Into the Maelstrom

by Loren L. Coleman

  A deep peal rumbled across the sky, like the roll of distant thunder or the passage of a hypersonic transport. Rebecca Howard glanced southeast, in the direction of the recently concluded firefight. “Artillery?” she asked, frowning at the unfamiliar noise.

  Unfamiliar because of the clear, pale blue sky stretching overhead. Sainz knew the sounds of a battlefield, no matter how distorted. He knew this one. “Thunder.”

  He scanned above for any sign of clouds. The pale blue washed almost white at the horizons, as if the color was being bled from the sky. “No stranger than anything else—thunder in a clear sky.”

  Just one more indication that something was going on in the atmosphere, at any rate. None of the Seventy-first’s comm specialists could raise Union command. Undiagnosed disturbances, they claimed. What it meant was no hope for reinforcements and no way to arrange withdrawal, should it become necessary.

  The major held one hand to her ear, as if trapping in the small earplug she wore. More than anything a gesture for silence while an aide back in the Hades briefed her by remote. “The pickets have met Tom’s squad. They brought out Fitzpatrick. She reconned a large Neo-Soviet force about thirty klicks southwest.” A longer pause. “They’re ready to fight—they know we’re here all right. And you called it, it’s the Fifty-sixth Striker. Lance Corporal Fitzpatrick has a rough estimate of force strength.” She gauged the position of the sun. “If we angle harder west, we might avoid them for another half day. But the fight will be tomorrow for certain.”

  Sainz stepped up onto the ice. For a moment he thought it might simply run back to water and he would sink into its blue depths, but it held. He saw the first trails of water forming as the river began to melt. It would be a slow process at first, the water pooling on its surface, those pools being warmed by the sun and helping to melt the ice further. Toward the end the process would accelerate, until the ice finally lost its battle with temperature, broke apart, and floated down the resurrected river.

  “The Seventy-first might be dissolved the same way,” he said, not bothering to explain his observation. “The Neo-Soviets can shave us down bit by bit, always pooling more forces against us than we have. In the end, we’ll shatter and be swept away.”

  “It’s just the Fifty-sixth, for now,” Rebecca Howard said. The two had worked together long enough to level with each other. And, when one needed it, to hit the other with a reality check. “If they came out to fight, maybe there’s something here worth protecting.”

  “Chernaya Gora.” Sainz nodded. “Black Mountain. I haven’t forgotten.” He stared up into Gory Putorana, to the southwest. “It’s out there, somewhere on the southern slopes apparently. And it does us no good to withdraw without the ability to call in retrieval. Let’s hope we find it while we’re strong enough to take it out.”

  He stood there quietly for so long that Rebecca turned away to leave him a moment’s peace. Sainz sensed her movement, knew she would keep the others away. So close to battle, everyone needed their private moment to ready themselves.

  “Who is our best shot with a Bloodhound?” he asked, freezing her in place. The Weatherby Mk-VI Bloodhound was the Union’s standard long-range marksman rifle. Read, sniper rifle. Sainz rarely authorized their use. Snipers tended to have short lives on the battlefield.

  “I would have said PFC Williams,” she said cautiously, thinking. “After him, I’d say either me or Sergeant Tyree.” She paused. “You think this Katya Romilsky will give you the shot?”

  “No. But then I also can’t afford to overlook the possibility of a mistake, either. I want all bases covered. If nothing else, it might give us a hole card to play if he works into the right position.” He nodded, as if to punctuate his decision. “I can’t spare you on the field. Issue Tyree a weapon with precision scope.

  “If we’re going to drag the Seventy-first through the grinder, I want to be ready to chip out some teeth.”

  * * *

  Randall Williams considered calling Paul Drake back to Tycho Control and Direction. He would set the Marine between him and the barrage of questions, requests, and demands being placed on him, defending a moment of peace and sanity that would let his scientist’s mind work on one problem at a time. TC&D was juggling too many projects, each one critically important to someone’s interests. The Canadian states were suffering massive communications blackout as several Union CanCom satellites shifted in their orbits. Battle Stations Independence and Liberty were under full manual control and requesting navigation assistance. Station Freedom, the third of the Union’s three orbiting battle platforms and in a higher orbit, reported less in the way of disturbances but had been tasked with moving over Siberia though they had lost half their propulsion systems in what they called an unclassified impact.

  Major Williams grew tired of such descriptions. There had been too many unclassified, undiagnosed, and nonlocalized phenomena of late.

  Meanwhile, the lunar tremors had not subsided. They continued with increasing frequency, if not severity. No one paused to ride out the light quakes, though. They worked through the trembles, ignoring them as best they could as fingers flew over touch-sensitive screens and comm specialists manned links to Tranquillity Base, Earth, Freedom, Liberty, and Independence, and various military posts nearby on Luna.

  “Phillipe, what do you have for me?” He paused behind the weapons specialist, who was busy manipulating numbers on a navigator’s console. He rested a hand on the corporal’s shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

  “This isn’t my seat, Major.” He held up his hands in surrender. “I need at least another orbit to bring Freedom over this Gory Putorana whateveritis.” He winced. “Maybe two.”

  “You know the basics of orbital mechanics, Phillipe. And you know the computer system well enough. My navigators are trying to keep Canada’s satellites from spinning off into space or decaying into the atmosphere, and now the Pacific Ring system isn’t looking too good either. We have forces on the ground in Siberia, and Freedom is their only chance of putting them back in contact with Union Command. Make it happen.”

  “I’ll try, sir.”

  Williams’s people were all giving one hundred ten percent, but sometimes that wasn’t enough. “If you can’t handle it, Phillipe, I’ll turn it back over to General Hayes’s people at Tranquillity.”

  That was, of course, an empty threat. With the Tycho workload, the major could only imagine the bedlam at Tranquillity Lunar Command. But, as always, the added push of competition focused his people. Savoign bent back to his console with renewed purpose.

  Not that Williams thought it would do any good. Freedom couldn’t maintain good comms with Union ground-based systems. How they would cut through the disturbance and link up with the Seventy-first Assault Group he couldn’t see. But more than an order from the general, the Seventy-first was his brother’s outfit. Major Williams had to try and get them support.

  “New message coming in on priority override,” Amanda Baker called out as a new quake shook Tycho.

  “Another one?” One more problem might be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

  PFC Baker frowned. “This is coming in from the observatory. They say the stars are flickering.”

  That wasn’t funny. Williams strode over to the console, picked up an auxiliary link. “Brigadier General Hayes has declared an emergency on Luna. Keep this line clear except for official traffic.” Because he evidenced little use for military authority, most of the time, did not mean he didn’t know how and when to use it.

  “Sir!” a voice interrupted before Williams disconnected. “This is an emergency. We’re losing star fixes. They’re flickering out, and then back into view.”

  “Switch to red,” Williams ordered a technician, who adjusted the lighting in TC&D from standard illumination to what had forever been known in the Union as battle condition red. The room darkened, but the red lights gave people enough to move around by, and console screens were actually better viewed thi
s way.

  The major looked through the plex wall, at the natural scene outside in the terrasim environment. “Kill the outside floods,” he ordered. Tycho was still days away from its dawn. As lights came down, the stars were easily visible in the darkness of the sky. Even through the generated atmosphere they would be brighter and more numerous than the best night on Earth.

  And some were indeed flickering. They would fade from view, as if occluded by some object, and then reappear. Those just off the base’s line of sight with Earth appeared affected the most, though no section of sky was immune. The excited talk of a moment before, the entire room at work, faded as all eyes slowly turned to the plex wall and what they could see of the sky. No one spoke—not a whisper. Only a few consoles beeped for attention, and they were ignored.

  Randall Williams continued to stare at the strange phenomenon. “Back to work,” he said softly. In the room’s abnormal silence, the whisper sounded exceptionally loud.

  He swallowed, feeling his mouth suddenly parched and a knot in his throat, but managed to continue in his regular voice. “Everyone back to work, except consoles eight through twelve, clear your screens.”

  That was half his astrophysics consoles. He pointed at the disturbance. “Find out what that is.”

  8

  * * *

  T he empire survey ship Kolyma hung against the star-strung backdrop of black space. The vessel pointed its after end along its direction of motion, the concave shield of its thruster port awash in a dull orange glow as the nuclear drive ejectors continued to fire a steady stream of fissioning material into the bowl. Though still traveling at several thousand kilometers per hour, the vessel appeared nearly motionless without any good relative point to judge velocity. Coming in at the back side of Terra made for a poor reference. The planet looked no more than a dark disk ringed by a thin solar halo, not to mention the immense difference in scale. And the Kolyma decelerated at only a slightly lower rate than the transport ship it pursued.

  To an outside observer—had such been possible—the pair of ships would have seemed to slowly drift toward each other. Though on slightly different approach vectors, they were quickly matching up on the same target. Terra.

  Strapped into his acceleration couch on the Kolyma, sweating through the discomfort of four and a half gravities of deceleration, Brygan Nystolov focused on the nearby monitor and watched that gap narrow. He waited either for his missiles to come within range or for the Leonid Sergetov to answer his hails. He didn’t want to destroy the ship, or its occupant, but unless the vessel answered and then slaved itself to his computers, he would have no choice.

  His orders were very clear.

  * * *

  Brygan had never seen General Leonov so angry as he had been twenty-four hours earlier.

  The general’s teeth were clenched so tightly the muscles along his jawline bulged in solid knots. His red-brown eyes blazed with fury, and his face flushed red all the way up his head, lending a pinkish cast to his gray crew cut. Brygan felt fortunate that he only had to deal with Leonov via the small monitor screen set among the Kolyma’s controls.

  “Scout Nystolov,” Leonov growled, “have you located any sign of the Union forces in Noctis Labyrinthus?”

  Brygan wondered what was really on the general’s mind. If he’d checked his consoles at all, he already knew that Brygan had abandoned the Labyrinth and was currently gaining altitude over Arsia Mons.

  “Plenty of signs, Comrade General Leonov. I believe they have separated into several forces, each laying false trails where we would expect to find them.”

  A curt nod. “So you plan to survey the nearby mountains?” The general obviously remembered Brygan’s comments about how he would attempt to seize a foothold on Mars were he the Union commander.

  “I wanted to look over Olympus Mons and the caldera of Pavonis Mons, yes. But to adequately quarter and search those areas will take a stronger force than just myself.”

  “I will assign such forces. You, Brygan Vassilyevich Nystolov, are to pursue a rogue vessel, manned by a possible traitor and defector, and destroy it.” The venom Leonov gave to the words traitor and defector said that he had already rendered his judgment. “The military transport Leonid Sergetov is already past our outer satellite ring and setting a Terra-bound course, current acceleration of three standard gravities.”

  The Sergetov? “I couldn’t possibly intercept her before Terra. Better to inform Neo-Soviet High Command.” Even as he spoke, Brygan knew what the general would say.

  “Communications are still unreliable.” Leonov threw a sidelong glance of disgust at the communications crew no doubt laboring back in a corner of the Ascraeus Mons base. “We have no transmission capability and only intermittent reception from Terra, mostly requesting status reports or informing us of strange planetwide disturbances.” The general shook his head. “Some of the reports make little sense, but it seems that our Union enemies have developed some new weapons. I believe High Command may be about to strike back with heavy assets.”

  “And the rogue?” Brygan asked, suddenly dreading who Leonov would name.

  “The Ascraeus Mental.” The general glowered. “Twice he sent you out chasing phantom trails. Now he steals a transport to make it back to Terra, at just the time when the Union successfully lands forces on Mars and war is imminent on Terra? That is too much the coincidence. He defeated security around the cage too easily, and has somehow managed to navigate an interplanetary craft.”

  “The Kolyma can make the trip, Comrade General. But it is a one-way mission. I will expend all my fuel to match the Sergetov’s acceleration.” And every second of delay cost Brygan another 29.4 meters per second in speed. He cleared his current piloting program and took manual control of the ship, turning onto a fast-escape course from Mars’s atmosphere. The small craft swung around in a tight arc, pressing Brygan back into the crash couch. Less than thirty hours’ flight time to Terra. Better, if he hoped to catch the Leonid Sergetov. “I am altering course now.”

  “Good hunting, Brygan Vassilyevich. When you reach Terra, you will do what you must to facilitate a return of full communications with the empire, but that is secondary to your mission. If you cannot gain control of the Leonid Sergetov, you will destroy it. There can be no chance of the Mental defecting.”

  “I understand, Comrade General.”

  As Leonov ended the conversation with a disconnect from his end, Brygan could finally frown in confusion. No Mental had ever defected or been accused of treason before. The evidence was circumstantial, but still damning.

  And Brygan noticed another item Leonov had not. That despite a physically weak constitution, the Mental would endure an acceleration three times Terran-standard gravity—six times that of Mars? Brygan had not mentioned that fact to the general, who, in his current state, would surely have twisted it into further evidence of treason. In Brygan’s mind, it raised even more disturbing questions.

  What could be so important as to drive the Mental to flee Mars, and in such haste? What was it he had seen, or sensed?

  * * *

  Questions that still plagued him as the computer cut back on the heavy G forces to a deceleration of only one standard gravity. A red icon flashed for attention on the main console screen. The Sergetov was now inside his extended range for missiles. He was fast approaching the troop transport as it continued a heavy-gravity decel. With only four missiles loaded on his ship, Brygan could afford no more than two risky launches. After that, if the missiles found no joy, he would have to match courses with the Sergetov for sure hits.

  Terra was huge in the forward window, though still several hours away, as Brygan cut all deceleration. He swung the small scout craft 180 degrees and reached for fire control, intent on launching the first missile. He paused in mid-reach, noticing the sudden flare of white energy that streaked across Terra’s shadowed side. A ballistic missile? Had the Union and Neo-Soviet empire entered into full-scale war again? Then the first tremor h
it the Kolyma, shaking the vessel for ten long seconds.

  A micrometeor strike? The odds were long that a spacecraft would strike a foreign particle large enough to do damage while traveling through the vacuum of space. The screens showed no damage, and he wasn’t venting atmosphere. Brygan almost wrote it off to an engine malfunction, except that the diagnostics all read in the green.

  Then another flare streaked across the dark face of Terra, quickly joined by three more, all at various angles to each other. Brygan Nystolov knew then that these were no missile strikes. In fact, at the relative scale, the flares were several kilometers in width and thousands in length. The scale boggled his mind for a brief instant of shock that ended when Terra suddenly pulsed a curtain of energy. No other way to describe it. The atmosphere glowed with illumination, allowing Brygan to pick out the Union continents sweeping by in what was their unsuspecting night, and then it strengthened to a solid white veil that rushed outward as a wave of energy that curled over the moon in a bright flare and swept over both incoming vessels.

  No noise. No shaking of the Kolyma this time. Just an eerie wash of pure energy that pulsed outward and then contracted back in until it settled around Terra in a nebulous haze at about half the radius from Terra to Luna. The blurred streaks became titanic tendrils of energy that curled around Terra and reached lazily into space for hundreds—thousands—of kilometers in a silent storm of energies the likes of which Brygan had never witnessed or even dreamed possible.