Misjump Read online

  “Fairly sure. To be honest, I am not that concerned about his safety. We blew up dozens of his buddies and he was firing at us. If he survives, great. If he doesn’t, sucks to be him,” came the reply.

  “Okay. Seems a bit cold but we didn’t put him in that state. How is the scanning going?” typed Lori.

  “Tricky. Where he is alive, things move, and I have to track them and alter the scan record as I go. It is doable, but I have had to write tracking software, and it is not running as smooth as I would like. I have to patch the glitches as I go.” The text appeared instantly, the overhead being orders of magnitude less than a full simulation.

  “I don’t know how you can scan a living organism non-destructively. Don’t the nanites need to go into him?” asked Lori.

  “Non-destructive is a relative term. I am taking things apart and putting them back together again when they are mapped. Johnie boy hasn’t reacted, so I don’t think it hurts. Everything should still work afterwards. It is not like there isn’t a lot of damage anyhow and his self-repair systems seem pretty good. I think it will be okay.”

  “He is healing quick enough for you to see?” asked Lori.

  “I wouldn’t call it healing. I don’t know how people are supposed to work, but this isn’t it,” read the reply.

  “How long before the scan is complete?” asked Lori.

  “Sooner if I am not answering questions. I will call you as soon as it is done, okay?”

  “Okay. Sorry,” typed Lori and sat back, wincing at her bruises. Gregor had been in a hurry to get her out.

  Gregor sat a few feet away, remote piloting a drone. Multiple displays showed the same view in visible light, IR, and microwave radar. The drone was just entering the hole in the hull of the greenie ship. The rest of the crew were watching on repeater screens. “Lori, I think you should see this,” said Gregor.

  Lori came to stand beside him. The view tipped and jerked as the long-legged drone navigated through the cavern where the engine had been, the space seeming huge from the cameras of the small drone. It launched towards the corridor. Gregor corrected its path with touches of the attitude thrusters. It slowed and hovered in front of the buckled wall before turning, the pilot’s fingers making delicate movements on the joysticks. The drone headed towards the corridor, the vacuum grainy with whatever had spilt through the door. The drone flew on into the denser darkness and the camera adjusted, the black mass resolving into blurred specks. The IR grew cloudy, the particles relatively warm, but the microwave plot remained clear.

  Gregor switched the radar feed to the primary display. The opening that he had cut was a large dark hole with the wall reflecting brightly. The drone drifted towards the hole, moving slowly. A grid started to form, loosely aligned squares with circular masses in the centre and Gregor stopped the small robot and called up the scanner menu. The radar built up a higher resolution scan, combining layers and scans together to pick out the details. The squares were the end of long cages that held cylinders, ghost images of electronics and pipes under some sort of cover. Thick bands of fabric or mesh connected the frames, and a suggestion of gear wheels was visible at the edge of the scan. They all stared at the image.

  Jax was the first to speak. “A belt-fed missile launcher? I have never heard of one of those. What kind of crazy would you have to be to make one?”

  Gregor shrugged. “Whole ship is screwed up. Why would you make it disposable?”

  Mellin said, “When you don’t have a military, but you are faced with a military threat, you use what you have. In a time of no oxen, cows may plough a field. Perhaps this is a warship made by people who are not warriors.”

  “If I was dealing with an enemy that could take over my body, I don’t think that I would want to get anywhere near them. This could make a kind of sense,” said Lori

  “Da, makes sense. Not greenie made, but they can use what they find. What was the greenie at the desk for though? There is no way to pilot that thing that I can see,” said Gregor.

  “I would guess that he was the engineer. If the ship is designed to be self-directing, there may be no way to give it orders except from the console,” said Meilin.

  “If they have never designed a ship before, how did they make one that could take a steel slug travelling at that speed?” asked Jax.

  “Good question,” said Gregor, and nudged the drone forward. When it reached the frame, it folded its legs in to fit, self-correcting as it touched the frame. It came to the end of the metalwork and stopped, rebounding slightly. The radar showed darkness ahead and Gregor switched back to the visual feed. There was tightly woven cloth ahead of the small machine, tears in the fabric leaking the black grains that they had seen before. “Some kind of kinetic absorber? Must have worked good. Ever see this, Jax?”

  “No, can’t say that I have. There is probably more structure to it, and this is just a layer, but it works well. I would like to see what the black stuff is though,” said Jax.

  “Yes, me too. Will not be a problem. Put double-sided tape on drone. Will have sample.” Gregor looked at the time display in the corner of the screen. “Is little over two hours since the fight. If the greenies had a relay, they would have seen, but maybe not have relay because why come with only part of fleet? Maybe a scout or something but nothing big or they would have used it, I think. Will check in with other Rockhammers.” He got up and headed for the cockpit.

  #

  Lori went back to her console and started typing. “How is it going?”

  “Good in general. The scan is going better if that is what you are asking. I found the bug that was slowing up the tracking, and I should be done in about fifty minutes. Do you want to put our guest on ice for me? I can try it with a drone but they are not built for this work, and you have already been exposed to him,” read the reply.

  “It should be okay if I am suited and if we use a UV flood. He will be not be burned too badly if I am quick,” typed Lori.

  “Given the scars that I am seeing, a little sunburn is not going to be the worst radiation problem he has. You are going to want to keep that suit on for multiple reasons,” replied Fumi.

  Lori sighed. “Right. I will get something to eat and head over,” she typed.

  “Beats me how you can eat then do medical stuff,” commented Fumi.

  “Practice,” replied Lori. “When you are a junior doctor, you eat when you can and sleep when you can. The squeamish get over it or starve.”

  “Loving the digital life,” replied Fumi.

  Putting the greenie into cold sleep should have been simple enough. Like the girl in the autopsy, he was thin almost to the point of starvation and slight of stature, possibly as a result of poor nutrition during development, although his brain size was about average. If it was starvation, it didn’t start until the body was mainly developed as far as Lori could tell. She measured his vitals and they were off from what she would have hoped to see. His blood had fatigue toxins and an elevated white cell count as if he had an infection. His temperature was also elevated, but a rapid scan discovered nothing bacterial in his bloodstream and an impoverished set of gut flora. She was reasonably sure that it wouldn’t kill him in cold sleep. She took a blood sample, looking at his face as she did so. His eyes were open, and she could see that he was focussing on whatever was in front of him, but there was no apparent intellectual or emotional reaction. She thought for a minute and then opened a channel to Fumi, this time using voice from her vacuum suit. “Hey, Fumi, the simulation of John Doe here, could I run an EKG on him and get lifelike results? I don’t know how exact the copy will be.”

  “He is scanned down to the molecular level. I didn’t want to miss anything. Whatever the meat one does, so the does VR one. However, the VR can be restored from backup and is in a sandbox so if you want to do anything risky, better to use the copy than the master,” replied Fumi.

  Lori nodded slowly. “Okay, that makes sense.” She prepared the greenie for storage, adjusting the tank for
the peculiarities of his metabolism. He was emitting low-level radiation at a rate that had to be harmful, but there was very little that she could do about that. She allowed for the small heating effect that it would have and started the initialisation sequence on the hypersleep capsule. They could be used in automatic mode, but the expert systems didn’t always make the best decisions when the sleeper was not exactly a standard model. She watched his vitals fall as the cooling systems brought his core temperature down, complex organics preventing ice formation and preserving cell integrity. Slowly, the vital sign indicators went to green across the board. He was down. She slid the filter gel over her helmet and asked Fumi to start the UV purge. The main lights dimmed, invisible high energy photons sterilising every surface.

  Chapter 25

  Gregor opened the shared channel. “All ships, please to acknowledge with ship’s name.” One after another, each of the Rockhammers acknowledged followed by “Foehammer, acknowledge.” The voice was clearly Ivo’s.

  “Foehammer? Really?” asked Gregor.

  “Has to have a name and it goes with the Rockhammers,” replied Ivo.

  Gregor shrugged. “Whatever. Tromp, Fist, and Blade in that order, how are the repairs going?” he asked.

  “Sarafina, this is Tromp. We have some manoeuvre drive back but repairs are going slowly. Turns out that the damage control systems took a lot, so it is trying to pull itself up by its bootstraps. We should be fully operational in about seventy-two to eighty hours. Right now, we have nothing we can do but ram if anyone shows up.”

  Gregor acknowledged and waited for the next ship.

  “Fist to Sarafina. We are back in the green. It looks like some things just got jarred loose, but some percussive maintenance got them back. The hull is messy, but it is all surface damage. No problems here.”

  “And Blade, report,” said Gregor.

  “Roger that, Sarafina. The warp drive is toast. The AI is regrowing it, but it will take at least a week. Everything else is online, but we have serious computer issues. We can regrow the drive or have AI support, but it can’t do both. We would be able to fight or run, but we will be stuck in-system for a while.”

  “Thank you, Blade. Other ships will be able to loan processing power. Foehammer, status please.” He was sure that he would come to hate the name.

  “Greg—Sarafina, this is the Foehammer. We have a generator up and running and Meilin has some control over the onboard computer. Jax and I have managed to flush most of the carbon-based particles out of the missile bay, and about half of the load could be fired if needed. We think that the in-system drive was next to the main reactor, but there isn’t enough left to be sure. This thing is not moving under its own power. We can get it to fight as long as the enemy is dead ahead and doesn’t move.”

  “Da, okay, not so good. Tromp and Blade, I want you to guard the jump point and the missile launcher. Nimitz, I want you over at the other jump point so that we don’t get surprises. Fist, Sarafina and Iron Maid are going to go in-system to scout. Only engage if you are certain that you can win and scuttle rather than allow selves to be captured, yes? Plenty of room on other ships for crew. Dead heroes not needed, yes?” said Gregor.

  “Uh, boss, this is Pieter on the Blade. You said in training that jump points don’t move much, yes?”

  “Yes. Years to drift at all. What is point?” asked Gregor.

  “Well, that is something that it has in common with the Foehammer there. Why don’t we push Foehammer into position and use it to make life hard for anything that jumps in?” asked the copilot of the Blade.

  Gregor thought for a few seconds. “Is not bad idea. Okay, do that and let all of us know if problem. Smart.” He looked down at the screen. “So, Iron Maid makes closest pass and if attacked, well, no-one on board and can avoid capture, no problem. Sarafina is next closest and Fist, I want you watching my ass.” He ignored the chuckle that came over the radio. “We are looking, yes, but not looking for a fight. We do not want to cause problems for the damaged ships, but if we need to run, we run. Ships are cheap for us and pilots expensive. If they are not making ships then for them, ships expensive but pilots cheap. We use that, yes?”

  “You reckon that we will meet any more greenie ships as we go in-system?” The speaker didn’t identify himself.

  “Maybe, but only way to know is to look. The two ships that met us say that they expected that we might come calling, but they didn’t think that we would be many, they didn’t think that we would be strong. I make the call when we see something. If unarmed, good. If armed, we decide then. If we see no ships, we see if ground defences waiting,” said Gregor. “Any questions?”

  “This is Fist. Any vector that you want to keep me on your ass or am I eyeballing it?” asked the radio. Gregor recognised the voice as Van der Meer, who was piloting that ship.

  “Fumi, course please,” said Gregor and the navigation console lit up with a curving path. It would take them past the planet in the habitable zone fast and close. He reached out and saw that there were options for a slingshot to brake and a different vector to escape. He grunted, impressed by her work.

  “And keep your eyes off my ass, okay?” came Fumi’s voice over the comm.

  “Roger!” said several voices, overlapping.

  “So, trip to Ironstone is three days but two because we are going to use gravity braking. Distance to jump point is eight light hours. If you need us, will be delay, yes?” said Gregor.

  “Why are we sticking so close to Iron Maid anyhow?” asked Van Der Meer.

  “Speed of light again,” answered Fumi. “The further away, the slower the data transfer and we want to gather as much data from it as we can and control the ship if there is any kind of reaction from the planet. Okay, everything should be recorded, but that only helps us if we get the ship back.”

  “And the greenie is on that ship. Lori is going to want to take a look at him and see if there is anything that we can do,” said Gregor.

  “No problem, I have his scan backed up here. I am pretty sure that we can rebuild him if we need to,” said Fumi.

  “Am not so sure that is the same,” said Gregor.

  “You don’t want to go there. Trust me on this,” said Fumi, her voice flat. “Okay, everyone ready?” Gregor and Van Der Meer agreed. “Let’s do this!”

  The ships approached the planet fast, too quick for the normal braking and landing approach. They would skim over the atmosphere with the Iron Maid lowest, both to get better sensor data and to attract any weapons fire. Only the unmanned ship would be using active scanning with the others keeping power and communications to a minimum, their paths ballistic. They would use gravity braking with only the Iron Maid low enough to experience much heating.

  Gregor sat in the pilot’s chair while Fumi sat in a VR replica of a cockpit. It was not quite standard since it didn’t have to be. Very few physical ships had an overstuffed armchair and potted plants in the cockpit. All of the control systems on the Iron Maid were slaved to their virtual counterparts. Ironstone turned under the ships, the night side dotted with streams of lights, clusters like galaxies where the cities were, but only the seas were really dark. Gregor keyed the comm to speak to Fumi.

  “Are you getting more detail? It looks like whole land surface is covered. Population is listed as three billion. That not looking like three billion to me!”

  “I think that our records are badly out of date, but I don’t think that is all city. The lights are too regular outside of the known population centres. They don’t look right for industrial or residential either,” said Fumi.

  “Maybe we just don’t know how greenies do it. Do known cities look too big to you?” asked Gregor.

  “Yup. They are certainly way larger than I was expecting. We are coming up on where Tamworth spaceport should be, and it will be a bit to the south of us. If we are going to get spotted, that is where I would expect it to come from,” said Fumi.

  “Not scanned yet? I would have expect
ed something,” said Gregor.

  “Not a thing. No satellites either. They don’t seem to be maintaining infrastructure.”

  “Must be generating a lot of power from the amount of light,” said Gregor.

  “Yup. No radio comms though. I guess that we will find out soon,” said Fumi.

  “Da, we will. We will not like what we are finding, I think.”

  “Damn straight,” said Fumi.

  The ships passed near the spaceport without any apparent scan and on over a large ocean that Gregor had chosen for insertion. The human-crewed ships passed higher, letting the gravity swing them around and spread them on different but carefully plotted parabolic orbits. As soon as they had the correct vector, each ship shut down their drives and ran dark. Only the Iron Maid entered the atmosphere, braking hard with its drive to limit the hull heating. It used the additional manoeuvrability that the reduced weight offered. It would still be obvious on infrared, but there was nothing to suggest that anyone was looking. There had been little traffic observable during the approach and it had all been bulk carriers on road or rail. They had not been able to tell what was in the carriers from space. That was the Iron Maid’s job. The crewless ship slipped down through the atmosphere until it was just above the waves. The heavy swell looked oily even through the ship’s image intensifiers. Slowly, the Iron Maid dropped down until it touched the water, down further until the water humped like a shell over its hull, and then deeper still until it was hidden from sight and radar. The radio contact with the other ships failed, but that was expected. The autopilot had been very carefully programmed. The Iron Maid headed for the shore, its pace a crawl after the dash in-system.

  Fumi popped up on several monitors back on the Sarafina. “Okay, well, that is the last that we will hear from the surface for a while. Everything looked good though.”

  “Da, nice work,” commented Gregor.

  Lori looked up from her tablet, “Yes, great. How is our passenger in cold sleep?” she asked.

  “Cold, slightly radioactive, and probably smelly,” said Fumi.