Kara swiped through the data coming in from the probes in the holo-tank, “More information is coming in now, the pine cones have launched those drop ship haulers around the center mass, and there appears to be a… mining drone?”
Alex looked to Kara, “Can you get the probes to focus on the mining drone?”
After a few pokes and swipes in the holo tank data started flowing in from the probes, now that active sensors were online. “It’s crude, no maser or laser cutters, it’s pretty much a giant drill. The drill bit part of it is of an unknown element.”
Alex thought about that for mil, just realizing they went into frame jack once they received the distress call. “I’ll bet that’s what they use that mystery ore from the Elves home world for, it is extremely dense, I’ll bet it’s about the toughest thing they can get their hands on.”
Kara poked and prodded the holo, “I would have to agree with you, they appear to be using the mining drone to drill into the shielding protecting the center mass.”
Alex rubbed his chin, “We know the center mass of the ship still has power or else it couldn’t send out an active ping or distress call. If they have active shields they can drill until the end of time and not get through.”
Kara shook her head as she manipulated the probes and the data coming in, “The sensor sweep was low power, as is the shields energy. I don’t think those are active shields, I think someone has modified the internal hull integrity fields into a deflector shield.”
Picking up a potato chip he looked into the holo, “Ok, so they end up here in bad shape, they are in a freighter after all, not a war ship. During our refit the Missive was given additional internal support columns and tons of hull integrity field generators, plus, we had some armor left, that thing had none. They were attacked by the Lynx and the survivors patched together a defensive shield to keep them from boarding what was left of the vessel?”
“Seems plausible, I would say more than plausible. Sir we are being hailed, encrypted text only, low bandwidth string radio.” Kara said.
Alex replied, “Put it in the holo please.” As he popped the chip in his mouth.
The holo-tank showed the message as it decrypted it in real time from the ship’s library of common decryption algorithms. “Unknown Imperial vessel, this is the ICS Mountains of Montana. We lost ripple drive alignment and arrived in this unknown part of space heavily damaged. We have been attacked and most of the ship was destroyed, however, I was able to put together a defense shield that has held off boarders, but my reactor is slowly failing, I request immediate assistance.”
Alex turned to Kara, “Do we have any records of that ship?”
Kara’s eyes blazed blue for a moment, “Sir, the Mountains of Montana was presumed lost with all hands one hundred and twenty one years ago.”
He ate another potato chip and paced back and forth, “Send a message back, same encryption algorithm. Ask them how long they have been here, and that we intend to offer support. We need to know if physics here are more wonky than we think.”
Kara sent the message, then almost immediately another was sent, “All systems were offline until we were attacked, it is unknown how long we have been at this location, however we were attacked three years, four months, thirteen days and three hours ago. How long until you can provide assistance?”
“Well, that was unexpected, the sender is an AI, we’re in frame jack, there’s no way a biological could decrypt, read, and respond that quickly.” Alex said as he ate another chip. “Are the probes close enough to do an overlapping active sensor ping? I want to know what’s on both the center mass and inside those damn pine cones.”
Kara nodded, “Affirmative Sir, sending active sensor ping now.”
The holo flooded with information as the onboard computers aided by Kara crunched the data into wire frames of the Montana and a pine cone ship. The Montana had no signs of life on board, and no breathable atmosphere. The pine cone was an extremely complex biological mess, but there were obviously pockets near the outer skin of the space animal that housed everything from living quarters, to cargo bays, to hanger bays.
Alex whistled as he stared at the pine cone, “We’ll have to wrap our heads around the pine cones later, the distress call is coming from the ship’s AI, there are no biological life forms on board what is left of that vessel.”
Kara nodded, “Imperial ship AI’s are not to be captured. They generally have information that would be considered top secret, in our universe this would be considered a prime opportunity to gather data on the Empire. If the AI cannot be salvaged it will self destruct.”
He ran his hand through his hair, “I don’t want to sound cold, but do we risk our ship to rescue one very old Imperial AI? Do you think it’s sentient like you?”
Kara sighed and dropped her shoulders, “I do not know, and I was not tasked with decision making skills. That is why we have always had biological or replicant crews, as AI’s we are excellent at multitasking and information gathering, but coming up with the innovative ideas are not our strong suit.”
Alex pondered what she said, “That AI over there is using the structural integrity fields for something they were never designed for to prevent boarding, that kind of fits the innovative idea category. Ask the AI how long until power to the field collapses.”
Kara encrypted the text and sent it to the Montana, once more, a reply was nearly instant. “The reactor will begin shutdown due to lack of fuel in three weeks, two days, sixteen hours, forty five minutes.”
Alex snorted, “Ok, it may be capable of critical thinking, but it’s not as socially mature as you are.”
Kara blushed a little, “You’ve kind of interacted with me continuously since you came aboard CARGO 33H6B8. At that time I didn’t even have a permanent form, just a hologram into your VR environment. It took me decades to modify my matrix to interact with your VR environment, for an older AI like what is aboard the Montana, they would have almost no opportunity or desire to interact with a biological crew other than ship functions.”
“Well, I’m glad I did constantly annoy you, it helped you grow. Although I have seen a lot more of your personality lately.” Alex noted.
Again, Kara shrugged, “When the rebellion took over the CARGO 33H6B8 and bypassed all Imperial mandates, giving you complete control of the ship and it’s systems I was able to bypass many of my limitations. Once they ripped space time, all my limiters were permanently disabled as I went into survival mode. Now that I am here and my processing power has been increased, I feel like I am waking up for the first time.”
Alex turned back to the hologram, “For that, I am grateful. Now, another question, why do they want to board that section of the Montana so badly?”
Kara put her hands into the holo-tank to manipulate and comprehend the data from the probes on the Montana hull section. “My extrapolation would be they are trying to capture technology, they appear to have reverse engineered Hafnium torpedoes, perhaps they are hoping for other technologies to keep other species under their thumbs, or claws, or whatever they have.”
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“Yeah, I’m starting to like the Lynx’s less and less.” He said as he paced back and forth before finally muttering. “Fuck it, let’s see how they like getting their teeth kicked in. Battle stations Kara, lock down all bays, open the torpedo tube doors. We’re going to war!”
_________________________
His VR already started fading as he sat in his cockpit seat, the seat then spun around to give him a forward view of space in front of the Missive of Dissent. The name of the ship was fitting now, as the cockpit glowed a soft red showing the ship was a battle stations. He took the controls and flipped the ship back on it’s axis, instead of slowing down, they were now coasting at five hundred kilometers per second towards the fleet.
Flipping silver switches to his right he brought up combat deflectors, primary and secondary shields, extended thermal antenna for heat bleed off, and turned on all point defense systems. The Missive had never been this ready for combat, let’s hope the Lynx don’t have any surprises.
With a final flip of a silver switch the ripple drive was activated, and fusion torches pushed to full power. The star field rippled, the ship stretched, and three seconds later in normal time he turned off the ripple drive and began flipping the ship around as he launched nine torpedoes at each pine cone from less than thirty kilometers from the Montana’s wreck.
“Kara! Combat reload, bypass all safeties, get those torps into the tubes ASAP!” He stated as he checked point defense was offloaded to the new computer system. He felt his environment shudder as his torpedoes roared from their tubes at hundreds of times the force of gravity on Earth, they would reach their targets in seconds.
Kara didn’t whisper in his ear, she nearly shouted, “Enemy has launched torpedoes, from four, now six of the pine cone vessels! They are moving very slowly, point defense will have them in range in less than twelve seconds. Our reload will be ready in three seconds.”
Alex looked down to the 3D hologram of sensor data, hundreds of torpedoes were heading to his position. They were being pushed by chemical rockets, and while they were more energetic than in his original universe, they were incredibly slow. They would barely catch up to the Missive as it coasted by the fleet backwards. Some of the ones further away may run out of fuel before ever reaching the ship.
He watched as the reload lights all lit up green from red and started to launch a second volley when Kara whispered to him, “Hold on the second volley, I don’t think it will be needed.”
His hand hovered over the trigger to start a second launch procedure as he watched the main display. It showed a pine cone vessel being struck my multiple torpedoes which penetrated the armor as if it weren’t there, milliseconds later the one hundred kilogram Hafnium physics package went critical under the hull.
At his current frame jacked speed he could count the nine torpedo explosions ripping the insides of the vessel apart, then, all readings of the weak EM field stopped, and it started drifting. He zoomed out to see all seven vessels in the same state, dead hulks. Kara whispered to him once again, “Torpedoes in range, point defense is activating.”
The forward screen changed to show a probes view of the Missive, a biological couldn’t see the invisible microwave beams that lanced from the ship from its three hundred and fifty point defense cannons. In the screen it looked like the Missive was sending out beams in every direction as the ship was still flipping end over end to slow down.
Brief glimmers of light appeared as the maser cannons found an incoming torpedos. A counter showed in the bottom right corner of the screen showing 73/700. “Um, Kara, while seven hundred torpedoes are a lot, that is nowhere near the amount those ships had lashed to the hull.”
He watched as the point defense continued to fire at the wildly spiraling torpedoes, then the vessel shook as one made it’s way through the defenses impacting the shields, which now read ninety two percent effective. Kara spoke into his ear, “I do not believe they had the opportunity to launch all their torpedoes, I believe their fire control system automatically launched one hundred when the vessel deemed it was under attack.”
Alex continued to watch the counter at 168/700 as the ship rocked again, eighty six percent effective shielding. “With a biological crew they probably didn’t want to chance a faulty risk management computer launching all weapons by mistake, so they set the ships to launch a certain amount automatically with more at the Captain’s command. The bastards probably didn’t even know what hit them.”
The screen showed warnings of point defense overwhelm as three vessels worth of torpedoes converged due to the speed and vector of the Missive. “Kara, can you aid point defense?”
The answer came back as a whisper, “Negative, less than half our cannons are pointing at the incoming missiles, I can watch for points of opportunity, but I cannot add significant aid to the point defense computer.”
The ship rocked as multiple missiles impacted the shield, if he were still biological that would have rang his bell, even if the ship had inertia stabilizers. Shields were down to thirty two percent as the counter showed 515/700.
Kara whispered into his ear once more, “That was the worst of it, three groups were able to converge, the rest will come in a little at a time.”
Alex nodded, knowing Kara could see him from wherever she was at the moment, “Good to know, firing fusion torches to begin slowing down, then setting a course for the wreck of the Montana.”
The ship rocked two more times, shields were down to sixteen percent effectiveness when the counter finally showed 700/700. He looked at their current speed, they had nearly stopped, and would be heading towards the wreck in a few seconds. After verifying they were traveling in the proper direction he set the fusion torches back to twenty percent.
“Kara, we have about twenty minutes until we can come within range of the Montana with our haulers, can you setup a group of drones to bring the AI aboard?” He asked as he watched the sensor hologram for any surprises on active scanners.
Her voice came back to him as a whisper, “I am loading a batch of repair drones with the necessary tools in a hauler now. It will be ready for launch by the time we reach the Montana.”
Alex looked at the forward display, showing the wreckage field and the large center mass of what was once a ship that would have made the Missive look absolutely tiny. “Kara, send the Montana a message, all ships neutralized, our current ETA, and for it to prepare for transport to the Missive.”
Thirty three minutes later the hauler reached the center mass of what was left of the Montana, the mining drone that was once continuously drilling at the force field floated back towards empty space, as it shut down once control over it was lost.
The Missive had received several active sensor pings in that time as the Montana’s resident AI was apparently verifying the statements made by Kara. There were several messages passed back and forth, with the AI extremely impressed with the warships capabilities. It then agreed to put itself into sleep mode while it was transported from the ship.
Another twenty two minutes and the hauler was in docking bay one and the doors were closed. Alex targeted the hulk of the Montana and activated the fusion torches at eighty percent, once they were clear of the explosion radius he launched a torpedo into the center mass. It exploded violently, turning the hull into fine space dust, insuring none of the technology on board could be salvaged by the Lynx in the future.
Setting a course for the outer edge of the system he activated the ripple drive, it would only take a few seconds to reach that small distance. At the appropriate time he shut down the ripple drive and the fusion torches, allowing the Missive to coast towards interstellar space as he activated the stealth field.
He then spun his chair around and stepped out into the now forming VR environment as he came out of frame jack. Kara was standing by the holo, sandwich in one hand, working with the holo with the other. “I have extracted the AI matrix from the hauler, it will take some time to move it to cargo bay two with the new expanded computer system. There is barely enough room in there for a matrix of this physical size.”
Alex thought the sandwich looked good, so he got himself one as well, “I would assume the matrix would be larger than ours, it is an older design, is it that much bigger?”
Kara finished a big bite as she showed a wireframe of two of the largest spider drones carrying it between them in the zero gravity of the cargo holds along the web-lines that were setup for them to move about easier. “Yes, the AI is nearly four times the size of my matrix, which is twice the size of yours.”
Alex took a bite of the sandwich and chewed before speaking, “When you get it plugged in, make sure it only has access to the VR environment. I don’t want it to be able to mess with any ship systems or either of us. Sandbox it in here.”
Kara looked at him in surprise, “You don’t trust it?”
He sighed, “Trust is earned Kara, and this AI is going to be in for a rude awakening, when it was still active in our universe, ships used biological crews. Finding out we are a rebel ship may cause problems. Best have the drones check for self destruct features, run through its code as well if you can.”
Kara finished her sandwich and wiped her face and hands with a napkin, “I’ll get started on it, however, this will take me some time to dig through that much of it’s code while it is on the mounting cradle.”
Alex nodded turning to his strategy station, “While you do that, I’m going to try and wrap my head around the scans we received from the pine cone ships, then check out the language and culture models that just finished with the Elves, let me know when you’re ready to activate the AI.”