Forsaken Skies

by D. Nolan Clark

  The disruptor round was a lumpy rod about a meter long. Most of it was solid carbon, dense and hard as diamond. Studded inside the rod were hundreds of small but very powerful explosive charges. They were timed to explode in series, each of them going off a millisecond after the one before it.

  The disruptor dug through the interceptor’s solid bulk, tearing the enemy craft apart as it wormed its way through. The carbon rod turned to shrapnel that tore the interceptor apart from the inside.

  The interceptor’s guns kept firing, impactors whizzing past Valk in a steady stream. He felt cold dread grip his stomach and he was certain, absolutely convinced, that the interceptor had some way of shrugging off his disruptor just like it had proved immune to his AV round.

  But then something inside it—maybe its fuel tank, maybe an ammunition magazine—exploded, and the whole ship blossomed outward in a spreading ball of fire that turned dark and dissipated almost instantly. Pieces of the interceptor flew off in every direction. Stray impactor rounds formed a cloud all around it, glittering in Valk’s lights.

  Inside the BR.9’s cockpit, Valk had stopped breathing. He watched the interceptor’s pieces spread outward, tumbling and twisting, until he couldn’t hold out any longer.

  He drew a breath.

  He’d made it.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was hard to make small talk when you couldn’t tell anybody where you were from. Or who your family was. Or, for that matter, why you’d been dragged out of a wrecked yacht hidden inside a gas giant and lugged along as deadweight to the middle of a combat zone.

  Thom did his best.

  “Lanoe said you were in the marines,” he said.

  Ensign Ehta didn’t seem to have heard him. At least, she didn’t reply. She punched a virtual key on her wrist display instead. The magnetic winch on the side of the tender whined and groaned and another fighter detached from the undercarriage. A telescoping crane arm reached out and gently deposited the fighter on the ground.

  Thom tried to help, steadying the fighter as it touched the concrete, trying to keep it from wobbling. Of course, if something went wrong and it tipped over, the fighter would crush him, even in Niraya’s low gravity. So Ehta had to keep an eye on him as well. “Is it true? You were a marine?”

  “Yeah,” she said. She walked around the fighter, checking it for damage. Her wrist display flickered and chimed as it ran a diagnostic on the fighter’s systems.

  “You must be pretty brave,” Thom suggested.

  She glanced up at him. He couldn’t read her eyes.

  “You hear stories,” Thom said. “You know. I saw a newscast on the battle at Nergal last term. We thought there had to be some kind of rounding error when we saw the number of casualties.”

  She picked up a tool, something with a light on the end, and swept it around inside the fighter’s main thruster.

  “It wasn’t an error, though, was it? You really lost five thousand troops in one day?”

  “More like in a minute,” Ehta said. She switched off her wrist display. “The marines fight on the ground. Ground’s a bad place to be when the Navy’s in orbit.” She shrugged, then peered down the barrel of a particle beam cannon.

  “How does something like that even happen?”

  She looked down at the tool in her hand. Then she set it carefully on a ground cloth and sighed. “If I tell you, will you be quiet and let me work?”

  “I’m—I didn’t mean to—”

  She tilted her head to one side, ignoring his stammering apology. “There was a lot of fighting around the main refinery yard on Nergal, lots of DaoLink insurgents but they were low on supplies and we were about to break through.” She shrugged. “DaoLink had a cruiser in a polar orbit, though. It opened up with its seventy-fives—that’s a kind of gun with a seventy-five-millimeter bore. Fires about six thousand rounds a minute, though that’s misleading, because it only carries enough ammo to discharge for ten seconds at a go. Anyway, they had a whole battery of those guns and they opened them up all at once. Blew up the refineries, but I guess they figured it would be cheaper to rebuild them than to surrender them.”

  Thom made a conscious effort not to let his jaw drop. “But all those people—they just—just killed thousands of marines to—”

  “Well, see, marines are even cheaper than refineries,” she pointed out. “There’s a lot of people on Earth and Mars and Ganymede and not a lot of jobs since the polys got enfranchised. So you can always get more marines.”

  She closed her eyes for a second, as if she were remembering that day. Slowly a smile curled across her mouth. “Nergal,” she said. “Real pretty.”

  “It…was?”

  “The fighting was actually on one of its moons. Nergal was up there in the sky. It’s a gas giant, a hot one like Geryon—you saw Geryon pretty good, I guess.”

  “More of it than I would have liked.”

  She nodded, but she wasn’t looking at him. “Well, this one had rings. That close to the star, they weren’t ice rings, though, like Saturn’s. Ice would have just sublimated away. These rings were made out of rock, so hot it was molten. The rings glowed, like a ribbon of fire floating around this big dark planet.” She opened her eyes and looked at him. “Pretty.”

  Thom had no idea how you could think about the scenery when so many of your friends and comrades were getting blown up from space. How much violence and death did you have to witness before it was less noteworthy than the view?

  He’d wondered the same thing about Lanoe, though in the abstract. He knew Lanoe was a highly decorated pilot. That he’d fought in more battles than Thom had even learned about in his history classes. You’d think that would leave some kind of mark on somebody. That you would just be able to tell.

  Instead, back when he worked for Thom’s father, Lanoe had just seemed like a quiet old man. It wasn’t until Lanoe had chased him halfway across the galaxy that Thom had realized there was more to him. That he had depths Thom couldn’t even begin to fathom.

  Being around all these old people with their stories, with their decades or centuries of experiences, made him feel ridiculously young. Unproven. His father had always kept him away from any kind of danger or excitement. His life had been one of unrelenting boredom, relieved only by the occasional yacht race.

  He wondered if he was ever going to have a chance to make something of himself. Lanoe had brought him to Niraya, he knew, because it was the last place the authorities would think to look for him. But did that mean he was going to spend the rest of his life, there?

  Hellfire, he hoped not. The air was so thin he could barely breathe. The gravity was lower than he was used to and that was annoying every time he tried to walk straight. It was cold, too, near freezing even with the local sun riding high in the sky.

  “You must have seen a lot of things nobody else ever will,” Thom said. “I mean, I’ve seen a bunch of planets, but typically just the spaceports and some hotels and—”

  “Kid,” Ehta said, “I’ve got work to do here, you know?” She tapped at her wrist display and small hatches opened on the sides of the unlimbered fighter. One after another she yanked out long, rectangular slabs of metal that Thom knew were fuel and ammunition cartridges. She laid them carefully on a sheet and started rubbing at them with her gloved fingers. He had no idea what she was trying to check.

  He waited until he couldn’t stand it anymore. The not talking. “I’m sorry if I bothered you,” he said.

  She sighed and looked up at him. He couldn’t take the expression on her face. He could imagine what she was thinking. He was just a kid, some stupid rich kid Lanoe had taken a shine to for some reason she couldn’t guess. Meanwhile she was a pilot and a Navy officer doing vitally important work that could save lives.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. He turned away. He would have run off, if he’d known of anyplace to go. “I’m sorry I’m in the way. I’m sorry I’m so useless.”

  “Kid,” she said, “relax. Just…relax.
And shut up.”

  His cheeks burned with shame. He was about to say something more, make another apology, except just then her wrist display started chiming and she looked up into the sky. He turned to look as well, and saw something small, moving fast, headed in their direction. It quickly revealed itself to be a fighter—a BR.9—coming in for a landing.

  “Valk’s back,” Ehta said. “Early.” She glanced at her wrist. “Really early.”

  Her display chimed at her again and Lanoe’s face appeared floating above her wrist. “Ehta?” he said. “When Valk lands, get him over here to the Retreat as quick as you can. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  By the time they reached the elder’s office, Ehta was gasping for breath. She was gratified to see that Thom was in just as bad shape—she’d thought she was getting old.

  Valk never even slowed down. He hadn’t lowered his helmet, of course, so he had plenty of oxygen. He hammered on the door like he owned the place and hurried inside. Ehta gave Thom a look and headed in as well.

  Inside, the elder and the other pilots were huddled around a desk, deep in conversation with a tall woman Ehta didn’t recognize. She had black hair cut to fall around her ears and she wore civilian clothes that were less than a decade out of date, so for this planet she looked pretty hip. “This is M. Derrow,” Lanoe said, pointing at her. “She runs the mining operations for Centrocor. She’s an engineer.” He looked up at Valk. “You have it?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Valk said.

  When he’d landed at the spaceport, he was carrying something big and heavy in his arms. He’d been in too big a rush to get to Lanoe to show it to her on the way over. Now he dumped it onto the desk with a clang. Powdery black residue scattered across the display top.

  Ehta joined the general throng, trying to get close enough to see what it was. Not that it was easy to tell. The object had been heavily damaged, cut up by a particle beam by the look of it. It was about as thick as Ehta’s thigh and scorched black until whatever color it had been originally was gone. One end of it was just a mass of severed wires and cables. The other tapered to a savagely sharp point. Like the claw of some giant robot wolf, maybe.

  “Do you recognize this?” Lanoe asked the elder.

  The old woman studied it carefully before she replied. “Yes. It looks just like one of the legs of the lander that killed my people.”

  Lanoe nodded. Clearly that was what he’d expected to hear.

  Ehta had barely glanced at the video of the killer drone attack. She remembered seeing a claw like that protrude from the chest of the dead elder in that video, though. She shivered a little.

  “This time they sent fifteen of them, with one interceptor as an escort,” Valk said. “I’ve got video and my fighter’s logs to look at, if you want.”

  Thom reached out one finger to poke at the exposed wires.

  “Leave that,” Lanoe barked.

  “I just thought—”

  “We don’t know if it’s safe,” Lanoe said, his voice softening a little. “Roan,” he said. “Can you do me a favor?”

  The Nirayan girl looked surprised. “Yes, of course,” she said.

  “Take Thom somewhere and get him something to eat,” Lanoe said.

  Ehta could see Thom winding up to protest, but the look on Lanoe’s face was pretty clear. This wasn’t a conversation for unauthorized civilians. The kids left the office together without any more fuss.

  “This isn’t for public consumption,” Lanoe said, gesturing at the thing on the desk. “Okay? M. Derrow—when Valk told me what he was bringing back, I knew we’d want an engineer’s perspective. That’s why we called you in here.”

  Derrow nodded uncertainly. She stepped up to the desk and took a long, thin probe out of one of her pockets. Then she looked at Valk and Ehta as if she’d suddenly realized there were strangers in the room. “I’m, uh, that is—I’m an administrator, mostly. I have a desk job. It’s been a long time since I actually did any fieldwork.”

  “You’re saying you can’t tell us anything?” Lanoe asked, looking angry. He never did have much use for people who wasted his time.

  “If I may,” Maggs said, leaning in. He smiled at the administrator and she glanced away. Uh-ho, Ehta thought. Maggs was already working his magic. “We need to keep this at the very top level. Tip-top. That’s why we wanted a woman of your…standing to give it the eye.”

  “Well…” Derrow said. “Let’s see.” She touched the claw with her probe in a couple of places. “Pretty bad scoring. This damage—it looks like maybe some kind of laser cutter did this?”

  “Particle beam,” Valk said. “My, uh, particle beam.”

  “Ah.” Derrow squatted down to get a better look at the ragged end. She stuck her probe into the stringy mass there, then took out a pair of pliers and grabbed one of the strands. She gave it a good tug as if she was trying to pull it out.

  Instead, the claw spasmed and thumped against the desk, its point digging a deep gouge out of the display top. It started flopping its way across the desk until Derrow let go of the pliers.

  Instantly it fell back, inert again.

  “Is that thing alive?” Zhang asked. “Was it alive?”

  “No,” Derrow told her. “It’s all metal. Lightweight alloys but nothing all that exotic. This was built, not born. Though it’s not a design I’m familiar with. These wires,” she said, touching the strands with her probe again—Ehta flinched in case the thing came back to life, but it didn’t—“are designed to act like muscle fibers. You pull on them and the whole limb contracts or flexes.”

  “A drone,” Lanoe said. “We knew that already. But you say this is new to you. Maybe some kind of new technology? Something DaoLink cooked up in a lab, maybe, and they needed to test it so they sent it here to see what it could do?”

  “No,” Derrow said. “No. This isn’t new technology at all. In fact, it’s pretty archaic. The concept goes way back, but this implementation is crude compared to modern myomechanicals—plastics with selective elasticity that make this look like a child’s toy. If Centrocor has that tech, so does DaoLink. This is antique. This,” she said, looking distinctly unimpressed, “would rust if it got wet.”

  “I don’t understand,” Lanoe said. “Why would they send old technology here?”

  Derrow shrugged. “It’s cheap? Disposable?”

  Zhang leaned over the claw, studying it with her metal eyes. “Is there any indication who built it? Any, I don’t know. Serial numbers? Maker’s marks?”

  Derrow used her tools to turn the thing over, study it from all sides. “Nothing like that.”

  Valk turned to face Lanoe. “There’s something else. I tried using an AV on the interceptor, but my sensors couldn’t detect anything like a cockpit onboard. No cavities large enough to hold a pilot at all.”

  “So the interceptor was a drone, too,” Lanoe said. He looked confused. It was hard to see the difference in that wrinkled face between confusion and anger, but Ehta had known him long enough to tell. “Remotely piloted, maybe.”

  Valk shook his head from side to side, an exaggerated gesture for a man with no face. “No way. My scans were thorough—there were no other enemy craft in the system, and the rest of the fleet is still light-days from here. The interceptor was slow, but it was tracking me in real time. No way a remote pilot could fight like that. The battle would have been over before they even knew it was happening. The interceptor was relying on its onboard computers.”

  “No. That’s impossible,” Zhang said.

  “Um,” Derrow said, “can I ask why?”

  Zhang folded her arms and lifted her left shoulder in a kind of noncommittal shrug. “You don’t let a computer fly a warship. You just don’t.”

  “Humanity,” Lanoe said, “has made a lot of mistakes with our technology. But we don’t make the same one twice. We dropped atomic bombs on ourselves once, and never again. We turned one planet into gray goo with nanotechnology. Never again. We don’t build artific
ial intelligences smarter than a mouse, and we will never, ever make a computer that smart and give it weapons. They tried it in the early days of the Century War and—well. It took a lot of us to fix that mistake.”

  “Then how do you explain this?” Derrow asked.

  “I’d love to hear suggestions,” Lanoe replied.

  Ehta surprised even herself when she cleared her throat.

  “Maybe,” she said, “I, uh. Have one.”

  Though she knew they would scoff when they heard it.

  Thom stomped down the stairs, with Roan following close behind. He couldn’t believe Lanoe would just dismiss him like that. Lanoe had saved his life—and risked so much in the process. Now he was just going to dump Thom on this backwater planet and leave him to do…what? Nothing. Worse than nothing—he had to be looked after, tended to. Lanoe was treating him like a liability.

  Well, he might be just that. If the authorities ever found out that Lanoe had helped Thom, they could arrest him as an accessory to—to—

  He couldn’t bring himself to even think it.

  “There’s a refectory downstairs,” Roan called after him. “I don’t know if you were actually hungry or not, but…”

  He turned around on the steps. Even walking down the stairs had left him out of breath, and now a surge of anger swept through him, pure unfocused, frustrated wrath that made his head swim. Why had Lanoe saved his life at all, just to bring him to this place that wasn’t even habitable? He thought of about a dozen choice comments he could make, barbed witticisms to direct at the girl’s bland, impassive face. She was already angry at him, like so many other people. Why bother even trying to be social?

  Because she was the only person on the planet, maybe, who would actually talk to him. If he was going to spend the rest of his life here, he needed to start making connections. Friends.