by Kali Altsoba
‘Sing muse of the rage of Ulysses, who brings ills upon his enemy. When he returns we shall bolt the doors on our day of blood revenge! There’ll be killing ‘till the full score is paid!’
Harsa
Two days of plasma drive acceleration to the L4 are followed by a second queasy vapors leap into-under-around-outside gravity wrinkles as Alpha leaves the ‘Mouth of Hell’ behind.
Just hours after it departs, a Zerstörer jumps in-system, looking in the last place a worried and murderously angry Kaigun admiral in orbit above Genève thinks Alpha might have run. It’s KG Karlsruhe, righted from its walty flip-over and uncontrolled spin during the last phase of The Gauntlet. It’s controlled by its XO. The old daisa went out an airlock on the admiral’s order.
Karlsruhe cautiously pokes its nose into Boca do Inferno, sniffing for Alpha. Its ship detection systems aren’t pre-adjusted to the intense luminosity, so they burn out instantly and the scout misses that Alpha is right there, in full illumination just past the edge of the planetary disk.
Before her crew recovers from vapors and light-seals the ship is struck by three active seeker-mines from a field of 200 mines set all around the LP. The first plasma plume breaks it nearly in half. The next two pulverize and vaporize the broken hulk. No chance, and no survivors. All that remains of Karlsruhe is a short, repeating distress beacon no one will ever find or answer. If they did, they would learn it warns approaching ships that a spreading debris field, shining brilliant as a silvered mirror in hellfire glare, is full of hidden mines and dead men.
***
Two days later Alpha parks behind the smaller of two gas planets in RCW-142. Both are hot jupiters curving in tight orbits around a main sequence G2V yellow dwarf. Émile thinks: ‘A modest star, of medium luminosity and temperature. Not like Boca do Inferno at all.’
Or rather, he thinks it after wasting sentimental moments lamenting the parentage of planets. Then he shakes off a second round of vapors and enters fresh readings into Resolve’s loxodograph. That action auto-updates the portolan charts, which are hazily long-range and far too vague about another oddball system that no one has ever been to or mapped before today.
Parking this close to the star is not an entirely safe position, but not overly difficult either. By staying in the leeside umbra behind the smaller gas giant, Alpha is shielded from twisting and cascading sheets of radiation from the broiling dwarf. It’s wafting all around from the average but uncomfortably close stellar reactor on the other side of the planetary shield. Not that ships’ armor and shielding can’t handle even these high levels of stellar wind. Undamaged armor and shielding that is. That kind would have no problem with a normal level of close stellar radiation.
Resolve’s Chief Engineer, Owoye Azazi, is standing in as chief for all Alpha ships, and he has something urgent to say about the shields. Short and rather fat for an active duty sailor, he’s very shy and nervous in Magda’s presence. He wipes his jet-black brow with a white cloth.
The odor of the Engine Room he carries to the Bridge is strong in Magda’s nostrils. She rather likes it, just as she really likes and respects him. She trusts him and appreciates his honest, hard-working, no nonsense smell and approach to solving problems.
“Azazi, requesting permission to enter the Bridge.”
“Granted, chief-of-engineers.”
“Ma’am, I’m happy to report that all five chiefs say that their internal shields will hold, ummm, under normal conditions. Just please don’t be twisting us around like back in Genève system, if you can help it ma’am. Bad news is, Asimov and Jutlandia need outer-plate repair.”
“Are you saying hold here so your repair crews can go outside to work?”
“No, sorry captain. Crews don’t got time given higher priority internal damage. We got some real bad leaks around cracked turrets and aft fuel rooms. We’d be here weeks if we tried to reeve the outer holes from work suits. We don’t got the right equipment to fix the big problems outside, not since we dumped all our jury rigs back at Toruń so we could jam in more bunks.”
“People were priority, chief.”
“I get it captain. And not that I object. Still, we’re ‘bout as well-equipped as a monk’s underpants. We can stick on patches that’ll hold, but can’t really fix things. Shit ... err, sorry captain, we don’t have the stuff we need even to find all the battle micro-damage.”
“How’s that? Aren’t there quantum dot-readers embedded all around our hulls and ships’ structures that give you critical feedback on stress and external shield damage, to help you find micro-punctures from dust hits and the like?”
“Yes captain, a good system it is, too. In peacetime. But we got hit by a lot more than space dust. There could be micro-cracks in the heterodiamond-plate or ceramic-carbyne shields of any ship that took even near-misses. Those we can’t locate or know are there, ‘cause the dots got taken out, too. Can’t know without pulling into a spaceyard for an all-exterior inspection.”
“I see. Alright, go on, chief.”
“Even then, we’d hafta do the repair work at that same spaceyard, captain. No way we can chance landing planetside for work in a ground dock or shipyard, the descent gravity might rip us apart if the holes are too big or any stress fractures too wide.”
“It’s that bad?”
“Yes ma’am. Then there’s all the patching we need done at the micro-level. Even with nanobot reevers, we can’t do it out here. Best course is t’assume some real bad damage is lurkin’ back there, and compensate in other ways.”
“Such as?”
“Don’t take us to Bendix, ma’am. The hulls might quit on us. During these transits, I recommend 50% maximum, at most.”
“OK chief, noted. What about major damage, holes you can see?”
“Two bot-EVAs we made bafore the last bohr showed Asimov and Jutlandia with serious holes aft. They shouldn’t be exposed to extra radiation, if you can avoid that, captain. Some of the shielding’s cracked wide-open on both ships. Asimov is hurt where her ass tubes got blown apart, and Jutlandia where that bâtard Kaigun die-shah cut her with his prow laser.”
“Give it to me ship-by-ship, chief engineer.”
“Jutlandia lost all the plate-armor we reeved on her at Toruń shipyard. That doubled as outer shielding, but at least she still got her original civilian hull intact. She’s OK, for a civy. But you can’t expect her to perform like a warship, captain. She’s just not built for it. No civy was ever built to come into weird systems like these two you ... err, that you had to jump us into.”
“Understood. What about Asimov?”
“Some of her ass shields are clear gone. We jury-rigged internal plates over the holes that came spiraling inside, through her bulkheads, flexible carbyne-sheets mostly. They won’t hold up in combat, but they’ll hold her together in vacuum and get her to sanctuary, if we don’t have no more shooting.”
“There shouldn’t be any, Mr. Azazi. Anything else I should know?”
“Ummm, well, Asimov leaks, ma’am.” The chief engineer looks suddenly sheepish. “Like an oil slick on Amphitrite. Nothin’ we can’t handle, short-term.”
“I’m sure of that.” Magda actually smiles, for the first time in days.
“Summary. Now, chief.”
“Full external repairs not possible, but I’m ordered to plug every internal leak on every ship before the next jump. Alpha will park right where it is until the chief-of-engineers on each ship, and I personally, give all five captains and Group Captain Aklyan the all-clear to bohr.”
“Very good. I’ll leave it in your hands then, chief. Report accepted.”
“Thank you, captain.”
“Good work, chief. Dismissed.”
Azazi passes a hand though his close-cropped afro in relief that the interrogation is over. He turns and leaves as quickly as he can. He’s never comfortable on the Bridge, but his captain always insists on a face-to-face report. He hurries back to the true home he loves, Engineering.
Magda is tired but more than pleased they made it this far. Alpha is clear of any known pursuit. Its half-way to the edge of a promontory of uninhabited Calmar Union stars that jut into the top end of still more barren systems claimed by the United Planets. She relaxes in the plush command chair then notices her First Officer is raising a querical eyebrow in her direction.
“Yes? What is it, Mr. Fontaine?”
“Ma’am, with respect, you’ve been in that command chair with only one short break over four days. Now would be a good time for you to get a real meal and some rest. It’s quiet out here. No enemy for at least 1.5 parsecs. We’ve got a full day of repairs until we bohr to the next LP.”
He’s right, of course, and right to call her out on getting needed rest. Even if she can’t sleep because the modadrene in her bloodstream and brain will prevent it if she tries. Still...
‘It would be good to give my Bridge officers room to work without having to worry about what I might be thinking at any and every moment. Émile can also do with some experience at the helm of Resolve. We’re going to need many new captains before this war is done.’
“Agreed. Have the second officer relieve you in three hours. Call me when she does. Take charge on the Combat Bridge, Mr. Fontaine. I’ll be in my cabin until Four Bells.”
***
Even with cracked aft-shielding, all five ships are protected by the mass and magnetic field of RCW-142B, the smaller of the two hot jupiters. It’s an unnerving place to park, inside a bubble-nebula of hot dust and gas. Nearby the yellow dwarf is a second mature star, the alpha or brightest, a large and luminous Type-B emitting a hurricane of particles far more intense than an average stellar wind. Farther off, a dozen protostars are taking shape in the gaseous nursery
Resolve’s stellar pallograph and wind detectors show the Type-B star losing 100 million times more mass per second than the more normal dwarf. These gales heat the gas and dust and blow it speedily outward, bubbling and infusing the nebula with exquisite primary colors, hence its name ‘Palette Nebula.’ All ships steeve into this potentially lethal radiation, facing their intact fore shields into billowing fusillades of particles that arrive in buffeting waves.
Something about the planet worries Émile: a wide black belt stretching around the upper hemisphere, a third above the equator. It’s regular and continuous yet looks like a still-healing impact wound from a comet hit that roiled and rollicked ten thousand klics or more deep. It’s just a surface wound on a gas giant, and great bands of wind are already thinning the blackness out.
‘So why does it look continuous and smooth? Shouldn’t be. It’s too long.’
Since the planet has yet to complete a rotation beneath the flotilla, Émile doesn’t know if the dark band circumnavigates the whole upper hemisphere. For the moment, he moves on.
One of the protostars is barely out of its stellar nursery, at less than a million years old. Puffed up by a lack of density to five times the size of the dwarf, it feeds and fuels at the same time by gulping gas from an immense, spinning accretion torus. It’ll consume loose hydrogen until it learns to fuse it, though odds are that this infant star won’t live that long. It’s revolving much too fast, at near break-up speed of 30X Sol Standard.
It’s also emitting two high-energy X-ray beams where nebular gas flows in from the accretion torus, emission zones many thousands of times hotter than the surface of the protostar. The beams head off at angles that easily miss the G2V yellow dwarf where five little ships huddle in protective planetary shade. The problem is that the youngster is rotating so fast it’s barely holding together and gives off periodic eruptions of superheated plasma. This baby’s destined to miscarry. It’ll soon naturally abort and die.
It’s highly unlikely the catastrophe will happen while Alpha’s in the nebula. Yet Émile struggles to suppress an irrational urge to call the Engine Room and order an immediate bohr.
‘Calm down! It’s almost impossible that it exploded exactly long enough ago for the terrible, rending shock wave to reach our exact position as I observe the protostar as it was 1.7 light years ago. Such odds would mean Alpha has the worst luck in whole history of bohr travel!’
A second nascent star is a more mature mass, but still young enough by stellar standards that it shoots colossal jets of water out its poles in bullet-like pulses. The ejecta moves at 100X the muzzle velocity of a KRA kinetic rifle. Every second, each polar jet spews the equivalent of 100 million times all the water flowing through the Greater Beas, largest river on Aral. Enough to fill the oceans of Amphitrite and every other sea on every Krevan world in just minutes. It’s been going on for tens of thousands of years, colossal jets surging and collapsing like a fire-hose, each pulse lasting a year or more. It could continue for thousands of years more, even a million, as excess material from its puffy accretion torus is violently vomited back at the poles.
The crews know it’s a common process sprinkle-spraying the Milky Way with water. Yet seeing it from inside the throbbing womb of a star-birthing nebula gives everyone watching on the Bridge a private case of the blue willies. Then Émile Fontaine finishes his calculations. What they reveal about the ejecta stream gives him the fright of his professional life and sends him running to warn that Alpha needs to bohr out of system “right now, captain. No time to lose!”
The water ejecta is a type of dirty primeval steam, atoms of hydrogen and oxygen, the building blocks of aqua vitae heated to nearly 100,000˚ Celsius along with minute quantities of carbon dioxide and silicon oxide. Base elements pulse away at 400,000 kph, interacting with the dust ring, converting to water molecules then larger chunks of ice so fast they escape the torus to shoot across the interior of the nebula. Émile now knows that a long cylinder of trillions of ice chunks has been on a direct intercept course with RCW-142B for 783 years, one of thousands of columnar pulses to make the trip across, some caught and pushed from behind by more cylinders of water-ice and dirt. A collision-pillar is building as columns hurtle toward the yellow dwarf.
Émile also knows what caused the long black scar encircling the gas giant behind him: a stellar ice-pillar impact the last time RCW-142B was in this position in its ultra rapid orbit around its parent star, just seven USD ago. Alpha does have the worst luck in bohr history, for his instruments warn that the bow wave of the next group of ice columns is due in six hours.
Magda Aklyan walks calmly to the Signal Bridge, next to Navigation. It houses primary coms, including holo-connection to all other ships in the flotilla. It’s a critical coms station, even though in action she prefers the Bridge-to-Bridge coms linked to her command chair.
“Repairs will have to wait,” she tells the captains and five engineer chiefs, all assembled as holos projecting from and on other Bridges. “Mr. Fontaine is adamant that we must leave.”
Everyone understands that if Émile Fontaine is saying they must move and fast, then they damn well must. “I know we’ve been pushing our ships and crews hard these past days, and that you’ve suffered losses to personnel and engineering capabilities. Nevertheless, Alpha is jumping again in one standard hour. This time, I promise, our next destination will be a lot less exciting.”
There’s nothing more to be said. Except of course by the mischievous Captain Tiva. He beams a big holo grin and opines to all the Bridges. “A poet wrote, ‘some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.’ I say best not stay to learn if Magda Aklyan can play, and win at dice!”
***
Maybe not, but her word is good. Alpha bohrs away from the path of the ice column with four hours to spare. It arrives a quantum-flash later in a planetless triple system whose red giant triplet star orbits far out from the inner binary. Starting at the gamma star’s windward L4, it takes Alpha five Standard Days, on half fusion-drive, a thrust limit set by limping Jutlandia, to cross over to the triplet’s leeward L2.
From there Émile maps a hyperspace ripple that connects to an uninhabited, bound-binary hosting four gas giant planets. One is hot, su
permassive and so tight in its inside orbit around one of the paired-stars that its gas cover is being blowtorched off a metallic core. Three cold blue giants, neptune-class, are in staggered-orbits farther out. It takes two days to reach another of the outer Trojan L5s, before making a last bohr-jump over the Calmari frontier.
Magda Aklyan brings her flotilla to rest at a dead, rocky planet’s L1 orbiting the Nova Cincinnatus star, one of the five Calmar Union systems with a declared sanctuary moon open to all fleeing Krevans. That’s thanks almost solely to Georges Briand and the ‘War Hawks’ in the Lok Sabra and Joint Cabinet. They pushed hard, over objections from Sanjay Pradip in CIS, Virgiliu Nicolescu in SGR, and Prime Minister Robert Hoare and his majority ‘Peace Faction.’
And yet, Resolve’s threat display flares bright with orange signals. As Émile comes out of the vapors he sees it’s a strong system force of NCU warships. A battleship, two heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, and 16 destroyers are on close station patrol in a heavily populated system interior. Or that’s where they were two hours ago when their images left the inner ring of planets and moons to travel at light speed to where a dazed Alpha arrives.
