by Richard Fox
“‘God is with us,’” Jenkins translated. “She was built in a joint Swedish-German venture and most of the crew is from central and northern Europe. The motto’s tied to the battle she’s named for, somehow. I’m from the States. Can’t say I understand their passion for all things religion or know much about European history.”
“You didn’t live through a Crusade. Did they lower the rear blast shield yet?” Valdar asked.
“Actually, sir, Commander Albrecht, the wing commander, has the ship on intake recovery until she’s with the fleet. No slowing down just to make the pilots lives easier. You may want to buckle up,” Jenkins said.
“May, she says.”
Valdar pulled against the handle aside her seat and flew to the seat against the wall the crewman prepared. He strapped himself in and pulled his helmet from the pouch on his thigh. In carry mode, the helmet was barely bigger than an Ubi tablet. With the helmet between his palms, he gave it a quick twist and the helmet popped into wear mode—a rounded cylinder with a loose plastic front. He slid the helmet over his head and it automatically fastened to his high-collared suit. The loose plastic went rigid and pressurized. The drop ship’s control feed popped onto his visor.
The drop ship went clear of the Breitenfeld’s bow and Valdar braced himself. The stars ahead morphed into streaks as the drop ship performed an inline Immelmann turn, turning around and over without losing any speed in their direction of travel away from the Breitenfeld. Some maneuvers could be done in the void that would result in a quick and messy death in atmosphere and Jenkins had just performed one elegantly.
Valdar held his breath for the next part. Still moving away from the Breitenfeld, Jenkins gunned the afterburners and Valdar felt the crush of g-forces against his body. The ship stopped shrinking, then grew larger on the screens ahead of them. Valdar looked to the port side and saw the wire outline of the wing engines swing 180 degrees and pulse. Instinct brought his gaze to the starboard side, where the matching engine had shifted as well.
The drop ship pitched beneath the gun deck and approached the hangar entrance. Crewmen evacuated the flight deck, where another drop ship was on the deck, steam and coolant streams puffing from the ship like the outer edge of a geyser.
“Speed disparity achieved, going to anti-gravs,” Jenkins said. Valdar felt the thrum of the engines die away and the drop ship hung in space before the Breitenfeld’s hangar entrance. The drop ship wouldn’t fly in and land; it would let the Breitenfeld overtake it, like krill swallowed by a whale shark.
The Breitenfeld moved around the drop ship and Jenkins used the anti-gravity emitters to guide it to the deck. The drop ship lowered, a bit too fast by Valdar’s estimation, and hit the deck hard enough that it bounced once.
“Oops,” Jenkins said.
All-clear icons popped onto his visor and Valdar removed his helmet. The upper and lower blast doors over the forward hangar entrance clamped together and amber lights warbled as atmosphere returned to the hangar.
Valdar felt weight return to his body with increasing pressure as the deck grav plating activated. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The weight of command waited for him once he disembarked from this drop ship.
This wasn’t what he’d planned. This wasn’t what he wanted but this was his duty.
Valdar collapsed his helmet with a twist and slipped it back into his thigh pouch. He unsnapped his restraints and strode from the cockpit, doing his best not to wobble on legs that hadn’t felt gravity for hours.
The Mule crew chief had the rear hatch lowered. A dozen naval officers and sailors stood in two even lines at the base of the ramp, all in their blue underway uniforms: coveralls over vacuum-rated skin suits. The men and women waiting for him had serious faces, all except one who bore a beaming smile. The smiler had dusky skin and her hair in a tight bun behind her head. He recognized his executive officer from her personnel file.
Valdar made his way down the ramp on rubbery legs. This is not the time to fall down, he told himself.
A boson held a music box to his lips and played three notes to pipe aboard the new captain.
“Breitenfeld, arriving,” boomed from the ship’s intercom system. The navy kept the traditional greeting of a ship’s commander as it evolved beyond the waterways to the void.
Across the hangar, a team of corpsmen ran up to another drop ship, a stretcher held between them. Valdar lost sight of the other drop ship as he came to a stop in front of his XO and exchanged salutes. Eyeballs from the assembled officers and sailors lingered on the ribbon racks sewn over the left breast of his uniform. Valdar had most of the ribbons one would expect of an officer with as many years served as he: The Defense of Australia, The Ryukyu Evacuation, a Purple Heart and a fruit salad of service ribbons. He knew they were staring at his Naval Cross and the Silver Star, the second and third highest awards for valor in the navy.
“Captain Valdar, I’m Commander Janessa Ericson. Welcome to the Breitenfeld. I have the department heads assembled and ready to brief you at your convenience. I understand you had a long flight and—Sir? Where are you going?”
Valdar had stepped around her and was running to the other drop ship where the medics carried a Marine from the bay on their stretcher.
Ericson, barely over five feet tall, struggled to catch up to her much longer-limbed commander as he trotted across the hangar bay.
A half-dozen Marines, their tan void armor stained in soot and blotches of blood, formed a semicircle around the medics and the Marine on their stretcher. A Marine in spotless armor and captain’s rank on his shoulder and chest plates saluted as Valdar came to a stop next to him.
“I told you I can walk just fine,” came a voice from the stretcher.
“What happened?” Valdar asked the Marine captain.
“The L-T took out a berserk Ibarra construction bot with his bare-fricking-hands, that’s what happened,” came a voice from the back of the Marines disembarking from the drop ship.
“Standish! Shut the hell up! That’s the new skipper,” said a panicked whisper.
Marines parted to let Valdar pass. Lieutenant Hale was on the stretcher, his right arm mag-locked to his side. The active camouflage on his injured arm flashed red to alert attending medics to his injuries as his vitals pulsed on his chest plate.
“That true, Marine?” Valdar asked, guiding the stretcher toward the air lock leading to sick bay.
Hale’s face flushed red and he looked down at his injured wrist where the jagged remnants of his gauntlet dagger still jutted from its sheath.
“Wasn’t barehanded, sir. Besides, I couldn’t have done it without my team distracting the bot,” Hale said.
Valdar nodded and let the stretcher and the Marines escorting it continue on without him. He turned around and locked eyes with the Marine captain.
“Sir, I’m Major Acera, commander of the joint army-marine task force on the Breitenfeld,” Acera said. He hadn’t promoted himself by accident. There was room for only a single captain on a ship; as such, those with the rank of captain from the other services were called the next higher rank as a matter of courtesy. The tanned Marine had pockmarked scars on the right side of his face and a sewn-up socket where his right eye should have been. Bionics were forbidden in combat areas and his injury would have been the end of Acera’s career if his armor’s systems weren’t able to make up for his lack of depth perception.
“Berserk Ibarra robots?” Valdar asked Acera.
“One of Ibarra’s asteroid factories went dark and the company asked us to investigate. There was some sort of malfunction with a new programming language. And whatever Ibarra was doing in that rock, it sure wasn’t mining. We’ve got one of the bot cores for analysis,” Acera said.
“Don’t touch it on this ship. If there’s some new Chinese malware running loose, the last thing we need to do is touch it and put the whole fleet at risk before we step off for Saturn,” Valdar said.
“All our systems are decentralized,
firewalled and properly shielded, sir,” Ericson said, stepping on her toe tips to talk over Acera’s shoulder.
“I heard that right before the Chinese turned my ship’s computers to slag,” Valdar said. “When was the last ship-wide analog drill?”
Ericson pursed her lips and whipped out her Ubi.
“Too long,” Valdar answered for her. “What’s our burn time to the rest of the fleet?”
“Eighteen hours and twelve minutes,” she said.
“That’s enough for a level two analog drill. Let me get situated and we’ll get it knocked out before we have to decelerate.” Valdar walked away and came to a sudden stop in the middle of the hangar.
He looked over his shoulder and said, “XO, where are my quarters?”
“Follow me, sir,” she said.
****
As captain of the Breitenfeld, a marvel of human engineering and capable of leveling entire cities from beyond the moon’s orbit, Valdar’s quarters were just large enough to hold his arms out without touching the walls and boasted a desk that folded down from the bulkhead.
His duffle bag was waiting on the bed for him. Some enterprising crewman had the courtesy to bring it up for him while he was otherwise engaged on the flight deck. Valdar pressed his hand against the bag and his palm print unlocked the flaps.
A framed picture tumbled from the bag and landed facedown. Valdar picked up the frame, a picture of his family on a Florida beach from years ago: him, his wife and two boys, all sunburned and caked in sand—his idea to turn everyone into a sugar cookie through a combination of surf and beach. The physical picture was something of an anachronism; most people kept photos in an online cloud or on their Ubis, but Valdar had little trust in ephemeral ones and zeroes dependent on a host of technical factors. The photo would remain intact and at his side, as subject to the passage of time as he was.
The photo went on a shelf above his bunk, a bunk he’d probably use less than four hours per day cycle if he was lucky. He looked at the display on the back of his left hand. There was enough time to run the analog drill and maybe a call to his family before the Breitenfeld joined the rest of the fleet.
A screen on the wall came to life and showed the face of one of his bridge crewman over a flashing bar of text alerting him that his video feed was off. Wouldn’t do to have the crew see the captain in any state of undress.
“Sir, sorry to bother you. Admiral Garrett on the line,” the crewman said.
“Patch him through,” Valdar said. He wiped his hand over his face and steeled himself for what could be a very angry call.
The face of Admiral Garrett, deep-set dark eyes over a square jaw and gray hair cut perfectly high and tight, came up. A red and yellow border around the screen marked this call as classified top secret.
“Isaac, good to see you. How’s the Breitenfeld?” the admiral asked.
“Just got in, sir. About to run an analog drill then have a sit-down with the department heads. Thank you for the opportunity to helm a ship one last time,” Valdar said.
“Don’t shit me, Isaac. I had to drag you kicking and screaming from your cozy little shore duty in Norfolk,” Garrett said, shaking his head slightly.
“I got to Norfolk two months ago. …This new assignment was rather sudden.”
“Indeed. You’ll get to ride out your retirement tour back at Norfolk as soon as the Titan orbital is up and running. Four months if nothing goes wrong, so probably seven months before you’re home. Just like I promised. I didn’t call just to chitchat though. I called you because you’re a man I know I can trust.
“Captain Riggs broke under interrogation, spilled everything about what the Chinese are after with the colony fleet and its capabilities. Given what we’ve learned elsewhere about the Chinese strike force at the Hainan orbital, the intelligence types have ‘high confidence’ that they’ll try to disrupt the launch to Saturn.”
“‘High confidence’? Is that a yes or no that the Chinese will attack?” Valdar asked. He glanced down at his forearm display and plotted out intercept courses from the Chinese space station to where the fleet massed over the north pole of the moon. If the Chinese came around the Earth at full burn…the largest space battle in the last two decades could be hours away.
“The secret squirrels never give a definitive answer. They got their pee-pees slapped for screwing up the Iraq invasion way back when and haven’t forgotten that lesson. The fleet will step off once the Breitenfeld has linked up with us at the L4. You’re tail-end Charlie on this so don’t skimp on the burn to get here. Understand?”
Valdar swallowed hard. He knew what was coming next.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m putting the Breitenfeld on a communication blackout immediately. The rest of the fleet will go dark soon as I shoo away the civilian reporters. Can’t tip our hands to the Chinese just yet,” Garrett said.
There went Valdar’s last chance to speak to his family.
“We’ll be ready, sir.”
CHAPTER 3
Marc Ibarra stopped to examine his first creation: a single sheet of graphene suspended in a glass case. Graphene, a lattice of carbon one atom thick, had been around for a few years before he cracked the code on mass producing the material in a commercially viable manner. After that discovery (and with some help) he developed super dense batteries that—when combined with Ibarra’s highly efficient solar panel—ended the world’s dependence on fossil and nuclear fuels. That radical shift in the energy economy had resulted in several failed states and wars across Europe and the Middle East, but such was the cost of humanity’s survival.
He leaned away from the display before his back could knot up. He’d been a young man when he made his first breakthrough. His only breakthrough. At seventy-nine, the breakthroughs kept coming, but he was little more than a conduit. That’s what his life had come to, laundering ideas for the human race.
Ibarra sighed and looked down the corridor. More glass cases commemorating “his” inventions: the first robot control core, the man-machine neuro-cowl interface, a lung 3-D printed from a bio reactor, the Ubi, the first sheet of grav plating, the gauss rifle and a mockup of his final invention—the slip-coil Alcubierre drive that could take a spaceship up to a decent percentage of the speed of light. At least, that’s what everyone was supposed to believe about the slip-coil drive.
He grabbed his walking cane by the platinum and gold handle and tottered down the hallway. A small entourage followed in his wake, all trained not to speak until spoken to. The heavy footfalls of two bodyguards in exo-armor drowned out the sound of Ibarra’s cane striking the marble floor that had once been in the Vatican.
Drones zipped past the windows flanking the hallway, all controlled by Ibarra’s proprietary software that guaranteed a safe drone work environment. Every drone accident in the last decade was directly attributed to human error, a fact he used to keep his insurance claims low and to drive marketing efforts.
His view from the bottom floor of Euskal Tower’s ninety-nine stories wasn’t much. The city that grew up around his company headquarters just south of Phoenix, Arizona, had crept north into the suburbs of the metropolis. His city boasted solar panels integrated into the roads and buildings, water-reclamation and rain-capture systems, and heavy stack graphene batteries that could run the entire city for decades without a joule of power from an outside source. Pundits joked that his city could be carved from the Earth and sent into orbit without as much as a flicker in the lights for a hundred years.
He held up three fingers to summon the appropriate aide and heard the pitter-patter of feet behind him.
“Where are we on Project Blue?” he half whispered.
“One of the employees sent an update. There was some damage to the systems. He didn’t elaborate but the timeline is still intact. The lamprey will disengage and return to Luna on schedule. There were…um…some fatalities when the systems malfunctioned. I’ve prepared a press statement and double-checked with legal. There�
��s no chance of a wrongful-death suit thanks to the standard hold-harmless agreements all our void employees sign,” said the aide, a young woman whose name Ibarra hadn’t bothered to learn.
“No press release. All the miners were sequestered from outside contact until the end of their contract. Not a word to anyone, even their families, until then,” Ibarra said.
“Mr. Ibarra, our previous focus groups on accidental employee deaths indicate we’d take a hit in public perception if we delay—”
Ibarra stopped dead in his tracks. He didn’t move or say a word. A second passed and the aide took the hint and shuffled back to the entourage without a peep. Ibarra held up five fingers and continued down the hallway.
The next aide sauntered up from behind with hardly a sound. He stole a glance at her and grinned. The half-Asian, half-Anglo Ms. Martel had been with him longer than any other employee. Even though she was a few years older, she looked hardly a day over forty, thanks to the best augmetics and rejuvenation therapies his money could buy.
“How is our colony fleet doing?” he asked.
“All ships are in place and their slip coils are almost fully charged. The robot crews on Titan and Iapetus report the habitats are complete. Applications for the next wave of colonists increased 22 percent once we posted the photos,” she said, her voice as low and silky as the day they’d met decades ago.
“And the Lehi?” he asked.
Martel cleared her throat.
Ibarra stopped and twisted the handle on his cane. A resonance field sprang from the handle, which would cancel out all sound from the conversation before it could travel two yards from the cane.
“I’m not getting any younger,” he said.
“The Lehi is green across the board. The crew doesn’t know what’s in the hold and we’ve scrubbed all the details from every system that was involved with its construction. If word gets out what we’ve put in there….”
“It won’t matter. It’s illegal on Earth, not the moons of Saturn,” he said.
