The Cruel Stars

by Christopher Nuttall

  Maybe I’ll take one last flight, after the war, he thought. And simply never come back.

  His threat receiver lit up, red icons flashing over the display. Alan reacted instinctively, yanking the starfighter to one side as ... something ... flashed past him. Newer alerts blinked up, warning him that the carrier had opened fire ... opened fire on him. He heard someone yelping in shock over the command network, curses echoing through his ears as the starfighters scattered. They were all far too close to the suddenly-hostile carrier for comfort.

  “Cease fire,” he snapped. He threw the starfighter into a series of evasive manoeuvres as another round of pellets shot past him. Those were real projectiles! Was someone trying to kill him? Bennett? Or Abigail? Or ... none of them made sense. Bennett wouldn't have any trouble killing Alan and convincing everyone else that it had been an unfortunate incident, if he wished. “I say again, cease fire!”

  The threat receiver blanked, so sharply he thought it had gone on the blink. He stared at it for a long moment, then looked up at the carrier. Or where the carrier should be ... what the hell should they do? Fly to one of the other carriers? Or ...

  “Sir, I’ve disengaged the point defence system,” Mike Whitehead said. The acting CAG sounded shaken. Blue-on-blue incidents were rare, but they did happen. “You should be safe to return to the ship.”

  “Make sure you isolate the entire system,” Alan ordered, stiffly. “I want to know exactly what happened.”

  He felt his heart begin to race as he guided the starfighter back towards the carrier. He’d expect an enemy carrier to fire on him, of course, but a friendly ship? Even if it was just a glitch, it boded ill for the future. And what if it wasn’t a glitch? What if it had been attempted murder? Alan thought his pilots and support crews didn't know what he’d done, but it wasn't impossible that one of them had found out. They could have sent a query back home if they’d had any reason to suspect that he was more than just another starfighter pilot who hadn't made the transition to command track.

  And someone on Earth could dig up the news records, he thought, numbly. He wasn't the only person who happened to be called Alan Campbell, but it was quite possible that he was the only starfighter pilot of that name. They’d know who I was and what I’d done.

  He tensed as the carrier grew larger and larger until it dominated the viewport, grimly aware that he might be picked off at point-blank range, but nothing happened. His starfighter landed neatly on the deck, automatically moving forward and through a pair of airlocks into the next chamber. Alan opened the cockpit as soon as the starfighter had come to a halt, jumping down to the flight deck rather than wait for the ground crew to bring him the ladder.

  Damn it, he thought, as he felt his body start to shake. He hadn't shook so badly since his first flight, years ago. What happened?

  He made his way to the hatch and stepped through, trying to keep from showing any sign of tension or fear. He’d thought he’d understood combat, but this ... an accident would be bad enough, but at least it would be an accident. It was not knowing that tore at him. Jail hadn't been too bad, all things considered. Colchester was better-run than some of the civilian hellholes. Civilian wardens had a reputation for everything from beating prisoners to sexually abusing them, but the redcaps had been strictly professional. None of them had tried to kill him.

  His wristcom bleeped. “Sir, the remainder of the pilots are landing,” Whitehead said. “Their timing isn't good.”

  “Call a general meeting for nineteen-hundred-hours,” Alan said. He fought to control the shakes. He’d been in danger before, but this ... he pushed the thought aside, sharply. “Inform the pilots that there is to be no chatter until the meeting. They can go get some food or something, but there is to be no discussion until a full investigation is held.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Alan ran his hand through his hair. It felt sweaty. He’d enjoyed being outside the ship, right up until the moment Haddock had tried to kill him. It was a grim reminder that nothing could be fully trusted, not even a piece of equipment that had been checked and rechecked time and time again. Just for a moment, he thought he understood the neo-villagers he’d seen in the countryside. They’d tried to go back to an era of thatched cottages and small fields that had never really existed, save in story and song. And while he’d thought they were silly at the time, he understood them now. Their lives were not dependent on technology.

  And yet, they’d be dead if an alien fleet materialised in their skies, he reminded himself, sourly. Unarmed primitives wouldn't stand a chance against modern firepower. Or even if they caught something dangerous.

  He forced himself to stand up straight. He’d go for a shower, perhaps grab a ration bar or two. By then, Abigail and Bennett would probably have completed a preliminary investigation. And then ... he shook his head. A glitch would be bad ... worse, perhaps, than a deliberate attempt at murder. The prospect of losing control over the ship was terrifying. What would go next? Life support? There was no shortage of horror stories about starships that had slowly poisoned their own crews when the life support systems had glitched. He’d thought the stories existed to remind crews not to take anything for granted, but now ... now he wasn't so sure. A single flaw in the air mix might kill the entire crew.

  And if we can't rely on the ship, he mused, what can we rely on?

  Chapter Twelve

  “I want a full explanation,” Abigail said. Her eyes swept the compartment. “What the fuck happened?”

  She looked from face to face. Alan was pale. He’d clearly had a nasty shock, even though he was trying to hide it. Beside him, Maddy looked worried. She wasn't guilty, Abigail was sure, but her motherly instincts told her that Maddy expected to be blamed for whatever had gone wrong. The two squadron commanders - and Bennett - appeared grim. They - and a handful of their subordinates - had been tearing apart the point defence system, trying to find out what had gone wrong.

  Maddy cleared her throat. “As far as I can tell, there was a glitch in the point defence sensor node,” she said. “The system ... ah ... the system managed to confuse two files and the logic subroutines failed and ...”

  Abigail gave her a sharp look. “And what?”

  “The computers believed two things to be true at once,” Maddy said. “On one hand, it believed that we might be under attack at any moment; on the other, it knew we were carrying out training exercises. I ... ah ... I think what happened ... I think the system basically classed our starfighters as the enemy, tripping the automatic point defence system as the starfighters moved into engagement range.”

  Whitehead frowned. “So the computers thought we were carrying out a live-fire exercise?”

  “No, sir,” Maddy said. “The point defence system is programmed to engage - automatically - any targets that come within torpedo range. When we go to battlestations, the human element is completely locked out of the loop. There just isn't time to ask for orders. When our starfighters approached, it defaulted to emergency protocols, classed everything as a potential enemy, and opened fire. It simply didn't have time to reassess the situation.”

  She took a breath. “The full report will be a little more complex,” she added. “But I think I’ve parsed out the basics.”

  “So it was a glitch,” Abigail said. “And not an attempt at” - she allowed her voice to harden -“outright murder.”

  Maddy paled. “I’m not a trained investigator, Captain,” she said. “All I can say is what I believe to have happened.”

  “Right,” Abigail said. The Belt Federation accepted that accidents happened. She didn't think the Royal Navy would be quite so sanguine. “Can you ensure it doesn't happen again?”

  “I think a couple of command nodes would need to be rewritten,” Maddy said. She bit her lip. “That’s a task for a proper WebHead, not me. It would be better, I think, to take the system offline while we’re carrying out exercises.”

  Abigail nodded, sourly. Maddy deserved one point, at lea
st, for being smart enough to admit her limitations. Trying to reprogram a computer core was incredibly difficult. Abigail had never been comfortable with a system she couldn't control perfectly, let alone repair. There were too many horror stories about hacker anarchists, dating all the way back to the Age of Unrest. Hanging a few hundred of the bastards hadn't stopped others from trying to break into sealed computer networks. Abigail could lose control of her ship and never know it.

  “If we take the system offline,” Whitehead said, “how long will it take to get it back online?”

  “Five minutes,” Maddy said.

  “Which would be too long, if one of those sensor contacts happens to be real,” Whitehead said. “Are there no other options?”

  Maddy hesitated. “We can alter our programming to some extent,” she said. “If I fiddle a little, I can draw a line between exercises and reality. But realistically I can't go too far without risking a total collapse.”

  “I see,” Abigail said.

  She scowled in disapproval. There had been too many vague sensor contacts since the convoy had left Earth, some of which had been close enough to force Commodore Banks to alter course. None of the contacts had opened fire, at least, but everyone was jumpy. There was no way to know if the contacts were alien starships or simple sensor glitches. Logic suggested the latter, yet no one knew.

  “Alan,” she said. “What do you think?”

  Alan started, as if he hadn't expected her to ask him anything. “We cannot stop exercises,” he said, slowly. “I think we’ll have to coordinate with the rest of the convoy, ensuring that we can take down our point defence network long enough to carry out the exercises in peace.”

  “We could simply tell the computers not to do it again,” Savage pointed out.

  “Yes, we can stop this problem from repeating itself,” Alan said. “But what about the next problem? What will happen next?”

  We don’t know, Abigail thought. And if we knew, we could stop it.

  She shrugged. “We’ll take down the network when we start the next set of exercises,” she said. It was a risk, but she saw no alternative. “Alan, make sure that Commodore Banks knows what we intend to do.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “Good,” Abigail said. “And now we have that matter under control” - she ignored Whitehead’s snort with the ease of long practice - “what do the exercises tell us?”

  “That we have a great deal of work to do,” Alan said. “We lost the carrier, twice.”

  “Ouch,” Abigail said.

  She listened to the discussion that followed, noting where the navy and the belt seemed to agree and where they differed. Some of their points were good ones - the quest for glory versus the need to actually win the engagement - and others seemed flawed. She couldn’t help thinking that navy pilots were far too much like overgrown children, rather than responsible adults. But then, she’d seen the projected loss rates ... such a bloodless term for the deaths of hundreds of starfighter pilots. Very few Belters would be comfortable with flying such craft, knowing the odds of long-term survival to be poor.

  “I’ll leave you to handle it,” she said, rising. “And inform me when you intend to launch the next set of exercises.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  She walked out of the compartment and down the long corridor to engineering. The ship felt different now, in so many ways. Haddock had never been so crowded before, even though her crew was tiny. But then, the living spaces had been tiny too. It wasn't really her ship any longer, she felt. The freighter she’d loved had been replaced by a mobile community she didn't quite know how to handle. She found it difficult to understand how fleet carrier commanders coped. Their crews numbered in the thousands.

  Vassilios Drakopoulos looked up as she entered the compartment. “Captain.”

  “Vass,” Abigail said. “A word?”

  Drakopoulos nodded and motioned for her to step into his cabin. It also doubled as his office, insofar as he had one. He didn't spend much time in it, Abigail knew. When he wasn't sleeping, he was in engineering. There was always something to fix on the ship or journals to read. His cramped cabin was really nothing more than a place to sleep.

  “The navy thinks the system glitched,” she said, shortly. “Do you agree?”

  “I think so,” Drakopoulos said. “Basically, the system got confused ...”

  He started to lurch into an explanation. Abigail held up a hand, cutting him off. He would have taken part in Maddy’s investigation and, if he’d had doubts, he would have taken them to her long ago. She didn't need to hear more technobabble.

  “That’s not the issue at the moment,” she said. “Will it happen again?”

  “I don’t know,” Drakopoulos admitted. “Captain, we’ve spliced together quite a few systems that were never designed to work together. And we didn't have time to stress-test any but the most important systems. I can point to a dozen places that could glitch, Captain, yet I don’t know which ones will glitch.”

  “And there’s nothing we can do about it,” Abigail said.

  She cursed under her breath. It was sheer luck that no one had been killed - this time. The next time might be a great deal worse. And then ... she shook her head in dismay. The Belt might understand that accidents happened, but this ... the Royal Navy would want answers. And then it would probably try to turn her into a scapegoat ...

  “At least it wasn't deliberate,” she muttered.

  “I don’t think so, Captain,” Drakopoulos agreed. “There would be no way to know who’d be targeted.”

  Abigail made a face. Perhaps Alan’s wife had had a friend who was now serving on Haddock, a friend who might want to avenge her death. Or ... she shook her head in annoyance. That was the stuff of bad detective novels or late-night movies that required only that the viewer sat and watched. No, logic dictated that the glitch had been nothing more than a glitch. The real problem was that it might happen again and - next time - someone might die.

  “Fuck,” she said. “See what you can do to minimise the risks.”

  “I’d like to tear out all the older systems and replace them,” Drakopoulos said. He lifted his bushy eyebrows. “Is that likely to happen?”

  Abigail made a rude sound. “What do you think?”

  She looked down at the hard metal deck. The Royal Navy was unlikely to authorise a refit that would take Haddock out of service for at least six months. It would be cheaper to build a modern freighter from scratch - or a purpose-built escort carrier, come to think of it. And there was no way she could afford to purchase top-of-the-line gear without the navy’s contribution. They’d just wind up more in debt than ever before.

  Drakopoulos cleared his throat. “I’ll see about stress-testing some of the less important systems,” he said. “But you know what could happen if it really doesn't live up to specifications.”

  Abigail nodded, curtly. If the stress-test was too good, or the equipment too frail, the whole system would collapse. And then the navy would demand explanations for that too ...

  “Do the best you can,” she ordered. She rose, careful not to bang her head on the metal ceiling. “I’ll be on the bridge.”

  ***

  “In summary, we will be conducting more exercises over the next two weeks,” Alan concluded, after a long discussion of the exercise. The starfighter pilots looked back at him with varying degrees of interest. “By the time we arrive at New Russia, I want to have us working together as a team.”

  He paused. “Any questions?”

  “But what about our scores?” Greene leaned forward, sharply. “We have to rack up the kills ...”

  Alan bit down on several nasty responses. “Bugger the scores,” he said, finally. He waved a hand at the nearest bulkhead. “This ship is our home. Blasting a hundred alien starfighters into dust will not save our asses if this ship is also blown into dust. Our job is not racking up the kills, but protecting the ship. Let me know if you have a problem with that and I’ll
beach you.”

  Greene, thankfully, had the wisdom to keep his mouth shut. Alan sighed, inwardly. It hadn't dawned on them, yet, that they could win the battle and still lose the war. Or at least their lives. Starfighter pilots rarely saw anything of the bigger picture, but he had to keep it in mind at all times. Perhaps it would be better, he told himself, if he didn’t take a starfighter into combat again.

  But I’m not going to stop, he thought, wryly. I can’t stay cooped inside forever. I’ll go mad.

  “Report to your bunk beds and get some sleep,” Alan finished. “We’ll be going back outside tomorrow morning.”

  He sat back and watched as the starfighter pilots filed out of the room. Some of them were cheerfully discussing the prospects for shore leave on New Russia, others were more subdued as they thought about just how badly things could have gone. Death was a constant threat, but dying because of friendly fire - when they were trying to land on the carrier, of all things - would be particularly galling. Hopefully, the incident would concentrate a few minds. They were at war.