Star Wolves (The Tribes of Yggdrasil Book 1) (14 page)

T
he
Sleipnir
slipped quietly back
to her arrival point, while the ship previously shadowing her searched in vain for its quarry.

Eva turned back to look at the Captain. “Captain, I have detected a small asteroid on sensors that seems to be where the emitters are located. And yes … I am afraid to say, they are just lasers. I am not detecting any shielding. One shot with our plasma-cannon may suffice,” Eva said.

“Oh, so you’re tactical advisor now?” Hal smiled at her.

Eva looked back and winked at him. “There are two asteroids in fact, at right angles to each other, approximately five light minutes apart. We will need to destroy both.”

“Cadfael, lets get ready to hit the first one," Hal said.

Sleipnir
approached the small oblong asteroid, which was approximately two-kilometers in diameter at its widest. With the press of a button
Sleipnir’s
plasma-cannon turret popped up from its concealed location on the top of the ship, and fired a succession of brief pulses; they were invisible to the naked eye, but were displayed on the view-screen, and their effect on the target was quite apparent—a ball of molten was ejected from the transmitter’s location, and that was all there was to it.

Its job done, the plasma-turret ducked back into its recessed home; an observer would never know there was a weapon there at all.

“One down,” Hal said, “on to the next one, Helmsman, if you please.”

Glaw turned back to smile at his Captain. “Aye aye, sir,” he said.

They approached the second sensor transceiver in the grid and fired upon it, destroying it as quickly as the first. But along with the expected debris, a much larger object floated off the asteroid.

“Contact! There’s a ship coming off that asteroid,” Eva said.

“What? Sensors, report. Combatives, shields up.”

They watched as a ship rose off the asteroid. It was big, and bristling with extensions one might logically assume were weapons. It was at least three times the physical dimensions of the Sleipnir.

“Sir, it masses approximately two kilo-tonnes. It has an anti-matter reactor, and I detect plasma cannons powering up, and small bays opening,” Eva reported in a surprisingly calm voice.

“Helm, head for New Midgard, Military acceleration! Nila, plot a jump.”

“Already on it, boss, ready to jump in sixty-seconds,” Nila replied.

Glaw spun the ship around seventy degrees to port and accelerated at nine-hundred and ninety-eight gravities - blistering acceleration, but not quite fast enough.

As the Sleipnir started to pull away from the alien vessel, she was rocked by weapons fire.

“Captain, they’re firing plasma cannons. We’ve taken hits to the aft shield, but they’re holding.” Cadfael reported.

“Captain,” Engineer Teaghynn reported, “I am detecting missile launches, two bogies inbound.”

Having a ship accelerate rapidly, and keeping the crew alive, was a challenge, but solvable. One just had to work with the variables: such as mass, inertial compensators, and a reactor big enough to handle it. But it also had to handle life support, shields, and many more systems. A missile had no such auxiliary systems to power, or crew. It had one mission: track and accelerate as quickly as possible to the target, then detonate. Therefore, missiles could out-accelerate any known vessel by a very wide margin … including the Sleipnir.

“Ok, we can't outrun them..." Hal thumbed his chin for a second, “Cadfael, how accurate is our targeting AI? Can our plasma-cannon act as point defense now that we have these new gravitic sensors?”

“Yes … I think so.”

“Do it.”

“Missile impacts in ten-seconds,” Eva reported.

“Firing,” Cadfael said. With a bright flash, the first missile was destroyed.

“Yes!” Hal exclaimed, “One more, c’mon!”

And the second missile was destroyed.

“There we go, well done!” Hal said.

“Captain, six more missiles launched!” Teaghynn said.

The Sleipnir was pulling away from the enemy vessel, but the missiles could still catch her.

“Forty-seconds to impact,” Eva said.

“Weapons free,” Hal ordered.

Cadfael began targeting and destroying the incoming missiles: one down … two down. The ship was rocked by heavy plasma cannon fire. Hal surveyed the crew as the emergency unfolded—it was like he was outside of his own body, an observer floating in the air, watching the battle.

‘Sit on the bank of the river and observe, don’t be washed away by the current’
Sencha the Druid had taught him back on Earth.

He was proud of his team. This was their first test, whatever the outcome, they had already passed.

“Three missiles down … four down.” Cadfael reported.

“Five-seconds to impact, two missiles still inbound,” Eva said.

“Nila, we ready to jump?” Hal asked.

The fifth missile impact rocked the ship violently the ship—inertial compensators couldn’t handle the sudden extra load placed on them, and keep up with the already desperate acceleration. Then, as the Sleipnir decelerated involuntarily, the sixth missile hit, and again the ship was rattled.

“Captain, shields down, damage to aft systems and compartments. Two more missiles incoming,” Teaghynn reported.

Glaw managed to level the ship and point it back on course.

“Jumping … now.” and Nila took the ship into hyperspace.

N
ila’s jump
was going to take them seven days through hyperspace to make it back to New Midgard and their rendezvous with the other ships, but at least they’d have the time in hyperspace to carry out repairs.

A few hours after their encounter with the hostile alien vessel, Hal assembled the entire crew in the Sleipnir’s War Room. Around the room the crew sat quiet as Hal stood and addressed them from the center of the room.

“We did well,” he said, shifting his proud expression to each person in turn, “it may not seem like it, but you all did your jobs perfectly, and under sudden and adverse conditions. I’m sure we’ll see worse before this is all over, but I wanted to let you know our little skirmish was a success. It proves to me you can do your jobs, and it should prove you have the confidence, ability, and courage in the face of the enemy. I’m proud to be your Captain.”

There were nods of acceptance, and a few skeptical looks, but Hal sensed most of them felt good about what happened.

“That said, we have work to do. The last missile hit has damaged the hyperdrive engines, and although our capable engineering team is repairing them,” he gestured to Teaghynn and Mared, “we may not be in the clear yet. Gina, I want your marines to help with the repairs in any way they can—grabbing parts, holding tools ... whatever. I know that’s not what you folks trained for, but we need all hands involved to ensure these repairs get done. If we can’t manage the repairs quickly, say within 48 hours, I’m told the hyperdrive may suffer severe damage, and we’d be forced into normal space to make repairs, putting us all at greater risk.”

“Anything we can do, Captain, you’ve got it.” Gina said.

“Yes, sir!” came a chorus from the marines.

Hal smiled at them. “Good, I like your enthusiasm. We’re still seven days from New Midgard in hyperspace, so I really don’t want to get stranded out here. Our Pinnace does have an emergency hyperdrive, but at one-third of our current speed, that would be twenty-one days just to go get help—one way.”

“Sir,” said Kasper Vollan, “we could get out and push…” The team laughed.

Hal was happy to see some of the tension ease from his people.

“Maybe just you, Vollan,” Hal replied.

“Yes, sir!” Vollan said, standing with a crisp salute.

“Ok, that’s it. Dismissed,” Hal said.

The crew began shuffling out of the room and Hal motioned for Nila to stay.

“Yes, boss?” Nila asked.

“Nila, I want you to identify every habitable refuge between here and New Midgard, that way we have a ready list of emergency stops should we need them.”

“Of course. I’ll also program that data into the Pinnace, shuttles and life-pods, just in case.”

Hal nodded. “Ok, great. Let’s hope we don’t need it, but better prepared than not.”

Nila nodded enthusiastically, eyes wide. “Indeed!”

H
al stayed
in the War Room to use the large holographic projector, typically used to plan battles, but was also used to browse astrogation data. He called up a star-chart of all the space between their current location and New Midgard—essentially browsing the route and the data he’d asked Nila to prepare. He just wanted to get a rough idea of what was in between them.

Eva walked back in, and Hal turned. “What’s up?”

“Nothing much, I just wanted to see how you were holding up. It has been a trying few weeks,” she said.

“Yes, it has,” Hal gestured to a sofa, suggesting they take a seat. He sat on one end … and Eva sat in the middle, closer to Hal than he would have expected anyone else to do, but they did have an intimate history. This was probably just automatic reflex for Eva, he thought.

“I just wanted to let you know you can talk to me,” she offered gently, “if you need to open up, or speak about things that you might not be able to with the others … we were close once, no?”

“We were.” Very close, he thought. At this distance he caught the subtle scent of soap and shampoo, a delicate womanly fragrance, almost intoxicating. Maybe he didn’t realize consciously, but he was hurting, badly. He felt suddenly drunk with desire and other sensations flooding over him.

Hal abruptly stood up. He tried to shake off this wanting, it was wrong, so wrong. His wife and son captured, or worse, and he let himself feel this way?

“Thanks, Eva. I appreciate the offer.”

She looked shocked, clearly surprised at his reaction to her friendly offer. If she only knew what he was feeling right now.

“I’m sorry, Captain,” she said more formally, “I did not mean to overstep. I just thought, since we had been close … once ... ” Her words trailed off.

“Thanks,” he said. Hal turned and left the room.

A
fter his brush with Eva
, Hal decided to walk off his pent-up frustration and self-loathing, and wound his way down a deck into engineering at the aft of the
Sleipnir
. From a few meters away, Hal could feel the gentle purr of the engine, usually a sweet and pleasing sensation—but today something was amiss. There was a very slight dissonance in its usual harmony. It spoke of an instrument out of tune, or a musician off key.

He could see Senior Engineer 0-3 Mared, tending to the engines with a concerned look. She spied Hal and stopped to acknowledge him, nodding.

“Sir,” she said.

“How are things looking, 0-3?” he asked.

“Worse than we thought previously, Captain. I think we need to drop out of hyperspace to work on the engines. I was hopeful I could repair them as we went, but running them is exacerbating the problem. If we could stop somewhere for twenty-four hours, that should be enough time to patch them up until we can return to the Orbital Station at New Midgard. The problem is the missile hit damaged the dark matter tap. If it goes, we lose reaction mass for sub-light drive, inertial compensators, contragrav and shields. That is a real weak spot in our design; one I intend to address when we get back. We have triple redundancy on our anti-matter reactors that power the tap, but no redundancy on the tap itself. I suppose it was due to the expected mission for these ships. Alfar warships have a redundant tap for both dark matter and dark energy, but then, they expect to take battle damage.”

Hal began pinching the skin at his throat and pursed his lips. The dark-matter tap was the most critical part of any ship. Using an anti-matter reactor to power the tap, it literally tapped into the dimension where dark matter resided, and since eighty-three percent of the mass of the visible universe was located in this dimension, the uses were countless. The dark matter could be temporarily brought into phase with the visible universe and stored in reservoirs. It was much more dense and massive than normal matter, and so occupied a smaller volume. Dark matter was also injected into plasma shell casings on-demand, and magnetically sealed. These were then fired as super-massive kinetic rounds. Although only the size of an old ninety-millimeter artillery shell, they were one-thousand times more massive, and packed a commensurate wallop.

In order to counteract the ship’s mass, and function as an inertial compensator, another piece of critical technology was required: a dark matter inverter, which inverted the mass of dark matter so that it became
negative
dark matter. This material was stored in a separate reservoir and essentially negated the mass of the ship on demand—acting as a variable inertial compensator.

Hal was quiet for a moment.

“Ok. I think we can do that. Our friends won’t know we’ve stopped.
If
they're following us, they would be on a direct jump right back to New Midgard, and the
Gungnir
. I’m certain she’s more than a match for the enemy-vessel.” Enemy vessel was the only term he could think of. Hal didn't know whether they were Hrymar, or some other race or faction. Enemy would have to suffice.

Hal tapped his wristcomm. “Nila?”

“Yes, boss?” came the near instant response.

“Nila, Mared feels we should drop out of hyperspace for twenty-four hours to repair the engines. She’s concerned the dark matter tap may fail before we get home. Can you find us a nice safe spot to lay up? I’d like to land and take all systems off-line and go completely dark if possible. A planet should give us some extra cover, just in case someone else is sneaking around. Can you find something close to where we are now?”

“On it, boss.”

Hal could always count on Nila and she was a joy to be around; He wished for ten more crew just like her, somedays. They also had a solid working relationship after two years of surveying together as a team.

“Ok, I found us a parking spot about an hour out.” Nila reported.

“Ok, Mared,” Hal said, “lets see if we can get this ship patched up.

T
he Sleipnir dropped
out of hyperspace and the main bridge view-screen lit up with a bright orange star shining in the distance.

“Report,” Hal ordered.

“Welcome to Libuscha, Captain,” Eva said, “she is a Spectral Class K5 V Orange Main Sequence star.” Eva continued to glance at her display scanning for relevant data, “I detect six orbiting bodies. There is an asteroid belt at 0.62 AU from the star…. and, here we are … there is a terrestrial world, Libuscha II, at 0.55 AU. It has an orbital period of 0.42 Earth years and gravity 0.83 that of Earth. It is a chilly place, with mainly iron and silicates in the crust. The atmosphere is thin and dry, but breathable." Eva looked back over her shoulder and smiled at Hal. “A good place to land, but I am afraid picnics will be a problem.”

“Fair enough,” Hal said, “take us in helm.”

T
he ship’s
sleek hull cut through Libuscha’s thin, rusty atmosphere with ease. Not that the crew would experience much atmospheric buffeting—the inertial compensators took care of that. Only in extreme cases, such as entering Jupiter’s great storm, would they have felt much of anything.

Glaw found a flat, orangish-black, stone plateau, and the
Sleipnir
touched down, her landing struts making firm contact with the rocky surface.

Hal looked over to Gina. “Let’s have a fire team on a twelve-hour watch rotation until we’re off this rock.”

“You've got it, sir,” Gina replied.

“I think I’m going to stretch my legs and take an air car out … see what’s in the vicinity of this plateau,” Hal said.

“Mind if I tag along?” Eva asked with enthusiasm.

Hal felt a lump in his stomach. What could he say? The last thing he needed was to be a foot away from Eva, alone in an aircar. But it wasn’t her fault, he needed to get control of his own emotions.

“Sure, 0-3,” he addressed her by her rank, trying to set a tone of formality, “give me thirty minutes to get ready.”

Eva left the bridge.

“Gina,” he motioned to her, “my office?”

She nodded and followed him into his office adjacent to the bridge.

“What’s up, sir?”

“Any progress on our investigation?”

“I’m afraid so,” she said

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’ve narrowed the list of likely suspects to three individuals.”

Hal raised his eyebrows. “Ok…”

“Based on time of death and crew alibis, there are only three people that could have killed her in the timeframe: Dana Hausler, your steward; Nila Johar, your Navigator; and Eva Joubert, your …
physicist
,” she said hesitantly. Implying Eva might have been more than just his physicist?

Hal let it slide. Gina was sharp, he was sure she knew there had been something between them.

“I just can’t believe any one of those three could have murdered Dana,” he said. “All three of them are … sweet women. Sorry for generalizing, but they are. Dana’s motherly, Nila’s like my kid sister, and Eva, well … we were involved years back.”

“I know,” Gina said, matter-of-factly.

“What do you mean—you know—you mean you suspected?” he asked with an irritated look.

“No, sir, I knew. I checked up on you before we left Alfheim.”

“I see,” Hal said evenly.

“It’s my job, sir. Remember, before I got pulled onto your team, I was heading off to become Director of Security at Norvik. And I
was
an MP. I’m a cop and a Marine, probably more cop. It’s my job to know things.”

“Ok, it’s fine, it’s just a bit … complicated right now. I haven’t seen her in years.”

“Understood. But just remember, any one of those three
could
have done it, despite what you
think
you know about them,” Gina said.

“But how certain are you it’s one of those three? We have seventeen other people on this ship.”

“I’d say I’m ninety-nine percent certain.”

Hal just nodded. He still couldn't wrap his head around the fact one of those women could be a murderer. He had eight lethal marines with special ops training—they felt much more likely as candidates—and he didn’t know them well, or consider any of them …
sweet
. Then he had a fleeting thought—could it be Gina?

“I’ll keep working the clues, but I think we’re at a standstill until we can get back to New Midgard- oh- never mind.”

“What do you mean? Why never mind?”

“I was just thinking … I brought an Alfar lie-detector with me to Norvik. But it was in my quarters when the city was nuked.”

Hal shook his head. “This has been a really fucked up month, Gina.”

She nodded silently.

Hal reached into a drawer on his desk and pulled out a bottle and two shot glasses. Gina read the bottle:

- Glenfiddich 40 Year Old Single Malt Whiskey (Bottled 2078) -

“
W
ow
! That must have cost a fortune. That’s fifty-years old.” Gina marveled.

“Yep. My grandfather bought it for me ten years ago. It was a graduation present. I take a drink on very special occasions, or very, very bad times,” Hal explained.

“Still half a bottle,” Gina noted.

Hal nodded. “I toasted with my grandfather when he gave me the bottle, then at my engagement to Siobhan, at Ailan’s birth, and when my grandfather passed away. This week is another milestone.” Hal filled the two glasses offering one to Gina.