by P. L. Nealen
“Can anyone still be alive aboard that?” Scalas asked.
“It’s possible,” Mor said. “The Antares III has considerable redundancies, especially when it comes to sealing hull breaches. There could well still be an air pocket inside somewhere. There’s obviously some kind of power source still functioning, or the transmitter wouldn’t be working. So there might be survivors.”
“Well,” Scalas said, “I’ll take First Squad EVA to investigate. Can you get us closer?”
“I could dock with her, if she still had an intact docking collar,” Mor retorted. “What kind of scow pilot do you take me for?”
Scalas refused to rise to the bait, but only clapped the captain on the shoulder before turning toward the lift in the center of the command deck. “I will be at Lock Number Ten,” he said. “Let me know when we have made rendezvous.”
Mor shook his head, though he did not look away from the holo tank to watch the Centurion leave. He had maneuvers to plot.
***
The smashed, ragged hull of the Antares III floated a mere two hundred meters away. It seemed like a long way, but there was a respectable amount of debris following the hulk, and even with the Dauntless’ armor, there was no reason to risk colliding with it. The Brothers had maneuvering units strapped around their armor’s sustainment packs, and could avoid significant debris with more precision than the starship could.
Scalas led the way, pumping little jets of compressed gas out of his propellant bottles with the small control stick that was strapped to his left gauntlet. The Dauntless had precisely matched velocities with the hulk, so the transit was easy. It was a simple, straight-line vector to the hulk.
There was lettering on the stricken starship’s flank. The enhanced vision projected on his visor slit showed him at least the first few letters, but he did not recognize them. He wasn’t sure what language the Valdekans spoke—for that matter, he was not even certain the Valdekans were human; he only knew that Valdek was well to Rimward, nearly fifty parsecs—but the lettering on their starships was neither Latin nor Trade Cant.
The main airlock was, as Mor had implied, blasted to scrap, apparently by a near-miss by a powergun bolt. A direct hit would likely have broken the ship’s spine. Whoever the Valdekans were, either their opponents were horrifically incompetent at ship-to-ship combat, or the Valdekan crew was very good at countermeasures and point defense.
He retrofired as he neared the twisted, mangled hull, until he was at a relative standstill, only about twenty meters from the hull itself. He was directly opposite the blasted remains of the airlock, and began scanning for another way in.
There. That must have been a shuttle or lander bay. It was not entirely intact; there would not have been a way in if it had been, since the bay doors were still closed. But a fragment or kinetic projectile had punched a long, ragged scar through the hull plating and the bay doors, leaving an opening that looked like it should be just big enough for a man in space armor to get through.
Triggering his jets, he began to drift toward the hole. Even armored, he had to be careful. Strike a structural member or heavy enough bit of hull plating, and his armor would not be enough to protect him from severe injury or decompression. Behind him, the rest of the squad, with Kahane, followed, drifting toward the same breach in a loose wedge. None of them really expected combat, but with the state the ship was in, and the fact that the distress call had been automated, enemy boarders inside the hull were not outside the realm of possibility.
Besides, they were Caractacans. Some might call their Code of honor rigid, but none could fault them for lack of vigilance.
He braked again, coming to a halt just a bare two meters from the breach. It was slightly larger than he’d thought; the ship was bigger than the Dauntless, and distances were deceiving in the murky artificial lighting enforced by his visor. It could still be hazardous to navigate, however, especially as the space beyond it was dark as the tomb, so he killed his relative velocity and prepared a grapple.
The “hook” was a small but powerful electromagnet, charged by his suit’s power supply. The gossamer cable looked far too thin to support an armored man’s weight, but was stronger than a two-centimeter steel cable. A quick flick of his wrist sent the magnet flying toward the bay doors. Only long practice and coordination kept the throw from starting him spinning.
The magnet caught and held. He reeled himself in, as more of them impacted the hull soundlessly around him. When he was close enough, he rotated himself so that his boots were pointed at the bay doors, and triggered their mag-locks.
The clunk of impact was transmitted through his armor, muted as it was. The mag-locks were tuned to his movement, so he could walk across the warped remains of the bay door relatively smoothly. He pulled a hand light from his belt kit and shone it through the rent in the door. Unhindered by atmosphere, it blazed brightly against a similarly wrecked transatmospheric shuttle. Whatever had penetrated the bay doors had turned the shuttle’s nose into a twisted mass of shredded metal and composite.
Bending “down,” Scalas took a firm but cautious grip on the edge of the puncture. As tough as the metal weave on the outside of his suit’s underlayer was, it was never a good idea to take chances in hard vacuum.
He released his mag-locks and torqued himself around the edge and inside the bay, keeping one hand locked on the edge of the torn metal, the other on his powergun. Once he was inside, he let go, pointed his boots at the inside of the doors, and triggered the mag-locks again.
His boots slammed down on the metal, and he could move with relative safety. Kahane, immediately identifiable by his height and girth, was easing his way through the hole after him. At least three other Brothers were stacked behind Kahane, waiting to make entry.
Carefully orienting himself, Scalas began to start to work his way around the breach, heading for the upper decks and the command deck, provided it was still intact. There were a handful of backup emergency lights around the central lift/ladderwell, so Mor’s guesswork appeared to be accurate; there was some sort of power source aboard that was still functioning, even if the main reactors and drives were cold.
It would have been disorienting to someone who had not trained in such maneuvers to the extent the Caractacans did. There was a reason the novitiate lasted five years. The ship’s layout, like any starship, was not unlike a tower or a tall building; the drives were down when under thrust, and the decks rose above them. But in zero gravity, there was no “up” or “down.” So, he was effectively walking on the inside of a slightly tapering cylinder, toward what could either be a ladder up, or down, or a bridge or catwalk leading to the central lift shaft.
Faint vibrations through his boots heralded the other Brothers following him in a loose wedge. Rescue mission or not, the Caractacans always moved as if ready for a fight.
He reached the catwalk and started to move along it, reorienting himself ninety degrees by releasing his mag-locks and grabbing the railing before re-engaging the locks.
The lift hatch was sealed shut. And while he could not read either the language or even the alphabet it was written in, it was entirely clear to him that it was going to stay that way as long as the bay remained depressurized.
“We need an emergency lock pod,” he sent over the short-range comm.
“Coming up, Centurion,” a Brother replied. It sounded like Harris. A few moments later, an armored figure appeared through the breach, pulling a compact package behind him. He plodded along the inside of the hull, following roughly the same route that Scalas and most of the rest of the squad had.
While they waited, Kahane was looking around, casting his hand light around the damaged shuttles and the rest of the bay. “Do you notice anything strange, Centurion?” he asked.
Scalas was looking, as well. There wasn’t much else to do until they could get the inflatable airlock in place. “Aside from the fact that there are only three shuttles in a hold easily big enough for five times that many craft?”
he asked.
“I don’t see any bodies,” Kahane said.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Scalas replied. “There would not be many personnel out and about in the launch bay during a space battle. They would have been on one of the command decks, strapped in for acceleration and armored, just like we would.”
“I suppose,” Kahane answered. He did not sound especially convinced. In fact, he sounded slightly spooked.
Scalas had to admit that the nearly-empty, darkened launch bay of a stricken starship in hard vacuum was an eerie place. The only light came from their own lamps and the dim lights around the lift hatch, but every once in a while, a light would glint weirdly off of a bit of wreckage, making it seem like there was movement where there should be none. Even Scalas was feeling disquieted.
It was Harris hauling the emergency lock, and he quickly started setting it up. It was little more than a synthetic tube, with a sealer at one end and an overlapping, airtight membrane at the other, hooked up to a compact atmosphere tank that was good for about a dozen cycles before it failed. Which meant they would not be able to get the entire squad inside. Especially if they wanted to get back out without blowing the hatch off.
“Kahane, Harris, Maxon, and Granzow, you’re with me,” Scalas instructed.
“Fillegron,” Kahane sent over the comm, “You are acting squad leader here in the bay. Get all but a few back to the Dauntless, pick five, and hold the breach.”
Fillegron saluted by slapping the buttstock of his powergun, and began to assemble the men in the bay. Meanwhile, Scalas slipped through the barrier and into the emergency lock. Maxon and Granzow were able to fit in with him, though it was decidedly cramped.
It took a few minutes for the small pack to pressurize the lock just enough for the safety interlocks on the hatch to release. Keeping his powergun ready, unsure of what to expect, Scalas stepped through the hatch.
The lift shaft dwindled into the distance in both directions. The lift itself was nowhere near them. So, they’d have to use the ladder. Fortunately, that was no hard task in freefall. Clamping his powergun to his side, Scalas grabbed hold of a rung and began to pull himself along, heading toward the starship’s blunt nose.
Under thrust, it would have been a long, grueling climb. As it was, he glided up the ladder, only needing to occasionally reach out and briefly grab a rung to straighten his course or continue to propel himself along.
About halfway to the nose, he paused and looked back down at the line of Brothers following him. “Can anyone tell what language these decks are marked in?” he asked. “It looks vaguely familiar, but unless we can decipher some of it, we are going to have to clear the entire ship, deck-by-deck, looking for survivors.”
“I think it is Eastern Satevic,” Maxon said. Maxon should know; he had been a professor at the University on Careyn III before the M’tait raid that had killed over eighty percent of the population. “Some of the symbols look familiar.”
“Can you read it?” Kahane asked.
“No,” Maxon replied. “I might recognize a word or two, but Careyn III was a long way Coreward from any of the worlds where the Satevic languages had taken root.”
“We don’t need to read the signage,” Granzow said. “I served on an Antares III for two years before my novitiate. I know the layout.”
For a moment, all four Caractacans looked at Granzow. “That is quite a coincidence,” Kahane said.
Granzow, holding a rung with one hand, shrugged slightly, the motion barely visible in his armor. “There are a lot of Antares IIIs floating around. They were one of the most popular hulls that the Waiyungari Shipyards turned out in the last thirty years, and at least fifteen major system fleets purchased them in bulk.”
“You are a fountain of occasionally useful but otherwise pointless information, Granzow,” Harris said.
“Well, this time it turned out to be useful,” Granzow pointed out. “And I can’t help it if you don’t have interests.”
“I have plenty of interests,” Harris countered. “Starship trivia simply does not happen to be one of them.”
“Enough,” Scalas said. “Granzow, how far are we from the command deck?”
“Another three levels, I think,” Granzow replied. “The primary command center will be wrapped around the lift shaft, with weapons emplacements and auxiliary mech compartments around it.”
Scalas looked up the lift shaft. That was a fairly standard design for a starship that could be expected to enter combat. Placing the command center deep inside the starship’s structure lessened the chance that it could be taken out with a single shot—presuming that a direct hit from a bomb-pumped X-ray laser or kinetic kill munition didn’t reduce the entire ship to atomized debris in a fraction of a second, anyway.
He pulled himself another three decks up, and steadied himself in front of the command center hatch. The Eastern Satevic writing was still indecipherable, but the lights were green; there was pressure on both sides of the hatch. Reaching forward, he keyed the hatch open, bringing his powergun to the ready as the portal irised open.
The command center layout was fairly standard for a starship, with acceleration couches arranged in front of consoles, most of which were currently dark. A few dim, blue emergency lights glowed in the alcoves in the overhead, but they did not illuminate much beyond the general layout. Scalas pulled himself through the hatch and triggered his mag-locks again.
His feet solidly on the deck, he moved forward. As he did so, the commander’s acceleration couch began to turn.
There was a figure in an armored spacesuit strapped into the couch. The visor was down, presenting only a dim, reflective face to the Caractacan lights. It was an unfamiliar design, blue and green, though definitely of considerably newer manufacture than the old orange suits the Quarisians had been wearing back on Iabreton II.
A distinctly feminine voice crackled from the figure, speaking stilted, heavily-accented Trade Cant. “You are Caractacans?”
“We are,” Scalas replied in the same language. “We received your distress signal.”
“Thank the universe!” the woman exclaimed. Scalas ignored the pantheism; his concerns were with the crew and the ship.
“Where are the rest of your crew?” he asked.
“I sent all but a skeleton engineering crew to the mid-decks,” the captain replied, as she started to unstrap from her couch. “We have two decks of hibernation pods; we had taken so much damage that I was afraid we would not be able to maintain full life support until help arrived.” If it arrived went unsaid. “I am Captain Kateryna Horvaset, commanding the RVC Mekadik, on behalf of the General-Regent of Valdek.”
“I am Centurion Erekan Scalas, Century XXXII, Caractacan Brotherhood,” Scalas identified himself. He glanced around at the darkened consoles. “The Brotherhood starship Dauntless is just a few hundred meters away, awaiting survivors.” He pinned the captain with a stare, somehow effective even through the polarized slit of his visor. “What happened to your ship, Captain?”
“That is why we made for the Avar Sector Keep, Centurion,” she replied. Straightening, her own boots’ mag-locks securely fastened to the deck, her helmet came just about to Scalas’ chin. “I have a formal message for your commanders, but the short version is that Valdek is under attack by a previously unknown force, and we are in desperate need of help.”
“Let us evacuate your crew and return to the Keep,” Scalas said. If she was telling the truth, that was certainly grave enough matter that it needed to be discussed with the Brother Legate, not as a casual conversation on the wreckage of a starship’s command deck. “Do you have enough spacesuits for all of them? It appears that EVA will be the only viable method of transfer.”
“We do,” she replied. “This is…was a Valdekan ship-of-the-line, Centurion. We were all equipped for combat, including explosive decompression, and as you can see, we certainly had already experienced some of it. I assure you, everyone has their own suit.”
/>
“Very well, Captain,” Scalas said. “Lead the way. We will evacuate your crew and return to Kaletonan IV. There you may deliver your message to the Brother Legate and the rest of the Centurions currently planetside.”
***
There were surprisingly few crew. Horvaset admitted that they had lost several sections worth to enemy fire when the hull had been holed. The starship had also apparently lifted with a short crew; time had been pressing, and she had not been due to lift for nearly a week. Apparently, the Mikadik had been on maintenance cycle when the attack had begun.
It still took several hours to get everyone across to the Dauntless and situated to Captain Mor’s satisfaction. Then, going fully inertialess, the starship lit her drive and left the hulk of the Mikadik behind, drifting toward the distant sun.
Chapter 5
For the second time in as many days, the Dauntless descended toward the Sector Keep on a thundering pillar of blue-white fire. This time, she carried survivors of a desperate space battle and a dire plea for help.
Scalas had not seen the message; Horvaset had insisted that it was for the Brother Legate’s eyes only. But she had told him and Mor something of what had happened in the distant Valdek system, and both men were grim as they descended. If true, this could have the potential to be another Pontakus IX.
“Look,” Mor said, pointing. There was a new spire standing on one of the distant landing pads. “The Challenger arrived while we were in the outer system.”
The Challenger was one of the Brotherhood’s newer starships, a sharp-nosed blade of a ship, nearly fifty meters longer than the spear-shaped Dauntless. It was also the charge of Centurion Virgil Costigan. Costigan was only still a Centurion because of his time in service and his own humility. The man who had nearly single-handedly held off a medium-sized M’tait Huntership’s complement of Slayers at Tide’s Point Station could easily have laid claim to a Legio, but Costigan had, if anything, been more reluctant than the Brotherhood Conclave for that to happen.