Hell's Razer

by S. F. Edwards

  Captain Sardenon’s stomach twisted in revulsion at every line he read of the damage assessment. It made him sick to look at the images from the Damage Control and Assessment Teams. Of the three hundred sixty-three refugees the Blade Force had rescued and brought aboard, less than a hundred remained. All of them had at least traces of the explosive in their systems. Only thirty had enough to do any damage. Fifteen of them knew it. It was the perfect trap, and he’d walked his ship right into it.

  To his surprise, Captain Sinon had somehow been one of the survivors. He pulled up the man’s interrogation on his macomm. “I swear, I didn’t know,” he yelled at Security Chief Glass. “We were chartered to smuggle refugees into Confed Space, just like we’ve done before, check your records!”

  “Who chartered you?”

  He shrugged on the tiny display. “I don’t know,” he replied looking away with a note of sadness. “Briseis handles, always handled, the arrangements.”

  “You had no idea about the biological explosives, or the shock troopers hidden amongst the refugees?”

  He stared at his hands for a long moment. “I don’t know.” He looked up. “There were inconsistencies with the manifest. Then the way we were pursued, that’s never happened before. And finally the way we were hounded to that system, only to be let go.”

  “And you never thought to address those to Blade Force Leader?”

  “He and his people were more concerned with the injured, the Governor, and those spooks.”

  The captain swiped away from the interrogation. He’d learn nothing from that, not yet. He looked at the damage assessment again. The dropship bay had been hulled, the explosion aboard the Blade Force’s dropship igniting a nearby munitions rack. The resulting detonation had blasted through the inner and outer hulls. The whole bay remained decompressed while Chief Engineer Baltrow compiled a list of where they could cull more Tacit Steel from once they’d returned to port.

  That would be far from an easy task. With the exception of a few samples in labs scattered around the Confederation, attempting to recreate the miracle material, all known stocks of Tacit Steel in the galaxy could be found in the hulls of the five Tacit supercarriers. Fortunately for the Wolfsbane, the first two ships of the line had used the material not only in their outer and inner hulls, but in most of their internal structure. The remaining three ships had been more conservative in their usage.

  It had all been mined from a single iron ore asteroid that had been discovered emerging from hyperspace. The iron, even when made into a composite with carbon and other metals, had the unique ability to survive in hyperspace without a protective shield. No one knew exactly how long the steel composite would last in hyperspace before the ether would consume it, or from where the asteroid had come, but multiple theories abounded.

  For the Captain, he believed the asteroid had been the core of a planet that had been pulled into hyperspace. Somehow, the radiation released during the planet’s consumption by the hyperspace ether had imbued the iron core with a means to resist it. Tacit Steel had proved as strong, resilient, and as workable as any structural steel. That had made it an ideal building material. That quality had allowed for the relative ease in repurposing it.

  He selected a source for patch material from the list and felt his grip on his career beginning to slip. The fighter transfer shafts. Damaged as they were on the portside, the ship had lost its ability to move fighters about internally. Better to use that material to patch the hull with. They could be rebuilt later from conventional metals. The loss of so much of the rare material could be a career breaker, to lose that much twice, a career ender.

  He sighed and wiped at his eyes as he moved on. He could worry about his career later. Despite Vaughnt’s best efforts, they’d lost the portside plasma beam cannon’s feed conduit. With it, the surrounding section had been gutted. It would take a tridec in drydock to repair the plasma conduit, longer in the field. The smaller explosions had done their own damage as well, and losing the Psi-Comm Control Bay had all but cut them off from the rest of the Confederation. Worse still, the Admiral had been in the control bay when the bomb had exploded. Now, Doctor Nereist, and his doctors in Med Bay One, worked their hardest to stabilize the taskforce’s Commander.

  Drobile wasn’t even a large enough colony to support a psi-comm center on its surface. Instead, it utilized an older tachyon communication array and hyperspace radio. The Wolfsbane no longer had that luxury. A single bomber had compromised the links to the long-range communications node. Worse, they’d found one of the prosthetics attached to a communications terminal. There was no telling what manner of virus the Geffers might have uploaded. Until his computer engineers could root it out, any outgoing communication might be compromised.

  Another had hit the secondary water recycling plant, and still another, the Stellar Cartography Chamber. It could have been far worse, he knew. None of the others had appeared to have reached their objectives. He could guess where they’d been heading based on where they’d exploded.

  Then there was the loss of life. He’d never know how many of the two hundred and fifty plus refugees that died were actual innocents. The losses to his own crew were lesser, but not by much; a hundred forty-two dead, and hundreds wounded, stung nonetheless.

  He had to take a break. The numbers were one thing, but when he tapped them, the names appeared. He knew them all. There wasn’t an officer or enlisted aboard the Wolfsbane that he didn’t know by name. Even most of the onboard civilians he could give a short rundown on. Thousands of crew, and he knew every name - maybe not every face - but he knew every name and what they did aboard his ship. These names, he knew the faces of most of them. He’d worked with them, spoken to them, even if just in passing. He set the macomm down and sat back breathing in the antiseptic air in the hopes it would clear his head.

  * * *

  Marda strode back into her medical bay and breathed a sigh of relief for the first time since the attack. The Captain was awake and sitting up in his bed. She could tell that something worried him, and seeing the macomm beside him, realized what it would be. He was working, against her orders. The two worst kind of patients: Doctors and Commanders.

  The wounds he’d received in the attack were grievous. Traces of silver in them from the explosion had slowed his natural healing ability. Even with all the technology at her disposal, he’d be a resident of the medical bay for at least another cycle. And he shouldn’t be working at all. Not while he had a command staff, all of whom were able to assume his duties.

  She came up and reviewed the vitals hovering over his head. His blood pressure was higher than she would have liked and his serotonin levels low. He was upset. “How are you, sir?” she asked with as cheery a face as she could manage.

  “Better than my ship,” he replied quietly, motioned across towards the darkened glass of the isolation chamber. “How’s he?”

  Marda looked back. An isolation ward with the windows blacked out was all but unheard of. A patient in such a chamber required close monitoring by any and all staff members. The only monitoring now was the set of vitals illuminated against the black screen – because this cycle, the patient within was Commander Tadeh Qudas. From the vitals it was clear he was clinging to life by little more than sheer willpower. “He’s alive, though I’m not sure how.”

  The Captain cracked a smile. “Because he’s a stubborn old bastard. It’ll take a lot more than a suicide bomber to kill him.”

  “I’m sure of that,” Marda sighed. “But due to the security level surrounding him, and the lack of medical staff that have been read in on his identity and physiology….” Marda wrung her hands, which were still aching. She could still see his blood on them.

  “How bad is he?”

  “I’ve had to clone him new lungs. So, he’s on a ventilator and direct blood gas infusion for now. I patched his heart back together and I have nanos repairing what’s left of the right half of his face and eye. And that’s where the real problem b
egins.”

  The Captain grunted in understanding.

  “Sir, Telshin physiology is in no database I have access to and the Telshin won’t let anyone into theirs. Que Dee and Gokhead can’t even weave their way in because they use their own private hyperweave that even the Synthetics aren’t able to gain access to. They’re too damned secretive and it may cost Tadeh Qudas his life.”

  “And if we reveal that he’s still alive, it would still cost him his life,” the Captain remarked. “Telshin law is clear on that point. No sole survivor can ever be permitted back into their ranks.”

  Marda could never wrap her brain around that. What kind of society would ostracize someone just for surviving? Most would celebrate them as a hero. Even Admiral Sadrick had told her that Tadeh Qudas had only one means of returning to the Telshin people. He had to prove that he’d hunted down and destroyed every last enemy that had wiped out his unit. It was one thing to come out as a victorious sole survivor. It was the greatest shame to have to be rescued by non-Telshins.

  “What are the nanos using as a template?” the Captain asked, pulling her from her musings.

  “The other half of his face, but he’ll come out badly scarred. There’s no avoiding it.”

  “He might like that.”

  “Sir, what do we do?”

  “You do what you can to keep him alive, and if he doesn’t make it,” the Captain stared at the darkened glass for a long moment. “Then we do what he would want and move on.”

  “Sir, his physiology is unlike anything I’ve seen before, and I’m an expert in xeno-biology. I’ve pieced back together beings from over two dozen races on an operating table and studied even more. Telshin biology,” she huffed out an exasperated sigh. “It makes no sense. Nothing is where evolution would place it…”

  “It’s all about survival,” he broke in, cutting her off. “I imagine you don’t know much Telshin history. Finding anything about them on hyperweave from before first contact is mostly speculation. But the Telshin genetically modified themselves quite heavily. Their natural evolution didn’t breed the warrior race we’ve all come to know and want walking two steps ahead of us.”

  Marda almost laughed at that, but it was true. Her father had once said that if he was ever heading into trouble, he wouldn’t want a Telshin by his side, but two steps ahead of him instead.

  “When their sister planet began to attack them, they armed and armored themselves in such a way that even naked they were a threat. As you’re seeing, that’s probably what’s keeping him alive. So, do what you can to keep him that way. Otherwise I’ll have to promote your husband.”

  Marda felt her veins ice over. With what she’d been contemplating, losing Tadeh Qudas and Blazer being promoted to fill the void, it was too much. She’d lose Blazer for sure. “He wouldn’t like that. Blazer that is.”

  “Does he know about certain other things in the mix that he might not like even more?”

  Marda turned towards him, wondered how much he knew about the transfer offer.

  “I’m to understand that Admiral Sadrick is trying to pull you away from our little family. Drag you off to some station off-planet.”

  Marda looked back towards the isolation booth, patched her micomm into the security cameras inside. He hadn’t moved, his condition unchanged. The need to save him seemed even more imperative. She turned back to the Captain. “Cathedral Six, actually. And after the events of the last tridec… I can see why.”

  “I understand completely. But we need you here.”

  “Sir?”

  “Vaughnt, Doctor Vaughnt, we need your expertise here. Who else would have discovered those biological explosives in the time and way that you did? Without that information on what to scan for, we’d have been blind as to where the enemy was heading. We could have lost the ship. Now, before you bring up Gokhead’s phase signature scans, those shock troopers were only with certain groups. The solo bombers, we never would have seen them, or slowed them down.”

  “Someone else would have…”

  “No,” he said with a flattened hand pointed her way like a hatchet. “You remained calm under pressure when everyone around you was in a panic.”

  She wiped at a patch on her face where her cheek had been burned by the blast outside her medical bay. “Yes, sir.”

  “That calm let you remember some obscure piece of knowledge about bio-explosives. That set you down a trail that kept us from losing this ship, and everyone aboard.”

  Marda hadn’t really considered that. Her skillset was unique in many ways, and she doubted that anyone else in the onboard medical facilities had even heard of bio-explosives before the last cycle.

  “You name anything you want to keep you aboard this ship.”

  “It’s not that simple. Blazer and I are raising our son aboard a warship. Our son. I left the team to be there for him in case a mission went wrong, to ensure that he still had a parent left. And now, now the Wolfsbane, the WOLFSBANE, has been damaged in battle and beaten internally from a shipboard assault.”

  “That I can understand. My own daughter is aboard, and were it up to me,” he sighed. “My son would be too. So, I know where you’re coming from. I lost my wife to this war and had to raise them by myself. If you really want to leave, I won’t stand in your way. But, I will do anything in my power to keep you on this ship, keep you as a part of my crew. We need you.”

  Marda nodded. “I’ll take that into consideration.”

  “VIP quarters within the Egg?”

  “No sir, no special favors,” she replied with a laugh. “Besides, we’re already quartered in the Egg.”

  The Captain took a pulse to consider. “Fresh fruit and veggies. Delivered to your door, by my daughter?”

  “Sir,” she laughed. “You have more important things to worry about at the moment than keeping a single doctor aboard.”

  “Not just any doctor, but the best damn doctor aboard. Don’t tell Dr Nereist that. If I lose you, you know I’ll lose the Blade Force too. There’s no way that husband of yours wouldn’t transfer out with you. And even if the rest didn’t, that would leave Officer Zithe in charge.”

  “Would that be such a bad thing?” Marda asked.

  “The way he prowls after my daughter, he’s lucky I haven’t spaced him already. But, he hasn’t broken any regs so there’s nothing I can do. If he had a command position…”

  “I’ve noticed that her quarters are inside the Egg too.”

  “She’s my daughter, I do what I can to protect her.”

  “I can understand and that’s why I’m debating things.”

  “As anyone in your position would.”

  “Next refit,” she motioned around. “The Egg gets a Type 3 upgrade and expansion.”

  The Captain’s eyes went wide. The Type 3 upgrade was no joke, transforming the Egg from a shelter into its own ship within the ship. The Robial and the Ib’Schag, the last two Tacits, had been built with Type-3 Eggs. The Ib’Schag’s could even separate from the ship since it had omitted the starboard hangar wing due to Tacit Steel shortages. “You know how much that costs?”

  Marda nodded.

  “Deal, and I grant you and your husband command authority to seal and unseal the Egg as needed.”

  “Sir?”

  “Trouble follows you people and I want to make sure that you have all the tools you need to keep it at bay. Now that that’s settled,” he picked up his macomm.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “No, thank you. Now go save Tadeh Qudas like you and your people saved my ship.”

  “Captain, Sir, good you are awake,” a voice Marda had only heard one or twice called.

  She turned. The ship’s new XO, Commander Salgou, stride acroo the medical bay. “Stand down, Commander,” she ordered and motioned back towards the Captain. “Captain Sardenon is still on bedrest.”

  “It’s fine doctor. I’ve been working for at least a hect.”

  Marda shot the Captain a hard, cold look th
at made him sit back further into his bed. “Ten pulses, and if your blood pressure so much as twitches.”

  “Give you a little command authority and…”

  “And what?”

  “Never mind,” he chuckled. “Report Commander!”

  “The time, sir,” Salgou replied and pointed to an old analog clock on the wall. “The Powell is going to send its signal within the hect, and there’s no way to reach them.”

  “Blast it,” the Captain growled. He hadn’t considered that with everything else going on. He eyed his blood pressure, Marda smiled at that. But the thought that they might not be able to contact their teams aboard the Powell to delay the signal sent a shiver through her.

  The Captain steepled his hands while he thought and stared over at Tadeh Qudas’ isolation chamber. “We’re hulled, and have major internal damage, but we live. Are we combat capable?”

  Marda felt her eyes go wide and turned on the Captain. The Commander seemed unfazed, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “Sir, the Wolfsbane is currently seventy-two percent combat effective. She can fight.”

  “Now, hold on a moment,” Marda cut in. “You aren’t seriously thinking of taking us back into battle are you?”

  The Captain nodded. “Why not? The Wolfsbane is a command ship. We treat her like one. We hold the rear line, provide command and control for the rest of the taskforce while we let out our fighter and bomber wings do the heavy hitting. Those are back up to strength. And we claim the biggest prize since the Planet Slicer. Commander, contact the taskforce. Have them get underway. Once we’re ready to move out, we’ll follow.”

  Marda could only stand dumbfounded and for a moment wondered if she could still reject the Captain’s offer. She thought better of it. It was not the time for recrimination. It was however the time to get her innocent child to the safest place she could think of. She headed off to the Isolation Bay and placed a call to Alieha on her micomm. She might not have a Type-3 Egg aboard, but she had access to the next best thing, for the moment.

  Bridge, GFS Barker, Ketig Nebula