Idwal’s voice over the comm system.

“Now what?” Hal tapped his wristcom. “Bridge, what is it?”

Eva Joubert’s voice replied, “Captain, we have a contact closing on us. Some type of vessel.”

“Why didn’t we see it on sensors when we arrived?”

“I am not sure, Captain,” she replied, “my best guess is that it popped out behind an asteroid and is now behind us. Its gravitic signature would not have flagged sensors, they would simply have considered it an inert object.”

“Cadfael, with me. Gina, good luck, I’ll be on the bridge," Hal said.

“Yes, sir.”

Hal dashed down the corridor from the crew quarters to the bridge in a half-run. He arrived in a few seconds. For convenience, the crew quarters were directly behind the bridge, that way, in an emergency, crew to get to their stations in seconds.

“Idwal, have you hailed them?” Hal asked.

“Yes sir, but they’re thirty light-minutes behind us, so we shouldn’t expect a reply for an hour.”

“Eva, can you tell us anything more about them?” Hal asked.

“Not much. Given their distance, the only way I was able to detect them was with our new gravitic sensors. I know they are there, approximately how massive they are—two-thousand tonnes—and how fast they are moving, but nothing else until we are in range with our standard sensors.”

“Ok. Glaw, full military deceleration. I don’t want to go farther afield until we know who they are. Let’s turn around and chat with our new friends.”

T
he unidentified vessel
seemed to be accelerating at about three-hundred gravities. With their combined acceleration and deceleration, the two ships were closing the gap rapidly.

“I’ll tell you what I’d like to know … how in Niflheim did those bastards detect us?” Hal asked, more rhetorically, “Sensor net perhaps? But why that specific location. Surely they couldn’t have a system wide detection system?”

“It is quite possible, Captain,” Eva replied, “they could have some kind of sensor grid in place. A simple lattice of lasers would be sufficient. Regardless of how effective our stealth is, we are still a solid object that will interfere with light. Even though we may not reflect light directly back, if we interrupt the beam, that is all they would need. Very low-tech. In fact, that same principle has been used for over a century in building security systems.”

“Sir,” Nila added, “all they would need to do is to place a grid around strategic points in the system. Any craft is going to come essentially in a straight line from another star system, in all likelihood. So they could just place a medium sized grid in an intersecting path between likely travel points. Not fool proof, but pretty darn effective.”

“So it would seem. If that’s all it is, I’m going to be pissed off. Our new stealth design foiled by a century old home security system? Damnit.” Hal shook his head in disgust.

The minutes seemed to drag interminably until they were in range of the target with conventional sensors.

“Captain, I can now detect an anti-matter reactor powering some type of ion engine,” Eva said, “and they are probing us using a variety of active sensors: radar, lidar, and something else I have been unable to identify. No weapons detected so far, at least not powered up."

Hal nodded. “Ok, Idwal, any response on comms yet? We should be in range.”

“No, sir, nothing yet. I have a basic message transmitting every few seconds in a variety of languages.”

“Captain!” Eva jumped out of her seat. “I do not think they can see us!”

“What do you mean?” Hal asked.

“Well, we might have tripped their sensor grid by physically interposing ourselves between a beam and its reflector, but that would just alert them we were here. Then we would have just disappeared from their sensors!” She was jubilant.

Hal slapped a hand on his forehead. “And we’ve been painting our current position and heading by sending out hails. Idwal, stop all transmissions to them now! Glaw, hard to port ninety degrees at fifty-percent acceleration and let’s see what they do.”

The other ship was only a few light minutes away now, and in short order they saw the unknown ship still on course for their previous heading.

“Ok, that’s good news, ” Hal said, "so they don’t see us, but they can tell when we arrive in system with that detection grid up.”

Cadfael said, “I think we should attempt to locate and destroy that sensor grid, at least the portion that is in line with our route into this system.”

“I was thinking the same think, Cadfael,” Hal agreed, “Eva, do you think you could sniff out this grid?”

“Bien sûr—but of course. If we backtrack to where we jumped in, the grid is likely being emitted and received reasonably close to that point. If it is some type of point source like a laser, they would want the transmitter and receiver as close as possible to reduce detection delays.”

Hal nodded. “Anyone else have input or ideas?”

The bridge was quiet.

Cadfael said, “I believe it would be safe to assume there will not be a large presence in this system, hence their use of a detection grid instead of using ships as picket. I believe the plan is relatively low risk.”

Hal nodded. “Ok, let’s do it. Glaw, take us back to our arrival point, and Eva, start sniffing around with sensors.”