by Joshua James
Great, Olsen thought, a first-encounter situation and the new race has turned out to be pompous as hell. “And what exactly is it? A beacon, perhaps?”
“It’s a weapon of vital importance. We have kept it sealed beneath a lump of heavy radiation-shielding for millennia. But now that you have uncovered it, it is your duty to ensure it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.”
Olsen flicked a button on the touchscreen that protruded out of his armrest to put the communication link on hold. Instead of seeing events on the bridge unfold in real time, the alien would see a computer simulation that emulated everyone onscreen, as if they were listening intently to what he would say next. But the Tauian said nothing and didn’t move one wrinkle.
“Schmidt, are you running en-scans?”
“Yes sir,” the big weapons officer replied. “No sign of any charged weaponry or raised shields.”
Olsen turned to Rob. “What do you think?”
“I have no reason to believe the ambassador is hostile. Nonetheless, I’ve reported the situation to Admiralty AI, and they think that you should listen to Ambassador Oort’s requests.”
Olsen raised an eyebrow. Finally, it seemed that Admiralty was getting interested. “He’s not made any requests yet. Wouldn’t it be better to listen to what he wants first?”
“The ambassador has requested that we take care of the weapon, sir.”
“But we don’t even know what it is. You say it’s emitting radiation, so surely taking it on board would harm the crew.”
“But we’ll find a way of shielding the radiation before taking it on board.”
“I’m not sure we have the equipment to shield it.” Although admittedly, Olsen was sure his brilliant ship’s engineer, Ensign Chang, would have a solution.
“This is non-negotiable, sir.”
Non-negotiable. There it was.
“How helpful,” Olsen said. He toggled the switch on his chair to resume the connection.
The Tauian raised its head as soon as Olsen did, clearly not having been tricked by the hold simulation; yet the alien didn’t seem in the remotest annoyed by the act. “If you have further questions, then on behalf of the Tauian civilization, I’m quite willing to answer them.”
“Yes. I want to know first if you pose any danger to us.”
“I am not here to harm you,” Oort said. “And I believe your scans already show that I have not come armed.”
“I see.” Olsen scratched at his neck. “The thing I don’t understand is, why would you want us to look after the weapon? If you’ve been protecting it for years, why don’t you secure it yourself?”
“Its high-energy nature makes it incredibly dangerous to remove it from this galaxy.”
“What’s it even doing in this galaxy in the first place?”
But before the Tauian had a chance to answer Olsen, an intensely bright flare shone through the window.
“Another ship coming out of warp speed, sir,” Lieutenant Santiago said. “This one’s massive.”
Olsen felt his poker face slip as incredulity washed over him. An attack. A strange object. An alien encounter. And that wasn’t enough for one morning?
“Okay, who’s the smartass that sent out the invitations for a galactic party?” He got a few chuckles from his crew. “Well, put it on screen.”
A view of space replaced the Tauian’s lithe glowing body on the overhead monitor. On the left, the Tauian warship disappeared, and the channel to the Tauian ship cut out.
Meanwhile, on the right of the screen, the glow faded to reveal a fully-armed Arstan warship. Olsen would know it anywhere: a bulky ship of modular design, with enough firepower to take out a current-generation dreadnought.
Damn. He knew exactly which it was before they’d even completed a sensor sweep.
“It’s the Okranti,” he said. “Hail Captain Kraic, if he’ll answer.” He’d not seen this Arstan CO since the Grashorn incident, although it wasn’t as if they’d always been chums.
The bridge fell silent a moment.
“No response, Captain,” Santiago said.
“Surprise, surprise,” growled Schmidt.
“Battle stations,” Olsen said.
Once again, the klaxons sounded, and once again, the whole of the Tapper went on red alert.
9
While the human and Foorint races could spend a year building one ship in drydock on a planet or a space-side shipyard, the Arstans’ ships made themselves on the fly. Each one started with a core CIC module, with anything up to forty-four ports. Further modules could latch onto and detach themselves from these ports, with functions ranging from weaponry and shield-generators to everyday necessities, such as a galley or living quarters.
A module, when attached, was part of the main ship. When detached it was a ship in its own right, perhaps four times larger than the Extractor, although sizes varied.
As soon as the Okranti came out of warp speed, it deployed its shield-generator modules. A good hundred of these moved outwards towards the Tapper and started to reconfigure themselves.
With everything happening so fast, Olsen had forgotten to dismiss Ensign Chang from the bridge. “Chang, you should have requested permission to leave the CIC. Get down to the defense bay and start working on that first shield generator, and get the coilguns back to even power. We’ll need everything possible if we’re going to have any chance of getting out of here alive.”
Then he turned to Rob, and remembered. “In fact, scratch that. Chang, I want you to work on the warp engine. Rob, go down and fix everything in the defense bay.” Escape indeed seemed the better option here.
“But sir,” Rob said, “Admiralty explicitly stated that you shouldn’t leave this system without the weapon. The command came from Fleet Admiral Brownstone herself.”
Brownstone? What did she know about this? Olsen made a mental note to ask her a few questions — if they made it out of this situation. “Just do it, Rob. I am still your commanding officer. You reserve to stop me going into warp speed if Admiralty commands, but you can’t stop me repairing my engines.”
The cyborg nodded. “Very well, sir.”
“Good. Dismissed.”
Both Rob and Chang saluted, and they left the bridge.
On-screen, the Arstan shield-modules had now reconfigured themselves in a latticework arrangement, making them look like a metallic space waffle and creating a massive barrier that the Tapper would have to fire through or execute an incredibly tricky maneuver around before it could get to the rest of the ship. The better bet was to try and weaken the shields at one point and then fire through the structure, yet that was still incredibly difficult to do.
“Schmidt, once the laser turrets are charged, focus fire on a central point, and don’t ease off it. I want them thinking we’re aiming to take down their ship when we’re actually going to scarper.”
Lieutenant Santiago spun around in her seat, looking alarmed. Olsen nodded at her, their conversation unspoken. He couldn’t go against a direct order from the Admiralty. But he could bend his way around what Rob had told him, especially if he wasn’t sitting right next to him relaying everything to Admiralty AI.
He flicked a switch on his touchscreen to mute all comms from the bridge. “Focus on the scanners, Santiago. I want to see on my screen where every single module is, and up-to-date recommendations on further courses of action.”
Santiago swallowed down whatever she was going to say and swiveled back around to her screen. “Yes, sir.”
Olsen restored comms. He’d ordered Ensign Chang to install that little hack so he could keep information from the Admiralty if he needed. And so far, Admiralty AI didn’t seem to know about this little feature.
The lasers soon fired, and a red spot erupted against the transparent blue shield wall in front of the latticework. “Rob, get as much power into those lasers as possible. We’re going to burn a hole using brute force.”
“Aye, captain,” Rob replied. And what he did down ther
e was useful, because the laser beam held for a few seconds more than usual before cutting out.
“En-scan on shields, Schmidt.”
“Done already, sir. Most of the wall is at one hundred percent, but there’s a weaker section now at seventy-five.”
Dammit, this was going to take a while. “Chang, status on the warp?”
“Almost done, sir, but we’re still going to need five minutes to power it up.”
“Let me know as soon as it’s ready.”
“Yes, sir.”
Another burst came out from the second laser and hit the shield barrier in precisely the same place. Olsen would commend Schmidt for being a good shot, but all the calculations were done by computers. The weapons officer only needed to enter a few equations and check everything was in working order. Though Olsen couldn’t see what the Okranti was doing behind the shield barrier, it did seem odd that they weren’t returning fire.
“Santiago, any sign of any energy readouts behind the barrier?”
“Negative, sir. They don’t seem to be arming their weapons, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Olsen tugged at his collar. Kraic was well inside human territory, so he couldn’t be surprised that Olsen had fired on him. “Yes, but I wonder why.”
He opened the navigation reports on his screen. The officers of the bridge, working behind their computers, would collect the information they thought the captain would find most useful. Olsen could then flick through information on each of the ship’s vital systems and make decisions based on what he had onscreen. Of course, protocols existed — a complex set of rules that each officer had to adhere to, or otherwise risk court-martial. These differed, depending on each officer’s specialization.
This time, a wire-frame blueprint cross-section came up of the Okranti — and much to Olsen’s surprise, the device hadn’t changed its configuration since leaving warp speed. Arstan battle tactics were malleable and often unpredictable. They continuously moved the modules around in combat to make it challenging to work out what form the next calibration would take, and therefore what to focus on.
But what could Captain Kraic be up to? Then, Olsen noticed, the Okranti was edging around the shield-generators. It was using the lattice structure as cover while it wheeled towards where their asteroid had been. The cube object — it planned to steal it off them.
How the hell does everyone know about this thing? The alien Ambassador Oort had said something about the object determining its own threat. Perhaps this was what he meant.
But surely that theory was a little too far-fetched. There was no way that an ancient device veiled for millennia could have any means of communicating with the three civilizations. Olsen cast his wild ideas aside. He needed to focus on maintaining control of the object.
Soon enough, the Okranti had pivoted enough around the shields. One of the modules detached and jetted over to it, while he and the rest of the bridge crew watched helplessly.
“Is there any way to target that module?”
“No, sir,” Schmidt said. “Not with their configuration. There’s just too many of them out there.”
“Sir, the Okranti is powering up to FTL-warp,” Santiago said quietly. “She’ll be ready in minutes.”
Olsen ground his fist down on his armrest. He had to do something, or Captain Kraic would get away with the object. He still didn’t even know what that thing was—a weapon, if the alien Ambassador Oort was telling the truth, and it seemed that Admiralty AI agreed—but the fact the Arstans wanted it was enough for Olsen to not want to give it away.
“Redrock,” he said over the intercom, “how quickly can you get the Extractor launched?”
“Less than a minute,” the shuttle pilot replied confidently. “You want me out there?”
“Do it,” Olsen said. “We’ll give you orders once you get outside. And take the Marines with you, just in case you have to board.”
“Aye, sir.”
A hatch opened on the side of the detached Arstan module, which maneuvered itself in space to swallow the object in one gulp. Soon enough, the bay doors closed, and the module started traveling back to the main body of the Okranti with its prize. Closer to the Tapper, a streak of exhaust shot outward and the Extractor was soon back in space.
“Can you see that cargo module, Redrock? That’s your target.”
“I’ll prep the lasers and missiles, sir.”
“Don’t fire on it yet.”
“We want our toy back?”
“Exactly. And in the meantime, keep the cargo module between you and the Okranti, so the big ship doesn’t destroy you in the crossfire.”
“Got it,” Redrock said.
“Good.” Olsen stood and crossed his fingers behind his back. This whole thing could go sideways fast.
10
The shield wall was a beautiful thing. As you got close to it, the whole arrangement shimmered with what looked like magical energy — a sea of luminescence and refracted blue light. An artist might get commissioned to construct something like it as space-art, spending hours lifting massive transport bays and slotting them into place, then carefully placing the shield-generators in such a way that the shields layered on top of each other like fish scales. Yet here, the Arstans had just slotted them together like children’s toy bricks.
Redrock didn’t have much time to marvel at it, but he did see it wisest to fly as close to it as possible. This way, he would shorten the distance he had to travel without cover to get to the cargo-module, because he didn’t doubt the Okranti would open fire on him as soon as he had a chance.
Through the latticework, he soon saw that it wasn’t going to be easy. Four modules had detached from the Okranti. The HUD integrated into his helmet told him that they each contained 13800-Celsius laser cannons. The Tapper could perhaps survive a shot from one of these guns, but the beam would punch through the shuttle’s hull in two seconds flat.
He punched a button on his dash to open the doors of the cargo bay. “Kota, you back there?” He’d been annoyed with her for half a minute, but that feeling was long gone.
“Affirmative,” the Marine sergeant replied. It would sound all business to anyone listening in, but there was a little smirk she managed to slip in at the end that Redrock heard.
“Good. Get me some extra help. We’ve got four bogeys inbound.”
“Fighters?” she asked.
“Negative. Weapon modules.”
“Shit.” Smirk gone. “Riley, take the top turret. Connery, take the bottom. Maybe if you can get close to a module, we can take it from the inside.”
“I don’t think they’ll give us that chance.”
Redrock increased the rear thrusters as he emerged from behind the shield wall. Immediately, the laser cannons opened fire, all four of them at once. He barrel-rolled out of the way of three beams, but a fourth grazed the aft of the hull.
“Singh, fire control,” Kota shouted at the back. “Dammit, Redrock, where do you keep the extinguisher on this thing?”
“Here up front,” he said.
Kota dived in and pulled herself to a stop in the pilot bay. Redrock turned to see her hard-lined face and short blonde hair. This could be the last he saw of her. He gave her a quick peck on the cheek, then pulled his chin back towards the window.
“Focus, Redrock,” she said as she grabbed the extinguisher.
“Yeah, yeah. Just go cool that damn hull.”
Kota made some remark he missed; then her mag-boots clanked towards the back of the deck. To Redrock’s right, the laser cannons were starting to glow red again. Arstan modules had automated turrets installed on every face to take out approaching fighter pilots; hence the need for the gunners. The same was true for the cargo bay, which the shuttle had now managed to find cover behind.
“How’s it going out there?” Captain Olsen asked.
“Still alive,” Redrock replied. “We took a hit, but our Marines managed to cool it down. I’m ready to unleash my fury on the cargo
bay.”
“Only use surface fire for now,” Olsen replied. “I don’t know what will happen to that weapon if it takes another explosion.”
It was an object before, thought Redrock. And now it’s a weapon. Interesting.
“Affirmative, sir,” and Redrock took the Extractor close to the cargo bay so the gunners could get in some shots. The turrets on the module had better range, and they unleashed their fire first. But Redrock was trained to approach from an angle, which meant he took minimal damage. The gunners took down four turrets before Redrock pulled the shuttle back.
“Are we going to board it?” Kota asked, looking out the window from her place crouched on the floor beside him. The advantage of these mag-boots was that they could work like seat belts if you pumped their strength up high enough, meaning Marines could stand anywhere on the deck without being thrown around by the ship’s momentum.
“Let’s ask the captain,” Redrock said; then he turned on the intercom. “Captain, the Marines think it’s best if they board the pod. What do you think, sir?”
But there was a momentary pause. Then, it was as if the sky behind the pod lit on fire for a moment.
“Redrock, evasive maneuvers.”
“What the—”
And the cargo-module suddenly lurched towards them and hit them on the right flank. In Redrock’s hands, the controls went haywire. Momentarily, the Extractor was sent spinning into space.
11
Olsen watched the screen in confusion as the cargo-module opened the bay doors on the side facing the Okranti. It just didn’t make sense. Unless they’d secured the weapon in restraints — which was highly unlikely, given its size and the timeframe — then it would just float out into space. And it did, emerging slowly from the cargo-module as if the Arstans didn’t care about recovering it.
“It looks like the Okranti’s ready to enter FTL-warp, sir,” Santiago said.
Olsen tapped in frustration on his chair arm. “What the hell are they up to?”
Suddenly, a message from the Extractor came on the intercom. “Captain, the Marines think it’s best if they board the pod. What do you think, sir?”