The PT Lilith received the command to activate the current fail-safe protocol. It waited a full 30 minutes for a cancellation request. One was not received. Fail-safe protocol confirmed, the PT Lilith's requested to disembark from the automated flight control system. It followed the given path out to the safety line and turned. The PT Lilith did not accelerate from the station at its full capability. Instead, it plotted a fairly simple course to take it around the station until the ship had digital eyes on its designated target. It then waited. The PT Lilith was not bored; it did not have the capability to feel such things. The target disembarked from its berth in relatively short order. It watched the target as it backed up to the safety line, made its own course correction, and started on its journey. The PT Lilith gave enough time to acquire a general calculation of where it was heading, and then it plotted an intercept course.
Stealth protocols required deactivation of the transponder. In inhabited systems, protocols required activation of the transponder. The PT Lilith calculated that it had a higher chance of success if the station believed the ship was functioning normally, while simultaneously not broadcasting its presence toward its target. It then logically deduced that the best option was to broadcast its transponder ID in a wide beam or cone towards the station. Anything caught in that beam, primarily the station, would see the PT Lilith as they expected to. Anything not caught in that beam would see a ship suddenly drop off their short-range sensors. Ideally, the target would not realize this had happened. It was possible someone else would report the disappearance to the station or some other security force that might be in the system. The risk was worth taking, the chances of being caught and destroyed before the PT Lilith destroyed its target were extraordinarily low.
The PT Lilith was an odd ship to look at; the rear was fairly boxy and fairly normal for a ship. The front, however, was quite different. Multiple spars spanned out forward. These spars held ablative shields. Though their primary function was to act as shielding for IR sensors, they also deflected radar signals and hid the gravitational distortion that pulled the PT Lilith along its intercept course. Missiles were loaded into each of the twin tubes. The PT Lilith accelerated while keeping its front pointed directly at its target. From the sides, above, below, and definitely from behind, the PT Lilith could be seen quite easily. From the front, the PT Lilith was invisible.
If the PT Lilith could feel anger, it would have the moment it was scanned by a tight beam. It was, of course, one of the scenarios that had been calculated. Some ship saw another ship without a transponder, had decided to scan it, and was no doubt reporting that to flight control. If the PT Lilith could hope, it would hope that there would be an argument between the human pilots with a conclusion that the issue was human error. The PT Lilith didn’t care. It couldn’t care. The PT Lilith pursued its target.
***
"System-wide HAZ-NAV: Ship spotted near Bachmann orbital? No transponder information attached," EX-Talia said, pretty much at the same time I was reading it. She added a "uhhh" before popping up an image of a strange-looking ship on one of the larger displays. The back end of the ship was the same boxy, unimaginative shape that most budget starships were. The front half, however, seemed to be more along the lines of an array of variously angled plates. I briefly wondered what they were for until I read the bottom text: "United Aceti Corporation PG 93 Mk-3, Unidirectional Stealth Vessel."
“Son of a bitch.” I said, my heart starting to race.
"Doesn't PT stand for patrol torpedo?" Sam asked, her voice sounding desperate.
"Sam, get the soft suits out. Now," I ran, practically jumping out of my seat and running to the back hatch between the galley and the cargo hold. I slammed the door shut and threw the lever, locking the dogs in place. Back to the bridge, I did the same thing with the hatch between the bridge and the galley. Sam had listened, and she was currently attempting to get her soft suit on. Mine was laying on the floor next to her, and I managed to shove my legs into it before she had figured out how to get her tail appropriately in place. We needed to start drilling this or something.
Suited up and sitting back in the pilot's seat, I waited for the hammer to drop. Somewhere out there in the vast darkness of space was a ship we could not see and I was fairly certain it was hunting us. The only part that made me question that was that the pilot was lying in the galley, dead. That thought struck me. I have murdered eight, maybe nine people now. Hell, maybe more. Who knows how many people were on that one ship? Wasn't I supposed to have nightmares or something? I didn't even feel that bad about the guy lying dead in the galley. Maybe the video games had desensitized me. Maybe there was a fundamentally broken part of my brain, maybe...
"Missiles inbound," X-Talia shouted.
I flipped the ship around so that we were flying backward, still trying to pick up speed, while activating the guns. "What's your estimate for how many missiles are on that ship?" I asked.
"The base statistics say it has room for 32," X-Talia replied.
I swallowed hard. There's no way we're getting around 32 fucking missiles. "Chamber the air in the cargo hold."
"Why do we need to do that?" Sam asked.
"In case we get hit, it'll reduce the amount of oxygen we lose considering the cargo bay's the largest target."
"Oh," she replied.
"I've made a modification to the targeting radical. You'll notice that the red will gradually get cooler in color as the missiles get closer to the appropriate range for the guns. I do suggest firing before it turns green and blinks," X-Talia said.
"Right. Thank you. Can you disable the safety on the Grav-Drive for me?"
"Done," she replied.
I stared at the two incoming death tubes on my screen, thanking the stars that the ship had fired from such a far distance. Two missiles coming at us fast. I hope we survive this.
"Those are much larger than I expected. I'm gonna cut my estimate down to 12," X-Talia said in one of those good news, bad news situations. Good news is there were fewer missiles to contend with. The bad news is they were more deadly.
"Almost in range," I said just before both missiles split into about 12 smaller targets. "Holy shit!" I could hear Sam make some type of whimpering sound.
"It's a trick, wait... OK." X-Talia siad, her voice calm and professional.
All the targeting data started vanishing from the screen, leaving icons for the original two missiles. I didn't exactly know what the hell was going on, but apparently it was some type of spoof to confuse the defending systems. I opened fire and was pleased when one of the missiles was taken out almost immediately, removing 12 targets from the screen as I shifted over to the other actual missile, ignoring the fake targets.
"Another two missiles fired," there was a brief pause before X-Talia added, "How much do you think these things cost?"
"Why are we worried about how expensive they are?" Sam asked, which honestly had been my question as well, but I was a little busy trying not to get us killed.
X-Talia replied with a question of her own that gave me hope. "Well, these things have got to be expensive, right? How much do you think he could afford?"
Sam said, "Oh."
As a second missile ceased functioning and veered off course towards us, X-Talia moved the targeting radicals over to the new incoming missiles. "These ones are smaller."
"That's a good thing, right?" Sam asked.
"I'm increasing my estimate of how many missiles he has to 16," X-Talia retorted.
Two more missiles followed after. “If this guy was smart, he would have dumped all his missiles and activated them at the same time. There's no way we would have survived that."
X-Talia rubbed her chin. "I think it's an AI, and not a very smart one."
"Well, it sure ain't the actual pilot," Sam added unhelpfully.
I began firing at the incoming missiles, taking out one at a time and really not having a hard time of it. The heat buildup was getting a little annoying. I was already starting to sweat inside the soft suit, and I couldn't imagine what the air would have been like outside. Despite the sweat trying to drip into my eyes and kill my focus, I pretty much had this.
"Two more missiles. These are the big ones again."
I really liked this Ripper ammunition. The system had popped up and asked if I wanted to launch the heat sink. Part of me wanted to do it just to get rid of the heat, as I didn't think I would actually need it to confuse one of the missiles. Like last time, these ones exploded into a bunch of smaller targets, and it took X-Talia a moment to narrow it down to the original two. I let rip with the ripper, knocking out one of the missiles and turned my targeting radical to the second. I totally had this, but when I pulled the trigger, nothing happened. A red flashing indicator in the corner of the screen screamed at me that I was out of fucking ammo.
"Fuck!" I shouted as I momentarily panicked. After a split second of hesitation, I rocked the ship back and launched the heat sink, hoping that the much larger than usual missile with its point defense cannon spoofing ability, was somehow dumb enough to go after a heat sink. To my utter astonishment, it did. I brought us full up away from the heat sink's trajectory as the missile dove for it and as I was breathing a sigh of relief, the missile realized its mistake and course corrected. I'm not exactly certain what I yelled, something along the lines of "son of a fuck whore!" By some miracle, the missile had enough forward velocity that it couldn't overcome its current trajectory. Presumably, it didn't have enough fuel to course correct all the way, so it decided to prematurely detonate. Explosions in space were honestly kind of disappointing. A brief flash of light, which over saturated one of the cameras, was all it showed. The loud ping that echoed through the hall was considerably more horrifying to experience.
"Hull breach in the cargo bay, damage is minor. We can fix it later," X-Talia said.
“How the hell did it hit us from that far?" I asked, unsure if I was horrified or relieved.
"The explosion must have accelerated a piece of debris," X-Talia retorted.
"To what? Quarter C?"
"I don't have enough data to calculate that," X-Talia replied.
"Really?" Sam asked. "Shouldn't there be a relatively easy calculation for that? You knew how far away it was, right?"
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
X-Talia put her hands on her hips and glared at Sam. "Yes, but most of my processing power is focusing on the ship throwing missiles at us."
"That brought my attention back to the mentioned ship. Like last time in the void, I couldn't actually see it. X-Talia had been watching it via cameras and had been plotting its course, but sensors weren't actually picking it up. To be fair, the sensors were kind of shit.
"It stopped launching missiles," I said, honestly more to myself, but Sam replied with a, “Yeah, you're right."
X-Talia crossed her arms and plastered a smug look on her face. “Told you the cost of those missiles were important."
I pointed at the screen. "Is that it?"
X-Talia highlighted the outline of the ship making the image pop out a bit more. "Yes," X-Talia said.
"Why can we see it?" Sam asked.
"It's getting closer," X-Talia replied, seeming somewhat confused.
The image on the screen was growing; it got to the point where the zoom had to back off, and as it got closer, the camera was able to pick up more detail. It indeed was a strange-looking ship, with all the angled plates just kind of dangling out in front of it.
"It must have seriously overridden the Gravity Drive. It's accelerating at a crazy rate," X-Talia said.
"Uhh," Sam started before asking the actual question, "Is it trying to ram us?"
I don't think I ever expected a question from Sam to hit me quite this hard. I wanted nothing more than to get rid of the heat in the bridge and get out of this sweaty, stinky soft suit. But that single question caused a shot of fear to run through my body, from my head down to my toes. We had no ammo. That thing had to be accelerating at 12 Gs at least. It was basically a giant kinetic slug and if it missed us, it would just adjust course and try to hit us again. I stared at the other ship as it got closer. It was at a point where I could literally see it in the forward viewport.
"Do something!" Sam yelled.
Literally, the only thing I could do was try to move out of the way. I started accelerating Port at three Gs, then when I was sure the damn thing had adjusted course to intercept us, I pulled Starward at 10 Gs.
The Gravity Drive was only rated for six Gs of acceleration. It could crank out more, but it caused a lot of strain on the Drive itself, the Power Core, and it oversaturated the inertial dampening systems. It was only a short maneuver, so it likely wouldn't permanently hurt the Grav Drive or Power Core, and either way, due to the way gravity-based flight mechanics worked, we weren't jostled around too much. The other vessel flew past us in a flash just off the port side. I exhaled a breath I didn't even know I was holding when I realized we had not been obliterated.
"Oh, shit. That was close," X-Talia said.
In space, being able to see a spaceship was close. This wasn't close. It was figuratively scraping off the paint.
"How close was it?" Sam said, her voice filled with dispersing panic.
"About 12 meters," X-Talia said, partially as a question. She shrugged. "It was moving too fast."
"It's turning around," Sam said, pointing at the display. The enemy vessel had indeed turned around, but due to the way space worked, that was just so that it could put its primary gravity projector towards us and pull itself at its top speed. At the rate it had been going, it would take a while for it to slow down and start gaining on us again. I pretty much did the same thing, except in the opposite direction, pulling the ship around so our aft end was towards the fucking thing.
What were we supposed to do? We had no ammo. Literally, the only thing we could do would be to put something in its way and I didn't have anything I could just throw out the window. Could throw something out the lock. The only thing I had on hand was lead. A lot of lead, probably in the form of lead bars.
"X-Talia, can you fly the ship? Can you fly it better than I can?"
The little avatar shrugged. "I can calculate perfect maneuvers. However, I lack intuition because that's not really a learned thing you people do."
"Okay. You take control. I have an idea. Sam, as soon as I get into the galley, I need you to cycle the air."
"Where are you going?"
"We have crates full of lead. I'm going to drop a kinetic minefield out the lock.”
I didn't stick around to listen to Sam argue the idea. Technically, I didn't have to; I would have heard anyway over the comm in my helmet. Again, it took forever to cycle the air through the galley. It really wasn't meant to be used as a lock.
I pulled the tether out from its storage cubby, attached it to my soft suit and the ring near the lock before dropping the gravity to next to nothing. Pushing my way over to the first crate of lead, I unlatched it from the floor and gave it a shove towards the lock. The lead, with all its mass, moved a whole lot slower than I did. I then had to stop it and guide it into the lock, mostly by using my own tether cable. I wrapped the tether around the crate, grabbed the other end of the lock, and pulled. The box drifted lazily into the lock, and once I was certain it was in a position where I could unlatch the lid, I increased the gravity up to 1/6 standard.
Once the lid was unlatched, I threw it back into the cargo bay. This was the part that made me nervous. I turned the gravity back off and overrode the safety mechanism that didn't want both doors of the lock open when there was a vacuum on the outside, despite the vacuum on the inside. With both doors open and a giant hole to the deep dark in front of me, I wedged myself between the wall and the crate and pushed outward, trying to impart a bit of a spin to the thing.
"X-Talia, drop the gravity and use the EMF drive."
I caught myself at the edge of the lock as the crate meandered its way out into the nothing. The slow spin I had given it seemed to be working as lead bars gently drifted out of the crate under the centrifugal force. The EMF drive would pull the ship away from the crate without bringing the crate with it. Using the gravity emitters would essentially just catch the crate and cause the ship to start carrying its payload along with us. I pushed my way back into the cargo hold and went for another crate to repeat the process.
"Grant, it's catching up," I shoved the third crate out, giving the thing a bit too much spin, and I had to swear as the lead bars flung themselves away from the ship. Hitting the button to close the lock, I pushed myself back out into the cargo hold and up off the floor, hanging onto the tether which caught on the upper rail, swung me around to land on my feet on the top of the catwalk. Or at least that was what I was trying to do. Zero G is kind of a bitch to work with and while I had the right amount of tether, I mostly just hit the plating with my side. I hung onto the railing, disconnected the tether, and pushed my way back into the galley. I stumbled through the doorway, the change between zero G and one standard messing with my sense of balance. With the hatchway slammed shut and the dogs latched, I ordered Sam to re-pressurize. Again, it took too long. I was still back in the pilot's seat before the vessel had hit my makeshift minefield.
I had been so convinced that throwing out a bunch of lead bars would be a great idea. Without active scans, the small chunks of dense metal wouldn't initially show up, but as I stared at the camera pickup, I realized my error. The only way to get rid of heat in outer space was by radiation. It took time to radiate heat. The lead bars had been stored inside the ship, which was heated. Therefore, while my supposedly invisible minefield should have worked just like I planned, every one of those damn pieces of lead was showing up on infrared like glowing beacons.
"Well, I guess now we find out how stupid the AI is," I said, chiding myself for thinking this was a good idea. I retook the flight controls from X-Talia and waited as the ship rocketed towards us. The thing had counteracted its forward momentum and started heading at us at a speed that was going to obliterate us simply due to E equals MC squared. Best case scenario, it tried to avoid the obstacles in its way and we could gain enough speed to make a break into the Rift. Worst case scenario, it managed to weave its way through the minefield and turn both our ships into rapidly cooling molten slag. I really wish I had a shield.
"It's not deviating," X-Talia said. That seemed like a whole lot of good news, but the lead in that first crate had had enough time to spread out so the other ship could probably fly through the debris with no issues. It made slight adjustments of its course to avoid chunks of metal. I wondered if the same maneuver I pulled last time would work. Theoretically, it would as long as I didn't use the same directions, maybe go up and then Starward.
"It hit something," X-Talia said, her voice rather deadpan considering the tense situation.
"Really?" Sam asked.
"Yes, it jerked, it hit something. Look, there," X-Talia highlighted a part on the display where something was flying off to the side. It kind of looked like one of the plates that had been welded to the front of the damn stealth vessel.
"It doesn't care!" Sam shouted as she white-knuckled the armrest of her seat and pushed herself back as if that would help against the impending collision. She wasn't kidding though. The ship was coming straight at us right through a cluster of very obvious chunks of metal. I watched in amazed fascination as the metal plates in the front of the enemy ship crumbled and scattered, turning into debris.
"Oh, fuck! Oh, fuck!" I yelled, throwing all the pull I could get out of the Gravity Drive into the dorsal projectors. The ship and its debris were coming at us with zero regard to its own safety. I had just enough time to hear X-Talia say, "Shit!" before everything went dark. I could hear Sam's heavy breathing through the comm in my helmet as I grabbed onto my seat before I drifted out of it.
"What happened?" Sam asked.
"My guess is it overloaded its Core."
"Why do we have no power?"
"EMP," I replied, crossing my fingers and hoping everything was gonna be ok. "Things should start coming back online any moment."
We had to wait far too many moments before things actually did. First was the emergency lighting. Then a couple of screens came back online, their boot-up sequences taking too long.
"Whoa," X-Talia said as she popped back on one of the screens. "Give me a minute."
"What's the damage?" I asked EX-Talia.
She looked at me with an annoyed expression. "What part of ‘give me a minute’ did you not understand?"
I held up my hands. "Ok, sorry." Then I had to drop them back down in my armrest to keep my ass from floating out of the seat. More of the screens came online, one of which displayed the Power Core; it looked fine to me.
"The Power Core didn't like that," X-Talia said, countering my previous thought.
"Is it safe?" Sam asked.
"Yeah, but it's gonna have reduced output."
Well, that wasn't so bad. I mean, on a cost level and the fact that we couldn't really dock at a station for any length of time because we were wanted criminals, it was bad, but for actual safe operations, it wasn't that bad.
"Why aren't we more damaged?" Sam asked.
I looked back at her and shrugged. X-Talia popped up a picture of the enemy ship drifting listlessly through the void. The front end was smashed to bits and the rear looked like an explosion had gone off on it. However, that was just the rear, not the sides, dorsal, or the ventral sections. That was likely a safety feature.
"Thank the stars for safety features and engineering," I said, trying to be a bit chipper about it.
I looked at X-Talia who looked back and nodded. "There's still a puncture in the cargo bay. The Power Core didn't like the hard shutdown, but there's nothing inherently wrong. EMF drive is online and the Grav-Drive is spinning up now. All other systems seem to be rebooting appropriately."
"Rift Drive?" Sam asked.
"Unaffected.”
"OK. So let's turn this boat around and start hightailing it out of here. As soon as the gravity is back online," literally as soon as I finished speaking the words, I felt weight return to my body and my ass settled down in my seat without it being supported by tension. "I guess I'll go fix the hole now."
With no objections, I got up and made my way to the galley where I had to deal with the whole airlock procedure again. This sucked. Maybe we needed a lock between the galley and the cargo bay. It didn't take too long to find the gash in the hull and plaster over it with one of the patch kits. I waited the several long minutes as X-Talia tried to fill the room with a breathable atmosphere. Everything seemed to be holding and apart from the heat that was still built up and slowly being radiated off into space, things were looking up.
"We just received a transmission from system authorities. They want us to plot a course back into the system so they can take us in for questioning," X-Talia said.
And now things were not looking up.
"How long before we can jump into the Rift?" Sam asked.
"About seven minutes, though I'd like a good twenty to bleed off some more of the heat." X-Talia responded.
"We have another heat sink right? We can load that up and launch it when it's saturated," Sam suggested.
"That would work." I shrugged to myself and made my way back to engineering, pulling out the last large heat sink and slotting it into the loader. With the hatch sealed and a loud ‘clunk’ sound, we were now theoretically dumping heat into the sink and could launch it out into the void of space. Kind of a waste, but getting rid of heat in the Rift was weird sometimes. It occasionally taxed the system when things were running normally. I was up on the bridge and finally de-suited when we fell into the Rift. Again, I found it crazy how comforting I found the weird eerie colors.
"I need a shower," Sam said, peeling herself out of their suit.
I also needed a shower, but first I had to deal with the dead guy in the galley. We'd dump his body at the next stop, but it was generally a bad idea to open the lock in the Rift, or so I was once told. There was a long pause, dead silence minus the environmental blower that filled the bridge with its ever present hum. I partially wondered if Sam was waiting for me to say something about the shower. I was thinking about it, but I wasn't gonna say anything. Things had finally gone back to mostly normal and I returned to breathing when she left the room.
X-Talia chuckled. "Humans."