The Endless Sky

by Adam P. Knave

  Though ultimately faster and far more maneuverable than any ship in the sky, GravPacks left the wearer with only a gravity envelope around them instead of a hull, which would also allow them to carry more food, atmosphere, and waste removal along for the ride.

  They took a long time to learn to control well, their specialized, contact-based HUD disorienting at first. Plus there was math involved in the use, and angles to consider, and generally no one felt they were worth the trouble.

  Mud’s parents proved the exception to that rule, however, and imparted the overall use of them to their adopted son. Being able to hold your own in space came in handy, and flying in a planet’s gravity well certainly expanded mission possibilities.

  They also gave physicists small nightmares. Doctor Terrance Williams, Mud’s grandfather, had invented the GravPack, and even he wasn’t sure how they worked. Not fully. Basic gravity shields for internal ship use and limited propulsion in smaller vessels made some sense, but the GravPack could throw itself faster than light and didn’t seem to be bothered or to incur time dilation, which fell into the “simply impossible” range of the universe.

  The packs didn’t care and went on working, and Mud’s team kept using them.

  Checking out each pack carefully, Mud and Bee stored them, sorting out everything else going with them on the trip. The boxes of scanning equipment and extra fuel for Bushfield (mission callsign Deep Water) and Beef’s fighters couldn’t all fit in the Arrow, forcing them to use a trailer sled. Chellox secured it, strapping the boxes into a larger container that could be towed by the Arrow. The tow would limit his maneuverability and speed, adding to their time to target, but deployment of the scanners would eat time regardless.

  All three ships checked out. Their cargo sat secured and verified. The crews loaded into their positions and refueling finished. They backed out slowly, dropping out of the docking ports into the vastness of space casually, like lost luggage. Only Mud’s call of “Arrow clear, mission clock started,” plus Deep Water and Beef’s confirmations, signaled the start of something. Mills’ reply, a simple “Copy,” and they were off and on the job.

  Due to the cargo trailer, they took a good half day to their first sensor drop-off. Steelbox and Olivet took the job, going, as Steelbox put it, “for a walk.” They wore their thinsuits, invisible gravity bubbles working as shields around their heads once the suits detected a slim enough oxygen level. They also wore their GravPacks, setting them to a very slender protective field. Only centimeters from their body, the field would help redirect any stray matter winging through space at speeds best described as catastrophic. No one wanted a micro-meteor to punch a hole in their suit, or their organs.

  Deployment went smooth, including base communication, so the teams moved on, continuing their route. Over the next two-and-a-half days, the pattern continued: they would reach a deployment location, deploy and adjust the sensors, and move on. Twice they also left fuel depots behind, but outside of that, nothing changed.

  They grew bored, but never lost mission awareness. Each of the seven of them knew that something could not only crop up at any moment, but, worse, something incredibly stupid could happen and endanger all of them. None of them wanted to be the cause of that potential mishap. For one thing, the mocking would never die down, but for another much more important reason, too: none of them wanted to cause anyone’s death.

  They were professionals, even though not all of the Insertion Team felt that way. Like many proficient people, each of them remained gut sure they were the only one involved who felt like a fraud, so they worked harder and hid their insecurities from everyone else.

  They moved on, running low on sensors to deploy. Finally, at the start of day four, ship time, they deployed the last sensor array, flipped it on, and confirmed it worked.

  “Deep Water, Beef, this is the Arrow,” Chellox said, relaxing now that the cargo trailer drifted, slaved to the last of the arrays. “Are we good for slaved hard burn?”

  Slaved burns were a simple idea. The trailing ships linked their flight controls to the lead, so they could fly as a pack without having to work at it, or worry. Deep Water and Beef both hated it, as did Chellox when he sat on the receiving end of a flight slaving. The maneuver still remained their fastest route in, however, and so two short agreements came back over the comms.

  Chellox flipped a few switches, confirmed vectors and status chains with Steelbox, and sent out a final warning, both to his crew and the linked ships. He’d have to fly a little slower than full out, so the ship linkages wouldn’t lag, but not by much. Everyone strapped in and braced for him to start tossing them through the black.

  The three ships moved through space as if they were angry at it, no longer on speaking terms and sure it knew what it had done. Speeding that way for another full day, the ships drew closer and closer to McDallison. Forward sensors scanned steadily, with Steelbox running the readings through his own homebrew systems to double-check some of the data. The pattern remained clear, nothing but the expected orbital bodies ahead, above, below, or around them.

  They drew within visual sight of McDallison, still feeling clear and free. For a few hours they continued, getting ready to cut the fighters loose and spread out, to start preparing for possible trouble. About an hour before their planned decoupling, alarms went off in all three ships. Instantly, all three pilots silenced the alarms and cut into a communications channel.

  “Arrow, this is Deep Water, drop us! We got incoming!”

  “This is Beef, I got no visuals, no scans, only alarms? Repeat, I have nothing showing. False alarm?”

  “Don’t care—Deep Water, Beef, you’re free to fly,” Chellox said, flipping switches on his console quickly. Inside the Arrow they all braced for the unknown, aware that often meant nearby explosions.

  “Copy, Arrow. Beef, go wide, could be false sensor readings. Could be an attack. Until we know, we assume worst.”

  “Copy, Deep Water, still seeing nothing.”

  “This is Arrow, we have nothing either. Are they just messing with our sensors to panic us?” Steelbox checked every instrument in reach, twice.

  “That’s current theory, Arrow,” came Bushfield’s reply. “This is Deep Water, assuming command,” she said crisply.

  Mud nodded to himself from his seat. Until further notice, this was a full-out combat situation. “You heard her,” he said to his crew, “combat assumed.” He switched his mic to a wider channel. “Deep Water, this is Mud. Want me out there?”

  “Not yet. Stand-by position only.”

  Mud stood and made his way to the ship’s airlock, strapping on his GravPack. Along the wall were a few small fold-out jump seats, one of which Mud flipped down and perched on. If Bushfield gave the order, he could be out of the ship and in combat in less than a full minute. Until then he sat, listened, and waited.

  The three ships still sped toward McDallison. Further apart, they each scanned electronically and visually, wary of anything coming at them. Slowly, though, over the course of an hour, they started to feel safe. Nothing showed up anywhere. Bushfield wasn’t quite ready to stand them down, however.

  She weighted a stand-down versus constant vigilance through the very human problem of constant caution breeding a drift in attention. Diminishing returns would start kicking in soon, but she wanted to push the envelope as far as she could, for safety. She had reached for her communications switch when the blackness of space erupted in a series of white-hot explosions all around her.

  “Status!” she yelled into her mic. “Report, everyone report!” Grabbing her controls tight, she juked her ship hard, throwing it through a series of turns and loops designed to shake off target locks. Her systems showed her Beef and the Arrow doing similar.

  “We got explosions out here, Deep Water,” Beef said over comms, “too many to count.”

  “Wide field,” Chellox said, sounding almost calm. Bushfield knew he could pilot through a firestorm without breathing hard. “Nano-drones b
lowing small charges. Sensors show...what, Steelbox? Ahhh, sorry, yes. We’re showing they could pierce hulls. Stay wide.”

  “Wide from what, we can’t see them!” Beef said.

  “Steady, Beef. Arrow, how’re they avoiding sensors?”

  “Working on it,” came the reply. Inside the ship, Bee and Olivet traded notes and chewed at the problem as fast as they could, knowing their own lives, and more, very possibly hung on their work.

  “Mud, stay off fie—No, damn it, Mud, get out here!” Bushfield’s head hit the back of her chair hard as more explosions rocked her ship. One of them would get lucky and blow a hole in her ship, or worse, an engine, any time now.

  Mud didn’t wait for further orders—he leapt from his seat, slapping the quick release in his harness. He hit the airlock cycle pad before he fully stepped into the chamber, warming up his GravPack to full operation as quick as it would cycle. Blinking twice to call up the HUD controls for space flight, he stepped out into nothing, and hung there.

  “I’m out for a walk, Deep Water. Talk to me.”

  “That bullet on your back throws fields hard. Time to push back.”

  “You want a wall?

  “Copy, Mud.”

  GravPacks worked by throwing up a HUD in special contact lenses. Users could then blink-select gravity wells for attract and repel. In space that often meant whole planets. The overall effect ended up being somewhere between giant invisible rope swinging and a strange bit of tightrope walking, theoretically at super-light speeds. But the silver, bullet-shaped device that ran the length of Mud’s back also put out a protective field. Close in it would deflect stray rocks and debris. Normal field size during free flight stood at around five feet. But the field could be widened and shaped when needed.

  Mud lashed himself to the bow of the Arrow, swinging in front of the ship smoothly. “Form in,” he said, glancing behind him to watch Bushfield and Beef tuck in close. Blinking quickly to select through menus, he turned his protective field into a wall in front of him and widened it as far as he could. Then he expanded it outward, with the field set to maximum density.

  Smaller ships had deflector shields based on gravity tech as well, but the shaping and manipulation of them was crude, useless for this sort of work. The nano-drones started to explode as the shield hit them. They could blow tiny holes in it, to be sure—the charges were focused and ugly—but Mud’s GravPack could put out far more energy to keep repairing the shield than they could manage to eat away at.

  Setting a repel strand to the nose of the Arrow, Mud started moving, his shield in front of him, setting off charges. The Arrow gained speed, which meant Mud gained speed, and as they did, Mud, as tip of the spear, ran the numbers on how long this could work.

  “Arrow, ETA on a better way to blow these things? I have no rear or side shields and will deplete pack before we reach planetfall. Please advise.”

  “Working on it, Mud,” Chellox said. “Hold tight.”

  “Mud,” Bushfield asked, “what are the chances one of these drones sneaks around the edge of your field?”

  “This is why I want an ETA, Deep Water.”

  “Copy,” she said, “Arrow?”

  “On it. Over,” came a reply from Steelbox.

  “You guys seeing this?” Mud asked suddenly. Ahead of him, as they grew ever closer to McDallison, twinkling shapes started to grow in the distance. Mud knew that twinkle: engine burn. He sighted, and sure enough the tiny twinkling ships could easily be traced straight-lined right back to the planet.

  “Copy,” Beef said. “Incoming. Reading twenty. No, ten. Forty...guys, they’re jamming us and sending misreads.”

  “I count fifteen,” Mud said. “With my eyeballs. That they haven’t jammed.”

  “Mud, get back in the Arrow and—”

  “Deep Water, they need to shut down the drones to fly into the field,” Mud said, cutting her off.

  “Not if they can ID friendlies they don’t,” she said.

  “Damn it.”

  “Exactly. We’ll take the drone hits. Don’t stand there like a big dumb target. Over.”

  “Copy, Deep Water. No big dumb target.” Mud pulled his shield in and reeled himself back to the Arrow, cycling the airlock.

  “Bee? Olivet? Any progress on the drones?” he asked as soon as he got back on board.

  “Not enough,” Olivet said, not bothering to look up from his console. “They’re shielded enough that we can’t find a frequency to remote blow them, hijack their controls, or disarm them. The go off on firm matter contact, like our hull, or a strong enough energy signature, like a ship shield or the GravPack. But we can’t fake a signature that strong or wave a big stick through the air to knock them about and set them off early.”

  “But they have to be able to avoid their own ships, right?” Mud asked, trying to sit comfortably with the GravPack still strapped to his back. Not an easy feat, and one he’d never gotten good at. He shifted constantly, forcing Bee to look somewhere else so the constant fidgeting didn’t annoy her.

  “Sure, so if we can work out what they broadcast—”

  “They’re too far and if they’re as shielded as the drones—” Olivet started.

  “Then we crack their shielding,” Bee cut in. “Not sure we have another option.”

  Mud nodded at her and turned his chair to face the cockpit. “You two doing all right?” he asked as lightly as possible.

  “Sure thing, Cap,” Steelbox said, “we’re just back to taking hits from the drones. Can’t we just set off some explosions of our own and wipe them out?”

  “We don’t have ammo to waste,” Chellox said, “but we need to clear the pattern before those fighters reach us.”

  “So we have about twenty minutes,” Steelbox said, “give or take.”

  “An eternity,” Mud said, rotating his chair to his own console. He keyed for Mills back on base and got static. “They’re jamming long-range comms,” he said over the larger group channel.

  “Confirmed,” Bushfield said, “but static?”

  “Dead silence last time,” Mud agreed.

  “If this is the same thing,” she pointed out.

  “Damn it,” Mud said, watching his screens, setting them to show him navigation data, “we know nothing and it’s going to get us killed.”

  “Deep Water to all ships, new action plan.”

  “Go ahead, Deep Water,” Chellox said.

  “Hit me, boss,” Beef replied.

  “While Arrow continues work on drone disabling, we’re going hard burn at McDallison.”

  “Front door?” Steelbox asked, looking over his shoulder at Mud.

  “Confirmed, Arrow. Look,” Bushfield said, inhaling slowly, enough to be heard over her mic, “we’re taking the hits either way. But if we move fast enough they might not keep up, and better, if they can, they may not turn as well and we can throw them at upcoming targets.”

  “Deep Water,” Mud said, “that’s just mean.”

  “I love it,” Beef said. “Starting hard burn in three.”

  “We love it, too,” Steelbox said. “Arrow on hard burn in two...”

  The three ships all lurched forward, engines pushing hard, and aimed themselves directly at the oncoming swarm. They got knocked around by drones, but kept going. At their speeds, the drones were starting to go off harder and harder, due to impact. Beef felt his bones rattle.

  “This is Beef, we need to close fast, not sure how much more of this my ship can take.”

  “Copy, take tight evasives. Let’s try to shake at least a few of them,” Bushfield said, her voice shaking as a drone went off on her right side midmessage.

  Rattling and taking damage as they went, the three ships closed with the fifteen enemy fighters as quickly as possible. As soon as they were in range, they tried to target the enemy, only to find the jamming being used wouldn’t allow for a clean lock.

  “Oh come on,” Beef said. “Permission to go manual and start blowing them out of the sky.
”

  “Affirmative. All weapons to manual,” Bushfield said. “Mud, stay indoors until the drones are better dealt with.”

  “Copy, Deep Water. Will sit tight.”

  Steelbox readied the Arrow’s weapons array and launched two missiles quickly. One went off early, intersecting with a drone. The other exploded off one of the enemy’s shields.

  “They’re using the drones to blow our shots,” he said.

  “Copy,” Deep Water said. “Arrow, throw out some widespread terror, open the door for us so we can open it for you with the fighters.”

  “Copy,” Steelbox said, manually targeting all fifteen fighters, knowing most of the shots wouldn’t get to target. He thumbed the button hard and watched the missiles fly free.

  “Beef, track and follow. Let’s take them out and remind them it’s our sky.”

  “Copy.”

  The two streamlined fighters shot ahead of the Arrow, following the missiles close, losing themselves in the scattered glare of the missiles’ thrusters. They broke in different directions, Deep Water going relative up, with Beef taking a turn relative left, around the missile array, and they turned hard enough that their engines whined at a pitch necessitating their comms being turned off for a second.

  The missiles started to explode as the drones intersected them, but Deep Water and Beef ignored that, taking a few drone hits to their own shields. Instead they opened fire on the mass of enemy ships in front of them, surprising them.

  Blasters and small manual-targeted missiles from both ships wound their way into the enemy field. The sudden, unexpected flurry of fire caused the enemy ships to attempt to scatter. Except they didn’t know where they could scatter to. In front of them their own drones exploded, along with incoming enemy missiles. From at least two sides they were also taking fire, and as they tried to work out whether they were about to take fire from any more angles, not yet sure that the ships attacking them were two of the three they’d been heading toward, they bounced and rolled from explosions.

  Two of the ships caught shots from Beef’s blasters and collided, trying to dodge. The Arrow came in behind their missiles, Steelbox taking a few potshots between the missile field at the enemy ships, knowing he couldn’t really do much damage even if he did hit one, but enjoying adding to their confusion and panic.