“Right,” said Mattis, cupping his chin in his hands. “We’ll need all the help we can get. Dock with the Fuqing. Get Shao on the horn. I want her best damage control teams and engineers over here. And don’t take no for an answer. Extend that offer to anyone else who can reach us in time, regardless of flag.” Gotta give a little carrot to go with that stick, though… “Tell anyone who agrees to help that no part of the ship is off limits. They have an all-access pass to the Midway, and tell our marines to cut the workmen some slack. I know they’re going to want to pick apart this ship for intel and, to be perfectly frank with you, I’m going to let them. After that battle, they’ve earned it.”
Commander Pitt’s skepticism was clear. “We could keep the reactor room under lockdown,” he said. “That’s where the ship’s biggest secrets are, and where our biggest advantage over the Chinese is.”
Lynch shook his head vigorously, his eyes on Mattis. “Hell no, sir. If they figure out how our heart beats…”
“Then,” said Mattis, “it’ll be better for us when we go toe-to-toe with these bastards again.” He wasn’t sure if Commander Pitt was on board with this plan, so he reiterated. “On my authority, Commander.”
Commander Pitt straightened his back. “Yes, sir. I’ll send word.”
Lynch looked distinctly unimpressed, but he had no time to deal with that. His earpiece chirped. He expected Shao to be on the line, but instead it was another voice. Clipped and proper and Indian-British.
“Admiral Mattis,” he said, “this is Commander Oliver Modi from Engineering, sir. I have been asked to give you my report.”
Mattis waited for him to do so. He didn’t. “Proceed,” he said finally.
“Very good, sir. Report is as follows: Engine one has sustained critical damage and is inoperable. Engine two has sustained critical damage and is inoperable. Engine three has—”
“Sustained critical damage and is inoperable?” guessed Mattis, slightly sarcastically.
“Incorrect, sir. Engine three has sustained severe damage and is functioning at one-quarter capacity.” He paused. “Sir, I imagined you would be aware of this by now.”
“I was, I just…” Mild frustration crept in, some of it genuine and justified, while another part was really thinking of Ramirez walking off the bridge. “Well, you kept saying the same damn thing over and over.”
“People say I am repetitive, sir. I simply prefer the terms ‘accurate’ and ‘comprehensive.’” Another slight pause. “Are you ready for me to continue?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Engine four has sustained critical damage and is inoperable.”
“Great.” Mattis rubbed his temples. “Got anything else for me, Commander Modi?”
“No.”
Well that was a waste of time. He went to close the connection, but Commander Lynch leaned over his own console and patched himself into the call.
“The Admiral really needs these engines working,” said Lynch. “Crack the whip. Work faster, Modi.”
“Good idea. I hadn’t considered that option.”
“Don’t get smart with us,” said Commander Lynch, leaning so far over his console it was like he was going to bite it. “You goddamn robot. Just fix the damn ship.”
If Modi was in any way offended, his tone didn’t convey it. “Physically repairing the ship is the purvey of damage control teams. I am simply the chief of engineering. However, given that there exists some capacity within engineering, I am happy to allocate resources to accommodate your request.”
“Great. Get to it. This is important,” said Pitt, waving a calming hand down toward Lynch.
“I concur,” said Modi.
“Bridge out.” Pitt closed the connection and, seemingly frustrated, shook his head. “Hey, Lynch. Go easy on him, okay?”
“Hell no,” said Lynch, scrunching up his face in frustration. “That damn man. Like four hats short of a rodeo.”
“Everything okay?” asked Mattis cautiously. “This isn’t going to be a problem, is it?”
“Oh, no,” said Lynch, his formal visage slipping. “Modi’s great, when he’s not driving me up the damn wall. He’s smart—no, better than that. Smart doesn’t even begin to describe how genius this guy is. But, ugh. It’s always ‘I concur, I concur.’ Ain’t nobody told him to say just plain ole’ yes? I tell you what, what he got in book smarts, he took from people smarts. Damn fool’s half machine. No wonder he loves them so much.”
Mattis smiled. “You know, the more you get annoyed at him, the more your inner Texan really starts to come out.”
“If that ain’t a fact, God’s a possum, sir,” said Lynch. “You can hang your hat on it.”
The phrase took some time to process. “O…kay.”
“That’s nothing, sir,” said Commander Pitt, making an obvious effort to maintain a professional air. “You should see him when he really gets started. Nobody can understand his jabbering. They’re like words being put in a blender. Malmsteen used to say that’s why I was here: to interpret.”
“I’m fine,” said Lynch. “It’s Modi who’s the problem. Bright as a new penny, but trying to get him to get to the point is like hugging a rose bush.” He rolled up his sleeve, the grogginess in his voice completely gone. Whatever the medics had done to him had done its work well. “Also, Admiral, I wanted to show you something.”
“Go ahead.”
“I was looking at the pulsing signal before the attack,” said Lynch. “Remember that?”
“Yeah,” said Mattis, the flickering signal almost forgotten in the rush of battle. “What you got for me, Lynch?”
“Well, it just kind of hit me, Admiral. I think I figured out what the signal was.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Lt. Patricia “Guano” Corrick’s Warbird
31km from the wreckage of Friendship Station
The enemy fleet had jumped away, leaving the impromptu fighter wing surrounded by empty space.
“Are they all gone?” asked Guano.
“Scopes are clear of capital ships,” said Viper. “I’m only seeing scattered wings of strike craft remaining, in twos and threes.”
“We didn’t hit them that badly,” said Roadie, his confusion shared by her. “We put a few missiles up their tailpipe, emptied our guns… The ship barely seemed to slow down.”
Coincidence? She didn’t think so. “Let’s press our advantage,” she said, resting her hand on her throttle. “I’m winchester on guns, radar-guided and heat-seekers, but I still have my semi-active missiles left. We can mop up these strike craft and go home for tea and medals.”
“Negative,” said Roadie. “Pull back to the Midway. I can see your busted canopy from here. Your ship is badly banged up. We can’t afford to lose you.”
Her blood was up. Five kills would make her an ace, a converted title, one nobody had been able to win since the war with the Chinese. “Those strike fighters are without their cap-ship support craft, without any kind of help. They should be easy to wipe up. I can help.”
“Not without any guns and a couple of small missiles, you can’t.”
“I can handle it,” she said, thumping her foot against the floor of her ship. “C’mon, Roadie, cut me loose. I got two missiles left. I’m still in this fight.”
Roadie’s voice grew incredulous. “Bravo-2, I am ordering you to immediately make your heading 111 by 31 and RTB. Those missiles are a last-ditch only and the Midway will require fighter escort until we sort out what the hell is going on. May I remind you your craft lost power for nearly half a minute only moments ago? Now hear this: you are not to attack any craft without an explicit call for weapons free. How copy?”
She wanted to resist, to argue, but she knew that it was pointless. A war zone wasn’t the right place to undermine the CAG’s authority on any matter, especially not one so serious as tactical decisions. “Solid copy on all,” she said, completely unable to keep the bitterness down in her throat, the words practically choking her. “
Bravo-2 is RTB.”
Guano swung the nose of her fighter back toward the Midway, thumping her fist on the side of the cockpit wall. This was bullshit! Roadie was being too cautious.
Another red drop of blood drifted up in front of her visor. When was the last time she’d checked in on her back-seater?
“Hey, buddy,” she said, twisting around in her seat, trying to get a glance at him. “How’re you traveling back there?”
Flatline was slumped forward in his seat. She could only see the rear of his helmet.
“Hey. Hey!” Nothing.
Her gut clenched and she touched her radio. “Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is Bravo-2 transmitting in the blind guard, declaring an emergency.”
For a brief second, there were no transmissions, as per protocol, then the Midway’s comm officer came on the line. “Bravo-2, this is Midway, roger emergency. State the nature of your distress.”
“It’s Flatline,” she said, struggling to keep her tone professional. “He was hit during the battle. I didn’t think it was bad—I didn’t think it was this bad, but he’s not moving. There’s blood in the cockpit. Over.”
Roadie’s voice cut over the transmission. “Dammit, Corrick, you should have said something—”
The Midway spoke over him. “Clear the air.” A pause. “Bravo-2, adjust your transponder and switch to 7700 so we can track you. Proceed directly to the Midway hangar bay and prepare for emergency landing. Medical crews are standing by.”
Adjust her transponder? What in the hell—why would she do that? She flew with one hand, looking over her shoulder. “Negative on the transponder adjust, I can’t reach the switch here. I’m burning toward the Midway at maximum acceleration. Prepare mag-brakes, I’m going to be coming in hot.”
“Acknowledged,” said Midway. “Grav-nets deployed. You are clear to land on any strip.”
“Oh,” she said. “It has to be on a strip, does it? Picky, picky.”
The radio operator on the other end was dead calm. “Confirmed, any strip.”
A moment’s quiet, and then Roadie’s voice came through. “Corrick, listen to me. Were you in a coma for flight school? You know—you know you’re supposed to report damage, especially anything that could jeopardize the safety of your crew. You’re the pilot. Flatline is under your command in this situation.”
“I’m aware,” she said, still trying to catch a glimpse of Flatline’s face. She couldn’t. “I know.”
“Can you still fly this thing?”
“Fly it?” Stupid question. “Of course. We’re in space. Flying is easy. Landing on the other hand…”
“Can you land?” asked Roadie, his tone ice cold.
“Of course!” She twisted back to her front, flicking the switch to extend the landing gear. The starboard and center struts came down nicely, their indicator lights glowing a healthy green, but the port-side strut flashed red. She tried again to extend it, but the console flashed red once more. “Landing safely, however, might be a bit of a stretch. My gear won’t deploy. I’m going to have to rely on the grav-nets.”
This was not a good idea. The forces involved in a grav-net capture could tear a fighter to shreds if they came in at the wrong angle. Given how damaged their craft was, it was a risk even if her approach was perfect.
“Corrick, if you survive this, I will kill you,” said Roadie.
He sounded like he meant it to.
The Midway operator came back. “Bravo-2, remain VFR if you can, remain straight and level. There’s a lot of debris out here, and it’s too difficult to see with the naked eye. Use your instruments. Trust me, you don’t want to get struck by this stuff.”
Debris? She finally looked up from her instruments.
The light of the star Cor Caroli glinted off large flat panels that spun, slowly, as they spread out from the wreckage of Friendship Station, the location of which was marked by a slowly expanding gas cloud—the internal atmosphere of the facility—diffusing into the surrounding space. Millions of tiny sparkles, pulverized station components, caught the light and reflected it everywhere, a dazzling display enveloping everything, bathed in the blue glare of the stars. Mixed in amongst the debris were smaller clouds, wreckage from the attacking ships, destroyed fighters—friendly and otherwise—and the lingering glow from nuclear torpedoes.
It was a beautiful splash of color across the void, but she couldn’t admire it. Her radar was useless, the energy reflected off infinite surfaces and scattering in all directions. Her screens showed a soup of light, color, and sharp pieces of metal silently drifting through the emptiness, a picturesque testament to a colossal battle she had barely seen, full of objects big and small, all deadly to a fighter that was coming apart at the seams.
And she would have to fly through it.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Bridge
USS Midway
Mattis beckoned Commander Pitt over, and Lynch, too. He took off his earpiece and put it on the armrest of his chair, reaching over and calling Shao, patching Modi into the call as well.
“Shao here,” she said, the sound of welding in the background.
Time for a team huddle.
“So,” said Mattis. “One of my bridge officers informs me that the signal we detected before the battle has been identified. You’re on speaker, everyone, so try not to talk all at once. Tell me what you have, Lynch.”
The man suddenly seemed less confident of his assertion. “It’s just a theory,” he cautioned.
“Facts are better than theories,” said Mattis, “but I’ll take a theory over a wild guess any day of the week.”
Shao interjected. “You called me away from fixing my ship to navel gaze about a sensor glitch? Admiral, tsk tsk tsk. I had thought so highly of you.”
“Just hear him out,” Mattis said, forcing a diplomatic tone past his lips. “It could be useful.”
“So could fixing my ship.”
Mattis gestured for Lynch to speak up.
“Well,” said Lynch, “I was examining the RCS returns from our primary long-range radar. Normally when we’re analyzing an intermittent signal, it’s either something so small and non-reflective that we can barely see it—it keeps crossing over the threshold between signal and noise based on speed, rotation, etc.—but this one was different. The signal was either there, strongly, or it wasn’t there at all. Which means we were either detecting an object similar in design to a massive spinning sheet of paper a mile wide…or they were doing something to hide their RCS profile.”
“The simple explanation,” asked Mattis, “if you would.”
“It’s cloaking technology,” said Lynch, a not insignificant amount of pride in his voice. “A theoretical construct in our lab, back in the day. It’s been theoretically discussed for nearly a century, but interest in it picked up after the war. Despite this, it’s cutting-edge stuff; the idea is to essentially fold space around an area like a blanket, so that when the radar pulses arrive, there’s nothing to detect. The catch is this: it takes enormous amounts of energy to do this. We were unable to fold areas of more than a few centimeters, for more than a few microseconds, and that took most of a cap ship’s reactor running at emergency power. It was possible, and well understood, just not feasible.”
Modi spoke up, his tone betraying just the barest hints of excitement. “You never indicated to me you were involved in experimental research after the war, Commander Lynch.”
“Well you never asked.”
“I would dearly love to read your notes, Commander Lynch, if you could just—”
“Sorry,” said Lynch. “Classified.”
Modi said nothing, but Mattis could practically feel his frustration.
“So,” said Shao, her voice small and tinny through the too-small speaker, “obviously this isn’t too classified, or you boys wouldn’t be talking about it in front of me.”
“Obviously,” said Commander Pitt, “you know something about it, too, or you wouldn’t draw attention to this fac
t.”
Everyone exchanged a knowing look, and Shao’s silence told them all they needed to know.
“If you know something about this technology,” said Mattis, “we’d appreciate a little reciprocity when it comes to openness and trust.”
“Trust has to be earned,” said Shao, somewhat unconvincingly.
“I think we’ve done our part.”
She hesitated again. “You realize that if The People’s Fleet Command has any reason to suspect I am sharing this information with you, I will be lucky if it simply costs me my command, yes? The PRC still practices capital punishment, and their needles are sharp.”
“That’s odd,” said Mattis. “My superiors are bound to be thrilled when I file my report and inform them how we fought alongside each other without verifying the identity of our attackers, how we risked an American asset to defend a nominally Chinese space station, and how I had your engineers tromping all over my ship with an all-access pass to see her inner workings. They’ll probably promote me. What rank comes after Admiral?”
“Point well taken,” said Shao. “Stand by.” He could hear the tapping of keys in the background, followed shortly after by the rustling and shuffling of papers. Paper archives? How old was this stuff? Or was it a security measure against electronic theft? No modem could hack into a locked safe. “According to these reports,” she said, “our scientists couldn’t bring the quantum field regulator’s temperature down below minus two hundred and twenty two point two degrees Celsius.”
Lynch looked like he might explode. “Two two two, point two? Precisely? Just confirming that.”
“That’s what it says here,” said Shao.
“You son of a bitch!” Lynch’s face screwed up like he’d swallowed a peeled lemon. He leaned right over the tiny earpiece like he was going to swallow that, too. “That’s not what your scientists said. That’s what I said! I wrote that damn report. I hadn’t slept for four days, we were way over budget, and I—well, I nodded off. My elbow hit the 2 key, the computer filled in the decimal point, and then when my chin hit the enter key, it got logged as an official report!” His upper lip curled back. “I got smoked by my CO, because it’s not meant to be cooled, it’s meant to be heated. You damn fools stole our research!”
The Last War: Book 1 of The Last War Series Page 10