An eternity later, the CLVL reached its effective threshold. It separated into two halves. A powerful explosive charge in the front quarter of its forward section detonated, dispersing a cloud of trillions of microscopic reflective grains. For less than a millisecond, the cloud enveloped the hostile drone, while full-spectrum cameras in the remainder of its forward half watched intently.
Spaceborne drones under stealth, regardless of who’d built them, used laser coms to communicate. The reason was simple. Unless an observer was in a direct line of sight between the drone and their mother, the signal couldn’t be intercepted, jammed, or altered. It had been the standard for encrypted tactical communications for centuries. And with quantum encryption, there was really no chance of decoding any messages even if one were sitting in direct line of the beam.
But that wasn’t the point.
Out of trillions of nano-scale particles, six managed to blunder into the pulse of laser energy the enemy drone directed toward its mother. A small portion of that energy reflected off of their crystalline surfaces and found its way back to the cameras in the back half of the CLVL, which then took those six geometric points in space and used them to draw a line twelve meters long. A line that gave a direct bearing back to the drone’s mother. In the end, less than a hundred photons was all it took to tell the tale.
Distance couldn’t be ascertained, but direction would be enough. The CLVL took two final steps to fulfill every demand that had been placed on its existence. It sent the data back through its telemetry link to its own mother, then ordered its fusion rocket in its aft section a few dozen meters behind to detonate.
Both it and the enemy drone winked out of the universe in the fires of a short-lived star.
“Got it!” Warner shouted triumphantly. “Solid bearing captured, and enemy drone splashed.”
“Scopes, confirm that,” Susan said.
“Fusion detonation confirmed.” Mattu’s hands danced in the air as she manipulated her display. “Both missile and drone destroyed.”
“Bearing to target?”
“Three-two-nine by zero-zero-four,” Warner said. “And change.”
“Release the telemetry to the Nav station. Charts, please put that bearing up on the main plot.”
“Yes’m. Getting telemetry now.”
In the tactical display, a bright streak of crimson started at the point where the CLVL just detonated and receded off into infinity just a sliver above the system’s eclectic plane.
“Scopes, are we sure the drone didn’t get a message off about the fog machine?” Susan asked after Mattu.
“The whole process from cloud deployment to fusion detonation took less than a hundred milliseconds, and the CLVLs throw out a riot of EM jamming. I can’t be absolutely certain, but I don’t think even one of our AIs could take in all that sensor data, analyze it through all the white noise, come to the correct conclusion, and encrypt it for transmission in that time frame. I think it’s safe to assume the secret of our new toy is safe for the moment.”
“That’s good enough for me.” Susan smiled. “Good work, everyone. We’ve successfully deployed a brand-new weapons system in live fire without a single hiccup. That might be a record all by itself. Double ration of pudding tonight. And Mr. Nesbit, I think a letter of commendation for its development team might be in order back at corporate.”
“I agree wholeheartedly, Captain.”
“Maybe even a bonus?”
Nesbit straightened a cufflink. “That’s really not for me to decide, but I’ll pass it along with my report.”
“Of course. Charts. How long before our rings are ready for another jump?”
“Alpha and gamma still going through cooldown and neg-mat recycling. Five minutes to reset,” Broadchurch replied.
“Let alpha ring take a break and bring beta online.”
“Yes’m.”
“Wait,” Nesbit wavered. “You’re not actually thinking about going after that thing?”
“That’s kind of the point of finding its bearing, Mr. Nesbit,” Susan responded frostily. “I’m tasked with patrolling this system. Someone has just committed a treaty violation. This is a warship, if my memory serves. Weapons Officer, we do have weapons onboard, yes?”
“Oodles, mum,” Warner said without containing her glee.
“Well, there you have it. Scopes, how long to get our birds back in the barn?”
“They’re pretty far out, mum. Even at full burn it’ll take the better part of two hours to get them to turn around, and another two hours to bring them into recovery range.”
Susan paused to consider this. The Ansari was powerful enough as a combatant in her own right, but her real strength lay in the data-gathering and situational awareness afforded by her flock of embarked drone platforms. They were the web to the ship’s spider, sending invisible signals through the silk wherever a wayward fly stumbled into one. That’s how she’d earned her nickname of “Orb Weaver.” A black spider with a leg resting on each of the eight planets of mankind’s home system emblazoned the ship’s mission patches and challenge coins.
Personally, Susan hated spiders. Something about ambush predators that didn’t work for their dinner bothered her. But, it wasn’t her call. The nickname had already been in the books for years before she took command, and you just didn’t mess with a ship’s history like that. Even dozens of light-years from their home, sailors were still a superstitious lot. And even she had to admit the metaphor was appropriate.
Leaving her drones behind wouldn’t blind her, not really. The ship had an envious suite of both passive and active sensors, as well as a towed array in the aft that spooled out on twenty kilometers of space elevator ribbon that was almost as powerful as the sensor clusters mounted on the Ansari herself. But it was a far cry from the multiple redundancies and overlapping perspectives of a proper flight of recon drones.
Still …
“Leave them
