by Allen Stroud
“Very similar to us,” Jacobson says.
“Indeed,” I say. “Looks like you were right, Keiyho; that’s an Earth-manufactured ship.”
I zoom in, tracking across the hull of the mysterious ship. There is a word etched into the fuselage – ‘Gallowglass’ – that must be its name.
“Jacobson, run a commissioned vessel database check on ‘Gallowglass’, please.”
“Aye, aye.” It only takes a few moments. “There’s no record, Captain,” Jacobson confirms.
“The ship has four additional thrusters compared to us,” Keiyho says. “I can see two laser housings, and three rocket clusters.”
“Two and three, to our one and four?”
“Yes, I think so, Captain.”
“What’s the range?”
“Four kilometres. She’s slowed to thirty klicks per hour and is still decelerating.”
“Is she in range of our weapons?”
“She will be in laser range in approximately ninety seconds.”
“Lieutenant Travers, warm up the engines. Prepare for a Z positive burn. Six hundred metres elevation. Ready the crew. Jacobson, give me a countdown on approach.”
I’m thinking about our saboteur. Both attacks came in moments where we were vulnerable, and we’re about to be very vulnerable. I’m not sure we have the right person in custody. I remember Arkov mentioning the message he received on his terminal from Sam. He’ll mention Sam was away from his post too. I need to stay away, focus on this and set aside my personal feelings. Someone accessed my computer as well. Hopefully, Le Garre can follow up on all of it and find our traitor.
“Thirty-five seconds, Captain.”
“Travers, initiate burn. Keiyho, get ready to target rockets and laser. Hit with everything, just like we discussed.”
“Aye, aye.”
We’re moving upward. I’m pressed into my seat. The main view screen is like being in an elevator with cargo container after cargo container going by. Then we reach the top and a dark expanse. Beyond it, the sun’s light reflects off an object in the distance. It’s the size of an apple, but getting closer.
The Gallowglass.
“We’re in range and I have a firing solution,” Keiyho announces.
“Do it,” I say.
“Firing now,” Keiyho replies.
In space, you can’t see a laser apart from when the light reflects back at you. That only happens when the laser encounters something, a solid object, gas, or liquid. At this distance, I think I can see the ship called the Gallowglass flash with green for a moment, but I could be fooling myself.
What I don’t imagine are the loud thumps and alert klaxons that herald the launch of our guided rockets. Four shapes jet away from us, their thruster engines aglow as they head straight for the oncoming ship.
I’m leaning forward in my chair, staring at our innocuous metallic neighbour. “Jacobson, activate the shutters. Travers, aim us right at them and boost to fifty klicks. Keiyho, recalibrate, reload and aim a second volley. Johansson, monitor impacts and any attempt at communication.”
There’s a chorus of affirmations. I’m pressed up and back into my chair as we maneuver and accelerate. A straight charge, like a joust. The distance between ships will disappear quickly. The element of surprise got us a first shot at them. If we can be quick and they are slow, we might get a second shot in before they can fire back.
“Captain, I’m detecting a change in telemetry on the rogue missile,” Johansson warns. “We also have a course change from the Gallowglass. She’s slowing and rotating to track us.”
“Adjust targeting to compensate,” I tell Keiyho.
“Aye, aye.”
There’s a flash from the approaching ship. Could it be an explosion from the laser? Or something else?
“I’m detecting retaliatory rocket launches, Captain!” Johansson says. “We’re being targeted and there’s some sort of—”
She doesn’t finish the sentence. There’s a tearing sound against the hull, and the decompression alarm goes off. The screen in front of me flashes red, and the schematic of the ship appears over the top of all the other windows.
“Laser impacts! We’re being hit on the gravity torus and the starboard thruster!” Jacobson yells over the noise.
“Travers, calculate a spiral maneuver that maintains our course!” I order. I open a comms channel. “Bridge to Engineering?”
Duggins’s voice in my ear is loud and urgent. “We have a lot going on down here, Captain!”
“We’re about to have more,” I say grimly. “Can you launch the last inflatable decoy we kept back?”
“We’ll find a way, Captain Shann,” Duggins says. Then he cuts the link.
For a moment, the tearing sound stops. I start thinking about the damage that’s been caused. We might already be dead, our ship venting its crucial atmosphere and reserves into the darkness. The Khidr is built to endure, with multiple redundancies and reinforced hull plating, but I doubt the designers considered a circumstance like this.
“Rocket impacts confirmed!” Johansson shouts.
“Second volley loaded and away!” Keiyho adds.
Another round of low thumps and rumbling as the rocket engines ignite. I switch my screen to an external camera view. The Gallowglass is right in front of us and clearly visible. Our ordnance will be launching at almost point-blank range.
Suddenly, the ship shakes. I’m thrown against the straps and everything tilts ninety degrees. “We’re hit!” Jacobson yells. “Multiple hull breaches! There’s a fire in corridor three!”
“Seal compartments,” I order. “Lock us in. Travers, rotate our profile as we pass the enemy. Keiyho, if you get a chance for a third shot, you take it!”
“Aye, aye!” Keiyho is staring at his screen grimly.
“Captain, I’m analysing the Gallowglass for damage,” Johansson says. “We’ve hurt them, but…I’m…I think they’ve got some kind of shielding…”
“Shielding?”
“Yes,” Johansson explains. “All four projectiles from our first salvo were direct hits, our laser tore a hole in their hull, but I’m not seeing enough damage. I think our warheads may have detonated before impact.”
“We can’t take much more of this, Captain,” Jacobson warns.
“Bring up a navigation chart. Is there anything else out here?”
“Demios is thirty-six hours away,” Johansson says, confirming what I already knew. “There’s nothing until we get to the asteroid belt.”
“Deploy prepared comms and plot a course toward Phobos Station,” I order. “Get a damage confirmation. If they’re still intact, we—”
The ship shakes again, and I’m slammed into the side of the chair. The rending sound of the laser returns. It’s much closer, probably cutting into the corridor outside or a compartment nearby.
“Rotate and come about!” I scream.
We turn, and the Gallowglass is right in front of our rocket launchers as we drift past them, less than a kilometre apart. The proximity alarm goes off. Keiyho is firing anything he has, including the rail guns. On my screen, I can see scarring along their hull. A container rips away from the ship and disappears in a flash-fire explosion.
Sharp strikes rattle the view port shutters. I’m wincing and ducking in my seat instinctively. “Soon as we’re clear, Travers, make for Phobos at the best speed you can manage. Alert the crew that we’re going for a burn.”
Travers nods, but doesn’t reply. “Automated alert active, Captain,” Jacobson says.
Another flash-fire explosion erupts from the Gallowglass, somewhere near the engines. Might have been fuel or an engine. “Johansson, get me everything you can on how much damage we’ve inflicted!”
“Aye, aye!”
I watch the collision counter numbers increase at the bottom of
the screen. We’re at two and a half klicks distance, and the Gallowglass is struggling to turn. She must have lost positional thrust. The tearing sound of her lasers raking across our hull rings out as we move away. I can see rockets heading toward us. One dissolves into flames, which quickly disappear in the vacuum. The other keeps coming, right at the screen.
“Brace for impact!” I yell.
I’m rammed into the seat. The breath in my lungs is gone in one big cough, and I feel something snap in my chest. I can’t inhale. There’s a roaring noise. I can’t hear anything over it. For a moment, I think we’re done. There’s been a hull breach here, on the bridge, and all the air has been sucked out into space, but then I realise the other signs of explosive decompression aren’t happening. It’s just me; I’m winded.
I smell burning; the screen in front of me is on fire. My hands fumble with the armrest, and I pull out the micro-extinguisher. Foam snuffs out the danger and coats the ruined electronics.
The roaring noise is fading. I can hear voices again, but they’re hard to make out. “Captain, we’re at four klicks; what’s your order? Do we disengage?” Travers is in my face, his dark skin and beard inches from me. I can smell his blood and sweat.
I nod. I try to speak. “Phobos.” I don’t know if he hears me, but he moves away.
A moment of nothing. Then pressure. I’m thrown around in my seat, before a constant force builds on me, pushing me back into the chair. My chest hurts; my lungs scream.
I…
* * *
Patrick Schuffer, the first man to walk on Mars, told lawmakers Thursday that the end of the ‘nations era’ has left the international human spaceflight programme to face a difficult future.
“Corporate partnership is a good thing, but we have to look at the balance. As of next week, we will have no access to, and return from, low Earth orbit unless a corporate partner authorises that trip. I can foresee a time when a conflict of interest may arise that puts lives in danger,” Schuffer told the Annual International Conference on Science, Space and Technology.
When asked to elaborate, Schuffer did: “After several false starts, humanity is beginning to expand its reach, at last. We’re looking at permanent Moon settlement, permanent Mars settlement and beyond. There’s an absolute need for corporate partners in all that, but somewhere down the line, the question of sovereignty is going to come up. When a commercial company is paying all the bills and providing all the materials, why shouldn’t they own the buildings and the land? In that moment, you don’t have an international conflict; you have the potential for an interplanetary conflict. It’s a question of looking ahead.”
Schuffer was part of a four-member panel of space experts who told delegates that the international coalition needs a stronger vision for the future and should focus on an ‘end-game strategy’ that ‘fostered the most collegiate working environment in space that could possibly be achieved’.
“We’re in danger of selling out completely,” said Afriki Affuno, who commanded the Artemis 6 flight to Ceres in 2186. “Most people think that’s about marketing and exhausting the brand, but in space travel and space colonisation, it’s a different issue. We’re talking about shaping people’s lives for generations. We have to redefine ownership and property for people who’ve never been to Earth. Why would they see some allegiance or loyalty to us if they were born on Mars or the Moon? If we want to have a say in the future of these new nations, we have to share the risk and the cost. That’s why there needs to be a partnership.”
Chapter Sixteen
Johansson
Alarms wail around the bridge. I’m triggering the emergency release in my seat. As the straps retract, I grab one with my left hand and use it to swing myself around, getting a look at the damage in here.
There’s a fire near the door, close to the atmospheric equaliser. The emergency system hasn’t kicked in to deal with it. If the flames get to the oxygen tanks, the whole bridge will explode.
It’s hard to move. The ship is accelerating. I could die doing this. One little slip and I’ll get thrown into the walls, over and over, until my bones break like sticks.
There’s a darkness at the edge of my vision and a throbbing in my head. I’m reaching for the emergency extinguisher packed into the side of my chair. Keiyho is also out of his chair, moving toward the captain. We exchange glances and he nods. I continue toward the fire, raise the extinguisher in my right hand and press the button, dousing the flames with foam.
“I’ve set course for Phobos Station!” Travers shouts over the alarms. “Captain’s last order!” He’s struggling out of his chair as well, turning toward Shann. Only Jacobson remains in his seat, leaning forward intent on his screen.
A small, cynical voice in my head says I should be helping the captain too. I glance in that direction. She’s injured and unconscious, her chair is tilted at an angle, and her screen is covered in extinguisher foam. If I’m seen to help and by her side while she’s disorientated, that could help with my letter of recommendation when this tour ends. I’d be doing myself a favour if—
No. That’s shitty behaviour. Cut it out, Ensign.
I remember Captain Shann’s last order to me. I need to focus on that and do my duty. The senior bridge officers will see to her.
I’m back in my seat. I bring up the bridge operations screen and mute the alarms. There’s a whole list of flashing systems and ship functions that are going to need attending to, but that’ll wait for a moment. The Khidr’s computer states our hull integrity is okay and the engines are functional. Everything else is secondary.
The tactical display shows the relative positions of our ship and the Gallowglass. The computer is running a damage assessment as I instructed before the hit. Snapshot photographs open and close in different windows, green boxes highlighting the possible damage we have inflicted. There is a finite window for this assessment. We’re moving farther and farther away from the enemy ship, so image capture will become difficult and detail will be harder to determine.
There’s a list of prioritised photographs appearing in another window. I open the one on top. It’s a picture of the side of the Gallowglass that was closest to us as we passed by. There are six different boxes, highlighting impact and damage assessment. Some of the smaller engine cones are ruptured. That means they may struggle to maneuver, but there isn’t nearly as much damage as I’d expect to see from the amount of ordnance we fired at their ship.
I track back through the footage recorded on our exterior cameras. There are a couple of freeze-frames of rocket explosions. I manipulate the image, zooming in. There’s clear distance between where the warheads detonated and the side of the enemy ship.
Why did our rockets explode before they hit the Gallowglass?
The pressure of acceleration is easing. The burn Travers initiated to aim us toward Phobos must be nearly complete. I glance over and notice Jacobson is still working away at his console, his hands flashing across the screen. We’re the only two people left on the bridge.
“Something wrong?” I ask.
“Travers didn’t factor deceleration into his executed course plot,” Jacobson says. “I’m correcting his work. If I don’t, we’ll be out of fuel and unable to stop.”
“Understandable, given the pressure of the situation,” I say.
Jacobson shakes his head. “There’s no excuse for incompetence, particularly when it could get us all killed.”
“Gunnar, you should cut him some slack.”
Jacobson spins around in his chair and glares at me. He looks angry and points a finger at me. Those baby blue eyes are icy, and his pasty white skin is red. He opens his mouth to speak, but stops himself and sighs. The tension seems to run out of him. “You’re right. We’re all tired. I should let it go.”
“Yeah, you should.” We’re friends. I’ve seen this before with him. Jacobson’s a perfectionis
t. That’s a trait we share. I used to think all his passion and enthusiasm was guileless, but it isn’t. That’s why we aren’t lovers anymore.
Jacobson runs a hand through his hair. “How did the captain look?” he asks.
“I didn’t see much. I think she was unconscious.”
“She’ll be all right, though, yeah?”
“I hope so.”
I’m thinking about Captain Shann. If she weren’t my superior officer and fifteen years older than me, we’d probably be close friends, or rivals. In her career, she’s achieved so many of the things I want to achieve, and she’s standing in front of a lot of doors I’d like to kick open.
That cynical voice in my head says I could do without her dying. I can’t help but agree.
“We’re outmatched by that ship,” Jacobson says. He nods toward his screen. “They’ll be wounded, but they’ll come after us. With those tracking missiles they have, we’ll need ideas if we’re going to survive.”
“Where did they come from?” I wonder out loud. “I’ve never heard of a Gallowglass. You said they’re not on the Fleet registry. Are there any private owners who it could belong to?”
“If there are, they’re breaking interstellar regulations,” Jacobson says. “No ship that large could be built without making use of the shipyard in Earth orbit or around Mars, unless we don’t just have this to deal with.”
He’s suggesting there might be another, secret shipyard, somewhere else. “That’s a worrying thought,” I say.
“Yes, it is.” Jacobson leans toward me and lowers his voice. “Something like this is bigger than us. The captain’s made choices that put us in the middle of a whirlwind.”
“She was following procedure.”
“That won’t do much good if we all get killed.”
I’m concerned at where this is going. “We’re military. We don’t question orders. We follow them.”
“Sure,” Jacobson replies. “But we need to stay alive and work out how we’re getting out of this.”
“I have faith in your abilities,” I say and turn back to my console.