March of War

by Bennett R. Coles

  “Well, some of it I lived through, kid, so it’s easy to remember.”

  “Thanks anyway. Now we can get a couple more reqs signed off by the XO.”

  “My pleasure.”

  There was a knock at the door. Hayley reached up to open it, watched John Micah walk through, then returned her focus to the tablet.

  “Attention on deck,” she sang.

  John noted the complete lack of movement, and nodded with approval.

  “Relax, please.”

  “What’s up, Shades?” Thomas asked. Micah shrugged, swatting Thomas’s feet clear to give him a perch on the arm of the couch.

  “Bored,” he said. “The evening brief’s about to start, so pretty much everyone who’s awake is headed for the bridge.”

  “That’ll make the XO happy,” Hayley said.

  “Yeah, but the wardroom’s kind of lame when you’re there by yourself.”

  “Well,” Thomas said, shifting to make more room, “as an honorary subbie, you’re always welcome in our home. Are you liking the gravity?”

  “Yeah, it’s comfortable—but as an ASW guy it makes me a little nervous. We really stand out in the Bulk, you know.”

  “I know, but Astral Intelligence says the stealth threat is low.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Oh, fucking get over yourself, Shades,” Hayley said. “There aren’t any rebel stealth ships this side of Sirius. Our threat is those pesky little attack craft the Valhallans use. They seem to have an infinite supply of them. We had to chase off another pack today while a convoy was jumping back to Terra. They’re just hanging around out there, right at the edge of sensor range. What a fucking pain—like mosquitoes you can’t reach to swat.”

  Thomas watched idly as John and Hayley chatted, knowing it would do them both good, but never for a moment thinking they’d be a lasting match. She was too harsh and he was too earnest, but the simple act of flirting could do wonders for a person’s morale.

  Tuning out their banter, he stared upward at the bulkhead, letting his thoughts wander.

  The AF had concluded that the attack on Toronto had been made by the rebel attack craft, swarming the close-in defenses and boarding the destroyer. A single hand-held gravi-bomb thrown onto the bridge could easily have caused the destruction Thomas had found, and the rest of the crew would have been taken prisoner without a fight. It had been Bowen’s quick response to the attack on Singapore which must’ve protected that destroyer from the same fate.

  Yeah, that explained it, but it still didn’t sit right. There wasn’t any intelligence suggesting that the rebels had developed hand-held gravi-bombs. And while a destroyer might have been overwhelmed, if the rebels got in some lucky shots early on, why hadn’t there been any emergency transmissions from Toronto when the boarding began?

  “Hey, Chen,” he called suddenly, “were there any special comm conditions here in Valhalla when Toronto was attacked?”

  “What?”

  He repeated the question, and John and Hayley went silent. They both stared at him.

  “Uhh, not that I recall,” Chen said. “Valhalla hasn’t been under any special restrictions at all in the war. It’s been a backwater theater the whole time.”

  “What are you thinking?” John asked.

  “Just wondering why Toronto didn’t send a tactical update on the attack, or even a distress signal when things started to look bad.”

  “Maybe they never had the chance.”

  “We’re a little faster on the uptake than that,” Hayley said, picking up on Thomas’s line of thinking. “It takes all of five seconds to switch the beacon to SOS.”

  Thomas sat up, all thoughts of lounging gone. “I’ve seen the Centauris block entire areas of space, cutting them off from external comms. Maybe the rebels brought that technology here.”

  “Then why didn’t they use it during the Singapore attack?” John countered. “We were far enough away to have been blocked.”

  “True,” Thomas admitted. “Plus the small craft can’t be carrying something like that. The amount of power needed would be beyond them.”

  “What about a stealth ship?”

  Thomas shook his head. “It’d have to re-enter the brane and stay there in order to maintain the block. No, I don’t think it’s blocked comms.”

  “Well, it was your fucking idea,” Hayley protested.

  “Shut up, I’m thinking.”

  Ignoring the stares, Thomas cradled his head in his hands and struggled to grasp the wisp of a thought he knew was eluding him. The enemy somehow gets past the close-in defenses and clamps on—hard enough. The enemy gets aboard the ship and makes it to the bridge, a sealed sphere, without being stopped or even confronted—very hard. The ship never even switches the beacon to SOS during the entire attack—

  Impossible.

  “The only way the attack on Toronto could have succeeded,” he said slowly, “was by complete surprise. The bridge had to be neutralized first. With no bridge, there were no sensors being watched, no weapons being controlled, and no comms being transmitted.”

  “But no torpedo is that accurate,” Hayley said, rising to her feet. “You can’t navigate in the Bulk with that kind of precision.”

  Thomas looked up at her from where he sat on the couch. He remembered how, on one of his first nights aboard Admiral Bowen, another woman had loomed over him exactly where Hayley stood, as he’d sat exactly where he was now. He remembered the crackle of air as the Special Forces operative had appeared directly in front of him.

  “Yes,” he said quietly, “you can. Or at least some people can.”

  Chen climbed down from his bunk and moved to stand next to John and Hayley. All three of them stared down at Thomas, and he knew each one of them believed him.

  “What time of day was the attack on Singapore?”

  “We got their call at eighteen-fifty or so,” Hayley said. “I was just prepping for the evening brief when she reported the attack craft inbound.”

  “At the edge of her sensors?”

  “Uhh, yeah, I think so. We were able to close the distance almost as quickly as the rebels did.”

  “Our ships have improved their sensor ranges in the past few months.” Thomas stood. “I bet they don’t know that. They probably didn’t expect to be picked up until they were closer.” He looked at Hayley. “You said those bandits are sitting right at the edge of our sensor range. Right now?”

  “Yeah, they have been for a few hours.”

  “They know the convoy’s jumped, and we’re alone out here. They can detect that we’ve switched our AG on, too, suggesting that we’ve stepped down an alert level. And if they know our daily routine—which is hardly top-secret information—they know when our entire command team is assembled in one place.”

  John figured it out first. “The evening brief.”

  Thomas grabbed the nearby handset and punched up the bridge.

  “Bridge.” The response was clipped. “Second officer of the watch.”

  “Alex, it’s Thomas. Stop the brief. Get all non-watch people out of there.”

  “Say again?”

  “Do it!”

  The line went dead, just as the deck heaved violently. Thomas saw the handset rip out of the wall as he clung to it, then realized that he was falling forward, as if a giant hand had tipped the entire cruiser up onto its bow. Something hard smashed into his head. He lay against the cold surface for a moment, staring up at the aft end of Club Sub, then felt gravity shift again as he slid down to the deck.

  Hayley was next to him, curled up in a ball as she gripped both hands against the top of her skull. Blood trickled between her fingers. John was sprawled in the open door to the washplace, Chen slumped against the forward bulkhead next to the sink.

  Thomas sat for a moment, instinctively waiting for the general alarm. There was nothing except for the soft cursing of Hayley beside him, and shuffling sounds as John pulled himself to his knees. In fact, he realized, he heard nothing.
No rush of air through the ventilation, no distant hum of the accretion drives spinning up, no clatter of boots or shouts in the passageway outside.

  In Thomas’s world—both as a warrior and a spacefarer—silence was terrifying. He leapt to his feet, stabbing at the speaker controls of the comm set and calling the engine room.

  The voice at the other end was anything but calm.

  “Machinery control.”

  “This is the strike officer—status!”

  “There’s some kind of incident forward, sir, but we can’t make sense of it. The bridge isn’t answering. We’ve gone to airtight conditions and put the drives to safe mode. You can have power anytime, but a lot of systems in the forward half of the ship aren’t responding.”

  Airtight explained the silence—engineering had shut all ventilation in case of a breach.

  “Good work. Have your senior person meet me in DCC.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Thomas looked down at his colleagues. John was on his feet and helping Chen rise. Hayley was sitting cross-legged on the deck, still holding her head. He grabbed the first-aid kit off the bulkhead and tossed it to Chen as he approached.

  “Check her head wound. John, you’re with me.”

  He cracked open the door to test for pressure, then slid it wide and stepped through. Debris littered the passageway. Looking forward, he could see the most distant handrails bent forward against their anchors. He didn’t need to look beyond to know what had happened to Bowen’s bridge.

  John appeared next to him. “Holy crap!”

  “Check forward. See if there are any survivors.”

  “What are you doing?”

  Thomas looked over at him, wishing he felt the humor of his next words.

  “Being the ace in the hole. I’ll be in DCC.”

  John raced up the passageway. Thomas ran aft three frames and down a ladder to deck three. He slowed amid the gathering crowd. Engineers piled into DCC and troopers headed into the strike storage. He poked his head into the latter.

  “Armored suits, full weapons, but impact-only rounds! Deploy to repel boarders. Bring my suit and gear to DCC.”

  “Yes, sir,” Buns snapped, not pausing as she donned her own suit. Two other troopers were also dressing, and another was already slapping magazines into the unlocked assault rifles. At Thomas’s order the loader paused.

  “Impact-only, sir?” he asked.

  “We’re fighting on our own ship, trooper. I don’t want holes blown through the hull every time you pull the trigger.” The trooper nodded and yanked the seated magazines free, opening another locked drawer to grab a new array of ammunition. Thomas paused for a second to admire the efficiency of his team—not a single order had been broadcast, but they were all prepping for the worst.

  He crossed to DCC, noting that the main damage control display was lit and engineers were starting to man their consoles.

  “Who’s senior here?” he bellowed above the noise.

  “I am.” Chief Petty Officer Ranson stood from where he’d been manipulating a side console. His massive form was reassuring.

  “Good,” Thomas said, striding up to the main display.

  “We don’t know what the fuck’s going on, sir,” Ranson said quietly, leaning in so close Thomas could smell the beer on his breath. “The after half of the ship looks normal, but forward of frame fifty-seven, here”—he gestured at a frame just forward of midships—“nothing makes sense. We’ve lost sensor readings in this entire area, but then everything looks normal right up here at the bow.” Another gesture. “Pressure is low in this forward area, but stable. No sign of a hull breach.”

  Thomas took in the symbols on the display, imagining the vast, circular hole that had just been torn out of Bowen’s heart.

  “You and I know exactly what’s going on, Chief. Don’t pretend otherwise.”

  Ranson’s eyes were afire, but Thomas knew the anger wasn’t for him.

  “How the fuck did they do this, sir?”

  “This is just the first step. We’re in a lot of trouble.”

  Thomas stepped away from the display and surveyed the room. Most of the stations were occupied, but there was no longer any chatter. All eyes were on him. He looked around for the main broadcast handset, and activated it.

  “All positions, this is the strike officer in DCC, sitrep.” His voice echoed in the passageway, as he knew it did throughout the ship. “Bowen has suffered an attack by gravi-torpedo which has destroyed most of the forward end of the ship on decks two, three, and four. There will be structural damage on all decks forward of frame fifty-seven, and all crew are to evacuate to positions aft of that frame, using decks one and five only. If you cannot reach your usual station, report to the after manning pool.”

  Some soldiers were more capable than others of improvising in crisis situations, but all responded well to a drilled-in command like the general alarm.

  “This is the strike officer,” he said again. “Bring the ship to battle stations.”

  Damage Control Center was one of the few places on board with full access to shipwide communications, and one of the engineers immediately sounded the general alarm, then repeated the order. Through the open door to the passageway he heard an immediate rumble of renewed activity.

  Engineers backed aside as Sergeant Bunyasiriphant clumped into DCC, her armored form looking extra massive as she carried Thomas’s suit in her arms. She lowered the torso and offered him the legs.

  “I’ve split the squad into pairs to guard the airlocks aft of frame fifty-seven, sir. However, there are six entry points and we can currently only cover four.” Her dark eyes lit up. “But I have a lot of extra weapons.”

  “I’ll get more troops for you.” Thomas stepped into his suit and took the torso from her, sliding it over his head and locking it into place. “Hold your current positions.”

  “How long ’til the attack?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe twenty minutes, maybe longer.”

  “Yes, sir.” She left his helmet and assault rifle on the nearest console, ignoring the protest of the engineer who was manning it, and returned to strike storage. As she departed, Thomas noticed Chen and Hayley slipping into DCC in their emergency vacuum suits. Hayley was holding a bandage against her head. Thomas motioned them over.

  “See anyone else on your way down here?”

  Chen shook his head. “Just a few stunned crew, heading to their stations.”

  Thomas reached for the broadcast handset, but fumbled with it in his armored glove. He passed it to Chen.

  “Sublieutenant, make the pipe—all officers report to DCC.”

  Chen duly repeated the order, then his eyes moved expectantly toward the door.

  “And talk to the hangar,” Thomas added. “I need to know the status of our Hawks.” He turned to Chief Ranson and calmly asked a few routine questions about engineering status. They had the desired effect, and the chief regained his usual composure, answering the questions and barking a few orders at his team. Reports began to come in from damage control teams, and a sense of normalcy slowly returned, at least for a battle situation.

  A distant voice came from the passageway, getting rapidly closer with demands of “make a hole!” and “coming through!” John Micah burst into DCC, eyes wide, warbags still contained on his belt.

  “The whole fucking bridge is gone!”

  Thomas marched toward him, servos whirring as his feet thumped against the deck.

  “I went to see what happened,” Micah shouted, “but the air sucked me down and I barely hung on. There’s just a big fucking hole in the center of the ship!” He was staring wildly at the engineers and was about to bellow again when Thomas grabbed his face with a gloved hand. He knew his armor well, and squeezed just enough to freeze Micah’s jaw.

  “Shut the fuck up, Lieutenant Micah,” he hissed. “We know what’s happened, and we’re dealing with it.” He lessened his grip, but didn’t remove his hand. “Are you calm?”


  “I saw it,” John whispered back, tears in his eyes. “It’s all gone.”

  “I know. I’ve seen it too, in Toronto. But we’re going to fight.”

  “How?”

  “I need your help,” he said carefully, ignoring the question and staring at his colleague. “Will you help me?”

  John was shaking, but a semblance of calm returned to his eyes.

  “Yes.”

  Thomas smiled, nodding as he released the anti-stealth director and motioned for him to follow. He returned to his position by the main display, flanked by the other officers.

  “The ship is at battle stations,” Chief Ranson reported, “from a damage control point of view, and with all personnel confirmed aft of frame fifty-seven.”

  “You’ve searched the forward end?”

  “Thermal scans indicated certain spaces with life forms, and the manning pool sent teams to evacuate them. Everyone’s clear now.”

  “What’s the count?”

  “Ninety-seven, including twenty-two wounded.” Ranson glanced past Thomas, then back. “No other officers.”

  Ninety-seven crew remaining, a quarter of whom were wounded. Over fifty lost in the attack. Thomas nodded to the chief, then regarded his officers. Chen stared wide-eyed. Hayley winced as she adjusted the bandage against her head.

  John started to regain his composure. He looked around slowly.

  “I guess you’re it… Captain.”

  “You ready to help me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Thomas took the handset from Chen and carefully pressed down on the talk button.

  “This is Sublieutenant Kane. I have assumed command of Admiral Bowen. Sitrep: the current threat is rebel small craft who will be attempting to board our ship. We will maintain personnel in engineering and DCC, and strike team will hold their positions. All other personnel report to the hangar. I will need twenty volunteers to take up arms and join our front line of defense. Make yourself known to Lieutenant Micah in the hangar.”

  He paused, knowing that the crew would be disoriented by his strange orders. Clarity was essential to focus them—and perhaps a touch of inspiration.

  “We will keep the unarmed and wounded in the hangar, clear of the fighting,” he continued. “Those who are armed will defend our ship from this attack. We will kill every rebel who boards us, and we will chase their craft away. We will ensure that all the colonies understand that they picked the wrong cruiser to mess with.”