Cyborg (The Deep Wide Black Book 1)

by JCH Rigby

  “Besides,” Piet went on, “there’s eleven of them. It took us years to build one. Do you think another company’s gotten so far ahead of us they’ve made eleven ships and sent them here, and we had no idea? Even if it were possible, it could only be ARTOK, and they’re nowhere close.”

  Greta was forced to reluctantly agree with his conclusion. “Okay. Forget other companies. What about the Chinese? The Luniks and L5? The Caliphate?”

  “Nope. Chinese? Not their style. They’re still going bankrupt running old stuff around Earth-Moon-Mars. After the way their economy’s gone since the war, they can’t afford to maintain what they have never mind do this. Luniks and L5? No way. Don’t make me laugh. They’re all so English. They can’t make up their own minds about anything. They’re too busy drinking tea, probably.”

  Piet’s voice was slowly rising in pitch; this really mattered to him. He was scared, and he wanted to be gone. “And if it’s the Caliphate, well—they might have kept it secret, though I doubt it, but we’d still have seen them launch. Like I say, you can’t hide it. No, this is alien, Greta, it has to be. Let’s get out of here fast.”

  It mattered to her as well, and she was scared, too. But she’d already decided on a different course of action than that suggested by the scientist. “No Piet. We can’t do that. If you’re right, and they’re alien, then we’ve got to get a better look at them. If you’re wrong, and they’re human, then we’ve got serious competition we didn’t know about. Same answer: we need to go see them.”

  Piet spun and pointed at the image of the eleven vast ships hanging serenely in space before them. “No. No. We need to leave now! Before they spot us.” Greta sensed that Piet was on the verge of losing it but the scientist was not finished pleading his case yet.

  “Maybe they are friendly. Maybe it’s an interplanetary flying circus, or a scrapyard for starships, or maybe it’s the start line of a round-the-gas-giant race. You’re the one in command but that looks a hell of a lot like a battle formation to me and we could just as well have arrived in their territorial water right in the middle of a war.” Piet’s voice dropped to a pleading whisper. “There are twenty-three lives on board this thing—and we owe it to the company to reach home safely. Come on, Greta, let’s get moving. Please.”

  Silence descended upon the cramped bridge. Piet floated in place, hand firmly grasping a wall bracket while Greta sat securely strapped into her command chair. The other members of the bridge crew who had witnessed the exchange between their commander and the missions lead scientist were conspicuously keeping their opinions to themselves, eyes fixed on their consoles. Greta realized that this was one of those make or break situations that her instructors at command school had warned her she would have to face one day. Her command of the mission was being challenged, intentionally or not, and she needed to deal with it. Piet had lots of pull amongst the higher echelons of NipponDeutsch which meant she had to be careful how she proceeded. In her progenitor Emil’s day Piet would probably have been shot him by now. Not today though. Greta took a deep breath, keeping her voice soft and consolatory.

  “Piet, don’t you see? That’s the whole reason we have to get a look at them. You said it yourself: We don’t even know what ARTOK’s up to, or if anyone else has faster-than-light. If we don’t know what our own species can do—there, I’ve said it again—how the hell can we run away not knowing anything about these people? If they’re hostile, then we need to know as much about them as possible.

  “I don’t want to roar off out of here and lead them straight back home—maybe they can follow the smear better than we can, and, if they’re potentially friendly, then meeting them just when we’ve found out how to do FTL could be the human race’s biggest ever opportunity.”

  Despite himself, the logic of Greta’s argument was undeniable. Piet nodded his head in agreement.

  Greta did her best to keep the sound of triumph from her voice. “Call the team heads to a meeting in ten minutes. We need to know the best way of doing this.”

  “The best way is not at all. You’re the boss, Greta.” Whatever victory she may have thought she had won was short lived as Piet finished his sentence. “But know I’m protesting this. You’re recklessly endangering a unique and priceless machine, and all our lives. If we live through this I’ll see you broken, never mind how far back we go.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  No Discernible Signals

  Sunday, June 12th

  After two days of acceleration and two of braking Amaterasu was within touching distance of the alien fleet. Richter had only just gotten hold of himself, and his queasy stomach before he found himself being strapped into an EVA suit by a woman from the tech team while struggling to hear what Gerhard Krause was saying. The sergeant’s voice kept rising and falling as the tech fiddled with Richter’s helmet, now coming to him through the speakers, now competing with the background noise of the starship’s countless systems. Erich Pedersen, the third trooper on board, sat fully suited up and waiting for pressure checks to complete, seemingly impassive.

  Eventually the tech stopped messing with Richter’s helmet and he could hear Krause clearly. “We’re going to take the EVA work sled as well, so if the lander can’t close on whatever they use for docking we’ll still have another option for linking up with them.”

  The sergeant’s words were cut off abruptly, replaced by the amplified voice of Commander Greta Wiedemann as she addressed the ship. “Now listen in. We’re now satisfied the ships are abandoned. We’re receiving no discernible signals on any frequency and have detected no power emanations. Meeting for team heads in five minutes.”

  Krause swiftly stepped back out of his suit and headed for the door. The meeting didn’t seem to require Richter, so he carried on with his final suit tests under the watchful eyes of the tech. Richter’s tech was well practiced and ran through the final checks smoothly but thoroughly. Air packs, carbon dioxide filters, vision systems and a second comms check. Richter waited patiently as the tech did his thing. The other member of the team, Erich Pederson, an original member of Krause’s team was finishing up his own checks when Krause returned

  “They’ve decided. There’s absolutely no sign of life on any of the ships. No course changes, no emissions, no heat, no signals. They don’t respond to a thing we do.” Krause gave his team a wry smile. “Except one which is giving off intermittent heat variations. The scientists reckon it might be sensor ghosts, but they are not willing to bet on it.” Richter was getting that sinking feeling.

  “The commander and Roorback are arguing about the next step, but I reckon she’s going to settle for moving the ship closer and holding there while we go take a look in the lander. I’ve suggested a maximum of two hours traveling time for the lander. That should give the ship plenty of warning time if it all goes wrong while we are doing our thing.”

  “The ship showing signs of activity is where we’re going, guys.” Krause had that smile on his face again. “It’s got a minute temperature variation from the others, but that’s all. We’ll try to dock with the sled, make entry and do our best to look harmless if there’s anyone on board. If the ship is abandoned then it’s a matter of looking around, learning whatever we can for not more than an hour, then extracting.”

  Richter liked the sound of Krause’s plan. A simple in and out. What could go wrong? So why was his sixth sense tickling the back of his neck. He shook it off

  “We’re taking in Lisl Reichmann and Max Baum from Engineering.” Not Baum thought Richter. Baum had been one of the jokers who had attempted to make fun of the troopers when they had boarded the Amaterasu. “Another team, under the Engineering top guy, Felix, will head for one of the other ships once they see how we get on. They’ll use the same technique, assuming we make it back okay.” Brilliant. Stick your head up, Leon, and try to draw some fire. Let’s see what the enemy does.

  “I’ll give more details when we brief with the other two. Erich, you’l
l be staying with the lander and standing off around 100 klicks out. If we need you, come running. If anything deeply weird happens, get out and keep going. I don’t want the Amaterasu left without somebody capable on board.” Krause looked at both of us as we nodded in acknowledgement. Satisfied he began to don his own EVA suit.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Battle Damage

  Monday, June 13th

  Not steel, then. The magnetic strips in Richter’s boots weren’t making any difference, so he turned them off. No knowing what sort of problems stray magnetism might cause deciding to rely on his EVA packs maneuvering jets and simple tethers to move around or hold position.

  The gas giant loomed massively to his front, ready to crush him, filling half the sky. Red, orange, blue, and brown clouds the size of moons raced wildly across its surface. The sled was nose-down to the planet and the alien ship, but here on the hull he felt as though he was on his back, lying down beneath a monstrous descending club. Skimming sideways across the gas giant’s magnetosphere during their approach in the lander, they’d been hoping their minimal emissions wouldn’t attract any attention from the aliens in the fury of this electronic storm.

  So here he was, hanging from the door knocker of an alien spaceship which might be unoccupied, but which much more probably was the home of a few hundred deeply pissed-off bug-eyed monsters whose beauty sleep he’d disturbed. Never mind the EVA suit; he knew he could smell his own sweat.

  Weapon up in his shoulder, Richter scanned left and right. All his experience and training told him to watch for danger in the strange and different, but not take the familiar for granted. Here, where did you start?

  The hull was all shapes and none, cubes and cylinders and cones wrapped around an egg-shaped core which stretched for hundreds of meters along its major axis. A few years back he’d seen one of the slow-liners, the cold-sleep colony ships, under construction in orbit above Luna. It was said they were the biggest machines ever built. This dwarfed it; and there were another ten of them sitting quite as a graveyard nearby.

  Massive tubular bulges ran in all directions along the hull’s surface. Big as it was, he could hardly make it out in the darkness. Off in the distance, odd shapes stretched onwards in the faint glow of light reflected from the gas giant.

  Well, if it wasn’t steel, what the hell was it? The hull surface felt-odd. Richter mentally berated himself. What else would it be? This was alien . The hull felt strangely soft underfoot, even given the absence of gravity, even through the bloody awful military EVA nano-boots whose grip without the magnets was absolutely rubbish compared to a regular climbing pair.

  Richter’s suit jets constantly fired tiny bursts to hold him down onto the hull, and it seemed as if his feet sank fractionally into the hull each time. He flicked a smart tether from his wrist around a piece of maybe-pipework giving himself a temporary hold. The smart tether would rewind on command, wouldn’t it, even here? Never mind what the hull’s made of; leave that to the techs.

  Krause waved at him from around twenty meters away. Richter turned so they faced each other directly, and the link-up light on Krause’s helmet glowed red in the darkness. His helmet vibrated momentarily, before fading; icons flickered in his head-up display. The senders would track each other, so long as they stayed in line of sight providing a voice net; secure, stealthy, with no stray emissions that anyone could eavesdrop on.

  “All quiet here, Richter. You good?”

  Richter was pressed into the side of a boxy structure around five meters high, studded with gridded panels, weird pipework and a pattern of swirling oily plates which made his eyes itch whenever he looked at them. He glanced around quickly. Despite the thick EVA suit, he could feel his heart thudding so hard in his chest Krause could probably see it from where he was.

  “Yeah, I’m good. Nothing moving, no activity at all. Bring ’em in.”

  While Krause got the reluctant Reichmann and Baum moving out of the sled, Richter peered very cautiously out from his cover and scanned about for ideas. Erich Pederson had piloted the lander to a point roughly midway along the hull, dropping the sled off before boosting away to a point well clear of the alien ship where he would wait for the signal to come in and recover the rest of the team.

  Richter continued his survey of his surroundings and his eyes lit on an aberration familiar to any soldier. “Krause. Look at this!” Shit. He can’t hear you, fool. Get him in line of sight . The box thing was between them. Richter moved until the signal light glowed again. They’d need to use the rebroadcast units to bounce the transmissions around corners. “Krause over here! Where I’m pointing. I don’t care how alien this thing is. This is battle damage.”

  The other three headed toward him, with varying amounts of coordination. Richter noticing, the woman Reichmann was embarrassingly good at the awkward business of zero-gravity movement in her borrowed nano-boots. They took up their own holds around him; Krause plainly irritated when he had to show Baum the helmet comms system again.

  “What have you got, Richter?” Demanded Krause, eyes continually in motion as he searched for threats. He wouldn’t want to keep them all close together any longer than necessary. Four people, one target. Bad idea.

  “Look here.” Richter pointed down at the hull. An irregular cavity in the craft’s skin, perhaps half a meter across, a ragged wound in the smooth flank. Under the narrow beam of his helmet light, the undamaged parts of the hull shone a silvery-white color. But here, a sunburst pattern of bronze and gold cracks radiated out from a scorched abrasion. Long fissures ran on for five meters or more across the surface.

  “This has to have been an impact weapon of some sort.”

  Lisl Reichmann surprised Richter by reacting first. She bent down on one knee, moving an instrument back and forth across the gouge. Max Baum stood frozen in place like he could not comprehend what he was seeing. Richter could sense his fear.

  Krause untethered and moved away from the group. Richter watched approvingly as the sergeant took up a fresh position, weapon up, looking along the hull toward what they’d provisionally designated as the stern. In each direction Richter looked, the other alien ships hung there; silent, enigmatic, exciting, terrifying.

  Richter turned his attention back to the crouched Lisl, who seemed deep in consultation with a suddenly more animated Max, helmets together. After a moment, she straightened up and spoke. “There’s a very marginal heat gradient here, barely a tenth of degree or so above the rest of the skin. That’s slightly warm itself, perhaps because of sunlight reflected from the planet. But, yes, something happened here, perhaps a long time back, perhaps not. Depends on the thermal characteristics of the hull material.” Her voice quivered slightly, a sign of her nervousness? Richter wasn’t the only one apprehensive

  Krause cut in. “Right. This changes things. We’ve got signs of combat, recent or not, so from now on Lisl, Max, do exactly what you’re told. We stick with the brief for the moment. We look for a way in, or any sign of occupation, learn what we can in a maximum of sixty minutes on board, then pull out. We’re nineteen minutes gone, forty-one left. Twenty each way. Set your clocks, if you haven’t already done so.

  “I’ve been looking, and there’re no other impact marks I can see around here. I don’t think you’d kill a ship like this with one hit, so there’s probably going to be more.

  “They’ve got to be in the same plane, if they’re from some kind of kinetic weapon. The kill site might give us a way in. The cavity looks like whatever it was hit at an angle, so we’re going to track in this direction.” Krause indicated a line from the cavity around the hull perimeter.

  “Richter leads, followed by Lisl, then me, and finally Max. We move as we rehearsed back on the Amaterasu . Focus, everyone. No one’s ever done this before.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The Psycho Drive

  Monday, June 13th

  The supposed kill-site was a gaping void in the ship’s hu
ll. Krause had been spot-on: they found it exactly on the line he predicted. It spanned ten meters of the hull’s broad curve, and the wound gave them a clear view of the vessel’s construction.

  It also convinced Richter he’d been right: this had been a ship-killing blow. Below a thick homogeneous epidermal layer, bronze-colored structural components were revealed, similarly stretched and torn. Something catastrophic happened here.

  When they reached the crater, Richter found himself a fire position giving a little cover, and squatted down with his back to the hole. The other three would concentrate on finding a way down into the ship while he watch their backs. Was anyone watching this? Deep inside the ship was a set of alien eyes observing their every move? He felt ridiculously vulnerable turning his back on an access route into the alien vessel. The skin on his back crawled. Who knew what lay within?

  “We can do this. There’s definitely enough room to get through, and I can make out what looks like a deck down there.” Came the voice of Max Baum over the comms. Richter was surprised by the sudden interest in his voice. Perhaps the engineer had been seduced by the thrill of the unknown technology they would find.

  Krause liked what he heard. “Listen, everyone. This is how we do it. I’m going in first, then Lisl, then Max. We’ll use the EVA jets because I don’t want anyone to stand on anything until we’ve had a good look at it, and we might need to move quickly, oriented face-down relative to how we are now. That way we’ll have the clearest view of what there is, because we’ll be going in forwards, not feet-first. Lisl, place a rebroadcast sender every time we change direction, so we can keep comms open to Richter. If we meet anything, no one fires unless we’re being fired at.