Date Point 10y4m1w5d AV
Starship Negotiab le Curiosity, Deep Space.
Calvin ‘Snapfire’ Sikes
“Hey, uh… hello in there.”
There was a kind of wary shifting sound from behind Hkzzvk’s door, but no reply. Calvin took that as an encouraging sign.
“Dude, uh… hey, I’m sorry about this but I can’t pronounce your name. Is it okay if I call you Hick?”
The translator gave Hkzzvk a hysterical edge to his voice. They really did a remarkable job of simulating where the voice was coming from, too. Rather than hearing the anxious Vzk’tk’s words from a speaker in the wall or anything, they really did sound like they were being shouted from the far side of the door. “Leave me alone!”
“I’m not coming in, I promise.” Sikes replied, soothingly. “That room’s your space, I respect that. Just checking you’re okay in there.”
”Leave me alone!!” Hkzzvk repeated, more frantically.
“Sorry man, I can’t. We’re all worried for you. But I’m just here to talk, you’re safe in there.”
There was no reply.
“…Sure appreciate it if you said somethin’ other than ‘leave me alone’ there, Hick.”
He let the silence drag on for a second or two, then decided that the old trick of just talking and talking and talking until the panicking creature got used to the sound of his voice was in order. Hkzzvk might be a fellow sapient being, but hey – whatever worked.
“Okay, well, I’m just gonna sit here and talk about whatever comes into my head, don’t mind me.” He said. “Gotta tell you though, I’d love to get this suit off sometime soon. It’s perfectly sized for me, but it squeezes real hard so it doesn’t rattle around, and yeah that’s a good thing for makin’ it easy to move in, it also makes it tough to wear for more than a couple of hours. I ain’t lookin’ forward to sitting around in this thing the whole way back, I tell ya that.”
Hkzzvk’s silence continued, so Calvin shrugged and settled in for a good long stream-of-consciousness.
“Though… okay, you probably never heard of skiing. Or maybe you did, maybe you guys have that. Probably not with four legs, but it’s this thing we do where we use long flat apparatus that we attach to our feet and it helps us slide easily over snow. Takes some work to get good at it, but there’s no better way to move fast over snow. Ski boots work a lot like the suit does, and those feel great to take off at the end of a day on the slopes, so I’m thinking when we get to take the spacesuit off after all this it’s gonna be… Actually, have you ever seen snow? Is that a thing on your home planet? Or… Dude, were you even born on a planet? I know a lot of ETs are born in space. I wonder if any humans have ever been born in space… It’d be tough for us, I bet the low gravity would screw with fetal development in all sorts’a ways…”
At length, he rambled on about the estimates in how many humans there were in the galaxy at large, wondered how they were getting by without easy access to clothing, and mused briefly about whether any of them had just given up and ‘gone native.’
He kept a lazy eye on the clock as he moved on to describing snow, then weather in general and especially thunderstorms.
“I mean, I guess all’a this sounds scary and alien to you huh? Deathworld weather and all that stuff but man, I tell ya it’s beautiful. I remember when I was little and this storm went over and it was just this crazy lightning show in the sky. My daddy and I sat on the porch and watched it for like half an hour, but then momma came out and said there was a tornado alarm and we had to spend the night sleeping on cots in the basement…”
He decided to move on from the subject of Earth’s weather and onto gentler and more calming matters. He was dealing with a sapient being after all, which meant that he couldn’t rely completely on tone of voice alone – he had to watch the content of what he was saying.
“Space is prettier though. There’s this nebula you can see from Cimbrean, It’s about as big in the sky as my thumb at arm’s length and yeah, things like storms are cool, but that nebula’s just like… every time I lay eyes on it it reminds me that wow, y’know, when I was a child we didn’t have FTL and aliens were just something that could theoretically exist, but then… there I am, living on a planet that’s not Earth, and I work in space, and I’m chatting to an alien right now. That’s kind of a-”
Hkzzvk finally said something, interrupting him. “Are you going to talk all night?” He asked. “You’re keeping me awake.”
“Ah, sorry dude, are you tired?
“I haven’t slept since you took over this ship! How could I? You’re dangerous!”
Calvin considered his reply carefully. “I know.” He said, eventually. “I know we are. We ain’t the bad guys though, man.”
“You’re still dangerous!” Hkzzvk insisted.
“I ain’t denyin’ that.” Sikes told him. “But so are lots’a things. This ship’s dangerous, ain’t it? Lotta power in here, lots of stuff the engineer’s gotta stay on top of, am I right?”
Hkzzvk said nothing, so Sikes shrugged and carried on talking. Okay, so he was keeping the alien awake, but really that worked to his advantage. Either the fatigue would help him calm Hkzzvk down so they could make contact properly, or else Hkzzvk would fall asleep listening to his voice and awaken rested and with some positive associations.
“Besides man, imagine yourself in our position. Ten years ago, we didn’t know any of this stuff. None of us had any clue what a deathworld is, or that Earth is one… I gotta be honest, it kinda scares me too. I don’t wanna accidentally hurt people, right? I ain’t a monster.”
“Then why are you here?” Hkzzvk asked. “Stay on your planet, where you belong! Go to other deathworlds! Why are you on our ship?”
“Would if we could, man.” Sikes grinned to himself. He was making definite progress. “Life ain’t that easy.”
“Why us?” Hkzzvk insisted.
“Ain’t nothin’ personal. You just got caught up in something important, that’s all.”
“I don’t trust you!”
Sikes sighed. “You should. Hicks, the only reason you’re still in that room is ‘cause we don’t wanna hurt you. Heck, I’m talkin’ to ya right now ‘cause we’re worried about ya. I ain’t askin’ for much, just want you to check in and let us know you’re okay.”
“I’m fine!”
“Sure, sure. Okay” Sikes soothed. He sat and waited for a minute.
“I… would like something to eat, please.” Hkzzvk ventured after a while. “And to drink.”
“Our rations wouldn’t be any good for you, buddy, and ain’t none of us know one end of your kitchen from the other. You wanna come out here and fix yerself somethin, we’ll turn down the gravity for ya. Whaddya say?”
“…And you promise that it’s safe? I won’t catch a fatal disease?” Hkzzvk asked.
“I promise.”
There was a thoughtful pause, and then the door cautiously opened. Hkzzvk peeked around it.
Carefully and respectfully, Sikes took a slow and unthreatening step back. He smiled, keeping his lips together so that there was no hint of teeth, and gestured openly to the kitchen.
He could see why people tended to compare Vzk’tk with giraffes – they had that kind of spindly, ungainly look to them, especially in their long legs and necks. But Hkzzvk’s attitude was more like a deer crossing the road and keeping a wary eye on the pickup that had stopped for it.
“Ship, set gravity in all areas to Dominion standard.” he ordered. The Negotiable Curiosity chimed and Titan woke with a snort as the gravity changed. Hkzzvk took an alarmed step back.
“Sorry bro.” Sikes called.
“Hey, the hermit emerges.” Akiyama sat up slowly. “How are you?”
“I am… fine. Thank you.” Hkzzvk ventured. Still moving like a nervous buck, he picked his way carefully out into the ship’s common area.
Sikes gave Titan a subtle headshake, asking for a kid gloves approach. He got an imperceptible nod by way of a reply, and Titan settled down with his head on his ruck again. “‘Kay. Lemme know if you need anything.”
Hkzzvk stepped warily around him and approached the food dispenser. A few taps later he had a small bowl of something that looked vaguely like dark arugula, a side order of something black and dripping with what Sikes hoped was sauce, and a small cup of water.
The bowl came with something like curved chopsticks. Apparently they were Hkzzvk’s customary eating utensil, because he was shovelling the arugula-ish into his mouth with gusto as soon as he had them in his hand.
“Dude, you had no food at all in there?” Sikes asked him. Hkzzvk flinched at being addressed, but then nodded. He skewered one of the slimy black things and slurped it up. Sikes caught the morsel’s scent and couldn’t stop a slight grimace from flickering across one eyebrow and the side of his nose. It smelled like rotting banana peel fermented in sour milk.
He took a step back and let the alien eat.
Eventually, Hkzzvk sighed and put the bowl down. He picked up a few of the uneaten leaves and twisted them together into what was unmistakably a kind of joint or cigarette, which he lit with a small circular lighter stored in a pouch on his arm.
“…I didn’t know folks out here smoke.” Sikes commented. Hkzzvk gave a complicated toss of his head that went untranslated, and flicked one of his ears.
The burning leaf smelled quite good, actually – sweeter and warmer than a cigarette. It reminded Sikes of fishing with his late great-uncle, who never went to the lake without his pipe and two Budweisers, and a couple of A&Ws for Calvin. Sadly, the old man had passed away before they’d been able to share a Bud together, but the smell coming from Hkzzvk’s impromptu roll-up was making Calvin suddenly thirsty for a root beer.
To his surprise, Hkzzvk finished his smoke by the simple expedient of eating the smouldering stub, grinding the embers out between his teeth. He shook himself, sending a wave of loose short-coated skin rippling down from the top of his long neck to the base of his tail, and sighed.
“Better?” Sikes asked him.
“Much better… Thank you.”
“Dude, like I said. We were just worried for ya.” He wasn’t sure what to read in Hkzzvk’s body language – for all he knew the Vzk’tk engineer might be mistrustful, wary, grateful or optimistic. He stood aside and indicated the open door. “You want the room, it’s yours, we won’t intrude, but please don’t starve yourself in there.”
Hkzzvk didn’t reply at first, but – still wary – he carefully retreated to the door to his room.
“You promise?” he asked.
“On my honor.” Sikes raised one hand solemnly to his chest and the other to ear level. For all Bedu’s dismissal of Hkzzvk’s intelligence, he counted on the jittery Vzk’tk to at least be able to interpret the gesture by context.
It apparently worked. Hkzzvk cautiously imitated him, then retreated into his room and closed the door.
“Nicely done.” Titan commented, sitting up again.
“It’s a start.” Sikes agreed. He grabbed an MRE and sat down to prepare it. Watching Hkzzvk eat had reminded him not only of his own appetite, but of the fact that he was burning through plenty of calories just by wearing the suit. “Aww, man. Jambalaya.” he complained. Somewhere along the line, they’d started playing a game where they had to eat whatever they grabbed, rather than saving the ones they didn’t want for last. Nobody was quite sure what the consequence would be for giving in, but none of them was willing to lose. “Real jambalaya should be fuckin’ spicy man, not this weak-ass shit. The Tabasco doesn’t save it.”
Fortunately, there was a loophole. “Trade ya for a sausage and gravy.” Akiyama offered, brandishing the one he’d just grabbed.
“Deal.”
“Always knew you had a talent for diplomacy.” Titan observed, once the meals had been traded and were heating. “No way you score that much pussy on your looks alone.”
Sikes snorted. “Blue fur and six limbs or not, he’s just a scared dude who got caught up in somethin’ bigger than him.” he said. “Useful knowing they smoke that stuff though. That’s good stuff. I can use that.”
“Y’know it didn’t even occur to me that maybe SOR needs a man with some talking skills.” Titan mused. “We’ve got so big and ass-kicky, kinda seems like a silver tongue’s gonna be low on the list, right?”
Sikes nodded, stirring his juice, but said nothing.
“Remember Ukraine? Operation SWORN BEACON? That shit woulda gone south if not for Booker.” Titan continued. “Maybe it’s something to raise with STAINLESS.”
“Maybe,” Sikes agreed. “Hell, we’re pretty fuckin’ high-profile too. You saw the whole Beef Brothers thing, right?”
Titan laughed. “Yeah, and man I bet Base is sore over that shit. You hear about the poll result?”
“No…?”
“It went ’Left Beef Best Beef, or Right Beef Superior Slab?’” Titan chuckled. “‘Horse took it three to one, man. Kicked Baseball’s ass.”
Sikes laughed. “Ah, poor Base… Feels weird bein’ part of a unit with that kind of media profile though, don’t it?”
“Very different to Delta.” Titan agreed. “Could be we’re all gonna need that silver tongue.”
He pulled his Jambalaya out of the heat and dug in. “Hell, could be the ultimate survival skill for mankind ain’t gonna be the muscles and stuff, it’s gonna be talking panicky ETs round to our side.”
“Bro, if that’s true, I’ll fuckin’ take it.” Sikes toasted the idea with his juice. “But I’m kinda thinkin’ it won’t be.”
Date Point 10y4m1w5d AV
Planet Perfection, The Core Worlds.
Eleven
“You’re human!”
“Coo you, seen what straight in front o’ I.” Dread was… smiling? Eleven had to dig into the Hierarchy database to reference human facial expressions, and decided that what she was seeing wasn’t a smile at all, but was instead tagged with the term ’rictus’. It was not, apparently, a friendly expression.
It certainly didn’t look like one. Quite aside from that hateful glare, she could see sharp slicing teeth and four pointed grabbing ones, and her host body’s instincts were sending urgent messages to the effect that she should tremble.
Humiliating as it was, breaking character was not acceptable, so Eleven allowed Mwrmwrwk’s body to tremble, and even cower a bit and back away.
“But… you’re… supposed to be Chehnasho.”
“I an’ I don’ wan’ Babylon come callin’, sight?”
Either the translator had made a complete hash of his language, or else he was speaking pure nonsense.“…What?”
Dread’s expression got even angrier somehow, and he spoke clearly and slowly, as if enunciating for an idiot. “If they-” he waved a hand at the planet in general “Find out a human is here, then they either kill me, or Hunters will come.”
“Then why-?”
“You out me, you die. Seen?”
His tone was completely unmalicious, meaning that his words weren’t so much a threat as an alert of future danger to be avoided, like a warning sign on a crumbling cliff edge.
Eleven was not going to be bullied by a deathworld primitive. In any case, deathworlders outside the quarantine field were not to be permitted – a rule she could have bent or broken if she wanted… but she didn’t want to.
Internally, she sent a priority alert to planetary security. Externally, she squeaked a terrified “…Understood.”
“Why I chasing Sanctuary?” Dread asked.
“That was the job!” Eleven told him. “The client wanted Krrkktnkk A’ktnnzzik’tk found. When we found him, we came straight back here.” Dread didn’t need to know that the client in question had been the Hierarchy.
“And he taken over this station?”
“Yes!”
“Were there humans wid’im?”
“I don’t know. We chased the wrong escape pod first. That one had three humans in it, a male and two females.”
His hand shot out so fast that even at Eleven’s accelerated processing speeds, Mwrwmwrk’s reflexes and sensory acuity weren’t adequate to the task of seeing it happen. In an eyeblink, he was holding her firmly by one of her belts. The fabric creaked as he hauled her closer, so close that the scent of him filled her nose. He even smelled angry.
“Where? When?!”
“Deep space!” Eleven answered. “Their pod was heading for the spacelane between the Allied Vgork Kingdoms and Domain space, not far from Freeport Eighty-Seven. That was… about [two months] ago. They would definitely have reached the lanes by now, and been detected.”
“Then what?”
“That depends who found them. Most ships wouldn’t knowingly take a human on board, and they were in no condition to fight. Their… the pod’s medical scanner was reporting that all three were badly hurt.”
The news seemed to enrage and disgust him. He let go of her harness and spun away. He took a deep breath and let it out with a frustrated vocalization before turning back and facing her.
“What. Does. That. Mean?” He asked, firmly.
“It means… most shipmasters would have just left them. Gaoians probably wouldn’t, but that’s a long way from Gaoian space, and if the Hunters found them first…”
She trailed off: his glare was only getting worse.
“…It means that they’re most likely either dead or still out there,” she summarized.
Dread’s nostrils flared and the line of hair above his right eye creased downward. She thought he was about to snap something, but instead he exhaled while making a coarse noise in the back of his mouth and changed the subject.
“Why’s that station so important?”
“It has a fully sized industrial nanofactory.” Eleven told him. “And A’ktnnzzik’tk is an ally of your species, which means he’s probably planning to use it for your benefit.”
“So?”
“So that is… very illegal. For several reasons.”
“So?”
“Oh, you should care.” Eleven told him. “Your species is only just in their post-contact stage, your economy couldn’t possibly absorb the introduction of even one functioning Kwmbwrw nanofactory. It would be catastrophic for you. Your entire manufacturing sector would become obsolete too quickly for your economy to adjust. Millions would be redundant, unemployed, starving.”
“…That bad?”
“It happened before. Have you ever met a Newex?”
He shook his head, a gesture she took for a reply in the negative.
“They’re a reclusive species with a tiny population, and they don’t leave their homeworld much if at all. About [two hundred years] ago they got their hands on nanofactory technology before they were ready, and it resulted in global economic collapse, which in turn led to mass starvation, plagues, rioting and internecine warfare. Even with all this time to recover, their population is still less than half what it was before the crisis.”
For the first time, he betrayed an emotion other than simmering rage. He put a hand on his jaw and rubbed thoughtfully, then ran that hand over the thick, matted ropes of hair that ran down his back. He turned away, paced thoughtfully, then took out his communicator.
“Not done wid I, yet.” He snarled. “Stay right there.”
Eleven watched the data traffic and had to suppress her emotional connection to her host or else she would have indicated triumph as she realised he first researched the Newexian crisis to verify what she had told him, and then immediately called his client, Shipmaster Mefr, host to Fifty-Three. He spoke slowly and carefully, disguising the unique cadences and idioms of what was clearly his native and preferred mode of speech, and reported everything, especially the nanofactory.
With plausible deniability for the information reaching the fleetmaster now established, Eleven’s work on Perfection was now done. There was only the matter of a rogue human to clean up.
Fortunately, that problem was about to solve itself.
“Right.” Dread pocketed his communicator. “Now. Sanctuary. I wan’ know everyt’ing…”
He trailed off, cocking his head at some sound that Eleven hadn’t detected. He gave her a suspicious glare, and then stepped twice to his side. In the quiet of the store-room, Eleven finally heard some kind of metallic, springy sort of sound that punctuated each of his footsteps.
Two cops burst into the room with their stun weaponry drawn and ready, and all hell broke loose
Irbzrkian electrical discharge weaponry had earned a large market share over the years. While they lacked the range, accuracy and rate of fire of kinetic pulse weaponry, the more than made up for those deficiencies in effectiveness. Irbzrk stun guns had been credited not only with subduing human fugitives, but also in fighting back against Hunter parties that had come looking for those humans. Dread didn’t stand a chance.
Not that mere insurmountable odds were likely to give any self-respecting deathworlder pause for thought.
The police – two Vzk’tk – needed a moment to realise that Dread was not in the middle of the room but lurking beside the door, and then it was already too late. Eleven wasn’t sure what she had been expecting from him, but the human seemed to have absolutely no compunctions about violence. The first officer through the door didn’t even have time to order him to surrender before Dread lashed out with enough force to pulp the poor creature’s forearm. It collapsed, shrieking like some kind of malfunctioning industrial machine and cradling its ruined limb.
The second fared no better. It tried to shoot at Dread, but the human flung himself to the ground, then used the interval as the cop’s gun was recharging its capacitors to shoot again to launch himself forwards. He crashed into the Vzk’tk officer’s legs and broke three of them – the officer crashed to the ground, screaming.
Eleven ran.
She flinched as a stun-gun shot that would have fried her host outright missed by a hand’s width the second she burst through the door. There were five more security officers in the alleyway, who beckoned urgently for her to get out of the way, and aimed at the door again.
What came through it wasn’t Dread, but the billow of black cloth was convincing enough for all of them to fire at once. Dread had removed his robes and thrown them out of the door in front of him. The garment ignited and fell to the ground burning, but Dread was right behind it and pounced over the flaming cloth.
Eleven had just enough time to solve the mystery of his too-long, Chehnasho-like legs. Under his robes, Dread was wearing a pair of shorts, a few holsters and harnesses, and a pair of boots with some kind of cantilevered assemblage of springs and metal that elongated his stride, made him taller and created the appearance of having digitigrade feet.
They also, it seemed, gave him a mechanical advantage. Eleven had the data on how agile humans were in standard gravity, but Dread’s leap was enormous even by their standards, and when he landed he did so by crashing shoulder-first into the middle officer.
The unfortunate being went sprawling, grievously wounded if not fatally so, and the other four found themselves within arm’s reach of a deathworlder in a fighting rage.
Eleven was pretty sure he killed two of them outright. Dread’s right hand was a knobbled club of gravity-forged dense bone and flesh, and it lashed out faster than the eye could follow. One of the officers staggered back and fell with his head lolling unnaturally, and another collapsed with a visible dent mid-forehead that didn’t look remotely survivable. When Dread grabbed the third and levered her into the fourth, he did so with enough force to almost tear her arm off, and left both of the officers creaking their agony in a disjointed pile of broken limbs on the deck.
Oh well. In his rage, the human had now undoubtedly sparked a city-wide hunt for himself that would inevitably lead to his capture. Eleven’s work was done.
She turned and sprinted away, preemptively shutting down the pain signals from her borrowed body.
Sure enough, he caught her. With those spring-boots on his feet, he could take huge bouncing strides in low gravity, and Eleven was smashed to the deck in only five paces. In an abstract way, she sensed three of Mwrmwrwk’s legs break, an injury that once upon a time would have been slowly and agonisingly fatal, and which the very best of modern Kwmbwrw medicine still treated by preference with amputation and prosthesis.
She was roughly shoved over, and was now nose-to-nose with a violently enraged human. “Blood clot fi I call Babylon, huh?” He snarled, incomprehensibly.
Eleven followed the script provided by Mwrmwrwk’s latent personality image. “Not me! Somebody must have seen-”
“Shut up! I got t’ree eye. Wan’ live wid two?”
He tugged a knife – not a fusion blade, just an ordinary bit of sharp metal, not that it would really matter to Mwrmwrwk’s flesh, not with deathworld strength behind it – from his belt and aimed it levelly at Eleven’s middle eye.
Oh dear. Eleven didn’t really want to have to endure that fate, and she sensed that now she could plausibly pass off her departure as Mwrmwrwk having died of sheer fright.
She ejected from her host, and triggered the kill subroutines in the implants as she evacuated them.
Crushed and already dying beneath Dread’s anger, the body of the already-late Mwrwmwrk spasmed, frothed at the mouth, and finally died.
Eleven reconnected to the first host that presented itself – a nearby Guvnuragnaguvendrugun who was being held back by the security cordon, and checked the feed from the kreewit biodrone.
She watched Dread take out his rage on the corpse of her late host, dismembering it in a few moments of pure animal violence. Then, snarling, he stood, looked around him, and took off at a run.
Eleven sent the kreewit to follow, but it immediately became apparent that Dread was far too fast for the little urban creature to keep up. She lost sight of him as he leaned into the turn round a sharp corner far ahead, and by the time her biodrone had reached that corner itself, he was gone.
Police vehicles thrummed overhead with their lights and sirens going full blast, and she reassured herself that his capture was only a matter of time.
She fed the Guvnurag host a false memory of becoming lost in thought, and dismounted gently. Her brief occupation would be overlooked as a moment of distraction: far better for creating less attention than to have the giant creature suddenly keel over dead in the crowd.
Satisfied, she slipped away onto the Hierarchy network, and began to compose her mission report.
It had, she considered, gone perfectly.
Date Point 10y4m1w5d AV
HMS Violent, Perfection System, The Core Worlds.
Commodore William Caruthers
Caruthers confessed to being a Star Trek fan, but something that had always struck him as amusing and odd about that franchise was just how much personal space all the characters enjoyed aboard their ships. Ensigns and Lieutenants were blessed with decent-sized apartments, usually with luxurious double beds and enough room to invite friends over for poker.
In reality, one of the great perks of being a senior officer was that you got a small cabin to yourself that was just about large enough to contain a bed, a sink and a desk. Caruthers’ was about half the size of Captain Picard’s ready room, let alone the opulent quarters in which that fictional officer had luxuriated. Meanwhile there were junior officers on Violent and elsewhere in the fleet who were sharing bunks.
That was the nature of life in the navy, and if the officers were sharing bunks then the ratings had an even more cramped and intimate time of it. Indeed, the cots and camp beds that the SOR techs kept in Caledonia’s starboard bay were widely reckoned to be the most luxurious sleeping arrangement in the fleet, and were thus the source of some mildly envious friction.
The cabin was important, though: it allowed him to sleep, and sleep he did at every opportunity. It might have been nice to unwind with a book first or something, but each time he had a chance to get his head down, he knew it was only going to be a handful of hours at most before his attention was once more required.
Answering phone calls was almost a reflex now. His hand was moving before he was fully awake.
“Ngh… Caruthers.”
”Call from the FIC, sir.”
“Put it through.”
The FIC was the Fleet Intelligence Center, housed on HMS Myrmidon, a team of dedicated and highly educated specialists whose job revolved around tending to the Watson systems and all those valuable FLOPS. Their efforts had broken the alien encryption in short order, and they were now busily reading ET’s mail. Thanks to them, Caruthers knew what his nonhuman counterpart’s orders were usually before they’d even finished reaching every officer in the alien fleet.
There was a delay of a second or two as the line was transferred, which he spent levering himself upright and massaging his face for clarity. “Chief. What news?”
“An interesting transmission from the planet to the fleet, sir. It looks like the SOR element were only partially successful – one of November Charlie’s crew evaded capture. It looks like she was tracked down and told them about Kirk and Mwrwrki station. Now there’s messages flying all over the ET fleet about Article Twelve of the Charter.”
Caruthers stood. “Damn!”
”Yes sir. If they decide to attack Caledonia, they’ll be doing it in about half an hour, assuming they stick to their plan of using their orbiting element as cover.”
“Thank you. Spread that intel.”
Well aware that he was a bit rumpled and unwashed from several solid days of being at work and snatching power-naps in between with only the odd meal at his desk, Caruthers would have preferred to grab a quick shower and a change of clothes, and he would have if there had been more than a half an hour in which to do so.
As it was… well, he was far from the only one. The standoff and constant state of readiness was probably keeping everybody in the fleet in similar condition.
Junior ranks got respectfully out of his way as he swarmed up the stairs to A deck and the bridge, where Violent’s CO, Commander Vaughan, was in the middle of taking the call from the Fleet Intel Center.
Caruthers double-checked the volume chart, double-checking that everything was still where it should be.
Vaughan put his phone down. “Well, that’s inconvenient,” he noted. “Shall we put a call in to your opposite number, sir?
“Best not.” Caruthers decided. “It won’t help us if we give away that we can listen to their communications.”
“If they decide to hit Caledonia now…”
“I think I’ve been more than patient enough with the ’Fleetmaster’.” Caruthers declared. He turned to the communications officer “Get me a line to all the captains.”
“Aye aye sir.”
It didn’t take long. The FIC had the art of rapidly disseminating vital information down pat – every commander they had was ready to receive orders. Bathini was on the line too, looking most exhausted of all but still dignified and fierce.
“Channel open, sir.”
Caruthers nodded his thanks, then addressed the camera on Vaughan’s console. “Gentlemen. I don’t plan on waiting half an hour to see if they attack, because if they do there won’t be a damn thing we can do to stop them from destroying Caledonia,” he announced, without preamble. “We’re going to strike now. Violent, Viceroy and Myrmidon will remain here with half the bulldogs. The rest of you will jump to beacon around that moon. We’re going to blind them, nothing more. EWAR and gravity spikes only until I say otherwise. Captain Daniels, you have seniority for the strike group. Just as we planned. Any questions?”
”What about that Gaoian ship?” Captain Ruckley asked. Ruckley was the CO of HMS Valiant and one of the most vocally pro-alliance.
“They’re to be spared unless they attack.” Caruthers, letting his tone of voice carry the implicit order that there would be no flinching if it came to blows. “We’ve entertained the possibility of contacting them and coming to some arrangement, but that’s not practical right now. Hopefully their captain is smart enough to keep his claws in. Anybody else?”
”What happens if they do succeed in attacking Caledonia?” Vaughan asked.
“Then we nuke all the heavy pickets.” Caruthers replied. “Including the flagship. If this goes tits-up then I at least want the galaxy to know for certain that we’re no soft touch when it’s killing time… Still. Bathini, have your crew ready to abandon ship.”
“Aye aye sir.”
“Anyone else?”
There was a round of general confirmation that they all understood their roles.
“Good hunting.”
Date Point 10y4m1w5d AV
Planet Perfection, The Core Worlds.
Zane
Zane had hit on the idea of using jumping stilts early on in his career as an infobroker. At first he’d considered duplicating Xiù’s Gaoian disguise, but had quickly given up on that idea. Quite aside from not speaking a lick of Gaori, his proportions were plainly and obviously wrong. He was far too tall, and too much of that height was legs.
Besides, Chehnasho had the more sinister reputation. Given that all he needed was an extra twelve inches or so in the leg to make himself roughly the right proportions, the rest had been first engineering and then adapting to the damn things. He’d fallen over a fair few times as he got used to them. Over the three years he’d spent on Perfection, he’d grown so used to his boots that taking them off in the seclusion of his safehouse had started to feel wrong… But they’d saved his life today.
He called The Contact.
“I want out.” He told her, the instant she answered his call.
“I was about to cut you loose anyway. Your usual flare for subtlety seems to have abandoned you.” the Corti replied. ”I assume you will be leaving us? Making use of that ship you have stored away, hmm?”
The little noodly grey bitch had always been far too sharp for Zane’s tastes. It might have been her influence that saw him rescued from Aru, but that didn’t mean he had to like her. Especially not when she so thoroughly punctured his illusions that he’d been able to keep the Creation Stepper a secret.
“I’m not stupid enough to stay here.” He shot back.
”Stupid enough to out yourself and kill three police officers. What were you thinking?”
“Don’t give I the evil eye.” Zane told her. “Bein’ caught was a when, not a if.”
“Was it really necessary to kill them?”
“Hard to not.” Zane retorted. “An’ it kill or be killed yah know.”
“Oh yes, I know. They’ll kill you if they catch you, undoubtedly. They aren’t necessarily wrong, either. If the Hunters get wind of your presence…”
Zane’s normally limited and currently negligible patience ran out. “I an’ I done talkin’?” He snapped, “Or am I gon’ have to listen until the end of Eart’?”
“…I have cleared your debt. You’re free to go, Dread. A pity, you have been a rare and valuable asset. I wish you all the best.”
“Ya. I’d wish I good luck, but I doesn’t need it, nuh true?” Zane didn’t often compliment anybody, but then again he didn’t like very many people. The Contact was a rare exception – she’d always treated him with respect and fairness.
“True. Farewell, Dread.”
“Yeah, yeah. Live long an’ prosper, an’ t’ing.”
He ended the call.
Inventory check – he had his clothing, his jumping stilts, several hundred thousand dominion currency credits spread across five different fake identities, and a small spaceship rigged for going from point A to point B as quickly as possible.
He also had being human. Awkward as it might be to have to constantly disguise that fact, being able to out-think everything in the galaxy, out-run them, or if need be tear them limb-from-limb was not a blessing to be sneered at.
He’d be fine.
Date Point 10y4m1w5d AV
Heavy System Picket Utopian Aspiration, Perfection System, The Core Worlds.
Fleetmaster Xkk’rtnnk A’vkrnkt’k
“The orbital element will be in position in two hundred Ri’, fleetmaster.”
“Good. Remember, the human retaliation will be immediate. Every ship is to warp to safety instantly upon the target’s destruction.”
Xkk’ took a last look at the fleet disposition and satisfied himself that the deathworlders were about to get a nasty shock. Considering just how much death and mayhem they had caused in their short time on the interstellar stage, he didn’t feel even the slightest twinge of-
More than half of the human fleet vanished. All they left on the field were three of their larger ships, twelve of the small probably-drones, and the damaged-
The tactical display made an alarmed noise and its happy blue abruptly turned green. Warning icons indicated a sudden and total shutdown in the available sensor telemetry from his own ship.
Before he could give any order, it went yellow, indicating that it was nonfunctional. The Utopian Aspiration was no longer receiving any sensor telemetry. His view of the human fleet and of the battlespace dissolved into useless fuzz.
Every officer he could see started prodding and swiping uselessly at their work stations, attempting to salvage the situation.
“What. Just. Happened?!” he demanded, raising his voice to cut through the sudden hubbub.
“Comms are down, sensors are down, station-keeping is down, navigation is down!”
“Superluminal comms?” Xkk’ called.
“Active, but… Fleetmaster, every ship is reporting identical failures.”
Xkk’ rounded on the tactical technicians. “Sensors!”
“The diagnostic says they’ve… burned out, fleetmaster.” The technician give him a wide-eyed, quite panicked look. “All of them at once. They… it seems the humans hit them with extremely high-energy beams of radiation in their most sensitive bands, exceeding their-”
“They shot us?” Xkk’ snapped.
“Yes, Fleetmaster.”
Xkk’ turned to Mefr. “They shot us! Those… cowardly, honorless, treacherous dirt-chewers shot us!”
“They beat us to it.” Mefr observed.
Xkk’ ground his teeth and seriously considered removing the Corti from her post, but she had not in fact been overtly insubordinate. Instead he reined in his temper. “The other elements?” he asked.
The tactical officer swiped desperately through his volumetric display elements. “Third group report identical system failures,” he called. “Second group are still at warp, they’re unscathed and request orders.”
Xkk’s hand stabbed into his command display and selected the only icon that had a known position and condition – HMS Caledonia.
“Destroy. That. Ship.” he snarled.
Date Point 10y4m1w5d AV
HMS Violent, Perfection System, The Core Worlds.
Commodore William Caruthers.
“Their FTL element is coming about.”
“Myrmidon to predict their in-vector and spike it. Valiant to warp four of their bulldogs to Caledonia and seed white noise. Mister Morgan, put our bulldogs among those spikes.”
“Aye aye!”
The Watson systems and the decade of GUI research and development that had begun the moment people got their heads round the idea that interstellar flight – and conflict – were likely to feature in humanity’s near future were proving their worth yet again. The Royal Navy prided itself on its traditions and on not fixing what wasn’t broken, but there was no command tradition or ship’s controls that were built to handle engagements across distances so vast that the speed of light itself was inconveniently too slow.
The system had therefore been purpose-built, and it worked beautifully. The computers listened, interpreted, shared, transmitted, prepared. All a human needed to do was confirm their analysis and not only did Caruthers’ orders immediately reach their intended recipients, but the computers on those ships had already prepared firing solutions and plotted accelerations.
They also kept Caruthers appraised of the progress of his commands. He had ordered for Myrmidon to fire gravity spikes and so now as each step in the process of reloading and firing that specialist ammunition filtered through Myrmidon’s own chain of command, Caruthers could watch it. The order was received, acknowledged, carried out. There was an agonising wait of some few seconds as her gun crews swapped ammo feeds.
No sooner was that step completed than Myrmidon fired. On the commodore’s screen, overlapping red bubbles filled the predicted incoming fleet’s approach vector, saturating several thousand cubic kilometers with no-warp zones. Caruthers watched the icon representing that fleet hawkishly, expecting them to detect the impediment in their way and abort their approach in favor of a different angle.
They didn’t, which was excellent evidence for their EWAR assault on the alien command element having completely blinded them.
The bulldogs synchronized with the control systems aboard Myrmidon and pulse-warped into the midst of that field of gravity spikes. By far the slowest step had been reloading the guns, and the result was that when, two minutes later, the last undamaged elements of the alien fleet arrived, rather than pouncing on a helpless target and annihilating it, they were instead brought crashing back down to sublight speeds, and before they could get their bearings, they were pounced upon, and rendered helpless.
Caruthers watched with a grim expression as the last alien ship lost attitude control and came adrift.
“…Hail the fleetmaster.” he ordered.