StarFight 1: Battlestar (4 page)

“O’Hara,” called Jacob from behind her. “What is the status of the Cloud Skimmer? How close is it to the meeting site?”

“The skimmer is twelve minutes out from the meeting site,” O’Hara said, her Irish accent very pronounced. “It is now over the ocean that separates the meeting site landmass from the continent below us.”

“What do our spysats say about the twelve alien ships?” Jacob asked.

Daisy looked ahead at the woman who had mentored her on space battle tactics. She liked Rosemary O’Hara. The woman reminded her of her mother. Who now worked on Pluto at the Wide Field Infrared Observatory on that small world. Her father, who’d divorced her Mom when Daisy was just nine, lived on Taiwan and worked at some kind of Chinese tech company. He had never sent her a birthday present, nor had he attended her graduation from the Stellar Academy. Her Mom had shown up. Which made her love the hard-working scientist even more than she already did. Thanks to her Mom, she had taken flying lessons at age 12, soloed at 13 and earned her jet pilot license at 16. That background, and help from the Illinois senator her Mom knew, had gained her admission to the academy. She had seen Jacob in some classes there, but had never spent time with him at the academy. Just before boarding she’d heard he was a loner, not sociable. Which did not fit his manner during the officers holo shoot at the orbital shipyard station. Or his manner on the
Lepanto
. While the man was shy, he had made Kenji feel welcome in the ensigns ward room, a place rarely visited by any enlisted Spacer. He’d done the same for Quincy, a Brit who came from a Royal Navy family. That reaching out had endeared Jacob to her. Which left her wondering why she had not taken the obvious step and invited him to join her at the weekly Dance Night. Surely he knew how to dance. While he was congenial to other women ensigns and enlisted, she had seen no sign he wanted close contact with women. Could she change that attitude?

“Acting Captain, the six spysats we have on that side of the world report every alien ship remains as they have been,” O’Hara said softly. “There is a forward group of six ships arranged in a hexagonal pattern, and a following group of six ships arranged similarly.”

Daisy blinked as a memory of her high school biology class filled her mind. She recalled a picture of a wasp nest hidden under the eave of an old wooden building. Each chamber built into the mix of plant fiber, mud and wasp secretions had six walls. They made for hexagonal chambers, similar to the honeycombs of bees. Larvae were born and fed in the hexagonal chambers until they became true wasps. The memory caused her to tap her right side armrest and bring up a holo image of the twelve alien ships. Yes! Each ship was long and had six sides faceting its shape. Tubular shapes stuck out from the front, middle and rear of each log-like ship. Were they lasers? Cannons? Missile launch silos? Something else?

“Thank you, Tactical,” Jacob said. “Uh, CWO Osashi, those spysats uploaded continuous video of the meeting with the aliens, didn’t they?”

“They did, sir,” the man said, his tone formal but not amiable. She wondered at that.

Her left armrest’s overhead image of the entire Bridge showed Jacob tapping his fingers on his armrest, clearly working at patience with the man who had challenged his right to issue any order. “Rerun on the front wallscreen the last three minutes of AV imagery. I assume the feed was cut off due to the lightning storm?”

“Sir, that is what happened,” the elderly chief warrant officer said, sitting stiffly at his post. The man tapped the control pillar in front of him. “Last three minutes of imagery going up. Time stamps are in the lower right corner.”

Daisy looked forward, trying to ignore the constant rasping of her vacsuit against her arms and legs. The suit was a bother but its wearing was in conformity with the new Alert status. At least the helmet-back position allowed her to breath normal ship air.

The wallscreen filled with a high density color image of the backs of the captains and XOs who sat on field stools facing a cluster of eighteen wasp-like aliens. Clearly the image came from the tablet of one of the ensigns who sat behind the senior officers. She saw the broad back of Admiral Johanson on the left side of the arc of officers. None of them wore vacsuits. All were dressed in woodland camo NWUs. In the middle of the room hovered a hologram that showed various Earth plants and animals. The imagery was controlled by some officer who was trying to establish a common language or terminology. A holo next to it was controlled by the aliens, one of whom held a silvery tablet in his upper arm pair. That holo showed color images of the fleet ships in orbit above the fourth planet. Behind the aliens was parked their shuttle, which like their ships had a hexagonal outer hull. Words were heard as the humans talked among themselves, while the only sound coming from the aliens were rare raspings of the top limbs against their thorax shell. She wondered if rasping their limbs against their chitin shells was how they talked.

“Does not look as if the two groups are understanding each other,” Jacob said, sounding calm but determined.

“Maybe Lieutenant Branstead knows what is happening. I just watched on my seat’s repeater screen, alert for any incoming signals,” the Communications chief said, his tone indifferent.

Daisy respected Branstead. The woman had a Ph.D. in molecular synthesis of biological polymers and led a deck of 51 specialists in the natural and social sciences. Which included Jacob’s friend Lori, a specialist in exobiology.

“I’m sure you were alert. That sparkle at the top! Is that the incoming eleventh shuttle?”

She fixed on what Jacob had noticed. The view from the back of the clear geodesic dome allowed a view of the landscape and sky in front of and above the dome. At the very top of the holo was a tubular image that shone silvery. As she watched, the tube quickly became an alien shuttle. In seconds it extruded six stick-like legs from its bottom hull, hovered on belly jets, then landed on the flame-fused brown soil of the meadow. It rested just ten meters to the side of the original alien shuttle.

“What’s happening on its roof?” Jacob asked quickly.

Daisy, like everyone on the Bridge, was fixed on these last images of their senior officers. Who seemed intent on running through a series of numbers filling their holo, which might have been from a SETI common language program. None of them paid attention to the new arrival. Which, she now saw, was opening up its top. The alien shuttle’s roof split open down the middle, then two hull flaps rose up vertically. In two seconds something round or . . . or globular, she now saw, lifted up slowly from the inside of the shuttle. She could not tell how big the globe was, other than by comparison to the shuttle itself. Daisy guessed the balloon-like globe was perhaps two meters wide. Which meant it was half as wide as the shuttle itself. The globe lifted up higher, then higher still, its rise steady. Was it a weather balloon? Something filled with helium or hydrogen? There were no jets or fans or propellers showing on the globe’s exterior.

“That globe is rising from the inside of the new shuttle,” Osashi said, answering Jacob’s query.

“What
is
that thing?” Jacob asked sharply, his tone intense.

“Maybe a weather monitoring station?” Osashi said, sounding puzzled. “When I first saw it I wondered what it might be. Perhaps the aliens were concerned for a local weather change. Or something. I’m no meteorologist. Sir.”

“Understood.”

She watched the globe rise up and beyond the view angle of the tablet held by the ensign who was transmitting the meeting actions to the spysats above for retransmission to—

“Damn!”

A bright yellow-white light flashed down into the holo image. Then the image went dark.

“What the hell was that light flash?” Jacob said.

“I have no idea,” Osashi said. “Maybe Chief Petty Officer Steinmetz can tell us. He’s our science . . . expert.”

She looked right to Willard Steinmetz, someone she knew only by name and rank and the fact he ran one of the Bridge function posts. The forty-something CPO gave a shrug, which made his large belly shake a bit.

“Acting Captain, I have no idea. Before this event, the air above the meeting site was calm, with a few scattered clouds and no sign of a storm or low pressure front approaching,” the man said thoughtfully. “One of my jobs was monitoring the meet site for bad weather. Got a second undergrad degree in meteorology. This planet has normal weather. Equator is warmer than the poles. Primary winds come from the northwest. The meet site is distant from any ocean or sea. I saw no natural source for the light event.”

“Nothing natural,” murmured Jacob from behind her, his tone musing.

Behind Daisy the hatch that gave entry to the Bridge hissed as its pressure seal released. Those would be Jacob’s friends. And hers too. She liked them and Kenji and also the four pilots who flew the Marine Darts. Piloting was a unique profession and every pilot on board the
Lepanto
knew every other pilot, no matter the deck or rank or gender. She left active the alien ship holo and her overhead screen image of the Bridge and the people on it, then looked left as the three friends came toward the command seats that filled the middle of the Bridge. What would Jacob ask of them?

♦   ♦   ♦

Jacob gave thanks the vacsuit’s flexible helmet could be lifted up and hang against his upper back. It allowed him to breath ship air and hear every squeak, rustle or low word spoken by the nine Bridge crew who occupied the function posts in front of him and Daisy. Seeing him do that had resulted in the crew doing the same. Course, once they entered active combat, everyone would seal up. And cross their fingers that the outer hull’s ablative coating and adaptive optics mirrors would deflect away or absorb the worst of any laser hit. Straight on laser hits would cut through the ablative coating that lay under the mirrors, but the two meters of titanium-nickel-steel armor that was the outer hull would resist any laser strike that did not stay focused for long minutes. Below the armor was a level of water, with the inner hull further below. Thousands of tons of water filled the space between the inner and outer hulls. The water gave them further shielding from stellar radiation that penetrated the outer hull. At the rear, the fuel tanks of tritium and deuterium isotopes gave further shielding to the crew folks working on Engines Deck, which filled the back half of Command Deck. Below the inner hull lay the seven decks stacked like a layer cake, with pressure hatches breaking every hallway and every gravlift shaft into spaces where air could be contained in case of a hull rupture. Course, if a beam or a deep penetrating missile hit the three fusion reactors that filled the central core of the ship, then life on the
Lepanto
would come to a quick end. The hiss of the Bridge entry hatch diverted him from the recorded imagery of the last moments at the meeting site. His friends had arrived. He looked left.

Lori led the group, followed by Carlos and Quincy. They faced him and saluted.

“Ensigns reporting as ordered,” Lori said over her vacsuit’s comlink. Seeing his helmet pushed back, she copied him. As did the two young men.

His three friends watched him carefully. Jacob sitting in the admiral’s seat had quickly told them he was in command on the Bridge. But beyond that, and the ship status change, they knew nothing. He saluted them back.

“Thank you each for coming.” Jacob gestured at the front wallscreen with its image of the opposite side of planet four. “We have lost contact with the admiral, our captain and our XO. The other ships have also lost contact with their captains and XOs. Using the ship status change code shared with me by the admiral, I changed our status to Alert Unknown Enemy.” He pointed at the spysat image of the black lightning storm that still swirled above the meeting site. “A massive electrical storm happened forty minutes ago, right after the arrival of a second alien shuttle. I had Tactical launch a Cloud Skimmer to give us a direct eyes-on view of the meeting site.” He focused back on his three friends. “The loss of tablet contact with everyone at the meeting site raises the chance this is due to enemy action. Presumably by the aliens on the far side of this world. We have radar painted the meeting site using a spysat, but it showed only the presence of eleven shuttles. Our nine and two alien. The enemy ships have not changed their geosync orbital attitude. I called you three here to get your thoughts.” He fixed on black-haired Lori, who wore an NWU Type I uniform like Daisy. In fact, all of them wore the camo uniforms. No one wore dress blues unless ordered to do so. The Russian woman, a graduate of some exobiology institute in Moscow, peered intently at him. “Ensign Lori Antonova, you are a biologist with a specialty in exobiology lifeforms. You know what our colonists have found on Earth’s seven colonies. You’ve seen the images of the wasp-like aliens. What do you deduce from the imagery of them and of their ships?”

The slim woman adopted a parade rest stance. She glanced at the front wallscreen and at Osashi’s holo that showed the alien ships, then back to him. “Acting Captain Renselaer, while the lifeforms on the colony planets show similar organization into mammal, avian, aquatic and insect-like lifeforms, with millions of exotic bacteria, the analogy to Earth animal life is risky. One world has lifeforms with tripodal leg arrangements. On another world, the animals resemble our radial pattern starfish. A third world has hopping as its primary locomotion mode. The presence of vertebrate life, predators and prey, scavengers and parasites, along with air and water-breathing lifeforms, is common to all seven worlds.” She pursed her lips, glanced aside at Daisy, then sighed. “Yes, these aliens resemble giant yellow jacket wasps. The striking red and black bands on their yellow exoskeleton bodies suggest they are predators. Bright colors warn of danger. In biological science it is called aposematism. It also makes sense due to their presence off planet. Predators hunt for new territory.” She paused, took a deep breath and continued. “But why they are here could be due to many factors. Exploration. Expansion of the home territory. Failure of the home world ecology. Or colonizing of suitable worlds. The fact the gravity on planet four is just a half gee suggests these insect aliens evolved on a world with low gravity, a high oxygen level, and perhaps dense plant life and ground life similar to what is found in Earth’s jungles.” She stopped.