by Mel Keegan
“Not much under light speed,” Vaurien said thoughtfully.
Perlman came closer, intent on the flatscreen. “They’d drive you nuts, doing this. They come in on a heading from Naiobe or one of the gravity wells of the supergiant stars, so fast, a gunship had to fly an intersect course, we’d never catch them. Then they stop, the sort of brutal braking maneuver that’d pulp any living pilot. They taunt you, make you follow, before they just vanish. One time, I followed one of these handfuls of pixie-dust right into the dark zone behind Ulkur. Jesus, Neil, d’you remember?”
“I’ve spent a year trying to forget,” Travers muttered. “Thing is, Barb, I never saw a Hellgate ghost outside of Hellgate. Gill?”
“Never,” she agreed. “But don’t ask me how this adds up.”
“They cruise on momentum at this speed,” Vidal said quietly, “like they got a slingshot off the gravity well of the black hole. They stop dead in space, and on a whim they vanish back into the cracks.” His brows arched at Jazinsky. “This is a lot like how it felt like to fly transspace. Surfing gravity tides and temporal currents – and there’s no shortage of those in this neck of the woods.”
With one hand flat in the small of her back, Jazinsky straightened. “Etienne, bring a probe online. Intercept, fast as possible.”
“Probe 215, launching,” the AI responded. “Time to intercept, 150 seconds.”
A graphic depicting the probe appeared in the navtank, and the overall scale of the image shifted to accommodate probe and target. Oberon was on the extreme rim of the display, while a plot of the ghost’s trajectory winked on in soft green lines.
“Where’s it going?” Travers wondered. “You said it’s holding a set course?”
“If it’s an energy pulse, it would,” Marin said thoughtfully. “They can’t deviate after transmission.”
“And if it’s an object,” Vidal added, “it’s going somewhere.”
The observation was intriguing and it was Vaurien who said, “Etienne, extrapolate on the trajectory plot. Give me an evaluation of this thing’s probable destination or target.”
They might have expected some small delay before the AI had the information, but Etienne pulled it directly from standard navigation routines. “Destination is Borushek. Departure vector is identical to that of the Tycho.”
Every head in the Ops room came up, and Vaurien’s brows knitted into a frown. “A handful of pixie-dust wouldn’t assume an exact heading for Borushek, or anywhere specific. It’s an object. Your imaging data is being screwed up Barb. Cloaking, or deliberate jamming. And since it’s an object we don’t recognize, it’s a safe bet it’s Zunshu, probably arrived via the same event that brought the automata.”
“And it,” Vidal whispered, “is on its way to Borushek.”
“It,” Hubler corrected, “is on its way right into the middle of the minefield Asako and me just seeded.”
“The smart question being, will the mines react to something that doesn’t even look like an object most of the time?” Vidal’s fingertips drummed on Jazinsky’s workspace. “What the hell is it, Barb? Time to make a judgment call while we still have the chance.”
“A cloaked object,” Jazinsky said slowly. “I’ll tell you more in …” She flicked a glance at the chrono. “About 80 seconds.”
Vaurien touched his combug. “Tully, do we have sublight?”
From the engine deck Ingersol said without hesitation, “Yeah, no problem. Why, we going somewhere? I thought we were getting a Weimann tow back to Alshie’nya.”
“We are … eventually.” Vaurien leaned on the side of the navtank, on both palms. “Pilots, confirm.”
“Still on station,” Yuval Greenstein’s guttural voice said from the flightdeck, “and eavesdropping on you guys. You want to take off after the probe?”
“Yeah.” Vaurien frowned deeply into the tank. “Yeah, I think we’d better. Keep a discreet distance, Yuval, but put us in strike range.”
The words seemed to galvanize Vidal. “Let me take Tactical again.”
And Hubler was moving, addressing his combug and Rodman, who was back on the Harlequin. “Askao, power up. We’re undocking.” He stomped away across the Ops room, slightly ungainly on the biocyber legs which infuriated him, and was framed in the doorway when he turned back to glare at Vaurien. “Where do you want us?”
“Use us for cover,” Richard said slowly. “Just in case.”
“In case of what, exactly?” Rodman’s voice demanded over the comm.
“If I knew that, we’d probably be heading for Freespace with our tail feathers on fire.” Vaurien gave Hubler a wink. “Like I said, use us for cover. See what we get from the probe.”
“Twenty seconds to intercept,” Jazinsky muttered as she pulled up a chair.
“And the forward railguns are armed,” Vidal added. “Automatic targeting can’t even find a lock on this thing, so we’ll do it manually.”
The airframe gave a telltale shiver as the tug began to maneuver. Marin registered the momentary falling sensation in the pit of his belly and looked into the tank. Etienne reconfigured the display in an instant as the ship came up close on the probe. At this range the datastream was instantaneous, no time lag, and Jazinsky pored over it while the tank switched over to a dizzying visual.
“Barb?” Vaurien’s eyes never left the image in the threedee.
“Definitely an object,” she said levelly. “Twenty meters or so … Zunshunium power source. I’m seeing split-second glimpses of stuff we can recognize among a torrent of gibberish – it’s just sensor jamming, but very, very sophisticated. Any of this look familiar, Gill?”
Perlman had come to the side of the tank, but her big shoulders only shrugged. “We never got close enough to get a good look at them.”
“Whoa … energy spike,” Jazinsky warned. “Power’s going off-scale. If I had to make a guess –”
“Drive engines?” Vidal asked sharply. “Shit, Richard, if it’s getting ready to vanish into the cracks, you can bet your pension the next place it’ll show up is Borushek.”
And this, Marin thought with stone cold rationale, was exactly the way so many of the Resalq homeworlds had been destroyed. This was what Mark Sherratt had been afraid of for a long time – the reason Saraine was dormant now, while for months Riga and Harrison Shapiro’s staff had lived poised on a five minute evacuation alert.
“Richard?” Vidal’s voice was sharp. “We’re going to get one chance. Catch or kill?”
“Catch,” Jazinsky said quickly. “Please – catch. We need this thing! Damn, you know what it is, don’t you?”
It was almost certainly what the Resalq had come to term a planet-killer, Marin knew. A world-wrecker. Without much real doubt, this was the device intended for Borushek. It was the first time the Zunshu had targeted a major colony world, and the first high-intensity strike since the destruction of Albeniz.
“Pilot, take us out to maximum distance for effective railgun strike, and then – Michael, hit it.” Vaurien did not hesitate. “Let’s see how it likes the guns. If you see it stagger, bring a geocannon to bear.”
The railguns began to stream blue-white lightning while he was still speaking, and Marin held his breath. He was watching the display where Jazinsky continued to monitor velocity, heading and the object’s distinctive energy signature. Zunshunium was as unique as a fingerprint.
“The energy spike is subsiding,” she mused. “Looks like it doesn’t care for being hit. Energy levels are almost back down to the point where they began, and still falling.”
“We might have hurt it.” Michael Vidal paused to recalibrate his weapons. “The geocannon is primed. Say the word, Rick.”
“It’s powering down.” Jazinsky’s fists were clenched. “It’s going dormant, Richard.”
“You’re guessing, and you can’t afford to,” Vaurien warned.
She pushed away from the workstation and sent her data to the navtank. “Look at it. What’s this look like to you?”
She made a good point, Marin thought. If the object had been any machine built according to human or Resalq technology, one would have said it was damaged, perhaps even badly damaged. If nothing else, the comprehensive cloaking that had made it close to indistinguishable from the background noise of Hellgate was dwindling away, leaving the Zunshu thing very obviously a machine.
But Vaurien was less sure. His eyes skimmed back to the weapons display, where the geocannon firing solution had resolved into a firm track since the jamming shut down.
“Richard?” Vidal was waiting.
“We need it,” Jazinsky insisted. “You know exactly what this is – we’ve never even seen one of these before, and we might never see one again! We can catch it in Aragos.”
“It can turn on us,” Perlman rasped. “It can self-destruct and take this ship with it. The time Bravo chased a Hellgate ghost into the dark zone behind Ulkur –? We must have cornered it, or else the thing was damaged, like this one might be. It destroyed itself. Ask Neil. It sent itself to hell with the kind of blast you’d expect if a Prometheus generator fell so far out of line, it blew. Ask Neil!”
The question was asked with a slight lift of one brow as Vaurien’s dark eyes turned to Travers, and Marin watched as Neil simply nodded, a mute response hinting at memories too horrible to be clearly recalled. Jazinsky was still determined, and Marin guessed she would make every argument about Wastrel and Resalq tech being far superior to anything Fleet possessed. Vaurien stalled her with a soft word. It was never more obvious that he was the captain of this ship, and command was not a democracy.
“Deep image it,” he said quietly. “If its cloaking just failed, you can image it right down to the molecular level.”
“Theoretically,” she said with forced calm. “To get down so deep would take ten, fifteen minutes at minimum safe distance. It’s not going to give us that kind of time.”
“Get what you can, Barb – use the probe’s deep imaging platform and do if fast, because we’re about to back way off. Tully?”
“Right here,” Ingersol responded from the engine deck. “You’re going to want the big handling drones.”
“If you’ve got four operational, launch them all.” Vaurien reached into the threedee, sorting through menus, fishing for data.
“We’ve got four,” Ingersol assured him. “They’re on the ramps … it’s going to be bloody tricky. The velocity of this thing –? Shit, Rick, you’re not asking for much.”
“I know. Get the drones close enough to lock tractors on the object, and not one centimeter closer.” He gave Jazinsky an almost apologetic look. “And I know we need it, but I’ve a nasty feeling … as soon as it registers the pull of tractors, it’s going to self-destruct with the kind of implosion that was intended to leave smoking wreckage where Borushek used to be. Tully, make full thrust available to the sublight engines. Yuval, standby to move us the hell away from it, soon as Barb’s done imaging it.”
“You got it,” Greenstein called from the flightdeck.
The probe was already working, and Marin was intent on Jazinsky’s flatscreen, where data was cascading directly to Etienne. But the energy signature off the Zunshu device was rippling in response, multiple little spikes and troughs.
“It knows it’s being imaged,” Vaurien said cynically.
“Is it armed?” Travers wondered.
“The whole thing is one big weapon.” Jazinsky did not look up from her work.
“No, he means could it take a shot at our probe?” Vidal corrected. “Or at us.”
Her shoulders lifted in a shrug which hinted at her aggravation. “I have no idea. It could. But if it’s a planet-wrecker, it could also be absolutely dedicated. Its tiny little brain knows how to do one thing: follow a set course, slither into a star system unseen behind a façade of sensor jamming, and detonate.”
“Christ,” Vidal whispered. “If we hadn’t been right here, right now…”
Borushek would have been gone. Marin wondered how the Terran Confederation might have interpreted the loss of a Deep Sky colony. Even if they publicly claimed responsibility, touting it as a punitive action, the punishment for their defeat at Velcastra, behind locked doors military committees in the homeworlds would know the truth. Colonials would never destroy their own planets, much less the bright worlds with the massive populations; and for decades the Confederation had been warned of the Zunshu.
The handling drones were fifty-tonne machines, each with its own powerful engine sled and industrial grade Aragos. They dwarfed the Zunshu object as Ingersol jockeyed them into position, and Marin watched the flatscreen where the hypnotic display charted the constant variation in the energy signature. The patterns were regular; and they were steadily increasing.
It was Perlman who said, “It looks like … it’s trying to power up its drive. Trying to get out of there.”
“Makes sense.” Vidal looked from Vaurien to Jazinsky and back. “It has one function – to wreck its designated target. Logically, it’d do anything in its power to achieve its goal before it self-destructed to prevent us getting hold of it.”
“Do you think you’re seeing data consistent with drive ignition?” Vaurien asked sharply.
Jazinsky’s white-blond head shook slowly. “It’s damned hard to be sure. This is … it’s alien, Richard. All I can tell you for certain is, we damaged it, deactivated its cloaking. Right now it’s cruising on sheer momentum, it knows it’s being imaged, it knows it’s surrounded by hostiles, and it’s generating massive amounts of energy. If it could take a shot at the probe or the drones or us, it would’ve done it by now. So – assume it can’t; assume it’s trying to get out, like Mick said, and do its job. This repeating pattern could easily be a drive ignition signature.”
“The safe bet says it is.” Travers turned his back on the screen and pulled both hands over his face. “You want my recommendation, Richard? Destroy it, while we’ve got the chance.”
“Yeah,” Vaurien said darkly. “I think you’re right. Tully, pull the drones back. I’m not even going to try to get a tractor on it.” He flicked a glance at Jazinsky. “You got your data?”
“Some.” She pushed back up to her feet and stood with folded arms, glaring into the navtank. “I guess I’ll work with what I have.”
The waveform display was pulsing strongly now, and the hair had begun to rise on Marin’s nape. He took a half-step closer to Travers as Vaurien said, “Mick, standby the geocannon. Yuval, put some serious space between us and it.”
The deck vibrated beneath Marin’s soles as the sublight engines moved the Wastrel’s colossal mass, and he was sure Vaurien was counting according to some primal instinct. No manual had ever been written, no rules of engagement existed. Richard knew this ship, these weapons, better than anyone else aboard, and it was a matter of intuition when he said, “All right, Mick – fire.”
The forward geocannon had been salvaged from an asteroid miner. It was designed to dissect minor planets into debris for a smelter, and Marin knew the unspeakable power of its projectiles. Each shell was semi-aware, with a rudimentary AI and a one-shot engine producing acceleration he could barely imagine. Still, a lag of six seconds yawned between the moment Vidal stroked the trigger and the sun-bright flare of impact, detonation. In that time, Greenstein had the tug driving away at the maximum her sublight engines could sustain.
The flare was yellow-white, like a rosette of pure energy blossoming against the angry backdrop of Hellgate, and then it blinked off, as if a switch had been thrown. Hubler and Rodman were shouting over the comm, and a single red track in the navtank marked the position of the Harlequin, which was racing away.
“What the hell –?” Greenstein demanded.
“Implosion,” Jazinsky barked. “We triggered it. Damn, Richard, I’m reading about a hundred gravities off the epicentre!”
Vaurien’s voice was a whipcrack. “Sound collision – Aragos to maximum off the starboard quarter – Pilot, safe distancing! And t
he rest of you, grab something. This could be rough.”
It was a terrible understatement. Marin could not remember a time when the Wastrel had shuddered like a wounded animal, lurched as if she had been struck with a mallet the size of a small, dense planet. The airframe thrummed; a hold twisted and ruptured with a scream of tearing metal which transmitted clearly through the hull. For a moment she seemed to fall, as if she had been resting on stable ground that had dropped out from beneath her. A dozen alarms began to blare, but Vaurien silenced them at once and into the sudden fracas of the loop he shouted,
“Etienne, how bad?”
The AI was as placid as ever. “Number three hold collapsed. The forward gantry cane derailed and destroyed the forward e-space transmitters. The outer hull is critically stressed at the spinal junctures. Number two reactor autoscrammed. Sublight engines are at 15% instability. Weimann drive is offline. Service drone storage bunkers 4 through 9 are warped and jammed. Drones are unresponsive. Widespread but minor damage in the fabrication bays and hangars. The four heavy handling drones fail to respond and are presumed destroyed. No human casualties.”
Richard passed a hand before his eyes and worked his neck around. To Marin’s eyes he looked pale, but his voice was level. “Tully, Yuval, get us moving. Put us a safe distance from Oberon, where we won’t be a target, and then mobilize what drones you can bring online. Prioritize structural repairs, and see if the reactor will come back up.”
“Doing it, Rick,” Ingersol assured him. “The reactor looks okay … let me run diagnostics. I’ll get back to you.”
And Greenstein: “There’s plenty of sublight mobility, boss. I’ve got us on a loop, back toward Alshie’nya. Mind you, it’s a ten hour run at these speeds.”
“Harlequin,” Vaurien called, “Harlequin, are you all right?”
To Marin’s intense relief, Hubler’s voice was there at once. “We only got a tickle from the edge of the blast. We’re fine.”
Still on station at Tactical, Vidal visibly subsided as Vaurien said, “Thank gods for small mercies. Head back to Alshie’nya, Harlequin. Tell Sasha Tomarov and Paul Wymark we took one hell of a beating. We need a tow, soon as the Wings of Freedom can get here. Whatever else they’re doing can wait.”