Cloak of War

by Casey Calouette

  Not a single whale made it out. The people grew more excited as the blood grew thicker in the water. They became animated, excited, almost animals themselves. Then the sea creatures would descend on the slaughter. Birds. Fish. Sharks.

  That’s about what I picture. Every damned ship that can mount a weapon will be headed there to join in on the kills.

  And that’s what we see. Bulk cruisers that normally haul fertilizer or farm equipment to the colonies blast the airwaves with invitations to other ships to pair up. Ships so old they should’ve been on the bottom of the scrapheap are going in to kill what they can.

  Even an old passenger liner, the sort that plied the inner planets of Sol, drunkenly calls out on the comms. The only thing they ask is that someone leave one of those Tyroleans for them to kill.

  Now, don’t get me wrong: I don’t have a single ounce of sympathy for the Tyroleans. They are about to get exactly what they deserve. But it’s funny how the preservation instinct is suddenly tossed out when the kill is guaranteed.

  But all of those ships can function. All of them are intact. All of them can add something to the mix. We’re barely held together. How can we even take a glancing blow without falling apart? This is madness.

  I meet Henna midway through the Orca. She leans forward as she stomps and curses. A slight sunburn darkens her cheeks, proof of time working on the reactor. She jams out a finger and points it up toward the bridge. “What’s that asshole doing? We can’t do this! This ship is one failure away from a catastrophe.”

  I raise up my hands defensively. “I know that, Henna, so give me some ammunition to argue with.”

  Henna shakes a fist in the air. “I’ll give him something to argue with! This fist right in his stupid goddamn mouth!”

  “Come on, we’ll explain the issues and lay it out. I know the condition of the ship as well as you do.”

  Henna stomps a foot onto the deck and glares at a fire control team that works around us. Huttola steps up to speak and then changes his mind and walks away. Can’t say I blame him.

  I lay my hands onto Henna’s shoulders and look her right in the eyes. “Henna, stay calm and let me do the talking. Just back me up with numbers. Got it?”

  Henna blows a stray hair off of her face and gives me a short nod. “Got it.”

  We find Hallverson supervising two torpedomen as they do a dry run on the aft torpedo tubes. Only one of the tubes is still functional, but it has to be completely loaded by hand. Both of the fore tubes are functional, but the manual loaders are beyond broken. So the aft tube is the only one we have to worry about reloading.

  Harpoon, the Queen’s own torpedo, is still in a protective capsule. But this time, it’s loaded in the cradle. The capsule will be shed once the torpedomen plunge her in.

  Hallverson waves his hand at us and finishes going through the loader checklist. I stand with one leg up on Bertha, the dummy torpedo, and wait for him to finish. He’s animated, excited; his hands move quickly—almost too quickly. It’s like he’s trying to squeeze his last moments of life into these final days.

  But he is, isn’t he?

  After a few minutes, the torpedomen leave, and Hallverson comes before both of us. I hope Henna has calmed down; she’s had a few minutes to percolate.

  “Well, are we combat effective?” Hallverson crosses his arms and looks right at Henna.

  “Sir,” I say quickly, “we’ve got a few minor issues. We’re short on—”

  Henna snaps. “Minor? The Orca is a floating wedge of swiss cheese. We’ve got more holes than we don’t. There’s barely any propellant left after that wormhole maneuver, the reactor is modulating in and out like a drunk old woman, and our damage control systems are barely keeping this rotten tub of shit together. We need a refit, a complete overhaul and—”

  “‘Rotten tub of shit’? You’ll work with what you have!” Hallverson yells back. The fire in his eyes flares anew, a smoldering fire given fresh kindling.

  Henna leans forward, looking to be eager for a fight. “I can’t work with what I don’t have! Where do you want me to get propellant, Captain? My ass? Or more fuel for the reactor? The galley? This is physics, sir. I can’t create a thing I don’t have!”

  Hallverson frowns at Henna. His eyes narrow a bit, but he doesn’t speak. If anything, he seems to be chewing it over.

  I’m caught between the two. Henna is spoiling for a fight; she wants to get us the hell out of here. The captain isn’t about to let anyone keep him from missing out on killing the Queen. As for me? Well, I want to get out of this mess without huffing vacuum. The Orca is a damned mess. Regardless of what Hallverson thinks, Henna is right.

  “She’s correct, Captain. If we can’t maneuver properly, then we’re a combat liability, not an asset.”

  Hallverson snaps his eyes to me, but still he doesn’t speak. I feel the weight of his gaze. He looks savage with a week-old beard that gives him a ghostly gray pallor.

  “How shortsighted are you two?” Hallverson looks at Henna then back at me. “Do you both think I’d throw this ship away without doing as much as I could to give her a fighting chance? Are you both that stupid?”

  I look at him and see not anger but disappointment. An uncomfortable feeling washes over me, and I realize I’m being shortsighted. He has done this a helluva lot longer than both of us have.

  He says, “The ship received a data dump from that destroyer. If the fleets can destroy the Tyroleans in the Good Hope system, then this war is effectively over. Do you two understand that? Over.”

  I lick my lips and give a glance at Henna. She looks as conflicted as I do.

  Hallverson steps closer to us both. “Now, help me finish this war. We’re inbound to requisition supplies now and drop off our wounded. Engineer Henna, prepare to take on more propellant. Jager, space suit.”

  He rests a hand on both of our shoulders and looks us square in the eye. “Are you with me now?”

  I nod. “Yes, sir.”

  Henna mutters her agreement.

  Hallverson leaves, and I give Henna a guilty look. I’ve doubted Hallverson for so long, seen him as a lost soul, that I’ve forgotten that he is the most talented Orca-class captain in the fleet. But a part of me feels manipulated—he knows exactly what to say to keep us on track. But still, if we can win the war…

  He has charisma, an attraction as elemental as a magnet or a molecular bond. You don’t just want to do what he says; you feel an urge to do it and do it well. Is it duty? Is it desire?

  We’ve got a med rendezvous with some random civvie. Our wounded are going off, whether they like it or not.

  I suit up along with Sebic and Katzen. Hallverson is short on details; he says we have to hook up an umbilical and supervise as the wounded transfer. Behind us, a dozen men and women lie on stretchers with IVs and medical pumps humming beside them.

  Yao stands in the midst with a blanket over his shoulders making him look like some lost old man. He can’t meet our gaze; he just stares off into space.

  The action alarm sounds. I snap up my face mask and run an integrity check. This suit has gone through a lot. On one shoulder is the patch from that little missile frigate I so deftly fucked up so long ago. It still smells faintly of piss.

  Comms signals click in my ears. The captain speaks to all of us. “Get the umbilical attached, help Engineering secure transfer lines, and then move the wounded across. No one comes on board, Jager. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” I reply slowly. “Captain, can you provide more information?”

  “We’re siphoning from a civilian vessel. Now here we go.”

  Umbilical transfers always suck. Normally, we’d use a nice, secure, airtight lock. But I guess the civilian ship doesn’t have one—most don’t. So we have to exit the ship, hook it up, pop our hatch, and hope nothing goes wrong.

  We step into the airlock. Sebic cradles the umbilical pack to his chest. It opens up like an old-style Slinky toy and telescopes across. It’s coated in an o
paque yellow membrane that keeps the air in. Or the vacuum out.

  A moment later, we’re outside. A dozen meters away, a huge civilian transport hangs motionless. The hull is pocked and beaten. Half a dozen names adorn the bow, with almost all of them faded into nothingness. Given her condition and lack of credentials, I decide she’s a frontier transport likely filled with crazy people.

  Colonists.

  Sebic feeds the tube outside while Katzen and I guide it toward the hatch of the transport. The moment we land, I latch on to the gritty-feeling hull door and lock in my side. Katzen follows suit, and we connect up the rest of the transfer tubes.

  Sebic is just a shape waiting outside of the umbilical.

  “Umbilical locked. Test pressure,” Katzen calls to the Orca.

  The umbilical puffs out. It buckles in and out before finally settling in. I watch my suit readout as the pressures fluctuate up and down. Finally, they level.

  “All right, match it up.”

  The moment the pressure equalizes, I bang on the door of the transport. The tiny window is scratched and smoky from too much time hanging out in space. Sebic disappears from view and heads back inside to help with the transfer.

  A second later, the hatch creaks open, and a man with a wild black beard looks back at me with a scowl. Behind him peer a dozen other men and women. The men all wear heavy beards, while the women are in sky-blue skirts.

  The man speaks, but I can’t hear him. I turn on my external pickup. “What?” I ask.

  “You can’t do this! We have rights!” the man stammers. The others behind him nod in agreement. It’s then I notice the wrenches and steel bars they wield.

  Good thing he can’t see the look of surprise on my face. It dawns on me that we aren’t getting a voluntary transfer of critical supplies; this is literally a requisition of goods by force.

  The Orca calls. I’m to start moving the wounded across immediately. I don’t recognize the voice that calls me, but it definitely isn’t the captain.

  “Are you ready for our wounded?” I say to the man.

  The others behind him protest.

  “But where can we go? We have no reaction mass now! This is against the law. We need to get our families away before the Tyroleans come back!” The look on his face is a mix of anger and confusion.

  I turn off the external speaker and open voice comms with Katzen and Sebic. “Start the wounded across.” Then I key the speaker back on. “Sir, there’s three fleets engaging those hostiles. I’m sure a ConFed Navy vessel will pick up these wounded in a few days. Do you have enough life support till then?”

  The man explains that they have enough supplies and power, but they want no part of our war. Katzen and Sebic move the stretchers through one at a time. Finally, Yao stumbles into the gravity of the transport.

  “Get back here. We’re moving out,” Hallverson calls on the open comms.

  Yao gives me a final look. In it I see guilt and disappointment but also relief like I haven’t seen since I met him. His tour is done. One part of me envies him, while another is spoiling for a fight. I grasp his corpse-thin hand in my vacuum suit glove and give it a single shake.

  “Good-bye, Mr. Yao.”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Jager,” Yao says and snaps as crisp a salute as he can manage.

  I back through the hatch and seal it tight. A moment later, we pump out the atmosphere and release it from the transport.

  “Hurry up! We’re running out of time!” Hallverson calls again.

  I looked back at the transport and watch as we slowly slide away. We don’t even wait to unhook the umbilical, instead just jettisoning it to drift in space.

  The fight of the century is on, and I’ll have a ringside seat.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  In the next five days, I barely get more than an hour’s sleep. It takes every bit of our energy and skill to bring the Orca into fighting condition. Hallverson is, once again, a perfectionist. But as Henna says, we are more hole than cheese.

  She’s rock jawed and mad as hell, and she reserves her anger for me. Whenever Hallverson comes, she gives him as solid an answer as an engineer can. It’s odd to hear an answer that’s cold, clinical, and somehow delivered in a tone that says go fuck yourself.

  Only after we return to the Orca do I learn that we cornered that transport and demanded they hand over reaction mass and propellant. They protested we were leaving them to die; Hallverson responded that we were trading them our wounded and they’d be guaranteed to get rescued.

  Not much consolation if the Tyrolean fleet comes barreling through.

  But I guess that’s what we’re doing. Making sure that doesn’t happen.

  Two systems out, we meet up with the front edge of the pincer. A pack of mauled Typhoon-class heavy cruisers hangs right around the nexus point. Thousands of mines glitter in space, so many it takes our tactical display a few seconds to render them all.

  I watch the external feed in the galley. Those ships are beaten like a rented mule. Granted, they are last generation’s ships, but they are well armored and proven and could still give a beating.

  I swallow down a dry chunk of biscuit. If those tough bastards are in that bad of shape, what the hell are we walking into?

  We enter the Falklands System, one system out from Good Hope. It’s there we run into the first wreckage field. A handful of MaoQin destroyers, barely held together, scour the ruins. ID beacons flicker throughout an expanding field of broken hulls and shattered armor. Some of the armor chunks give off infrared radiation. This battlefield is still fresh.

  Most of wrecks are Tsarist Combine cruisers with a mix of ConFed Navy and SouPac destroyers. To see those three working together shows a very odd union. The ConFed was always loose, normally buoyed up by the North American Colonial Division. A couple of generations back, the Tsarist Navy invaded SouPac space. That’ll throw a monkey wrench in your diplomacy, eh?

  Amazing what the threat of extinction will do to enforce cooperation.

  Is this the high-water mark? Have our fleets managed to keep the Tyroleans bottled up in Good Hope? We keep our comms silent and pass by the destroyers. I pray they have luck finding at least some survivors. But I know those odds.

  An even more beat-up defensive line waits at the next nexus point. It’s my watch when we come to the line. A massive Everest-class battleship, the Dover, sits motionless. One entire side of her is shredded open. Guts of polymer and titanium ply into space with shreds of wire splayed out like sinew. Welding arcs dance across her hull and illuminate her like some old galleon.

  Around them are ships in even worse shape. Cruisers you can see stars through. Destroyers missing massive sections of hull. Even a supply vessel is in the fighting formation.

  It makes me think of my first posting with a sense of nostalgia.

  “Open comms to the Dover. Let’s get permission to go through.”

  “Aye aye,” Baskin replies.

  A minute later, an audio-only feed comes on. A woman’s voice on the other end sounds distant and lost. “This is the Dover. You’re clear to transit. Be aware that Good Hope is considered hostile space. You may be engaged at any moment.”

  “Understood. How, uh, how are we doing?”

  The woman on the Dover gives a dry laugh. “How do ya think? Now give ’em hell for us. God we knows we gave it our all.”

  “Will do. Thank you, Dover.”

  “Dover out.”

  “Raj? Lock in the next bounce. Sound quarters, please. I don’t expect any excitement, but let’s be ready.”

  “Ready!” Raj calls.

  I let out a deep breath. A quick glance at the viewscreen shows me that every critical system is ready to go. A closer look shows the detailed damage report. Damn near every other system is damaged or destroyed.

  “Hit it, Raj.”

  We bounce one step closer and encounter nothing.

  For a brief moment, I think I hear Colby. A shiver run down my back as the adrenaline seeps away
. A bitter taste fills my mouth.

  Hallverson takes the next watch and informs me that he’ll be taking it all the way in. I’m in an odd sort of standby. Not on watch, but I can be called at any moment. So I find Henna in Engineering and spend my time with her. She rarely leaves the reactor now; she calls it a finicky thing.

  On this ship, she’s the closest thing I have to family. I like her. It’s relaxing; her odd superstitions make such a contrast to the hard edge of being an engineer. One moment she’ll describe how she leaves bread crumbs on her doorsteps for the pixies and a minute later describes how steel stresses and shatters.

  Our time together is still short. Hallverson calls often and has me inspect this system or that. I’m his eyes and ears for the ship. He’s the one manning the guns; this is his moment, the moment he’ll finally hunt and kill his White Queen.

  The only consolation I take is that this battle, this brawl in Good Hope, might win the war. Thinking back to the space around Tyrol Prime, I wonder if that’s really true.

  Henna lays it out, and I feel rather foolish I hadn’t realized it myself. For the entire war, neither the ConFed nor the Tyroleans have ever laid it on the line like this. The numerical advantage is so close on both sides that a major victory could totally alter the course of the war.

  So both sides play their cards close. Defense. Spar. A quick jab, a little skirmish, then back off. Each side waits for the other to commit. It seems the Tyroleans went for it, and now they’re paying the price. Though from the beating we’re taking, I’m not sure if we can come out on top.

  Our bounces are about half of normal. Our reactor can’t take the stress. Hell, the bounce drive is acting funny, and those things are bulletproof.

  Sebic and Hauptmann work their asses off in this stretch. Right now, we can only deploy the sauce on the starboard side. The bow tank is shredded. No way to fix it, either. So instead, Hallverson has those two plugging the holes with sealant and then inflating a massive water bladder.

  Oddly enough, it works. In a week or so, the cloaking gas will degrade the plastics, but for now it holds just fine.