Spooker
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Grass Eaters 2 | 61 | Margins V
🕑 Added 2024-10-04 16:47:00 +0000 UTCZNS 1006, Datsot (21,000 Ls)
POV: Stsinkt, Znosian Dominion Navy (Rank: Ten Whiskers)
The place where the planet McMurdo-6 was supposed to be — it was now empty space; even its rings and satellites were no longer there.
“What in the name of the Prophecy is going on?” Stsinkt asked, her voice deadly quiet.
“Ten Whiskers, the Digital Guide has compiled and cross-referenced all our astronomical records on this system. We have captured records from the Lesser Predators going back decades. We have telescopic data from centuries back. We have our own recent survey data from just a few years ago during our invasion preparations—”
“What does it conclude?”
“It’s… uncertain. The most likely explanation is enemy action.”
“That much is obvious, we are in an enemy system after all,” she pointed out. “But what action, specifically? What did they do?”
“The Digital Guide has no idea. It is still calculating, pondering the problem.”
“Are they… hiding it? Do they have some kind of planet hiding technology we didn’t know about, like their ships?” she speculated.
“It doesn’t know.”
“Did they… blow it up?” she prompted.
“It doesn’t know, but that is one of the less likely possibilities, as there does not appear to be a significant amount of gravitational mass in the area… though many pieces of its ring have displaced— they appear to be in odd positions.”
“So what does the combat computer know?” she asked impatiently.
He hesitated for a moment, hoping he wouldn’t offend her. “Ten Whiskers, the Digital Guide was made for calculating strategic and tactical matters related to military operations. I don’t think this astronomical curiosity is in the purview of its expertise.”
“Strategic and tactical matters related to military operations,” Stsinkt repeated and snorted. “It hasn’t done that well on that front either in this campaign.”
“Yes, Ten Whiskers. I take full responsibility for my failure to produce positive results from its guidance.”
“And we can’t even message back to Grantor to see if they can figure this out,” Stsinkt muttered.
Her computer officer said nothing.
After a moment, she continued, “Can the Digital Guide at least tell us this: will the absence of McMurdo-6, in any way, hinder our campaign to destroy the Great Predator Nest?”
“It doesn’t see how.”
“Me neither.” She thought for a moment. “Maybe this is some kind of illusion, some distraction. Alert the fleet: all ships be on the lookout for enemies, and burn towards the next system as hard as we can. We will not be deterred by more predator tricks.”
“Yes, Ten Whiskers. Should we investigate the—”
“We can come back and figure out this admittedly peculiar astronomic mystery later… after we have laid waste to the predators’ home system.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
To Ten Whiskers Stsinkt’s surprise, the Great Predators did not even attempt to attack her fleet as they crossed the McMurdo system. Nor did they intercept any of her ships as the Grand Fleet blinked to the star system that they labelled as Flint on their star maps.
There were no additional surprises in Flint either. In fact, the system appeared just as deserted as McMurdo.
Nonetheless, the Grand Fleet once again took a non-linear approach towards the next system limit from above the system plane.
“Computer Officer, does the combat computer have an explanation for why the Great Predators are refusing to engage in battle?” Stsinkt asked as the fleet entered blink again three days later, this time towards the Hawking system. “Our pre-invasion projections and strategic simulations all assumed we would take at least some combat losses in these systems to their invisible missiles and fortifications.”
He shook his head. “No, Ten Whiskers. It is confused too.”
“It seems to have been in a perpetual state of confusion since we entered Great Predator territory proper,” she remarked.
“Yes, Ten Whiskers.”
“What about you? What do you think is going on?”
“I— I don’t know, Ten Whiskers.”
“Take a guess,” she said, looking around the bridge. “Anyone? Anything? Am I the only one who does any independent thinking around here?”
The computer officer looked down at his walking paws as silence lingered in the room.
“No one?” Stsinkt said, sighing.
Prompted, her computer officer gave her his best speculation. “What if— maybe the Great Predators are scared? Maybe they have pulled back all their forces to evacuate their home planet like the Slow Predators?” he asked, referring to the fate of the Granti a few years ago.
She shook her head. “Even if they are giving up and evacuating, they would want to slow us down even more.”
Seeing that was the best her crew could come up with without using a computer, Stsinkt sighed as no other hypothesis was forthcoming on the bridge. She found herself wondering whether things would have been easier if she had been born dumbly compliant like the rest of them.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
When the Grand Fleet arrived at Hawking, they found the same thing they had in the last two systems: not a sign of enemies.
And this time, Hawking-7 and Hawking-8 were also missing.
“Ten Whiskers, we’ve never surveyed this system, but we had star charts from the Lesser Predators and telescopic imagery. Two of its outer planets are missing this time! The seventh and eighth planets.”
“Another astronomical curiosity,” Stsinkt muttered. “Maybe if we capture high ranking officers in the Great Predator Navy in their home nest, we can find out just what happened here.”
“No, Ten Whiskers. It is not just a mere curiosity this time. We have a major problem now.”
“A problem?” she asked, sitting up in her command chair.
“Yes, in our simulations and plans, we were scheduled to conduct our final refueling in this system.”
“And? If the predators are hiding somewhere in this system, I’m sure we’ll take losses again, but—”
“No, Ten Whiskers. The gas planets we were planning on refueling at were the seventh and eighth planet of this system.”
Her heart nearly stopped beating for a second. “The planets we were going to refuel at are the ones that are gone?”
“Yes, Ten Whiskers. Our charts clearly showed two gas planets in this system.”
She opened her snout in shock. “But— but— so how much fuel are we running on?”
“The Digital Guide says that most of our ships can make it to the next system, Ten Whiskers. The one they call Sirius. But that system is another 8.6 light years to the Great Predator Nest—” He left the last part unsaid, his meaning clear.
“Are there any gas planets in Sirius?”
“At least two, according to our charts, but—”
She finished his sentence, “But whatever the Great Predators did — to the gas planets in this system and to McMurdo-6 — they probably also did to the ones in the next system, Sirius.”
“Yes, Ten Whiskers.”
“So what was an astronomical curiosity is now incredibly vital for us to figure out,” she concluded. “Scan the locations where those planets should be. Like I originally speculated, maybe it’s… some kind of long-range… invisibility technology much like their hiding ships.”
He nodded and got to work on his Digital Guide. After a few minutes, he came back with the results.
“Ten Whiskers, the gas planets are missing not only from our radar sensors, but they’re gone from our visual and infrared sensors as well. We know that the Great Predators can shrink a spacecraft with the mass of half our missile destroyer to the shape and size of a head. And if we extrapolated that to the planets we expected to see here… they would shrink to the size of… a smaller moon. Maybe a large asteroid. It should still be very visible on our sensors.”
“So it’s not invisible. And it’s not blown up, or we’d see lots of additional debris. Did they maybe fool our long-range telescopic surveys somehow? Did they perhaps plant false data with the Lesser Predators?”
The computer officer typed the query into his Digital Guide, then quickly shook his head. “That seems unlikely, unless they have been planning for this defense for over two hundred years: our latest telescopic images of this system were taken more than two hundred light years out.”
“Is that… impossible?”
“It seems… unlikely. The Great Predators were not spacefaring two centuries ago. If they were…” he let his voice trail off, and Stsinkt understood immediately. If these predators had all this technology two centuries ago, they would probably have destroyed the Dominion by now.
She sat in her command chair, just staring at the missing planets on the starmap.
Enough time passed that her computer officer got concerned. “Ten Whiskers… are you alright?”
She snapped back to attention and sighed. “Are there any other systems… near us? Systems with gas planets?”
“None that are accessible by blink, Ten Whiskers. The nearest — confirmed — gas planet would be if we went back to Datsot or Plaunsollib.”
She shook her head. “We don’t have enough blink fuel to get back to either of those.”
“What do we do, Ten Whiskers?”
Stsinkt buried her head in her paws. Why did these Great Predators insist on making what was supposed to be so simple — merely traveling through space… so annoyingly difficult?
“How many ships don’t have enough to make it to the next system?” she asked.
He buried himself into his console for a few minutes before he came up with the answer. “A few of our heavy cargo transports, recovery ships, and hospital ships. But we can transfer some fuel to them from our other ships and the whole fleet can make it.”
She nodded. “We can’t afford to waste any ships, especially not now. Transfer the fuel. If what we fear comes true in Sirius, we’ll deal with it then.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
What she feared came true in Sirius.
Sirius A-4, A-5, and A-6 were all missing from the 1006’s charts.
Stsinkt looked at the empty space where they were supposed to be glumly. “I guess there were supposed to be three gas planets here, not just two. A-3 must have been a giant as well; we just incorrectly identified it in our astronomical survey. And the Great Predators did something to all three.”
Her computer officer frowned at his console. “Wait a second, Ten Whiskers. We’re getting something— something anomalous.”
She pulled up what he was looking at on the main screen. “What is it?”
“Sirius A… the Digital Guide flagged some unexpected activity near the star.” He typed a few more queries on his console, and the screen zoomed in to—
She opened her mouth wide, her snout flaring. “Is that—”
“That is… Sirius A-6, I believe,” he replied, half in shock, half in awe. “It’s a lot closer to the star than it’s supposed to be.”
The gas planet was dwarfed in comparison to the main sequence star on the screen, its eclipse on the telescopes like a large, circular smudge on a camera lens. And as they watched, the console displayed its calculation for its trajectory: it was heading straight into the star itself.
The realization hitting her instantly, Stsinkt stood up and looked at the computer officer urgently. “Six Whiskers, can we catch up to it?”
“Ten Whiskers?”
“The Great Predators, they— they— they must have gotten planetary tugs like we do. They’re throwing their own gas planets into their stars! Can we catch up to it to refuel before it is too close to the star?”
The implications dawning on him as well, he quickly typed another question into the Digital Guide. A few seconds later, he stepped back, seeming deflated.
“What’s the matter?” she demanded.
“The footage— it’s from eight light hours away, Ten Whiskers,” he explained. “Based on the trajectory, the planet is likely already dead. It has been dead for hours. We just haven’t— we just haven’t observed it yet.”
Stsinkt sank into her command chair in despair once again.
They stared at the screen as the gas giant sank into the gravitational disintegration limit of the Sirius-A star over the next couple of hours as they advanced through the system. The swirling hues of Sirius A-6, crimson and gold, loosened around the planet like fabric untangling a spinning top in slow motion. Tendrils of gas split off from the main body, the ribbons shooting off as if threatening to get away, but even the violent release was not enough to escape the star’s gravitational clutches; they merely delayed their terminal descent towards the star.
The core of the planet exposed itself, fragmenting into a trillion pieces of ice and rock before the short-lived comets flung themselves directly into the surface of their fiery doom. Some pieces of the dust did manage to sling themselves hard enough to make an orbit around Sirius A, forming a temporary ring.
And as if in a final taunt to the Grand Fleet being a few hours too late, the star’s corona, a halo of plasma and magnetic fields, erupted in a massive ejection… like a burping predator content after a hearty meal.
Stsinkt closed her eyes, feeling a part of her dying as the gas planet did. “How much blink fuel do we have left in the fleet?”
“Not enough to get all of us to the Great Predator Nest, Ten Whiskers,” the computer officer calculated.
“And if we transfer and distribute fuel optimally to try to get as many into there as we can?” the exhausted ten whiskers asked.
“About half.”
“Half?” she asked, suddenly sitting up and a glimmer of hope sparking in her heart. “That’s still — assuming even distribution among the ship types — a lot of combat ships. And the orbital ships are smaller, so if we cut the cargo, the battlecruisers, and all the auxiliary ships—”
“Yes, if we shrink our parameters and ditch the larger ships except the Great Exterminators’ orbital transports and fire support,” the computer officer read from his console. “We can distribute enough fuel to get a total of about fourteen hundred missile destroyers through.”
“That’s still above our projected margins, is it not?” Stsinkt asked, realizing internally she sounded a lot more excited than she should be about planning to ditch over half of her combat fleet.
“Yes. It is,” he declared. “By about twice.”
“Twice…” she mused. “Hey, that’s not too— things could be worse.”
“Assuming that they don’t cut our margins even—”
“Yes, Six Whiskers,” she sighed. “Assuming they don’t cut our margins even further with more predator trickery— somehow.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
TRNS Mississippi, Sirius (19,000 Ls)
POV: Amelia Waters, Terran Republic Navy (Rank: Admiral)
“—the complete destruction of these six extrasolar planets will ruin the future value of our entire galactic neighborhood. It will necessitate the use of expensive refueling ships and stations to transport or travel in and out of the Sol cluster. It will greatly increase the logistics difficulty of our future military operations. It may shackle an uncountable number of our children and grandchildren to Sol with this new economic and developmental burden. And it can never be undone.”
Amelia looked stonily out at her civilization which she’d just condemned to paying through the nose for interstellar transport costs.
Forever.
There would be kids born today who could have grown up to explore the stars, to colonize new worlds… only to be locked forever in their home system because they wouldn’t be able to afford it. Not all of them, but some would. Because of what she’d done. A pessimist would say that the opportunity cost she was incurring now was uncapped. But then again, a pessimist would say the entire human species had about a week to live anyway.
Maybe there was another way. Maybe it would all turn out to be unnecessary. Maybe the Buns were only here to peacefully say hello.
If we survive long enough for our history books to condemn what we did here… that would be a good problem to have.
“However, this is the only path to the survival of our people. Of our species. If there was another, I would take it in a heartbeat. But there is not. And given the same circumstances, I would do it again in a heartbeat. What this painful sacrifice buys us is not guaranteed victory; what it buys us is opportunity. Opportunity on the margins. The enemy will likely still be able to get a portion of their fleet into Sol. But now, we have a fighting chance.”
Amelia’s unflinching eyes reflected her steel resolve, and as she turned to face them, she saw the crew of the Mississippi stare up at her with their matching determination.
“A fighting chance. Spacers and Marines of the Terran Republic, this is our chance. The cradle of our civilization is behind us. Our people are behind us. They are counting on all of us. Prepare for battle.”
Comments
Bayliner1980
I feel like the absence or the mere action of moving those gas giants would have a major affect on the other planets. Possibly throwing the systems into disarray for centuries.
AnAbsoluteVillain
Yeah... Also who says they can't make their own gas giant. Throw a rock to skim the sun, and it will collect the hydrogen ejection of the corona mass. Plantary star scoop.
Valdis Trautmanis
Ok, so in essence the "warp field" is created somewhere in orbit of the planet, is large enough to engulf it all and it all together gets pulled forward by the space contraction-expansion. Got it 👍I just had in my head canon that the drive/engine assembly must be physically part of the ship/object it must move
Spooker
Alcubierre drives work by contracting space (negative mass in front of the object), not by physically adding thrust, so if negative mass were possible, it might not require contact. In the story, pure Alcubierre drives can't go very fast (<0.2 G) and are basically only used for massive tugs. The combat ships use hybrid drives that also include reaction thrusters. (Actually, now that you mention it, a reaction thruster could work too. Thrust in one direction, movement in the other. You just need something that can stabilize itself and survive a few hundred million PSI.) In other words? Pure handwavium.
Valdis Trautmanis
Not necessarily, Amelia is being unnecessarily dramatic. Thus far only the direct route from Terran to Malgeir space that the Buns used for their invasion was made into a choke point. There are other stars nearby and all the space in the opposite direction we can travel and expand into.
Valdis Trautmanis
Riddle me this: I can believe moving a solid object like a terrestrial planet with a planetary tug, but how does one tug a gas giant that has no solid surface down to the core?
Cosmic Bananas
That.. good job on making it an actual hard hitting cost, I get the feeling humanity will need to expand
Kevin Neely
Or grounds for their exterminatus+all your base belongs to us
erickjosemolina
Quien sabe, tal vez en el futuro puedan viajar de otra manera
jrharper42
Probably a good time to invest in ExxonMobil's space division...
Nicolae
Fuck. That is something the bunnies will be paying for lifetimes to fix.
