by Ken Britz
Cowan wanted to rub her eyes. She was tired. Not physically, her suit had injected her with regular doses of stimulant. They’d been after that sub for three days now. Emotionally and mentally, she was drained. And angry. She was angry that the sub had gotten away. Even if Venger got her mains back, she still wouldn’t catch the sub before it reached the shipyard orbital. At least Alexandria had days of warning. It also had strong defenses, and Cowan was half tempted to remind the Rogers they should’ve let the shipyard defense systems overwhelm the sub. But the captain had other problems and piling on wouldn’t change the fact that Venger was adrift. “We’re out of the fight now. It’s all we can do to defend ourselves. We still have auxiliary and port main power. Secondary thrust control, but we can’t catch her now. Even we could get to point one cee, it wouldn’t be enough.”
“Christ,” Lieutenant Onawe repeated. “I feel like we just did this.” He was still watching the ship under repair with molecular sheets of plating manufactured by the damage control repair team.
“That’s what war is, Ato,” Cowan said. “Just a long string of destroy-repair cycles until resources or people run out. On a planetary scale….” Cowan shook her head, the motion invisible in her helmet. She gave the First Lieutenant a hand signal that meant both goodbye and keep at it. He acknowledged. She strode to the airlock, mindful she was without a safety. One couldn’t be spared, and Cowan didn’t care. Something caught her eye. Her suit beeped and her heads-up display highlighted an object. A body in a spacesuit cartwheeled by, cutting a wake through the debris. Its low power mode detected her suit and sent her a burst of data. The man inside the suit was dead. Chief Weapons Technician Kelly F. Dale, Hegemonic Federation Class IV. His recovery system downloaded his critical data into her suit, and she shunted the data to her terminal and sent acknowledgement to the dead man’s spacesuit, which went into beacon mode for retrieval. She motioned for one of her specialists.
“Ma’am?” Boatswain’s Mate Second Class Delia Estaban said, stepping over.
Cowan’s display locked onto the spacesuit, range and velocity data scrawled in her HUD. “Your monkey shot, please.”
Esteban unmounted the grappling rifle from her back and handed it to the XO.
Cowan activated and slaved it to her suit. She aimed carefully.
“It’s just a subspacer, ma’am,” Estaban said.
Cowan increased the magnetic grip in her boots, feeling the system estimate Dale’s body might be out of range. She adjusted, exhaled and fired. The rifle vibrated in her hand while the wire unspooled. The bulb caught the body’s boot. Cowan jerked against the inertia. She reeled the spool in slowly, as all the momentum imparted would translate to speed and she didn’t want a corpse bearing down on her toward her at 20 or 30 m/s2. She handed the rifle to the specialist. “He’s still a spacer.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Estaban said. “Damn good shot, ma’am, even with optics.”
“Helps if your dad was a space marine, once upon a time. I prefer ships and bigger guns.”
Cowan saluted her fellow spacefarer and was ashamed for being angry at missing the chance to blow his boat to kingdom come. A few others had received the same data transmission and saluted the lost crewman with her. Someone hummed ‘Eternal Father’ on the common channel, bringing a sense of humanity to this grisly business of war. Cowan watched until the specialist and another crewman pulled the body down to the hull. She filed the data and switched the beacon off of her HUD. Cowan thought of Anders and the pair of crew members lost two days before. It was possible they were still alive. Cowan hoped they were and again reminded herself to file a return flight plan to retrieve them. She considered commandeering the captain’s gig to go after them and rejected it. Her place was here on Venger, not in search and rescue.
Cowan had enjoyed her younger days as a shuttle jockey, before she was accepted into the Academy, and the times after, shuttling between ship, station, and planet. Feeling nostalgic, Amber? she asked herself. She still had an old shuttle—she hoped to teach JJ and Lucy to fly someday soon, after the war. It was always ‘soon.’ Even as XO of Venger, she’d pilot the captain’s gig whenever the coxswain was inclined (which was always when the XO was inclined).
Her thoughts returned to the dead subspacer and she wanted to meet the enemy captain face-to-face. Get Venger back into the fight…
Cowan’s suit chirped—the captain wanted to see her.
The forward hull being open to space made her re-entry quick. Once inside, she headed aft. The bridge was another casualty; the Backbreaker torpedo had punched molten shrapnel through the hull and into the bridge, wrecking most of its systems and killing the copilot. The rest were injured, and control had automatically transferred to the auxiliary bridge. Two dark shapes with headlamps moved about like angler fish hunting for prey. The hull was already repaired here, but to restore these systems would take time. No one was working on the bridge, but there was activity throughout Venger’s main corridor. Fifty percent of the ship was open to hard vacuum to expedite the repair. The teams would be in suits for a long time.
There was no need for her to use the j-tubes, so she went to the larger internal airlock amidships. She had to wait until enough people entered to trigger the automatic cycle, so she pulled out her terminal and reviewed the dead man’s record. Most of it was encrypted, offering only next of kin and pertinent contact information. He was from Odessa, not Wolf, Childress, or Midgard-Sekai—one of the patronage planets of the Hegemony, then. Cowan remembered a port visit to Odessa in her bull ensign days aboard Olympos. Cowan didn’t remember much of the port visit since she pulled duty most of the time, but she remembered Odessa’s amazing butterscotch sunsets and the sweetgrass smell of its dry winds. It was a beautiful colony planet, much like Earth, in the habitable zone around a Sol-class star. She examined the dead man’s picture. His lean features weren’t familiar. She flipped to the five lost Venger crewmen and wondered how the hell had the enemy only lost the one. She filed it away as a casualty of war—data that would be exchanged between the Galactic League and Hegemony. Unable to avoid it, she wondered if Juan-Felipe was floating dead in the Eagle Nebula, spacesuit transmitting his credentials to anyone and no one. She jammed her terminal into her suit as if that idea could also be filed away. It helped.
The lock opened and the group collectively retracted their helmets, revealing tired and sweaty faces. The repair team shuffled out ahead of her, their job outweighing the skipper’s need to see her. A few of the faces smiled, and she offered them words of encouragement as they left.
She set her suit to its most comfortable setting and entered the small auxiliary bridge. Rogers was there, in deep thought, the tachyon display on one screen and an odd set of mathematical symbols working on the other, tugging at his beard. It was, to Cowan, an odd juxtaposition. She checked her suit levels, connecting it to an available restock cable. It recharged power systems, suit goo, water, air, and flushed waste—the latter giving a disconcerting yet pleasant feel. She scrubbed her hair with her fingers and picked up fresh magbulbs of coffee.
She approved pending watch team reassignments to repairs and returned to the astrodisplay. A wide probability cone expanded as the enemy’s position became more ambiguous. Cowan reoriented the display and then made some corrections to the prediction tacticals that narrowed the cone somewhat. The enemy had to be making for the Jovian, using its background radiation to hide their emissions. That’s what she would do if the ship was too damaged to shift into subspace.
“Sir,” she prompted after drinking half her magbulb.
Rogers tore his eyes away from the quantum formulas with some reluctance. “How’re the repairs?”
“We’re down for the count, I’m afraid. Cheng says we’ll be lucky to get point oh five cee from the starboard main. It might be a day or more before we’re spaceworthy.”
“Down? Not just yet. There’s something I’ve been working on for a few solyars. Before I got put back on the command track whe
n the war broke out.”
Cowan handed him a magbulb of coffee.
He smiled then, his eyes twinkling. “Did Tom tell you the story about Tau Ceti supply depot?”
“Not really, sir. Tom said it was highly original and highly classified—”
“Please. I’ve been an exec, Amber. Your clearance is high enough. And even if you didn’t have clearance, Tom would want you to know what you’re getting into.”
Cowan removed the restock cable, giving her time to think, time to admit something she’d wanted to avoid for almost a solyar. “He told me you used the compression core AI to do an in-system compression hop, but just the core… had it removed from the ship and used as a gravity bomb.”
Rogers shrugged. “That’s only partly right. It wasn’t supposed to be a gravity bomb—which is a misnomer—by the way, it was supposed to surprise the supply depot and punch a hole through their defense system for Venger and the convoy to get through. It did more than punch a hole. I damn near destroyed the depot itself. It’s still in bad shape and it’d take solyars for Galactic League Construction to put it back to anything like its former self. The Hegemony abandoned it after that.”
“I understand why you’ve never made admiral now, sir. All the newsfeeds touted it as a great military victory. I had hoped my term as executive officer would be cut short when they promoted you to admiral and gave me command of Venger. Admiral Rogeness said as much, but…” Cowan put a hand on Venger’s bulkhead. “She grows on you fast, battered and bruised as she is.”
“That she does, and I’m sorry I’ve possibly torpedoed your career, if you’ll pardon the expression. Reminiscing about my spectacularly successful failures is not what I called you in for. I want to run something by you…”
Cowan listened. His idea, with or without merit, was nothing short of crazy. She was impressed. If it didn’t work, the sub would be free to take out the shipyard. If it did work, they had a small chance of stopping her. Still, it was crazy.
Pirate crazy.
19
HFSS Kuro Hai
Rigel B Jovian Outer Moon Orbit
0435 U.Z.
1254.12.14 A.F.
HFSS Kuro Hai slid past the Jovian terminus, sparks of lightning visible on its riotous blue and green gaseous surface. Kenga’s damage control displays flickered with activity. The hull was nearly repaired, with a new hull generator in place and stealth plating restored. That was good news, as the outer radiation readings were now beyond human tolerances. Black crablike repair bots were operating in pairs now, the radiation affecting their circuits as they closed range with the gas giant. They were past its outer ring of moons and they dropped into geosynchronous orbit on the dark side.
Kenga’s teeth hurt, and the pain in her body exceeded the pain management Lin prescribed. I’m running out of time, she thought. But if she rushed headlong into her plan, it would all come apart. Though she’d removed Reed as XO for the time being, he was still proconsul and had some authority over how the ship operated. He’d acted in the face of her collapse, though more aggressively than she wanted.
The repair estimate updated, and she checked the astrodisplay. The second corvette had left the shipyard and was burning hard toward the Jovian—that was something new.
The corvette hadn’t firewalled her throttle, which meant her acceleration was limited or was possibly being cautious. That was something to consider—a second cautious corvette captain. The corvette was still hours out with a twenty-minute light delay one-way.
Kenga sighed and tapped the comm link to Weps. “Gunnar, reload the starboard fin with the two Backbreakers in tubes two and four. Load the rest with low-yield, high acceleration torpedoes.” She sent him the calculations for what she had planned.
“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Tan said. “And the port torpedo bay? Load with standards?”
“That’s right. We’re still loaded with mines in the aft bay?”
“Fully racked, ma’am,” Tan said.
“Very well. Load the aft tubes with mines.” Kenga said, closing the circuit.
“Something in mind, Captain?” Reed asked.
“Nothing more than a standard approach and attack on the corvette. It’ll be close, but by the time she reaches Jovian orbit, we should be translated into shallow subspace.”
“That’ll make us detectable to their new system,” Reed said, rubbing his nose absently. “That doesn’t seem like a normal approach and attack.”
Kenga motioned to the Jovian on their screens. “My plan is to dive into the Jovian exosphere. Its radiation will confound their systems enough to allow us to attack.”
“I’ll check with sensors, but if it affects our tachyon detection systems, the chances are theirs will be affected as well.”
Kenga nodded. “The gravity well will affect our torpedoes, though. It will be a balancing act. How far down do we go but still get our torpedoes on target?” She was tired and felt three times older than she was. Her body battled itself, fighting the cancer within her. It might be worsened by the Jovian’s radiation, even with the hull’s double shielding. Things would improve for Kuro once they were in subspace, but Kenga wouldn’t be in subspace.
“She’ll see the torpedoes coming from low orbit long before they reach her,” Reed said. He moved the astrodisplay to show the corvette’s trajectory. “Bait?”
“More like some encouragement,” Kenga agreed, sending her tactical plan to the astrodisplay for Reed to judge. She watched him study it with fascination. She’d gotten the idea yesterday, from the first corvette’s reaction to the small trailing mines she dropped behind her. Reed’s tone went from concern to accusation. “You mean to draw her into a lower orbit.”
“No one wants to enter a minefield. Strip the shroud from one out of every four or five mines, just enough for them to be detectable at close optics. Maneuver to avoid those, perhaps strike a shrouded one. It would encourage a closer orbit and an abundance of caution.”
“What if the captain is aggressive?” Reed asked.
“I’ve seen nothing of the sort from this captain. I don’t think he’s the aggressive kind, though he’s trying hard to appear that way. The mines won’t be useful around the shipyard orbital. They’ll be worthwhile here.”
Reed was skeptical but couldn’t find a flaw in her plan. Except, How low does she intend to go? “It seems sound, ma’am.”
“I’m glad you agree, Proconsul.”
Kenga fixed the time remaining in her head and got up from her creche. “Officer of the Deck, when the ship is ready, translate into subspace, two degrees.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
“Proconsul, care to join me in the starboard fin? We have a few hours yet, and I’d like to get a bit of rest beforehand.”
Reed nodded. “I’d be honored to,” he said, though anger flashed in his eyes. Almost a day later and he still smarted over being removed from command. It would go in her war report and his undisclosed addendum. Did it matter? Probably not.
She took the lift to her stateroom, too wrung out to climb the ladder in her usual manner.
In her stateroom, she removed her spacesuit. It was a slow and laborious process, but she needed to get out of it. Even in its relaxed condition, it was painful to wear. What about my condition? Only three days ago she’d climbed into the damn thing as fast as she always had. Now it was a half hour of torment to get herself out. She hung it its ready harness and connected the restock umbilical, then she collapsed, the deck cool against her flushed and sweaty cheek. After what seemed like forever, she pulled herself up to the polysteel sink and vomited in stabbing heaves that made her cry out in agony. It was impossible to hold back the searing pain now.
When did I eat last? Breakfast two days ago? No, the steward brought several meals to the control room—soup and simple fare. Things she liked. Is this how the end comes? With nothing but weakness and pain? The stabbing pain in her stomach and back settled in. Centisolyars after they’d defeated most cancers, there we
re still a few forms that had been resistant to modern treatment.
She got onto her feet, peeled off her unitard, and slid into the tiny shower, sluicing water over her skin, washing away sweat and bile. When she stopped the water, she heard the chirp at her door. She tapped the comm button with a shaky hand. “Captain.”
“House call, ma’am,” Dr. Lin said.
Kenga hit the unlock button and tapped the ultrasonics to dry herself.
The ship’s doctor came in and pressed her lips into a thin line at the sight of Kenga stepping out of the shower. It struck Kenga then, this odd juxtaposition between them. Kenga felt hundreds of solyars old while Lin looked young despite the gray hair.
“You look like Hel,” Lin said, locking the door and reaching into a locker to pull out a fresh unitard. She’s taken off her own spacesuit.
“Just get me through the next few days, please,” Kenga managed.
Lin clucked her tongue and helped Kenga into her unitard, for which Kenga was grateful after the hour of struggling with her suit and the agonizing heaves.
“I don’t know if you have that long,” Lin said. “You shouldn’t be out of your bunk. Not after the last flare.”
Kenga eased onto her bunk with a groan and winced. She forced herself to glance at her displays. She tapped the comm button to Weapons.
“Weapons, Captain. It looks like we’re in position, Weps. I’m sending you my tacticals for the aft bay. Have the aft team make the modifications to the mines.”
“Weapons, aye,” Tan responded.
Jovian loomed in the display like some great crystal ball. “How is he?”
Dr. Lin opened her synthesizing kit and sighed. “Tan? His shoulder will heal. The laser destroyed a lot of tissue, but he was lucky. He’s stubborn, like you. Won’t let me lock him in sick bay like I should.”
“Like you, too,” Kenga smiled. “Do I need to order him to sick bay?”