“Where is it?” Jackson demanded.
“Stationary relative to our position, five hundred meters off the bow and ten degrees to starboard,” Davis said. “The Vruahn cube is not answering any of our hails but it must be receiving. I threatened to open fire if it continued its approach and it stopped there.”
“Coms! Patch me through.”
“You’re on a live channel, sir.” Jackson noticed in passing that Lieutenant Keller was back at his station with a large bandage on the left side of his head.
“This is Captain Wolfe back aboard the Ares,” he said, trying to reign in his rage. “You have ten seconds to convince me not to turn you to slag.”
“Primary protocols dictated the protection of the communication node,” the cube’s voice came over the bridge speakers.
“At the cost of more lives?” Jackson seethed. “You’ll have to do better. I am not allowing you back on this ship while you’re operating under unknown protocols that are a clear danger to my ship and my crew.”
“If you do not allow the cube back aboard your vessel, Captain, your mission will have been for nothing,” the cube said. “Is that really what you want?”
“Ah … the handlers,” Jackson recognized the shift in the cube’s speech patterns. “Now we’re getting somewhere. My ultimatum stands. Get someone on the channel that can offer assurances or I vaporize the cube with the node in it.”
“Your officers are also inside the shuttle,” the cube pointed out.
“You’re wasting time,” Jackson ignored the barb. The channel fell silent for a few minutes before he felt they needed another prod.
“Tactical, lock forward battery onto the shuttle,” he said. “Maximum power.”
“Aye, sir,” Barrett said without hesitation. “Forward laser battery coming online. Targeting sweep initiated.”
“Captain, there’s a private com channel request coming in for you from the shuttle,” Keller said. “The header tag says it’s from a ‘Setsi?’ Am I saying that right?”
“Send it to my office, Mr. Keller,” Jackson turned to walk off the bridge. “And it’s good to see you back on duty.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
****
“Captain, I thought we were past all this needless posturing.” Setsi’s expressionless face appeared on Jackson’s terminal screen.
“Your animated stasis pod just fucking killed another three of my crew!” Jackson raged, not caring that the hatch wasn’t soundproof. “What kind of bullshit alliance is this? We are not expendable beasts of burden and I am not posturing. I will destroy that cube.”
“That cube was designed, built, and delivered at your request.” Setsi actually seemed exasperated. “Did you think that you would win your little war without any more bloodshed?”
“I did not,” Jackson said. “But I also didn’t expect said blood to be spilled because of Vruahn arrogance or incompetence … I haven’t decided which.”
“You dare to accuse us of such things?” Setsi’s face morphed through a few unreadable expressions before settling back down again. “Captain … we have worked with humans for nearly two of your centuries and never had we come up against such inexplicable hostility or obtuseness.”
“You’ve kept human pets that you’ve trained to be attack dogs,” Jackson shot back. “Don’t bullshit me, Setsi … you had no intention of helping us until your own little corner of the galaxy was threatened. There is so much about this that stinks to high heaven, but right now I only care about one thing: are you going to give me all of the information on this machine that’s been carving a bloody swath through my crew? Or am I going to give the order to fire and end this ridiculous one-sided alliance?”
Setsi stared blankly at him through the monitor in what could have been interpreted as an attempt at intimidation, but Jackson knew to mean that whoever was controlling the avatar had stepped away for something.
“We will be sending the entire technical specifications for both the stasis pod and the proposed mission parameters as well as updating the primary protocols to make the machine more … forthcoming and flexible,” Setsi said. “We regret the deaths of your crewmembers, Captain. We hope they will not have been in vain. Stand by for data transmission.”
“I wasn’t expecting that,” Jackson said to a blank screen as the channel had been terminated remotely from the other side.
“Captain, we have an incoming channel request from the cube,” Davis broke in over the intercom. “Data only.”
“Let it through,” Jackson said. “Tell Barrett to power down the forward batteries and then get me a channel to Captain Wright. I need to be briefed on the particulars of the Alpha.”
“Aye, sir.”
During Celesta’s debrief about how she had made the call to fire two Shrikes into the hole they’d cut through the Alpha’s hull, Jackson was preoccupied with the odd shift in their arrangement with the Vruahn. He wasn’t sure if the sudden acquiescence made him feel any more secure about his allies or not.
“I ordered Jillian to have the Ares ready to move but to stand fast,” Celesta was saying. “Your standing order to kill the Alpha had technically been to me, and I didn’t want her taking any heat if somehow it had been the wrong move while you were out of contact.”
“Hmm?” Jackson murmured. “Oh, yes. You did exactly as you should have, Captain. Thank you for confirming we were aboard the shuttle before firing. Two months of radiation treatment isn’t my idea of a good time.”
“Of course, sir,” Celesta said. “Will there be anything else?”
“No, Captain, this mission is concluded,” Jackson sighed. “At great cost we managed to pull it off and now it’s time to get back to New Sierra. I’ll bet the political powers that be have shaken off their initial shock and are coming at the admiral in full force. Be ready to depart the system within the day. If the Ares isn’t ready to make the transition then the stasis cube will be transferred to the Icarus and you will fly the flag back to Terran space.”
“Yes, sir,” Celesta nodded. “Icarus out.”
Jackson stayed in his office a bit longer, not wanting to go out on the bridge just yet after the debacle that was the EVA mission. He swung his chair around, pulled his utility pant leg up, and detached his prosthetic to allow the skin around the socket a chance to breathe a bit while he read the latest report that had come in from the Hyperion.
From what Captain Walton was implying it was good that they arrived when they did. There was almost a full-blown mutiny ready to erupt on the Atlas when they made contact, two separate factions fighting over whether to abandon ship or not. Disaster was barely averted there, and the Hyperion was able to drag the powerless Atlas up to a higher orbit so that engineering teams could get the stricken ship’s powerplant back up and running. As of the timestamp on the report they had fully charged the batteries and starter banks on the Atlas and were ready to begin priming Reactor One for a restart. The emergency backup fuel cells still would not engage, and they couldn’t figure out why, so for the time being they were ignoring that problem.
With a grunt of pain Jackson reattached his leg with a snap, waiting as the nerve sensations evened out from the prosthetic, and then fixed his uniform. He desperately wanted to sit down and enjoy a hot meal and he would seriously consider doing great bodily harm to someone if it meant he could lie down and sleep uninterrupted for at least five hours, but that wasn’t in the cards. The Ares was in a bad way and the crew had been beaten up plenty. He had to see to them and he wouldn’t be able to rest until the shuttle was back aboard and he talked to the cube again to see just what changes had been made when the Vruahn shifted the protocols around.
****
“All of the hull breaches are repaired to the point that Commander Singh feels comfortable clearing the ship for warp transition,” Hayashi was saying as the rest of first watch filtered onto the bridge, all of them holding some sort of liquid stimulant in their hands. “The cube has been secured
and the shuttle crew has been cleared to return to duty.”
“Good, good,” Jackson said. “Any word on if they were able to locate the bodies that were missing from the EVA mission?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but no.” Hayashi looked down at the floor. “There was simply too much debris from the destroyed Alpha and our own engine to pick out the small profiles of the EVA suits on radar.”
“Very well,” Jackson said. “Tell the crew that we will have a memorial service for our crewmembers directly preceding the planned service for the Artemis. Inform Engineering that I intend to begin accelerating for the jump point as soon as the Atlas and Hyperion join the formation; the other ships will follow two days later. Given that we’ll be limping to transition on a single main we’ll all arrive in the X-Ray system more or less together that way.”
“Yes, sir.” Hayashi bowed his head again. “I will prepare a brief and inform the crew.” Jackson watched as he hustled away, and he made a mental note to make sure the young officer was taken care of if they survived the upcoming fight. He had no illusions about his own future; he had no chance of ever advancing past captaining a destroyer and he was just fine with that. He would retire with a collective sigh of relief from the Fleet brass, but he had a talented crop of junior officers that he wanted to see given every chance to go as far as they could. Barrett and Davis in particular had command written all over them, and Hayashi needed to be given experience past the OPS station. There were also some hard-charging enlisted spacers like Accari whom he would like to see given the option to attend the Academy’s accelerated officer training program.
He shook his head to clear out all the fluff. What the hell? He had to be completely focused on the task at hand and put all the administrative crap on hold until they were in a position to worry about such things. The damnable, unfair misery of it was that the whole thing was just a form of mental masturbation meant to accomplish one thing: distract him from the fact that he was leading these men and women to almost certain death. It wasn’t just the numerical superiority that had him concerned; he was still quite shaken at how the Ares had responded in her first real bare-knuckle fight with a Phage heavy. While the gravity bombs were a unique and unpredictable element to the fight, it hadn’t taken much and she was now missing an engine and streaming atmosphere from a dozen temporary hull patches.
The Blue Jacket had taken harder hits on the chin during her engagement with a Phage Super Alpha and wouldn’t lay down, kept coming back for one more round. The Starwolf-class was maybe too clever, too dependent on the exotic materials and cutting-edge structural engineering methodologies. There was something to be said for the old iron. His previous ship had a hull that was three meters thick of solid alloy in most places. But maybe the problem was him. He was given a new ship that was faster, nimbler, and loaded with tech that he hadn’t even dreamed of years ago and he still tried to fight her like she was a drunken bar brawler instead of playing to her strengths.
“Are you okay, sir?” Davis asked.
“Yes, Lieutenant,” Jackson smiled absently. “Just thinking.”
“Yes, sir,” Davis looked unconvinced. “We’ll be ready to get underway shortly. Engineering is just making some final inspections of the drive.”
“Very good,” Jackson stood. “You have the ship, Lieutenant. Make sure everyone knows that it’s dress blacks for the service unless they’re working in an area that precludes it.”
“Yes, sir,” she said somberly.
Chapter 18
“Transition successful,” Hayashi announced.
“Position verified, sir,” Accari said. “We’re right on target and in the X-Ray system.”
“Tactical, full passive scans of the system,” Jackson said. “This is still contested space. Use the cube’s detection equipment if you need to. Helm, push us out of the jump point on thrusters, maintain our carried-over velocity from transition.”
“Aye, sir,” the helmsman said. “Pushing off to starboard.”
“OPS, have Engineering perform a full set of checks on the warp drive and on Engine One before we fire it up,” Jackson said. “Let’s not take any unnecessary risks with our only MPD pod.”
The Ares slid into the system with the momentum she carried from the warp transition, while Commander Singh’s crews worked feverishly to make sure she was ready for the next short warp flight to the Xi’an System before the long burn all the way to New Sierra. Jackson spent his time reviewing the new technical data the Vruahn had transmitted over, specifically the rough mission parameters they’d set for the attack on the Phage core mind. The plan was pretty cut and dry, which was good in some ways. They were fielding the largest armada in the history of human spaceflight and there were a lot of moving parts. Command and control would be an issue no matter what, so Jackson did lean towards the elegance of a simple plan that everyone could understand.
The bad part was that the Vruahn weren’t exactly tactical geniuses. A good strategy didn’t have to be overly complex to be workable, but it also shouldn’t be too obvious. The idea of using a Phage transponder to allow them a close approach was a good one, if it worked, but he had no illusions that they would be so easily fooled for long. A species that was able to communicate across such vast distances almost instantaneously would be aware when one of their big boys had dropped off the map without a trace. Having it just pop back up next to one of their most strategically important installations was sure to put them on the defensive almost immediately.
As he read the synopsis provided with the Vruahn battle plan he started to recognize certain themes. The Phage were vicious and instinctual, but they were not unthinking beasts. While they certainly reacted to stimuli in a way that gave the appearance that they were mostly animalistic in nature, Jackson had observed them employing increasingly complex tactics against Fleet forces based on their limited experience with humans, even to the point of dabbling in the nuances of psychological warfare, tiring the easily stressed humans to the point of rash action. The Vruahn seemed to think that the Phage were just advanced constructs that, in spite of the core mind’s influence, were incapable of higher reasoning and that the simple, blunt methods they’d laid out would secure a victory.
Or … they knew that it wouldn’t but the battle would effectively eliminate humanity’s military strength while weakening the Phage to the point that they wouldn’t threaten the Vruahn for many years to come. Could their new allies, a species of avowed pacifists, really be so coldly calculating with the fates of entire species? The answer he had for that question sent a cold chill up his spine.
“Captain, we have a standard Fleet hail coming in from the inner system,” Keller said. “No registry or callsign attached.”
“I see,” Jackson rolled his eyes. “Please transmit our greeting to Agent Pike and ask him if we have clear skies back to Xi’an.”
“Yes, sir.”
While still going through the Vruahn data dump Jackson kept an eye on the mission clock above the main display that had started an elapsed time count the moment the ship had shuddered her way back into real space in the X-Ray System.
“Sir, a reply came back with a generic CIS transponder code requesting a private channel with you,” Keller said eventually. Jackson looked at the clock again: thirty-three minutes. Pike must be on the near side of the system, likely watching the jump point and waiting for them to pop out.
“Send it to my office, Lieutenant.” Jackson pushed himself up out of his seat with a certain amount of dread. If Pike was waiting for him to come back from the Zulu System it probably wasn’t for a congratulatory cheer; the CIS agent was much too valuable to his superiors to waste time sitting in an empty star system waiting for a few ships to straggle through.
“How did you know it was me?” Pike grinned widely on the display.
“Who else skulks around in the dark, harassing me at every turn?” Jackson settled into his seat. “What brings you all the way out here, Pike?”
“I’m
mildly insulted by that,” Pike sniffed. “I see you’re not bringing all your ship back with you.”
“No, I’m not,” Jackson said. “I’m also not bringing back all of my squadron.”
“The Icarus?” Pike sat up quickly, causing Jackson to narrow his eyes suspiciously.
“No … the Artemis was lost with all hands in the opening shots of the battle,” Jackson said slowly. “But we were successful in our mission. Thanks for asking.”
“Yes, of course,” Pike composed himself. “Well done, Captain, and the loss of the Artemis is a huge price to pay. So is the Alpha still in the Zulu System?”
“I’ll fill you in later as well as send you a private copy of the report I’m filing with Admiral Marcum,” Jackson said. “It’s not so simple as bringing back a crippled Alpha, but to answer your question, we were successful and we didn’t leave anything alive in the Zulu System. So, not to be rude … but what the hell are you doing out here?”
“The usual,” Pike said. “Things have become a bit more complicated in the DeLonges System since you’ve left. The sky has been polluted with com drones as all the political wrangling has started up again. President McKellar has tried to reassert his authority from the Ark and, believe it or not, Earth has now entered the fray claiming that they are the de facto seat of power now that Haven is gone.”
“Funny, since Earth has no military power with which to exert their political will,” Jackson snorted. “I assume there’s much more going on behind the scenes within the enclaves to cause them to make such an absurd statement.”
“You betcha,” Pike said. “Anyway … Marcum asked me to come out here and give you warning that your name has been tossed around quite a bit in all the posturing.”
“He could have done that with a com drone,” Jackson said.
“I was also supposed to look for your remains if you were gone for too long,” Pike said.
Counterstrike (Black Fleet Trilogy, Book 3) Page 18
