Hecate

by J. B. Rockwell

  Stealth ship meant stealthy, after all. Engineers never designed them for combat missions.

  Sikuuku scanned the mission package, closed it with a sound of disgust. “You need me, I’ll be back here taking a nap.” He folded his arms and kicked up his feet, making himself as comfortable as possible in the cramped Artillery pod.

  “Chiefs,” Henricksen snorted. “Always lyin’ down on the job.”

  A hand snaked from the Artillery pod, finger extending, pointing upward like a flag.

  Henricksen caught himself just short of laughing—wouldn’t do to encourage that kind of behavior in front of the others. Get them thinking they could take the same liberties with their new captain. “Appreciate the gesture, Chief, but you can put that back where you found it.”

  Kept his voice even, just a hint of steel creeping in. Sikuuku—stubborn cuss that he was—let that full bird salute hang out there a moment longer anyway. Tucked it up when he was satisfied and stowed it safely away.

  Straightened up a bit while he was at it, giving Henricksen that much. Took a second look at that mission package while Henricksen keyed the simulation, activating the pod.

  “Main propulsion.”

  “Online and ready, sir.” Taggert glanced at Henricksen, nodded to the simulated stars outside. “Stealth system’s showing nominal. Should be invisible to anything out there. Well except for the engines, of course.” He shrugged helplessly. “Can’t really hide those.”

  Still getting smart on the stealth system, but the engineering specs claimed it hid the ship’s shape from sensors. No idea how it all worked—lot of mumbo-jumbo and techno-jargon that made absolutely no sense at all. Something about electronic camouflage using a combination of white noise and scan refraction to mask their signature and confuse the sensors.

  Supposedly the human eye could still spot a cloaked ship, assuming it came in close enough, of course. Sim recording system would capture everything plain as day—this being training simulation, not a one hundred percent perfect mission recreation—but in real life, in a real ship, not the virtual reality of the sims, there’d be nothing to see if the stealth system worked correctly.

  Except, as Taggert pointed out, for the engines. Couldn’t hide those. Fleet hadn’t figured out how to mask that kind of energy signature. Not yet, anyway.

  Henricksen thought about that conversation in the control room—Karansky and his engineers arguing about the stealth system and the engines. Thought about telling Taggert to turn it off as a precaution. Mission specs stipulated cloaked entrance, though. So, against his better judgment, Henricksen decided to leave it on.

  “Whenever you’re ready, sir,” Taggert prompted when Henricksen just sat there, staring at the windows.

  “Right. Spool up the jump drives, Taggert. We’re go in 3, 2, 1, launch!”

  The RV-N kicked like a bitch, even in simulation. Rougher ride than Hecate, who was smooth as silk outside the chaos of combat. Propulsion pinned Henricksen to his seat and held him there as the RV-N’s main engines pushed hard, shoving it toward the stars.

  Lost himself for a moment, staring at those pinpricks, feeling the ship shudder around him. Thought he was back there, holding tight to Hecate’s Command Post as the warship banked and shifted, dodging plasma fire.

  Shook himself—angry, annoyed that he’d slipped again. Fingers trembling as he touched at Helm’s controls, adjusting their course and speed, getting a feel for how the RV-N maneuvered under propulsion.

  “Touchy,” he grunted, as the simulated ship slewed sideways, back end kicking out before he muscled it into line.

  Sensitive controls. Everything balanced on a knife’s edge. Sharp-sided chassis and maneuverable as hell, but twitchy. Instantly reacting to the slightest change.

  Almost lost it, he thought, heart hammering. Right out of the gate.

  Another touch—softer this time, infinitely careful, and the stealth ship lurched and shot forward, veering off-line. He recovered—just barely—bringing it back under control before it spun completely about.

  Heard the crew gasp, clutching at their panels. Sikuuku snickering softly in the pod directly behind him.

  “Need some lubricant for those rusty reflexes, Captain?” Sikuuku kept his voice low this time, keying his helmet comms to a private channel so Taggert and Abboud wouldn’t hear.

  “Shut it,” Henricksen growled. “Like to see you try to fly this slick-as-snot thing.” He checked their location and the target specified in the mission package. Relayed the jump coordinates to Taggert and held on tight as the buckle formed ahead of them, sucking the RV-N into the hyperspace trough. “Shit. Holy shit,” he swore, ship pitching and yawing, shaking fit to wake the dead as it bumped along the trough. “Is this normal?” he asked, looking over at Taggert.

  A shrug of dark shoulders, Taggert shaking his head. “RV-N’s far from smooth, but it’s not usually this bad.”

  “Betting the pilot’s not usually this bad either,” Sikuuku muttered across that private channel to Henricksen’s helmet.

  “Thought you were taking a nap.”

  “Who can sleep with all this going on?”

  “Monitoring system’s showing some kind of feedback.” Taggert tapped at his panel, analyzing the data the jump drives sent back. “It’s interfering with the hyperspace drive system.”

  “What kind of feedback?” Henricksen demanded.

  “Not sure.” Taggert cycled through the data, searching for clues. “Saw something like this earlier. On one of the other runs. Didn’t get a good fix on it then, not quite sure what it is now.”

  “Run a capture. Have the engineers look at it later.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Taggert looped in the monitoring system, setting it to record and process the data the engines put out while Henricksen throttled the controls, making minute adjustments to smooth the ship’s run. Calm things down.

  Improved their situation a little bit, but the ship still rattled alarmingly. Bumped and kicked the whole way through the trough.

  Short trip, thankfully—thirty seconds in hyperspace and they dumped back out again. Real space amazingly smooth. A welcome relief from that bone rattling trip through jump.

  Henricksen sighed as they exited, relaxing his death grip on the ship’s flight controls. Not the most auspicious of beginnings, but at least they were through. The first part of the simulation successfully passed, the more difficult part yet to come.

  As if on cue, Scan lit up, contacts flooding Abboud’s display.

  “Asteroid field dead ahead,” she called—calm, and cool, and dialed in tight.

  Henricksen frowned inside his helmet. “Asteroid field. You sure about that?”

  Mission plan specified the target location, but it hadn’t said anything about that.

  “Ugh. This again,” Taggert grumbled. “I hate this one.”

  Henricksen glanced at him in surprise. “You’ve run this simulation before?”

  Asteroid field seemed an odd choice for a simulation in the first place. Ships typically steered well clear of those tumbling, spinning rocks.

  “Few times,” Taggert told him. “System’s glitched or something.” He flicked at switches, toggling displays. “Supposed to be randomized simulations, but we must’ve hit this asteroid field a half dozen times in the last two weeks.”

  Sikuuku leaned out of his pod, tapping Henricksen on the shoulder. “Wasn’t Adaeze running an asteroid field simulation?”

  “Not sure,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. “Coulda been.”

  Paid more attention to the pilots than the actual simulations, to be honest. But he thought he remembered obstacles. A similar sea of spinning rocks.

  “Hardly get through a day’s training without hitting the asteroid field simulation,” Taggert muttered, still grumbling. “Slipshod software if you ask me. Whole damn thing’s a mess.”

  “Sounds like,” Henricksen murmured, studying the screen in front of him. The simulated windows looking ou
t on simulated stars. “I’ll talk to Karansky tomorrow. See if—”

  “Sir! I’ve got something!” Abboud bent over Scan’s panels as the sensors sent back data, long lines of information crawling across the station’s screens.

  “What?” Henricksen prompted. “What is it? What’s out there?”

  “I thought…” Abboud trailed off, shaking her head. “Sorry, sir. I thought I had something, but it’s gone now.”

  “Gone. What do you mean ‘gone’?” Henricksen growled. “What the hell was it? What did you think you saw?”

  “I thought—I’m not…” Abboud’s hands curled into fists, pressing hard against the station’s panels. “A ship,” she said. “A ship’s beacon. Maybe more than one.”

  “Where?”

  “There,” Abboud said, pointing at the windows. “Inside that asteroid field ahead.”

  Henricksen tore his eyes from the simulated windows, looking over at Scan. “What kind of ship? One of ours?”

  “I don’t know,” Abboud told him, voice edged with annoyance. “The scans picked up on something and I thought, for a minute…” She spread her hands, staring at Scan’s panels in frustration. “Gone, sir. Whatever it was, it’s gone now. Or blocked,” she added, tone turning thoughtful as she took another looking at Scan. “Rocks keeping moving around. Getting in the way of the scans. Sensors are having fits trying to get a fix on anything in there.”

  Sensors didn’t like obstructions. Scans hit those rocks and bounced right back.

  Kinda like our stealth system, Henricksen thought.

  Had to wonder if that’s how the engineers came up with the idea in the first place. Scientists were good at that. Stealing ideas from nature.

  “Run the scans again,” Henricksen ordered, bothered by that anomalous signature. That there and not-there blip Abboud caught on Scan. “Broad spectrum spread, overlapping pattern.”

  Abboud looked at him. “I don’t see—”

  “Just run ’em, Abboud. It’ll make me feel better.”

  “Aye, sir,” she said, confused, uncertain, humoring Henricksen because he was senior officer in charge. “Nothing, sir,” she reported a couple of minutes later. “Scans are clean. Nothing but rocks as far as the eye can see.”

  Which was very far in this case. Those eyes being attached to a RV-N class stealth ship equipped with the latest and greatest reconnaissance package. A view obstructed only by that mass of asteroids out there—a dense sea of tumbling rocks hiding god-only-knew-what inside.

  I don’t like it, Henricksen thought, staring through the simulated windows. Got a bad feeling about flying in there blind.

  But that was the mission: work his way into an open space the mission plan showed at the asteroid field’s center, gather information on whatever was in there—phantom vessels, for instance—and skedaddle. Get his ship and crew back out.

  Simple. So very simple. Except that scan blip still bothered him. Made him wonder what kind of nasty little surprises lurked inside those rocks.

  “Screw it,” he muttered, gripping the control stick with both hands. “Taggert. Cut the engines. We’re going in.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  A last rumble and the RV-N’s propulsion cut out. Momentum carried them the rest of the way—a long, smooth slide across an expanse of open space. Sensors wide open, drinking in data on everything around them, the Raven’s sharp-sided shape closing the gap to the asteroid field quickly, sneakily, hiding behind a cloak of electronic darkness.

  “Big one,” Sikuuku grunted as the asteroid field hove into view. “Gotta be thousands of rocks in that thing.”

  And every last one with its own orbit. Each one spinning in a wobbling, repeating pattern, the field itself a carefully balanced ecosystem—a stone sea of harmony just a hair’s breadth from complete chaos.

  One wrong move and we’re all dead.

  Sobering thought, even in simulation. Henricksen sucked in a few breaths to settle his nerves, feathering the maneuvering jets to aim the ship toward an opening. Eased it through and into the leading edge of the asteroid field, sliding neatly between two lumpen shapes.

  Blew the entrance—he realized that immediately—coming in way too hot, carrying way too much speed. Human error—AI would’ve caught it, used the reverse thrusters to decrease their rate of approach—made by a rusty pilot, too long out of the seat.

  “Fuck,” Henricksen breathed, coming up against a rock. He yanked hard on the control stick—reflexes kicking in, muscle memory operating on instinct—and slewed the ship to port. Pushed the stick forward to angle the RV-N’s nose downward, slipping the ship beneath the next rock because there wasn’t any other choice.

  Proximity alarms went haywire, warnings lights igniting on nearly every panel across the bridge. Scan worked like crazy, trying to plot the asteroids around them, calculate their orbital points and rates of rotation to find a safe way through to the open space the mission plan promised lay at the asteroid field’s middle.

  Meanwhile Henricksen kept dodging. Zig-zagging desperately as each new obstacle appeared.

  “Um…sir? Sir?” Taggert sounded panicked. Crossed his arms and grabbed at his harness, fingers clenched in a death grip at his shoulders. “Are you sure you—”

  “Fuck no, Taggert. I’ve got no fucking idea.”

  He tapped the maneuvering jets, setting them to full reverse to try to slow the ship down. Jogged the ship hard to port as an oversized rock appeared from nowhere, tumbling on a collision course with the RV-N’s starboard side, and found himself head on with a trio of asteroids, all of them tumbling in time.

  “Shit!” he yelled. “Shit, shit, shit!”

  A touch at the panel fired the maneuvering jets again, shoving the ship away. Second touch brought the back end around, the way ahead growing increasingly cluttered the further they moved in.

  “Fuck!” He jammed the control stick sideways, spitting curses as the ship scraped a rock. Flipped the RV-N in the opposite direction and found his path obstructed—rocks everywhere, blocking every available path.

  The klaxons changed tone, warning of an imminent collision. Something large and potentially deadly heading their way. Henricksen hauled the ship over, banking hard to starboard as they came up on the biggest asteroid yet. Overcorrected to avoid it—knew it right away—and felt the ship wobble and roll over, sending it into an unrecoverable spin.

  “Brace! Brace! Brace!” Henricksen yelled, wrestling with the ship, trying to get it back under control.

  He almost had it, just about stopped the spinning, but the wing clipped a passing asteroid and they ricocheted away. Slammed into a rock and rebounded, flew straight on into another asteroid and exploded in spectacular fashion.

  The simulation cut off, the display at the front of the bridge flashing ‘Failure! Failure Failure!’, mocking them with pictures of flowers and sympathy cards sent to their families with the Fleet’s condolences.

  “Fuck!” Henricksen punched the panel in frustration. Punched it again and sat back seething with anger, rubbing at his sore hand.

  His fault, that failure. New ship, so that was part of it, but overcorrecting like that…

  “Sloppy,” he muttered, angry all over again. “Rusty as hell and sloppy to boot.”

  Taggert looked at him, shrugged his shoulders and wisely held his tongue.

  Sikuuku sighed behind, resetting the Artillery pod. “Well, that went about as expected.”

  Henricksen yanked off his helmet and twisted, staring murder at the gunner. “Reset,” he barked, keying into the system. “We’re running it again.”

  The simulation reinitiated—recon mission this time, Fleet ships around them, not an asteroid in sight. Henricksen grabbed the stick and eased the ship forward, determined not to fuck it up this time.

  Eleven

  Second run went better than the first—didn’t kill anyone this time, even managed to bring the ship back in one piece. Helped that there was no asteroid field to contend with this ru
n, just a station with a couple of dozen ships scattered around it—DSR, ostensibly, which meant lots of sneaking about and poking at communications.

  Earned themselves a partial pass on that one—ship and crew returned intact, the mission itself incomplete due to a “lack of viable intelligence”, which meant supposedly they’d missed something. Encrypted comms package or some such. For her part, Abboud felt differently. Swore up and down that they’d covered everything. Every channel, encrypted or otherwise.

  Not that it mattered. No arguing with a simulation. Henricksen logged the partial pass and reset the pod. Gave the crew fifteen minutes to reinitiate systems and run through the usual pre-flight checks before starting over again.

  Third launch was ugly from the get-go—doomed to failure, despite Henricksen’s best efforts. Crew was tired by then, grumbling and dispirited. The sim picked the asteroid field run again—the same run as the first time, with the exact same mission—and, as an added bonus, threw in a scattering of DSR ships patrolling the asteroid field’s outer layer.

  Made Abboud feel better, coming across them. Embarrassed as hell after that first run, thinking she’d spooked and started seeing things. Inventing sensor blips that simply weren’t there. Made everyone feel better when Henricksen slipped by them without crashing into anything. In fact, they were all feeling pretty damn good about themselves and this ships of theirs until a second smattering ships appeared further in.

  Reared up right in front of them, hiding in the shadows of the tumbling rocks. Henricksen grabbed at the controls and twitched the ship over, bobbled the maneuver in his hurry and bounced it off an asteroid. Dented the RV-N so badly the cloaking system shorted out, taking the starboard side sensor array with it. Woke those patrolling ships up—better believe that—so they bailed out in a hurry. Tucked tail and ran—half-blind, asses hanging out in the wind—as plasma fire lit of their backside, chasing them all the way out of the asteroid field and into open space. Kept chasing them as Taggert spooled the hyperspace engines and jumped them back to base, system recording a second failure, mocking them with more sympathy cards and flowers.