Earth Song: Twilight Serenade Read online

  The Beezer all reacted the same when first exposed to space, to the last. They were basically useless for the first several shifts in space as they became acclimated and got the excitement out of their systems.

  The first shift, Minu boarded a shuttle to fly over to the Ibeen that was now undergoing salvage in earnest that the Beezer had arrived. She found the exterior of Ibeen Epsilon almost covered in huge space-suited grazers, all bouncing around, staring at the void, and generally frolicking in the most dangerous environment imaginable.

  “Cows in space,” Aaron said with a laugh in his voice.

  “Who’d have thought they’d take to it like that?” Minu wondered aloud.

  “You’ve been to Serengeti,” Aaron said.

  “Sure. More times than I’d care to admit.”

  “So what is it like again?”

  Minu recalled one of her many trips. Their cities were almost invisible, even in the center of the largest. Vast plains of rolling grasslands in all direction. Then a building, or an underground transit tunnel punching through the side of a hill to disappear into another hill. No forests that she ever saw. Just endless, open, sky.

  “I see what you mean. It’s like their planet in three directions, not two.” Aaron just grinned.

  The Ibeen was crowded with Beezer who were quickly becoming experts on the big transports. When Minu was first aboard she’d figured it was a basket case. Then the two functional Ibeen arrived, full of extra parts from the previous salvage. They’d evaluated the new ship and inside an hour pronounced it repairable and it was christened Ibeen Zeta.

  The primary stores on Ibeen Zeta had been armaments and medical supplies. Lilith reviewed the data, accepted the armaments were useful and sent out shuttles from the Fiisk to begin transfer. The medical supplies were split fifty-fifty between the humans and the Beezer.

  “We’re going to have to bring Cherise or a team from Logistics on future runs like this,” Minu announced at a meeting that evening.

  “I agree,” Lilith said. “While it is no problem for me to ascertain what might be of military use, it will quickly grow beyond my ability to plan for its disposition.”

  “The Beezer have agreed as part of the deal with us to store material on Serengeti and their colony.” Minu made a note at the next communication with home to arrange to get a logistics team out to them. What had been planned to be a quick grab of the ghost fleet had turned into a major operation.

  Minu looked up at the display showing Ibeen Zeta in computer relief. Two of the huge cargo balls had been deemed damaged beyond repair. They had been stripped down to component parts and loaded into another cargo ball. They’d also detached cargo modules and moved them around so the missing ones were on opposite sides to balance the weight.

  “The Beezer reported the main damage that took the transport out was a missile hit to the controls. Now as Lilith told us, they Ibeen all operated on a special AI, akin to the combat intelligences, but able to operate fully autonomously for extended periods. Since the Beezer don’t have these AI and therefore operate the ships manually, it was easy for them to bring it back online.”

  “There is damage to the computer that needs to be dealt with,” Lilith added, “but that can be done later once the ship is manned. Computer core parts are something we have in abundance from the previous salvage.”

  “Tomorrow,” Minu said, “we board the Kiile.”

  First shift in the morning Minu and Aaron were aboard one of the Kaatan shuttles, both in space suits and with the rear of the shuttle crowded with two dozen crystalline bots. The Kiile were only half the size of an Ibeen, but with many more interior spaces to be searched. Four shuttles from the Ibeens flew in formation behind hers. Each carried a crew of two experienced Beezer spacers, and two inexperienced. There simply weren’t enough with time in the vastness to only send in the experienced ones. This had to be a salvage operation and a learning experience all in one trip.

  Minu watched the video feed of the approaching Kiile with interest. It was both familiar and foreign in its design. Resembling an Ibeen from one direction, a Fiisk from another, and viewed from the side neither of the two. As they closed it loomed massive, like all the big ships of the People.

  “They used the Eseel to tow the carriers away from the battle site,” Lilith had explained. “The People’s ships were not equipped with self-destruct.”

  “Do we know why the two were disabled?” Minu asked.

  “From preliminary scans, it appears both took critical hits to their drives. Due to the mission of the Kiile, their maneuverability is considerably less than other ships of their class such as the Fiisk.”

  “Though more so than the Ibeen?” Bakook asked.

  “Only in speed, not general maneuverability. If they are both fully loaded the Ibeen is actually slightly more maneuverable. The Kiile would count on support ships for defense and avoid direct combat. Its shields are better than the Ibeen, though it has only point defenses.”

  As they got even closer the damage became visible. The five cylindrical spines down the center of the ship were shattered where they emerged from the aft along with one of the huge four balls clustered there, its structure exploded and exposed like the skeleton of a long rotted corpse.

  Scorch marks marred the mirrored hull in hundreds of places and that became more noticeable the closer they got. Short of ships from the previous ghost fleet which were shattered, it was the most damage she’d ever seen. Only from the midpoint forward did the ship appear nearly undamaged.

  “The damage is all from aft,” Minu noted.

  “They were fleeing when attacked,” Lilith told her. The Fiisk’s CI had given her as much detail on the battle as it possessed. “The other ships tried to protect them, but were unable to.”

  “What about the fighters on board?” Minu asked.

  “I don’t have that information.”

  The entire center of the ship, a vast open structure with equipment, bays, and smaller ubiquitous cargo balls, was the carrier’s flight decks. Where it housed, serviced, and launched them. Those areas were also almost untouched. Minu wondered why they hadn’t defended the ships.

  “Lilith, do we have the traps disarmed?”

  “Confirmed, Mom.”

  “Good. Aaron, take us into the main flight deck there?”

  The Kiile had four flight decks that ran all the way through both sides of the ship allowing launching an recovering from either direction. In the center were blast doors the accessed the hangars.

  The shuttle flew in at only a few meters a second, affording a good view of the interior. Like the ship itself, the space was titanic. Compared to even the cavernous bays of the Fiisk, the flight decks were many times larger.

  “These are big enough for a Kaatan, aren’t they?” wondered Minu to her daughter back on her ship.

  “Yes,” Lilith agreed. “The facilities of the Kiile were capable of servicing even larger ships. Their second main purpose was as fleet service craft.”

  Minu looked and Aaron who glanced back at her, a grin on his face. This looked better and better.

  They passed the last of the nearest Eseel which floated less than a hundred meters from the hulk. The dozen dualloy cables that attached it to the Kiile seemed far too insubstantial to allow it to tow the carrier, which massed a million times its size.

  “The cables helped create a gravitic continuity between all the towing craft and the carrier,” Lilith had explained. When it came to gravitic theory her science fell far short. Only Aaron was even close to her knowledge. Ever since he’d rejoined them he’d been spending every moment possible working with gravitics. She knew he had a plan, and a glimmer of what it was.

  “How many Eseel?” Minu asked her daughter.

  “Twelve rigged to tow, thirty-two on board each Kiile. All seem intact and have responded to basic network hails. Though they are critically low on power and unable to come out of safe mode.”

  “Even if there are no fighters,
that is quite a complement of gunboats,” Aaron pointed out. “Eighty Eseel in addition to the Fiisk we’ve salvaged? It’s a fleet.”

  “A far underpowered fleet,” Lilith told him. “And it lacks depth. The Eseel mount some good short range energy weapons, but lack shield capacity to even take a single shipkiller. And they don’t have the raw maneuverability of the People’s fighters.”

  As the shuttle passed into the flight deck, what little light that had been outside from surrounding stars was immediately gone. Since there was no atmosphere, reflected light didn’t work. Aaron brought up the shuttle’s recessed lighting and threw everything into stark relief. He slid his finger on a control point and a powerful beam sprang into life, following his motions to illuminate points of interest.

  Minu was examining one of the huge hangar blast doors as they approached the center of the flight deck. “What kind of fighters can we expect?”

  “I cannot say. I have details on more than a dozen kinds in the database. However there is no data on how many were constructed, deployed, or even actually ever built. The details of this battle fleet sound desperate. It could be anything.”

  Minu nodded as they came to a stop, their small flotilla of shuttles floating in the middle of the massive flight deck. Forward and aft were the massive blast doors that would protect the hangars of this decks. “Any ideas how to get in?” Aaron asked.

  “Knocking is out of the question,” Bakook said.

  If Minu didn’t know better, she’d have thought the Beezer had just made a joke.

  “The internal controls were probably handled via radio for proximity,” Lilith told them. “The signal would be tightbeam, aimed at the door control area to the lower left. A security measure. I have sent your shuttle a series of code groups for you to try.”

  Aaron grunted as the radio chimed that it received a data transmission. Minu configured the radio transmitter from the second pilot seat, bringing up a little display that actually allowed her to aim the transmitter.

  Once it was ready she set about sending the codes her daughter gave them. On the third one, the perimeter of the blast door flashed, a blue line racing around its perimeter three times then began to slide open.

  “We’re in,” Minu told Lilith over the transmitter, “code group three.”

  “Very well, Mom. Proceed with caution. The People could have set additional security measures on such a prize.”

  Behind them in the cargo area Minu could hear the sounds of the Beezer finalizing their space suit checks. They barely had enough for all the recruits. Lilith’s ship had fabricated a dozen, and back on Serengeti a company had been contracted to make them as fast as they could. Even with that, there were few spare parts, and no spare suits. Item one thousand on Minu’s ‘stuff that needed a solution’ list.

  The massive blast door, easily ten meters tall and thirty meters wide, finished its slow, ponderous slide to the right. Minu’s mind unconsciously added the sound effects of ancient metal-on-metal grinding, plucking that of the door from Jabba the Hutt’s castle in Return of the Jedi. Of course, through vacuum the only sound was the quiet hum of the Kaatan shuttle’s power systems and clanking of Beezer spacesuits being sealed.

  As soon as the door stopped Aaron nudged the reaction controls and the shuttle side-slipped into the bay. Abandoning the floodlight, he stabbed a control and additional lighting came on along the shuttles sides. The others followed suit and the hangar was awash in brilliant light.

  When she’d found out there were carriers to salvage Minu had accessed her species’ database on such craft from old earth. There had been detailed schematics of nuclear powered aircraft carriers including how they handled fighters, stored, and repaired them.

  Inside the hangar bay she could see she had completely wasted her time. And worse, she should have known better. What could a space carrier have in common with a terrestrial wet-navy carrier, other than the transport of fighters and such? Even the flight decks weren’t decks in the traditional sense. They were more like tubes, staging areas where craft would wait, being held in place by gravitic tractors until they were flung out into space.

  The interior was circular, like many such spaces on the People’s ships. The walls were a honeycomb of space for the storing of craft. In the center were three pylons projecting outward from the walls. One below, and one to each upper side. The heads up display on the shuttle was feeding deck plans from the Kaatan. Those were labeled as ‘handling booms’, and were gravitic in nature. They would move ships from storage into the central bay and out to be launched.

  A half dozen exits were available. Four were large enough to accommodate the shuttle, and arranged roughly at the cardinal points with north being the one she’d just come in through. Two were larger and went up and down from their orientation. They were for transferring ships between the hangars. The space also sported another dozen small personnel and equipment sized locks that led elsewhere in the ship.

  Aaron maneuvered them out to near where the three handling booms almost met. The space was easily a hundred meters across. The Eseel’s thirty-meter length fit easily as Aaron maneuvered to allow room for the other four shuttles to fit as well. Once they were all in and at station keeping, Minu transmitted to them.

  “We’re going to run operations from here. Beezer teams, go ahead and disembark and meet outside by my shuttle where I will assign you bots.”

  “You really think we should all go out?” Aaron asked as he climbed out of the pilots’ seat and followed her aft.

  “Lilith can handle the shuttles if anything happens,” Minu said as she unpacked the alarmingly thin helmet from its pouch on her suit’s belt and slipped it over her head. A single button press on the largest part of the suit, a box not much bigger than a sandwich also on her belt.

  She felt the suit stiffen and a blast of cool air as the helmet self-sealed and inflated to a hard bubble. Its interior shimmered as the built in polarization activated and the heads up display came alive with the suits condition. A line of blue lights indicated proper function and data indicated the suit would sustain her for the next twelve hours. Gloves from the same pouch created complete suit integrity.

  Minu gestured and four of the crystalline bots moved over in a now familiar configuration, one wrapping around each limb. She glanced over at Aaron who was looking at the other bots skeptically. “You’ve seen me do this a dozen times now.”

  “It’s not the same thing,” he complained.

  “You have two alien manufactured cybernetic legs, and I have an arm and the musculature of both legs, and you’re squeamish about a couple bots shepherding you into space?”

  “The difference is I could take apart my legs, or your arm, and understand how they work. Hell, I could reproduce all of that tech. Or mostly,” he added half under his breath. “Those things are piles of minerals that can absorb enough power to cut through a half meter of dualloy, can exert enough force to travel a half a million kilometers, and can communicate across the galaxy instantaneously. So yeah, they weird me out a bit.”

  Minu looked at the bot wrapped around her right arm. She moved the limb around, the bot mimicking her movements so perfectly she couldn’t feel it at all. “I guess I never thought about it that way.”

  She moved the hand closer to her face, turning the hand to examine the three fingers through the alien made suit glove. Maybe alien technology had been part of her body for so long she just didn’t have it in herself to wonder how it worked. The optronics processors in her original gray skinned armed had little azure chips in them.

  Every tablet on Bellatrix, every vehicle computer, every little miniature communicator, every kid’s speaking toy, every farmer’s crop monitor, every tradesman’s point-of-sales terminal, every housewife’s television, every primary school student’s classroom computer system had an azure based optronics processor. Was there a word beyond ubiquitous? Universal.

  “Do we have a choice but trust them?” Minu asked her husband. “Mindy
turns one month old tomorrow. She’s being watched by a bot like these.”

  The bot extruded limbs to wrap around the wrist and elbow, had lengthened its body along the back of her arm, and ran one limb under her armpit and up to connect with the one on her left arm. It vaguely reminded her of the exoskeletons used in some freight operations. She didn’t want to admit it bothered her a little bit too.

  Aaron fussed for almost a minute getting his suit on and secured, twice as long as it should have taken. He glanced at Minu out of the corner of his eye and she gave him ‘that look’. So he sighed and held out a hand towards the collection of bots in the rear of the passenger cabin.

  Just like they had for her, four of them detached from the others and flew across to Aaron, arranging themselves in the identical configuration.

  “This is so strange,” he said as he flexed and moved, first slowly then quickly, trying to see if he could notice them resisting. “It’s almost as if they’re not there.”

  “Pretty amazing if you think that they appear to be living crystal,” Minu pointed out.

  “I didn’t need to hear that.”

  A minute later the cargo bay was decompressed and the two flew out to meet the sixteen Beezer. Despite the eight rookies having had some time in space, they were still evidenced in their body language of excitement. They turned this way and that, looking at everything, flying about on their suits’ thrusters.

  Their leaders had to caution them not to use the thruster packs too extensively. Unlike the azure bots that provided motive force for Minu and Aaron, the thrusters were only good for so much delta V. And that wasn’t a very high number.

  “Let’s split into two teams,” she told Bakook. “I’ll head one group, Aaron the other. Divide your people among experienced and inexperienced so we have a uniform spread.”

  “I have done this in advance,” Bakook said. He gave an order and the formation of Beezer split in two. Aaron flew over and took charge of one group, the other naturally followed Minu.

  “Keep in regular contact,” Minu told them all, “we can’t be 100% certain we’ve found and deactivated all the traps.”