Invisible Enemy

by Ken Britz

  Kenga’s data went offline when she left the creche, as Reed had said. Nothing in the medical data bothered her—it was all normal for someone as ill as Kenga. No, it wasn’t Kenga’s medical data that was wrong. It was that Kenga’s suit was offline. If she was in distress, her suit would’ve transmitted that immediately.

  Lin skimmed through the medical comm logs and found nothing. That was interesting. If Kenga had died, the suit would have gone into emergency mode and begun standard low power beacon transmission. It would connect first to the ship’s system and then broadcast the galactic universal setting for DIS—Death in Space. Only one DIS had been received and that was Weapons Chief Kelly Dale.

  The problem was obvious now. Kenga’s suit was offline, and that was something she couldn’t ignore. If Kenga was dead in the starboard fin, why didn’t her suit transmit the DIS signal?

  She pulled up a direct link to Chief Wagoner, but he didn’t respond. Kenga, alive or dead, could still finish her mission, if she was still in the fin. But what if she’d been ejected into space? That sounded outlandish to Lin, but it would mean Kenga’s true mission—the mission only Lin was privy to—was a failure. And that bothered Lin as much as the loss of her friend did. It only added to her desire to get into the fin and see if Reed had spaced Kenga. Now that would be grounds to take control of Kuro.

  Before she could reveal Kenga’s mission, she needed to recover the body. Lin had always known why the High Admiralty called her back to service to accompany Kenga, but it didn’t hit her until now just how thoroughly they had planned this. The High Admiralty understood their relationship and history, and they knew—damn them!—knew that Lin would help Kenga achieve her goal no matter what. Damn you, too, Karine!

  Decision made, Lin unstrapped, but the ship’s close aboard alarm wailed and the PA blared, “Emergency translation to real space!”

  The sick bay lights and screens brightened to almost painful levels. The ship shuddered and the impeller purr pitched into a growl. The collision alarm sounded, a more urgent tone than the close aboard alarm and Lin cling to the creche.

  “Brace for impact! Brace for impact!”

  Unstrapped, Lin was thrown out of her creche. Her suit reacted, contracting and hardening itself before she hit the bulkhead but her head struck the wall. Physics, the inertial dampeners, and her suit kept her from being turned into jumbled cellular matter. Her head rang, and she was almost overcome by vertigo until she realized they were in free fall. Atmosphere evacuation stared with a hiss and her suit deployed its helmet. Lin’s heartbeat hammered in her ears. She bumped into the overhead bulkhead and bounced off, finally getting a mag boot on the deck to right herself. Her suit relaxed from its hardened state.

  Medical alerts peppered her heads up display. She’d been concussed, which wasn’t a surprise with her throbbing skull. Her suit warbled with a low gravity alert. Motes of dust floated around sick bay and there was some gravity from the ship’s newly acquired spin. Voices clamored on the common channel.

  “We’ve been hit! Someone’s rammed us! Who the Hel would ram?”

  “Quiet on the channel!” a commanding voice said.

  Lin got her other boot on the deck and steadied herself, feeling the spin. She grabbed a handhold and let her mind work at the speed it could manage, barely noticing when her suit injected her with a mild pain reliever. The suit found no traumatic brain injury and the alarms tapered off.

  The Kuro encountered something real space and collided with it. What was it?

  Through her helmet, her breathing, and the ringing in her ears, she sensed the angry buzz of Kuro weapons systems. The humming of the gravitic impeller ebbed, then died. Metal and carbon alloys ground together in a silent scream of agony.

  The ship tumbled, the maneuvering thrusters without power. The screens and lights in sick bay blanked, then the emergency lights came on and her heads up lit up with injury reports.

  Lin was bruised and shaken. She wasn’t standing on the deck like she thought, but on the overhead. The grinding continued, as though Kuro was being flensed. When the damage screens came up she was horrified to see multiple hull breaches down the ship’s main axis. Lin took a few moments to get her bearings and then retrieved her medical kit. She checked that her suit was fully stocked with all the medical multi-tools and chemical bases she could take and snapped the kit to her back in a freehand carry.

  Kuro was gravely injured and her training took over. Whatever they’d hit, Lin had a crew to save, if she could. She reviewed the damage, prioritizing the breached compartments, starting with the closest, intending to work her way forward. She pulled open panels and activated her medical team, a swarm of little white and silver bots. They connected to her suit and received the base instructions to follow, and they did, clinging to the wall like spiders.

  28

  GLSS Venger

  Rigel B Inner System

  0040 U.Z.

  1254.12.15 A.F.

  “Compression drive disengage in one minute,” Venger’s quantum artificial intelligence said over the suit PA circuit. They had been in fold-space for at least an hour according to the internal clock, though JEM’s quantum clock showed real time as half a day elapsed. Mitchum shifted his screen from damage control to combat tactical. He palmed the engineering circuit. “Stow all gear. Stand by.”

  He glanced at the main engines status—they hadn’t been brought online in the intervening hour. If Venger survived, they should be able to limp back to the shipyard orbital for repairs. He couldn’t help but sigh. He’d just gotten the ship back to full fighting strength… he shook his head.

  “Final decompress in five… four… three… two… one…,” JEM warned and Venger burst out of fold-space. Mitchum grabbed his creche frame reflexively, expecting the worst.

  Venger popped into Rigel B with a gravity ripple. The system automatically oriented itself to the ecliptic and triangulated its position with light measurements. The close aboard and collision alarms went off in his helmet and the bridge lights flashed in rapid succession.

  “Brace for impact… Brace for impact…” the ship’s automated voice said.

  What the hell?

  The impact was tremendous, pulling Mitchum’s against his straps. His gimbals worked to reorient him as the ship tumbled. “Secure thrust!” he ordered.

  Someone whooped on the engineering circuit.

  “What’re you so excited about?” someone else yelled.

  “We ain’t dead!”

  A new voice offered, “I think we hit something.”

  “What gave you that idea?”

  “Stow it,” Vargas said. “We got work to do.”

  Mitchum agreed, though he didn’t remember ever not working, except to ride out some hairball of a fight with the enemy. Well, he was in something now. He held on.

  “Zero thrust,” the engineering office of the watch reported.

  “Conn, engineering, zero thrust,” Mitchum replied.

  Tearing and screaming vibrated up Venger’s belly; the inertial systems redlined, absorbing countermotion. Whatever this was, it was moving faster than they were and Venger was absorbing as much kinetic energy as possible. What had they hit? It wasn’t a meteor or asteroid.

  Power shifted to auxiliaries and the damage control screen lit up with destruction to Venger’s ventral side—hull plating, sensors, and weapon blisters flashed yellow or red or black for unresponsive. Venger’s weapon arrays pulsed and power arrays showed drain. The ship was attacking whatever it was.

  “Engineering, conn, aye. We’ve engaged the subspace vessel,” Cowan’s voice was calm. “Give all the power you can to weapons.”

  “Conn, engineering, shifting all auxiliary power to weapons,” Mitchum replied. He checked the operating systems. The forward torpedo bays were still out of commission, as were the rail gun and several ventral blisters. The rings were still operative as were most of the particle, laser, and mass drivers, which would fire until their ammunition ran dry.
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  Optics shifted and he saw the ominous black shape of the sub jammed against Venger’s under hull. They’d unfolded right next to the damn thing! The enemy was fighting back, pulsing in false color on the combat displays. The two ships were hammering it out, with Venger’s superior capacity and size giving her the advantage. Debris sparkled and plumes of escaping gas vented from both ships. They scored the invisible hull of the subspace ship with rippling salvos of blaster fire. Mitchum diverted power from the aft torpedo bay to the weapons arrays. The combat display was a crisscross of fire. Bulkheads rippled and warped, and the amber decompress lights in engineering went red. Venger’s underbelly was a red mass of damage. Blisters and weapons systems blinked out, damaged, overloaded, out of power, or out of ammunition. He flagged priorities, and the system responded, recovering circuits, reactivating blisters and charging banks with power. The auxiliary core was being taxed, but it was designed to power the weapons systems in an emergency. With several systems offline, this became more manageable. Sensor array packs went black and shifted to alternate packs. The hull creaked, hissed, and buckled under repeated laser and particle bolt fire. The two ships were beating each other into blind and stupid incapacity.

  Explosions vibrated through Mitchum’s creche gimbals as internal tanks ruptured. On the common and proximity circuits his engineering teams responded to casualties and worked feverishly to reroute and restore power. The screams and pleas of the wounded were quickly cut off. Mitchum reacted only to his screens and the crew kept Venger alive.

  The aft weapons ring died. One too many motors burned out by laser fire or ground up against the enemy’s hull. Mitchum routed power to maneuvering thrusters so the bridge could arrest their tumble. The secondary drives jolted the ship in an attempt to separate but the two vessels were stuck fast.

  The smaller, once sleek enemy had pierced Venger’s ventral hull and was imbedded to half her length near the main drive cones. After their heated exchange, the two ships had eliminated most of each other’s blisters. By dint of superior size and weapon rings Venger was winning out. The black vessel was disabled except for maneuvering thrusters which she was using in an effort to extricate herself. That wouldn’t happen unless Venger attempted counterthrust. Rigel’s Jovian streaked by, an aquamarine smear.

  “Bet the mains are broke again,” someone sighed.

  Mitchum frowned and brought up the external displays, wanting to see the scarred inky black hull of the enemy sub. He hadn’t seen one in solyars and never this close.

  There were suits—bodies floating around the fused vessels. It was hard to tell what crew they were from, though a steady stream of beacons scrolled on the ship’s communications band. A few wore the GLF blue, but most were black. Some still moved, others tumbled like rag dolls. Suits, alone in space.

  Mitchum’s mind detached, compartmentalizing the carnage. Venger was badly wounded. He’d lost crew, but he couldn’t look away from the macabre dance of death. His mind went to Anders. How was Vic making out? He felt a power hum from somewhere though his creche, but Venger had become silent as well. Like a gunfighter who’d taken a shot, but still stood, waiting for the duel to end. Something clanked against his helmet and he shook himself out of his fugue state.

  The PA circuit chirped. “All hands to Armory One and Two. Stand by all airlocks. Prepare to repel boarders.”

  He keyed the engineering circuit. “Engineering, Cheng, maintain power to essential systems. I’ll assist ship’s efforts. You know what to do. Spin down and shut down the compression core. Damage control teams continue what you’re doing.”

  Mitchum unstrapped, aching from the impact inside his suit. Through the detachment he struggled to maintain he realized that they were, in fact, alive. They survived Roger’s improbable maneuver and somehow unfolded right next to the enemy and survived that, too. The PA circuit repeated the command and for the second time in as many moments, he shook himself back to the present.

  After the engineering departments acknowledged, Mitchum made his way through the ship to the aft armory. Cowan was field stripping a pulse rifle and looked like she’d used the weapon for solyars. She waved him over, more or less the opposite of his usual interactions with her. He floated over, switching to local comms.

  “I’d like to ask a hundred questions, like how the hell did we survive? How did we not only survive, but in all the vastness of space we ran into the very thing we were chasing? And how did we miss her in subspace?”

  “Is that all you got?” Cowan said.

  “That’s for starters, but all I really want to know right now is: what’s the plan?”

  She laughed, an edge of bitterness in her contralto. “We’re going to board her, pirate style.”

  “Since when do we board hostile ships?” Mitchum tried to remember the procedure. He might’ve had a lecture on it in his plebe days at the academy. Most boardings were done as part of routine transport between systems, the local fleet acting as in-system holding for contraband. That was about the extent of Mitchum’s memory. “And, are you all right? You seem different. Giddy, almost.”

  Cowan smiled. “I’m thrilled we survived Rogers’ insane idea. Sure, our ship is mangled, and old enough to be considered for scrap now, but I’m alive. That’s enough, isn’t it?”

  Mitchum smiled. Cowan’s eyes had excited determination in them, as though she’d defied death one too many times and wasn’t taking any more shit from the universe—like a cat on her ninth life. “I suppose it is. Do you need a hand?”

  “I wanted to take the captain’s gig over, but we left it out-system with some of our crew. That would expose us to weapon blisters on the far side, anyway. So, it might be best to try a spacewalk over. How are your repairs coming?”

  “What’s left of my engineers are up to their necks in work, but I’d rather help you if you don’t mind.”

  Cowan regarded him, her brows drawn together. She knew the regulations, and he had more work than he could handle here on Venger. She was on the edge of insanity probably, much like he was. “That’ll work. Time to fight them hand-to-hand.” She handed him a gauss pistol.

  “Just a pistol?” Mitchum asked, looking at her pulse rifle with the over-under ‘puck’ grenade launcher. It was a short-nosed weapon, meant for close quarters fighting. It was no longer than her forearm, but tall and blocky.

  “You’re with me in the after section boarding party. We need to get into the ship before they initiate her self-destruct. There’s a lot of intelligence on that sub.”

  “If they fight hand-to-hand like they do in space, we’ll have a hell of a time. Who’s taking forward?”

  “Weps. He’s got most of security with him. That’ll cause a stir. Jolly’s giving us two hours to get over there and find something. Hopefully, we can secure the ship. Worst case, we blow up with her.”

  Mitchum realized the gravity of what they were going to do and reconsidered. “Why don’t I stay behind and get Venger away?”

  Cowan gave him a wry smile. “You’re committed now. Besides, I don’t think you can get the mains or the hulls apart in that time. Skipper will manage here with the astrogator and the rest of engineering. DC bots are out there to cut us apart. We’re screwed if we don’t get this clusterfuck under control—despite my bit about the luckiest thing that’s ever happened to us.”

  Mitchum checked his pistol, holstered it, pocketed magazines, and went with the fire team Cowan assembled. The ship was still at battle stations in hard vacuum, so cycling the aft ’lock was easy.

  “Ready, Bos’n?” Cowan asked.

  Bos’n Estaban emerged with a long grapple, clipping to a brace outside the ship. She sighted the enemy vessel, looking for a likely hill penetration, ranged the shot and fired. Filament wire spooled from the gun. Mitchum thought she hit it, but the grapple exploded in a puff of charged debris. What had happened?

  “Well, shit,” the Bos’n said. “Lost the anchor.”

  “Something weird going on with their hull?
Want me to try?” Cowan asked.

  Estaban shook her head. “I’d need to re-spool. I don’t think your shot will make a difference. No offense, ma’am.”

  Something about the grappling anchor’s disintegration tickled the back of Mitchum’s mind.

  “EVA packs then.” Cowan had already linked her suit to the packs lining the inner wall of the airlock. She motioned for the other two crew, both boatswains. “You two stay here, keep anyone but us or someone with a GLF ident from coming into the ship. I don’t think they have the crew to board Venger, but desperation makes you do crazy things.”

  Mitchum backed up and hitched his shoulders in an EVA pack, which attached to his suit and linked to his systems. Cowan and Estaban were already out of the ship. His suit calculated the distance. Not that far. He stared up at the inky star on the enemy’s hull. She was menacing and beautiful and it seemed to Mitchum like she was cradled in the underbelly of Venger like a baby whale with its mother. Mitchum leaped, his suit giving him a trajectory and thrusters firing to send him on his way. He followed Cowan as she skimmed down the hull, looking for an airlock.

  What a beautiful beast. Where she wasn’t damaged, she was smooth as glass, though up close there were scratches and whorls of micro-abrasion on the hull. As he neared, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, as though he were in some electrical field. Portions of the surface were invisible, and Mitchum realized these were part of its stealth shroud, making it invisible to optics. Its surface was mercurial, fluid, and it fascinated the engineer in him. He wanted to touch it, but a nagging feeling said no. He maneuvered around a piece of spinning debris, and when he came back to his course, Estaban was stretching her hand toward it.