A Learning Experience 2: Hard Lessons

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  The Captain’s voice grew deeper. “Helm, take us into attack position,” he ordered. “And make damn sure they don’t get a sniff of us before it’s too late.”

  “Aye, sir,” the helmsman said.

  Yolanda watched, carefully, as Freedom inched closer to the Tokomak cruiser. She knew, from her simulations, that it was immensely difficult to penetrate a cloak when the cloaked ship was taking even minimal precautions to hide its location, but the Tokomak weren't even scanning for turbulence caused by the interaction of the drive field with the cloaking device. Indeed, apart from a handful of light sensor sweeps, they weren't doing anything. It was possible they were using passive sensors, which emitted nothing for her sensors to pick up, but it was still odd. She couldn’t help wondering if they knew where Freedom was and were just trying to lull her into a false sense of security. Nothing else seemed to make sense.

  “They’re just sitting there,” Commander Gregory said. “Two minutes to optimal firing range.”

  “Lock weapons on targets,” Captain Singh ordered. If he felt any tension, Yolanda couldn't hear it in his voice. “Prepare to fire.”

  “Particle beams locked, ready to fire,” Commander Gregory said. “Phasers locked, ready to fire.”

  Yolanda felt, suddenly, as if the entire universe was hanging on a knife-edge ...

  “Fire,” Captain Singh ordered.

  The Tokomak cruiser writhed under the fire as particle beams slammed into – and then though – its shields. Utterly unprepared for attack, it hadn’t even raised its shields beyond the point needed to deflect radiation and cosmic dust. Yolanda watched, astonished, horrified and not a little proud, as its shields flickered out of existence before it even realised it was under attack.

  “Switch targeting to FTL drives and prepare to fire,” Captain Singh ordered, as the Tokomak cruiser rolled over. Its sensors, too late, started to probe space for the hostile ship. “Disable their drive.”

  Freedom fired, again. “Drive disabled,” Yolanda reported. “They’re attempting to lock weapons on us.”

  “Launch decoy drones, then disable their sensors,” Captain Singh ordered. “And launch the Marines.”

  Good luck, Martin, Yolanda thought.

  New alarms sounded. “Enemy ship has opened fire,” Commander Gregory snapped. “Their aim is erratic.”

  “I don’t think they have a decent lock on us,” Yolanda supplied, although she wasn't sure she believed her own words. The enemy crew couldn't be so incompetent as to be unable to track the weapons fire back to its source, could they? It wasn't as if Freedom had launched stealth antimatter-tipped missiles that could have come from anywhere. “They’re firing almost at random.”

  “Their command and control network must be down,” Captain Singh said. He sounded disbelieving. There were so many redundancies built into Freedom’s internal datanet that the only way to destroy it was to reduce the ship to atoms. “Target their weapons systems; fire to disable.”

  “Aye, sir,” Commander Gregory said. “Firing now.”

  Yolanda watched in bemusement as the hail of fire from the Tokomak ship came to an end. They’d fired in all directions, as if they’d thought they were surrounded ... or as if they’d lost everything and intended to at least try to score a hit or two before they were destroyed. Had their bridge been taken out in the first salvo? It didn't seem likely; human designs, at least, placed the bridge well away from the shield generators. But the Tokomak seemed to be doing everything wrong.

  “Weapons disabled, sir,” Commander Gregory reported.

  “Very good,” the Captain said. “Transmit a demand for surrender.”

  Yolanda tapped her console, sending the pre-recorded message. “Message sent, sir,” she said. The seconds ticked away as the Marines approached the stricken ship’s hull. “No response.”

  “They might have lost communications,” Commander Gregory speculated.

  “They might,” Captain Singh agreed. “Ensign?”

  “There’s no sign they received our message,” Yolanda said. “But their ship hasn't taken that much damage.”

  She glanced down at her console. “Enemy ship is showing power fluctuations,” she added, slowly. “I don’t think they can maintain their internal power or atmosphere for much longer. They may have already diverted everything they can to life support.”

  “Good,” Captain Singh said. “Keep sensors fixed on their hull. If there is the slightest hint they can drop back into FTL, or do anything else even remotely hostile, I want to know about it.”

  “Aye, sir,” Yolanda said.

  ***

  “Go, go, go!”

  Martin braced himself as the suit was ejected out into space, aimed directly at the giant Tokomak cruiser. The live feed from Freedom’s sensors identified a hundred weaknesses in the design, but she looked impressive to a single Marine. Indeed, it was hard to truly grasp her size and power, even though he’d spent the last six months on Freedom. And Freedom was half the size of the Tokomak ship.

  “Go straight through the hull,” Major Lockland ordered. “Do not waste time trying to find an airlock. Just punch through and into the ship.”

  Martin’s suit spun as he closed in on the giant ship, allowing him to land neatly on the hull. Four of the Marines were already placing charges on the metal, opening a pathway into the giant ship. A sudden outflow of atmosphere told him they’d succeeded; he braced himself, then plunged into the ship, followed by the remainder of the Marines. His suit automatically launched nanotech drones, scouting out ahead of the Marines as they advanced into the ship; behind him, the gash in the hull was sealed, saving what remained of the ship’s atmosphere.

  “We have best guesses for the location of the bridge, engineering and life support sections,” Lieutenant Robbins said. “Our orders are to advance on the engineering sections.”

  “Understood,” Martin said. Ahead of him, there was an airlock, half-open. He frowned, then realised the safety system must have jammed when they’d cut their way into the ship. “Did they not bother with any maintenance?”

  He smashed the airlock open with his armoured fists, then advanced forward ... and then stopped. Dozens of thin aliens, their skins torn and broken, drifted in front of him. They’d suffocated when they’d run out of oxygen, he realised in horror. They should have been safe – the airlocks had tried to activate automatically – but they’d jammed. The starship’s commander had skimped on maintenance and this was the result. He swallowed hard, forcing himself not to throw up. He’d seen worse in the simulators, but this was real.

  “Continue forwards,” Robbins ordered.

  Martin felt chills running down his spine as they moved past the next set of airlocks and into a pressurised area. There was no sign of any aliens, leaving him to wonder if they’d fled – or if they were planning an ambush. He glanced into a pair of side rooms, but saw nothing apart from pieces of unfamiliar equipment. There was no point in poking and prodding at them himself, he knew. It was far better to leave that for the tech experts.

  “My God,” Corporal Rogers said. “What the hell is that?”

  Martin followed his gaze. The next airlock had opened automatically at their approach – and the corridor beyond was decorated in a style most humans would have unhesitatingly called gaudy. Martin couldn't help thinking of drug lords and gangbangers wearing tasteless gold jewellery, people for whom the whole point of having wealth was to show it off. There was no rhyme or reason to the decorations, as far as he could tell. But then, aliens might have very different senses of just what was tasteful ...

  Alerts flared up in his implants as the lead Marines ran into fire. The Tokomak had, somehow, managed to organise an ambush. Martin moved forward, crouching as low as he could in the suit, and launched a pair of grenades down the corridor, blowing the alien position to bits. The Marines ran forward in the wake of the blast, looking for surviving aliens and stunning them. Martin suspected that few would survive, even if they were stunne
d, but they needed prisoners. He glanced from side to side as he reached the blast zone, then forced himself to run onwards. There was no time for anything, but carrying out his duties.

  The lights failed. He swore as his suit’s sensors adapted to the darkness, casting an eerie pallor over the scene. The gravity failed seconds later; the suit adapted, fixing the Marines to the deck. He pushed the sensations aside and kept moving. If they were lucky, the power failures meant that the ship was under their control. But if they weren’t ...

  They could blow the ship, he thought. Take us and them to hell together.

  “The RIs cracked the computer network,” Major Lockland said. “We have control of the ship’s datanet.”

  Martin let out a sigh of relief as new data started to flow into his implants. The analysts hadn't been too far wrong, he saw; the Marines were indeed approaching the engineering compartment, or what was left of it. Resistance tailed off rapidly as the ship’s onboard sensors were used to locate the surviving aliens and teleport them directly into the brig, where they were promptly stunned. The jammers they’d been using to prevent teleporting within their ship’s hull had been deactivated.

  At least they took that precaution, he thought, dully. They could have made it easier for us – and them – if they hadn't.

  “Secure the remaining parts of the ship, then deploy scanning drones,” Major Lockland ordered. “And then prepare to move the ship elsewhere.”

  Martin braced himself as he stepped into the engineering compartment. It was a mess; bodies lay everywhere, some seemingly intact, others mutilated and torn by exploding consoles. He rolled his eyes at the sight, recognising more signs of very poor maintenance. Outside bad movies and worse VR simulations, consoles simply didn't explode, no matter what sort of battering the ship had taken. It was horrific to realise, after spending so long being taught the importance of keeping everything perfectly maintained, that there were people out there who hadn't even grasped the first lesson.

  “This is your rifle,” Sergeant Grison had said, almost a year ago. “It is yours. You are responsible for maintaining your rifle and any other piece of equipment we give you. It will be inspected, frequently. And if your rifle is in poor state, may God have mercy on your soul. Look after your rifle and it will look after you.”

  He shuddered, again, as he worked out what the compartment must have looked like before the short, sharp battle. Captain Singh, according to Yolanda, was absolutely determined to have the finest ship in the fleet, but he didn't waste time forcing the crew to scrub the decks and wear dress uniforms at all times. But the Tokomak commander evidently had, judging from the engineering compartment. The sections that weren't damaged looked remarkably impressive, even by human standards.

  “Quit woolgathering,” Lieutenant Robbins barked. “You have work to do!”

  “Yes, Lieutenant,” Martin said.

  He forced down a smile as he went to work. Whatever else happened, there was no way they could say he hadn't served on a combat mission now. He’d be one of the Marines – and he would finally have a place to call home.

  And true brothers, he thought. And that was all I wanted.

  ***

  It was nearly two hours before the Tokomak ship – whose name translated as the Supreme Flower of the Delicate Evening – was finally secured. Kevin had watched, first in fear and then in honest amusement, as Freedom took the ship apart, piece by piece. He’d expected the Tokomak to put up a stubborn fight, but instead they’d practically rolled over after the first shot. Their attempts to fight back had been completely ineffective.

  “We have fifty-seven Tokomak in custody,” Julian reported, shortly. “They’re all currently loaded into stasis chambers.”

  “Keep them there, for the moment,” Kevin ordered. It was, to all intents and purposes, a Red October scenario. How far was he prepared to go to make sure that the truth behind Supreme Flower of the Delicate Evening’s –he mentally shorted it to Flower – disappearance remained a secret? Was he prepared to butcher helpless Tokomaks? “And the ship itself?”

  “Largely intact, apart from the drives and hull-mounted weapons,” Julian said. “The computer cores weren't even crashed before we gained control.”

  “Better make sure there aren't any nasty surprises in the hulk,” Kevin said. How long had it been since the Tokomak had fought a real battle? The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if he had overestimated them. What if ... there was a chance to win the war with a pre-emptive strike on Varnar or Hades? It was something he would have to raise before the Council. “Can she be towed?”

  “Captain Singh is confident she can be taken to Area 51,” Julian said. “His crew will have to be warned to keep their gobs shut, though. They might start talking when they’re in their cups and the bragging is about to begin.”

  “They’ll have to be warned,” Kevin agreed. “I’ll have a word with Captain Singh personally.”

  He smiled. “And I will also complement him on a job well done,” he added. As unimpressive as the opposition had been, there was no denying the fact that the crew of Freedom had done a very good job. “What happened today may make the difference between victory and total defeat.”

  Chapter Twenty

  A survey carried out by Gallup in the United States, Europe and Australia pegged ‘racist’ as the single most hated and overused word in the English language. Respondents claimed that the word was so overused as to be completely devoid of meaning, a fact easily verified by the observation that every single candidate in every single election for the past twenty years was accused of being a racist at least twenty times. Responding to the survey, the Anti-Racist League stated that the curse of racism had yet to be removed from human society ...

  -Solar News Network, Year 53

  “Welcome to Area 51, Kevin.”

  “Thank you, Keith,” Kevin said. “I trust you and your team had fun?”

  “We had a lot of fun,” Glass said. “There is no shortage of arguments about just why we found what we did, but we do have some preliminary conclusions.”

  Keith Glass gave him a mischievous smile. Area 51 wasn’t the only secret base in the Solar Union, certainly not the only place that studied alien technology, but it was the only base that studied stolen alien technology. Half of the SIA’s operations were devised to obtain more samples of alien technology, technical manuals and everything else that might help the human race match and exceed the Galactics. But no one had stolen an entire top-of-the-line starship before.

  If it is a top of the line starship, Kevin thought. The Varnar would have put up a much harder fight.

  Glass turned and led Kevin through a pair of airlocks, into a giant observation lounge. The Tokomak starship floated over their heads, sealed inside the giant asteroid. Kevin looked up and drank in the sight – by now, he was used to the sensation of feeling as though an entire starship was about to come crashing down on his head – and then turned back to Glass. The Admiral’s assistant was already bringing them both mugs of coffee.

  “Have a seat,” Glass invited. “One day, I will have to write a book about this.”

  They shared a smile. Keith Glass had been a popular science-fiction writer before the Hordesmen had first approached Earth, then a natural recruit for the Solar Union before it had even been called the Solar Union. Indeed, quite a few members of his team were past and present science-fiction writers, men and women who could devise uses for alien technology the Galactics had never thought of, let alone tried to implement. The remainder were the best and brightest of humanity, including youngsters from Earth who had come specifically to work on alien technology.

  “I think someone already wrote The Hunt For Red October In Space,” Kevin said. “There’s probably a copy or two floating around the datanet.”

  “I have no doubt of it,” Glass agreed. “I would be pissed if I didn't have so much else to do here.”

  Kevin nodded in understanding. The datanet had changed so many things,
but – perhaps most of all – it had destroyed Hollywood. What was the point of spending millions of dollars in making a movie when it would be pirated within days of its release, or when a handful of amateurs with access to vast computing power could produce their own movies and release them practically for free? If a particularly famous actor was unavailable, there was no reason they couldn't create computer-generated substitutes. Hollywood had never quite managed to adapt to the new reality and had gone the way of the dinosaurs.

  But it does have its advantages, he thought, wryly. How else could you watch a movie starring all fifteen versions of Doctor Who?

  “First, we did manage to recover the computer cores intact,” Glass said, once he’d taken a sip of coffee. “It wasn't too hard to break into their secure compartments, Kevin. I’m rather disappointed in them.”