Misjump Read online

  “Fumi, can you conference us please?” he asked the empty air. Images from the other ships appeared on monitors around the walls. “Meilin, chair us please.” His words were polite and his tone was level, but there was no doubt that it was an order. She nodded curtly.

  “Defence force, I call the meeting to order.” She knew that the name was pretentious, but Gregor had been clear that the group needed an identity. There was no need to ask for order. Everyone was already waiting silently. “The first item on the agenda is a situation briefing from Gregor. Sir, you have the floor.” The title was for show, but the respect was genuine. She had known the pilot for years, but the events of the past few months had shown her a very different side of her friend and colleague.

  Gregor leaned forward, presenting himself well to what he hoped was the active camera. “We are in good state of readiness for anything that comes through the jump point. Better than I had expected. You have all, every one of you, shone. You have made me proud.

  “We do not know when retaliation will come, but it will come. We have taken this system from them. While they still control planet, we control the space it is in and could wipe all life from it if we chose. No opponent can let us hold it unopposed. The first strike back could be in an hour or so and, if it comes, it will be something that we can defeat. They might have a few smaller ships and perhaps a ship of the line at Neuholme. We are well deployed, and they would have to run a gauntlet of debris, lasers, fast rocks, and guided missiles to push us out. If we stand, they cannot do it with anticipated strength.

  “The longer we have to wait for them, the more that they can bring to party but the more that we can prepare. We are in good position, and we will make them pay. If we fall back, we fall back in good order. If we jump out, we jump to position that the greenies have never broken. Being here is a victory, and we can make them hurt.

  “In next few hours, we should have Tromp back, maybe reinforcements too. We will use them to strengthen our position. The greenies beat humanity before, but we have another hundred years of technology now. They can’t know what we can do. When they come, we will show them. We hold this space. We work to hold the planet too. Make no mistake. We are not the defenders here. We are the aggressors, and they do not know what they are facing. Our next steps are to keep what we have taken and reclaim the planet. Dr Lori Hernadez and Ms Fumi Takahashi have a report for us. If there are questions, we will take at end, yes?”

  Meilin nodded. “When you are ready please, ladies.”

  Lori was the first to speak. “We have been studying the greenie that we captured on the missile boat, both in VR and, to the extent possible, in cold sleep. There seems to be a very good match between the two, and we are confident that what we are seeing is what there is. We believe that we have a fair understanding of what we are up against. Every greenie is a host and a parasite. The host is often human in form but doesn’t have to be. For reasons that will become apparent soon, there is a practical minimum size for the host. The parasites are … well, not alive in a conventional sense. They are around ten microns across and gain their energy from very short wavelength radiation. Their size determines the lowest frequency that they can harvest. Unfortunately for them and us, the wavelengths that are useful to them are damaging to the host.

  “Individually, the parasites are less alive than an insect, much less so. However, there seems to be coordinated activity across multiple parasites. The more of them that there are, the more intelligent they are. A human-sized host seems to be able to support about the same level of intelligence as a smart animal. They can carry out simple orders given by a larger group. That is what the greenie that we captured was doing—repeating a series of operations to keep the missile boat operational. When the ship lost power, it didn’t have the intelligence to take further action. We are confident that multiple greenies can work together when in close proximity, the parasites in multiple hosts communicating via radio pulses, again with very short wavelengths. As for the hosts, they seem to have been left to develop until they reached a certain size and then they are infected. The brain of our captured subject has been deliberately damaged, and higher order thought would not be possible for him. The brain was not well developed prior to this, and we believe that this is intentional.

  “I want to be very clear on this point. We are going to be in a situation where we will be killing greenies. They may be human-shaped, but they are not human in any real sense. The brain of the host will not know that you are killing it or care or be afraid. Whatever the greenie seems to be doing, you cannot show it mercy except by ending its existence. Any intelligence that you see comes from the parasite, and even that is not intelligent in its own right. They are more like insects in a hive that share a collective mind than individuals in any real sense. You are food and a place to live for them. You don’t need to feel bad about ending them. Once you know more about what we found on the planet, you won’t want to. Fumi, if you please.”

  Fumi’s voice came over the speakers, and the display changed to a map. “Okay, so we had a good look at Ironstone. We only examined a fairly small area in detail, but the same patterns could be seen repeatedly on our flyby. They incorporated human-built settlements into the matrix and the infill is mostly a cut-and-paste. What we saw is very likely to be the same across Ironstone and other planets that they infest.

  “What we saw was kinda like the organism that lived there. Everything is on two levels. On the surface, it looks like they are doing just enough to keep the hosts alive—and I do mean just enough. The hosts are on minimum calorie diet and die young because of the radiation. We didn’t see it, but we assume that they have some kind of breeding program to keep up the population since there are no more human worlds around to plunder as far as we can tell. We didn’t see the breeding program and suspect that infants are shipped in from a specialist centre of some kind, but we did find a creche of sorts. It was … it was not good. The hosts seemed to be catatonic and were controlled by greenies to get them on exercise machines to keep the bodies useful. Judging from Dr Hernadez’s work, they are fully converted at some point in their teens. They probably reproduce young, under parasite control.

  “On another level, the place is incredibly active. The hosts are packed in to buildings at high density. We think that this makes it easier for the parasites to work in coordination across multiple hosts. We recorded a lot of high-frequency radio chatter. The activity we see on the surface is really the maintenance for a hive, not the hive itself.

  “We are pretty sure that the intelligence of a group of parasites is proportional to the number of parasites in close proximity; they scale in ways that we don’t. An individual host doesn’t have enough to be smarter than a dog. A shipful is probably more intelligent than a human. A planetful is perhaps a genius that thinks very slowly due to speed of light issues. It is kind of the opposite of the way that humans are. Ever hear that people are smart but crowds are dumb? Well, with greenies, the opposite is true. If we are facing a few, we are smarter. If we are facing a lot of them, they are smarter but slower. We need to learn to use that advantage. They can also coordinate better than we can because they are literally one mind. That said, by using a proper command structure, AIs, and our own brains, we can be flexible and an individual person is a lot smarter than a single greenie.

  “When they last faced humanity, they faced people and some pretty dumb AIs. This time, we have smart AIs and, modesty aside, virtual people. At the moment, I am the only one, but we will need more if we are to be faster and smarter. We would like volunteers. I will also make a promise to you. We are expecting trouble. It is possible that some of us will get hurt or killed. If you let me scan you, I will reboot you if the worst happens. I should tell you that it is not as good as real life. Now that I have got the environment set up, it is a hell of a lot better.”

  The meeting was silent for a moment as people thought about that. Meilin called them back to business. “Jax Acharia and Ivo Kevic w
ill report on the military situation on the ground.”

  Jax spoke next. “Okay, as far as we can tell, they don’t have a military. This might sound good, but it isn’t. In a regular invasion, you are only really facing about five percent of the population, the ones in uniforms with guns. Civilians try to avoid conflict if they can. Greenies are not like that. Because they are controlled by the parasites, the death of a host doesn’t mean much to them. They may not fight well, but we have reason to think that every last one of them will fight to the death, which means that we are not just outnumbered, we are utterly humped. There is not a hope that we can manage an invasion. We can’t knock out vital infrastructure and bring them to surrender. They just are not that centralised. We checked some of the old records that we got from the stalk and they bear this out. Greenies don’t surrender. We don’t know what they have in the way of weapons, but they could manufacture something, maybe something very nasty. We don’t see a way to beat the greenie except by killing each and every one of them. If we are going to do that, we would be best off attacking from orbit. It makes no sense to risk our own people going down to the surface.”

  A voice came from one of the other ships. “This is Pieter. Uh, don’t we think that most of humanity are controlled by the parasite? Are you seriously saying that we are going to have to kill everyone in the whole damn galaxy? Does that sound crazy to anyone else?”

  Jax looked at Gregor, who motioned to continue. “Well, they are not human anymore, but yeah, we seem to be all out of sane options at the moment.”

  “Is there any way to turn them back?” asked Pieter.

  Lori took the question. “The brain development of the greenie that we have is well below the sort of level required for a functional person. It may be that some of the hosts are in better condition, but I think that they are far beyond any form of healing that we can offer. As it stands, killing them is a form of euthanasia.”

  “If we have to kill everyone to save humanity, that doesn’t sound like a win,” said Pieter.

  Lori nodded. “I know, and we will keep looking for a better way, but I don’t know that we will find one. I don’t like it either.”

  After a moment, Meilin asked, “Are there any other questions?”

  “What do we do now?” asked a speaker, not identifying himself.

  “We wait,” said Gregor, “improve our defences and wait to see what we get from the stalk and what the greenies do. We work and wait in shifts and, when something unfriendly comes in, we turn it to slag. All ships will stay close to the jump point to Neuholme except for Nimitz. The Nimitz will hold our retreat and alert us if any threats coming from Klondike. The mining colony should be safe, but a plan with no retreat option is bad plan. Any questions?”

  There were no more questions.

  #

  Six hours later, each of the ships got an alert that another ship had warped into system. Before the pilots could do more than peer at the Neuholme jump point, Fumi broadcast that it was the Tromp returning from the stalk. It rapidly changed vector to meet the rest of the fleet. Comms was slow at that range and it was standard practice to only radio when there was an urgent message. The second and third Rockhammer ships were a surprise when they entered the system. They followed a similar vector but accelerated more slowly, apparently carrying more mass. Partway to rendezvous, the radar signature of each ship brightened and then split. Gregor initially thought that they were dumping cargo, especially when the acceleration of the Rockhammers increased but realised his mistake when the new radar contacts moved away under power. He opened the comms, targeting the Tromp.

  “Tromp, what gives? Report.”

  “And good to see you too, Sarafina. Any greenies ships show up yet? I am seeing a lot of debris.” The pilot’s radio protocol was about what Gregor would have expected from a rockhound.

  “Negative, Tromp. No contact yet. Who are your friends and what did they just do?” The speed of light delay was significant but possible to work with.

  “All A-OK. The ships are the House of Orange and the Claw. They were unloading a bunch of single ships, a couple of reactors, and a nanite package. They are being injected into the asteroid belt to boost our manufacturing here. Nitrauw found maps of the belt and they know where they are going. He sends his congratulations,” said the pilot of the Tromp.

  “Right. They are Rockhammers too, yes? Please take station towards the rear of the formation. Are we ex—” Gregor was cut off by an alarm warning that another ship had entered the system. He felt rather than heard a muffled thump as the magnetic launcher fired or relayed a projectile. “Contact!” he shouted, switching to broadcast mode.

  “Target destroyed! Hold your fire!” came over the comms in Fumi’s voice.

  Gregor started going through the sensor results. “Fumi, what did they send? How come we took it down so quick?”

  “Looked like a skip drone, boss. Certainly nothing big as the first laser took it apart. The missile and the iron pellet were overkill,” said Fumi.

  Gregor nodded, still on broadcast. “Okay, stay alert. Maybe they wouldn’t send a drone right before a warship, but is greenie so who knows? Be ready. Nimitz, keep monitoring. Next time, I want the report from you, not from incoming ships.”

  The communication that came in next was from another of the new ships. “Sarafina, this is House of Orange. Sure is nice to see you again. Got any more coffee? Running kinda low here. Great to be somewhere new though. Makin’ best speed to your position. Zeek out.” The familiar voice was a welcome surprise as they waited for the next change.

  After several more stress-filled hours, nothing else had jumped in, and the new Rockhammers had joined the formation. Meilin worked out a rota to allow crews to rest and submitted it to Gregor for approval. The House of Orange and Claw had retained a pair of single ships, and the copilot of the Claw went into the debris field to recover as much as possible of the skip drone. It had been little more than a fuel tank, a jump drive, and a sensor package. Since there was no way to communicate to any ships that were on the way, it was either intended to jump back and report or update any ship jumping in. There was no way to tell if it was the same drone that jumped out, but if it were then it had refuelled somehow. The construction of the drone told them very little since the parts were off the shelf human designs although not models that the crew of the Sarafina had seen before. It was bare bones construction, designed to be as cheap as possible. It was possible that it had been developed during the war against the Greenies.

  After a day, there had been no new entries from either jump point, and that made it unlikely that there would be anything for at least three weeks. If there were not a force waiting at Neuholme, anything jump capable would take a week to get to the next system and a ship in that system would take a week to get to Neuholme and another to get to Ironstone. The more distributed the greenie ships were, the longer that it would take to get a significant force in-system. The longer the delay, the more ships that could be brought but the longer that the defenders had to prepare. It was a calculated gamble that Gregor was all too familiar with, but he didn’t understand the way that this enemy thought. They probably had little understanding of what sort of ships they would find waiting in Neuholme as there was no way that the greenies could know about the misjump of the Sarafina and the very different universe that it had come from. They would be more likely to assume that the mining colony had managed to get out of system somehow. There would have been time for a sublight journey. The biggest threats were that they would mount an attack on the stalk at the core of the Yellow Sun mining colony via Jindo or at Neuholme. If they had the ships to do it, attacking both at once made the most sense as it prevented the two systems from supporting each other. That meant that Gregor had to second guess Nitrauw as well, but that was easier. He had met the man and knew what mattered to him. Nitrauw would preserve the colony at all costs. If his expeditionary force could hold Ironstone, that was a bonus, but if they were lost and the colo
ny survived, he would consider it a good enough result. There wasn’t going to be any significant help from that quarter.

  Chapter 27

  The wait had gone on longer than anyone had anticipated. The single ships had been able to get several old bases in the asteroid belt back online and processing ore. They had been abandoned before the fall of the planet as the belt was mined beyond commercial exploitation. There were still many millions of tons of material, but the easy pickings had been taken and iron and nickel were common enough throughout the sector to have little market value. The rockhounds had used the nanite packages to convert the output of the smelters to war production. They could make stripped down AI-controlled Rockhammers or missiles easily enough and had started to manufacture skip drones for communicating with the stalk back at the Klondike colony. The most recent ships were a Frankenstein's monster with a jumpless Rockhammer stuffed full of missiles. The ships were oddly shaped, the passenger and crew quarters gone, and the cargo area converted to hold eight of the missiles copied from the captured ship that had been rechristened Foehammer. The second team had focussed on setting up a series of accelerator rings that could get a one kilo mass up to a significant fraction of the speed of light. The point of aim was almost fixed, but it covered the jump point well. It was overkill for what it was; a hit would convert most of a heavy cruiser to vapour and could pose a serious threat to ground defences. The power came at a cost; the rate of fire was terrible.

  As the weeks had dragged on, most of the crew had agreed to be scanned and stored by Fumi, the process having been proved on the captured greenie that was still in cold sleep. Only one of the scanned crew had agreed to be activated immediately—one of the single ship pilots, Henk Van Roest. He said he was perfectly comfortable with his own company and liked tinkering with things. Fumi had decanted him into a copy of her virtual environment and he (or copies of him) were happily running most of the belt factories. The odd ship variants had been his idea and he had copied himself into each one to act as the pilot. Fumi was sure that there were at least a dozen of him in various places, but he had refused to be specific when asked. He didn’t seem to be doing anything that wasn’t helping the mission so Fumi mentally labelled it as a problem for another day.