In the Black

by Patrick S. Tomlinson

  Good, Susan thought. Maybe they can keep their heads down long enough to get clear of this mess after all. The three “friendly” green icons of the PAC task group hadn’t changed course from their orbital path, but then they wouldn’t for at least another hour and a half. Susan’s light-speed message had only just reached them six minutes ago. Even if they’d already bubbled out, the data stream leaving their IFF interrogation systems would take that long to arrive here.

  “We set the table just in time,” Mattu interrupted her train of thought. “The Halcyon’s bubble just popped. And the Carnegie.”

  “Where’s the Paul Allen?”

  “Nothing yet. Wait one … there she is. But—” Mattu ran a couple calculations through her station. “Bahen ke laude Charts, cross-check me on this.”

  Broadchurch looked to their station as the nav data from Mattu’s drones streamed in. “Holy shit,” she said a moment later. “Those incompetent, greenhorn, snotty cruise…”

  Miguel cut off the growing tirade. “What’s the matter, Charts?”

  “Their exit point, sir. If we’d stayed where we were, they’d have clipped us fifteen klicks inside their gooey zone as the bubble burst. We’d be looking at a broken keel right now.”

  Susan suppressed a gasp. Instead, she turned around to look directly into the eyes of her XO and knew without a word that they were sharing the same horrible thought.

  There were no greenhorn crews on the bridge of a planetary assault carrier. At over thirty billion nudollars a piece, it wasn’t worth the risk. That had not been a navigation error. Not over such an easy jump.

  So, they were being taken to the warehouse after all.

  “They got one of my missile groups,” Warner said, like someone who’d just seen her favorite pet run over.

  “How many?”

  “Half of them. It’s my fault, I shouldn’t have bunched them so close together.”

  Susan’s teeth ground together. Two dozen ship-killers was ten percent of her offensive missile capacity, and they’d all just been turned into slag in a millisecond without so much as a chipped ceramoplast panel to show for it.

  “Did we lose any recon platforms?” Miguel asked.

  “No, sir,” Mattu answered briskly. “They’re easier to hide further out, so…”

  “Thank goodness for small favors,” Susan said.

  “We’re being hailed,” Broadchurch said. “Admiral Perez asking to speak to Ansari Actual.”

  “Oh I just bet she is.” Susan straightened her shoulders. “Audio only. Put her through.”

  “Link open, mum.”

  “Admiral Perez. Go ahead for Ansari Actual.”

  “This is Perez. Am I speaking to Captain Kamala?”

  “I’m CO of the Ansari, Admiral, so yes.”

  “Sorry, Captain. But your video feed seems to be missing and I only know you from your file. Your voice isn’t familiar to me.”

  “Actually, mum, we’ve met twice, not that I would expect you to remember. I served with you on the Rothchild briefly back when you were a commander and I was just an enlisted rank. We met again at a cocktail party a few months ago while Ansari was in for refit.”

  “Yes, well, I couldn’t help but notice your ship is about thirty-thousand klicks away from where we expected to find you.”

  “We had a high-g drill scheduled. Slipped my mind, and by the time I remembered, it was too late to get a message to you. So I went ahead with it anyway, you know how important drills are for maintaining crew competency. Speaking of competency, I couldn’t help but notice your ship bubbled in so close to where you thought we would be that if we had been there, we’d be putting out fires and bleeding atmosphere right now. Those of us who weren’t puking and or shitting their guts out.”

  Behind her, Nesbit audibly sucked air through his teeth at the breach of professional etiquette and protocol, but Susan ignored him.

  “How colorful,” Perez resumed. “Yes, my navigation officer does seem to have let some calibrations slip in his gravimetric modeling for this system. He will be disciplined for the near miss, I assure you.”

  “What a happy coincidence our mutual oversights canceled each out, then,” Susan said acidly.

  “Quite. But now I’m afraid I have much less happy news to share.”

  “And that would be?”

  Everyone in the CIC leaned forward a fraction, as if getting closer to the speakers would drag the admiral’s words out of them faster.

  “It is my sad duty to report that you and your entire command have been recalled to the Admiralty House, where you will await court-martial under the CCDF Charter.”

  Susan let the blow land invisibly. Now was not the time to lose her nerve in front of the officers and enlisted under her care.

  “May I ask under what charge is this court-martial being convened, Admiral?” she asked matter-of-factly.

  “Dereliction of duty.”

  “That’s a very serious charge, Admiral.”

  “I’m a very serious officer, Captain.

  “Mum, Paul Allen’s CiWS just went hot,” Mattu whispered as loudly as she could. “Support ships’, too.”

  Susan nodded acknowledgement. “CiWS, Perez? I thought we were having a conversation.”

  “Don’t think I didn’t notice your defensive systems are active.”

  “Lots of rocks get tossed around this far out in the system,” Susan said vaguely. “What evidence do you have to support your accusation of dereliction?”

  “Your own confession, Captain Kamala. Did you not record and submit a report via skip drone detailing how you not only failed to destroy an enemy vessel that had violated the treaty line against explicit orders that have been in force for seventy years, but rendered it aid? That’s treason, Captain. I’m frankly shocked that you made me spell it out for you.”

  Susan’s jaw flexed. With effort, she kept her tone even. “The vessel in question had been disabled in an onboard accident that nearly proved catastrophic. Under the circumstances, I decided that—”

  Admiral Perez’s voice jumped in and angrily cut her off. “I wasn’t sent out here to litigate this with you, Kamala. I came to take you in. You and your crew are hereby placed under arrest under Article II, Section XI of the CCDF Charter. You will surrender your command and order your crew to assemble in the small craft bay where you will all be processed and transferred to a holding area we have set up for you on the Allen’s hangar deck under marine guard.”

  “And the Ansari?” Susan asked.

  “We have a skeleton crew aboard waiting to take control to bring her back to port. Your crew will wipe all of your biometrics and passcodes and reset everything to factory default.”

  Susan sighed and leaned to one side of her chair. “That’s no good for me.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Perez said incredulously.

  “If you’ll keep reading the Charter, you’ll come to Article II, Section XXVI, which specifically forbids collective punishment of crew members following the orders of their superiors in good faith.”

  “That does not apply to times of war.”

  “With due respect, Admiral, we prevented a time of war.”

  “You destroyed one of their fleet tenders in open space! That’s an act of war.”

  Susan laughed. “Aren’t you being a duplicitous little minx. Yeah, we totally did that. But we did it smart so the Xre couldn’t pin it on us, not officially. So, we’re right back to where we were. You want my ass in a sling over this? Fine, I surrender, officially as of this moment and turn command over to my XO. He will take Ansari wherever you order him to. But only with her crew intact. You want to quote The Book at me? Great, then we do things by The Book, or not at all.”

  The line went silent for a long, long, very uncomfortably long time.

  “Is it still open?” Susan whispered to Mattu, who nodded.

  “I want you on a shuttle in no more than ten minutes, Captain,” Perez’s voice broke back in at last. “And you
will transmit, with video, confirmation that you are aboard once it’s reached safe maneuvering distance. No tricks or stupid horseplay, or my task group will have to force the issue. Do we perfectly understand each other, Captain?”

  “I’m certain we do. Ten minutes. Kamala out.” She made a slashing gesture and Mattu cut the link. Susan stood from her chair for the last time. “Miguel, you’re in command. Follow Admiral Perez’s orders to the letter, no matter how humiliating or punitive they may seem. Just get my … your ship and our people safely back to port. Worry about the rest later.”

  “Mum. You’re not actually going over there?” he asked with a haunted face, like he was looking at a ghost.

  “I most certainly am.”

  “The hell you are. They’ll shoot you down the second you’re out the launch bay doors.”

  “She wouldn’t dare.”

  “She just tried to turn us to goo not ten minutes ago and you’re giving her the benefit of the doubt?” Miguel shouted.

  “Don’t raise your voice to me in my CIC, XO,” Susan said, smoldering.

  “With respects, mum, but it’s not your CIC anymore. You just handed me the baton. Everyone else heard that, right?” A round of nod and affirmations went around the room. “See?”

  “Don’t you monkeys get it?” Susan threw her hands out. “I’m trying to keep from implicating you. All of you. I’m protecting you.”

  Miguel crossed his arms. “And we’re protecting you. You can get on that shuttle, but I won’t give it clearance to leave.”

  Susan stared at him with an infuriating mix of rage, admiration, exasperation, gratitude, and desire. All of which jockeyed for dominance until they all effectively killed each other, leaving her with resignation.

  “We seem to be at an impasse, and the clock is running. What do you suggest?”

  Miguel’s hazel eyes brightened. “I’m glad you asked.” He reached for the coms circuit and brought up the boat bay. “Sergeant Okuda, have you been listening in?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. I want you to prep one of your scary black stealth assault shuttles for prisoner transport. With a full complement of marine guards. Our captain is a dangerous fugitive, after all. Very crafty. You have five minutes to prep.”

  “What about the standard shuttle they’re already prepping down here?”

  “You’ll be following it at a discreet distance, and it will be remotely piloted from here.”

  “I want to go on record to say this is lunacy,” Nesbit said.

  “Noted, CL.”

  * * *

  Seven minutes later, two shuttles launched from the Ansari’s boat bay. One running full IFF, active radar/lidar, and even blinking white, red, and green nav lights, while the other hid in the shadows of the first. Utterly, deadly silent.

  Twenty-three minutes after that, the lead shuttle exploded into a shower of jagged, red-hot fragments under the assault of the Carnegie’s point defense lasers, swatted away like a house fly.

  Miguel’s eyes flared with incandescent fury at the betrayal by ships, by personnel, of his own fleet. Fellow spacers who’d taken the same oath to defend the worlds of man and their patron companies as he had. Men and women who, as far as they knew, had just executed a fellow officer without the trial due to her. The fact they were mistaken did absolutely nothing to blunt the sharp edge of his rage.

  “Weapons officer,” his voice smoldered.

  “Sir?” Lieutenant Warner answered, her voice uncertain, not yet recovered from the emotional shock of the unexpected violence.

  “Overkill something.”

  Warner’s face keened into an ax. “With style, sir.”

  Her purpose restored, Warner’s fingers danced and jabbed at icons, activating every offensive weapon and defensive system the Ansari mounted, lighting up the surrounding vacuum with a constellation of laser pulses, radar, electronic jamming, and fusion plumes like a stellar nursery.

  With that, the real Battle of Grendel was underway.

  The first shot came from the Ansari’s offensive laser array. Despite the distance, the beam reached out and linked up with a monocle drone Mattu had snuck into position at the first whiff of suspicion. The multi-gigawatt beam had diffused from thirty centimeters to more than ten meters by the time it reached the meta-material lens. But once it exited, it had refocused to nearly its initial width and concentration. A few thousand kilometers later, it slammed into the forward port quadrant of the heavy cruiser Carnegie, melting through a phased radar array, gamma ray telescope, and a point defense laser cluster before chewing through another two meters of ablative ceramoplast armor to vaporize a reaction control thruster propellant tank and two spinal-mount railgun capacitor coils in the ensuing secondary explosion.

  A hell of a good start, but the IR signature of so much transfer energy passing through the monocle couldn’t be absorbed or radiated fast enough and gave away its position. It died a moment later, snuffed out by an answering laser it couldn’t catch from the wounded cruiser.

  But, they still had two more of them, waiting in the black.

  “Deploy decoys. I want them activated the millisecond they’re out of the tubes. Light up our deployed ship-killers and target Carnegie with the first volley.”

  “Not the Allen?” Warner asked.

  “No, we can’t saturate their CiWS until we put out that cruiser’s eyes. And we have at least a chance of swarming their point defense.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “In the meantime, burn another monocle. That last shot was a beauty.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Charts? Bring us into position to bring our captain back onboard!”

  “She’s angling away, XO,” Mattu said.

  “She’s what?” Miguel’s head swiveled from the Drone Integration Station back up to the main plot. Sure enough, the IFF icon for the captain’s shuttle had altered course, taking it away from Ansari under maximum clandestine thrust. “Is she trying to get clear of our gooey zone in case we blow a bubble?”

  “She’s already cleared minimum safe distance, sir, and still accelerating,” Broadchurch answered.

  “Where the hell does she think she’s going?”

  “Carnegie’s returning fire,” Mattu barked. “Multiple missile launches detected. Showing one-five contacts. Will be clear for maneuvering in three seconds.”

  Miguel’s face twisted up. “They’re only launching them now?”

  “Confirmed, sir. EM spike signature matches Mosaic-class heavy cruiser launch rails.”

  Miguel shook his head. They hadn’t even floated missiles back before they entered the Ansari’s sensor envelope. Now his defensive systems would have a hard track on them from tube-to-target, sending hit probabilities through the roof. Overconfident, inexperienced idiots couldn’t even plan a proper ambush with a seven-to-one tonnage advantage. They’d expected the captain to follow orders and surrender the ship without resistance in the face of such overwhelming force. That plan out the window, they were improvising a battleplan, and it showed.

  Ansari was still outside the effective range of Carnegie’s laser array, who obviously hadn’t bothered to launch a monocle drone, either. So, for at least a little while, all they had to worry about was swatting missiles out of the black. Miguel looked at the icon for the captain’s shuttle as it piled on meters per second headed off on whatever harebrained assignment Susan had picked for them. It was out of his hands now. His job was to make sure she had a ship to come back to.

  “Weapons, get a new flight of ship-killers in the vac. Charts, Scopes, line us up with a monocle and give Carnegie another beam. Double pudding if you can jam it right down the hole we just made. Get the decoys maneuvering. And somebody swat those bugs!”

  * * *

  “Holy shit!” the pilot cursed from his seat on the flight deck.

  “SitRep!” Susan barked. The same flight data feed the shuttle’s crew had was being shunted into her own augmented reality environ, but it
was diverted so drastically from the tactical maps she was used to in the CIC that she couldn’t interpret half of what it tried to tell her.

  “The decoy shuttle just exploded, mum! Brace! Brace! Brace!”

  Before she could respond, the pilot threw the shuttle into a high-g turn that nearly crushed her spine. An image of the shuttle’s cockpit disintegrating into fire and shrapnel as it careened into its doomed sister played across Susan’s imagination even as all the color drained away from her vision. Her suit automatically constricted around her legs and abdomen, pushing blood back into her torso and brain, struggling to keep her conscious against the onslaught of artificial gravity.

  Then, as suddenly as the weight had slammed down on her, it disappeared, then reversed. The ceiling became the floor as Susan’s full weight and a lot more dug into her shoulder straps. Even under the pressure, Susan felt two distinct pulses through her crash harness. Whether they were impacts from debris or weapons fire, she couldn’t say. Not that there was much difference between a bolt and a bullet at these velocities.

  “Fuck me,” Okuda bit off to Susan’s right, a sentiment she shared in its entirety.

  The thrust cut off without warning again, leaving them on the float. Susan hadn’t experienced maneuvering that violent since simulated spaceflight training back in C school.

  “Are we clear?” she shouted up to the cockpit.

  “Clear of the decoy’s wreckage, yes mum. We’ve taken light damage to our adaptive camo.”

  “Have they spotted us?”

  “I think they have bigger problems.” The pilot grimaced. “Ansari just opened fire.”

  “On a planetary assault carrier battle group?” Okuda asked incredulously. “Is the XO insane?”

  “No, but he’s damned good and pissed. And so am I. Pilot, get us clear of their lines of fire. Has he launched missiles yet?”

  “Plumes just went hot, mum. Burning for the lead cruiser. Oh hell, Ansari just scored a laser hit on the Carnegie.”