The Memnon Incident: Part 3 of 4 (A Serial Novel) Read online

  The

  Memnon

  Incident

  Part Three of Four

  Marc DeSantis

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination, and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Marc DeSantis

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Chapter Twenty

  RHS Steadfast, Memnon system

  "Early-warning craft from Adonis are reporting close flybys of Memnonian fighters," Lieutenant Cassandra Feeney reported. "Seven squadrons in strength."

  "They'll have at least twice that between their three carriers," More noted unhappily. "Amy, how close are they coming to the Owls?" The E-71C Owl was a carrierborne early-warning platform able to sweep a volume of space two million kilometers across with radar, gravdar, electro-optics, and several other sensor technologies. It was unarmed, with protection for the machine supplied by covering fighters. Its primary role was to deliver a broad picture of the battlespace to a fleet commander at a far distance from the main body of his ships and warn of incoming attacks early enough to allow him to take countermeasures.

  "The RMN fighters are cutting racetrack ovals through space, and staying out of weapons range, theirs and ours," Amy said.

  "They don't want to go to war just yet," More mused. "Neither do I. Maybe we can work something out. Where are the battleships? The Royal Alfred ought to be the flagship."

  "The Royal Alfred is at the center of one of the four RMN battlegroups. The Scepter is with another, and has displaced to the other side of our flotilla, opposite the Royal Alfred," reported the Steadfast's shipbrain.

  "A fancy piece of hyperjumping," More muttered. He would have to take back some of the disparaging things he had said and thought about the professionalism of the RMN's officer corps.

  "Hail the Royal Alfred, Ensign Garand. Tell them that I want to talk."

  "Aye, aye, captain. The Alfred is about half-a-million kilometers from us, so there will be a noticeable time lag between our sending a message and receiving a response to it."

  "Understood. Do it."

  About ten seconds passed before Garand received a reply from the Royal Alfred. "Should I put it on screen, captain?"

  "Go ahead."

  On the vidscreen at the fore of the bridge materialized a courtly-looking man, just past middle age. He stood erect, with the stiff bearing of an aristocrat. That was not surprising, since most of the RMN's upper ranks were filled by noblemen. "RHS Steadfast," he said. "I am Admiral Jonathan Wu of the Royal Memnonian Navy. You are intruding upon Memnonian space in violation of interstellar accords and are engaged in, as we can easily tell, the sowing of nuclear mines as well as the attempted theft of a Memnonian warship. I will be blunt so that there is no misunderstanding. Depart now and avoid a fight. Your two fighters and their pilots that are being pursued by ours will be taken into custody and returned safely to you in due course."

  More took his time in composing his reply. Between his need to be extremely careful about what he said, and the time lag as lightspeed signals crossed hundreds of thousands of kilometers, the turnaround time of a message and its answer would never be faster than about four seconds. He could afford to be slow in responding with war or peace at stake.

  "This is Captain Andrew More of the RHS Steadfast and the commanding officer of this squadron. We were most certainly not mining your space, Admiral Wu. We ran into the minecloud when we displaced here. Someone left it there for us to run into," More said. "And that warship? You know as well as I do that it is not yours."

  Seconds passed before the vidscreen image of Wu again began to speak. "Come now, Captain More," he chided. "You claim to have run into these mines when you left hyperspace? The odds of that are so improbable as to be impossible. You are engaged in a mining of our space that contravenes interstellar law and is an act of war. Your mere uninvited presence in our space - seven warships, no less - is in itself an act of war. As for the warship, it is indisputably ours. It was lost by our fleet during an exercise some years ago. It is named Morrigan. We have found it again. Stand aside, or there will be consequences."

  How could Wu have known Morrigan's name? Intercepted communications perhaps? Wu's face betrayed not the slightest doubt about his story, even though all present knew it was utter nonsense.

  "I will not dignify your claim to ownership of Morrigan with a response, Admiral Wu," More said. "We are at a distance from your system's primary of a light year. We are in interstellar space, which is owned by no one. We are conducting legal salvage of an abandoned ship."

  There was again a delay as More's message raced across the thousands of kilometers to the Royal Alfred. Several seconds later, Wu gave a brittle smile. "Salvage you say? Indeed! I almost think you actually believe that, Captain More. The Royal Memnonian Navy never gives up its claim to any of its warships. Even if it had been lost for a thousand years, it remains the property of the RMN." The smile disappeared. "Let us cut to the chase. You are not where you are supposed to be. Had a Memnonian flotilla been discovered poking about inside the Halifax system, you would consider that an act of war. There is no debating that. Your ships are also suspiciously close to a cluster of mines numbering over one million. We have examined them. Oh, don't be surprised that we were able to get a look at them without your knowledge. We are not the clumsy oafs you think us to be. I have to hand it to you and your talented Halifaxian engineers, that you were able to produce so many fine copies of our nukes, right down to the IFF coding. I wonder whom you were laying them for, if not for us? You can imagine our wonderment when the scale of your treachery became known to us. I refused to believe that this was the work of the noble RHN, you tireless defenders of freedom and interstellar law. And yet here you are, mining our system and purloining one of our lost warships. We have caught you redhanded."

  "This is not what it looks like," More assured Wu. What else could he say? They had in fact come to Memnon to test out spoofing gear that would fool Memnonian sensors in case war came with Memnon. Halifax no longer trusted King Maurice. It was an ugly affair in the best of light. With atomic mines strewn everywhere and a derelict warship being combed over by Halifaxian naval personnel, it could only appear that the RHN was pulling off some kind of nefarious operation in Memnonian space.

  "Ha!" Admiral Wu barked after a brief delay. "What fools do you take us for, Captain More?" Wu faded from view to be replaced by a two-dimensional representation of the positions of the four Memnonian battlegroups and More's little squadron. "As you can see, you are not escaping from us. We outnumber you by a factor of eleven. Don't waste your breath in telling me that the odds are not as bad as that, that your ships are better than ours. All true. You will lose nonetheless. Any survivors will be held as hostages to prevent your government from launching a reprisal against us. Further, I sincerely doubt there will be a reprisal of any kind. The Royal Memnonian Navy will take back possession of Morrigan and will become, once again, the most powerful navy in the Great Sphere."

  Wu was a cool customer, More thought. The stakes for Memnon could not be higher than they were right now. He was the highest-ranking fleet commander Memnon had, and King Maurice had entrusted him with every major warship in his navy. More was impressed by the admiral's sangfroid. He was gamely adhering to the fiction about Morrigan's ownership, and would not concede that the ancien
t vessel was not Memnon's no matter that the assertion was obviously ridiculous.

  "This does not have to end so badly for you," Wu said. "I say again. Depart now, do not linger. We of Memnon will let this unfortunate matter drop, peacefully, and without loss of face for you."

  Wu wanted Morrigan more than anything else. He was prepared to lose dozens of his ships in a bruising fight with Halifaxian warships. Even if he lost over half of his fleet, if Wu could secure Morrigan he would be the greatest military hero in Memnonian history. If he could get the Halifaxian ships to leave without a fight, granting them their lives in exchange for safe conduct out of the system, he would gladly do that too. Letting the Halifaxians go meant nothing to him. It was all about the strange old ship at the center of the RHN squadron. More would have to play for more time. His people had still not returned from Morrigan and there had been no word given by Lieutenant Jenkins that the ship had been rigged for destruction.

  "I will need time to think about this," he said.

  Another delay. Then Wu nodded. "You have one hour to decide. After that I will not guarantee safe passage."

  Wu disappeared from the screen. More grimaced. There was no way that he was going to let Morrigan fall into Memnonian hands. But he was going to cut this close. His people on Morrigan were already overdue. "Garand, raise the exploration detail. Ask them where the hell they are."

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Aboard the Morrigan

  Chandler closed his eyes. "As if this could not get any worse."

  "You have a talent for stating the obvious, Chandler," Venn said. "Any other gems?"

  "Hey, you, uh, officers of the Republic of Halifax Navy," Howell said, "maybe you could leave your little lover's quarrel aside for the moment and contribute to figuring a way out of this dunghole. We should start by getting off this shuttle and out of the bay before Morrigan vents toxic gas in here."

  Both Chandler and Venn turned abruptly on him. "We're not involved," Chandler said. "I thought you knew that."

  Venn's face was florid with rage. "Me? Him? Lovers?" she sputtered. "What a ghastly insult!

  "Well, heck, I'm not that bad," a hurt Chandler said. "Maybe I'm not your type, you seem to have a thing for captains, but you could do worse than me."

  Venn turned back to Chandler, who was picking up his bags. "Thing for captains? Ha! An old canard. I respect the captain, that's all. You, on the other hand, are beneath my notice!"

  "You seem awfully angry for someone who doesn't give a hoot about this man," Howell observed. "I know I'm just a civilian contractor and all, but I know men and women, and you two seem to have some real tension based on an unresolved romantic attraction."

  Howell had piqued Chandler's intellectual interest. "I wonder what makes you say that?"

  "Oh, it's the way you can't help arguing every time you see one another. You said it yourself, that this started when you were still at the Academy at Cold Bay. She was always on your case. A woman doesn't get so worked up over a man unless there's something there." Howell nodded to the door. "Let's get off the shuttle. We've got a problem to solve."

  The Steadfast's crewmen hurried down the shuttle's ramp, met up with those from the Kongo and Cormorant shuttles, and began to walk toward Jenkins' marines, who were trying to open a door to get out of the cavernous landing bay.

  "As for you, you look her over too. I've seen your eyes linger. Maybe you have a crush on her as well. You just can't do anything about it in the Navy."

  "That is interesting," Chandler said, mulling over Howell's words. "I still don't see it."

  Venn stormed passed them both. "Idiots."

  "We're not going to solve your romantic tangle anytime soon, and never will if we can't get off Morrigan. Let's see what the marines want to do."

  Lieutenant Jenkins and his squad had cut open a door leading out of the bay. "I think that we should make for the bridge," Jenkins said. Morrigan is jamming our signal. We might be able to get a message to Steadfast from there."

  "Why should that work?" Howell asked. "Wouldn't Morrigan simply cut off any comm gear you try to use there?"

  "An astute question, Mr. Howell. But I don't intend to use any of Morrigan's own equipment."

  Chandler seemed unconvinced. "And she won't be able to jam it either?"

  "Come with us," the marine said. "You'll see."

  The walk to the bridge through Morrigan's empty passageways took some time. Morrigan had not spoken since she had closed the landing bay doors. Every now and again, the ship would experience surges of power, with the lights in the corridors suddenly becoming brighter, and then fading to almost nothing. The areas that the marines and the naval crew traversed had not been touched by whatever ancient misfortune Morrigan had experienced, and for a few minutes, Howell could persuade himself that he was on an intact vessel of exploration from the Time Before venturing into the unknown. When he had last made his way from the bridge to the landing bay, the ship was undergoing a frenzy of randomly opening and closing doors and access hatches in addition to malfunctioning lifts. Now, the route was entirely clear. Morrigan was, it seemed, quiescent.

  On the bridge, Jenkins produced a small device. It consisted of a small optical lens with a spotting laser attached to its side.

  "Is that a surveyor's instrument?" Howell inquired.

  "Something like it," Jenkins said.

  "What are you going to do with it?"

  "Just watch." Jenkins turned on the optical lens, which hummed as it hovered on a small gravitic suspensor field. He aimed it out the armored glass windows that surrounded the Morrigan's bridge. It began to search the starlit sky for several seconds, before it chirped happily.

  "It's found Steadfast," Jenkins said proudly. He began to tap into a pair of buttons on the side of the device. The laser began to emit long and short pulses. Not enough to damage the windows. Just enough to penetrate and soar off into the darkness. To the Steadfast, Howell realized.

  "You needed a window to let you send battlecode," Howell said. "Clever - and unjammable."

  The lieutenant nodded. "Transparent windows are in short supply on a warship. The most certain place to get a good line of sight to Steadfast was from the bridge. This is not surveying equipment," he said, patting the lens gently. "It's actually a piece of targeting gear. The targeting laser makes for a good, improvised comm system if everything else fails and we have a line of sight to our intended recipient."

  "Why did you keep what you were going to do a secret?"

  "You may have forgotten, but Morrigan seems to be able to listen in on everything," the marine explained. "She might have barred our access to the bridge if she had an idea of what I was going to try." Jenkins looked about the bridge warily. "I don't know where she has gone now. We haven't heard from her in about half-an-hour."

  "What did you tell Steadfast?"

  "Just that we are in a lot of danger and will probably die soon. I also mentioned how much I like you all."

  "Really?" Chandler almost squeaked in surprise.

  "No, of course not," Jenkins smirked. "I informed Steadfast that we're not getting off Morrigan any time soon."

  "What is the captain going to do?" asked Venn.

  "I don't know yet. Battlecode isn't the most meaningful form of communication. No poetry in my message. Only the facts. At least Captain More knows what's going on. He will make his next decisions accordingly."

  Howell cocked his head thoughtfully. "Do you think that the captain will leave us behind? What with the entire Memnonian fleet here, if we can't get off he'll have to leave us."

  Jenkins sighed. "Look, I don't know how to tell you this, but Captain More may have to do something far worse than leave us behind. Memnon outnumbers us many times over. He can't leave Morrigan to be grabbed by the RMN. He may have to destroy Morrigan himself."

  Howell was stunned. "With us still on it?" He looked around wildly. "With weapons?"

  "Yes, with us still aboard. And I don't think he'll be able to pe
rsuade Morrigan to self-detonate. She seems to have a canny, self-preserving way about her."

  "What do you mean?" asked Venn. "I think she is wounded."

  "Think about it," Jenkins said. "One moment, Morrigan was comparing us to rodents, to an infestation, and wanted to kill us. You started to leave, and then she refused to let you go. She has probably noticed the arrival of the RMN, and guessed what my mission is."

  "And your mission is to prep Morrigan for destruction," said Howell. "That's why you stayed behind. You were going to destroy the ship yourselves."

  "You've got it." The optical targeter began to blink several times. Jenkins paid the closest attention to the blinking light, which varied in duration between short and long blinks. Jenkins gestured toward the window, beyond which hung the Steadfast somewhere in the dark distance. "Though it appears that my mission is on hold for now. Captain More says we're to stay put, and wait for further orders."

  "The captain told you that, just now?" Howell asked in amazement. "You can read flashes of battlecode?"

  Jenkins nodded. "I'm a Halifaxian marine. They train us well."

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Memnon system

  It was all physics. Given enough time, a faster-moving object would overtake a slower-moving one that had a headstart, no matter how long. Commander Callisto Imagawa's F-243B Wildcat, like that of her wingman, Lieutenant Tom Percy, housed two enormously powerful J89 engines with high thrust-to-weight ratios that granted tremendous acceleration. Problem was, their pursuers, a hodgepodge of older fighters drawn from around the Great Sphere, were generally far lighter machines. The Wildcat, a heavy fighter with good, but not outstanding, maneuverability, was optimized for the fleet defense role, and so had been designed to be an unrivaled missile platform first, a dogfighter second. Its primary weapons were its four big, long-range Iron Lance missiles, which were something of a cross between an antifighter weapon and a true antiship missile. These were intended to independently track and destroy enemy fighters at extreme ranges, before they could get close to the fleet to inflict harm of their own. The Memnonian fighters were all much smaller than the Wildcat, and were meant to be dogfighters before anything else. Even though their engines were little things compared to the twin beasts stuck in the backs of the Wildcats, they were pushing significantly less weight, and so their acceleration was better. Though the Wildcats had been lightened considerably when they had launched their Iron Lances, over several hours of pursuit, the speedier Memnonians were bound to gain on the fleeing Halifaxian fighters, and they had.