"And now it's back."
"Yeah, and I don't really want to see this ghost ship blast into Earth. See if you can find a way to intercept it."
"How fast do you think we are, Cap'?" the tactical officer muttered, bent over his console, and set to work on the futile task.
"Stiletto. Jovian Defense Perimeter. We were unable to intercept the rogue vessel with any of our chasers. We were able to nick the vessel with a blast from our [untranslatable] but the hit appeared to do nothing besides knocking the vessel slightly off course. Vectors embedded herein. Thank you for the warning and we apologize for not being able to do more. Hail Tarazed."
And the message winked out. The vectors seemed to indicate the vehicle would shoot by Earth at a perigee of about a hundred thousand kilometers, close enough to frighten but not damage.
But the vehicle could very easily shift its vector and enter an impacting orbit.
"Untranslatable?" McInnis scowled.
"Linguistics AI thinks it means 'very, very big gun'," the communications officer said dryly.
"I thought I heard rumors of that... the Tarazedis built something in Jupiter's atmosphere, a big fusion cannon that they blew the glitches off Io with a few years ago... hmm."
"Well, what do we do? The thing is blue shifted clear off the spectrum. It's coming just about directly toward us, and it'll close to less than a light-second in about two hours. This mother is fast."
The captain sighed heavily. "If we cannot find a way to stop it, we will have to intercept and collide with it. We can't let something going at that velocity collide with Earth."
His crew did not comment, did not protest the death sentence he had just read them. Fifty percent cee? There wouldn't even be bits of them left. Perhaps a free-floating cloud of hot plasma. The tactical officer grimaced. "I'll work out our intercept burns. But it'll be quite difficult to accurately plot something moving at such a speed. The sensors were not designed for it."
"Right..."
"And furthermore, the computer will have to take over for the last minute. If we have to intercept this thing, we decide a minute in advance and then let the computer take us to our deaths. There will be no turning back."
"Understood. Plot it and feed it into my console."
"Yessir." The tactical officer wiped beads of perspiration from his forehead, then bent over his console again.
"You know something?" the captain asked the bridge at large. When no response came, he answered. "This bites."
While no one spoke, the bridge still reverberated with heartfelt agreement.
"Farsight to Stiletto," the call came in less than ten minutes before thevessels closed their final kilometer. "Please remove yourself from our path."
The captain leapt to his feet immediately. "Stiletto, Farsight," he snapped. "Shift orbit and identify yourself at once!"
"I cannot."
I? The speaker was a woman, with a calm, quiet voice. There was no way a single person could run a torchship. Of course, there was no way a torchship could escape from its berth and blast off to the Oort Cloud by itself either...
"Call up the records for the ship. See if that voice matches--"
"Already done," the communications officer said, shaking his head with a puzzled expression. "Captain Maria Perez, the vessel's commander. But she's dead."
"An Immortal," he spat.
"More likely a voder," the reply came. "Doesn't seem to have the full harmonics of a human voice. We're listening to a recording."
"That responded?"
The officer shrugged. "If it has a good computer system it's possible..."
"Or maybe it's a bloody ghost! Kill the channel. If the thing is on computer control, it will not back off. We have to stop it."
"The intercept program is keyed into your console."
"Sorry folks, but our mission here is clear... anyone who wants to grab a lifepod, better get moving..."
No one stirred.
The captain smiled grimly. "Let's do it. Initiating primary burn--"
And the crew were slammed back into their seats at the interceptor's powerful engines blasted at a hundred ten percent rated capacity, hurling the small vessel into the larger ship's path.
The apparent mismatch in size would count for nothing at these speeds. The torchship would blast the interceptor into a cloud of plasma instantly, and that cloud would rip directly though the incoming ship, reducing it as well to disorganized molecules several microseconds later.
At least it would be quick. And they would not even see their death coming before the ship appeared as if out of nowhere and hit them.
"It has been an honor serving with you," the captain said softly a minute before collision, as the computer beeped its shrill warning."
"The torchship has not changed course," the tactical officer said softly twenty seconds before impact. "We will impact. I've always wanted to be a hero..."
McInnis smiled grimly, faced the viewscreen where his enemy would soon arrive. "Eat this, Farsi--"
The world went white.
