Alpha Contact

by P. K. Hawkins

  “Oh yeah, definitely too much,” Johnson said. “Apparently, anyone with a high-enough-powered telescope could see the battle all the way from Earth. All those attempts you made at clandestine secrecy didn’t last long.”

  Bernhard supposed that was for the best. There would still be an arms and technological race between countries to capitalize on all the tech they might be able to pull off the Visitor, but if all the countries of the world had witnessed that there was a much deadlier threat out here than each other, maybe they would be able to look beyond their own personal paranoias and work together to be prepared in the future.

  “Where’s Teng and uh…?” Bernhard trailed off, realizing he wasn’t sure yet who had been killed.

  “Dufresne,” Johnson said quietly. “Houston was the one in the ship that took out so many of the Cortex soldiers. He died a hero.”

  “Yes,” Bernhard agreed. “He did.”

  “Both Teng and Dufresne are back in the Visitor. Don’t worry, Teng is being very careful about making sure that neither of them are in a position to be taken over by the Nerve, although we haven’t seen any sign of the Nerve since the battle.”

  “Why not just have them come back to the Ambassador?” Bernhard asked.

  “Not enough air here,” Zersky said. “We’re going to have to go back to the Visitor soon as well if we don’t want to suffocate. Teng already ordered that one of us come out here every so often to make sure that the comm equipment keeps working, but otherwise, the Visitor is going to be our home for at least the next two weeks.”

  “Two weeks?” Bernhard asked. “Why?”

  “Your brain must still be a little scrambled if you can’t yet figure it all out for yourself,” Zersky said.

  “Bernhard, they already had a hard enough time organizing our mission to the Visitor on such a short notice. Mounting a full rescue operation for us, as well as sending additional scientists and military personnel to keep the Visitor secure, isn’t going to be a quick job.”

  Bernhard nodded, a motion that he instantly regretted as the headache flared again.

  “We’ll be taking one of the Cortex ships back to the Visitor as soon as Dr. Johnson says you’re ready to travel,” Zersky said.

  “In the meantime, could you give us a couple of minutes by ourselves?” Johnson asked Zersky. Zersky gave her a knowing smile.

  “Sure. I’ll be in the hold waiting for you both when you’re ready.”

  Zersky went out of the shuttle’s main cabin, leaving the two of them alone for the moment.

  “Right, um, I wanted to apologize,” Johnson said. “You know, for the awkward conversation we had right before the battle.”

  “You don’t have anything to apologize for, Johnson.”

  “Please, call me Jane.”

  “Uh, Jane then. I was the one who misinterpreted what you were trying to say and made an ass out of myself.”

  “Yeah, about that. You actually didn’t.”

  “Huh?”

  “I did want to kiss you. I just got cold feet at the last second. I’m not exactly good at that sort of thing.”

  Bernhard chuckled. “Neither am I.”

  “But see, the thing is, we’ve got two weeks to practice and figure that kind of stuff out, don’t we?” Johnson leaned over him. This time, there was absolutely no question about her intentions.

  “Yes, we do,” Bernhard said. And despite all the horrors this mission had provided, he suddenly found himself uncharacteristically optimistic about these next two weeks.

  End

  Read on for a free sample of Hecate.

  One

  Hecate’s probes slid through the sea of wrecked ships, searching for signs of life. Any life—human, AI, anything that survived the massacre that occurred here, deep in unsettled space.

  Assuming anything did survive.

  A sobering thought, and one that consumed Henricksen. Drew his eyes to the floor-to-ceiling windows wrapping the front of Hecate’s bridge. To the stars and devastation, hoping, praying to spot something out there, and finding naught but despair.

  Death and wreckage everywhere he looked.

  “Farrow,” he called, half turning. Flicking his fingers at the fair-haired woman working the station to his right. “What’s the word?”

  “Checking.” Farrow bent her wrists, exposing the comms ports sunk into her flesh, trailing cables connecting her to the panel in front of her. “Wasteland,” she reported, voice dreamy, blue eyes hidden behind the Comms visor covering her eyes and forehead, wrapping across her ears. “Some kind of interference…” She winced, adjusting a tiny dial near her temple. “No one sending, though. No one picking up, as far as I can tell.”

  Well, that’s certainly ominous.

  Henricksen frowned, eyes flickering to the windows. “Scan. What’s out there?”

  “Nothing, sir.” Duclos twisted in his seat, shaven head painted in the multi-colored lights flashing across Scan’s panel, long nose looking even longer in the low lighting around him. “Few blips now and then, but I can’t get a solid reading.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Radiation,” Hecate cut in, serene, AI tones drifting from the overhead speakers, camera swiveling to point Henricksen’s way. “It’s confusing the probes’ sensors. Messing up the scans.” A twitch of the camera, taking in Farrow. “Possibly Comms.”

  Henricksen grunted, thinking. “Any chance it’s natural?”

  “Doubtful. No planets nearby, and the closest star is still light years away. Sensors aren’t picking up any solar particle events.”

  Ship then. Or weapons. Manmade in either event.

  Henricksen didn’t like it. Not one bit.

  “And the blips?”

  “Could be anything. A byproduct of the radiation itself.”

  “Wonderful,” he grunted. “Just fucking wonderful.”

  Didn’t come across radiation often these days. Ships still used radiological weapons—Fleet ships included, at least the larger ones, like the Dreadnoughts—but nuclear drives were old beyond old, bordering on ancient. Phased out a couple of centuries ago in favor of the fuel cells and plasma drives more modern ships carried.

  Radiologicals complicated things. Turned this simple little recon mission they’d been sent on into something altogether different. Radiation—enough radiation for the probes’ sensors to pick up on—likely meant contamination, a complication Henricksen most definitely did not want to deal with.

  He stared through the bridge’s windows, considering the messed they’d found outside. Lifted his eyes to Hecate’s camera sitting just above them, one of dozens scattered across the length and breadth of her warship’s body—her eyes on the crew, on everything going on around the ship. “Whaddaya wanna do?” he asked her, because this wasn’t his decision. He was captain—her captain—and in charge of the crew, but not Hecate’s master. Nor she his, either.

  Hecate considered the question before answering.

  Not entirely her call, this time. Technically Seychelles—the grey-skinned, smooth-sided Valkyrie cruiser behind them—was in charge of this mission, granted authority over the entire operation by Brutus himself. Hecate and three of her disc-shaped Aurora brethren detailed to go with her, backed up by a handful of Titans—sharp-sided and sinister, bodies shaped like four-pointed spearheads.

  Ten ships in total, sent walkabout on a reconnaissance mission. Ten Fleet cruisers deployed to find out what the hell had happened to those vessels out there. And why no one knew anything had happened until it was entirely too late.

  “No sense leaving the probes out there,” Hecate decided, camera adjusting, zooming in on Henricksen’s face. “Not sure there’s all that much they can do.”

  “’Spose not,” he murmured, dropping his eyes to the windows, considering the drifting wreckage outside. “Fuck it. Recall ’em, Duclos.”

  Duclos glanced around, blinking in surprise. “But the probes, our orders—”

  “Know my orders, Duclos.” He
nricksen favored the crewman with a flat-eyed stare. Lean face all planes and angles, turned harsh and angry in the bridge’s sparse light. Like all the crew, he dressed in Hecate’s midnight blue uniform, torch and keys patch a silver twinkle on his shoulder, nothing but the insignia pinned to his collar to set him apart from any of the others.

  Commander’s insignia, this being an Aurora, not a Dreadnought or Valkyrie. Silver leaves, not the stars Henricksen wanted, and by all rights should already have earned.

  “You heard her.” A nod to the camera above them, Henricksen’s eyes never leaving Duclos’s face. “Probes are useless. Radiation’s mucking up the scans. Pull ’em back in, Duclos. Now, if you please.”

  Duclos hesitated, eyes flicking from Henricksen at the Command Post to Hecate’s camera watching from above. “Aye, sir,” he said softly, facing back around. His hands lifted, reaching for the panels in front of him and froze there, hanging just above it, brow furrowing as he stared at its polyglass surface.

  Like he’d forgotten how to work the thing. Or he didn’t know quite what to do.

  “Umm… Sir?” Another glance at Henricksen, standing at the Command Post dominating the center of Hecate’s bridge. “How are we supposed to…” Duclos trailed off, waving vaguely at the windows. The wrecked ships drifting against a backdrop of black night and stars.

  Henricksen quirked an eyebrow, looking a question at the camera.

  “Helm,” Hecate called, AI voice filling the bridge. “Take us in.”

  “Aye—wait. In?” Shaheen frowned hard at the camera.

  Serious young woman, that one. Sepia-toned skin, long, dark hair pulled back and plaited in a tight, regulation braid. Uniform crisp and perfect no matter how many shifts she stood on the bridge.

  “In where?” she demanded, looking thoroughly confused.

  Henricksen shrugged, smiling, nodding to the cluster of ships in the distance.

  Shaheen stared—eyes wide, mouth sagging open. “There? Sir. I’m not—I really don’t think—”

  “No. You don’t.” Henricksen’s smile vanished, face turning stony and hard. “You do what the lady says.” A touch of one hand to his temple, tipping an invisible cap to Hecate’s camera. “Now take us in, Shaheen. Probes can’t pick up squat in that radioactive soup, but maybe those fancy new sensors Hecate got installed last month can.”

  “Aye, sir,” Shaheen murmured, throwing an apologetic look at the camera. Slim fingers touched at Helm’s panel, bringing the impulse engines to life. A few strokes of virtual keys and Hecate slid forward, approaching the cluster of wrecked ships.

  Henricksen stared through the windows, watching those vessels draw closer. “Farrow. Send a message to Seychelles. Tell her and the others to stay put while—”

  “Why don’t you let me do that,” Hecate interrupted. “Seychelles is in charge of this mission,” she reminded him. “I’m guessing she might not like being told what to do.”

  “AI never do, do they?” Henricksen grunted.

  Hecate laughed softly, dulcet tones filling the bridge. “Not generally, no,” she admitted. “Which is why I’ll suggest she stay put.”

  Henricksen dipped his head, smiling crookedly as Hecate opened ship-to-ship comms.

  A good ship, this Aurora. His third command and easily his favorite, despite their rough start. Respected Hecate. Respected the hell out of her. Liked her, which he hadn’t expected, Aurora AI being sixth generation and nothing at all like the quirky, oft-argumentative eight generation Titans he’d commanded before.

  Lucky to have this assignment, Henricksen admitted. Can’t imagine leaving her.

  But he would, eventually. Didn’t like to think about it, not after everything they’d been through together, but he wanted those captain’s stars. Chased them for so many years.

  Commander’s billet on an Aurora, though, which meant a captain—once promoted—couldn’t stay. Once he earned his captain’s stars, if he earned his captain’s stars…

  Henricksen sighed heavily, touching at the silver insignia pinned to his collar. Promotion in the Fleet was never a sure thing—more officers than there were billets on hand, generally, which meant that, with each turn of the crank, a few more got spat out. He’d fought his way to commander. Earned that rank the hard way—through combat rotations and hazardous duty assignments, spilling a fair amount of his own blood on his way to Hecate’s chair—but captains…captains tended to stick around and keep their postings, so long as they didn’t get killed or age out. Screw up so badly that the Fleet had to kick them to the curb.

  Results got Henricksen this far. Results and a reputation for working goddamned hard. But no matter how good his record, Henricksen was still a pusher kid from the colonies—youth spent running the long haul freighters. An Officers Candidate School graduate from the combat program on Aeleon, not one of those stuck up assholes the Fleet pushed through the Academies on Sosholo or Yunshinshin.

  Three commands under Henricksen’s belt now. Two eighth generation Titans—Harbinger, who died in a collision with a DSR cruiser, and Vigilant after that—and now battle-scarred Hecate, with close to two hundred years in the Fleet. Three commands and still hustling. Fighting for the captain’s stars the Academy boys—with their pedigree, and manners, and lineages stretching back centuries—bought on credit with their rich-ass parents’ funds.

  Well fuck them. He wasn’t done fighting. And he wasn’t giving up on his stars.

  “Henricksen. Henricksen!” Hecate called, camera pivoting his way.

  “Sorry.” He snatched his fingers from his collar, hand dropping to his side. “Thinking.”

  A pause before Hecate answered, camera zooming in tight. “Dreaming of stars, no doubt.”

  Caught red-handed.

  Henricksen ducked his head, face flushing.

  Hecate knew him too well. Knew just how much he wanted those stars.

  “Sorry,” he repeated. Hand lifting unbidden, reaching for the devices on his collar before he forced it back down. “So what’s the word?” he asked her, in the silence that followed—Hecate watching, crew watching, all those eyes focused on him. “What’s Seychelles got to say.”

  “We’re cleared to go in,” she told him. “Seychelles advises us to be careful,” she added, a hint of a smile creeping into her voice.

  “Careful,” Henricksen snorted, regaining his composure. Shoulders twitching as he straightened up. “When have I ever not be careful?”

  “You really want me to answer that?”

  “What? That thing on Ephelus again.” Henricksen rolled his eyes. “You’re never gonna let me live that down, are you?”

  “Ephelus. Trisserine. Agdonalo—”

  “You were as much to blame for those last two as me, you know.”

  Hecate wisely didn’t answer. Her decision to move on the DSR before reinforcements arrived. Her guns that chased them off in both cases, making the local constabulary quite happy in the process.

  Good team, Hecate and he. One of the best in the galaxy, if he did say so himself.

  Almost made him want to stay. Almost made him want to give up chasing those stars.

  Later, he told himself. Worry about the stars later. Focus on the job for now.

  “Shaheen!” Henricksen called, turning toward Helm. “Time to intercept?”

  “Three minutes, sir. We’re on approach.”

  “Right. Sikuuku!” Henricksen pivoted, pointing at the gimballed Artillery pod bulging roundly from the right-hand wall. The squat, square man stuffed inside it, slouching insouciantly, looking bored out of his mind. Tattoos showed darkly on his red-brown skin, blue-black patterns inked across his nose and cheeks, framed by jet-black hair the color of raven’s wings clipped to a soft fuzz on his wide head. “Seychelles wants us to be careful. Think you can help out with that?”

  “’Spose,” Sikuuku shrugged, muscled shoulders rippling beneath his uniform jacket. “Not like I’ve got anything else to do.” He reached for the targeting visor lying aband
oned on the Artillery pod’s panel, plucked it up with thick fingers and slipped it over his eyes. “Snipe hunt, if you ask me, but it’s no skin off my nose if you wanna wave Hecate’s guns around a bit.”

  “Hope you’re right,” Henricksen told him. “But something bad happened to those vessels.” He nodded to the drifting ships outside without looking. “DSR bad, I’m willing to bet.”

  Sikuuku leaned out of his pod and lifted his visor with one finger, considering the scene outside himself. “Yeah. Looks like.” A grimace and he knocked the visor back down, ran the pod through a system’s check, machinery buzzing and whirring as he pivoted about. “Weapons are hot,” he reported. “Anything moves, you just give the word and I’ll vaporize it, Commander.”

  He would—Sikuuku was a damn fine gunner. One of the best in the Fleet, based on Henricksen’s experience. Three ships they’d served on together, the last two under Henricksen’s command. Had to pull a few strings to get the two of them assigned together this time, but it was worth it. Worth every damned favor Henricksen had to pay off to make it happen.

  No one else he wanted sitting in that Artillery station. No other gunner in the Fleet he trusted more than Sikuuku.

  “Duclos. How we doing with those probes?”

  “Last one’s coming on board, sir. Eight’s a bit slow.”

  Henricksen raised his head, quirking an eyebrow at Hecate’s camera.

  “Missed his maintenance cycle. I’ll have the TSGs give him a once-over to see what’s going on.”

  “Tell them to put a rush on it. Last thing we need is a slow-ass, lazy probe.”

  “Eight’s not lazy,” Hecate chided. “He’s just old and needs a little extra attention now and then.”

  “Whatever.” Henricksen flipped a hand, returning his attention to the windows as the drifting ships drew close. “Bunched up pretty tight,” he noted, tapping at a panel in front of him—one of five arranged in a semi-circle in front of the Command Post’s black, padded chair.

  A stroke of the keys cycled the feeds from Hecate’s hull cameras, one view replacing another as he scanned the ships outside. A score of them in total—a nice, round number that just didn’t feel right.