The Liberty Fleet Trilogy (War of Alien Aggression, box set two)

by A. D. Bloom

  "It's a very important part of the process," the company man said. He grinned with his lips pressed together to confirm he'd attempted humor. "Now that I've met you," Cyning said. "I approve. You're luckier than you know, Captain Foet. This job will be a unique opportunity to say the least." Garlan snorted out his nostrils and sneered because he couldn't find any words for the derision he felt. "Every man waits for his chance," Cyning said, "for his ship to come in, as it were. The trick is knowing when it has arrived."

  "I want my ship back."

  Dana Sellis pushed the shots across the table at him. He took one and knocked it back without tasting it like Cyning's expensive booze was cheap rotgut. He faked a smile for the lady while it burned a trail down his throat. "Pass those 'round," he said to Bix. "And watch out for the king's coin in the bottom."

  Cyning smiled at that. "Be aboard the railgun monitor SCS Choctaw before 1730. All you need are your suits and helmets." Then, he spun on his heel and made for the hatch.

  Deimos Yards, Section 7, G-Deck Landing Pads

  Garlan's battered, Staas Blue exosuit was as much emergency-patching as suit, but the helmet mounted arrays were top notch. They picked out the pack of six QF-111 Dingoes flying above the shipyards from the heat glow of their engines even when the drones were coasting. "Give 'em a couple seconds to pass. We don't want to get shredded." Garlan said, "Bix, get up here. You might as well have some fun today."

  "There's no longboats out on these pads, Skipper."

  His XO smiled at Bix. "Spot that the moment you came out the airlocks with us, did you?" Carnaby pushed him up the line of spacers in exosuits adjusting their slim-jim gas belts. "See, Bix...if you're not a Staas crew, those longboat rides cost money. We haven't yet signed the contract and we don't yet have any money. So we'll be getting to the Choctaw the old-fashioned way."

  "G-Deck pads are always deserted," Garlan told the kid once he'd reached the front of the line. "It's too much of a pain in the ass to get to anywhere from here so nobody lands or sets down unless they have to."

  Graves hefted the blocky, 1-meter modular assembly by the sides to avoid the spiny forest of antennas that grew off the front. He pointed the back of it at Bix. "Here. Hold this." The kid grabbed it by the two mountings on either side of the exhaust nozzle that made such good handles. "That's a BX-115 whisker proxy - flies around in front of UN ships for advanced recon when they're too cheap to hire Privateers."

  "What do I do with it?"

  "The really important thing is you don't let go of it," Carnaby said.

  "Just point it where we want to go. Use those directional buttons on the handle to steer." He walked around to the kid's rear and got a good hold on the handle on the back of his suit. "You're going where that proxy goes and we're going with you." He felt a little tug when Carnaby got hold of the handle on the back of his suit. In seconds, the entire crew of twelve had all gotten a good grip on the crewman in front of them.

  "Don't worry, you'll use the vectoring test buttons to steer it. Be ready because it's gonna blow a little cold plasma at you. In your face actually."

  "Plasma? That's going to cook me!"

  "The temp will be less than half what your exosuit is rated for. So don't sweat it."

  "Plasma? Why can't we just use the slim jims..."

  "Too visible. Yard Master doesn't like free swimmers in his yards. Neither do his security drones."

  "The Dingoes might take you for a Squidy and shred you," Annie said. If she was trying to scare the kid, it didn't work.

  "How do I start it?"

  Garlan looked up for the patrols again. There was nothing but tugs guiding far-off haulers into the yards. "Graves is going to start it." He looked over his shoulder at Graves, behind Carnaby and Singh. The old spacer was holding up an extended index finger like he was ready to press the imaginary button projected in his visor. It was linked to the script he'd written for the whisker. "Do it," Garlan said. "Now."

  Bix didn't let go. The kid got that part right, but when the whisker started spitting plasma in his visor, it must have spooked him because he screamed a little. Garlan saw him frantically working the test buttons on the handle like they'd told him to, but no matter what he did, he couldn't seem to direct the whisker the way he wanted to go. "I can't control it!" he shouted on local comms as they fell upwards in a whipping ascending spiral of Graves' making. "I'm losing it!" Bix said it a few times before he panicked and screamed again. They all burst out laughing then, and the kid finally realized someone else was doing the flying.

  Garlan said, "Don't sweat it, Bix. Graves has thrust vector control from his suitcomp. But don't let go of the whisker, okay?"

  Just fifty meters off the pads they got clear of the shipyard's artificial gravity and popped above the maintenance shacks that had blocked the view on all sides.

  Seen from the outer rings, the Deimos shipyards looked like one of Earth's cities, but unbound by connection to any world. Its towers rose for kilometers in two directions, giving it a pair of skylines to rival any terrestrial metropolis. Where highways would feed into a city's sprawl, docks and berths and fast-printing decks had grown instead to service the ships under construction and repair. Docked there were almost completed Staas Company attack carriers, new puff-chested capital ships for the UN Fleet, ring-hulled breaching ships, Sturgeon Class destroyers, sloops, and support ships of every kind.

  Garlan's helmet picked out SCS Choctaw's transponder and projected an outline of her hull in his visor. She wasn't alone. Besides the five other monitors in her squadron, UNS Guerrero and her eight destroyers, a breaching ship, and three haulers held station close. Next to the battleship, the 300-meter monitors looked puny and the eight destroyers even smaller for being so slender. "Turn us," Garland said. "Turn us towards the Choctaw, Graves. She's at your nine o' clock high, 10Ks off the docks near Guerrero. Aim for the tower."

  The monitor's stubby command tower rose up from the topside of the converted freighter's hull, above and to port of the single railgun's gaping, open port. The crew of the Doxy flew at it strung out like sausage links. Guerrero's size made Garlan almost overestimate the distance to the monitors that were holding station a full K closer. The patch welds on the side of the Choctaw's tower were getting closer fast. "Let go of the whisker, Bix. It'll find its way home. Now, break it up, people."

  They pushed off each other gently and spread out while the slim jims puffed to keep them from spinning. Carnaby said, "Feet first, people. Feet first. Skipper wants 98% relative V deceleration bursts on the starboard side of the tower. Lock it in."

  The hull of the Choctaw rose up at them like they were falling from orbit. His helmet showed his current landing spot. The imaginary button projected in his visor blinked, waiting for him to push it. "Deceleration on my bingo in three...two...one... bingo." The gas coming out of their belts made a thin, frozen fog in the vacuum that trailed behind them and glittered in the raw sun.

  They landed feet first on the starboard side of the monitor's command tower. He only had to walk fifteen meters to look in through the windows of the bridge and see Dana Sellis standing next to the Choctaw's command chair.

  She leaned into the button on the arm of the chair when she pressed the transmit switch. "It's 17:31," she said over local comms. "You're late, Fo-et."

  2

  SCS Choctaw

  Dana Sellis made them sign the contracts before she'd allow them out of the airlock. One by one, they spat in the tubes and pricked their thumbs and made their marks. And it was done. They tossed it all into a sack she held at the hatch as they passed. "Congratulations," she said once they were all on board. "You're Privateers." Then, she turned and walked while the bag full of contracts and capsules of their fluids clinked against her legs.

  Garlan shouted at her back. "What are we supposed to do until we get to Shedir?"

  "Chief Kurtz will take care of you."

  "First officer is busy," Kurtz said. Kurtz looked like he'd been out in low-gees since be
fore they got the gene-cuts right. The man had a little curve in his spine from it...probably heart problems, too. "Welcome aboard. We used to be haulers like you," he said, "but they gutted Choctaw's holds and packed a cannon down her center. Now, she's mostly reactors and gun....I mean super-capacitors and magnetic acceleration rings and the loading section for the railgun."

  Bix said, "We thought all of you di-"

  "We didn't know any of these were still in service," Carnaby said.

  "After Sirius, you mean." Kurtz's face hadn't seemed so bright and friendly before until it darkened then. Railgun monitors like this one had been made to help fight the ongoing battle at Sirius and they'd perished in astounding numbers.

  At least they were on a lucky ship, he thought.

  "You and your crew might as well ride in our mess hall. It doubles as our lounge. There's a few big grav couches in there. We don't really have anywhere else to put you. If you're not at station on this ship or in your bunk, that's about the only other place to be. That compartment has a few portholes so at least you won't feel like you're riding in the hold."

  "Much obliged, Chief," Garlan said. "We'll stay out of the way. Won't we, Carnaby?"

  "You won't even notice us."

  Down the stairs and forward again ten meters, Kurtz spun the wheel and pushed open the hatch into the mess. "Keep the hatch closed when you're inside. Always closed during a transit."

  "Why's that?" Bix said as he stepped in.

  "Why?" said Kurtz? He glanced at Garlan then. "In case, that's why, powder monkey."

  "In case what?"

  The Chief said to Garlan, "How long has he been out in the black?" Kurtz told the kid what Garlan would have said. "In case of who the fuck knows what, boy! Isn't that the whole point?"

  One side of the twelve by ten-meter compartment was taken up by six tables and benches welded to the deck, a few refer units, a galley kitchen, and storage. Most of the compartment was lined with belt-iron steel mined from the asteroid belt and fast-printed laminates, but the far side of the compartment was different. What the monitor's crew had set up there looked so out of place on a warship that Garlan actually stopped in his tracks and clogged up the hatch. His crew pushed him out of the way when they got a glimpse of the woven rugs on the deck and on the bulkheads. It looked like some kind of Eurasian bordello with jumbo grav couches. The Doxy's crew bounded across the compartment and took running dives to get on them first.

  "This is generous. We'll try not to wreck the place, Chief."

  "Yeah." Kurtz glanced just once at the Doxy's crew in his lounge and it seemed he already regretted it. "Cookie is going to be coming in and working up dinner any second so don't let him catch you pokin' around his domain. He's touchy about that." Kurtz left them to go back to his station for the transit.

  Bix said from the porthole, "A second breaching ship is coming. It's steaming inside the formation. What's that other ship with her?"

  Garlan spotted the 375-meter, wheel-shaped breaching ship settling in next to the haulers off to starboard in the formation. One glance at the sweeping, flattened teardrop lines of the 150-meter pleasure ship holding close to it and Garlan knew what it was - and whom. "That's a big, ostentatious yacht. That's the company man, Cyning." He lifted his helmet and tilted it to look through the visor at the approaching craft. 'SCS AQUITAINE' blinked next to her. "He's coming, I guess."

  "I thought there was combat." Bix sounded disappointed.

  "Oh, don't worry, kid," Graves said. "I'm sure there will be. A man with his own breaching ship can slip away from a fight pretty quick."

  Choctaw's pinch projected .3 artificial gees and adaptive pulses to kill the inertia, but it had a cheap set of coils and everyone on board felt an extra tenth of a gee pulling aft when the convoy set out. The squadron of six, Staas Company monitors made for the Sol-Procyon transit point accompanied by eight, sleek UNS destroyers, three fat-bodied Staas haulers, two breaching ships, the company man's yacht, and the great battleship Guerrero that seemed to make satellites of them all.

  Hours later, above the solar system's ecliptic, out past the orbit of Saturn, the thin voice from the breaching ship spoke to them, patched through over the Choctaw's squack, their internal comms system. "This is Lieutenant Banerjee on SCS Midwicket. We are at one minute to discharge and breach. One minute."

  Garlan didn't watch. He'd never seen them open a transit before up close, but now, for some reason he didn't want to. He sat at one of the tables in the mess while Bix watched at the porthole. The electrical storms running up and down the breaching ship's leaky capacitors flashed cold over the kid's face like lightning. "Point of no return," the voice from Midwicket said. "Discharge is imminent."

  When the breaching ship fired, the kid's eyes widened some and filled with the golden glow from the intersecting particle streams. As the release of energy from their collision grew and grew, the kilometer-wide ball of hellfire over the transit point colored Bix's face ember orange like they were all on their way to hell. When the fabric of space tore and the Sol-Procyon Transit finally opened for them, the formation steamed into the breach single file.

  Exotic firefly particles skating on the meniscus of the transit skittered down the hull and past the porthole. They were gone in seconds and then, there was nothing outside but the burning, waving tunnel walls streaking past.

  "Seven minutes to Procyon," Carnaby said. "Then fourteen more transits to Shedir."

  Garlan wasn't sure if he'd slept on the trip or not. He thought he'd spent most of that time floating between waking and sleep, stretched out on the carpeted deck. He heard Annie say, "Skipper. Wake up. We're there. We're at Shedir."

  The deck moved under him and threw him upwards so forcefully and so fast that it pressed him flat and he lost his breath. It tossed him two meters into the air.

  Blinding light poured in from the portholes. Out the corner of his eye and at the other end of the compartment, he saw his crew all suspended over the deck like him as a shockwave rolled through it, popping the bolts that held down the tables and benches around them. An instant later, the deck rushed up and swatted all of them again.

  The upper bulkhead smashed his nose. He choked and aspirated on his own blood. What came out of his airways formed a cloud of globules and droplets around him. Artificial gravity had failed. The main lights flickered and failed as well. Emergency lighting kicked in, bloody red, casting deep shadows. Once the bulkheads and deck stopped moving around them, he tried to figure out where in the compartment he was. "Helmets! Helmets on!" he shouted.

  "Skipper wants helmets on!" Carnaby barely wheezed the words out like he was still trying to get his breath back.

  Garlan spotted his own helmet on the far side of the compartment. The bulkheads looked off angle like the whole ship had all been bent out of line. Once he got sealed, Annie shouted in his ear over local comms. "What the shite happened?!"

  "The fuck you think?" Singh said, "We took a hit!"

  The voice that broke into local suit comms then must have belonged to the captain of the Choctaw, but the life sounded drained out of him. From his vantage point on the bridge, he could probably see the full extent of the damage to the ship. Whatever he saw, his voice sounded as if all hope had left it. "Abandon ship. All hands, abandon ship."

  The Choctaw's computer broadcast the location of the ship's lifeboats to Garlan's suitcomp, and it calculated the shortest path to the closest one. An arrow blinked red and translucent in his helmet visor, pointing at the closed hatch of the compartment. "Hit that hatch!"

  "Got red on the gauge," Carnaby said. "We got full vacuum on the other side. I'm popping the hatch valves. Decompressing..." The pressure release valves were small and it took long, painful seconds until enough atmo had blown out that they could pull the inward swinging hatch open.

  The steel of the passageway outside was charred and showed signs of flash-melting. Wreckage partially blocked his view towards the bow, but he could see down towards the stern end of the
command tower well-enough. Just a few meters aft, the twisted passageway ended. Past the ragged glowing, molten edges where the steel had been torn, there was nothing but the cold stars burning outside, searing bright pinpricks without a hint of twinkle.

  He weighed their chances in a lifeboat versus the safety of a quick egress in half a heartbeat. As Garlan turned back to the Doxy's crew, he did his best to sound unimpressed by the damage. He said, "Fuck the lifeboats. We'll fly aft. We'll make for the black and use the slim jims to get clear."

  "You heard the Skipper," Carnaby said. "Crouch, set, and go! You know the drill! Set here! Set here!" Carnaby slapped at the left side of the open hatchway, the best point to push off for a shot up the passage to the hole leading out of the ship. "Annie, you're up!"

  Garlan hung on to what had been the top of the hatchway, floating inverted in the dim. The crew of the Doxy held onto the edge of the hatch and each other while Annie set, spotted, and shot.

  He saw her clear the wreckage and puff gas from her belt. She disappeared from view riding the vapor trails before Singh set and shot after her. Singh followed her trails, curving to port and flying out of sight. "Keep it moving!" he said as Bix got set. "Make sure you get good and clear, kid...in case the reactor or anything they're carrying decides to cook. Go!"

  Bix launched alright, but he hit the gas belt early and bounced himself off a bulkhead before he made it out. "Next! Go!"

  "Captain Foet!" That was Dana Sellis' voice in his ear over local comms. The blinking directional indicator in his visor said she was only 6 meters away, towards the bow. She was picking her way through the conduits and pieces of rent bulkhead that occluded the passageway. The vacuum behind her was dotted with suit lights from crewmen making for the same exit.

  "Go! Go!" he shouted, and as she passed, he reached out, set his hand in the small of her back and propelled her faster down the passage and towards the stars. "Follow the gas trails!"