Wasp Hand Page 6

  “What is a nestship?” said March. “Like a colony ship, I assume?”

  “Yes,” said Stormreel. “In a sense. It is also quite a bit more. I need to use the wall display again.” March gestured at the screen, and Stormreel stood, plugged another thumb drive into the data port, and tapped the controls. Jordan hovered behind him, looking anxious to help, but the admiral needed no assistance. March wondered how many flag officers needed their hands held for simple tasks but put the thought aside as unproductive.

  The wallscreen flickered, and an image appeared of a strange oval-shaped starship. It was obviously a Wasp ship, its hull the same grayish-green color as the starfighters and adorned with those glowing red highlights. The ship looked like a giant organic creature, and again March felt an instinctual revulsion to its appearance. The nestship made him think of a giant poisonous insect, the sort of thing that would crawl out of the mouth of a bloated, rotting corpse.

  “That scale,” said Adelaide, looking at some of the metadata displayed on the corner of the screen. “Is that accurate?”

  “It is,” said Stormreel. “This is an image of the Eumenidae nestship from the Fourth Empire. The vessel in this image is just over seventy-three kilometers long.”

  “That’s like a good-sized asteroid,” said Adelaide. “If their technology is entirely organic-based...how do they even build an organic ship that large? It would take the larger part of the biomass from a habitable planet to provide that much material...”

  “It would,” said Stormreel. “Which is the point of the attack on Vesper’s World, I suppose. The nestship will act as a colony ship, a seed, a troop carrier, and a terraforming apparatus. When it lands on Vesper’s World, it will immediately release vast quantities of spores designed to convert all animal and plant life into a Eumenidae ecosystem. The Eumenidae themselves will capture the individual colonists, kill them, and use their bodies as protein to help fuel the process. The ship itself will function as a colossal terraforming engine, and start converting the planet’s climate to one more amenable to the Eumenidae. As for how the nestship became so large, no doubt you observed the large quantity of dark energy the Wasp fighters radiated. It appears to be part of their metabolic process. Through some unknown means, the Wasps continuously tap dark energy radiation drawn from hyperspace. That is what allows them to grow new technology and equipment so quickly.”

  “Dark energy,” said March. “Before we rescued you, Dr. Taren worked out how to detect the dark energy signature of the Wasp starships.”

  “Did she?” said Donaghy, raising his eyebrows. He looked to the admiral. “Sir, that could be incredibly valuable if we can get that information to the Seventh Fleet. Dark energy radiation sensors aren’t limited by the speed of light. If the Fleet can scan the Vesper system, we’ll have a huge advantage over the Wasps.”

  “Captain March?” said Stormreel.

  “Vigil,” called March. “Please show the final dark energy scan from the Vesper system before we entered hyperspace.”

  “Acknowledged,” said Vigil. The screen flickered, and the sensor data appeared. March got to his feet and scrutinized it. Usually, the ship’s dark energy sensors scanned for the distinctive trace of the dark matter reactors that powered hyperdrives. The Eumenidae starships had a radically different radiation signature, and it took March a minute to sort through it.

  “Sixty-eight,” said March at last. “It looks like there are sixty-eight starships of capital ship size in the Vesper system.”

  “Most of them look like corvettes and frigates,” said Donaghy.

  “Probably like the scoutship that shot at us when we dropped out of hyperspace,” said Adelaide.

  “Almost certainly,” said Stormreel. “According to the records of the Fourth Empire, Wasp nestships were always surrounded by a screen of scoutships, and both the nestship and the scoutship could grow new starfighters as necessary.” He pointed at the screen. “And almost certainly that is the nestship.”

  March considered the image on the screen. He tapped the display, zooming into the radiation readout.

  “God,” said Donaghy. “That’s from a ship at least fifty kilometers long.”

  March grunted. “Based on this vector information, it’s going to reach Vesper’s World in another six days. Unless it jumps to hyperspace to cover some of the intra-system distance.”

  “It most likely will not,” said Stormreel. “The accounts of the Fourth Empire say that nestships always proceeded at sub-light speeds towards their target worlds once they arrived in a solar system. Given the enormous quantity of dark energy it takes to move a ship of that mass into hyperspace, we can assume the Wasp nestship will not enter hyperspace for any reason other than an emergency.”

  March frowned. “Do you have the entire Seventh Fleet nearby?”

  “No,” said Stormreel. “The Roncesvalles is waiting at fixed coordinates a short distance outside the system, accompanied by two cruisers, two destroyers, and four corvettes. The rest of the Fleet is currently on patrol through the outlying systems watching for Machinist incursions.”

  “Those scoutships have at least the firepower of a corvette,” said March, “and the Wasps have over sixty of them. You don’t have the forces to stop the Wasps.” He looked at the dark energy signature of the nestship again. “And that doesn’t even account for the armaments of the nestship itself.”

  “The nestship itself has limited armaments,” said Stormreel. “Its sheer size provides an excellent defense. It can also grow vast quantities of starfighters to defend itself.”

  “Then how are you going to achieve victory with only nine capital starships?” said March.

  “Nine,” murmured Stormreel, looking at the display. “We also have the Tiger.”

  “The Tiger isn’t a capital warship,” said March.

  “It is not,” said Stormreel, “but it may be exactly what I require.”

  “What do you mean?” said March. Both Donaghy and Jordan frowned. One did not question a Lord Admiral of the Royal Calaskaran Navy…but then most flag officers did not act like Theodoric Stormreel.

  “The gravitic shielding of the Wasp ships can be overcome,” said Stormreel. “It is powerful, yes, and acts as a unified shielding system against both kinetic and energy-based attacks, something that human scientists have never been able to construct.”

  “The gravitic shielding isn’t the problem,” said March. “It’s the number of ships. If you launch Roncesvalles and its task force at the nestship, you still wouldn’t be able to destroy it. The ship would hold out until its escorts arrived to destroy your capital warships.”

  “You are entirely correct, Captain March,” said Stormreel. “A conventional attack on the nestship would fail badly. However, the reliance the Eumenidae place upon biotechnology carries its own weakness.”

  “And what weakness it that?” said March.

  “Induced genetic mutation,” said Stormreel. “Specifically, genetic errors introduced via the radiation of multiple neutron bomb explosions. As you have observed, a Wasp starship can heal itself at a terrifying rate, and grow new starfighters and weapon emplacements swiftly. But that kind of organic growth has a weakness. Specifically, their DNA is networked. Any errors introduced into the Wasp DNA multiply at an exponential rate. An aggressive cancer, for instance, might take a year to kill a human. But for the Eumenidae…”

  “It’s a weakness,” said Adelaide. “The neutron bombs would kill off a substantial portion of their organic technology. Their healing mechanisms would kick into overdrive to repair the damage, but the radiation from the bombs would have damaged the DNA. They would grow new cells to repair the damage, but their cells would contain coding errors…”

  “And the Wasp starship would destroy itself in short order,” said Stormreel. “For that matter, the nestship and its queens act as the central genetic repository for the attached scoutships and starfighters. Any genetic coding errors introduced into the nestship will spread to the rest of
the fleet.”

  “Their gravitic shielding is more than strong enough to repel the radiation from a neutron bomb blast,” said March.

  “Yes,” said Stormreel. “Which is why we are going to obtain a piece of equipment that will neutralize that advantage.”

  March blinked. “That’s why you were traveling alone on the shuttle, wasn’t it? To pick up that piece of equipment.”

  “You guess correctly,” said Stormreel. “The Admiralty suspected that this was coming for some time. Consequently, we have been preparing to face the Wasp threat. One of those preparations was to obtain a device that would prove of use against the Eumenidae. You know as well as I do that the Machinists would take swift advantage of any perceived weakness in the Kingdom of Calaskar.” March nodded. “The device was smuggled in greatest secrecy to Vesper Station and secured there. My shuttle was to take me there under the guise of a surprise inspection of the station’s defense procedures. I would take the device, return to the Seventh Fleet, and prepare for the strike against the Eumenidae. Unfortunately, we arrived in the Vesper system, and promptly flew into a Wasp patrol…and you know the rest.”

  “All right,” said March. “That’s what you want from us. You want us to take you to Vesper Station, find the device, and take you back to the Seventh Fleet.”

  “That is correct, Captain March,” said Stormreel. “And the sooner we depart, the better.”

  March hesitated. Stormreel was entirely within his legal rights to commandeer the Tiger and order March to take him to Vesper Station. For that matter, Censor had ordered him to cooperate with the Lord Admiral. Yet Stormreel was trying to obtain March’s voluntary cooperation, rather than simply threatening him with prosecution. But March also had a strong room full of relics of the Great Elder Ones, and if the Tiger was destroyed, the Machinists might find those devices.

  But there were fifteen million people on Vesper’s World.

  “Yes,” said March. “We’ll head for Vesper Station at once.”

  “Very good,” said Stormreel. “Captain March, I will need a word alone with you before we depart.”

  March nodded and looked at Adelaide. “Can you get the ship started on a hyperspace calculation for Vesper Station?”

  “I’m on it,” said Adelaide, getting to her feet. “I’ll get started on the pre-jump checklists, too.”

  “Thanks,” said March. She grinned at him and disappeared through the door into the dorsal corridor.

  “I like your girlfriend, Captain March,” said Donaghy. “I haven’t met many women who could fly a Mercator Foundry Yards blockade runner.”

  “It comes in handy,” said March.

  “Captain, Ensign, give us a moment, please,” said Stormreel.

  Donaghy and Jordan dutifully filed into the corridor.

  March and Stormreel looked at each other.

  “Tell me, Captain,” said Stormreel. “What do you know about the Great Elder Ones?”

  March let out a long breath. “More than I ever wanted.”

  Stormreel smiled. “Am I cleared to know about them, is that what you mean? I will spare you the mystery. The Great Elder Ones were an ancient and malevolent alien race that ruled most of this region of space long before humans left primeval Earth. They were defeated and driven back to their own universe long ago, but they left behind some of their technology…and the hive mind of the Machinists and their Wraith device project is based upon the technology of the Great Elder Ones.”

  “I see,” said March. “You do read Censor’s reports, don’t you?”

  “With great interest,” said Stormreel. “And that leads me to a deduction. You have some of the relics of the Great Elder Ones locked in your ship’s strong room, do you not? Dr. Taren is an archaeologist, and likely she stumbled across them without realizing it. It would also explain why you are traveling alone with her aboard your ship.”

  March said nothing, thinking about his answer.

  “It is absolutely imperative,” he said at last, “that the Machinists do not capture this ship. Or destroy it. If they blow up the Tiger and kill us all, they’ll still be able to sift the cargo out of the wreckage.” He frowned as a thought occurred to him. “Do you think the Wasps could be interested in the relics of the Great Elder Ones?”

  “I don’t know,” said Stormreel. “There are no accounts of them using anything other than their own organic technology, but the records are incomplete. And perhaps the relics of the Great Elder Ones offer power they would not turn down. However, the question is moot if we destroy their nestship.”

  “The path to victory,” said March.

  Stormreel’s smile was hard and mirthless. “Yes. It forgives nearly all sins committed in its pursuit, does it not?”

  The intercom chimed before March had to answer.

  “Jack?” came Adelaide’s voice.

  “Yeah?” said March.

  “I think we’re about ready,” said Adelaide.

  “I’m on my way,” said March.

  He nodded to the admiral and left the galley.

  Chapter 4: Vesper Station

  The door to the flight cabin closed behind March, and he locked it.

  He wanted to talk to Adelaide alone.

  March stepped towards the pilot’s acceleration chair and paused for just a second. Adelaide sat in the co-pilot’s acceleration chair, her fingers working over the controls. The blue glow from the holographic displays played over her face, her eyes intent on the navigation screen. He was struck by how beautiful she looked sitting there, and he was gripped by the urge to draw closer and kiss her.

  Sentimental. He was getting sentimental.

  “A liability,” said Stormreel in his memory.

  March pushed the thought from his mind and sat at the pilot’s station.

  “What did the admiral want?” said Adelaide.

  “He deduced that we have relics of the Great Elder Ones,” said March.

  “That’s just swell,” said Adelaide. She hesitated. “Well, maybe that isn’t a problem. Censor trusted him enough to give him that blanket order.”

  “He did,” said March, checking the engine status. Adelaide had completed the pre-hyperspace checklist, and Vigil was finishing the navigational calculation to take them to the Vesper system. “Did Censor ever talk to you about Stormreel? Tell you what he thinks of the man?”

  “Never,” said Adelaide. “Do…you want to know what I think?”

  “Yes,” said March. “I do. Very much.”

  “Oh, good. Glad I’m not just a pretty face to you then,” said Adelaide, but she grinned as she said it.

  March smiled back. The expression still felt strange to him. “No law says you can’t have a pretty face and a sharp mind.”

  “I suppose not,” said Adelaide. She took a deep breath. “I think we ought to trust him. He has a reputation for being a, well, for being an asshole…”

  “There’s a goddamn mystery,” said March.

  “But I think he knows what he’s doing,” said Adelaide. “He’s won a lot of battles for Calaskar. And, God, there are fifteen million people on Vesper’s World, and they’re all going to die if that nestship gets there. If we have a chance to save them, I think it’s worth it.”

  “Yeah,” said March.

  He thought of Martel’s World once more, of watching the planet burn as the fleeing Machinist ships unleashed their bombardment.

  “Hyperspace calculation complete,” announced Vigil.

  March checked the calculation on his display. They were septillions of kilometers from Vesper Station, but the hyperspace jump would take about eight minutes. The terminus point would put them ten thousand kilometers from Vesper Station, as close as they could jump to Vesper’s World itself without the planet’s gravity well causing the hyperspace tunnel to collapse. March brought up the data from the dark energy scan and superimposed it over the hyperspace calculation.

  “You think we might encounter any Eumenidae ships near Vesper Station?” s
aid Adelaide.

  “We might,” said March. “Some of those scoutships were close to the planet itself. And the planet’s gravity well might throw off the dark energy sensors.” He let out a breath. “We’ll just have to find out when we get there.” He looked at her. “Start on the weapons and shield checklist when we go to hyperspace. We might need to fight as soon as we reach Vesper Station.”

  “Right,” said Adelaide, turning her attention to her displays.

  March took one last look at the system status and grasped the power levers for the hyperdrive. The drive activated, opening a hyperspace tunnel in front of the ship, and the Tiger left normal space. March looked at the engine status displays, but everything was green. The dark matter reactor was functioning, there were no power spikes in the hyperdrive, and the resonator coils were generating a proper repulsion field. He looked at Adelaide’s displays and saw that she was working on the checklists for the shield generators.

  “I’ll take the weapons if you finish up the shields,” said March.

  “Sounds good,” said Adelaide. “Jack. This device of Stormreel’s, the one we need to pick up on Vesper Station. What do you think it is?”