by Ken Britz
She read the information, committing its contents to memory. Dread filled her gut. Kenga, an experienced subspace captain, felt her skin prickle at the potential for catastrophe. When she finished reading, the pad died, its internal systems self-destructing, randomizing the data.
“That’s all it?” Kenga whispered.
Zeng threw the pad into the flash incinerator behind him. “There’s more, but we don’t have the time, and—”
“Operational Security,” Kenga finished, lost in thought. The danger was all around them and they didn’t even know it… until now. It made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. Could Kenga ask anyone else to carry this message? She thought about what might’ve really happened to the Tora Hai, and her blood went cold. She thought of Stig and the breadth of captains of the subspace fleet, and it occurred to her that there were reasons other than her record she was chosen. She had no children—her family was of some standing, but they were not part of the new aristocracy. If she failed… Kuro Hai would be added to the roster of ships on eternal patrol, like the Tora Hai and the Occult. Worse, she would be disavowed, but that seemed unlikely. No, Kenga would either succeed or not. Would it get Kenga closer to her goal of ending the war, or would it push her closer to the edge of insanity?
Radachi and Zeng waited. Zeng looked on the verge of exploding with impatience, but Radachi stilled him with a glance. “I don’t suppose I have any choice, do I?” Kenga smiled. “I’ll take on Mercer’s mission—your mission—ma’am.”
2
HFSS Kuro Hai
Interstellar Fold-Space
0740 U.Z.
1254.12.12 A.F.
Kenga ate a light but filling breakfast alone in the Kuro’s wardroom. Her officers had already eaten and were about their duties, and she had dismissed her steward to attend to routine. She had wanted a meal with them, but she reminded herself to not be maudlin. You’ve had over two solyars of meals with Kuro Hai’s crew, she told herself. They will be here. When all things go to Hel, the ship’s crew will still be here.
When she was younger, she’d been too nervous to eat before combat and that had been a big mistake. You don’t pass up a real meal after you’ve been in a suit for weeks, alternating between canned systems and suit-goo. The repast settled her stomach, and the routine put her mind deeper into her focused state. She refilled her magbulb and returned to her stateroom.
She pulled out her terminal and reviewed her patrol orders, reminding herself of the false mission. Enter Rigel B system and take out the Alexandria shipyard orbital by any means necessary.
Her door chirped and Dr. Lin entered. How young my old friend looks, Kenga mused. The furrowed line of Lin’s brow had faded these last few weeks in fold-space, and the roots of her gray hair returned to black as restored tissue reversed the effects of time. Now we combine youth with wisdom.
“Did I look so old when I arrived?” Lin said with a warm smile.
“I only wondered how we’d gotten so old,” Kenga replied.
“Spacers never grow old.” Lin handed Kenga a magbulb. “Your gene-splice tea.”
“We die, though.”
“That’s a morbid thought.”
“You’re a doctor, Lynn. You’ve seen your fair share of death.” Kenga opened the magbulb and let the steam fill her lungs. She inhaled the scents of blue cinnamon and mint herbs from Lin’s personal collection. “Do you regret agreeing to my request?” Kenga whispered.
“Who’s been your friend for more than half a centisolyar?” Lin grinned, then grimaced and sighed. “The aches of age go away, but now I have growing pains and hot flashes at the same time.”
Kenga tasted the medicinal tang of the gene-splice at the back of her throat, the heat scalding her insides. Lin held out a chemotab. “Prognosis, doctor?” Kenga took the tab and slid it under her tongue. The biomolecular delivery expedited the medicinal cocktail into her system.
“What does it matter now, my friend?” Lin said.
“It matters a great deal to me,” Kenga admitted. She downed Lin’s tea, washing away the remnants of the tab with a hot spicy aftertaste.
“I suppose it does.” Lin’s brow furrowed.
Do I exude finality? Death? Or just pain? Kenga wondered.
“Next time add your brandy to my tea,” Lin said.
“Let’s not ruin either your tea or my brandy that way.”
Lin gave one more smile, checking Kenga’s biomedical readouts. Her concern was masked by a professional veneer. With a sigh, she opened the door and was gone.
Kenga leaned against the wall for a moment, pain receptors flaring throughout her body despite the cocktail. After a tooth grinding eternity, the pain dulled to a stomach-churning throb. She pulled the polysteel sink from its stowed position and splashed water on her face. It doesn’t hurt so bad, she thought. She stared into the mirror at the lacquered wooden plaque mounted to the wall behind her. ‘All subspace warfare is based upon deception’, it read, an updated version of an ancient Sun Tzu phrase.
She checked the ship’s chronometer and met Master Chief Wagoner outside her door.
“Ma’am,” The Chief of the Boat said.
“Making the rounds, COB?” Kenga asked.
“Just finished, ma’am. Heading to the bridge now.”
“You’re a creature of habit.”
“And you’re not, ma’am? It’s good luck, you and me,” Wagoner replied. He’d been her right hand, the first enlisted back when her command aboard Kuro Hai was new. He’d found out some of her spacer habits and adapted himself to them. After a score of missions, Kenga’s habits were now Wagoner’s and as routine as if he were born to them.
“Have you seen the XO?”
“He was in the sensor shack when I went through.”
“He’s probably on the bridge now.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Wagoner gave a curt nod and entered the dorsal lift.
Kenga strode to the ventral lift on the opposite side, remembering the adage ‘belly front, back aft’ for flow of personnel. She rode it all the way down, the whisper of the lift punctuated by the minute pressure pulses as she dropped through the ship. She missed the purr of the gravitic impeller here in fold-space, but was happy for one benefit of compression drive travel—gravity. If you entered fold-space while under acceleration, that acceleration continued during fold-space navigation. It was more difficult for the quantum AI to calculate and introduced follow-on effects, all of which meant they often took a longer route to their destination, but it was worth it.
On her way through the boat, the crew were getting ready for combat. The ship was filled with chatter of crew members stowing sensors and bringing in gear extended beyond the outer hull. While the compression field extended well beyond the hull, the range of the subspace field was short, and anything outside the smooth outer hull got left behind when the ship translated into subspace. It was no accident that subspace vessels had a sleek aerodynamic look, despite not being designed for atmosphere.
Because she was small, the Kuro had no rail gun, but she didn’t need it. She had torpedoes fore and aft, along with port and starboard attack fins with payload dispersal. It was not uncommon for subspace vessels to conduct strike runs, sent in with payloads dropped to a celestial body’s surface or launched at orbital facilities from close range (in astral terms). Kuro had a special payload this run.
Kenga heard the launcher load system before she arrived at the fin deck. Weps was making last-minute checks of the system with his crack payload crew. When she stepped off the dorsal lift platform, she spied Lieutenant Commander Gunnar Tan monitoring his crew and the machines that manned the system. He caught Kenga out of the corner of his eye.
“Final load system check, ma’am. I’ve checked over the port and starboard loadouts—no discrepancies and the warheads are all reporting green and mean.”
Kenga frowned, remembering what she had stowed in the starboard fin, but was sure the launcher contents would pass all of its mimetic d
iagnostics. She drank her tea and forced her expression back to neutral. “We might need your loadout team, but have you checked on our little passenger?” Her side hurt like Hel. If it’s not war that gets you, it’s something else. Is that how the phrase goes? While she’d undergone her ‘treatment’ and ‘Rest and Recuperation’ a month ago, Zeng had given her a few, well thought out parting gifts for Kuro’s mission.
“Same as always, ready to go on your command.” Tan was younger than Kenga but had been around since the early days of the Hegemonic Subspace Fleet. He knew the Kuro inside and out though he didn’t quite understand the intricacies of the subspace hull and compression drive. Weapons were his specialty. Kenga had thought long and hard about getting him reassigned. But he was a damn fine weapons officer, and if this mission was to succeed, she needed him now more than ever. She’d never asked for her crew to do more than their duty. They had always known the possibility of death awaited them. This was no different. Wasn’t it?
“And torpedoes?”
“No problems. Did preflight checks myself. If any of those fish go awry, I’ll space myself.”
“Waste of a spacesuit, Weps,” Kenga replied and continued on her way.
“Gods be damned, I hope we get to send some hot plasma up the ass of those GLF assholes,” Tan said to his crew when he thought she was out of earshot.
“You have this interesting fixation with asses and assholes, sir,” Chief Dale replied. The crew finished a round of speed launcher load and configuration sims.
After checking on the forward impeller control room and crew, she passed the sensor shack on her way to the bridge. She peeked in, but Senior Chief Chapel and his crew of sensorheads were deep into their helmets, readying their cortexes for vast amounts of data. I’ve got to stop thinking about trying to spare members of my crew. It’s one ship, one mission, she thought. She rode the ventral lift to the bridge.
“Captain on the conn,” Lieutenant junior grade Feller, the Officer of the Deck, reported. The crew on watch didn’t move from their stations, but they tensed in their creches.
“Status of the subspace system?” she asked as a matter of routine, noting Wagoner in the copilot’s creche, already at his combat station.
“Charged and ready,” the OOD responded.
“And the gravitic impeller?”
“Ready to engage,” Feller replied. “Secondary thrust is cold iron, as per your standing orders.” He perspired despite the cool air of the ship. He was young. Do they get younger as the war drags on or am I just imagining it? Too young for this mission. Most of them were too young, but the Hegemonic Federation’s subspace force was brash and daring. It was they who put the GLF on their heels, despite the GLF having the larger fleet when the Secession occurred.
Kinnara didn’t have the capacity or capability to keep up with Hegemony’s advances in the subspace arena. The Subspace Fleet grasped the truth of interplanetary warfare: that it was an island-hopping campaign. Shipping, transport and strategic targets won the war. The Hegemony developed and advanced the N-boat design far beyond pre-war models, and many rightly suspected the Triumvirate had held back significant advances in subspace technology that were only now being used to full effect. The GLF had their own subspace fleet, but they lagged in both technology and tactics. Their real space fleet was far more capable though they had to rely on nascent detection technology. It was imperfect and the Hegemonic Subspace Fleet held the advantage.
A messing crew member made the rounds, collecting and handing out magbulbs. Kenga waved her bulb and drank. The tea remained hot, warming her grinding insides.
“Captain,” Reed acknowledged her presence. Kenga wasn’t fond of Reed. He was part of the new Hegemonic aristocracy and not true subspace material, proconsul or no. He did his duty competently, but his appointment as XO in place of Stig Edmonds was ill-advised. Proconsuls had significant uses—they could cut through red tape, trading on their aristocracy to stifle bureaucracy. It was also Commander Reed’s duty as proconsul to report on Kenga’s conduct and Kuro via different channels from Kenga’s war patrol report.
“Commander,” Kenga replied, settling into her captain’s chair, holding the bulb close to her side. The pain hadn’t worked itself out with breakfast or on her tour of the ship, but her mind cleared. She was alert and ready. Reed could say whatever he wanted, but this was her last patrol, her last mission, whatever the outcome. And that last thought made her feel light, unburdened by command, if only for a moment. She reviewed the astrogation display of the Rigel B system, markers blinking on known strategic assets.
“Final decompression in five minutes,” the quantum AI announced.
“Battle stations, suit standby,” Kenga ordered in her soft soprano. Time enough for orders when they’re in the thick of things—trust the crew to fight the ship first, command second.
Feller tapped the controls, sending the alarm shipwide. Kenga closed her eyes and listened to the ship prepare for battle. The axial passage sealed between compartments. Argon mixed with oxygen in the atmosphere, reducing the chance of fire. If they put on their suits, the atmosphere would be replaced with Argon or vacuum, depending on the state of the ship. But until then, they needed to be comfortable and mobile for as long as possible.
“Captain has the deck and the conn,” Feller reported with a salute.
Kenga got into her spacesuit, always at the ready on the bridge. With the ease of solyars of practice, she slid out of her mag boots and flight suit, leaving a form-fitting skinsuit sleeve engineered for comfort and long-term wear. The skinsuit was more than underwear; it was a second skin, mating with the universal spacesuits throughout the ship. In the ancient days of space travel, spacesuits were an incredible undertaking to get into and out of. The suits of the modern spacer did most of the work. Kenga stepped into the suit, sealed it, clamped the boots in place, tested magnetics, all while the suit itself did its own self-checks and mated with her skinsuit, connecting sensors, ports and even orifices to the suit’s systems. As complex as the quantum AI, the compression core, or the subspace hull were, the spacesuit was the real feat of engineering to Kenga. Inside of sixty seconds, she was suited up and comfortable, her tea bulb in her gloved hand and the helmet retracted. They might be days inside their suits, so the fleet trained this way. Crueler than the violent seas of Midgard-Sekai, the oceans of space didn’t drown you when you were thrown overboard. Space didn’t care. It gave nothing. You would die alone with only what you had with you. It was why spacesuits had a single feature never designed into any planetside suit—a suicide option, a painless injection that ended your life as you drifted among the stars, without waiting for your air or power or sanity to expire. It had long ago been argued against—the scientists saying carbon dioxide poisoning would fog your mind and put you to sleep. After the first battle that left hundreds of bodies adrift in space, the GLF installed the option and trained every person in its use.
Kenga’s suit chirped when its checks were complete, and she was still the fastest on the bridge. The goal was the same, but the tricks and approaches were unique to each person, depending on learning, skill, and familiarity.
There was someone in engineering who might be as fast as she was. She shook her head.
The decompression warning klaxoned.
“No mains just yet,” she reminded the pilot.
“Yes, ma’am,” the pilot responded.
“Stand by,” the quantum AI said.
Kenga snapped into her creche. It was unlikely there would be contact, but routine and habit had a long history. Seventy solyars of experience.
The Kuro Hai decompressed into real space, the black screens now full of stars. “Orienting the ship to the ecliptic on re-entry,” Lieutenant Commander Jin, the astrogator reported. The crew obeyed the order to orient themselves to Rigel B’s ecliptic plane once they entered real space. They were above it as measured by the bodies orbiting counterclockwise, like their ancestral home, the planet Earth. The ship oriented it
self to the ecliptic with a minute nudge of thrusters.
“Passive sweep,” Reed said, floating in the confines of his creche. He’d forgotten his magbulb, and it floated forward, bouncing off a bulkhead. Wagoner snatched it out the air and stowed it in a magnetic zarf. “No close contacts,” Reed reported from sensors. Nothing within a light minute.
Kenga shook her head and reviewed the display. “We’re on course. No corrections needed.” The long compression trajectory was worth it. Kuro’s quantum AI had done its job.
“Quantum AI stowed for flight,” engineering announced on their reporting circuit.
Kenga folded her arms and waited. In real space, things traveled at the light or sub-light speeds. It would take time for them to scan their surroundings. Ten minutes passed.
“Clear,” the XO reported.
Kenga didn’t believe that. Rigel B was not without defense. She expected at least two corvettes on patrol. But they were not in immediate danger. With an eye on the astrodisplay, she snapped the button for the aft torpedo bay. “Weapons, conn, status of Little Kuro?”
“Conn, Weapons, charged, programmed and ready for swim out.”
“Pilot, reverse course. Engage gravitic impeller.”
“Reversing course. Engaging impeller,” the pilot acknowledged, and the ship buzzed and flashed with the orange trajectory alarm. The world spun as the Kuro Hai spun in space, still on her original track. “Steady on course one seven four, positive two point three ecliptic.”
“Weapons, conn, deploy.”
Weps acknowledged.
Kenga shifted her tactical and optics to the aft section of the ship. A black, torpedo shaped object slid away from Kuro’s hull like a baby whale being birthed.
“Little Kuro away,” Weps reported. “Hull charged. Trajectory good.”
