The Law of Natural Selection
MSF Olympus SSV-3A
October 28, 2187
Cryosleep was supposed to be more romantic than this. Robert “Bobby” Lawson didn’t feel well rested so much as thoroughly violated. Jesus Christ this hurts. The comparison to being hit by a freight train wasn’t a good enough description. More like being on the inside of a implosion nuclear bomb. The bright light piercing through Bobby’s closed eye lids certainly seemed nuclear in its brightness.
Recovering enough to open his eyes a frosted glass screen with green readouts greeted him. He remembered nothing of this artificial cocoon. Clearly, he had been sedated before being put under for the long nap. Painfully lifting his head to look down at his body only confirmed he must have been knocked out. He sure as shit wouldn’t have done this to himself willingly. Not with the number of tubes and wires disappearing into awkward places.
He allowed his head to fall back on the hard foam back rest. Trying to feel through the general ache if anything seemed to hurt more than something else. Each subtle movement pulling at least half a dozen nondescript medical devices and tubes taught.
A feminine electronic voice almost succeeded in its attempt to surprise Bobby is sending his face though the tempered glass shell. “Good morning, Captain Lawson.” Goddamn ship AIs.
Captain huh? That was almost funny. As if anything about this journey was comparable to his old job, shipping plastic consumer goods between Earth and Mars. Such was the fate of a naval conscript.
“Mrmm…” An elegant response. Parse that through your language model asshole.
“You have been asleep for, 3 months, 2 weeks, seven days. Vital signs are nominal. Do you feel well?”
“What do you think?”
“Given the experimental nature of cryosleep the list of possible side effects are quite long. I would have difficulty guessing without more information.”
“I feel like shit. In fact, I feel like---" Bobby paused. Leaning forward he caught a large bruise up his entire left side. How the fuck did I miss that? “Woah. What did you do, beat me while I was asleep?
It took a bit of composure to not shrink back as the spider-like arms of the ceiling mounted manipulator robot moved down. One of the AI’s many mechanical appendages on the ship.
“I see. Large external bruising. Good news, your vital signs show no evidence of internal hemorrhaging. It seems to be a result of being pushed upon your container’s side during our evasive maneuvers.”
My container, what am I a sardine? Bobby’s groggy mind caught up to the robotic words a few seconds later. Evasive maneuvers?
“Back up. What do you mean evasive maneuvers? There’s no way we’re close enough to the no-go zone to be getting shot at.” His memory may have been rough, but he was certain protocol was to wake up essential personnel two weeks before they got into range.
“28 hours ago the MSF Olympus, UNSF Reno, and UNSF St Lucia engaged in unplanned burns to evade incoming projectiles. Given their performance characteristics and estimated point of origin I have determined these projectiles to be hostile fire. Largely ineffective, but notable nonetheless.”
“Well shit. Must have been some moves you pulled.”
“Yes. The time to react was limited. As was the acceleration we could undertake.” Bobby swore he could detect a tone of if it wasn’t for you sentient water bags I could have dodged those with ease through the monotone robotic voice.
“Should I be worried?”
“I have already begun to setup a series of offsets from our main trajectory at random intervals. No more than 1G of acceleration at a time. Though of course the closer we get the less time to react we have.”
“I didn’t know they could shoot this far out.”
“My limited analysis is that these projectiles were waiting out in space as a kind of tripwire defense.”
“Uh. Well, I suppose that’s good?” If ‘the enemy’ had fired from within the no-go zone that would suggest quite the technological superiority.
“Please wait a few more moments for the recovery process of your cyropod to finish. Once I begin to release you from the various life support systems you may feel some discomfort.” From where some of the tubes were going he didn’t doubt that.
Cool. I’m being thawed out like a TV dinner. The progress was agonizingly slow but could at least be tracked by the receding frost on the outer window. By the time the seal had been popped, and the various tubes had been removed, he could get a better view of the larger cylindrical room. It was surprisingly small given its utility. The spider like arms were mounted on a ceiling track. Three rows of four cryobeds were lined up in a curve along the lower half of the cylinder.
On the wall opposite Bobby, a screen showed a nice view of their current trajectory which would cycle through different zoom levels to give a causal viewer a good sense of perspective. First thing he noticed was that they were hauling ass. The meters/second measurement was a meaningful fraction of the speed of light. Secondly, they were way out. It looked like they had recently passed Uranus, closing in on the ominous red oval containing the enemy’s beachhead around the wormhole at the outer edge of the Kuiper belt.
One particular cyropod was about half the size and had indecipherable wiring on it. Oh yeah, I forgot the alien.
Or sorry, not officially an alien. The creature’s official designation on the crew roster was Specialized Tactics and Intelligence Advisor in Exotic Threats. A mouthful typical for the Office of Space Intelligence (OSI). The bureaucratic unwillingness to just give the creature the title of resident mission alien was funny. Humanity was allied with a bunch of refugee squids preparing for a war against some amorphous ‘the enemy’ that made said squids’ refugees in the first place, and the OSI can’t be bothered to say alien in an official capacity.
He had taken to giving the alien the name Thaddeus as that was the closest human word to the noise the guy had made he introduced himself. Thaddeus had seemed quite aloof. Not that Bobby was surprised. When the Zephorians, as they were called, bothered to learn human language at all their social skills were somewhat lacking.
After taking a few moments to get dressed in the standard issue combined fleet uniform, Bobby made his way to the door that led to the bridge. The ship itself, the MSF Olympus, was essentially a giant stick. Living quarters, weapons, and the bridge on one side and the giant engine with its fusion reactor, fuel, and supporting equipment on the other. Certainly not designed for all out brawls. Speed was king out here.
Thankfully, getting to the bridge was easier this time around. When first boarding in Earth orbit, the lack of gravity forced Bobby to showcase his lack of experience moving around without that lovely 9.8 m/s^(2.) However, modern science now offered comfort. Humanity, and evidentially the Zephorians, had yet to crack true control of gravity. But they could at least now induce it in one direction with a secondary drive powered by the larger fusion engine.
Making his way to the large circular airlock leading to the bridge, Bobby began the complicated process of opening it. The whole room was armored and had its own life-support. The unspoken expectation of course was to keep fighting even if the rest of the ship had a shit ton of holes in it.
As he swung the door open the sentient squid almost got himself killed.
“Human greetings!” The four-armed creature was a foot away from Bobby’s face. Hopefully, Thaddeus didn’t notice that Bobby’s side arm was currently ¾ of the way out of his holster with the safety off.
“Holy shit! Are you trying to get killed?”
“Why do you raise voice? Nature of mission means death or bodily harm likely. Why surprised?” The creature responded in a trilling voice.
The Zephorians themselves all had a similar look with minor variations. A generally humanoid like body with two arms and two legs but with a tail. Said arms and legs were essentially tentacles, with no discernable joints. Their head and body shape looked like a cross between a lizard, a juvenile shark, and a stingray. They had two fishlike eyes that could swivel on the side. Their skin color was the most obvious way to differentiate individuals. Usually some shade of a muted tropical color. Thaddeus was a light bluish purple.
Their aquatic body looked oddly well equipped to move around in zero gravity. It was surprising given the weak appearance of their tentacle-like legs to see Thaddeus standing and walking around ‘normally’ in 1 G.
“I think the whole idea is to not scare each other into heart failure and instead to die like proper military men, engaging the enemy.”
“Am sorry. Still unuse to human activities. Simply happy to see another awake.”
“That’s fine.”
Thaddeus seemed to lose interest in the conversation and amble over to the navigation console. Bobby headed towards the captain’s chair mounted in the center of the hexagonal room. The computer would be yelling if something was wrong but there was no harm in double checking. After spending a few minutes checking over the systems things were looking all right.
The automated battle management system had already deployed recon drones far ahead. Not that they would last long. Human drones never got closer than a few AU to the no-go zone before getting knocked out by God knew what. Still, it would distract the enemy. Speaking of which.
“Hey. Given your our supposed expert in 'the enemy', what are they like?” No response.
Bobby leaned over in the bulky crash chair to look at Thaddeus doing…something with the navigation display. “Hey!” Nothing. Bobby was tempted to throw something.
“Thaddeus.” The zephorian concentrated one fish like eye on Bobby before his head followed. “Want talk?”
“Yeah man, I asked you a question.”
“What question?”
“About the enemy and your advisor role. We’re you listening?”
“If wanted to talk to me, why not address me by name before question?” Are you fucking kidding me?
“In general, if one human asks a question and only one other person is present it’s assumed that other person is being talked to.”
“Is odd. Prone to error. Bad system.” Bobby wasn’t sure how to respond to that.
“Ok. Thaddeus, have you seen the enemy before?”
“No, never in person. Not know any Zephorian who has seen.”
“Then why did they stick you on this mission?”
“I see enemy’s weapon systems. Begin reverse engineer one before collapse. I judge weapon fired at us to be of similar design.”
“And?”
“Missile, very fast.” Not the best description but not wrong either.
“Indeed, very fast. How long have you been up?” Crickets.
“Thaddeus, how long have you been up?”
“I am awake.”
“Yes, how long Thaddeus?”
“Human time conception odd, no like use. Why not have 100 seconds per minute if use base 10 for other math. 60 second minutes another silly system.” Ok you little fucker, so your too good for minutes and seconds huh.
What the Zephorians lacked in social or martial skills they made up for with their brains. To say they thought different was a bit too simplistic. They could feel the same emotions as a human sure, but culturally they were more, what. Mathematical? Like fish Vulcans or something. Though they did seem to open up a bit when being around humans.
Still, their brain was what counted. Their science had a much better grasp on relativity, space and time than humanity did. It just clicked better for them. It was why they were kept around on Mars as refugees.
Thaddeus’s other job was the backup flight computer. These guys could think so fast in terms of numbers that if every one of the triple redundant flight computers failed this little guy could take over the burn and weapon trajectory calculations…manually. The engines on the Olympus’ own long range kinetic kill vehicles were the first joint Human-Zephorian design pressed into service.
Said weapons were the whole purpose of this mission. The enemy was building up an invasion beachhead on the rocks of the outer Kupier belt, especially around the wormhole. It seemed that neither humanity, the enemy, nor the Zephorians had cracked FTL travel. But, wormholes had so far shown themselves to be relatively common.
As such, humanity was now in a cold war with an unknown hostile alien intelligence. Waiting for the real war, the invasion, to start. With humanity preparing while enemy moved in material and resources to build up a launch platform for their offensive. With no FTL, the war would take decades.
Three larger rocks that the long-range recon probes identified as areas of “uniquely large industrial development” in the no-go zone were the mission’s targets. They could be refueling points, ship anchorages, who fucking knew. The point was to seize some initiative. As such Bobby’s Olympus and its two sister ships were on a multi-year bombing run at speeds were time dilation became nontrivial.
Each ship would fire both of their long-range kill vehicles at the assigned rock in the no go zone. Then they would flip and burn back towards Earth, going down again for the long nap. Each kill vehicle was basically a tungsten rod that stretched a quarter of the Olympus’s length with a high acceleration fusion engine on the end. When the weapons got to their targets, they would be going so fast that interception would be almost impossible. Theoretically at least.
An icon blinking red indicated that the furthest away recon drone had been scrapped. Right at the edge of the red no-go zone.
“Well shit. Looks like we’ll need to rely on the preset targeting data. Not that these rocks move all that much from their predicted orbits.”
“Enemy is asshole!” Bobby wasn’t aware these guys could curse.
“Thaddeus! Watch your fucking language!” Surprisingly the alien seemed embarrassed. Bobby wasn’t aware they were capable of that either. Bobby couldn’t help but smile. Well make a properly adjusted human out of you yet, little guy.