by Scott Warren
“You know boy, only two or three guys I’d rather storm a Dirregaunt battleship with,” she said.
“Yeah, but how many of them love you like I do?”
“None,” she said softly.
Aimes pulled away. Tessa picked up her own rifle as she watched him disappear into the thick fog of the artificial forest.
“See ya ‘round, Tess.”
Best Wishes stood, transfixed by the main view screen. His claws clicked against the bone protuberances on his chest. The human ship was nearly within range of the Springdawn’s forward-firing lasers. The course the Paralt ordered them to follow would take them within a light-second of the second planet, behind which the Springdawn waited. His engines were powered down to minimize the risk of detection, only the sensors and the capacitors for his weapons remained energized. Mere moments separated him from his prey now, and Prince Tavram would not escape again.
A low rumble translated through the floor paneling, vibrating his command console and briefly distorting the view screen’s display. He dug his claws into the sides of his station to remain on his feet. What was that? Alarms began to sound on the bridge. The frequencies for both explosion and decompression alarms overlapped but his careful hearing easily differentiated them. He looked to his first officer.
“Commander, loss of integrity in the forward sensor array. The crew reports they heard … thunder before the explosion.”
Best Wishes’ pulse began to quicken. Broad Resolve had heard thunder when his mate was killed. Oh, Praetory, Dutiful Heiress was assigned to forward sensors. “Dispatch security teams to all adjacent compartments. Man the doors, I am coming myself.”
“What of the Condor?”
“Fire as soon as we have a solution,” Best Wishes replied, already halfway to the door of the bridge. He cursed under his breath when he felt, more than heard, the Grah’lhin following behind. Members of the security team began to flank him, one offering a handheld laser to Best Wishes.
The team reached the boundary of the area affected by decompression. Six compartments adjacent to the forward sensor array had been affected All those within were almost certainly dead. They would have to remotely seal the doors to isolate the sensor array. The hiss of air caused the entire security team to flinch around him.
“My Commander,” said the young lieutenant of his security force, “The chamber is repressurizing.”
As if he didn’t already know. “Has the remote system been accessed?” he asked.
“Not by us.”
Then what? “Steady, hunters,” said Best Wishes. The hiss of moving air drew down, and he felt the security team tense up as the lock on the door cycled by itself. Not by itself, by something on the other side. By the Praetor, the deck had been exposed to vacuum, something could have gotten in.
No, he wouldn’t fall prey to superstition. He wouldn’t! He was better than that. Better. A hollow creak echoed through the room as the damaged door began to slide open. Thick gray smoke poured through the crack, smelling sickly sweet. There was more blood in the air. He focused his top eye, attempting to pierce the smoke and see beyond the visible spectrum of his primary eyes. There were strange particulates in the smoke, like flecks of metallics blocking most of even his infrared gaze. And behind it, something colder than the smoke. Something … vaguely bipedal.
His security lieutenant saw it too. He fired into the smoke, the rest of his team following suit. Lasers clicked and hummed as capacitors were discharged and refilled, creating a brilliant display through his fourth eye. The smoke flared as the lasers’ energy dissipated within. The … thing, remained on the other side, one arm strangely much longer than the other. It raised that arm towards the door.
Not longer, realized Best Wishes, holding something.
“Lieutenant, get down!” shouted Best Wishes as he dove to the decking. Thunder filled the compartment, painful to his highly sensitive ears. The security lieutenant hit the deck next to him, sightless eyes staring above a pair of steaming holes in the lieutenant’s face. Beyond the lieutenant, another of the security team gurgled as blood wept between the fingers he held over his throat. Best Wishes shouted at him, but his ears had drawn themselves shut to avoid further damage to their sensitive inner organs.
The cold thing, he refused to call it a spacewalker, slid out of the smoke. It was black, and definitely bipedal. Slightly shorter than a Dirregaunt. It had no face, but Best Wishes could feel its regard. Before it could act he felt the lumbering roar of the Grah’lhin translate through the flooring under his hands, and saw the things attention snap up as the giant insect charged. It raised the artifact in its hands again, the tip flashing brightly as it strafed away from the Grah’lhin. Something severed two of Bargult’s legs, and sent shattered chips of carapace spinning away. Best Wishes made an attempt with his laser, but succeeded only in briefly warming the surface of the cold thing before it vaulted over him and out the door by which the security team had arrived.
Spacewalker. There could be no doubt. It had come in through the hull breach. Was this a human? How many were on the Springdawn? The rest of the security team watched, dumbfounded. He barked them to their feet, ordering their pursuit. His ears were opening back up, and he could hear the thunder retreating through the compartments ahead. A few spirited remarks had them pursuing the terror through the dorsal forests of the Springdawn.
Overhead the lights dimmed further, and a hum vibrated through the ship. The human ship had passed into range, and his first officer, Modest Bearing, had taken the shot. A moment passed. Then the engines began to spool up, and the forward capacitors whined as charge flowed into them. The Springdawn prepared for a chase and a second shot. They had missed. Best Wishes threw the laser to the ground, smashing it beneath a powerful, clawed foot, again and again, until components began to tear bloody gouges in the skin of his pads. He had no words to describe his anger, so he simply screamed, silent to his own ears, deaf to the thunder of the retreating spacewalker.
“Huian, cut the compression. Bring us to point two while we’re within the planet’s gravity well.”
“Aye ma’am.”
Forel Beta, the second planet orbiting their destination star grew rapidly on the view screen as the Alcubierre drive was secured, restoring the Condor to her primary maneuvering engines. Their assigned procedure vectored them between the planet and its first moon, a distance slightly greater than a light second. Passing between opposed celestial forces under the effects of compression was unpredictable at best, and had sheared more than one ship into scrap metal with all hands still aboard.
“I don’t like this. Huian, deviate twelve degrees south azimuth. Let’s see how itchy the Paralt are.”
The view of the planet shifted on the primary screen as the Condor tilted to a nose-down attitude relative to the solar plane. Her communications console buzzed immediately. She thumbed the circuit, bringing up the pilot of another fighter assigned to shadow them.
“Paralt interceptor, Condor, deviating from course to avoid debris field in orbit above the planet, will resume course when clear of hazard.”
“Negative, Condor, my scope is clear. Check your sensors and resume assigned course immediately to maintain traffic separation.”
Victoria looked at her sensor repeater, showing the bearings and distances to all traffic in the area offered up by Avery and her sensor team. Liners, cargo hulks, and small, speedy envoy craft cluttered her queue, none of which was close or marked as a contact of interest. In fact, this entire quadrant of the system seemed clear. Except for what looked like … a human friend-foe identifier?
“Uh huh … listen champ, I’ll get back to you, I have another call,” she said. Not like he had anything useful to say anyhow. She cut off the interceptor’s reply, switching to the strange broadcast. It was weak, likely a bounce signal. Maybe off the moon.
“…imes Webb of the … anyone r-r-receiving … ingdawn ambush imminen—”
Ice poured down Victoria’s spine int
o every nerve in her body.
“Huian, punch it, now!”
Victoria was pressed back into her command couch as the Condor accelerated faster than her gravitic dampeners could compensate. Light washed out her rear view screen as the Springdawn’s deep-space lasers tore through the space the Condor had occupied only moments earlier. The computer had no origin, the lasers had come from behind the planet, refracted through the upper levels of the atmosphere. The math involved in such precision staggered Victoria, humanity might as well be cavemen compared to the Dirregaunt. Apex ambush predators. Hell, humanity wasn’t even on the food chain.
Alarms blared across the bridge as the Dirregaunt ship passed into view.
“Conn, sensors, Dirregaunt contact, two-nine-two, distance three-forty K-K. Profile indicates it’s the Springdawn.”
“Yeah, no shit Avery, I got that. Give me something useful. Huian, initiate an evasion program, distance one light-second. Get us to Forel.”
As she spoke, the broadcast entered direct line-of-sight, clearing up.
“Say again, Marine Aimes Webb of the Condor, to any human forces in this system, anyone receiving, Springdawn attack is imminent.”
“Thanks Webb,” Victoria whispered. She couldn’t pretend to know how he had managed to get the Springdawn to broadcast a warning of its own ambush, but damned if that boy hadn’t saved the ship.”
“Conn, sensors. Looks like the Springdawn was mostly shut down for the ambush, we’ve got a few seconds max before she’s back online.”
A few seconds could buy a lot of time, the Condor already had a few hundred thousand kilometer lead, but the Springdawn had a technological edge by the order of several magnitudes, like a tactical Alcubierre drive that could shunt them around faster than the speed of light. But they hadn’t engaged it.
“Avery, why haven’t they gone superluminal to chase?”
“Spectrum shows gas particulates along the dorsal hull, I think they have a hull breach. They’re picking up speed though, Vick. Best estimate is five minutes until they’re back in range. Takes a lot to move a ship that big. Those interceptors are a bigger problem, my scope shows an intercept course one-fifty K-K and closing.”
“They’re just trying to make a good show for the Dirregaunt. Tac, send a few dummies their way, give em an excuse to break off the hunt.”
The ship bucked twice as a pair of missiles shot away, screaming toward the approaching interceptors. On her repeater, she watched the two small fighters change course to retreat. That should keep the Dirregaunt off the Paralt’s back.
“Ma’am, should we engage the Alcubierre? With the Springdawn unable to enter a compressive state we could outrun them.”
“Negative Huian, we don’t know for sure they can’t, only for sure that they’re catching up now. We slip into a compression and maybe they decide to risk it, or maybe they plan to take advantage of our blindness to sweep around and get ahead of us. Don’t underestimate how clever xenos are. Just squeeze every ounce of acceleration you can out of the main engines.”
It still might not be enough. By her math was another 8 minutes to the jump shell at their current speed. The Dirregaunt only needed a few seconds to line up a shot, but they needed to close to within a light second to reliably overcome the ship’s evasion protocols. Or they could get lucky and turn the Condor into scrap.
There was still one more trick she could try, while they were out of the Springdawn’s visual range.
“Tac, detach the gravitic buoy. Huian, twelve degrees up azimuth. Yuri, engage the GSD and drop the heat shield.”
The gravitic buoy was an expensive little toy, able to fool most of the gravitic and heat sensors the xenos employed. Victoria had no idea whether it would work on the Dirregaunt, but the GSD had kept them hidden before, or so she thought. After all, the Springdawn had found them in a system the Dirregaunt had no other reason to be in. She watched as the Condor’s ballistic course took them further from the trajectory of the buoy. The gravity on the Condor remained steady, even as the tones of her ship changed.
“Yuri, why am I not floating? Gravitic stealth status?”
“The GSD is fully functional, captain. That Malagath engineer has been making improvements to our designs. You wouldn’t believe the stuff she’s been cooking up back here.”
Well, at least they were good for something. Less risk of losing her lunch in the microgravity.
“Conn, sensors. Springdawn remaining on present course, no alteration.”
“It looks as though your gambit has succeeded once again,” said the First Prince behind her. Victoria nearly jumped, she had forgotten Tavram was even there.
“We’re not out of the fire yet, your royal princeness,” she said, turning to his steady regard. No emotion showed on his face, though they would have been alien to her eyes she may have preferred it to the cold calculating stare. She felt like he was already dissecting her on an autopsy table. Fucking xeno creep.
She shivered, turning back to the view-screen, where she enlarged the view of the Springdawn. Being chased put one at a tactical disadvantage in the theater of space. At such incredible speeds there was a delay in the picture, they saw the Springdawn as it had been seconds before the present, a result of traveling at appreciable fractions of the speed of light. The chasing ship would have more current data, and the range of its weapons and sensors exceeded the range of its optics.
“Conn, sensors, Springdawn coming in range of the buoy, showing capacitors charged.”
But not firing yet. Shit, were they waiting for a visual? They kept closing the distance.
Unless …
Victoria enlarged the view of the Springdawn. The enormous ship was rolling clockwise. The dorsal batteries came into view, pivoted towards the Condor.
“Huian, full port slip, now! Drop the heat shield and get us to emergency acceleration.”
The Condor bucked to the left as a wash of active sensor pulses crashed into them. The view screen filled with fire as the Springdawn’s dorsal batteries discharged, lancing deadly light as bright as any star. The Condor shook as if hit by a comet, yawing and rolling from the blast.
“Conn, engineering, starboard ablative wing at six percent. Heat damage to the starboard hull.”
Victoria glanced at the damage. “Huian, get us inverted, put the portside wing to them. If they get a direct hit they’ll still cut us in half. Time to jump?”
“Three and a half minutes, Ma’am” said Huian. The girl was visibly shaken. At least she knew how much trouble she was in. The Chinese Navy never worried about this sort of shit.
“Huian, you with me?” asked Victoria. Her pilot nodded, still trembling. But her hands were deft on the controls, spinning the Condor to point the remaining ablative plating towards the Springdawn.
“Carillo,” called Victoria over the open microphone, “we’ve got to keep them away for three minutes, send a swarm down their throat, divide their focus.”
“Aye, Vick.”
The Condor vibrated as a small fleet of live missiles deployed from her tubes, spreading and dashing towards the Dirregaunt ship. They bucked and rocked to avoid point defense systems as they went, deploying flares to confuse sensors. Her rear optics had been completely wiped by the Dirregaunt lasers, but she watched on her tactical view as the Springdawn’s point defenses started to cut down her missiles, slowing the charging of her main battery’s capacitors.
Not enough time, she thought as the number of missiles in the salvo dwindled to single digits. Not a single warhead struck home on the hull of the Dirregaunt battleship.
“Conn, sensors. Showing an explosion on the Springdawn.”
Victoria pulled over her sensor screen. “Did one of our warheads make it through?”
“Negative, Vick. Scan suggests it came from inside the Springdawn. Spectrum shows traces of exotic matter. The Dirregaunt are reducing their acceleration. Vick, they’re breaking off the chase.”
It took her a moment to realize the ne
wfound silence was the absence of the marine’s warning broadcast, discontinued after the explosion. She rubbed her thumb and index finger over her eyes. Not a recorded broadcast then, Aimes Webb had been aboard the Springdawn somehow. Despite the loss, she bit back a grin. Like hornets in a beehive, her marines. The brave little bastard had given his life to give her fair warning. But if he was there, Tessa Baum wouldn’t be far behind. The Dirregaunt would have to deal with both before they could safely engage an enemy. In space the Dirregaunt were unstoppable. But well, man to man? Her marines knew how to hurt an enemy, especially one that forgot centuries ago what it meant to be weaker than your enemy.
Victoria sat back against her couch and exhaled. She had fired on the Dirregaunt and lived to tell. They would follow. They had to, she recognized the drive in their captain she saw in herself. Maybe not to the listening post, extracting their coordinates from the busy jump point would take days. But they must know by now that the Condor was bound for the Malagath frontier at Kallico’rey, and routes were extremely limited. Somewhere ahead, the Springdawn would be waiting. They barely survived this encounter. How would the next play out?
She watched on the forward view screen as the brilliance of Forel gave way to the strange abstract of horizon space, and the familiar chill crept across her skin. Four hours to the listening station was plenty of time to drink herself to sleep. She vacated the captain’s couch, passing the First Prince on her way from the conn. A short dip of his head was the only acknowledgement of her victory. Asshole.
Chapter 9: Listening In
Best Wishes watched on his forward view screen as the Paralt carrier broke apart. It was the coward’s toll, for peeling away from the hunt so easily. He had watched so many ships burned, blasted, and torn from space that he should no longer feel anything at their passing. But blood coursed through his reserve veins, reddening his vision and twisting his face into a snarl. The pressure built dangerously, but he relished the anger rather than slow his heart. The few fighters who hadn’t offered meek, fruitless defense fled deeper into the system. They weren’t worth the effort to hunt down.