Obsidio

by Amie Kaufman

  “Report,” Boll prompts.

  Garber pulls herself together, offers a small salute. “Ma’am, the Mao’s communications array is online. We were scanning for any signal from Heimdall Station.” She straightens, now trying for professionalism, unaware nobody else in the room has been bothering. “We just received a transmission.”

  The room goes still.

  “From Heimdall?” Garver asks, bewildered.

  “Negative, Chief,” Garber replies. “It’s from Kerenza IV.”

  “…Survivors,” Kady breathes.

  “They’re sending a distress call?” Boll asks.

  Garber slowly shakes her head. “No ma’am. It’s not a civilian transmission.”

  Hanna Donnelly’s the first to understand, the first to break the silence.

  “BeiTech…,” she whispers.

  —PRIORITY ONE TRANSMISSION—

  AUTHORIZATION: SŪN 7802-024-BTN

  Location: 101:421:082 (Kerenza system)

  To: BEITECH HEADQUARTERS, JIA III, 587:331:908 N 71°22'01", W 38°50'31"

  Incept: 08/16/75

  Secure Ident: 08uǂʭ00wtu-32u&*ʑBBt764#Ξ-redsys-cypher

  Director Taylor,

  Given the nearly seven months of silence since my last report, I imagine I am the last man in the universe you expected a transmission from. However, my TechEng crews assure me our communication capabilities are now restored and that—should he still be in place—Operative Rapier on Heimdall Station will be able to pass this transmission on to headquarters.

  To be brief: Mobile Jump Platform Magellan was badly damaged by UTA battlecarrier Alexander in the attack on Kerenza IV. On February 1, barely three sols after our arrival in orbit, a hermium containment breach aboard Magellan resulted in a localized warp storm that encircled Kerenza IV’s gravity well. The Magellan was saved, but damage to the propulsion systems of my remaining ships meant we were unable to travel past the storm’s periphery, effectively cutting off all intersystem communication from Kerenza IV until the particulate hermium was dispersed by solar winds. If you are receiving this transmission, the storm has abated enough to allow us to restore comms.

  Our situation:

  • The WUC holdings on Kerenza IV, including a fully functional hermium mine, are still under BeiTech control.

  • Kerenza civilians required to produce reactor-grade hermium or maintain colony functions are pacified.

  • Current colony population: approximately 3,200.

  • Repairs to Mobile Jump Platform Magellan are 94 percent complete. My TechEng staff assures me Magellan will be fully operational in eleven standard days.

  • A hermium reserve of at least 40 percent is required for Magellan to successfully execute a fleetwide jump to the Jia system. With current output of the Kerenza mine, this capacity will be reached in fourteen days.

  • We have received no transmissions from Captain Larbalestier or dreadnought Lincoln and are unaware of the status of their pursuit of UTA battlecarrier Alexander.

  • We have received no transmissions from Jump Station Heimdall or Operative Rapier advising us of changes to operation status.

  After consultation with command staff, and given that we have seen no retaliation from the UTA for our attack on battlecarrier Alexander, we are proceeding under the assumption that Lincoln was successful in her mission to destroy Alexander, that Operative Rapier is still in place aboard Heimdall deleting distress calls sent from the system and that the covert status of this operation is still somehow intact. Therefore, I am redefining our mission objectives as follows:

  1. Restore Magellan to full operational status.

  2. Restore Magellan’s hermium reserves to capacity required for a jump to the Jia system.

  3. Jump Magellan back to BeiTech headquarters on Jia III, with dreadnought Churchill in tow. (Dreadnought Kenyatta was badly damaged in the initial assault and is currently caught in a decaying orbit around Kerenza. The ship has been abandoned and will be scuttled before we depart.)

  Note: The Kerenza IV hermium mine and colony infrastructure will be kept intact when we jump, but unless otherwise advised, we will liquidate the remaining Kerenza populace upon departure, in order to preserve operational secrecy.

  We will maintain zero-transmission protocol unless status changes. Should you wish to countermand our priorities, I can be reached via standard encrypted channels.

  In Aeternum Invicti.

  Sūn Huojin

  Admiral, BeiTech Industries Orbital Corps

  Commander, BT013-TN Churchill, Assault Fleet Kerenza

  PS: If you would be so kind, I would request a member of the BeiTech Communications Ministry contact my wife and son and assure them I am well.

  RADIO TRANSMISSION: TRANSPORT MAO—PERSONAL CHANNEL 008

  PARTICIPANTS:

  Kady Grant, Systems Chief

  Ezra Mason, 2nd Lieutenant, United Terran Authority

  DATE: 08/17/75

  TIMESTAMP: 03:42

  GRANT, K: [tap tap]

  GRANT, K: Is this thing on?

  MASON, E: Hey, you. Where you at?

  GRANT, K: Up on the bridge. Boll is inspecting her shiny new ship, so I figured I’d start poking around in the system, get the network patched into Hypatia comms units.

  MASON, E: How’d you get that done so quick?

  GRANT, K: Have we not covered this yet?

  MASON, E: Sorry. You’re a genius, I keep forgetting.

  GRANT, K: I’ll keep reminding you.

  GRANT, K: So I have good news and bad news.

  MASON, E: Just once I wish someone would say, “I have good news and ****ing awesome news.”

  MASON, E: Like, “hey, we found a big crate full of malt liquor, oh, and by the way, you are the Son Of The One True King” or something.

  GRANT, K: Will you settle for good news, ****ing awesome news and some other information you should probably have at your disposal?

  MASON, E: You mean “some other information you should probably have at your disposal, Your Majesty”?

  GRANT, K: My, but we’re in a mood. Adorable.

  GRANT, K: But I’m a bit crunched for time, so may I deliver said info, my sweet prince?

  MASON, E: Okay, go. Good news first, please.

  GRANT, K: Good news is that my dad just went into surgery and they’re very optimistic.

  MASON, E: Kades, that’s great news!

  GRANT, K: The ****ing awesome news is that Captain Boll already has logistics folks sorting out accommodation details. Once we transfer all the Hypatia refugees over to the Mao, space is going to be at a real premium. But it turns out this command staff gig actually has some perks. Boll has allotted me a much sought-after bunk for my very own personal use, eight hours of every twenty-four. And Dad will be in recovery for days, so cannot supervise who I share it with.

  MASON, E: Down, boy.

  MASON, E: I can’t take this thing anywhere, I swear.

  GRANT, K: Sadly, I must refrain from making all the innuendos right now and press on to the rest of the stuff I’ve got for you.

  MASON, E: Prince Ezra is listening.

  GRANT, K: Did you and Winifred hear about the transmission yet?

  MASON, E: We been taking inventory down in the belly of this beast for the last five hours. All we’ve heard is the sound of the engines and my stomach growling.

  GRANT, K: Okay, so this is classified.

  GRANT, K: A transmission just came in from the BeiTech crew on Kerenza. They’re alive, and at least some of our people are alive too. They’ve been off comms for months and are trying to get a message out to BT headquarters through the now-collapsed Heimdall wormhole.

  MASON, E: What the ****?

  MASON, E: There are still people alive there? Holy ****, Kades!

  GRANT, K: I know. Boll just made the call. As
soon as the transfer of Hypatia’s population to the Mao is done, we’re headed back there, fast as we can.

  GRANT, K: But we’re on a timeline. The BT crew are repairing their mobile jump platform ship, Magellan. As soon as it’s ready to go, they’ll wipe out the colony survivors and disappear.

  MASON, E: Jesus…

  MASON, E: Do we know who’s alive? Like a list or something?

  GRANT, K: We have nothing, no list. Some people in the mines, that’s all we know.

  GRANT, K: We just have to get there before BT bugs out and leaves behind a smoking hole and no way out for us or the folks we want to save.

  GRANT, K: AIDAN is another question mark. I’m prepping to dump its persona routines into the Mao’s system, since we don’t have time or room to transport the Hypatia servers over here. That means it’s going to lose a big chunk of its memory, and it’ll basically be a copy of a copy. Not sure how it’s going to hold up, but I’m hoping it might be able to pull some more info from the transmission once it’s up and running.

  MASON, E: You’re going to hook it into the Mao? Are you sure that’s a good idea?

  MASON, E: It’d seem plugging a potentially psychotic AI into Mao’s systems might be problematic…Actually, ****, can it hear what I’m saying right now?

  MASON, E: Hello, benevolent, totally-not-mad computer, nothing to see here!

  GRANT, K: All good. It’s not interested in what you say. Well, maybe a little, I think it’d prefer I paid more attention to it than you, but we’re fine. It saved us during all that **** with the wormhole. Without it, we’d never have figured out a way to repair the paradox. I think it’s earned a little latitude. I’ll have to clear it with Boll first, though.

  GRANT, K: Meanwhile, Garver has been dutifully fulfilling his role as a Pain In Everyone’s *** for the last hour. Under everyone’s feet. In everyone’s face.

  MASON, E: Yeah, he seemed like a real barrel of chuckles.

  GRANT, K: He has comprehensively failed to charm me.

  GRANT, K: Boll is about two more interruptions from taking a swing at him. He’s likely to head down and bother you and Winifred soon.

  MASON, E: He dares question the Son Of The One True King?

  GRANT, K: Just do me a favor and be ready to tell him what you guys got down there, so he takes at least one of us seriously.

  GRANT, K: By the way, please tell me you have some guns or something helpful beyond razor-sharp wit.

  MASON, E: Well, as it so happens, I have good news and ****ing awesome news.

  MASON, E: See, that’s how you do it.

  GRANT, K: Hey, if you’re not impressed with the bunk news, I’m happy to have it allllllll to myself.

  GRANT, K: I will starfish gloriously and sleep uninterrupted by snores.

  MASON, E: A Prince Of The Realm does not snore.

  MASON, E: Anyway. Fred and me are almost finished down here. Good news is that AIDAN was right. While Mao looks like a heavy freighter, it’s actually a gunboat. I guess Lieutenant Falk and his squad of ****stains wanted it to look vanilla on the outside.

  MASON, E: Engines are top-tier, and unlike Hypatia or Alexander, undamaged. So it’s not gonna take us anywhere near as long to get back to the colony as it took to run away from it. The projection I heard was around nineteen days. Not the seven months it took us to haul *** here. This thing is a miracle of speed. It’s so fast it’s got your pants off before you’ve finished your drink.

  MASON, E: We’ve got anti-fighter screens, ship-to-ship ordnance with a tip-top targeting system, breaching pods and, oh yes, our very own Decimus 10 nuclear ****ing missile.

  MASON, E: Now ask me what the ****ing awesome news is.

  GRANT, K: Too busy trying not to make size-of-missile joke.

  MASON, E: Slandering your prince constitutes high treason, you know.

  GRANT, K: Aaaaanyway…

  MASON, E: The ****ing awesome news is we found three fighter ships in the hangar down here. They’re Chimeras. Different from Cyclones. You need a pilot and gunner to fly one properly. But they hit like anvils, and can fight in atmo as well as vacuum. Not sure what Falk’s team were doing with them. I guess they needed all kinds of tools for all kinds of jobs on board?

  MASON, E: Point is, we have guns. Top-tier engines. Between these Chimeras and the Cyclones we can transfer over from Hypatia, we got twenty-one fighter ships. Which means when we’re headed back to Kerenza, we’re not showing up naked.

  GRANT, K: That would indeed seem to constitute ****ing awesome news.

  MASON, E: Very nearly as good as the bunk news.

  GRANT, K: I gotta love you and leave you, but I figure my downtime starts in, oh, about thirty-two hours. Any chance you can get a break?

  MASON, E: A Prince Of The Realm walks where he will.

  MASON, E: …Meaning I’ll ask Winifred and get back to you.

  GRANT, K: Okay.

  GRANT, K: I do, you know.

  MASON, E: Do what?

  GRANT, K: Shut up.

  GRANT, K: Love you, okay?

  MASON, E: I know.

  MASON, E: I just like to hear you say it.

  GRANT, K: Gotta go. Take care.

  MASON, E: As you wish.

  —TRANSMISSION ENDS—

  MAO

  ASSAULT VESSEL: MAO

  Commander: Syra Boll

  Executive Officer: Yuki Hirano

  CLASS: Griffon (highly modified)

  LENGTH: 0.8 km

  HEIGHT: 0.18 km

  CREW AND PASSENGERS: 3360

  MAX VELOCITY: 1.91 sst

  ACCELERATION: 1.75 sst

  DEFENSE GRID: Chelsea-iixv1

  PAYLOAD:

  Decimus 10 nuclear

  missile x 1

  Furiosa MX4 railgun x 4

  FIGHTERS: Chimera MkII x 3

  SHUTTLES: Vitus III x

  To: ZHUANG, Yulin

  From: GRANT, Kady

  Incept: 01:20, 08/18/75

  Subject: Scuttlebutt?

  Hey Yulin—

  Sorry to email instead of coming to visit. I am buried in work, and i mean that literally :( i climbed into the servers to do some of the hookups manually, then the supply guys unloaded a pile of boxes and stacked them in front of the door and now i’m trapped while the one supply guy who checks his mail hikes up six decks to tell his buddies they just trapped us in here.

  WE ARE A FIGHTING FORCE THAT CANNOT LOSE.

  Anyway. scuttlebutt is that it’s going to be lights-out for good old Hypatia before we get under way to Kerenza. confirm/deny?

  x K

  GRANT, Kady

  Systems Chief (Acting)

  ID 962/Kerenza/Civ/Ref

  Click here to register your Go-Mail, and access our full range of features.

  To: GRANT, Kady

  From: ZHUANG, Yulin

  Incept: 01:41, 08/18/75

  Subject: Re: Scuttlebutt?

  Hey Kady—

  If by “lights-out” you mean the engineering department will plant a series of strategically placed and carefully calculated charges throughout the Hypatia and then have one of our pilots press the big red button from a careful distance, then yes, confirmed. Captain’s orders. Hypatia is too damaged to keep up, so our options are to leave her behind or destroy her. Captain wants us to leave no trace.

  It may be scuttlebutt that we’re going to SCUTTLE BUT it’s also true. See what I did there?

  Have you considered not being rescued? I bet it’s peaceful in the servers.

  Y

  ZHUANG, Yulin

  Head of Engineering

  ID 447/Kerenza/Civ/Ref

  Click
here to register your Go-Mail, and access our full range of features.

  To: BOLL, Syra; ZHUANG, Yulin

  From: GRANT, Kady

  Incept: 01:44, 08/18/75

  Subject: Fw: Re: Scuttlebutt?

  Captain, please see mail chain below. Can we discuss? There’s another option beyond destroying all trace of the Hypatia. Someone from WUC might find a way to come looking for us eventually, and if we leave her behind, she can serve as a beacon and a record of what happened here.

  If we don’t make it off Kerenza, we HAVE to leave word behind, or our last chance at justice is gone.

  GRANT, Kady

  Systems Chief (Acting)

  ID 962/Kerenza/Civ/Ref

  To: GRANT, Kady

  From: ZHUANG, Yulin

  Incept: 01:41, 08/18/75

  Subject: Re: Scuttlebutt?

  [expand]

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  To: GRANT, Kady; ZHUANG, Yulin

  From: BOLL, Syra

  Incept: 02:53, 08/18/75

  Subject: Officers do not spread scuttlebutt

  Kady,

  Thank you for your input. I value suggestions and advice from all my officers. That said, my decision remains firm. I am not planning to leave word so someone else can figure out our story. I am planning to survive.

  If it’s not WUC but BeiTech that comes this way—and I take this opportunity to remind you that these people have already attacked our colony on Kerenza, killed civilians and military peacekeepers in the thousands, launched a hostile takeover of Heimdall and sent not one but two drone fleets to deal with us, so we’re talking about people with a great deal of determination—then I am not leaving a signpost to point which way we went. It may be that by destroying the Hypatia we can even convince them that we’ve perished and throw them off the scent.