Eclipse

by K. A. Bedford

  “Ah, Lily — just coming to, uh, see you…” he was saying, and looked surprised to see her step around a corner, almost bumping into him.

  “I know, Ron. I thought we should have a wee chat, you and I.”

  His face showed he liked the sound of that idea, ­despite the urgency of his business. Something had made him run to that Brig. But here he was, looking at Riordan, and even I could see he still fancied her. There was a sickening expression on his otherwise severe, sharp face. He touched his moustache and smiled. “Is that so, is that so?” he said, eyes keen.

  “That’s right,” Riordan said, her voice sounding like she was smiling. She took him by the arm, gently, like she really did have something interesting in mind.

  “I do need to have a word with young Mr. Dunne.”

  “I won’t keep you long, Ron.”

  She was looking at him as he looked down at her. He looked a tad suspicious, I thought, like he wondered if something was up, with all this informality.

  But then he flashed his shark smile. “Of course…”

  I returned to my current problem: the bed. Ferguson had left it made in impeccable Service fashion, corners folded exactly right, blanket tightness beyond reproach. Now I just had to lift the mattress and reach underneath…

  Taking several breaths, I was trying to talk myself into it. It was only a bed. Only a bed. The real monster was outside somewhere — I knew that. But all the same…

  Bending down, vast quantities of blood rushed to my head; the room spun. I was hot, dizzy, and almost fell.

  “Bloody hell, get a grip…” I straightened up again, took more breaths, bent down again, and lifted the ­mattress…

  Ferguson was saying, unamused, “What are you really up to, Lily?” Leaning over her.

  Riordan wasn’t worried. “I just think a little counseling would help you, Ron. You’re obsessing over this Dunne. He’s not worth it. He’s just a 1!”

  “He might be just a 1,” Ferguson said, looking at her with a dark and fractured glare, “but he’s also a proven spy and traitor, and an attempted murderer, in case you’d forgotten!”

  The Proddi wasn’t there. Shit… Standing there, stunned, I was ready to snap, if I hadn’t already. I kicked the damn bed.

  Then, not knowing what I was about to do, I hauled the mattress off the bunk, up-ended the bunk itself, threw aside books, pillows, a third-full bottle of genuine, non-fabbed Scotch. I tore up sheets of Active Paper I found on his desk, and pulled out all the drawers, throwing all this crap around the room. I don’t remember, but I was ­probably screaming, a catharsis of rage and joy; all this destruction, and I was liking it a lot — until I opened the drawer on the bottom-left side of his desk.

  Gleaming amongst other bits and pieces, documents, folders, and books, was Ferguson’s knife.

  Standing there, staring down at it, I saw it in the sight of my imagination, the blade covered in my blood. Part of me wanted to touch it, but another wanted to flee. “Oh…”

  Suddenly, red alert klaxons came blasting over my headware.

  “What…?” Standing, I was staring at the inert ceiling and the stupid white glare of the light bar.

  It was a ShipMind notice from Rudyard, “We are ­under attack! Man your stations! Repeat: we are under attack!”

  The klaxon continued to sound.

  Under attack? How the hell could we be under attack? I flipped to ShipMind’s vessel status channel. A vast cloud of fist-sized crackbots, Autonomous Informational Assault Devices, wrapped in high stealth and almost ­invisible to sensors, was headed our way, fast. There were perhaps a million of them, homing in on the whole Battle Group, seeking our heat, our space-time deformation, our ship-to-ship comm traffic, and the very molecules of our polydiamond armor itself. Already they were close enough to engulf the entire fleet. The ships that had launched the bots were nowhere in sensor range.

  Eclipse joined the other ships in the group. We deployed close-in weapons defense systems, more than a dozen ­automated launcher turrets rose out of our hull and launched a monster storm of small explosive shells designed to home on the AIADs. Between the combined ­firepower of the Battle Group’s dozen ships, over one ­million such shells were launched in the first minutes. Meanwhile, the ships’ reflective white armor shifted black and sensor-hostile. Intership comm went to tightbeam ­lasers.

  Nearby space lit up with fire as shells found targets.

  Or most of them. The close-in defense systems kept firing. Deep in the core of each ship, automated weapons-grade fab systems were cranking out more ammunition. When the shells arrived at the turret autoloaders, they would still be hot from the fabs.

  ShipMind reported, “Four AIAD units have made hull-contact. Prepare for emergency conditions.”

  I swore, grabbed the knife, and shoved it in my pocket. It was time to get the hell out of here!

  Riordan broke the link. Last I saw, as I left Ferguson’s quarters, he was running this way. She was heading for her quarters.

  Vessel status showed the four crackbots limpeted on the hull. I knew they would begin their comm assault, doing their best to break into our infostructure, probably using quantum anticrypto systems. Powerful pre-programmed countermeasures would attempt to block their ferocious attack while the turrets would try to shoot the bots off the hull. Speed was everything. The enemy, if they gained control of ShipMind, and with it access to all ship’s systems, could conceivably shut down this entire fleet in a matter of minutes without firing a shot.

  Long-range sensors still showed no sign of the fleet that had launched this attack. I was starting to wonder if perhaps somebody back at Service HQ had sold our intended coordinates to the Asiatics.

  As for me and my bizarre mission, I didn’t know where to go or what to do. There wasn’t much I could do but watch the battle unfold and keep tracking Ferguson. I stopped and took a breath. It would be fun to lock Ferguson out of his quarters.

  God, the dumb things you think about in a crisis!

  As I searched for the commands to do this, I saw him running up the passageway. He looked furious — ­until he saw me. He stopped cold, staring, blinking, baffled. It was a unique moment: Ferguson surprised and unprepared. “Dunne — is that…?”

  I wanted to run. I had never felt a stronger urge to flee in my life.

  But I stood there and faced him, shaking with fear. “Mr. Ferguson.” My mouth was dry.

  “But … you’re down, in the…” Ferguson was thumbing over his shoulder, to indicate the Brig.

  “Quantum tunneling…” I said, showing the calm poise of madness. Strange how right now he looked like a scared old man. For a moment I stared, wondering what had changed.

  “What?”

  Hands in my pockets, I found myself walking towards him with a strange sense of detachment, knowing I’d ­finally lost it.

  “Dunne, we’re under attack. Get to you post.”

  “I have no post. Sir.” I stood in his path.

  “Well, listen. I need you to do a little job. It’s the captain, Dunne. He’s falling apart.”

  “The captain?”

  “I’ve just come from seeing him. Man’s a damned basket case. Won’t let me get the docs to take him off duty. Says he can bloody well handle it.”

  I said nothing and stared at him. It was odd, seeing how small he was, how like a weasel.

  “Dunne, you have to kill him.”

  “Kill him?” I laughed out loud. “You want me to kill the captain?” More laughing. Laughing fit to burst.

  “Do this for me and I’ll drop the charges, boy. You’ll be completely free. You can have a transfer to the ship of your choice. The flagship! Just do this one thing. This one little thing.”

  I kept laughing. The irony was too much. And he looked so pathetic — scared, eve
n. The great battle was upon us, and he wasn’t in charge. The man who was in charge was falling apart. We were doomed, and he knew it! His only hope was the one man in the crew least ­inclined to do him a favor. If I laughed any harder, I’d wet myself.

  “For Christ’s sake, boy! I order you to kill the captain! Now get on and bloody do it!”

  “No. Don’t think so. Sir.” Wiping tears from my eyes with my left hand. My right hand was still in my pocket.

  The light bars flickered. Painful feedback noise screamed through our headware. I winced, gasping at the agony.

  Ferguson, gritting his teeth, pointed at me, advancing a further step. “You can hear that? You’ve got headware?”

  It was hard to gloat and smile when you’ve got piercing torture shooting through your brain. The enemy crackbots were starting to get through. Where were the bloody countermeasures?

  “But we cleaned out all your headware. We took it all out.”

  Wincing, fighting flashes of pain, I said, “The headware fairy left me some under my pillow, Ron.”

  Then Ferguson put it together. “Riordan!”

  I had my right hand on the cool steel of his knife. He was two steps away.

  “That bloody bitch!”

  I took another step forward, clenching my jaw, trying to keep my eyes open. Pain swooped through my brain like dying angels; terror howled in my guts.

  Ferguson was suddenly distracted — bridge business. He said, “Launch the bloody counterswarm now, damn you! Target those crackbots! Break formation!”

  While Ferguson was losing his own coherence, sensing his destiny slipping away, I found myself feeling calm, in the eye of a cyclone of madness. The pain in my head was bad, but I could handle it. Pain was life; life pain.

  “Hey, Ron!” I said.

  Distracted, he looked up and saw me before him. “Not now!”

  I plunged the knife deep and hard, up under his ribs. It slipped through the layers of his uniform, skin, muscle, and pericardium with surprisingly little effort, less than I had expected. Like the blade wanted to cut his heart, like it couldn’t wait. The blade went in up to the hilt.

  “A lady made me a better offer, Ron.” His hot blood was streaming onto my hand.

  He looked astonished, but amused. “You’re one of us … now, boy,” Ferguson said, staring at me, not blinking, ­almost ­smiling.

  We were close enough to kiss. I twisted the knife. He shuddered, wincing.

  So much blood.

  Deep in the eye of my madness, I hardly noticed the screaming feedback in my headware. The lights were going. My headware was flashing emergency core crash warnings. There was one that mentioned shipwide personnel biocontrol access was being challenged.

  Big deal. I had Ferguson.

  At that moment I could have sworn I saw Colin standing behind Ferguson, leaning against the wall, one foot up ­behind him. He was watching the blood pooling around the old bastard’s polished shoes. Colin gave me a wry smile and a thumb’s up.

  I laughed and cried. Colin wasn’t there next time I looked.

  “I’m a real Service officer now,” I said softly, tears running down my face, as Ferguson died, heavy at the end of my arm.

  He slumped and gurgled, “…knew … you were … trouble…”

  His body fell off the knife. I dropped it on his blood-soaked chest.

  I shook, and felt funny. My legs were weak; I had to sit down before I fell down. Sitting on the deck under the flickering, fading lights, next to the spreading lake of blood around Ferguson’s body. It was getting hard to breathe; my heart was racing, fluttering.

  The lights went. Darkness closed over us.

  In the noise coming through my headware, a hissing, breaking-up warning: Biostatic control interface violated. ­Recommend immediate hard system eject or risk organic ­system failure. Please confirm.

  I blinked my confirmation in the dark. My new headware began to unravel.

  Twenty-Six

  The Paper spoke the time in the cooling darkness, “The time is oh-five-twenty-four hours, Winter City Mean Time.” There were no feeds from outside. ShipMind was offline. Primary environmental systems were offline; such air and heat and gravity that we had came from isolated backup power sources hardened against infowar attacks. The air was still; there was no background hushing sound from the ceiling vents or hum from the matter pumps. The power plant was down. Eclipse was adrift.

  I heard voices in the distance, yelling.

  Janning was coordinating repairs. Rudyard was in the Infirmary, supposedly curled up in a fetal ball, making strange chewing and swallowing motions. I wondered if I was the only one on the ship who understood why he was doing that.

  Riordan had found me earlier; she took me back to her quarters, tucked me into bed, and made sure I kept warm to avoid shock. She said our counterswarm had blasted the enemy AIAD units off the hull, but they had already finished uploading their crippling code into our compromised infostructure, and had begun phase two of their ­programmed mission: undoing the ship’s armor, breaking the chemical bonds. When the enemy ships came into missile range, they’d find nice, vulnerable holes in our armor. We could only wait and hope we could restore basic systems before they arrived to finish us off.

  “What about the other ships?” I asked her, feeling my whole body trembling still in the wake of killing Ferguson. I wanted to push off the blankets; she kept pulling them back over me.

  “Pretty much the same condition we are, as far as we can tell.”

  She left for routine patrols. There were reports of ­enlisted men going berserk in the dark. Other officers were going through strange psychological crises, wandering the passageways, shouting, crying, calling out for their mothers. Riordan received word of at least three attempted rapes, and several assaults.

  About two hours later Acting Captain Janning announced we had basic systems back online. The power plant was still down, but we could at least maneuver. Tracking tubes was out. A bunch of workerbots were out inspecting the hull and fixing the damage left by the AIADs. Environmental systems were up; air was circulating; heat was coming back. Lights flickered and came on, running at about three-quarters strength. Matter pumps were working, too, which meant that fab units would respond to orders so we could put aside the hard rations and bottled water. ShipMind would be up shortly, Janning reported. His image on my Paper made him look small and exhausted. In the window I saw people milling around him, passing back and forth, yelling things to each other. It looked like he might be in Engineering.

  Twenty minutes later, ShipMind was back. I sat up in Riordan’s bunk, waiting for my headware to snap back into luminous life. And then remembered I had removed mine.

  I also remembered I still had the breakdown products from my previous headware slowly turning into cytotoxins.

  I slumped, sighing. The crap around here never ended.

  Shortly before 0800 hours, my Paper relayed a report from Janning: sensors were back. “That’s the good news,” he said, face grim.

  “What now?” I muttered.

  “The bad news is the Asiatic Fourth Fleet is closing on our location, moving at relativistic speed, coming in from three directions. Estimated arrival — thirty minutes. Our best estimate on power plant availability is at least another hour. Sorry, folks. We’re doing our best down here. Meanwhile, we’ve redirected ten thousand AIADs of our own to close on the Fourth Fleet as fast as they can.”

  The Asiastic Fourth Fleet, according to ShipMind’s files, consisted of at least twenty ships, twelve of which were rated at cruiser strength or better. At least two were thought equivalent to Queen Helen.

  I called up ShipMind’s vessel status channel on my Paper. It showed which systems were available, which weren’t, and the status of the remainder. Without the power plant, we coul
dn’t use our main gun, such as it was. Helm systems were capable of showing us a display of local hypertube weather, which revealed eight viable tube entry points within a thousand cubic kilometers. So many escape routes, if only we had the power plant.

  The Asiatics were braking, dumping velocity hard. On IR they showed up like shooting stars.

  They’d reach their missile range in twelve minutes.

  At minus four minutes they disappeared off our sensors.

  No IR traces; no other traces. One moment they were there, twenty powerful ships diving on us with evil intent and terrifying power, and the next — gone.

  Our AIADs sent back word that they couldn’t find any targets. Should they return to Eclipse?

  Janning called them back.

  He appeared on shipwide comm, looking puzzled and shaken. “Men, women, it now appears that the Asiatic Fourth Fleet will not be engaging us, after all. A minute ago, they completely disappeared off our scopes. We’ve been scanning across the band, and can’t find a damned thing. No visible wreckage, no telltale emissions from tube usage. All of which is…” he swallowed, visibly ­un­comfortable with this idea, “a bit disturbing.”

  I punched up a display from the portside of the ship. Three of the other ships in our group were more or less functioning. One, the destroyer Nelson, was still adrift, and looked like she might stay that way. There had only been a brief, tenuous comm-flash from some portable unit that indicated shipwide rioting, and that the captain and XO were dead. The rest of the ships, including Queen Helen, were still slowly coming back up. I couldn’t see Queen Helen from this angle; I was glad of that. I didn’t want to think about her.

  For that matter, I didn’t want to think about any of it. As it was, I was still trying to accept that I had killed a man. It occurred to me that I should have resisted the urge to kill him; that I should have let him go. Ferguson was the most despicable person I had ever encountered, including that bastard Dewey, but by repaying his ­violence with violence of my own, hadn’t I shown that he’d broken me more than I thought? I had murdered him. He hadn’t threatened me, hadn’t been actively trying to kill me at that moment. Sure he’d … hurt me, once or twice.