Into the Darkness: Crimson Worlds Refugees I (24 page)

Compton sat in the cramped cockpit of the fighter. He’d popped his armor and climbed out as soon as he’d managed to stumble onboard, and Hurley had managed to find him a jumpsuit. It wasn’t an admiral’s uniform, nor was it a perfect fit…but it spared him the indignity of sitting in the middle of the fighter completely naked.

He pressed a small button, muting the com unit. “Greta, get on a secure line now. I want you to scramble every squadron you’re sure is loyal.” He paused. “And remember, they may be firing on their own ships, so make damned sure you stick to people you trust.”

“Yes, sir,” Hurley replied, picking up her headset as she did.

“Admiral Compton,” Udinov’s voice blasted through the speakers again. “I urge you to reconsider your position. I’m sure there is some middle ground we can discuss, some mutually acceptable solution.”

Compton felt a wave of anger. He tried to bite down on it, but he was only partially successful. “I will reconsider nothing. I am not in the habit of discussing terms with mutineers.”

He glanced over at Hurley, and nodded as she gave him a thumbs up. Her squadrons were scrambling.

“There is little point to further discussions. All loyal ships, you are ordered to close with the nearest mutinous vessels. You will either accept their unconditional surrenders or you will attack without further notice.”

He felt his body tense with anger. At the mutiny, certainly, but also at the stupidity of it all, at the astonishing waste about to take place, the insanity about to cause human warships to battle each other in the depths of First Imperium space.
We do the enemy’s work for him,
he thought bitterly.
But I have no choice…

“Admiral West,
Midway
is to open f…”

“Admiral, we’ve got ships transiting from X16, sir. Looks like two fast attack ships. Incoming transmissions.” Kip Janz’ voice was high pitched with surprise. “Putting it on speaker, sir.”

“Admiral Compton, this is Captain Callou aboard Dragonfly. We have enemy forces on our tail, sir. Repeat, enemy forces pursuing us…”

But Compton already knew. His eyes were fixed on the fighter’s tiny screen…and all he could see was contact after contact pouring through the warp gate behind the two scoutships.

The enemy was already there.

Chapter Fifteen

Research Notes of Dr. Hieronymus Cutter

We have been three days in the bowels of the First Imperium vessel. I knew, intellectually, how massive this ship was, but it is another thing entirely to actually experience it…to traverse kilometer after kilometer of dark, endless corridor with no end in sight.

We must find the location of the main processing unit, the great computer that once ran this entire vessel. I can only imagine in the vaguest manner the enormity of such an intelligence, its immense stores of data, its unimaginable computing power. What is such a computer like, I wonder? Nothing man has ever built is comparable. The quasi-sentient units we create for our ships and Marines are like children’s toys by comparison.

Will such a system seem like a computer at all to me? Or will I perceive it more as another person? Even a god of sorts? Will it be so far beyond any of us as to defy all comprehension?

I do not know. Indeed, I know our mission is dangerous, far more so than I told Admiral Compton it would be…though I daresay he knew better as well. But there is no choice. If we cannot learn how to control or at least communicate persuasively with the intelligences that control our enemy, we are doomed. I would not trade a chance at long term success for a few months of life, fleeing into the darkness. No, this is our chance, perhaps our only one.

First Imperium Colossus

System X20– High Orbit Around Planet IV

The Fleet:  225 ships, 47,815 crew

Hieronymus Cutter moved forward slowly, carefully. His people had been at it for days, wandering through the almost unending corridors of the First Imperium vessel. He had everybody on a rotation of twenty hours on duty and four off, with the whole unrealistic schedule supported by the liberal use of stims. Still, he knew his people were getting sluggish, and one sloppy, careless move could have disastrous consequences.

The ship itself was completely dead, but they’d already managed to accidently activate half a dozen security bots. They’d been able to knock them all out, but not before the deadly automatons had killed two and wounded half a dozen others. One of the dead had been from Cutter’s team and the other one of Frasier’s Marines.

The bots appeared to be unconnected to the ship’s main systems, operating independently, responding to threats as they appeared. Still, he’d detected no power from any type of scanners, absolutely nothing but the single source he knew was the antimatter containment system. How were these bots detecting anything if they had no energy output whatsoever?

No energy we can detect
, he thought suddenly.
Dark energy, maybe?
The alloy of the First Imperium hulls was infused with a mysterious form of dark matter. Now Cutter wondered if the ancient aliens had also learned how to manipulate dark energy. He stopped suddenly.

“Is something wrong, Hieronymus?” Ana Zhukov had been walking right behind, and she almost ran into him.

“Dark energy,” he said, his voice soft, distracted. “The First Imperium is able to utilize dark energy, at least for some purposes…like communications.” He turned and looked back at her. “Don’t you see? It explains everything. The original distress call from Epsilon Eridani IV, the seeming ability of the First Imperium to communicate through warp gates, the security bots that seem to have scanners running with no detectable energy output…”

“Yes,” she said softly. “Of course. It would explain everything, wouldn’t it? Or at least it might. But we know almost nothing about dark energy, Hieronymus. So it’s just a wild guess at this point.”

“It’s more than that, Ana.” His voice was becoming firmer as he spoke. He’d been unsure a moment before, but now he was totally convinced. “There is no question the enemy can communicate in ways we can neither detect nor explain. And you yourself have run the scans here. There is no energy output we can trace, no scanning system running in the background. Yet, we have activated multiple defensive bots as we’ve explored. Scanners require some kind of energy to operate. If we question this assertion we have to abandon everything we understand about physics, right?”

She nodded. “Agreed…”

“So if there must be energy usage and we cannot detect it, we are dealing with some sort of undetectable energy, correct?”

“Yes,” she said tentatively. “But…”

“There is no but. Dark energy is the only undetectable form of energy we have posited to exist. It is vastly more likely we are dealing with dark energy than something completely unknown.” He sighed. “Still, even if we accept this as fact, I’m not sure what it does for us, at least in the short term. We’ve never been able to detect dark energy flows before, despite centuries of research. We may know what we’re dealing with, but that won’t have any impact unless we can find a way to scan for it…or block it.”

Cutter sighed. “I wish Friederich was here. He would understand this better than I do.” Friederich Hofstader had been Cutter’s mentor years before. Hofstader was a physicist, generally accepted as the world’s most knowledgeable. Cutter’s studies had begun in that field, but his greatest work had been in the areas of artificial intelligences and quantum computing. And now he was staring at an enormous physics problem.

“You realize what this means, Hieronymus? If the First Imperium can manipulate dark energy sources that we can’t even detect, we can never be sure something is truly dead.” She looked around. “Even this ship may still be more functional than we thought.”

“Perhaps. We can only speculate what knowledge the First Imperium possesses that we do not. It would be an error to assume their science is a simple progression forward of ours. Our understanding of the universe is incomplete…and in some ways almost certainly in error. Some forms of advancement manifest in the execution of an idea. Planes, for example. An observer from the middle ages could imagine such a thing was possible. Indeed, he would have seen birds flying many times. But could he have imagined a radio transmitting voices across hundreds of kilometers? The concept would have been totally new to him.”

“I think you are right, Hieronymus.” She paused. “We can only guess at what they can utilize this power for. We simply don’t know enough about dark energy to make truly educated projections.”

“They use matter-antimatter annihilation to power their vessels and weapons. And Epsilon Eridani IV provides some evidence that they produce their antimatter using highly advanced—but conventional—energy generation. So we can make a reasonable assumption that they do not have the capacity to utilize dark energy for most of their needs.’

“Or that it is not as efficient a power source for weapons and spaceship drives.” Ana’s tone was tentative at first, but it slowly firmed up as she spoke. “However, we must infer that they have the capacity to utilize dark energy for communications purposes, which means we can never be sure if they are in contact with other First Imperium units or intelligences.”

“I am inclined to agree,” Cutter replied. “The only way we can be sure to sever contact with commands and data flows from outside is to physically destroy all their communications gear. Including the dark energy units. And we have no idea what to look for in those.”

“Dr. Cutter?” It was Frasier’s voice on the com.

“Yes, Major?”

“I think we’ve found something. I’m with a team of your people right now, and they’ve found what they think is the main data center.”

Cutter felt a rush of excitement. He turned and looked over at Ana before continuing. “That is good news, Major. Transmit your location, and we’ll be right there.”

*  *  *

“I have never even imagined anything like this.” Cutter’s voice was distracted. His eyes were fixed on a long row of cylinders, three deep and stretching as far as he could see in the dim light of the portable lamps. Each of the shiny-metallic tubes was a meter across and five meters high. “I can’t even begin to guess at the knowledge stores this unit possesses.” He turned his eyes to a large spherical structure built from some clear polymer. It was three meters in diameter and mounted in a large metallic base. It was dark inside, but he could see the shadowy outlines of a lattice-like web of filaments.

The main processing unit…

The room was enormous, like nothing he’d ever seen in a spaceship.
Of course you’ve never seen a ship this large before
. As far as he could tell, they were almost dead center in the vessel’s interior.
Exactly where I’d expect to find the intelligence.

“So this is what we’ve been looking for then?” Connor Frasier was standing right behind Cutter. Admiral Compton had been clear when the expedition set out from the fleet. Frasier was to protect the scientist at all costs.

“Almost certainly, Major,” Cutter replied. “This is a computer…or at least a far more advanced version of what we call a computer. I’m fairly certain these cylinders are data storage units.” He pointed toward the sphere. “And I’d wager that is the main processing unit…the intelligence itself, so to speak.”

He turned and walked toward the opposite wall. There were screens and a number devices that looked like keyboards of some kind. And chairs. Cutter stopped and put his hand on the back of one of the seats.
My God
, he thought.
This looks like almost like a workstation on Midway
. He’d often imagined what the beings that had created the First Imperium looked like. He suspected almost everyone had. Based on the designs of their battle robots, the general assumption had been they were moderately similar to humans. But these workstations looked like they’d been designed
for
humans.

“This ship definitely had a crew once…and based on these chairs, and the other things we’ve seen, they looked a hell of a lot like us, at least in basic size and structure.”

Ana was a few meters back, with half a dozen team members standing behind her. “We need to find an input device before we even consider trying to activate this thing.” She stepped forward, stopping right next to Cutter. “And we have to disable the communications systems.”

“Finding the com might be the most difficult part of this. Besides the sheer size of this ship, we have no idea what a dark energy communications unit looks like.” He sighed and paused for a few seconds. “We might have to take the risk of trying to activate the AI…and count on getting control quickly enough to order it to shut down the communications network.

“What if that doesn’t work?” Gregor Kahn was standing behind Ana. He was the best and brightest of the team they’d brought with them, but he was a pain in the ass too.

Cutter turned and walked toward the row of workstations, his eyes panning along the equipment that looked both strange and familiar.

“Then we die, Gregor.”

Chapter Sixteen

Excerpt from After Action Report, Mariko Fujin, Lieutenant, Commanding Gold Dragon Squadron

There is only one thing I can say about my comrades in the Gold Dragon Squadron…in the Battle of X18, uncommon valor was a common virtue.

Fighter-Bomber A001 – “Pit Viper”

X18 System - Enroute to AS Midway from Planet IV

The Fleet:  225 ships, 47,817 crew

“Greta, get the rest of your birds launched…now!” The voice was crisp, firm. Battle was upon them all, and Terrance Compton was ready.

“On it, sir,” she replied. Hurley was hunched over her screen, organizing her squadrons. She’d restricted her earlier launch order to Alliance and PRC wings, the ones she knew for sure were 100% loyal, but now she was sending every fighter that could fly into the fight. She preferred to execute meticulously-planned operations, the kind of well-choreographed assaults that had made her the uncontested master of fighter tactics. But there was no time. The fleet was too close to the warp gate, and the enemy would be on them too quickly. If her birds were going to make a difference in this fight, it had to be now, in a mad and chaotic assault, organization and tactics be damned.