by Rolf Nelson
“Nothing detected out that way. The guns are much nearer the river, here,” the armored soldier avatar replied, noting with an X a spot on the west side. “There are others another twenty kilometers east, firing south.”
“Show me everything that looks military.” Pale icons show up on the screen indicating uncertain identifications and locations, the ones to the north near the river are irregularly clustered as if recently deployed from movement, with signifiers they are not entrenched, and those farther east are evenly distributed and well dug in. “OK, no river crossing equipment. So they are likely the same ones that shot us down, then moved on the city when our side shelled us for disobeying orders and taking over the transport.”
“Incoming craft from the northeast are claiming to be unarmed neutral medical support contractors. Limited scans indicate light guns and two missile pods each on hardpoints. They are demanding we identify ourselves,” Quiri reported.
“Tell them we’re the mercy ship Nautilus, and we can see they are armed. If they are here to help, fine, if they fire on us we’ll shift arty counter-fire to them for a few charge cycles and they can join the ranks of those checking out the afterlife. How many guns active on that side?” Helton replied. A schematic of usable guns appears on a screen, more complicated than normal because some of the usable guns had significantly reduced aiming capability. “Cover them with the one-twenties. Drop ‘em if they give us so much as a target lock.”
The reply to their claimed identity is met with a laughing snort of derision. “Yeah, sure you are, buddy! And I’m the king of Alrorian Prime!”
Quiritis’s angry reply leaves no room for misunderstanding. “You better get your eyes off your instruments and on the target, pinhead, because you are this close” she held her fingers up to the com camera, very close together “to being turned into Swiss-flippin’-cheese by my gunnery chief, who is getting really pissed off at still being in a war zone and not being able to shoot someone again already!”
On the screen showing the incoming video from one of the inbound ship’s cockpit the smirking figure of the pilot made a few adjustments to his controls to get an exterior visual of Tajemnica zoomed in. The effect on his expression when he realized he’s staring down the barrels of several cannons was immediate and profound. His impression of the ship he faced was instantly reformed. The surreal drapery of driftwood and kelp on the battle-scarred ship make an outsized impression as he licked his suddenly-dry lips. “WOAH! Hey, there, lady! Roger that, Nautilus, read you five by five! Hands are off all weapons controls, Ma’am. Ready to believe you are whoever you say you are, Ma’am. Just here to help the injured!”
“And you’d damn well better keep it that way, plankton-brain! If you think we look bad, you ought to see the frigates that did this to us. Oh, no, wait… You can’t!”
The two contractor ships slowed their approach, coming in steadily, reporting their casualty capacity and negotiating landing parameters very carefully with the hospital.
Helton picked up the mic and punches for a general PA and local broadcast. “This is the Captain. Attention all Mike and November Company personnel without serious or life-threatening injuries. We will be lifting shortly and heading out-system. You can stay ashore and take your chances with the government, and we’ll do what we can to mess with their records to give you a chance for a little while. Or you can stay aboard and take your chances with us. I can’t guarantee anything except exile, getting shot at for a while, rocketing to the top of the interstellar criminal list, and that we can try to drop you off, eventually, wherever you want to get dropped. As you can see from the condition of the ship, there are people that don’t like us. It’s been an honor serving with you, even if none of us chose this path. Unload the injured, then either get aboard or disappear. Best of luck either way.”
On the cargo deck and ramp there was a momentary silence amid the sizzling pop of laser fire and the finally-arriving rolling thunder of detonating artillery shells. Without a word, everyone started moving again, making room for the landing contract casualty ships, handing off the injured from casualty bags to gurneys, and redirecting for the lowering ramps of the hospital ships and their waiting auto-docs, with whispered words of luck, prayers, and getting word to family. Then nearly every one of Mike and November companies who was able returned to Tajemnica’s ramp and still-damp cargo bay.
On the bridge, Kwon and Harbin were sorting through sensor data, news feeds, and hacked-into security cameras, coming up with nothing except for a gun battle on the east side of town where an apparent skirmish line of troops had dug in surrounding the town. “Can’t see the city shooting anyone on its own, being neutral ground,” Harbin noted. “Can’t hurt to pay them a quick visit before we knock out the artillery.”
“Can’t we just shoot them now?” Kwon asked.
“No. Lasers and the 120mm cannon are direct fire. Hostiles are just beyond those hills. Need to be higher or closer for a good angle. Be there soon enough.”
“Sorry I can’t get better pics on sensors,” Taj’s tanker avatar apologized. “Not really built for long distance swimmin’, ya’know. I’m flyin’ mostly blind, here, kiddos.”
“Doing fine, my friend,” Helton reassured the AI, scanning the words on his screen while donning his space armor in preparation for whatever was coming. “Time to see if that’s Allonia causing those soldiers heartburn.” He picked up the mic and thumbed the PA button. “Weapons up, guys! Need to check out a situation, see if Mr. Smith’s wife needs help in a firefight. Yeah, she’s like that. Oh, in case you missed it, his real name is Sergeant Dorek Kaminski, Plataean freelancer, and his wife is one reason we we’re alive and wanted, and she’s almost as tough as he is. Stand by. Landing in two or three minutes.”
“And if a couple of them could hustle up to the mid and upper decks to shuffle ammo and toss a few tank rounds into the magazines of working guns it would give me more options. Down to five rounds of white phosphorous and two HE rounds between the only two fully functioning turrets,” Taj’s avatar pointed out.
“Get Mike company rifle squads three and four on it” Helton ordered, looking over what little of the outside situation he could on screens, before pulling on his helmet and grabbing a rifle from the ready-rack on the wall and headed for the cargo deck.
As he passed the mid-deck Nesbit waved him down. “She’s in bad shape, and sensors are seriously crippled. We need to see if we can splice into the local network with a hard connection.”
“We can’t be totally blind. She’s doing fine on shooting down incoming rounds.”
Taj interrupted him, with a smiling avatar. “Stationary point to point unguided ballistic trajectories of more than twenty seconds with laser counter-fire and proximity fuses screaming at me the whole way? I could talk you through that kindergarten problem with a slide rule and solve it with time to spare. I’m mostly blind, not totally dead.”
“We can’t exactly splice into a local news feed directly, I wouldn’t think” Helton objected.
“Sure we can. Just use a standard Rj323 hot-splice coupling on a terahertz fiber and-”
Helton cut him off. “Taj, do you have the hardware?”
“Likely so. If not I can fab it up in about five minutes in engineering, between the CNC and molecular deposition unit. A direct local feed would help a lot.”
“Outstanding, Duke!” The captain grinned at the computer geek in his element. “Take charge, make sure the specs work, be her hands and make it happen! I have to take care of some other things in the mean time.”
He took the stairs two at a time and entered the cargo deck shouting commands in all directions to move ammo, help Nesbit, prep for landing and possible casualties, get the few moderately injured to sick bay, and get some screens and sensors working again in the recently flooded cargo compartment.
Helton stood on the lowered ramp to provide his suit-camera view to Tajemnica as she came in to hover and slowly land in the middle of the gunfight. It wa
s near a building with utility access markings Nesbit indicated was a likely a good target for some hardwiring. As the ship landed, a half dozen of the now-free conscripts lay prone, and under Kaminski’s direction looked over the edge of the ramp. They aimed their rifles down on the loose line of men on the outskirts of town who had the three they were rescuing pinned down. The decrepit-looking craft extended her landing pads and set gently on the ground of the city park, then lowered herself all the way down to prevent anyone shooting underneath. Tajemnica was not ten meters from the dirt-filled decorative planting wall and shot up vehicle which Brother Libra and the two ladies were taking cover behind. Helton strode off the ramp as Allonia and Roy stood up grinning widely, then reached down and picked up Sharon, one on each side of her. They turned her to face him. Sharon’s eyes grew wide at the spectacle of the ship and Helton’s armored figure confidently waving Nesbit’s squad at a run down the side ramp toward their mission spot, trailing a fiber optic cable from a spool and carrying a load of tools.
“Everyone seems to be running late today! So, need a lift anywhere?” He looked at his gawking sister, her eyes moving back and forth between him and his ship. He waved towards Tajemnica. “You were not believing, I think?”
Sharon looked at the scarred hulk. “Can’t be. It can’t be true.”
“The universe sees her and trembles. Needs a little work right now, but I think it’ll buff out. What kept you?”
“Town got surrounded before we could bug out, had a series of blockages and firefights. Tried to be cautious on account of the ladies,” Roy said. “Everyone OK?”
“Well enough.” Helton pointed to his ear. “Can’t hear. Close shelling. Taj is transcribing for me. We should be able to lift in a couple minutes with a few more mouths staying for dinner.”
Over at the side utility building, one of Moffett’s squad got the door open, giving Nesbit’s team access to the interior. One of the turrets on the far side fired, the thundering blast echoing strangely and malevolently among the city walls and making people jump. Nesbit’s voice came in over the com and on Helton’s monocle screen. “Hey, just lost a cable! Careful with the big guns out there! Glad we got them, don’t want to lose the wire with a careless shot… Ah-HA! Got another live one. Should be spliced in shortly.”
Helton shook Roy’s hand heartily and looked around the area. “Wasn’t expecting you, Brother. Anyone else in the woodwork we need to pick up?”
Brother Libra shook his head. “Nobody of consequence. We came over with a few others, but they had their own business to take care of.” They watched as Allonia ran over and jumped on Dorek, giving him a bear hug and a kiss while wrapping her legs around him, evoking much laughter and clapping from the men not immediately otherwise occupied.
“Ah, young love.” Helton looked at his sister. “I love it when a plan comes together.” She just looked back at him, still half in a state of shock from the whole situation. “Come on, let’s go meet your sister-in-law.” With a gentle push from Libra as he slung his rifle, Sharon followed the much-changed brother she thought she knew up the ramp, while the occasional shot rang out, the buzzing of lasers heating the humid air amid the dull background roar of surf and artillery shells gave the seaweed-draped ship a surrealistic soundtrack matching its appearance.
After getting scared seeing Harbin coming up the stairwell, Sharon arrived on the bridge trailing after Helton just as several screens lit up with rapidly changing images. “Oh, baby! Yeah! Got eyes again!” the armored tanker avatar chortles. “Man’s a cer-tee-fied genius. Hooked into all the local feeds. Cameras everywhere, port controllers, even a-”
“Don’t get carried away, Taj.”
“No worries, bub. Been doing this a while. Low profile is muh middle name… unlike yours, it appears.” Parade pictures from a local news site flash on a screen. “They make a nice looking couple, eh? Anyway… On to business. Yup, soldiers all along, moving into the port, air traffic restricted and nothing showing cause they shut it all down. OK, fiddling with records while I search for things… This useful?” An image of Allonia’s group in a pub with the bank manager clearly getting a rejection from one of the other ladies who had come over with them. “Anyone we need to worry about?”
Brother Libra chuckled at the image and memory. “No. Just some people we flew over with. They’ll be fine.”
“Wait a sec,” Helton paused, looking concerned. “If you can see these pics… how long before we are identified and draw down a world of hurt? We’re in no shape to fight off another squadron.”
“Ah…. Well, small city, one official news channel… looks like I can tweak the real-time feeds, and munge their older items, leaving just a few doctored images… Working on it… How’s this look?” Taj popped up modified surveillance camera view of where they had landed, showing a smaller, much more rounded, sleek, and undamaged craft with a shiny new paint job.
“I like it. What about Harbin, Kaminski, and myself? And Allonia?”
“She wasn’t in the parade, so there are a lot fewer images of her, I’ll see what I can do. Kaminski is a virtual unknown, shouldn’t be a major problem. Harbin is barely recognizable, but I can change those I can find. You’re at the back…. Hardly any images, and most of those are only partial. How about…” A picture of Helton walking past appeared, then altered rapidly with a nose job, eye change, and some color, making him look generically East Asian. “Good?”
“Great! Now, can you find out the best direction to get out of here?”
“Working on it. Not a lot of data from the air traffic control. Jamming from the northern battalion is likely pushing contract levels. Enough to make things hard for me given the current state of the sensors.”
“We might have to take them out to get a good picture….” Helton chinned his suit mic. “Duke, do you think we can splice into a mil net if we can find a wire?”
A moment later Nesbit’s voice came in, muffled by the throat mic he’s wearing and new to. “I’d think so. I worked for a military subcontractor for a couple of years. Hardware is about the same. Packet protocols are a little different, but physically the differences are mostly with robustness of weather-resistant couplings and the-”
“If we get you a line, can you get us a connection?” Helton asked, cutting him off. “Will you need anything else that you didn’t have here?”
“Should be able to. Yes. No, don’t think there’s anything else.”
“OK, then get it ready. We’ll take off soon, hit them, take out whatever we need to, splice in, and figure a vector from there once we know what’s going on. Get ready to get back aboard.”
“Roger that, Captain! Or would that be aye-aye? I’m not really used to this stuff yet.”
“Never mind formalities, Nesbit! Doing fine. Just be ready to run for the ramp when we lift.”
The minutes ticked by with Taj getting her bearings after two weeks spent hiding under water with minimal news, searching for and changing imagery and reports, digging into databases to alter entries where possible, determining locations and movements of possibly important people or groups, and sucking down news reports that might indicate the state of political affairs. While the AI flogged photons, Harbin lead a rifle-squad to the top of Tajemnica to do their best to keep the few enemy heads that popped up lowered, Kaminski and Allonia exchanged notes on recent activities and the overall situation while organizing things for the expected soon-to-happen fight and flight, Helton and Quiritis did their best to cover their tracks and brainstorm ways to throw the military off their trail long enough to get out of the system alive.
“We’re the definition of non-stealth right now, so slipping out unnoticed on radar or anything else is out of the question,” Quiritis pointed out. “Ragged holes, melted parts, lots of odd angles.” She shook her head, frowning.
“The city has surveillance cameras everywhere, and a lot of people are now on the beach; it sounds like they are wondering if any more ships will show up. Can’t fly out tha
t way without being seen and reported. Once they know we can hide in the ocean they’ll focus on it, and I can’t hide there much longer without losing more critical systems.”
“Once someone in higher command identifies us, everything else will become back-burner and they’ll converge on us. We really need a cloaking device.” Helton scrunched up his nose, looking at the data and images flowing across his screens.
Sharon, finally coming to grips that what she was seeing and hearing was a totally new reality she needed to adjust to and not just a twisted dream, finally chimed in. “It looks hopeless. You can’t leave, you can barely fly, you have injured, and I can see why you’re wanted. Can’t you just surrender and let the lawyers sort it out without getting everyone killed?”
Quiritis looked back and forth between her and Helton. “You sure you’re related?” Helton smiled ruefully and nodded. “Look, sister-in-law. I know we just met, but let’s get one thing straight. Taj doesn’t give up. She’s a fully self-aware AI more than four centuries old. Helton represents an existential threat to most governments, as does Allonia. It’s the lawyers who want to destroy them even more than the military. We’ve all been through worse recently and made it out. So any more talk about surrender and I’m personally throwing your ass right back off the ramp you walked up, family or not. Help with some ideas or shut it.”
“What can possibly be worse than what is out there right now?” Sharon demanded to know, affronted by such direct words. “You can’t fight, you can hardly fly, and it is only a matter of time before the army’s ships show up-”
“The navy has ships, sis.”
“-and you appear to be fresh out of any fictional cloaking device or alien technology that will let you sink into the ground right here and disappear.”
Quiritis cut off a sarcastic reply upon seeing the expression on her husband’s face. “What is it, dearest?” Helton started to make several replies as lots of ideas careen around inside his skull. Quiritis glanced at Sharon. “That’s his I have an idea look. Ever seen it?” Sharon nodded vaguely and shrugged. “Learn to respect it.” She held up a finger to her lips for quiet, smiled, and turned back to scanning data as Helton thought furiously and Sharon worried.