To Fall Among Vultures

by Scott Warren

  "Bastards got tired of us listening. They can tell which of our systems are active while we’re aboard. No secrets from the Malagath. Avery, get them on the horn."

  As she spoke, the computer oriented itself to the local stellar plane and then began the process of adjusting known constellations of stars to determine their location. Not that it mattered much, humans had never jumped to this system before. They knew very little of Gavisar, only secondhand knowledge from Sothcide that it was a vast planet, incredibly dense and unsuited to most non-native life. Freshwater oceans on the surface, but the crust and mantle were honeycombed with caverns and the background radiation was unusually high. It took a few moments for the computer to spot three likely planetoids from reflected light, but only one was her best bet for Gavisar. She adjusted the computer entry manually before the Malagath video signal bulled over her comms channels and the severe face of the duchess filled all of her screens.

  "Condor Actual. Go for course correction," said Victoria. She had to resist the urge to grin. The duchess’ perfect jewelry had been knocked out of alignment and rather than surrounding her like a rich tapestry, the crystals now seemed to buzz about her head like angry hornets. The vents on her neck were pulsing in time with her breath, cooling her blood. Tight muscles stretched across her forehead as she regarded Victoria.

  "Condor," said Duchess Tora, rolling the unfamiliar word around in her mouth. "Our proximity to the star’s gravity lessens the chance of gravitic detection and presents an opportunity to come from a perfect vector to mask our thermal signature."

  Good cover. But Malagath weren’t as practiced at deception as humans.

  "You will investigate and transmit your findings back to me," the Duchess continued.

  Any desire to grin drained from Victoria. "I think I might be misunderstanding."

  "Quite possible," said Duchess Tora. Now it was her turn to grin, or rather, their equivalent. Victoria didn’t need her retinal implants to provide the translation of the Malagath noble’s pupils dilating practically to the full width of her eyes. The First Prince had never shown her that particular expression, and it wasn’t one she cared to see ever again. Christ, it was probably a view most xenos only ever saw at the end of their life. "I am better equipped than most to study the idiosyncrasies of the lesser empires. Sometimes I wonder how creatures such as yourself function. There is so much you do not understand."

  Victoria felt a ‘but’ coming.

  "But some have the potential for more. I saw this in the Maeyar as I did in others, in their discipline and their ingenuity. I saw the potential for them to serve the Empire. When Tavram looked upon you he saw little of either quality, but the First Prince saw merit in your sense of sacrifice, and usefulness in your guile and wrath. However, I expect I am more likely to find merit in your guile and usefulness in your sacrifice."

  Victoria bared her teeth, unsure whether the duchess was watching commandeered cameras or just listening to her through some other means, as she had never actually opened a communication link between them. If she could barge her way onto her viewscreens, what else could the duchess do? Tora had Victoria in her little xeno pocket, shunned by the Maeyar and far from friendly skies. And now the bitch was sending her, alone, to investigate the origin of a fleet over a thousand ships strong that had arrived with the singular purpose of scouring Pedres clean of humanity’s most lucrative interstellar trading partners.

  "Well fuck me. I’ll write you a postcard when we get there."

  "A tightbeam communication will do. I’m told by the Maeyar your ship manages encryption for you. I expect details within six hours by secure channel. I shall maintain my current position. Approach as close as you are able."

  Her current position, within jump distance of Gavisar’s blue dwarf star, what a reassuring thought. Still, the fighting weight of a Malagath Star-runner was nothing to scoff at. It was a match for any ten of the heaviest ships buzzing around Pedres right now, Maeyar or Gavisar. And it wouldn’t even be considered a warship, more like a glorified yacht. Not to say the duchess would bring those arms to bear in order to bail Victoria out, but a girl could hope.

  "Understand all, Duchess Tora. Condor out."

  Victoria reached out to cut the circuit before she remembered that she had never established it in the first place. One did not hang up on the Malagath.

  The duchess reclined in her throne, tall glass goblet held lazily between slender blue fingers. "Do not fail me, human. There will not be another opportunity to prove your worth to the Empire."

  The launch rails always put Sothcide in the mind of carnival attractions, in the way the enormous pitch black cylinders rotated through their warm-ups while he conducted his final pre-takeoff checklist. In the corner of his onscreen display a small timer counted down the seconds until the Starscream reached its launch position. The carrier group was drifting without power, preparing to use the moon’s gravity to adjust course. Once behind it, it would mask the heat of the launch systems and the fighters would drift into an attack run position before circling the planet.

  Seventeen ships making a bulwark ahead of the Gavisar fleet screened the invasion against an attack from Pedres, but had left themselves exposed.

  "Two minutes, Riz," He signaled in his radio. The gunner in the seat behind him clicked back an assent. His fingers would be on the firing controls, but Sothcide cycled through the configurations for the laser arrays, performing a last minute verification that the delicate apertures and mechanisms functioned as expected. Riz responded by cycling through a set of targeting simulations and off-the-cuff solutions that had margins of error that impressed even Sothcide with his high standard. While the discipline of the crew aboard the Starscream left something to be desired, he had never found reason to question their unerring intelligence. They were a clever set of scoundrels, and they knew the qualities that Wing Commander Vehl desired.

  One minute.

  Sothcide disabled the final safeties on the launch mechanisms, releasing the mechanical clamps and energizing the magnetic rails. Snow crept across his display from the electromagnetic interference. When active, the sets of launch rails accounted for roughly forty percent of the ship’s total voltage consumption, an even higher load than the engines. He could hear the whine of the power translating through the hull of his fighter, even as the polarity of the rails pushed it back against the wall of the launch chamber. His primary screen switched to the forward optical display, offering no useful tactical information but demanded by many of the pilots out of tradition and the sheer rush of riding the vacuum of space closer than any other.

  Except the humans, of course. Somewhere above Juna were humans separated from the cruel pull of space by little more than plastic, climbing through cored ships like bugs on driftwood. He had their communication channel loaded into one of his radio backups, but Arda had insisted on radio silence. Still, his receiver was tuned, and if they were still down there and spoke up, he would hear.

  "Fighters, launch by squadron, mark in ten seconds."

  Sothcide closed his eyes for a moment, trying to imagine that Vehl’s voice had a soft enough canter for him to convince himself it was Jalith. Then the three second alarm sounded, and he felt the aperture shudder as the fighter before him was launched and his chamber rotated into position with a hiss of escaping gas. The white cloud of nitrogen had barely faded before the array of magnetic coils switched polarity, and he was pressed into his seat as the intense force of the huge magnets chased him out the launch tube on a shimmer of nitrogen heated by the pressure of his interceptor’s nosecone.

  "Launch, launch, launch!" came the automatic recording. Several seconds late, as ever.

  It took only a fraction of a second to be clear of the long magnetic aperture, and the Starscream dwindled in his rear viewscreen as he assumed manual control over the fighter and polled his squadron for position reports.

  The wide arc of Juna’s dark moon dominated his view, blocking out the stars from two thirds
of the sky beneath its ribbon of light. Soon the fighter began to push past, and then Sothcide and his squadron were greeted to Juna in all her storm-covered glory, and to the fight that had erupted in her upper orbit.

  Ahead, his passive sensors already indicated Arda’s battlegroup appearing to attack with a diminished force, drawing out the overextended members of the screen with exchanged standoff fire as they struggled to climb out of Juna’s gravity at an unfavorable angle. Yadus had been right; their flank was horribly exposed as the majority of the Gavisar fleet was orbiting the planet in the opposite direction and would have to reverse acceleration and climb to offer resistance. Even with the naked eye, Sothcide could see the induction streamers hanging off the backs of the ships, generating enough emergency power to keep their crews alive and little else. So many streamers . . . .

  One by one his squadron checked in, and after that it took only seconds for Sothcide to interface with the leaders of the other fighter and bomber squadrons even now coming onto the proper trajectory thanks to the dual gravity wells of Juna and her moon tugging him into alignment.

  This would be the day Pedres held.

  Chapter 11 – Forward Vitacuus

  The fighting had intensified above Juna. Aesop could see the small explosions from missiles and lasers as the Maeyar fleet made contact and exchanged fire with standoff armaments. Without the ship’s sensors operational, his knowledge of the scope of the battle was severely limited. But the communications array had begun to pick up some snippets of the Maeyar fleet chatter, and from what he could tell, another wave of the Pedres Defense Fleet was about to cripple an over-exposed picket. It was a ballsy move on the part of Pedres if they could pull it off.

  The only problem was that Gavisar fleet comms had ordered the bulk of the fighting ships to pull back, so what were the Maeyar engaging up there? Had a few warships missed the order? The wing admirals were assaulting a superior force, but every Gavisari ship destroyed carried with it a non-insignificant percentage of their entire population. It was hard to imagine they would leave any out of position.

  "Singh, tell me you found Jones’ key. Ben-zona, Singh?"

  There was no answer. Probably plugged into the banks of recordings again, lost to the dead Gavisar communication recordings. Growling, Aesop swung around and nearly raised his rifle to the figure of Vega in the hatch, hands squeezing the rim. Mags floated behind him.

  "Sarge, you need to see this."

  It took him a few moments to realize why Vega sounded odd. The grunt had only ever used his rank a handful of times, when shit was really hitting the fan. "Where’s Singh?"

  "Trying to raise someone on the dish. Anyone, but no one in the Maeyar fleet is listening. They’ve shut out external comms."

  "What?"

  Aesop launched himself through the hatch. Broadcasting communications other than the discrete databursts carried an entirely unacceptable level of detection risk. The isolation couldn’t have gotten to her in only a day, so what was that girl thinking?

  "Sarge, come on," Vega protested as Aesop pushed past him. He could see Singh at the breach in the Blessing’s pressure hull where he’d clamped the portable communication array to the deck. Sure enough, his marine had patched into the unit and was issuing plain-voice radio signals on Maeyar bands. Hands grabbed him from behind as he made to push toward her and he found himself spinning through the compartment with Vega slapping the side of his faceplate.

  "Vega, let me go!" said Aesop, trying to pry the marine off him.

  "Not until you look down below, you dense mother fucker."

  Aesop calmed himself and released the grip he hadn’t noticed wrapped around his knife, still sheathed, thank God. Vega was a Privateer marine, and a hell of a fighter. But Aesop had seen the worst of the fighting in Gaza and Tehran and it didn’t take much to slip back into those days. Mags and Singh were both staring at them, having bounced off enough walls for their scuffle to translate through the metal and composite bulkheads.

  Maggie motioned for him, and after he and Vega untangled themselves he drifted over to the hole in the hull that faced the space-ward side of Pedres. He watched for a second, then two, and then raised his rifle to use the magnification built into his sights to be sure of what he was seeing.

  One after another, Gavisari ships were coming to life. Running lights, engines, and active EM emissions as scanners swept the sky. There were bursts of light, and ship after ship sped up their orbit with the terrifying acceleration only possible with warship-grade inertial dampeners, leaving behind thin tethers of white-hot metal.

  "Keep at it, Singh. Get the old lady, or the Maeyar fleet, or whoever you goddamned can."

  The Gavisar Home Defense Fleet hadn’t been overextended, they’d been lying in wait disguised as refugee ships barely capable of emitting power. Aesop swore. That was the fleet movement they’d witnessed before they could get comms running, when so many of the ships had pushed into upper orbit on their last legs. They’d swapped the induction tethers to their fighting vessels and trusted the storms to disguise their nature.

  And it had worked. It was human deception, and Aesop should have spotted it. Somewhere up there Jones was watching through the viewscreen on the Howard Phillips as humanity’s would-be allies fell into his trap. And Aesop was helpless to stop it.

  But there was something he could do . . . .

  "Contact bearing zero zero four, up nine on the positive azimuth. Designated Gavisar heavy cruiser. No active emissions."

  Victoria looked at the sensor repeater on her captain’s console, lips pursed. So far there had been zero active emissions from deeper in the system. No radio waves, microwaves, collect calls, bird calls, just . . . nothing. For a planet of thirty-six billion and a habitable moon they didn’t seem to be the talking type. If there are any of them left.

  Victoria shuddered, and watched as Huian swung them to keep the railguns trained on the contact. As if they would do serious damage to a heavy cruiser. By all accounts the Gavisari knew how to build a beastly cruiser, and they’d used their fleet to repel all would-be conquerors.

  "Avery, give me lidar on that cruiser."

  "Aye Vick," her sensor officer replied with a tad more hesitation than usual.

  "Fire Control, get me a solution on him just in case."

  Typically used for mapping planetary surfaces and terrain features through low visibility, the Condor’s lidar could also be used to construct a millimeter-detailed model of any surface, including derelict ships, in just a few seconds. The only problem is that shining a thousand lasers at your target was a good way to get their attention, but Victoria didn’t expect that to be an issue as she watched the computer reconstruct the heavy cruiser on the main viewscreen. Or rather, three quarters of the cruiser. The rest had been shorn off by some cataclysmic ordinance. It almost looked as though some celestial giant had gripped the ship at stem and stern and pulled as hard as it could until the thing parted. Debris floated along the same vector, scattered across dozens of kilometers, and Huian maneuvered the Condor to remove any risk of collision. At these relative speeds, being unlucky enough to hit a sizable chunk of the cruiser would result in the Condor being spread across a similar distance.

  The scan continued as the Condor sailed past, filling in the holes of the surface model. It didn’t take long for Avery to paint another contact on her screen, and more after that. Eventually her scope had gotten so full that her sensor operator had given up labeling designations on individual ships and instead had his sensor techs group them in groups of five or ten.

  "They’re all trying to crawl to the star for a jump. Every fucking one," said Victoria. Hundreds of warships and thousands of civilian vessels floated in a moving graveyard toward their eventual stellar cremation. If even a third of the wreckage had cleared the star as viable fighters they’d have rolled over Pedres like a three-legged tide.

  Huian entered another course correction that carried them close enough to a broken transport to trip the
radiological sensors on the starboard side of the Condor. The torn hull still glowed where the rest of the ship cast it in shadow, the same assortment of gamma and beta rays that infiltrated horizon space. Meanwhile Victoria continued to monitor on all open frequencies for even a single sign of life in the ghost fleet and the growing orb of Gavisar beyond.

  "How many do you think this fleet carried?" asked Huian. "Millions? Perhaps a billion Gavisari?"

  "How many never made it off the surface?" Vick retorted.

  The closer the Condor approached Gavisar, the slower the main force of the Homeworld Defense Fleet drifted, many still venting burning plasma from breached reactors. All the while the planet continued to grow in the sensors, revealing the vast swaths of deserts and mountains across the surface.

  "Huian, start the deceleration."

  "I already have, Skipper."

  Victoria frowned, eyeing the astral distances winding down at a slower rate than she’d have expected. "Avery, anything in orbit yet?"

  "I’ve got a dozen more infrared radiation signatures, Vick, zero bearing. And we’re about to lose it over the planet. Fire aboard orbital defense platforms. No radio waves, no active emissions. Dead quiet out there."

  It was a new sensation for Victoria, a new kind of chill creeping down her spine as she approached a planet in broad daylight. The light didn’t concern her, the surface of the Condor absorbed ninety-six percent of all light all the way up into the ultraviolet spectrum. Even if you shined a flashlight at the hull you’d miss a Privateer. No, she’d flown through hundreds of uninhabited systems and never experienced such an errant and oppressive stillness, as if the entire planet were becalmed. Forty billion souls and not a single one was talking. Not only were the air waves quiet, but whoever had silenced them left no sign. An entire fleet torn apart, and not a single confirmed kill on whoever had done it. Victoria’s hair began to rise as the distance to Gavisar crept down. Whoever had done it could still be out there, and the list of possible culprits was growing worryingly thin.