The Battlestar Glory Ch. 04

(This is not a sexy story. It is a space war thriller.)

(This is not a sexy story. It is a space war thriller.)

Chapter 4: Inspiration

Chapter 4: Inspiration

From the Log of War Admiral Norman North, 6 months after Vitalics:

Things have been very quiet since our victory over the Insect fleet, three months ago. I imagine the Insects would be too busy consolidating their hold on our homeworlds to send more than a single fleet against us. Additionally, by the time this fleet attacked us and the news of their failure reached the Insect leadership, we would be months outside of known space and many months away from their nearest fleet. And as we continue to move away from our homeworlds, and away from the Insect fleets, it would take them a long time to catch up with us.

Admittedly, we are not always moving at our top speed. We can't go faster than our slowest merchant ship. We also periodically stop to investigate planets and gather supplies, and the Insects may catch up to us at some point. But it would take months, maybe even a year, just to catch up to us at our current speed, if they even managed to find us. So the military threat is thankfully reduced, for now.

This permits us to focus on our primary mission, to find artifacts of the Monumentals which will help us defeat the Insects. Our chances of success are small--finding unplundered Monumental artifacts will be difficult enough, but finding ones with direct military applications may be even more unlikely. Even if we do find new technology, there's no guarantee that we'll be able to figure out how to harness it. After all, the Monumentals were centuries, even millennia ahead of us technologically.

That's why we have Professor Stevenson and his staff aboard. They have been studying the known Monumental obelisks and artifacts for decades and may be able to point us in the right direction where to look. Right now I'm advised we should look for a binary system with four planets, one of them with an oxygen atmosphere. Based on examination of ancient Monumental maps, Stevenson believes they may have some sort of base on such a planet. Of course, with the enormous passage of time, even if there were such a base, it may be long gone now. And such a base could be hidden, or booby trapped, or worse.

We've checked out several binary systems in the area, but so far found nothing.

**********

"I'm telling you Obe, this is a complete waste of time," said Took. He and Obe were on patrol ahead, heading towards a binary system on the edge of sensors. "This is the third binary system this week. I'm all binaried out."

"The War Admiral says we have to look for planets orbiting binary stars, so that's what we're going to do."

"No," said Took. "Professor Stevenson says that. The War Admiral just repeats what he says."

"The difference being....?"

"We're not following one of the Admiral's hunches, we're following the whimsies of a scholarly greybeard who thinks nothing about spending 20 years studying pieces of an old ceramic pot. We could be at this for decades."

"Have you got anything better to do?"

"Well, I, ah..." Took was speechless, for a moment. "I was thinking of starting up a newsvid."

"A newsvid?"

"Sure! A fleetwide online newspaper."

"Iday, this isn't August."

"Ok, we're a fleet, I know that, but we're also a community, the last community of humans," said Took. "I was thinking of it as a morale thing, to keep our spirits up-"

"Hold it!" said Obe. "I'm getting something on sensors. Planets! One.... two... three... four.... And one of them has an oxygen atmosphere! Just like the Professor said he was looking for."

"Let's go into orbit for a close scan," said Took.

They moved closer and spent the next few minutes searching the planet surface. "Plants... animals... but no civilization," said Obe.

"You spoke too soon, Obe! I'm picking up a power source on the surface, contained in a metallic structure."

"A city?"

Took shook his head, checking the reading. "No, unless this city is forty feet wide and twenty feet tall. Let's call a team in." He raised his comm range. "Glory, this is Captain Took-"

********

A shuttle transported the research team to the surface, followed closely by a transport with a platoon of Major Fortran's men. The War Admiral himself had given the order, saying that the safety of the research team was of the highest priority. Everyone else, the pilots and the marines, were expendable.

They touched down on a grassy plain near the object.

The marines disembarked first, securing a perimeter. Finally Major Fortran himself emerged, and gave the go-ahead for the shuttle crew to open the hatch. Professor Stevenson and his researchers emerged, together with agricultural specialists who were seeing if there was anything of value they could take from the planet.

The power source was a monument, a tall black gleaming obelisk, of the type that Took had seen in museums back on August. Took's presence wasn't strictly required, but he had invited himself and Obe along, for "moral support."

The monument had symbols that were embedded on the sides of the thing. They stuck out and could be felt, by touch, much like the old-fashioned lettering for blind people. Stevenson eagerly pointed out one of the symbol chains to a colleague, and they started muttering to themselves.

"Nice to get some fresh air," said Took, turning away and looking at the grassy plain around them. This was the first time he, or anyone else, had been in a breathable atmosphere outside the ship since that little colony they stumbled on a few months ago, just after their flight from Orotis.

"Looks kind of spooky, doesn't it?" said Took, looking at the tall monument as it gleamed in the binary sunlight.

"Yeah, it does," said Obe. "To think that this was built by a race millions of years older than us. What's it all about? What's it for?"

"No one knows," said Took. "But I heard that some of those monuments have strange powers, or are boobytrapped." He took a few steps back. "We'd best keep our distance, pal."

But if the monument had any special powers, it didn't seem to effect the research team.

********

They ended up staying at the location for two days; the agricultural team determined that there were edible fruits and seeds that could be gathered in sufficient quantities to make it worthwhile, and Stevenson didn't mind the additional time studying the monument. When they returned to theGlory, Stevenson made his report in private to the War Admiral. Only the War Admiral's closest aides, Captain Dulin and Commander Wren, were in attendance; the rest of the fleet wasn't as optimistic about this "Monumental hunt" as the War Admiral was.

"It's very similar to the monument we found on Whenfor," said Stevenson excitedly. "Do you realize that this is only the third monument we've found which seems to use the exact same symbol language as other monuments we've discovered. Why, I can't begin to wonder just how-"

"Professor," said the War Admiral. "That's all very interesting. But what does it say?"

"What does it say? We don't know. It's covered with hundreds of symbols which will take months to fully decode," said Stevenson. "But one section we have clearly translated makes a clear reference to a planet, just ten light years away, in a neighboring system."

"What does it say about this planet?" the War Admiral asked.

"We're not sure," said Stevenson. "You have to understand, we've only deciphered a small part of this language. We've never had a large enough sample to-"

"And what about the power source you detected?"

"It's in the interior," said Stevenson. "We don't know what the power is for or what it does, we can't scan through-"

"Could we cut through it?" Dulin asked.

Stevenson looked horrified. "Blast a monument? Your puny laser guns wouldn't even scratch the alien metals. You'd have to use shipboard batteries-"

"We have shipboard batteries," said the War Admiral.

"You'd destroy such a priceless artifact? Never!' said Stevenson.

"Let me be clear, Professor," said the War Admiral. "This is not a dig, or an expedition to recover museum pieces. This is about getting technology, and about survival. If blasting that thing open will get us what we want, we'll blast it. Do you understand?"

Stevenson opened his mouth, then closed it, then nodded slowly.

"Good. For now, we'll try a moderate course," said North. "Provide the location of this solar system to navigation. We'll set a course, once we've retrieved the last recovery teams."

After Stevenson left, Captain Dulin looked at the War Admiral. "Blasting it open with the power of the ship's turbolasers?" he asked.

The War Admiral merely shrugged. "It probably wouldn't have worked, anyway" said North. "It would be like trying to cut a diamond with a hydrogen bomb. If our ship's turrets could blast into that thing, we'd probably destroy anything useful inside."

"Then why did you...."

"To make a point to our good professor where our priorities lay. We're here to get things done, and we'll do whatever it takes," said the War Admiral.

********

Took was on patrol again. This time his squadron was on temporary deployment to theBlue Luna, the fleet's pocket battleship. The fleet's engineers had tinkered with theLuna'sengines to raise their output almost to battlecruiser speeds. With equal firepower and more armor and shields than any battlecruiser in the fleet, even the new Tiger class ships, theBlue Lunamade an ideal advance scout.

Took liked the Captain of theLuna, an old veteran named Myster Harkness who was blunt and direct. The only reason that Harkness, and his ship, was alive was that he was one of those few captains who had refused to participate in the Vitalics armistice, where most of the League fleet was slaughtered. He had only been saved from a court-martial when North had agreed to have his ship transferred to his fleet, which was stationed on Hunt's Moon. The reason Took admired Harkness was because Harkness had been very vocal about telling the admirals what he thought of the peace deal. He was a straight-talking blast from the hip kind of guy--just like Idaho Took.

Took, Obe, and the Ken Pilot's fighters were on point, ahead of theBlue Luna, which itself was a full day ahead of rest of the fleet.

"...so the whole idea of scouting is that if there's anything dangerous out there, we get clobbered, because we're expendable," said Took.

"No, we're here to give the fleet advance warning," said Obe.

"If we manage to do so before we get clobbered. Face it, Obe, we're expendable; even theBlue Lunais expendable. It's like sending a pawn and a rook to check out what's on the other side of the board. TheLuna'sthe rook, and we're a couple of pawns; if we get knocked off, the Queen will weep and then send one of her horses-"

"Do you ever stop talking?" said the Ken Pilot.

"Only when you start," Took immediately responded. "Is that what it takes to provoke you into a conversation?"

"Alert," said the Ken Pilot. "I'm picking up something on long range scanners, just on the edge of sensor detection range."

They turned to their scanners. At very extreme range they saw a few ships... and then, seconds later, more and more of them--a mass of ships. Even at this range, their identity was clear: Insects.

"Let's get out of here," said Took, turning his Wildcat 150-B into a sharp bank. He kept his eyes peeled on the rear scanner during the whole flight back. But if the Insects had spotted them, they weren't sending interceptors to challenge them. By the time they returned to theLuna,they were once again out of sensor range of the Insects.

They went directly to the bridge to report to Captain Harkness.

"There's a bug fleet out there, a big one," said Took.

"Size? Composition?"

"We didn't stop to take notes, sir," said Took. "We didn't want to risk detection."

"Risk further detection, you mean," grunted Harkness. "All right, let's set up a tightbeam to theGloryand see what command wants to do."

********

"Another fleet," said the War Admiral, looking very surprised.

Dulin was surprised by the Admiral's surprise. It so rarely happened that anything took the War Admiral by surprise.

"How can this be?" said the War Admiral. "There's no way another fleet could have caught up to us this quickly. We're moving away from occupied territory, so they would have to move much faster to catch up."

"Furthermore, the enemy isaheadof us," said Commander Wren. "They would have had to catch up to us without our noticing, and then made a very large circle around us at tremendous speeds to avoid our sensors."

"That's a possibility, but that doesn't seem very likely to me," said the War Admiral.

"What's the alternative?" asked one of the senior Captains.

"Perhaps the Insects have colonies out this far," said Captain Bennett. "We've never been able to locate their homeworlds, after all."

"If they have colonies here, then why haven't they attacked the Alliance from this part of space?" the War Admiral said. "If so, Orotis would've been the first battlefield. But in all our years of fighting them, they've never hit us from this region of space. We presumed that it was mutually unexplored."

"What do we have on the composition of the enemy force?" Bennett asked.

"Very little," said Dulin. "We've analyzed the sensor reports from Took, Obe, and the Ken Pilot, and identified perhaps thirty capital ships, but at the distance they scanned from, we couldn't get more specifics. There could be even more ships out there."

"I guess the logical thing to do would be to head into a different direction," said Bennett. "We should start navigation working on an evasive course-"

"Just a minute," said the War Admiral. "We can't change direction."

All eyes were on the War Admiral.

"The monument directed us to a system just two light years behind the location of the Insect fleet. If there's something there, we have to find it," said North.

Bennett cleared his throat diplomatically. "War Admiral, I understand your goals, but surely our immediate survival takes priority-"

"This search takes priority. We may be searching the rest of our lives for clues about the Monumentals, Captain," said the War Admiral. "How will you feel, ten years from now, when we're still searching, knowing we passed up this obvious lead?"

Bennett didn't seem to know how to respond. He obviously didn't have much faith in the War Admiral's obsession with the Monumentals, but didn't want to directly challenge the War Admiral.

"Do you really want to spend the rest of our lives wandering from system to system, without hope?" said North. "I admit what I propose is difficult, and it isn't without risk. But it's the only chance we have. We need something to hope for, however small the chances are." He paused. "I propose a compromise. We have the Insect fleet's projected course. I say we plot a course around theirs, to circle around them outside of their sensor range and come at the system from behind."

And with minimal discussion, North's plan was approved.

********

Now a journey that was supposed to take three more days was taking seven. But by avoiding a direct confrontation with the Insects, North hoped he could preserve his fighting force as long as possible. Each battle which resulted in the deaths of one human and ten Insects was a victory for the Insects. For the Insects could repopulate at will, but the fleet was limited to the fighters and soldiers who had escaped the disaster at Vitalics and the fall of the Alliance.

As luck would have it, the Insect fleet didn't stay in one, compact group, but fanned out over several systems, to widen the scope of their search.

And one of their scoutships found the fleet.

When he discovered that the Insects had been alerted, North ordered the fleet to full attack, figuring that with the enemy fleet dispersed that he could make short work of their individual elements, one by one.

But the Insect fleet wasn't really dispersed.

There were two main groups, a battlecruiser squadron escorted by a cruiser group, and a second group led by a half dozen sleek battleships. North's fleet was still working on the first group when the second one showed up.

********

How North managed to extricate the fleet without taking even heavier losses than it did, was a mystery to most. But the results were bad enough; one battlecruiser, two light cruisers, and three destroyers were totally wiped out. One deep space cruiser was so badly gutted that it had to be abandoned and scuttled; and a badly damaged destroyer was barely kept operational. Total casualties: 800 dead, and nearly 300 wounded, some seriously.

North only managed to eke out something of a victory by attacking what he thought was the Insects commander's ship, one of the late arriving battleships. He ordered his forces to concentrate on that one ship to the exclusion of all else; when it had been heavily damaged, the enemy pulled back.

The War Admiral frowned as he read the casualty reports. But it could have been worse, much worse. The Insects never got past their defense line of warships to their vulnerable merchant vessels, which were their prime suppliers of food and maintenance; and more ships could have been lost if the battle hadn't turned their way.

The War Admiral had destroyed the bulk of the first part of their fleet, but somewhere out there, not far away, was a still potent force of battleships and a mix of support ships. He had reduced their numbers, but there were still at least five battleships that were fully operational, and they wouldn't give up so easily.

Services were held for the dead, and North looked straight ahead, avoiding the gaze of his officers. Did they blame him? If the former League officers didn't, the Directorate officers certainly did. If only they had changed course entirely, and not attempted to flank the Insects, this wouldn't have happened.

They held a staff meeting right after the services where they discussed battle damage and repairs. A full third of the fleet had suffered varying degrees of damage.

"We'll lay over here for repairs," said the War Admiral, pointing to the neighboring solar system on the holo. No one needed to be told that this was the system that they had been heading for in the first place.

"Is that wise, sir?" said Captain Bennett. "There's still an enemy fleet out there, and if we stay in this area, they'll be sure to find us again."

"What do you suggest?" the War Admiral said.

"Let's put at least a few light years between us and this system before we stop," said Bennett. "That way, it will at least take them longer to find us."

The War Admiral reluctantly nodded. "Agreed." He created a flight path on the holographic display, one that would take them through the solar system he was interested in. "Any further comment?" There was silence. "You're all dismissed."

The senior captains filed out of the war room, looking grim. When they had filed out, leaving only Captain Dulin and Commander Wren, he simply continued to sit there silently, staring at the holographic display.

"They blame me, of course," said the War Admiral. "It's only natural. If we had tried to avoid the Insect fleet entirely, this wouldn't have happened."

"They're only thinking about their own short term survival," said Commander Wren.

"Eight hundred sailors and officers didn't survive in the short term," said the War Admiral.

"If we only looked out for our own survival, we would never have a chance to liberate our homeworlds," said Dulin. "You're doing the right thing, War Admiral."