Q-Ship Chameleon

by Glynn Stewart

  He stood on a bridge that was in much worse shape than the one Kyle sat on. The command chair was gone, and many of the consoles had been replaced by jury-rigged stopgaps. The space was the painstaking kind of clean that only happened in the mess after true disasters, where “real” clean was impossible.

  Those stopgap consoles just happened to be facing away from the camera Adelaide was looking into, and none of the half-dozen people in shabby shipsuits on the young officer’s bridge had faces visible in the transmission.

  “This is Lieutenant Pierre Adelaide, Acting Captain of Christopher Lee,” the simulacrum said in a voice that mixed exhaustion and relief.

  “As you yourself said, Captain Nguyen, exact details of Lee’s mission are classified, but we were captured by pirates and my superiors were all killed. The pirates destroyed the Q-Com blocks and flew Christopher Lee as a pirate for some weeks before I and the remaining crew managed to escape and retake the ship.

  “I owe my life to the brave Specialists and Marines who risked everything to break out,” he continued. “We’ve managed enough repairs to get the ship flying, but without the Q-blocks, we had no ability to call home. We…” Adelaide swallowed. “Our orders were not to reveal Christopher Lee’s existence to anyone unnecessarily and to return to Tau Ceti.

  “We are not in need of medical assistance,” he said carefully, “but I am not confident of Lee’s ability to sustain acceleration or to create another Alcubierre bubble. We have a package to be hand-delivered to the Central Research Station, but then I must request a slip at one of the shipyards for major repairs.”

  The image froze.

  “Message sent,” Glass reported. “Any idea on turnaround time?”

  “Captain Nguyen is on one of the defensive platforms around Shipyard Alpha,” Chownyk reported. “We’re still a full light-minute away, so a minimum two-minute turnaround even if she’s authorized to make the call on her own.”

  Two minutes passed in silence. Kyle kept up his usual cheery appearance, though he doubted he was the only one on the bridge who wanted to hold their breath. This was the first moment of truth, one of the points where the entire plan would come apart if the Commonwealth didn’t buy it.

  Five minutes passed.

  “We are at emergence plus twenty minutes,” Taylor announced quietly. “We are forty-five minutes from starfighter deployment, ninety from closest approach to the research station.”

  Kyle didn’t say anything in response, waiting and watching. None of the fighter squadrons patrolling the star system were moving toward them, which was a positive sign, but without some kind of response…

  “Incoming transmission,” Chownyk reported, almost fifteen minutes after they’d sent their message. “This one is coming from the Research Station itself.”

  A different Terran officer appeared on the screen, this one a tall man with darkly tanned skin and a short black braid hanging down over his right ear. He wore the same uniform as Captain Nguyen—except with the two gold stars of a Commonwealth Rear Admiral.

  “This Admiral Alec Cornsilk,” he said. “Captain Nguyen relayed your transmission to me and I apologize for the delay, Lieutenant Adelaide. I cannot imagine what it cost for you to retake your ship and return all this way. Welcome home!”

  The Admiral’s clear, honest enthusiasm and warmth left Kyle feeling guilty. Everything they had told the Terrans was a lie—less than fifty of Christopher Lee’s crew had still been aboard when she’d been recaptured. The “brave Specialists and Marines” their simulacrum had praised were, in the main, dead.

  “Continue on your course for Shipyard Alpha,” Cornsilk ordered. “I’m informed we should have a slip free for Christopher Lee to slot into for repairs. You said you had a package to deliver to my station. If you have a shuttle you can send over, I’ll have someone waiting to meet you.

  “Once you’ve docked, get in touch with my staff,” the Admiral instructed. “We will need to debrief you, and after the kind of trip you’ve just had, I’ll want to do that over the best meal I can find!”

  The image froze and Kyle smiled.

  “Much as it pains me to do a disservice to such a kind Admiral,” he said aloud, “he seems to have given us the open door we need. Let’s have the good Lieutenant deliver the appropriate kind of thanks.

  “Then let’s get ready to drop Rokos’s fighters. We are at now at launch minus thirty-three minutes.”

  #

  Russell watched through his starfighter’s sensors as the massive cargo hatches at the end of the flight bay slid open. Normally, the two doors were sequenced to open and close one after the other, in a time lapse so short humans barely registered it, to allow starfighters to leave or board the ship with the minimum loss of atmosphere.

  Now, with every loose object secured and the support staff evacuated, both doors slid open at Chief Hanz’s command. The starfighter handling systems, designed to operate in vacuum as an emergency measure, gently removed the Scimitars from their hangar bays four at a time and set them loose, letting them drift out into deep space with the escaping air.

  The Wing Commander tried not to hold his breath. This wasn’t necessarily the most dangerous part of the operation, but it was the one where everything could go wrong. There were enough different fighter groups and commands in the star system, he agreed with the assessment that once they were in and flying, everyone would assume they belonged to everyone else.

  The most likely failure point was when they brought their engines online, but the Scimitars weren’t the stealth fighters Cavendish had brought along. They had no way to hide their internal heat, no smart hulls to blend them into the background. If anyone was looking with a telescope, what they were doing would be obvious.

  “Your turn, sir,” Hanz told him as the robotic waldos locked onto his ship. “While I have to confess I’m not overly fond of these Terran birds, I do quite like their crews. Do try and bring everyone home, sir.”

  They both knew that wasn’t going to happen. Starfighter wings always took losses—often brutal ones. Even with the limited population fit to fly starfighters, any star system could replace pilots and fighters far more easily than the astronomically expensive starships they launched from.

  And this mission was going to be hell.

  “I’ll just have a quick chat with the Terrans, explain that we just need to steal some data and blow a fleet’s worth of warships to the Void, and then we can all go home,” he told her dryly. “I’m sure they’ll be completely on board with just letting us get things done.”

  She snorted.

  “I’ve never met anyone whose tongue was that silver, sir. Shoot straight.”

  The waldos released him, and his Scimitar drifted down the deck. A few seconds later and his ship was in space, drifting along with the rest of his Wing.

  The last pair of fighters followed him out, and he had a thirty-strong strike force drifting through space at the same velocity as their mothership.

  Chameleon was heading toward turnover on a straightforward and obvious vector toward Shipyard Alpha. She’d pass by the Research Station on the way at a perfectly safe thousand kilometers a second…about ten minutes before the starfighters, which would not decelerate, reached Shipyard Alpha itself three million kilometers farther on.

  #

  Turnover.

  Chameleon flipped in space, the spherical ship rotating to bring her massive antimatter thrusters to bear in the opposite direction. Superheated energetic particles washed forward, creating a powerful wake of radiation that preceded the Q-ship at lightspeed.

  The perfect shield to hide behind. Moments after the Q-ship started throwing drive fumes out toward every sensor in orbit of Tau Ceti H, the thirty Scimitars behind her lit off their own engines and began to accelerate toward Shipyard Alpha.

  This time, Kyle was holding his breath. They’d fooled the Terrans with their electronic simulacrum, and it appeared the deployment of the starfighters, now sixty thousand kilometers behin
d them as Chameleon continued to accelerate towards turnover, had gone unnoticed.

  If anyone was feeling suspicious, the sudden appearance of a three-squadron patrol behind the new ship would set alarm bells ringing. While those alarm bells should only trigger a query initially, they still needed over thirty-five minutes—and answering that query would only buy them a handful.

  This was the single biggest risk of the plan, and Kyle was relying on an error that had been repeated hundreds of times since its most famous occurrence at Pearl Harbor on Earth: since the only fighters that could possibly be in Tau Ceti were Commonwealth, any fighter seen had to be Commonwealth.

  That they were flying Terran-designed starfighters would help, though the whole deception would come crashing down if they tried to interrogate more than Rokos’s fighter by Q-Com. The presence of a legitimate Terran Q-block was too risky for them to leave them in place on more than one ship.

  Seconds ticked by.

  “This is Strike Actual,” Rokos reported. “We are online and headed for Shipyard Alpha. No challenges detected as yet. Keeping the Q-Com online and watching for new friends.”

  Kyle glanced over at Taylor, who gave him a slow, hesitant nod.

  “We show you clear as well, Strike Actual,” he replied. “Radio silence until the rocket goes up now. Chameleon out.”

  There was, quite appropriately, no response.

  Kyle opened another link.

  “Major Hansen, we have official approval to send over a shuttle,” he told the Marine. “Are your people ready?”

  “I’ll be going over with Lieutenant Riley’s platoon, and the remainder of the company is standing by for heavy assault if we can launch in time.”

  “Numbers say you have barely five minutes after landing till Rokos raises hell,” Kyle warned him. “Are you up for it?”

  “Vae victis, Captain.” Hansen threw the condottieri’s motto at him. “We will overcome, no matter who you ask us to pretend to be.”

  “We have no margin, Lieutenant Major,” Kyle said quietly. “We need the plans for those new starfighters.”

  “There’s only so much I can do with five minutes, boss,” Hansen replied, his tone equally quiet. “And we’re more likely to trigger alarms than anyone else now.”

  “We’ll have your heavy assault right behind you when you do,” Chameleon’s Captain promised. “If we can steal it quietly, I’m not complaining—but once it goes hot, it’s smash-and-grab. We need those plans—at all costs.”

  “Understood,” Hansen acknowledged grimly.

  #

  Chapter 40

  Tau Ceti System

  19:45 June 21, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  Chameleon Assault Shuttle Three

  Edvard had his eyes closed as the assault shuttle decelerated hard toward the Terran space station. While he had the high implant bandwidth compatibility necessary to be a military officer in the twenty-eighth century—though not enough to be starfighter crew by any stretch—he found that having his eyes closed helped deal with multiple implant stimuli.

  Right now, he was watching the entire star system through the shuttle’s sensors. Without data they intentionally didn’t have on the shuttle, he wasn’t certain which of the patrols swanning around Tau Ceti H was their own strike team.

  “Contact in four minutes,” the pilot announced over the PA.

  “Check your gear,” Riley snapped.

  Even with his eyes closed, Edvard knew what the scene in the shuttle’s main compartment would look like. The black-ops platoon was in low-profile body armor that could pass for shipsuits except under close inspection. It wouldn’t stop a battle-armor penetrator but would stand off a few regular rounds.

  The second wave was packing anti-armor carbines, just in case, but the first squad carried the kind of light arms that might pass without too much comment. Riley and her computer specialists carried only sidearms, as did Edvard himself.

  “I don’t actually need a babysitter, you know,” Riley told him over a private implant link. “This is my ballgame now. I know the plays better than you do.”

  “I know,” he admitted, “but it’s my responsibility—and I’m the one who has to make the call on the follow-up assault. I’ll try not to jog your elbow.”

  “I appreciate it,” she said. “But if you get yourself killed on this damn fool endeavor, I will never forgive you.”

  Opening his eyes to avoid visibly shaking his head, Edvard drew and checked the safety and magazine on his sidearm while he arched an eyebrow at her.

  “We both have a job to do,” he told her as he slid the mag back in with a sharp click. “Let’s leave…anything else until afterwards.”

  Riley chuckled, the first part of the conversation audible to anyone else around them.

  “I’m taking that as a promise…boss.”

  #

  The assault shuttle settled calmly to the deck of the space station’s landing bay, a far cry from many of Edvard’s recent experiences with landing the small spacecraft. Rising, the Marine checked his intentionally haphazardly fabricated Terran Commonwealth Navy Petty Officer chevrons and picked up the courier case at his feet.

  Riley and three of her electronic-specialist troopers, wearing the equally crudely made insignia of a Terran Commonwealth Marine Corps Corporal and Privates, fell in around him as they exited the shuttle. The carefully shielded hull of the assault craft would prevent the station’s sensors from realizing just how packed full it was with the rest of Riley’s platoon.

  The landing bay was surprisingly small and spartan, with only one other shuttle and a single exit deeper into the station. The walls presumably held compartments with refueling gear and so forth, but the only visible break was a window allowing a flight control officer to overlook the bay.

  Edvard presumed the three people standing next to the exit were the welcoming party and made a beeline for them.

  The leader of the party, a tall pale-skinned woman with the single gold bar of a Commonwealth Marine Corps Major, met him halfway with a crisp salute that Edvard’s assumed rank did not deserve. The story of Adelaide’s “brave escape” had clearly spread.

  “Major Armstrong,” she introduced herself. “I understand you have a package for us, PO.”

  “I do,” Edvard confirmed, lifting the courier case. “I have no idea what it contains,” he admitted cheerfully, “but the Skipper said the orders he found on the old Captain’s computers said to deliver it to the starfighter research department here.”

  “I can deliver it for you,” Armstrong said calmly. “You’re not cleared to go farther into the station.”

  “People died for us to get this back,” Edvard said quietly. “Adelaide ordered me to see it delivered myself.”

  The data chips in the case were actually full of garbage data, but that was hidden under one of the Commonwealth’s top-level ciphers—from a year earlier, but that was reasonable, given when the then–Christopher Lee had left.

  “I appreciate both Lieutenant Adelaide’s concern and your orders,” the Terran Marine said gently, “but I have no authority to allow you on the station. I need you to give me the case and return to Christopher Lee.”

  There went that part of the plan, though Edvard had never put that much faith in it.

  “Can we at least grab a bite to eat?” he asked plaintively. “We’ve been on reprocessed ration bars for weeks.”

  The recycling systems on a warship were fantastically efficient things, but no crew voluntarily went onto reprocessed ration bars. The taste was surprisingly tolerable, but no one could get out of their minds just where the bars came from.

  Armstrong winced but shook her head.

  “I can recommend a place on Shipyard Alpha,” she said apologetically, holding her hand out for the case, “But this is a Class One facility; I can’t let you aboard.”

  Edvard mentally checked the time. Still four minutes before the fighters were in range, but he’d run this conversation out a
s long as he could.

  “That’s unfortunate,” he told Armstrong aloud—and sent the “go” signal to Riley and his people through the implant.

  He didn’t even see Riley move. There was a flash of motion and Armstrong was down, her trachea crushed by an iron-hard fist to the throat and her legs swept out from underneath her. The Terran officer likely didn’t even realize she was under attack before Riley had killed her.

  Her escorts didn’t last any longer, their life-spans extended by fractions of a second only because they’d been hanging back and it had taken the black-ops cyborgs slightly longer to reach them.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Edvard shouted aloud, shoving his shock at the speed and brutality of the deaths aside—he’d seen sudden death before, if not like this.

  The rest of the platoon heard the order and came boiling out of the shuttle—but even as they did so, the emergency shutters on the flight control booth slammed shut.

  Edvard was already linking into the Q-Com aboard the shuttle.

  “Rocket, Rocket, Rocket,” he announced to Chameleon and Commander Rokos. “Station Security didn’t buy the story. Launch the second wave; we’re moving on the bay flight control to locate a data center.”

  He paused.

  “Good luck.”

  #

  Heavy security shutters had slammed shut over the exit as well, but while Edvard had been letting everyone else know the shooting had started, the black-ops troopers had been pulling out a bipod-mounted rocket launcher.

  One of the troopers slammed a long box magazine into the top and stepped away to clear the space behind it, waving aside a trooper who’d misjudged the danger zone. A second soldier braced the launcher’s bipod against his torso and aimed the weapon. A moment later, the whole assemblage spewed fire as it salvoed four rockets in under a second.

  The smart weapons slammed into the shutter covering the bay flight control window in a neatly calculated pattern and detonated their shaped charges—reducing the entire security shutter and a significant chunk of the surrounding metal wall to shards of debris that swept the control center.