Her color deepened. She faced forward, her tone careful bland. “I do not understand how Marines can help during flight?”
Coop nodded. Pappy had seen the movies, too. “He wants to give us a fighting chance if trouble pops up.” Though the kind of trouble the marines could help with, well, he hoped they wouldn’t have that kind. There’d been some objections from the geeks about them using stealth mode. They thought the Phoenicopterians should know they were trying to help. That would let Derwent start negotiating right away, but he hadn’t heard the word “invasion,” like he and Pappy had. No, it was better to go in dark, then de-cloak if everything was clear at the border.
She glanced back at the Marines. “They appear to be fierce warriors.”
No argument from him on that, though, “I’m a fierce warrior, too, but flying my bird.”
She laughed softly. “Yes.”
But in her gaze he saw shy agreement. He’d take it as a good sign. “Have you been able to link to Dr. Janeck?”
Coop had probably met Janeck at some point, but he hadn’t realized how young he was. Hadn’t been thrilled by the non-geek look of interest he gave Arian. Wasn’t sorry the guy would be on the other shuttle with Tiger.
“I am initiating the sequence now,” she murmured, her hands settling on the controls like they’d been there before.
Coop felt a twinge of unease—reminded himself it was good for her to know what she was doing. He’d seen her do stranger things. A HUD—a heads up display—popped up, but it kept changing so fast it made him dizzy, so he focused on his pre-flight, checking his comm with Tiger.
“All present and accounted for, Banshee.” Tiger’s voice in his ear was familiar and comforting.
He’d been Coop’s wingman since their first flight school. For whatever reason, no one had wanted to break up the band. Or maybe no one else wanted the job, he thought with a grin. One of the images on the HUD caught his attention. It was the array.
“That’s sure pretty,” he murmured. It looked like a smooth net. The connections were bright points of light except along a ragged tear. “That’s a nasty break.”
“It is much more extensive than it appeared from my first scan,” she said, looking worried.
From here it looked big enough to drive a ship through. “Can we scan for threats that might be present outside the array?”
“When we are closer. The array, even damaged, resists scans outside its perimeter.”
Always try to see what’s coming was his motto, one these birds needed to learn. Of course, it might just be them having trouble getting eyes on what was outside this system. No one had said the birds couldn’t see outside their net.
“Do we have a course to send to Tiger?”
“Let me acquire it for you.” She tapped things on her panel and the HUD changed, a new course forming at the base of the array.
He frowned as he did some math, helped by his controls. “Let’s hope we can get there before anyone uses that hole.” With the shuttle’s fastest propulsion, it was going to take them the better part of twenty-four hours.
“To be of use, we must use the comet drive—”
“The what?” Coop frowned.
“The comet drive?”Arian looked at him. “It is much more efficient and faster than the standard propulsion, though it uses more power. We won’t be able to use our shields until we drop out of comet drive, but the cloak should still be effective, particularly if I can link the drives between the two ships. With linked propulsion, our transit should be almost instantaneous.” She frowned at the HUD. “We will need to move a safe distance from the Boyington before we initiate the drive. It creates unstable space in all directions, and that would not be good for your ship to experience.”
Coop opened his mouth. Closed it. Finally asked, “What is a safe distance and are there any side effects or anything I should warn our passengers about?”
She gave him the distance. “They should strap in and so should we,” she said. “It is very fast.”
“Flyboys like fast,” he said, hoping he liked the comet drive’s “very fast.” Instantaneous? He opened a channel to Tiger. “We’re going to link the two shuttles, so we can make the transit, um, jump together to the array. Oh, and strap in. Once we get a go, we’ll proceed to the coordinates I’m transmitting, then link and…um, jump.”
Coop edited out the part about the comet drive. He was pretty sure Pappy would cancel the mission if he found out about that before they left. Forgiveness was more likely to get than permission to use the tech, especially if it worked as advertised. And of course, they needed to accomplish their mission without losing the new tech. On the downside of the upside, if they lost the tech, they probably wouldn’t be alive to face Pappy anyway.
“Kicking some tires and lighting some fires,” Tiger said with his usual good humor. “And strapping in, sir.”
He wondered how happy his wing man would be once they kicked the tires into comet speed. He shrugged. Tiger liked fast, too. He called the Boyington. “Are we go, no-go on Operation Array?”
The pause felt over long, and he felt his gut tightening. To say Pappy was not thrilled at the moment was a massive understatement. Like the king and queen of understatements. This wasn’t just a rock and a hard place. This was all that, and a FUBAR place.
“You have a go, Banshee. Repeat Operation Array is a go.” A pause. “God speed.”
“Strap down, guys,” Coop told his passengers. He activated pre-launch procedures, shutting the air tight doors of all sections, and lowered the armor protections for all view screens. They had some pretty big viewing ports up top, a section he figured had been for bigwigs. It wasn’t standard procedure for normal flight, but he didn’t know how old these shuttles were and he was pretty sure no one had used this comet drive for a very long time. If a breach was inclined to happen, he figured it would be inclined now. Good old Murphy’s Law.
He took the lead in exiting the bay, felt Tiger’s hot breath on his six. The shuttle should have felt clunky after his Dauntless, but he was finding it a pretty sweet little ship to drive this time. Which felt odd. Same ship as he’d flown for the bird meet. But it felt different. Maybe because this mission was about stopping an invasion. And he knew it had a comet drive. He took it easy after they exited the bay, though, no fancy flying. No reason to tick off Pappy before he had to.
Arian kept her attention divided between her controls and the HUD. “I’m initiating the pairing sequence between the comet drives, and bringing them both online. We will jump in thirty seconds.”
The countdown felt both slow and fast. If the drive operated as advertised, it was sure to cause unique stress factors for the shuttles.
“Brace for jump,” he said, including their ship and Tiger’s in the warning, only wondering when it was too late if they should be wearing speed jeans to help with the incoming G-force…
“Initiating comet drive now.” Her voice was so flat, it reminded him of the sim computer’s voice.
The yank came between blinks. Pressure on his chest was bad, like a gorilla sat down to eat a banana there. Followed by the jolt as the speed-brakes came on. The distant sound of Tiger cursing. A babble of questions from the Boyington that needed to catch up with his ears.
And then everything was back where it should be. He hoped.
Arian’s brows arched. “They sound very upset.”
“They’ll get over it,” Coop said. Maybe. “Why don’t you start doing what you’re going to do and I’ll try to explain what just happened to home plate.” And Tiger.
23
Up close, the damage was impressive. Some of the satellites were gone, others damaged though still tenuously connected. There were gaps in the coverage, resulting in a critical weakening in the array’s ability to hide itself and the system. Arian scanned the satellites around the damage, frowning as she initiated a connection request between this ship and the array. While she waited for this “handshake,” she considered what was v
isible to their eyes and scanners.
The Phoenicopterians seemed sure an invasion was imminent. Was it based on the fact that the breach existed, or did they have the capability to see outside their sanctuary? It was not something they would want known by outsiders, if they hoped to secure them in a haven, but the idea of it made sense to Arian. Surely they would need to see beyond their borders from time to time? And if they could not? Then how current were the star charts they had provided to the Boyington? It must be possible, she concluded. That they had not informed her of this…
All of it came back to trust. She could understand why both sides were troubled. The Phoenicopterians feared for their sanctuary, and Coop’s people wanted to go home. Competing interests could complicate trust. Could she find a way through this tangle that would satisfy both? And if she couldn’t, who did she sacrifice? Her insides flinched at the thought of this choice. It seemed inconceivable for her to betray either. She had to find a way to help both. If she failed…
She did not know what would happen, but she knew she could not let either side down. She must succeed at both or die.
Because she did not wish to dwell on dying, she glanced at Coop. He seemed to be explaining about the comet drive. How could they not know about this drive? That seemed most odd to her. How long had they possessed these shuttles? And why did they only have two of them? She felt that quiver of knowledge just out of reach, of knowing without actually knowing, but it was not relevant to their current circumstances. She was here to do a job, and that must be her only focus.
The array was quite remarkable, even without all the expectations swirling around it. And not just because she’d lived most of her life on a farm and this was even more complex than anything she’d ever seen.
It looked like a net—she frowned—what did she know of fisherman’s nets? Whatever, the design was quite similar, with strands of energy linking them together. The satellites were the joining points that both hid and protected the sanctuary. It traced the edges of this small galaxy of a star system. The satellites themselves were circular, with spikes sticking out in every direction. Some of those spikes were antennas to communicate with the others, but others were…just spikes. She sat back. That was interesting. Why spikes when the devices had both cloaking, shielding, and deflective capabilities?
She turned her attention back to the breach. The energy lines were thinner, but still there, the devices appearing to cling together as if they knew the importance of their mission. Almost, she had a sense of being there when they were devised, of standing in front of one with tool in hand…
Her hands flexed, then closed around a tool not there—
Coop retracted the shielding on the front view screen, so they could see the array in real time. This view of the actual devices startled her for some reason. They looked so much…older than—she shook off the past, though it left reluctantly.
“Is that weapons damage?” Coop asked.
She shot him a look, noting his frown.
He tapped his radio. “Sorry, sir, we are attempting to assess the situation. It’s complicated. Yes, I did say weapons fire, sir. Could you please hold while we figure this out?”
It was a very polite way to tell his colonel to back off, though he was only able to do it because they were out of reach, Arian surmised, with a slight smile. If he were here, the Colonel would be pacing. Almost she wished she could move around, as the shuttle computer argued with the array’s systems. No handshake yet—there was a discreet trill.
“I’m into the first layer of programming,” she said. It was not the level she needed to access, but it was a start, this maintenance level. “The devices have cloaking capability. When they are functioning correctly, this sanctuary is virtually invisible.”
“Virtually?” Coop queried.
“Well, if someone flew into it, perhaps they would know something was there.” She tapped deeper into the maintenance program. “No, it has quite sophisticated deflective ability, so if a ship flew straight into it, it would be deflected without damage.” She frowned.
“It would just bounce off?” Coop shook his head.
“It is designed to divert objects prior to impact. They would miss the array, possibly without realizing they’d changed course.”
“But wouldn’t that make it impossible for someone to shoot at it?”
“It should.” Arian explored the data some more. “According to the maintenance data, some of the satellites began to experience programming failure, which weakened the deflective capabilities in this section.”
“Why?” Coop asked.
She looked at him. He believed her able to know more than was possible. His confidence in her made her want to try. “It could be a factor of aging. It is very old.” A notation caught her eye. “Once it began to fail, it also became vulnerable to meteor strikes.”
“Which compounded the problem?”
“That would be my guess.” She scrolled through the data after the strikes. “Because it wasn’t repaired, over time the breach widened. The master program tried to adjust for the failures, but eventually, the cloak began to fail, as well.”
“So, not weapons fire?”
She dug deeper. “There is data that suggests the array has experienced weapons fire.”
“Suggests?”
She nodded. “The array does not know the difference between a meteor and directed fire, but there are energy spikes that would not be consistent with meteors.” He arched a brow. “Whatever caused the impacts, the protective capability is compromised.”
“So it’s probably visible on the other side?” Coop asked.
“I would postulate that at least this damaged section is visible.”
“Which would be why the birds are afraid of an invasion.”
“It’s such a small area,” Arian protested, “in an immense galaxy. If someone saw it…”
“It’s kind of typical to try to get past a wall. Curiosity and all that.”
She nodded slowly. She knew all too well about wanting to breach barriers. “The presence of protection would be perceived as evidence that something valuable was inside.”
“Pirates, most likely.” He grinned. “They do get around.”
“If there were attacks, early data indicates they were weak and ineffective. The intensity of the impacts has increased recently.”
“Recently?”
“Well, recently for the Phoenicopterians. It has probably been many hundreds of your years. The impacts commence and stop many times.” She sorted the data, pulling out what she believed would interest Coop. “The type of energy signature varies when those impacts begin to occur, but for some time the energy signature has not varied as much, except in intensity.”
His frown deepened. “Someone, or something, has stepped up the attacks.”
It was a logical conclusion. She pressed the programing, trying to access the next level. They needed to see outside the array.
“Can you fix this thing?” His worry was evident.
She shared it. Fixing the array was essential to negotiating their exit from the sanctuary and to protecting the Phoenicopterians. Though, even if fixed, something or someone appeared to know this system existed. Would a persistent enemy just leave?
“I can not fix destroyed devices.” She had this sense that, with enough time, she could have built replacements. And resources, she reminded herself with an inner scoff. She had neither. “The programming has been trying to link the healthy satellites together. Perhaps I can help it. But if the attacks continue, it is only a…”
“Bandaid? A temporary fix,” he added, assuming—rightly—that she would not understand the other reference. “Can we see what is on the other side yet?”
“I am attempting to access the next level of programming.” It did not want to let her in.
“I wonder…” Coop changed course so that they were sitting in front of one of the larger holes in the array coverage. He leaned forward as if he could see thr
ough the array.
“That is interesting. It still blocks our view out, at least…” She sighed. She needed that access and then the next one after that. She supposed it made sense, but it was most frustrating when she was trying to help. “I am not sure I would keep the ship here, however—incoming!”
Coop veered the ship as sharply away from the gap as he could in space. Luckily the incoming was bound by the same laws of physics as they were. The shuttle’s shields took a glancing blow before they reached a position behind a stronger section of the array.
“Did they see us?”
“I am not certain,” Arian said. The energy pulses had not followed them, however. “We need to see more.”
“What’s the problem?”
“The array’s programming has many levels. Each one is harder to access than the last one.”
“Can the geek doc help you with that?”
“Tell the Captain I’m trying.”
The geek doc’s voice sounded amused in her comm.
“Bastards are undoing my work almost as fast as I can do it.”
Arian suddenly found herself in the next level of programming. It was not the highest level yet, but now she could see the other side of the array. She stiffened. “I see why the Phoenicopterians are concerned.”
“—holy—”
Arian did not recognize the word Dr. Janeck used. She suspected it was more exclamation than technical term.
“That’s not good,” Coop said.
“No,” Arian agreed. If this is what the Phoenicopterians had seen, it was no wonder they lived in fear.
* * *
The enemy fleet consisted of thirty large ships, with about one hundred smaller ships in various sizes. The larger ships were thinner toward the nose, thicker in the middle, and then they narrowed again. Ships of war were designed to look intimidating. The Boyington, for instance, was a ship made for war, even if its primary purpose was exploration. But these—these were war birds. They’d been crafted to inspire fear before the shooting began. The lines and angles were predatory. They reminded him of flying dinosaurs, birds of prey like the Klingons had, only these weren’t digital or special effects. And the size of the fleet told Coop they did not intend to go home empty-handed this time.
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