Darklight Pirates

Donal Tomlins tried to hide his frustration. He walked around--through--the hologram to study it from every angle. The stars refused to budge, and the tiny notation he had appended to each inhabited star system glowed an angry red in his HUD, set so only he could read the sometimes acerbic evaluations he had given. No matter how he shifted alliances, what he promised, the number of ships he mustered, Ballymore remained in Weir’s control. Even committing an act of utter treason and enlisting both Eire and Uller against Burran did nothing to dislodge Weir from his position as controller of the entire planet. Worse, that projection showed Weir coming out the victor, with a planet unified under his thumb.

Programmer General of Burran carried immense power. Even making wild assumptions that Weir would commit mistakes so elementary a first year cadet would know better, Donal returned to only one conclusion.

“Cut off the imported supplies.”

He jerked around, extinguished his HUD and reached for the lasepistol tucked inside his jacket. Donal checked the move when he saw Leanne Chang studying him with her ebony eyes. They might have been polished black marbles for all the emotion she showed. Not for the first time he wondered if Supreme Leader hadn’t sent an android instead of a flesh and blood woman. In spite of himself, he laughed.

Cletus might not even know, even sharing her bed. The boy hadn’t been much of a lady’s man while he worked his way through the academy and into a military command. Donal sobered. His own personal life had suffered, too. Not knowing Kori’s fate gnawed away at him and, as much as anything, drove him to depose Weir and take back the Programmer General’s position.

“Revenge is a satisfactory reason,” Leanne said. She walked into the middle of the display. A few small waves of her hand sent the galaxy spinning in crazy orbits. “He took what was yours. He might have killed your family. Do you know for certain?”

“I don’t. From what you and Cletus said, my wife and daughter might have escaped.”

“We did not abandon the fight without reason. The firepower being directed against us alone would have overwhelmed even the most advanced warriorobot. Equipping both warbots with the STF armor would not have given longer time in the field against such defensive might.”

“I’m not blaming you. I blame myself. I didn’t make the best use of what weapons I had.”

“You had to act quickly, without real intelligence. That is always the way it is in battle. Too often, many die finding the true situation.”

“‘The fortunes of war are always doubtful.’”

Leanne looked at him, the unspoken question hanging between them.

“Seneca,” he said. “I think another quotation is more appropriate. ’If words of command are not clear and distinct, then the general is to blame.”

“Sun Tzu, of course,” Leanne said. “You are widely studied in the ways of war?”

“I don’t have access to a k-chip, nor do I think such an implant would help me.”

“Supreme Leader agrees. Native ability, honed by experience, is a far better indicator of success in war. Simply having the knowledge of all generals throughout history falls short when a new situation is encountered. War is not chess where all possible games have been played and can be duplicated. There are always new challenges to face in combat.”

“So it always will be, as it always will be.” Donal sagged, then straightened. Showing despair in front of the woman was a mistake. Show her no weakness. Show no one.

Leanne nodded. She stepped away and let the starfields resurrect. She pointed to one. It grew in brightness.

“This is your goal? You will find no allies to aid you.”

“The only allies to be had would extract a bigger payment than if I let Weir continue ruling Burran. My entire planet cannot be forfeit because I desire revenge.”

“Some would disagree.”

“How is the refitting for the Shillelagh going? Cletus hasn’t been by in several days, which makes me think he has some surprise he wants to spring on me. Does it have to do with the warbots? He is quite taken with them and their potential.”

“With only a pair of them, their use is limited to hardly more than the rescue we attempted. You have not heard of the breakthrough made by the scientists?”

“I received reports at odd intervals back on Burran,” he said. “I found much of what they said interesting but hardly of a major nature. What is it that excites you? And Cletus?”

His small jibe didn’t faze her. She bent slightly at the knees, crossed her wrists, then rose, spreading her arms wide to sweep away all his tactical planning. For a moment only empty space in the large circular white room dominated. Then a man walked into the room. Donal turned. The quality of the hologram was excellent. He watched a projection and not Scrutiny’s chief scientist in the flesh.

“Our calculations tell us that the neutron star spiraled inward, taking up residence in the red giant’s core in less than a month. This happened a thousand years ago, perhaps longer. Adequate time, cosmically speaking, for the system to settle down might be orders of magnitude longer. For that, we should be glad because the instability generates radiation unknown from any other source, even quick period pulsars.”

Donal went to stand beside Leanne, whose full attention fixed on Doctor Germain although she must have watched this video before coming to him. His arm touched hers. A fleeting touch but electric. She was always alert, yet relaxed. Nothing got past her notice, reinforcing his question as to her humanity. If she weren’t an android or a clever robot, had Far Kingdom learned to genetically manipulate for such behavior? Or was she simply well trained and self-possessed to the point Donal doubted her humanity? It would have benefitted him greatly to have spent more time on Far Kingdom and seen what daily life was like, what the citizens did and thought and dreamed. Supreme Leader would never have permitted that. Far Kingdom was a world closed to foreigners. Laowai. He had heard the term whispered as he and the rest of the Burran delegation had been shown around on their carefully orchestrated tour. The exact meaning might be derogatory, but it certainly meant foreigner. Burran might have been settled by the dozen Irish escape ships during the Great Farewell, but his nation welcomed those from other worlds. Only, there were scant numbers wanting to leave their own enclave worlds. Far Kingdom was a perfect example, teeming with billions but only a small cadre of specially trained diplomats--or spies--like Leanne willing to accompany him off-world.

“This. Listen carefully to the recording.” She tugged on his sleeve. She kept her grip and stepped closer so her body pressed into his.

Distracted, Donal almost missed what Doctor Germain said.

“... revolutionary power source. In my hand I hold a battery charged with what we euphemistically call darklight radiation. There might be a component in higher dimensions. It might be dependent on the still mostly unknown dark matter and energy in our spacetime. Wherever the energy originates, this small battery can power a dreadnought’s laser cannon longer than the fusion generator designed for such mattters.”

“That’s smaller than the palm of his hand. The laser turrets have a fusion generator the size of this room to power them.” Donal blurted his protest, as if the hologram could answer his protest.

“Wait, Donal, wait,” urged Leanne. “He will show an experiment.”

“It’s one of the scoopships used to mine the gas giants. What--”

“... the ship’s fusion plant has been replaced by this darklight-energy charged battery.”

Donal stared. Doctor Germain showed a battery hardly larger than an appliance locker used for minor storage aboard the Shillelagh. The display ran through readouts and metering, but such things could be faked. It was as if Leanne read his mind.

“I’ve run my own tests. With this installed, you can power a dreadnought ten times longer than using the standard fusion plant, with half the downtime. There is hardly anything to go wrong. Coolants are not needed, reducing both dangerous chemicals and complicated tubing.” She shrugged and gave a wistful smile, as if wishing she had invented this herself. “You need more power cables to feed the StringSpaceLift exciters and generate the opening into StringSpace, but refitting is simple.”

“So,” asked Donal, “are smaller versions possible to power the laser cannon? Each bank of those has its own fusion plant.”

“This was the first thing we tried. And, yes, Programmer General, such is possible without loss of range or power density.”

“It’s wrong to rip out the existing fusion units,” Cletus said as he entered the room. He had been spying on the holographic presentation from just outside the chamber. “Can this be added as a backup?” He reached out and brushed across the battery in Doctor Germain’s hand.

“Without much effort. Loss would be in cargo space. Perhaps twenty percent loss,” Leanne said. “The benefit comes in removing the fusion units entirely.”

“Cletus is right about removing the standard power units. This might fail. As much as I want a topnotch warship, it’s untested, isn’t it?”

“I would not say that, Programmer General,” Germain said. Donal jumped. The recorded projection had morphed into streaming, with the scientist able to take part in the discussion. “We have used the prototype for more than six months with no trouble. The scoopships which we depend on for our raw materials? All are battery powered now.”

“That’s dangerous,” Donal said.

“Not too much,” Leanne said. “The conversion back to standard fusion would require only a few weeks.”

Donal looked around. Cletus opposed such a changeover. Leanne would be up to her elbows helping with the conversion. Doctor Germain wanted his pet project installed as vindication of time, effort and money spent. With the scientist, it might even be more. It demonstrated the usefulness of a strange science with barely understood radiation from the merged neutron-red giant star system.

“It isn’t possible to use both systems at the same time to double your power,” Germain said, anticipating his question. “One or the other. If you wanted to scale up the power, a new ship design would be required. Frankly, that is beyond the capability of our dry dock. We have the engineers and computing power to create a new ship’s design but not the construction equipment to build it.”

“Scrutiny is a research post,” Donal said, his mind racing. He considered telling Germain of the situation on Ballymore and decided against it. Since construction of this post had been known only to him and a few others he trusted high up in the Burran chain of command, finding the system would be impossible. He had made certain no record of Scrutiny’s location had ever been recorded in the computers, in the vast databases, anywhere. More than one sleepless night had been spent scouring the entirety of data to erase how the scientists had been recruited, how they had been whisked away, anything that might hint at this research outpost existing. The most likely way Scrutiny would be discovered was combing through observational records on Earth and finding the first sightings back in the Twentieth Century.

With Earth the way it was and had been for centuries, that was unlikely.

Still, a Burran astronomer had done that very thing once before. Donal had attended the man’s funeral here on Scrutiny when he had died from a brain aneurysm after a long career.

“How long will it take to install such batteries?”

“Father, this isn’t a good idea.”

Donal motioned Cletus to silence.

“Adding the darklight radiation battery and disconnecting--not removing--existing power?”

“For the laser cannon, only a week. For the dreadnought’s main power, a month.”

“Do so, Doctor. Order it done.” Donal saw that Leanne had pulled his son aside and whispered in his ear. Cletus looked surprised, then nodded. Donal wished he had such persuasive powers, but Leanne might have them only with Cletus.

Germain left in a whirl of colors as the hologram dissolved. Donal had learned not to worry over decisions made, unless they went awry. Then they had to be corrected. Until his choosing to refit the Shillelagh proved itself one way or the other, he had other problems to solve.

“They can install the railguns at the same time as they refit the lasers.” Cletus stood with his arms crossed, looking belligerent.

“Why do you want kinetic weapons?” This startled Donal. Cletus knew how useless such weapons were in a space battle. They were better suited to planetary bombardment; even then deflecting asteroids gave greater destructive power.

“Leanne has found something more in the research that Germain didn’t mention.”

“It is not in his field. It is only of theoretical use at the moment but can provide an incredible weapon,” she said. Leanne touched a spot on her forearm. A small warm glow winked once just below the skin. Whatever she had to report wasn’t to be shared, even with the scientists who made Scrutiny their home. This activated a spy zone that kept prying electronics at bay.

“Is it something more to do with the embedded neutron star?”

“In a way. It was briefly mentioned when we visited the charging stations on the sunward side. This planet is tidal locked, the far end of the ellipsoid always pointing toward the star combination. Such mass creates a time warp that can be exploited.”

“How does a railgun matter?” Donal saw Leanne became as excited as he had ever seen her. He wondered that she shared this rather than keeping it to herself to pass on to the scientists on Far Kingdom.

“A particle is dragged back in time a few microseconds so that the same matter occupies the same space at the same time.” She waved her ringed fingers about and brought up a display to show intricate calculations. She blanked that hurriedly and revealed only a simple show-and-tell holo.

“Double the matter, but two distinct masses can’t occupy the same space,” Cletus said.

“An explosion?”

“Total conversion of the mass into energy. Complete annihilation without the need of generating anti-matter.” Her holo obeyed another gesture and erupted with eye-searing intensity.

“Anti-matter has proven difficult to create and store aboard combat ships,” Cletus said. “All that’s needed here is the timeshifter in a warhead.”

“How large a mass is displaced in time?” Donal tried to work through the possibilities and found his mind drifting back to Ballymore. He had a nation--a world--to regain. Moreover, this transcended his expertise. He programmed complex systems of supply for energy and materiel and made projections of society’s needs and cultural mores. He didn’t create the products.

“Any size you want. A gram. A kilo. A metric ton.”

“Total conversion of a thousand kilos? But that--” He understood then what his son foresaw. A railgun could launch a solid warhead at a small fraction of the speed of light and alter its mass. Then the timeshifter moved this back a fraction of an instant for complete mass to energy conversion.

“We can use a grain of sand or a rock. Anything becomes an explosive of irresistible force,” Leanne said. “There is no need to store dangerous radioactives, worry about their corruption because of decay products in the pit, no need to plan a mission around the half life of the components. A warship can be on patrol for a week or ten years and maintain complete destructive power.”

“I never approved of fusion weapons because of that,” Donal said.

“You fought the entire council over it. I remember. I wasn’t very old.” Cletus clamped his mouth shut and glanced guiltily at Leanne, as if this reminder of his youth might prejudice her. She never noticed.

“The best use of a railgun so far has been to deploy the warhead as a carrier for mines. That might still be useful attacking a single ship. It’s difficult to hit a ship even ten light seconds distant.”

“You can destroy an entire fleet with a single warhead,” Leanne said. She nodded as she drifted into deep thought. “Yes, the shotgun approach. I must see how difficult it will be to build the timeshifter for tens or even hundreds of particles.”

Without another word, she left, muttering to herself. Cletus started after her but Donal grabbed his arm and held him back.

“A moment. Let her deal with the weapons. Unless I am mistaken, that is her speciality.”

“No, she’s in the diplomatic corps. She--”

Cletus fell silent when Donal fixed him with a hard stare.

“Think carefully of all she has said and how she approaches her tasks. She is as much a warrior as you are. It’s time for you to be a general and finally guide our military efforts. How do we use these weapons to regain power?”

“Refitting the warbots with the darklight batteries would improve their range and mobility.”

“Add more armor. Use the liquid armor to reduce weight and vulnerability. The Scrutiny scientists can build and install the armor. Remember how the tanks hammered you back at the ... prison compound.” Donal swallowed hard.

“I wish we had remained a few minutes longer. Mother and the girls must have been there. I could have rescued them.”

“The robotic weapons aren’t invincible. The damage to them proves that. If you had stayed even a few more seconds, I’d have lost you, too.”

“I’m a soldier. It’s my duty.”

“It’s your duty to serve the people of Burran. There is a chance your mother might still be alive.” Donal tasted the metallic burn of a lie on his tongue. He wanted Kori to be alive. He wanted Ebony and Bella to be well, but the chances were slim. “For all I know, Weir is a good ruler and giving the people everything I could and more, but seizing power as he did cannot be allowed to stand. Stability is as important as keeping the water gushing and the electricity flowing.”

“He can’t be as good as you, Father.”

“Even if he is, what if someone else sees how he has seized power and wrests it from him? Whoever replaces Weir might not be as benevolent.”

“He imprisoned our family. That’s the act of a tyrant, not a benevolent ruler.”

“I agree, Cletus. That’s why we must devise a battle plan to regain control, of the Blarney Stone and Burran. I’ve arranged for a control helmet so we can use Scrutiny’s computing power. Let Leanne work on her weapons. Let the engineers rebuild the Shillelagh. That’ll free us to come up with a plan that will depose Weir with the least possible damage to our world.”

Donal knew it wouldn’t be as easy as uttering a few words. But it had to be done. Goram Weir had to pay for all he had done to Burran.

And to the Tomlins family.