In Her Name: The Last War (3 page)

“Why does the focus keep shifting?” Marisova asked into the sudden silence that had descended on the bridge. The alien vessel shimmered in the display as if a child were twisting an imaginary focus knob for the primary telescope back and forth, taking the image in and out of focus.

“That’s what I was about to say,” Amundsen answered, McClaren now having shifted the survey team leader’s image onto yet a third segment of the bridge display. Before he had seemed both excited and frightened. Now it was clear that fear was crowding out his excitement. “That is one of at least four ships that is heading directly toward us from the outer habitable planet. The reason you are seeing the focusing anomaly is because the ships are moving at an incredible velocity, and the telescope cannot hold the image in alignment. Even what you see here has been enhanced with post-processing.” He visibly gulped. “Captain, they knew we were coming, hours, possibly even a few days, before we arrived. They knew right where we were going to be, and they must have left orbit before we arrived. They
must
have. It’s theoretically possible to predict a hyperspace emergence, but...we now know that it’s not just a theory.” He looked again at one of his off-screen displays, then back to the monitor. “I don’t know exactly what their initial acceleration rate was, but they’re now moving so fast that the light we’re seeing reflected from their hulls is noticeably blue-shifted. I estimate their current velocity is roughly five percent of C.”

Five percent of the speed of light
, McClaren thought, incredulous.
Nearly fifteen thousand kilometers per second
.
And they didn’t take much time to reach it
. 

“I’m trying to estimate their acceleration rate, but it must be-”

“A lot higher than we could ever achieve,” McClaren cut him off, looking closely at the wavering image of the alien vessel. “Any idea how big she is?”

“I have no data to estimate her length,” Amundsen replied, “but I estimate the beam of this ship to be roughly five hundred meters. I can only assume that her length is considerably more, but we won’t know until we get a more oblique view.”

“That ship is five hundred meters
wide
?” Kumar asked, incredulous.
Aurora
herself was barely that long from stem to stern. While she was by no means the largest starship built by human hands, she was usually the largest vessel in whatever port she put into.

“Yes,” Amundsen told him. “And the other three ships are roughly the same size.”

“Christ,” someone whispered. 

“Raj,” McClaren said, turning to his exec. “Thoughts?”

“Communications is running the initial first contact sequence now.” He turned to face the captain. “Our signals will take roughly thirty minutes to reach the inner planets, but those ships...” He shook his head. “They’re close enough now that they should have already received our transmissions. If they’re listening.” He looked distinctly uncomfortable. “If I were a betting man, I would say those were warships.”

McClaren nodded grimly. “Comms,” he looked over at Ensign John Waverly, “keep stepping through the first contact communications sequence. Just make sure that we’re listening, too.”

“I’m on it, sir,” the young man replied. Waverly seemed incredibly young, but like the rest of
Aurora’s
crew, he did his job exceptionally well. “I’m well versed in the FCP procedures, sir. So far, though, I haven’t come across any emissions anywhere in the standard spectrum, other than what Lieutenant Amundsen’s team have already reported. If they use anything anywhere in the radio frequency band, we’re sure not seeing it. And I haven’t identified any coherent light sources, either.”

So, no radio and no communications lasers
, McClaren thought uneasily. Even though the aliens knew that company was coming, they had remained silent. Or if they were talking, they were using some form of transmission that was beyond what
Aurora
was capable of seeing or hearing. Maybe the aliens were beyond such mundane things as radio- and light-based communications?

“How long until those ships get here?” McClaren asked Amundsen, whose worried face still stared out from the bridge display screen.
Aurora
herself was motionless relative to her emergence point: McClaren never moved in-system on a survey until they knew much more about their environment than they did now. And it made for a much more convenient reference point for a rapid jump-out.

“At their current velocity, they would overshoot us in just under three hours. But, of course, they will need to decelerate to meet us...”

“That depends on their intentions,” Kumar interjected. “They could attack as they pass by...”

“Or they could simply stop,” Marisova observed quietly. Everyone turned to gape at her. “We know nothing about their drive systems,” she explained. “Nothing about those ships registers on our sensors other than direct visuals. What if they achieved their current velocity nearly instantaneously when they decided to head out to meet us?”

“Preposterous,” Amundsen exclaimed. “That’s simply not possible!”

“But-”

“Enough, people,” McClaren said quietly. “Beyond the obviously impressive capabilities of the aliens, it all boils down to this: do we stay or do we go?” He looked around at his bridge crew, then opened a channel to the entire ship. “Crew, this is the captain. As I’m sure most of you are now aware, the system we’ve entered is inhabited. We’re in a first contact situation. The
only
first contact situation anyone has ever faced. So what we do now is going to become part of The Book that will tell others either how to do it right, or how not to do it if we royally screw things up. I’ll be completely honest with you: I’m not happy with the situation. We’ve got four big ships heading toward us in an awful hurry. They could be warships. I don’t blame whoever these folks are for sending out an armed welcoming committee. If it were my home, I’d send some warships out to take a look, too.

“But I’d also make sure to send some diplomats along: people who want to talk with their new neighbors. What bothers me is that we haven’t seen anything, from the ships or the two inhabited planets, that looks like any sort of communication. Maybe they’re just using something we can’t pick up. Maybe the ships coming our way are packed with scientists and ambassadors and they want to make it a big surprise. I just don’t know.

“What I do know is that we’ve got about three hours to make a decision and take action. My inclination is to stay. Not to try and score the first handshake with an alien, but because...it’s our first opportunity to say hello to another sentient race. We’ve been preparing for this moment since before the very first starship left Earth. It’s a risk, but it’s also the greatest opportunity humanity has ever had. 

“So here’s what we’re going to do. We’ve got a little bit of time to discuss our options before our new friends reach us. Department heads, talk to your people. Get a feel for what they’re thinking. Then all department heads and the senior chiefs are to meet in my ready room in exactly one hour. I’ll make the final decision on whether we stay or go, but I want to hear what you all have to say. That is all.” He punched the button on the touchpad, closing the circuit. 

“In the meantime,” he told Kumar and Marisova, “get an emergency jump sequence lined up. Pick a destination other than our inbound vector. If these ships come in with guns blazing, the last thing I want to do is point them back the way we came, toward home.”

On the display screen, the alien ship and her sisters continued toward them.

* * *

The four battlecruisers sailed quickly to meet the alien vessel, but they hardly revealed their true capabilities. While it was now clear that the alien ship was extremely primitive, those who guarded the Empire took nothing for granted. They would reveal no more about themselves than absolutely necessary until they were sure the new arrival posed no threat. The Empire had not lasted through the ages by leaving anything to chance.

Aboard the lead ship, a group of warriors prepared for battle with the unknown, while healers and other castes made ready to learn all there was to know about the strangers. 

They did not have much longer to wait.

* * *

There was standing room only in the captain’s ready room an hour later. At the table sat the six department heads, responsible for the primary functional areas of the ship, the
Aurora’s
senior chief, and the captain. Along the walls of the now-cramped compartment stood the senior enlisted member of each department and the ship’s two midshipmen. The XO and the bridge crew remained at their stations, although they were tied in through a video feed on the bridge wraparound display.

The emotional tension ran high among the people in the room, McClaren could easily see. But from the body language and the expressions on their faces it wasn’t from fear, but excited anticipation. It was an emotion he fully shared.

“I’m not going to waste any time on preliminaries,” he began. “You all know what’s going on and what’s at stake. According to the Survey Department,” he nodded at Amundsen, who was the only one around the table who looked distinctly unhappy, “the ships haven’t changed course or velocity. So it looks like they’re either going to blow by us, which I think would probably be bad news, or their technology is so radically advanced that they can stop on a proverbial dime.” 

At that, the survey leader’s frown grew more pronounced, turning his normally pale face into a grimace.

“Amundsen?” McClaren asked. “You’ve got something to say. Spit it out.”

“I think Lieutenant Marisova was right,” he said grudgingly, nodding toward the video pickup that showed the meeting to the bridge crew. But McClaren knew that it wasn’t because Marisova had said it. It was because he was afraid to believe that what she said could possibly be true, or even close to the truth. “I don’t believe they could accelerate to their current velocity instantaneously, but even assuming several days’ warning - even weeks! - the acceleration they must have achieved would have to have been...unbelievable.” He shook his head. “No. I believe those ships will not simply pass by us. They will slow down and rendezvous with us sometime in the next two hours, decelerating at a minimum of two hundred gees. Probably much more.”

A chill ran down McClaren’s spine.
Aurora
had the most efficient reactionless drives in service by any of the many worlds colonized by Mankind, and was one of the few to be fitted with artificial gravity, a recent innovation, and acceleration dampers. She wasn’t nearly as fast as a courier ship, certainly, but for a military survey vessel she was no slouch. But two hundred gees? Not even close.

“Robotic ships?” Aubrey Hannan, the chief of the Engineering Section suggested. “They could certainly handle that sort of acceleration.”

“It doesn’t matter,” McClaren interjected, gently but firmly steering the conversation from interesting, but essentially useless, speculation back to the issue at hand. “From my perspective, it doesn’t matter how fast the aliens can maneuver. We’re not a warship, and I have no intention of masquerading as one. It’s clear they have radically advanced technology. That’s not necessarily a surprise; we could have just as easily stumbled upon a world in the pre-atomic era, and we would be the high-tech aliens. Our options remain the same: stay and say hello, or jump out with what I hope is a fat safety margin before they get here.” He glanced around and his gaze landed on the junior midshipman. “Midshipman Sato, what’s your call?”

Ichiro Sato, already standing ramrod straight against the bulkhead, stiffened even further. All of nineteen years old, he was the youngest member of the crew. Extremely courteous, conscientious, and intelligent, he was well respected by the other members of the crew, although his rigid outer shell was a magnet for good-natured ribbing. Exceptionally competent and a fast learner, he kept quietly to himself. He was one of a select few from the Terran Naval Academy who were chosen to spend one or more of their academy years aboard ship as advanced training as junior officers. It was a great opportunity, but came with a hefty commitment: deployed midshipmen had to continue their academy studies while also performing their duties aboard ship.

“Sir...” Sato momentarily gulped for air, McClaren’s question having caught him completely off-guard.

The captain felt momentarily guilty for putting Sato on the spot first, but he had a reason. “Relax, Ichiro,” McClaren told him. “I called this meeting for ideas. The senior officers, including myself, and the chiefs have years of preconceived notions drilled into our heads. We’ve got years of experience, yes, but this situation calls for a fresh perspective. If you were in my shoes, what would your decision be? There’s no right or wrong answer to this one.”

While Ichiro’s features didn’t betray it, the captain’s last comment caused him even more consternation. He had been brought up in a traditional Japanese family on Nagano, where, according to his father, everything was either
right
or it was
wrong
; there was no in-between. And more often than not, anything Ichiro did was
wrong
. That was the main reason Ichiro had decided to apply for service in the Terran Navy when he was sixteen: to spite his father and escape the tyranny of his house, and to avoid the stifling life of a salaryman trapped in the web of a hegemonic corporate world. Earth’s global military services accepted applicants from all but a few rogue worlds, and Ichiro’s test scores and academic record had opened the door for him to enter the Terran Naval Academy. There, too, most everything was either right or wrong. The difference between the academy and his home was that in the academy, Ichiro was nearly always
right
. His unfailing determination to succeed had given him a sense of confidence he had never known before, putting him at the head of his class and earning him a position aboard the
Aurora
.

That realization, and his desperate desire not to lose face in front of the captain and ship’s officers, gave him back his voice. “Sir. I believe we should stay and greet the ships.”