Battlecruiser Alamo: Cage of Gold

by Richard Tongue

   “There’s no way that the surface can be natural.”

   “I ran simulations,” Nelyubov said, “and the data we’ve got agrees with you pretty closely. While a crater like that would provide some sort of an atmosphere, the odds against it being anything that we could breathe are millions to one against. The presence of Neander down there seals it as far as I’m concerned. This planet has had two waves of colonists from Earth.”

   “Hard to imagine,” Grant said. “They were taking a tremendous risk, launching in a ship like that with an untested star-drive. Ships like that struggled to make it to the nearest planet, but we’re almost twenty light-years from Earth.”

   “And yet ships like that settled Ragnarok, Jefferson, worlds in the Cabal,” Orlova said, shaking her head. “We thought we were the pioneers coming out here. All we’re doing is following in their footsteps.”

   “Don’t worry, Maggie,” Nelyubov said. “We’ll get to do some exploring of our own one of these days. There has to be some limit on how far they expanded.”

   “I hope so,” she replied. “What about the rest of it?”

   Walking over to the viewscreen, he replied, “They’re finished. That’s not a stable environment. If they had three or four times the area to work with, that colony might have a chance, but I’d say they’ve about reached the limit of their potential. No room for expansion. Worse, that atmosphere is going to deteriorate, and rapidly.”

   Nodding, she said, “I was afraid you were going to say that. Let’s talk options. I know the Captain is going to want a full report.”

   With a sigh, Nelyubov said, “It really comes down to one. Evacuation. Pull the colonists out and evacuate them to a world that actually has some potential. Jefferson, maybe, if we can make the agreements, though I don’t think we’d have any trouble just bringing them back to Mars.”

   “You’re thinking politics,” Grant said. “Try thinking logistics. We’re talking about a population of twenty thousand people.”

   “Actually,” Nelyubov said with a sigh, “more like forty thousand. You were forgetting the Neander.”

   “We don’t have the space-lift capability.”

   “There’s the luxury of time, Lieutenant.” Orlova said. “We don’t have to do it today.”

   “The longer we wait, the harder it gets to pull off,” Nelyubov said. “Assuming that we can use one of the assault carriers, I think we could pull the population back to Yeager Station in a little over a year. Civilian transports to take them on from there. Ragnarok might be a possibility for resettlement, thinking about it.”

   “Cost?”

   He smiled, reached for a datapad, and said, “Enough to build three battlecruisers. Conservatively. Whether the Senate would vote for this in a million years is another question entirely.”

   “There must be another option.”

   “What? Terraforming would cost a fortune, and I’m not sure we could pull it off in any case. Ultimately, we’re at the outer reach of our logistics pipeline out here. If they were settlers in the system we wouldn’t have a problem, but we’re talking about four jumps to get back to Sol. There aren’t that many freighters around that can do that.”

   Folding his arms, Grant said, “All of this overlooks the fact that they won’t leave their world anyway.”

   “Wouldn’t they?” Orlova asked. “Knowing what the ultimate fate of their descendants will be, a life that gets harder and harder until it becomes impossible? Oh, we could turn the planet into a domed settlement, I suppose, but what would be the point? There just isn’t anything here to make the system worth exploiting.”

   “Strategically....,” Nelyubov began.

   “Today, yes, that’s important. Will it be important tomorrow? Or next year? Or in a decade from now? That’s a hell of a gamble to bet the future of your children on. If I had a choice, I’d be on the first ship out.”

   “With all due respect,” Grant began, and then the lights went out.

   Orlova waited for a second for the emergency lights to come on, then reached into her pocket for her communicator flicking it open and turning it on by feel. She heard a clunk, then a yell, as someone behind her walked into something.

   “Everyone stay were they are,” she said. “Bridge to Engineering. What the hell’s going on?”

   “Wait one,” Quinn said. “Auxiliary Control took over. I’m trying to fix it now.”

   “There are four redundant power distribution systems serving the bridge,” Grant said. “How do they all get knocked out at once?”

   Abruptly, the lights came back on, and the systems restarted, consoles booting up as their operators logged back on.

   “Thanks, Jack,” Orlova said.

   “Don’t thank me, I didn’t do anything.”

   “What?”

   “I hardly had time to get the diagnostic software started up. I still don’t know what happened.” There was a pause, and he added, “I’ve got a damage control team heading up right now.”

   “Keep ship operations at Auxiliary Control for the moment, and get someone to monitor it to make sure that it doesn’t go down either.”

   “Already on it. Grogan’s on the way with a portable generator just in case. I don’t think anything else is wrong with the ship, but I’m going to start a full check of all systems.”

   “Agreed. I’ll be down in a minute.” Returning the communicator to her pocket, she turned to the bridge crew and said, “Don’t bother logging in. I want you all in Auxiliary Control. Grant, you take the conn down there.”

   “On it,” he said, sliding up from his station. “Come on, everyone.”

   “We’re going to Engineering?” Nelyubov asked.

   Nodding, she stepped into the elevator, half-expecting that the door would refuse to open, and tapped the control to send it hurtling through the decks. Nelyubov looked at her for a moment, then frowned.

   “Go on,” she said.

   “This is really getting to you, isn’t it.”

   “They’re stuck in the middle of a war zone, Frank. Thousands of men, women, children. With a not-man ship behind enemy lines raising an army to slaughter them, if what the Captain said is correct. Certainly it seems to match their usual strategy.”

   “Why, though? What’s so important about this planet?”

   “Now that is an excellent question. Strategically it could be valuable, yes, but there is nothing stopping them putting a battlecruiser in orbit and just conquering the place. With orbital superiority, the colonists could stop us. So why use a small scoutship?”

   “Maybe their resources are spread thinner than we thought,” Nelyubov said, shaking his head. “No, that’s too easy an explanation. And they had the resources to spare if we wanted them, the ones we knocked out last month. They could have used them here to greater effect.”

   “There’s something missing from all of this, a piece of the puzzle we don’t have yet.” With a sigh, she added, “At the end of the day, I don’t think we have much of a choice. We can’t just sit up here and watch a massacre taking place, not when we have the ability to intervene and prevent it from happening. We’re going to be sending the rest of the platoon down to the planet.”

   “Probably.”

   “And I don’t like that either. It feels as though we’re being forced into a single course of action.”

   Pulling out a datapad, Nelyubov said, “There are definitely signs of mass movement in the outer crater areas. Forces in the thousands massing for some purpose. I can’t see what else they could be preparing, not given their strategic positioning.”

   “Hell, maybe that’s the idea,” she replied. “Suck us into attritional warfare, force us to position forces here.”

   Shaking his head again, he said, “Even if we can’t stop this with Alamo’s forces, all we’d need to do is leave a platoon down on the planet as military advisors, give them some
equipment, and they could do the job themselves. We’re not talking about a significant resource drain.”

   “There’s a mystery here, Frank. And one we’ve got to uncover before we can call this one a win. After we’re done here, I want you down on the sensor decks. I want that planet taken apart one molecule at a time if that’s what it takes. Keep looking until you find something, anything that we’ve missed in our first pass.”

   “The far side of the planet?”

   “Have Jack set up a satellite network. Full orbital surveillance.”

   “That’s going to hit our reserves, Maggie.”

   “I know,” she said, and the doors opened, a frustrated Quinn standing in front of them, his hands gripping a datapad tightly enough that his knuckles turned white.

   “I’ve solved a bit of it, but you aren’t going to like it,” the engineer said.

   “Tell me the bad news. Is it related to the damage we took in the battle?”

   “No, but that certainly isn’t helping.” Thrusting the datapad into her hands, he said, “I had Hooke take a look at the root networks. There’s no possible hardware-based reason for all the power networks to suddenly decide not to supply the bridge, not without damage enough to rip the ship in half.”

   “Which means it must be software-based,” Nelyubov said.

   “There were significant changes in the power distribution software. Enough to cover what happened and a lot more besides.”

   “A warning shot?” Orlova said. “That’s crazy. We’ll be able to track them easily.” Quinn shook his head, and she added, “No fingerprints?”

   “All of the software is back to normal, and not restored to factory defaults. Or even to the backups we take every week. There are changes present that I implemented this morning. Someone went in, changed the systems to suit themselves, then went back out and changed them all back again. We’re talking some serious equipment to do that.”

   “More than that,” Orlova replied. “I presume you’ve checked the rest of the database?”

   “I’d just finished up when you arrived. Everything’s as it should be, and I can’t think of a way to hide something powerful enough to do this.”

   “Which means an external system.”

   Nelyubov frowned, then said, “Tell me this doesn’t mean what I think it means.”

   “I’m very much afraid that it does,” Orlova said with a sigh. “We’ve got a saboteur on board.”

  Chapter 4

   The limousine pulled up outside the ruin of the colony ship, by a small restored section with an American flag flying over it, permanently fixed at half-mast. A sign proclaimed the ‘Museum of Earth’, and a soldier stood to attention by the side of the entrance, his rifle snapping into place by his side.

   “I thought it would be an appropriate place to have our discussion. The place is closed for the moment, and is as quiet as my apartment would be,” Governor Hammond said.

   “No Governor's Mansion?” Marshall asked.

   “Building mansions was not our highest priority, Captain. I have the top floor of a prefabricated apartment block, four rooms. It is more than sufficient for my need.” He smiled, and said, “The anniversary of our landing was only a few weeks ago, so the ceremonial car was in good condition. Normally we keep it in mothballs.”

   The driver walked around to the Governor’s door and pulled it open, standing at attention as he climbed out onto the road. Marshall and Salazar slid out after him, looking up at the towering, rusted ship, rising eighty feet high, dominating the skyline. Around it were a cluster of low buildings, all near-identical of prefabricated design, mostly made of hull material.

   “The ship was designed to be broken up for the colony. We made full use of everything we had.” Hammond tapped the hull with a loving hand, and said, “When I was five years old, my father took us on board, told us that we were going on a great adventure. I didn’t understand, not then, but I came to soon enough. This ship was our home for three years, and carried us from a ruined world to our salvation.” He looked around at the barren, bleak landscape, and added, “Our paradise.”

   “I can’t conceive what it must have been like.”

   Hammond’s gaze was elsewhere, perhaps twenty light-years away. “The sirens sounded. Even then I knew what that meant, that there was an attack in progress, warheads on the way to wipe us out. The Secretary of Defense was on the base, part of the dispersal plan, and he gave the order. A thousand of us, all picked from the garrison and their families, all climbed onto the ship and strapped ourselves in. It was the largest spaceship ever launched from the surface of a planet, and for all I knew still is.

   Taking a deep breath, he continued, “And when we launched, we killed everyone we left behind with our first pulse. A fifty-kiloton bomb to get us moving, to get us started. They were dead anyway, soon enough. That’s what we told ourselves. Then we raced through the orbital defenses, spilling our bombs after us, a column of fire into the darkness. It must have been something to see. Finally, we tried the faster-than-light drive, knowing that if it didn’t work, we were all dead. As you can see, it did.”

   Shaking his head, he said, “I’m sorry. Just an old man, rambling about the past. There aren’t many of us left now, those who rode the rocket to get out here. The children don’t remember what it was like, knowing that any malfunction might kill us, and end any chance for the survival of mankind. We thought we were all that was left, that Earth was finished, the planetary colonies doomed.” Looking at Marshall, he said, “Your arrival, Captain, is the answer to a dream.”

   “You aren’t the only colony to have been established in those days. The Australians settled Ragnarok, at Lalande 21185, and another American expedition made it to a planet they called Jefferson.”

   With a smile, Hammond said, “I guess the Air Force got their ship up as well, then. We never did hear. Then humanity survives?”

   “Thrives,” Salazar said. “We’re on dozens of planets now, scattered across forty, fifty light-years, and still expanding. Our new hendecaspace ships can make the jump between systems in days.”

   “It took years for us, Sub-Lieutenant. Years in an untested ship thrown together with a secret budget at the last minute. And yet it was all we had to work with, and it did the job. At least, after a fashion. This wasn’t our first choice for a settlement.”

   “Where were you aiming for?”

   “Procyon. The Hawking Telescope had picked up a habitable planet, at least potentially.”

   “The Lunar Republic settled it about five years ago,” Marshall said.

   “Lunar Republic?”

   “It’s a long story.” Hammond looked at him expectantly, and Marshall continued, “The war you escaped from lasted for ten years, and the aftermath for the rest of the century. There was never a peace treaty, circumstances rendered it moot. None of the nations that fought in the war still exist.”

   “Then the United States…”

   “All national governments were dissolved in 2077 in the One Earth Pact.”

   Shaking his head, the Governor replied, “We're going to have to adjust our calendars. We knew that we'd experienced some time dilation, but working out the changes was a low priority until it was too late. For us, we're only just on the threshold of the 22nd century, and for you it is half over.” He looked at the two of them, smiled, and said, “Just an old man rambling. You were saying?”

   “The priority was survival. For a while it was uncertain whether Earth had been irreparably damaged by the war. Over time, gradually, we pulled ourselves back from the brink. The planetary colonies survived, thrived, even, and that provided resources for the rebuilding program. By about 2100 it was clear that we could repair the damage done to the ecosystem.”

   Hammond smiled, and then, “A happy ending. So your Triplanetary Confederation is Earth, Mars and where? Ragnarok?”

   “Mars, Callis
to and Titan. We rebelled against the United Nations. The rebuilding came to an end, but the exploitation didn’t. So we declared independence, and after ten years, made it stick. The Interplanetary War ended fifteen years ago.” Shaking his head, he said, “I fought in the last three years of it. I’ll see that you get full briefing materials, enough to bring you all back up to date with the state of the galaxy.”

   “The state of the galaxy,” Hammond said. “That has quite a ring to it.” He looked down at the ground, and said, “You’ll have to forgive me. I’ve been used to being responsible for the survival of the human race. To find that we are in a forgotten backwater is going to be hard to get used to.”

   A jeep pulled up beside them, sending a cloud of dust spilling up into the air, and a thin, wiry man wearing a battered field uniform, a star on each shoulder, jumped out into the street. Marshall immediately snapped a salute, the general returning it with a smile.

   “I’ve talked to one of your people,” he began. “You must be Captain Marshall.”

   “Yes, sir,” he said. “General Daniels?”

   Nodding, Daniels replied, “Sorry I wasn’t there to see you come down. I was out at Patton Outpost.”

   “Trouble?” Hammond asked.

   “One of our patrols spotted signs of activity. I think one of the tribes is going to be probing our defenses tonight.” Turning to Marshall, he said, “We could really use a bit of help if we’re going to repel them.”

   “What is the tactical situation?”

   “Poor, bordering on desperate. I’ve got about a hundred effectives,” he glanced at the insignia on his shoulder, and grinned, continuing, “for all that I should be commanding a brigade. We’re spread out at half a dozen outposts, with a few reserves back at the Fort. Any large-scale attack will break through, and there’s damn all we can do about it. It’s as simple as that.”

   “I’m afraid General Daniels is quite correct, Captain,” Hammond said. “I’ll make it formal and request the assistance of your forces. There are women and children down here, and I don’t think their chances are going to about to much.”