Fire on the Frontline

by Trevor Wyatt

  But Jeryl…Jeryl she could trust.

  Surrounded by bureaucrats from all sides, he somehow managed to retain a certain ruggedness that Ashley found reminiscent of all those war stories about The Schism. If that tidal wave ended up being more real than she wanted it to be, she was glad to have Captain Jeryl at the helm.

  “What’s going on, Ashley?” he asked her as the door closed behind them. His lips were a thin line, his voice was clipped and terse.

  She looked back at him for a moment, the hard edge in his eyes a reminder that in that moment, she was his First Officer, and not the woman who had slept next to him in a high-rise suite in New Sydney.

  “Take a look at this,” she started, walking toward the metallic workstation that took over Jeryl’s entire office. The workstation was a round platform with a sleek surface. Barely noticeable holographic projectors were mounted all around its curved edges. The workstation was smaller than the central console they had back in the CNC, but it was still imposing enough to have a few officers around it.

  Ashley opened her palm over the workstation and the whole surface lit up. The holographic projectors heated up, and the main control dashboard appeared in front of her, a see-through projection she could use even if she had her eyes closed. As complex as the dashboard might seem, the Academy drilled their officers hard in matters of bureaucracy and logistics.

  Eventually, the entire thing became second nature to a fast learner like Ashley. She pulled up the readings the Science Officer alerted her to, moving her fingers in the air as if she was weaving a fine, invisible web.

  After the radar alerted them to the presence of debris in the area, Ashley had sent a small probe out for visual confirmation; she thought she had simply found a small asteroid field, nothing remarkable at all. The visual readings, however, quickly dispelled the naïve thought.

  “What am I looking at, Ashley?” Jeryl asked her placing his hands on the edge of the workstation. He leaned forward, his eyes narrowing as he focused on the images Ashley just projected. In the projection, a few shards of contorted metal seemed to float freely in the vastness of space, tiny crumbles of glittering debris in a dark canvas.

  Instead of replying, Ashley spread her fingers wide once more and zoomed in on the debris. A dark shadow took over Jeryl’s narrowed eyes, Ashley knew the Captain was trying to escape the inevitable answer. The Seeker had set out on a simple reconnaissance mission, its purpose to retrieve a small crew of overexcited scientists who unwittingly entered uncharted territory—but all that was about to change.

  A deep exploration vessel turned into scrap right in the middle of nowhere; if Jeryl was already fidgety about the whole situation, Ashley couldn’t even imagine what the Admiral’s reaction was going to be. She could already see this mission’s folder stamped with a large red S, all that information turning into a slew of “on a need to know basis” facts.

  It just made no sense to Ashley. She doubted any of the Outer Colony fleets would be this deep into outer space, and even smugglers and pirates wouldn’t be venturing this far. What the hell had happened here?

  “Are you sure, Ashley?” Jeryl asked her again, looking up from the projected images and staring right at her, the lines in his face turning into deep trails of concern. “We have to be sure.”

  “I’m positive,” Ashley nodded, taking a deep breath as she felt the words claw up her throat. “We’ve identified the debris as The Mariner—and it was destroyed.”

  Jeryl

  After staring at the expanded view, taking in the data readouts cascading down the side of the screen, Jeryl looked back at Ashley’s face. Her lips were compressed into a thin line and her brows furrowed. Jeryl cleared his throat.

  “The energy signatures from that wreckage...”

  Ashley nodded.

  “No radioactivity. No CP beams. Something—”

  “Unknown,” Jeryl finished.

  Unknown, he thought.

  Alien.

  “But there’s no trace of any activity in this sector,” Jeryl said. It was needless to say that there had never been a trace of activity in any of the sectors. It was a matter of historical fact; there was no intelligent life anywhere in the volume of space controlled by the Union.

  “What are we dealing with here?”

  Ashley allowed a small smile to soften her tight lips.

  “As you say, it’s unknown.”

  Several thoughts raced inside Jeryl’s mind.

  Is this it? First Contact?

  No, he couldn’t buy that. The Outer Colonies, despite his ruling out their interference, could have upped their game with weapons research, and come up with an advanced tech they had come a long way to test. Or had a new player entered the game? But still…Jeryl wondered how any of those reasons could explain why anyone would destroy an unarmed vessel like the The Mariner.

  He drew a breath.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s look at the facts. The Mariner is destroyed. We are ruling out something internal—sabotage, some experiment gone awry. Right?”

  He shot Ashley a glance and she nodded once. “So we assume an outside force. And yet—,” Jeryl deliberately tapped the top of his desk. “—there aren’t any. As far as we know,” he added quickly, seeing that Ashley had opened her mouth to reply. “It’s a big galaxy, but still.”

  There were only a few billion humans scattered across a couple of hundred worlds—plenty of room for strange things to lurk in unexplored places, even in systems they had colonized.

  “We have already agreed that it’s an unknown,” said Ashley. “Alien? Human agency? Or perhaps some sort of natural phenomenon.”

  “Natural?”

  Jeryl thought about that for a moment. “Well, they were out here on an exploratory mission. Our records show they were to investigate the Anderson Nebula.”

  “That’s right,” Ashley said.

  The Anderson was a small planetary nebula. It was young, less than two thousand years old. It was far enough from Earth, only detected by one of the more distant Union worlds. The Mariner was sent to investigate the neutron star spinning at the nebula’s center. It would be the closest neutron star to Union territory, which had made the place worth a visit.

  Jeryl cast another glance at the readouts.

  “Well,” he said, “if you’re suggesting they tangled with the Anderson’s neutron star, Ashley—mmm, I don’t think it parses. Given the position of the wreckage, it’s clear they never got close enough to the nebula to be affected by its collapse. Sensors give no indication of anything else in the vicinity like, I don’t know, a mini black hole...which in any case wouldn’t have torn the ship apart. Nor would the neutron star. Either one would have sucked the ship in.”

  Jeryl shrugged. “Gravity being what it is. There’d be nothing at all here.”

  Ashley sighed. “I know. But whatever it was, it was more powerful than anything in our records.”

  Jeryl had trouble concentrating on the conversation. He kept thinking back to the time they spent at the Oath, when they—

  No, he thought., Best not go there. He shook his head to dispel the memory.

  “There’s no use denying it,” she said sharply, misinterpreting Jeryl’s gesture. “As you’ve said, it’s a big galaxy. Shit happens, sir. Did you take a really close look at Lannigan’s report on the wreckage?”

  Without answering, Jeryl did as she suggested, and spent a few minutes going over the abstract that Taft Lannigan, The Seeker’s Science Officer, had prepared. As ship’s captain, he didn’t have the time or the inclination to wade through screen after screen of technical data when all he wanted was a summary. Dr. Lannigan knew that, and knew better than to waste his time. He was a good officer. But now, what Jeryl found in Dr. Lannigan’s report made him frown.

  Unknown energy signatures, they already knew that. But the traces they left behind indicated levels so powerful that they were not only unknown to Terran science, but also stronger than anything else they had enco
untered before.

  When Outer Colonies split off, they had taken some of Earth’s finest—and most malcontented—minds with them. Jeryl wondered about them again.

  “It’s not the Outers. It can’t be them,” Ashley said as if she were reading his mind.

  Jeryl stared at her.

  “I think you’re right,” he said after weighing the possibility. “I think they’re too busy trying to stay alive.”

  “In which case,” she said, “what about someone else?”

  Jeryl scoffed. “Who?”

  “One of the corporate fleets.”

  While it was true that the corpers—that was what they called them—bragged about having more advanced hardware and AIs than the Union ships, all those things had been fairy tales they had let them believe. A commercial enterprise anywhere in history that has a leg up over the military was non-existent. Jeryl supposed there were isolated examples, but for the most part, more technical advances had come through military necessity than through corper blue-skying.

  Except genetics, Jeryl thought. And even there, he knew for a fact that the Union had research facilities at least on par with the civilian facilities.

  But the bottom line was the corpers simply weren’t anywhere near the fringes of known space. There was no money to be made in undeveloped areas. The corpers weren’t humanitarian outfits; they were motivated by financial gain, and not prone to much speculative exploration.

  Once a promising world was located, some place thickly forested, abundant with foreign vegetation with potential to cure diseases or prolong life...Then the corporations would show up, glad-handing the colonies and dumping money into research for a cut of the gain. It was politics and business as usual.

  “There’s just no reason to suspect any kind of corporate involvement here,” Jeryl said. “And what would they have to gain by destroying a Union starship?”

  “Because they’ve stumbled on something lucrative? Like, something incredibly lucrative that it’d be worth killing for?”

  Jeryl shook his head. “It just doesn’t make any sense, Ash.”

  Ash—he had used her nickname, despite himself. Ashley, however, didn’t seem to notice the breach in professionalism.

  “That would be, I don’t know, renegade behavior,” Jeryl continued. “No one could get away with that for long. And what could possibly be that lucrative?”

  “All right then, what about someone completely new?”

  Jeryl grinned. “How long did you say you’ve been an officer on a starship?”

  Ashley flushed.

  “There’s nothing. No one else,” said Jeryl. “Look, excuse me for being obvious, but in 150 years as a space-faring civilization, we’ve never found any other sentient life. Not even a trace. No ruins, fossils...zero. Zip. Not even radio signals.”

  “What if they don’t use radio?” said Ashley.

  Before he could object, Ashley waved her hand.

  “I know, I know—you’re right. I mean, I understand perfectly well that neither the outers nor the corpers could develop whatever destroyed The Mariner. But something did.”

  “Undeniably.”

  “Have you ever heard of Sherlock Holmes?”

  Jeryl blinked at the abrupt change of subject.

  “No. What ship does he command?”

  Ashley smiled. “He’s a fictional character, Jeryl. A detective, created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the Nineteenth Century.”

  “Oh. Well, no, I’ve never heard of him.” Jeryl knew she read a lot, but he had no idea her tastes included pre-Union fiction until now.

  I learn something new every day, he thought.

  “Well, Holmes once said, when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. So, if we rule out involvement by corpers and outers, and other human agencies, and natural phenomena, we are left with...”

  She raised her eyebrows at Jeryl. Jeryl, in turn, concealed his irritation.

  “I don’t know,” he said in a clipped tone. He saw a telltale blink red on his desktop. “Look, I have to report to the admiral. He doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

  “Of course, sir.” Ashley smiled. It was nice smile, a private one, like the ones she gave him at the Oath. Jeryl hoped to see more of it.

  “Shall I talk to Dr. Lannigan? Have him bring some of the debris aboard for closer study?”

  “Precisely what I was going to suggest,” said Jeryl. The telltale blinked again. Admiral Flynn really didn’t care to be kept waiting.

  “See to it, please, Commander.”

  Ashley snapped off a salute, and Jeryl returned it automatically. They both smiled, a private undertone shared between them. Jeryl wanted to say something else, something personal, but before he could sort out his thoughts, Ashley said, “I’ll be in CNC, sir.”

  She turned and left his office. The telltale sign of an incoming transmission blinked and Jeryl, alone, tapped the comm link.

  Time to face the music that was Armada Command.

  Jeryl

  “Dammit, Montgomery, I want answers. I need answers.”

  “I understand, Admiral. I’m doing my best to—”

  Admiral Flynn waved an impatient hand as if to wipe Jeryl’s words away from the air. Flynn was a choleric man in his mid-sixties, still craggy and in great shape, his brush-cut hair gone grey. Jeryl knew he was an enthusiastic amateur boxer, and personally, he wouldn’t want to step into the ring with him despite Flynn being shorter and lighter than he was. The Admiral had a fire for personal best.

  Jeryl took no offense at the gesture. He explained to him that he was having some of the wreckage brought aboard for closer examination.

  “Just give me a couple of hours to get a more complete report together, Admiral,” he said, remaining calm in the face of Flynn’s glare.

  Jeryl had dealt with Flynn before and he knew that despite the Admiral’s bluster, Flynn was no martinet. And Jeryl knew that he was not stalling.

  Flynn scrunched his face up.

  “All right,” he growled. “You’ve got three hours. Fair?”

  “Fair,” Jeryl said. He signed off and went down to the science section with the intention to build a fire under Dr. Lannigan.

  * * *

  Three hours later he was back on the slipstream with Admiral Flynn at Edoris Station, sharing his findings. Even though there had never been any proof that a slipstream broadcast could be hacked, it was customary to encode them on the off chance the Outers have made a breakthrough.

  Flynn wasn’t happy with what he was told.

  “All my science team can say is that whatever destroyed The Mariner was an energy weapon of some kind,” said Jeryl.

  Flynn let out an impressive snort. “Well, it’s good to know that we haven’t got one of Horatio Hornblower’s ships of the line out here blasting away with a fusillade of cannon fire!”

  Jeryl bit his lips to restrain a laugh despite his sarcasm.

  “Send me the reports. I want to see ‘em.”

  Jeryl subvocalized a few commands to the ship’s computer; it responded with a low compliant tone.

  “On their way,” said Jeryl.

  Even though Flynn was light years away at Edoris, the slipstream, quantum miracle that it was, dropped the documents into his computer almost at once. Jerly knew the documents would not make him any happier. Flynn called them up on a read-screen, his scowl deepening as he scanned through the files.

  “Unknown energy signature...all remaining components give evidence of having been bathed in highly charged emissions. Super charged, in fact.”

  He grunted.

  “Whatever that is. No, no,” he added as Jeryl started to explain, “I know what it means. You’re saying that whatever hit The Mariner disintegrated some of its components, destroying enough of them that the ship’s hull couldn’t maintain integrity. The Mariner exploded. The wreckage is brittle, some of it, like old bread.”

  Admiral Flynn looked up from Flynn’s r
eport.

  “They were on their way to investigate a neutron star in that damned nebula.”

  Again, the Admiral scrunched his face. “Could they have been caught in a GRB?”

  GRB, Jeryl thought. Gamma ray burst?

  He took a few seconds to ponder the idea. High-energy physics was not his field, but like all ship captains, Jeryl knew his astronomy. He supposed a concentrated burst of gamma rays could do the sort of damage they found, but, from what he knew, GRBs were rare; maybe half a dozen per galaxy per million years.

  GRBs were associated with the collapse of a dying sun into a high-density neutron star, but The Mariner’s target had been sitting in its nebula for centuries, at most.

  The biggest strike against implicating a GRB was that there had never been one in their galaxy; all observed GRBs originated from outside the Milky Way. An event of that size would have lit up radio telescopes dozens of worlds. A GRB in the Milky Way, if it happened to be pointing at Earth, could trigger a mass extinction event, potentially sterilizing the planet, and turning it into a lifeless cinder.

  Jeryl explained his reasoning to Flynn, and the Admiral nodded as if he had already figured it out. Jeryl thought he probably already has.

  “Well then, this last bit,” Flynn said, flicking a paragraph up onto the screen so that Jeryl could see it, too.

  “Lannigan is saying that he suspects a concentrated, highly charged beam of photons. Mixed in with a population of some unknown particle.”

  “Yeah, um...” Jeryl hoped his face remained passive; he hadn’t noticed that particular datum in the findings.

  Unknown?

  Jeryl cursed silently. Not that it was a surprise to him—everything about this situation smacked of the unknown, only he should have caught that detail. Jeryl nodded sagely.

  Fortunately, Flynn took it as an agreement with his assessment rather than Jeryl’s attempt to cover his mistake.

  “So we’re left with a particle beam of a previously undiscovered nature that can cause molecular breakdown,” said Jeryl, summing up for himself as much as for the Admiral.