by Mark Wandrey
After that, their mother decided it was worthless to forbid the game, so she got them to promise to stay between Deck 12 (the enlisted galley) and Deck 20. They had done as she wished. Mostly. Forays outside of their designated AoP, or Area of Play, were done carefully from then on to avoid detection. That plan had worked excellently.
Of course, their mother’s attempt to control them wasn’t helped by the fact the crew of Pegasus simply adored the twin girls. Born with startling white hair, the heirs to the Winged Hussars were the only children on a working mercenary ship. Their father was unknown, so every man on the ship became a surrogate father, and every woman a loving aunt.
Alex stopped in the intermix chamber and listened. The sounds of the system were intimately familiar to her after years of crawling through the ductwork. She strained her ears for any sound of her sister Katrina. After a moment of nothing, she moved onward.
Even now, at almost eight years old, she didn’t find it unusual that she was spending a lot of her formative years in a battlecruiser flying around the galaxy. The ship was more home, and more fun, than the planet they called Home. Besides, they got to visit strange worlds and meet strange and interesting aliens!
Three minutes left, and Alex cut across a service-way which she was now nearly too big to fit through. She managed to wiggle her hips past the support beam and made it to the other side. When she moved past the marker to Deck Two there she was.
“Gotcha,” Alex said and slapped Kat’s heel.
“Shhhh!” the other girl hissed.
“I win,” Alex said.
“Quiet, stupid,” Kat mouthed, and gestured for her to crawl up to her level. The ship was under light acceleration, so they hardly had to use the ribs of the shaft to crawl ‘up.’ Kat was braced next to a vent cover. Alex knew Deck Two only contained avionics and the forward missile tubes; there wasn’t anything interesting up here. But as Alex came up next to her twin, she could see through the grate—someone was there.
They were overlooking Section Two, which held the missile launcher hardware and the main avionics engineering space. Inside a crewman was sitting in a chair, alone, leaning forward over a console as if asleep.
“What is he doing?” Alex wondered.
“Quiet,” Kat hissed back. They’d never seen anyone in this space except during maintenance after returning from a contract. Alex was sure it was manned during combat, but the twin’s combat station was in their mom’s armored cabin, in their specially-made pressure suits. That was fun too, except when the ship was damaged. That was frightening.
They watched together for several minutes. After a time, Kat noticed something and leaned close to Alex’s ear to whisper.
“Look at the control console,” she said. At first, Alex didn’t see anything, then she slowly realized it was responding to commands. But the crewman wasn’t moving. They both realized who it was at the same time.
The crewman sat up straight, only it wasn’t a man. She had her hair cut super short, like most of the male crewmen preferred. She did that because of the computer links installed in her head, just behind both ears.
“It’s her,” Kat said with awe. Alex knew her sister liked Lt. Drake. Liked might not have been a strong enough word. Worshiped? Lt. Drake was the ship’s computer expert, and one of only four members with pinlinks, special computer implants in her brain that let her control computers and interface with many machines.
Lt. Drake sat staring at the console for a long moment, then turned to look right at the girls through the grate. They both gasped, and the older woman smiled.
“You two aren’t supposed to be up here,” she said. The two girls remained perfectly still and silent for a long moment. Drake turned the rest of the way around and stood, hands on her hips, glaring. “You two come down here right now.”
“Poop,” Alex said and began unlatching the grate to push it open. Kat helped, and a minute later they dropped lightly to the deck.
“What do you have to say for yourselves?” the lieutenant asked. She looked stern, but the girls knew better. Even though Drake was a bit odd, she still loved the twins, just like every other crewman.
“We were playing and got lost,” Alex tried. Drake was unmoved.
“She made me do it,” Kat said, and Alex popped her on the back of the head. Kat took a swing at her in reply, and Lt. Drake moved in between them before it turned into another patented twin-brawl.
“Okay, whatever the reason, you aren’t supposed to be up here. Come on, I’ll take you down to your quarters. We’ll be at mid-course and flipping over soon.” The girls loved zero-G and were at home in it.
“What were you doing?” Kat asked as they were escorted to the lift. Drake pressed the call button and glanced at the young girl.
“I was working on the fire control computer.”
“Did you see the ghost?” Alex asked.
“What ghost?” Drake asked, not looking at them.
“The one that lives in the computers,” Kat said. It wasn’t uncommon for the girls to answer each other’s questions or to ask follow-up questions for each other. Drake laughed.
“You girls are trying to make up campfire stories.”
“What’s a campfire?” they both asked at the same time. Drake looked at them in surprise, then shook her head.
“I forget you two have never been to Earth.” Both girls made faces; Alex stuck her finger in her mouth like she was trying to make herself puke.
“Who’d want to go there?” she asked. Kat nodded in agreement.
“Regardless, stop telling those stories. They’re silly.”
“We’ve seen it,” Kat said. The lift arrived, and Drake gently moved them inside with her.
“What did you see?”
“This one time,” Kat said, “I saw the computer in AuxCon running by itself. It was scrolling data and running sensors.”
“And what were you doing in auxiliary control?” Drake asked. Kat’s jaw fell open and Alex silently berated her sister for getting caught in such a simple trap.
“The crew talks about it too,” Alex said, trying to rescue her sister. “A damage control tech told me last year that they were trapped in a section that was decompressing after a battle. The air tight door controls were busted, and no one was there to help them. Suddenly, the door opened, and they got out.”
“Someone on the bridge helped them,” Drake said.
“No,” Alex insisted, “he said the controls to the bridge were also broken, and the cameras were out. There was no way anyone even knew they were trapped.”
The lift hummed along in silence for a few moments, then arrived on Deck 20. The doors slid open and Drake led them out.
“Well, here you are,” she said. “You two troublemakers stay here until your mom gets off watch, and I promise I’ll tell the head cook to give you both a special cookie after dinner.” They beamed and promised they’d stay put. Drake smiled, mussed their hair, and turned to go.
“Lieutenant,” Kat said, and the woman turned back. “I want to have pinplants just like yours.”
“Why?” Drake asked.
“So I can talk to the ghost.” Alex looked askance at her sister. Lt. Drake cocked her head, then got a very strange smile on her face.
“You two remember your promise, and I’ll see you at mess call.” A second later, she was in the lift and gone.
“You’re nuts,” Alex said. “Who’d want wires in their brain?”
“What’s wrong with that?” Kat asked. “You’ve got poop in yours!” This time, there was no one to stop the brawl.
* * * * *
Chapter 7
EMS Pegasus
S.G. Skaa System
Hyperspace Emergence Point
“So much for going straight to Karma,” Paka said as the ship rocked from a salvo of missile impacts.
“Your humor is noted,” Alexis said as she held onto her command chair. “Can you get us out of this?” Pegasus had emerged into the S.G. Skaa syste
m, a nowhere star system in the middle of nowhere, which is why Alexis had chosen it for their stop en route to Karma. There was no direct way to get from Obiya 199 to Karma. They would need to cross the void between the Jesc arm, where they’d been, and the Tolo arm, where Karma was located. She’d informed her helmsman and navigator to pick an out-of-the-way route to minimize any potential trouble. It obviously hadn’t worked out as she’d planned.
The instant they transitioned from hyperspace, they were confronted with two ships engaged in a running battle. Both were moderately damaged, and both immediately began requesting an ‘On the Spot’ contract with the Winged Hussars to destroy the other ship.
“I’m sorry,” Alexis had transmitted to both interested parties; “the Winged Hussars are not currently accepting any contracts.” She’d set Condition One, just in case. A second later both of the other ships turned and opened fire on the Pegasus!
“Some people just don’t take a ‘no’ answer very well,” Flipper bubbled and laughed as he began evasive maneuvers.
“Edwards,” Alexis said, “please give me an evaluation of those ships.”
“Ma’am,” Edwards said in his Louisiana accent. “Both ships are escort frigates. The one designated as Alpha is a Desha class, made by the Izlian, the one designated Bravo is a Catroo class of Buma design.”
“Buma,” Alexis noted, “I didn’t know they designed warships.”
“Apparently, they do,” Paka said.
“Both vessels have sustained serious damage,” Edwards continued, “though neither is incapable of combat.” The ship shuddered again as more missiles walked across their shields. Luckily, they were all conventional, or they might have been in trouble.
“I don’t want to kill them,” Alexis said, “they’re stupid, not dangerous.”
“Rude, too,” Paka added; “don’t forget rude. There was no reason to open fire just because we wouldn’t pick a side!”
“Maybe they don’t like mercs?” Alexis said. “We don’t know for sure they’re mercs. It’s not unheard of for some species to crew their own escort ships. I think we’ve stumbled into some kind of non-merc turf war. Chug, get us the hell out of here.” The helmsman looked back at his captain with one of his three eyestalks.
“Understood,” he said. Chug’s piloting shell had multiple translator speakers so non-Bakulu crew could easily understand his speech, since most humanoid species would find it otherwise impossible. Clamped into the piloting section, the alien mollusk could manipulate many controls simultaneously and was fully-interfaced via pinplants to the ship’s system. Originally the Pegasus required four crew to man the helm; Chug did it all by himself. The acceleration alarm chimed, and the ship performed a 3G skew turn to align itself with the system’s stargate. Still more missiles came at them.
“Permission to engage?” Edwards asked. Each volley of missiles was met by dozens of point-defense lasers, which were mounted throughout the Pegasus.
Every few seconds the two escorts launched another flurry of almost two dozen missiles.
“Do those things carry infinite missiles?” Alexis growled.
“Both the Catroo and Desha classes are missile frigates,” Edwards pointed out.
“They are trying to bracket us,” the bridge crew’s other Bakulu, Glick, spoke up. The ship’s situational control, or SitCon, he managed battles and maintained awareness of their battlespace to allow individual systems’ controllers to better concentrate on their jobs.
“Guess they’ve worked out their differences for now,” Paka said. Glick spoke up again.
“The skew turn is bringing our baffles into alignment with the Catroo class.” Like old Earth submarines, the area directly behind a fusion torch powered ship was called its baffles, and was invisible to its sensors.
“Intensify aft quarter anti-missile laser fire,” Alexis ordered.
“Trying,” Edwards said. He commanded through a fusion of hand and pinplant inputs honed through years of practice.
A dozen missiles arced in from the Catroo class, straight at the aft quarter of Pegasus. The shields weren’t active directly aft when her engines were operating, even at one-quarter power, and it was an area of vulnerability. While the ship’s weapons could shoot through their shields, the fusion torch of her main drive was another matter. There were anti-missile laser pods around the engine clusters for this reason, but they took a few seconds to change orientation. In this case, those few seconds were an eternity.
Most of the twelve missiles splashed against the periphery of the aft quarter’s shields. Four went through. Two were incinerated by the plasma plume of the ship’s drive; the other two impacted the ship. The long hull resounded from the impacts as the high explosive missiles slammed into it and detonated.
“Report!” Paka barked.
“Two hits,” the damage control coordinator, or DCC, called out in his squeaky voice. The elSha glanced back at the captain, his reptilian mouth snapping in concern. “Reactor Two suffered minor damage. Commander Long informs he has placed it in safe mode. The second missile hit Deck 30, there is extensive damage and decompression!”
“Marine country,” Paka said solemnly.
“That’s enough!” Alexis roared. “Guylan, deal with the damage. Edwards, one ship-killer each.” The short TacCom’s ebony skin was shiny with sweat as he glanced at his captain, then nodded solemnly.
“Acknowledged,” he said and used his pinplants to launch the missiles. “Two missiles away.”
The two escort frigates were designed to get in fast, rain missiles, and get away. They were meant to operate in cooperation with laser frigates, who could screen them from missile fire. In this case, they had no such escort. Their own point defenses were woefully inadequate for the Hussars’ highly-advanced version of the Union anti-ship missiles known as ship-killers.
The two missiles flashed away at almost a thousand Gs of acceleration and reached their targets in seconds. As they approached, they shed their fairings, which acted as chaff to confuse the enemy point defense systems, then split into two weapons each. The enemy defenses fired at the harmless chaff, and both missiles reached their targets.
The two weapons were identical, and set to hit within a quarter second of each other. Both were micro-nuclear bombs the Hussars called “Squash-bombs.” The first knocked down the enemy’s shields, the second went off against the hull.
“Both ships destroyed,” Glick said.
“Confirmed,” Flipper agreed, “clean kills.”
“Noted,” Alexis said. “Anyone else in the system?”
Flipper worked his instruments. “There are nine other ships in the system,” he announced. “Five are at the stargate waiting for transition. One is at this system’s gas giant mining operation, transferring cargo. The other three are in transit to the stargate. Closest ship is more than 10 light minutes away.”
“Very good,” Alexis said, “secure from Condition One. Guylan, update?”
“Team One is fighting a plasma-induced fire in Reactor Two,” the elSha reported. “Team Two is still trying to gain entrance to Deck 30.” The intraship communication chimed.
“Is the reactor going to go critical?” Alexis asked.
“I don’t believe so,” the scrapping, grating voice of the chief engineer, a Jeha named Long, replied.
“Bridge, this is Sgt. T’jto.”
“Captain here, go ahead, Sergeant.”
“Dragon Squad suited up when you set Condition One. We’re on Deck 30 in armor. The missile decompressed the entire deck. We are the only survivors.”
* * * * *
Chapter 8
The Pegasus limped between the emergence point and the stargate in S.G. Skaa at a nominal three-quarters gravity. They could have cut a quarter of the 62-hour travel time by thrusting at a full gravity; however, Alexis decided against it after consulting with Chief Engineer Long and Guylan. Reactor Two was offline, and would remain so for several weeks. The damage was extensive; the biggest problem
was the marines usually helped fix hull damage, and there weren’t many marines left.
On the third day, all crew except those needed for minimal operations mustered on the primary shuttle deck. It was the largest open space on the ship with a deck properly oriented during thrust. Thirty-seven Winged Hussar flags were spread over plastic shells holding the bodies of their dead.
“We gather here to say goodbye to our comrades,” Captain Alexis Cromwell said to the gathered crew. Like the caskets, they represented many races. There were more Humans present than any other race, yet they still represented less than half the crew. “They were all, like most of us, mercenaries by trade. Even those among us who do not fight, still understand the risk. We stand on our home, Pegasus, knowing that every time the bell sounds, we could all be cast into the black.” Some of the beings bowed heads, others whispered words. Some Human men and women quietly wept. A few of the other races also visibly grieved. “Yet we face it together, all Hussars, all family.” They all stood silently while several crewmen went among the caskets and gathered the flags, respectfully folding each one, before returning to the other side of the bay to stand with the rest of the crew.
“Prepare for burial in the black,” Paka pronounced. The shuttle bay’s divider came down and the half with the caskets partially depressurized. The surviving marines came forward with laser weapons, standing ready. Alexis looked down at the deck and spoke again.
“When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.” She turned to Paka and nodded.