Date Point: 15y6m1d AV
The Ring, Hell System, Hunter Space
Captain Anthony “Abbott” Costello
“Put this in perspective for me. How big is eighteen-point seven gigatons in terms I can understand?”
Something serious had gone down in the ship-scrapper facility, too, long before the strike team arrived. From the looks of things their tank friend had ripped plenty of other shit apart in there, but the whole hangar was built to rip shit apart anyway. Huge clawed and saw-bladed robot arms were lurking up near the ceiling, ready to descend on any machine unfortunate enough to be dragged into their grasp.
One whole wall—the Ring’s outer skin—was an atmosphere-retaining field. Costello had to look closely and carefully to even pick out its faint blue-green iridescence against the infinite night. Really, it looked like they were open to vacuum.
They would be, in a few seconds.
Irish had deposited the bomb in the middle of the deck with a relieved groan, then promptly jumped to checking everybody’s suit seals. Nobody could ever fault that man’s relentless energy.
Daar meanwhile was watching as Titan and Sikes welded the payload to the deck. He growled his reply to Costello’s question.
“Big enough it could blow everythin’ from New York ‘ta Washington DC into th’ stone age, damn near.”
“Imagine a mushroom cloud that engulfed the whole of Massachusetts,” Akiyama added helpfully.
“I’m a Canuck, remember?” Costello reminded them. “I’m from Montreal.”
“…Well sir, if it went off in your hometown it’d level Ottawa too, and give people third-degree burns down in Toronto and New York City.”
“…Dang.”
“Yeah…” Akiyama paused. “How clean is this thing?”
“As clean as any bomb y’all ever made,” Daar informed him.
Titan caught Costello’s eye for a second before returning to his work. “Right… important point there, then, we’re gonna need to keep suit seal after planetfall, unless you wanna suck down fallout.”
“Eh, not a bad idea. Prolly ain’t necessary though. ‘Sides, y’all don’t wanna set off another skidmark, I wager…”
“All them irradiated bits of Ring falling on our head are gonna fuck up the planet bad enough anyway, sir…” Sikes commented. He grunted as he finished securing the bomb and its shield emitter to the deck. The idea was that any Hunters that wanted to tamper with it would just end up setting it off instead.
“Yeah, that sounds like a hazard,” Costello pointed out. “Can we do anything to mitigate it?”
“We shouldn’t need to. When the Ring pulls itself apart the suppressor field should drop long before any of the big pieces de-orbit. We’ll be long-gone through our Array before that happens.”
“You’re certain?”
“…Well, I ain’t never blown up an orbital megastructure before,” Sikes commented. “So this is as sure as I can be. Anyway, she’s all yours sir.”
That last remark was addressed at Daar, who duck-nodded grimly and broke out the bomb’s activation passphrase. He pointed himself at the device, squared up, and spoke in Gaori: [“Wisdom is the most exquisite curse.”]
The light on the bomb went bright blue.
Regaari made an intrigued noise. [“Apt. One of Great Father Fyu’s sayings, yes?”]
[“Nah, Stoneback lore says it were actually Great Mother Tiritya who said it, ‘cuz some dumbfuck asked her why Fyu always looked so depressed.”]
“Let’s maybe step away from the giant nuclear weapon, eh?” Costello suggested. “Far, far away.”
“Express elevator to Hell’s waitin’ and ready sir,” Firth told him. They’d cleared out the debris near the atmosphere retention field to make for a smooth exit, and the team was running over pre-jump checks for an EA-HELLNO.
It was a solemn ritual. The founders had lost a Brother this way, before Costello’s time. They weren’t interested in losing another to the same mistake. Even WARHORSE seemed to have come back from that intense place he went to during a mission, just a little. He checked Costello’s suit from the ankles up with a few short words, gave him the traditional stunning slap to the helmet to let him know he was good to go, and turned to check Murray.
Funny how ‘Horse always looked after the smallest guys first.
“Buddy up!”
Everyone formed their groups. HELLNO jumps could be precise, but if shit went wrong then spreading themselves over a territory was also a good idea, and they’d settled on three as the optimal drop-buddy group size.
Costello’s group included Blaczynski and one of the First Fang Brothers, a brute who outmassed Champion Fiin by a fair bit, and whose armor was bloody all the way down to his shoulders. Taciturn, too. Apparently he only got talkative around Females or in First Fang gatherings.
Checks were finished quickly, no sign of any more Hunters. Costello didn’t like that at all, especially when the reason why became apparent when he stepped up to the pressure field and called up his suit’s sensor overlay.
It lit up with ship contacts. Hundreds, thousands of them… all undocking and getting the hell away from the Ring.
He switched to the command channel.
“Enemy’s fleeing the Ring, Great Father. I see a lot of ships out there…”
All that came back was a growl, and a short sentence. “…Let’s get offa this thing.”
Costello didn’t need telling twice. They lined up at the edge, checked left and right one last time, then pushed forward through the field together.
That moment of transition between atmo and vacuum was always weird for Costello, but going through a pressure field was even weirder. He felt the tension drop off as a dozen pounds per square inch just lifted off him. Even with the EV-MASS clamping down on his whole body to keep him pressurized and stop him from suffering for it, the difference was there.
Of course, the sound was a whole different matter. The only noises left were the quiet, internal ones that had just been part of the background a second ago. Now, they were thrust into the foreground by the absence of anything else.
The gravity field obviously ended at the pressure threshold. Centripetal acceleration took over and the Ring fell away from him, until he reached that tricky spot where he stopped having a sense of subjective direction. If he looked at it one way, the Ring might be a massive, perfectly flat wall that he was drifting away from. Or it might be a ceiling he was falling from, or a floor he was rising above.
Orbital mechanics was part of Firth’s job, and this particular de-orbit was going to be tricky: they had a giant metal structure to circumnavigate before they could begin re-entry.
They’d brought WiTChES-equipped kinetic maneuvering packs this time, rather than relying on cold-gas. The gas produced way more thrust, but they just couldn’t carry enough reaction mass to de-orbit successfully. The fields went up, snapping wide around them like a diaphanous aurora-borealis version of Batman’s cloak. Angled properly toward the sun, they could power the kinetic packs for a pretty steady acceleration, and acceleration built up quick. It wasn’t long before the Ring’s surface was a blur that Costello had decided was “below” him.
They were horrifically vulnerable out here, but the other option was instant incineration in a nuclear blast orders of magnitude larger even than the San Diego and Tsar Bomba events on Earth. End of list. No jumping back, no warp-capable ship for evac. It was jump, or die.
For some reason, however, the Hunters seemed to be ignoring them. Maybe it was just healthy wariness of the bomb, but…
No matter. There was nothing to do now except wait.
At least there was a nice view.
Date Point: 15y6m1d AV
MBG private jet, over Iowa, USA, Earth
Kevin Jenkins
“Got an update from Cimbrean…”
Moses looked up from the couch at the back of the plane, where he’d been sitting with a coffee and a tablet. “Has she spoken to the press yet?”
Kevin nodded. “Yeah. Footage is up on ESNN.”
Moses made an irate noise. “Always with the beating our people to the punch…” he grumbled, and tapped at his tablet. Kevin relocated over to stand behind him and watch.
Xiù had done a fantastic job of presenting herself, and she looked every inch the composed corporate professional as she stood tall in front of the camera flashes and microphones.
She began with a gentle nod to the reporters. From the looks of things, HMNB Folctha was besieged by the media at this point, and Kevin could see all kinds of network logos on show.
“Go on, you,” Kevin muttered, gently encouraging her even though he knew that the interview had already finished.
Xiù let the flashes die down before speaking. “Thank you for your patience,” she began. “I’m going to keep this brief, because there’s a lot we still need to establish, but I’m pleased to say that the Spaceborne Operations Regiment and Clan Whitecrest have rescued the surviving crew of Byron Group Exploration Vehicle Three, Dauntless. I’m afraid the crew have suffered casualties, and I won’t be revealing much until we’ve had a chance to speak with the next of kin, but I can confirm that four of the crew are alive and recovering in the base’s infirmary. A fifth is critically wounded, but stable for now.”
“Attagirl, you’re doin’ great,” Moses muttered.
On screen, Xiù seemed to be totally in command. “I’ll do what I can to answer your questions, but you should know that I may not be able to answer all of them. There are many things we still don’t know, or need to sort out. But for now I will say that we’re happy to have our colleagues back and we’ll be doing absolutely everything we can to help them and their families. I know from personal experience that coming home after a long, life-changing journey is… not easy. But we’ll be there for them, every step of the way.”
Moses grinned as she finished her brief speech and started taking questions.
“Well, you were right Kevin,” he said.
“C’mon, you didn’t doubt her either or you wouldn’t’ve agreed to the idea,” Kevin replied. He returned to his own work and listened with half an ear as Moses watched the whole video.
Most of the questions were met with apologetic declinations along the lines of “I’m not able to comment on what the Allied military’s response to this event may or may not be.” and a few polite reprimands like “Well, sorry, but we’re not here to talk about me, we’re here for my colleagues.”
As Kevin listened, he reviewed the detailed email she’d sent him. It was stomach-knotting stuff, especially the fact that the poor bastards had resorted to murder and what was effectively cannibalism. People were not gonna like that one bit. He sure as hell didn’t, and he could see how maybe he’d have done the same thing if it was that or starve. But there were gonna be a lot of armchair warriors who’d get fuckin’ angry when the truth came out, and defending them was going to be a… brave position for the Group to take.
“Dang,” Moses cursed gently.
“What?”
Moses grunted and rewound the video. “That reporter’s sharp.”
He aimed the screen at Kevin just as said reporter asked her question. “Ava Ríos, ESNN. There’s no way that ship was carrying enough food for a ten year mission… How did they survive so long?”
Xiù made a small mis-step: For just a second, she looked uncomfortable and cagey. The expression was gone even quicker than it arrived, but it was there on camera. “I can’t answer that right now, I’m sorry.”
Ríos, it seemed, was not the kind of woman who was deterred so easily. “Didn’t you ask them?”
“As I said, I don’t have all the answers at this point, and this would be one of the questions I can’t answer.” Xiù repeated. “I’m sorry.”
“Hrrm.” Kevin mulled the exchange over and scratched his jaw. “Gotta hand that girl a point. She asked a good question.”
“I feel like I know that name from somewhere. Ríos.”
“You should, boss. She’s ESNN’s star reporter, she wrote the ‘Humble Hero’ article on Xiù and I’ve got one of her prints in my office.”
“…Which one’s that?”
“The blue and white one next to my bookshelf.”
Moses grunted. “…Thought that was an abstract piece. Guess I never looked at it properly.”
“Nope. Original photograph with the artist as model, limited print. Paid a couple grand for it, too.” Kevin was thoroughly pleased with that purchase: It was already worth twice as much as he’d paid for it.
He’d taken up collecting art more out of not knowing what else to do with his money than for any better reason. Moses paid him a substantial six-figure salary with an executive bonus, but after the disaster that had been his first and only attempt at marriage and fatherhood, Kevin was committed to being a lifelong bachelor. Some fuckups weren’t worth revisiting.
His estranged daughter Callie had refused to let him pay for her college education which… hurt like hell, frankly. But it was her choice, and he was proud of her for going her own road despite everything. And if she wanted to stick with the wheelchair rather than let him pay for nerve regeneration therapy or an exoframe… well, that was her call too. He hated it, but she didn’t want anything to do with him.
And frankly, he knew better than to blame her.
Without a family to support there sometimes didn’t seem to be a whole lot of a point to having that kind of money, so he spent it on collecting stuff. The only downside to his art-collecting hobby, if indeed it was a downside, was that he’d apparently developed a knack for spotting up-and-comers who’d be way more valuable down the road. So really he was just generating more money via long-term investment.
He shook the thought off and considered the exchange between Ríos and Xiù. “…We ain’t gonna be able to keep their, uh, survival strategy dark forever, I reckon.”
“No,” Moses agreed.
“…Have we got our people’s backs, Moses?”
Moses stood up and tugged his shirt into a more comfortable position as he roamed the plane’s interior. A thought seemed to amuse him as he stopped by the porthole window and stared out at the clouds far below, and he grunted something that was almost a laugh. “Out, damned spot…”
“…Boss?”
Moses blinked and returned to the here-and-now. “…Yeah,” he decided. He turned around and was all business again. “We’ve got our people’s backs.”
“Despite what they did?”
“We’ll take fire for it either way,” Moses grumbled. “That’s life. But we look out for our own, Kevin. Especially when they only wound up in that situation because I was so impatient to get out there and start finding planets…”
He sighed and sat down on the couch again. “There’s a lotta blood on my hands. I can’t wash it off, but I can face it down. I didn’t get where I am today by hiding my mistakes.”
“Okay.” Kevin nodded, and the matter was decided. “Where do we start?”
“We start…” Moses mulled it over for a second, then nodded to himself. “…Well. I’m going to start with an apology.”
Date Point: 15y6m1d AV
Freefall above planet Hell, Hunter Space
Captain Anthony “Abbott” Costello
“This is a win, right?”
“Barely.”
Daar didn’t sound remotely happy. Their suit sensors were tracking thousands of ships fleeing the Ring like wasps swarming from a burning hive. None of them seemed interested in hunting the falling raiders. That in itself was… atypical, for Hunters. Everything Costello knew about them said that at least a few of them would have braved the pursuit for a shot at vengeance but now…
Instead, they were conserving resources. No wonder Daar wasn’t happy: It didn’t matter that not a single Brother had been so much as wounded, nor did it matter that they’d kicked ass like only the HEAT and First Fang could. This had been the moment to smash both the Ring and the Swarm-of-Swarms, to cripple the Hunters and reverse the momentum on a reign of terror that had been grinding on since before Humanity figured out how to knap flint.
Instead… without the Ring and its slave population, every ship that escaped was going to need food and supplies. The Hunters would need to feed, and the galaxy was going to suffer for it.
“My Father,” Regaari was only a few hundred meters to Costello’s left, and maybe a hundred feet higher up. “We’re outside the lethal radius, and the atmosphere should protect us now.”
Daar’s radio clicked, but that was the only acknowledgement he gave.
Costello saw clearly when the bomb went off. His helmet was designed so he could stare at a star if need be, so the immense flash of light in the heavens above him was no problem at all.
That… seemed to be it. An anticlimax, almost. The Ring was still a gossamer thread in the distance, but then again the best estimates said that after breaking in just one place it would take the better part of three hours for its own spin to completely smash it.
Part of him wished he could see what that would look like. The rest was very, very glad to be far away from it: Daar had just killed a lot of innocent people.
From the sound of his voice, he knew it too. “…Mission accomplished,” the Great Father announced.
There was nothing else to say, and in any case the reentry plasma was really beginning to flicker around the edges of Costello’s EARS field. For the next few minutes, their comms were going to be worthless anyway. Plenty of time to think and reflect.
Plenty of time to pray.
“May God have mercy on our souls…”
Alone, he fell into the fire to contemplate his sins.