Soundless Conflicts

by S. Walker

  Captain Siers was giving her full attention now, eyebrows raised and looking surprised. "They're not the final stop on the Corporate edge," she continued, ears hot and burning. "But they're only one away: Kstrop-2 is the end of the line going straight out from here. They trade each other for necessities: Metal and raw elements for force-grown food products. Most importantly, though: Pilster hasn't reported in to Corporate HQ for two full solar quarters."

  Janson applauded, large hands clapping and laughing the whole way. "'Ey, she's got us all on this one! Good on you, LT!"

  Even Paul seemed impressed, the corner of his mouth edging upward in approval. "It seems she does, indeed. Emilia?"

  The short Comms technician turned around, sulking. "I could have done better."

  "But not that quickly," Captain Siers corrected, adding a few appreciative claps of his own. "When did you have time for that rundown, lieutenant?"

  "Between duties, sir. It was easy." It had actually been a ten minute rage break after ramming the Kipper into a planetoid. Five times, including one spectacular failure where the ship plowed straight through the planetoid, all three singularities eating into solid mass until the reactor gave out and they collapsed (crushing the Kipper like a beer can in the process). After that fiasco she'd stared at facts about their destination until her fists didn't want to pound through the simulation any more. "Knowing everything about a layover is part of my duties."

  Looks were shared around the bridge. "Let's not rub that in too much, Reals. But you definitely won the layover stipend this time, I'll set you up when we get to their inbound station."

  "Speakin' ah which: One minute out, cap'n." Janson waved a timer onto the display. There still wasn't anything to see straight ahead but absolute blackness-- all three singularities ate any light coming from dead ahead. "Have you ever transited before, LT?"

  "Yes, once." She'd been eight at the time, but no need to elaborate. She checked her backup harness setup nervously. Everyone depended on local gravity fields to keep them in place at their workstations but Jamet was more nervous than she wanted to let on. "I've seen plenty of simulations, though."

  "The real thing is a little different." Captain Siers assured her. "Everyone have their cups? Fill 'em up, let's toast to arrival."

  Jamet's jaw dropped as cups were produced and filled. "You cannot be serious."

  "Oh come on, Princess." Emilia threw her head back and to one side, exaggerating an unseen eye roll. "What's the worst that could happen? Here we go: Ten! Nine!"

  An outraged Jamet abstained as the entire crew counted down the last few seconds, cups held aloft towards the singularity-blacked forward viewscreen. At 'zero' they cheered and toasted, heads back while automated systems smoothly rotated all three singularities to the stern of the Kipper to bring it to a halt.

  Light did funny things when one was cheating physics to exceed reality's speed limit. On the forward screen utter blackness snapped into relief as the light of Pilster-3's distant sun finally made it through to the sensors. The dot rapidly expanded, screaming forward into relief as light-delayed visuals crashed into their rapidly approaching ship. Asteroid belts spun in fast-forward blurs, gas giants rocketing on elliptical orbits.

  And there, dead center around the designated system arrival point, something glittered.

  Jamet frowned. Opened her mouth, hesitated, closed it again. Was this normal? No one else seemed to be paying attention, Captain Siers was even poking fun at Paul Noscome about some establishment they'd both been to a while back.

  The glittering expanded as Kipper hurtled towards the system, singularities aft and braking momentum on a glide path that would put them at a dead stop.

  "Captain?" Jamet started, then raised her voice over Janson's booming baritone laughter. "Pardon! Captain Siers?"

  He looked over, noting her confusion. "Yes?"

  They were coming up on it now, relative speed dipping under a hundred thousand miles per second. The glittering cloud was growing-- huge, immense, with black specks swirling through it everywhere. It was easily tens of thousands of miles wide, nearly edging off the forward display. "Captain!"

  He looked from her to the forward viewscreen, then jumped in shock. "Dead stars!"

  Then they were in it, still decelerating below four hundred miles per second as the soft, shiny cloud abruptly resolved into thousands of metallic pieces. Busted ship hulls and unidentifiable debris streaked by at incredible speeds as the Kipper aimed itself dead-center towards a huge, derelict freighter on a collision course.

  Emilia screamed, hands thrown upwards in terror. Janson hollered something obscene in a baritone voice that practically vibrated the deck plates. Paul and Captain Siers both froze in horror, stiff-arming their respective consoles.

  Lieutenant Jamet Reals, operating on nearly twenty seven hours without sleep, snarled. "Are you fucking serious!?"

  Without pausing to think she slammed a toggle for manual control, palmed her custom controls and flicked all three singularities in a whirling, hellish circle counterclockwise around the ship. If she'd spent even a second trying to time the move it never would have worked, but in the heat of the moment reflexes and raw luck saved them all.

  The Kipper's oversized singularities smashed sideways into the spinning derelict, each artificial black hole taking a huge bite from the hull before collapsing into itself. The first cut a quarter through, followed in a quick succession by the remaining two in a storm of screaming system alerts and overloaded reactor warnings.

  In the blink of an eye the Kipper buzzsawed through, scattering an explosion of rent hull plates and flotsam in every direction as they went. A final twist of the derelict caught the ship as it went by, hammering their hull hard enough to overwhelm local gravity and send everyone on the bridge flying into the port side bulkhead in a ball of frantic screams.

  Everyone, that is, except for Lieutenant Reals. Who was quite sensibly following procedure and wearing her redundant restraint belt. "HA! EAT CHECKLIST!"

  As victory cries go, it wasn't much.

  Bridge power died, then snapped back online with a beep of rebooting consoles. Jamet hammered hers, yanking up displays on every side and prioritizing navigation hazards. "Engineer Janson!"

  "Ow, my damn leg. What! I mean yes, ma'am!"

  "The reactors! Reboot, reboot, reboot! I need navigation right now!"

  "Fuck navigation," A shrill voice complained. "I'm going to hail the nearest station and rip someone a new asshole. Where the hell was the alert beacon for an entire ship graveyard?!" Emilia made an appearance, crawling out of the pile with her visor flashing angry colors.

  "Is anyone hurt? Triage, call out if you are injured." Paul was holding one arm about halfway up where he'd grown a new joint. "Other than me," he hissed.

  Jamet ignored him, eyes frantically scanning displays. The Kipper was dead-stick, spinning at just under ten miles per second through a hail of metal fragments. Impacts pinged like metallic rain against the hull as damage reports accumulated. "Captain, we're going to breach along the port side! I need navigation! Janson!"

  The big man lurched across the deck and fell into his workspace. "Aye, one moment! Rebootin' now!"

  "Do it faster." Jamet was staring upwards now, squinting at something in-system towards the distant star.

  Captain Siers staggered to his feet, then took his seat again. "Status! Breach check!" He hit several indicators in a series, then swiped viciously. "Locking all emergency bulkheads. Segmenting firebreaks."

  Emilia took her seat back, then threw communications indicators across the display. "CES Kipper, hailing all Corporate vessels! We've run into your goddamn junkyard and if someone doesn't answer me in-"

  "Engineer Janson?" Something in Jamet's voice cut through the wail of alarms and frantic motions.

  Everyone shut up. "Ma'am?"

  She was still staring upwards, eyes squinted and tracking across exterior displays. "Get the Krepsfield up, right now."

  Captain Sie
rs grabbed exterior sensors, zooming towards where Jamet was looking. "What is it, lieutenant?"

  Out in the darkness, past the whirling pieces of who-knew-how-many busted derelicts, something moved. Even at a distance it eclipsed the star briefly, throwing the Kipper into shadow.

  Emilia tagged it with a marker, distance numbers in the five hundred thousands and dropping. "What the hell is that?"

  "I don't know," Jamet yelled. "But it's coming and captain," she waved an arm at the graveyard around them. "I don't think this was accidental."

  Chapter 7

  Dodging Questions

  Lieutenant Jamet Reals framed the incoming vessel in a callout box, then pinned it to the edge of the display surface so everyone could keep an eye on it. Distance numbers slid downward, blurring through five hundred thousand miles. "Engineer..."

  Janson grunted from her left. "Twelve seconds, ma'am. Ahm redlining the aft reactor ta push the Krepsfield faster. We're goin' ta be working on the spare after this, if we're lucky. Nine, eight-"

  Captain Siers worked furiously on his console, then pinged Emilia. "Comm, hail that ship. Order them off."

  Something large hammered the Kipper's starboard side, just beneath the hull bottom. Everyone jolted in place as new alarms began screaming. Jamet slapped an override and whirled through exterior displays. "What was that?"

  Paul found it first, his one good arm spinning sensor images across the workspace. "Debris, looks like shuttle pieces and-" he winced, looking away. "Used lifeboats."

  "Five, four-" Janson muttered, pushing already-amber sliders higher on his readouts. His board looked like one huge smear of blinking red indicators.

  To the right Emilia was growling into her headset. "Unidentified vessel, this is the CES Kipper. Turn your goddamn ship heading away from our position and respond or so help me they will not find the pieces I leave behind."

  "Less swearing and more professionalism, Comms." Captain Siers had a snapshot of the distant object, working with filters to zoom and unblur it. "I doubt aggressiveness will make a difference. Paul, seal Environment; we're losing lower deck atmosphere."

  "Already on it, sir. Only one arm, here." Paul was sweating, working controls with one hand while the other dangled.

  "Two, one!" Janson pointed at Lieutenant Reals.

  She looked down, checked her console and looked up again. "Engineer? I have nothing to work with, here!" A quick glance up at the callout brought a new sense of urgency. "Two light seconds out! Passing four hundred thousand!" Screen projections flipped to expanded view, showing the Kipper in a debris cloud ten thousand miles wide with an ominous red blob coming straight in at a ninety degree angle.

  His finger became a 'hold up' palm. "Give me a- there!, go go go!"

  Jamet's console came to life as a singularity spun up. "One! This is one singularity! Where's the rest?!" In full panic mode she almost allocated the black hole to the closest distance possible for maximum acceleration. Only four hours of watching simulated Kippers ripping in half from doing that exact thing prevented her from instantly killing everyone. She tossed it out fifty miles, instead-- close enough to make the ship groan, not close enough to tear the bow completely off.

  The Kipper wallowed drunkenly, coming around to face the pull of the overpowered singularity. Unfortunately so did everything nearby: Gravity played no favorites, yanking a huge cone of debris alongside the ship into gradual acceleration.

  Clanging intensified on the hull. Paul began shouting damage alerts and lockdowns over the top of Emilia's ever more inventive attempts to get a response to hails.

  Captain Siers finally had a clean image, a still picture taken just past the broken remains of a cargo hauler as the distant star lit up the incoming ship. He threw the picture into a corner of the communal display, expanding it into visibility. "Anyone know what that is?"

  Jamet spared it a single fast glance, then refocused on her display. A second singularity snapped into existence and she allocated it instantly to reinforce the first. Kipper took a noticeable speed jump, crawling up past nine hundred miles per second. "Little busy!"

  "Looks like a ball of clouds." Janson yelled across the bridge. "Or a planetoid wi' atmosphere, maybe?"

  Measurements gridded over top of the image as Emilia made a contribution. "Can't be, too small! It's barely twelve miles wide, thirty long!"

  "That is small to you?" Paul sounded pained.

  "For a planetoid, yes! And who ever heard of a hunk of rock that could navigate?!"

  She was right: The huge ball of cloudy dust was still picking up speed, faster than the Kipper could match. It was blazing a path directly towards the ship, now less than three hundred fifty thousand miles away and closing at a terrific clip. Sensor sweeps came back with wildly inconsistent results, putting the pursuer's mass at anywhere from a hundred thousand tons to over five million.

  "Janson!" Jamet made frantic motions at her display, then the incoming sensor contact.

  "Ahm tryin', ma'am!"

  Proximity alarms screamed as the Kipper skimmed by a slowly spinning hulk and nosed directly toward a wide spread of shipping containers fanning from its gaping hull. Jamet frantically palmed the navigation controls, fingers speed-tapping singularities into new positions. Kipper responded by rolling bow-upwards in a spiral hard enough to ragdoll everyone for a moment until local gravity caught up. They missed plowing through several thousand containers by less than five miles; close enough to see colored logos painted on the metal sides.

  Siers groaned, arms braced on his console. "Hell of a dodge, Jamet. Emilia, any response?"

  "No! They're mute, dead or automated!" The little technician pounded her display in frustration.

  "Any response from anyone? Local system authority? Traffic control? Entertainment feeds?"

  Which was a good question and threw Emilia off for a moment. She frowned, swiping through channels and listening. "No, captain. Nothing on GravCom at all, not even the automated beacons or a carrier signal. If we weren't smack in the middle of a huge ball of crap I would swear there wasn't anyone here."

  Paul had his sleeve up with the loose end tied over his shoulder in an improvised sling. His free arm worked menus, opening and closing them in a blur of activity that silenced breach alarms. "Electromagnetic." He suggested. "Radio signals, automated beacons. LasComm."

  "You want me to check for laser signals while we're dancing through junkyards?"

  Jamet listened with half an ear, eyes glued to her controls and nervously checking the incoming contact. It was just over two hundred thousand miles out now, coming straight at them while she lost distance with every dodge around navigational hazards. She edged both working singularities closer to the Kipper, using their event horizons to boost speed while eating some of the debris rocketing towards the ship. "Jannnsonnn, any mooooment now..."

  "Ahm working, ma'am. We took bad hits underneath, relays are having fits." He tapped the back of his neck, right over the scars. "Got every working drone on it right now, but ah can't promise."

  Something banged off the hull, loud enough to make her ears ring. Jamet swore. "Emilia! I need an overlay! Anything moving towards us-- highlight it so I can dodge!"

  "A bit goddamn busy right now, Princess."

  "I got it, lieutenant." Captain Siers threw a sensor filter over the entire forward display, outlining anything moving towards the ship in muted red. Just in time, too: Jamet yelped and cranked one wrist hard enough to hurt, pulling the Kipper sideways just long enough to skate by some sort of twisted metal lattice.