Their Last Full Measure

by Christopher Nuttall

  She deployed a handful of drones instead, surrounding herself with a web of false sensor images. The enemy targeting locks slipped as they realised they were suddenly facing seven different targets, or one real target and six decoys. Their sensors weren’t good enough to tell the difference, not even at close range. They’d have to engage all the possible targets ... Hameeda allowed herself a smile as she blazed forward, throwing her ship into a series of evasive manoeuvres as she finally entered weapons range. The enemy CO was a little too smart to be in command of such rustbuckets. He was careful to hold his fire until she got closer, rather than wasting missiles trying to hit her at extreme range. This far from the core, in such a low-priority system, she would be surprised if there were any missile production facilities. Her opponent might have to wait for months until he received replacements from the core worlds ...

  The enemy ships launched missiles, trying hard to coordinate their fire. Hameeda gleefully screwed with their targeting, deploying a handful of additional drones to ensure they didn’t come remotely close to her. They didn’t have antimatter warheads either ... she smirked, then evaded a missile that locked onto one of its fellows, destroying both of them in a single blinding flash. The enemy CO was good, but his tech really wasn’t up to the job. She fought down the urge to open hailing frequencies and transmit an entire list of insults right across the system. Instead, she transmitted the message instead. Someone would be listening. Who knew? Maybe they’d record the message and upload it to the datanet when the system came back online.

  She blazed through the enemy formation, feinted at the planet and turned away, aiming for deep space. The enemy might have had a chance to set an ambush, if they’d had the time to summon a more modern squadron, but they’d squandered it. She sent the message one final time, then drove onwards into the night. Behind her, the enemy ships turned and retreated towards the planet. She didn’t want to know what might be going through their commander’s head. The idealist in her hoped he wouldn’t suffer for his failure. The cold-blooded part of her noted that he really had been disturbingly competent, compared to most of his fellows. If the enemy killed him, it would work out in humanity’s favour ...

  This war will probably get him killed before too long anyway, she told herself. She didn’t bother to cloak as she rocketed away from the planet. They’d already be on the verge of losing track of her, if they hadn’t already lost her. And that will be the end.

  A radio signal, surprisingly primitive, blinked up in her mind’s eye. Someone was trying to hail her? She stared in astonishment, studying the line of code words and phrases that scrolled through the system. They were all positive, all human, but ... she frowned, remembering just how popular human movies and television series had become amongst the younger Galactics. It was possible, just possible, that it was a trap. A very un-Tokomak trap, if it was a trap, but that alone would recommend it. The Tokomak knew she could evade any enemy fleet, as long as she saw it. A smaller ship might just get through her defences and into position to take a clear shot at her hull.

  She frowned, reaching out through her sensors. A lone freighter drifted in space, almost completely powered down. There was no way in hell anyone on the planet, now falling behind her at a terrifying rate, would know it was there. She wasn’t even sure they would have seen the freighter arrive. She hadn’t picked up any major sensor arrays around the planet. And that meant ...

  If this is a trap, they would have had to put the freighter along my exit vector, she mused. It was possible that someone had guessed her exit vector, but ... how would they have known where and when she’d drop into FTL. The trap would have failed completely if she’d vanished after escaping the planet. She wouldn’t even have known it was there. But if this isn’t a trap ... what is it?

  She opened a communications link, narrowing the beam to reduce the chance of eavesdroppers. It was unlikely there were any prowling around, but ... the odds of encountering the freighter were very low too. She didn’t care to calculate them. There was a pause, then a response. Audio only.

  “This is Samuel Piece,” the voice said. Her analysis software insisted it was a human voice, although that was meaningless. Deepfakes had been a problem for decades. The Tokomak wouldn’t have any trouble faking a human voice, if it occurred to them to try. “I request that you pick myself and my comrades up before they catch us.”

  “This is Captain Hameeda,” Hameeda said. Her computers blinked up a number of people with the same name, none of whom she knew personally. A couple had obscured files, suggesting they worked for Solar Intelligence. “Explain yourself.”

  There was no answer for a long moment, long enough for Hameeda to start to worry. She checked her FTL drive, ready to jump out and run at a moment’s notice. If this was some kind of trap ... she was sure she could get out before the jaws slammed closed. But she knew better than to take it for granted. If the freighter was crammed with antimatter, she was already inside the blast radius. And there would be no warning before the blast wave hit her.

  “I admit you don’t know us from Adam,” Piece said, finally. “I have ID codes in my implants and ...”

  Hameeda frowned. Human slang was suggestive, although she knew it proved nothing too. A skilled xenospecialist could put a profile together and then ... she closed her eyes for a long second, trying to think. If Piece was human, perhaps a deep-cover agent, she had to recover him. If not ... she cursed. She’d have to put her ship and herself at risk, in a place where no one would ever know what had happened if things went wrong, or ... or she’d never know if she’d done the right thing.

  “I have four people with me,” Piece continued. “They require asylum.”

  “Really.” Hameeda made up her mind. “Power down your ship, then transfer yourselves to the escape pod and launch yourself into space. My drones will collect you. Or stay where you are.”

  “Understood.” Piece didn’t sound surprised. “We’ll be out in a moment.”

  Hameeda gritted her teeth as she launched the drones. In hindsight, she should have requested a marine platoon or two before setting out to wreak havoc. She disliked the idea of company, at least for longer than a few days, but they’d have been very useful now. Instead, she had to watch through the drones as they powered their way towards the escape pod. Piece seemed to be following orders. She hoped that was a good sign.

  The drones split up as they approached the pod, two heading to the pod itself and the others inspecting the freighter. Up close, it was so old that Hameeda was surprised the hull itself wasn’t starting to decay. She hated to think just how many people had owned the ship before it reached its final pair of hands. The drones probed the airlock warily, then opened the hatch and slipped inside. The air was cooling rapidly - a handful of warning signs suggested there were tiny breaches in the hull - but the drones had no trouble picking human DNA out of the air. Hameeda allowed herself a moment of relief as the drones hacked the ship’s datacore, then turned her attention to the escape pod. If it was a trap, it was a very odd one.

  She peered through their sensors as they dragged the pod towards the LinkShip. Piece himself was a dark-skinned human male, his face scarred and pitted. Beside him were three aliens, fragile-looking green-skinned humanoids she didn’t recognise. Piece had a handful of implants, including one that pinged a Solar Union IFF code at her when she scanned it. The other three were completely barren of tech. It looked as if they’d had implants, from the deep scans, but they’d been removed at one point.

  The scans kept pulsing, breaking their bodies down to the submolecular level. Piece carried a pistol, seemingly of human design ... a chemical weapon, rather than a phaser or blaster. The others carried a handful of tools, some of which were clearly designed to function as weapons with a little imagination. She scanned them carefully, then decided she was being silly. They didn’t have anything really dangerous. She’d feared a backpack nuke or antimatter containment chamber. The only thing Piece would have had to do to take
her out, if he’d had one of those, was simply turn it off.

  Well, she thought. It is either a very weird trap or they’re innocents.

  She paused long enough to assess the live feed from the freighter’s datacore - it was so old that she suspected it was rather unreliable, the starcharts so badly corrupted that it was impossible to trace the vessel’s flight path - then made up her mind. “Remove all your tools and weapons and place them to one side,” she ordered. “Prepare for teleport.”

  Piece made no objection, putting his gun to one side with casual ease. The others looked more reluctant and didn’t seem inclined to obey until Piece pushed them into it. Hameeda felt a flicker of sympathy as she activated the teleporter, beaming the three aliens into a stasis chamber. Piece looked surprised, his expression suddenly freezing as he was teleported into a second chamber. Hameeda studied the matter feed through her sensors as they materialised, making very sure there were no surprises within their bodies. Her biosensors reported nothing, but that was meaningless. The Galactics were ancient. They’d invented the teleporters. They would presumably know how to circumvent them.

  And the stasis fields worked perfectly, she mused. They can wait there until I deal with them.

  She took one last look at the freighter, then recovered her drones and dropped into FTL. There was no hint that anyone on the planet was watching her - she was fairly sure they’d lost track of her - but she took evasive action anyway. She’d have to be more careful when she reached the next system, if Piece didn’t convince her to cut her mission short and go elsewhere. He’d sought her out, perhaps deliberately. And that meant ... what?

  The hacked datacore files lay open in front of her. She cursed under her breath, wishing she could have a long chat with the engineer who maintained the piece of junk. The machine was so outdated that a pre-space human computer would be more capable, at least when it came to keeping the starship functional. It looked as if someone had systematically disabled a number of safety features, each one more important than the last. The Tokomak were very keen on safety - they worked so many safeguards into their starships that they actually impeded their operations - but they weren’t completely wrong. Or misguided. She was mildly surprised the freighter hadn’t exploded when it jumped into FTL.

  Score one for the Tokomak, she thought, as she disconnected herself from the neural net and stood. She wanted to eat, but ... she also wanted to talk to Piece. She ran his ID through her records and came up with a classified file, marked with the Solar Intelligence verification code. It was something of a relief. Whatever else she’d done, at least she hadn’t wasted her time. And I need to know what he’s doing here.

  She ate quickly, taking something from the store rather than bothering to cook for herself, then headed into the shower. She’d have to wear something if she was coming face to face with a stranger. An alien might not notice - interspecies sex was rare, and flatly banned amongst the Galactics - but Piece would. She snorted at the thought as she checked the internal defences, just in case. Piece probably couldn’t be conditioned to turn against the Solar Union -his implants would see to it - but there was no reason he couldn’t be bribed or threatened into compliance. The Tokomak had a lot of collaborators. They could hardly be slouches when it came to finding out what someone wanted and offering it to them.

  A deep-cover agent would know better, she told herself, flatly. Right?

  She sighed as she dressed rapidly, the simple tunic feeling odd against her skin. She’d grown too used to walking around naked. Normally, she wouldn’t care if anyone saw her, but right now ... there were too many uncertainties, too many things she didn’t know, for her to allow herself any distraction. She had to know what was going on before she committed herself to anything.

  The LinkShip hummed around her, steadying her. She relaxed into its embrace, silently praising the designers. If she had to spend the rest of her life on a starship, this one would be more than enough. Who knew? After the war was over, if she survived, she could slip into unexplored space and seek out new life and new civilisations.

  “To boldly go where no one has ever gone before,” she quoted. “Apart from the people who already live there, of course.”

  Smiling, she headed to the stasis chambers.

  Chapter Five

  Up close, floating in the stasis field, Samuel Piece looked almost peaceful.

  Hameeda studied him, both through her eyes and through a dozen different medical and security sensors. He was definitely human, to the ninth decimal place. His DNA spoke of an origin in the Solar Union, rather than Earth or one of the human colonies established by aliens who wanted their human slaves to breed. He was quite heavily enhanced, with both biological tweaks and implants. She was mildly impressed. He was almost as heavily implanted as herself.

  And he’d be more so, if he wasn’t trying to hide his implants, she mused. A GalTech scanner might miss most of Piece’s augmentations, although Hameeda wouldn’t have cared to bet her life on it. Perhaps one of his implants was designed to feed false readings back to the scanner. The Galactics took their tech for granted, but surely it would have occurred to them that their scanners could be fooled. As technology advanced, the technology to fool it advanced too. But his implants don’t seem to be messing with my scanners.

  She took a step back, then deactivated the stasis field with a thought. Piece staggered as the blue light vanished, looking around wildly as the tractor field caught him before he could hit the deck. To him, it must have seemed like an instant transfer from his ship to the stasis field. He’d known he was being teleported, but ... Hameeda nodded to herself as he stood up. Piece clearly wasn’t someone who could be stunned by a simple trick. He would have expected her to take precautions.

  His eyes alighted on her, looking her up and down in a manner that slightly discomforted her. It wasn’t sexual, as far as she could tell. His eyes didn’t linger on her breasts. He was evaluating her as a potential threat. She braced herself, ready to snap the stasis field back into existence if he did anything dangerous. She had no qualms about keeping him in stasis and taking him back to N-Gann. Admiral Stuart could deal with him. Hameeda was sure she’d have the codes to unlock his implants, if there was no other choice. And the codes to confirm his identity.

  Piece met her eyes. “This is a human ship?”

  “I thought we’d already established that,” Hameeda said, dryly. “What can I do for you?”

  “Take me and my companions to higher authority, wherever that may be.” Piece looked around, his eyes narrowing. “What is this ship?”

  Hameeda frowned. “Classified,” she said. He was sharp. The LinkShip was hardly a conventional ship. He’d picked up on that very quickly. “Come with me.”

  She turned and led him through to the galley, grimly aware of his eyes following her. Piece would have to be an idiot to miss the absence of other crewmen. He knew the LinkShip was small, compared to most FTL ships, but not that small. She wondered, idly, what he made of it. It was standard procedure to quarantine strangers, isolating them from the rest of the crew in case they had bad intentions, but the LinkShip didn’t really have the space. The majority of the hull was crammed with weapons, sensors and drives. There was enough room for her, and perhaps one or two more, but after that ... they’d have to get very friendly.

  “What would you like?” She waved him to a chair and turned to the drink processor. “I’m having tea.”

  “Tea would be fine, thanks.” Piece sank into a chair, looking more relaxed. “Where is the fleet now?”

  “N-Gann.” Hameeda was surprised he didn’t already know. Or perhaps it wasn’t a surprise. The Tokomak hadn’t been able to hide the fall of Apsidal and much of the Apsidal Chain, but they’d stayed mum about losing N-Gann. They’d never lost a fleet base, not in all their thousands of years of unquestioned dominance. The news broadcasts she’d picked up had carefully avoided mentioning anything about N-Gann. “They took the world a couple of months ago.”


  Piece looked up, sharply. “Really? I was told N-Gann was impregnable.”

  Hameeda smiled. “They did say that, didn’t they? It must be very embarrassing for them.”

  She picked up the mugs and handed one of them to him. “And now we’re on our way to N-Gann,” she said, “I think you owe me an explanation. Who are you and what are you doing here?”

  “I told you,” Piece said. “I’m a deep cover agent on long-term assignment ...”

  “And you had the wit to flag me down,” Hameeda said, curtly. “How did you even know where to meet me?”

  “I didn’t.” Piece grinned at her. “It was a stroke of luck.”

  “Really,” Hameeda said, drawing out the word. “What happened?”