by Tim Lebbon
Hell, they might have been dead by now.
Relaxing back in his chair, he enjoyed looking through the Gagarin’s vast bridge window at what he and his crews had achieved. Around him, the murmur of conversations was muted, the lighting low. Each of the fourteen-member bridge crew was lit from his or her screen.
When pulled together for interstellar travel, the Gagarin was a huge vessel composed of unique parts that combined to make the whole. But when they were stationary, working in a single location as they had been for the past four months, those disparate sections were spread over twenty spherical miles of space. They ranged from the main Gagarin control center—incorporating the bridge, repair port, and the main quarters for most of the scientists and construction staff—to the four small craft that orbited the newly completed drophole structure itself. There were storage vessels, tugs, a hospital ship, welfare centers for the crews, a green dome for growing their food, two recreation blocks, and a score of smaller craft involved in the maneuver and construction processes.
Right now the larger ships were all on station between Gagarin and the drophole, smaller ships flitting back and forth carrying crew and supplies to various places. With the drophole successfully commissioned and days away from first drop, it would soon be time to draw the main craft together again. More than forty docking procedures would be overseen by the Gagarin’s AI computer Yuri, and then the ship would be whole once more.
McBrain felt the calm satisfaction of a job well done, but also the curious fluttering in his stomach at the prospect of another couple of years’ travel to the next proposed location.
Further away, orbiting the site at various points and distances, were the Colonial Marines’ ships. There were always two ships on station with a Titan as standard, providing escorts and protection for the vast drophole-building ships. McBrain had been reminded on countless occasions of the value of his charge, running into billions of credits, and he had always felt comfortable with the military presence.
It was rare that Marines and Titan crews ever crossed paths.
There were isolated cases over the past few decades of Titan ships being attacked by pirates, Yautja, or elements of Red Four when the anti-Weyland-Yutani terrorist group had an active presence across the Rim, but the Gagarin herself had never been subject to an attack or problem requiring military assistance. Any internal problems were dealt with by McBrain and his supporting officers.
He knew that his career had been blessed. He’d heard of other Titan ships being destroyed when their dropholes went into meltdown at initiation, suffering cataclysmic damage from asteroid impacts, becoming infested with exotic vermin, or even being selected as a staging ground for Yautja hunts.
There had been the case of one ship, the Peake, being chased along the Rim by a determined band of pirates, their stolen vessels proving a match for the Colonial Marine escorts. The Titan ship itself was broken down and the constituent parts were used as weapons against the aggressors.
McBrain had read the Peake’s captain’s famous account, A Year of Hell, and although he admired what she and her crew had eventually achieved, he sought no such adventures. The Peake had lost half of its eight-hundred-person crew during that year, and many of those left alive were permanently damaged by the events. They were scientists and spacefarers, not soldiers.
So six Colonial Marine ships patrolled around the Gagarin and Gamma 123. Over the past couple of months there had been reports of Yautja attacks across this sector of the Outer Rim, and the Marines were constantly on a war footing. There had also been a series of attacks within the Human Sphere—sabotage assaults that had resulted in some horrific disasters and loss of life. He was troubled by this, but comforted by the additional security sent their way. The ships cruised anywhere up to ten thousand miles around Gamma 123, and any aggressors entering the region would be dealt with long before they reached the Gagarin.
Beyond the spread of ships and service vessels, the drophole itself presented a vast, awesome spectacle.
McBrain never tired of viewing the end product of their mammoth efforts.
The drophole was a complete circular unit, more than two miles in diameter and comprising fifty thousand tons of diamond-filament compound. The factory that manufactured the compound was one of the Gagarin’s largest units, and he could see the blocky vessel now, seven miles to starboard and buzzing with activity as the decommissioning process was finalized. At its maximum production speed, its output was phenomenal—a thousand tons of the super-hard material spewing from its egress ports each day. The compound was gathered by catcher-ships, then transported to the drophole frame and molded into place.
The drophole glimmered in starlight. Diamond-filament was used because, apart from trimonite, it was the hardest compound known to man. A pleasing side effect of its use was its reflective properties, catching starlight and casting it out again. On rare occasions, and if caught at just the right angle, the entire circular surface of a drophole glowed like a rainbow.
At five locations around the drophole frame were the bulkier containment blocks. These were the real guts of the device. They housed the heavy containment fields behind which science and mystery collided. McBrain had never pretended to truly understand how the dropholes worked. Indeed, he’d heard it said that only a dozen people in the Human Sphere even came close to understanding. What he did know was that the containment fields were the most important aspect of the whole drophole’s construction.
If they failed, the anti-matter they contained would interact with matter, and cause a cataclysmic explosion.
Since the early days of this arcane technology, more than a thousand dropholes had been built and commissioned. Around a hundred had failed to initiate, for reasons that were never quite clear. Scores had ended in tragedy. With the accelerated expansion and ever-growing reach of the Human Sphere, a dozen Titan ships had been lost in the last century alone when the dropholes they were building suffered failure.
It was a risky career.
McBrain comforted himself with the idea that if a containment field ever did fail, on a project he was overseeing, he wouldn’t know anything about it. He and his entire crew would be vaporized before knowing anything was wrong.
“Boss?”
“Eh?”
“Sorry, boss,” Clintock said, “I didn’t realize it was time for your afternoon nap.”
“Smartass.”
Clintock smiled. “I said, we’re ready for the first drop.” He peered out through the viewport. “Another one bites the dust, eh, Nathan?”
“Yeah. We live to build another day.”
They stared at the circular structure in the distance. At present it held nothing within its circumference, and through it they could see stars. But when initiated it would turn dark—black as infinity—and to drop through would be to travel light years.
“Have they told us which will be the first ship to use it?” McBrain asked.
“Not yet,” Clintock said. “Probably a Colonial Marine ship, as usual.”
“And why not,” McBrain said. “They’re here to take the risks.”
“They’re paid a shitload more than us, too.”
“Still saving your credits?”
“Of course. I don’t want to be out here at the ass end of nowhere when I’m your age, boss.” He grinned wryly. “No offense.”
“None taken.” McBrain stood, groaning as his stiff knees clicked, and then the whole bridge was lit up with the soft blue glow of warning lights.
Other crew members sat up, took crossed feet off of their units, put down mugs of drink, and peered intently at their monitors and screens.
A holo screen unfolded from the ceiling and dropped down in front of McBrain’s control suite, and the wide viewing windows around the bridge grew dark.
“What is it?” McBrain asked.
“We’ve got a ship just dropped out of warp nearby,” Ellis said. She was their communications officer, a large, gruff woman who was a pricele
ss part of the team.
McBrain leaned on the back of his seat. Clintock turned off the warning chimes, and the whole bridge went silent. In the holo screen before him, a schematic of their area of space appeared. At first the Gagarin, the drophole, and its attendant ships filled the screen, then they rapidly shrank as the surrounding space was plotted. Gagarin remained at the center, becoming little more than a green dot, gently glowing.
Blue specks circled farther out, indicating the locations of the six Colonial Marine ships. Two of them were already accelerating across the screen toward the upper right corner, and as they went a red dot appeared.
“Ellis?” McBrain asked.
“Hang on, boss,” she said. “I’m getting some info now but it’s… er…”
“Spit it out,” he said, but he already knew the answer. The other crew around the bridge gave her their full attention, anxious to hear what she had to say. McBrain knew what they were thinking.
Yautja? Here?
The marines guarding Gamma 123 had informed him of the ceasefire agreement that had been reached some weeks ago, but that didn’t guarantee that the attacks wouldn’t continue. He knew little of the Yautja, other than what was found in the materials provided by the Company. And that wasn’t much. As a species they were unpredictable, violent, and still mysterious after all this time.
“Right,” Ellis said, breaking the silence. “Well, it’s a big ship, dropped out of warp just over one million miles away. Computer has recognized the ship’s drive trail but… it doesn’t make any sense.”
“What doesn’t?” he asked, frustration giving his voice an edge.
“Boss, it’s a vessel called the Susco-Foley.”
“Never heard of it.”
“I doubt anyone here has. It’s a Fiennes ship, launched from Sol orbit in 2216.”
“A Fiennes ship?” Clintock echoed. “What the hell’s it doing here?”
“Those ships never had warp drives,” someone else said.
“It’s got to be a mistake,” McBrain said. “Yuri, can you confirm?”
The ship’s computer coughed as if to clear its throat, an affectation that McBrain usually found endearing, but which now was annoying.
“Yes, Nathan,” Yuri responded. “Everything indicates the ship is indeed the Susco-Foley, though it appears larger than that original craft, and there are embellishments.”
“Embellishments?”
“The warp wave it threw ahead of its arrival seems to suggest it was traveling at warp-30.”
A gasp went around the bridge.
“Well that is a mistake, then,” McBrain said. “No human ship can travel that fast, much less one that was built four and a half centuries ago.” Even the Arrow-class Excursionist vessels could only hit warp-15.
He watched the big holo screen before him, as the same image was thrown on other screens around the bridge. Four of the six Colonial Marine vessels were heading on an intercept course, closing on the pulsing red dot that moved closer to the Gagarin with every breath.
“Any comms between them and the Marine ships?” he asked.
“Only going one way,” Ellis said. “The Marines are hailing, but there’s no response.”
The four military ships edged closer to the Gagarin, forming a protective shield. They would be ready to lay down staggering firepower if the need arose.
“What the hell is this?” McBrain muttered.
“It’s not Yautja,” Clintock said. “They’ve never been seen in a ship that big.”
“Don’t they steal and modify tech as well as building their own?” Ellis asked.
“I don’t know,” McBrain said. “But it’s nothing to worry about. The Marines have got this.” Watching the blue specks converging ahead of the mysterious new arrival, he only hoped it was true.
A transmission crackled over their loudspeakers.
“Gagarin, this is Blue One. You there, McBrain?”
“I read you, Vicar.” Blue One was the Marines’ command ship, a destroyer captained by a woman he had never met. Upon arrival, Lieutenant Vicar had told him that he and his crew were safe with her, and there had been very little contact since. That was more than four months ago.
“You’ll have seen our new arrival,” the voice continued. “We’re closing, and attempting to make contact.”
“Roger that,” he said. “You know that ship’s nearly five hundred years old, don’t you?”
Vicar didn’t reply for a few seconds.
“That has to be a glitch in our computers.”
“All of them?”
More silence, filled with the white noise of space.
“Stand by,” Vicar said. “Make sure—”
Without warning her voice was cut off. At the same time, one of the blue specks on his holo screen winked out of existence.
“What was that?” McBrain asked, raising his voice without meaning to. “What happened?” His heart was beating faster, not from fear but with uncertainty. He liked to know what was happening. He liked his ducks in a row. “Hello? Lieutenant Vicar?”
“Connection’s failed,” Ellis said. Then she pointed. “Look.”
The second blue dot swerved away from the newly arrived ship. McBrain and everyone else on the bridge saw a dozen smaller red specks separate from the intruder, and give chase.
“More ships?” he asked.
“Think so,” Clintock said. “Nathan, what’s happening?”
“I think we’re watching a battle,” he said. His heart fluttered, and his stomach clenched. “Signal all Gagarin components,” he said. “Tell them to scatter.”
“Really?”
“Really! Are you seeing this?” He pointed at the holo screen. The Marine ship weaved and spun, and three of the pursuing red dots blinked out. The other Marine vessels closed around the drophole and the Gagarin, and formed a protective shield, but he knew their crews would be witnessing the same events. The marines had just seen their commanding officer killed, along with her crew.
“They’re now less than half a million miles away,” Ellis said. “Closing fast.”
The second blue dot disappeared.
“Oh, shit,” someone said. McBrain looked around, catching Clintock’s eye and sharing a worried glance.
“Pirates?” Clintock asked. “Red Four?”
“Red Four have never done anything like this,” someone else on the bridge replied. “No, this is something else.”
More red dots swarmed ahead of the main ship, closing rapidly on the Gagarin.
“Screen view,” McBrain said. The panoramic viewing windows all around the bridge faded from pale to black, speckled with stars and offering a wide field of vision once more, out toward the drophole.
Two of the Colonial Marine ships immediately leapt into view, closing on the drophole and taking positions either side of it.
Of course, McBrain thought. They’d protect that over us. He held no bitterness, because he knew that these troops were following Weyland-Yutani orders. The drophole, now established, was far more important than the men and women who had traveled so far and worked so hard to build it.
To the right of the bridge, in the direction of the approaching ship, there was nothing to see.
“Distance?” he asked.
“Two hundred thousand miles,” Ellis said.
The last two Marine ships were out there, swinging around to intercept the approaching vessel and the smaller ships that had fallen away from it. McBrain thought they must have been fighter craft or drones.
“Everyone to lifeboats,” he said. “Send the signal.”
“But we’re protected!” Clintock said.
“We’ve just seen two of our protectors blown to atoms,” McBrain said. “Send the signal.”
Ellis didn’t question. She broadcast the signal to abandon ship, and Yuri took it up and ensured that it was distributed and heard throughout the Gagarin’s fleet.
McBrain felt sick. His legs were shaking.
Something
an old colleague and lover once said came back to him, as her haunting words had from time to time over the past two decades. Miriam Lane was dead now, killed in a drophole disaster fifty light years around the Sphere. She had always seen their work as pushing frontiers, and one night after a few drinks, lying with her head on McBrain’s chest, she’d waxed philosophical.
“That’s the trouble with what we do,” she’d murmured. “We’re moving so quickly that we don’t appreciate what we’ve passed, and don’t fear what might be ahead. One day something will notice us.”
“We’ve been noticed, Miriam,” he whispered, and then they saw the first of the ships.
It must have been the largest vessel, the one identified rightly or wrongly as the Fiennes ship Susco-Foley. It began as a speck in the void, just another star, but its slight movement set it apart.
It grew.
“You should go,” he said to the others on the bridge, but every man and woman remained there with him, staying at their stations. There was nothing they could do—Titan ships had never been armed, and the Gagarin didn’t even possess any hull shielding—but it was important that the lifeboats, once launched from the components, were tracked and noted. Yuri would do much of that, but his crew felt that they also needed some element of control.
McBrain’s eyes burned, but he did not cry.
One of the two Marine ships beyond the Gagarin, a destroyer, darted out toward the approaching vessels. There was no hailing now, and no hesitation. This was combat.
A dozen smaller craft came into view ahead of the Susco-Foley, twisting and jumping, releasing ordnance that flared and streaked toward the destroyer. Most of it exploded far away, hit by the ship’s defensive lasers, but some got through and exploded close to its hull, sending the Colonial Marine vessel into a spin.