Cloak of War

by Casey Calouette

  Captain Hallverson leans back and hits the intercom. “Hartford, bring in some coffee, please.”

  How long till we run out of that wonderful nectar? The Russians didn’t send any over, unfortunately.

  As I wait, I wonder if Hallverson knows that Hartford and I have been trying to breathe some life back into the crew. He has to know. Maybe all he needs is a chance himself?

  Hallverson lays out the tablet before us. “We’re going to do this like we did in our first run.”

  Sebic and Hauptmann both sit up straight. Even Colby looks surprised.

  “Since we have newcomers, I’ll explain our plan. We bounce in on the star side of the nexus point and cloak immediately. As soon as we can bounce again, we go. We’ll leave some torpedoes in our gas cloud once we depart. A little surprise to keep them guessing.” He keys on the tablet. “At that point, we don’t cloak again unless we’re caught. It’ll be a lightning run—bounce, charge, bounce, charge—until we’re clear. Understood?”

  “How long will the transit of this system take?” I say.

  “At this pace, about three days.”

  Three days of constant watches. No sleep. The threat that we can be pounced upon at any moment. Exciting. It’ll be the longest boxing match I’ve ever been in.

  Henna shifts uncomfortably. “Captain, the reactor will be under a great deal of stress. Ultracharging is only recommended for one cycle.”

  “I know my ship, thank you,” Hallverson replies. He looks at the crew. “If we try to do a slow, safe transit, it’ll take us forever to get through the system to our destination.”

  “Why the hurry?” I say. “Time is on our side.”

  “Our orders were clarified. Time is not on our side.” Hallverson hands me the tablet. As I read it, he says, “In a nutshell, the Tyroleans need iridium weaponry to win the fleet battles. Command determined that the bottleneck is getting tight. They’ve opened a dozen fronts to sap that one resource. It’s the job of us and and a few other Orcas to turn off that flow of weaponry. We hit the source and strike at every freighter leaving back toward ConFed space.”

  I look up from the tablet, from page after page of statistics laying it all out. “How do we know where they’re all going?”

  Hallverson smiles a thin smile. “Because they plan on engaging the bulk of the Tyrolean fleet. If we can do our job, we’ll bleed them of ammunition and trap them far away from their supply lines. With any luck, we’ll even make it on time; that is, if the battle happens.”

  I finish reading the tablet. A detachment from the Eleventh Fleet managed to entrap a cluster of Tyrolean ships on the far side of the ConFed near Brasilia space. It was a running brawl, and then suddenly the Tyroleans stopped firing with heavy-hitting rounds. At that point, the Eleventh Fleet came in and made short work of the remaining Tyrolean ships. Without the iridium-enhanced ammunition, we could compete on an even keel.

  The rest of the meeting focuses on the details. Jump plans. Maintenance intervals. And of course, secondary plans. That part is the shortest. There aren’t any.

  Hartford serves coffee. Already it’s looking thin. How will our meals look at the end of this patrol? Too bad the Russians didn’t give us a real bear. You can’t eat a robotic one.

  Hallverson sips and then stands abruptly. “No second guesses. No one questions my command. Jager, if you have any goddamn problems, lay them out now.”

  His anger catches me off guard. “No, sir.”

  “Then let’s get on our way. Sound the alarm. We’re going in.”

  I step into the cool air of the hall and wait until everyone files past. Henna is last and gives my shoulder a squeeze. Her eyes say enough: she’s scared.

  Hallverson leads the way to the bridge. He sits in his usual spot. I slide in behind Raj, with Yao taking station behind Katzen.

  “Jump to first coordinates on my call. Program will be a full-velocity dip. Gas goes up after five seconds.”

  The commands go into each console. Raj carefully sorts out her scans and lays out a secondary plot. Captain Hallverson acknowledges the orders.

  In the vids, there would have been a speech, something to rally the crew, a few words of encouragement—anything to let it on the line. But Hallverson says nothing. He’s focused on the star plot, focused on the mission, and as I think about it, focused on getting through this petty business of winning a war and getting on with killing the White Queen.

  “Go.”

  The Orca bounces a dozen astronomical units and lands on the far side of the nexus point. Thermal spikes run throughout the ship as liquid nitrogen struggles to lower the temps on the astrogation computers. Raj mumbles a prayer, and then I see why.

  A dozen destroyers are in a circular pattern around the nexus point. Most are a few thousand kilometers off, but a pair are close: a few hundred kilometers. A star pattern of minefields resolves off our bow with some sort of structure sitting just on the edge.

  “We’re getting lit up!” Raj calls. “Laser, radar, microwave, every spectrum.”

  The ship rolls and surges. The plot for movement suddenly ceases, and the hull groans as the cloaking gas flares.

  “Prepare to launch torpedoes!” Hallverson calls.

  “Torpedoes ready!” Yao snaps back. He rests his hands on Katzen’s slender shoulders.

  They’re coming for us.

  The destroyers surge from every corner and set course for our last known position. Cones of probability all punch into our location. Time is not on our side. Our course is slowly changing, painfully slow. They know where we were but not where we are headed.

  The first destroyer blasts past with engines at full bore. It only decelerates once it’s past our previous location.

  “Oldest trick in the book,” Hallverson says. “You don’t move at all, just sit still and let them think you’re moving.”

  This should worry me. It means the Tyroleans here have experience with Orcas.

  Bit by bit, we advance at a ponderous pace. A cloud of ball bearings slews past from the second destroyer. It launches active probes, and then it gets interesting.

  “Gas depletion!” Yao announces.

  “Keep it at tactical levels,” Hallverson replies coolly.

  The active ping is adding energy to the gas cloud. So in order to retain the cloaking property, we have to add more gas to balance it out. The problem is what happens when we run out of gas.

  “Engineering, time till bounce?” Hallverson calls. His eyes are focused on the incoming destroyers, even though the bounce time is on the corner of the screen.

  “Thirty minutes,” Henna calls over the intercom.

  And so we are hunted for thirty minutes. For thirty minutes, we’re pursued by four destroyers. They dance and bounce and deploy charges all around: clouds of dust, ball bearings, even water jets. All it takes is just one bit into us, and it’s over.

  My gut is tight the whole time, like I’m holding it for a punch. They are so close that we’ll be dead in a second if they get a good signal.

  “Impact! Single point,” Yao calls, his voice cracking. “Starboard, aft quadrant.”

  “Prep to bounce!” Hallverson yells. He rubs his forehead with one hand, the other squeezing the armrest on his chair.

  “Bounce ready!” Henna calls back.

  “Torpedoes, zero velocity, target mode automatic, launch in three, two, one…bounce now!”

  The Orca deploys a pair of torpedoes and immediately surges out from the pocket of cloaking gas. Our sensors go wild as a dozen different weapons systems lock on to us. But just before any can catch us, we bounce farther into the system. The only thing left behind is a pocket of gas and two torpedoes.

  I exhale a quick breath. We’ve made it.

  Except something isn’t right. Alarms blast out from the sensors console. The front of our hull is emitting a massive amount of gamma radiation.

  Raj turns to Captain Hallverson. “Sir! That structure fired a high-energy lanthanum isotope burst. We’r
e glowing like a lighthouse.”

  Hallverson straightens himself up in his seat. “Prepare for action.”

  “What’s that mean?” I say to Yao.

  Raj speaks first. “Lanthanum isotopes screw up the astrogation AI. Half-life is about twenty-three hours. Until then, we’re emitting a ridiculous amount of gamma radiation. We can’t plot a new bounce with all that energy on our nose.”

  “And it means we can’t cloak, and we’re like a shining beacon. They’ll be coming soon.” Yao sounds like a ghost.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Have you ever felt that you just couldn’t get a break? That fate was somehow stacked against you? That even if you did all right, somehow destiny would step in and turn it all to shit?

  When we land from the bounce, that’s how it feels. Our one method of escape, cloaking, is closed off from us. The nose of our ship radiates energy like a Christmas tree. Nor can we bounce: the AI is seized up in a conniption fit as it tries to resolve the data through that cloud of screaming gamma radiation.

  Lanthanum is some nasty shit. It’s like cheap whisky for the quantum computing core.

  “Status!” Hallverson yells.

  “Three AU bounce, uh, 1500 light-seconds until our signature reaches the hostiles,” Raj replies.

  I climb across the bridge and peer at the signals display. External radiation sensors blare nine shades of crazy.

  Hallverson stands. He calls out to the bridge. “Prep torpedoes. Let’s get some birds in the sky. We can’t roll any sauce with that level of radiation.”

  No sauce.

  We can’t cloak, not with that gamma radiation shining right through. It’s too intense of a signal.

  “Ready to fire on your call,” Katzen says in a shaky voice. “Spread pattern, sir?”

  “Full spread, orbital coverage. Have them halt a hundred kilometers out. Then we drop another pattern.” Hallverson looks over his shoulder. “Our armor won’t last long. We need to lay out a spread to catch them off guard and buy us five minutes.”

  Armor. Armor? Shit. Once you start talking armor, you’ve got problems. Our armor is measured in millimeters. Thin.

  “Captain!” I yell out. This time, I crawl right over Raj and fall to the floor. My hands shake as I call up the maintenance program.

  “Mr. Jager? This is no time for hysterics. Head back, prep for fire control,” Hallverson snaps.

  Page after page of engineering schematics flash by. Preventive maintenance. Repair instructions. And finally, what I’m looking for—the armor panel welding layout. I study it and zoom in on four different spots.

  The armor plate is designed to come off to repair the damage underneath. The clock is ticking, though. Not only do we have to cut it off, but we have to do it before the radiation spreads deeper into the hull structure itself.

  “Mr. Jager, did you hear me? Get in the back!” Hallverson stands from his chair and looks down. “What are you doing?”

  “We can cut off the armor, four triple layer welds, burn it off in about, uh…” I turn to look at the schematic. “Twenty minutes.”

  Hallverson stares at me for a hard second. His eyes narrow just a touch. “Colby?”

  “Sir,” comes the response over the intercom.

  “Can we cut off the armor plate on the nose? It’s peppered with lanthanum isotopes,” Hallverson says without taking his eyes off me.

  “It’ll take about half an hour,” Colby replies quickly. I can hear some excitement in her voice.

  “Jager says he can do it in twenty,” Hallverson says back.

  “Then tell him to get his ass suited up and meet me at the airlock.”

  Hallverson speaks without taking his eyes off me. “Katzen, hold that launch.”

  I grin and sprint toward the door.

  “Don’t let us down, Mr. Jager.” Hallverson’s voice is loud, almost excited.

  “I won’t!” I cycle the bulkhead and holler down the hall, “Make way! Make way!”

  Fire control teams back out of the hall. They are sheathed in vacuum suits and fire-retardant vests like steelworkers of old.

  “Move, move!” I yell and push a hatch open before a maintenance team can shut it.

  Ticktock. The clock ticks as I run. We have two chances here. One, cut away that irradiated armor and escape. Two, lay out enough torpedoes to make those destroyers run away. In all reality, if we stand and fight, we’ll die. The Orca-class ships aren’t designed to be exposed. And those destroyers are specifically designed to kill ships like ours.

  I find Colby waiting with Sebic and Hauptmann. Dr. Mohammad pumps an injection into each of their necks. My suit still stinks from the last time I sweated in it.

  “Go, we’ll meet you outside,” Colby says. “Hit number three and number four. Jager and I will burn one and two.”

  Sebic and Hauptmann grab heavy plasma torches along with the argon tanks and march into the airlock.

  Colby hefts one for both of us. “Get your injection, eh, Jager boy?”

  I snug one arm of the suit down and then struggle into the other. “What is it?”

  “Potassium iodide along with some other goodies to keep the gamma radiation from killing you,” Dr. Mohammad mumbles. He sticks the raspy pad of the injector against my neck. It hisses.

  “Ouch!” I rub the spot.

  “Quitcherbitchin. Now let’s go,” Colby says. She snaps her face mask up.

  I raise my mask and heft the plasma cutter. “Hey, wait a second.” My spirits rise up. “If you wanted to die, you wouldn’t be worried about a long-term radiation pill.”

  “You’re rubbing off on me,” Colby grumbles over the private comms.

  I grin inside of my suit and step inside the airlock. Her face is barely visible through the tint of the mask. Is that a smile I see?

  “Don’t be getting smug, Jager boy. Now let’s do this.”

  The lock cycles, and we crawl over the coal-black hull. The faintest signs of pitting and oxidation ripple the otherwise pristine coating.

  “Twenty minutes till hostiles receive the signal,” Raj calls over the open comms.

  I split off from Colby and pull myself hand over hand until I’m at the junction point.

  “Good luck, Jager boy,” Colby calls. Do I sense her warming up a bit? Maybe a few degrees over absolute zero.

  A plasma torch isn’t anything special. It acts rather like an arc welder but in reverse. You use an electric charge to make a funnel of ionized plasma. Then you burn into the metal and finally blast the molten stuff away with a punch of argon.

  I set the tip, pull the trigger, and watch the sparks fly. Slowly it burns deeper and melts the perfectly laid weld. I think of the dead welders that worked so hard to make it perfect. Now I’m gouging it out and casting it loose.

  Glowing bits of slag and molten metal drift away and slowly settle onto the hull. It’s like a swarm of meteorites glowing in slow motion.

  The first two sides burn off quickly, then the weld starts to sputter. “Changing the tip,” I call over the comms.

  The spanner wrench is half wrapped up in cabling, so I have to unwind it all. Whoever used it last hadn’t stowed it very well. Finally I pop the bad nozzle and seat in a new one.

  I swear as I hit the armor plate with the nozzle. This is taking too long. “How you guys making out?”

  “Almost through!” Sebic calls.

  Colby replies the same. Hauptmann is quiet.

  “Hauptmann?”

  “I’m having some issues,” he snaps back. I can hear the frustration in his voice. “Cranking up the pressure.”

  “Five minutes!” Raj calls.

  “I’m done!” Colby calls triumphantly. “Boo-yeah!”

  My nozzle cuts through the inner layers faster than the outer ones. The armor plate is ragged and rippled, like contours of a cliff.

  A vibration shudders through the hull. I feel it in my feet. The armor plate is groaning from thermal expansion.

  My corner snaps off w
ith a sudden pop.

  Colby bounds across the hull. “I’m off to help Sebic.”

  “Two minutes!” Raj calls. Her voice is tight like a string.

  “Hauptmann?”

  Hauptmann doesn’t reply. All I can hear on his channel is a heavy rasping and the grinding of teeth.

  I scoop up my gear and bound as quick as I can across the low gravity of the armored nose. Hauptmann is half hunched with a cloud of glowing bits all around him. He’s into the weld at an odd angle and is having to go back and recut to get deep enough inside. It must be the anchor corner and is extra braced.

  We work silently as he cuts at one side and I the other. I ignore Raj’s voice counting down.

  “We’re headed in to blow it!” Colby calls. A few explosive bolts will let it blast free, and we can bounce.

  “Goddamit,” Hauptmann swears. His tip sputters out and fizzles. Only gas blows on the molten metal. “I’m out!”

  “Get in!” I call back. “I got this.”

  “Time!” Raj calls. “They’ll be spooling up for the bounce now!”

  “I’m sorry, dammit, I’m sorry,” Hauptmann pleads.

  I push him with one hand. “Get in! I got this!”

  I focus on his cut and burn away bit by bit until I’m deep enough to bury that diamond-white tip and finally separate the armor plate. It kicks up, and I feel a twang in my boots.

  “I’m clear! Headed in now!”

  There isn’t time to spool up the mess of the plasma cutter, so I leave it. Every stride is in slow motion. I watch the stars and wonder if I’ll even see the enemy destroyers land. Depends how accurate they are. But I guess it’ll be accurate enough with a giant gamma radiation slug zooming them in.

  The airlock is closed. I peer through the window just as Hauptmann steps through and seals it on the inside.

  I hammer down on the door open button, but nothing happens. Again I hit it; it should’ve bled all the pressure by now.

  Inside, Colby, Hauptmann, and Sebic all shout at the tiny window. I can see their frantic faces through a frost-smeared lens.

  I slam my fist down two more times. Both times I hit as hard as I ever did boxing.