It was an inheritance from the Nationalist Wars, constructed by the Atlantic Alliance during the final years of the fighting to support the overwhelming space fleet that the politicians had hoped would provide the final victory to justify the overwhelming cost of the conflict. That dream had died at the Battle of Tau Ceti, the largest battle in the history of humanity, one that ended with no victors, no glory. A bitter, bloody stalemate that forced all sides to the peace table. Which in itself was one kind of victory.
When the wars ended, the station was turned over to the Terran Republic, a monument to past glories. Since then, it had become a quiet, dull posting, a place where careers went to die, home for dreamers and thinkers who were more concerned in working out their careers and returning to their lives down on the surface. Before the war, some had even lived on Earth, commuting to the station by shuttle.
For Commodore Laura Maddox, it had been a prison. Once, she had been a high-flyer, on her way to the command of a fleet, to the top of the service. All of that had ended, and she’d found herself on Gateway Station with a staff that barely justified a Commander, still less a one-star flag officer. A single aide, her ever-loyal Lieutenant Moreau, and a mission that consisted mostly of endlessly monitoring the mothballed facilities, making sure that if the need arose, they’d be ready.
Three months ago, that had finally happened.
Calm gave way to panic, the staff doubled once, twice, thrice in a desperate move to prepare the fleet for battle, to mobilize all possible ships for action. The scant reserve formation was brought into the line in a matter of weeks, then a collection of merchant ships deemed suitable for conversion. That had been easy. Frantic, but easy. Now Gateway Station was to build a new battle fleet, larger than any ever conceived, to take the fight to the enemy, out among the stars.
Maddox looked up from her desk, staring at the viewport on her office wall, a line of half-built ships stretching out as far as she could see, dozens of hulks in the process of construction, hundreds of engineers working with thousands of drones to put the ships into the line as rapidly as they possibly could. And every day, new designs coming up from the surface, new ideas to be turned into reality. Ships of every class and type, from the smallest scout to the biggest battleship.
There was a knock on her door, and Moreau walked inside, a tablet in his hand and a stern look on his face. He stood at attention opposite her, and she gestured for him to sit down.
“Anything new, Lieutenant?” she asked.
“The latest batch of requisition reports for your approval,” he began. “Notes for disciplinary action on the two technicians caught with those grey-market computer parts. I’ve looked into it, and they weren’t doing anything that would have adversely affected the capability of the ship.”
“What was the reason, then?”
“Speed. Apparently, it was faster for them to get the components they needed from a ‘friend of a friend’ than to order them through channels. I’ve had them tested, and they match military-grade hardware. We’re still trying to find out just where they got them from, but that’s a matter for the military police down on the surface.” He paused, then said, “I have the impression that they had at least tacit approval from their superior, and I suspect that if we start digging too deeply, we’re going to find this going on all over the place.”
“I agree,” she replied. “One of the arts of command, Lieutenant, is knowing when you shouldn’t know something. I think this counts. What’s your recommendation? Administrative punishment?”
“All leave cancelled for two months, extra duty shifts.”
She cracked a smile, then replied, “Everyone is working under those strictures anyway.” She paused, then asked, “Did you manage to cancel my request for leave?”
“I did, but it was surprisingly difficult,” Moreau said. “Strange that it wasn’t done automatically with the rest of them.”
“I’m not surprised,” she said. “If I’d gone planetside for two weeks, I’d have come back to find that someone else had taken this chair, and I’d be heading to some lonely outpost on the frontier to cool my heels for the rest of the war. I think I’ll just stay where I am, at least for the time being.” She smiled, then added, “Though the legion of people who had pictured themselves as my replacements will doubtless be disappointed.”
“I would feel the same, ma’am,” Moreau replied. “I have the latest dispatches as well, but I’m afraid they’re pretty grim reading. There’s still no contact with any survivors from Triton, and no search and rescue ships are to be dispatched. The last stragglers from Proxima made it home last night, but they sustained heavy casualties fighting their way back to friendly space. More rumblings from Mars about the neutrality stance, some indications that their politicians are concerned about choosing sides.”
“I suppose I can’t blame them for that,” she said. “Any good news?”
“The last two convoys to Mars and Venus made it back with no trouble, no sign of attack. Fleet Intelligence suggests that the Belters are lulling us into a false sense of security, hoping that we might weaken our escort forces and open ourselves up to a strike.”
“That’s not going to happen any time soon,” she said. “To sum all of this up, we’re holding the territory that is within easy reach, cislunar space and the trading links to the inner planets, but that’s just about all. The last of our outposts beyond the solar system are falling as fast as the Belters can reach them, and the prospects of forcing a confrontation which would be to our advantage are remote at best. Does that sound about right?”
“I’m afraid so, ma’am,” Moreau replied. “Stalemate, at least for the present. Unless the Belters can change the picture, then they’re unlikely to actually break through our lines in a hurry, but we don’t have the ability to project any significant strength much beyond Mars either. We’ve also lost track of Goliath after its attack on our supply depots at Epsilon Indi. Admiralty believes that it’s preparing for a major attack, perhaps to support their next efforts to establish a foothold on Luna.”
“Rationally, I suppose no would be a good time for a peace conference, but the Belters would ask for too much, and we’d yield too little,” she said.
Raising his eyebrow, Moreau said, “You’d concede?”
“How much is this war going to cost, Lieutenant? In terms of lives, resources, ships? I’m not even just talking about Earth. It’s going to hurt the Belt as well. We’re fighting over a few resource worlds, scattered over a couple of dozen light-years. I can’t help but think that everything we’re throwing into the war could be better spent finding new worlds than fighting over old ones. It’s a big enough galaxy. There’s room for Earth and the Belt.”
“I would be careful about that sort of talk if I were you, ma’am.”
She cracked a smile, then asked, “Are you going to report me for defeatism, Lieutenant?”
“Of course not, Commodore.”
Shaking her head, she sighed, then said, “This isn’t quite what I had in mind when I joined the Academy. I figured I’d end up on the bridge of a starship, heading out into the great unknown. Not riding a desk.”
“Speaking purely personally, ma’am, I am precisely where I expected to be. Some of us are quite happy working behind the scenes, rather than at the tip of the spear. And they also serve, Commodore, who only stand and wait.” He placed the tablet in front of her, and said, “There’s something else, a shuttle out of standard pattern. It launched out of somewhere in North America, about fifteen minutes ago. No clearance.”
“Our fault or Earth’s?”
“I suspect neither, ma’am. My guess is that we’ve stumbled across some more of the smugglers. The pilot of the shuttle was rather belligerent when questioned, and I decided it was prudent to permit him to dock.”
“And have every search team on the station waiting when they arrive,” Maddox replied. “Smart. When is the shuttle scheduled to arrive?”
“In about eight minutes,
Commodore. I’ve alerted Major Rojek to be at the ready, and he’s got a team standing by in case they show any resistance.” He paused, then said, “About Major Rojek, ma’am…”
“I don’t know anything about him either,” she replied. “Just that he’s a temporary replacement for Colonel Childress, and that he’ll be heading back down to the surface in a week. I picked up a few strong hints that he was ticking off a few boxes on his requirements for promotion, but from what I’ve seen of him, he somehow doesn’t look the type.”
“Maybe, ma’am, but he does seem to at least be doing his job. A little better than Childress, actually. He helped catch those two technicians.”
She raised an eyebrow, and said, “Are you sure…”
“No, Commodore, he didn’t have anything to do with it. If he was that good an actor, he’d be in movies.” He looked at his watch, then said, “That shuttle should be on approach now.”
She nodded, rose from her chair, and led the way out of her office, down the corridor to the cavernous Operations room beyond. Until two months ago, this room had been mothballed as well, just like the rest of the station, but now it was a hive of activity, dozens of technicians moving from console to console, struggling to coordinate the orbital traffic, the construction work, cargo shipments, a thousand other details that had to be organized.
The defense of orbital space was down to Guardian Station, five hundred miles above them. There was a time when Guardian had been the privileged assignment, command viewed as a reward for the end of an illustrious career, a retirement present. Now there were a dozen flag officers lusting over her posting, and though it was hardly the assignment she’d dreamed about, she saw no reason to indulge them.
Moreau moved over to the nearest vacant console, his hands working the controls to bring the image of the shuttle into stark relief. Immediately, Maddox realized there was something wrong, the trajectory plot deviating from the flight plan programmed into the computer. She looked questioningly at her aide, who immediately started to calculate the new trajectory, turning a few seconds later with a frown on his face.
“It looks like she’s heading for Avenger, ma’am,” he said. “A flyby.”
“Any sign of armament on board?” Maddox asked. “Are we looking at some kind of Trojan Horse here?”
“Nothing on the outside of the shuttle, and according to the sensors, there are only a few hand weapons on board, nothing that wouldn’t be accounted for by the shuttle’s weapons locker. Everything looks precisely as it should be, except that the shuttle isn’t going where it told us it was.”
“She’s slowing,” one of the duty technicians reported. “I think she’s planning to dock with her.” He looked at a monitor, then turned to face Maddox, eyes wide, saying, “Commodore, that ship’s unmanned. The crew was all given shore leave.”
“What?” she asked. “The entire ship’s complement is missing? Who in the name of hell authorized that?”
“It didn’t come through our office,” Moreau said. “I would have flagged that as soon as I saw it.” His hands were a blur on his controls, and he added, “I can see the order, but it came directly from the Bureau of Engineering. We weren’t even formally notified.”
“I am picking up a life reading on Avenger,” the technician said. “One female. Can’t tell who, but the manifest of the transfer shuttle shows five passengers, not six. One of the original crew must have stayed behind.”
“I have a horrible feeling I know what’s happened here,” Maddox said, “and I will be damned if I let it happen on my station! Not on my watch!” Turning to Moreau, she ordered, “Get Major Rojek moving right away. I want assault shuttles over on Avenger now.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
Glaring at the duty controller, she continued, “Lieutenant, what ships are close by. We must have something down here that can go after them!”
“Pericles and Indomitable, ma’am, but…”
“A scout and a cruiser. Get them moving.”
“They’re on stand-down for maintenance, Commodore. It hasn’t started yet, but most of their crews are down on Earth for leave, and…”
“I’m not sending them to Andromeda, Lieutenant! Get them moving, and get them moving now, and tell their commanders that if they don’t get after Avenger in the next five minutes, they’ll be looking for another line of work!” She turned to Moreau, and added, “Where are the Marines?”
“Taking too long,” he said. “I’m getting them moving now.”
“Good,” she replied. “Good. Tell the Major I want prisoners. Someone’s betrayed us. I want to know who.”
Chapter 6
It was almost unbelievably strange to be alone on a starship. To know that you were the only person on board, a ship that theoretically could hold more than a hundred people. Carter sat at the sensor station, a sandwich in one hand as she poked at the controls with another, finishing up the last details of the calibration process.
She yawned as the final sequence began, then glanced up at the clock over the viewscreen. Only twenty minutes before she had to be on the transit shuttle, but that wasn’t going to be a problem. Plenty of time. Besides, if she knew Hanson, he was already sleeping off a monumental drinking binge, and checking on whether she’d left the ship on time would have been the last thing on his mind.
And in any case, what exactly could he do, even if he did? It wasn’t as though he’d be able to ruin her career any more than it already had been. One of her instructors at the Academy had warned her to watch out, to be careful not to over-specialize in one particular field, that the generalists had the best career path. One more case where she should have paid more attention to good advice when she had the chance.
Finishing her sandwich, she licked the sauce from her fingers then rose from her seat, the last of the testing sequences completed, the sensors now calibrated. At least she could go down to the surface with something like a clean conscience. She pondered the invitation from Lopez again, considering for a moment whether to head down to Houston, or whether to try out her old hometown instead, see if there was anyone there she remembered. Anyone there she wanted to remember, anyway.
Her thoughts were interrupted by an amber light on the display. A shuttlecraft, heading towards Avenger. She focused a short-range sensor on the incoming craft, muttering under her breath.
“Hanson, you bastard, what the hell do you think you are doing?” she cursed, shaking her head in disbelief. The identification code indicated nothing unusual. Just another interface shuttle, heading up from the surface, with a flight plan indicated that they were heading for Gateway Station, not Avenger. Probably just a few curious engineers wanting to get a close look at the new ship before reporting to their new duty station. It wasn’t uncommon.
Nevertheless, they were getting way off trajectory. Far enough that they were in danger of violating traffic regulations. Far enough to be a risk.
She stabbed a button and said, “Shuttle One-Nine, this is Avenger. State your intentions, please?” After a few seconds, with no reply, she repeated, “Shuttle One-Nine, this is Avenger Actual, state your intentions?” She sat down at her console again, and said, “Shuttle One-Nine, reply at once or I will be forced to engage my defensive sub-systems.”
There was still no reply, and she quickly slaved the relevant controls to her console, starting to bring up the defenses, frowning as the systems failed to activate, a series of alert lights flashing on to warn her of a series of malfunctions in the command interfaces.
Nobody had so much as touched those systems in months, aside from the routine tests. Unless someone had made a monumental error, they should be working fine. The shuttle continued to close, swinging around and cutting speed for what had to be a planned rendezvous and docking. It couldn’t be anything else, not at this stage.
“Avenger to Gateway Traffic Control,” she said. “Avenger to Gateway Traffic Control. I am declaring an emergency situation. Suspected enemy forces are inbound. Request Marine
support at once.” Again, there was no reply, and she scrambled for the controls, tapping and swiping in a desperate bid to make contact with someone, with anyone. Trying and failing.
There was nothing she could do. The whole system was locked out, every command interface, and she couldn’t do anything with the ship. Couldn’t even send out a distress signal. At least that explained why Hanson was so eager to see her off the ship in a hurry. Someone was attempting to steal Avenger. There was no other explanation that made any sense.
Whoever they were, they couldn’t do anything about the detectors, and they couldn’t do anything about the pistol she had at her belt. She pulled her sidearm from her holster, checked that the ammunition clip was in position, charging points connected, and looked at the sensors again to work out where the shuttle was approaching. Docking Airlock One, just aft from the bridge. That made sense, at least. They’d be in a hurry.
And she would be waiting for them.
Unsurprisingly, the elevator didn’t open. The would-be hijackers had done an extremely thorough job. Fortunately, the manual override on the maintenance crawlspace worked first time, and she slid inside, scrambling through the narrow passage in a bid to beat the shuttle to the airlock, her pistol still in her hand as she raced to her destination. She knew the layout of this ship by heart, every short cut, every access point, and she reached the hatch at the end of the passage with seconds to spare.
She dropped down into the corridor beyond, standing in front of the airlock, pistol raised to cover the hatch, ready to shoot down the first person to step inside. She might not be able to stop the hijackers taking Avenger, but she could certainly make them pay a heavy price for their actions.
Impatiently, she waited for the hatch to open, reaching to the wall to bring up an external camera feed, the image appearing on the hatch as though it had become transparent, showing the shuttle firing its thrusters to guide in for a smooth docking. With a barely audible clang, the locks engaged, and the airlock cycled to open the doors. At last, the hatch slid open.
Shadow of Oblivion Page 5
