Across Enemy Space

by L. J. Simpson

  “Yes, sir,” said Redmayne uneasily. “Begging the Brigadier’s pardon, but I have no knowledge of the data contained within the Raven’s hard drives. I’m assured that in the event of capture, the enemy will not be able to break the encryption codes.”

  “That’s right,” said the IT engineer. “The drives are protected by a spatially sensitive fractal encryption code that is it to all intents and purposes unbreakable.”

  “You are naturally concerned that if you are briefed on the coming offensive, your knowledge could – in the event of your capture – be extracted and used to the enemy’s advantage,” said Torrance.

  “Exactly… sir,” said Redmayne.

  “Don’t worry, Major. We have no intention of giving you details of our battle plans. Nor – if you were worrying – do we plan to equip you with a suicide pill.”

  “I’m not sure I follow,” said Redmayne.

  “Major, you have spent the last ten days based here at Trinity, during which time you have conducted a number of trials in the surrounding sectors. I understand you have been testing the Raven’s capabilities for locating static defenses and also detecting and cataloguing combat vessels.”

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “And what have you detected?” asked Faulkner.

  Throughout his deployment at Trinity Base, Redmayne had been completely focused on testing the Raven’s ability to detect threats – so focused that he hadn’t looked past the results of the scans. They were just training flights, after all. Now he replayed some of those missions through his mind, recalling all the major units he’d identified – the Colossus, Leviathan, Thunderer, Tempest, Fairfax, St. Bart, Atlantis, Caspian, Orion, Minotaur… and more besides, all of them with their support groups in tow, and all – according to the scans – with a full weapons payload and fuel cells charged to full capacity.

  “A preponderance of Alliance units in our center,” he said slowly. “With an unusually heavy concentration of capital ships.”

  “Which tells you what?”

  It didn’t take much working out. That number of capital ships within the same radius could only mean one thing. They were gathering for an offensive, and sitting right opposite them was over the border was…

  “Tarsus. We’re planning an assault on Tarsus – and sometime in the very near future, judging by the readiness of the fleet.”

  “That is a most interesting conclusion,” said Faulkner. “Please understand that no-one here can either confirm or deny that Tarsus is our primary target. I apologize for our secrecy but ambiguity now may aid you in the event of capture. All we ask is that you follow your instincts. In addition, we need you to pass on this code – AP2755. Be sure to remember it, Major. Our allies on the other side of Combine space will understand its meaning.”

  “AP2755,” repeated Redmayne, imprinting it on his brain.

  “We realize the heavy burden we are placing upon your shoulders,” said Torrance. “I understand you have already been briefed on what to expect if you are taken prisoner. There is only so much that a man can tolerate and we neither ask nor expect the impossible. We leave it to you to do your duty as you see fit.”

  “Understood,” said Redmayne, belatedly comprehending that the visiting flag officers hadn’t come simply to wish him bon voyage. No matter… The extra responsibility and the realization of what he already knew changed nothing at all; it made the mission neither easier nor harder and would change nothing in the event of his capture. They’d torture him just the same whether he knew anything of value or whether he didn’t.

  He’d just have to make sure he didn’t get captured. And remember that code – AP2755. He hoped he’d have more luck remembering that than the motto he’d learned when he first gained his commission. Noli umquam voluntarius esse – never volunteer for anything.

  Chapter 24: The Crossing

  It was difficult to miss a carrier battle group – even one that was doing its best to stay covert. This particular battle group wasn’t even trying. They wanted to be noticed.

  The Tigris was the heaviest unit in the Alliance fleet; eight hundred meters long and weighing in at three hundred thousand tons, she carried eight squadrons of attack fighters and assault craft. As normal doctrine dictated, she headed up a battle group, travelling in the company of an escort generally made up of a cruiser and three or four smaller vessels. On this occasion, the escort was double the norm with a pair of heavy cruisers and half a dozen destroyers in attendance, all surrounding their charge in a protective shield.

  The battle group set off from Trinity Base and after passing through the Shield, they set course straight for the frontier, dropping out of warp no more than a light year from Combine territory. As soon as the group was arranged in combat formation, they turned to starboard and began a sub-light run across the front of Combine space.

  Aboard the Tigris, two squadrons of Ares fighters sat in their launch tubes, ready to deploy at a moment’s notice should the enemy decide to intervene. Another two squadrons were on a one minute alert, their pilots fully suited up and waiting in the ready room adjacent to the hangar deck.

  After cruising along the border for thirty minutes, the battle group again went to into warp, emerging into normal space one light year further along the frontier. This time, a small Combine scouting force came nosing about. Remaining on their own side of the lines, they stayed well out of range but maintained contact with the Tigris and her escorts as they cruised steadfastly along.

  The Tigris’s commander let the Combine scouts have a good look at his formation before ordering another jump. The two leading destroyers were first to leave, shooting off into hyperspace with the usual blaze of light. A few seconds later, the Tigris and the two cruisers followed, the remaining four destroyers jumping independently at ten second intervals.

  Just before the Tigris made the jump, the Raven exited a small hangar on the carrier’s beam. Shielded from the Combine scouts by the Tigris’s great bulk, Redmayne engaged the thrusters and quickly guided the Raven away from the formation and into open space. He looked on in awe as one by one the rest of the fleet disappeared, leaving the Raven alone in the darkness. Well, almost.

  The enemy scouting group was still there, sitting just a few hundred thousand kilometers off his beam. Redmayne flipped on his sensors and waited for the Raven’s computers to classify the enemy vessels. A moment later he had the answer – three Whisky class scouts – virtually obsolete as far as combat missions were concerned but still quick and agile enough for use as border guards. They held position for a few minutes before aiming their bows at Combine space and jumping off into hyperspace.

  It was time to go to work. Redmayne began his first long range survey of the area ahead. According to intelligence, for the next two light years there was nothing in front of him but empty space. Intelligence might well be right but they weren’t the ones sitting here. He’d do his own checks before he entered the lion’s den. His long range scanners cut through into subspace and began analyzing anything that showed up against the normal background of space. The scan ate up real time – it would be a good hour before he obtained any meaningful results and another hour on top to firm up the data. The longer the scan, the more faith he could put in the results. In the meantime, all he could do was wait.

  Until now Redmayne had never made it past the front lines. Venturing that far had been exciting enough and he counted himself lucky to have come away with his life. There were certainly enough who hadn’t. Of all the times he had delivered a twenty five man rifle platoon to the landing zones, only once had the same number survived to make the return journey. Even bare of human emotion is was a depressing enough statistic, but the reality meant taking in a group of living, breathing young men and women and returning with a payload of broken bodies, some shrieking in pain, some zipped up in body bags. By his third or fourth mission he’d stopped looking at the faces of his passengers – at least on the way into the drop zone. It wasn’t a conscious decisi
on – it just happened.

  The solitude of this particular mission appealed to him. It was just him and the enemy – literally. In the back of his mind he knew that a lot of people were relying on him but for once they weren’t actually here sitting beside him. It made for a good, clean fight… or something like that. And sitting here all alone on the edges of Combine space was a completely awe inspiring experience. For perhaps the first time in the war he found that he was actually enjoying himself.

  He waited patiently as his sensors gathered data from the void ahead. It wasn’t a job you could rush and took just as long as it took. His sensors could detect the emissions from warp disrupters long before they were powerful enough to threaten him and the same went for enemy sensors. It was just a matter of being methodical, remaining calm and staying out of their reaches.

  He shifted in his seat – an unusually comfortable one at that. Just as well, considering it was where he’d be spending most of the next week. It could have been worse; there was enough room – just – to stand up in the small space behind the pilot’s chair and the Raven even had a tiny ablutions unit and a galley of sorts, though neither was much larger than a small cupboard.

  Finally, the results of the scan appeared on his tactical display. Intel had it right for once – the way ahead was clear. There was a disrupter spike off to starboard and some weak S-band emissions originating from somewhere above and to port. Neither gave him any cause for concern. He locked in the co-ordinates for the jump and hit the button. As the stars shimmered and then faded away, a faint tremor passed through his body, almost like a wave passing by a swimmer. The hyper-drive unraveled the fabric of space-time and the Raven passed smoothly through, swallowed whole by a realm where Einstein’s laws no longer applied. Redmayne often wondered if Einstein would have minded.

  It would take six hours reach his first waypoint, designated checkpoint Alpha, which lay exactly halfway between two uninhabited systems dead ahead. Redmayne took the chance to catch up on his sleep and then spent the remainder of the time reviewing the route that the Intel guys had prepared for him.

  From checkpoint Alpha they recommended two further jumps to circumnavigate a known Combine facility based within a system called Pictor. The most recent data suggested that a construction battalion was based there. The CBs wouldn’t pose a threat but there was a good the chance that the unit would be protected by an escort – most likely a flotilla of corvettes or frigates. They most definitely would pose a threat if he happened to be detected.

  Counting down the final few seconds, Redmayne tightened his straps. Checkpoint Alpha was still well outside the ‘core’ of Combine territory and the chances of his dropping out of warp in the vicinity of an enemy ship were remote. Remote… but real enough. As the Raven dropped out of hyperspace with the familiar tremor, Redmayne quickly scanned his instruments, looking for signs of danger.

  Quiet as a tomb… and just the way we like it, he told himself. He allowed the Raven to drift as he scanned the recommended course to checkpoint Beta. Once again, nothing appeared on his thread board.

  Amazing… Intel were two for two, he thought. Actually, that was being unfair; Intel got a lot right, but you tended to forget that, remembering only the times when they got it wrong, mainly because their mistakes often got a whole lot of people killed.

  Two jumps later and Redmayme was sitting on a plane level with Pictor. He was too far away to tell what was stationed there but there were signs of heavy traffic through the system. Every warp jump left a tell-tale signature and the bigger the ship, the bigger the imprint. In the vicinity of Pictor there were signatures aplenty, both large and small.

  He was also picking up a signal that wasn’t recognized by his data banks. It was similar to the readings you’d get from a warp field disrupter, but subtly different. He spent the next few minutes recording and cataloguing the emissions. Whatever they were, they were cutting deeply into sub-space. Redmayne could only conclude that they were emanating from whatever the Combine was using to block communications.

  This was high value data, something that would be of real importance to the Alliance. He was sorely tempted to close on the emitter and collect more data but it wasn’t in his mission brief and time was against him. Reluctantly, he turned his attention to scanning ahead in preparation for jump number four.

  This time the data didn’t match Intel’s forecast; there was a battery of warp disrupters directly ahead, with a scanning array sitting beyond that. They must be protecting something of value but whatever it was he had best stay well clear. He made a series of short range jumps, skirting the boundary of the disrupter field until he found its edge, considering himself fortunate that from there he was able to reach checkpoint Delta in a single jump. He only had the capacity for so many unscheduled jumps and that was three gone already. If he carried on like this it was going to be a close run thing…

  And so it went on; warp, drift, scan, repeat. By the end of the fifth day he was well past the halfway point and if he’d had any doubts about the Raven’s capabilities, they were about to disappear.

  Entering normal space near checkpoint Tau, he detected a pair of frigates travelling at sub-light speed across his bows. They hadn’t shown up on his long range scans and had almost certainly arrived here while he’d been in hyperspace. Smooth as the Raven’s transitions were, her emergence into normal space caused ripples in the fabric of space-time; ripples which could be detected if the enemy was close enough.

  Sure enough, the frigates slowed and turned towards him. Redmayne had two choices – flee, or trust in his ship’s stealth capabilities and sit it out. The Raven was already powered down after the jump and the few emissions that his systems were generating should be retained within the composite hull. The same composites should also absorb most of the enemy’s scans – at least at their present range.

  Redmayne elected to wait them out. His passive scanners had already identified them as Copperheads, amongst the most capable frigates in the Combine inventory. That was not good news; they wouldn’t catch him if it came to a stern chase but they might just bring him down with a lucky shot. Even if he did manage to evade, he’d be forced to make the next jump without scanning ahead. Much better to wait – at least until he had no other options.

  The Copperheads slowed further; almost certainly they had detected an anomaly and were now trying to localize it. Still closing at an oblique angle, Redmayne noted that they had narrowed the resolution of their beams – if they were going to pick him up now was the time.

  He held his breath as his sensors detected one of the Copperhead’s beams sweep over the Raven. If they picked up an echo from his hull, the beam would surely return, sweeping back and forth until the enemy got a precise fix of his location. Then his only recourse would be to flee. His hands hovered above the engine controls, ready to smash the throttles wide open and make a dash for safety but the beam never returned. The two Copperheads reverted back to their original course and receded into the distance.

  Redmayne watched them depart devoid of emotion. No surprise, no elation, nothing. Realized dawned that he was slowly but surely approaching exhaustion, both physically and mentally. This was not the kind of mission that he was used to – it wasn’t the kind of mission anyone was used to. As a landing craft pilot he was often subjected to extreme pressure, but only for relatively short periods of time, after which he would have time to wind down, get drunk, smash a few glasses and rid his system of whatever demons he’d picked up during the ordeal.

  This mission – one that perhaps no-one was truly qualified for – was different. Until just now, he had faced no imminent danger but the ever present likelihood was sufficient to wear him down by degrees. He’d managed to snatch a few hours sleep here and there and indeed had medication to keep him awake and his senses tuned, but there was a limit to their effectiveness. Right now he’d had enough of the damned pills; the thing he needed above all else was rest – he was running close to empty.


  His next jump was to checkpoint Upsilon, almost exactly in center of the greatest void in the whole of Combine space and the most isolated checkpoint of the whole journey. He decided to make the jump and then rest, recharging his batteries before embarking on the final stretch of his journey into NT territory. A couple of hours later he had enough data to make the jump and after making one final check of the immediate vicinity, he engaged the hyper drive and sped away.

  Redmayne slept for seven straight hours as the Raven drifted slowly in the blackness near checkpoint Upsilon. As expected, the area had been devoid of activity and on arrival he gratefully removed his helmet, boots and gloves and reclined his seat as far back as it would go. He laid back his head and despite a nagging pain around his temples he was sound asleep within minutes. It was a deep, dreamless sleep, the kind that only comes from acute fatigue. His breathing slow and measured, he barely stirred as the hours passed by. And while he slept, his scanners searched far into the distance, probing the reaches of what he hoped would be his last stop-off in Combine space; if all went well, the jump after that could take him clear into the safety of the Northern Territories.

  When he awoke, the headache had gone and he felt completely rested. For a while, he just lay there, completely motionless, his eyelids still heavy as the illuminated dials and gauges on the console swam into focus. Stretching his arms and legs, he eased the kinks out if his body and then brought his seat back to the upright position. His limbs still had a heaviness about them but the weariness inside was gone, replaced with a calmness that had been missing during the previous few days.

  Munching on an energy bar, he checked the scans of his route to the next checkpoint. The sensors had been running for almost eight hours and the incoming data was the most comprehensive he’d collected to date. There were three distinct threats surrounding checkpoint Phi, his planned point of entry into normal space. Two were logged on his map, one wasn’t. The latter was a system previously thought to be uninhabited but was now showing signs of heavy traffic in and out. The three threats formed a triangle with checkpoint Phi located exactly in the center. It wasn’t ideal but there was nothing barring him from flying straight in and after that, there would be just one last jump, a final dash across the border to safety. The border zone would be well defended, making the last jump the most dangerous of all, but he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.