Hecate

by J. B. Rockwell

  Henricksen sighed, rubbing at his face. “It’s late, Chief.” Not quite an apology, but the best he could offer right now.

  “It is,” she agreed, watching him, studying his face. “You should probably get going.” A nod to the bridge’s door. “Get those crew assignments made before Kinsey does it for you.”

  “Yeah. Right,” Henricksen grunted, pushing to his feet. He threaded his way between the bridge pod’s stations, reached for the latch and opened the door.

  “She’ll be ready, Captain,” Shaw called after him. “She’ll be ready when you are. I promise you that.”

  Henricksen turned his head, looking back over his shoulder. “Thank you, Chief,” he said softly.

  Shaw raised a hand and snapped off a salute. “Aye, sir. Night, sir.”

  “Good night, Chief.”

  He stepped through, pulling the door closed behind him, fleeing Shaw and the ship. Paused long enough to stuff himself into the abandoned pressure suit before exiting the hangar bay and making for the safety of the RV-N crews’ berthings. For his rack and the reader, and those assignments he still hadn’t made.

  Fifteen

  Nearly 2300 by the time Henricksen returned to his quarters, putting him in violation of his own curfew. No one around to call him on it, of course—unlikely anyway would call him on it even if they had been around, him being captain and all. In charge of this squadron and allowed to bend the rules.

  Rank, as they say, had its privileges. Not Henricksen’s style to take advantage of it—kept the curfew until now to set a good example, eat his own dog food and all that—and, honestly, he was so damned tired most nights that he didn’t even want to think about staying up late. Carousing with the young bucks.

  Would’ve, once upon a time. Back when he was a wet-behind-the-ears junior officer burning the candle at both ends. Got away with it for a while, but a few stints in combat wiped that right out of him. A few days without sleep, watching friends and shipmates die made you understand the value of being properly rested. How luxurious sleep was. What a precious commodity it came to be when the shit hit the fan, and everything went tits up.

  Unfortunately, that precious commodity pretty much eluded Henricksen that night. He slipped into his quarters and shed his uniform before climbing into bed. Lay there staring at the ceiling for a while, tossing and turning, obsessively checking the clock’s time until it flipped over to 0300 and he finally gave up.

  Climbed out of bed cursing. Showered, and shaved, and dressed in a crisp, clean uniform—another luxury, clothing changes being as hard to come by in combat as showers and sleeping—and sat himself down at his cramped little desk.

  Set his reader down on top of it and just stared at it a while, hands resting on either side of it, fingers drumming against the desktop. Keyed it on with a sigh and started paging through personnel files—official records and his own notes—playing with combinations of crew.

  Spent a few hours that way, without coming to any firm decisions. Ticked off a couple of names and set them beside others, but mostly just swapped people around.

  Shut the reader down when 0530 came around. Shoved it in a pocket as he grabbed breakfast in the mess hall—powdered eggs and synth bacon, some kind of yellow fruit that tasted faintly of bananas and smelled strongly of protein supplements—and wandered down to the sims.

  First two runs were shit—too much on Henricksen’s mind and not enough sleep, leaving him distracted. Making rookie mistakes that left the crew wondering, throwing worried looks his way.

  “Captain.” Sikuuku leaned out of his pod as the second run ended, tapping the side of his helmet as he switched to a private channel.

  No real privacy in a sim pod—tight quarters, everyone in everyone else’s way—but the helmets muffled voices. Private channels allowed for whispered words to be passed in confidence.

  “What’s going on?”

  Couldn’t see Sikuuku’s face—not with that helmet obscuring it—but the worry came through clearly in his voice.

  “Sorry. Distracted.” Henricksen shrugged his shoulders, adjusting the seat straps as he toggled the system, setting up for another run. “Didn’t sleep well.”

  “Something I should know?”

  “Kinsey.” Henricksen shrugged again, flipped a hand without looking around. “Gave me hell about assignments last night.”

  “Could be he’s right.” Sikuuku settled back in his pod as Henricksen initiated the start-up routine. “Crew’s getting awful tired of this sim hokey-pokey.”

  “Don’t start,” Henricksen growled. “Last thing I need is two of you riding my ass.” He cut the private channel, switching to internal comms. “Pre-flight. Run starts in thirty seconds.”

  A flurry of activity as crew checked systems—Sikuuku’s gimbaled pod pivoting, Hanu running diagnostics, checking status with Ahmadi at Scan. Routine by now, the checks and rechecks, and boring as hell, but they ran it every time. Every damn time.

  Routine kept crews alive. Turned actions into instinct, taking the guesswork out of things when the chips were down.

  “Scan,” Henricksen called, voice calm, steady, cold as ice.

  “Go,” Ahmadi told him.

  “Engineering.”

  “Go,” Hanu answered.

  “Artillery.”

  “You know I’m go,” Sikuuku said, smile in his voice.

  Henricksen reached for the panel, and the button to launch the next simulation. “Three. Two. One. Launch.” A touch of his finger, and the pod kicked hard, pinning the crew in their seats.

  #

  Third run started out a beauty—best of the day, one of Henricksen’s best ever. Asteroid field again, which distracted him for a moment. Had him thinking about dinner with Kinsey, that cryptic comment about the DSR keeping secrets. Shaw’s mention of Kepler, and Kinsey pulling chocks from the planet, moving the entire RV-N project here to Dragoon.

  “What the hell is in there?” he muttered.

  “Rock,” Ahmadi called. “Three o’clock.”

  “Got it.” Henricksen feathered the jets, sliding around the asteroid field, threading his way through the tumbling jumble of oddly shaped stones. Stalking the ships hidden at the center. That massive, mystery object the sensors couldn’t quite identify. “Anything, Ahmadi?”

  “Not yet.” He fiddled with Scan’s settings, alternating the patterns of the sensors. “Bits and pieces but the rocks keep getting in the way so I can’t get a solid lock.”

  “Right. I’ll take us in closer.” Henricksen drew a deep breath, risked another burst of the jets. “Sensors?”

  “Nothing yet, sir.”

  Good sign. Meant those ships out there hadn’t spotted them. Nice to know this fancy-schmancy stealth tech might actually be worth its salt.

  Sims, after all. Software, theory, not the real thing.

  Third burst and a warning appeared, red light flashing on Ahmadi’s panel. “Active scan. We’ve got eyes on us, sir.”

  “Shit. Where?”

  Ahmadi leaned forward, fingers flying across the panel. “Dead ahead. Hold her steady while I—”

  “Henricksen.”

  Shaw’s voice, sounding muted, far away. Scratchy channel, piped directly to his helmet’s comms, machinery filling the background with noise.

  Flight deck, his mind translated, based on that noise.

  Odd, that she’d contact him directly, especially from there. Didn’t remember Shaw ever listening in on their sim sessions much less cutting in to offer commentary, and he honestly didn’t need the distraction. Not on this just-about-perfect run.

  “Little busy, Shaw. Not really the time.”

  “It’s important,” she said, voice insistent.

  “I’m sure it is,” he told her, hands gripping the control stick as a tumbling rock all but scraped their hull. “But it’ll have to wait—”

  “No. It can’t. Kinsey’s got Adaeze in the RV-N.”

  “What?!”

  “Rock, rock, rock!”
Ahmadi yelled.

  “Shit.” Henricksen fired the port-side thrusters, banking hard. Scan lit up like a Christmas tree, warnings popping off everywhere as the simulated ships bathed them in sensors, weapons systems coming alive as they targeted the RV-N’s cloaked form. “Shit. Shit, shit, shit.”

  “Weapons fire!” Ahmadi warned.

  Henricksen hauled the ship over, bringing it right into the path of a rock. Skimmed to one side and clipped it—almost made it, but the RV-N’s wingtip caught a spike-shaped protrusion, spinning it away from him, sending it crashing into another just like it. “Fuck,” he breathed, slamming his hand against the panel. “Fuck me.”

  Weapons fire behind them, tracking the RV-N’s shape, shredding the asteroids to either side. Chunks of rock flew everywhere, setting off a chain reaction that knocked asteroids off their axis, sending them spinning randomly in every direction.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  Scan signatures showed chaos—asteroids colliding everywhere, bouncing off one another and careening out of control. Henricksen dodged desperately, hands wrapped in a death grip around the control stick as he zig-zagged through an increasingly cluttered landscape, searching for a way out. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” he muttered, yanking hard on the control stick, firing the thrusters in a long burst.

  A rock rose up in front of him—huge, towering, nearly twice the size of any other in the asteroid field. No time to go around it so Henricksen pulled the stick back, hands trembling, arms shaking with the effort as he tried to fly the ship up and over.

  Not gonna make it. We’re not quite gonna make it.

  “Hold on!” he yelled, thinking he could salvage it. That he could still get the ship and crew home.

  And he just about did—might have gotten them out clean, if the rock hadn’t continued to tumble, showing them a towering, nub-like projection that hit the stealth ship head-on, bringing it to a sudden and inevitable halt.

  Error messages appeared, the pod reporting failure—target destroyed, ship destroyed, the entire run an unqualified mess.

  Henricksen sat back, staring at the blinking panel, reached forward and shut the simulation down. “What’s this about Adaeze?”

  “Kinsey ordered her crew into one of the RV-Ns.” Shaw sounded panicked—not like her at all. “He launched them, Henricksen. He launched them on a live exercise.”

  “Can’t be.” He reached for the monitoring system, checking on the other pods, convinced Shaw was wrong.

  Simulations running in all of them, except for Number Five. Five, which was Adaeze’s, and empty. Pilot and crew—Grunewald, Abboud, Fisker, all of them gone.

  Fisker. Oh God, Fisker.

  He’d missed them shutting the sim down somehow. Got so damned tied up in his own simulation that he hadn’t even noticed Adaeze’s crew getting called out.

  “Son-of-a-bitch,” Henricksen muttered. “Son-of-a-bitch!” He punched the panel hard, pissed at Kinsey, angry at himself. Tore his seat’s restraining straps loose, ignoring the flight crew’s questions, Sikuuku’s reaching hands as he lunged for the pod’s door, ripped it open and climbed out into the monitoring room on the other side. “How long?” he demanded, speaking through the helmet’s comms.

  “Ten minutes,” Shaw told him, voice worried, apologetic. “Would’ve warned you sooner but Kinsey had the comms blocked. Took me a while to jump a channel to your suit.”

  “Dammit. God dammit,” Henricksen swore, tearing the helmet from his head.

  “What’s going on?” Sikuuku asked, appearing at his shoulder.

  “Kinsey. Your fucking friend Kinsey screwed me over.” Henricksen threw the helmet across the room, grabbed Sikuuku’s arm and pulled him close. “Did you know about this? Did you know what Kinsey was up to?”

  “What? No. No,” the gunner insisted, angry now, shaking Henricksen’s arm off. “Hardly said two words to me since we got here.”

  Henricksen studied his face, nodded and turned around.

  “Garrett.” Sikuuku’s hand landed on Henricksen’s shoulder. “What’s happening? What’s going on?”

  “Told you. He screwed me.” Henricksen turned his head, studying his friend with one eye. Grabbed the door and pulled it open, storming across the control room, yelling at the top of his lungs. “Thought we had an agreement, Kinsey.” Pinstriped suit by the windows, standing with two lab-coated engineers. Dark face turning toward Henricksen as he strode angrily across the room. “Your project, my crew. So, explain to me what the hell they’re doing out there.” He stabbed a finger at the windows. At the hangar bay’s open doorway and the stars showing outside.

  Kinsey straightened, turning, hands clasped behind his back. The lab coats—Song and Wallace, Karansky lurking in one corner—glanced around, blanched when they saw him and took a sudden and intense interest in their stations.

  “I needed a live test,” Kinsey said in his clipped, no-nonsense tone. “You’ve been dragging your feet so I took things into my own hands.”

  “They weren’t ready! I told you last night—”

  “And I told you that you needed to makes some decisions.” Kinsey stared coldly, face a complete blank. “This project needs to move forward, Captain, and I mean to do that with or without you. Whichever you prefer.”

  “Move the project forward?” Henricksen barked a bitter laugh, throwing his hands in the arm. “The chassis’ not ready.” He slid in close, finger stabbing at Kinsey’s chest. “You’ll kill them, you self-righteous—”

  “Back. Off,” Kinsey warned, slapping his hand away.

  Henricksen shoved him hard, sending Kinsey stumbling backward, artificial leg catching on a monitoring station, sending him sprawling to the floor. Hadn’t meant to knock him over—didn’t think about that artificial leg and Kinsey’s chancy balance when he shoved him—but Henricksen was too pissed to apologize. Way too angry to back down. “This is my Command, Kinsey. I—”

  “Easy, Captain, easy.” Sikuuku stepped in front of him, making placating gestures with his hands. “He sent them out there,” a nod to the windows at the front of the control room, “nothing to be done about it now.”

  Henricksen looked at him, and at Kinsey picking himself up off the floor. “Call them back,” he ordered, rounding on the two engineers. “Call the RV-N back to the hangar. Tell Adaeze—”

  “Belay that,” Kinsey snapped, fiddling with the joint of his artificial leg, adjusting the drape of his suit’s trousers as he stood. “Mission is go. No turning back.”

  “Mission?” Henricksen swung around, staring in angry disbelief. “So it’s a mission now?”

  “Shakedown run,” Song interjected, shoulders hunched, clipboard clasped tight to her chest. She flicked her eyes to Kinsey, nodding an apology, reached behind her to tap at a station, throwing a live video feed onto the windows looking out on the hangar.

  “The chassis’ ready,” Kinsey told him. “But the Brass ordered a shakedown run before they’ll approve a real launch.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Henricksen moved a step closer to Kinsey, came up against Sikuuku as he re-inserted his burly body between them. “Last night, at dinner—”

  “Last night it wasn’t ready.” Kinsey brushed at his sleeve, tugged at his lapels. “This morning it was. You have Shaw to thank for that.” A nod to the windows and Shaw’s mech gang in the hangar below.

  “She tell you it was ready?”

  Kinsey twitched his shoulders, waved vaguely at the air. “Shaw wants tests before she’ll sign off on anything. Adaeze was available—”

  “You had no right pulling Adaeze. Her or her crew.”

  “I had every right, Captain.” Kinsey advanced on him, coming right up behind Sikuuku, dark eyes staring over his shoulder. “She’s your best pilot. She has the best feel for the chassis.”

  “Control, this is One-Eight-Three.” Adaeze’s voice sounded impossibly calm as it filtered through the room’s speakers. “We are through Checkpoint Alpha, one hundred tho
usand kilometers out from the first beacon.”

  Kinsey tilted his head, eyebrow lifting, leaned to one side and activated the comms. “Acknowledged, One-Eight-Three. Proceed on course.”

  “Roger.”

  Kinsey lifted his finger, cutting the comms. “I need data on the RV-N’s engines and cloaking system.” A nod to the video feed showing the RV-N and darkness, the pinpricks of stars. “To get that data, I need live tests.” He folded his arms and crossed his legs, leaning against the station. “I run this project, Captain. Which means you, and Adaeze, and every last one of these crew report to me, understand?”

  Henricksen’s face darkened. “We had a deal—”

  “No. We didn’t. We had an agreement. One I changed because it no longer suited my needs.”

  Henricksen glared, hating him. Tempted to deck the smug fucker and knock him right down again.

  “Control. Control this is One-Eight-Three.” Adaeze again, a hint of annoyance penetrating the calm. “We’ve reached the first marker. What are your orders?”

  “It’s too late.” Sikuuku’s hand landed on his shoulder, squeezing hard to get Henricksen’s attention. “It’s too late—they’re already out there. And we need the data. We do,” he insisted when Henricksen started to object. “Done as much as we can in the sims, Captain.” A flick of his eyes over Henricksen’s shoulder as a door opened, releasing a mass of confused RV-N crew into the monitoring room. “They’re launched. They’re out there. Best we can do is let Adaeze finish this run, and bring that bird back in.”

  “What’s going on?” Baldini demanded, staring at the video showing on the windows. “That a live feed? Who’s out there? Who’d you—”

  “Control. Control, are you reading me?” Adaeze called.

  “Hold position,” Kinsey told her, touching a panel, opening a channel to the ship. “Await further orders.”

  “Adaeze?” Baldini looked indignant. “You sneak crew out of the sims to launch that bird and you put Adaeze—”

  “Lock it down!” Sikuuku yelled. “You. All of you,” the gunner pointed at Baldini, swept his eyes across the group of crew, “you get back in the sims—”