Project Sail

by Anthony DeCosmo

The cylinder’s perverse siren song ended, leaving behind the silence of the dead.

  Hawthorne stumbled, the pistol growing so heavy that it fell from his hand.

  The two soldiers and the pilot had died instantly, but Charles lay on his back with blood pooling in a chest wound.

  Hawthorne walked to him and stared down at the broken, dying man.

  “I just wanted to be out here…I just wanted to see the universe,” Charles said and he reached for his helmet with two quivering arms that rapidly lost strength and collapsed to the ground beside him.

  Charles started to cry and mumbled, “I didn’t want any of this. I just wanted a ship, I just wanted to sail the stars.”

  Hawthorne dropped to a knee and asked, “What did you think would happen? This is what we do; we fuck things up. Maybe we do not belong out here. Maybe we don’t deserve it.”

  “Hawthorne…please…”

  He reached down and undid the seals, removing Charles’ helmet with a soft hiss.

  Charles only had a few breaths remaining, but they were the first breaths by any man on that beautiful alien world.

  Hawthorne asked, “What is it like?”

  “Clean, Hawthorne, it tastes clean,” and he grinned a smile of satisfaction before the life left his eyes.

  45. Space Junk

  SE 185 orbited three hundred kilometers from the European Alliance’s heavy cruiser in a relationship similar to an ant staring at a boot.

  Fisk was no expert in space combat, but he understood their position. The fact that Charles had left them without sending an EA boarding party only underlined how helpless they were in the face of the warship. At any moment, a flurry of missiles, a cutting laser, or any number of high-tech weapons could turn his ship into space junk.

  As for running, it would take a large, long, and detectable power surge to charge the Alcubierre-Haruto drive enough to leave the system and the cruiser—or its weapons--could catch them if they attempted to run using the diametric drive.

  The bridge door opened and Coffman entered.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Yes, well, we are making a great deal of progress in repairing Dr. Kost’s chip. I believe we have a program that will restart her implant to the extent that its built-in software should reboot.”

  “I thought Phipps and Soto were working on that?”

  Coffman crossed his arms and tapped his chin.

  “Andy and Rafael are doing most of the work, but both of them are struggling to remain, well, focused on the project.”

  Fisk stared at him, unsure what he meant.

  Warner explained sharply, “They both lost people close to them in the last two hours. What is it you don’t understand about that?”

  He tugged at his sleeves and replied, “I know, but none of us are getting out of this alive unless we can find a way to fly out of here without being blown up.”

  From his navigator’s chair, Starr said, “I have been thinking about plotting a course to keep G-Moon between us and the cruiser to buy us time to get clear, but so far I can’t find one that the navigation computer thinks will work.”

  “So why haven’t they blown us up yet?” Warner asked.

  Coffman told her, “We have been studying and mapping G-Moon for more than three weeks. I suspect they will board our ship, strip the data banks, and take this vessel for their own.”

  Tommy Starr muttered, “And then kill us.”

  Fisk walked toward the empty pilot’s chair and stared out the window at the blue dot that was the Alliance cruiser. He wished he had never accepted the task of gathering the replacement crew for 185. Hell, he wished he had not taken a job with UVI or any corporation.

  His first doubts had come with Martin Chambers’ gruesome death followed by orders to remove and kill Charles from command. His view of Universal Visions as a forward-thinking force for economic good became clouded by a scary web of conspiracy between UVI and the North American government that included skullduggery and hidden agendas.

  He could be in Mexico, working with his girl in her father’s restaurant. Not the glamorous life he craved, but a simple one and perhaps a purer form of the capitalism in which he placed his faith.

  The sound of a warning chime and Warner’s panicked voice chased away his musings.

  “Shit, I have another energy spike like the one that hit the planet, but wait, not as powerful.”

  “Where?” Coffman hurried to her side while Fisk hovered at the center of the bridge.

  “Five thousand kilometers to port, heading out to space.”

  Starr pointed at a screen and shouted: “Look!”

  The stars near the European Alliance cruiser bent and stretched for a split second, and then a ship appeared; a big ship, larger than the cruiser by two hundred meters and bulkier.

  While of a new design, it was still recognizable as Russian. Its size and the volume of visible armaments identified it as a battleship, the only class of vessel known to man that could overshadow the power of an EA heavy cruiser.

  Concave openings on the bow belonged to their version of an Alcubierre—Haruto drive. Fisk saw bulging compartments along the hull, launch tubes, and a pair of fin-like wings. The mass of the monster ship suggested immense power.

  They had plotted their arrival perfectly, halting their A-H drive at closer than ten kilometers to the cruiser’s starboard side with aligned broadsides and immediately launched a salvo of projectiles at the Europeans.

  Defensive fire frantically met the new threat as automated short-range Gatlin guns struggled to create an anti-missile shield of flak. A maelstrom of detonations filled the space separating the ships with a dozen atomic shock waves erupting one after another.

  One…two…three missiles penetrated the curtain of shrapnel and hit the Alliance’s warship, blasting off shards of protective armor and burrowing into the hull where more debris ejected into orbit. The cruiser wobbled like a boxer hit by a surprise uppercut.

  The battleship then ignited thrusters in a series of choreographed bursts that rotated the yaw axis while barrel rolling. The well-orchestrated maneuver could be described as graceful, despite the vessel’s bulky profile.

  In an instant, the Russians had closed to within one kilometer with their bow at a right angle to the Europeans, who ignited their engines and attempted to escape.

  But the cruiser did not budge; it had become stuck in space.

  The Russian projected a gravity field around the Alliance warship: a constricting gravity field.

  As a victim caught in a murderous chokehold will flail at his attacker, the Europeans scrambled to disrupt the battleship’s grip. A trio of cutting lasers sliced into the enemy hull, but tungsten rods launched and destroyed the emitters; the red beams went dark.

  The cruiser’s hammerhead bow crushed inwards as the invisible fist closed. Lights went dark, the portside wing curled, and a series of secondary explosions erupted from within.

  Missiles flew from under the cruiser’s starboard wing but at such close proximity they were easy targets for Russian flak.

  Thrusters fired on the Alliance’s ship as it tried to turn within the trap, to focus its forward radiation beams on the enemy and irradiate the crew. But the vice was too taut; as the cruiser attempted to move the pressure increased, collapsing its starboard wing and warping its spine.

  As if punishing a disobedient child, the Russians reacted to the cruiser’s struggles with a punitive burst of missiles, this time with conventional warheads that smashed into the enemy’s flank one after another.

  Shocked by the Russian’s sudden arrival, outmaneuvered and overpowered, the cruiser turned to desperation, firing a hundred flying spheres and a dozen rockets in one last-gasp to break free.

  Rapid-fire cannon picked off the suicide drones allowing only a handful to scar the thick hull. A laser defense grid knocked all but two missiles off course, and they only managed to chip one of the battleship’s fins.

  The Russian vessel trembled w
ith power as the deadly gravitational bubble finished its work. The front and rear ends of the Alliance cruiser bent in and down as it morphed into one big metal mess. Escape pods fleeing the carnage discharged from airlocks along the deforming hull, but stuck in the field as if frozen in time.

  Internal explosions shot out, froze, and then fell back into the main body. Wings, spine, and bow that measured four-hundred meters two minutes ago condensed into a ball less than a quarter of that in diameter…and then fell free as the grip released.

  Like a heap of space junk, the remains of the Alliance’s heavy cruiser dropped from orbit, glowing red from the heat of reentry until breaking up into shrapnel.

  Thrusters fired again as the battleship reoriented itself into an orbit almost identical with the cruiser’s previous position. A solitary missile launched, cut down through the atmosphere, and erupted in an atomic fireball as it hit the Alliance encampment on G-Moon.

  ---

  Hawthorne stumbled away from the bodies in the cylinder chamber, horrified that he had done such a thing but relieved he still lived.

  Shooting Charles had been the by-product of the struggle for the gun and had happened too fast to feel guilty. The soldiers had been faceless enemies, hidden behind armor and helmets. Killing them felt similar to destroying robots.

  But he had looked the pilot in the eyes as he pulled the trigger, and watched her helmet and head explode, turning a young woman into a pile of lifeless gore, some of which splattered on the artifact.

  This is what humanity offers your world, he thought. We traveled across the galaxy to this quiet place and brought with us missiles, bullets, and death.

  He was scared and tired but mostly he was embarrassed on behalf of his entire species.

  As he stumbled from the interior chamber to the outer cavern, a bright flash lit the landscape as if the red dwarf Gliese 581 had gone supernova. As the light faded, he felt the ground rumble and a sharp wind blew into the cave from outside.

  When he exited, he saw the source of the light and the wind: an atomic mushroom cloud rising from the European camp. A small device, but the crowning symbol of man’s obsession with destruction.

  Hawthorne dropped to his knees and kept mumbling over and over, “I’m sorry...I’m sorry…I’m sorry.”

  The radio inside his helmet crackled to life and then a Russian voice—translated into English—broadcast over every frequency.

  “This message is for Commander Jonathan Hawthorne of the USNA survey ship SE 185. You will report to the Sergey Gorshkov, or your ship and landing party will be liquidated.”

  46. The Russians

  Hawthorne piloted the shuttle off the surface in a spiraling course into the atmosphere.

  Shock at the sight of the mushroom cloud and depression over the day’s turn of events had worn him to the point of mental exhaustion. At least he had found Kelly and King sheltered in the research cave, safe from the shock wave that had wiped out the Alliance camp and flattened several square kilometers of forest. Clearly, the Russians had used a tactical weapon measuring less than a full megaton in power.

  Upon reaching orbit, he immediately spotted the Russian man-of-war and while he had experience dealing with battleships, the Sergey Gorshkov took intimidating to a new level. It managed to appear both bulky and sleek, projecting strength and agility.

  He took comfort in the Russian summons, hoping they offered safe passage away from Gliese 581g. He even wondered if they had come to the rescue in a deal struck with the Americans, and that Admiral Amanda Duncan might be waiting to greet him.

  Whatever the case, they had not nuked the research cave nor shot his shuttle from orbit, so their terms had to be better than those offered by the Europeans.

  Following the course sent by the Russians, the navigation computer directed his shuttle to a docking tube. The plane descended to the round hatch, latched on, and formed a seal.

  Hawthorne discarded his space suit and wore his blue coveralls emblazoned with the Project Sail mission badge. He opened a hatch in the passenger compartment floor and entered the battleship’s airlock.

  After a silent scan, the interior door opened and he stepped onto foreign territory, passing through an arch and into an antechamber furnished with empty benches and an unmanned security station with light from glowing panels.

  “Hello?”

  A door slid open and recessed lights brightened the corridor ahead. He took the cue and started along the hall. As he did, the lights behind went dark and the door shut.

  The illumination ended at a four-way intersection with the adjoining corridors so dark he dare not advance.

  He wondered if the Russians considered this psychological warfare, although he could not fathom why they would need psychological warfare when they possessed a battleship.

  Then again, he debated internally, perhaps the ship is so automated that it does not need a large crew.

  The lights behind him went dark but more came on to his right, brightening a path forward and, at the same time, answering his questions.

  First, the battleship did have a large crew and second, it did not need that crew to operate.

  Dead bodies filled the hall, at least twenty men and women dressed in the brown and black uniforms of the Russian navy, colors that clashed with the purplish hue of their dead skin.

  Fear stuck his feet to the floor with the grip of a gravitational anomaly. Leaving behind his space suit felt like the worst mistake of his life because even though atmosphere currently filled the corridor, an environmental malfunction had killed these people.

  The lights flashed, clearly urging him to continue on, which he did, stepping carefully between and around the fallen sailors. When he cleared the carnage, the lights turned off, returning the dead to darkness.

  Another intersection, another set of lights served as breadcrumbs, this time down stairs to a wide horizontal door blocked by another pile of bodies, their stiff hands clawing at the metal, desperately trying to breach this bulkhead during the last seconds of life.

  The door opened for Hawthorne and the pile collapsed; corpses rolled away.

  Behind, the lights faded. Ahead, a bridge filled with a dozen distinct stations, three raised platforms, a huge main screen covering the front wall, and a Captain’s chair in the middle.

  Hawthorne saw more bodies, including one in that big chair, but nothing alive other than the equipment.

  “Hello?”

  An answer played from speakers around the bridge in a monotone synthesized voice.

  “This is the voice of world control.”

  Hawthorne froze and wondered if he had actually heard those words, but when he accepted this was not an auditory mirage, he asked, “Lazarus?”

  The voice became masculine and familiar.

  “Hawk! Yes, it’s me, surprised?”

  Was this a big joke? Would all the Russians stand up now, wipe the makeup off, and have a good laugh?

  “The internal sensors measure an increase in your heart rate and respiration, your eyebrows have lifted and your mouth is open. You are very surprised.”

  The room spun from the confused thoughts crisscrossing his mind. He had expected to find a Russian commander who would issue ultimatums. Instead he found his old friend Gerald Faust, or at least what had become of him after his upload into a computer.

  Hawthorne found his voice: “Is this the Russian ship that was lost? Why did you follow me here?”

  “Follow you? Hawk, I brought you here.”

  His legs wobbled and he sought support against a communications console.

  “Fisk said…he said a computer program selected the crew.”

  “Sitting in the heart of the solar system’s largest communications network makes it easy to eavesdrop on conversations. The executives at Universal Visions use our priority channels and it is a two-way street. I sent one of my friends to Oberon, imbedded in a data transmission.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  �
�When I heard about Probe 581, I had a friend hitch a ride, and when it started picking up energy from the artifact on the moon, I decided I wanted to see for myself.”

  “You are supposed to be in a computer on Pan!”

  “Tasker told you, they harvested the quantum particles that comprise my consciousness. My relationship with the computer is less like a program and more like, well, a symbiotic organism.”

  “What?”

  “Okay, yes, you could call it parasitic. I exist as a group of subatomic particles inside this ship’s systems, having ridden a data transmission to come aboard. I am a quantum computer unto myself, in a sense; a network of particles traveling in tandem.”

  “I don’t understand and I don’t care. Why are you here? How did you gain control of this ship?”

  “I do not like your tone, Hawk.”

  He held his breath and realized that if Lazarus controlled the ship, he controlled the oxygen, as the Russians had learned.

  “You murdered the crew?”

  “SE 185 isn’t strong, so I needed this ship. I couldn’t get into the Niobe, either, for a slew of reasons.”

  “Wait…what?”

  “So that made the Niobe a threat. One phony intelligence report solved that problem; since Ganymede, the Chinese are paranoid. By the way, they have no intention of assassinating you.”

  “You tricked the Chinese?”

  “You still are not getting it. Calm down, take a deep breath, and listen. I made everything happen. Everything. The Chinese, your crew, the probe reactivating and leading you to the artifact. I was in control from the beginning.”

  “The Chinese destroy the Niobe, a computer picks the crew…you picked the crew.”

  “Why the hell would the USNA Navy think Jonathan Hawthorne was the best guy for this mission? Or that Wren idiot, or King. Shit, I threw in that Thomas chick just for you. Tell me, did you finally screw a girl half your age? That was your goal, wasn’t it?”

  “Did you kill Martin Chambers?”

  “Nope, just a coincidence but he was the one I thought might give me fits. Oh, and Charles to an extent, but he was in bed with the Alliance. I had to wait until they made their move before I could jump here. I have been watching from two light-hours away.”