Chapter 38
“An outraged citizenry inevitably creates an extension of state powers.”
Devlin Sinclair-Maru, Integrity Mirror
The strong scent of cleaner could not quite cover the tang of blood still flavoring the air of Tanager’s small bridge, but the odor matched the ongoing tension among the crew.
“Sensors, lay those missile tracks up on main,” Roush ordered. “Weps, let’s get a couple thirty-twos out in the dark.”
Tanager slingshotted around Delta Three’s gravity well, accelerating hard, running flat out while their enemy, Carthage, lay occluded behind the planet’s bulk.
“There’s a-another satellite, Commander,” Che Ramos reported, staring hard into the sensor scopes.
“Weps, kill that satellite.”
“Yes, Commander,” Lieutenant Tilly Pennysmith affirmed, locking her point-defense turrets on the small target, lost against the planet’s bulk. The high-energy pulses lanced out, sending fragments of yet another unarmed satellite spinning out, unable to observe or communicate for their enemies any longer.
Tanager spat out a string of 32-gauge missiles in their wake, each missile drifting, with only launch momentum pushing them out. As each missile motored up from the ship’s magazine, Pennysmith prayed the rails, armatures, and links would keep working without fail.
Deckchief Church sat nearby with a carbine across his knees, ready for any emergency. He also knew that Tanager’s loading apparatus historically failed with little provocation, and he prepared to run for the Weapons section as needed.
“Nav, give us fifteen degrees negative, and ready those transition calcs.”
“Fifteen negative, Commander,” Julie Yeager said, her face pale, clearly near the end of her nerves. “Transition calcs are ready.”
“C-Carthage is on us, Commander,” Che Ramos said as the distant signature of the more powerful ship appeared, rising over the edge of Delta Three’s horizon. “Sh-she’s painting us!”
Susan Roush stared at the tracks for a moment. “Okay Sensors, go active. Let’s see what Carthage does with her missiles, if we can.”
Che triggered Tanager’s active sensors, sending multispectrum transmissions blasting out into the system. As sensor returns bounced back to Tanager, Roush stared at the growing picture. “No imagination, silly arseholes. No imagination at all.”
Tanager torched out from Delta Three’s gravity well with a high velocity, angling negative, relative to the galactic plane, not far from the gravitational threshold allowing their transition. Carthage’s wave of pursuing missiles had all raced after Tanager’s initial course and were now forced to claw their way back, far off track.
“Uh, C-Commander,” Che stammered. “There’s a new contact showing up, d-deep in the well, just c-clearing the horizon.”
Susan Roush held a pretty solid idea who that must be. “What ship?”
“I-I’m not sure—”
“It is the heavy merchant Aurora,” Loki’s dry voice interjected. “It likely contains the captain and Chief Maru.”
Roush sized up the growing picture for a moment. “Down so deep, he’s got to be collecting the Marines. He should be good, I think.”
Che Ramos saw a curious blip in his sensors, farther out-system where nothing but empty space should be. “C-Commander! New contact out-system, one-twenty right azimuth, thirty degrees positive!”
“What the shit…?” Roush stared at the holo.
“Oh no, no, no!” Julie Yeager sobbed suddenly. “No, no, no!”
“Pull it together, Nav!” Roush ordered as she quickly formed a new picture of their threat. Their active sensor pulse had saved them from a nasty surprise. A ship sat, waiting silent and dark in a far-slung orbit, ready to scoop them up.
“We’re dead! We’re dead!” Julie Yeager cried, her face pinched.
“Church, get her out, and get Ruprecht for me,” Roush said. “Weps, give me a pattern of sixty-fours right at the new contact. We can use those for interdiction and keep their damned missiles off us.”
“L-launch!” Che called out. “Outbound contact launched missiles—still launching!”
Roush snapped between her instruments feeling the first cold stabs of real fear. A large expanse of open space still existed around Delta Three, but the available avenues away to a safe transition point shrank by the moment as ships and missiles raced toward Tanager. Only Tanager’s high delta-v and Roush’s counterintuitive course selection had given them an inkling of hope.
If the rebels really slaughtered the station’s entire inhabitants, then surrendering could not be considered. Not that she was even close to admitting defeat yet.
Ruprecht hustled into the bridge. “You take Nav, Lieutenant, if you can handle the pressure,” Roush said, barely glancing up. “We’ve got a damned maze to navigate if we’re ever going to leave this system.”
Ruprecht glanced at all the intersecting tracks displayed on the main holo and raised his eyebrows as he settled his heavyworld frame into place. “Very well, Commander.”
“I’ve got a malfunction on the load trays, Commander,” Tilly Pennysmith said, flushing.
“Tell me it’s the sixty-fours,” Roush said.
“It’s the sixty-fours,” Pennysmith said.
“Ops, get Cray from Engineering and the deckchief down to the Weapons section. Get that load tray un-fucked.” Roush turned on Che Ramos. “Got the ident on that out-system contact yet?”
“N-no, Commander, s-still trying to—”
“Loki?” Roush interrupted. “You got that out-system figured?”
“I am sorry, Commander,” Loki’s mellow voice offered. “A definitive identification is still pending. It is approximately a fifty-thousand-ton cruiser, according to my measurements.”
Fifty thousand tons… Roush felt her internal chill increase. The enemy kept such a substantive warship running dark, idling out on the fringes, for what?
“Weps, you got a wide enough spread to detonate a couple of those fish?”
Pennysmith checked her scopes, assuring that her missile patterns had dispersed enough. One detonation wouldn’t wipe out the other missiles in the pattern. “Yes, Commander. All patterns are dispersed.”
“Alright, let’s poke ’em in the eye,” Roush said. “Nav, get ready for a course change. Weps, detonate your selected fish.”
A nuclear missile in each pattern, one between Tanager and each of the enemy vessels, detonated. For a short time Tanager lay concealed from her enemies behind globes of expanding energy, and within that window, Tanager rolled to a new heading, accelerating hard.
Susan Roush glowered into the scopes, calculating their chances of breaking free, but even in the midst of her calculations she spared a thought for Saef and Major Mahdi. In all the furor, could they slip away?
* * *
One small section in an advanced Marine training course involved various unique methods for escaping out of a gravity well, after said Marines had sown hate and discontent planetside. The common execu-jet figured heavily in these plans, so Major Mahdi’s assaulters all knew the drill: check for fuel, burn off the primary and secondary transponders, hotwire the autopilot system, then run like hell and stay low.
With six heavy battledress Marines distributed around the jet’s interior, curled into their tightest form factors, the jet flew low over the water. Wiley drooped over the control console, his helmet off and wet hair dripping, a patchwork of bandages decorating his face. He felt blood soaking the seat beneath him, but he ignored that and the pain radiating from numerous wounds as he looked from the small nav screen to optical scan and back. The horizon ahead grew brighter as they flew toward dayside, running flat out.
He knew that there would likely be no warning, no notice if an interceptor got on their path; the execu-jet exploding around them would be the subtle indication of failure.
“How you holding up, Marine?” Major Mahdi’s voice crackled out from where he curled his battledress-clad form, just outside the cockpit.
Wiley saw more fiery streamers plummeting from the upper atmosphere where wreckage of some kind fell from orbit. “I’m holding, sir. Looks like we got a couple minutes until we start our climb… And there’s more shit falling from orbit.”
Since they had received the short, coded signal from Sergeant Kabir, Major Mahdi’s raiders had shed some of their fatalistic joviality. As the likelihood of survival grew before their eyes, they became increasingly attached to the idea of remaining alive and intact.
“Roush or the captain slagging their satellites, likely,” Major Mahdi rumbled. “The only reason we’re slipping away so easy.”
“Here’s the climb.” Wiley saw the nav track change a moment before the execu-jet nosed up, rising from just above the water, climbing sharply. Combined with blood loss, the compressing g-forces dimmed his vision and made his head spin. Through the tumult in his skull he heard Major Mahdi’s voice.
“With no satellites, so far out over the ocean, if they detect our climb at all it will be too damned late.”
Wiley nodded his head, his eyes closed, feeling the climb pushing him farther into the seat, blood squeezing out of the cushion below him like a sponge, running down the back of both legs. The words too damned late spun through his mind a few times before he found the energy to speak. “Reckon you’re right, sir.”
* * *
Saef used every trick he knew to reduce the signature of the ship as he eased away from the station and slowed gradually into a deeper and deeper orbit. Without a synthetic Intelligence scanning all around, looking for hints of any other vessel visible to optical scopes, Saef could only gather so much about the activities of Tanager and any enemies on-system. The passive scanners on a merchant spacer like Aurora left him feeling nearly blind, even compared to a humble old warship like Tanager. As a result, he largely ignored the drama unfolding through the system, focusing simply upon sneaking down into the well to collect his troops.
Now for Major Mahdi to complete the other half of the puzzle without either of them being observed and swatted out of the air.
Sergeant Kabir clomped back into the tiny bridge and took a knee beside Saef. “Cleared the ship as best we could. We’re alone, and the cargo hold looks pretty full.”
Saef peered into an antiquated scope and made an adjustment to the controls. “Good, Sergeant. And Chief Maru?”
“Seems stable enough, sir. Haider said she came to for a bit, asked for food.” He chuckled. “For a skinny little thing, she sure has an appetite!”
Saef turned his inimical gaze on Sergeant Kabir. “He fed her, didn’t he?”
“What? Yes, yes,” Kabir felt himself shifting uncomfortably with the intensity of Saef’s eyes. “Haider gave her one of her food bars.”
Saef nodded and turned back to the instruments. “If she doesn’t regain consciousness in an hour or so, we’ll need to rig a glucose drip.”
“Really, Captain? She’s only been out for a few—”
“Yes, Sergeant. Make a note of it, please.”
Sergeant Kabir grimaced, about to ask additional questions despite Saef’s peremptory tone, when the sound of a clattering step reached them. Despite having personally cleared the vessel, Kabir’s carbine leveled at the bridge hatch. No quick clearing could unearth every little hiding place.
“Oh, it’s your luggage, sir.” Kabir’s carbine lowered as the dumb-mech scampered in on its six legs, squirming up close to Saef’s command seat.
“So it is.” Saef frowned over at the dented metal carapace that angled up toward him on its articulated legs. Saef detected a faint chirping sound from within the dumb-mech: the Imperial QE comm. Saef’s frown deepened. What could Winter Yung possibly need?
For a moment Saef considered ignoring the comm. His hands were full, trying to save himself, his Marines, and the fortunes of his family. A moment later the idea of sending out word of the Delta Three slaughter trumped even survival.
“Sergeant, open one case in the cargo hold, please. Match it to the manifest. Any case will do.”
Sergeant Kabir hesitated only a moment at the strange order, before nodding. “Yes, sir.” Hefting his carbine, he clomped out the narrow bridge hatch.
Saef checked his instruments and controls, assuring that the Aurora continued its slide down into the well, on track for their rendezvous with Major Mahdi. He opened the dumb-mech’s main compartment and drew out the chirping quantum-entangled communicator.
As the waiting message responded to his authentication, scrolling its characters across the secure screen, Saef felt his stomach quake, despair washing over him.
The government offices of Delta Three operated a QE comm tied to its counterpart in the Imperial offices of Core control, like all provincial governments. Through these comm connections Imperial edicts, emergency alerts and other small messages suited for the constrained bandwidth passed in both directions. On this day of violence and treachery Delta Three’s comm had apparently been put to use.
Saef read the scrolling text twice: GOVERNOR’S OFFICE OF DELTA THREE JUST DECLARED THAT IMPERIAL MARINES ASSASSINATED THE GOVERNOR AND LAUNCHED UNPROVOKED ATTACKS ON MILITARY AND CIVILIAN TARGETS. ARE YOUR MARINES DEPLOYED PLANETSIDE?
Saef stared at the blinking cursor for a long moment, thinking of the best reply to convey the complexities of the tactical situation, the startling discoveries. As last he punched in a short string of characters and sent them, knowing that they would instantly appear on Winter Yung’s mated comm, over a light-year away.
Saef stared at those characters in all of their blunt understatement: YES.
The eternity before a reply registered Saef spent checking the Aurora’s progress down to his rendezvous. Major Mahdi assassinated the governor? The governor’s office claimed loyalty to the Emperor even as rebel warships dominated the system, and their orbital station hosted the slaughter of thousands?
The comm chirped and Saef looked at the single, horrible line: NO ONE CAN SAVE YOU FROM THIS.
For centuries the Sinclair-Maru Family represented solidity and competence. One moment the Family name meant something honest and estimable, and now…? Saef felt his breath leave him, darkness filling his thoughts.
The comm chirped again, its message matching the coldness in Saef’s gut: CONSIDER SUICIDE.
The suggestion did not seem inappropriate in that moment, but Saef struggled to find the Deep Man. As he fought down the constriction around his chest, clarity seemed to arise. Aside from responsibility to collect Tanager’s Marines, Saef needed some hint of the emergent danger to reach the greater sphere of human space. Suicide was not an available option.
He punched in a string of characters and read the terse lines before he sent the message: REBEL WARSHIPS HOLD DELTA THREE SYSTEM. THOUSANDS FOUND EXECUTED ON ORBITAL STATION. EVIDENCE OF NONHUMAN INVOLVEMENT.
With the message sent, Saef drew in a calming breath, securing his place within the Deep Man, above and beyond fear, and turned back to the ship controls with little thought of the disaster that awaited.
The return message arrived quickly: RETURN TO CORE. SPEAK TO NO ONE ABOUT POSSIBLE NONHUMAN AGENCY. YOU MAY YET SURVIVE THIS. OUT.
When Sergeant Kabir returned, the dumb-mech scampered past him out the bridge hatch, and Saef seemed fully occupied with the ship’s controls.
“Captain, the manifest is—is the damnedest thing. Full of Shaper tech. So much, you…you wouldn’t believe it.”
“Is that so?” Saef said without turning from his tasks.
“I opened a couple of cases, and it all seems to match. Don’t think I’ve ever seen so much Shaper shit in one place. Gotta be worth…millions? More?”
Saef nodded. “Excellent, Sergeant. Can you get back and man the secondary airlock? With luck, we’ll come up on your comrades in thirty minutes or less.”
Sergeant Kabir opened his mouth to ask if Saef understood what he was saying about the immense wealth held within this merchant ship, but changed his mind. “Secondary airlock? Aye, sir. On it.”
Saef leaned over Aurora’s scopes again, looking for any trace of Major Mahdi climbing up to meet them, even as Aurora slid deeper and deeper into the well. Saef felt the deck shiver beneath him. The upper reaches of Delta Three’s atmosphere buffeted them, and their only possible rendezvous point drew near. If Major Mahdi could not reach them within that narrow confine of space and time, he and his Marines would remain on Delta Three to face whatever fate the residents might inflict upon them.
Even as he stared into the scope, scanning for any hint, Saef wondered if it might be better if Mahdi remained behind. Assassinated the regional governor…?
* * *
The execu-jet climbed at a sharp angle, the green field of ocean spreading out below, storm clouds far behind. Wiley slumped in his seat, eyes nearly closed, barely seeing the nav screen and its flickering numerals, higher and higher. A part of his mind counted down the seconds. Just a little higher, a little farther, and they would be beyond the reach of any planetside defenses. Just a bit longer and they would be away.
“You still there, Marine?” Major Mahdi’s voice cut through the haze over Wiley’s mind.
Wiley opened his mouth to speak but found it too parched to make a sound.
“Wiley?”
Wiley took a sip from his hydration pack before managing, “I’m here, sir.”
“Good. Not long now.”
Even as Mahdi spoke, the execu-jet’s engines cut out, there was a moment of weightlessness, and the jet’s mag-drives kicked in. Weight returned as they continued to climb, now thrusting against the planet’s magnetic field, clambering up into the last traces of the atmosphere, above the reach of conventional engines. Rather than rocketing up to escape velocity, the execu-jet found orbit like a spider inching up a magnetic web, slow and steady, even when desperate speed was desired.
Wiley stirred, flipping on their docking beacon. He scanned through the hazy distance and black sky, seeing life and freedom in darkness, while destruction and death awaited upon the planet’s bright face.
“Anything, Wiley?” Major Mahdi inquired, his mechanical voice grating in the stillness.
“Not yet.” A panel light lit up even as Wiley spoke. “Maybe this is it.” He punched a comm button and the signal blared to life: “Unidentified craft, you are in violation of—” Wiley punched the comm button again.
“Nope,” he said. “Looks like groundside is on to us.”
“So it does.”
The silence in the cockpit stretched out and Wiley found his thoughts fading again, spinning into a near dream state as his gaze wandered from the angrily flashing comm light to the faint glimmer of stars through the cockpit view screen. One of those glimmering points might even be home, an uninmportant star that warmed his skin during idyllic summer days of his youth on an unimportant world. The stars blanked out as a large shape swept toward them, now catching the light, gleaming brightly.
Wiley stared vacantly for a long moment, worked his mouth and finally managed, “Looks like our ride is here.”
* * *
Saef matched the execu-jet’s path as closely as possible before triggering the docking sequencer. He found the airlock monitor and watched, expecting the execu-jet to slowly ease up to Aurora’s extending port, kiss and lock. Instead, he saw the execu-jet’s hatch pop, and a string of humanoid figures leaping the gap, two oversized figures bearing bulky burdens as they crossed the distance. With the planet surface swirling below, the Marines momentarily became individual orbital bodies, a display Saef had not anticipated. Still, it was mere seconds before the lock cycled, and Sergeant Kabir signaled the all clear.
Saef immediately moved to the nav controls, entering the course he had waiting. Aurora accelerated, lifting out of the gravity well, edging into a higher orbit, moving to a slingshot departure from Delta Three’s embrace.
With the system course in motion, Saef began transition calculations, fumbling through Aurora’s merchant nav system, finding his way through the variations from Fleet standards.
Some minutes passed with Saef dividing his attention between the intrasystem navigation demands and ironing out the final steps of the transition calculations, before Sergeant Kabir reached out through the ship comm.
“All secure here, Captain. One dead, one wounded.”
Saef stabbed the comm tab. “Affirmative. If the major could come to the bridge as soon as possible, I would appreciate it.”
“Roger that. Give us a bit to get him out of his kit.”
It was only a few minutes later when Saef heard the solid tread of an approaching stride. Saef turned to see Major Mahdi duck through the low bridge hatchway, his blocky features as composed as ever.
“Captain,” Mahdi rumbled, stepping to the vacant seat and settling in.
“Give me the high points, Major,” Saef said, turning back to the instruments. “Forgive my preoccupation.”
Mahdi waved a dismissive hand. “Work your magic, Captain. I’d like to see this system behind me.”
“Trouble?”
Mahdi mused a moment before speaking. “Sergeant Kabir told me about Suffolk, so I figure you may have some inkling of the scope.”
That reply jarred Saef. His thought had fixated on the governor’s fate, and now came back around to the disturbing possibility of some nonhuman agency. “Did he also mention the slaughter?”
Mahdi nodded. “He did. Taken with my planetside view, I am…uneasy.”
“High points, Major?”
“Right. Sorry.” Mahdi rubbed a hand across his face. “After some fiddling about, we stopped the governor’s vehicles, identified ourselves, and had to put down a couple of the governor’s cronies who made their try.”
“And the governor?” Saef asked. “Killed in the cross fire, I presume?”
Mahdi shook his head, puzzled. “No. He survived long enough to say a few interesting words before one of his bunch took a knife to him.”
Saef looked over at Mahdi with surprise. “One of his own people? You sure?”
Major Mahdi stared back. “Of course I’m sure, Captain. Got a vidcapture of it, too, if you care to see for yourself.”
Saef felt relief flooding through him, but he merely nodded, and turned back to the ship’s instruments.
“Thing is,” Mahdi continued, “she killed him when he squawked that she wasn’t human.” He leaned back in the seat and drew a deep breath. “And I believe him.”
“Suffolk, and the slaughter on the station…it does seem…disquieting…inhuman.”
“Aliens…even better at inhumanity than we are. Lifetimes of practice, I suppose.”
“I daresay,” Saef answered, surprised at the grim amusement in the major’s voice.
“Don’t mind me, Captain.” Mahdi smiled thinly. “My Marines just pulled off one of the most successful raids in recent history, we’ve exposed these alien sods, and I’ve found a fight worthy of my ancestors. It is an interesting moment to be alive.”
Saef began to reply, then looked at a flicker across his instruments. He switched the holo to optical feeds, bringing up the system starscape and the bright edge of Delta Three planetside. Two expanding orbs of energy filled the near field, brightening the cockpit from the screen’s radiance.
Saef stared at the image. “An interesting moment to be alive, Major, if we can survive the next few hours, and if the Admiralty doesn’t crucify us.”
“Just part of the excitement, Captain.” Mahdi folded thick arms across his chest, staring at the glowing image. “You never feel more human than when you’re right on the edge of destruction.”
Saef drew a deep breath as the twin suns of nuclear energy began to shrink, and the faint torch of a lone ship began to resolve, accelerating hard, running from invisible threats.
Would Susan Roush agree? Does she feel especially human even now?