System Failure

by Joe Zieja

  “We can’t get out of the way,” Belgrave said, not looking at all like they were about to die. “We need to move all of the ships that entered the sector before the rest of our force can come in. We’re being used to barricade our own door, so to speak.”

  Great. Now they were basically all alone, under intense fire from the pirates, and they wouldn’t be able to get reinforcements unless they raced toward all the people trying to kill them.

  Honestly, this was becoming kind of a typical day for Rogers.

  • • •

  Cynthia looked at herself in the mirror. She knew what was going on outside right now, but she didn’t know what she was supposed to do about it. In truth, Rogers deserved what he got. Hell, maybe the galaxy deserved what it got. All of this running around the universe from place to place, trying to escape destruction. What was the point if your wife was just going to cheat on you and attack all of your friends?

  Cynthia felt like an idiot. This is the way it had always gone down with the two of them. They’d be happy as clams for months, then Sjana would go on a binge and come home with lipstick on her collar. Or her sleeve. Or other articles of clothing upon which one might not normally find lipstick. They’d fight. Fists would fly. They’d make up, get drunk, and start all over again. So why had she assumed that all this time apart, followed by a literal struggle for galactic peace, would bring them finally together again?

  “You feel like an idiot because you are an idiot—that’s why,” she said. She’d come here thinking that she could finally run away with Sjana, give up her ties to civil society, and go pirating with her, living happily ever after.

  Outside, she could hear people running down the hallways shouting at each other, the occasional raucous laughter breaking through. Apparently they had Rogers and the Flagship on the ropes. There was no way they’d be able to resist.

  “Are you sure about that?” someone outside said. “I thought we were going to pin them down and then get the captain. Why are we loading hull breakers?”

  “Guess Cap changed her mind,” another person answered. “Soon as the shields are down, pop goes the weasel, eh?”

  “That doesn’t make any sense at all. Is there a big crank on the outside of the Flagship we’re going to turn?”

  “It’s just an expression.”

  “Yeah, the wrong one. But . . . do you really think this is what we should be doing right now? We’re never going to get that pardon if we keep murdering people.”

  The voices faded away, leaving Cynthia feeling cold in the pit of her stomach.

  So Sjana had lied to her. Again. And that meant that everyone on the Flagship was going to die. Her friends, her fellow marines. Everyone on that ship was about to become the object of her crazy wife’s vengeance about a woman who Cynthia, by all rights, probably would have killed herself.

  “Oh screw this,” she said. She grabbed her pistol.

  • • •

  The Flagship bridge approached a level of panic that Rogers had never seen before. Even with the droids, even with the Thelicosans, they’d been fairly confident that they had some options. Boominite containers rigged to explode and face-kicking enemy fleet commanders couldn’t hold a candle to two enemy forces getting ready to blast them into the Un-Space point and make them Un-Alive. Commander Belgrave, who normally looked so calm and composed that Rogers wanted to set his underwear on fire, gripped the sides of his console, his eyes darting to the display as he tried to plot the best course for the massive Flagship to avoid enemy fire and give the rest of the fleet room to come into the battlespace.

  “Goddamn it,” Rogers said. “I’m really having trouble prioritizing which absolute mess I am supposed to address at any given moment. Shields?”

  “Not good, sir,” one of the defensive technicians said. “We’ve got five, maybe ten minutes more effective shields. The pirates’ attack runs aren’t very effective, but they’re cutting us down bit by bit.”

  Rogers squinted. They were probably used to attacking small cargo ships that didn’t have the armament or the defenses of the Flagship, which was what was buying them all this time. But . . . ten minutes to figure this out. “And the Jupiterians?”

  “About five minutes.”

  So, they didn’t have ten minutes at all. Once the Jupiterian forces came barreling down on them, it didn’t matter how bad the pirates were at their jobs. The Jupiterians were packing stolen military equipment from all four systems as well as stuff designed by the Snaggardir corporation. Rogers couldn’t believe he was about to be turned into goo by a company made famous by their hot dogs and scratch-off lottery tickets.

  “Okay,” Rogers said, “give me the force disposition that made it through Un-Space with us.”

  “It’s just us, sir,” the defensive technician said. “There were only a few escort ships and they’ve either been disabled or destroyed.”

  “Great,” Rogers said. “Any idea on why the Galaxy Eater isn’t here? Can we get a message back to HQ?”

  “Already on it,” S1C Brelle, the communications technician, said. “Sorry if I overstepped, sir, but I sent it as soon as we figured out that the Galaxy Eater was missing. We haven’t gotten a response yet, but honestly it won’t matter if we don’t deal with the Jupiterians first.”

  Rogers felt himself sweating in places that he wasn’t even sure sweat could come from. Were there pores on the bottom of one’s toes? They couldn’t deal with the Jupiterians until they dealt with the pirates, and they couldn’t deal with the pirates without any backup. It was like a giant trying to swat away a swarm of flies without any arms.

  Commanders Zaz and Rholos, the defensive and offensive coordinators, respectively, stood on the bridge, talking into their headsets. They’d discarded their laminated sheets after Rogers had dispelled the usefulness of The Art of War II: Now In Space, and both seemed lost without anything to wave around. Instead, they mostly paced and yelled, occasionally taking swigs from large, squeezable bottles of water.

  “Zaz!” Rogers said. “Is there anything we can do to put some distance between us and the Un-Space point? We need to get more of our fleet in here as soon as possible. How many ships do you think we’d need to even the odds here?”

  Zaz looked up, sliding one side of the headset off his ears.

  “If we could get a couple of gunships in, they might be able to at least unplug the hole further. At this point, I’d recommend charging directly at the center mass of the pirates and praying . . . in space.”

  “Please stop saying ‘in space’ after every suggestion you give me,” Rogers said. He looked at Belgrave. “Can you, like, make the ship jink or something so that we don’t get blasted so hard?”

  “We’re a floating city, sir. I can’t make the ship do anything other than move in a single direction and not crash into stations when we dock.”

  Outside, the flashes on the exterior of the ship were rising in frequency and intensity to seizure-inducing proportions. They didn’t have much time left. Rogers keyed in the war room.

  “Any comments from the peanut gallery?” Rogers asked the other members of the Joint Force.

  “I’m allergic to peanuts,” Thrumeaux said.

  “Who are you? Deet?” Rogers asked. “It’s an expression. Look, do you have any advice on how to not die? Because I would like to not die.”

  “You know, we could just hand you over,” Krell said.

  “I would prefer that not to happen,” Keffoule said, her voice icy. Probably for the first time since he’d met her, Rogers was thankful for her obsession with him. On the other hand, it meant that she was still obsessed with him.

  “If it means that much to you, then of course I will abandon that suggestion,” Krell said. Rogers could almost feel the slime coming through the communication system. Did he really want Keffoule to end up with a guy like that? He just seemed gross in so many ways. “But we did accomplish a maneuver once in a similar situation that might work here.”

  “Enlig
hten me,” Rogers said. “Fast.”

  The ship bucked as though it had hit an asteroid, which, given the fact that the sector was cleared for habitation, was completely impossible. Shouts of surprise rose up from all parts of the bridge, and Rogers nearly tumbled out of his chair as the inertial force turned the world sideways for a moment.

  “What the hell was that?” Rogers asked.

  “It was an asteroid, sir,” Zaz said, listening into his headphones intently. “Shields are getting really weak if we were able to feel it like that.”

  Rogers yelled something that wasn’t quite a word. “Nothing makes any sense anymore! Krell? Your plan, please?”

  “We charged a blockade once by cutting down most of the ship’s power and rerouting it all to engines and shields. Since that included some backup life support and some inertial dampening systems, it nearly killed us all, but it worked.” Krell gave a hearty laugh, the kind that came from a man drinking too much beer and misremembering stories to give himself an over-inflated ego. “You know, Alandra—can I call you Alandra?—it reminds me of—”

  “That’s great, Krell,” Rogers said. “Not really the time for reminiscing. Deet, plug in and run those calculations. See how much distance that’ll give us between ‘certain death’ and just ‘extremely probable death.’ ”

  “Aye-aye, Captain,” Deet said, ambling over to a port and extending his dongle. “You know, I think the Flagship and I could be really good together if she’d give me a chance.”

  “Gross, Deet.” Rogers pressed a couple of buttons on his commander’s console and brought up the address system for the ship. “Everyone brace for immediate, and completely stupid, movement. Tie everything down and put lids on your coffee cups.”

  All around the bridge, he could hear the snapping of seat belts and the snapping of lids. Really, he was surprised by how many people might be drinking coffee at a time like this. He took a sip of his coffee and waited for Deet to finish doing whatever it was he was doing to the Flagship.

  Deet’s eyes blinked different colors for a few seconds, and he made some noises that Rogers wasn’t really used to hearing come from the robot. Namely a long whistle, like he was catcalling someone on the street, followed by a burping noise and the flushing of a toilet.

  “Are you alright?” Rogers asked.

  “I am,” Deet said. “The shield impacts are sending some strange electrical currents through the ship that I am picking up. Nothing to be worried—” He made a noise like a power drill. “Nothing to be worried about.”

  Rogers stood up, staring intently at Deet and gritting his teeth. The pirates were massing for another attack run, one that Rogers thought might be their last.

  “Deet. The plan.”

  “I can begin making the power configurations right now. If I do it, it might save you some time, and the displeasure of talking to people. You say you always hate talking to people, especially all these ‘[DEITY FORSAKEN] morons.’ ”

  Rogers felt his face getting hot. Belgrave gave a long sigh.

  “I do not say those sorts of things about my crew,” Rogers said.

  “As a matter of fact,” Deet said, “I have a time-stamped, recorded conversation that—”

  “Deet, just stop talking and do the thing that will make us die slower!”

  “It’s already done, Rogers. It’s been done for the entire time you’ve been talking. You know, sometimes I think you have your priorities a little mixed up. Shouldn’t you be preparing to defend yourself once we finish getting through the—”

  Any further speech by Deet, or anyone else, was cut off as the Flagship suddenly made a hard turn, throwing loose equipment and people all over the bridge, and accelerated forward at an extremely uncomfortable speed. The flashes on the outside of the ship turned into a sort of steady glow, the color moving back toward green, indicating that the shields were recharging from other systems on the ship. The Flagship’s defensive-fire systems stopped shooting plasma blasts at the pirates, who were now getting very big very fast. A flying datapad hit an unfortunate marine in the head, knocking him unconscious.

  “Hhrrrrhhhhhh,” Rogers said in a moment of clarity as his face was being turned inside out by the force of movement. He could see pirate fighters start to take evasive action, obviously not expecting the Flagship to turn off all their guns and charge through them. Just the trajectory of their ship solved a few problems as some of the pirate ships, unable to change direction in time, slammed directly into the shield wall of the Flagship and exploded on impact.

  “Weee!” Deet said. He waggled his arms in the air. “I think I am actually having fun! Does fun make me human? Belgrave, does it? Hey, Belgrave, why are you turning purple?”

  The silver specks floating in Rogers’ field of vision suddenly decided to be courteous and invite a bunch of other different-colored specks as well and start having a party. All the colors of the rainbow were dancing in his vision. A few more seconds and everyone on the ship would pass out from the inertia. Rogers hoped the Astromologer, who was in the zero-gravity room, was tied down properly instead of reading his Tootle Roo cards or whatever, or he was definitely now a human pancake.

  While Rogers could tell that, without a doubt, this was helping clear the Un-Space gate, he could also see something else that was going to be a very large problem very quickly. The direction in which they’d accelerated to get out of the way happened to be the exact same direction from which the large Jupiterian force was coming. They were rushing from one problem to another.

  “Ssstttoooooppp!” Rogers yelled. “Too mmmuuuucccchhh!”

  Groans rose up all around him, with most of the bridge crew making indecipherable yells. Someone on the far end of the bridge actually sneezed, and Rogers could hear the audible slap of the residue hitting the wall—and one of the screaming offensive-systems technicians—behind her.

  “I really don’t see what all of you are so fussy about,” Deet said. “I’m over here having the time of my life and firmly establishing my sentience by doing so, and everyone is all ‘Oohhh nooo, my front ribs are touching my back ribs’ and all that. Humans are so dramatic.” He made something like a sigh, a noise that Deet could never seem to get correct. “Everyone just hang on a second while I—once again—do all of the [EXPLETIVE] work.”

  A moment later, the ship’s rapid deceleration sent everything that wasn’t tied down back across the ship. The marine who had been knocked unconscious by the datapad regained his senses for only enough time to say “We did it” before being hit again by the same datapad, which knocked him back into oblivion.

  It felt like the whole world had stopped. There weren’t any more pirates in front of them; but there were certainly a hell of a lot of Jupiterians. Everyone on the bridge gave an audible groan as though they’d been conducted to do so by someone waving a baton in front of an orchestra of misery.

  “Stasis mongort!” Rogers said, only half aware of where his body began and ended. This was way worse than anything the Viking could have dealt him. “I mean, uh, status report! What’s going on?”

  The silence that followed seemed to stretch to eternity. Zaz and Rholos chattered into their headsets, though a bit less enthusiastically than they had before they’d made the rapid acceleration.

  Suddenly beeps rang through the bridge as the battlespace display alerted them to multiple new spacecraft in the area.

  “They’re coming through!” Commander Rholos said. “Reinforcements! All units, get ready for a ten-seven-seven blitz on my mark. Ready—go!”

  “What the hell is a ten-seven-seven blitz?” Rogers asked.

  “It’s an attack formation . . . in space,” Zaz replied. Where did he get another laminated sheet from?

  “I told you to stop doing that!”

  The display of the battlespace looked as merry as a non-religion-specific holiday decoration on steroids. Blue dots were starting to pour in from the Un-Space point, unhindered by the pirates, who were now chasing the Flagship
instead of doing their job of blocking off access. It was like a little kids’ soccer game; every ship was chasing the one shiny object of the Flagship and ignoring the reason they were there in the first place—to win the game.

  “Reset our power priorities and get the guns back online,” Rogers said. “We’ve got them from one side, and the rest of the force will get them from the other. Belgrave, get us ninety degrees above so we don’t shoot each other and we’ll pour fire into the middle.”

  Holy shit, Rogers thought. That was a real-life, tactically sound decision. I wonder what the Viking would have to say about my “tactics” now!

  Unfortunately, the Viking probably wouldn’t say anything. She’d completely dispensed with physical abuse and had sunk into a silence that wasn’t even satisfactorily tense. It was just . . . depressed. Almost disappointed. Honestly, Rogers felt like a kid again, with his mother refusing to be angry with him. He also immediately understood the weirdness associated with comparing the woman of his dreams to his mother, but he supposed every man did it at some point. Rogers would work out all that deep Freudian stuff later.II

  He missed the Viking.

  “What are you all staring at?” Rogers asked.

  Everyone on the bridge was looking at him, standing still. Even Belgrave seemed to be flummoxed for some reason. Was he really such a bad commander that it shocked the people around him when he came up with a good battle plan on the fly?

  “Jeez, guys, it was one order. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Please just start to kill pirates so that we can focus on Jupiterians, okay?”

  “Yes, sir!” everyone said.

  Rogers went back to looking at the display while he tried to figure out how to deal with the other half of the problem. Realizing that he had no idea how to deal with the other half of the problem, he motioned for Zaz and Rholos to come over. They struck out across the bridge with the same wide, awkward gait, as though they were trying to cover as many yards with each step as humanly possible.

  “What’s on your mind, Skip?” Commander Zaz said.