by M. D. Cooper
Just do what you’re supposed to do, you bastards.
The fishbones passed over the hundred-thousand-kilometer mark, but didn’t fire. Both enemy ships were on nearly the same vector now, streaking toward the Lantzer, their trajectory lined up to take them only a few hundred kilometers off the ISF cruiser’s bow.
“Grapeshot firing!” Karma announced, the ship shuddering as the massive gun launched several tons of material at a hundredth the speed of light.
A long groan sounded from somewhere above the bridge, and Jessica patted the edge of the holotank. “Hold together, girl.”
Gil said.
“It’s not that bad,” Jessica shot back. “There are still a half-dozen structural mounts holding the arch in place.”
“Noted,” Jessica replied, glancing at Lucida, who was looking up at her. “Do what you can to reduce strain.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
Jessica turned her attention back to the holotank, watching as the two enemy ships predictably shifted away from the apparent path of the grapeshot.
They eased onto the anticipated vectors, and though it was exactly what she wanted, Jessica wasn’t ready to crow with delight just yet. The enemy had feinted more than once; there was no reason to believe that it couldn’t happen again.
“They’re right in the pocket,” Karma announced, sounding no more optimistic than Jessica felt. “Our shot is shifting into position. Impacts in seventy-two seconds.”
“No one spoke over the following minute, and when the time remaining reached ten seconds, the weapons officer began an audible countdown. A second after it hit zero, scan picked up impacts on one ship, but not the other.
“F2 jinked!” Karma called out.
“Shift all targeting to F3!” Jessica ordered.
Scan showed multiple direct hits, and that ship’s shields had to be weakened.
Railguns one and two belched out tungsten rounds—those guns were thankfully mounted further aft on the Lantzer—and though the deck shuddered beneath them with each round in the salvo, nothing tore free from the hull.
The kinetic slugs streaked through the black toward F3, and the Lantzer’s beams joined in, tagging the enemy vessel and further weakening its shields.
In response, both enemy ships fired their weapons on the ISF cruiser. Proton beams slashing through the black to slam into the Lantzer’s stasis shields in a dazzling display.
Gil announced as the enemy’s shots blinded the ship’s sensors.
Then the fishbones streaked past, and scan updated showing F3 bleeding a trail of plasma and ionized gas in its wake.
Cheers came from Karma and Lucida, but Jessica withheld hers. Though the plasma stream was coming from near the fishbone’s engines, it was still maneuvering, albeit poorly.
“Shit, F2 is braking hard!” Karma called out a second later.
Jessica shook her head, watching as the enemy vessel executed a burn that had its main weapons facing the Lantzer.
Gil announced, and the enemy ship’s beams splashed harmlessly against them.
A sigh of relief came from Lucida, but Jessica wasn’t ready to celebrate just yet.
“Shields back around the whole—” Jessica’s words were cut off as the deck rocked beneath them, the ship’s a-grav dampeners straining to keep the crew safe as the cruiser spun through space.
Gil said, his voice laden with worry.
Jessica had already surmised that.
she called out to the crew, knowing that the missiles had struck close to where Trevor and West were working.
Trevor was first to reply.
A sense of profound relief came over her as the rest of the crew signaled that they were alive. Meg broke an arm when she was flung against a bulkhead, and everyone other than the bridge crew had a few flesh wounds.
Gill swore, the first time Jessica had heard the AI do so.
She turned to the forward display to see a ship’s integrity warning. Visuals from the hull showed the dorsal arch—including railgun three—peel off and drift away. Lucida muttered curses under her breath as she struggled to correct the ship’s spin.
Jessica pursed her lips, not letting the fear that was threatening to subsume her take over. She’d survived far too much in her life to believe there weren’t still options.
One of which was to surrender.
Glenn said, interrupting her ruminations.
Jessica answered wordlessly, wondering what the man was getting at.
Jessica’s eyes widened and she let out a curse, garnering the attention of Karma and Lucida, who she waved off.
she asked.
Tangel had given her a brief overview, but she’d never learned the specifics. It annoyed her that Glenn hadn’t suggested it sooner, but she could imagine why he was hesitant to bring it up until now.
Jessica said, half expecting to hear Cheeky laugh at the statement.
Glenn made a sound like he was scared to say what the caveat was.
Jessica urged him on.
Jessica barked a laugh, shaking her head as she considered their options.
She looked at the holotank. F2 was braking hard and would be back in firing range in eight minutes, though F3 had killed its engines and was adrift on a vector away from the Lantzer. With the ship’s dorsal arch gone, they couldn’t envelop the entire cruiser in regular shields, let alone stasis shields. The moment that F2 came back around and opened fire, they’d be done for.
Chief Glenn signaled his acknowledgment, and Jessica updated the rest of crew with the plan. To her surprise, no one objected to the idea of leaving Exdali free to roam this region of space.
The one thing that wore on her mind was the presence of the Exdali in interstellar space to begin with. They’d tried dipping the Lantzer into the dark layer twice more, both times finding it teeming with the things that dwelt there.
The crew had debated the presence of the dark layer creatures to no end. They’d settled on two possibilities. The first was that for Exdali to be present all over the galaxy, it was possible that they migrated in some fashion, and that’s what they were in the midst of. The second was that the Caretakers had somehow summoned the things to this area.
Despite the lack of any clear evidence to point toward the second option, it was what Jessica feared most to be true. It also meant that there was a possibility that the ascended AIs could control the creatures—though if that was the case, she would have expected them to use Exdali in their attack.
In addition to all that, she considered that the ascended AIs would be able to stuff the things back in the rift and close it up with no harm done.
That’s something we’ll just have to risk.
“Roll the ship,” Jessica ordered Lucida. “Let’s keep our—well, what remains of our dorsal arch away from them.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the ensign replied, plotting a burn that Jessic
a and Gil approved.
“Oh crap!” Karma exclaimed a moment later. “F3 is releasing more drones!”
“What?!” Jessica demanded.
The first two days of fighting against the fishbone cruisers had been more of a war with their drones than anything else. One of attrition, to be precise. In the end, the enemy ships had depleted their drone fleets, smashing them uselessly against the Lantzer’s shields—though that onslaught had pushed the cobbled-together systems, causing many secondary and tertiary failures across the ship.
When the fishbones had ceased releasing drones, the Lantzer’s crew had been wary of more to come, but four days later, had believed the ships to be out of the disposable machines.
“How many?” Jessica asked, though she knew scan was still differentiating the signatures.
“A hundred, at least,” Karma said in a quiet voice. “Leading edge is ten minutes out.”
Jessica called down to the chief before reaching out to Trevor and West a moment later.
Trevor replied without hesitation.
Jessica said, feeling some measure of relief at the good news.
Trevor said with a laugh, and she couldn’t quite tell if it was rueful or nonchalant.
* * * * *
Trevor glanced at West, who was climbing the ring segment furthest down the rail, slotting an antimatter pod into place. Though the ring was nearly ready to deploy, it would take a few minutes to assemble once in space—the result of hauling something in the ship that the entire vessel had to fit through.
“I told the admiral we’ll be ready in a minute!” he called out to the engineer.
“What?!” West exclaimed, turning sharply and nearly losing her grip. “We’re easily ten minutes out. I haven’t even initialized the maneuvering systems.”
“I already did,” Trevor replied. “Just get that antimatter in there and get down.”
West grunted something that he couldn’t quite make out, but half a minute later, she was on the deck, and Trevor pulled on his EV suit’s helmet before walking to the dock’s command console where he activated the bay doors.
The grav shields were working in the bay, but he wasn’t taking any chances, and began a depressurization process as well. West jogged to his side, pulling on her own helmet and giving him a sour look.
Trevor replied.
West nodded as she activated the rails.
Trevor suggested.
West said absently as the first section of ring slid out into space.
Trevor said as the second section slid out.
There were six more to go, and neither he nor West spoke further as they drifted away from the ship.
The engineer brought up a display of the ring on the console.
They both fell silent as the maneuvering jets on section four fired, bringing it closer to its mate. Then one of the jets cut out, and the arch slewed aside.
West bellowed, killing section four’s jets and activating three’s.
After a moment of vector correction, the sections began to ease toward one another while the others also mated. A minute later, the ring was assembled and began its activation sequence.
Trevor relayed to his wife.
she replied soberly.
* * * * *
“Gate’s coming online,” Jessica announced, and Lucida nodded as she looked at the readings on her console.
“Yes, ma’am, jump targeting is transferring to my station. Shoot, several of its maneuvering thrusters aren’t responding…. And wow! West knows some really good curses.”
Jessica saw the readings on the console next to her. “Looks like we’ll have to come around.”
Gil cautioned.
“Yes.”
Jessica lifted a hand to her mouth, focusing on her breathing as the timing for three events converged. The Caretakers’ remaining fishbone ship was closing fast, already within firing range of the Lantzer, and soon the gate. They’d be within optimal range in a minute.
The grav systems were already opening the rift to the dark layer, creating an inky rent in space that made the interstellar darkness look like noon on a terraformed world.
Gil announced.
On top of every other risk they were taking, the Call was where things could really go terribly wrong. When the Exdali exited the rift, the things would move toward the source of the signal. When the ISF fleet at Carthage had used the dark layer creatures to destroy the Orion Guard fleet, they had used multiple signals from hundreds of ships to guide the creatures.
Jessica did not have that option.
Luckily, Glenn had come up with a way to bounce the signal off the Caretakers’ ship, using the enemy’s own grav shields to echo and broadcast the signal toward the rift.
It was a gamble, but everything they were doing was a gamble. Jessica would rather pull out all the stops than just give up and let the ascended AIs do…whatever it was they were planning on doing.
The ship’s grav shields began to emit the specialized signal that attracted Exdali, tightbeaming it toward the Caretakers’ vessel. The enemy ship registered it as a hostile attack and diffused the incoming signal, bouncing it out into space.
Within seconds, Jessica could see the first strands of darkness begin to appear around the rift.
Discerning the difference between the rift into the dark layer and the creatures leaving it wasn’t easy at first, but the first one, a hundred-meter-long inky splotch against Stillwater’s backdrop, separated from the rift, moving toward the Caretakers’ ship.
The distortion the Lantzer’s signal caused on the enemy ship’s shields must have caused it not to see the Exdali at first, because for nearly half a minute, the fishbone ship kept boosting straight toward the Lantzer and the rift between the vessels.
“Shit…maybe they’ll just fly right into the dark layer,” Karma said with a laugh.
“I’d sure be happy with that,” Lucida added.
Jessica nodded in agreement, though she didn’t expect the enemy to be that blind.
Sure enough, a few moments later, the enemy ship spun and began boosting on a new vector. One of the Exdali very nearly latched onto the fishbone, but missed. More followed in its wake, a writhing mass of utterly black forms, twisting and stretching across space toward the mass they hungered for.
The Caretaker ship began to extend its AP engine’s nozzle, the tip of which would protrude beyond the ship’s shields. Jessica worried it would allow the fishbone to outpace the Exdali, and shot Karma an order.
“Shoot that thing off.”
“With pleasure, ma’am.”
Karma fired two shots with the Lantzer’s proton beams. The first missed, but the second hit, tearing off the end of the nozzle and sending the chunk of ship’s engine spinning into one of the Exdali’s maws.
The infusion of matter seemed to give the thing an energy boost, and it surged forwar
d, passing right through the fishbone’s grav shield and attaching itself to the hull near the engines.
One of the vessel’s fusion burners sputtered and died, slowing the ship enough for the rest of the things that were in pursuit to reach the hull.
The bridge crew watched in a silent mixture of excitement and horror as the creatures from the dark layer devoured the Caretaker ship, explosions blooming against the Exdali’s dark bodies as critical systems were compromised.
“You know…” Karma mused. “What happens when those things get to a CriEn module?”
“They’ll have safety shutdowns,” Jessica said. “Just like the Orion ships had when they were devoured by the Exdali over Carthage.”
“And what if they disable those safeties?” the ensign asked.
Jessica pursed her lips. “Kill the signal, bring us about. It’s time we jump.”
The bridge crew complied while she continued to watch the things eat the enemy ship. The other Caretaker vessel was still drifting on the same vector as before, and Jessica wondered if it really was completely dead, or if it was just playing at it to avoid attention from the Exdali.
“Lining up with the gate,” Lucida announced as the ship came around. “We—”
Jessica had been watching the gate come into view on the main holodisplay, and her mouth fell open at the same time that Lucida’s voice cut out.
“Fuck,” the admiral whispered.
Though it was being consumed, the other fishbone ship fired a single shot from where it drifted in the black. The beam only scored a glancing blow, but it was enough to spin the gate around.
“It’s out of alignment now. Maneuvering thrusters aren’t responding,” Lucida muttered. “Calling down to West.”
Jessica nodded, watching as a group of Exdali broke off from the feeding frenzy on the other fishbone, heading for the ship that had just fired. Her lower lip found its way between her teeth, and she began to gnaw on it, waiting for the things to turn toward the Lantzer.
But none did.