Cloak of War

by Casey Calouette

  Hallverson rises slowly to his feet. One arm comes up at the same moment. A finger wavers and then straightens like an arrow. His mouth opens. No sound comes out for a second, and then he howls, “The White Queen!”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  There, around the Queen, are the broken remnants of the Tyrolean fleet. A milky-gray moon is large in our view. It’s just off the fifth planet. On our scan, it’s designated as defensive position Guernsey.

  At this point, we’re barely fifty kilometers from the surface of the planet. Rooks and knights screen one edge and are using a ConFed inhibitor to drag in our ships and put them right into the Tyrolean optimal range. The Queen is arrayed right next to a dozen bishops, with two freighters right up close.

  The position is clever. By getting so close, our guys tried to screen a good portion of the system from hostiles. You can’t bounce through a planet. Except now that the Tyroleans are about to hold it, the ConFed ships are going to have the same problem.

  Just before us is a line from the Eleventh Fleet. They are beyond battered. All that is left is a pack of old MaoQin battlecruisers that wear so much armor that an asteroid would have a hard time killing them. But even they are falling.

  This isn’t just a resupply point. It’s where the Tyrolean fleet is about to hammer the ConFed. They’re taking up combat formations, screening the ships that are being resupplied. We have minutes, scant minutes, to get into position and nail those freighters; otherwise, our fleets are done.

  “Captain! We have to warn the fleet!”

  Hallverson looks at me like I’m mad. He pushes me away. “Cloak the ship! Prepare to fire all torpedoes on the Queen on my mark!”

  The comms officer calls out: “Main fleet is inbound! Ten minutes. All other ships have orders to get here now. Nantucket is reporting one freighter down.”

  The freighters before us are the last two left in system. It’s now or never.

  The pipes on the bridge clatter and clang as the last of our cloaking gas pours out from the ship.

  A command priority message blinks on the main screen. I reach over and slap at the Comms officer’s screen and play it.

  “Hey!” he protests loudly.

  “—inbound to the first moon of the fifth planet. All forces, get to point Guernsey. The last two freighters are holding on point Guernsey.” The message repeats. It’s an all-hands-on-deck call. Time to step in the ring; the fleet’s coming.

  Hallverson suddenly leans forward and balls his fists into his eyes. “Anastasia? Oh God, oh God!”

  “Belay that order! Lock in those freighters, fire on my mark!” I step away from the engineering console and head right for Pochinko. She has her eyes on Hallverson, not on me. “Pochinko! Lock in those freighters, dammit! Fire on my mark!”

  “They’re burning!” Hallverson bellows. He stands up straight and levels a finger right at me. “You! You!”

  I slam Pochinko out of her chair and quickly tap on both the freighters. Two fish. All we have is two fish. Harpoon and one more.

  “Stop him!” Hallverson roars. He charges across the captain’s platform.

  “Raj, Katzen! Get in here now! Fire on the freighters!” I call on my suit. Then I turn away from the weapons console, ball up my fists, and step back into the role of a boxer.

  No gloves. No mask. No mouthguard. This is a back-alley brawl if there ever was one. I ignore Pochinko and the rest of Hallverson’s watch. Raj, Katzen, and even Baskins can keep them locked down.

  All I have to do is keep Hallverson occupied long enough to let Katzen get the firing plot finished.

  Hallverson latches both arms onto the railing and vaults over. Fresh blood runs down from his ears. But I don’t focus on that; I watch his eyes.

  There’s truth in a boxer’s eyes. He’ll look where he wants to strike, where he wants to move, where he wants you to go. Except Hallverson isn’t a boxer.

  His feet land with a thud. I pick my stance, shift one leg back, and bring up both fists.

  I have a plan. If he comes in to wrestle, I’ll just grab on to him and hold him down. Katzen only needs about four seconds. But if he comes in to fight, all I have to do is knock that pneumatic pistol out from his hands. Again, four seconds.

  Simple as pie, right?

  Hallverson bounds one step and sends out his left arm in a wide haymaker. I watch his right. Where’s that pistol? There’s nothing in his hands. Then I see it tucked into his belt.

  I swing up one arm, block his haymaker, and then jab in with my right. My fist connects squarely with his jaw, and his head snaps back a fraction of an inch. Holy shit. I’ve done it. I’ve just become a mutineer.

  A fresh trickle of blood rolls down from Hallverson’s nose. “Pochinko! Fire on the Queen!”

  Raj and Katzen burst through the bulkhead hatch. Baskins stands at the edge of the bulkhead but doesn’t come on the bridge.

  Raj, all fifty kilos of her, kicks the man from Engineering square in the balls and then charges at Pochinko. I see surprise in Hallverson’s eyes; he hadn’t expected others to come to my aid.

  Katzen bounds past me and slides into the chair.

  Raj covers one side from the rest of Hallverson’s watch. She holds her hands out before her, ready to bat any attack away. “C’mon, you fuckers! Who wants some of this shit? I’ll fuck you up!”

  “Anastasia! They’re burning!” Hallverson bellows.

  I snap up one arm, block an incoming punch, and hit Hallverson once more. Hard. I can see the whites of his eyes jiggle. The bloodshot parts wobble like a too-old cracked egg.

  And then he simply pushes me away.

  I have one arm on the way back to punch with the other ready to block. Hallverson just reaches in, fast as a snake, and wrenches me to the side. Behind me, Katzen works furiously to lock in the program.

  As I clatter to the ground, I listen, pray, and hope to hear the sound of our last two torpedoes firing. I land so hard that my earpiece falls free.

  Instead, I hear the sound of that pneumatic pistol. I scramble to my feet just in time to see Katzen slump to the floor, unconscious from the sedative in the pneumatic pistol.

  All Hallverson has to do is sit, undo the changes, and engage the program to kill the Queen.

  Shit.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  I charge right at Hallverson. He’s half-hunched with one eye on me and the other on the screen.

  My feet clang on the deck, and I cross the space in half a second. I use my momentum to propel a punch right at the side of his head. Except he rolls out of the chair and catches me with his leg as I stumble to the floor. Lights flash in my eyes.

  Knockout lights. They used to call them that because once you hit the mat, the press went wild. Flashbulbs on those old cameras.

  Hallverson stands and kicks me hard, right in the stomach. I ball over and gasp for air. If I hadn’t had my suit on, he would’ve knocked me out permanently. You just can’t rebound from a massive stomach hit. Not even a horse can.

  The Orca groans. Battle-damage alarms blare on the bridge.

  “Bah!” Hallverson shouts. He steadies himself with one hand while with the other he squeezes his forehead. “Oh God! They’re burning!”

  I catch a glimpse of the main display, and it takes my breath away. Wave after wave of ConFed ships are landing right in the optimal range of the Tyrolean fleets. Neutron blasters and iridium charges devastate everything that lands. Another bishop is taking position in the line. A second ship filled with iridium from a freighter we can’t kill.

  I take the moment of confusion and jump to my feet. I punch Hallverson as hard as I can. My knuckles crack as they connect right with the side of his head. Jabs of fire travel down my arm. Broken knuckles, baby.

  Pochinko and Wallace charge at Raj. Raj knocks out Pachinko with an uppercut, but a moment later Wallace has her on the floor and pummels her.

  Hallverson wavers. His knees do a ninth-round buckle. The light drifts from his eyes.

&
nbsp; Normally, that’s where you stop. You don’t punch a man before he’s going to hit the mat. I was that man once, that time the Turk pounded my skull in. The Turk stopped just short of killing me.

  Fuck him.

  Hallverson gets one more punch. I pop him right in the jaw with a vicious right jab. His eyes cross, and he slides to the floor.

  The weapons console still shows the plot locked on to the freighters.

  “Hit it!” Raj screams.

  Wallace tries to crawl off of her, but Raj bites down on one of his hands and locks on to him with her arms and legs. He bellows and backhands her, but her bite’s latched on tight.

  With a single swipe, I engage the program. Two thuds shudder through the ship.

  Two coal-black torpedoes accelerate past burning civilian rigs. Past a line of Tsarist Combine cruisers. Past three MaoQin battlecruisers that still fight, even though they are cracked in half. And finally right past the White Queen.

  Harpoon strikes first, and the freighter explodes in a cloud of expanding iridium ammunition. A line of orange pearls ignites as all of the support craft around the ship go up. One of the bishops takes the full brunt and cracks apart.

  The second freighter’s death isn’t nearly as dramatic. It implodes in the rear of the ship while the crewed section spouts flame and then goes silent. It has to have been empty at that point.

  Will it be enough? The main fleet isn’t even here yet.

  Raj lets Wallace go and runs over to Katzen. She snaps up his visor. Then she looks at me. “What are you waiting for? Go!”

  Shit, my earpiece. I run over, bend down, and stuff it into my ear.

  “—abandon ship! The heat sinks took a hit. We can’t contain the reactor for much longer!” Henna’s voice is loud in my ear.

  “Henna! What happened?”

  “Jager!” She sounds relieved. “Get out now! We took a hit. The Orca is building up heat and fast.”

  “Go!” I yell and wave toward the exit.

  Baskins finally comes in and helps Raj drag Katzen off. I climb up onto the captain’s platform and stare up at the tactical display. Three lines of ConFed heavy cruisers, Nimitz class, our newest, our best, land right next to the Tyroleans. A moment later arrives a mixed bag of worn-out battleships and finally Admiral Klaus’s flagship itself.

  I gently snap open the emergency call on the chair and press it down. Antennas burst through our cloaking gas and broadcast our position. I know there’s nothing worse than fleeing a dying ship only to be trapped where no one can see you.

  The hull groans again. The ship is trying to shuttle heat into nonessential systems. But you can only spread it so far. I step off the platform and stop.

  Hallverson.

  I jog to his side and roll him over. He mutters to himself. The only words I can make out are the names of his dead children. So I throw one of his arms over my shoulder and groan as I bring him to his feet. I can’t leave him to die, not like this.

  We take two stilted steps when I feel his arm tightening around my neck. I struggle to break free. With one hand I try to pry his arm off; with the other I punch again and again into his suit. He squeezes like an iron vise. My suit cracks and pops in my ears, and my faceplate shoots off, broken.

  “Jager,” his voice rasps in my ear. “Get off my ship.”

  Hallverson tosses me away and stands above me with a look of complete contempt. Blood streams down from his nose, his teeth are stained red, even his eyes are almost completely crimson.

  I steady myself and gasp for air. A quick glance down tells me all I need to know. My suit is useless, the face shield broken. “We need to go, Captain! The Orca is gonna blow. The heat sinks are shot.”

  Hallverson staggers drunkenly onto the captain’s platform and plops himself down into his chair. He calls up the astrogation control and lays in a course.

  “Magnus!” I yell at him.

  He leers at me with drunken eyes, hateful eyes, with a crooked smile of satisfaction. “I’ll get my revenge now, boy. Go.”

  There on the viewscreen is the plot. Hallverson has set course to plow the Orca right into the White Queen.

  He stares up at the video feed and locks it on to the White Queen. His voice low, he mutters at the screen: “From hell’s heart, I stab at thee.”

  I turn and run off the bridge without bothering to seal the bulkhead. That is the last time I see Captain Magnus Hallverson.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  “Everyone out! Seal up! Light your beacons! The distress call is live!” I bellow as I run down the hall. About now, I’m trying to figure out exactly how I’m going to get out of the ship. Not just out, but out with a functional spacesuit.

  Sparks rain down from a line of conduit. Lights flicker. Vacuum alarms sound sporadically. Through all of that is a groan from the hull and a tremor in the drives. The Orca is dying. Not that she’ll live long with Hallverson at the helm.

  I stop at a maintenance console and catch my breath. Icons for all of the crew are exiting the ship. Only a few icons remain. Those are the dead, or so I assume. I know we have casualties.

  “Where’s a suit?” I yell and rip open one locker after the next. Junk. Debris. The accumulated twenty kilos of a sailor’s life. And not a starsuit to be found.

  How long do I have? Fifteen minutes? Maybe not even that if he’s got the drives maxed out.

  Won’t that be something? After everything I’ve done, I get stuck on the Orca with Captain Hallverson.

  I check a dozen more cabinets and lockers. Even the emergency suits are gone. The heavy welding suits are nowhere to be seen. I tear open the medical cabinets, but they are empty too.

  The only spot I know that still has suits, or should, is Engineering. Last I was there, they had no atmosphere. I run down the hall, wondering if I can hold my breath long enough to get into a radiation suit. It takes a trained engineer a few minutes. It’ll take me longer.

  My suit is soaked. I can feel the sweat, smell it—it’s horrible. A sweat like I’ve never had. Fear. An animal fear. Imminent death.

  I claw at the Engineering hatch and crawl into the makeshift airlock. Someone is still tending the reactor.

  “Henna!” I yell.

  She turns her heavy radiation suit and looks at me. “Get out! The reactor is unstable, I have to—”

  “You get out!” I yell back. “I need a suit. My visor is shot!”

  I watch as she turns to look at the console and then back across the room.

  My heart sinks. Two of the heavy radiation suits hang from the wall, both in shreds.

  “When will he fire the last torpedo?” Henna’s voice cracks.

  “We did! We’re out of fish.”

  “What?”

  “Hallverson is going to crash the Orca into the White Queen!”

  Henna lets out a very unladylike string of swear words. “I was keeping the ship alive so everyone can get out!”

  “Can it last fifteen minutes?” I rack my brain while she taps at the console.

  Sealant? Maybe I can stick a bag over my head, and then she can coat the edges with sealant. Or maybe even some sort of food container? Fear. I just want to get outside. But space is the most hostile thing known to man. Well, except for the Orca. It’ll be pretty damn hostile in here soon too.

  Then it hits me. Bertha.

  That dummy training torpedo is big enough for both of us to crawl inside and even has some atmosphere for sensitive instrumentation. As long as we can load it up, that is.

  “Henna, meet me at the aft torpedo room!”

  “What?” she yells back in surprise.

  I exit the bulkhead and seal it so she can equalize the pressures.

  A dim gray smoke clings to the ceiling, and the air tastes like burnt steel. A shudder rockets through the hull. Fifty meters ahead of me, I watch as the hull buckles in and a kinetic round punches right through. Debris rockets out from the cabinets before me and shoots out of the hull breach.

  I slide down
the stairs into the aft torpedo bay. Both of the tubes show empty. Bertha lies on the auxiliary cradle.

  “Thank God for crosstraining,” I mumble. My hands undo the seals. I call up the torpedo controls and prep both of the tubes.

  Inside of Bertha is the usual maintenance equipment. I grab it all and toss it onto the floor with a crash. The air is getting thin; sounds are quieter than they should be. Or are they? I’ll lose consciousness soon. It alarms me to know that I might not even be aware of it.

  The tube door opens up. I push with all my strength and barely budge the heavy capsule toward the gaping hole. The autoloader is down. Normally a pack of torpedomen do this. I have me.

  Henna clanks down the steps in her too-large suit. “Need a hand?”

  I grin and make a space for her. We both push until the front of the capsule locks on to the firing arm. At that point, a hydraulic cylinder will draw it the rest of the way in.

  “Get in!” I yell to her. I have to preload the program and give it a countdown. The console shows a dozen data alerts. One by one, I override them all and prepare to fire Bertha with zero safety protocols.

  Henna climbs in, and her bulky suit takes up most of the space inside.

  I key the program for fifteen seconds and sprint over to Bertha. My hands tremble, and dots of black dance in my eyes. I cram myself next to Henna, wedge really tight like a tick. I can barely reach the lid. It feels so heavy in my hands as I pull it down on top of us.

  “I hope you’re right!” she says in that know-it-all engineer’s tone.

  Inside of the capsule, it’s totally dark. Truly like a coffin. I wait for the acceleration. Pray for it, really. I hope whatever superstitions Henna has are about to pay off.

  Seconds creep by. My heart slams in my chest. How far out are we? For all I know, we could be launching right into a line of Tyrolean ships.

  It feels too long. Something is wrong. We should have fired. We should be outside. Oh fuck. What’d I do wrong?

  A wicked push wedges me even tighter against Henna. I scream; it’s involuntary, like all of the air exited my lungs just from sheer acceleration. Just as I lose consciousness I realize I must’ve input ten gravities of acceleration instead of just one.