Advance to Contact (Warp Marine Corps Book 3)

by C. J. Carella

  “Well, they got their wish, then. Glad we could oblige them.”

  “In any case, we hope to eventually restore the habitat to a fully functional state, but right now most of our efforts are focused on keeping the lights on, and only in selected areas at that. We don’t have the manpower to do much else. Removing the weapon locks is going to take time, mainly because we can’t spare the time and personnel to do it quickly. Not if we want life support and other basic systems to remain operational.”

  “So we are basically helpless here.”

  “Not exactly, Madam Secretary. Offensive systems remain offline, but we can bring up about fifty percent of the habitat’s shields, which as we saw are beyond anything in the known galaxy.”

  “For one, they are big enough to cover my entire task force, as long as we bunch up within their fifty-kilometer radius,” Captain Benchley said. “My destroyers don’t have a lot of throw weight, but right now they are the most heavily-defended ships in the US Navy.”

  “Well, that’s something.”

  “Our current plan is to keep up the façade that the Tah-Leen are still running the show while we wait for reinforcements to arrive. Our technical team will continue trying to unlock the habitat’s weapon systems.”

  Said technical team consisted of Heather, anybody who could be spared from the naval force’s Administration and Communications departments, and a handful of civilians with IT experience. Mario Rockwell, the former RSO, had run a CIC during his time in the Navy, and he was now her second in command. Without its controlling intelligence, however, keeping the station running would take at least a hundred skilled personnel. She had about twenty, none of them really trained for the task. Shutting down every nonessential system helped, but at a price. Over ninety percent of the habitat was now without power, life support or robotic upkeep. Before very long, things would start breaking down. They needed help.

  “Speaking of weapon systems, what is Major Zhang’s status? I see she is still listed as a casualty.”

  “She suffered severe neural damage during the takeover, unfortunately. A medical team placed her in an induced coma for the time being.”

  “I read her report, or rather the report you wrote for her,” General Gage said. “That skeleton thing is an actual warship?”

  “The remains of one, yes. It currently lacks life support and secondary weapons.” And it runs on hoodoo and sorcery, she didn’t say out loud.

  “We’ll put some chiefs to work on making it space-worthy, just in case.”

  “I cautiously agree,” Secretary Goftalu said. “From what I read, that… thing is probably too valuable to risk in combat, but if things go wrong it may become a matter of using it or losing it. Making it ready seems like a sensible precaution.”

  “Of course, the only pilot we have is in a coma at the moment,” Captain Benchley noted.

  “And if needs must, I’m sure Major Zhang will do her duty. She is a Marine, after all.”

  * * *

  The Snowflakes are dead.

  The thought should have made her feel satisfied, or even overjoyed. Lisbeth had gotten to know the Tah-Leen as she hunted them down one by one, and to know them was to loathe them. Most of them didn’t believe anybody outside their species was truly real. They’d spent so much time living in a fantasy world populated by copies of themselves that they were less in touch with reality than the worst warp-madness sufferer. They were dangerous, evil in just about every meaning of the word, and beyond redemption. They needed killing, in other words.

  Problem was, the dead lived on in the Starless Path.

  They were chasing her, and their leader was the nameless thing that had plagued her nightmares for so long. But now it had plenty of help. The Tah-Leen she’d killed wanted revenge, and knew just how to get it. If they caught her, her screaming would never end.

  She ran, and they followed.

  Fear. It was always there. Under the bravado, the stubbornness, the overachieving. She’d done the craziest things just to prove she wasn’t afraid, but when she was dreaming or inside the living nightmares of warp space, she always ended up running away. Like she was doing now. Here, she didn’t have an audience to impress. It was just her and her fear. She’d abandoned Deborah Smith and left her to die because she’d been scared. Maybe she should just let them catch her. She deserved whatever they did to her.

  Wake up.

  She did. White light blinded her eyes when she opened them. There was something stuck down her throat and for a second she thought it was a tentacle. Just as she reached for it in a panicked motion, the sensors in the breathing tube realized she was conscious and the invasive device contracted and withdrew, leaving her sitting up and coughing.

  “Welcome back.”

  The speaker handed her a cup of water, and she downed half of it in a few gulps. The frenzied drinking triggered another coughing fit.

  “Easy there, Major. Try small sips.”

  She obeyed.

  Lieutenant Browning, the Brunhild’s medical officer, eyed her warily as she drank.

  The last thing she remembered was killing the ninety-third Tah-Leen. It’d been the Hierophant; she’d saved it for last, waiting until the Marines had taken its bodies apart before going in and shutting down its Prime Core. She’d been on her last legs by then, and as soon as she knew her job was done she’d stopped fighting the overwhelming need to let go and let the darkness in. She’d passed out, expecting never to wake up again.

  “You gave us quite a scare, Major,” the Navy doctor told her. “We had to repair several brain lesions, two of which resulted in edema. Things were touch and go for a while, but you’re out of the woods. We decided to take you off the induced coma and see how you’d far. So far, so good.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  “The swelling is gone, and it looks like there was no permanent damage. At least, no obvious damage.”

  “But my brain is still all messed up, right?”

  “Not how I would put it, but yes. The scans show a number of abnormal formations in your neocortex. I would hesitate to call them tumors, however, since they don’t seem to be damaging or irritating the surrounding tissue. I don’t know what to call them, to be honest.”

  “I do,” Lisbeth said. “But I think it’d be best if you keep these findings to yourself, Lieutenant. I have a hunch that all my brain scans are going to become classified as soon as higher is made aware of them.”

  “Oh.”

  Lieutenant Browning looked none too happy about that. Stumbling into some secret project wasn’t good for one’s career. While the government didn’t go around killing people like in your typical crappy movie, people who learned things they didn’t need to know often ended up posted somewhere remote, the kind of place where an email to Sol System would take a couple of months to get there, after being examined and vetted by a team of humorless censors.

  “As long as you are discreet about the scans, you should be okay,” she told him.

  “Thank you. In any case, you seem to be fully recovered. I would recommend light duty for the next week, however.”

  Lisbeth nodded, knowing that her chances of getting a week off were slim to none. A few hundred humans were squatting on one of the most important crossroads in the galaxy. Sooner or later, someone was going to try and evict them. If it happened before reinforcements arrived – a quick check showed her they hadn’t done so yet – then Lisbeth might have to do something crazy.

  Crazy. She’d been downright nuts even before she went on her killing spree, and gotten even nuttier afterwards. But she felt fine right now. No urge to giggle, or to spout off nonsense. Progress.

  I’m feeling much better now, said the madwoman, she thought, and had to suppress the urge to laugh. Uh-oh.

  “I have to make the rest of my rounds, but an orderly will be here shortly with some food,” the medical officer told her.

  “Thank you again.”

  Once she was alone in the compartment,
Lisbeth checked her messages. General Gage had standing orders for her to report as soon as she was able to; she figured he could wait until she ate her breakfast or lunch or whatever meal she was due for. There were a few messages from Captain Orlov. Richard. Pretty sweet of him, considering they’d just had a couple of rolls in the hay before the trip started. Their duties kept them well away from each other for the rest of the cruise. She should give him a call, but probably wouldn’t. She read a long email from Heather giving her a rundown of the current situation. A team of machinists and repairmen were looking into get the Corpse-Ship running again, just in case. When the Navy decided to put some time and effort into recommissioning a prehistoric ship, you knew the situation had become truly desperate.

  “We’re all in big trouble,” she told the giant three-eyed alien that only she could see.

  “That we are, Christopher Robin,” said her guardian angel. It still looked like Atu, mostly, but it didn’t sound anything like it. The lecturing tone had been replaced with a cartoonish voice. “That we are.”

  * * *

  Machinery Repairman Rodolfo ‘R&R’ Rodrigo had never known what falling in love felt like. Until now.

  “Look at it,” he said. “Just look at it!”

  “Keep it in your pants, R&R,” Chief Hong said, but without much heat. The Chief was just as awed by the sight below them as Rodrigo. As everyone in the team tasked with examining the fabricator and, if possible, making use of it.

  “A Level Six fabber. Fucking-A. Biggest one I’ve ever seen,” Rodolfo went on. He all but ran across the walkway surrounding the five-hundred-meter long structure to get a better look at it. “We’ve got, what, four of them in the entire US?”

  “Five. Two on Earth’s shipyards, two in the orbitals around Wolf 1061, and one that just went online at Drake. This one is damn big,” the Chief admitted.

  “I think this is an NAD-7, Chief.” Rodolfo said.

  “There’s no Level Seven, R&R. A Level Six can make anything in the galactic inventory, including other Level Sixes, if you don’t mind spending fifteen years having it reproduce.”

  To the average citizen, a fabber was a fabber, a matter-printing machine that could create anything from a penknife to a plasma gun by putting it together molecule by molecule or, for the more sophisticated stuff, subatomic particle by particle. Thing was, most Nanoscale Assembly Devices couldn’t make plasma guns, or even the plasma-tipped bullets that the US used as a poor-man’s substitute. To build anything beyond pre-Contact tech levels, you needed a Level Two. For even basic gravity-wave circuitry, a NAD-3 was needed. And most vital components in a starship required a Level Four.

  Level Five and Six fabricators were the gold standard. You could make anything on one of those, assuming you had a trained operator at the controls. Fabbers required a thinking being to perform the ‘proper quantum wave-function collapse’ (a fancy term for ‘magic’ as far as Rodolfo was concerned) that got you the stuff you wanted rather than a mess of randomly-arranged matter. ‘Fabber operators are the closest thing to God you’ll find in this world.’ Rodolfo’s Basic Subatomic Construction instructor loved to say that, much to the annoyance of the Star Baptists in the class.

  “I think I can use it,” Rodolfo said. “I’m rated on a Level Three. Still taking classes to qualify for Four; I’m about halfway there.” He looked at the trio of Machinist Mates who were along; they were from the Cromwell, so he didn’t know them. “How about you guys?”

  “All Level Twos,” MM Kruger said. “Hell, I’ve never seen a Level Four in the flesh.”

  The machine shops aboard the destroyers had Level Two fabbers as well as normal tools; they could rebuild modular replacements for basic components, but that was about it. For major repairs, you needed the services of a logistics ship, which had a couple of NAD-3s or -4s aboard, making it as expensive as a battlecruiser despite having no armor, weapons or military-grade warp drives. Rodolfo was the best fabber operator in the Ataturk. Maybe in the entire squadron. He might be able to play with a Level Seven, and build some high-grade stuff. Might.

  He wanted very badly to try, though. Just the chance to take a test drive on this beauty was worth risking a few burned-out synapses.

  “Ain’t gonna be easy,” Hong said. The chief couldn’t wrap his head around the mental acrobatics that using an NAD-4 or higher required, but he knew his stuff. “Not calibrated for human brains, for one. The civvie chick running the station says she uploaded our blueprints into it, but who knows if the translation protocols are up to snuff. One mistake and we get shit that don’t work, or worse, shit that blows up.”

  “I’ll be careful, Chief,” Rodolfo said. “Like I said, I think I can handle it.”

  “Don’t think, R&R Yes or no?”

  “I can handle it, Chief.”

  Chief Hong grinned. “Then let’s take her for a spin, what do you say?”

  * * *

  “Hit another jackpot,” Heather told Peter as the two enjoyed the luxury of an hour’s lunch, two days after their victory.

  “Too bad we don’t rate salvage rights, or we’d all be billionaires by now,” he said. “Still, I believe we’re all getting some nice performance bonuses this year.”

  Those could easily triple your yearly pay rate, or even triple your yearly hazardous duty pay. A drop in the bucket compared to the amount of loot they had ‘liberated’ from the Tah-Leen, but better than a poke in the eye. Heather was looking at a nice bonus herself. Modern civil service prided itself in rewarding performance rather than ticket-punching and ass-kissing, although the dreaded General Inspectors made sure the undeserving didn’t use the bonus system unfairly. She was sure nobody would question these bonuses, though. The diplomatic mission had single-handedly fixed the trade deficit the war and the Ovals’ betrayal had created.

  This must be the first time a diplomatic mission has exterminated and looted an entire civilization, she thought. Well, unless one wanted to call Cortez’s expedition a diplomatic mission.

  In the abstract, she found the whole situation rather regrettable, but in this particular case the Snowflakes had it coming.

  “The Navy team has gotten the Tah-Leen fabbers to work,” she went on. “One of them, at least. The habitat has eight large-scale models, all rated at Level Six, or perhaps better than Six. About three thousand smaller systems, too, although most of them have been mothballed since before the last Ice Age on Earth, so nobody knows how many of those we can get working again. Given enough operators and time, and if we modify the habitat and turn it into a shipyard, Xanadu could easily out-produce Earth. Probably out-produce every human world combined.”

  “Damn. Time is a problem, though.”

  She nodded. “Even if everything goes well, getting this place in working order is going to take at least a couple of years. Probably more like three to five, since we can’t spare enough qualified personnel, not as long as the war goes on.”

  “But after we win the war, this is going to move us way up in the totem pole.”

  “Yep. Maybe not quite enough to qualify for Great Power status, but a lot closer than where we are now.”

  She didn’t add that ‘after we win the war’ should really be ‘if we win the war.’ Pessimism rarely achieved anything useful.

  “Meanwhile, we may not be able to use our new super-fabbers to start churning out dreadnoughts, but I convinced Chief Hong to run some replacement gear for your company. Think of it as an early birthday present.”

  “Thank you,” he said with a grin. “Although the machine shops aboard the destroyers and the cruise liner could replace all our ordnance and equipment easily enough.”

  “Well, since we are suffering from an embarrassment of riches, I dug up some Tah-Leen blueprints and had MR Rodrigo turn out some improved gear. Here, let me upload the specs.”

  Peter frowned for a moment while he skimmed through the technical data she sent to his imp. His eyes widened. “Jesus. Double-layer personal shields?”


  “Yep. That’s what those robot dinosaurs were using, which is why they were so hard to kill. And your new body armor’s refractory index is about three times better, too. If the simulations are right, 4mm plasma rounds won’t be able to penetrate the new chest plates even after multiple hits; ditto for normal laser pulses. And the new power packs are rated for three weeks of sustained operations.”

  “Damn. If we could outfit the whole Corps like this…”

  “Well, having a Class Six fabber outfit a Marine company isn’t exactly cost-effective. But with only one qualified operator and three assistants, we really can’t tackle any big projects, so we might as well do something for your troops, just in case they have to repel boarders or whatever.”

  They both laughed at the ludicrous idea.

  “The only project that took precedence was building a life support module and reinforcing the seals in that creepy skeleton-ship of Zhang’s, and that only took half a day. Now they’re turning out about a dozen armor suits or twenty power packs an hour, alternating between them. Should be able to outfit your company, the Secretary’s protective detail and all the navy master at arms in two or three days.”

  “Thank you. That’s one hell of a present. I better start thinking of something special for your birthday.”

  “You should have your bonus by then.”

  “Well played, agent. How about weapons? Any chance they can improve what we’ve got?”

  “Now you’re getting greedy.”

  “What can I say? When it’s raining soup, you don’t go outside with a fork.”

  “Well, if time permits we might be able to do something. Meanwhile, though, here’s directions to the Tah-Leen Armory. I’ve made sure all the weapons there are safe to use, and General Gage signed off on the idea of sending a team to see if there’s anything you can outfit the troops with. Think of that as a Christmas present.”

  “Talk about loot. Consider that bonus spent on you. Every last cent.”