Hecate

by J. B. Rockwell

  “Shit,” he breathed, pressure easing, suit backing off. “What the hell was that?”

  “Sorry,” Ogawa panted, shaking her head. “Couldn’t see. Couldn’t find the controls.” She bent over, clutching at her stomach, craned her neck, looking up at the camera. “AI got it. Sorry.” Another shake of her head. “My mistake. Sorry about that, sir.”

  Sikuuku groaned loudly, loosening his seat’s straps. Doubled over, cradling his helmeted head in his hands. “Think I’m gonna be sick.”

  Henricksen didn’t feel all that great himself, to be honest. Stomach kept flipping over, doing cartwheels inside his gut. Rest of his body felt pummeled—bruised and battered, like he’d been in a bar fight with some iron fisted giant wearing knuckledusters and steel-toed boots.

  He winced, rubbing at creaking ribs. Swallowed hard, willing his breakfast to stay put as he straightened up, lifting his eyes to Scythe’s camera. “How bad?” he asked her, because they’d blown it. Completely missed that five second mark. He just didn’t know by how much. “How far off did we end up?”

  “We…overshot the target,” Scythe said carefully, camera twitching toward Ogawa, jerking back to Henricksen in the Pilot’s seat. “I had to throw it into reverse to bleed off some speed and slow us down.”

  Better than coming up on that asteroid field too fast and splattering against a rock, he supposed, but still…

  “Damn near pulverized us,” Henricksen growled, shrugging abused shoulders, rubbing at a sore, soon-to-be-stiff neck.

  “Fucked it up, sir. Overburned by nearly a second. If it wasn’t for Scythe…” Ogawa trailed off, shaking her head. Checked their position in relation to the asteroid field, the velocity of their approach. “Too fast. We’re still coming in way too fast.” She punched the panel in front of her, clearly upset.

  “Easy, Ogawa. Not blamin’ you.”

  “Yeah, well, I am. Carrying a lot more speed than we planned for, sir. Scythe cut our velocity with that back burn, but we still need to bleed some more off.” Ogawa punched the panel again, sat back in disgust. “We’re fucked, sir. Completely fucked.”

  “So how do we get unfucked?” Henricksen asked quietly.

  “How the hell would I know?” she cried, throwing her hands in the air. “I’m the one who fucked it all up in the first place, remember?”

  Henricksen gritted his teeth, forcing himself to stay calm. “Scythe? What do your calcs say?”

  “We’ll need to execute a .50 second full reverse burn before we hit the edge of the asteroid field,” she said, panel lighting, calculations running in front of him.

  “Full reverse. As in…”

  “Main propulsion. Wide open.”

  Henricksen rubbed at sore ribs, already dreading it. “You couldn’t just run that last back burn a little bit longer?”

  “I could have. But you’d be unconscious right now. Probably have some broken bones. Internal bleeding—”

  “Alright. I get,” he said, waving her off. “How long until we reach the edge of the asteroid field?”

  “Three minutes, twelve seconds.” Scythe set a clock on the front window, cool blue numbers counting down.

  “Three minutes.” Henricksen chewed his lip, thinking a moment. “And our friends out there?” He pointed his chin at the asteroid field in the distance, the DSR station hidden inside. “Five ships running with their engines wide open. That’s an awful lotta energy lighting up the night.”

  Scythe didn’t answer right away—that got his attention. And when she did, it sounded rushed. Suspiciously nonchalant. “We should be fine,” she said confidently. Too confidently for his taste.

  “Should be,” he repeated.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Hanu?”

  “Scans show clean.” Hanu looked at him, at Scythe’s camera watching over them both. “Nothing out there as far as I can tell. And anything inside the asteroid field…” She shrugged her shoulders, turning toward the front windows. “Shouldn’t be able to scan us with all those rocks in the way. Especially...” She hesitated, throwing another look at the camera. “Especially if we wait until the last moment.”

  “Wait. What?” Henricksen glanced sharply at Scan.

  “The asteroids block signals, right? So we shunt ourselves around with the maneuvering jets—small burn, nothing long range sensors should pick up—and line up with one of those big rocks.” Hanu pointed at the windows, the asteroid field that was much, much closer. “Should shield us, right? Once we get in close enough?”

  Henricksen looked a question at the camera.

  “It should,” Scythe agreed. “In theory.”

  “How close?” he asked her. “How close do we have to get?”

  Scythe ran the calculations. “Ten thousand kilometers should do it.”

  “Yikes.” Frightfully close at the stealth ship’s current speed. “Options?” Henricksen asked, looking around the bridge pod.

  “Go back?” Sikuuku suggested.

  “Tempting,” Henricksen grunted. “Won’t deny that.” But they’d have to scrub their speed to do it. Maneuvering jets could probably muscle the ship around, but they’d need main propulsion to get moving and chart a course back to Dragoon.

  Same thing. Same damn problem, either way.

  “Any other options?”

  Silence from the crew—everyone looking at each, shaking their heads.

  “Alright. We do it Hanu’s way, then. Ten thousand kilometers—you heard her. Scythe.” He pointed at the camera with one hand, wrapping the other around the ship’s control stick. “Pass the word to the other Ravens.”

  “Done,” she said, passing the order along.

  “Let’s drop some pingers before we hit the brakes. Give ourselves some eyes and ears to watch our backs after we go in.”

  “Also done,” she said promptly, adding that order to the last.

  Henricksen nodded his thanks, pulling scan data onto his panel, picked out a good-sized asteroid and lined the ship up. “Alright, Ogawa. Prep those engines. Full reverse burn.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Henricksen tugged at his seat straps, while Ogawa worked away at Engineering, obsessively checking the distance to that asteroid field.

  Fifty thousand kilometers now—a little over a minute before they’d need to get on the engines again. He breathed deep, chest tight with worry, hoping the rock he’d picked was big enough to shield them. That he didn’t run right into the damn thing trying to execute this maneuver and put an end to them all right then and there.

  “We’ll be fine,” Scythe said, watching him from above. “I mean, sure, there’s a .01 chance I miscalculated—”

  “Don’t.” Henricksen raised a hand, cutting her off. “Don’t give me the facts and figures. Just…” He sighed, shaking his head. Tapped a finger to the side of his helmet as he switched comms over to a private channel. “What happened back there?” he asked her. “Before you slammed on the brakes and almost turned us all into slurry.”

  “Not sure what you mean.”

  “The cloaking system. Damn thing rattles my bones, but this…this was different. Worse. Spine feels like a xylophone that got beat with a set of hammers.”

  “Oh. That. Resonance,” she said—a casual, almost flippant response. “From, you know, the stealth shields overlapping.”

  “Overlapping stealth shields. And just whose idea was that?”

  “Shriek’s. He thought it would make us stealthy. Well, stealthier, I guess, considering...We probably should have tested it,” she admitted in a surprisingly sheepish voice.

  Henricksen blinked, staring at the camera in surprise. Never heard sheepishness from an AI before. Most of them were all cool tones and serene confidence until somebody pissed them off. “Next time…just give me a little warning next time, okay?”

  “Got it. Sorry,” Scythe added. “About the whole…xylophone thing.”

  Henricksen grunted, resetting the comms. Checked the front windows and found the asteroid fi
eld much closer—Scythe and her entourage just thirty thousand kilometers distant now. “Fan out,” he called, opening a secure channel to the other Ravens. “Find a line in.” He paused, scanning the data from the sensors, feathered the maneuvering jets to shunt Scythe to a wide space between two boulders. Consulted the display on the front windows again, noting the positions of the other ships with him, making sure no one else was trying to thread the same hole.

  Realized they’d dropped into that wedge formation again—Scythe in the lead, Shriek and the others stagger-stepped to either side, the resonance from their overlapping stealth shields building, rattling his bones. “Not too tight,” he warned. “Last thing I need is Sikuuku chucking his breakfast inside that Artillery pod.”

  The ships jockeyed around, maneuvering jets flaring as they spread a bit wider, giving themselves more room.

  The resonance eased immediately, returning to the expected, vibrating hum.

  “That’s better.” Henricksen wrapped both hands around the control stick, eyes locked onto the front windows as the distance counter hit twenty thousand kilometers out. “Scythe. You ready?”

  “Let me at ’em,” she said, smile in her voice.

  Henricksen shrugged his shoulders, breath quickening as the asteroid field loomed close. “Hanu. Call it. Count us down.”

  “Aye, sir. Fifteen thousand kilometers out.”

  “Got it,” he muttered, giving his harness a tug.

  “Don’t crash us,” Sikuuku warned. “I will be so pissed if you crash us going in.”

  “Appreciate the vote of confidence, Chief.”

  “Twelve thousand kilometers.” Hanu gripped her panel, leaning forward. “Eleven…”

  “Pingers deployed,” Scythe announced. “We’ve got eyes and ears on the stars.”

  “Ten.”

  “Burn!”

  Twenty-Seven

  Main propulsion kicked hard—brutal, battering, tearing at flesh and bone. Henricksen clenched his teeth, holding tight to the panel in front of him as Scythe engines lit, firing in full reverse to slow her screaming approach. Velocity plummeted, speed peeling off in huge chunks, but Henricksen hardly noticed. All he saw was that rock ahead of them—a huge, lumpen thing roughly the size of a Dreadnought, tumbling endlessly around its center axis.

  Scythe came in on a collision course, less than a kilometer separating the stealth ship from that improvised asteroid shield.

  “Shit!” Henricksen grabbed at the controls, hauling the ship over, thrusters firing, pushing Scythe hard to port. He cringed, half expecting them to hit the rock anyway, holding on for dear life as the ship skimmed around it, missing it by a hair’s breadth. Swore loudly when they came up on another almost immediately, realized going around this one just wasn’t an option. “Shit, shit, shit!”

  He yanked hard, lifting Scythe’s nose to send her up and over that rock, perimeter alarms screaming in his ears.

  “Scythe! Kill the wailers!”

  Didn’t need the noise. Thousands of rocks out there, spreading in every direction. Didn’t need the perimeter alarms going psycho trying to warn him about every last one.

  “Scythe!”

  A last squawk and the shrieking ceased, dropping the bridge pod into silence. Panels kept flashing, though, highlighting nearby asteroids on the schematic projected on the front windows.

  Henricksen drew a breath, ears ringing in the sudden silence. Found his center—heart beating double-time, adrenaline pumping through his body—and re-oriented, locating their position on the map.

  Looked past the apparently random clutter to the pattern lying beneath, because there was nothing at all random about an asteroid field. Each rock spun independently, following an orbit only it knew. And every other rock spun around it, following an endless, unchanging path it had settled into a billion years ago, back when the asteroid field first formed.

  Chart that field, and navigation almost became easy. Fly it blind and you took your life into your own hands.

  That’s where he was right now: holding on, picking his way through. Hated being a pioneer. Wished to hell Kinsey’s spook could’ve coughed up some better intel.

  “Report,” he barked, eyes on the front windows, hands making minute adjustments as Scythe moved deeper into the asteroid field. “Hanu. Did we wake the neighbors?”

  “Scans show clean. No sensor sweeps anyway. Can’t really tell much more from here.”

  “Son-of-a-bitch.” Sikuuku laughed, fist pounding the side of his pod. “It worked. That crazy-ass idea actually worked.”

  “Don’t count your chickens yet.” Henricksen reached for Comms, opening a secure channel to the other Ravens. “Shriek.”

  “Present,” Shriek answered cheerily. “Sharp’s here with me so he’s not splattered either. Dented his belly, though.” He dropped his voice, whispering conspiratorially across the common channel. “Not so sure his pilot’s all that good.”

  “His pilot can kick your pilot’s ass all the way across the galaxy,” Mahal shot back.

  “Can it, you two,” Henricksen snapped. “Sever? Snicker—”

  “Whoo-hoo!” Baldini’s bawdy voice drowned out everything else on the line. “Now that was a rush!”

  Henricksen sighed heavily. Evidently no one understood minimal comms. “Snicker-snack. You out there?”

  “Aye, Captain,” Janssen answered. “Skimmed one of those rollers, though. Took some damage.”

  “How bad?”

  A pause before Janssen answered. “Starboard side array’s gone. Lost the weapons, too. Engines are fine. Hull’s intact. But we’re starboard side blind. Open to attack.”

  Damn. Not off to a good start.

  Fucked up their approach and now two ships dented. One left partially mission capable. Didn’t bode well for the rest of the mission, especially since, from here on in, things only got harder.

  “Stick close to Mahal,” Henricksen ordered. “Have Sharp and Snicker-snack pair up so you can keep an eye on each other.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Give me a fix on their location, Hanu.” Henricksen waited while Hanu swept Scythe’s modified sensor array across the area around them, repeating the scans until Snicker-snack’s shape appeared, slipping stealthily around a rock.

  “Got him, Captain.”

  “Good. Now layer in the others. Keep tabs on the squadron while we move in.”

  Hanu looked at him, and at the windows, fingers hovering just above Scan’s panel. No easy feat, tracking those ships here. Especially considering all the clutter in the way.

  “Not askin’ for miracles, Hanu. Just do the best you can.”

  “Aye, sir,” she said quietly, and leaned over her panel, fingers working away.

  “Everybody ready?”

  “Aye, sir,” Hanu and Ogawa answered together.

  “Standing by to do nothing,” Sikuuku said, stifling a yawn.

  “No offense, Chief, but I hope we don’t need you. Mission’s pretty much fucked if we have to use your guns.”

  A grunt from the gunner as Henricksen consulted the schematic, searching for a relatively safe path in.

  No obvious route to follow, so he zigged and zagged, aiming roughly for the asteroid field’s center, Scythe’s sensor dating updating Kinsey’s roughed-out map as they moved deeper in.

  Lot more rocks out there than Kinsey’s map accounted for. Spook’s data, supposedly, but not very good. Made him wonder what else was missing from that improvised map.

  “Sir.”

  “What now, Hanu?” Henricksen growled, checking the map.

  Three kilometers at this point, almost halfway to the asteroid field’s center.

  “Anomalous signature.” Hanu pointed to a new piece of information showing on the already cluttered schematic. “Some kind of composite metal structure.”

  “Ship?” he asked, eyeing the way ahead worriedly.

  “Don’t think so. This looks…different.”

  “Different how? How?” Henri
cksen demanded, but Hanu just shook her, cycling through the data on her panel. Shunted it all to Ogawa for a second look. “What?” he snapped. “Somebody tell me what the hell—”

  “Mines.” Ogawa raised her head, visored face staring at the windows. “Scans missed them before because they’re mixed in with the rocks. Couldn’t pick up the metal—”

  “Until we were right on top of them. Fuck.” Henricksen sighed.

  One more complication. A complication he severely didn’t need.

  “Sorry, sir.” Small voice from Hanu, shoulders lifting in a helpless shrug.

  “Not your fault, Hanu.”

  Sims didn’t show them. Kinsey’s map didn’t either. Had a hard time picking them out with his own eyes because pretty much everything out there looked grey, and black, and big as a goddamn ship.

  Bad start to this mission, and things keep getting worse.

  Henricksen chewed his lip worriedly, guiding Scythe around yet another rock. “Tag the mine and reset the sensors to look for that signature. Mark any others they find in red so I can tell them from the rocks.”

  “Done,” Scythe answered, schematic shifting, a dozen or so round, red shapes layering in amongst the rocks.

  Hanu looked at them, and at the camera at the front of the bridge. Lashed out at Scan in frustration, muttering something about “stupid, show-off AIs” under her breath.

  “Let it go, Hanu,” Henricksen advised.

  Hanu kept muttering, stabbing angrily at her panel.

  Henricksen sighed, making a mental note to talk to Scythe about the importance of letting the crew do their fucking jobs. “Send that scan signature to the other ships, Hanu, so they know what to look for.”

  “Aye, sir.” Hanu rattled away at the panel’s virtual keyboard, pulling in information from the sensors. A few strokes of the keys and she bundled up a data package, sending it across an encrypted channel.

  A flash of red on the front windows and another of those mines appeared. This one dead ahead. Directly in their path.

  “Shit,” Henricksen swore, diverting. “Shit!” as another mine appeared. Two more after that, set close together this time. “Fucking impossible,” he muttered, searching for a path.