by M. D. Cooper
No more relativistic missiles appeared on sensors, though the closer the fighters got the less time they’d have to spot them. They widened their jinking pattern and when the hundred thousand kilometer mark was crossed, flipped their engines around and picked their targets.
Jessica saw the point defense lasers Carson had told her to look for and fired her shotgun at them. The weapon deployed a hundred sabot rounds, which raced toward the Sirian scout ship before exploding into chaff.
Moving ten thousand kilometers per second, the point defense lasers could only pick off so many of the small jagged pieces of carbon before they pelted the ship’s shields.
Energy signatures flared as the shields strengthened to deflect the chaff, but she saw some get through and several of the point defense lasers were disabled.
Carson opened up with his fighter’s main beams, using the over extension of the enemy’s shields Jessica created to his advantage. He punched through one location and melted away half the ablative plating on the main battery. He followed up with his shotgun less than a second later and tore half the battery clear off the scout ship.
Jessica lanced at the gash in the hull with her beams and then a second later they were out of range.
The combat net showed that all the fighters had landed their strikes, but the lead ship was not yet disabled. It still had several functional batteries and the engines remained operational.
The pilots broke formation, arcing toward the Kap and reversing direction as quickly as they could. The burn on each of the fighters was right at the 70g limit the ships and pilots could handle.
The pressure on her body was overwhelming, and Jessica struggled to draw breath even though liquid oxygen was being forced into her lungs. The cocoon encasing her stiffened and the latticework of nano filaments which had grown all through her body tensed, holding organs and soft tissue in place.
She tried not to pay attention to the display which showed her cellular wall integrity, or the micro fractures growing through her bones, and instead kept an eye on the damage estimates rolling in.
Jessica looked over the tactical net and saw that the Andromeda was five minutes from coming into range behind the Sirians. Not perfect timing, but pretty good considering the distances and speeds involved.
By that time the fighters would be completing their arch and coming in for a second run.
Time dilation and sensor lag meant that even though the fighters and Andromeda would be hitting their targets at the same time, neither would see the other’s attacks until they were well underway.
Carson directed Jessica to hit more of the point defense lasers while he concentrated his fire on the remainder of the battery.
The combat net updated and Jessica saw that each scout ship had disgorged four fighters. They had stayed close to their ship’s hulls, but now spread out, bringing beams and shotguns to bear on A and C wings.
Orders updated—A wing was to stay on target while C wing provided cover. Jessica synchronized a new jinking pattern with Carson and her beams swept across the scout ship, weakening shields and blasting those locations with her shotgun.
The combat net showed that the lead ship’s defenses were down to a point where missiles stood a chance of reaching their targets and, as she made a close pass, Jessica let two fusion warheads fly.
The first was destroyed by a beam from an enemy fighter, but the second made it close. Just before it was destroyed by enemy beams, Jessica detonated it.
Nuclear fire washed across the Sirian scout ship and sensors showed its shields flicker and die. A moment later Rock, on the far side of the ship, let fly with another warhead. His penetrated the hull and released an EMP burst which disabled the Sirian vessel.
With the wing’s primary target disabled, the combat net updated and showed A wing’s new objective to be the second scout ship. C wing was engaging the remaining nine enemy fighters and Jessica could just see the Andromeda with her optics, trading beam fire and shotgun blasts with the third Sirian vessel.
Joe maintained alignment with the two remaining scout ships so only one could use its beams on the Andromeda—a feat which took no small amount of skill. The cruiser was maneuvering with every available thruster and the energy output made it glow like a second star on Jessica’s sensors.
The fighters boosted at max g toward their next target; as they crossed within fifty thousand kilometers they rotated their pion engines and all beam weapons toward the ship.
Lashing out at their selected targets, the scout ship’s shields flared, desperately bleeding off heat from beams while strengthening to ward off the shotgun blasts.
The squadron blew past the ship and banked around again to make another run—this time at a much more comfortable 50gs.
Jessica stayed close to Carson, clearing defense beams and adding punch to his attacks where she could. The second ship’s shields were weakening and its defenses were also crossing the critical barrier where warheads could make it through.
The fighters arched around for another run, six black specs of power and destruction bent on tearing their foe apart.
At least that’s how Jessica felt when suddenly her HUD went red and alarms showed on a dozen critical systems.
ONLY THE DEAD KNOW THE END OF WAR
STELLAR DATE: 3283400 / 07.18.4277 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Arc-5 Fighter
REGION: Interstellar Space, Outside Kapteyn’s Heliopause
Jessica awoke alone.
The realization that she had passed from dreams into full consciousness dawned slowly. Everything was dark and she couldn’t open her eyes. Her limbs were constricted and seemed trapped in something almost like a gel…
The shoot suit, I’m in my fighter.
For a moment she felt better, it explained her eyes, the pressure, the cocoon.
But not the blindness.
She should be able to see with the ship, but when she attempted to Link with it, nothing happened. Neither Cordy, nor the dumb NSAI on the fighter responded.
She drew a deep breath, feeling the liquid oxygen course into her lungs. At least life support appeared to be working, that much was reassuring.
Jessica brought her personal HUD up in her mind and reviewed her vitals. What she saw would have made her gasp, were she able to.
Her bones were riddled with fractures, blood vessels were crushed and leaking, several of her fingers were broken and she had suffered third degree burns over most of her body.
While she was out, her internal med systems must have shunted as many of her pain receptors as possible, because she should have been in unimaginable agony.
She checked the time and saw that it had been thirty hours since the battle.
Her mind reeled at the thought.
Thirty hours. Jessica dismissed the thought that she was the lone survivor. The Andromeda and its fighters had been winning the engagement handily when whatever happened disabled her ship.
And gave me a very unhealthy dose of hard radiation, Jessica thought as she looked at her bio report.
She reviewed the logs and came to the conclusion that the second scout ship must have detonated its main reactor. It was the only thing that could have produced the type of radiation she saw in her body.
Her fighter had been a scant three hundred kilometers from the scout ship, she was lucky to be alive—lucky that her fighter’s antimatter containment vessel had remained intact.
Her mind wandered as she imagined her ship driftin
g in the darkness, a black speck in a black void, likely surrounded by the much hotter wreckage of the scout ship.
Jessica ran the odds of rescue. They came up high—within the first ten hours after the battle.
As the clock slid past forty hours she fought to keep panic at bay.
She had been in the shoot suit, cocooned in her fighter for over three days. She wasn’t given to claustrophobia—no one rated for piloting a fighter could be—but she was starting to feel the need to get out of the ship claw at the edges of her mind.
To get out no matter what, just to see where she was.
What, to stand on my ship and wave my arms?
She forced back the madness plucking at the edges of her thoughts.
She still had not managed to make any data connections to the ship, but she could tell that the life support system was failing. The oxygen content in the liquid flowing through her lungs was decreasing.
Jessica estimated she had only a few hours left before…
A dull thud reverberated through the ship.
It wasn’t the first time something had impacted the fighter, which was what led her to believe she was drifting in the scout ship’s debris field.
But the thud came again and then turned into a low vibration. No, this was no chance collision, Jessica knew this was a rescue.
It seemed like hours—though was only twenty-three minutes—before she felt the ship’s hatch open and the cocoon disgorge her.
A suspension field enveloped her and she finally Linked.
It was Andromeda and the rich timber of Corsia’s voice filled her mind.
The shoot suit’s external optics came back online and Jessica saw Joe and Trist, along with many of the fighter pilots. They were cheering.
It was good to be home.
A LONG DAY’S END
STELLAR DATE: 3285312 / 10.12.4282 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: High Victoria
REGION: Victorian Space Federation, Kapteyn’s Star System
Tanis stopped before one of the station’s wide observation windows and Markus’s chair glided to a stop beside her. They had nearly completed their round of the station; a tour they had been taking every month for several years now—ever since Markus had retired from active governance of the Victorian colony to convalesce on the station.
“I can see it how it will be,” Markus said as he gazed over the world below him. “Oceans, forests, people everywhere. It’ll be a paradise.”
“It’s going to be amazing,” Tanis said with a nod. “Even our engineers didn’t think they could do so much with a world like this. Your people’s drive deserves the credit. You never would take no for an answer.”
Markus chuckled, the rasp wheezing at the end and he stifled a cough before responding.
“You know me, ever the optimist.”
“I wish you’d let our medics help you,” Tanis said. “We could give you decades more.”
Markus waved his hand dismissively. “You know my answer; why do you always ask? You’ve given me far more life than I ever expected. The old dog messed up my DNA too much to give me more time than this—not without me becoming someone else—or a machine.”
The plight he faced was one many of the elder Victorians were grappling with. So much of their base DNA was corrupted by generations of long-term exposure to the extreme radiation around Sirius that the older they got, the more prone they were to cancerous growths.
Medics aboard the Intrepid could repair their DNA, but they would need to replace much of it. A recipient of such treatment would have their body’s base code altered. Many, like Markus, found that to be undesirable.
“Do I seem so much worse for it?” Tanis asked.
Markus looked up at her, his wrinkled smile causing her to respond in kind.
“You’re the best damn-looking half-robot woman I’ve ever set eyes on. Heck, if I’m to believe you, there are actually two women living in that head of yours,” Markus said with a wink.
He never doubted AI’s existence, but he liked to pretend he did; that Angela was just Tanis’s snarky alternate personality.
Angela laughed.
“You’re talking to her, aren’t you,” Markus asked.
“How could you tell?” Tanis asked. “I’m pretty sure I don’t give it away.”
“You don’t, I just guessed. You as an individual may be inscrutable, but human nature isn’t so hard to figure out.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Tanis replied.
“I don’t think you should worry about it. You’re probably the most stable person I know. If your brain were going to turn to mush it probably would have done it years ago.” Markus gave her a gentle pat on the arm.
“OK, now I wonder if Angela was relaying our conversation to you.”
Markus gave a short laugh.
“Nothing so sinister. Being this close to death gives you a different sort of perspective. I know being in charge of the fate of so many makes you constantly evaluate your abilities and doubt your own qualifications—or it’d better,” he said with an evaluating eye cast her way.
Tanis raised her hands in mock protest. “No lack or self-doubt here. I know I look implacable to everyone, but I’m not. I thought I had royally screwed it several times over the years.”
“Yet you always pull a trick out of your hat,” Markus said. “You’ve done it in battle a hundred times and when you turned your hand to politics and diplomacy you navigated those waters just as well.”
“I think my skill at politics is an extension of my abilities in battle. Everyone thinks I’m a crazy bloodhound and no one wants to see if I’ll snap and kick the tar out of them to get my way.”
Markus chuckled. “I’ll admit the thought crossed my mind once, but I never gave it any serious consideration.”
Tanis smiled. “Glad to hear it.”
The pair watched in silence as a shuttle passed the observation deck, bringing a load of passengers in from the Hyperion to the station. Tanis brought up the manifest and final destinations of the shuttle and passengers. Most were going downworld to Victoria on vacation, while a few were transferring out to the colony on Tara.
“Your people are really multiplying—is that the right word? It’s just impressive to see them really take hold of this system.”
“It’s what makes this worth it,” Markus said. “To think, we who were once destined to spend our lives in small quarters on a single platform, now have a whole star system to ourselves. No small thanks to you.”
Tanis waved her hand. “I helped you because you were here and needed it. You’re the ones that got here on your own steam. That took guts.”
Markus nodded contemplatively, but didn’t speak.
“You think of the other Nimbus you left behind, don’t you?” Tanis asked.
He took a long moment to respond. “I do. I wish I could have figured out a way to save everyone, but that would likely ended with the death of everyone on the Hyperion. My duty was to them first. Hard as that is.”
“I have some understanding of that,” Tanis said with a nod. “Every commander does—or should. At some point it comes down to them or you.”
“That’s a dangerous sentiment,” Markus said. “That would lead me to wonder if you’d someday make the same call with me and my people.”
“I would,” Tanis said without hesitation. “I know it sounds horrible—I would not do it easily, but if it came to us or you, you know what I’d choose. I know you would too.”
“I would.” Markus shook his head as he spoke. “Life has made
us hard—maybe too hard.”
“Let’s talk about something else, something happy,” Tanis said, not wanting to remember those words as some of her last to Markus.
“I won’t ask you what you think about Tom getting elected for his second term as President down on Victoria, then,” Markus said. “You probably don’t have happy feelings about that.”
Tanis laughed, “Not especially. I did hear that Agnes and Dmitry are great grandparents now. Agnes seemed especially happy since she was just able to have the one son.”
“She was already planning the child’s first birthday when I saw her last,” Markus said with a chuckle. “With three of her other grandchildren pregnant she’ll soon be the matriarch of her own clan. A long journey for the woman who manned the desk outside my office where so much of our little rebellion was planned.”
“Hah! Little rebellion.” Tanis couldn’t help but notice that no matter where she steered conversation today Markus waxed nostalgic. Maybe that was what happened when you calmly stared your end in the face.
A comfortable silence stretched between them for several minutes before Tanis spoke up.
“I’m starved, and now that they have those pig farms on Victoria one of the commissary’s up here is serving BLTs. You in?”
“Absolutely. Let’s see if my people can make bacon to satisfy your refined palette.”
TRUE COLORS
STELLAR DATE: 3286965 / 04.22.4287 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Sperios Outpost, Victoria
REGION: Victorian Space Federation, Kapteyn’s Star System
Tom glanced at his companion across the table in the dimly lit bar. He didn’t trust her, but he knew she hated the Edeners as much as he did, even if she was one—in a manner of speaking.
“How much longer is your contact going to take?” he asked. “It’s not like this is the sort of place I’m known to frequent.”
