by Marko Kloos
“Bogey Three is on a perpendicular, passing to port aft,” the tactical officer says. “Bogey Two is closing laterally from our starboard. Bearing five-zero degrees, closing at two hundred meters per second.” He looks up from his display and flicks a hologram over to the main tactical readout on the holotable.
“Sir, Bogey Three is on a collision course. If our speed and heading don’t change, our paths will intersect in twenty-three seconds.”
“Bring propulsion back online,” Colonel Campbell orders. “Hold the burn until the last second. We’re too damn close as it is. I don’t want to light off a signal flare earlier than we have to. Prepare for course change, make your heading zero-five-five by positive zero-four-five. At the last second, helm.”
“Aye-aye, sir,” the helmsman says.
“Is patrol pattern,” Dmitry says behind me. “Like sharks.”
“Exactly like sharks,” Colonel Campbell says. “They’re circling the node, waiting for food. And we’re the minnow.”
I watch as the orange icons for the Lanky seed ships and the lonely blue icon representing the Indy shift around on the plot gradually. One of the orange icons inches closer to our blue one by the second. The computer, ever helpful, has drawn trajectory lines for both ships, and the orange and blue trajectories intersect at a point in space 2,500 kilometers and twelve seconds away.
“Propulsion online,” the engineering officer announces. “Standing by for burn.”
“Burn in three, two, one,” the helmsman says. I swallow hard at the sight of the Lanky ship approaching from starboard, intruding into our section of space like a careless hydrobus driver. “Burn.”
The fusion engines come back to life with a thrum, and even with the antigravity deck plating keeping us on our feet, the sense of sudden acceleration is dramatic. The tactical display on the holotable spins as the Indy reorients herself to correct her trajectory with the thrust generated by her powerful main propulsion system.
“Come to new bearing, all ahead flank. Get us the hell out of here,” Colonel Campbell shouts.
The Lanky ship on the optical sensor feed grows larger and larger on the display. Even with the cameras at minimum optical zoom, the seed ship blocks most of the view to our starboard as the distance between us decreases rapidly. I really do feel like a minnow, but the Lanky ship isn’t a shark—it’s a whale, and it’s about to swallow us without intent, purely by accident of proximity. At this distance, I can make out details on the Lanky ship I’ve never seen before—elongated bumps, irregular patterns of texture that almost look like bark or wrinkles on wet skin. I know it’s a ship—I’ve seen plenty of recon footage of them deploying seedpods by the hundreds onto colony worlds—but it’s not the first time that I find myself thinking it looks like a living, sentient thing.
Indy counter-burns her engines at full thrust to correct her path, then swings around to the new heading, which has us racing alongside the Lanky ship going roughly the same direction. The Lanky is going at a steady two hundred meters per second, but Indy is accelerating at maximum gravities, streaking through space like a guided missile. We are so close to the seed ship that it feels like I could open an airlock and touch their hull. Two more seconds of uncorrected trajectory, and we would have shattered against that hull at thousands of meters per second.
“Come to new heading zero-five-zero by negative four-five,” Colonel Campbell orders. “Give this asshole some space.”
“Aye-aye, sir,” the helmsman acknowledges.
Behind me, Dmitry curses in Russian again. We pull away from the Lanky ship—not nearly quickly enough for my taste—and the Indy turns slightly, pointing her bow at the space below and to the left of the Lanky. Despite our difference in speed, we are still not completely clear of the seed ship.
“Too close,” the tactical officer warns. “They spotted us, I think. I see activity on their port hull.”
The camera feed shows the flank of the Lanky from an upside-down angle. I can clearly see movement—not the mechanical opening of missile tubes like on a human warship, but rather dilations, small holes opening in the side of the Lanky ship in a cascading wave of what looks like contractions on the flank of an animal.
“Go active on all sensors,” Colonel Campbell shouts. “Weapons, set the CIWS to Condition Red. All hands, brace for incoming.”
I turn around and grasp the railing of the CIC pit. More displays come to life as the various stations around the pit have their functions restored, the ship regaining her eyes and ears, and what few teeth she has. The CIWS, the ship’s close-in weapons system, is designed to swat enemy missiles out of space before they can reach Indy and blow her up. I don’t know if they work against Lanky penetrators, which don’t show up on radar and move at insane speeds, but anything is better than no defensive measures at all.
“Bogey One and Two are changing course,” the tactical officer warns. “They’re starting to come about.”
“Cat’s out of the bag now,” Colonel Campbell says. “Get us the hell out of this neighborhood.”
“Incoming,” the tactical officer shouts. “Visual launch confirmation. Vampire, vampire. All hands, brace for—”
There’s a series of thundering bangs, and Indy shudders perceptibly. All over the CIC, warning lights and alarms start going off.
“Multiple impacts! Explosive decompression in multiple compartments.”
“Roll the ship,” Colonel Campbell orders. “Come to new heading one-zero-zero by negative four-five, zig and zag evasive pattern. Weapons, go active on the rail gun and return fire. I’ll be damned if I let them shoot holes in my ship without shooting back.”
“Aye, sir.” The weapons officer activates the ship’s rail gun mount. I can’t see the control screen, but I can hear the metallic clang of the projectiles transmitting vibration through the hull as they leave the electrified rails of the cannon barrel at Mach 20. Then I see the impacts blooming on the hull of the nearby seed ship. The super-dense penetrators from the rail gun would shear through a fleet frigate from bow to stern at such close range, but as far as I can tell, they’re not even scratching the hull as they shatter into stardust on whatever unearthly material the Lankies use for armor plating.
“We took some major hits,” the engineering officer says. “Half the damage board is red.”
“Collect reports and have damage control stand by. We’ll sort this shit out when we’re in the clear.”
“Incoming,” the tactical officer warns, not quite as urgently as before. “They’re spraying blind at this point. We’re out of their weapons envelope.”
“Keep our course and don’t let up on the throttle,” Colonel Campbell orders. “And go full EMCON again. Visual kit only.”
“Aye, sir.”
Whatever the Lankies hit, the propulsion system and main reactor are not among the destroyed systems. Indy is running from the area around the Alcubierre node as fast as her fusion drive allows, and that’s all that matters right now. The Lanky seed ships keep circling around in irregular search patterns, but it’s pretty clear from the optical tracking that we’ve turned invisible to them again. Ten minutes pass, then fifteen. After twenty minutes of sustained maximum acceleration, the seed ships are small enough in the optical feed to not invoke a feeling of imminent demise in me anymore. All around me, there’s hectic activity in the CIC as department heads collect reports from their subordinates and issue orders.
“Throttle back, let us coast for a while,” Colonel Campbell says. “Damage reports.”
The XO consults her display. “Looks like we took two hits. Both penetrators nailed our lower aft starboard side and went right through to the top fore port side. We have decompressed compartments on Alpha, Bravo, and Echo decks, and seven compartments forward of frame twenty-five are open to space.”
She scrolls through the data on his display with the flick of a finger.
“Missile tubes one and three are gone. The secondary data bus got shredded. We lost the forward wat
er recyclers and the entire port-side freshwater tank. Officers’ mess is gone. And the auxiliary neural-networks cluster is offline. We have four KIA. Would be more if everyone hadn’t been in vacsuits.”
“That was sort of the point,” Colonel Campbell says. “After Versailles, I’ve become a firm believer in vacsuit ops. Have those damage-control teams patch what they can with what we have.”
“We’ll need a month in a fleet yard just to plug the holes,” the engineering officer says.
“Well, ain’t none of those nearby. Where the hell are we, anyway? Astrogation, give me a fix. And then I’m going to need a fucking drink after all this excitement.”
“More bad news, Skipper,” the XO says.
“Well, don’t make me wait.”
“The number-two parasite fighter bay took a direct hit. The fighter’s scrap, and the refueling nodes in number two are shot to shit.”
“There goes half our offensive fighter power.”
Colonel Campbell sighs loudly and runs a hand through the short stubble of his regulation-length buzz cut.
“Well, I suppose it could have been worse. Welcome back to the solar system, I guess.”
The navigation fix places us right on the inner edge of the asteroid belt, two hundred fifty million kilometers away from the sun and sixty million kilometers from Mars. The plot on the CIC holotable updates with the plotted course back to Earth.
“That takes us awfully close to Mars,” the XO says. Major Renner looks like she hasn’t had any decent sleep in a month. Indy is at the limit of her endurance for interstellar deployments, and so is her crew. With the weather the way it is on New Svalbard right now, very few of the crew members actually got to catch some fresh air and a change of scenery while Indy played orbital bodyguard to the colony, so most of her crew have been on watch rotation for over three months without a break.
“What about the Titan fleet yards? They’re way past the asteroid belt. Maybe they’re still around.”
“Mars is the way we have to go,” Colonel Campbell says. “After that run through half of Fomalhaut, we don’t have the fuel left to try for the outer solar system. I wouldn’t want to try and take a damaged ship through the belt even if we did.”
He looks around in the CIC, where every pair of eyes is fixed on the holotable in the center of the room.
“We’re here to scout out the path to Earth, and that’s what we will do, folks. If Earth is still in human hands, we can rearm and refuel, get the dents hammered out. And if the Lankies have the place, none of this matters a good goddamn anyway.”
He studies the plot again and points to the computer-generated trajectory.
“We’ll coast for a bit until we have the worst of the damage patched up. Then we go for a low burn toward Mars, and use the gravity well to dogleg over to Earth. Helm, lay in the course. Tactical, let’s keep the active radiation to a bare minimum. It’s not like we can spot the bastards on radar, anyway. Optical recon only, and stay sharp. I want a recon bird out on our trajectory as a curb feeler. Maximum telemetry range, passive listen only. Let’s get to it, folks.”
The CIC crew tend to their new duties in a flurry of activity. I feel a little in the way now in my bulky armor, taking up a good amount of space down here in the pit.
“Sir, what can I do to make myself useful around here?”
Colonel Campbell looks at me and runs his hand through his short hair again.
“Hell, Mr. Grayson, you’ve been fleet long enough. Never miss an opportunity to grab some rack time if it presents itself. Take our guest with you and get out of armor for now.”
He looks at the holographic display in front of him and pokes at our trajectory line with his index finger.
“Mars is occupied space. And I’ll eat my collar eagles if the sixty million klicks of space between here and there aren’t lousy with Lanky seed ships. If they know where the doorway is, they know which way we have to come. Best keep that armor close, Mr. Grayson. You’ll be needing it again soon enough, I think.”
“Aye-aye, sir.” I turn to leave and signal Dmitry to follow me. The armed SI guard at the hatch opens it for us, and we step out into the corridor in the center of Charlie Deck. It’s only when I release my helmet seal and let the cool air of the environmental system replace the stale air in my battle armor that I realize my back is completely sweat-soaked, even though I haven’t moved more than a few feet since we got out of Alcubierre.
CHAPTER 7
It’s strange to be in the inner solar system and not hear any comms chatter at all.
The inner system is usually a busy, noisy place, despite the vast distances even between intersystem planets and moons. We’ve had a hundred years to put infrastructure into place, and you can place video comms from one of the asteroids in the belt to your family on Earth, provided they allocate you the priority bandwidth and you don’t mind holding a conversation with a six-minute delay between replies. But as we coast through the space between the belt and Mars, there’s nothing at all on the comms frequencies. Indy is a signal-intelligence ship among her other functions, so she has good ears, but nobody out there is talking.
“Got visual on another Lanky,” the tactical officer says. “Distance four hundred kilometers. Designate bogey Lima-7. Bearing zero-one-eight by positive one-three-eight. Reciprocal heading, moving at two hundred meters per second steady.”
“Stay on course,” Colonel Campbell orders. “He’ll pass with room to spare. We’ve dodged closer.”
In the past few hours, we’ve detected and evaded half a dozen Lanky seed ships loitering along our pathway toward Mars. Even with the excellent optical gear on Indy, the Lankies are all but invisible until they’re almost on top of us, astronomically speaking. We are coasting on our trajectory, using the momentum from our earlier burn that set us on our way, and without radar emissions or engine-exhaust signature, Indy is a hole in space, a black cat in a dark room.
“There’s no way the rest of the fleet can make this run,” the XO says.
“No, there isn’t. Even if they make it past that welcoming committee at the transition point, they’ll get chewed up before they’re halfway to Mars,” Colonel Campbell says.
The damage-control crews are still at work patching up the ship’s wounds. The penetrator rods fired by the Lanky ships are short ranged, but whatever ends up in their path gets foot-wide holes blown through it at hypersonic speeds. Indy’s agility and small size let her avoid most of the salvo from the seed ship, but the two projectiles that hit hurt the ship badly. They blew through Indy from our bottom right flank to the top left of the hull, wrecking everything in their path. Still, most of us are alive, the ship is moving, and most of the compartments have air in them.
As we make our way toward the gravity well of Mars, I use one of the CIC data consoles to go through the pictures of the Lanky seed ships we’ve encountered so far, studying them like an encyclopedia of advanced superpredators, and I realize that for all our struggles with them, all the ass-kickings we have doled out and received over the last five years, we know next to nothing about them.
“They’re all different, you know,” someone says from behind my right shoulder. I turn around and see the tactical officer looking over my shoulder. He’s sipping soy coffee from a mug with the ship’s seal on it.
“Different how?” I ask.
“You know whale pods, back on Earth?”
I nod.
“They’re all individuals, right? You can listen to them on sonar and tell them apart by voices. When they’re on the surface, you can see markings and scars and stuff.”
He points at the screen in front of me, which shows two seed ships side by side in profile.
“Those guys? Same thing. We’ve been cataloguing every one we spot. Speed, size, patrol path, optical profile. They don’t have hull numbers like we do, of course. But once you’re close enough for optical gear, you can tell them apart. A mark here, a bump there. Ripple in the skin. That sort of thing.”
He takes another sip of his coffee.
“Ours all look the same ’cause they all came out of the same fleet yard. Built to the same set of blueprints. These guys? They don’t look like they’ve been built at all.”
“They don’t look uniform enough,” I say.
“Right. Cheery thought, huh? Maybe there’s an even bigger mother ship pumping these things out somewhere. Like a whale birthing a calf.”
“Cheery thought,” I agree.
“Getting some traffic from Mars now,” the sergeant manning the signals-intelligence station in CIC says a few hours later. We are well into the second half of our parabolic trajectory that will slingshot us around Mars and toward Earth.
“Anything on fleet channels?” the XO asks.
“Uh, sort of, ma’am. All I’m getting right now is automated traffic on the fleet emergency band.”
“Crash buoys,” Colonel Campbell says darkly.
“Yes, sir.”
As we get closer to Mars and the signals burn through the interplanetary clutter, the plot on the holotable in the center of the CIC updates with the blinking pale blue icons of automatic emergency buoys. The computer assigns ship IDs to the signals as they are identified and sorted out.
“FF-478 Guadalupe Hidalgo,” the XO reads out loud. “CVA-1033 Alberta. Damn, that’s one of the Commonwealth-class carriers. CG-759 Vanguard. DD-772 Jorge P. Acosta. CG-99 Caledonia.”
“I know the skipper of Caledonia,” Colonel Campbell says. “Jana Mackay. I went to Fleet Command School with her.”