Tyche's Grace

by Richard Parry

  RADAR Acronym for RAdio Detection And Ranging. RADAR uses radio waves to determine the range, angle, and velocity of objects.

  Radiation Sickness A constant hazard of space. Many crews take daily medication to ward off radiation sickness. It’s as much a part of shipboard life as making sure your O2 is topped up. This means that a mild dose of radiation is unlikely to kill you if treated in time, but massive doses are still dangerous.

  Railgun A kinetic weapon that fires high velocity rounds by way of a pair of conductive rails. They are often mounted on larger ships and make a dramatic statement when fired against enemy vessels.

  Reactor Starships use fusion reactors. The most common design is the ICF (Internal Confinement Fusion) style of reactor. These have a variety of safety functions that make them suitable for spacefaring needs, including containment fields in case of malfunction. Larger starships can eject faulty reactors into the hard black.

  Republic The ruling government of human civilization. The Republic is made up of a Senate, headquartered on Earth. Initially founded by dissenters against the Empire, it has risen to be the driving force of human innovation, commerce, and expansion. The final fight between the Empire and the Republic was quick, due to the small number of ships deployed by the Empire (the Republic Navy had reliable intelligence that the Empire’s forces were much larger). Quick didn’t mean bloodless, although the Republic offered amnesty for any serving Empire crew who wished to take it.

  Rig Slang for maintenance equipment commonly worn by Guild Engineers about starships. These double as space suits for zero atmosphere maintenance on the exterior of a starship’s hull. The design incorporates a visor with configurable HUD for instrumentation and telemetry, and a set of programmable servitor arms for complex manipulation of equipment.

  Shingle A guild badge of practice, allowing the holder to a) claim they are Guild certified and b) ply their trade as a Guild craftsperson. They are notoriously hard to get, requiring years of study and excellence in your field.

  Ship Suit Slang for spacesuit. Generally denotes a space suit for a specific ship carrying crew logograms and/or color themes.

  Space Suit Clothing worn to keep humans alive in the hard black. They provide protection against vacuum, temperature extremes, and radiation. Military models are often fitted with armor to protect against blasters, lasers, masers, and kinetic rounds. They often provide additional protection against high-G maneuvers.

  Spacer Slang for those who crew on a starship, civilian or military.

  Tonne Metric ton, equivalent to 1,000 kilograms.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  FIRST UP, THANKS to all y’all who read these books. Without readers, there would be no stories, and the world would be a darker place. You are legendary.

  Thanks to everyone who helped with this series, but in particular Scott and Pat. Your help and encouragement is humbling.

  My last thanks is reserved for my Rae. You are my true north charting a sea made of stars and possibility.

  — R. P.

  April 2018, Wellington

  EXCERPT: TYCHE'S DEMONS

  SOMETHING WICKED

  FIVE MINUTES. THAT’S all it took from we’re having a good time to we’re going to die, horribly.

  El entered the bridge, swagger dialed up to eleven, and gave her second a practiced glare. “Price. Report.”

  “Captain on the bridge.” Price, for his part no stranger to the Captain of the Skyguard wanting a little bridge time, stood from the command couch and slipped sideways into Tactical. “Captain Roussel, sir. We’re about to jump into Paloma. Still nothing on scan.”

  Not that nothing on scan was a surprise. The Troy floated in the hard black, somewhere between nowhere and haven’t got there yet. They’d jumped into a system with an angry red star, a couple rocks in orbit that had been tagged and bagged by a research team years back, and then forgotten in one regime change or another. El wasn’t sure whether it was the regime change from Empire to Republic, or Republic back to Empire, and her field of fucks was barren on that particular issue. All that mattered from a stars-and-charts perspective was this system was empty and made a convenient jump point to Paloma.

  The bridge’s holo stage lit the center of the room, all calming green as the Troy mapped out in-system bodies, all where they should be. The bridge itself was an Empire design, familiar, the gold falcon on the floor bright and new.

  She slung herself into the captain’s acceleration couch. “Lieutenant, we are a couple light years—”

  “Fifty light years, sir,” said Price.

  El raised an eyebrow. If it wasn’t for his too-damn-pretty-to-die good looks, she might have said something, but the bridge deserved a little cheer for all hands. She suspected Dot Sound — the Comms officer on station to El’s right — had tapped that well at least once. “Fifty,” said El.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You know, Lieutenant, that ‘a couple’ is a variable unit of Guild measurement? It’s in the manual.” El kept her face deadpan.

  “The manual, sir?”

  “That’s right, Lieutenant,” said El. “Anyway. We’re a couple light years out. Hell, if we were a single light year out, anything we got here from Paloma would be dead news anyway. But it’s good to know nothing’s out there wanting to eat our faces.” Catching a snort from Helm, El turned to face Leo Shackleton, a man who used the callsign Hot Shot. “Ensign,” said El. “You have something to add?”

  “Coming down with a cold, sir,” said Leo. He wasn’t pretty except the way he flew. El had scooped the kid up from the Skyguard’s flight school and put him on her bridge crew before he’d done three weeks. When she’d asked him where he learned to fly so well, he’d given her a smile — all crooked teeth and acne — and said hell, I used to work in a circus. El didn’t know which circus or where, but she’d go there someday to do a little more recruiting. He hadn’t done his Guild cert for Helm, but El knew a person. Being connected was good. So Leo Shackleton, eighteen-years-old and change, maybe the ugliest damn person she’d ever seen, was now Helm on the destroyer Troy.

  “Very well,” said El. “I figure we go see what’s out there. Comm?”

  “Sir?” said Dot, who looked to be practicing her don’t get involved routine.

  “I want you to broadcast a high-five and a hearty hello when we jump in,” said El. “I want everyone who hears us to know we’re more interested in dancing and a good night out rather than firing up our rails.”

  “Sir,” said Dot. “Pearls, black dress, and a show, on it.”

  “Price,” said El. “Why are we still here?”

  Price cleared his throat. “A good question. Helm, ready for jump?”

  “Helm is ready for jump,” said Leo.

  “Comm, ready for jump,” said Dot.

  “Tactical, ready for jump,” said Price. “Captain?”

  “Lieutenant.”

  “I’ve got a knife in a boot and a gun in a shoulder holster, just in case our dance partner is a mugger,” said Price.

  “Just the way I like it,” said El. She frowned. El didn’t much like flying into dangerous situations, but if she had to, having a hand-picked crew of non-imbeciles was her preferred way of doing it. “Let’s go.”

  “Negative space bow wave forming,” said Leo. “Bridge, bow wave is stable. Route is green. In three.” Accompanying his words, the big number 3 lit the bridge holo stage. “Two.” The number shifted to a big 2, this time flashing. El caught fuck yeah from Dot’s station, and she couldn’t hold back her own smile. “One,” said Leo. “Jumping.”

  Space outside the bridge windows stretched, pulled, and El felt—

  Her skin, warmed from the hearts and minds around her. The remembered taste of coffee, heaven-sent. Her fingers, gripping the arms of the acceleration couch, not in fear, but in joy. The pure thrill of acceleration, impossible, unbelievable acceleration. She couldn’t feel it. She was it. She was everything. She was the universe.

  Stars stretc
hed, made points of light that streaked past the Troy’s bridge.

  They jumped.

  • • •

  Five minutes was a relative measure.

  The Troy shuddered into place in the Paloma system. El ran a hand through her hair, still feeling the post-jump rush, her skin alive with sensation. “Report.”

  Dot shifted on her acceleration couch. “Nothin on comm. Hailing.”

  “Well, that’s unexpected,” said Price. El followed his line of sight, taking in the bridge’s holo. Where there should have been comforting green lines, the Troy painted the system in angry reds.

  “Where’s the damn outpost?” said Leo. “Uh. Sir?”

  “It’s alright, Ensign,” said El. “The same question was on my mind too. Price?”

  The lieutenant worked his console, no doubt looking for answers. While he did his thing, El turned her gaze from the bridge holo to the windows. Out there, in the hard black, was Paloma’s yellow star. The system had four planets, none of them terraformed. That was as expected. When the cap — fucking hell, El, he’s the emperor now — the emperor had said put a Guild outpost about there, pointing at a star chart, finger hovered over the system that would bear the name Paloma, people had scurried. Autofactories had been sent. They'd constructed a Guild Bridge. A station, a big one, not to orbit a planet, but the system’s star. No one asked why, because when Nate had a hunch, it usually proved good.

  The reason the Troy was having a panic attack was because Paloma Station wasn’t there. Gone. A big tub, twenty thousand souls aboard, a thing you couldn’t miss. It shouldn’t be hiding behind the star, unless someone had pulled up a moon-sized tug and given it a nudge. No tugs. No nudging. No Paloma Station, either.

  Get your shit stacked and in order, El. “Lieutenant Price,” she said.

  “Sir.”

  “I want you to find me that station. I don’t care if you need to get out there in a suit and walk between Paloma’s star and Paloma Delta. I want you to get every spare crew member up and looking out portholes. I don’t care if they’re sleeping, Lieutenant. Stations do not disappear.”

  “Comm has … something,” said Dot.

  “Specifics are useful, Comm,” said El. She shifted on her couch, the straps feeling constricting rather than comforting. “‘Something’ isn’t a super good descriptor.”

  “It’s… audio. I think.”

  “On speaker.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” said Dot. She clicked a button on her console, and the bridge speakers filled with a sound that was too orderly for static. Like, what static would sound like if it found itself in a marching band, a conductor at the front, and a firing squad to shoot any stray piece of disorderly noise. Racked and stacked, but … meaningless.

  “You’re right,” said El. “That is something.” She waited, then got tired of waiting pretty quick. “What is it?”

  “Working on it, sir,” said Dot. Her voice was distracted, attention on her console.

  “Found it,” said Price. “Or, enough stray mass to be a station.” He clicked buttons on his console, the bridge holo clearing, zooming, and reframing a section of the system. Just empty hard black to the naked eye, but to the Troy’s keen gaze, full of what would best be described as space sand. Spread out in an orbit around Paloma’s star, an ovoid shape of debris, each piece about the size of a marble spread over a Jupiter-sized area of space.

  El leaned forward, staring at the holo. “Lieutenant Price,” she said. “Are you saying that Paloma Station was destroyed? And that what destroyed it was so thorough that they rendered the station down to nothing larger than an after-dinner mint?”

  “Ceramicrete, and, uh…” He licked his lips. “Water, and carbon.” Doubt crept into his voice. “No steel, or tungsten. No metals of any kind. Not even traces, which is … strange. But yes, my best guess is that’s what’s left of Paloma Station.” The holo scrolled with the thousands of material traces in the debris cloud, the major chunks alongside polymers and proteins. All the things busy human hands made, alongside a bunch of what looked like the remains of twenty-thousand Guild Engineers and their support teams. Just, no metal. There were — or had been — Empire Navy crew on that station. Good men and women, out on the edge of space, because the emperor had said, right there.

  Your shit is not stacked and in order, El. “Helm.”

  “Sir,” said Leo, his normal cockiness bridled and tame.

  “Light the fires. Take us closer.”

  “Aye, aye,” he said. El felt the gentle push of the Troy’s fusion drives, the ship seeking through the hard black. “2Gs, holding.”

  “Don’t spare the horses,” said El.

  “Aye, aye. Burn at 4Gs.”

  The gentle push turned into a shove, the rumble of the mighty drives something El felt through her couch. El looked at Price. “Fangs out, Lieutenant.”

  “Bared and grinning,” he agreed. His console’s holo was bright with telemetry, looking for a target. Railguns, online. Plasma cannons warmed and ready for a conversation. Lasers and masers. PDCs, watching for anything that wanted to come close enough for a cuddle. “Now at general quarters.”

  “Comm, report.” El turned to Dot. “I need data.”

  “It’s a pattern,” said Dot. “It repeats.” She played a snippet of sound over the bridge speakers, about two seconds long. “That is the message, repeated over and over.”

  “It’s a two-second message?”

  “It’s a two-second pattern,” said Dot. “I don’t know if I’d call it a message. There’s a lot of data in that two seconds. It could be a shopping list. It could be a compressed sample of a holo show. But I think it’s something else,” she said.

  “What?” said El. “You know I don’t like playing the whole guessing game thing, right?”

  “Sorry, sir,” said Dot. “Here.” She worked her console, the sound stopping for a second, replaced with something that sounded similar. Not the same, but similar.

  “What am I listening to?” said El.

  “This is a coded message between autofactories in the Troy,” said Ella. “When our constructs build something, they ‘talk’ in bursts. They coordinate peer-to-peer.”

  “You’re saying the broadcast out there is an autofactory?” said El.

  “Maybe,” said Dot. “It’s not one of ours, though. If it was, I could tell you what they were constructing. But it’s similar messaging.”

  “Inbound target. High velocity approach vector. Burning hard.” Price’s voice was tense, the bridge holo bright with some of that anxiety in the form of telemetry shared from his console. El noted his use of target rather than ship. The Troy’s LIDAR and RADAR reached out, caressing the inbound vessel, showing them what they were up against.

  “What the fuck is that?” said Leo.

  “Ensign,” said El. “If there’s going to be swearing on this bridge, it’s coming from me.” She turned to Price. “What the fuck is that?”

  The holo painted a ship a little smaller than the Troy. It was polyhedral in shape, like nothing the Old Empire, or the Republic after it, had built. El wasn’t up to counting the number of sides at this particular moment, but it looked more-than-ten-but-less-than-twenty. Each side housed a drive core and a set of protrusions the Troy guessed were weapon mounts, but the destroyer wasn’t sure. It was burning from out of the lee of Paloma’s star, making what El would call very good time. The Troy said it was pouring on 10Gs of thrust, the kind of thing that would make your bones hurt.

  “It’s a spaceship,” said Price.

  “Don’t be an asshole, Lieutenant,” said El. “I can see it’s a—”

  “Incoming fire!” shouted Price. “Railgun rounds.” The bridge holo agreed, updating with bright red lines between the enemy and the Troy’s hull.

  “Evasive maneuvers,” said El. They were too far out for the enemy’s railgun rounds to be anything other than a probe. See how the Troy might react. And El was up for that party. “Helm, do your thing. Take us
right to that motherfucker.”

  “Aye, aye,” said Leo, hands on his console. The Troy’s drives pushed harder, making breathing a strain. The big destroyer changed direction. The ship pointed its prow at the polyhedral enemy. The bridge holo was bright with inbound fire telemetry.

  “Transponder?” said El.

  “No,” said Dot.

  “No?”

  “No,” she said. “Nothing we can hang a sign on.” Dot paused. “I’m getting that signal again,” she said. “Same, but different.”

  “Tell you what,” said El. “Why don’t you send ‘em a message?”

  “What message?”

  “Tell ‘em to go fuck ‘emselves, with my compliments,” said El. “Price? I need a firing solution.”

  “On it, sir,” said Price. The bridge holo blinked, zooming out from the enemy ship, showing the Troy on the display as well. The distances were vast but given enough time they’d get to tangle with the enemy. “I’ve got multiple scenarios loaded into Tactical. I can give ‘em a nudge from here, if you like.”

  “Do it,” said El.

  “Firing,” said Price. The Troy had three railguns mounted topside. They woke up, shifting the big twin arms toward the hard black where their enemy awaited. There was a deep hum, then a flash of white as the rail arms superheated, accelerating their payloads to over a third of the speed of light. The bridge shook as the rails fired, then again, and once more. “The Captain sends her regards,” said Price. “Nine rounds, outbound.”

  “Track those rounds,” said El. “Back in the day, I used time and distance to great effect. Wouldn’t want us snared in our own trap.”

  “Tagged and bagged,” said Price.

  “Incoming hail,” said Dot.

  “You what?” said El.

  “Incoming hail,” said Dot. “It’s, uh.”

  “Let’s hear it,” said El.

  The bridge speakers crackled, a flat voice spoke, not male or female, not hot or cold. The words were well-formed, but slightly off, like the speaker wasn’t from around here. Where they might be from, El didn’t know. She’d not heard an accent like that. It was almost like it was a bunch of accents, all jumbled together. “Empire destroyer Troy, we have you.”