Family Law 2: The Long Voyage of the Little Fleet (19 page)

"The Biters are, (how?) (uncertain?) you say, fight easy? Get (want?) fight easy?"

"Tell your guys to work with our crew on aggressive, combative, angry, easily provoked, mad."

"Huh! Lot words. Something you know well you got many words."

"Yes. Know well. Know lot (too?) well.

"You talk to Biters open," he paused. "
Everybody
hear."

"Yes, in the clear, we say. No (encryption?). No (code?). Not (private?). (Crap?) tell your guys (to?) work on (those?) words."

"Yes enough. They not like talk that way. We on station hear. They fight faster you make them look bad. They (unknown?), they (unknown?).  They see Lee bite sandwich. They get there with you. You say no. They fight. You much, much same them. More same not like us. Talk bad. They talk bad. You talk bad again," he said hands stabbing at each other. "Go you, go Biters, end fight we think."

"(So?) (why?) uncertain you think they (win?)?" Gordon asked. Damn software. "Why think fight end, we destroyed, Biters not destroyed?"

The Badger actually shrugged, a gesture so like both Humans and Derf that Lee laughed out loud.

"We do (that?) (too?)," Lee told him.

"Same?" he asked and shrugged again. She thought that's what a Badger must look like when the felt sheepish or amused. "Yes (good?) we same (unknown?) one way."

"Yes, same," Lee agreed.

"We know Biters. Not know you. Not know end."

"(What?) (if?) we (win?)," Thor asked. "(What?) if Biters destroyed?"

"Coming up on two minutes for missile activation," Brownie reminded them.

"That (unknown?). Lot (many?), things. More we (can?) know (hold?) now," the Badger said.

"Yeah, (it's?) (complicated?)," Gordon agreed. Talk later. We fight," he said and cut the Badger com and software off.

"Thanks for the heads up. This needs our full attention. I wonder if they will abort their burn and vector away from us when they see the missile close on them?"

* * *

The Captain was calling out orders to secure for turn-over and a braking burn. The tactical officer interjected a "Sir!" while he was speaking, earning a glare, but no pause in his orders, just a forestalling hand whipped up in a gesture that was quick and unfriendly. "What?" He barked with a loud exasperated click of his beak after the ship started it's rotation.

"Sir, the missile that went dead has reactivated and turned toward us! It pinged us with its own radar. Estimated time to intercept twelve minutes."

"Configure our radar for jamming and track it. Prepare a missile to intercept it at a hundredth of a light second. Prepare the close in defense cloud in case it gets past the missile."

The defense cloud was a huge mass of tiny hard triangles, about four millimeters along each edge, meant to shred an incoming missile that needed to close to within a few kilometers to detonate. Gordon's crew would have recognized them as a giant Claymore mine.

"Initiating jamming with a peek at ten second intervals. No reaction to jamming. Missile still on course. Uh, radar is acting odd. I believe the missile has jamming capabilities itself. Oh crap, radar breaking up, random lines and dots, radar now down hard."

"Tactician, launch on time for intercept assuming a straight in course. The same with the close defense. Firing blind is better than sitting waiting for the impact."

"Yes sir. Launch in three minutes, close defense in four minutes forty seconds."

They waited in silence. Finally the ship lurched from the interceptor launch.

>WHAM< The whole hull rang and the lights went out. The drive ceased functioning. At least the emergency lights worked.

"What in the seventy two tiers of hell was
that
?" the Captain demanded. "Did we catch something else? The close defense didn't deploy so we got hit early. No way that missile hit us."

"Whatever it was, it was so bright it overloaded the hull cameras," his tactician warned him.

"Engineering doesn't answer sir."

"Work forward until you get an answer from someone."

After a pause the communications tech announced. "The missile crew amidships reports they have put on their pressure suits and there is nothing behind bulkhead twenty seven."

"No pressure?"

"No sir. No
ship
."

The Captain said that thing no commander ever wants to say. "We are blind and adrift. Rig self destruct so we can deny them the vessel if we are boarded."

"I'm sorry sir, the self destruct uses the drive. It was all behind bulkhead twenty nine. All I can do is rig the computer to wipe and melt the core memory."

"We still have radio while the batteries last," the com tech reminded him. "Is there anyone at the station capable of doing an intercept and tow?"

"Wouldn't they
love
that," the Captain hissed. "And the money grubbing bastards would send a bill home that would ruin us.
I'm
not going to ask them."

"I don't see how we will ever get this wreck to a shipyard," his number two said. "There is nothing big enough to grapple it and take it through a jump. Perhaps a yard could build this model ship from bulkhead twenty seven back and bring it here. Weld it on and splice all the lines and wires..."

"Assuming the aliens don't come in closer and finish us off with whatever they used on the station drone," the Captain said. "If they can bring in a drive section and repair it is not our concern, because
we
won't be crewing it. I imagine they won't hold it against base rank crew not in the command structure. But no bridge crew loses a command and then is told it was unavoidable and given another."

"I suppose we owe them preserving what we can."

"If opportunity presents itself to do so honorably," the Captain said begrudgedly.

* * *

"Hit! Radar shows a cloud of condensed metal vapor and larger debris," Brownie said. "They have ceased acceleration. No further radar emissions. Ah, looks like they have a slow tumble too. I'm getting a changing radar cross section. Yeah, it peaked and going back down now, tumbling for sure."

"Do you think we can render assistance?" Gordon asked. "I'd say a tow back to the station is in order. Assuming their environmental systems will last the trip."

"Not-by-us," Lee protested firmly.

Gordon looked at her surprised. Usually Lee was more forgiving than he tended to be. It was rare he heard that steel in her voice. What was she thinking? Abandon them to suffocate or freeze? Or even finish them off?

"If an alien vessel had just blown our drive section off the back of the ship and they came around to board or tow you away, what would
you
do?"

"Oh. ..I'd blow the thing to hell to avoid capture and hope they were stupid enough to get close and let me take them with us."

Lee nodded agreement silently.

"Perhaps," Brownie volunteered, "we should see if any of the station personnel are able, or disposed at all, to render assistance."

"Lee, let's go back to the Ward Room. I need a couple sandwiches, they don't keep me satisfied very long," Gordon revealed, "and we can discuss this with Luke's crew."

The graphic they created with Luke's crew was plain enough, just in case the words were still ambiguous. The animation showed the Biters ship flipping and the missile from the
Retribution
taking off the extreme rear of the ship. They didn't show it blowing up at a distance and a beam doing the damage. No need to give details away they probably could not see from the station. It showed the entire Small Fleet staying away and a ship from the station slowing the wreck's motion and then pushing it back to the station.

Their reply showed them taking the survivors off with one ship and pushing the shortened ship back to the station with another.

That worked too. They might have more information about how long life support would run or the Biter's preferences about being rescued. With no complicated dialog needed they said, "Yes."

* * *

"Sir, station command is asking if we want a rescue and recovery operation. They indicate the alien vessel suggested they respond and doesn't want to be involved."

"I guess they have determined we don't have any technology worth stealing," he said bitterly.

"Tell the damn grass eating Badger yes," he agreed. "You can phrase it more pleasantly than that," he added. "If I was him I'd jack the price up if it was accepted with insults, no matter how true. I never thought I'd need to be
nice
to a damn Badger."

* * *

"Well isn't that interesting?" Lee spoke aloud. She was watching the translator channels.

"What?" Gordon asked.

"The language they are feeding us. I've been quietly sub vocalizing parts of it. Trying to see some structure or words with a common root."

"Not as sub as you think. I thought you'd cracked and acquired an invisible friend."

"Big ears," she accused. "It's a lot like English, it's bits and pieces of different languages. They seem to have plucked the word for something from whichever language had a word easy for everyone to pronounce. They call it 'Trade', so that looks auspicious for us getting them to do some trading with us."

"Auspicious? Is that like superstitious?" Thor asked. Lee ignored him.

"The Biters must be alive and somewhat functioning," Brownie told them. "They stopped the tumble and I can't imagine an automated system doing that with a chunk of the ship gone."

* * *

The Biters were quick to refuse having their wreck docked to the station so they could live on ship. The docking fees would be ruinous in the time rescue would take to arrive.
If
they were rescued. The command structure was not kind to crews who lost their ship. They scheduled to go down-world where accommodations were more reasonable. They'd grabbed all their personal items, a few small pieces of equipment, like computer memory and destroyed a few things they didn't want the lesser races to see.

The wreck was stabilized and parked far enough from the station to not be in the way of traffic, but close enough to keep an eye on it. Close enough to send a crew over to snoop on the Biters current ship design too.

The Badger engineer called his supervisor. "You need to come down here and look at this."

"Can't you write it up, take a few pix and send me the report?"

"No. Not unless I hand deliver it. I don't want to tell you over the radio either."

"Something different?"

"Something strange, different and scary as hell. That's already saying too much."

"Well, I'm supposed to have an annual suit familiarization every year anyway. I'll be over in about four thousand seconds. Can you wait that long for me?"

"Absolutely. I'll go back in the work scooter and come out when you arrive.

The supervisor broke the connection and sighed. The engineer was effusive and given to bouts of sudden over dramatic sensationalism. Maybe a little paranoid too. Which wasn't always a bad thing when dealing with the Biters. It might be healthy with these new people too. But he was solid enough in his profession he'd better go look at whatever stirred him up.

The engineer led him along a temporary boom, clamped to the wreck to provide a safe access and a place to dock a construction scooter with its grapples.

"Don't feel the edge," the engineer warned him, putting a restraining hand on his elbow when he started to reach. "It's sharp enough to cut your glove."

"This is bizarre," the administrator said. The rear of the ship was gone, a fraction of the last compartment a shallow hollow at the rear. There were no ragged edges or floating strands of wires.

"No joke. You tell me what would slice the ass off a ship like a big razor. I expected to see one of two things. Either the wreck would be a ragged mess of shredded metal from the shrapnel of conventional explosives, or gone entirely, blown to bits. I suppose eventually one might see a ship that was hit by a powerful enough laser beam to damage it, but nothing we make at present."

"It's not straight either, is it?"

"You've got a good eye. No, it's a segment of an arch. Whatever did this was in a circle about fifty man lengths across. So if it had hit dead center it would have vaporized most of the ship."

The boss man floated there looking at it. The engineer kept quiet. His boss wasn't stupid, just trained differently and he could be insightful if you shut up and let him think. He was remembering Lee taking a bite of sandwich and holding it back up with a big arch gone...

"It's not," he struggled for a way to say it, "lopsided."

"Yeah?"

"You already know what I'm trying to say!"

"Yes, but when you reason it out yourself you really believe it. And the evidence is right in front of you just screaming out the answer. So you tell me."

"OK. The chances of them missing the center of the ship but being
exactly
in line with the long axis is just about zero. The end is sheared off as straight as you'd cut a slice off a sausage! So they missed to the rear on purpose. They could have destroyed them completely, but chose instead to give them a little slap like spanking an errant cub to teach it a lesson."

"Yep. That's what I saw too. Although I have no confidence the Biters are bright enough cubs to have learned the intended lesson. I'm afraid they will need a few more swats, likely harder ones."

"What did this though? I mean, did it take the part missing away by some mechanism we don't understand? Is it still in one piece somewhere, else?"
Swallowed like a bite of sandwich
, he thought.

"No sir. It was plain old vaporized all right. Look here," he invited, moving into the hollow of the last compartment exposed by the destruction. "Don't snag yourself on the edges." He removed a utility knife and went to a sort of work bench that was attached to the bulkhead that was untouched. He scraped away at it and a light brown polymer surface appeared as the grey film was flaked off.

"The shiny grey surface is evaporated, uh  – well everything that is gone – vacuum deposited like we'd make a mirror. Damned if I know how to make a beam that will do that. Not with an edge transition finer than one of your ear hairs."