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  “Helm port two-five pitch minus four zero, activate! Tubewall to maximum depth! Eyes, launch a mailtube on my signal. We don’t know what we’ve found, but we know NavInt wants to know about it!”

  “Already feeding sensor data to the mailtube, Sir… holding for launch on your A2 panel, tube one,” said Doris. Funny how quickly military formality returns when they start shooting at us, Kirrah thought, as she swept the ship around to their new course.

  “Spitballs loading in tubes two and four, Sir,” Kirrah added, attempting to anticipate the next orders. A faint rumbling vibration echoed through the scoutship’s frame as servos pulled the chubby 1.5 meter weapons from the magazine just behind the bow, and trundled them to the adjacent launch tubes. Another snick sound from the starboard manlift marked another arrival.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant Roehl. I have the conn. Howell, please take the weapons board,” said the deeper voice of Captain Leitch as he strode onto the bridge. Kirrah always found the presence of the stocky, competent captain reassuring, and something tight between her shoulder blades unclenched a notch or two as he settled his muscular frame into the command chair. Sorry we bothered your sleep, Sir, part of her mind whimpered irrationally. And how did you get here so fast? Sammy was working just one level down, did you sleep in uniform?

  “Helm. Please load two Spoofs in tube three, and queue three more mailtubes to launch at opportunity… anyone know who’s out there?” Silence answered, all eyes on the main display tank watching hostile missile tracks converge on their old trajectory.

  The tracks, unfortunately, from the moment they’d gone up-Tube, were only their own computer’s projections. The good news and the bad news about engagements between FTL vessels, was that no signal from normal space could reach a ship while she was under Tubedrive. However, as long as the missiles themselves stayed sub-light, they could track the Arvida-Yee just fine by her drive’s gravity waves. While sub-c they couldn’t catch her, but with a little foresight they could arrange to be in her path… as at least one was very likely to do - that was an excellent missile spread, ahead of them.

  Seconds oozed by. The atmosphere on the bridge thickened with anticipation. The red lines on the display reached the green cone representing their available course changes, moved deeper into it. More seconds. Suddenly yellow lights flared on everyone’s boards. Their Tubedrive staggered briefly, then resumed its resonant hum. Outside the small ship, a vicious sleet of hard gamma photons and subatomic particles was swept into the gravity well of the Tubefield, around the ship, and ejected in a spectacular glowing roostertail that would finally fade into a five thousand kilometer plume of weightless embers behind them.

  “Kruss! That was a Kruss warhead!”

  “I know, Lieutenant Finch, I know… wonder what our friends are doing ‘way out here. Ready with the Spitballs… and let’s give them a Spoof to play with at the same time. Might cover the mailtube launch when we dip in for a moment. Helm, starboard 5, plus 20, continue accel.”

  Another sudden angry flare of yellow, another moan from their drive generator. This time two amber lights remained on Engineering’s board. “On it!” said Sammy at Engineering, and Lt. Commander Docking from the Weapons board, at the same time. Both men queried the ship’s AI for the exact damage. Sammy spoke first: “No problem, shunt three down, isolating… clear!”

  “Captain to all hands. Alright, people, we’ve found a Kruss vessel where they’ve never been before. We’re going to drop sub-cee for exactly three seconds. We will launch two mailtubes on random evasions, two Spit-5 seeker missiles, and a Spoof. We will acquire maximum sensor data, return to Tubespace and run like hell. Anyone see a problem with that?”

  More silence, as the bridge crew reflected on the fact that there was no Kruss warship known which could match their speed, nor one that would even break a sweat, converting a Regnum scoutship into a relativistic ball of incandescent plasma, if it came to a standup fight. No more yellow lights, the one missile spread seemed to be it…

  Thirty seconds later, forty… Kirrah dialed back the Tubefield, everyone else’s eyes glued to the main tank. They slipped into normal space, heard the thuk-clang as the ready tubes flushed their loads, a light rumble and another clang as the second mailtube cycled out tube one. They fled back into trans-light on schedule, changed course again. The display showed the green tracks of their outgoing missiles, the destination system a few light-hours ahead, and nothing else at all.

  Their immediate tactical problem was that their active Tubedrive was showing up like a beacon on any Kruss vessel’s sensors. While the Kruss stayed sub-c, they could track the Arvida-Yee in Tubedrive, and until the enemy warship lit its own drive, it was as good as invisible on whatever ballistic trajectory it was following, even if the Regnum vessel unTubed to look for it. No modern warship was so foolishly designed as to reflect active radar pulses.

  Run and show or see and slow, those were the rules of Tubespace engagements… and ‘see’ meant not ‘what’s happening now’, but whatever laggard light and grav waves finally told, minutes or hours late, of the enemy’s distant actions. The Academy’s Tactical instructor had called it ‘Hobson’s Rules of Naval Engagement’. At the moment, Kirrah called it unfair.

  “Course, Sir?” Damn the dry throat. And how did Captain Leitch sound so calm? And why did everything look so clear and sharp?

  “Eh? Yes, Lieutenant Roehl, a very good question. I would seriously like to know what’s happened to our attackers.” Captain Leitch’s fingers drummed on the armrest. She could see his jaw clenching, unclenching, in sync with the fingers. When he did that in a chess game, it usually meant he was considering a gambit.

  “How many Spoofs left?”

  “Four, Sir, and eight more mailtubes.” The ‘Spoofs’ were small missiles similar to the mailtubes, but carried sophisticated ECM warheads capable of imitating the grav-wave signature of most vessels, including scoutships like Arvida-Yee.

  “Very good, Helm. Maintain course six minutes, then bring us back on course to, ahhh, S22041, plus 3 degrees pitch.” Captain Leitch noticed Master Chief Sammy Lee trade an uneasy glance with Lieutenant Sykes in the hatchway, where he had materialized some time in the last few minutes. “Yes, gentlemen, we don’t know where the bogie is, so running one way is just as good as running another. This way we’ll pass close enough to our objective to at least check for hablets.”

  More minutes crawled past.

  “Helm, at the course correction, hold us sub-cee and run out a sensor pod. I want to know what they’re up to,” said Captain Leitch. “And prepare another Spoof to launch on our present heading. Maybe we can decoy them if they’re still chasing. Guns, set up four more Spits. Let’s see how those new Mark Fives perform in ambush mode.”

  “Sir”.

  “Aye, Sir”.

  With fingers steadier than she felt, Kirrah dialed the Tubefield down, and with it the Arvida-Yee’s virtual velocity. Their second-last sensor pod spooled out on its cable, extending beyond the Tubefield and greedily gathering photons and gravitons from the Siderial universe. The soft whirring of the air ventilator suddenly sounded very loud. In a moment the main display showed the sun ahead of them, and no gravtrace at all.

  “Helm, launch our Spoof, then give me that course change. Make our speed point two cees ballistic, then down drive. It’s his turn to wonder where we are. Guns, drop those four Spits, silent launch, minimal spread. Eyes, I need to know what happened back there, soonest.”

  “Aye, Sir, it’ll be… two hundred ten minutes,” responded Doris. Their brief FTL sprint had put the Arvida-Yee that far ahead of any possible lightspeed sensor readings of their first brief engagement.

  Kirrah played over her console. The Freefall alarm buzzed briefly; the small ship lurched, steadied; the Tubedrive died with a whisper and they fell, now weightless and silent, toward the distant sun. Kirrah felt her limbs lose their weight, lap and shoulder restraints snug automatically to cradle her body against the contoured
seat.

  On the main display tank, their Spoof missile raced off along their original course, its grav track looking for all the world like a Survey Scoutship resuming course after a quick stop to check sensor readings. Behind it, four lethal Spit-5 seeker missiles drifted stealthed and silent, their AI’s patiently watching for the gravitics signature that would indicate a hostile vessel’s Tubedrive.

  “Captain to all hands: if you’re not on the bridge, you can stand down to Condition Alpha Two. Ladies and gentlemen, this may be a long day. Would someone please bring sandwiches and caffi to the Bridge crew, ahhh, Angie or Harrah, if you can?”

  “I’m on it, Cap!” Even over the intercom, Lieutenant Angela Foley’s voice sounded soothing and sweet, like the star of some 3V show. It was probably part of the reason Angie did so well in First Contact missions, at least with those species capable of hearing sounds. Her looks didn’t hurt either: most sapient species appreciated, at least aesthetically, her smooth, perfect symmetry and graceful lines. Somehow, Angie just makes everyone around her look plain, thought Kirrah a few minutes later, as she gratefully accepted a sandwich and a bulb of the hot stimulant beverage.

  More minutes passed. Plus, she considered wryly, Angie’s disposition was so naturally sunny and cheerful, no one could even resent her stunning good looks... it just wasn't fair. Amazing, thought a small corner of Kirrah’s mind – we are running for our lives in a cat and mouse game with a Kruss warship that probably outmasses us a thousand to one, and I’m sitting here eating hamlette and cheese and speculating about hypothetical competition for hypothetical mates. Focus, Kirrah! Focus!

  Suddenly the Display alarm pinged, causing her to flinch sharply. A scarlet line traced across the display from below, slightly left of their course.

  “Relax, people,” said Lt. Commander Docking from the Weapons board. “They’re shooting blind just to rattle us.”

  Then it’s working, thought Kirrah. Even though the only tracks they could pick up on passive sensors were from something running in Tubedrive, which meant they were seeing where it had been, err, (glance at the display)… nineteen seconds ago.

  We’re not supposed to be fighting, she grumbled silently. We’re a Survey ship! If I’d wanted fighting I would’ve joined the real Navy! With nothing to do at the moment but worry, her mind obligingly offered up variations on a theme of doom.

  I wonder if the alarm has time to sound, when a ship eats a missile? …or would it be more correct to say ‘when a missile eats a ship’? I wonder if you have time to feel anything? I wonder if a body’s atoms tend to stay in the same part of the plasma cloud, or if everyone’s all mix… Lieutenant! Put a PLUG in it! Focus!

  More minutes passed. Smalltalk stuttered and died. An hour. The Display alarm pinged again, Kirrah jumped again. Nervous? Who, me? The main display showed what had already happened, fourteen light-minutes in their past: a solid red line indicating a hostile Tubedrive, well back and tracking their earlier course. Two thinner red lines marked the tracks of something, probably sensor drones, diverging like seeking arms. Kirrah felt the small hairs on her forearms prickle as eight more thin missile trails lit out after their Spoof, and four more after the two mailtubes they had launched at the last course change. Lieutenant Finch flicked a brief, wide-eyed grimace at Kirrah. Yeah, Kirrah agreed mentally, they must want us pretty bad…

  All eyes followed the hostile red line as it approached the silent green sparks of their passive missiles, waiting… Simultaneously all four Spit-5’s lit their drives, converging faster than light on their target. Telemetry analysis gave the details of the one-tenth second dance: two of their missiles switched to Tubefield-attack mode, pouring their entire generating capacity into destabilizing the target’s Tubewalls, ravening their field intensities in a few microseconds of deadly whipsaw feedback as the Kruss drive fought to stabilize. And stabilize it did, but not before the other two seekers detected fleeting openings in the target’s Tubewall, and plunged into the ragged gaps faster than any sensor could follow. Once inside, the deadly seekers simply collapsed their Tubefields at maximum intensity, instantly converting their 80-kilo mass into microscopic black holes moving at near-lightspeed, and within the Kruss warship’s protective field.

  Black holes this tiny emit all their mass as fierce Hawking radiation in less than a microsecond, but with the time dilation travelling at 0.99c, they cover five to ten kilometers as they die. In effect, a fifteen hundred megaton nuclear bomb with a fireball 200 meters wide and ten kilometers long, and an appetite voracious as flame in a dry forest, for consuming any matter in its path.

  With destruction arriving scant nanoseconds behind any possible detection, point defenses had no chance at all. The Kruss Tubedrive snapped off like a switch thrown, its red trace ending abruptly in the center of the four-branched green star of their converging missile tracks.

  Into the stunned silence, Lt. Finch touched another key and spoke softly: “Optical…” and the display filled with the replay in visible light: a sudden blue-white flare and fading yellow cloud, as Kruss hullmetal and once-organic residue cycled up to half a million degrees Kelvin and began to cool, on the long slow fall to cosmic background temperature. Loud cheers echoed faintly down the open manlift from the offshift crew, watching on the rec-room display five levels forward. The Arvida-Yee fell onward toward the sun S22041.

  “Very good, Commander Docking. That was well done, everyone,” said Captain Leitch. “Maintain gravitics silence. I want to know at least one mailtube made it away. ‘Eyes’, let me know when we get that data. And what’s our particle influx?”

  “At current rate we’re good for another ten hours, Sir. That’s allowing for a denser solar wind as we pass periastron, assuming no Tubewall.” The Captain nodded, balancing the beating they’d take from running onto stray atoms at one-fifth lightspeed, with the risk of lighting their Tubedrive again, which would both shield them and make them visible to any other grav sensors in the system.

  Over an hour later, the light and gravity waves from their first hostile contact finally caught up to the Arvida-Yee’s sensors. Lieutenant Finch bent intently over her board, analyzing the data.

  “Inconclusive, Sir,” she said. “Here’s all we got…” On the display tank, one corner showed a playback of the sensor data from their first missile salvo. “Our first Spoof was intercepted here,” her cursor touched a short green line connected to a thin red one. “The first two Spitballs failed to penetrate,” …another two green lines, ending on the thicker red one, “…and the Kruss launched here and here, you can see their seekers’ve acquired our mailtubes, but they’ll all be well out of scan range before any possible intercept.”

  In the computer-versus-computer shell game that would follow, each missile would try to outguess the other, the targets trying their best to zig and zag without revealing their destination’s true bearing, and trying to be somewhere else when the pursuers caught up. The odds slightly favored a speedy escape, but a bit of bad luck or a malfunction could easily doom either messenger missile, leaving NavInt ignorant of their encounter and the unexpected Kruss presence.

  “Damn!” said Master Chief Sammy Lee, who had taken over the Weapons board during their prolonged wait. “That means we’ve still got the ball…”

  “Just so, Sammy,” said the Captain. Kirrah noticed herself relaxing a little at the informality – if Captain Leitch was back on a first-name basis, then his instincts were that the immediate danger was over.

  “We’ll maintain battle stations and wear survival suits, until we’ve made a pass through the system.” Several groans wafted back from the forward compartments. “I know the suits are uncomfortable for so long, you sailors can thank me later. Doris, I want you to send a sensor drone ahead on a ballistic trajectory, close pass over the star’s north pole. No Tubedrives, y’hear? Totally grav-passive, railgun launch, tightbeam the data back to us. Set it up with Kirrah. Oh, and deadman it back to NavInt”.

  “Aye, Sir”. Hmm, no ‘
on it, Cap’, apparently Doris was not yet back to first-name comfort levels. Captain Leitch’s ‘deadman’ order, to send the drone home automatically if they failed to recall it, was simple prudence. Kirrah thoughtfully rotated the ship side-on, presenting optimal angle for the railgun launch. She watched Doris’ fingers flying over her board, setting up the drone’s mission parameters. A tiny worry line furrowed Lieutenant Finch’s smooth brow as she flicked an imaginary wisp of dark hair from her face. Then the characteristic pause as she double-checked her work. No Fleet sailor wanted to make the mistake that could bring her ship and crew to grief, and you could never tell how trivial that mistake would look as it was being made. Doris was very good at her job, Kirrah thought – that drone would do exactly what they wanted it to.

  “Railgun launch in five… three, two, one…” Krangggg! The whole ship rang like a struck gong, as the intense and intricate magnetic fields of her main railgun accelerated the hundred-kilo reconnaissance drone to 15 kilometers per second in the length of its six-meter launchtube.

  “Drone’s away, Cap!” said Lieutenant Finch, a little redundantly.

  “Thank you, Eyes,” replied Captain Leitch. “Report as available.”

  “Aye, Sir: we’re already in the Oort belt, nothing special, just a few rocks… looks like two gas giants and two iceballs, nothing in the water zone, yet.” The ‘water zone’: that not-too-hot, not-too-cold magic ring around a sun, where life could gather like hunters around a campfire, backs to the endless dark.

  The Arvida-Yee fell inward at 20 percent lightspeed, dropping like a stone thrown from Kirrah’s last course change, passive sensors alive. No grav signature, no emissions at all, a mote lost in the millions of objects small and large scattered through the immense volume around a star. An even smaller mote, her drone sped on ahead, gradually widening the distance between them. Three more hours passed.