Imprint of Blood

by Phil Huddleston

  “Hmm…,” said Teresa. They were already in stealth mode, running as cold and quiet as possible. “How close will we pass on this vector?”

  “We’ll go right by her,” said the Tac Officer. “Less than 30,000 klicks.”

  “OK, Helm,” said Teresa, “turn us to a vector that’ll get us behind that other big rock there behind her, that one…” she designated a point in the holotank – “and do it as quietly and slowly as possible. I don’t care if it takes us a week to get there, I do not want these girls snapping to us.”

  “Aye, Skipper,” said the grizzled old yeoman at Helm, a former U.S. Navy veteran who retired early to join the RDF. Ever so slowly the Sirius drifted off to the designated point, her asteroid camouflage giving her the appearance of just another piece of rock in the Kuiper belt. The yeoman even had them slowly tumbling to make it look more natural. It took them nearly forty-eight hours to get there, but they did it without attracting the attention of the lurking Aeolian destroyer.

  Once comfortably resting behind the rock Teresa had picked out, they had a barely visible line of sight to the last known position of the Acrux - and the Aeolian destroyer.

  Teresa, coming out of her day cabin at 0600, returned to her command chair and addressed the XO.

  “Any sign of debris?”

  “I’m sorry to say, plenty of it, Skipper,” said the XO. “Enough to account for the Acrux. I’m afraid she’s gone.”

  Teresa cursed, something she knew Jake would not approve of – but Jake was not here looking at a destroyed RDF starship.

  “Any sign of the dead man’s buoy?” asked Teresa.

  “We’re looking, Skipper,” said the XO. “So far, nothing.”

  Teresa sat silently as her team searched for the device called a dead man’s buoy. This was essentially the flight data recorder of the Acrux. In the event a scoutship was destroyed, the buoy – barely 10 cm in length, disguised as just another piece of debris - would float free of the wreck and with extremely weak pulses of a tiny magnetic drive, start drifting away from the wreck. When it was 10,000 km from the original location, it would enter reporting mode.

  This meant that once a day, at some random time, it would briefly send a tiny burst of noise, designed to mimic the background noise of the universe. The receivers on board the Sirius could detect that pseudo-random noise, pinpoint the location of the buoy, and send it a tight laser blip ordering it to activate and dump its status back to the Sirius.

  Finally, after six hours of tedious waiting, the Comm officer jumped. “Got a signal, Skipper. 12,000 klicks thataway.” He pointed to a blinking red dot in the holotank. “Sent the activation pulse, waiting…”

  With a grim smile, he looked over at Teresa. “Got the dump. Sending it to your tablet.”

  Teresa acknowledged with a nod, looked at her tablet. The dump was not long; there were just a few dozen entries in the log. She looked at the last few…

  -21340321.2244:42: Target DD1 designated, Aeolian destroyer, vector 010.344

  -21340321.2254:16: DD1 vector change, direct intercept vector. Condition Red

  -21340321.2254:36: Engines max emergency, accel 208g external, 8g internal, vector 182.124

  -21340321.2256:14: DD1 increases accel to 210g external, overtaking, increased accel to 220g emergency, WepsAI in control

  -21340321.2256:18: DD1 fires 4 missiles, overtaking, estimated 4,000 g accel. Evasive action

  -21340321.2256:30: 3 missiles impact, damage heavy, engine out

  -21340321.2257:50: DD1 vectors for boarding

  -21340321.2258:44: self-destruct activated

  Teresa bowed her head and rubbed her eyes, then flipped the log to all her officers. Around the bridge, there were more than a few bowed heads and prayers. After a long silence, Teresa stood from her command chair.

  “XO, please take a note for the ship’s log and for the mission report upon our return. Quote, we need a better way to get status of what happens after a self-destruct, suggest some secondary drones that fire off and watch things, then QE squirt back to HQ etc. etc.”

  “Noted for the log and for the mission report, Skipper,” said the XO.

  Teresa mused for a moment. “Also, XO, for the mission report – designate this location as a military grave, marked as such on all charts.”

  The XO blinked, and then nodded. “Aye, Skipper, so noted.”

  Teresa turned to the bridge crew. “Does anyone see anything else that we can do here?” she asked.

  Everyone shook their heads.

  “Then Tac, set the dead man’s buoy to self-destruct in five days. Comm, send a QE squirt to HQ with our short log. Send another one to the Aeolis and Barcam teams, let them know the Acrux is gone, we’ll have another scoutship on station in about six weeks, location TBD.

  “Helm, back us out of here very, very slowly and carefully, slower than we came in. I’m still in shock at the accel on those Aeolian missiles. Let’s take about three days to drift out of here, if you don’t mind. Once we get out of their plausible detection range, take us home.”

  “Aye, aye, Mum,” said the Helm. Ever so slowly, the Sirius drifted away from the asteroid, keeping it between themselves and the distant Aeolian destroyer watching the debris field.

  Sol System - MarsBase

  A few days after Teresa’s return from Aeolis, she and Jake were talking. There wasn’t much they could do about the Acrux. Nobody could find any reason why the Aeolians had noticed the scoutship hiding in their Kuiper belt. Nothing unusual had been reported by the Acrux before its discovery. No ELINT had been picked up in the Aeolian Empire regarding the detection; evidently the Aeolian Navy had put a tight lid on it. The best they could hope for was that the Aeolians would eventually forget about it and move on to other things.

  Teresa and Atsuko had conducted a joint operations briefing with their combined staff officers and impressed upon them, once again, the need for stealth and discretion in their scoutship operations. Beyond that, there was little they could do. They conducted a memorial service for the crew and added their names to the growing list on the black marble wall in the lobby of the Headquarters Building at MarsBase. A list that contained hundreds of names now and had overflowed into three separate marble facades.

  Teresa told Jake about the incredible acceleration of the Aeolian missiles – 4000g – a figure that the RDF could not match. They were getting a maximum of 3000g out of their latest generation of missiles. Jake shook his head. He made notes, then sent a short message to the R&D team with the information, and a comment: “if the Aeolians can do it, then we can do it; make it happen”.

  Then Jake told Teresa about a new issue. Atsuko’s team reported that a Bat corvette had been spotted near Phi Sagittarii, only 239 light years from Earth, nosing around the system. Luckily, it had reversed course and headed back toward the Pipe Nebula.

  But the spreading electromagnetic fields – the EMF – of Earth’s radio and television signals had been moving out from Earth since roughly 1910. They now formed a sphere 224 light years in radius from Earth. The Bat corvette had been within 15 light years of discovering them. In terms of travel time, only 1 day away from detecting those early emissions.

  A shiver ran down Teresa’s back. They were not at all ready to fight the Bats. They were still outnumbered at least 20 to 1 in terms of firepower. If that Bat captain had decided to travel just one more day in this direction…

  “I had a sleepless night last night,” Jake said, “just thinking about this. I kept running scenarios through my mind. How can we accelerate our readiness? What can we do for contingency plans? But I came up with nothing new. We’re doing everything we can. We’re building warships like crazy, both on Earth and now in the colonies. Mitsukeli just started construction on our first battleship, the Arizona…”

  Teresa stopped him. “The Arizona? Why did you pick that name? Wasn’t she sunk at Pearl Harbor?”

  Jake smiled. “Yes; she never got to fight. But I think she had a right to, so
I’m giving her a second chance.”

  Teresa shrugged. “If you say so…”

  Jake continued. “But this business with the Bat scout corvette, and the Acrux, gives me the willies. We’re riding on a razor’s edge here every single day. One wrong move – one renegade ship captain, one crazed terrorist with access to a starship – one Aeolian captain getting a hunch, one Bat scout corvette deciding to take a long ride into the black – and we’re done.”

  Teresa nodded. “So what more can we do?”

  Jake looked at her. “I want to send a colony ship out on a one-way. To a blind location, at least 2,000 lights away. A fail-safe, so to speak. If something happens to Earth and the rest of the colonies, one chance for humanity to live on.”

  Teresa nodded in understanding, thinking it through.

  “That’s not going to be very much fun for the crew,” she said. “I take it there’s no coming back.”

  “Right,” said Jake. “I don’t want to know where they are, I don’t want them to ever come back into this area of space until the Bat threat has resolved.”

  Teresa nodded. “And I bet you want Gunner and I to come up with the ship and the crew.”

  Jake grinned. “You are such a good mind-reader.”

  ***

  Two weeks later, Kirsten caught Jake in his office.

  “Well, it happened,” she said.

  Jake looked at her, puzzled. “What?”

  “Sierra Nevada. The ultra-right thugs tried to take over, they’ve captured the communications complex, power plant and the water plant. They’ve cut off all power and water. They’re holding the colony hostage until they agree to drop the separation of church and state clause from the constitution and let them create a theocracy. I knew it would come to this sooner or later. I’m going out there.”

  Jake objected. “No, Kirs, let them handle it on their own. They’ll sort it.”

  Kirsten sat down in the chair in front of Jake’s desk. “Jake, if we don’t intervene, there may be a lot of bloodshed. Let me go and see if I can get them talking again.”

  “No, Kirs. Really. Let them handle their own affairs. Besides, we have our holiday coming on with the kids. Remember? All of us going to Earth for the July 4th fireworks, staying at the cabin?”

  “Jake,” Kirsten badgered him. “The Colonial Office is my job. It’s my responsibility. Let me do my job.”

  Jake shook his head. “You have staff. You have Sara and Pete. Let them take care of it.”

  “Jake,” Kirsten said softly. “I don’t tell you how to do your job. Let me do mine. I’ll take Pete with me. I’ll be back in time for the 4th. I’ll meet you guys at the cabin.”

  Jake waved his hands in defeat. “Be sure you do. It’s just not the same without all of us together for the holiday. And take a full Seal team with you.”

  Kirsten came around the desk and kissed him on the forehead. “See you in ten days,” she said.

  Sol System - Earth

  “Daddy, what did you do in the war?” asked Granada. Jake, Teresa and the children were at the cabin in Texas, having a bonfire, roasting marshmallows. Granada, the oldest, was seven that year. Chloe was five, Skip was four and Stephen was two. They had started their short vacation, waiting for Kirsten to arrive.

  Jake grinned. “Not much. I flew off a carrier, went up in the sky, shot at other planes and they shot at me.”

  Teresa laughed. “Don’t think I’ve ever heard it put quite so clearly.”

  “The kids at school said you got shot down,” said Granada.

  “I did,” said Jake. “On my 28th mission. May 12, 2115. That was quite a day.”

  Teresa touched Jake on the arm. “You’ve never told them about it. You should tell them.”

  Jake looked back at her. “As should you, Terese.”

  “What?” exclaimed Granada. “Mom was shot down too?”

  “Yes, she was,” said Jake. “May 27, 2115. Right smack over the Yalu River. She came down in the middle of the river and the Chinese and North Koreans had a big argument over who got to take her prisoner. The Chinese won.”

  “Mom!” yelled Granada. “You never told us!”

  Teresa looked at the fire, stirring it up with a long stick. Sparks flew up into the air, making a river of light and dark, flowing up into the stars pricking the sky.

  “I don’t talk about it much, G,” she said.

  Jake intervened. “Your mom was taken prisoner by the Chinese, and tortured for a while, G. So it hurts her to talk about it.”

  “Oh,” said Granada. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  “It’s OK, honey,” Teresa leaned over and kissed her. “Don’t you worry about it.”

  Chloe jumped in. “What’s torture?”

  Teresa ruffled Chloe’s hair. “It’s when bad people do things to hurt you, Chlo.”

  “Oh,” said Skip. “Like when Chlo pulls my hair.”

  “Well, a little bit worse than that, dear,” said Teresa.

  “Did Other Mommy fight in the war, too?” asked Granada.

  “No, Other Mommy was working in science, making things to help the navy. In Austin, not too far from here.” said Teresa.

  Skip jumped in. “So what happened to you when you got shot down, Daddy?”

  “Not much,” said Jake. “I hit my head on the side of the airplane when I ejected, so I was unconscious for a while. I woke up lying in a field in Mongolia. I was too dizzy to get up, so I just laid there. A bunch of farmers ran up with pitchforks and made me stay there until the Mongolian army arrived. The army guys took me to a place where they kept me for the rest of the war, because they were neutral and didn’t want to get into the fight.”

  “What was the fight about, Daddy?”

  Jake shook his head. “The same thing most fights are about, Chlo. Somebody wants something, and another somebody doesn’t want them to have it. All the gorillas start pounding their chests and hooting at each other, and the next thing you know there’s a fight. Humans haven’t made too much progress since we came out of the jungle, I guess.”

  “Mom, did you get hurt when you ejected out of the plane?”

  “No,” said Teresa. “It hurt my back a lot, but I got over that pretty quick.”

  “Oh,” said Stephen. “Did you break the plane?”

  “I did,” grinned Teresa. “I broke the plane really, really bad!”

  “And so did Daddy!” said Chloe.

  Jake agreed. “I certainly broke mine. I saw the crater it made.”

  Skip starting chanting. “Mommy broke a plane. Daddy broke a plane. Mommy broke a plane. Daddy broke a plane…”

  Jake reached over and took Teresa’s hand and squeezed it. Teresa leaned back onto Jake, settling into the space between his raised knees, her back resting against him, looking at the children poking at the fire with their sticks, throwing sparks into the heavens.

  ***

  It was late morning, next day, when Lois and Atsuko came, unannounced. Jake, Teresa and the children were returning from a walk down by the river, the children clutching handfuls of bedraggled flowers and chattering like magpies. Stephen had a frog in his pocket, though neither Jake nor Teresa knew it. They would find it later that night.

  Jake heard the flitter coming, and turned to stare into the bright summer sky, stopping his walk momentarily. Then he turned to Teresa, a worried look in his eyes.

  “This can’t be good,” he said softly. Teresa nodded. They had left strict orders not to be disturbed unless it was a dire emergency. And it wouldn’t be Kirsten, because she would comm them first to say hi to the children. They continued toward the cabin, while the flitter landed in front and powered down, whining softly. The hatch popped open and Atsuko climbed out, followed by Lois Vetton. As they got closer, Jake could see that Lois had been crying. Her eyes were red. That’s when he knew. Teresa gasped, and stopped dead in her tracks. She shook her head.

  “No, no, no,” she cried.

  Atsuko came up to them and stopped in front of
them. She had determined not to cry, but now faced with Jake and Teresa, she couldn’t help it. Tears coursed down her cheeks.

  Jake turned to Granada. “G, please take the kids into the cabin for us, would you?”

  Granada nodded, but questioned: “Why? What’s going on?”

  Jake squatted down and put his hands on her shoulders. “Please, Granada, just take them inside. We’ll be there in a minute.”

  Granada nodded again, then shooed the other three into the cabin. Chloe, getting some glimpse of the bad news that was coming, resisted, but Granada had a way with them, and managed to get all of them inside. Jake turned back to Atsuko and Lois, who were just standing there, devastated and forlorn.

  “Kirsten?” he asked.

  Atsuko nodded. Lois started crying again. Jake, in his grief, just reacted on automatic pilot. He walked over to Lois and put his arms around her, holding her.

  “She was hit by a stray bullet on Sierra Nevada,” said Atsuko with some difficulty. “It was painless. She never knew what hit her.”

  Teresa wailed, and stumbled into Atsuko’s arms. They held each other, sobbing, as Jake held Lois. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of the children, standing inside at the window, watching them in confusion.

  “The children,” he said softly to the others. “The children are watching. We have to get it together.”

  Teresa pulled back from Atsuko, sniffling, nodding, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. Lois turned away from Jake, trying to pull herself together. Atsuko also turned away, wiping her eyes with her hands. Together they stood for several minutes, trying to compose themselves.

  Finally, they were able to turn and enter the cabin to tell the children.

  ***

  A week later, at the funeral, Teresa and Lois stood directly behind Chloe and Stephen - Kirsten’s children – their hands resting on their little shoulders, making it clear to everyone that these children still had mothers. Jake stood next to Lois, behind Granada and Skip - Teresa’s children - in a wall of solidarity, his hands on their shoulders as well.

  Chloe was old enough to understand; she would never see her mother again. She stood straight, brave, trying to honor her mother’s own courage. Stephen did not fully comprehend what was happening but tugged at his sister’s coat from time to time. Chloe placed her arm around his shoulders, comforting him.