by Tori Harris
“Aye, sir.”
“Helm, if she decides to attack, we expect she will jump directly into low orbit — perhaps even just inside the upper atmosphere. Can you plot an atmospheric C-Jump from our current position?”
“Yes, sir. In fact, I’ve already got several rough-plotted, just in case. With your permission, however, I’d like to put us in a little better alignment. That way, once she jumps, we’ll be just a few seconds behind her.”
“Excellent, do it. Once you are satisfied, pass the data along to the other three ships in our reserve squadron. I’d like them to follow us in, if possible, but we don’t need them transitioning inside our hull when they do.”
“Will do, Captain.”
“Tactical, our primary objective is not to attack the Gunov herself, but to intercept and completely destroy the Sazoch. The intel we have on the biological agent involved leads us to believe that it may be susceptible to heat, so once we find it, we will engage with energy weapons only.”
“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Lau replied, “… if we can find it.”
“True enough,” Prescott sighed. “I wish I had more to offer you on that subject, but there just hasn’t been enough time for our Science and Engineering Directorate to develop anything like a ‘sure thing’ detection strategy. All I can tell you is to hammer the hell out of the area with every active sensor we have and hope that we find it in time. The flagship will be attempting to coordinate with some ground-based detection systems as well, but …”
“But there’s not a lot of time for that kind of thing, sir,” Schmidt offered.
“No, I’m afraid not, but if Fisher puts us right on top of the Gunov immediately after she jumps, I have to believe we’ll see something.”
“There she goes, sir!” Lieutenant Lau reported excitedly as the Tactical console emitted a series of urgent-sounding warning tones.
Four and a half million kilometers away — with Serapion now in her death throes and TFS Cossack maneuvering to begin her attack on the Resistance flagship — the Gunov transitioned to hyperspace once again.
“Fisher?” Prescott said expectantly.
“Almost there, sir. One zero seconds.”
SCS Gunov, Low Earth Orbit
(Approaching the Philippine Islands)
“Hyperdrive disengaged,” the Wek helm officer reported, although he need not have done so with Terra’s largest ocean now completely filling the bridge display screen. “Deceleration burn commencing,” he continued, as the destroyer’s forward-facing retrograde engines quickly deployed and engaged at their maximum rated thrust.
“Confirming launch commit of the first Sazoch delivery vehicle. Firing in ten seconds,” Commodore Sarafi said, mostly to himself out of force of habit as he entered the required launch authorization codes at his Command workstation.
Sitting less than two meters away, Commander Freyda felt paralyzed by indecision. Since unexpectedly hearing Prince Naftur’s voice addressing the Resistance task force upon their arrival, she had been silently replaying his words over and over again in her mind: “… it is still not too late to end the bloodshed … end it now before our world is forever darkened by a shame so heinous that we shall never again regain our honor.” But it truly was too late now, wasn’t it? The first Sazoch weapon would be launched regardless of any actions she chose to take at this point. The sense of inevitability that accompanied this thought caused a wave of relief to wash through her mind — relief that, for better or worse, she was now freed from any personal responsibility for what was about to happen.
But you know that to be a lie, do you not? she asked herself. A convenient lie of self-deception told in silence by every witness to such atrocities throughout history. All of them cowards who had the opportunity to take action, but were too weak and afraid to do so. As her own thoughts echoed in her mind, the bitter sense of relief she had felt ignited a white hot rage deep within her chest. With no time for further contemplation, she was spurred into action by the fundamental conviction that she could not allow herself to indulge in the denial of her own role in what was happening around her. I am Ragini Freyda, she thought, as her fingers flew over her workstation’s touchscreen, child of Graca … born of the house Jelani … and I am no coward.
As she finished entering commands, she looked up at Commodore Sarafi wearing an expression of anger mixed with a vague sense of pity. Although she felt somewhat vindicated in the knowledge that she might well have saved the entire Human species from extinction, she knew with almost absolute certainty that she would pay for her actions with her own life, as well as the lives of many honorable Wek officers aboard her ship.
“The first Sazoch is away, Commodore,” the tactical officer announced.
“Sir, the ship is no longer responding to control inputs,” the helm officer reported in an urgent, but controlled tone.
Sarafi looked up from his own screen and immediately noticed his XO’s stare. “Manual override,” he ordered, sensing that things were by no means as they should be.
“Our shields are down!” the tactical officer bellowed.
“Alright, everyone,” Sarafi said, raising his voice in a calm but firm tone, “let’s work the problems one at a time. The AI will manage the helm momentarily while we sort out the control problem. Regarding the shields, a couple of overlapping emitters get taken offline during a weapons launch. Perhaps this is what you are seeing.”
“No, Commodore,” the Wek officer replied, still rapidly entering commands in an attempt to isolate the problem. “Immediately after the Sazoch launch, rather than bringing those emitters back online, the entire system disengaged. Our shields are completely down.”
Sarafi turned to look his XO directly in the eyes. “Oh, Ragini,” he whispered, “what have you done?”
TFS Theseus, Low Earth Orbit
(North of Papua New Guinea)
“Transition complete, Captain. Range to the Gunov, one zero kilometers dead ahead,” Ensign Fisher reported from the Helm console as their quarry appeared in the center of the bridge view screen.
“Nice job, Fisher, just hold this position,” Prescott replied. “Tactical, give us an active spherical scan at maximum power. With the exception of the Gunov herself, take out anything you don’t recognize as a friendly target.”
“On it, sir,” Schmidt replied. “Nothing so far.”
“Captain,” Lieutenant Lau said excitedly, “they just dropped their shields!”
“By all means, fire!” Prescott said with a spontaneous involuntary laugh in spite of the urgency of the situation.
“Firing all weapons,” Lau replied, entering commands as fast as possible in a near frantic effort to keep up with the rapidly changing situation.
“Contact!” Schmidt bellowed from Tactical 1. “Not a Sazoch, Captain, it’s the Gresav … thirty kilometers to starboard. She’s firing as well.”
On the view screen, Theseus’ three remaining forward plasma torpedo tubes as well as all available railgun and energy weapon emplacements opened up on the Gunov’s fully exposed drive section. At almost precisely the same moment, the Gresav’s heavy keel-mounted energy weapon fired — its enormous stream of focused energy stabbing through the darkness to pierce the Resistance flagship directly in the center of her sublight engine cluster. With her shields offline, the Gunov never even had the opportunity to return fire. In a scene eerily reminiscent of the Battle of Gliese 667, the Gresav’s energy weapon appeared to maintain a single discharge until its beam had literally burned its way through the entire length of its target to exit near the ship’s bow.
Knowing all too well the danger posed to the Terran population below from the dreadful weapons the Gunov had been carrying, Admiral Naftur had intentionally placed his shot in an effort to initiate an antimatter release. As the hellish, orange-tinted beam penetrated the destroyer’s reactor containment unit, nearly six kilograms of antihydrogen — stored in the form of ice crystals — flash vaporized before coming into contact with the sur
rounding normal matter. The resulting annihilation event had an explosive yield exceeding ninety megatons of TNT, completely obliterating the Gunov and sending a massive cloud of superheated debris tumbling into the Earth’s upper atmosphere from the Solomon Islands to the Antarctic Peninsula. At the same time, gamma rays produced from the explosion interacted with the Earth’s magnetic field, generating a significant electromagnetic pulse. Although both warships were hardened against its effects, a roughly three-thousand-kilometer-long stretch of the South Pacific Ocean suffered power outages and widespread damage to electronic equipment as a result. Fortunately, the relatively low altitude of the blast confined the worst of the damage to one of the least populated sections of the planet’s surface.
“The Gunov has been destroyed, Captain,” Schmidt reported evenly. “We never detected any sort of weapons launch. If they did get one off, there’s so much debris in the atmosphere right now that I doubt we’d ever see it.”
“Understood, but keep trying. Comm, signal the rest of our ships to fan out and continue the search. We will also need to update the Flag on our situation shortly.”
“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Dubashi replied from the Comm/Nav console. “Also, Admiral Naftur is hailing us.”
“Thank you. On-screen, please.”
“Aye, sir, opening channel.”
A window opened on the left side of the view screen to display an exuberant Rugali Naftur.
“Once again, I have the pleasure of being the first to wish the two of you joy of our great victory, Captain Prescott and Commander Reynolds,” he greeted warmly.
“To you as well, Admiral. We arrived in low orbit less than thirty seconds after the Gunov, but detected no Sazoch weapons being launched.”
“Humph,” Naftur growled. “They are exceedingly difficult to detect, but Sarafi would most likely have been entering the required authorization commands himself, so it seems unlikely to me that he would have had time to complete a launch sequence. In any event, we will, of course, assist you in your search. The Gunov herself, however, experienced temperatures exceeding twenty million kelvins, so I do not believe your people have anything to fear from any devices that remained onboard.”
“Agreed,” Prescott nodded. “Sir, I don’t know how we will ever repay you for all of the assistance you have provided our people. There is no doubt in my mind that none of us — and by ‘us’ I mean our entire species — would have survived without your help.”
“Any man of honor, yourself included, would have done the same in my place, but I appreciate the sentiment in any case. Regarding how you may, as you say, ‘repay’ me,” he paused, smiling fiercely, “fear not, young Captain, you will be provided with that opportunity soon enough.”
Guardian Spacecraft, Earth
(0059 Local - South Pacific Ocean - 123 km Above the Island of Tonga)
With a blue flash of light easily visible from the ground over a huge, but still relatively remote section of the Earth’s surface, the Guardian spacecraft transitioned from hyperspace less than two kilometers from its target. A quick scan of the rather utilitarian Sazoch delivery system indicated that, in spite of its having been launched, the onboard AI had been ordered to place its containment system in a “fail-safe” mode and had not been granted authorization to deploy its deadly payload. After a brief interaction with the weapon, it all but abandoned any attempts at preventing the unauthorized access to its most sensitive systems. As a result, the Guardian was able to assess that there was little danger that biological materials would be released — even in the event of an unpowered descent to the surface. The weapon was aware that it could not return to its host vessel and further indicated that it intended to seek a remote location near the planet’s southern pole to set down and await its recovery by friendly forces. As had so often been the case throughout Terran history, dumb luck — or perhaps divine providence — had served their species far better than any knowledge or technology they had managed to acquire.
Thousands of possible scenarios flashed through the Guardian’s consciousness, even as it powered up its weapon systems and prepared to fire on its target. The Makers generally discouraged outright dishonesty. Deception, on the other hand — particularly the omission or purposeful delay of certain key pieces of information — was permissible under certain circumstances. The Humans were very fond of the notion that morality was a flexible concept, tinged with shades of grey rather than absolutes. Surely, then, they could hardly fault others for similar thinking … particularly their allies or those seeking to become their allies. Membership in the Alliance was, after all, wholly in their best interest.
Structural analysis of the Sazoch delivery system — a fine name for such a weapon, it thought — indicated that the safest method of forcing a landing at a given location was removal of its drive section at a precise instant during its descent. Once this occurred, the engines would continue to provide thrust for a few additional seconds, followed by an uncontrolled plunge into the South Pacific Ocean, just off the southernmost tip of South America. The payload section would then follow a fairly predictable descent profile utilizing a series of emergency gravitic generators and small thrusters to prevent a hard landing.
Approximate landing area selected … four seconds remaining. A “test,” then, as Admiral Patterson said — or, more accurately, the application of a specific set of circumstances to better illustrate the benefits of Alliance membership, the Guardian thought, as it opened fire on the Sazoch delivery system.
***
Just over one hour later, the following “Flash” Emergency Action Message was received via the reserved command and control channels of the NRD network:
Z1303
TOP SECRET MAGI PRIME
FM: GUARDIAN SPACECRAFT - SOL SYSTEM
TO: EAM — TFC FLEET OPS
INFO: SUCCESSFUL ATMOSPHERIC INTERCEPT OF SAJETH COLLECTIVE SPACECRAFT
1. SMALL SPACECRAFT BELIEVED TO BE CARRYING WEAPONIZED BIOLOGICAL AGENTS INTERCEPTED OVER SOUTHERN PACIFIC OCEAN.
2. NO SUBMUNITIONS OR DRONES WERE DETECTED DURING INTERCEPT, BUT RECOMMEND EXTREME CAUTION.
3. AREA IN THE VICINITY OF ANY WRECKAGE SHOULD BE QUARANTINED PENDING DECONTAMINATION.
4. RECOMMEND TWO HUNDRED KILOMETER SEARCH AREA CENTERED AROUND -56.17333, -67.83410.
5. GUARDIAN SPACECRAFT AVAILABLE FOR IMMEDIATE CONSULTATIONS REGARDING REMEDIATION EFFORTS.
Epilogue
Earth, Patagonian Desert
(128 km Northwest of Tres Cerros, Argentina)
Although the cold, dry air is still breathable and the local gravity hovers very near the planetary standard of 9.81 m/s2, there is little else about the Earth’s fourth largest desert that most Humans would recognize as “home.” Once a vast, temperate forest, the formation of the Andes Mountains to the west a mere forty-five million years prior covered much of the region with volcanic ash. As the mountain chain rose ever higher, its jagged peaks impeded the flow of moisture from the Pacific Ocean — a “rain shadow” that ultimately created one of the most barren, inhospitable locations that planet Earth has to offer.
With a near constant stream of cool mountain air descending down the leeward side of the Andes, the Patagonian Steppe experienced strong winds throughout the year. And over the past hour, its ever-present, mournful howl had served to mask the low, rumbling sounds of four Sherpa Autonomous Space Vehicles operating in the area. The first of these had arrived from the north, immediately beginning a series of overflights in a precise, grid-like search pattern. Although there was no way to know precisely what kind of pathogen they were looking for, the shuttles were equipped with a broad range of sensors capable of detecting even the most minute traces of chemical or biological agents. Based on the intelligence currently in hand, a modified virus of terrestrial origin was deemed the most likely delivery vector. In this at least, the Sazoch’s crash site had been something of a lucky break for the personnel tasked with securing the area. With the region’s extremely spar
se Human population and relatively sterile biome, it was hoped that even the smallest release of weaponized biological materials would be easily detectable.
Once multiple sweeps of the area had been completed with no signs of contamination detected, three additional Sherpas had arrived, along with a high altitude combat air patrol of eight Argentinian fighter aircraft. Although the fighters had clearly been dispatched by the Argentinian government, the four Sherpas each bore an emblem that was neither that of Terran Fleet Command nor the Argentinian component of the Central and South American Union.
After the Sherpas had finished deploying troops at several strategic locations to establish a defensive perimeter, a much larger group disembarked and set to work on the crash site itself. All of the obviously military personnel wore full body armor that appeared to be of similar design to earlier versions of TFC’s combat EVA suits. Combat operations seemed unlikely at such a remote location on the Earth’s surface, but the suits also offered protection from all known chemical and biological agents, which seemed by far the most likely threat to their occupants at the moment. All of the other personnel in the area had donned the latest in “Level A” hazmat suits, although there had been some debate as to whether such precautions would ultimately prove futile if a release had indeed occurred.
The Sazoch spacecraft itself was in surprisingly good condition, considering how it had arrived at this location. Its main propulsion unit had been sheared off with almost surgical precision during the Guardian’s attack, landing nearly a thousand kilometers to the south near Cape Horn. Here, however, the weapon system’s heavily armored payload module was still largely intact, and appeared to have landed under power to some degree — perhaps even utilizing a form of gravitic braking in order to arrest its rapid descent to the desert floor. Intact or not, the team processing the crash site was taking no chances. Two of the four shuttles had situated themselves just upwind, allowing technicians to uncoil several long hoses from their cargo bays. Each hose fed a bank of nozzles that immediately began dousing the entire site with a fine spray of chemicals in an effort to eradicate anything that might be released during the next phase of their recovery operation.