Noctilucent clouds guided me to the starport. Downsiders
think that so many of the vistas we see in space are spectacular, and they are,
but color like this is often lacking. Unlike the enhanced holovids, much of
what we see is washed out to the unaided eye. Mostly, it’s white or black with
infinite shades of gray.
Like the job.
I had been recalled from leave for a routine Interdiction
patrol, an anti-smuggling run for the co-ops. Fringers don’t bow to LOW OrbIT
corporate interests, but they aggressively defend their own. Home adheres to
something resembling the rule of law unlike the rough justice meted out
elsewhere in the Fringe Alliance. They even budget us for uniforms along with
badges and guns. We inherited the orbital patrol cruisers captured in the last Fringe
War. LOW OrbIT quality though a few generations back. We’ve updated the sensor
suites to top of the line. We need them to go up against the corporation-sized budgets.
LOW OrbIT tax law lets the interstellars write off smuggling as a double-shot
of R&D and advertising with incentives for opening new markets. Weird since
they counterfeit our tech then hide their own logos. It’s not so much business
as usual as an economic extension of the last interstellar war.
Needless to say, Interdiction doesn’t get a lot of sleep.
The other side has their best and brightest figuring out new and clever ways of
conducting corporate espionage and sometimes outright sabotage. And they don’t
mind trying something novel just to see if it will work. As long as it doesn’t
blow up to where it hits the news feeds in the core colonies. At least in a way
they can’t spin.
Just another part of the job.
LOW OrbIT claims jurisdiction around Home from high orbit
outward. Interdiction claims everything inward from high orbit of Chang’e, Home’s
farthest moon. Between is a no-man’s land of enforcement. Fortunately, LOW
OrbIT can’t just park a navy cruiser up there. Unfortunately, they subcontract
out violation detection to the tabloids and accept their footage before the
Enforcement Committee. Those guerilla freelance operators are wizards at
splicing additional footage directly into a feed. That’s why they are persona
non grata and all their media is destroyed on sight. Interdiction was in the
process of retrofitting a handful of patrol cruisers with countermeasure suites
to prevent live-streaming and delayed retrieval from interplanetary space. The
Ariadne was one.
The transport bus skirted the Stack Maze just beyond the
starport fence. The sprawling, haphazard habitat of abandoned cargo containers
forms the central distribution point for ninety percent of all smuggling into
Home. To properly combat the problem would require razing it to the ground.
Given that it also forms the central spine of the collective geography known as
Petit Darwin, there is no political will to enact that solution. Nearly a
million refugees fled the Green Revolution. Home doesn’t want them. Darwin
doesn’t want them back. With no place else for the fugees to go, clearing the
camps is not an option. But should we ever receive the order, I would be the
first to bring the match.
I know this job from both angles. When I was granted asylum
from Darwin, I had to smuggle in my
niece, the daughter of my twin who had been killed at Blind
Mouth Bay.
I could have assumed my sister’s identity but that would have meant I couldn’t
defect. Hanna had no negotiable skills. Elsa and I would have been just another
pair of fugees scraping out a living any way we could.
I worked in LOW OrbIT Customs Enforcement on Darwin,
so I knew all the tricks, knew what to look for, knew what the agents tended to
overlook. I knew their soft spots, and exactly how to exploit them. Human trafficking
is all about deception and misdirection, getting people not to look inside. And
knowing how to offer the right bribe.
I’d set Elsa up in the Stack Maze while I worked up her
identity, fostered with a family I thought I could trust. A week before the
cover I’d established for her would have allowed me to bring her out in my arms
with no questions, she disappeared. Her surrogate family said she’d been
kidnapped but my under the table investigation revealed they’d sold her, for
what purpose I’ll never know. I was her only family. I should have been her
guardian angel. She was all I had left of Hanna. Who sells a five-year-old?
My response was swift. I descended on the Stack Maze like a
Valkyrie, claiming everyone with a whiff of involvement. Doctoring official records
on Home is no mean feat though far easier than on Darwin.
Some I had deported, others imprisoned on unrelated charges. A select few met a
darker fate. People disappear from the Stack Maze all the time. Fugees killing
fugees doesn’t interest the authorities on Home. Most consider it a public
service.
By the time my vengeance had burned itself out, Elsa’s trail
had gone cold, never to reignite. Five years later, I still combed the
Interdiction reports and scanned the feeds praying one day she’d find her way
back to me. Every six months I updated her age enhancement simulation just to
be sure I’d recognize her although her face was emblazoned on my memory from
the last time I’d left her in the Maze.
Even my vocal convictions weren’t enough to gain full
acceptance from the Ariadne’s crew. I remained an affirmative action fugee in
their eyes who had not earned her position despite being the best countermeasures
operator in the squadron. Even though I was fully rated on sensors and command
qualified, the Alliance didn’t
trust a defector on a bridge. Had I not fled the Green Revolution, I would have
made captain by now rather than being stuck as a lowly countermeasures tech. Five
years of loyal service changed nothing. Only the captain paid me any grudging
respect. She knew just how lucky she was to have me.
At the starport, I checked in for the next skyhook shuttle
to orbit. At the last minute the kiosk informed me I’d been upgraded to a
private conference compartment from the normal economy cattle car. I had three
companions: Ursula Bonet, Aaron Gardner and Mercy Santos, the senior crew of
the Ariadne. A moment later, my comm chimed with formal orders to attend a
mission briefing on the way to orbit. I passed through the security scanners
and headed to the gate after a quick diversion for coffee. I swiped my ID and was
surprised to find I’d been given priority boarding.
I arrived at the conference compartment to find Lt. Gardner stationed
outside the door, tall and lean like an Interdiction recruiting holo. Captain
Bonet was up for squadron commander which meant he was next in line for command
of the Ariadne. Technically, as senior sensor operator, he was my immediate
supervisor as well as the XO.
“My orders are to report here for the mission briefing,” I said,
reaching around him for the latch.
He shifted to block my entry. “Captain Bonet may want to
consult your expertise. You are to advise when asked not offer your opinion.
Understood, Anderson?” He puffed
out his chest and loomed as if to emphasize his point.
“Perfectly,” I replied, looking up at him with a carefully
neutral expression.
“Good. Now lose that coffee. This is a mission briefing not
the mess deck.” He didn’t stand aside, just straightened his already perfectly
pressed uniform shirt.
“Anything else?” I asked, belatedly adding, “Sir?”
“Don’t embarrass me.” He opened the door and strode in.
After dropping my coffee into the recycler, I followed.
Inside, Captain Bonet and Marine Lt. Santos waited. Ursula Bonet was built like
an asteroid miner, or a propaganda hero chiseled from the steppes of twentieth
Terra during some great patriotic war. By contrast, Mercy Santos was a whippet
of a woman whose blond hair and otherwise unremarkable features were flattered
by the deep charcoal uniform so many mistake for black. Bonet studied her
datapad. Santos nursed a cup of
coffee.
“Thank you for joining us, Anderson,” Captain Bonet said
when she finally looked up. “Please, sit
down.”
I did.
“We’ve received new orders,” Bonet began. “Control has
instructed the Ariadne to establish a sector cordon using Marine listening outposts
on Sin and Chang’e.”
The names of those two moons were why bored system surveyors
shouldn’t be allowed access to mythological databases in my mind. At least Home
hadn’t picked some unpronounceable Aztec moon god like some less habitable
worlds I knew.
“I thought this was a shakedown cruise so we could
familiarize ourselves with the new systems,” I said. Gardner
glared as if to reiterate his earlier warning. I ignored him.
“Control moved up the timetable,” Bonet said. “You’re the
only countermeasures tech in the squadron who’s already qualified on the
upgrades, Andersen. I told them you were up for it. I want you to coordinate
with Lt. Santos to integrate her portable arrays into our network. They’ll be
our eyes.”
I was confused. “Don’t we already have arrays on both those
moons?”
“We do but their positions are well known,” Bonet explained.
“Control is afraid they’ve been compromised. So they’ve ordered us to set up an
independent network for the duration of the operation.”
“Does that mean Specialist Andersen will be detached to one
of the outposts?” Gardner asked
hopefully.
“No,” Bonet answered. “We’ll need her to operate the new
countermeasures suite on the Ariadne. Fill them in, Mercy.”
Lt. Santos took over. “The Alliance
intercepted chatter about a new phase to the corporate labor smuggling that hit
us so hard last year, this time with a twist. They say Happy Family R&D has
reprogrammed some number of fugees who are genetically predisposed to betrayal.
Sleeper ops that don’t know they’re waiting to be activated. Analysis indicates
this could be a long game scenario. In the right place with the right
connections, it would only take one slipping through to cause us grave harm.”
Santos
studiously avoided eye contact. Gardner
cast a long look at me. After five years as an outsider, I was used to it. But
it still lit a slow fuse inside me, one I carefully snuffed out.
Santos
continued, “We’ll drop off a squad on each moon while on routine patrol. They’ll
overland into their designated positions.”
“Two man squads?” Gardner
asked.
“Three,” Santos
replied. “I want to avoid port and starboard watches.”
“We’ll need them fresh,” Bonet added.
“That means we’ll be patrolling with only one squad of ship’s
troops,” Gardner observed.
“It’s a risk we’ll have to take,” Bonet replied. She raised
an eyebrow when he didn’t look satisfied. “We’re a patrol cruiser, Mister Gardner.
Since when do we need Marines to do our job?” I aborted a smile before it could
emerge.
Santos stepped
in to save him. “I’ll be coordinating both squads personally from the Ariadne.”
“We won’t have long before LOW OrbIT detects those outposts
and tries to shut them down,” Gardner
pointed out.
“If our information is correct,” Bonet said, “We won’t need
long.”
“I take it there’s still the potential for footage of this mission to end up with
the tabloids,” I said, a statement rather than a question.
“You can count on it,” Bonet replied, turning back to her datapad. “So this
one’s by the book. I’m uploading the operational data to your and Gardner’s
pads. I want technical recommendations before we dock. Get to it.”
---
The skyhook shuttle lifted us to low orbit where we
transferred to the electrodynamic tether that dropped us at the shipyard.
Weightlessness felt like freedom after so long in a gravity well. No matter how
hard we trained or how far the tech for artificial gravity advanced, going back
to Home was always a strain. A reminder of where I no longer belonged.
Martin Ricketts, our weapons tech, was standing watch at the
top of the Ariadne’s gangway when I arrived. “How was the trip up?” he asked.
I just rolled my eyes. “The Captain and XO are about a
minute behind me,” I told him, giving him time for any last minute preparations
though he would have been monitoring exactly when we docked. I knew he was
hoping for a heads up on their mood. He’d gotten all he was going to get from
me. I owed him nothing and had work to do before we undocked.
I’d read and reread Captain Bonet’s briefing in transit, eager
to uncover any information I might glean from between the lines. The summary
was simple. Happy Family, Ltd. had jumpstarted an old campaign they’d used against
7 Nations, one of the Fringe Alliance’s only homegrown interstellar
corporations. Since the Green Revolution, Home had been battling human
trafficking constantly. Large interstellars like Happy Family had taken
advantage of the chaos of the refugee migration to undermine Home’s economy by
sending in waves of operatives with desirable skills. They had infiltrated
various subsidiaries then sabotaged them in a coordinated fashion months or
years later. That was a key part of the reason I was never quite trusted.
Everyone thought I was a sleeper.
But Fringers tended to be a bit naïve and conspiratorial in
their views. They thought LOW OrbIT’s Machiavellianism ran rampant at all levels.
They didn’t realize that Customs Enforcement had a vested interest in
uncovering human trafficking schemes wherever they existed. It was in their
charter as an independent agency. We all took the Defense of Human Rights
clause in our swearing-in oath very seriously. Though, like Interdiction, Customs
Enforcement was never adequately funded to do the job assigned. Most of Interdiction’s
conflict with LOW OrbIT came down to a turf war exploited by politicians with
personal agendas on the Enforcement Committee. Thus the prolific use of tabloid
journalists to keep the general public on their side. Customs Enforcement was
regularly undercut by the same tactics. And we all hated the traffickers as
much as the tabloids who protected them.
If nothing else, corporate espionage operations took
advantage of the deep-seeded distrust within the Fringe Alliance and kept us
from benefiting from the tide of refugees that landed at our door. To counter
the operations, Home had had to implement background checks and all manner of
other security protocols that were anathema to the libertarian leanings of the Alliance.
Liberty still kept their faith in
social contracts, Anarchy in frontier justice. Neither of those worlds had the
extent of the problem that Home did, or even a fraction of the fugee
population. Not that Home had the ability to integrate that many refugees very
quickly anyway.
And now some corporate espionage exec had dreamed up a fresh
operation to exploit the desperation on both sides. It had to be promising for Happy
Family to risk recycling a previously countered scheme.
I made my way down to my duty station, buried in the
converted bay that had once housed the Ariadne’s gig. The space had been
divided between the electronics for the countermeasures suite and a small
immigration detention area. Once the seals were set, the holding area was beyond
the Green Line, extraterritorial, as were the orbital immigration centers where
detainees were routinely processed until Immigration determined their official
status. Home’s charter was very liberal regarding claims of asylum once someone
entered our territory. Technically, anything beyond the Green Line was nominal
LOW OrbIT domain though strictly administered by Home Interdiction until immigrants
passed inside. Only a command level officer could open the holding area once
the seals were in place.
I snaked my way from the main airlock down into Marine
country then through Engineering, careful not to snag a uniform sleeve on any
of the exposed conduit hangers lining the narrow, leaden access corridor. My
duty station was a console with a cramped acceleration couch wedged in an
alcove across from the shielded control compartment for the Ariadne’s weapons systems.
The safest place on the ship, Ricketts always said, surrounded by the bulk of
the drives. That’s if you didn’t mind a hint of exotic radiation if the
shielding leaked. These ships had been built by the lowest bidder, so it often
did.
I settled into my workstation. Before I reviewed the operation
parameters again, I fired up the new countermeasures suite on a self-diagnostic
and calibration run then reviewed the install logs to see how well the shipyard
techs had integrated it with our existing capabilities. I quickly found and
corrected a dozen minor interface errors then tweaked the inputs based on a few
eccentricities with our current sensor suite that didn’t appear in the manuals.
At some point, Ricketts was relieved from watch and climbed
into weapons control. I barely noticed. When the overheads flickered with the
crossover from station to ship’s internal power, I began my pre-flight
crosschecks, linking my displays to the main sensor console on the bridge so Gardner
could monitor my board if he wanted. Gardner
was a micromanager. He’d feel compelled to check on me at some point rather
than relying on me to do the job I was trained for. Which could have been his
job had circumstances been different, though I doubted he could do mine.
Once we were underway, I set up the framework for a secure
data distribution system linking the countermeasures suite to the portable
sensor arrays the Marines would deploy on Home’s two outer moons. This was
trickier. In addition to the standard spread-spectrum techniques, I implemented
independent, rotating polarization filters for each signal. The hardest part
was synchronizing the randomization. Fortunately, cryptography was one area
where the Fringe Alliance’s tech exceeded LOW OrbIT’s. Fringers valued their privacy.
Transmitter power was a concern, though the link budget worked out if we maxed
the receiver gain on the Ariadne. Of course, that would leave us vulnerable to
a host of other tricks. Through an iterative process, I worked it back to
something within the mission briefing’s risk management parameters.
Sensors and countermeasures are like a chess game. You try
to mask your actions, but rarely could you hide them completely. You knew the
other side would detect at least some of what you did and they knew you knew
that. So you guided their reactions based on what they could and couldn’t see.
Instead of providing them with the clarity of black and white, you were hoping
they’d fill in the story you wanted from the grayscale you provided as they
were trying to do the same. Success often came down to who was a better
storyteller. When you threw in counter-countermeasures, the interaction became
a seductive dance, the impression of eroticism that led to lust. Lust led to
mistakes.
By the time I finished setting everything up, we were
approaching the first drop point. I checked Gardner’s
positional displays and found Captain Bonet was using Sin as a shield against
spying from both the normal traffic lanes and from the known external system
vantages. I began analyzing our sensor sweeps to see if any other observers
might be lurking. Nothing raised a flag. We dropped the first squad during a gravity
assist maneuver without incident. About midway to Chang’e, they brought their
array online and I integrated it into our local network. I programmed an
optimized sector scan using the new array combined with our routine sweeps and
all the supplementary system data I could link in from the Electronic Support Measures
database.
Instead of slingshotting Chang’e, we transferred our
residual velocity into a fast, stable orbit. Once again, in a relatively
shielded position Captain Bonet inserted the second squad. While they were
still in descent, the countermeasures suite chirped a warning.
“Captain, potential contact,” I commed up to the bridge, reading
off its sector coordinates.
“What confidence level?” Gardner
asked.
“One point one three sigma,” I answered.
“That’s well below the threshold for standard protocol…” Gardner
began.
Captain Bonet interrupted. “Converging or diverging?”
“Converging. Now one point one four sigma.” Not a great
convergence given the pattern search probability algorithm but it was
something. I just hoped the signal didn’t degauss on me and disappear
completely.
“Hook the contact on your display, Andersen, and stream the
data directly to the bridge,” Bonet ordered.
“Captain, recommend we wait for second squad to go active
for three sigma confirmation,” Gardner
said.
“ETA of second squad in position and online, Lt. Santos?”
Bonet asked.
“Two point three seven hours, optimal,” she answered. It was
not a short overland and setup.
“Nav, estimate time to intercept at T plus point oh five and
T plus two point three seven,” the Captain ordered.
A moment later Shay responded. “At T plus point oh five, TTI
equal two point five four hours. At T plus two point three seven, TTI equal five
point four niner.”
“Overlay both intercept courses on my display,” Bonet said.
I mirrored the Captain’s display in a side window, as she knew most of the crew
would. The first intercept point was just inside the gray zone of enforcement,
the second approaching the Green Line of Home’s uncontested inner zone. If we
waited, we would be overtaking the contact under acceleration rather than swinging
in for a velocity match. That would severely limit our response options. With
our orbital mechanics, there was no way to confront the contact head on, not
that we would want to. Then we would be outbound while it was still inbound. Those
were desperation tactics.
“Nav, implement optimal intercept to presumed contact on my
mark. Three, two, one. Mark.” Bonet ordered. “Mr. Gardner, inform Control then run
Andersen’s data through the ESM database. See if it spits out anyone we know.”
“Aye-aye,” was Gardner’s
clipped response. He didn’t like having his recommendation overruled. He was
always too much of a stickler for the book.
“Gunnery, get hot,” Bonet continued issuing her orders, “I
want firing solutions as soon as we come in range based on passives only.
Sensors, do not paint that target until my orders. Let’s make sure we know what
we’re dealing with. Engineering, give me whatever boost you can from the
drives. Nose the red line if you have to. Stay sharp, people. This wouldn’t be
the first ambush someone tried to get us to walk into.”
So we broke orbit and gave chase. Chase being more implied
than actual in the early stages of our spiral arc. That gave me time to tweak
the filters to see if I could get a confirmation of the target. I hoped so or
we would be desperately out of position if another contact came in. I prayed
this one was real.
Two hours and fifty-four minutes seems like a long time, and
it is. A long, slow, tense time where everyone tries to stay focused on their
jobs. Gardner maintained marginally
time-delayed contact with Control. The only other patrol cruiser close to our
position was the Thetis but she was still well outside intercept range even at
high-G acceleration. Shay, our navigator and pilot, updated our intercept
course based on my and Gardner’s
sensor data as well as whatever drive optimizations Tarnat, our ship’s
engineer, could give him. That left Santos
to prep Panico and Sethi as a boarding party while Bonet kept us all sharp with
drills and damage control simulations.
An hour away from contact, and the countermeasures suite
still hadn’t closed to a one point five sigma confidence level. Whatever it
was, there was still a fifteen percent chance it would turn out to be something
other than a ship. While it didn’t seem high, it was much higher than any of us
were comfortable with.
Twenty minutes from intercept, the second array came online.
As I was integrating it into our network, the contact deviated from what had
been a stable trajectory throughout our tracking. With the additional data from
Chang’e, the confidence level closed beyond a four sigma level, a one in
fifteen thousand chance it wasn’t a vessel of some kind.
A few seconds later, Gardner
commed ship-wide, “ESM identifies the contact as Darwin’s
Truth, a short haul freighter last seen on Harmony just over two years prior.
Flagged as a known smuggler. Board on contact.” He tagged the particulars on
the sensor display.
Captain Bonet began issuing new orders for intercept. With
the course change, the contact would skate just outside Interdiction’s claimed jurisdiction.
That didn’t mean we wouldn’t go in for a closer look, if nothing else to tag
the contact and update the ESM database.
The timing was suspicious. If I hadn’t known better, I would
have thought someone had an inside track on our data. Harmony was a Chinese national
colony. Happy Family had a major corporate headquarters there. This smelled of
a setup. So I ran an analysis along the contact’s previous flight line to see
if the course change was a diversion.
And there it was, buried deep in the noise, a second contact,
seemingly adrift.
I signaled the bridge. “Captain, I have a second contact on Darwin’s
Truth’s previous vector.”
“Confidence level?” Bonet asked.
“One point oh four sigma,” I said. Roughly a one in three
chance it was a ghost. Probably equal that it was just ejecta to draw us off. I
tagged and forwarded the signal to the bridge.
“Sensors, how long before we’re in range to add anything
meaningful about Darwin’s Truth to
the ESM database?” Bonet asked.
“Fifteen minutes at current delta,” Gardner
answered. Meaning it could be longer if Darwin’s
Truth had any untapped acceleration in reserve.
“Nav, if we maintain present course for another point one
five, would we be able intercept Beta contact before it hits the Green Line?”
A moment passed. Then two.
“Negative,” Shay replied. “No solution on Beta contact
before the Green Line if we maintain intercept course with Darwin’s
Truth.” It was one or the other. I’m sure Captain Bonet knew that but she
needed it confirmed. Plus it gave her a moment to decide.
“Nav, resume original course” Bonet ordered. “Re-establish
intercept course with Beta contact.”
“Captain, if I may…” Gardner
began.
“You may not, Mr. Gardner,” Bonet snapped. “Inform Control.
Request they prepare interceptor missiles as backup if Beta contact turns
hostile. Recommend Thetis calculate an intercept solution on Darwin’s
Truth.”
Gardner may not
have realized it but by cutting him off, Captain Bonet had taken all responsibility
for the decision upon herself and freed her subordinates from any consequences
of her order.
A silence fell over the comms except for whatever terse voice
traffic was required for us to do our jobs. Minute by minute we closed with the
contact. Five minutes out, we had no visual confirmation. Captain Bonet ordered
Santos and her squad to prepare for
boarding. Two minutes, and still nothing. We readied the docking ring anyway.
One minute, and the pattern search probability algorithm still hadn’t closed to
anything closer than one point five sigma. My stomach began to sink. I could
feel my crewmates doubts growing as dark as the coldscape beyond the Ariadne.
Then a smudge appeared on an external camera, a distortion
of the star field partially eclipsing the disk of Home. There was definitely
something there. The comms burst back to life with internal traffic and
preparations. Using the visual input, we locked onto the target, though we
could barely hold a three sigma threshold even then. Whatever countermeasures
they were using were state of the art. Captain Bonet freed Ricketts to a
return-fire protocol, meaning fire control was at his discretion if he detected
any threat.
Per Interdiction protocol the Captain maintained distance at
one minute out while Gardner and I analyzed the object in every way we knew how
for anything threatening, exotic radiation, spurious energy spikes, increasing
EM fields. Nothing. Gardner hailed
it over an extended set of frequencies. Static. So he launched a sensor drone
to get a closer look.
The object turned out to be the size and shape of a standard
five-hundred displacement ton vacuum-rated cargo container like the ones used
to build the Stack Maze. Though this one didn’t have any flat, reflective
surfaces or stark discontinuities at the corners. It was coated with EM
absorbing shielding layered over with an interspersed network of EM emitters.
Together, they functioned much like an invisibility cloak, dispersing incoming radiation
while mimicking the expected emissions of background signals. Kind of an analog
of the noise-cancellation feature built into our comms. Clever and cutting
edge. The internal processors had to be fast to keep up with our sensors. It
was only the new countermeasures suite that had allowed us to pick up the
anomalies that led us here.
We had no choice but to board it. Once the docking ring
clamped on, we could try to slow it or nudge it into position where a tug could
pick it up before it hit the Green Line. Regardless, we had to know what was onboard
before it drifted too close to Home. If they had to, Home Defense would
dispatch interceptor missiles to destroy it. More likely we’d back off and let
Ricketts take gunnery practice on it to break it up to where the system defense
stations could handle the debris. First we needed to make certain no refugees
were on board. That would be a PR nightmare. And just the type of trap Happy
Family would set using a confiscated smuggler and a mercenary tabloid unit.
Search and seizure was the worst job in Interdiction. We
never knew what new tricks the other side would come up with. Being half blind
to start, we’d be completely vulnerable. Though most of the time we spent in
the coldscape, that’s exactly how we felt.
At first, the boarding operation went smoothly. Shay matched
velocities with the container, which wasn’t difficult since it seemed to have
no maneuver drive. Gardner discovered
an external hatch so we didn’t have to force-breech its outer skin. Bonet ordered
Santos to extend the docking ring,
which latched onto the exterior hatch then cut its way inside after deploying the
temporary gasket that would form an airlock seal and would automatically reseal
the vessel when the Ariadne broke away. Ricketts calculated firing solutions
right up to the moment the docking ring made contact while I prepped for any countermeasures
response.
The countermeasures suite detected a miniscule EM spike when
the docking ring connected but Gardner
chose to disregard it. No one else detected any change in the vessel’s status,
internal or external. Santos and
her squad boarded through the narrow hole left by the cutting torch.
Inside was a cramped maze of heavily shadowed, gunmetal gray
passageways studded with access hatchways in the bulkheads, overheads and
decks, just like the lower levels of the Ariadne only without the brightly
colored warning labels. The boarding party made their way through by the
numbers, a three-man overwatch formation. They met no resistance before they encountered
an airtight hatchway into an internal cargo chamber. There was a viewport.
“Cryo chambers,” Sethi called out over the tactical subnet.
“We’ve got fugees.”
“Burn your way in,” Santos
ordered. “Panico, cover.”
Over the comms, I heard the distinctive flick of a plasma torch
being ignited then cutting. A few seconds later shots and screaming erupted from
the speaker before the channel cut to static. Then my world exploded.
The Ariadne shuddered and rocked sideways. Klaxons blared.
Airtight hatches slammed shut. The artificial gravity and inertial compensation
sputtered offline. The restraints on my acceleration couch tightened. The
compartment dropped into darkness then flickered back with dim emergency
lighting. My workstation blanked everything but the countermeasures suite which
screamed to life with a combination of signals and warnings of broadband
jamming, all of which we were powerless to counteract. In the chaos, my head
felt foggy and light.
I opened a comm channel on the internal damage control subnet
which immediately brought up an assessment screen. On the bridge Nav was
offline. Sensors, offline. The Captain’s station, offline. I switched to
Engineering, hoping Tarnat would reconfigure his workstation to take over
command functions. Offline. Not damaged, not degraded. Nonexistent. As far as
the computer network was concerned, those links had been severed. The only
stations left were Gunnery, which scrolled up a string of degradations, and Countermeasures.
My station.
I prayed that somehow the bridge or Engineering were
operating on isolated networks, despite the damage control subnet being
independent with its own alternate routing. Otherwise, the Ariadne was in deep.
Then, LOW OrbIT basic kicked in. Take charge and integrate the largest network
possible. If someone higher up the command chain survived, they would integrate
our network into theirs later.
“All personnel, report,” I commed across the open network.
“Andersen, Countermeasures, aye.”
“Ricketts, Gunnery, aye.”
Nothing further came across the communications network.
“As senior ship’s officer, I am taking command,” I said.
“Computer, transfer command authority to Andersen, Carissa, Tech-Spec First Class.”
I recited my command code and serial number. My board unlocked the command
functions of the Captain’s console. With that I could reconfigure it to run
whatever systems remained from here or delegate it elsewhere.
“Gunnery,” I turned my attention to Ricketts, “Damage
report.”
“Gunnery aye,” Ricketts commed back. “Main turret offline. Rail-gun
one inoperative. Rail-gun two constrained to non-lethal mode. Passive defenses
only. Capacitors drained. Workstation degraded. Initiating damage control
protocol.”
“Belay that, Gunnery,” I ordered as I hammered away at the
command keys on my screen. “I’m reconfiguring Countermeasures as a bridge
override station. I need you to set up as aux Engineering.”
“In current condition, that means abandoning all Gunnery
functions,” he advised.
“Acknowledged,” I said. “I doubt we have the power to run
any of the guns right now. Signal me when you are online.”
The damage assessment diagnostic popped up with its results.
I read them over the network so Ricketts would know what we were up against.
“Ok, here’s our status. Bridge, down. Engineering, down. Fusion generator,
offline. Power supply, backups only. Main drive, offline. Attitude thrusters
only. Comms, broadband omni-directional. Sensors, passive only. Countermeasures,
minor degradation. Artificial gravity and intertial compensation offline. Life
support on batteries. Our current power budget can handle comms, passive sensors,
minimal life support and attitude thrusters, with a little to spare if we need
it. You ready to take that over, Ricketts?”
“Aye, coming online…” he paused, “Now.”
“Transferring Engineering to your control. Set up the
automated repair sequences. See if I missed anything and whether you can eke
out any more power. I’m going to check if Gardner’s
sensor drone is still up there. Maybe we can see how bad we’re hit.”
First, I initiated an automated distress call through the omni-directional
comms. Not that it would likely do much good. My console indicated we were
bathed in jamming at this point and we didn’t have the power to slice through
it. Though Control had to know something catastrophic had happened by this
point. If we couldn’t contact them soon, interceptor missiles would be up and on
the way.
I reconfigured my board as the primary sensor station and
integrated it with the countermeasures suite. I detected layered jamming plus
what appeared to be a tight-band frequency hopping signal that was allowed to
pass through a tailored filter scheme. Very clever. Also very exploitable by a
piggyback maneuver. The narrow windows of clear spectrum opened a fraction
longer than the signal passing through it. The spectrum analyzer could spot the
notch before it fully closed with a little help from our cryptographic prediction
algorithm. Each of those filters also set up a partially degraded area in
numerous sidebands. Those overlapped. With a little added power, I might be
able to punch a signal through.
After a minute of analysis, the countermeasures suite spit
out a pattern that might just work at least at close range. The bandwidth would
be low as we’d have to rely on a redundant packets scheme to cover data losses.
It wasn’t great but if the sensor drone was still up there and functional, I
should be able to construct some still pictures of the damage if it was in a
good position. Moving it would be difficult. I just hoped Gardner
has set it up with a default maneuvering pattern if it lost contact.
I sent the commands for the drone to open up its receiver
and enter a deeply redundant data mode. I didn’t have it drop its filters
completely, just to somewhere above the notched noise floor of the sidebands. A
full minute later, I received an acknowledgement. Soon after, static-laden
stills of the Ariadne’s exterior slowly began to fill in. The pictures were
beyond words even as they grew clearer pixel by pixel. I piped them over to
Ricketts.
“Holy…” was his only response.
There was a large, scorched crater in the Ariadne’s hull
where the bridge should have been. The compartment itself was open to vacuum.
Thankfully, nothing recognizable could be seen within the slaty shadows.
Engineering, too, had taken a direct, high power hit. It lay sparking like a
slowly bleeding electronic wound deep in the Ariadne’s side. The extended
docking ring was bent but otherwise intact. We were still attached to the cargo
container.
Silence fell across us like a pall. There was almost no way
any of the bridge crew had survived. Bonet, Gardner,
Shay, all gone in an instant. From the look of Engineering, I doubted Tarnat
had fared much better. It was a miracle either Ricketts or I had survived. The
baffling of the immigration detention area and the shielding for the countermeasures
suite were probably the only things that saved us. Or the drives, like he’d
always said.
Even now, the ship wasn’t close to home and dry. With only a
handful of systems at our disposal, I was uncertain we ever would be. All of
our directional comm antennas were twisted or completely sheared away. Our
sensor arrays were pockmarked wreckage that resembled the far side of Sin, a
broken web. Our last vector was taking us directly toward Home. A quick few
taps on the Nav system confirmed this was still the case. Even if we survived, Home
Defense protocol dictated that without communications, high-G acceleration
missiles were already outbound. They would arrive in half an hour.
As an added bonus, the countermeasures suite detected that the
cargo container was still sending an outbound signal. Likely a tabloid data
stream which meant our deaths would be recorded and replayed for all of Home to
see. Along with the deaths of any passengers onboard that cargo container who
remained alive. Unless we could somehow reestablish comms to any friendly unit,
or distance ourselves from the cargo container, we were doomed. We could blow
the docking ring, which would condemn the boarding party if any of them had survived,
but with only attitude thrusters, we’d never achieve minimum safe distance from
the inbound missiles. We could abandon ship, but that would mean facing the
blasts with the nearly non-existent shielding of a survival bubble.
I was uncertain whether any of these same thoughts were
coursing through Ricketts’ head as I tried to shake off the images of the
Ariadne that had almost completely filled in and were now crystal clear. My
training kicked in a second time.
“Ricketts,” I commed over the open net, “What is the status
of the capacitors for rail-gun two?”
After a second or two, Ricketts groggily replied. “Uh,
that’s a no-go, Andersen. If we fire the rail-gun at this range, we’d take as
much damage as the target.”
“Snap out of it, Gunnery. I’m not asking for recommendations.
I need information.” I repeated my request slower and louder. “What is the
status of the capacitors?”
I could almost hear him shake his head to clear it. “Capacitors
are degraded. It looks like they discharged to prevent further damage when we
took a power spike just before the main reactor went offline.”
“Will they hold a charge? Enough for one shot?” This was
critical.
“Maybe if we had the juice. The power budget doesn’t support
it.”
I sighed. We might get out of this yet. “Ricketts, I want you to start trickle
charging those capacitors. Use every backup. Drain the batteries if you have
to. Kill all ship’s systems, including life support. We’ll use the suits if it
comes to that. Configure Engineering to automated damage control then cut it
loose.”
“If we do that, the reactor could become unstable.” Which we
both knew meant that if it was sufficiently damaged, it might not shut down properly
but rather start spewing exotic radiation throughout the hull.
“A chance we’ll have to take. Just leave us enough to run the boards.”
Now he sounded a bit clearer. “What about the countermeasures
suite? If I bleed a charge off the internals, that might speed things up.”
“Set that up but do not engage. I’m going to need power to the
suite to act as comms relay to the sensor drone. That’s about our only chance.”
With our transmit capacity so far reduced, there was no way
to overcome the cargo container’s jamming. That meant either gaining enough
distance to where our transmitter’s small signal could overcome the jammer or shutting
it down. Attitude thrusters would never get us far enough away. Pulling the
plug on the jammer meant going into the container blind and hoping we could
find the breaker before we met the boarding party’s fate. Given that they were
Marines and we weren’t, that seemed unlikely.
I started configuring the countermeasures suite and the
sensor drone to act as a comm relay. Less than ideal, but it beat the
alternative.
Just then, a deeply distorted voice emerged not from the
comms but from the countermeasures suite itself.
“Ariadne, this is Santos,
respond.” Her voice sounded unsteady. The suite must have picked her signal out
of the noise.
“Santos, Ariadne
here. Good to hear you’re still with us Lt.” I said. I tagged her signal as
friendly, ordered the countermeasures suite to clean it up and piped it through
the normal comms.
“Andersen? Patch me through to Bonet.” Santos’
voice still sounded primitive and synthetic.
“Bonet and all senior crew are missing and presumed dead.
It’s only me and Ricketts. I am in charge of Ariadne.”
“Then as ranking officer,” Santos
said, her voice only slightly steadier as the countermeasures suite corrected
the signal, “I assume command. Santos,
Mercy, 1st Lt.” She rattled off her command code and serial number.
“Negative, Santos,”
I replied in my best LOW OrbIT command voice. “This is a ship’s matter. You
aren’t in the Ariadne’s chain of command.” Technically, that wasn’t true. The
Marines were beneath all other ship’s crew, regardless of rank, except on external
maneuvers they commanded. And a Tech-Spec First Class outranked a Gunnery Tech,
though just barely.
“Computer,” Santos
said. “Log my last order as head of Security Section.” As Security Section Head,
she had placed herself back in the chain of command. “Andersen. I want you to
suit up and hit the armory. Meet me outside the docking ring in five. Ricketts
will take charge of Ariadne in my absence.”
“What the hell are you doing, Santos?
We’re in full damage control mode here. I can’t abandon my station.”
“You don’t give me orders, Specialist,” she snapped. “I’ve
got two down, one injured. I need backup so I can check my people. These
bastards knew exactly where we’d be. Now get down here before I lock out your
board.”
She’d been hit. No wonder she sounded woozy. But her orders
were suicidal. She had no read of the situation. I did. And I didn’t have time
to play Marine if any of us were going to get out of this. So before Santos
could consolidate her mistake, I said, “Computer, confirm Marine Lt. Santos’s
location as external to Ariadne.”
“Don’t do this, Andersen,” she warned. Her voice sounded
almost automated through a burst of distortion.
“You’re detached duty, lieutenant,” I replied evenly as I
watched the computer confirm I was still in command.
“As soon as I set foot on that ship, your career is
finished,” she hissed.
“Let’s handle the courts-martial after we all get out alive,
shall we? Advise you return to Ariadne best speed.”
“Negative,” Santos
growled. “I’m not leaving them behind.”
Ricketts floated into the passageway from the Gunnery
station. He already had on a tactical headset.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going, Ricketts?”
“Following Mercy’s orders.” His voice had an icy edge.
“Request denied,” I said, trying hard to maintain my
authority. “I need you here.”
“I’m not taking orders from a fugee while a Fringer needs
our help,” he spat. I thought I’d become used to the barbs but that one stung.
“Have you both gone stupid?” I stared at him. “We’ve got
missiles inbound and we’re attached to the target. Now, get back to your post,
mister.”
“What are you going to do, shoot me?” He sneered. He knew I didn’t have a
weapon. We didn’t need them at our stations. I could lock down the armory but
that would be pointless. So I let him go.
“Twenty minutes,” I said, trying to maintain a semblance of
command, “then I blow the docking ring regardless of your position. Get Santos
out of there whatever you have to do.”
“Fringers are family,” he replied. “That’s something a fugee
wouldn’t understand.” Like he would know anything about that.
“One second, Ricketts” I ignored his level stare as I keyed
his comms into the same scheme as the sensor drone. “When you get to Santos,
have her mirror this protocol. And if you find the plug for that jammer, pull
it.”
Ricketts hand-over-handed himself down the passageway toward
the docking ring. I brought up his camera feed on a corner of my display and
set a timer running beside it. Twenty minutes started ticking down. If it hit
zero, and they weren’t back on the Ariadne, both those bastards were on their
own. It’s not like we were family. They’d made that abundantly clear.
I went back to reconfiguring the sensor drone, only occasionally
glancing at Ricketts’ feed. Progress was achingly slow over what amounted to a constricted
bandwidth connection with a low signal-to-noise ratio. What had taken seconds
for Ricketts’s headset stretched into minutes. As I waited for each command
confirmation, I watched Ricketts’ progress through his tactical headset. He skipped
the EVA locker, going straight for the armory cabinet and bringing out a shotgun
and a sidearm, a standard issue for security drills. He painstakingly loaded
each weapon in the null gravity. Then he donned a flak vest and a grabbed a
first aid kit before strapping on a helmet.
By the time I’d finished with the sensor drone, five minutes
had burned off the countdown. Ricketts found Santos
leaning against a bulkhead right outside the docking ring. The cargo container
had maintained artificial gravity where the Ariadne had not. Ricketts brought
out the first aid kit. Santos waved
him off, indicating she’d taken care of preliminaries herself. Instead, he injected
her with a combination painkiller/stimulant while she reconfigured her comms.
Her helmet feed returned online, which I placed in a reduced window next to
his.
I quickly reviewed Ricketts’ gunnery setup. Rail-gun two was
loaded with an Electromagnetic Pulse charge locked onto the cargo container
with an auto-target feature. If anything could shut down the jammer, an EMP would. With a hull breach, I’d need to achieve minimum safe distance
before I set off the charge or I’d risk burning out what few systems the
Ariadne had left. Ricketts had already mirrored Gunnery to my board with a
simple command sequence to engage. There was nothing else do until the
capacitors completed charging.
Ricketts and Santos
were leapfrogging their way through the cargo container in a standard move and
cover formation now. Something niggled at the back of my mind. A stealth cargo
container lighting off a jammer didn’t make sense to me. That just made it a
target. At first I’d thought it was a clever way to ambush and destroy one of
Home’s freshly upgraded patrol cruisers. But the more I thought about it, the
less sense that made. In order to avoid detection, Darwin’s
Truth must have left Harmony months ago and coasted in under limited thrust to
avoid detection. That was a lot of time, energy and effort to trap one ship,
with a pretty low risk-reward ratio. It seemed more likely this was a fallback
scenario in case the cargo was intercepted. If a suspect vessel couldn’t be
diverted from crossing the Green Line into Home’s uncontested territory, the
standard response was to destroy it. That might get them video of us killing the
passengers.
But the more I thought about that, the more something else didn’t
fit. “They knew exactly where we’d be.” If nothing else, Santos
operated by the book, as did Captain Bonet most of the time. That meant a
textbook docking and a textbook boarding. The docking would have put the
Ariadne exactly where concealed, shape-charged missiles could wipe out the
bridge and Engineering, disabling or destroying the ship.
That the cargo container still had artificial gravity made
even less sense. It was a significant power draw and hard to conceal. Unless
someone wanted to limit the degrees of freedom for a boarding party. The
boarding procedure would have made the positions of the boarding party equally
predictable from our standard overwatch tactics. The jammer lighting off would
make it an easy target for any inbound missiles. Which meant someone thought
the passengers in those cryo-chambers were too valuable to be captured.
“Santos, pull
back,” I shouted over the comms. “It’s another ambush.”
“Negative, Andersen, We’ve almost reached Panico and Sethi.”
She ducked to cover and signaled Ricketts forward.
“There’s an automated defense system keying off our boarding
tactics,” I argued.
“We swept the passageways on entry. We’ve detected no sensors, no EM.” She
started forward to where Panico’s body lay sprawled.
“It’s a static system,” I yelled. “They only need passive
sensors.”
“Clear off this frequency, Andersen, and let us do our job.”
She checked Panico, looked at Ricketts and shook her head. Ricketts crouched
and ran for Sethi.
“Santos, listen
to me,” I pleaded. “There’s something about this cargo they want to protect.
Something they don’t want discovered. That’s why they’ve made themselves a
target. Why else would they fire up a jammer?” It was like a homing beacon for the
interceptor missiles.
Santos didn’t respond.
Instead she cut her communications link. Ricketts muted my incoming comms but
allowed me to continue to see his camera feed. The last thing I heard him say was,
“We’ve got children in here.” His helmet-cam zoomed in on the viewport of the
airtight hatch. A little girl, maybe five-years-old, whose face I immediately
recognized stared out at him. Elsa. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
I screamed into the dead comms. No one heard. I watched Ricketts
move into position to open the hatch that Sethi had cut through as Santos
provided cover just as standard tactics dictated. I could only stare. As soon
as the hatch cracked, Santos waved
Ricketts to overwatch. I pounded my workstation in frustration. Santos
slipped inside. All hell broke loose again. Ricketts’ feed went dark.
Instinctively, my arms shot up around my head as I braced
for a second round of explosions, even knowing that if one came, I was dead. A
shudder passed through the ship but nothing else. When I realized I was holding
my breath, I let out a sigh and scrambled to call up the feed from the sensor
drone to make sure nothing else had happened. Jets of air that instantly desublimated
into an icy mist now leaked from Engineering. The self-sealing bulkheads had
been compromised. The Ariadne might not have long.
I didn’t have time to dwell on it. Either I would be dead in
a few minutes like the others or I wouldn’t. Like Elsa. Had that really been
her? That changed everything.
I called up the log of Ricketts feed and freeze-framed the
image of the viewport. There she was, staring back at me, frozen in time from
the last time I’d seen her. She hadn’t aged a day. Had they kept her in cryo
this entire time?
I glanced at the countdown clock. Ten minutes. Just enough
time to rescue the survivors if nothing went wrong. What were the odds of that?
I didn’t care. I couldn’t leave Elsa behind again when there
was the slimmest chance she was still alive. I released my acceleration
restraints and grappled my way down the passageway to the armory. Hastily, I donned
a vest and grabbed a shotgun, not that either had been much use to Ricketts.
Old training. I ensured the shotgun was loaded then pushed off toward the
docking ring.
Entering the cargo container, I came across a scene of slaughter.
In the zigzag of passageways, first I found Panico, then Sethi, both sprawled
where they’d fallen, shredded by auto-defense systems. I could see the blood
stain where Mercy must have first been hit. Ricketts was next, holding cover just
outside the hatchway. Blood leaked from multiple fatal wounds. That hatch was
ajar to entry width. I pushed it farther open with the barrel of the shotgun
and crept forward, weapon ready.
Inside the slaughter had grown into complete and utter carnage.
Racks of cryo units lined opposite walls of the chamber three high, stacked
like bunks on a LOW OrbIT cruiser, a dozen at least. Each observation port was laced
with strings of automatic weapons fire. Interdiction Marine standard issue I
had no doubt. Part of Happy Family’s forensic trap. Within each lay a small,
sleeping face, some shattered by the impacts, others resting as peacefully as blond
angels above torn and rent little bodies. One bed was open, gaping like a hole
from an extracted tooth. One child was not where she was supposed to be.
I surveyed the scene. The ashen floor was a slick, swirling
mess of brightly colored fluids, crimson and chartreuse, natural and man-made.
In the center of it all like the focus of some ancient abstract sculpture or an
iridescent crime scene lay Lt. Santos, her gray body armor studded with lines
of rounds like decorative rhinestones, each terminating where one had found a
weakness or seam. Her assault weapon had been cast aside, her arms now wrapped
protectively around a precious package like a cocoon, her body shielding it
like a shroud. There was no doubt she, like the others, was dead.
My heart leapt as something stirred beneath her. A small, damp
cough emerged, familiar to anyone who had reawakened from cryo-sleep too
quickly. I dropped the shotgun and pulled Santos’
body aside.
There she was, bloodstained but alive. My Elsa. Somehow
she’d crawled to safety and survived. I had only Mercy to thank for that. Maybe
we weren’t so different after all. I knew if Elsa was coughing, she’d be ok. As
I scooped her into my arms, I prayed the auto-defense systems didn’t have a
third and final surprise. Steering clear of anything resembling cover just in
case, I spirited her back to the Ariadne as quickly as I could, securing the hatch
behind me.
Regulations said she, not any of my fallen companions, was
the priority. There was no time to retrieve their bodies anyway. Ricketts, Santos,
Panico and Sethi, their sacrifice would serve the living, as would the rest of
the Ariadne’s crew’s. Though they might not see it that way had they known my
plan. I knew it was too late to prevent the tabloid footage from reaching Darwin’s
Truth. Perhaps I could use it to my advantage. Happy Family had no interest in
showing any survivors. Without any of the boarding party’s records, Control
would have a hard time disputing my account. All they’d care about was that Elsa
was in custody or confirmed dead.
Regulations also said that I should immediately install her
in detention, beyond the Green Line, until my superiors could determine what to
do with her. But I knew they would never accept her just like my crew had never
accepted me. So I left that door unopened. For now.
Instead I tucked Elsa into my bunk and secured her with
crash webbing then tended her to ensure she was uninjured. When I was confident
she hadn’t been hit, that all the blood on her was Mercy’s, I injected her with
a stimulant to ease her ragged breathing. She never said a word even when I brushed a
few stray strands of her fine blond hair back behind her ear. What had they
done to her?
I didn’t have time to find out. Her hollow, pale blue eyes followed
me to the door just as they had the last time I’d left her in the Stack Maze. She’d
been fussy that day not wanting me to leave. Never again after this time, my
Elsa. Never again.
First, I had to get us out of here. Did I dare risk breaking
contact with the container with the Ariadne in such fragile shape? Would the
concussion of blowing the docking ring further compromise the hull? I didn’t
know but didn’t have much choice. Either the undocking or the inbound missiles could
finish Ariadne. At least with undocking I stood a chance.
So I held my breath and set off the separating charges. The
small, explosive burst nudged the Ariadne. I fired the attitude thrusters under
smooth acceleration and limped away, praying the container was out of pop-up
missiles. Slowly, we drifted apart. I spun the Ariadne 180 degree to face our
good side to the target then used the fuel gauge of the thrusters to extrapolate
the distance we’d achieve before checking my countdown clock. Under five
minutes. I hoped I hadn’t miscalculated.
Our velocity would top out just about the time the rail gun
charged enough to open fire. Belatedly, I remembered to pivot the sensor drone
into the Ariadne’s shadow and mirror our course. While the command
confirmations took forever, the lighter massed drone easily caught up with us once
it received my orders and moved to where we would shield it. I still needed it
as a comm relay if the rail-gun actually fired and we somehow survived.
With the countdown clock ticking into single seconds, we
were still short of minimum safe distance for the EMP charge. About a minute
short. I was blind to where the incoming missiles were. They could be right on
top of us by now. I couldn’t risk the wait. I keyed the auto-fire sequence.
The interior lights dimmed. Circuitry shorted throughout my
compartment from the inductive backlash. The capacitors must have been more
compromised than Ricketts thought. I prayed the relays would hold and my board would
remain active.
It did. Until half a second later when I slammed into the
restraints as we slewed and spun sideways. The Ariadne accelerated for three
full seconds, the internal structure of the ship groaning like an old woman
rising from her chair. I furiously commanded the sensor drone to maintain
distance. No acknowledgement came back.
What the hell? There shouldn’t have been a shockwave. Unless
it wasn’t an EMP charge Ricketts had loaded in the rail-gun. Or the container
had more undetected weaponry and we’d taken another hit. If we had, I had no
idea how we’d survived.
I stared at the sensor display, praying it would clear.
Praying the EMP had taken that jammer offline. At point-blank range, even the
Ariadne’s systems would have suffered. Only the hardened interior of the
countermeasures suite might have survived.
When the cloud of jamming finally lifted, there they were. A
flight of warheads screaming inbound, still accelerating at several Gs. I
blared our distress call through the sensor drone along with our encoded
transponder, praying it remained undamaged.
I nearly cried when the missiles all veered off. When I
checked the sensor display, there was nothing but an expanding debris field in
the container’s last known position. The EMP must have triggered overload in
the reactor. Or a self-destruct sequence.
Moments later I was contacted by Control. They dispatched
the Thetis to secure the area and two tugs to haul the Ariadne in. I informed
them that Ariadne maintained integrity and I would stay aboard as acting
captain to see her home. Control concurred. Darwin’s
Truth would slip away.
After that, everything became a blur. While I awaited
rescue, I scrubbed the logs and constructed a story to support how I was
determined to get Elsa off the ship and across the Green Line. It was all about
deception and misdirection, getting people not to look where I stashed her. And
knowing who to offer the right bribe. Back on Home, it wouldn’t take much to
doctor the records just like the tabloids did. Elsa’s identity from five years
ago was still poised to go online. I hadn’t had the heart to delete it. A few
minor tweaks and she’d be mine again. Officially this time.
I’ll never know why of all of the children in that cryo
chamber only she survived. Had the container approached just close enough to
Home for the auto-warming sequence to engage and prepare its passengers for
landing? Or was it some deeper part of Happy Family’s plan that used Elsa as
the bait?
Either way, every time I closed my eyes, I could
see the bodies of the others in their cryo chambers. All five-year-old children,
all girls. All with identical faces. The same dimpled chin. The same baby fine
blond hair. The same pale blue eyes, just like Hanna at that age. But I knew in
my heart I’d rescued the original not a copy. And I would die before I let anyone
take Elsa away from me again.
Text © 2013 Edward P. Morgan III
