Trapped

by Scott Bartlett

  Husher decided to dispense with any preamble. “Admiral, we think we can plot a snap warp.”

  “My people are telling me that isn’t possible in a system we have so little data on.”

  Husher wanted to say that not having much data hadn’t stopped Iver from ordering an attack, but he held his tongue. “My Nav officer thinks that if we get close to the periphery of the system, given the lack of star density in this region, she can plot a safe jump course.”

  “Reasonably safe,” Fontaine said from behind Husher. “Captain.”

  Husher kept his expression neutral. “It’ll be a close thing, but it’s the best option we have.”

  “How far is the periphery?” Iver asked.

  “Fontaine?”

  Husher’s Nav officer tapped twice at her console. “Just under three billion kilometers, sir. I can be more precise if needed.”

  “That’s…not as close as I’d hoped,” Iver said

  Husher noticed his hands tightening on the command seat’s armrests, and he forced them to relax. “Are we sure we can’t warp sooner than that, Fontaine?”

  “It’s not that we can’t warp sooner. It’s that the farther out we get, the better our chances of not warping into anything.”

  “Which is a bad thing,” offered Shota. His flippancy under the circumstances should have annoyed Husher, but he was growing to like his brash young XO.

  “Those aliens will catch us before then at current speed,” offered Winterton. “Well before. We’ll need to deter them.”

  “Admiral?”

  Iver seemed to mull this over for a second. Then he turned to Daniels. “Tell the group. We’ll jump the instant we have a course and are clear.” He turned back to Husher. “In the meantime, fire everything you have. We need every second we can get.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Husher, as the connection was cut from the Providence’s side. A moment later, the same orders were transmitted to the rest of the battle group.

  Husher sat back down in his command chair. “Tremaine, how are we looking for firing particle beams?”

  “Capacitor is at seventy percent, sir. We have a lot of leeway before we need to start conserving charge for warp.”

  “Excellent. Favor secondary beams if you can, but use the primary for anything that gets too close.”

  “Aye, sir,” Tremaine said.

  Long spoke up. “Sir, message from Major Gamble. He reports the marine team is working to contain a group of alien invaders that breached the hull. They appear to be targeting the reactor core.”

  There was a moment of silence in the CIC. Just what we needed. “There’s nothing we can do from up here. We’ll have to hope that the marines can hold the line.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Coms officer said, hesitating.

  “What else, Commander?”

  “Sir, he reports extensive damage to the hull.”

  “Very well, send repair teams to—”

  “Captain, he’s saying the substance the aliens are producing is corroding the ship…and it appears to be purposefully targeting internal systems.”

  Husher stared at Long. “Sentient acid? Is that what I’m hearing?”

  “We can’t go to warp with hull damage,” Shota put in.

  “Winterton, do we have structural damage?” Husher asked.

  The sensor operator nodded slowly. “Yes, though it’s not yet at priority levels, sir.”

  “Not yet,” said Shota. “But if it’s spreading…”

  “All the more reason to get to that warp point as quickly as we can.” Husher tapped a command into his com. “What’s the air group’s status?”

  “Not good,” Callum replied. Husher could tell from the echo that he was already back in his fighter. Husher wondered if the man had been out of it since it had made an emergency landing with the rest of the Pythons. Probably not. They’d refueled and turned around for just this occasion. “We’re at about 40% capacity. Anything those aliens hit gets eaten down to the energy core by those acidic weapons of theirs.”

  “We need everything out there right now, Major. We have to hold that alien horde off long enough for the battle group to jump.”

  “Understood, sir. We’ll give ‘em hell.”

  “Good. But first, we’ll give them hell.” He turned to Tremaine. “Tactical spread, Hydra and Gorgons. No reason to hold back now. If we can’t make that warp, it won’t matter.”

  “Everything and the kitchen sink,” said Tremaine with relish.

  “We should use paired waves,” said Shota. “Judging from the movement we saw earlier.” He glanced at Husher. “It wouldn’t do much in our universe, but I’m betting these aliens have never seen it before.”

  The paired wave tactic was one that had become standard with the new Hellsong Hydras. It allowed the bursting cloud of kinetic impactors to create a cloud that blinded any anti-missile tactics that would otherwise thwart the stealth Gorgon missiles. For the dancing, unpredictable movements of the aliens, it might just be the best option.

  Husher nodded at Shota. “Make it as the commander says, Ensign. Paired waves—hydras linked to Gorgons. Report results, and if they’re better than our last barrage on the first pass, then send that along to the rest of the battle group ships.”

  Winterton exhaled sharply through his teeth. “Sir, the Wasp and the Able report heavy starfighter losses. They are pulling back to regroup.”

  “Any change in the density or speed of those incoming aliens?”

  “Negative, sir. Some change in spatial arrangement near the air group attack vectors, but I think they’re just skipping around the ships and burning them with that acid wash. Very few kills.”

  “Let’s hope our ship-to-ship efforts are more successful.”

  “Tactical on screen,” said Tremaine, and they now saw the line of missiles as they advanced on the incoming horde of alien ships.

  Husher couldn’t help but glance at the distance left to travel before they could warp. It was just too damn far.

  “Front-line Hydras are going into kill-mass mode,” Winterton said as the forward missiles split over and over into a cloud of kill-masses. That cloud poured into the aliens…and then through. “Few impacts, sir. But there was—”

  “There.” Shota pointed at the display. “There!”

  On the screen, explosions bloomed through the front of the enemy fleet, a slow-moving wave of light and fire. It seemed to crescendo and then peter out as it made its way into the heart of the cloud, but by that point their entire formation was deformed and shifted, with the side facing the Relentless badly wrecked.

  “Relay to strike group to make way for paired waves,” snapped Husher.

  “Aye, sir,” said his Coms officer as he spun around to send the message.

  “Second barrage,” announced Winterton.

  It had the same effect as the first, but this time the missiles struck deep in the heart of the enemy fleet, the explosions rending the innards of the advancing swarm.

  “It’s slowing,” said Winterton. “Sensors are picking up a new distortion in the enemy swarm. It seems to be re-coalescing, but at a reduced rate.”

  Husher leaned back. He hadn’t even realized he was leaning forward. He could feel a palpable sense of release on the deck. “This crazy plan might just work.”

  “New contacts,” said Winterton. “There are five more of those big ships appearing. They aren’t directly on our path, but they’re going to be closer than that previous cloud if they decide to…yes, they’re unraveling too, deploying the smaller ships. I’d estimate they’ll form up into a second swarm shortly.”

  “Where the hell did they come from?”

  “From behind the gas giant, sir. But...”

  “But?”

  “I don’t think they can realistically catch us. On our current course, we’re going to make it.”

  Husher felt some more of the tension leave his body.

  Then something on the main viewscreen flashed, like a small pulse
of energy. In the same instant, Husher spied from the corner of his eye that the unbroken line of green dots had altered—the dots that represented their destroyers. When he glanced that way, he saw only four, where there should have been five.

  He knew what was coming before Winterton spoke. He just didn’t know the name yet.

  “Sir, sensors just lost the Able.”

  Shota stepped toward the main viewscreen, eyes wide. “The enemy wasn’t anywhere near her. What happened?”

  “Before she vanished, there was an energy burst I’d associate with her main reactor core.”

  “It blew.” Husher leaned back in his seat.

  “How?” Shota was still pointing at the tactical board. “There’s no way anything got near them!”

  “The same way they nearly got ours.” Husher turned to Long. “Have we heard anything else from Major Callum?”

  “Just got a report, sir,” he said.

  “And?” A report was good. A report meant the marines were still there, or at least some of them were.

  “He reports they’ve lost fourteen marines and two mechs. But the threat is neutralized.”

  Husher looked up at the board again, exhaling slowly. “They saved all our lives, then.”

  He exchanged a grim look with Shota, who looked paler than he’d been a second ago.

  “The enemy must have compromised their hull during that first attack, just like us.” Husher resisted the urge to massage his temples. “Either the intruders weren’t detected, or they weren’t neutralized before they were able to compromise their reactor core.”

  He turned toward Long. “Coms, send a message to the rest of the battle group. They’re to post guards at all critical engineering stations, with particular focus on reactor cores. If they had any contact with the aliens, they better get any onboard threats neutralized fast. And if they have active threats they haven’t neutralized…well, now they know where they’ll be headed.”

  Shota found his voice again. “My God. What are those things, that that they could take down an entire destroyer?”

  “We’ll need to debrief the marine and mech teams, and the pilots. We need to understand what we’re up against.”

  The viewscreen now had a full view of the Able, broken into several pieces. There was no light. No sound. Just debris floating in space.

  “Can we effect a rescue?” Husher asked, knowing the answer.

  “We can have fighters make a sweep, but we can’t get evac operations there without slowing down.”

  Husher looked at the mob of aliens still bearing down on them. The human missile barrage had slowed them, but they’d regrouped, and were coming again as fast as they could. No doubt emboldened by their late-arriving comrades, who were right behind them.

  We have to keep going. If any of us are going to make it out of this system alive…we have to keep going. “There’s no point in making a pass with the fighters if we can’t get shuttles there to pick anyone up. Call the fighter wings back. Make ready for our snap jump the instant we have a destination plotted.” Husher felt a hard knot in the pit of his stomach.

  Those alien bastards were going to pay for this. They were going to pay for every last crew member on the Able.

  “Sir,” Winterton said. “I hate to bring this up, but…”

  “Say it.”

  “The hull breach on the port side is now registering structural damage.”

  Husher closed his eyes , and this time he allowed himself to rub his temples. “Can we jump with it?”

  “If it gets any bigger—”

  “Tell the Providence that if we don’t jump now, we can’t come along.”

  Maybe it was for the best, Husher told himself. Maybe this way he wouldn’t have to live with the guilt of leaving the Able behind. This way he’d be able to turn and die in a blaze of glory, right alongside the Able. He’d get a chance to effect some payback.

  “Providence reports common destination locked. Coordinates are good. We’re ready for snap warp jump,” said Long.

  Husher opened his eyes and looked at his XO. “Well, do we try the jump or turn and fight?”

  “I want to kill these bastards.”

  “So do I.” But he continued to hold Shota’s gaze.

  The XO stood his ground for a moment longer, out of stubbornness or pride Husher wasn’t sure. Finally, he let his shoulders slouch. “We might die in the jump. We will die in the fight.”

  Husher nodded. “Agreed.” He turned to Fontaine at the Nav station. “Make ready for jump.”

  “Yes, sir. Though I’m still not guaranteeing this won’t just turn us all into trillions of loose molecules floating through space.”

  “Reassuring as always, Lieutenant. But our options are dwindling.”

  As he said it, the outer batteries of the point defense system opened up. The front edge of the incoming aliens had just entered the railguns’ maximum range, and the computer had responded automatically. The rolling vibration throughout the CIC was enough to remind everyone of what was at stake.

  “We’re ready, sir,” Fontaine said.

  Husher glanced at the tactical board and watched as, one by one, the green dots at the front of the formation began to wink out. On his own console, he took one last look at the dead hulk of the Able, now clearly illuminated in the glow of the gas giant that dominated the system.

  No matter how hard he squinted, he knew he wouldn’t see anything amidst the debris. But in his imagination, he could see the bloated bodies of the Able’s crew bouncing off the pieces of their dead ship, like so much shrapnel from a bullet impact.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said.

  The stars on the viewscreen distorted and stretched as the warp bubble encapsulated the Relentless.

  They slipped into warp.

  Chapter 21

  Quarantine Zone

  Primary Engineering Plant, UHC Relentless

  “Fast as the devil and twice as nasty,” said Major Gamble from a bulkhead viewscreen.

  Husher stood just outside the engineering plant that housed the ship’s main reactor. The marine commander was no more than a dozen meters away, but he might as well have been on a different ship altogether.

  “How long are they going to keep you in there?” Husher asked. The reason he was talking to the major through a viewscreen was because Gamble and the rest of his marines were in quarantine, stuck inside the engineering plant. They couldn’t even get out of their pressure suits. The smart kids with the PhDs all said they couldn’t alter the pressure inside the space until they better understood the biohazard.

  Whatever the acidic shit eating up the Relentless was, Husher wanted it found and destroyed.

  Gamble was shaking his head. “Nobody seems to know. Or at least, they aren’t telling an old jarhead. You talk to old sawbones over there?”

  He nodded in the direction of Dr. Guzman, who hadn’t stopped moving since the moment Husher arrived. Currently, he was hovering over a marine private, who sat wearing a dazed expression.

  “No,” Husher said. “He stubbornly refuses to put talking to me above trying to save the lives of your men, if you can believe it.”

  Gamble nodded. “Just about right, then.” He paused. “I did have two men get slashed with those alien claws. I think the doctor’s most interested in them right now. Anyone that got hit with that acid shit is long gone.”

  “I hear you were one of the slash victims.”

  “Yeah, but the doc hasn’t been able to corner me. He knows not to bother with me while I still have men that need tending to.”

  Husher chuckled softly. “So you saw this stuff in action?”

  “I sure did, and let me tell you, it was freaky. I’ve never seen anything like it—the way it seemed to know what it was doing”

  “So you think it was more than just an automatic reaction.”

  “Not sure I follow, sir.”

  “Like plants bending toward light. It could be the substance was drawn t
o the energy of the reactor core. The same way those creatures seemed to be.”

  Gamble frowned. “Even if that were it, it’s pretty strange stuff.”

  A marine appeared behind Gamble. “Major?”

  Gamble turned. “What do you need, Private?”

  “Just getting a data check on this,” he said, holding up a tablet.

  Gamble gave him a once-over and a “Sure,” then he turned back to Husher. “You believe these kids, Captain?” said Gamble, thrusting a thumb at the private, who did his best to look innocent. “When we were coming up, would we just walk up to a couple of superiors and act like there was nothing wrong with butting in for a signature on a damn tablet?” Gamble handed back the tablet. “This is Private Tammery. I suppose if I’m being generous, he was the one to first notice how weird that acid was acting.”

  Tammery leaned into view. “Captain.”

  “All right, get back to work, Private,” Gamble said, giving the private a shove to help him on his way. “Kids these days.”

  Husher cleared his throat. “So, the acid. Can you be more specific about what it was doing?”

  “Right. It wasn’t just flowing toward the reactor, sir.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was talking to the chief engineer, and he was saying how the stuff seemed to know how to maximize the damage it was doing to the ship. It went for the bulkheads and beams that would most compromise the structure. You can see for yourself.”

  Gamble stepped out of the way and pointed at the engineer plant overhead…or what was left of it. Struts had been burned away to nubs and Husher could see through to the deck above. “They did a number on us, all right.”

  Gamble nodded. “But now think about where that hole is relative to the hull breach,” he said. He was again tracing the path with his outstretched arm. “It’s not lined up at all. They weren’t just rushing toward the reactor, sir. They were looking for weak points and exploiting them as they went. That’s why the smart kids want us quarantined. We don’t know what this thing is capable of.”

  Husher realized his breathing had sped up. This thing might be more alive than we know.

  He thought about the Able’s destruction. What if they’d managed to kill off the things that attacked them, but never realized until it was too late that there was another threat?