A Fiery Sunset

by Chris Kennedy

  “And you believe the rest of the Human mercs are prisoners on Karma?” the Peacemaker didn’t seem convinced or unconvinced. He just listened.

  “We know that to be true, based on a report provided to Commander Cromwell.”

  “The Peacemaker Guild has had good dealings with the Winged Hussars,” he said. “They’ve helped us from time to time.” Jim nodded. “Still, you haven’t said why you want the Raknar.”

  “For an edge,” he said.

  “I’m not sure I can stand aside while you steal these from the KzSha.”

  “Technically speaking, they don’t belong to the KzSha,” Jim said. The Peacemaker leaned closer. “The KzSha are squatting here; they never filed a lease with the Cartography Guild.” Jim smiled up at the huge ursoid. “Finders keepers.”

  “Interesting thought,” the Peacemaker replied. “My people have a similar saying; a possession in one claw is as good as desire in the other nine.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  The Peacemaker looked at the CASPers waiting nearby, then Jim, then out the doorway Jim had arrived through. “Have you seen the sunset on this world?” Caught off guard, Jim shook his head. “It’s quite beautiful.” The Peacemaker turned toward the exit. “I think I’ll go watch it. I trust you won’t do anything illegal in the hour it takes for the sun to set?” The Oogar Peacemaker looked back at Jim, and he’d swear the big purple bear winked, then trudged up the dirt and out of the site.

  “What the fuck was that all about?” Hargrave asked.

  “I have no idea,” Jim said, “but unless I miss my guess, we have exactly one hour to get these things out of here!” He looked around. “Splunk,” he yelled. “Splunk, we ready?”

  “Good to go, .”

  The squad of CASPers worked together to clear one of the massive doorways, which only took a few minutes. As soon as it was clear, one of the twenty crawlers Alexis had fabricated for him came rolling into the warehouse…followed by another, and another.

  She’d far exceeded what he’d thought they were capable of in only a few hours’ work. A Winged Hussars’ manufactory turned out the machines based on Jim’s specifications. He couldn’t take credit for it; the Raknar-tender was a design he’d found months ago. While there wasn’t much on building or operating the Raknars, there was quite a bit on maintenance and handling.

  Basically a tracked, articulated frame fit with powerful lifting fans, it rolled up in front of a mecha Splunk had tagged then, like a scorpion, bent up and over backward, grabbing the Raknar in a wrap-around bear hug. Using a combination of hydraulic and metallic muscles similar to what powered the newer CASPers, the haulers unhooked the Raknar from the wall and lowered them to a horizontal position. The tracks took over and rolled them outside. Once there, the fans came alive, and 1,000 tons of war machine was lifted up and away.

  An hour later the Peacemaker walked down the dirt drift to find no sign of the Humans, and 20 empty spots in the walls. The sounds of powerful lifting fans retreated toward the KzSha complex. His radio came alive, telling him the KzSha armed forces were trying to scramble in response to an incident.

  “Tell them to stand down,” he said, “by order of the Peacemaker Guild.”

  “Understood, Enforcer,” the reply came back. Half an hour later, the roar of shuttles boosting into the night sky echoed up from the valley floor. He turned his head and saw the brilliant streaks of their engines burning upward. He contacted his assistant. “I need to prepare a communication packet to go out on the next Guild courier.”

  * * *

  EMS Pegasus, 2nd Level Hyperspace

  “Is that report ready yet?” Alexis asked, floating back into the CIC. She’d been in the docking bridge, an exposed blister of windows that allowed for close maneuvering of the ship. Despite the disconcerting effect 2nd Level Hyperspace had on her mind, she’d wanted to look at the ships directly.

  “Long said any minute,” Paka said. “How do they look?”

  “Like Pegasus,” she told her XO. Her predecessors had done their share of looking for more Egleesius-class ships, all without luck. It only made sense. As tough and disproportionately powerful as they were, if any other examples of the deadly warships still existed from the Great Galactic War, everyone would know about them. The ship was rife with speculation about finding them there. The only one who didn’t seem to hold an opinion was the one who should’ve known the most.

  “Still no comment?”

  “” Ghost replied. That concerned Alexis, because Ghost seemed to always have something to say.

  “Engineer Long is reporting,” Hoot announced.

  “On the Tri-V,” Alexis said and pulled herself over to her command chair. In normal space she’d have just floated over there, but 2nd Level Hyperspace was frustrating that way.

  On the big Tri-V, six images similar to Pegasus appeared. Their Jeha chief engineer began speaking over the images.

  “We were incorrect,” he said. “These are not six Egleesius-class battlecruisers.” The images morphed into wire frame drawings with measurements and details. “Four of them are; the other two are something else entirely. Their proportions are identical, but they only have shields, no offensive weaponry. The spinal mount door is larger and considerably more robust. The ship has four fusion torches instead of three and is lacking any shuttle bays. Frankly, I’m stumped as to what they are.”

  “How about hyperspatial capabilities?” Alexis asked.

  “All six have shunts.”

  “Okay,” she said, “now the next question. What’s their general condition?”

  “We haven’t been able to gain access to the two unusual ones. They don’t have airlocks either, so we’ve concentrated on the four Egleesiuses. They’ve all seen heavy battle. If I had a week, I could get two of them moving under their own power. Their interiors are a disaster. A lot of equipment has been stripped. Like the ships already salvaged, there’s nothing biological aboard. These also look like there were battles inside them. We found a section of a small craft that looks a lot like the one we salvaged last time. I think it was cut in half by weapons fire.”

  “Are the hulls sufficiently intact?”

  “Sure,” he said. “There’s a lot of damage, but none have suffered catastrophic damage. They’re all missing hyperspace generators. Looks like they were salvaged but the shunts, like ours, can’t be removed without chopping up the hull. There’s not enough F11 to run a backup generator. What’re your orders, Captain?”

  “I want them all rigged for transition back to New Warsaw.” The connection was silent for a time.

  “With those two Izlian ships, do you know how complicated the connections will be? Rigging three ships would have been challenging; six is crazy.”

  “Eight,” Alexis corrected him, “I said all of them.”

  “Commander,” Long complained, “that’s not possible.”

  “Anything is possible, unless it’s impossible. Are you saying you can’t do it?”

  “No,” he replied slowly, “running the power to pull the other ships with us isn’t the issue. With our improved fusion plants, we have a good surplus even with the extra-large hyperspace gateway we’ll have to generate. The issue is we’ll have to hook all these ships together. Throwing a cable over isn’t enough. Cruisers aren’t designed to hook to other cruisers. Smaller ships, sure. The stability issues are off the scale. One wrong move, and we could tear Pegasus in half or have one of the other ships pivot and smash into our hull.”

  In practice, the Winged Hussars didn’t use parasite tactics very often. Large, combined fleets would have their battlecruisers and battleships carry squadrons of frigates and gunboats on their hulls. It reduced the power consumption of the larger ships and allowed the smaller ones to dedicate more of their design toward combat capability. The Winged Hussars preferred all their ships to be able to move through hyperspace by themselves. It was a more complicated tactical doctrine, but also more flexible. That was a
lso one of the biggest reasons they had no battleships.

  “Status on Prize 1 and 2?” she asked Xander who, as TacCom, was overseeing the delicate ballet of large and small ships around them.

  “Prize 1 is secured,” she said, “Prize 2 is in process. The prize crew estimates an hour to complete.”

  “As soon as they finish, have them taken by shuttle to Long on the Egleesius-class ships.”

  “Commander, they’re scheduled to stand down for five hours of rest,” Xander reminded.

  “None of us are getting enough rest,” Alexis retorted. “Give the order. Long, I’m sending over the remainder of the other prize crews. I want you to pick the best condition of those Egleesius and pour your efforts into getting her power plants working enough to run hyperspace shunts. We’ll move the two unusual ones over here to mate with Pegasus, while you get one Egleesius working and dock the other three with it.”

  “That just might work,” Long said.

  “Make it work,” Alexis said and cut the line. “Drone Control, now that we’re all together, recover the drones we’ve been using for defense of the prize crews and launch all remaining drones.”

  “Mission?” the reply came.

  “Intercept. Target the mystery signal behind us.”

  In the hours since they’d met up with the teams that’d found the Egleesius ships, the sensor returns of the ship behind them had continued to keep its distance. It disappeared from time to time, but always returned. There was no doubt they were being observed.

  “Acknowledged,” Drone Control answered.

  “Captain,” Chug called.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Is it possible for us to return to New Warsaw with the two Izlian and the other two strange Egleesius, then come back for the rest?”

  “I’m informed the shape of this place makes it unlikely we’ll appear anywhere near this spot,” Alexis said. “But it was a good idea.” Chug’s eyestalks nodded, and he went back to his duties. In reality, what Sato had said when she’d proposed that very idea an hour ago was that he doubted the physics of how 2nd Level Hyperspace appeared would be the same if they re-visited it and mentioned something about quantum uncertainty. The ancient warships were far too valuable to risk not being able to find them again.

  “Drones recovered; launching fresh drones.” On the big Tri-V, twenty blue dots formed up like a school of fish and shot off toward the mysterious signal. Within a second of their acceleration, their mystery guest disappeared.

  “Limit the drones’ pursuit range to one-third of their available fuel,” Alexis ordered.

  “Acknowledged,” Drone Control replied. Once the drones were more than a few dozen kilometers away, radio ceased to work normally, and laser comms ceased not much past that. She ground her teeth as the perfect formation of 20 combat drones lanced away from Pegasus. 2nd Level Hyperspace annoyed her on a fundamental level. How were you supposed to operate in such an alien realm?

  “Once the other drones are serviced, send a few out to act as relays.”

  “Already on that,” Drone Control answered.

  Minutes ticked by. Just as the first relay drones went into the black, the combat formation passed beyond sensor range and disappeared. Now the real waiting began.

  “Long here.”

  “Go ahead,” Alexis said.

  “We caught a bit of a break. The two unusual ships appear to be designed to ride. They have easily accessible connection points that are quite robust. We can use them at the center of the formation.”

  “Will that affect the grouping, having the ship with active shunts on the outside instead of the middle?”

  “No,” Long said, “as long as the field is projected correctly, it won’t matter. We’ve started flushing the F11 jacket and running temporary computer controls to the Egleesius-class now designated EG1. So far everything looks like it’s in good shape. I don’t know how to program the hyperspace computer, though. We have extras, but this is different.”

  “”

  “We’ve got that covered,” Alexis said. “I’ll have a module sent over from our…specialist, with the next supply shuttle.”

  “Thanks, Pegasus.”

  “Now,” Alexis said, “about those other two Egleesius-classes with no weapons, or even airlocks? Care to explain what those are for?”

  “”

  “Can’t, or won’t?”

  “”

  “For the all-powerful AI of the Dusman, you’re sure clueless when it serves your purpose.”

  “”

  Alexis, like those before her, was never sure about those kinds of statements Ghost made. Taking over her sister’s body after she’d been killed in combat threw its motivation into doubt for Alexis. How do you trust an AI that jumped into a biological body like some old Earth sci-fi movie? Yet, if Ghost had ever meant to betray them, it’d had a thousand opportunities before Alexis’s time, and a thousand since. If it just wasn’t always so obfuscating and mysterious about its basic nature, maybe she’d trust it more. Maybe. But maybe not.

  Time moved still slower once the drones were out of contact. Sato said he was working on a means of longer range comms but didn’t have anything finished yet. The relay drone was almost to the established sensor range when the original strike group reappeared, minus four drones.

  “Drone sortie has suffered 20% casualties,” Xander reported. Alexis nodded, considering that a good sign. It probably meant their skulker had been dealt with. A moment later more points lit up, only these were green, denoting unknown or enemy targets.

  “Contact,” Flipper confirmed, “marking between 5 and 10 bogies inbound right behind the combat drones.”

  “Oh shit,” Paka said. “Set Condition One. Prepare for combat!”

  “Chug, bring us about to face the inbounds.”

  “Coming about, aye,” the Bakulu helmsman said. The alarm sounded and, 10 seconds later, Pegasus fired her maneuvering jets and turned to the required heading. The somewhat larger bulk of the two Izlian cruisers floated unmoving nearby.

  “ETA for targets to our threat box?” she asked.

  “Estimate five minutes,” Xander replied.

  “Ship reports at combat stations,” Paka confirmed. “Shields up, all tubes loaded.” The strange energy properties of 2nd Level Hyperspace meant missiles were the most effective weapons at their disposal.

  “Give us a quarter G,” she ordered. “Let’s get some range between us and the salvage parties.”

  Hoot spoke up, the Buma’s feathery head turning toward the commander. “Lieutenant Ewald on Prize 1 is calling.”

  “Lieutenant Ewald, I’m a little busy.”

  “Yes ma’am,” the young lieutenant replied, “I believe we can help. I have Reactor One at full power, and maneuvering and shields are online.”

  “You’re an overachiever. I’m impressed.”

  “My team deserves all the credit, Commander.”

  “Those Izlian heavy cruisers were beam throwers. That means you don’t have shit for missiles.”

  “Correct, ma’am,” he confirmed. “And what we had are gone; the magazines are dry. What I do have are some seriously-powerful shields, though; better even than Pegasus, actually. These heavy cruisers are designed to sit in the middle of the storm and soak it up. The point-defense lasers on three quadrants are reporting nearly 100% as well. Let me fall into formation and screen.”

  Alexis considered for a second. The green aggressor dots were closing fast, and she had no idea what they were facing. It could be a wave of missiles, or 10 battleships. Ghost had warned her from the beginning that the Dusman considered this place extremely dangerous. Now she was beginning to understand why.

  “How much reaction mass do you have?” she asked the Lieutenant.

  “Estimate is about 200 G/hours.”

  “Lieuten
ant, fall into formation.” A short distance behind Pegasus, the Izlian heavy cruiser’s fusion torches lit with a flash, clearing accumulated debris, and the huge ship accelerated smoothly. Two ships are better than one, she decided.

  “Getting better sensor resolution,” Flipper said. “I’ve got nine bogies inbound.”

  “Drones are flying with bingo-fuel indicated,” Drone Control reported.

  “Time to launch another wave?”

  “Ten minutes required to finish turn-around.”

  “They’ll be in our threat box in three minutes,” Xander said.

  “Hold drones aboard for my order,” Alexis said. “As soon as you have radio contact with the drones, split their formation to clear us a firing solution.”

  “Affirmative.” The ship shuddered, the lights flashed, and alarms sounded.

  “Forward shield impact,” Xander said, “estimated 20-gigawatt range!”

  “What was it?” Paka demanded.

  “No visible indications,” Flipper said, “checking the recordings.” Another shudder, and this time damage alarms sounded.

  “Hull breach,” Afeeko, the damage control coordinator, or DCC, announced. “Deck Five, Section Three and Four.” The elSha looked at her commander in concern. “Radiological alarm.”

  “There was no nuclear explosion,” Flipper said immediately, “I’d have seen it.”

  “Unless nukes don’t work normally here,” Alexis said.

  “Radiation teams to Deck Four,” Glick, the SitCon, said.

  “Forward quarter shields down 50%,” Xander said, obviously in confusion.

  “Chug, roll the ship. Could these be C-Plus weapons?”

  “Faster-than-light projectiles wouldn’t give off energized radiation,” Afeeko replied. They were hit again. “I have another hull breach, Deck One!”