Battle Cruiser

by B. V. Larson

  Next to the station, Defiant herself floated. There was a wand-thin tube connecting the station to the ship. I expected traffic between the two to be constant. I was surprised that I didn’t see the pods zipping back and forth, carrying new crewmen, supplies and the like aboard.

  “That’s our ship,” I said. “She’s a pleasure to behold, isn’t she, Zye?”

  “In a way,” she said. “In comparison to Earth, I will feel at home aboard her. But she was also my prison in space, familiar or not.”

  I looked at Zye with upraised eyebrows. She rarely made such a thoughtful speech.

  She returned my scrutiny. “Although I admired your skill when hiding your rank and tricking those men,” she said. “I’m still puzzling as to your purpose. Why did you do it?”

  “To gain information. The lower ranks often hide their true feelings from their superiors. I wanted to hear what they really thought.”

  Zye shook her head. “So odd. A Beta wouldn’t want to know what an underling thought—not unless the underling was an Alpha or a rogue like myself. Even then, an officer would probably have no curiosity about the honest opinions of others.”

  “Well, you’ll get used to us in time, I suppose.”

  “Yes. If these rebels don’t destroy us all.”

  “They won’t—not with your help.”

  She looked at me thoughtfully. “What do you mean, Captain?”

  “You disabled the battle cruiser somehow, didn’t you? When we left? That’s why they can’t fly her without our help.”

  She looked troubled. “I didn’t think you’d figure that out.”

  I laughed. “You might be subtle and tricky, Zye, but I’m beginning to know you pretty well.”

  The truth was that Zye’s “tricks” were often ham-handed stunts. She pulled them off mostly through the application of sheer gall. I thought that her high rate of her success when attempting deceptions had to be due to her normally stolid demeanor. People just didn’t expect anything but very flat-footed behavior from her. She was the ultimate straight-man—except when she wasn’t.

  Zye looked down into my face wearing an odd expression. Was she blushing or was it just the angle of the light?

  The sky-lift’s great calipers were applied. A groaning, screeching sound was created, and the floor vibrated under our feet. Less than a minute later, we docked with the station.

  The doors swept open, revealing a group of very serious technicians. They were mostly yard-dogs—bosun mechanics and bosun’s mates.

  Among the group was a single individual who put a smile on my face. It was none other than Rumbold.

  “Captain Sparhawk, sir!” he said, stepping forward. “If you could follow me—there’s literally no time to waste.”

  “Agreed. Let’s go.”

  We marched in a large group around the outer torus of the station. Here, the centrifugal gravity was stronger than at the center of the disk-like station where the ships were docked. When we reached the correct spoke of the central wheel, we moved inward.

  When we reached the pier where Defiant was docked, it looked like the dock itself was under construction. There were welding-bots, laser cutters and panels with exposed wires lying everywhere in the workspace outside the primary airlock.

  “Here she is,” Rumbold said with a flourish. “Pier 39. Would you like to do the honors, sir?”

  He waved vaguely at the heavy hexagonal doorway. I frowned at him.

  “What do you mean ‘do the honors?’” I demanded. “Open the door, Rumbold.”

  He took in a deep breath. He and the other techs eyed one another in defeat.

  “Honestly, sir, we were hoping…the truth is we can no longer get past the door.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Rumbold's demeanor switched from sheepish to angry in one second, a behavior pattern of his I was very familiar with.

  “It’s the ship’s damnable AI, Captain! I don’t understand it. We were working at a good pace, repairing systems, taking those battle scars off the hull—but then the computer took over and kicked us all out! It won’t even allow pressurization of the docking tube, and the collar at the other end indicates it’s been decoupled. I’ve never—”

  To stop his tirade I put up my hand, palm out.

  “I see,” I said.

  And I did see. When we’d arrived down here at Pier 39, I’d been under the impression the pier itself was under some kind of construction. Now I realized the ship was obstructing them, and the techs had been attempting to dismantle the ship-to-ship universal interface from the station’s side.

  “Did you try a space-walk?” I asked, surveying their efforts.

  “Of course,” Rumbold huffed. “We did that in the first hour. Nearly lost two good men in the attempt. The frigging thing just shut us out. Every time we get close to one of its external hatches, it shuts the damned thing closed tighter than a—”

  “I understand,” I said.

  Pretending it was only an afterthought, I turned at last to Zye.

  She loomed quietly nearby. She’d remained silent up until now. I didn’t want anyone to discover and report her sabotage, so I hoped she’d be smart enough to play along at this point.

  “Zye,” I said, “do you have any suggestions?”

  “I must approach the interface,” she said.

  The technicians had formed a throng around us. They were clearly in a bad mood, but they let her walk past them and up a ramp to the open control panels. She began to look them over closely.

  While she did so, I engaged the crew in conversation. “So, Rumbold, have you been assigned to Defiant’s crew?”

  “No sir,” he said sadly, “I’m working the station yard like the rest of these sad-sacks. But if you were to put in a kind word, that might change.”

  Suddenly, the huge door Zye had been fooling with sprung open behind us. There was a sucking sound as the vacuum in the tube was filled from the station’s air supply.

  “That crazy bitch!” Rumbold shouted.

  Zye and I both looked at him, startled.

  “Uh, sorry sirs. I meant the computer. She let you right in, didn’t she? What was it, a password?”

  “You have to initiate the procedural steps to docking with a Beta ship in a specific order,” Zye said. “The AI is programmed to detect any pattern other than the one that’s required. A misstep will shut down all systems.”

  Rumbold’s eyes narrowed to slits. “What? What specific order? All we ever do is attach the tube, marry the universal collars and pressurize the tube!”

  “Ah,” Zye said, putting up a large finger. “I see the problem already. You’re supposed to depressurize the tube after pressurizing it—cycling the air in and out twice.”

  Rumbold’s jaw sagged. “That’s insane, wasteful and downright dangerous. Explain to me why any ship would require such a procedure!”

  I took a step forward, interceding myself between them. “Let’s keep in mind the door is now open. With luck, the AI will stop obstructing us.”

  “I don’t get it,” muttered Rumbold. “Something funny is going on around here.”

  My mind raced. The other yard-dogs, and more importantly the trio of officers who’d been observing from the back, were all looking suspicious. Commander Durris, in particular looked like he smelled a rat. Leave it to Rumbold to not let something go.

  “I will explain,” Zye said, stepping forward. “The ship is trying to keep out the Stroj.”

  “The what?”

  “The Stroj are creatures,” Zye explained, “cybernetic beings. They were behind the rash of assassinations on Earth.”

  The men looked from one to another, confused and alarmed.

  “We haven’t heard of any such beings, sir,” said Commander Durris from the back. He was addressing me, rather than Zye. “As far as we know, the rock rats are behind the attacks on officials as part of a general rebellion.”

  I nodded sagely. “That’s the cover story. But I�
�ve personally met and fought with the Stroj. The Betas—like Zye here—are constantly under attack from their worlds.”

  Rumbold gawked at me. “That robot thing! The one that attacked your father! That was a Stroj, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Zye spoke up again. “My point is that my people have had to go to great lengths to make sure we’re not infiltrated. We have patterns, codes of behavior the Stroj don’t know about. If an enemy were to attempt to enter this ship, for example—”

  “I get it,” Rumbold said excitedly. “They’d be identified. It’s like a passcode. A behavioral passcode.”

  “That’s right,” Zye said.

  Commander Durris stepped up to Zye. “Is that true, Lieutenant?” he asked. “This ship has behavioral security?”

  “Yes,” Zye said flatly.

  “Then why didn’t you inform us? Our crew has wasted days fooling around—”

  “She’s been with me, Commander,” I said, intervening. “We’ve been battling the Stroj on Earth, in fact.”

  That got everyone to shut up. Before they could ask any more incriminating questions, I herded them aboard the battle cruiser. I kept telling them there was no more time to waste, and there would be a thorough investigation later.

  I didn’t like to mislead people, but sometimes it was necessary when the stakes were so high.

  -45-

  With trepidation, the work crews followed Zye and me aboard the ship. I could tell they were worried that Defiant might still be engaged in some sort of elaborate trickery. They clearly believed the ship was dangerous.

  As I was far more at ease than the rest, I followed Zye with a confident step. For her part, Zye was all business. She fearlessly marched straight to the bridge.

  There were no problems until we passed the junction deck, where my crew had worked so hard to connect power cables weeks earlier.

  “Those robots,” Rumbold said warily as we approached a standing phalanx of automatons carrying tools. “Excuse me, Captain, but I feel I must warn you. These welding bots became particularly hostile the last time we were aboard. Maybe we should—”

  “Nonsense, Rumbold. Look! Zye fears nothing. Let’s try to keep up with her.”

  Reluctantly, he followed in my wake. Behind him came several others. They had power-wrenches and laser-torches in their hands, holding them at the ready like rifles. Every time a hatch swished shut behind us, all the techs jumped.

  We passed the bots and eventually reached the bridge. Zye stepped to her station, sat down, and began engaging systems.

  “The self-diagnostics protocol has begun,” she informed us. “It will be a few minutes until the ship is flight-worthy. After the diagnostics are complete, we’ll be able to see if any problem areas remain.”

  “A few minutes?” demanded Rumbold. “Problem areas? What are you talking about? There was massive damage!”

  “Yes,” Zye said, “there was. But the repair bots have been here ever since rebuilding the ship. The fact we found them all lined up and idle indicates they’ve finished their work. If you’d simply given them the raw materials they needed instead of attempting to do the work yourselves, your time and effort would have been much better spent.”

  The techs sputtered at that. “They didn’t obey us!” Rumbold complained. “We saw them working, but no amount of fooling with their instruction queues changed a thing!”

  Zye turned back to her boards. “Ah,” she said after approximately two seconds of looking at a pull-down menu. “I have discovered the difficulty. You see this checkmark on the rotational options list?”

  “Uh…you mean that dot? What is that, a bad pixel?”

  “No. That is the “frozen” option. That’s why the dot is blue. I’ll change it to green by logging in, and resetting the fields…there.”

  By now, the techs and the officers were crowding around, frowning at Zye’s screen.

  “What did that do?” asked Commander Durris.

  “That allows the work queue to be altered,” Zye explained. “It was frozen before—as I said.”

  “That’s it?” demanded Rumbold, scandalized. “All that time we spent—what an insane interface you Betas came up with. It’s almost as if you were trying to make it obscure and confusing.”

  “What you suggest is insulting,” Zye said.

  Grumbling, the techs milled around. They poked at the screens. Several things around the bridge now seemed to have unlocked. I suspected that Zye had removed some kind of obstacle which had served to impede them at every step.

  Slapping my hands together loudly, I made everyone except for Zye jump.

  “All right then, twenty minutes until the diagnostics are complete? Is that what you said, Zye? How about you familiarize the flight crew here with the operational controls while we’re waiting.”

  The group moved to other terminals. I could tell the officers from CENTCOM were game, but they had almost no idea what they were doing.

  “Where’s the rest of my flight crew?” I demanded.

  “Flight crew?” Commander Durris asked. “It was assumed we’d spend today working on the ship—in fact, no one has been able to even board her—”

  “That’s solved,” I interrupted. “I need experienced people. At the very least, I want Ensign Yamada and Marine Lieutenant Morris. Get them here as soon as possible, Commander Durris. Sooner, if you can.”

  He stared at me for a half-second. “But sir, we need more qualified bridge personnel. I served as an XO on the destroyer, Centauri. If you’d allow me to show you the roster of individuals CENTCOM recommended—”

  I put my hand up and forced a smile. “I do want to see it. And I want you to get them aboard as well. But put a priority on finding the two individuals I just requested.”

  Turning, I headed for the exit.

  “Sir? Where are you going, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  Glancing over my shoulder, I gave him a disapproving look. I could tell already this commander they’d saddled me with might become a problem. He seemed to think he should be in charge of the ship. It was true that yesterday, he’d outranked me—but that was yesterday.

  “I’m heading to the ship’s stores. I checked the manifest, and I noted that they had a selection of uniforms and other equipment. I need to change my rank insignia before the rest of the crew arrives.”

  “Oh, right,” he said, nodding. “I hope they have your size.”

  I stared at him for a moment longer. Had his comment been made in earnest, or had it been some kind of slight? I wasn’t sure. I decided to let it go and left the bridge.

  When I found my Captain’s bars at last and pressed them to the fabric of my uniform, they adhered there, linking the nano-fiber surfaces together. To part them would either take a ripping force, or a series of gentle taps that would reprogram the fibers.

  Smiling in a reflective screen, I observed myself. I was officially a captain, and I’d only been in the Guard for a decade. To my knowledge, no one had reached such a rank in so short a time since the Cataclysm. I allowed myself to feel a modicum of pleasure in the achievement. Even my father may be forced to experience a certain degree of pride, should he awaken from his coma.

  Thinking of my family caused me a pang. I hadn’t checked on them for hours. Glancing at the time, I figured I had several minutes to spare. I touched the stateroom mirror, transforming it into a communications device, and then I called my mother. I could have used my implant, but warships and space stations were programmed to intercept such traffic.

  My mother opened the channel quickly. She looked startled to see me.

  “William?” she asked. “Where are you—that isn’t Cutlass behind you.”

  “No, my old ship was destroyed, remember?”

  “Yes, of course. You must be calling about your father. You’ll be happy to hear he’s stabilized. He’s not awake yet, but he should make some kind of recovery.”

  “That’s excellent news, Mother.”
<
br />   She stared at me. “I’ve heard a rumor, William,” she said. “There’s talk of political difficulties. The Sparhawk family has enemies—I know you don’t need me to tell you that.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, I heard that CENTCOM may pressure you to resign. I didn’t know quite how to tell you about it, but I thought you might be better prepared if the moment does come.”

  I looked at her thoughtfully. “Why would they do that, Mother?”

  “Because of a constitutional conflict. You can’t be an officer in the Guard and a Public Servant at the same time. You should know that.”

  “Yes, of course,” I murmured. I realized I had to tell her what had happened, but it wasn’t easy for me. My family had invested everything in their political position. To abandon that—well, it would be unthinkable to them. Either of them.

  “I just wanted to get that out in the open,” she said. “I’m so sorry to even worry you about it. I know how much you love the Guard, but you surely have always known this day must come. There’s no shame in resigning from the military to step up to a higher level position. Don’t let any of your friends tell you otherwise. In fact—”

  “Mother,” I said suddenly, unable to listen to her any longer. “There’s something I must tell you.”

  “What is it?”

  My instinct was to look down, to not meet her eyes as I told her the news. But I forced myself to gaze directly into her face instead.

  “They did press me to resign,” I said. “And I did so. They summoned me to CENTCOM and forced my hand.”

  “Oh, that’s awful!” she said, completely misunderstanding the situation. “I’m sorry, Will. Don’t worry, government work can be exciting too. You’ll see—”

  “Mother, I resigned my seat in the Ministry—not my officer’s commission.”

  She was beyond stunned. Her jaw sagged, and she stared at me for several seconds. Finally, regaining her composure, she took in a breath and clasped her hands in front of her.

  “We can fix this,” she said. “We’ve faced worse—not since you were born, mind you—but Heaven and Earth can be moved when House Sparhawk—”