Thunder & Lightning

by Christopher Nuttall

  He was twenty-nine. He was undisputed leader of a small gang of airbornes. If airbornes were the knights of the streets, then he was at least a lord. He had eight girls, any of whom would sleep with him in a heartbeat. Bubs and Santos were both offended by how the gang leader had stopped fucking them, in fact. He had territory – this rooftop – and the reputation and respect that any good airborne leader had.

  And I feel like a fuckup.

  Something had to be done.

  There’d been a radio channel that reported purely war news, from the various brushfire conflicts in Africa and the Middle East. Aircraft didn’t work alone. They went in ahead of the soldiers and tanks, or at their request. Or they dropped rifle-toting infantry into the fight, from behind.

  Except all streetgangers universally hate all airbornes.

  Streeters hated airbornes, but the big streeters – the ones who’d forcibly taken control of tenement blocks – didn’t hesitate to employ them. Self-interest trumped everything else and airbornes were an effective way to fuck with your enemies.

  An empire.

  Hundreds of streetgangers. Sewergangers, too. Going down, planting nitro, controlling the underground. Rivergangers sniping from the East River and the Hudson, transplanting squads and companies deep behind territorial perimeters.

  Formations of airbornes above them, dropping grapple-hooks with trailing ropes onto the roofs of inaccessible buildings so that snipers could scale the ropes and take position. Bombing and strafing the enemy as they fought or maneuvered. While high above those, formations with automatic tracer-rifles guarded them against marauding enemy airbornes.

  An army like that could rule all of Midtown. Hell, all of Manhattan. It could raise Hammer and the Hawks to the status of kings.

  They could take the entire city.

  What kind of power could stand up against that? The owners of the arkscrapers themselves would have to show him respect. The Cluster Secretaries – hell, the Conglomeration Secretary – would have to talk with him. Show respect to him, who owned the streets and everything above and below them.

  Well, no. They’d come in with tanks and helicopters and nerve gas for the sewers.

  That had happened once, in Hammer’s memory. Sewer vermin under the West Side had butchered a repair crew who’d trespassed on their territory. Three techs and six guards, he’d heard; the arkies weren’t completely stupid.

  People had responded to what must have been a Mayday from the repair crew. Less than an hour after the crew had descended into the sewers, troop-carrying helicopters had landed on the site while tracked carriers made their way in from one of the scrapers. The troops in the choppers had secured a perimeter and the choppers had then gone up again, their door gunners casually annihilating a dozen-strong airborne gang that’d come in for a look.

  Then the arkie soldiers or police had donned gas masks, taken hoses from one of their tracked carriers, and started pumping something into the manholes. A month later, it had still been death to go down there.

  They can wipe us out whenever they feel like it, and don’t forget that. Their technology is way magnitude ahead of ours.

  It would still be possible to negotiate. The violence on the streets was a byproduct of the way the city was built. Arkscrapers were clustered together and surrounded by abandoned high-rise buildings, which were inherently ganger country because tenement soldiers couldn’t easily control them. So the gangs were the ones with more immediate access to the munificent arkscraper trash dumps. They sold it to the tenements, who processed it back into useful products the arkies would pay for. That was how money entered the streets; all the killing just moved it around a bit. Streetgangers fighting for salvage; tenement warlords fighting for turf, peons, and crudely-built industrial facilities.

  Stop being so scatterbrained, Hammer told himself. How to start?

  Where to start?

  By making an alliance with Hoshi, the leader of the biggest streetgang in the building below. The one he’d tried to be friendly with. That would put close to thirty ground fighters under his influence.

  He sipped from his old plastic cup. The street alcohol had a newly foul taste to it. It was probably just in his mind.

  Success will bring others.

  If we have radios, we could operate more efficiently.

  He’d wanted radios for a long while. No matter how good you were, high-level accurate bombing simply wasn’t possible. The winds changed between different heights. But if you had two guys with radios… A scout flying at old bomb-pass level, fifty or sixty feet, and a flight leader flying at three hundred, then you’d have two sets of wind data to work from.

  That meant you could figure out some kind of average. Not thinking you could do on the fly, but with hard practice you could calculate tables and memorize them.

  Accurate bombing from three or four hundred feet.

  That kind of thing was drool-worthy. That kind of thing would make you famous.

  That kind of thing would have every predator in the sky wanting your mark.

  That kind of thing would give you enough money to buy ultralights. Hire snipers. Become counter-predators yourself.

  What are you thinking about this for? Go do it!

  Maybe he would.

  Carve an empire from the tenements. Make a way to control the streets. Direct access to trash dumps – permanent garrisons of disciplined troops, perhaps.

  One sector. Then another. Economic and military control.

  And eventually, parlay that up into the arkscrapers.

  For more, go to https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076YP1NT9 !

  Coming soon from co-author Christopher Nuttall: Invincible!

  All is not well in the Human Sphere. The alliance between the Great Powers is starting to fall apart, the human economy cannot keep up with the urgent need for newer and better starships and politicians are demanding an end to military spending. For the Royal Navy, desperately trying to do too many tasks with too few ships, it is the worst possible time for a new threat to appear.

  When a generation starship is detected approaching a British colony world, HMS Invincible is dispatched to intercept the aliens before they can make landfall. But the newcomers bring with them tidings of a new and deadly threat, an expansionist alien race far too close to the Human Sphere for comfort ...

  And a horror beyond human understanding.

  Prologue

  It was trite but true, Doctor Dora Fayette had often thought, that in space no one could hear you scream. And yet, space was noisy to those with the right sort of ears. Stars, pulsars and even black holes produced radio noise, bursts of high-intensity energy that - once upon a time - had been mistaken for signs of intelligent life. It was hard, so hard, to pick out the faint hints of what might be radio signals from undiscovered civilisations against the towering waves of background noise, a task made harder by the radio signals put out by the ever-growing number of human colonies. And yet, it was a task that needed to be done.

  Dora had never doubted it. Indeed, it was something of her calling, the only job she’d found that she’d ever considered remotely comfortable. She was a slight woman in her early thirties, although she looked younger, the result of a combination of rejuvenation treatments and a simple reluctance to take time away from her studies to eat. Living practically alone - there were five naval crewmen on Wensleydale Station, but they knew better than to disturb her - hadn't done much for her appearance, but she didn't care. She’d never liked being around other people anyway. Even videoconferencing was a strain.

  There wasn't much to Wensleydale Station. It was nothing more than a handful of prefabricated modules that had been shipped to Wensleydale - a human-compatible planet on the edge of the Human Sphere - and put together to produce an orbital station and listening post. But then, there wasn't much to Wensleydale either. It would be a great colony one day, Dora had been assured, but right now there were only a couple of hundred colonists on the ground, breaking the soil and turning We
nsleydale into a world that could actually host a far larger colony. Dora knew she wouldn't be around to see it. She’d be shipped further away from Earth well before the first large colony ship arrived.

  She sat within her nest on the station and studied the latest set of read-outs. The combination of orbital and radio telescopes, long-range passive sensors and deep-space gravimetric monitors continued to insist that the Wensleydale System was as empty as her departmental head’s brain, but she didn't care about local events. That was the Royal Navy’s concern, although she’d been warned, when she first arrived, that if they did run into something they couldn't handle, they were in real trouble. Wensleydale Station was armed, technically, but it wouldn't take more than a single gunboat to turn the entire structure into vapour. It was one of the reasons Dora had been sent to Wensleydale in the first place. If there was a threat lurking in the unexplored regions further away from Earth, the Royal Navy wanted advance warning.

  Dora rather suspected the Royal Navy was wasting its time, although she had no intention of pointing it out to them. Humanity had believed it was alone in the universe until it had encountered the Tadpoles and part of the reason humanity had believed it was alone was that a dazzling array of sensors had failed to pick up even the slightest hint that the Tadpoles existed. Dora had seen the exhaustive reports, compiled after the war. There hadn't been any clue, not in the official reports or buried somewhere in the raw data, that suggested the human race was not alone. Nor had humanity detected the Foxes or the Cows until their star system had been probed. And the Vesy hadn’t developed technological civilisation by the time they were discovered. Dora might be wasting her time too ...

  ... But she doubted it. Let the military worry about undiscovered threats. She was more interested in exploring the mysteries of the universe. And the equipment at her disposal was better than anything she’d used during her stint at the Luna Telescope. It was worth any discomfort, even having to share a station with five naval crewmen, to have access to the navy’s tools. They might be largely wasted, but not completely.

  A box blinked up in her headset. One of the naval crewmen had sent her a message, inviting her to dinner ... such as it was. She shook her head, dismissing the note with a shrug. She was far too agoraphobic - and asexual - to risk spending time with any of them. Besides, didn't they have their own work to do? Little happened on Wensleydale Station - she knew that for a fact - but there was always something to do. The station required constant maintenance to keep it functioning ...

  ... And then her console chimed an alert.

  Dora leaned forward, puzzled. It wasn't the near-space proximity alarm. That would have set sirens howling all over the station. And it wasn't the alert she’d set to go off if there was even the slightest hint of alien transmissions, dozens of light-years away. It was ... her lips thinned as she realised that the computers hadn't been able to neatly catalogue the signal. It was too close to be interesting to her, yet too far away to alarm the naval crew. Except ... it was right at the edge of the system.

  “Curious,” she muttered. Wensleydale had been surveyed, although - reading between the lines - she had the feeling the naval crew who’d discovered the system had skimped on the survey. A human-compatible world was more interesting than the comets and asteroids lurking at the edge of the system. “What is it?”

  She keyed a switch, unlocking the computer’s free-association modules. She’d never trusted them - even the smartest computers couldn't think like humans, which meant they had a tendency to forget or ignore valuable pieces of data - but she had a feeling that they might be necessary. The computer hummed as it scanned the databanks while she scrutinised the live feed from the long-range sensors. It was odd, very odd. The ... the event, whatever it was, was nearly a quarter of a light-year from Wensleydale. It almost looked like ...

  The computers blinked up an answer. Fusion-drive flare.

  Dora stared. She’d studied the records. A number of asteroids had been converted into starships and launched into interstellar space before the tramlines had been discovered, over a hundred years ago. None of them had reached their destinations yet ... come to think of it, none of them had aimed themselves at Wensleydale. The system’s primary star would have been in their records, of course, but they hadn't had any reason to think they might have found a human-compatible planet at the far end. And even if they had, it would have taken them thousands of years to reach their destination. Ice ran down her spine. The ship - it had to be a ship - couldn't be human.

  She took a long breath, then keyed her console, sending an alert to the naval crewmen. The ship - the slower-than-light ship - was still a very long way away, but it was heading directly towards Wensleydale. The aliens would know there was a planet, waiting for them. It was impossible to imagine a race that had fusion drives, but not basic telescopes. And yet ... they might not realise that Wensleydale was already occupied. A society that had to rely on STL ships presumably didn’t know anything about the tramlines.

  A face blinked up in front of her. Dora fought down the urge to flinch away. Commander Haircloth wasn’t a bad man - none of the naval crewmen were bad - but he was a person, intruding into her world. He looked to have let himself go, a little. Faint stubble lined his cheeks. He and his crew rarely bothered to make themselves look shipshape and Bristol fashion unless Wensleydale Station was having visitors.

  His voice was sharp. “Is ... is that thing real?”

  “Yes,” Dora said, turning her head so she wouldn't have to look at him. It was easier to pretend that he was just a voice if she couldn't see his face. “It’s a genuine interstellar colony ship.”

  Haircloth took a long breath. “Where from?”

  Dora checked her console. “Assuming a straight-line flight, it came from USS-38202,” she said. “A G2 star, fifteen light-years away. There’s no direct tramline route to that star.”

  “It might not have any tramlines at all,” Haircloth mused.

  “Perhaps,” Dora said.

  She considered it for a moment. Gravimetric science wasn't her field, but she was fairly sure that every star had at least one or two tramlines. But there was no guarantee that any tramline reaching USS-38202 would intersect with a tramline human starships could access. There was a way to create an artificial tramline, long enough for a starship to jump across interstellar space, but it had its limitations. Whoever they sent might find themselves trapped, unable to return.

  Haircloth had his mind on more practical concerns. “How long until it enters orbit?”

  Dora shrugged - interplanetary mechanics wasn’t her field either - then keyed the computer console again, letting it do the work. It threw up a wide range of possible scenarios, ranging from several months to a year or two. Too much depended on just what the aliens could actually do. If they had drive fields, they might start deploying them once they entered the system. They’d reach Wensleydale in less than a month.

  “It depends,” she said, finally. She sent him the projections. “What now?”

  “They won’t have drive fields,” Haircloth said. “They could have made the crossing far quicker if they had ... unless they feared burning out the drive in interstellar space. That would be bad.”

  He cleared his throat. “I’ll alert the crew, then pass a message up the chain,” he said. “It’ll be taking my career in my hands, but I’m sure the Admiralty will agree that launching the drone is necessary.”

  “No doubt,” Dora agreed, dryly. The Royal Navy Admiralty and her former University’s finance department had at least one thing in common. They were prepared to waste money on fripperies, while penny-pinching on important matters. Haircloth would be in real trouble if the Admiralty decided that launching an extremely expensive messenger drone up the tramline was a waste of money. It cost more than the average gunboat. “Good luck.”

  Haircloth smiled, rather wanly. “Thank you, Dora,” he said. “Can you detail at least two of the sensor platforms to keep an eye on our vis
itors?”

  Dora felt a hot flash of resentment, which she quickly suppressed. They already had answers, didn't they? The flare was artificial and therefore nowhere near as interesting as the quasar she’d been watching. But she knew it was a childish thought. That quasar wasn't going anywhere.

  “Yes,” she said. She ran her hand over the console. “Done.”

  “Very good,” Haircloth said. His voice was tinged with excitement. “And now, we wait.”

  Dora sighed to herself as she closed the connection. She could understand why Haircloth would find the prospect of alien contact - another alien contact - exciting, but it wasn't an excitement she shared. It wouldn't be long before everything from naval gunships to Foreign Office First Contact teams started to arrive, probably followed by representatives from the other human and alien powers. And planetary developmental money would follow in their wake. Wensleydale would rapidly become as cramped and unbearable as Earth or Terra Nova. She would have to go somewhere else, if there was somewhere else. The Royal Navy might not be so obliging next time.

  Joy, she thought. She looked at her consoles for a long moment. But at least we just proved that the millions of pounds they spent on deep-space monitoring systems wasn't wasted.

  Shaking her head, she turned her attention back to the quasar. Commander Haircloth and his men could monitor their visitors as they made their final approach. She had better things to do with her time ...