Deathtrap

by Craig Alanson

  Captain Tubek almost turned away from the display to take a sip of water from a bottle attached to his chair. The bottle was smart, it had a tiny brain that did not open the lid unless it knew the user wanted a drink, a necessary feature in the zero gravity aboard Kristang warships. Tubek’s right hand felt along the chair’s arm for the bottle, but when his hand grasped the device, he released it, his attention fully focused on the sensor data. “Kobinda,” he waved to the officer at the sensor station, while tapping the display with a finger, his claw making a clicking sound on the well-worn but still shiny material. “This latest contact,” the captain’s voice trailed away as he stared intently at the display.

  “Yes, Sir,” Kobinda bit back a weary sigh, thinking he knew his commander’s question. “It could be a sensor ghost. There have been a lot of obvious ghosts I have not reported,” he added to reassure the captain that his precious time was not being wasted.

  “That isn’t the problem,” Tubek didn’t look away from the display. He had just come onto the bridge to relieve the previous duty officer. “Show me all your contacts, even the ones you dismissed as ghosts.”

  Kobinda did not bother to say that information was readily available on the captain’s display, because senior officers were much too busy to bother learning how to use the ship’s systems. “Done, Sir. The obvious sensor ghosts are outlined in blue.”

  Tubek knew exactly what information was available on his display, he had served as a sensor officer aboard frigates and destroyers for seven years, before family connections arranged for him to command the worst piece of shit in the clan’s fleet. Ordering Kobinda to send the information to him was not laziness by the captain, he wanted to see what his sensor officer thought was important. Tubek started with the contacts that had been declared as ‘possible’ by the threat analysis system. Most of those had also quickly been dismissed by Kobinda, well before ship’s computer agreed there was nothing out there. A few other contacts had required closer observation before they, too, had been revealed as nothing more than sunlight reflecting off a loose cloud of pebbles or some other natural feature of the asteroid field. Tubek agreed with the sensor officer’s analysis and judgment, so far, their little ship had not detected anything worth investigating.

  The contacts that had been investigated and dismissed were random in location, distance from the ship and by the nature of the incoming data. Those contacts had been determined to be nothing more than floating rocks, loose clouds of dust or other natural objects. What bothered Captain Tubek were the contacts that the sensor system itself had dismissed as nothing more than glitches, ghosts in the sensor data itself. “Kobinda,” Tubek did not take his eyes off the display. “These ghosts, they are consistent.”

  “Sir? Consistent?” Kobinda had no idea what his captain meant.

  “They are not random. All the ghost contacts are behind us, and at a distance that varies by no more than twenty one percent. If the ghost were caused by software glitches in the sensor network, I would expect the ghosts to be randomly distributed all around us.”

  “Er, yes, Captain,” Kobinda anticipated a scolding about his failure to keep the sensor system properly tuned, though his conscience was clear that he had done his best with the outdated equipment. “I suspect one of the aft sensor arrays is transmitting false data to the network. That system has been instructed to ignore data from that array, unless it can be verified by one of the other arrays.”

  “Ignored?” Tubek felt a chill. “There could be other contacts that have not even been recorded?!”

  Kobinda was surprised by his captain’s sudden anger. “Yes, Sir. Three days ago, the system began giving us so many false contacts, I had to de-prioritize that array,” he said, knowing his action had been logged into the status report the captain should have read. “The software has a feature for-”

  “I know how that software works, you fool! The Ruhar also know how our software functions!” Tubek looked at the display with fresh alarm. The contacts that had been dismissed as nothing more than ghosts could be a faulty sensor array. Or they could be an enemy ship lurking at the edge of the Taanab’s sensor range, knowing exactly how their target’s sensor computer would interpret a faint, intermittent contact! “Battle stations!” He gave the order to bring the ship to full alert, including feeding full power to the ship’s defensive shields. Those shields could protect his little ship, but the sudden power surge could also be detected by any enemy ship in the area. “Navigator, one-quarter thrust, new heading-”

  Tubek never finished his order, for a pair of railgun rounds slammed into his ship. The first round hit the defense shields that were still powering up, overloading the forward dorsal generator and leaving a gap in coverage that the second round zipped through. That second round was barely slowed by the frigate’s armor plating, the only effect of the impact was converting the round into superheated plasma that spread out in a shotgun-shell pattern to burn through the frigate’s vulnerable insides. Including the Taanab’s bridge, buried in the center of the ship.

  The first two railgun shots were actually scored as misses by their mother ship, a destroyer that had been aiming for the Taanab’s aft engineering section. While the frigate careened out of control, her automated defense systems were kept busy fending off maser beams, while the little ship’s erratic motion made three pairs of railgun darts miss, to streak off into interstellar space and eventually beyond the edge of the galaxy. The frigate’s engineering officer was beginning to assert control over his ship when another dart struck the reactor, and the officer’s mind had time for only two thoughts before he became part of the asteroid field.

  First, he thought ‘I hate this job’.

  His second thought was, ‘We need a new strategy because THIS shit isn’t working’.

  The force defending Feznako had lost another ship.

  Aboard the Ruhar light cruiser City of Fantoori, the captain congratulated her crew, while inwardly groaning with dread. Her original assignment to Feznako had been simple; raid military facilities on the planet, and destroy enemy ships when possible, at minimal risk to her small task force. The objective was to tie up Kristang ships, so they could not cause mischief elsewhere. The Ruhar Federal government did not especially want to capture Feznako, that world had not much to offer, and adding yet another new colony would stretch the already overloaded resources of the fleet and army. Not to mention further irritating the Peace faction in the legislature, who wanted the government to stop capturing territory just because they could.

  Her actions at Feznako had been successful, too successful. With the loss of the last frigate, the Kristang had only three destroyer escorts and a truly ancient light cruiser to defend the system. Feznako would fall easily, and the captain of the Fantoori knew that when she reported the situation to fleet headquarters, some overly-aggressive jackass would order her to capture the planet with her little task force. She was not worried about doing that, her ships were in little danger. What she was worried about was what came after the Kristang surrendered the planet. The Fantoori could be stuck there on dull garrison duty for months, even years, while the real action raged far away.

  She also felt sorry for the poor bastards in the Federal Army, who would have to drop boots on the ground and pacify such a worthless planet.

  Specialist Hanst Bo approached the flag officer quarters of the Jeraptha battleship with hesitant steps. He had a message for Admiral Tashallo, and although Bo had not read the message, he had of course scanned the header when the message came in to be decrypted, so he knew the admiral was not going to be pleased with the reply to his earlier inquiry. Bo could have reared up on his back pair of legs and run down the passageway if the message was urgent, or if it were merely good news the admiral would want to learn about immediately. Instead, Bo had trudged along on all four legs, and he paused at every intersection to politely wait for cross traffic, even when he had plenty of time to walk through the intersection without blocking anyone’s path.<
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  In front of the door to the admiral’s office, he straightened, looking down to inspect his uniform. Everything was in order. There was no excuse for further delay. Because the message was time-stamped, if he delayed much longer, the admiral would know.

  Admiral Gost-Ren Tashallo, commander of the Blue Squadron’s 98th Fleet, was grumpily stirring honey into a steaming mug of fatah and glancing over at a bottle of burgoze on a shelf. The fatah aboard the ship was excellent, the freshly-roasted nuts being ground for each order, but a shot of burgoze would make it taste even better. At least, the burgoze would make the fatah taste different than his usual morning mug, and Tashallo ached for something different. Not a different beverage, a different career. Since his famously smashing and still-unexplained victory at the Battle of Glark, his 98th Fleet had been stuck with boring and unchallenging duty. At least the 98th was no longer consigned to garrison guard work, but conducting a public-relations tour of Jeraptha space was not why Tashallo had joined the military. A tour, far from the action, was also very bad for the 98th’s morale, for no military action meant poor prospects for wagering action. Of course, Tashallo’s fleet was connected to the rest of the Jeraptha Home Fleet and the actions of other fleets and squadrons could be wagered on, but being relegated to the role of spectator went against his aggressive nature.

  It was intensely frustrating that his beloved 98th was now the second most powerful unit in the Blue Squadron. Indeed, it was the single most powerful autonomous unit in the entire Home Fleet, being centered around three new fast battleships. Those killer warships had been provided before the 98th began its publicity tour, as a tangible and very visible way to show the public what they were getting in return for the vigorish skimmed off wagers by the central government. Tashallo had taken the powerful fast battleship I Am Aching To Give Somebody A Beat-Down And Today Is YOUR Lucky Day as his flagship, with the sister ships How’d That Work For You? and You Should See The Last Guy Who Tried That Shit under the command of captains who had earned the honor. The 98th could take on any unit of any technologically-equivalent species, and even pose a threat to a small group of Maxolhx warships.

  And that was the problem. Every time Tashallo had proposed to take the 98th into action against the combined Bosphuraq-Thuranin offensive, the reward odds reported by the fleet’s Action Officer were disappointing, even insulting. With such low odds, Tashallo’s commanding officer of the Blue Squadron was not tempted to release the 98th from its low-risk duty as a reserve for the actual fighting units of the Blue. Reward odds were based on the difficulty of the proposed mission, and the risk a unit took by going into action. Because the 98th was so powerful, almost no enemy battlegroup could be considered a risk to the Fighting 98th. At least, that was the official excuse given by the Central Wagering Department, although the truth was more personal and more depressing.

  No one wanted to bet against Admiral Tashallo.

  After the Battle of Glark, when Tashallo had thoroughly smashed a large Thuranin attacking force, a full Inquisition had been launched to discover who had provided the crucial information about enemy plans. The combined brain power and skills of the Inquisitors, backed by Fleet Intelligence and their vast AIs, had so far provided no clue about where the information had come from. Tashallo had been cleared of any wrong-doing, but that was almost the worst case for him. If he had not somehow sneakily obtained the information from an enemy source, then there were only two possibilities. First, maybe Tashallo was simply lucky, and no one was foolish enough to bet against luck. Or, second and even worse, Tashallo was acting as a front for hidden wagerers inside Fleet Intelligence, so they could get better odds on their own wagers.

  It was not fair. Admiral Sashell’s 67th Fleet had also participated in the Battle of Glark, yet no one hesitated to place wagers with the clearly very lucky Sashell, because the public assumed Sashell had merely been in the right place at the right time when Tashallo needed backup. That kind of luck didn’t happen often, so people were eager to bet against Sashell, as that guy had clearly used up a lifetime of luck and was due for a fall. It helped that the crafty Admiral Sashell had deliberately, but not too obviously, lost several wagers after the Battle of Glark, to lure wagerers into taking action against him.

  Tashallo had tried the same tactic with no success. The public was wary of getting sucked in by winning a few small-money bets, therefore they declined any action against the legendary admiral of the 98th Fleet. Tashallo was not the only victim of his own success; his superior in command of the Blue Squadron also had suffered a shortfall in action, along with every member of the 98th.

  The situation was making the hugely successful admiral unpopular with his crews, morale and combat readiness had fallen to unacceptable levels. He needed to get his powerful force into action, combat action that led to the almost-more-important wagering action.

  So, Tashallo had dropped the idea of tangling with a mere enemy battlegroup, and looked for a worthy opponent. He had found one, now all he needed were two things; approval from fleet headquarters, and a favorable reply from the Central Wagering Department. If he did not-

  The doorbell chimed, and after a formal pause, the door slid aside. “Ah,” Tashallo’s expression brightened. “Bo. Come in, Specialist.”

  “Admiral Tashallo,” Bo’s hand trembled slightly as he gave the message slip to the 98th’s commanding officer. He stood at attention, waiting for the senior officer’s command, while he stared straight ahead. With his peripheral vision, he watched the admiral’s eyes narrow with displeasure, that must be the unhappy news in the header. Bo cringed and braced himself for becoming the object of the admiral’s displeasure.

  Thus, he was puzzled when Tashallo’s antenna, which had been drooping, stood up and twitched, fairly dancing with pleasure. The admiral looked up at Bo, his mandibles clicking with excitement. “Bo, do you have credit with the fleet’s Action Officer?”

  Hanst Bo had much of his next paycheck already devoted to wagers registered with the Action Officer, plus a few private prop bets here and there with members of the ship’s crew. Part of his reason for putting so much of his funds at risk was simple boredom, he craved action and a dull good-will tour was severely lacking in stimulation. Wisely, he had reserved funds to take advantage of juicy opportunities if they fell into his grasp. “Of course, Admiral,” he bowed from his thorax. “Do you wish to wager against me?”

  “Eh? No,” Tashallo was momentarily confused, then realized the communications specialist meant he wished to wager about the admiral’s reaction to the message. “Nothing so mundane, Bo,” Tashallo waved the flimsy message slip, then crumpled it and tossed it into a basket, where it flashed into dust. “I am talking about real action.”

  “Combat?” Bo continued at attention, but the involuntary muscles of his antennas caused them to slump slightly, a betrayal of his inner emotions he knew the admiral had noticed.

  “Yes, Bo, combat. Fear not, I am not contemplating taking the 98th into some simple fight against an overmatched enemy battlegroup, where we are sure to win easily, and the outcome will have no lasting effect on the war effort.”

  “No, Sir?” Bo’s antennas now stood straight up.

  “The 98th will be in a desperate battle for our very lives, Bo. If we are victorious, even the Kristang will compose an epic opera to commemorate our deeds. Go now, I need to speak with my captains.”

  As the door slid closed, Tashallo contemplated his reply to the Central Wagering Office. He was not happy with the reward odds for the proposed operation, nor the rules imposed by the Blue Squadron commander. The reward odds were still almost insulting, and his commanding officer insisted Tashallo be prepared to jump away if the powerful and highly-visible 98th ever got into actual danger. Neither of those two issues actually bothered Tashallo.

  What bothered him was, if he were successful in the upcoming fight, then it truly would be almost impossible to find someone to bet against him.

  CHAPTER THREE

 
; “That was section,” Jesse blinked slowly and checked the display on his left wrist. He was not so much tired as he was bored, worn out from the tedious routine day after day after day. “Uh, three four seven, Bravo. It’s Bravo this time, yay,” he announced with a level of enthusiasm usually reserved for getting a root canal or waiting in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles. “Clear.”

  “I am so stoked for section Charlie next,” Dave replied with a yawn.

  “Hey, look alive, you two,” Shauna called from their Dodo dropship, which was hanging in space fifty kilometers away, behind another asteroid. Their pilots had tucked the ship there so it would be safe, in case Cornpone and Ski found an active boobytrap inside the abandoned Kristang asteroid they were clearing. They hoped the Dodo they had been trusted with, the sophisticated Ruhar airspace craft that had been their home for three weeks, was safe, but they knew a missile or maser hidden in the asteroid field could hit them at any moment. The two pilots had explained that parking the Dodo behind an asteroid, that blocked their view of the away team, was not done to protect the ship from flying debris in case Cornpone and Ski set off a fatal boobytrap, it was so the Dodo’s defense shields and Proximity Defense System could be kept active continuously. Having a bulky asteroid between the Dodo and the away team meant that Dave and Jesse would not be exposed to flying shrapnel if the PDS cannons fired at an incoming missile. “It’s dangerous out there.”