Chapter Twelve
DECEMBER 2123
REFUELING ORBIT AROUND PLANET IV, WOLF 424 A
For the thirty-second time, Riordan started his day at Wolf 424 A by turning on the commplex. Nine hours ago, just before rolling into his bunk, he’d finished his fourth complete read-through of all the available material on the Dornaani, taking notes as he went. Today, he’d start—
The walls emitted the distinctive double yowl of the emergency klaxon: unidentified contact.
Riordan was on his feet, moving toward his rack. “Q-command, hi-gee configuration.” His bunk began converting into an acceleration couch, a pressure-rated cover rotating up into seal-ready position.
Just as he reached it, his intercom chirped through a flurry of tones: message from the bridge.
“Riordan here.”
“Commodore, the captain asks you join her. All possible haste, sir.”
Riordan smiled. “About time the Dornaani got here.”
“No, sir. It’s not the Dornaani. It’s the Arat Kur.”
* * *
Peña was already on the bridge when Riordan arrived, half drifting, half glide-walking into the tiered chamber. Ed reached out an arm to ensure that Caine stopped where he intended.
Riordan waved it off as he got a grip on the intended handhold, smiled crookedly. “Not a total newb.”
Peña shrugged, didn’t say anything. It was unclear if that was simply his natural taciturnity or because he decided not to contradict his superior.
Schoeffel came swim-dancing in from the other side, hooked a finger at Caine. “Come take a look.” She adjusted her drift with a slight deck-kick and bulkhead push; that angled her down toward the sensor station. She jabbed a finger at a cluster of five red motes. “Those bogeys are Arat Kur, or I’m a shave tail.”
Riordan took hold of the back of the sensor officer’s seat, pulled himself closer. “Bring up whatever data you have on their thruster emissions.”
“Mister—eh, Commodore Riordan, like I told the captain, they’re still two light-minutes out. We don’t have enough—”
Schoeffel nodded at the officer. “Do it.” Face suddenly devoid of expression, he complied.
Riordan glanced at the density of the particle trail, the heat of the exhaust, and its approximate shape. Nodding, he checked the acceleration of the oncoming craft. “Definitely not one of ours. Anything we have with that kind of performance leaves a much bigger exhaust smudge and lots more particles.” He looked up at Schoeffel’s face, saw eagerness and concern in equal measures. “How’d you identify them at this range, Captain?”
“Same way you did: saw roach combat drones up close and personal, four years ago.”
Riordan glanced at the navplot near the center of the bridge. “So where the hell did they come from?”
Schoeffel drifted toward the faux 3-D chart table, shrank the scale. Both of Wolf 424’s red dwarfs came into view. The guidon indicating Down-Under’s position was tucked behind what appeared to be a blue marble orbiting the closer star. She pointed to it. “That’s us, snugged in on the dark side of the only gas giant, not quite as big as Neptune.” She pointed to the five red motes. The computer projection traced their known vectors and then extrapolated backward, showed them as emerging from around the far side of Wolf 424 A. “Didn’t see them coming, given the angle.”
“The angle?” asked Ed, who had drifted closer.
Schoeffel pointed impatiently at distant Wolf 424 B, which was mostly eclipsed by the primary star. “The planet and two stars are almost in syzygy. From our position at the gas giant, Wolf 424 B is almost in perfect opposition and only a few degrees off the ecliptic.”
Ed nodded. “So, when they came from the far side of 424 A, probably a week or so ago, they had the other star—424 B—at their back. Sensors couldn’t pick them out.”
Schoeffel nodded. Her expression suggested that Peña had risen slightly in her opinion. “Even if they were under thrust, our sensors would have had to stay fixed on exactly the right spot to have any chance of noticing any spectral wiggle their exhausts would have caused.” She glanced at Riordan. “Sorry, sir. This tub’s arrays are nothing like milspec.”
Caine nodded. “Which they were counting on. Just as they were counting on our main hull—and therefore, the main array—being behind the gas giant, shielding ourselves from flares while we refueled. Textbook. What do you think they are, Captain?”
“Drones. No doubt about it. Ratio of acceleration to approximate mass says those platforms are extremely compact. No room for life support systems.”
Riordan looked at the navplot again. “I agree. Which is why there’s probably another piece on the game board that we haven’t seen yet.”
“Their shift-carrier, sir?” The sensor officer pointed behind Wolf 424 A. “Almost still on the far side, where we can’t see her.”
Riordan shook his head. “I’m thinking there’s something a lot closer to us.”
The captain frowned at the navplot, then raised an eyebrow. “A control craft.”
Riordan nodded. “We are almost two AU from 424 A: sixteen light-minutes, more or less. If these are unpiloted vehicles, then their actions are being controlled in one of three ways. One: from their probable point of origin, which means a thirty-two-minute command cycle. Two: they are in a fully autonomous attack mode. Or, three: there’s a control ship that’s probably within a few light-seconds.”
Schoeffel nodded. “The last option is the only one that makes sense. Those drones will be dead twenty times over if they have to wait half an hour for orders. On the other hand, autonomous controls might fail to engage the priority target.” She looked meaningfully at Riordan. “But if they’ve got a control ship out there, it must be lying doggo.”
Riordan scanned the plot. “Does this gas giant have any satellites?”
“None. And only one other starward planet within an AU.”
“Then it’s probably a very small craft maintaining a position on the opposite side of this gas giant.”
Schoeffel shook her head. “I doubt it. We’ve had automated fuel skimmers making runs around the bright side. Never got a sensor return.”
Riordan raised an eyebrow. “Were the skimmers running autonomously?”
Schoeffel nodded, then grinned ruefully. “Yeah. Rudimentary sensor package slaved to even more rudimentary auton.” She maneuvered closer to him. “That means they could have doggo drones back there with the control ship.”
Riordan nodded. “Expect these bogeys to make a pass at such high relative velocity that you have damn little chance to hit them. The doggo drones could then swing around from the blind side of the gas giant and clean up whatever the first group didn’t get.”
Schoeffel glanced at the plot. “Judging from the bogeys’ rate of approach, they’ll cover those two light-seconds in about ten minutes. At most.”
Riordan nodded. “Right. So how can I—?”
“You can go with Mr. Peña, Commodore,” Schoeffel interrupted. She nodded to Peña, who drifted unusually close to Riordan. “We have a contingency for this, but we don’t have a lot of time.” She nodded aft. “So, smartly now.”
“Captain—” Riordan stopped, momentarily caught between his resolve to survive and save Elena, and his reflex to never leave comrades to fight in his stead.
Apparently sensing that, Schoeffel pushed closer, her breath soured by anxiety. “Commodore, you’ve got to go now.”
“But the mission—”
“You are the mission,” Ed added from behind. It was the first time Caine had heard any emphasis in his otherwise monotone voice. “C’mon, sir. We’ve got to go.”
Riordan felt rage, gratitude, shame, looked to find words, couldn’t, knew every passing second was an unacceptable risk.
He turned and launched himself into a long glide back toward the entry.
* * *
Once they were inside the keel-following shuttle-car, Peña nodded for Caine to strap in. Caine did, just as the car’s sudden acceleration almost threw him out of his seat. They were pulling more than a gee.
Peña smiled slightly. “The Old Lady has overridden the safety parameters. We’ll be there in about ninety seconds.”
“Where?”
“Aft cargo moorings.”
Riordan frowned, then realized. “Not all of those bulk cargo containers are filled with routine stores, are they?”
Peña shook his head, watched the overhead transit monitor plot their progress down the keel.
Riordan tapped his collarcom. “Access command channel. Authorization: Riordan One.” Bridge chatter abruptly emerged from his tiny communicator, as well as one-sided conversations with engineering, flight operations, and gunnery. The latter was a woefully short exchange. As a commercial shift-carrier, Down-Under had no offensive systems, just point-defense fire lasers for splashing inbound warheads.
Peña seemed distracted by the chatter, as if he didn’t want to listen to it but couldn’t keep from doing so. When he saw Caine studying him, he looked away. Quickly.
Suddenly, Caine understood. “You and Schoeffel sure did have me fooled. Are you two still an item, or is that long past?”
Peña sighed. “Past. Had to be. Happened when we were serving.”
“And you were enlisted and she was an officer?”
He shrugged. “You know how it is. Even if people are willing to look the other way, the stable boy still can’t date the princess.”
Riordan nodded. “You two make a pretty good team.”
“We did. I guess we still do.” The car braked hard, pushing them sideways against their straps. “Here we are. Move out. Sir.”
Riordan threw off the restraints, took a long step to the opening door, and stopped in surprise. There, clearly visible beyond a double docking collar, was a short passageway he knew very well: the entry to his old ship, the Puller. But, even as Ed’s hand locked firmly on his bicep and began propelling him forward into the boarding tube, Caine realized that although this was indeed a Wolfe-class corvette, it was not Puller. She had none of the same dings and dents. Or Slaasriithi modifications.
Ed explained. “There are three corvettes inside this cargo container: Mercer, Cradock, and Bridges.” They crossed over the coaming as the tempo of the clipped bridge chatter and preflight checks accelerated. “This corvette, Mercer, has extra fuel: she can sprint a long time.” They headed aft. “The other two Wolfes are carrying double ordnance loads. We run, they fight.”
“Then why are you leading me away from the bridge?”
“Because Mercer has also been retrofitted with an escape system.”
Caine rounded the corner into what would have been, on any other Wolfe-class corvette, the last bunkroom—and saw a nightmare, instead. An escape pod. The kind that not only powered you swiftly away from a stricken ship, but automatically strapped you down and forced you into cryogenic suspension. “This isn’t neces—”
Ed pushed him hard from behind. “I know you hate this, Commodore. If I’d been in an icebox as often as you have, I’d feel the same way.” There was a loud kra-thrunk, a sudden sideways motion, and a shift in balance. “Mercer’s away, sir. You’ve got to get in. Now.”
Riordan nodded, started stripping off his duty suit, hung on to the collarcom.
Schoeffel’s voice was snapping rapid orders. “PDF batteries three and four, keep an eye on planet horizon to aft. Slower drones could come from that direction. Cradock, you have the ball when we go active with the remote arrays. Comms, I need redundant lascom links to all ships and platforms. Yolanda?”
“Flight here. What you need, Skipper?”
“Push those skimmers out further; make them look like patrolling hunter-drones.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll try.”
“You do that. And stay in our shadow as long as you can.”
“No argument there, Down-Under.”
Then a voice that was more surprised than worried, more perplexed than urgent. “Captain, Sensor Ops here.”
“I can see your code, Mister Guzman. What have you got?”
“I’m not sure, Captain. I—”
“Holy shit!” shouted another voice; the tone froze Riordan in place. “What the hell is that?”
“Energy spike. Range seven light-minutes. No! Range one light-min— Wait. This can’t be—”
“It’s the Dornaani!” yelled the XO, Malatesta.
“Or Ktor, or something else,” Schoeffel said in a loud, grim voice. “Settle down. This could be a trick.” The channel changed. Peña’s own collarcom toned. “Eddie: is the package secure?”
“He’s just about to—”
“Eddie, secure the damn package! Now!”
Peña put a hand on his holster. “I don’t want to use the tranq gels, Commodore.”
Riordan nodded, felt Mercer buck and rock: evasive action. He jumped into the cryopod, flopping facedown on the belly couch. Orders and counterorders screamed out of his collarcom. One of the shuttle pilots yelled about a new bogey—then static.
Peña slapped the pod actuator, shouted, “Package secure!”
Restraints went over Caine’s arms, shoulders, waist, legs, and snapped tight. The belly couch slammed forward, locked in place as the cover descended and sealed overhead: an egg bounded within an egg.
The collarcom was still emitting commands and curses and shouts about the Arat Kur and the Dornaani and the new bogeys when Riordan felt the first needle go into his arm: just as brisk, efficient, and icy as the first time, five years ago.
The synthetic morphine rushed into him and then flowed rapidly outward into his extremities, a sensation at once warm and treacherous as he tried to hold on to thoughts that might very well be his last.
Connor’s sun-brightened smile. Elena’s high cheekbones and fine nose. Then Caine was there with her, their eyes and their lips moving closer, closer—but instead of a kiss, their faces flowed together, merged. And became Connor’s.
Just before darkness washed in from everywhere, drowning everything.