Human, page 24
part #1 of Humanity Ascendant Series
She was too keyed up from the action to stay around on the bridge. “I’ll be in my bunk,” she told Gleb, ignoring the look of awe on his face.
They’d just taken out a cruiser, killed hundreds of Quailu, and now she was going to grab a quick nap?
She kept the grimace off her face as she wove her way through the crowd of extra prize crew in the engineering spaces. She wasn’t the imperturbable leader he thought her to be. She just didn’t want to deal with her post-action jitters and recriminations in front of the crew.
She flopped down on her bunk. She’d take a half hour or so to sort out her thoughts and then head back out.
She was still lying in the same position, six hours later, when Meesh gave her foot a shake, waking her up.
“Frigate,” he said simply.
Hela sat up, realizing as she did that she still had her suit on. It was probably the smart thing to do, really, given that they were lurking around in a gas giant’s outer atmosphere, looking for trouble.
She had an easier time getting through the middle of the ship now that the prize crew were all on their feet, checking suits and weapons.
“Talk to me, Gleb,” she said, leaning over to see the holo from something approximating his own perspective.
“A frigate here.” He pointed. “A faint ghost over here that looks like a cruiser. I think A Waste of Time is moving in for the assault but she’s even harder to see than the frigate.”
“They’re matching our approach,” she replied, nodding with approval at their vector-icon in the holo.
It had been worked out in advance. They couldn’t use communications without alerting the enemy, so the junior scout-ship in each hunting pair would try to mirror the leader, approaching at the same time.
Assuming they could even see each other. It was nearly impossible even when they knew that friendlies were out there. For an enemy ship to spot them, it would take a minor miracle.
“Almost there,” Eve called over her shoulder. “Two minutes out.”
Hela stuck her head around the bulkhead. “Line up!” she shouted at the prize crew. “Two minutes! Get your fingers out of your noses; it’s time to button up!”
She turned back to Gleb. “Rig the ship for combat.”
“Rigging for combat!” Gleb confirmed.
Their helmets snapped shut and gloves grew into place. The background sounds of the ship, the ones she never noticed until moments like this, became muted, though an alarm was sounding in her ears and a red icon flashed in front of her left eye.
Cursing, she ran back into the engineering compartment, seeing a corresponding red icon over one of the crewmen of the prize crew. She strode over to the helmetless man who was hammering, ineffectually, at the collar of his suit.
She grabbed his collar and dragged him over to her cubicle door. You can come out if you get it working,” she snarled, shutting him in her sleeping space. One improperly suited crewman could hold up the rigging process, unless the captain authorized an override or that crewman was sealed in a space with air to breathe.
As soon as the cubicle door closed on him, the atmosphere was sucked out of the little ship and what little sound she had still heard from the ship faded, carried now by the thin upper-atmosphere of the planet.
She shoved a few crewmen into line as she moved toward the growing hole in the starboard side of the hull, directly opposite the pitch drives. The frigate was rapidly growing to fill the view.
She grabbed a stanchion and leaned out to look along the length of the frigate. She would have jumped out of her skin, if there had been enough room in the suit, when Meesh grabbed her tie-cable.
She looked back inside where he held up the mag-clip at the end of her cable.
“Best time to hook up is before you fall out of the ship.”
Before she could reply, Eve interrupted.
“Hammurabi’s nads!” she shouted, overloading the channel with a layer of static. “Gas harvesting platform, dead ahead!”
Hela turned to look ahead. A massive complex floated ahead of them, suspended by a series of large balloons. It was coming up fast.
The scout-ship swerved upwards and to port, understandable with a frigate preventing escape to starboard, but Hela was hanging partially out of the starboard side and Your Last Chance was an incredibly nimble ship.
The inertial dampeners weren’t meant to cover things outside the hull. Their effects did bleed out past the plating for a few feet but the fall-off in the effect was pretty sharp and Hela’s left arm suddenly felt as though some invisible giant was trying to pull her out of the hole in the hull.
She looked back into the ship, her breath catching in her throat and she saw Meesh standing there with a look of shock in his eyes and the mag-clip still in his hand.
Hela was pulled out of the opening, accelerating as her body left the dampening field.
Meesh finally snapped out of it. “Belay maneuvering!” he yelled, slapping the clip up onto the thicker stanchion that radiated out from the top of the engine mountings.
Hela hit the end of her tether less than a second after Meesh had attached the clip and it felt like she’d been hit with a speeding ground-car. Her back was screaming protests to her brain and her left shoulder might have been dislocated from the violence of the unexpected acceleration.
They’d managed to clear the harvesting platform but Hela, straining to reach her cable retract, was a good twenty meters closer and headed straight for the lowest of the four balloons that held the platform up.
She managed to get her right hand up to her retractor and she started inching toward the ship but not in time to miss the lower balloon.
It was big enough to hide a frigate inside and the material had to be tough but, thankfully, her suit was tougher and she punched through, her tie cable slicing a rent along the side as she flew in toward the center. A staircase wound its way up from the base of the balloon, leading to a gas generator near its center. A startled Quailu stood at the controls with some kind of tool in his hand and she managed a casual wave as she sped past.
She looked down and her blood suddenly ran cold. A second, narrower staircase worked its way up the inside of the balloon wall, leading to a hatch near its equator. She had no idea what it was for but she was heading straight for it; the retractor was working too slowly.
She grabbed the cable with both hands, ignoring the searing pain in her left shoulder, and pulled for all she was worth. She saw no slack in the cable at her chest but her hands were moving toward her as she tried to climb back along the cable, hand over hand.
Either her retractor was automatically taking up the slack or her hands were slipping on the cable. Either way, there was nothing to do but keep trying.
Her breathing froze as the stairs raced toward her but she slammed through the fabric of the balloon with just over a meter to spare.
“Gahhh!” she opined as her head struck an antenna and her ass tore a signal light loose. All things considered, she felt it was an appropriate comment.
But she was clear!
And the scout-ship was closer than she would have expected, so her desperate scramble had been worth the effort. She twisted to look for the frigate.
“Oh my various gods!” she exclaimed softly.
The harvesting platform had been slightly to port for the frigate so she’d sheared off to starboard. It was a sensible course of action, except there had been a scout-ship closing in on them from that side.
The bulk of the frigate would have masked the platform from the scout-ship’s view so the enemy’s emergency course-change would have been completely unexpected.
She couldn’t see Waste of Time , but she suspected they were embedded in the starboard side of the frigate. Its crew would almost certainly be dead. A cloud of debris was spinning away from the enemy ship’s side.
The Quailu would have been partially incapacitated by the sudden drop in pressure. The hull would have sealed itself around the scout-ship by now but a lot of air would have been vented in the relatively thin atmosphere of the gas giant. The large central ramp would have spread the pressure change very rapidly.
Hearing loss, temporary or permanent blindness and a general feeling of terror would be infecting the Quailu crewmen and at a time when quick action would be needed to save their ship.
An explosion tore a new hole in the hull on the port side. It might be from a damaged system or maybe even from one of the small mines the scout-ships had received from the Mouse . Whatever the cause, the frigate began to drop her bow toward the planet.
The Waste of Time and the frigate were both doomed.
She brought her breathing under control but she couldn’t wipe the moisture from her eyes with the helmet closed. Nineteen good people gone due to shitty luck.
She remembered Eth’s advice.
You can’t count on luck. It’ll turn on you but, if you look after your people…
Meesh and someone from the prize crew grabbed her arms and pulled her in.
And Then the Murders Began
E th had to force himself to look away from his holo and open up the queue of status reports he’d been ignoring. They didn’t make for very exciting reading but, if he continued to ignore them, every department head would notice and they’d know exactly why.
He resisted the urge to open and close each file. They’d end up with a set of timestamps that would have proclaimed his distraction even more eloquently than simply ignoring them.
He grunted in surprise. His gunnery officer had located a large cache of anti-ship mines in storage and he’d parceled them out to the scout-ships.
Not that he would have stopped him, but Eth wished he’d told him about it. He grimaced. Technically, he was telling him in his report, but this was an important detail. Too important to leave in a report that might be ignored.
He’d have to have a quiet chat with him. Initiative and exceeding authority got up from opposite sides of the same bed. The idea was sound, but a quick call up to the bridge would have been welcome.
“You were pretending to be absorbed in your reports and then you accidentally started doing some actual work, didn’t you?”
Eth looked up. Father Sulak stood there, one hand holding a steel coffee mug and the other scratching absently under his robes. The Quailu grinned widely at him.
“Look sharp!” Eth called out to the bridge crew. “Our oracle’s suddenly on the bridge, trying to act casual. Something’s about to happen!”
“Am I that transparent?” Sulak asked.
“Even more transparent than that old robe of yours,” Eth told him. “You just make a fresh pot of my coffee?”
Sulak chuckled. “It was Uktannu’s coffee not so long ago…”
“And I took it as the spoils of war,” Eth said, sounding as though he were explaining it to a child. Mostly, he liked Sulak because he didn’t seem put out by his inability to read him, but his refusal to take himself too seriously helped as well.
“Perhaps I’ve seized the galley,” Sulak suggested.
“Good!” Eth grinned at the oracle. “I haven’t really sorted out who’s going to run the place. I like my eggs over easy. Something should squirt out when you bite into them.”
“Carnivores!” Sulak shuddered, though Eth felt nothing but amusement from him. The Quailu were mostly vegetarian but they did eat the occasional bit of dead animal. “I’m already looking after the galley staff.”
“Then why haven’t they started on the second-shift main meal yet?”
“Reading multiple distortions!” Oliv said. “Looks like they’re opening paths from inside the atmosphere. They must have just had a timer counting down so they’d all jump out at the same time.”
“That would be why,” Sulak said casually. He noticed Eth’s look of confusion. “I hate to waste food, so I had the galley hold off on…”
“Any sign of our people?” Eth asked, cutting off the oracle.
Oliv shook her head. “Not yet.”
“That’s a day earlier than we expected,” Henku said, sounding as though an agreement had been broken.
“First smart thing they’ve done so far.” Eth waved at the holo. “They know what we’re likely to expect from them so they’re changing the tempo, trying to catch the defense off-balance.”
“Here come our people.” Oliv began tagging ships as they emerged from the atmosphere. “That gas might make comms difficult but there’s no hiding a distortion effect. Our hunting teams will know the quarry’s run off.”
The thick gasses that had made it possible to approach the enemy undetected also wreaked havoc with sensors and communications. That was why the scouts had been advised to watch for distortion signatures.
It was the one sure sign that the enemy was leaving. It ensured Eth would be able to consolidate his small force in time to have an impact on the second battle for Arbella.
He came out of his chair, seeing only two of the hoped-for three frigates, each with two scout-ships attached to their flanks like parasites. A single scout-ship signaled from the far side of the gas giant.
He opened the channel. “Warrant Hela, report.”
“We lost the Waste of Time to a collision with a frigate,” she told him. “So we spent the rest of our time hunting down cruisers. Managed to knock out three before the rest pathed out.”
“I’m sorry to hear about the Waste of Time ,” he told her, “but well done, Warrant. Dock with us until we get back to Arbella.”
Three cruisers knocked out of the fight before it even began! Warrant Officer Hela would bear watching. He’d have to get his captains together after the fight, assuming they were still alive, and have her explain what she’d been doing for the last few days.
He designated two channels to the frigates, bringing up holograms of their captains in front of him. “Carol, Fink, your ships are ready for action?”
“As ready as we’re going to be,” Fink shrugged. “We’re running with a skeleton crew here.”
“We’re ready,” Carol confirmed, “but I’m not going to pretend I like this.”
He knew she didn’t mean running a short-handed frigate. “I need you on that frigate,” he told her. “I’ve got someone in mind for lead scout but she’s going to have to lean on you. We don’t have a lot of experienced leaders to choose from.”
“And by ‘a lot’ you mean ‘any’?” Carol chuckled.
“It’s a steep learning curve,” Eth admitted, “but we have good people to work with – lots of combat experience, just not combat in ships. We’ve been relatively lucky so far, but we need to get our shit together before that luck runs out.
“For now, just go with the plan I just sent over.”
“Sir,” Hela interjected, her holographic image appearing next to Fink, “I haven’t had a chance to go through the whole thing yet but isn’t this a violation of the conventions?”
“Only for a defensive deployment, Warrant. I believe this qualifies as an offensive usage.”
“Your Last Chance is docked,” Oliv interrupted. “We’re ready to go.”
“Any inspiring words, Lieutenant Eth?” Carol asked, smirking.
“Yeah, um… This is a make-or-break moment for our people. The whole galaxy is gonna be rehashing what we do in the next couple of hours so, what do we say?”
Carol rolled her eyes. “We’re not at home to Mr. Screw-Up?”
“Damn straight.” Eth nodded. “Let’s get in there, murder some of the bastards and see if we can scare them off.
“Hendy, confirm path-destination with our two frigates and coordinate the jump.”
The path back to Arbella was a short one, taking less than five minutes, and they came out well back from the standard approach corridor.
“Enemy appears to be in two echelons,” Oliv advised. “One facing down the approach to the planet and one facing out toward us.”
Eth glanced at the holo showing his own ships, pleased to see his scout-ships already separated from the larger ships and racing toward the enemy fleet. “Clearly, they’re expecting an attack from behind. The database describes Tilsin as a sharp tactician. He’s probably got them dancing to one tune or another.
“Waypoint one,” he ordered. “And watch out for incoming.”
The cruiser and the two frigates began heading in, but they were angling heavily to starboard, aimed for a course that would skirt that side of the opening in the planetary minefield.
The enemies’ sensors would have detected their arrival waves and now they’d be watching the small force as it moved over…
Away from the approaching scout-ships.
“Incoming,” Oliv said calmly.
“Altering our velocity by two percent so the slugs will miss us,” Hendy said.
“Missiles?” Eth asked.
“We’re nowhere close to their maneuver range so they’ll be purely inertial by the time they miss us,” Oliv scorned. “It’s almost like they’re just trying to scare us off.”
“So Uktannu isn’t in overall command,” Eth mused. “He’d have more sense than to waste munitions like this.”
“How the mighty have fallen,” Hendy offered dryly. “At least that increases our chances of success.”
“Maybe we should return the gesture.” Eth squinted at the holo. “Fire off a few rounds, kick up a ruckus to keep their interest, let ‘em know it’s mutual…”
“We’d have to turn back in,” Hendy cautioned.
“Yeah, our mains can’t traverse that far on this course,” Oliv added.
“I don’t see how that’s a problem,” Eth countered. “They’d expect us to fire back at them. It might even reassure them. Why not just fire a few slugs in whatever random direction we’re currently headed? That’ll hold their attention for a while – wondering what the Hells we were shooting at…”
“Well, we are decoys,” Oliv conceded. She began feeding power into the capacitor banks for the main rail-guns.
W hat in the hells are they shooting at?” Hela peered out the starboard side cockpit window.
“Absolutely nothing,” Eve said. “Just the minefield over there.”
“I suppose if we’re scratching our heads, then so are the enemy, which is probably what the lieutenant had in mind.” Hela turned back to her display panel.
