>Mission files released, the Peacekeeper’s command AI announced in their minds. Instantly, Liu knew the situation as a psychological wall dissolved away, as if something broke the surface of his mental ocean.
>Target system: GC-212-07-05c. Common name: Gamma Centauri.
>Acceptable maximum delta t, 100 standard years. Current delta t, 97.5 standard years.
>Objective: pacify insurgent fleet and compel insurgent surrender.
>Further political objectives pending release.
Liu typed into the keyboard, knowing that his thoughts were likely monitored, but hoping that the auditor was too distracted by other things to look for keyboard entries. He cleared his mind as best he could, typing solely from instinctual muscle memory, purposefully bypassing his conscious thought layer.
>Tactical glasses output, he typed.
A blinking cursor appeared in front of him.
>Acceptable civilian casualties? He typed into his keyboard.
>DATA NOT RELEASED.
>Return trajectory?
>DATA NOT RELEASED.
Holy shit. His undisciplined neural excitement attracted the attention of the auditor, who glanced over at him for a fraction of a second, but then stared off into space again.
>Set vector direction (0,1,-3), local basis, the commander ordered over Neuronet. An officer to his left typed into the air. There was a faint nudge as the Peacekeeper’s magnetic thrust vectoring and side thrusters gently pushed them to change vector and orientation. The small vector arrow showing their trajectory on the central projection slowly morphed into a new direction, taking them into the shadow of an outer gas giant.
>Cut engines, the commander ordered again. Instantly, another major typed on imaginary keys. The ghostly nudges stopped. Silence. The Peacekeeper was now coasting through space, falling through the Gamma Centauri system on a near ballistic track.
>Ping Relativity, tell them to cut engines, optical confirmation.
>Slow subjective time, Liu ordered to his implants. The entire room seemed to instantly begin moving in slow motion. His hands felt heavy and clumsy, but this was no time to make errors.
Liu Yang typed into his keyboard. He was keyed into the comm system. He rotated his hand in mid air, rotating the optical sensor focus to the Relativity. Its reactor was still glowing a brilliant pale purple, but now he could resolve each brief flash of the pulse engine. During the quiet between pulses, he typed his command. A burst of radio emanated from the Peacekeeper. For what felt like an eternity later, there was nothing. Then, an encoded infrared flash from the Relativity burst onto his glasses and was instantly translated to the CIC.
>Relativity received. Going optical, the Relativity’s optical burst responded.
>Trail, cut engines. Liu typed.
The map showed the Relativity reorienting its vector as ordered, following the Peacekeeper into the gas giant’s shadow. Liu’s sensor eyes showed the purple glare of the Relativity’s reactor immediately cut out, replaced by the diffuse gray of its structure’s remaining thermal glow. The sensors had seamlessly transitioned from near ultraviolet to near infrared.
The light of an alien sun glinted off the upper cloud deck of the distant gas giant. Rising almost exactly over the horizon were two faint, point-like sources, normally hidden but refracted through the outer atmosphere of the gas giant.
“Bogey on vector (2,1,5), distance unknown,” Liu stated. “Bogey 2 on (2,1.5,5) in formation, distance unknown.”
>Can you range and ID them? The commander asked on Neuronet.
Liu nodded. “I’ll try.”
>Optical mode, zoom. He typed. The long range telescopes of the Peacekeeper turned, but there was nothing to see but single pixels. They were still just point sources at that distance.
>Neutron spectrometer. Liu commanded again. He switched to a neutron view of the universe. His vision suddenly went dark, but there were two brilliant stars shining ahead, glaringly bright in the typical 2.47 and 14.1 MeV neutrons spewed by fusion reactors. Each ticked with a careful but urgent precision.
They were Striker class battlecruisers, just like the Peacekeeper and Relativity, though their trajectory seemed representative of an older model and their fuel mix seemed to be poorer in He3 dopant. The lower quality fuel was making them excessively neutron bright. Either that, or they were just that much closer.
“Negative on ranging. Optical resolution insufficient. Fuel yield variable per pulse. Neutron spectrometry confirms bogeys using pulsed fusion. Can confirm Directorate fuel mix, cannot confirm ranging due to uncertain He3 doping.”
>IR the Relativity. Tell her to vent cold gas, vector away, set up a parallax rangefinding baseline, 1M km. The commander announced.
>Set IFF hostile. The auditor’s gentle voice pierced everyone’s mind.
“Auditor, we have not characterized the target-” Liu said before another thought interrupted him.
>Set. IFF. Hostile. The auditor’s Neuronet voice took on a much more authoritative tone. She glared at Liu with a deep disgust, as if he was an insect that wandered in her way. Without any way to resist or his direct intervention, the icons on the projection turned from yellow to red.
>Auditor, these look like Directorate ships, the commander implored.
>They are not Directorate ships. The auditor calmly stated. The commander’s face winced a little. It seemed like he was under immense mental strain, while the auditor almost looked bored. The only sign of any stress on her face was a small dab of sweat on her nose.
>Commander Colonel Sanchez, your cooperation will be most appreciated. The auditor’s mental pressure over the Neuronet had become absolutely suffocating. Liu felt as if his own mind was being squeezed into a corner of his head. In the corner of his vision, he saw the soldier next to him was sweating profusely, as if he was under an immense amount of physical stress. It seemed that everyone with a Neuronet connection was struggling, and losing, against the auditor’s neural control.
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Liu’s interior fortress finally buckled. It was too much. He surrendered to the pressure. The voluntary portion of his mind and the ship were both under the Auditor’s control now. His body and his memories were just along for the ride.
>Bring us lower to the gas giant. At periapsis, conduct propellant burn, set vector intercept to (2,1,5). End burn immediately on emergence from shadow. Arm 7 cruise missiles, launch 6. Set dual IR neutron homing 6, imaging IR 1, begin terminal phase at 0.01 AU. Prepare ejection. Lock further commands from others, 1 hour.
The auditor issued rapidfire orders directly to the Peacekeeper that seemed impossibly quick. A torrent of data and Neuronet commands flooded over Liu’s consciousness that he was powerless to stop.
He struggled to keep his sensor view on, just to see how the battle would play out. Everything was agonizingly drawn out in his slowed subjective time.
A slight drag was felt. The diffuse exosphere of the gas giant started scraping against their hull. The Peacekeeper, like all other battlecruisers, was not designed for atmospheric flight. They’d crash and burn, literally, if this continued.
Then there was the clink of the propellant valves opening. He could almost feel the rush of the cold hydrogen through the arteries of the ship. They hold this as the high thrust afterburner. Within seconds, he was pressed down onto the tiny metal ledge that held his feet. His ankles, which haven’t been exercised in decades of real time, felt like they could crumble under the g-forces.
Suddenly, the burn stopped. Engines and propellant flow were both cut. Silence again. The auditor now looked like she was straining under the mental load of suppressing the entire crew by Neuronet while managing the battle, her forehead glistening with sweat.
Liu tried to focus on his sensor vision. The neutron view was blind. The optical view showed only the gas giant’s cloud decks. But soon, the neutron view came alive. Two brilliant engines burning with the neutron light of deuterium fusion peered out from under the clouds, long before optical sensors could see anything.
An ominous jolt was felt as six cruise missiles were cold launched one by one. Each vibration echoed through the Peacekeeper’s frame, followed by a tense silence. The missiles invisibly moved by the inertia given to them by the cruising Peacekeeper. The missiles were slowly nudged in an arc, held against the gas giant’s disc by gravity and atmospheric drag until the fateful moment when they’d emerge over the horizon. For now, they’d be rendered invisible by the upper cloud decks and scattered starlight.
The seventh cruise missile was held in reserve but with the launch cell open, already acquiring data through its imaging IR sensors. Liu had no access to its onboard sensors, but he had an uneasy intuition about its potential target.
Quiet. An IR flash lit up in the corner of Liu Yang’s eyes. He turned, shifting to the Peacekeeper’s aft sensors with his eye movements alone.
>Peacekeeper, this is Relativity. We detected munitions release. What is your target? We have no target detection.
He felt the oppression on the Neuronet lift just a bit for a fraction of a second as the auditor strained to keep them down while doubtlessly thinking what to say to the Relativity. No reply. He strained to type something, but could barely move his eyeballs to keep up with the sensors, let alone his arms to type. Neuronet commands, of course, were out of the question.
>Peacekeeper, this is Relativity. Neutron spectrometry detects Directorate fuel signatures. Explain munitions release and firing solution.
No reply. He could feel the Auditor’s mind straining. The sweat on her forehead and temple had become quite a bit more obvious.
>Peacekeeper, cease fire! Those are ours! Acknowledge immediately.
There was no reply. In the sensors, a small cluster of dim flares lit up. Pusher engines lit their plume for a few seconds before falling away. It would allow the nuclear pulse engines to come to life at a safe distance, completely decoupled from the Peacekeeper’s trajectory.
In a few seconds, every sensor channel came alive in his eyes. Six simultaneous infrared, X-ray and neutron flares appeared as the cruise missiles engaged their nuclear pulse engines for the terminal burn. Liu immediately saw the nudge, nudge, nudge of the target ships suddenly rise into a panicked torrent. A huge IR plume rose behind them. Extreme thrust evasive maneuvers with propellant dump. Dozens of brief IR bursts, followed by single pixel neutron bursts, swarmed around the targeted ships. Then the target ships cut their engines. The bright neutron lights disappeared. Interceptors, neutron flares, engine cut. Standard procedure; completely futile.
Their radiators were now glowing orange hot from absorbing the massive reactor heat generated during evasive maneuvers, making them a beacon for the IR seekers. A few small explosions. Some of the cruise missiles were intercepted and disappeared off their tracker. But the target ships were now drifting and couldn’t shake the last missiles.
The pulse engines of one of the cruise missiles nimbly maneuvered around the remaining outer interceptor screen, ignoring the now defunct neutron signal. The pulse engine went dark and fell away, tumbling into the blackness as a distant burst released the final stage.
There was only darkness before a massive explosion surged into the glowing radiator, the signature of a nuclear warhead detonating with a 20 MT blast. There would be nothing left of the target ship. A brief, full spectrum burst blinded the center view of the Peacekeeper’s sensors. It was over. They never had a chance. Just as the sensors had recovered, another blinding burst followed.
>Mission GC-212-07-05c: Primary pacification objective complete. Logging 2 (two) Striker-class battlecruisers as expended assets.
An IR burst appeared in the corner of Liu’s eye again once the sensors recovered. It was an urgent audio hail from the Relativity.
“Colonel Sanchez, this is Colonel Meng. What did you just do?” A different voice was on the audio channel, a much more urgent woman’s voice.
The Neuronet pressure loosened a bit. Colonel Sanchez was struggling to open his mouth, but his teeth were clamped shut. Naturally, a direct Neuronet message from the Colonel would be impossible. A few more tense seconds.
>Colonel Meng. This is Auditor-72-A9-M5, Ministry of Internal Affairs. I am currently in command of the Peacekeeper, she thought with the same eerily gentle but firm voice.
Yet another impossibly long pause.
“Auditor, explain.”
>I have no need to. The Peacekeeper’s actions are authorized. You will find your next mission files unlocked soon, confirming this.
Another long pause on the audio channel. They could hear an audible sigh.
Auditor-72-A9-M5 immediately sensed their hesitation and acted to correct it.
>Do not deviate from your instructions.
Release. The pressure gradually lifted off their heads. The auditor had finally let them go. She also no longer looked like she was straining. It couldn’t have been easy suppressing the minds of hundreds of combat veterans, Liu thought.
The Peacekeeper was drifting, and so was the crew.
“What the hell was that, Auditor?” Sanchez yelled, tearing off his wire and restraints in anger. “I’m in charge on this ship.”
>The Ministry of Internal Affairs is the authority on these missions.
The colonel seethed. “You know, I could shoot you right now when I’m unplugged. You’re just some little girl in the real world.”
>No, you can’t.
The colonel reached for his pistol, looked at it longingly, then slowly took it out of his holster and twirled it around in his hand. “Really.”
>Try it.
He pressed his hand on the grip.
>You’ll find the DNA key is disabled.
Sanchez tried clicking the safety. Nothing. It was immovable. Confused, he unloaded his weapon and squeezed the trigger. It wouldn’t budge. He quietly reloaded and holstered the pistol.
The CIC was dead quiet. Nobody knew where to even look, let alone what to say. The auditor’s gentle voice sounded again in their heads.
>Partial control has been restored to the crew. You will continue the trajectory I have just set. IFF has been set to automatically eliminate pre-selected targets that may appear.
The auditor disconnected herself from her perch and effortlessly swam to the CIC door in near total silence. It slid open just enough for her to pass, and then slid closed again. Everyone looked around, but still said nothing. No commands were issued. No typing. Just quiet.
“Let’s get back to work,” Colonel Sanchez announced with a dejected voice, breaking the long silence.
But there was nothing to do. Their trajectory was set.
