Ship of Destiny

by Frank Chadwick

  Fifteen thousand kilometers away from them, in the middle of the attack swarm, the missile coded Cold Bravo became a tiny sun for an instant. Thirty x-ray laser pulses connected the new star with the alien long ship for too brief a time for the human eye even to register, but long enough to transfer an avalanche of its deadly, searing energy.

  The long ship’s fusion reactor containment must have failed because the stern section of the enemy ship suddenly became its own miniature sun.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Minutes later, aboard USS Cam Ranh Bay,

  outbound to Destie-Seven

  16 June 2134 (one hundred twenty days after Incident Seventeen)

  Sam should have felt the tension ebb from his body but did not. This wasn’t over. He looked at the battle clock: one hour fifty-three minutes. Two minutes since the Cold Charlie had fired and cut the other long ship, the one disabled by the jump mishap, in half. Two minutes since he had begun decelerating again. His own sensors couldn’t see the alien ships now, and the sensor drone was still partially obscured by the detonation of the three Mark Fives in the attack swarm. Both alien ships were wrecks, but really big wrecks, with some sections fairly intact. There was no telling how much it would take to finish them, although taking out one of their reactors was certainly a good start.

  “Helm, where are we going to be when we match velocity with the wrecks?” Sam asked.

  “Sir, we’ll decelerate to match velocity with them in forty-four minutes,” Barr-Sanchez said. “but by then we’ll have overshot them by over twenty thousand kilometers. We’re just going too fast to stop before then, even at full thrust.”

  “How close will we come to them as we pass?” Sam asked.

  “About five thousand kilometers, sir,” she answered.

  “That’ll be inside point defense laser range,” Alexander said, “or in their case, particle accelerator range.”

  Sam was pleased to see the TAC Boss seemed to have recovered his composure. It had been touch and go with him during the battle, but he’d kept it together.

  Close-in combat was not what Sam had been thinking about, but it was worth considering. If those ships had any close-in weaponry still functional, they could make things ugly. Even throwing sand at them at close range, given the velocity when they passed each other, could cause a fair amount of damage if the Bay didn’t maneuver fast enough to avoid it.

  “TAC, program the Mark Five we have in the pipe to divide its energy dump between the three large remaining hull sections. Open the iris valves on the one-five gig lasers and extend the heads. We’re going to be in range in a couple minutes. COMM, see if you can get a tight beam to either of those wrecks.”

  “No power over there, sir,” Bohannon answered.

  “No active power plant,” Sam said. “There could still be stored energy, like our power ring. Give them a shout.”

  Three minutes later they were just inside their own laser engagement range. Sam had waited about as long as he thought prudent when Lieutenant Bohannon jerked forward in her chair. “Sir, I’ve got someone! Text message using the system we worked out with the New People. Message reads: What more do you want from us, S’Bitka World Destroyer?”

  World destroyer. That’s what they thought of him, and not without some justification.

  “COMM, make the following reply: Am I speaking to the leader of the ship, or to the ship itself?”

  “Incoming reply, sir,” Bohannon said and read it, stumbling slightly on the names. “The Ships are dead. I am Rhaunu by-Vrook through-Reokwikki.”

  “Sounds like the pedigree of a racehorse,” Alexander said.

  “Too bad it’s not a ship,” Sam said. “That one ore carrier we ran into wasn’t bad. Okay, make this reply: Surrender at once and I will do what I can to assist your survivors. If you do not surrender, I will destroy you. Sign it and send it.”

  “Think they know what surrender means?” Alexander said.

  “The New People did,” Bohannon answered as she punched in the text. “Who knows if these things do? They aren’t New People, that’s for sure. That vid of P’Daan’s made them look like big roaches, but without antennas. But they understand the common Guardian language, and it has a number of ways of expressing the concept of surrender.”

  “Roaches?” Alexander said. “I think they just got a nickname.”

  Sam’s commlink vibrated, and he saw Ka’Deem Brook’s ID tag.

  “Yes, XO.”

  Captain, I just read your text. I have to protest. We have no business stopping for survivors.

  “Mister Brook, if they surrender, we are obliged by custom, law, and regulation to render assistance.”

  Exigent circumstances! Brook almost shouted.

  “Not in my judgment, XO. Sorry I didn’t bring you into the loop on this, but there wasn’t time. If we’re going to take them out with another missile, we have to get a firm answer before we get in range of their close defense weaponry. Minutes count.”

  How do you know you can trust them?

  “How do you know you can trust anyone, XO? You don’t ever know for sure.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Bohannon said from the COMM chair beside him. “Captain, I have an answer. They give up.”

  “Helm, once we’re stopped, calculate a burn to get us back to proximity with the enemy wrecks, then decelerate to bring us to zero close rate at a range of ten kilometers.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Barr-Sanchez answered.

  “TAC, secure the Mark Five in the tube but keep the two big laser heads extended. We’re going in, but not emptyhanded.”

  “Alea iacta est,” Alexander said. Sam wasn’t sure what that meant or what his TAC boss thought of all this, but right now neither one really mattered.

  Captain, the last time you trusted anyone connected with the Guardians, our landing party was murdered and eaten, Ka’Deem Brook said through the commlink. This decision is reckless and I formally protest it.

  “Noted.”

  Senior Chief Bosun’s Mate Edward Wainwright, “Boats” to most of the officers and crew, relaxed in his self-selected battle station in the docking and small craft launch bay. He had no specific duties to perform while at general quarters and so got to pick his own station. He took a chair in the launch bay because that’s what he’d done until the captain and XO Running-Deer had bumped him upstairs. That’s what he told everyone, anyway. The real reason he’d picked this position was to keep an eye on Lieutenant Junior Grade Sylvia Norquist, the First Lieutenant.

  First Lieutenant—that was an interesting title. Whenever Brits heard it they assumed it meant the same as First Officer, which is what they called their XOs. But all it meant was the lieutenant leading the First Division, and by tradition it was usually the most junior lieutenant on the ship. First Division was responsible for the deck, which meant general cleaning and maintenance, as well as docking, and the launch, piloting, and recovery of the ship’s small craft, the Bay’s six PSRVs.

  Not much usually happened in the First Division when at general quarters, especially since the PSRVs weren’t armed, but the officers had dreamed up a way to use the PSRV launch cradles to deliver Mark Four missiles. Totally nuts. The idea that their improvised shackles would hold a two-ton missile in the cradle while under one gee acceleration was a disaster waiting to happen. But it had held—after Wainwright supervised a little creative reinforcing of the shackles.

  The next crazy idea had been that Norquist, the most junior lieutenant on the ship, could manage to launch four of those monsters out the docking cradles while under combat acceleration. Wainwright had wanted a front-row seat to that circus, and he wanted to be there to step in if necessary. But it hadn’t been necessary. Norquist got all four of the missiles deployed within the two narrow launch windows and did it without crushing any of her bosun’s mates. The captain had cut the acceleration, so that helped, but still—not too shabby. Now Wainwright had nothing to do but watch the deck crew securing the empty shackles and
observe Norquist’s new dose of confidence. She wore it well, with modesty, like just one more job squared away.

  He felt his commlink vibrate and saw the captain’s ID tag.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Boats, there are over two hundred surviving crew in the remaining compartments of those alien ships. You’ve got about twenty-five minutes to put together a rescue and repair mission. Mister Ma’s Engineering department will provide the EVA personnel and on-ship fabricators, Ms. Acho’s logistics crew is putting together bottled oxygen and some sort of trauma response, Major Merderet loaned us a fireteam of Marines before we de-docked with the habitat ring. We’ll put them in hard suits for security. Ms. Norquist’s small craft subdivision will ferry personnel and material to and from the wrecks in our PSRVs.

  Wainwright wondered what sort of trauma response they could offer for a totally alien species. Spray bandage and rubbing alcohol, he supposed. Maybe just bandage.

  “Sounds like all the bases are covered, sir. What do you want me to do?”

  Take charge and keep it from turning into a cluster fuck. We’re about thirty minutes from rendezvous. After that you’ve got twelve hours before we have to break off and rejoin the spin habitat.

  “We know what those things breathe, sir? What their body chemistry is?”

  Not yet, Boats. That’ll be your first job: atmosphere and tissue samples. Then see about helping them with repairs, although how you repair a living ship that’s apparently dead is a good question. At least they all speak the Guardian standard language and you’ll have autotrans loaded in your commlinks. That should help some. But all we can do is our best. If they die, let’s make sure it wasn’t from our lack of trying.

  “Aye, aye, sir. Maybe we can lash something together over there that’ll keep them alive for a few days. Are their friends going to stop and help them?”

  That’s their call, Boats. This is mine.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Okay, I’ve got an incoming comm from Mister Haykuz, our Varoki diplomat. Maybe I should have brought him in on the diplomacy part. What do you think?

  Wainwright could hear the suppressed humor in the captain’s voice even through the commlink, and why not? They’d been jumped by two long ships, had taken them out, and had suffered no damage and no casualties. And they’d done it with an armed transport. A small ration of celebration was in order.

  “Captain, if he thinks he can do better than an unconditional surrender, let’s give him a shot at it next time.”

  Captain Bitka laughed.

  Laptoon Haykuz waited with his commlink channel open, expecting a call-back message, but was surprised when the captain personally answered after less than a minute.

  Yes, Mister Haykuz?

  “Captain, first I wish to congratulate you on this victory which, I understand, was bloodless.”

  Bloodless for us, anyway. Not so much for the other guys. But thank you. Now, if that’s all, I’m a little busy right now.

  “I can imagine you are, directing the rescue effort, and I apologize for intruding on your work, but something occurred to me. If we are going to spend some time helping the aliens, I wonder if I might be allowed to open a dialog with one of their representatives.”

  For what purpose?

  “To find out whatever we can about this other new alien race. They are not at all like the New People, I understand.”

  Haykuz felt his heart accelerate as the silence grew. Perhaps he really could accomplish something useful, but why would the captain trust him, after all? Then Captain Bitka spoke again.

  Well, it can’t hurt. Permission granted and good luck. But how are you going to manage it from back on the habitat wheel?

  Haykuz let out a breath he had not realized he had been holding. “Oh, I intend to do everything by text and holocomm. I am no hero, Captain.”

  Heroism is highly overrated, Mister Haykuz. Just do what you can.

  Something he had not previously considered occurred to Haykuz, and the thought made his ears twitch and his skin tingle.

  “Oh, one more thing, Captain. I wonder if I might call on one or two others to help me.”

  As long as they aren’t involved in the rescue effort or ship operations, be my guest. I imagine Dr. Däng could be of help.

  Haykuz thanked the captain and broke the connection. Dr. Däng might indeed be of assistance, and he would ask her, but that was not who he had in mind. He sat for a moment, gathering his courage and resolve. Then he rose, left his quarters, and walked nearly halfway around the habitat wheel. He explained his purpose to the two Marine guards and then walked across the threshold of the stateroom he had dreaded entering for so long. Strangely, today the dread was gone.

  “Ah, the little Varoki-thing returns,” the Guardian Te’Anna said, and she stood up, perhaps in order to look down on him. Her shoulder feathers spread in a menacing fashion and her halo grew bright. “Have you reconsidered the possible origin of your species?”

  “Yes,” he answered, and held up his hands as a display. “Observe: four fingers and a thumb, but your creations seem to mimic your own three-fingered hands.”

  He flexed his long, slender fingers, turned his hands to show the range and complexity of their motion. “Also, I observe your work is not so fine as this. Perhaps you have little need for nimble-fingered slaves.”

  The Guardian sat back down and considered him with her unblinking eyes the color of stone. “Perhaps you are right. Did you come just to tell me this?”

  “I came to ask if you would like to do something with me, something I think you will find very interesting.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The next day, aboard USS Cam Ranh Bay,

  outbound to Destie-Seven

  17 June 2134 (one hundred twenty-one days

  after Incident Seventeen)

  Homer Alexander sat with his hands in his lap and stared at the bowl of steaming whole-grain porridge that was his breakfast.

  “Food’s getting a little boring,” the captain said, “but Acho says we’ll have some ripe tomatoes in a few days. That’ll be a treat, won’t it?”

  “Yes, sir,” Homer answered.

  It was actually Ensign Gutierrez from engineering’s place in the breakfast rotation, but Homer had prevailed upon her to switch places with him. He’d told her he had tactical developments he had to discuss with the captain, and that was almost true. Over the course of the last twenty-four hours Homer had been forced to take a long, hard look at himself, and he didn’t like what he saw. He remembered what a college creative writing teacher had once told him about growing up: children think about what they want to be, while adults think about what they want to do. She had been talking about people who want to be writers but don’t actually like to write, but it was a more universal observation, wasn’t it? How many wanted to be firemen, but didn’t particularly want to run into burning buildings? Or get hot?

  He wanted to be a tactical officer, but was that what he wanted to do? Was he even capable of it? He’d taken such pride in it, and now that all seemed like vanity, very silly vanity, and misplaced.

  “TAC, we’ve still got a couple decoy packs, don’t we?”

  “Three, sir,” Homer answered.

  “I’ve been thinking about what the Guardians will decide after seeing this fight. Those two ships following us from Destie-Four, I want you to fire a decoy cluster back down our course to intercept them. It will take a few days to get to them but I want to see what they’ll do about it. Displace out of its way and so lose a day or two catching us? Or maybe try to kill every decoy. They can’t know whether or not there’s a live missile in there, so they pretty much have to do one or the other.”

  “I’ll see to it as soon as we finish breakfast, sir,” Homer said.

  The captain studied him before speaking again.

  “So, what are you chewing on, TAC? It sure isn’t your oatmeal.”

  “I’ve been thinking about my performance in the battle sir. I think
. . . ” He wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence. What did he think?

  “Yeah, you screwed up there at the end,” the captain said as he took another spoonful of oatmeal. “You let yourself get scared. But you held it together, I’ll give you that much. You managed to at least read off the instruments, but your brain shut down, didn’t it? Most important weapon a TAC boss has is his brain, Mister Alexander, and you disarmed yourself. You can’t afford to ever let that happen again.”

  He said this without fire or contempt, more the way an instructor would correct a classroom problem done wrong. You forgot to carry forward the residual velocity, Mister Alexander. Don’t let it happen again. But it wasn’t that easy.

  “I . . . I don’t know if I can manage that, sir. I may not have what it takes.”

  The captain looked up at him and for the first time, a shadow of anger crossed his face.

  “What are we, cavemen?” Bitka demanded. “Sitting around the fire in loincloths, praying to some stupid god of war, to give us courage? And if he doesn’t it must mean we aren’t worthy, or some bullshit like that?

  “When you get scared, your heart races. When your heart rate gets above a certain speed it’s beating faster than the chambers can refill and so your blood pressure drops. Then your brain gets starved for oxygen, higher brain functions shut down, and all that stuff you experienced during the battle happens. You think it happened to you because you don’t have what it takes? No, Lieutenant, it happened because you were the only person on that bridge who forgot your tactical breathing routine. Jesus Christ, how hard is it? Inhale for five seconds, hold it for five, let it out for five, wait five, repeat. That’s how you control your heart rate in a crisis, and damnit, you know that! What did you think, real men don’t need to breathe tactically? This is the twenty-second century, Alexander. We don’t need war gods anymore; we got science. Watch your biomonitor, remember your training, do your job, and . . . and eat your breakfast before it gets cold. Hungry children on Bronstein’s World would kill their siblings for that breakfast.”