Sign of the Times
JANUARY- 2506. LOVE, WAR, AND BASKETBALL.
Adi should have known better than to get between a woman and her hangover.
Wyn Lebasque really loved Calvados. The bars were good, the routes were steady, and the stays were short enough. She could have had stable, simple work back home on Yangtze or anywhere else back in Keid. That was boring. There was no excitement behind a life that was as easy as they got back in the rest of the Republics. Sure, she had to move cargo, but she got to see the world behind the Curtain on a budget and with very little constraints but a time and a date. She’d stayed in ports in Tau Ceti, Rigel, Fomalhaut, Epsilon Indi, and even as far out as the systems out in the Pavonian Current. She’d gotten to see a good amount of Sol, too, and she honestly got why nobody really cared about Earth anymore.
Wyn dragged her face out of the couch’s pillows. She blinked the sleep out of her eyes and it took her irises a second to let in the light in a trickle rather than a flood— as she came to, she took in emerald eyes in a judgemental squint.
“We gotta go, ya fuckin’ bum.” Adi Kamil scoffed. “We’re leaving early.”
“Early?”
“Those guys in the Gulf need bailing out. We leave in forty-eight hours.”
“Fuck, it gotta be us?” She groaned.
“They’re starving, Wyn.”
“Fuck.”
She rolled off the couch, flopping onto the floor with a thud. It was a less dignified sound than the thump she used to have. Was she letting herself go? Adi crossed his arms over her. “Do I have to drag you on your feet? Chrissakes, Wyn, what was it last night? Absinthe?”
“Y…yeah.”
“To which?”
“It was… jägerbombs, not absinthe.”
He cocked his head, hands on his hips. “Really, Wyn?” He rolled his eyes, and squatted down, holding out his arm with a sigh. “C’mon.”
“What would… What’d I do without you?”
“I don’t know, Wyn. Drown in puke, I think?”
“Fuck off.” She groaned, wrapping her arm over his shoulder as he slung her bag across his arm. “Yeah, probably.”
“Point that— point your face away from me while I help you walk, okay? Your breath is rancid.”
“Got it. Radical.” She nodded.
Calvados City was pretty, for what it was. Palm trees, imports from Earth, reached out for the sky, dwarfed by the space elevator that sprung up from the center of the resort town. This city had two kinds of people in it: traders and vacationers. It was Minerva’s one indulgence into the world of moneymaking rackets. Wyn stumbled alongside Adi, her right arm slung over him, a WIRED!™ can in her left hand, hoping the pseudocaf would, even if it wouldn’t sober her up, at least let her have the energy to walk alone. She couldn’t help but think it tasted like battery acid, but even if the Blues didn’t know how to make an energy drink taste good, they sure as hell knew how to make it kick. That was the upside of living here— even if any other Minervan looked at you with suspicion, you could trade across the Curtain with impunity and relaxed tariffs. There was next to no luxury you could find in the UN that you couldn’t find in the FMR— well, good wine came to mind— but there was something about the storied, prominent name brands of the United Nations that some people couldn’t help but find irresistible.
Hawaiian shirts and pastel swimsuits mobbed the tube station as they stepped into the subway car, and the two freight haulers stood out in the crowd like a sore thumb, clearly not dressed for the occasion. God forbid anyone here have something to do. She sighed. Fuckin’ tourists. She was at least glad the station was so close to her apartment. This line ran from the Long Shore neighborhood to Jarrett Beach, but it passed through the space elevator on the way. That was their stop, and she sipped away at the caustic beverage as she awaited the siren call of the text-to-speech announcer beckoning her to safety, away from these disgusting people who had the gall to enjoy themselves in her backyard. She hadn’t grown up here, of course, and she barely lived here anyways, but it was hers. She’d run away from the comfort and stability of New Brixton and sought the rough living of running freight because there was nothing that scared her more than a soft life— let alone a degree, a desk, and a partnership at Lebasque & Koyama. It was either this or the military, and unlike many of her countrymen, she didn’t particularly care enough about the FMR to take a slug for it.
The announcer sung its sweet, saccharine-smooth song as the algorithm pieced together the words “Now arriving: Bonhomme Memorial Space Tether. Mind the gap.” Her hangover and the some two hundred or so miligrams of pseudocaffeine in her body were viciously fighting for control over her brain as Adi led her by the hand out of the subway car, emerging into the concourse of the station. The view of the city was majestic from the glass walls of the Tether’s integrated Calvados City Rapid Transit station; glass, concrete, and composite alongside faux wood and stone with grand avenues and promenades stretching down into the beach in one direction, and towards the bazaar in another. They sauntered towards the entrance gates of the embarkation station, and scanned their work IDs at the commercial gate. Adi passed her bag through the scanner and they walked through the security gates, and as the disinterested officer stared wistlessly off towards the beach, a green light flashed behind his console and he waved them through. “Travel safe.”
They nodded, and stepped into one of the smaller auxiliary cars, slated for a climb at thirty minutes past the hour. The tether complex was, in fact, several space elevators colocated with each other— and the passenger cars had the best view. It wasn’t common for space elevators to have windows, let alone large wrap-around ones, with most settling for a pass-through screen to entertain its passengers with a spectacular vision of the world slipping away, but these ones were wrapped around with windows of what was either alumiglass or clear-ceramic. She couldn’t tell. It didn’t really matter, either. It would hold, and it would look damn good while it did. The climber car’s passengers were an eclectic mix— there was somebody from anywhere here. Anywhere but here, anyways.
On their right sat a pair of UN businessmen— she could tell by the way they carried themselves. They flicked their eyes around like they were in enemy territory, the polo shirts and khaki pants telling on them almost as much as their laptop bags, almost as much as the way they walked ever so uneasily in Calvados’ 0.85g.
On their left was another gaggle of locals— as much as one could call them that, anyways. These ones were either dockworkers or cargo haulers like her— they were built for it, and their wrists showed the imprints that years working in exo-harnesses would give you. Even still, they weren’t from here. Nobody was from Calvados. People born here rarely stayed here, anyways. People came here because they hated how cushy their life was in a place where the state would provide for you, because they wanted to chase riches in a land where there were actual consequences. Or the illusion of them, anyways. Calvados was a land of a quick buck, a quick tan, and quicker changes in fortune. It was a quick ride down to the gutter if you played your cards wrong, but wealth was never more than five minutes away. That’s why she was here. Sure, they still had some of the Minervan safety net— but they weren’t smothered by it, and it wouldn’t fuck you out of your next score. That’s how she saw it, that’s how she liked it, and that was enough for her and the lucky few hundred thousand to live in the Calvados Special Economic Zone. Most back home thought people like them were insane. They just didn’t see the vision.
They settled in as the time wound down to the climb, pulling the harnesses down and strapping in for what would be a pretty speedy ride, given the distances involved.
She breathed in and coughed— Adi had been right about her breath— and as the door alarms sounded and the hatches slid shut, she watched the surly bonds of Calvados slip away in a blur of skyscraper, sand, and sea.
The Siren’s Song was a storied ship. She had been christened Terra Nova, first owned by a UN company from Epsilon Indi, and now owned by a Minervan co-op. She was a Savannah-Class, a tried-and-true cargo hauler design that had been built by the yards at Alpha Centauri for almost a hundred years, which was itself a slightly tweaked version of an older design from Sol’s twenty-fourth century. The internal markets of the UN and FMR very rarely touched— at least, outside of Special Economic Zones like Calvados— but in the freight business, it really didn’t matter who you bought your ship from. They were all pretty much the same, and most of them were second-hand, if not third or fourth, and none of them were particularly luxurious. Siren’s Song was no exception.
The dockworkers scurried around the loading platform, EVA suits’ position-marker lights cutting through the settling night, as the shadows of dusk crept upon the trunk of the enormous tree piercing into the heavens. They had still about two days to load the shipments of grain, seeds, soil, Raw Programmable Protein, aeroponic equipment, and various other supplies, including a few luxuries— real coffee, for one. Grown on Minerva. Not the synthetic stuff. She’d be doing the same job in reverse when they got to Akrotiri— well, not quite. She’d be loading all the containers onto shuttles to bring down to the surface. They had the capacity for thousands of containers, but Akrotiri didn’t need all that. Most of the containers flying with them would be for another leg of the run— they’d hang a chain of assists off EQ Pegasi, Krüger 60, and 61 Cygni into a high-velocity trajectory to reach Altair in two months. It sucked that they were going to lose a bunch of money on this run— some of the goods they had been planning to bring to Altair weren’t scheduled to arrive for another month. Oh well. Looks like they had to go be altruistic for a change. She was still getting paid, at least.
The decks up here were plategrav. Inside, anyways. It was real fancy stuff. Sure, the technology to make gravity from the deckplates had been around for a few decades, but it still felt new, perhaps because it hadn’t made its way to cargo ships yet. Cruise ships and mega-yachts used it. The UN military almost went all in on it in the 2430s until it killed a ton of people, and then they backed off until they finally did go all in on it a few decades later. Minerva had been a little bit more skeptical, especially after all the deaths the Blues had on the Charles de Gaulle and the Akagi, and was only just kind of rolling it out now. Freight haulers? Hell no. Too expensive for next to no gain of functionality in the ultimate goal of making money. She was enjoying it while it lasted.
She stumble-sauntered towards the gangway, the meager portal of the airlock beckoning her home.
Captain Kaylin Rama looked out over untamed stars and uncharted space, and sighed. The WORLDS’ OKAYEST XO capilary-mug hung next to her, holding back her coffee from floating away by clever fluid dynamics and sheer human ingenuity, as she peered out the meager observation deck, one of precious few aboard the behemoth vessel. If she looked out the cupola window at the right angles, she could see hundreds of torpedo tubes and missile cells stretch out across the primary hull of the battleship, and always, always the slablike panels of applique armor hung above the vista of the space beyond like a gaping maw.
She clicked on her mag-boots and did a flip with whatever joy and whimsy she could muster against the best efforts of Big Navy, images of the twentieth-century astronauts experiencing zero-g for the first time looming larger than life in her mind. She let herself hang from the ceiling for a bit, before grabbing her coffee, taking a sip, and taking another glance out the observation cupola trying to spot any of the other ships in her battlegroup.
The intercom in the room crackled, her XO’s voice filtering into the stale air of the observation deck. “Skipper, FLASH priority. New orders came in.”
She already had her phone in hand. Her work phone, anyways. It’d buzzed just moments earlier. She unfolded the screen into the full reading tablet size and sighed when she saw the orders on the screen.
It was going to be a long few months.
She disabled her boots’ magnetic grip, did a halfhearted somersault onto the deckplate, and walked off for the CIC, feet firmly planted on the best stand-in available for solid ground.
“Captain on the deck!”
Her Executive Officer, Commander Erik Olsen, stepped aside from the holographic station at the center of the CIC and nodded to her, tapping a button to switch workstations to the other side of the table. He pulled back the acceleration chair and brought the desk up to standing height. “All yours, ma’am.”
She returned a salute and nodded. “At ease.”
The sailors got back to work as she walked up to her crash couch, tapping the headrest as she always did. “You read them?” She held her tablet in her hand.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Thoughts?” She arched an eyebrow.
“Depends.” He paused. “Professional or personal?”
“Business before pleasure.”
“Professionally: I think we can break it, ma’am.” He nodded. “We’ve got a lot of firepower here. Even if we don’t match their numbers, just us being there will call into question the political viability of the blockade.”
“Personally.”
“Personally, I think the worlds are going to hell in a handbasket, and we’re the couriers.”
“I’ll take that under advisement.” She nodded. “Let’s get a course laid in, get these orders to the rest of the battlegroup. And tell the chef to throw the steaks on the grill once we transit slip.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
She picked up a phone from the base of the console. “All hands, all hands. This is the Captain.” All across the ship, the 1MC jumped to life. “Due to circumstances beyond our control, our deployment has been— oh, I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. We’ve been retasked. Our new orders are to preempt the incoming United Nations blockade of Akrotiri, one of our furthest colonies... and to deter its continued enforcement. We will not be engaging in combat with the Blues, but is damn well our job to put the fear of God— and more importantly the fear of us— in ‘em.” She sighed. “Unfortunately, this will mean we’ll be out here a little while longer. And yes, there will be steak in the mess when we reach the slipstream. Might as well celebrate, I guess.” She sighed. “We will need to give this task our all. This is a mission of incredible importance. Those people down there are counting on us, and if we don’t deliver, they could starve. So let’s get out there, let’s get mean, and let’s send the Blues home scared.” She nodded to the slip officer. “Mr. Joyeaux, lay in the course.”
“Aye, ma’am.” He nodded. “We should have a solution in six hours.”
She buried her head back into the phone. “All hands, make ready for slipspace transition in t-minus six hours.”
"You know," the voice from the TV in the Siren’s Song rec room was nonchalant and bemused, ever so slightly loopy. "I ran into Jason Solís at a wings joint in Marshall the other day."
"No kidding, Xavi?" The other voice was similarly out to lunch. "Did he recognize you?"
"Well, considering that to most people, I'm a disembodied voice on a television, no."
"You know, my grandma was mad when I took the announcer job,"
"Really, Steve?"
"Absolutely. She said nobody would see my pretty face," he shook his head, no camera in sight to catch it. "She wanted me to be a neodisco star."
"Do you think you have that in you?"
"One hundred percent, Xavi."
"Okay, then, let's hear it."
"Okay, you, me, and all of Minerva." Steve drew a deep breath and snapped his fingers. "Ohhh, when I see you walk in the roooom—" He sucked in a breath and stopped singing. "Oh, that's a foul, Montaña. Bokeo at the line for the 'Nauts."
"You know, maybe she was onto something." Xavier nodded, a slight frown of approval on a face neither Adi or Wyn could see.
Wyn sighed.
"These announcers fucking blow, man."
"Look, gonna have to put up with these jokers. This is the only broadcast I could record." Adi's shoulders sunk. "At least the game's good."
"They never talk about it!"
"You're not watching for the commentators, are you?"
"No, but, like."
"Let's work through that, Steve. Your grandma wanted people to see your face, so she encouraged you to sing, a profession which is also largely audio based."
"Correct, Xavi."
"Oh my God they're still on the grandma thing."
"Did you tell her that?"
"Yes I did. Solís for three! And he ties the game up."
"Can the Caballeros make it down the court before the buzzer? Veiss has it, and he's running out of time, he shoots it from halfcourt—
"Oh, shit." Adi leaned forward in his seat. Wyn's eyes widened.
"Oh, right off the backboard!"
They grinned at each other.
"Looks like your 'Nauts are hanging in there, Adi."
"Yeah, barely. Just wait. Suri is a choke artist."
"Adi, with all due respect, what the hell are you on about?"
"You saw what happened in the divisionals last year."
She sighed. "You fuckin' Canaveral fans are delusional…"
The Action Group Intelligence Center was always a little bit chillier than the rest of the ship. That had always rubbed Captain Rama wrong. The whole damn ship was too cold all the time. She was glad this generation of duty uniforms had a personal pressure layer— the fact that anybody doing anything was effectively walking around in a temporarily helmetless spacesuit meant everybody had their own climate control for everything but their head. Most people left the gloves off until General Quarters hit. She couldn't help but always notice that Olsen didn't.
Lieutenant Commander Jo Broadhurst, the lead intelligence officer of Space Action Group FIVE-SEVEN, stepped up in front of the display table, beckoning the others in the command staff around. She stood shoulder-to-shoulder with several other Captains, and a gaggle of space warfare officers gathered, clustered around them, peering over shoulders and between cracks in the group.
Jo nodded, and he clicked a remote. “Alright, let's begin.” A holographic, faded-color rendering of a sparse star system sprung to life in front of them. “GJ 1221 Draconis. White dwarf, two planets. GJ 1221 II, lifeless, frozen rock. One, however, is a different story. I'm sure some of you have heard the name Akrotiri thrown around. This is it. Our friend Jimmy’s favorite little boondoggle. Eyeball planet, breathable atmosphere and damn near one-g, stuck bang-on in the middle of a fading Goldilocks zone and on the far edge of nowhere. Native flora and fauna. And, as I'm sure many of you have all figured out by now, the reason we're all here today.”
“While back, the lovely people of Calvados— bless their hearts— set up a colony on Akrotiri. Two problems. One, they didn't tell anybody until after they did it. They were frustrated the Consensus was moving slow on authorizing their project. So somebody gets the wonderful idea to do it unofficially without asking and go beg for forgiveness later. Doesn't matter, we're obligated to protect ‘em. They're Minervan citizens.” Somehow, Rama grumbled to herself. Wouldn't think it, the way the Calvadans act.
“Problem two. The UN moved in just after they got there. And they had no idea anybody was there. Several UN space agencies built a radio telescope in orbit of the planet to observe past the Draconis Gulf for scientific applications.” Jo shook his head. “This is the bigger of the two problems… by a considerable margin. Because there's also a secret third problem, and it makes all of this a lot worse. There's UN forces on the ground already, and they're listed as officially dead. Deserters, back from the Maybe War. Of course, Bradbury wants them back, and their equipment, of course— and moreover, they want our colonists off the rock.”
“Fuck,” Rama whispered under her breath. So this just got a whole lot more messy.
“We’ve had actionable intelligence that the UN is dispatching a blockade from multiple sources for a few weeks now. An inside source in-system has corroborated it and a source in Bradbury has confirmed it. The colonists have been having food problems recently— it’s a pretty damn cynical play. Starve ‘em out ‘till they give you what you want. Here’s our rules of engagement…”
“So yeah, two things you need to know about me. I'm arachnophobic, but, like, phobic in the scared way and the hate way. I don't know if y'all know this but brown recluse spiders are an invasive species in some parts of Mars. I mean, all species are invasive species on Mars, but those lil’ motherfuckers weren't supposed to hitch a ride. Like I'm sorry, little guys, but we don't want your kind here.” The standup on the lounge TV paced along the stage. “Number two is I puke easy. I don't know what it is. I can't get bad news without throwing up. I think I just have a very sympathetic digestive system. Lil’ guy's tryin' to show his support. How much this means to him. By ruining my day.”
“Hey, Brett?”
“Yeah, Wyn?” The lump on the couch stirred.
“We had the room scheduled. Think you could, y’know…?” She jerked a thumb back towards the door. “Unless you want to stay for basketball.”
“NBA or RB—”
“Republics League.”
He rolled his eyes. “Enjoy your short-dude ball.”
“Oh, shuddup, Brett.”
“Fine, fine.” Brett threw his hands up and walked towards the rec room’s exit. “You two enjoy yourselves. See ya for poker at 1800?”
“Yeah, def.” Adi smiled. “See ya there.” Brett grunted.
“Who's on today?” Adi cocked his head as Wyn walked to the TV, sticking a datacart into the appropriate plug.
“Well, Adi, today in basketball we have… let’s see. ‘Dores-Roohawks, Nauts-Hoplites, and Mets-Manhattan Beach.”
“Oh, rad. Canaveral vs Attica? That's gonna be a fun one.” He stuck a thumb out towards the TV. “Fire it up.”
“Gotcha. You mind getting the popcorn?”
“Sure, yeah.” Adi nodded, heading over to the cabinet. He groaned. “All we got is Crispin Buttery’s. All out of the good stuff, I guess.”
“Crispin Buttery’s is good stuff.” Wyn huffed.
“Have you ever actually looked at the back of the bag?” Adi raised an eyebrow.
“Uh… no.”
“I don’t think you’d ever eat it again if you did.” He squinted, holding up the Martian staple. “I mean, I’m pretty sure that much sodium just kills you.”
“I like it salty!”
“Wyn, you’re gonna die young.”
You say that like it’s something I didn’t already know. Wyn shrugged. “All queued up.” She gave Adi a thumbs-up.
“I still don’t think you’re using that right, Wyn.”
“Get off my ass.” She hit play, and the RBL on S5 fanfare filled the rec room, as cleanly-designed team graphics split the screen. The dulcet tones of Steve Boise and Xavier Ofosu-Yeboah broke both the silence and the peace on the couch.
“These clowns again?” Wyn buried her face in her hands.
“You’re always surprised, Wyn, but it’s literally their job. They’re the guys who get paid to do this for Sports Five. We always watch Sports Five. It’s always them.”
“Nuh-uh! We got a different crew last week!”
“Steve had food poisoning!” Adi paused. “Wait, why’d that take them both out?”
“If I had known a little food poisoning was all it took to keep them out of the booth, I would have been a chef,” Wyn grinned. “Well, looks like we’re in for a fun one.”
“Oh, that one sucked,” Wyn rolled her eyes. “Suri is a fucking fraud, and I had to listen to a man winging about a tummyache for two hours to his bozo lackey.”
“I don’t think they’re that—”
“Shut the fuck up, Adi.”
He threw his hands up in protest. “Woah, there. Okay. See you for poker?”
“Yeah, whatev.”
“All hands. General Quarters, General Quarters. All hands, man your battle stations. The route of travel is forward and dorsal to starboard side, ventral and aft to port.” The 1MC boomed through every corridor and compartment on the venerable old battleship. “Set Environmental Condition Five and prepare for imminent contact. This is not a drill.” The CIC was mercifully spared from the meticulously-drilled chaos and commotion that would be consuming the rest of the ship, and Captain Rama looked over at the face of the Boatswain’s Mate, speaking calmly into the mic inside their pressure helm, the red battle lights of the CIC glinting off the duraglas visor. “Prepare for imminent realspace influx in fifteen minutes. I say again…”
She stared down at her console, her breath fogging her visor. She was breathing too fast and the CIC was too cold. I shouldn’t be this anxious. We’re not here to shoot anybody.
Olsen radioed in on a private channel. “You good, Skipper?”
“Yeah. All ready, XO.”
“You think we’ll have to fight?”
“Not unless they do something real fuckin’ stupid.”
“Think they will?”
“Jury’s out.”
He closed the channel, and fourteen minutes later, reality collapsed on itself. Her stomach was punched into itself, the fluid in her ears momentarily going every which way. There was no real ‘up’ in space, but suddenly up was everywhere, nowhere, and somewhere, all at once. She wanted to puke. She always wanted to puke when they did a slip transit. She never did. Contacts lit up on her master display, and console operators ringing the CIC began assessing what they were. An eyeball planet hung suspended in the distant sunrays of a dying dwarf. They were in the right place.
“Coleman is a fraud.” A hmph and spilled popcorn accompanied a foot stomping against the deckplate.
“What the hell are you talking about, Wyn?” Adi picked up his face from the couch pillows, silhouetted in the glow of the TV. “He’s one of the best three-point shooters in the whole League.”
“He can’t fucking dribble! Every time he tries to back up he gets stolen from. I don’t care how many threes he hits, he’s holding everyone else back! He can’t rebound, he can’t dribble… all he does is force everyone else to play for him. And de la Cruz is way better than he looks because he never gets a chance to show it. Bench Coleman. Fucking fraud.”
“You say that about everybody,”
“Then everybody should stop being frauds!”
He sighed.
Captain Rama wanted to get up out of her seat and look over some shoulders. That’s what she was going to do if nothing happened in fifteen minutes. “SENS, what are we seeing?”
“Slew of new contacts, Captain. five… new picture, seven contacts India. Tracks and classifications to come. Only so much I can do with the retro IR sensors while we’re burning. Permission to go loud on radar?”
“Permission granted. Thank you, SENS.” The engine burn was blinding the sensitive infrared cameras that comprised one of the many tools of the trade for getting to know your new neighbors. The radars would pick up the slack, but they likely wouldn't have the majority of their tactical picture until they could bring the most sensitive parts of the ship’s admittedly aging sensor suite to bear. She nodded from inside her pressure helmet. “TAC, status?”
“Tubes one through fifty loaded, with fifty-one through eighty on standby, ma’am.” The Tactical Officer squinted at his monitors. “Capacitor banks one through five coming online. Will keep you apprised of any issues.”
“Understood.” She nodded. “Bring the secondary gun radiators online, too.”
“Don't you think that's a little aggressive of a posture, Captain?” Olsen, her XO, radioed in from across the command console on a private channel.
“That's the point, Erik. I want them to know we mean it.”
“Ma’am, do we mean it?” There was a hint of concern in his voice, seeping in where the gasket of calm, professional confidence had slipped ever so slightly out of alignment.
“You know what our rules of engagement say.”
“I know what they say, Captain. But we’re out on the edge of nowhere. Do you mean it?”
“I wish I didn't, Commander Olsen.”
“God help us all,” Erik slumped back into his acceleration chair.
“Yeah,” Kaylin snipped. “Yeah, pretty much.”
“Captain, SENS.” The Sensors Officer called in.
“Go ahead, SENS.”
“We have new contacts. Radar reports twenty-three contacts Romeo. We have established initial classifications and are developing tracks. Check the system for details.” The contact markers on her console display blossomed with information, preliminary orbit projections sprouting forth from newly-resolved prograde vectors. She watched as specks of sensor noise resolved into satellites and drones, individual strands of a great Blue web weaving itself into view. “Thank you, SENS.”
“TAC, Captain. I want a dry cycle on the guns while we're still burning retrograde. Check them. Full systems test, bring the secondary power system on.”
“Aye, skipper. Bringing the battle reactor online.”
Erik stared daggers across the console. She met his gaze, recoiled, and paused. Wait, no… If Erik thought the fore gun radiators being on was a sign of aggression, what the hell would it say to light them up like a Christmas tree? She wanted them to know she meant it. She didn't want them to think she was going to start it.
“Negative, disregard my last. Surge the main. Don't waste the fuel.”
“Aye, Captain. Cycling sequential off main grid.”
Lights flickered. In many other, less essential parts of the ship, they were just plain going out. The MEDINA RIDGE was a beautiful, graceful lady, but she was getting up in age, and she was a product of her time, even with all the work they had done on her. In her generation, battleship power grids had been a limiting factor— and the designers of the day had decided that the MARIANAS-Class would sidestep that limitation by having an entirely secondary power grid for the main guns alone— the ‘battle reactor’. El Morro Naval Yard was proud of its handiwork— it meant a MARIANAS could do something no other battleship of her day could do, and have all five main, spinal guns shoot simultaneously and on a single target. However, it was a pain in the ass, and worse, one that was almost never necessary. Few captains ever ordered the secondary reactor to active— outside of live-fire gunnery exercises, there was next to no reason to. Kaylin Rama, after further consideration, was not about to buck a good trend.
“Gun One, empty, check, firing.” A dedicated bank of capacitors dumped massive sums of energy harvested from the disemboweled core of an artificial star into a series of magnets strung out along a barrel spanning a good chunk of a kilometer, with nothing to accelerate. Heat, of course, found its way out, a complex series of heat exchangers passing thermal energy to the secondary gun radiators up top. Her display flashed a green OK on the status indicator.
“Gun One is go. Gun Two, empty, check, firing.”
A silence hung.
“Gun Two is go. Gun Three, empty, check, firing.”
She looked up through the holographic projection of the system, peering over the watchstanding console at Olsen. He didn't seem to notice, staring intently at his console, brow furrowed in a nervous pause.
“Everything okay, Olsen?”
“Yeah, just… worried.”
“More so than usual?”
“Yeah. First contact with the Blues,”
“This is your… first? Even after all those Frontier deterrence patrols?”
“Yes ma’am.”
The voice of the TAC officer broke their conversation. “Gun Three is go. Gun Four, empty, check, firing.”
She nodded towards the Tactical Officer, uncaring that he couldn't see her. “Olsen, you've really… never run into them? That's surprising.”
“I mean, not… this close, in this hard of contact. I know it says deterrence patrols, but those patrols got really sidetracked. Most of what we did was antipiracy,” He shook his head. “The Blues were being too well behaved.”
Another green OK flashed onscreen. “Gun Four is go. Gun Five, empty, check, firing.”
“I thought I’d told you about this,” Erik’s voice came in over the private channel.
“Well, I— I don't remember you telling me, but. Maybe? I'm— I'm really sorry— I… I believe you when you say you told me, but I just can't remember it—”
“Ma’am, don't worry about it. It's been a long patrol.”
“Look, Erik. You've got so much experience under your belt I forget sometimes there are things I've done that you haven't.”
A jolt and the sound of a loud CRAAAAK ran down the structure of the ship up into her acceleration couch and through her console, and an alarm broke out over her helmet speakers. A large red INOP flashed over the icon for Gun Five. “Reporting a fire in Capacitor Bank Five. Gun Five is no go. Repeat, no go.”
“Shit—”
“Fuck!” Rama scrolled through messages on the Damage Control screen in disbelief and switched over to a public channel. “DAMCON, tell me you have a team en route!”
“They were out as soon as I heard the call, ma’am.” The Damage Control Officer nodded, his lightboard showing statuses all over the ship. “We'll get it all fixed up right away.”
“You know, kid, in all my years in the Fleet,” Chief Poole scratched his head, or at least tried to through his pressure helm. “I dinnae think I ever saw something like this.”
“What, exactly… is it?” The younger Machinist’s Mate squinted at the charred-out wreck of Capacitor Bank Five. “Well. I know what it is. What it was.”
“Heat exchangers are melted right through, all three of ‘em. And look at that crack, Kuzma,” Poole pointed to the main capacitor array. “Oh, shite, is that still bubblin’?”
“Source of the fire?” Kuzma raised an eyebrow. “You think, I mean.”
“Possibly. Shite, I tell ya, kid. This whole Navy is going t’hell. Look at this installation. Sloppy work. Rushed work.” He held out a phone— one of the few with an enabled camera onboard, taking pictures of the sizzling wreckage. “No wonder it caught. Get the foam on it. Can't believe the bloody DAMCON boys missed that.”
“On it, Chief.” Kuzma leveled the nozzle of the isolator-extinguisher bottle on the bubbling, cracked shell of the enormous capacitor. He had to check to see if the RCS autocompensator was on before he squeezed the trigger, bracing himself for the slight pushback. Neutralizing foam sprayed and crystallized on the broken component.
“Agh, no fixing that one.” Chief shook his head. “We have backups of the capacitors, sure… but the heat exchanger units are supposed to be impossible to all lose at the same time.” He grit his teeth. “See, son, we used to have enough time in spacedock to get everything done right… now every sailor and yardworker has to run around with their hair on fire to match the pace of the bloody deployments. It wasn't like this twenty years ago.” He shook his head with a disapproving click of the tongue. “If the Maestro was still alive to see this, I bet’e’d drive off a cliff again. His bloody brilliance shot to hell by a bunch of knobbers who think they can do it better, faster ‘n’ cheaper than ‘m.”
“Huh? I thought he got in a car crash,”
“What, you didn't read past the headlines, did you? He gunned it right off the cliffside on Highway 25. The old man died with his fate in his hands, just like he lived.”
“Should we all be so lucky, I guess.” Kuzma shrugged. Small chunks of isolator foam that hadn't quite attached itself to the capacitor floated past his visor and pinged off one of the other A-gangers working with him in the reasonably small room.
“Are’ya daft? The old man drove off a cliff, fell forty meters to his death! Hardly lucky. Ya wanna be lucky like that? Put that gunk in a cup an’ drink it!”
“No, Chief, on second thought I guess he wasn't that lucky.”
“No shite, he died on New Year's Eve in ninety-nine. Missed a hell of a party. Poor old bastard. Dearly missed.”
One of the Electrician’s Mates with them, EM2 Valencia, tapped the flashlight on her helmet. “Hang on a tic. Got something here.”
“Yeah?” Chief Poole looked back at her. “Whatcha got, kid?”
“Looks like… busted power relay. Burnt out. It's the switcher.” Valencia shook her head. “That relay right there, 2B-65-243? Regulates the whole power distribution for the capacitor bank. That's responsible for switching between the main and the secondary power circuit. Looks like it got jammed somewhere in between… Every wire but ground is connected.”
“Must have cycled too quickly,” Chief Poole looked down at the relay. “Ah, shite.”
“That's what I was thinking, Chief. We better check the other guns. These relays don't get flipped often. Who knows what will fail next.”
“So what's the damage, Valencia? Kuzma?”
“Relay 2B-65-243, which, we can bypass… not much else on this side. Minor cosmetic damage.” Valencia looked over at Kuzma.
“Main capacitor bank melted. Secondary exploded. As you said, Chief, we got spares. Easy replacement, as long as we can get the… melted capacitor goop out of here. We're really gonna be reeling from losing the heat exchangers. It's supposed to be impossible to lose them all simultaneously— we just got real unlucky, I guess. Main capacitor fire melted through the primary, and the explosion of the secondary capacitor sent shrapnel through the two backups. Can run the whole gun on one. Not on none.”
“Thank God the auto-extinguishers kicked in. Would have hated to do this work while we were still under thrust.” Poole nodded. “Petty Officer Valencia, you take point, get this wrapped up. CHENG, TAC, and the Captain want two things, answers and a solution, and I don't intend to keep them waiting on either.”
“Shit,” Rama’s eyes flicked up and down the report. “So we're down one gun heading into the closest contact anyone's had with the Blues in thirty years.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Poole nodded. “For the moment, we’ve lost functionality of Gun Five.”
“What the hell happened?” CHENG, Commander Meyers, stared him down, face red with annoyance. “You’re kidding me.”
“We believe the root cause stems from a combination of inadequate relay actuator maintenance in the last overhaul period and a rapid cycle between primary and secondary power grids.”
Rama’s heart sank.
“You believe.” Commander Meyers grit his teeth.
“Well, sir, it's the determination of our fact-finding survey, aye—”
“Chief, this was your team. Your conclusion.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Mr. Meyers.” Captain Rama cut off Meyers before he could say something inflammatory. “Let the Chief speak. I’d like to ask him about something he said earlier.”
“Sorry, ma’am.” CHENG backed off.
“I believe you said ‘for now’, Chief?”
“Aye, for the moment. I have a plan on how we can bring ‘er online again, but… it's a bit of a long shot.”
“A long shot.” Rama shook her head. “Well, any gun is better than no gun.”
“Aye, ma’am.” Poole nodded. “Alright. So, the capacitor can be easily replaced with onboard stocks. The heat exchangers, we'd need to go back to a FRRV or spacedock, and we don't have either luxury, do we? But what we do have are backups, but they're on the other guns.”
“I see where this is going, and I'm going to stop you right here.” Commander Meyers shook his head. “I worked ship thermal systems for years. Those units don't come apart.”
“No they dinnae, not by design. But, with a little elbow grease and creative thinking, I know we can take them apart. I went through the ship’s schematic bank, and while they're complicated, and it'll take a delicate touch, I've started working out a procedure to remove and replace one of the backup heat exchangers. Gun One looks like our best transplant candidate.”
“Let's see it, then.” Rama nodded. “Show CHENG.”
“Aye.” He pulled out a tablet and handed it over to the Chief Engineer. Meyers’ eyes widened. “Huh,” he grimaced. “It's... doable. More than I expected. Captain, we can do this, but we run the risk of disabling two guns instead of one.”
“We need to restore our full offensive capabilities, CHENG. We've got a full picture now. We're sitting just slightly over a three to one numerical disadvantage. That's not something we can afford going into with one hand tied behind our back.”
“You wanna cut off that hand trying to get it out?”
“We can mitigate the risk. If you give me a shirt-sleeve working environment in there it'll be a lot easier. I’ll have a team of my best men on it, and I'll be doing most of the work myself. I need you two to trust me,” Poole locked eyes with the Captain. “I've been in this service for twenty-four years, I'll be retirin’ soon whether I want to or not, and I dinnae. I've been doing this longer than some of the crew of this ship have been alive. I need you to trust me now, and if you cannae trust me, I'm askin’ you to trust my experience and my rate.”
“Alright, Chief. I'll trust you,” Meyers lowered the tablet, looking Poole right in the eyes. “You get your best men on this.”
“Aye, thank you, sir.”
“Make it so, Chief. Git ‘er done.” Rama nodded, and walked off. Poole turned to do the same before feeling a heavy hand on his shoulder, spinning on his heels.
“Listen, Chief. I know you're been around the block. I know you can do this,” the Chief Engineer dripped cold judgement in a hushed tone. “Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should take the risk. Captain’s a tactical officer. She sees risk as reward. I don't. I'm an engineering officer. I see risk as lives, and these are the lives of everyone in this battlegroup we're talking about. I don't care that you're an old timer, and your retirement is not my priority. The lives of this crew are. You fuck this up, and I will bury you. Dismissed.”
“Hey, Wyn. It's. León.” The man on the message sighed. “We’re… worried about you. I know you don't want to hear from us. I don't care. We heard from a friend in the Calvados government that the ship you're on is trying to reach Akrotiri.” León Lebasque paused. “I don't really care what you do with your life. You're my sister, not my kid. But I don't want you to die. And it would probably kill Mom to find out that you ran off and got yourself killed in a system nobody cared about until last month. Get home safe. If you can get off that ship, leave. I'm sure you know about the blockade. This shit is dangerous, Wyn. You're not just fooling around for extra cash anymore, these are warships, with nukes. Just get home safe! You don't ever have to see us again, just. Let us know when you get back. I love you.”
SEND RECIEPT: FEB 11 2506 12:45:34 UTC <NEW BRIXTON, SHUKAR REP., YANGTZE, KEID>
RECIEVED: FEB 14 2506 14:06:27 UTC [CODE D56- BUFFER DELAY//SLIPRELAY OUT OF ALIGNMENT]
Wyn shook her head. Blockade? León was usually cryptic and annoying— too concerned with politeness and pleasantries to say what he actually meant, like Dad— so this was, admittedly, a change of pace. Wyn liked it. She'd always preferred a more direct approach. What the hell is he talking about, though, blockade?
The intercom chirped. “All hands, all hands. This is your Captain speaking. This is a summons for an emergency all-hands meeting in the main canteen. We will meet in two hours. Be there.”
Oh, shit.
“Thank you all for coming,” Captain Artemov stood up on the mess table, his synthetic frame’s metal skeleton catching the glint of the overhead lights. “I’m sorry for the theatrics, but we have a very dire situation.”
Adi met Wyn’s eyes. He looked panicked. Perhaps he’d already heard.
“There is a United Nations naval blockade around Akrotiri,” The Captain pulled down a deep breath. “And they are threatening to destroy anyone who attempts to cross.”
“Oh.” Wyn blinked. That’s what he meant.
“I understand that when you all signed on with Northstar Spacelines, you didn’t sign up for humanitarian missions, or to get shot at, but this is life or death for these people. I know you’ve seen the articles, the news. They’ve been starving for a month and a half now. Subsisting on whatever little they can grow, because much of the local wildlife is poisonous. They’re good people. They deserve a shot. The UN won’t give ‘em it.”
We’re not seriously going to—
She could see Adi taking a deep breath.
“We don’t have enough time to head to a port before we try this, so… we have to put this to a vote. But I think I should let you know something. The government on Calvados has offered to more than double our pay for running that blockade. Five times more than double, actually, they’re gonna 10x it. I think for most of you, that translates to retirement, or whatever else you wanna do. Our other option is to turn the ship around, hang an assist off Krüger 60 and go home. But then they all die.”
“Way I see it, those people deserve a chance at life, and we can give it to them. It’s a risky maneuver we’ve got calculated, we’ll be pushing our drive pretty damn hard and coming out real close to the planet. But we’ll be coming out with enough velocity to do a slingshot, drop all our cargo tugs on automated flight just before the periapse, and go. They won’t be able to stop us before we get past the blockade. They’ll have two choices. Start a war and shoot some civilians, or let us do what we want. Look,” Artemov paused. “We’re not here because it’s safe. In one way or another, being a Calvadan is to be a gambler. So let’s go, let’s get a little reckless. For a good cause, of course, and if not for that, for the payday at the end. Let’s go double or nothing. I’m voting to go.”
“So, those are our options. We’re gonna hold a vote. Simple majority wins. Line up to port if you want to play it safe, if you want to turn around. Line up starboard if you’re coming with me. If you want to save these fellow Calvadans.”
Adi had already started walking starboard once the Captain had told the others to line up port. Wyn grabbed his sleeve.
“Seriously? It’s crazy!”
“Wyn,” He shook his head. “There’s a lot of people down there. Lot more than in here.”
She shook her head, slowly, shocked. “Come on. Think of your family.”
“I am, Wyn. I am. If my family was down there, I’d want somebody coming for them.”
He broke away, and she was left holding the silence as the sea of cargo haulers parted around her. She glanced to her left, to her right, her breath quickening. She closed her eyes and walked left, crossing her fingers.
Her brother’s face was plastered in her imagination. Even with all that had happened between them, between her and Dad, between her and Mom, León still wanted to talk to her. What the fuck? Her breath sped. She had thought she’d done enough to make her position clear— don’t fucking talk to me. Why did he still want to talk? Why did he care? She didn’t really feel like she loved him still. Why did he love her?
“We have a verdict,” the Captain announced.
She opened her eyes, and her heart sank.
It was time to go die for a majority of the crew’s good intentions.
“Been a while, huh, Wyn? Been a weird week.” Adi passed her a bag of Crispin Buttery’s as he sat down on the couch, gesturing towards the game on the television. “St. Kateri versus the Indys, right?”
“Yeah.” Wyn snipped. “The annoying guys are back, too.”
“I… know, Wyn. They’re the regulars.”
“While you were gone, one of them went on vacation and so they got a new set of guys. They were good.”
“While I was gone? Wyn, you didn’t invite me.”
“The North’s looking pretty open now. Canaveral and New Groton’re dueling for the Central-West, but Canaveral’s ahead.”
“Wyn, the fuck.”
“You fucking voted to kill me,” Wyn shot at him. “And you want to act like things are normal, one week later.”
“You’re the one who brought me here, Wyn. And you tried to change the topic.”
“I'm just. I'm just a little pissed! You know. Nothing big. We could have all gone home. Yeah, company’s losing money on this bullshit but we'll be okay. We'll be okay.” Her breath quickened. “But you and. You and all the other idiots wanted to throw us in the way of a fucking nuke so you can feel good about yourselves!” She jammed a finger in Adi’s face. “You know, at first I wondered if it was for the money… yeah, the money’s good. If that was it I would get it.” She paused. “But it's not about the money, huh? You just want to be a good person.”
“Yeah.”
“Then that's a real shame. It looks like all you good people want to do is get killed.”
“Wyn. None of these people signed up for this,” he shook his head. “I don't expect you to understand—”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Wyn, these things are bigger than living or dying. When we took this job, we knew there was risk. I'm not here for myself, Wyn. My little brother was sick—”
“So go to the fucking hospital, Adi. I don’t know what the hell that has to do with anything. Not back home on Minerva.”
“Wyn, for the love of God, let me talk. He had Cunningham-Hayes Syndrome. Type 2.”
“Oh, shit. The super lung cancer disease?”
“Yeah. The uncurable one. Well, it was, until about… fifteen years ago, when BioDyne developed a treatment.”
“BioDyne? Wait, then how’d you get it? They don't sell to Minerva.”
“They sell to Minervans, as long as they're paying in Imbrian dollars.”
“So it is about the money.”
“No, Wyn… it's not. I paid off my debt three years ago.” Adi sighed. “We got my brother his genetweak. You know there's never been a gene therapy that's worked for people with Type 2? Not until now.”
“I… no, I didn't know that.”
“I'm here for my family, Wyn. Or, I was. Before all this, I was going to go to uni. I was fourth in my class, had a guaranteed slot at the University of Beqaa, honors pre-law. I wanted to be a public defender.”
“Funny. I can't see you as a lawyer.” She scowled.
“I can't either, not anymore. I don't even know what I want to do with myself anymore.” He hung his head. “I just want to do something good, here…”
She threw out her hands in frustration. “What good is throwing all our lives away?”
He snapped his head back up into a determined stare, a melancholy yearning tugging at the corners of his eyes. “You're so convinced it won't work because you don't want it to be able to. And you and I both know you don't care about your life— not while you’ve been drinking yourself half to death and smoking away another three-eighths, so… why does it suddenly mean so much to you?”
“I…” Wyn couldn’t answer. Not now. Not here.
“You know what, Wyn? You’re so committed to hurting yourself that it's exhausting, sometimes, being your friend.”
“Then why worry about it?” She shot a glare. “If it’s so bad— if I’m such a bad person— you could just be done here!”
“Because I care about you, Wyn, because as much as you have your low points and seem to be allergic to help, when you’re at your higher points I can see what you hide down deep.” He took a breath. “You’re facing down so much, and you can’t stand the possibility of anyone else seeing you like that, but it’s a little late for that. And I don’t think any less of you for it. You’ve spent so long simply reacting to how the world would tell you what kind of person you are… but you can still make yourself the person you want to be.” He reached out a hand. “I know you’re scared. Me too. You just have to open your heart to the possibility that this could work, that we could do some good beyond ourselves here. So… you wanna fight this thing or what?”
She paused. She stared down at his outstretched hand.
“Don’t fucking talk to me,” she said.
Valencia, Kuzma, Decker, and Chief Poole gathered around the heat exchangers of Gun One, and the crack team of electricians and mechanics got to work. Chief Poole grabbed the microiron, delicately desoldering the brazed joints around the outside of the secondary backup. The metal flowed, sucked up into the vac-tube he held in his left hand. It curled down the coppery surface like dewdrops down the Seongnam fieldgrass. It was a nice view— he had not seen dewdrops since he had embarked on the MEDINA RIDGE at the start of this long, long patrol.
He missed them. There would be much more time for dewdrops and sunny days after this patrol was over. There would be time to watch his Trevor run through the fieldgrass, barely over the top of the long, alien stalks.
He smiled.
Trevor would be six now, no? It had been a year and a half— one of the longest Frontier cruises on record. It was far too much time to be away. All that stood between him and his son was a mix of forty UN-UNC frigates, interdictors, and destroyers, the concrete representation of one man’s will. Or perhaps it was the will of the many, that these people should be condemned and their home left desolate. Poole could never tell with the UN anymore.
The harsh, stark diode lights of the worklamps beat down. Vapor, surely toxic, curled off the brazing microiron. He almost wondered what it smelled like, on the other side of the filtration mask. He knew he didn’t want to know.
Chief, Crewman Paulos had stopped him in the hallways a few days ago. What do we do if this goes tits-up?
Well, he’d said. We fight, o’course.
What if it goes tits-up in Bravo Shift? I don’t want to be stuck doing odd jobs while the ship explodes.
Ah, no, son. He’d chuckled. We wouldnae even have time. They’ll feck up real good. Then we die nice and cozy in our sleep.
He snickered, and his hand jumped. The microiron smacked into one of the heat exchanger’s many walls and clattered down into the serpentine abyss of the metal device, trailing brazing metal behind it. “Shite!”
“What’s wrong, Chief?”
“Oh, t’hell with this, I dropped my brazing iron. It’s still on, and… it looks like a lot of the filler went with it.”
“Shit.” Kuzma rushed over. “Still, shouldn’t have broken anything, right? We can just scrape off the filler metal.”
“Oh, I hope so, son. It’s my head if not…” Poole fumbled for a flashlight, knocking his toolkit off the ledge with a sudden “Aw, shite.” Kuzma gasped.
The red metal box sailed down with a catestrophic crack onto the exposed innards of the heat exchanger. The whole room jumped.
“What was that, Chief?” Valencia shouted. “Holy shit!”
“Oh, she’s broken,” he paused. “Toolbox fell. Knocked the feckin’ thing clean in two.”
“I thought these things were sturdier than that.” Kuzma blinked in stunned amazement.
“You’d have another thing coming, son. The metal is heat conductive, but it’s fairly malleable. Plus we’ve left it damn cold for a long time. Gets brittle, like that.”
“That sounds like a shitty design!”
“Well, they didnae design them to be ripped apart in the field, did they? And they designed them to be used! These guns are thirty-five years old. They havenae seen action. They’ve been cold for the better part of four decades.” He paused. “Ah, feck me.”
“What is it, Chief?” Kuzma looked up at his mentor and boss, and didn’t like the look on his face.
“I’m going to have to tell CHENG about this,” He sighed. “Oh, he’ll keelhaul me with a smile.” Chief Poole walked over to his tablet. Kuzma stepped in between him and the device.
“No, Chief.” He looked around the room. “Decker, Valencia. Chief Poole’s stuck up for you, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Decker said. Valencia nodded.
“Time to stick up for him. We’ll get this one taken off completely, and, we’ll fix it. In the meantime, we take the other off and slap it on Gun Five.”
“No,” Chief Poole said. “I dinnae need you to risk your necks for me. And we’ll only be down to one exchanger on two guns, not one.” He shook his head. “This was my mistake. My consequences.”
“You got a kid, right?” Kuzma raised an eyebrow. “You’ve told me about him.”
“Aye, the wean.” He shook his head. “I… I’ll make it work.”
“If you let CHENG throw you out, you won’t get your retirement. We can help you out. Trust us. Look,” Kuzma knelt down, grabbing the heat exchanger’s shattered carcass. “Clean break. We can get this functional again in an afternoon, maybe two days. Not pretty, but it’ll work.”
“No, son. I cannae. I’ve always done things by the book.”
“I agree with Kuzma. You’ll have to work the rest of your life if you want to provide something good for him. Sure, you can do it, but. They’ll be screwing you out of the twenty-four years you’ve given this country. All over an honest mistake, one that could have happened to anyone,” Valencia crossed her arms, walking over. “Look. We can pick this up another time. Just let me tell CHENG we’re gonna need another crack at this tomorrow, and that the backup is disconnected. No lying, just… delegation. We’ll keep watch here, and make sure nobody finds out. We can do both, Chief.”
“Decker?” Poole looked over.
“Well… yeah. I don’t like this, but. They’re right. We can’t let them fuck you over.”
“Then it’s settled,” Poole said. “You’re all set on insubordination, on lying to an officer, on… You know this could be considered, well, all sorts of things? Dereliction, at least.”
They glanced around, an uneasy silence falling between the three Petty Officers.
“Yeah,” Kuzma broke the silence. “I’d take the fall for ya, Chief.”
“Me too,” Valencia nodded.
“I’m in, Chief. Hell or high water.” Decker gave an uneasy, partly-unconvinced nod of his own.
“I’m giving you a week before I rat this all out to CHENG, or when I think this is all headed south,” Poole nodded. “Whichever one comes first.”
The hatch to the Captain’s Cabin unsealed with a gentle hiss, and Commander Erik Olsen raised an eyebrow.
“C’mon in, Erik.” Kaylin Rama sighed, brushing a strand of stray, floating hazelnut out of her eyes. “Good to see ya.”
“Ma’am.” He nodded. The Captain’s Cabin of a MARIANAS-Class was certainly, for lack of a better term, grand, fit for a vessel of her scale and her station. Rama had it sparsely but tastefully appointed, and a soft technogroove sound filtered out of what was effectively a two-story studio apartment built for space. Handholds lined the walls, with a few acceleration chairs stacked up against the innermost one. He marveled at the mahogany and Jakarta wood paneling— he had a sneaking suspicion that unlike the ones in the rest of the ship, these were real. He had been in here a few times, but never alone. Like all Minervan battleships, the MARIANAS-Class was a well-armed office building somebody had taught to fly, and this was her corner office. All that was missing were the windows.
She kicked herself off the floor, disengaging the magnetic locks on her boots, and glided over towards a couch and a coffee table, gracefully planting herself back on the deck once she’d arrived at her destination. “I figured we should talk.”
He decided not to indulge in any zero-gravity antics, and instead let his magboots keep him comfortably planted to the laughably out of style carpet. It was a pattern he hadn’t seen outside of his grandparents’ apartment— a tacky, 2440s interlocking-alternating hex pattern in green, grey, and orange, the colors of the Minervan flag. How patriotic. “Lovely decor they stuck you with. Did it come from a museum, or did they have to plunder a retirement home?”
“No,” she threw her hands up. “Look. They never refit the carpet. Apparently it was somewhere between ‘massage bunks’ and ‘free puppies’ on the priorities list.”
“Oh, so it’s an antique.”
“Careful, the Old Lady might hear.” Rama smirked, rapping the wood-paneled wall.
He snickered. “So. We should talk. May I speak freely, ma’am?”
“You, Erik? Always.”
“That’s never something you want to hear from spouses, significant others, or commanding officers.”
“Well, Erik… May I call you Erik?”
“You do anyways, ma’am. My permission has never stopped you. And no, I don’t mind.”
“Ah. Hm.” She paused, frowning. “My apologies. You can call me Kaylin, by the way. I don’t care.”
“Thank you, ma’am. I will keep that under advisement.”
“Want a drink?” She grabbed a lowball glass and a bottle of alcohol-free soju from an acceleration drawer hidden in the Jakarta wood paneling. “I’d bring out the hard stuff, but… you know. What I wouldn’t give to take the edge off right now… but I suppose we need that edge, right?”
“Yeah, sure. Always been a fan of the taste, anyways.” Erik nodded. “So, why have you called me here, ma’am? Not for pleasantries and a… well, a dry soju, surely.”
“Shit, I got sidetracked. I wanted to call you here for some honest conversation. See, the other day, I realized I barely know you, and we’ve been working together all tour.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll have you know that there is a perfectly good reason for that.”
“And what might that be?”
“I’m not particularly interesting,” he shrugged. “And I… don’t like to talk about myself.”
“Erik. Don't put yourself down.” She chuckled and smiled, if only for a moment. “I have to trust you in a life-or-death situation. And I do, I do trust you, but I've come to understand that I don't know you that well, and as I've been increasingly confronted with the possibility we could get in a slugfest here, I want to make sure I know you well enough to know how you'll react.”
“Oh.” He sighed. “Yeah, fair. Should I start with my Frontier service?”
“No, Erik.” She shook her head. “That's important, and all, and we'll get to it. But I want to know about you as a person.” She turned around, opening another drawer and removing a vibrantly marked case from it.
“You're kidding.” His face fell.
“Unfortunately for both of us, I am not kidding about Acquaintables.” She tapped the box of icebreaker cards, and set it down on the table with a magnetic clunk. “A gift from my mother that I have never once used, but you've been the one guy I just don't get.”
“Ma’am, is this an order?”
“No, not really.”
“I don't want to play an icebreaker game.”
“Fine, we can just read the cards.”
He audibly gulped.
She opened the box, pulling a stack of red cards out of the package. They hung scattered in the air pirouetting in the dead gravity, almost graceful, almost spilled.
“Alright, I'll ask you first.” Kaylin reached out, snatching a card slowly turning about its axis. “Favorite RBL team.”
“Uh… Navs are my home team, but I don't really pay attention to basketball.” He shrugged. “I’m a football guy, but I don't even get the time to watch much anymore.”
“FMF or one of the soccer leagues?”
“Minervan football,” he nodded. “Portsmouth Gridiron FC, but again, haven't seen the Griddies play in forever.”
“I'm a Buenasuerte girl, myself, right outside of Montaña,” she paused. “Grew up a big Cabs b-ball fan, got that from my dad. You from Portsmouth proper?”
“No, ma’am. Grew up down the line in Scranton.”
“Oh, Scranton’s pretty this time of year.” She nodded. “Next question. Grab one.”
“Uhhh…” He grabbed a card out of the cloud, a pressure-gloved hand gently grasping the cardstock. “What’s the best vacation you've ever been on?”
“Oh. Easy. Calvados, New Years Eve ‘99. I managed to take leave just in time, went with my college roommate. We went to the Grand Monegasque, and I said I wasn't going to gamble, and honestly it wasn't all that grand— just a bunch of chainsmokers in Hawaiian shirts huddled around some very fancy roulette tables— but I won a few quid. It was fun. I was pretty good at blackjack. Rung in the New Century right, on the beach with a marg.”
“Sounds… fun, I guess. How much did you win?”
“Went in with two hundred won, left with seven.”
“…Seven quid?”
“Seven hundred, smart guy.” She rolled her eyes. “So, how ‘bout you?”
“I did a ski tour of Pelham Republic,” he shrugged. “It was pretty nice. But ma’am, how is this helping us fight the Blues?”
“I dunno. Trust the system, Erik. We'll get a good one here soon enough.”
“I admire your faith, ma’am. I do not share it.”
“Noted.”
She leaned over, looking at Erik through the hole in the nebula of prompts. “Alright, Olsen. Your turn.” She nodded.
He sighed. “I don't think this is helping, ma’am.”
“Erik.” She scowled.
“I don't know anything more about you other than that you're good at blackjack. What good is this doing? I can run you through my career, or something actually—”
“Erik, draw the damn card.”
He groaned.
“Tell a secret you've never told anybody before.”
She paused, slumping her chin into her hand, staring into the field of cards between them. “Well, I guess it would be that I only really joined the Navy because my Mom wanted me to.”
“Okay…” he shook his head, sighed, and stared towards the ceiling.
“She was an enlisted Sailor, and I felt like I'd be letting her down if I didn't join.”
“That's your secret? That you're a momma's girl?”
“Uh, yeah, why?”
He grit his teeth, swatting aside the floating niceties and platitudes, and cast the avalanche of cardstock to the deckplate, twisting and somersaulting in the microgravity.
“You said you wanted to get to know me, as a real person. This isn't doing any of that. And you know what, ma’am? May I speak freely?”
She jolted back in her seat. “Of course, Erik.”
“I didn't wanna be here either,” he leveled his gaze at her, a piercing coldness staring through her.
The man at the apartment door looked down at Erik, a split-second’s somberness overwritten by a smile. “Hey, kid.” He crouched down to eye-level, the rows of ribbons on his black suit passing by Erik’s gaze as he came down.
“My name is Jaylen O’Leary. I work with your Mom.” He held a black leather case under his arm and wore a funny white hat. Two other strangers stood behind him, clad in the same, the dress black uniforms of the Minervan Navy. “Is your Dad around?”
“Y…yeah.” Erik shut the door in the man’s face and ran down the hall, banging on the door to his father’s study. “Dad, there's a man at the door who wants to see you. He said he works with Mom. And he’s sad.”
He didn't reply for a second. The door opened, and Sam Olsen put on a smile for his son. “Hey, kiddo. He's sad? What do you mean?”
“He was really upset when I opened the door, but when he saw it was me, he smiled.”
“Can't get anything by you, can ya, kiddo?” Sam gave his son’s hair a ruffle. “Tell ya what. Go throw on some Ricky Roohawk and I'll come watch it with you once we finish talking.” He smiled down at his son. It was the same smile the man at the door had, eyes deep and distant, mind in a conversation that was yet to come. He nodded. “Alright, Dad.”
He walked over to the living room as his dad went down the hall. He cranked the volume on the TV and flipped on Ricky Roohawk. It was a good episode, the one where Ricky learned how to play basketball and learned the basics of being a good sport. He'd seen it a few times already, though, and he was growing out of Ricky Roohawk, anyways. He snuck down the hallway, crouching behind one of Mom’s vases of zafaran flowers, the one he’d made in pottery class.
He heard his father sobbing.
“I’m here because I grew up with only a father, because some bureaucrats on Mars drawing lines where they didn't belong killed my mother. I've been stuck bearing the weight of her death, her absence, since I was eleven. You wonder why I'm cautious? You wonder why I'm distant? She laid down her life for her country, for her fellow sailors, for me, and Dad. I didn't have a choice after that. I had to honor her sacrifice. And make sure nobody would have to reenact it. We've been on the edge of war with Sol ever since that toddler got elected. My caution, my clarity, is more important than ever. And these?” He held up a gloved hand. “Not everyone wants to spend the money out of their own pocket to get their gloves remolded because we're not going to war, so they just wear ‘em on the belt ‘cause they're uncomfortable…Well, we weren't really going to war when my Mom died, and we're not really going to war today, either, so I guess that's a problem for another day, huh? I take it seriously because we're not really going to war, and we're never really going to war, until we blink, and we open our eyes, and we're just there. At war.”
She blinked. There was a long pause. She had been left to hold the burden of the silence. He broke it once more.
“I’m sorry for losing my composure, ma’am, but I think we’re getting nowhere with this. May I be excused?”
She nodded. “Yes, Commander Olsen. You may.”
She stood up and watched him walk off, a sign on her breath. An alert buzzed her phone. She walked over to the terminal on the wall to answer it.
The intel officer stared into the camera. “Captain.”
“Commander Broadhurst.”
“Bad news from the Calvados government. Well, it's bad news for us, anyway. They sent a ship, and they're only telling us now that it's too late to turn it back.”
“Fuuuuuck me.”
“Yeah, I… definitely feel ya. I'm convening an emergency meeting, figured I'd let you know before everyone else.”
“I'll be there in five. Could you raise the heat in there?”
“No, ma’am, it's broken.”
“Lovely. Thank you, Commander.” He nodded, and she hung up.
The interior, pressurized cargo section of the Siren’s Song ran up the long, spindly midsection of the ship, and as they drew ever closer to their destination, the skyscraper of a storehouse was abuzz in activity.
The trams had run day and night for the last few days, as the teams of loaders shuffled crates and crates of Raw Programmable Protein, agricultural equipment, printer-fabricators, and other essentials onto the shuttles docked along the ship’s sides. The pressurized cargo space was a maze, isolated on each deck by airtight elevator doors that allowed each deck to hold its own climate control. Normally, this would all be pretty automated. This was an old ship, though, and the automation was iffy at best, so it helped to have people doing the hard work. If the autoloader for the trams failed— which it often did at this age— it would shut down their ability to move cargo to the shuttles for hours, and as they approached Akrotiri every hour was precious. Realspace influx was only a half-hour away. He had one last thing to attend to before he strapped in back aft, on call in case anything went wrong.
Adi fished into his pocket, an exoskeleton-gloved hand struggling against the seams of his coveralls. He sighed, pulling it back, shaking his hand out. He reached over to his wrist, pushing a button to decouple the suit from his right arm. He pushed it back into the pocket, pulling out a datacart, the blue tape label reading RBL 2505-JAN 2506. He stared into the window on the front of the drive, a holographic crystal matrix shimmering behind it. Color-shifted emeralds stared back at him, reflected and mirrored across a million axes, and he sighed.
“Okay, I want something to do for the next Altair run. So…” Adi held up the datacart. “Five-hundred terabytes. I’m recording every RBL game this season. And we’re not watching them until we’re underway.”
“The waiting’s gonna suck,” Wyn squinted, “But yeah, fuck it.”
“Well, it was fun while it lasted.”
He tossed the datacart into the shuttle, hoping somebody down there would watch it.
Adi clutched the restraints, waiting as the display hanging from the ceiling counted down. Seconds ticked off. The arrow crept on and on. He did his best to avoid looking at Wyn, strapped in not three seats to his right, breathing ragged against his pressure helm.
One minute, thirty five.
One minute, twelve.
Forty three.
Thirty.
The slip drive’s whine shuddered up and down every structural beam on the ship, rattling every deck panel and shaking every weld. He felt the harmony of planes of existence he would never know, he could never know, that he could scarcely even imagine, crashing down on him.
His gut twisted into a knot as gravity went haywire, unsecured papers across the compartment lifting up and shuddering under the transit.
An alarm whined in his ears.
He gripped the armrests, and he glanced over to Wyn. The last thing he saw was the sorrow in her eyes.
Chief Poole stormed into the Auxiliary Machinery workshop, a haste and irritation in his step, scanning the busy hive of A-gangers, Electricians’ Mates, and myriad other enlisted rates crowding the space. “Kuzma!” He scowled. A panicked non-rate pointed towards a welder’s divider, the dim flashes of a microtorch casting off the wall. “Thank ya, son.”
“Kuzma, out here, now!”
“Sorry, Chief!” Kuzma’s voice was ever so slightly muffled by a welder’s mask. “Coming!”
He put down the torch and mask, and slipped out from behind the curtain. He nodded.
“Come, walk with me.”
“Alright, Chief.” Poole turned and started for the corridor. They shared the silence for a while, walking towards the elevator. The corridors were certainly showing their age, the interior lights showing off every crack, peel, and hole in the faux Jakarta wood laminate, the paint peeling from the metal panels below and above the comforting facsimile of the wood. Padded cubbies were stacked in gaps between the laminate, and equipment lockers, deployable acceleration couches, emergency pressure suits, and terminals dotted the hallway. They stepped into the lift, Poole selecting the deck, and shot up the ship’s structure before he turned the RUN/HOLD switch on the control panel. Emergency lights kicked in, and the car was bathed in crimson.
“You're calling it, Chief?” Kuzma looked over at his mentor, a nervous furrow in his brow.
“I'm calling it, son. We dinnae have time.”
“Chief, it's only been a few days. We almost have the heat exchanger fixed, and Gun Five is back online! Come on, let us finish, Chief.”
“I dinnae care for ‘almost’. We’re sitting coplanar to at least ten thousand nuclear warheads dialed in on us!”
“All the more reason for us to finish the job!”
“All the more reason, son, for the Captain to know what she’s working with!”
“You know CHENG will throw you under the bus.”
“Aye, I do. There’s a lot more people than me on this ship.”
Kuzma shuffled between Poole and the control panel.
“Don’t, Chief. Think about Trevor.”
He grit his teeth, fire springing into his eyes. “Aye, I am. Trevor needs a father.”
Kuzma recoiled, the cold metal panels of the elevator walls leeching into his spine.
“I…”
“It’s okay, Ryan. You dinnae have to defend me.”
“I’m sorry, Chief.”
He backed away from the controls, and let Chief lean in and flip the switch.
“Aye, me too.”
They spent the rest of the ride in silence, stepping off the elevator near the galley when a wailing siren and a crackling intercom cracked their uneasy peace in two.
“General Quarters, General Quarters. All hands, man your battle stations. The route of travel is forward, dorsal, and up to starboard, down, ventral, and aft to port.”
The lights flickered as a second fusion reactor roared to life, and the two sailors jumped into action.
“What's going on?” Rama had groggily stumbled out of her stateroom, hurriedly sliding a locking ring on her uniform’s waistline pressure garment into place.
“Gravitational anomaly, ma’am, they're waiting for you in the CIC.”
“Is it that damn ship?”
The Yeoman, one of her administrative aides, handed her a tablet. “Looks like it, ma’am. Wave displacement of fifty-eight kilotons.” The young sailor was sweating bullets. “That's big. Small freighter or a large warship.”
“Well, we're expecting a small freighter. Where's it coming out?”
“Other side of the planet, unfortunately. Can't get eyes on it, either, our probes are EM jammed to hell and they've got dazzling on the lascomms. We're not getting anything out of them for a while.”
“Have we sent a shuttle? Adjusted our orbit?”
“Yes, ma’am. We've got a Roohawk squadron on the way, spreading out across multiple orbits to get a few angles, but the spectrum is so contested we won't be able to get anything back from them without some time. We can send text fine, but any actual high quality video isn't getting to us unless they come back and land.”
“That’ll take the better half of forever.”
“Pretty much, ma’am, and the phasing burn might not get us there in time. Hell, shuttles might not either.” The Yeoman unsealed the hatchway to the CIC, the heavy, airtight door hissing and swinging open. “After you, ma’am.” Sealing the door behind them in the red lighting of the CIC, he announced the arrival to the assembly of technicians, officers, and flight crew. “Captain on deck!”
“Captain.” Olsen nodded.
“Commander. I got the lowdown on the way here.”
“We've charted a phasing orbit to come around the other side so we can get eyes on, but unless we really want to poke the bear we won't be able to beat them to it.”
“How close can we get?”
“Close.” He tapped the watchstanding console, a trajectory projecting into the air between them. “We can get right on top of the predicted exit, but it could be seen as provocative, as it’d be a pretty aggressive change in our stance that’d bring us into a much lower periapsis... And a few intersects.”
“What if we announce it? And what's our closest approach?”
“Seven point three kilometers, right here, and six point eight there.” He pointed to a series of two intersect points further along the trajectory. “This is all assuming they don't move, of course.”
“Big assumption. And that's a little closer than I'd like.”
“Me too.” He nodded.
“Well, it looks the best of bad options.” She put her hand on her forehead. “How are our weapons systems?”
“Tubes are all reporting green.” He sat down at his station across from the watchstander’s console. “Gun five is back online.”
“Any issues with the others?”
“No, ma’am. Secondary power switchover was clean, and all auxiliary systems are reporting operational.”
“Clean bill of health.” She nodded. “Mr. Olsen, I understand you suggest we lay in this burn.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She grabbed her helmet off the back of her chair, sealing it down and tapping a comms button on her console marked NAV. “Ms. Foulke, you have permission to execute the burn.”
“Aye, ma’am.” The Navigator nodded. The 1MC chirped a warning to secure for a high-G burn.
“COMMS, open a channel, unsecured RF. Announce our burn, mirror it on lasers at all UN ships visible.”
“Aye, ma’am,” the Comms officer nodded.
All that was left was the wait.
Massive reaction control thrusters fired as the warship reoriented itself. She felt the cold bite of the injector seat along her spine as her blood was being slowly drained and replaced with the anti-accelerant. The clock on the display counted down to the maneuver. It was three minutes out, and the brief euphoric hit of the oxygenated fluid hitting her head— as well as whatever the hell else was in it— was rushing through her mind. She never did like being on it for too long, but it always dialed her in.
The clock ticked thirty, and she gripped the armrests of her console, the gloves wrapped around her fingers transmitting the feel like a second skin. There was always a little bit of the plastic moulding along the side of the right armrest that always annoyed her, a defect, a ping-pong paddle shaped tag. She'd catch herself picking at it sometimes, and she had to remind herself not to now. She didn't want her hand hanging off the side of the rest in a 10g burn. She liked her arm in one piece.
“Secure immediately for high-g burn on the mark. Ten, nine… main engine ignition… seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Mark.”
Thirteen fusion torches roared to life, the disembodied hearts of a small constellation arresting the velocity of the titanic warship’s eternal fall past Akrotiri, transforming the gentle drift of an autumn leaf into a penny’s rapid plummet off a skyscraper.
She crashed against the aging pleather-clad gel-matrix of the bucket chair, feeling the water and blood reservoirs squeezing against her body, a fluid g-suit working in synergy with the drugs running through her veins to keep her alive, awake, and aware, ten gs of weight crushing down on her.
Three minutes to engine cutoff, ten minutes to line of sight, twenty minutes to contact. They could have cut the time down more, but the spaceframe could only take so much, and every one of them knew this old bird had her hours, minutes, and seconds numbered. Over and above any abuse she could take, however— it was the crew that was the real limiting factor. If things went sideways, there would be a lot more, likely shorter burns in their future— and if things really went to hell, there might be one or two very long ones after that. They had to pace themselves. Everybody only had so much in them.
“Captain?” The Systems Coordination Officer, a synth from Tynekill named Cooper Amendola with a large link cable trailing from his head, turned his optics package over towards her station. “Gravitometer readings are going crazy. I don't know what the hell happened… influx in thirty seconds!” He paused, updating the charts. "That's a much sharper approach angle than we initially modeled..."
“Dammit!” She shuddered under the weight of the burn. “Thank you, Mr. Amendola, but we're going to miss our mark!”
“I'm working with SENS, Cyber, EWAR, and Comms to see if we can burn through the jamming, get eyes on it. No joy so far.” Commander Amendola turned back to his console— largely a formality for a SCO. “What's the play, ma’am?”
“I don't like this, but it looks like we're out of options. We're going to have to trust them not to do something really, really stupid. Comms, get on the horn with the Blues. Send a warning, order them not to fire on any ship crossing the blockade or we will respond in kind.”
“Aye, ma’am!”
Olsen stared over the console’s top, locking eyes with her, a private channel open. “Think they'll listen?”
“All we can do is find out.” She sighed, and the engine cut out behind her.
“Confirmed influx!”
Ten minutes was an eternity in times like these. They had assembled, by tonnage, the single largest meeting the two navies had seen since Second 61 Cygni, with all the flash and fury that had entailed. It was quite the party. The time had finally arrived to find out if the Reaper had made the guest list.
“Fuck!” SENS shouted. “Eyes on, ma’am,” The officer chirped over the radio with a gulp. “Piping the EO feed to your display now.” One of the electro-optical telescope mounts onboard the warship— a turreted ball mount amidst a forest of sensors— slewed onto its target, what should have been a modern colossus, a behemoth vessel ferrying the needs and wants of human civilization across the stars. What they laid eyes upon was a ruined shell, a broken, scattered, drifting arc of fragmented metal and composite, the great skeletal remains of some prehistoric beast.
Her heart dropped, and she was afraid.
She watched as debris slipped past the sensor’s zoomed-in field of view, twisted and shattered fragments thrown aside as dust in the wind. Are there survivors?
She switched the camera to thermal and searched for any particularly bright spots. A few splotches stood out, and the telescope slewed to the closest one, having filtered out the RCS plumes of several UN probes. Swapping to visual, the telltale transparent shell of a depressurization harness wrapped around a man’s figure, half cast in shadow; his face called out for help, for rescue, and failing that, for memory. As the debris floated around him and a panel of shattered titanium hull drifted by him, the veil of shadow parted to reveal his fate, a tramway track and portions of its associated deckplate cutting his silhouette in two.
The CIC stood in echoing silence.
“It appears there are no discernable survivors, ma’am,” SENS remarked, a flatness to her voice very much unlike her. “My department is moving to track the debris.”
“They shot them,” she blinked. “They fucking shot them.”
“Appears so, ma’am.” Olsen nodded, his gaze distant and cold. “Let's think this through, though.”
“I know, just… hard to see what else this could be. I mean, this is already damn close to checking all the boxes on our RoE—”
“Captain, incoming on an open channel.” Comms cut in. “It's the Blues.”
She switched to her XO’s private channel. “I'm going to try to be peaceful, and diplomatic about this,” Rama nodded across the console. “But I'm not going to throw our mission away, Erik.”
He looked up from his console, and nodded.
She pushed the TSCREEN ENABLE button on the side of her console, and opened up the radio communications window with a tap of her finger. “I'm listening, Comms.”
“It's Commodore Nacif, she wants to talk to you.”
“Put her through.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
The radio crackled. “Minervan warship Medina Ridge, do you read? This is Commodore Kelly Nacif of the Martian Federation Navy.”
“I read, Commodore. This is Captain Kaylin Rama of the Federated Minervan Republics Navy, and I must tell you, I am in no mood for pleasantries.”
“I was afraid you would say that, Captain. We would like to first let you know that we did not fire on that ship. That wasn't us.”
“Anyone in your place would say that.”
“In order to assure you of this, we are conducting an investigation into the cause of the ship’s destruction, and while I am certain my superiors will frown on this, in the interest of peace and de-escalation, we are preparing to share communications logs, sensor feeds, and Stores Management reports from several of the ships closest to the ship at the moment of the incident.”
“I'm sure you will permit our own, independent survey.”
There was a brief pause. Perhaps her long-winded Martian counterpart was catching her breath.
“I'm afraid I cannot.”
“Commodore, tensions between our two countries are at an all-time high—”
“Tensions between our many nations and yours are indeed at a breaking point— which is precisely why we must conduct this survey alone.”
“I don't know what you mean.”
Olsen locked eyes with Rama. “Listen to her, no one talks like that. She's stalling for something.”
The Commodore cleared her throat. “Between two sailors, I don't believe it takes an astropolitics professor to realize that it's within your country’s best interest for us to have killed them,”
“You think we're going to fake it.”
“I think you may, and that possibility is enough to make such an arrangement unthinkable to me— to do so would risk the safety of my squadron and its assembled crews.”
“How do we know you won't fake it?”
“Unfortunately, all I can give you is my word, for now. When you receive the data, authenticate the timestamps.”
“Then it's one word against the other. You can't ask me to stake the security of our nation on your word alone.”
“I have to.”
“I’m giving you ten minutes.” She paused. “We are on a trajectory that will bring you into contact with several of your ships. I know that information shouldn't take long to pull if you're not editing it. Ten minutes, and you have two options. Exonerate yourself or allow our own investigation. If you don't we shoot.”
“I'll have it to you soon, Captain.”
She hung up the connection.
“Do you believe her, ma’am?” Erik looked down at his console.
“I did,” he paused. “But, ma’am? One of their torpedo tubes is hot.” He flicked over an IR image of one of their TARUGA-Class frigates— the new ones— and zoomed in on her weapons module. One of the torpedo tubes glowed white. “You know I urge caution. I still think we should hear them out instead of going in blazing. It just, reminds me too much of something else.”
“Go on.” Rama nodded.
“Back in the sixties, before the war, there were a few accidents in some Frontier systems of ours the Blues wanted, but since we couldn't always maintain permanent presences out there, sometimes the UN would just stumble on some horrible tragedy that would just clear up the system for themselves.”
“No, yeah, you're right…” She glanced down at the image, squinting. “That kind of just happened back in the day, though, didn't it? Frontier’s iffy.”
“Not that iffy, ma’am. And I don't know how they're going to spin this, but they pulled this exact shit back then. They loved ambiguity. We can't give them that now. If we give them that ambiguity, they'll live in it forever, and they'll bash us over the head with it and run all over us...”
“You still want to wait for the data?”
“Of course… we have to do our due diligence. But we only wait to shoot until then. I think they're hostile as of now.”
“Ma’am?” Comms cut through on the emergency line. “We just got word from one of the Roohawk shuttles. Several other formations are about to come around the planet, and they've been burning hard for us. They're massing their forces, initial orbit analysis is reading them to converge on us in thirty minutes.”
“That's not building my hope in their innocence.”
“Weapons still look good, ma’am.” Commander Olsen nodded.
“Another update,” Comms nodded. “Download has started. We're sandboxing it and putting Cyber on heightened alert. They're prepping our own package in case this goes south.”
“Good. They had six minutes left.”
Commander Amendola, the Systems Coordination Officer, piped up. “We're all set to start analyzing, ma’am. We'll get you our findings before the shooting starts. It's tight, but we're running our systems hard. Give us three minutes.”
The ships drifted ever closer in the boundless night, the seeds of ruin scattered on solar winds.
“We have the preliminary analysis, ma’am,” Amendola nodded from his seat. “Take a look.”
The images that came up on her screen were several— but one was front and center. “Look at this footage of the influx. See? It comes out as debris already— but there's something wrong.” A chain of shattered metal, composite, and surely among it bodies, fuzzy and reflected as if lost in a kaleidoscope looking into a house of mirrors, poured forth from a rift in the fabric of space and time.
She shook her head. “I don't get it, this looks exonerating... A lot of slip lensing, though... Like, a lot of it. Never seen this much, not even in the Hwangbo accident footage.”
“Lemme put some filters on.” Amendola sighed. “They gave us a fraud. See those streaks? And that pixelation?”
“You're sure that's not the lensing?”
“Yes, ma’am. I'd put my life on it,” the synthetic sailor nodded. “Slipstream dimensional lensing is a pretty common way to hide edit attempts, because it already has many of the telltale signs in a clean photo… the timestamps verify, but there's also additional editing to degrade the general quality of the image, and… no infrared information. That's not the most damning, though.”
“What is?”
“We've identified the ship closest to the influx as the Pavonian Defense Forces Navy ship Agamemnon. It's one of the new class of frigates, the Taruga-Class. This appears to be their first deployment.” He paused, bringing up the Stores Management reports. “They didn't send us any SMS records from any of the Tarugas… and our own sensors did capture a still IR frame of the Agamemnon with one of her bow tubes hot... which, would indicate a recent launch.”
“So, we go, then.” She blinked. She didn't know what else to do.
“Ma’am, if there's any way we can stall for time and more answers—”
“No,” Erik spoke up. “She's right. We go.”
“It looks bad, but we only had three minutes, and while I think it's more likely than not—”
“Commander Amendola,” Commander Olsen held up a hand. “You all know I’m a cautious man. This is more difficult for me than you know. But they lied to us. By omission or manipulation, they lied to us. Doesn't matter. At this point, there is only one thing that matters. They will be ready for us, in three minutes’ time. If we're still bickering here, instead of being on our shit, we're going to die here.”
Rama nodded. “I agree.”
“Besides,” he paused. “We gave our word. If we backtrack now and start stalling, it will just tell them our word is flexible. We want our word to mean anything, we knuckle down, and we fight.”
“Shit,” Amendola sighed. “So, that's it? We're doing this?”
“Yes, Mr. Amendola,” she nodded. “Instruct the cyber department to prep something good, and select targets for electronic attack. TAC, send me those target lists one more time. I concurred already, I just want to see it again. Comms, send no further reply and cut the channel. Don't need them sneaking anything in.”
“Aye, ma’am,” the SCO called in.
“Aye, ma’am,” the TAC called in.
“Aye, ma’am,” the Comms called in.
Silence hung over the CIC. It would not be broken until the thunder of torpedo launches and point defense gunfire shook the structure of the ship. She met Erik’s eyes, and nodded. There was a cold resolve in them. That was good. They'd need that.
“Targets are locked on tubes one through fifty, ma’am.” TAC stared down the display. He gulped, and clutched the armrests of his acceleration chair. “Firing solutions for the main guns are being continuously generated, and we are entering guns range.”
“Thank you, TAC. Program the torpedoes to come about from a side aspect attack, and adjust spinal targeting solutions to compensate for the juke.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“SCO, you are cleared hot for offensive SCREW, pass the word to our interdictors.” Captain Rama nodded. “TAC, once you have those solutions ready, I want you to fire on my mark. Make sure to target their interdictor first.”
Amendola nodded. “Rerouting nonessential power to cyber and electronic warfare.” Her display lit up with red lines, outgoing lasers carrying malicious payloads or false contacts designed to dazzle and scramble enemy sensors.
“Ma’am,” TAC nodded. “Solutions ready.”
She watched as the range band shrunk down on the display, a dashed line marked NEZ— No-Escape Zone— creeping ever closer. She waited and watched, and she called it with roughly a fifty-five seconds to go before reaching that critical range.
“Shoot tubes one through five-oh, and orient for followup shot.”
“Aye.”
The hull shook as fifty heavyweight torpedoes shot off, the nuclear warheads and bright thruster plume of the shot ensuring they'd be detected by the Blues’ sensors. There was truly no going back now. Somebody was going to die today, and probably quite a few. She looked around at the people beside her, and locked eyes with Olsen.
Not us. Not now. Not here.
“Engage according to the firing solution, TAC.”
“Aye.”
The Helm shouted out. “Bringing us around for shot one!”
“System is locked, fire control on automatic!”
“Alignment green, check timing!”
“Torpedoes closing on hostiles.”
“Hostile launch, spikers inbound. Spikers inbound. Count eight-six spikers, medium-weight.”
“SPACTGRU Five-Seven, this is Rama,” she punched a button on her console. “Free engagement is authorized. Fire at will.”
“They're juking, ma’am!”
The fire control system had what it wanted, and the ship shuddered under the kick of one of her spinal coilguns, a massive shell punching through the void at incredible speed. Rama’s display held the Blues’ cyberwarfare ship, a RIGEL-Class interdictor that had lightly been trying to worm its way into their systems for the last few days, square in her sights. She watched as lasers lit up the infrared camera view and as bright tracers peeled off the craft, RCS thrusters pushing the ship out of the way of the missiles without breaking the lock of her massive, overpowered comms lasers. That was exactly how she wanted it. The coilgun shell slammed home. Her display was awash in light as the the torpedoes detonated next to the bisected hulk of the ship. “Splash one, eight remaining! Our solution’s broken on the others, though, they pushed harder than we calculated for.”
“Spectrum is clearing up, jamming’s out!”
“Fleet point defense engaging inbounds!”
Rama keyed the console. “TAC, you're cleared for torpedo free fire! Prioritize the frigates, their sensors are newer.”
“Aye, ma’am!” The room rocked under the fire of torpedo drives. “Shooting tubes five-one through one-six-five.”
She swiped at the controls, painting targets. “Get me guns solutions on these targets, TAC, and prosecute.”
She got an AFFIRM notification in response. Too busy to talk, she supposed. She watched the console as inbound missiles shot towards them, blinking off the scopes one at a time as the fleet’s point defense did its job. She checked the CYBER page on her console, and the SCO and his teams, on this ship and the interdictors IFRIT and GORGON, were hard at work getting inside the digital defenses of the Blue fleet. Everything, it seemed, was going well.
“Longford reports hits on destroyer, Denver reports two splashed frigates, and Kilimanjaro reports one more frigate on the drift.” Comms radioed in. “Elvirhavn reports three nuclear hits to her radiators, they're dead in the water until they can bring up aux. They are committed to present trajectory.”
“Shit,” Rama grit her teeth. “Detach Bajacalifornia and El Morro, form them up to screen for Elvirhavn. Do not lose that ship. These guys were just the beginning.”
SENS turned around and nodded at her. “That'd be the rest of them now, ma’am. They're all burning for us. Sprint burn, lower teens g. They're pushing hard. Expect company in fifteen minutes.”
“Final headcount?”
“Twelve Taruga frigates, twelve Orion hunter-killers, four Dauntless escorts, and three Rigel interdictors.”
“Goddamn.” Olsen wheezed. “Lotta firepower…”
“So are we, Commander Olsen.” As if on cue, one of the five main guns sent shivers down the spines of both the ship and her crew.
“Splash one frigate,” TAC nodded. “Harlem also reporting one splashed destroyer.”
“Hostile launch, spikers inbound.” SENS cut in. “Spikers inbound. Count five-four spikers, medium-weight.”
“Thank you, SENS.” Captain Rama glanced to her right. “SCO, how goes cyber?”
“Uphill battle, but we’re making progress. We haven’t made any intrusions to their wider network, but we’ve got ins on a few specific vessels. We’ll send the special package when we get the chance.”
“Understood. Keep it up.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
She could hear the point defense guns open up as the structure of the ship shook, decades-old titanium alloy and composite shuddering under the hollow ring of the magnetic autocannons.
“Heat spike in destroyer contact India-Four!” SENS shouted. “It’s in the weapons module, ma’am, they’re firing spinal—!”
The ship rocked under a great and horrible crash.
“Hit to the port forward plate!” Damage Control shouted out. “No penetration, ma’am!”
“Shit!” Rama shouted. “Secure for rapid maneuvers, and get me sandshot!”
She locked eyes with Olsen. “I didn’t think their spinals could hit that fast, not this far.”
“Neither did I.” Olsen grit his teeth as a wave of acceleration hit from the evasive burn. “That’s gotta be a new gun, then. The ones in the War couldn’t.”
“Comms, advise all, Orions present have a longer spinal range than previously estimated.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
“Be advised, volley out from four destroyers… one miss, three hits. Carraroe and Gorgon reporting damage…” TAC breathed. “Istwith is not responding, ma’am.”
“Get me eyes!” She stared down at her display. Debris trailed from behind the destroyer, seemingly struck right down the middle of her modular core by the hypervelocity slug. “Is she on the drift, or dead?”
“Assessing, ma’am, attempting to reconnect with Istwith CIC.”
An eternity passed in that moment.
“We have signal from Istwith backup systems. Shot right down the sweet spot, she’s out for the count. Reactor’s out, she’s on the drift and out of power... Crew is abandoning ship.”
“Fuck…” Rama stared as precious few shuttles and a great many lifeboats poured out from the drifting hulk of the destroyer, ants abandoning their hive in the cold, long night. “Bring primaries to bear and fire, I want this taken care of for when the reinforcements arrive.”
“Aye, ma’am. Aligning spinals, fire control on automatic.” RCS thrusters kicked the ship into the proper direction, and the fire control computer waited for just the right lead to drift into place. The capacitors spooled up, and a loud buzz filled her helmet.
“Shit! Catastrophic fault in Gun One. Reassigning gun and firing.” The ship’s maneuvering rockets fired again, and a deep rumble shot down the central column of the ship, a tombstone on the way to adorn the coffin of approximately one hundred and sixty five people. “Gun One is reporting a total loss of cooling. She’s FUBAR, ma’am.”
“Scramble a damage control party, get it working!”
“No use, we can’t fix it here, Captain!”
“Fuck!” Rama gripped her armrest.
“Heat spike in destroyer contact India-Seven—” SENS fell silent. “Pongraesan reporting hit to her reactor, ma’am.” The sailor turned around and glanced back at the Captain. “Pongraesan’s hailing us on emergency comms!”
“Put them on!”
“Medina, this is destroyer Pongraesan, we've lost all essential systems, including point defe—”
The transmission cut out just as the shudder of a spinal gun shot up her spine, just that slim second too late. A flurry of torpedoes had already broken the back of the Minervan destroyer.
“Ma’am, splash one, but we lost Pongraesan. Doesn't look good. Count five-two lifeboats. Denver and Longford report kills also, and the last destroyer is on the drift, total mission kill. Space is sanitized. Enemy reinforcements are twelve and a half minutes out. Do we disengage?”
She glanced back to Olsen. He shook his head.
“Too many of our people down there. We back off now, we throw them to the lions. Pass the word to the fleet— Do what you can to fix yourself up in ten minutes, pick up all the lifeboats you can, and be ready to engage.”
“Understood, ma’am,” Comms nodded.
She took a breath, and stared at the lifeboats floating in the dark.
Twelve, twelve, four, and three.
The two fleets flung towards each other, falling endlessly in the snare of the planet’s pull, eleven Minervan, thirty one United Nations. As they closed in, sensors locked, missiles spilling from their sides, great clouds of warheads and boosters scattered in the light of a dying ember, the cold luminance of a white dwarf bathing the warships in sickly radiance. Coilgun shots cracked through the void, first spinals and then secondaries; lasers burnt aside armor and swatted down missiles and drones; all the while, the abandoned hulk of the Excessively Large Radio Space Telescope watched on in thoughtless horror.
That mournful leviathan drifted on, metal and composite flower scattered on the final resting place of countless souls, lifeless and hollow; fated eternally to peer out into that great void with no one to hear her findings.
Auroras danced on the skies of the planet below as nuclear explosions silhouetted the great dance of Minervan armor-clad chisels and Solar alligator-headed beasts. Blue-striped, wasp-waisted destroyers cracked asunder, applique-rigged armor panels blew off Minervan ships. They pirouetted in the stark luminance, weaving around each other as needles in the tapestry of the night. A coilgun round struck true and cracked the torpedo room of one of the Blue destroyers; a stray neutron beam warhead later, and she was consumed in a ball of blinding light, taking another of her sisters with her.
A hole in space-time tore open as one of the UN ships broke formation, dumping every bit of power she could muster into her drive, no doubt on her way to summon more ships to the fray. The two formations broke ranks, and against her will, the Captain called it off. They had bloodied the Blues’ nose, if not broken it— only nineteen of the forty-ship blockade still stood. They had lost some of their own, and they would no doubt grieve for them, but they would do so in a safer place. The ceasefire order had come from Admiral al-Hajj himself, her fleet CO. She'd wanted to argue that her orders were worth more than his— hers came from the President. She knew better than to do so. The President had made it clear that she did not want war, and they were playing with fire. Perhaps, if they yanked their hand out now, they wouldn't get burned.
Rama stared down at her display, an image of the colony below gradually coming into focus. Bodies laid out, scattered across the ground, as alien creatures walked amongst them.
She blinked in disbelief.
“Ma’am, gravitational influx inbound, looks like a cluster, one-six-eight kilotons total, that's a UN battlegroup, on our doorstep!”
“How'd they get here so quick?”
“Probably kept a group on station to surge if something like this happened.”
Erik looked up, teeth grit. “We have our orders, ma’am. We have to leave.”
“What about our guys?”
“We have all the lifeboats that launched from Pongraesan, Istwith, Carraroe, Elvirhavn, and Gorgon on scopes. We can recall them to dock with us and get about sixty percent of them before we really have to get the hell out.”
“And on the ground?”
“On the ground?”
“The colonists.”
“I've been looking, but I don't see anyone. There's some… a few heat signatures, but the atmosphere makes it hard to make anything out for certain. And I have no direct evidence that anyone down there survived. There's signs of a battle,” Olsen’s face fell. “They're gone, ma’am. We did what we could.”
“I hate putting our people's lives at the mercy of the Blues.”
“Me too.”
“Fuck,” Rama sighed, glancing down at the readout of the inbound slipspace contacts. “Recall the lifeboats, and get us out of here.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
The office of the President was a spartan one, cramped by the standards of worlds new and old alike. Nia Baughan was an uneasy resident of the Office at the End of the Hall, and no amount of cushion on her chair or extra height in the doorframe would put her at ease. The unpolished concrete of her desk, seal of the Republics inlaid in Seongnam trinitite, ensured that. Every once in a while, when she went home and shut the lights, she swore it would glow. That didn't make any sense to her, but the unburied ghosts of ash and glass had always held a strong presence just over her shoulder.
Today, they had come in force, and they stood in silent vigil over the documents laying on the glass-paned writing surface that had been laid atop that dreadful concrete brick. They cried out for vengeance, for more of Minerva’s sons and daughters had joined them, adrift in endless sleep among distant starlight and sundered steel. They cried out for vengeance, for now once more Minervan blood hung crystalline in the skies above and soaked the roots of alien fields below.
“I won't do it,” she muttered. “I will give you justice, I will give you peace. But not vengeance.”
“I'm sorry, ma’am?”
She bolted upright, and stared back at the door. “Oh, I'm sorry. Come in.” She sighed, looking back down at the documents. “I suppose I have left you waiting.” She nodded to the bodyguard near the door. “Some privacy, please?”
Admiral Hathaway Lee doffed his cap as the bodyguard made his exit. “Madam President.” He saluted.
“Ach, I've no need.” She waved a hand at the door. “Hathaway, we've worked together for how long? I remember when you outranked me, I do.”
“It wasn't that long ago, ma’am.” He sighed. “Ma’am, may I ask something improper?”
“Yeah, Hathaway, you may.”
“Do you mind if I smoke in here?”
“No,” She leaned back in her chair, staring up at the ceiling. “As long as you share.”
“This whole situation is fucked.” He handed her the cigarette, and she took a drag. “I’m glad I quit dip, but… I broke being clean last week. Hard not to, with that news. I wish I had some of those old school paper ones, though. Had one. Real tobacco. Smoked it already. You’ll have to do with the electric.”
“It’s all so… distant, that.” She stood up, looking back through the rear and only window of the office, down into the Consensus Chamber below. “They have so much in their hands out there. You lot, sailors. So far away… even the smallest spark, just so very astray, could send the whole thing up.” She sighed, gesturing for the cigarette again. “And we'd be too late to tell them no.”
“Well, that's what the fleet commanders are for.” He placed the metal stick in her hand. “You've thought about it, I take it?”
“Vaughn and all his men want me to respond with another show of force. A tit for tat blockade of Gleise 486.”
“That's… down, end of the Ophiuchan Run.”
“Nowhere near the Triangle, but still a claim we don't recognize. A hell of a provocation, that.”
“You won't do it.”
“Of course not. We don't recognize it, no. We don't claim it, either.”
“I'm with you, ma’am. This needs to stop somewhere, or else we're dusting off the war plans.”
“I think Vaughn already has them in his back pocket. You remember Colonel Hesp, no?”
“How could you not? The prick. Always so smug.”
“Him and Riahi have been excoriating me in the Committee. In my Committee. I think he smells blood.” She watched the vapor curl up off her lips in the reflection against the dimly lit, unoccupied meeting hall. “I need to survive a vote, this year. My only saving grace may be that they move too slow.”
“Hm.”
“It doesn't help, you know. That I'm a foreigner, to them. I was a child when I came here, but you can hear it in my voice. See it in my build. I'm still the Solar in the End Office, to them. And they are a fickle bunch, at that.”
“This is why I never got into politics,” the Admiral shook his head with a shrug as he stared out with her into the empty Chamber.
“No,” She turned, and his eyes met hers. “Only its end result.”
He snorted.
“And what will you do if he wins them over?”
“Well, then,” She broke his gaze, and shook her head. “Then, I suppose, I'll take the fall, I will. But this, I can end.”
“I hope so,” he scowled. “I think I've had my fill of dead friends. Still,” he paused. “You do this, ball’s in Liu’s court now.”
“Well,” she sighed. “It goes both ways. Some point, somebody has to play.” She handed the cigarette back to her old friend.
He took it in hand, raised it to his mouth, and took a deep pull in. “I admire your faith, ma’am.”
“Sometimes, I wish I did too.”
He nodded, and headed to the door. “Goodnight, Nia.” He smiled. “See you tomorrow.”
“Goodnight, Hathaway.”
She looked down at her desk, and with an incredulous sigh picked up the cold metal of the cigarette, watching as the ghosts of Akrotiri hung in the vapor on her breath.
Incredible read and an amazing inlet to the world of Waybound. I am addicted now.
First off, gonna be real: The constant big-arse paragraphs make a kind of slog out of this to read, XD
Second off to positive straits: More downtime after the near-two months of hiatus is really neat and this is an equally really watershed addition to this 'verse, especially combined with the second half's descriptive combat and (most of the time) realistic, brevite dialog!
That interface is also plain yet informative enough (but not too much), although it, um, looks a little not flashy enough
Safe and prosperous tidings to more content :)