"You don't think it's risky putting that many people on a platform that could suffer catastrophic system failure at any time?" the yacht's first mate spoke up. "You couldn't evacuate most of them in time."
"Statistically, the risk is lower than putting a population on a geologically active world." Hoshino sniffed. "Our habitats have no volcanic or seismic activity, no weather that we don't generate ourselves, controlled radiation exposure, air that is filtered of pathogens we don't wish to be there. Believe me … Amaterasu is safer than living on your home planet."
"Let's agree to disagree," the first mate said in a bored tone and turned back to his terminal monitor. He was one of the most arrogant lieutenants Jillian had ever been around. He'd started the flight in the Kirin System trying to proposition her until he realized who she was, then he realized her connections might be his ticket off the small runabout. He complained loudly and often about the injustice of someone as obviously skilled as him not being on the bridge of a mainline warship.
"We have a … this doesn't make any sense," the sensor operator said from his cramped station.
"What is it?" Jillian asked. She was an assimilated O-5, not technically a Fleet officer anymore, but the captain of the yacht had taken to giving her rotations on the bridge.
"The computer is telling me it's a transition flash, but it doesn't match anything in the database," the operator said. "It was small like a Prowler might make, but it wasn't uniform the way all Terran warp drive flashes are."
"Does it match any of the non-associated anomalies?" Jillian asked tensely. She was well-aware of the Darshik Specter and its unique warp transition. All Fleet ships had a database of "anomalies" to look out for, and she knew that the Specter had been added to the latest update. If it showed up, the computer would give the proper warnings.
"Negative, ma'am. It was too far within the system to be a warp flash from any known type of starship anyway," he said, turning away from his monitor to look at her.
"How close?" she asked.
"The computer calculates it to be—"
"Look!" the first mate shouted just as a brilliant flash lit up the entire bridge. It was so bright the forward windows dimmed automatically.
"No!!" Hoshino cried out once their eyes adjusted. Amaterasu was burning in space. The mammoth station had been pierced in multiple places and secondary explosions were tearing pieces off, some of them measuring kilometers across.
Jillian watched in horror as a white lance stabbed through the hull of Amaterasu and began to walk up slowly, disappearing after a few seconds. She knew a Darshik plasma lance when she saw one, but she'd never heard of one with that sort of destructive capability.
"Load all sensor data on a point-to-point com drone and fire it off, NOW!" she shouted to the sensor operator. "And shut down all active sensors, go silent."
"Destination for the com drone," he asked, his voice shaking.
"New Sierra Platform … priority one-alpha-one," she said. "Pilot! We won't be able to outrun that ship … is there anywhere to hide?"
"No, this planet has no moons and we're three-quarters of a billion kilometers from the asteroid field," the pilot said.
"Take us down!" Hoshino said, pointing at the planet wildly. "This ship can land and there's no atmosphere to speak of down there. Take us down and land in one of those impact craters. Shut the engines and the sensors off and try to hide."
"Do it!" Jillian barked. "And pick a crater near one of the poles … Amaterasu isn't going to be able to stay in orbit much longer."
Even as she said it the lights on the station were winking out, and on the optical sensors they could see it was beginning to list and lose altitude. Without a heavy atmosphere to slow it down and burn it away the station would hit the planet with tremendous force. Jillian thought that could work in their favor as it would create a hell of a mess for someone to try and look through even with the most advanced sensors.
"Keep all passive sensors trained on Amaterasu," she said. "Try to get a look at the ship that hit her."
"All those people," the first mate whispered as the pilot swung the small ship away and down towards the planet, pushing the engines up.
"Why don't you go wake the captain up," Jillian told him. He appeared to be locked up and wasn't doing any good on the bridge. Since the yacht hadn't taken fire or performed any evasive maneuvers, the captain was likely still snoring in his rack, totally oblivious to the devastation right above them.
"I think I found a target," the pilot said. "Initial readings show we'll fit down in the depression easily and the surface looks solid enough so the landing gear won't sink."
"Good," Jillian said, her hands shaking after the massive adrenaline shock her system had just gone through. For the first time in a long time she felt genuinely afraid. The small yacht had no warp drive, no weapons, and there weren't any other Fleet vessels in the system that she knew of. There were a lot of Tsuyo research and construction vessels to support Amaterasu, but no warships. Hopefully they could hide on the surface and blend in while her com drone raced for New Sierra to at least let CENTCOM know that the Darshik were stepping up their game.
The yacht began to shake violently as it streaked down into the beginnings of the wispy atmosphere, warning alarms blaring and the computer spitting out a stream of warnings to reduce velocity. Without having to be told, the pilot ignored them and pushed the throttles on the mains up a tick further.
"Let's clean her up!" the pilot called out. "Prepare for atmospheric flight."
The small ship was designed to be flown safely within a planet's atmosphere and land, so at the pilot's request the flight engineer retracted all the protruding radomes and antennas into the hull to "clean up" the yacht's flight profile. Almost immediately the buffeting lessened dramatically as the now-slick craft pushed deeper into the atmosphere, its lifting body design actually starting to generate a little lift.
"Have we been spotted?" Jillian asked, looking up as Amaterasu could still be seen breaking apart through the dorsal observation portholes.
"We're blind until we can redeploy the sensors!" the flight engineer shouted over the sound of the slipstream screaming over the hull.
"Have you lost your fucking mind, Wolfe?" Captain Eckler thundered as he stumbled onto the bridge.
"Look!" Jillian pointed upwards. "A Darshik ship just took out that habitat. We have to hide!"
Eckler blinked a few times, apparently in a stupor, before nodding slowly and looking around his bridge.
"Report!" he finally choked out.
"We're making our way to this depression in the northern polar region, sir," the sensor operator spoke up, pointing at his display. "We'll land there and go dark … hope they don't see us."
"How long?"
"Coming about on our final turn now, Captain," the pilot said. "Flight, shut down internal gravity and stand by to fire retro thrusters."
"Gravity off, retro burn prepped," the flight engineer confirmed. "On your mark."
"Mark!" the pilot shouted, slapping the throttles back to idle and pitching their prow up a few degrees. The deck shook mightily as the ventral thrusters all fired, taking up the weight of the ship as it slowed well past the point of the lifting surfaces being effective.
"Stabilize!"
"We're stable, we're stable!" the flight engineer shouted. "Just get us down!"
"Drop landing gear and stand by for final decent," the pilot said, sweat running off his brow. The sturdy little craft was built to be able to fly and land within an atmosphere, but not at breakneck speeds and with a spooked crew running from an enemy warship in orbit.
"Gear down!"
"Here we go."
Jillian's stomach dropped as the port side dipped precariously, the thrusters still shaking the deck hard enough to cause her feet to go numb. Slowly the pilot leveled them, turned the ship to the orientation he wanted, and began reducing thrust to slowly settle them to the surface. At two-hundred-meters altitude Jillian could
make out their target on the display, fed to the pilot through the ventral optical sensors.
"Ten meters!" the sensor operator called out. A few seconds later there was a jarring hit that almost knocked Jillian off her feet.
"We're down!" the pilot called out. "Shut down main engines and thrusters."
"Mains coming down, thrusters off," the flight engineer called out.
"Damage?" Captain Eckler called out in the eerie silence, his voice now too loud with the roar of engines and slipstream gone.
"No damage, no casualties reported."
"Redeploy our sensors and get eyes on what's left of Amaterasu and try to get a positive identification on the enemy ship," Eckler said before turning to Jillian. "Did you get one of our com drones off about the attack?"
"Yes, sir," Jillian said. "All the preliminary sensor data and the ship's log was sent to New Sierra."
"Outstanding, Commander," Eckler said, using her assimilated rank. He himself was a commander in rank but assumed the title of captain when he was aboard. "So CENTCOM will be aware of the situation and we still have one com drone left … assuming we're able to get back into space to use it."
"Sensors redeployed," the operator said. "We're on passives only. There are too many lifeboat signals to pick out how many survivors might have gotten off the station, but it looks like a lot."
"That's something at least," Hoshino said, the first time he'd spoken since they began their descent.
"Do you have family aboard Amaterasu, Mr. Hoshino?" Jillian asked.
"My wife and three children," the Tsuyo rep said in a flat voice, his eyes full and unfocused.
"Perhaps you'd like to return to your quarters for a bit," Eckler said gently. "We'll keep you in the loop, and if we start to get a better idea of the situation I'll let you know if we're in a position to take action."
Without any sort of acknowledgement, Hoshino turned and walked off the bridge. Jillian's heart broke for him and her thoughts went immediately to her twins. They were on Arcadia in the care of her parents and, she had assumed, completely safe from the Darshik. But if they could strike here, was there any place in the Federation that was really safe?
Her thoughts also were with her husband. He was in constant danger on his latest mission, and while the Federation all knew the implacable Captain Wolfe, she knew Jackson, a man with sometimes crippling self-doubt and someone who carried the guilt of thousands of deaths on his shoulders. She knew he was cunning and relentless, but this Specter—for she had no doubt who was commanding the Darshik ship—had just taken out hundreds of thousands of civilians for apparently no reason. Could Jackson go toe-to-toe with that sort of ruthless disregard for life? Or would his instincts to protect innocents at all costs compromise him and give this Specter the chance to take the Nemesis out?
"Captain Wolfe to the bridge. Captain Wolfe to the bridge."
The insistent calls from the computer over the intercom, along with his own comlink chirping in chorus, pulled Jackson out of the deep sleep he was in. It was the type of sleep he only enjoyed aboard a ship when it was either docked or in a formation with other ships like now.
"What the hell?" he grumbled and rolled off his rack, clearing his throat. "On my way."
The Nemesis had been sitting in orbit over the gas giant with the rest of the Black Fleet formation for so long he thought maybe CENTCOM had forgotten about them. Pike and Marcum had departed over a week ago and he’d heard through the command-level chatter in the system that the Ushin delegation was heading home at any time. If his mission to track and kill the Specter had truly been scuttled, he wished that they'd either give him a standard patrol route to serve out his time or, barring that, just release him outright and let him slink back into retirement.
He checked his prosthetic leg once more before sliding on his pants and pulling on his utility top. The new leg was much, much better than the previous model. Its tactile feedback was so good and the actuators so smooth and quiet that he was no longer actually aware that it wasn't his real leg. The Tsuyo doctors swore they were on the verge of a breakthrough that would allow them to regrow the leg, but with hardware this good, he wasn't in any hurry.
On his way out of his quarters he abstractly wondered why, with the technology available, cybernetic enhancements had never caught on. Maybe if they continued having to fight ground wars someone would think of enhancing their soldiers.
"What's the good word, Captain?"
"You ever sleep, Sergeant Barton?" Jackson asked. He'd grown to enjoy the fact that Barton seemed to know just how far to push the line of familiarity while not stepping over. It made having him as a near constant shadow much more tolerable.
"Sergeant Castillo and I have switched over to split sixes for your guard detail, sir," Barton said.
"Castillo? Who says I want that lunatic watching my back?" Jackson asked. Barton laughed good-naturedly and took his post just outside the bridge hatchway as the captain walked through.
"Report."
"Captain, we have a priority one alpha channel request coming in," the second watch com officer said. "CENTCOM is preparing to broadcast a command-level briefing to most ships in the system within the next two hours and we're one of them … the confirmation codes have already come in from New Sierra."
"Send it to the observation lounge and have Commander Chambliss join me there ASAP," Jackson said.
"Aye, sir."
"This is a bit unusual," Chambliss remarked after Jackson had told him everything he knew. "Aren't these things normally pre-recorded and then sent as an encrypted data message?"
"Yes," Jackson said, eyeing Chambliss's sugary pastry with undisguised envy. One drawback of getting older was he couldn't eat whatever he wanted anymore with any expectation of his workout regimen keeping him trim.
"Maybe with so many ships in the system at one time they figured this was easier."
They finished their breakfast in silence while the large holographic screen that was projected over the end of the table showed the United Terran Federation Starfleet emblem along with the words "Stand By" crawling along the bottom. The new projectors on the Valkyrie-class were so good he could project a substantial-looking high-resolution screen anywhere he wanted it. Jackson caught the change in the screen out of his peripheral vision and looked up to see Admiral Pitt standing behind a lectern in a briefing room that was also packed with Fleet officers.
"Good morning, or whatever time it is for those of you on the two dozen ships this is being broadcast to," Pitt began. Jackson saw the drawn look on his face and knew something had happened, and he could take a pretty good guess at what had been the cause.
"We received an emergency point-to-point com drone ten hours ago that came in from the Kirin System, a system owned by the Tsuyo Corp with no habitable planets … but it did have a population of around four hundred and fifty thousand people. This broadcast has an accompanying data packet and in it are all the technical specifications of the Amaterasu Habitat Project.
"What we've been able to verify is that nearly three weeks ago Amaterasu was taken out by a Darshik warship in what's being considered the highest loss of civilian lives since the Phage took out Haven. We've dispatched emergency search and recovery vessels but they're some weeks out still.
"The reason for this initial briefing is to give you a heads up. The Ushin may have negotiated a tenuous peace with the Darshik, but it appears not everyone is abiding by the ceasefire. I've been authorized by the President via the CENTCOM Chief of Staff to tell everyone hearing my voice to consider themselves on alert. The rogue Darshik elements could strike here next, or the decision might be made to mobilize for a counterstrike. Either way, take stock of your ships, get your crews spun up, and call for provisioning if you need it. I do not want to hear about a starship delaying its departure if so ordered because it’s waiting for consumables or munitions. Top off your air, water, and food and make sure your ships are fueled and ready to fight.
"That's all I ha
ve for you at this time. All commanders need to hang loose and be ready for specific instructions that we'll be sending out shortly."
In true Pitt style, the broadcast terminated without any extraneous words or unnecessary filler. Once he had said everything he had wanted to say, he killed the feed.
"Holy shit," Chambliss hissed. "There were hundreds of thousands of people on that habitat."
"You're familiar?" Jackson asked.
"Yes, sir," Chambliss said. "It was an ambitious project that really stretched what we thought was possible with self-sustaining orbital platforms."
"Why the hell would the Darshik hit something like that?" Jackson wondered. "It's an unnecessary provocation at a time they can least afford it."
"Captain, we just received a message instructing us to maintain position and be ready to accept a VIP guest within the next twelve hours," the com officer's voice came over the intercom. Jackson did the math in his head and figured it must be one of the larger fleet shuttles coming from the New Sierra Platform.
"Acknowledged," Jackson said. "Please inform Major Baer and Flight OPS so they're ready."
"Aye, sir."
8
"Attention on deck!" The sound of boot heels snapping together echoed through the room.
"Permission to come aboard, Captain."
"Permission granted, Admiral," Jackson said. "Welcome aboard the Nemesis. By your order, Admiral?"
"At ease!" Admiral Pitt barked. Jackson nodded to Celesta Wright, standing just behind Pitt, and the pinched look on her face made his stomach clench. This wasn't a social visit.
"Honor guard, dismissed," Major Baer said, turning and motioning the ten Marines out of the airlock receiving area before assuming the position of parade rest.
"I hope you come in peace, sir," Jackson said with a laugh when he looked over Pitt's shoulder and saw who else had accompanied him.
Destroyer (Expansion Wars Trilogy, Book 3) Page 8