The Xenocide Mission

by Ben Jeapes

  Halfway up, he had to step onto the deck as a repair crew of humans and Rusties hurried down past him. Apart from them, the ship seemed deserted. Everyone would still be in their modules.

  Two more decks up, and he noticed a change in the light. He climbed one more deck and looked out into space.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he breathed. Pathfinder had almost been snapped in two. An enormous chunk had been torn from its side, three or more decks worth. The outer hull had shattered, the inner structures that it was there to protect were torn and twisted.

  With the missing decks would have gone optical cabling, command channels, a large part of the ship’s integral strength. Forget it, said the voice of his old enemy at the back of his mind, as his appalled eyes took in the damage. This ship isn’t going anywhere, there’s no way you’re getting to Joel, let’s just sit down and give up . . .

  For a moment the smooth, velvet black of space called to him. Mesmerized by the emptiness, by the void that so exactly matched his feelings, he took a step forward. He could step out of the artgrav, out of the ship, into space and his worries would be over. He polarized his faceplate so that he could see the stars; they were rotating. Pathfinder was spinning head over tail around its centre of gravity. And there . . .

  His despair was forgotten, banished to the back of his mind with an indignant yelp. ‘Perry!’ he shouted. ‘Perry, can you hear me? McCallum? Anyone?’ The ladder led up through the wreckage; he started climbing with double the vigour.

  ‘Pathfinder is in a state of emergency. You are not authorized to engage with the command systems of the ship,’ said his suit’s voice. Gilmore swore, but because he knew from experience how much chance he stood engaging an artificial intelligence in logical debate, he kept going. He didn’t dare look behind him.

  ‘Caution,’ said his suit. ‘Biometrics show imminent danger of hyperventilation.’

  He was at the right level. He swung off the ladder, ever mindful of the torn plating that reached out from all sides, ready to prick a gentle little hole in his suit’s fabric. Bullseye; the airlock of the flight deck module was dead ahead, out (thank God) of the damaged area. Another minute and he was through, and into the flight deck. His suit was still wittering about hyperventilation as he twisted his helmet off.

  Several still forms had been laid against one bulkhead, human and Rustie. One in particular caught his attention: he couldn’t see the features but he saw the four gold rings on the sleeve. But McLaughlin had a crumpled shipsuit to pillow his head and the face wasn’t covered.

  Those humans and Rusties who were still mobile swarmed over the command desks, fighting to bring the ship back under control. A Rustie saw Gilmore come in. Sand Strong, Pathfinder’s second in command.

  ‘Mr Gilmore,’ it said, ‘you should be—’

  ‘Get Perry,’ Gilmore gasped. ‘There’s a huge great hole around deck fifteen and there’s XCs heading towards it.’

  Colonel Stormer had been itching for action, his men fully prepared, and they swarmed out of the airlock towards the stricken ship seconds after the Martial Mother’s order was given.

  ‘Finish the Ritual. Finish the intruders.’

  The wound in its side was the obvious entry point. From there they could work fore and aft, wiping out the intruders, removing the challenge to their conquest. It would be good.

  Then plasma bursts erupted all around him. The Not Us had divined his intentions. They were inferior creatures but not stupid.

  ‘Return fire,’ he ordered. He could see the Not Us soldiers, armoured forms jetting down from the prow of the ship. There was no cover out here. Both sides were in plain view, and who lived and who died would be down to chance and the battle gods. But Stormer had no doubt in the superior prowess of his own gods over those of any outlanders.

  Two worthy brothers perished alongside him, their suits torn open by the plasma fire, their contents exploding through the rents into the vacuum. Lives lost and gone for ever, no chance of Sharing, but the ship was too close and the battle hormones were too strong in him for any regrets. Two, three of the outlander figures exploded ahead of him; he would leave it up to the dead to thrash out their differences in the afterlife.

  And then he was at the hole in the hull, through it, and in.

  ‘Never mind us.’ Perry’s voice was harsh. ‘You’re already onboard. Get down to fifteen and provide back-up.’

  In other words, some of the XCs might get past Perry’s people and be unleashed on to a defenceless human crew. Gilmore shuddered at the thought but he approved of Perry’s thinking.

  ‘Bill, we’ll take for ever . . .’ That was Donna.

  ‘Just do it! Perry out.’

  God, it would take for ever, Gilmore thought. The endless passages, ladders, stairs, all still in partial gravity so thrusters would be no use . . .

  Gilmore reached for his aide, then remembered he still wasn’t cleared to talk to anyone. He grabbed the aide of the nearest human crewman and ignored the automatic yelp of outrage. ‘McCallum, where are you?’

  ‘Who the hell’s this? We’re in the boat bay.’

  ‘This is the flight deck. There’s a hatch. A maintenance hatch. Marked . . .’ Gilmore screwed his eyes shut, trying to remember. ‘Marked something like “hull inspection” or “hull maintenance egress” . . . it’s directly opposite the boat elevator.’

  A pause. A frantic, horribly long pause.

  ‘ “Intra-hull inspection egress hash 407 dash 1?” What about it?’

  ‘It takes you into an airlock, and then you’re through into the hull space. You can get right down between the inner and outer hulls, no grav, free fall all the way.’

  ‘We’re on our way!’

  Gilmore breathed out, then turned to Sand Strong.

  ‘Close . . . I mean, Sand Strong, I recommend you close, seal and lock all bulkheads around the damaged area. And the systems down there are iffy so send maintenance crews to check they really are closed, sealed and locked. And you might want to cut the artgrav in that area – it’ll save power and make it easier for Perry’s people.’

  ‘At once.’ Sand Strong was no longer the second in command of a starship but a Rustie – a genetically bred servant. It turned to the rest of the crew and relayed Gilmore’s orders.

  And then, Gilmore thought, leave it to the marines.

  It was like the jungle again. A shadowy mass of obstacles, every obstruction a potential threat. But at least it wasn’t humid and there weren’t any snakes.

  Charlie Platoon spread out around the ship, between the two hulls, falling down towards the stern. Pathfinder’s innards were a blur of support struts and infrastructure as their suit thrusters carried them down towards the enemy. And there were the XCs ahead. No time for finesse.

  ‘Charlie Platoon,’ Donna ordered. She would give the order she had always wanted to give in the jungle but hadn’t dared: meeting the enemy on their own ground, you just could not afford to get into an anything-goes firefight. The enemy might have planned for that. But here a firefight was all they could afford: the situation was that desperate. ‘Fire at will!’

  She raised her own gun, eyeballed the commands to her shoulder lasers and let rip.

  Plasma and laser fire blazed down the dark tunnel between the hulls. Donna kept her finger on the trigger and sprayed fire back and forth, only just remembering the thruster commands that slowed her down. Some of the squat, four-armed XC figures exploded, others poured back fire of their own. A section of the outer hull exploded right by her and sent her smashing into the inner. Her suit fought to control the spin. She collided with an XC and the two of them spun down sternwards, past the hole and through the firefight. Thruster gas flared in all directions, hers and his; her suit began to settle, and she and the XC fell away and came round to face each other. She sent the commands to her suit lasers just as it brought its own gun up. The front of its armour tore open under laser fire and it died messily, and then she was jetting back up to the action. She cl
ipped a fresh charge into her carbine and opened fire again as she rose to the combat.

  Stormer was almost killed by an outlander lurking behind one of the struts that linked the two hulls. The Not Us already had its gun up when he saw it and he was just bringing his own gun to bear when a shot from one of his lieutenants took its helmet visor away. Stormer nodded his gratitude to his colleague and repaid the compliment by taking out another outlander that had been half hidden by a torn section of inner bulkhead. But then the lieutenant was transfixed by shots from two other outlanders, one coming up from around the hull and the other emerging briefly from behind one strut before disappearing behind another. Stormer was dangerously exposed and with a curse he kicked off for a more sheltered spot. Part of his mind registered that he was out of the hull space and into the ship.

  The outlander that the lieutenant had killed was hanging in space, its arms flung out, but its feet stayed attached to the hull. And that, Stormer thought grimly as he let rip with another clutch of plasma fire that took chunks off the outer hull and scared two more outlanders away from what had been an advantageous firing position, was the problem. The armour these outlanders wore, naturally enough, went with their ship. Somehow their soles were designed to grip onto whatever material the ship was made of, which wasn’t steel. His own were not. He and his men could only manoeuvre with suit thrusters; the intruders could use thrusters and run around, which gave them far more freedom of movement.

  Then the wall of what had been an inner cabin came up at him more quickly than he had expected and he had to spend yet more thruster fuel to stop himself crashing into it. It dissolved into plasma and he jetted to one side to get out of yet another outlander’s line of fire. He sheltered behind a cluster of cabling and fired back.

  Stormer prided himself on being able to get around in freefall; that near-crash had been inexcusable. The only reason could be that the outlanders were finally getting their ship under control, cancelling out the spin. And of course the outlander troops would have their suit computers (he sprayed fire at three more of them, killing one and hitting a second, sending it spinning out of control and maybe killing it) tuned into the ship’s computers, so that they could adjust to the changed motion without even thinking about it.

  All in all, the advantage was with the outlanders.

  An explosion right by his head threw Stormer back out into the hull space again; a gale of fragments and expanding gas knocked him against the outer hull. His grip weakened for a moment and another blast shocked his gun from his hand. It span away down the length of the dim cavern that was their battlefield; back towards the bow, if his sense of direction didn’t fail him. Stormer set his suit to follow it but the explosion must have damaged something. It could only manage a couple of desultory bursts that carried him away from the fighting, before the thrusters failed altogether.

  Away from the fighting! Rage flared within him. They were his people, he should be leading them; he should be in their midst, to die proudly.

  For die he would; he knew that now. The Martial Mother had issued the ritual challenge and, for all their strangeness, the outlanders had responded well. He, Stormer, had failed. The outlanders were on their home ground and they were fighting for their lives. They fought like . . . almost like Kin, he grudgingly admitted.

  ‘Martial Mother, this is Stormer.’ Even to his own ears, his voice sounded weak. Was he losing air? He couldn’t tell. His suit’s diagnostics had packed in too. ‘I ask permission to withdraw my people.’

  No answer.

  ‘This is Stormer. First Son of the Family Dadoi. Can anyone hear me?’

  Suit radio also gone. Stormer wondered how far back up the hull he had drifted. It wasn’t important.

  He had one weapon left to him. He would have to do it manually.

  The fingers of his feeding hands plucked feebly at the access plate over his suit’s thruster controls. He couldn’t look down at what he was doing but he could do it by feel. He found the nozzle of the main fuel tube and opened it. Then he located the nozzle of the reactant feed – the added element that made the fuel combust.

  Normally the two chemicals met in small quantities in the suit’s mixing chamber, and the exploding gas was channelled into the thrusters. Instead he plugged the two nozzles together, connecting one reservoir straight into another.

  His last regret was that though he had left a Sharing behind him, it had of course been before this last battle. His family would know nothing of how he had died, but perhaps they knew him well enough to guess.

  His last act was to send a final thrust command to his suit.

  The explosion blasted a hole in both hulls.

  ‘This is Perry.’ The marine captain’s voice was grey with fatigue and a singular lack of triumph. ‘The XCs are withdrawing.’

  Tension on the flight deck dissolved into whoops of joy, humans thumping each other and the Rusties on the back.

  ‘Well done!’ said Sand Strong. ‘All marines pull back into the ship. Damage control parties make your reports.’

  ‘Sand Strong,’ Gilmore said, his eyes on one of the displays.

  ‘Medics report to the flight deck.’

  ‘Sand Strong . . .’

  ‘Ops, get reports from all ship modules.’

  Gilmore gave up on Sand Strong. ‘Pilot, extend the drive field to include all marines and get us out of here!’

  Sand Strong did finally register that someone else was giving orders. ‘Mr Gilmore, you must—’

  Gilmore grabbed the Rustie’s head and thrust it in front of the display. ‘Look!’

  Sand Strong looked. ‘Pilot, do as he says! One light second distance, go now.’

  Pathfinder had been damaged by the sacrifice of one XC transport ship. The XCs still had two more in reserve, and one of them was manoeuvring.

  It fired its main engine and darted towards Pathfinder just as Pathfinder’s own drive engaged.

  Pathfinder hung in empty space. The Shield was a green globe in the dark; SkySpy and its attendant XC ships could only be seen with the telescope that was trained on them.

  Sand Strong, Gilmore and the ship’s officers were gathered together on the flight deck. Perry and McCallum had joined them, helmets off but still armoured up. Andrew McLaughlin and the other injured were in the sickbay. Pathfinder’s captain had yet to wake up.

  ‘We’ve done what we came to do.’ Perry’s face was tired and drawn but his voice was steady and hard. ‘Even though it cost us half our people dead and the ship almost blown in two, we’ve done it. We can step-through back to the Roving and send in a squadron. Or, what the hell, just leave them alone, why not? They know we exist but there’s nothing they can do about it.’

  ‘We have reason to believe there are two survivors on the Dead World,’ Gilmore said, staring at the desktop, not looking up at the marine. ‘We can’t go yet.’ Pathfinder had shown it could manoeuvre. It could still get to the Dead World. It could still retrieve Joel . . .

  ‘Sure we can. We step-through home, another ship steps right through into Dead World orbit and picks them up. And what are you doing here?’

  ‘I asked him to stay,’ Sand Strong said. ‘Mr Gilmore has proved most useful so far.’

  ‘Thanks for telling us about the hatch,’ Donna added.

  ‘That was you?’ Perry said. He still glared at Gilmore but there was almost a tinge of respect as well. ‘Good advice. Thank you. But you have to see—’

  ‘We are Navy, my son and Boon Round are Navy, we owe it to them to get them,’ Gilmore said. A dispassionate, professional stance that surely no-one could argue with, he thought. ‘You’d do it for your marines.’

  ‘And I am really sorry about your son, but I lost half my men!’ Perry shouted. ‘Have you ever taken casualties in the line of duty?’

  ‘Yes,’ Gilmore said. Perry really, visibly, hadn’t expected that answer.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, more quietly. Still with great control. ‘But you’re incorrect. I w
ouldn’t do it for my marines, and they wouldn’t expect me to, if I didn’t think we were up to it. And we are not up to it.’

  ‘Captain Perry,’ said Sand Strong, ‘with respect, this is a ship matter. Orders were to cede to your judgement in matters concerning SkySpy. In your opinion, has the SkySpy aspect of this mission been completed?’

  Perry glowered. ‘Well, we’ve established that the memory banks were destroyed and we retrieved what we wanted. So yes, we completed it.’

  ‘And we have a good idea where the survivors are . . .’

  ‘The big momma said they crashed,’ Perry pointed out.

  ‘Then you are right. We’re in no state to go after them.’

  ‘But . . .’ Gilmore said, aghast.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Gilmore. Using Captain Perry’s method, a fully functional ship can be with them within days. An undamaged Pathfinder could get to the Dead World in much less time, but we still don’t know how much damage the ship has taken; we still have no idea how spaceworthy we are. We have to get back to dock; that is our priority. And we know that we can step-through straight away.’

  Gilmore simmered, but . . . He was gratified to see a look of sympathy from Donna McCallum. In fact, she really looked like she was sharing his pain. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Right.’

  ‘Nav,’ Sand Strong said. ‘Scan for a step-through point along the nearest line direct to the Roving. Power up main drive, all hands stand by for manoeuvre . . .’

  ‘Um.’ The Nav officer looked over from his desk. ‘No response from the step-through generator.’

  It took an external inspection to confirm that the step-through generator wasn’t there. It was usually mounted on the outer hull, ready to be flown out on its sled ahead of the ship to open a step-through point. But it wasn’t there now.

  At some point in the battle, an explosion between the hulls in the vicinity of deck three, quite some way from the fighting, had knocked holes in both directions. The explosion had been beneath the gantry that held the generator sled. The remains of the gantry, with the generator attached, were back at SkySpy.