“Thirteen sent out the beginning of a burst transmission just before it died, encrypted, but over high-gain radio, breaking protocol, which is why I think its whisker laser was dead. It also tried to move a second time, but had already burned up most of its hydrazine. I think it saw the threat and was trying to tell us what killed it. That’s why the onboard AI overrode its orders and switched to radio.”
“But it was already damaged. How can you be sure its AI wasn’t malfunctioning?” Nesbit asked.
“Virtual neural networks are firewalled like crazy to keep that from happening. They’re also incredibly fragile. Any damage to the physical components and they just collapse. It’s pretty much an all-or-nothing deal,” Mattu answered confidently.
“And how do we know the explosion wasn’t the result of an internal failure?” Susan asked. “The platform was already damaged; maybe there was a leak in the hydrazine tanks, or a deformation of one of the engine bells that caused the explosion.”
Mattu nodded. “I can’t rule that out, mum. But it doesn’t explain why Thirteen tried to move again. It saw something else coming and tried to get out of the way. Maybe it blew itself up in the attempt, maybe it was hit. Either way, it was reacting to something.”
Susan found herself nodding along. The ensign’s argument was sound, even if she wished it wasn’t. “So, what was it trying to avoid, micrometeoroids?”
“Two of them traveling in nearly perfect parallel courses less than five seconds apart? The odds against that are—”
“Astronomical,” Miguel finished for her.
“Yessir,” Mattu said. “Losing Eight two weeks ago was remarkable enough. But twice? With a follow-up shot? No way.”
Susan took a deep breath, then let it out through her nose. “Well argued, Scopes. So, someone is not only finding our recon drones, but picking them off.”
“I think we can consider our cage appropriately rattled, mum,” Miguel said.
“How are they doing it?” Nesbit asked.
Susan turned to the head of her Weapons Department. “Warner?”
The stout, short-haired lieutenant looked like she could muscle a three-hundred-kilo guided missile onto the pylon of a dropship wing by hand if the situation called for it. She held up three fingers. “Well, there’s three possibilities: beamers, boomers, or bangers. We can rule out beamers, because you can’t see a laser coming in order to dodge it in the first place. Boomers are out, too, ’cause even if you sent a missile in ballistic and set for kinetic kill only, the energies are too big. Even a glancing blow from a fusion-drive missile is like a low-yield nuke going off. There wouldn’t be anything left.” One finger remained up. “So that leaves bangers. A railgun round fits the circumstances. But that opens up its own questions.”
“Like what?” Nesbit said. “We’re not all tacticians, Lieutenant.”
“Obviously.”
“Lieutenant,” Susan interjected. “No need to be rude. Mr. Nesbit’s specialties inhabit a … different axis from ours. Please, give him a rundown.”
“Sorry, mum. Mr. Nesbit. Just got yanked out of my rack, is all. Mattu, can you pull the projection out to the Red Line?”
The ensign nodded. “Yes’m.” A moment later, the display zoomed out in scale once more, until it encompassed not just the inner system, but all the way out to twelve AU from the primary. At the twelve-AU boundary, a bright red dividing line encircled the system. This was the treaty line negotiated after the Intersection War. This was where company claims to a given star system ended, and free space began. It was the dividing line the Xre dare not cross, unless they wanted to find themselves on the receiving end of megatons or gigawatts.
“Thank you, Scopes. Now, the problem is twofold. One is detection. Our Mk XXVI recon birds are absolutely state of the art. Fresh off the assembly line for this deployment. They have the radar return of a peppercorn and the IR signature of a squirrel fart. We have trouble tracking them even when they’re shining a damned whisker laser at us. I simply don’t believe anybody could spot them from, what’s the closest approach? Nine AU out? No way, I don’t care how good their passive sensors have gotten.”
“Fine, fine,” Nesbit said tersely. “And the second problem?”
“If we’re talking about railgun rounds, which we pretty much have to be, there’s an issue of time-to-target. Our guns are a little slower than the Xre, but they’re limited by the same physics and material science we are, so their projectiles cap out at a hair over fifteen kilometers per second. To cover nine AU at that speed, the projectile would’ve had to be fired … um…”
“Two years and nine months ago,” Susan answered for her.
“Yes, Cap, that’s right,” Warner said after finishing the number crunching in her head, clearly impressed.
“I started out as a banger’s mate.” Susan smiled. “We worked out ridiculous shots in our spare time. So, Mr. Nesbit, the inescapable conclusion is someone fired a railgun almost three years ago at an invisible target that hadn’t even arrived yet.…”
“Or?”
“Or, someone snuck their own armed drones into the inner system to kill ours.”
“Why are you so sure it’s just a drone and not an entire warship?”
Susan smoothed out a wrinkle on her tunic’s sleeve. “Because, Mr. Nesbit, if they had the technological edge to hide an entire warship from one of our Mk XXVI platforms until it was inside banger range, there would be nothing preventing the same ship from killing every last one of us before we even saw the shot.”
For a long moment, the only sounds to be heard in the CIC were the fans circulating warm air into the compartment. Nesbit cleared his throat to
