The starship shook slightly as the missile launched, racing towards the enemy ship at a speed no human could stand, even with the most advanced compensators in the galaxy. The missiles weren't as bad a threat as the space operas made them out to be – anyone could see them coming and point defence lasers could take them out pretty quickly – but they drew a line in the sand. The pirate would have to know, now, that the Captain was serious. I found myself making a mental bet. Would they take out the missile with their point defence, assuming they had any point defence, or would they allow it to pass them and detonate harmlessly a few thousand kilometres from their position?
“Enemy ship has engaged the missile,” Lieutenant Hatchet said, a moment later. I watched as the missile icon vanished from the display. “They have destroyed the missile.”
“Helm, close to engagement range,” the Captain ordered. “Lieutenant Hatchet, you are authorised to engage with lasers at will.”
“Aye, sir,” I said. We had been moving directly towards the pirate ship, but now I ramped up the drive and pushed us forward on a collusion course. The pirate would have to be blind to miss our approach now and if they didn’t move, they would be rammed, unless we altered course ourselves. I hadn’t realised how slow and stately space combat actually was until I’d spent hours in the simulators. “Five minutes to prime engagement range.”
The pirate ship seemed to alter course slightly, spinning away from its prey. “They’ve seen us,” Roger exclaimed. “They’ve locked on.”
“Report,” the Captain said. There was a hint of reproof in his tone. “Calmly, if possible.”
Roger sounded embarrassed and I didn’t blame him. He’d probably earned a demerit at least for that unprofessional report. “They just swept us with targeting sensors, sir,” Roger said, carefully. “They’re locking on to us with their fire control.”
“Charge point defence lasers, prepare to engage,” the Captain said, calmly. “Lieutenant…”
“Opening fire, sir,” Lieutenant Hatchet said. The lights dimmed slightly as the starship’s power was diverted towards the laser cannons. The pirate drive field would interdict as much as possible, but a constant bombardment would eventually overload the drive field and send the starship out of control. “Enemy ship is engaging with missiles. Point defence systems online and engaging enemy forces at will.”
I watched as two missiles launched from the pirate ship. The sight puzzled me for a moment. Was it my imagination, or were the pirate missiles moving faster than the standard missiles we carried? They were still picked off by the point defence, but it was apparent that the missiles were heavily armoured against laser fire. One of them got far too close before it was burned to nothing. I saw the Captain exchange a long glance with Lieutenant Hatchet, their faces unreadable, before she redoubled her efforts and continued to burn away at the pirate ship.
“Stay with him,” the Captain ordered, as the pirate ship continued to move away. I kept us right on his tail, despite a growing number of missiles being fired at us. I wondered why the Captain wasn't ordering us to engage with our own missiles, or torpedoes, but there was little point. The pirate point defence seemed as capable as our own. Its drive field seemed to be radiating energy as our lasers bit into it, but it wasn't stopping. “Ah…”
I saw the wormhole blossom into existence around the pirate ship. A moment later, it was gone.
“Secure from battle stations,” the Captain said. If he were angry, he hid it well. “Master Sergeant, prepare a team to board the freighter and attempt to locate whatever the pirates were after. Everyone else, good work.”
I glowed. Praise from the Captain was rare. “Ensigns, you are dismissed,” the Captain said. “Report to the Senior Chief for further duties.”
The next hour was largely uneventful. The Senior Chief, as always, had a vast number of tasks that needed doing whenever someone could be spared and I found myself working with Sally on the starship’s main shuttle. I’d flown shuttles back at the Academy, but I hadn’t had a chance to fly once since I’d boarded the starship, even in simulation. I was dimly aware that the Captain would be going down to the surface when we finally made orbit and I rather hoped he’d chose me as his pilot. It was unlikely – flying the shuttles was the Pilot’s other task – but I could dream, couldn’t I? Besides, I’d heard good things about Terra Nova.
“Good enough,” the Senior Chief said, finally. We were, as Ensigns, allowed to refer to him by his first name, but none of us quite dared. “We don’t want the Captain to be put out by the condition of his shuttle, do we?”
“No, Senior Chief,” we said, together. A Senior Chief couldn’t be called ‘sir’ – he’d made that point clear the first time he'd had us as a group – but what else could we call him? His task – bossing the various crewmen around – wasn't an easy one, even though no one in their right mind would have picked a fight with him. He'd once disciplined a drunken crewman by giving him a black eye and a sound thrashing. The crewmen might have called us ‘babies’ when they thought we couldn’t hear, but they wouldn’t dare defy the Senior Chief.
“Of course not,” the Senior Chief agreed. His voice lightened slightly. “It is particularly important when the Captain has decided that the Ensigns who were on the bridge are to accompany him to the surface. You wouldn’t want to be the person responsible for the mess, would you?”
“Lucky you,” Sally said, without heat. If she hadn’t been tired, she would probably have said a great deal more, perhaps even a discussion of my parentage. “Senior Chief, why is the planet called Terra Nova anyway?”
“Officially, because it was the first planet we discovered,” the Senior Chief said. He laughed, as if he were laughing at a very private joke. “Or perhaps it was just a case of someone lacking in imagination at the right time. That said…do you know what the inhabitants call it?”
We shook our heads.
He smiled, with the air of one imparting a great secret.
“Hell,” he said.
Chapter Four
The causes of the Terra Nova disaster – although the UN refuses to admit to this day that it was a disaster – are many, but the simplest cause of all remains unspoken. The UN attempted to ensure that every ethnic group on Earth received a ‘fair’ patch of ground on the new world. This might not have led to disaster, if the UN hadn’t then insisted that all groups were to be forced together on one continent, as, according to the latest political-science theories, they would form into a new community. This might have worked…if the UN hadn’t then taken steps to prevent, quite unintentionally, such a community from forming. It took twenty years to develop Terra Nova…
The war started the following year.
-Thomas Anderson. An Unbiased Look at the UNPF. Baen Historical Press, 2500.
The Captain didn’t allow me to fly the shuttle, but I was able to sit up front with the Pilot and watch as we descended through the atmosphere of Terra Nova. It reminded me of travelling up from Earth on the orbital tower, back when I had been accepted into the Academy, but descending in a shuttle was somehow more exciting. Terra Nova looked a lot like Earth – it had the same mixture of green land and blue seas – but it was lacking the clouds of pollution that infested Earth’s upper atmosphere. The Political Officer had waxed lyrical about how pristine Terra Nova had been before humanity had landed on it, and how it was still a paradise, without the wrecking effects of capitalist terrorists.
Despite his words, I was actually looking forward to visiting the planet, although I was starting to realise that anything that was described in such glowing terms probably had a nasty sting in the tail. It was a lesson the Senior Chief had hammered into our heads repeatedly, starting with a lesson on space helmet safety that had included retch gas seeping through ‘sealed’ spacesuits and dozens of others since. The promises the manufactory people had made, the Senior Chief had warned us, could never be taken at face value. Checking and rechecking the inventory was part of our duties as Ensigns. N
othing could be left unaccounted for, even the merest item.
“That’s Landing City,” the Pilot said, as we continued to fly down the coastline. The city spilled out over the land ahead of us, somehow subtly different from any city on Earth. It took me a moment to realise what was missing. There were no towering mega-skyscrapers, each one holding thousands of people in a self-contained environment, but merely smaller blocky buildings. They all looked to have been turned out at the same manufacturer’s complex and they probably had been. I recalled reading that most colony worlds developed their own housing style pretty quickly, but the core city always kept the original settlement design. I couldn’t understand why. It looked pretty ugly from high overhead. “Do you know how many Landing Cities there are in the entire galaxy?”
I shook my head. “One hundred and seven,” the Pilot informed me, with a grin. He wasn't – technically – in the chain of command, but we’d been taught that it was wise to listen to all of the department heads. They knew their own specialities and not much else, according to the official statements, but they’d been in space longer than any of us Ensigns had been alive. “Humans are not known for their imagination, eh?”
“No,” I agreed, as two silvery shapes shot past us. “What are they?”
“Fighter jets intercepting us and escorting us to the spaceport,” the Pilot said, checking his display. “The damned flyboys haven’t bothered to check in with us yet, either. They’re damn lucky I didn’t have my lasers on a hair trigger.”
The radio buzzed an inquisitive statement. “Shuttle One, UNS Jacques Delors,” the Pilot said. I lifted an eyebrow in his direction. I didn’t understand how he’d made sense out of that racket. “We are landing at the main spaceport, over.”
There was another burst of talking from the radio. “Understood,” the pilot said. “Altering course now to compensate.”
He grinned at me as the shuttle yawed through a long curve that took it around the city. “They’re going to escort us down to the spaceport,” he said. “It seems they’re having some trouble down there and perhaps we’ll need some help from them.”
I stared as the fighters closed in around us. They were crude aircraft, but the missiles and bombs they carried under their wings were clearly deadly. I couldn’t understand why they were carrying so many weapons. Even if there was trouble down on the planet below, the enemy couldn’t have any aircraft, could they? Enemy? The Political Officer had told us that the world was peaceful and tranquil.
“Here we are,” the pilot said, as we floated down towards the spaceport. It was a massive complex, surrounded by heavy defences and crammed with aircraft. I hadn’t seen anything so large since I’d left Earth. Even the Academy Flight Ground had been smaller than the massive airfield. “Coming into land…now!”
We touched the ground with scarcely a bump. “The Captain will want to see you now,” the pilot prompted, as the ground crew appeared from all around us. Some of them were pushing small fuel tanks, others were clearly soldiers, wearing standard UNPF urban combat outfits. The sight of them sent a chill down my spine. Was it really so important that the shuttle was guarded with armed men in the middle of the compound? “Have fun.”
I nodded. “Thank you,” I said. I had wondered if the Pilot harboured a grudge over my work on the helm console, but he didn’t seem concerned. I hadn’t placed myself there anyway. “It was a good flight.”
The noise struck us as soon as we opened the hatches and filed out. It was a deafening cacophony of aircraft engines, heavy vehicles and not a little shooting, somewhere off in the distance. The air was warm and oppressive, smelling of vehicle flumes and burning fires. I found myself staring wide-eyed at the spaceport, taking in the heavy combat aircraft and the hundreds of helicopters that seemed to be coming and going all the time. They weren't dinky little civilian-model helicopters either, but dark-painted military aircraft, laden down with missiles and guns. I was starting to realise that Terra Nova was far from peaceful.
I looked back at the five Marines and realised that they shared my views. They weren't standing at ease like the rest of us, even the Captain, but were holding their weapons so that they could open fire quickly on any target that presented itself. I had always found the Marines a little intimidating – the Captain was the only one who was authorised to issue them orders, despite their presence on the starship – but I was glad to have them along. I had the feeling that we were going to need them.
“Captain Harriman?” A man detached himself from the general mob surrounding the shuttle and came over to the Captain. He reminded me – to my shame – of the picture we’d cut when we’d first boarded the Jacques Delors. He held himself as if he didn’t know how to stand to attention, or as if he didn’t know how to use the rifle he had slung over one shoulder. His uniform was too clean and pressed to be real. “I’m Colonel Hoskins, military rep. The Governor has requested the pleasure of your company at Government House.”
I saw the Captain’s lips thin and felt a moment’s pity for the Colonel. “I was informed that the reception would be at the spaceport,” he said, tightly. There was an undertone in his voice I didn’t like, or understand. “I trust that you have provided us with sufficient transport and an escort?”
“Of course, sir,” the Colonel said. I couldn’t understand how he was still on his feet. If the Captain had spoken to me like that, I would have probably died of shock. It would have been kinder to shout at us. “Right this way…ah, your Marines can leave their weapons here…”
His voice trailed off as he saw the Captain’s expression, and the way the Marines were fingering their weapons. “But there will be no need for that,” he added, quickly. “I’m sure that everything will be fine.”
He led us across the airfield, chattering away to the Captain as if they were old friends, although he never seemed to say anything of any real substance. We were left walking behind them, with the Marines spread out around us, allowing us to take in the airport as we walked. I wasn't impressed by the rows of soldiers all around us, marching around as if they were permanently in a hurry. Compared to the Marines, I was starting to realise, most of them were barely trained. They might have looked intimidating to some, but I was surprised to realise that they didn’t intimidate me.
I looked over at Roger and risked a whisper. “How many troops are assigned to this planet?”
Roger looked at the Captain’s back and answered, equally quietly. “The files say around five hundred thousand,” he muttered back. “It could be a lot more.”
“Here you are,” Colonel Hoskins said, as if he’d discovered them personally. “You escort and transport awaits.”
I couldn’t believe my eyes. The Captain deserved a limo, at the very least. Instead, we were looking at a pair of armoured trucks, surrounded by a set of armoured cars and troop transports. There had to be at least seventy soldiers there…and yet, somehow I wasn't reassured at all. The trucks looked older than I was; the soldiers looked bored and completely unconcerned by their mission. It didn’t, I decided, bode well for the reassurances that the planet was safe.
Another flight of helicopters flew overhead as Colonel Hoskins invited us into the vehicles. The Captain, the Master Sergeant and two armed Marines went into one of the vehicles; myself, Roger, Muna and the remaining Marines went into the other vehicle. I couldn’t help, but wince when I smelled the inside of the truck; I had a nasty feeling that it was normally used for transporting pigs, or prisoners. If I had left a compartment on the ship smelling like that, the First Lieutenant would have probably beaten us black and blue. I didn’t want to think about what the Captain would have said about it. The best thing that could be said for the vehicle was that it had no windows. I didn’t want to look outside.
The engine coughed to life, releasing a vaguely-unpleasant smell into the rear, and the vehicle started to move. I found myself tensing as it rattled back and forth, leaving us all completely confused. They could have been taking us anywhere. I pulled ou
t my terminal and started to open a link with the ship, but it seemed that the local communications network wasn't open for mere Ensigns. The local communications node refused access.
“Try using the emergency code,” Roger suggested. I tried, but the local net continued to refuse access. He looked up at the lead Marine. “Can you reach the ship?”
“The local Marine net is still active,” the Marine said. It took me a moment to realise that she was female. The body armour she wore covered up all traces of her breasts. I didn’t know what she looked like under the mask and, somehow, I didn’t want to know. “There’s enough data there to keep us going for a while…”
The entire truck rang like a bell. “Gunshot,” one of the Marines said. I wanted to cringe inside, but somehow I managed to control myself. I had never been in a gunfight before, but I’d seen hundreds on video, late-night entertainments where the villain had used a gun to inflict nightmares. A single shot could kill easily, or so we had been told. A moment later, a handful of other shots bounced off the armour and the truck lurched violently.
Martial Law 1: Patriotic Treason Page 4
