Operation Cobalt – A Military Science Fiction Thriller: The Biogenesis War Files

by L. L. Richman

  {Noble One, this is Spartan.} Rafe’s voice cut in over Team Five’s combat net. {We have two unidentified ships, armed and assumed hostile. I say again, armed ships, assumed hostile. Breaking away to engage.}

  Rafe’s brief comm was met with silence, but that didn’t worry Micah overmuch. If the hostiles’ presence extended to the platform, it was possible they’d made contact and were already engaging.

  Micah almost felt sorry for their surprise guests. If there was criminal intent, no team was better equipped to take them out than SRU Team Five.

  The Helios drifted silently away, Rafe’s deft hand at the controls seamlessly reconfiguring the ship’s tunable outer layer from a reflectance that matched the platform to one that emulated the blackness of space.

  Scimitar was now effectively a ghost, with full stray-light suppression on all EM bands. The chances of the two unmarked hostiles finding the Shadow Recon ship were next to none, but that didn’t mean its flight crew were going to sit on their hands while a threat lurked nearby.

  * * *

  Thad had taken a knee and was looking at a pile of rubble through the reticle of his P-SCAR rifle, debating whether he was looking at a trap set by the coasties, when the call from Scimitar came through.

  {Noble Two, this is Spartan. Do you copy?}

  Thad did a slow visual sweep of the area. He sent a brief, two-click acknowledgment as he slid back toward the concealment provided by the passageway.

  {Unable to reach Noble One,} the voice continued. {We have a situation.}

  Rafe’s update was delivered in the preternaturally calm voice all Shadow Recon pilots seemed to have, no matter how tense things got. As he listened, Thad turned the news over in his tactician’s mind.

  {Could they be coasties?}

  {They don’t fit the profi—} Thad heard Micah swear as he abruptly cut off, only to come back in the next instant with an update. {Negative, Tango One is now closing on the coastie ship.}

  Thad scrubbed the stubble on the side of his face. Well, ain’t that just a fine kettle of fish.

  He turned and motioned the two team members on his six to come forward. When they were within range, he reached out to establish an untraceable, peer-to-peer connection.

  {We have a new player, not connected to the 76th. Assume active hostiles.}

  The woman facing him remained impassive, but the demolitions man crouching beside her lifted a brow, and his gaze slid sideways. {And here you thought this exercise would be boring, Sarge.}

  He elbowed the sniper lightly—or would have, had Ell’s hand not whipped out and twisted the man’s arm behind his back.

  {Ow, dammit!}

  {You were saying, sir?}

  Thad buried a smile as he glanced back toward the intersection.

  {We need to make contact with the coasties. Let them know we have company, and the exercise is off.}

  Ell released Mike’s arm and then shot Thad a considering look. {I can climb overhead, drop behind them and deliver the message.}

  Thad nodded. {Go.}

  She slung her P-SCAR rifle over her shoulder, crossed on light feet to the bulkhead, and then began her silent ascent. Spars ridged the bulkhead’s surface in regular intervals, making it easy for the sniper to find purchase. The sticky organogel threads lining the palms of her drakeskin suit would enable her to remain there indefinitely.

  Halfway up the wall, Ell engaged her suit’s active stealth and faded from sight. Thad’s suit kept track of her, its predictive systems using the team’s connection to track her telemetry, her position showing as a ghostly outline over his HUD.

  That part of his plan in place, Thad glanced over at Mike. {Rafe couldn’t raise the captain. Find her and give her a sitrep.}

  He brought up a schematic of the platform, and dropped a pin on its control center {We know she was headed here. If she’s not responding, chances are that she, Jack, and Asha have already had a run-in with whoever’s out there badgering Scimitar. Round up any coasties you find along the way.}

  Mike nodded. {Yessir.}

  Thad squinted at the pile of rubble. {Stay frosty and don’t get yourself caught. In the meantime, I think I’ll do a little tracking myself.}

  {Good hunting, LT.} The demolitions man rose and crept silently down the passageway, the platform’s emergency lighting lending an eerie cast to his form before he faded from view.

  * * *

  Rafe had brought Scimitar around on the same heading as the ship bearing down on the coast guard cutter, kicking thrusters to maximum in order to gain on the unmarked vessel.

  {ECM, Lieutenant,} ordered the captain. {Cass, warn the 76th they’re about to have company.}

  Micah was already in motion, having anticipated the order for electronic countermeasures. His right hand pushed outward, his left simultaneously curving inward, even as Rafe spoke.

  The movements weren’t physical actions; as deeply enmeshed as Micah was with the ship’s SyntheticVision system, they were more of a visual manifestation of his thoughts. They also resulted in immediate motion within the swarm of drones under his command.

  {ECM away.}

  The drones he recalled with his left hand docked silently with the ship, while the ones released by his right were flushed from several ports along Scimitar’s flank. Clad in the same stealth coating that enveloped the Helios, the drones were nearly impossible to detect.

  Micah separated them into two swarms. One went speeding back toward the ship that was skimming across the platform’s surface in its hunt for Scimitar. The other inserted itself between the cutter and the enemy vessel.

  {Dazzlers en route, Banshees on hold,} announced Micah.

  {Good. Coordinate with the coastie defense grid to avoid crossfire,} Rafe instructed.

  The Dazzlers Micah had unleashed were tiny yet powerful tools in the ship’s arsenal. When activated, they emitted strong electronic jamming that would deny targeting information to the enemy. The drones also blocked communication, making it impossible to coordinate an attack—and, in this case, to contact anyone who might be on the platform.

  While the Dazzlers were defensive, the drones Micah held in reserve were not. Where the Dazzlers’ purpose was to confuse and confound, the Banshees were built to pack a powerful punch. Their payload of missiles varied by class, and all of them mounted five-centimeter lasers that could deliver pulsed bursts of weapons fire on Micah’s mental command.

  {Any guesses as to who our friends out there might be?} the mental voice of Scimitar’s gunner tickled Micah’s ear as he watched her target the tangos. The twin large-bore, RAU-19 railguns under Dana’s control tracked the vessels the ship’s IFF had identified as ‘Foe’.

  {My credit’s on pirates,} Cass volunteered. {It’s no secret this platform’s being decommissioned. Makes a perfect hideout—or a place to offload goods.}

  Dana scoffed. {Well, we know one thing for sure. Whoever they are, they don’t have the brains God gave a gnat. Who’d be dumb enough to go up against a Shadow Recon ship?}

  {Let’s find out.} At Rafe’s words, a highlight appeared on Micah’s overlay. In the next instant, Rafe enlarged the image until the ‘SS’ icon emblazoned on the ship’s ventral fin could be clearly seen.

  Micah unleashed a few choice words. {Aw, that’s just great. Don’t waste your time trying to persuade them to surrender. Those secessionists would rather die than give in.}

  Rafe grunted his agreement. {Better warn the team.}

  A beat later, his voice came over the combat net. {Noble, this is Spartan. Tangos are SS. I say again, tangos are SS. Assume you have company, over.}

  {Copy, Spartan.} Thad’s voice sounded gruff, as if he were already in the thick of battle. His next words confirmed Micah’s suspicions. {Engaging.}

  The SS in the logo stood for ‘Secede Sirius’. They were a separatist group that had been trying unsuccessfully for more than a century to persuade the citizens of the Sirius binary system to secede from the Geminate Alliance.

  Highl
y nationalistic, the group’s chief complaint was the imbalance of power between the two star systems of Procyon and Sirius. Their platform promised to rectify that.

  The organization regularly attempted to place themselves on ballots. Sometimes it worked; most times, it didn’t. They’d been around so long, few took them seriously.

  That had recently changed. The SS, as they now called themselves, was under new management—one willing to use violence to make its point.

  Rafe sent the Helios breaking north of the stellar plane, giving them a clear shot as the ship entered weapons range.

  {Free to engage,} he said, {but try for disabling shots if you can.}

  Micah heard Dana’s reply as if from a distance. The merge he shared with the ship rendered the cockpit invisible, transmuting his perception into a different reality altogether. It was as if he floated freely in the black, his view unimpeded by something as mundane as bulkhead and hull.

  Over comms, he heard Cass coordinating with the coastie defense grid, updating them in real-time of Scimitar’s intentions.

  Scimitar surged forward. The next few minutes passed by in a blur, yet held that quality of time slowing that so often happened when senses were acute.

  Although Scimitar was invisible to EM scans, Dana’s railgun fire easily marked the Helios’ location. The SS vessel returned fire, and Rafe slewed to port, tracer rounds from the enemy ship flashing by.

  Micah swiveled his head to follow the other spacecraft as it began evasive maneuvers, the reticle of his Banshee’s targeting app locking onto the enemy ship with smooth precision. With a thought, the drone under his command spat out a series of two-second bursts, pulsed light from its five-centimeter laser hitting the seam where the fusion drive met its powerplant.

  The Banshee’s initial assault weakened the area just enough that the follow-up missile Micah unleashed punched through the outer hull, severing its drive train. The other craft disintegrated instantly.

  Even as the debris field expanded, Rafe was already banking Scimitar into a tight curve.

  {What part of disabling shots did you not understand, Lieutenant?}

  {That ship shouldn’t have blown like it did.} Micah spared a swift glance at the man seated to his right. {It’s almost as if they had some sort of dead-man’s switch wired in to ensure no prisoners were taken.}

  {Survivors?} Rafe barked the question at Cass as the ship carved an arc that took them below the plane of the system, neatly avoiding the debris field.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Micah saw the crew chief shake her head. {It must have been remotely piloted, I’m not reading any biological material in the field at all.}

  {Huh. Anyone else think this was a bit too easy?} Dana spoke into the silence.

  A quick blip caught Micah’s eye. At the same time, Cass let out a string of curses. {Dana, next time, keep your damn mouth shut.}

  Three more ships swept out from behind a well-positioned asteroid whose metal content had effectively blocked their ship’s scan from reading them.

  {Brace for maneuvers!}

  THREE

  CMS Goblin

  Cobalt Mining Sector Twelve

  It didn’t surprise Katie when the ship that had nearly sideswiped Goblin turned its nose toward Sierra Twelve. There really wasn’t anywhere else for it to go.

  Space was vast, far more so than most planet-bound people realized. For another ship to have come this close to the tug was either a deliberate move by its pilot, or it was a one-in-a-million fluke. Katie was hoping it was the latter; she didn’t care to think that someone wished her dead.

  What really surprised her, though, was that the ship was flying dark. All vessels were required by interstellar law to have an X-Nav transponder, which used Interstellar Navigation System coordinates, to broadcast its location. INS allowed the space traffic control system and other ships in the area to know a vessel’s precise location.

  The near-miss that just occurred should have been impossible. And yet it had happened.

  That captured Katie’s curiosity.

  Ordinarily, the long trek back to the platform was boring, often spent buried in homework for one of the university classes Doc had suggested she take. Not today.

  After recovering the load of ore she’d ejected, she spent the transit time studying the track the ship had been on when it left the tug’s sensor range, and monitoring the platform’s STC channel, waiting for Sierra Twelve’s sensors to grab onto the rogue ship. She entertained herself by imagining all the choice words Jeremy would have for its pilot once it neared the platform.

  The real interaction came right in the middle of a song by a band called Charles or Daniels something… Katie forgot which. The music cut out precipitously, Jeremy’s irate voice sounding over the feed. As she’d predicted, he immediately began to tear the pilot of the mystery spacecraft a new one.

  {Ship entering Cobalt Sierra Twelve space, turn on your X-Nav!} he snapped, his tone just shy of a shout.

  There was no verbal response. Thirty seconds later, Jeremy followed up with another angry spate of words.

  {Unknown vessel, you are in violation of STC regs. In case you forgot,} his voice dripped sarcasm, {that means you need to request permission before entering a no-wake-zone. Exit the area, check ATIS, and advise on initial contact.}

  Everyone knew to check with the Automated Traffic Information SI before entering a platform’s nearspace. To do otherwise wasn’t just bad manners; it was plain stupid.

  When there was still no answer, Jeremy came back onto the channel, his voice sharp enough to cut glass.

  {Unmarked ship, you are in violation of STC regs. Shut down your fusion drive and exit nearspace—now!}

  Katie sucked in a breath at ‘fusion drive’. Goblin was too far away for her to see anything firsthand with the tug’s sensors, but she knew what Jeremy’s words meant: the ship was doing the unthinkable—braking hard through Sierra Twelve’s no-wake zone, in utter disregard for the safety of any other spacecraft or workers who might be in the area.

  Civilian spaceships used two main forms of propulsion to move around: thrusters and fusion drives. While a thruster’s compressed gases were an effective way to maneuver a ship, they did a poor job of imparting any speed. Fusion engines did the heavy lifting.

  The brute force of a tokamak fusion drive could propel a ship from rest to cruising speed in very little time; it was also the fastest way to bring a ship to a stop.

  The problem with that method was the fusion plant’s plasma plume. The ionizing radiation it put out was lethal; that was the reason for no-wake zones. Ships coming and going from any populated region were restricted to thrusters-only, until they reached a certain distance.

  From what she could hear, it sounded like this ship was placing everyone near the platform’s docks in grave peril. Such a maneuver was only done under the direst of circumstances—or as an act of war.

  Katie’s hand rested lightly on Fred’s head as she thought it through. Her fingers dug into the fur behind his right ear, absently scratching as she studied the feed on her forward display.

  “Goblin, get me a reciprocal on the ship that nearly hit us. What was its most likely origin?”

  The answer was immediate.

  {The vessel appears to have originated from Cobalt Mining Platform Thirty-Seven.}

  Katie frowned, her hands dancing across the console as she studied the readout the ship’s SI had pushed to the main holo. “But wasn’t that platform decommissioned six months ago?”

  {Affirmative.}

  She lapsed into silence, listening to Jeremy’s increasingly irate calls, and the announcement that a pair of tugs had been scrambled to intercept the ship.

  Several minutes passed, and then the channel erupted with the voices of ships’ pilots raised in anger, fear, and confusion. Katie leaned forward, as if the action would help her to better discern the tangle of words. Eventually, it became clear that the strange ship had fired upon the tugs, disabling them bot
h.

  She could hear the tension in Jeremy’s voice now, his words becoming ever more frantic as he ordered the ship away from Sierra Twelve.

  And then, the channel fell silent.

  FOUR

  Abandoned mining platform

  0.9 AU from Sierra Twelve

  Thad ignored the deadly battle raging in nearspace around the decommissioned platform as he prowled its empty hallways. His movements were as silent as a Ceriban hunting cat hungry for its next meal.

  The prey he sought might be human by strict definition, but to the Marine’s mind, anyone associated with the SS was little better than vermin, and worthy of about the same regard. His recon drones had placed them approximately a klick ahead, and moving upspin fast.

  This wasn’t the first decommissioned station the Unit had used for its war games, so the sight that greeted Thad when he stepped onto the platform’s main concourse didn’t surprise him.

  Signs of hasty departure were everywhere. Conduit hung loose from dropped ceilings, where tiles had been removed for easy access. Abandoned boxes were strewn haphazardly, those who had opened them more interested in efficiency than tidiness.

  He released a cloud of audio chaff to muffle the sound of his own footsteps, knowing that the platform’s sound-deadening nanoacoustics had long since been stripped away. The stillness of the concourse would magnify his presence—and that of his opponent, as he closed on them.

  His drakeskin suit bent the light around him, disguising his electromagnetic signature both in the visible and infrared spectrums. But a smart opponent would look for displacement in air currents, as well. He couldn’t do much about that, though, so he hugged the walls, crossing from cover to cover as he progressed.

  Thad had shot one of the intruders with the specially formulated paintball gun Jack had cobbled together. The impact had startled the man, and at first, he’d thought he’d been shot—only to be disabused of that notion when his partners began laughing at him.