by Jay Allan
Now Kemal himself prepared to visit his new fief. At the spaceport, the shuttles had been launching for days, ferrying people and equipment to the orbiting fleet. An armada of ships, mostly transports, but some gunboats as well, had been assembled by Raschid to support his new interstellar dominion. The ships were mostly older surplus hulls but, old or new, fleets were expensive, and this one had strained even the vast resources of Kemal Raschid.
Kemal wordlessly waved his hand. It was a signal that he was finished listening to the petitioners. Hamid, his chamberlain and major domo had entered through the side door of the audience chamber.
“My lord, your shuttle awaits you.” The chamberlain stood respectfully in the doorway. His uniform was utilitarian, crisp and clean in sharp contrast to the intricate décor of the palace. When Kemal had first arrived on Bokhara he had imitated the pomp and ceremony of his father’s domicile, including antique period costumes for the staff. But years of hard work and a focus on the profitability of his estate had instilled a new appreciation for practicality.
“I am ready, Hamid.” Kemal walked toward the door, the chamberlain moving quickly out of his way. “It is time for me to see what these new worlds have to offer.”
Red Crescent moved across the front of the warp gate. The ship was thrusting at half a gee, altering its vector slightly to position itself to drop the next scanner buoy. The solar system, dubbed Zon 111 by the Caliphate, not only had two useful planets, it had a warp gate leading into uncharted space.
Zon 111 was far from any hostile borders, but Kemal was a cautious man, and he intended to take no chances. That warp gate probably led farther out into the galaxy, but it was always possible that the chain of warp lines looped back to an enemy world. The Caliphate had lost the war in no small part because the Alliance found a previously undiscovered warp gate that turned a once secure sector into a warzone. So Red Crescent was out here to put a detection grid in place. Once that was active, anything coming through the gate would trigger an alarm.
Captain Mustafa was bored. A veteran of the Caliphate’s navy, Mustafa had been in some of the largest battles ever fought. He’d mustered out during the purges after the war. It was better to retire in good standing, he thought, than to stay too long and become a scapegoat for defeat. He’d gotten a few civilian jobs, but trade among the Caliphate’s colonies collapsed after the war, and they were still recovering slowly. When Mustafa received Kemal’s offer to captain one of his new ships he gladly accepted.
“Scanner reading, captain.” First Officer Fawaz looked up from the display screen and turned toward Mustafa. “Energy emissions from the warp gate.”
Mustafa’s head snapped around. “Confirm readings.”
Fawaz turned toward his control board, but before he could do anything the ship’s klaxon went off. “We have something transiting in through the warp gate, captain.” His voice was shaky. Fawaz wasn’t a military veteran; his career had been on freighters and survey vessels.
“Activate deployed scanners.” Mustafa’s military reflexes were a little rusty, but they started coming back. “I want all possible data on whatever comes through that gate.”
“Ship transiting now, captain.” Fawaz stared at his screen and froze.
“What is it?” Mustafa stared over at his stunned first officer. “Now, officer, Fawaz!”
Mustafa’s rebuke shook Fawaz out of his shock. “Ah…sorry sir. According to preliminary scans the vessel masses approximately 70,000 tons.” He turned back toward the captain, his face white as a sheet. “What ship that large could be all the way out here?”
Mustafa ignored the question. He was wondering the same thing. There were warships that size, certainly, and even larger. Freighters too. But not usually out on the extreme frontier. “First Officer, send a communication. Demand the vessel identify itself.” Mustafa sat on his chair rubbing his chin. “And power up the laser battery.” Red Crescent wasn’t a warship, but it carried a double turret of light lasers.
“Yes, sir. Identity request transmitted in all languages, sir.” Fawaz glanced down at his board. “Laser turret activated and ready, captain.”
“Prepare a burst communication to Kemal’s Sword.” With a lack of modesty universal in his family, Kemal had named his flagship after himself. “Transmit from my communicator.”
Fawaz worked his controls. “Ready, sir. You may begin at any time.” A brief pause then: “No response from the unidentified vessel, captain. Scanners indicate significant power buildup.” Ships suffered a short period of disruption after a warp transit. It wasn’t usually tactically significant…unless a defender was sitting right on the gate, like Red Crescent was. Normally, battlefleets positioned themselves farther back, which gave them a wider range of options to react to an invading force.
Mustafa flipped on his communications headset. “This is Red Crescent with a priority communication for Emir Kemal.” It would take six hours for the transmission to reach Kemal’s ship. Whatever was going to happen in the next few minutes, Mustafa and his ship were on their own. “We have an unidentified vessel that has just transited into the system. Estimated mass of 70,000 tons. Intent and origin unknown.” Mustafa felt like he should say more, but he didn’t know anything else. Not yet.
“Officer Fawaz, repeat the communication demanding identification.”
“Yes, sir.” Fawaz moved his hands toward his board. “Sir…detecting massive energy buildup in…”
Red Crescent shook wildly. The lights went off, the bright illumination of the main system replaced by a dim glow from the battery-powered backups. There was a groaning sound and then another shudder, the metal spine of the ship breaking. Mustafa knew immediately that his ship was dead. He didn’t know what had hit them, but whatever it was, it was enough to kill Red Crescent with one shot.
“Sir, the reactor has shut down.” Fawaz was near panic. “Life support on minimal operation. Hull integrity compromised. Secondary explosions.”
“Get Engineer Nassar on my com.” Mustafa was staring down at his own display as he barked out the order.
“Engineer Nassar is dead, sir. So are both his technicians.” Fawaz was almost incoherent with fear. “What are we going to do?”
Mustafa leaned back in his chair and closed the visor on his helmet. I don’t know what to do, he thought grimly. He knew there was no way to save the ship.
Red Crescent tumbled again as it was torn apart by a second blast. The bridge shook wildly as it lost hull integrity and its atmosphere was quickly sucked out into the vacuum. Mustafa saw a large chunk of a conduit hit Fawaz, beheading the first officer in the process…just before the captain was sucked through a large gash in the hull.
Mustafa had his survival suit on with his helmet secure, and by some miracle, he was pulled unhurt through the opening in the hull. He was floating in space…actually he was moving at over 150,000 meters per second, the intrinsic velocity of Red Crescent when we was ejected. He couldn’t feel anything…just a calm sensation. The enemy ship was close by the standards of space warfare, but it was far too distant for him to see with the naked eye. He saw only the mangled hull of his own ship...and the black curtain of space, pin-pricked by the stars.
His survival suit wasn’t powered armor. He didn’t have a nuclear reactor to energize it, just a few small batteries. He knew he had six hours, maybe seven before he ran out of power. He would die then, though it would be a close race between suffocation and freezing. Unless, of course, he’d gotten a truly massive dose of radiation. Then the end would be quicker and he would die in agony, wracked with pain and choking on his own vomit.
I’ll just have to see what happens, he thought with an eerie calm.
“I want full power now, captain. We must reach the warp gate before that ship can fire on us.” Kemal was strapped into his acceleration couch on his self-named flagship, suffering terribly. He was not a navy man; he had no experience with the g forces that ships’ crews underwent during battle…or when fleeing. He’
d thrown up at least three times, all over his expensive silk outfit. His present state was considerably beneath the dignity he customarily considered his due, and he was in a foul mood.
Kemal’s Sword had been a hunter-killer, the Caliphate’s answer to the Alliance’s fast attack ships. The ship had been obsolete and posted to the mothballed reserve for years, but in the post-war scramble for cash, the navy sold it off, along with two dozen other ancient vessels. When Kemal bought the ship, he replaced the military grade reactor with a standard commercial one. The naval reactors were simply too expensive to operate and maintain, and they required an engineer with a much higher rating to keep them safely functioning.
The commercial reactor was enough to operate the ship normally, but its acceleration capped out around 15g. It was enough to make Kemal uncomfortable, but it was woefully inadequate to escape from an enemy accelerating at 30g.
“Yes, my lord.” The captain sat at one of the workstations on the bridge, since the normal command chair had been converted for Kemal’s use. “With my lord’s permission, I will take personal charge of the reactor’s operation. Perhaps we can coax 110% or even 115%.” Captain Essa had been an engineer in the navy before he’d moved up to command rank. His naval career had been promising, but his family were retainers of the Raschid on Earth, and he resigned from the fleet to accept the command of Kemal’s flagship. He’d been reluctant to leave his naval posting, but the lesser nobility in the Caliphate were highly dependent on their sponsors, and offending one of the Raschid would have been a betrayal to his family.
“Yes, yes.” Kemal’s head ached like nothing he had ever felt before, and his patience was at an end. He couldn’t understand how the veteran spacers could put up with this discomfort so often. “Whatever you feel is best. Just get us through that warp gate.” Kemal was afraid too. If they didn’t make it to the gate on time, they would die. This unidentified ship had already blown most of his little fleet to plasma, and he knew Kemal’s Sword had no chance in a fight.
Essa stared down at his board, speaking softly into his com to the ship’s computer. He’d have preferred to be down in engineering handling the reactor at close quarters, but moving around in a ship at 15g wasn’t practical…and cutting thrust, even for an instant, was unthinkable right now.
Kemal leaned back in his couch trying to remain quiet despite his urge to cry out. The pain was getting worse…he was sure of it. He got his confirmation a minute later when Essa announced he’d managed to get the thrust up to 17g.
Kemal lay back, focused almost entirely on his distress. But in the back of his mind there was a spark of lucidity, a thought and a feeling of urgency accompanying it. We have to get back and report. The Caliph must know about this.
Chapter 17
Critical Care Unit 3
Armstrong Joint Services Medical Center
Armstrong - Gamma Pavonis III
Sarah Linden was leaning over the med-capsule, her face a mask of concentration. She had her top team waiting – she’d gotten word days before that James Teller was on his way to Armstrong, badly wounded and in medical stasis. She knew Teller well; he was one of Erik Cain’s top officers…and Cain was Sarah Linden’s longtime companion and lover.
“Oh, James. Just look at you.” She muttered softly to herself as she looked down at Teller’s mangled body. She’d known exactly what to expect; all the data on the patient’s condition had been sent to her long before the transport docked. But it was still always a shock to see a human being – especially someone you knew – so gruesomely mutilated.
Her focus was total, but the back of her mind drifted through the years. She’d met Erik when he was brought to her at this very hospital, wounded at least as badly as Teller, and possibly worse. Cain had been exposed to an enormous amount of radiation, and he was so weak he could barely turn his head. But he recovered, and it wasn’t long before he became a nightmare, terrorizing the entire med staff. Except her. He’d had a crush on her from the day he regained consciousness. At first she thought it was cute…he wasn’t the first Marine who fell for her after she’d put him back together. But then she began to realize there was something different about him. She’d never been able to explain it, even to herself. But the two of them were kindred spirits of a sort. She couldn’t keep a tiny smile from her lips as she thought back. It had been more than fifteen years, and nothing had changed. War and duty put distance between them far more often than they wished, but nothing dampened their feelings for each other.
“OK, Andrea, let’s get him into surgery right now.” Sarah was a pleasant, soft-spoken woman in most situations, but when she was dealing with the wounded she ordered her people around as imperiously as Cain did on the battlefield. Sarah was fanatically dedicated to her job, and she’d saved thousands of Marines over the years. She’d always sympathized with Erik about the demons he faced. Her successes, at least, got up and walked out of the hospital. His victories were as bathed in blood as his defeats, and the ghosts that haunted him didn’t seem to care if they’d died in a battle won or a battle lost.
“No significant radiation exposure, right?” Andrea Tuscan was one of her younger doctors, still in surgical training. She was smart as hell, and Sarah had taken her on as a protégé of sorts.
“No.” Sarah was staring at the med-unit’s readouts, confirming what she already knew from the advance transmissions. “He’s in bad shape, but it’s all just physical injuries.” She’d still never had a patient who’d been exposed to as much radiation as Cain had been…at least not one who’d survived. He’d managed to get caught in the open with his armor breached just about as close to a nuclear detonation as a human could be and still survive. Literally. She’d had to regenerate almost every internal organ to replace those destroyed by the radiation. She’d flushed his circulatory system at least ten times, but finally she managed to repair all the damage. He still had some residual effects – she’d treated him for various cancers three times since then. But that was easily cured, a minor inconvenience at worst.
“Surgery unit C.” The med-unit moved under its own power, the medical AI following Sarah’s verbal instructions and directing the hulking, coffin-like capsule. It made a soft hum as it worked its way slowly down the corridor. Sarah followed, reading the display at the end of the unit. There wasn’t much to monitor – the machine was breathing for Teller, pumping his blood, providing nourishment and hydration. He was arguably really dead, the machinery preserving what was left of his body so the medical team could treat his injuries and revive him.
The surgical team was waiting in the unit. Teller would be in surgery for hours. Sarah and her people would repair whatever they could, and they would harvest the tissue grafts they needed to grow replacement organs for those damaged beyond repair. Teller would remain in medical stasis while his new organs developed, and then Sarah would transplant them into his body. After that was completed he would be revived and go through the agonizing process of regenerating an arm and both legs. Then, after some physical therapy, he’d be as good as new. If all went well, he’d walk out of the hospital in six months, maybe seven.
“Seal off unit.” The doors to the surgical theater closed at Sarah’s command. There was a high-pitched whine as the atmospheric system sterilized the room and everything in it. “Prepare to open med-unit.” Sarah took a deep breath and looked over at her team. “Ok people, let’s get started.”
Sarah sat in her office exhausted, still wearing her blood-soaked scrubs. Teller had been in surgery for twelve hours and, despite a few complications, he’d come through fine. Her people were catalyzing the regeneration tanks now…in another few hours they’d begin growing perfect replacements for Teller’s left lung and his liver. The rest of his organs hadn’t been as badly damaged, and they’d been repaired during surgery. Teller would remain in medical stasis until Sarah completed the transplants. Then she’d have a conscious patient to deal with.
Marines were tough to deal with under the best
of conditions, but the ones like Cain and Teller were particularly difficult to handle. Men and women cut from that cloth don’t respond well to infirmity or inactivity. Teller didn’t have Cain’s rebellious streak or his fiery temper, at least. She knew she’d been spared the worst of Cain’s fury when he was her patient, and she shuddered to think how hard he’d have been on a doctor he wasn’t falling in love with.
Right now she wanted to sleep. More than anything. Just the thought of her waiting bed was enough to make her weep. But there was work to do. A lot of it. Teller didn’t arrive on Armstrong alone, and Sarah had a legion of his shattered Marines to deal with. Her staff had been working through the night, getting the worst cases into surgery. Sarah Linden took her responsibilities seriously, and she wasn’t about to lose any Marine who managed to get to her hospital. She would make damned sure of that. If it meant no sleep, so be it.
At least on Armstrong she had the resources to properly treat everyone. She’d commanded more than one field hospital where that hadn’t been the case. She closed her eyes as her thoughts drifted back to Carson’s World during the war. They’d been forced into old mining tunnels to avoid the shelling. The wounded came in faster than her people could handle, and they ran out of everything – med-units, drugs, monitors. There were wounded men and women everywhere…laying on the cold stone ground for lack of even a cot. It was a painful memory – she’d lost a lot of Marines there, men and women she could have saved with the right equipment and supplies. The waste of it all was hard to take.
She’d come the closest she ever had to resigning after that nightmare. She’d never told Erik, but she’d actually filled out the forms. But something kept her from submitting them. Everyone she loved was in the service, and if any of them was wounded, she wanted to be there. But it was more than that…she realized resigning would be a futile gesture. Those broken and bleeding bodies would still be there and, without her efforts, more of them would die. Leaving would be too selfish. It would be abandoning her duty, her purpose.