Rising Star

by Donald Nicklas

  “No, Captain Slone. There have been no message capsules from Petrov space.”

  “Do we know anything about the vessel that sent the distress message?”

  “No. Only what the message said, that it was a civilian Starliner in some kind of distress. I think it was reckless of our destroyer to enter a corporate war zone. Both Sinclair and Petrov resistance are operating there and we also hear rumors of pirate activity in the disputed areas.”

  Slone gave this some consideration. “I suspect her captain thought two jumps in would be safe. I’m not sure I wouldn’t have done it myself. I will let you go before we get too far from your vessel.” The fleet had not stopped for the meeting. “Stay on post and if there is any kind of incursion, send a message to New Wales and Nova Romae immediately. I will leave it up to you if you feel it is something you can handle alone, but the home worlds must know about it.”

  “Understood. Good luck to you and your fleet. I have friends on the Broken Arrow, which is the name of the missing ship.”

  “Let’s hope they just broke down.”

  Everyone knew that was not the case, but they all had hope. It had been weeks since the ship left its post and no word. Even if there were a catastrophic breakdown, a message capsule would have automatically launched and sent notification of ship destruction to New Wales. Enough time had passed for it to arrive. Captain Stark stood up, saluted and left for the hangar to return to his ship. After he was out of the room, Captain Artok began to speak in the odd way serpents had of undulating their lips and then in the hypnotic way the serpents spoke to humans, she said, “Sss. Captain Stark was not very helpful.”

  “I know, Captain Artok,” Slone said. “I too had hoped for more. I think he is worried about what may come out of the slipstream and I don’t blame him. Normally I would send him back a few systems, but there are too many outbound slipstreams in the system to allow any uncontested enemy access. Return to your ships. We have two jumps to the source of the distress message. I want all ships to enter invisible except for the Invicta. This way we will have a surprise for anyone waiting there.” Everyone left and the fleet continued its transit to the outbound slipstream.

  Three hours later, the fleet was at the outbound slipstream. “Tom, put me through to the fleet.”

  “Yes sir,” Tom Gardner acknowledged. “Combat channel is open.”

  “This is Captain Slone. We are about to enter what used to be Petrov Corporation space. It is now controlled by Sinclair Corporation, so all ships will stay invisible until we know what is going on. The Invicta will remain visible to challenge anyone we meet. We are only here to investigate what happened to the NW Broken Arrow. We are not here to start a war or get involved in one. However, we will defend ourselves if we have to. We will traverse all systems in formation Lambda with the Invicta at the point of the chevron. All ships enter the slipstream on my mark.”

  All ships acknowledged and Slone turned to Paul McMann and ordered the slipstream sails deployed and the Invicta sped to light speed.

  “Paul, what is our speed and slipstream time?”

  Paul McMann did some calculations then reported, “Speed is 1.85 light years per hour. Transit time is 9 hours 27 minutes.”

  “Set ship to slipstream watch and let everyone get some rest. I have no idea what is waiting in Petrov space.”

  The Slones went to the children’s section, collected their daughter, and took her back to the captain’s quarters. After they put her to bed and sat down to relax, Alaya Slone looked at her husband and said, “So, Chris, what do you think we’re heading into. I could tell Captain Stark was very concerned about the missing destroyer. Ships don’t just vanish.”

  “Unless you have a serpent aboard,” Christopher chuckled, and then turned serious. “I don’t like any of this and I’m glad we’re not going it alone again. I may need your scouts for reconnaissance if we have to do a local search.”

  “I’ll alert Tavia and her serpents.”

  “How is that working out?”

  “Tavia is a gem. She has her serpent crew wrapped around her finger and Hatch never leaves her side. Sometimes I think she will soon be more serpent than human.”

  “How is the romance with Bill Marshal going?”

  Normally Slone would not get involved in the crew’s private lives, but Tavia has been like an adopted daughter to the Slones since she entered their lives as a young teen. Alaya responded to her husband, “I think it is going well. Both of them live for their service to the Republic, so they have a lot in common. They spend all of their free time together and they work together to train the serpents in battle formations and Tavia is always doing language practice. Did you know she is able to speak their language as fast as a serpent now?”

  “Really? She never ceases to surprise. Well I am ready for some rest. We will enter Petrov space in less than nine hours and we need to be sharp.” They finished their drinks and had a snack, then turned in. The fleet sailed on towards Petrov space.

  The first system they entered was uninhabited. It was a binary system with two, main sequence white stars, spectral class F. Orbiting around, and between the stars was an assortment of planets from barren rocks to gas giants, but neither ships nor bases were present in the system. After a system traverse of only five hours, they entered a very fast slipstream that would bring them to the system from which the distress capsule came. The slipstream passage lasted eleven hours and finally the fleet was ready to exit into their destination. The Slones were on the bridge as the white curtain ahead of the ship dissolved into the system. Christopher Slone looked in the direction of the serpent at the cloaking console.

  “Hister, is the rest of the fleet through?”

  “Sss. Yes Captain. All are through and all are invisible.”

  Next Slone turned to Roger Umgabe, “Anything on sensors?”

  “No active emissions in the system. Too early yet for system analysis.”

  “Keep monitoring and let me know as soon as you pick up anything. Tell the fleet we will be checking each body in the system.”

  The Invicta moved to the nearest planet in the system, which was a single star system consisting of a red dwarf with four planets, all gas giants and few asteroids. Slone was thinking this was a beautiful system and just the kind that would interest tourists taking a Starliner. The star was ruby red and the planets were all colorful. What he could not understand is why any civilian cruises were in an area of space that was occupied by an enemy force. Petrov Corporation space was not an area of peace. From what Igor Perminov had told the Romani, there was an active resistance and four years was not enough time for Sinclair Corporation to secure an area as large as Petrov Corp. So what was a cruise ship doing in a war zone? Slone was still wondering about this when Roger Umgabe interrupted his thoughts.

  “Captain, I’m picking up wreckage near a moon of the third planet.”

  “Any indication what it’s from?”

  “There is a weak transponder signal. It’s our destroyer.”

  “Tom, notify the fleet we are heading to the third planet. Follow and maintain invisibility in case this is a trap. Paul, take us to the location of the wreckage.”

  The Invicta moved towards the third planet. Transit time was just over three hours and all were at their stations. An hour before arrival, Slone ordered the fleet to general quarters and aboard all of the ships the klaxon called the crew to battle stations. As the Invicta started to enter the debris field of the wreckage, Slone could hear the larger pieces of wreckage hitting the nose of the dreadnought. One small piece entered through the hangar deck force field and crashed to the hangar floor.

  “All stop,” Slone ordered.

  At the engineering station, Diana Tojo-Gardner reported, “Engine room indicates all stop.”

  The Dreadnought stopped as the forward thrusters fired to halt forward momentum. Everyone on the bridge could see the wreck through the front window, the rear third of the destroyer was smashed into a million frag
ments. The forward two thirds were badly damaged from cannon shots and missiles but still relatively intact. Some bodies could be seen floating near the wreckage and the whole was being pulled towards an icy moon of the gas giant. If they had arrived a few days later, the remains would have been in pieces on the moon. Slone now turned to Roger Umgabe, “Roger any other vessels or signals in this system?”

  “No, Captain.”

  “Tom, order the fleet visible and have the destroyers set up a picket on this side and the other side of the gas giant. Have the cruiser join the destroyer going to the far side of the planet. Have Captain Artok keep the Avenging Talon near us.”

  “All ships acknowledge orders and are moving to their stations. We will be out of communication with our cruiser and the beta destroyer once they are on the far side of the planet. Request permission to put a repeater into a high orbit to maintain communication.”

  “Granted, put up the repeater.”

  Aye, sir.”

  Slone now turned to his wife. “Chief Scout Slone, take your scouts over to the wreckage and check for survivors. Also, check for escape pods, though I doubt you’ll find any since we haven’t picked up any beacon signals.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Alaya kept it formal since they were not husband and wife when on duty. She left the bridge and headed to the hangar deck. There was her new scout vessel, a modified serpent ship. She decided to use a serpent ship since it was more powerful than a standard scout was and much faster in the slipstream. It could actually achieve three light years per hour, rather than the maximum of two light years per hour attained by human ships. Her crew was also a mix of serpent and human. She had herself as captain and Tavia MacDougal as Primary scout and second in command. The rest of the crew consisted of the serpent Hatch who maintained the cloaking device. The navigator was a serpent named Blue Scale, whom the crew called Blue for short. Blue also shared the communication station with the only other human aboard. That human was the sensor and engineering tech, Raul Cortega, fully recovered from his injuries during the serpent civil war. The last member of the crew was another serpent they called Deadeye for her ability with weapons. She operated the weapons station. Alaya had named her new ship the Gladius and it was modified for a mixed species crew. Each control panel was duplicated for humans and serpents. This allowed cross training in all areas; a must for the scout service. They had also lost half of the passenger accommodations in the rear of the vessel and changed them to six serpent and six human compartments. The recovered space was now used for any equipment needed for the particular scouting mission. When everyone was at their station on the expanded bridge, Tavia flew the Gladius out of the hangar deck with Alaya acting as copilot. They rapidly covered the distance to the wrecked destroyer. On the nose of the ship, they could clearly see the name, NW Broken Arrow.

  “Tavia, take us on a survey of the ship before we attempt a landing. Raul, give me a reading of the entire ship as we circle her. I don’t want any surprises.”

  Tavia moved along the side of the destroyer and the damage was evident. The cannons on that side were both dismounted and one was missing and assumed ejected. There were large defects in the hull where the missile tubes appear to have exploded before the tube doors were ever opened. Some of the cannon shots passed through the ship to the port side and detonated the missiles on that side.

  “Blue, open a channel to the Invicta,” Alaya ordered.

  “Sss. Yes captain. The line is open.”

  “Captain Slone, we have flown around the entire destroyer and there is no sign of life. Oddly, it appears that the destroyer never fired a missile in return. They exploded in their tubes without the outer doors opening. Whoever did this caught the crew completely by surprise.”

  “Even though the destroyer was an auxiliary vessel owned by New Wales, the crew was well trained or they would not have been given border patrol. Go aboard and see what you can discover.”

  “Yes, sir.” Alaya had to smile. Slone loved it when his wife called him ‘sir’.

  “Tavia, take us into the hangar bay and land where you can.”

  “Yes, Alaya,” the scout service was a bit more informal than the military. Though they were part of the military, scouts could be either military or civilian, since a lot of their time was tied up in exploration for mining sites. Tavia brought the Gladius through the opening of the hangar deck. Since there was no power on the ship, there was no force field and the entire ship was depressurized. They all knew they would not find anyone alive. There was no life support and it had already been several weeks since the ship disappeared. As usual, Tavia made a perfect landing. There was no artificial gravity, so she activated the ship’s magnetic locks on the landing gear to keep it on deck.

  “Everyone wear armored space suits and keep your weapons handy,” Alaya ordered.

  The hold was depressurized and the landing party walked out on the wing of their vessel. Raul stayed behind in the pressurized bridge to maintain a communications link with the fleet so that all may hear what transpires. “Tavia, take Hatch and Deadeye aft to check out what happened there. Blue, come with me to the bridge.”

  Tavia led her group aft towards the missing rear of the ship. As soon as they left the hangar they began finding the crew. There were bodies everywhere. They had been torn apart by cannon shots or killed by shrapnel splinters from the cannon damage. They checked the side rooms and the cannon stations. Wherever they looked, the findings were the same, death everywhere. Tavia touched the communicator on her helmet, “Alaya, nothing but bodies down here. It looks like they were taken out by a single, massive broadside.”

  “I concur, but corporate dreadnoughts don’t have that much firepower in their broadside. Anyway, they should have gotten off at least one volley of missiles. Something else is going on here. We are about to enter the bridge. I hope we have some answers there. Go to the backup server niche and get the video log.”

  “Will do.”

  When a ship was destroyed, there was no way of knowing what survived and what didn’t. To make sure there was a record of events, there was a real-time backup hidden in the depths of the ship, buried in a wall. If you didn’t know where it was, you would not find it. Alaya and Blue worked their way to the bridge and came across the forward guards in full armor, protecting the entrance to the bridge. All were dead, apparently from decompression. Their eyes were bulged and ruptured and blood was coming from all orifices. This told Alaya that the ship decompressed rapidly. This could only mean there was massive damage happening over the entire ship at the same time. The big question in Alaya’s mind was why would a destroyer get so close to another ship to allow this kind of damage? The door to the bridge was now in front of her, but without power, it would not open when the code was put into the keypad.

  “Sss. I will pull door open,” Blue said as she was about to pull the door apart.

  “Wait, Blue, in case it is still pressurized. Let me check.” Alaya went to the external pressure tap. This was designed to tell if an area was pressurized when there was no power for readouts. The concept was similar to tire pressure gages on ancient Earth vehicles. Alaya took the pressure check device out of her utility belt and placed it against the pressure tap next to the door. “Negative pressure. Ok Blue, pull the doors apart.”

  Since Blue had her claws contained in a space suit, she had to use the tools on her belt. She pulled out a long crowbar-like tool, which she pushed into the crevice where the doors joined. It would have taken two or three humans to pull the doors apart, but serpents were much stronger than humans were and had a muscle structure that gave them greater advantage. Blue strained against the bar and after a short time, the doors began to separate. Once they were far enough apart, she placed both of her hands into the gap and pulled them apart far enough for them to enter. The bridge was a shambles. From the looks of things, at least two cannon shots hit the bridge. Those bodies that were not sucked into space were lying around or floating as dismembered pieces. Alaya had t
o accept that no one survived this. She went over to one of the only intact consoles. This was one of the destroyers captured intact from Petrov Corp and given to New Wales as an auxiliary vessel. Because it was a corporate ship, Alaya was fully familiar with the controls. The consoles served two purposes. One was to control the systems assigned to them and the other was to give readouts. They always retained the last readouts. As luck would have it, this was the engineering console so it would have the last status of ship’s systems before the power was lost. To deal with the present situation, all consoles had small battery backups to allow them to show the last readings. Alaya activated the battery power and the console came to life. She reviewed the last 30 seconds before power failed and to her shock, thirty seconds before the power went out, all systems reported normal. That could only mean that the fire trained on the ship was so devastating, it ended the vessel in a single barrage. She touched the communicator on her helmet. “Tavia, nothing more to learn on the bridge. What have you found?”

  “A lot of bodies and massive damage. The generator room is still intact but the engine room is gone along with the tail of the ship. If we can get a new fuel tank over here, we can get the generator going, but there are so many holes in this ship, I don’t know what good it would do. I have the video log”

  “Understood, and a good thing. The log on the bridge is destroyed. Invicta, did you get that?”

  “Yes we did. I am sending a salvage crew over to recover the bodies and anything else salvageable. Bring back that log and pull your people off the derelict,” Christopher Slone ordered.

  “On our way back,” Alaya said then ordered, “Everyone back to the Gladius.”