Chapter 3
A few hours of sleep did wonders for Dean. The docking maneuver was proving difficult to complete with the ring ship. Esma and her team of operators had done their best, but without visual or radar telemetry, there was too big a risk that the ships would collide and cause irreparable harm.
“Captain Blaze,” Matsumoto’s firm yet steady voice roused Dean. “Do you read me, Captain?”
“Yes, sir,” Dean shook his head and sat up. He was tired but felt better than he had before his short nap.
“We need your platoon at the op center.”
“On our way, sir,” Dean replied.
He stood and stretched, checking the chronometer. He’d been asleep almost three hours. A gentle nudge roused Joaquin Chavez. The staff sergeant was on his feet in less than three seconds.
“Orders, Captain,” he said stiffly, even though Dean could still hear the fatigue in his friend’s voice.
“We’re needed,” Dean said. “Wake the others.”
They went down the line of specialists, waking each one. With his platoon awake, Dean led them to the operations center on the far side of the nesting structure. Communications and navigation took place on top of the huge nest, but a row of consoles was being set up near the ladder that led to the top of the structure. Dean saw three enlisted men working hard to get everything connected. The equipment had been taken from one of the EsDef ships that was still connected to the ring section of the huge alien vessel. But from the looks of things, setting up a control center was still a work in progress.
Matsumoto was there, along with Esma and a few other senior offers from the Sekigahara. Dean came to attention and saluted the admiral. His platoon stood at attention behind him. Matsumoto returned the salute crisply, with barely a hint of a smile. Dean wore no ribbons on his battle armor, but it was a given that officers in EsDef knew he was a Planetary Medal of Honor recipient and therefore unencumbered by the requirement to salute a senior officer. The stoic admiral took the salute as it was intended—a show of respect—and reciprocated the gesture.
“I’m sorry to wake you,” the commander said. “As you can see, we are making progress on taking full control of this vessel, but we’ve encountered a problem.”
“We’re here to help in any way we can, sir,” Dean said.
“Dean,” Esma didn’t bother trying to hide her familiarity any longer. “We can’t figure out how the Kroll were able to pilot the ship without telemetry.”
“There aren’t any external camera feeds that we can find,” said another officer that Dean didn’t recognize.
“No radar, either,” Esma continued. “Nothing that shows the actual location of the ship in conjunction with the objects around her.”
“I think the Kroll must have had a type of sonar, like bats,” Dean said. “Maybe extrasensory abilities, although they didn’t use them against us. But I’ve seen the results of their commands to their subordinate creatures, as well as an understanding of their surroundings that can’t be easily explained. They knew things about every part of their ship, as they were happening, even though they never left the aviary.”
“And there are no system controls on the gravity drive,” Esma said. “It makes sense that they were using something, although I don’t think echolocation like a bat would work beyond the ship.”
“How the Kroll operated in that regard is irrelevant at the moment,” Matsumoto said. “We need to see where we are going. Normally, I would send drones to position external cameras, but unfortunately those supplies are still on the ring portion of the ship.”
“I’m guessing you have an idea for how to solve this problem?”
“Indeed,” the admiral said. “You have access to the vid feeds recorded by the battle armor worn by the members of your platoon, do you not?”
“I do,” Dean said.
“Then here is what I propose: your platoon should go EVA and take positions on various parts of the harvester ship, allowing us to tap into your TCU and navigate the harvester back into position on the ring ship.”
“After that,” Esma added, “we can use drones to attach cameras to the ship.”
“Why can’t you just do that now?” Dean said. “Order the operators on the ring ship to send over drones with cameras?”
“We could,” Esma said. “But we aren’t ready to utilize those cameras yet. Our systems aren’t online, and we would need to pair the cameras with this new setup before they were taken out.”
“So it’s a matter of time,” Dean said.
He didn’t like sending his platoon on a dangerous mission just because it was expedient. Then again, he couldn’t refuse just because a task involved danger. They were Force Recon; they weren’t supposed to be scared of anything. And Dean wanted to complete his mission in a timely fashion. He didn’t need an administrator somewhere asking why he refused the admiral’s request and cost them precious time.
“Alright,” Dean said. “We can do that. I’m down two specialists, so you’ll only have ten vid feeds.”
“That’s enough,” Esma said, breathing a sigh of relief. “I hated to ask, but it’s the only way.”
“I understand,” Dean said. “Show us where we need to go.”
The next half hour was spent making preparations. Dean insisted that everyone check and recheck their battle armor. They rigged tethers but wouldn’t really be able to use the safety harnesses until they had moved into position on the hull of the ship.
Dean was stationed on top of the gravity drive, his armor projecting a low-res image of whatever vid feed he had on his TCU visor. The armor was a marvel, and Dean was still surprised at all the things it could do. Esma and three other operators were controlling the ship by placing their hands inside of large flaps. Dean could tell immediately that the setup was constructed to accommodate Kroll wings. The avian creatures could extend their wings with the tips fitting into the flaps. The space between the control features was too wide for a human to operate solo, and Dean guessed the second set of controls was like the copilot’s controls in human aircraft.
“We’re ready to go,” Chavez said over the platoon channel of their comlink.
“You guys be careful,” Dean said. “This isn’t combat, but it’s dangerous just the same.”
“We can handle a little stroll out in the fresh air,” Ghost said.
“There is no air in space,” Tallgrass responded.
“Keep in mind the danger that there may be sections outside the artificial gravity of the ship,” Dean said.
“I’d almost feel better if we were in zero-G from the get-go,” Chavez said.
“Yeah, it would make the climb easier,” Adkins added.
“You are so lazy, dude,” Landin teased.
“You aren’t the one carrying over a hundred pounds of armor, Doc,” Adkins said.
“Just be careful,” Dean reminded them. “I don’t need anyone floating off into space.”
“Or getting sucked into the gravity of the planet and burning up as you fall through the atmosphere,” Harper said.
“Wouldn’t our armor protect us from that?” Wilson asked.
“Let’s not test it,” Dean said. “Be careful—that’s an order.”
Chavez pushed through the Kroll sealing membrane first. Dean watched via Chavez’s vid feed as the staff sergeant turned around, holding onto a small protrusion in the side of the ship, and began helping the other members of the platoon. For Dean, watching from a place of safety was even more difficult than making the climb—not that he relished the thought of trying to climb anything with his broken arm. The bite of the feline alien creature had been powerful, snapping the bones in his forearm. Only his armor and a light pain-reducing drug allowed him to ignore the injury. He would have to get it and the burn on his back seen to once they were safely on their way back to the Sol system. But Dean was more concerned with his platoon, many of them favoring wounds of their own.
“Right there,” Esma said. “That’s right where I want him
.”
“It’s actually a woman,” Dean said.
“Tell her then. I should have known it was a woman; her positioning is perfect.”
“Tallgrass,” Dean said over the platoon channel. “Hold that position.”
“Affirmative, Captain,” Sergeant Eleanor Tallgrass responded.
It took a while to get everyone in position around the huge ship. The more difficult positions were on the angled lower sections of the ship, where the artificial gravity wanted to pull the Recon Specialists off the hull and drop them into space. Chavez, Landin, and Ghost took the lower positions, while Harper and Tallgrass were sent near the top of the spacecraft. Adkins, the Swede, and the triplets were arranged around the circumference of the acorn-shaped vessel, giving Esma a view all around the ship in every direction.
“Here we go,” she said. “Commencing reinsertion, over.”
Dean was comforted slightly by the formal use of radio communications in what was essentially a very dangerous docking maneuver. Captain Dante, a drone and shuttle operator, was co-piloting an alien spaceship with alien controls in an effort to connect the harvester to its outer ring. There was so much about the vessel that they still didn’t know or understand. The power plant, for example, acted like a battery, yet it was self-charging. Humanity had nothing even close to a perpetual energy source. They had fusion reactors to generate electricity, but they were finite systems that consumed a fuel source to create energy. The harvester seemed to automatically recharge just by being connected to the ring section of the ship, and yet the power supply on each part of the vessel was exactly the same.
“Let’s come around thirty degrees,” Esma said, doing her best to line the harvester up with the ring below it. “Dean, I need to see all three vid feeds from below.”
Dean changed the vid feeds on his TCU, which changed them on the projection.
“Alright, everything looks good,” Esma said. “We need to adjust our attitude slightly, Evan. Just a few degrees. There, that looks right.”
“Damn, I wish we had computer controls,” the operator named Evan said.
Dean noticed the man was a captain with flecks of gray in his short hair. There was sweat on his forehead, which didn’t give Dean confidence.
“Flying by sight is one thing,” Esma said. “Flying blind with holographic projections isn’t my cup of tea.”
“Sekigahara, this is the Hastings. You are green for reinsertion, over.”
“Sekigahara, this is the Petersberg. You are green for reinsertion, over.”
“Everything looks good from the Dunkirk, Sekigahara. Begin docking maneuver, over.”
Dean knew the Hastings was stationed above and to the harvester’s right. The Petersberg was below and to the left. Everything looked good according to the other commanders, which Dean took to be a positive sign.
“Alright Dean, show me the left side,” Esma said. “Good, now the right. Okay, people, let’s begin the descent. Fleet, this is the Sekigahara. Beginning our reinsertion now, over.”
“Roger that,” came the reply, but Dean was too busy scanning the tiny minimized vid feeds in case something was out of place to keep up with the comms traffic.
The harvester slowly moved down into the ring. They had to adjust their position six times to make sure they were on the right course and line up everything properly. Dean guessed that it would be much easier if the woman he loved could simply feel both ships. He had trouble even screwing on the lid to his protein shaker cup most days; he couldn’t imagine piloting a ship into the eye of a needle half-blind. He could tell the operators were nervous, but they pulled off the maneuver without even scratching the paint.
“That’s it, we’re locked in place,” Esma said.
“Platoon, you are relieved,” Dean said. “Return to the ship immediately. And be careful.”
“Yes, sir,” they all responded.
“That was excellent,” Matsumoto said from his place on the edge of the nest structure.
The top of the nest was flat, and the wall the admiral stood on was wider than a sidewalk in a park, making it safe enough for Matsumoto to command from. He had a communications officer with a portable station that looked to Dean much like the comms gear he had pulled from his own battle armor on the lip of the structure with him. It made sense that the piloting aspect of the alien craft was by far the most important, and Matsumoto wanted to be close to the operators working atop the huge gravity drive, which was in the center of the tall nest structure.
“Captain Blaze, the colonists have been returned to their home world,” the admiral said. “And we are ready to return to Earth orbit.”
“By all means, Admiral. Take us home.”
“May I suggest you seek medical treatment for your platoon in the Dunkirk med facility Admiral Aviv has set up?”
“If we aren’t needed, sir.”
“You can stand down for the time being, Captain. Your courageous platoon has gone above and beyond the call of duty. Piloting the ships is our domain, and if it gives us any hope of defeating the Kroll, trust that I will see it through.”
“I can do that, Admiral. I leave the ships in your capable hands.”
There was a tangible sense of relief in allowing the admiral to take full command. Dean could think of nothing left for his platoon to do. They needed rest and recovery from their mission. So he breathed a sigh of relief and made his way out to the curving passageway. It was the first time Dean had really stopped long enough to take in the marvels of the Kroll ship. There was an aesthetic quality to the design that was also very functional. The curve of the glass wall was surprisingly smooth. Dean knew it would have been much more practical to make flat glass panels with angled panes to fit the curvature of the ring-shaped vessel, but the Kroll had instead made huge, curving walls of glass.
On the other hand, cleaning was obviously not something they were concerned with. The same curving glass walls were cloudy and smudged from the helpless creatures held captive by the Kroll. Not to mention the fact that Dean’s platoon had to deal with the grizzly remains of the colonists on which the Kroll had gorged themselves, which had been left scattered through the aviary. It was one of the many tasks that had been taken care of once the avian predators were dealt with and Dean’s platoon had taken control of the harvester.
He walked down the corridor toward the sickbay. Most of his platoon had returned from their EVA and were gathered outside the control center, where Admiral Aviv was monitoring the other two ships. She smiled at Dean and nodded. He returned the gesture and waited for Chavez to arrive with Tallgrass and Harper.
“We are moving out of the system, Captain,” Aviv said as she joined Dean’s platoon. “Barring an emergency, your mission is complete.”
“I won’t feel completely at ease until we’re back in the Sol system, but thank you, Admiral. The outcome was better than we hoped for.”
“Can I know the reason for the Colonel’s wish to capture enemy ships?”
“It’s no secret,” Dean said. “Colonel Davis wants to take the fight to the Kroll.”
“We have war ships. Why do we need to steal vessels from the enemy?”
“The E.S.D.F. Apache was stopped well before reaching the Urgglatta home world. It’s our hope that we’ll be able to close with the enemy in one of their own ships,” Dean said. “We don’t know if the Kroll stopped our diplomatic ship because of the way the gravity drive works or because we were in a foreign vessel.”
“That’s a big if,” she said.
“True, but we know so little about the Kroll. This way, our people will be able to study their technology.”
“Which only seems fair,” she said, “since they were plainly doing the same with the Recon Specialists we lost.”
Dean nodded, his throat tight as he remembered the horrible chamber below the aviary where the surviving Recon Specialists had been tortured and dismembered.
“I read about your encounter with the Kroll in the Alrakis system an
d on the Apache,” Aviv went on. “Even before we were assigned to RA Chancy’s armada, I felt that EsDef was being careless in the face of a new and dangerous enemy.”
“The Kroll are the first space-faring race that poses a threat to humanity,” Harper said.
“What about the Brae Garr?” Ghost asked.
“We never fought them in space,” Harper argued.
“I agree,” the admiral said. “We have never faced a threat of this magnitude. Yet it seems careless that we wouldn’t take steps to ensure the threat did not reach our colony worlds. We are the Extra Solar Defense Force, but thus far, we have only managed to react to the aggression of the Kroll.”
“That is going to change,” Dean said. “We have the resources to take the fight to our enemies. If we can win a decisive battle, it will change the balance of power.”
Dean spent nearly an hour talking with Admiral Ruth Aviv while the rest of his platoon was seen to in the makeshift medical facility. She was smart and motivated, unlike most of the naval commanders Dean had known. He got the feeling that she was ready for a fight and disappointed that her chance had been spoiled by Rear Admiral Chancy’s poor strategy.
“It was nice to formally meet you, Captain Blaze,” Aviv said when the med tech called his name for treatment. “You live up to your growing reputation.”
“My reputation for disobeying orders?” he joked.
“No, you are a fighter. A natural-born tactician. My people have known some of the greatest, and you are quickly rising to that level.”
“I’m just following orders,” Dean said.
“No, Captain, you are getting things done. I appreciate that.”
She waved him toward the sickbay, but there was something in her eyes that made Dean feel a little giddy. Perhaps it was the compliment, or the fact that Aviv—despite having been a captive of the Kroll for days—was a very attractive woman. Dean had been flattered and flirted with on his media tour of Earth after he captured the Urgglatta ship. He had resisted the charms of socialites, actresses, and even powerful politicians who sought to seduce him. Yet he had never felt like a nervous schoolboy with a crush on his teacher the way that Admiral Aviv had just made him feel.
Abyss Of Savagery Page 3