by Cameron, TR
Okoye’s deep experience saved the ship. Cross wouldn’t have thought of it, and none of the other bridge crew had mentioned it as an option. As soon as he heard the command, the helm officer automatically hit the button, as he’d been trained to do in drill after drill, until the memory was built into his muscles and required no thought at all.
“Tunnel jump. Now.” The Washington took a shortcut from one end of the sector to the other, reappearing almost instantly on the opposite side of the starbase. As she reverted to normal space, she was in the path of another ship that went evasive to avoid her. Standard protocol was that a ship emerging from tunnel space stayed on course and those around her dodged—another procedure burned into the muscle memory of every helm officer.
The torpedoes reacquired the Washington and turned to follow, but the distance was far enough that the starbase point defense cannons, along with those of her sister ships, were able to destroy the incoming projectiles before they could reach her.
“Tunnel jump. Brilliant, Captain.” Cross’s admiration was clear in his voice, and he was sure he was speaking on behalf of the entire crew of the Washington.
Okoye shrugged. “Sometimes the oldest tricks are the best tricks, XO.”
The sense of relief that the crew felt was punctured by an announcement that overrode all communication systems. “This is Starbase 14. Full evacuation protocol initiated. Repeat, full evacuation protocol initiated.”
The communication officer switched to another starbase channel. A recorded message said, “We have been attacked by enemy forces that have left devices embedded in the base. Analysis has revealed an increasing gravitic force emanating from each. Initial analyses show that these are arranged in a deliberate pattern to reinforce one another and tear apart the base. We estimate only eighteen minutes before they reach full power and the base cracks.” The time remaining, reduced with each replay of the message.
Okoye paused for a moment, allowing the message to sink in. “Helm, take us back to our original berth. Communication, send a recall to all of our personnel still aboard the base to report to that berth.” He paused, listening to messages over the command net. “It appears we are picking up some Marines assigned to a ship that can’t make it back. Make it happen, people, as quickly as possible.”
He turned and looked at Cross. “Get down there and coordinate getting them aboard. Take Flynn with you, she can compensate for your frequent lack of people skills. Especially where Marines are concerned.” Cross winced, but there was no denying that his history with Marines was less positive than it should have been. It wasn’t fantastic that the captain brought it up in front of the entire bridge crew though.
Cross unbuckled and dashed for the lift, stepping in just after Kate. The door swished closed behind them, and the lift dropped them down toward the boarding deck.
“Perhaps you should let me do all the talking,” Kate teased. Cross just shook his head.
“You can’t talk to Marines. They don’t have the brainpower to understand actual language. Only grunting.”
She stifled a laugh. “No wonder the captain sent me along. You seem to have a bias.”
“Me? Never.”
Then the lift opened on the boarding deck, and the time for humor was over.
Chapter Twenty
Kate and Cross stepped out into a strangely ordered chaos of bodies. Some crew members were changing shifts at battle stations while others were clearing the way for a rapid influx of people and things from the starbase.
“There’s no way to tell which side of the ship they’ll come from. Let’s cover both,” Cross said. Kate nodded and pointed to the airlock on the left. Cross advanced in the opposite direction.
She weaved with a fighter’s grace through the throng—dodging and ducking, always aware of her target. Finally, she reached it, only to find Jannik had gotten there before her.
“This is a fun one, isn’t it?”
“Fun is not quite the word I’d use for it,” Kate replied, calling up external views of the Washington sliding into her docking berth.
The helm officer’s voice came across the intercom, “We’re not going to latch on. I’ll hold her in position here. Start boarding.”
Kate and Jannik both hit buttons, and a section of the Washington’s hull pushed out and slid sideways, revealing a hatch in the starbase fifteen meters away. A gangway emerged from the deck to extend across the gap separating them from the space station. A long flexible tube extended with it, curving above and below the gangway, and would eventually contain atmosphere for those crossing from one airlock to the other.
As she waited for the connection to be established, Kate called up Cross’s view on another display, seeing a mirror of their own procedure on the other side of the ship.
After several seconds, the tube showed a clean seal and filled with breathable air. Kate hit the button to release the airlock on her side, and someone aboard the station did the same. Both doors slid open almost simultaneously, and the waiting crew started across the gangway at a run. Kate nodded to Jannik, who had his hands on the controls in case something went wrong, and moved to the doorway.
“Go, go, go. Faster, faster, faster,” she called to every person within range of her voice, and they responded by offering just a little extra speed as they cannonballed into the Washington. A quick look at the monitor showed that Cross’s side was boarding people too, and Kate’s fear they would have to leave their crew behind diminished with each passing second.
Finally, the crew was aboard and the Marines began their transit. They came in pairs, dragging equipment crates between them. The boots of their power armor thudded on the gangway as they drew closer to the ship. Kate escorted the first pair arriving to a side area of the boarding deck, yelling, “Make way, make way,” to the members of the Washington’s crew who were still catching their breaths, in some cases pushing them physically along toward the left in order to create room for the incoming personnel.
“Jannik,” she continued yelling, “release the maintenance ladders.” He nodded and hit the buttons that opened the between-deck hatches throughout the boarding level. She pushed sailors toward the ladders, and the congestion cleared out a little more quickly as people climbed rather than waiting for their turn on the lifts.
She ran back to the airlock door, sparing a precious second to check how Cross’s side was faring when Captain Okoye’s voice delivered more bad news. “Cross, Flynn, you have ninety seconds to wrap-up boarding before we undock.”
Kate cursed under her breath and yelled across the gangway, “Sixty seconds. Go, go, go.”
There was a jolt as the starbase shuddered from the pressure being exerted by the gravitic mines. “I don’t think we’re going to get all of those seconds,” she muttered to herself, as she tended to do during times of emergency, and quickly assessed the number of Marines remaining. The numbers didn’t add up. Some of them would be left behind when the ship pulled away.
She beat her hand against the hull once in frustration, then came up with a new plan. She ran across to one of the Marines standing in the side area, speaking when his helmet swiveled toward her. “We’re going to have to improvise, there’s not enough time. Tell your people to attach to the lines when they come out.”
He nodded, and Kate raced to the controls again, cycling the inner door of the Washington’s airlock closed and retracting the atmosphere tube. She knew the power armor would have internal air sufficient to keep the Marines breathing until they could get on board—assuming her idea worked.
She crossed to Jannik’s position and edged him out of the way. There was just no time to explain. The Washington carried magnetic grapnels, used to pull ships together so their airlocks could connect. There were six of them surrounding the airlock—two on each side and one above and below. She fired the grapnels, which locked onto the starbase. Next, she hit the button to retract the gangway. From there, she dug into the programming. She found enough time for a brief look at the
Marine, who gave her a thumbs up.
The helmsman’s voice sounded over the intercom. “Disengaging now.” Kate accessed the subroutine she was looking for and defeated the automatic retraction that came with the release of the magnetic seal. Just as the ship started to move, she released the magnets on the grapnels, and the Washington pulled gently away from the dock, trailing six lines of Marines who were climbing hand over hand through the weightlessness to get to the Washington’s airlock.
“Good job, my girl,” Jannik whispered in her ear as he guided her away from the controls. “Maybe you should sit down, though.”
Kate realized that she was shaking from the adrenaline coursing through her, and followed Jannik’s advice, finding a seat on a nearby crate and pushing sweat-dampened hair out of her face.
“Nice work, Lieutenant Commander,” said a mechanical voice next to her, and she looked up to see the Marine that she had interacted with earlier looking down at her through the lenses of his power armor. “All of our people are on board or on the lines.”
She noted the use of “our,” and thought Cross would be perturbed to find she had apparently adopted a contingent of Marines.
Chapter Twenty-One
As the lift door slid open, Cross and Kate emerged to hear the sector command net playing over the bridge speakers. Each officer on the bridge was intently working at his or her console, dealing with the massive flow of incoming information to give Captain Okoye the largest number of options. Kate moved to the sensor station, and Cross strapped in to the XO chair.
Okoye acknowledged their entrance with a loud, “Good work, Lieutenant Commanders.” Cross felt the glow of confidence that came with the recognition, and knew the captain had done it on purpose. Psychological manipulation in the service of good. Okoye continued speaking after a brief pause. “You’re in time to see the finish.”
Cross looked up at the screen where a third countdown had joined the two that were always present. The new one marked the life left to the starbase, and it was already under one minute. The battle schematic showed that all the ships were at a good distance and were accelerating away on the most efficient vectors available to them. He shifted his eyes back to the real-time display at just the right moment.
Each of the mines was aglow, displaying the spiral pattern of their arrangement even against the similar color of the starbase’s exterior. The stresses that each exerted on the structure of the base had already resulted in small cracks radiating out from each mine. As the cracks from separate mines touched, the integrity of the starbase vanished. It was as if a pair of giant hands had grabbed it above and below the midpoint and twisted each half in opposite directions.
Debris exploded outward as giant fissures appeared, spiraling through the starbase from its center point. Built to withstand the direct pressures that human science understood the need to defend against, it had minimal resistance to the twisting attack of the gravitic mines. Within seconds, the two halves separated from the sheer power of the opposing torques, and floated freely in space. Also floating freely was jetsam of all kinds, which sadly included the bodies of those not able to escape the base in time.
A small percentage of those jettisoned had deployed emergency beacons, and over the command net, each ship was tasked with the retrieval of the ones nearest to them. Rescue operations were automatic, requiring nothing more than a gesture from Okoye to get the ship underway. The crew worked in a haze of disbelief, none of them ever having seen anything as large as a starbase fall victim to violence. Even the dreadnought Rio was tiny in comparison.
Okoye shook his head, and Cross wondered what he was thinking. That secret was not revealed in the dry delivery of the captain’s next words, “Continue rescue operations. The captains are going to confer with the admiralty, and I’d like to do it somewhere that I don’t have to look at that.” He shook his head again. “Lieutenant Commander Cross, you have the—”
Cross lurched in his seat in response to the huge fireball on the screen. Unlike the death of the starbase, the explosion of the Toronto was unheralded, a sudden new star aglow in the sector. Shocked outbursts erupted, followed by a stunned silence.
Okoye snapped “Report. What happened to her?”
Every member of the bridge crew dove into their instruments, including Cross. Kate was the first to respond. “From the playback, there are many small glowing objects that appear across the ship, increasing in intensity until the moment that the ship’s engines explode.”
The tactical officer confirmed, “That’s what I see too. No evidence of external weapons other than the glowing objects. No way to tell what activated them—”
“Or how many more of them there are,” finished Cross.
The heavy silence returned as everyone considered that more explosions might be imminent. When they didn’t materialize, the tension reduced, but only a little.
Okoye said, “All right. We can only control what we can control, so let’s do our jobs. Helm, our destination has been linked to you. Set up to engage tunnel drive to get there with all speed once we complete rescue operations.”
“Captain, respectfully,” Cross said, “the admiralty may be wrong on this one. There is information about the enemy we can only gather here and only gather now.” Okoye gave him a sideways look that communicated nothing. Cross forged ahead. “We need to stay and discover as much as possible. They have already attacked us here, it’s not likely they’ll be back soon.”
“You’re making a big assumption, Lieutenant Commander Cross.” His tone was less collegial, more professorial. “Why, exactly, do you think the enemy won’t return? Leaving the sector could be a feint, prior to returning for a second round of attacks.”
Cross didn’t back down. “Captain, it is my opinion that the aliens were testing our defenses here. The goal was to assess our capabilities, not to achieve our destruction. The aliens must have more than eight ships in their fleet, given how fast they were able to respond when we were in their part of the universe.” He shrugged. “If they had wanted to destroy us, they would have brought more ships. Clearly their technological level is such that they could coordinate such a thing. Hell, Captain, it’s not like we forced them to leave. The eight they sent probably could have finished us all off. We would’ve inflicted some damage, but there’s no way we would’ve defeated them.”
He paused, searching for a further argument, and realized he didn’t have one. “It just felt like they were testing, sir, and left when their experiment was complete.”
Okoye sighed and drummed his fingers on the edge of his chair. “Not that it’s a democracy, but let’s see what the third in our command triumvirate thinks.” Cross and Okoye both turned to Kate.
She cleared her throat, buying a moment to think that fooled nobody. “I’m with Cross on this one, Captain. They sent a small sortie, they tested out the efficacy of their various weapons against us and against our starbase, and then returned to analyze the results. For all we know, they left behind sensors or something to continue gathering data on our response.” Her voice grew darker as she contemplated that possibility. “Whatever we do, we don’t want to leave this sector directly for our destination. They figured out where we were somehow. Maybe they can identify tunnel destinations from the source?”
“Impossible, according to all the science we have.” Okoye raised a hand to cut off Kate’s objection. “I know, we don’t know what science they have. Still, it does us no good to imagine that they are omnipotent or omniscient.” His fingers, drumming, finished in a decisive tap on the chair. “My instincts are telling me the same thing as yours. They could’ve done much worse to us, so they must’ve had a reason not to. Let’s hedge our bets.”
Cross followed Okoye’s gaze as he turned forward again and saw that most of the ships in the sector were moving toward a departure vector that would put them in position to tunnel directly to the rendezvous point. The Washington was following in that same direction, albeit much more slowly than her s
ister ships. Cross gave an appreciative nod to the back of the helm officer’s head. Without a direct order to do so, Lieutenant Zachary Lee had slowed the ship, staying within the parameters of their orders while also giving the command crew time to deliberate. It was the sort of thing a confident captain encouraged in his crew, and a less confident one chastised them for. Cross was sure that Okoye had noticed and declined to comment.
“XO, you have the deck. I will politely suggest to the admirals that we take a two-step progression to our destination, rather than a single jump, even though this will cost us some time. In case I fail, keep moving as slowly as possible toward our departure point while you all,” he waved his arms to indicate the entire bridge crew, “find as much information as you can before we leave this sector. Staying for more than a few hours would invite trouble, I think.”
Cross stood up from his chair. “I have the deck, Captain. We’ll be ready to depart in three hours barring orders to the contrary.” Okoye nodded and left the bridge. Without sitting down, Cross addressed his crew, “You are all experts in what you do. Spend the next hour running every analysis you can think of. At the end of that time, we’ll share information and decide how to progress.
He walked over to Kate and asked, “Anything I can do to assist you?” She was already face down in her instruments, hands moving across the console.
“Yes. Go away.”
“If I had a dollar for every time a woman told me that, I’d be able to build my own starbase.”
Kate-and several others-laughed. Cross gave a small smile, then moved to the next station and asked the same question.
An hour and fifteen minutes later, the officers shared their discoveries. Only two offered avenues for further investigation, one from the tactical officer, and one from the communication officer. The former reported that the gravitic mines that destroyed the starbase and the Toronto were the same, and a replay of the battle showed when they had been attached to the side of the ship.
