Battle Cruiser

by B. V. Larson

  “Excellent,” I said. “This way, Lieutenant.”

  I walked smartly down the passage. Morris followed me, favoring his false limb. I noticed that now and then he cast a glance over his shoulder at Zye.

  “She’s still following us,” he muttered, “and she’s got that gun trained on my back.”

  I nodded appreciatively. “An excellent bodyguard. She trusts, she obeys—but she keeps a tight watch. I approve.”

  Morris looked at me in confusion. “What kind of a hold do you have over her?”

  “She’s placed herself under my command. As you have.”

  “Huh. You must be some kind of sorcerer, Sparhawk!”

  “I’ve been called worse.”

  Morris laughed at that. It was a real, full-bellied laugh. I couldn’t help but like the man.

  -26-

  When I reached the life support center, I found Yamada wasn’t there. She’d left a message blinking on the display. It was a map showing the current deck and the one above. She’d left a dashed line in yellow, which climbed up a shaft and to another location.

  “Yamada?” I radioed, “where are you?”

  “The ship’s repair bots have been busy, sir,” she said promptly. “I’m on the bridge. Not everything is working up here, but we’ve got sensors, communications and weapons control.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Lieutenant Morris followed me, and Zye’s ominous presence brought up the rear. We found the new bridge to be a hotbed of activity. There were repair bots everywhere. Two of them were setting up consoles, welding with an upper arm while two lower arms held metal slabs in place.

  I was impressed by the sturdy nature of Beta construction. Unlike Altair, which was thin-hulled and lightly armored in comparison, everything about this vessel seemed solid and built to last. The interior structure wasn’t as tough as the outer hull, but it was still fullerene-laced. The poly-alloy base material used in the decks and walls was several centimeters thick. Nothing about Defiant was weak.

  The internal components of the bridge such as consoles and furniture were mere steel, but they were still impressive due to their precise form.

  “Is this the command center?” I asked, stepping to a central raised stage and eyeing three chairs of startling size.

  “Yes,” Zye answered from behind me. “The captain sits in the rearward seat, overlooking the other two, which are occupied by the helmsmen and the tactical officer. All three seats can spin in any direction, including a vertical angle.”

  I ran my hands over the chairs, each of which was enclosed in a spherical cage of metal tubing. They were attached to the floor, but built to rotate freely. They looked almost like gyroscopes to me. I could tell they were designed to keep the bridge crew oriented in any direction they wished.

  “How do these seats work, exactly?” I asked.

  “The ship’s inertial dampeners are designed to prevent injury caused by high-G acceleration,” Zye said. “But it’s possible during maneuvers to overload the dampeners. It’s been determined that these chairs can prevent blackouts by always rotating so that the officers will be in an optimal position to take the centrifugal forces exerted on their bodies.”

  “I see…” I said, walking around the enclosed, cage-like chair in the rear of the group—the captain’s chair. I put my hands on the tubing and gently spun it. To my surprise, it moved easily.

  “Do you want to give it a try, Captain?” Yamada asked. She moved to the forward console Zye had identified as the helmsman’s station and took a seat, smiling at me.

  “Yes, why not?” I said. Feeling oddly elated, I climbed into the seat and felt it roll under me. “Can you lock it?” I asked. “It’s moving too easily.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  Yamada touched her console, and my seat instantly resisted motion. I could still move it by applying pressure with my feet against the deck, but it wasn’t rolling all over the place anymore.

  “I like that better,” I said. “The view from inside this seat is unobstructed for the most part. It’s like sitting inside the cockpit of a power-lifter.”

  “I thought the same,” she said. “The system is set up so you can turn and apply your hands directly to the rear console, or you can look over the shoulders of the helmsman and gunner.”

  “Zye?” I asked. “What about navigation, sensor operations and communications?”

  “Those stations are arrayed along the walls,” she said, pointing to the stations encircling the central three. “The ship is designed to be operated with a minimum bridge crew of three. More personnel improve responsiveness, but they’re optional. These three stations can perform every function.”

  I looked back at her. “I’m impressed,” I said. “This is a Beta design, I take it?”

  “Yes—well no, not exactly.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Zye shifted slightly, moving her weight from one heavy hip to the other. Her long, straight black hair swung with the movement.

  “Normal Betas aren’t capable of innovative designs. This work was done by an Alpha.”

  I blinked at her. “Did you say an Alpha? So you aren’t all clones?”

  “We are clones, but we’re not all equal. Slight mutations are applied to one out of every hundred embryos. The DNA is reshuffled, varied at random. Often, these special clones die as they aren’t viable. But sometimes a special individual is spawned. An Alpha.”

  Spinning my chair around, I gestured for her to take the third seat, fire control. She did so, and she fit perfectly. In comparison I felt like a child playing in my father’s favorite chair.

  “You Zye,” I said. “You’re an Alpha, aren’t you?”

  “I was meant to be,” she admitted. “I was a variation, an experiment. But I was a failure, in the end. It was determined that my variation wasn’t useful, and I was to be put down.”

  My mouth opened, then closed again. I nodded thoughtfully. “I see,” I said. “You hid your flaws. You survived. You were eventually found out, however, and that’s why you were imprisoned.”

  “Yes,” she said, looking uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, but the subject is painful to me. It’s my greatest shame.”

  “There’s no shame in being different, Zye,” I said firmly. I spread my hands wide. “Look at us. We’re all variations. None of us conform to any mold. You’re among your own kind here. Even if your Beta sisters rejected you, you’ve been accepted on this crew.”

  She smiled then. Her thin lips twitched up, but the expression quickly faded. I was happy to see her reaction.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” she said.

  I thought about pressing her to reveal the nature of her “variations”. How, exactly, was she unlike her fellow Betas? She’d said when we’d first met that her crime was to hide things, and clearly she’d managed to do that for a very long time. But they’d found her out in the end.

  Despite my curiosity, I decided to pass on asking her more probing questions. Eventually, she’d open up and let us know more about her painful past. When she felt like telling us more, I’d be on hand to listen.

  “All right then,” I said, turning to Yamada, “let’s go over the repair list. What are those robots up to?”

  “Oh…okay,” she said, taken by surprise. “I’ve got the list right here, sir.”

  She began to rattle off numbers and details. I was pleased. The repair bots were working constantly, fixing systems all over the ship. Initially there had been only two functional robots. Their top priority, apparently, had been repairing more generators so that more robots could operate. Now we had a full army of bots bustling around doing critical work. Since there were no more robots to put online, they were all working on the ship itself, and they were fixing things with startling speed.

  “What about the external repairs?” I asked. “The sensor arrays and the damaged hull?”

  “Are you sure you plan to give this ship up when the time comes, Sparh
awk?” Lieutenant Morris asked me suddenly.

  I spun my chair to face him. I’d forgotten about him, but he’d been standing near the exit watching us the entire time.

  “What are you saying, Lieutenant?” I asked.

  “That you seem to be entirely too comfortable in that chair. You know the Guard will never let you keep command of this vessel, don’t you?”

  I struggled to keep a straight face. Although his words did sting, I knew he was right—I was falling in love with this battle cruiser. I no longer cared who had built her.

  Chastising myself internally, I climbed out of the captain’s seat. “I suppose you’re right. We need to get on with the rescue effort. Have any of the survivors from Altair reached our hull yet?”

  “No sir,” Yamada said, “but they should be arriving soon. They managed to get one of their lifeboats to operate, but all it did was give them a boost in our direction before they ran out of fuel.”

  Frowning, I examined the data. “Are you saying the entire crew of Altair is riding in a single lifeboat?”

  “Not exactly. They wouldn’t all fit inside. Most of them are clinging to it. What I’m saying is they used the boat’s very limited fuel reserves to counter Altair’s spin. They’re without power now, and they’ll crash down into the outer hull in…about twelve minutes.”

  “What’s their velocity?”

  “About thirty kilometers an hour, sir.”

  I thought about that. It wasn’t a fatal speed, especially with a soft mass of snow to cushion the landing—but it would be enough to break bones.

  “Let’s go up and meet them,” I said.

  My crewmen looked at me. “That wasn’t the arrangement you made with Taranto,” Yamada said.

  “You listened to that?”

  “I overheard,” she said quickly.

  “Their speed of descent will cause injuries. I’m not going to be responsible for any more deaths if I can help it. Yamada, stay here. Zye, you come with me.”

  “Wait,” Lieutenant Morris said. “Can I come with you?”

  “Will you remember your oath? To obey my commands while aboard this vessel, until we either get back to Earth or authorities arrive?”

  “Yes. If you’ll save the crew and give up when the time is right—then yes. I can help convince the crew to cooperate as well.”

  I nodded sharply. I was pleased by his attitude, but I didn’t want to show it too overtly. The truth was, I needed a man Altair’s crew would trust to convince them not to try to kill us all and take over the ship.

  We exited the ship through the same gaps in the hull that Lieutenant Morris and his men had originally used to board her. Morris led the way, in fact.

  Boot tracks going the other way were commonly discovered. There were a lot of them. I realized that we’d barely won this struggle.

  “What would you have done, Lieutenant,” I asked, “if you’d managed to take this ship? Execute my crew?”

  “What? No.”

  “Imagine the scenario,” I pressed. “We fought hard but lost. Five or six of us survived, wounded and spent. The order comes down from Singh—kill the prisoners.”

  Morris looked at me as if I were mad. “Why would he do that?”

  “Imagine that I’m telling the truth. That Singh was on some kind of mutinous mission of his own. He gives you that order—what do you do?”

  Morris hesitated, troubled. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I could do it. We marines are few and far between these days. Most of the Guard is landlocked. A few fly in the navy. We’re trained to follow orders—but I don’t know.”

  “Were you technically the Marine Commander aboard Altair?”

  “Was I? I still am the ship’s Marine Commander—well, whatever’s left of her.”

  “Does that position give you independent authority?”

  He shrugged. “To a degree. An admiral or a captain could order me around, of course. My only discretion is how to follow their directives. Boarding ships, defending ships, that’s my job. Of course, this is the first real action other than search and seizure missions involving smugglers that we’ve done in a century.”

  Nodding thoughtfully, I followed him up onto the outer hull of the ship. It was like exiting an ice-encrusted cave in the Antarctic. Overhead, the stars glittered. Jupiter was visible, and from our vantage point, the massive planet resembled a small moon. We were far closer to the gas giant than Earth had ever come in her locked orbit. I could even make out a few of the largest Jovian moons like motes of dust circling a bulb of light.

  “How long?” Zye asked me.

  “Until the lifeboat arrives?” I asked. “About two minutes.”

  She peered off into the distance. “I think I see it. Something is coming toward us. Our speeds are almost matched—but we’re being overtaken.”

  I followed her gaze, but saw nothing.

  “I can’t see the boat!” Morris said, moving restlessly and peering into space. “Can you see if it’s tumbling?”

  “I don’t think so,” Zye said, staring.

  I could only surmise that her eyes were better than ours. It made sense—if you were going to clone thousands of giants, filling an entire star system with them, you might as well design them with excellent vision.

  “Zye,” I asked. “Is there any chance they’ll hit us?”

  “I can’t tell. We should stand inside the rip in the ship’s hull. We can take shelter at the last moment if necessary.”

  We waited for two long, tense minutes. At last, I could see the tiny lifeboat, as well. It was tumbling, but gently. A spray of smaller objects, silhouetted by the light of the distant Sun, leapt free from her at the last moment and sent themselves off in random directions.

  “They’re jumping off,” Zye said, “so the ship doesn’t crush them.”

  “Taranto!” I shouted. “We’re here, we see you’re inbound. We’ll come to render aid as soon as you impact. Please identify your most seriously injured people, so we can take them to our medical facilities first.”

  “Sparhawk? Is that you—?”

  The message cut off as the group crash landed. I could see, all around us, bodies striking the snow. They sent up puffs of ice crystals in a dozen individual geysers.

  Then, the lifeboat hit. There was a flash, and a jet of gas was released in a steamy puff. The boat rolled three times, then came to a halt. Fortunately, lifeboats were built solidly. It had stayed intact.

  “I’m in the lifeboat,” Taranto said. “I’m okay, the others are reporting in—”

  I heard them then. Taranto must have ordered them to switch channels. They were transmitting in the clear.

  The survivors were groaning. Some cried out in agony. They had broken bones and a few had problems with suit integrity.

  We scrambled out of our cavern and plowed into the ice. The nearest body was only thirty meters away, and it was moving feebly.

  The next hour was difficult for everyone, but we managed to get them all into our vessel. No one shot at us, fortunately. They were too stressed and shocked by the manner of their arrival for that. They welcomed emergency people rushing to their aid, it was only human.

  Zye, however, did give a number of them pause. They shrank from her huge hands, but she plucked them up and carried them off like naughty children. Some of their startled reactions were comical.

  When the worst of the wounded were finally inside cells in the detention center, medical robots went to work on them. Taranto came to my side. He was uninjured as the lifeboat had taken the rough landing in stride.

  “Sparhawk,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. “You’re a man of your word, whatever else you might be.”

  “Thank you, Midshipman,” I said. “I only wish I could have saved more.”

  Taranto stared at me with squinting eyes. “I can’t figure you out, man,” he said. “Do you really think you’re going to get away with this? The destruction of a fleet vessel? The killing of your own commanding officer?”


  “The truth will see me through to justice, sir,” I said.

  He nodded, bemused.

  “I’ll speak at your trial,” he said. “I’ll tell them what you did here. I owe you that much—but Sparhawk?”

  I turned to look at Taranto. It was then that I saw the pistol in his hand. He’d carried it in a pouch, I surmised. He had it aimed at my side.

  “You gave your word, Midshipman,” I said.

  “That I did,” he said ruefully, “and that pains me, it really does.”

  -27-

  Taranto’s treachery took me by surprise. I suppose that was a character flaw in my make-up. As a man of commitment, I am sometimes blind to the possibility of duplicity in others.

  Zye, however, had no such failings. She’d been operating the detention center cells, setting them into automatic mode so they could go to work on the most injured men in their embrace. The general medical deck was, as yet, still inoperable.

  Even before Taranto made his play, she’d sensed his intent. She moved behind him, and her large hand clamped over his, directing the pistol downward.

  A power bolt cracked the air and melted a puddle of poly-alloy on the deck. Zye had managed to aim the gun away from my person.

  A brief struggle ensued—very brief. Taranto, red-faced and wide-eyed, struggled with both his hands on the gun.

  Zye seemed unimpressed. The gun didn’t waver from its position, aiming at the deck. Her other hand, however, snaked up and around his throat. She constricted his neck—and it was over. Soundlessly, he slid to the floor.

  Several crewmen, both mine and those from Altair swung around to look at us in shock.

  “He’s injured himself,” Zye stated loudly. “I must provide aid to him.”

  She picked up Taranto’s limp form and carried him to an empty cell. Stripping off his clothes as a mother might a baby, she left him there and slammed the door.

  The others watched with confused frowns as the surgical bot went to work. They cast suspicious glances at us. I exited the center quickly, giving them a nod and a reassuring smile.

  Zye followed me, as usual. When we were alone in the passageway, I confronted her.