by A. D. Bloom
Going up the aft tube of the command tower with it, Ram almost vomited in the lift. This is the only way, he told himself. Justice was what he'd wanted. This was justice for the dead – the ones Cozen had killed outright and the ones who died because of his war. And it was the only way to get his pilots out from in front of Witt's firing squad. These are good reasons, Ram told himself again, but he still didn't believe it.
The hatch hung open and Cozen sat at his desk, behind projections of the ongoing battle at Sirius. He didn't look up right away, and Ram made sure they carried the sculpture inside before Cozen could stop them.
"She said it was a gift," Ram told him. "She said she wanted you to have it."
"A gift." His nostrils flared. "It was mine before it was her's..." His eyes flicked around the compartment and fell on the corner. "Just put it there for now." He pointed.
Ram set the sculpture's anti-grav base on the deck and locked it down. The shaped field pushed his hands upwards and towards the center as he and Biko set the bronze arc in it vertically, hovering over the base.
Cozen said, "What about the two squadron leaders?"
"She's keeping them for now."
"Did she say for how long?"
"No."
Biko said, "What the hell does she want from us?"
"Let me worry about that, Mr. Biko," Cozen told him. "For now, I want you to go and figure out how we're going to deploy one-hundred and forty-four additional fighters from Hardway's bays. That's what Matilda Witt's new battleplan calls for." Hearing that didn't make Biko look any less worried as he went out the hatch.
After a few seconds of silence, Harry Cozen closed the hatch and sealed it. He said, "What does Matilda want in exchange for Jordo and Pooch?"
"You. She wants you," Ram said. "She wants to string you up. For what happened on Moriah."
"She wants to use it to blackmail me, I imagine. Take Hardway from me along with all my other operations."
"She'd like to cast you as the Butcher of Moriah and put you on trial as the man who started the war by slaughtering an alien diplomatic mission."
"If that is true of me, then it is also true of you, Mr. Devlin, never forget that."
"And Mohegan. She suspects you killed the ten miners aboard Mohegan."
"Yes, well, so do you," Cozen said. "I imagine the two of you had much to talk about."
Ram's stomach tried to climb up his throat. He reminded himself: This is what you wanted. This is what Cozen deserves. Ram told himself that in five different ways.
Matilda Witt was probably listening right now. He tried to ask Cozen to tell him the truth once and for all about Moriah, but the muscles in Ram's throat suddenly spasmed so he could barely speak.
"You don't look well, Mr. Devlin. I imagine Matilda poured a bit of liquor down your gullet." He made a show of sniffing the air. "I think I can smell it."
Ram nodded. "I'm fine."
"Go clean your blood," Cozen said. "That's an order."
Ten decks down, in the sub-tower where company officers bunked, Ram sat on his thin mattress. He held the simple, little clearzine patch between his thumb and forefinger. All he had to do was slap it on and the cat's tongue of microneedles on it would painlessly deliver the payload. His blood would be clean in fifteen seconds.
He brought it towards the side of his neck, but his hand stopped 10cm away. He tried again and balked again, thinking about the promise of a 15-second, full-on, head-splitting, ear-ringing hangover. That's what it would do, guaranteed. You'd feel that way no matter how much or how little the clearzine cleaned from your blood.
Ram put it down and got out the bottle of Scotch that Harry Cozen had given him. He decided he'd clean his blood in five minutes. A moment later, he lay back on his bunk and floated. It felt like the greensuits down in engineering had turned off the carrier's artificial gravity and draped a blanket of sunshine around him.
Metal impacted on metal three times fast on the other side of Ram's closed hatch. The sound of it made him sit up fast enough that he banged his brain against his skull. He reached for a fresh clearzine patch from the drawer and then staggered to the hatch. He spun the wheel and stepped back.
"12 fighters per 70-meter bay. That's the most I can safely fit," Biko said as he pushed the hatch open, came in, and closed it behind him. "So that's 12 more bays for 144 more fighters. Where the hell am I supposed to put the junks? I don't know why the 55th and the 38th SD both have to launch from Hardway." Biko finally looked at Ram. His eyes flitted to the discarded clearzine patch and the other one in his hand. "You gonna share?"
Ram told Biko everything, including Matilda Witt's appeal to his sense of justice and how she'd dangled the idea of peace in front of him. "She wants a confession from Harry Cozen...how he started the war. The sculpture is a surveillance transmitter of some kind. A q-link for a quantum audio-gravure, analog recorder. At least that's what she told me."
"And I helped you put it in Cozen's office," Biko said. "Will he find the bug?"
"Probably not. That's not the problem. The problem is: I couldn't do what she wanted. Before I could get my balls up, Cozen sent me to my quarters to clear my head. I got the hell out. I thought I could do this. I can't. Now, two pilots are going to die and the war will go on because I can't set him up."
Biko said, "You're not protecting Harry Cozen, Ram. You're protecting his lie. And if it got out that this wasn't a war of alien aggression after all, then it would mess humanity up bad enough that we might just lose this war. It can't get out. Period."
"What about peace? What if it's possible?"
"Even if you believe her," Biko said, "the Squidies' terms for peace might not be so great. Besides, this isn't what we agreed on. We said we'd win this war and then deal justice to Cozen ourselves when it's over. And that's what we're going to do. We need him, Ram. When this war is over, you can burn a hole clear through his brain and avenge the dead. But until then, we need him."
Chapter Nine
Dana Sellis sat in the command chair for the trip across Groomsbridge to the Castor Transit. It was worth losing a few hours of sleep to have the chair. Before the war, she'd been the ship's geologist. She picked the rocks the junks dug. When the war came, Cozen had promoted her to Lt. Commander and the more she sat in that command chair, the more she liked it. Third watch, fourth, dog watch, it didn't matter. If she got to sit in the chair, she'd take the shift. So far, she hadn't screwed it up.
Bergano had the Air Traffic Controller's console on that watch. He called out the contacts when they appeared. "Multiple bogies, 63 million Ks out, bearing 149 flat – right in between us and the transit point."
"Where the hell did they come from? Did they just blink into existence and shine all over our LiDAR?"
"It's a radar return," he said. "And it's gone." The blinking red dots disappeared from the projected display.
"It could have been a natural phenomena of some kind," said Li from his position at the NAV console.
"A natural phenomena like what?" Dana thumped the arm of the chair before she thumbed comms to Taipan. "Taipan, this is Hardway..."
"Taipan here." Dana didn't recognize the voice. "Go ahead Hardway."
"We've sighted some intermittent contacts between us and the transit point. Interrogative: Have Taipan's arrays picked up any alien-band emissions or noted possible contacts of any kind?"
"Negative, Hardway. It's all quiet. We have nothing but clear skies from here to the Castor Transit. You might be chasing sensor ghosts."
Well, fuck you, too, Taipan. "Uh... we copy that, Taipan, and we're going to send a flight of Bitzers ahead just to make sure."
"Already on it, Hardway. Eight Staas F-151s from the 99th Wicked Weasels are 20,000 Ks out and headed that way."
An hour later, the Operations Console blinked red at Lieutenant Katz with a dozen warnings. It was his third watch ever on the bridge, but it only took him a second to report what he saw to Dana. "OpsCon reports pressure changes between the inner
and outer hull, command tower module.... localized to.... sub-section 2."
Dana said, "I swear if they gave us half-assed welds back at Sagan, then I'm going to use the bow of this ship to knock on the Yardmaster’s door when we get back." Katz didn't laugh. He just stared at her waiting for orders. "When something needs to be fixed, you call the redsuits."
"Bridge to Chief Lee," Katz said on internal comms.
Wherever he was, Lee sounded like he was in a hurricane. "I'm working."
"This is Lt. Katz. OpsCon reports pressure fluctuations between the hulls – command tower, sub-section 2. Request you get some suits out there an-"
"Yeah, yeah," Chief Lee said. "We know the drill, Bridge. Relax. Redsuits are on it."
*****
Chief Horcheese used her suit computer to open the bay 12 doors from inside the knuckledragger's chest and walked the 4-meter-tall mechanized suit towards Burr. It hunched forward like a gorilla, using its clenched fists as extra feet. Astronautics Maintenance Technical Specialist 3rd Class, Donald P. Burr, looked like he was trying to get crushed by one of those gigantic metal fists. Over local suit comms, she said, "AMTS Burr, if I see you climb up on this thing when it's moving, you'll be cleaning toilets in the pilots' Hab for the next six months."
Burr said, "Chief Reese does it."
"Chief Reese already has two prosthetic limbs."
Burr was her crew's newest of newts, a cherry they picked on on Sagan, three weeks out of training. His exosuit was still bright red all over. That color would change to a singed crimson after the first, unexpected plasma bath he got from an alien bomb or a fighter pilot too eager to get out of the bays.
"Checklist," she said.
"Did it."
"Do it again. Batteries?"
"Fully fucking charged"
Burr was getting annoyed, but cherries who don't do their basic sys-checks don't come back. "Rebreather Systems?"
"All green."
"Suit comp and NAV?"
"Green, green. It's all green. Let's go."
"Alright, kid. Get ready to climb up on my shoulders." Horcheese worked the sticks and pedals and did her best to make the 4-meter-tall knuckledragger kneel. It bent at the midpoint of its back legs while leaning its hulking torso forward, supporting itself on its bent front arms and two giant fists. She said, "OK. Get up there, Burr."
He climbed up the suit's right arm and disappeared from her view as he got on top of the machine. "I'm on."
Horcheese 'stood up'. For the knuckledragger, that meant straightening the arms, leaning the torso back, and returning to a posture in which the mech-suit looked more like a headless, mechanical ape than anything else. She walked it to the edge of the bay.
She said, "Don't mess with my puffer jets this time, 'Bandit'."
"Fuck you, Chief."
The first time Burr ever rode on the top of her knuckledragger was back at Sagan Station at the Staas Company Yards. He didn't tell her it was his first time riding 'gorilla-back' and since nobody else had been up there with him to tell him what not to do, dumbass Burr (just trying to hold on) bent his torso over one of the puffers, the little gas maneuvering jets. The burst of gas it shot out had been meant to adjust the course of a 4-meter-tall mechanized suit, so when Horcheese maneuvered and the puff of gas hit Burr in the belly, it knocked him off and sent him flying 2km out over the shipyards. He went fast enough and far enough that a pair of the autonomous QF-111 Dingo drones on patrol veered in to sniff him and see if he was some new kind of alien spybird. They almost declared him a bandit and probably would have chewed him up with the autocannon if Horcheese hadn't flown the knuckledragger after him and got him so fast.
If Burr was a glory-boy fighter pilot, he would have got called 'Bandit' for that. But redsuits don't get nicknames. Redsuits get it done.
Groomsbridge shone up from below as Horcheese puffed the knuckledragger out into the black. "Bridge, this is Horcheese. I'm out with crew and lookin' for your hole." Burr snickered on local comms.
Lt. Commander Dana Sellis said, "Copy that, Horcheese. Let us know when you find it."
Horcheese turned the 'dragger parallel to the open bay. She flew over bays 11 and 10 until she got to the edge of the module and turned the corner.
The command tower rose up over 200 meters off the spine. On the aft side, where the raw light from Groomsbridge 1618 struck the outer hull and armor, it looked sheathed in a cowl of zero-gee flame. The windows of the bridge and the observation deck perched at the top of the dark side, high up and small, glowing in the shadows. Horcheese used her helmet to zoom in on them. She saw Dana Sellis looking back at her.
"Alright, Burr," Horcheese said, "the lady up in the tower is watching us so we're gonna do the part she can actually see first so it looks like we're working extra hard, get it?"
"Got it."
"Good." Horcheese puffed to port and starboard and spun the mech-suit ninety degrees. Then, she puffed from the rear and to port to stop her forward momentum and sent the machine towards the pitch black, ten-meter gap between the primary launch bay module and the base of the command tower. Both modules rode the tensegrity spine (like all the carrier's modules) and when the narrow chasm between them was in shade like it was now, it became a starless, black trench, almost 100 meters deep.
She flew them down into the murk where the only lights were theirs. "We're going to start at the bottom and work our way up. Turn on the scanner, Burr. Start panning around with the IF-13."
"You got it, Chief." It took a couple of seconds of fumbling up on top of the suit for Burr to turn on the survey scanner. He panned the beam across the surface of the command tower's sloping outer hull. It looked like a searchlight beam, but so dim and so very deep red that after you looked at it for a few seconds, you almost couldn't be sure it was still on until you turned it off and looked for the color change.
It wasn't one color or one beam at all, of course. The IF-13 used a whole bundle of frequencies to actively measure. Down in the dark trench, its amalgam light reflected off the belt-iron steel and gave the whole scene a hellish palette.
"Nothin'," Burr said after Horcheese had puffed them all across the lowest point in the trench. "I got nothin'. This outer hull is as smooth as my fresh shav-"
"Keep looking, Burr. The lady is watching."
Fifty meters up the command tower, in the middle of the narrow trench between modules, Burr stopped panning the beam around and kept it pointed at this one spot that was higher up than they were, where she couldn't see so well. "What is it, Burr? You holding out on me?"
"I don't know. Maybe this POS is busted."
"The IF-13 works fine. I checked it myself."
"It keeps changing its dang mind, Chief. Says this one patch of hull is okay, but then a second later, it says it's bulging, and then a second after that, it says it's got a concave deformation, and then it's normal again. Hold the beam still, and it reads normal."
She puffed the knuckledragger up ten meters and to the right, following Burr's beam until they hovered five meters in front of the command tower's outer hull and the spot that Burr still had lit up with the scanner's infernal light. "Normal," he said. Then he shifted the beam a few centimeters. "Now, it reads convex."
"I can't see anything," she said. "Can you localize it? Narrow the beam. Top side. Big knob on the left."
"I know where it is." The beam's edges didn't become any more distinct, but it shrank, making the trench even darker. After he played the narrow spotlight across the outer hull a few more times, he said, "Move us up a meter, and two meters to the right." She moved the 'dragger like he wanted, and he said, "That's it. That's it. I got you, you little..."
"Burr!"
"The messed up part is an area a little over a meter wide on all sides, Chief. And it's rectangular."
"This is gonna' ruin the scanner output. Hold on..." She turned the 'dragger's spotlight on the area and had to double check to make sure she was pointing it at the right spot. Horcheese saw nothin
g but unbroken, belt-iron steel.
Burr said, "Wait a second." Before she could ask why, he jumped off her shoulder and flew across the gap between the knuckledragger and the command tower.
"Where the hell are you going, Burr?"
"Relax, Chief. I got this." He drifted forward to the questioned spot on the hull, hands and feet out to stop himself. Horcheese just didn't understand what happened next. When he made contact with the hull, his hand went right through meters of armored outer hull, tearing it like it foil. "What the hell?"
He pulled his hand free where it had punched through, and a paper-thin layer of something that looked like hull but wasn't slowly reformed over the hole, healing the tear he'd made. Horcheese zoomed in with her helmet to see it as it was happening – the five or so flaps of material that had torn when he punched through were now folding themselves back into place.
Before Horcheese could stop him, Burr took one of the flaps between his thumb and forefinger and pulled on it, peeling it outwards so the hole tore open wider. Behind it was the blackness between the outer and inner hull. "Hey, I think this hole goes right through to the inside," Burr said. He laughed. "Yeah, Bridge, I think I found your problem, here."
It looked just like the weathered outer hull. The scratches and scars, the impossible to fake pitting and wear made by impacting hydrogen atoms and cosmic rays – it was all there. It looked exactly like the hull. But it was foil-thin and self-repairing. And someone had put it there over a hole they cut in the hull. Horcheese shivered. "Burr, get the fuck away from there. Now!" She thumbed open a comms channel to the bridge.
"Bridge, this is Chief Horcheese. It's urgent."
"This is Dana Sellis."
"Someone cut a big rectangular hole through the outer hull down here between the tower and the bays. And they patched it with some kind of weird, self-repairing material that mimics the hull well enough that it almost fooled the IF-13. I don't know what it is and we didn't put it here."