In Nadir's Shadow

by E. J. Heijnis

  The glowing panels overhead winked out, replaced a moment later by a red glow. The wild patterns of light on the orb had been reduced to gentle, wispy swirls that slowed even as she watched. Break down the outer barrier. She visualized only the result she wanted: a hole large enough to extract the cocoon. With a burst of concentration she'd found to function as a signal to execute the provided instructions, she put the Vile to work. All six stalked over to the clear barrier and assaulted it. The material echoed under the blows, forcing Seruya to cover her ears. Even so, the noise was deafening, and she felt the sound rippling over her skin.

  A web of cracks spread across the surface, just a moment before it shattered. She ducked her head as clear shards scattered all across the room, some striking her skin and leaving tiny cuts deep enough to bleed. When she looked up, the Vile had already gathered off to the side.

  With the barrier broken, a vast sense of suffering and despair rolled over her. Its sudden appearance and intensity were enough for her to see the emotions came from outside herself, but even so, she had to resist an overwhelming urge to fall down and shed every last tear in her body. "What is this?" she snapped, her voice thick. "Are you doing this?"

  "You feel the suffering of our unborn. Do you see the two protrusions from the wall resting on the outer shell's surface?"

  She approached the orb. "I do."

  "Please break the contact between them and the cocoon."

  She did as she was asked, and the orb went still, the last stirrings of light fading into a deep blue.

  "They have been trapped in this place for over a thousand of this world's years, tortured for every moment of that time," Sage said. "Each has gone insane, and no longer recognizes their own kind."

  Seruya stared at the cocoon, mouth agape. Her mind traveled back through the years, to the beginning of her life. For all that time, and so much longer before that... She couldn't begin to grasp the full measure of the torment imposed on these creatures. What manner of being could inflict this on another? Any other? "Who?" she whispered. "Who did this to you?"

  "Those who built this place. Who took your ancestors and made them into what you are today. They fled this world because our kind had defeated them, and rebuilt on another. They had grown strong by the time we found them again, using our unborn to fight us. We have warred against them ever since."

  "And now they're coming back?"

  "Yes."

  "We shall welcome them. When they land, I will destroy them."

  "We do not seek revenge. Only the return of our unborn."

  She waited for Sage to speak again. After a time, she said, "You have been at war for a thousand years to get back what was taken from you, and you have learned nothing?"

  "Inflicting suffering in turn does not improve our situation, nor does it change what has already happened."

  Irritation sharpened her tone. "You're twice wrong. Punishing those who take from you teaches them and others that doing so carries a heavy price. Thus, they will reconsider before acting against you again. In that way, you ensure that the sacrifice of those who died won't have to be repeated."

  "There is no strength you can show that your enemy will not learn to disdain with the passage of time. One day, they will once again believe themselves stronger, and all they will remember is their cause to hate you."

  "Then you remind them!" she spat. "You watch them! When they make weapons, you take them away. When some speak of war, you kill them. When they hide from you, you expose them. They've already shown you their ways. Vigilance is your only defense!"

  "And how long would you be vigilant? A hundred years? A thousand? Will the next generation remember the past well enough to keep the watch? If not, then one day their guard will drop and the enemy will return, and their memory of inequality will be more recent than yours. They will believe themselves the ones wronged, and some of yours will wonder if they agree."

  Seruya growled in frustration. "If this is your attitude, then I don't wonder why your war has lasted so long. Why resist at all? Offer your enemy everything you have, because one day, they'll take it all anyway."

  "There is a way to end it. Once we reclaim our unborn, we can afford compassion and mercy. When your enemy understands they were wrong to oppose you, you obtain true victory."

  "And what if betrayal is in their nature?" she hissed. "What if it's inevitable that they turn on you again when it suits them?"

  "Then it is inevitable, and nothing we do will change it."

  "Gah!" She threw up her hands and turned away. "Are all your kind as thick as you? If this is truly your strategy, then keep your warriors strong, because you will need them to die for you again." She looked at the Vile over her shoulder. Follow me. As she left the room, the monsters shuffled after her. "You said you intended to look for information here. When you have learned what you need, come to me and I'll help you find whatever it is your enemy seeks."

  "Where will you go?"

  "Home."

  Chapter Fifteen

  Miron walked into Control feeling better than he had in weeks. After participating in the frantic effort to repair as much damage as they could before their arrival, he'd collapsed on his bunk for six hours of uninterrupted sleep. Opening his eyes to the simulated daylight in his cabin rather than a dull red glare had been one of the best moments of his life. Even pulling on his orange vacsuit and the solemn reminder of imminent battle had failed to dampen it.

  All in vacsuits, the command crew worked at a feverish pace, calibrating controls, testing tactical systems, and securing the Control compartment for combat. Gervasi moved among them like grease, directing with her sharp voice and assisting when needed. Borya sat in his chair, staring at the Master Tactical Display's rendition of a planetary system. Graphs and lines indicated gravitational forces and the orbits of the planet's two moons. Miron took the seat next to him. "How are we doing?"

  Borya didn't look at him. "Better. Our guns are all tracking, and ammo feeds are working for now. Still plenty of problems left, but at least we can shoot. Anisim says the only weapon he won't sign off on is the Lancer cannon."

  "Anisim?"

  "I promoted him. He's the new engineering chief."

  Miron nodded. "He has good intuition." After a moment's silence, he continued, "What do you have in mind for today?"

  "We're still in poor condition for a drag-out fight. This needs to be quick, close, and brutal." Borya pointed at the display. "I aim to put us into a powered elliptic orbit with a tight perigee. When they drop down to sublight, we'll be coming in fast while they're stuck at transition speed. Even if they see us, they can't adjust their entry point. Guns will aim for the drive nodes. That will shackle the enemy to planetary orbit. For the second pass, we'll shorten our orbit with a burn, then go for the kill with a Viper missile salvo."

  Miron didn't need the Ship Master to point out each pass would offer the enemy an opportunity to land heavy hits on Tenacious, any one of which could compromise a jury-rigged repair and put the ship out of action. It was a typical, all-or-nothing Borya scheme. It had failed him at least once before. "We should land a small crew before they get here. They might not notice, and it'll give us some options if Tenacious is too badly damaged in the fight."

  Borya shook his head. "Not a good idea. We need every hand to patch any problems that come up once we engage. That, and this crew has lived in a nightmare together for weeks. Now we either make it, or we don't. They all deserve that. No one's more important than anyone else."

  Including you. Miron heard the implied statement clearly enough. Borya had lost sight of the objective. "It's not about you or me, or the crew, or the ship. It's about our species. Don't you remember that?"

  "I could never forget. And to me, there is no point in stranding a handful of us on a planet they may never be able to leave. If Tenacious is crippled, what will they do? Start walking? Without the ship's equipment, we have no chance." He shot Miron a glance. "You still don't understand our situation. It
's just us. No one else is coming. This ship's crew is a limited resource. No one is expendable anymore." He turned to Yegor, assigned to Detection with Oksana to replace Ilari. "D-OPS, do you have the enemy's course plotted? Do we have an entry point for them?"

  "Yes, sir. It's on the display now."

  "Navs, are your courses plotted?"

  Matfey gave a deliberate nod without taking his eyes off his display. "Yes, sir. Coming up on MTD now."

  A yellow line appeared on the display, looping around Nadir. Pulsing dots indicated the relative positions of the Tenacious and its pursuer at the moment it was expected to slow to sublight speed. "Two minutes until we terminate FTL," Osip said from the helm station. "The enemy should arrive ninety-eight minutes, forty-seven seconds after us."

  "What's our projected closing speed upon contact?" Borya said.

  Matfey replied after the briefest pause, "Sixty-eight point zero nine kk's."

  The Ship Master nodded. "OC, alert level one. All crew to combat stations."

  "Alert level one, yes, sir," Bogdan replied. The claxon blared eight times in rapid succession.

  Gervasi chimed in without turning: "Engine room, prime main drive."

  Miron watched the Ship Master from the corner of his eye. Borya had always been stubborn and prone to creative interpretation of orders, but he'd never before disrespected Miron. Was it the stress of the journey, or was he the cause? Had his actions on Ilari's behalf pushed Borya this far?

  He ground his teeth and dismissed his concerns for now. If they survived the upcoming encounter, he'd find the time to sit down with Borya and hash out their issues. They'd known each other too long to just leave it at this.

  "Ten seconds to sublight."

  He counted down in his head as Gervasi came to the third command seat, just in front of Borya and Miron. She hesitated before she sat, giving him a searching glance before facing forward and belting herself in. At zero, the ship shuddered for a long moment. Once it had settled, the silence rang in his ears, and it took a while before he realized what was missing: the deep, steady hum of the FTL drive.

  Tenacious had arrived.

  The Master Tactical Display's rendition of Nadir changed as the computer received more data. Geographical features popped up one after the other, followed by atmospheric conditions. Only Borya and he knew the truth of their destination, and though he'd studied the map during his briefing, the sight of what had once been their homeworld left him with a knot in his throat. Deep blue oceans covered most of the globe, surrounding two large continents. Tall grey mountains cast harsh shadows over a verdant stretch of green, and elsewhere, golden plains stretched from coast to coast. A single, smaller continent peeked out from beneath the thick clouds on the northern hemisphere. Every part of its surface he could see was covered in white.

  "All right," Gervasi growled. "That's enough of that."

  The entire command crew quickly returned their eyes to their displays. Miron scanned their faces and saw far too much emotion in some. Clearly, there had been plenty of speculation about their destination.

  Borya looked at him, and shook his head with a chuckle. "So somebody figured it out," he said to the command crew. "It's true. That's Nadir out there. That's where we all came from. You want to see it for yourself? You blow that floater bastard to pieces when he shows up."

  "Yes, sir!" At least three voices joined in the answer.

  "Ten seconds to main engine burn," Osip said. At the end of the count, a deep rumble rose from deep inside the ship. The pulsing dot that tracked Tenacious's progress through the system slowly picked up speed.

  Gervasi turned to Matfey. "Navs, how's acceleration? Are we on the curve?"

  "Right on it, sir. On track to hit thirty kk's in nineteen minutes. Apogee in thirty-one minutes, forty-eight seconds."

  Miron breathed deeply, seeking the quiet state of mind he used to prepare for battle. It wouldn't come, no matter how many steady breaths he took. He had no fleet to command, and Borya knew how to handle the ship in battle as well as he did. He'd be little more than a spectator this time. On top of that, both ship and crew were far from ready for combat. Half a day of uninterrupted work and six hours of sleep couldn't reverse weeks of sabotage and unrelenting harassment.

  Gervasi called for updates every few minutes. Gugal reported issues with two railgun turrets not loading ammo, and tension mounted as engineers worked to solve the problem. The timer hit ninety minutes and continued its steady countdown.

  Miron scanned the MTD again, trying to get a picture of the battlefield in his head. Tenacious had reached the furthest point in its orbit and now raced back towards the planet, plunging into its gravity with the aid of the ship's main drive. At the moment of the enemy's arrival, the ship would be at peak velocity; well beyond what was needed to achieve escape. They'd be forced to use the drive to remain in orbit and come around again, exposing the stern and the vulnerable thruster exhaust as they curved around the planet. Hopefully, damage and countermeasures would be enough to keep the floaters from making significant hits.

  One number caught his attention, nestled among a list of statistics about the planet. "Borya, look at the CO2 in the atmosphere."

  Borya's eyes flicked over, then away, then back again. "That's way over projections."

  For whatever reason, CO2 levels far surpassed what the briefing had told them to expect. Volcanic eruption was a possible cause. Burning fossil fuels was another.

  "One minute until enemy entry," Yegor reported.

  Borya turned to the gunnery station. "Guns, firing plan. Your primary target is the drive nodes. I need the enemy incapable of breaking orbit for the duration of the engagement. Release chaff as soon as the angle on our exhaust opens up. Understood?"

  "Aye, sir," Ipati and Gugal echoed.

  Tenacious raced towards the intercept point. Miron dried his palms on his knees.

  "Three seconds!"

  A second dot flashed into being, right where it was supposed to be. Detection of the target filled in the final parameter in the instructions provided by the gunners, and the ship's weapons opened fire. A loud whine rose quickly to a high pitch before terminating with a rattling noise. At the same time, a rapid series of dull impacts set the deck to tremble.

  "What happened?" Gervasi demanded.

  Ipati said, "Lancer cannon misfired, sir. It sounded like the capacitor failed."

  Gervasi looked at her. "Sounded?"

  The woman glanced at the Master Second. "Yes, sir. I tested particle cannons for two years. It's ballast until we get to a dockyard."

  A two-month delay to figure out how to fit a Lancer-type particle cannon in a spaceframe as small as Tenacious, just for it to fail at first use in combat. Miron shook his head and shelved his disdain for designers who failed to account for real-world conditions. None of them were here to witness the consequences.

  A separate section on the MTD showed a diagram of the enemy ship, fashioned from whatever information the ship could detect. Miron's jaw tightened as he recognized the Type 7, a ship twice the length of Tenacious. Nicknamed Arrowhead, it carried more than enough floaters to penetrate Tenacious's armor if they struck together. Single impacts blossomed all along the sleek, cross-shaped hull. They quickly tracked down its long wings as the fire control system made corrections, concentrating on the bulging stern.

  On the tactical diagram, Tenacious closed the distance. A series of staccato echoes meant the turret railguns had come into effective range and opened fire. More impacts peppered the enemy ship as it initiated a roll, hiding the already damaged sections from fire. Numbers tracking its acceleration began to drop.

  "Roll all you want, you're not going anywhere," Borya muttered. Before he finished speaking, a deafening crash rocked the ship. Only Miron's harness kept him in his seat. Two more followed, each sending violent tremors through the ship.

  As Tenacious blasted past its opponent, ports around the stern released the ship's countermeasures. Miron didn't need the d
isplay to picture the dozen stout buoys tumbling away from the hull, each equipped with a ghost shield. Not that they carried anything worth shielding; their purpose was to frustrate the floaters' targeting efforts. Shockwaves rocked the ship, but no direct impacts registered. As the range opened up, the turret railguns ceased fire.

  "Report damage," Gervasi said.

  "We took three armor impacts on the way in, one for seventy percent and two for about forty," Bogdan said. "Nothing got through."

  "The enemy is adjusting course to enter low orbit," Yegor said. "Projected orbital speed is twenty-five point four kk's.

  Borya squinted at the MTD and muttered to himself, fingers twitching as he worked with his implant to calculate speeds, courses, and distances. "Navs, new parameters: adjust orbit for optimal firing angle on the target's projected position. Helm, execute upon acquisition."

  Matfey replied at once: "New burn angle ready."

  "Burning now," Osip said.

  The deck trembled as the MPD thruster fired up, adjusting Tenacious's orbit to give them the best possible angle on the enemy ship when they swung back to the planet. Borya gave a contented growl and said, "Activate Viper launch triggers. Full salvo." The next time the two ships passed within range, the fire control system would release the four unguided distortion-drive missiles from their ports along the flank. Although only capable of FTL speed for a tiny fraction of a second, and utterly helpless after that, the Viper missiles packed overwhelming punch within their limited range.

  On the display, the floater ship entered a simple circular orbit at a mere two thousand kilometers above Nadir's surface, traveling perpendicular to Tenacious's trajectory. The line indicating its orbit began to flash as the planet hid the ship from direct detection.

  Miron would have done the same if his ship was crippled and under attack; the low orbit gave the ship more speed than it would have been able to sustain with its damaged drives. It also meant Tenacious would have to time its approach carefully, or risk the planet spoiling their fire.

  Tenacious reached the apogee of its elliptic orbit. With another reorientation, the main drive fired again, propelling the ship back towards Nadir. Thirty, then forty minutes passed, until the line depicting the floater's orbit turned solid again. On the display, the two combatants closed rapidly. The deck shuddered under the stress of the two heavy railguns opening fire.