by Shane Black
The voice of the Flight Boss was overwhelmed by the piercing sound of Lieutenant Commander March’s engines and the deck-shaking thrum of the rail tunnel’s magnetic and electrical charging coils.
The rail operator peered out of the nest built into the floor of the launching system. He could see the Yellowjacket pilot’s name and “Caveman” call sign emblazoned just under his cupola. The black blast plate over his eyes made it impossible to see his face.
Commander March turned toward the nest and saluted sharply just as his engines reached launch power. He grabbed the controls with both hands as the charge indicator rolled across the rail operator’s console and finally shifted green. Tunnel One shuddered with barely restrained energy just before the stabilizers blasted all twelve of the gas pressure locks around the vessel free. Buccaneer One rocketed forward, slamming its pilot back in the crash couch. The glowing circular amplifiers slid past his fighter at faster and faster speeds until he exploded into space at more than 350MPH. Seconds later, his heavily armed little craft punched up to more than 2300MPH.
On the opposite side of Argent, the same ritual played out for Lieutenant Jonathan Tichborne’s Gato Uno, dubbed “El Jefe” by his squadron. A quick salute, and his black sword-emblazoned ship surged forward, propelled by incomprehensible power. Los Gatos were officially on patrol.
Then Lieutenant JG Eileen Walsh, callsign “Meerkat,” saluted the emblem and slammed both feet down against the gas locks. A moment later Buccaneer Four blasted free of Argent’s flight deck.
Seconds later, one of the double-sized rail tunnels along Argent’s ventral hull glowed to life. Inside, the lethal weapon points of T-Hawk Five twisted and folded towards her center axis as her drive field steadily powered up around her menacingly dark hull. The anti-magnetic energy of the gunship’s interdiction systems reacted with the apocalyptic voltage inside the rail tunnel, providing the additional energy necessary to accelerate a much larger ship to launch velocity. The pilot saluted the emblem and clamped both hands around the vessel’s grip triggers. T-Hawk Five’s engines exploded to life and caught the leading edge of the magnetic force before the ship roared out of the rail tunnel at hundreds of miles an hour. Within seconds it banked into formation with Buccaneer One like a bald eagle maneuvering into formation with a flock of sparrows and set course for the first rally point.
Behind her, Gato Cinco flashed into space, followed by Buccaneers Two and Seven and then T-Hawk Eight. In the space of only three minutes and change, DSS Argent had launched a mighty wave of fighters and gunships.
Seventy-Five
“They’ve got power down here. There’s no question about it. This asteroid has been involved in everything we’ve seen so far,” Yili said.
“So why didn’t they maintain fire against Argent?” Zony asked, examining the discharged little alien device she had used to teleport herself and Curtiss to the battle station.
Yili suddenly stopped and stared at the control systems. They were part of an out-of-the-way valve control console: Unremarkable in virtually every respect except for the information they were conveying to Argent’s Chief Engineer.
“That’s impossible,” she half-whispered. Zony looked up. Unable to interpret whatever Curtiss was seeing, she turned instead to trying to decipher the pale look on Yili’s face. She stood.
“What is it?”
“They’re not using power the way we do,” Curtiss replied, coaxing as much information out of the relatively underpowered little terminal as she could. “Look at this.” A colorful chart with undulating bands displayed across it appeared.
“That’s a frequency map,” Zony said. “Why would they need that in the power grid for a battle station’s weapons?”
“Because they’re using pico-frequency communications to drive a matter-energy conversion field. Somehow they’ve found a way to synchronize the EM waveforms with the energy field they are maintaining.”
It rapidly dawned on Zony what the implications were. “The Dunkerque.”
“Exactly. We had to generate our own energy field with the SRS emitters. Once we synchronized it, we opened a gateway to wherever the Captain ended up and brought him and the out-of-phase ship back to our space. This ‘Ithis’ Daysmith was shouting about must use this as the whole basis of their technology. They can project energy or matter through ultra-high-frequency transmissions.”
“Hold on a second,” Zony replied, pointing at the frequency map again. “Those wavelengths are so short we can barely pick them out at ranges of a few feet. Getting a pico transmission across the room would take a couple hundred watts. Getting one from Argent to here would take tens of millions. Where are they getting the power? They only had enough for one shot from this gun!”
“The theory is that once you synch the communications frequency with the energy signature, you get a hyper-efficient field density. It’s like the opposite of a scattering field. If you plug in the right numbers, the field stabilizes at a given frequency, which means you don’t use power at one end to ‘jump’ to the other, because–”
“–because you draw power from the energy field itself. Like an electric train.”
“Exactly, lieutenant.” Yili switched the display back to the asteroid’s energy system. “And now that we know what to look for, we won’t make the mistake of thinking this–” she pointed at one of the large structures in the schematic “–is some kind of energy production node instead of a life support processor. Everything they’ve got down here is designed to keep humans alive. I’ll bet you a steak dinner they set up that gun to draw energy from the exact same field that weird little teleporter uses.”
Zony was already busy fiddling with the device’s controls. Now that they had a working hypothesis, she was only a step or two away from proving it. “I’m pretty sure I know what they did,” she muttered as she turned the object over and over. A few moments later, it lit up again, bathing the room in a soothing yellow glow.
“That thing just ties in to the same field signature, doesn’t it?”
“As long as you’ve got the right frequency,” Zony replied. “They can’t change the energy signature of the field once it’s established. They would have to create a new field from scratch. That probably takes more energy than they have access to, so that limits the number of available frequencies for getting matter, energy and information from one point to another.”
“But we already used the obvious one and it went dark. They switch them on purpose, don’t they?” Lieutenant Curtiss was starting to get the hang of Signals.
“Harmonic.” Zony grinned. “Give me a week, and I’ll have the whole rotation mapped out. Either way, we’re back in business and now we’ve got the advantage.”
Yili raised an eyebrow.
“Now that we know what to look for, this thing will lead us to every interesting place we need to go.”
“I think we should be careful about teleporting all over the place.”
“We don’t need to. We know this device can map the energy field to physical space, otherwise it would be like a water pipe with caps on both ends. All we have to do is use its method of mapping the energy field to physical locations and it becomes a homing beacon to whatever we’re looking for, including–”
“Including every last enemy soldier on this base.”
Seventy-Six
Lucas Moody could only stare in disbelief at what he was seeing. Or, perhaps he was staring at what others wanted him to see. Either way, the chamber he had wandered in to was unlike anything he had encountered before. Considering the unfathomable wonders he had already come across, he wasn’t prepared for what he was observing. It had to be unreal, yet there it was.
The closest thing his human mind could imagine that resembled the Ithis structure was an insect’s eye viewed from the inside. As long as he kept his mind on the entire vista of color and motion, he could examine the whole structure and it’s various general details. The moment he focused his attention on just one of those m
any details, it grew to nearly surround him.
It was very much like sorting through a schematic with a system that could “zoom in” on a particular section. Each individual hexagonal “window” looked to be a view of a physical location somewhere, presented from the point of view of a high angle observer. It was, essentially, the largest bank of surveillance cameras ever constructed. From where he was standing, Moo was fairly certain there were at least hundreds of thousands of tiny flickering windows, if not millions. The strange thing was, if his eyes lingered for even a moment, whatever he was looking at would grow large enough to recognize.
He was about to go back the way he came when something caught his attention. He wasn’t quite sure what he had seen was recognizable, but there was something in his mind that told him to go take another look. There. Near the center of the far wall of the spherical chamber was a familiar color. As he focused, a picture of two people examining a strange object emerged.
“Hey! I’m in here! I’m here!” he shouted. The images of Yili and Zony didn’t respond to the sound. Colonel Moody began running towards what, from his vantage point, was the viewscreen displaying his fellow officers. When he looked around to see if he was making any progress, he was almost overcome by a sense of vertigo. Being inside such a large structure made it very difficult for his merely human mind to gather any significant knowledge about his speed, direction or momentum. He couldn’t even say for sure what platform he was supported by. He could feel his footsteps, but he had no physical frame of reference.
But when he focused his attention back on Yili and Zony and whatever location they occupied, it became easier for him to recognize what was happening. He felt as if he were moving faster, but he could not say why. Whatever was at the other end of the viewscreen he was staring at as intently as he could seemed to get more and more real. Finally his mind caught up with what was going on, and the control room where the engineer and Signals officer were standing was suddenly approaching him at his top running speed. He started bellowing, and his voice rose higher and higher as he ran. A moment later, he burst through some kind of membrane, and felt as if his body had lost at least one of its dimensions.
In an instant of time, Colonel Moody caught a glimpse of open space, the upper edge of the Sentinel emplacement on Barker’s Asteroid and an almost painfully bright lattice of alien numbers and letters. Then, still howling, he quite literally fell out of the ceiling and slammed against the floor next to Yili and Zony. Broken and shattered pieces of metal, plastic and stone clattered against the floor with him.
Lieutenant Curtiss jumped back and drew her weapon. Zony shrieked and backed into a corner, ready to perform rare and violent martial arts.
“As you were,” Colonel Moody coughed before rolling prone on his back and staring at the ceiling.
Seventy-Seven
The frigate-enhanced wedge of Argent fighters advanced, clearing space ahead of their Strike Fleet. In the distance, the King Two formation loomed. Both its capital ships were wide awake and active, making their avatars on the tactical display bright and crisp and more than a little unsettling.
Aboard Buccaneer Four, Lieutenant Eileen “Meerkat” Walsh was troubled. Before the launch she had been provided with all the pre-flight astrometry and battlespace analysis, just like all the other pilots. But her instruments weren’t responding as expected, and no matter what adjustments she made, the data she was getting was either defective, illusionary or just plain wrong.
Any Skywatch fighter jock would readily admit the majority of any squadron treated pre-flight astrometry like in-flight magazines on a commercial spaceliner. They might get an occasional flip-through but were rarely studied. Meerkat was the exception. She had a system for making sure she got the essentials before she filed her datapaks.
What that pre-flight telemetry said and what her instruments were reporting were at odds. She cycled the diagnostic sequence for her passive spectrometry sensors once, and then once again. Every time the system reset, it glowed back to life with exactly the same information at a slightly closer range. Because the Kingsblade and the Orca were both running active, there was no way for them to conceal their organics signatures. They couldn’t create reflective interference, and ECM would simply be a waste of power, as any medium-range electromagnetic detection or analysis system would be able to ride each ship’s own range beacons right down to their respective bridges.
That only meant one thing. If their organics signatures were absent, it meant there were no life forms aboard. Buccaneer Four’s sensors were reporting exactly that: No organics. Not a single molecule. If her observations were confirmed, it meant both Task Forces were unmanned. While the knowledge none of their fleet mates were in danger might have been a relief to Argent’s attack wave initially, it was what came next that would chill even the bravest pilot right down to their knees.
Who or what was controlling those ships? How were they controlled? And from where?
“Buck Four to flight leader.”
There was a hesitant pause, as the squadron had been advised to maintain radio silence until King Two’s advance wave broke range.
“Go ahead Buck Four,” came the response. Eileen couldn’t be sure, but Commander March’s voice sounded tight and annoyed. So Meerkat decided to just go with the facts and by the book. The fighter wings maintained their formations, knifing through space at nearly 500 miles a second.
“Sir, my forward sensors are showing no life forms on any ship in formation King Two. I’ve bounced the system twice, and I can only re-confirm my readings. There’s nobody aboard those ships.”
Before Commander March could respond, an impossibly powerful explosion ripped a hole in space only half a light-second forward of the leading Argent squadron. Reactive hatches and blast plates went dark to shield the pilots from the intense brightness. By the time their instruments cleared, three dozen DSS Orca fighters were screaming through writhing hundred-mile-long plasma fires directly into the teeth of the Argent attack wave!
Seventy-Eight
“Confirmed Dunkerque! The Sentinel is operational! We–” The Argent transmission was overwhelmed by a surge of electronic noise.
For a soundless moment, Captain Cerylia L’Orleans and Commander Toby DeMay stared at each other, their respective tactical and strategic minds coming to exactly opposite conclusions.
“We’ve got to take out that gun,” DeMay announced. He moved quickly to man the bridge engineering station.
“You don’t have the firepower or the standoff capability for that kind of assault, Commander,” L’Orleans replied. “And neither do we. Get your crew and join us aboard my corsair. We can approach that battle station by stealth and get you on the ground without firing a shot.”
“I’m not abandoning my command,” DeMay snapped, eyes intent on his engineering readouts.
“You were sent on a desperation mission that could only succeed against an abandoned or inactive installation. If that thing is operational, it will swat you out of space like an insect the moment you reach the perimeter. It’s a suicide run, Commander.”
DeMay looked up. “Are you asking me to trust you? I still have a wound on my neck from our first meeting.” His expression was as deadpan as he could make it. For all he knew, that Sentinel was already lining up a shot at his engine room, or worse.
L’Orleans walked across the bridge with a determined expression and stopped inches from her opposite number. Her bearing was unmistakable. She was a woman used to being listened to and unaccustomed to being doubted. Her eyes burned as she replied.
“I’m asking you if you want to be alive when this mission is over, Commander. And I only ask those kinds of questions once. You don’t have the manpower to put this ship in the fight and you know it. If you want to hurl yourself on your sword out of some misguided sense of duty, I’m not going to stop you. I’m also not going to stand here and be a target while you do it.”
DeMay watched as the pirate captain produced a comm
link. “Notify Small Bird to lay in an evasive course for Point Bronco. Energize cloak and have the Master of the Ship make provision for ten–”
“Hostages,” DeMay finished for her. Cerylia smiled sweetly and reactivated her commlink.
“–guests. Condor out.”
Toby didn’t react. He looked like a man trying desperately not to betray his anxiety at making the decision to violate Skywatch regulations and abandon his command. Without breaking eye contact with Captain L’Orleans, he activated the intraship.
“All hands, this is the Captain. Rendezvous on Deck Three starboard and prepare to abandon ship.” He let go of the transmit button with an angry flourish. “And I just ended my career.”
“Negative, Commander,” L’Orleans replied as she holstered her commlink. “You just guaranteed yourself a fighting chance to see those gold maple leaves turn silver some day.”
Seventy-Nine
“We fired.” Yili’s voice was even and confident. Her words, however, had a frozen edge. Both of her fellow officers had the same question.
Fired on whom?
“So much for our theories about how this thing is powered,” Moo offered, still dusting himself off. “But after what I’ve seen, I’d be willing to believe these beasts can do just about anything.”
“They’re advanced. No question about that,” Yili replied. “Diamond Jack over there fit the two pieces of the map together for us.”
“Good, then you’ll both be a big help when I lock Atwell in a box and ship him back to a five-flag court martial. He’s back on the Ithis planet or whatever it is. They’ve got Hughes and they’re doing something to his mind. Their next target is the Captain.”
The lights dimmed and the station shuddered as what all three officers presumed was another shot went off.
