Author's Preface
I want to address the current trend of looking down on the Naval personnel of the Independence Wars, referred to as TOS, or Those Old Soldiers.
The Navy made mistakes. Losing a fleet to a handful of Hrun pirates is embarrassing.
But we shouldn't forget what the commanders back then were up against, and what little quality equipment they actually had.
When we think of the Independence Wars, we picture the famous 3xx and 4xx battlecruisers. Even today, many remain dangerous warships.
What we miss is that those were the exceptions, not the rule. 75% of the fleet consisted of 2xx- or even 1xx-class cruisers.
The 1xx class especially wasn't even equipped with artificial gravity.
And 2xx cruisers could never be upgraded with any type of Davies guns due to a lack of power.
Then let's see what they were up against.
From the Batract Hyphae to pirates, every enemy was new and lethal.
Even our current fleet would rather retreat from Doomspheres than engage one.
And lastly, we have the Infectors and their…
— Excerpt of Fleet Memo 234871 regarding sentiments about the handling of the Independence Wars, 160 P.I.
Sitting down in the chair in her office, Admiral Sanders dreaded the next meeting.
Status reports to the Admiralty were draining enough, but having to repeat the same thing again and again…
At least Browner knew how things worked at the frontier. They didn't, and every day was improvisation camouflaged as competency and training.
"Good morning, Cassidy. You look horrible."
Browner's charming humor in full action…
"Morning, Admiral."
She wasn't in the mood today.
"So, how are things on your end? I heard Admiral Chen-Buckler has almost finished fortifying Sinob and will continue to the Faaq system in two weeks?"
At least he had fun, or something to do, unlike her fleets…
"Yes, the Second and Third Fleets had some small skirmishes, but just like in every battle over the last three weeks, the Infectors immediately retreat when they encounter Humans."
Browner sipped his drink and nodded.
"Yeah, we know. But that's not what troubles you."
"No, sir. My trouble is that my fleet is stuck here in the Margresh system guarding the wormhole exit. It's mentally draining my officers. We're training the Psstips fleet for agile space battles right now; that is something to break the monotony, at least."
"Good. Monotony leads to mistakes, and we can't risk any mistakes right now."
Sanders had to suppress a sarcastic laugh at that.
"The Infectors hand us enough monotony as is. Five or six ships exit the wormhole every 47 hours, like clockwork."
"Well, at least they are predictable."
Sanders had thought about it and come to the conclusion that it wasn't predictability. It was an ingenious tactic.
"No, sir. They want us to believe they are. I think they are trying to trick us into a false sense of security."
That got Browner's attention.
"Tell me."
"As far as we know, they think in different dimensions. Time is something that happens to others; we already know the Batract Hyphae think that way. I guess they will wait us out. Stretch us thin and attack Water, the Flirr homeworld, as soon as we move assets away from here."
Browner seemed to think her tactical calculations through.
"You might be right. So, how do you intend to solve this? I assume you don't plan on staying pinned down there forever."
"No, Admiral, I don't. My plan is to ramp up defenses as soon as the industry in the system is finished, then mix the Psstips fleets with some of the arriving Shraphen and Nuk fleets and go back on the offensive. The Psstips are born for guard duty. They actually love lying in wait forever."
Browner shook his head. Guard duty was the worst for him as well.
"Good for them. Anything else?"
There was more. The second biggest problem on the horizon.
"Yes, three more ships lost p-p. I'm down to 15 ships capable of it. Any news from Aligned Engineering?"
"They are as puzzled by it as you are. We analyzed the transmitters you sent back. The particles simply evaporated. We have no clue why this happened so fast."
They had only had p-p for a little over a year, but losing it now would be a catastrophe.
Browner answered as if he had read her thoughts.
"The Shraphen and Nuk will arrive in less than a week. They have spare transmitters, plus I sent two supply ships ahead; they will build relay stations. We won't lose contact, Cassidy."
"Yeah, what would I do without getting called horrible-looking every three days?"
"It's just me caring for you."
"Mhmm."
Sanders knew she looked horrible. She was on a weeks-long trip visiting every ship of her fleet to gain firsthand knowledge about her fleets' morale.
"When's the next attack due?"
"Two hours, Admiral."
"So, you're planning to go forward with the scout mission?"
"Any reason not to?"
"No. Update me when you get intel. Browner out."
Sanders finished her coffee, still staring at the dark screen. The scout mission was one thing, but the p-p transmitters failing... That was critical.
"Zeus, how are the p-p transmitters in the googly eyes?"
'All working as intended. In fact, none of the transmitters failed.'
Putting her cup down, she sat up straight.
"How did no one notice that before?"
'I can't answer that. It might be because googly eyes rarely need to use p-p.'
She had the feeling this was something worth following up. Why did one system fail not only in her fleet, but also in Chen-Buckler's fleet? Even the Shraphen and Nuk reported failures, though fewer than hers. And the exact same system didn't fail when used in googly eyes.
It had started when they were in transit from Burrow. Only a negligible few transmitters went out. But now, it was getting more and more critical.
"Are the transmitters different?"
'No, they are the same base military model. We could not find any correlation with usage, either. Heavily used transmitters fail at the same rate as idle ones.'
"How's that possible? What is different between the googly eyes and ships?"
'Size, mass, hull plating, energy supply. But since the transmitters intended for the stations fail at the exact same ratio, all of the mentioned factors seem to have no effect.'
"Distance…"
'P-p is distance-independent. And the googly eyes traveled the same distance as the ships, naturally.'
"Yes, but googly eyes transmit to the ships. p-p is strictly one-to-one comms. One transmitter bound to its opposite, right?"
'Correct. Each pair of transmitters is interlocked and can't communicate with any other transmitters, except if one side is connected to a relay. Currently, all relays for fleet actions are located on Titan.'
"So… every ship has a direct line to Titan. And if I talk to… let's say Burrow?"
'The connection goes from Niobe to Titan, and then to Burrow.'
"But if I watch a googly eye stream?"
'The bound, or quantum-locked, counterpart is aboard Niobe*, due to logistics constraints. Admiral, by this logic chain, distance is undoubtedly a factor. I think this is crucial. I will inform the engineering departments of the fleet and on Titan.'*
"Again, how did no one think of that?"
'The initial assumption was enemy countermeasures, since only ships in this theater of war against the Infectors are affected.'
"The initial assumption from the engineers was bullshit."
'In hindsight, yes. But outsiders often provide a crucial viewpoint on engineering problems that specialists might miss.'
Looking at her degrees from the naval academy, she snapped at Zeus.
"I do have an engineering degree, like all ASN officers, you know?"
'Then why didn't you find the discrepancy earlier?'
Zeus had disarmed her with his last quip. It wouldn't help to fight with the engineering departments over why they hadn't caught issues with a technology that was, by all accounts, still highly experimental. .
"Just file the reports and keep me up to date, okay?"
'Already done, Admiral.'
"Time till the Infectors attack again?"
'One hour, 47 minutes.'
"So I have time for my paperwork?"
'It seems unavoidable, Sir.'
"Crap."
————
Ten minutes before the next expected attack, Sanders joined the bridge. Arriving on the bridge without anyone announcing her was refreshing after visiting the other ships.
On Niobe , no one flinched or chose another elevator just because they saw her.
She had never liked the attention the stars on her collar gave her.
Sometimes she dearly missed the camaraderie she'd had as a Lieutenant or Commander.
At least on her flagship she had a bit of it.
"Commander, is everything prepared?"
Commander Sharif stood up from the captain's chair to make room for her, but she gestured for him to sit back down.
She wanted to observe the mission instead of focusing on executing it.
"Yes, Sir. The stealthy eyes are ready, and the Fletcher is in position and ready to be scuttled."
"Good. Proceed as planned."
The idea was simple: get stealth drones through the wormhole undetected to scout the other side. Naval Intelligence assumed the wormhole would lead to some kind of enemy stronghold.
Sending drones in the middle of a firefight might be too obvious, so a distraction was needed. Something harmless-looking.
Zeus had had the idea to use the Fletcher , an old BC1xx-type cruiser that had been mission-killed in the initial battles, as a trojan horse.
Fletcher had been hit at the hub of the rotating segment. This made working on her a nightmare. Then the core had a malfunction.
Sure, the ship could be fixed, but now she would serve even better.
Charges had been placed, and in time the ship would 'veer uncontrolled' into the wormhole, concealing the stealth drones in her cargo hold.
"T-7 minutes. All ships in formation. Pioneers report gun towers online."
That was unexpected. The last reports from the pioneers had mentioned the gun towers would need at least another day.
"Zeus, any details on the gun towers?"
'Yes, Sir. The pioneers focused their efforts on getting the first three satellites online as a live-fire test. All three gun-tower-type satellites are equipped with two turrets, each mounting an FTL MK1 'Davies' cannon.'
Good idea to test three satellites in live fire instead of building the whole swarm and then finding a critical issue.
And six more guns are always welcome.
"T-3 minutes."
Sanders tried to find the officer who had announced it, since she didn't know his voice. Probably one of the new technicians.
"Registering EM spikes." She found him. A dark-haired Lieutenant in his mid-twenties, the crew patch on his uniform still marking him as a previous member of the Fletcher .
She walked over to him, and the man grew nervous as he found himself at the center of her attention.
"These spikes, did we register them in their initial attack as well, Lieutenant…?"
"Erm… Tomasz. Grabowski. No, we noticed the spike only at their second attack out of the wormhole. Ma'am, ermm, Sir."
"How nice of them to announce themselves, hmm, Lieutenant?"
Pointing at his ship's patch, she added, "Make her proud, Lieutenant Tomasz Grabowski. Not every ship gets one last mission. A heroic send-off, so to speak. Make her proud."
The Lieutenant's face turned a remarkable red, and Sanders heard him breathe out heavily as she returned to her usual observation place behind the captain's chair.
"T-30 seconds," Grabowski reported.
Sanders made a mental note to observe the man more closely. To be placed on the bridge of her flagship was a huge success for a Lieutenant, and he must have caught someone's eye.
The counter ticked down, then, perfectly on time, the first Infectors appeared.
Sharif turned his head to look at her, and she gave fire authorization with a nod.
"Main gun, fire on target. Comms, inform the fleet: fire at will. PDGs, destroy the remains before they can drift away."
Not that any officer on the bridge would have needed the orders. The crew was a well-oiled machine, and mostly battle-hardened.
The main gun fired. Even without seeing the streak of white flaming light leave the ship's bow, she felt the pull in her teeth.
The flame was protomatter vaporizing. To her it was the whitest white in existence — it sucked the color from its surroundings. Some of the crew swore it was red, or purple.
The first Infector inverted under the concentrated fire before it could shoot back.
Sanders swore it got easier to kill them every time. And they got smaller.
Now comes the hard part.
On the screen, she saw the next Infector exiting.
"Grabowski, give me his size."
"600 meters, Sir."
Compared to the usual 1000, so they were smaller.
"Detonate Fletcher charges."
Some ships continued to simulate a fight and missed the Infector on purpose as the charges detonated on the Fletcher . The engineers had even rigged the escape capsules to launch a few minutes after the explosions.
Seeing the proud ship drag plasma fires behind her, escape capsules launching, brought back grim memories. She had seen too many ships in this state not to react, even though she knew it was all spectacle.
The third Infector exited.
"Fire back on target."
Before the fleet could destroy the Infectors, the second one managed to line up a shot.
Niobe 's helmsman managed to turn the ship away enough that the particle stream only scorched the hull.
This had been expected. Ever since the first battle over Water, the Infectors had Niobe as their primary target.
The enemy had learned.
Niobe shook under the fire. Even the exceptional Nuk shields she had installed collapsed under the particle stream.
The googly eyes allowed for a phenomenal third-person view of the ship, and Sanders flinched as she saw the damage.
Even a smaller Infector had collapsed the shields and burned through the hull armor. Water and oxygen vented from the pierced tanks in the ship's catacombs. But luckily, the inner hull was intact.
I'm gonna revoke the order allowing out-of-suit combat. And file a recommendation for ASN Headquarters. S hields were not enough security to prevent inner hull breaches.
The risk of enemy fire had been calculated into the plan. Usually the Infectors didn't even get time to shoot, but for the ruse to work, the Infectors had to see Fletcher damaged and drifting. It was logical that something, somewhere, was watching the battle.
Fletcher drifted now, as planned, into the wormhole's vortex — and was gone.
"Getting telemetry from Fletcher , Sir." Another tech, Lieutenant Commander Danielle Yazzle, the first Coyote's Star Colony officer, reported.
"Beam it into the CIC. Commander Sharif, get this biowaste out of my system. Yazzle, Grabowski, come with me."
Sanders turned and walked through the connecting door into the CIC. Behind her, she heard Sharif ordering:
"You heard the Admiral. Fire at the squids and get the system cleaned."
Yazzle and Grabowski followed Sanders into the CIC, the higher-ranking Lieutenant Commander guiding the visibly shaken Lieutenant to a free station before she reported.
"Sir, telemetry on screens five to ten. Stealthy eyes report all clear for launch."
Taking in the first clear pictures from the enemy system, Sanders searched for anything of note. But without googly eyes, the cameras of starships were limited.
"Grabowski, give her some rotation. Detonate a drive."
"Aye, Sir."
As the Lieutenant detonated the auxiliary RCS drive, the escaping gases and fuels slowly began to rotate the ship, providing a clearer picture of the space around the enemy wormhole exit.
"We're beginning to map the starfield in order to locate the enemy system, Sir."
Sanders' style of dragging new and promising blood into the CIC had worked well on Yazzle. She was almost at home here already and showed good initiative.
One of the other officers in the CIC had probably already started the same mapping, but the fleet needed qualified personnel, and doing real work beat simulator training every time.
Thats why I have the best officers in the Navy…
"Sir… I found… something."
"Not the usual way to report a finding, Lieutenant, is it?"
'I have to defend the Lieutenant. I couldn't describe it better after a second's analysis, Admiral.'
Zeus activated the holoscreen and projected an image taken from Fletcher 's POV.
A clearly technological structure sat in the center of the picture. A massive ring forming a stretched hexagon, with large towering structures at both ends. The wormhole was centered on the ring, seemingly created by the structure.
The whole picture took on an almost obscene quality because of the hundreds of Infectors that crawled on the structure, like snails on a metal frame.
Is that thing making the wormhole?
What really caught everyone's eye was the mass of Infectors floating next to the hexagonal ring.
'First counts estimate a thousand to fifteen hundred Infectors forming the mass.'
"What is that?"
Sanders had never seen that, or anything like it.
"A Nest?" Grabowski offered.
Sanders looked long at the Lieutenant.
A Nest?
"Explain…"
The Lieutenant almost stammered again. Sanders decided a smile could ease the poor soul.
"Well, Sir… I worked on my grandfather's farm as a child. And the Infectors on the megastructure, they remind me of snails… And then there's the mass of Infectors, huddling like a snail nest. At least that's what my grandfather called it. Later I learned that's how they… well, reproduce. A giant orgy."
Sanders turned to look at the… Nest again.
Yeah, it looked like a giant squid orgy.
But Infectors reproduce by being grown out of biosphere biomatter?
"Detonate the Fletcher and get me stealthy eye telemetry."
The self-destruct was the last ruse: creating a massive debris cloud for the stealthy eyes to hide in.
"Yes… Sir."
She noticed his hesitation. He was a former crewman of the Fletcher . And crews had a special bond with their ship. At least human crews did.
"Do you want someone else to do it?"
"No, Sir. It's her last mission, and I was her last acting ops officer. It's my duty."
Ops officer at Lieutenant? Either the Navy was really low on personnel, or he's gifted. Even if he had only gotten the job because Commander Lee was killed in the hit that mission-killed the ship.
"Detonation."
The screen went dark for a second, only to show the five new viewpoints of the stealth drones.
"Stealthy eye telemetry nominal. Receiving stellar mapping data as well as video and gravimetric datastreams."
Around her, the screens lit up and filled with data. Fletcher 's sensors had been damaged in the initial battle, and the engineers couldn't fix them and the drive at the same time.
"So, what about this megastructure?"
A video stream changed, centering on the hexagonal structure. Grabowski overlaid it with a measurement grid.
"First scans can only give approximations. We need the stealth eyes to fan out farther to get good multiple POVs to be certain, but the structure seems to be fifteen hundred kilometers across. The… knobs at the ends are roughly five hundred kilometers high and radiate massive amounts of power."
He checked something on his console, then checked again and shook his head.
"Lieutenant?"
"Sir, the mass. It… it must be a distortion from the wormhole."
"Why?"
"It's reading at 640 quintillion tons. A bit more than Mars."
Sanders now understood the Lieutenant's confusion.
Either the construction was built out of something so dense no Human knew of it, or the wormhole did indeed distort the reading.
"Get astrophysics to check the readings. Send it back to ASN Headquarters as well; they have whole universities of people for that kind of nonsense. Lieutenant Commander Yazzle, any news on the location?"
Sanders had seen Yazzle rubbing her temples and the bridge of her nose at an increasing rate.
"Not directly, Sir. There are noticeably very few stars, and—"
"Holy shit."
Sanders turned at Grabowski's outburst. Before she could say a word, she saw why he had lost his composure.
Stealthy eye 3, 'Donald', had turned, and in the background starfield was something no Human spacefarer had ever seen.
The Milky Way, in almost full overhead view.
"Stellar cartography has a position fix, plus-minus ten light-years. NGC 2419. The Intergalactic Wanderer. Distance to… our galaxy, 280,000 light-years."
I guess we're not going there for a while…
Zeus whispered in her earpiece.
'There goes the theory of distance being related to the p-p problem.'