Oort Rising

by Magnus Victor

  The searing pain in his left arm was gone, but it was numb now, and useless. He struggled with only one arm to control the recoil and get the railgun pointed back down the corridor. Fire. Wrestle with the gun. Fire again. He could hear nothing over the overpowering ringing in his ears, and his vision blurred. He only knew that the enemy was that-a-way. He hoped that he was helping.

  A hand clapped his shoulder, and he whirled, ceasing fire. An armored Marine stood beside him, his opaque faceplate in sharp contrast to the dull blue of the armor. A silver bar insignia sat on its shoulder.

  The Marine’s faceplate cleared. Antoniy. Still alive.

  Antoniy’s mouth was moving, but Klaus couldn’t hear anything. He shook his head, pointing to his helmet.

  Antoniy pointed at the railgun with his left hand, while drawing his right hand across his throat. Stop firing.

  Klaus nodded, and looked down the hallway. The smoke cleared slowly, the ventilators pulling it away. Nothing else moved. The corridor was strewn with bodies – and parts of bodies – of enemy troops.

  Klaus dropped the railgun, and stood to get a better look. His hand shook, and he pressed it to his side to hide it from Antoniy. Only four of the corpses were clad in power armor. A dozen others were dressed in simple, one-piece suits. The armor blocks they wore on top covered only their torso, not their extremities. Blood pooled everywhere on the deck. Some of the bodies were completely destroyed, their torsos shattered, their limbs missing. Like soldiers shot apart with cannon fire. He looked down at the railgun at his feet, and swallowed hard.

  Oh. His chest tightened.

  Then he remembered the Marines. His stomach flipped as he tried to ignore the body of the man who originally held the railgun, his left shoulder and arm missing, his head canted at an impossible angle.

  Klaus breathed again. It was war, and he had only done what needed to be done. At least his worst fears had not come true. The rebels had military equipment, all right, but only for a few of their men. Made sense for a group of insurgents, but for most of those men, they might as well have entered the battle naked.

  He turned back to Antoniy. “NOW WHAT?” he said. Antoniy winced. Probably too loud, then, but he couldn't tell.

  Antoniy tapped the side of his helmet, to indicate that he had received a radio message. He typed into the datapad built into his suit’s left-hand gauntlet.

  A message appeared on Klaus' datapad. “Boarders repulsed.”

  “WHAT, THAT’S IT?” He had expected more of a fight for such an important compartment.

  Another message. “Reactor four down. Needs repairs.”

  Just like that. Leave it to the engineers to clean up the mess. Klaus nodded to Antoniy. “THEN I'M OFF.”

  *^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

  “Still no sign of the Verdun?” demanded the Captain. It made no sense for the rebel warship to hold back like that. By now their boarding crews were down, both on the Overlord and on the Tannenberg, but it would have been logical for them to attack during the distraction. That meant that they were up to something else. And she hated not knowing what that was.

  “No, ma’am.”

  As if on cue, the sensors officer called out. “Ma’am! Weak grav signature, bearing one-oh-five by eighteen degrees. Range one point two million kilometers. Target is not maneuvering.”

  A command ship of some sort, observing the battle? She could think of one likely candidate for which ship that was.

  Trying to hide, eh? “Can we hit them?”

  “They're outside of effective range, ma'am. Shell flight time is four-eight seconds.”

  With that kind of time, the target could easily maneuver to dodge. She grinned to herself. But that was not the point. If the enemy ship maneuvered, the Overlord's sensors could get a reading on its unique drive signature. If it was the Verdun, they would have positive confirmation that it had been captured. If it wasn't the Verdun, then they would have a ship ID that they could hunt down later.

  Conagher turned to the helmsman. “Rotate to bring the starboard, bow and dorsal batteries to bear. Fire salvo when all three can hit the target.”

  “Aye.”

  The Overlord sent twelve shots screaming through space towards the distant target, cruising at 8% of the speed of light. None of them would hit, she assumed, but even so she considered it a good investment.

  “Target is maneuvering, ma’am.” reported the tactical officer. “Drive signature matches the Verdun!”

  And the investment paid off.

  “Verdun has maneuvered out of shell trajectory, ma’am.”

  Of course. The rebels knew that their shields might have held, but why risk it? “Close the range.” She considered for a moment. “Keep the deflectors up at full power. Divert energy from weapons to engines. Full available speed.”

  So – the Verdun had been watching the fight, but had not engaged?

  “Ma'am!” Verdun is moving away, at speed. We're barely gaining on her.”

  And now she was fleeing? “Keep up the pursuit. When she jumps, I want to know where to.” In the Overlord's current shape, there was no way that she could safely pursue the Verdun if the smaller warship jumped to superluminal speed.

  She kept an eye on the tactical holo as they drew closer. She wondered how well the Verdun's new captain knew Navy weaponry, especially the new-generation guns on the Overlord, and how close he could let them approach before he—

  “Ma'am! The Verdun has jumped! We got her vector. On-screen.”

  “Trace the vector, see if it passes near anything recorded.” This far out-system, they were nearly to the heart of the Oort Cloud. There were plenty of locations, plenty of large asteroids and minor planetoids which had not been surveyed, and which the rebels could use as a fallback. It was very unlikely that they'd choose a location which would show up in records, but you never knew.

  Worth a try, at least.

  She studied the map of the battle, thinking. The Verdun's captain had jumped earlier than he needed to. Earlier, that is, unless he knew about the classified weaponry aboard the Overlord. Either that, or he was just being cautious.

  *^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

  Klaus' hearing was recovering. He could hear voices, yet couldn't make out words. But that did not concern him much at this point. After all, the reactor would not be talking to him.

  The number four reactor — what was left of it — posed a real challenge. The grav foci casing was covered with pockmarks, where coilgun impacts had dug into the structure. One streak of deeper craters — the ones that had likely done the most damage — looked like railgun impacts. He peered back and forth between the reactor and the fortified corridor outside, and shook his head. Who the hell had missed that badly?

  The coolant pipes themselves were not as strong as the casing. Holes had been blown clean through them everywhere. Pieces hung off the reactor assembly in tatters, but at least the flow had been switched off. The wet deck, and the water pooling around the drains, revealed that the automatic cutoffs hadn't activated perfectly, though. Typical Rockman corner-cutting. Probably not a single priority feedback circuit in the entire scram system.

  The four technicians in the room had not seen him enter. He nodded. Good. They were crawling over the access scaffolding, stemming the worst of the leaks. Exactly what they should be doing. With his left arm taped to his side, he didn't fancy climbing up there after them.

  No sense letting them get full of themselves, though. He called loudly, “Right! What have you done to this poor machine?”

  One technician to his left put down a wrench the length of his arm, and approximated a very hurried salute. “It got hit by a few stray shots, during the fight. Ah...sir.” He did not wait for an answer, but went straight back to what he was doing.

  "What? Speak up! I'm still deaf from those damned railguns."

  "A FEW STRAY SHOTS, SIR!" The tech stood up and faced Klaus, carefully mouthing the words. Once again, he turned back to his work.

  “A few
stray shots?!” Klaus grumbled. The turbine feed piping alone would take days to repair!

  “Well, yes.” This time, the technician did not bother looking up.

  At least, Klaus assumed he had answered. He couldn't read lips, and certainly not from behind. He had to admire the tech, though, as the man climbed a ladder for a better view. Better for him to fix the thing than to talk.

  At the rate they were moving, they might clear the broken pieces within hours. He scanned the console for an in-depth report. And the other damage did not look too—

  “Dammit. The detail generators are slagged.” he exclaimed. Nobody reacted.

  That was a killer. He probably should have expected it, though. All the newer fusion reactors in the Navy used focused gravitational fields to force particles to fuse. They were much more reliable and low-maintenance than the magnetic fields that they had replaced.

  The downside was, they were sensitive. And for some reason, the gravity field generators used here were unarmored. Probably the designers did not expect any fighting this close to the ship's core.

  But whatever the reason, the damage in front of him would take a lot of effort to repair.

  Did they even have the replacements for those? Klaus checked his datapad, hoping that some enterprising quartermaster would have thought to stock a replacement. He frowned. Of course, that hadn't happened.

  “The reactor’s deadline.” he muttered to the techs, and again nobody listened. “No spares for the detail generator.” He strode to the hatch. “I’ll check with the ‘shops if they can fab us one.”

  But he would not hold his breath on that idea, either.

  Chapter 11: Rebel

  In the depths of the Overlord, Antoniy sat in a dark, quiet room. Flat neutral colors, solid but bare furniture. A room whose design, he suspected, had changed little over the centuries. The wall behind him was a one-way mirror. The other walls, the ceiling, and the floor were coated to absorb sound, giving the room an unnerving silence.

  He gave a long, intense stare at the man across the table. “So. You were expecting a walkover?”

  The man raised his head slowly, locking one good eye on Antoniy. His right eye socket was empty, its edges still oozing rivulets of blood. His right arm was no more than a stump – the ship's surgeons had cauterized the wound to keep him alive – and his left was loosely manacled to the chair. He twitched back and forth, as if something gnawed at him under his skin. All over.

  He did not look comfortable.

  Perhaps this explained the pure rage which glared from his remaining eye: he was beyond the ‘yelling’ stage of anger, and had proceeded to a preternatural calm. His voice was low and insistent, his teeth gritted.

  “We were expecting some fucking help. The bastards set us up.” He waved the stump at Antoniy, pointing with a non-existent hand. “And it would have worked. We had you!”

  Antoniy leaned back, and studied his prisoner in the long silence. His valuable prisoner, as there were not many. Of the two-hundred and ten rebels who had boarded the Overlord, twelve were still alive, more or less. Seven of those might even live until tomorrow.

  Antoniy steepled his fingers, and rested his chin on his hands. “’The bastards. hmm? I can think of a few ways we can get back at them.”

  “’We’? There is no 'we.” he pulled at the chain on his left wrist. “Why the hell should I help you?”

  “We've cauterized your bleeding arm, patched up your missing eye and pumped you so full of antibiotics that you'll probably survive. We're the only reason you're alive right now. That's on one side.” He leaned forward. “What have 'the bastards' done for you?”

  “You're the reason I'm in this shape in the first place,” came the low growl.

  Expected, but at least the man was talking. “Think about it. Who sent you here? Who promised support, only to pull the rug out from under your feet? Who sent brave soldiers to their deaths?” Brave the rebels might be, but calling them 'soldiers' was charitable.

  Antoniy stood and waved toward the door. “Look, we could walk out there right now, and look through all the bodies of your dead. How many of 'the bastards' do you think you would find out there?”

  He waited a few moments, letting that sink in, and then sat down again. The prisoner's downcast gaze told him what he needed to know. The man might not love Antoniy or the Navy, but he did know that his 'leaders' were not with the boarding parties.

  Antoniy could use that.

  He tapped a finger idly on the table. “Why, do you suppose, did they choose to betray you? And why now?” The Oort Cloud rebel groups, he knew, were highly compartmentalized, and they would most likely not change that, even for such large-scale mission. Each independent cell, often less than a dozen members, had little to no information about the others, much less about who gave them orders. “You saw your friends killed. Not easy to do, I know.”

  Antoniy's memory jumped, unbidden, to the face of one of his own Marines, killed in the fight. He leaned over the table, poking a finger into the rebel's chest, avoiding the bandages and bruises. “And you think we are your enemy?”

  For several seconds, the two men stared at each other. One and a half pairs of eyes, unmoving. Then the rebel spoke, voice strained. “I ain't gonna betray my comrades.”

  “Tough-guy, huh?” Ah, well, that was worth a shot. There were always more traditional methods of extracting information.

  First, the 'stick.' Antoniy leaned forwards. “You know the minimum sentence for armed rebellion. You're in for a bad time of it.”

  “I ain’t afraid of dyin’.”

  “Dying isn’t what you should be afraid of. You’ve killed Federal servicemen.”

  The rebel kept silent.

  “But you didn't kill them all, and their comrades would like to have a word with you.” On cue, the room was flooded with the most horrible, ear-piercing scream imaginable. A scream so terrible that it could not have come from a human, but engineered to set off every single 'panic note' the human ear recognized. Even knowing that it was a computer-generated sound, Antoniy shivered involuntarily.

  Across the table, the man shivered as well. The human hind-brain was very susceptible to manipulation, thankfully. With the rebel unnerved, time for the 'carrot.' “Of course, that isn’t set in stone. Tell us where they are, and we can do something for you.”

  *^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

  Captain Conagher, face impassive, watched the Commodore pace back and forth inside her office. Let him pace, she thought, as long as he held his tongue, at least for a while. Inside she was seething. Her beautiful ship, halfway wrecked because some high-up brass had to leap before he looked. And she had had to let him.

  Although, to be fair, the rebels' trick with the IFF would have worked, even without Petrakov's foolhardy stunt. Just not as well. It could have been worse, though. At least he had not ordered a follow-up attack straight away. After all, it could easily have been a set-up. Maybe that's what the Verdun had been trying to do, and maybe not. But in either case, the Overlord needed time for repairs.

  The Commodore waved his arms. “What are we waiting for? Their boarders told us where their nest is, so we hunt them down like the rats they are and crush them.” He smashed one fist into his open palm.

  “Sir. We’ve been ambushed once, already." She let her meaning sink in. After a few strides, the Commodore stopped pacing, and she continued, her voice matter-of-fact, "On top of that, there’s still battle damage to repair. One of the reactors is deadlined indefinitely and we’ve got key people in the medbay. Our sails have yet to be replaced, and the Tannenberg's not any better off.”

  She studied the man's face, trying to read it. Was this just his natural aggressiveness, or was he over-reacting out of some sense of shame? After all, it was pretty clear to anyone that Petrakov had made a serious blunder. But he was still the commanding officer. She needed to get him to see reason, before he made another error. “Their base is certain to have heavier defenses, and it does us n
o good to go in under-prepared. The squadron needs time to rebuild combat effectiveness. ”

  Petrakov nodded brusquely, not letting up, but at least his tone lost some of its bluster. “Well, yes. But the enemy’s taken much heavier losses. We need to hit them again, before they can regroup.”

  “They lost a number of minor ships. Very little, really.” The Captain responded, pointing to the graphic projected above her desk. “They sacrificed those troops, let them die. And to what purpose? Perhaps to lure us into a rash attack?” She toggled up a holo of the Verdun. “And now we know they've got this. She could go toe-to-toe with the Tannenberg, even without her damage.”

  She called up an image of the rebel base: a small planetoid, less than a hundred kilometers in diameter, with its own collection of much smaller debris orbiting it. “If their base really is at 1048 Podera, we must assume that they’ve got defenses ready. It’s perfect for defense: large enough to hold deep bunkers, small enough that the gravity well won’t be a problem for weapons platforms.”

  She keyed her datapad, and a series of blinking lights appeared in the display. “Podera was never scanned in detail, all we've got is a surface-map. But if the rebels have any more military-grade equipment, this is where they would put it. They'd have lines of fire on any approach vector to the planetoid.”

  “Then we stand off and bombard them from out of their effective range.”

  “Which would take time. Time that any enemy leaders — anyone with useful knowledge that we could extract — could use to escape. While we sit at long range, they fly off into the black before we could possibly intercept. We only have two ships, don't forget, hardly a blockade.” She shifted her display to show a list of insurgent attacks in the past five years. “If we want to end this, we have to destroy the enemy command structure.” She looked away from Petrakov, thinking. “Which gives us the problem of finding them. They could be on the planetoid, but that doesn't feel right.”