by Marko Kloos
“Launching Two. Launching Four. Launching Five. Launching Six. Birds away, sir.”
“Confirm separation,” the tactical officer says. “Drones are coasting passive and ballistic.”
On the plot, the four drones we just launched appear as blue inverted V shapes. They slowly crawl away from Indy, fanning out very slightly as they go.
“We have good data link.”
“Prep Flight Two and launch when ready,” Major Renner says.
Almost as soon as the recon drones are away from the ship, our sensor input markedly increases in quality and resolution. The tactical plot does sort of a blip as it updates the holographic orb with new data, and ship icons shift around a bit to reflect the new data from the remote drones.
“They don’t have enough ships for a decent picket,” Colonel Campbell says after he watches the plot change for a few minutes. “Not for a chunk of space like this. They have those three right there”—he points at the picket force we just evaded—“and they’re walling off the likely approach from Earth and Luna.”
“Not meant to be airtight, just to keep nosy neighbors away,” Major Renner agrees.
“Well, it’s not like there’s a lot of traffic left around Earth.”
The drones coast out from Indy’s trajectory powered only by the magnetic acceleration imparted by the launch-tube system. Ten thousand meters away, and with Indy already a few dozen kilometers away from the launch point, they activate their own propulsion systems, and they speed off on their respective trajectories. Indy is sending out four more sets of eyes and ears on a very long leash, doing exactly what she was built for in the first place.
“Flight Two is going into the tubes right now,” the weapons officer announces. “Three minutes for prelaunch warm-up.”
When the second flight of recon drones launches, the first flight is already hundreds of kilometers away, making a fuel-efficient and stealthy path to their assigned positions. Flight Two separates from the ship, and the drones coast out to their activation points and shoot off to their own preprogrammed coordinates. Within two hours, the drones are roughly where we want them: above, below, and to either side of this uncharted deep-space anchorage. Indy has made a long, curved detour around the picket screen, which is now above and off our starboard stern. The anchorage is off our starboard bow, half a million kilometers away.
“Correct our trajectory,” Colonel Campbell orders. “Helm, nudge her fifteen degrees to port, neutral pitch. Let’s reduce our aspect a little. Just in case their sensors are as good as ours.”
We creep closer to the anchorage, like thieves staking out a mark on the dark streets of a PRC past midnight while the cops are patrolling nearby. There’s an anchorage out here, all right, and the combined sensor feed from Indy’s passive gear and the eight stealth drones that are bracketing this sector of space paint a clearer picture of its surroundings every minute we close the distance.
“Eighteen ships,” the XO counts. “Dang, that’s a respectable task force.”
“There are at least two more,” the tactical officer says. He highlights the anchorage on the screen above the holotable. “Right here, in the docking berths. And they’re big ships. I’d say carrier sized.”
“Any ID on them?”
“No, sir. I’m not getting anything from them at all, not even IFF.”
The cluster of ships on the far side of the anchorage gives up the identities of its members bit by bit. The drone network and Indy’s computer compare the electronic signatures of the ships and assign hull numbers or class IDs to the assembled fleet one by one as we get closer.
“There’s another carrier,” the XO points out. The ID tag on the contact icon reads “CV-2153 POLLUX.”
“A cruiser. Two more frigates. That right there is a fleet supply ship. Looks like the Hampton Beach. Another one. And another one.” Major Renner looks at Colonel Campbell and chuckles. “You were on the money, sir. With those frigate names.”
She points to the icons for the frigates, which are in a formation with the cruiser and escorting the carrier. The ID tags have changed from “UNKNOWN” to “FF-902 LETHE” and “FF-900 STYX.” The colonel smiles a curt, humorless smile.
Then the IDs for the bulk of the ships in the middle of the group get updated, and Colonel Campbell lets out a quiet whistle.
“Twelve auxiliary fleet freighters.”
“What kind of strike force needs that much cargo space?” the XO wonders out loud. “That’s almost a million tons of bulk cargo.”
“That’s not a strike force,” I say.
Colonel Campbell shakes his head. “No, Mr. Grayson, it is not.”
He puts the palms of his hands on the edge of the holotable and leans forward a little, his eyes on the central cluster of icons on the tactical orb. The hologram reflects in his eyes with a blue tinge.
“Seven fighting ships, three fleet supply ships, and a dozen Alcubierre-capable deep-space bulk freighters. That right there is an evacuation fleet. We are looking at an exodus.”
CHAPTER 15
“Maybe they’re assembling a relief force for Mars,” Major Renner says. The discussion in CIC has been going on for a while, and it’s clear that the XO is trying to look for an explanation for the situation that doesn’t involve command betrayal on a grand scale.
“What are they doing with almost a quarter of the merchant fleet out here?” I ask. “They’re not flying them to Mars. Might as well blow them up right here and save the reactor fuel.”
“Hell, I don’t know. Ground troops? A few armor regiments? You don’t really believe that we’re running from the Lankies. Leaving Earth undefended. How many people can you even put on those freighters?” says Major Renner.
“Lots,” the engineering chief says. “You convert one of those bulk beasts to passenger use, you can stuff damn near ten thousand people into one. More if they’re not picky about accommodations.”
“Still, that’s—what, a hundred, hundred and fifty thousand? That’s barely two fifth-gen public-housing blocks. It makes no sense at all.”
“I don’t think they’re evacuating the PRCs,” I say.
Major Renner gives me a look that tells me she finds the suggestion uncomfortable.
“I think Mr. Grayson is correct,” Colonel Campbell says. “I think whatever protocol they have in place here doesn’t involve a wholesale evacuation of the civilian population. We all know that’s a logistical impossibility. All the tonnage in the fleet couldn’t hold more than a fraction of a percent of the civvies down there.” He taps his fingers on the glass of the holotable. “If anyone’s getting ready to evacuate, they’re not getting out the rabble, that’s for sure.”
“We’re getting some better top-down footage of the anchorage from Drone Five,” the electronic-warfare officer says. “You may want to look at this, sir.”
“Bring it up on the plot,” Colonel Campbell orders.
The EW officer flicks the footage over to the holotable, where a window pops up above the tactical orb and its slowly moving confederation of pale blue icons.
“What in the fuck are those?” Major Renner says.
The optical feed from the drone shows the anchorage from “above,” giving us a snapshot of the whole thing in its lateral configuration. It’s not as big as a proper space station, but much more sizable than any of the deep-space anchorages I’ve ever seen. There are six outriggers with docking points attached to a central spine. Three of the docking stations are occupied. One holds the familiar silhouette of a Blue-class fleet destroyer—the damaged Murphy, in the process of docking. The other two ships are something I’ve never seen before. With Murphy nearby providing a handy scale for reference, I gauge that the two ships on the opposite side of the anchorage are enormous, over twice the length of the destroyer and considerably wider.
Colonel Campbell studies the image. He reaches out and zooms in with his fingers, then pans the picture left and right.
“That is nothing you’ll fi
nd in the fleet database,” he says. “They look like carriers, but they’re not. I mean, they’re big enough—what’s your guess, XO? Hundred, hundred and ten thousand tons?”
“Hard to guess without knowing what’s inside the hull,” Major Renner says. “A hundred thousand, if half the interior volume is flight deck. If it’s not a bird farm, a hundred and fifty, easy.”
The tactical officer lets out a low whistle. “That’s a huge fucking hull.”
I look at the image of the two unknown ships sitting side by side in their berths. They don’t quite look like carriers to me. They look different, denser somehow, more aggressive, like a Hammerhead cruiser flattened out and blown up to almost twice its original size. Whatever they are, I have no doubt that I’m looking at a pair of warships, meant to get close to dangerous things and take them apart.
“They’re not finished,” the chief engineer says.
“What?” Major Renner leans forward a little and peers at the image more closely.
“See that lamellar pattern on the hull?” The engineering officer leans in and does his own pan-and-zoom. “Pretty sure that’s standoff armor plating. Maybe that new reactive stuff they were trying out a year or two back at the proving grounds. See how it’s mounted in slats, like here?” He points at a section of the picture. All I see are shadows on the hull that make a sort of crosshatched pattern, but I nod anyway.
“But it doesn’t go all the way from bow to stern. It goes to right here on this ship, about one-third of the way down the hull. A little further on the other one. Look at the stern sections. Those are lateral bulkhead frame supports, open to space. Unless they meant to build those things with only their bow sections armored, they’re not finished.”
He zooms out the image a little and pans over to the berth outriggers between the ships. Then he taps the hologram with a finger.
“They’re still welding the hull together. You can see the laser arms here and here. Those ships are under construction. I’d say they’re about two-thirds done, maybe a little more.”
“But what are they for?” Colonel Campbell wonders out loud. “What the hell are they building out here, out of sight and off the books?” He flicks the image over to the edge of the tactical display and looks at the plot. “Can we get Number Five drone a little closer to that anchorage? I want to get better footage of those hulls, maybe an ELINT profile if they have any of their sensor gear installed and running already. Hull that size, you don’t wait until all the armor’s on before you put in the radios.”
“Aye, sir. I can go in another few hundred K.”
“Just as far as you can go without pegging any meters over there. If they find a recon drone, they’ll know someone’s eavesdropping, and then they’ll comb the neighborhood.”
I’ve been in the CIC since our hasty departure from Independence Station almost eight hours ago, and I am tired to the bone. Colonel Campbell looks as worn-out as I feel. The wrinkles in the corners of his eyes seem to have gotten quite a bit deeper overnight. He stifles a yawn and looks over at the time-and-date display on the back bulkhead of the CIC. The ship time is 0230 Zulu, half past two in the small hours of the morning, when human reaction times are at their worst. In a starship, that number is as arbitrary and meaningless as any other, but somehow knowing that it’s the middle of what would be the night watch on Earth just adds to the sense of fatigue I am feeling. None of us has gotten any rack time in at least fourteen hours.
The colonel catches me glancing at the clock as well and gives me a tired little smile.
“No rest for the weary, Mr. Grayson.”
He closes the recon picture windows on the holotable and pans out the scale of the plot until Indy and all the ships around the clandestine anchorage are just little blue dots right near the center. I see the blue-and-green orb representing Earth, and the smaller gray one for Luna beyond.
“Staff Sergeant Grayson, please fetch our Alliance guest and have him join us in briefing room Delta. XO, come along and bring the department heads. Tactical, you have the deck and the conn.”
“I have the deck and the conn,” the tactical officer confirms.
“We are going to figure out just what the hell we are going to do next,” the colonel says. “And then we’re going to take some rack time in shifts before this crew collapses from exhaustion.”
Dmitry is asleep in his berth when I come to fetch him, but he seems to sleep in his battle dress uniform, because he’s dressed and ready to go not sixty seconds after I rap on the hatch of his berth.
The briefing room on Delta Deck is one of the larger spaces on Indy. It’s not quite as spacious as the enlisted or NCO mess berths, but it’s bigger than the CIC pit. Most importantly, it has about twenty chairs bolted into the deck, all facing the forward bulkhead, which holds a single large holographic display that goes from the top of the bulkhead all the way to the bottom.
Dmitry and I walk into the briefing room to find half the chairs in the room full already. Most of the department heads are here, including the lieutenant in command of the embarked SI squad. He gives me a nod when he sees me stepping through the hatch, and I return it. Everyone in this room looks in need of a daylong appointment with their racks and then a month of R & R.
“Philbrick told me about the hand,” the lieutenant says when I sit down in the chair next to him. “Doc couldn’t stitch ’em back on?”
I shake my head curtly. “Those fingers are all over the deck liner on the concourse,” I say. “Nothing left to stitch back on. I’ll never talk smack about those shitty little cop buzzguns again.”
“At least it’s not your gun hand,” he says.
“Yeah, I lucked out, huh?”
The hatch opens again, and Colonel Campbell and Major Renner walk in. The XO takes one of the empty chairs while the colonel walks to the front of the room and turns on the holoscreen with a gesture. It comes to life and shows a tactical orb, a mirror image of the situational display in the CIC. The group of auxiliary fleet freighters is sitting in space, flanked by the small group of warships in attendance. Well off past our starboard stern, the picket force is doing its patrol, lighting up the tactical display with occasional flares of active radar energy as they shine a light into the black to flush out intruders. Indy is like a burglar listening in to a family meeting in the living room after having snuck past the armed guards at the neighborhood gate.
“Situation,” Colonel Campbell says. “We are in deep space a million kilometers from Earth, in optical sensor range of an uncharted installation that is very clearly military in nature. There is a sizable civilian cargo fleet nearby, and some very powerful deep-space combatants escorting them. That includes three frigates that aren’t even listed in the fleet register, and two warships under construction that are bigger than anything we have in the fleet right now.”
He turns around and marks the respective icons on the screen. The icon for Indy is coasting away from the station and the picket force again slowly, but the eight stealth drones are keeping station all around the anchorage and the assembled fleet.
“Based on our reception when we got back to the solar system unexpectedly, I am convinced that this anchorage and the ships all around it aren’t common knowledge back at Earth. They tried hard to keep a lid on our arrival, and they were perfectly willing to blow us out of space to keep us from leaving again. It’s clear that they are up to something they don’t want to become general knowledge. The question is, what do we do with this intel now?”
“Go back to Earth, send the coordinates of this little party to every ship we see, and then down to the civvie networks for good measure,” Major Renner says.
“To what end?” our tactical officer says. “That’s a bad idea, ma’am. No offense.”
“Elaborate, Captain Freeman,” the colonel says.
Captain Freeman probably only has ten years on me, but at the moment, he looks like he’s pushing fifty. He’s haggard and tired, with deep rings under his eyes. I haven’t loo
ked in a mirror in a while, but I suspect I’m not looking all that youthful and fresh anymore myself.
“Well, that force sitting there obviously doesn’t want to be discovered,” the tactical officer says. “And they’re the only task force close to Earth right now. Anybody goes checking out the coordinates we give them, they’ll get the shit shot out of them.”
“So we’ll send the info down to the civilians,” Major Renner says. “Let the Networks run with it. Story of the century, right?”
“And then what?” I ask. “The civvies find out that the fleet is tucking tail and evacuating? You’d cause a riot from coast to coast.” Then I have a nasty, unwelcome thought. “If the authorities even let the Networks air that sort of thing. All those civvie freighters? I’m sure they don’t just hold military assets. Hell, I’d be shocked if they don’t have mostly ’burbers and government employees on them.”
“Now that’s a cheerful prospect,” Lieutenant Shirley murmurs next to me. “The rats leaving the sinking ship.”
“The well-connected rats,” I correct, and he smiles weakly.
“So what do we do?” Major Renner asks. “Run off and leave them be? They’re fixing to leave with most of the combat power on this side of the blockade. Maybe on both sides. Who knows what’s left out there?”
“That’s precisely what we should do,” Colonel Campbell replies.
“You can’t be serious, sir,” the XO says.
“I can.” Colonel Campbell brings up the date-and-time window of the tactical display mirrored on the screen.
“We’ve been away from Fomalhaut coming on fifteen days now. We don’t have time to sit here and keep an eye on this happy assembly out here. This detour has cost us enough time and fuel already. Let them pack up and leave the system—I don’t give a shit right now. We have thirty thousand people waiting for us to come back to New Svalbard and tell them where the Lankies are lying in wait. We’ll leave the drones on station. If we ever get back, we can collect them and download the recon data.” He looks around in the briefing room. “Does anyone present disagree in any particular aspect?”
