Chapter Three
OUTER SYSTEM, BD+56 2966 SEVEN
Caine watched as Peter Wu moved to occupy the bridge console next to Melissa Sleeman’s sensor panel. “Remote ops manned and ready,” he announced.
“Very good. Ms. Veriden, have the Slaasriithi responded yet?”
“Just now. They acknowledge reception of our final transmission and advise that they are going dark, too. We have an automated check-in lascom ping set for every thirty minutes, with a three minute maximum plus-or-minus randomizing element built in.”
Riordan nodded. Now two light-minutes distant from the shift-carrier, Puller was about as alone as alone could get. If something happened, there’d be no way for Tidal-Drift-Instaurator-to-Shore-of-Stars to intervene in a timely fashion. “Dr. Sleeman, what are sensors revealing about the debris?”
“Easier to show you than tell you, sir.”
“We’ll all take a look. Main display; use faux 3-D.”
Sleeman complied. The three major debris fields appeared on the large screen above the piloting couches. The innermost field was the longest, located between the orbit of the planet’s closest moon and its slightly skewed belt. The other two debris traces were slightly more dense and slightly less attenuated. Riordan frowned. “Mr. Tsaami, I’ll bet you’ve got some recommendations at this point.”
The former Survey and Settlement Office pilot glanced down at a small screen reprising the view in the larger one located just behind him. Even from his oblique rear vantage point, Riordan detected a hint of a smile raising the outline of the helmsman’s cheek. “Why do you ask, sir?”
“Don’t be coy. We’ve got enough data now to decide where we’re going to make our first sweep.”
“Yes, we do. So what are you thinking?”
“I’m asking you.” And you know why; because I’m pretty much a newb and you’ve been doing this so long you could do it in your sleep.
Tsaami seemed pleased as he answered. Whether that was because he was gratified to show off his profound experience or because his skipper was neither too proud nor too insecure to seek expert opinions freely from his crew, was impossible to tell. “We want to start with the nearest one. And I think you already know why.”
“The attenuation of the debris and proximity to the moon.”
“Yeah, and the fact that any heavies which send refueling drogues to scoop up deuterium from the gas giant’s exosphere would have been easing in from that orbit. And would want to keep that moon within reach.”
Commenting over the comm, Little Guy sounded puzzled. “I thought it’s SOP to avoid moons, to stay away from their gravity wells and the debris around them.”
Before Karam could reply, Tina Melah’s voice jumped in. “True in a lot of places, but not always true around a gas giant—particularly not one where you’re going to conduct frontier refueling. You can get all sorts of bad ‘weather’ if you get in close to a gas giant. There was one time near Epsilon Indi when we—”
Riordan cleared his throat. “Thank you, Tina. Karam, please finish your recommendation.”
“Happy to do so if people let me,” grumbled Tsaami. “As I was saying, sir, that inner moon is a likely waypoint for ships initiating a refueling run. First, as Tina mentioned, it gives you hard cover against the crap you encounter near gas giants: higher radiation levels, ionic irregularities due to solar wind variations, and rings of frozen volatiles that clutter up any equatorial approaches. In the latter case, a moon tends to work like a vacuum cleaner, sweeping up a lot of that junk, making normal navigation easier.
“So a proximal moon can work like a waystation as you make your way in closer to a gas giant. It’s a good sensor object, too, so it’s friendly to navigators looking to plot courses. And it’s easy to eyeball if instruments break or get sketchy. Lastly, if something really goes wrong and you need to wait for help, you can usually find a natural feature—like a crater with ice—that is a better long-term choice than floating in free space. It gives you some hard cover and some volatiles: helps you live off the land if rescuers aren’t nearby.”
Riordan nodded. “So of the three debris trails, the one close to the moon was probably the site of any permanent or semi-permanent facility that the Hkh’Rkh or the Arat Kur might have built.”
“So, do I set course for that debris trail, Commodore? ETA would be”—Karam checked his instruments quickly—“forty-two minutes.”
“That’s the course we want, Mr. Tsaami. Dr. Sleeman, let’s bring the rest of our passive sensor array on line. And Ms. Veriden, keep the command channel clear from this point forward and pass the word: all crew is to strap in.”
She moved to comply, smiled sardonically in the direction of the helm. “Why? Are you gonna give Tsaami another chance to test out his new ride?”
“No, Ms. Veriden, I am readying us for combat. Stand ready to sound general quarters.”
* * *
The bow view in the main screen was unlike any Riordan had seen before. In space, you usually never came close enough to other objects to eyeball them. They were sensor blips until right before you docked with them or they came at you with lethal intent. But as Puller angled in toward the inert, frost-dusted moon low off their port bow, space ahead winked and flickered intermittently: tumbling debris or ice chips that caught and flung off the primary’s light. There weren’t many such twinklings—maybe a dozen scattered across the whole forward panorama—but to be able to see so many with the naked eye indicated that they were in a very densely littered section of space.
“Dr. Sleeman, distance from the mean center of the object cluster we delineated fifteen minutes ago?”
“Just under two thousand kilometers, sir.”
“At what point along our trajectory will we begin passing the outermost objects of that cluster?”
“Approximately three hundred kilometers further along, sir.”
“Current relative velocity?”
“Four hundred thirty meters per second.”
Riordan did the math, frowned. “So if there’s anything here to jump us, it will do so in the next ten or twelve minutes.”
The back of Karam’s head cycled through a quick set of nods. “Once we begin moving past their hiding spots, the robots will consider the possibility that our sensors will get a peek into the sensor shadows in which they’ve been hiding. They’ll start the party before that happens.”
Riordan rubbed his index finger across his upper lip. He leaned his mouth closer to the mic. “Gunnery.”
“Rulaine here.”
“Bannor, have you digested the specs on the Slaasriithi Point-defense Independent Platforms, yet? We’ll need to deploy them soon.”
“Well, Slaasriithi don’t seem to organize specs the way we do, but I can tell you this: their PIPs are way beyond ours. Their lasers have more endurance and better focal performance per meter of focal length. They’re UV weapons, so they have better energy delivery on targets in vacuum. I can’t figure out what their cycle rate is, yet; the translation of their data tables is far from perfect.”
“Have you consulted one of the pastorae advisors?”
“Not on the PIPs. They were helping me with the Puller’s own lasers and then got called back to engineering. Again.”
That made five visits to engineering by the Slaasriithi. Not surprising: many of their systems were not simply more advanced analogs of Puller’s original hardware; they were devices without human precedent, and so, completely beyond the experience of Tina or Phil. “Give me your best guess on the PIPs. Then tell me what’s wrong with our own lasers.”
“I think the Slaasriithi PIPs can engage roughly three times as many targets per minute as ours do, and they are more likely to generate a mission kill when they hit. They could be better than that, but I can’t figure out their targeting specs. They use terms and metrics that have nothing to do with any gunnery software I’ve ever heard of.”
“Are they partially biological systems?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I do know that, in the aggregate, their PIPs do the job of about four of ours. At least.”
“Okay. Now what’s the problem with Puller’s onboard lasers?”
“Well—they’re not Puller’s onboard lasers. Not anymore. They’re Slaasriithi replacements.”
“What? But our lasers weren’t damaged.”
“Right. But, according to the pastorae, when the Slaasriithi were running live trials, they miscalibrated the feed from our new monster of a power plant and fried our own laser’s capacitor. So they had to replace the whole system.”
“You mean, the capacitor?”
“No, I mean the laser itself. All of it. The splitter-blisters weren’t affected, but the main laser is all theirs, from power input all the way to the primary centerline firing housing at the bow. Yiithrii’ah’aash didn’t tell you?”
“No, he didn’t.” But maybe it’s not so odd that he didn’t want to announce it when we were still in human space. The Slaasriithi Great Ring isn’t comfortable giving us access to their technology. On the other hand, a lot of them—Yiithrii’ah’aash in particular—seem glad to find excuses to slip us a few more crumbs whenever possible… “So does this laser substantively change our combat profile?”
“You bet. This isn’t a tactical laser for PDF and small craft engagement, Caine; this is one of their dual purpose lasers. Cannibalized straight from the Shore-of-Stars’s own defense batteries. It puts ten times the energy on target and has five times the effective range of our old laser.”
Riordan managed to suppress a surprised gulp that would have been wholly inconsistent with anything resembling “command image.” “That’s—pretty impressive.”
“There’s more. It’s variable wavelength. UV is the primary setting but it can range most of the way down the spectrum. Loses a lot of hitting power doing so, of course, but it’s an option. Gives you deeper reach into an atmosphere. It may have other uses I can’t even guess at.”
“But how the hell do they even do that?”
“I’m even less of a physicist than you are, Caine. But right now, I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth.”
“Good philosophy. Are our gunnery controls recalibrated for it?”
“The Slaasriithi technical advisors say so. At least, I think that’s what they said. These guys—or gals, or whatever—are relying on their translators. Which don’t seem very reliable.”
“Understood. Prepare to transfer control over the PIPs to Peter. He’ll be handling them along with our scout drones and phased sensor arrays. I want you to stay focused on the ship’s laser, as well as any missiles or offensive drones we have to launch. If they have any bigger systems out here, I don’t want you distracted by swatting down their small stuff.”
“Roger that. Rulaine out.”
Riordan tapped off the mic, turned to Melissa Sleeman. “Anything yet?”
“All quiet out there, sir.”
“That wreckage up ahead, bearing fifty-seven by three-thirty relative: it looks fairly intact.”
“Yes, sir. Fuel tanks and the remains of a ship. Well, half of a ship.”
“Type?”
“Rotational cross section matches it with a Hkh’Rkh modular hull. Designated as type Yankee-Whiskey Three. Can be fitted out as a transport, tanker/tender, or construction auxiliary. Fuel tanks are both Arat Kur and Hkh’Rkh.” She turned. “Milspec all, sir.”
Yes, and lots of it. Too much.
Dora was frowning over her computer panel. “I thought the Hkh’Rkh were only permitted access to the colony world, Turkh’saar, and that the rest of the system belonged to the Arat Kur.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that, but encountering Hkh’Rkh milspec vehicles and tankage out here is strange.” More than strange; it violates their codominium agreement with the Arat Kur. But maybe they mutually set that aside some time before the Slaasriithi showed up and crashed their party. “Dr. Sleeman, what’s the local density of frozen volatile particles?”
“Erm…eight percent above system normal for open space, sir.”
Karam’s voice was low. “If you’re thinking about detecting their point-to-point lascom transmissions by reflected or refracted light, those numbers still won’t cut it.”
“No, but I think we can boost the numbers a bit. Lieutenant Wu, ready our scout drones for active launch. Include micrograin particle dispensers in their modular payload bay. Image makers as well.”
Tsaami turned briefly from the helm to grin back at Riordan. There was nothing disrespectful in the helmsman’s expression, but even so, Caine felt as though he’d been patted on the head. “You wish to add something, Mr. Tsaami?”
“Uh, no…no, sir.”
Riordan nodded, turned back to Peter. “Coordinate with Dr. Sleeman. Look for areas in the wreckage where there are sensor shadows. Plot logical line-of-sight telemetries between those areas. Aim the scout drones to intersect those lines.”
“Sir, that will scatter our scouts across a ninety-five-degree frontal cone. Their sensors will probably be too dispersed to coordinate upon potential targets.”
“That’s fine, Mr. Wu; we only need them to flush out the game. Our second launch tier will be phased sensor arrays, and behind them, our two PIPs.”
“The Slaasriithi models, sir?”
“No; our own. We’re saving the two new ones for terminal defense of our own hull.”
“Do you expect the enemy systems to get that close?”
Riordan gazed calmly at Wu. “I do, Lieutenant. Because I suspect they already are that close. Commence launching our three waves of remote platforms.”
* * *
The scouts had closed half the distance to the midpoint of the wreckage when Melissa Sleeman straightened abruptly. “Pings, sir. The ones the Slaasriithi heard. But…a whole chorus of them. Up ahead; all within five hundred kilometers of the mean center.”
“Well, I’d say they’ve seen us. Signals analysis: are they Arat Kur or Hkh’Rkh, Dr. Sleeman?”
“I can’t tell yet if—no; a mix of both, sir. But mostly Arat Kur.”
Figures. “Watch carefully for small thermal blooms, Dr. Sleeman. They might not be in our line of sight, and will be very faint, barely above background.”
“Low power electronics coming on line as the systems wake up?”
“Exactly. And the Arat Kur systems are too advanced to show up at all. But the entire matrix will start coordinating for an attack as soon as they’ve reconfirmed each others’ locations. Lieutenant Wu, I need you to sprint our scouts forward at max gees to get one hundred kilometers closer to those possible line-of-sight telemetries we plotted earlier.”
“Yes, sir. And once they get there?”
“Discharge the micrograin packets. Send those seeding coordinates to Dr. Sleeman so she can watch for any LOS emissions cutting across the local sleet or the reactive particles we’re adding to it.”
“Boosting scout drones now, sir.”
Riordan turned to Dora. “Ms. Veriden, signal the crew: bogeys detected. Engagement imminent. Stand to all systems.”
For the first time since meeting her, Veriden’s reply was neither gruff, snarky, or sardonic. “Yes, sir.” She might have even sounded anxious.
Riordan considered saying something reassuring—she was used to having her threats up close, personal, and directly susceptible to her lethal skills—but he suspected that would have annoyed her.
Karam Tsaami cleared his throat. “Orders for the helm, sir?”
“Steady as we go, and no additional thrust. I want to remain as dark as we can, for as long as we can.”
“Understood, sir…but thermally, we still stand out like light bulb in a dark room.”
“Which is why I’m going to give them something brighter to look at. Mr. Wu, deploy image makers and engage.”
“Deploying and activating, sir.”
Up ahead, visible to the naked eye, at least a half a dozen bright, blue-white stars ignited, moving very slowly, despite the fact that they were now travelling several hundred kilometers per hour faster than Puller itself.
“Will the enemy systems really get fooled by those?” Dora wondered aloud. She sounded more worried than dismissive.
“Not if there were living, breathing beings in the command-and-control loop,” Caine replied with a shrug. “But automated systems, even the Arat Kur’s, are always weaker when they are on their own. Right now, their drones are calculating the likelihood that those are in fact decoys which we just lit up, supported by image makers. And the Arat Kur systems are almost certainly deciding that our decoys are probably just that: decoys. But only probably. So they won’t ignore them entirely; their programming won’t allow them to. So they’ll dedicate some assets to counteracting the decoys. Probably starting just about—”
“Commodore!” Sleeman’s voice was a mixture of raw excitement and incompletely suppressed fear. “Lascom light refraction coming off the micrograin particles we seeded at suspected telemetry intersection coordinates three and five. One Arat Kur lascom system, one Hkh’Rkh.”
Here they come. “Assess LOS beam directionality; interpolate vector of origin. Relay that to drone control. Mr. Wu, activate passive phased array components of the second wave of sensor drones. Have your scouts send detection and triangulation data back to that array directly; Puller needs to be out of that loop to accelerate the overall threat-reaction time.”
Which turned out to be a prudent decision; enemy contacts popped up so quickly in the holoplot that Sleeman did not have the time to call them all out. “Multiple bogeys all across our front cone—and beyond its edges, sir. Cone of engagement is one hundred ten degrees. Multiple sprint-mines inbound, most targeting our image makers. A few still hanging on our scouts. A half dozen enemy drones as well. Two are deploying a phased array.”
Given the paucity of highly autonomous systems in the Hkh’Rkh inventories, most or all of the drones were certainly Arat Kur in origin. “Mr. Wu, evasive thrust on all decoys and scouts so that their mines have to light up active sensors: it will take them a few more seconds before they sort out their own phased array. Have our PIPS engage any mines that are homing on our scouts.”
“What about covering our decoys, sir?”
“They’ll be done fooling anyone in another twenty seconds. Better they each take another mine out of the game.”
Out in space, several small, bright stars—thermal decoys—flared and winked out. “We are eliminating their mines, sir, and several elements of their phased array. But their drones are now reciprocally targeting ours.”
“PIPs to evasive. Bring our phased array on-line for active targeting. Relay the firing solutions directly to the PIPs. After they’ve neutralized their first target-set, they may light up and use their own arrays.”
“Executing, sir.”
In the holoplot, the number of bogeys was dropping off sharply. Enemy missiles and drones sought where the evading PIPs had been moments before, overshot them, spent what little thrust they had left to come around, activating their own sensors to reacquire the targets. Which gave the PIPs flawless firing solutions; they sent short laser bursts right back up the active sensor pathways. But the Arat Kur drones had been waiting for that, began firing at the newly rediscovered PIPs in a spastic dance of death.
“Good thing we got to look at the Arat Kur playbook when they surrendered,” Dora breathed grimly. “Looks like we’re beating them.”
Riordan hated to ruin her attempt at self-reassurance. “No, we’re just taking their bait.” He almost missed her worried glare as he tapped his mic on. “Major Rulaine, soft deploy the Slaasriithi PIPs. Lieutenant Wu, soft deploy our other phased array sensor drones. Keep them in a local security footprint.”
As Wu complied, Bannor asked, “I presume I’m watching our flanks for the real hammer coming down?”
“Our flanks, maybe even our rear,” Riordan affirmed. “And be ready to shift our laser blisters to PDF mode.”
“You sure you don’t want me to do that now?”
“We still can’t be sure that there aren’t a few threats larger than conventional drones out there, Bannor. So we can’t afford to reduce our beam output by shifting the laser to the splitters. Not yet.”
“Got it. Is Karam ready to tumble Puller?”
Before Caine could reply, Tsaami muttered into his own commlink. “I know the drill, too, genius. And don’t get cocky; remember who held your hand during the gunnery simulator.”
“That’s enough,” Caine ordered. “You two can snarl at each other later. Right now, just stand to your stations. When they spring their trap, we won’t have a lot of time to spring ours.”
As Peter Wu managed the human PIPs that were dueling with the Arat Kur laser drones and slapping down the last of the Hkh’Rkh mines—which were actually swift, short-ranged missiles with large warheads—Dora muttered, “What do you mean, ‘when they spring their trap’? Haven’t they just done that?” She waved a hand at the flashing discharges beyond their bow.
“This is not a knife fight, Ms. Veriden; this is chess. Ploys within ploys. The enemy system is trying to focus our attention ahead, but that’s not where the danger is. They’re like a magician waving a bright wand in one hand: it’s a good bet they’re just trying to distract us, keep us from anticipating just where they’re going to pull the next rabbit out of their hat.”
“Which we’ve probably already passed, on our flanks or behind us.”
“Exactly. But we know that trick. And we have a few of our own.”
“Commodore,” Sleeman shouted, “multiple bogeys registering behind our relative midship plane. Relaying data to Rulaine.”
“Bannor, it’s your show, now. Call the ball.”
Rulaine’s voice was utterly calm. “Peter, light up the second phased array: give me active targeting.” A split-second pause, then: “Good. Engaging—”
In the holoplot, more than a score of bogeys—all identified as having Arat Kur thrust and communication signatures—had illuminated, closing on Puller and the phased array and Slaasriithi PIP drones that were covering her.
“You knew they’d save the Arat Kur drones for their Sunday punch,” Dora murmured, as much to herself as to him, “because the Hkh’Rkh units were just there to make us look in the wrong direction.”
“Yes, but we could still have some unpleasant surprises.” Such as: what if the Arat Kur left behind a drone fighter. That would be big enough to force Puller to keep her laser in its bow-aimed ship-killer mode, rather than the split-beam PDF flyswatter mode. If that happened, and if the Slaasriithi PIPs were not able to take on twenty or so enemy drones in time…well, the outcome would be in doubt. Very much so.
At which point, another dozen Arat Kur drones came swarming out from behind one of the rapidly tumbling fuel tanks.
“Damn,” Bannor breathed over the tactical channel. “Caine, I don’t think the Slaasriithi PIPs can—”
Riordan assessed the number of bogeys, their rate of approach, the rapid coalescence of their active scans upon Puller. “Shift laser to PDF mode. And soft deploy four standard missiles from the rotary launcher.”
“Complying…but why the missiles?”
“In case they pull something even bigger out of their hat. If they do, then the deployed missiles can keep their other platforms busy while you shift our laser back into the role of ship-killer.”
“Works for me,” Bannor mumbled, distracted.
Riordan glanced into the holoplot, studied the forward edge of the battlespace. “Mr. Wu, update.”
“A draw, sir. We shot each other into rubbish. I’ve got nothing to send back to help Major Rulaine.”
“Then soft-deploy a laser drone.”
“Sir, that’s our last one—”
“And hopefully we won’t need it, but if we do, it could buy us the seconds we need to survive. Karam, tumble us; I want our bow laser one hundred and eighty degees about.”
“Thought you’d never ask. Hang on.”
Dora snapped on the open channel, shouted, “Brace for maneuver”—and just barely grabbed her shoulder straps in time to keep from flying free as Puller turned a half-somersault, bringing them face to face with the new wave of attackers.
The Slaasriithi PIPs had made short work of the leading Arat Kur laser drones. That appeared to prompt the enemy’s defense net to reassess the relative danger of the enemy targets. If left unengaged, the Slaasriithi defense drones might erode the remaining Arat Kur attack platforms so rapidly that they would not be able to swarm and overwhelm their adversary. Their automated response: to shift their targeting. One of the blue motes in the holoplot—the relative portside PIP—flashed once, became yellow-lined.
“PIP two is compromised; function unreliable,” Peter reported when Bannor did not do so himself; he was probably preparing to swat down the remaining drones before they got too close.
The deck thrummed lightly. An irregular tattoo of vibrations rose up through their acceleration couches, shimmied their organs slightly.
“What the hell was that?” Veriden asked, wide-eyed.
“That,” answered Caine, “was our new laser getting charged and dissipating heat as it fires. In very rapid sequence.” He pointed into holoplot.
The gradual reduction of the enemy drones suddenly became a wave of annihilation. No longer were they being disabled every few seconds; they were being vaporized in a seamless cascade, the nearest first.
In thirty seconds, the holoplot was clear.
Dora Veriden leaned back in her seat. “Well, that was exciting.”
“Wanna do it again?” Karam asked impishly.
“Go to hell, Tsaami,” she muttered. Although they had become involved in some kind of semi-romantic relationship that no one else could fathom, this time she didn’t add a reassuring smile to the end of her exhortation.
“Unfortunately,” Riordan interjected, “Mr. Tsaami was not kidding. We have two other debris trails to scout and clear.”
Melissa Sleeman, who had more than her share of nerve, grew pale. “Commodore, we don’t have as many assets as we did going in this time. We’ve spent all our image makers, our own PIPs are reduced to rubbish, and one of the Slaasriithi’s is none too well for the wear.”
“Which is why we’re going to bring their PIP on board to see if our exosapient technical experts can effect repairs to it while we move on to the next survey point. And although this was a far more extensive ambush than we anticipated, there’s reason to hope that the other two debris trails will not present us with the same challenges. They do not offer the enemy the same level of concealment or close-range surprise, nor are they traffic hot spots. So they are unlikely to warrant the same level of defense.” He unstrapped, rose from the couch, stretched. “All things being equal, this should prove to be the worst of it.”
“And if it’s not?” Wu asked.
“Then, Lieutenant Wu, we have a harder job ahead of us.” He tapped his mic. “Lieutenant Robin, Chief O’Garran, prepare to go EVA to collect the damaged Slaasriithi PIP. Then everyone takes five to eat a light lunch while Mr. Tsaami brings us around. We shouldn’t go into battle again on empty stomachs.”
* * *
“Well, that wasn’t so bad,” commented Bannor as he drifted back on to the bridge, prepackaged dinner in hand.
“Speak for yourself,” grumbled an ashen-faced Dora, whose lunch of several hours ago had not agreed with her. Or, more accurately, the strain of additional combat had not agreed with her lunch.
Riordan understood Veriden’s reaction. They had all been lulled into the collective hope that the lack of enemy presence at the second debris trail foretold a similar lack of danger in the third and final one. Instead, they were greeted by an all-Arat Kur ambush.
Granted, the ambush had been small by comparison to the first: a dozen platforms, all told. And because the debris was less dense, the range of engagement had been considerably greater and had come from fewer points of the compass. With no large chunks for the drones to hide behind, Puller had more time between detection and combat, which worked very much to the favor of the humans.
However, with fewer remote assets, Puller was also more vulnerable to being swarmed by Arat Kur drones if too many approached her simultaneously. So Riordan had fought them in a sequence of fundamentally separate engagements. He had kept Tsaami moving Puller aggressively about the battlespace, eliminating each group of targets before any others could draw within effective range. But those tactics had necessitated several close calls and dramatic, high-gee maneuvers.
That had taken a heavy toll on Dora Veriden’s nerves. She was a seasoned operative, highly trained, resourceful, tough, and brave beyond belief on occasions. But all her work had been on planet, at close quarters. Her fate had always been firmly in her own capable hands and decided in environments akin to those in which she had grown up. However, in space, automation and unappealable physics held sway, trumping her skills, creativity, and shrewdness. She had made her career, and her life, about maintaining control in all ways, at all times. But in this airless, weightless battlefield, she was no more a master of her fate than anyone else—arguably less, because she had fewer spaceside skills. Having lived the truth of that several dozen times in the course of a few hours had clearly rattled her.
Peter Wu turned around in his couch, food wrappers a neatly crumpled square in his left hand. “I was surprised at the ease with which we defeated the Hkh’Rkh platforms in the first engagement.”
“Coulda told you that would be the case, Pete,” Karam drawled as he punched in the last burns and corrections for their automated return to Shore-of-Stars. “Hkh’Rkh tech is easily fifteen, twenty years behind ours. More, in computers and material science. So when it comes to drones, their robobrains are stupid, their structures are heavier, and their engines have poorer thrust-to-mass ratios. Piss poor, in fact. The Hkh’Rkh may like to build things tough and with lots of redundancy, but they can’t when it comes to spacecraft: to be fast enough, they have to be extremely light. But that means no redundancy and reduced range. That’s why you could knock them out of action with love taps.”
“Thank you for the lecture, Karam,” Wu deadpanned, “and do not call me ‘Pete.’”
Tsaami nodded. “Sure. Forgot you were sensitive about your first name…Pete.”
Wu sighed, toggled his ROV command panel off. “I think today, I will break with habit and have a bulb of coffee, rather than tea.”
“Same here,” Phil Friel chimed in from engineering. “I won’t deny I’m feeling a spot of weariness coming on.”
Melissa Sleeman nodded. “We all will, before long. That Slaasriithi wake-up cocktail is wearing off. And if we don’t sleep when that happens, we’re going to feel awful. And have a longer recovery period.”
“I’ll make a second pot, then,” Tygg called from the galley. His voice was loud enough that he didn’t need to resort to the open channel.
“Sounds like java all around,” O’Garran commented.
“We could pop some stimulants, if we have to,” Tina Melah mumbled as she drifted on to the bridge as well.
Karam shook his head. “No, you don’t want to do that.” Bannor nodded in silent, glum agreement. “If you extend drug-induced wakefulness with more drug-induced wakefulness, you start going down a rabbit hole of decreasing reaction time, misperception, testiness, even downright schizoid behavior if you take it too far.” He patted the helm. “Besides, we don’t have to. Puller’s going to take us home all by herself.”
Tina Melah crossed her arms. “Huh?”
Caine rubbed his eyes. “As soon as we burned down the last Arat Kur drone, we boosted into position for reestablishing line-of-sight contact with Shore-of-Stars. We set rendezvous coordinates and got under way toward her. We tumble at midcourse and counterboost so that we arrive there at relative all-stop. Then they scoop us up and Duncan helps them dump us in our berths, if we’re too exhausted to do it ourselves.”
Melissa Sleeman stifled a yawn. “Did they get any word from your contact on Turkh’saar while we were clearing the approach?”
Riordan shook his head. “No, but there was some more of the strange radio traffic that Downing told us about.”
“More archaic rock music?” Tina asked.
“No. That wouldn’t have been so bad.” He nodded at Dora, who shrugged and tapped her dynamic console. The speakers crackled a bit before a voice emerged from a thin wash of static. It was a Hkh’Rkh, apparently trying to speak English. “Respond. We are here no soldiers. Workers, young, and females. Only. Do not—”
There was a sudden raucous up-dopplering of rotors, more akin to the open type of old-style helicopters rather than the sound made by a vertibird’s ducted fans. Heavy automatic weapons stuttered, came closer. Cries of pain, dismay, anger—not human—rose, then were cut short as a dull crump resounded very close to the pick up. More rotors whup-whup-whupped in the background, punctuated by small arms fire—and then silence.
“What the hell was that?” Tina Melah breathed.
“I don’t know,” Riordan answered, suddenly feeling much more tired than he had five seconds earlier, “but that’s what we’ve got to find out.”