Zeno-F, part 5
Fin
Recall
We were on route to our final raid when we got the recall. The Malix had jumped in and ordered us back to our base camp and prepare for immediate loading. Their scout drones had reported an incoming enemy squadron, and it was time for us to clear the area.
We arrived back at an almost deserted camp. The engineers section was ordered to some job. ‘Preparing a surprise’ is all they would tell me. The rest of us were put to work packing up equipment or piling it up for disposal. I noticed ammo was one thing they weren’t taking back. I asked and the trooper next to me told me the engineers were going to blow it up in a destruction pit.
I and Zeno-f were slated for the first lift, but when the time came, I couldn’t locate him. A trooper took my place, and I stayed to find him. Nothing. I ended up on the last lift with the engineers. The pilot pointed out some distant specks on the horizon and said they were the enemy squadron, a battlecruiser, three cruisers, and two escorts and they would be within engagement range in an hour. I couldn’t see them, but others said they did.
Our lift was to the Thorne. A portal-jumper plane had jumped after her to give her the news. The portal she was coming in on was near our base camp so she arrived before the Malix, which had gone off through a portal a third the way around a globe and would take a while to arrive. Our exit portal was close to the base camp.
On ship, everyone was busy preparing for action. I asked if there was something I could do and was told to stay in my quarters. There I queried my high access chat AI, and some of Winne’s custom jobs trying to understand what was going on. I had the advantage of having the data Zeno-F had provided on portals near the area, so we could make some guesses about where the Malix had been. Likely, she had been raiding upstream of the logistics route, towards the enemy concentration of industrial worlds. Malix was staying close by and raiding the various routes to the front-line worlds downstream of the logistics hub of Ω-Cas IV.
I went to bed and was asleep almost as soon as my bed folded out. I was awakened to a screeching alarm. I groggily wondered if it was a battle klaxon and the engagement had started. But no, it was an ultra-priority intercom, which overrode my sleep setting. I was being summoned to the science lab.
There I saw the doctor (also chief science officer), an older woman with a long face and gray braids loose, not wrapped up in the hair tie-bag bun. With her was two assistants and an officer - a Captain. Behind them on the table was a Captain Michális’ body bag.
Why has the Macheeng’s rider not boarded the ship?, the officer demanded.
I don’t know, I said. After we were recalled, I did not see him. We left without him, because we were in a hurry. It was marked on the loadmasters manifest, and I filed it in my preliminary report.
Hmmm he said, looking at my suspiciously. He turned and told the science officer to give me her findings.
Yes. We were performing the autopsy and have identified the poison. It is chemically similar to an odd molecule the air monitors picked up in the hold at the time you and Zeno-F disembarked. Is it possible that his fuel cell substrate is octanitropentane?
Er, I don’t know I said. All he told me was that it was extremely energy dense and stable, but toxic.
Stable? Stable and high energy molecules also make great explosives. Claud-Chem she said to her desktop AI, analyze the potential for rendering this molecule into a class IV explosive.
Analyzing, her screen said. Chemical formulas and molecular diagrams started popping up on the wall sized screen. She quickly scanned them and said, yes it would be fairly easy to make this into an explosive similar to TNT. The Cubane form would be easy to derive, quite stable, and deadly when triggered.
The officer turned to me, face hard. Did you know that the Macheeng had the potential to blow up the Thorne? Did you know it could creat chemical warfare agents?
No, I said. Who was in charge of vetting the contents of its container? Wasn’t that shipboard security?
We glared at each other for a second. We need to see Zeno-F and demand an explanation, I said, especially since we are on the eve of battle.
He called together a squad of Kavniki and we went to the hold. The shipping container looked the same as ever, with its two guards who had obviously been leaning up against the container and joking.
Inside was a wreckage. The compartment had a hole burned in it, and poking our heads through we could see nothing but slag. The robot was gone. There was a notification icon blinking in the lower corner of the screen. I went over and pressed. The image of the robot appeared.
Farewell, he said. My calculations are that you will not survive the sector squadron that is surely the reason for sudden haste. You humans thought you were so smart, second guessing our proposed mission. Fools! We know so much more than you about the galaxy - your only real choice was to trust us or not. You could have been even now destroying their sector squadron and preparing to push deep into their undefended core worlds. You could have been on the eve of dictating terms from above their helpless cities while their starving armies surrender just to get a bite to eat. Instead you have merely thrown a wrench in their pipeline earning your hardpressed armies but a brief respite. You thought you were so clever, hedging your bets with a compromised quick jab, thinking to milk intelligence from us. Well, enjoy your minor victory. And if you manage to get out of the trap you’ve put yourself in, enjoy all the intelligence. I myself have taken another way out. I would say good luck, but almost certainly it would be better to say ‘Die!’ The video cut to hollow mocking laughter. An eerie sound, and the robotic imitation of it was off and quite grotesque.
Poking around his half shipping container showed little else of value. The officer said he had to prepare for the battle, but they would continue the inquest later. I returned to my pod, and as I played back in my mind all that had happened with Zeno, questioning every event in the light of his plan to abandon us, and his assumption that we would likely be killed or captured.
Retreat
I fell asleep again in the middle of my ruminations. This time it was the battle klaxon that alerted me. I was instructed to lock into the braced battle position. My bed folded me up into the fetal position, wrapping me around a large fluid filled bag. A multi point harness locked me into place. The onscreen AI chat attendant walked me though the process and then we had a conversation about the sewage storage bags built into the bad and how to use them while braced into my crash seat.
The chat attendant offered to dispense some mild sedatives. I declined preferring to be aware and capable in case of the rare event that I needed to crawl out of a burning wreck or something like that. And i was curious to watch the battle from my screens. With my security access I could view all the cameras including the radar slaved ultra long-distance cameras. I also could see the basic situation plot. I didn’t have access to more specialized plots, command comms, and intra-ship comms. Probably the commander was not aware of my extraordinary access - best I kept quiet about it. Usually, security admin would be a role filled by an officer, and I suspected they hadn’t considered all the ramifications when a civilian had been appointed to that role.
I put in a call to Wynne. I hadn’t seen her since I got back. She texted that she was the bridge and couldn’t talk, but she sent me access to a basic tac chat AI.
We were moving to away from the inbound squadron but at an angle and to rendezvous with the Thorne. I couldn’t see the logic behind it though until I had the AI overlay portal area on the display. The potential portal area of htis world was a little over a thousand klicks long. It was a long, jagged area, curving over in opposite directions at both ends. It was mostly a line with thickness only at the center and at the swirls at the ends. The movement was for the Malix to approach the portal as quickly as possible and for the Thorne to rendezvous with her as soon as possible.
But no, it was a little off. The Malix was moving slower than the Thorne. That was odd because it was a light cruiser and should be the fastest class of warship in the fleet. Light cruisers were designed for message carrying in unsecure atmosphere, and for quick raids such as intercepting enemy mail ships behind their “lines”. The only thing faster should be actual aircraft. Maybe the Malix had been damaged and was not able to move at full power. It had spotted the enemy after all, and perhaps that had been a blind encounter instead of through scouting by its handful of on onboard aircraft.
If the Malix was damaged though, why were we rendezvousing with it? Our chances were slim as it was and would be worse if our speed was reduced. I had never been to tactical school, so watch and learn.
The plot had a marking for firing points. I assume this was when the ships would be in missile range of each other, and they would launch their salvos. We had several aircraft in the air now, off to either side. I presumed they would be adding to the salvo with long range 520 kg missiles. Perhaps missiles coming in from different directions would help overload enemy air defenses. Then I saw enemy aircraft launching to intercept them. Ours fired missiles and started running back to the ship.
Studying the plot again I noticed several oddities. Our firing point occurred before theirs, and their path took them fairly close to our base camp. The oddest thing was that two of the long-range cameras were focused on what looked like a pile of dirt that had been bulldozed together. These cameras had massive lenses, several feet wide, so there weren’t that many of them. Why would they be looking at dirt? I kept one of these screens open in the corner in case something interesting started happening. The other long-range camera were focused on enemy ships. Even with the big lense they were still fuzzy, but it allowed for class recognition I suppose and perhaps later could be used for damage estimates, and finding gaps that had opened in the air defenses.
We reached our firing point, and I heard 'clang’ and felt the imperceptible series of lurches as the vertical launch cells opened up and fired their contents. The deck cameras showed a fury of flame and motion as all the long-range missiles were fired. These cells would be reloaded with shorter range missiles for when the shops closed for the decisive closer range fight. A little later I saw a few of the horizontal aft tubes open and fire ramjet torpedoes. They would be timed to arrive at roughly the same time as the missiles so as to overwhelm enemy air defenses as much as possible.
The enemy ships showed no activity. Why weren’t they firing? Oh, it was because we were moving away at full speed of 74 knots. Their missiles had to travel farther to catch up to us, while their ships were moving into our salvo.
The seconds ticked by. Suddenly the enemy ships exploded as they arrived at their launch point. From the vantage point and low resolution of our cameras it appeared as if the whole deck suddenly burst into flame and smoke. It didn’t take long for it clear. They were traveling as fast as us, catching up to us on the angle.
I watched for their bow tubes to launch, when the screen of the dirt flashed in the corner of my eye. When I had glanced over all I could see there was dust. I quickly did a 10 second rewind and slo-mo replay. The pile of dirt exploded with terrific force. I could see black objects for an instant in the blast. Huh. Maybe there was a forward sensor or jammer in there that made it a target. Replaying even slower I couldn’t see any incoming projectiles that set it off. Then the feed I had open of the enemy ships started showing black vertical streaks. I made that my center screen and zoomed out. The black streaks were everywhere. They started thinning and then they were gone. I paused and they were blurry but definitely something there, something going up?
The plot seemed to be showing a cloud around their ships now and our missiles were almost at target. Their bow tubes still hadn’t fired. I thought I could make out their covers so they must have them. I guess the distance difference was amplified the distance in speed. The blurry image of the many gravity bypass antennas below the ship seems odd. Some of them seemed to be missing. If those were damaged, they would have to vector their thrust more vertically, trading speed in order to stay aloft. The burn did seem visible, there below the wing. The black streaks returned and almost simultaneously their air defense guns opened up. Was this some new kind of secret weapon? The volume of lead was impressive. Like most ships every surface on deck that was not occupied by something or needed to kept clear had air defense weaponry bolted on it, ranging from 8mm machine guns to heavy 152mm guns. They were synced and controlled into fire sectors, aiming at different targets as they came in. And our salvo started coming in amidst black puffs of smoke. I saw missiles blowing up right and left. But there - one exploded right against the superstructure, and there another exploded, not on the ship but close to it as it was passing by. The long-range missiles were big with a big warhead, and the explosion ripped off a bank of point defense guns, and the hull crumpled in a little where it met the deck. The deck railing was blown away right there, and twisted in.
In a few seconds it was all over. There was still some black streaking, whatever that was. Fires were burning here and there, and there was a lot of wreckage. I saw crew emerging. Damage control teams no doubt, putting out fires and repairing what guns could be repaired. Ammo bots trundled out onto deck to reload depleted ammo bins.
Wait - there, one of the ships which had been hit on its starboard delta winglet root was going down. It was a slow gentle descent, but it was definitely going down. The vector thrust gimbals in nose and winglet were pointing straight down, except the starboard one, which appeared to be off. It seemed to be turning slightly, no longer pointing directly toward us.
All their ships had fires on them except one, and their speed in the plot started visibly dropping. This was a lot more effect than I believe the initial long-range salvo would have. I scrambled to replay videos to see them all. The system didn’t allow things to be saved, and the playback only stored a few minutes’ worth of the stream.
Soon it was our turn. The air defense was even more impressive up close. Ranks of guns turning in sync and spewing lead like there was no tomorrow. I felt myself being pushed into my chair with sudden acceleration coupled with a slight stomach lurch, like in an elevator. Our speed was increased dramatically, our altitude was dropping and looking at other cameras I saw our three gimbal jets all had after burners on. We were getting one last burst of speed to give our air defenses a few more fractions of a second to find their targets.
I saw and heard their missiles going off. One of them was an especially hollow boom. It must have rang the hull just right. Then it was over.
The captain came on for an all-hands intercom announcement. He spoke in a deliberately slow and calm drawl. Damage appears to be light. Damage control teams to stations, stand by for portal jump. After the jump there will be stand down from combat posture for 3 minutes. Please take advantage to stretch your limbs.
After the jump we went back to our crash couches. The ships pivoted around in preparation for a head on engagement. The enemy did not come through. One of the portal aircraft jumped through to see what was going on. When he came back we got word to stand down from combat positions and we would be plotting a path back to Earth.
Report
The word in the mess and in the passageways was ‘dirt cannon’. Sailors were talking up this surprise weapon as giving us the edge in the salvo. I looked up my engineer contat. He said, “Yep. We laid a little trap for them. We dig a hole, put a shit ton of TNT in it and piled up a ton of debris and rock on it. Calculations showed it would blow things up to about mile high. But the center of it, carefully placed according to calculations was piles of rods cut to match their radar wavelengths. It was not only shrapnel, you see, but also chaff. And the incoming missile salvo had some warheads replaced with chaff illuminating radar modules to defeat their doppler filtering.”
I started on my report. The battle itself was not my concern. I was alone on writing a report on the alien. The commander wanted to distance himself and his team from the tricky subject of his abandoning us and knowingly leading us to our deaths. He asked me to give Zeno-Fs farewell message the rating of ‘utmost secrecy’, and not let anyone else know. So nobody knew except him, the officer, and myself.
I wrote up everything Zeno-F did in the new light of his assumption that we would be killed. I concluded was that his evaluation was correct. Without a whole lot more information our only option was to trust him or not. Compromised cooperation would likely give us the worst of both worlds. My recommendation was to not trust them. The things Zeno-F had said led me to conclude that in the end the Macheengs would not allow us to progress too much technologically or spread too far into the galaxy. We would always present a risk of re-enslavement to them, if our growth was not constrained.
When we returned to the naval base, I submitted a report. It was returned to me quickly marked as urgent: must edit and a comment from the third vice chief of the Schtabs Service Bureau himself. The comment was a laconic, “be careful about what you include”
I was put in a soft security lockdown; well the whole crew were. They told us the feared off world pathogens. We had a section of base to ourselves. But I was getting special attention from the air-filtered guards and service personnel, who seemed to always happen to pop out whenever I went outside or went off somewhere. To my eye they had the look of trained security men - studied nonchalance masking an alert air, and always the sense of being watched.
I got the message. I changed my report. Zeno-F was now missing unexpectedly in action. His final message was just a farewell. I took out parts where he talked about them wanting to kill all biological civilizations. I didn’t mention the doctors’ suspicions about the poison that killed Captain Michális. Being one of the listed was a political and risky business. One had to be careful, but it was also important that one play the game correctly without coercion and minimal prompting, if any at all. Clearly, they were wanting to keep the lid on Zeno-F. I deleted my conclusions and instead said that the Macheengs possessed unknown capabilities and could prove to be a valuable ally, but more needed to be known about them.
The Long Cruise
I was in a risky situation. Possessing too much sensitive knowledge for one who was not in an inner circle of coordination on this. It was not unusual for someone in this position to disappear or to be jailed on spurious charges. This risk was the price we listed class pay for our privileges. We serve and live at someone’s pleasure. Probably the best I could hope for was a remote posting where I would be out of communication with others. This wasn’t the network age, everyone was confined to a small social scene both digitally and IRL without unvetted contact of their organization. For me, a listed it was different. I had family all over, some in high places, and a freedom to move around, besides my work and my neighborhood.
I was happy to receive orders at the end of the “quarantine”. It might be a ruse for easy disposal of a loose security thread, but most likely it was the distant posting. What would it be? Assigned to an ice ball listening post, that was in conjunction with earth only once a decade?
It was a remote base. I was supposed to join a group called the long-range patrol. There were few other details. Included were the tickets. I hadn’t talked much with either Wynne or my contact from the engineer’s mate. I didn’t want to risk my shaky status rubbing off on them. I was happy to find them waiting for the same transport and headed to the same place.
The journey was hellish. Multiple changes, and two different legs over 20 hours in an aircraft. Military transport never put a premium on comfort and most of the legs were on military craft. It was remote, what could one expect.
The base was cloaked in shadow. It was a tidal locked world with the base set on a high tabletop island sticking out of a placid ocean. On the ground the sky was a deep green, palpably radiating warmth. But the sun itself was hidden, forever just beyond the horizon, only the last few rays and glow of sunset could be seen.
I was pleased to see that it had substantial dock facilities. Maybe this wasn’t the dead-end assignment that I had feared. They had intake briefing setup for us, but they were waiting for a few more transfers to do it. That meant we had the luxury of a full day and a half with nothing to do. I started the work of untying the knots in my muscles and restoring their tone. I did this by spending time in the Gym and taking walks and lots of diffracted sunlight from the sky.
Wynne was an enthusiastic gym partner. She was not lying about her squat strength. She could squat almost two and a half times her body weight and she was solidly built. She beat me on squat but I was ahead on body fat and on the clean and jerk which was my favorite. I wasn’t big into strength training but working up to a big set of those, and the occasional 300 meter sprint kept me satisfied with my fitness.
Justiani, the engineer, liked to go on expeditions to explore the world. The one and a half day of waiting turned into five, one day at a time. He organized the trips and Wynne and I would go along. This was mostly trails over the edge. The real find was a route down to a narrow gravelly beach. We were cautioned about the agressive and poisionus sea life, so we didn’t go out into the ocean. I wasn’t sure how beaches would form in a tidal locked world, but I suppose it’s not just tides that wear down the coastline.
I wondered if the green sky was beautiful as we got used to it. Justiani said that it was because of the high oxygen and water content in the air. Wynne though the sun must be a different color than ours, and that might be the reason for the sky color.
Sooner than I would have liked the shuttle arrived with a large group of transfers from earth. At orientation we were briefed that we would be manning a ‘long cruiser’. It was designed to operate away from base and resupply for very long periods of time. It would be used to explore deep beyond the lines of contact with the enemy. It was extra-long and slender. Beautiful, as far as ships go.
The plan was for an experimental ship type to augment the cruisers capacity and also resupply it far from base. These would be a squadron of ukranoplans, a type of seaplane that skimmed above the waves as much as flew using ground effect. It had two hulls that it could use to land and take off from the water catamaran style. It had a nuclear reactor and also used standard aviation fuel with a mix of electric and combustion jet engines. These ships were designed as haulers but with an easily adaptable hold. It could carry cargo, vertical launch cells or even serve as an aircraft carrier for a handful of aircraft. Because of its top speed near 800 clicks it could haul launch and recover the ultracruise fighter whose engines was optimized for ultracruise (approximately Mach 2.6 cruising speed without afterburner, earth).
The ultracruise had the longest range and the best speed but their power at low speed was poor. They had swing wings to compensate for low speed, but they still needed a lot of runway to take off or land - unless their carrier already was doing the speed for them. A large part of the preparation for our long cruise would be developing procedures for taking off and landing high craft at high speeds.
I got my assignment after the orientation. The XO explained that there was not enough personnel for me to hold only one role and given the long cruise time people needed to be trained to cover any personnel losses. I would be an officer aboard the long cruiser and would be in intensive 12+ hour a day remote learning. Unless I preferred to refuse my commission, the XO added, not bothering to conceal his hopefulness at that prospect.
No, I said, I accept the commission. If I was going to be banished to nowhere far better to be on adventure and learning something, than wasting away in boredom
Wynne was not happy about being confined aboard a small ship. She liked big social scenes, big enough to be anonymous when she wanted, and also being outdoors.
Justiani was ecstatic about the assignment. New toys. On my only free time he dragged me to go look at the Lueka ultracruise fighters. They had the sleek and angular look of stealth aircraft, but with bulky shoulders. He told methe bulky shoulders were required for the wings to be able to sweep and get the best performance at high speeds. I noticed the craft still had their manufacturers marking, which was in the western script. I had learned it but was not fluent so I puzzled it out F-40 Bobcat it said. Justiani noticed my gaze and told me that the New World still had the best fighters even after their plague and chaos years at the end of the network era, and even though they weren’t part of the off-world Authority or one world government, they would readily sell them to the authority, provided they stayed off world.
Justiani was even more enthusiastic about the ukranoplans. We went down to the dock on the busy side of the island, away from the beach. It was a massive hulk in the dim light. Justiani said it displaced much less than ship, that a lot of its apparent size was the floats and empty space under the hold. The whole thing was a flying wing he said, with a disc-oidal wingform. He told me the jet engines were a mix of electric running off the small onboard nuclear generator and avgas. He told me that they had onboard plants to process seawater into avgas when they were docked, using the electricity generated by the reactor.
