Ragnarok: Colonization, intrigue and betrayal.

by Andrew Claymore

  Gabriella needed something new to think about, quickly. How do those water bottles work? She looked aft. With a sigh, she trudged toward the junction near Engineering where the training pod sat unused.

  She was probably the only one to use it since the ship had left the Rhuland dockyards. It was a cheaper model than the one she was used to. It was just a reclining seat with a neural web array built into the headrest.

  The bottles, as it turned out, used a nanite-based… meta-material was the closest word in English though it didn’t quite fit… to create an artificial gravity field. They were tuned to deactivate in proximity to the electromagnetic signature of a sentient brain.

  The neural array, its latest task complete, went back to its quiet, standby hum. Gabriella lay in the chair, looking up at the cable-runs with mild curiosity.

  Why did the explanation seem so damned important?

  Who gives a shit how the gravplate in a bottle works? Her eyes grew wide and she sat up. Luna had developed SOP’s for the fighter squadrons by adapting the Earth versions to standard imperial operations.

  Gabriella had all of that in her head.

  If Memnon was going to sterilize a planet how would he go about it?

  He’d establish orbital superiority first, wiping out the local defenses. His next step would be parking in orbit to rain destruction on the population.

  How does a ship maintain standard orbit? she asked herself, her self-possession slipped in the excitement of the idea. The information flooding into her conscious mind was just what she was looking for.

  “Hey!” a voice shouted from somewhere above her. “Who’s down there?”

  “Shit!” she muttered. Grabbing her satchel she hopped down the from the chair and raced off toward the centerline of the huge ship. She dived down a side passage just as a hatch snapped open over the chair.

  “What the hells?” a voice said. “There’s a room down here!”

  She took a deep breath, brought her emotions under control… mostly… and used a snippet to open a hole into the guts of the ship. She ducked through into a dark space and closed the opening as a set of footsteps approached the intersection.

  The steps hesitated at the branch she’d taken, then moved away. She let out a breath, firming up her resolve to remain as blank as possible.

  She knew the maintenance tunnels remained pressurized during combat because they’d been forgotten about centuries before the risks of explosive decompression had even been recognized. Now she was back in the ship’s guts and she still had no suit.

  What other parts of the ship remain pressurized during a battle? she asked herself. Medbay, not a good choice, she decided. It was deep in the bowels of the ship.

  She caught her breath. Security? Of course. You don’t want prisoners wearing their suits in lock-down, do you? They might use them to work mischief, or even escape, because the brig’s lower level is against the ventral section of the hull.

  De-pressurizing the security section would have been a death-sentence for any prisoners. That probably wasn’t much of a concern for Memnon, who seemed to prefer summary execution over incarceration anyway.

  The place should be pretty quiet or, at least, quiet enough for what she had in mind. She had to get there, though, and she’d never make it if she had to crawl through the cable tiers.

  She cocked her head in the darkness. Can I make a weapon in this situation?

  Her escape and evasion data came through for her. Part of the fighter pilot download, Luna had made sure there was a way for her downed pilots to make weapons from any source of nanites.

  She didn’t have her suit’s processor to translate her knowledge into PLC code but she wasn’t trying to build a shelter with its own fusion reactor. All she needed was an edged weapon.

  She used her phone implant to request some of the spare nanites that every ship kept on hand for damage control. Once she had enough, she fed the necessary code through her phone to form her weapon.

  She opened a way back into the maintenance tunnels and stepped out, a knife in her hand. In the wider spaces of the tunnel, it automatically morphed into a half-length spear.

  She nodded approvingly. It was light but it didn’t need weight. She could put enough force behind it to penetrate an armored EVA suit which was better at deflecting projectiles than it was at turning an edged weapon.

  She stepped back out into the main trunk, her body jerking into a crouch as the engineering petty officer snarled in triumph.

  “I knew it!” he crowed. “I thought I smelled one of your kind down here! When I present our lord with your head… Hurkhg!”

  His mouth sagged open, leaving his threat unfinished. His hands came up to grasp the shaft of her spear as if he might try to pull it out of his chest.

  Gabriella stood there, exultant in her victory but horrified at her reaction at the same time. She was smiling, she knew, but she also felt like sobbing.

  Her victim sank to his knees, looking up at her pleadingly as his hands fell away from the weapon.

  Dammit! she raged, tugging at the shaft, and flinching from his moans. How do I… She ordered the necessary update and her spear rearranged itself into a knife, flowing out of her victim’s chest in the process.

  His suit locked him in place, the CPU compartment over his sternum sparking from the damage Gabriella’s thrust had done.

  Idiot, she reproached herself. You could have used his suit.

  That was the final straw. Her adrenaline was running higher than at any other point in her life. She’d just fatally wounded this person and her disgust at this self-absorbed, coldly rational critique of her own actions brought the contents of her stomach boiling up her throat.

  “Oh, Gods!” she managed to blurt before throwing up in the astonished face of her dying enemy.

  He couldn’t even move out of the way with his suit dead.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, reaching out to brush some of it from his eye sockets but the attempt brought on a fresh wave of nausea and she loosed another volley of sour mash down the neck of his suit.

  “I swear that wasn’t on purpose!” she told him. “Look, I’ll just…” She reached out to put a comforting hand on his shoulder but recoiled from the sticky armored surface.

  “OK, yeah. I’m just gonna...”

  She edged past him in the narrow tunnel and headed forward, shuddering with disgust. She stopped after less than ten meters.

  She clenched her hands, eyes shut tight. If I’m going to do what needs to be done, the best time was before that guy noticed my emotions.

  She opened her eyes and turned around. The second best time is right now, before they notice he’s missing.

  The feedback linkages are inside the pitch drive casings, she thought, recalling the information as she walked back toward Engineering. The drives were recessed into the main decking so the non-arboreal Quailu crew could reach the top interface without having to climb.

  I should be able to get inside from beneath the main deck. She didn’t need to change all of the linkages. The system used only one at a time, otherwise a calibration issue could make the engines tear the ship in two.

  All she had to do was re-route one of them. She could remotely switch the system over to that linkage at the right moment and the attack should be thrown into chaos.

  She reached the junction where the training chair sat. The hatch above it was still open and someone was calling down to the dead crewman.

  She edged around the outer walls of the junction, keeping her emotions in check, pushing the fear to the back of her mind. A code snippet opened a hole on the far side of the junction and she slipped through.

  The crawl to the central engine was short and dusty. There was no access hatch down here, so she had to create one through the very careful application of coding. She set down her weapon and opened a new window.

  A large section of the protective sphere dissolved out of her way, bathing her face in pulsing light. Gabriella eased her
way inside, being careful to keep near the outer shell so the orbiting rings of magnetic semi-fluid didn’t collide with her.

  She could see the junction she needed, attached to the inner surface of the shell and just above deck level. She stretched her right arm up to grab the quick-release couple and pressed in on the safety ring.

  It was a bit sticky and didn’t release on the first try, which probably saved her life. Her body tried to bend back at the waist when she felt the front of her shorts pulled forward with sudden force.

  If the couple in her hand had been released, she would have reflexively thrust her arm and head into the path of one of the orbiting rings. What the hells? she wondered in a brief flare of panic but she crushed it immediately.

  Nobody could have been in here with her, pulling at her shorts. She looked down at the tendril of thread where her button had been. Metal button, she chided herself.

  It had been pulled off by the magnetic array in the engine. What other safety protocols am I ignoring? she asked, more as a rhetorical exercise than as an actual search for knowledge. The resulting flood of procedural data was more alarming than it was helpful so she simply gave the retaining ring another push, released the couple and inserted it into the bypass valve.

  Good thing I don’t have any fillings, she thought. It’s a good thing mom was always such a stickler at bedtime…

  That was the wrong thing to think, here in the middle of enemy territory. Caught off guard by her train of thought, Gabriella closed her eyes and took a series of deep breaths.

  She sidled out of the engine and closed up the sphere. She picked up her weapon and started crawling back to the tunnel.

  It was a little harder with the button missing. It had only been decorative but it still kept the top two inches of a fake fly closed. Now her shorts were riding uncomfortably low on her hips.

  She opened a hole back into the junction and cursed the gods, whoever the hells they might happen to be. Her knife extended into a spear and she thrust it into the neck of the crewman standing next to the training chair.

  She should have expected someone to climb down when her first victim had failed to check in. At least there was just this one new threat to deal with.

  The engineer had been drawing breath to say something, probably along the lines of ‘Hey, there’s a wild Human loose down here!’ so she’d acted automatically.

  He’d been silenced but another crewmate, looking down through the hatch, managed to get the gist of what had startled his stricken comrade. “Gods!” he screamed, leaping away from the hatch. “There’s a Human down there! It just killed Melchior!”

  “Shit!” she blurted in English, turning immediately to race forward down the tunnel. A perfectly good suit this time and I still can’t take it! Why can’t the goddamned Universe pick on someone else for a change?

  As if in answer, a combat alert blared, buzzing the cable trays above her head as she ran. The ship was going into battle. A hissing noise began as powerful pumps began collecting the ship’s precious atmosphere for storage.

  And here she was, wearing nothing but a t-shirt and a pair of shorts that weren’t rated for zero-atmo work, as far as Gabriella knew.

  The engineering team, now knowing about the tunnels and that there was an enemy in them, must have re-coded them for atmo-evac. They had a fight to prep for, so they were opting for the simplest way of dealing with her.

  She called up a code-snippet and opened a hole in the wall between the tunnel and one of the offices in the security division. She stepped through in time to see an officer run out the door to the ship’s main central ramp.

  The place was deserted. There were no suits in sight. Sighing, she closed the hole behind her and moved out to the main processing room where they held prisoners, or would have if Memnon didn’t just kill whoever pissed him off.

  In the middle was a circular hatch. She traced her hand around a glowing line of cuneiform and the hatch dropped down a hands-breadth before jerking out of the way.

  She opened a ship’s interface window and linked to it with her implant. She activated the lines that would give the central engine’s systems priority for the gravity feedback loop. If Memnon won the initial battle for control of the orbitals, he’d put the ship in orbit.

  And her work would cause it to crash into the surface.

  With a last look around, she slid down into the escape pod and closed it up.

  The Battle for Irth?

  Sol System

  “Normalizing,” the navigator said, his voice gratingly professional.

  Gleb bit back an angry retort and focused on the empty tactical holo, waiting anxiously for the data to populate. A layer of noise appeared and a voice hailed them.

  A voice from Orbital Control, Irth.

  The trace populated, showing only the defensive forces Gleb had left here. Gleb’s initial relief was knocked smartly over the head by the probability of Ragnarok’s demise.

  He looked at his wife. She was staring at the trace, hands clenched. Did they pick the wrong planet?

  By now, Orbital Control was aware of who had arrived and John McAdam, commanding the local defenses, was on the channel.

  His condolences on the loss of the Lady Adelina only heightened their urgency. “Eth.” Gleb turned to the holographic version of his old friend. “I’m transferring my sigil to the Cutlass. I need you to return to the Mouse. John, Eth…” He stopped as John held up a hand.

  “I understand,” he assured Gleb. “Eth has had a lot more experience at this than I have. I have no problems serving under his command.”

  Gleb nodded. “Thank-you, John. I’m leaving our forces here, just in case Irth is still in danger. I’ll take the Cutlass to Ragnarok.”

  “Just the Cutlass?” John exclaimed but then he composed his features. “If the enemy has won, they’ll probably be finished with the colonists by the time you get there.”

  “And if Bill has defeated them,” Luna added, “they won’t need help from us.”

  “And if they’re still fighting some running battle through the system?” John asked.

  “Not prepared to risk Irth on a slim chance like that,” Gleb said firmly.

  John sighed, looking left when a low voice caught his attention. He nodded. “The calculus of combat…” He looked back at Gleb. “Godspeed, Lord.” He turned fractionally. “Lady.”

  Gleb looked at Luna, the desire to protest sensibly strangled before it could reach his tongue. Her niece may still be alive… Our niece. He felt a stirring of something in his chest at the thought of… family...

  Sandbagged

  Ragnarok

  Hennessy stopped walking. He’d been heading for the bridge but an alarm klaxon started sounding. He stepped to the side of the hallway and opened a holo.

  “What’s the story, Fen?” he asked his executive officer.

  “Incoming path alert,” Fen told him. “Sending out the Dice to intercept.”

  “Very well,” Hennessy acknowledged. “I’ll take the Gamblers out to cover the fleet, just in case.” He hit a button on his holo, alerting his squadron to suit up.

  “Sir,” Fen’s voice sounded in his ear as Bill ran. “Looks like trouble. We’ve got three frigates and eight freighters inbound. Gods only know what the freighters represent but you sure as hells can’t take them for granted. Both our corvettes are at full alert. I’ve alerted the colony. They’re going into the lockdown shelter. Also, I’ve sent the wake-up call for the Hooligans but they’ll be a few minutes getting suited up.”

  “Good. Stay sharp. This looks a little too easy. No answer to hails?” He tied into the bridge channel, chiding himself for having to ask such a basic question.

  “Not a peep.”

  The deck shuddered under his feet as the Loaded Dice squadron ejected from the sides of the Kuphar. He could hear the slightly tinny voice of the comms rating trying to raise the incoming ships.

  He patched into the Loaded Dice’s net. “Dice, this is Kuphar
Actual. Unless ordered otherwise, when you reach the engagement envelope, you’re clear to engage. I say again, you are clear to engage.”

  “Roger, Kuphar, Dice out.”

  “This smells wrong, Fen,” Hennessy said. “Keep our ships moving. They may not see the ’vettes but they can see the Kuphar easy enough. If they have a second punch waiting out there somewhere, we don’t want to sit here holding our chin out.”

  He raced into the hangar bay and headed for his fighter. By the time he was connecting to his controls, the last of his pilots was just climbing into his bird.

  The few seconds it took for the last pilot felt like a century. The last light on his HUD turned green and he reached out to the pulsing icon. “Gamblers – launch, launch, launch.”

  He hit the icon, slamming back in his seat before the fighter’s inertial compensation came online for flight mode.

  He could have had that fixed but, after years of catapulting off carrier decks, it wouldn’t have felt right. He was out of the carrier in a blink and swerved hard to port, ignoring the pre-assigned form-up point.

  He set a pattern for close patrol on his three-ship flotilla. “Gambler Actual, break by flight and cover your sectors.”

  His own flight was forward, nearer to the incoming ships. He rolled, putting the planet above him and took a look around it to see if anyone had used Ragnarok itself to hide the arrival of a second group.

  Nothing yet but he shuddered at the stupidity he’d failed to spot for so long. “Fen,” he called over the bridge net that was still running in his ear at half volume. “Push our ’vettes out. I can clearly see two black holes with the planet behind them.”

  “Black holes?” Memnon looked at his latest sensor officer.

  “Yes, lord. Consistent with the size of their corvettes. They’re positioned so our first wave can’t see them but our scout has the planet behind them.”

  “And you said scouting was foolish,” Memnon turned to Garand.

  “Indeed, lord,” answered Garand, who’d said nothing of the sort. “But, having been proven wrong, I should point out that your useful scout has shown us they’ve launched two swarms of small craft.”