Broken Halo (Wayfarers)

by Debenham, Kindal

  Abruptly, the display brightened and flared into uselessness as the RSRs detonated every flare and jamming package they had been able to carry. The sensors of every ship in the immediate area screamed in protest as waves of electromagnetic torture pulsed outward, blinding the eyes that depended on them. Some of them had even been positioned to go off among the rigs who had been dogfighting a heartbeat before. For a few seconds, there was no force in the universe that could have tracked a ship through that disruption, and in that moment her fleet made its move.

  Every single Wayfarer ship made a sharp change in course, veering sharply away from their original vector. For an agonizingly long moment, their tetherdrives strained to cut velocity from their previous direction, fighting to accelerate along a nearly perpendicular course. She could only hope that the rigs were doing likewise, sweeping out of their engagements and toward safety while their pursuit was blind.

  Then her ships cut their sensor emissions to passive levels, shut off any power sources that might have leaked their presence, and pushed their recovering defensive screens to maximum power. In that instant, her display flickered, and the bridge lights dimmed slightly as the Concord followed her instructions as well, but Susan kept her eyes on the display. Her ships were doing their best to disappear, and if everything had gone well, the battle would be over.

  Long, tense minutes crept by without renewed combat, and the Concord’s passive sensors began to localize the rest of her fleet. The ships were in formation, though it was a ragged one now. The Salvation’s tetherdrive hadn’t been able to effect the course change well enough, and she was on an awkward vector that would take her clear of the other ships. Many of the heavier vessels had similar problems, but there was no sign of the Directorate fleet or their rigs. Susan breathed a small sigh of relief. They had made it.

  Then her eyes turned back to the site of the battle, where the last known position of Angel-One had been marked in the orange hues saved for dead or missing units, and she was forced to admit that safety had not come soon enough for the one person she cared about most.

  Wong heard the angry hiss of breath from his commanding officer and turned from the command plot. He saw Admiral Nevlin staring at his own personal display and recognized rage in the man’s expression. The admiral turned his chair abruptly to face him. “Captain Wong! What happened to the Wayfarer fleet?”

  Speaking with the caution of the wise, Wong responded. “The enemy appears to have set up a disruption net, sir. Our sensors lost contact with them during the maneuver, and they are likely on an evasive course under blackout conditions.” The situation had been obvious from the moment the first flares went off, and Wong doubted that the question had been meant to probe for such basic information. The admiral’s rapidly darkening expression confirmed his suspicion.

  Nevlin leaned forward. “I want her found, Captain. Now!” He glanced toward the local display, which featured the Imperious and her few remaining escorts still chasing the ships that had begun the engagement. “And why have those decoys not been destroyed? If we had rejoined the rest of the task force, we could have annihilated them by now.”

  The admiral’s voice had rung throughout the interior of the command deck, and Wong spared a moment to steady his own feelings. To be criticized for a command decision was one thing; to be insulted and belittled before the eyes of his bridge crew was quite another. “Sir, the WGCs have almost finished their refits. Heavy attack runs on these three ships will begin as soon as they are ready.” He made a sharp motion to the local display. “Our scouts still have them localized, and they may lead us to the rest of their fleet.”

  “A bit optimistic, Captain. They’re clearly just a distraction, meant to decoy us from their real fleet.” Nevlin’s tone had turned far uglier. “Why, even the most raw recruit could have—” His lecture cut off as a new tone sounded, and he looked to the main display. “Captain?”

  Wong turned to his rig watchstander, who had straightened in his seat. “Lieutenant Ramsey? What is it?”

  “A signal from one of our scouting flights, Captain.” Ramsey’s mouth worked for a moment, and then he touched a control. “I think you will need to evaluate this for yourself, sir.”

  Wong nodded, and a static-filled signal came over the speakers at his station. “This is Six-Four-R, reporting from area Nine-Nine-Alpha. We have an anomalous contact.” There was a pause, and then the rig pilot’s voice came back more strongly. “Imperious, we have multiple anomalous contacts. They’re transmitting a message of some kind.”

  Lights began to flicker into existence on the plot, and Wong frowned. They were insubstantial, but there were a significant number of them. Were these hidden allies that the Wayfarers were anticipating? He touched a control to respond to the pilot directly. “Six-Four-R, have you identified them as hostiles?”

  “Negative, Imperious. They have made no aggressive moves. I’ll be damned if there’s less than …” The pilot’s voice trailed off, and then came back with a note of fear in it. “Receiving transmission. Forwarding signal to the flagship.”

  Wong glanced to his right at the communication watchstander, who nodded and touched a control. Then a rumbling, stone-deep voice seemed to echo from Hell over the bridge’s speakers.

  “Atanaas?”

  The entire crew on the bridge went still, and Wong curled his fingers into fists. He did not say anything for a long minute, but one of the junior officers, an ensign at a backup station, put his feelings into words. “What the hell is that?”

  Wong heard another crew member turn to admonish the ensign, but he could hardly disagree with the awe and fear in the young man’s voice. He disciplined himself, stamping out any sign of that surge of anticipation, and then touched a control. “Six-Four-R, stand by for further instructions. Continue relay of incoming transmissions.” Then he turned to Nevlin. “Admiral? Do you have further instructions for us?”

  Nevlin’s face had gone paper white. For a moment, it seemed that he hadn’t even heard Wong’s question, but then he jumped as if startled. He glared at Wong with sudden anger, but before he could respond, the voice echoed across the bridge again. “Atanaas? U aes Waeferer? Mae aentinde?”

  Wong turned sharply to the communications watchstander, who was standing in stunned disbelief at her station. “Lieutenant, did I just here the contact say ‘Wayfarer’?”

  She blanched. “I—I think so, Captain. I’m not sure what else it is saying. Could it be some kind of encrypt overlay?”

  Then the rig pilot’s voice came over the speakers again. “Sir, the contacts are starting to come closer. They’re like nothing I’ve seen before.” The contacts on the plot began to grow more distinct, and Six-Four-R’s voice took on a tone of concern that showed even through the static. “They are armed, sir, and some of them are starting to point weapons in our direction. Requesting orders.”

  Before Wong could answer the pilot, the rig watchstander called out to him. “Sir, we have reports of other contacts from two other patrol units. Putting them onscreen.” Two more flickering batches of red began to dance near the two nearest scouting units to Six-Four-R, and Wong felt his worry deepen. Those rigs had been returning from their scouting missions, not heading out. They would be lower on energy reserves than his outgoing units, and he had armed them lightly, with instructions to avoid the heavier-armed Wayfarer units and simply keep track of the enemy position. He had no idea what they would be facing out there until he had the rest of his rigs outbound.

  He needed to know more. “Are the others sending signals?” The rig watchstander shook his head, and Wong felt another burst of worry flood him. Who were these newcomers, and were they a threat or not?

  Again the strange voice echoed across the bridge, and there was a note of threat in it now. “Tel bez nu mue aentindise. No aes Waeferer; pardke laes eddequen? Aes oun amidre du Atanaas? Se nu, bencames pard aeblir.” Wong shook his head. It was completely unintelligible, and it was hard not to embrace the feeling that these
contacts were only the beginning of what was out there. “Get this transmission down to crypt, and then we can—”

  “No.” The single word chopped Wong’s instructions short like a falling blade. Wong turned to see Nevlin standing from his seat. The admiral strode across the bridge to the main plot, and his expression was one of carefully crafted reproach.

  “We cannot afford to be distracted from our goal, Captain.” Nevlin waved a hand at the flickers of contact, disdain evident in every motion. “Our enemy is out there, hiding, and our responsibility is to find them—not to waste our time with whatever miscreants these may be.” He turned to address the rig watchstander directly. “Instruct our pilots to exchange fire with the unknown contacts if they draw any closer. We will launch rigs in support once we are able; until then, we are going to proceed to our objective.”

  Then Nevlin turned to face Wong, and his eyes glittered with a curious kind of hate. “Directly to our objective, Captain. No more games with the unknown, no more cat-and-mouse chases for unimportant targets. Find Susan Delacourt and her band of cultists and kill them. Am I understood, Captain?”

  Wong stiffened to attention and offered a formal bow. “Yes, Admiral. I understand.” When he straightened, he turned to the helm watchstander. “Change course. Bring our portion of the task group around to vector three-four-eight, and instruct the rest of the task force to begin a search pattern for the enemy.” He paused, his eyes flicking to the dots representing the fleeing detachment of cruisers. “We will continue to monitor those targets, in case they alter course to rejoin their comrades, but all strike operations will be suspended until the Concord is found.”

  His officers murmured replies, and Nevlin stalked back to his grand seat with a satisfied air. As the admiral passed him, Wong kept his eyes straight ahead, still fixed on the main plot. He didn’t know how far his control would extend, and his fists tightened as the plot showed a skirmish developing between the unknown contacts and his scouts. Six-Four-R vanished almost immediately, a casualty, and Wong forced himself to turn away. He had a duty to perform—no matter how little he was coming to like it.

  Chapter Twelve

  Gabe woke slowly, his consciousness returning in fitful, confused jerks. Part of the problem was due to his rig’s interface. The BCI had not been intended for long-term use, and perfectly normal activities such as sleep had not been anticipated when the computer had been calibrated. There was a lively debate on the effect a dream would have on a BCI-connected pilot, but Gabe had never dared take the risk of finding out for himself.

  The second reason for his disorientation was the fact that his rig was tumbling through the void at high speed and with absolutely no attitude control. Each time he opened his eyes—or more accurately, activated his sensors—the stars spun about him in a kaleidoscope of color and light. His interface hadn’t continued to send him pain sensations, except when his movements threatened to tear more of his rig apart, but the motion enough was nauseating. He had to debate whether it was a blessing or a curse that he could not throw up.

  When Gabe finally managed to stay alert long enough to think straight, he tried his communications array. Clearing his throat rewarded him with nothing but static, but he tried anyway. “Angel-One to Command. Do you copy?”

  Static and background murmurs were all he heard in response. Gabe tried to pinpoint his location based on the planets and constellations, but his spin meant everything was moving too fast for him to draw a positive fix. “Angel-One to anybody. Come in.”

  Silence was his only answer, and Gabe realized that he was on his own. He had no idea where the fleet was, and even less of a clue how far away he had flown after the battle. His energy reserves were almost depleted—though the battle could have accounted for most of what had been spent—and he didn’t know how much longer the rig could maintain the gravity neutral bubble that kept the rig’s spin from crushing him. Yet he had to try something, if only to find a way out of his predicament.

  Careful not to jostle his mangled rig, he began to brake his momentum and bring a halt to the spin. The tetherdrive seemed to be working fine. It responded well to his direction, and the nauseating twirl of starlight began to slow. Gabe couldn’t restrain a smile; despite everything, he might still—

  Then the tetherdrive gave out with a squeal of failing electronics, and his progress came to a shuddering halt. Gabe smelled burnt wiring, and he didn’t know if it was a real sensation or if the BCI had improvised to communicate the fact that his propulsion had gone the way of the dinosaurs. Any chance he had of flying back to the fleet was dead—his only hope was that someone would stumble across him before his energy reserves faded completely.

  He gritted his teeth and forced himself to check his status. Though the spin had nearly stopped, he continued to twirl softly through space. His rotation gave him a chance to mark the planets and other large objects nearby, and a quick dance of mental calculus told him that he was steadily diving below the plane of the system, out and away from the planet that had sheltered the fleet.

  The angle was much wider than he liked; Susan’s primary contingency plan had called for a sharp course change followed by a blackout, which meant that he was probably getting farther away from her ships rather than closer. Scouting patrols would have meant taking the risk that the Directorate would run across them, so he had no hope that some RSR would see him on a sweep. Susan wouldn’t take that chance, not if it meant putting the rest of the fleet in danger.

  Gabe grunted as he checked his power supply. Given the way his tetherdrive had drained it before it failed, he had obviously started with less than he’d initially thought. Another bout of math told him that his gravity bubble would last only another thirteen hours. Life support would last another ten after that, but by then he could very well have already been smashed against the interior of his own rig.

  Added to those sorry numbers was the tally of injuries his rig had sustained. His right leg was gone—nothing but a trailing set of wires and shattered metal extended from the hip there. The left shoulder had a hole in it the size of a rig’s fist, and the armor around that crater had melted and flowed into the gap. His rig’s hands had been just as badly treated—they’d been wrapped around his rifle when it exploded, and he was missing fingers. He held one hand up to examine it, and saw a star through the hole in its palm.

  With a grunt, Gabe settled his limbs into the most comfortable position he could manage. Moving meant energy, and energy wasted meant time lost. He knew that conserving his resources made no sense—there was no possible way that anyone was going to come to his rescue any time soon—but he wasn’t about to give up on survival now. Gabe prayed that the Lord would send him help, and tried to think of a way out.

  Susan leaned against the bulkhead and laid her head back against the smooth metal. Her tears had run down her cheeks, and she took a moment to wipe them dry before she stood up.

  She was alone in the mystery chamber, separated by several hundred meters of corridor and bulkheads from anyone who could have witnessed her grief. It would not have helped matters to have the rest of the officers see her break down, certainly not when the situation was so entirely desperate.

  “Desperate” almost seemed like too calm a word for the disaster surrounding the Wayfarer fleet. The Redemption may have made it out of the firestorm of Directorate plasma and missiles, but her armor had been shattered and her superstructure broken. There was too much damage to consider the ship an operational craft; now she was good for little more than a scuttling demonstration. The Salvation and the Liberation had fared little better, the former nearly being lost entirely when her tetherdrive broke down, and the latter suffering an onboard fire that had gutted half her interior. Susan shuddered to think of all the crewmen who had died aboard those ships, and wondered how any of the survivors still managed to continue.

  Those cruisers were not the only ones to manage a less-than-total escape. The Foundry had reported that much of her engineering machi
nery had been ruined, and they were still laboring amidst the wreckage to recover what they could. The Fountain, the frigate assigned to carry the fleets’ best water containment and purification systems, had been hit hard enough to fill half her compartments with contamination that would take weeks to filter out, and the Harvest, her food-bearing counterpart, had lost nearly as many supplies to damage.

  Of the Penance, the Scrap, and the Junkyard, she had heard nothing. Mccalister was obviously unable to find the rest of the fleet, either because his detachment had been destroyed, or because the blackout had cut him off from all possible communication. The third possibility—that the mercenaries had finally revolted and reclaimed their captured vessels—was too awful to contemplate.

  The only bright spot—and it was still dim indeed—was that the civilian craft had barely been touched. Their screens had been exposed to the strength of the Directorate’s fire, and none of the unarmed craft had been destroyed. They were ready to flee the system, if that plan was still possible, but Susan had begun to wonder if that escape would only delay the inevitable. There was no chance the Directorate would stop now, not when their prey was wounded so terribly.

  Susan folded her arms and pushed herself away from the wall. It might have been easier—simpler, even—if Gabriel had been with her to face the devastation, but he was gone now. The other pilots had watched him die, killed by a foe that none of them had managed to scratch. A flicker of hatred twisted her features, but was quickly banished by her own sense of despair. How was she going to fight her way through this time?

  A quiet cough made Susan stiffen her back, and her expression fell easily into the professional mask she knew she had to wear. She straightened her uniform for a moment, surreptitiously policing any trace of tears from her eyes, and then she turned. “This is a restricted area. I’m afraid I must ask you to—”