by David Adams
Unknown, but not for long. Part one of their operation was complete. Their prey was away. “Helm,” she asked, “do we have it?”
There was a brief pause as her helmsman considered his screens. It seemed like an eternity to her; she waited for the confirmation that would either launch her new ship’s first real operation or doom them to more rear guard. More drills. More inspections and repairs and upgrades and fixes and…
“Confirmed,” said Lieutenant Peter Gurruwiwi, his white smile a half moon on his black face, his Australian accent thick as treacle. “We have the signal, ma’am. The coordinates of their jump have been downloaded. Plugging them into our jump drive.”
“Very good, Lieutenant,” said Sabeen, letting out a relieved breath she didn’t realise she’d been holding. She stood up properly. “Pass along the coordinates to the rest of the fleet, just in case they need them.” It was a shame that the Rubens, their sister ship, could not join them on this operation… but they were out on one of their long-distance missions, as was typical for the plucky little ship the had stolen from the Toralii.
Until the Rubens reported in, there was no way to contact them. “Start the clock. Let me know when we are ready to jump.”
“Aye aye, Captain,” Gurruwiwi said, his fingers flying over his keyboard. “Starting the clock.”
Above her, on the ceiling of their stolen Toralii ship, a timer flashed into existence and began to count down from twenty minutes. It was calculated by Captain Williams that twenty minutes should be the optimal pursuit time. Enough time for a ship to leave the jump point but not too soon for them to be followed.
Of course, if the ship double-jumped by heading to a decoy location first, they were totally screwed. But that was the nature of the gamble.
Time would tell.
She was the CO, but right at this moment, the stage belonged to Gurruwiwi. The endlessly cheery Australian was one of the few survivors of the destroyed ship TFR Sydney—a survivor only because he was one of a handful of crew stationed temporarily stationed the Washington as part of crew cross-training. Allah had spared him, and Sabeen thought it fitting that he should serve on the ship that bore his Captain’s namesake.
“Got it,” Gurruwiwi said. “Pulling up the coordinates and overlaying them over a galactic map.” He looked up from his console, eyes wide. “Captain, the ship jumped… to Kor’Vakkar. They’ve gone to Hades.”
Kor’Vakkar. Fleet Command had called it the ‘Hades’ system, but in the Toralii tongue, the name meant The Gateway of Eternal Ash. A dead system which used to be host to a huge shipyard and maintenance facility, and one of the Toralii Alliance’s significant logistical hubs. The raid there was Humanity’s first footprint on the galactic community, and the first one to bear significant fruit; their surprise assault had crippled a portion of the Toralii fleet. It was the first time the Pillars of the Earth had engaged the Toralii outside of Earth’s solar system.
Humanity was overdue for a return.
“Prep the jump drive,” said Sabeen, reaching up and adjusting her headscarf. “When the timer runs out, jump the ship.”
Hopefully the Toralii ship isn’t hanging around the Lagrange point, or else they’re going to get blown into subatomic particles.
She didn’t like going into a situation blind, but what option did she have? That ship was the only solid lead they had on Liao’s location, and the Beijing’s engineers had gone to considerable effort to plant the tracking device on the outer hull, and even more effort to patch the tiny device into the visiting ship’s systems.
They had a direct path into the Toralii ship’s computers.
“What do you think?” asked her XO, Major Alex “Jazz” Aharoni, his face split in a cocky smile. “Fancy a trip to Kor’Vakkar?”
“I’ve heard mixed things,” said Sabeen, smiling in return. “Nice weather. Lousy service. But I think it’s worth checking out.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if Liao’s being held there,” Jazz said. “We popped the shipyard that served as the main Toralii facility, but there were plenty of planets and stuff in that sector. It was a stronghold for the Alliance and it’s difficult to believe that they wouldn’t have other, smaller facilities in the sector given how remote and valueless it would be.”
It being valueless was a good point. Humans had a long, sordid history of squabbling over resources. What better place to hide a facility where nobody would go looking?
“Plus,” said Sabeen, “I imagine the Toralii Alliance gain a certain amount of satisfaction keeping her prisoner at the site of her most famous victory.”
“I agree,” Jazz said. He turned his monitor so that Sabeen could see it. An image of the Toralii ship was there, floating in space, a picture taken right before it jumped. “Flowing Water Over Smooth Pebbles is a strange name for a ship.”
“I suppose,” she answered, “but no stranger than, say, naming a ship after a dead guy.”
That was true. They went back to watching their screens. Sabeen leaned back, watching the ceiling.
Time ticked down. Every minute seemed to be stretched out, elongated, with nothing more to do but wait. Every non-vital system on the ship was shut down; they had to minimise their power signature if they hoped to follow the Smooth Pebbles without being detected.
Her operations crew grew nervous as well, although as she watched she really began to realise it was not nervousness at all, but eagerness. The crew of the Knight had been pieced together from various ships; Australian, American, Iranian, and even a few civilians taken from the general surviving populace. They had drilled and worked and prepared together, but never had they actually engaged in anything that resembled combat. It was time.
Her crew were ready to fight.
“Six minutes, Captain,” Gurruwiwi said. He didn’t need to. The giant numbers above them counted down accurately… but it was good to hear someone speak, if only to reassure her that she wasn’t alone.
Five minutes. Four minutes. Three. Two…
Her feet lifted off the deck as the artificial gravity switched off, the last of the vital systems aside from air. All around her operations was bathed in a faint purple light. The Toralii colour of warning. She held onto the railing as her headscarf floated above her hair.
“Ready to jump,” Gurruwiwi said. He too held tight to his console.
The Triumph class cruisers humanity had built each had a silver key—a pair of them—to activate the jump drive. Things were different on their stolen Toralii vessels. Everything was electronic.
“Execute the jump on my mark,” said Sabeen. “Three. Two. One. Mark!”
A faint tremor ran through the operations room. It was strange to feel; the much larger Human ships had no indication that a jump was taking place, but the smaller ships, despite their advanced technology, seemed to suffer more from the translocational effect.
“Jump complete,” Jazz said.
Immediately, the screens of her operations crew lit up and her console followed suit. The passive sensors screen was full of signals and the wail of collision alarms sounded all around her, kicking in all at once making everyone jump.
“Report!” Sabeen shouted over the din. Floating above her console, she cycled through available screens. “What the hell is going on?”
Ensign Enlai Eng, their sensors and radar operator, answered first. “Optical and thermal sensor contacts, ranges six hundred kilometres, eight hundred kilometres, more… none squawking IFF. Thousands of smaller reflections moving with the larger targets.”
“Evasive manoeuvres,” Jazz said. “Helm, bring the ship out of the Lagrange point.”
She ground her teeth. She had not anticipated this. Had she taken her crew into a trap on their first mission? If she turned on their radar system, they would be revealed. “What are they? Strike craft? Weapons?”
“No ma’am,” said Eng, floating above his station. “Based on the thermal spectrum and energy patterns… we appear to be inside a debris field. Metallurgical
composition is consistent with Toralii shipwork.”
Now that was worrying. “Debris field…?” Sabeen’s chest tightened. If they had jumped inside another ship, that ship would be shredded. “Did we stomp the Smooth Pebbles?”
There was a heart stopping moment as the operations crew consulted their instruments. If they had, Kamal’s note would be destroyed, along with their hope of tracking down where Liao and the other prisoners were. Twenty minutes had seemed like an eternity, but now she cursed herself. They should have waited longer. They should have waited…
“Negative, Captain,” Gurruwiwi said, the tension in his voice lessening as he spoke. “We’re still detecting the tracking signal in this sector, approximately seven thousand kilometres bearing 201 mark 119, accelerating away from the Lagrange point. They appear to be heading to a nearby planetoid. A small bugger. Barely anything to her.”
She exhaled and refocused her attention on the console before her. The Smooth Pebbles was completing its mission. Nothing to be alarmed about.
“Where did this debris come from?” she asked.
Eng tapped away at his keyboard. “Analysis of hull fragments suggest that they match the configuration of ships destroyed in the original raid on Kor’Vakkar. Passive sensors indicate that the debris field is extensive…it stretches across most of this system and has fallen into a predictable orbit. The pieces seem to be on a trajectory similar to an asteroid field.”
These weren’t contacts or threats. It had come from the battle fought here, and the devastation Liao and her crew had wrought on the system. They were ship fragments, bulkheads, bodies possibly… all manner of debris, preserved by space and darkness. They were sailing amongst the ghosts of past battles.
This was a good thing. The debris would provide cover for their approach.
As she was pondering this, another thought jumped into her head. All Task Force Resolution COs were issued specific commands: always retrieve any alien technology, especially Toralii civilian or military technology, for study and analysis. This was considered a high priority for the fleet and, typically, overrode mission objectives that were not mission-critical.
There was a significant potential treasure trove of cutting edge military technology circling Kor’Vakkar. Any one of the larger pieces could prove to be extremely valuable.
Of course, doing so would require them to abandon their mission to follow the Smooth Pebbles.
“Mister Eng, record the trajectory of those pieces and find out whatever we can about them. We’ll be back for them later, if we can, or possibly dispatch fleet assets to recover them.”
“Aye aye,” said Eng. “Logging everything we can.”
“Good. Now… get the hell out of here. Try to make it seem natural, like we’re a piece of this garbage.”
The Knight pulled away from the Lagrange point, adopting the same neutral drift as the debris field. The farther away it grew, the more tension flowed out of Sabeen and the rest of the crew.
“How is our little friend doing?” she asked, keeping her eyes on the ceiling, watching the holographic image of Smooth Pebbles. “Are they altering course? Are there any indications they spotted us?”
“No,” Jazz said. “Not yet. It looks like they’re heading right to that planet there.”
She switched the ceiling view to the indicated planetoid. It truly was tiny. Grey and barren, the planetoid had no life or atmosphere. Even the Toralii optics could pull only a low-resolution image at the distance they were at, especially with their systems at minimum capacity. Even with the limited imagery, though, she saw no lights or structures of any sort. Sensors indicated minimal thermal and electromagnetic traces. The frozen planet was just like any other dead world: an empty husk devoid of atmosphere, water, and life.
“You think she’s there?” Jazz peered over Sabeen’s shoulder, floating slightly above her as he looked at her monitor. “It’s basically a moon gone rogue. Even smaller than some we’ve seen.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “All I know is that Smooth Pebbles is heading that way.” She glanced at Gurruwiwi. “If they jump again, we can track them, right?”
“Too right,” Gurruwiwi said. “The signal is nice and strong. The virus we put into their systems is working.”
That was good. “Then let’s see how this plays out.” She touched her console. “Launch Broadswords. Begin phase two.”
With their ships away, the minutes stretched into hours. Sabeen tried to keep her focus as the Smooth Pebbles sailed unerringly towards the dead world, tailed by the ‘debris” that was their gunships. Gurruwiwi had named the planet Mullaŋan, a word that meant “little girl” in his native language. There was a part of it she couldn’t pronounce, some tricky slippery sound, but tried her best.
Despite her best efforts, her mind wandered. It was difficult to focus on their mission with hours of nothing, and the ship’s sensors would beep at her if there was anything that truly needed her attention. Her mind took her away from the strange system in alien space, and she thought of home.
Life in Tehran had been good to her. As a woman, but one who was wealthy and so had become a student of the military academy, she’d enjoyed a certain amount of leeway and privilege that her peers had not. Not enough to live in a place that wasn’t polluted, of course, even in the north. She had been glad she did not live in the south, where the air at sunset was a purple haze that blanketed the city and the lights of the streets and tall buildings struggled to compete with it. In the north, however, the light shone. Golden and bright from every window and street, they lit up the trees and tall buildings with colour. Her richly decorated, elevated house near the base of the Alborz mountains had offered a prime view of the city, and of the snow-capped mountains offered a serene, majestic companion to the industrialised, developed city.
Traffic had been terrible. The people were loud and rude, especially to women, but due to the lack of alcohol, it had been significantly safer in many respects, and the street life offered something to everyone. She’d been forced to wear a headscarf, which she found uncomfortable and irritating, but that came part and parcel with Islam. Shops, books, street markets… the city had been alive in a way no other city she had visited ever was—or would be again.
That place was gone, destroyed by the Toralii. Wounded, crippled, her people had only just begun to rebuild before the planet burned around them.
“What do you think?” Jazz asked.
The words jolted Sabeen out of her thoughts, catapulting her back to the present. She wasn’t in Tehran anymore; she was aboard a stolen Toralii freighter delivering a rescue mission to a suspected prison camp, and she had no business daydreaming.
“I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I-I wasn’t paying attention. Say again?”
Jazz grinned. “I asked if you had any thoughts on the fleet rumours regarding peace with the Toralii.”
She glanced around, seeing the eyes of the operations crew upon her. “I’m… not sure this is a good time and place to discuss the matter. We are on duty.”
His face fell, and she suspected he was offended by the mild rebuke. His posture stiffened slightly, and his tone became more formal. “Understood, Captain. My mistake. Captain Williams tends to run a less… formal ship, especially during long missions with significant downtime. I assumed you would adopt the same position.”
Although she had been the Tehran’s temporary CO several times, she had always operated under Captain Grégoire’s direct or indirect authority. Now it was her ship. She could set the rules.
Williams, as a former fighter pilot, ran a notoriously informal ship. People called each other by their callsigns, rank was largely ignored, and everyone swore and bantered openly. It was too much for her, and she could not understand how military discipline could possibly be upheld in such an environment, even if she could not dispute the Rubens’s extremely proud track record. Especially impressive for a vessel of her tonnage, the Rubens had sunk more Toralii shipping than any other c
raft, save the Beijing. As a former fighter pilot himself, Jazz also preferred to be called by his callsign most of the time and probably preferred similarly informal operations, especially during downtimes.
That was fine, but the Knight was her ship. Her ship—her rules. Still. He made a good point.
“Sorry,” she said, straightening her back. “I’m… still figuring out how we’re going to run this ship. The Rubens spent a lot of time away from the rest of the fleet; the Knight is, in all likelihood, going to do the same. I’d rather we be a family, in that situation, than simply…” She struggled to find the right word. “Coworkers.”
“Aye aye,” Jazz said. “Was hoping you’d say that.”
She smiled. “Right. So… peace with the Toralii, right?”
Jazz, seemingly relieved she was asking about it, leaned against his console. “Thoughts on that?”
“Never,” Sabeen said, the playfulness slowly falling out of her voice. “The Toralii burned Earth to a cinder. I’d rather see them all writhing in the deepest pit of hell.”
“Even the Telvan?” Jazz asked.
She considered for a brief second then shook her head. “The Telvan aren’t so bad. I meant the Alliance.”
Gurruwiwi spoke up. “I’d be careful of that, Captain.”
She raised an eyebrow curiously. “How do you mean?”
He seemed momentarily uncomfortable, and for a little while, said nothing.
Sabeen could understand. Questioning the Captain… “Permission to speak your mind, Lieutenant.”
That seemed to help.
“War is a risky prospect,” Gurruwiwi said. “Humans are a small species now. We don’t have the raw numbers to fight any battle we can’t win. That’s why we’re here saving Captain Liao… because she’s a Human, and we need her. We fight to survive, not for vengeance.”
“I agree,” said Sabeen. “Although Liao’s experience and tactical expertise will be valuable in the future, if we can retrieve her.”
