by Brian Smith
“They earned it,” Captain Keith replied. “Mind the store, XO.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Jim Ford replied. He was seated at the astrogator’s station, his usual post on the bridge. Reuben James had already throttled down and was on a free-fall trajectory, closing for rendezvous with Marineris. The tender stood out clearly on the displays now, both optical and lidar.
It seemed like half a lifetime since they’d last seen her, but a lot had happened since then. Normally they would soft-dock and run fueling lines and a gangway between the two ships, but this time they’d been ordered to do a complete hard-dock. Given the fact that Reuben James had seen combat, a return to Mars, and battle-damage repairs all since their last rendezvous, they anticipated a visit and an inspection from the commodore.
Ford had worked everyone’s hind end off to make sure the James was shipshape, partly for that and partly as a remedy for the doldrums threatening to set in with the crew after a very pleasant shore leave. Hard work was an old naval panacea; after leaving Diane Hutton behind on Mars, Ford had needed it himself.
“This will go down as the busiest deployment this squadron has ever seen,” Chief Sandler remarked from the quartermaster’s station next to him. “First our deal at 5111 Omega, and then Flatley gets the call to run down Dejah Thoris. There they are,” he added, pointing to two closely paired light specks in one of their optical scopes. Running down-well for Mars, lucky bastards. They didn’t even have to get shot at.”
“Well, that means they aren’t going to get three weeks in port for repairs either,” Ford reminded him.
They hadn’t heard much about it, only that it had been a by-the-book recovery of a hijacked vessel. Once Flatley had gotten close aboard and ordered her to heave to, the freighter apparently surrendered without a fight. Marineris had rendezvoused with both ships shortly thereafter and organized a prize crew, and now Flatley was escorting the recovered ship back to Mars. There wasn’t any word on the disposition of the freighter’s original crew—that usually didn’t bode well. Ford was curious who had taken her and how she’d been found, given that the board-and-search order had come all the way from 4th Fleet HQ at Halsey Station. Ford supposed they’d get the story firsthand very shortly.
ENS Amy Tanner currently had the deck, under the watchful eye of LTJG Yoon. WO1 Santos, one of their two senior pilots, had the helm. Tanner didn’t try to micromanage things, much to her credit—she passed the conn to Santos and ordered her to dock the ship without much fanfare. Ford and Santos bit back grins as they saw Yoon’s mixed reaction to the order; since Tanner was in the process of qualifying as an OOD and a SWO, he’d obviously expected her to be a little more hands-on.
Of course, Yoon would have done the same thing, but the difference was that he was already qualified. Ford kept an eye on things as the captain had ordered, but there wasn’t any reason for him to interfere. Yoon was an excellent ship handler, and he’d been doing a good job of training Tanner. Santos did most of the work in the end, although piloting the ship was more a labor of love for her than actual work. Reuben James achieved hard-dock with Marineris with a minimum of drama and a maximum of efficiency.
“And that’s how we do that,” Tanner said with just a hint of smugness after Santos reported that docking was complete.
***
Down near the main gangway airlock, Captain Keith moved along the line of Marines, who were geared up in their combat suits as if for a boarding action. It was the easiest way for them to transfer all their gear back over to Marineris, and mirrored the way they’d come aboard in the first place. Keith thanked each Marine for his or her recent efforts and contribution to the ship. He finally reached SSGT Vargas at the end of the line.
“The ship’s going to seem pretty empty after you go back,” Keith chuckled. “It’s been tight quarters, but we sort of got used to it after a while. I just wish you were going back with everyone you brought,” he added seriously.
“We all do, captain,” Vargas replied. “We won’t mind being back in our own digs, but 3rd Squad will carry a soft spot for the old James from now on, that’s for sure. We’ll see you around, sir,” he added, drawing up to attention and rendering a smart salute.
Keith returned the salute as one of the bosun’s mates turned to him. “We’re hard docked, captain—lights are green,” the rating reported.
“Open her up,” Keith ordered. The bosun’s mate acknowledged, and the heavy airlock doors of their main gangway hatch rolled open.
Keith suffered a moment’s confusion—he caught a glimpse of battle-suited bodies lined up tightly on the other side, at least four ranks deep, and a swarm of drones pouring through the hatch over their heads in zero-g. The quarterdeck was suddenly plunged into darkness as the lights went out, a darkness split almost immediately by the flare of particle beams flashing like lightning bolts.
Keith’s world ended a moment later in a flash of light and pain.
***
“What the—!” someone exclaimed on the darkened bridge.
Everything was out: lights, displays, even the ever-present hum of the recirculation fans. Everyone started talking at once. “Everyone pipe down! Pipe down, dammit!” Ford shouted, causing much of the din to die away immediately. “Bosun’s mate, activate the emergency lamps.”
“Trying to find the switches, XO,” he called back.
“Here,” Santos called. A beam of light cut through the darkness, coming from the maglight the pilot kept handy in one of her jumpsuit’s pen holders. She directed the light at the appropriate console, and a moment later several white emergency lamps embedded in the bulkheads and overhead switched on, bathing the bridge in an eerie half-light.
“Attention on the bridge. This is Lieutenant j.g. Yoon. I have the deck,” Yoon announced. “Ensign Tanner, take astrogation from the XO. Sir, ship’s network is dead. So are internal communications. I can’t raise anyone. Recommend we go to full-power-out procedures.”
“You have the deck, lieutenant! Get on with it!” Ford snapped with rare distemper.
“Something must have shorted out when we hard-docked or opened the gangway,” Tanner commented.
Ford shook his head. “Not the whole ship—we need to find out if the reactor is down. Mr. Yoon, send your watch runner to the reactor room and get a status report on the power plant. Pass the word by mouth and suit radios: all hands are to suit up.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Yoon replied and passed the order to the bosun’s mate of the watch; his runner had heard the XO and was already suiting up. The rest of those present began donning gloves and helmets, closing off their pressure seals, buddy-checking one another and making sure air bottles were fully charged. There wasn’t much noise for a few moments as they went about this task—it was Tanner who paused, a funny look on her face as she stopped with her helmet poised over her head.
“Does anyone hear that?” she asked.
“Hear what?” someone asked. Again everyone started talking at once.
“Pipe down!” Tanner barked, even before Yoon or Ford could say anything. “Everyone! Shut up and listen!” The bridge fell silent, and this time there was no mistaking it: the distant sound of screams carried through the bulkheads, accompanied by weapons fire.
“Holy . . . fucking . . . shit!” Santos breathed in disbelief.
“Belay my last order,” Ford snapped grimly. “Bosun’s mate, grab your sidearm and begin passing the word, compartment to compartment: General Quarters. All hands into battle suits if available. Otherwise, suit up in helmets and gloves. All hands are to arm themselves with any weapon at hand and repel boarders. If they aren’t from Reuben James, kill them. Lieutenant Yoon!”
“Sir?”
“Seal the bridge behind me and hold it. I’m going one deck down, to CDC. If we can get our network back up, we can deploy our own drones.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Sir—we’re hard-docked with Marineris! Our own tender! What the hell?”
“Impossible as it sounds, she appears
to be boarding us,” Ford answered. “Assume nothing. If you hear from the captain, fill him in. He was down at the main lock, though, so . . .” He let his voice trail off grimly as he finished putting on his helmet and sealing it. Once it was sealed up, he was able to switch on his helmet radio. “If you restore communications, get out an OPREP PINNACLE message to anyone who can receive us.”
“Yes, sir,” Yoon replied, now talking over his own helmet radio. They were starting to hear panicked, confused calls coming in from other quarters as more members of the crew suited up and used their helmet radios for communications.
A loud squeal of jamming suddenly lanced through Ford’s eardots, causing him to swear in pain. He immediately muted his radio and pressed his helmet against Yoon’s to keep talking. The young officer’s eyes were wild and near-panicked. Ford rapped him twice on the crown of his helmet, hard, to make sure he had Yoon’s attention. Yoon’s eyes locked onto his across the gulf of their faceplates.
“Listen up! My intent is to separate us from Marineris by any means possible, restore power, and hold Reuben James. Do not give up the ship, Mr. Yoon, do you hear me? Whatever happens, don’t give up the ship!”
***
At the main gangway, SSGT Vargas stirred sluggishly in zero-g as his combat suit dosed him with respirocytes and ordered his endocrine pumps to hit him with a generous dose of pain blockers and stimulants. He was semiconscious and only half aware of what he was doing, but his training kicked in full force. He fumbled for his helmet without thinking about it, slipping it on and activating the helmet seals. The internal electronic suite switched on, and the first thing the limited AI brain of the suit detected was that it was already badly breached.
Vargas’s legs were gone below midthigh, lased clean through by a particle beam that had cauterized the wounds and prevented him from bleeding out on the spot. The suit responded as programmed, to save his life; it irised closed just below Vargas’s pelvis, amputating the stumps a second time and closing them off like a mechanical tourniquet while forming a pressure seal against a potential vacuum as well. Vargas grunted explosively as this happened—it didn’t hurt after the dosing of meds he’d received, but he was aware that something major had just transpired.
He activated his helmet light, flailing slightly as the actions of his suit generated enough force to float him up off the overhead, where he’d been drifting. He looked down and saw Captain Keith’s corpse floating amid an all too familiar scene, given their recent action at 5111 Omega. Keith’s head was gone, blasted away, with only a charred stump of neck showing above his jumpsuit collar line. The battle had begun before any of them knew they were even in one, and it swept past them quickly, leaving the quarterdeck a silent field of the slain in its wake. It took him only a moment to confirm he was alone here, that everyone else was dead.
Vargas triggered another dose of stimulants on his own, trying to clear the fog from his head. He remembered the gangway opening and all hell suddenly breaking loose in a sudden pitch darkness. It was like a nightmarish combat drill made real.
Holy fuck, we’ve been boarded by our own flagship—which means it ain’t our flagship anymore, he told himself with remarkable clarity of thought. He tried to access the ship’s network; it was down. He tried the Marineris network, only to find he was locked out, which theoretically shouldn’t have been possible; it confirmed that she was no longer friendly, however. Suit radios were jammed solid—no joy there. Vargas dropped his snoopers and switched over to low-light mode, which at least allowed him to see. He was floating amid the bodily remains of the captain and his own Marines, staring through the open gangway into the deserted interior corridors of Marineris. Okay, what now? he asked himself sluggishly.
He tried to think it through, aware that he was going into shock. He accessed his biomonitor and let out a long, low groan. Even in an age when limbs could be regenerated, the psychological impact of discerning his ravaged body was devastating. His suit’s actions to keep him alive and conscious were temporary stopgaps—he was mortally wounded unless he made it to a first-class medical facility soonest, and that wasn’t going to happen here.
Vargas looked around almost absent-mindedly and noticed with a spark of interest that console lights and power were not too far away: right on the other side of the gangway, aboard Marineris. Well, that makes sense, though, right? he thought to himself. He tried to reflexively kick off the overhead, only to realize that he couldn’t—he was missing from just below his hips. He twisted around and pushed off with his hands, turning midair as he bridged the gap. Like a drunk giving himself mental instructions, he told himself firmly not to try to magboot himself to the deck on the other side—because he couldn’t. He groped for a handhold when the time came, catching himself at the control console on the Marineris side.
Think it through, he told himself.
He grasped that a major priority for whoever was left aboard the frigate would be to undock from Marineris. Whatever hack she’d run into the James’s onboard systems wouldn’t be overcome while the two vessels were physically linked. If she could undock—cut the hard line between them—then they might have a chance to reboot her systems and restore control. He glanced at his chrono, wishing he knew how long he’d been out. He had no way of knowing if the power blackout was shipwide or just on the quarterdeck. Had the James crew set Zebra and compartmentalized the ship? It made sense that they would, especially if they were fighting a boarding action. Those hatches could be sealed manually, even without power. The crew would be all suited up, too, or trying to suit up. If they weren’t, he might kill a lot of people if he undocked the ship. He had to stay on the Marineris side of the hatch to do it, which meant he couldn’t manually seal the James’s gangway hatch.
Indecision dug at him like a cancer, until he heard a voice in his head: the voice of his old drill instructor, nose to nose and screaming in a spittle-flecked rage, back during recruit training on Parris Island and what seemed like two lifetimes ago: You’d best unfuck yourself and get with the program, boot! It’s better to make a bad decision than no decision at all! Decide! Decide!
Vargas understood he was dying; he didn’t have much time. Decide!
“Fuck it,” he snarled. Vargas reached out and flipped the hard circuit breakers to gain sole manual control over the hatch, ensuring that he couldn’t be overridden remotely. Then he closed the inner and outer doors on the Marineris side, sealing off the gangway. He overrode the computer’s inquiries and warnings and manually released the docking clamps. Once the seal was broken, physics did the rest. Reuben James explosively decompressed through her main gangway, with the decompression acting like an RCS thruster and pushing her away from Marineris.
Vargas’s decision had been correct in more ways than one and had beneficial side effects. The flying drone swarm doing most of the killing aboard the frigate was largely cleaned out by the explosive decompression: the individual drones didn’t have the thruster power or fuel reserves to combat the force of it and were blown clear. A good number of invading Omnisynths went as well and, unfortunately, many Reuben James crew members. Although some of the latter were suited, most weren’t, and the majority of those blown into space were already dead—killed by the boarders. The few who were suited and survived the decompression itself nevertheless perished later; there would never be a chance to get an accurate count of them, much less retrieve them.
SSGT Vargas expired a short time later, trapped aboard Marineris and never knowing that his actions had given the crew of Reuben James a fighting chance.
***
Someone had already turned on the emergency lights in the CDC when Ford arrived. He paused long enough on the ladder well to pop the manual override and seal the hatch behind him. In his mind’s eye he was thinking about the position of the gangway a few decks down and how best to barricade the forward part of the ship until the crew could organize and fight back.
As Ford entered the compartment, he was encouraged to see not pand
emonium but a group of sailors already suited up and going over their equipment, trying to sort out what was happening and to get everything working again. Ford already had a thought on that. He launched himself toward the cyber/intel station, currently manned by Petty Officer Sims. Chief Eckert, their new cyber/intel division head, wasn’t here. He wasn’t on watch, which meant he was somewhere farther aft and probably caught up in the thick of things.
Sims saw him coming and turned so that they could touch helmets and talk. “This all seem familiar, XO?” Sims shouted through their touching faceplates, with wild eyes. It was very much like the Trojan-horse attack Cheryl Ayers and Sims had engineered on 5111 Omega from Aurora.
“That’s just what I was thinking!” Ford shouted back. “I think the reactor is fine, or at least not damaged! This blackout is a cyberattack! Can you unscrew it?”
“I’m on it, sir!” Sims replied.
There was a sudden lurch, a slight sideways force they could feel for a few seconds against null-g, and then it passed.
“What the hell was that?” Sims asked.
Ford was experienced enough to guess. “We just undocked from Marineris! Get cracking on that console!”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
Ford made his way over to LTJG Gordon, the CDC watch officer. “Feel that? I think someone managed to cut us loose!”
“Well, I don’t know about that!” Gordon replied by reflex. “Might have been a decompression somewhere aft,” he added. “Here’s the deal, sir—I think we got hit with a cyberstrike right as we docked. The reactor is probably shut down, but physically it should be okay. I sent two ratings forward to manually restart the forward aux-power unit and disconnect the network lines between there and CDC. We should have limited power back soonest, and then we need to denetwork and reboot anything we want to have function.” Gordon gestured around him for emphasis, where his people had already pulled panels and were digging into the guts of their consoles, working in the half-illumination provided by helmet lights and emergency lamps.
