Chapter 5: On the Road Again

T’Bwinkel was basking in the afternoon sun by the largest pool on Anouilh, the island resort owned by Teddy Frisco. She was surrounded by three women – Tatts, Dakota, and Molly – and Teddy, to whom the three tacitly deferred for the moment. She had just returned from the Artic where she toured the Pussy Pirates’ downed and crippled saucer-shaped ship, St. Jeanne d’Arc. While her AI friend, A’Udree, visited with her father Ubie, T’Bwinkel was enjoying the sun and watching her kits play in the water with a dozen or so naked humans.

Demonstrating her political best, T’Bwinkel, had assured the assembled leadership that she had no desire or intention of extracting any of their citizens. “I’ve served my terms in politics, now I’m touring to find out if what I set in motion makes sense in the real universe and not just the council room. Perspective – that’s what I’m after.”

“I’m told,” she continued, “that the four of you hold leadership positions, so I think you will understand. Among the Tu’ull, C’Strtd, or Lead Councilor, is the title I just relinquished. It’s now coveted by some, revered by others, and despised by yet more. You will be amused by its original meaning. Like many terms in current use, its antecedents are less than glorious.”

“Today, C’Strtd is a title of respect, ‘she who holds responsibility.’ Our academics who study the original phrase that the title comes from, might translate it as ‘He who cannot avoid his fate.’ In truth, though, if I understand your language properly, better would be closer to ‘He who is left holding the bag.’ Luckily for me, the bag has a hole in it, and I’ve escaped.”

T’Bwinkel sighed, looked down, then turned to her hosts and told them, “Fighting and intentional harm is very hard to understand or even grasp that it can exist. I could never intentionally harm another sentient being, but it’s starting to make at least partial sense to me. Tu’ull have been present when a battle was raging. My own kits allied with humans to rescue others while being fired upon, and now those same kits are over in your pool frolicking without a care.”

“Your poet Inkie’s music and a young human named Shellie James, have helped me understand that resistance to protect doesn’t always need to harm. Your culture has a term that is both honored and despised: ‘conscientious objector’. If we Tu’ull do nothing to help, we will be despised conscientious objectors.”

“There are other roles that don’t involve injuring or killing,” she continued, “and I’m beginning to see that we Tu’ull can be much more involved in our defense. St. Jeanne d’Arc gave me an idea. She is a launching platform for smaller fast drones used to destroy Sa’arm vessels. Why couldn’t human ships, Pink Panther or Cheval Jaune , for example, carry similar small drones, each piloted by a Tu’ull and with the mission of destroying incoming projectiles? That should free humans to concentrate fire on the Sa’arm ships firing those projectiles.”

“Now, that’s some idea!” Teddy exclaimed, “What do you think, Ubie?”

Though he was having a great time visiting with his daughter, Ubie always kept his attention on Teddy and, especially, Tatts. His response came through the three speakers closest to the small group, “I question the practicality of the concept. What can meat do to an incoming projectile – closing at Ludicrous Speed – that an automated fire-control system cannot?”

“Still,” A’Udree injected, “while I can react faster than meat, dedicated defense mechanisms maneuvering independently might provide a decisive edge. We need to keep thinking outside the container.”

Ubie continued, “Well, then if we decide the concept has practical merit, we can supply templates and software for the drones and cockpits. But we’ll need workarounds. Our ships use portals to transport rounds fired from large rail guns under the Earth’s oceans. That’s not practical on the Panther and the Horsey. Then there’s practice. The Pussies drill almost constantly with a single purpose. Who on your ships would and could dedicate that much effort?”

“It’s a new direction we hadn’t considered,” Teddy added diplomatically. “We’ll devote some brainpower to explore the concept.”

Preparations were underway. Cheval Jaune, like the Archerfish class ship her design was based upon, was stealthed. Her diameter was half again that of an Archerfish, and she was three pods longer. During her last visit, the Tu’ull had changed out her engines to the latest and fastest in their inventory. In addition, the Tu’ull had confirmed the use of the destroyed Tu’ullat 10655 identifier as another element of Caleb’s ‘beard.’

Cheval Jaune’s magazine carried forty-eight missiles, each with a Tu’ull-upgraded, all-in engine capable of huge accelerations over a very short period. At the missiles’ speeds, mass rather than explosives did the damage, and they were structured with an ablative nose followed by tandem masses delivering a one two punch.

The magazine supplemented the missiles already loaded in her six tubes. And like all of the Archerfish class, the missile pod was sealed during combat so that if something went wrong, the auto-loaders couldn’t accidentally feed a crewmember into a tube instead of a missile.

The missile crew’s fire control positions were located within the ship’s command module. They were aided by three stealthy Remora-class probes. With no superluminal drive, a Remora was designed to hang close and feed data and targeting information to the stealthed missileers.

Another key modification was the addition of a pod behind the missiles and ahead of the command pod. There, three gun turrets, mounting chain guns, were installed equidistant around the ship’s central axis within the hull to preserve Cheval Jaune’s stealth. When needed, the turrets would be raised to fire depleted uranium slugs from the select-fire cannons based on the M242 Bushmaster. Mostly useless against incoming hyper-speed missiles, the cannons had proved themselves when covering Marines boarding a Sa’arm derelict.