If the platform was in trouble, and she could do something to help, she would have to make her move very soon. Yet, she didn’t want to make a hasty decision she ended up regretting. Before taking any action, she decided to reach out to a nearby platform to see if she could learn anything about the mysterious ship.
“Goblin, connect to Sierra Twelve’s Starshot buoy, and get me Platform Twenty-Nine’s STC Center.”
There was a pause, and then the ship responded. {Unable to comply. Ford-Svaiter node unavailable.}
Katie sat up in alarm. In all her eighteen years, she’d never once heard of a Ford-Svaiter node going down.
“Goblin, try again.”
The response was the same.
Eyes narrowing in thought, she ordered the ship to connect to a more distant Starshot buoy, located an AU beyond Sierra Twelve, on the rimward side.
Goblin’s response was the same.
She frowned. “Well, that makes about as much sense as a trap door in a tokamak.”
The odds of one node being down were very low. The odds of two nodes being down bordered on the incomprehensible.
“Goblin, try the Starshot buoy toward Heliodor.”
{Negative reception. Ford-Svaiter node unavailable.}
If three nodes were down, then whoever had arrived on Sierra Twelve must actively be jamming the frequencies. The newcomers were hostile.
Now she needed to figure out what she was going to do about it.
SIX
GNS Scimitar
en route
Cobalt Platform Sierra Twelve
Several hours earlier….
Those aboard Scimitar endured a hard, fifty-g accel for the first two hours of flight time. This allowed the Helios to catch up with the spiked vessel, Rafe maneuvering them into the optimal position to follow without being spotted. Once they’d reached that point, they eased off, matching the other ship’s two-g burn as they followed silently at a distance.
Micah wasn’t sure he agreed with the instructions Lane had received from Colonel Valenti, back at SRU headquarters in Procyon. The colonel had ordered them to follow but not engage until there was clear evidence that the SS had taken the platform and was holding its employees hostage.
{Technically, we’re not supposed to be operating within our own borders at all,} Jack reminded them when Dana voiced what they’d all been thinking. {We’re the Alliance’s military force, remember? Not its peacekeeping one.}
{Tell that to anyone who gets shot and killed while we sit on our asses and watch,} grumbled Cass.
{Not disagreeing with you, there, cher,} Thad supplied, {but for some reason, HQ keeps forgetting to ask my opinion about the orders they give.}
That got a snort out of Cass. {Point,} she admitted. {But that doesn’t mean we have to like it, all the same.}
{Ooh-rah,} Mike muttered from where he sat reclined in one of the cabin seats, his cap pulled low over his brow. {Wake me when there are SS assholes to blow up.}
From there, it was a long, tedious journey, Scimitar lagging far enough behind not to be picked up on the ship’s sensors. When it became clear the ship was headed to Sierra Twelve, Lane had them diverge from the flight path for a close pass by the sector’s Starshot buoy, just long enough for Cass to download recordings of the area from the past few days. The data would allow the team to get the lay of the land before they approached.
The SRU team huddled around a portable console, poring over the logs for the next hour. Micah deployed a small swarm of drones while Scimitar floated in space beside the buoy, awaiting her passengers’ instructions. He also kept a surface connection with the drones following the SS ship.
He pulled out of the connection long enough to focus his attention fully on Lane when the SRU team captain swiveled her chair around to face the cockpit.
An icon began to flash in the lower corner of the forward screens, indicating a file was being pushed to it. Rafe reached for it, and the icon expanded into a map of the nearby asteroid wall that formed the edge of the Cobalt Outback.
“Their destination,” Lane told them with a head-tilt indicating the flashing pin she’d dropped on a nearby mining platform. “Sierra Twelve has six thousand residents, give or take, servicing three main rigs buried deep within the wall. They—”
A proximity warning began to sound from the Griffin drones following the SS ship, cutting her off mid-sentence.
Micah jerked his head around at the sound, his senses plunging deep into the interface. He wasn’t with the ship any longer; he was one hundred thousand kilometers away, shadowing a ship running dark, and barreling toward an unsuspecting Cobalt Mining tug.
“Report, Lieutenant,” Rafe’s voice sounded as if from a great distance.
{Turn, you fool,} Micah’s mental voice went out over the shipnet. {Turn!}
{Lieutenant Case!}
Micah flipped the feed onto Scimitar’s main screens, his entire focus on the two converging ships. He let out a gust of air when the tug released its load and bolted stellar south, the ship’s overpowered drives giving it an enormous boost. Still, it was barely enough.
The other ship executed a hard turn, momentum carrying it dangerously close to the netted sphere of rocks. Somehow, it managed to evade, though Micah had to wonder about the condition of its paint job afterward.
His mind registered exclamations from the crew with some detachment, their reactions as they watched the near-miss play out, but his focus was pinned to the two ships. When he was convinced neither had come to harm, he pulled out of the SyntheticVision merge.
Mike’s was the first voice he heard clearly. “Think I might need to go change my shorts, after that.”
Rafe shook his head, voice tinged with disgust. “With the SS ship flying dark, that tug had virtually no warning until they were almost on top of it. That was some quick thinking by the pilot.”
Micah nodded. “Agreed.”
They resumed their watchful waiting, the hours ticking down until the ship would arrive in Sierra Twelve’s nearspace.
Fifteen hours and counting.
SEVEN
CMS Goblin
Cobalt Mining Sector Twelve
Katie stared out the tug’s airlock window, at the platform floating several hundred kilometers in the distance. The station seemed so very far away. It wouldn’t be her first non-tethered EVA, but it would certainly be the first time she’d ever purposely turned off her suit’s locator beacon.
It had become painfully clear over the past several hours that something was seriously wrong with Sierra Twelve. The unfamiliar voice that had come over the STC channel and demanded all Cobalt ships to return to the platform had fallen silent.
To say this was highly irregular was an understatement. First, Cobalt Mining didn’t shut down for anything short of a massive solar event from Big Blue, which meant its STC was always talking to one ship or another.
Second, the mandate was impossible to follow. Many of the ships were on weeks-long deployments, the kind her father used to fly. There was no conceivable way they could comply.
She’d initially ignored the order herself, but had been called harshly to task when she’d failed to change her heading. Knowing a gut reaction wasn’t the most reliable navaid, she’d reluctantly turned her nose back toward Sierra Twelve.
Besides, it wasn’t like she had anywhere else she could go; Goblin wasn’t equipped for long-haul trips. Although enviro could handle it, there certainly wasn’t enough food to sustain both her and Fred for the three-plus days it would take her to get to the next platform.
If there was something going on, she’d need to gather evidence before she made her escape.
Katie had tried raising Doc to see if he knew anything about what was going on, but he hadn’t answered. This wasn’t unusual, though; he often put his wire on Do Not Disturb while seeing patients.
Jeremy hadn’t answered either, when she’d first tried to contact him on a private channel. She tried again an hour later, and t
hen again an hour after that. The third time, she finally got through, but his voice sounded strained and awkward, and it set her spidey senses tingling.
When he’d asked how her cat was doing, she’d known for sure something was wrong. Jeremy knew all about Fred; he’d been known to slip the pup a rawhide bone from time to time.
So now here she stood, at Goblin’s aft airlock, suited up for an EVA that broke all the rules. She’d forced herself to think through all the options, and this one, while risky, provided her with the best chance for successfully sneaking onto Sierra Twelve without anyone the wiser.
And maybe, just maybe, she’d be able to send out a call for help in the process.
Katie’s ID was currently listed with Sierra Twelve’s SI as being aboard Goblin. If her ruse was going to work, they needed to continue to think she was aboard the tug—certainly not arrowing her way through the black toward a little-used maintenance hatch.
She also knew that if she allowed the platform to register her presence, the control center would be notified immediately. So she’d disabled her wire’s auto-connect feature, as well.
Two super dumb things a pilot was taught never, ever to do. Yeah, she was breaking all the rules.
She looked down at the rounded bump protruding from her EVA suit, where Fred lay tucked against her belly. The pup wriggled and whined, unhappy with his confinement.
“Just a little while longer,” she told him as she retested the integrity of her suit’s seal one last time.
Everything read green.
She’d checked the radiation sensors mounted on Goblin’s hull, and read the latest space weather report just before suiting up. Today’s measurements were well within the safe range for the amount of time she’d be outside the ship—for a human.
The risks to Fred were greater, she knew. He was a puppy and still developing. Unfortunately, she didn’t know how great a risk, so getting Fred to medical so Doc Slater could check him out would be her top priority once she made it to the platform.
She palmed the hatch open and felt a brief gust of wind as the tiny airlock’s atmosphere evacuated. Fred squirmed as her suit compensated for the vacuum. Checking that her bag of supplies was secured to its tether, she planted her boots against the edge of the hatch and pushed off.
As the tug fell away behind her, Katie brought up a visual approach indicator that showed both heading and distance to destination on her overlay. The numbers spiraled down the closer she got to the access hatch. After several seconds of monitoring her heading, Katie switched her attention to the tug.
Rotating her body to keep Goblin in her line of sight, she tested the whiskerbeam she’d set up prior to departure. The untraceable tightbeam connection would allow her to continue the pretense that she was still aboard the tug. It also allowed her to send Goblin’s SI instructions remotely.
Katie waited until her readout showed she was safely out of range. Once assured she wouldn’t be caught in the tug’s plasma wash, she initiated a starboard thruster burn, turning the ship’s nose away from the platform.
As expected, the change in heading elicited a sharp response from the person who had taken over STC.
{Cobalt tug Goblin, correct your heading,} the voice instructed.
{Sorry about that, Sierra Twelve. I’ve developed a bit of a hitch in my git-along. Hang on, trying to stabilize.}
She reckoned the more confusion she could toss into the mix, the better, so she leavened her speech with a heavy dose of platform slang. She doubted whoever was on the other end was too familiar with the patois.
She also figured they’d lose patience with the tug, and order it to turn back soon. While she waited, she split her attention between the ship and her destination, watching the spar grow larger as she neared it.
The silence lasted all of thirty seconds.
{Goblin, correct your course now!}
Katie keyed the comms and let out a long, audible sigh. {Sorry ‘bout that, Sierra Twelve. You know these things turn about as fast as a herd o’ turtles. You don’t want me to lose this net full of stones, now, do ya? You know the quartermaster; he’s as tight as a bull’s ass at fly time.}
Her offer to ditch what was arguably a high-value load of metals should have resulted in a quick refusal, but it didn’t. That was telling.
She only had to stretch this drama out another five minutes. At that point, she could trigger the distraction that would cover her suit’s braking burn so she didn’t end up splattered against the platform’s hull.
She altered Goblin’s course this way and that as she continued the charade with STC. As the clock hit the five-minute mark, she pulled up a stack of preset instructions she’d programmed to execute on her command, swiftly scanning through them one last time.
It’s now or never.
{Goblin, execute operation Asshat One.}
{Compliance,} came the voice of the ship’s SI.
Instantly, the grapples securing Goblin’s cargo released. As the netted asteroid chunks floated free, the now-unfettered tug nosed down below the plane, braking hard.
The maneuver dropped the ship neatly behind the material it had so recently been hauling. With a wall of rock now between it and the platform, Goblin’s fusion drives went to maximum thrust.
Katie imagined she could hear the drives screaming as the tug tried to claw its way back along the reciprocal of its course, its velocity slowly increasing as it overcame its previous momentum. She sent the stolid little tug a mental apology at the abuse it was taking as she fired her own suit’s thrusters, confident that whoever was in the STC was well-occupied looking the other way.
As she’d predicted, the tug’s unexpected movements took the terrorists by surprise. What she hadn’t anticipated was that it would also draw their fire. If she wanted to get her SOS out, Katie realized she’d better send her final command to the ship.
She fancied she saw a slight puff of air escape as a modified probe was propelled from one of the tug’s starboard sensor ports. Ordinarily used for materials assays, Katie had modified this one, fitting it with a small logic cube. It held all of the information Goblin had gathered on the unknown ship, as well as a summary of the current situation on the mining platform.
The powerful emission from the tug’s drives hid the probe’s smaller EM profile, and Katie kept it on the same heading so that Goblin would continue to mask its presence from those who had taken over Sierra Twelve.
She’d programmed the probe to fly dark once ejected from the vessel. With its transponder off, nothing but its own engine wash could give its presence away.
It would continue to boost silently along the same path as the tug until it passed beyond Sierra Twelve’s sensors and weapons range. She’d made a wild guess on the intruders’ jamming equipment, and was hoping its reach wasn’t much more than what the platform could achieve.
Her body remained tense while the numbers flashing in red on her overlay spun down. The minute the probe hit the safe zone and the numbers turned green, the probe’s transponder came online. She let out a whoop as and it began transmitting a Mayday signal on all channels.
She smiled viciously. That oughta jerk a knot in your tail, you egg-suckin’ pieces a’ owl shit.
Her smile fell from her face moments later as a missile streaked from the platform’s dock.
EIGHT
GNS Scimitar
nearing platform Sierra Twelve
The moment Scimitar’s crew realized the SS vessel wasn’t going to abide by the no-wake rules, they had a decision to make. Doing the same meant revealing their presence, and neither Lane nor Rafe wanted to lose the advantage of secrecy.
Aside from that was the issue of Sierra Twelve’s own safety. The Secede Sirius ship’s actions demonstrated a complete disregard for the lives of those on the platform. The warriors on board the Helios weren’t about to add to that.
Rafe began to brake outside the no-wake-zone, allowing the SS ship to surge ahead. By the time the tug began its
fateful run, Scimitar was too far out of range to be of any assistance to the tug’s pilot, even with the Banshees Micah had already deployed into a forward array.
They’d listened in on the frequency, had all heard the exchange between the girl piloting the tug and the platform. Whoever she was, she sounded like a spirited individual—and far too young to be going head to head with the likes of the SS.
A sick feeling punched Micah in the gut when railfire from the platform’s defense systems raked Goblin’s fuselage from tip to stern. The tug jinked erratically, but it was hopeless. Eventually, the platform’s guns got in a strike, and the punctured hull vented atmosphere in one huge gout.
Micah heard someone’s breath hiss out in an explosive gasp. Thad let loose a string of Cajun expletives, while inside his head, Cass’s mental voice did much the same.
{Someone tell me that girl had the smarts to suit up before she began her run,} Lane said. Micah heard anger in her voice, and knew it wasn’t directed at the tug, but at the heartless bastards shooting at an unarmed vessel.
{Micah, is there any chance your drones can—} Jack’s words were hoarse with strain, and he cut off abruptly when he saw the slight shake of Micah’s head.
{I could target the platform’s railguns, but if I were to miss….}
Micah didn’t need to complete the thought. Everyone knew what that meant, and the risk to civilians was just too high.
{The Banshees’ onboard SIs can’t get targeting solutions on the railfire quickly enough to use their lasers to neutralize the projectiles,} he added. {They’d get some, but not all.}
Lane shook her head. {It would also give away our presence, and we’d lose every tactical advantage we have.}
{It’s a no-win scenario.} Ell’s voice intruded quietly into the conversation.
Operation Cobalt – A Military Science Fiction Thriller: The Biogenesis War Files Page 4
