Blue Defender

by Sean Monaghan

  “Who cares what I call it! Look on the scopes. For the love of... just look. Get optical views on it.”

  “We don’t even have you on opticals right now. You’re an awful long ways off. Even if you are coming in fast. Did I mention that you’re accelerating too much? I’m sure I did.”

  Charlie could be so annoying sometimes. Like having a brother.

  “You’ve got magnification,” Matti-Jay said. “Get the telescopes to pick me out. Track me in. I’m going to fly close to the thing.”

  “What for?”

  “I think it’s invisible.”

  “Like it’s cloaked? Why would someone cloak a ship out here? Anyway, technology like that is really only experimental. I don’t think anyone’s using it, let alone flying all the way out to Ludelle to try it out.”

  He was right, despite being just plain obsequious. As if he was trying to find every single argument against everything she was saying.

  Which made it very clear what the problem was.

  “Charlie. This thing isn’t from Earth. It’s not human-built.” She didn’t want to say that it could be alive. Which was impossible, but also impossible to avoid considering.

  Here they were at an alien planet. Who knew what other forms of life there might be? Just because everyone thought that it was impossible for life to exist in vacuum didn’t mean it really was impossible.

  Once, people had thought that heavier-than-air flight was impossible. Then they’d thought that faster-than-light travel was impossible.

  Yet here they were. The Donner and the Blue Defender, herself and Charlie and all the others. Heavier than air and having traveled faster than light.

  “You mean it’s an alien ship?” Charlie said, voice less crackly. “Copy that. Getting the scopes on you now.”

  Had she convinced him? Maybe.

  She was less than ten kilometers from the dragon now. And closing. It was still a speck, just a slightly bigger speck.

  Less than five hundred kilometers to the Donner now. And moving at over fifteen hundred kilometers an hour. Accelerating still.

  Matti-Jay would have to decelerate the runabout at some point soon.

  But she and the dragon would be there in less than twenty minutes.

  “I see you,” Charlie said. “On the scopes. You’re kind of shimmery at this distance. You know, with your speed and acceleration.”

  “Do you see the dragon?”

  “Nope. There’s nothing there. I just–”

  “Look all around. It’s maybe eight kilometers from me. That the range I’ve got.”

  “All right. Keep your hair on. There’s just nothing–wait. What’s that?”

  “You see it?”

  “Huh. That’s moving real fast.”

  “Charlie.”

  He didn’t reply. The sound of his breathing came through the background hiss.

  “Charlie?” Her mouth was dry.

  “It’s coming right for us.”

  Matti-Jay swallowed. “I know.”

  Chapter Six

  Fifteen minutes passed by. Matti-Jay continued to work on the acceleration. The air in the bubble grew cooler, but the strawberry scent returned. Almost as if it came in timed little puffs.

  The dragon continued to close on the Donner. The dragon didn’t slow down.

  “Matti-Jay?” Charlie said. His voice was clearer as the Blue Defender got closer. “You’re coming in fast.”

  “I’m matching the dragon.”

  “We can see that.” His voice sounded resigned. “You need to decelerate. You’re going to overshoot.”

  Matti-Jay licked her dry lips. “All right.”

  She’d managed to keep the little runabout within ten kilometers of the dragon. It had stopped accelerating, once it had reached a shade over a thousand kilometers an hour. Still beelining for the bigger vessel.

  No signs of slowing down.

  “What is it?” she asked. “Can you tell?”

  “It’s a vessel.”

  “Oh.”

  “You didn’t think it was alive did you?”

  “Who knows what we might find out here. We’re light years from Earth. All sorts of things could be different.”

  “All right. But they’ve been looking over the images we’re getting. There are giveaways. The dragon has ports on it. Places for docking clamps and access. There are things like screws holding down the scales in places.”

  “A ship.”

  “Yes. But all of this is very hurried analysis from very patchy data. It’s coming in fast so a lot of the imagery is not useful. Blurred or stretched. And we haven’t had long to look at it.”

  “The Donner needs to move,” Matti-Jay said. “It needs to get out of the way.”

  “They’ve analyzed the trajectory,” Charlie said. “It’s going to pass us by. It will come very close. We think it’s just coming to give us a look. It’s exactly the kind of thing we would do. Why we’re out here–to observe.”

  “It didn’t ‘observe’ me. It just about bit my runabout in half.”

  “Quite. Well, we’ll see it soon. The runabout I mean.”

  “Yes. It’s a mess.”

  “I know. Remember to turn around and slow down. No matter what you do now, you’re going to overshoot.”

  “I’m watching this dragon.”

  “I know. You should stop and focus on bringing your vessel in safely.”

  Matti-Jay held her breath. Puffed out her cheeks and blew at the bubble. Why weren’t they taking this seriously?

  “Charlie,” she said. “Listen to me. The ship’s in danger. You see the damage it did to my runabout.”

  “It’s not as bad as all that. The self-repair is allowing you to accelerate pretty hard.”

  “Charlie. Tell them. Tell the captain. Let me talk to them!”

  “Look, they’re all pretty busy here–”

  “I can’t believe this. What could make them too busy to look at this. You’ve only got a couple of minutes.”

  “You know how this is. They like to analyze everything. Just to be sure. It’s not coming in real fast. I mean like a meteor. And the ship has her standard field defenses. I guess they figure we’ll be fine. Also, that trajectory is carrying it well away from us.”

  Matti-Jay closed her eyes. “Charlie,” she whispered, not even sure if the busted comms would carry her voice when it was that low.

  “I’m here,” he said. “Not going anywhere. We’ll guide you in.”

  “You should go,” Matti-Jay said. “Go and get into one of the other runabouts. If the dragon damages the Donner you need to be safe.”

  “Aww, I didn’t know you cared.”

  “Yes you did.”

  Charlie didn’t reply.

  “How long now?” Matti-Jay said.

  “It’ll pass by in just under two minutes.”

  “I wish you would get into a runabout. Make it a lifeboat.”

  “Things didn’t work out so well for you in yours.”

  Matti-Jay swallowed Maybe he was right. Maybe the dragon was just observing. Maybe attacking the Blue Defender had been a mistake.

  Everything would be all right. The dragon would fly past. Matti-Jay could take her runabout into the Donner’s dock safely. The little runabout would go into the hangar workshop and the bots would pull it apart and put it back together as good as new.

  She was overreacting. That was it. She’d had a fright. The thing had almost killed her. She was still shaking. Heart beating hard.

  Another whiff of the strawberry scent swirled around her.

  “Charlie,” she said, still a whisper. “It’s all right then. It’ll all–”

  “Matti-Jay!” Charlie yelped.

  “What?”

  “Look. Look on your scope.”

  “What? What is it?”

  Matti-Jay’s display flashed at her. Something about the environmental systems.

  “Charlie?”

  “The dragon,” he yelped. “It’s change
d course.”

  Matti-Jay tried to move aside the environmental information to get to her scope. The bubble’s tiny display was ridiculously limited.

  “Matti-Jay!” Charlie yelped again. “You were right. It’s coming right at us.”

  Chapter Seven

  Matti-Jay tapped at the armrest controls, bumping her fingers against the solidity of the bubble. She got the display to fade out its environmental data. Brought up the main controls again.

  She shut off the engines. A loud clunk came from somewhere. With some more manipulating, she turned the Blue Defender on its axis. The runabout vibrated with a background whirring as the attitude jets spun her around.

  Matti-Jay spun the little ship fast. The movement pulled at her. The runabout creaked.

  She couldn’t think about that. She had to focus.

  One hundred and eighty degrees around and the Blue Defender came to a stop. The vibrations vanished

  Another few taps at the controls and Matti-Jay got the ultramagnetic engines running again. The seat kicked against her as the deceleration took hold.

  “Charlie?”

  No response.

  She needed to see the Donner. But now the Blue Defender was pointed the wrong way. The view she had through the transparent bubble and the cockpit window now just showed empty space.

  With some more taps, she waved away the display’s engine controls. She brought up the imagery feeds. From the Blue Defender’s array of external cameras.

  Some of them were dead. Busted in the dragon attack.

  But she had enough to get something. Not a very steady image, and not very clear with the coarse magnification the imagery system had, but she could see the vessel.

  And the dragon. Speeding in. Dead on target.

  “Charlie?” Matti-Jay said.

  Still nothing.

  The dragon closed the gap rapidly. The dragon was leaving her behind. Matti-Jay swallowed. It hadn’t slowed a bit.

  Even with her own deceleration she was going to overshoot.

  The dragon drew closer and closer. Tens of kilometers became just kilometers. Became hundreds of meters.

  MATTI-JAY SAW THE IMPACT.

  The dragon tore a hole amidships. Deep through the heart of the Donner.

  Chapter Eight

  The damage was spectacular. Matti-Jay swallowed. Her heart pounded.

  The Blue Defender flashed data onto the screen. Repairs sufficient, it read, Emergency bubble retraction.

  The display shivered. The bubble enclosing her rippled, making an odd rustling sound. The bubble began folding up around her. Much more slowly than it had formed in the first place.

  It did block her view. The bubble’s tiny screen shut down and slipped away, but the bubble’s folds and crinkles refracted the light so she couldn’t see the main console displays.

  Bad timing.

  “Come on,” she muttered. All she had was the memory of that momentary fragment. The dragon plunging into the Donner like a slingshotted stone into soft butter. Shards of the vessel flying away like splatters.

  The rustling bubble finally retracted out of her way. It slurped back into the headrest, ending with a solid click as the housing resealed.

  Ready for the next decompression.

  The air was chilly. Matti-Jay’s breath came out as vapor.

  The console displays had both dedicated themselves to showing the runabout’s status. Good hull integrity, with the self-repair gels having closed up all the holes. The onboard microbots were continuing to work, maintaining and checking the gels. The ultramagnetic engines were firing out through the nacelle, creating the maximum deceleration that the vessel could stand.

  “B.D.?” she said. “You still there?”

  Nothing. It would have been comforting to have had the neutral voice. Just some reassurance that the runabout was doing all right.

  More bots and sensors watched the structural members to ensure that they all continued to do their job.

  Matti-Jay wiped at the displays and waved her hands to take over the information feeds. Her fingers shivered in the cold. She made a quiet clap, followed by a movement as if a balloon was inflating between her hands. Just to the size of an orange. She drew out the imaginary balloon-orange as if stretching it out into a footlong sub.

  The displays brought up quick menus and she was able to point, pinch and twist to get up the imagery data.

  This was so much easier than the basic armrest controls she’d had to use while encased in the bubble.

  The imagery feeds came up.

  Already the Blue Defender had gone past the Donner. The runabout was still decelerating. She’d gone about eight kilometers in just those few moments.

  The dragon was nowhere to be seen. At the magnification Matti-Jay had, though, and with the distance, the dragon could well be just out of view.

  The Donner was tumbling. It was slow, but definite. End over end. Out of control. Tiny, almost invisible bursts of vapor came from the ship’s attitude jets as the automatic systems tried to recover from the tumbling trajectory.

  “Charlie?” Matti-Jay said, quietly, not really expecting a response.

  None came.

  The hole in the Donner’s hull came around into view. Where the dragon had punched through. And it really had gone through. Right through and come out the other side.

  Big pieces of debris drifted around. Hull plates and structural girders and chunks of parts like machinery and tubing. Smaller unidentifiable pieces too.

  Working quickly Matti-Jay tried to access the telemetry from the Donner.

  Like the Blue Defender, the Donner had numerous redundant systems to prevent decompression if she got punctured. This, though, might well overwhelm some systems.

  People had died. That was clear.

  Even with emergency gels and bulkhead doors and all the other systems designed to keep atmosphere in at least some sections, there was no way everyone had survived that attack.

  Straight through the middle.

  People she knew.

  Matti-Jay closed her eyes. She took a deep breath. She choked up for a moment and a shudder ran through her.

  She’d gotten off lightly. Just the bite on the ship and loss of atmosphere. But at least she was alive.

  She needed to get back there. Help any way she could.

  The deceleration was just about done. Under two hundred kilometers per hour now. Less than a minute until she would hit zero, relative to the Donner and start in on the return trajectory. That was about all the runabout could handle right now.

  How was she going to repair the Blue Defender? With that much damage to the Donner things would be stretched. That hole had even gone through some of the hangar workshops.

  The Donner continued its slow tumble. The attitude jets were having little effect. She was quite a mass to shift.

  As the ship came around, presenting her keel, it was obvious that there was even more damage. No big hole, but a whole of smaller ones. With parts of the hull bent outward.

  Something had punched through from inside.

  That kind of made sense. As the dragon had made its plunge, it must have knocked aside some of the bigger pieces of equipment. At that speed, they could have deflected and ripped off in a different direction.

  Things like the big assay machinery for mineral processing, and the compressed habitat blocks ready to deploy to the surface.

  The Donner’s hull was pretty tough. Just not up to this kind of thing.

  “Charlie?” Matti-Jay said. “Anyone?”

  Nothing.

  She leaned back in her seat, feeling numb. The Donner was her only way home. They were light years from Earth. A radio message would take fifty three years to get there.

  An SOS. Come rescue us. Matti-Jay would be an old woman before anyone heard it.

  The Donner did have jump tech buoys that could be deployed. A whole cluster of them. Designed for returning data from their research. The buoys were tiny. Watermelon-sized thi
ngs equipped with their own tiny drive.

  The crew would load up all the data into a buoy and send it back to Earth. It would take less than six weeks–with that kind of thing you didn’t have to worry about frail human bodies inside–but it still took time. Days.

  But it could be used to send a distress call. There were probably a few other ships capable of leaping out to Ludelle, but that would still take six weeks.

  Looking at the Donner it didn’t seem like she would last six hours.

  The Blue Defender’s ultramagnetic engines were still running, but she’d come to a stop and was now accelerating toward the Donner again. Matti-Jay made some minor corrections to the trajectory to make sure she was headed toward the ship. Along with the tumble, the dragon’s impact had changed the ship’s orbit.

  Matti-Jay was going to have to be careful as she approached too. There was a whole debris field. Growing too.

  As she approached, the planet Ludelle 8 crept into view again. It seemed much closer. Strange.

  Matti-Jay waved up data to check her orbit. The displays showed it fine at two hundred and eighty kilometers above the surface.

  Which meant that the Donner was lower. It had been just over three hundred kilometers. Sure, it was spiraling slowly in, but only by a few kilometers per day.

  Twenty in the space of just a few minutes was...

  Matti-Jay had a sinking feeling now.

  She tapped for a connection to the Donner. Just to read its telemetry. Nothing came through.

  “Charlie, please,” she said. “Please. I need to know what’s going on there.”

  The comms stayed silent.

  With some more waves at the displays, Matti-Jay opened the Blue Defender’s own onboard calculation systems. She had the sensors read the Donner’s tumble and velocity and altitude.

  The runabout was now only about four kilometers from the Donner. Matti-Jay shut down the engines. Her stomach churned a moment as the weight from acceleration vanished. Null gravity again.

  It took the system a moment to analyze the information. It built up a slow picture on the left hand display. With some waved tweaks, Matti-Jay shifted the data into a stepped matrix. From there she got the system to create a graph.