Humans

by A. G. Claymore

  One of the advantages of the carbon nano-tubule coating on the hull was the massive signal gain. The entire nanite hull, configured as a series of meta-materials – materials that, because of their orientation, performed functions that the material alone never could – did double-duty as a sensor array.

  The nano-tubules gave stealth by refusing to let most of the electromagnetic energy bounce off the hull. Light and most other energy waves simply bounced down between the microscopic filaments and never came back out.

  Not only did this make the ship stealthier, it also meant that her surface collected a massively increased amount of data.

  “Have I missed anything?” Father Sulak strolled in with a mug of coffee in his hand.

  “Not yet,” Eth told him, looking pointedly at the mug until the Quailu oracle noticed and handed it over. He took a drink, sighing with satisfaction as he handed it back. “Just starting to get data now, but it doesn’t look to be heavily defended.”

  “Something doesn’t smell right,” Sulak muttered.

  “No offense, Father, but coming from you…”

  Sulak chuckled.

  “Do you belong to some obscure order that takes exception to bathing?”

  “Not the whole order,” Sulak replied. “Cleanliness, after all, is close to godliness…”

  “In a Zeartekka dictionary, maybe,” Oliv needled Sulak with a fond smile.

  “Oh! I might use that.” Sulak gave her an elaborate bow before turning back to Eth. “It was my mentor, if you must know.”

  Eth frowned. “Your mentor?”

  “Famously filthy!” Sulak said proudly. “He always maintained that his clientele took him more seriously after he stopped bathing. They seemed to feel he was too busy communing with the gods to waste time on such trivial matters as personal hygiene.”

  Eth gaped at him. “It’s just marketing?”

  “That’s a pretty bald way of stating it but, yes, I suppose you could call it that.” Sulak finished his coffee. “Anyway, it worked. When he retired, he bought his own moon in the Arbella system.”

  “His own moon?”

  “That’s right. Seven eighths standard gravity and fully habitable.”

  “I want a moon too,” Hendy said innocently.

  “Maybe the father’s mentor needs a personal pilot,” Eth suggested. “In the meantime, drop us in closer, if you please, lieutenant.”

  “Aye, sir,” Oliv replied. Hendy, take us in at one half max velocity.”

  The display remained the same but the magnification indicator began scrolling down at an alarmingly fast speed and the resolution of the images began to firm up. What had been fuzzy clouds with ship number estimates soon became individual vessels. Those vessels then started resolving themselves into passenger ships, freighters, cruisers, frigates and shuttles.

  “Reading just one cruiser and four frigates,” the sensor officer advised. “Everything else is just civilian traffic.”

  “Everything?” Oliv enlarged a section of the display in a new projection. “What are these orange coded entries?”

  “Those appear to be…” The sensor officer bent to his panel and keyed in a flurry of commands. “… Shuttles, possibly military. Looks like two of them moving away from the warships.”

  “But not heading for Heiropolis,” Oliv said meditatively, “and I doubt they’re practicing orbital insertion, so what’s on the other side of the planet? They’re going there for a reason.”

  “Is there a minefield?” Eth asked.

  “Standard configuration, sir,” the sensor officer confirmed. “Big gap left on this side for regular traffic.”

  “So,” Eth mused, “whatever’s in there…”

  “Ain’t gonna be spotted till you’re right on top of them with your back to the minefield,” Oliv finished for him.

  Eth stared moodily at the display. Pure waste of our time, coming here. He’d hoped to find some way of seizing this system so they could slice Sandrak’s holdings in two. It might not put a stop to his schemes but it would certainly put a crimp in them.

  And it would win Mishak succession votes among electors who were nervous of Sandrak’s power.

  Even a minor action here could reflect well on our lord, he thought, a grin stealing across his features. If we can contrive to make them look foolish, others will assume, correctly, that it was done by our forces.

  “I like where your head’s at, boy!” Abdu’s voice said approvingly.

  “Have you ever had a day where everything was going badly,” Eth asked, “and you just say ‘screw it, let’s have a bit of fun while we’re here’?”

  “Oh gods save us,” Oliv muttered, not quite under her breath.

  “Where is your sense of adventure?” he asked her, eyes shining with mischief. “This is a perfect time to try out the external portal cover.”

  Olive’s eyebrows made a decent attempt at touching the bridge of her nose. “You’re thinking of taking out the Foot up Your Ass? We didn’t even bring along a crew for her. She’s just there to hide the docking portal.”

  “The portal cover’s also there to hide the portal,” he countered, “and you can spare me a pilot and Meesh for a couple of hours.”

  “Meesh?”

  “What I have in mind,” he said obscurely, “is actually one of his specialties.” He shrugged. “He’s leaving this ship for the Stiletto soon, anyway, so it’s time his second got a chance to run the engineering crew in a hostile action; see how he performs.”

  It had all started out so well.

  Perhaps ‘well’ was an overstatement. As the captain of the only cruiser in the small squadron at the entry corridor, Hillalum was in nominal command, but he was still a sacrificial goat tied to a stake.

  His father had always noticed his cognitive abilities and wanted him to become an oracle. Perhaps he would have seen this coming?

  His plan was to withdraw at the first sign of hostiles. He’d pull his cruiser… and the frigates, he supposed… to spinward, where the main fleet would be approaching to pounce on the unwary enemy. Given the current position of the Heiropolitan moons, spinward offered the least interference in his ships’ pitch fields, so it didn’t even bear asking the commander of the main fleet about it.

  He expected to escape with the loss of some frigates but he’d be alive to tell about it and, more importantly, he’d have an ‘independent command’ mark in his record to burnish his future career.

  He’d been offered a turd sandwich but he’d at least turned it into a… turd platter?

  And then the terror began.

  He was trapped inside his own body. He’d always assumed he’d feel that way in his later years, corpulent and riddled with parasites, but not now, not in his prime. One moment, he’d been watching a polarized news feed, letting his crew think he was going over performance reviews and, the next, he was on the decking, half conscious and blinded.

  He could feel a presence unlike any he’d ever felt before. It seemed to be the reason for his incapacitation and it frightened him.

  He felt feet striking the decking, moving quickly around him, though he knew they weren’t his people. He dimly perceived an alarm tone and urgent inquiries over his helmet. When did that close up?

  Unbidden and quite unwelcome, the stories from Memnon’s flagship suddenly intruded on his thoughts – crewmen found inexplicably dead in poses of apparent relaxation… One survivor claimed he’d been accosted by Nergal himself.

  In his semi-conscious state, Hillalum couldn’t be certain, but he was reasonably sure he was hyperventilating.

  Then, when he was on the verge of slipping into unconsciousness, he felt the presence fade and his mind began the struggle back to full faculty. He sat up, looking at a set of gouges cut into the decking near where his head had lain.

  It was a wedge-shaped cuneiform inscription and he shuddered with renewed fear.

  “Nergal,” he breathed in horrified wonderment.

  What else could explain all
of this but intervention by the gods themselves?

  “Sir!” the tactical officer shouted, startling Hillalum both with the volume of his voice and the fear in his mind. “We’re locked onto our frigates!”

  “What?” Hillalum grabbed the back of a control station and pulled himself up to glare at the officer. “Don’t just tell me about it,” he snarled. “Disengage the targeting links immediately before they…”

  “Incoming hail from our frigates,” the comms officer announced.

  “I can’t, sir,” the tactical officer insisted. “We’re locked out of… We’re firing on them!” he nearly screamed in his panic.

  Hillalum spun to the tactical holo, staring in horror as missiles from his own ship streaked toward his subordinates.

  The four frigates were turning to face him…

  Sargon turned to his communications officer. “Say that again,” he ordered.

  “Sire, the frigates in our decoy fleet are demanding to know why the Hizmaal has opened fire on them.”

  “Hillalum!” Sargon trembled with rage. He’d hoped the fool would get himself killed and he’d accept the loss of a cruiser to do it but he never dreamed Hillalum would be so incompetent as to shoot at his own side. “What the demons is that idiot playing at?”

  “No response from the Hizmaal, sire.”

  Damn it! There goes a perfectly arranged ambush! “Probably lose those frigates before we get there,” he ground out, “but the attempt has to be made. Helm! All ahead full. Looks like we have an enemy to kill after all!”

  The fleet, seven cruisers, not including Sargon’s own heavy cruiser, and twenty-eight frigates, began accelerating toward whatever the hells was going on with the decoy group.

  He could feel the confusion from his crew and knew he had to stamp it out. “Hillalum must stop or be stopped,” he growled. “I want everyone ready. We must be prepared to do whatever is necessary to save our frigates from his folly.”

  “We have a signal from the Hizmaal, sire.” The communications officer activated an icon for his general.

  Sargon opened the call and a hazy image of Hillalum appeared, hands held out in supplication.

  “None of this is our doing!” he insisted.

  “The missiles are coming from your ship!” Sargon shouted. “Cease fire immediately and send the self-destruct to any missiles that…”

  “We can’t!” Hillalum wailed desperately. “We’re locked out!” He wrung his hands at Sargon, voice dropping nearly to a whisper. “It was Nergal! He was here!”

  Sargon supressed a shudder of fear and fought to ignore the rising hairs on his neck. He couldn’t allow this to infect his own people. The rumors were already having a bad enough effect. He swiped angrily at the holo, swatting Hillalum’s image out of existence.

  “Destroy the Hizmaal!” he roared. “Wipe those traitors out of my universe!”

  He was gratified by the renewed energy he felt from his bridge crew. He could feel their anger at the fools who’d fire on their own side. He didn’t know what was behind the insane rumors but he’d damned sure…

  A series of distant explosions preceded a wild lurch, the decking beneath his feet suddenly shifting hard to port. Sargon threw out his arms, teetering ludicrously on one foot for several seconds while he fought to regain his balance.

  “Mines!” tactical called out.

  “I’d guessed that for myself!” Sargon snapped, his already bad mood causing him to lash out, even though he knew it to be counter-productive. “What the devils are mines doing here? Are they strays from our own minefield?”

  “Unknown, sire, but, if they are, then there can’t be very many. The minefield appears to be intact.”

  Another dull crumping noise from beneath gave the lie to his assessment. A power-coupler above the bridge blew out with a demonic squelching sound and the main holo flickered and died. The smell of ozone permeated the air, rank in Sargon’s nostrils.

  “Let’s assume there are more of the damned things,” he said, forcing himself to calm down. “What’s the status of the rest of our forces?”

  Did that idiot Hillalum somehow lay a minefield to trip us up?

  “Fleet reporting seventy percent combat-effective,” the tactical officer advised. “Three other cruisers with heavy damage and five frigates knocked out of action. All damaged ships will be able to effect repairs but not in the near future.”

  “Back everyone off!” Sargon ordered. He’d finally overcome his rage and the cold hard facts were staring him in the face. He was down to seventy percent combat-effective, not even counting the probable loss of his entire decoy force, and he still hadn’t seen the enemy.

  Clearly, whoever they were, they wanted him to press on into their minefield and lose more ships. And how the devils did they lay a minefield right under his nose without him noticing?” He shuddered.

  If he survived the day, Sandrak would ask him the very same question.

  Eth and Meesh jogged onto the bridge. “What’s the enemy status, Captain?”

  “Looks like they came to their senses,” Oliv said, nodding at the main holo. “They’re pulling back from your minefield but their sacrificial goats are still beating the shit out of each other!”

  “The ways of Nergal are ineffable,” Meesh said solemnly.

  Father Sulak grunted. “Well, there’s no effing way they’ll figure this out any time soon.”

  “If they’re not going to play,” Eth said, “then we’ll leave them our toys and go home. Captain, I’ll trouble you to deploy a coated drone programmed for SSD broadcast.”

  “Already spooled up,” she replied. “Sending it now.”

  The drone, coated with the same carbon nano-tubules that rendered their ships almost entirely undetectable, would send out a search or self-destruct command to the similarly coated missiles in Heiropolitan orbit. It was the best way of sending the signal without the risk of giving away their ship’s position.

  The remaining missiles received the signal and, of the seven left, four were able to identify military targets. They activated their MA fields and streaked out toward their prey, hammering into two frigates and two cruisers at velocities that would make light blush.

  The last three weapons decided they weren’t going to be finding a target any time soon and so they maneuvered close to each other and group-detonated their warheads. Their radiant energy had little effect on the one weapon that had failed its detonation sequence but the vaporized osmium packed around the warheads did an excellent job of erasing the failed weapon from existence.

  There would be no evidence of Lady Bau’s gift for the enemy to analyse.

  “The Anuksha’s dead in the black,” tactical announced, squinting up at the low resolution emergency holo. “Sirabai is crippled and those two frigates are little more than debris traces now.”

  “Signal the fleet,” Sargon ordered. “All stop! Launch shuttles to sweep for mines. All call-signs to remain at full alert!” The last attack was different. The weapons had seemed to do more damage and now Sargon was down to less than half the force he’d arrived with. Two of his decoy frigates had been crippled and Hillalum’s cruiser was nearly a hulk as well.

  And he still hadn’t seen the damned enemy!

  Meesh shook his head in amazement. “At this point, we could probably finish them off and send our lord the good news that he’s the proud new owner of a key system!”

  Eth sighed, his good mood evaporating. “Y’know, I always felt, in the back of my mind, that this whole idea was half-assed. Taking Heiropolis sounds good on a planning board but then what do you do?”

  Meesh shrugged.

  “Then you die trying to hold onto it?” Oliv asked.

  “She was always a smart one!” Abdu said.

  Eth nodded his agreement. He waved at the display. “Nine cruisers and thirty-two frigates in total, when you count their decoy force. We made them look like a pack of rump sniffing idiots with one ship. Do we really want to be sitting down ther
e, waiting for Sandrak to come looking for revenge?”

  “He doesn’t have stealth,” Meesh countered.

  “And we can’t use it for garrison duty,” Eth replied. “If you take a highly secretive stealth-platform and keep it in orbit, folks will figure out what it is pretty damned fast.”

  “And Sandrak does have stealth capabilities, I suppose,” Meesh muttered. “Any old freighter can show up, packed to the gunwales with warheads and blast herself to fragments.”

  “So what the hells are you moping about?” Oliv demanded. “Sir,” she added hastily, causing Eth to chuckle. “We’ve shown this world to be a running sore on the ass of whoever holds it. Sandrak can’t let us take it or the entire HQE would be laughing at him. Let’s leave it, for now, and come back when he’s got more ships for us to destroy!”

  “Either way, he’s getting laughed at,” Eth mused. “Let’s hope our lord endorses this when we get back to the main fleet.” That was the real reason for his unease. He’d been sent out here to investigate the possibility of an attack, not to enrage one of the most powerful nobles in the empire.

  It wasn’t a conversation he was looking forward to.

  “That’s enough damage for one day,” he declared. “Captain, please take us back to the rendezvous point as soon as you can clear the heat out of the sinks.”

  “Bring us about,” Oliv ordered. “We’ll go to the opposite side of the gas giant, this time. Three quarters pitch.”

  Eth moved to the back of the bridge as Meesh went below to check on engineering. Why the hells do I jump into these situations without giving enough thought to Mishak’s likely response? His lord was, by Quailu standards, downright intrepid but it seemed as though Eth was pushing his luck even more than when he’d intervened to save the Lady Bau.

  That had worked out spectacularly well but, sooner or later, he was going to end up putting his neck on the block.

  He just hoped that hadn’t happened today.

  “Might have…”

  Shut up, old man!”

  Anger Unleashed