“I’ve given my orders, Mr. Nesbit,” Susan said icily.
“Yeah, the wrong orders. Your own XO told you, you’re countermanding seventy years of foreign policy. You don’t have the authority.”
“You are here as an observer and advisor, Mr. Nesbit, which is where your authority ends.”
“I’m done with you,” he said dismissively before turning to Miguel. “Commander, relieve the captain and—”
Miguel moved so fast his body blurred into Susan’s peripheral vision. Before anyone really registered what happened, he’d thrown Nesbit up against the CIC’s starboard bulkhead with the ease of a child pinning the tail on the donkey.
“Listen, suit,” Miguel said with the sort of deliberate calm that promised unimaginable chaos if it was disturbed in the least measure. “The old lady made her call. That’s her job. I implement her orders. That’s my job. Don’t think for a millisecond that our disagreement before she gave me an order was an opening for you to wiggle in after it was issued. Clear?”
Nesbit had some difficulty talking around the vise-grip hand clamped down on his throat, so he just nodded his understanding instead.
“Good.” Miguel released him.
Susan turned to address the marine by the hatch who’d somehow managed to remain at attention through the entire exchange. “Guard, our CL appears to be suffering from fatigue. Please escort him back to his quarters and make sure he gets a full watch of uninterrupted rest.”
“Immediately, mum.” The marine stepped into the CIC, the palm of his hand resting on his still-holstered-but-it-wouldn’t-take-a-second sidearm. “CL Nesbit, if you’ll come with me?”
He reached out to take Nesbit by the elbow, but was rebuffed.
“I know the way to my cabin, Private,” Nesbit huffed. “This is all going in my report, Captain.”
“As it will in mine, sir. Get some rest.” Susan nodded to the marine guard and Nesbit was unceremoniously escorted out of her sight. “And just when I was starting to think we might get along,” she lamented.
“Hope springs eternal,” Miguel said.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For not mutinying. I know how bad you want a command.”
“Ha! I’ll earn one the old-fashioned way.” He looked up at the plot and the falling countdown. “If I live that long. I sure hope you’re right about this, mum.”
“Me too, XO. Guns, lock our laser array onto the Chusexx’s antimatter containment pods. If they as much as sneeze, don’t wait for my order, just blow them straight back to wherever the hell their homeworld is.”
“With pleasure, mum.”
“Good. Open a channel.”
* * *
“Derstu,” Hurg perked up in her seat. “We’re getting a song from the human ship.”
Thuk’s hopes rose. Why would the humans bother to answer his song if they were already committed to their destruction? Maybe there was a slim chance to survive the disaster after all. “Put it to the mouths.”
“Chusexx harmony, this is [Derstu] Susan Kamala, CCDF Ansari. We grab your [Mayday] and stand to contribute. Be caution, aggression will greet death power instant. Sleep weapons and take/accept rescue/savior bird.”
Everyone stared at each other with their mandibles hanging limp. The humans were not only staying their execution, but offering aid? It didn’t seem possible.
“It’s a trick,” Kivits said. “Has to be. They mean to board us and take the ship as a prize.”
“Perhaps.”
“Well? We can’t let that happen.”
“We won’t. If they are being deceptive, we will simply scuttle the ship.”
“But we’ll all die!”
“We were going to do that anyway. We’re trading for time and chances. And I’ll take as much of both as I can possibly leverage. Hurg, let me sing our reply, please.”
“Ready to capture, Derstu.”
“Susan Kamala, I am Thuk, singing for this harmony. We accept your offered hand with great thanks, and will gladly receive your rescue team. Without source energy, our weapons are already disabled. However, we must keep our meteor brooms active, even if the risk is low. Send, please.”
Thuk awaited the reply nervously. He wouldn’t have to wait long. At this short range, light lag would be negligible.
“[Derstu] Thuk, song acceptable. Be caution, any light shine on rescue/savior bird greet death power. We launch shortly. Small hand of warriors travel bird defend rescue/savior attendants. Please hospitality.”
Thuk and Kivits looked at each other for a long, silent, uncomfortable moment.
“No,” Kivits finally said. “No way.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
“You want to let human warriors into our home?”
“‘Want’ is not the right word. We ‘need’ to.”
“And let them turn on us at any moment?”
“If they do, I’m confident our own warriors will defend their home with a great deal of enthusiasm. A handful of humans, on foot, in an unfamiliar mound, can’t possibly fight their way to the mind cavern before we release the annihilation fuel reserves. Our situation is fundamentally unchanged. This is an affront, but it is not a problem.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“What about … the weapon?”
“It’s mostly external. And I don’t think they’re going to be bouncing around in vacuum skins.”
“It’s not all external. There are several components in the mechanical caverns that could be visible to—”
“Yes, yes, I agree.” Thuk faced the recording alcove. “Susan Kamala. My harmony and I are … reluctant to allow armed warriors into our home.”
“Not negotiate, [Derstu] Thuk. I want/desire help you, but safety people mine prioritize.”
“What assurances do I have that your warriors won’t try to capture the Chusexx or her harmony?”
“I limit number/size. Takeover impossible. Only protect our attendants. Must respond mayday by corporate space law.”
“Those laws only extend to other human vessels, do they not?”
“Law essence, then. Say you what, goodwill token, I join warriors, self.”
There was an inaudible sound from the background, followed by the muffling sound of someone covering an ear. Thuk, Kivits, and Hurg looked at each other anxiously.
“Is she sun-stroked?” Kivits asked. “Coming over here herself?”
“Well, it does give us pretty good collateral, don’t you agree?”
The scratching sound happened again as Susan Kamala’s voice returned. “Forgive interruption, Thuk. My dulac misunderstand/disagreement. Now straight. So, we deal?”
“Your offer is acceptable, Susan Kamala. For reasons of sensitivity, there are places your warriors cannot be allowed to venture. I’m sure you would have similar concerns if we were visiting your home. You will be informed of such places politely, but firmly. I ask that you respect our privacy.”
“Our attendants not unescorted. If warriors not allowed, none of our people help those areas.”
“That is understood, Susan Kamala.”
“Then agreed. Our bird inbound. [ETA] forty-seven [minutes]. Being clear, take hostages/captives, my weapons attendant stand order cut through Chusexx as ripe [banana]. Kamala, out.” The link went silent.
“What’s a banana?” Hurg asked.
“I have no idea.” Thuk ran “forty-seven minutes” through a conversion tab. He had just enough time to get back to his room and put on formal dress before heading to the nest. The circumstances seemed to call for it. Thuk stood up from his chair and headed for the door.
“Wait, where are you going?” Kivits called to his back.
“Down to the bird nest to greet our ‘guests.’ Never seen a human in the skin before. I wonder what they smell like.”
“What, and leave me here to blow up the ship if they get by you?”
“You�
�d rather go grovel for aid from our enemies?”
Kivits’s thorax constricted. “I suppose not.”
“As I assumed. Try to keep the lights on. Diplomacy in the dark often leads to light in brief, violent flashes.”
SIXTEEN
“This is the single goddamned dumbest thing I have ever seen, heard, or read about,” Miguel said. “Mum,” he added.
“Noted, XO. Now hand your old lady her sidearm.”
Miguel obliged, but didn’t stop talking. “I mean, we just spent more than a month trying to shoot holes in them, they’ve already violated the Red Line twice and blown up our drones, and now we’re not even going to try and take them as a prize? What changed?”
“Everything, Miguel.” Susan pulled the Glock M73 from its holster and hit the magazine release: Full load of 10 mm armor-piercing fléchette cluster rounds meant to penetrate the Xre’s natural armor plating and tumble around in the goop. Each round held a bundle of six darts inside a sabot. Killing Xre was notoriously difficult. Most of the last war had been fought ship-to-ship or through orbital bombardments. Actual ground engagements or boarding actions had been exceptionally rare. Few humans had ever seen a Xre in the flesh. Fewer still had lived long enough to share any details. What little they knew about Xre physiology came mostly from dissecting cadavers recovered from shattered warships.
Susan slapped the magazine back into the pistol and racked the action to chamber a round before putting it back in its holster.
“We were shooting at them because they were an aggressor and a threat. Now, they’re not. If we blow up a defenseless ship, it could start a war. If we try to board, they’ll probably fight and we’ll have to kill them all and it could start a war. But, if we help…”
“We hold out an olive branch,” Miguel completed her thought.
“Exactly. Maybe this is the moment we finally put our dicks away, zip up our trousers, and start actually talking to one another.”
“I wish I shared your optimism, mum.”
“Optimism? That’s the first time I’ve ever been accused of such a terrible thing. I think they’re probably just as afraid to die needlessly as we are. Do they even remember why we started fighting in the first place? I don’t.” Susan turned to walk down the flexible accordion tunnel to the waiting shuttle, but paused at the threshold. “But I wasn’t kidding before. If they try anything, you tell that high-functioning psychopath Warner to cook them like a bug-zapper. Admiralty House can always find another recklessly naïve captain for the Ansari.”
“You don’t think they’d just let me keep her, mum?” Miguel said with a smile.
“Goodbye, Miguel. See you soon.”
“Good luck, mum. I’ll keep your seat warm.”
Susan nodded and spun the hatch tight behind her. It was a short walk from the hatch to the shuttle, but somehow it seemed like a kilometer. Susan swallowed hard. Miguel was right about one thing, this was the dumbest idea she’d ever heard of, too. Nothing for it, girl. You’re committed now.
She stepped away from the small platform inside the transfer tube and across the bright red line that delineated the last little piece of Ansari real estate, and moved across the jointed, shifting grates loosely attached to the floor of the transfer tube. The shuttle, one of the marines’ two assault birds that had been selected, was matte black and almost perfectly smooth. Like the Ansari herself, it had no portholes or windows, save for a gun slit windshield made out of twenty centimeters of laminated transparent aluminum that was probably stronger than the armor plating surrounding it, a compromise the designers had only made in the exceedingly unlikely event all of the shuttle’s optical feeds or computer systems were knocked out and the pilot had to maneuver using visual references alone.
The team already inside saw her approach through one of the thousands of tiny cameras embedded in the adaptive-camo skin on the hull. Indeed, it was easier to just think of the hull as one big, uninterrupted eye. Perfectly machined seams in the hull, grown really, cracked open as the two halves of the armored entry hatch swung out to invite her into the airlock.
Most shuttles featured small, two-person airlocks, large enough only for an EVA team to cycle in and out. But marine assault shuttles were very different. For vacuum-insertion mission profiles, their airlocks needed to accommodate up to an entire squad of a dozen armed marines in hardsuits so they could all deploy in one enraged wave.
As a result, Susan could lay down the narrow way in the airlock without her head or toes touching the bulkheads. Fortunately, she didn’t have to wait for the air to cycle. As soon as the door behind her closed and locked, the lights went green and the inner door opened to reveal the commander of her marine detachment already kitted-out in medium, servo-assisted, vac-rated armor and a bullpup, over-under 6.5 mm rifle/20 mm grenade close quarters battle rifle hanging from her shoulder on a retractable sling.
“I just want to go on record as this being the stupidest—”
Susan waved her hand. “Yes, yes. I’ve gotten it both ends of this tunnel, Staff Sergeant.”
Sergeant Okuda blanched a little at the reprimand. “I wouldn’t let the grunts hear you phrase it exactly like that, mum.”
“I think they’d better behave themselves. This is a deadly serious operation.”
“Which is exactly why I’d feel better if you watched it unfold from the CIC.”
“No can do, Sarge. I’ve already given my word. Backing out now could spark a confrontation. I understand I’ve put you in a difficult position, but it is what it is.”
“Difficult? Oh no, mum. Marines love the chance to be a trip wire for a nuclear shootout between capital ships.”
“That’s the spirit. Let’s get underway.”
Susan took the front-row seat reserved for her in the shuttle’s passenger compartment. After being strapped into her crash harness by a copilot who’d missed her calling as a corset-tightener, Susan settled in for the flight over to the Chusexx. The distance between the ships had closed, but the Ansari needed to maintain a respectable buffer zone just in case their tracking and AMS systems needed to react if the Xre got desperate and started flinging missiles. Without main power, the Xre’s lasers and railguns would be inoperable. But missiles, once floated out of the tubes, carried their own reactant mass and power sources. They were an ever-present danger, even from a “dead” ship.
“Okay, ladies and grunts,” Okuda said into the compartment’s intercom. “As you all know, we’re headed into a whole hornet’s nest of bullshit. Our RoE are simple: You shoot first, I shoot you. If they shoot first and you fail to shoot back, I shoot you. Grunts, our priorities are as follows.” She held up three fingers and started counting down. “One, keep the captain alive. Two, keep the DC team alive. Three, avenge their deaths if we fail on priority one or two. And we won’t have long to do that, as Lieutenant Warner up in the CIC has her finger hovering over the button that will burn a hole through the bugs’ antimatter containment pods and reduce all of us into pure energy and elementary particles before any of you can shit your hardsuits.”
Okuda cleared her throat. “Damage Control Team, I’m sure you’ve already been briefed on this by your section chief, but it bears repeating. Even with your hazmat suits, we are entering an environment optimized for Xre physiology. Xre-adapted bacteria and viruses have never meshed with our biology, so you don’t have to worry about catching a space bug. However, the atmosphere will be almost forty percent oxygen, plus more carbon dioxide than we’re used to. Your respirators will filter out particulate, but the gas mix will breeze right through. Most of you won’t suffer any ill effects beyond a mild headache from the excess CO2, but some of you may experience symptoms of oxygen poisoning such as euphoria, twitching lips, vertigo, convulsions, and nausea. If you start to feel any of these symptoms, don’t ‘tough it out.’ Put your hand up and report it immediately and one of us will escort you back to the shuttle for recovery. Don’t be a hero. Heroes get dead. Clear?”
“What if
one of you starts to feel it?” a random tech blurted out.
“We won’t,” Okuda answered. “One, because CCDF Marine Indoc and Basic weeds out those susceptible, and two, because our hardsuits regulate our atmospheres. Any other stupid questions?”
There were none.
“Excellent! Moving on. The captain has agreed to the Xre’s request not to venture where we aren’t welcome. So nobody wander off, and if you’re turned back by one of their crew from a place you weren’t supposed to be in the first place, don’t be an asshole about it. Clear?”
A general round of grunts and acknowledgments from those assembled confirmed that, as a practical matter, Okuda’s instructions were clear.
“Outstanding. We’ll be in the black for thirty minutes before we land in their bay and get to work. So relax, take a nap, pray, write a letter, whatever you need to do to get your heads right. Because when we cross that threshold, we’ll be stepping into a custom-fitted clusterfuck. Captain Kamala, want to add anything?”
Susan smirked. “Thank you, Sergeant, but I think you hit the high points quite eloquently.” Okuda was an excellent squad leader, equal parts mother and drill sergeant wrapped up in a package that was just as eager to kiss as kill. Susan was surprised she and Warner hadn’t hooked up yet. Maybe they had but preferred privacy. Whatever the case, it wasn’t her concern. The half hour passed in relative quiet as everyone dealt with the tension and anxiety in their own heads and their own ways. The minutes felt to Susan like they passed both too quickly and agonizingly slowly at once.
Two-thirds of the way through the trip, the shuttle flipped ass over tea kettle to point its fusion rockets at the rendezvous point and throttled up to decelerate for a clean zero-zero intercept. The pressure of deceleration pushed Susan back into her chair, gently but firmly. It felt good to have the reference point of gravity back again. For a woman who’d spent her entire career in and around starships, she’d never really gotten used to zero g. She’d done well enough in training to pass her quals, but she’d just never taken to it the way many of the other spacers had, which was even stranger when one considered how much she loved to swim.
In the Black Page 18