Shiplord: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 3)

by Felix R. Savage

  “No, and no. We could ask the G9 leaders to bring supplies when they come up to sue for peace.”

  Hannah rode out the next skip thinking about what she’d most like to drink right now. For some reason she really craved Madeira. Or a dry white wine. Oh, or champagne. Was there champagne in heaven?

  Their skips got shorter as the Lightbringer lost speed.

  Half an hour between skip two and skip three.

  Twenty minutes after skip three, they braced for skip four.

  Ripstiggr, lying on his side in his hammock, gestured at the consoles, and Hannah gathered herself.

  Bump bump bump, her hammock soaked up shockwaves.

  She reviewed the last email she’d ever received from Iristigut.

  Ripstiggr wasn’t a real pilot.

  Iristigut was.

  And he’d told her a few things about flying the Lightbringer, things she might need to know if they were actually going to try this aerobraking shit.

  Such as: You must keep the ship’s nose UP.

  OK.

  Hannah took a deep breath—and snatched the flight controls from Ripstiggr.

  She was Shiplord.

  And her interface with the chip had improved a lot recently. For so long it had seemed like she was making no progress at all … but that’s how exponential learning curves work. They look flat for the longest time and then they shoot up. So after all this time, her efforts to learn Rristigul were finally paying off, while the chip’s own machine learning capabilities had allowed it to build up an understanding of how her brain worked. They had achieved the first-ever interstellar technological handshake.

  Didn’t feel like a handshake, though.

  Felt like a hug.

  My baby.

  No. Not my baby.

  With a thought and a gesture, Hannah pushed the Lightbringer’s nose down.

  The ship lost its balance. It pitched into the thermosphere, diving towards the Pacific, out of control.

  *

  When she and Bethany were kids—this was before their parents died—they used to vacation at Shaver Lake, in the Sierra National Forest. The family car was a jeep. The girls delighted in going for off-road rides on the dirt roads around the lake. Securely buckled in, they’d shriek joyously, “Faster! Daddy, go faster!”

  Little had they known that jeep would kill their parents when Hannah was ten.

  Anyway.

  Bump bump bump.

  Faster, Daddy, faster!

  Turns out bumpy rides aren’t so much fun when you’re 42, and instead of rocketing over a dirt road, you’re freefalling through Earth’s atmosphere, and your five-kilometer billion-ton jeep is melting.

  The chip flooded her with panicky status updates.

  Ripstiggr wrestled with the maneuvering thrusters but any idiot could see that that was not going to be enough to flatten out the Lightbringer’s dive. In contrast to their previous flyby, when they zoomed in at a nice low angle, they were going in steep and hot.

  Flung around in her hammock, Hannah thought: Look, Skyler. Look. I did the right thing.

  But when you fall from high orbit, you fall for a long time. Long before the Lightbringer reached the stratosphere, her triumph had started to pall, as she listened to the soldiers and crew joke about their impending death. How big of a splash will we make? They were professional. Calm. Composed. Everything astronauts should be. And she’d just killed them all.

  Ripstiggr abandoned his futile struggle with the maneuvering thrusters. He climbed out of his hammock and leapt into Hannah’s, landing on his hands and knees, straddling her. “You did this.”

  Hannah wiped her eyes and nose, leaving snail trails on the arms of her suit. She hadn’t even known she was crying. “They think you did it,” she said, turning her head to indicate the soldiers and crew. “They think you screwed up.”

  Ripstiggr grabbed her by the hair. She screamed. Balancing with his feet on the ends of her hammock, he lifted her by her hair. “This alien,” he shouted. “This thing has sabotaged our mission.” Hannah was still screaming, clutching at his wrists. “Death is too good for her. But there isn’t time to punish her as she deserves, unfortunately.”

  He gripped her head in one hand, her shoulder in the other, prepared to twist.

  “No,” Gurlp shouted, jumping out of her hammock. “She is best Shiplord we ever have!”

  “Take your dirty ditch-born hands off her,” Joker yelled.

  “You killed one Shiplord already,” Hulk rumbled. “You go too far, Ripstiggr.”

  “That’s right! Leave her alone!” Gurlp shouted.

  Ripstiggr’s grip slackened.

  Hannah twisted free. She took a half-step, turning to face Ripstiggr in the swaying hammock. His mouth hung open. Never before had his people stood up to him like this. The rriksti were feudal, intensely hierarchical … but when all was said and done, Ripstiggr was just a platoon sergeant. They hadn’t forgotten that, even if he wished they would.

  Hannah punched him in the crotch.

  Then she lost her balance and fell out of the hammock, into the arms of her crew.

  “He screwed up,” she said, dashing her hair out of her face. “But I can fix this.”

  Could she?

  Soldiers vaulted down from their hammocks and formed a living shield around her. It wasn’t necessary, as Ripstiggr hadn’t moved, but she appreciated the thought. She hung onto them for support as the bumpy descent continued.

  “We’ll deploy the dirigibles,” she said.

  “What dirigibles?”

  Hannah winked. “You don’t think they made a ship this big, this powerful, this expensive, and didn’t give it an emergency unpowered descent option?”

  She was cheating, kinda, because Iristigut had told her about the dirigibles, but it still felt great when they stared at her in awe.

  “We can’t use the dirigibles yet, though,” she acknowledged. “They’d just burn up.”

  The hull was ablating in a cone of fire.

  Ice broke off from stanchions and shattered decks, and showered out of the hole in the side of the ship.

  External heat rejection systems were melting.

  From the ground, the Lightbringer must look like the Chicxulub impactor.

  “I need to calculate our trajectory. Can you get Ripstiggr out of the drive chancel? Don’t hurt him. I just don’t want him near me.”

  In a press of jostling bodies, she forced her way back to the drive chancel and got a boost into her hammock. The soldiers stayed with her, surrounding her hammock like a praetorian guard. She concentrated on the screens and tried not to think about how badly she wanted a drink. She understood now that alcohol hindered her interface with the chip. It insulated her from the Lightbringer. That’s probably why she craved it so much—

  Oh, Hannah-banana, quit making excuses for yourseld.

  The Lightbringer approached the coast of California, 120 kilometers up, doing Mach 35.

  CHAPTER 52

  “Shiplord, we should launch the shuttles,” Joker said.

  “What?” Hannah shook zoomed-in optical images out of her eyes. She’d found Pacific Heights, where Bethany and her family used to live. She’d been trying to find their house, but the neighborhood was unrecognizable. Many homes had been bulldozed. Smoke rose from outdoor fires. Swimming pools had turned green, or were empty. She remembered Isabel cleaving through the water in the Zieglers’ backyard pool, and clenched her fists in a spontaneous prayer. Please God, let her be safe.

  “Oh … the shuttles.”

  The four refurbished shuttles waited in the vacuum dock, fueled up. Each shuttle carried a full complement of crew and infantry, 200 apiece. Plus bombs.

  If Hannah refused to launch the shuttles, the crew would doubt their decision to take her side. If she said yes … the shuttles would be free to drop their payloads on Earth’s ICBM launch sites.

  It wasn’t that hard a choice.

  Hannah never had been a fan of weapons of m
ass destruction.

  “Go ahead,” she said, authorizing the shuttles with a thought.

  Back in the vacuum dock, robot arms flung the shuttles at the autorips in the wall. The four little craft tumbled out into the Lightbringer’s fiery slipstream, and powered up to full thrust.

  Two of them climbed, turning 90°, into polar orbits. They would hook over the North Pole and stoop down on launch sites in Asia and Russia.

  The other two screamed ahead of the Lightbringer, heading for Europe.

  “We take care of North America targets ourselves,” Gurlp said. “Shiplord, authorize weapons systems!”

  Hannah looked into Gurlp’s bright eyes, and died a bit inside. Gurlp had been the first crew member to speak up in her support. She owed her her life. How could she say no?

  But this was the same as authorizing the shuttles. Right? They would only be hitting strategic targets. And wherever Hannah’s family was, they sure weren’t hanging out at a military airfield.

  “Weapons systems authorized,” she said in a low voice.

  The railgun powered up. Gurlp pushed past her, bio-antennas stabbing at the targeting console.

  A projectile screamed along the rails. It arrowed down through the atmosphere and slammed into Vandenberg Air Force Base, which now belonged to the Republic of California. The launch pad and associated facilities were instantly pulverized. A mushroom cloud rose over the wreckage, towering up to the stratosphere … but the Lightbringer had already passed on to the east.

  *

  Underground in the Cheyenne complex, Tom Flaherty gave orders to scramble every fighter still under the command of the United States government. His comms section had fallen back on a patched-together network of third-party base stations and military radio. Nevertheless, the orders quickly reached Air Force bases in Alaska, Kansas, and Oklahoma. F-22s and F-35s took off in pursuit of the Lightbringer.

  The floor bucked under Flaherty’s feet.

  Kuldeep, beside him, staggered and grabbed a desk for balance.

  Insulation tiles fell from the ceiling. Dust filled the room.

  The lights went out.

  The phone in Flaherty’s hand hissed static.

  *

  A missile sank New Hope off the Louisiana coast.

  Cape Canaveral went up in flames. All that rocket fuel made an explosion so big it broke windows in Miami.

  Wallops Island, the NASA facility off the Virginia coast, took a direct hit.

  The Lightbringer charged on over the Atlantic.

  Atmospheric drag had reduced its speed to Mach 10.

  And now it was only 60 kilometers up, bouncing and roaring through the mesosphere.

  Hannah, said the chip. Enemies/allies acquired.

  “Oh, look,” Hannah said. “We’ve got company.”

  She drove her hands into her hair, despairing. There was just no good way out of this. Each of those fighter jets had a pilot, and each of the pilots had a family ... and gung-ho Gurlp was already targeting them.

  Hannah focused on the Lightbringer, so she wouldn’t have to watch the jets go down. She pulsed the maneuvering thrusters, just to confirm they were still working. Fuel was low, so she killed the thrusters again.

  The Atlantic swept past below.

  The Lightbringer punched down through the ozone layer.

  The American fighter jets rose on a vector that would intercept the alien ship’s descent.

  Gurlp nailed the leaders with HERF pulses.

  They fell to the ocean like stones.

  The others, quick learners, hung back out of HERF range.

  And down we go into the troposphere—the bottom layer of the atmosphere, the stuff we breathe.

  Clouds covered the eastern Atlantic, so Hannah couldn’t see exactly how much ocean they still had to cross. She tried to bite her nails, tasted filthy smart material, doffed the suit to her elbows and chewed on a thumbnail that wasn’t much cleaner.

  Back in the unpressurized regions of the ship, the soldiers who could not fit into the bridge were hanging on for dear life. Hannah figured out how to check in with them, and did it. “How’s it going, guys?”

  “Bumpy,” they said.

  Now there was air outside, albeit thin. It battered into the hole in the side of the ship, filling the interior corridors. At the same time, the Venturi effect tried to press the airflow out. Bumpy was an understatement. The soldiers had lashed themselves to stanchions, crowded into the least-exposed decks.

  The Lightbringer tore through the cloud ceiling, cutting through thick cumulus. Hannah gasped in horror as she saw nothing but ocean to the east and west.

  “Deploy dirigibles,” she said. She had to stretch this glide out any way she could.

  Hidden exterior compartments—at least, they used to be hidden before the outer layer of the hull melted off—snapped open. Thirty-five enormous sand-colored dirigibles burst out, inflating as their tethers jerked taut. Inside them: very hot hydrogen gas.

  The Lightbringer juddered. Hannah clung to the sides of her hammock, waiting to see how much lift and drag the dirigibles could deliver.

  Answer: not much.

  Still falling.

  “Knew those wouldn’t help,” said a familiar voice. She glanced up and saw Ripstiggr looking down at her. He’d climbed into the web of support cables that held the hammocks. Crouched up there like a spider, he stared down at the group in the drive chancel.

  “It was a good idea in theory,” Hannah snapped.

  “I know what they’ll be good for,” Ripstiggr said. “Release them.”

  “No!”

  Back on Sleeper Deck 4, a soldier raised her head. Her suit flowed back from golden bio-antennas and an ecstatic face. Her companions grabbed at her in horror. “I can breathe!” she said. “Try it!”

  Then she keeled over, because the Lightbringer was at the same altitude as the top of Mount Everest.

  But all the time they were dropping into thicker, warmer air. More soldiers doffed their suits. It broke Hannah’s heart to witness their delight as they inhaled Earth’s air for the first time, knowing these might be the last breaths they ever drew.

  “Those flyboys are catching up,” Ripstiggr said. “HERF mast’s out of power. Let me—”

  He leapt down from his perch. They wrestled. Ripstiggr kicked Gurlp in the face, pinned Hannah’s arms, and gestured at the dirigible controls.

  Ten of the dirigibles flew away behind the Lightbringer—and exploded into fireballs, the hydrogen ignited by explosive bolts.

  One F-22 flew straight into a burning dirigible.

  The other jets veered clear.

  Meanwhile, imprisoned in Ripstiggr’s arms, in the warm cage where she used to feel so safe, Hannah fired the maneuvering thrusters, rolling the Lightbringer 50° off the horizontal.

  All the hammocks swung and bumped each other.

  The wall of the drive chancel became a steeply pitched ceiling.

  Everyone who was out of their hammocks—Ripstiggr, Gurlp, Joker, Hannah, and a dozen soldiers—wound up in a heap on the opposite wall.

  “You probably have this idea of a crash landing where you just glide in like a paper airplane,” Hannah gasped. She was trapped in the pile of bodies, but Ripstiggr had shielded her with his body, protecting her from getting crushed. “That’s not how it works. It doesn’t matter how you come in, right side up or upside-down or backwards, as long as you keep your nose up. And because this ship is shaped like a freaking sperm whale, you know, with the magnetic field generator and all that business, rolling is the only way to do it. We’ll probably land in the Atlantic, anyway. So it won’t make any difference. But I tried.”

  Gurlp’s voice said, “Is that land?”

  “Land?” Hannah struggled upright, for their current value of ‘upright.’ Stepping on people, she fought for a view of the transparent wall.

  Ahead of the Lightbringer, a purple smear lurked beneath the clouds.

  “Land! It is! Oh, come on, come on, com
e on,” Hannah begged. “Come on, baby! You can do it!”

  The Lightbringer fell onwards and down towards the distant shore, while Ripstiggr released the rest of the dirigibles one by one, scaring off the few jets that still pursued.

  A breadcrumb trail of fireballs traced the alien ship’s course over the coast of Gabon.

  Its sonic boom rolled like thunder, terrifying people and animals across a curve of Africa as wide as the path of a solar eclipse.

  Everyone on the bridge shouted deliriously as the ground came closer. Cacophony reigned on the radio frequencies. The air was silent, except for the creaking of hammocks, and one hoarse human voice. Hannah was promising God that if she lived through this, she would give up drinking.

  The Lightbringer tore through treetops, touched down, rebounded, ploughed into dense undergrowth, and skidded along for several miles while incinerating and flattening the jungle at the same time.

  It came to rest on its side, smoking, in a sparsely inhabited region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

  The bridge airlocks gave way.

  Sweet, humid, rich air flooded in.

  CHAPTER 53

  As the Cloudeater glided around the moon yet again, Alexei and Nene butchered a dead rriksti in the cargo hold. She had died in the steam explosion on board the SoD. Alexei hadn’t known her very well. That did not make the grisly task any easier, nor did the knowledge that many of the survivors would refuse to eat her flesh, even if he sliced it thinner than gourmet sausage. Rriksti funerals included ceremonial consumption of mummified flesh, but they drew the line at eating their friends as a source of calories. They would, literally, starve first.

  The Cloudeater had orbited the moon nineteen times now. Every orbit changed their plane by a few degrees. They had started off in the SoD’s equatorial orbit. To land at the south pole, they needed to get into a polar orbit. With limited reaction mass, Keelraiser had only one option: Go round, and round, and round, burning for a few minutes each time, tipping their orbit south like the hand of a clock.

  Every orbit took six hours.

  Six hours times nineteen is almost five days.

  But who’s counting, when you’re living in a flying gulag? Every hour dragged like a year. Alexei actually felt guilty relief at escaping to the cargo hold, breathing suit air instead of the stench in the passenger cabin. The ramp was open a crack. Sun shone in. Earlier he had glimpsed Earth in that crack. They’d learned from the internet a couple of days ago that the Lightbringer had crash-landed in the Congo.