Her Brother's Keeper

by Mike Kupari

  “Captain, we’re ready for liftoff!”

  “Colin, punch it!” Catherine said. Her pilot pushed the throttle up. The four engines roared to life, sending a cloud of dust and smoke across the spaceport, followed by the heat of the exhaust.

  The rocket launcher, the militiamen, and the not-fully-retracted landing tower were all blasted by the exhaust of the ship. The ship rumbled off of the ground, vibrating as it slowly accelerated. At two thousand meters, Colin throttled up, and Catherine was mashed into her chair as the ship made for the safety of orbit. Lang’s ranting transmission faded to static as the Andromeda left Zanzibar behind.

  * * *

  Never in all her years as a spacer had Catherine been so relieved to make it into space. The brown sphere of Zanzibar was far below the ship now, and though she was still under multi-G acceleration, Catherine was at ease for the first time since this journey had begun.

  Wolfram sent her a private text message. Congratulations, Kapitänin, he said. You’ve done it. Mission accomplished.

  Catherine smiled. I couldn’t have done it without you, she wrote back. When we get back to Heinlein, I want the whole crew to take some well-deserved vacation. We’ll stay planeted for a few months this time. We’ve earned enough money on this run that we can afford it.

  The ship will need a refit anyway, Wolfram pointed out.

  I know you had your doubts about this mission, Wolfram. So did I. Thank you for expressing them, and thank you for backing me up when I made my decision.

  There is no need to thank me for doing my job, Kapitänin. This what an executive officer does. It is I who owes you a great deal. You know what happened to my career with the Fleet.

  Catherine was well aware of it. A substance abuse problem, an addiction to stims, had cost Wolfram a promising career in the Concordiat Defense Force. It was unusual of him to talk about it.

  You gave me a second chance. For that, I am forever in your debt, and you will always be my Kapitänin.

  Catherine could not help but smile, mashed into her acceleration chair though she was.

  “Captain?” Luis Azevedo said, getting Catherine’s attention. He sounded concerned.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Ma’am, I’ve got an unidentified contact bearing down on us. They just came over the planetary horizon. I’ll send it to your screen.”

  A moment later, a projection of the orbital system of Zanzibar appeared on one of Catherine’s displays. It showed the Andromeda and her trajectory to the jump point. Coming from the other side of Zanzibar was the bogey Azevedo was talking about. Whatever it was, it was big. Its exhaust signature indicated that it was a small capital ship of some sort. Catherine’s heart dropped into her stomach.

  “Captain!” Azevedo exclaimed. “Telemetry says it’s a Conan-Delta class cruiser. Orlov Combine fleet! It’s on an intercept course, and we’re being targeted! Incoming transmission!”

  Catherine, for a very brief moment, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. “Play it.”

  A Combine fleet officer appeared on her screen, looking pale and barely human. “Pirate ship Andromeda, this is Cruiser-Two-Four-Seven of the People’s Combined Collective. You are wanted for collusion with anticitizen militants, kidnapping, bribery, and the destruction of a peaceful space station. Power down your engines and stand by to be boarded.”

  “That’ll be the day,” Catherine said firmly. “Luis, send a reply, tell them to piss off. Sound general quarters.” She touched the intercom control. “Attention all hands, this is the captain speaking. Battle stations, battle stations, this is not a drill. We’ve got an incoming bandit from the Orlov Combine, looks like a light cruiser. All personnel suit up as quickly as possible. Damage control parties stand by. That is all.”

  Wolfram von Spandau appeared on her screen from his station below decks. “What are your orders?”

  “We can’t outrun them,” she said, “and I don’t want to leave them here to blast Sanctuary from orbit in any case. Colin, turn us around. Get me weapons lock. Target their propulsion system first. Retract the radiators. Engage ECM. I want a high speed pass, throwing everything we have at them.”

  “It’s risky, Kapitänin,” her exec said.

  “We’re not going to survive a long-range slug-match with that cruiser,” Catherine said. “Colin, bring us right down their throats! Fire everything we have, then get us below the planetary horizon again!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the pilot said, as the two officers on the command deck began targeting and electronic defenses. “Stand by for maneuvers!”

  Nattaya Tantirangsi reported from her station. “Skipper, we’re being scanned. She’s locked on! Missile launch! Volley Alpha, six warheads, closing fast!”

  “Targeting!” Azevedo said.

  Catherine grimaced. “Engage ECM. Nuchy, empty the missile racks, rapid fire! Luis, shoot down the incoming! Target their propulsion system with the gauss gun and fire at will!”

  “Splash one!” Azevedo cried. “Splash two!”

  “Firing!” Nattaya said. “Missiles away!” The Andromeda ripple-fired her two rotary missile launchers. Ten missiles all screamed toward the Combine cruiser. “Our racks are depleted!”

  “I know. When we get to knife-fight range, divert lasers to targeting the enemy ship. We’re only going to get one pass. We won’t have time to reload the magazines.”

  “Hang on!” Colin said, grunting as G-forces crushed him into his seat. The two ships, the seventy-meter-long Andromeda and the hundred and twenty-meter-long Combine cruiser, closed on each other in silence, at a blistering speed.

  “Another volley inbound!” Azevedo said. “Six more missiles, Salvo-Bravo!”

  “Target with lasers and engage, fire at will!”

  Nuchy cried out excitedly. “Skipper! Two of our gauss slugs got through! Bandit is damaged! Her acceleration is dropping rapidly!”

  “Excellent, keep up the—”

  “Third volley inbound, Salvo-Charlie! Jesus, eight missiles!”

  “Remain calm, Mr. Azevedo,” Catherine warned. “Divert the gauss gun to targeting the incoming warheads. Don’t let anything get through! Keep firing our missiles! Deploy all countermeasures, and try to fry the missiles’ targeting with our radar! Now, people!”

  Luis and Nuchy focused on their duties, mashed into their chairs by the acceleration, their hands nonetheless flying across their consoles. The missiles were destroyed, spoofed, or lost their lock, one after another. One of the Combine missiles, however, had a surprise. It missed on the first past, flipped around to pursue the Andromeda from behind. “Skipper!” Nuchy said. “Missile on our six! It was hidden behind our exhaust plume!”

  “Shoot it down!” Catherine ordered. It was too late. The ship shuddered violently, a sickening groan of twisting metal echoing through her corridors.

  “We’re hit!” Nuchy said. An alarm sounded and warnings lit up her screens.

  “No detonation!” Luis added. “It’s a dud.”

  Wolfram von Spandau appeared on her screen. “Kapitänin, I will go assess the damage.”

  “We’re still under acceleration!” Catherine said. The ship was accelerating at four times the force of gravity. “We’re about to make the pass! Target the bandit with everything we have left! Fire at will!” Zanzibar hung far below them as the two ships passed each other in a flash, exchanging fire and carving into each other with lasers. After the pass, the Andromeda kept going, racing to put Zanzibar between itself and the Combine ship. Klaxons and alarms screamed throughout the ship as weapons continued to fire. She’d been hit, but damage control parties couldn’t begin their work until she stopped maneuvering. Until the fight was over, Catherine didn’t even know how bad the damage was.

  A few agonizing seconds later, the impossible happened: the Combine cruiser, trailing atmosphere and no longer accelerating, began to break up. She then vanished in a flash as her reactor exploded.

  “Captain,” Nuchy said, almost in shock, “w
e . . . splash one bandit. We did it.”

  “Congratulations, ma’am,” Luis Azevedo said, breathing heavily.

  A cheer echoed throughout the ship. Crewmembers banged on bulkheads and shouted victoriously as they learned of the cruiser’s destruction. Just like that, it was over. Space combat tended to be a long, slow-paced affair, and it was very rare that ships could surprise each other at such close range. But when it did happen, combat tended to be short and violent. Whoever got the first good hit usually won, and somehow, the Andromeda had gotten lucky and scored a critical hit on the Combine cruiser.

  “Wolfram, give me a damage report,” Catherine said. Her screens were lit up with red, but her exec was below decks and would have a better assessment.

  There was no response.

  “Wolfram, this is the captain, damage report!” Catherine was unable to hide the concern in her voice.

  There was no response for a long moment. Then, “Captain, this is Tech Oswald. The first officer is dead. We’ve got a hull breach. Looks like one of their lasers hit the passageway he was in, just below the cargo deck. I’m . . . I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t know what he was doing out of his compartment. Damage control parties are responding.”

  Catherine’s heart fell into her stomach again. She sat in silence, barely listening as Engineering, Astrogation, and other critical systems were checked by their respective damage control teams. The Andromeda was hit, but she had prevailed, and she wasn’t crippled. There had been a high price, though, and the butcher’s bill kept climbing as casualty reports came in. She rubbed her face with her hands and struggled to keep her composure.

  “Uh, Captain, I’m sorry to disturb you,” Azevedo said quietly, “but we’ve got another problem. There’s . . . there’s an unexploded missile stuck in our hull.”

  Catherine nodded. In the intensity of combat she’d almost forgotten about it. “Show me.” A second later, the feed from an external camera, looking down the Andromeda’s hull, appeared on her screen. It zoomed in and focused on what was very clearly the rear-end of a missile, embedded in the honeycomb energy absorber layer.

  “I can pull it out with the manipulator arm, Captain,” Azevedo suggested.

  “No. Leave it be. Get me Wade Bishop.”

  * * *

  “There’s good news and bad news,” Wade Bishop said, studying a 3D representation of the embedded missile in the holotank. He had a tablet computer in his hands, and was reading a military ordnance publication of some sort. “Actually, the bad news is there is no good news.”

  “That’s . . . just lovely,” Captain Blackwood said resignedly. “Please explain.”

  “Well, according to my pubs, that’s a Combine Type-2404 anti-ship missile.”

  “Are those military ordnance publications you’ve got there?” Marcus asked. “Aren’t those classified?”

  “Yup,” Wade said. “Anyway, the 2404 is about the most vindictive missile ever fielded. It’s not designed to detonate upon impact. It’s got an armored penetrator nose and a long-delay, anti-removal, anti-disturbance fuze. It’s intended to embed itself in any enemy ship, like us, for example, and sit there being a pain in the ass. If we try to pull it out, it’ll probably detonate. If we accelerate too much, try to land, or transit with it still embedded in the hull, it’ll probably detonate. If we just wait and do nothing, eventually the timer will run down and it’ll detonate. The warhead is three hundred kilograms of high explosive, more than enough to tear the ship in half.”

  “How much time do we have?” Chief Engineer Nair asked. She looked tired, disheveled, even. Her normally cool composure had cracked. Her assistant engineer, Love, who had entered the Agamemnon with Wade, had been killed in the battle. There was no time for mourning now.

  “I don’t know,” Wade answered. “The timer is randomized. It could be a matter of minutes, it could be days or weeks. Eventually, though, the battery will bleed down and it’ll detonate.”

  Kel Morrow, the Astrogator, spoke up. “Why would anyone design such a weapon?”

  Wade shrugged. “It ties up resources. A ship lost in battle is lost. A ship that’s damaged can limp home. A ship with this thing stuck in it? It’s not going anywhere. Even if you try to abandon ship, there’s a chance the missile will detonate during the evacuation. It was designed with the Concordiat Fleet in mind, I suspect. The Combine fleet isn’t so concerned with losses, doctrinally.”

  “Can you disarm it?” the captain asked.

  “I don’t know, ma’am,” Wade said honestly. “There are procedures for it, but they’ve never been tested. I can’t do it from here. Unless you have a military-grade manipulator robot handy, I’m going to have to suit up, go outside, and go hands-on. The missile has anti-tampering features, but their software is pretty crude, I’m pretty sure I can get around it. But the only way to actually disarm it is to take it apart and remove the detonator assembly. It doesn’t have an off-switch.”

  “Will you try?” the captain asked. “It’s a lot to ask.”

  “No, it’s not,” Wade disagreed. “If we don’t do something, we’re all dead anyway. Bearing in mind that my Fleet Nuclear/Explosive Ordnance Disposal certifications have been expired for a few years, I’ll give it my best shot. I believe I can disarm it, but I can’t make a positive statement. It’s gonna be dicey.”

  “I understand, Mr. Bishop,” the captain said. “Thank you. I know you’ll do your best.”

  A short while later, Wade and Cargomaster Kimball were suiting up in the ship’s docking bay. Kimball was quite insistent that Wade not go on his spacewalk alone, and the mercenary didn’t argue; he needed help with all of the tools and equipment, as well as a safety backup. Kimball was the most experienced EVA operator by far. Annie was helping him into his suit.

  Devree Starlighter joined them in the docking bay, and helped Wade get into his own spacesuit. “You be careful out there,” she said firmly “Nobody else is going to die, you hear me?”

  Wade looked at her as he sealed the suit’s gloves. “If we go, we’re all going together. But listen, I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think it was going to work. No worries, hey?”

  Devree shook her head. “You’re an idiot.” She moved forward, kissed him on the cheek, then pulled the helmet down over his head. “You’re sealed.”

  Marcus was there too. “Wade,” he said, looking over at Annie. “My daughter is on this ship.”

  “I know, Boss. I’ve got this.” Wade checked his suit’s systems. “Boards are green. Comms are good. O2 is good. Heating and cooling are good. Devree? Can I buy you dinner when we get back to New Austin?”

  Devree raised an eyebrow. “You mean like a date?”

  “Something like that.”

  She smiled. “We’ll see. Focus on not killing us all and we’ll go from there.”

  Wade chuckled inside his helmet. He watched Devree, Marcus, and Annie leave the docking bay, and the room fell silent as it slowly depressurized.

  “Are you ready, Mercenary Bishop?” Kimball asked.

  “As ready as I’m going to get,” Wade said. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  The brown ball of Zanzibar hung far below the Andromeda as Cargomaster Kimball and Wade Bishop emerged from the docking port in the nose. Catherine, along with everyone else on board, monitored the ship’s external camera feeds as the two men made the long spacewalk down to where the missile was embedded. On the dark side of the ship, away from the sun, Wade pulled out a flashlight to examine the missile. Tethered to the ship for safety, he moved forward to do so while Kimball hung back.

  “Definitely a Type-2404,” Wade said. His communications were being relayed to the command deck. “She’s stuck in there good, too. Kimball, bring the laser cutter up. We’re going to need to take off a section of the hull so I can get to the internals.”

  Catherine watched in silence as Wade and Kimball used the laser to cut away a section of the honeycomb energy absorber. The chunk was sent spinning off into the
darkness and Wade moved in, tools in hand. He removed a small panel on the outer section of the hull, plugged a cable into the computer mounted on the wrist of his spacesuit, and attached an adapter to the end of the cable. He then connected it to a port in the missile.

  “Running diagnostics now,” he said. “It’s not letting me in, but let me try. . . .” He trailed off momentarily as he tapped the screen of the computer on his wrist. “That did it. Their software is outdated as hell. I think I spoofed it. Okay, the anti-tampering mechanism should be disabled.”

  “Should be?” Catherine asked.

  Wade didn’t exactly shrug inside his spacesuit, but tried. “Best I can do, Captain. Okay, I’m going to remove this panel now and get at the internals. If it doesn’t detonate, we’ll know the anti-tamper is disabled.” He chuckled humorlessly, hovering just above the missile in the blackness of space. Using a power tool, he removed a series of screws, pulled a computer board out, held his breath, and snipped the cable.

  “Nothing happened,” Kimball pointed out. On the command deck, Captain Blackwood exhaled heavily.

  “Okay, next step,” Wade said, reading his screen. “Damn it. I’ve got to get through this mass of cables and shit and get at the detonator. Some of them I can cut, some of them I can’t, and they’re not marked or anything. This will take a while. Stand by.”

  Everyone on the command deck watched nervously as Wade slowly navigated the tangled mess of cables, connectors, and circuit boards, occasionally cutting something when the publications told him it was safe to do so. The younger officers whispered to each other, but no one else said anything. After a few minutes, Wade brought the power tool back in and began to remove screws and fasteners from the detonator assembly.