To Fall Among Vultures

by Scott Warren

  A countdown cycled on his retinal implants, approaching zero as the hiss of air being pumped from the forward airlock dulled and went silent. Nothing but a soft shell of flexible composites stood between Aesop and vacuum now.

  "Charge boots, set up the pulley," he said. His suit’s microphones picked up the subtle buzz of the electromagnetic boots of his squad translating through the floor, and he reached to the bulkhead, swiping down the controls to isolate the airlock from the ship’s artificial gravity field. Down vanished. Held in place only by energized pads on the bottom of his feet, he slid the hatch open, bathing the airlock in the artificial light of the tether.

  "Target acquired, Sarge."

  "Hold, Vega. We got a ship twenty-two hundred meters away and two thousand meters of cable to get to it. Let’s keep it in our pants, eh?" said Aesop. He leaned against the upper edge of the hatch, gazing down the length of the radiant tether to the drifting ship almost two miles away. The Condor was catching up slowly. From the hatch he could see the underside of the nose, stubby and dotted with sensor modules. One offered a view of himself, the video repeated on a screen in the airlock. There wasn’t much room to move around, but the marines were used to the cramped quarters. Every bit as efficient as any IDF unit he’d worked with planetside.

  "Nineteen-hundred meters," Vega reported. Aesop tapped twice on the top of the airlock hatch with a gloved fist, and with that his marine fired the harpoon, carbon fiber coiling behind as the projectile passed near Aesop’s armpit. It took only a handful of seconds before he confirmed the hit with the sensor shack. The reel buzzed as it drew the line taut, then clicked with finality. He could imagine the sounds it made as he sensed its vibration through his feet and his glove, having heard it a half-hundred times at the practice range.

  "Alright boys and girls, let’s go for a ride."

  "Poor Cohen, can’t wait to get over there and find another alien to fall in love with."

  Aesop grinned inside his suit, eyes still fixed on the Gavisar ship through the translucent shell of his faceplate. "Mags, you’re on the general circuit. I can hear you."

  "Oh, look at that," she said, tone making it clear she knew exactly what channel she’d been on. She clipped her rider onto the line and threw a one-fingered salute as the device shot her out of the airlock. Vega and Singh followed close behind, then it was his turn to leave the Condor and enter the night sky of Juna.

  It was impossible for viewscreens to ever truly represent the view offered by raw space. The curve of the planet and the luminous weather below dominated his field of vision. No matter how many times he performed spacewalks, each one was like the very first time. Wonder, excitement, and just a little fear. There was just so much space. Being on a planet, seeing a dozen miles in any given direction? Aesop would take the magnificence of orbit any day. The peace, too. Sure, the xenos squabbled as bad as Earth ever had, but here in the moment none of that mattered. Not even the thousand-strong fleet in orbit and between Pedres and Juna. Of those thousand ships, the old lady had elected to put him on one, ballsy move, that.

  As he gazed at the Gavisari ship growing closer by the minute he felt a telltale shudder in his rider. "What’s the tension on the line at right now?" he asked. Numbers flashed across his retinal implants as Vega sent him the information. Aesop reviewed it with a cursory glance. "Dial it back twenty percent, yes?"

  "We’re starting to introduce our own heading deviation," said Maggie. Another rumble translated through the cable as she spoke.

  "Vega, what did you latch us on to?"

  "What? The hull? The hell should I know, I look like a xenotech egghead to you?"

  The Condor was running a full communications blackout, and Aesop’s eyes weren’t good enough to see what was going on. With one hand still on the cable rider, he loosened the straps on his X-87 and swung the rifle over his head, pushing the optics to their max magnification just in time to watch a sensor array pierced by the harpoon tear partly away from the hull with a shower of sparks and venting gas. The compartment on the other side must have still had some atmospheric pressure.

  "Harah! Vega, cut the line!" said Aesop. Ahead of him the Gavisari ship began to rotate, less than a kilometer away now. The torsion pulled on the induction tether, and the whole ensemble began to swing closer. His eyes widened, and he frantically clawed at the release for his lanyard. He cut it loose just as the brilliant line of xeno alloy contacted the carbon fiber cable with an arcing flash, completing the circuit with the ship through the harpoon still wedged in its hull. The carbon fiber parted instantly from the heat of the contact. The tension on the line snapped back, whipcord ribbon disappearing as it sprang back and struck the outer hull of the Condor.

  Mags hadn’t managed to release her own lanyard in time, and caught between the point of impact and the Gavisari ship, the voltage arced directly to the metallic components of her suit. She was maybe a hundred meters ahead of him, tumbling like a limp rag in the vacuum. All four of them retained their momentum, but now the rapid ride toward the derelict vessel became a high-speed free fall through the chaotic coils of molten-bright cable. Light assaulted Aesop from all sides as he engaged the EVA thrusters built into his heavy vacuum suit.

  He passed Singh, who was using her thrusters to decelerate even as he built speed. Ahead of her, Vega was busy trying to stop a wild spin, the cabling having snagged his lanyard as it snapped.

  Maggie Chambers had been first through the airlock, as she was any time she could get away with it. She’d put on more speed than she should have, and details on the derelict were becoming alarmingly visible as Aesop raced to her vacuum suit, grabbing on and arresting her spin as best he could.

  "Cohen, six o’clock!" came Singh’s voice over his radio. He twisted, eyes widening as a searing loop of tether spread before him. Behind it, he noticed the Condor, visible only by the starlight it blocked, pulling away from the deathtrap. It had no way to get to them, and they’d just painted a huge target on the rest of the crew’s back with their fuckup. Cohen put his feet against Maggie’s armor, pushing enough to send them in opposite directions. The cable undulated between them, close enough for static to crackle through the radio in his helmet. Then it was gone, and too late to do anything to slow himself or Mags as they crashed into the hull of the Gavisari ship. His face struck the inside of the composite helmet. Everything went dark.

  "Huian, get us in there for a pickup."

  Victoria’s navigator shook her head. "It’s no good, Vick, computer can’t determine a safe course, the model is too complex."

  Despite her words, Huian Wong increased the shuttered thrust, only to be rebuffed as the end of the tether swung dangerously close to the prow of the Condor. Victoria clenched her fists, resisting the urge to throw her coffee cup through the main viewscreen. Four personnel alone, exposed, and she couldn’t pull them out. Every maneuver with the ion engines increased the chance of detection, but that hardly seemed to matter now that they were waving a glowing, ten-kilometer banner across the upper atmosphere.

  Victoria found herself in the worst position a captain can. She had no choice.

  "Pull out," she said. The sound of the conn hatch closing brought her around to the silhouette of a broad figure in a black vacuum suit.

  "Oh, I think my ears must be stuffed, Vick. I’ve got four marines down there."

  Just what she needed. "Major, this isn’t up for discussion."

  "Oh, I agree."

  Victoria cupped a hand to her forehead. "Get the fuck off my conn, Red. Sensors, talk to me."

  The open microphone crackled with Avery’s voice. Even he sounded shaken at having witnessed the catastrophic boarding failure. "Got two xenos decreasing bearing rate, Vick. Someone’s coming in for a closer look."

  "And someone else, namely us, has a powerful reason to weigh anchor and be elsewhere. Huian, gain some distance."

  "Victoria," started Red, but she wheeled on him.

  "You think I want to leave four of my Vultur
es on that goddamned piece of shit scrap heap? Christ, Red, I`d throw you out the airlock after them if I thought you could make it without that cord cutting you in half. Now unless you have anything worth anything to spit out, get. The fuck. Off. My. Conn."

  "Vick, please."

  The Major’s voice was soft. Softer than she’d ever heard it. Red Calhoun had been a soft-spoken man as long as she’d known him. In Victoria’s experience, men his size said more with quiet confidence and hushed looks than with words. Victoria exhaled, the anger leaving her body as expended as the breath she’d been holding after her tirade.

  "Break emissions control. Find out who you have left down there, Red. Don’t make me regret this."

  He looked past her at the Gavisari ship growing smaller on the main viewscreen. His eyes met hers, defeated eyes, but some measure of relief glimmered there. He strode to the executive officer’s station without another word, helmet tossed on the seat. The Major was as well versed in the systems aboard the Condor as any of her officers, and it didn’t take long for his fingers to open the tightbeam channel to the Gavisari derelict.

  "This is Major Calhoun. Emcon suspended. Sitrep, marines."

  The only thing on the line was static for several seconds, but eventually a South American accented Kosso came through the receiver. "Major, this is Vega. Cohen and Chambers are down but breathing, requesting egress sir."

  Victoria bit back a curse. "Negative, Vega. No way for us to get to you. We’re on track to break orbit in 20 minutes and regroup with the carrier."

  "Hang tight, lad, we’ll swing back. Till then, you’ve a job to do. That’s not changed."

  "You shitting me Major? "

  Victoria closed the channel, cutting off whatever reply the major had been about to give. They’d broadcast enough, already risking detection. "Huian," she said, "time until we hit our return window?"

  "We’ll be on the sunward side of the planet in fourteen minutes, Skipper."

  "Make the necessary course adjustments now. We’re too close to the planet, I don’t want bounced light giving away our maneuvering," said Victoria. She locked eyes with Red Calhoun. "We’re coming back for them, Red. I swear to high heaven we’re coming back."

  Chapter 7 – False Flags

  Captain Bullock scrolled down a list of damage reports on his retinal implants as he ignored the lieutenant junior grade barraging him with the Union Earth Naval regulations concerning accommodations for rescued sailors. In truth he registered as little of one as the other, and sought only a distraction from the fact he’d just witnessed a fellow captain and crew snuffed out with little effort by a xeno ship that shrugged off everything he put down the barrel.

  They were too far from home, escorts that couldn’t even defend themselves, let alone the freighter carrying silk and coffee, of all things, to Pedres. Like they were some fourteenth-century caravel. His ship was ill-equipped to confront any of the countless xenos, despite being thrice the tonnage of a Privateer. If that Maeyar fleet hadn’t shown up when they did, he’d be as dust as the Clarke. Most of her personnel managed to make it off, but Captain Hill had gone down with the ship and his entire command team. Bullock looked at his own, packed into the CIC at half a dozen stations. He wasn’t fool enough to stick around this system. They’d jumped into a war, and damned if he wasn’t going to jump right back out again regardless of the freighter’s full holds, and hightail it to the system’s core.

  Two fighters kept pace with his ship, a dozen kilometers off his starboard, according to his thermal sensors and active Lidar. The two little wasps probably matched his firepower, if not his armor. And their presence wasn’t exactly reassuring.

  "Open a channel to the lead fighter," he said.

  The main screen clicked, a portion being taken by the low resolution camera on board the fighter.

  "Wing Officer Sothcide. Go ahead, Human Hudson."

  Bullock didn’t bother to correct him. "Wing Officer, we’re adjusting course to make best time for the core. It’s a little too unfriendly in this neighborhood for us."

  The communication feed was muted for a few moments before the wing officer replied. "Negative, Human Hudson. All traffic out of the system is suspended on the grounds of informational security. Proceed to Pedres approach as planned and wait for further instructions."

  "Wing officer, we’re staring down the barrel of a thousand-ship gun here. I can’t keep my people in a system under active attack."

  "I understand your reservations, Human Hudson, but my orders are clear. There is to be no traffic out of Pedres until further notice."

  Bullock watched on his sensors repeater as one of the fighters crept ahead of the other and climbed in the azimuthal plane. It was a subtle movement, but the two craft were improving their ranging solution on the Hudson River. Not for the first time, he felt the cold dampness of his uniform collar against the back of his neck. The maneuver wasn’t a threat, per se, but it was certainly less than a friendly gesture. At their current acceleration the formation was six hours from Pedres, or nine from the closest calculated jump point. But he also had the freighter to worry about. The freighter had no Alcubierre drive. It was too big. Though size didn’t seem to be a problem for the xenos, humans were still limited by mass when it came to executing a horizon jump. Bullock terminated the communication, weighing his options.

  "Skipper, we’re picking up active targeting radiation."

  The words cut through his thoughts as his head snapped to the tactical officer’s station. "Whose?"

  The young officer looked at him, her eyes wide. "It’s a Privateer profile, sir."

  "Missile fire, missile fire! Port side, zero bearing rate!"

  Captain Bullock got to his feet. "Battle stations!" he roared, "Point defense, target those missiles, get me a solution on the source!"

  "Point defenses inactive, Captain. IFF paints missiles as friendly, I don’t have time to override. Projected time to impact, eight seconds! Seven, six,"

  "Evasive program," yelled Bullock, knowing that inertia would never let him move the bulky destroyer fast enough to evade the missiles. Had Victoria fired on him?

  "Two, one!"

  No explosion came. A half dozen missiles streaked past his ship, lancing out after the escort fighters.

  "Incoming communication, textual only, human IFF code."

  As the fighters reacted to the volley of missiles, words scrolled across the main viewscreen. HUDSON RIVER – MAEYAR AMBUSH IMMINENT - MAKE BEST TIME TO JUMP - TIME NOW

  "Don’t have to tell me twice," said Bullock. Helm, make the course adjustments to the nearest jump."

  The viewscreen showed the icy contrails of the missiles as they streaked toward the fighters, and the warnings as the fighters fired back. A shriek of tearing hull pierced his ears as the lasers carved a channel through his starboard ablative armor. Not strong enough to penetrate at their max range without a cohesive saturation on a single spot, they still wiped out a half-dozen sensor modules, leaving a gap in his visual feed. He swore.

  "Skipper, the secondary hit the Yakima. She’s venting atmosphere."

  The majority of the freighter was kept in vacuum during transit, outside the pressure hull of the inner compartments. If they struck atmo then the crew was almost certainly dead and the cargo boat dead in the water.

  "What about those missiles?"

  The tactical officer regarded her screen. "Impact on the secondary, no engine profile, no active radiation. The primary . . . Jesus, he just took out all three missiles. He’s full burn sir, headed back to the picket fleet."

  "Can we take him out?"

  "Negative sir, our missiles can’t catch up with a Maeyar fighter at full acceleration and a head start."

  Bullock swiped the viewscreen displaying the Yakima to his primary repeater. At max magnification he could see the plumes of frozen atmosphere petering off as pressure in the inner hull equalized with the vacuum of space. The freighter had no hardening against directed energy weapons, the fig
hter had cut her apart like swiss cheese. There was no one left to escort. He’d failed his mission.

  "Prep the Alcubierre, let’s get out of here before the Wing Officer tells his friends what just happened." Victoria, what did you do?

  The Condor’s circuit carried it away from the boarded Gavisari vessel and into the upper atmosphere where Victoria ordered her pilot to break orbit. Several hours of slow flight carried the Vultures far enough from the sensors of the Gavisari to risk acceleration, and from there Victoria watched her ship eat up the kilometers of space on the way to the rendezvous point, watching Juna shrink in the rear viewscreen. Long range passive sensors gave away the presence of a multitude of ships in the theater, the majority of the fleet in Pedres had moved to the staging point inside the last planet’s orbit. By the time Victoria reached a distance she felt comfortable risking communications, the sensor team already identified upwards of fifty contacts at a destroyer profile or larger.

  "Go ahead and growl up the Wing Commander," said Victoria, "Fleet Ops is going to want to act on what we saw. Guarantee they’ll want to make a move when they find out half of those ships are without power."

  "Even so, they can’t field enough ships here without leaving Maeyar exposed. They’re terribly outnumbered, Vick," said Huian.

  "So are we." Victoria held up a hand to halt Huian’s response as the communication channel connected. "Wing Commander Jalith, Captain Marin identifying, activating IFF transponder now."

  Almost as soon as the transponder revealed their position, sensors warnings lit her command repeater with active radiation signatures as the Maeyar active sensor suites bathed the Condor with ranging and targeting radar.