by Jamie Sawyer
“I’m ordering you to tell me what you’re doing, Captain!” Sergkov said.
“Easy, Major,” I said, hand on his shoulder. “Let the captain work—”
“Incoming signal!” an officer yelped.
The Gate was receding fast as the Fe made burn across the system, darting for the cover of the nearest moon.
Sergkov took my advice and fell silent.
Three, four, five ships appeared through the Gate. Fusion drives lighting like miniature stars, streaking across the map.
“Ships from North Star,” Zero said.
“No shit,” Lopez whispered.
“Don’t worry, Lopez,” Zero said. “They can’t hear us. There’s no need to whisper.”
Lopez opened and closed her hands into fists. The hydraulics in her gloves hissed quietly. “I know that, Zero,” she whispered back. “But it makes me feel better.”
“Those are Alliance ships,” I said, watching the magnified images on the scopes. We were still a good distance from the vessels, but I recognised them even at range.
“They’re running with active weapons signatures,” an officer confirmed.
“They’re hunting,” Riggs said. Also now whispering. Zero sighed and shook her head.
“Can we take them?” Sergkov asked.
“I’d rather not. We start firing weapons, everything in this system is going to know where we are. Could be anything out there: Black Spiral, Krell…” Carmine shivered. “How long until we reach NX-923?”
“Closing distance now,” an officer answered. Swallowed. “This is going to be close.”
The hunting party spread out. Their weapons systems were running hot—broadcasting like beacons, bright and loud.
“Someone give me a status check on our weapons systems,” Carmine said.
Yukio worked at her console. “The missile tubes are locked and loaded,” she said, “but the railgun isn’t hot yet. To do that, we’d have to light up. I’m also getting a report of a damaged null-shield projector on the portside.”
“Can’t you initiate auto-repair?” Sergkov said, impatiently.
“I’m currently getting a red signal on the auto-repair package,” Yukio explained. “Possibly damaged when we disembarked North Star.”
“Someone will have to go outside and do it manually,” Carmine muttered.
“Not during a fight they won’t,” I said, ending any discussion of conducting a complicated field repair under enemy fire.
The tac-display showed that the Santa Fe had now pulled into a tight orbit around NX-923. The moon was barren and rocky, lunar-like.
“All stop,” Carmine declared. “And go dark.”
Sergkov made a sound at the back of his throat, as though he was about to start asking more questions, but Carmine held up a bony hand to silence him.
“We need to make sure that we haven’t been followed,” she said.
The crew executed the order. Various stations around the bridge’s work-pit went dim, indicating that the ship was running at minimum power. The fusion engine deactivated. The scanner-suite went passive. Energy emissions were shielded, held inside the Santa Fe’s stealth coil. I’d been on starships running dark before, and it’s never a comfortable experience. This was no different: I felt incredibly vulnerable out here without shields or weapons. The SOC was one of very few modules that was still running.
“Near-space scan, please,” Carmine said.
“Results on your console, ma’am.”
Five starships spread across the system.
“Will they be able to see us?” Lopez asked.
“Space is big,” Carmine said. “If we hold our position here, the moon should block any emission leakage. We’re tucked in nice and tight; its gravity well should do the rest.”
“Should?” Sergkov said.
Carmine gave a non-committal shrug, her uniform rustling. “Nothing is guaranteed, Major. Who knows what systems the Spiral have on their ships?”
“More than they should have…” Riggs said. “That’s for sure.”
Every passing second seemed to stretch out, last a lifetime. No one even moved aboard the bridge as we watched the enemy ships burning across near-space. Cold sweat trickled down my spine. I wore a neoprene undersuit, designed to interface with the HURT suit’s control mechanisms, and I realised that it was bathed in damp sweat.
“Hostile Bravo is moving off,” Yukio said.
The starship designated Bravo—actual name and serial code unknown—made a sudden and sharp braking manoeuvre. Just as suddenly, the ship then arced towards the Shard Gate, leaving a heat trail from her fusion engine as she went.
“She’s squawking,” another officer said. “I’m getting comms traffic between ships.”
“Let’s hope that someone is giving the order to break off,” Carmine said.
I noticed that her mechanical leg was twitching rapidly, beating a staccato rhythm against the deck. Nervous energy.
Like hunting dogs, the Black Spiral ships nosed around the edges of the system. More data was exchanged between vessels. The information was in turn parsed and digested by the Santa Fe’s intelligence engine.
“Do we know what they’re saying?” Lopez asked.
“Yeah,” Riggs said, “they’re saying ‘Vote Lopez.’”
“Fuck you, Riggs.”
“We might be able to crack their encryption later,” Carmine said, “but now isn’t the time.”
“Hostiles Alpha, Charlie, and Delta are breaking off too,” Yukio said. “Taking a course back towards the Gate. Hard burn.”
Only Echo remained: a flashing blip, the closest hostile on the map. It was one ship, and maybe one-on-one we could take it, but we had no idea of its armament or whether it was still in contact with the rest of the fleet. If she found us, the ship would undoubtedly call in back-up.
Then, finally, Yukio said, “Echo is leaving. She’s taking the same course as the others.”
I allowed myself the luxury of breathing. Riggs and Feng bumped fists, hooting in triumph. Carmine remained on the sensors, Sergkov at her shoulder, assessing her every action and reaction.
“All hostiles off-grid,” Yukio said. “The Shard Gate’s energy emissions are reducing.”
“Shit,” Novak said. “Was close, yes?”
I realised that he hadn’t spoken throughout the incident.
“Nice work, Carmine,” I said. “You’ve still got it.”
Carmine gave me a lukewarm smile. She opened her hand, and I noticed for the first time that she had a crumpled holo-picture in her sweaty palm: her daughters, young faces beaming back at a mother that they hadn’t seen in years of real-time. Carmine quickly stuffed the holo back into the fold of her uniform, looking away from me with strained eyes.
Sergkov sighed. “If you have a plan, next time I would appreciate a little warning.”
Carmine stirred from her command podium, Yukio at her side with the silver cane. The captain took it and wrapped it on the deck, noisily.
“Unless someone just died and made you captain,” she said, her words deliberately acidic, the expression on her worn face not much better, “I’d remind you that I’m in command of the Santa Fe. There was little chance of us escaping that encounter without suffering significant damage.”
Sergkov looked around the bridge, embarrassed that his authority was being undermined. I just watched on with interest: from experience, I knew that Carmine was not a woman to be messed with.
“And while we are discussing the free exchange of information,” Carmine continued, “I would like an explanation for the presence of an alien entity aboard the Santa Fe.”
She lifted her cane and pointed it at the Pariah—still wedged between terminals, its mass coiled and crammed like a sardine in a ration-pack. The xeno’s eyes traced the metal implement, perhaps evaluating whether it was some form of weapon. In Carmine’s hands, it probably was.
“I want that thing locked down,” Carmine said.
Ca
rmine didn’t even react when the Pariah stirred from its hiding place, stood at full height beside the bridge hatch. The rest of her crew were perhaps made of weaker stuff, because several flinched away from the alien, giving it a wide berth. The Jackals bristled, ready to react, but the Pariah just stood there.
“This isn’t the place, Captain,” Sergkov eventually answered.
“Fine,” Carmine said. “Main conference room it is, then.” She nodded sharply in my direction. “Fifteen minutes. It will be a meeting of your command staff, Major.”
Sergkov swept his gaze over the bridge, but nodded. “All right,” he said, before turning and stomping away.
“Someone doesn’t like his command being questioned…” Riggs offered.
“Stay out of it,” I said. “I’ll take care of this. The rest of you, get down to Medical and out of those sims.”
“This is highly irregular,” Sergkov said, before the hatch to the conference room had even closed.
“I don’t give a damn what it is,” Carmine said. She flopped, ungracefully, into one of the chairs set up around the main meeting table: where, in other circumstances, a proper command cadre would be assembled. “I had the decency not to embarrass you any further in front of the crew, Vadim. Now at least have the decency to tell me what the hell is going on.”
Sergkov’s brow furrowed, and I noticed that his face was still streaked with dirt. His uniform was stained by oil from the attack in the transit tunnel.
“This is a classified operation, Carmine. You’re just going to have to trust me on this. I’m telling you what you need to know—”
“How long have we worked together, Vadim?” Carmine asked.
It struck me off-balance that she was suddenly using his first name, and I remembered Dr. Skinner’s question about the major’s family. I found it hard to accept that this man had a life beyond the mission.
“I don’t see what that has to do with it—”
“Shall I tell you, then?” Carmine said. “Three years. Three years you’ve had me flying around the Drift and probing the FQZ looking for the Black Spiral. How many times have we found them?”
Sergkov worked his jaw. “That’s not the point.”
“I’ll answer for you again, then: twice. We engaged the Black Spiral on Sigma Base nine months ago. Then we found them at Daktar.”
“So what?” Sergkov said. “We have intelligence, the likes of which I’m not at liberty to discuss with either of you.”
“And now you bring a talking fish onto my ship, without a word of explanation!” Carmine threw her hands in the air in exasperation. “What’s happening here, Vadim?”
Sergkov dogmatically towed the Mili-Intel line. “It’s classified.”
“The Warlord was on North Star,” I said, slowly. “He was on Daktar, as were you. Who is he, Major? Who is the Warlord?”
“Intelligence on the Warlord requires specific clearance.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “Warlord said that he was like me, once, and he told me that I needed to know what was happening out here.”
Sergkov let out a long sigh, his shoulders dropping. He gave me a two-barrels glare and collapsed into the seat beside Carmine. Somewhere inside of him, conditioning came unstuck: a dam broke. I could almost see him working through this problem, figuring out how best to keep Carmine and me onside.
“Fine,” he said. “You want to know? I’ll tell you.”
“That’s more like it. See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“You’re not funny, Lieutenant,” Sergkov said. “‘Warlord’ is the intelligence designation of the Black Spiral’s self-appointed leader. Not much is known about who he is now, but we know who he was. Clade Cooper.”
That didn’t mean much to me; I’d never heard of the name. But if Sergkov was in the mood for talking, I wanted as much information from him as he was willing to give.
“Go on,” I pressed.
“He was Alliance military.”
“Sim Ops?”
“No, thankfully,” Sergkov said. “Sim Ops traitors tend to be few and far between, for what it’s worth.”
“I’ve known enough of them,” I said, pushing uncomfortable memories aside. “But that doesn’t tell me much. I’d guessed that he was military after what happened on Daktar.”
His ability to interfere with communications—to access the Army comms-net, as he’d demonstrated on North Star—only confirmed that impression.
Sergkov continued: “Warlord was a serving Alliance Army Ranger, 1st Battalion. Special Operations. He made Sergeant. His team specialised in insertion missions across the Quarantine Zone and the Maelstrom. During the last war, he had quite the kill-count.”
“And he did it all in his own body?” I asked, scepticism creeping into my voice.
Sergkov gave me a wicked smile. “Not everyone fights in a different body to that God gave them.”
“Still, if it was deep insertion work—wouldn’t it be easier to use a sim team?”
Sergkov’s smile became fixed and glassy. “Not this sort of work, and not this deep. Cooper’s Ranger team were the best at what they did: deep recon work, well inside the Maelstrom. The sort of work that few simulant teams can do, given the need for a base of operations. They used small, single-squad ships to monitor the movement of war-fleets, during the Krell War. They probably saved millions, if not billions, of lives—allowed us to evacuate warm bodies from the Outer Colonies while they remained that way.”
I frowned. “Sounds an awful lot like suicide to me…”
“Coming from you, is that some sort of accolade?” Sergkov said. “Warlord’s squad was called the Iron Knights, and much of his work was off the record.” He sighed, shook his head. “Which was how he ended up where he did. “We—Military Intelligence—sent him and his team to Barain-11. A moon that was only relevant because of its proximity to a Q-space jump point. It was called Operation Pitfall. Contact was lost shortly after the Knights made planetfall. Sixteen days overdue, and Command thought that they had been wiped out.
“While that operation was underway, the Red Fin Collective launched an attack on one of the Alliance territories. Cooper’s family was caught in the evacuation.” He swallowed, and the colour seemed to drain from his face. “They were killed. Wife and two children—all gone.”
“And what happened to Warlord?” I asked.
“He was taken prisoner by the Krell.” Sergkov paused for a long moment, as though toying with guilt, or perhaps deciding how much he should tell me. “He spent two years in Krell captivity. Experienced something that the Krell call ‘the Deep.’ I suppose its closest description is a form of interrogation or torture. He could never forgive the Alliance for not sending in reinforcements to save his team, and never forget that his family had been killed while he was on that operation.”
“How did he end up becoming leader of the Spiral?” I said. “Guy sounds more like a hero than the head of a terrorist organisation…”
“He went through rehab and extensive body surgery after his liberation,” Sergkov explained. “But the last the Alliance knew of him, he was a broken man.” Sergkov swallowed. “Then, a few months after his discharge from a rehab station on Fortuna, he turned up fighting for the Spiral. Whether he started the Black Spiral movement or just hijacked it, doesn’t really matter. He’s part of it, and with him on board they have leadership.”
“And why were you tracking him, Major?” I asked.
“It … it’s not relevant,” Sergkov said.
Carmine shook her head. “We need to know everything.”
But I already knew the answer to my question, because I’d heard enough to draw my own conclusions.
“You sent him there, didn’t you?” I said. “You were responsible for sending Cooper to Barain-11, weren’t you?”
Carmine’s eyes widened with anger. She looked from me to Sergkov, then stayed there. A fraught silence stretched across the room.
“Well, did you?” Carmine asked,
her voice rising in pitch.
Sergkov exhaled slowly before speaking again. I wanted Major Sergkov to confirm it, to accept it.
“I want to be the one to bring him in,” he said, carefully, “because I started this. I gave him the mission. I sent him to that moon.”
“Great,” Carmine said. She threw her hands up in the air. “So this is personal.”
“Warlord doesn’t know,” Sergkov said. “But his case—bringing him in—has become an obsession. A quest.”
“And we’re just caught up in your little vendetta,” Carmine sighed. She shook her head, tutting to herself.
Sergkov wouldn’t be cowed. “It isn’t like that. I want to right a wrong. You have to believe me when I say that I don’t know why the Warlord was on North Star. The Spiral attacks cannot be predicted.”
“Did the Spiral want Dr. Skinner?” I offered.
“That’s a possibility,” Sergkov said. “Either him, or his research.”
Both of which are now gone, I thought with some bitterness.
“Let’s deal with what we know,” I said. “Should we call in the attack on North Star?”
“We can’t,” Sergkov said. “You’re under my authority, and if it comes to it, I’ll take responsibility for the lack of report. Other Alliance forces may have been compromised.”
This was like fighting the Directorate all over again. I’d been there, done that: and was quite glad that the cloak-and-dagger war was finished. The idea that the Spiral might be doing a better job of compromising assets than the Alliance’s long-term nemesis … It didn’t feel good at all.
“We continue with the mission,” Sergkov said. He removed a data-clip from his lapel pocket and passed it to Carmine. “Everything you need to proceed with the next stage of the operation is on there.”
Carmine inserted the clip into a console on the conference table. Astrogation files and other navigational material flooded her feed, a holo-map projecting from the desk. The name SAB RHEA appeared on the readout.
“That’s the last known location of the Hannover,” Sergkov said. “Whatever happened to her, we’ll find some answers there.”
Carmine assessed the data. “There are stable Q-jump points here, here, and here,” she said, pointing out coordinates on the holo-map. “The journey will be several days.” She shrugged. “Accounting for time-dilation, even with our improved drive, we’re talking months of real-time.”