Shiplord: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 3)

by Felix R. Savage

  “It’s too late,” Alexei said.

  “DO IT NOW.”

  “No, I mean it’s too late for this. We’ve come too far together. I can’t abandon you.”

  “I’ll. Be. Fine. I’ve got plenty of MREs.”

  Alexei stared at the concave forward wall of the crew seating area. It displayed an optical feed of the moon, blurring past like the floor of the main hab when you looked down from the axis tunnel. He did not want to leave the SoD. Could they survive down there? It would depend on Keelraiser’s piloting skills. If Keelraiser could land the Cloudeater close enough to Camp Eternal Light, they’d have a chance.

  He made his decision. Rolled out of his couch.

  Nene, in the couch next to his, caught his hand.

  Thrust gravity pulled them both down to the aft wall.

  Alexei caught her in his arms. He kissed her to hide the fact that his heart was breaking. She knew anyway, of course. “I have to stay with them,” she whispered.

  “I know. I have to stay with the SoD.”

  “I know.”

  “I love you.”

  “You are my life.” This was her way of saying I love you. “Perhaps we’ll meet again when this is over.”

  Alexei nodded and kissed her again, taking his time because it would be the last time. The other rriksti in the crew seating area looked away. They considered public displays of affection unseemly. Did Alexei give a fuck? He did not. He had found the one woman in the universe for him, and now he was letting her go because he was a motherfucking Russian cosmonaut and he had to do his job.

  He vaulted up the ladder and plummetted down the corridor into the passenger cabin. It felt like falling out of the future into an overcrowded third-class train carriage. Fine white dust floated in the air. People couldn’t help crying, although they knew how bad it was for the air circulation system. Alexei knew how they felt. He worked his way back to the engineering decks at the rear of the shuttle. “I need the ultrasound pulse cutter. Quick.”

  Skyler elbowed between the rriksti thronging the corridor. “I’m coming with you.”

  *

  Alexei aimed the ultrasound pulse cutter at each weld in turn. The tool had an ultrasonic transducer on the end of an extendable arm. Like many rriksti gizmos it was based on principles familiar to humanity, which could only be applied if you also had megawatts of power packed into a battery the size of a smartphone.

  Welds are sintered powder.

  Pulse ultrasound through them and they go back to being powder again.

  They worked by the light of the moon, as if standing on their heads, while the Mare Fecunditatis swept beneath them. Suddenly darkness engulfed them. The SoD had crossed the terminator.

  Alexei cursed and switched on his chest-lamp.

  Skyler, aiming his own chest-lamp at the aft starboard weld, began to sing: “Breathe, breathe in the air. Don’t be afraid to care …”

  The lyrics floated to Alexei’s lips. “Leave, but don’t leave me …” Nene. Leave, but don’t leave me.

  “Pink Floyd depresses the shit out of me,” Jack said, from the SoD’s bridge. “Can’t we have something a bit more cheerful?”

  So they sang Monty Python songs until the final weld crumbled into powder and the Cloudeater floated free, cellar-depth below the SoD’s truss.

  “You’re clear to thrust, Cloudeater,” Alexei said. “Godsp—”

  An angle iron swung at him. Skyler was wielding it like an extra-long baseball bat. Alexei tried to dodge, too late. The angle iron caught him lengthwise under the ribs, knocking the air out of his lungs. He bounced out on his tether.

  Skyler scrambled to the other end of the tether, released it from the truss, and threw the tether reel into the Cloudeater’s cargo hold. He threw the angle iron after it.

  Rriksti hands caught both things.

  “Got him,” their sweet voices said. “Got him.”

  As the ramp began to hinge up, the rriksti hauled in the tether, with Alexei on the end of it. “Fuck you, Taft,” he shouted.

  “No no no no no,” Skyler said in his headset. “You saved my life. I’m just returning the favor. Anyway, they need you. Think those douches at CELL are going to welcome three hundred rriksti with open arms, without a human to vouch for them? If so, you’re really naïve. And with all due respect to Giles, it better be a human with the normal amount of fingers. So that’s your job, and I’m going to do my job.”

  The rriksti hauled Alexei over the cargo ramp. It closed, cutting off Skyler’s voice.

  The Cloudeater’s drive turbines spun up with a noise like thunder.

  The little shuttle broke away from the SoD and rolled into a steep climb, scrambling for altitude.

  *

  “Godspeed,” Skyler whispered.

  Then he went back in.

  “There I was thinking I’d have peace and quiet at last,” Jack said in his headset.

  Skyler choked on the putrid smell of rotten vegetation that filled the ship. “Whew. Does it ever stink in here.” The housekeeping turbine was still down. Fuel cells powered the emergency LEDs. Skyler scrambled back to the engineering module.

  “What are you doing?” Jack said.

  “My job.” Skyler checked the displays. He settled in on the aft wall. Twiddled a Monopoly piece. Flipped it up in the air and caught it. The hexagonal display shone like the sun, solid yellow. Above it, Hannah’s family smiled down from that curled old photograph.

  “You keep surprising me,” Jack said. “I mean that in a good way.”

  “Let’s just get it over with,” Skyler said.

  He had made a decision. An irrevocable decision. The Cloudeater was already thousands of kilometers away. He’d chosen the SoD. He’d chosen Jack. He’d chosen to be a party and a witness to Hannah’s murder.

  He could not have lived with himself any other way.

  “You shouldn’t have to do this by yourself,” he told Jack. “You didn’t sign up to murder people for the greater good. I did. I didn’t know what the NXC was going in, but ignorance is no excuse. I could’ve quit at any time. After the first murder. Or the third one.”

  Oliver Meeks.

  Lance.

  Qiu Meili. (No, he hadn’t meant to murder her, but it sure felt like he had.)

  And now … Hannah.

  He’d stepped onto a bitter path back in 2012, chasing the illusion of importance. Maybe this would put an end to it.

  “If anyone makes a stink about the nuke, we’ll say I held a gun to your head,” he said.

  “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch,” Jack said. “I can’t even see the Lightbringer yet.”

  *

  So he went lower.

  Bending even harder. Yawing the ship to keep the nose pointed down.

  The moon’s horizon no longer looked smooth. Mountains crenellated it.

  Quick glance at the altimeter.

  Ooer.

  But now that the SoD didn’t have the Cloudeater clinging to its back, Jack didn’t have to worry about overstressing the truss. And with less mass to shove, the MPD drive’s thrust went further. So the ship was handling beautifully, and Jack felt confident enough to go lower still.

  There it is!

  Finally, the Lightbringer glimmered over the horizon. Radar said it was only 500 klicks ahead. Jack imagined catching up and overtaking the alien ship, giving it the middle finger in the rearview mirror. He snorted at the silly mental image. He bent the SoD even closer to the surface, narrowing the gap, and at the same time he reached up and powered on the rails.

  “You should come up here,” he said to Skyler. “There’s nothing for you to do back there really, and it’s an amazing view.”

  In the thirty seconds it took for Skyler to come forward, the SoD had closed the gap to 200 kilometers, but the Lightbringer had seen them coming and reacted the only way it could. With no main drive, this meant using its maneuvering thrusters to angle closer to the surface. Same thing Jack was doing.

/>   “Look, the whale’s trying to dive.”

  Skyler plopped into the left seat. White-knuckled, he stared at the main screen. “Oh. My. God.”

  “It’s something, isn’t it?”

  They were scudding over the dark side of the moon at a height of fifteen kilometers. ‘Dark side’ turned out to be a misnomer. Earth hovered at the top of the screen, and its reflected light shone on the barren moonscape, turning it turquoise. Navy blue shadows puddled at the feet of jagged hills.

  But Jack only had eyes for the Lightbringer. It kept going lower. The chase had become a game of chicken. Who would lose his nerve first?

  Jack had the smaller and more maneuverable ship. He dived down to nine kilometers, confident that he could pull up at any time.

  He ranged the railgun with the laser. A targeting reticule settled onto the radar plot, trapping the Lightbringer dead center of his sights.

  Tracer rounds away.

  They impacted on the Lightbringer’s hull like fireworks.

  “Firing … now.”

  Zzzzoik!

  The last plutonium round sped away. Time seemed to stretch like a rubber band. Both Jack and Skyler shouted like sports fans, caught up in the moment—come on, come on ...

  *

  “Incoming,” Hannah said. “This is a little bit worrying! If that’s your backup, why are they shooting at us?”

  Skyler! Why are you shooting at me?

  But of course, it wasn’t Skyler at the controls. It had to be Iristigut. He didn’t trust her to do the right thing. Not anymore.

  She clenched her fists, struggling with panic.

  “Don’t worry! It’s their way of showing affection,” Ripstiggr said, working the flight controls with grim concentration.

  Hannah, said the chip, following her around like Isabel used to follow Bethany: Mommy, Mommy, Mommy. Impact something something Rristigul something, and a picture of yet another crater. This one could more fairly be described as a dent.

  Relief flooded through Hannah. What do you know? Ripstiggr had been right. That had just been a symbolic shot. Or something.

  “I guess that’s the Imfi equivalent of a love tap,” she said. “Now would you please pull us out of this nosedive?”

  “It’s not a nosedive. It’s a maneuver,” Ripstiggr said, unconvincingly.

  Ripstiggr was not a professional pilot, of course. He was a professional reader of technical manuals. He was just winging it with enough panache to convince everyone he knew what he was doing … except Hannah.

  Somehow or other, he managed to pull the Lightbringer up a bit.

  *

  “I did not miss,” Jack whispered.

  Yet ahead of them, the Lightbringer hurtled on around the moon, undamaged.

  “You saw, didn’t you, Skyler? The round impacted the hull fair and square! I did not miss.”

  “It must have been a dud,” Skyler said.

  This obvious truth knocked the stuffing out of Jack. A dud. Of course. Given Jack’s luck, it was a miracle it hadn’t blown up on the rails.

  The SoD glided on. After a few moments of mentally abusing the designers of the dud round, and all the factories that made all its components, Jack decided to stay low. He didn’t have any more ideas, but keeping up with the Lightbringer seemed preferable to getting left behind.

  “What now?” Skyler asked. A few hours ago, Keelraiser, sitting in the same place, had asked the same question.

  But the failure of the nuke’s fuse, or detonator, or whatever component had glitched out, changed everything. Jack gave a different answer. “Back to Earth, I suppose.”

  “OK.”

  “It’s still unclear whether the Lightbringer will be able to successfully inject into orbit. We can. Our tanks’ll be bone dry by that time, but …”

  “Been there, done that,” Skyler nodded.

  “After that, I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see if the Lightbringer obliterates human civilization. If it does, end of story. If it doesn’t … well, someone’ll probably send a Soyuz up for us so they can put us in jail.”

  Skyler sighed noisily into his suit’s transmitter. “Well, we tried.”

  “Yeah. We tried.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, too.”

  “But …”

  “When life seems jolly rotten, there’s something you’ve forgotten,” Jack sang.

  “And that’s to laugh and smile and dance and sing!” Skyler joined in.

  “When you’re feeling in the dumps …”

  “Jack, are those mountains supposed to be there?”

  “Of course they are, they’ve been there for billions of years. Don’t be silly chumps …”

  “Just purse your lips and whistle.”

  “That’s the thing!” they bawled together.

  “How, um, high, exactly, are they?” Skyler interrupted as the peaks came closer.

  “And always look on the bright side of life … Do you know, I’m not sure. The heights of mountains on the moon wasn’t in our astronaut training. Come on! Always look on the bright side of life!”

  Those mountains actually look as if they might be a bit higher than our current altitude, which is, let me see, eight kilometers.

  Hmm.

  Better pull up a bit.

  Jack clutched the reaction wheels. For good measure, he fired the RCS thrusters, too. “Always look on the bright side of life,” he hummed.

  Skyler fumbled with his harness, strapping himself in.

  That might be a good idea, actually.

  Clutch with one hand, jam the straps into the buckles with the other.

  Come on come on come on—

  Jack waited impatiently, but without any real fear, for the gyroscopes to bring the SoD’s nose around, correcting their flight path away from the moon for a rapid gain of altitude. It was going to be close. But he’d flown around Jupiter. Around Mars. Around the sun. He could do this in his sleep, remember?

  Oh fuck, look at that horrible peak. Right in the way.

  “Skyler, um, if you’re at all religious you might want to start praying.”

  “I don’t know any prayers.”

  Blasting hard, the SoD climbed towards the mountain peak.

  Jack reached for his rosary, before remembering he’d given it to Keelraiser. A scalding surge of fear left his mind a blank. “Jesus,” he screamed. “Jesus Jesus Jesus—”

  Sometimes the difference between life and death is a crap detonator.

  And sometimes it’s three meters.

  The bridge and main hab skimmed over the peak. The aft modules and the bioshield squeezed over, just missing it.

  All this happened between one heartbeat and the next.

  The reactor smashed into the peak.

  At the SoD’s current speed—north of 30,000 kph—the lunar rock acted like one of Keelraiser’s tungsten-edged swords.

  The truss sheared.

  The reactor bounced down the back side of the mountain.

  The rest of the SoD flew on for some way, spinning wildly, until the moon’s weak gravity pulled it down. It crashed into a crater, bioshield first. Dust undisturbed since the birth of the solar system geysered into the sky.

  Down at the bottom of the dust eruption, the SoD’s bioshield split.

  The rotating hab cracked off from the truss.

  The pieces skidded across the crater floor, kicking up more dust, and came to rest separately, just short of a deep rille.

  The ship that flew to Europa had found its resting place on the dark side of the moon.

  CHAPTER 51

  Three days later, the Lightbringer—undamaged, which is to say, no more damaged than it had been already—returned to Earth. It bounced off the top of the atmosphere like a stone skipping over water.

  Hannah’s teeth jarred together. She covered it with a yawn. “How many more skips?”

  “As many as we can manage,” Ripstiggr said.

  Hannah nodded. She’d just
have to play it by ear.

  The jolting stopped as the Lightbringer soared back into space.

  “One hour until our next skip,” Hannah said, converting the figures the chip supplied. That gave her time to grab a last drink.

  She wriggled out of her hammock. The Lightbringer had no crash couches, since it was never intended to land anywhere, but it had emergency hammocks. Made of a smart material similar to the clingfilm that the rriksti used for everything, they’d fallen from the ceiling of the bridge like oxygen masks in an airline safety video. They were pretty comfy.

  She dropped to the floor and padded across the bridge. Above her head, hundreds of hammocks blocked the view of Earth. She went into her bedroom—and screeched in outrage.

  Half a dozen soldiers clustered around the safe in the corner, helping themselves to her booze.

  “You goddamn schleerps! Get out of here!”

  They fled the Shiplord’s wrath, hanging their heads.

  Her jug of krak was completely empty.

  “Ripstiggr. These assholes have bogarted our booze. Tell someone to get more from the still.”

  “There’s none left,” Ripstiggr said.

  “Please say you’re kidding me.”

  “It is customary to pass out alcohol rations before going into action. It is customary on Earth, as well. I looked it up.”

  Hannah tilted the jug upside-down over her mouth. A single drop trickled out, piquing her thirst unbearably. “How’d those guys get into my safe?”

  “I gave them the combination.”

  “You bastard.”

  “Did you see their insignias?”

  “No,” Hannah was forced to admit. She’d only had eyes for the empty jug.

  “They’re pilots. They will be flying the shuttles.”

  “Ah.” Hannah had to admit that if she was going to climb into one of those Frankenstein repair jobs, she would want a drink, too.

  But she wanted one anyway, it would have been her last drink, and when she got back to the drive chancel she ducked under Ripstiggr’s hammock and punched him in the butt. “Don’t you ever, ever give away my booze without asking me again.”

  “Gimme another love tap, baby,” Ripstiggr said, stretching like a cat.

  “Is the still running? Will it be done soon?”