Authors: Stephen W Bennett
There was a twisting sensation that told him the ship was
rotating. The intensity of the sensation, while not severe, indicated a more
rapid attitude change than any he had noticed previously. The acceleration gong
started again, but sounded only once, just as the rotation ended, and
acceleration hit.
It wasn't bone crushing, but it rapidly became damned
uncomfortable on the now unyielding floor that seemed so soft a moment ago.
Dillon couldn't recall the conversion function to figure Normal Space
acceleration and internal compensation, and he knew it was not a linear
calculation anyway. They were really boosting hard if a residual of four
gravities remained.
Whatever they were trying to avoid, it must be an act of
desperation. Four g's represented the maximum uncompensated acceleration the
Flight of Fancy was designed to impose on its passengers. At least that was in
the information printed on the back of each cabin door.
Seconds stretched into uncomfortable minutes and Dillon was
compelled to try to shift his position repeatedly in an effort to ease
discomfort as the floor pressed painfully against his spine, hipbones, shoulder
blades, and the back of his head. Moving his arm required considerable effort
when he attempted to check the time on his thumbnail watch. He felt foolish
when he nearly smacked himself in the face as he brought his fourfold heavier
hand up to see.
He had checked the time before as he ran from the lounge.
Instead of the five-minute leeway promised by Jake, it had been barely two
minutes before the Captain had initiated the course change. Mirikami had been
forced to cut that promised safety margin. The ship had now been at
acceleration for nearly four minutes. If it didn't let up soon, some of the
older members of the scientific contingent would be in serious respiratory
difficulty, if not so already.
Almost as if his thoughts had been overheard, the
acceleration dramatically reduced, providing instant easing of his own
breathing. The relief, though welcome, was not total. The internal gravity was
still more than the one g the ship had been maintaining since it had slowly
eased up to that level during the day. Dillon estimated it to be about one and
a half times standard. That would translate into a ship acceleration of slightly
under twenty gravities, he thought. They still seemed to be on the run,
presumably away from some threat. A Jump might even be imminent.
He was startled when the door chime sounded. The telltale
panel indicated he was at the Bridge level, though the door had not opened. He
had been unaware that the lift had resumed moving. Evidently, it could function
at this lower acceleration. With slow deliberation, he climbed to his feet,
holding firmly on to the handrail around the sides in the event the full
four-g's resumed without warning. If it did, he would hit the floor with the
impact of about eight hundred eighty pounds.
He placed his palm on the door actuator. Nothing happened.
Jake's voice promptly issued from the ceiling speaker, not the lift’s simpler AI
voice. “Please state your name and purpose of your visit. Stand at the center
of the elevator so the video monitor may clearly...” The computer's voice cut
off, replaced immediately by Mirikami's. “Come in Doctor Martin, quickly
please.” The door glided open.
Dillon moved swiftly as he could to his previous chair,
which now had transformed itself into a semi reclined acceleration couch. He
gratefully sank into the soft material as it automatically adjusted to his
contours. Mirikami was alone, looking up at a display screen on what had been
his lap console earlier. A quick nod and hand gesture was the Captain's only
greeting. His gesture and attitude suggested that he was listening to something
via his embedded com unit.
Dillon sat in impatient silence, quickly scanning each of
the large view screens, which had partly rotated overhead, to be more visible
from a reclined position. He saw nothing that offered him a clue as to what was
happening. He heard Mirikami terminate communications with whoever had been speaking
to him.
Mirikami immediately began to explain their situation.
“Almost nine minutes ago Jake reported twenty-two small ship sized objects
rapidly closing on us from the direction of Newborn. They are accelerating at
an extremely high rate. Jake's assessment, as well as my own, is that these are
some type of new design large missile. They must have been fired from one or
more ships between us and Newborn, but the ships themselves have not been
detected.”
“Damn!” Dillon swore. “Midwife was attacked after all. Wait
a minute...,” Dillon thought of something. “You said twenty two missiles.
That's a hell of an over kill for just one ship. Could they be small manned
fighters?” He recalled Mirikami’s story.
“Not possible. They appear to be large enough, but Jake says
their Normal Space acceleration is just over two hundred g's.”
“By eliminating the manned choice through the known physics
of drive mechanics. The uncompensated internal g's would have turned anyone
inside into jelly.”
He had more. “Twenty of them did a collective rollover
shortly after we picked them up and now are decelerating at a fantastic rate,
but still rapidly closing with us of course. They are no longer my main
concern, since they will get here ten or fifteen minutes after the other two.
The two lead missiles are still coming at us with the same enormous
acceleration they had when the others turned over. I don't know what sort of
advantage the other twenty would gain by slowing the rate of closure, except
maneuverability. You don’t need much course adjustment for a large slow target
like us. But twenty two missiles, as you said, is overkill anyway.”
Shaking his head, the Captain offered another conjecture.
“Perhaps only the lead two are still targeted on us. The other twenty may have
been sent in the event we were a naval flotilla.” He paused. “On second
thought, our calls to Midwife have been on continuous repeat for hours, and our
re-entry gamma burst would show as a single ship. No, the bastards know we are
alone, and a civilian passenger ship.”
“What's the closest they'll get before we can Jump,
Captain?” He assumed they were running to insure that the primary Trap had
ample time to snare a tunneling Jump energy tachyon.
Mirikami grunted and cleared his throat before he answered.
“The two lead missiles will reach us in...,” he looked at his display screen,
“six minutes, twelve seconds. Unless the tachyon Trap beats the probabilities,
we are very unlikely to capture a minimum Jump energy tachyon in time.” It came
out sounding like an apology.
It was a couple of seconds sinking in for Dillon. Something
didn't add up. “I don't understand. Why can't we keep running from them,
stretch out the time to improve our odds?” Reducing acceleration for the Flight
of Fancy now seemed suicidal.
Mirikami shook his head ruefully. “That was my first
instinct, and the reason I made that course change and four g push. Jake ran a
computation for me while we were trying to run. It was hopeless. We can't
significantly counter a two hundred g real rate of acceleration! I could still
buy us a minute or so, but it would drain energy from our secondary Trap faster
than we can expect replacement low energy tacs. We would lose our best
performance maneuvering system once the Trap field was drained, leaving our
fusion generator and limited thruster propulsion. We’d have lasers, but no
plasma beams at all without Trap energy.
“Statistically we won't catch a minimum Jump particle for an
average of another fifteen or so minutes, that's an
average,
Doctor.
When they close on us, we can't afford to be helpless, without full thrust, or
power for the particle beams and lasers. That's why I stopped running as hard,
to conserve energy since they will surely catch us if we don’t get that miracle
Jump tac.”
Dillon's sat in stunned silence for long seconds. Then “What
happened to our forty-minute warning from Jake, Captain?” It sounded more like
an accusation than a question.
Knowing it was coming didn't make answering the question
easier. Nothing could quell the terrible guilt that consumed Mirikami. His
arrogance and clearly demonstrated ignorance was probably going cost the lives
of his passengers and crew.
He made no excuses. “The fault is mine. Neither our sensors
nor Jake's monitoring are to blame. The missiles were detected and reported to
me at our maximum detection range. My previous military experience told me that
I could stay out of range of any attacker for a good deal longer than the
maximum time it would take to make a Jump. I was wrong! These missiles have
some sort of new propulsion system that permits them to accelerate faster than
anything I thought drive physics would permit.” He shook his head in dismayed
amazement.
“A rocket engine on missiles this size, coming from Newborn,
would have burned their fuel reserves out long ago. These have to be using Trap
Drives. My promise of a forty-minute warning has proven to be worthless. They
will have covered that detection distance in less than 10 minutes, plus the
seconds I gained in trying to get away.
“I ordered the Drive Room crew to retune the primary Trap
for minimum Jump energy just as soon as the threat was detected. When I saw
there was almost no doubt they would catch us before we could Jump, I started
conserving power for a final defense and maneuvering.”
As if waiting for that cue, Jake's ever-calm voice intruded.
“Particle beam plasma in chamber one is optimum; the plasma in chamber two will
reach firing temperature in thirty-nine seconds. LDS one and two remain on
line.”
Mirikami acknowledged, placing his left hand on an armrest
that had extruded where he could reach it without reaching up to his now
overhead console. Dillon observed two covered switches were under the Captain's
hand.
Dillon knew the ship's lasers and particle beams, normally
used to ward off occasional small interplanetary debris, were scaled down
versions of military hardware. “What chance do we have of knocking out the two
lead missiles?” he asked.
“Poor,” Mirikami admitted. “Even if we can stay locked on
them. Our system wasn't designed to hit targets that accelerate on their own.
Rocks move on ballistic tracks at a constant velocity, while a missile is
armored, and defends itself by being reflective and spinning, twisting and
altering acceleration. Only our own ship’s acceleration is included in tracking
computations of orbiting debris. Jake will attempt to calculate the needed
adjustments as changes are detected and feed the corrections to the targeting
computer. We have to keep the beams and lasers on track long enough to try to
penetrate the armor that I assume they have, or damage something in their
guidance system. Neither possibility is likely.”
“Can we dodge at the last moment? If they're moving that
fast, perhaps we can sidestep enough before they can adjust.”
“I doubt it, but I was going to give it a try anyway. With
weaponry this sophisticated and expensive, they surely don’t need a direct hit.
A small nuclear warhead would have to miss by over a kilometer for our hull to
survive. I don't know if these contain nukes of any size, of course. If we
can't disable them, I'll try one final kick to push us as far as possible from
their paths as they get close.”
“Is there anything I can help you do?” He was thinking of
the fact that Mirikami was working alone. Dillon wanted badly to do something.
Anything, besides waiting for fate to catch up to him.
“Pray to the quantum gods for a Jump tac” Invited Mirikami.
He raised the protective covers and threw the two switches that armed the
particle beam systems, the lasers having been in Jake's control since re-entry.
“Jake has his firing command. I've just released the interlocks to permit
automatic firing when they come into the range where we can achieve the
sharpest focusing.” Referring to his display, “That will be in a little over
three minutes.”
Mirikami keyed the acceleration alarm and switched on the
intercom. “Attention, Please. Attention. This is Captain Mirikami. We are under
missile attack by unknown forces. We are attempting to evade the missiles long
enough to capture a minimum Jump tachyon, and leave the Newborn system. There
will be a minute of much higher acceleration than the previous four gravities
sometime within the next few minutes. If you have not reached a couch yet, or
are not lying down, your life may well depend on your doing so. If you can,
remove your shoes, empty your pockets, and loosen tight clothing. But do it
fast. You have just two minutes to return to a prone position. The ship's
computer will inform you when two minutes have elapsed. Listen for the
acceleration alarm just before we start thrust.
“That goes for us too, Doctor Martin,” as he kicked off his
shoes and unfastened and dropped a utility belt.
Dillon was pulling off his second boot when a barefoot
Noreen burst from the stairwell onto the Bridge. Looking winded, she barely
gave Dillon a glance as she threw herself onto her couch. “Who are they?” she
asked, between gasps for air, “Jake didn't say.”
“Don't know,” Mirikami spoke in curt sentences. “Made no
transmissions. Impossibly fast. Clearly, the strategy is to hit us before we
catch a Jump tac. Looks like it will work. Willfem's installing a shunt on the
second field's regulator. If done in time, I'm pre-programming a last ditch max
thrust right now. See if we can sidestep the first two, gain some time.”
“Thought so..., Jake told me most of it.” She was struggling
to regain her breath, speaking between gasps. “Kicked off shoes in stairwell.
... 'Fraid I'd be there when you did it. ...Couldn't risk lift, ...ran up from
deck three. ...Hi Dillon!” She tossed the words at him without turning.