Originator

by Joel Shepherd

  Ari and Ragi, sadly, she hadn’t found a way to leave behind. She opened a direct line to them both, plus young Yogendra, who was one of Ari’s friends, an underground net freak with an uncanny knack for the stuff most people found too advanced to handle.

  “Guys, you okay?”

  “I’m okay,” said Ragi. “Systems functioning, everything looks good.”

  “Damn that sucks,” Ari groaned. “Fucking space travel.”

  “Drink your liquids, get your blood sugar up, then as soon as you can hold it down, eat something.”

  “Yogie? Hey, Yogie, if you’re gonna be sick, use the damn bag, I’m not cleaning that up.”

  The three civvies were in Engineering, often called B-Bridge, from where technical aspects of the ship were managed in detail. With no hope of making real sense of Talee net technology within the time scales required, Ibrahim had done a most un-dictator-like thing and released it wholesale to the Tanushan underground. Ranaprasana and FedInt had again been horrified, but Sandy thought it a good move regardless—the Talee had used the entire Tanushan network against them, and the vulnerability of civilian infrastructure was as much a problem as that of military and security systems.

  The underground would no doubt now start using the technology for nefarious purposes, but as long as the authorities had GIs like Ragi and herself on their side, the new net-tech arms race between legal and illegal users should remain balanced. The Provisional Grand Council’s horror stemmed mostly from the massive technological edge this was giving Callay, on top of its existing edge, no matter that the FSA made it available to everyone as fast as starships could bring it to them. But whatever the additional consequences, there was no choice either way—humanity had to catch up fast, and that meant everyone: governments, civilians, cities, and planets.

  First to have their systems stripped, shielded, and massively improved were these Fleet ships and all accompanying elements. But that took operators who understood the systems, and that meant the three best that Callay could spare. That they weren’t combatants was irrelevant—they just needed to keep everything together once contact with the Talee began. Given the difficulties of hacking ship networks from other ships, at distances where light took many minutes to reach its target, and would Doppler into alternative spectrums due to the variable relative velocities of the combatants, Ragi was relatively confident that network attack would be the least of their problems.

  That left the captains to worry about the fact that Talee ships had massively advanced engines and navigation, were nearly impossible for human sensors to detect unless they manoeuvred or fired, and had been observed doing things that twisted the laws of physics to degrees that even the most daring FTL practitioners found baffling. Playing games with them in deep space was not an option. This plan was all attack.

  “What’s it look like?” Reichardt was asking tersely.

  “Can’t tell yet. Station’s there. Looks intact.” That was Antibe Station, where negotiation between League and Federation Fleets had been taking place on and off for the past year.

  “Regular station chatter. Sounds normal.”

  “Put it up,” said Reichardt. For a moment, they all listened. It sounded like station chatter anywhere, routine queries about headings, berthing clearances, sequencing. If the entire station had been taken by VR assault, that would mean nothing.

  “Traffic plots look normal.”

  “No sign from Pantala surface. But we’re too far out.”

  “Light-wave will reach them in three,” said Reichardt. “First response in two point four five.”

  Vanessa’s channel opened. “Whatcha’ think?” It sounded like Vanessa was chewing gum, sometimes her habit before ops. Tension relief, Sandy supposed.

  “We’re in the right spot,” said Sandy. On the background feed, Svetlana had Kiril on her longboard, the two of them paddling down a small wave together. “Two hard brakes and we’re in, farside.” Droze was on the other side of the planet, from their current position. The problem with a blind approach, of course, was that they didn’t know exactly what they were going to hit yet. Or if the Talee were here at all.

  “Would have been nice to do some recon first,” Vanessa suggested.

  “They’d have spotted it and guessed we were coming. Surprise is better.”

  “Yeah.” Reluctantly. “Glad you’re commanding this one.” Sandy knew what she meant. Vanessa was a hell of a combat commander, but Fleet assaults were different. The speeds involved, the distances, the sheer scale of everything, including consequences, were unsettling.

  “Just like old times,” she said easily . . . and was distracted by a new alarm on bridge nav comp.

  “You got that?”

  “Nav reading! One-forty-nine by twenty-nine! Accelerating!”

  “What is it?” Reichardt demanded.

  “Can’t be sure, it’s . . .”

  “Pulsing! Boosting for jump!”

  “That signature’s off the scale, that’s Talee.”

  “Short-jump,” said Reichardt. “He’s seen us, he’s heading in to warn the others.”

  Sandy guessed what was coming and spoke on her local-only channel once more. “Boys and girls, this is your flight attendant Sandy. Buckle in and swallow hard because we’ve just been blown. We’re gonna short-jump after that scout, he was lying out here silent and we went straight past him.”

  “Isn’t short-jump this close to a planet kinda dangerous?” asked Shen.

  “Yep,” said Sandy nonchalantly. “War’s hell.”

  “Can you calc it?” Reichardt was asking Helm.

  “Wait wait . . . running points three and five. . . .”

  “Scan has the fix.”

  “Fleet has sync! Fleet has sync, good to go!”

  “Powered up, systems green.”

  “Green green, Fleet reports green!”

  “Helm?”

  “Wait wait . . . still running . . . got it! Fixed and locked, good to go!”

  “Fixing the mark,” said Reichardt, and Sandy saw a new plot appear on their inbound track, like a giant hoop they were about to jump through. “Mark in five, all hands, short-jump approaching, all hands brace.” In that bored Texan drawl, like he was ordering pizza. And Sandy’s stomach lurched as she recalled that even she didn’t like this bit . . .

  . . . and it hit, with a force like a ton of water dropped on her head . . . and it should have crushed her, only now she’s underwater, floundering, struggling to breathe as that singular instant stretches . . . and stretches . . .

  . . . and wham! they were back in, and alarms are sounding, and everything felt upside down and woozy. She pulled up her faceplate, feeling every muscle in her arm tensed and rippling, and gasped a lungful of cold assault ship air. Turned her head hard to grasp the drink tube in her lips and took a long gulp into a protesting stomach as scan showed five ships, all in, then three more behind, and several more on a wide flanking pattern, covering for mid-system runners or inbound support both.

  “Station! Station traffic is responding, they’ve seen us!”

  “Situation!” Reichardt demanded, as tense as Sandy had ever heard him. “Where is that scout?”

  There were ships at station, they were close enough to see that, but no ID. There were anti-orbital defences on Pantala too, put there by humans, but if the Talee had control on the surface they’d have control of them as well. But those weren’t going to stop a hard run-in like this and were mostly to deter anyone lingering and raining orbital artillery on those below.

  “Movement at station! Multiple vessels undocking, they’re burning!”

  “Son of a bitch!” As one of them cycled his jump engines, a flare of energy so close to station it would have destroyed both, had it been a human vessel. “They’re cycling!”

  “This is Caribbean, fire pattern locked.” That was Bursteimer, leading that wide group, having short-jumped to catch up with Mekong, his transmissions fifteen seconds delayed. Velocity dump was now
crucial; only starships had jump engines, and if the assault shuttles were dropped now, they’d take a week to slow down. Given that Pantala’s upper atmosphere was six minutes away at this velocity, that wasn’t going to work. Mekong had to dump down to manageable velocity, but she made herself a big fat target the minute she did so, thus these other attack ships around her, coming in on variable trajectories, making any defenders at station more worried about dodging their ordnance than shooting at Mekong.

  “Is that all of them?” Reichardt asked. Meaning the ships breaking free of station. They were scattering, spinward and outward of planetary orbit, more defensive than hostile.

  “Scan shows four ships on station! One IDs as Murray!” Which was a Federation carrier, out here on the extended negotiations that had started last year. “They’re not moving or talking!”

  “Those runners are Talee! Look at them boost up, that’s . . . that’s too fucking fast!”

  “So they’ve occupied the station,” Reichardt surmised. “Fair bet they’ve got the surface. Snowcat, this will either be a hot insertion or a cold scouting mission, stand by for dump and release.”

  “Snowcat copies,” said Sandy. And deactivated her home movies, because if she was glad for anything, it was that her kids weren’t here for this.

  Again the stomach-churning lurch into hyperspace, but shallower this time, then out, as Mekong performed a flip end over end, with three heavy cruisers in support, and hammered on the main engines. Again Sandy’s muscles compressed all over, as ten Gs of thrust hit them, and she sucked air with difficulty, vision blurring. It wasn’t comfortable for a GI, God knew how the straights coped, augments or not. Actual-velocity approached optimal-velocity, twenty seconds, fifteen seconds . . . tacnet showed that several of her non-synthetic troops were out cold, vitals registering unconsciousness. Vanessa was one of them. And Sandy worried anew at Vanessa’s recent augment overload syndrome, as it had been diagnosed—the doctors had patched it best they could, but there was no guarantee that if physical stress reached a certain level . . .

  And scan blinked red alarms, new contacts, but scan on the bridge couldn’t say a thing under this much G-stress, could barely force the air from her lungs. Contacts hostile, low angled across the Pantalan atmosphere, and apparently firing. . . .

  WHAM! as the grapples cut early, and the assault shuttle was clear of Mekong, and Sandy’s feed went dead, then new thrust kicked from another direction as the shuttle’s own thrusters engaged. This was more gentle, but still fierce at 7G. . . . Sandy’s feed came back as the shuttle’s own nav comp became independent. And everything abruptly blanked out as Mekong cycled up once more—very difficult right above the planet, fire now outgoing with railguns and missiles but carrying little velocity so it wouldn’t scare opposing captains into disruptive evasions yet.

  One thousand Ks altitude, on a shallow approach but far too fast—if they hit the atmosphere like this they’d burn up like meteors. Even as she watched, the pilot readjusted the approach trajectory to a shallower angle, buying them more time as the engines thundered in a desperate attempt to lose sufficient velocity. A huge flash nearby, someone had been hit, but she couldn’t worry about it now, all her ten assault shuttles were intact, it must have been one of the big ships. Just hope none of that incoming fire was aimed at the shuttles. Droze was just under two thousand Ks from their entry point, and reentry would cover most of that . . . this might yet work.

  Fleet were engaging, fire going in both directions, and now fire coming from the surface . . . no telling yet who it was aimed at; Sandy decided to assume it was hostile. Unlikely that the Talee would have left human-friendly gunners on the surface. She tuned the Fleet chatter out; she was a ground pounder now, and all her attention had to be on the surface . . . but then, “New contact, new contact! Three-twenty-eight by thirteen, range point twenty-one!”

  Those were new ships jumping into the system. They broadcast no IDs, so there was no telling whose they were. They should have been their League allies, if that plan was working, but if Talee farther out were receiving this light-wave by now, and heading in far faster than news of this attack could head out . . .

  If Fleet lost this fight, she and everyone in the assault were going to be stranded down on the surface, with no way off. The possibility of which was, of course, why marines were bred so damn tough since their invention in support of wet navies all those centuries ago.

  They hit the atmosphere, and Gs briefly ceased as the shuttles reoriented their shielded bellies and throttled their engines back. It was an intensely vulnerable moment, as it was very hard to dodge during reentry . . . though luckily most ordnance didn’t handle well in this midpoint transition between air and no air, so targeting them would be just as hard. Then the Gs came back, worse than ever, ten Gs, now eleven, and everything shaking and banging like some giant had grabbed them for the joy of making them rattle.

  It went on for another three minutes before easing off, as active control returned to the pilots, and they hurtled down through the middle atmosphere with flight surfaces reengaging, spreading out across a ten-K formation. Still sixty Ks up and descending fast.

  “Entering communications range now,” announced the shuttle pilot, and Sandy saw a flicker on the coms shields. Recently familiar patterns, spikes in passive data of a certain structure. Then it faded, finding no purchase.

  “That looked like a coms assault,” said Sandy. “Let’s hope that’s the best they can do.” If it weren’t for their new tech upgrades, they’d be falling out of the sky about now, while dreaming happily (or unhappily) in VR. An eruption of missile contrails followed, from within the haze of the dusty horizon.

  “Made them angry,” said Jane, who was Sandy’s wingman for this op. “They don’t like us not falling asleep.”

  “Let’s not judge their state of mind,” said Sandy. She actually didn’t want to think about it at all. These were aliens. She’d never fought aliens before. No one had, at least that they knew of—it was always possible that League had tussled with Talee before and never admitted to it. The existence of Talee was old news; it was nearly two hundred years since the first explorers into this region of space had begun encountering Talee ships keeping a watchful distance. It was one of the longest-running mysteries humans had ever faced, the identities of these mysterious watchers, who refused every offer of friendship and trade. Everyone had hoped that the mystery would not be finally unravelled in circumstances like this.

  “That’s coming from Droze,” said the pilot, looking at the incoming missiles. “Full countermeasures.”

  “The question now is our tech, or theirs?” said another pilot.

  There was no hope of evasive manoeuvers in huge assault shuttles against missiles that could pluck birds out of the air. But being big had other advantages, and the shuttles packed every countermeasures system yet devised. They engaged now, jamming, active hacking, sensor-blinding, then multiple volleys of antimissile missiles, while lasers and electro-magfire waited for anything that got through, with chaff and flares as final precaution. Sandy registered thirty-plus incoming, but even now several looked to be struggling to acquire. Not Talee tech, then.

  They had visuals now, from drones now high above Droze, and Sandy focused on them instead of the missiles. Familiar layouts, city streets and boundaries, the big corporations in the middle, surrounded by high walls and defences, and then the sprawling outer rim, the uninvited settlers who ranged from mildly to extremely poor and desperate. There, on the far eastern border, was Rimtown. Danya, Svetlana, and Kiril’s home, where she’d found them, or they’d found her. And if some other stroke of fate had intervened, she’d have missed them, and they’d still be there, and all their lives would be so much different.

  “There’s ships down in the corporate zone,” said Sandy of those visuals, highlighting the dark shapes on the map for others to see. “No apparent street traffic; that’s normal under assault. Those ships don’t look like any design we’ve seen
.”

  “Any coms traffic?” Vanessa queried the shuttle crews. “Anything to let us know what’s happened?”

  “Look for broadband radio from the perimeter,” Sandy added. “Home Guard used the most basic tech to beat the companies. If they’ve been occupied, one of them might tell us.” Assuming Home Guard thought Federation occupation would be preferable to Talee.

  “Looks like scenario C,” said Captain Singh.

  “That it does,” said Sandy, as incoming missiles detonated five Ks out, and others spun off as lasers blinded their guidance. Scenario A had been a fast strike, Talee going in and out fast and leaving most intact. In that case, they’d have been long gone. Scenario B had been similar, only more violent, destroying rather than occupying. Scenario C had been occupation, not destruction, relying on Talee network technologies to keep humans subdued for long enough to do a thorough job of searching for what they were after. Of course, Droze presented a problem for them, because only the wealthy, high-tech people in the corporate zone were uplinked. Much of the outer zone was not, especially the younger ones, and that was three-quarters and more of the population. On the other hand, Sandy wondered, would that majority care if the corporate zone had been occupied by some mysterious outside force? Would they assume it was League? Or Federation? And would they care what happened to corporate folk at all? She doubted it. The Talee didn’t need to subdue the entire population, just the corporates. And the rest of the city probably wouldn’t thank her for bringing a strike team down from orbit to solve the corporations’ problems and dumping a big pile of ordnance on their heads to do it.