by Ron Collins
The mission timer counted down.
“We are out of super-L,” the controller called. “Thirty seconds to launch.”
“Roger,” came the voice of a pilot.
“Roger,” came another, then another, and another, until there was a pregnant pause.
“Mouser?”
“Roger,” Nimchura said, filling the space.
“Roger,” came another voice.
He squeezed the joystick.
The good news was that the base launch sequence and mission setup was preprogrammed—whoever had developed the profile was thorough and focused on details. The eight Z-pads here would be spaced out along a single line.
The bad news was that the target was clearly Orion.
“Five seconds.”
What was going on? Was he going to destroy Orion?
The launch system engaged.
Ahead of him, the pod bay doors irised open. A moment later g forces pressed him into his seat and he was flying again, racing through deep space on the back of a piece of machinery built to burn plasma.
For just that one moment, those questions didn’t matter.
Per the mission plan, the Z-pad’s autopilot took hold of his skimmer at first, maneuvering him to his assigned station in space. So he spent time listening to the familiar sound of radio chatter. The skimmer pilots were raw, untested, and nervous. He could hear that in their voices.
He took a few minutes to get more reacquainted with the instrument panel. It splayed in from of him in dim red and green hues—thruster controls, direct interfaces to the computer system that plugged into his helmet and monitored his physical parameters to adjust everything from the compartment’s temperature to the softness of the seating. A navigation pane scrolled up on the screen, and he saw the locations of each skimmer as well as Einstein.
A battle map showed him Icarus, posted at a position opposite Galopar, which showed as a huge green and orange ball that loomed in space before him.
Memories of his months planetside came back.
He remembered how it felt to be working so hard and not be able to fly, and it immediately compared to his time on Atropos. The difference was that on Galopar he knew he was working toward a mission, whereas gaining his “freedom” on Atropos meant slinging concrete for the rest of his life.
“Target due on station in fifteen seconds,” a voice came from the radio.
“Roger, command lead,” came the lone reply.
The timer marked the passage of each second.
For a moment, Nimchura forgot to breathe.
Then a shimmer came to space in front of him. A pinprick of a warp at first, then a wavering form that bent the star pattern around him. There was no sound, of course. No boom. Just a dim flare of light, and the sudden appearance of the spacecraft.
Orion had arrived.
CHAPTER 15
UGIS Orion
Local Date: January 25, 2215
Local Time: 0815
Immediately upon dropping out of superluminal, Captain Douglas met with his staff. The briefing room held twelve people in relative comfort. Torrance was the fifteenth to enter.
Feeling out of place, he picked his way to stand against the corner along the left side of the oblong table. Two officers were already standing; the rest were seated and chatting quietly.
Ambassador Reyes sat to the left of the captain’s empty chair.
Two officers broke out in laughter over a joke Torrance hadn’t heard.
Captain Douglas entered and all discussion stopped.
“Universe Three is here,” he said, stepping straight to his place and getting directly to the point. “Einstein is on our short-range radio sensors. They have also positioned a network of skimmers across space. I think it’s safe to assume their weapons are trained on us—though I think it’s unlikely they can cause us serious damage.”
Torrance knew better than ask what Douglas meant by “serious damage,” but he also understood weapons systems well enough now to know that a Z-pad’s plasma cannons could create a serious crimp in Orion’s style.
“We do not know the location of Icarus,” the captain continued.
He punched a touchpad on the desk. The holo created an image of Atropos. A blazing red blip represented Orion and a blue mark represented Einstein, who sat on a bearing directly between Orion and U3’s home planet. “Per the agenda, we will be receiving guests in less than an hour, so the ambassador has something he wants to say.”
Douglas motioned to Reyes. “Ambassador Reyes?”
The ambassador rose.
“I know how hard this is for many of you,” Reyes said. “But our mission is clear. As representatives of our government, I expect we will treat our visitors with dignity and grace.”
Torrance saw suppressed anger.
After what seemed like a week of silence, the commander from secondary propulsion spoke what everyone else had been thinking. “I can’t believe we’re going to have Casmir Francis aboard our ship, and we’re not going to do a goddamned thing about it.”
“This is a mission of peace,” the ambassador said.
“What if they ambush us?” another commander asked.
Captain Douglas leaned in before the ambassador could respond. “Thanks to our resident war hero, we have our H-MADS system operational. And standard battle orders will be observed throughout the negotiation.” Douglas paused just long enough to ensure everyone was listening. “Please review them, now.”
Arms reached out in unison, fingers pressing display pads to bring up the appropriate battle specs. Torrance scanned his quickly: Armed crew members were to be at every power station and environmental control command; sensor scans were to be at 100 percent pattern matching. All weaponry was armed and ready.
Douglas gave them time to read before continuing.
“We’ll be at the rendezvous point in a half hour. Which means we need everybody prepared and at their stations in fifteen minutes. But I want to reiterate what the ambassador said. This is a peaceful mission. A lot of lives depend on how we perform today. Let’s not blow it.”
* * *
Z-pad
Local Date: Conejo 4, 9
Local Time: 0700
Nimchura watched the shuttle disembark from Einstein.
What in the hell was happening?
“Thunderbolt has left the Professor,” came the radio call. “All weapons on lockdown.”
Nimchura’s fingers played across the panel as he set his plasma cannon to focus on Orion’s Star Drive system. That was the plan, and he didn’t want to draw attention by deviating now.
What was happening, though?
Why were they locking on a spaceship that one of their shuttles was so obviously getting ready to board? Was this some kind of mutiny? Was the U3 space force working with the UG now? What was in the shuttle? People? Material? Information? He interpreted the Professor as the radio call sign of Einstein, but what, or who, was Thunderbolt?
All he knew for sure was that Universe Three had a string of skimmers lined up on two sides, ready to attack.
And all he could think about now was that several hundred crew on Orion were sitting ducks in these crosshairs. Just like the crews on Sunchaser and Everguard had been.
He let his gaze play out over space, saw the line of bright dots that represented the Z-pads, each sitting on that line like a buzzard with a plasma cannon.
His throat grew big, and he swallowed down a dry mouth.
His fingers played along the control panel almost as if they were working on their own, calling up the weapons controllers, and adjusting the laser systems and his central targeting system.
Then he pulled up navigation.
As the shuttle from Einstein entered Orion’s docking bay, Nimchura’s work came to a close.
He may not know what was happening, but he knew what he was going to do.
Remember the goddamned Sunchaser, assholes.
Remember Deuce Jarboe.
*
* *
Torrance sat in his command office and watched Einstein’s shuttle arrive on intership video. A detachment of Universe Three security exited the shuttle first, then what he assumed were officers of the organization, and then Casmir Francis himself exited.
The man’s appearance twisted in his gut.
Torrance was running on pure adrenaline by now, but felt emotionally dizzy. His brain was fogged by lack of sleep, but his entire body was amped up and reacting to the smallest of inputs.
It would be so easy to take this man out here.
Casmir Francis—the man who was single-handedly responsible for the deaths of people Torrance had served with for the past fifteen local years.
He thought about Malloy and Marisa.
He thought about Alexandir Romanov and his son Andre. The captain had planned to retire after he conned Everguard to its final resting bay. His son would have followed through with his career.
The desire for vengeance was suddenly strong.
On the other hand, the ambassador’s words about the position that the United Government found themselves in came back to Torrance, too. They were true enough—with the spread of humanity across the stars, there really was no way to truly win an intergalactic war, but there were thousands of ways to lose one.
In the quiet of the moment, he flashed on the idea of life on Eden, whatever it might be.
He had been so busy since the Everguard disaster, that other than that one afternoon, the Eden files hadn’t really entered his consciousness. But now he was filled with sensations that were equal parts hope and dread. If human beings couldn’t come to a peace with other human beings, what chance did they have to come to understandings with truly alien cultures?
Suddenly he found himself hoping beyond hope that Reyes managed to pull this off.
Einstein’s shuttle cleared the loading bay door.
Torrance pulled his glance from the systems controls to focus on the real-time video feed. A few moments from now, Casmir Francis and his party would walk out of the landing bay and down the corridor to the meeting hall, where he would meet Ambassador Reyes. They would shake hands and begin working on what was arguably the most important treaty in the history of the galaxy.
Everything snapped into focus.
His heart thundered in his chest.
He was confused at first, then angry, then quite terrified.
He replayed the glances he had seen pass between officers in the briefing room, remembered the harshness of Douglas’s words as he moved up milestones in the mission. He thought about the error they had been working on—the motion that caused the faulty trigger was exactly that of a man accepting a handshake.
Something snapped inside his brain.
Holy Christ.
This was all a big ruse.
The trigger had never been faulty. He hadn’t had time to actually review the root code, but he was willing to bet anything at all that the system was working exactly as it had been programmed to work.
Torrance glanced at the clock as he ran from his office and raced through the corridor. He didn’t know if he could make it in time, but he had to get to Weapons Command.
If he didn’t stop them, life as they knew it might well be over.
CHAPTER 16
Z-pad, Galopar orbit
Local Date: Conejo 4, 9
Local Time: 0715
Nimchura finished reprogramming the weapons controller, and then deactivated the mission profile.
“What are you doing, Mouser?”
He ignored the question, and engaged the CuttCo drives. The trim boosters flared, sending a thrumming through the compartment as the rockets rotated him into a direction along the line of Z-pads before him. Einstein lay at the end of that line.
He hoped he made it that far.
Twisting the joystick, he drove the Z-pad hard forward. False gravity pressed him against his seat, making him smile. If he was going to die, at least it was going to be on his own terms.
“Mouser, please report.”
The first Z-pad came to bear. He took it with a laser blast to its fuel cell. A steady roll got him past the debris field. He pulled his skimmer up, and targeted Z-pad number two.
Chatter filled his ears as it exploded.
He got the third before the rest began to react.
Nimchura’s assessment of the pilots had been right. They were green, and they were nervous—more concerned with managing their mission profiles than able to fly their spacecraft. He picked two more off before the collective got themselves together. By this time the radio frequency had changed, and the chatter went dead.
“Disconnect all auto input,” Nimchura commanded—just in case central command had any remote tricks up their sleeves.
Five of Einstein’s Z-pads remained.
His sensor system reported that a group of Icarus’s craft were being deployed into his sector.
He let his mind flow into the craft.
Let his body become the deflector plates and flow into the heat of the engines. The hydraulics became blood that ran in his veins. The smell of the craft was something solid then, permeated his being, became part of the thing that he was, merged with the brine of his sweat and the earthy tone of the Universe Three jacket he was wearing.
He put the craft into a sharp eight-point roll at the same time as he twisted across Einstein’s plane of fire. The craft responded beautifully. He dropped speed, then bumped it up, targeting another Z-pad, and seeing it disintegrate before him. This was what he was meant to do, he thought, almost in passing. This was who he was, he knew as he pulled on the joystick and screamed against g forces that would kill a person of lesser conditioning.
His systems flashed red as tails locked onto him.
He waggled and swooped, losing the lock, but also losing a target.
A Z-pad became framed in the green of the planet, and he blazed it.
Icarus’s Z-pads arrived.
Nimchura took out three of them, but there were too many.
He understood he was doomed as four of them blocked his backside, and two more flew ropes around his flanks.
He understood he wasn’t going to get a clean shot at Einstein as he dove for the protective floor of Galopar’s atmospheric shell.
That didn’t matter anymore, though.
He was flying.
He was driving a machine through space as hard as he could drive it. Sitting on the edge of his capability.
Doing what he was made to do.
He was flying this piece-of-shit skimmer in ways it had never been flown before.
For a moment, he thought he was going to make it.
The sensors showed he hit the upper ionosphere of Galopar’s shell. Another moment and he would begin entry. Another moment and he was certain that the green pilots of the Universe Three space force would never be able to follow him.
The shot that took out his portside deflector shields changed all that.
A moment later Todias “Yuletide” Nimchura lost control of his skimmer, and plunged into the upper layers of Galopar’s atmosphere.
CHAPTER 17
UGIS Orion
Local Date: January 25, 2215
Local Time: 0910
“Skiles?” Torrance said into his personal communicator while he shouldered his way through the routine foot traffic in the main corridor. With every step he was moving faster, but his heart was pounding at three times the speed of his feet.
“Sir?”
“I need the parameter that H-MADS’s image processing system uses to trigger data to the laser.”
“What are you doing, sir?”
“Just get me the goddamned parameter,” he cried, growing short of breath.
His chest hurt as he ran. His legs burned.
He bounced off people as he turned corners and jumped into the central lift tube where he bent over with his hands on his knees, panting while it slowly moved him deeper into Orion’s belly. Ten seconds had never felt so long.
“I’ve sent the parameter to your memory space, sir,” Skiles replied.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Torrance checked the system on his handheld. Yes, the code was there, a long binary string with a randomly named alphanumeric key that was running right alongside the normal security watchdog. Yuan was very, very good.
“May I ask again what you’re doing, sir?” Skiles asked.
“Nothing,” he said. He didn’t know who was in on this. Maybe everyone? Or just a small conspiracy? Just Yuan? Suddenly the world seemed to crash in on him. He couldn’t afford to tell Skiles anything. That was the problem with conspiracies, he realized. Once you knew something was going on, you couldn’t be sure of anything.
The lift door opened. He ran.
Weapons Command was just down the hallway.
He burst in, the door crashing against the back wall with a lightning bolt’s clap.
Faces turned to him, slack with surprise.
His breathing was ragged, and his hair disheveled. A bead of sweat rolled down his temple.
LiJuan Yuan was there, her hair prim and proper, her makeup precise. She had been watching a screen that displayed an image of Casmir Francis emerging from the pod, surrounded by an entourage of guards in brown and white.
“I want you to show me the H-MADS triggering routines,” he said to the ensign working the prime weapons console.
The ensign made no direct move.
“I said show me the triggering code.”
“Universe Three is aboard this ship, Commander,” Yuan said. “We don’t have time for that.”
“I’m sure you don’t,” Torrance said with too much force. He stomped to the prime console. “But as your commanding officer I direct you to show me the triggering routines.”
“It’s too late, Commander. There’s nothing you can do.”
Torrance’s gaze whipped back to Yuan.
“H-MADS wasn’t failing at all, was it?”