by M. D. Cooper
Under Logan’s control, all of the carefully disguised armament that was the Q-ship Avon Vale could be unleashed against Barat—and demonstrate to all that this old girl had teeth. He almost hoped it would be.
It’ll certainly come as a surprise to our Godel guest. He smiled to himself as he glanced over at Simone. We’ll assure her our shields are military-grade as well…as is our crew.
He’d just reached for the webbing to clip himself into his cradle when he heard an audible gasp escape Jonesy’s lips from where he sat at Comm. Terrance looked over and caught the stunned look on the man’s face, an expression seized by shock and horror.
The sudden, keening wail echoed sharply through the bridge, and it was as if an electric current had discharged, freezing everyone in place for a brief moment in time.
Terrance leapt to his feet, releasing his restraints with a snap. He stepped toward the main holo, then stopped as the sound was repeated.
Shannon’s voice moaned again, and Terrance turned in a circle, glancing from pick-up to pick-up, his body whipcord taut, his stare fierce in its intensity.
“Shannon,” his voice rang out, “talk to me!”
Pivoting to face Jonesy, his eyes bored into those of the engineer, demanding an answer.
“It’s the cap—” Jonesy started, and then broke off. He swallowed, his voice breaking, “—the captain, sir. She’s….” His eyes closed in pain, and Terrance abruptly recalled the many years the former ESF ensign had served with Calista.
Jonesy’s next words came out in a barely audible whisper. “She’s…dead.”
* * * * *
An expanse snapped into place. Charley anchored it; Kodi, Logan and Landon populated it, bringing Terrance, Jonesy and Khela along.
They were back on El Dorado, in the anechoic chamber that Shannon had once called home. The place where she had first met Calista, on the day Terrance had introduced her to the company as Enfield Aerospace’s new Chief Pilot.
In the center of the ersatz chamber sat Shannon, surrounded by wave-canceling surfaces, a replica of the Elastene-clad fighter hovering before her.
The AI’s silver hair fell around her shoulders, strands that would ordinarily dance with a shimmering life laying dull and flat. Her head hung low, her clothing ripped and torn. Shannon hugged her arms tightly about herself as if she could not get warm. As he watched, her body shook, wracked with sobs. A soft threnody filled the expanse as she rocked herself slowly back and forth.
Jonesy approached her first. Tears tracking silently down his dusky cheeks, the engineer folded his legs beneath him and sat, his shoulder touching hers. After a moment, the man reached back and placed a hand between her bowed shoulders, moving it in gentle circles.
Khela’s voice sounded inside Terrance’s head.
Terrance knew his wife was thinking of her own loss of her dearest friend, Hana, the AI with whom she’d been paired for many years. He glanced over from Shannon to meet Khela’s dark eyes.
After exchanging a long look with him, she stepped up to the AI’s other side and sank down next to her, gripping Shannon’s hand tightly in both of her own.
No words were offered, just shared sorrow.
“Is that…really Shannon?” Terrance whispered in a low voice, turning his gaze from the pain-wracked frame of the Vale’s AI to Charley’s fathomless, sea green eyes. “Is she truly expressing grief as a human would?”
The Tau Ceti AI shook his head, and a connection sprang up between the observers standing on the chamber’s edge.
The AI smiled, and there was a sadness to it that touched something deep inside Terrance.
Terrance shook his head as he absorbed what Charley had just told him. He knew he was holding his own sorrow at bay, held hostage to the imminent danger the Vale faced. Looking at the three before them, he hated like hell to yank them from their grief and demand that they return to their stations.
A shaft of anger shot through him as he realized that Barat’s greed was robbing them all of the opportunity to mourn, and he cursed the timing that brought the news at such a critical juncture.
He began to step toward them, but Kodi reached out a hand and stopped him.
Terrance shot him a hard look.
Terrance saw the profiler’s gaze land on his twin, and he realized suddenly that the AI would understand all too well the loss Shannon was experiencing.
He shook his head. In some ways, this reality they’ve created here seems as fragile and delicate as an eggshell, he thought as he looked around in amazement one last time. But it’s one hell of an eggshell. If I know Charley, he has these three wrapped in titanium, and warded against the tempest raging outside.
“Okay, then,” he spoke aloud. “You’ve convinced me.”
Landon sent a flash of derision.
* * * * *
Landon turned the Avon Vale as it closed within fifty thousand kilometers of the Baratian cruiser. He angled the vessel so its engines were not exposed to the enemy, while still allowing him to apply heavy thrust to match velocity.
The vector had him easing ever closer to the enemy ship, but he didn’t mind. It also sent a clear message: You will have to go through us to get to your objective.
In case the Baratians weren’t too bright, Landon was preparing to hail the enemy ship, when a call came in from them.
He accepted the communication and activated full video, letting the enemy see what they were up against.
“Civilian craft approaching Verdant Mining, you are entering an area of—” The Barat officer broke off with a scowl as she realized what she was addressing.
Her tone changed, and she stated flatly, “Get out of our way, or suffer the consequences.”
Landon sent the woman a surprised look. “This area is considered inter-system space. It’s free to anyone who wants to transit. Why should I get out of your way? Perhaps you should move instead.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “We’ve been watching you. Your ship just left Ver
dant, probably to sow more unrest. We, however, are on a humanitarian mission,” she snarled. “Something your kind wouldn’t understand. Now make a hole, or we’ll make you into one.” She bared her teeth, as if the thought of firing upon the Vale held great appeal.
Woman, you have no idea how appealing that thought is to me, as well. Just give me an excuse. Please….
Landon’s expression didn’t change, although he didn’t attempt to censor the flare of fury he sent to his brother and the other members of the team.
“If by ‘sow unrest’, you mean render aid, you’d be correct,” he countered, his mild tone revealing none of the rage churning inside him. “In fact, we just ferried a large number of emergency personnel to repair the platform, and Marines to stabilize the situation.”
The woman’s nostrils flared at his words, and she turned her head to one side. Audio cut out, and Landon was certain she was confirming this with her own communications team. When she returned, her eyes were cold and hard.
“You were warned,” was all she said before the feed cut out.
Landon turned to Charley, his expression anticipatory.
“Ready?” he asked, and the Tau Ceti AI nodded, hunger burning in his eyes.
With a satisfied smile, Landon sat back in his seat.
“Release the drones.”
* * * * *
The ES fields snapped off, and three hundred and fifty military drones drifted from either side of the Avon Vale. They emitted no EM, only being propelled outward by the expulsion of air from the bays.
Charley suspected that if the Baratian cruiser—a stubby, utilitarian thing named the Coldfire—saw the drones, it would think them nothing more than chaff.
Beams lanced out from the Coldfire, striking the Avon Vale fore and aft, those shots being partially deflected by actual chaff and the Elastene plating on the ship.
Several other shots lanced through the cloud of drones, but Charley was weaving them in an erratic pattern, so none of the beams struck.
He assumed that the humans aboard the enemy ship were attempting to assess whether the drones were powered by sentient beings or if it was artifice, a ploy to deter the cruiser from achieving its goal.
Landon held his course, not even rolling the ship when the enemy attacked, baiting the Coldfire’s odious captain into thinking that the Vale was all bluster and no substance.
In response, Landon fired the starboard maneuvering thrusters, bringing the Vale onto a vector that would see them pass within a dozen kilometers of the Baratian ship.
The Coldfire’s skipper didn’t disappoint. Two dozen missiles belched from its nose, streaking toward the Vale on erratic courses as the ship’s civilian-grade point defense beams came to life.
With only thirty seconds to spare, a ripple passed along the length of the Avon Vale as hull plating slid aside. Twenty-five-centimeter lenses were exposed to the deep black as Charley triggered the port beams and sent collated streams of photons slashing through vacuum to vaporize the missiles.
The somnolent ship was finally revealed for what it truly was: a tiger in disguise.
Ten of the incoming missiles were destroyed in the first few seconds, and another five spun off course moments later. Charley tracked the remaining nine, bringing a group of drones in close to fire on the missiles. The Vale’s shorter range ten-centimeter beams came online, adding to the invisible barrage whittling away at the Coldfire’s attack.
When the last missile was destroyed a kilometer off the Vale’s bow, Landon growled into Charley’s mind.
Charley had been with Phantom Blade long enough to get to know Calista. He respected her. More, he truly liked her. He thought of Jason and Tobias, and what they were going through on Barat, and something deep inside him burned, raw and ugly.
With grim determination, Charley brought the full squadron of drones to life as he sent them charging across the void. At the same time, beams from the Vale raked over the Coldfire, burning away the Baratian ship’s defenses.
The enemy ship deployed its own chaff and a meager number of drones, but Charley swatted them out of the black like so many flies.
His drones were the tiger’s claws, long and sharp. They dove in close, their maneuvers unmatchable by any human-controlled tracking system.
You trust your NSAI too little, Charley thought as he watched the Coldfire respond too late to one attack after another.
Though the enemy cruiser fired another two hundred missiles in a desperate bid to stay alive, none made it even halfway to the Avon Vale. In response, it adjusted course, moving from a vector-matching approach with the Verdant platform to a collision course.
Charley brought fifty of his drones in to fire on the Coldfire’s port engine, shredding the cowling bell and breaching the plasma chamber.
The enemy ship shuddered, its hull appearing to ripple from stern to bow as the engine blew, the force of the explosion sending the craft veering off course. Then the starboard engine died, and the vessel went dark, a drifting hulk headed nowhere in the endless darkness.
Charley didn’t respond for a minute, calculating the risk that the enemy ship posed. He fired a few more shots, disabling its remaining maneuvering thrusters, before recalling the remaining hundred drones.
“Good,” the Enfield scion said aloud. “Now let’s get to Barat, we have a pickup to make.”
STAR LIGHT, STAR BRIGHT
STELLAR DATE: 03.17.3272 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: State House, New Kells
REGION: Godel, Little River
The night sky above New Kells was crisp, the air cold. Godel’s single moon, Escher, hung low in the sky. As Jason watched, the silvery orb of the moon’s own satellite, Bach, was swallowed by the larger disc, as the smaller moon-moon’s orbit obscured it from view.
The gravel crunched under his booted feet as he turned away, wandering aimlessly through the gardens of State House. He came across the occasional agent from Edouard’s presidential detail making their rounds, but each one had merely nodded and then veered away, understanding his need for solitude.
The previous few days had passed in a dull haze. He recalled numbly the events the night the stasis pod blew, his mind ticking them off, one by one.
Eidolon’s hatch opening, the ground shuddering under the weight of a battleframe as it raced to his side. The concussive wave of an explosion rolling over him, a sensation of blistering heat that seared exposed skin. The quiescent shuttle erupting above his head, the acrid after-smell of ozone hitting the back of his throat from the firing of Eidolon’s e-beams—like chlorine, and yet not.
The sound of bodies dropping.
He’d still been conscious at that point, though in shock.
He recalled the cool, metal touch of a hand supporting him as a spray of mednano was applied to burns covering neck, hands, and face—everything not protected by his base layer.
The stabbing pain behind his eyes easing as the mednano had begun its work. He’d rolled forward, burying his charred head in blistered hands as his sight began to slowly return. Not wanting to see through newly-healed eyes the blackened crater before him wh
ere a vibrant woman once stood.
Stars…Calista….
Jason knew she’d sacrificed herself to save him. It didn’t make accepting it any easier.
His awareness of the events that night on Barat felt far more vivid than his current surroundings. He looked up, unseeing, at the night sky above him as the memories played out yet again inside his mind.
His eyes pricked, burning as he gave himself over to the jagged pain that ripped through him at the thought of the woman he’d lost. The woman they’d all lost.
Fuck, it hurts.
Logan told him what Charley had done; the cruiser’s missile salvo had been the excuse the powerful AI had craved, releasing some of the rage they’d all felt at the news of their captain’s loss.
The profiler had shared the feed from that day with both Jason and Tobias. He’d reviewed the recording, seen the Avon Vale throw off her guise as the warship hammered the Republican cruiser, until all that remained was a kilometers-wide debris field.
He’d heard it would take a Godel cleanup crew another few days’ worth of dragnet duty to clear the lanes for safe transit.
Jason supposed that someday, once he began to feel something again, he’d be impressed—amazed, even—at the formidable power Phantom Blade had achieved.
But he couldn’t really find it in himself to care right now.
He thought about the conversation they’d had with Simone about religion. Well, if a supreme being existed, he bitterly resented the seeming indifference to the fact that a woman as strong, smart, and infinitely talented as Calista had lost her life. Especially in such a senseless way.
A noise from behind warned him that he was no longer alone. He ignored it, willing the presence away.
Whoever it was decided not to take the hint.
“I’ve been told that your ancestors used to look up and wish upon the stars,” Simone’s voice cut into his thoughts, as if he’d conjured the AI simply by thinking of her.
