Trial by Fire: Chapter Six

Outbound from Barnard’s Star 2 C

    Trevor resisted the impulse to roll his eyes. What do I think? I think you’re a civilian who’s been turned into a toy soldier. I think that sometimes you’re too damned smart for your own good–but thank God we’ve got you on our side. I think it pisses me off that the woman I’m always thinking about is in love with you, not me. “I think your idea is just crazy enough that it might work.”

    Caine nodded slowly. “Can you talk Hazawa into it?”

    Hazawa: another contestant in today’s Amateur Hour Follies. “Probably, but it’ll be faster if I just take command–”

    Trevor had not expected Caine to interrupt, but he did. “Which means you’d have to self-activate out of reserve and take the conn.”

    “So?”

    “So, you might want to retain your current civilian status and stay here in Auxiliary Command. Just in case this craziness doesn’t work out.”

    “You mean, in case we’re captured? Well, yeah,” he admitted, “you’ve got a point. So”–he checked his watch–”we’ve got about a minute before things get lively. Get on your collarcom with Hazawa. Explain your idea quickly and convey my recommendation that he follows it.”

    “I should call?”

    “Yes, you. If something happens to me, he’s got to know to listen to you, too. He’s too green to know that you don’t know half of what you’re talking about.”

    “Thanks for the pep talk, Trevor.”

    “Don’t mention it. Get going. I’ve got some real work to do.”

    As Caine started explaining his idea–and rank–to Hazawa, Trevor reconsidered the cutter’s own passive scan plot, and the composite data being relayed from the CINCBARCOMCEN radio shack on Barney Deucy. Half of the Pearl’s deep space battle group was now retroboosting to maintain distance. The other half–all lighter ships–had adjusted course and piled on the plasma, evidently trying to three-dimensionally cross the T ahead of the enemy’s main body, albeit at a rather steep angle. Perduro had adopted a reasonable two-tier strategy. She would hold one of her groups back to duel with the enemy heavies as long as possible, perhaps showing their heels if the shift carriers got far enough away that the Arat Kur couldn’t catch them anymore. The other part of Perduro’s force was probably going to seed mines and sleeper drones–maybe even a few of the nuke-pumped, X-ray-laser ship-killers–in the path of the enemy. Which would present the invaders with Hobson’s choice. Slow down to optimize scans and minimize damage from the autonomous and remote-controlled munitions deployed by the closer, lighter battle group; or rush through that kill zone in an attempt to close quickly with the heavier, but more distant, main fleet elements. Either way, there was a chance that significant parts of Perduro’s flotilla would survive to fight again another day.

    Or maybe not. As Trevor started reading the transponder tail numbers on the fleet plot, he wondered if there was a computer malfunction. Half of the missile frigates, including the one drawing near their crippled cutter, were of the “Spear” class, the last of the fission-drive buckets. Now officially reserve vessels, they had been shipped to The Pearl for training purposes. What the hell were they doing on the line? In fact, only Perduro’s flagship–the President-class cruiser Jefferson–was a truly modern ship. Goddamnit, where are all the–?

    The cutter shuddered slightly.

    Caine, just finishing with Hazawa, looked over. “Were we hit, or–?”

    Trevor checked the plot. The blue triangle that denoted the tanker Baton Rouge faded away. “No, Caine; that was the farewell song of a nearby ship. From the look of it, hit by another shot from their lead ship. Did Hazawa go for the plan?”

    “Yep, he’s got the distress signals on now. And it looks like he’ll have the preignition toroid repaired in a few minutes. He’s taken the plant offline, so we’re on battery backup and looking pretty dead. Just for good measure, he vented a little coolant from the starboard ignition chamber.”

    “So it looks like we’ve got a radiation leak, too. Nice touch. Hazawa’s idea?”

    Caine was silent, staring at the sensor plots.

    Trevor smiled. Of course it wasn’t Hazawa’s idea.

    Caine leaned closer to the plots. “Where are their drones?”

    “I’ve been wondering the same thing. They should have opened up by now.”

    “Hell, if they’re traveling under their own power, we should have seen some thermal signatures on our own passive sensors, right?”

    Trevor frowned. “Well, if they were our drones, yes. But the invaders could have some stealth capabilities that–” Caine looked like he wanted to say something, but suppressed it. Trevor sighed. “Okay, spill it.”

    “Trevor, do you know of any way to conceal high-temperature exhaust in space?”

    “No.”

    “I don’t either. I can’t even think of how you’d do that. But instead, what they could have done was–” And then Caine was on his feet. “The ships near us. Send them a warning. They’re going to get hit point blank–in minutes, maybe seconds.”

    “What? How the–?”

    “If the invaders’ technology is both better and more compact, they’ve got more uncommitted hull volume to play with.”

    “So?”

    “So, they could build in big mass drivers to launch their drones. So if they shifted in and the drones were launched immediately, we wouldn’t see them because they’re just inert metal traveling towards us at god-knows-how-many gees. But when they get close enough–”

    Trevor completed the sentence as he put his hand on the open comms. “They go active at point blank range, firing and evading while they’re in among us. And then they continue right on through us to serve as the advance strike force against the Pearl. Where they’ll cause just enough havoc to further delay any evacuation.” Trevor’s finger was poised above the “send” relays, ready to broadcast in the clear–but he took his hand back. Slowly. And felt like a murderer as he did it.

    “Trevor, what are you–?”

    “You said it yourself, Caine. We’ve got to follow orders. We’ve got to get out of here and report. If those drones are close by, and if we go active–if we even juice up the tight beam laser relays–we’re likely to be vaporized before we can send.”

    And then it didn’t matter. Without having to listen to Hazawa’s nervous sitreps, it became quite evident that their theory was horribly correct. The nearby ships started taking crippling damage from drones that popped up on their sensors at only two and three thousand kilometers range, making targeted strikes on engineering sections, missile bays, sensor arrays. Secondary explosions of munitions and fuel were reported on every hull.

    Trevor had only heard one thing like it before: when he had been coordinating the ROV oversight for a combined Spetznaz-SEAL operation that ran into an ambush in Uzbekistan. The casualties came so thick and fast that there was no time to think, to reconfigure the mission, to plan an extraction. It was like listening to an announcer doing play-by-play for a demolition derby. He had only been able to hope that, at the end of that litany of destruction and death, someone–anyone–would be left alive. That hope had been forlorn.

    So it was here, too. The missile frigate was the first hit–naturally–and her skipper evidently knew he didn’t have much time left; he salvoed his bays in the direction of the enemy’s lead ship. He unloaded sixty percent of his ordnance before Trevor’s passive sensors registered a split-second, white-hot thermal bloom where the frigate had been a moment before. Then the invaders’ drones picked off the much slower human drones and their control sloop. Finally, the remaining enemy craft tumbled so they could keep firing at the human auxiliaries which were now aft of them as they kept arrowing toward The Pearl.

    Hazawa’s somber voice broke the extended silence “We have the toroid back online, sirs.”

    Trevor rubbed his brow. “Which, ironically, makes us the most intact and capable ship in this entire sector.”

    Caine frowned. “How long do you think we should wait?”

    “Before trying to make a getaway? Depends on what I see here in the next fifteen minutes.” Trevor tapped the proximity passive sensor sweep.

    “What do we want to see?”

    “Wrong question. The right question is, what do we not want to see? Answer: we absolutely do not want to see a second wave of drones that are moving more slowly, because those could retroboost and come back for us. We don’t want their main hulls to retroboost either, or even slow down, because that means they’re willing to make sure that they’ve finished business out here, even if that delays them in their push to The Pearl. And no small craft. They’d be the worst, because whereas a big hull usually can’t loiter because it’s been tasked with key strategic objectives, smaller craft are more likely to be sent on more generalized patrol or picket missions. And that’s my biggest worry: that they leave behind a sloop or a frigate to sift through the junk that used to be our ships, trying to gather technical intelligence.”

    “How’s the rest of our side doing?”

    “I can’t tell. When Hazawa shut down power, our tight-beam gimballing servos went offline. But that’s not a big loss. I think the niceties of lascom are about to become a thing of the past.”

    “Because they’re going to be hitting The Pearl soon?”

    “Yes, which will whack the snot out of precision communications. Not that The Pearl wants to talk with us anymore, anyway. They’ll have cleared their tracking and comm arrays to maintain redundant C4I with our effective fleet elements. And we no longer qualify as such. We’re on our own, for now.”

    Caine was oddly silent. Trevor looked up, discovered that he was staring intently at the passive scan plot. “Trevor, what do you think that might be?”

    Trevor followed Caine’s extended index finger to the thermal bloom that marked the drive of the approaching alien main hull–except now it was trailed by two small pinpricks, one of which was dropping behind very rapidly.

    “That?” Trevor rubbed his eyes but could still see the decelerating pinprick. “That’s trouble.”

    And, thirty minutes later, it still was. Caine was looking at the shining mote that was now plainly visible at the center of their view screen. “Still coming toward us?”

    “Yep. It’s ignored the wreckage of the frigate.” Something’s wrong here. Trevor tapped his collarcom. “Lieutenant, are you sure our power plant is cold?”

    Hazawa sounded more collected than he had when, twenty minutes earlier, the main attacking vessel had virtually grazed their hull at two hundred kilometers range. “Fusion is offline sir.”

    “And we’re not the only transponder in the water?”

    “No, sir. Four others in our area alone.” Hazawa’s voice rose slightly. “Sir, this small enemy craft–it’s getting awful close, two hundred klicks and still retroboosting. Now maneuvering to match vectors with us.” Hazawa’s voice tightened. “Sir, if they close to within fifty klicks, my orders clearly stipulate that I must take them under fire. And if they attempt to board, I must–”

    “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

    “Yes, sir.”

    Trevor turned to Caine, who hadn’t taken his eyes off the craft’s now visible outline. “How long?” he asked.

    “That they’ll be alongside us in three or four minutes, tops. But how did they come straight to us?”

    Caine looked out at the debris-field, most of it just winking bits of distant, rolling scrap metal, a few close enough that their tattered outlines were visible. He shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense. We are in slightly better shape than the remains of the closest fleet auxiliary, the San Marin, but she’s a bigger hull, and so should be more interesting to them. I think they’d be eager to get a look at the contents of a tender with half of her lading intact.”

    Hazawa’s voice was slightly tremulous over the shipwide. “All personnel, all sections: watch personnel to the weapons lockers to distribute sidearms. Stand by to repel boarders. Enemy craft at one hundred kilometers.”

    Repel boarders? In space? It was too ludicrous to imagine, but it was about to happen. The enemy craft, a rounded body bloated by a large number of fuel tanks and furnished with a sharp, inquisitive prow, kept approaching. The proximity alarm triggered automatically, set up a shipwide ululation which underscored Hazawa’s order: “PDF battery: acquire target.”

    Trevor rose. “Okay, so no one has any idea how they found us. Any thoughts about–?”

    Caine turned quickly. “Trevor, our distress signal: will it be the same as the type emitted by, let’s say, the frigate?”

    “Yeah, except it’ll be a lot longer. The frigate is a single hull: one registry code. But this ship carries modules, each of which has its own registry.”

    “So all the registries of all the carried modules are transmitted along with that of the carrier?”

    “Yeah, they’re appended to the end of the basic transponder signal. That way, if there’s a wreck, rescue teams can figure out if any of the modules are missing, or–”

    “And how does the cutter’s transponder know the registry of all the modules?”

    “Well, as long as they’re attached, it polls their individual registry chips, and–”

    Caine shook his head and interrupted. “Trevor, you changed our habmod’s registry, right before the attack, didn’t you?”

    “Yeah. Since we’re just civvie diplomats again, I had to change the module’s designation from military to–” Trevor stopped. “Oh, Christ.”

    Caine nodded. “You changed it to a diplomatic code.”

    Hazawa’s voice announced, “Enemy craft closing through fifty kilometers. Stand by to–” Static surged over his last order.

    Trevor felt a flash of hot moisture rise on his brow. He slapped his collarcom, noticed that the cutter’s PDF pod had powered up. “So the attackers think–”

    “–that we’re flying a diplomatic pennon: a white flag. One of their commo officers must know how to read our data streams and noticed it embedded in either the transponder code, the distress signal, or both.”

    Trevor nodded. “Lieutenant Hazawa, please respond.” Nothing. Where the hell–?

    And just as Hazawa responded–sounding both more confident, relieved, and excited–the bridge back-chatter confirmed what Trevor saw happening on his subsystem activity monitor. Behind Hazawa’s energetic, “Yes, Captain?” was a whoop that almost drowned out the background report that Trevor dreaded hearing. “Direct hit on the enemy ship, sir. The bogey is venting atmosphere and angling away erratically. Reacquiring–”

    “No, Lieutenant!” Trevor shouted into his static-ridden collarcom. “Stand down, stand–!”

    Hazawa’s “Say again?” vied with another excited report. “Multiple hits in her stern, sir. She’s corkscrewing badly. I think we hit her engines–”

    “Cease fire, cease–!” Trevor was shouting, when Caine’s hand came down hard on his shoulder. Trevor yanked away. “What?”

    Caine’s voice was eerily calm. “We’ve got to detach.”

    “What the hell are you–?”

    “We’ve got only seconds now. What’s the procedure?”

    Detach? What the hell was Caine talking abou–?

    And then Trevor saw two new bogeys light up, one only one hundred twenty klicks away.

    Caine nodded toward the two red triangles. “The enemy left drones laying doggo out here. And we’ve just made ourselves a target.”

    The EM emission sensor shrilled throughout the cutter.

    “They’ve acquired and locked. Trevor–”

    Not even the time to say goodbye to Hazawa. What a shitty business this is–Trevor pulled open a red cover to his lower left, grabbed the recessed handle, turned it sharply to the left so that he could pull it straight up. And did so.

    The blast of the emergency jettisoning charges–only twelve feet behind them–was deafening as the hab mod blew itself away from the cutter’s keel. Caine lost the grip on his seat, spiraled off at an angle, slammed into a bulkhead, and floated free: stunned, unconscious, or dead.

    The external viewing screen showed a slowly somersaulting image of the crippled cutter, now bookended by two explosions in rapid succession, one at the bow and one in the stern. Modules and pieces of her went cartwheeling in all directions. Trevor saw another flash back in the engine decks: a small secondary, back near the containment rings. Meaning that any second now–

    Trevor scooped his feet under him so that they were on the seat, twisted and kicked off toward Caine. He cinched him around the waist as he passed, bumped to an awkward but fast stop, reverse kicked. He regained the acceleration couch, pulled Caine on top of him, pulled a strap across them both–

    –just as the cutter’s engine decks erupted outwards into a sudden, angry, blue-white star.

    The screen blanked the same instant that the shock wave hit.