The Stars Now Unclaimed

by Drew Williams

“And are you?”

  “No.”

  I swallowed, still staring out at the ballet of destruction through the cockpit window. The lashes of cannon fire rising from the planet below and the moon above struck the dreadnaughts’ shields in blazing lines of light, but for every shot we got off, they managed at least two, if not three. It was a slow-motion stabbing, a simple brute force equation—they had more guns than we did, and could diffuse the damage we were inflicting upon them across seven different ships. We only had three locations to shield.

  Even as I watched, one of the dreadnaughts took a direct hit, and its shields cracked apart. Explosions started rippling through its hull, and it drifted out of its position, trying to put as much space between itself and the other Pax ships before the inevitable. It was a bit like watching a watercraft sink beneath the waves. The Pax soldiers on board were my enemy, and the death of their ship meant that Sanctum would survive for at least a little longer. That didn’t mean I would wish such a death on anyone—trapped on a vessel that was ripping itself apart, knowing at any moment the fusion reactors would go and you’d be vaporized and spread across the cosmos.

  The Pax didn’t even believe in escape pods. Thought they encouraged cowardice.

  “I don’t suppose that changes your math,” I asked John Henry dully.

  “No,” he replied. “As I said: we knew that would happen momentarily. I factored its loss into my calculus. Two hours, at most.”

  A bright, shining line of light, almost indigo, spread through the enemy dreadnaught, and then it was gone, the massive explosion of its reactors going critical swallowed up by the very vastness of space around it.

  “There has to be something we can do,” I told the AI in Sanctum. It occurred to me that this whole fight—the dreadnaughts firing down at the city from orbit, us firing back from the mountaintop—must feel very much like a close-quarters brawl to him; the city was his body, after all, he had sensors everywhere. Every shot the shield took from the dreadnaughts above was the equivalent of being punched in the ribs. Every bit of energy the shields couldn’t replace was like him trying to get air back into his lungs, and not quite getting enough before the next punch came.

  “You’re free to join the defense of Sanctum, of course,” John Henry said politely, as though inviting us for tea. “Even considering the fact that Scheherazade, especially, is running low on core energy, both she and Bolivar are extremely capable—helping to keep the enemy fighters at bay might stretch out Sanctum’s remaining time as much as twenty minutes longer. Alternately, you could attempt to flee, but I wouldn’t advise it; the Pax have some of their dreadnaughts—”

  “Guarding the path out, I know,” I told him. “I wasn’t thinking about running, John Henry.”

  “I know you weren’t. If they didn’t have their ships blockading the system exit, though, I would likely be suggesting you do just that. This is not a fight we can win.”

  “There must be something—”

  “I have examined all the possibilities, Jane. Sanctum is lost.”

  CHAPTER 3

  No,” I shook my head. “No. No.” It was as though, if I kept repeating it, it would somehow come true; the situation would change somehow so long as I kept denying it. The act of a child, I know—I’d seen it enough in my charges—but I couldn’t help it. We’d fought too hard, sacrificed too much, for us to lose now.

  “Have they figured out a way to evacuate Sanctum yet?” Marus asked John Henry, his voice sober.

  “Evacuation was never a serious consideration,” John Henry replied. “If we were going to evacuate, we would have done it before the Pax even arrived in-system. We gambled; we lost. There are some countermeasures that are being taken—some of our data is being broadcast on coded frequencies, where hopefully it will be intercepted by agents that were unable to return to Sanctum in time to join its defense. But that—”

  “We need another gun,” Esa said suddenly.

  “Well, yes, child,” Marus told her. “But that’s—”

  “That’s all we need, though, right? Another gun? That would change the . . . bad math, that would be enough to pound the dreadnaughts out of the sky before they can get through Sanctum’s shield?”

  “Yes, but there is no other gun, Esa,” I sighed, trying to keep a handle on my temper; I didn’t need to be dealing with this right now. “That’s just—”

  “Sure there are,” she said. “Four or five of them, actually.”

  “The other cannon in-system won’t work; even if they were operable, which they’re not, they’re not in firing positions where they could even hit the Pax dreadnaughts—”

  “Not the anti-orbital cannons; the dreadnaughts themselves. I’m saying . . .” She unbuckled herself, came to stand at my shoulder, and pointed out the cockpit window. From the angle Schaz was drifting at, we could see three separate Pax dreadnaughts—not the circle of still-firing ships above Sanctum, or the grouping guarding the exit, but some of the others, those that had been so damaged during their path through the system that they’d withdrawn outside the cannons’ envelope rather than risk being destroyed completely. “I’m saying those are guns, right?”

  I just stared out the cockpit for a moment. It was insane. It was the reckless, impulsive, desperate act of a teenager—it was ridiculous to even suggest it, to think about it. Those dreadnaughts had been taken out of the long-range fight, but that didn’t mean that they were drifting empty; they were still full of Pax, however many had survived the hits they’d taken when their shields were breached.

  We were already fighting on three different fronts: the battle in the skies over Sanctum, the battle above the planetary guns, the battle in the void. Now she wanted us to open up a fourth assault, to try and take a Pax dreadnaught away from its crew, so we could aim its main gun at its former compatriots and hit them with a surprise attack.

  “That’s insane,” I told Esa, after processing even the idea she was suggesting.

  “Yeah, sure, whatever,” she sighed, ignoring the actual words I was saying to stare at me intently. “But would it work?”

  “You’re asking . . . what you’re suggesting, it would mean storming through a half-dozen fortified positions inside the dreadnaught, somehow sealing off—”

  “I didn’t ask ‘can we do it?,’ I asked ‘would it work?’ If we got to one of the enemy dreadnaughts, if we were able to commandeer its big gun—even if just for a shot or two—would that make the difference in the fight above Sanctum?”

  “John Henry?” I asked, swallowing. No one said a word; we all just waited for the computer housed deep beneath Sanctum to finish his calculations—to see if Esa’s insane idea meant there was a chance that he, and all of us, might survive.

  “Yes,” he said.

  CHAPTER 4

  Find me a target,” I told Scheherazade, my hands already running over the instrument panels, getting as many scans as I could before I folded us into stealth mode. “We need to know which of those dreadnaughts has taken the most damage without possibly ruining the shaft of their main cannon. We need to know which of them will require the least shifting to aim at our targets; we need to know which of them has functioning reactors on board still; we need to know—”

  “Are we actually doing this?” Marus asked faintly.

  “You just started moving,” Javier called in over the comms. “Where are you going? What do you know that I don’t know?”

  “We’re going to go storm a dreadnaught,” I told him. “You were a pirate for a bit there; this should be right up your alley.”

  “I was never a—we’re going to what?”

  “Have Bolivar drop in behind Schaz. We’re going to storm a dreadnaught.” I actually grinned as I repeated myself; I couldn’t help it. The very idea was ludicrous.

  The Pax would never see it coming.

  “. . . Why?”

  “Because if we can get to the gunnery controls of one of those damaged vessels out there, if we can get to the gunnery c
ontrols and we can get just a few good shots off, we can break up the Pax firing pattern. Right now they’re rotating their ships in and out of the firing solutions of our three cannons, giving their shields time to recharge. If we can hit one of them before that happens, we can shrink the circle, we can make it so that they—”

  “I—okay, I get, you know, the plan, such as it is, but what in any god’s name makes you think we can do any of that? Those dreadnaughts were taken out of the fight over Sanctum, sure, but they’re not, you know, they’re not exactly sitting empty. There have to be hundreds, maybe even thousands of Pax troops still on board—”

  “We do nothing and Sanctum dies. It’s that simple.”

  “That’s fine, and I understand that, and believe me, I want to do something too, but I’m saying—you’re not hearing what I’m saying. Whose idea was this, anyway? Yours? Marus’s?”

  “Esa’s.”

  “Esa’s. This was Esa’s idea.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Does she—”

  “I’m listening too, you know,” Esa told him.

  “Great, fine. Do you understand that we can’t do this? I’m saying regardless of whether it will turn the tide of the battle, the five of us—”

  “Twelve of us.” That was a new signal; another ship was lifting off of the planet, joining our formation.

  “Sahluk?” I asked. “Is that you? What the hell are you doing off of the ground?”

  “The rest of my team can hold the cannon—you did a pretty good job ripping their ground forces apart,” he told me. “John Henry filled me in on your plan, such as it is. There was another stealth ship, apparently, a prototype in the labs at Sanctum—he managed to get it—”

  “He? Who the hell’s he? Who’s piloting that thing?”

  “That would be me, Jane.” It was Criat. What the hell was Criat doing behind the stick of a prototype stealth ship? He’d never been one to shy from a fight, but this was a different thing entirely.

  “What the hell are you doing out here, boss?” I asked him. I couldn’t even remember the last time Criat had been in a cockpit. That thing over Last Echelon; that had been half a century ago.

  “Well, I had been coming to help you, but since you seem to have a plan to save all of us, I figured I’d pick you up some reinforcements.” It was a tiny craft, a scouting ship—I could barely imagine Criat and Sahluk squeezing in there together, let alone with five other soldiers, Sahluk’s best. Still, twelve was better than five—that was for damned sure.

  “Great, wonderful,” Javier said. “Can we circle back around to the part where this is a crazy plan that sprouted from the mind of a teenager who knows fuck-all about interplanetary combat?”

  “Aren’t you going to add ‘no offense’?” Esa asked him.

  “No! I’m not! You don’t know what the hell you’re doing! Even if we did manage to board one of their ships, and even if we did manage to seal off the gunnery controls and, you know, access them, even if we did all that, there are more Pax dreadnaughts out there, waiting out the fight. The instant they figure out what we’re doing, they will blow us right out of the void. The Pax on board the ship we’re trying to take will lower their own shields, and their brothers will blow us to hell and back before we can even—”

  “Not if we take that one.” I highlighted one of the enemy craft in my HUD and bounced the information along the comm channel to Bolivar and to Criat’s craft.

  “That one,” Javier said slowly. “That’s the one you want to hit.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a Nemesis class dreadnaught, built by the Atellier sect during the wars. It’s crewed by twenty-five hundred. It took less damage from the bombardment coming in than any of the others, there’s still likely—”

  “And that’s exactly why it’s our target. It had to pull out of the fight because we landed a lucky shot on its propulsion systems.” I had been busy scanning the enemy dreadnaughts as Javier laid out his objections. “It still has full shielding.”

  “Which—yeah, which, again, the Pax inside will just drop the instant that—”

  “Not on a Nemesis. Its shielding station is located right beside gunnery control. They’re built to keep fighting, even after . . . you know, to keep fighting at the last minute. We’re going to use that against them. We take gunnery control, we take shielding, and with its engines down it can’t maneuver away from the angle it’s already sitting at—an angle that already gives us a firing solution on the dreadnaughts attacking Sanctum. Javier, listen: look at it. What do you see?”

  He paused for a moment, looking at the ship, not just the scans. “It’s new,” he said finally. “It’s one of the ships from—from whatever forgotten depot they raided. Even after all the fighting today, it’s still all shiny, barely touched.”

  “Exactly. That meant the Pax inside will barely know its layout; they’ll be less familiar with its controls, we’ll be able to lessen their advantage. It’s perfect for this plan.”

  Javier sighed, long and hard. “We’re really doing this, aren’t we?” he asked.

  “We don’t have many other options,” Criat reminded him. “It’s die trying this, or die as the Pax round us all up after they obliterate Sanctum. One way or another—”

  “Yeah. I get it. Fuck it. God hates a coward.”

  “So now you’re on board with my plan?” Esa asked him.

  “No, I think it’s a terrible plan. But since I don’t have a better one—fuck it,” he said again. “Let’s go storm a dreadnaught. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  We might just be about to find out.

  CHAPTER 5

  So,” Javier asked, “how do we actually do this?”

  “I thought you were on board now,” Criat asked him.

  “I am; I’m saying—what’s the actual plan here? We can’t just fly up to the docking bay doors and ask politely if they’ll let us in. We can’t fire on them and blast open the docking bay doors; even if we had the ordnance to do so, which, by the way, all my missiles are spent, if anyone was asking—but even if we did have the ordnance, their shields are still up. We can approach, and we can maybe stay off their radar, assuming our stealth kits hold up and we’re, you know, very lucky, but how do we actually breach the damn ship?”

  Silence for a moment, both inside Scheherazade and on the comm channels. The dreadnaughts loomed ahead of us against the sweep of the stars; three massive ships, two of them heavily damaged, the third—our target—in the center of the pack. Unlike the others, which bristled with guns and towers, the Nemesis was a lean, long beast, more rounded edges and recessed guns than bulky protrusions—the product of an entirely different design sensibility than the Pax’s homegrown dreadnaughts. The void around it shimmered slightly, visible only in erratic pulses as the debris that floated through the system deflected off its shield.

  “Have we considered the idea that—it’s a target, a very clear target,” the Preacher put in. “Like you said”—she turned to me—“it’s perfect. How do we know it’s not a poisoned chalice?”

  “A what?” Esa asked.

  “How do we know it’s not a trap?”

  “Because nobody—not even the Pax—would be stupid enough to come up with an idea like this,” Javier replied.

  “Hey!” Esa objected.

  “Did I say stupid? I meant brilliant. It’s a brilliant plan, and we’re all most assuredly not going to die, assuming we can even come up with a way to get on board.”

  “The damage to the engines,” Marus said suddenly.

  I pulled up Schaz’s scans of the dreadnaught’s superstructure. “We can’t get a ship through that breach, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” I told him. “Even if we did, we’d have nowhere to go; we’d be stuck behind the bulkheads.”

  “Not the ships,” he said. “Just us. As long as the ships approach slowly enough, we can get through the shields; shielding only stops objects moving at dangerous velocities. We can—”


  “Oh, no.” The words escaped me in a kind of moan as I saw where he was going. I couldn’t help it. I knew what he was planning, and I hated it. I hated it.

  “We can reach the dreadnaught’s hull directly,” Marus bored onward with his terrible plan, “and climb into the breach ourselves. Make our way through the engines. There has to be some sort of maintenance access in there that will let us into the dreadnaught body proper.”

  “You want us to go EVA?” Even Javier sounded impressed by the insanity of the plan. “You want us to climb around on the outside of an enemy ship. Then climb into their engines—which, let’s hope they’re not currently doing repairs, on their, you know, broken ship that requires exactly those—and then from there, make our way into the ship itself.”

  “It’s not far,” Criat rumbled. “From the engineering sector of the ship to the gunnery controls, I mean. It’s feasible. It’s very feasible.”

  “So it’s a good idea, then?” Esa asked him.

  “I wouldn’t go that far. It was Marus’s idea, after all.”

  “I don’t hear any other options,” Marus sighed.

  I tried like hell to think of one. I hated EVA—extravehicular activity, otherwise known as spacewalking. I hated it unreasonably. Something about being surrounded by all that nothing, with just one misstep sending you spiraling off into the void, doomed to slowly suffocate as the oxygen supplies in your suit drained down . . . I’d had nightmares about it all my life, ever since my original sect had put me through a terrifying training scenario in EVA combat. It had only been compounded by an incident shortly after I joined the Justified, an incident where . . .

  I didn’t even want to think about it.

  “There’s a problem, though,” Criat added.

  “Of course there is.” I tried not to sound too thankful.

  “We’ve crammed more people into my ship than it was meant to hold. We don’t have enough suits or magboots for all of us to go EVA.”

  “So we split into two teams,” the Preacher put in. “That’s simple enough. Those of us on Bolivar and Scheherazade will go EVA, enter the engines and assault the gunnery controls. If we move quick enough, we can seal off that section of the ship. The Pax will still be trying to get in, but from there, we’ll have access to docking systems.”