Soundless Conflicts

by S. Walker

  Her eyes darted to the callout, noting they'd lost another twenty thousand miles on the chase. Their pursuer was barely over a light-second out now and picking up speed. If whoever was steering cared about the debris field Kipper was dodging through it didn't show-- their navigation line ran straight through Jamet's heading and absolutely nowhere else.

  Which actually didn't make sense. "Captain!"

  "Listening, lieutenant. Janson, I'm giving you priority control, all systems-- speed those repairs up, pull power from anywhere you need."

  One hundred forty thousand miles out. "Captain, the incoming target! Watch the course corrections!" She wheeled the Kipper starboard around another obstacle, screaming by close enough to pull fragments of metal right off the busted hulk. Coming around the far side Jamet snapped both singularities port, then abruptly forward again in a fishtail that came close to ramming through another derelict.

  Captain Siers was staring at the navigation display, eyes darting between their ship and pursuit. He swore. "I see it, lieutenant. That shouldn't be happening."

  She cursed. "I was hoping I imagined it."

  "No, you got it right-- they're correcting to stay on a collision course the exact same instant we make any maneuver. The exact instant, before they could possibly see us."

  Janson frowned without looking up. "That's not right. Light delay should get 'em, they're more than a second out. Can't be aiming at us faster than they can see us changin' headings." He did something complicated on the display, sending clear blue lines through most of the lower schematic. "Cutting power from lower deck life support, sendin' to the Krepsfield. Sorry."

  "Nothing down there is going to die from it." Siers frowned. "Although the caf beans are going to be freeze dried pretty badly. Lieutenant, you're the navigational expert: Explanations? How are they matching corrections so fast?"

  "I don't know! Predictive maneuvers? Movement models? Psychic helm steering?" The display flashed red as something too big to make out leaned into their gravity cone, broken metal bits reaching for the hull. Jamet slid one singularity below the bow and slightly to port, using the other to slap the hulk with an event horizon-powered love tap. Kipper shuddered and crabbed sideways, the stern drifting around as they missed the obstacle. A moment later both singularities snapped forward again, straining to make up for lost speed.

  Distance numbers ticked downward in a blur, then slowed. She glanced at it: A hundred fifteen thousand and dropping. "They're gaining on every turn."

  Emilia pinged for attention, one hand waving. "I found signals! Everything's on the EM spectrum: Radio, low- and high-frequency. Absolutely nothing on GravCom." She pointed at the Medical station. "You get no credit for that."

  "None taken." Paul had an emergency medical kit open and an autopresser in his good hand. He was struggling to load a purple-colored ampule into the side of the device.

  Siers frowned, one hand coming up to scratch his mustache. "Nothing on instant communications, but EM is active. Emilia, is there anyone live? Responding real time? Or it is all automated?"

  Her visor flashed once, reflecting controls on the workstation display. "No. It's all automated. Emergency calls from both stations, hazard warnings and- oh shit." She frowned. "One of the mining rigs is losing orbit."

  Jamet angled both singularities downwards, pulling the Kipper into a shallow dive beneath a spinning sheet of hull plating nearly half a mile wide. Dying radio markers tagged it as a piece of a vessel called the CES Pinhat; if she lived through this Jamet might look it up.

  A quick glance at the callout showed pursuit correcting instantly in real time, shaving the distance to just under six figures. "Getting closer, need options! It's in the debris field with us now, but it doesn't seem to care about dodging anything." Sensors dutifully notified her as the oncoming cloud of whatever-the-hell-it-was drove straight through a smaller hauler, leaving spherical explosions and an incredible donut of blasted fragments behind. "Someone please tell me they're seeing this!"

  Captain Siers and Emilia were in discussion. "How old are the distress signals?"

  Emilia synced ship and system time. "Six- no, seven solar months now. Plus a few days." She looked heartbroken, eyebrows arching over her visor. "They've been begging for help for over half a year. Poor bastards."

  He winced sympathetically. "That matches. Corporate HQ stopped receiving quarterly reports about that time, it must have happened then."

  Paul finally got the cartridge loaded, then jammed the injection side against his leg. A long hiss later the scowl faded off his face as narcotics killed the pain of his broken arm. "If it is any consolation," he added. "I doubt they lasted more than the first few months if food shipments stopped. But I agree: Poor bastards."

  "Did the system Comm relay pass anything?" Siers was scanning through logs now, text blurring as he looked for something.

  "Doubt it, I'm pretty sure we passed the wreck on our way in."

  "Singularity online!" Janson suddenly yelled. "LT!"

  Jamet whooped, made a grabbing motion at the offered icon and slammed it into place with the other two. Kipper surged with new speed, picking up a quick five thousand miles of distance before the counter started slowly ticking down again. She yelled, enraged. "Are you serious! How are they doing that? It just isn't possible!"

  Captain Siers stopped scrolling, face set in hard lines as he looked at something on the display. "Lieutenant, I'm arming weapons."

  It felt like all the air sucked out of the bridge. Jamet had a brief, hysterical hallucination of a literal mountain of paperwork propping up an inquiry board as Corporate lawyers hurled fire and flames. "Sir, are you sure? Is that necessary? The cost, the insurance investigations alone-"

  Everyone shot her a disbelieving look at the same time. Emilia flat out sneered. "Wow, Princess. Just wow."

  "Cut it, not now. Lieutenant I'll take it on record and full authority. Concentrate on not hitting anything, firing Rents in four seconds."

  Reals doubled down on navigation, swearing quietly and sweating. Weapons weren't a thing. Well obviously they were a thing, she'd seen them during research, but they weren't something people ran around using. Cormorent torpedoes-- 'Rents in slang-- were basically tiny power plants with a Krepsfield generator on the front that served as both propulsion and lethal ordnance at the same time. When fired at a target they basically never stopped accelerating until the singularity on the front rammed straight into whoever was unfortunate enough to be on the other end. Simple, but brutally effective.

  "Firing now," Captain Siers announced, finger hammering a display toggle.

  Everyone watched on forward display as half a dozen tubes detached and flipped end over end from both sides of the Kipper. Seconds later they peeled off, singularity drives snapping on and yanking them into absurdly fast acceleration vectors headed outwards to... to...

  She frowned. "Captain, what did you shoot at?" Projected lines lit up the display, headed directly away from the ship with nothing indicated on the other end.

  "Nothing, lieutenant. Look at our pursuit distance."

  Her eyes jumped to the display. It was back over a hundred thousand now and climbing upwards. Her jaw dropped. "What! What's going on?"

  Paul got it first, but Janson beat him to the explanation. "It's the singularities. They're trackin' the gravity wells or somethin' in real time. The same way GravComm works at every distance for communications, no matter where yah are in system." His baritone voice was full of surprise and more than a little professional interest. "They can read it, know every time we change course."

  Emilia looked just as rattled as Jamet. "That's... that's crazy."

  "But it has to be true. Look." Paul pointed at the torpedo paths, then drew a line across the display from them to the angry red dot of their pursuer. For the first time it was off-course, angling after the nearest Cormorent and picking up speed.

  "Dying stars." It seemed plausible, but Jamet instantly saw a new problem. "But what about nav
igation? We can't even slow down without moving our singularities, much less change course! And every time we fling our singularities around what's that look like? Waving sparkling flags?"

  Captain Siers nodded. "It's a problem. But we have a solution, I believe." He indicated the list on his console where six dark spots showed expended torpedoes. "Distractions."

  Jamet broke into cold sweat as Corporate-trained ghosts threw riots in her soul. "For the love of the bottom line."

  "Lieutenant, get ready trade our budget for our lives."

  Emilia broke into high, hysterical laughter.

  Chapter 8

  Passing By

  Kipper launched out of the derelict graveyard at four hundred miles per second, spinning like a top and hurling singularity torpedoes in every direction. Seconds later a monstrous vessel blasted through debris after them on a collision course, streaming thick metallic clouds and shedding pieces of broken ships like leviathan scales.

  Lieutenant Jamet Reals, recent graduate of a self-administered refresher training in manual navigation, was not having a pleasant day. "It's undercutting our course again! Throw more Cormorents!" Everyone's local gravity strained as she threw the ship into another hard bank, singularities whirling to new positions to pull the hull around.

  Captain Siers wheezed through the turn as his secondary harness tightened. "Halfway through our 'Rent supply, lieutenant. We only have two dozen left, and I think our friend has started to catch on."

  "Ah think so, too." Janson agreed from the Engineer station. Reflected red indicator lights lit him up from below, throwing shadows over his broad face with every movement. "Last shot barely made it twitch for a moment." He eyed the on-screen callout from a dedicated sensor pointed directly back at their pursuit. Red numbers indicating distance whipsawed between ninety and a hundred thousand miles. "They're ridin' us pretty close."

  "Options, everyone." Siers sounded calm and pragmatic, but one look at his face showed how bad it was getting. "We can't keep running forever."

  "Relay beacons!" Emilia shouted from Comms. "There's two in stock-"

  "We're carrying relay beacons?" Jamet yelled, eyes glued to her workstation and palms still in full contact with singularity controls. "Do you know how much those cost?!"

  The short technician shouted right over her. "-we can throw them off the back! They're GravComm setups, if Big Boy out there is after singularities they'll look like supernovas!"

  "Janson?" Siers' voice was tight. "Workable?"

  "Aye, usually. But ah'm checking our hold now and it's not looking good, captain. Took a lot of hits back there, sensors are out. Also ah had ta pull power for the Krepsfield from the lower decks." He sounded apologetic.

  "So we would have to look," Paul contributed from Medical. He swiped through menus with one good arm, carefully holding his broken one out of the way as he spoke in that curiously atonal voice. "Then manually jettison. Skinsuits needed as well; I am not seeing atmosphere on most decks. Right now we have more holes than the system can count."

  "Well do you have a better idea?" Emilia demanded.

  "Asteroid belts, perhaps? Get into the rocks, find one that thing cannot just blast through and then play hide and seek."

  Siers nodded thoughtfully, hands a blur on his console. "That's not bad. Emilia, what's our distance to the nearest belt?"

  She whirled in place, both small hands grabbing icons and combining. Moments later results flashed across her visor, then popped onto the combined workspace. "Less than a minute if we go hard starboard. But we'd be going in a straight line the entire time and, uh," her mouth twisted like she'd bitten something sour.

  "Obliterated before getting halfway there." Paul sounded tired. "Planet, perhaps?" He indicated the forward display where one of the system's gas giants was almost close enough to see. "Get behind that, use it as an obstacle?"

  Emilia and Siers were shaking their heads in tandem. The captain shot him down first. "It's not a hard surface like a copper-nickel asteroid would be. It would just dip into the gas and undercut us coming around the edge. Not to mention we can't throw a singularity towards something that big; the Krepsfield can't generate an event horizon inside a larger gravity well. We'd lose navigation."

  "This is a great discussion!" Jamet abruptly screamed. "But we have to move! Hold on!" Forward workspaces lit up as she banked the Kipper through another screaming turn, sending the system's primary star flashing across their viewable area in a relativistic blur. "Fire Cormorents starboard!"

  Captain Siers punched indicators, sending another pair of torpedoes flying. "Shots away, starboard! Someone get an update, what's the gain?"

  Everyone glanced at the callout. Emilia groaned. "Gain of forty thousand. It's already back on us, ignoring the 'Rent shots."

  Janson went back to his workspace, quietly swearing as he directed repairs with increasing urgency.

  She didn't give up. "Wait, here's an idea: Launch on them instead of firing at nothing?" Emilia flicked both hands at the workspace screens, visor flashing a hotbed of rainbow swirls. "Give them some problems to handle instead of us?"

  "Not against the idea," Captain Siers threw back. "But look at the size of the vessel-- that thing is nearly planetoid status. We'd need to hit something vital to make a difference; can you get a read on the surface beneath those clouds? Give us something to target?"

  Emilia dragged icons across her display, directing scans and throwing results into a communal window on everyone's shared workspace. "I've been trying! Look at this crap! Whatever those clouds are they reflect pretty much everything back I hit it with. The only consistent results I got were from spectrographic snapshots when it exploded through those haulers."

  Siers blinked. "Spectrography? You got element flashes from it?"

  "I- I think we did, but who knows what those haulers were carrying around," Emilia seemed hesitant. "Systems came back with some wild results. It might just be cargo getting atomized at a billion miles per second."

  Paul leaned on his Medical console, torso blanking out the workspace above it. "I have a feeling that any information would help right now."

  "Fine, you asked for it. Blackbody results came back heavy on iron and carbon, with a lot of nitrogen and some phosphorus thrown in." She gestured, frustrated. "That's steel, mostly. Probably the ship hull blowing into pieces. But the color bleed on the edges was truly wild: Huge amounts of silicon, with a wild tangent into exotic compounds like ytterbium. But none of that matters," she groused. "Because the sensors are damaged, the results came back with less energy than it should."

  Siers exchanged a glance with Paul. "Why does that mean the sensors are damaged?"

  Janson waved a hand, eyes still down on his display. "Ah I got that, captain: Net energy loss is a Casimir effect." He glanced up, noting their confused looks. "Ah, sorry. Means whatever hit that cargo hauler was generatin' its own event horizon at the time. Some o' the energy went into a singularity or somethin' similar."

  "Yes, that." Emilia looked smug. "Which isn't likely: The ship would have to also be inside a black hole at the same time to pull that off."

  Captain Siers frowned, mustache twitching. "So either the sensors are wrong-"

  "That's my guess."

  "-or whatever is chasing us isn't using the same propulsion the Kipper does."

  Emilia scowled and opened her mouth, then hesitated. "I don't know."

  "Well that's just fantastic," Jamet growled. "But we're going to need another dodge soon." She pointed to the callout, finger hovering over distance numbers as they ticked downwards. "It's under seventy thousand miles, ranged. Damn thing is still accelerating, if we stopped it would blow through us in about three seconds."