Act of War

by R. L. Giddings

  “A lot of those people had families. How do you think they’re going to feel?”

  “Like I said: it’s not easy,” she squinted into the distance. “Only, sometimes you’ve got to make those tough choices. No one said making these decisions were going to be easy. If Faulkner taught me anything, he taught me that.”

  Farnese stepped away from the hand-rail. “And I suppose that’s your way of telling me that I have to make a decision: stand by my captain and forget about your crew or risk my reputation by telling you what’s really going on here.”

  “You’ve got that all mixed up,” Silva leaned in. “That’s not me talking – that’s your conscience.”

  “Okay,” Farnese started to move down the walkway then, looking out to the stars. “When I brought you up here, you didn’t ask the most obvious question.”

  “And that is?”

  “Why would a military vessel like the Renheim need an observation deck? Everyone asks that.”

  “Fine. Why has the Renheim got an observation deck?”

  Farnese smiled, showing perfect white teeth.

  “The Renheim wasn’t designed as a fighting vessel. Originally, she was intended as frontline hospital ship but the war ended before she could be commissioned. She was re-fitted as a patrol ship but she still retains a lot of those medical facilities. This area, for instance, was built with patients in mind. Somewhere they could come as part of their recuperation.”

  “I have to admit, it’s very beautiful.”

  Farnese looked pointedly at her. “Yes, it is.”

  Silva ignored him. “So, what you’re saying is that the Renheim would be an ideal place to house the survivors from the Mantis.”

  “You might think that,” Farnese said cryptically. “But that’s not what I said. I was merely trying to show you around. Give you some sense of the ship’s heritage.”

  Silva laughed, despite the gravity of the situation. Farnese was too accomplished an operator to compromise himself so readily. She decided to take a different approach.

  “But you’d have to agree that you’re much better equipped to deal with this kind of assignment than we are. After all, you have a crew trained in Search and Rescue,” Silva took in the whole room with one sweep of her arm. “You have all these facilities.”

  “Try telling that to Captain Meyer.”

  Suddenly, the entire observation area was filled with the sound of a high pitched whistle.

  “What on earth’s that?” she said.

  “Captain’s quite traditional about some things.”

  “Three blasts? What’s that mean?”

  “Hostiles have entered the area of operations.”

  “Hostiles, plural?”

  He gave her a sheepish look. “I’m afraid so.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Webster was standing with Meyer in front of the main viewing screen when Silva and Farnese returned.

  Without waiting to be invited, Silva came over and stood next to him, the subtle hint of her perfume impossible to ignore.

  Farnese hung back from the screen as if, by not seeing it, he could delay the inevitable.

  “How many of them are there?” Silva asked.

  “So far, there’s been three of them,” Webster said.

  “How far apart?”

  Webster had to check. “Approximately one every ten to twelve minutes.”

  “How long ‘til the next one?”

  “Anytime now.”

  Farnese moved over to join them.

  The view kept switching from one ship to the other as they accelerated. While there were similarities with the Da’al ship they’ve encountered earlier, each one was markedly different from the rest.

  “How big are these things?” Farnese asked, his usually scrupulous regard for rank suddenly forgotten.

  “It’s not clear,” Meyer was making calculations on his tablet. “We can make all the estimations about tonnage we want but there’s no telling how accurate they are. They appear to be made from some kind of organic material for one thing.”

  “Average size, though?” Webster pressed.

  Meyer froze the screen on an angular looking ship. “My crew puts this as something approaching a heavy cruiser.”

  He switched to the next one. It had a very peculiar shape.

  “Looks like an old fishing hook,” Webster noted, following the curve of the ship with his finger. “It’s even got a sort of barb on one end.”

  Meyer was unimpressed. “Light cruiser at best.”

  The next one was a teardrop shape, formed from a lattice-like structure. “Lots of disagreement about this one, for obvious reasons. It’s bigger than the others but I’d hesitate to call that a battlecruiser.”

  “So, we’re seeing this now,” Silva observed. “But how long ago did this occur in real time: four hours? Five?”

  They were going to have to take into consideration the speed of light.

  “Just over four and a half,” Meyer said.

  “I hope that’s all of them,” Farnese said. “For all our sakes.”

  “Me too,” Webster said. “We’re not even sure what it is they want.”

  “Revenge,” said Meyer. “Pure and simple. You destroyed their ship. Wiped out their crew. I’d be surprised if they didn’t respond.”

  Webster rankled at that. Meyer was obliquely criticising Faulkner. Meyer, the man who had run at the first sight of the enemy.

  “The Mantis was well within her rights,” Silva pointed out. “That first ship had already destroyed both the Meridian and the Nantucket.”

  “Yes,” Meyer said, “And now it looks like this lot has arrived to finish what they started.”

  This exchange was followed by a bad tempered silence. Webster didn’t want to say any more on the matter for fear of offending the already prickly Meyer but there were limits to his powers of self-control. He could endure all kinds of personal slights from Meyer but he couldn’t stand to hear Faulkner’s name being disparaged.

  It was Farnese who broke the deadlock.

  “Well, I guess this changes things.”

  “How so?” Meyer said.

  Farnese indicated their guests. “Are you happy to talk about this in front of our guests?”

  Webster had to suppress a smile at this blatant use of reverse psychology. Seemed that Farnese was pulling for their side now. Clearly, Lieutenant Silva had managed to work her charms on him as well.

  Meyer massaged his forehead with a single finger. “Under the circumstances, I feel that it would be appropriate for us to share details of our current mission. We are on the same side after all.”

  “Tigris?” Webster said.

  Meyer let out a sigh. “Was it so obvious?”

  “It might only be a research facility but it’s the Confederation’s only other concern in the area after Blackthorn and Laxx.”

  Meyer stared impassively at Webster and Silva before looking back at Farnese.

  “Would it be appropriate to share some of our mission objectives?” he asked.

  “No. I think that’s enough to be getting on with. Reaching Tigris remains our key objective and we’ve already lost too much time. The question is whether we can get there to complete our mission before the enemy arrives. Commander Farnese, what’s our current estimated arrival time?”

  “If we sail immediately: seventeen hundred hours tomorrow evening should see us make orbit.”

  “It would be useful to know what sort of speeds these other ships are capable of.”

  Webster said, “Captain Faulkner fired off a drone just before he rammed Blackthorn. All our findings will be on there. Lieutenant Silva, you did some work on calculating the speed of that first Da’al ship. Do you still have that information?”

  “I do, sir,” she went back to where she’d been sitting and retrieved her tablet. “Based on our current intel, would you like an estimate of how long it would take that ship to reach Tigris, captain?”

  She took his silence
for assent and accessed her tablet.

  “Nineteen hours approximately.”

  “Meaning they’d arrive at roughly fifteen hundred hours,” Webster said, watching Meyer and Farnese’s reaction. “Do me a favour, lieutenant. How long would it take the Dardelion to reach Tigris? Same parameters.”

  They had to wait for her to enter the data.

  “Sixteen hours.”

  “That’s a lot better,” Webster said, but he wasn’t the one they had to convince.

  “That’s still cutting it very fine, though,” Farnese pointed out.

  Meyer broke away from them and went to stand at the head of the table.

  “Why is it?” he said. “That I feel like I’m being backed into a corner over this? Commander Webster?”

  Webster moved to stand on the opposite side of the table. “Honestly, sir, I think we’re all in the same boat here. Those members of my crew still to be rescued, the people stuck on Blackthorn, the scientists on Tigris. They’re all running out of time. The Da’al, it would seem from the arrival of these new ships, are keen to assert their dominance over this system and, even with the Yakutian’s help, this doesn’t seem to be a situation we can currently defend against. All we can do is work together to save as many of our people as possible. That way, at least, we might get a chance to re-group.”

  “My orders are very specific. It is imperative that I carry them out with all due haste.”

  But Meyer’s tough words didn’t match his general bearing. It was obvious to everyone. The man looked as if he were already beaten.

  “The figures speak for themselves,” Webster said. “If you insist on pursuing this course of action with the Renheim odds are that you’re going to fail. You will appear in orbit three hours after the Da’al have already established themselves and you will have lost the initiative.”

  “I can do the math, commander. You’re saying what? That I should hand my orders over to you? Trust that you’ll be able to carry them out before the Da’al arrive?”

  “As I don’t have access to your mission brief, only you can answer that question, sir.”

  “And in return, I’m left to mop up your mess?”

  Webster could barely contain himself. The urge to lash out was almost overwhelming.

  “Sir, the men and women of the Mantis were following orders when they climbed into those escape pods. Now, whatever you might think of Captain Faulkner and the decisions he made, you cannot allow that to influence the way you deal with those survivors.”

  Meyer rested his finger tips on the highly lacquered table.

  Time passed.

  Meyer lifted his head, his eyes locking onto Webster’s.

  “If we are to go down this path I must have your assurance that I will in no way be held responsible for the success or failure of your mission.”

  “That goes without saying.”

  “Nonetheless, I must insist that you make a declaration to that effect before you leave.”

  In case we don’t come back.

  “Very well, captain. You have my word.”

  “You will of course carry out all aspects of your orders precisely as given.”

  “Once I’ve been fully briefed, I’ll be happy to agree to that.”

  “I’m sorry, commander, you don’t seem to understand: this is a one-off deal. You must agree to all my terms before receiving any details.”

  He shot a look in Silva’s direction. She pursed her lips but didn’t say anything.

  “That is the agreement I am offering. Take it or leave it.”

  No one in his right mind would agree to such a thing.

  “This is all highly irregular,” Farnese pointed out.

  “The whole situation is highly irregular,” Webster said. “But I suppose I have no other choice.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Morton was exhausted.

  She hadn’t slept the night before, just lay there on her cot trying to make sense of all that was going on.

  And it wasn’t as if she was going to have an opportunity to take it easy during the coming day. Before she’d had time for breakfast, a female Chief Petty Officer had come over to complain about one of the Yakutian guards who had taken to walking into the shower area whenever there were women in there.

  Only she wasn’t asking for Morton’s help. This was a courtesy call. The woman had told the guard what would happen to him if she found her in there again and, from the look of her, Morton had no reason to doubt that she wouldn’t follow through on her promises. Morton needed to see the chief of security and get the situation resolved before it escalated further.

  But before she could get around to that, the medical supplies had arrived. Morton had a nurse working with her and it was their job to check the medicines against the manifest. As always, there were items missing. She had left the nurse to sort it out while she had gone on her rounds.

  Morton hadn’t expected to be acting as a general practitioner at this stage in her career, but there was nothing else for it. It wasn’t that the Yakutians didn’t have some excellent doctors working for them - they did. The problem was that beneath this top level of practitioner, the standard of healthcare dropped off alarmingly. She’d have been surprised for instance if any of the nurses she’d encountered so far had volunteered for their job. They acted as though they were being punished for something. And, whenever she had occasion to make use of their services, they acted as though she were wasting their valuable time. That was the main reason she preferred checking on the health of her fellow crew members herself.

  There was one young spacer who she was particularly concerned about. She suspected that he had a serious chest infection, which he was trying to hide from her, terrified that he would be taken off to the Yakutian medical facility. The rumour was that anyone who went in there would come out loaded full of implants. It wasn’t true of course – implants were hugely expensive – but it didn’t stop the rumours from spreading. If she did have to send him there she knew that he’d resist as best he could. But if he didn’t show any signs of improvement today, she was going to have to do something. That was the reason she’d determined to leave him until last on today’s rounds.

  Things weren’t helped by the fact that she was having trouble concentrating. Ever since last night, she’d been haunted by what it was that she and Hermendal had seen. If what they’d seen was real, there were so many implications that it was frightening.

  The whole episode had all the elements of a particularly disturbing nightmare: finding a secret area buried within the bowels of the ship, the bone numbing cold, the partially hidden artefact.

  But, most disturbing of all, was what she had seen written on the artefact’s underside.

  She was already beginning to question what it was that they’d actually seen. She’d avoided discussing it with Hermandal on the journey home. He’d suspected something, of course. All the way back to the intersection he’d been asking her what it was that had rattled her so badly.

  But she had determined not to discuss it, fearing that to give voice to her suspicions would only make matters worse.

  So, she said nothing.

  She was halfway through her rounds when she became aware of a disturbance in the camp. Normally, she would have been the first to determine what exactly was going on but not this morning. She was in the process of checking on a woman with a particularly nasty skin infection when she heard her name being called. She’d seen a number of such infections in the past week and was concerned that they might somehow be related.

  She looked up to see four of the ship’s blue suited Scarpa troops bundling towards her. She hadn’t had any dealings with the Scarpa before and just the sight of their uniforms had her heart racing.

  The Scarpa were responsible for keeping order on-board ship, a sort of combination of MP and Marine, they had a fearsome reputation amongst the Yakutian crew.

  When they came to stand over her, Morton realised that there were five of them, not four
. They were accompanied by a slim young officer sporting an array of disfiguring facial implants.

  “Doctor Morton?” he said, his voice sounding vaguely automated. “Doctor Elsbeth Morton?”

  The woman that Morton had been examining was already struggling back into her uniform.

  Morton stood up, her heart hammering in her chest.

  “Yes. What’s all this about?”

  “I am not at liberty to discuss that at the moment. Please, Dr Morton, will you come with us.”

  *

  She was taken to a part of the ship that she’d not visited before. From what she already knew, she guessed that they were somewhere on the third deck. The elevators had read-outs just the same as those on the Mantis but her grasp of Yakutian numbers wasn’t that good. She was going to have to brush up on that if they were here for much longer.

  They were in some kind of science facility with partitioned rooms made up of lots of glass panels. As they passed through the various departments, she started to realise that each area was colour coded. They had started off in the yellow section before moving into the purple section. Everywhere they went, people hurried to move out of their way, the blue Scarpa uniforms having an instant and obvious effect. Eventually they arrived in an area where the glass sections were opaque. It was a subtle difference but it filled Morton with a real sense of disquiet.

  She was led by the young officer into a small waiting room. Two of the Scarpa came in behind them while the other two remained outside. There were two desks opposite each other and a selection of metal stools. She chose to sit down while the others remained standing. It looked like they were in for a long wait.

  After the initial rush of adrenaline had subsided, Morton’s lack of sleep began to take its toll and she found it took a conscious effort just to keep her eyes open. It must have been some thirty minutes later when she heard the guards outside coming to attention.

  Clearly an officer of rank, she decided. A mere scientist wouldn’t warrant that kind of attention. Had Mahbarat finally decided to put in an appearance?

  The officer, looking sheepish, slipped out into the hallway where a brief conversation took place.