Brink of Destruction, page 13
But, moving slowly, Santonokos started to bring his gauntleted hands together. “I need to activate the comms to order it.”
Draven watched him, his finger on the trigger, the aiming pip in his visor hovering right at the captain’s faceplate.
He had to decide. Take the chance that Santonokos wasn’t suicidal, and that he wasn’t reaching for a detonator? Or simply shoot him, and potentially start a bloodbath if he was wrong?
Finally, he lowered his muzzle fractionally. “Give the order.”
Santonokos nodded and touched a control on his gauntlet. Nothing exploded. “All personnel, lay down your weapons and come to the center dome with your hands on your helmets. The Zolarians will not harm us.”
With a flash of anger, Draven wondered just why he was so sure.
Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to calm down, surprised at his own reactions. This was his first engagement with the Mytunese since Dur Udyaanm. He hadn’t realized just how much he had internalized the experience of that hellish fight, both on the moon above and the planet below. How much he’d come to hate. How willing he was to unleash death, just in case.
He thought he was starting to understand the Corvanites a bit more.
The other Mytunese were starting to come in from the other two domes. As instructed, they had their hands on top of their helmets. Not all of them were in hardsuits, either. Some were in regular civilian pressure suits. This hadn’t been much of a combat outpost, or if it was, it had been intended to observe, report, and engage spaceborne threats.
A figure loomed next to him, and Draven realized that Captain Breck had finally come into the base. He lowered his weapon the rest of the way.
It was over.
For now.
CHAPTER 17
Bannon was still fighting off the effects of wormhole transition when he reported to Commander Fox’s office. The tiny compartment, not much bigger than his own planning space, was just off the company areas, rather than in the officer quarters.
That wasn’t a matter of Fox’s personal preference, though Bannon had worked for the man long enough to expect that if it hadn’t been Corvanite policy, he would have insisted on it anyway. Many Corvanite leaders had more in common with Captain Haarot than Commander Fox. Haarot was not a bad man or a bad leader. He simply demanded that his men throw themselves one hundred percent into the mission, and he held them to the same standard to which he held himself. There was no bend in Captain Haarot, no room for any consideration except the mission. He’d been trained that way. They all had. It had been one of the first lessons of the agoge field.
Yet out on real battlefields, far from home and support, men needed more. Even Corvanites. And Commander Fox, as distant as he could be at times, understood that.
His fatherly moments were reserved more often for the junior warriors, but he knew when to step down with his officers as well. And the disorientation and nausea that usually followed a wormhole transit was usually one of those times.
That he’d ordered Bannon up as soon as they’d exited the Eredin system and gotten to the next—Bannon wasn’t sure which the next system was yet—meant there was something serious afoot.
He slammed his hand on the side of the hatchway, standing straight in his mag boots. The Thunderer was coasting for a while, as the navigation stations confirmed their location and planned the drive burn and trajectory to the next wormhole point, so they were in zero gee. “Lieutenant Bannon reporting as ordered, sir.”
“Come in, Bannon.” Fox was at his desk, poring over the notes that he must have taken during the conversation with the Columbians and the Shiyhanese. Bannon hadn’t seen him take them, then realized that the commander must have transcribed them afterward.
“Strap in.” Commander Fox pointed to a seat that doubled as another acceleration couch across from his desk. “I expect we will be under thrust soon.”
Ordinarily that was limited to only about one gee, easy enough for any Corvanite to cope with, but standard procedure still called for all hands to be strapped in at the beginning of a burn. Even a difference of only one gee, if someone was out of position, could cause an injury.
It wasn’t so much that Corvanites were overly solicitous of their troops. A part of Bannon, a part that had never really left the agoge field, felt that all men should be aware enough of what was going on to know not to be out of position when a main drive burn started. But too many injuries also had the effect of undermining combat effectiveness.
So he strapped in without a word.
Commander Fox studied him. Under thrust, he’d probably rest his elbows on the desk. In zero gee, he simply folded his arms, though they floated slightly above his massive chest. “Well, Lieutenant. You have probably the most extensive experience with the ghost ships. What do you think about Ransjunan’s story?”
Bannon shrugged, an odd movement in freefall. “I’ve fought them, sir. Boarded one that attempted to self-destruct. I can’t say I’m an expert in their thought processes.”
“From the sounds of things, no one is.” Fox looked at his notes where they hovered in the holo display in front of him. “Even the chyotsu didn’t seem to have any interaction with them that wasn’t belligerent.”
“Do you think it’s true, sir? Ransjunan’s story?”
Fox tilted his head to one side, his eyes still on the glowing letters. “I think he believes it. Granted, if there are ways a human can learn to read a chyotsu, I am unfamiliar with them. But that did not strike me as an elaborate fabrication.” He snorted. “After all, it required him to speak at some length about how much his government doesn’t know.”
“Maybe.” Bannon had had some time to think it over, though passing through a wormhole tended to dampen one’s ability to ponder. “It does seem to match the patterns that we have observed, though.” He began to tick off points on his fingers. “They make no direct contact, but attempt to inflame tensions and drive wars. We’ve seen that. There has been no particular rhyme or reason to their attacks except to keep us and the Zolarians, or the Mytunese and the Zolarians, at each other’s throats. They also seem to be very well informed about the strategic situation in this region of space.”
“What makes you say that?” Commander Fox seemed genuinely curious.
“Well, sir, there are a couple of reasons.” Bannon found that the picture was starting to become a little clearer in his own mind. “There was a human aboard the ship that I boarded over Zhogalgan. He was as dedicated as the rest of the alien crew, and whatever method they used to commit suicide just before the ship entered its self-destruct sequence, he did the same thing. It didn’t seem to be anything external. Some sort of implant, possibly. At any rate, they had a source of information from this region—or somewhere in the human constellation. This region seems more likely, given their targets.
“Then, on Thuraban, a year after they almost got us to start openly engaging the Zolarians at Zhogalgan, they stepped in to attack us, and then the Afa Thura, who were the primary rivals of the very thura that the Zolarians were cultivating as allies. That might not seem to point immediately to an extensive knowledge of the overall strategic situation in this cluster, sir, except that the Zolarians were enlisting the Suta Thura into their war with the Mytunese. The ghost ships wanted that to happen. And they were willing to annihilate the Afa Thura to make it happen.”
Fox nodded slowly. “And now they’re in the Eredin system, not far from where the Zolarians are preparing the first steps of their offensive against Mytun.”
“It makes me wonder, sir.”
“Wonder what?” Commander Fox’s gaze sharpened. He’d picked something out of Bannon’s words, something in his tone.
“The Shihyan thinks that these aliens are preparing an invasion. That’s still possible. But then why would they pick already festering trouble spots? If they wanted to weaken potential defenders, why only target belligerents already at each other’s throats?”
Commander Fox tapped a finger against his chin. “There are a couple of possibilities—and this is taking into consideration that I am a human attempting to understand an alien mindset by analyzing what little we have observed of their actions. First, the human you briefly captured on that ship above Zhogalgan might be a clue. If they have agents already operating on our worlds, those agents may be helping fuel the conflicts, with the intention of spreading them once they fully ignite.
“Furthermore, they may be simply using such agents to pick their targets, and attempting to provoke conflicts that will spread on their own. Zhogalgan, again, was a prime example once the Eurasian Concordium arrived. That would have spun out of control quickly, dragging the war all the way back to Earth.” He tilted his head toward the notes. “This situation is perhaps less subject to wide escalation, particularly as the Council continues to be displeased with the Mytunese’s actions, but should the Zolarians push past the boundaries our consuls have warned them against, this could become just the sort of galactic arm-spanning conflagration the ghost ships appear to want.”
The thrust alarm chimed, but both men were already strapped in. The faint rumble was almost imperceptible over the other sounds that were constant in a functioning starship, but the weight slowly began to build.
“Again, this is all speculation. Without actually capturing one of these aliens, or one of their computer systems, we cannot be sure of any of their motives or plans.”
Another alert chimed, and Fox’s gaze turned to the tactical display, a frown creasing his features. He touched a control, replacing his notes with the display, which expanded to fill most of the holo tank above his desk.
Bannon saw what had prompted the alert, and he felt a chill.
The system—the display showed that it didn’t have a name in Corvanite catalogs, only the alphanumeric RT7255—consisted of little more than an A-type star, three rocky dwarf planets, and a large asteroid belt. The next wormhole emergence point had been calculated at just above the ecliptic, half an AU on the other side of the star. Even at one gee, it was going to take some time to cross the system.
That wasn’t the cause of the alarm, however.
There had been enough sensor data gathered since Zhogalgan for the ships’ computers to identify one of the ghost ships, even as elusive as they were, their emissions faint and their hulls so black that they were almost impossible to pick out with visual sensors unless they were occluding an object with enough light either emitting or reflecting from it. And there was a ghost ship hovering near one of those dwarf planets, not far from the trajectory that the Thunderer would have to follow to reach the next wormhole emergence point.
As the data filled in the display, it became clear that this was far larger than the ghost ship over Zhogalgan. Larger than the ship that had paced the Infiltrator on the way out from Eredin IV. It might even be the same size as the big one that had been spotted in the distance there. If not the very same ship.
Bannon felt a very un-Corvanite chill. “Sir, we know that the ghost ships can open wormholes where there are no known wormhole emergence points.”
“You think they jumped ahead of us.” It was not a question.
“It looks that way, sir. Unless this system is where their base is.” Bannon was speculating; he had no access to the wider scanner information about this system.
“Doubtful.” Fox’s eyes narrowed. “If the sensors picked up that ship, they should have picked up anything of any greater size.”
“Unless they are dug into one of the dwarf planets.” Bannon knew he was reaching, but there was something about this situation that made him reluctant to simply accept that this was only one ship. Even if there was no base here—and it would make sense to him if there was; RT7255 fit the Columbians’ framework, being an uninhabited system far out from any wormhole connection to any inhabited planet except for Eredin IV, and that world could only barely be considered “habitable”—to assume that without checking bothered him.
He wasn’t entirely sure why. After the clashes with the ghost ship aliens he’d been through so far, he didn’t relish the thought of engaging them on their own ground with only the Thunderer and her complement of starfighters and ground warriors. But the thought of having those shadowy ships and their spindly operators somewhere behind them bothered him even more.
“We could scan them as we go by, but I doubt it. Even if they are here, we cannot engage them with only this ship.” Commander Fox might not have Bannon’s history with the ghost ships, but he held his rank by virtue of experience, knowledge, and wisdom. “I will speak with Captain Tomas, but we will continue on through the system, do what we need to in order to destroy or evade that ghost ship, and get somewhere secure before we can do anything about the base or its possible location.” He turned an unblinking gaze on his subordinate. “I have asked a great deal of you in recent years, Lieutenant, but that doesn’t mean you’re capable of miracles. Don’t forget that.”
Bannon nodded, both chastened and relieved. Commander Fox wasn’t finished yet, though.
“There is one question about this ship’s presence that you haven’t yet considered, Lieutenant.”
Bannon looked up. Fox was studying the ghost ship in the holo display. “Sir?”
Fox continued to look at the image for a moment before turning his pale eyes on Bannon. “Why are the ghost ships so interested in our presence? Why pursue one ship from a backwater system where we expected to find Zolarians? They have not pursued like this before, to the best of my knowledge.”
Bannon frowned as it dawned on him. “There’s something else going on in the Eredin system. Something they don’t want anyone to see. And they think we know what it was, since we rescued the Columbians and the Shihyanese.”
“It would appear so.” Fox took a deep breath. “I expect we will be secured for maneuvering soon, but as soon as we get out of this system, we need to have another talk with your Columbian and Shihyanese friends.”
CHAPTER 18
Captain Tomas’s eyes narrowed as he studied the ship in his holo display. Even the intelligence personnel and programs on Corvan Major were still unsure what the ghost ships’ capabilities were, and the emissions readouts were therefore relatively opaque. They could catalog a neutrino signature, but anything else was guesswork.
Unless it began actively scanning with lidar, he couldn’t even be sure that it was aware of the Thunderer’s presence. He was reasonably sure it was; the ghost ships had exhibited a level of technology pretty far beyond most human societies. But for now, it floated in orbit over the nameless rock of a dwarf planet, quiescent. Waiting.
Tomas had fought one of these ships before. A smaller one, but one that had nevertheless presented a challenge unlike any he’d seen in over two decades as a spacer. To face this monster gave him pause.
Not trepidation. Not really. That was not a Corvanite reaction, let alone that of a veteran who had seen space combat with pirates, otuchans, and half a dozen minor powers across the cluster for over twenty years. But he was a realist. To throw his ship—and the lives of those aboard—away was not the Corvanite way either.
He zoomed the display back out. Prudence would suggest, faced with any other opponent, that they make straight for the next wormhole emergence point at three gees, the most that his Corvanites were trained to withstand for an extended period—up to over a week if necessary. Yet as he studied the bleak, lifeless system and where the ghost ship orbited, he took his time to consider his options.
Even if the ghost ship was there to intercept the Thunderer, it would be days before they were close enough for an intercept. The ghost ships’ capabilities were unknown but assumed to be formidable, but even they were still subject to the laws of physics and orbital dynamics.
Commander Fox’s message had been terse but clear. There was a reason that ghost ship was in this system. A reason they were pursuing the Thunderer. That it was a pursuit, Tomas was sure. He’d compared the signature of the ship currently farther down the gravity well with the large vessel that had been glimpsed just before transiting out of the Eredin system. It was the same craft.
That had told the commander—and Tomas agreed—that there was some reason the ghost ships didn’t want the Thunderer getting back to Corvanite space. If that was so, then their escape became paramount.
The reason the ghost ships wanted his ship captured or destroyed was currently immaterial to Tomas. That it was so was enough.
And trying to rush through the system would accomplish nothing if they were intercepted.
He began to tap in the program for the next series of maneuvers. They would take days, but—provided the ghost ship didn’t suddenly display a capacity for violating physics itself—he just might get the Thunderer out of the RT7255 system.
What came after that was a question for the other side of that wormhole transition.
***
“All compartments report secured for acceleration, sir.”
Tomas acknowledged, his full focus on the display in front of him. The announcement was glorified background noise, though he still cataloged it as necessary information. If any of the crew hadn’t been secure in their acceleration couches—or, for that matter, if any of the stowage had been loose—it could have been disastrous.
The one-gee burn toward the wormhole emergence point had continued while he’d plotted his next moves. It wasn’t directed along a perfectly straight line; even under power, the gravitational pull of the various bodies in the system, the star most strongly, were still going to influence the ship’s path. In any case, that trajectory was about to become academic.
The realities of space flight often precluded the sort of manual flying that a good pilot wished he could do. Particularly when the planned flight path was as intricate and risky as the one he’d worked up. That was what flight computers were for. They could time the thruster and main drive burns down to the millisecond, more precisely than any human could manage by feel. When such precision could mean the difference between reaching a destination and overshooting by tens of thousands of miles—or more—the computer became vital.
