by Eric Nylund
Commander Keyes consulted the countdown timer on his data pad. “Lieutenant Hikowa: fire the nuke.”
“Shiva away, sir! On course—one eight zero, maximum burn.”
Plasma filled the forescreen; the center of the red mass turned blue. Greens and yellows radiated outward, the light frequencies blue-shifting in spectra.
“Distance three hundred thousand kilometers,” Lieutenant Dominique said. “Collision in two seconds.”
Commander Keyes waited a heartbeat then hit the emergency thrusters to port. A bang resonated through the ship’s hull—Commander Keyes flew sideways and impacted with the bulkhead.
The view screen was full of fire and the bridge was suddenly hot.
Commander Keyes stood. He counted the beats of his pounding heart. One, two, three—
If they had been hit by the plasma, there wouldn’t be anything to count. They would be dead already.
Only one view screen was working now, however. “Aft camera,” he said.
The twin blots of fire streaked along their trajectories for a moment, then lazily arced, continuing their pursuit of the Iroquois. One pulled slightly ahead of its counterpart, so they appeared now like two blazing eyes.
Commander Keyes marveled at the aliens’ ability to direct that plasma from such a great distance. “Good,” he murmured to himself. “Chase us all the way to hell, you bastards.
“Track them,” he ordered Lieutenant Hall.
“Aye, sir,” she said. Her perfectly groomed hair was tousled. “Plasma increasing velocity. Matching our speed... overtaking our velocity now. They will intercept in forty-three seconds.”
“Forward camera,” Commander Keyes ordered.
The view screen flashed: the image changed to show the two alien frigates turning to face the incoming Iroquois head-on. Blue lights flickered along their hulls—pulse lasers charging.
Commander Keyes pulled back the camera angle and saw the alien carrier and the destroyer were still inbound toward Sigma Octanus IV. He read their position off his data pad and quickly performed the necessary calculations.
“Course correction,” he told Lieutenant Jaggers. “Come about to heading zero zero four point two five. Declination zero zero zero point one eight.”
“Aye, sir,” Jaggers said. “Zero zero four point two five. Declination zero zero zero point one eight.”
The view screen turned and centered on the enormous Covenant destroyer.
“Collision course!” Lieutenant Hall announced. “Impact with Covenant destroyer in eight seconds.”
“Stand by for new course correction: declination minus zero zero zero point one zero.”
“Aye, sir.” As Jaggers typed he wiped the sweat from his eyes and double-checked his numbers. “Course online. Awaiting your order, sir.”
“Collision with Covenant destroyer in five seconds,” Hall said. She clutched the edge of her seat.
The destroyer grew in the view screen: laser turrets and launch bays, bulbous alien protrusions and flickering blue lights.
“Hold this course,” Commander Keyes said. “Sound collision alarm. Switch to undercarriage camera now.”
Klaxons blared.
The view screen snapped off and on and showed black space—then a flash of the faint purple-blue hull of a Covenant ship.
The Iroquois screeched and shuddered as she grazed the prow of the Covenant destroyer. Silver shields flickered onscreen—then the screen filled with static.
“Course correction now!” Commander Keyes shouted.
“Aye, sir.”
There was a brief burn from the thrusters and the Iroquois nudged down slightly.
“Hull breach!” Lieutenant Hall said. “Sealing pressure doors.”
“Aft camera,” Commander Keyes said. “Guns: Fire aft Archer missile pods!”
“Missiles away,” Lieutenant Hikowa replied.
Keyes watched as the first of the plasma torpedoes that had been trailing the Iroquois impacted on the prow of the alien destroyer. The ship’s shields flared, flickered... and vanished. The second bolt hit a moment later. The hull of the alien ship blazed and then turned red-hot, melted, and boiled. Secondary explosions burst through the hull.
The Archer missiles streaked toward the wounded Covenant ship, tiny trails of exhaust stretching from the Iroquois to the target. They slammed into the gaping wounds in the hull and detonated. Fire and debris burst from the destroyer.
A smile spread across Keyes’ face as he watched the alien ship burn, list, and slowly plunge into Sigma Octanus IV’s gravity well. Without power, the Covenant vessel would burn up in the planet’s atmosphere.
Commander Keyes flicked on the intercom. “Brace for emergency thruster maneuver.”
He punched the thruster controls—explosive force detonated on the starboard side of the ship. The Iroquois nosed toward Sigma Octanus IV.
“Course correction, Lieutenant Jaggers,” he said. “Bring us into a tight orbit.”
“Aye, sir.” He furiously tapped in commands, diverting engine output through attitude thrusters.
The hull of the Iroquois glowed red as it entered the atmosphere. A cloud of yellow ionization built up around the view screen.
Commander Keyes gripped the railing tighter.
The view screen cleared and he could see the stars. The Iroquois entered the dark side of the planet.
Commander Keyes slumped forward and started breathing again.
“Engine coolant failure, sir,” Lieutenant Hall said.
“Shut the engines down,” he ordered. “Emergency vent.”
“Aye, sir. Venting fusion reactor plasma.”
The Iroquois was abruptly quiet. No rumble of her engines. And no one said anything until Lieutenant Hikowa stood and said, “Sir, that was the most brilliant maneuver I have ever seen.”
Commander Keyes gave a short laugh. “You think so, Lieutenant?”
If one of his students had proposed such a maneuver in his tactics class, he would have given them a C+. He would have told them their maneuver was full of bravado and daring... but extremely risky, placing the crew in the ship in unnecessary danger.
“This isn’t over yet. Stay sharp,” he told them. “Lieutenant Hikowa what is the charge status of the MAC guns?”
“Capacitors at ninety-five percent, sir, and draining at a rate of three percent per minute.”
“Ready MAC guns, one heavy round apiece. Arm all forward Archer missile pods.”
“Aye, sir.”
The Iroquois broke free of the dark side of Sigma Octanus IV.
“Fire chemical thrusters to break orbit, Lieutenant Hall.”
“Firing, aye.”
There was a brief rumble. The screen centered on the backsides of the two Covenant frigates they had passed on the way in.
The alien ships started to come about; blue flashes flickered along their hulls as their laser turrets charged. Motes of red collected along their lateral lines. They were readying another salvo of plasma torpedoes.
There was something there, however, that was too small to see on the view screen: the nuke. Keyes had launched that missile in the opposite direction—but its reverse thrust had not completely overcome their tremendous forward velocity.
As the Iroquois had screamed over the prow of the destroyer, and as they orbited Sigma Octanus IV, the nuke had drifted closer to the frigates... who had fixed their attention solidly on the Iroquois.
Commander Keyes tapped his data pad and sent the signal to detonate the bomb.
There was a flash of white, a crackle of lightning, and the alien ships vanished as a cloud of destruction enveloped them. Waves of the EMP interacted with the magnetic field of Sigma Octanus IV—rippled with rainbow borealis. The cloud of vapor expanded and cooled, and faded to yellow, orange, red, then black dust that scattered into space.
Both Covenant frigates, however, were still intact. Their shields, however, flickered once... then went dead.
“Get me firing solutions for
the MAC guns, Lieutenant Hikowa. On the double.”
“Aye, sir. MAC gun capacitors at ninety-three percent. Firing solution online.”
“Fire, Lieutenant Hikowa.”
Two thumps resonated through the hull of the Iroquois.
“Lock remaining Archer missile pods on targets and fire.”
“Missiles away, Commander.”
Twin thunderbolts and hundreds of missiles streaked toward the two helpless frigates.
The MAC rounds tore though them—one ship was holed from nose to tail; the other ship was hit on her midline, right near the engines. Internal explosions chained up the length of the ship, bulging the second ship’s hull along her length.
Archer missiles impacted seconds later, exploding through chunks of hull and armor, tearing the alien ships apart. The frigate that had taken the MAC round in her engines mushroomed, a fireworks bouquet of shrapnel and sparks. The other ship burned, her internal skeletal structure showing now; she turned toward the Iroquois but didn’t fire a weapon... just drifted out of control. Dead in space.
“Position of the Covenant carrier, Lieutenant Hall?”
Lieutenant Hall paused, then reported, “In polar orbit around Sigma Octanus Four. But she’s moving off at considerable speed. Headed out-system, course zero four five.”
“Alert the Allegiance and Gettysburg of her position.”
Commander Keyes sighed and slumped back into his chair. They had stopped the Covenant ships from glassing the planet—saved millions of lives. They had done the impossible: taken on four Covenant ships and won.
Commander Keyes paused in his self-congratulation. Something was wrong. He had never seen the Covenant run. In every battle he had seen or read about, they stayed to slaughter every last survivor... or if they were defeated, they always fought to the last ship.
“Check the planet,” he told Lieutenant Hall. “Look for anything—dropped weapons, strange transmissions. There’s got to be something there.”
“Aye, sir.”
Keyes prayed she wouldn’t find anything. At this point he was out of tricks. He couldn’t turn the Iroquois around and return to Sigma Octanus IV even if he had wanted to. The Iroquois’ engines were down for a long time. They were speeding on an out-system vector at a considerable velocity. And even if they could stop—there was no way to recharge the MAC guns, and no remaining Archer missiles. They were practically dead in space.
He pulled out his pipe and steadied his shaking hand.
“Sir!” Lieutenant Hall cried. “Dropships, sir. The alien carrier deployed thirty—correction: thirty-four—dropships. I have silhouettes descending to the surface. They’re on course for Côte d’Azur. A major population center.”
“An invasion,” Commander Keyes said. “Get FLEETCOM ASAP. Time to send in the Marines.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
0600 Hours, July 18, 2552 (Military Calendar)
UNSC Iroquois, military staging area in orbit around Sigma Octanus IV
Commander Keyes had a sinking feeling that although he had won the battle, it would be the first of many to come in the Sigma Octanus System.
He watched the four dozen other UNSC ships orbit the planet: frigates and destroyers, two carriers, and a massive repair and refitting station—more vessels than Admiral Cole had at his disposal during his four-year-long campaign to save Harvest. Admiral Stanforth had pulled out all the stops.
Although Commander Keyes was grateful for the quick and overwhelming response, he wondered why the Admiral had dedicated so many ships to the area. Sigma Octanus wasn’t strategically positioned. It had no special resources. True, the UNSC had standing orders to protect civilian lives, but the fleet was spread dangerously thin. Commander Keyes knew there were more valuable systems that needed protection.
He pushed these thoughts aside. He was sure Admiral Stanforth had his reasons. Meanwhile the repair and resupply of the Iroquois was his top priority—he didn’t want to get caught half ready if the Covenant returned.
Or rather, when they returned.
It was a curious thing: the aliens dropping their ground forces and then retreating. That was not their usual mode of operation. Commander Keyes suspected this was just an opening move in a game he didn’t yet understand.
A shadow crossed the fore camera of the Iroquois as the repair station Cradle maneuvered closer. Cradle was essentially a large square plate with engines. Large was an understatement; she was over a square kilometer. Three destroyers could be eclipsed by her shadow. The station running at full steam could refit six destroyers, three from her lower surface and three on her upper surface, within a matter of hours.
Scaffolds deployed from her surfaces to facilitate repairs. Resupply tubes, hoses, and cargo trams fed into the Iroquois. It would take the full attention of Cradle thirty hours to repair the Iroquois, however.
The aliens had not landed a single serious shot. Nonetheless, the Iroquois had almost been destroyed during the execution of what some in the fleet were already calling the “Keyes Loop.”
Commander Keyes glanced at his data pad and the extensive list of repairs. Fifteen percent of the electronic systems had to be replaced—burned out from the EMP when the Shiva missile detonated. The Iroquois’ engines required a full overhaul. Both coolant systems had valves that had been fused from the tremendous heat. Five of the superconducting magnets had to be replaced as well.
But most troublesome was the damage to the underside of the Iroquois. When they had told Commander Keyes what had happened, he went outside in a Longsword interceptor to personally inspect what he had done to his ship.
The underside of the Iroquois had been scraped when they passed over the prow of the alien destroyer. He knew there was some damage... but was not prepared for what he saw.
UNSC destroyers had nearly two meters of titaniuma battleplate on their surfaces. Commander Keyes had abraded through all of it. He had breached every bottom deck of the Iroquois. The jagged serrated edges of the plate curled away from the wound. Men in EVA thruster packs were busy cutting off the damaged sections so new plates could be welded into place.
The underside was mirror smooth and perfectly flat. But Keyes knew that the appearance of benign flatness was deceptive. Had the angle of the Iroquois been tilted a single degree down, the force of the two ships impacting would have shorn his ship in half.
The red war stripes that had been painted on the Iroquois’ side looked like bloody slashes. The dockmaster had privately told Commander Keyes that his crew could buff the paint off—or even repaint the war stripes, if he wanted.
Commander Keyes had politely refused the offer. He wanted them left exactly the way they were. He wanted to be reminded that while everyone had admired what he had done—it had been an act of desperation, not heroism.
He wanted to be reminded of how close a brush he had had with death.
Commander Keyes returned to the Iroquois and marched directly to his quarters.
He sat at his antique oak desk and tapped the intercom. “Lieutenant Dominique, you have the bridge for the next cycle. I am not to be disturbed.”
“Aye, Commander. Understood.”
Commander Keyes loosened his collar and unbuttoned his uniform. He retrieved the seventy-year-old bottle of Scotch that his father had given him from the bottom drawer, and then poured four centimeters into a plastic cup.
He had to attend to an even more unpleasant task: what to do about Lieutenant Jaggers.
Jaggers had exhibited borderline cowardice, insubordination and come within a hairbreadth of attempted mutiny during the engagement. Keyes could have had him court-martialed. Every reg in the books screamed at him to... but he didn’t have it in him to send the young man before a board of inquiry. He would instead merely transfer the Lieutenant to a place where he would still do the UNSC some good—perhaps a distant outpost.
Was all the blame his? As Commander, it was his responsibility to maintain control, to prevent a crewman from even thinking that
mutiny was a possibility.
He sighed. Maybe he should have told his crew what he was attempting... but there had simply been no time. And certainly, no time for discussion as Jaggers would have wanted. No. The other bridge officers had concerns, but they had followed his orders, as their duty required.
As much as Commander Keyes believed in giving people a second chance, this was where he drew the line.
To make matters worse, transferring Jaggers would leave a hole in the bridge crew.
Commander Keyes accessed the service records of Iroquois’ junior officers. There were several who might qualify for navigation officer. He flipped through their files on his data pad, and then paused.
The theoretical paper on mass-space compression was still open, as well as his hastily calculated course corrections.
He smiled and archived those notes. He might one day give a lecture on this battle at the Academy. It would be useful to have the original source material.
There was also the data from the Archimedes Sensor Outpost. That report had been thoroughly made: clean data graphs and a navigational course plotted for the object through Slipstream space—not an easy task even with an AI. The report even had tags to route it to the astrophysics section of the UNSC. Thoughtful.
He looked up the service record of the officer who had filed the report: Ensign William Lovell.
Keyes leaned closer. The boy’s Career Service Vitae was almost twice as long as his own. He had volunteered and been accepted at Luna Academy. He transferred in his second year, having already received a commission to Ensign for heroism in a training flight that had saved the entire crew. He took duty on the first outbound corvette headed into battle. Three Bronze Stars, a Silver Cluster, and two Purple Hearts, and he had catapulted to a full Lieutenant within three years.
Then something went terribly wrong. Lovell’s decline in the UNSC had been as rapid as his ascent. Four reports of insubordination and he was busted to Second Lieutenant and transferred twice. An incident with a civilian woman—no details in the files, although Commander Keyes wondered if the girl listed in the report, Anna Gerov, was Vice Admiral Gerov’s daughter.