Doomed Cargo

by Ian Cannon

  Tawny watched it with a sinking feeling, as though the twenty some odd years she’d spent running from her childhood had been erased, and here she was facing it brand new all over again. It was an unexpected thing, and it haunted her.

  Ben sensed his wife’s mood. The silence in the cockpit was thick. He knew it would come to this; a colony out in the middle of the trade lanes, an orphanage, an orphan returning to her past. His heart felt heavy for her.

  He said, “Hey.”

  She flashed a look at him. It made him sharpen his gaze. Was that a tear in her eye?

  He said, “You okay?”

  She nodded. Another moment of silence passed before she got up, said, “I’ll be in the back.”

  “Okay, hun.”

  She left. He made a helpless face. Nothing he could do. Tawny was always a bright, hot-headed woman. It caused him to hurt even more when she went glum. But it did happen, from time to time. The woman had a past, so it was unavoidable. They both had their moods. She just needed to be left alone a bit. He’d approach her later. For now…

  He flipped on the nav panel. “Okay, REX,” he said, “let’s get to drop number two.” He brought up their manifesto. “Looks like Tantalus. The Requiem colony. Lords, what’re they doing way out there?”

  “Avoiding the war,” REX said logically. Ben grinned at his A.I.’s dry response.

  “Right.”

  Tantalus was a dead planet way out in faraway space. It spewed toxic, sulfa-based gas into its atmosphere creating an adipocerous yellow-hued appearance. He’d never been curious about the planet, never really had any reason to venture out that far. It was, after all, a full ten light hours away. At full inner-warp it would take a day to arrive, winding them gradually through the orbital paths of a dozen other planets. The nav computer would make its own adjustments. It would give him time to relax, maybe even find a way to take Tawny’s mind off her troubles.

  “Laid in,” REX said.

  “Burn.”

  Everything wound up and they were off leaving Molos in their six.

  Chapter Seven

  It was quiet. Too quiet. Ben found himself nodding off with his feet propped up on the control panel, his body lounged back into his flight seat. Eyes were heavy. They slowly closed.

  A bleep sounded.

  His eyes opened with a—huh?

  It was just the nav computer. It was making adjustments in their flight. He flipped on the stellar course map. Their projected course showed on the screen moving through space in a wide, looping path nearly a dozen AU out from Wi’ahr. Nothing seemed wrong. So, why’d the nav computer beep at him? What was it seeing?

  He zoomed in for a closer view expecting to see obstructions in the space ahead—maybe an arrant meteor or a spontaneous traffic lane. They tended to pop up from time to time. But there was nothing, so why was the nav computer straying?

  He tapped his overhead control panel as if waking REX and said, “REX, you falling asleep, too, there buddy?”

  “Uh, no,” he said, insulted. Computers never slept. Not like humanoids, anyway.

  “You been drinking?”

  “No. Got any?”

  “We’re wandering off course,” Ben said.

  “Oh.” There was an embarrassed chuckle. “Readjusting.”

  Ben looked up a bit intrigued. “What is it, REX?”

  “Not sure. I’ll run a diagnostic on my nav computer.”

  “Okay,” Ben said, and settled back. He closed his eyes, but found himself suddenly restless. He propped up and threw a look over his shoulder. No Tawny. He sighed, got up and went to check on her.

  He found her in her alcove off to the port side of the passenger hold. She was leaned back in her ergo-chair silhouetted against the star drop. Her silky figure showed stark and mysterious in the gloomy light. She read a holobook, consumed in the text.

  “What’re you reading?”

  She put it away, looked up. “Nothing.”

  He leaned against a bulkhead and gave her a knowing look. She hadn’t been reading at all. She was dwelling. “You want to talk about it?”

  “It’s just stuff.”

  “Orphan stuff?”

  She looked up giving him a crooked look and nodded her head.

  “You want to talk about it?” he asked. A moment went by. It was strangely uncomfortable. He figured if she didn’t want to talk about it, nothing he could do. Switching topics, he said, “Well, we’re in route to Tantalus. Should be arriving in about—”

  “I shouldn’t have gone there,” she blurted.

  He looked at her, didn’t say anything.

  She said, “Those kids. That girl. It’s not right. It’s not—” She made a miserable sound.

  “It hurts you to see that, doesn’t it?” he assumed.

  She gave him a sincere look, nodded a yes.

  “You’ve been there.”

  “Yeah.” She looked up with misty eyes. “Not much to say, I guess.”

  He nodded with commiseration. “I know.”

  “I just want to help.”

  Still nodding, he said, “Yeah.”

  “But I can’t.”

  He gave her an empathetic smile. They both had demons.

  REX interrupted, “Hey, Cap. You want to come see this?”

  He looked up. “What is it, REX?”

  “Well, I think I found out what’s flubbin’ up my nav comp.”

  Tawny and Ben switched an interested look and headed to the cockpit.

  “I analyzed the nav comp, didn’t find anything, so I checked a few other systems. Check this out,” REX said illuminating a diagnostic readout on the main screen. “You see this?”

  Ben looked at it, unimpressed. It was a schematics chart of REX’s drive systems, from retro rockets to inner-warp. It looked very complex, but he’d seen it before. Nothing seemed immediately amiss. He merely said, “Yeah.”

  “Okay, that’s what you see, right?” REX said.

  “Yeah.”

  “This is what I see.” The image on the screen broke apart and replaced with sheets of running code. Symbols. Numbers. Thousands of commands every second. Millions a minute. Billions a day.

  “Are you saying you have a headache?” Ben said.

  “Sometimes.” He froze the code on his screen, then scrolled it down, backing up through his memory by several minutes. It stopped. “There. Now do you see?”

  Ben chuckled, said, “Looks all the same to me, pal.”

  The screen zoomed into the code illuminating a single line. “That, right there.”

  Ben gave it a quizzical look, said, “Huh.”

  “Interesting, isn’t it?” REX said.

  “Yes, it is.”

  Tawny leaned forward, eyes on the screen. She said, “What is it?”

  Ben cleared his throat, said, “Okay, this is REX’s drive system—mag drive, retros, combustion, inner-warp, all that.”

  “Yeah?”

  “But that’s not drive code. That’s something else.”

  “That’s right,” REX said. “That’s comm.”

  Tawny scrunched her face up and looked at Ben. “Comm code in the drive systems?”

  “Yep.”

  “How’d it get there?”

  Ben said, “Beats me. REX, can you cypher it?”

  “I’ll put it through.”

  The comm system lit up. A sound came over the internal system that made them cup their ears. A high-pitched squeal that broke off into digital white noise, like a voice from the ether crying out in agony. Then it died.

  “The heck was that?” Ben said.

  A quiet whup came over the system next. It was REX audibly flushing with embarrassment. “Sorry, guys. So, that’s what you hear. But this is what I hear.”

  A series of ticks and burps sounded off in perfect, synchronized intervals, like a very specific code.

  “What is that?” Tawny said.

  “Those are binary words,” REX said.

  “Binary words in your
engines?” Ben said.

  “Yep. That’s why we bumped off course. My systems didn’t know how to translate them.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “Well, I’m not a humanoid, but to me it sounds like orders.”

  “Orders—to do what?” Ben asked.

  “Don’t know. The message is not complete. It’s just part of the … oh, look. More code.” He spotted more of the gibberish laid into his command cycle.

  Ben said, “Piece it together.”

  “Okay. Give me a minute.” They could hear the code splicing together—more clicking and ticking.

  Tawny’s eyebrows drew together, thinking. “So, why were they in our drive systems?”

  REX said, “Beats me. It’s as if someone was trying to get our attention, so they were jacking with our nav control.”

  “They took us off course hoping we’d run a diagnostic,” Ben said putting it together. “And find their little message.”

  Tawny said, “Like a message in a bottle.”

  “Uh-huh,” REX said.

  “That’s disconcerting.”

  “You think someone’s in trouble?” Tawny asked.

  Ben shrugged—Maybe.

  “Okay, got it,” REX said. “I’m putting it through the translator. Maybe we’ll get a language.”

  They waited, then heard a distinctive humanoid voice amidst the signal: “Distance nineteen astro units. Ascend to zero degrees, lateral plain. Adjust to zero degrees, vertical plain. One through five armed. Wave two, co-ordinate feed. Wave three, prep.”

  Ben flinched. He’d heard this type of order before. “Those are bombardment orders. Three waves.”

  Tawny gave him a severe look.

  Ben rubbed his lips thinking. “Nineteen astro units. That’s halfway across the system. These are long range warheads.”

  “What does it mean?” Tawny said.

  Ben continued, “Zero ascension, zero dissension. No change. Same plain.” He felt his blood chill. Someone was firing at something from half the twin solar system away sharing the exact same cosmic plain. This wasn’t ship-to-ship. And it wasn’t surface to atmosphere. Only one type of object shared a common cosmic plain. Planets.

  This was planet-to-planet.

  “Bi-gods, someone’s about to get hit, big time.”

  “Who?” Tawny said.

  “Don’t know. REX, is that all? Are there target coordinates?”

  “Um. Uh. Yeah! Coming through.”

  A string of numbers displayed on the screen. Ben nodded, “Those are planetary coordinates alright.”

  Tawny’s voice came out breathless, her skin flushed white. “Oh my Gods!” She clawed at his arm trying to speak, but nothing came out.

  “Sweetie, what?”

  She finally said, “Manifesto. Get our contract manifesto.”

  Ben emitted it over the holopad.

  There it was.

  Those same coordinates.

  A unique cube of space.

  Their first stop.

  The Molos system.

  Haven Crest.

  It was the strike target.

  REX was beyond his top speed. At half light inner-warp, time began to distort. At two thirds inner-warp, he would. The cockpit was already beginning to shimmy.

  “How much time?” Tawny yelled.

  “To us, or them?” REX asked.

  She scrunched her face at him. She had no idea what any of that meant. Something about near-light speeds and relativistic time and blah blah blah. To her, it was all the same. “Just get us there!” she cried.

  Back in the main hold, Ben stormed to the holotable and called, “REX, show me Haven Crest.”

  The planet Molos emitted over the holotable in huge 3-D representation—a sphere taking up ten cubed feet of space. A dot showed the orbiting colony at its western equator. “Zoom out, one astro unit,” Ben said. The planet Molos shrank dramatically as the image pulled away. Other planets became visible. “Nineteen AU,” he called. The map pulled further away until half the twin solar system showed. Scale was lost. The planets became no more than glowing highlights with their orbital paths arcing through the room, and their magnetospheres visible in large, lighted swaths. The sun Ae’ahm appeared way over in the upper quadrant of the 3-D space.

  Ben said, “Overlay the co-ordinate set in reverse fashion using Haven Crest as the point of origin.” A bevy of hypothetical yarns of light emanated through the map, all beginning at Haven Crest. “Omit all hypotheticals that don’t culminate into a planetary locale.”

  The strings of light blinked away as REX’s command computer eliminated possible trajectories given Ben’s orders. In moments, there was only one trajectory left. It bowed away from Haven Crest curving gracefully through the room following a precise course in and around planetary orbits. His eyes followed it all the way to …

  He put a hand up to his mouth.

  Golotha, capitol world of the Imperium.

  “Oh no …” he muttered before realizing Tawny had stormed from the cockpit and stood behind him. He turned to face her. She spilled a look of confusion and worry.

  Golotha had fired rockets at Molos from nineteen AU away. Just under two billion miles. They were on their way, and they were going to obliterate Haven Crest. Tawny saw it, too. There was no hiding it.

  “Why?” she gasped.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Will we make it?”

  He calculated in his head. It was vaguely simple math. “We have to assume those rockets are EmDrive warheads. Point-nine-nine warp. That puts them there in just under three hours, relativistic.”

  “Will we make it?” she repeated, angrily.

  “We don’t know when they were fired.”

  “Benji!” she yelled, eyes filling with tears of worry. “Will we make it?”

  He didn’t know how to answer that question. Haven Crest was two hours away at REX’s top speed. But what did it matter? They were going regardless. He looked at her and said, “Yeah, we’ll make it.” She nodded and bolted for the cockpit. He called, “Tawny,” spinning her around. He said, “We’re flying into an inferno.”

  The look in her face was one of determination. She said, “I don’t care. We have to get them out of there.”

  Them. He knew who she meant. Orphans.

  He nodded withholding any rebuttal and merely said, “Right.”

  “We’ll be in local communication range in,” REX paused, then, “fifteen seconds.”

  “Slow to maximum thruster velocity,” Ben said.

  The inner-warp cyclone reversed into a multitude of star-streaks that all collapsed down into points of light, and Molos zoomed into view.

  “There they are!” Tawny cried.

  The station became visible above the Molosian atmosphere, framed by the planet’s lively pastel body. The moon Dalus was higher in the distance, shedding a silvery halo down on Haven Crest’s starward side. Long lines of commerce stretched from the station. Lights blinked. It looked tiny at distance. The station had no idea what was streaking toward them at near-light-speed.

  “Open comm. All channels.”

  “Open,” she said, her voice undermined by the frantic situation.

  “Haven, this is the private freighter REX on unassigned approach, come back,” Ben called.

  No voice returned.

  Ben said, “Haven, this is an emergency call, come back!”

  Tawny pointed. “REX, get us to the nearest docking hub.”

  REX executed a quick scan of the station. “They’re all taken. We’ll have to wait in line.”

  Tawny made a frustrated sound and said, “Just get us closer.”

  The comm said, “This is Haven Crest. Uh, welcome back, REX. What can we—’”

  “Get Callan on the horn, now!”

  “Uh—okay. What’s the nature of—”

  “Listen,” Ben barked, “Your colony is in serious trouble. Get Callan.”

  “Hold.”

  A mo
ment later, Callan said, “Captain Dash, this is Callan.”

  “Callan, listen. You guys—” he paused miserably. This was going to be some shocking news. “You guys are about to be under attack. EmDrive warheads are headed toward you now. You have to get your people off that station.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, it’s a shocker, I know. There’s no time to digest it. Just begin evacuation procedures, immediately.”

  “By who?”

  “I don’t know. Look, you’re going to have to trust me on this. Three waves. They’re coming your way right now.”

  REX said, “Cap, I’m registering several objects dropping in from warp. Quadrant plain, two-seventy degrees. They’ll be in visual range in…”

  Tawny and Ben both shot a horrified look through the viewport at two-seventy. “Oh—there they are,” REX said.

  They popped into view one at a time, very rapidly. Five of them. EmDrive rockets. They were visible against the bright, silver field of Dalus. And they were moving fast. “Oh no!” Ben gasped.

  Tawny grabbed onto his arm impulsively and shrieked, “Callan, evacuate the kids!”

  They were too late. Missed it by minutes. All they could do was watch. The rockets pierced across the moon’s backdrop and out into the vault of space, headed toward the station like dart trails. The distance shortened. Callan’s voice began screaming over the comm. He saw it, too. Death approaching. Tawny slammed her eyes shut, put her face into Ben’s shoulder. She couldn’t watch. Blood froze up inside her veins. Breath held. Life stopped. Who could do such a thing? What cold-blooded humanoid horror would murder a colony of space refugees?

  Who could murder orphans?

  Perfect children?

  An innocent girl?

  In three.

  Two.

  One.

  The first rocket missed the station. Ben’s eyes widened in shock. Then the second missed. He gasped. Then the third, fourth, fifth—all missed. They weren’t even terribly close, perhaps half a kilometer. They streaked by headed for the surface of Molos.

  Callan’s screams turned to grueling sighs of relief.

  Tawny opened one eye. The station was still there. There was no cloud of erupting debris. She opened the other. Below, five thin contrails sliced through the Molos atmosphere growing further and further away. The rockets were about to burn up over the planet, explode in the Molosian skies.