Trapped

by Scott Bartlett

  Husher stabbed at the com on the arm of his command chair. “Major Callum, scramble the air group. Retain near-space support for the alert fighters, but the rest of your birds need to join our friends from the other destroyers.” Husher could see from the tactical display that the Relentless was already falling in with the other destroyers, taking the point of the formation.

  The other four ships belched Python fighters. Each air group maintained their individual squadrons, while coordinating their movements via the leaders of the various air groups. He listened as Callum acknowledged his orders, then immediately began to coordinate with the other CAGs.

  Husher allowed himself a moment to imagine Fesky in Callum’s position, commanding his air group with a deadly combination of long experience and raw talent.

  He banished the thought. Callum knew what he was doing.

  “Can we get a close visual of one of those things?” Husher asked.

  On screen, a portion of the incoming cloud was magnified. Winterton grimaced. “That’s the best we can do, sir. Sensors are still having trouble penetrating that cloud, for whatever reason.”

  “Are they…sharing propulsion, somehow?” Shota asked, and Husher understood why he thought so. On the individual ship that had been enhanced on the viewscreen, there was no sign of a drive of any kind at work. No thruster exhaust, no energy emission.

  “Honestly, I can’t make heads or tails of it.” Winterton’s usual rock-solid demeanor was showing cracks.

  Yeah, Husher thought. Literally. The things had no tails, or heads, or faces for that matter. “They have no sensible shape.” Some of his frustration leaked into his voice.

  The oncoming creatures were more amoeba-like than the larger structure they’d attached from, with partially translucent skin that flowed and morphed, folding like flabby accordions before stretching out again. They didn’t look or behave like any ship he’d seen before. Instead of propelling themselves through space, they seemed to…undulate through it. That was the only way Husher could think to describe it.

  He shook his head. “At least the giant thing they detached from had a clear propulsion system. Which makes me wonder whether these things aren’t an entirely different kind of ship. Not just smaller than whatever they detached from, but…different.”

  Shota tilted his head to the side. “They may have no shape, but when you consider the swarm as a whole, they’re more or less uniform, and they appear to be acting in unison. That cloud is moving as a single entity. A single…organism.”

  Tremaine twisted in his seat. “Fighters are within targeting range.”

  “Acknowledged,” Husher barked, then turned back to Shota. “I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

  Chapter 14

  Relentless Air Group

  Just beyond UHC Relentless’ nearspace

  Major Callum didn’t like anything about what he was seeing. “Tango and Whiskey, you got eyes on yet?”

  “Tactical is shit,” said Whiskey leader. “Thunder, you got visual?”

  “That’s a big negative, Rooster,” replied Thunder, who’d picked a bad day to be in the driver’s seat for the Tango squad.

  Unless you like the idea of diving into an unknown alien force and looking for a fight, Callum reflected.

  On second thought, for Thunder this might qualify as a good day.

  Thunder was a Winger, one of a dozen in the Relentless fighter wing. She’d been looking for a fight from the moment Callum had first met her. Rooster was her opposite number, the Whiskey squad leader. He was Callum’s most experienced pilot, and a man he would gladly trust with his life—and had, on more than one occasion. They all had. That was the job.

  But Rooster hadn’t been himself lately. Not since they’d sent that Quatro ship flaming into oblivion with all hands onboard. Callum needed him to come out of his funk soon.

  Now would be nice.

  “Let’s just shoot first and analyze later,” a third voice said.

  “Isn’t that your first date policy, Z-Man?” Rooster said. “How’s that working out for you?”

  “Score more than you,” Z fired back. He was one of the youngest in the wing, and his pride was easily wounded.

  Rooster chuckled. “Scoring with your left hand doesn’t count. Now why don’t we figure out what we’re looking at here, people?”

  “They’re moving erratic as hell,” Thunder said. “Can’t get a fix on them. These guys are flying like the major trying to impress the brass.”

  Callum was about to retort when something strange happened on his scope. One of the enemy ships stuttered forward in space, almost inside his missile lock range, then disappeared, reappearing inside the cloud formation.

  A moment later, another one did the same thing. Then another. His firing solution computer kept humming to life, then falling silent as it lost the targets it had acquired.

  “We’re going to have a problem locking onto these things if they keep jumping around like this,” he muttered.

  His on-board computer was already starting to overload him with information. Ordinarily, it gave him the info he requested the moment he needed it. But as enemy ships kept appearing and reappearing, the information fed to him was all over the place, as spastic as his targets.

  Which meant that the best targeting algorithm the Milky Way’s intelligent species could develop was next to useless. The information it fed him was an incomprehensible jumble of data.

  “Tune back your targeting systems,” Callum ordered over the air group command channel. “Have your pilots do the same.”

  “What?” Thunder spat.

  “How are we going to get weapons lock?” Rooster cut in. “Our magnetic personalities?”

  “We’ll have to figure it out,” Callum snapped. It was too warm in his suit. He felt his knuckles tightening on the stick in front of him. He didn’t like this. Not only were these things completely alien, but they were moving in a way that was impossible. It had to be.

  Yet they were doing it all the same.

  “Major, I’m not showing a bubble,” another voice said.

  “Say again, Eightball?”

  Eightball was flying formation with Tango, but he was nominally at the head of that formation. “I don’t have subspace capabilities,” the Winger said, his voice calm. “I’m not able to form the transition bubble. Can you confirm?”

  Callum pulled up his onboard and requested prep for subspace jump. The computer flashed, but nothing happened.

  He frowned. Back home, he’d used the subspace jump to great effect. It was one of the best options they had. Each Python could jump in and out of subspace in quick bursts, allowing them to get the drop on enemies—assuming they weren’t also able to jump into subspace. Two subspace-capable forces could track each other as they jumped back and forth, but in practice, such fights were rare.

  We’re not in the Milky Way, Callum reminded himself. And clearly, something about the space here, or the ships they were approaching, was blocking their subspace capability. He didn't need the computer to tell him the bubble wasn’t working. The fact the space around him was completely failing to warp did that.

  The computer flashed red, and a JUMP ABORT message flashed there.

  “Confirmed,” said Thunder and Rooster almost simultaneously.

  “No subspace,” Thunder added.

  “I’m the new guy, but that doesn’t seem good,” Z said.

  Rooster told him to cut the com chatter. That shut everyone up. If there was anything that would make everyone nervous, it was Rooster telling them to cut the chatter. He loved the chatter.

  “We need to change our vector,” Rooster added, and Callum knew he was talking to him.

  “Negative. We’re in the pipeline with the other air groups. If we change our flight aspect, we’ll leave our neighbors vulnerable.”

  “What the hell!” shouted Eightball.

  Callum’s gaze snapped to his HUD display. On the screen there, one of the enemy ships had appeared
right behind Eightball.

  “Come around, Thunder, and clean his ass—”

  Before he could finish the command, the ship disappeared again.

  “Where’d it go?” Thunder said.

  “There’s another one,” Z yelled.

  A chorus of panicked voices filled the coms as alien ships began to appear among the fighters.

  Callum lined up a shot on one, but his missile computer refused to make a lock. He was left to eye it up with his slug guns, but before he could pull the trigger, it disappeared again.

  He cursed. Another target appeared at his starboard side and he snapped around, spinning his flight computer upward to fire, but again, he blinked and the ship vanished.

  “What the hell are they doing?” Thunder said, voice tremulous.

  Rooster cut through the chatter. “They aren’t engaging. Repeat, they aren’t engaging.”

  It was like the alien ships were playing with them, appearing and then disappearing in their midst. The Python fighters simply weren’t quick enough to target them before they vanished.

  Callum realized he was biting his bottom lip, hard. These bastards were playing the same game the Pythons had been able to pull off against their enemies, before subspace tech was widely distributed. It had allowed them an element of surprise that was unparalleled.

  Except there was one big difference. When they’d had the superior technology, they’d used it to engage their enemies. These ships weren’t. They were simply appearing and disappearing randomly.

  Or were they?

  Callum waved his sensor glove through the HUD image his Python was showing him. “Where are they appearing?”

  Before his computer crunched the data, he could sense the change in the com chatter. There were fewer sightings. The chatter was still coming, but it was from startled pilots exchanging information about previous sightings. He wasn’t hearing any new sightings.

  Then, he felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.

  The enemy wasn’t engaging his fighters because they were flying right past them.

  The computer completed its pattern analysis of the alien appearances. From its visual representation, it seemed like the cloud of fighters had come apart as it reached the wave of Python fighters, jumped in and out among them, then reformed behind them.

  “Shit,” Callum hissed. “They went right past us!”

  Now that he said it, there was stunned silence on the coms. “Turn it around, turn it around!”

  The fighters spun in a ragged line as the pilots seemed to grasp what Callum was saying. They fired their thrusters, arresting their momentum toward the main enemy vessel, then they rushed back toward their own battle group, the g-forces piling on.

  “Relentless,” Callum said over the all-hands channel. “Be advised you have inbound targets. Repeat, the aliens are inbound.”

  A wave of helplessness washed over him as his fighters rushed to catch up with the alien craft. The enemy’s newly reformed swarm angled downward, pointing straight at the row of destroyers Callum was supposed to be protecting.

  “Major, look!” Eightball said. The Winger had been among the first to catch on to what the jumping alien ships were up to, and he was now one of the farthest forward of the fighters racing after the enemy. He and Callum both had a perfect view.

  The alien ships were again stuttering in space, launching masses that seemed to flow forward from their innards in a slingshot-like motion.

  The projectiles screamed downward, smashing into the destroyers. Callum winced as the Relentless shuddered under the impacts.

  He waited for the explosions to come, but nothing happened. “What the hell?” He raised his sensor glove to the HUD again. “Magnify.”

  A section of the Relentless jumped into view. Callum felt a chill run down his spine as the reality of what he was seeing dawned on him.

  “They’re burrowing,” he said, his voice coming out hoarse.

  “What?” Thunder said. “Did he just say—”

  Callum cut her off as he spoke once more over a fleet-wide channel. “Relentless, you have been breached. Repeat, your outer hull has been breached. Something is….” He swallowed. “Something’s tearing through the hull.”

  Chapter 15

  Main DFAC

  UHC Relentless

  The mess hall of the Relentless was nearly empty. Battle stations had been called, and those that had places to be in such a circumstance were there. For Jake, there was nowhere in particular for him to be until he was called for.

  The Oneiri mech team was attached to the marine battalion. They were technically on alert when the rest of the ship was at battle stations, but whatever was happening out there, it was happening in deep space, far from anything Jake or anyone else in Oneiri could affect.

  Anyway, Jake assumed Husher knew what he was doing. He’d proven that enough times, even if the old man didn’t quite have the killer edge he once had.

  Jake had run into him only once in the halls since arriving on the ship. He got the impression that Husher hadn’t even realized his specific team was aboard, which probably spoke to the speed with which the battle group had been pulled together. Expedient redeployment of resources would probably be the euphemism fleet command would use to describe it. Jake would just call it chaotic.

  His radio squawked once, and he glanced down to see it was Maura. “Where are you, Jake?”

  “Standing by,” he said, picking up the radio. “Like everyone else.” He looked down at his prosthetic arms and hands, then down at his prosthetic legs and feet. The tech was advanced. They transferred sensations exactly as natural ones would. His limbs had been the sacrifices he’d made to wield the powerful alien mech that had helped turn the tide of war. At the end, it had literally absorbed him into itself. Parts of him, anyway. He’d managed to resist the siren song of fully merging with the alien, but the scars he carried were more than just the machined parts where his limbs had once been.

  He’d lost his killer edge, too. Once upon a time, he would have demanded to be part of whatever was happening out there. He wouldn’t have sat around in some empty mess hall in the bowels of a ship under attack. He wouldn’t have left his fate in others’ hands.

  Once upon a time, there was no fight he wouldn’t have forced his way into.

  Live long enough, and everyone loses their edge.

  “Okay,” Maura pressed. “Where are you standing by? I need someone to talk to. I can’t just sit here with my thumb up my ass.”

  “Sure you can.” Jake knew what Maura was doing. She was worried about him. She didn’t want him left alone with his thoughts. “Seriously, Maura. I’m fine. Stay with the team.”

  There was a long pause. “Sure, Jake.”

  He killed the radio and looked up to find a Winger with a long beak and thinning feathers studying him. Jake still couldn’t say that he was very good at reading Winger expressions, but this one looked bemused.

  “For a second, I thought you were talking to yourself, young man.” The Winger spoke with the thick, shrill accent characteristic of the species.

  Jake remembered, then: this Winger was the head cook. He cleared his throat. “Must be lonely down here when everybody else goes to battle positions.”

  The Winger surprised him by breaking out into a loud laugh. “I’m in back most of the time, scrambling to get all the chow ready. Any break is a blessing. I love the silence.”

  He nodded. “I get that, I guess.”

  “No battle stations for you, then?”

  “I’m with the marine battalion.”

  The alien nodded. “Ah, yes. With Major Gamble.” The Winger peered around. For a moment, Jake thought his expression looked thoughtful. “It looks like the battalion’s ranks are a bit thinner than I remember.”

  Jake snorted in spite of himself. “They’re in the hangar bay. Ready to jump into the action.”

  “So you’re staying closer to the food. Smart. I think you’re onto something. Although I hate t
o tell you, there isn’t any pie left from yesterday. I’ve had half a dozen folks come hunting for it.”

  Jake shook his head. “I just wanted to be alone.”

  “I can understand that. If you need anything, just ask.” The Winger started to walk away.

  But Jake surprised himself by speaking again. “That’s not exactly true.” He’d planned to let the cook walk away. He’d implied that he wanted him to, after all. But now he was calling him back. “I could chat. For a second.”

  The cook put down something that looked like an automatic mixer and took a seat. He smoothed his feathers absentmindedly. “You’ve lost someone.”

  Jake lifted his head in surprise.

  “I know the look. I see it more than you might think. I see it in the mirror, if I’m being honest.”

  That brought a grimace. “I’m sorry. Everybody lost somebody, in the war.”

  “Amen.” The Winger clacked his beak. “You know, Captain Husher and I go way back.”

  Jake wondered what prompted the man to bring up Husher.

  As if the Winger could read his thoughts, he shrugged. “He’s told me about you. About what you’ve been through. About what you all went through, at the end of the war.”

  “He did?” Jake asked.

  “Even a starship captain needs someone to talk to. Someone who doesn’t judge.”

  “The captain’s a good man.” Jake suppressed a wince. These days, he couldn’t think about Husher without thinking about Iris. About what might have been.

  The Winger leaned forward, his long beak protruding over the table. “I’m good at taking the measure of a man, if you’ll forgive a bad cooking analogy.”

  For the first time, Jake noticed the discoloration on the front of the Winger’s beak, as well as a series of chips along the edges leading back. The silence stretched on, and Jake realized the alien was waiting for him to speak. He cleared his throat. “One of the mech pilots on my team. I—well, I cared for her deeply. Now she’s basically comatose, in a long-term care facility.”

  The Winger opened his beak, but Jake pressed on before he could say anything. “There wasn’t anything I could do about it. There were factors at work that I couldn’t even understand at the time, and now that I do, I know there was nothing I could have done. Nothing. But even so, I can’t help but blame myself.”