by Mike Freeman
Smoke drifted from the battery. There were no missiles left. They had all been fired. It didn’t make any sense.
“Havoc?”
She was in the cabin by the side of the Colosseum. She had no idea how she’d got here. She remembered the cockpit of the Alliance shuttle exploding and not a lot else. There was a shuttle next to the cabin that she’d never seen before. It had United Systems markings on it.
Despite the terrible feeling growing in her stomach, she forced herself to work methodically through the options. Well he's not in the Colosseum, she thought. He can’t get in there without me. So he’s either outside, doing something out of sight, which is not impossible, or... She looked at the cluster of bright dots high in the atmosphere.
She cast up to the Alliance platform via the cabin relay.
“Disc six, Alliance platform. Anybody there?”
“Weaver?”
“Touvenay? Are you ok up there?”
“We lost the Intrepid. The EOS Brilliance destroyed it. They tell us they may seize our disc.”
Weaver reeled.
“Why would––”
“But that isn't our biggest problem.”
“It isn’t?”
“The ORC have just threatened to destroy our platform.”
“But why––”
“Because we've just launched a barrage of cruise missiles at their ship.”
“What?”
“We were hoping you could tell us about it. The missiles came from where you're transmitting at the Colosseum.”
“Do you know where Havoc is?”
“Havoc’s alive?”
“I hope so. I'm worried about him. About what he’s doing.”
“I’ve really not the faintest idea. But if you think that's worrying, have a look at this.”
Weaver examined Touvenay’s feed. It showed a shimmering gold cloud with Plash in the background. Plash gave the pulsating cloud a staggering sense of scale. The cloud was shaped like the hood of a cobra, drawn back and poised to strike.
Weaver remembered her essential piece of information. What she’d planned to tell Havoc before she'd been hit by a short range missile. The target of the Diss.
Her hand covered her mouth.
“Oh dear God. What have I done?”
Touvenay raised an eyebrow.
“What have you done?”
235.
Admiral Szabo stood in his customary position by the huge windows with his hands clasped behind his back.
The scintillating cloud of Diss expanded outward as it shifted position. Waves pulsed across the cloud’s surface as it continuously mutated. Szabo regarded the seething alien nebula with increasing trepidation.
“Nothing from the probe?”
“Nothing, Comrade Admiral.”
Szabo dropped his hands and turned. He gestured toward General Forge and the Scepter that he'd recovered. A group of ORC scientists clustered around the General’s alien artifact.
“Well, General, we have your alien targeting system as you promised. And our scientists should be able to get to the bottom of it.”
Forge nodded.
“Yes, indeed.”
Szabo gazed out of the window.
“It is fortunate that we have it, of course, this great weapon.”
Forge obviously sensed the tone of Szabo’s delivery.
“What do you mean? Why?”
Szabo looked back at Forge.
“Because this cloud that you insist is a uniquely dangerous weapon...”
“Yes.”
Szabo swept his arm toward the window.
“It appears to be traveling straight toward us.”
Forge grabbed the Scepter and pushed though the scientists.
“What?”
236.
Weaver cast to Touvenay on the platform.
“I targeted the Diss on the Scepter.”
Touvenay frowned.
“I understand you targeted the Diss using the Scepter. But on what?”
She shook her head.
“No. When Tyburn asked me to target the Diss on Plash, I thought why not target the Scepter itself, if that was the control system? So I used the Scepter to target itself.”
Touvenay wrinkled his nose as he considered this.
“Ah, I see. How terribly meta.”
“Well the cloud is moving,” Whittenhorn said.
“And now Havoc is going to fly straight into the Diss when he tries to find Tyburn.”
“How?” Whittenhorn said.
“What?” Bergeron said.
“The missile launch at the Relentless.”
There was a pause.
“You think that Havoc is inside an orbital missile?” Bergeron said.
Whittenhorn looked astonished.
Weaver grimaced.
“He has a thing for Tyburn. It's hard to explain.”
“No it isn’t,” Whittenhorn said, “he’s a blood thirsty killer.”
Touvenay narrowed his eyes.
“So Tyburn has the Scepter, but presumably he has no idea that the Diss are targeted on it. On him, effectively.”
Weaver looked at the feed of the Diss cloud with growing horror.
“That’s right.”
“Well he will soon,” Whittenhorn said.
“And Havoc has no idea. He’s effectively flying into oblivion,” Touvenay said.
Weaver’s gut contracted.
“How can we help him?”
Whittenhorn shook his head.
“We can't. We've got a shuttle up here that won't get within a thousand kilometers of an ORC battlecruiser that thinks we’ve just attacked it. And did you see what the Diss did to that ORC probe?”
“No.”
Whittenhorn made a puffing motion with his hand.
“Here one moment, gone the next.”
“We just have to pray,” Bergeron said.
Weaver rolled her eyes. Touvenay’s response was acerbic.
“Two hands working do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.”
Weaver agreed. She racked her brains.
“Or put another way, call on God but still row from the rocks,” Touvenay said.
Weaver nodded.
“We need to do something.”
Her new mantra.
237.
Havoc vibrated in tune with the missile.
He pressed his arms out to lock himself solidly in position and let the missile's stability management system do its job. He was battered by shock waves as the missile rammed its way through the turbulent atmosphere. He could have drawn a map of every bump and pressure ripple as they passed through the missile's skin and across his body. The temperature continued to rise. When this went wrong, it tended to go spectacularly wrong. He was fine as long as the missile’s profile was maintained. He could handle it.
He tracked his position as the sixteen missiles broke through the upper atmosphere. The ride quality improved dramatically as the atmosphere receded. The atmospheric pressure dropped sufficiently and the missiles broke open, discharging their destination packages. It was a precarious trade-off. He wanted maximum benefit from the booster phase but one target was much easier for the ORC to take out than sixteen. The missiles divided and multiplied like cell mitosis as ORC missiles exploded amongst them, destroying seven of the destination packages. Due to the close proximity of the ORC battlecruiser, the destination packages split almost immediately into their constituent warheads. Over seventeen hundred surviving warheads shot away from the planet.
So far, so good.
Laser fire swept over the fleet. Havoc’s assumption was that the ORC would follow standard doctrine and only dwell their lasers on each missile long enough to mission kill them, otherwise his goose would literally cook.
He exhaled thankfully as the ORC lasers flitted across the fleet burning out sensors and systems. The laser strikes would reduce the missiles to lumps of unguided kinetic but without physically destroying them.
The Relentless’s particle beam weapons began punching holes through the missiles as his fleet got closer. Kinetics tore into other missiles and obliterated them. The front of his package superheated as the ORC selected it for laser mission kill. His container’s ablative heat shield vaporized. He braced himself to burn.
Some things were worth dying for.
238.
Tyburn tried to explain the facts to the intransigent ORC Admiral.
“The Diss cloud is preparing to attack the planet, Admiral Szabo. I know it is.”
Admiral Szabo snorted.
“I hate to disagree with you, General. I merely observe that the planet is over there, my ship is over here, and that the large cloud of alien weaponry is either taking a very long, indeed circuitously scenic route toward it or, more simply, that you are wrong. Both Occam’s razor and your own track record suggest the latter.”
Tyburn ground his teeth, seething as he contemplated the incoming missile barrage.
“I believe that there may be an Alliance agent concealed in one of those warheads.”
Admiral Szabo stared out of the window at the scintillating cloud.
“Update on the missiles, Comrade Captain.”
“Yes, Comrade Admiral. We believe we have nullified the live warheads.”
“You believe?”
“We have destroyed them, Comrade Admiral. Also, there is something rather peculiar about their disposition.”
“Yes?”
“On their current tracks none of the full kinetics will hit the Relentless and none of the fragmentation kinetics have split despite it being optimal for them to have done so by now.”
Tyburn frowned. Havoc was coming here. It was self-evident.
Szabo raised an eyebrow.
“Oh?”
“We are continuing countermeasures, Comrade Admiral. A large number of kinetics will pass mid-aft. A number have discharged vast quantities of nanoscreen and furthermore, many of them have reversed orientation and appear to be decelerating.”
“We’re being attacked by decelerating missiles?”
“That is affirmative, Comrade Admiral.”
“I see. The shield?”
“I am keeping the shield oriented toward the cloud, Comrade Admiral.”
Szabo nodded as he glanced at Tyburn.
“This Alliance agent is coming for us or coming for you, General? Please be specific.”
“For me, I imagine.”
“Then kindly deal with him.”
It was obvious that Szabo expected Tyburn to take umbrage at this lowly task.
Tyburn smiled.
“I'd be delighted, Comrade Admiral.”
Szabo tried again.
“I would offer you some of my men, General, if you’d managed to keep any of them alive.”
Tyburn ignored Szabo’s needling. He had no problem keeping it intimate with Havoc.
“As you wish, Comrade Admiral.”
Szabo gave up. He turned back to the window and reclasped his hands behind his back.
“Very well. Please take your alien artifact with you so we can track its effect on the cloud.”
Tyburn looked down at the Scepter.
“Certainly, Comrade Admiral.”
“You may proceed, General.”
Tyburn walked off the bridge.
239.
Havoc jetted along the side of the ORC battlecruiser with his filament blade slicing open the hull like a surgeon's scalpel. A trail of air exploded out behind him like the plume of a galloping horse.
Ahead of him two ORC drones lifted out to sweep back to kill him. He jetted harder and plunged through the hull and into the ship.
He'd penetrated ORC vessels before though never a full battlecruiser and always with a team. He knew the basic ORC layout and he knew this ship was short of manpower.
He wasn’t greedy.
He only wanted one.
240.
Admiral Szabo refiltered his vision to adjust for the increasing brightness of the Diss. His command staff relayed a flurry of situation reports from further aft.
“We have a continuing hull breach along sector seven. Drones are on approach. Closing locks E-five through H-one.”
“Penetration into shaft six. Up to four intruders on scan. Blades are moving to eliminate the threat.”
“Two of our drones are on approach from outside the hull. They are entering the depressurized area.”
“Confirming we have the intruder contained.”
“Blade contact is imminent.”
“We’ve lost contact with blades one and three.”
“The first drone is down.”
“Four hull breeches in sector six. Vitals negative on two crew at the six span-intersection.”
“Oxygen fire spreading into the relay arc of sector six.”
The Ship Captain highlighted a location on their ship topo.
“General Forge is establishing a position in sector five. He has two drones in support.”
Szabo shook his head as he gazed out the window. The sooner he got rid of Forge the better.
“Are we ready to jettison General Forge and his guest?”
“Affirmative, Comrade Admiral. The trajectory of the aft section is locked. Directional jets are configured and ready to fire on your mark.”
The Tactical Officer cleared her throat. Szabo glanced over his shoulder. The Tactical Officer was practically hopping from foot to foot.
“You have your assessment?”
“Yes, Comrade Admiral. The situation is far worse than we anticipated.”
Szabo’s eyes narrowed.
“Worse?”
“The cloud is accelerating in bursts, Comrade Admiral. Its acceleration dwarves our own.”
“So?”
“Given the scale of the Diss cloud, its acceleration and the acceleration of ejected ship section, I do not believe that the alien artifact will be sufficiently clear. We have at most a negligible chance of avoiding being consumed along with it.”
Szabo glowered at her.
“You’re telling me we’re too late to get rid of the alien artifact? Already?”
Her throat bobbed as she raised her chin.
“Yes, Comrade Admiral.”
Szabo spat air.
“Pizdets.”
They would have to fight the Diss.
He stared at the scintillating cloud extending in waves toward the Relentless. It was stunningly impressive, completely unknown and fucking terrifying. The light from the cloud played across his face. He cursed himself for waiting. He should have bundled Forge and his stick into a shuttle when he had the chance. Twenty-twenty hindsight, of course.
“That thing is coming to get us. Or to get Forge's alien technology back.”
He spun round to look at the Tactical Officer.
“Your assessment?”
“Directed energy weapons are inadequate due to the scale of the threat, Comrade Admiral. Our effect weapons do not cover the extent of the cloud – we could destroy perhaps thirty percent of its extent. That is not our main risk, however, which is the time we have before it reaches our vessel. It appears our ship will be consumed within twenty minutes at most.”
“At most?”
“Indeed, Comrade Admiral. It appears that an orderly withdrawal is our best option until we are in a position to counter the threat.”
Szabo glared at the woman.
“You are suggesting that we abandon ship?”
The Tactic
al Officer visibly buckled under his baleful stare, but to her credit she held to her recommendation.
“Yes, Comrade Admiral. We should stand off in the shuttles until we understand how to counter the threat that the cloud presents.”
“Our best weapon coverage is less than a third of the cloud? Even with antimatter munitions?”
“That is correct, Comrade Admiral.”
Szabo regarded her for a moment. He admired her tenacity.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
She nodded.
“Comrade Admiral.”
Szabo regarded the cloud. He blew out his cheeks.
“Ni khuya sebe. My actions will bring shame on us all. For that, I am truly sorry. Communications?”
“Comrade Admiral?”
“Request berths on the People's Republic Loyalty as per the Savrasov-Bukin Pact.”
The Vice Commander looked shocked.
“You plan to evacuate, Comrade Admiral?”
Szabo nodded. He could hardly believe the words coming out of his mouth.
“We must be realistic. Forge has brought a subversive device into the heart of our ship. We have no time. We cannot outrun this weapon so we must evacuate the ship.”
“Surely, Comrade Admiral––”
“Muster the shuttles. We will stand off and evaluate what happens.”
Szabo turned to the Communications Officer.
“Well?”
“The Loyalty offers berths for ten personnel, Comrade Admiral.”
“That would seem to cover the remaining crew, would it not?”
“It would, Comrade Admiral, but I had wondered about General Forge...”
Szabo’s waved his hand dismissively.
“There is no better place for General Forge to test his hypothesis that the Diss are not attacking. He can stay here with his magic stick. We shall retire to the People’s Republic Loyalty. If General Forge is correct we shall return forthwith. If he is not, well what better place to study what happens to our glorious Relentless than from an exploration vessel like the Loyalty? Set weapons to engage if the cloud comes too close. This shall provide even more useful data. Let the record show that I am more concerned with the collection of valuable data than the pointless sacrifice of crew.”
