by J. N. Chaney
“Unclear. Their closest match is to Deeper Bishops, but there’s considerable overlap with signals arising from other sources, such as Battle Princes, or even several natural phenomena.
Dash narrowed his eyes. Space was really nothing but signals, from a gazillion different sources, across the whole EM spectrum, plus particulate emissions, neutrinos, and the list went on. But his own gut was leaning toward agreeing with Ragsdale’s.
“Where are you going with this?” Leira asked.
Ragsdale glanced at the Ops tech. “Put up the location where the Absolute Zero found that missile.”
A blue icon appeared. The dashed red line almost intersected it.
“Near miss,” Amy said, but Conover shook his head.
“No, it isn’t. Given the amount of uncertainty in that trajectory—assuming it’s a real trajectory at all—it likely includes where that missile was found.”
Dash moved to stand beside Ragsdale. “Let’s put up any other friendly assets that might have been affected by this. Ours, League, N’Teel, anyone.” He fervently hoped no icons would appear.
But two did. Two blue icons flicked into view, both squarely intersected by the ominous red line.
“Shit. What are those, Custodian?”
“Two salvage tugs, the Endurance and the Mighty Mouse.”
“Mighty Mouse?”
“Yeah, it’s an ancient animated thing from Old Earth,” Amy said.
Every gaze in the Command Center focused on her.
“What? Some of that old stuff we have in the archives is awesome.”
Dash smirked. “You just keep doing you, Amy.” He turned back to the screen.
“Custodian, get those tugs on the comm.”
Benzel, who’d crossed to another Ops terminal and tapped away at it, looked up. “They’ve been doing salvage ops for the past three days. There’s no shortage of scrap in the Backwater system, considering how much fighting’s gone on there. They’re due back here to the Forge…” Benzel glanced at the screen, then back up again. “Right about now, in fact.”
“No response from either of the tugs,” Custodian said.
“Shit. Issue an emergency recall order. That should go straight to their AIs, right?” Dash said.
“It will. I’m doing so now,” Custodian said.
They waited.
“No response,” Custodian finally replied.
Leira went wide-eyed. “If they were infected like that missile was and are on their way back here—”
“Then they could theoretically infect the Kingsport and anything else they manage to contact,” Dash finished for her. He was already heading for the door.
“Crash action here, folks. We need to find those tugs,” he called over his shoulder.
“And then what?” Jexin asked.
He stopped and turned around.
“And then, we do whatever we have to do.”
Dash held his breath as the Archetype dropped out of unSpace. The two salvage tugs’ transponders were as offline as everything else about them, so they’d gone entirely dark. That led to some bad hours, as Dash, Benzel, Wei-Ping, and the others tried to rearrange forces to deal with a threat to any of their assets, with the main emphasis naturally put on the Kingsport. It was easy to defend, though, since the tugs could only realistically get to it through the gate from Backwater. But the small task force guarding the gate hadn’t seen even a hint of them. The only information they did have was a scanner log showing the two tugs translating away from Backwater.
“So the Kingsport couldn’t be their target, so the threat isn’t here,” Leira had said, but Dash had just shaken his head.
“We don’t know that. The Deepers could just open a gate somewhere else. We have to assume those two tugs are able to go anywhere and threaten anything when they arrive.”
It might seem like paranoia, but when it came to the Deepers, they had to be prepared for anything.
And then, the Southern Anchor had broadcasted a general alert. The two tugs had just arrived in Edge, the Rimward League’s most important holding. They were now racing in-system, heading directly for the planet and the Anchor they’d deployed to help protect it.
“Dash, we can turn those tugs to vapor long before they even get close,” Southern’s Ops Officer had said over the comm. “Just give the word.”
Dash was tempted to do just that. But he finally decided against it. First, there were forty-two crewmembers aboard the two tugs who might still be alive but helpless to control their ships. Second, if they could somehow manage to stop them without destroying them, they might prove to be a treasure trove of information about this new Deeper threat.
So, he told Southern to hold fire. He, Leira, Conover, and Jexin were already at Backwater, and the mechs should be fast enough to translate to Edge and catch up to the tugs before they could pose a threat.
Should be fast enough.
“If they start to pose a genuine threat, use your discretion. Try to disable them. But if you can’t, then do whatever you need to do to stop them,” he finally replied.
“Roger that. Southern out.”
Now, back in real space, Dash saw the two tugs on the tactical display. They were powerful little vessels that translated to potentially high acceleration. But they were still only a fraction of the power of the four mechs, which immediately raced after them, rapidly closing the distance.
“We’ll be in maximum effective missile range in seven minutes, and dark-lance range four minutes after that,” Sentinel said.
Dash sighed out a breath. “I’d really rather not destroy them, Sentinel. How about you, Tybalt, and the other AIs wrack your collective electronic brains for some alternative?”
Sentinel’s reply was immediate. “Done. The options are limited.”
Dash wore a mirthless smile. Sometimes he forgot that when they weren’t having to interact with what must, to the AIs, be glacially slow humans, they were blindingly fast machines.
“How limited?”
“Considering that we know almost nothing substantive about this new phenomenon, extremely limited. The most reasonable course of action is to attempt to disable the tugs by damaging their engines. Failing that, the only logical alternative is to utterly destroy them.”
Dash listened to Sentinel’s grim words, disappointed but not surprised. He’d been hoping the AIs could come up with a more clever solution, but they knew as little as any of them did about what they were facing.
The mechs quickly caught up to the two tugs. Dash and Conover fell into station with the Mighty Mouse, while Leira and Jexin approached the Endurance. None of them needed their mechs’ scans to be able to tell both had been infected by the Deeper agent, whatever it was. Porous, blackish scars mottled their hulls, resembling something growing in one of Elois’s Petrie dishes.
“Sentinel, is there any way to tell if anyone’s still alive on board?”
“The tugs’ hulls have been completely compromised in several places, so there has been some failure of airtight integrity. But the tugs are also designed to withstand collisions with debris, so essentially every compartment can be sealed.”
“So, what? That’s a maybe?”
“That’s a maybe. I’m sorry, but there’s no way to be sure. The best our scanners can determine is the presence of organic life, and the Deeper agent itself returns that type of signal.”
Dash chewed his lip. Maybe. Shit. It was the worst possible answer. A yes would have given them reason to at least try a rescue operation, while a no would have made any thoughts of rescue moot. But a maybe didn’t help at all.
“Dash, I’ve been discussing ways we might try to board them with Tybalt, and we do have a couple of ideas,” Conover said.
“Do any of those ideas come with a guarantee that whoever does try to board won’t be infected themselves? Them or their vac-armor, since either would be really, really bad?”
A moment passed before Conover gave his desolate reply, the one Dash expecte
d.
“No, they don’t.”
“Didn’t think so.”
“Dash, I hate to suggest you’re on a clock, but these tugs will be a threat to Southern in just under thirty minutes,” Sentinel said.
Dash grunted his understanding. Edge traffic control had cleared all other ships well out of the way, but the two tugs were clearly making a straight shot for Southern anyway. Above all else, they couldn’t risk having the Anchor infected. If it was compromised and turned hostile, it would be a threat to Edge itself. An Anchor was more than capable of laying waste to a planet and would be a tough fight even for the mechs.
“Does anyone have any ideas?” he asked over the comm.
“I say we go with disabling them. All they have is point-defense, so they’re no threat to us,” Leira said.
“Agreed. We can fire from point-blank range, so our targeting should be no problem,” Jexin added.
“Conover, how about using some EW wizardry? Can you and Kristin do anything remotely to stop them?”
“We’ve considered that. Anything that might work requires a two-way interaction with the tugs, though. Do you really want us to try to establish an uplink to them?”
“No.”
Dash bit his lip a moment longer, then sighed. “Okay. I’ll do this. If we end up with a worst-case scenario, no one else needs to carry it with them.”
Dash eased the Archetype close to within a few klicks of the Mighty Mouse. He carefully lined-up a dark-lance shot aimed at the tug’s big drive bell. The tug’s point-defense battery immediately opened fire, but it was more a gesture than an actual threat. The Archetype’s shield easily absorbed and then radiated away the incoming energy as fast as it arrived.
This should be easy. The dark-lance’s fire control system was designed to target things hundreds of thousands of klicks away, after all. Dash took a breath, then fired.
The dark-lance beam struck the drive bell, blowing it apart. The tug began slewing to one side, its exhaust no longer balanced along its centerline. The drive’s safeties should now activate, cutting the drive.
But they didn’t, and the tug’s slewing motion started turning into an uncontrolled tumble. Dash cursed and lined up a second dark-lance shot, this time aiming for the engineering section just ahead of the drive bell.
Before he could fire, though, the tug exploded in a dazzling flash of lost fusion containment. The blast swept over the Archetype, making the shield flare with coruscating power. When it cleared, the Mighty Mouse was just bits and fragments whirling away from a glowing cloud of vapor.
Dash snapped out a string of curses. “It shouldn’t have lost containment just from damage to its exhaust bell.”
“I don’t think it did, Dash,” Conover said. “From what we can tell from the scanner log, the reactor’s containment system just shut down on its own.”
Dash cursed again. Reactors were designed with multiple layers of safety to prevent the stellar incandescence of the fusion reaction from becoming an uncontained explosion. It simply wasn’t possible to shut down the whole system.
Of course, with an alien biomechanical virus involved, all bets were off.
Dash took a breath. “Okay, let’s see if we can save the Endurance.”
“Dash, I think we know how this is going to go,” Leira said, her voice grave.
“Maybe we should just end this,” Jexin said, but Dash cut them both off.
“If there’s even a ghost of a chance to save some of our people, I’m going to take it.” He slid the Archetype toward the second tug.
“Sentinel, if the power-sword is amped right up, it should just disintegrate normal matter, right?”
“It would break molecular bonds and reduce any matter contacting it to constituent atoms, yes.”
“Would that be true for this damned virus?”
“There’s no reason it wouldn’t be. It is still composed of matter and is unlikely in the extreme to behave otherwise.”
Dash deployed the power-sword. Leira immediately came on the comm.
“Dash, you’re not going to try what I think you are, are you?”
He eased the Archetype toward the Endurance. “Depends what you think I’m going to try.”
“No. Don’t be cute. This isn’t a time for it.”
“If I can enclose the Endurance in the Archetype’s shield, then cut the drive section free, we should be able to save the rest of it.”
“Damn it, Dash, that means you have to get close enough to touch the bloody thing.”
“Dash, I am in agreement with Leira on this. You’re risking the Archetype and yourself by getting close enough to use the power-sword,” Sentinel said.
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Dash—” Leira started, but he cut her off.
“I’m not going to let these people die if I can help it,” he snapped.
“You don’t even know if they’re alive.”
“Which means we also don’t know if they’re not.” He stopped the Archetype about two hundred meters from the tug. “Sentinel, if there’s any sign of that thing trying to change course suddenly, looking to collide, you blast us out of here, max acceleration.”
“Understood.”
Dash edged the Archetype even closer. As he did, he had Sentinel redirect power from every weapon except the power-sword into the shield, then had her extend the shield to enclose the Endurance in its protective embrace. At least that was the theory, but protecting the Archetype, as well as the bulk of the crewed portion of the tug, while he sheared away its drive, was going to be complicated to pull off.
“You ready, Sentinel?”
“I’m an AI, Dash. I’m always ready.”
“Must be nice,” he muttered, eyeing the Endurance’s hull. “Sentinel, any way you can overlay the tug’s schematic right on the—”
A series of lines and highlights popped into view, marking out and shading sections of the Endurance and effectively giving him a line along which to cut.
“Yeah. Thanks.” He brandished the power-sword and selected where he wanted to cut. The sword, with its matter-disruption field fully charged, should be able to slash through the tug in one, clean blow. He could feel Leira and the others watching intently, waiting, holding their breath, jaws clenched tight, guts clenched even tighter.
Or was that just him?
“Okay, then here we—”
“Dash, the Endurance is transmitting,” Sentinel cut in.
He’d just started to wind up and swing. He froze, awkwardly caught in mid-strike.
“Put it on!”
The voice that crackled across the comm was an icy chill echoing out of some vast, desolate emptiness. If the void itself had come to life and started to speak, this would be its voice.
“I am the Corruptor. And I have come.”
An instant later, the Endurance exploded in Dash’s face.
Only a few months ago, during a tense mission to retrieve an incapacitated Deeper Battle Prince wedged into a rocky crevasse, Conover had been caught in the blast of its catastrophic self-immolation. He’d later said he got to experience a nuclear explosion from the inside.
Dash had now joined that exclusive club.
For a while, he could only drift, while Sentinel worked feverishly to clear the Archetype’s tripped safeties and faltering systems. It was testament to the mech’s raw, implacable endurance that it could take a fusion containment explosion at—point blank range didn’t even fit. He’d literally been within power-sword’s reach of the Endurance when it had lost containment.
He shook his head. Or thought he did, anyway. The Meld remained awash in the residual impact of the blast, then cleared. Reality firmed back up around him, revealing the Swift directly in front of him, close enough to touch.
The sudden appearance of the other mech right in front of his face triggered a very human flinch.
“Leira. Don’t sneak up on me like that, if you don’t mind. My heart’s sort of racing.”
“So you are still alive in there,” she said.
“More or less, I guess.” He swept his attention over the status board, stunned to find most systems flicking neatly back to green. Only a couple of peripheral ones stayed stuck on yellow, and none on red.
He’d effectively just been ground-zero for a thermonuclear explosion, and less than thirty seconds later, the Archetype was back up and running. If he’d had any doubts about how much the recent upgrades had improved the mech’s protection, he didn’t anymore.
The Swift backed away, giving the Archetype space. “You know, the novelty of wondering if you are still alive after some crazy stunt is starting to wear off, dear,” Leira said, her tone rich with exhaustion and relief.
He took in what remained of the Endurance, which was essentially nothing, just a tenuous, cooling cloud of plasma, and a few tougher bits not completely vaporized by the blast. “Sometimes the gamble works. This one didn’t. We just lost two good crews.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” Leira said. Dash sensed she wanted to say more but couldn’t find the words.
“Dash, Southern here. We’re not detecting anything else coming in-system. Looks like the threat’s ended.”
He shot back a curt acknowledgment. What had been the hard-working crews of two salvage shuttles had just been written off as a threat that had been ended. He was sure that Southern’s Ops Officer would feel the loss just as keenly as he did but forced himself to stay focused, his head firmly in the deadly serious game.
That’s what war does, he thought. It forces people to shove aside very human feelings and emotions so they don’t get in the way of carrying on with the pain and destruction and death.
And that was why it had to end.
18
Dash strode out of the Absolute Zero’s airlock, driven on a cresting wave of grim determination. As soon as he saw Elois, he started speaking.
“Elois, we need to know what happened to those tugs, what this new Deeper weapon or whatever it is, is.”
“I know. And we have.”