02 Redemption by Andrew Beery

Author:Andrew Beery [Beery, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen - Schism…

The GCP Yorktown jumped to a point just shy of 1000 AU from Earth. Cat sat in her familiar command chair. She enjoyed the feel of this particular chair. In her mind the chair represented her first best destiny. The Yorktown was fully cloaked and, in anticipation of who she expected to find out here in the middle of nowhere, she had Cinnabon ensconced at a communications console on the bridge near Commander Trifa.

“Helm, confirm cloak,”

“Cloak confirmed,” Ensign Tilman confirmed. “Our position is 2063 kilometers sunward of the leading…” He leaned forward and double checked his display and then looked up at his commanding officer, “Ma’am it looks like a formation of rocks and they are moving fast. They will be in our general vicinity in about twenty minutes if we don’t move.”

Ken spoke up from his station, “WhimPy-23 confirmed the KayBee’s were excavating asteroids and fitting them with jump drives.”

“I’m not surprised. This confirms a suspicion I shared with the Admiralty Board. It seemed to me the aggressive behavior of the KayBee hive mind would not be restricted to the Kepler system once they had access to hyperfield technology.”

“Jumping a hundred massive asteroids moving several thousand kilometers an hour on an impact vector for Earth into near Earth space, would fit my definition of aggressive.” Ben said.

Cat nodded at the D’lralu power engineer. “I agree. This is a disturbing development. Commander Trifa, open a link to Orbital One and pipe a continuous feed from our sensors to them. Mr. Tilman, bring up the hyperdrive. Microjumps, one hundred per second. Keep us a fixed distance in front of the leading edge of that formation.”

“Course laid in, beginning microjump sequence,” the ensign confirmed.

The bridge was quiet for a few seconds as everyone took in the incredible scene on the forward viewscreen. The ship’s AI automatically enhanced the image so that the asteroids, which would normally be quite dark this far from Sol’s illumination, appeared well lit.

“Africanized bees,” Ken mumbled.

Cat raised an eyebrow.

Her first officer continued. “Killer bees; in the 1950s a bee keeper accidentally released twenty-six aggressive African queen bees in São Paulo Brazil. They took over the tame domestic bee population and eventually migrated as far as the United States. The Africanized bees were much more aggressive and actively pursued perceived threats. They quickly got the nickname ‘killer bees.’”

“You see the KayBees under the control of the super-mind as something analogous?”

“I do,” he confirmed.

Cat fiddled with a lock of her hair– something she tended to do unconsciously. “What was the solution? How did they fix the killer bee problem?”

“They couldn’t. Once the genie was out of the bottle there was no way to put him back. Eventually they introduced a genetically engineered hybrid that could compete and dilute the aggressive gene pool, but they never were able to completely undo the damage.”

Before Cat could respond with another question there was a stir behind her.

“Cat,” Rasta-Tckner interrupted. “I’m hearing conversations from those ships. They must be using their

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