Battlecruiser Alamo: Shadows in the Sky

by Richard Tongue

   “Closing on target,” Harper said. “First good scans of the debris. Interesting.”

   “What?”

   “They lost a battle, Pavel. Signs of attack by a laser cannon. A damned big one, at that.”

   Salazar's face fell, and he said, “Given what we've seen thrown about recently, that's not good news.” He glanced across at the sensor screen, and added, “No sign of activity at the moment, and we haven't picked up any sign of laser emplacements on the surface of the sphere.”

   “You're assuming that we'd recognize them if we saw them.”

   “True.” He tapped another control, slowing the shuttle to match speed with the drifting debris, and said, “Only one way we're going to know for sure. Salazar to Alamo.”

   “Alamo here,” Francis replied. “All sensors clear. Carpenter's gathering all the data she can, and requests permission to commence probe bombardment of the black hole.”

   “Fine,” he said, “but find something else to call it. It sounds more like a planetary assault than a scientific expedition. We're about to head over to Polaris. Have us tracked at all times.”

   “Will do. And Ensign Rhodes is in Shuttle One with a squad in case you run into anything you aren't expecting. Fighter squadron is on standby as well.”

   Frowning, Salazar replied, “Under no circumstances is any aggressive action to be taken unless I give personal authorization. We've just found evidence that Monitor was destroyed by laser bombardment, and I have a feeling that Alamo wouldn't last for a second if someone decided that we posed a threat. Maintain passive stance, and if attacked, run for the outer belt.”

   “It'd take months to get to another hendecaspace point in normal space.”

   “Better delayed than dead, Max,” he replied, rising from his couch, reaching into the compartment over his head for his suit. “We're about to head over. If anything happens out there, no matter how insignificant, I want to know immediately. Understood?”

   “Aye, sir,” he said. “We've got your back.”

   Salazar locked his helmet into position, and grabbed the portable generator before running his eyes over Harper, doing a visual check of the integrity of her suit while she returned the favor. At a thumbs'-up, he turned to the airlock, tapping the controls to cycle him through the double hatches, sending him drifting out into free space, leaving the shuttle behind. Harper followed a moment later, grimacing.

   “I still hate these things,” she said.

   “After all this time, you haven't got used to a spacesuit yet?”

   “Don't worry, I'm fine, I'd just be happier with a nice solid hull between me and instant death.” She tapped her thruster controls, moving towards the largest piece of debris, a sealed hatch facing them. “Cold, space cold, and no sign of outgassing. I guess there's no danger that somebody has survived in this mess.”

   “They'd have found a way to signal us if they had,” Salazar replied, carefully following, tapping a lateral thruster to send him clear of a piece of tumbling debris. “It doesn't look as though there's going to be much to salvage. Certainly no signs of power.”

   “I just hope the holographic memory survived. At the very least we ought to be able to get a look at the command logs. See if there's any sort of a message.” She pushed over to the hatch, wiping the control surface clear of dust with a wipe of her glove, and tapped the controls. “Nothing. No real surprise. Plug in the jenny, and we'll see what we can do.”

   Nodding, Salazar reached down to the kit, fumbling with the cable as he rammed it home. Instantly, lights flashed on the panel, a tidal wave of red flickering on the display. Harper tapped the controls twice to clear the alerts, then entered an override code to open the door. Salazar braced for a release of air, but it never came, and he ducked inside, his eyes widening as a figure floated out towards him, a tumbling, desiccated corpse, wearing a Triplanetary uniform.

   “Spaceman First Class Stewart,” Harper said, running her datapad over the man's face. “Shuttle technician. I'll tag the body for retrieval.”

   “Why?” Salazar asked.

   “Burial.”

   “We'll say words for him, Kris, but there's nothing we can do for him that hasn't already been done. Let him rest with his ship and his comrades. That's what I'd want in his place, and I suspect you'd feel the same way.” Reaching out, he carefully tugged the corpse back, wrapping a strap around its wrist to secure him to the airlock. “We'll make sure he's tucked back in when we leave. Rest in peace, Spaceman.” He gently slid through the hatch into the corridor beyond, shining his helmet torch over the burned and blackened walls.

   “They really did a number on her, didn't they,” Harper said with a sigh. “She was something pretty special.” She paused, shining her touch on a control surface, and said, “That's strange.”

   “What?”

   “Those panels were new. Holographic projectors for the corridor, designed to overlay schematics and for specific damage reports. Some real high-tech, and they just left it there.”

   “Kris, we're floating a quarter of a million miles from a Dyson Sphere. This probably looks like a flint knife to them.” He looked again, then said, “No, wait a minute. I get it. They'd want to establish a technological baseline, work out what they had to deal with.”

   “Unless they never made it out here. This hasn't been touched.” Turning to him, she said, “I'm more and more convinced that we're looking at some sort of automated system, Pavel. I don't think there is any supervision, or we'd have been contacted, or destroyed, long since.” Gesturing down the corridor, she continued, “If I remember the layout, one of the Auxiliary Control bunkers is that way.”

   “One of them?”

   “There were two. At opposite ends of the ship. And theoretically, almost any room could be used as one with a few minutes to prepare. A completely distributed command network. I told you this ship was state of the art.” Swinging over a collection of tangled cables, floating limply from the wall, she ducked through a shattered hatch, into the empty space beyond. “Notice anything else?”

   “No other bodies.” Sliding to the wall, Salazar pulled open a panel, and said, “Escape pod is still in place. They must have pulled out in the shuttles. Or someone took them.” Flicking a control on his wrist, he said, “Salazar to Alamo. Any change out there?”

   “Nothing, Captain,” Francis replied. “Screens are still clear. At least for the moment, we're all alone out here. Aside from the obvious, of course.”

   “Here it is,” Harper said. “Internal network's still working. I can feed power through from the generator outside. Wait one.” She tapped a dusty control, and the ceiling lights flickered into life, stark white illuminating the room. One by one, the consoles started up, all of them reporting the disaster that had overwhelmed the ship, emergency alerts flashing on the monitors, red lights everywhere. Salazar pushed over to the helm, working the controls.

   “Someone tried evasive action,” he said. “Last course change entered in put the ship on random walk. Time index reads a hundred and one days, nine hours, and an odd number of minutes ago. They've been here for quite a while.” He frowned, nodded, then said, “If they didn't tarry in any of the other systems, that means they were here for a couple of weeks before whatever happened, happened.”

   “Long enough to give us an element of reassurance,” Harper replied. “Wait one, I think I'm getting somewhere. There's a lot of degraded data, but I think I can push through to the backups.”

   “Short-range communications are working. Alamo, this is Salazar. Stand by to accept a data dump from Monitor, fed in through the transfer shuttle. Dump it into an isolated database until the hacking team can take a good look at it, just in case any infection's crept into the systems. I don't want any risk of Alamo getting contaminated.”

   “Understood,” Francis said. “We're ready to go when you are.”

   “Beginning transfer,” H
arper replied. “Should be enough in the generator to complete the upload, but it's all so scrambled that it could take weeks to work through it.”

   “Weeks?”

   “Combination of degraded data and tough encryption. I'm going to have a hard time putting this all back together again, but I'll get there. I see a lot of very late nights ahead for the security team.” Tapping in a control sequence, she said, “I can call up a few of the last command logs now. Active in the system. We're missing most of them, but some of them are accessible.”

   “Do it,” Salazar said. “Feed it into our helmet pickups. I think we're safe enough here for the present. There's still no sign of activity anywhere else on the ship, and we've made our presence clear enough that any theoretical intruders would already have come looking.”

   “Here we go,” she said, and the face of Captain Margaret Orlova appeared on his heads-up display, sitting behind a desk in an unfamiliar office.

   “It has been a week since we were thrown through the wormhole,” Orlova began, “and our science team has conclusively determined that there is no way back from our current location. Examination of the ruins on the surface has given us a few leads, but Lieutenant Riley has noticed an anomaly six jumps from here, a black hole that appears to be orbiting some sort of large-mass body. Our best guess is that this represents some sort of macro-engineering project, and given that the same level of technology would be required to build a wormhole network, I am proceeding directly to that location at full speed. If we fail to find anything useful, we can always double back. End Monitor Log Nine-Seven-Six.”

   “I'll be damned,” Salazar said. “They jumped right to it.”

   “Monitor had a brand new sensor package,” Harper replied. “Better than ours, especially at long ranges. She was designed for operations out on the Frontier.”

   “Any more?”

   “Two more. Number Two coming up now.”

   This time Orlova looked harried, her hair disheveled, and the previously pristine office was a wreck. A half-empty cup of coffee sat in front of her, next to a scattered collection of datapads. Instead of opening at the beginning of the log, this time they were cutting in well into it.

   “...attack knocked out our main reactor and the secondary laser array. We've got clear for the moment, but I'm not convinced that we can stay out of range for any length of time. Still no contact with our team inside the Sphere, but I don't know how much longer that will matter. Repairs to the hendecaspace drive are proceeding, and Lieutenant Lieu is confident that we can leave the system in a matter of days. Assuming nothing else goes wrong. End Monitor Log Nine-Nine-Four.”

   “Then they were attacked,” Salazar said. “Though if it had been one of the gigawatt lasers we saw, I find it hard to believe that there would be any wreckage left for us to find.”

   “Perhaps they have other defensive systems, or maybe they were deliberately pulling their punches. There's a chance they wanted prisoners.”

   Frowning, Salazar said, “It sounds like they already had them. Play the last one.”

   “It is the last one, by time index,” Harper said. “I'm fairly certain about that.”

   This time Orlova was half-wearing a spacesuit, and klaxons were sounding in the background, the unmistakable whine of a decompression alarm. There was no doubt that Monitor had been on the brink of disaster when the log was recorded. One look at Orlova's face said that.

   “Final entry. The last attack crippled us, and they're coming around for another pass. We are forced to abandon Monitor and seek sanctuary on the surface. Still no contact with the first landing parties, but at this point, we don't have a choice. If anyone gets this message and understands it, please contact Triplanetary Fleet Command if you can. Our landing coordinates are enclosed, if whoever finds us has the ability to attempt a rescue. End Monitor Log, Nine-Nine-Nine.”

   “Didn't even make the thousand,” Salazar said. “Do you have the figures, Kris?”

   Nodding, she said, “Down to within a mile, I think. At least that's a reasonable area to search.” Looking across at him, she said, “We know that a team from Monitor made it down there.”

   “And we also know that they didn't make it back.”

   “Pavel, we've gone this far. You know that we've got to take a look for ourselves. Otherwise all of this was for nothing.” She pulled out her datapad, and added, “That landing spot is less than half a million miles away. A few hours' flight on a shuttle if we leave now. I can't see any reason to wait any longer, especially not if there might be hostile ships in-system.”

   “We haven't detected anything,” he replied, but then nodded. “One shuttle, and we keep the landing team tight. I guess it's time to let Clarke go for a walk. I just hope we're doing the right thing.” Tapping a control again, he said, “Salazar to Alamo. Prepare Shuttle Two for immediate launch, and put Sub-Lieutenant Clarke on the line. We're going in.”

  Chapter 6

   Clarke looked out of the viewport at the sphere, the shuttle slowly curving down towards the surface, the pilot cautiously covering the remaining distance. At every moment over the last five hours, he'd been waiting for something to leap out at them, or for Alamo to issue a last-minute recall. Now, they were only a few moments from landing, potentially from reaching the inside of the sphere itself.

   Everyone on the shuttle was a volunteer, though it was a team he'd have happily picked for himself if necessary. Mortimer as second officer, Fox as bodyguard, Garland as paramedic. With Koslowski flying them in, though the mission profile was quite clear that she should remain in the cockpit at all times.

   “Suits on, everyone,” Koslowski said, her voice echoing from the speakers. “We'll be landing in two minutes. I'm still looking for the airlock. Can't see anything yet.”

   “You aren't thinking big enough,” Mortimer said, eyes wide. “I'm looking at it right now.”

   “Where?”

   “That target wasn't somewhere within a mile. That's the size of the airlock.”

   Clarke looked out of his viewport, and after a moment to adjust his sense of scale, he saw it. A long crack running down the structure, with the faint outline of a hexagonal hatch. The builders of this sphere had thought on a massive scale, and that this was probably only one of a large number of similar structures filled him with a sense of astonishment.

   “Hold on!” Fox said, and Clarke grabbed for a handhold just as weight abruptly returned, the shuttle's engine faltering for a moment before roaring to full power, landing jets struggling to keep them stable. “Should have thought of that sooner. We're in an artificial gravity field.”

   “I still say that just isn't possible,” Garland replied.

   “Better tell that to the people who built the sphere,” Clarke said. “Midshipman, how are we doing? Can you adjust to the increased gravity?”

   “That's affirmative,” she replied. “Not a problem. Lieutenant Lombardo was expecting this, and we loaded up with plenty of additional fuel. There's a flat area just ahead, clear of the airlock. I'm taking her down there.” She paused, and added, “And I'm not the first one to spot it. I can make out a beacon, and it looks suspiciously like one of ours. Triplanetary design.”

   “I see it,” Garland said, gesturing out of the window. “And for the record, people, this is Point Nine G. Not quite Earth, but close enough that anyone living here wouldn't need any medical help. Adaptation would be easy.”

   “Let's hope that isn't information we need for a long time,” Mortimer said, tugging on her helmet. “Anyone got any ideas about how we're going to crack that airlock open. Monitor didn't exactly leave us an instruction manual.”

   “They figured it out,” Clarke replied. “If they did, we can. And they'll have probably left a few clues around for us to find if we're careful. On that topic, nobody touches anything until we've had a proper analysis. And don't make any threatening moves, not at all. We don't ha
ve any idea who might be watching us.”

   “You too?” Mortimer asked. “I've felt like there's someone peering over our shoulder since we came onto final approach.”

   “Final burn!” Koslowski said. “That's it. Touchdown. We're on the surface. I don't believe it. We actually made it.”

   “Don't sound so shocked,” Clarke replied, moving over to the airlock. “Sensors on, people, and full transmit back to Alamo.” He tapped a control, then said, “Shuttle Two to Alamo Actual. We're about to step out onto the surface. Awaiting final authorization.”

   “Shuttle Two, you are Go for EVA,” Salazar replied. “I think everyone on board is watching you. Not to add to the pressure, or anything like that. Just thought you'd like to know.”

   “Thank you, sir,” Clarke said with a smile. “Cracking inner hatch now.” He stepped inside, Fox next to him, and waited for the air to be withdrawn from the small room. He peered out of the small window in the outer door, looking at the endless surface reaching out for what appeared to be an eternity in every direction.

   Finally, the hatch slid open, the faintest puff of air leaking out into space, and he took his first step out onto the surface. Whatever he had thought it would feel like, he'd been wrong. He couldn't quite reach the ground, something repelling him away, and the effect was as though he was sliding on an endless plain of ice. Careful not to press against the shuttle, he took an uncertain step forward, and almost went flying before Fox grabbed him by the belt, her thruster pack firing to lock her in place.

   “Strange stuff, sir,” she said. “Never seen anything like it.”

   “Yeah,” he replied, turning to her with a smile. “Thanks.”

   “I was expecting it. You've got a habit of leaping before you look.”

   “Saves time,” he said with a grin, before turning back to the hatch. “Let's make our way over to the beacon first. If there's any message left for us, that's where we'll find it.” He reached down with a toolkit, ready to get a sample of the hull, but the blade bounced away just as his boot had. “We're not going to be able to get anything for analysis, Alamo. At least, not from the outside.”