Sagitta

by C M Benamati

  Stone leaned against the desk. “Howard isn’t willing to risk the wait. We need this ship now, before the Russians make their move. And we can’t afford another Starfire situation.”

  Roland snorted. “The field modulation didn’t kill the Starfire, it was leakage current through the coil insulation.”

  “Your theory, Roland, but not NR’s. Besides, even if I believe you, what was I to do? Disobey Howard?”

  Roland shrugged.

  “Is there anything else that could go wrong? Could this happen again?”

  Roland held out his hands and rolled his eyes. “This isn’t the Odyssey. She’s new, finicky.”

  Stone looked past Roland to the place on his wall where he kept a model of their old ship. She pushed off and glided over to it, tracing it with her finger. She blinked. Damn it, don’t cry.

  “Missing the old girl again?”

  “Huh?” said Stone. “Oh I suppose so.”

  “The Odyssey was a fine ship. It’s a shame about the decommissioning.”

  “They should have turned her into a moored trainer,” said Stone. “The cadets need a real ship to practice on.”

  Roland nodded. “It’s funny. I still see bits of her in the Sagitta. I don’t know what it is. Sometimes, if I stand in the right spot in engineering, the hum of the conduits sounds almost like home.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Stone.

  ∆∆∆

  With his hands bound, Morgan was helpless to resist as the two guards launched themselves down the Sagitta’s corridors, carrying him between them like a sack of potatoes. The walls, floor, and ceiling were outfitted with nylon webbing, forming strategic handholds for zero-gravity transit. Morgan soon lost all sense of direction as he was guided along. It was all he could do to keep from puking.

  They stopped abruptly at a door set into the corridor wall. It opened inward with a slight hiss of differential pressure. The guards shoved Morgan head first into the small anteroom. A woman sat at a simple desk in the center of the space. Behind her was another pressure door.

  “Is this the last of them?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said one of the guards. “Three pilots, three riders.”

  Three of us, thought Morgan with a sinking feeling. Bad things come in threes. First the race track, then the shuttle, and now we meet again here.

  The woman rose, gave Morgan a cursory look-over, and gestured at the closed door behind her. “In there with him then. He can stew with his friends until Stone figures out what to do about this, uh, situation.”

  The guards made quick work of it; one of them maneuvered him across the room while the other opened the cell door.

  “Thanks,” Morgan grumbled, as one of the guards removed his handcuffs.

  “Don’t mention it,” said the man. He pushed Morgan into the cell and swung the door shut behind him.

  Carried forward helplessly by his momentum, Morgan traversed through the center of the small room and slammed into the opposite wall next to a small window. He rebounded, tumbled sideways, but managed to grab hold of one of the straps that lined the wall. He pulled, bumped into the wall, and clung there miserably. His stomach rolled. Oh please don’t throw up, don’t!

  He felt eyes on him. Slowly, he turned his head, looking from Victor to Liz and then back to Victor. They were floating in opposite corners of the room, not speaking, but glaring at each other. Morgan got the impression that his arrival had interrupted something. What, exactly?

  “Liz, are you ok?” he asked.

  She turned her head to look at him, and he saw the moisture coagulating around her eyes. She’s been crying.

  “No,” she said. “I am not ok.”

  He bit his lip. What has he done to you? As he turned to face Victor, his blood began to boil. “You,” he said, pointing. “What are you about, huh? Following us around like this.”

  Victor snorted. “Me, following you? Yeah right. I got here first, remember?”

  “That’s not what I mean. I saw you on the station trailing along.” He pointed at Liz. “You can’t keep your eyes off her. You’re some sort of sicko, aren’t you?”

  Victor laughed. When he spoke his voice was trembling. “Sick? Ha ha, sick! Yeah, I am sick. You have no idea how sick I am.” He scratched at the back of his neck. “Tell him, baby. Tell him how sick I am.”

  Liz was silent.

  Victor slammed his fist into the wall. “Whippin tell him!”

  Morgan cringed involuntarily. Victor regarded Liz like a starving wolf watching an injured doe. He’s a psychopath. Victor’s prosthetic hand was slowly clenching and unclenching. He could probably crush my throat with that hand. He reached into his pocket and felt for the Scorpion’s ignition key. Good, he still had it. He didn’t relish the thought of a fight in zero-gravity, but if Victor made even the slightest move towards Liz…

  “I can admit it now,” said Victor, watching Liz. “I do freely admit it. I’m sick. I need help. You were right.”

  Liz said nothing, but her lip was trembling.

  “Baby, you’re all I need. You’re all I want. You’re all I think about. That’s why I’m here. Not just to tell you, but to show you.” He turned his head and pushed his hair up and out of the way. The light caught on something metal—a small ring at the base of his skull.

  “You came here to show her your data port?” said Morgan.

  Victor ignored him. “You see baby, I hurt you. I abandoned you. You were right. But today I’m going to fix all that. I’m done with sims, once and for all.”

  “You’ve said that before,” said Liz, her voice almost a whisper.

  “Yes, yes I have,” said Victor, giggling. “And I meant to be, I really did. But you have no idea, Elizabeth. No idea! Luna Seven was—is so strong, so amazing. I need it, you see. Even now, I need it. But no longer!”

  “What are you talking about?” said Liz, her voice rising. “What are you doing?”

  Victor’s mechanical fingers caressed his data port, tracing the outline against the back of his neck. His skin glistened with sweat. He tensed.

  “No!” screamed Liz. She pushed off from the wall. Morgan reached out and managed to grab her before she got to Victor. “Morgan,” she snapped, pushing away, “let me go!”

  Morgan didn’t let her go. Instead he watched in horror as Victor’s mechanical fingers pried under the flange of the data port. Blood and some sort of white fluid spurted out.

  “Wraaahhhhgggg!” roared Victor. His hand twisted, then jerked. Six inches of bloody conduit and tattered bio-fibers trailed behind the data port as he ripped it from his neck. He brought his hand around and stared at the crumpled bloody mess, then looked up at Liz. “I did it for you,” he gasped.

  “No,” sobbed Liz, as Victor curled up into a fetal ball and began convulsing. “No, no, no!”

  Liz was pounding at Morgan’s chest. It’s over. It’s safe. Let her go.

  She pushed off from the wall and scooped Victor towards her, covering the wound with her hands. Blood floated in globules, more coming out all the time from between her fingers.

  There was a hiss as the cell door swung open and the female jailor poked her head in. “Medical to the brig, on the double,” she said into her communicator. She cast a quick glance at Morgan. “You! Don’t try anything.”

  He held up his hands. “I won’t.”

  “Move over,” said the woman, coming fully into the room. She had a pressure bandage in her hand.

  “Hurry,” pleaded Liz. “Hurry, he’s bleeding out.”

  Morgan watched in a daze as the woman pressed the bandage against the back of Victor’s head. Liz was holding Victor’s hands in hers, her eyes squeezed shut. She’s crying for him. Why? How, after all he did to her. He backed away, trying not to wretch. All that blood. What happens when someone rips a data port out of their brain?

  Liz was running her fingers through Victor’s hair, whispering something in his ear. He made her happy once. Morgan forced himself to look at
Victor’s contorted face and saw not an enemy, but a wretched, tortured fool.

  He looked away. “Please, don’t die,” he muttered. “For her. Don’t die.”

  ∆∆∆

  The doors to Roland’s office opened and Boyle popped his head in.

  “You deaf chief? I’ve been calling you on the com the last ten minutes.”

  “It’s off,” said Stone. “Why.”

  Boyle turned, noticed her, and flushed. “Sorry ma’am, I didn’t know you were in here. We’ve got a problem. The power bleeds are fried. I can’t get the capacitors to power down.”

  “Well just replace the bleed shunts and drain the capacitors once you’re done.”

  “There’s no time. The capacitors weren’t designed to store this amount of energy for this long. They’re overloading.”

  Roland cursed. “We’ll have to dump the energy into the engines. With zero field modulation, we won’t go anywhere. That should dissipate it. And check to make sure there aren’t any more ships out there.”

  Stone couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Really? That’s all you can do?”

  Roland threw his hands in the air. “Yes, damn it. Once it’s done, we’ll shut the system down entirely and pull into spacedock for a full teardown.”

  Boyle had been talking into his portable com unit. “The bridge reports there are no ships within range,” he said. “The field is set to static mode.”

  “Ok,” said Roland, looking at Stone.

  Stone clicked on her communicator. This had better work. “Stone to bridge. Please confirm zero field modulation and then bring the engines online, full power.”

  All was quiet for a moment, and then the room shifted. The ceiling thudded into Stone’s back, sending her toppling down and over Roland’s desk. Boyle managed to stay on his feet, but only by grabbing hold of the computer terminal in the wall and magnetizing his boots. Roland’s head made a dull thud as it struck the frame next to the door.

  “Brace, brace, brace!” came the acceleration alarm from the corridor outside the engineering office. “Warning: Acceleration. Brace, brace, brace!”

  Stone pinched her collar, reactivating her com unit. “Bridge, report.”

  “This is Lieutenant Lawson. I don’t know what’s going down in engineering, but the Sagitta just jumped to warp.”

  Stone glared up at Roland. He was hovering above her with blood spurting from his head. He moaned and clutched his face. “Bridge, disengage all engines.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Lawson over the com. “Helm is not responding. We’re exceeding 100C. Something is modulating the warp field. The command didn’t come from us though, we set it to neutral.”

  “I’ll be right there,” said Stone. I wonder if the command came from the DC-28 computer node. Roland might be right about that AI.

  Roland had managed to get himself oriented. He was breathing heavily, but seemed to be alright. Stone and Boyle helped him towards the office’s door.

  “You ok?”

  He nodded. “Just a scratch. Sorry, I’m bleeding all over the place.”

  Stone batted a few drops away from her face. “It happens. No matter. Get to main engineering and get us stopped. And have someone rip out DC-28.”

  “I’m on it,” said Boyle.

  The three of them exited the engineer’s office together and kicked off, shooting down the corridor, Stone in one direction and the two engineers in the other.

  Chapter 24

  Mog studied the asteroid on the viewscreen, which was dimly illuminated by his ship’s navigational lamps. The crater they were hiding in could have swallowed the entire Navy whole. The rock walls surrounding the four warships—four tiny specs in the maw of some giant—were scarred from ancient impacts. The sight made Mog nervous. The Narma Kull was running in low power mode. Without her shields, even a rock the size of his fist could puncture the hull and vent their atmosphere into space.

  He took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and let it out in a slow hiss. Five hours had passed since the Narma Kull and the three heavy frigates had split off from the evacuation fleet and hidden here. The transports were nearly clear of the system.

  I wish we’d had a chance to test those PPCs. It had taken too long to finish the hull bracing around the new guns. Kremp assured him they would work, but a test firing now might give their position away. Not immediately of course—the approaching Ta’Krell couldn’t possibly see into the system until they broke through the hyperspace distortion. It was the residual energy signatures he was worried about. They need to see the exhaust from the transport ships and nothing else. Nothing to suggest we are here.

  He scrolled through his displays, watching the vector plot of the approaching ships. They were almost at the edge of the system, and had spread out as Kremp had predicted.

  “The computer has an updated report on the approaching craft,” said Nali.

  Mog sat up straighter. “Go ahead.”

  “Energy signatures are correlated with ninety-five percent confidence. They are Ta’Krell.”

  “I’m so surprised,” said Ryal.

  Mog bowed his head. For the first time since the start of the war the announcement didn’t sound like a death sentence.

  “The tables have turned, haven’t they?” said Ryal, stepping up to Mog’s command chair.

  “I hope so,” said Mog.

  “I know we’re going to win,” said Ryal. “You know why? Because I’m sick of losing.”

  Mog bared his teeth. “Win or die.”

  “No running,” said Ryal, placing his metallic paw on Mog’s shoulder.

  An alert sounded from Meela’s console. “Commander,” she said. “The vanguard ships just punched through the system’s hyperspace distortion barrier. They’re in our reference frame, passing over us in three, two, one…no indication that we’ve been detected. They’ll be surrounding Mauria Prime shortly.”

  “Sledgim,” said Mog. “Call it Sledgim.”

  He stood and walked to the front of the bridge. The viewscreen towered over him. He imagined the Ta’Krell commanders, their eyes set on the ice world and its ragtag defense fleet. They were counting on an easy victory. They wouldn’t see the little ants crawling out of the crater behind them.

  He turned to face his crew.

  “I don’t have to tell you that this is our last stand. It is going to be difficult. Our fleet has never matched theirs, but today we have the element of surprise. We have some new weapons, but more importantly, we have nothing left to lose. So, let today be different. Let today be the day when we sent the Ta’Krell straight to the bloody pit!”

  He thrust a fist in the air as the crew shouted battle cries—old veterans and new recruits showing like vigor. He lowered his arm, waiting for the commotion to die down.

  “Thank you, my friends, for standing with me against the darkness once again. This ship—”

  He walked over to the bulkhead and laid a hand on the polished metal.

  “This ship is Mauria. You are Mauria. Today we honor a kingdom that was, and fight for what may yet be. The rules are simple. Stay at your posts. Follow my orders. Do Mauria proud. That is all.”

  “Let’s get them!” shouted Ja’Tar.

  “To the death!” said Nali.

  “Yes,” said Meela, her voice quivering. “Tell me when, sir, and I’ll fly us right down their throat.”

  Mog walked over to his helmswoman. “Soon,” he said, patting her shoulder. He reached down and pressed the helm station’s communication’s panel.

  “All hands, this is the commander. Battle stations.”

  ∆∆∆

  No sooner had the medical team taken Victor from the brig and slammed the door shut when the ship lurched. Morgan was relatively unaffected since he was floating in the middle of the room, but Liz had been clinging to the door, begging the medics to let her accompany Victor to the medical bay.

  She shrieked and lost her grip, spiraling backwards into Morgan. He caught her an
d grabbed hold of the webbing next to the window.

  The small speaker set into one of the walls erupted with a shrill klaxon, followed by “Brace, brace, brace! Warning: Acceleration. Brace, brace, brace!”

  “Are you alright?” said Morgan, as Liz scrambled to grab hold of the webbing.

  She didn’t answer. She was staring out the porthole. Morgan tried to see past her, but the window was tiny and her head blocked the view. He swore as the momentum of his floating legs pulled him in the wrong direction. By the time he had himself repositioned, Liz had turned away from the window.

  She looked like she’d seen a ghost.

  “Liz, what is it?”

  “A warp bubble,” she said. “That’s what this ship does. It makes the warp bubble.”

  What on Earth is she talking about? Morgan pulled himself back towards the window. What he saw made absolutely no sense.

  ∆∆∆

  “Commander,” said Ja’tar. “Mar-Ruba’s fleet has engaged the Ta’Krell.”

  “Acknowledged,” said Mog. “Status on our evacuation fleet?”

  “They’re almost out of the system. The big transports have their shields wrapped around the civilian vessels. No sign of pursuit.”

  Mog bowed his head. As he had assumed, the Ta’Krell weren’t concerned about letting unarmed evacuation transports escape. They were confident that they could destroy Sledgim quickly, before the hyperspace wakes of the unarmed transports dissipated.

  “How long until we clear the asteroid belt?”

  “Thirty seconds,” said Meela, adjusting one of her holographic displays. Mog felt the faint tug of acceleration as the thrusters adjusted their course. There were no asteroids visible on the screen, but the Narma Kull was going fast enough that Meela had to program course corrections well in advance of visual contact.

  “Alright, we’re out,” said Meela. “Our escorts are still proceeding out at constant velocity. They’ll be clear of the inner belt’s orbit in ten seconds.”

  “The Ta’Krell should be picking up our signatures soon,” said Ryal. He stepped forward to peer over Meela’s shoulder. “Set in a hyperspace jump. We want to come up right behind them and pinch them between our forces.”