Storm Between the Stars: Book 1 in the Fall of the Censor

by Karl K Gallagher

  ***

  “Aether’s too thick to hit her at this range,” said the gunner’s mate.

  “Acknowledged,” said Captain Wing. “Fire as we close.”

  His crew had lost their frustration. With prey in sight they all focused on the hunt.

  The sensor tech announced, “Target evading plus-Y.”

  “Stand by,” said the astrogator. It took him less than half a minute to calculate three courses. “Best closing time is to stay in the current until we halve the distance, then go direct.”

  “Stay in current, aye,” said the helmsman. Implacable proceeded forward.

  Captain Wing let a smile escape. He’d weeded his crew down to the ones he needed. No more requesting permission or orders for every action. They knew what to do and they did it.

  The bridge elevator doors hissed open. Wing turned to see three officers step onto the bridge.

  “Come to see the finish, doctor?” he asked his chief medical officer.

  The doctor shrugged.

  Wing turned to the former XO and chief engineer. “Gentlemen, you were confined to quarters.”

  The doctor found his voice. “Sir, I must evaluate your fitness to retain command. Will you accompany me to sickbay?”

  Wing’s face froze. His whole body turned cold in outrage. “I will not. We are engaged in combat.”

  The last word was underscored by the slap of superheated aether striking the hull. “Almost,” said the gunner’s mate.

  The doctor stood stiffly at attention. “By doctrine I must consult with the acting executive officer.”

  “Very well.” Wing waved the Fighter Operations Leader over. “Lead, once you’ve reassured the doctor about his anxieties, please see those two to the brig, since their quarters can’t hold them.”

  Then Wing turned and walked to the center of the bridge. He didn’t want to listen to mutinous talk. If the FOL could settle it before anyone needed to be court-martialed, good.

  “Shift to direct course,” called the astrogator.

  “Forty degrees to starboard, aye,” said the helmsman.

  The viewscreen now showed the churning vortices of the maelstrom in place of the smooth green of the current. Implacable lurched as she felt the turbulence.

  Wing glanced back. The XO and chief engineer were now whispering to the FOL. Well, if they wanted to be spaced for attempted mutiny he wouldn’t stop them.

  The astrogator ordered, “Six degrees pitch up, four degrees port.” The helmsman echoed the numbers back as he adjusted course.

  “We’re closing on the traitors,” said the sensor tech. The excitement in his voice was contagious.

  “Hull stress is up but still within limits,” said the damage control officer.

  “Acknowledged,” said Captain Wing. “Continue pursuit.”

  ***

  Azure Tarn shook like a chew toy in a puppy’s mouth as she plunged through the storm. The bridge crew had all seat-belted and even put on their seldom-used shoulder straps. Even secured to his chair Landry felt aches from the shaking. His neck hurt worst, the muscles sore from trying to hold his head steady against the lurches and rolls.

  “It’s out of the current and closing!” yelled Betty over the storm’s roar.

  Roger fought the vortices to steer as straight away from the Censorial ship as they could. He wound up tacking back and forth across the desired path, sometimes intentionally using gusts to get extra distance, more often blown off course by an unexpected surge of aether.

  “Damn, it’s coming straight at us,” shouted Betty. “How come it isn’t being pushed around?”

  “Cube-square,” said the captain. “It has too much mass to care.”

  A line of text from the first mate appeared on his repeater. “Your speech may have pissed them off too much.”

  He typed in return, “Yeah. I wanted to lull him into not taking risks. Guess it backfired.”

  “Good try though,” she replied.

  The aether around them glowed with light as the Censorials fired again. Landry held his hand over his face to block the glare. This time there was a crack-whoosh sound as the light faded. A flicker of lightning ahead of them was pale in comparison.

  “No electrical damage,” declared Welly. “Structure holding. Oh, we lost the galley windows.”

  “Acknowledged,” shouted Landry. By themselves not important damage, but it was an opening for the storm to tear at the ship. Worse, it meant the Censorial ship was close enough to score real hits. They may have only survived because the aether was thick enough to dissipate the bolt. If they entered a patch of thin aether . . .

  Captain Landry ordered, “Roger, take us into the densest aether you can find.”

  “Aye-aye,” said the helmsman.

  Landry gripped his chair. He’d rather the storm killed them than the Censorials.

  ***

  “Atmosphere venting from the target,” reported the sensor tech. “Definite hull breach.”

  Captain Wing slapped the gunner’s mate on the shoulder. “Well done, Guns, well done. Now belay firing until you’re close enough to target their drive. We need prisoners. I want to immobilize her then take her under tow.”

  At the last words the helmsman flashed an astonished glance at the captain, then changed his expression back to professionally calm.

  The junior officers manning stations on the bridge traded looks. The astrogator spoke up. “Sir, towing under these conditions will be difficult.”

  Wing’s tone was unconcerned. “Yes, we’ll have to wait for the storm to pass.”

  “Airlock six lost outer door. Team en route to reinforce inner door,” said the damage control officer.

  “Very well,” said Wing. “How’s the structure reading?”

  “Currently all within limits, sir. A few places have gone over limit but no cracks yet.” The DCO swallowed before continuing. “We’ll need a full tear-down to inspect for damage when we return to port, sir.”

  “We’ll all deserve a good long shore leave after we drag these traitors home for trial.”

  Wing glanced over at the knot of quietly arguing senior officers. Were they still going on? Well, there was one way to settle that. He summoned the ship’s master at arms to the bridge. He could take the XO and chief engineer to the brig, where they’d stop distracting the doctor from his duties.

  “Target’s engines locked in,” said the gunner’s mate. “And . . . damn.”

  “Problem, Guns?” asked the captain.

  “Density’s too damn high, sir. If I fire now the shock wave will wreck the emitter.”

  “Very well. Stay on her. Fire as soon as it’s safe.”

  “Aye-aye.”

  The helmsman asked, “Sir, how close do you want to get to that ship? She’s blowing around like a leaf. I’d hate to ram her—by accident.”

  “Hmmm.” Wing studied Azure Tarn’s movement in the display. “No closer than five hundred meters.”

  “Aye-aye.”

  “Sir, do you have a moment?” called the Fighter Operations Leader.

  Wing walked over to the group. “Yes, what is it?”

  “Sir, as acting executive officer, I request that you take Implacable out of this storm.”

  A lurch sent the doctor sprawling across a console. The other officers side-stepped to keep their balance. Wing merely flexed his knees to absorb the shock.

  “Now?” Wing demanded. He pointed at the main display. “We’ve caught them. A bit of thin aether and we can cripple their ship. We’ve won. And you want to throw it away, let them spread their poison elsewhere?”

  The FOL set his jaw. “Sir, the ship is in danger. She’s not built for these conditions.”

  “No. That’s final. If you repeat the request you’ll be relieved.”

  The bridge elevator opened. The master at arms and two of his deputies stepped out.

  The FOL turned to the doctor. “I find the captain is recklessly endangering the ship and crew.”

 
; The chief medical officer declared, “Then I find Captain Wing unfit for command. Sir, please report to sickbay.”

  Implacable pitched under a gust. The XO held the doctor on his feet.

  “I’ll be smashed if I will,” snarled Wing. “This is mutiny!”

  “No, sir. This is my duty,” said the doctor calmly.

  Wing cursed. Then he turned to the master at arms. “These men are under arrest. Throw them in the brig!”

  The doctor followed that by saying, “The captain is unfit for duty. Please escort him to sickbay.”

  The master at arms looked over the officers. He saw the XO, FOL, and chief engineer standing with the doctor. Then he said to the captain, “I’m sorry, sir. Doctrine requires me to obey the chief medical officer in these situations. Please come with me.”

  Wing cursed.

  “Breach in fighter sockets six and fourteen!” cried the damage control officer. “Aether in the power and control lines. Radial ribs fracturing!”

  “Too late,” said the chief engineer.

  ***

  The Censorial ship couldn’t fit into the aft camera’s field of view any more. Combined with Azure Tarn’s thrashing about it was hard to get a good look at their pursuer. Landry just knew that it was big and close.

  If he wanted an exact distance he could ask Betty. She was pinging the damn thing. She’d stopped reporting the range when it went under ten klicks. It was a lot closer now.

  “Why don’t they shoot and get it over with?” burst out Soon.

  “Prisoners,” answered Marcus. “They want to interrogate us.”

  Roger cursed as a violet vortex spun the ship around. For a moment they could see the grim disk of the Censorial ship in the bridge windows. Then he forced Azure Tarn into a blue whirlpool and they shot away again.

  “What the hell? They can’t be launching fighters here,” said Betty as she studied the radar returns.

  Landry looked at the aft camera. He froze the feed as it swept across the Censorial. “That looks more like debris than fighters.”

  Fighters wouldn’t survive this part of the storm anyway. The two trailing Azure Tarn had fallen out of sight as the ship fled into the denser maelstrom.

  “Yep, shedding debris,” agreed Betty. “I’m receiving stronger returns on the mother ship. Must be losing hull panels, exposing interior corners.”

  Everyone stayed tense. They’d had hope of escape before. They kept superstitiously quiet rather than ruin their hope by speaking it aloud.

  “The debris isn’t dense,” said Betty. “It’s spreading fast, going at the speed of the gusts.”

  Welly said, “I see some. It’s blowing like confetti.”

  A hull panel twenty meters across flew past the starboard side of the ship.

  “Damn, that could have cut us in half,” said Welly.

  Landry pounded the intercom switch. “Gander, emergency transition now. Repeat, emergency transition now.”

  The glow in the windows faded to black. Distant stars speckled the field. Azure Tarn settled into normal space as if she were bolted to bedrock.

  Landry took a deep breath and let it out. No vertigo. Wait. He did feel some vertigo, but compared to the abuse of the storm it was nothing.

  Something on the ship went whang-whoosh. Then there was a high pitched whistle.

  “That was the forward corridor hatch to the galley failing,” said Welly. “And the leading edge on the port quarter is leaking air.”

  The intercom crackled. “I’m pumping down air as fast as I can,” said Gander. “We’re losing a lot so don’t waste any. Going to have to do repairs in vacuum.”

  “Any sign of that warship?” demanded Landry.

  Betty said, “Pinging in all directions. There’s nothing out there.”

  After ten minutes of pinging the consensus was that the Censorial ship must have broken up before it could transition.

  Given the option Landry would have ordered sleep all around but they couldn’t do that when the access to crew quarters was in vacuum. He did let the crew nap in their suits while waiting for the air to be evacuated.

  Even the bridge had to be pumped down to vacuum. It had a simple hatch to the forward corridor, not an airlock.

  The corridor didn’t have any noticeable damage. When Marcus and Welly led the rest into the galley they saw a disaster.

  Normally the most home-like part of the ship, it had been stripped of everything loose or light. Half the furniture was gone, popped free of the deck tracks it clipped into.

  Lane inspected the cabinets. “Most of the dishes are here. Plates cabinet came open, they’re gone. Oh. Spice cabinet failed too. No salt or anything left.”

  That produced a mass groan over the suit radios.

  Alys poked at a blistered patch of paint. “What did that?” she asked.

  “Aether,” answered Welly. “In normal space some disperses into vacuum, some sticks and sublimates into heat.”

  The galley dome windows were gone. Even part of the frame was torn away. Gander set Tets to cutting patches to fit over the holes.

  Marcus and Welly drew the outside work. Finding the cracks in the outer hull was the hard part. One rupture was on the belly, where ramming the navigation buoys had damaged the hull. Once each was identified welding a strip of metal over it was easy.

  As easy as working with hot metal in free fall can be.

  It took nine hours to make Azure Tarn air tight again. When the last leak had been found and sealed Captain Landry gathered them in the galley.

  “We’re going to stand down for twenty-four hours. Get some sleep. Have a bath—no water limit. Have those shakes you’ve been putting off. Then we’ll resume normal running. Full inspections. Catch up on maintenance. I want to wait at least a week for the storm to go by. Then we head home.”

  The word ‘home’ produced wistful looks. They were all ready to be home again. But the thought of a rest was more immediately appealing.

  ***

  Azure Tarn reentered hyperspace to find herself in the tail end of the storm. A gentle current tried to shift the ship’s bow but Roger held her steady with a flick of his fingers.

  “Not picking up any signals,” said Betty. “Just background noise.”

  “Good,” said Landry. “Soon, we’ll head out when you have a course for us.”

  Betty said, “Some of the debris from that Censorial might be valuable. Can I ping for it?”

  “Absolutely not. If there’s any Censorials looking for that ship they’d be on us like flies.”

  “Yes, sir.” Her disappointment was audible.

  Soon was comparing photos from the trip out to the current view. When she made a match she called out vectors to Roger. He put the ship in motion.

  The storm had carried them two days travel away from the entrance to the Fieran Bubble. It took over eight days to arrive.

  “Nice to see it’s still there,” said Roger as the entered the tunnel into the Bubble. Some chuckles from the other bridge crew said they’d shared his worry of returning to find the way home closed off forever.

  “Betty, measure the tunnel, would you?” asked Captain Landry.

  “Yessir.” She had to power up the radar transmitters first. Once she’d integrated the results, Betty said, “Noticeably wider than when we first went through.”

  “Thank you.” Landry sat back. It looked like Fiera would stay connected to the wider galaxy whether it liked it or not.

  Once through the tunnel astrogation was easy. The shoals around Fiera’s sun were stable and well mapped. In only a couple days’ travel they dropped into normal space over Fiera.

  Landry’s heart leaped to see his homeworld again. The tan deserts and jade forests peeked out through the clouds. The traffic display showed the usual tangle of ships and stations orbiting the world. A massive containership went past them, probably headed for Svalbard with a load of textiles and medicines to exchange for refined metals and fish delicacies.

  “We�
�re cleared to land at Baslim Base,” said the first mate. “Direct descent authorized. The news channels are jumping. The tariff renewal debate is now an argument over the Concord as a whole. Mardam and Lunto pulled their ships out of the Concord fleet and are threatening to form a new arrangement with Svalbard and Iolite.”

  “Oh, God, not another war,” said Welly. “My mother told me about living through the last one.”

  “We don’t need to deal with that and the Censorials,” agreed Soon.

  Landry chuckled. “I think the Censorate will help them all remember how much they have in common. First mate, can you get me a link to our contract officer?”

  “On it,” said Lane.

  The face of a middle-aged naval officer appeared on Landry’s repeater. His thick neck and thin stack of ribbons told of a career spent in unexciting desk jobs. “Captain JG Carmichael, Survey Office, how may I help you?”

  “Hello, Carmichael, it’s Niko Landry. How are you today?”

  “Niko! I’m fine, thanks. Look, Niko, I can’t make an interim payment on the survey contract. It’s all or nothing.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not asking for a payment. I’m in breach anyway.”

  The officer’s eyebrows rose. “Lane? Are you there?”

  She leaned into the camera’s view. “Hi, Glenn.”

  “Could you check Niko for fever? He just said he doesn’t want money.”

  Lane laughed. “I think we’re good on that. We have bigger worries now.”

  “What kind of worries?” asked Carmichael.

  “Worries for you, too,” said Landry. “I don’t want to discuss it on an open line. Can I come to your office? I can be there in three hours.”

  “That’s quitting time. But okay. If I’m not worried by your stuff you owe me dinner.”

  “It’s a bet. Can you have your chain of command there?”

  Carmichael laughed. “How much of my chain?”

  “All the way to the Planetary Liaison if you can get her.”

  That didn’t amuse him. “If you knew anything about what’s going on now you’d know the Liaison is too busy for anything else. And I like you but I’ll be damned if I’ll put my career on the line for you until you show me something solid.”