by A. D. Bloom
"We've only got 29 minutes of power left to run the stealth. After that, they’ll spot us and the Ekkai will fry us out of the sky."
"Belly is going to heat up some on the way in. I can't avoid it."
"I don't even know how to ask the bugs if their n-space shunt can handle the extra heat. Just take us down."
Dana examined the positions of the ships in the Ekkai home fleet one more time in the display over the console between the pilots' seats. The squadrons of Hunter-Killers had scoured the space surrounding the transit and eventually chased their decoys until self-destruction. The Ekkai hadn't begun to disperse, but a pair of larger Ekkai gunboats studded with fast-tracking beam turrets had turned to patrol the space near the third planet.
She looked down through the diamond-pane panels set in the cockpit's deck at the lightning reaching up from the tops of the clouds below. The flashes seemed to trigger more flashes, and discharges rolled across the nimbus clouds below, out to the edges of the storm that covered half the continent.
"According to the bugs, that atmo is nitrogen, oxygen, trace helium and small amounts of argon. You can breathe it."
Lippmann said, "That's water vapor in those clouds?"
"Those are mostly normal clouds - not on fire, no sulfuric acid, just nice, fluffy clouds." The lightning discharges that connected with the junk didn't do any damage, but the burning atmo surrounding the pulses drew jagged and lasting lines on her retina.
Inside the nimbus, the vapor beaded up on the bottom of the cockpit canopy and steamed off the friction-heated, planet-facing surfaces of the junk. When they passed through the bottom of the clouds, the steam trailed behind them in a thin, vertical column. Seconds later, Dana saw the forest canopies and lakes in the tarnished light of the planet's lentiform moons.
"I can tell land from ocean, but I can't get any decent imaging to pick a perfect landing spot unless you let me go active with the radar and LiDAR," Dice said.
"Too noisy."
"Okay then, where do you want me to set down?"
The IR imaging in her helmet showed the lakes that dotted the landscape between the ridges below. The top of the forest canopy was broken in places that radiated heat upwards into the night in shafts. "Continue our descent. I want you to lower the junk down into one of those gaps in the forest canopy."
"That looks like some thick stuff."
"Pick a gap big enough for a 50-meter junk."
All the power was going to the pinch to fight the .37 gees of the planet's gravity. There wasn't enough power left for much inertial negation, so when Dice hit the gas thrusters and slid the junk sideways, everyone got slammed to port. "Easy!"
"I told you to ride below where you could strap in," he said. "I got your clearing right below us now." It glowed as warm as a human body on infrared, but the atmospheric temperature was 21 Celsius.
"500 meters to the surface."
"What the hell are those?" She followed Lippmann's stabbing finger and looked down and out the starboard side at whatever had him laughing on local comms. They would have been invisible in the night except for the faint glow they gave off. "Some kind of gasbag."
They floated over the canopy, hundreds of them, like glowing balloons each at least a dozen meters wide. Swarms of something miniscule attracted to the light flew between them like animate fog while the gasbags dragged hundreds of spaghetti-thin tentacles over the top of the forest as if they were man o' war jellyfish trawling for food.
Dice started laughing at them like Lippmann. The creatures were mostly symmetrical and the gasbags bulged up on the left and right side in just the right proportions to look like a pairs of giant, glowing human breasts. Darkened patches on the tops more than suggested nipples.
"200 meters," Lippmann said, still chuckling over local comms. "I'm popping the gear."
"The hell are you guys laughing at up there?" said Dudley from below.
"Starboard side, quick!" Lippmann said. Duds must have seen them because he lost it, too.
"100 meters," Dice said.
"[Interrogative]" Clack said over local comms, "Explain funny."
She said, "Those lifeforms look like human body parts. Like female breasts. It's not actually funny."
"Totally not funny," Lippmann said. But he was still laughing on local comms.
"50 meters. Not funny," confirmed Dice with a suppressed snicker.
The Shediri chatter erupted on comms between the bugs, and Clack's translator said. "Not funny, but laugh."
"25 meters, brace yourselves," said Dice.
The trees of the alien forest rose up on all sides. The clearing wasn't much bigger than the junk and the anti-gravity envelope from the boat's pinch rustled the long leaves like a hurricane updraft. Small patches of darkness took flight from the canopy and blocked out the stars. Soft bodies thudded off the cockpit and gave Dana a fright before they fluttered away into the murk.
"Touchdown in three...two...one..."
3
Task Force Liberty, Shedir System
SCS Hardway
Margo and the boy stepped through the ready room hatch in exosuits, carrying their helmets under their arms. The Shediri raider that landed them in Bay One had set down only five minutes ago. They must have run through the ship to get to Ram's ready room so quickly.
He pushed a glass towards Margo. "Is this a personal visit or a visit on behalf of your 'employer' the Shediri Hive Regent? You're supposed to warn me about the official visits. Technically, you're both agents of an alien power."
"It's time to go," Margo said, brushing the glass aside with the back of her hand. "Now."
The boy swung the door of Ram's counter surveillance cage open and closed on its hinges. No matter what he was, he still wasn't quite nine years old yet. Young Hank said. "The ships of the new UN fleet and the new Staas carriers are all skipping their shakedown cruises. They're going straight to the Ekkai homeworld."
"How much time do we have?"
The boy stepped inside the cage and closed the door and spoke through the mesh while he ran his gloved fingers over it. "They've already left. We're late. We have to go now."
Margo said, "Here at Shedir, we're closer to the Alcyone System and the Ekkai homeworld than the new Earth fleet is, of course. The combined UN and Privateer assault fleet is approximately 13 hours from Shedir as we speak. The most direct route to Alcyone passes through this system so it's a fair bet they'll go this way. We don't know the speed of their slowest ships or the time it will take them to cross star systems getting from transit to transit, but if we leave now, it's safe to say they're now 13 hours behind us."
"If we leave now, we've got less than 13 hours from when we arrive in the Ekkai's system to defeat the Ekkai and secure a surrender," said Ram.
"That's correct," Margo said.
"I don't see what you're worried about," the boy said. He opened the door of the cage and stepped out. "We will accomplish our goal." At times the boy spoke just like Harry Cozen. Those were usually the times that Hank scared him most. It made him think the clone would turn out the same as the original. "You should tell your crew to prepare to get underway," Hank said as he batted the glass back and forth between his palms on Devlin's desk. Before Ram could tell him to mind his own business, the boy looked up at him with softened eyes and said, "This used to be my desk once. I remember that I liked having it. I liked it more than you do."
"I'm not giving it back." Ram thumbed comms to the Bridge. "Mr. Biko. We will prepare to get underway immediately. Cease all repair operations. Recall all birds not designated as standard CAP for interstellar transit operations."
"Are we going somewhere?"
"Alcyone, home of the Ekkai. We're leaving as soon as possible. Contact the Doxy and make sure the Shediri are ready to open the transit. Notify the monitor squadron. I'm going to see Chun now."
Pardue broke into the line. "Longboat in Bay One, clearance on request," she said.
Ram expected Margo and the boy to be movi
ng towards the hatch by now, but the two of them still stood in front of his desk in his ready room. Margo finally took the glass from the boy and reached for his scotch. "The two of you should get to the bays and depart," he said. "The flight-space around the carrier is going to get a little tight soon and we're going to need the deck space that 27-meter Shediri raider is taking up."
"Oh, the raider that dropped us off on Hardway is long gone," she said. He felt his brow knot as she spoke. "We're going with you to the Ekkai's home system. Hank and I are coming along to represent the interests of Hive Regent Kesik, didn't you know?"
"That wasn't part of the deal."
She sighed. "Don't you ever tire of crying 'not fair', Devlin?"
"He doesn't," the boy said, laughing. "I want to visit the alien converted carrier. I want to meet the bug boy."
"The what?"
Margot rolled her eyes. "The powder monkey on Captain Foet's ship...the one that had the accident. Since Hank heard there was a human boy with Shediri cell colonies living in his body, he hasn't stopped talking about meeting him."
"I'm going on my own," Hank said and ran out the hatch with his little helmet.
Ram thumbed comms. "Biko, this is Ram. Get a pair of Marines to escort my... my son to SCS Doxy. He's already on his way to Bay One." After he lifted his thumb, he looked up at Margo who was now enjoying her first sip of scotch. With her eyes closed like that she didn't even look dangerous. "Do the Shediri know Hank tortured one of them?" he said.
She shrugged. "They know one of us did. What's more distressing is that they don't see a problem with torture."
"You don't. I heard you were there when the boy did it. You held his coat."
"And I found it utterly abhorrent."
"That boy is a bad seed."
"Am I? Don't judge us by our DNA, dear husband. I'm not the woman that came before me. I'm more. And that boy isn't just a clone of Harry the Terrible. He's also a nine-year-old boy who likes wheat squares and spaghetti, but has been eating survival rations on an alien planet for two months and fixating on the notion of becoming a 'real Shediri boy' as he puts it."
"What does that mean?"
"I have no idea. It's probably just boyhood fantasy. The point is, he thinks Earth doesn't want him."
"Margo, I'm not his real father. I just pretend to be so you and him don't get..."
"And we thank you for that," she said. "I know you and I will never have anything but the appearance of a relationship. Our marriage is pretense just as your relationship to the boy is pretense. It's not so bad for me. For the boy, it's a different story. The difference being, of course, is that I have had actual lovers and will have more in the future. I have already had what you pretend to be, but Hank hasn't ever had a biological father. You're his pretend father, but that's all he's ever going to have."
"I know all this."
"Then it wouldn't kill you to fake it well once and a while. It might do the boy some good and maybe he wouldn't be such a monster."
20 meters over the hull of UNS Guerrero
From the moment Captain Chun Ye Men came in the airlock of Ram's longboat, he looked cramped. That compartment was bigger than his ready room, but the longboat's thin bulkheads seemed to close in on him and hunch his shoulders as he removed his white helmet.
Ram placed the last of the multispectral noisemakers and activated the set to give them some minimal assurance of privacy. "Dammit," Chun said as his gloved hand came to his ear.
"You can hear them?"
"More like feel them in my jaw. Warn me before you turn those on."
He didn't have any time to waste. "The task force has to depart for Alcyone and the Ekkai homeworld now. Right now. The UN and Privateer assault fleet have already sortied for Alcyone. They'll pass through this system in less than thirteen hours." He'd expected some widening of the eyes or the line of Chun's brow to break in surprise, but the UN captain's face remained as calm and inscrutable as undisturbed pond water. Ram said, "The Shediri claim they have more than enough breaching mines to open the three transits between here and Alcyone. Once in-system, we'll defeat the Ekkai's stealth and navigate safely around their fleet to find our target using the network of surveillance proxies already established and monitored by Dana Sellis from the habitable planet, Alcyone-3. Once we can isolate a vessel large enough that it can be expected to contain an Ekkai of sufficiently high rank to negotiate with..."
Chun said, "Yes, yes. I know the plan, but have you considered Hive Regent Kesik's price for her support?"
"She wants the Ekkai to surrender to her, not Earth. That's her only condition for all the help she's given us."
"That's going to give her a better claim to Alcyone-3 than the UN," Chun said. "The third planet is habitable. Almost as habitable as Earth. We need that planet."
Ram nodded. "We don't have a choice if we want to save the Ekkai. The UN and Staas want to be feared. They want to make an example out of the clams for siding against us in the war with the Imperium. I can't let them drop gravity bombs on the Ekkai's homeworld like they...like I did to the Squidies. We owe it to the dead to prevent it from happening again."
"Dead Squidies are dead," Chun said. "I don't know the truth of your involvement in either the start of the last war or its unfortunate, genocidal end, but that debt doesn't belong to me or my crew."
"I can't do this without you. This battleship of yours can take on half the Ekkai fleet by itself and if the Imperium is there, they'd be smart to run from her. I need this ship and I need you to decide what you're going to do now, Chun - right this minute. We're out of time."
"I have orders to remain and defend this system."
Ram pleaded. "Humanity isn't a plague of murder and plunder spreading like a stain, but that will be the truth of what we are if we allow this massacre to happen."
Chun put his helmet on and blinked at Ram through the visor. As he made for the airlock, he said, "When you depart and enter the mouth of the Shedir-Reticulae Interstellar Transit, don't slow down or stop at any point."
"Why?"
"Because when I see you go, I will have no choice but to take this battleship into the transit after you before it closes." Chun smiled. "To protect UN interests from rogue, Staas Company pirates."
SCS Hardway, Bridge
Ram's exosuit still had a chill on it when he stepped off the lift. "I'll take that chair back, Biko."
"Hurts my back anyway," said Ram's XO as he took a place at the tactical consoleto the right of the command chair.
"Your longboat was the last to tuck in the barn," Pardue reported.
"All ships in the battlegroup report they're free of repair crews and ready to depart," said Barnes from communications.
"And Guerrero?" Margo asked.
"I didn't see you there." She stepped out from behind the rear consoles behind comms where she'd lurked as he entered. "Well, what did Chun say?"
"He called us pirates. Communications," Ram said, "send via the Diplomatic Console simultaneously to Hive Regent Kesik and Hive Hrt'ee. Message is as follows: "Human Thank. Devlin Thank. Action is truth."
"Sending..."
"NAV, maneuvering thrusters only, jet us a full 5 Ks out before you spin us on course for the Shedir-Reticulae Transit. Comms, tell the Doxy and the monitor squadron to fall in with us."
"He's still working the DipCon message," Biko said. "I've got it."
Margo stood at the arm of the command chair and looked into the light of Shedir streaming through the forward widows of the bridge. She must have sensed him looking at her; Margo's chin lifted and she gazed into the star's glow as if she was basking in some kind of glory before she turned and smiled at him.
"Staas and the UN are going to know we left," he said.
"Staas Company already knows we're going. That is to say, the Hive Regent told the Staas Company Rep. They'll inform the UN, I imagine. The response will be something to the effect of 'let him try'. They're quite confident with the superiority they'll be b
ringing to Alcyone, it won't matter if the enemy knows they're coming."
Task Force Liberty's five railgun monitors fell into echelon to the carrier's port side. SCS Doxy joined Hardway on her starboard side with the landed raiders of the Shediri swarm clinging to her decks. Chun would follow them soon, Ram thought. He'd have to if he planned to get inside the hypermass transit before it closed.
Three hours later, with an officially protesting UNS Guerrero in pursuit, Hardway and the other vessels turned and burned to decelerate and held station in front of the transit point while SCS Doxy steamed to the front. Ram had only ever seen the Shediri open a hypermass transit between star systems once before, when they'd sent Dana on her way to the enemy system ahead of them.
Pardue said, "When they sent Dana's mining junk ahead, it took a couple tries. I hope they've go this down."
"I think perhaps you underestimate the Shediri," Margo said. "It's not that the bugs aren't good at opening a hypermass transit. They're simply a few hundred years rusty at it. They've literally forgotten more than we know. They used to roam the local cluster, but after the Imperium came, anything that could breach space was illegal tech. Only their allied 'enforcer' species like the Squidies and now the Ekkai are allowed by the Imperium to wander the stars freely."
"Why would they prevent travel and trade like that?" Biko said. "What about all the technological development the Ortani Imperium prevented with that policy?"
"That's precisely the point of it," she said. "Look at what's happened already when we put our technology together with the Shediri and threw in our exceptional martial expertise. We've developed new weapons and grown strong enough already to tear the fear-based fabric of the Imperium's grip. I doubt we'll ever destroy the Ortani Imperium itself, but we won't have to. Can't you see already how their empire is beginning to unravel in this neck of the galactic woods? This, Mr. Biko is precisely what they were trying to prevent by hindering the exchange of technologies and ideas."