by M. D. Cooper
Fran cursed. “More Heartbridge drones? I’m sick of those things. What are we doing? We’re a civilian ship under attack. Send out an assistance request.”
Andy blinked. “I didn’t think of that. It’s a good idea.”
“No one’s going to get here in time,” Wong said.
“I’ll take every idea I can get,” Andy said. “Now, Ms. Wong, you need to get back to your quarters and make sure everyone’s strapped in. It’s about to get messy.”
Fran had sat down in the co-pilot’s seat and was checking ship status. She put up a replica of the incoming objects’ velocity relative to that of Sunny Skies.
“Point defense cannons online,” she said. “Cara, have you got the main communications array ready for a directional burst?”
“No,” Cara said. “Why would we do that?”
Andy smirked. “A last-ditch effort to fry incoming ships.”
“Captain Sykes,” Wong said. “I understand this seems complicated, but it’s not. I’m used to these kinds of politics and I see you’re not.”
“I was a soldier in the TSF,” Andy said. “I’m not a complicated person.”
“I understand. There is a network in place to assist fleeing AI. I can explain more once we’re through this. The action on Ceres plays a role in that network, and I’ll admit we’ve been working against Heartbridge for a long time. All of this will make sense.”
“Like you said, once we get through this you’ll be explaining exactly what it is you’re doing,” Andy said. “Right now, I have drones to worry about. Now go strap in.”
Wong gave him a tight smile and left the command deck.
When the door slid closed behind the small woman, Fran said, “I don’t trust that lady.”
“I don’t know what to make of it,” Andy said. “She didn’t have to say anything she just did. She could have let us figure it all out on our own.”
Fran grinned. “Maybe she’s lying after all.”
“Why? For the hell of it? This crap is making my head hurt?”
“You sure that isn’t Lyssa?”
“You’re all giving me a headache,” Lyssa answered quickly. “I don’t like being a bystander in all this. What can I do to help?”
“You can help me monitor the power load relative to the shields and weapon systems,” Fran said.
“You can monitor those drones when I keep getting distracted,” Andy added.
“I can do those things.”
“Can you check on Tim and the dog, too?” Andy asked.
“Tim is in his room. Em is sitting beside him.”
“Cara,” Andy said, “tell Tim to get in his safety harness.” He grinned at Fran. “I could get used to having an SAI on board.”
“I can’t make Tim do something he doesn’t want to do,” Lyssa said.
“You can pay attention to what my monkey brain can’t. Or at least help out like any other crewmember would.”
Back in the pilot’s seat, Andy pulled the holodisplay in close, and started testing different evasion courses. Every time he ran the numbers, the drones still caught them. The smaller ships were simply faster and could withstand more g-forces. Running the formulas a third time, something in the drone’s flight path caught his attention. They hadn’t actually made any high-g maneuvers beyond human endurance.
“Now that’s strange,” he said. “Cara, do you have any long-range IR scans of the incoming drones yet?”
“All I can see are their engines, Dad. Can you get anything inside the ship from this far out?”
“Not typically. It was a hunch. They’re drones but they aren’t flying like drones.”
“You think we’re dealing with human crews?” Fran asked.
“Anything’s possible in the middle of nowhere,” Andy said. “I’m not discarding the possibility. Don’t drop any of the weapons systems.” He glanced at Cara. “Start broadcasting registry requests and see how they respond.”
Andy flipped through several status menus. “Oh,” he said abruptly. “The emergency call.” He found the emergency protocol and activated the assistance beacon. A red icon flashed at the top of the holodisplay, indicating the ship was undertaking a long-range broadcast.
“What do I do if someone answers the alert?” Cara asked.
“You tell them we’re under attack and send our coordinates.”
When Cara didn’t answer, Andy glanced her direction. “Make sense?”
Cara’s expression shifted from frustration to confusion as Andy watched, her gaze fixed on her display.
“Cara?”
“It makes sense,” she said. “But I didn’t think you expected our call to be answered so quickly.”
“What?” Andy said. He looked at Fran, who shook her head. “Where’s the response coming from?”
“It’s local,” Cara said. “It came back almost as soon as you activated the beacon.”
Fran barked a laugh. “Heartbridge is answering.”
Andy stared at the flashing emergency icon on the display. “That’s not what I expected,” he said. He tapped the icon to accept the incoming signal.
It was Cal Kraft’s voice that came over the speakers.
“Captain Sykes,” Kraft said. “How interesting to find you in my back yard.”
Andy swallowed. “Mr. Kraft. Are you still with Heartbridge?”
“I am.”
“Then I understand my ship is in the vicinity of a Heartbridge facility?”
“That is correct. You activated an emergency beacon. Are you requesting assistance at this time?”
Andy flicked his gaze to the holodisplay, where the velocity numbers between Sunny Skies and the incoming ships were growing closer.
“We have three vessels approaching us on a hostile vector and velocity. Do you know anything about them?”
“I do,” Kraft said, sounding pleased. “Those ships contain Heartbridge property. If you find yourself in possession of them or their contents, you are required by SolGov legal authority to return them to me without delay.”
“I don’t know if that’s an option, Mr. Kraft. I’m about to engage them with my point defense cannons before they become kinetic attacks on my ship.”
Kraft whistled. “That’s unfortunate. Of course you have the right to self-defense.”
“I do,” Andy said. “This is also open space.”
“Then I understand, Captain Sykes. If you need to engage those craft to ensure the safety of your ship and crew, I understand. I may ask you to verify some insurance paperwork for me, but you do what you need to do.”
Fran shot Andy a frown, the implants in her eyes flashing.
“How can I help, Captain Sykes?” Kraft prompted, forcing Andy’s attention back to him.
“I’m in the middle of an engagement. I’ll let you know what we need in about five minutes.”
“Perfect,” Kraft said, a smile in his voice. “I’ll be ready to send a salvage team as soon as you need. Out here.”
The signal dropped. Andy tapped his thumbs on the console. “That bastard couldn’t be more pleased with himself. He’s been waiting for us the whole time.”
“You couldn’t have known they had an installation out here,” Fran said. “If it hadn’t been this, it would be another ship like the Benevolent Hand.”
Andy shook his head. “I don’t see how we’re getting out of this. We can’t fight another drone fleet. We can’t outrun them.”
“We can burn right now,” Fran said. “We’d have to burn hard and aerobrake through Jupiter’s upper atmosphere to slow once we arrived.”
Andy did the basic calculation. “We’d be out of fuel at the transfer point, if we survive aerobraking, we’d need to pray for search and rescue to find us before we fall into the planet.
“Or we f
ail to brake and end up drifting through the system,” Cara added, her voice wavering slightly.
“We could turn back to InnerSol,” Fran suggested.
Andy nodded, mentally listing all the various destinations they might reach and the consequences of each. He couldn’t see a way out. They were caught. He swallowed, knowing what he had to do. Kraft wanted Lyssa. He didn’t care about the kids or Fran. As far as he knew, Fugia Wong and her people weren’t on Kraft’s radar. He could trade himself for their freedom.
But that didn’t work, either. He had promised Lyssa.
A promise had to mean something.
He couldn’t leave them and assume they would be safe. Hope is not a plan.
“Dad,” Cara said. “We’re getting another signal.”
Anger flashed across Andy’s thoughts. “Tell Kraft we’re busy.”
“It’s not Cal Kraft,” Cara said. Her voice was trembling. “It’s one of the ships coming toward us.”
“It is?” Andy said, shocked. “Who?”
Cara bit her lip as though she didn’t want to speak. Instead of answering, she tapped her console. An audio recording played a wash of static, followed by:
“Worry’s End. Worry’s End. This is a distress signal. I request assistance. I am under attack by hostile forces. I say again: I request assistance from hostiles. My name is Britney Sykes. I have wounded on board.”
Andy clenched his jaw, not believing what he heard.
It was Brit.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FORTY
STELLAR DATE: 09.22.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Clinic 46
REGION: Jovian L1 Hildas Asteroids, Jovian Combine, OuterSol
Cal Kraft stood in the Clinic 46 Operations Center, looking over the shoulder of a space traffic controller as the woman shifted a holodisplay that looked like a confetti storm. A background of gray icons indicated the fleet Heartbridge kept in storage around the outpost, while smaller blue icons indicated security patrols operating in the area. A large yellow icon showed the civilian freighter Mortal Chance making the scheduled cargo drop, while another section of the display flashed bright and dark to indicate increased activity. That was where the woman who had grabbed Petral Dulan along with every Seed in the drone control section was running in a stolen shuttle, with two attack drones in escort.
“Sir,” another technician said. “We just intercepted a signal sent to the Worry’s End. The shuttle is requesting help.”
“I want to hear it,” Cal said.
He was filled with a general anger and not yet sure what deserved its focus. He noticed the staff watching him warily, probably aware of what had happened to the crew of the Benevolent Hand. He’d been justified then; the captain had been a fool who had been about to get more people killed. These people weren’t much different: contractors on an outpost in the middle of nowhere. They couldn’t be expected to care about their jobs without a little actual fear added to the transaction.
The woman sounded desperate but there was a strange quality to her voice. She wasn’t scared of her situation. She was afraid Andy Sykes wouldn’t answer.
Cal quickly ran through the resources he had available, which wasn’t much. The fleet surrounding Clinic 46 was mothballed, their reactors cold. It would take days to get the first ship online, and he didn’t have a crew. The drones in active patrol had Weapon Born pilots, but the woman had taken all the others. The outpost had an onboard SAI capable of controlling enough fighters to smash the Worry’s End into scrap, but he wasn’t certain that was what he wanted in this situation. Too many events were aligning at once for this all to be coincidence.
He focused on the freighter. “Give me the stats on the Mortal Chance,” he said.
The tech pulled up the ship’s registry, including a short bio on Captain Harm. The frigate had begun its life as a heavy troop transport on Mars and had a reinforced superstructure and overpowered main engine designed for escaping gravity wells.
“Whoever you are,” he said, “you chose the wrong ship for your mission.”
“Sir?” the tech asked.
Cal dismissed the woman and pointed at the officer on duty. “I need a shuttle and a squad of security.”
“What’s the plan, sir?” the administrative sergeant asked.
“I’m going to invoke a part of Captain Harm’s contract that she probably didn’t bother to read.”
In twenty minutes, Cal was dressed in body armor and checking his weapons loadout in the lower fleet section. Ten men and woman stood in formation in front of a medium-shuttle while their squad leader, a woman named Ulan Gibbs who bore a jagged scar across her face, checked their gear and cursed at them. Cal watched for a minute, listening. Gibbs was good and it was obvious her soldiers cared about their gear— but she managed to find something to correct on nearly all of them.
When the inspection was finished, Gibbs nodded to Cal and said, “We’re ready when you are, sir.”
“Thanks,” Cal said. He raised his voice. “You’ve all been out here on station security and probably bored off your asses. Things are about to get interesting. A combatant just penetrated station security and stole the majority of our attack drone AI, as well as another test subject that represents significant company intellectual property. That person is about to rendezvous with another ship and try to leave our vicinity. Since the drone fleet is offline, we’re going to commandeer the civilian cargo frigate waiting off station and use their ship to interdict the combatants.”
He looked at each face down the line. They all nodded as he spoke and didn’t appear to have any dumb questions in their eyes.
“We may need to conduct EV operations once we reach the objective so be ready.” Cal looked at Ural Gibbs. “I’m not going to wait for anyone unless I get held up by some overwhelming attack. Stay with me and provide a good base of fire at every opportunity. I want comms silent until there’s some need for a meet. Understood?”
Gibbs gave him a nod. “Perfectly,” she said.
Cal slung his rifle over his shoulder and picked up his case, which was full of grenades. He stepped into the shuttle. It was a basic personnel mover with benches facing each other along the walls and storage cabinets at the back. The nose had room for a three-person crew. He took the pilot’s seat. The system recognized his presence and started cycling through warm-up procedures.
The AI didn’t say anything else as the squad filed on board and settled in their seats, adjusting harnesses and balancing weapons and helmets between their knees. Gibbs growled at them to get their helmets on and make last minute combat checks as the main door closed and sealed. The outer bay doors opened and the shuttle lifted off the deck, pitching a little, before activating steam thrust to push away from the asteroid.
In zero-g now, Cal watched the light fade quickly through the front visual panels, then shifted to the holodisplay and mapped their location with the Mortal Chance. They would intercept the freighter in less than five minutes.
“ETA four minutes,” he shouted to the squad, which shut them up. Gibbs looked up from checking her ammo belt and nodded.
Cal pulled his helmet on and adjusted the seals. The HUD glowed to life on his faceshield.
For three minutes, there was nothing but dark through the visual panels. Then the Mortal Chance appeared in front of shuttle spinning like a top. Sandra adjusted their approach and matched velocity and spin with the frigate, until the shuttle faced one long side of the cargo freighter continuously. In the middle of a long flat section midships were the oval cargo bays, and between them sat the shuttle airlock. Sandra brought the shuttle in neatly. Cal felt a small vibration when the connection was made and the heavy maglocks engaged.
the AI said.
Unbuckling his harness so he could float free of the chair, Cal said,
Gibbs opened the airlock into the Mortal Chance and the soldiers on the facing wall kicked through the open door with their rifles up. Cal went after the first team. The rest of the squad followed in groups of four. Cal didn’t wait for them. Gibbs let him know when they were all onboard.
With the first team behind him, Cal moved through the cargo section of the freighter, working quickly until he reached the habitat ring with the crew sections and command deck. He rounded a corner and found himself two meters from a young man with bright blue hair. Cal shot him in the forehead before he could open his mouth in surprise.
Turning, he motioned for one of the soldiers to move the body into an open room, then continued down the corridor. The ship looked well-maintained, if out of date. Several empty rooms indicated it could accommodate more crew than they had on board. The captain was probably burning out crews with overwork.
