Q-Ship Chameleon

by Glynn Stewart

  “We have two days before I plan on kicking off the attack. Let’s see if we can find a way to get the supplies we need without losing anyone.”

  Before Huī Xing, the brainstorming would have been useful, but he’d have had a plan to start from. Now…now he didn’t trust his own plans. The first-strike, shock-and-awe, aggressive tactics he’d used earlier in his career had pulled him into a trap there that had almost got his entire command wiped out.

  He still had the instinct, but he didn’t trust it. Part of him wanted to go full bore, bluff their way as close as they could under a TCN shipping ID and do to the Zions what another Terran Q-ship had done to the main station in the Hessian system at the start of the war: blow them apart with lances at close range.

  If they could pull it off, they’d knock out the main defenses, destroy the control center for the defensive satellites, and launch their assault shuttles and starfighters at point-blank range to secure the rest of the depot.

  It would be a very “Stellar Fox” plan…but the man who’d once rammed a battleship found himself unable to trust his instincts.

  #

  The door to Kyle’s office chimed softly, informing him that someone was requesting admission. It was late enough that the ensign who would normally be holding down the door and screening his appointments was gone, sent off to his well-deserved rest from playing Captain’s watchdog.

  His implant informed him that Mister Glass was outside, holding what looked like a paper bag, of all things. They didn’t have a scheduled meeting. Kyle was up late going over the plan they’d put together for the Aurelius system, but he was content with what his staff had put together.

  With a thought, he opened the door and waved the spy in.

  “Have a seat, Agent Glass,” Kyle told the older man with an expansive wave. “What can I do for you?”

  “The ship seems oddly quiet tonight,” Glass said softly. “I feel like I’m walking through a library. Is this…normal?”

  “When we’re going into battle? It depends,” the Captain replied. “If you think it’s too quiet, go visit the flight deck lounge or the Marine barracks. More than enough noise there for anyone!”

  “I’ll pass,” the spy said dryly. “Here. Peace offering.”

  He opened the paper bag and pulled out two tumblers, a small cooler of ice, and a dusty black bottle.

  “This came all the way from Earth, one of six bottles I bought in Scotland a very long time ago,” the spy said quietly. “It’s not the last, and it’s been opened before, but I don’t share this with a lot of people. You saved my life on Judecca Station.”

  Glass dropped several ice cubes into each glass and then poured a generous two fingers of amber liquid over them before sliding a glass gently across the table.

  Kyle took it carefully, sniffing at the unfamiliar scent.

  “I think we both saved each other’s lives,” he pointed out. “That was very nearly a complete disaster.”

  “And you and your people got us out of it,” Glass replied. He offered his glass to Kyle and the clinked together. “L’chaim!”

  The amber liquid went down like smooth fire and Kyle coughed.

  “Scotch whisky,” Glass told him. “Castle’s version is evolved from what used to be called ‘rye whiskey’, quite a different drink after a few hundred years.”

  “So I see, Agent.”

  “Please, call me Nick,” the spy replied. “It’s even my real name, which we both know Glass isn’t.”

  They sipped the whisky in silence for a long moment, Kyle studying the hologram of the Aurelius system.

  “I have to ask,” he said after a moment. “Trickster said something about dropping a space station into a gas giant? What happened?”

  Glass chuckled, shaking his head.

  “That was a long time ago,” he pointed out. “Back when I had hair! The war was barely over; a lot of people in the Commonwealth were surprisingly angry at the Alliance, for all that we really didn’t put the screws on as much as some wanted.”

  The Alliance had forced the Commonwealth back to the status quo as of the opening of the war and demanded that they help repair the systems they’d damaged. It had hardly been a new Treaty of Versailles, but you wouldn’t know that from the way the Commonwealth media talked about it even now.

  “We were deep into Commonwealth space on an intel-gathering op,” Glass continued. “The ship basically was a freighter. Half the crew didn’t know any of us were spies; we were hauling real, legitimate cargo. And we were recording everything we saw with high-powered passive scanners and buying intel from people like Trickster and Ostrowski—I first met them both back then, though neither was as big a deal twenty-odd years ago.

  “Trickster was in-system when this went down, which is probably why they remember it so vividly—and yes, they already had the mask and the name then.

  “We were dealing with the Tetragrammaton Mob at the time. They had a few facilities scattered around the place, but they wanted to do a physical handover of the data and the payment at a cloudscoop they were running way out in the outer system.”

  The old man shook his head.

  “It was, of course, a trap. They’d sold out us to Commonwealth intelligence, and we were ambushed by TCMC commandos.” He shivered at an unseen memory. “They make Riley’s people look soft and fleshy.

  “Half the crew might not have known we were spies, but the other half were some of the Federation’s best,” he continued. “We had our pick of veterans after the war ended, hard men and women who’d forgotten how to do anything else.

  “The commandos had machinery. We had experience. We got off the station and back onto the ship—much like the mess on Judecca.”

  He took a large swallow of the whisky, forcing Kyle to wait for a moment.

  “Then, well, we had a station full of people who’d betrayed us, and Commonwealth commandos. The Captain was dead, I was left in charge, and we had a small antimissile suite to make sure we could run if we needed to.

  “We shot out the stabilizers and pushed with the ship as we broke free,” he finished simply.

  Kyle winced. Normally, the stabilization rockets and mass manipulators aboard a space station were an unneeded safeguard. They might fire once a year or so, mostly to counteract the impact of docking ships. With all of them gone, however, an attached ship could easily throw the station into an unstable orbit.

  “My understanding is that they got almost everybody off,” Glass noted after a moment. “It wasn’t a fast fall, after all. But they were far too busy to chase us after that!”

  #

  Chapter 23

  Aurelius System

  12:00 June 5, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  Chameleon

  The Q-ship emerged from Alcubierre-Stetson drive in the normal flash of Cherenkov radiation, at the edge of the zone where the Aurelius Pair’s gravity rendered warping space dangerous. Their emergence point had been chosen carefully, with the depot platforms twenty million kilometers away and currently hidden by the closer of the two gas giants.

  “Echo Squadron launching,” Taylor reported crisply.

  The ship shivered slightly as seven of the fighter launch tubes fired, the hatches sliding shut to cover and conceal their presence as more fighters were slid into their place.

  With no engines active and their heat sinks running on maximum, Kyle was actually impressed by how hard the black-ops fighters were to detect. They were visible from this close, but with their dark coatings and small size, they should actually be able to sneak up on the depot.

  “Good luck, Flight Lieutenant Tomacino,” Kyle told the senior Lieutenant in command of the squadron.

  “We’ll see you on the other side, Captain,” the pilot replied.

  As the fighters spilled away solely under the velocity imparted by the launch tubes, Lau silently brought up Chameleon’s own engines, accelerating toward the depot at the hundred gravities the Troubadour-J freighter she looked
like could manage.

  Two and a half hours, though it would probably be a lot sooner before they were challenged by the depot’s defenders. Those four Zion platforms worried Kyle. If their flight groups deployed, this attack was over. A rapid and inglorious retreat back to League space would be their only option—Aurelius wouldn’t be vulnerable to this style of attack again.

  “Ten minutes until we clear Aurelius 4B and have visual,” Chownyk noted from the CIC. “Scanners don’t show any probes or satellites covering the blind spot. They should be here; I’m worried about our sensors, Captain.”

  “Are we talking ‘our sensors might not be the best Intelligence could find after all’ or ‘there’s a leftover Terran virus that’s intentionally screwing with us’?” Kyle asked with an only somewhat forced grin. “Because I’m not buying either explanation.”

  His XO was silent for a moment.

  “I just can’t believe they wouldn’t cover the blind spot on the other side of the gas giant,” the cyborg pointed out. “It seems…reckless.”

  “Remember that we are in Commonwealth space,” Glass pointed out from the uncomfortably observer seat at the back of the bridge. “This is a base whose existence is classified as well. They feel safe here—if Ostrowski hadn’t been amenable to large amounts of cash, they should have been safe here.”

  “It’s arrogant, XO,” Kyle told him. “Not reckless. Are we seeing any blips? Or are we fully clear?”

  “Nothing,” he admitted. “I’m going to sit back here and babysit the analysis computers, though, just in case. It’s too easy.”

  “Please do,” Chameleon’s Captain confirmed. “I agree: the door is way too open.”

  #

  As they rounded the edge of Aurelius 4B, they got their first look at the depot that wasn’t a month old. Everything they saw now was still a minute old, but that was practically real time compared to Ostrowski’s intelligence or their own light-month-out scans.

  Kyle concealed a sigh of relief as their view confirmed the promised lack of any starships. Even their current plan would have been in trouble if there had been a TCN warship present despite the schedule.

  Everything else looked much the same as it had a month before. Four Zion platforms orbited in a protective square above the single large station and dozen storage pods that made up the storage depot itself. A single squadron of ten starfighters orbited above them…and Kyle inhaled sharply as the data processed.

  The ten ships weren’t Scimitars. They were Katanas.

  “Confirm those starfighters IDs,” he snapped.

  “Double-checked, triple-checking now,” Chownyk responded from CIC. “Data checks out; the patrol squadron are definitely Katanas. Do we abort?”

  “No,” Kyle replied instantly. They could still abort, though it would be obvious what they’d done. “If everything works, Echo will still take them by surprise.”

  If they didn’t, he’d just sentenced twenty-one men and women to death unless he could pull off a miracle.

  “No signal from them?” he asked aloud. No one else needed to know what was going through his head. They had to trust that the Captain would get them through.

  “None yet,” Taylor confirmed. “We’ve been in their line of sight for five minutes; they’re late.”

  “REMFs,” Kyle said with a chuckle. “Terran REMFs at that. Let me know the instant those starfighters move.”

  #

  They’d been in system for forty-five minutes and in view of the depot for over half an hour before the first response from the Terrans arrived.

  “I’m getting a ping for our Q-Com ID codes,” Taylor reported. “Nothing else. Just…the automated handshake request. Um.” She glanced back at Glass. “Can we use our Terran quantum blocks?”

  “We have them for a reason,” the spy told her. “The system will mark which ones we use today; we’ll have to dump them after this is over. Try not to use too many up.”

  “Understood,” the tactical officer said slowly. “Pinging them with the ID for one of the blocks.”

  “How do I look?” Kyle asked as he tossed his uniform jacket aside, glancing back at the spy. His shipsuit was unmarked.

  “You need the hat,” Glass replied. “Terran Merchant Marine Captains are never seen without it in their official capacities. Ever.”

  With a sigh, Kyle grabbed the high-peaked white cap from where he’d hung it on the end of his chair’s arm and settled it neatly on his head. In his opinion, no sensible spaceborne organization, military or civilian, would insist on something so useless as a hat in space, but despite current appearances, he was not a Terran Merchant Marine Captain.

  It was five more minutes after they’d responded to the Q-Com request before the depot’s staff finally made contact.

  Taylor connected the channel through as soon as it was active, showing an extremely pale-skinned man whose hair had been shaved off in favor of a clearly permanently attached cap of circuitry. He wore the red-sashed black uniform of the Terran Commonwealth Navy with two gold bars at his throat.

  “Unidentified civilian ship, this is Commander Roger Lafferty at the Aurelius Navy Depot. You are not on our shipping schedule; please identify yourself and state your reason for approaching the Depot.”

  Lafferty sounded like this was the most exciting thing that had happened to him in weeks…and he still didn’t find it particularly interesting. How many months, Kyle wondered, had the man been stranded at this backwater base?

  “Aurelius Depot, this is the registered TMM freighter Historic Ideal, Captain John Sheridan commanding,” Kyle told the Navy officer. “We have a cargo of munitions and food supplies we were told to deliver here. I didn’t even know there was anything here!”

  “I’m sorry, you’re not on our shipping schedule and I can’t authenticate you,” Lafferty told him in a bored voice. “You’re going to need to turn around and leave the system immediately.”

  “Stand by to fake an engine malfunction,” Kyle told Lau via an implant channel, then turned his best obsequious smile back on the depot officer.

  “I can transmit you our instructions,” he told Lafferty. “I don’t understand the problem! We were looking for work in the Corsica system and were offered this job.” He paused, injecting a hopefully carefully measured amount of panic and distress into his voice. “Sir, I went a week out of my way to come here at the Navy’s request; if I don’t get paid for this delivery, I may not make the next note payment on Ideal. Please!”

  Kyle could watch the conflict on the Terran officer’s face between the urge to be a petty tyrant and the urge to help a fellow spacer out. It was a shorter struggle than he’d expected from the initial interaction, and Lafferty sighed.

  “Look, I’ll follow up with Logistics Command and see if I can find your orders,” he said finally. “For now, you can maintain your course, but do not approach within one million kilometers of the station without further authorization, or my standing orders give me no choice but to fire on you. Understand?”

  “I understand, Commander,” Kyle told him. “Thank you, thank you!”

  And with the notorious speed—or lack thereof—of Commonwealth Navy Logistics Command, he might just make it all the way to that million-kilometer mark. Which was even better than they’d been counting on.

  #

  Russell Rokos stood in Chameleon’s primary flight control center, watching the ship inch toward its destination. He had one squadron, Alpha, in their birds and in the tubes. The rest of his flight crews waited in various lounges and quarters around Flight Deck.

  It was always a tough call for the CAG as to when to have the rest of the crews mount up. Chameleon had just made turnover and was still seventy-five minutes from the depot. At ten million kilometers, Roberts could technically order the launch of the starfighter wing at any moment.

  That wasn’t the plan and Russell glanced at the icon marking the estimated progress of Echo Squadron. It would be another forty minutes before the plan called
for them to launch, but the plan hadn’t expected Katanas at the facility.

  He spotted Cavendish standing at the edge of the room, carefully watching the massive central hologram to see where her people were. He felt a moment of guilt at sending her squadron—hell, even her starfighter—into action without her, but it faded quickly.

  He still didn’t trust her to follow orders in action, and he needed to know Echo Squadron was going to do their part today. He sympathized with her, but he was still glad he wasn’t going to have her at his back with gigaton-range warheads.

  Standing in the middle of the room, Russell himself was clearly visible to everyone. After a few moments, Cavendish crossed over to stand next to him.

  “You’re going to get my people killed,” she hissed. “This whole op is suicide at this point!”

  “Not your call, Commander,” he said levelly. “Not my call, either. We came here to do a job and we’re going to do it. I would have thought that a black-ops pilot would get that if anyone did.”

  She glared at him for a moment, then turned her gaze on the hologram.

  “I get it,” she said slowly. “But you’ve hung my entire squadron out to dry. Their stealth isn’t that good—no stealth is in space.”

  “There’s a plan,” Russell told her. “Tomacino knows it. I know it. The Captain knows it—and if anyone can improvise their way out if the plan starts coming apart, it’s Roberts.”

  “So I should just have faith; is that what you’re telling me?” she demanded. “I’m not good at that.”

  “Look to the Stars,” he said gently. “I, however, have a battle to fight.”

  Stepping way from the grounded Flight Commander, he raised his voice.

  “All right, people, this is it. Drop ’em and load ’em—I want all squadrons on ready status in five minutes!”