“Congratulations to Mira and Hank,” Juan said.
“I thought his name was ‘Jerry.’”
The guy turned and said, “In another three segs it’ll be JR.”
I did laugh.
Something scrolled on screen and one of the crew said, “Oh, shit.”
“What?” from the captain and Juan together.
“Ionization trace. Our drive, all that plasma and dust. If they see it—”
I hoped they were too busy with their on-station disaster to do anything. I didn’t want to eat a missile.
Jerry/Hank/JR said, “They have something online. We’re being actively probed and they probably know we’re stealthed.”
Acquiring tracking in space is hard. Keeping it is easy. We’d been seen, and enough resolution should show our power levels, that ionization, and there are a range of possible trajectories.
I said, quietly, “Thanks for being a great bunkmate, Teresa.”
“And you,” she said. “I don’t think we’re dead yet, though.”
I was pretty sure we were. It might take a while, but they had time to let every jump point know to be waiting for us on this side and the other, and we couldn’t stay here forever.
Juan said, “Head break, fast.”
I waited in line, zipped suit and drained fast, got back to my improv couch. I was just glad I didn’t die sitting on the commode.
“We do have a missile,” Jerry said, and I gulped and clenched eyes.
The captain said, “Full evasion. Decoys. Chaff. Flares. Dazzlers. Counterfire. A-rad. Emergency boost.”
As he said it, I heard or felt it. We suddenly shifted on three axes. Thunks indicated stuff being deployed, and I saw the view fuzz and flare and twitch. Something launched because I felt it blow out by pneumatic. Then we hit G. I mean we really hit G. It was six or eight. Ours, not Earth.
It immediately stopped.
There was a large, bright explosion aft.
“Hopefully that did it. They shouldn’t see anything for a while.”
I understood. A short, heavy burn in all that crud right after hitting them should be hard to find even on review. The explosion was a decoy, and there had been others. I wonder if their missile had hit one.
Jerry said, “Pity we can’t do that to ground-based targets, but they’ve got so much sensor suite they can see dust specks, and enough counterbattery they’d have cooked us before we got into approach.”
“I understand even an accident would be devastating.”
“Yes, if you call several gigatons ‘devastating.’ You’ll never see a ship impact a planet. Meteor guards were adapted to make sure.”
The station, though, was apparently less critical, even with all those lives aboard.
Juan said, “This will obviously dictate a change in our operations. Either we find another ship we can use or borrow, or we resort to passenger status and do what we can.”
They’d lost their ship and still planned to attack. I had to respect that kind of balls.
“Unrelated question,” I asked. “Assuming this boat doesn’t have phase drive, how do you get in and out of systems? Our fleet carriers are obvious.”
“We can’t answer that,” I was told.
I still don’t know if they’d been in system that entire time, slammed a Jump Point, piggybacked on another ship, or actually had a billion-credit phase drive.
My immediate worry was staying alive. Our diversion worked, and we moved outsystem, with less and less likelihood of them finding us in the volume.
The station was critically damaged. The passive sensors on that boat were amazing, but I assume they were built for intel scooping. We caught local news, outsystem news bursts, and apparently decoded some scrambled intel signals.
They brought in engineers and modules and set up an emergency control center, but the ships couldn’t dock. That meant they had to borrow lighters and shuttles, transport them in-system, and use those for unloading. Then there was some political argument over whether the ships should pay for that as a cost of doing business, or the government should underwrite it as a catastrophic event.
When it was made clear that no one would bother shipping if they had to pay for the unloading, they threatened to criminally charge ships that didn’t for “war profiteering.” How were they going to identify which ships? There were probably a couple on contract schedule runs, but most were now and again, or even one-offs.
I’ve never known politicians to make sense.
After two weeks, they came around to the UN paying for the loading and unloading, but had a huge list of requirements, even more than the ones we’d had to deal with.
I could see how a handful of ships doing our kind of thing could utterly crash chunks of their economy. I just wasn’t sure that would stop them from destroying us in the process.
I said two weeks. We were around longer than that. We kept going, outsystem. I got concerned. It was quiet and dark out there, and no stations.
Fifteen-day cycles along, thrust came back online and we moved out of emgee into .5. Given the time and trajectory, we had to be well out of the gravity well of the star and in the right range for a Jump Point, but there was no way it was unguarded for us to get through.
We kept going.
No one else seemed scared, so I tried to assume they knew what they were doing. I was sure they did. I just couldn’t feel secure when I didn’t.
We had no news out here, either. No one could beamcast us, and broadcasts for local space were too weak even for the sensors on an intel boat.
It was as alone as I’ve ever been in my life. Despite the “depths” of space, most people stay near habitats or planets, or routes with regular traffic. Or else they take large survey ships in pairs. We had fifteen people in a boat the size of a ground-based house, and most of that house was engine, powerplant, sensors and oxy production.
A ten-day Freehold week after that, there was activity up front.
“Contact. Positive ID on the Serang.”
I recognized that. The Serang was one of our destroyers.
Eventually there were bumps and clangs and we were docked and attached.
I felt a lot better.
“How far out are we?” I asked.
Juan and the captain exchanged looks and shrugged before I got an answer.
The captain said, “We’re out by the astropause.”
“That’s outside the outer Halo, yes?”
“Kuiper Belt and Scattered Disk, yes. Typically it is. With the smaller star, we’re actually still within those. Slightly.”
Damn. That was actually the deepest into space I’d ever been.
It’s deeper than almost anyone got to go.
I said, “I don’t recall them updating to phase drive.”
I got no answer.
I found out much later that officially they hadn’t upgraded. Brandt had a couple of units ready to go when we got attacked, stuck them on a ship and donated them. They were concealed and dragged out of system, and then installed. The UN didn’t even know Serang still existed. Supply boats fed them, they fed us, and they hadn’t been in any system for the duration. They’d been astrogating in deep space, alone. That had to be a hell of a story.
They spent half a day fastening us to their superstructure. I don’t know the physics, but you can’t just tow a ship, apparently. There’s an envelope around the structural mass based on some sort of submolecular shaping of space from it. There has to be complete contact and only certain overall shapes work.
It was my first time in phase drive, and it was neat. There’s no whomp upside the head. Everything gets really fuzzy for a bit, almost like being drunk, then it fades back to normal. We were elsewhere.
Once again I found out a lot later. We were at an actual interstellar base our engineers had built. Our phase drive ships were here, dragging the others with them whenever they could.
Churchill had been destroyed. I didn’t have any close friends who’d be
en aboard, but they were mostly good people and they’d fought bravely. I felt like crap for being here.
Teresa supported me again.
“Don’t feel that way. Death is something that happens, and dying there wouldn’t have allowed you to help us. You’ve done a lot more here. You couldn’t have saved the ship.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Survivor’s guilt.”
“You have nothing to feel guilty over. It’s perfectly natural, so I’m going to offer you some medical rum and thanks, for getting us where we are.” She had a selection of bottles in her gear crate, all labeled with stock codes that declared them official issue.
I tossed the rum back and grimaced. There’s a reason I drink fruity drinks.
It didn’t help at once, but I did eventually accept it. It still sucked to know they were dead and I couldn’t have done anything.
“You couldn’t have done anything if you’d never been aboard,” she said. “They’d just be names then.”
“I can’t detach myself from people like that.”
“It’s tough. It takes time. Should I leave you alone to meditate? Or do you want company?”
I shrugged. “Hanging out is good. I won’t talk much.”
“That’s fine.”
I avoided that by thinking about what was here. Actually, the one led to the other. Our warships weren’t fighting. One on one, they could fight UN ships. What they couldn’t do was resupply. Once low on fuel or ammo, that was it, even if they didn’t lose, which they would some of the time.
Instead, we had them running supplies. They were faster-than-light, go-anywhere transports that could haul multiple cargos. They moved fuel, people and intel where it could be used to strike at UN operations. I didn’t realize at the time how much influence I had. I was one small part of a team of nine, but that team reduced UN operational effectiveness by several percent in several systems. Add in the actual battles we’d fought and the skull kicking was all out of proportion to the size of the boot.
Regarding the station location, apparently, the astrogation crew had coded and locked instructions they accessed in flight, and not even the captains knew. Since there was no jump point to that station, the UN couldn’t even get there, even if someone who knew told them where it was. It was literally impenetrable until the UN finished outfitting a phase drive ship, then they’d have to either know where it was or do a lot of searching, then they’d have fewer ships for that battle than we did.
As far as the smaller ships, they couldn’t fight us if they couldn’t find us, and if they found out we were inside their borders, they still couldn’t really fight us without hurting their own people and infrastructure, though it was clear they didn’t really care about the people. All the resources they put into protecting their systems, stations, people and equipment was resources not in our system. We wanted to avoid fighting there for all those reasons.
“Churchill did their part by delivering you to us,” Glenn said.
I looked up. I realized I’d been muttering and blushed.
“Angie, a lot of people go through life wondering if they matter. None of us have that problem. You shouldn’t either.”
I nodded with damp eyes.
CHAPTER 33
Yet another tramp showed up, towed by another ship. This one was newer, registered out of Caledonia. It scared me how many ships with false histories and registries seemed to be floating about. It was the Camby.
“Are the logs correct on this one?” I asked. I didn’t want to pimp myself to a perv again.
Juan said, “They are, because several of our residents have been running it the last decade. Those residents retain Caledonian citizenship because they planned to retire to our system. They were made very comfortable in an alternate retirement.”
That sounded disturbing.
“What does that mean?”
“It means they were given a lot of money, new ID and a quiet place to live to enjoy that money. What, you think we killed them?” He gave me an odd look.
“I, uh, wasn’t sure.”
They gave me a Look.
I thought it was a fair question, but obviously I’d made a social error.
I asked, “We’re just going to do the same thing as last time?”
He said, “Not quite. We will still engage in clandestine combat as dictated by mission parameters and opportunity. However, we’re moving more toward intelligence gathering for others to use.”
I hoped that would be a lighter load than we had. A year and a half of this was wearing. Days of boredom and real work done for fake reasons, followed by segs of terror and panic and divs of fear of getting caught, rinse, repeat. We all have our limits and I was near mine.
At least there was room aboard. She wasn’t as nice as Pieper after upgrade, but she was better than a lot I’d served on. I had my own small bunkroom with a rolling hatch. I could be out in seconds, and private when I needed to. Talk about luxury.
I was stowing my gear when an All Hands klaxon sounded. It was a military klaxon, and I made a note to tell them to change that if this was supposed to be a civilian vessel.
I reported to the C-deck. There were MPs there. Ours.
The warrant leader in charge of the element was talking.
“Captain Gaspardeau, can you fully vet and account for your crew?”
“I can. Angie is an attached asset who’s been with us for several months, and is absolutely reliable. The rest are members of my element and we have trained as a unit since before the war, in preparation for it. We had an infiltrator whom we identified, court martialed and executed before we captured Scrommelfenk. What specifically are you looking for?”
“We will need to search the ship in a full showdown, sir. I apologize for the necessity.”
“Fair enough. But are you able to answer my question?”
“After we search, sir,” the warrant said.
One by one, we went to our cubbies and opened every container of everything. Teresa and I went together as chaperon for each other. I opened my roller and my bag, laid out everything down to my toothbrush and epi cream. I put my Bodybuzz on the bunk, then my wigs and dyes.
The female MP asked, “Ma’am, are the cosmetics professional or personal?”
Not “lady” but “ma’am.” She didn’t know my rank equivalent and was making sure to address me as an officer.
“I use them for both. We frequently change appearances.”
“Fair enough. Stow that and show me the bunk, please.”
I put everything away and peeled the bedding, the gel mattress, lifted the springs and opened the underbunk storage.
We swapped while they had Teresa toss her stuff. She had no cosmetics to speak of, more clothes, minimal toys.
Cleared, we went back to the C-deck with our belongings stuffed into our luggage, while the MPs plus a ship maintenance crew started there and worked aft. I went to the galley to monitor while they pulled every pack, opened all the heaters and the fridge, everything.
It took all day.
Outside there were sounds of hull techs doing yet more searches.
It didn’t stop there. They went over the capital ships the same way. They had two crews on each checking each other. Stem to stern of every craft, then the station.
It turned out that nothing is one hundred percent secure. There were a handful of UN infiltrators who had good cameras and old-fashioned parallax gear to measure and determine the station’s location. Then either we would have a phase drive ship, or perhaps just a huge warhead or a bunch of generators to scramble space and destroy any ship trying to precipitate (as I found out the term is) there.
Two of them had been caught talking and swapping data on paper. Very secure, until someone sees it. The other two were found in the sweeps. All four were given quick but fair court martials, then shot at the base of the skull and spaced. The recovered bodies were recycled for minerals and hydrocarbons.
I guess the court martials might have been a bit
abbreviated, and the UN complained about that after the war, but they were caught with the gear and enough evidence proved they were plants. And I guess we didn’t shove electrodes into them and torture them, so I wasn’t very sympathetic.
We put everything back together, and our host pulled us out. This time, phase drive went on for longer. Apparently, that’s not related to distance, but is related to some complicated energy expenditure based on the structure of space.
I still have no idea where that station is. I’m not sure anyone does. But I bet it still exists.
CHAPTER 34
When we precipitated, we were in Mtali, or near it. Far outsystem. We had an extra fuel bunker in cargo, and a feed mechanism to get it into the powerplant.
Juan said, “Now, if we’re lucky, Mtali won’t ask too many questions about why we’ve been here a month and not done anything. We have a backup plan of claiming repairs and can limp in if needed.”
Mtali runs their own point, though they have a lot of cultural arguments over who does it, so they rotate. It depends on which group you get how well they do. The Sufi and Sunni aren’t bad. The Amala and Shia are terrible. The Christian Coalition are in between. The other groups aren’t big enough to involve. Yes, they divide by religion, not nation or industry. It’s a mess.
That worked for us, though, since it was a different group on departure, and they don’t like to talk to each other, so no one questioned when we’d come in or who through. We officially came from in-system, didn’t dock, queued up and jumped.
That put us back in Alsace.
This was a station I wasn’t very familiar with. I’d been here twice about five years before. All we did was eat and sleep out, though, and pick up legit cargo.
Then we went across system to where I knew. It was the station on this side of Earth.
We were very clean. We dropped cargo there, picked some up, logged an “irregularity” in Mtali space, then jumped through to Earth.
I realize they were the enemy and our main target, but I hated being in that system, every time.