CHAPTER 11 - THE SECRETIVE EMPIRE

17 Apr 2231

It was the tail end of Jamaad and Artur's shift when the ship exited warp... actually, it was supposed to be Rachel and Kuw's shift, but they were both not fit to command the ship in a stressful situation like this. Jamaad took a few extra swigs of strong coffee and decided to pull a few extra hours. Perhaps he and the Canid were the most well-suited for cases where a firm hand and a tough fist were most appropriate, as opposed to the sensitive ear and the persuasive voice, or the caring touch and the mechanical clench.

The Hxet-ktee system, according to Rachel's scans, was a fairly unremarkable red dwarf with no planets beyond two gas giants, resembling Frontier's End except even smaller and barer of solids. It must have been a very old system, perhaps as old as the Milky Way itself, considering its ultra-low metallicity. Maybe the rings of these gas giants hid some secrets of long-forgotten precursor races? Yet, the kjee were not going to share these secrets, if they had found any. Instead, these planets and their elderly mother remained silent in their eternal dance, as silent as they were for many billions of years. They lasted longer than anything any civilization built, and would outlast anything they would ever build.

Of course, the serene atmosphere was undercut by the fact that there were many kjee vessels in the system. The upgraded sensors revealed their structures: all were roughly shaped like triangular pyramids of varying narrowness, and of course mainly composed of scaffolding. The engines on these pyramids were often on large 'stilts', to shield the crew from harmful radiation caused by torch drives. Torch drives were an ubiquitous technology: it turned out fusion efficient enough to create them was actually fairly easy to create for any information-age civilization that stumbled upon a little secret. Humans did so in the late Age of Protests, for example. The kjee did that somewhat later, and thus their empire was smaller, as fusion-torches were such a crucial tech for space colonization that bad luck could seriously damage a civilization's chances. Who knew how different the Oval's landscape would have been if, say, humanity spent longer squabbling among itself and did not become the number three great power, or the peaceful Chimeras simply got lucky and snatched up a large empire instead of becoming a compact hermit republic?

"Sensors Officer Rachel, stop staring below the screen like you're baked!" Jamaad said.

"I think it's the painkillers, I apologize sir," Rachel replied as she shook her head. "I promise I didn't sneak in any catnip," she giggled.

Jamaad thought that was actually pretty funny, but only nodded. "What are the hostiles like?"

"There are five of their starguards about to approach hailing range. Two from the direction of the system, one from deep space, one up, one down, roughly in a bipyramidal shape. Looks like we had shitty luck and stumbled into an encirclement. All of them are actually faster than our current speed. They have railguns and missiles. Should we call Kuw?" She then assigned each kjee ship a number before forwarding the data to the other stations.

"Nah, let her rest," Jamaad shook his head and started shouting into his datapad, "Officer Patch, put the engines into overdrive! Turn the ship so that it goes between the first and the third hostile, then pull up to go between three of them!"

The robot, below in the engineering deck, prepared to optimize the engines for performance, as it did during the fight with the pirate. The captain made an announcement instructing everyone to get into an acceleration-safe position. The previous sequence of button-presses and lever-pulls was repeated in a much more well-planned and methodical way. Nevertheless, the effects were harsh. Rachel's injured tail lashed painfully against the back of the seat, causing her to cry out in pain, while poor Rogier rolled off his cot in the medbay. The rest handled the acceleration surprisingly well.

The third Kjee ship was on a close enough trajectory to be able to hail the Pheidippides. Jamaad sighed and thought whether to respond himself or walk back on his statement about Kuw. In the end, he decided to answer them himself, sending the feed to his seat's screen instead of the comms console.

On the other end of the display was a creature radically different from human, relmai, or chohjozra. This kjee resembled a human-sized mix between a three-legged spider and a lobster. She had three chitinous legs as long as a human leg and slightly thicker than a human arm, with five bumpy, spiked segments. At the end of each leg was some kind of four-clawed manipulator hand-foot. This chitin, much like her cone-shaped body, was covered in shaggy white hair like that of an Angora cat. The body was relatively small by comparison, perhaps the size of a human abdomen, and had a small antenna at the tip of its cone. In one of the three gaps between her legs was a small head. On its round face were three large black eyes and four mandibles surrounding a lamprey-like mouth with a thin hanging tongue. This kjee wore what must have been her species' equivalent of an uniform: reflective black bands, three each over her body and limbs, each decorated with three medals of silver or platinum. Jamaad knew this was indeed a female, as male kjee were cuboid-shaped instead of cone-shaped.

Before he could say anything, a voice, clearly synthesized, resounded. "Interloping human! Identify yourself before me, Fleetmaster V-tey-e H-xee-ko of the 371th Victorious Starguard Taskgroup of the Splendorous Kjee Empire! State your reasons for intruding upon our space."

"Captain Jamaad Warren of the Terran StarNavy," he spoke calmly, "you do not need to know our reasons. And you will regret prying further."

Artur began opening his mouth, but Jamaad silently shushed him, and the weapons officer reconsidered his attempt at thoughtful and eloquent diplomacy.

"They're readying up weapons!" Rachel yelled.

V-tey-e bounced up and down slightly. "Then we will find out what your reasons are, human."

Jamaad smiled. "Come and get us."

As they spoke, the engines reached their full potential, producing a constant roar. The ship would still need to skim for around ten hours, and would need to survive while staying within the system until then. They would likely not need to accelerate at overdrive throttle for the whole stretch, as all that mattered now was breaking out of the current predicament.

"There's nothing circular about this, yet we call it an encirclement…" a thought crossed Jamaad's mind.

Soon, the situation wasn't looking too good. Even with the Pheidippides going into the middle of one of the faces of one of the triangles that composed the enemy formation, it looked like the scout ship would wind up in the effective range of at least one kjee cruiser's missile launcher… and possibly a rapid-fire railgun.

"Are we going to die?" Rachel trembled.

Artur, who was previously fiddling with the targeting levers and mumbling something in Interslavic, turned around and replied. "You know, if you panic about it, we will. Calm your tits."

"Prepare to engage evasive maneuvers, but don't perform them until explicit permission," Jamaad commanded to Patch.

The purpose here was merely escape, unlike the first confrontation, where it was a duty to destroy the pirate. In fact, direct combat was not a good idea at all: it would waste precious missiles, and destroying a kjee ship could get them in trouble or even start a war. Everyone realized this, and knew the rest did too, so nothing was said about it. Jamaad knew his crew by now. Even Artur had a good understanding of when not to shoot, and the incident yesterday kind of put a measure of humility into him. Yes, it was not related to combat… but still, he realized that excessive force and fanaticism in its application could hurt people he did not intend to hurt.

Thirty minutes passed, of nervousness and tension that gradually rose even in the two tougher crewmembers. Rachel bit her retractable claws in between giving readings: the three ships continued closing in at the approach. Jamaad occasionally barked an order to Patch to try and push the engines even more. The fractal robot complied, but issued warnings about how much such optimizations would reduce the drives' lifetime: by three weeks, by three months, by a year. Yet, Jamaad kept pushing. Artur, meanwhile, leaned back and thought about the ship's armament…

"They turned on afterburners! All three are still in front of us and now in effective missile range!" Rachel yelled.

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Jamaad sighed. "Artur, prepare weapons and await further orders."

"Aye aye sir."

The kjee ships seemed to work in perfect geometric unison, as before, then now. In this complete synchronicity, each of the three launched three barrages of three small missiles.

"You know," Rachel said after reporting this, "I think this species really likes the number three."

Chuckles resounded through the room. Gallows humor was a well-worn tradition in the Terran StarNavy.

"Continue ahead, don't evade yet," the captain said to Patch.

The swarms of missiles continued their approach. Soon, they were so close that they shone brightly on all sensor readouts, the plumes of their powerful engines blaring in IR, in visible light, and in ultraviolet. They began clumping into a lance-shaped 'fist', speeding together towards the Pheidippides. Meanwhile, the two ships further behind also fired their clusters, but those were trailing behind for now.

"ROTATE 360 DEGREES CLOCKWISE, AS FAST AS POSSIBLE!" Jamaad yelled, then switched to the intercom, "EVERYONE, BRACE YOURSELVES!"

"Wha–"

Rachel felt like she was in some kind of deranged theme park ride as the ship kicked itself into a retrograde position, but thankfully the seatbelt held her in her chair. The engineers below were not so lucky. They were thrown off their feet and into consoles and pipes, their uniforms thankfully cushioning the impacts.

The scout ship's quadruple exhaust pillar swept through the fist of missiles like a plasmatic tornado. Some were vaporized, some were blown apart, and some lucky stragglers were thrown hopelessly off course.

The ship then just as quickly returned to its prograde thrust vector, continuing on its path without losing too much speed. Rachel's heart raced as she checked the threat display, and was relieved to see that the swarm was gone, and they were about to pass the three surrounding ships.

"What the fuck was that?" she asked.

Artur replied before Jamaad could. "Oh, it's the Lingxin Maneuver. When your PD can't cover so many missiles, just sweep 'em!"

"Ah, right, I think I slept through that part at the academy."

This brief release of tension did not last.

"Railgun volley incoming!" Rachel informed and pushed the data, "Three! Six! Nine! Eleven volleys of tiny shells!"

"BRACE AGAIN!" Jamaad barked, and then mumbled something into his datapad.

Of course, everyone uninjured could brace for the evasive maneuver. But those in the medbay did not have such luck.

***

Kuw was shaking and whimpering the entire time, curled up under the blanket, which weighed down on her in a hug of synth-cotton. With every evasion, she was tossed around, but its weight held her down. She worried about her friends and coworkers– those, to a relmai, were no different– more than she did about herself. Elektra was somewhere beyond, outside the comforting dome of the blanket. So close, yet so far. Kuw distracted herself from the horror and the anxiety by playing a game on her datapad, but somehow it did not bring her much joy, merely going through the motions. Suddenly, a blue hand pried the blanket upwards, and Elektra poked her head in, having crawled across the floor to the cot.

"Hello Kuw, please don't tell Jamaad. I can feel with my heart that you need this," she then gave the comms officer a small, colorful box with a label in Liamuju, "A very nice white-furred relmai, named… I think his name started with 'Tiik', gave me this at FE in exchange for–"

A particularly violent swing knocked Elektra off her knees, and the box landed in Kuw's hands as the blanket fell back down.

She opened the package. Garish, semitranslucent bottles. In each bottle were many circular, gelatinous pills with multicolored liquid inside.

"Thank ya!" Kuw shouted. Soon, she felt very relaxed and happy, the worries disappeared, and the game seemed fun again. Perhaps humans would call this unhealthy, 'cheating', or even immoral, but for her it was immoral to deny happiness to anyone.

***

Back in the CIC, there continued to be a commotion. Rachel cleaned and pushed all-important data about the trajectories of the ever-increasing amount of railgun volleys. They acted more-or-less like gigantic, solid projectiles, as if the ship was to be hit by the full brunt of such a volley, it would be destroyed or, worse, incapacitated.

"What if our engines get busted and we get captured?" Rachel said, after a volley nearly destroyed one of the ship's radiators but was narrowly dodged.

"Well, for that case, I have a gun," Artur said.

"...really?"

"What do you really mean? Do you know what they do to those they capture?"

"I–"

Artur interrupted Rachel. "If you have a BCI, they hack it. If you don't have a BCI, one gets jammed into your fuckin brain. Then… have you got any deep fears, hurtful traumas, intense phobias?"

She blinked.

"Rhetorical question. Anyways, they then use a special algorithm to make you relive those things, experiencing them at, fuck I can't say, hundreds of times normal strength… all while slowing perception of time so that an hour is like a whole fuckin day. Why? To break–" Artur was interrupted by a brief swing of the ship's hull to evade another hail of shells, "--you, to make you tell them everything about the mission, any Alliance secrets you know. And if you do tell, they release you. But you will be a broken wreck for the rest of your life. Fuck that shit. I'm blowing everyone's brains out if that happens, so the kjee can't get at them. It's my duty to save you from a fate worse than death."

Rachel remained silent.

Jamaad shook his head. "Weapons Officer Artur Greenpaw, while what you said may be accurate…" he switched to a markedly less polite voice, "cut that shit out! We don't need it right now. Besides, it won't happen."

"The three ships are now behind us," Rachel said, a glimmer of hope showing through her shaken voice.

"See? See what I meant?" The captain said. "We just had–"

Another evasive maneuver, a particularly vigorous one. An explosion somewhere below. The sounds of metal shredding into splinters.

"Girder damage! A shell blew through one of the pillar's girders!" Rachel shouted. "We didn't get bisected but it doesn't look like we'll be able to dodge as easily now, or we'll fucking tear ourselves in half!"

Jamaad scowled, and thought for a few seconds. "Artur! Fire the sensor blinder missile!"

"Ah, konechno," Artur mumbled, grinning. After a few button presses, the autoloader could be heard doing its job: clanking and whirring resounded through the CIC, followed by a bang and a hiss. The missile exited the tube like a beast being released from a cage. It immediately made an U-turn and went flying backwards, into the fray of the three pursuers. The crew anxiously waited.

"Rachel, when it's about to blow, turn off our sensors. This will be rough." Jamaad said.

The ships began firing at the missile instead of the Pheidippides, but thanks to the missile's extreme acceleration and its own evasive maneuvers, it evaded all the shells. These movements were so intense that if a ship performed them, the crew would have been reduced to a fine red paste. But fortunately, circuit boards were essentially impervious to G-forces. Thus, the missile zig-zagged its way towards the pursuing kjee…

Once it was close enough, its warhead opened like a flower, revealing a sphere of some black material. Then, the flash of a thermonuclear explosion vaporized the missile and the sphere… and after a split nanosecond, the flash grew even brighter than it would have normally been. So bright in fact, that it shone like the star at the center of the system.

It was too far to cause any structural damage to the kjee ships. After all, if the missile approached that close, it would likely have been shot down by point defense batteries. Some light heating, charring of paint, and so on… nevertheless, the ships stopped firing at the Pheidippides, and in fact began breaking their formation.

Rachel learned that upon reactivating the sensors. "So, they're blind like newborn kittens now. What next?"

"None of the five appear to have more missiles, and we'll soon exit railgun range. Full accel ahead for two hours, then slow down to non-overdrive until boundary!" Jamaad said, both commanding Patch and explaining to Rachel.

She smiled. The horror was well and truly over now. Jamaad's gambit did indeed pay off. A knight slipped past a net of defending enemy pieces. The metaphorical pawn that was sacrificed in the gambit was the operating lifetime of the warp drive and the engines, and the structural integrity of the central pillar. But the former two most likely wouldn't come into play during the mission, and the latter was easily fixable at the next station.

Jamaad yawned. "I'll wake Kuw up. She is in command now. Alert me if something really needs my attention."

"Sleep well, sir!" the other two officers shouted at once.

Artur followed the captain, and helped him walk in the extreme gravity by holding his body up. Rachel was soon alone. Kuw didn't come immediately.

The catgirl shrugged and checked the map of the Oval. They looked to be around forty percent of the way to the Kingdoms. Many more civilizations, some strange and some oddly familiar, some friendly like the humans and relmai and some hostile like the kjee, were still in the way. They were going to make it, she was sure of it. Next was the territory of the hive-minded, peaceful bquaa.

Kuw still wasn't there…