Impulse

by Dave Bara

  “They didn’t put up much of a fight,” Colonel Babayan said, “given their rather legendary reputation. Do we finish them off?”

  “No,” I said, looking at the deck strewn with bodies. “We get the hell out of here.” I ordered a full retreat to the shuttles. As we were filing back double-time Colonel Babayan stopped beside one of the dead Imperial marine’s bodies. I watched as she knelt down over him.

  “Colonel, we don’t have time for this.”

  “Wait!” she said. I went over to her as the last of our marines streamed by me with Jenny Hogan in tow. Marker stood by the open hatch of the shuttle, impatiently holding his rifle.

  “Almost out of time, sir!” he called. I bent down over Babayan and the dead Imperial marine. She pulled back his uniform, which had already been ripped open by coil rifle fire, and pointed to a tattoo on his chest. It was over his heart and still visible even though the rest of his body was badly burned.

  “This tattoo, it’s the double eagle,” she said.

  “The what?” I asked, not sure what she meant. She looked shocked. I waited for a second to give her time.

  “The double eagle,” she repeated. “Of Carinthia. Cochrane, this man is from Impulse.”

  “What?” I said. “That can’t be.” I looked down at his face. It wasn’t familiar, still . . .

  “Believe me, I know this symbol. Half the navy gets it tattooed on their chest when they enlist, over their heart, right here.” She pointed again, then she stood up, clenching her fists. “Now we know what happened to the crew of Impulse.”

  I looked around the bay. A half-dozen dead men in Imperial marine uniforms.

  “But what could make them change allegiance?” I said. She looked straight at me with those green eyes, now filled with rage.

  “Nanotechnology. You experienced it yourself. The machine took you over, for a time. It must have been something similar here. No Carinthian would turn on his own like that, not willingly,” she said.

  “Commander . . .” came Marker’s urgent voice in my ear.

  “C’mon,” I said, taking Babayan by the arm. “We’ve got to go, now.” She gripped her rifle tightly, unmoving, finger poised over the trigger. “Lena, we can’t fight whoever did this here. We have to do it from Starbound. Now we’ve got to go. That’s an order,” I said. She relinquished her anger then and I rushed her back to the shuttle and inside, then ordered us up off the deck. A few straggling Imperial marines started firing at us as we pulled away, but it was too scattered and too distant to hurt us.

  “Do we return fire?” came Marker’s voice over my com as I held onto Babayan in the personnel bay.

  “Negative,” I responded. “Just get us home.”

  “Get me in touch with Maclintock,” I ordered as I entered the shuttle’s command deck.

  “He’s already on,” Marker said. I nodded and activated my com, switching to the navy band.

  “Captain, we have three dead and fifteen wounded here, but we recovered Jenny Hogan from Impulse. No other survivors. Colonel Babayan,” I hesitated here, “Colonel Babayan believes the troops in Imperial uniforms that we were fighting were in fact the missing crew of Impulse, acting under some form of compulsion from Imperial nanotech. Do you read me, Starbound?”

  “Affirmative,” said Maclintock. “Put Colonel Babayan on with Commander Kierkopf. I have another assignment for you.” I called over to Babayan and then switched to back the main com channel.

  “Here, sir,” I said. To my surprise the voice on the other end of the line was that of Serosian.

  “Peter, you need to get back here as soon as possible,” he said.

  “We’re on our way now. What’s up?”

  “We’ve located Impulse, and I need you onboard the yacht with me,” he said.

  “The yacht? Why?”

  “Because we’re going there,” he said. “To Impulse. And we don’t have time to waste. The dreadnought, that thing, is starting to move.”

  I switched the main shuttle display from tactical to a reverse angle. Sure enough, the dreadnought was lighting up, charging weapons, and starting to move slowly toward us, like a colossus trying to move in heavy seas.

  I tried to swallow, and felt nothing but a thick lump of bile forming in my throat.

  Thirteen minutes later the shuttle’s hold was empty, the marines were offloaded, Jenny Hogan was on her way to the med deck, and I was back in space, the yacht pushing full bore for the abandoned Impulse.

  “How did you locate her?” I asked Serosian. His reply was swift and clear.

  “It’s not important,” he said from the control console. “I’ll introduce you to the technology later. Right now I need you to focus, Peter. I need you to access the yacht’s power core and prepare to release her HD crystal.”

  I was confused. “Now? Why?”

  “You’ll need it when you get to Impulse,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “To refire her engines.” I stopped.

  “What?”

  “I convinced Maclintock that I could get Impulse back in the fight. You’re going to have to take the HD drive from this yacht and load it into Impulse to replace the one Tralfane destroyed. We’ll make it back to Starbound on impellers,” he said.

  “Will it have enough power to run Impulse?” I asked. He nodded.

  “It should, if we can survive long enough to install it. Now go.” He nodded to the inner chambers of the yacht. I went in as he started the process of shutting down the HD crystal. After a few seconds, the doors to the inner tabernacle opened and the crystal began floating toward me with an appearance of intent that made me uncomfortable.

  “What’s our status?” I asked from the chamber over my EVA suit com. The line stayed silent for a moment.

  “The dreadnought is closing on Starbound,” he finally said. “Maclintock has it under control, for now. The good news is that it’s not paying any attention to us.”

  “That sounds like we’re getting lucky,” I said.

  “We’re not,” he said. “That dreadnought is on automated attack, most likely powered by the hyperdimensional drive stolen from Impulse’s yacht by Tralfane. It has nearly as much power as Starbound has, with superior delivery systems. That’s why it’s critical—”

  A wave of crackling energy came across the channel as interference. It was so loud I scrambled to cut off the signal, but it still left my ears ringing. I gathered in the HD drive and placed it in a protective case that Serosian had given me, then went back to the main console.

  In the rearview display Starbound was being menaced by the dreadnought. White fire rained down on her in a blizzard of cannonade from the four massive coil cannons of the dreadnought.

  “We’ve got to get over there,” I said to Serosian. He looked at me, his face grim, but said nothing.

  Impulse was a complete wreck, scarred and burned all along her main hull with large holes blasted in her midships. The conning tower and the bridge where I had spent so much time on my first assignment were gone. She was dark and spinning in empty space, a slow death ballet that both frightened and saddened me. She shouldn’t have to go down this way, no ship should.

  Serosian matched the yacht to Impulse’s spin and then came alongside her, aligning the airlock to one of her aft cargo docks. It had a small utility port that looked undamaged. It seemed to be the most likely place where I could get in and get to the galleria, the ship’s central lifeline. From there I could access the forward engineering room and hopefully install the HD drive.

  “You’ll have to make it back out the way you come in. Once you fire her up you’ll have to activate an automated defense protocol and point her toward the dreadnought. The tactical computer should do the rest,” Serosian said in my ear as I stood in the yacht’s airlock. “And we’d best use the longwave channel for communication from here on out.”
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  “Acknowledged,” I said, switching to the longwave channel. I was ready and emptied the airlock from the inside. The last time I had stood in a similar place I’d nearly killed myself by misfiring the cone jets. This time I strapped them on tightly, determined to get it right. I would have to, there was no time for a tether. I would have to navigate open space on my own.

  I keyed in the code sequence and the outer hatch slid open. There was a tug as the airlock adjusted to the full vacuum of space. I held on to the handrails and then gently pushed myself to the edge of the doorway. I secured the HD crystal case to my suit, then looked across the abyss. Impulse floated some five hundred meters away from me, the sealed utility port door my only focus. I pushed away and fired the jets, just a small pulse to gently increase my speed. My EVA suit display gave me time and distance to my target, even recommended jet pulse timing and power settings. But I had to ignore them. They were designed for safety first, and safety was a secondary consideration. Time was something I simply didn’t have enough of.

  A flare of orange and white light flashed off the singed alabaster hull of Impulse as I floated closer. It was the glare from the death struggle going on behind me. I could only hope that Starbound was a better match for the dreadnought than Impulse apparently had been.

  I was halfway now, breathing so heavily in my suit that the EVA controls were having trouble keeping my faceplate clear of the fog of my own breath. The crossing was taking too much time.

  I recalculated time and distance, then adjusted the jet burst to cut the remaining crossing time in half. The suit warned me against such a course, but I shut the alarm off. My comrades were out there fighting for their lives, and I was determined to do something to help them.

  I reset the jets for a six second burn, then fired them without hesitation. I accelerated toward Impulse, cutting the distance in half again in seconds. But then I realized I was off course. I was going to miss the utility port and splatter against the hull, or maybe just skid right along it until a piece of broken hull metal cut me into pieces. I only had one chance.

  I pulled out my coil pistol and aimed it at the cargo door, now looming larger and larger with every passing second. I primed the pistol and fired it. The door exploded from within, releasing gas and air and debris into space, right at me. I rolled into a ball as a huge section of the door whipped past me. Small pieces of the door bounced off of my faceplate as I drove on, an out-of-control missile heading for an open gash in Impulse’s side. I reached out with my hand, desperately grabbing for a dangling cargo line. I caught it, but my forward momentum whipped me around through open hole in Impulse like a kite in the wind. It felt like my arm was going to come out of the socket, but I held on, grabbing at the line with both hands and pulling myself under control, finally killing my momentum against the padded cargo bay walls and then descending to the floor. I held on for dear life to a floor hook, then settled on to the deck.

  After a few seconds to rub my shoulder and catch my breath, I floated slowly toward the doorway that would lead me out into the main decks, my heart pounding in my chest.

  “Jesus Christ!” I said to myself. “What a ride!”

  The Battle

  I ran through the shattered main gallery of Impulse as fast as I could with my grav boots on, dodging fallen ceiling plaster and murals that had come undone from the walls. There was debris everywhere, but no bodies. I was making for the forward engineering room, where the main controls for Impulse’s HD drive were.

  I had been out of touch with Serosian for more than ten minutes, but in that time I’d picked up enough random com chatter to determine that the dreadnought was slowly beating down Starbound’s defenses, forcing her into a more and more precarious position with each passing minute, blocking her retreat to the artificial jump point. One thing was clear—for Starbound to make it out of Altos space, it was going to have to defeat the dreadnought.

  I passed out of the gallery and into officer country, the dark corridor illuminated only by my helmet LED. I passed by the Historian’s chambers that had been occupied by Tralfane when I was aboard. The doors had coil rifle burns on them, as did all the surrounding walls. I was sure the yacht, and Tralfane, were gone.

  I made it to the control room, and pulled myself through the broken doorway. There was no sign of power anywhere on board. My grav boots made me cling to the floor more than I wanted, but I made my way across the room and to the main HD drive console. It was a mess, but the main panel, identical to the one in the Historian’s quarters, was still intact.

  I tried to raise Serosian on my com. It took four minutes before I got through.

  “. . . no time . . .” followed by crackles and waves of static was all that came through. Then suddenly the signal surged and I had to reduce the volume in my ear again.

  “Peter! Can you hear me?” came the Historian’s frantic voice.

  “Yes, I can,” I responded. The signal was almost crystal clear.

  “I’ve diverted power from the defenses—” he was cut off by static again, then continued. “. . . got the crystal?” he finished.

  “I’ve got it. I’m in the drive master control room,” I yelled.

  “Place the crystal—” static again, “. . . display panel. Do you understand?” I wasn’t sure if I did, but I decided I had to act. I pulled the case out and removed the HD drive crystal, then placed it on the main console. The panel material began to swirl around the crystal and the panel began to light up with sickly yellows, oranges, and grays. I linked my com into the console to boost my signal and called out using Impulse’s main com system.

  “Serosian! I’m here! I’ve got the console working, do you read me?” I called.

  “Prepare to receive the code,” he said.

  “What code?”

  “Peter, listen to me. I’m going to send you a key code. You’ll have to call up the panel keyboard and enter it in exactly the order I send it. Do you understand?”

  “I do. But what will happen when I enter the code?”

  “If it works, we’ll have access to the console and all of Impulse’s systems, at least the ones that still work,” Serosian said.

  “And if it doesn’t work? If Tralfane has sabotaged the panel?” I asked. But I got no further response or explanation, only static.

  The symbols started coming through to me on my EVA suit display. They were geometric in some way, and they appeared right to left. I swept my hand across the panel and a keyboard appeared with two rows of seven empty blocks each above the key display. I carefully entered the symbols in order from a menu, and each time I did a corresponding Imperial letter appeared on the panel, unscrambled, right to left:

  VZVKZSK

  VMBVZVK

  I completed the string, then entered the code. The panel glowed orange and then went to a blank, deep blue as all the characters disappeared.

  The panel seemed to turn to liquid then, absorbing the HD crystal into the console. It began glowing a bright red and then suddenly all of Impulse’s systems were coming back online to the degree that they could, but my communication line to Serosian was cut off. I checked the service inventory; I had one coil cannon battery, no Hoagland Field, and only half power to the impellers. All of the automated attack systems were offline, permanently. I had to make a decision. I swept my hand across the panel and powered up the coil cannon and the impeller drives. With a lurch that felt like it was going to tear the ship apart, Impulse started forward. I pulled up the tactical display and watched as the dreadnought pursued Starbound relentlessly, the two ships exchanging barrages of cannon fire. But the readouts were clear: Starbound was losing.

  “Time to change the odds,” I said aloud, then set my course and slammed the impellers to max—heading straight for the dreadnought.

  The Imperial beast kept growing larger in my visual plasma display as tactical showed the distance between us closing. So
on enough I would draw its fire, but that would give Starbound a reprieve, and perhaps a chance.

  I entered coil cannon range but the power curve was marginal. The cannon had taken hits in Impulse’s last battle and firing it without generating major blowback was a huge risk. I needed something more.

  I called to Serosian again, with no answer for several seconds before he came through on a low-frequency line. The longwave was apparently out of commission.

  “What’s your situation, Peter?” he asked.

  “Automated attack systems are out. I’ve only got a single coil cannon and I probably won’t even dent the hull with that, assuming I can fire it without destroying Impulse,” I said. I hesitated before asking the next question. “You have to give me something else to use, some other weapon,” I pleaded, the dreadnought looming huge in my plasma viewer.

  The line stayed silent for several seconds, then Serosian’s deep baritone came through, crackling with static.

  “Your only other alternative,” he said, speaking slowly, “is to remove the Hoagland Field keeping the singularity contained.”

  I wasn’t sure I knew what he meant. He couldn’t possibly be saying what I thought he was . . .

  “Are you telling me to use the singularity in the HD drive as a weapon?” I said.

  The line buzzed and cracked, then Serosian’s voice came through in fractured sentences.

  “Peter . . . must open the hyperdimensional channel . . .” The buzzing from the ongoing mortal struggle between Starbound and the dreadnought blocked out the rest of the message. I was desperate with fear.