Chapter 17

The light of the nearby star reflected off the Sala’ci’s sloped hull, the black bubble of glass that was its canopy standing out high up on the nose of the ship. It was like the tinted window of a limousine, only the vague outline of its alien pilot’s shape sticking out as Mezul turned her beak to and fro, flying close enough that Lambert could make out the outline of her head if he looked hard enough.

“What is it we are scouting for, exactly?” she asked over the comms, the pair of ships banking to avoid a nasty gas cloud in their path.

“We need to document whatever the UEC’s got,” Lambert replied. “Number of ships, types of craft, position and heading, things like that.”

They’d been flying through the nebula for over an hour now, their thermal scans and emission detectors on the lookout for any anomalies that might signify the presence of a ship. Their search vector was in line with the UEC ambassador’s last coordinates, but they’d found no sign of the Raptor so far, just rocks and gas.

“How can we do so with our scanners going haywire?” Ruvaara asked. She was the only other alien on their ship with a translator,

Lambert didn’t know how the aliens picked who got the surgery, but it was probably reserved for those who would be interacting with humans more often than others.

“That’s Carl’s line,” Lambert replied. “Just keep an eye out for signals that don’t cut out every few moments, or tags with constant speeds and headings, that’s a sure tell that something’s out there and not just distortion.”

“Yeah, check for consistencies among the inconsistencies,” Carl said through the shared channel. “We might get lucky again and they’re fighting a third, or er, fourth alien species, and we can come in and save the day again.”

“Did you say fourth?” Mezul asked. “You have found other life?”

“Yep, maybe a hundred and fifty-something years ago,”

Lambert explained. “The Confederacy was expanding out to the Galactic East when they found someone else was expanding the other way. I don’t know the exact details, it’s all very hush-hush, but after a few diplomatic visits the Suvelians decided we weren’t worth the effort. Their leaders agreed to keep a few systems between our borders neutral, and they kept to their side of the Milky Way ever since.”

“How sad,” Mezul replied. “Has there been any contact between your clans since?”

“Not so much as a peep. They want nothing to do with the

UEC, and who could blame them? I doubt they’ll care that the Hub went independent from the Confederacy, get the feeling we’re all the same to them.”

“If only they had heard your music,” Mezul suggested.

Since there wasn’t much else to do or see, Mezul had humbly requested that Lambert blast some tunes through the shared frequency. They’d be putting out a lot of radio chatter, but the nebula’s energies should give them enough cover to help the aliens acquaint with the latest pop songs, Lambert feeling like some kind of radio host as he worked through his playlist.

The infinite stretch of the nebulae went out in all directions, a few clumps of asteroids and the occasional gas cloud forcing the ships to deviate from their flight path, the latter of which sometimes only visible on the scanners rather than the naked eye.

After some time of silence and static, Lambert patched through to the Sala’ci. “What kind of music do Balokarids have?” he asked. It was Mezul who answered.

“There are more lyrics compared to yours,” she said. “We put more emphasis on vocal and physical performance. Your instruments are more diverse, yet your singers do sound more or less the same.”

Lambert supposed that was true, given how many different trills and chirps he’d heard aboard their carrier, the Balokarid voice range must be miles longer than humans. “Physical performance?” Lambert asked. “Like dancing?”

“Surely humans dance too?”

“We do, it’s just ... I’d never imagined how an alien might dance.”

“Perhaps when we have time for a demonstration, you’d need not imagine...”

Ruvaara, perhaps not wanting to be left out or tired of listening in, patched herself through. “Mezul, stop flirting with the human you’re like twenty times older than him.”

“I’m not that old Ruv’, you-” Mezul cut off her mic with a hiss,

Lambert laughing as he glanced over at her ship.

After another hour, something came up on the scanner. A red thermal profile popped up on the far edges of his tactical map, an unidentified tag appearing beside it on his display. The tag fizzed in and out of focus, but the profile stayed still.

“Got something,” Lambert said. “Heat-sig at heading three- three-zero. That’s a little to the left of your nose, Mezul,” he added.

“We see it,” she replied. “Is that the flame from an engine?”

“Could be, let’s check it out.”

He banked the ship, cutting his engines to limit his own thermal profile and using momentum to carry them towards the signature.

The Sala’ci matched his movements with barely a delay, Mezul likewise turning down her thrusters. The aliens were certainly attentive.

“I recommend we avoid putting power to weapon systems,” Alice advised. It had been quiet for most of the trip, and now its perfect, synthesised voice was coming back with potential threats in the area. “Targeting systems may draw us unwanted attention.”

“Who is that?” Mezul asked, the radio giving her voice a tinny quality.

“That’s Alice,” Lambert said. “Our third ‘crewmember’.”

“But you said there was only two of you on your ship.”

“Two people. Alice is a ... computer – that talks.”

“No need to sound so excited, Lieutenant,” Alice noted. “I am a logistical support platform programmed to handle the many ship systems my fellow humans are unable to efficiently interact with due to the lack of staff present. It is nice to meet you, Mezul.”

“Oh, hello Alice,” Mezul replied, naturally surprised. “Are there other ... computer-things like you?”

“Not in Captain Anders’ fleet. I was installed in corvette one- five as part of a testing program to decide whether personality efficiency is within acceptable levels for further distribution.”

“We drew the short straw to be the guinea pigs,” Lambert clarified. “But we can talk about this later, the signature’s getting hotter, definitely a ship using its afterburners.” He hit the pause button on his music player, stowing the device in a pocket beneath his seat. “Mezul, pull out a click to our left. We’ll go right, get a closer look.”

He pushed the joysticks forward, increasing momentum as the ship peeled off towards the right side of the signature. The Sala’ci did the same, putting distance between his corvette while still keeping in comms range. They were close enough that the heat signature’s IFF tag appeared on his tactical map, though there was too much interference to get a positive ID, the tag displaying a pair of question marks just beside it.

“This is just like when we first encountered each other,” Mezul said over the radio, her craft making small adjustments as it avoided the few microscopical asteroids lingering in her path.

“Don’t show them the same courtesy you did for us,” Lambert warned. “We’re supposed to do recon, but if they spot us, kill them.”

The tag was burning away at a high, constant speed, not quite moving directly away from them. That meant that the interference was shadowing them, at least for now. He couldn’t rely on it for concealment, however, but he could power down non-critical systems to limit any signals they gave off, and could even get them within radar range without being detected if they were lucky.

It was hard enough keeping an eye out for the ship while manoeuvring through the gas clouds and the micrometeors, Lambert constantly altering their vector as they gave chase with his toes curled in anticipation.

“Closin’ to close quarters,” Carl reported. “ready the missiles, Cap?”

“Do it,” Lambert replied. “This is closer than I’d like to be.”

“My weapons are not quite within effective range yet,” Mezul said. “No wonder your human ships are so much more powerful than what we have.”

Lambert felt the ship rumble as the PDC’s raised out of their housings, their turrets swivelling to track the thermal target, their aiming reticles appearing on his display.

The signature was growing hotter, closer. Lambert flipped the ship and countered his thrust, gunning the engines until they were almost drifting. The tag was constantly recalibrating its position on his tac view, but he could see its profile matched that of a Raptor.

Could it be the same ship that Captain Anders spoke to?

The Sala’ci moved through the gas clouds off to Lambert’s left, the faint glittering of its shields sparkling like the stars far behind it. He’d seen how its shields could force their ships through more dangerous clouds, Mezul taking her own more direct approach.

A ping drew his attention back to his tac view. Another red, hostile tag appeared at the edge of his sphere of detection. Then two, then three more. He wasn’t alarmed, the energies of the nebula messed with his systems all the time, but as he directed all his scanners in that direction, the IFF tags didn’t disappear.

“Got something here, Mezul,” Lambert said. “Multiple contacts ahead and above us.”

“We see them” she replied. “Let us get closer, so we can see what we are dealing with.”

Lambert followed her lead, closing the distance between them and the ships. He already knew what they would find, but he was still taken aback when he got close enough to zoom the external cameras in towards the tag locations.

He switched the thermal view off, and at first there was nothing but clouds, but then something metal glinted off the distant sun. It was the hull of a ship, painted the standard black of the Confederate Navy, its sleek profile turned away from this angle, exposing four gargantuan engine thrusters as big as houses. They expelled white- hot jets of flame that gave off tremendous amounts of heat, situated between two great plates of armour that boxed in the engine module.

Above the engines, a disk-shaped piece of glass jutted out of the armoured hull, the command bridge situated high to allow as much visibility to the navigators as possible. The profile tapered into a thin profile that ended at a point, giving off the vague shape of a torpedo, with the prow half smooth and the stern more angular.

The ship banked more to the right as he watched, Lambert getting a better look at the many guns that extended from the hull like quills. Two rows of point-defence cannons flanked the sides, ten apiece. Square sections that housed missile launchers covered the belly and the roof, the sections between covered in antennae and long, slanted rectangles that roofed the torpedo bays, leaving not an inch of the hull free from weaponry.

It was armed to the teeth, but the thing that stood out the most was the giant railgun strapped onto the nose, almost disproportionally massive compared to the various other weapons. Its long barrel faced defiantly forward like a gargoyle perched on a battlement, the armament akin to the cannons once used on the battleships of Earth’s water navy. The barrel was lined with magnetic coils, claws of metal cupping a readied tungsten slug that was about as long as a ballistic missile.

“Fuck me rigid,” Lambert hissed. “That’s a destroyer.”

“An apt word,” Mezul murmured. “This is the one, that ship followed us all the way from Dur’shala...”

The destroyer was not alone – several dozen smaller craft surrounded the ship in a bubble. Raptors, corvettes, even a small squadron of torpedo bombers, ships that doubled as close air support and anti-frigate bombers. They looked like insects compared to the huge ship, the destroyer easily a third larger than the Gallipoli.

“What is that craft off to the side there?” Ruvaara asked.

Lambert didn’t need to ask her to point out which one. As the destroyer banked more and more, it revealed more fighter ships hiding behind it, plus another larger vessel. It was shaped like a giant oil silo, maybe a hundred meters from top to bottom, the base covered in industrial landing gears with claw-shaped feet that hinted at its atmospheric capabilities. Its nose was covered in heat panels to protect the ship from the extreme heat when entering and leaving atmosphere, scorched black with use. A standard cockpit canopy stuck out of one side, and on its flanks were stabiliser fins not unlike those used by atmospheric planes. The whole thing resembled the pioneering rockets humanity used back in its early space fairing days, only scaled up tenfold.

“That’s a tanker-class ship,” Lambert explained. “And a pretty old one, too. Its hull is actually one giant bottle of fuel. They’re unarmed, designed to increase a fleet’s effective flight range without having to bring along a capital ship. Since destroyers lack hangar bays altogether, that thing’s their only way to refuel.”

“A canister that big would make a huge explosion,” Ruvaara mused.

“I like how she thinks,” Carl noted.

Lambert took note of all the craft present, and what types he could see. It would all be recorded down, but he still had to write up personal reports the Captain would no doubt read when they got back. “Alice,” he said. “Have we got enough pictures?”

“There may be other ships hiding on the other side of the destroyer, I would advise repositioning just to make sure.”

“Do you take orders from it?” Mezul asked. Lambert tried and failed not to sound annoyed.

“It’s more like an advisor, one I’m under orders to keep around.

For now.”

He swung the corvette, angling so that they were above the destroyer relative to its heading, knowing that each passing second increased the chances they were discovered, and he certainly didn’t want to be caught in the sights of that massive railgun.

After a long minute, Alice reported in. “No new vessels detected. We have sufficient data to bring back to the Captain.”

“Shouldn’t we try doin’ some sabotagin’?” Carl suggested. “You heard Ruvaara, a lucky missile could turn that tanker to slag.”

“I might be able to move in closer for a strafe,” Mezul replied. “I don’t think your shields could withstand a barrage of hundred-millimetre shells ... Could it?”

“How big is a millimetre?”

Lambert ignored her, Alice asking him through his helmet’s receiver what his orders were. The Gallipoli was vastly outgunned and outnumbered, any advantage he could gain now would help them and the Balokarids immensely, but he couldn’t exactly ask for orders this deep into the nebula.

“We have to try something,” he said. “Load the stubs, Carl, we’re going in.”

“We’ll move on the tanker,” Mezul reported, her tag on his map pivoting up and away.

“No,” he said. “Hang back, if the range on your lasers is like what I saw last time, you’ll be blown to bits before you can get close. Stay with us, we’ll need your cover if we’re seen.

For a moment he thought she wouldn’t listen, but then her tag did a one-eighty, staying further back as Lambert cruised them closer. They crossed into the estimated range of the destroyer’s radar, represented by a giant red ring on his tac view. It felt like he was dipping a toe into a pond infested with piranhas. Lambert unconsciously held his breath as they came close enough he could make out the giant ship’s profile as a spec through the canopy, any moment now and they would be spotted. Hopefully the energies around them were helping them blend in.