Injection Burn

by Jason M. Hough

  “Keep me posted,” Gloria said at her back. “We need power, then engines, then the other imploder. In that order. Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  “And suit up, just in case. It’s going to get cold in here.”

  Beth nodded almost absently, utterly focused on the task.

  Caps, Gloria thought, pushing back toward the central spine. The small thorium reactor provided power and propulsion, but the ship had a bank of ultracapacitors to handle electricity needs during maintenance or failure. Why were they still offline, too?

  “Any damage?” she called ahead of herself, drifting through the darkness toward the navigator’s bay.

  “Smacked my head pretty good,” Xavi answered. “No worse than a rugby match.”

  “I meant the ultracaps.”

  As if in answer the whole ship reverberated as power flowed back into its veins. Lights winked on up and down the spine, and with them came the familiar whir of the air processors. Almost immediately the haze began to dissipate. A split second later came a chorus of alarms sounded from every section.

  “Was that you or Beth?” Gloria asked.

  “Me,” Xavi said. “Can’t get to the primary due to the fire, it’s totally shot. Had to manually crank over to secondary.”

  “Thrusters?”

  “Not yet. Gyros will take a minute, but they’re not good for much.”

  “Well, we may not be able to move, but at least we can see. Remember, no active sensors until I okay it. We emit nothing, right? Sutter’s orders. The longer it takes the Swarm to spot us, the better.”

  “After that exit we already stick out like the dog’s balls.”

  “Even so, no sensor sweeps.”

  “I hear you loud and clear, boss.”

  She flew on up to the bridge and settled into her chair, eyes scanning the banks of screens before her.

  The Wildflower tumbled through space, though she only knew this from the instrument readouts before her. Exterior views were still powering up.

  “Maneuvering thrusters are up,” Xavi said in her ear a minute later.

  “Copy. I’m righting us.” Gloria commanded the ship to settle itself relative to the local star. Gently, so as not to throw everyone inside against a wall. She felt a slight tug as the tiny engines ignited, pulling her to one side.

  “Stellar navigation coming online,” Xavi said.

  She had the same display, though typically with less detail to minimize distraction. Given the circumstances, she ordered it to give her the full breadth of information.

  They’d made it, that much was immediately obvious. Kepler-22 had eleven planets, and they were just inside the orbit of the second farthest, a tiny ball of ice dubbed Skara Brae. Each world in the system had been named after a fabled lost city of Earth. Gloria had no idea why.

  She ran a hand over her face. She needed to focus. Skara Brae was good. They were exactly where they were supposed to be.

  No sign of the Zephyr, but they’d be running dark as well, so unless Sutter made contact she’d have to assume they’d made it through. In better shape, with any luck.

  But there was something unexpected in their wake, more or less where the Zephyr should be. An unidentifiable mass roughly ten thousand kilometers from the fold exit, a distance growing rapidly due to the speed at which the Wildflower had emerged. Exiting a fold meant emerging in a poorly understood situation at high velocity. Usually so far away from anything else that it didn’t matter. That was all going to change with the Mark 5, she realized.

  Her eyes found and focused on the large object that hadn’t factored into Beth’s calculations. The mystery ended almost before it began, as Gloria recognized the massive oblong shape immediately.

  A Scipio supply ship, and it was turning toward them. The term supply was an Earth-given affectation. In truth no one knew what purpose the behemoths served, but they were common in the vast swath of space between the world of Carthage and the distant, ever-vigilant fleet that was the Swarm Blockade. Sometimes these massive ships would fly out to that orbital distance and make a circuit of the Swarm, the little scout vessels connecting with and then detaching from the much larger supplier. Gloria subscribed to the theory the big ships were delivering fuel, or food, or something like it.

  A debris cloud was pushing out from one side of the massive ship. Fire and explosions lit up the infrared from a gash at the center.

  “You seeing that, boss?” Xavi asked.

  “I am.”

  “Think Sutter did that?”

  “It’s likely. The question is whether it was on purpose or a collision.”

  “Of all the damn luck.”

  “Beth?” Gloria called.

  The reply came instantly. “Almost done, Captain.”

  “You’d better be, dear, because we’ve got company.”

  “Understood.” A quiver in her voice.

  “Thank you. Xavi?”

  “God, they’re close,” he said, distracted.

  “And they’ve already seen us. So light up the active sensors. Focus on the Zephyr. Where are they, and in what condition. Remember our role here.”

  He grunted. “Good. I hate hiding. Full sweep initiated.”

  The plan had been to emerge well inside the Swarm, and sit absolutely quiet as long as possible while Sutter and his crew searched for the missing ship. Just in case, Gloria brought up the sensor interface and added her own commands to the queue, commands designed to listen for the transponder of the original lost ship, the Lonesome, and any distress call or message Captain Dawson might have left. It would be a while yet before signals from the diversionary fleet arrived, so distant were they. With any luck they were already pulling a big chunk of the Swarm away, giving the Zephyr and the Wildflower a nice cushion of time to perform their mission.

  She was about to close the interface when she noticed another command in the scanner queue. An odd one, quite complex. It had been entered seconds before by Beth Lee.

  Gloria’s eyes narrowed. “Beth?”

  “Finishing up now. The reactor should be—”

  “Never mind that. What’s this sensor request you added?”

  Silence.

  Xavi’s portrait, on the side of the screen, looked directly at Gloria, eyebrows raised.

  “Answer me, please,” Gloria added.

  “I…,” Beth said. “It’s a passive—”

  “What are you looking for?”

  More silence. Then, meekly, she said, “Skyler Luiken’s Key Ship.”

  Gloria blinked.

  Xavi let out a little laugh.

  “On whose orders?”

  Beth glanced down, embarrassed. When she replied she sounded like a child. “No one’s. I just wanted to know—”

  “Miss Lee,” Gloria said, “we’ve had ships exploring the edges of this system for more than a decade. Ever since we could fold space. Nothing’s ever been found. No signals, no signatures. Nothing.”

  The Key Ship had left Earth almost two thousand years earlier, the culmination of a bizarre “first contact” with an alien race known as the Builders. After subjecting Earth to a series of events that almost wiped out humanity, the Builders finally showed themselves and explained their actions. It had all been a test, of sorts, and humanity had passed. Despite all the death and destruction, a small group of humans led by Skyler Luiken had agreed to stay on the Builder vessel, dubbed the Key Ship because of the strange objects that had activated it. The tests Earth had been subjected to implied that humans could help the Builders break the siege of their home world.

  No one had ever heard from them again, though, and the siege remained in full force.

  “I understand your point of view, Captain Tsandi, but it is possible that part of the Swarm’s purpose is to dampen or distort any such signals from leaving the system.”

  “It’s been, what, seventeen hundred years, Beth? Face it, they failed.” Gloria studied the woman’s face, wondering why it was that brilliant people so
often believed things so obviously not true. The Builders, and their human helpers, had failed. Everyone agreed on that. If they’d ever reached their destination or not, no one knew, but the fact was Carthage was still under siege, the Swarm Blockade an impenetrable barrier. Of the fate of the human crew no message had ever been received. It had all been a long time ago, the deeds and actions mostly the stuff of legend despite a decent media record.

  Gloria counted herself among those who couldn’t care less. It was ancient history. Earth had moved on. Bounced back from that calamity with surprising force. Resettled and rebuilt. Explored and exploited the solar system. And then had come the ability to fold space.

  Beth started to argue again, but Gloria cut her off. “The Lonesome, Beth, that’s what we’re here for, understand? They made it. That we know for sure. And we know what happens if the Scipios find them before we do. That craft, or the Zephyr or us, could lead the Scipios to Earth. This isn’t some archeological expedition. We’ve got to locate and either retrieve or destroy the Lonesome, and then get out of here ourselves. I want to know you understand. I want to hear you say it.”

  A silence stretched, and Gloria felt an anger she’d not expected begin to fade. She’d always made it a point of pride not to raise her voice with her crew. She saw those who flew with her as her family, and if her parents had taught her one thing it was that warmth and compassion were a courtesy you should afford your own.

  “The Key Ship could lead them to Earth, too,” Beth Lee said in her flat, factual way. “By that logic, I mean. Captain.”

  The words were like a splash of cold water. “You…We’ll debate that later. Focus on the task at hand, Miss Lee,” Gloria said, because she couldn’t really disagree. “We’re adrift in perhaps the most dangerous place in the galaxy. This is not the time for distractions.”

  The other woman nodded, and went back to work.

  Gloria stewed, her finger hovering over an icon. After a few seconds she pulled back. She did not remove the sensor request.

  “Boss!” Xavi shouted, despite the comm in her ear being online.

  Gloria winced. “Go ahead.”

  “The long range!”

  She shifted focus to it. Out near the edge of the system, an evenly spaced grid of dots formed a gigantic sphere around the solar system. The Wildflower hadn’t been here long enough to get a true fix on any but the closest, and she saw immediately what had Xavi so excited. The dots were pushing out, not in toward her. The ruse of the diversionary fleet had worked, at least for now. If only this damn supply ship wasn’t right on top of us.

  “Well, that’s something,” she said. “What about this behemoth? Any escort?”

  “Not that I can see, but she’s coming about.”

  “And the Zephyr?”

  “Crickets, nothing but crickets.”

  Gloria’s heart sank even as it beat faster. “Keep me apprised. Beth, I need an update.”

  The engineer replied a second later, the rebuke of moments earlier evidently forgotten. “Engines should be back online in one minute, maybe less.”

  “What about the imploder?” Gloria asked, already dreading the reply. Beth would have mentioned it first if the news were good.

  “That’s going to take a bit more time.”

  “How much more?”

  “I don’t like to guess.”

  “I’m ordering you to guess, Miss Lee.”

  A hesitation. Studying raw data, probably.

  “Twenty minutes, maybe.”

  Gloria considered that. The time made little difference, in truth. Without engines the imploder would be useless.

  “Xavi?”

  “Yeah, boss.”

  “Calculate us an escape trajectory, just in case. I want it ready at the touch of an icon.” The Mark 5 imploder may be able to exit a fold in slightly curved space, but it still had to enter at a point of near-zero curvature or face serious risk. When the time came to leave, they’d have to be well away from this ship, these planets, this Sun. Every second of head start they could get would make a difference.

  And what’s more, Gloria thought with growing worry, they only had the one imploder left. Part of the mass-shedding diet the Wildflower had been on in preparation for this mission. One imploder meant just getting out to a safe distance wasn’t enough. To perform a hasty fold without the usual careful calculations would be pointless. A big object like this supply ship curved space only minutely, but that was enough to drop you trillions of kilometers from the intended destination, reliant on distress calls that worked only at the poky speed of light. Normally not a problem, she’d just recalculate and try again. No such luxury here. Gloria would just have to hope, if the time came to do an emergency fold, that they’d have time to aim at Earth, or a colony, or some distant supply cache. “We need to be ready to leave if Sutter orders us to.” If he’s still alive, she left unsaid.

  “You got it.”

  Minutes later a bright red INCOMING TRANSMISSION event popped up on the comm screen, and for the first time since arriving Gloria felt a pang of hope.

  Sutter’s face appeared a second later. Blood ran from a gash on his forehead, the cockpit behind him a mixture of darkness, showers of white-hot sparks, and the urgent cries and shouts of a crew in dire straits.

  The Wildflower

  4.AUG.3911 (Earth Actual)

  “WILDFLOWER,” SUTTER SAID, “get the hell out of here!”

  The image suddenly stretched to the left, smeared by interference, and the audio garbled.

  “Where are you? We’ll come—”

  “No,” Sutter said through the static. “Get away. That’s an order. We’re badly damaged. Collided with that heap of shit. Reactor leak. Imploder damaged. Not—”

  A sharp bang preceded the link being dropped.

  Gloria tapped a button and her wraparound display instantly shifted to a tactical configuration. She whirled, spinning her couch to face aft, and saw the nearby Scipio behemoth looming, almost finished with its slow turn that would put it on the Wildflower’s trajectory.

  “Xavi!”

  “I heard him.”

  “Find them, now. I don’t…I can’t see—”

  “Already on it. Working on that link, too.”

  Gloria skimmed the intel on the giant hauler. It was almost a kilometer long and looked as if built from a hundred skyscrapers lashed together. One element did stick out: the word UNARMED right there at the top of the screen. That seemed to be the consensus, at least, according to distant observation. It seemed a safe assumption they would have some kind of ability to at least investigate a hostile presence like the Wildflower. Gloria did not intend to wait around and find out.

  “The link’s coming back,” Xavi said.

  Sutter’s face appeared, like a ghost in digital noise. He was saying something but no sound came through.

  “Where are you?” Gloria pleaded.

  His reply came through in fractured syllables. “Forget us. We’re in…—wake. Rejoin fleet and try—”

  A wash of signal corruption. “Dammit, dammit…,” Gloria said. The enemy vessel completed its turn. Somewhere in the vast plume of its gigantic engines, the Zephyr was being melted. “Its mass must have shifted your exit right on top of it, and ours near enough.”

  Sutter’s voice came back, though the visual had died. “Buy you time,” was all Gloria could make out.

  The implications chilled her. The Zephyr was done for, and Sutter would not allow her secrets to fall into Scipio hands. The same decision would face Gloria if she could not get away. “Beth? I need good news.”

  “Engines in ten seconds,” she replied.

  “Thank you. Xavi?”

  “Say the word, boss.”

  “Do it!”

  “Full burn, coming up.”

  And he meant it. The instant Beth’s countdown hit zero, Gloria’s seat spun of its own accord, facing her along the acceleration vector. An instant of silence followed, then she slammed back into her cha
ir as if propelled on the edge of an explosion. A pressure that kept piling on. The corners of her vision blurred and tinted dark red. Bits of the ship began to rattle, then the entire hull shuddered. Gloria’s own teeth clattered together. In her haste she’d forgotten her mouthpiece, which hung from her collar, but with her arm now pinned by the force of the engines she could do nothing about it.

  Something clanged from somewhere midship. A terrible thought went through her mind: Could the ship handle it, so soon after that rocky arrival?

  Too late to worry about that. Gloria gripped the arms of her chair and ground her trembling teeth. She felt the knife of unconsciousness begin to twist from the corners of her vision and slammed her eyes shut, but the sensation did not go away, it only grew. Then her compression suit squeezed so hard she’d have screamed if she could. The pain all along her chest and thighs was savage and bright, but the suit didn’t care, the suit performed its function by keeping her conscious.

  “Xavi, you’re tearing us apart!” she growled, the words tumbling out like spit gravel.

  “All systems green!” he shot back. “All systems green!”

  Unable to see, Gloria could only trust him. She didn’t like Xavi much. Not as a friend. He was heartless and brash, the kind of man she avoided in her personal life. But damned if he wasn’t reliable as a mountain when things went wrong. Friend or not, he was family to her. The renegade little brother, loved despite the flaws.

  Through the constant shuddering roar of the engines, Gloria found she could open her eyes after a minute of acclimation. She scanned the readouts and imagery in front of her.

  The Scipio supply ship now pointed right at the Wildflower, its engines forming a glowing yellow haze around the profile. Somewhere in that fiery exhaust was the Zephyr, if it hadn’t already been vaporized. Gloria studied her pursuer, both in visual and on the other frequencies, but as of yet could see no smaller craft or missiles in flight. Beam weapons would of course impact at the same time as any indication of their use, but as of yet the Wildflower had suffered only the usual Scipio sensor sweeps. Nothing to be done about that. Scipios rarely fired on ships from Earth. They wanted a working example of an imploder too badly. The question was, how would they react when presented with two such ships in such close proximity? If the Zephyr was salvageable…