InterstellarNet 03 Enigma

by Edward M. Lerner

  Me, too.

  Faintly, through floor and boots—once, twice, three times—she felt the fierce vibration of a nearby ship launching.

  She joined the handful of people queued up to enter the control room. The woman ahead of Corinne turned to glower. “They won’t let you in. Authorized personnel only.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Return to your cabin,” the woman said. “It’s for your own safety.”

  Safety from what? Beyond the line, past the open door, a big holo display brimmed with icons. Hundreds of tiny blips, all in red, converging. A second swarm, likewise inbound, was emerging around the limb of Saturn. With image enhancement in her implant, she could, just barely, read some of the labels. None of the red blips had accompanying traffic-control icons.

  Whoever they were, they were coming in hot. They were decelerating at—six gees!

  From a control-room console a warning issued, “… Ships en route to Prometheus, this is Admiral Matsushita of the United Planets Navy. Be advised, you are approaching restricted space. Entrance without authorization is strictly prohibited. Repeat. Unidentified ships en route …”

  Corinne kept eying—and recording—the dynamic situation in the big display. The translucent sphere at the center of the holo had to stand for Prometheus. The white cylinder not far off, amid five green blips, had to be Discovery.

  Another three green blips crept outward from the sphere. Those had been launches she’d felt. Gone to protect the starship, she supposed—only her gut insisted they were getting the hell away from the antimatter plant on Prometheus.

  Titan and Rhea, on opposite sides of the display, each had its own swarm of blips: scattered green dots among many white. She interpreted the color coding as a few naval vessels amid many more civilian ships. Would the navy strip those worlds bare of defenses for the sake of Prometheus—where UP forces would still be badly outnumbered?

  “… Be advised, you are approaching restricted space. Entrance without authorization is strictly …”

  When she and Grace had arrived, disinvited, two naval corvettes had escorted Odyssey to its present berth. From that experience, Corinne knew the size of UP corvettes—just as, from research and Donald’s guided tour, she understood just how large Discovery was. The nearby blips, representing the ships within optical range, were shown to scale. If the onrushing red blips were also to scale? They’d be tiny.

  What the hell were they?

  The navy’s looping broadcast stuttered and stopped. A new message began. “Unidentified ships approaching Prometheus, change course immediately or you will be fired upon. Repeat. Unidentified ships approaching …”

  Two more project staff went into the control room, and Corinne found herself at the threshold.

  “Ma’am,” a hulking marine said icily, squinting at her ID. His badge read Chang. “Authorized personnel only. Return to your cabin.”

  “Flynn, who’s attacking?” Corinne called into the control room.

  “Get that woman out of here!” someone inside—not Flynn—barked. Corinne recognized the raspy voice: Annabeth Miller, Discovery project manager. “And close the damned door.”

  Apart from activities on Prometheus’ surface and the project team’s squadron of short-range shuttles, this control room didn’t control anything. Whatever action the naval forces undertook would be run out of the admiral’s flagship. There was no reason she shouldn’t be inside, watching alongside everyone else.

  Corinne said, “The public has a right to—”

  “Now, Sergeant,” Miller ordered.

  “Yes, sir,” Chang said, grabbing her elbow. He out-massed her by at least thirty kilos. “Come on.”

  “Like it or not,” Corinne protested as the sergeant took her in tow, “this is history.” Two paces down the hall, she yelled, “Someone from the press needs to be there.”

  Two turns later, almost back to her cabin, the marine skidded to a abrupt halt. “New orders. I’m to bring you back.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “They didn’t say.”

  Corinne opened the control-room door to find Annabeth Miller slumped against a wall. The woman looked … drained. In the holo, the eight green blips of the local fleet were forming a tight cluster around Discovery. The starship’s top acceleration was one-third gee. It seemed to Corinne that Discovery hadn’t even attempted to flee—and so, neither could its defenders.

  The leading wave of red blips was closer than ever, still racing straight at them, still decelerating flat-out. The second wave was also plainly converging on Prometheus. A third wave, fewer in number than either of the earlier groups, but individually much larger, had appeared from behind Saturn. These last ships were decelerating at just two gees.

  “What happened?” Corinne asked.

  “A response.”

  Corinne took Miller answering her as permission to enter.

  A new voice, a synthesized voice, issued from the comm console. “… UP forces near Prometheus, withdraw or be destroyed. We are taking possession of Discovery and the moon. Repeat. UP Naval forces near Prometheus, withdraw or be destroyed. We are taking …”

  “Our guys are hopelessly outnumbered,” Corinne said.

  Miller sagged further. “I know.”

  • • • •

  By the minute, the mood inside the control room grew gloomier.

  “We’re being invaded.” Corinne struggled to keep the fear from her voice. She was working, damn it. “By whom?”

  “By what, I think.” Miller gestured to an aux display. “By those.”

  Through the glare of a white-hot fusion drive, even the best digital enhancement could discern little; even a rude outline made Corinne shiver. All angles and tubes, struts and antennae and engine, it offered little to suggest an inhabitable volume. “Robots?”

  “Drones.” Lt. Flynn swiveled in his seat to look at them. “Battle drones. Those tubes? I’m fairly sure they’re missile launchers.”

  As though cued by the word missiles, half of the defending force launched a salvo. Tiny bright dots—like so many gnats—in the holo marked the outbound missiles.

  “Are they suicidal?” Miller muttered.

  “No,” said Flynn, “they’re proud. They won’t, they can’t give up without firing a shot.”

  A counter salvo, twice as large, burst from the front wave of drones.

  Their pride is going to get them killed, Corinne thought.

  In the display, the encounter of barrage and counter-barrage was a firecracker-like string of soundless explosions. A few UP missiles came through the encounter unscathed—to blink out, moments later.

  “What happened?” Miller asked.

  “Antimissile lasers,” Flynn said. “In a vacuum, without dust or gas to scatter light, the beams are invisible.”

  Missiles had run the gauntlet going the other way, too. Closing on the paltry few defenders, some of those, too, blinked out. Not all.

  “Orion,” Flynn said in anguish as a green blip flashed, then faded to a dim, washed-out shade. “They took a hit. Their main drive is down.”

  “Withdraw or be destroyed,” the intruders transmitted once again.

  The UP warships responded with a fresh salvo, met with another counter salvo. The front wave of red blips, closing fast, deployed into a … Corinne found she lacked the vocabulary. A big, threatening formation, ready to engulf Discovery and its guardians.

  On most of the drones, decelerated to a near halt, the white-hot fusion exhausts vanished. The … wings? … of the formation would soon meet behind the starship.

  “I should be with them,” Flynn growled.

  In a low, discouraged voice, he attempted to explain the tactics, the maneuvers, the thrust and parry of the battle. All that Corinne processed (trusting in her implant to record the details) was that human ships with flesh-and-blood crews would always be outmaneuvered by drones with none. And that the local UP forces, outnumbered as they were, finally had no choice—the
three surviving ships, anyway—but to pull back. Admiral Matsushita, in his parting transmission vowed to return.

  At battle’s end, as one drone constellation took shape around Discovery and a second around Prometheus, Flynn still refused to speculate who, if anyone, controlled the drones.

  But Corinne thought she knew—hoping desperately that she was mistaken.

  • • • •

  Tracing low, tight orbits around Prometheus, stripped of the blinding glare of active fusion drives, the drones, though stealthy and dark, could no longer disguise their nature from surface sensors. No living being could be aboard any of these tiny vessels.

  Corinne thought, Sometimes seeing is worse than imagining.

  But waiting was the worst.

  The mute drones overhead were also waiting. On their side, it seemed to be for the final wave of intruders. Those, without doubt, were human ships! They approached Prometheus in radio silence.

  And then three of the intruders’ ships were descending.

  Throughout the base and, on the little moon’s opposite side, in the hastily shut-down antimatter factory, personnel still huddled wherever the emergency had found them. Miller gave a quick update over the intercom to personnel still huddling wherever the lockdown had found them. She concluded, “For your own safety, remain where you are. Avoid acting in any manner that might be construed as threatening. Cooperate. The navy will be back to help.”

  Will it? Corinne wondered, as three ships swooped toward a landing.

  “This is Corinne Elman,” she began, “reporting live from the beleaguered world of Prometheus.” She spoke to everyone in the control room, to posterity, and—assuming the navy was relaying—to the Solar System. And so, to Denise.

  “Unidentified military forces continue to besiege us. Some are soon to land. As we wait, our fates unclear, we know that the brave men and women of the United Planets navy, outnumbered and outgunned, did their best to—”

  “Where’s Dimples?” someone asked in a stage whisper.

  “Stepped out,” another answered. “Ten minutes ago, maybe?”

  “Their best to defend us and the mission,” Corinne continued doggedly. “After heavy losses they—”

  With the battle lost, the control-room main display now cycled among the base’s several outside cameras. From fiery sparks in the sky, descending, Corinne’s view flipped to the Prometheus “spaceport”: a bulldozed plain pocked with scorch marks. And on the periphery, amid a jumble of boulders—

  A figure in a spacesuit, aiming a short tube.

  “Jesus, that’s Flynn out there,” Miller said.

  The control-room window overlooked the spaceport. As Corinne turned to see, yellow-orange fire burst from his tube. And then, almost too fast to take in:

  —Flame, streaking skyward, vanishing into the white-hot seething exhaust of a descending freighter.

  —Countless laser blasts, lancing downward from ships and orbiting drones, rendered manifest in sudden eruptions of gas, dust, and steam.

  —And, above Flynn’s glowing, rapidly dissipating, vaporous remains, where his missile had struck … an enormous fireball.

  • • • •

  Laser pistols in hand, snarling, two armored Snake soldiers strode into the control room.

  Corinne felt her eyes go round. This couldn’t be! She must still be dreaming.

  Glithwah strode in after the soldiers, her glittering eyes taking in a scene of shock and dejection. “Who is in charge?” she demanded.

  Annabeth Miller squared her shoulders. “I am the project manager here.”

  Glithwah pointed to wreckage glowing outside the window. “That was unwise. Brave, but foolish.”

  Flynn couldn’t not act. Nor, Corinne realized, could she stand fearfully at the back of the crowd. Whatever happened, happened. She stepped forward. “No, Foremost, it is your leaving Ariel that was foolish.”

  Glithwah blinked. “This is an unexpected surprise. Today must be your lucky day.”

  “What do you mean?” Corinne asked.

  “I mean,” the Snake said, “I have quite the scoop for you.”

  THE XOOL RESISTANCE

  CHAPTER 39

  With her eyes closed, Grace DiMeara would have known the mess hall was dangerously overcrowded. Had she covered her ears—against the widespread murmuring, the sobbing children, the roar of an HVAC system unequal to the heat given off by so many close-packed bodies—she would still have known. The miasma of sweat and fear was that thick.

  But Grace was not about to close her eyes. Because a panicked stampede seemed all too probable. Because, in eerie silence, their jailors, one posted at every door, ceaselessly scanned the room.

  And because the stakes were far, far higher than her own insignificant life.

  “It’ll be okay,” Donald With The Ridiculous Sideburns whispered to her. Only rather than the pest who had hit on her daily these past weeks on Prometheus, rather than the self-important assistant to the deputy to the project manager, Donald had become, as far as anyone in the room knew, the person in charge—

  Apart from their captors, that was.

  “How, okay?” she countered, fighting back a shiver.

  As though reading her mind, Donald glanced toward the crumpled bodies of the three men who had rushed a guard. One had wrestled a gun from it. Had, at pointblank range, emptied a full clip into it. Ricochets took down the shooter, the slugs bouncing without effect off the armored robot. In a trice, it had gutted its other assailants.

  Donald’s gaze flicked again, this time toward the window wall.

  Saturn dominated the view, its rings, seen edge on, cutting a brilliant slash across the sky. By planet light, widely scattered wreckage, some of it still glowing a sullen red-orange, cast long, inky shadows across the landing field. And seemingly wherever Grace looked, glints and sparkles—the firefly-like flashes of distant fusion drives—marked the intricate dance of Snake and United Planets ships. Where sparkles converged, perhaps there were skirmishes.

  Donald said, “There are good guys out there, too.”

  The operative word being too. Again, Grace shivered. How in the name of her lords had the local Snakes obtained a battle fleet?

  And again, Donald seemed to read her thoughts. “They had the advantage of surprise.”

  You think? Not to mention killer-robot swarms—tech that no one in the whole frigging Solar System was supposed to have. Sharing the mess hall with just a few such bots made her skin crawl.

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “And now they have the advantage of hostages.”

  In the kitchen, an argument had broken out. “I’d better go arbitrate.” Donald insinuated his way through the milling throng toward the disturbance, urging everyone to remain calm, squeezing past tables shoved together and chairs stacked high to clear space.

  All around, snatches of conversation emerged from and dissolved back into the background din. Even the speculations were circumspect, the questions people wanted to ask unsuitable for uttering aloud. As for mind-to-mind links, those were impossible. Every attempt at a link, even with heads touching, dissolved into meaningless static. Befitting their status as prisoners, RF suppressors had been deployed to jam neural implants.

  And so, few dared ask: how long did the Snakes intend to stay? Would they, as in their past outrage, make their run for interstellar space holding hostages? How would the United Planets navy react, and how soon—

  And what level of casualties among the hostages would the navy consider acceptable?

  An elderly woman, lean and hollow-cheeked, her coarse gray hair close-cropped, marched up. She wore the cold and distant stare so typical of an Augmented. Many among the starship’s crew were such human/AI hybrids.

  Abominations, every one.

  Grace had met this woman while touring Discovery. One of the astrobiologists? Without access to her implant, Grace could not recall. As for a name, she had no idea.

  The woman said, “You were speaking with Mr. Sch
nabel. What does he know about—”

  “No more than you or I know,” Grace interrupted.

  And what she knew was nada, not even where her roommate was. An hour before the world had been turned upside down, Grace had taken her insomnia—after all her scheming, all her efforts, all her bold words, she had yet to fulfill her commitment to her lords—for a meandering, mind-clearing walk down empty, nightshift halls. Slowly pulling the cabin door shut behind her, Grace had had her last glimpse of Corinne.

  Where was Corinne now? At best, being held with the base’s senior execs, also unaccounted for. Grace preferred not to consider at worst.

  “But Mr. Schnabel must have told you—” the woman said, stopping abruptly as, at the front of the mess hall, the sentry bot snapped to attention with guns raised.

  The robot stood at least two meters tall. With its four legs and two arms, the chassis suggested a classical centaur, while its lone eye seemed cyclopean. But what mythological figure had ever held vigil with the metronomic sweep of a laser beam?

  Just as the doors opened, ceiling lights faded. The Snake home world orbited a red-dwarf sun, and the aliens liked things dim. She recalled that most of Ariel colony had been on the gloomy side, too.

  More robots entered, with guns at the ready, followed by a Snake in an utterly unornamented uniform. Make that the Snake: Firh Glithwah, Foremost of the Snakes interned on Saturn’s moon, Ariel. Only how many Snakes, if any, remained on Ariel?

  People crammed into the mess hall had already backed away from the sentry bot and its carnage. Now everyone recoiled farther from the entrance. Between the overcrowding and the fetid, muggy air, Grace found it difficult to breathe. The rotten-eggs taint that clung to Snakes did not help.

  The clamor of moments ago faded into silence.

  Glithwah was tall for a Snake, and that made her a bit over a meter tall. She massed, perhaps, twenty-five kilos. Still, she dominated the room. Maybe it was the knowledge that she held the power of life and death over everyone here.

  Glithwah gestured at tattered corpses on the floor. “I regret the loss of life,” she said, her voice pitched well into the soprano range.