The Tau Ceti Agenda

October 31, 2388 AD

Sol System

Oort Cloud

Saturday, 7:31 AM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

"Captain Walker!"

"Go Nav." Sharon watched the purple and white flashes of the hyperspace conduit swirl in front of her ship. The Blair was approaching the Oort Cloud Seppy facility, and from the latest communication from the Madira, it wouldn't be a second too early.

"Conduit collapsing in twenty seconds, ma'am."

"Roger that, Nav." Sharon tugged at her seatbelt again to make sure it was good and tight. It was. "XO!"

"Aye, Captain?"

"All the forward SIFs at max and prepare for impacts."

"Aye, Captain. Forward SIFs at max." Commander Brasher tapped at her controls, and Sharon caught a glimpse of her XO tugging subconsciously at her own seatbelt.

"Nav. You got that secondary jaunt plan calculated?"

"Aye, CO."

Okay, Marley, sound it off, the captain told her AIC.

Yes, ma'am.

"All hands, all hands, prepare for emergence from hyperspace conduit. Man all battlestations and prepare for incoming. Normal space in nine, eight, seven, six, five, four . . ."

The purple and white flashes of Cerenkov radiation swirled away like water in the bottom of a toilet bowl and then scattered off in all directions, vanishing. The U.S.S. Anthony Blair materialized in normal space at maximum normal space velocity only a thousand kilometers from the moon planetoid. The giant supercarrier loomed toward the mass driver suspected location as relayed by the STO of the Madira. The surface had been scratched up by what appeared to be DEG fire, but there was no sign of any direct hits or of the Madira for that matter.

"STO, I want full sensors on those coordinates looking for that mass driver tube," Fullback ordered.

"Roger that, Captain." Lieutenant Commander Zeke Caldwell toggled through mountains of sensor data being DTMed to him from the ship's CDC and from his own systems. There was nothing useful, yet. But as the ship's science and technical officer, it was his job to figure it out.

"Where is the Madira?" Commander Brasher asked.

"I've got a hyperspace conduit opening up about ten thousand kilometers away, XO. That is probably them," the STO replied.

"CO Madira? This is CO Blair. You copy?" Fullback said over the command-net channel.

"CO, CDC!"

"Go, CDC."

"Captain, we've got massive electromagnetic signatures building up over the Seppy facility. I think there's a teleportation occurring."

"STO concurs with those readings, Captain. And the Madira just came out of hyperspace right beneath it!"

"Roger that, CDC. Roger that, STO. Madira! Do you copy?"

"CO Blair. CO Madira. Good of y'all to join us, Fullback. Watch out for the mass driver; it will be recharged in three minutes and twelve seconds. I'm having my STO synch up our clock to you. Be advised that we are dead in the water. Aux prop is at least five to ten minutes out, and we just did our last jaunt for a while, I'm told." Captain Jefferson's voice sounded a bit strained over the net. Sharon needed to give him some good news, but right now that wasn't about to happen.

"Wally, in case you haven't noticed, there is a QMT disturbance forming less than ten kilometers above you. Is there anything we can do to help?"

"Yes. Knock out that damned mass driver, and then get your ass down here."

"Roger that, Madira. Good luck, Wally. Blair, out."

"Gunnery Officer Blake, do you have a target yet?"

"Nothing specific, Captain."

"Captain! I've got a reading on the power source for the driver. There is signigicant buildup about a kilometer deep in the crust of that thing."

"That's too deep to get at with DEGs, CO," the XO replied.

"Where is the throat?" Sharon leaned back in her chair, watching the battle thousands of kilometers below them raging in her mindview. And the large disturbance over the teleportation facility continued to grow and grow for a few seconds more, and then there was a large flash of light in the sensors. The next thing she knew, the DTM was pinging new targets and painting the area with big red dots.

"Looking for the throat, ma'am, but until it fires, we probably won't find it," the STO responded.

"Understood."

"CO, CDC."

"I see the bogies below, CDC."

"Aye, ma'am. Just thought you'd want to know that we just had a Seppy hauler, three battle cruisers, and a couple frigates pop into normal space down there."

"Thanks, CDC." Sharon noted that the new red dots in her mindview had new labels on them, explaining what they were.

"Okay, Nav, jaunt us out into the line of fire of the last mass driver shot at the Madira bow-first. That will put us just a few thousand kilometers from the engagement zone. You have the coordinates."

"Ma'am?"

"Well, we ain't gonna find them until they shoot at us."

"Uh, yes ma'am. Prepping jaunt systems."

"As soon as we take the first hit, or before if you can manage it, punch the jaunt drive. Understood?"

"Roger that, ma'am."

"Okay, we've got more than two minutes to kill here. Somebody, find us some targets to shoot at." Captain Walker made a bright, toothy smile at her bridge crew, hoping to spark an idea.

"Well, Captain," the COB started between sips of coffee. "If we ain't got nothing to shoot at up here, why not shoot at something down there?"

"Damned good idea, Bill." She turned her chair slightly toward the gunnery officer. "Ensign Blake, pick any enemy targets below and fire at your discretion."

"Yes, ma'am. It'll be like shooting fish in barrel, whatever the hell that means," the gunnery officer replied.

"Jaunt coordinates ready, Captain."

"Captain Jefferson! We just had a Seppy hauler, three battle cruisers, and a couple frigates materialize in normal space about ten kilometers straight up, sir," the STO reported.

"Roger that, STO. Gunnery Officer Rice, target those bastards with everything we've got." Wallace spun his chair toward the air boss's station. "Air Boss, where are the rest of the fighters now?"

"Well, sir, we let them out just before we jaunted through hyperspace, and even at max speed, they are still about four minutes out."

"Goddamn, what a pickle," the XO grunted. "Sir, I'm getting reports from all over the ship. Whatever the hell Engineering did to give us that last jaunt blew out almost everything but the DEGs."

"Well, then, keep firing them." This was about as grim as Wallace had seen it get. The Madira was wounded badly and floating adrift in space with no structural integrity field generators and no propulsion. Fire teams and damage diagnostics showed a hole through the aft section of the supercarrier big enough to build a housing community in and the majority of the air wing was four minutes away in deep space. Oh, and there was the little fact that there had just been a small fleet of enemy ships appear in normal space right on top of them. This was definitely a typical Navy day.

I'm open for ideas. Timmy?

I'm working on it, sir. The CHENG's team and I are rerouting everything we can to get us some sort of propulsion. With the enemy ships above us and the facility below us, on the other hand, it is unlikely that they would fire the mass driver at us, in fear of hitting them.

That was the whole point of taking up this position, Timmy.

Aye, sir.

Keep at it.

Aye.

"CO! The hauler is dumping out Gnats as fast as it can throw them. I've got more than a hundred and counting!" the air boss shouted. "Our guys are gonna be outnumbered by at least one order of magnitude, sir."

"Warn them and tell them to make do."

"Aye, sir." The air boss reluctantly relayed the order to the CAG. What DeathRay said in return was rather foul.

"Captain. We've got nukes," the XO said with a crazy grin on his face.

"You're damned right we do, Larry. Let's send those battle cruisers a few of them."

"Roger that, sir."

"Gunnery Officer Rice!"

"All hands, all hands, prepare for QMT jump in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, jump!"

The ship had surged with a strange feel of static electricity, and then there was a crackling sound reverberating down the corridor through the structural members. Then everything seemed as normal as before.

We just jumped to Sol?

Apparently so, I'm asking the Lorda troop lifter now.

Kira raced down the corridor toward the engineering section of the Phlegra, scanning through drawings and schematics of the ship hoping to find an internal Achilles heel. On several occasions, she was nearly spotted. But to her advantage, the ship was only being manned by a very skeleton crew.

Kira, I'm picking up handshaking pings from U.S. fleet sources!

What! Here?

There are hundreds of them. And it's the Sienna Madira!

Oh my God! They must be attacking the facility. We have to warn them about Luna City!

Who do I contact? Uncle Timmy? Captain Jefferson?

No! Boland! Contact Jack Boland. He'll remember me. Penzington, Nancy Penzington was my name then.

Right, I recall. I'm handshaking with his AIC now for a secure channel.

Jack! I'm getting a message to you from on board one of the enemy vessels that just teleported in, Candis alerted DeathRay.

For me? Who is it?

All I'm getting is code name Bachelor Party!

Holy shit, put it through!

"DeathRay, DeathRay, this is Nancy Penzington, code name Bachelor Party, do you copy?"

"Penzington, is that really you?"

"Watch your six, DeathRay!" Fish cried out over the tac-net. "Fox three!"

"Oh shit!" DeathRay dove hard to the deck, pulling up with only meters to spare before he slammed the surface. He toggled to bot mode and put his feet down, running and jumping over a catwalk that led down a dugout crater rim, taking cover there. The Stinger on his tail shot past him, rolling over into bot mode himself and firing cannons backwards toward Jack's Ares-T fighter. Tracers ripped past, blasting up dust all around him. Jack rolled over onto his back, tracking the yellow Xs in his mind over the path of the Stinger until they both turned red. "Guns, guns, guns."

"Roger that, Boland. It's good to hear you're still alive."

"What can I do for you, Penzington. I'm a little busy right now!" DeathRay toggled back to fighter mode, going full acceleration back up into the fray and away from the exploding enemy mecha behind him.

"This takes priority over all orders you have, Boland. This battle cruiser that I'm on is about to QMT jump to Earth space and kamikaze into Luna City. It must be stopped."

"I need to relay that to the Madira." DeathRay toggled a channel in his DTM.

"Roger that, Boland. I'm gonna try and shake things up from the inside. Penzington out."

"CO Madira, DeathRay!"

"Go, DeathRay!"

"Sir, I just got a communication from Bachelor Party. She's on board the middle battle cruiser and has warned me that it is about to jump to Earth and crash into Luna City."

"Understood, DeathRay. Can you help her in any way?"

"I could trash and thrash on the ship, sir."

"Go, DeathRay. We are barely holding our own here, and things just got worse. There's not much we can do to help you otherwise."

"Understood, sir."

"Goddamnit! Air Boss!"

"Sir?"

"Pull the Saviors off of the facility to help the Dawgs support the ground forces. Warboys is getting hammered down there."

"Aye, sir."

"Missiles away, Captain!" the XO shouted. The ship shook and sang out from enemy cannon fire and DEGs ablating the hull plating. Without the SIFs operational, the enemy fire continued to chew away at the ship. It was already battered and couldn't take much more. "Detonation in three, two, one."

"Countermeasures got one of them, sir!"

"The other one got through," the CO replied and used his DTM to look at the onslaught of enemy fighters pouring from the Seppy hauler. The flash of one of the nukes detonating within the cloud of fighters was a sight for sore eyes. More than thirty of the enemy mecha were vaporized within the fireball, and tens more were spun out of control and damaged.

"Keep firing missiles on the nearest ship, XO!"

"Aye, sir."

"Captain! The first wave of our displaced fighters are now entering the mix," the air boss announced.

"About fucking time." The Sienna Madira shook and rang, and the sound of the hull plating being vaporized and blown into space continued. But if the fighters got into the mix and the Blair could get in it too, all wasn't lost just yet.

The ship lurched upward from an explosion on the underbelly armor. Several lower decks blew out, followed by secondary explosions that dominoed upward through the aft section of the ship. The missile hit in just the right location to rip through the supercarrier all the way to the damaged section on the upper decks, leaving a gaping hole more than ten meters in diameter that passed completely through the ship.

"We're taking fire from the deck," the XO said. "Countermeasures!"

"What a typical Navy day," the CO said through tight lips.

"All hands, all hands, brace for impact in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one!"

The mass driver round pounded dead on target into the bow of the Blair, shaking the ship like a slinky. There were screeches and groans of metal structural members bending against the force of the massive energy from the railgun impact, but the SIFs held.

"Forward SIFs at seventy percent, ma'am!" the XO shouted.

"Nav! Go now!"

"Aye, Captain! Engaging jaunt, now!"

The ship's hyperdrive system spun up, projecting the conduit just abow of the ship, and it slipped safely into a conduit and out of normal space. Seconds later, the ship popped back into normal space, just above the surface of the moon planetoid and too close to it for the mass driver to get line-of-sight with it.

"STO, find it!"

"There! I've got the barrel, ma'am! Transferring coordinates to Ensign Blake now."

"Blake, fire!"

Ensign Blake targeted the barrel of the mass driver and opened up the DEGs full power on it. The massive photonic energy of the directed energy weapons focused to a brilliant sun hot spot on the barrel, vaporizing materials instantly. The hole at the mouth of the mass driver glowed white-hot from light, scattering off the dust and gas particles being thrown up into space from the energy transfer of the beam to the target.

"Captain, probably wouldn't hurt to drop a nuke down their throat," the COB added.

"You heard the COB, XO. Let's nuke the bastards."

"Roger that, ma'am. Best news I've heard all day." The XO tapped a command into her console. "Two missiles away!"

"Nav, get us back down to the fight."

"Yes, ma'am. Preparing to jaunt."

"Air Boss! Have the Killers up first and out as soon as we hit the ball!"

"Aye, Captain."

"Hyperspace in five . . ."