Mutant Hunter

by Tobias Roote

  Dalt calculated they had scant seconds before the battleship put out fighters to remove them as a threat and he intended to use the time wisely.

  “Prepare missiles. Target their engines - here,” he indicated on the schematics that were up on the main vidscreen. Dalt knew these ships inside out. He had studied them intensely over the years and there was a single point on their mountings that if hit correctly would drop the baffles over the engines and disable the ship long enough for a small ship like theirs to make an escape. It would take the battleship a few minutes of intense engine burn to melt off the scrap iron enough to resume the chase if they didn’t damage their engines in the process. The problem was the escape trajectory would take them straight across the flank of the second battleship, and in view of their unsuccessful first approach, Dalt didn’t like the odds, but couldn't think of any other strategy.

  Then he had an idea that might save them as well as giving Grady all the time he needed.

  “Get me that battleship’s captain on the comms.” If he could convince the captain that they had destroyed the Citrix, they might get out of this alive.

  “The captain is refusing to talk to you, says to ‘die well’,” the radio officer responded.

  “Tell him he has destroyed the Citrix that ‘we’ the Angels were sent to eliminate. Advise him to contact Phang, their DCOD, for confirmation of our mission orders.” Olgar had updated him on their mission parameters before they had engaged the blockade ships. They wouldn’t know that this ship wasn’t an Angel ship, neither would Phang who Dalt had cursory dealings with in the past.

  A few minutes went by during which Dalt’s guns and missiles remained targeting the engine mountings of the battleship. He gnawed at his lip, an old habit that his crew recognised as battle tension and not nervousness. They were ready to fight their way out from underneath if necessary.

  The radio operator turned towards him. “They say heave-to and turn off targeting systems, we will be escorted to the landing bay,” he said. “There is a fighter escort approaching and advising us to follow.”

  Dalt nodded to the helmsman to do so. Murmers went through the bridge as his crew thought they were surrendering.

  “Grell ! Into the enemy’s maw and we’ll likely never survive the experience,” his SIC turned and commented out of the corner of his mouth.

  Dalt looked at his son, a good choice for his second in command. The man rarely, if ever, reacted badly to a tense situation. This was unusual and Dalt understood why. He had become very protective of Dalt in recent years and had been trying to encourage him to retire to spend more time on their home planet. His years of service were unparalleled and his children, all clones, were widely distributed within the Dispersalistas Intelligence Agency. Dalt admitted he was tired and could do with some relief, but couldn’t let go of the reins. Olgar had been the same, he knew, but this wasn’t the time for weakness. His response to his son was typical and reassuring at the same time.

  “Yes, but we have a chance, albeit a very slim one, a chance nonetheless,” Dalt replied. In truth he had no option. He needed to give Grady time to get out of scanning range of the blockade. There was a slight possibility of damaging one battleship, but the other would still kill them and catch the Citrix. This was the only way they could delay the search for long enough.

  “Give me internal comms,” he ordered glaring at the radio operator who had been listening to their exchange as if anticipating his command. The young man flicked a switch that was already between his fingers, his response immediate.

  Another son who knew him too well, Dalt thought proudly. He tried to remember his name, Inicu, Inikas, Linkas, that was it.

  “You have it, leader,” Linkas responded.

  “Thank you, Linkas,” Dalt murmured below the volume threshold that would be broadcast to the rest of the ship. His comms officer was one of the youngest on the ship. He remembered him. A bright lad, always used to run the gauntlet to get to Dalt ahead of the other children and then would glue himself to his leg until Dalt picked him up so he could at least walk the rest of the way into the community habitat that was their home.

  Dalt smiled grimly at the dim memory and raised his voice so it would carry across the small ship.

  “Now hear this, we are being escorted into the enemy battleship. We have no assurances and no expectations. You have been trained for such situations. You know your roles, I expect you to fulfil them to the glory of the Dispersal. Good luck !” he said with more confidence than he felt. He glanced at Linkas who still held the switch open. Was he that predictable, he wondered with a touch of irritation.

  “Commandos, to your positions. ‘Operation Shadow’ is now in effect.”

  Ten black-clad, highly-trained soldiers would know exactly what was expected of them and whilst it was a possibility that none of them would survive, Dalt knew that this was the best diversion he could expect to help the Citrix escape.

  The SIC turned to him, “Operation Shadow ?” His eyebrow raised in concern, “You think it will work on a ship this size ?”

  “Yes And no, I don’t know what it will achieve except it might help us sell our lives more dearly for the cause instead of being interrogated and executed on some backward planet somewhere. The cause will eventually avenge us, but this level of aggression from the Core navy is unprecedented. I fear we are seeing the opening moves of a new war and for some reason...” he indicated back from where they had come. “... that planet back there is the catalyst. More importantly, Grady knows why and needs to get clear to the nearest buoy.”

  The CN Dramatus - Archon Blockade

  Cole Brazan, the sensor operator looked closely at the readout, then checked again. Yes, he was almost certain. The odd blip looked like a small ship, but it wasn’t reading as anything at all, just a piece of junk floating through space. He couldn’t be 100% sure though. He looked around for a friendly face and was about to call First Officer Charon for a second opinion when the bombardment of the other two ships began. In the excitement he left the blip for a few minutes. When he went back to it, it was gone. He knew he should have called attention to it sooner, but now it was no longer on his screen he would be punished for losing it as well as not announcing its presence. The mood of the captain was such that Brazan erred on the side of self-preservation and decided to pretended it was nothing. It probably was just junk anyway, he made the lame excuse to himself.

  He looked around guiltily and not for the first time saw the object of his resentment not twenty feet away. The captain was a total recalcitrant waste of space ; he’d got command of the Dramatus as a result of blackmail and lies. If there was ever a man who wasn’t fit to rule a bathtub, let alone a state-of-the-art battleship, then he was it. If Charon had been in charge the ship would be a different place to work. He, like the other conscripts had no loyalty to the Core navy. Whilst Brazan was out of the firing line most of the time, he still ended up being penalised regularly pushing his delistment date further and further away. He should have finished his enlistment time over fourteen months ago, yet here he was still with three years left because of purported infractions of service. He was nothing more than a slave to the Core and the more he thought about it, the more he hoped the missing ship escaped.

  Charon, the First Officer, noticed his gaze and looked at him warningly. He looked back at his screen and felt the reproach aimed at his back. It wasn’t the first time that Charon had cause to warn him of his attitude. If the captain had seen him glaring like that he would have been punished, possibly shot. Charon was only trying to keep him alive. Brazan concentrated on his screen and watched as the remaining ship was escorted onto the Dramatus by the fighters. There were no pilots on these particular prototypes. They were trialling a new AI that was not only intuitive, but steeped in the strategies of all recorded fighter engagements going back before the Mutant War. They were exceedingly efficient and could manage manoeuvres beyond the ability of human pilots. It was the way of the future,
as was this new set-up of a minimal crew manning all aspects of the large ship.

  In all his years in service he had never seen a ship’s engineer operating from the bridge. Yet, here they were with the latest inter-stellar drive and three engineers on the bridge to manage the engines. They were assisted by yet another AI expert system built in tandem with an outside organisation on Exodus, a secret planet doing high-tech and classified research where much of the new AI technology was developed. Brazan only knew because he had overheard a discussion between an employee of Exodus and Charon when the last nodes were being installed. The first officer seemed keen to know of someone’s whereabouts on the planet. Brazan thought that Charon might have originated from there, like all of them, pulled from hundreds of planets and forced to serve in the corporations’ naval fleet.

  Stifling his resentment, Brazan continued to monitor for traffic and only occasionally swung the sensors back in the direction of the lost space junk. He wouldn’t lose sleep over missing one small vessel, what harm could it do ?

  Race against Time

  Without realising how close to discovery they had been it was fully an hour later when the crew of the Citrix, floating through space like a piece of space rock began to relax. There had been no contact with the outside world in that time and Grady was becoming increasingly keen to switch on his sensors. He was amazed they had snuck through the blockade and could only put it down to Dalt’s and the Angels ship's efforts to divert attention from them.

  There was no doubt in Grady’s mind that they escaped mainly due to the complacent crews on the battleships. By not believing the small ships represented any threat at all they had obviously ignored any other sensor readings that seemed harmless and chose to concentrate only on those that were aggressively firing on them. So it was that the Citrix was out of range and harm's way when he began to switch on the ship’s systems. Ario came back on-line and concurred with his appraisal.

  Shrilla seemed subdued and whenever Grady tried to pull her into conversation she muttered and scowled at nothing in particular. Grady decided that she was unlikely to surface until she had resolved the war within herself. He could imagine it was difficult for her to even consider the possibility that the Dispersalistas were right and the history she had been taught was wrong. Still, she hadn’t shot him in the back yet or taken over the comms and called the Core to take him into custody. Which was lucky, he thought, otherwise they would be space dust now as they wouldn’t bother with any trial or judgement - execute on sight would be their standing orders over the problem with Fuego and his prior history with the Core. He hoped she realised that wasn’t an option while they were in enemy space.

  “Ario, plot the fastest course to the comms buoy and then onto AWC. Make ready an emergency beacon set to these frequencies.” He proceeded to pass them verbally. When she overheard that Shrilla finally sat up and took notice.

  “They’re not AWA frequencies !” she queried.

  “No, they’re not,” he answered curtly. He waited for the accusation to come from his partner who was increasingly distancing herself from him, but it didn’t materialise. Neither did the laser blast between his shoulder blades. He shrugged and carried on making his arrangements.

  “Ario, load all data from the planet Archon-5 including body recorders from arrival Archon-5 to blockade intercept and encrypt to Delta.” The level was high enough so that only captains of ships or other agents would have clearance to decrypt. It was a back-up plan in case they were blown out of space in the next few hours.

  Grady waited several minutes while the AI compiled the information then gave it the heading on which to fire the missile-style beacon.

  “Beacon away,” Ario responded after several more minutes had passed. Grady felt the slight tremor as its internal rockets fired it away from the ship and up to cruising speed. It would coast until it reached its destination, or be intercepted within the hour if there was anyone in the vicinity. With that done and their course plotted to the AWA buoy, Grady relaxed. There was nothing showing on sensors, only open space between them and their destination.

  Taking his cue from Shrilla who was still sitting quietly contemplating, Grady sat back and thought about what had occurred the last few days. The unravelling of his past was something of a surprise to him because although he had been aware of his past he had no awareness that pre-conditioning had been instilled in him for such a time as he might come across a seeded planet. He had always viewed that part of him as in the past. The discovery of another human species had awoken that conditioning and he was now without a doubt a Dispersalista agent again. This meant he had to think first of the cult, before he considered the AWA.

  Shrilla didn’t know, but suspected his involvement was more than research. He’d left the door open to further discussion and he felt sure that once Shrilla had absorbed the truth, something she wasn’t yet prepared to do, she would understand the necessity of the subterfuge and fall in alongside him. He had lost the itch on his back that marked him as a potential target and was expecting no surprises from her in the next few hours while they traversed space.

  As if sensing his attention, Shrilla turned to him.

  “They will be waiting for us at the AWC. They will never let us through, you know. It will be locked down tight.”

  “Yes, I’m aware,” he replied, Grady was aware also of the fact she was talking ‘we’ not ‘you’ - had she decided ?

  “We need a plan and we can’t go directly there or we will be blown out of the skies and possibly AWC will be obliterated too. Am I the only one that thinks that Core have crossed the line and are in the process of starting a war ?”

  She had a point, and one he had been overlooking with his preoccupation with the Ektepoi. Grady realised that while he had been worrying about Shrilla shooting him in the back, she had been considering the ramifications of what was going on around them. Grady felt guilty that he had been thinking less of her.

  “The increasing aggression of Core is very worrying and has all the indicators of an escalation in hostilities. If we turn up at AWC with the truth of the planet Archon-5, the Core might be forced to act and that might be all the spark that is needed,” Grady agreed.

  Indeed, there might already be repercussions. Grady checked the ship’s chronometer. Just under an hour before they reached the comms buoy. They would know soon enough, he thought ruefully.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Revenge

  As their ship was escorted onto the landing bay there was little evidence of them being expected. The fighters that had followed them in coasted alongside and then landed deeper in the bays. Their engines went silent and docking clamps engaged, while the fighters themselves were turned about ready for fast redeployment. Dalt thought it was strange when nobody exited the cockpits, which were dark and hidden by the coated windows. Ignoring them for the moment he instructed his crew to form up outside the ship. It would look better and divert attention away from the Shadow Operation. He belatedly wondered if it would not have been better to attempt to outrun the guns of the battleship and its sister ship running alongside.

  No, he reassured himself, it was better this way. In a tin can in space they had zero opportunity to do anything worthwhile, here they had a chance to strike at the heart of the corporations’ hold on the empire. A battleship, no less. “Grady - I hope you’re away, my son,” he muttered as the doors to the main part of the ship ground open to vomit their welcoming committee.

  An escort of pristine grey-suited soldiers were accompanied by no less than the captain of the battleship. Dalt was amazed that the top man would oversee their arrival on the deck of the landing bay. A small contingent of guards promptly surrounded their ship and all of the men were quickly disarmed. The guards had no idea that the weapons removed were the least of their problems, his men's silver-banded mutation was far more lethal than the laser rifles and were obviously completely unknown to the enemy.

  The continued roar as the rem
aining fighters landed in the adjoining bays almost deafened the captain’s opening words.

  “I’m Captain Perrinwold, welcome to the battleship CNS Dramatus where most of you will be reasonably well looked after - if you behave,” he scowled menacingly while he scanned the crew. They returned his stare unperturbed by his intended threat. They had suffered worse at the hands of their own leader.

  “However, first there is the important matter of the murder of my friend, the captain of the Persipis, an unarmed research vessel that was collating data on the local planetary system.” He stalked up to Dalt and his officers who stood at the front of the small group. “Tell me, which one of you is the captain of this piece of shrapnel ?” he demanded facing off against them. The intent was clear and the malevolence was telegraphed to the guards alongside him who wound their attention up a notch at the rhetoric of their captain.

  They couldn’t say that the other ship they had destroyed was the one that had killed the captain’s friend and Dalt wondered if his men had managed to reach their positions yet, or if it was still too soon. He would have to stall them and was about to move forward to engage the battleship captain when before he could say a word he was dug in the ribs and pushed back by his own SIC who bravely stepped forward. The remaining crew tightened the space around Dalt, pushing him back, as if to protect him from interfering in what was about to occur. They all knew that Dalt was an extremely valuable asset to the DIA and all would willingly sacrifice themselves for him.