Firestar
Copyright© 2009 by Prince von Vlox
Chapter 24
Home System, Oort Cloud
“Corey?” Amanda del Rio called.
“Umm?” First Officer Corey Andersen blinked back awake. Her fighter was riding piggyback on Amanda as they returned to the main base, and she’d been catching some shut-eye. These days it seemed like she was so busy she could only catch up on her sleep during transits between different parts of her command. “What is it?”
“We’ve got someone hyperjumping in. Check it out.” Amanda marked a location that was close to their course.
Corey checked, but nothing showed up on her scan. “Are you sure? I’m not getting anything.” Her fighter was temporarily attached to the hull of Amanda del Rio, one of the top-secret ships that had been nicknamed “Morosini’s Children.” The Children were only 60 meters long. Families engineers had managed to fit a strike carrier’s engines and an impressive array of weapons and sensors, most of them experimental, in their narrow hulls. There was no room for the crew, but the ‘crew’ was merely the brain, brain stem, and shunt of a pilot attached directly to the ship. It was a drastic solution, but it did solve several otherwise intractable engineering issues while creating the most deadly attack craft in the Families Navy.
“Something I learned at a technical lecture many years ago, back before I put on this ship. Donna, Sherri, and I linked our sensors to make a virtual antenna. Here, I’ll port it over to you.”
Corey mentally felt around through her shunt for the proper switch and began to accept the data from the others. She felt the gravitational anomaly that experience told her was something arriving from hyperjump.
“Shut down now, all of you!” she broadcast to all ships.
“Are we sure--” Sherri started to ask as she shut down.
“Assume it’s hostile. If it’s a friend, we’ll know soon enough. But remember we’re a secret project, so we’re hiding from our side too, at least for now. If it’s hostile, we’ll want every advantage we can get. It isn’t a big hyper footprint, so it must be something small trying to come in on the quiet. This far out from Home makes me curious who they are and what they want.”
All three of the Children shut down their drives. A moment later, their electronics went quiet, except for the communications lasers that connected them with each other. A minute later, the stranger emerged from hyperjump less than 30 light seconds away. It drifted quietly for 15 minutes, probably using its passive scanners to make sure the immediate neighborhood was clear. Finally, it set a course toward the inner system at a modest 1 G, keeping its gravity drive on low power.
“That looks perfectly normal,” Donna said sarcastically. If she’d still had a head, she would have rolled her eyes.
“Let’s treat it as a tactical problem, girls,” Corey said. “How do we intercept it?”
“At its current velocity, it’ll be 30 hours before it crosses the hyper limit,” Sherri replied after a moment of silence. “If I were running that ship, I’d never cross the limit so I could always use a jump to get away. If anything showed up that I didn’t like, I’d just mash the button and go elsewhere.”
Corey made her decision. “All right, we’ll track it. If they’re what I think they are, they’re either meeting someone or they’re meeting some thing. Donna, start planning an attack. I want you to come in behind them and spook them. Sherri, if they jump away, plot the vector and follow. You recover from hyperjump faster than a ship with electronics, so you should be able to attack them.”
“What about me?” Amanda asked.
“Give Donna about a one-second head start. They can’t jump straight ahead; the hyperjump limit is only a short distance away. That means they’ll have to turn, and when they do, try to get ahead of them. I’m betting you’ll have an acceleration advantage.”
“Aye, Ma’am.”
“One more thing,” Corey added as the Children used their reaction thrusters to match acceleration with the stranger.
“Ma’am?” Donna asked, her voice all prim and proper. Somebody snickered.
“Let’s try to leave that ship intact enough that we can take prisoners. But if you can’t, remember, they can’t be allowed to report seeing you.”
“I hope they fire,” Sherri said, almost too softly for Corey to hear her. “But I bet I can cut their engines apart before they can flee.”
The next three hours dragged slowly. The only change was that the stranger shut down its drive and coasted. Finally, though, they turned. Corey had been dozing lightly. She snapped awake the moment Amanda called her.
“Give them another 10 minutes,” Corey said. “They’re below the minimum velocity they need to do a hyperjump.” Normally, that was about 1% of the speed of light. “I want them to stay that way.”
“I’ve been checking my passive displays,” Amanda replied. “I don’t have anything approaching, and there aren’t any nearby objects.”
The comment sparked a suspicion in Corey’s mind. “Sherri? Move to get the strange ship squarely between you and Home, and do it on the quiet. Reaction thrusters only.”
“You think they’re receiving a message?”
“I do. And you can record it if you can get anywhere in the beam.”
“Do you think we can decipher it?”
“I doubt it, but we won’t know unless we have the message.”
“Let me do some numbers.”
“Amanda, you and Donna will carry out the original plan. Wait for my command.”
“Aye, boss,” Donna acknowledged.
“All right, I’ve got a solution,” Sherri announced a minute later, and cross-loaded it to the others.
“Wait and watch for changes. Everyone continue to update your own solutions.”
Another half hour passed. Finally, the strange ship turned to a course that would roughly parallel the Home System’s hyperjump limit. Its velocity was well below the threshold needed for a jump, and its main drives were quiet. There would be no better opportunity to attack.
“Go!” Corey ordered.
Donna piled on the acceleration, well over 700 Gs. She was trying to appear big and obvious, and she must have caught the strangers by surprise. It sat quiescent for several seconds.
Corey would have seen more, but Amanda popped them into jump.
“Jump duration?” However long it was, Corey knew it would be too long for her. She wondered if she had fumbled it. Would their target escape? Could Donna disable them? The last time the Children had been in combat, they’d relied upon numbers and acceleration to overwhelm a group of Idenux raiders. She needed to do better than Julie van Fleet, the commander of that last fight.
“Just a touch over 20 seconds.”
“I’d forgotten how empty jump space is.”
“Yeah, that’s the one part of this set-up that I don’t like. At least we only have to use jump tactically, so a few minutes isn’t too bad.”
Corey felt the encroaching emptiness seeping into her, and thought otherwise. It was like being in a sensory deprivation chamber. Something like this could drive her over the edge in no time. How could anyone stand it during an interstellar jump? The cetacean brains that ran Families’ ships certainly couldn’t, which was why they had ship’s crew read to them, show them vid flicks, play cards, or anything else to pass the time.
“I’ll see what I can arrange,” Corey finally said.
“Let’s rethink the whole idea instead, boss. I’d rather have us dependent on shuttles and carriers. We can help them, and they can help us.”
“Yes, but that leaves you vulnerable. It’s a compromise. If they leave, you can’t get home. If you leave, their defense is weakened. You have to stay close to protect them. They have to stay close to you to play mother hen. We can do better.”
“We can get home on our own, boss. It’ll just take longer. Five seconds to emergence.”
“Stay passive when we get out. They may see you, but they’ll pay more attention to Donna. She’ll force them on to you.”
“How do you know that? Never mind. Three. Two. One. Now.”
They were out of hyperjump. Starlight and nebula glow dazzled her. Corey rolled her fighter away from Amanda, and as her systems reset, piled on the acceleration, searching around her for the stranger. She caught a hint of their target and changed course towards it. Donna and Amanda would do the actual fighting, but her fighter wasn’t toothless. She’d watch for any message drone the stranger launched.
The strange ship was already accelerating. Corey sniffed its drive emanations through the sensors connected to her shunt. “Definitely not Families, and not Idenux either.” It was time for a decision. “I don’t care who it is, take ‘em. We’ll sort it out later.”
The ship changed course away from Donna. That delivered the stranger directly into Amanda’s lap. Her first shot smashed into the boxlike ship, and hull metal flashed into vapor. Amanda’s second shot included a missile with a gravity imploder warhead. The ship twisted as gravitational stress ripped through it. Then it tumbled end over end, shedding wreckage.
Corey hung back, watching and waiting. In the next few seconds, the ship was rendered helpless, except for any personal weapons the crew had.
They had no means to board the stranger, but Corey called for the Colbert, the specially built shuttle that hauled the Children around. It took an hour for the Colbert to arrive. Corey had briefed them, so they had a boarding party ready.
“Twelve crew, Ma’am,” the officer in charge of the boarding party reported when the stranger was secured. “One died by a laser to the head. The others resisted, so we had to use a little more force than we’d intended to incapacitate them.”
“A little more force? How much more?”
“About half of them have injuries that will require medical assistance.”
“All right. Who are they? And what are they doing here?”
“They’re Imperials, Ma’am. Imperial Colandran Navy, and they claim we attacked them without provocation. They said this will be a major diplomatic incident.”
“Only if someone hears about it. Remind them of that. Remind them also that accidents happen in a war. After 30 years of war, we’re a little trigger-happy around strangers.” She switched frequencies to Colbert’s bridge. “This is Andersen. I’m landing.”
She aligned with the small rail they’d built for her on Colbert. In five minutes, she was climbing out of her fighter. She felt wrung out and definitely in need of a shower, but there would be time for that later. The rating who had helped her decapsulate tossed her a robe, and Corey ran for the Bridge while pulling it on.
“Can you take their whole ship on board?” she asked the Captain of Colbert as soon as she entered the Bridge.
“Most of it, Ma’am,” Second Officer Bauer replied. “If we do, there won’t be any room for the ladies.”
“Go ahead and do it.” Corey picked up a shunt collar and fit it around her neck so it was resting directly against her shunt, the fleshy bundle of nerves at the top of her spine. “Sherri? Did you get anything?”
“I copied a transmission from Home, but it was all in code.”
“One of you gets to make her own way home, gang. When we take that ship on board, there won’t be room for any of you.”
“You have to get them out of sight,” Amanda said. “We’ll be fine.”
“We’ll clean up the last of the debris,” Donna said. “Don’t worry about us. If we hard dock with each other and link systems, the trip shouldn’t be too bad.”
“Fair enough. I’ll see you guys when you get to the base. I can send Colbert back if it will make your trip easier.”
“No,” Amanda said. “Colbert needs to get these people back.”
“True, but that’s still a long trip back for you. Take care. Don’t let anyone see you.”
Corey detached the shunt collar and dropped it in the drawer. “Captain Bauer, secure our guests somewhere where they can’t get up to any mischief. Don’t leave them on their ship, even with guards. If possible, hold each of them separately. Oh, and head back to the base.”
“What about the ladies?”
“They’re making their own way back.” Corey ran through a mental checklist. “Get a drone off to the base with full particulars. I want a place prepared for our guests, and they can get started on that right away.”
“Aye, Ma’am.” Officer Bauer looked around her Bridge. “All right, girls, you heard the boss. Let’s get busy and make it happen.”
Corey retired to the cabin they’d given her. She looked longingly at the fresher in the corner--Regulations said she was allowed a shower after any flight in a fighter--but sat at her desk and made notes about the attack. Only when she had written down everything she could remember did she allow herself the luxury of a quick scrub.
Four hours and one hyperjump later, they entered the rock swarm orbiting around their base. It took most of an hour to navigate through the maze and land on the largest of the three planetoids it protected, but shortly after that, Corey strode into her office and dropped into her desk chair. Her aide, Janet daCruz, smiled at her before pulling another form off the pile of reports that filled her desk.
Having an aide had bothered Corey at first. Admirals had aides. Council members had aides. Even a few Captains had aides, those commanding carrier battle groups or cruiser squadrons. She was a First Officer, and she wasn’t authorized to have an aide. But she did. Her second day here had taught her why she needed one: she could have handled normal Navy paperwork, but what this research base needed would have buried her.
Janet was nearly twice Corey’s age, and like everyone else on the base, called her the Old Lady. That felt strange every time she heard it. Corey could see Janet out of the corner of her eye, busy at her desk, the cat Ruffles snoring against her feet. Space was at a premium on this rock, and Corey was glad they had to share an office.
“Have you told anyone about our guests?” Corey asked, assuming Janet knew as much or more about the captured Imperial ship as her commander. Aides knew everything important, and they knew what was important. That was how they got to be aides.
“No, Ma’am, though I suggested to Admiral Carter’s aide that the next time she happened to be out this way she might want to drop in for some brew and gossip.”
Corey laughed. The thought of someone visiting the Oort Cloud surrounding the Home System for social reasons was funny. “The senior aide to the Eldest of the Fleet doesn’t have time for social calls nine light-hours from home. By the way, when is she visiting us?”
“Well, this is all unofficial, Ma’am, so I really can’t say. But if I were off duty in about 21 hours, I would expect to run into someone in the mess that I hadn’t seen in the last five months.”
“I’ll make a point to be off duty and in the mess at that time,” Corey said. “After they unload our little surprise, I’m sending the Colbert in-system with what Sherri collected. Let the Admiral know they’re coming, please.”
“Aye, Ma’am.”
“Where did you put our guests?”
“At the moment, they’re still on Colbert, confined to individual cabins. I didn’t want to expose them to anything about this base that I didn’t have to. They’ll have to be patient until we finish preparing a place for them.”
Corey nodded. She ran her hand over her neck where the shunt collar had chafed her skin. She needed sleep, she needed a shower, she needed to write a report, she needed ... she needed sleep. “Anything else? I’m going to turn in for a few hours.” She eyed the stacks of paper awaiting her attention. They were taller than she remembered. The Administrative Department shouldn’t be passing this much on to her. She’d have to look into what was going on there, but only after she got some sleep.
“Just one more thing,” Janet said as Corey got up. “The first ship of the final batch arrived while you were gone; she’s in Hanger 2. You’ll want to meet her.” A muscle in her face jumped. “It’s someone you know, Svetlana Federova.”
Corey hesitated, and then took the file. Touching it made her hurt. She felt sad, angry, and relieved all at once. She didn’t open it, though. After a moment, she put it squarely in the center of her desk.
“Tell them I’m on my way down. I’ll want a moment alone with her.”
“Aye, Ma’am. I’ll let them know.”
She had read through the names and personal histories of every pilot involved in this project. She had read their after-action reports, their fitness sheets, and their combat reports. She had read all of the minutiae the Families and the Navy had collected over the years. She read the hospital reports, the diagnoses, and the profiles of those who had ‘gone mechanical’, the ones who, for whatever reason, had chosen not to push the Button. In a way, the mechanicals were probably the luckiest of all the pilots who joined Morosini’s Children. For them, it was the logical culmination of a choice each had already made.
Over the years, pilots had evolved various names for what they perceived through their shunt. The most popular term for it was The Glory. It was every frequency in the universe dumped into their nervous system.
At first, the total sensory impact overwhelmed you. You had to learn to deal with that, or you never reached a combat assignment. Rookies were brought along slowly, given larger and larger doses on every training flight. Frequencies were added, and new senses were brought into play. The shunt, that bundle of nerves at the top of her neck protected by a lump of skin, grew in proportion to the increased activity passing through it.
Glory and grandeur ... those words were inadequate to describe what people really experienced. You couldn’t describe the smell of gravity drives or the taste of synthetic aperture radar. Pilots learned to live and work there, or they were sent off to an assignment they could handle. Fleet had a large number of assignments where the universe couldn’t overwhelm a gal.
Officially, nobody knew why pilots would ‘go mechanical’. Unofficially, other pilots knew that it was because they could no longer live in the same world as everyone else. It wasn’t just fighter pilots, either. About once a year, some pilot, somewhere, shunted into her cruiser, escort, carrier, shuttle, scout, merchant, or other vessel, would hesitate when it was time to push The Button and break her connection to the universe, and The Glory would take her.
Years before, when the problem was originally identified, the first few pilots to go mechanical were forcibly brought back to the normal world. Those early few were the objects of countless hours of research. There was a group of decision-makers that said it was necessary to know why pilots were turning away from their loved ones, their friends, their Families, their kith and kin. The words these people heard, words like ‘glory’ and ‘grandeur’, and a mute shaking of the head when they asked why, were unacceptable to them. They wanted practical answers, not vague words. They felt the need to guard the Families from this strange new affliction.
In the end, their minds and spirits broken, those first few victims were quietly locked away, denied what they most wanted in the world, denied the use of their skills, denied the chance to follow their hearts. Most found ways to take their own lives despite the safeguards surrounding them. The others never rejoined the world they’d turned away from. This terrified many among the Families.
Fear of what the shunt cost almost outweighed what it promised. The shunt was necessary for space travel in the Nebula. It was part of a living body, and thus able to repair itself, at least to some extent. No other control technology could survive the high radiation environment of the Nebula, especially electronics. Everyone knew that if the Families moved further into space, more cases would crop up.
Someone had to make a decision, someone who had been there, and come back. That someone took a hard-eyed look at the costs of training, at the costs of hospitalization, at the costs of care, and at the human cost to those left behind.
“What’s really being lost?” she had asked. “Why are we doing this to these people?” She struck a deal, offering the mechanicals the freedom of The Glory, promising to support the biotechnology that kept them alive, but only if they would continue to work and hold responsibilities as members of the United Families.
And a few are almost killed, Corey thought, and living in the shunt is a special mercy for them. Corey slipped the folder into a drawer and stared at the holopic of her and Svetlana. It had been taken on the carrier Jellicoe. She had been a newly promoted Squadron Lead, and Svetya had been assigned to her as a ‘steadying influence’. Partly that was because they were opposite in so many ways: Svetya was tall, thin, and blonde; she was dark-haired and petite. Svetya was in her mid-30s, ancient by fighter pilot standards, while Corey, 12 years her younger, was sometimes mistaken for a teenager playing dress-up in a naval uniform.
She slipped the fleece-lined glove she kept on her bookshelf on her real hand--her prosthetic didn’t need one--and walked through the quiet, empty corridors of the base. Hanger 2 was busy. Technicians were scurrying over a hull resting in a cradle. They replenished fluids, ran diagnostics, updated the weapons systems, and repaired or modified all of the other things that needed to be done to prepare the Children for combat.
Corey watched the technicians for a few minutes, conscious that she was being watched in turn. Then the eldest of the work crew decided it was time for a break. They finished their immediate tasks, put down their tools and equipment, and left Corey alone in the hangar.
She approached the ship, her breath hanging in the air. Up close, she could see rime ice on the scaffolding. Her ears were numb, and her lips were cold. She didn’t care; she was entirely focused on the deadly sliver of metal that carried what remained of her best friend.
She stood for a moment with both hands flat against the hull, remembering; the poker game that had lasted three days until they could all see the last bet and the last fold. The hours of talk, comparing sibs, Septs, and Families. The familiar presence just above and behind her every time they flew, both of them acting and reacting as if their brains were sharing the same thoughts.
Damn this war.
Corey pushed a recessed button with her gloved finger, and a small hatch popped open. She opened the patch on her left glove and pressed the contacts on the back of her hand against the plastic plate just inside the hatch.
“Hello, Svetlana.”
“Hi, Corey.” Her friend’s shunt voice was the same as the one Corey remembered.
“I was beginning to wonder if I would see you here, Svetya. I don’t hear much about what happens outside of the project. They didn’t tell me how your operation had gone.”
Svetlana laughed quietly. “I gave the doctors a scare or two. Nothing like what we’ll do to the Idenux. This is ... this is incredible, Corey. No, that doesn’t say half of it. I feel like I could use one of those cruisers of theirs for a ball.”
“We’re going to do that. Just remember, Svetya, most ball games are team sports.”
“Don’t worry, Corey, I learned my lesson the last time. It’s great you wound up in charge of us. I can’t think of anybody who could do it better. I didn’t think they’d be smart enough to give you this job. It’s just like the old days, isn’t it?”
“Those old days weren’t that long ago.”
There was a long pause, and then Svetlana spoke slowly and softly. “They were for me, Corey. It seems like a lifetime ago. They tell me you’re a First Officer now. I always knew you’d do well. You’ll be an Admiral one day, mark my words. Do I call you Ma’am, or what?”
“Whatever suits you,” Corey replied. “Old Lady seems to be the popular term of endearment at the moment.”
“Somehow it just seems natural to call you either Ma’am or the Old Lady. It always has.”
“Svetlana, I’m the youngest one here. Even our freshest newbie is two years older than me.”