by Hugo Huesca
Where’s your hidden strike coming from, Erickson? What are you hiding from me?
Hours later, one of the bridge’s lookouts opened a line with Alicante and Clarke. The young man could barely keep his voice from trembling. “Vortex’s torpedoes came into effective range of our escorts, sir. They’re firing back, sir. The Kite took a direct hit.”
Clarke blinked as his brain processed the meaning of those sentences.
“Torpedoes firing back?” roared Alicante. “What are you saying, ensign? That’s not how torpedoes work!”
“Get me a visual on those torpedoes,” said Clarke, interrupting Alicante’s lecture on the poor lookout. “I want a full scan on them, too, right away.”
The map showed how the green dot that had been the Kite disappeared. The red triangles that represented the enemy torpedoes were still a long way away from Hawk, currently engaged with the two surviving escort ships.
That’s sixteen men and women dead, just like that, thought Clarke, his gaze hovering over Kite’s crew chart. The EIF’s war hadn’t started yet, and people on both sides were already dying.
Alicante ordered the two escorts to pull back into Hawk’s point defense range. As a response, the torpedoes rushed at the Hawk, diving under the ship’s axis in a tightly-cut, inverted parabola, dodging turret fire all the while.
Something is really off about these torpedoes. Their increased acceleration had reduced their striking distance to Hawk to ten minutes from its original half hour. At this point, the Hawk was committed to its course, it wouldn’t be able to change direction without killing all its crew due to excessive g force.
But destroyers’ turrets could deal with dozens of torpedoes. Hawk should be safe.
An alarm blared on the bridge, along with red, strobing lights. “We’ve been hit!” exclaimed an ensign over the public line. She read a short damage report. Turret fire, glancing strike, it had penetrated Hawk’s second layer of armor until the layer’s ballistic gel stopped the bullets.
Comprehension dawned as Clarke parsed the damage report. He knew what the scans would say about those torpedoes. A cold hand caressed his spine.
They couldn’t have dared…
“Commander Alicante,” he said, “those aren’t torpedoes. They’re ships. They aren’t in collision course with us, they’re trying to reach engagement distance.”
“No way, Captain. They’re pulling twenty gs, they have to be torpedoes,” said Alicante. “Their crew would be jelly by now.”
“There’s no crew,” Clarke said. That cold caress again. “Those ships are all dead inside, Commander. They’re AI controlled.”
The weight of his words hung on the bridge like a physical anchor.
“But that’s illegal! Not even Earth would resort to warship AI! When the people hear about it…”
What are they going to do? Clarke thought. Tal-Kader’s the one enforcing the rules.
“I’m positive, Commander. Look at their course. They’re investing in a parabola course, so they get to rake our engines when they come up. That’s not a collision course.”
Of course, that course would put them in range of all of Hawk’s auxiliaries, but what did that matter to the software that ruled them?
Alicante cursed bitterly and ordered his crew to switch targeting patterns from interception to engagement. Clarke’s internal organs inched toward the back of the g-seat as Hawk accelerated and showered the AI ships with targeting lasers.
“Clarke,” Pascari’s voice reached him, “what’s going on?”
“Vortex is carrying unmanned ships,” Clarke said. He had his gaze glued on the targeting map. Sure enough, someone in the bridge updated the map’s readouts and changed the triangles to ship’s dots.
“What? So Tal-Kader’s committing war crimes in broad daylight, now? Fucking cowards aren’t brave enough to face us themselves!”
“I figure they’re pulling all the stops to slow us down,” said Clarke. “Sentinel must be real close, and Erickson doesn’t want to be the guy who has to explain that he lost Isabella Reiner.”
After all, Clarke knew the Defense Fleet didn’t take failure lightly. He had avoided the firing squad on a technicality, ten years ago. He figured Tal-Kader’s lawyers had plugged those bugs since.
“All Erickson’s going to get is a bullet to the head, either from me or his bosses,” Pascari said.
That’s what’s worrying me, Clarke thought. A desperate man in Erickson’s position might resort to desperate tactics.
Like shooting at Dione.
A kinetic round aimed at a populated planet meant nothing short of mass extinction. A crime so horrible that its mere possibility had surrendered Jagal when Mississippi bypassed the planet’s defenders. So far in the history of the Edge, no one had actually made good on that threat.
No one had launched AI warships either.
As if directly commanded by Clarke’s will, Hawk invested all his point defense weaponry in saturating the unmanned ships’ possible courses with firepower, sparing no thought for saving ammunition. Tiny blue lines shot from Hawk’s dot and spread toward the enemy ships like strands of a web. At once, the ships began evasive maneuvers.
Too close, Clarke thought, before the blue lines had reached them. Fast or not, you’re too close to us.
How deep could the layers of armor go in ships that size? Hawk’s rounds were designed to penetrate the shells of ships of the line.
Most of the lines passed the ships without harming them. Enough found their target.
Clarke closed his eyes. He could imagine the path of the bullets as if he rode them. First, he pierced the outer hull, traveled through a thick composite of ablative materials designed to withstand both weaponry and small meteors, swam through a vacuum, and dove inside a coat of ballistic gel. Second to last, a layer of ceramics whose function was to slow a bullet—or a very fast rock. This entire trip past the outer hull would be the first armor layer in a ship of the line. A corvette-sized ship had only this one layer to protect itself against hundreds of years of mankind perfecting the art of accelerating tiny projectiles at things it didn’t like.
In the race between attack and defense, attack was the favorite contender.
After the ceramics came the ship’s skeleton. Pure metal composite, the last barrier between him and the ship’s precious, fragile entrails—mechanical or human, it didn’t matter much at this point.
One of the AI ships crumbled as Hawk’s targeting patterns stopped trying to keep them away and instead focused on out-firing them. The red dot disappeared, eight minutes away from the destroyer.
AI or not, fast or not, a corvette-sized ship lacked the range, computing power, and weaponry of a destroyer.
The surviving ship scored a single hit before its dot disappeared. The hit stopped at the third armor layer, halfway through its ballistic gel. Had it kept going, it would’ve speared the bridge.
“All ships, ten minute acceleration break. Combat’s arrived faster than we thought,” Clarke said. “Everyone, don your pressure suits.”
He filed the AI ships as a new threat in Vortex’s hand. There would be time to deal with the political implications later after Sierra picked Hirsen and Isabella up from Dione.
The ETA on Dione blinked in bright green letters. Thirty hours to go. It wasn’t much, and if his suspicions on Sentinel proved correct, Clarke doubted they’d have much time to wait for Hirsen to appear.
And there was still the threat of Vortex and the other two destroyers to consider.
“Commander,” he said to Alicante, “what’s the word on Hirsen? Has he responded to our hails?”
Pascari had given Communications the private encoding that Hirsen had used to communicate with the EIF in the first place. When—if—the man contacted Sierra to coordinate Isabella’s extraction, he’d do so using that same code.
“Negative contact, Captain. NavComm hasn’t picked up anything,” Alicante answered. “Another tick on your list of worries, isn’t i
t, sir?”
“Yes,” Clarke said. His gaze was still glued on the map, but now the thirty hour countdown clamored for an equal share of his attention.
“I figured,” said Alicante. His voice dripped with gallows humor. “Know what, sir? I would hate to be in your shoes right now. I’ll thank Pascari, later, if we survive this.”
Thirty hours, and the clock ticked. Clarke and Sierra—hell, the entire EIF, had bet with their lives that, down below on Dione’s surface, a man named Daneel Hirsen waited for them with Isabella Reiner in tow. For all Clarke knew, Hirsen had lay dead in a gutter for the last year, and Antonov chased his phantom.
Where are you, Hirsen?
25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Delagarza
“You come at an inopportune time,” Nanny Kayoko’s holo said.
Delagarza shot a tense look at the armed rebels flanking him. Their fingers close to the trigger guards of their rifles, and the muscles of their necks taut under the augmented strain of their partial power armor. “I realize that. But we can’t just wait until things die down to have a happy chat, can we?”
Kayoko laughed hoarsely. Her artificial face may be young, but that laugh belonged to a person who has outlived entire generations. “Is that your attempt at humor? To laugh at me while my rebellion crumbles? I could have you shot, you know.”
Delagarza thought of the urban tanks rolling down the streets, the amphibian infiltration squads pouring down into Alwinter’s sewers, the security squads methodically cleansing alleys and mansions of gangers and the mob alike.
“To be honest, Kayoko, that sounds like the least of my problems.”
That laugh again. Perhaps those anti-aging surgeries weren’t as infallible as the hired medics liked to preach. After all, there’s only so many lifetimes a brain can live before checking out. Perhaps Kayoko was at her limit. She sure as hell didn’t look healthy, with her disheveled hair and those deep bags under her eyes.
“Who am I talking to?” she asked. “Hirsen or Delagarza?”
“At this point,” said Delagarza, “it doesn’t matter. We need to talk, Kayoko.”
“So we do,” she said, still smirking, the very image of a woman who’s not used to people talking to her that way. “You know that, as we speak, a squad of enforcer-led amphibians are approaching my compound, right? Come meet me, and you may not come out again.”
Delagarza said nothing, letting his expression speak for him. Kayoko gestured at the rebels next to him. His back tensed, ready to make a move, but the two men lowered their rifles and nudged him toward Kayoko’s home.
Taiga was a different beast than the one Delagarza had left months ago, back when he was merely Samuel Delagarza, ‘ware expert and fast-talking prospector.
These streets weren’t empty, but they were devoid of the nervous life of the tourist and the hustler making their luck in them. Instead, armed rebels roamed around, their spines straight and in high alert, their partial power armor buzzing with the hum of repurposed reg-suits and battery packs.
He saw a couple tanks, nothing like the urban titans that roamed upper Alwinter, but old ones, versions not seen since the old Earther wars. Machine gun nests covered the corners and oversaw kill-zones covered in mines and razorwire. Mortars and other small artillery vehicles were better hidden, but Hirsen pointed them at Delagarza when he caught a glimpse from the corner of his eye.
Most of the rebels, despite their weaponry and armor, carried the tattoos and implants of former gangers, perhaps not even a year away from that life.
Taiga’s recycled air carried the stench of sweat, gunpowder, and fear. A battle was coming. It would be a decisive battle if not a particularly close one.
Kayoko’s home had been designed in classical Nipponese fashion, with said fashion being, perhaps, the only feature older than Kayoko herself in the entirety of Taiga Town. Unseen servants, perhaps machinery, parted the wood panels that covered the house’s entrance as Delagarza and his rebel escort approached. Their footsteps came muffled against the tatami floor. They didn’t leave their shoes at the doorstep, a particular breach of manners that life in Dione made a necessity. The risk of frostbite took precedence over politeness.
Dragons stared at Delagarza as he passed, drawn with ink over the sliding panels of the house’s doors and walls. Unseen life-support machinery filled every nook and cranny with a warm summer breeze, no buzz or hum that Delagarza could hear. Kayoko could afford the extra expense of quiet living.
She waited for him in a yellow room, bare except for an elm table with short legs, teacups, and a pot over it. Nanny Kayoko sat on the floor at the other side of the table, a steaming cup waiting in front of her. She was dressed in a pink kimono that made her look as graceful as the flowers across its silk. And as fragile.
“You’ll have to excuse me not waiting for you,” she said. “But I had no notice you were coming, and I’m afraid I’m not young anymore. Tea?”
Delagarza sat opposite her as the two rebels left the room at her urging. “Shouldn’t you be leading your rebellion?”
She dismissed his words with a wave of her hand and poured him a steaming cup of tea. “Ah, I’ve people to do that for me. All that can be done is being done, I assure you. It’s hard to lead an underground resistance with an all-seeing God hovering beyond the sky, its mind set to destroying us. That an old lady chooses to spend her last moments enjoying a facsimile of the tradition of her ancestors is not going to change the end result.”
Joseph Clarke and his ships are about to kill that ship you fear so much, Delagarza thought. He could imagine the countdown. Twenty five hours until Sierra’s arrival at Dione, the fight with Vortex sure to come long before that. He wondered if the firelights would show up in Alwinter’s night.
He took a sip out of the cup she offered him. It carried a grass-like aroma and tasted of green and the ocean. “I need a transmitter,” he said. “The EIF is calling to Hirsen, but I cannot answer without one.”
She paused to drink. “We have a long distance radio transmitter here, but the Vortex will listen to anything you say. If you want encoding, you’ll need to go to our headquarters, where we have the ‘ware you need. I’ll have Cronos show you the way. Maybe you’ll beat the enforcers to the punch.”
Delagarza nodded. At the back of his mind, Hirsen ran some numbers and clicked a metaphorical tongue in disapproval. We have to get out of Taiga, and fast. They’re running on borrowed time.
“I’ll tell Cronos to bring you the transmitter. Is there anything else, Samuel?” Kayoko asked. She texted a short string of instructions from her wristband and looked up, expectantly, like she could read Delagarza’s mind.
“Hirsen’s wondering,” Delagarza said slowly, “why you haven’t been forthcoming with him about your investigation.”
“Maybe if Hirsen saw fit to oversee conversations I have with his own body, I’d be more keen to share with him,” Kayoko said. No hesitation on her part. Her old eyes glinted with mischievousness.
“I know about the junkyard,” said Delagarza. “You’re keeping Newgen’s spaceship there. What for?”
“To investigate it, of course,” she said. “You wish to know what I found?”
Delagarza nodded. His cup lay forgotten on the table, half-drunk.
“More questions,” Kayoko shrugged. “Data that made no sense, either the mistake of faulty equipment or a mystery that far exceeds the capacity of my team of scientists.”
“We have no time for vagueness,” Delagarza urged her. He could see Hirsen’s projections about the enforcers’ advance. Those amphibian teams they led came straight from Vortex infiltration squads, Tal-Kader’s answer to Earth’s marines.
As if to punctuate his words, a tremor shook the room around them like it was made out of cardboard. Delagarza’s cup spilled green liquid over the tatami pads.
The sound of a firefight erupted in the distance.
“Indeed, Samuel,” she said. She placed a tense, white han
d under her kimono, breast-high, and took out a black data chip from a hidden pocket. “You wish to know why I didn’t tell Hirsen? Greed, Delagarza. Plain old greed. If I had more time to study that ship, I’m sure I’d have become as powerful as the great CEO of the Edge’s oligarchs. Imagine what I could’ve done for my people. For Dione.”
“I’m sure your reasons were all pure and noble,” Delagarza said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm in his voice.
“None of that matters now.”
She handed him the chip. He pocketed it.
The next tremor was more violent. Delagarza looked up, wondering if the ceiling would come down on them.
“Just answer me one last question, Samuel. Ask your invisible passenger if you must,” Kayoko said, behaving like the tremors and the now clearly audible firefight outside didn’t exist. “What do we know about the universe that can make a ship three decades younger than it should?”
Delagarza blinked. He almost forgot about the incoming battle. “What?”
“Hand the chip to the EIF’s best experts,” she smiled. “See if they can crack the riddle. If they can’t…ask the Mississippi. No, don’t ask me to be clear. It’s just woman’s intuition is all. An educated guess, from an old fool who spent too much time gazing at the sky.”
The paper door slid and Cronos entered the room. He was carrying a handheld device the size and shape of a portfolio. “We need to leave, Nanny,” he said. “They’re coming.”
“I can’t run, my dear,” she said. She stood and winced as she did so. “But I figure that won’t stop you from trying to protect me, will it?”
“No, nanny,” he said. “We’ll die to carve a path for you.”
Kayoko nodded, accepting Cronos’ loyalty with humbleness. “Then I won’t insult you by ordering you to leave me behind.”
