Explorations: War

by Richard Fox

  “Your desired distance from the target, Currentmaster?”

  “Torpedo range. Keep us nose first toward them,” Aptor ordered.

  “That will present the smallest cross-section, Currentmaster, true, but it will limit us to one main battery if we decide to fire on them again,” Wavisoc said, standing beside his commander as always.

  Aptor didn’t quite ignore the ship’s pessimist—that would be a severe dereliction of duty—but he didn’t have to give weight equal to his own judgment for each and every event that occurred. Truthfully, it was a fine line to swim.

  He turned back to his command chair and tapped a button on the armrest, opening a channel directly to the commander of his contingent of armored troopers.

  “Strongclaw Oonipol, are your attack craft prepared?”

  The young officer’s voice replied immediately, strong and confident. “We are ready to launch at your command, Currentmaster.”

  “Remain ready,” Aptor replied and closed the channel.

  Wavisoc fidgeted next to him. “If you mean to send troopers over to subdue the humans and take them alive…”

  “Possibly,” Aptor said, keeping only two eyes on the pessimist and the rest on the tactical plot. “We shall see how this flows.”

  “If we let aliens with strange biology on board, they could infect us with an unknown pathogen. We would have to maintain an atmosphere and temperature that wouldn’t kill them, which might tax the ship’s systems to their limits. And what if the humans get free while they’re on our ship? They could kill us all in our sleep.”

  ProudRock Aptor was ready to attack. He could feel the battle lust welling up inside and, not for the first time, realized the wisdom of keeping Wavisoc nearby. He didn’t agree with a single thing the ship’s pessimist was suggesting would happen, but having alternatives and outcomes listed helped him think.

  “Navigation, match orbits!”

  ***

  Fazion opened the hatch to the robotics module and reached forward with his left hand to make sure the door had actually slid up out of his way. His right eye was still completely blind, and the best he could manage with his left was the ability to pick out a light source if it was nearby. Satisfied the hatch had opened, he shuffled forward. The shaking in his limbs had gotten a bit better as well, but he still felt like someone was holding a tanning booth turned to maximum against the entire right side of his body. The hiss of the open comms channel disappeared. The link down to the base was out yet again.

  “Addy, can you hear me?”

  “Yes, Fazion, and now that you’re inside the robotics module, I can see you as well. There is nothing on the floor in front of you, so you may walk forward. If you will turn left slightly…yes, that’s it…and continue forward approximately ten of your steps, you will find the hatch leading to the waste reclamation closet.”

  “Thank God!” Fazion said. He started walking forward immediately, swinging his arms back and forth in front of him to avoid running into anything, despite the AI shard’s claim of a clear route. It was all he could do not to break into a run. When he was halfway across the module, the AI chimed in his ear again.

  “Mister Sedaris, we have reestablished a link with Erebos Base, but the alien vessel has returned and is matching orbits approximately 31.25 kilometers from us.”

  “First things first,” Fazion said, slapping his hands on to the bathroom’s hatch control. He leaned against the door as slid upward, the rough composite making grinding noises against the smooth plastic and ceramic of his spacesuit. When he felt his head fall forward as it cleared the bottom of the rising hatch, Fazion pushed his considerable bulk into the tiny compartment. He unsealed his spacesuit and dug through the layers of clothing underneath, positioning himself over where he hoped the vacuum pump would be. The shard of Aadesh 49 closed and sealed the hatch behind the large young human, wondering why the man was laughing and screaming praise to a deity.

  ***

  ProudRock Aptor looked down at his bridge crew and said, “We’ll start by poking them like a molting female. Let us see if these humans will give up their eggs to us.”

  The generally affirmative mumble and subdued laughter at his analogy made him want to click his teeth together rapidly in triumph. A good leader should be able to inspire his subordinates as well as lead them successfully in combat. Today, Empyrean willing, Aptor would do both.

  “Optics,” he said, “identify those long, thin structures that stick out of the human ship at regular intervals.”

  “Very bright on infrared, Currentmaster,” the officer said, with four of his eyes buried in a scope. “I suggest they are some form of thermal radiators.”

  “Then that is where we will start. Gunnery, minimum intensity. As the next ‘thermal radiator’ rotates into view, destroy it.”

  ***

  “Incoming!” Matthew shouted, watching his holodisplay as the thin ruby beam drew a perfect line between the two ships. “Another beam weapon!”

  “Commander, thermal dump number two has been destroyed,” Aadesh 49 reported.

  Six could feel everyone in the control center watching him, waiting for a response. He gripped the edge of the countertop in front of him and squeezed, watching his own holo and cursing the excruciatingly slow roll the Path had picked up after the first attack. With no direct attitude control over what was left of his ship, he was forced to wait.

  ***

  “Has there been any change in the human ship’s position? Any attempts to contact us?” Aptor asked.

  “No, Currentmaster.”

  “Any electronic warfare directed at us?”

  “No, Currentmaster.”

  “Target the next radiator and fire.”

  ***

  “Thermal dump three has been destroyed, Commander,” the AI said, its tone as even and cool as if it were listing off galley inventory.

  Six frowned down at the tactical plot in front of him, finger hovering over a large, red virtual button. Just a couple more seconds of as the Path continued to roll…

  Stephane leaned in and whispered, “What are you going to do?”

  “This,” Six growled, mashing down on the Apex missile launcher’s fire control.

  A ten-meter section of the Path’s hull rotated into the middle of the ship, swinging the Apex missile launcher out into space. Twin launch rails spun and tracked the alien ship, belching flame and expanding gas as twelve six-meter-long missiles sped away in a volley that lasted only two seconds. At the same instant, the 900-megawatt laser turret on the chin of the bridge and crew module slid out of its recessed chamber and fired a long steady beam, but instead of stitching a line of destruction across the hull of the alien warship, the energy hit something just short of the target’s hull and flared like a small sun.

  “They’ve got shields!” Harrison Lee cried. Six felt an unaccustomed stab of fear as he watched his chin turret’s energy splash and dissipate against the indigo forcefield.

  The small swarm of missiles crossed the gulf between the two ships in fifteen seconds. Plenty of time for Six to watch his laser weapon fail, to hope that the missiles would have greater effect, and to watch that hope extinguished as a dozen fusion warheads slammed into the forcefield surrounding the hostile vessel.

  Seeing the size of the explosions, Prem Mitra jumped out of his seat. “Holy shit!”

  “Did we just nuke them?” Harrison Lee asked.

  Six sat back in his chair and let his shoulders slump. His eyes stayed fixed on the spot where the laser and then the missiles had struck.

  Stephane leaned forward into his line of sight. “You brought nukes on a research mission?” she asked.

  Six took a deep breath and sighed, still staring at the undamaged alien ship. “I always bring nukes.”

  Stephane turned to look at the live image of the alien for a long second, before sitting back into her own chair and similarly deflating. “I don’t suppose you have any more?”

  Six looked over and g
ave her a lopsided smile. “Just one, but you’re not going to like where it is.”

  ***

  The engineer’s voice emanated from the intercom speaker in Aptor’s headrest. The news was very good.

  “Human fusion weapons ineffective, Currentmaster. The neutron soak is high, but manageable.”

  When the laser had hit them, ship’s pessimist LongTree Wavisoc stiffened with barely controlled outrage. When the missiles pummeled the shields a few moments later, Wavisoc had nearly lost control. Nearly, because the pessimist had successfully clamped down on the rage. Instead, he stood in place, opening and closing his thumbclaws. “They dare fire upon us!”

  ProudRock had not expected a tenth of that fusillade, and was confident he had seen the worst the humans would be able to throw at them.

  “Gunnery,” he said almost cheefully, “full intensity. Destroy their weapons emplacements.”

  The forward battery fired a thick white-hot beam that pierced the Apex launcher’s guidance optics instantly, vaporizing the interior of the weapons carriage and continuing out the other side, blowing most of the housing off the side of the Path’s hull.

  ***

  Ichabod sat frozen, jaw slack, watching the exchange of weaponry in orbit. When he had let Stephane Bescond talk him into this job, he had known, academically, that space travel was inherently dangerous. He had known, academically, that agreeing to head out to the Oort Cloud with no support or backup was also inherently dangerous. He could imagine any number of perfectly accidental events that might kill someone in a place as dangerous as Erebos—Doctor Bescond often said she liked having him around for his creative way of looking at problems—but Ichabod never accepted that he might get injured, let alone die. As the fusion missile strike ended and the alien warship fired back, ice-cold fingers of panic traced up Ichabod’s spine and his overactive imagination betrayed him. He didn’t picture himself dying in an explosion or suffocating when the life support failed, nor did he see himself being shot by an alien soldier or flash-frozen and crushed under his own weight when tossed out an airlock naked. Instead, Ichabod Finn’s imagination showed him a high-production-value movie of horrible alien monsters slamming him down on an exam table and holding him while they sliced his clothes off, taking huge chunks of skin off in the process because they didn’t give a damn about him or his screams of agony. To them, he was just somewhat interesting meat. Something to be dissected alive and tossed in the garbage afterwards.

  When the missile launcher exploded, Ichabod snapped out of it and looked down at the console in front of him. His hands shot out and his fingers flew across the virtual controls like a concert pianist. The overhead lights dimmed as he worked.

  ***

  The gunnery officer stood and faced his commander.

  “Their missile weapon has been destroyed, Currentmaster.”

  ProudRock Aptor looked at Pessimist Wavisoc, expecting the usual tirade of why their weapon exploding was somehow bad for the egapocid warship. Wavisoc blinked six eyes at him, then looked away nervously.

  “Don’t look at me for guidance on this, Currentmaster Aptor. Pulling their teeth is the correct course of action.”

  Aptor clicked his teeth together, enjoying the irony of a supportive ship’s pessimist. The humans’ attempt to destroy them must have shaken Wavisoc more than he was letting on.

  “Well-aimed, Gunnery,” Aptor said, adding a congratulatory click for emphasis. “Full intensity. Destroy their beam weapon. If any other weapons appear, destroy them as well.”

  The gunnery officer returned to his seat and dialed in his shot. He had already swung the turret to aim at the human beam weapon. Part of being a good gunnery officer was anticipating the currentmaster’s next order, after all. Now all he had to do was grasp the firing toggle and squeeze—

  The ship rang like a gigantic bell and the angled metal of the gunnery console in front of him accelerated toward his face, slamming him up and out of his chair along with others on both sides.

  Proudrock Aptor was bucked up and out of his command chair, barely able to hold on to it to prevent his being thrown across the deck as so many of his subordinates had been. Alarms pulsed and shrieked in the sudden gloom as lighting failed and red emergency lamps came on. The intercom fizzed loudly with static, the engineering officer shouting at him over the ringing in his ears.

  “Currentmaster! Forward shields have collapsed!”

  ProudRock snapped his teeth together, deep-seated instincts ready to leap, ready to grasp something with his thumbclaws and kill…

  “Navigation!” he roared, “swing our nose away from the humans! Now! Now! Now!”

  Maneuvering alarms sounded again, and the regular lights came back up. All around the bridge, officers were picking themselves up off the deck. Aptor used his chair to climb into a standing position, offering a firm grip to help up Wavisoc, who had fallen completely flat.

  “We’re presenting a bigger target,” Wavisoc said with an unsteady, thin voice. “If you—”

  “Silence!” Aptor thundered. “Return to your stations! Engineering, reinforce the facing shields! Navigation, prepare maximum acceleration on my command. And SOMEONE TELL ME WHAT THEY HIT US WITH!!!”

  “They…didn’t, Currentmaster.”

  Aptor spun toward the voice, his hands hooked into talons and raising into a fighting stance before he got control of himself. “What?!”

  The sensor officer was apparently the only one that hadn’t gotten knocked out of his station. He leaned over his scopes, peering intently at the information scrolling across his console.

  “The power level…the frequency…it matches our weapons exactly.”

  “What are you saying?” Wavisoc yelled.

  “I’m saying that…somehow…we struck ourselves.”

  ProudRock Aptor felt a chill spread through his already cold-blooded carapace.

  Someone gently touched his arm, and he looked over to see Wavisoc staring at him intently with all six eyes, his mouth tentacles almost vibrating with apprehension. The pessimist leaned forward and pitched his voice so only Aptor could hear him.

  “Run, ProudRock. Get us out of here. Order the hyperdrive engaged immediately and take us home.”

  Aptor looked down at Wavisoc for a long moment, weighing the positives and negatives of such orders. He warbled softly in response.

  “No, LongTree Wavisoc. We cannot. The Bright Father Empyrean is undeniably our Glorious Savior, but He is also harshly unforgiving of failure.”

  ***

  Six and Stephane both shouted at Ichabod in unison. “You what?”

  Six stared up at the holo as the alien ship turned its damaged section away from the Path, drawing an arc of smoke and small debris.

  “I…uh…figured, you know…that they would fire at our turret next, so…I, um…”

  The intercom chimed. Konrad’s frantic voice boomed into the control center. “Command, what the hell is going on up there? The entire torodial array just red-lined!”

  Six looked from the intercom speaker back to Ichabod and raised an eyebrow.

  “I p-p-put the aperture in front of the chin tu-tu-turret, perp-perp…” Ichabod stopped for a quick second, closing his eyes. “Perpendicular to the enemy ship.”

  “Where is the terminus?” Stephane asked.

  “Sitting fifty meters above the aperture,” Harrison said, looking with wide-eyed disbelief at his own displays.

  “It’s outside the minimum safe distance for the ten-meter aperture I used,” Ichabod exclaimed, almost sounding offended. “Right now the terminus is rotated ninety vertical from the hostile’s point of view and I’ve got Aadesh 49 keeping it that way, no matter what maneuver they make. If they do somehow manage to detect it—”

  “—it will just look like a line in space,” finished Stephane. “Ichabod, are you saying that you made aliens shoot themselves?”

  The scientist nodded, long messy hair bouncing with each quick up-and-down.

  “
Is the wormhole still functional?” Six asked.

  “Yes,” Ichabod and Harrison answered.

  “I thought about using an reverse alignment to camouflage the Path,” Ichabod said, “but—”

  “Using a wormhole to camouflage a ship in space?” Six said. “How?”

  “It’s something Fazion came up with. Pretty simple, when you think about it,” Harrison said. “Essentially you hide between the aperture and the terminus.”

  “Come again?” Six said, trying and failing to see how that could help.

  “You put the terminus facing toward the observer you want to hide from, and the aperture at the other end of your ship. All photonic images, for example, the starfield or a planet behind you, would pass into the aperture and come out the terminus. The observer sees what the aperture sees, but can’t see anything in between the aperture and the terminus.”

  “I wasn’t entirely sure what a beam weapon that can slice up starships would do if it hit the terminus,” Ichabod said. “The aperture just lets it go right through, but the terminus…”

  “What would happen?” Six asked.

  “We don’t know,” Stephane said. “The power we apply from the generators downstairs just teases open the wormhole where we want it. The non-local energy that keeps the throat open has a property that only allows one-way travel. Nothing can enter the terminus, not even photons. Bombarding the terminus with various types of high-energy radiation is one of our scheduled tests. Maybe it will be a catastrophe, maybe a new way to shield ships from damage, like our friends up there. We just don’t know.”

  Tactics unfolded in Six’s mind. They might just have a couple options after all.

  “Addy, please tell me we have a reliable link to the Path and that you have remote control.”

  “Confirmed, Commander. We are down to fifty percent on the vernier thrusters, but since we’re now dealing with a third of the original mass and length, the remaining modules should be quite agile.”