Invisible Enemy

by Ken Britz

  “Secure the port main. Get the rail gun online.”

  “Sir, we still have enemy torpedoes incoming.”

  “I’m working on that, Jackie!”

  “Conn, weapons, rail gun online. Will need full thrust control to guide,” Weps reported.

  Thrust shut down and gravity went with it.

  Hollis gave control to Weps. “Give them everything we have, Weps. Sensors, switch to forward arrays,” Hollis said his face ruddy, stunned and angry.

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “Hull breach, after torpedo bay,” the ship reported. “Hull breach, compression core.”

  The enemy punched holes in them? How? She must be close, Traynor thought.

  “Solution ready,” Sensors said. “I’m losing sensors, sir.”

  Marengo Orca spun and juddered again as the rail gun fired, sending slug after slug into space. She was sluggish, as though she’d taken one too many punches in a boxing match. She was on her feet, but if she couldn’t score a hit, Orca was gone. The lights flicked to emergency red on the bridge. They were using all available power for the rail gun.

  That’s not a good sign, Traynor thought. The auxiliary went offline and the rail gun ceased firing.

  “Loss of power,” Weps reported. “Forward weapons ring running on reserves.”

  The ship fought blind. The third torpedo detonated and Marengo Orca slewed sideways. “Firing… firing… firing…” the weapons computer droned.

  The astrodisplay went down and Traynor switched to her tactical. The fourth torpedo was still incoming, arcing around to find their wounded spot. She switched to the Jovian. The counterfire torpedo searched fruitlessly, and the Betta disappeared into the atmosphere. She zoomed in and caught a flicker on the display.

  “Keep the weapons array oriented to the torpedo,” Hollis said, his eyes on the Jovian.

  Orca maneuvered on thrusters to assist the forward and close-in weapons systems still firing at the pursuing torpedo. “Forward countermeasures depleted.”

  “Forward torpedo tubes are still in reload, sir,” Traynor said, her fingers flying, trying to get the crippled Marengo Orca back in the fight. “Firing after torpedoes on manual solution.”

  Orca shuddered and the displays went white. Traynor slammed sideways in her creche. She shifted her tacticals. “Final torpedo destroyed, sir,” she managed. “Laserhead must’ve gone off.” Her face twisted and for once, she was glad to be in her suit—her pain wasn’t on display. She hurt as bad as the Orca did and felt punch drunk. Concussion.

  “Conn, sensors, resetting arrays due to close aboard explosion,” Sensors warned.

  “Christ, she’s a bastard,” Hollis growled. “Maneuvering, I need thrust!”

  “Restoring power from auxiliary core in fifteen seconds. Starboard core functional. Port core breach and in emergency shutdown. Power restore in ten seconds. Thrust capable in one minute on a single drive,” Engineering reported.

  The astrodisplay flickered, blinked and reset, bringing to life the extreme display of the Jovian.

  They saw her then, in the swirl of blue atmosphere.

  A fin rotated into existence out of the nothing, wide, black, and menacing.

  She was accelerating at terrific speed, away from the Jovian. Traynor frowned. Something was wrong with the display. She zoomed out to find the inbound enemy torpedo, but at ten second light delay, it was too late.

  The fifth torpedo punched into the ship, snapping her axial keel. Traynor screamed, but she couldn’t hear her own voice over the ship’s death throes. A section of bridge sheared off and fell away, ejecting Hollis into the void in a spray of crystallized blood.

  24

  GLSS Venger

  Rigel B Outer System

  1328 U.Z.

  1254.12.14 A.F.

  Cowan’s suit chirped. She put down her hot pack, wiped her mouth and picked up the handset. “XO.”

  “Amber, this is Jolly. Got bad news. Marengo Orca is dead.”

  Cowan’s blood went cold. “Seriously?” She shivered, and her suit tightened in response to her emotional reaction. She reset it with an annoyed tap on the wrist and pulled up a display. When she found Marengo Orca, there were two signals, separating as they spiraled into the Jovian gravity well. Orca’s keel had snapped and her aft thrust manifold was a mangled wreck—and this image was thirty minutes old.

  Jackie.

  Her friend was very likely dead. She bit her lip against the thought and slapped her wrist again.

  Rogers continued, “Getting the final telemetry data from her now. The sub is accelerating from low orbit and in subspace. We should pick up her trail when she comes out of the radiation belt.”

  The techs worked feverishly, swapping quantum packs inside the compression core chamber. She floated outside the compartment, supervising. Luckily, JEM wasn’t very large and had a lot of redundant systems. Despite being in the most hardened portion of Venger, the compression core was still likely to be damaged if the ship took a hit. From the earliest days of compression cores and warships, the compression drive’s importance to the crew wasn’t lost on spacers. Without the AI and core, a ship would be stranded wherever they happened to be. Normally JEM was stowed for flight—powered down and stored in the dense confines of the compression drive itself. That hadn’t happened, so the techs were replacing components that had been damaged or flagged for failed diagnostics.

  “Looks like they’ll be done in a few minutes.”

  “I’m setting the rest of the ship to battle stations. Prep your suit and get to aux bridge when you’re done.”

  “We’re going to do this thing, aren’t we, sir?”

  “If we can stop her, we will. If we don’t—”

  “It won’t matter. I’m with you, sir,” Cowan said and hung up. She finished the hot pack and bagged it for recycling. She motioned to Chief Vargas. “Time?”

  “Buttoning up now, sir!” Vargas said, ever cheerful.

  “Get into your suits double-time when you’re done. We’re going to do something crazy.”

  “We wouldn’t be doing this if we were just having fun,” one tech said.

  “I fancy being time sliced. Being spread out over centuries has its appeal,” another said.

  “Shut up and keep working,” Vargas growled.

  Cowan climbed the tube, went to her cabin and shut the door, unable to contain her emotions. They were about to do something insane because they were the only ones who could stop the enemy. She’d held out some hope that Hollis could do it, but that hope died with the Orca.

  She cursed Hollis but realized he might be dead—probably was dead. Was Jackie dead? What would happen to JJ and Lucy, and Juan-Felipe? He might already be dead in Eagle Nebula.

  She splashed water on her face from the stowaway sink. Whatever the crew thought, she dealt with the same emotions everyone on Venger faced—but she was seasoned, well-practiced in hiding her feelings. She brought up a vid of her kids but couldn’t bear to listen to their voices. She drank in their faces and smiles. For the last time? She dug deep to muster the courage to take on this gods-be-damned N-boat. This war was shit.

  She pulled out her terminal. “This is Commander Amber Hermione Cowan, GLF Serial 753409. We are about to attempt a dangerous maneuver to prevent the enemy from reaching the Alexandria shipyard. If we don’t succeed, these are my final words. Personal commendations to the crew, including Chief Engineer Javier Mitchum, who kept Venger in the fight. Astrogator Jim Powell and Chief Machine Technician Hannibal Vargas for exemplary work in the face of impossible odds. To Juan-Felipe, JJ, and Lucy: I love you.” She cut the recording after she failed to think of something wise or profound, and filed the message into her suit’s hardened storage.

  Looking better than she felt, she headed to aux bridge and found Powell and Rogers huddled over fold-space calculations.

  “JEM is online and ready,” Rogers said as Cowan settled in her creche.

  She pulled up the tactical displays and
checked their weapon loadout, back in that compartmentalized piece of herself where the solyar of training drilled out the panic. They had two Bettas, torpedoes, slugs, and plenty of weapons blisters on both rings and hull. Lack of full propulsion and forward torpedo tubes aside, Venger had a lot of fight left in her. The Bettas were useless now—Venger’s aft tubes hadn’t been modified for them. She sent a query to Weps Estrada to see if they could be jettisoned.

  She poured over the tacticals, debating between close-in fighting and range, based on the best guesses the captain and astrogator were feeding to her systems. Weps made his recommendations, and together they changed the torpedo loadout configuration. They were low on countermeasures—enough for one torpedo or perhaps a salvo. She flagged them all. If they were dead, it wouldn’t matter that they didn’t use them so she prepared for the worst. She kept nothing in reserve.

  “Tacticals ready,” she said.

  Rogers switched on the PA. “This is the Captain. Our intention is to make an untested compression hop. The probability of failure is high with the usual unknowns. The other option is to let the shipyard be attacked and destroyed. If you’re not ready for this, flag your suit and we’ll disembark personnel in my gig, no questions asked.”

  He waited five minutes. No flags.

  Cowan felt both pride for Venger’s crew and a deep sadness for their potential fate.

  “Very well, Venger. I commend your dedication. I’ve flagged the following twenty-five personnel. They will disembark on my gig. I know you want to be in the fight, but I’m ordering you off the ship,” Rogers said. “I’m sending orders to the officer in charge to pick up survivors to capacity and head in-system to the shipyard which will be there.”

  Rogers paused, considering his next words.

  “We’re going into hell’s teeth but I’ve never served with a better crew. You’re more than an old captain deserves, and I pray we make it through this. Prepare for compression jump. Set battle stations,” Rogers finished.

  “Let’s give ’em hell,” the Chief of the boat said into the PA, and Cowan heard muffled cheers from around the ship. She smiled grimly. Venger’s crew was just as crazy as her captain. The battle stations klaxon went off, and the ship locked itself down for the fight. Helmets sealed, and the ship evacuated its air into compressed cylinders. The aux bridge lights went amber, then red when the ship was in vacuum. Cowan listened to her own breathing and the reports of the ship readying for combat. Her tactical displays flashed to combat ready, and the ship compartments reported readiness.

  “Gig, you have permission to depart,” Cowan said after Lieutenant Govern, the forward torpedo officer, reported all personnel on board and manifest downloaded from the ship. The gig detached from the hull and pushed away on maneuvering thrusters, then its drive cone flared and they were gone—a sliver of silver gray in the inky blanket of stars. “Captain’s gig is at safe distance, sir,” Cowan reported.

  “Pilot, all ahead full. Give us as much as you can,” Rogers ordered, his voice oddly soft in Cowan’s suit speakers. He’d put away all of his fold-space calculations and probability curves. His screens were tactical and her skipper’s head was in the fight. That comforted her and gave her confidence. The long spiraled loops of possibility out of the system flickered and fuzzed on the astrodisplay from the proposed system hop as machines tried to represent the data There was a good chance (if they didn’t kill themselves) that they would end up near the Jovian Lagrange One point. That should put them ahead of the enemy.

  “Aye, aye, sir,” the pilot replied, throttling up as much as the secondaries and port main could give. They didn’t quite make it to one gravity inertial.

  Cowan’s creche hissed, and gravity pressed down on her. The inertial dampener didn’t even have to work hard, which was good, with power sidelined for weapons and maneuvering systems. A tickle of anticipation fluttered in her gut, though if they survived the hop, they’d still have to close with the enemy. If. If.

  “JEM, engage compression drive,” Rogers said. “Ten seconds.”

  “Engaging in ten… nine…,” JEM said.

  The astrogator and pilot prayed, though their rituals were different. Cowan closed her eyes and visualized the other side of fold-space. The place where Venger would be.

  “Two… one, engage.”

  Time sped up, slowed down, then snapped into relative time as the compression drive squeezed the fabric of space, bringing two distant points together and pushing the ship from one to the other and reaching for the next, dropping a connection when the next was secured, causing a ripple in the space-time fabric behind them.

  Venger was on her way.

  25

  HFSS Kuro Hai

  Rigel B Jovian Orbit

  1328 U.Z.

  1254.12.14 A.F.

  The fifth backbreaker pierced the heart of the corvette, so forcefully that the ship snapped in two, both pieces still pulling away at speed. Kuro’s impeller chuffed like a tiger as the ship accelerated.

  “Counterfire detect,” Sensors grunted said, and a torpedo launched from the after section of the crippled ship.

  “Maintain… course… and… speed,” Kenga gasped. It could catch them on their acceleration curve, but Kenga would shift the fin into subspace. The astrodisplay flickered, displaying possible intercept tracks. They had one countermeasure volley, but Reed didn’t need it. Kuro was accelerating up the cee curve, past the troposphere and out of the radiation.

  If Kuro’s crew cheered, they didn’t share it the control room or on the shipwide circuit. Reed wanted to celebrate, but the optics extreme-range image of bodies floating with the ship debris were burned in his mind. The corvette was dead in space and in a decaying orbit around the Jovian. Kuro had gotten lucky in that fight—Kenga’s tactical acumen and insight were remarkable. Kuro, though still damaged from the first corvette was still a lethal weapon. Kenga had brought them out of this in remarkably good shape. When Reed went after the first corvette, the Kuro had been hurt badly.

  Unlike that first corvette, this enemy commander hadn’t followed with a second salvo of torpedoes, which agreed with a cautious mind. That he ran when Kuro’s torpedoes screamed toward him gave Kenga time to get a tight solution with her own final torpedo, locked onto his drive signature. Now the corvette wouldn’t be following Kuro at all, and if the Jovian had a say, they would be permanent inhabitants of the blue planet. Kuro had navigated past two valiant enemies—that was the hard part. Getting past the shipyard defenses would be a matter of physics rather than cunning and tactics.

  The Kuro crew might make it out alive. Rarely had an N-boat gone toe-to-toe with two corvettes and survived; Kenga and Reed had put both out of the fight. Kenga had been brilliant and served the Hegemony well. Reed, for all his anger, admired her.

  Once the enemy torpedo was lost in the swirl of atmosphere behind them, Kenga signaled for Reed to reduce acceleration to within inertial parameters. Reed throttled back on the impeller, and the gravity anvil slid off his chest.

  “Excellent maneuvering, Proconsul,” Kenga said. “I’ll translate us deep and we’ll get past the sensor field. Send the order to recharge spaces and resume repairs. We have time before we get to the shipyard. Let’s give the crew a chance to get out of their suits and have something to eat.”

  Reed relayed the message. He checked the ship’s status and flagged priority repairs. Weapon blisters might not need replacement, but the after torpedoes needed to be transferred to the port forward bay. The lights and screens inside the fin pulsed purple for a moment and then the sensor arrays went black and the lights dimmed. The air thickened into glittering water around him. The ship had translated deeper into subspace. There were flickers of shapes and pulses—effects from the Jovian’s magnetosphere, perhaps? The sensorhead behind him powered down his arrays and made the checks for their next deployment as a matter of routine.

  The fin clamps resonated through the hull and their creches hissed on gimbals as the attack fin retrac
ted into the ship’s hull. When it mated with the internal mechanisms, Kenga was once again below him and Chapel above.

  “Proconsul, a moment if you please?” Kenga said to him on the private channel. She’d unstrapped and gotten out of her creche while he shut down his station, going through post and preflight checks as fast as he could.

  Chapel climbed out of the open hatch into the ship proper.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, climbing out of his creche.

  Kenga climbed up to his platform and went to the lower/after torpedo launch access system. This was only used to investigate a malfunctioning system or manually launch a torpedo. There should be one reserve torpedo in the bay, Reed recalled, the four salvo launch and fifth that brought the killing blow still vivid in his mind.

  The captain went to work, and he was surprised by how much better she looked than when they’d arrived at Rigel B. Kenga punched her command codes, and the system read her biometrics before clicking open. The launcher bay rotated to the reserve torpedo and Kenga waved him over. Reed looked through the access panel to see the sleek black torpedo.

  The launch tube was empty.

  He turned to Kenga, gesturing confusion.

  “This is where you’re spending the rest of the voyage, commander,” Kenga said.

  “You’re locking me in the launcher?” Reed was incredulous. “Why? What’s the mission? You’ll take out the shipyard.”

  Kenga cocked her head to the side. “Do you think so?” Her service pistol pointed at Reed. “What do you know about the mission?”

  “I already told you.”

  “Then you know nothing.”

  “All right,” Reed said, raising his hands. “It’s a crime in the Hegemony to aim a weapon at an aristocrat. You do know that?”

  Kenga’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. “I didn’t kill a ship full of good spacers to show you which side I’m on. You’ll stay here, Proconsul. When my mission is complete, you’ll be the last on the ship to know.”