Chapter 387

The Retreat

As Jeff stepped out the garage door into the bright expanse of fresh snow in the parking lot, he heard Ship mentally call him. She didn’t bother to try sending a word message, but just sent the impression that the scout had entered atmosphere. Nor did he bother to tell her he was on the way, but just acknowledged because he knew she could see him as well as sense him mentally.

One of the tunneling workers also happened to see him and realized that it was the weird owner out in his tee shirt and jeans in near zero weather, jogging toward the little building in back of the hotel. He stood watching until Jeff disappeared into the building, shrugged, thought, Rich people are weird, and went on about his business.

Inside Ship, the Prime headed for the flight deck as she informed him, “Scout’s arrival in thirty-one seconds.”

“Thank you,” Jeff responded as he began to jog, anxious to hear what Dave and Evie had to report.

He had just arrived on the flight deck when the big hatch shimmered and disappeared, and the scout nosed its way inside. As the hatch became solid again, the scout slid, a few inches off the deck, to where Jeff stood before it stopped.

A moment later, Evie, followed by Dave, came down the steps from the belly hatch, both carrying their small travel bags.

As the scout went on to park itself, Evie grabbed Jeff in a hug, then gave him a quick kiss on the lips.

“I’m not going to kiss you,” Dave joked as Evie moved aside and Dave gave Jeff a hug, “but I will say it’s damn nice to be home.”

“What’s the matter? Did you two get tired of each other?” Jeff teased.

Dave pulled Evie to him before answering, “You know better than that,” he said as she smiled up at him, “but the space in the scout is – shall we say – a bit limited.”

“The warp drive, the stealth equipment, the in-system drives and the environmental systems as well as all the other devices that go to make up the scout take up space,” Ship interrupted to say.

“I know,” Dave responded, his voice contrite. “I wasn’t complaining about the scout. It did a perfect job.”

“What he’s griping about is that the bed is too small for two people to ... uh, sleep comfortably,” Evie responded with a somewhat suppressed giggle.

As Dave frowned at her, Ship, her voice sounding puzzled, said, “But the bed was designed for the pilots to sleep in shifts. Diana and Selina did not report any problems with a similar scout at the academy, and their mission was of a much longer duration.”

“Uh,” Jeff interrupted to respond to Ship, “I think you and I need to have a discussion about married couples.”

“But...”

“Later,” he insisted.

“Yes, Prime.”

Dave caught Jeff’s eye. “Let’s have some coffee in the lounge and we’ll give you a synopsis of what happened during the mission.”

“The AI has already sent me the trip data,” Ship offered, “I can condense it and mentally send it to my Prime.”

“We’ll discuss that when we get to the lounge,” Jeff told her, “and as I’ve said before, although the scout will have an enormous amount of very precise data, I want to hear Dave’s and Evie’s impressions and feelings about the mission. Those could well be every bit as important as the factual data collected by the scout’s AI.”

“Yes, my Prime.” Then after a pause, “I readily acknowledge that is one of the major reasons for me to have a crew.”

As Dave and Evie reported to Jeff, each had a serving of Diana’s raspberry coffee cake replicated by Ship. Jeff gave a mental request and their coffee cups were refilled, even to matching perfectly the mixture of sweetener and cream in Evie’s previous cup.

“More coffee cake?” Ship asked, following Diana’s instructions, trying to be the perfect host.

Thanking her, Evie declined for all three as Jeff continued with his observations of Evie and Dave’s report. “So, to sum it up, the two of you feel the aliens are now much closer to having their warp drive repaired?” he offered.

“Well, Dave is,” Evie replied. “To be frank with you, I’m not sure. Oh, it’s obvious they are working on their drive, and things are definitely happening, but this shimmering business has been going on from time to time before this trip, but ... I know my husband. He sometimes sees or senses things, if you will, that I don’t.”

When Dave tried to point out that she did the same thing on occasion when he didn’t have a clue, she shook her head. “Sure, I might pick up on nuances during a conversation, particularly on certain subjects that a man might miss – as any woman can sometimes do,” she said with a grin, “but that’s not what we’re talking about here. I saw some changes, but Dave sees more into those changes than I do. Over the years, I’ve learned to depend on his hunches. Those hunches and insights have made us money when I could not understand what he saw in a situation. He thinks the aliens are close to having their drive repaired, and I’ve learned to forego arguing with his hunches.”

Ship broke in to say, “The overall data does indicate that the aliens are significantly closer to having their drives synchronized, but as I have pointed out earlier, near synchronization of warp coils – which I am now almost certain the alien drive is equipped with – is far from sufficient. The alignment has to be near perfect – that is to say, synchronized to four decimal places. Anything short of that will usually not allow the warp drive to operate without catastrophic results.”

“Four decimal places?” Evie wondered aloud.

“Yes. From the data the scout’s AI brought back, I am reasonably certain the alien drive consists of six coils operating in unison to produce a warp field powerful enough to transport their large craft. As I’ve said, warp drives that consist of separate power sources must be in near-perfect synchronization to operate safely. Here, four decimal places means that the power sources must be synchronized to 99.9999% or better or the drive risks catastrophic failure. If the failure happens while in warp, the wreckage can be spread over light years of space.”

“I still think they’re close,” Dave argued. “And don’t ask me why. It just ... Dammit, they are,” he insisted.

“Then we need to go to round-the-clock surveillance,” Jeff returned, obviously fully trusting Dave’s insight into the situation.

Dave glanced at his wife, their years together allowing them on occasion to communicate with a look. Obviously agreeing with each other, Evie caught Jeff’s eye. “Let us repack our bags and we’ll be ready to return. We’ll stay out there until relieved,” Evie responded for the two of them.

But Jeff was shaking his head. “Arlene and Ann worked in a session of the academy late yesterday. They’re nearing graduation, but they both said they needed a break from the grind. They will relieve you two for a couple of days, then you can take over the surveillance until we have more people trained with the scouts. I’ve been allowing everyone to attend academy at their own discretion, but it’s time I set a schedule. It feels like years of academy time, but the whole thing can be completed in days our time. I’m afraid there are going to be some unhappy people, but it’s something I feel is necessary.”

Taking a sip of coffee, he thought a moment before continuing, “We have no concrete evidence that the aliens were heading for Earth when their drive malfunctioned, but Ship assures me that they, having the obvious technology they must have to build a warp drive, consequently, must be aware of our planet. If they’re aware, common sense would dictate that they will probably investigate at some point. With the power those craft displayed destroying the asteroids, they would have to be assault craft of some kind. From the looks of them, my guess is they’re some type of multipurpose attack vehicle.

“Whatever the precise designation, it goes without saying that none of Earth’s fighters would stand a chance against them. Ship thinks they might well have some type of shielding technology, but even if they don’t, all they would have to do to outmaneuver Earth’s forces is to head for space. Earth has no defense against orbital attack, except Ship – none. The alien’s weapons practice certainly revealed that they have the capability to hang in orbit and destroy anything we can fight with, not to mention what they could do to cities or equipment on the ground, or... troops and the public in general.”

“I suppose you want us to finish up at the academy too,” Dave asked.

“Definitely,” the Prime responded with an accompanying nod of his head. “The alien vessel is bigger than Ship in our dimensions, but remember, Ship is multidimensional, so everything considered, she is far superior in that respect, too. If those are weapon pods, the alien has one hell of a lot of firepower even if it has the same weapons as its attack craft. But we all know that isn’t so. Again, logic would dictate that those pods support far more powerful weapons, possibly some types not demonstrated yet. Plus you can bet that ship has many of those attack craft that we haven’t yet seen. I suspect that the group we did see was their equivalent of a squadron.”

The three sat for a moment thinking before Jeff continued, “I keep asking myself why one ship is out there all by itself. If the aliens were going to attack Earth, it would seem that they certainly would have more than one ship, unless ... they’re so confident that they are positive that one ship is all they would need to win a fight for the possession of a planet. And that implies...”

“ ... That they have done this so many times that they know one ship is all that will be needed,” Dave supplied, ominously.

“But we have Ship,” Jeff said with pride.

“That monster is a lot bigger than Ship,” Evie pointed out, forgetting that Ship was listening.

“Oh, shit,” Jeff whispered under his breath.

Ship made a noise that sounded like disgust. “The alien vessel’s systems are primitive compared to mine, starting with an obvious lack of trans-dimensional capability which the scout’s AI would have easily detected. And as my Prime just pointed out, because of my dimensional capability, my hull volume and mass are much greater. The aliens obviously still use warp coil technology for their ship’s energy, but my energy comes from the dimensions and is many orders of magnitude greater. I also have shields that are impossible to penetrate. Even if my weapons should prove ineffective – and they will not – I could simply ram their ship. In here, unless you happened to be viewing it on screen, you would not even notice the collision that would instantly destroy their vessel.”

No one said anything, but a similar thought passed through all their minds. Ship has never gone into battle. The silence dragged for another moment, and it was enough for ship to surmise what they were thinking.

“Indeed, I have never been into battle, but you have to realize that I spent many millennia constructing the vessel you are sitting inside. I was given detailed data on every space battle my master race had ever been involved in. Those battles ranged from one-on-one encounters to full-scale space armada all-out wars. I had a very long time to critique each of those many encounters, and remember, I forget nothing. There were mistakes made on both sides, but as I’ve already told you, my race was losing the war when my brain was sent to the dimension and planet where my Prime found me. The disaster that was occurring was not the fault of my people. They could not produce and field ships and weapons as quickly as the hordes of the enemy that continued to attack could, no matter how many of their ships my race destroyed. We had the advantage in technology, but the enemy seemed to have an unending supply of ships and the crews to man them. When we killed a ship and its crew, there was seemingly an endless stream of others to take its place, but our crews and ships were far from endless. Our losses were appalling. By the time they sent my mind away, we had lost so many people that we were sending younger and younger crews into battle, and there could be only one logical outcome.

“When the elders of my race realized that the final battle would be lost, they sent the most advanced AI they could develop to design and build the most advanced warship I could conceive of, and admonished me to continue to improve it until they came for me – but they never did. And they very carefully left no clues as to the location of my home system,” she said with sadness.