Willow shakes her head. “No, nothing.”
“EM spike, orbital structure,” Isaac says.
The top of the orbital structure is a ring with scores of rods stretching upwards like antennae. A bright light flickers chaotically in the ring’s center.
Isaac reads from his console. “Getting EM all along the spotlight now.”
“Some of it’s radio frequency,” Willow says.
Ananke’s hologram fades away from her seat. A moment later, the center console glows with her display. “Analyzing.”
The tower’s apex flickers brilliantly and the spotlight above it transforms into a scintillating lightning bolt rising to space. At first, it looks like the orbital ring blossoms into a star, but when the glare fades, the structure is undamaged. Where there had been empty space in the ring’s center, now a prickly silver sphere rotates slowly.
“Whoa,” Isaac says.
James’s pulse ticks up a few beats. “Magnify.”
The sphere doesn’t look like the Silver Stars they encountered on Janus. Judging by the scale of the structure, the sphere is probably ten meters wide with a geometric faceted structure, like a twenty-sided die, and flattened rods pointing out like porcupine quills.
“Another EM spike,” Isaac says. “This one’s from the orbital ring.”
It’s pure instinct that causes James to slap his hand on the RF engine controls as a dozen points flare electric blue along the ring's interior. The sphere flashes and collapses into a pinpoint. The space a few hundred meters in front of Promise explodes into blinding white, and the sphere emerges from the fireball, spinning wildly and fragmenting gleaming metal javelins. A shrill alert rings from Beckman’s tactical station as James slams the engines to the max. Promise jerks hard down, James’s harness straps cracking against his shoulders like a seatbelt in a car crash as everyone gasps, space spinning counterclockwise on the bridge screen as the whirl of silver metal reaches for Promise like outstretched fingers. A chrome blur shoots across the screen, and something hits the ship so hard that the deceleration lurches James into his harness straps, banging his forearms on the console. Something in his left arm cracks under the impact. Promise’s aft explodes in groaning metal, and James’s ears pop as the wind rustles for a moment on the bridge before a pressure door clanks shut in the aft.
“Hull breach,” Ananke says. “Reactor room. Bulkheads sealed.”
James slaps at the console, searching numbly for the engine controls, and pulls the ship out of the dive. The pressure on his shoulders eases up as the back of Promise sputters and pops. When he turns his head to look at the crew, pain shoots down his neck. Everyone is stunned and in the process of getting reoriented to their consoles.
The flash of a second sphere appears in the orbital ring as another lightning bolt connects from the surface.
“Ananke, jump!” James says quickly.
Ananke’s screen swirls with silver. “That hit damaged the drive. We can’t jump.”
James’s pulse is racing now as tinges of pain report from his neck and arms. “Beckman, kinetics to auto, proximity trigger.” He slides his hands to the engine controls. “Everyone brace for another evasive dive.”
The ring bursts white, and the second sphere jumps a few hundred meters in front of Promise. As it fragments, Promise’s kinetic cannons open fire, lines of pulsing blue streaks firehosing from both sides of the ship, sending a wall of hypersonic projectiles spraying across the incoming fragments. Sparks and flares pepper along the sphere’s javelins as they disintegrate from the projectile hits.
“Evasive!” James says, spinning the ship away from the metal maelstrom. Once again, it feels like his harness is about to snap as the swarm streaks overhead and clatters along the hull. A few of the larger chunks hit harder along the port nacelles, jolting the ship. James throttles the engines back as the volley passes. “Beckman, target the launch point and fire on the next sphere before it jumps.”
“On it,” Beckman says.
Isaac is back at his console. “Another EM spike from the tower.”
A third lightning bolt shoots up from the surface, depositing another silver sphere in the ring’s center.
Beckman mashes his panel. “Firing.”
Four of Promise’s lasers fire from the fore and port sides, invisible in the intervening space but bursting into scintillating green on the upper quadrant of the sphere. Electric green crackles along the impact zone as the lasers cleave through the top half of the sphere. When they reach the center, the sphere explodes into a brilliant gold and emerald starburst. Pieces of the explosion impact the ring, sending thousands of metal fragments skittering. As Promise’s lasers cease-fire, glowing craters pulse in clusters along the ring’s periphery.
“Did we hit the ring?” James says.
“No,” Beckman replies. “That was from their sphere blowing up in their face.”
Isaac reads from his display. “Thermal emissions are decreasing from the tower.”
James is breathing hard. “Keep a lock on the ring and kinetics to auto. Ananke, any luck with the drive?”
“I’m sorry, James,” she says. “It’s moderately damaged. We can’t jump again until the damaged parts are replaced.”
A sinking feeling washes across James’s stomach. “Can it be repaired?”
Ananke’s screen is a mix of red and silver. “I don’t know. Hitoshi and Lin will need to evaluate it. The engine room is in a vacuum.”
“James,” Julian says. “I’d like to unbuckle and treat everyone’s injuries.”
James looks at the screen and then back at the crew. They look a bit banged up, but no one appears seriously injured. “Does anyone need immediate attention?” When the crew shakes their heads, James says. “Stay buckled for now. Let’s make sure the Stars aren’t throwing anything more at us. If I have to do another evasive, it’s not going to be pretty for anyone who isn’t buckled.”
“I understand,” Julian says.
James glances at Hitoshi and Lin, trying to get a read on whether they can fix the drive. They both look terrified. “Okay, let’s pull together a damage assessment. Whatever you can do from your consoles. Hands-on stuff will have to wait.”
Hitoshi glumly says, “Copy.”
James looks over at Ava. She’s wiping some blood from the bottom of her nose. She catches his gaze and glances back sadly. She’s sad for me, he realizes. I almost just got her and everyone else killed, and she’s thinking of how I must feel. He wants to go over there and help her — tend to her bloody nose and reassure her that he’s going to get them out of this, but he can’t right now. Like Julian, he needs to stay in his seat. He gives her his best comforting nod, and she returns it. When he looks back up at the screen, the destroyed sphere has dulled to an ember swarm with matching wounds on the ring. James curls his right hand, slowly raises it and hits his console softly.
20
Sunflower
James sits on the bed in sickbay wearing only his EV suit undergarments, guarding his left arm slightly. It’s been nearly two hours of calm since the attack, and they’ve taken the opportunity to get everyone’s injuries treated before regrouping. When he looks at the bottom of his forearm, it’s swollen and whitish-blue.
Julian swings a hand-held scanner over both sides of James’s arm, then sets it down and taps the medical display panel mounted overhead. An annotated three-dimensional model of the interior of James’s arm rotates on the screen. “Nightstick fracture,” Julian says, pointing to one of the annotations. “Bit of an archaic term, but usually results from defending oneself from an overhead blow. In your case, it was the console edge attacking you from below.”
James smirks. “Yeah, we should add some padding to those.”
Julian motions to James’s right arm, and he holds it up. An angry purple bruise already bisects the underside. Julian scans it. “Soft tissue damage, contusions. No fractures.”
“How’s the rest of the crew?”
Julian
walks around the bed behind James and sets his left hand on James’s shoulder. The scanner whirs from just behind his head. “Mostly bruising. Soft tissue damage from the harness straps, forearm, and wrist impacts on panels, whiplash, cervical myelopathy…” He pauses, and James can tell he’s glancing at the medical display. On the screen, James’s spine is a stack of vertebrae. A few red circles highlight problem areas. “Willow and Isaac have mild sprains. Ava had a slight injury to her nose and lip. I have a few bruises. Beckman was uninjured, but I think he benefited from his combat suit’s padding. I actually think the EV suits helped everyone by providing support and protection.”
“Were the injuries from my evasive acceleration or the impact?”
“A bit of both,” Julian says.
James looks down, his posture sinking.
Julian crosses back in front of him, fetching some supplies. “You know, when I was treating Hitoshi, he told me your maneuver pushed Promise out of the path of the bulk of the projectiles. He said that the first assault would have passed right through the reactor if you hadn’t done that.”
James looks back up at Julian. “I should’ve jumped.”
Julian arches an eyebrow at him. “How long does a Riggs jump take?”
A shrug. “Seven seconds.”
“My friend,” Julian says, wrapping an elastic band around James’s left bicep. “I do not recall having seven seconds.”
“Yeah, maybe not.”
“I suspect your instincts told you that, and that’s why you chose the evasive.” He points to James’s arm. “Hold still for a moment.” Julian touches a button, and James’s arm goes numb. He slides a device along James’s forearm until the panel dings, and then he presses it against the injury. There’s just a bit of pressure. When he removes it, a small red spot is visible, but it does not bleed. “The fracture is small, of the ulnar diaphysis. I’ve injected a nanobot gel directly into the break. It should heal completely within seven days. We’ll gelcast it for forty-eight hours until the bone matrix is assembled.”
James smiles. “I’ll go with the blue one this time. Mix it up a bit.”
Julian selects an aerosol and sprays James’s arm. The translucent liquid rapidly expands into a blue cast. Julian removes the nerve-block armband. “I’ll give you some dermals for the swelling and muscle relaxants for the neck injuries.”
James turns his arm, inspecting the cast. “Thanks. I’ll try to keep anything else from smashing into us.”
“I have no doubts.” A pause. “And James, if I may say so, you have an ability that I envy. Given a split-second to decide something, you can process it without engaging in higher-level thinking. It’s as if I gave you a math problem, and you said the first number that came to mind, and that was the right answer. It probably feels like instinct, but you’re still thinking it through, even if you don’t know that you’re thinking it through.”
James squints curiously. “Are you saying I shouldn’t think so much, doc?”
“Well, no. If you have the luxury of time, think away. But for those quick calls, trust your instincts. I know I do.”
James ponders his comment for a moment and smiles. “You always give good advice, Julian. I think you could double as ship’s counselor.”
“Bedside manner is a skill every physician must perfect.” He turns off the medical scanner and steps back. “But if there’s ever anything you’d like to talk about, I am here for you, my friend.”
The bridge screen has a schematic of Promise dotted with blinking red splotches. An inset window live-streams a feed from one of Beckman’s drones. In it, the arc of Promise’s port hull glides by. As the drone flies higher, port nacelle number two comes into view, chunks of its armor nibbled off like crumbling concrete.
“Anything get through?” James asks.
Beckman shakes his head. “No. Armor damage only. Looks sprayable. Should be able to patch it.”
“Everything checks out inside nacelle two,” Hitoshi says. “Glad these guys don’t seem to have energy weapons.”
The camera swings along the interior of nacelle two, showing sideswiped gouges. Unlike the nacelle’s exterior, the interior is coated in the lighter, iridescent gunmetal armor. A sap-like blue liquid fills some of the gouges. Beckman nods. “MESH armor is sealing. Looks like moderate damage. Lucky it wasn’t a direct hit.”
Micro-encapsulated self-healing armor, James thinks. No need to spray it. It’ll bleed a little, scab, and solidify. Glad Beckman talked him into that upgrade.
The drone turns and sweeps its cameras onto the primary hull. “Coming around to the reactor area,” Beckman says.
The damage here is more extensive, with heavy cratering across the hull. The MESH armor is bleeding its blue sealant, filling the gashes like rivers. The entire port aft quadrant of the ship’s dorsal hull is injured. The drone descends, gliding towards the massive strut that connects the ship’s hull with nacelle two. A black hole of caved-in metal is right at the connection. The drone approaches it, flicking on its floodlights, and peers inside. Structural beams and jumbles of severed fiber optics catch the drone’s light, metal surfaces gleaming along the circular tunnel carved into the ship. A hint of an interior room’s illuminated floor is visible at the end of the tunnel.
Hitoshi groans. “Well, that sucks. Looks like it went right through the strut cavity, down through the reactor room, and into the drive deck. It missed just about anything that had armor on it and slipped through the cracks. From that angle, it probably took out half a dozen g-wave emitters. One-in-a-million shot.”
“That’s about par for us,” Beckman says.
“Think you can still access the drive deck from the reactor room?” James says.
“Depends if it wrecked the access hatches,” Hitoshi says. “We’ll have to suit up and go inside the reactor room to see.”
“The big question is whether we stay here or move before doing that.”
“We could return to our spot behind Sao,” Isaac says. “A few hours of slowtime to get there.”
“I don’t think we should stress the ship with any gees until we see the drive damage,” Lin says.
James glances at Beckman.
Beckman says, “Tough call. We go back to Sao, and we put a planet between them and us. We stay here, and we keep them in our weapon’s range. I think we should stay. I’d rather have them in our gunsights than put us in a spot where they can jump to us, and we can’t shoot back until they’re in our face.”
“Do we want to continue to try and contact them?” Willow says.
James shakes his head. “Let’s listen for a while. We’re not sure if our attempt is what provoked them.”
“So far,” Beckman says. “They’ve been hostile at every encounter. They tried to kill a bunch of us back at Janus. They abducted Ananke and destroyed Goose. Now they fired on us and only stopped when we made them stop. When you extend your hand, and the other guy punches you in the face, that’s on him. After that, though, you’ve got to realize handshakes aren’t the way to go.”
“Maybe they see it the same way,” Ava says, her speech a little muffled from a swollen lip. “They might have been defending the crystal life that we poked on Janus, and now they are defending against the same alien invaders who have come for their outpost.”
Beckman considers her statement for a moment. “Fair enough, but since we don’t know what the hell they’re doing, we shouldn’t assume it’s all going to end in hugs and high fives.”
Hitoshi smiles. “More like high twelves for them.” When James looks at him, he adds, “Fingers, tentacles, pseudopods…whatever they have. I don’t know. I’ll stop talking now.”
“Julian,” James says, “what do you think?”
Julian looks up. The mission has been so focused on the science of planets and astrobiology that no one’s needed him to weigh in, and James feels like that’s a miss. Julian says, “I think there is danger regardless of where we move the ship, so we should choose based on where
there is the most to gain. There still is a chance for dialogue. We should stay while we repair the drive. It seems, at least now, that we have the superior weaponry if we should need to defend ourselves.”
James nods and glances at Ananke’s screen. Her display shifts in blue and purple waves. “Ananke?”
“I agree, James,” Ananke says. “We should still try.”
James looks across the crew. “Okay, we’ll stay. Ananke, you’re with me. Hitoshi, Lin, let’s get what you need to go below deck and check out the drive. We’ll meet up in Environmentals and decompress the room for reactor entry. Beckman, we’ll need the repair drone out and about if we have to get externals on anything.”
“Roger that,” Beckman says.
“Julian, you have the most experience from your Hermes days. You have the bridge.”
Julian gives James a slightly surprised nod.
“Okay,” James says, “let’s get to it.”
Promise’s Environmentals room is a cramped octagonal antechamber with every surface filled with equipment and screens. James, Hitoshi, and Lin float side-by-side in its center, wearing EV suits with pulse pistols on their hips. Each person carries a silver case. Ananke’s slate is mounted to James’s upper left chest plate.
Hitoshi reaches towards the Atmospherics screen and keys a few commands. “Here goes. Decompressing now.”
An alarm dings as the lights in the room cycle red. The air hisses outside of James’s helmet like a deflating tire, the sound of the alarm growing fainter and fainter until it is silent. The overhead lights flick to orange, and Hitoshi gives a thumbs up. James snags one of the ceiling rungs, pulling himself forward, and drifts into the reactor room door. Promise’s reactor is an imposing metal hourglass surrounded by a ring of screens. Workstations line the walls, and sliding access panels are stamped on the floor and roof. The overhead lighting is colored orange, indicating a vacuum. When James leans into the room, he spots the breach on the outer wall. Metal is splayed around a two-meter opening as if a cannonball had blasted through the wall. A caved-in portion of the floor matches the entry wound. James pulls against the doorframe and glides over to the wall breach. When he leans down and peers up into it, it’s a roughly cylindrical tunnel cutting through five meters of Promise’s body. A bit of Luhman’s red sunlight spills in from the entry point, the pinpoints of stars visible.
Bernard's Dream: A Hayden's World Novel (Hayden's World Origins Book 8) Page 18
