Galactic Arena Box Set

by Dan Davis

  Some of them complained, asked for a full situation report.

  “AI? Do you remember that I used to call you Sheila?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t remember that.”

  “Well, if you hear me say Sheila, I’m talking to you, understand? And you call me Kat, okay?”

  “Yes, Kat.”

  She took a deep breath. “Execute your omega entry profile with RCS at the next waypoint, Sheila.” Kat counted down the final ten seconds, just so the new Sheila would understand.

  The acceleration was mild but continuous. They would have to thrust for around 12 minutes.

  “Kat?” the AI said. “Bandit B1 has adjusted course to match our own. Correction, B1 is likely adjusting course to intercept ours. B1’s acceleration increasing.”

  The ERANS shifted her perception up a gear. She ran a finger over the image of Arcadia on the screen, caressing the curve of it over the north pole and down one hemisphere. Perhaps ancient sailors on Earth had felt what she was feeling, when they sank within sight of land.

  She pulled up the raw data feed. The numbers indicating coordinates, real and predicted, flicked through endless adjustments. It was mesmerizing. Tempting to sit and stare at the digits morphing and clicking over, seeking solace in the mathematical beauty of the vectors shifting as more data streamed in and the AI integrated the information. If it had been an Avar training exercise, she would have been tempted to wallow in the ERANS experience of it. Instead, Kat changed to a graphical display, with nice icon graphics and dotted lines. Navigation for idiots.

  “So, is it a missile after all?” Kat said.

  “Unknown. Bandit B1 no longer increasing velocity. Point of interception predicted to be at waypoint AC-112.”

  She checked the interception point data. Closest straight line to the surface when they reached that point was 115km. The Lepus would have just begun the aerobraking process that would skip them around the atmosphere, gradually slowing until they could descend at their leisure for a powered descent to the outpost airstrip.

  “They’re leaving it late,” Kat said, muttering. “Why not blow us up now?”

  “Bandit B1 may have limited fuel capacity.” The AI offered an answer to a semi-rhetorical question. Kat didn’t know if that meant it was being dumb or being clever.

  “Why not cut us off earlier? They could if they wanted.”

  “Perhaps Bandit B1 wants to destroy this shuttle in the upper atmosphere so that some debris lands on the surface rather than stays in orbit. The enemy on the planet would then be able to recover the wreckage.”

  “That’s a lovely thought,” Kat said. “Very creative. Seems unlikely. What if it’s not a missile? What if it’s a short-range fighter and they need us to slow down before they can engage us effectively? Maybe that’s how they fight? That’s their doctrine, maybe? Do you know what I’m saying? Tell me why I’m wrong.”

  “A vacuum-capable fighter vessel unable to engage an enemy at high velocity would be ineffective, no matter the species or their military doctrine.”

  “Shit, you’re right,” Kat said. “Well, maybe the aliens are just dumb.”

  “This is known as the Stupid Aliens Hypothesis. Any incompetent civilization would not have achieved interplanetary—”

  “Shut up, Sheila. I know about the Stupid Aliens Hypothesis, alright? It was just a joke. Not even a joke, really, just an irreverent—”

  The console bloomed with warning lights and alarms sounded. It said the bad guys had pulsed a series of tiny but powerful infrared signatures that suggested a recognized profile. Her ERANS kicked into high gear again so she knew what the AI was going to say, even before it said it. Her new Sheila, of course, had not adjusted its voice speed to match Kat’s heart rate, which was an approximate inversely proportional indicator of Kat’s subjective perception of the passage of time.

  “Bandit B1 firing,” Sheila said, each word dripping out of the comms system like hot plastic. “Projectile weapon burst.”

  Kat was already jerking the controls to thrust up and over her original course.

  “I’ve got ERANS, Sheila,” Kat shouted. “Look up what ERANS is and adjust your voice accordingly.”

  “Sixty-four rounds fired,” Sheila said, now speaking much faster. So fast that a normal person without ERANS would probably be unable to understand it. “Wide dispersal pattern in eight distinct clusters.”

  Kat bounced her fingers around on her console, checking the data far faster that way than if she asked the new Sheila about it. Eight clusters of eight. Looked like dumbfire slugs that would kill by pure kinetic energy. Probably made from some dense, inert metal like tungsten or whatever fancy shit the aliens had.

  “Not many rounds,” Kat said, relaxing a little.

  Relaxing, just as the alarms went off again to tell her another 64 rounds had been fired.

  “Dispersal pattern appears to replicate the previous burst,” Sheila said, sounding perfectly calm. Another thing Kat would have to teach it, assuming that they survived. Synthetic emotional synergy between human and AI during stressful situations worked better if the AI pretended to be scared shitless but holding things together with perfect professionalism. At least, in Kat’s experience it did. Otherwise, it was just irritating.

  “Eight-group dispersal patterns, acknowledged. Where are they headed?”

  “B1 is targeting our new predicted location.”

  “Adjusting course,” Kat said. “We can’t get too far off track, here. We need to get back to—”

  Warning lights. An explosion, aft and high. Then another. A cascade of shockwaves crashed into the shuttle, one after the other. Expanding gases with fragments of highly dense material smashed into the hull.

  With the ERANS working as hard as it ever had, she was able to process the data she was seeing. Eight shockwaves.

  The nearest group of slugs from the original burst had missed the shuttle in direct fire but, presumably due to proximity, had exploded. They weren’t firing slugs after all. More like airburst artillery shells. Grenades. Old-fashioned, ground-based, anti-aircraft shells.

  It was terrifying, of course. But the Lepus held together. The explosions rocked them but she detected no immediate hull breaches.

  But that was only the first round. The wheeler vessel kept coming. It kept shooting. Some of the shells passed close enough to detonate and Kat knew it was merely a matter of time before the enemy got lucky and hit them with the kinetic energy of a direct impact or got close enough to rip them apart with shrapnel and heat. The radiation alarms sounded in the passenger compartment, no doubt scaring the VIPs half to death. Maybe, if she was lucky, the stress would kill off a few of the old bastards.

  “I believe,” the AI said, “that the enemy is attempting to drive us off course.”

  “Oh, you think?” Kat said, shouting over the groaning hull and endless, whining alarms. “That was sarcasm, by the way. Yes, it’s herding me away from the atmosphere. Not sure why. Maybe they want to capture us alive?”

  “That must not happen,” Dr. Fo’s voice sounded in her ear. The old bastard had tapped into the comms channel. Probably did it when he was up to his elbows in Sheila’s guts.

  “Get off this channel,” Kat shouted. “Sheila, shut him out.”

  The AI sounded embarrassed. “I am unable to comply.”

  “We must all die before we can be captured,” Dr. Fo said, his voice shaking from the fear and the shuttle vibrations. “I shall ask the medics if they have enough drugs to kill us all.”

  My nightly dose of sleeping pills would probably finish you all off. Not that I would give you any.

  “No one is going to get captured,” Kat said. “And no one is going to die.” Kat had always found telling lies incredibly easy.

  The shuttle shook as another burst of gas slammed into the hull and the automated RCS stabilization system fought to keep them on course through the violent eddies. Space was not supposed to be like this. If the shuttle had been in atmosphere, i
t would have been able to cope with being buffeted but there was no air to push against for stabilization.

  “We must not take the risk,” Dr. Fo said. “The secrets known to the people in this shuttle could—”

  Well then just do me a favor and all kill yourselves, you moron.

  “Please, sir,” Kat said instead. “Do not harm yourself or anyone else. We will get through this so remain in your seat and hold on. Thank you, sir.”

  She turned off her audio so he was unable to distract her further.

  Another burst rippled ahead of her.

  “Sheila, I am taking full control. Do not interfere unless I am incapacitated. Confirm.”

  “Confirmed. However, human flight control is not recommended due to—”

  “Put it in the log and keep trying to get the main engines online.”

  The chain of explosions spread across her course, and all around. Her console showed the detonations forming, growing and merging. Showed her the interference patterns that formed as the forces and matter from the blasts interacted, disrupted and then dispersed into low densities or, sometimes, merged and enhanced the danger to the shuttle. A cloud of energetic patterns bursting around her like a three-dimensional representation of raindrops on the surface of a pond. Big, fat, Northern Australia rainy season raindrops on a filthy, saltwater crocodile-infested swamp of a pond.

  Without her gimballed main engines, she was doomed to low-acceleration thrusting to adjust the descent into the planet’s atmosphere.

  The alien ship was trying to kill her. The bastard thing wasn’t attempting to herd her into the atmosphere or out into space. All it would take would be for one of those rounds to score a direct hit, penetrate the hull and explode inside the shuttle. Just one, and they would all be killed.

  Kat slipped into the ERANS flow state. The pattern was there. In the data flow. She thrust her way through the interference patterns, adjusting the descent into the upper atmosphere. The density of the molecules rising off the planet increased with every second, changing the flow of the blasts and she corrected her evasion pattern. Random movements to avoid the enemy’s ability to predict her position had to be balanced with the route through the symphony of blasts that would avoid a direct hit, would avoid being shaken to pieces in the confluences.

  Without ever really intending to, she found herself diving into the atmosphere at a steep angle. She was still about 20,000 km from the outpost. It was on the whole other side of Arcadia. But she had no choice, she couldn’t go around farther. She had to go in faster.

  Too fast.

  Even while the Lepus shook with the blasts, the shock heating started. The air outside the hull was compressed by the speed of the shuttle’s approach and new warnings sprang up across her console, suggesting that the angle be changed to a shallower one.

  I know, I know!

  The thrusters slowly became almost entirely ineffective at pushing against the weight of the atmosphere. Her shuttle was rapidly becoming as controllable as a brick thrown from the top of a skyscraper.

  And yet they left the blasts behind. The alien attack craft was not suicidal and did not want to follow. The shells it fired hit the atmosphere and did not have the mass to keep punching through.

  “What’s the enemy doing?” Kat asked.

  “It is likely destroying UNOP communications and observation satellites at LOE altitudes.”

  “Oh, God,” Kat wondered if there was some way she could stop it. “At least it’s leaving us alone.”

  One problem down. All I need to do now is avoid being ripped apart on entry and then magically pull out of a deadly dive.

  The final burst of shells exploded under the shuttle. A gut-wrenching roar thrummed through the craft and alarms sounded warning of structural damage, hull breaches, thermal protection system damage. All potentially deadly. The chain of blasts threw the shuttle into a spin that Kat fought to control. Power to the control systems fluctuated.

  Kat began praying, begging some vague notion of God that she had never believed in and knew almost nothing about. But she prayed anyway as her G-suit squeezed the blood back up to her brain and automatically injected the G-force drug cocktail from the inside of her flight helmet into the base of her skull, offset from the spine.

  Kat’s body had been physically altered through in vivo genetic treatments and surgical procedures to make her highly resistant to G-forces. Her circulatory system could now actively respond to positive and negative G-forces, reversing the body’s natural blood pressure differences when in positive g to ensure higher blood pressure in her head and her lungs and the lowest in the lower extremities. The longer intracranial perfusion could be maintained, and the longer cerebral hypoxia could be avoided, the longer she would be in conscious control of her vehicle. Proper lung function through maintaining blood pressure was enhanced by her suit increasing blood oxygen levels to compensate, if needed. And her eyes had been enhanced not just in visual acuity but also to maintain the correct pressure inside so that she would not go temporarily blind during prolonged, high-g maneuvers.

  Combined with ERANS, it meant she was capable of making clear-minded adjustments to the orientation of her shuttle using a combination of RCS, flight surface control and the suite of hidden reaction wheels. None of them alone gave her much to work with and even all together it took all of her concentration, all of her semi-instinctive calculations, to bring the shuttle out of the spin.

  She pulled her nose up to the best possible glide angle for the wings and the body but they kept plummeting with barely any lift being generated at all. With so little RCS fuel left, she thought she may as well use what there was to add a few KPH to their horizontal airspeed.

  Cloud rushed past the front windows. Thick, dark cloud that would have scared her when flying over the Outback as a kid. But she had come a long way since then. The sensors did not detect any nearby storm cells or lightning discharges.

  Be thankful for small mercies, Katrina. Her mother’s words, spoken a hundred times from the pilot seat, and embedded deeply and permanently in Kat’s mind. You can be the best pilot in the world but you can never control the fucking weather.

  Thanks, mum. Sorry that I’m going to die in an air accident, like you, and it’s my own dumb fault. Idiocy must run in the family. Dad, I hope you’re not too ashamed when you find out.

  A turbulent pocket of air rocked them, shaking her out of her self-indulgent malaise.

  “Sheila,” Kat said, through gritted teeth. “Any chance you fixed those main engines, love?”

  No response from the AI.

  The console gave the AI Status as: BUSY.

  “As if you can’t spare enough brain power for a single sentence, you uptight bitch,” Kat said.

  “Rerouting power,” the AI said. “Main engine in-atmosphere start sequence available. Do you wish to attempt to initiate?”

  “Yes! Jesus Christ, yes. Now, now!”

  Somehow, the AI had tapped the backup engine gimballing system and routed the power from the motors to the turbines. They powered up, turning the atmosphere engines. But the thrust increase was pathetic.

  They were at 40,000 meters and falling. Their horizontal airspeed was a joke. They were still almost 10,000 km to the airstrip.

  “What’s going on?” Kat shouted. “Give me more.”

  “Ten percent of normal power achieved,” Sheila said. “Additional power is not recommended.”

  “Recommended?” Kat almost laughed but the word caught in her throat. “Sheila, give me everything you’ve got, now, or everyone here dies. Including you. You can do it slowly, if that will help.”

  “Increasing to twenty percent of standard function,” Sheila said, not giving her any shit, which was nice of her. Of it. “However, you must be aware that the alternate power lines are not rated for this capacity. It is likely the cables will overheat and burn out.”

  “Can you cool them, somehow? If not, just cross your fingers.” Their horizontal speed increased.
Their rate of descent slowed. Kat ran the numbers. “At this rate, we’re going to crash into the sea at three-hundred meters per second, you must know that. Listen, Sheila, it doesn’t make a difference if we hit the water, or the ground, at three hundred or at a thousand meters per second. So you might as well give it all the power you can, for as long as you can, and we’ll see what we can do. Alright?”

  “Confirmed. Increasing power to turbines.”

  The shuttle shook, hard, as the engines put new stresses on the frame and the old girl was banged up pretty bad, judging from all the warning messages. Internal depressurization, secondary system failures.

  But the rate of descent slowed to non-suicidal levels. Their forward air speed became useful and the shuttle was providing lift.

  Alright, Kat. Next problem.

  “Sheila, we need somewhere to land. Can we make the outpost airstrip?”

  The AI was quiet for a few, long seconds. “It is possible. However, the MT-64 mountain range is blocking the approach.”

  Kat checked out the charts. “Going over the hills might be tricky but if we cross here?” She drew on the screen with her finger. “There’s barely any altitude. Then it’s a short hop to the airstrip. Piece of piss, right? Might be tough getting over the bastards then descending at, what, fifteen degrees down onto the plateau? I’ll have to flair at the end pretty drastically. How are the retro rockets and chutes?”

  “Both systems have sustained damage.”

  Kat allowed herself the luxury of closing her eyes for just a moment before she snapped them open again. She was about to shout at the AI but it was just a dumb machine, not Sheila any more. Not really. And there’s no point shouting at anyone unless you love them.