by C. Gockel
Wren snickered. Chavez coughed. And Noa actually felt her lips turn up. At least her crew was in a good mood. The Ark rounded the first planetoid and its asteroid orbiters, and began its flight toward the next cluster. At their current speed, they’d be at the next cluster in 4.6 minutes.
To James alone she mused over the ether, “I wonder who else bet against me.”
“I didn't,” James replied. “That would be very wrong.”
Noa relaxed.
“Because I don’t know how much money I have back on Earth,” James continued, and she could see his eyebrow rising just by the way he drew out those thoughts.
Grinning despite herself, Noa shook her head. “You are such a—”
A sharp bleat of static made her eyes jerk to the small comm on the dash.
James stood in Airlock 1, closest to the bridge.
Over the ether, Noa said, “You’re such a—”
And then her thoughts abruptly cut off.
Across the general ether, James said, “Commander, is something wrong?” His mind leapt to the video streams from the ship’s exterior. He couldn’t see anything. All biosigns aboard the Ark were normal. Noa’s line was still open, but she wasn’t responding. Perhaps busy with some technicality? Another channel lit in his mind; one that lit up more and more frequently of late. After a second’s hesitation, James answered it.
“Hey James, why aren’t you with us civies?” Raif, Wren’s son, asked him.
“I’m in the airlock with Gunny,” James responded.
“What are you doing there?” Raif asked, and a red light flashed in the periphery of James’s vision. An app alerted him that Raif was anxious.
James wasn’t a parent, or even human, but he thought he had excellent models of parental behavior. His father—or the real James’s father—had an augmented heart implanted when James was only ten. Laughing off the nearly deadly heart attack that had preceded the operation, his father had told the young, anxious James, “Don’t worry, this is just a scheme to test out my company’s products.”
He sought a similar quip to put Raif at ease. “What I am doing here is wearing a spacesuit. I’m about to do a bit of space walking,” James said. “Don’t you wish you were me?” What child didn’t want to space walk at least once? The other James had.
“A space suit? Full deal? Really?” Raif said. “Wow, we can do that now that we’re not at lightspeed. Can I?”
“Maybe later. Look, I have to focus here. Gonna have to let you go.”
“All right … You’re lucky to be there. Snyder is complaining about all the ‘toddlers he has to babysit.’ I’m twelve and he’s not my babysitter.”
Snyder was one of the rescued civilians from Atlantia. Born into wealth, he was used to things going his way. He was also a litigator and … litigious.
“You’re probably babysitting him,” James said, not just being appeasing. The boy was the go-fer between computing, engineering, and the bridge.
“Solar cores, yes,” said Raif, and then disconnected.
Wren's voice cut across the general channel. “Got some static on the comm. Could be dust on the antennae.”
Beside James, Gunny fully suited, shifted, and went to stand directly beneath the outer airlock opening. Normally the door would be beside them, but Manuel had decreased and shifted the grav. James was standing on what was usually a wall. Gunny was standing on what was usually the inner door. Both of them were fully suited for space walk. They each had a plasma launcher, easy enough to heft in the lighter G. When Gunny turned to look at him, James couldn’t see anything but his own reflection in the man’s visor.
Across the ether, someone asked, “Can we move out of the galley now? We’d like to see the cloud, Commander.”
“Please remain where you are,” Noa replied across the general ether.
“Is there danger?” someone said.
“It’s standard procedure for civilians to remain in the most secure area of the ship when coming out of lightspeed,” Noa replied.
The original speaker said, “But this isn’t a combat situation, surely we can—”
“Please remain in the galley,” Noa said, her thoughts still calm. Her thoughts across the general channel were cool, level, and professional.
“My son forgot his teddy xengaum, I just want to go—”
“This isn’t a cruise ship, Mr. Snyder.” Over the general ether, Noa’s mental tone was friendly, despite the harshness of the words. Over James’s personal channel, it was another matter. “That blasted son-of-a-lizzar dung weevil!”
Snyder, not hearing her private commentary, continued, “Really, Commander, don’t you think you’re being a little—?”
Irritated, James reached into the ship’s ether, saw the light that was Snyder, and he turned it off so the man could no longer interrupt her, and he locked the galley door.
“Thank you for shutting him up, Ghost,” said Noa, mistakenly attributing the shutdown to Ghost.
“Errr …” said Ghost. “You’re welcome?”
“I see something,” Sterling said. “Heading this way, eleven o’clock.”
“I don’t have anything on the comm,” Wren said.
“Here we go,” said Gunny, inclining his head up to the door overhead.
“Ghost,” Noa said, “can you amplify our ether range?”
“I’m trying, Commander.”
James’s mind leapt into the ether and the monitor read-outs at her words. Even as a civilian—or a cyborg civilian imposter—he knew sometimes ships in distress would use a handheld flashlight to signal for help in Morse Code. He saw nothing that could qualify.
“Commander?” Gunny said.
“Go, Gunny,” Noa replied. James felt her wordlessly reach for his private channel, but before he could respond, the outer airlock opened. Since the room had already been depressurized, Gunny and James weren’t sucked out. Instead, Gunny gently hopped up and caught himself on the lip of the doorway. James did the same, and found himself suspended in a universe of swirling light and color. Raising his weapon, he peered over the scope and saw a bright pinprick of light at eleven o’clock. Another pinpoint of brightness at ten and nine o’clock caught his eye, and more at twelve and two. An internal application told him they’d be three minutes behind the first.
Noa’s voice cracked over the ether. “Five incoming—and they’re hot.”
At her words, a spot at the front of the first object, two handspans wide, began to glow.
“Fire!” Gunny roared.
Bolts of plasma launched from the airlock turrets lit up the dome of the Ark. Two beams that Noa’s apps told her were from Airlock 1 hit the drone at eleven o’clock. Electricity fired along the drone’s hull, its advance halted, and its outer hull cracked open. Spinning in place, it sent its outer plating hurtling out in every direction, a final assault. She heard the reverberations in the hull as the scraps hit the Ark’s exterior.
“Fire the cannons!” Ghost screamed across the ether. “They’ll disintegrate the targets.”
“Bridge, hold your fire,” Noa said aloud.
She heard Sterling shift in his seat.
“The Ark’s hull can take the shrapnel. Do not fire the main cannons!” Noa said. It couldn’t withstand too many plasma charges from the things, but the old boat had been designed for unexplored deep space and could handle a few physical collisions. Her teeth ground. Her men in the airlocks could not take physical collisions, of course.
Ghost whined again, “Use the main cannons!”
Dipping her chin, she said, “Save the main cannons for whatever is sending these things.” Because whatever it was, it was far bigger and far nastier, and they’d only have two shots.
Thoughts shaky, Ghost replied, “Oh.”
“Ghost, you work on contacting whatever it is.”
“It has to be behind the next cluster,” he exclaimed. “That’s why I’m not getting a signal. We should alter our course and go around it, Commander.”
“What?” said Ghost.
“Commander?” said Chavez.
Wren snapped before Noa could respond, “That would put it on our tail … and we don’t have cannons to guard our ass.”
Before Noa could hear the reply to that explanation, an exploding drone in a spinning ball of plasma and shrapnel came hurtling to the glass of the dome.
James and Gunny’s blasts hit another drone in a twisting coil of plasma trails. In a brilliant flash of orange, it began its death spin. As he waited for his plasma launcher to recharge, in the periphery of his vision he saw two more bolts of plasma from Airlock 7 arc over his head, but James’s eyes were fixated on the drone he and Gunny had hit, spinning faster and faster. White light flashed behind his eyes and he knew with bright white certainty that it would collide with the dome.
The dome could survive a collision with an object, but could it withstand a collision with a spinning ball of electrically-charged metal? Before his mind had even finished processing the question, he’d released the phaser launcher, thrown down his hands, and had pushed himself off the Ark’s hull, propelling him up into space to give him a better angle. The launcher, tied to him by a shoulder strap, came with him. Time seemed to slow as he re-clasped the weapon and aimed. A bright light in the launcher told him it was ready to fire again. Another white light went off behind his eyes and he knew there was a 33.2% chance that the dome, already stressed by seven years at lightspeed, a landing in Luddeccea’s frigid Northeasterly Current, centuries parked at the Luddeccean equator subjected to sometimes football-sized hail, would crack.
He pulled the trigger. His aim was true. The drone veered off its course, sparked and spun, its projectiles skidding over the hull.
He felt a tug, and Gunny’s voice filled his mind. “James, get down here,” and he realized what a dangerous position he was in, high above the Ark’s airlock, tethered to the rest of his crew by a thin band. He looked down and saw Gunny hastily reeling him in. Another drone began to spin above and ahead of them. Shards flew from its outer casing. Gunny should have retreated back into the safety of the airlock, but he didn’t, he just kept pulling James in … James released a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding. The warm light of gratitude, relief, and a sort of exasperation with what was either Fleet or Luddeccean stoicism flittered in his mind. His feet were almost at the level of the Gunny’s head when a shard flew between them. He felt a jerk, and then he saw Gunny give a final tug—but instead of going back toward the airlock, James floated backward—no, a useless application told him—he was going in the same direction as the Ark, just slower. There was another explosion and he couldn’t see anything at all as a piece of plating from the Ark’s hull came tearing toward him and the wide flat bottom of it hit him in the chest. His suit did not rupture, but he was propelled backward even faster.
“We’ve lost James!” he heard Gunny shout in the ether, and he felt all his thought processors come to a halt. Noa would not leave him, but if she found him “alive,” or at least still animate, after his CO2 converter expired, the reckoning would come sooner. He struggled against the plate, and managed to push it off of him. He found the controls for the jets in his suit, managed to turn them on, but his apps screamed that they wouldn’t be enough.
Overhead more drones flashed, plasma fire streaked up from the Ark, and shards of exploded machinery flew past. He was going to be pulverized. If his suit was breached, he’d be believed dead, and if he was believed dead and found alive …
He felt pressure on his calf.
“Gotcha,” Gunny said over the ether. “James, turn off your jets.”
The jets were the only thing slowing his backward momentum. James looked down. He saw Gunny’s tether floating loose in zero G, and Gunny himself holding onto his leg. He’d put himself in the same peril James was in.
James turned off his jets.
“Airlock 7, we’re coming!” Gunny shouted. But an app in James’s mind told him that was impossible. The airlock was below them; their jets were aimed in the wrong direction.
Gunny lifted his phaser rifle. With a mental cry of “Allah Akbar,” Gunny aimed the barrel of the launcher at the last approaching drone and fired. It was then that James realized the blue light of the recoil dampener wasn’t lit.
Gunny flew backward and down, dragging James with him. They hit the hull, bounced, and then James was yanked backward and down by an unseen force.
“Got the professor’s tail!” one of Sterling’s men, Lance Corporal Amanda Ling, cried.
Shards shot past them.
“I’m hit,” Gunny shouted.
The grip on his leg vanished, and suddenly James was jerked down past Gunny, hovering in space in front of him. Instead of reaching for James, Gunny was seeking the breach sealer for his left arm. The man who’d saved him was going to float into the abyss. Reaching up, James caught Gunny’s phaser rifle strap and pulled the sergeant to him as he was reeled into the lift.
“Manuel, give us gravity!” Lance Corporal Tom Briggs called.
Before James knew what was happening, he was falling. He heard an “oompf!” over his radio, and then an “mmpf!”
He landed flat on his back on something relatively soft and lumpy. “Ugh!” Ling’s voice cracked over his radio. An instant later, Gunny landed on top of James, and all the air exited whatever passed for lungs inside his body with a “pffffft.” In his radio came another loud crackling noise.
Ling’s mind rang out through the ether. “Shut the airlock!” and the bright light of the Kanakah Cloud winked out.
Noa’s words rang through the ether. “Status.” Over his personal channel, she said, “James?”
“I’m here … in Airlock 7,” he said. Gunny’s body convulsed on top of him and the crackling of his radio got louder. He felt a stab of worry, and reached to the man through the ether.
“I’m going to kill whoever sent those lizzar-blasted drones,” Noa’s mind hissed to him privately. But over the general channel, she said, “Gunny? Sergeant?”
The crackling noise continued, as did Gunny’s convulsions.
“Is he?”
“Gunny?” James said, but got no answer. Just even louder crackling and more convulsions.
“Respectfully, please get off of me, Corporal,” Briggs said.
“I can’t with these two on top of me,” said Ling.
“What’s wrong with Gunny?” Noa said.
“I don’t—” James was cut off by Gunny saying, “I’m laughing my ass off!” He rolled off of James, and said across the ether, “We’re all here, and we’re all safe, Commander.”
James rolled the other way, stood up, and looked over at Gunny.
“Damn, that was so hilarious ... I’m cryin’,” the sergeant said aloud. “Also, I wish I still drank. That was too close for comfort.”
Over the ether, Noa’s voice cracked. “Gunny, how is your suit?”
“Worked exactly the way it's supposed to!” Gunny replied.
“I need you back in Airlock 1,” Noa said. Privately, she said, “James—” He expected a quip, maybe ‘don’t do that to me,’ or at least, ‘what were you thinking?’ But the connection went dark, leaving him oddly adrift.
And then Wren’s voice followed, “I’ve got contact!”
“Damn,” said Wren. “Lost it.”
“Me too,” Ghost said. “It’s the planetoid cluster, Commander. There’s a lot of dust between those rocks.”
Noa’s lip curled, her eyes on the skylight. The drones hadn’t been large enough to destroy the Ark, but if any of them had gotten a clean shot at a time band, they could have incapacitated her ship. Pirates, obviously. Well, they were about to get a surprise.
“Cannons ready?” she asked.
“Ready,” said Chavez and Sterling in unison.
“Ghost,” she said over the ether. “Do you have any sort of read on those drones?”
“They were
trying to communicate with someone—and failing. It’s the cluster ahead. It’s blocking signals.”
The comm cracked.
“But we’ll be in range within minutes,” Ghost finished.
The comm screamed, and Wren’s hands flew over the dials.
“Unknown ship, unknown ship, requesting assistance …”
The comm cracked again, and another voice rattled through the bridge. “Unknown ship, this is none of your business!”
“Ghost?” Noa said.
“The second one, Commander,” Ghost replied. “The aggressive one … that’s the one the drones were trying to reach.”
Noa growled. “They lost their chance to play nice.”
Ghost’s thoughts stuttered across the ether. “But Commander, really? They’re obviously distracted by whomever they are currently engaged with, and surely it would be better to save our ammo. We don’t have an unlimited supply. ”
Every gram in her body felt like fire. Fleet Pilots did not appease enemies that fired first.
Noa dipped her chin. Over the ether, she asked, “Gunny, are you back in position?”
“We’re ready, Commander.” He sounded almost gleeful, and Noa recognized an adrenaline high when she heard it.
Ghost protested, “Commander, I must insist—”
“She’s doing the right thing, Big Brain!” Wren snapped. “Shut your apps off or so help me, I’ll come there and shut them off for you!”
The light of Ghost’s consciousness winked out. The Ark dipped below the cluster, and Noa’s and Wren’s eyes went up. A familiar black ship, with wings like the spiky shell of a rock urchin was hovering above an enormous dark concrete disk. The disk had a central core of patchwork metal. Her apps put its diameter at three kilometers and its width at one hundred forty meters. It was crawling with more of Xo’s drones and thousands of ticks.
“That’s Captain Xo,” Noa said, eyes on the black ship. “Chavez, Sterling, that’s your target!”
“Locked on!” they said nearly in unison.
The comm cracked again. “Unknown ship, unknown ship, please provide assistance!”
A light on the monitor warned that a spot on Xo’s freighter was heating up—a plasma launcher being primed. An app told her she had three seconds.