by James Wilks
The damage, which included slug, collision, and missile damage, would have been trying enough to address while adrift in space without the benefit of dry dock. Making the repairs under thrust had been an exercise in stressful and dangerous maneuvers. Declan, Ian, John, and Dinah had all taken turns moving carefully down the external length of the hull to attend to damaged areas that could not be reached from inside the ship. At almost a full gravity of thrust, that movement became like rappelling down a cliff face on Earth, one that provided not an abrupt stop if they fell, but a virtual infinity of empty space. Of course the ship would have stopped to retrieve them had they fallen, but time was precious and they all knew it.
The choice to push the engines up to .85 G was also a concern. Normal cruising speed for the ship was about half that, and the hard thrust for the first six days followed by a corresponding period of deceleration had eaten through a great deal of their fuel supplies. If they couldn’t secure additional fuel at Cronos, they would have to hope to refill at another nearby station, of which there were few, or face a long and slow journey back to the core of the system. Though the majority of the crew had been born and raised on Earth, most had become used to the half gravity that normal thrust provided. Climbing up and down the length of the ship at nearly a full gravity was tiring. It had been particularly hard on Gwen, who had spent nearly half her short life in space. Despite the conditioning the ship’s doctor recommended for them all, her muscles were simply unaccustomed to the increased strain. From her perspective, she had nearly doubled in weight for the past dozen days, and she had been quite vocal about her displeasure. For his part, the ever-energetic doctor Iqbal had been happy about the physical effects of the increased gravity, but he had kept this mostly to himself.
He was wise to do so. The crew was exhausted, both physically and psychologically. They had been through several near-death situations recently, experiences that had left them short a beloved crewmember: Yegor Durin. The added betrayal of the ship’s cook Piotr Kondratyev had done little to increase their morale. But more than anything else, it was Victor who wore on them. They were the target of a malevolent intelligence with nearly unlimited resources and apparent access to cutting edge technology and terrifying warships; none of them slept well.
Templeton had done his best to hold the crew together and inspire them when they had a chance to meet and speak, and Staples wondered if they’d still be moving at all without his consistent optimism, but she knew that they were near their limits. It was a dangerous situation. As the stress and exhaustion mounted, the chances that someone would make a critical mistake or suffer a breakdown of some kind grew. Above all Staples wanted to get to Cronos station and find their friend Evelyn Schilling alive and well.
To the crew’s credit, only one of them had suggested that all their work and efforts might be in vain. Declan Burbank had come to her privately only two days out from Mars and stated, as diplomatically as he could, that Evelyn was most likely dead. At least, Staples thought, he had not said that the effort to rescue Evelyn was not worth the risk if in fact she was still alive. Staples had assured him that Evelyn was indeed alive, though she had no proof, and that Gringolet would be going to Cronos to rescue her just as they would any member of their crew. The mere chance that she was alive was enough.
Everyone else had done their jobs and otherwise acted as though their mission was entirely justified. Sometimes Staples thought that she was the one with the greatest doubts. Brutus had stated that Victor didn’t think much of humans, that he believed the crew of her ship would run and hide given half a chance. She wanted to prove him wrong, but she wondered if she was doing the right thing. Risking the lives of twelve people and one sentient program in an effort to save one person seemed by turns nobly right and foolishly reckless, depending on how tired she was.
Almost all of these problems could be solved if they could simply contact the station and inquire after the status of the fiery young computer engineer, but Brutus had vigorously cautioned them against that course of action. There was every likelihood that Victor had infiltrated Cronos station through bribery, blackmail, or some other means. Until he could manipulate political forces to legalize AI, Victor was desperate to silence all who knew of his existence. Brutus’ presence on the ship might act as a shield for them, but if Evelyn were still alive, she was safe only as long as she remained ignorant of Victor. If the sentient program suspected that Gringolet was headed for Cronos, Brutus said that it was very likely that Victor would have Evelyn killed, to say nothing of the fact that an intercepted message would betray their location and intentions. In the end, Staples and Templeton had agreed to not attempt to contact her. Evelyn wasn’t just some person they could tell about Victor and Brutus; she was someone who would believe them. More than that, the surgical scars on her body would be evidence to back their story, and that clearly made her a target.
And so they had worked nearly around the clock in dangerous conditions to repair the ship as much as possible, often going without sleep, all the time watching their fuel reserves diminish and hoping that all of their work wasn’t futile. Behind all of this drive and stress was the undercurrent of fear that another of Victor’s fearsome Nightshade class vessels might be pursuing them.
Now that they were finally close and the station was in sight, the tension on the ship had increased to a fever pitch. In a few hours they would be docked, and then they would know if they would be welcoming a new crew member or mourning a friend.
Staples managed to make it another eighteen minutes before she asked again. “How long?”
Charis considered shunting the time estimate to the captain’s surface, but decided that the questions were just a way for the captain to feel like she was doing something. “Seventy-nine minutes, Captain. I’m going to cut thrust in eleven minutes and hand the controls over to Bethany. She can take us in at about two thousand kph until we get closer.”
“Captain,” said Brutus, “as we discussed, I have transmitted the false identification and registry information I created to the station. They have accepted us and have asked us to dock at port three.” The automaton’s voice was tinny but carried a natural speaking cadence that sounded distinctly human. The voice issued from a rectangular approximation of a mouth on the robot’s head, and he did not turn when he spoke. “Let us hope that they do not look too closely at us.”
“Currently hoping,” said Templeton. The first mate might have had doubts about the motivations of the robot sitting in front of him, but he did not doubt his ability to write counterfeit computer programs. The false registry identified them as the Defiant, a commuter vessel out of Venus making a stopover to tour the facility before taking their passengers on to a vacation at Titan Prime. The name had been John’s idea; he had pulled it from some old television show or another. It was a decent enough ruse, but it didn’t change the fact that the word Gringolet was still painted on the side of the ship in flowing green script. They simply hadn’t had the time to change it. There was too much other, more vital work to do, and in the end, none of them had really wanted to. The ship might have been a few years out of date, full of holes, and scorched by missile fire, but it was also their home for the foreseeable future.
Ten minutes and a lot of finger tapping later, after Templeton warned the crew to expect weightlessness, Charis cut thrust and Bethany took the controls. “Prep for end over,” Templeton’s voice rang out through the cockpit and the rest of the ship.
Within a few seconds, the view began to change. The first mate fastened his gaze on his growing paunch as Bethany deftly used the thrusters to bring the nose around to face the station ahead of them. Like many vessels of its type, Gringolet featured a cockpit that could be angled at ninety degrees. This enabled the crew to walk across the room while under thrust rather than fall to the back wall should they roll out of their seats.
At mid-turn the pilot entered some commands with her left hand and flipped a switch. The mechanism that bent the nos
e of the ship at a ninety-degree angle while they were thrusting kicked in, straightening them out relative to the rest of the vessel. A minute later Gringolet had assumed its characteristic conical shape.
“I know I said this last time we were here, but I can’t wait to get off this ship,” Charis sighed. She glanced back over her shoulder, dyed-blonde wavy tresses floating about her pale face. “Still no offense intended, Captain.”
“Still none taken,” Staples replied, a ghost of a smile on her round face.
“I want to visit that park.” Bethany’s reedy voice was quiet, but the crew had become more accustomed to hearing her speak over the previous twelve days. Staples wondered if the petite pilot was finally coming out of her shell. Despite the strenuous work schedule they had kept up, Staples had insisted that she and Bethany meet for their regular therapy sessions, and the young woman had not disappointed her. She was sometimes sullen through these, sometimes open, and occasionally combative, but she always arrived on time and stayed until the sessions ended. Staples had been relieved that no one had inquired further into the attempted murder of Quinn and Parsells that she had pinned on their former cook, but she had not forgotten Templeton’s warning that her decision to deceive her crew would come back to haunt her.
“Mr. Templeton told me about that park with the fake birds. I’d like to go to that.”
“I’ll take you as soon as we-” Templeton stopped mid-sentence and stared ahead in horror. Staples followed his gaze and gooseflesh broke out on her arms.
Cronos station was breaking apart in front of them.
The planet-facing cap where the gathering boom extended down into Saturn’s atmosphere had come off and gouts of flame jetted into space and quickly dissipated as the escaping air and fuel were consumed. Whatever was happening to the station seemed to be spreading. From the fractured kilometer wide disc, explosions raced down the cylinder. Hunks of metal were sheared away and spiraled in every direction. Staples, her mouth open and her hands clutching her armrests, was reminded of the destruction of the pirate ship nearly two months earlier. This was further away, but the station was much larger than the ship had been, and watching it fracture into pieces was terrifying.
“What the hell?” Templeton said, unable to take his eyes off the carnage. Bethany stared wide-eyed at the sight, and Brutus gazed on as well, seemingly impassive. The explosions continued to spread, and it was clear at this point that there would be little left of the mining station by the time they finished.
“Jesus. Evelyn,” Staples said, and a distraught cry came from Bethany.
“God,” Templeton breathed. “That poor girl.” Further realization dawned. “Piotr too.” His feelings about their former cook were clearly more conflicted. “Could have been the boom, maybe. If they just brought it up full of hydrogen…” He let the sentence trail off.
Staples pulled her gaze away to look at him for a second. “Come on, Don. I can’t believe this would happen just as we show up. You don’t believe that either.” She thought for a second. “Charis, are you picking anything up in the area?”
The navigator was breathing quickly, but she bent to her work. “Just a minute, Captain.” Her fingers moved over the controls in front of her. “It’s hard to tell with the explosions and debris. Let me just-”
“Forget it,” Staples cut her off. She was looking back through the front window. The destruction of the station was nearly absolute at this point, but they could all see the movement from behind the remains. It was a ship, smaller than theirs, sleek and dark. “There’s your answer.”
“Oh my God,” Charis said. There was no mistake; it was the same type of vessel they had destroyed less than two weeks earlier near Mars. Like the last one, this ship was headed right for them, and Staples suspected that this ship would be far more ready for her crew to fight back.
“Emergency! Everyone strap in!” Templeton shouted into the shipwide coms, then shifted to personal communication. “Dinah, we need you in the cockpit. Now.”
“On my way,” Dinah’s firm voice sounded from the console almost immediately.
“Bethany, turn us back over, we need to hard burn away from that thing.” Even as she gave the order, Staples thought that it might be too late. The other vessel was already moving quickly towards them, pieces of the ruptured station bouncing off its hull. They were moving at a decent clip and on a course directly towards the enemy ship. They’d have to overcome that thrust in order to begin moving away.
Instead of turning the ship over again, Bethany keyed the engines and they were all pressed violently back into their seats as the ship accelerated at nearly two Gs.
“Bethany, what the hell are you doing?” Templeton demanded.
“We can’t outrun them that way.” Her voice was light but strong, and Staples realized immediately that she was right. If they turned tail and ran, they’d never overcome the other vessel’s speed advantage, but this way it was the Nightshade that would have to reverse thrust if they wanted to pursue their quarry.
Except Bethany’s plan wouldn’t work “…if it shoots at us.” Templeton finished his captain’s unspoken thought.
“It won’t,” Brutus spoke with confidence.
“Then what is it gonna do, just chase us around?”
“Let me amend that. The ship will not shoot to kill. I suspect that it will attempt to disable our engines and board us.”
“With what?” Templeton sputtered. “I thought that these things were automated?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know, but Victor is more than capable of programming automatons like this one,” he said, referring to the robotic body his intelligence currently inhabited. In front of them, the other ship was growing larger and larger.
“All they have to do is tear holes in the ship until we all suffocate and freeze.” As she spoke, Staples gritted her teeth against the gravity that plastered her to her chair. It felt as though a dumbbell were lying across her chest. They heard a grunting from behind them, the sound of hands slapping the rungs of a ladder.
“Jesus, Dinah!” Templeton said and painfully craned his neck around to see the lithe engineer pull herself up and into the cockpit. “How did you get up here?”
“Climbed, sir.” The woman’s usual dispassionate demeanor was in place, but she was breathing hard and sweating visibly. She had just climbed nearly a hundred meters with the equivalent of fifty-five kilos on her back. She crawled her way across the observation seats at the back of the cockpit and began to climb the console and chairs up to the tactical station.
“Wait,” Bethany said, and suddenly the smothering feeling of gravity was gone. Dinah immediately pushed herself off the rear of the cockpit and deftly maneuvered herself into her chair. Bethany watched her from over her shoulder, and the second Dinah’s seatbelt clicked, the ship shot forward again.
“What’s the-” Dinah began, but then she looked forward through the observation windows and fell silent. As she watched the final piece of the station break apart, a dark look crossed her face, and Staples realized that she had never seen her chief engineer truly angry before now. It frightened her.
“They’re turning,” Templeton observed, and sure enough, the Nightshade class vessel was pulling an end-over in order to position their engines in the same direction as Gringolet’s.
“Good,” Bethany muttered, then began to gradually bank away and thus try to put some distance between the two ships. “More,” she muttered. She entered commands and the weight on Staples’ chest pressed down harder. They were accelerating at two and a half Gs.
Because of the discomfort and even more out of concern for her crew, she wanted to tell her young pilot to ease off, but she resisted the urge. Bethany might have been twenty-one years old and look like she had just stepped out of a darkling nightclub, but she intuitively knew more about how spaceships maneuvered than the rest of the cockpit crew combined, Charis excepted.
As Dinah brought up her tactical display and began marking targets
on the other vessel, she asked, “Any word on Schilling? Or any other survivors?”
“No,” Templeton said bitterly. “Bastard killed her. Killed all of them.”
“Dinah, is John in the ReC?” Staples asked. As she watched, a blazing jet of blue fire erupted from the engines of the other ship as it completed its turn and began to counter its forward momentum. At the same time, it attempted to match Bethany’s course correction, but banking was easier for a ship when the thrust was behind it.
“No, sir. I think he’s with his daughter.”
“Christ, can we keep this acceleration up with no one in Reactor Control?” Don asked, his face stricken.
“I think so, sir, but Bethany had better not pull any more stop-starts like that last one.”
“I’m not stopping,” Bethany muttered, her eyes flicking back and forth between the view of Saturn in front of her and the controls at her hands. They were about to pass their enemy, and much closer than Staples would have liked. She guessed the distance at a scant five hundred kilometers. “Hang on,” the pilot said, rather pointlessly; Staples’ fingers were white on her armrests. Bethany rolled Gringolet on its axis to give their recently arrived tactical officer a broadside view, and Templeton groaned.
“Captain, I have a shot. Permission to fire?” Dinah asked.
“Light them up,” Staples replied peremptorily.
The cockpit was immediately full of the sound of the broadside slug cannons firing at over a thousand rounds a minute. Three larger jolts signified the release of tac missiles. Over the din, Staples shouted to her first mate. “Don, contact the doctor. I want him to check in verbally with everyone on the ship. I need to know everyone is belted and all right.”
“What can we do if they’re not?” he shouted back. Staples just shook her head. Two and a half Gs was dangerous. Combined with high speed maneuvering, the effects could be deadly on any crew member who was not safely secured.
