Explorations: War

by Richard Fox

  “A warship, then,” Six said, leaning forward to rest his hands on the countertop, and he knew in his bones that this was going to end badly. “Addy, extrapolate from that image and the last known vector of the hostile. Where did they go?”

  “Best guess, Commander, is that they were decelerating into Erebos orbit and are using the planet’s gravity to swing them around.”

  “How long before they can be back overhead?” Stephane asked.

  “Too many unknowns, Doctor,” Aadesh 49 replied. “But if we were dealing with the most advanced human vessels of a similar size, two minutes. Up to thirty-three minutes for an orbital insertion that will bring them to rest relative to No Logical Path, directly overhead.”

  “How long to get the shuttle up there?” she asked.

  “Ten minutes just to heat it up,” Six said. “Another ten to get up and dock with the Path and—”

  “We got our link back!” Matthew shouted excitedly from his station. “Comms and data are back up!”

  “Do what you can to stop the roll remotely, Matt, and confirm the orbit is still stable,” Six ordered. His jaw clenched as he queried the network for JoJo’s transponder. No pings returned. The last confirmed position was the aft airlock, almost exactly where the alien beam weapon had cut through the hull.

  “What about Fazion’s pod?” he said, trying to keep his voice even.

  “Got a lock and confirmed open channel, skipper,” Matthew said.

  Six hit the icon on his holo that connected him directly to the pod’s comm array. Fazion’s agonized cries filled the control center at full volume, making everyone flinch.

  “Fazion!” Six yelled. The kid just kept right on screaming, sucking down air in between huge, wet sobs. “Fazion, this is Six. Calm the hell down!”

  Something struck Six’s right shoulder with enough force to rock his entire torso. He glanced over to see Stephane glaring at him.

  “He is not one of your combat-boosted soldiers, Bergman,” she hissed. “He’s a mathematician and he’s scared to death.”

  Stephane joined the channel, keeping her voice soft but firm. “Fazion?”

  The sobs continued, but the screaming stopped. “Doctor Bescond? Is that you?”

  “Yes, mon ami.”

  “JoJo’s gone, Doctor. One second she was there, waving at me, then—”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I can’t see anything!” the kid yelled, at the edge of hysteria.

  “It’s okay, Fazion. We’re going to help you—”

  “My eyes are wide open,” he exclaimed, “but I can’t see anything! My face hurts!”

  Fazion was panting heavily, and Six was afraid he would pass out. They needed to get him back on board the Path immediately.

  “Fazion, this is Six. Can you move your arms?”

  “Yes! But I can’t see!”

  “Understood, son. I need you to either reach behind the headrest or on the bottom of the seat near your thigh. Can you do that?”

  “Ye—yeah. Yes, sir,” Fazion answered, his breath slowing somewhat.

  “You’ll feel a large button.”

  “Got it! What do I do?”

  “Push it quickly three times. It will pop out after the third click. You push it down hard once more and the pod will auto-dock with the Path.”

  “Okay,” the young man said, then, “I’m moving! I can feel the acceleration.”

  “Good, son. Just sit tight.”

  The signal icon went dark, indicating that the link up to the ship had been lost.

  “Matt, get him back,” Six said, and turned to face Garza and Robert. “Both of you, full combat kit, then go get the shuttle heated up.”

  Without a word, the two big operatives turned to leave the control center. Robert casually tossed Garza one of the heavy, gear-filled crates as if it were a pillow.

  “Khan, get every bot and drone we have activated and ready.”

  “For what?” Stephane asked.

  “Options, doc. Options.”

  ***

  The maintenance pod cycled through the docking sequence, and Fazion could feel the clicks as the door leading to the Path’s interior opened in front of him. Shaking, breathing in sobs and hiccups, he tried to stand against the artificial standard gravity, using his hands to feel for the edge of the hatch and step through. His legs gave out immediately and he went straight down to his knees, then elbows, before lying prone on the deck of the airlock. The return to gravity also proved that Six had been telling the truth about evolution and bladders, and Fazion realized that he needed to take an epic piss. The first real-world danger he’d ever faced and all he could think about was finding the nearest toilet.

  His limbs wouldn’t stop shaking, and the entire right side of his face felt like he’d gotten the worst sunburn in history. His right eye remained completely blind, but he thought the left eye’s darkness was a shade lighter. He brought up a shaking hand and waved it weakly in front of his face.

  Yep, definitely saw that, he thought, somewhat relieved.

  Fazion called out for Commander Bergman, for Doctor Bescond, for anyone, but there was no response. He rolled over on his back, carefully, squeezing back against the immense pressure in his lower torso. Thinking that there might be something wrong with his spacesuit’s radio, he reached with barely-controlled hands for the seals on his helmet, hoping he’d be able to talk to Erebos Base through the ship’s intercom.

  Aadesh 49 chimed in his ear. “Mister Sedaris, please do not remove your helmet. The ship is venting atmosphere in several places.”

  Fazion let his arms fall to the deck, relived that he didn’t have to try and get the clasps undone with fingers that didn’t seem to want to cooperate. “Aadesh 49, thank God,” he said, trying to breathe steadily. “Do you know what happened?”

  “No Logical Path has been attacked by a warship of unknown origin.”

  “Aliens?” Fazion yelled, instantly regretting it as the right side of his face throbbed painfully.

  “Quite possibly.”

  “How bad have we been hit?”

  “The main drive, the displacement drive, and the main reactor are spinning away from the rest of the ship.”

  That’s very bad, Fazion thought. Then he remembered JoJo waving at him from the airlock.

  “JoJo?” he whispered, not really wanting to hear the answer.

  “I’m sorry, Mister Sedaris.”

  Fazion felt around with his hands, finding the wall nearby and pulling himself up into a seated position. The bend at the waist pushed against a very full bladder, but he gritted his teeth against the pressure. He would not go down in history as the guy that filled his spacesuit with urine in the opening shots of a war with real extraterrestrials. Skin could be grafted, eyes and optic nerves regrown, but that level of embarrassment was permanent and inescapable.

  “Where are they now?” Fazion asked, feeling for a handhold to pull himself standing.

  “They came in at a very high velocity and we believe they are decelerating around Erebos, but, admittedly, that is speculation.”

  “No disrespect intended, Addy, but why aren’t I talking to the control center?”

  “The comms link with the ground is intermittent,” said the AI. “I am attempting to resolve that right now.”

  “So you’re not actually Aadesh 49. You’re a shard?”

  “Correct, Mr. Sedaris. When communications are reestablished, I will seamlessly integrate and the primary mentality will know what I know. In the meantime, how may I assist you?”

  “I’m blind, Addy, and I think I might be going into shock, but, more importantly, I really need to take a leak.”

  Outside the bridge and crew module, all the way forward, the only toilet Fazion could clearly remember was just forward of the secondary engines—near the midpoint of the ship before most of the modules had been sent down to build Erebos Base. If the main drive had been shot off, he supposed that now made them the primary engines.


  “The nearest waste reclamation chamber is in the robotics module, through the next hatch forward. It is a sealed chamber, so you may safely unsuit within.”

  Something like vertigo swept over Fazion, and he almost swooned when he realized he had no idea where on the ship he actually was, and regretted not memorizing the layout after all the time he had spent on board.

  “That’s great,” Fazion grunted, grasping the wall and slowly pulling his legs underneath his torso. “Which way is forward?”

  “Pardon me, sir, but communications have been restored. Commander Bergman is—”

  “Faze?” Six’s voice called.

  “Here, sir,” Fazion replied, standing carefully, embracing the module wall like a rock climber stuck on a ledge.

  “Okay, we’re showing you back inside the ship, but the Path’s comm array isn’t cooperating. I don’t have your location.”

  “Yeah, I’m here,” Fazion said. “Addy just told me I’m just aft of the robotics module.” His limbs weren’t shaking as much and the darkness in front of his left eye seemed more gray now than black, but he was still dizzy and the right side of his face felt like someone was holding a hot skillet against it.

  Fazion waited for Six to continue. “Commander?”

  “The link is down again, sir,” the shard said.

  ***

  In the control center, Six slammed his fist against the top of his station.

  “Dammit! Matt, get me comms with the ship again.” He looked up at the tactical display they had put up on the main holo, showing the location of the base and the Path in orbit.

  “Anyone picked up the hostiles yet?” he asked, receiving a chorus of negatives. Six connected to Garza, out on the landing field readying the shuttle. “What do we have aboard that can treat vision trauma?”

  “The autodoc can stabilize his system,” Garza said. “It can also prevent infection and keep him comfortable, but for something like optic nerve damage, we’d need a full medical facility. Sorry, skipper.”

  “The autodoc is two hundred meters away from him through a heavily damaged civilian freighter,” Six said.

  “Well, each module has a basic medkit. If he’s in shock, we’d at least be able to treat that, but there’s nothing that can help with vision except maybe some VR goggles in one of the bot kits.”

  Ichabod spun around at his station and looked up at Six. “Mr. Komal, can you repeat that?”

  “I said that some of the bots have VR goggles in their kit,” Garza said.

  “What are you getting at, Icky?” Six asked.

  Ichabod stood, gesturing wildly with his arms. “Fazion is a hardcore gamer. He’s got a full set of VR wetware installed.”

  “That won’t help, though,” Matthew said. “The bot goggles are opaque. No forward-facing camera. They’re just…”

  Matthew frowned and crossed his arms, concentrating.

  “Exactly. He can activate one of the small drones and jack into its optical feed using the goggles. The images should bypass the optical nerves and go straight into his wetware sensorium.”

  “Yeah, that would probably work,” Matthew said, “but the resolution is going to be shit.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Six said, “as long as he can move through the ship quickly.”

  “I appreciate your concern for him, Commander,” Stephane said, “but that alien ship could show back up at any moment. Is this really a priority?”

  “Even if that ship doesn’t come back, which I admit is highly unlikely, any distress signal we send back to Sol would take—”

  “About 318 days,” she finished for him.

  “Right, and they would respond within hours, but by then, everyone here would likely have starved to death. We only brought enough consumables for six months.” When Stephane frowned at him, he continued, “And frankly, I thought that much food was overkill. We were only supposed to be here long enough to build the base, run through your tests, and prove the tech works. Another group of SG researchers and staff were supposed to show after that, and we’d get to go home.”

  “That part, I didn’t know. So what’s this got to do with Fazion getting forward?” she asked.

  He grinned at her. “You know as much about my ship as I do about your wormhole.”

  A mental command sent to the base datanet from the holodisplay at Six’s station brought up a schematic of the Path. He pointed to a small blister in the hull.

  “Here, right behind the bridge and crew module, is a single-use lifeboat. It’s got enough oomph to get up to four people within five AU of Sol.”

  If Six had sent a jolt of electricity through the scientists’ chairs, they wouldn’t have shot out of their seats any quicker. All of them except Stephane started yelling at him simultaneously.

  “You mean we can get home?”

  “Can it land down here?”

  “Can it launch remotely?”

  “Taisez-vous!” Stephane yelled, shutting them up instantly. She looked back to Six. “How many of us can it seat?”

  “It’s only designed to seat two, but four can squeeze in. And no,” he said, looking down at the three men slowly returning to their seats. “I can’t land it down here. It’s not designed for regular operations on a planet, let alone four times standard gravity.”

  “Why can’t we just load it with a recorded message and launch it right now?” she asked.

  “We could,” Six answered, “but first, those assholes up in orbit will probably destroy it the second it moves from behind the wormhole. Second, do you have any idea how many signals UEF space traffic controllers deal with not just every day, but minute to minute? An unmanned lifeboat will get shunted off into some standby queue, and who knows when they’ll get to us?”

  “And if we send Fazion, he jumps home and they drop everything to get to him because there’s an actual person inside?”

  “Correct.”

  Stephane threw her arms up and frowned, the frustration in her voice rising through the octaves. “But that’s absolutely ridiculous!”

  Six frowned right back at her and yelled right back. “I promise I’ll take it up with the board at the very next Aerospace Safety Commission meeting. For now, we’re sending your boy.”

  Stephane closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then nodded.

  “Alternatively,” Six said, softening his tone, “we all die at the hands of aliens…or whatever they have at the end of their arms. If they have arms.”

  “Link to the Path is back up, skipper!” Matthew shouted.

  ***

  Fazion’s hand slid lightly along the way as he took small, shuffling steps forward, careful not to disturb his swollen bladder. Academically, he was amazed that the searing pain of having one’s eyes burned out could take a back seat to the biggest piss in the history of manned space flight. He was feeling the raised metal of the frame around the hatch when the static in his earphones cleared, and he heard Six’s voice again.

  “Fazion, if you’re still in the airlock chamber, we need you go forward to next module where the bots are stored.”

  “I’m at the hatch to the main passageway now, sir,” Fazion said as he slid his hand up and down along the wall next to the hatch, trying and failing to find the little control panel, but feeling nothing but flat composite. Frustrated, he started swinging his hand in wider arcs, like trying to find a light switch in a pitch-black bedroom.

  This is what it’s like to be blind, he thought. This will be my life if the doctors can’t fix me.

  A single tear welled up and ran down his cheek. His finger struck the hatch control and he hit it, feeling the vibration of the door opening through his boots.

  “We’ve got a job for you,” Six said. “Now I know you’re scared, but I think you’re going to love this.”

  “Thanks, but first I have to—sir, is Doctor Bescond listening?”

  “Of course, Fazion. I’m right here,” Stephane cooed, trying to sound as softly reassuring as possible. “We ar
e all right here with you. You’re not alone.”

  Fazion groaned in dismay, the agony in his privates combining with the horror of complete and utter embarrassment.

  “What’s wrong, kid?” Six asked.

  Fazion fought down another wave of pressure and answered through clenched teeth.

  “I’ll do whatever you need me to, sir,” he said, almost sobbing with the effort. “But first…I really gotta pee.”

  ***

  “Do you think we should have expended so much reserve fuel changing the inclination of our orbit, Currentmaster?” the ship’s pessimist asked. “We will have less reserve available if we have to maneuver during combat.”

  ProudRock Aptor clicked his teeth together. Despite the severe damage they had inflicted during their first pass, he wasn’t about to make things easy for the humans by coming back around the planet in a predictable equatorial ballistic trajectory. As soon as they had been over the horizon, he had ordered an extended burn that had not only killed most of their initial velocity, but had changed their inclination by a full quarter-sphere. Their approach would be over the top of the planet and unexpected. Not that he thought they would need to surprise the humans again, but it was good training for his officers.

  “The human vessel is most likely a freighter, and we’ve taken away their main drive. They’re not going anywhere. If anyone is going to be maneuvering in this encounter, it will be us.”

  On the wallscreen, the forward sensor blisters relayed the real-time view from the nose of his ship. The dark surface of the planet rolled by underneath them, until the sensor officer detected the two parts of the human ship exactly where they had left them. Bright green targeting brackets sprang up on the wallscreen, providing distance and firing solutions for the various weapon systems the gunnery officer could bring to bear.

  Aptor warbled and stood up.

  “Navigation, bring us to a stop relative to the larger piece of the human ship.”

  Alarms pulsed loudly throughout the ship, warning the crew of impending maneuvers.