The Aggressive (Book 1 of the Titanwar saga): A science fiction thriller

by Gem Jackson

  They were all still looking at him.

  “I’ve got an idea,” he said.

  “Oh good,” said Sleet, rolling her eyes. “I’m glad to hear that. In the meantime, we’ve got incoming communications.”

  “From who?”

  “There’s a recorded message from APSA, arrived from one of the lunar bases. There are also live calls from Titan and the Cronus.”

  “Let’s hear from APSA. Tell the others we’ll be with them shortly.” A murmur of laughter flitted around the room. “See if you can’t find some music for them while they’re on hold.”

  Sleet threw him a sloppy salute. “Aye, Captain. Unless I fuck this up, this should be APSA on the main speaker.” She leaned close to the control panel, scrunching up her face before picking out the correct sequence on the glassy surface.

  “This is APSA command,” said the voice on the recording. It was clear and calm. “This is for the attention of the current occupants of the APSA heavy cruiser Aggressive. You are instructed to move away Titan with the utmost haste and calculate a jump to Ceres where you will rendezvous—”

  Leon waved the voice away. “Cut that thing off. They can go to hell if they think I’m backing down now.”

  Sleet slapped her thigh and joined in a chorus of approval from the others.

  “Good work, Starflight,” said Hail. “Welcome to our world.”

  Leon felt the smile stretching into his cheeks and batted away the compliments.

  “C’mon, we’re not done yet,” he said. “Let’s hear what Captain Motion has to say, shall we?”

  Leon ran his tongue over his lips. The sweat from the effort of moving the bodies had left them dry and chapped, yet salty and bitter at the same time. He cleared his through a couple of times and scanned the room. They were all still looking at him. Silent.

  “Come in Cronus, this is Aggressive actual.” The sparse control room swallowed his voice. His tongue felt too big for his mouth. He released his finger from the microphone switch and waited for a response. When it came, the speakers filled the air with the clipped voice of a commander at ease with his position.

  “Hello Aggressive actual, this is Captain Thomas Motion.” A pause. “Who am I speaking to precisely?”

  Leon looked around, wide-eyed, at the other crew. “I don’t want to give my name.” he said.

  Sleet leaned into her mic on the communication console.

  “Captain Motion, you’re speaking to Captain Starflight,” she said, shrugging. Torren put his head into his hands, while the rest of them tried hard not to laugh.

  “Starflight? My boy, is that you?” Motion sounded elated, which given his granite voice, was deeply unnerving. “Oh, that is wonderful news. Now, don’t be nervous young man, you’ve done a great thing for your nation. Your achievement in capturing the Aggressive is a victory shared by everyone on Titan. Do you hear me, boy? You’re a hero.”

  Leon grimaced. It would be so easy to fold. To reply with his own jubilant tone and negotiate terms. He closed his eyes and rubbed a hand over his face, resisting the urge to go down that route. He understood what lay further down that road. When he opened his eyes again Sleet was shaking her head; a warning.

  “You misunderstand, Captain.” Leon kept his voice as flat as possible. “We haven’t taken the Aggressive for Titan. We have taken it and we intend to keep it.” Nobody laughed this time, but they were with him. He saw the approval in their eyes. They all knew what that meant to defy Motion and still they were with him.

  “Come now, young man, don’t be foolish. I’m sure we can reach an arrangement. If you’re concerned about consequences relating to your abandonment of the Cronus, I can assure you—”

  Leon interrupted. “You’re not getting this ship, Captain. I’m giving you and your crew notice to stand-down. Return to Titan and we shall jump away. If you do not change course, if you follow us when we jump, then consider this fair warning; you will be fired upon.” He was sweating again. The pirate crew all but danced around the control room at his performance. He felt taller. Broader. Stronger.

  “Leon—it is Leon, isn’t it? Don’t do something you may later regret.” Motion’s voice had hardened. “You’re a child of the revolution, Leon. Your father was a martyr. He was a revolutionary. He fought for this. While you were suckling at your mother’s teat, he was waging a war. He died at the hands of the old state, fighting for an independent Titan. Are you going to turn your back on him? Are you going to disgrace the memory of your father? Think about it.”

  Leon gripped the arms of the chair. His fingers went numb.

  “My father wasn’t a revolutionary, a martyr, a terrorist or anything else. He’s dead, and that’s all there is to it. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I met him, Leon,” said Motion. “It was many years ago, but I met him. I remember. He was full of fire, full of life. He believed in an independent Titan. You can help fulfil that dream, Leon. Bring the ship home for your father. For Titan. A hero’s welcome awaits you. You can have it all.”

  “No.”

  “This is your last chance.”

  “No. Stop calling me Leon. I’m the captain of the Aggressive.”

  “We’ll take the ship either way, Leon. You can’t outrun us. There’s nowhere to hide a vessel that size. Hand it over now or we will board you and take it by force.”

  “No.”

  “Hell, I’ll drag you off myself, you little shit.”

  Leon spoke slowly. He wasn’t nervous anymore. He thought about Ardbeg and the grenades. He thought about Murray and hammer. He thought about Ramis and the gaping exit wound in his chest. The well of anger that perpetually sat somewhere beneath his ribs threatened to explode. But it didn’t. Instead, what came out were words, pouring like lava; relentless, searing, unstoppable.

  “You’re not having this ship. You’re not taking this crew. I know I can’t keep it. I’ll have to give it up eventually, but I’ll be damned if I let you have it.” Motion went to say something, but Leon raised his voice over the top of him. “You’re angry because you know you’re powerless. Your threats are empty. We’re more powerful than you. This ship is bigger. It has more guns. All you have are words. You should listen to me, Captain Motion; my threats are not empty. Turn back now or I will blast you and your ship apart.” He turned to Sleet. “Could you broadcast what I say next on open frequencies? So it gets picked up by anyone who might be listening in?”

  She nodded and fiddled at her station a little. “Done. You’re on, Starflight.”

  “The Titan ship Cronus and all accompanying vessels are ordered to alter course immediately or they will be fired upon and destroyed. To the crew of the Cronus I say this—if your captain takes you into combat, you will lose. I suggest you abandon ship or else you risk becoming a casualty of whatever absurd stand-off this has turned into. You have been warned.” He signalled to Sleet to cut the transmission.

  This was it. There was no way that Motion would let them get away with the Aggressive. If he was honest with himself, Leon wasn’t half as confident as he sounded. Motion had a full complement of crew on-board, all drilled and prepared for war. He didn’t know anything about the Cronus’ combat ability, aside from the fact that it’s T-jump capabilities far outstripped their own. Was the same true of its rail-guns? It didn’t matter. The die was cast.

  “Torren, could you and Birch co-ordinate a three-minute barrage directed at the Cronus? If you can, keep it to roughly a third of the starboard batteries. The rails will degrade as we use them and without a bigger crew replacing them will be hard. We’ve got to preserve the ship as much as possible. Plus, if they do have short range jump capability, there’s no reason a ship like that will stick around waiting to be hit. This is basically a decoy.”

  “Agreed,” said Torren.

  “Once you’ve got it locked in,” continued Leon, “I’d like you to plot a second barrage from the port-side, directed at a fixed point around thirty kilometres directly
away from us.”

  Torren looked confused. “Into empty space?”

  “I know, it doesn’t make, sense—just trust me, okay?”

  “Fuck!” It was Hail. “Three more capital warships have just lit themselves up.”

  “What? How did we miss them?” asked Sleet.

  “They were probably disguised as commercial ships. Fake IFF beacons, no active sensors, looming about like cattle,” said Torren. “Unless anyone looked at them directly, they could do it for weeks unnoticed. It’s how we used to operate when we were waiting to hijack ships. No reason they can’t do it too.”

  “That means we’re outnumbered,” said Sleet.

  “And outgunned,” added Leon. “But it doesn’t change anything.” She looked at him, mouth all but agape. “It really doesn’t.” He turned to Hail, seated at the sensor panels. “I want you to focus on the Cronus. The second you see an energy surge for a T-jump, you tell me. Okay?” She nodded. “And I mean the absolute second. It’s crucial.”

  “Torren, how is the starboard barrage looking?”

  “Dialled in and ready to go.”

  “Excellent. I think we’re ready. One last thing, Sleet, can you broadcast one last message to Captain Motion? I’m not bothered about a response, he just needs to hear this.”

  Sleet, confused, put the call through.

  “Captain Motion, I can’t help but notice the colour you had the Cronus painted. Birch, is Captain Motion in a red-ship?” He pointed to the screen showing a reasonably well focused image of the Cronus, its alabaster paintwork gleaming in the reflected glow of Saturn and Titan.

  “No, Cap,” said Birth. He smiled at Leon. This felt right. “It’s not a red ship.”

  “That’s right, it’s not a red ship, it’s a white ship. Fire control? Commence barrage, if you please.”

  The relative calm of the control room was shattered in an instant. A cacophony of noise ensued as dozens of individual rail-guns fired over their eight second cycles. It felt as if the Aggressive was battering itself apart. Alarms and sirens sprang into life as multiple targeting system were trained on the ship.

  “We’re being targeted by at least ten vessels,” shouted Sleet. “We should jump away, it’s too many.”

  “No,” said Leon. “Most of those are the smaller ships. Has anyone actually fired on us yet?”

  Sleet checked. “No. They’re just aiming at us.”

  “Just keep an eye out for that power surge.”

  “The smaller ships are shooting.”

  “Ignore them.”

  They were a minute into the barrage. The Cronus had to jump; he felt it in his bones. If not, this could become a slug-fest. They could shoot for hours and the Cronus could simply jump away every time a barrage got near. A memory came to Leon, of playing chess with his uncle as a child. By the end of the game Leon had the upper hand, possessing his king and a bishop versus his uncle’s king. Yet, no matter how he moved, he couldn’t get his uncle in check. The older man had smiled and teased him for the best part of an afternoon as he shifted his king here and there, slipping through the traps Leon laid for him. In the end he had been forced to take a draw. He felt cheated at the time. Was this going to be the same?

  Then it happened. Hail and Sleet yelled together.

  “Power surge from the Cronus. They’re preparing to jump.”

  “Hold on tight,” said Leon. He closed his eyes to better visualise the sequence of moves needed.

  “More power surges,” said Hail. “The other capital ships are jumping as well.”

  There was panic in her voice. Outnumbered. Outgunned. Outmanoeuvred.

  “Torren, prepare to lock on and fire with that port-side battery as soon as you get a viable target.”

  “Aye, Captain.” That made Leon smile; Captain.

  He let his hands fly across the panel, inputting the movement sequences needed to counter the Cronus. He understood the tolerances of the Aggressive, at least in theory, and hoped that he wasn’t miscalculating. It felt like he was spinning plates again, operating at his limits.

  The ship lurched as his navigation commands were put into action.

  “What the hell are you doing?” said Torren. So much for deference. “The barrage isn’t complete yet. It’s going to be thrown off.”

  “It doesn’t matter. The Cronus is jumping. Think about it, if you wanted to take out a ship like this and you could jump short distances, where would you jump?”

  “Somewhere close,” said Sleet. “Close enough to surprise your enemy and get the drop on them.”

  “Exactly, only you wouldn’t put your head in front of a shotgun, would you?” said Leon. “So—”

  “You’d jump to face a weak spot. A side with no weapons.”

  “Right. One that was vulnerable,” said Leon. They were following now.

  “The engines!”

  Leon beamed. They understood. The Cronus disappeared from the tactical environment board. It had jumped.

  “What have you done?” asked Sleet.

  “Get ready, Torren,” said Leon. He faced Sleet. “We’re doing an about face.” His stomach did somersaults as the inertial dampers struggled to compensate for the violent movements of the ship. “I’ve stood us upright to begin with, pitched ninety degree upward, and that shift you felt then, that was a quarter roll to starboard. Instead of jumping to face our engines, they’ll be pointing at our port side rail-gun batteries.”

  “The Cronus is back,” said Hail. “Fuck, she’s close. Fifty kilometres off our port side. Double fuck, there are two other ships with it.”

  “Torren, can you get a lock?”

  “Working on it, it’ll take a few seconds.”

  Leon chewed his hand and resisted the urge to interrupt the Murpo. It was now a race to see who could lock their weapon batteries on first. It normally took a ship a few minutes to bring their systems on-line after a jump and re-orientate the sensors and other gyroscopic systems. With their own port weapons already broadly pointing in the right direction, a quick re-alignment might shave a few precious seconds off. He prayed that would be enough of an advantage.

  “We’re locked on.”

  “Fire. Full broadside, Torren, give ‘em everything. Birch, shut down the starboard batteries.”

  The noise became unbearable. There were thirty-six batteries on the port side—a hundred and forty-four individual guns. Everyone in the room looked at the screens at the front. Leon maximised the image, spreading the port optical sensor feeds across all the screens. The high albedo of Titan and Saturn combined with the short physical distance lit the Titan ships up as if they had floodlights trained on them. It also meant they had an excellent image of what was occurring. It was horrifying. Around them the Aggressive roared like an engine of hell, spewing hot metal at the vessels on the screen. It took just a few seconds—maybe twelve? Fifteen?—for the flashing metal to span the void between them.

  The three vessels hung together, just a few kilometres apart. The unusual attitude of the Aggressive, which had reared up ninety degrees in relation to the solar plane, meant the enemy ships appeared stacked in a column, nose to tail. Each was decorated with the same white livery, cut with a stark, red-flash stripe across the rear third. Leon felt a pang of jealousy. The Aggressive was an ugly beast, all brutal lines and sharp angles. It was an image of industrial utility. The Titan ships, on the other hand, were beautiful. They began to move, slowly at first, bringing their own weapons to bear. It was as if they had been stunned and were only just waking to their situation. But it was too late.

  The storm of sabot fragments engulfed all three vessels. Explosions bloomed across each of their hulls. It happened again, and again, and again. They were shredded under the onslaught. There was a flash of light from the ship in the middle, which dazzled the optics for a second. A sabot must have hit the hydrogen fuel line. As the image returned the ship had been split into three pieces, each slowly spinning away from the others. Gas and fire flared from the wre
ckage for a couple of seconds before succumbing to the vacuum of space. Tiny fragments of the ship formed a haze between the broken parts of the ship, twinkling like glitter in a snow-globe.

  “Incoming fire!” said someone.

  Leon pulled himself away from the screen. “The fourth ship! Of course.”

  He scanned the tactical board and located it directly ahead of them. It had obviously aimed to jump on top of them, but had ended up staring down the barrel of the Aggressive’s forward weapon batteries.

  “Torren, enemy straight ahead. Forward batteries, lock-on and fire, please.”

  He didn’t hear the response over the chaos, but saw the former warfare officer go to work.

  “The second ship has gone down.”

  Leon looked back at the optical feed. The top-most ship was reduced to pieces now. Multiple hull breaches had torn it open from end to end, spilling people and parts out into space. Still their own guns fired. The third vessel had acquired a firing solution on them and had begun its own barrage, though it was but a fraction of what the Aggressive could muster.

  “We’re taking damage,” said Hail. “Two hull breaches across the mid-section.”

  “Hold fast,” shouted Leon. The Titan ships couldn’t withstand much more of this.

  There was another flash, this time from the third vessel. Only it wasn’t an explosion, but bore the tell-tale marks of a T-jump.

  “They’ve run!” shouted Hail. “I repeat, the remaining ships have jumped away. We did it! They fucked off.”

  Leon checked the tactical environment board, then the optical feeds. There was no sign of the two remaining Titan vessels. Just two shattered wrecks and half a dozen escape pods that had managed to find a way out of the madness.

  Leon closed his eyes and collapsed back into the seat. “Cease fire. Cease fire.”

  He heard the rest of them celebrate around him. He sank into exhaustion and offered no resistance when Hail barrelled over and picked him up in a rib-crushing bear hug.