So why did he feel death stalking so closely? Why did he have the urge to point every battery at that gem of a world and wipe away all human life from its surface? What unexplained aspect of their occupation made him seriously consider preemptive genocide?
LCDR Kortney “K.K.” Kropp, his XO, interrupted his ever-darkening thoughts by bringing herself to a stop next to him on Mare Crisium’s bridge. “Captain, I have the latest daily reports from the Marine contingent,” she said, holding out a tablet.
He did not bother to take it or to look away from Adelaide. “Summarize, K.K.”
This was not unexpected with Beam. She cleared her throat and began. “Yes, sir. The Marines report the orbital bombardment of the two insurgent groups was successful. Except for a smattering of malcontents, camp followers, and a few stragglers, the insurgency is pretty much done for. We have a spy highly placed in the resistance network, a local we managed to turn, and he’ll lead them into an ambush tomorrow. Things should get calmer once we do that.”
Beam squinted and looked at Kropp with a questioningly. “The local traitor? Was that the one whose wife we were holding or something?”
“Yes, sir. Daniel and Astrid Sotherby.”
The CO turned back to the planet. “He’s going to be very disappointed with us when he comes to fetch his wife and finds her a frozen corpse.”
“The traitor’s wage, sir. We’ll handle it if the Marines don’t do it for us.”
They were both quiet until CDR Beam broke the silence. “K.K., have you ever thought about why we’re out here?”
She shrugged. “Orders, sir. We’re here to distract the ALS and split their forces, to show them the Union is more than capable of striking them with impunity no matter how independent and mighty they consider themselves, and—I suppose—eventually return the ALS worlds to the Union.”
He smiled, turned from the view, and pushed his way back to his seat. LCDR Kropp followed and took her seat next to him. He answered her as they moved. “A serviceable answer, but not really what I meant. Before our tech enabled the first diaspora, the population of Earth was 8 billion people. And after our first expansion into the solar system, and then into the star systems of nearly 100 worlds? The population of our home world remains between 8 and 9 billion. Offworld? The population in aggregate is barely over a tenth of that. One hundred worlds and two hundred years, and we’ve expanded into a population that could easily have fit onto a single extra planet. What is it that drives us to continue our expansion, then to so zealously defend new territory that we don’t need, to the point of outright war? And not just once, but over and over again?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, sir. I’m sticking with ‘orders’ for my answer.”
He smiled, but he could feel it was a bitter, jagged smile, frightening rather than reassuring. “In fifteen minutes, we could render Adelaide uninhabited, and do you know how much it would matter? Who would care? The answers are ‘not at all’ and ‘no one.’”
Beam could see his XO growing uncomfortable. She stammered, “I—I imagine it might matter to the people we’re bombing. Or to their families. If it were me or mine, I know I’d be pretty damn upset about it.”
“Fret not, Commander. I am prepared for it, some parts of me even relish the thought…but I don’t plan to commit genocide today. You have to be honest, though. This lovely, perfect little colony doesn’t matter, except as a throwaway gambit between two indifferent empires. It does not even matter overmuch to the Alliance. I mean, how well have they guarded it in all this time?”
Before she could answer or argue, the technician at Sensors—a junior spacer named Pitzer—cried out, “Emergence! Captain, I have a single ship emergence about two light minutes away. Looks like a destroyer-sized target, fingerprinting in progress.”
K.K. nodded at the highlighted icon on the display tank. “Looks like it might matter to somebody. They finally showed up.”
Beam grunted but did not comment.
Petty Officer Pitzer spoke up again, but this time he sounded confused. “Sir, it appears to be an Alliance destroyer all right, but it is…seriously messed up. I’m showing severe hull damage, radiation leaks, atmosphere leaks, and only one of four main drives operational. Limited sensor dwells detected, all low-power, dumb beams instead of encrypted dwells. It looks like someone patched together a scrap heap.”
“Mmm-hmmm. And what is this scrap heap doing?”
“It’s calling us, sir.”
* * *
“Unidentified Terran Union Navy destroyer, this is the warship Puller, formerly of the Alliance Navy. Please respond. We are seriously damaged and have no hostile intent.” Benno sat strapped into his seat, his face drawn and haggard, leaning forward in nervous anticipation.
He was here. He was finally home. But the prize seemed that much further away.
The last two days had been harrowing. After successfully making the jump to the trinary system, they had not been able to rest or repair. It would not take long for the rest of Task Force 757 to determine where they likely went and pursue. So, with the ship on fire, 75% of the systems non-operational, many crew dead or dying, they had been forced to get the engines back online, reorient, and jump, and jump again. Each transit had strained systems that might not take another strain, but they had no choice. Only distance and unobserved transits might keep their own people from a fruitful pursuit.
After the third transit, Benno finally felt safe enough to address the viability of the Puller.
It was not a good story.
Thirty-six of his fellow mutineers were gone. Another ten were in Medical, not expected to survive, and most of the rest had some form of injury but soldiered on nonetheless. Of the 27 loyalist hostages in the hull section, only seven survived the xaser beam that had pierced it. The ten people in the brig survived, including the XO. The Puller had begun with just under 200 crew. After losses in Executive Amber, the mutiny, Paradiso, and now Morgan’s Rock, Benno had only 77 crew upon which he could count.
With so few, to even attempt to make the ship spaceworthy—much less put her back to some semblance of her fighting trim—he had been required to do the near unthinkable: release the loyalists. He had been judicious. Only those that earned a unanimous vote of confidence from his de facto department heads were let out—including CDR Ashton, the real Chief Engineer, and Benno’s old boss, the Weapons Officer LCDR Forrestal. In the end, every able body labored to clear a never-ending repair list. Benno had worked continuously for 28 hours, restringing cable and setting up data networks to route around the pervasive battle damage.
He imagined the only reason there had not been another mutiny against him was that the survivors were too damned tired and beat down to bother trying.
When it was all said and done though, the ship was operational—but just operational and barely so at that. There would be no fighting and winning in Adelaide or against the squadron still most likely pursuing them. They were doomed and so were Mio and everyone else on Adelaide.
It had warranted a change in tactics.
After a two-minute light speed lag back and forth, with a little extra time to decide how to respond, a man’s voice crackled out of the void. “Alliance destroyer Puller, this is the Terran Union Naval Vessel Mare Crisium. We are in complete possession of the Adelaide system and will defend our occupation with maximum force. You are ordered not to attempt to flee and to make no attempt at a combat approach. You are to heave to and surrender as prisoners of war…or be destroyed.”
Benno shook his head and smiled. He pushed the transmit stud on his seat. “Mare Crisium, we have no intention of challenging you for the system. That might have been why we started all of this, but we no longer possess the means, and we have run out of choices. You need to understand something—we are no longer an Alliance warship. After we found out about your occupation and discovered the Alliance intended to let it go unanswered…we mutinied and abandoned our fleet. The damage you see to my vessel was done
by our own fellow Alliance forces. We can no longer fight them or you. All that matters to us is the safety of our families on the planet below.
“To that end, we surrender to you and seek asylum from the Alliance through service and loyalty to the Terran Union.”
* * *
CDR Beam and LCDR Kropp stared warily at one another. She shook her head. “It has to be a trap.”
“Of course, it’s a trap. But look at that ship. If that’s deception, they’re really overselling it. Why would they need to do that? We’re the ones deep in someone else’s territory with no supply lines. If they wanted to dislodge us, all they have to do is bring in a squadron. Yes, we’d likely annihilate the population before we left, but still. This seems…too desperate.”
With no answer in the last few minutes, Benno transmitted again. “We are prepared to back up our story with proof, Mare Crisium. With your permission, we can transfer security footage of the mutiny, automated deck logs, and tactical feeds from the last squadron’s attack upon us.”
K.K. chuffed a laugh. “As if we would just plug any recording they sent us into our network. That’s like inviting them to send us a system worm.”
Beam shrugged. “We could always download it to a stand-alone tablet and watch it from there.”
The voice sounded again. “And could we please approach? I don’t know if the light speed lag is super long, or I’m too impatient, or you just don’t feel like talking, but this five-minute pause between responses is killing me. Sorry.”
The Terran CO and XO looked at one another again, weighing options. Eventually, Kropp said, “If they are defecting as mutineers, we can demand unconditional surrender, require them to turn over all files, encryption keys, software, weapons, etc. They might have decent intel on their fleet objectives, make-up, plans, and comms. It’s not like they could take us in a fight anyway, but it would be nice to pull stuff from an operational ship, rather than sifting through a debris cloud.”
Beam nodded. “It’s win-win…until one betrays the other. Okay. They want to see their families. Allow them to approach, all weapon systems powered down and monitored remotely. They light off anything, and we finish the seemingly easy job of destroying them. Bring them into shuttle range so their long-range weapons are useless, then we board and take what we want.”
She nodded back. “And what about bringing them down to Adelaide?”
He smiled. “You said it before—Traitor’s Wages. I’ve got no obligation to a bunch of deserters and mutineers. We get what we need from them, then we destroy their ship.”
“Aye aye, sir. I’ll contact the surface and put them on high alert. We’ll move out to rendezvous with this Puller, but we’ll stay within the coverage range of the anti-orbit missile battery.”
CDR Beam steepled his fingers and grinned. “Very well, carry on.”
* * *
Benno nodded as the instructions came to them. He looked over at CDR Ashton, strapped in next to him, suited up, but no longer shackled to her seat. And this time, she sat in her traditional spot, the XO’s chair.
He shrugged. “Better than them shooting first. Reasonably cautious.”
She shook her head. “And it still requires us to casually put our heads right into the lion’s mouth. This is a shit plan, Warrant.”
“Agreed. Its one and only virtue is that it’s the only one we’ve got. Have faith.”
“Faith isn’t going to keep us from turning into a disassociated cloud of plasma!”
“I promise the cloud of plasma that was you can tell the cloud of plasma that was me, ‘I told you so,’ when this is all over. Until then, Commander, more do, less talk.”
She frowned and glared but got to work, ordering the bridge and CIC crews around.
The Puller thrust in on her one working dark matter drive, crabbing the ship to keep their off-center thrust vector aligned with the ship’s center of mass. Even then, they babied the engine, pushing the destroyer forward at only one quarter gravity of acceleration.
Mare Crisium suffered no such limitations. The Terran warship thrust to the rendezvous point at an unnecessary two Gs and prowled the position like a cat too long caged, eager for blood. They scanned Puller and the surrounding space, keen to find even a single cold, dark, quiet weapon the disabled enemy might try to swim out, powered down, to act as a mine. The ship’s crew kept the Puller locked in the fire control solutions of their twin railgun mounts and ten laser emitters. Their weapons were set on automatic and ready to fire at the first provocation.
The distance between the ships closed as they maneuvered and flipped-ship to achieve a stationary rendezvous. The gap fell to one light minute. Then thirty light-seconds. Ten light-seconds. One second. A hundred thousand kilometers. A thousand kilometers. A hundred. Ten.
One kilometer.
* * *
“Very well, sir. We’ve closed to mutual suicide pact distance,” K.K. announced, dryly.
Captain Beam chuffed an appreciative laugh. He looked over and could plainly see the Puller’s damaged hull. He had never been this close to an enemy ship. Engagements were carried out too fast and too far away to ever actually see the opposition. He rarely even saw ships from his own Navy.
Shaking himself from his thoughts, he replied to her. “Very droll, XO. Your objections have been noted. We both know they are probably planning something, but unless they don’t plan on surviving, getting this close cuts any nukes out of the equation. We’re inside their initiation range. Safeties won’t allow them to blow.”
“Which limits ours as well, sir.”
“Yes, but we have both our railguns powered up and trained on them. We’ve verified their railguns are both down. Same with laser mounts. Their missile hatches are open and unshielded. As soon as we see a single erg of waste heat from any of their weapons, our railguns will cut them in half. And given their current condition, it won’t be too difficult a task.” He gestured at the data tank. “Now, any more skirt-holding required, or may we continue with the fleecing of these poor, dumb, trusting morons?”
Her eyes turned dark, but she answered with a clipped, precise, “No, sir.”
“Very well, XO.” He turned from her and flipped a switch on his seat. “Puller, this is Mare Crisium Actual. We are ready on our end. Ready to receive our shuttle?”
Benno came back immediately. “Yes, Mare Crisium. You reviewed the files we sent you?”
“Yes, Mister Sanchez. Either you have a very skilled videographer capable of Hollywood-level special effects, or you are indeed a murderous, mutinous, honorless bastard. But since you only murdered Alliance personnel, you have my tentative word that we will give you asylum and access to your families on the surface. Sufficient?”
There was a pause they could no longer attribute to light-speed lag. “It’ll have to be, Mare Crisium. Note, your shuttle will have to dock at our EVA hatch. The dropship hangar doors are dead. Unless you want us to cut them off?”
“Noted and not necessary. Stand by to receive us. Mare Crisium out,” Beam answered, then unkeyed the comm. He looked at LCDR Kropp. “You’re up. Remember, if needed, shoot first, shoot early, and shoot often. Don’t let them lull you into complacency. Play nice only if playing nice gets you what you want. Whether they end up dead under you and your Marines, or when I put a nuke into them, they are already corpses.”
She nodded but appeared distinctly uncomfortable.
No matter, Beam thought. She’ll do her duty, even if she might not do it as readily as I would.
His XO departed, and he smiled at the targeting reticles that swept over the broken Alliance ship.
* * *
“Turd shuttle inbound, Skipper,” the TAO said over the comm.
“Roger, CIC,” Benno answered. “Standby to initiate charges.”
“Charges standing by, Bridge.”
Benno looked at CDR Ashton, but she did not look back at him, engrossed in her own screens. Turning his helmeted head, he shifted his gaze to an inset win
dow on his display panels. Adelaide turned serenely below them. Only one icon was lit up on the planet—that of the Terran Marines’ anti-orbit missile battery. Unlike their previous two battles, this weapon system would come into play. It was up and radiating. Just one of the 100 Dauphine 500-kiloton, fusion-pumped, independent xaser warheads was more than enough to core out a full dreadnought. Altogether, they added up to 50 megatons of directed energy, capable of taking out an entire fleet, much less their little, damaged destroyer.
Of course, Benno did not honestly care. He could only look at that icon as yet another obstacle in an interminable series of them. The only thing he could see on that inset of the planet was an icon that existed only in his mind’s eye. It was the icon marking Mio Sanchez. In his most fervent hopes, it blazed green and vibrant, signaling her safety and health. In his worst fears, it pulsed dark and red, an epitaph to his failures as a father.
He was so close. Only a couple more hurdles now…
“Shuttle’s at the midpoint,” CDR Ashton interjected. “It’s not bothering to flip, though. Coming in slow and careful on positioning rockets only, guns trained.”
Benno nodded. “Sure. It’s only a kilometer.”
“Yeah, it’s only a kilometer, you crazy bastard.” She shook her head. Her arguments did not need another airing.
Benno keyed his comm. “Terran shuttle, this is Puller. Stand by. We got the hangar doors unstuck. Why don’t you come in there instead?”
The shuttle did not pause, and inertia carried it on, but he could almost feel their momentary confusion, could picture them questioning whether to continue to the EVA hatch, or go to the hangar. It was not excessive, not a complete breakdown in their observation-decision loop, but it was doubt, new information to be processed and accepted, rejected, or wondered at. Perhaps it would be enough to slow their reaction time…
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